Day: November 30, 2017

The rise in popularity and prices of cryptocurrencies will bring an inevitable rise in cyber-crime and those trying to steal it. This last week has seen the crypto top three; Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum, all reach record price highs of $11,400, $100 and $500 respectively. Big bucks bring bad guys and they are finding ever more devious ways to get at this digital booty.

Internet security researchers have found new techniques that let hackers perform browser-based crypto-mining even after the window has been closed. Millions of unsuspecting people have been targeted by drive-by crypto-miners using compromised websites to harness the CPU power and electricity of their machines without their knowledge.

Using malware called Coinhive, unscrupulous hackers can infect websites that inject code to secretly siphon off your computer power to mine the altcoin Monero which is currently trading around $175. The crypto-miner released in September allowed website owners to make extra revenue from their readers by harnessing their CPU power. However, it does not tell the user what is taking place and why their computer may start running a lot slower when visiting certain websites. The profits are shared between the account holder who gets 70% of what is mined and Coinhive the remaining 30%. It has been estimated that Coinhive is making between 4 and 5 million dollars a year from deceptive web-based mining operations. Torrent sharing platform The Pirate Bay was one of the early adopters of Coinhive, and changed its technique to mine through forced advertising instead of directly after users complained about their machines slowing down.

Researchers have found thousands of websites that are running Coinhive, many unknowingly, with proceeds going to whoever hacked the site. Anti-malware provider Malwarebytes have also discovered that the leaching can continue even after the user has closed the browser window. A pop-under window hiding behind the Windows taskbar is the culprit. It has been designed to bypass ad-blockers and closing the main browser still doesn’t get rid of it.

The code is even more cunning in that it intentionally does not max out the CPU usage but throttles down the computationally intensive actions to make usage look more natural. The technique works on the latest version of Chrome and the latest version of Windows 10 and antivirus providers have yet to include it in their signature updates although Malwarebytes are on the ball and claim to have blocked 248 million attempts at drive-by mining in the last month.

Vigilance is the key for end users, keep an eye on your CPU usage through Windows task manager and shut down all browser instances when you are no longer browsing the web.

The post Drive-by Crypto Miners Want Your Computer appeared first on NEWSBTC.

There are limitations to what the human brain is capable of, especially when it comes to juggling complex statistical models, analyzing trends and predicting market sentiments. These days, such complex tasks are increasingly being delegated to machine intelligence who are not only capable of raking in higher profits, but can do so without any human emotion. And these machines are about to become a lot more smarter with Signal’s marketplace for data science powered signals for trading cryptocurrencies.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

Signals is a Prague-based start-up that is developing a smart marketplace for cryptocurrency trading signals. The marketplace enables traders to easily create their own custom trading strategies from the vast array of trading algorithms, ranging from traditional technical analysis to state-of-the-art machine-learning techniques without any programming skills.

The easy-to-use interface allows users to quickly assemble their trading strategy all under a few clicks. Backed by vaults of historical data and computational power, machines can make smarter and faster trading decisions and maximize trading profits.

Built on blockchain technology, Signals not only provides a secure marketplace platform, but also enables traders to monitor the distribution of tokens among token holders and predict price movement based on holding patterns.

For experienced developers and data scientists, the Signals Platform is a great opportunity to monetize knowledge and technical know-how by developing indicators which can be traded on the marketplace.

The platform also comes with a simulation model for users to train their model using historical data from crypto exchanges, optimized algorithms, and supportive analytics to train the model.  Once perfected and optimized, traders can take their models online for real-time trading decision and share it with the community.

Signals is offering sophisticated and powerful machine learning algorithms for the whole crypto community backed by decentralized supercomputers power and augmented by crowd sourced wisdom. Here is a glimpse of the platform’s capabilities

To process extreme amounts of data and complex algorithmic computations within a short time, the Signals company has just partnered with iExec, a French company specializing in blockchain-based cloud computing.

IExec is building an innovative marketplace network for users to monetize their applications, servers, and data-sets. This synergetic partnership enables Signals to process big data within a reasonable timeframe, while making it affordable for common users.  

The alpha version of Signals platform and Strategy marketplace is scheduled for public release before the end of 2017. The platform’s ecosystem including purchasing indicators, data sets, and leasing a strategy for copy-trading will be readily available through the native Signals Token (SGN). SGN is a deflationary token. A small percent of the token gets burned every time payment is made on the platform. This design ensures that the token increases in both market price and growth as supply shrinks.

Signals is offering SGN token to marketplace participants through its Token Presale event. The event starts on Wednesday, November 22, 2017, at 14:00 UTC. Tokens will be offered for Ethereum at approximately 0.26 USD per token. Participants must register on Signals website a name, e-mail and an ETH wallet address before participating.

‘Big Four’ firm PwC recently accepted bitcoin in exchange for advisory services, a news report revealed Thursday.

The last thing most people needed right now was another Bitcoin hard fork. We have seen far too many coins abuse the Bitcoin name for financial gain in the past few weeks. That hasn’t prevented the Lightning Bitcoin team from trying to make their mark on the ecosystem, though. It is an interesting form of Bitcoin, although it won’t necessarily succeed in dethroning Bitcoin, or even Bitcoin Cash for that matter.

Lightning Bitcoin is Coming Soon

It will be interesting to see how many more forks of Bitcoin come to market during the next few years. Surprisingly, there seems to be a genuine market for these sorts of currencies, even though most people will agree that replacing Bitcoin will not be easy whatsoever. Lightning Bitcoin may sound appealing at first, but it is evident things are on the verge of really getting out of hand. So many forks make the cryptocurrency industry look as childish as it did about five years ago.

The main selling point of Lightning Bitcoin is that it aims to make Bitcoin “fast” again. This will be achieved with a three-second block time, with all blocks being 2MB in size. It is an interesting change of pace compared to the 8MB block forks we have seen over the past few months. The goal is to support between 1,000 and 10,000 transactions per second, which would certainly be a milestone for any form of Bitcoin. After all, this is one of the main flaws associated with BTC, as the latter can only support so many transactions per second.

Moreover, Lightning Bitcoin uses the DPoS consensus mechanism, which allows for the separation of voting and bookkeeping rights. According to its site, “Users can maintain the policy discourse as long as they possess tokens, thus achieve the true autonomy.” At the same time, this consensus mechanism may backfire on Lightning Bitcoin, as there is no perfect consensus model in the first place. The tokens will be distributed to existing Bitcoin holders at a 1:1 ratio, which means it is another airdrop for Bitcoin users.

Furthermore, it appears Lightning Bitcoin will have built-in smart contract support, allowing users to issue digital assets of their own. This seems to be an effort to compete with Ethereum, although it is unclear why anyone would issue tokens on the LBTC ecosystem now or in the future. Last but not least, there is support for dApp development in this ecosystem as well, combined with zero-knowledge proof for additional privacy and even cross-chain atomic swaps. It’s an interesting combination of features, although nothing that will necessarily win over the community whatsoever.

The goal is to introduce this new currency once the Bitcoin network hits block 499,999. That should happen in a few weeks from now, with the mainnet launch scheduled to happen in the following week. Smart contract deployment will not be available until Q3 of 2018, and that 10,000 TPS milestone will not be reached until 2019. While this may appear to be a proper roadmap, it is evident the value of LBTC will be mainly determined through speculation first and foremost. There will be nothing setting this new network apart from Bitcoin or any other hard fork other than its consensus algorithm.

So far, it seems this new currency will find its way onto a few cryptocurrency exchanges from day one. The website lists CEX, Gate.io, BTCC, and others as supporting this upcoming altcoin. Whether or not there will be much demand for this new currency remains to be seen. It is evident there’s good reason to hold onto Bitcoin right now, as many different airdrops are coming in the near future. Lightning Bitcoin will not be the last of these; that much is evident.

From the developers of Babystep, the world’s biggest online provider of educational content video catalogs, comes parenting start up FamilyPoints. The new company aims to use the innovation of blockchain technology to transform the global parenting market — estimated to be worth $6 trillion.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

FamilyPoints has also announced the appointment of Shaoming Yang as its chief business development officer, hoping to benefit from the seasoned capabilities of the former Alibaba senior manager, also recognized for his role in founding China’s first e-commerce website focused on providing for parents.

Yang will be leading Babystep and FamilyPoints e-commerce development, in addition to forming strategic partnerships, with the ultimate goal of helping parents to minimize the costs of childcare products expenditure. His motivation derives from his own personal situation.

Yang described his motivation for joining this project:

“My little boy is being raised in Shenzhen. Compare with the kindergarten system in Singapore, I am worried which kindergarten to send him to as most are privately run and there is no proper accreditation in place. A lot of people need connections just to get in a good school. With FamilyPoints, parents can properly review kindergartens and share genuine feedback with fellow parents. If this can solve my problem, it can also help others.”

While other similar platforms are available, FamilyPoints will be the first to be based on blockchain. This is expected to bring about several innovative improvements, such as more secure transactions, with a transparent channel for reviews on services and products. The platform will also integrate a rewards system and a referral program to build user loyalty.

FamilyPoints intends to create a blockchain-based ledger that will serve as a yardstick against which the quality of products and services will be measured. Thanks to the immutability of ratings and reviews, the ledger will create a natural system of trust within the parenting ecosystem, one that is cross-industry and scalable for the establishment of trust on any system.

This will set a higher standard for manufacturers and service providers to attain, ensuring that consumers across the globe are better protected against misinformation in the industry, which is becoming increasingly problematic in the modern context of widespread information.

FamilyPoints Crowdfunding

In order to raise the funds necessary to develop, market and expand the platform, FamilyPoints will be hosting a token generation event to issue its native FamilyPoints tokens (FPT) to potential backers. FPT are ERC20-based tokens issued on the Ethereum protocol, which will function as app tokens used to access the FamilyPoints platform through subscription fees.

Potential users of this platform will include:

1. Retail users: These are individual parents and other online shoppers desiring access to the best-rated educational services and who want to purchase trustworthy mother and child products, getting the best value for their money.
2. Service Providers: Companies, organizations and institutions such as kindergartens, education centers, language schools, financial institutions and tourism companies who want to open up new, targeted customer bases to relay information to about their products and services.
3. Merchants: Online retailers specializing in selling mother and child products.
4. Product Manufacturers: Producers and manufacturers who offer white label products or those who want to access customers directly without going through the retail industry.
5. Other Stakeholders: Potential partners who can choose to join the FamilyPoints platform at various strategic stages in future development.

About Babystep

Babystep was founded in 2015 and today owns the largest video library of educational parenting content in the world, featuring over 1,150 videos in 8 different languages. After winning China’s biggest start up competition, the prestigious G-Startup, Babystep launched its own mobile video platform that currently generates 15 million organic views every month thanks to a base of 1.5 million established subscribers this year.

The company has initiated an expansion into furniture retail in China, with a growing presence on Taobao, Xiaohongshu (小红书), and Yidoutang. Babystep is now a Top 3 parenting channel in Baidu app for mothers, a Top 10 educational content provider for Alibaba, and is Touttiao and Le.tv’s fastest growing educational content provider.

About FamilyPoints

FamilyPoints’s blockchain-based solution is fully scalable, with parents potentially earning up to 40% rewards from mother and child product purchases. Rewards can be redeemed towards a range or products and services within the platform, including children educational services, professional expert consultation, live stream webinars and early education classes.

Higher rewards are possible because of direct partnerships with selected manufacturers and brands, significantly lowering mark ups. FamilyPoints is considering to offer other services in the future, including banking, insurance and travel.

To learn more about FamilyPoints and get updates on its token generation event, visit the website or read its whitepaper.

Most cryptocurrency users are well aware that buying or selling crypto with PayPal is a big problem. In most cases, it is something one should avoid, as there is always the risk of fraud or even a chargeback. It now appears the company itself is actively freezing user accounts connected with any cryptocurrency-related activity. While some people may consider this to be borderline illegal, the company is certainly within its rights to freeze accounts and make funds inaccessible for extended periods of time.

Avoid PayPal When Dealing with Cryptocurrency

It is a mystery why so many people still try to buy and sell cryptocurrency through PayPal. Although PayPal may be one of the more convenient and commonly-used online payment methods out there, the company doesn’t like Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies all that much either. In fact, the platform protects neither buyers nor sellers of “digital items” like cryptocurrencies.

One of the big risks when using PayPal to sell cryptocurrencies is that buyers can always perform a chargeback. If the buyer claims he or she never received the cryptocurrency in question, they will probably get their money back. Even if they did receive the money, and the seller can prove it, it is still up to the company itself to determine whether or not a refund request is valid. In most cases, the sellers will get the short end of the stick, but that is only to be expected.

Things have certainly escalated lately, as the company is cracking down on cryptocurrency activity even further. Some users report their PayPal accounts have suddenly been “frozen” and their money made inaccessible for 180 days. This is not something a lot of PayPal users will like whatsoever, but it is evident the company doesn’t take kindly to Bitcoin and altcoins right now.

Paypal has banned my account for selling CryptoCurrency. They have Frozen my sale payments for 180 days with no appeals! Can they legally do this? I have bills to pay and never had complaints and they never said anything every time I got scammed and called. Now I get this letter pic.twitter.com/Dbycl5kHWG

— IrishGirl710 (@IrishGirlCrypto) November 28, 2017

If people bothered to read the PayPal Terms of Service, they might notice the company can close user accounts or freeze their funds whenever they feel the need to. Although it may not happen all that often, there is no option available to appeal such a decision, and users will have no choice but to accept the penalty. Even when the 180-day period ends, the company is allowed to keep the money frozen for another similar period, after which they will decide whether or not the account in question will be closed permanently. For some people, this will mean not being able to access thousands of dollars for up to a year, without any recourse.

Moreover, people who actively sell any form of cryptocurrency through PayPal are now considered to be “currency dealers or an exchange”. These service providers must always obtain specific authorization before they are allowed to use PayPal to process payments. In the case of the current string of activities, none of the users attempted to receive such authorization, which means their accounts got flagged automatically. Users failing to comply with the official guidelines will have their accounts closed, with no option to appeal.

It is evident anyone looking to sell cryptocurrencies should use LocalBitcoins or other platforms and never deal with PayPal ever again. The company is rock solid when it comes to normal payments, but it has a clear disdain for cryptocurrency activity, which is only to be expected. There is no reason to deal with PayPal to buy or sell Bitcoin and altcoins, as there are so many other payment options one can choose from. The sooner people realize this, the better it will be for everyone involved.

As the world of cryptocurrencies and ICOs heats up, there are many lingering questions about how tokens will fit within tax and regulatory frameworks.

The infamous meme sentence “man not hot” would certainly apply to the Bitcoin price trend right now. More specifically, this currency is going through a pretty rough patch right now, although it remains to be seen how things will play out. More specifically, the Bitcoin price is genuine struggling to retain its value whatsoever, as the market is still pretty sour right now. It is not unlikely this is only the beginning of a major price correction.

What Comes Next for the Bitcoin Price?

Sadly, there is no real answer to this question whatsoever. More specifically, when the Bitcoin price hit $11,500 less than 24 hours ago, people were elated. As one would expect, FOMO started setting in and people called for a $15,000 price before Christmas. Those with a clear mind could certainly see things would not go as smoothly, and it didn’t take long before the reality started setting in.

More specifically, the Bitcoin price took a sharp nosedive all the way to $9,600 and has been struggling to remain at that value ever since. Despite a strong push toward over $10,500 , that momentum could not be sustained whatsoever. It has been a few hours since hitting that print point and the Bitcoin price is now struggling to reclaim $10,000. A very normal turn of events, to say the very least, but it is still pretty cumbersome to watch it unfold.

It is evident there is a lot more interesting in selling Bitcoin than buying the world’s leading cryptocurrency right now. A lot of people have bought Bitcoin at the top, unfortunately, and they are now faced with a difficult decision.  Either they sell to keep their losses to a minimum, or they simply hold out in the hopes of seeing the Bitcoin price go up again in the future. While this latter option seems the best choice right now, there is no reason to think we will see a Bitcoin price of over $11,000 again this year. It may still happen, though, but it seems rather unlikely right now.

With over $10.3bn in 24-hour trading volume, there is no lack of interest in the world’s leading cryptocurrency whatsoever. Those who see the bigger picture will certainly acknowledge this is an excellent dip to stock up on Bitcoin. However, everyone wants to buy BTC as cheap as possible. Catching this falling knife will not be easy whatsoever, as it doesn’t appear as if this is the bottom for this particular dip just yet.

With so much trading volume to go around, it is almost surprising to see Bitfinex still in the lead. For some unknown reason, this particular platform generated twice the volume of Bithumb. That is rather remarkable,  considering there are some serious allegations affecting this exchange. How all of this will play out and impact the Bitcoin price in the coming days and weeks, remains to be determined. For now, there will be a fair amount of volatility to contend with, unfortunately.

Rest assured there will be a very strong focus on the Bitcoin price moving forward. Whether that means we will see another run at surpassing $11,000 this year, is anybody’s guess right now. We can only hope to see the markets stabilize before the weekend comes around. Right now, that doesn’t appear to be in the cards, though, but things are always evolving in the world of cryptocurrencies.

John McAfee who has doubled his 2020 prediction from $500,000 to $1 mln, betting his d**k on it.

Bitcoin prices are taking a hit at press time, and could suffer a deeper pullback over the weekend, the price charts indicate.

Bitcoin network issues have been apparent for quite some time now. Especially when it comes to the mempool, things get out of hand quite regularly. It seems the backlog is filling up once again. With over 70,000 unconfirmed transactions hitting the network, things aren’t looking all that great. This is mainly due to the number of transactions per second, surpassing the 34 mark. Whether or not this is part of another spam attack, remains to be seen, though.

It is always interesting to see how things play out on the Bitcoin network in real-time. More specifically, there are mempool issues on more than one occasion. Right now, it seems the backlog is filling up pretty quickly once again. Over the past 24 hours, around 30,000 unconfirmed transactions have been added and the queue isn’t getting cleared whatsoever. In fact, it seems things are getting gradually worse right now, which is pretty troublesome.

More Mempool Concerns for Bitcoin

With so many new transactions hitting the network per second, things won’t improve soon. While it is good to see so many transactions, the network can’t handle them all right now. We also see over 1,000 BTC in fees in the mempool right now, which is quite a high number. There is no real shift in hashpower to speak of either. In most cases, such a mempool issue is caused by BCH getting more hashpower. So far, that is not the case, as the hashpower hasn’t changed much over the past few days.

There is one slightly worrisome development, though. On the three-hour chart, it shows a Bitcoin mining hashrate drop by as much as 25%. This has not translated into any major trends just yet, though. It may just be a blip on the radar, but it might indicate something is going on we don’t know about just yet. It is expected this mempool issue will sort itself out pretty soon, though. For now, there is no indication of a spam attack or any nefarious activity.

This is not the first nor the last time we will see Bitcoin network congestion. These problems have been apparent for quite some time now, and it seems this is not the last time either. Until Bitcoin can properly scale, problems like these will continue to arise on a regular basis. This is far from an ideal situation, but it is to be expected, after all. It will be interesting to see how things will unfold in this regard. It will certainly spark a lot of new debates in the coming days, that much is certain.

Header image courtesy of Shutterstock

The post Bitcoin Mempool Clogs up With Unconfirmed Transactions Again appeared first on NEWSBTC.

We knew a correction was just around the corner in the bitcoin price having seen the exuberance of the last few days and action hasn’t disappointed us in that regard. Price dropped from in and around the $11,000 area to as low as $9,000 apiece in a matter of hours and current levels sit just ahead of $9,800.

The hope is that the recent bottom proves to be just that – a turnaround point from which sentiment can reverse and the bitcoin price can once again resume its overarching march to the upside.

All we’ve got to do is make sure that we’re ready as and when things move so as to ensure we can pull a profit from the market.

So, with this in mind, let’s get some levels in place that we can use near term. As ever, take a quick look at the chart below before we get started so as to get an idea where things stand. It’s a one-minute candlestick chart and it’s got our range overlaid in green.

As the chart shows, the range we are using for the session today comes in as defined by support to the downside at 9710 and resistance to the upside at 9946.

We’re going to be on the lookout for a close above resistance to validate an upside entry towards a target of 10000 flat. A stop loss on the position somewhere in the region of 9920 looks good from a risk management perspective.

Looking the other way, if we get a close below support, we’ll be jumping in short towards a downside target of 9670. A stop on this one somewhere in the region of 9720 will help us get out of the position if things turn around.

Let’s see how things play out from here.

Charts courtesy of Trading View

The post Bitcoin Price Watch; Trading The Downside Run appeared first on NEWSBTC.