China investigates the local illegal BTC mining farms

Southwestern Chinese province Sichuan authorities are investigating the activity of local BTC mining farms, as they are supposed to be created without official permission.

According to the local media, the Bureau of Land and Resource in Garzê discovered farms of BTC mining that were deployed in hydro power plants without prior permission.

It is noted, Garzê Economic Information Bureau with other agencies organized a group to study the legal construction regarding issue.

An Economic Bureau co-worker mentioned, “We are in investigation process and can’t disclose any details.”

The question is about the BTC mining farms that are built at hydroelectric power stations along the Sichuan Province Dadu River. Their location is chosen for a reason – to maximize cheap electricity’s use in the area. However, founders of farms didn’t receive any permission for that kind of activity.

The media also mentions a particular farm, which is capable of operating 50,000 BTC unit mining equipment and 60% of this equipment is already in operation.

The Bureau of Land and Resource official report states, “We are planning to check whether a BTC mining farm activity is legal and has permission for a farm building.”

As the rainy season in China is close, miners again invest in the deployment of farms in the mountainous areas of Sichuan, including Garzê and Ngava districts, hoping to increase the return on investment through cheap energy in the regions. During the dry season in Sichuan, Chinese miners spread throughout the country and abroad.

However, the Economic Bureau official representative noted that BTC mining enterprises are prohibited in the Garzê district: “We do not allow third-party investors to participate in such enterprises. For projects related to big data, we will conduct appropriate investigations before the final decision is made.”

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IS THERE A NEW SATOSHI NAKAMOTO?

A Chinese citizen, Wei Liu, now registered the copyright of the BTC whitepaper, claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto. This once again demonstrated that copyright doesn’t actually mean anything.

On the 24th of May, Liu requested registeration of ownership of the BTC whitepaper to the United States Copyright Office.

This paper was published on bitcoin.org, on 31 October 2008, titled Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer Electronic Cash System by the anonymous author Satoshi Nakamoto. The whitepaper discussed the issues of existing electronic payment systems as well as suggested a solution in the form of BTC. Satoshi believed that people needed an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust for a third party.

Wei Liu is a mysterious figure and is rumored to be a woman that worked at Bibox, a crypto asset exchange that tried to steal $3 mln last year.

On the other hand, according to CoinDesk, Liu is the current chief executive of a crypto market research company, CoinSummer, and a Chinese entrepreneur. Also it is reported that Wei Liu was the former chief executive of MarvelousPeach Capital, a crypto asset fund.

Supposedly, he registered ownership of the BTC whitepaper to prove the point that it can be done by anyone.

In an interview Wei Liu stated, “I did it to show that any person can register the copyright of BTC. Anyone can be Satoshi”.

In should be mentioned that the speculation that Wright was going to register ownership of Bitcoin sparked the fear of missing out in the crypto community and the price of Bitcoin SV skyrocketed by 66% on May 21.

Many speculations occurred around the questionable BitcoinCask fork. As a result, in recent days the Chinese press began spreading false information about BitcoinCash re-listing on Binance since Wright proved to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto.

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LocalBitcoins trader sentenced to 21 months in prison

LocalBitcoins trader sentenced to 21 months in prison by US authorities for running an unlicensed remittance company and real estate and Bitcoin fraud.

The United States Attorney Southern District of California reported in a press release, Morgan Rockcoons 21 months is sentenced in federal prison for his “business”, which also includes real estate fraud using bitcoins.

It is noted thet Rockes made more than 1000 transactions on the P2P platform till 2017 end. In February last year, Morgan Rohuns was arrested for selling BTC worth more than $10,000 to an undercover US National Security Agent. Coming out after his arrest, Rokuns launched the Bitcointopia scheme.

He advertised the sale of land not owned by him in Elko County Nevada and sold from 500-1,000 acres of undeveloped land at 0.5 Bitcoin per acre, promising “to create a city of future based on digital assets, automation and technology.”

In February, the Florida Court of Appeals overturned a decision that justified Rocks’s money laundering and acting as an unlicensed money transfer operator.

In February of this year, another California trader was sentenced to two years in prison for violating AML rules. He received more than $820,000 from BTC sales on the LocalBitcoins P2P platform from 2015 to 2018.

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NORTH KOREA USES CRYPTO MINING TO BYPASS SANCTIONS

The United States Intelligence agencies report that North Korea performed cybercrimes like crypto asset mining and theft from banks in order to bypass the sanctions, based on reports from a US international multimedia agency, Voice of America.

Deputy assistant director of the FBI’s cyber intelligence branch, Tonya Ugoretz, reported on Wednesday at a conference organized by Aspen Institute, an international nonprofit think tank, that as a result of sanctions, North Korea hacked Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014, the Bangladesh Bank robbery in 2016 and the WannaCry ransomware incident in 2017.

The United States Department of Justice, in September 2018, charged Park Jin-hyok, a North Korean programmer, claiming that he was linked to a series of cyber attacks.

“As US sanctions are increasingly affecting North Korea more, the country carries out cyber attacks in order to make money either from crypto asset mining or theft from banks,” Ugoretz expressed.

The director of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, Erin Joe, stated at the same conference that the United States government agencies had their attention on North Korea’s attempts of cryptocurrency cybercrimes, which are relatively new.

“The FBI, along with other agencies, puts much energy and resources trying to prevent malicious activity involving crypto assets,” He added

“It is a newer phenomenon and it comes with a number of problems that we need to study and understand so that we have the ability to stop cybercrimes related to crypto coins and regular currency.”

At the conference, “The Challenge of Deterrence in Cyberspace” was an important point of discussion as many talked about methods to handle cyber attacks and threats from Iran, Russia, China as well as individuals or independent groups.

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NEW BITCOIN SCAM IN THE US

The United States government carries on its efforts to eliminate crypto asset scams in the country.

On May 28, 2019, Judge Anthony J Battaglia sentenced Morgan Rockcoons of Las Vegas, Nevada, to 21 months in jail for managing an illegal business of money transactions.  Moreover, he was required to pay $80,600 in unlawful profits.

The offender pleaded guilty on May 7 and confessed managing a Bitcoin exchange lacking registration with FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) of the United States Department of Treasury. What is more, Rockcoons admitted to arranging plans to deceive people alleged real estate sales of property that wasn’t his in Nevada.

Based on the Government, Rockcoons promoted his exchange on localbitcoins.com. As of April 2016, his localbitcoin.com account suggested that he was a San Diego based BTC trader and seller and had taken part in over 500 trades. However, in October 2017, the number of transactions surpassed 1000. Rockoons gained 36% of the money per transfer.

Before his arrest in 2018, Rockcoons was accused of participating in illegal transactions in November 2017 and was later arrested in February 2018 and was released in spring 2018.

While Rockcoons was out of jail he began promoting a real estate development with Bitcoin as the payment method, Bitcointopia, on his social media. This too later turned out to be a fraud and, to this day, only 10 of his victims were identified.

 

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New malware disguised as free BTC and ETH generator

Hackers developed a new scheme, disguised as free BTC and ETH generators, aimed at cryptocurrency stealing and implementing ransomware viruses on the victims’ computers.

The Bleeping Computer reports that hackers use some sites to promote their programs for free distribution of Bitcoin and Ethereum. According to sources familiar with the situation, hackers promote the BTC Collector program, promising users free Bitcoin equal to $5-$30 when they start the program.

In fact, the main purpose of malware disguising itself as a free distribution of cryptocurrencies is to install ransom malware viruses on the computers of victims

Reportedly, firstly Frost malware researcher found this scheme. In particular, this scheme is promoted through sites that promise to reward Bitcoin and Ethereum users when they recommend friends to visit the platform. The fraudsters claim that if 1,000 people are referred by the referral link of the participant in the scheme, he will receive 3 ETH.

The site also states that users can earn daily BTC in the amount of $15 to $\45 automatically, without doing anything. On the site you can download the BTC Collector program, which after downloading and installing, allegedly generates a free Bitcoin for the victim.

The VirusTotal link is embedded in the Bitcoin Collector (Zip file) to deceive the victim and make him believe that the program is safe and does not contain malicious codes. After the file has been downloaded and launched by the victim, many files are created, including the executable file BotCollector.exe. When you open BotCollector.exe, the program launches Freebitco.in-Bot, a Trojan disguised as a BTC generator.

Analyzing the Trojan, researchers found that as soon as the victim presses the “Start” button, the bot copies the file from geobaze \ patch \ logo.png to logo.exe and launches it.

Researchers noted; “Depending on the running campaign, this leads either to downloading an extortion virus, or to a trojan that steals passwords.”

As Bitcoin and altcoins continue to increase in price, fraudsters also improve their skills. For instance, last week it was reported that two new cryptocurrency phishing applications were found on Google Play.

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Yahoo! will launch new crypto exchange, TaoTao

On May 30, Japan will launch a new crypto exchange called Taotao, 40% owned by the American Internet giant Yahoo! Japan.

This was announced on the official Twitter account of the platform.

At the first stage, the website will provide its customers with the opportunity to trade in Bitcoin and Ethereum. There will also be available margin trading in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Ripple. According to unconfirmed reports, Taotao is a former BitARG exchange that was purchased by Yahoo! Japan for 2 billion yen (19 million USD).

Initially it was assumed that the launch of the platform would take place in the middle of May, but at the last moment the start was postponed without explanation. It is worth to note that Taotao is regulated by the FSA – Financial Services Agency and has a license to provide crypto exchange services.

In the previous week, several Japanese exchanges of digital currencies reported a threefold growth in the number of new accounts amid increasing Bitcoin. Meanwhile, local regulators began to worry about the possibility of money laundering in the crypto-asset industry, so they thought about tightening the rules in this area.

Many cryptocurrency companies are starting to understand that users are demonstrating a huge demand for marginal cryptocurrency trading, so they meet and run such services. For example, Changpeng Zhao (CZ) recently announced Binance 2.0, which will provide the opportunity to trade with leverage.1

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KAVANAUGH LAUNCHES A FILM FINANCING CRYPTO STRATEGY

Ryan Kavanaugh, current executive of Warner Bros. Pictures, along with his team, has released over 200 movie including Dear John, Immortals, Limitless, The Fighter and many more.

Kavanaugh was also behind a groundbreaking financial contract for Marvel Studios. This deal resulted in the establishment of MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). The first MCU movie was Iron Man, which was released in 2008. Other MCU movies include The Avengers Series, Ant-Man and Captain America.

Backed by Venture Capital firms Step Ventures and the Central Wealth Investment Fund of Hong Kong, Kavanaugh is launching an altcoin called Proxicoin that makes use of the Ethereum technology with the purpose of giving investors the opportunity to finance movies and television.

Exploiting utility tokens which will be traded and listed on Fusang, a Hong-Kong based crypto asset exchange, investors will acquire a partial ownership of media projects.

On the other hand, there is an ongoing project of a trading platform for investors called Entertainment Stock X (ESX) that will assist individuals or businesses in partaking of crowdfunding campaigns via IPOs. The platform will launch by the end of 2019.

“Entertainment Stock X right now has contracts for listing on more than thirty major movie projects and is anticipated to have a large share of 600 large movies and TV shows every year,” The compay’s media statement read.

“This is a transformative move in the entertainment industry. Proxicoin makes a highly in demand product accessible for the mainstream. Traditionally, movie is an asset class that is not linked to capital markets and is a competitive asset class for large hedge funds and banks,” added Vincent Tse, the CEO of Step Ventures.

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Plasmon will use the blockchain to ensure safety of the food

The Italian baby food manufacturer Plasmon will use the blockchain to ensure the safety of ingredients used in the food.

The Italian Ministry of Agricultural Food and Forestry Policies (MIPAAF) together with Plasmon, and the research organization Crea, will develop a blockchain-based solution to ensure the transparency and safety of food storage.

It is expected to use the blockchain to ensure the quality of the food and the safety of its transportation, which will make the supply chain more efficient and increase the awareness of Italian-made products in the national and international markets.

Italy has been studying the blockchain usage in the food industry for some years, examining successful examples of its use by retail giant Carrefour, Bumble Bee Foods and SSP, chocolate manufacturer Hershey, American retailer Albertsons, multinational food and drink company Nestlé and others.

Previously, the Italian wineries Ricci Curbastro, Ruffino Wines and West Wind Wines announced the use of the blockchain to enable authentication of the wine.

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BITCOIN HITS ONE-YEAR HIGH: NEW BULL MARKET?

As Bitcoin reached its one year high, excitement in the crypto community rises.

Since March, crypto asset prices have doubled and, as a result, the interest in crypto increased too.

The first crypto coin, BTC, increased by 10 percent since Friday and was at some point trading at $8,847. Because of this, other coins increased in value too with Litecoin (LTC) and Ethereum (ETH) rising respectively by 9 and 6 percent.

Given that the number of mainstream companies interested in crypto assets has experienced large growth recently, crypto proponents have been very enthusiastic. For instance, AT&T stated that they will allow customers to pay their online bills via BitPay.

Regardless of negative predictions from JP Morgan strategists, Bitcoin’s value is up 70 percent.

“As crypto assets become more easy to use they gain higher chances of mainstream adoption,” a senior market analyst at eToro, Mati Greenspan, announced on Friday.

After last year’s BTC price collapses of over 70 percent, the most popular cryptocurrency in having a good year in 2019.  As long as the institutionalization of crypto coins continues the BTC price will rise leading other cryptocurrencies to gain value too.

“Merchants adopting crypto encourages people to use it too. That’s crucial,’ president of ProChain Capital, David Tawil, claimed.

Despite all of the positive news, many investors still remember the market crash of 2018 and are cautious of making major investments.

“Some melting still needs to happen after the crypto winter. There may be some time before crypto enters another steady bull market.” Tawil commented at last.

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AT&T CUSTOMERS WILL BE ABLE TO PAY FOR COMPANY’S SERVICES WITH CRYPTOCURRENCIES THROUGH BITPAY

American telecommunications giant AT&T will accept cryptocurrencies for payment of telephone bills via the Internet with the help of cryptocurrency operator BitPay.

According to AT&T Vice President Kevin McDorman, the company’s customers use cryptocurrencies, so it is pleased to provide them with the opportunity to pay their bills in their preferred way.

At the end of 2018, AT&T announced the development of blockchain-based solutions compatible with Microsoft Azure and the IBM blockchain platform. Solutions are designed to provide transparency and confidence in even the most complex supply chains for institutional clients in areas such as manufacturing, retail and healthcare.

AT&T also filed a patent application for the development based on the blockchain “maps of the history of social networking, which would allow AT&T to collect information about the preferred social networks of their subscribers.”

According to information published on the website of the Bureau of patents and trademarks USA (USPTO), users of the platform maps the history of social networking will be able to apply the “immutable and permanent nature of records in the blockchain to store and provide access to data about transactions that are carried out in several applications of social networks”.

In 2017, the subsidiary of AT&T Mobility patented solution for integrating cryptocurrency payments in the vehicle.

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ALIBABA USES BLOCKCHAIN IN THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SYSTEM

Chinese e-Commerce giant Alibaba will use blockchain technology in the system of intellectual property accounting of global enterprises and brands.

According to the Director of the company for the protection of intellectual property Ali Xizhi, Alibaba is developing a system of confirmation of intellectual property rights by using the blockchain. The company plans to fully implement the technology in September, after which the system will include digital copyright protection, including visual content.

According to the developers, the system will allow electronic deposits of international brands to communicate directly with Internet courts through the blockchain-based intellectual property protection platform (IPP), providing a basis for the protection of judicial rights. China’s Internet courts, which are located in Hangzhou, Beijing, and Guangzhou, use blockchain and AI to make judgments.

In March, Alibaba and Aerospace Information software developer signed a cooperation agreement, within the framework of which they will use blockchain to share experience and developments in the field of cloud computing, Finance and taxation.

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250 EMPLOYEES OF THE CRYPTOCURRENCY EXCHANGE KRAKEN GET PAID IN BITCOINS

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken reported that last month the company paid 250 salaries in bitcoins.

This information was left under the message of the famous expert on Finance Peter Schiff, who said that people will not agree to receive a salary in cryptocurrency.

“By the way, the employee who took all the amount due to him in bitcoins in 2012, in 2013 quit his job,” the representatives of the exchange added.

According to preliminary data, the company has 800 employees. This means that a little less than a third of them receive a salary in cryptocurrencies. At the same time, it should be said that the labor legislation of America requires at least a partial payment in Fiat money or checks, so you need to wait for additional comments from representatives of the company before talking about the details of the compensation mechanism for a particular case.

Recall that this week Kraken announced a “unique and limited opportunity” to buy preferred shares of the company.

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JAPANESE REGULATOR TIGHTENS SUPERVISION OVER CRYPTOCURRENCY EXCHANGES

The financial services Agency (FSA) of Japan plans to tighten supervision over cryptocurrency exchanges in the country in order to smooth the fears of the authorities about money laundering on these sites.

It is reported that the Japanese regulator will also check compliance with local exchanges KYC and AML rules. In addition, the FSA will pay attention to the daily operations of traditional financial institutions.

Later this year, the intergovernmental Group on financial action against money laundering (FATF) is also planning to check local cryptocurrency exchanges.  Note that after checking FATF local financial institutions in 2008, Japan was assigned the lowest score in the field of identification.

After that, the FSA issued new orders in order to correct the situation, but this did not help much and the hacking of crypto-currency exchanges in the Asian market has become more frequent. In addition, the hacking of the Japanese exchange Coincheck in early 2018 became the largest in the history of crypto-currency trading platforms.

Yesterday, the Japanese Parliament approved amendments to the law “On financial instruments and exchanges”, as well as to the law “On financial settlements”, approving the norms of regulation of cryptocurrencies. The amendments expand the scope of regulation, affecting also margin trading.

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THE FOUNDER OF THE HACKED EXCHANGE CRYPTOPIA DECIDED TO START “FROM SCRATCH”

Adam Clark, the founder of the exchange hacked in January Cryptopia, decided not to despair because of his failures and began to conquer the cryptocurrency industry “from scratch”.

In social networks Twitter and LinkedIn Clark said that he is the founder of the exchange Assetylene. Note that at the moment the profile Assetylene, created on Twitter in September last year, signed 71 people.

The portal Decrypt drew attention to the fact that the interface of the exchange is almost 100% similar to the interface of the trading platform TradeSatoshi, on which Clark worked previously as a senior developer.

 

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JPMORGAN: THE PRICE OF BITCOIN HAS EXCEEDED THE INTERNAL VALUE OF THE CRYPTOCURRENCY

Digital money was in a similar situation in 2017 before the market collapsed, representatives of a large American Bank reminded.

During the last breakthrough of The bitcoin exchange rate in the spring of 2019, the price of the first cryptocurrency exceeded its internal value, strategists of the us Bank JPMorgan reported. They compared the growth of the coin with the situation in 2017, when the market increased many times, and then began to fall.

“Over the past few days, the actual price of bitcoin has exceeded its marginal cost. This discrepancy bears some echoes of the sharp growth at the end of 2017, and then it was eliminated mainly by a decrease in actual prices,” the experts said.

They are based on the analysis of bitcoin as a commodity. The cost of its production was based on the calculated computing power, energy costs and energy efficiency of the equipment. In a conversation with Bloomberg, one analyst explained that it is extremely difficult to determine the internal or fair price of digital money, and some believe that it does not exist in principle.

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HONDA AND GM ARE EXPLORING THE POSSIBILITY OF STORING ELECTRIC VEHICLE DATA ON THE BLOCKCHAIN

Major car manufacturers Honda and General Motors (GM) are exploring the possibility of using blockchain technology to store electric vehicle data.

As part of the project, Honda and GM will explore the possibility of using technology to stabilize power supply in intelligent power systems. In particular, the companies intend to develop a method that will allow owners of electric vehicles to receive a fee for storing energy in batteries and sharing it with project participants.

The parties will work within the international technology consortium Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI), which is focused on the use of blockchain for control and management of data related to the automotive industry. More than 30 companies participate in the project, including Bosch, Hyperledger, IBM and IOTA.

Earlier, GM filed a patent application for a blockchain solution for Autonomous vehicle data management. The American automobile giant has also signed a cooperation agreement with Spring Labs for developments in the field of data security.

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BITСONNECT RETURNS: A VERSION 2.0 OF FRAUDULENT PROJECT

Apparently, the coming return of known fraudulent schemes BitСonnect. The organizers of the project revealed their plans to launch in July this year. The owner of the Twitter account added that potential investors will be able to purchase tokens on a large exchange of binance crypto-currencies.

“Please welcome the return of BitСonnect 2.0. We will launch the project on July 1,” the report said.

Despite the fact that additional information is allegedly available on the “official” website of the project, activity in social networks remains the only hint of the upcoming plans. The site consists only of a subscription form for updates, a countdown timer and a widget that broadcasts messages from Twitter.

However, in addition to the launch date, the rest of the operation of the new incarnation BitСonnect remain a mystery. As previously reported, the original BitСonnect — supposedly a platform for exchange and credit was closed in January 2018 after it became aware of the fraudulent nature of the project.

Then investors have seen how the price of tokens BitСonnect fell to almost zero in a matter of minutes. After the information about BitСonnect 2.0 users in social networks began to warn each other that they should not interact with the scheme, even if the company will manage to sell the new tokens. Some noted that the validity of the domain name Bitconnect.io will expire before the expected date of launch.

 

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Crypto market cap and TOP cryptos with the biggest market shares.

We can all agree that for the last couple of years cryptocurrencies and crypto market have been the talk of many, with some saying that it is just a scam and some claiming that cryptocurrencies are the fourth industrial revolution.

Either way, you can’t deny that crypto coins are playing a game-changing role in the financial industry and if you play your cards right, you’ll achieve great success.

So, let’s get into details about the crypto market and great investment opportunities that exist in it!

Crypto Market And Its Capitalization

A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography for security. The underlying technology, blockchain, is used in many spheres ranging from healthcare to music.

The first crypto asset, Bitcoin, wasn’t actually created to be a currency. In fact, in words of its creator, Bitcoin was created as a cash system that doesn’t involve a third party. However, it didn’t go as planned.

The new currency received many mixed reactions. The transition from markets controlled by governments and other central authorities to a completely decentralized market is exciting for some, but also scary for many others.

The crypto market cap (market capitalization) is the market value of a crypto asset’s outstanding shares. In 2018, the cryptocurrency market cap was around $800 billion. However, on April 8, 2019, the market cap reached $185 billion. It is also estimated that by 2027, 10 percent of the global GDP will consist of crypto assets.

In order to monitor the market cap volume, transactions and track all the cryptocurrencies in one place, there have been created crypto portfolio trackers, which help investors organize their investing process effectively.

TOP Cryptocurrencies With The Biggest Market Shares

Bitcoin (BTC)

When you are dealing with the crypto market, reputation is a crucial aspect of investment choices in certain coins. Therefore, Bitcoin is an attractive asset for everyone in the crypto trading community.

Being the torch bearer for other digital assets, Bitcoin is the most popular and valuable asset and, in addition, the prices of other assets one way or another depend on the earlier mentioned crypto coin. Thus, it is always safe to have a large coin such as BTC in your wallet. Bitcoin’s market cap at this point is $96,5 billion.

Ethereum (ETH)

Ether is the second largest crypto asset and the first largest decentralised app platform in crypto.This platform also allows usage of ‘smart contracts’. In comparison with BTC, the Ethereum platform is more efficient, corruption free and very immune to third party changes.

Ripple (XRP)

For those, looking to make a smart investment, Ripple is perfect. In the last couple of years, many banks adopted Ripple, which makes it the first one to be adopted by the masses in the financial industry.

For Ripple, it was not difficult to succeed, since they have received large funding, with one of the most prominent investors being Google. On the Ripple platform, not only can you exchange crypto assets, but also fiat currencies and commodities.

Bitcoin Cash(BCH)

This crypto coin was released by Bitcoin in 2017 and was created by developers and miners as a way to resolve the scaling problem of crypto assets. Bitcoin Cash is cheaper, faster and more scalable than Bitcoin. However, the value of BCH is 10 to 15 percent of the Bitcoin value and it’s more volatile making this option attractive to trade.

Litecoin (LTC)

The next big cryptocurrency to invest in is Litecoin. The crypto asset has high liquidity and a quite large market cap ($4,5 billion). LTC uses Bitcoin’s technology improving it and, thus, making Litecoin one of the fastest cryptocurrencies (safest).

Litecoin is also very sensitive on the surrounding news, that’s why any investor interested in trading with it, must be following the Litecoin news on a daily basis, as it can give you quite clear picture of what is going to happen with Litecoin price in a near future.

Important note. Any market, no matter, Forex, bonds, commodities or crypto, all have the same behavior. Markets moves based on the BIG volume reserve that one can see on the chart (D/W) big consolidations which follow BIG breaks ups or downs.

Look the pic below:

If you can find them, you know when the market cap will grow which subsequently will grow on price too.That is the institutional investors leverage compared to retail investors.

To summarize, crypto market cap is the amount of all crypto coins in the market that exist currently and, as mentioned above, higher market cap means that the digital asset is more stable, and vice versa.

Stay focused to not lose any potential deal due the market changes.

Good luck!

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MATI GREENSPAN ETORO: “THE PRICE OF BITCOIN WILL RISE TO 50 000%”

Senior analyst of the cryptocurrency platform believes that the main digital coin has just begun its ascent to the historical maximum

The recent rise in the bitcoin rate was the beginning of a new “bullish” cycle, said senior analyst at eToro Mati Greenspan in an interview with Bloomberg. According to him, the price jumps of cryptocurrency are an integral part of the industry, so today’s decline should not surprise anyone.

“It’s just part of a big cycle. Bitcoin has gone through several cycles before… And now we are talking about an increase from 10 000% to 50 000%, in such a scale, rollbacks that can be 80% or even 90% are not excluded,” Greenspan believes.

The analyst cited the example of a winter decline in the price of bitcoin by more than 85% after the highs reached in December 2017. The current period Greenspan calls the new parabolic cycle.

The expert also said that in recent years, the industry has a lot of positive news that affect not only the cryptocurrency rate, but also its mass adoption. For example, Microsoft plans to create a system of decentralized identification on the bitcoin blockchain, and large American retailers will start accepting Bitcoin thanks to the partnership of Gemini and Flexa.

 

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AMAZON RECEIVED A PATENT TO CREATE A CRYPTOGRAPHIC SYSTEM BY POW CONSENSUS

The technology giant Amazon has received a patent for various methods of creating a cryptographic system based on the PoW consensus.

The patent application was filed back in 2016, and the patent itself was issued this week by the US patent and trademark Office (USPTO). The paper describes how Merkle trees, among other things, can be used as a solution to problems of the proof of work (PoW) method.

The structure of Merkle trees allows you to check data transmitted between computers and in P2P networks such as blockchains. It is used to ensure that the blocks are not tampered with. PoW is a consensus-building method that is used to secure networks by asking a network member to do work that often involves using the computing power of a computer to solve complex mathematical problems.

The patent also mentions “cryptographic key”, “digital signature” and “public signature key”, among other concepts related to blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

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COINBASE EARN BECAME AVAILABLE FOR RESIDENTS OF MORE THAN 100 COUNTRIES

Coinbase has announced that the Coinbase Earn program, which allows you to receive rewards for exploring various digital assets, will now be available to residents of over 100 countries.

Coinbase Earn was launched in late 2018 and initially access to the platform was by invitation only. As part of the pilot version of the program, users received a reward for training or passing the test on cryptocurrencies in 0x tokens.

“One of the main obstacles preventing people from exploring new digital assets was the lack of knowledge about these assets. Many of the people we interviewed expressed a strong desire to learn about various new cryptocurrencies in addition to bitcoin, but did not know where to start,” the representatives of the exchange said.

Now users of the program will be able to receive coins of various projects, such as Stellar (XLM), Zcash (ZEC) and Basic Attention Token (BAT), for passing training and completing tests on them.

 

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SALES OF HARDWARE WALLETS LEDGER DOUBLED AFTER HACKING OF BINANCE EXCHANGE

SALES OF HARDWARE WALLETS LEDGER DOUBLED AFTER HACKING OF BINANCE EXCHANGE

As the head of the Ledger company Pascal Gauthier said, after the hacking of the largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance last week, the sales of the company’s hardware wallets doubled.

“Binance got hacked and on the same day our sales doubled,” Gauthier said at an Atomic Swap conference in New York.

Pascal Gauthier raised the issue during a debate, when the conversation turned on the importance of key storage crypto-currency exchanges and users. He stressed that the issue of security is critical in order to grow optimism around cryptocurrencies.

“We believe in the Ledger that the security is insufficient for asset protection. We think that this is a great technology, but its weak point is the end users and storage of private keys”, — said the head of Ledger.

He also noted that work on such an important aspect is full of stress. Especially at a time when the market capitalization is growing rapidly, and when it passes the $ 1 trillion mark, security will become even more important.

The attackers managed to steal from the exchange Binance 7 000 bitcoins and some user data, including two-factor authorization codes and API keys. After that, the company suspended the Deposit and withdrawal of funds and resumed them only on Tuesday.

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AMERICAN BRAND ALYX WILL TRACK THE SUPPLY CHAIN OF CLOTHING ON THE IOTA BLOCKCHAIN

The American clothing brand Alyx intends to use the IOTA blockchain to track the supply chain of its products.

As part of the initiative, the company will work with a global manufacturer and distributor of adhesives, labels and labels for Avery Dennison clothing. This collaboration will allow Alyx consumers to have a complete understanding of the brand’s supply chain.

Users will scan the QR code and use the app to track the lifecycle of an item from its creation to the point of sale. Data on raw materials, as well as the place and date of production of clothing will be stored in the iota blockchain.

According to the Executive Director of Avery Dennison Debbie Shakespeare, this will allow the brand and consumers to be 100% confident in the accuracy of information about the process of creating clothes. The importance of this fact was also noted by the creative Director of Alyx Matthew Williams, explaining that the company produces goods, taking care of the environment and using recycled materials.

 

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eBAY HAS DENIED RUMORS ABOUT ACCEPTING CRYPTOCURRENCY AS A MEANS OF PAYMENT

A representative of eBay denied rumors that the largest platform of online auctions plans to start accepting cryptocurrencies for payment.

“Cryptocurrencies are not accepted as a form of payment on the eBay platform, and this is not part of our payment strategy,” the company representative stressed.

As noted by the co-founder of the trading platform KoinStreet Roshan Mirajkar, in the cryptocurrency industry is quite difficult to distinguish the rumors from this information. Companies like eBay often pay a lot of attention to marketing, but they have problems with direct communication.

“The cryptocurrency industry is getting too big to ignore. But I’m not sure that they know the right way,” said Mirajkar.

In addition, there was information that a large trading platform TD Ameritrade, which holds more than $1.3 billion of assets, is testing the urgent trading of bitcoin and litecoin. This rumor arose against the background of the statement of the President of the company that many clients of the platform are interested in cryptocurrencies. However, the head of TD Ameritrade on digital assets Sunayna Tuteja denied this information:

“At the moment we are not testing these tools. We have a tool called paperMoney that customers can use to test their strategies. It’s a simulation, no real trades.”

Recall that the information about the possible start of accepting cryptocurrencies by the eBay platform appeared after the appearance of banners at the Consensus conference in New York.

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MEDIA: EBAY PLANS TO ACCEPT CRYPTOCURRENCIES

There are more rumors in the media that the world’s largest online auction service, eBay, plans to accept cryptocurrencies.

The fact that eBay is going to become a participant in the cryptocurrency market is indicated by the information placed on banners at the Consensus conference in New York.

The company has not yet made an official statement. If the information is confirmed, cryptocurrency payments will be available for 180 million active users of the site.

Adopting eBay cryptocurrency can be a logical step after UTRUST, a cryptocurrency-enabled payment platform, hired former eBay and PayPal executive director Sanja Kon as vice president of global partnership in 2018.

Earlier, Scott Cutler, vice president of eBay Americas, said the company is considering accepting payments in bitcoins.

“This is a trend that everyone is talking about,” he said. “We take this idea seriously, because cryptocurrencies are becoming a more common payment instrument, but we are not yet ready to make it a reality.”

Rumors about the official implementation of cryptocurrency payments on eBay regularly appear for five years. However, the company still prefers to remain on hold.

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LARGE US CHAIN STORES WILL START ACCEPTING CRYPTOCURRENCY FOR PAYMENT

Several large US chain stores, including Amazon’s Whole Foods food chain, announced the imminent availability of payment for goods with cryptocurrencies.

It is reported that, in addition to Whole Foods, cryptocurrency will be received by Crate and Barrel, a chain of home goods stores, Nordstrom, a network of expensive department stores, Baskin Robbins, a well-known café chain, as well as some other retail chains. Users will be able to pay for purchases using BTC, BCH, ETH and GUSD cryptocurrency. Such an opportunity will come from the cooperation of the stores with the payment startup Flexa and the Gemini exchange.

To pay users will need to install a special mobile application Spedn. Scanners in stores will be configured to accept payment through the application, and the cashier will not even know that the user pays for purchases with cryptocurrency. The retail network will receive funds from Flexa in real time, and transfers will be available both in cryptocurrencies and in US dollars.

It is reported that the solution developed by Flexa, allows for transactions in real time, and the application makes the purchase process fast and trouble-free. The head of Flexa Tyler Spalding stressed that the use of cryptocurrency will help retailers to reduce the amount of commissions that are paid for cashless payments. In addition, cryptocurrency payments will provide shops with the opportunity to experiment with new types of loyalty programs.

The Winklevoss brothers (Cameron, Tyler Winklevoss), the founders of the Gemini exchange, which will be responsible for calculations and transfers, also noted that often the users are frightened by the high volatility of cryptocurrencies. However, this problem can be solved using a stable Geini Dollar, the rate of which is pegged to the US dollar.

Earlier, the leadership of the British travel company Corporate Traveler noted the desire of customers to use cryptocurrency as a means of payment, with the result that the company began to accept bitcoins for payment. It was also reported that the Starbucks network of coffee shops will introduce cryptocurrency payments by the end of this year.

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THE US TOKEN TAXONOMY ACT WILL NOT TAX TRANSACTIONS FOR LESS THAN $ 600

The Token Taxonomy Act (TTA) implies tax exemption for cryptocurrency transactions of less than $ 600, Jerry Brito said.

Speaking at the Consensus conference, the director of the non-commercial research and legal center for cryptocurrency Coin Center said that the law provides for changes in the tax base – this is an exception for some operations in cryptocurrency.

So, if the owner of cryptocurrency receives income from operations less than $ 600, he is not obliged to report profits to the US Tax Service (IRS).

Brito noted that regulators may require information on capital gains when using cryptocurrencies to purchase low-cost items, such as a laptop, plane tickets, or even entering into a contract using a smart contract.

The Token Taxonomy Act (TTA) was introduced in December by congressmen Warren Davidson and Darren Soto to give citizens the opportunity to freely participate in cryptocurrency markets using the token classification.

The adoption of the law will exclude cryptocurrency from classification as a security, respectively, they will no longer be under the supervision of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which regulates their use. TTA will also separate the jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

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CRYPTOCURRENCY INVESTOR WON $75 MILLION IN THE CASE OF COUNTERFEIT SIM-CARDS

American investor Michael Terpin won the case against Nicholas Truglia, who allegedly stole his crypto assets.

Last week, the California Supreme court ordered Manhattan resident Nicholas Truglia to pay investor Michael Terpin $75.8 million in compensation. As previously reported, Terpin filed a complaint against Truglia in late December, a few months after filing a lawsuit against the telecommunications giant AT&T for assisting criminals in the theft of its crypto assets.

According to the statement, Truglia and other participants in the fraudulent scheme stole the crypto assets of Turpin, gaining control of his phone number. Truglia was arrested in November for stealing $1 million in cryptocurrencies, including by counterfeiting SIM cards.

In February of this year, the first who was convicted of “SIM-swapping” – a method of hacking in which the offender “copies” the phone number of the victim to another SIM card – was an American student Joel Ortiz, who allegedly stole cryptocurrency worth more than $5 million Ortiz pleaded guilty and was sentenced to ten years in prison.

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VENEZUELA WILL LAUNCH AN APPLICATION TO EXCHANGE CRYPTOCURRENCY FOR FIAT MONEY

The startup Reserve, working on the launch of its own stablecoin, plans to release an application for the exchange of cryptocurrencies for Fiat money in Venezuela and Angola.

It is reported that in the near future the application will appear in the Google Play store and will be available for devices based on Android OS. With it, individuals and companies will be able to exchange Fiat money on stabilin RSD, tied to the U.S. dollar.

As told by the co-founder and head of the Reserve Nevin Freeman, the main reason for the launch of the application is in Venezuela was a huge inflation and the constantly declining rate of the Bolivar – Fiat currency of the country.

“A lot of people, including some of our investors, discouraged us from launching the application in Venezuela. However, hyperinflation is exactly the problem that Reserve should solve, and Venezuela is now suffering from the biggest inflation in the world. Therefore, we decided that this should be done,” Freeman said.

In a press release, Reserve notes that now there are 16 countries in the world with annual inflation exceeding 20%, and the Venezuelan Bolivar loses 10% of its value every day.

 

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BINANCE WILL RESUME ACCEPTING DEPOSITS AND WITHDRAWALS THIS WEEK

The head of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance Changpeng Zhao announced that deposit and withdrawal of funds suspended last week after the hacking of the site will be resumed on Tuesday.

“Our team has made significant progress in investigating the incident in recent days – we have made several important system updates, added many new security features, and some of the old ones have been completely upgraded. More information about this will be provided later. We plan to restore deposits and withdrawals on Tuesday. The exact time will be announced later and will depend on the success of the test. The update will require a suspension of trading,” Zhao said in the exchange’s blog.

Recall that one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges Binance was hacked on may 8. As a result of a well-planned attack, the attackers managed to withdraw 7,000 BTC from the hot wallet of the exchange. Later it became known that hackers began to transfer the stolen bitcoins through mixers.

In addition, hackers were able to obtain API key data, two-factor authentication codes, and possibly other user data. After that, the exchange suspended the Deposit and withdrawal of funds from the site, and began work on updating its security system.

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Bitpanda Digitises Physical Gold and Silver

Vienna, 13 May 2019 – Vienna-based fintech Bitpanda launches gold and silver trading for its 1 million users. The new product Bitpanda Metals allows users to securely and conveniently invest in gold and silver and benefit from ultra-low fees. The assets are 100% physically backed, fully insured and stored in a high-security vault in Switzerland.

• Users can buy gold and silver to diversify their portfolio
• Gold and silver are asset-backed by physical gold and silver bars
• Transparent and low fees
• Duty-free, 100% insured and safely stored in Switzerland
• Swap gold and silver with any digital asset on Bitpanda
• Set up savings plans for regular invests

Bitpanda, the Viennese fintech with around 1 million users and more than 100 employees is adding gold and silver as a new asset class to their trading platform. With Bitpanda Metals the company is introducing the user experience and convenience of buying digital assets to the world of precious metals trading.

Bitpanda partnered with precious metals brokers pro aurum and philoro to securely store the physical underlying of the gold and silver tokens offered by Bitpanda. The physically backed, digitised gold and silver can be traded with the same ease as with other digital assets on the Bitpanda platform. Users can buy small amounts beginning from €1 using a wide variety of payment methods and pay in Euro, Swiss Franc, British Pound or US Dollar. Gold can be bought for no fees no matter the amount (after the launch promo for a low fee of just 0,5%) and stored for a transparent and industry-wide unique storage fee of just 0,0125% per week. Gold and silver holdings are 100% insured. Users can sell anytime they see fit, and they are also able to instantly swap any amount of their gold or silver holdings with Bitcoin and any other available digital asset available on Bitpanda.

“Gold and silver stood the test of time as an asset class, and we are now bringing it to the 21st century. With high transparency, very low fees and the same convenience as for other assets on our platform, we are disrupting the gold trading business. With Bitpanda Metals we allow small investors to buy without having to pay horrendous fees. This is a real game changer,” says Bitpanda CEO Eric Demuth.

To celebrate the launch of Bitpanda Metals, Bitpanda charges no fees on buying gold until 15 June 2019, plus users receive 5 to €200 worth of digitised gold or silver when they invest at least €25 gold or silver on the Bitpanda platform.

About Bitpanda

Bitpanda is a fintech based in Vienna, Austria founded in 2014 by Eric Demuth, Paul Klanschek and Christian Trummer. The company is a firm believer in the innovative power of cryptocurrencies, digitised assets and blockchain technology. Bitpanda’s mission is to tear down the barriers to personal finance and bring traditional financial products to the 21st century. Today, Bitpanda has around 1 million users and more than 100 team members. With a PSD2 payment service provider license, state-of-the-art security and streamlined user experience, Bitpanda has grown into a popular trading platform for newbies and experts alike. Users can currently trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, gold and over 20 other digital assets.

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BINANCE COIN LOSES ITS POSITION

The hacking of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance provoked not only a flurry of discontent among the cypto community representatives, but also led to a drop in the value of the BNB (Binance Coin), which is the coin of Binance.

Recall that as a result of the attack on the trading platform more than 7000 bitcoins worth almost $41 million were stolen. the Main digital assets of the BNB platform began to fall in price almost immediately after the administration of Binance posted a message confirming the attack and theft of user funds.

Since the beginning of 2019, the BNB coin showed a steady growth, reaching its maximum in April. The main drivers of growth in the value of the asset were the launch of the network of exchange Binance Chain and the transition of many projects to this blockchain.

However, after the hacker attack, investors began to aggressively sell the coin of the trading platform because of the fear that the hacking could happen again. During the last two days since the attack, the rate of Binance Coin has fallen by almost 20%.

On Friday, may 10th, the coin fell in price for several hours by 9% to $19. The market capitalization of the crypto currency sank to $2,810 billion. Note that in early January BNB was trading at $6, and by the end of April this token soared to $26 (+330%).

According to experts, the rapid growth in the value of the asset once again proved its precarious position in the market, as only one hacker attack led to a fall in the BNB rate. And the option that the cryptocurrency falls to the January mark is not excluded, if the pressure on the Binance platform continues increase.

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THE ECB PRESIDENT CALLED CRYPTOCURRENCIES “A DUBIOUS INVESTMENT”

The President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi, during a meeting with the winners of the Euro Generation award called cryptocurrencies a risky tool for investment.

The Euro Generation award is given for winning the competition for high school students organized by the ECB and the Central banks of the Eurozone.

“Cryptocurrency – bitcoins, altcoins or something like that are not really currencies, they are risky assets. Euro is Euro. Today, tomorrow, in a month – it’s always the Euro. And the ECB is behind the Euro. Who is behind the cryptocurrency. They are very risky assets,” he answered a question about his attitude towards cryptocurrencies.

The head of the ECB also stressed that cryptocurrencies are not significant enough to affect the economy at the macro level. A similar point of view was previously expressed by his colleague Yves Mersch, saying that the cryptocurrency market is not large enough to threaten financial stability.

Draghi recalled that the regulation of the use of cryptocurrencies is not within the competence of the ECB. However, the Bank feels responsible for protecting the rights of consumers, who, when acquiring these “questionable assets”, must make sure that they understand their actions and are aware of the risks they face.

The cryptocurrency community has criticized Draghi’s position, pointing to inflation of Fiat currencies as proof of the fact that the Euro can also be called a risky asset due to the instability of its price.

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MINING COMPANY HUT 8 LOST $136 MILLION IN 2018

Canadian mining company Hut 8 at the end of 2018 received an income of about $50 million, but taking into account the costs incurred a total loss of more than $136 million.

According to the firm’s annual report, Hut 8, which is considered one of the world’s largest public cryptocurrency mining companies, generated revenue of $49.4 million in 2018. Profit before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization of the company for the year amounted to $19.3 million, but with all expenses losses reached $136.7 million.

Currently, Hut 8 operates 85 mining centers around the world, and the results of 2018 reflect the fate of many mining companies during the “bear” cryptocurrency market.

The company will continue to focus solely on mining BTC rather than other cryptocurrencies, and leaders expect bitcoin’s price to continue to rise in the near future.

“During 2018, the average cost of Hut for the production of 1 BTC was constantly below the market price,” commented operations Director Andrew Kiguel.

 

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CHANGPENG ZHAO OFFERED TO RAISE FUNDS TO FIGHT CRAIG WRIGHT’S LEGAL CLAIMS

CEO exchange Binance, Chanpen Zhao proposed to run in the charity Fund Binance a separate program for the fight against judicial claims of Craig Wright.

The funds raised will be used to cover the legal costs of those community members who are sued by Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright, known among crypto-enthusiasts because of his high-profile statements that he is the true Satoshi Nakamoto.

“Craig Wright is filing lawsuits against those people who do not have the resources to conduct trials,” Zhao writes.

The raised funds will be transferred to the selected lawyers directly from the charity Fund. Naturally, the related operations will be properly verified and confirmed with the help of blockchain.

Zhao wants to force Wright to pay all transaction costs alone, because if he loses the case in court, he will have to compensate the defendants. Further, these funds will be directed to donors or in favor of other charitable initiatives.

The CEO of Binance decided to set a personal example and promised to donate $10,000 to BNB.

“I think that after collecting the necessary amount of claims will stop automatically.”

In his address, Zhao posted a survey in which more than 8,000 people took part. Of these, 65% promised to take part in the campaign and donate some amount. The remaining 35% voted for the option “Let CSW continue to press people.”

In the comments, a user under the pseudonym @adebayodavid asked: “Why such a charity need Binance? This step will only spoil the reputation of the company.” To this CZ replied: “Believe me, I myself do not want to take part in this mess. I have more important things to do. But someone has to go down a step and put things in order.”

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CYBERCRIMINALS MINE XMR USING VULNERABILITIES IN OLDER VERSIONS OF CONFLUENCE ATLASSIAN

According to the analytical company Trend Micro, cybercriminals use the vulnerability CVE-2019-3396 in the Confluence Atlassian software for hidden mining of monero.

The vulnerability could allow cybercriminals to covertly install and run XMR miner on a computer, as well as hide mining activity using a rootkit to hide network malware activity and reduce CPU load.

According to the security best practices of the creators of the Confluence Atlassian teamwork platform, this vulnerability only applies to some older versions of Confluence. The problem can be solved by downloading the corrected versions of Confluence Server and Data Center.

Last year, Trend Micro reported that the number of crypto-jacking attacks increased by 956% from the first half of 2017 to the first half of 2018. And hackers began a sharp competition among themselves for the resources of hacked computers.

 

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BITMAIN REDUCED COMPUTING POWER BY 88%.

The Chinese mining giant Bitmain has reduced its computing power by almost 88%. According to the company, when mining cryptocurrency using the SHA256 algorithm, the hashrate was 237.29 PH/s. At the same time, in April this figure reached 2.072 PH/s, and in March, 1.700 PH/s. It also became known that the share of the Beijing-based company in the total hash rate of the Bitcoin network dropped tenfold – from 4% to 0.4%.

The experts have suggested that the company could withdraw 130,000 units of AntMiner S9 from the mining business. Bitmain representatives themselves have not yet commented on the hashrate reduction.

The corporation published the first report on the existing mining capacities in July last year. Then the hardware hashrate on SHA-256 was 1692 PH/s. In early March of this year, researchers at the ChainDD portal stated that almost 74.5% of the Bitcoin network hashrets control the mining pools included in the Bitmain structure.

In late April, it became known that the corporation launched the sales of ASIC-miner Antminer T17. The device is intended for the extraction of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency. The model is equipped with a new generation chip.

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HACKERS HACKED BINANCE. CRYPTOCURRENCY WITHDRAWAL IS TEMPORARILY STOPPED

A large exchange lost more than $ 41 million in Bitcoin. Unplanned technical work began on the platform.

On May 7, 7000 BTC ($ 41.1 million at the current exchange rate) were stolen from the Binance cryptocurrency exchange. On the “large-scale security breach,” said the head of the platform Changpeng Zhao, later confirmation appeared on the official website of the company.

The attackers managed to gain access to user API keys, two-factor authentication codes, and “other potentially important information.” Exchange developers do not exclude that hackers can still control some user accounts.

The funds were withdrawn from one hot wallet of the exchange, it contained about 2% of all available Bitcoins from the company. Other wallets have not suffered yet.

“The hackers specifically waited for the moment and carried out coordinated actions through several seemingly unrelated accounts at the most convenient time. The transaction was structured to circumvent existing security measures. Unfortunately, we could not block the withdrawal of funds until it is confirmed. This operation triggered the various signaling mechanisms in our system, after which we immediately stopped the withdrawal of funds, ”say the employees of the exchange.

According to the developers, it will take them about a week to carry out all the necessary security restoration operations. During technical works users will not be able to deposit and withdraw funds. Trade will continue in the normal mode. All losses will be reimbursed, the exchange has previously established a #SAFU fund, which sends 10% of the commissions collected “to protect users in extreme cases”.

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CRUSOE ENERGY WILL OFFER OIL PRODUCERS TO USE NATURAL GAS SURPLUS FOR MINING CRYPTOCURRENCIES

Crusoe Energy Systems has announced the development of mobile modular data centers that can be used for mining cryptocurrencies, consuming the excess gas remaining in oil production.

It is reported that with the help of such mobile data centers, companies producing oil will be able to stop burning gas surpluses and use it for mining cryptocurrencies. It will also reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds and nitrous oxide immediately by 99%.

“We are striving to develop new technologies to reduce emissions from gas flaring that can cope with the large flow of gas that is generated by shale oil producers in North America. Crusoe technology makes it possible to use energy wasted in vain for growing industries that require energy-intensive computing. For example, for the spheres of blockchain and artificial intelligence, ”said co-founder and head of Crusoe, Chase Lochmiller.

The company has already received more than $ 4.5 million investment in the development of appropriate equipment.

v

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CENTRAL BANK OF THAILAND CREATES A SOLUTION ON THE BLOCKCHAIN AS PART OF THE RELEASE OF ITS OWN DIGITAL CURRENCY

The Central Bank of Thailand (BoT) is advancing in the implementation of its own digital currency project and created a prototype solution based on the blockchain.

The decision will allow the central bank to conduct interbank transactions using digital currency among its eight commercial partner banks. Technical partner BoT Wipro announced this on Tuesday. The prototype was created as part of a central bank digital currency project called lnthanon. Wipro and R3 blockchain consortium provided development services.

The solution will allow decentralized interbank gross settlement in real time (RTGS), using cryptocurrency of the central bank for faster payments, noted in Wipro.

The Central Bank of Thailand announced last August that it was developing regulated cryptocurrency on the R3 Corda platform. The project’s banking partners include Bangkok Bank Public, Krung Thai, Siam Commercial Bank, Standard Chartered Bank (Thailand) and HSBC. BoT also announced that it is working on another test of the DLT concept, designed to increase the efficiency of sales of government bonds.

In addition, recently it became known that the Bank of Thailand Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) and the state-owned oil company PTTEP successfully tested the use of the blockchain for international transfers.

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THE COURT ORDERED CRAIG WRIGHT TO PROVIDE A LIST OF HIS BITCOIN ADDRESSES

A federal court in the Southern District of Florida ordered Craig Wright to provide a list of his public Bitcoin addresses.

Recall that in a lawsuit filed in February last year on behalf of David Kleiman, it is claimed that Wright stole the bitcoins worth more than $ 5 billion at the current rate.

The issued ruling contains a number of claimants ’claims that asked the court to oblige Wright to provide a list of Bitcoin’s public addresses belonging to him as of December 31, 2013, to identify Bitcoins allegedly transferred to anonymous trust management in 2011, and also to provide documents related to by this trust. In addition, the plaintiffs asked the court to oblige Wright to establish the identity of the current and past trustees and beneficiaries of the trust under oath.

The document states that the court revised its ruling on a previously submitted request from Wright, whose goal was to hide information relating to his assets in Bitcoin.  As previously reported, in December last year, the court rejected a request to dismiss the case against Craig Wright.

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STEPHEN PALLEY: “CRYPTOCURRENCIES CAN BE EFFECTIVE FOR MICROPAYMENTS”

Partner of law firm Anderson Kill Stephen Palley believes that cryptocurrencies can be effective for the implementation of micropayments.

As Pally noted, PayPal’s Mass Pay API used to be implemented for mass micropayments, but now there are new technologies that allow micropayments to be made more efficiently. He stressed that the processing of such payments in the blockchain is much faster.

“One of the problems that cryptocurrencies solve is micropayments,” said Pally.

He also expressed his opinion on the boom of ICO-projects in 2017, when companies collected millions of dollars without having a finished product, and sometimes even without confirming their concept.

“You made a white paper, opened a channel on Slack or Discord and raised $ 5 million over a period of six months to a year. These times are over. I do not understand the use of experimental technology to raise money, ”said Pally.

The lawyer also believes that the authorities need to regulate the cryptocurrency industry more transparently. To do this, you need to develop new bills and discuss them with industry experts.

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50% OF TRANSACTIONS IN THE BITCOIN CASH NETWORK IN APRIL REFER TO THE SAME ADDRESS

Only one address in the Bitcoin Cash network is responsible for half of the transactions carried out during the last month, draws the attention of the user Twitter.

According to some assumptions, the activity of the owner of this address may be due to the desire to create the appearance of demand for cryptocurrency payment capabilities among users.

This address began to be used on April 9, 2019, and since then has transferred more than 575,000 transactions. During the same time, 1.17 million transactions were recorded throughout the Bitcoin Cash blockchain. Thus, the remaining addresses accounted for 51% of transactions in the total amount.

A significant part of the transaction of this address is made to transfer the same amount to 0.00000731 BCH. At the time of publication, the total balance at the address in question is $ 1,253, the total amount of outgoing transactions is $ 20,673.

Recently it became known that the CEO of the Japanese corporation SBI Holdings had intended to engage in the promotion of Bitcoin Cash, but abandoned this idea because of the controversial hard forks on the cryptocurrency network.

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THE NUMBER OF MIXED CRYPTOCURRENCY TRANSACTIONS INCREASED BY 300%

Mixed cryptocurrency transactions currently account for 4.09% of all bitcoin payments.

According to data published by Longhash, the frequency of using CoinJoin technology, by which random transactions are mixed with each other to hide participants, has increased by 300% over the past 9 months.

Data were provided by Adam Fiscor, technical Director of zkSNACKs. The main product of the company is the Wasabi Wallet, aimed at increasing the level of anonymity for bitcoin users. Fiscor States that transaction using CoinJoin has reached its highest level since 2013-2014.

Mixing with CoinJoin and other mixers is becoming more popular as governments around the world are beginning to strengthen control over transactions on the blockchain. At the same time, law enforcement agencies often use specialized companies, such as Chainalysis, to prosecute hackers and criminals associated with cryptocurrencies.

Although anonymous cryptocurrencies are positioned as an alternative to bitcoin, in some countries it is becoming increasingly difficult to use them. In March, the Finance Committee of France called for a ban on anonymous cryptocurrency transactions, and in November, the highest legislative body of Taiwan has approved the amendments to the existing laws, which allow the regulator of the country to oppose the implementation of the anonymous cryptocurrency transactions.

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 WASHINGTON STATE RECOGNIZED THE LEGITIMACY OF THE BLOCKCHAIN RECORDS

Washington state parliamentarians passed a bill that recognizes and protects the legal status of electronic records that are part of systems built on distributed registry technology.

The bill was introduced in January, but the Governor of the state signed it after hearings and amendments. The law, which prevents discrimination against electronic records that are part of the distributed register, will enter into force at the end of July.

“An electronic record cannot be denied legal force, validity or enforcement just because it is created, transferred, received or stored using distributed registry technology,” the bill says.

The document also establishes definitions of the terms “blockchain” and “distributed register”, which can be used in other bills in the future.

Recently, the state of Washington passed a bill to encourage the use of blockchain. The law encourages development on the basis of the blockchain, recognizes the appropriateness of its use in trade, in particular in the documents with a digital signature, and also makes changes to the existing regulatory framework to define technology.

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THE NEXT VERSION OF BITCOIN CORE 0.18.0 IS LAUNCHED

On May 2^nd, the developers published the next version of the Bitcoin Core full-client 0.18.0.

As expected, now full bitcoin nodes running on the new version of Bitcoin Core will be able to interact with hardware wallets, including Ledger, Trezor, Digital BitBox, KeepKey or Coldcard through the Hardware Wallet Interaction (HWI) tool. This solution will allow users to achieve a higher level of security. To use this function is still possible only through the command line, but the developers have promised that over time will make this solution available to all users, including those who do not have specialized knowledge.

Also in the new version of the client, a command-line tool called bitcoin-wallet has appeared, with which you can create a new wallet file without resorting to the remote procedure call function, and view basic information about the existing wallet: encryption status, use of a passphrase, the number of transactions, etc.

Subsequently, users can combine several wallets created by them and manage them through a graphical interface (GUI). This feature, called multi-wallet, will be improved with subsequent updates as problems still remain when using the GUI to access multi-wallet. For example, you cannot use the multi-wallet coin control feature.

Also, some interface elements were changed, for example, in the outgoing transaction tab, the checkbox was removed, which forced the user to pay the commission amount not lower than the set threshold. In the new version of the client, the user can reduce the size of the commission up to the minimum for the transfer of the transaction to the network.

In particular, a number of commands for remote procedure calls, intended primarily for developers, were added and updated, protection against errors for miners was added and other minor flaws were eliminated.

The previous large-scale release of Bitcoin Core version 0.17.0 took place in October last year.

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