Tag: Bitcoin (BTC)

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Crypto News

We’ll Soon Celebrate 10 Years of Bitcoin (BTC) and Blockchain Technology

A decade after the birth of the Bitcoin (BTC) protocol, there are still many unknowns around this technology and its benefits. Is the blockchain technology today what it promised it would be in its first days of existence?

Since blockchain technology emerged in 2009 with Bitcoin (BTC), the interest in this technology has not stopped increasing. Experts affirm that it will be the next industrial revolution, the era of the Internet of value. A blockchain is nothing more than a database that is distributed among different participants, cryptographically encrypted and organized in blocks of transactions mathematically related to each other.

The first blockchain was the Bitcoin (BTC) one, launched in 2009. But how is it now, almost ten years later? In its latest edition, The Economist has included a special report on this technology, saying that “Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies are useless.”

It wasn’t supposed to work that way, The Economist says. Bitcoin (BTC) emerged after the 2008 global financial crisis, as a kind of techno-anarchist project to empower and protect people who shared a deep distrust of governments, banks, and big trusts. Its original objective was the creation of a popular currency as an alternative global financial system that is controlled by governments and banks. In short, Bitcoin (BTC) is a decentralized project.

A decade later, Bitcoin (BTC) and blockchain technology are hardly used for their purposes set in their first days of life

Relatively few suppliers accept Bitcoin (BTC), disillusioned by their volatility and grim reputation. Its decentralized nature and mining-based working environment make it slow as this blockchain handles less than ten transactions per second which is very really sluggish compared to the tens of thousands of transactions per second conducted by existing payment networks or other blockchain technologies, as well.

While the infrastructure based on Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain is highly secure, crypto exchanges that handle the conversion of this digital asset into fiat money have been repeatedly hacked over the ten years of Bitcoin (BTC) and blockchain technology existence.

As for the blockchain technology that supports Bitcoin (BTC)and almost all the other cryptocurrencies, “the advantages of blockchains are often oversold,” said The Economist.

While we know that the cryptocurrencies market is more and more attractive to investors, it’s volatility is one of the main challenges someone has to tackle when putting money on cryptos. Blockchain technology, on the other hand, is a very promising solution in comparison with the conventional payment system, even though it’s slower at the moment.

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Crypto News

Bitmain, Bitcoin (BTC) Mining Rigs Manufacturer, Reported Losses In Q2 2018

The Chinese Bitcoin (BTC) mining equipment manufacturer Bitmain introduced an Initial Public Offering (IPO) application on the Hong Kong stock exchange, in which it confirms losses of $395 million in the second quarter of 2018, after almost surpassing its net profit for the whole of 2017 in Q1.

In the application for the IPO, Bitmain reveals its business figures until the second quarter of 2018

After doubling its sales in 2016 compared with 2015, and almost multiplying them by 10 in 2017, the Chinese manufacturer obtained more revenue in the first half of 2018 than in the whole of 2017, as shown.

The losses are attributed to the drop in the price of Bitcoin (BTC) in 2018, about 67%, from its January 2018 peak of $19,608, to its current value of around $6,500. This notorious decrease affects the profitability of Bitcoin (BTC) mining, although it is known that miners, in general, do not stop investing in better equipment.

Bitmain was already preparing its IPO, with some incidents such as leaked documents about its assets in cryptocurrencies, or support publications from other companies that were later rejected, although it finally formalized the IPO request this Wednesday.

The drop in Bitcoin (BTC) price affected Bitmain revenues in Q2 2018

The sharp rise in the price of Bitcoin (BTC) in 2017, which led to an increase in Bitmain sales at the beginning of this year, also led to the rise in the price of Bitcoin (BTC) mining equipment as demand exceeded supply. In the second quarter of 2018, that dynamic is reversed, as Bitmain had acquired a large inventory of ASIC chips and components to increase production and much of the equipment was not sold.

Bitmain confirms the decline in prices in 2018, comparing the average price of its equipment sold in the first half of 2017 with the average price in 2018, from $1,191 to $972. The cause of the decline, Bitmain says, is the decline in the expected return per unit of one mined Bitcoin (BTC).

As for its cryptocurrencies holdings, the Bitmain IPO filing does not specify the amounts for cryptos the Bitcoin (BTC) mining equipment manufacturer has, but it points out that it fell from $1.172.4 million in T1 to $886.9 million in T2, possibly linked to the decline in the price of BCH in that period.

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Crypto News

Tether (USDT) Stablecoin Doesn’t Affect Bitcoin (BTC) Price, But Influences BTC Trading Volumes

The stable cryptocurrency Tether (USDT) has no impact on the price of Bitcoin (BTC), but it doesn’t affect its trading volume, according to the results of the latest academic research conducted by Professor Wang Chun Wei, of the School of Business at the University of Queensland, Australia.

Tether (USDT) has nothing to do with Bitcoin (BTC) price surges

According to the results of the study, which will be presented in the October 2018 edition of Economics Letters, there is no evidence to suggest that Tether (USDT) emissions cause Bitcoin (BTC) price surges.

The new study contradicts previous research that the stablecoin was manipulating the cryptocurrencies market, leading to the significant surge of Bitcoin (BTC) in December 2017.

Wei’s findings, focused mainly on market valuation and efficiency, used the vector autoregression (VAR) model, which serves to investigate whether or not there is a causal relationship between something in the past and something in the future.

The study was thus based both on the daily information on the commercial activity of USDT and BTC and on data from Omni Explorer, which lists all the addresses of new USDT issues.

Tether (USDT) is, however, influencing Bitcoin (BTC) trading volumes

“We found a positive relationship between Tether’s concessions and the increase in trading volumes the following day. Our VAR estimates show that both Bitcoin (BTC) and Tether (USDT) trade increases after Tether’s subsidies. However, these increases in trading volume do not lead directly to increases in Bitcoin (BTC). The effect is short-lived, and trading volumes return to normal in 5 days,” said Wang Chun Wei.

These findings largely coincide with a report published by Oleksandr Ivanov, a data scientist at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, who also found that there is no correlation between the growth in the volume of circulating Tether (USDT) and the price of Bitcoin (BTC).

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Crypto News

Zaif Cryptocurrency Exchange Lost $60 Million BTC, MONA, and BCH During a Recent Cyber Attack

Zaif, a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange, reported on Thursday, September 20th, that it suffered a cyber attack which resulted in the theft of $60 million in Bitcoin (BTC), Monacoin (MONA), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The startup reported that the event occurred on September 14th but was noticed on Monday and confirmed on Tuesday.

Of the total amount subtracted, about $19.6 million belong to the cryptocurrency exchange platform, while the rest of the funds were stolen from customers. The Osaka-based company, owned by Tech Bureau Corp, temporarily suspended all deposits and withdrawals until security levels were restored, according to the press release.

Although the investigations are in their initial phase, the company said the cyberattackers diverted the cryptos from the platform’s wallets to their accounts.

Zaif, a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange, lost $60 million in Bitcoin (BTC), Monacoin (MONA), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) in a cyber attack

“The reason why the amount of damage cannot be determined at this time is that the server is not restarting until security is guaranteed to avoid secondary damage. As soon as the amount of virtual currency lost is determined, we will report it promptly, stated Zaif’s representatives.

The incident was reported by Zaif to the Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA), as part of its protocol in case of such attacks, to initiate investigations and find the hackers.

In the past, cyber attacks on Japanese cryptocurrency exchange platforms have given a massive blow to the crypto ecosystem in the country. This was also the case in January when $530 million in NEM (XEM) were stolen from Coincheck. The event was considered by Lon Wong, founder of NEM (XEM), as “the biggest robbery in the history of the world.”

Another famous case was that of Mt. Gox Bitcoin (BTC) exchange house in 2014 when the hacker stole 744,000 Bitcoin (BTC) from the users and another 100,000 BTC from the startup itself. The losses summed up to $422 million.

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Crypto News

Bitcoin Core 0.16.3 Launched Yesterday To Address A DoS Vulnerability in the Previous Version

A new version of the Bitcoin Core client, the software that identifies valid blocks of the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain, went live yesterday night, as the Bitcoin Operations Technology Group (Optech) reported on Twitter.

The version of Bitcoin Core 0.16.3 corrects a denial of service (DoS) vulnerability, introduced in version 0.14.0, which had remained undetected until now, and which caused the fall of the Bitcoin Core client by trying to validate a block containing a transaction that attempted to use the same currencies for two different payments, known as a double-spending attack.

In a newsletter addressed to the Bitcoin (BTC) community, Optech explains that after submitting the update yesterday to be reviewed by prominent members of the community, the binary programs of version 0.16.3 were made available yesterday night. Optech recommends that the update should be done immediately.

The newly launched Bitcoin Core 0.16.3 addresses the DoS vulnerability of the previous version

A block containing a double-spending is not allowed by Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain, but the software error blocked the miner or the group of miners trying to validate the malicious block, instead of discarding the block. This progressive blocking effect would have disabled an essential section of the network, leading to a significant decrease in the Bitcoin (BTC) mining hashrate with all the consequent security risks that this entails.

Although a subdirectory of the Bitcoin section in Github describes in detail the procedure for upgrading to Bitcoin Core 0.16.3 and credits the developers Matt Corallo and Suhas Daftuar as responsible for introducing the code to remove the vulnerability, it is not clear who detected the error that could potentially have led to a few issues on Bitcoin (BTC) network.

Optech also reported this Tuesday that the previous version of Bitcoin Core 0.17 is also being updated to include the correction of the DoS vulnerability described above. The availability of Release Candidate 4 of Bitcoin Core 0.17, 0.17RC4, which contains the respective fixes, will soon be announced, says the Optech newsletter.

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