Day: January 6, 2018

Fortune

Breaking Bitcoin With a Quantum Computer Fortune Alex Beath, a Toronto-based physicist and pension fund analyst, is skeptical about Bitcoin but sees one useful purpose for the crypto-currency: It may detect when someone creates a working quantum computer. “The second someone creates a viable quantum ...

There’s nothing to stop crypto market from growing! And what cryptos are you hodling? #PRICE ANALYSIS

Ripple is the talk of the town these days. Although not everyone may see the added value of this project right away, it is evident that the markets have responded positively to the company’s developments. In fact, a recent tweet by the company suggests that the year 2018 will be pretty interesting for Ripple and XRP. In fact, its CEO claims that three of the top five global money transfer companies will use XRP moving forward.

What Does the Future Hold for Ripple?

Projects such as Ripple are very different from more traditional forms of digital money. Especially when it comes to cryptocurrencies, Ripple doesn’t even come close to comparing. This is by design, mind you, as Ripple’s XRP is a digital asset which is tailored to the financial sector first and foremost. This means such a project can be of great interest to banks and other financial service providers, including remittance companies. The big question is whether or not any of those companies will actually implement XRP at some point in the future, though.

If Ripple’s team is to be believed, the year 2018 will be quite positive. We have already seen the value of its native asset skyrocket, although it is undergoing a small correction as we speak. The fact that XRP can be traded against most cryptocurrencies is somewhat of a concern, though, as it will ultimately lead to even more speculation and price manipulation over time. With over 38 billion tokens circulating across wallets and exchanges, it is evident there will be some form of manipulation at some point in the future.

At the same time, Ripple’s team remains confident that more and more companies will start using their XRP asset in the future. After successful trials in the Asian banking sector in recent years, it will be interesting to see what comes next for the company and its digital asset. It seems the next frontier waiting to be conquered is the global money transfer industry. The official Ripple Twitter account recently tweeted that three of the top 5 global money transfer companies would start using XRP in the year 2018, though to what extent they will do so was left unsaid.

Which companies this will include has yet to be determined as well. Western Union seems a very likely candidate in this regard, although nothing has been officially confirmed at this point. Other companies which could be on this list include MoneyGram, TransferWise, TransferGo, Monzo, and even PayPal. For now, there is a lot of speculation as to which companies will show an interest in XRP. Regardless of which companies come through, it will be an interesting development for Ripple as a whole.

Assuming there is any truth to this claim, we will soon see plenty of new use cases for Ripple’s native asset. That is still one of the most important developments for any cryptocurrency or digital asset. Use cases trump new exchange listings first and foremost, even though some novice users will gladly disagree on this front. Having proper use cases for XRP will not only increase global demand for this asset, but it will also have an impact on its price in the long run. 

CEO Brad Garlinghouse remains confident that a lot of actual banks and payment providers will show an interest in xRapid. For those unaware, xRapid is the XRP liquidity product provided by Ripple. Several trials have allegedly been conducted with great success. Moreover, partners have been pleased with the efficiency which XRP brings to the table, especially when it comes to cross-border transactions. The future seemingly looks bright for Ripple and XRP, but it remains to be seen what 2018 will bring.

The man behind this very platform sees a lot of potential in cryptocurrencies to give power back to the people. #ADOPTION

RxEAL, a new platform for secure rental deposit storage on the Ethereum blockchain, is about to launch its token public presale. RxEAL aims to solve the problem of the growing number of security deposit disputes by providing a simple way to create smart contracts and offering decentralised dispute resolution. Currently, the company’s main focus is on real estate and automotive rental markets. Dmitrijs Orlovs, co-founder and the head of business strategy at RxEAL, answers a few questions about his upcoming ICO and the problems RxEAL plans to solve.  

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

Why is your main focus currently on real estate?

Real estate is one of the greatest money makers of all time. According to the latest data, the real estate industry is valued at over $3 trillion. People have always invested in real estate and always will, and with the industry going strong in the future, it is in constant need of upgrades and solutions to resolve long-standing problems.

What is the problem that you want to solve?

Today, more people than ever before are involved in rental transactions, caused by factors like the growth of the sharing economy, favorable conditions for travelers and others. Unfortunately, a significant amount of the agreements on these rental transactions end in disputes. More specifically, data tells us that almost 50% of the agreements globally are subject to disputes. In the UK alone, 6 billion Euros are lost annually because of this. These shocking data indicated to us that there is a major error in the form of agreement itself. Most of the dispute cases arise on the basis that deposits have not been returned or the amount returned was lower than expected.

How do you aim to improve the situation?

Within the RxEAL platform, users are able to generate smart contracts based on terms both parties have agreed on. The contract will ensure that the deposit amount will be stored securely on Ethereum blockchain throughout the course of the agreement. In the event of a dispute, the platform will provide decentralized and independent arbitrage conducted by qualified members who earn RxEAL tokens for resolving the dispute. Our approach eliminates the possibility of breaching the contract terms, hence solving the issue of trust associated with rental deposits. Basically, our mission with RxEAL is to have a world where no security deposit is disputed.

 

If you are interested in the RxEAL vision, visit their website to read the white paper and learn about the team: https://rxeal.com .

Dates to note:

Public pre-sale: January 15th, 2018 at 12:00 UTC

Public pre-sale ends: February 2nd, 2018 at 12:00 UTC or upon reaching the presale cap.

*Pre-sale participants can buy RXL tokens with a 100% bonus at a fixed rate of 0.00125 ETH.

 

ICO start date: February 19th, 2018 at 12:00 UTC

End date: March 21st, 2018 at 12:00 UTC or upon reaching the token sale hard cap.

Slowly but surely, artificial intelligence continues to make inroads in the financial sector. There are many areas of this industry which could benefit from an AI-first approach. Amanda is one of those new projects well worth keeping an eye on. This AI loan assistant combines the best of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology. It is the flagship project of Money Token, the blockchain-based financial ecosystem.

Amanda Combines Blockchain and AI

It is evident that the world of finance will undergo some major changes in the coming years. Whether that will be due to blockchain, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies, or anything else remains to be determined. Now is a good time to try and combine all of these different technologies into one powerful product tailored to fit consumers’ needs. Amanda, the new AI loan assistant developed by Money Token, seems to check a lot of the right boxes in this regard.

More specifically, the goal is to provide loan services to the cryptocurrency community. All loans will be backed by crypto-assets, a functionality which is already possible today. However, there are always drawbacks to early platforms offering such services, including slow speeds, lengthy loan approval procedures, and not being able to handle the workload in general. This is where Amanda comes in, as it is an artificial intelligence system designed specifically to handle loans and the associated approval process.

As can be read on the project’s Medium page, Amanda will provide both loan registration and approval services backed by crypto-assets. These assets can be used as collateral when requesting a loan, which is a pretty interesting concept. Although it may sound scary to take this route, Amanda will walk users through the entire process and point out any potential risks which users will need to be aware of. The AI is more than capable of answering questions and providing regular news updates to customers.

It is evident that there is a bright future ahead for artificial intelligence in the world of finance. Indeed, there are a lot of processes within this industry which can – or will need to be – automated sooner rather than later, and using an AI to tackle most of these problems makes a lot of sense. Multiple banks all over the world have already started providing customers with AI-driven personal assistants. Whether or not such efforts will ever go mainstream remains to be determined, though.

MoneyToken.com cofounder Jerome MacGillivray commented as follows:

Amanda is the start of an amazing fusion of today’s technology — Blockchain meets AI. We are totally thrilled by what we have going on here; Money Token is building an ecosystem, not only to provide much-needed loan services, but also to create a platform that can take the crypto community to the next level. 

It is good to see companies bring together AI and the blockchain in this way. Since Money Token focuses on a cryptocurrency-backed loan platform, a stablecoin, and its own exchange service, it will be interesting to see how Amanda can complement these other services in the future. Amanda is certainly a service well worth keeping an eye on, as she may very well transform the world of finance and cryptocurrency as we know it today.

At the turn of the millennium, the concept of product reviews saw something of a postmodernist reinvention throughout the Western hemisphere, which corresponded with the advent of ‘Web 2.0.’ The two most notable manifestations of this would most definitely be user reviews, and review aggregators such as Metacritic.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

Review aggregators, if you weren’t previously aware, are sites which use algorithms to calculate average scores from an international portfolio of critical publications – in order to inform and influence the purchasing decisions of their visitors. Many allow users to sign up and leave their own reviews also: contributing to a separate ‘community‘ aggregate score.

It is highly arguable whether the changes such services has brought are akin to a reviews renaissance or if their success is the result of teleopathic fallacy, and it’s about time we think seriously about how this has affected the landscape of the review industry and who it has affected. It’s essential that we seriously consider what changes are needed to help improve the future of online shopping, whether the Blockchain might be just the instrument to facilitate them.

Quantity over quality: the problem with review aggregates

If a writer’s 1,000-word product review is featured on Metacritic, but nobody cares to read it, was there any value to the content produced at all?

A common complaint that has been levied against review aggregators are related to the subsequent effects of their core conceptual function. These sites re-contextualize the purpose of a review from a self-contained assessment that reflects the individual writer’s opinion and style; into a homogenized component of a greater aggregate, headlined by a numerical score converted from often differing scales. Some partnered publications don’t even assign scores to their reviews. Another result of this is a devaluation of each review featured, with each facing a depreciation of relative influence.

There is a range of possible flaws in this concept that stands out immediately, which can be tied to a set of key questions, including:

• How is the algorithm weight the importance of each publication and it’s proportional contribution to the final aggregate?
• What is site’s validation processes with regards to their partnership with critics?
• And to what extent, if any, do the interests of the site’s advertisers affect the objectivity of their reporting?

Academic and business-oriented studies have confirmed that these aggregate scores have had a huge influence on the development of products they relate to, with particular reference to digital media and the video game industry. Presenting reviews as raw numbers and singular bylines is reductive to the qualitative value of the feedback, as opinions on quality are simplified into “Good,” “Average” or “Bad” (or green, yellow and red on Metacritic).

As a result of this, we are more likely to see a cap on the upper and lower extremes quality overall: alongside the unique features that inform the positive or negative aspects of the score. Ideally, feedback should contribute to informing innovation within new product developments; however, aggregation has seemingly resulted in product homogenization and predictably uniform features.

Fixing user reviews: when the customer doesn’t always write

The thing is, professional product reviews as an industry has suffered from a lack of transparency since their inception. Due to their strict reliance on advertising revenue, they have always been plagued by allegations of misrepresenting products produced by their clients.

Customer reviews, on the other hand, have the benefit of the reader being able to identify with the first-hand impressions of a peer. Research has shown that most online shoppers do indeed trust reviews they read, with a more prevalent issue being a lack of motivation from customers towards actually write them.

A “lack of time and incentives” has been identified as the most prominent reason given by people surveyed, which is where a particular Zurich, Switzerland team of developers come in.

‘Lina’ has seemingly killed two birds with one stone, with a new Ethereum backed platform titled ‘Lina.review.’ The team behind the project claim to bypass the potential for corruption by taking advantage of the Blockchain’s inherent anonymity and transparency benefits.

One of the projects primary objectives is to incentivize real customer reviewers towards producing high quality, objective and frequent content. This will hopefully lead to a higher consistency of output from top community writers through the creation of a tokenized review community (‘Lina Token’), which promises to reward good work from writers with tangible rewards; as well as increasing consumer confidence.

Lina’s highly anticipated ICO is set for launch on Jan. 15th 2018.

At the beginning of 2018, I wrote an article outlining a New Year’s resolution that I thought could help promote cryptocurrency adoption and awareness in 2018. It would not have been fair, or interesting, if I chose not to do it or not to follow up with my progress. While we only just finished the first week of 2018, I thought it would be nice to start writing updates on a weekly basis.

Try to Speak to As Many People About Crypto as Possible

I am happy to report that since the start of the New Year, I have found time to speak to at least one new person every day about cryptocurrencies. I jotted down some notes after some of the best conversations so I wouldn’t forget them. Here they are:

1. Cryptocurrency is becoming more mainstream because it has finally found some more legitimate use cases. The friend I was speaking with about this had previously hesitated and recoiled from any attempt to purchase crypto in the past because she felt they were “tainted” and “only used on the black market to buy drugs, order hitmen, and so forth.” She confided in me that it was CME’s decision to take on futures trading of Bitcoin that really changed her mind about it. “It’s really for everyone, isn’t it?” she said to me. “Just got a bad rap early on.” She’s since purchased Bitcoin, Litecoin, and ETH (pretty much all that’s been on Coinbase).

2. I was speaking with a bartender at a local brewery and – half jokingly – asked if he would accept Dogecoin as payment (it was a dog-friendly taproom). He gave a good laugh, but then asked me about it. He told me that he had been hearing about Bitcoin and other cryptos a lot recently in the news, but was too nervous to ask what they were or how they worked. Stigma and pride had kept him from doing so in the past, he said. We spoke for a good 20 minutes, and I explained blockchains, proof of work and proof of stake, and crypto’s benefits for businesses. I ended up actually getting him to download the mobile Dogecoin wallet, and I sent him 100 doge. While I didn’t expect to receive anything in return, he found a way to have a pint “spill” for me.

Try to learn something new about crypto every day

This one was not hard at all. There is so much happening from code to community that it makes finding out something one does not know incredibly easy. For example: previously I thought Peercoin only utilized a proof-of-stake model for minting. To my delightful surprise, it uses both proof-of-work and proof-of-stake, which makes sense for keeping members of the community active.

I also learned that many people in crypto still do not pay their taxes when they take profits (or report losses to mitigate those taxes), which is baffling to me. I learned this when Coinbase’s app (I use it for quick price-checking on my phone) displayed a banner reminder about paying taxes. After some investigation, it became apparent that there is a large portion of the cryptocurrency community that does not report crypto. This seems 1) blemishing for us in the eyes of the wider world and 2) just kind of not well-thought-out. The nature of the blockchain makes it rather easy to track money, and this will probably catch up with a lot of people.

Be Generous, Use and Give Your Coins

This part of the resolution is not going to be a daily, or even weekly thing due to the extent of current adoption. It is my hope that it will become more common as the year goes on. However, I am happy to say that this week, I did give that bartender some Dogecoin, and that I got a “spilled” beer for it.

Have you taken on this resolution as well and had interesting stories from it? We’d love to hear them below and on our social media!

The first-of-its-kind ICO crowdfunding platform CoinStarter launched their whitelist which ends prior to their pre-ICO on January 6th 2017, giving participants a 70% bonus plus early access to their highly-anticipated ICO. The innovative platform has already gathered a community of 140,000 loyal ICO enthusiasts and had the platform in beta testing for over three months. This is something you don’t see very often. Usually ICOs can only show a rough roadmap of their project and a short whitepaper, but not CoinStarter.

CoinStarter launched registrations to the whitelist to its ICO, giving users an early-access to the pre-ICO as well as a 70% bonus on the purchase. This allows members of the whitelist to buy StarterCoins with a substantial discount and ahead of everyone else.

Participants who make a purchase of 1 ETH or more during the pre-ICO will also receive 2 years of free CoinStarterBox. Subscribers of CoinStarterBox receive carefully selected coins from the best ICOs every month, making it fun and easy to find new promising ICOs.

Imagine receiving coins every month that have the potential of becoming the next Bitcoin or Ethereum, or coming back to your CoinStarterBox account after some time and finding out that you had received some coins that have grown tens or hundreds of times in value.

In addition to being a coin of value, StarterCoin has many other functions. Businesses can use them to take advantage of the wide variety of tools provided by the platform and launch their ICO, manage their business through Businefy, and gain exposure and reach a dedicated audience through CoinStarterBox. Regular users can back promising ICOs and be a part of the CoinStarterBox solutions, receiving promising coins every month.

The limited amount of StarterCoin’s issued and the fact that these coins have more use cases than being just a symbol of value, ensures a steady growth in value and also proves to be a valuable asset for every business-minded person.

The CoinStarter pre-ICO launches on the 6th of January, 2018. The ICO starts on the 20th of January and lasts till 17th of February. Reserving a place in the pre-ICO through the whitelist will give supporters an amazing opportunity to get a head start to the pre-ICO and receive a considerable bonus on the purchase of StarterCoins.

Places on the whitelist can be accessed here: https://coinstarter.com/whitelist

This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views held by any employees of The Merkle. This is not investment, trading, or gambling advice. Always conduct your own independent research.

It is evident that a lot of cryptocurrency exchanges had some issues throughout 2017. Scaling such centralized platforms will always remain a major challenge. That’s especially the case when these companies have to deal with a major influx of new users on a daily basis. It seems these problems will remain present during the first few days and weeks of 2018. Coinbase is still experiencing major issues with most cryptocurrencies, US wires, and ID verification. It is evident something will need to change sooner or later.

More Coinbase Woes to Kick off 2018

Being one of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchanges is both a blessing and a curse most of the time. After all, it means the company is doing a good job and making a healthy amount of profit. It also shows that consumers all over the world are willing to put their faith in that particular company. For all intents and purposes, trust is crucial in the world of cryptocurrency, especially when it comes to the exchange platforms available to us today.

However, there are always two sides to a medallion. For all of the interest users show in the exchange of their choosing, it puts a major strain on that company’s infrastructure and resources. Customer support staff will have to deal with more tickets, whereas the platform’s trading engine will be stressed a lot more. Furthermore, the site’s front-end and back-end will have to keep up with the growing number of users, which is a lot easier said than done these days.

Coinbase has seen its fair share of issues in 2017 on these fronts. More specifically, there have been numerous incidents regarding cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals. In December, the company also announced delays for wire transfers, which affected both deposits and withdrawals of fiat currency. Plus, the verification of new user identities has hit a snag as well, due to the overwhelming amount of information waiting to be processed.

So far, it seems 2018 will hold more of the same for Coinbase. Its Status page shows a fair few areas affected by degraded performance. They include transactions involving Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin, whereas Bitcoin Cash remains unaffected for now. There are also delays for US and SEPA wires, as well as ID verification. Everything else seems to be working just fine for the time being, but it is possible that customers may experience additional problems at some point.

It is good to see the company post updates on these matters, though. Considering that its ID verification delays date back to December 9, it is evident that not much progress has been made in the past month. A lot of new people were introduced to cryptocurrency over the holidays, which is taking its toll on the Coinbase service. Wire processing delays have been apparent since December 15, yet it seems the situation has only grown worse over time. For now, outgoing wires can take 7 to 10 business days, whereas reversals are delayed by up to 5 business days.

All of this goes to show that Coinbase is still one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. However, it will need to get its act together and hire a lot more people to deal with all of these issues. It is unacceptable that a company of this size is dealing with lingering issues for weeks on end. Granted, it is working as hard as possible to fix things. For now, customers have been more than patient in this regard, but even their patience will run out at some point.

Major South Korean exchanges are on a hiring spree. The demand for cryptocurrencies and the government’s mandate for stronger security systems are driving the need for additional manpower at crypto exchanges. Their attractive employment benefits and flexible work environment are pulling workers from traditional banks and financial companies.

Also read: Russian Regulators Draft Law to Restrict Crypto Mining, Payments, and Token Sales

Major Korean Exchanges Are Hiring

South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges have announced that they will be hiring new staff. This announcement came amid the Korean government tightening regulations for cryptocurrencies.

Bithumb, which already has 450 employees, said it will hire 400 additional full-time staff. 300 of them will be at the company’s customer centers while 100 will be at its headquarters, Money Today reported. CEO Jeon Soo-yong was quoted by Chosun, “We decided to hire many workers to help create more jobs for young people and expand our operations.” The publication elaborated:

A hundred of the new workers will handle IT, overseas marketing and legal affairs at the headquarters, while the rest [300 employees] will man the call centers.

Rival Upbit, backed by Kakao Corporation, currently employs about 100 people. The company plans to hire more than 100 new employees this year. Korbit will also increase personnel from about 60 to more than 100, Money Today detailed.

The accelerated growth rate of the Korean cryptocurrency market is driving demand for manpower. In addition, the demand for experienced IT personnel spiked at crypto exchanges due to a recent government order for “the establishment of a security and trading system at virtual currency exchanges with a level equal to that of financial institutions,” the publication described.

More Attractive Work Environment Than Banks

The crypto market is “absorbing existing financial resources from [traditional] banks and brokerage firms” as it grows, the news outlet explained. “Existing banking personnel have applied for recruitment at major virtual currency exchanges such as Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Upbit.”

Unlike traditional financial companies, workers have more freedom and flexibility, the work atmosphere is informal, and workers can leave early some days, the publication noted. Employment benefits at crypto exchanges also rival those of major conglomerates, Chosun conveyed, adding that, at Bithumb:

Workers get overtime pay, stock options and incentive payments as well as transportation expenses, food stipends, unlimited book purchase credits, fitness club memberships and even oriental medicine treatments and massages.

What do you think of Korean crypto exchanges going on a hiring spree and pulling workers from banks? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Bithumb, and Upbit.

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The post Korean Crypto Exchanges Go on Hiring Spree, Stealing Workers From Banks appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Bitcoin casino fans looking for the best bitcoin gambling site should check out BitcoinGames.com. The surging value of this cryptocurrency makes it a perfect option for playing and winning Bitcoins. Besides, the digital coins promise comfortable to use and hassle-free transactions. The site caters to both skilled and inexperienced gamblers.

No Registration Needed

Players don’t have to register and assured of instant payouts with a minimum of 99% expected returns for all games. Users who enter the site get an anonymous account automatically. Go to the unique URL to access your account by clicking on the account tab found on the leaderboards. Avoid revealing your account details to other people. Otherwise, they can obtain your credit balance.

BitcoinGames.com takes precautionary measures to secure account passwords using a two-factor process for authentication. Players must enter their respective passwords during initial access to the private accounts and make Bitcoin withdrawals. The term, “Provably Fair” in web-based gambling means one can play with confidence since the site ensures total equality for all games.

The dealer hands out a new deck of cards at random and cannot influence or control the shuffling. Servers shuffle the cards first. Then, the computer provides a casual number that servers do not know for users to cut the deck.

Convenience for Players

At BitcoinGames.com, you can have fun in table games such as free Bitcoin dice and earn huge prizes. The simple steps in Bitcoin Dice made it very popular among gaming enthusiasts. BitcoinGames.com offers players absolute ease due to its straightforward layout and provides all the necessary information particularly for first-time players. Or, forward your queries to the website email address because it does not have a live support chat in place yet. The most significant house edge in all of the site’s games is only 0.5% or one half of a percent.

Other games that you can play at BitcoinGames.com include Video Poker, Blackjack, Roulette, Slots, Craps, and Keno.

BitcoinGames.com provides a house edge for games as follows:

• Dice – 0.75%
• Video Poker – 0.25%
• Craps – 0.2%
• Blackjack – 0.4%
• Roulette, Keno, and Slots – 1%

The site’s native Android application allows users free download and installation of the app on their mobile devices. The program supports Blackjack, Slots, and Video Poker games that integrate with your mobile BTC wallet directly.

Withdrawals and Payments

Players must furnish their cryptocurrency wallet address for deposits and withdrawal of money. You only need a few seconds to deposit minus any verification of transactions. The same process applies to withdrawing money. You see the funds in your account after several seconds. However, you need to verify twice to protect against fraud. Users must pay minimal transaction charge of 0.0001 Bitcoin.

BitcoinGames.com does not offer any bonuses or promotions even at the Bitcoin Dice faucet. Players have the opportunity to increase their coins using the website’s referral program. Just refer a colleague or several friends to play on this site and obtain at least 25% of the house edge aside from a percentage of games played by your peers.

This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views held by any employees of The Merkle. This is not investment, trading, or gambling advice. Always conduct your own independent research.

Cryptojacking is the secret use of your device’s resources to mine cryptocurrencies. There are several forms of cryptojacking, including in-browser mining, hacked apps, and background malware.

Cryptojacking gained traction in September 2017, when Coinhive offered its JavaScript code as an alternative to regular advertising.

The idea is simple – a website adds a special code to its page, and when people visit that website, their web browsers start to run the Coinhive code whose primary goal is to perform the mathematical calculations needed for mining cryptocurrencies. This process is resource-intensive and causes computers’ CPUs to spike and load to their maximum.

Several big websites tried to monetize their traffic using Coinhive but received negative comments from their visitors who did not want to get their machines and CPUs overloaded. The worst part of this is that the in-browser mining was started secretly, without users being notified or given the opportunity to opt out.

While Coinhive later released AuthedMine, which always asks website visitors if they wish to allow in-browser mining, numerous cybercriminals had already caught the gist and started to employ Coinhive in their operations.

Even ransomware payloads, which were once the top malware, have become less profitable than cryptojacking as hackers have largely shifted from deploying ransomware to dropping miners. Most often, they do so using hacked websites.

Malware researchers started to track cryptojacking and have provided interesting news on how it’s evolved during the short period since September. This first phase of cryptojacking attacks showed the growing interest in this area among various bad actors.

Initially, hackers mainly inserted Coinhive’s code containing their website keys (user IDs received from Coinhive) into hacked sites. Sometimes they injected the Coinhive miner into websites’ headers, and some crooks managed to hack WordPress plugins and put the rogue miner there. As a result, all websites using those plugins started to simultaneously earn and send Monero to hackers’ wallets.

Due to the fact that the Coinhive web domain landed on multiple blacklists, cybercriminals started to avoid connecting to the library file located at coinhive.com/lib/coinhive.min.js. To achieve that, they placed this file on multiple third-party websites.

A number of initiatives to avoid coinhive.com appear quite unsophisticated. For instance, one was to inject the entire library code – which weighs dozens of kilobytes – into websites.

In any event, submitting the Coinhive library code (even if it is obfuscated) to another website still involves making requests to Coinhive’s domain, so it is very simple to discover and block such attacks. Later, though, hackers started employing more serious obfuscation.

As to hosting their malware, crooks started to utilize free services and tools that are popular among most developers like Now.sh, Heroku, and of course GitHub.

Nonetheless, Coinhive is not the sole means of placing a cryptocurrency miner onto a site. The actual know-how is public knowledge, so a lot of hackers have created their own unique apps, including mining platforms, in order to engage in cryptojacking.

It is obvious that self-hosted applications are more advantageous than Coinhive’s miner or its alternatives. Ultimately, they are much more adjustable for attackers. They can help them steer clear of blacklists through the use of their own domains (changing them every time they need to.)

You may configure the whole thing as you like, thereby making it function optimally with your attack plan. In addition to the above, crooks avoid giving away fees to solutions like Coinhive (whose fee is around 30%.)

Once such an approach turns out to be profitable, miners will probably become custom-built to operate in the dark web (with auto obfuscation, domain switching, and revenue sharing) and sooner or later be incorporated into exploit kits.

If companies like Coinhive continue to disallow misuse of their solutions, this might be a breakup moment for legitimate and malicious miners. Time will tell if this forecast is correct. At this time, it is obvious that cryptojacking is among the fastest-growing types of website hacks as we march into 2018.

Five years after its inception, satirical cryptocurrency Dogecoin has breached the $1 bln market cap. #HYPE

In the world of cryptocurrency, there are so many currencies worth keeping an eye on, it almost becomes impossible to keep tabs on everything. One of the currencies in the top 25 making a lot of waves recently is Siacoin. Most people are familiar with this project, and it seems the native currency is finally appreciating in value to represent the potential value of this project. Thanks to an 86.15% gain over the past 24 hours, things are looking pretty good for the Siacoin price.

Major Gains for the Siacoin Price

Although most people only keep tabs on the top 10 cryptocurrencies, a lot of things are changing a bit further down the line. More specifically, a lot of currencies that aren’t in the top 20 have noted some major gains in the past two weeks. One of those coins is Siacoin, the native currency of the Sia project. It was only a matter of time until more people realized the value of this particular project, although the current gains do resemble some pump-and-dump action as well.

More specifically, the Siacoin price has shut up all the way to $0.087 overnight. This is a pretty low value for a currency which can have a major impact on the future of data centers and decentralized networks as a whole. Although it is still too early to tell whether or not Sia and Siacoin will be a big success in the future, things are certainly looking rather promising right now. With the Siacoin price appreciating so much, Siacoin is now the 22nd largest cryptocurrency when ranked by market cap.

Considering how the Siacoin price seemed stuck at $0.0275 for quite some time, this move is all the more impressive. The current Siacoin uptrend started becoming visible on January 4th and it has spilled over to today. At its peak, the value of one Siacoin even reached $0.093, although it is obvious why this price momentum could not be sustained. More specifically, the all-time high was rejected fairly quickly, mainly because people took healthy profits and tried to buy back in cheaper.

Thanks to $515.27m worth of 24-hour trading volume, things are looking good for Siacoin as we speak. Whether or not this volume will keep up or even increase in the next few hours, remains to be determined at this point. It is a pretty solid trading volume for Siacoin, although it is a lot lower compared to what most top cryptocurrencies can generate these days. It’s certainly a big step up from the average of around $20m we mostly see for Siacoin.

The vast majority of Siacoin trading volume comes from the Bittrex exchange. Its BTC and ETH markets for SC generate nearly 99.5% of all volume right now. Do keep in mind Poloniex is also a good place to trade Siacoin, although the exchange’s price and volume are currently excluded on Coinmarketcap. The price on HitBTC is a lot higher compared to other exchanges, but people shouldn’t pay too much attention to this discrepancy either. All things considered, things look pretty good for this particular altcoin.

How the Siacoin price will evolve in the future, remains to be seen. More specifically, there is enough momentum to push toward $0.10 once again this weekend, although one has to keep in mind people will keep scalping profits whenever the opportunity presents itself. Especially given the recent Siacoin price gains, buying at the top is not advised. Those brave enough to take the gamble may still net some decent profits in the next few hours, though.