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Europol Estimates Cryptocurrencies Account for 4% of Illicitly Trafficked Cash in Europe

Criminals in Europe are using cryptocurrencies to launder as much as $5.5 billion (£4 billion) in illegal money according to the head of Europol, the EU’s policing agency. Director of Europol, Rob Wainwright, estimates that around 4% of all criminal proceeds in Europe are being funneled through cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin — and he expects this … Continue reading Europol Estimates Cryptocurrencies Account for 4% of Illicitly Trafficked Cash in Europe

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Criminals in Europe are using cryptocurrencies to launder as much as $5.5 billion (£4 billion) in illegal money according to the head of Europol, the EU’s policing agency.

Director of Europol, Rob Wainwright, estimates that around 4% of all criminal proceeds in Europe are being funneled through cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin — and he expects this figure to increase. Given that the agency’s standing estimate for the total amount of illicit cash circulating Europe is around $138 billion (£100 billion), this would put the amount being trafficked in cryptocurrencies at $5.5 billion.

“It’s growing quite quickly and we’re quite concerned,” Wainwright said in an interview with the BBC. He went on to add that police find it harder to stop illicit cryptocurrency transfers because they have no way to freeze crypto wallets in the way they could freeze a traditional bank account: “They’re not banks and governed by a central authority so the police cannot monitor those transactions,” he said. “And if they do identify them as criminal they have no way to freeze the assets unlike in the regular banking system.” To make matters worse, Europol has determined that money mules are being used to cash out, converting Bitcoin into fiat currencies in smaller amounts making it harder for police to track.

Speaking to the industry in general, Wainwright said the following: “They have to take a responsible action and collaborate with us when we are investigating very large-scale crime. I think they also have to develop a better sense of responsibility around how they’re running virtual currency.”

Law enforcement officials across the board are increasingly concerned about the use of cryptocurrencies by organized criminals. The coins are not directly regulated in Europe and it is still unclear among most financial regulators how they should be classified under existing laws. The UK is considering making amendments to EU anti-money laundering rules to make it apply to cryptocurrencies.

With regard to money laundering, Bitcoin appears to be the most frequently used cryptocurrency, likely because of its higher profile. But officials have also voiced concerns about others like Monero and Zcash, which go to even greater lengths to conceal the identities of those trading in them. Overall, Litecoin and Dash are actually second to Bitcoin in terms of trading volume on the dark web.

Outside policing agencies like Europol, others governmental organizations are more enthusiastic about the future of cryptocurrencies — in particular, blockchain technology. The European Commission announced in a press release earlier this month that it is launching the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum, taking a great step forward aimed at “uniting” the economy around Blockchain. The project will bring together various sectors, including regulators, industry experts, and politicians, to develop new use cases. 

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Microsoft Announces Blockchain-Based Decentralized Identification System

Following a collaboration with the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF), tech giant Microsoft has revealed plans to utilize blockchain technology to solve some of the challenges faced in managing identities and personal data digitally, including users’ concerns on privacy and security. In today’s post, entitled Decentralized Digital Identities and Blockchain – The Future as We See It, … Continue reading Microsoft Announces Blockchain-Based Decentralized Identification System

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Following a collaboration with the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF), tech giant Microsoft has revealed plans to utilize blockchain technology to solve some of the challenges faced in managing identities and personal data digitally, including users’ concerns on privacy and security.

In today’s post, entitled Decentralized Digital Identities and Blockchain – The Future as We See It, Microsoft announced its embrace of blockchain-based technology, such as those that underpin Bitcoin and Ethereum, for use in decentralized IDs (DIDs) through the Microsoft Authenticator app.

Unlike traditional forms of identification used today, a decentralized identity system is not controlled by any single, centralized institution such as a government or tech company. The idea is that DIDs remove the possibility of censorship and give an individual full control over their identity and reputation. After looking at various types of decentralized identity systems, Microsoft turned to public blockchains due to their ability to enable privacy, self-ownership, and permission-less access.

“After examining decentralized storage systems, consensus protocols, blockchains, and a variety of emerging standards we believe blockchain technology and protocols are well suited for enabling Decentralized IDs,” the announcement from Microsoft read. Identity is one of the long-touted use cases of blockchain technology that does not have anything to do with payments or currency. In the post, Microsoft points to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin as three specific platforms it thinks are suitable foundations for DIDs.

A key takeaway is that instead of relying on third-parties, blockchain could prove instrumental in putting control back into the hands of the customer as well as securely storing personal data. “Today, users grant broad consent to countless apps and services for collection and retention of their data for use beyond their control,” the post reads. “With data breaches and identity theft becoming more sophisticated and frequent, users need a way to take ownership of their identity.”

In the past, critics have argued that identity systems built on public blockchains would be too expensive and difficult to scale, but today’s post points out that layer-two systems can be used to reduce the necessary number of costly on-chain interactions. This is somewhat similar to how the Lightning Network (LN) can be used to better scale Bitcoin’s payments use case. 

“While some blockchain communities have increased on-chain transaction capacity (e.g. blocksize increases), this approach generally degrades the decentralized state of the network and cannot reach the millions of transactions per second the system would generate at world-scale. To overcome these technical barriers, we are collaborating on decentralized Layer 2 protocols that run atop these public blockchains to achieve global scale, while preserving the attributes of a world-class DID system,” reads the post from Microsoft.

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Cryptocurrency Crackdown Continues With New Jersey Ban – Fortune

FortuneCryptocurrency Crackdown Continues With New Jersey BanFortuneAs the promise of moderated regulation helped the price of Bitcoin rebound over $8,800, U.S. regulators are continuing their crackdown on firms in the cryptocurrency space. On Friday, …


Fortune

Cryptocurrency Crackdown Continues With New Jersey Ban
Fortune
As the promise of moderated regulation helped the price of Bitcoin rebound over $8,800, U.S. regulators are continuing their crackdown on firms in the cryptocurrency space. On Friday, the New Jersey Bureau of Securities ordered Bitcoin-related ...

What is U.CASH?

In cryptocurrency, we hear a lot about “banking the unbanked” and how new digital currencies can provide opportunities for individuals who may find it hard to open a bank account. Whether lacking necessary documentation or minimum funds, it is not as easy as one may think to open a bank account. In this climate, a project called U.CASH aims to do the opposite (or so their motto claims), to “unbank the banked.” What is U.CASH? U.CASH began as a project called “SecuraCoin,” and their aim is to build a global network of cash to digital conversation locations in tandem with

In cryptocurrency, we hear a lot about “banking the unbanked” and how new digital currencies can provide opportunities for individuals who may find it hard to open a bank account. Whether lacking necessary documentation or minimum funds, it is not as easy as one may think to open a bank account. In this climate, a project called U.CASH aims to do the opposite (or so their motto claims), to “unbank the banked.”

What is U.CASH?

U.CASH began as a project called “SecuraCoin,” and their aim is to build a global network of cash to digital conversation locations in tandem with their technology. The team claims that the network will natively support all fiats and many digital currencies, that it will be compatible with any assets (such as art, bullion representatives, files, and more), and work with any blockchain. All of this amounts to a rather ambiguous and ambitious “anything is possible with U.CASH.”

Their list of short-term and long-term goals is also widespread. They list currency conversion, digital wallet services, financial services, converter networks, worldwide usage, global exchange, distributed vaults, Peer to Peer transactions, easy use, easy access to digital currencies, proof-of-existence services, and monetary freedom.

The hope is to “unbank” the world by allowing anyone with internet access participate in the global economy via cash and digital assets. The system is based on “converters.” There are three kinds of converters, retail, mobile, and online. The retail converters are money as service businesses. These provide secure locations to exchange between cash and digital assets. The mobile converters meet with others to do in-person conversions between cash and digital assets. Online converters provide remote, non-personal conversion between cash and digital assets.  

Rather than the typical ICO we’ve seen become so popular, U.CASH chose to do a IBO, or “initial bounty offering.” In an IBO, the majority of access to tokens is determined by contribution of time and expertise. Rather than crowdsourcing funds, they crowdsource resources and skills for the project itself. It is an interesting idea. The IBO has completed and the U.CASH team distributed 8,634,014,796.17 UCASH.

This coin exploded recently taking a top 25 slot on coinmarketcap. It sits at #22 at the time of writing.

Whether or not it will be able to hold this position against other digital market favorites and new cryptocurrencies remains to be seen.

U.CASH’s performance is part of an overall trend we are seeing where cryptocurrencies have meteoric rises even in the face of less than favorable market conditions.

Next Bitcoin Bull Run to Occur in 2 Weeks: Pantera – Investopedia (blog)


Investopedia (blog)

Next Bitcoin Bull Run to Occur in 2 Weeks: Pantera
Investopedia (blog)
Bitcoin investors, who are used to major price fluctuations, should also gain from the entrance of institutional investors into the market, according to the Pantera founder. “There’s such an institutional appetite to get exposure to this. It’s a half-a


Investopedia (blog)

Next Bitcoin Bull Run to Occur in 2 Weeks: Pantera
Investopedia (blog)
Bitcoin investors, who are used to major price fluctuations, should also gain from the entrance of institutional investors into the market, according to the Pantera founder. “There's such an institutional appetite to get exposure to this. It's a half-a ...

Start-up LoopX Disappears, Taking With It $4.5 Million Following ICO

After raising $4.5 million in a series of initial coin offerings (ICOs), cryptocurrency start-up LoopX has disappeared — along with the cash that investors provided — in what appears to be the most recent exit scam to plague the cryptocurrency community. Once a company with an active online presence, LoopX has entirely disappeared from the … Continue reading Start-up LoopX Disappears, Taking With It $4.5 Million Following ICO

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After raising $4.5 million in a series of initial coin offerings (ICOs), cryptocurrency start-up LoopX has disappeared — along with the cash that investors provided — in what appears to be the most recent exit scam to plague the cryptocurrency community.

Once a company with an active online presence, LoopX has entirely disappeared from the internet. The company’s website is no longer online and its social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Telegram, have been deleted.

The founders of LoopX told early backers that their team had been building an investment platform that would utilize a proprietary trading algorithm. According to a cached version of the company’s website, it planned to offer the “most advanced loop trading software to date.” A quote from the defunct website read as follows: “After testing our algorithm thoroughly over half a year with great profits continuously every month, we can now finally bring all this advantages of our LoopX – Trading Software to the public.”

LoopX made a number of bold claims to investors, including the promise of “guaranteed profits every week” and “great profits continuously every month.” The company also claimed that cryptocurrency markets were “projected to grow up to 10 times the size of now until the next year.”

The company’s white paper — which, unsurprisingly, has also been scrubbed from the internet — offered similar language. “Finally the opportunity is here for the common investor to be part of a revolution and be finally free, financially free… Our top priority is to give you an opportunity to sit back, let us do the work and watch your money grow.”

“Our software handles over 10,000 trades per second and calculates over 100 currencies at a time,” the LoopX website read. “Always looking for those opportunities to make profits bigger then 10 percent, which will payed out to our members on a weekly basis.”

Off the backs of all these promises, the company raised about $4.5 million, including 276 Bitcoin and 2,446 Ethereum. In hindsight, it’s surprising that investors put so much faith into a company that was using a lot of incorrect language and grammar — something not indicative of a “core group of high performance professionals” that LoopX was apparently formed around. 

In an ICO, an investor is given a token in exchange for an investment of cash or another cryptocurrency. The idea is that if a company is successful, the token will gain value over time and the investor will eventually be able to bring-in major returns. For more information about ICOs, check out our article The Biggest Threat to an ICO and How to Avoid It.

In the case of LoopX, it appears the money put forth by investors is gone, along with the company itself in what appears to be a classic exit scam — a con job where a company accepts money for a service that it never intends on providing.

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The Electrum Personal Server Will Give Users the Full Node Security They Need

The Electrum Personal Server promises a resource-efficient, secure and private way to use bitcoin with hardware and software wallets, connected to full nodes. Developed by open-source programmer Christian Belcher, best known for his contributions to…

The Electrum Personal Server Will Give Users the Full Node Security They Need

The Electrum Personal Server promises a resource-efficient, secure and private way to use bitcoin with hardware and software wallets, connected to full nodes. Developed by open-source programmer Christian Belcher, best known for his contributions to JoinMarket, the Electrum Personal Server directly addresses vulnerabilities with the popular Electrum Bitcoin wallet, while sparing users the significant resource usage of an Electrum server.

According to Belcher, connecting Electrum with the Electrum Personal Server is the most resource-efficient, secure and private way to use a hardware or software wallet connected to a full node. It is important for all users to connect their wallets to full nodes for the Bitcoin network to maintain long-term security, he maintains.

“If bitcoin is digital gold, then a full node wallet is your own personal goldsmith who checks for you that received payments are genuine,” explained Belcher in correspondence with Bitcoin Magazine.

Full Nodes vs. Thin Clients Refresher

In the Bitcoin blockchain, full nodes are programs that validate transactions and blocks on the network. Full nodes assist the network by accepting transactions and blocks from other full nodes, validating them and sharing them with other full nodes. Essentially, full nodes are the referees of the Bitcoin blockchain –– they check to see that chains are following the rules of the network and ignore chains who break them. As an example, Belcher noted that “[transactions] printing infinite money would be rejected by [full nodes] as if they never existed.” In this way, Bitcoin can ensure that no more than 21 million coins are ever minted.

While full nodes are the most secure, they are are also more resource-intensive. A full node takes up around 156 GB of disk space (a number which is growing by more than 50 GB per year), can take days to sync when used for the first time, requires significant amount of bandwidth each month, and takes up CPU power validating all transactions and blocks on the network.

Thin clients (also known as lightweight clients), however, do not download the entire Bitcoin blockchain. Instead, they only download a copy of all the headers for the blocks in the blockchain. Thin clients are able to achieve increased efficiency and speed by receiving notifications when a transaction affects their wallet specifically. But this does mean that thin clients must tell a third party which addresses belong to them, which is bad for privacy. Additionally, thin clients trade full validation and security for efficiency, placing their trust in full nodes to verify that rules are being followed on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Electrum

Since 2011, the Electrum wallet –– a light client –– has been among the community favorites. It features a pleasant user interface, hardware wallet connectivity, “forgiving” seed recovery phrases, cold storage solutions, decentralized servers to prevent downtimes, and multi-sig permissions. However, similar to other thin clients, the Electrum wallet’s lightweight connection with the Bitcoin blockchain comes at the cost of privacy, validity and scalability.

By default, the Electrum wallet sends all its bitcoin addresses to an Electrum server, which sends back a user’s history and balance. According to Belcher, “This means that the Electrum server knows all the user’s bitcoin addresses and could spy on them, essentially seeing everything a user does.” Users should note that anytime their bitcoin addresses are stored on a thin-client server, their transactions can be monitored.

Like other thin clients, if Electrum servers do not properly verify the rules of the Bitcoin blockchain, wallets can be deceived. For example, a compromised Electrum server could lead the Electrum wallet to accept a fake transaction for USD $1000 worth of bitcoin that would not have been validated by a full node.

Electrum servers also store records of every address ever used on the Bitcoin network, which, as user-base increases, poses a hindrance to scalability.

In the Electrum ecosystem, the only way for a user to avoid these vulnerabilities inherent to the Electrum thin client is to run their own Electrum server and connect it to their wallet. This fix is more resource-intensive than running a Bitcoin full node; it requires the unpruned Bitcoin blockchain, the full transaction index and extra address index. Electrum Servers are also more RAM and CPU intensive than full nodes, and are not made to be turned on and off efficiently.

Electrum Personal Server Solution

The Electrum Personal Server provides bitcoin users with increased efficiency, security and privacy. In this implementation of the Electrum server protocol, users seeking a full node connection can interact with all traditional Electrum wallet features while running a Bitcoin full node, instead of downloading an Electrum server.

Efficiency

From an efficiency perspective, connecting an Electrum wallet to a full node allows users to take advantage of resource-saving Bitcoin Core features such as pruning, disabled txindex and blocksonly. These features are not available to an Electrum server.

Users also benefit from the traditional Electrum wallet user experience/user interface and functionality such as hardware wallet integration, offline signing, recovery phrases and multi-signature wallets.

Security and Privacy

Because users are connected to a full node, they aren’t prone to any of the aforementioned privacy and security threats posed to thin clients.

There is a caveat –– users lose the popular “instant-on” feature of the Electrum wallet when using a full node such as the Electrum Personal Server. The full node must synchronize first, before displaying a wallet’s bitcoin balance. Depending on connection speeds and time since last connectivity, this process could take a few minutes or hours.

For users seeking to connect their wallet to an Electrum Personal Server, the process is fairly straightforward. According to Belcher’s blog post, users must:

  1. Download the alpha version;
  2. Configure the Electrum Personal server with their master public key. Those addresses are then imported into Bitcoin Core as watch-only;
  3. Rescan the wallet if it contains historical transactions. There is no need to rescan, however, if a new, empty wallet is created.

Why Should the Average Bitcoin User Care?

Belcher outlined that since the inception of the Bitcoin network, the basic security model has relied on most of the economy using full node wallets, not thin clients that are vulnerable to manipulation. This way, legitimate Bitcoin transactions are always accurately verified, nefarious transactions are always rejected, and the hard limit of 21 million bitcoins (which are really just bits and bytes) is enforced.

Belcher believes that “bitcoin is dead in the long term” if most of the Bitcoin economy does not use full node wallets.

He hopes that the Electrum Personal Server can serve as a framework for other lightweight Bitcoin wallets to connect to full nodes run by users, rather than (centralized) servers. For instance, a Samourai Wallet or Breadwallet can utilize a script similar to the Electrum Personal Server to connect to a full node.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

Hut 8 Mining Corp. To Be Listed on Toronto-Based Stock Exchange

Canadian investors will soon be able to get exposure to the rapidly growing market for the specialised computer components that power the world’s Bitcoin mining farms. Hut 8 Mining Corp., backed by Bitfury Group Ltd., is poised to launch on the TSX Venture Exchange in Toronto later this month. Bitfury is the main competition to … Continue reading Hut 8 Mining Corp. To Be Listed on Toronto-Based Stock Exchange

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Canadian investors will soon be able to get exposure to the rapidly growing market for the specialised computer components that power the world’s Bitcoin mining farms. Hut 8 Mining Corp., backed by Bitfury Group Ltd., is poised to launch on the TSX Venture Exchange in Toronto later this month. Bitfury is the main competition to the Chinese mining rig manufacturing behemoth that is Jihan Wu’s Bitmain Technologies Ltd.

According to investor documentation reported by Bloomberg, Bitfury already has 172 megawatts of data centers around the world and are responsible for mining over a million BTC. It’s estimated that their most recent annual revenue was in excess of $350 million. However, this pales in comparison to Bitmain’s market dominance. One source estimated that as of early December, the company were responsible for around 50% of the overall hashing power on the entire Bitcoin network. This is somewhat of a concern for a network that is supposedly completely decentralised.

Sean Clark, the CEO of Hut 8 told Bloomberg about the listing and of the opportunity to redistribute cryptocurrency mining:

“Hut 8 is a proxy for Bitfury in North America, that’s all it is… [The listing] is about access to capital and scale… We found a perfect vehicle to capitalise incredibly quickly. Bitfury now is going to rebalance the global network.”

The CEO is referring to the concentration of mining that has occurred in China over recent years largely thanks to Bitmain’s dominance. Being largely an experiment in decentralised consensus finding, such a concentration is for many the anti-thesis of what Bitcoin was supposed to achieve. Recent news about a crackdown in the cryptocurrency industry in China, plus the increased financial clout Bitfury will be able to wield following the listing should go someway to redistributing mining across the planet.

Lucas Nuzzi, an independent researcher on cryptocurrency at the New York-based Digital Asset Research elaborated on the issue of mining centralisation:

“It’s a serious centralisation concern because dependency upon a single hardware provider goes against the ethos of Bitcoin.”

The name chosen for the new listing, Hut 8, is an amusing reference to this ongoing battle for dominance in the cryptocurrency mining industry. Hut 8 was the name of the World War II data centre in which the mathematician Alan Turing finally broke the enigma code, hugely impacting the outcome of the entire conflict in favour of the Allies.

Hut 8 will be 49% owned by Bitfury with the other share being divided between various insiders and private investors. According to a presentation document, longtime crypto bull Mike Novogratz will also back the venture.

When asked about recent market volatility affecting the profitability of the new listing, Clark responded with optimism:

“We are long-term bullish on the price of Bitcoin so we expect volatility like this to occur.”

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Coupons: Re-engineered — 4 Reasons To Back The Rouge Project

We get it. Every startup aims to be ‘disruptive’, right? The way we see it, it’s important to think big, but start small. Here at the Rouge Project, while our overall mission is ‘to create a fair and value-driven digital marketing ecosystem that directly benefits brands, consumers, and publishers’; our goals are incremental. The way … Continue reading Coupons: Re-engineered — 4 Reasons To Back The Rouge Project

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We get it. Every startup aims to be ‘disruptive’, right? The way we see it, it’s important to think big, but start small.

Here at the Rouge Project, while our overall mission is ‘to create a fair and value-driven digital marketing ecosystem that directly benefits brands, consumers, and publishers’; our goals are incremental. The way we’re fulfilling our mission is firmly rooted in what’s visible and achievable: which is why we’re starting our journey by tackling digital coupons using blockchain technology.

Intrigued? Here are 4 reasons to take a closer look at what we’re doing.

 

We’re Problem Solving In A Growth Area

The coupon industry is a huge growth area that’s at the core of traditional and digital marketing. However online coupons are completely open to fraud. Just search for discount codes for your favourite brand or online store and you’ll discover scores of shady looking sites where savvy bargain hunters post (often outdated) codes for all to see.

Why is this a bad thing? It isn’t for shoppers. But it’s disastrous for marketers and publishers. Brands have a finite amount of budget to spend on discounts and, as they did in the good old days of print advertising, issue coupons by paying to advertise them with publications that offer the most engaged audiences. But if anyone can redeem coupons once they’re visible in one place, the offer is completely worthless to those issuing them.

Another major obstacle are salespeople: agencies that take commission for the placement and performance of ads and offers. The prices they charge are rarely consistent with the value they offer. If the total cost of issuing a coupon is tied to ever-increasing costs, there’s little meaningful value left to pass on to shoppers.

That’s the battle we’ve picked. And we’re confident it’s one we can win: using the blockchain.

 

We’re Improving Processes & Fighting Fraud

We’re creating a new kind of digital coupon; fully-trackable, non-forgeable coupons that only release their value when acquired or redeemed by users.

Our decentralised apps (Dapps) are being built on the Ethereum blockchain, meaning we’re able to lock in each coupon’s value, using smart contract technology. And, in a similar way to how a bitcoin cannot be double spent (as it’s listed on a public ledger) when a coupon’s issued, the brand sending it knows that the coupon can only redeemed once, as they’re impossible to forge.

As a result, brands have full visibility of each coupon they issue; know when and where each one is redeemed; and can then attribute a monetary value to the publisher whose site the coupons were listed on. This also works in the publisher’s favour, as they have more opportunity to leverage their niche readership and command a higher premium for more targeted customer reach. And users benefit too. As there’s no sales commission being taken by middlemen, significantly reducing costs, users either gain more competitive discounts or can trade their single use coupons for Ethereum-backed tokens.

 

We’re Building A Value-Based Ecosystem

Our solution doesn’t just use the blockchain as a database; it’s a decentralised protocol that unlocks and distributes value. Not only that; we’re also creating an ecosystem that makes the direct transfer of value between brands, publishers, and users possible.

Underpinning this are our Ethereum-backed (ERC-20) utility tokens — RGEs — which prevent fraud and can be used by brands to advertise coupons with publishers; who can in turn ‘unlock’ their value, ensuring each transaction’s safety.

There will be a finite number of RGE tokens. Over time some will be burned to deter fraud. However, a large percentage of these will be made available during our ICO and pre-sales (visit our website for more details on how to participate).

 

We’re Setting The Groundwork For Broader Scope

As far we know, there are no other blockchain-based projects developing a marketing and ecommerce protocol like ours. Although we’re starting with coupons, in the longer term our platform could encompass other aspects of digital marketing; increasing security during the sale and purchase of other forms of online inventory.

By creating a scalable framework that begins with coupons, but could expand to other areas, we’re hopeful that we won’t ‘disrupt’ digital marketing in the conventional sense; instead we’ll enhance the way that it offers trust and value for everyone involved.

— — — — — —

Rouge will at the upcoming D10e Silicon Valley event on February 15–18, 2018.

Want to find out more about our work at Rouge? Read our whitepaper. Also, be sure to follow us on FacebookTwitterMedium, and GitHub. And don’t forget to join our Telegram group, where you can interact with the founders, admins, and other community members.

Rouge’s ICO token pre-sale is now on! Visit our website for full details.

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Advertising Display Hacked for Cryptocurrency Mining

You’ve heard of online pop-up ads secretly mining Bitcoin on unsuspecting users’ computers but what about digital campaigns targeting high street shoppers? According to Terence Eden’s Blog, one of the large digital advertising displays that are common fixtures in big cities these days was hacked. Rather than displaying some commercial message from a global megabrand, … Continue reading Advertising Display Hacked for Cryptocurrency Mining

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You’ve heard of online pop-up ads secretly mining Bitcoin on unsuspecting users’ computers but what about digital campaigns targeting high street shoppers? According to Terence Eden’s Blog, one of the large digital advertising displays that are common fixtures in big cities these days was hacked. Rather than displaying some commercial message from a global megabrand, the machine showed what was obviously a Windows operating system with a window labelled “NiceHash Miner Legacy” – a Bitcoin mining program designed for older machines.

According to pictures from the website that reported the compromised machine, the digital advertising display is mining with a hash-rate of zero. Therefore, it’s entirely possible that the intended beneficiary of the hack isn’t receiving anything for their hard work. The author of the blog post calls for “someone cleverer than me [to] figure out which wallet starts with 3Jgi6 and is receiving these coins.”

Of course, it’s nothing special to see a broken digital advertising display showing a Windows error message. In fact, the author of the original blog post has a page dedicated to these somewhat amusing technical mistakes. However, this appears to be the first instance reported of a terminal being co-opted to mine cryptocurrency. It’s impossible to tell if the hack was the result of an external security breach, or if it’s the work of a savvy employee having a shot at making a little extra side income. Alternatively, the advertising industry might have turned their backs on hawking the latest fragrance from whichever celebrity or showing off this year’s must-have sports utility vehicle. The latter seems least likely, however.

It isn’t the first time that advertising has been used to hide cryptocurrency miners. Previously, hackers have disguised mining software into online adverts or games and used unsuspecting browsers’ machines to mine digital currency for themselves. “Cryptojacking“, as the practice is now referred to as, isn’t limited to the world of advertising either. Popular file sharing site The Pirate Bay and a WiFi provider at a Starbucks cafe in Argentina are amongst those accused of co-opting their users’ computer systems for their own benefit

 

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