Day: February 23, 2018

The bank warns its investors that cryptocurrencies could hamper its ability to comply with anti-money-laundering regulations, among other dangers.

We have seen multiple initial coin offerings suffer mysterious hacks and other problems after their token sales ended. It is one of the major issues associated with this particular industry. Titanium, a relatively new ICO, has fallen victim to the theft of 16 million ICO tokens. It seems this may have been an inside job, although that has not been confirmed as of right now.

Titanium ICO Experiences Major Issues

Even though most people haven’t even heard of the Titanium ICO, that is not what matters here. It is another initial coin offering which seemingly did not take the proper security precautions. It is uncanny how many such projects exist today, as this is not the first time a project has had its site hacked, funds stolen, or is forced to deal with malicious actors. Rest assured it will not be the last time we see such an incident occur either.

The Titanium team issued a major warning to all its investors yesterday. In the communique, the team explained that 16 million BAR tokens had been stolen from the company’s wallets. While that is rather troublesome, it also shows this may very well have been an inside job by one of the initial coin offering’s team members. That hasn’t been confirmed as of right now, but it poses a lot of problems for the people who invested in this project.

With 16 million tokens having been stolen, the Titanium team has a lot of issues to sort out. Considering that this theft represents “a large part of the signature token supply”, it is evident immediate action is more than warranted. The last thing this nascent ICO needs is someone dumping their tokens across all exchanges and crippling its value in the long term. None of this would have been an issue if the team had taken proper precautions, but that is a topic for another discussion.

For now, it seems the Titanium team will take the logical approach of creating a secondary token by forking the original one. This new token will have to be integrated into the project’s infrastructure, though that shouldn’t be too difficult. All existing token holders will receive the new token at a 1:1 ratio, which is only normal. Whether users will be issued these new tokens will depend on if they had already moved their tokens out of the website’s wallets or not. If they did, a form will need to be filled in with specific details.

For now, the trading of BAR tokens is to be suspended on all of the supporting exchanges. It remains unclear if all trading platforms will adhere to this request before any major damage is done, although it seems safe to assume that they will. This hack will not affect the team’s plan to release their MVP in March, which is one positive thing to come out of all this.

Unfortunately, this is another example of how initial coin offerings pose risks in many ways. Not every product will work in the long run, and some projects are outright scams. In the case of Titanium and a few others, the lack of proper wallet security during and after the ICO has had major repercussions for all parties involved. It remains unclear who is responsible for this hack and if they will be punished for their actions.

21 South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges to evaluate self-regulatory compliance #NEWS

Employees at the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) spent the second day offline today, while security officials — including the FBI — continue to investigate a ransomware virus that hijacked computer files and demanded payment in Bitcoin for their return.

According to Amy Ford, a CDOT spokeswoman, only employee computers running Windows and equipped with McAfee security software were impacted.

“No one is back online. What we’re doing is working offline. All our critical services are still online — cameras, variable message boards, CoTrip, alerts on traffic. They are running on separate systems,” Ford said. “The message I’m sharing [with employees] is CDOT operated for a long time without computers so we’ll use pen and paper.”

SamSam

The ordeal began on Wednesday morning when CDOT shut down more than 2,000 employee computers and began investigating the attack. The malicious code was a variant of ransomware called SamSam, according to Brandi Simmons of the Governor’s Office of Information Technology (OIT). Later in the day, in attempts to prevent further damage, McAfee, the security software used by the CDOT computers, provided a software patch to stop the execution of the ransomware.

“This ransomware virus was a variant and the state worked with its antivirus software provider to implement a fix today. The state has robust backup and security tools and has no intention of paying ransomware. Teams will continue to monitor the situation closely and will be working into the night,” said OIT chief technology officer David McCurdy in a statement.

The OIT, which reached out to the FBI for assistance, are still investigating the attack and have not paid a cent to attackers — nor do they plan to according to Simmons:

“No payments have been made or will be made. We are still investigating to see whether or not files were damaged or recovered,” she said in an email.

As noted, the ransomware was a variant of SamSam, which last made headlines in January after targeting the healthcare industry. It encrypted files and renamed them “I’m sorry,” according to a report by security firm TrendMicro. One hospital in Indiana, Hancock Health, paid $55,000 to get its files back. To make things worse, a growing problem is that paying cyber-jackers in itself isn’t always easy— sometimes other hackers hijack the ransom payments before they are received and redirect them into their own cryptocurrency wallets.

These remote hacks are becoming more and more common — just last week Elon Musk’s cloud was hacked. In this case, though, the cyber-attackers didn’t steal information: They used his computer system’s power to mine cryptocurrencies, deeming it more profitable than extracting files and demanding ransom.  

The post Colorado Department of Transportation, CDOT, Completely Offline After Ransomware Virus appeared first on NewsBTC.

Austria is drawing up cryptocurrency regulations, using as a model existing rules for the trading of gold and derivatives.

The Venezuelan government is quite keen on creating new cryptocurrencies, by the look of things. Following the success of its initial Petro sale, a plan has been devised to create Petro Gold. This new token will be backed by the country’s precious metal reserves.

The Petro Gold Token may Become a Thing

It is safe to say Venezuela can only be saved by cryptocurrencies at this point. Whether that means existing and established cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum will play any role of importance has yet to be determined. For now, it seems the government is more focused on creating its own cryptocurrencies. The Petro was introduced to investors earlier this week and has raised a staggering amount of money already.

With this success in place, no one should be surprised that the Venezuelan government is already looking into exploring other opportunities. It seems they have their mind set on creating a Petro Gold cryptocurrency, which will be backed by the country’s natural resources. Rather than using oil barrels again, Petro Gold will be backed by the country’s precious metal reserves. It makes a lot of sense on paper, even though it remains to be seen if this new currency will see any success.

As it happens, there are a lot of concerns surrounding this new initiative. Even though the Petro cryptocurrency is seemingly a big success already, there are still a lot of people who remain unconvinced this cryptocurrency will ever be anything but a pipe dream. Using these currencies to bypass the US sanctions imposed on the country is a very risky venture and may backfire on anyone who invests in these tokens.

This launch comes at a rather interesting time as well. With the Petro being a success, the government seemingly assumes Petro Gold will see similar success in the coming months. This raises a lot of questions as to how easy it is for any government to create value out of thin air by creating new tokens. After all, these tokens are backed by natural resources via a promise from the Venezuelan government. It remains to be seen if the government will be able to do so when push comes to shove, though.

For the time being, there are no real details regarding the Petro Gold currency. It is evident this currency may not even have been created, yet the enthusiasm from President Maduro certainly seems to indicate this plan has been on the table for quite some time now. Gold-backed cryptocurrencies already exist, and it remains to be seen if Petro Gold will bring some competition to this market. The country is still struggling financially, and the value attributed to these tokens is completely based on good faith and speculation.

After all, there is nothing preventing people from buying gold directly without having to go through a cryptocurrency first. The gold in Venezuela is not worth any less – or more – than gold in any other country. It makes very little sense to assume this cryptocurrency will entice investors, as there is no shortage of gold out there. Rather, there aren’t enough reasons to invest in gold as of right now. Petro Gold is a very dubious project, to say the very least.

Solving the crypto energy crisis through waste products. #SPONSORED

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

Big spending may be the only way for Bank of America to compete with cryptocurrency, the bank tells the SEC in its 2017 fiscal report. #NEWS

There is an obvious connection between cryptocurrencies and gaming. The same applies to blockchain technology and eSports, especially when it comes to content delivery. Theta aims to disrupt the video delivery industry by issuing its tokens to streamers, eSports players, and others. It is quite an undertaking that requires a lot of people.  

What is Theta Exactly?

The concept of Theta is not difficult to explain. The team is focused on disrupting the online video industry in spectacular fashion. Delivering video to various parts of the world is a very expensive venture as of right now. Theta’s decentralized peer-to-peer network will improve video delivery while decreasing the cost of doing so. Creating an end-to-end infrastructure for decentralized video streaming is something to look forward to.

How Does it all Work?

Live streaming video content is quite convenient, yet it is also prone to quite a few problems. Perhaps the biggest problem is low-quality video, combined with the high cost of the infrastructure required to power such activity. It is evident the current ecosystem is heavily centralized and incredibly inefficient. Viewers get very little reward in exchange for streaming things over the internet.

Theta aims to solve all this by introducing decentralized video streaming over blockchain technology. As a result, the streaming experience will be smooth and of high quality. Additionally, the cost of delivering video streams will be reduced, and viewers will earn Theta Tokens as a reward for viewing content. Additionally, tokens can be earned when sharing bandwidth and resources as part of this network.

With end-to-end decentralized video delivery, support for dApps, and a native token, Theta is certainly worth keeping an eye on. The dApps built on top of this platform can tackle various industries, ranging from eSports to movies, education and even enterprise conferencing. Whether or not this decentralized streaming network will ever gain major traction has yet to be determined, however.

The Theta Token

As mentioned before, the Theta Token is primarily designed to reward viewers and those who share their bandwidth and other resources with the Theta network. Viewers can also share these tokens with content creators as a way to incentivize future content creation. It seems these Theta Tokens will empower users and creators alike by cutting out as many middlemen as possible.

The Theta Roadmap

Creating such a powerful platform will not happen overnight. Theta has been in development for some time now, and the current focus is on developing the Theta blockchain. Its tokens are already integrated into the SLIVER.tv eSports platform, which showcases the potential of these tokens as we speak. The native network launch will happen in late 2018, after which time the ERC20 tokens will be exchanged for native blockchain tokens.

During an ethereum core developer meeting Friday, Vitalik Buterin argued the protocol’s governance isn’t functioning poorly, it’s just misunderstood.