Day: June 10, 2018

Apple has made a number of store revisions in order to loosen its guidelines for crypto apps, reports Investing.com. A group known as the Developers Union had recently made requests to Apple to allow every app on the platform to free trials before July 2019, among suggestions for other improvements.

The union is an unofficial body which says that its aim is to “bring developers and supporters together for better App Stores for all”. It currently only has 400 members but hopes to stretch its membership to 20,000 this month according to The Register.

It appears that the IT multinational has been listening given its recent announcements, also noting how its apps are currently:

“Changing the world, enriching people’s lives, and enabling developers to innovate like never before. As a result, the App Store has grown into an ecosystem for millions of developers and more than a billion users.”

Telegram backer and self-proclaimed “global entrepreneur” Pavel Durov has blamed a lack of updates to his app on Apple “not siding with us” in the ongoing furore in Russia over the crypto-chat platform. He was forced to apologize to his customers due to features of the latest iOS 11.4 not working, alleging that Apple had prevented updates to Telegram. He has also blamed Apple for Telegram being unable to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation due to the alleged block on updates.

Apple’s latest announcement regarding cryptocurrency states: “Apps may facilitate transactions or transmissions of cryptocurrency on an approved exchange, provided they are offered by the exchange itself. Cryptocurrency Apps may not offer currency for completing tasks, such as downloading other Apps, encouraging other users to download, posting to social networks, etc.”

This is a significant move from Apple’s position five years ago when the IT giant reportedly asked companies to remove cryptos from their apps. Regarding ICOs, Apple says that apps must facilitate transactions from established banks, securities firms, futures commission merchants and other approved financial institutions.

Apple specifies that apps can’t mine for cryptos “unless the processing is performed off device (e.g. cloud-based mining)”.

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The post Apple Bows to Public Pressure over Crypto-Unfriendly Apps appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

The Bitcoin price has taken another massive dip over the weekend. Pinpointing the exact reason for that development is not all that easy. Some people blame the hack of CoinRail to be the culprit. However, the exchange is a small platform with a less-than-great reputation in South Korea.

CoinRail Hack is Unfortunate

Whenever a cryptocurrency exchange is hacked, panic ensues. In the case of CoinRail, the actual impact on cryptocurrency markets is minimal. It was ranked outside of the top 80 by overall trading platform. Additionally, it mainly specializes in trading smaller tokens with a low market cap and little market presence. With this information in mind, the hack of CoinRail is not important for the major cryptocurrencies.

Even so, some media sources gladly claim otherwise. It is evident the cryptocurrency market has taken a nosedive. The correlation with the Coinrail incident, however, remains unproven and seems virtually non-existent.  It is possible some of the stolen funds from the exchange is converted to Ethereum or Bitcoin in the process. However, that would represent marginal amounts of either currency and cannot trigger a massive market sell-off.

Spooking the cryptocurrency markets has become worryingly easy these days. Any major incident can trigger a wave of panic selling. At the same time, one has to wonder if there isn’t more to the ongoing Bitcoin price manipulation investigation launched in the US. All of these correlations seem to occur at the most opportune time for speculators to drive the price down.

Looking for Long-term Momentum

As Binance CEO Changpeng ZHao stated, this most recent dip is not unusual. A lot of volatility takes place in the cryptocurrency world at all times. Ups and downs occur every single day, and it seems that situation will remain in place for some time to come. Long-term veterans acknowledge this is nothing to worry about when looking at the longer picture.

Given South Korea’s position in cryptocurrency, it’s only normal the CoinRail news is highlighted. However, one has to acknowledge the bad news is also what most MSM are looking for rather than focus on positive news. There are a lot of things happening in the world of cryptocurrency which will result in positive developments over the coming years.

Bitcoin and Ethereum will both scale beyond their current capabilities. Litecoin aims to make an impact in the merchant industry. Other currencies which are worth their salt will also find their place in the market. Additionally, a lot of financial industry experts are convinced cryptocurrencies will still be a big part of the future of finance moving forward. From a long-term perspective, things are looking just fine. As such, the Bitcoin price will rebound eventually.

The post No, Bitcoin Price Didn’t Fall Because a Minor Cryptocurrency Exchange was Hacked appeared first on NewsBTC.

South Korea-based Coinrail has not disclosed the exact amount lost in the breach, but data suggests the damage could be $40 million.

Bitcoin price plunge over the weekend is generally being linked to another cryptocurrency exchange hack in South Korea. This time it was a smaller exchange called Coinrail that was breached by blackhats who made off with over $40 million in altcoins which may have caused the massive sell-off on Sunday leaving a trail of red all through the top 100 trading cryptocurrencies.

Hack Aimed at User Accounts

Coinrail is a relatively obscure exchange that trades 50 coins and is ranked 98th in the world with a 24-hour volume of about $2.65 million, according to data from Coinmarketcap.com. The news came first from the exchanges own Twitter account where they announced that there had been a “cyber Intrusion” and some coins where confirmed jeopardized.

해킹공격시도로 인한 시스템 점검중입니다. 일부코인(펀디엑스,NPXS)이 확인되었으며 추가적인 코인피해가 있는지 여부를 확인중입니다. 추후 자세한 사항은 재공지하겠습니다 / There has been an cyber intrusion in our system. We're confirming it and some coins(Pundi X, NPXS) are confirmed.

— coinrail (@Coinrail_Korea) June 10, 2018

Further information followed which broke down the haul of altcoins. First on the list is $19.5 million worth of NPXS tokens issued through an ICO held by payments startup Pundi X. Then another $13.8 million of an ICO generated coin called Aston X used on a platform to decentralize documents. These followed by $5.8 million of Dent tokens and $1.1 million of Tron. There were also smaller amounts of five other tokens pilfered in the attack.

Similar to the Coincheck hack earlier this year in Japan the issuing companies weren’t hacked, the tokens were stolen from user accounts held by the exchange. Coinrail has responded to the hack by taking its service offline and moving the remainder of its assets – which it tallies as 70% of its total holdings – into cold storage as an investigation is conducted into the crime.

ICOs Proactively Respond

Pundi has reported that it has frozen the nearly $20 million worth of its tokens stolen and ceased trading across all exchanges in order to assist the South Korean police with their investigation. Aston and NPER also reported that they would freeze their stolen tokens with NPER which lost $860,000 adding that it would incinerate their lost tokens to make them useless to the thieves.

It is as yet unclear whether or not Coinrail will follow the precedent set by Coincheck in refunding it’s users the value of their stolen coins. As a still unregulated currency digital tokens are not insured by any government which means that when they are stolen there is no agency to turn to for a refund.

The hack which was relatively small when compared to the legendary Mt. Gox or Coincheck theft is widely being blamed for the plunge in Bitcoin and consequently every other coin price trading in the top 100.  Some skeptics on social media doubt whether a breach in the security of such an obscure exchange could be responsible for the loss of what Fortune magazine reported to be $115 billion market wide but in crypto world, the smallest pebble can cause a mighty wave.

The post Is South Korean Exchange Hack Responsible for Bitcoin Price Plunge? appeared first on NewsBTC.

Cardano Price Key Highlights

• Cardano continues to trend lower below a descending trend line on the 1-hour chart.
• Long-term support appears to be drawing bullish pressure and a bounce could be due.
• In that case, Cardano could still encounter nearby resistance at the Fib levels and trend line.

Cardano looks prime for a pullback from its drop and the trend line and Fib levels might keep gains in check.

Technical Indicators Signals

The 100 SMA is below the longer-term 200 SMA to confirm that the path of least resistance is to the downside. In other words, the selloff is more likely to resume than to reverse. The 100 SMA is also near the descending trend line to add to its strength as a ceiling.

The 61.8% Fib is closest to the trend line, though, and might keep gains in check close to the 2.0000 major psychological level, which previously held as support. The 200 SMA is at the swing high or 0.2100 level to add an extra barrier.

RSI looks ready to pull up from oversold levels to signal that buyers are returning. A bullish divergence can also be seen as price made lower lows while the oscillator had higher lows.

Similarly, stochastic is turning higher to show that bullish momentum might return. If this is strong enough to take Cardano past the nearby resistance levels, a longer-term climb could ensue.

ADAUSD Chart from TradingView

Market Factors

Cryptocurrencies are on the back foot to start the week as a small South Korean exchange, Coinrail, was reportedly hacked over the weekend. The exchange tweeted that only lesser-known altcoins like Pundi X were affected, but the security jitters still managed to spread across other altcoins.

Meanwhile, the dollar could be under bullish pressure as the FOMC statement looms. Traders are expecting a rate hike and further tightening clues that might drive the dollar higher across the board.

The post Cardano (ADA/USD) Price Watch: Potential Pullback Scenario appeared first on NewsBTC.

Amidst the brutal market conditions, a Reddit user, BeanThe5th, has somehow managed to get in more trouble than the market is currently in, reportedly losing two Bitcoin in a hack. 

Reddit User Loses Two Bitcoin In Binance Hack

Yesterday, BeanThe5th made a thread in the popular /r/cryptocurrency subreddit, regarding a theft that has occurred on his or her Binance account. Many users who saw this Reddit thread were quite surprised, as it has become common knowledge that Binance is one of the most reputable and secure exchanges that exist.

According to the aforementioned Reddit user, the thieves took two Bitcoins from their account. However, Binance has a daily withdrawal limit in place for unverified users, which stopped the criminals from taking all $50,000 worth of cryptocurrencies from the account. Although some larger investors may see this as a restriction, in this situation, this limit luckily saved a majority of the user’s funds.

The hackers also managed to take control of all of the user’s social media pages, along with any other accounts associated with the hacked email addresses. The user also had cryptoassets on other exchanges but confirmed that the funds on the other exchanges were safe and locked on these exchanges.

How Did This Occur?

The hacker(s) managed to get past the often secure two-factor authentication (2FA) by using a ‘SIM swap’ method. This method of intrusion requires the criminals to pretend to be the targeted individual. The criminal will then need to contact the individual’s phone provider, getting the provider to move all SIM information onto the hacker’s phone. This allows for all two-factor security messages to be sent to the hacker’s phone instead of the original user’s device.

As well, the attackers also managed to take control of the user’s Google Authenticator account, which Binance uses as another layer of security.

Due to the fact that they also had access to the passwords of the individual, it became an easy task to get funds withdrawn from Binance after taking control of the 2FA accounts. 

With all these factors in mind, it has become apparent that this attack was meticulous and most likely required an immense amount of planning prior attack’s execution. 

A representative from Binance quickly responded as the post skyrocketed to the front page of the most popular cryptocurrency subreddit. Jager, Binance customer support team member, asked for the affected user to procure their support ticket ID, to help expedite the case.

Bean answered with his ticket ID as requested, with the representative from Binance confirming that the account had been locked just a few minutes later.

Security Methods

Some Reddit users suggested alternative methods to make sure that an attack on a cryptocurrency user’s funds won’t happen again.

Reddit user JohnnyK10 recommended a security method to the affected user, saying:

Dont keep 50k worth of coins on a exchange. A cold hardware wallet is your safest bet.

Many cryptocurrency experts, along with large holders, believe that it is best to hold large amounts of cryptocurrencies in a secure hardware wallet, like the Ledger Nano. This greatly reduces the risk of hacking, some saying removing all risk of attack entirely.

Products like the Ledger and Trezor are easy to use and support a wide variety of popular cryptocurrencies. As well, most hardware wallets cost under $150 U.S. dollars, making them a logical security method for users who are aware of these fantastic devices. 

Due to the severity of the attack, others speculated that there must have been an attack on the user’s computer, with a keylogger or activity tracker implanted being the most likely scenario. When using a hardware wallet, it removes any risk of a keylogger attack, even if the hardware wallet is plugged into the computer. Hardware wallets keep all sensitive information on the device, using extremely secure channels to help verify transactions using a private key. 

If users do not opt-in to buy a hardware wallet, it is suggested by many to keep up to date with the proper computer security programs, which have become increasingly secure.

Think about it, buying a $150 hardware wallet or $100 security program will help many users mitigate the risk of an attack on thousands of dollars worth of their cryptocurrencies.

As more attacks like this occur, it will only begin to make even more sense for investors to keep their funds under lock and key.

Featured Image from Shutterstock

The post Binance User Loses 2 BTC After Hacker Steals Password, How to Prevent Theft appeared first on NewsBTC.

Former chair of the FDIC, Sheila Bair, writes on the viability of CBDCs and their need for further investigation.

Bitcoin Price Key Highlights

• Bitcoin is still inside its descending triangle visible on the daily chart.
• Price is testing support and is approaching the peak of the formation to signal an imminent breakout.
• Technical indicators appear to be favoring a downside move and a selloff.

Bitcoin is testing the bottom of its descending triangle on the daily chart and could be due for a breakout soon.

Technical Indicators Signals

The 100 SMA is below the longer-term 200 SMA to signal that the path of least resistance is to the downside. In other words, a downside break is more likely to occur than an upside break.

In that case, bitcoin price could tumble to the next potential support zones at $4,000 then $2,000. On the other hand, an upside break could still find resistance at the moving averages but the rally could potentially last by the same height as the chart pattern.

RSI is heading lower to signal that sellers have the upper hand. However, this oscillator is dipping into oversold territory to signal a slowdown in selling pressure. Turning back up could bring buyers in again.

Stochastic is also moving south and has more room to fall before hitting oversold levels. This suggests that bears could stay in control of bitcoin price for much longer.

BTCUSD Chart from TradingView

Market Factors

Bitcoin price encountered another wave of selling pressure when it was reported that a small South Korean exchange was hacked. Coinrail tweeted over the weekend about the breach and reported that only lesser-known altcoins like Pundi X were affected. Still, investors couldn’t help but revisit security concerns in the overall industry.

Meanwhile, the dollar is facing the upcoming FOMC decision during which a rate hike would likely be announced. More hawkish remarks could boost the dollar further against bitcoin while cautious comments on future tightening could dampen gains.

The post Bitcoin (BTC) Price Watch: Can Bulls Defend the Triangle Bottom? appeared first on NewsBTC.

Key Highlights

• Ripple price declined sharply and broke the $0.65 and $0.62 support levels against the US dollar.
• There was a break below a major bullish trend line with support at $0.66 on the hourly chart of the XRP/USD pair (data source from Kraken).
• The pair may decline further if it fails to hold the $0.55 support area in the near term.

Ripple price crashed and broke many supports against the US Dollar and Bitcoin. XRP/USD could accelerate declines if buyers fail to defend $0.55.

Ripple Price Decline

During the past few hours, there was a sharp downside move from well above $0.68 in Ripple price against the US Dollar. The price broke down and cleared many supports on the way down such as $0.6500 and $0.6200. There was also a break below the $0.6000 handle, which opened the doors for more losses. The current price action is very bearish with a negative bias below the $0.6000 handle.

During the decline, there was a break below a major bullish trend line with support at $0.66 on the hourly chart of the XRP/USD pair. The pair declined and traded close to the $0.5500 level. A low was formed near the $0.5550 level where buyers emerged and protected further declines. At the moment, the price is correcting higher and is trading near $0.5650. An initial resistance is around the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $0.6792 high to $0.5551 low. Above this, the broken support near the $0.6000 handle may act as a resistance.

Looking at the chart, the price is clearly in a bearish zone below $0.6000. It may continue to move down if sellers remain in control below $0.5800. A break below the $0.5500 support may push the price towards $0.5000.

Looking at the technical indicators:

Hourly MACD – The MACD for XRP/USD is mostly in the bearish zone.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for XRP/USD is now near the 30 level.

Major Support Level – $0.5500

Major Resistance Level – $0.6000

The post Ripple Price Analysis: XRP/USD Could Revisit $0.50 appeared first on NewsBTC.

It’s debatable whether investing in a range of coins limits downside as Markowitz’s MPT framework would suggest, but it might help capture upside.

Key Highlights

• ETH price declined sharply and traded below the $540 support area against the US Dollar.
• There is a connecting bearish trend line forming with resistance at $560 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via Kraken).
• The pair may correct a few points in the short term, but upsides are likely to be capped by $560.

Ethereum price declined heavily against the US Dollar and Bitcoin. ETH/USD almost tested the $500 level and is currently in a bearish zone.

Ethereum Price Decline

There was a nasty decline in ETH price from well above $600 against the US Dollar. The price traded lower by more than $100 and crashed below many support levels. It declined below the $570, $540 and $525 support levels to move into a bearish zone. It almost tested the $500 level and is currently struggling to recover. The recent low was formed near the $506 level, which means close to the last swing level.

An upside correction is underway, which could lead the price towards the $530 level. An initial resistance is near the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $608 high to $506 low. Above this, there are many hurdles near the $560 level. There is also a connecting bearish trend line forming with resistance at $560 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD. Moreover, the 50% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $608 high to $506 low is also near the same level.

Looking at the chart, the price may correct a few points in the short term, but it could face a lot of barriers near $540 and $560. On the downside, the recent low of $506 is a short-term support. Below this, the price may even break $500.

Hourly MACD – The MACD is placed heavily in a bearish zone.

Hourly RSI – The RSI is currently placed near the oversold levels with a lot of bearish signs.

Major Support Level – $500

Major Resistance Level – $560

The post Ethereum Price Analysis: ETH/USD Crashes To $500 appeared first on NewsBTC.

The TzLibre fork will be launched on the 4th of June 2018. TzLibre are forking DLS-Tezos, this fork is for the Tezos contributors. TzLibre is a trustless and hard-capped implementation of the Tezos idea.

TzLibre will start airdropping TZL tokens to all Tezos contributors who have claimed them. TzLibre is a group of Tezos token sale contributors who fell in love with the Tezos ideals, but wanted to further push the boundaries of the project. It was said that Tezos could not be forked, but that is exactly what TzLibre are doing. TzLibre is set to maximise contributors interests.

The TzLibre Fork

Funding

TzLibre will utilize the Tezos Foundation and protect contributors

Tokens

TzLibre will set an amount of tokens to be assigned to network validators, TzLibre has also set an immutable hard-cap at 763M tokens.

Governance

TzLibre want to combat inflation of money supply, censorship of transactions, freezing of accounts and many other types of manipulation. TzLibre will use eternity clauses; a hardcoded Constitution to protect basic users rights such as transaction immutability.

Legal

TzLibre is aware of the investigations on Ripple, and has been worried that XZL was at risk of being labeled a security be the SEC. TzLibre has consulted legal, and TzLibre is a independent team not associated with any business company and can’t be considered a security by any means.

Funding

The Tezos Foundation Charter has been created to allow it to fund multiple Tezos implementations.

The Charter states: “[Tezos Foundation] primary – but not exclusive – endeavor is the promotion and development of the Tezos protocol and related technologies”.

TzLibre is adamant to support the Tezos Foundation, and make sure its charter supports TzLibre as well as any other legitimate forks.

TzLibre Reception

TzLibre is being censored in each and every Tezos community group, the project as of now only has a little of 5% of the entire Tezos contributors following on Riot, Reddit, Telegram, WeChat, QQ and more.

Trading

The native TzLibre token (TZL )will be traded on ForkDelta Exchange, this is the world’s first decentralized and trustless exchange. Bids are already being placed on the exchange and trading will begin on the 4th of June, 2018.

Partners

TzLibre is pleased to announce that are partnering with Ethereum Commonwealth and the ZClassic community volunteer development team. Both teams have extensive experience in the fork processes. Utilizing both these entities TzLibre plan to raise public awareness on centralized “blockchains” created and run for profit by private corporations.  

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The post TzLibre Announces Upcoming Tezos Fork appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

Bitcoin has taken a serious beating in the last 48 hours with significant drops happening in two legs plunging the price from just above $7,600 to $6,784 at the time of writing according to livecoinwatch.com. That is a 7.9% loss in 24 hours for BTC but as coins have remained closely correlated in this market where Bitcoin goes the rest follow, every altcoin in the top 100 is showing red this morning on coinmarketcap.

As always the cryptomarket is a volatile space where trading trends are created by emotion as much as any actual outside force but in the case of this weekends carnage, there are at least two contributing factors to blame. First and foremost is the news that another South Korean exchange has been hacked.

Coinrail Hack

Coinrail, a relatively small exchange but still ranked among the worlds top 100 reported at first that it was reviewing its system due to a “cyber intrusion” and later revealed that $40 million in altcoins had been stolen from user accounts, similar to Japan’s Coincheck hack earlier this year.

해킹공격시도로 인한 시스템 점검중입니다. 일부코인(펀디엑스,NPXS)이 확인되었으며 추가적인 코인피해가 있는지 여부를 확인중입니다. 추후 자세한 사항은 재공지하겠습니다 / There has been an cyber intrusion in our system. We're confirming it and some coins(Pundi X, NPXS) are confirmed.

— coinrail (@Coinrail_Korea) June 10, 2018

Though the exchange is small and even the $40 million is a low number compared with other hacks the carry on effect can be serious. South Korea has been the third largest market for Bitcoin trading in the world after Japan and the US and has also suffered several major exchange hacks resulting in both fear driven activity on the trading side and calls for more stringent regulation from the government.

This leads to the second factor of regulatory uncertainty which has had an overhanging effect on trading throughout the year but may be coming to a head soon. Since the unprecedented bull market of 2017 came to a crashing halt the threat and hand-wringing of government agencies around the world have caused dips and spikes in the market everytime an official makes a statement concerning the status of Bitcoin or the legality of ICO’s.

For many analysts, June has been a target month for US regulatory questions to be answered due to the movement of institutional money into the crypto space marked by Goldman Sachs launching Wall Streets first ever digital assets trading desk. However ongoing investigations by both the Securities Exchange Commision and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission continue to shake potential traders confidence in cryptocurrencies.

Coming Clarity May Boost Market Price

There is some good regulatory news on the horizon though as the Global Times, owned by China’s official communist party newspaper People’s Daily hinted China may be ready to overturn its February ban on Bitcoin as it ran an editorial which read “It’s time for China to lay the regulatory groundwork for its rise as a future digital currency trendsetter”

Whether Bitcoin can come bounding back from this weekend to reach the kinds of highs in June that bulls like Tom Lee have been predicting for months is unsure but with some clarity coming out of the US and the general push of institutional money especially flowing into the Bitcoin futures market there is every indication that recovery could be swift as the price of Bitcoin has already moved back into the green.

The post Bitcoin Took a Beating but Should be Bouncing Back appeared first on NewsBTC.