Cryptocurrency & Mining - Page 28

Bitmain will be launching its next-gen Antminer soon, with the company announcing at the World Digital Mining Summit in Georgia its next-gen ASIC chip 'DM1391' that will mine cryptocurrencies on the SHA256 algorithm.

Bitmain will be one of the first to use the 7nm process with its new ASIC SHA256 algorithm acceleration chip, with over 1 billion transistors and optimized for maximum efficiency. Bitmain's new 7nm built ASIC chip is the most powerful and power efficient ever made, something that Bitmain CEO and co-founder Jihan Wu saying the new ASIC can reach a ratio of energy consumption to the mining capacity that is as low as 47J/T.

The new 7nm chips are being made by TSMC and have already entered mas sproduction, so expect new Antminer's to blow away previous-gen mining performance, with even more impressive power efficiency in the near future. Bitmain isn't new to developing world-leading ASICs with current-gen 16nm designs used in the popular Antminer S9 miner, and many other ASIC-based miners from Bitmain.

The blockchain will be used for many things over the coming decades, and one of them is here now: solving online trolling. Authenteq has just announced Trollteq, their new identity management solution that taps the power of the blockchain to thwart online trolls.

Trollteq uses the blockchain in an ingenius way, where a troll is banned they can't come back and register as another person or online identity, they're banned permanently. Authenteq's new solution requires a buy-in from platforms that want a troll-free base, with Authenteq CEO Kari Thor Runarsson explaining: "The sad truth is that trolls have taken over a large swath of the Internet - our mission is to remove their greatest asset - their ability to hide behind fake names and identities, while still protecting their identities and freedom of speech".

Runarsson continues: "Any website or commenting system such as Disqus can instantly add Trollteq to their site or customers - we can scale up to a billion identity authentications in under 90 seconds. This means we are robust enough to handle even Twitter or Facebook user IDs".

Opera has been a leader in the cryptocurrency race, as they were the first web browser with crypto jacking protection and now they have another world first.

Opera has launched a new private beta version of its web browser that packs a built-in crypto wallet, something that supports the Ethereum Web3 API that will be integrated with a "default WebView" on top. Opera's new crypto wallet will automatically add tokens and collectibles into your crypto wallet, for your convenience.

Charles Hamel, the product manager of Opera Crypto said: "We believe the web of today will be the interface to the decentralized web of tomorrow. By becoming the the first major browser to open up to Web 3.0, we would like to contribute to making the internet of the future more accessible. Our hope is that this will accelerate the transition of cryptocurrencies from speculation and investment to being used for actual payments and transactions in our users' daily lives".

The future of rendering special effects and CG animation is about to change, with OTOY unveiling RNDR which looks to the cloud, blockchain, and cryptocurrency technologies to use PCs and graphics cards that are otherwise unused, to render CG images for content creators.

OTOY CEO Jules Urbach believes in the future of blockchain being used for collective rendering, opening up an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) last year with Render Token, and driving it home with the just-announced RNDR. Render Token lets people invest in it, as it uses a distributed GPU rendering network to entice users to invest, so that content creators can tap into users' unused computing power to get their jobs complete.

Venture Beat reports that OTOY has "created an ability to render graphics in the cloud, and it is using blockchain technology to enable people to make use of it. The goal is to create a decentralized economy for 3D assets, which could be rendered via the shared hardware, hosted in the cloud, and then sold and traded in a decentralized fashion".

We all know how much cryptocurrency has had an impact in the world as it hit us, PC gamers, the most: graphics cards. They disappeared from shelves shortly after seeing hyperinflation-like prices in the huge crypto mining boom, but another explosion that happened because of crypto was all of the cryptojacking in the months following.

According to data from McAfee Labs, cryptojacking has overtaken ransomware attacks. Raj Samani, the chief scientist at McAfee explains: "Attackers targeting cryptocurrencies may be moving from ransomware to coin miner malware, which hijacks systems to mine for cryptocurrencies and increase their profits".

McAfee's report is startling, as it explains: "Coin miner malware grew a stunning 629% to more than 2.9 million known samples in Q1 from almost 400,000 samples in Q4. This suggests that cybercriminals are warming to the prospect of monetizing infections of user systems without prompting victims to make payments, as is the case with popular ransomware schemes".

Another day... another massive cryptocurrency heist, this time with South Korean exchange Bithumb being hit for over $30 million.

The new $30 million heist of Bithumb has been a bit deal, considering the exchange is the sixth-largest of crypto trading in the world, is worrying to say the last. Bithumb has announced it will pay victims of the breach back, with the SK exchange using its own reserves to pay users.

Bithumb posted to their Twitter, announcing: "All deposit and withdrawal service will be stopped to make sure the security. We will keep notice you of the restart of the service. We apologize for your inconvenience and thanks for your understanding".

Bitcoin Gold was hit with a 51% attack in the last few days, with the attacker hitting BTG with a double spend attack that allowed the hacker/s to steal up to $18 million.

The BTG development team confirmed the attack took place, with the attacker controlling over 51% of the network's hashrate, using that to reorganize the blockchain and reverse transactions. The hackers "made deposits at cryptocurrency exchanges, traded the coins for BTC or another coin, and then withdrew the funds. Next, the attacker used their dominant computing power to force the rest of the network to accept falsified blocks that reversed their initial deposits and caused these funds to vanish from exchange-controlled wallets", reports CCN.

Up to $18 million could've been stolen as the attacker sent themselves over 380,000 BTG but there's no word on how many of these transactions were successful. If they were, up to $18 million is gone. The blame? Equihash, the mining algorithm behind BTG. BTG developers blamed, at least in part, Equihash; which is used with numerous cryptocurrencies.

Matthew Mellon was already wealthy before the super-powered rise of Bitcoin and all of the other cryptocurrencies, but did you know that he invested $2 million of his fortune into XRP? Mellon has just died unexpectedly, leaving all of his BTC, XRP, and other cryptocurrencies stranded with no way to access them without their respective wallet passwords.

Mellon spent $2 million buying XRP because he liked that the Ripple team was working within the banking system, where at the time he said: "Crypto is scary and dark. It's anti-America. I am pro-America, pro-business and pro-bank. That's why I went with Ripple".

At the peak of XRP, Mellon's bag of Ripple was worth $1 billion and his family cannot find the password to access the funds. Mellon, up until his death, was spending $7 million a month before he was found dead in his Mexico hotel room on April 16. Mellon made a name for himself in fashion, and then made his first billion with XRP, but struggled with drug addiction throughout his life.

The price of Bitcoin has been sinking for a few solid days now, so it comes as a surprise that hte US Department of Justice is looking into criminal traders who might be manipulating the price of BTC and other cryptocurrenices.

Bloomberg reports from its wources that the DOJ investigation will target practices that have been regulated out of futures and equities markets. Illegal practices happen, where traders will submit false orders and then cancel them at the last minute, or they'll trade big numbers with themselves to create the look of (false) demand.

The site added: "Authorities worry that virtual currencies are susceptible to fraud for multiple reasons: skepticism that all exchanges are actively pursuing cheaters, wild price swings that could make it easy to push valuations around and a lack of regulations like the ones that govern stocks and other assets".

The world of cryptocurrency is expanding faster than most people can imagine, but I didn't think we'd be in the world of the first cryptocurrency-powered beer vending machine at this stage, but here we are.

San Francisco-based startup Civic has teased the world's first "crypto beer vending machine" at the Coindesk Consensus 2018 summit in New York. The beer vending machine would eventually access the blockchain to verify consumers' age, and then throw out a beer or 6 for you.

It will be incredibly simple to do, as the vending machine can be access through the installation of Civic's app on your phone, verify your ID there, and then you'll walk up to the machine and collect your beer. The only way this works is that governments will have to have citizens' ID tied to the blockchain, which I'm sure will happen eventually. Sure, it won't happen overnight, but give it another 5-10 years and stories like this will be remembered.

Facebook is making big moves into the world of cryptocurrency with the latest rumors seeing the social networking company working on their own cryptocurrency, a new crypto that would power payments on Facebook.

Cheddar is behind the news citing sources familiar with the matter that would see Facebook using their new "digital token" to buy and sell things through the social network. Facebook is reportedly also looking into "other ways" they could use this cryptocurrency.

It makes sense, given that Messenger boss David Marcus, recently leaving the chat app side of Facebook to work in the blockchain department of Facebook. Days later the rumors begin of Facebook kick starting their own cryptocurrency, which totally makes sense.

This year hasn't been very nice to cryptocurrency prices, with Bitcoin tumbling down to some worrying lows but now it is recovering in the best way it has for 2018 alone.

Bitcoin is now sitting pretty at over $9000, representing a 33% rise from April 1's low of $6926, the largest increase in BTC's price this year. Bitcoin dropped from its massive price of $13,860 on January 1 to a much lower $10,166 on February 1, and then down to $7000 in March.

We still need to see Bitcoin rise above $10,000 before it is on the road to a proper recovery, but we need to see it at over $17,000 as it was before January before we can rest easy.

This is one of the most exciting applications for blockchain tech and is a huge win for you, me and the online media companies we interact with! The ad-blocking browser Brave has partnered with Dow Jones Media Group. Why would they do that you ask? Especially when media groups detest ad-blocking software.

Brave, while people love it for its ad-blocking capabilities, never intended to completely block ads, they want to do it better. They want to deliver more privacy and security, a faster browser experience, fewer middlemen and reward users and content creators.

This is where the blockchain comes in! Brave Software have created the Basic Attention Token (BAT) which will allow for blockchain based digital advertising to value user attention securely and accurately. Brendan Eich, the creator of Javascript and co-founder of Mozilla and Firefox is the CEO of Brave Software and the founder of BAT, wants to help protect users while also making sure content is rewarded appropriately.

Today during a live stream on Diary of a Made Man, Ian Balina noticed something astray... he was being hacked! Balina is a Blockchain and Cryptocurrency investor who has over 150,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel where he reviews ICOS. Balina looks to have lost over $1,000,000 in this hack.

When he first realised this was happening he put out a tweet showing his ether wallet addresses where his tokens were stolen from and also the wallet addresses of the hackers, asking for help from his Twitter community. The tweets have subsequently been deleted by Balina. The three wallets of the hackers coming to $1,396,986.31 in total, as of writing this article yet you can watch live as the tokens are being moved out, presumably sold, even as soon as 9 minutes ago.

In truly terrible form, there are people commenting in etherscan on the hackers wallet address asking for a slice of the pie by posting their addresses and asking for some of the stolen tokens. Unfortunately, people are saying that Balina made himself too much of a target by posting snapshots of his portfolio which contained upwards of $3,000,000 in tokens.

CNBC Fast Money's Brian Kelly has likened Bitcoin adoption to the internet adoption stages in the way it will change tech, but we are only in the 1980s internet adoption stage. He said he thought we might be 1995 internet stage but after the last couple of months talking to people, its still very early days!

Laura Shin, a crypto/blockchain journalist, echoed the same sentiment in her interview with CNBC Africa, saying that people are drawing parallels between bitcoin and the internet and we are in a very early phase of growth in this industry. Shin went onto say that it's a good idea to try and get in on the ground floor and ride the wave up as there are so many big players coming in and providing good infrastructure solutions which did not exist until recently.

Investment tycoon who loves rocking bitcoin ties, Tim Draper, again, another big player saying we are in the baby stage. Draper says "It is a hundred trillion dollar market. So that means, that we have a long way to go in a crypto market. We're now in the hundreds of billions, it's like it's got a thousand times on what it is now to go." Draper predicts that bitcoin will be $250,000 by 2022! When Brian Kelly was asked about Draper's prediction, he said it sounds crazy but when we look at bitcoin's history, it's very possible!

Crypto communities erupted in the past 24 hours with bitcoin having its biggest single-day surge since December! In only an hour bitcoins price surged by over a thousand dollars from just under $7,000USD to just over $8,000USD. The price how now sitting around $7,765, up 12.07% since yesterday. Some reports suggested that bitcoin had processed the most amount of trades within a one-hour period on April 12 than any other day in its 10-year history.

The market is beautiful and green across the board, getting everyone excited! EOS still holding 5th place in the top ten in preparation for the airdrop. There has certainly been enough positive news in the community for people to relax and buy up some more while we are currently hovering around the $7,000-$8,000 mark. Keep in mind, on this day last year, bitcoin was trading at $1,201 and had a market cap of only $19,541,300,000.

This week the news has seen Goldman Sachs executive leave to become COO of Galaxy Digital, the Rockefeller family's VC fund, Venrock, announcing a partnership with CoinFund, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak saying bitcoin is more legitimate than other systems and now a beautiful surge that has put it back in mainstream media focus, we just might be able to hold this point and even surpass it!

Let's take a look at a hard fork first, according to Investopedia it is: "a radical change to the protocol that makes previously invalid blocks/transactions valid (or vice-versa)".

Investopedia continued: "This requires all nodes or users to upgrade to the latest version of the protocol software. Put differently, a hard fork is a permanent divergence from the previous version of the blockchain, and nodes running previous versions will no longer be accepted by the newest version."

That possibly makes things as clear as mud, in its most basic form, a hard fork is a software upgrade that is not backwards compatible with the old software. In other words, everyone has to upgrade to the new system in order to participate. There are currently two basic hard forks people talk about, 'planned' hard forks and 'contentious' hard forks.

Bitmain unveiled its first Ethereum ASIC miner with the Antminer E3, with an April release window that has now been delayed into July after the ASICs "weaker-than-expected performance" reports DigiTimes.

Until now, Bitmain was expected to have full batches of the new Ethereum ASIC miners in late-July, but now the company will ship a small batch in July and the rest of them in Q4 2018 after the company released a refined version of the Antminer E3. The initial Antminer E3 should pump away at 180MH/s, offering the hashing performance of 5 x GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards. The revised one, could be many hundreds of megahashes per second... which would be great.

DigiTimes reports that shipments of the Bitmain Antminer E3 were meant to get close to 2 million units, and even weith the delay Bitman is expected to still reach the same goal according to industry sources. DigiTimes adds: "Bitmain will begin accepting pre-orders for the Antminer E3 in April and will start a small volume of shipments in July. The mass shipments of the ASIC miner are planned for the fourth quarter of 2018 after the release of a revised version of the miner,the sources said, adding the ASIC is manufactured on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) 28nm process".

EOS has gone on a massive bull run in the past 24 hours, running up a massive 42%! It has now overtaken Litecoin in Market capitalisation by $539,000,000 and has taken 5th place in the top ten cryptos. Many are speculating it is because of the eosDAC airdrop that is due to start on April 15.

According to the EOS White Paper:

November 2017 through to February of this year saw many people scramble into the crypto space. Recording breaking amounts of people, not just record-breaking, exchange breaking amounts!

Many exchanges having to shut their doors to new investors so they could handle the sheer amounts of orders being placed on their books. This is when the trouble began for banks. Bank accounts and credit cards were bled dry all over the world as people believed they could 'get rich quick' by investing what they had into bitcoin or altcoins.

Some banks closed people's accounts, others stopped people from being able to use their credit cards and others issued sky-high fees. JPMorgan Chase & Co did the latter and are now being sued for it. JPMorgan decided to charge their credit card users up to 30% in interest and additional fees. Brady Tucker, a Chase credit-card customer from Idaho, seeking a class-action suit against Chase claimed the bank began treating his cryptocurrency buys through CoinBase like cash advances instead of purchase.