Day: June 5, 2018

U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration plans to “increase focus” on blockchain tech

The Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange has been experiencing a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack since the morning of 5 June 2018, according to an announcement on its Twitter account. The attack started this morning during unplanned maintenance due to problems with its trading engine, and is causing extreme load and poor performance on its servers.

Bitfinex is under DDoS attack. The DDoS attack started during earlier maintenance and has been ongoing since.

— Bitfinex (@bitfinex) November 26, 2017

It’s unknown if the problems with Bitfinex’s trading engine and the DDoS attack are related. The exchange was offline during the maintenance when the attack started. It is possible that the party or parties behind the DDoS attack wanted to hit Bitfinex at a time of weakness.

In a DDoS attack, hackers flood a victim with data from many different IP addresses, making the attack impossible to stop by blocking any single source. The goal is to make a website inaccessible by customers. The physical equivalent of a DDoS is blockading the front of a store with a group of people so customers can’t get in. While bad for business, the security of the cryptocurrency that Bitfinex holds does not appear to be compromised by a DDoS attack.

Bloomberg reports that the attack is preventing users from accessing the exchange. Bitfinex is the largest exchange in the world by trading volume between USD and Bitcoin, with trading volume on an average day of BTC 20,000 (some USD 150 million). Trading volume has floored today due to the exchange being offline during maintenance and the following DDoS attack.

Events like these can cause uncertainty and fear in Bitcoin markets but so far its price has barely reacted and is holding steady above USD 7,400.

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The third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, Huobi, has launched an investment fund that will invest in blockchain companies. According to China Money Network, the fund will be a partnership between the Singapore-headquartered exchange and two other firms, and seeks to raise 100 billion Korean won (US$93 million). The announcement comes just days after another leading crypto exchange, Binance, announced a similar move.

Fostering The Blockchain Startup Ecosystem

Huobi’s investment fund is a partnership between the exchange, investment firm NewMargin Capital, and Kiwoom Securities, a South Korean online brokerage firm. NewMargin is a Beijing-based investment firm which has invested in many successful companies including software developer AsiaInfo, edutech firm eFuture, and wind turbine manufacturer GoldWind.

The fund plans to invest in blockchain startups in China and South Korea. It also aims to increase cooperation between blockchain companies in those countries. It will also bring on limited partners including the Industrial Bank of Korea and the Korea Development Bank. Seoul-based Mirae Asset Financial Group will also come on board as an investor, according to reports.

The announcement comes just days after Binance announced a similar fund of its own. The $1 billion fund will use the exchange’s native BNB tokens exclusively and will be administered through Binance Labs. However, unlike Huobi, which will bring other investors on board, Binance will source the entire investment amount from its own reserves. The fund will invest both directly and indirectly in blockchain startups, as well as in other blockchain-focused investment funds. The exchange will seek to invest in 20 investment funds with at least $100 million under management.

Binance Labs, the exchange’s incubator, will administer the funds, an executive disclosed, and the fund has already invested in four projects. They include MobileCoin, a privacy-focused blockchain startup which will be built on the Stellar Consensus Protocol and which promises its users easy private key management and an opaque ledger that will ensure security and privacy. Binance led a $30 million fundraising round for the startup, which boasts the founder of the encrypted messaging app Signal as its technical advisor.

The fund has also invested in Oasis Labs, a startup whose blockchain platform Ekiden promises to address the scalability and security challenges that face most blockchains. The other projects in which the fund has invested are Certik, a verification platform for smart contracts, and Republic, a decentralized crowdfunding platform.

Crypto exchanges are not the only companies to have identified the huge potential of blockchain startups. Japanese games developer and publisher Gumi also recently announced a blockchain-focused investment fund, American tech website VentureBeat reported on May 30. The $30 million fund which is dubbed Gumi Cryptos will invest in “promising cryptocurrency and blockchain technology companies globally.” Some of the companies in which the fund has already invested include decentralized video streaming service Theta, sharing economy marketplace Origin Protocol, and Basis, a stable cryptocurrency which uses an algorithmic protocol similar to a central bank to maintain stability.

The CEO of Ripple, the network behind the third largest digital currency, XRP, spoke today about his own company as well as Bitcoin and the wider cryptocurrency space. Brad Garlinghouse said that although BTC cannot compete with XRP in terms of transfer times and costs, it was undoubtedly a store of value.

Garlinghouse: XRP and BTC Aren’t in Competition with Each Other

Brad Garlinghouse was speaking to CNBC at the Money 2020 conference that is being held in Amsterdam this week. The Ripple CEO said that he felt that different cryptocurrencies weren’t necessarily in competition with one another. “Specializations of different kinds of ledgers” would allow different blockchains to find their own niches.

For Garlinghouse, Bitcoin cannot compete with XRP as a means of transfer. With XRP transfers taking seconds and Bitcoin’s taking considerably longer, the executive feels that his own company offers better utility in this niche.

However, that doesn’t mean that Bitcoin is the useless old relic that some altcoin aficionados claim it to be. Garlinghouse admits that it is proving an effective store of value:

“I think it [Bitcoin] is a store of value. We as a world have decided to store value to the tune of about $130 billion… that’s a store of value. It’s hard to argue that.”

The Ripple CEO next addressed some of the other projects in the cryptocurrency space. He mentioned that some initial coin offerings (ICOs) were not even clear about the problem that they addressed. For this reason, he remains sceptical about them retaining any value in the future.

Garlinghouse then turned his attention to an issue facing Ripple – the pending lawsuit against the company. Last month, Ryan Coffee filed a suit in California regarding supposed securities law violations. The plaintiff had lost money through trading XRP. He alleges that the team behind Ripple earned millions by selling the tokens they had gifted themselves when they created the platform.

Garlinghouse dismissed the case as ‘outrageous,’ claiming that the XRP token had enough utility to not be deemed a security. He went on to call Coffee ‘somebody who held XRP for… two weeks… and is making some claims.’ The CEO concluded:

“Whether or not XRP is a security is not going to be dictated by one lawsuit… I think it’s very clear that XRP is not a security, it does exist independently of Ripple the company. If Ripple the company is shut down tomorrow the XRP ecosystem would continue to exist. It’s an independent, open-sourced technology.”

Finally, the Ripple CEO was pushed for a price prediction for his network’s native currency. To this he responded that he didn’t know how to make such a call and ‘wouldn’t dare try’ anyway.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

The post Ripple CEO: ‘Bitcoin Is a Store of Value…It’s Hard to Argue with That’ appeared first on NewsBTC.

A new website launched by Belgian government agencies outlines different ways to avoid crypto fraud.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

With record numbers of crypto mining hardware imports, Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance has proposed a temporary blanket ban, local media reports

The Digital Currency Research Lab headed by Di Gang at the People’s Bank of China, China’s central bank, has developed a system that issues digital checks using blockchain and smart contract technology. This follows a year-long effort that began in 2016 in order to combat check fraud in the Chinese market.

The digital checks exist on the blockchain in the form of smart contracts that are automatically enforced. Since the blockchain is an immutable ledger, this reduces transaction risks since it would be extremely difficult to forge a check. China has been suffering from check fraud since there are a large number of intermediaries that issue checks, giving fraudsters lots of different types of checks they can forge, and this has been undermining the Chinese economy.

The proposed blockchain-based digital check system organizes all different types of Chinese checks into one network, making it easy for regulators to set rules and keep track of what’s going on.

Each digital check is a piece of code that contains the check’s data and business logic, and will have capabilities including endorsement transfer, discounting, transfer discounting, and redemption. These capabilities are realized through smart contracts.

The blockchain nature of this new system for issuing checks gives consumers and regulators a transparent view of the lifecycle of a digital check. This is also helpful for judicial proceedings following bad business deals since everything involving a check will be easily accessible on the blockchain.

The proposed system will only take seconds to confirm a check, rapidly accelerating the speed at which checks are processed in China. Also, the encrypted data will be highly protected, with blockchain’s cryptographic features yet to be breached easily.

A prototype of the blockchain-based digital check system was already successfully tested in 2017. It is unknown when the system will go into operational real-world use. Regardless, it is a positive sign from the Chinese central bank, as it appears to not only be embracing blockchain technology, but accelerating its advance and finding new uses for it.

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The St Petersburg City Court in Russia has lifted the block on crypto media website Bitcoininfo.ru, after the District Court shut down its site in July 2016, according to local news outlet TASS.

In 2016, digital currencies hadn’t reached global acceptance, as governments viewed money laundering as a major barrier to any kind of more liberal regulation. The 16 July ruling banning crypto-related information sources was very much reflecting state government thinking at the time.

According to TASS, the new decision was the result of a recent referral by Russia’s Supreme Court following a complaint from Bitcoininfo. The company claimed that the process to appeal the ban was initiated by prosecutors without involving the website’s owners, nor was the site asked to remove any content, previously considered as prohibited for viewing.

The original ban was served on the owners as prosecutors claimed it contained information about cryptocurrencies which were deemed as being “outside of government control”, and according to the District Court at the time, the site didn’t have “specific consumer properties”. The ban was also served as it was claimed that Bitcoininfo was facilitating “growth of the shadow economy”.

This is the second success for crypto-related websites this year after the same St Petersburg court annulled a trial court decision to ban 40 other Bitcoin-related websites, previously accused of spreading information about digital currency that “is not backed by any real asset and does not provide information about its owners”.

The Russian government is reviewing cryptocurrency regulation under the Digital Assets Regulation Bill filed 25 January. The bill defines cryptocurrencies and tokens as digital financial assets. If the bill passes in its current form, it would allow trading on cryptocurrency exchange operators with authorized Know-Your-Customer (KYC) standards. This would also apply to initial coin offerings (ICOs) established in Russia.

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Samsung launches blockchain platform Nexfinance to help finance businesses

At press time, bitcoin is trading for roughly $7,460, meaning there’s no change in its overall price. It’s a good sign in the sense that bitcoin hasn’t dropped any further – the current price is a $200+ drop from its recent $7,600 high – though it’s disappointing that bitcoin is still struggling to surpass present resistance levels.

A new report suggests that bitcoin has already “died” multiple times, incurring its 62nd death earlier this year, and that the latest one is occurring on the 300th anniversary of its first death. In addition, the currency has lost approximately $2,600 in its value since the 200th anniversary of its first death in December of last year, and many critics are now claiming the cryptocurrency is “doomed to fail.”

As stated in Forbes, this is all due to an “Achilles heel” in bitcoin’s mining operations. The source suggests that bitcoin’s mining methods are more expensive than one might assume, and that as bitcoin has gained popularity, mining has become much more difficult, as those extracting new coins are working to ensure bitcoin isn’t overproduced in some way.

It goes on to state that more powerful computers will be needed for mining to continue, which means more energy consumption and higher prices for both consumers and miners alike, and the costs may outweigh the benefits sooner than anticipated.

The added costs and energy usage could potentially make it difficult for bitcoin to retain its value. In addition, the currency cannot be shut down by government authorities due to its decentralized nature, though increased energy consumption could change this if we’re not careful.

This new report is emerging just 24 hours after Steve Wozniak’s recent praise of bitcoin. In an interview with CNBC, the computer mogul announced that he hopes bitcoin can become a single, global currency, and that it’s the equivalent of “digital gold.” Wozniak called bitcoin “pure,” and admits that while he’s not invested in it, he admires its imposed limited supply, which makes it less vulnerable to problems often faced by both gold and USD.

In addition, Wozniak also called for further regulation efforts, and said they were crucial to bitcoin’s survival. Ironically, new regulation has appeared on the horizon in the form of Valerie Szczepanik, who will serve as a senior cryptocurrency advisor to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The organization is continuing its work in the fight against market volatility and fake initial coin offerings (ICOs), and Szczepanik will take on a “big role” when it comes to deciding future regulation’s direction.

SEC Chairman Jay Clayton recently announced:

“With her demonstrated skill, experience and keen awareness of the importance of fostering innovation while ensuring investor protection, Val is the right person to coordinate our efforts in this dynamic area.”

In the meantime, bitcoin is still experiencing very weak support levels at $7,300, and another bearish decline could occur in the short-term. Current resistance is set at $7,600, which once broken, could potentially take bitcoin up to the $7,700 mark granted the price is able to pick up momentum soon.