Day: August 23, 2017

A change to the bitcoin cash blockchain has provided further clues as the evolving relationship between the two competing blockchains.

The cryptocurrency ICO world received another nasty surprise yesterday when we learned the Enigma pre-ICO had been hacked. Assailants successfully modified the page for the project’s pre-ICO offering and changed the deposit address. Quite a lot of funds were sent to this wrong address, eventually adding up to around 373 Ether. It now appears the funds were successfully moved to the Bitfinex exchange, where they will be dumped on the markets.

Stolen Enigma Pre-ICO Funds Lands on Bitfinex

It is not the first nor the last time we hear of a cryptocurrency ICO hack. Criminals are purposefully targeting these projects because they attract a lot of novice investors. Every ICO project has its own web page, which contains the deposit address for both the regular ICO and the pre-ICO. These web pages are a massive security risk for all parties involved, as they are often prone to hacking attempts and other types of modification behind the scenes.

In the case of the Enigma ICO, the team was alerted to the Ethereum deposit address for their pre-ICO being changed. That is pretty interesting, considering the official pre-ICO had not even started yet at that time. Someone successfully gained access to the website’s server and modified some of the pages without the team noticing it until it was too late. Despite various alerts on social media, people kept sending funds to this address regardless.

When everything was said and done, the fake address received around 373 Ether from the Enigma pre-ICO scam. However, it turns out the account had other transactions from different phishing attempts, adding up to a total of 343.639 Ether in total. It looks as if all of this money is currently residing on the Bitfinex exchange, as the transfer was initiated 21 hours ago, at the time of writing. It is unclear if Bitfinex is aware of this platform and plans to undertake action against this user.

Looking at the Bitfinex chart, the Ether/USD price has crashed hard around the time this transfer hit the exchange with enough confirmations. Then again, Ethereum seems to be in a bit of a downward spiral right now, indicating this can just be a mere coincidence right now.  No one doubts this money will be sold on the Bitfinex exchange unless the company undertakes against. At the current price, 676.63656 Ether is worth $212,514. That is quite a lot of money to fall into the wrong hands. All of this goes to show cryptocurrency ICOs are a big problem for the ecosystem as a whole and we may see similar thefts in the future.

Not too long ago, a similar incident affected the InsureX ICO. A hacker successfully modified their website and changed the deposit address for Ethereum investments. It is a bit strange to see projects focusing on decentralization rely on centralized website platforms and not take the proper precautions when it comes to protecting their web pages. It is unclear how these problems can be solved, though. Using social media to spread the word to users will not work either, as those channels are often targeted by criminals as well.

Investors also have to do their due diligence before making financial contributions to projects, though. Everyone hopes to see  a tenfold return or better on their investment. Partaking in the pre-ICO is your best bet for quick results. However, it is this type of greed the criminals are actively targeting these days. Unfortunately, their attempts have been rather successful so far and it does not appear that situation will change anytime soon.

Big things are happening in the cryptocurrency world as of late. With the Bitcoin price slowly picking up again, things are looking positive. As a result, the total cryptocurrency market cap has increased to $150bn for the first time. This new all-time high should not be ignored by any means, though. It is a big … Continue reading Cryptocurrency Market cap Sets a New All-time High of Over $150bn

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We have come to the end of the day in our bitcoin price trading efforts out of Europe and it’s time to take stock of how things played out during the session in an attempt to formulate a strategy that we can carry forward into the session this evening. Any readers that caught this morning’s … Continue reading Bitcoin Price Watch; Trading The Recovery

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One of China’s “most active investors” has contributed 100 percent to a funding round by Blockchain startup Onchain.

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Banks control the money, just like exchanges control cryptocurrencies, but crypto can be exchanged outside this monopoly

For those people who are wondering whether or not more services will support Bitcoin Cash in the future, it looks like we may have an answer on our hands. The ElectrumX server – which a popular full node implementation for Electrum servers – now uses the BCH chain as the main setting. People who want to use SegWit will need to make some modifications to the way they run this software package. An intriguing change, although some official communication regarding this change would have been appreciated.

ElectrumX Switches to Bitcoin Cash

It is never good to see popular open source systems make drastic changes to the way they operate without announcing them. In the case of ElectrumX, their decision to change from the Bitcoin blockchain to Bitcoin Cash as the “main” implementation without alerting users will not be appreciated. It is unclear why the team never made this change public in the first place, even though it can be found in the GitHub notes when you know what to look for.

Everyone who runs an Electrum server needs to be aware of this change. Although ElectrumX is only one of the multiple server implementations people can use, it is possible there will be server operators who have no idea this change occurred. If they update the software and do not read through the documentation properly, they will be automatically running Electrum for the Bitcoin Cash network. Support for the SegWit chain has not been disabled, but operators will need to manually modify the way they run ElectrumX. This is not the best decision by the team.

In fact, one could argue it makes a lot more sense to enable BCH support through a dedicated command, rather than making it the main implementation suddenly. After all, there is no reason to think Bitcoin Cash will suddenly become the main Bitcoin blockchain. Despite a few price pumps over the past few days, the overall market trend is still incredibly bearish for BCH – and BTC for that matter -. With the lower mining difficulty still in effect, there are far too many new coins generated every single hour. The majority of those coins will be sold on the open markets in the next few days, further driving down the price.

It is still more profitable to mine Bitcoin Cash compared to Bitcoin itself. That situation will not change until the difficulty adjusts properly, as it sits at 7% of the original chain’s difficulty right now. This low difficulty, combined with the increasing hashrate, will certainly result in a lot more blocks found on the network. All of these blocks still have the 12.5 BCH reward right now, increasing the inflation for new BCH coins hitting the market. If ten blocks are found in a one-hour period, there will be 125 additional BCH to be sold on the market. At a price of $685.57, that is a lot of money entering the market quickly. The scales will be tipped eventually.

In the end, it is good to see companies openly support Bitcoin Cash. However, the way they go about it, especially in the case of ElectrumX, leaves a lot to be desired. We can only hope other companies are far more transparent when it comes to deciding upon whether or not they should support the BCH chain and currency. Doing things in a hush-hush manner will not go over well with the general Bitcoin community. This decision by ElectrumX will have some repercussions for this project.

A candidate for the US Congress in upstate New York has begun accepting donations in bitcoin.