Cryptocurrency & Mining News - Page 4

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".

As you can see from the imaige above, cryptominers weren't really a concern until the start of the year with less than 200,000 new cryptominer malware surfacing in Q4 2017, while that number popped up over 2.5 million in Q1 2018 alone.

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".

Computex 2018 - SAPPHIRE moved into the crypto mining space in a big way this year, unveiling their new INCA CS-14 Mining Solution that uses something you can't buy in Radeon form: dual-GPUs based on the RX 470.

The system itself runs an AMD Embedded G-series FP4 SoC, 8GB of DDR4, 128GB M.2 SSD, runs Ubuntu, and then rocks the huge 7 x dual-RX 470s with 8GB for a total of 14 graphics cards.

In order to power the system SAPPHIRE has used two 1600W PSUs, but I asked what power consumption the system will typically use and they said just over 2000W or so. Not bad at all, considering that it pumps away at over 400MH/s.

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.

Mellon leaves behind a wife and three children.

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.

Remember that Marcus used to be the boss of PayPal, and is on the board of directors of Coinbase, meaning he's uniquely qualified to handle cryptocurrency and blockchain advancements for Facebook... meaning we're in for quite the ride.

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.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin was sitting at $9074 but we all know how quickly that can change. At this rate, I'm hoping to see BTC valued at over $10,000 again before the end of the month, if all goes well.

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.