Month: December 2019

Advertisment As this decade inches to a close, Poloniex becomes the next cryptocurrency exchange to mismanage user data after “someone leaked” email addresses and passwords. Poloniex Forces Users to Reset PasswordsAfter rampant scams and phishing attempts, Poloniex customers were rightly cautious over the email they received from the cryptocurrency exchange on Dec 30.One customer tagged Poloniex on Twitter telling the company to “be careful” with the “scam” email doing the rounds. @Poloniex be careful with this Scam email we are Read more …

The last five years have been a test phase for bitcoin derivatives, which began tentatively when Bitmex eased into life in 2014. Now, as the cryptoconomy prepares to enter a new decade, derivatives products will play a pivotal role in price discovery. 2020 will be a big year for bitcoin and for the futures markets where billions of dollars will be won and lost, and the next bull market will begin. Also read: South Korea Imposes $69M Tax Obligation on Read more …

XRP hasn’t done too well in the past 12 months, plunging by 47% since Jan. 1st, 2019. For some perspective, Bitcoin has gained a jaw-dropping 90%, surging on the back of a confluence of factors, which includes a capital flow from altcoins to the market leader BTC. Tis the season to feast on the tears of shitcoiners. YTD: BTC +82%ETH -18%XRP -47% — Jimmy Song (송재준) (@jimmysong) December 28, 2019 Although some are sure that the Bitcoin-centric trend in the Read more …

According to a recent warning by Parity, the fastest Ethereum client, it seems that Parity Ethereum nodes may be under attack, and users need to implement new updates. As the last day of 2019 took off, a new announcement was published on the website of Ethereum client, Parity. The announcement says that the company, Parity Technologies, received and investigated reports of some Parity Ethereum nodes that were not syncing properly. We have received multiple reports that @ParityTech nodes are randomly Read more …

Turkey’s Istanbul Clearing, Settlement and Custody Bank (Takasbank) announced that its blockchain-based, physical gold-backed transfer system is now live. Turkish Takasbank launched BiGA Digital Gold to provide banks with a blockchain-based system for the issuance, repayment and transfer of digitized gold, according to an announcement on Dec. 30.  The BiGA system — first announced in September 2019 — enables participating banks to use blockchain tech to transfer digital assets representing a quantity of physical gold. Each asset represents a gram Read more …

Experts predict that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will gain momentum in 2020 and therefore will become increasingly pervasive in all industry sectors. There will also be an explosion of cybersecurity threats targeting all verticals worldwide next year, they say. Bitcoin Transactions and Data on the Blockchain Are Safe Just like other industries, the crypto industry must also prepare to respond to the ever-changing crypto-security threats. Bitcoin’s resiliency resides in the randomness of the data exchanges within the blockchain, and the Read more …

Hedera Hashgraph, one of the prominent new projects for 2019, is in trouble again. Nodes have shut down without warning, suggesting the network may be more centralized than previously thought. Hedera Hashgraph Node Shutdown Angers Community The community noted 4 out of 10 council nodes shut down, signaling centralization. The closing of this number of nodes also practically turns Hedera Hashgraph into a centralized operation. In an open network, securing the ledger with just six nodes would allow Sybill attacks. Read more …

Advertisment An Ethereum wallet available as a Chrome browser extension has been found to be injecting malicious javascript code. ‘Shitcoin Wallet’ tries to scrape data from other open windows and send it to a remote server. MyEtherWallet And Binance Among Those TargetedThe code was identified by security and anti-phishing expert, Harry Denley, who warned about the potential breach in a tweet. A browser crypto wallet is injecting malicious JS to steal secrets from @myetherwallet @idexio @binance @neotrackerio @SwitcheoNetworkExtension-native wallet create Read more …

Despite the harsh market conditions this year, high profile closures of a few ventures and a lot of employee downsizing, the number of companies operating in the blockchain and cryptocurrency fields in Israel actually grew by 32% in 2019. Also Read: Bankrupt DX Exchange Didn’t Pay Israeli Suppliers and Employees Israeli Blockchain Industry Survives Crypto Winter As of December 2019, 150 active blockchain and crypto companies are operating in Israel, an increase of 32% compared with only 113 companies at Read more …

It has been an eventful year for bitcoin. Digital Assets Data, which records, collates and analyzes cryptocurrency and blockchain transaction, value and popularity information, has identified a few essential trends as 2019 comes to an end. Here are three bitcoin trends that we’ve been following this year. Bitcoin as Digital Gold To begin with, anyone interested in bitcoin has, at one time or another, had to explain it to someone entirely unfamiliar with cryptocurrencies and digital assets; many of these Read more …

While Bitcoin saw a strong rejection at $7,500, with the price of the leading cryptocurrency rapidly plunging to $7,200, leading some to suggest that an extended bearish reversal was possible, analysts remain bullish on BTC. A prominent cryptocurrency trader recently remarked that his analysis of Bitcoin’s chart over the past few months shows that a key bullish divergence is forming, which implies that the price of the asset could surge by 40% in the coming weeks. Related Reading: Bitcoin Price Read more …

This post is part of CoinDesk’s 2019 Year in Review, a collection of 100 op-eds, interviews and takes on the state of blockchain and the world. Dr Gina C Pieters is an Assistant Instructional Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago, and a Research Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at the University of Cambridge. She has been researching cryptocurrencies since 2015. There is an unresolved debate over how to define decentralization in a Read more …