Topic: Forget about exchanger search! Use BestChange! - page 37. (Read 13529 times)

Firstly, its is too early to talk about scam in this situation, the exchanger did not take away the user’s money or embezzle it; it has just frozen it to conduct an investigation, because the transaction was marked as suspicious. The exchange is replying to our emails, and informed us that the issue will be solved in the nearest future. Currently the exchanger is switched off in our monitoring until the situation is solved.

Our service minimized the risks of exchanging funds, because we thoroughly check all exchangers before adding them to our monitor. We have very strict requirements to the exchangers, we check them using dozens of parameters, this is why it is impossible to add a scam to our website.

But in any case we cannot be a so-called “guarantor” because we do not work with users’ money, but only provide the information where they can exchange funds.
We do not see, who exactly left our website and went to the exchanger listed with us, there is no way for us to check that this very person exchanged a certain amount with the exchanger, we do not see what funds go between the client and exchangers and have no control over it. If we cannot control exchanges, we cannot be a “guarantor” of the deals between the client and exchanger.

What we can do (and we are good at it) – is to include only the best and tursted exchangers, help users solve their problems with an exchanger, timely switch off exchangers from the monitor if they start acting suspicious. Also all users can leave a review about their exchange experience. Usually the administration of exchangers values their reputation and swiftly reacts to the reviews of switching off from the monitor.

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We would be happy if our service could help both the models to cash out their earnings and the community for accepted payment ways. 

Mostly the pornhub community was been payed with wire-transfers or paypal/perfect money, etc but most of those ways were stopped being payed and hence pornhub decided to give cryptocurrencies a shot. Tether being a stable coin gives them them a ease of access for easy and quick transactions worldwide without worrying about the transaction fees and the fees is comparatively much smaller than paypal, etc.

This would surely make them stand on profits for sure so they would continue starting to accept few more reliable coins which would make them more popular. Perhaps, the pornhub models might be facing problems in cashing out the tether and your platform might give them the ability to cashout instantly by finding some better exchange.

Just a quick question: What if I use your service for comparing the exchanges and get scammed after trading my Litecoin for Skrill USD? Will my faith be similar to the guy who is the reason you got negative trust by DT? How you filter the scam exchanges and protect the customers?

Is a quantum computer dangerous for Bitcoin?

Many researches say that in less than 10 years computing machines using quantum principles will threaten blockchain technology which is a basis for cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin and similar systems’ defense algorithm is based on a principle of asymmetric encryption with and open and private keys. Transaction is signed by a private key, and its truth is checked with a help of an open key.

Despite the fact that Bitcoin blockchain uses asymmetric encryption, the users don’t have to worry for the safety of their coins. The open key is not stored openly. Thus, the addresses for coins transferring are not open keys, but just the results of usage of hash-function SHA-256. The hashing function performs one-sided transformation and that’s why it’s stable against quantum computer attacks.

The public key is rendered to the network in the open way just until it receives a confirmation. If an attacker receives an open key during transaction, he will have around 10 minutes to get the private key with the help of a quantum computer and try to make his own transaction from the same address but specifying a larger commission.

By the way, bitcoin mining is also relevantly safe, as the equipment for mining cryptocurrencies in the near future will be more powerful that quantum computers.

It is worth to note, that quantum calculations threaten absolutely all systems of computer security which care based on cryptography with an open key, and not only blockchain. Internet connections to render your password in Internet banking uses a similar encryption technology, same as communication in chatrooms, social networks and lots of other routine actions.

All security systems, including blockchain systems, need to take into account postquantum encryption to ensure data safety. But the most simple and effective way can be changing traditional systems by such blockchain which implements quantum-resistant cryptography.

There are several different ways of encryption with open key resistant to quantum calculations: bases on matrix, on code, multidimensional quadratic functions, and hashing function. But let us not digress into detail math stories.

The main point is that if there is a serious threat to blockchain posed by quantum computer, developers can improve the protection. Moreover, successful research and developments in this regards are being done not for the first year.

What do you think, who will be the first in this race – bitcoin developers or quantum computer developers?

Pornhub added Tether, and the number of wallets with balance over 1 BTC continues to grow

Pornhub is now accepting Tether

One of the world’s largest adult sites added USDT tokens support. Pornhub blog says that it became possible thanks to cooperation with TRON, and if one chooses to pay for the website’s services in USDT, it is recommended to use TRONLink wallet.

Two months ago PayPal stopped supporting payments to Pornhub’s models, which made the platform add new payment system. Justin Sun, Tron’s CEO, said that introduction of payment in Tether is a “a brilliant way to support the victims of centralized payment platforms like PayPal”.

The number of wallets with balance over 1 BTC is growing

Glassnode company experts calculated that number of addresses with one or more bitcoins rose by 10% over 12 months. Now their number is 784’000.

According to the analysts, this key metric shows the number of retail trader. Since the beginning of 2015 this number has double which demonstrates the growing interest to cryptocurrencies.

“The steady rise is the result of accumulation by retail buyers. The rising number of addresses accumulating greater amounts of BTC is a sign that adoption as a store of value is increasing”, — the report says.

The Amsterdam Stock Exchange is considered the oldest in the world. It was established in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company, which issued the first shares on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. It was the first company to issue stocks and bonds and the first to formally begin trading in securities.

In the 1600's, the Dutch, French and British governments all gave charters to companies with East India in their names. At the peak of imperialism, it seemed like everyone had a share in the profits from the East Indian and Asian campaigns except the people living there. Sea trips that brought back commodities from the East were very risky - besides pirates, there were risks of weather and losing navigation.

To minimize the risk of a lost ship ruining their profits, ship owners had long been using the help of investors who would finance the trip - outfitting the ship and crew in return for a percentage of the profits if the voyage turned out a success. These early limited liability companies often lasted for only a single voyage. They were then dissolved, and a new one was created for the next trip. Investors lessened their risk by investing in several different ventures at the same time, thereby playing the odds against all of them ending in disaster.

When the East India companies formed, they changed the way business was done. These companies issued stock that would pay dividends on all the proceeds from all the voyages the companies undertook, rather than going voyage by voyage. These were the first modern joint stock companies. This allowed the companies to demand more for their shares and build larger fleets. The size of the companies, combined with royal charters forbidding competition, meant huge profits for investors.

Hopefully you are not, but who know? I'm not judge that your exchange is scammer directly but I just see some topic that spread up there.

That is why I say it will be interesting to see what will happen next. Perhaps your investigation will be finished as soon as possible.

Did you know that in its modern form, credit card appeared back in 1949? Originally nobody took them seriously, but within the next few years they literally conquered the whole world.

The first universal credit card, which could be used at a variety of establishments, was introduced by the Diners’ Club, Inc., in 1950. Another major card of this type, known as a travel and entertainment card, was established by the American Express Company in 1958.

Today billions of people around the world use bank cards. The share of cashless payments is gradually growing, and they become a usual and more convenient method of payment.

According to statistics, for the year 2015, debit card usage accounted for 69.5 billion in payments, dwarfing all other forms of non-cash payments including credit cards (33.8 billion) and checks (17.3 billion). One new debit card is issued in the U.S. every five seconds. There were 471 million Visa debit cards in the U.S. and 1.09 billion in the rest of the world at the end of March 2015.

How many bank cards do you have? How often do you use cash?

Same here. But after I initially encountered their signature campaign, I tried doing a little searching and reading of their platform. They have been in the business for a good deal of time. They are not an exchange strictly speaking. They are listing exchanges for people to easily browse and make comparison.

Cryptocurrencies were originally envisioned as a decentralized payment means, independent of fiat money rates and not tied to traditional valuable assets.

This peculiarity adds cryptocurrencies a characteristic feature — high volatility of the rate. Many folks gain thanks to this feature, but the possibility that the rate can dramatically drop or leap hinders the usage of cryptocurrency as a full-fledge payment means.

In order to regulate the rate, it was decided to tie up cryptocurrencies to stable assets that have long been established in the economy. Thus, they began to tie up the value of cryptocurrency to fiat money, gold and oil. Digital currencies can be tied up to any valuable asset or commodity which can make their value more stable.

Cryptocurrencies pegged to physical assets have a lower rate volatility and became known as stablecoins. Stablecoins are a compromise between fiat money and cryptocurrencies. Most often, the value of a stablecoin is pegged to fiat money. The value of these coins is equal to that of fiat currency and represents a sort of a promissory note. Every coin is leveraged to one unit of fiat money, for instance, dollar, which acts as a guarantee and provides for the value of the currency.

The most popular stablecoins are:

Tether (USDT) * USD Coin (USDC) * TrueUSD (TUSD) * Paxos Standard Token (PAX) * Dai (DAI)

And what stablecoins do you use ?

Actually I only know them now due to their bounty program, I think they already put limit in the participants as they pay higher reward than others. Regarding the exchange haven't tried it yet but many threads appear as well their trust reputation. Will try it one of these days to check the support.

Blockchain is not a financial pyramid.

To see this, one should understand what a financial pyramid (also called an investment pyramid) is. This is a system for receiving profit via constantly attracting money from new participants. That means the profit of the first participants is paid at the expense of funds of their followers.

It is obvious that if bitcoin does not have any dividend yield, that is, if you do not receive additional funds just because you own cryptocurrency, then bitcoin, as most of other significant cryptocurrencies, cannot be a financial pyramid by definition.

Then why such confusion? Most likely that the reason behind such a poor analogy was the poverty of intellect in most cryptocurrency critics after the events of 2017. They did not even try to learn about the principles and technologies behind cryptocurrencies but started without any reason calling them a financial pyramid. Partially they can be understood, because the previously unknown project that made it possible for people to increase their capital several times over a few months sounds very suspicious.

But what happened is that people earned profit due to the increase in the price of the active, and not because of the means of new users. Yes, to some extend it was the dramatic increase of popularity that brought about price increase, but these concepts should not be confused. Situations when demand starts to dramatically exceed supply are always accompanied by similar price increase. These can be company shares, investment fund units or even salt that can rise in price against the backdrop of false rumors. Price increase due to the growth of demand is a typical market situation, and not a disguised financial pyramid.

That being said, blockchain-based pyramids can sometimes be found, for instance, PonziCoin and Bitconnet. But these are particular cases of the misuse of the technology in creating a financial pyramid, and not vice versa.

It should be noted that there are financial pyramids that are disguised as cryptocurrency projects, only exacerbating the suspicion of inexperienced crowd. For example, they can promise profit thanks to a “unique trading robot” that multiplies your investments, or something of this kind. Of course, they have nothing to do with cryptocurrencies, and the illusion of work is maintained at expense of new client’s investments.

We hope that we have made our point clear. And what other unreasonable definitions of bitcoin have you come across? We would be happy to discuss it with you in our next articles.

As we have replied in this topic, the exchanger has "frozen" the funds of the user and is holding an investigation. We are following the situation and have switched off the exchanger until the situation is resolved.


We have not "scammed" anyone, please read above.

Blockchain and bitcoin based on it, as any new revolutionary technology, have their drawbacks. The mechanism of ‘proof-of-work’ consensus uses enormous volumes of electricity, cryptocurrency is used for speculations and sometimes in illegal activities.

But to say that because of that the technology faces a failure, is the same as saying in 1995 that the Internet will not work because it’s clumsy and unorganized.

Bitcoin has been living for over 10 years now despite numerous predictions of its demise. And it is constantly developing. The first cryptocurrency is no longer a “toy for geeks” as it used to be in 2009. Today Blockstream satellites allow making bitcoin transactions even without Internet.

Blockstream company which deals with bitcoin blockchain pilot projects and New Zealand developer goTenna have united their efforts to improve the project that allows sending and receiving bitcoins without Internet with the help of data translation via satellites using radio frequencies which are supported by goTenna devices.

The users will be able to receive bitcoins via satellite and goTenna Mesh network without direct connection to the Internet. If you do not like the control of the local provider or your connection is down for some reason, for example, because of a natural disaster, you will still be able to make a transaction.

With all the innovative features, this technology is quite easy to use. With an electricity generator, satellite dish, Raspberry Pi, a Wi-Fi point and the necessary software you could make global bitcoin transactions.

At first sight, it sounds rather expensive. But if you divide the expenses among people, for instance, if the whole village chips in for the purchase of the equipment, the costs are not so high. To use this service, you need a small satellite dish that uses USB port to connect to PC or specialized equipment such as Raspberry Pi. To manage connection, you can use free software with open source code, for instance GNU Radio.

And the service itself has demonstrated “excellent” uptime and its network has excess capacity to ensure reliability.

And do you still think that bitcoin does not have any future and nobody uses it?

Interesting to see what will happen next to this exchange. One side there are some accusation against this exchange that they have scammed some their user as said above but in other side they have opened a promotion on this forum a week ago and the participant have been getting paid.

How Safe are Bitcoin Paper Wallets?

A bitcoin paper wallet is a public and private key printed on paper or a piece of plastic. It is an offline wallet and is referred to as a type of “cold storage”. This means that it is an extra-secure storage that is not connected to the Internet which can be hacked. Although its security can be debatable.

The piece of paper (or plastic) contains printed private and public keys, usually accompanied by QR code, which also serves as the address. You can simply copy and paste the keys onto a text document and print it out (making sure to delete the document from your PC). You can also use free online services that generate the printable wallet. The key generation is usually done in your browser, so they are not transmitted on the internet. But to be on the safe side, you are advised to clear your browser after printing. Keeping an image of the paper wallet on your computer or phone is a definite no-no.

Some paper wallet services offer a handy design that you can cut, fold and seal, making them a lightweight and relatively secure form of storing your bitcoins offline. You send your bitcoin to the public address displayed on the wallet, and then store the paper in a secure place.

The security of paper wallets stems from the fact that they
are absolutely offline, and hackers cannot reach them. But, on the other hand, you need to keep this piece of paper secure to protect your funds.

There is a risk that somebody can find your printout and withdraw your funds without your knowledge.
As an extra precaution measure you can fold the printout covering the private key and seal the fold with a tamper evident seal.

Also, you need to bear in mind the physical vulnerability of the material. To protect the paper wallet from water (for example, in case of flooding) you may want to keep the printout in a sealed plastic bag. But there does not seem to be a good protection against fire.

But these risks are not very likely, use common sense to keep your wallets safe the way you would jewels and ordinary cash. In general paper wallets are by far the safest option to store your digital assets.

Whatever your preferred method of storing e-currencies, you can always buy or sell your crypto money choosing the best rates at bestchange.com !

Over 20000 USD lost.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.53659941

Best_Change lists fake exchangers on his monitoring platform and refuses to sanction them.

Did you know that only one third of mined bitcoins participate in the turnover? The rest of bitcoins do not move among the wallets.

Of course, this can partially be blamed on hodlers, but it is highly likely that the access to inactive wallets was simply lost or the coins were forgotten by users.

The reason for that could be a loss or breaking of private key containers, impossibility to restore passwords from online-service or their closure, incompatibility of hierarchical generation of keys and lots of other options. If you have lost a password/key to your bitcoin wallet, you won’t be able to restore it, this is how the system works.

But what about the fact that every 10 minutes miners create more and more new bitcoins?

There is a limit after which the growth of the total amount of bitcoin in the network will stop, and this limit is 21 million of coins. Moreover, every 4 years the amount of new bitcoins is reduced two-fold.

For the 10 year and a half of bitcoin’s existence there has been generated around 17,7 million of bitcoins, which constitutes around 84 per cent of their total amount. If the access to two thirds of the coins has already been lost, then around 9 million of coins are left in the turnover, 3 million coins out of which do not yet exist.

Even if we do not take into account the possibility of losing an access to wallets in the future, it still turns out that we may face a shortage much larger, that it seems at first glance.

If bitcoin ceases to be a speculative asset and turns into one of the main reserve currencies of the world’s central banks, its total capitalization will be less correlated with the actual amount of available funds.

For instance, if now bitcoin would substitute the US dollar as the main reserve currency and its capitalization was at the level of the USA national debt, then the price of one bitcoin would be a little over $1 million. And if we take into account that the real volume of bitcoins available for turnover currently is about 6 million of coins, then bitcoin would have to have the price of $3,5 million to be compatible with US debt by capitalization.

And do you believe in the future of bitcoin? What price deems fair for the cryptocurrency number one?

If you trust in the future growth of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, our monitoring BestChange.com is at your service: with our help you can easily find the best exchanging rates for any e-currency and have a safe transaction.

Thank you for your comment. We do have cryptocurrencies on www.bestchange.com such as Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, Bitcoin Gold, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Monero, Dogecoin, Tether and many others. Feel free to check it. We can add new cryptocurrencies when there is a sufficient demand for it and there are exchangers that work with this new cryptocurrency.

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Hidden miners were found in audio files

BlackBerry Cylance threat researches discovered malicious virus – Monero miner embedded within WAV audio files.

When played, some of the WAV had no glitches, others generated white noise. The specialists discovered embedded code Monero CPU miner, as well as the code used to establish a reverse shell to remotely connect to the victim’s network.

NewsBTC analyst: bitcoin dropped down to $7,500

Aayush Jindal, expert for NewsBTC website believes that the world’s main crypto coin will continue falling. The next levels will be $7,800 и $7,500.

According to him, the resistance at supporting bitcoin’s price of $8,000 was a reason behind the new bearish trend on the 4-hours chart.

There is a major bearish trend line forming with resistance near $7,950 on the 4-hours chart of the BTC/USD pair. MACD and RSI indicators also signal the declining movement. Currently BTC is trading around the mark of $7,900.

Are whales to blame for bitcoin’s decline?

On Friday bitcoin lost about 1,8% in price. The dump started at night, and right on the verge of it Whale Alert analysts detected a transfer of 10,000 BTC (around $80 mln) to Binance trading platform.

If these two events are connected is not clear, but the crypto community is actively discussing the topic of bitcoin-whales manipulating the market. Unlike the classic markets, the crypto market has no protection against such activities.

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Visa and MasterCard created an Apple Pay competitor for paying for online purchases

Payment systems Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover joined their efforts to create a new option to pay for online purchases in “one click”. The joint project Click to Pay will make online checkout easier as all the payment details will be kept in one place. This eliminates the need to enter your credit card number each time.

The new payment service is expected to become the main competitor of Apple Pay and PayPal. A similar function (one-click purchase) is already working on Amazon, but the use is limited only by this online-retailer.

Ex-CFTC Chair: we deliberately collapsed bitcoin

Christopher Giancarlo, former chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission said that the Treasury and the SEC are responsible for bitcoin’s drop in price after reaching its historical minimum in December 2017.

According to him, the regulator intentionally approved the release of bitcoin futures on Chicago Mercantile Exchange to allow to open short positions.

"We saw a bubble building and we thought the best way to address it was to allow the market to interact with it."

Giancarlo said that the US Treasury and SEC decided to collapse the BTC price to prevent the bubble from reaching the dangerous size for the economy. In their time regulators overlooked the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis, that’s why in 2017 they took preventive steps.

Casa start-up solves the problem of passing on crypto assets

Custodial start-up Cassa offers a service of guaranteed passing on of crypto assets.

The gist of the offer is that the owner makes an agreement with Case in which he gives an additional key to his wallet.

Thanks to the fact that the optional key with multisignature is transferred to Casa, this eliminates the theft of bitcoins.

In case the owner of the cryptocurrency passes away, Casa fulfills the last will of the deceased.

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Will China buy all the bitcoins?

Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the People’s Republic of China, called for more efforts to advance development in the field of blockchain technologies, which lead to a frenzy in the world of cryptocurrency. For instance, after Xi’s speech, the search volume in the app WeChat for hashtags “Blockchain” and “Bitcoin” increased 12 and 2 fold correspondingly, and Chinese cryptocoins saw a dramatic price boost during the last weekend. For instance, TRX surged by 50%, and Neo almost doubled its value, having fixed it at a little over $11 for a coin.

Against the background of this frenzy, some people saw China's growing interest in cryptocurrencies as a threat. One of them is Anthony Pompiliano, who tweeted: “Someone tell President Donald Trump that there are only 21 million Bitcoin and China is planning to buy them all. This is going to be the real US – China competition. That should get him to pay attention. The guy hates losing and will try to buy them all.”

However, despite this tweet was supported by many people, the majority favor a different opinion on forums dedicated to cryptocurrencies: “If China buys all bitcoins in free circulations, it will acquire nothing more than a large number of empty “candy wrappers”, because, as cryptocurrency owners think “in this outcome the interest to bitcoin will evaporate, and the demand for it will drop to zero”

Crypto Capital Principal indicted

According to court documents, presented to the accused by the Attorney of the Southern District of New York, Crypto Capital Pricnipal Oz Yosef was planning to transfer $ 10,000,000 to a bank located in the Bahamas for the purpose of misappropriation, which falls under the article on bank fraud.

During the investigation, the company’s funds were frozen. It must be noted that $880 of these funds belonged to Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange.

51 % attack in BCash chain

For a day, in the interval between October 24-25, one or several miners controlled half of all computing power used for mining Bitcoin Cash. During this time the unknown perpetrator(s) managed to mine 73 blocks.

This situation attracted great attention, and the position of the cryptocurrency already not very welcomed in the Internet became even more precarious. For instance, Twitter user Notgrubles suggested delisting Bitcoin Cash from main trading platforms.

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The People's Republic of China adopts the first law on cryptography

This law will come into force on January 1, 2020. Interestingly, the law is not connected directly with cryptocurrencies, but is aimed at creating standards for the application of cryptography and passwords management. However, according to experts, passing this law means nothing other than China’s approaching the launching their new national cryptocurrency. It is connected with the fact that cryptography is the main component of cryptocurrency.

TRON dislodged Ethereum in an updated Chinese cryptocurrency rating

CCID of China has presented its fourteenth rating of cryptocurrencies. The leaders occupying the first three positions remained unchanged, but also some reshuffling took place. Ethereum lost 13 points for basic-tech, due to which it ceded the second place in the rating to TRON cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin does not participate in this race to the top and from the moment of publication of the previous rating, having received a small boost to its total index, still occupies the eleventh position.

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Actions of one whale could influence on bitcoin surge in 2017 and Stellar has destroyed 55 billion of their token

Bitcoin price surge of 2017 could be fueled by one whale

The University of Texas has published research which shows that a whale was buying a large amount of BTC during drawdowns and additional emission of USDT. It is important that such a “scheme” was used only on the Bitfinex exchange.

Connection between bitcoin growth and USDT have been discussed before. TokenAnalyst experts have already noted an incredible coincidence between bitcoin pump and Tether emission. However, it was believed earlier that this had been caused by actions of lots of independent traders.

A group of researchers analyzed all BTC and USDT transaction between March, 1, 2017 and March, 31, 2018 and came to a conclusion that it had been one large player. At the same time, no similar pattern was detected on other exchanges.

It should be understood that Bitfinex controlled over 20% of the market in 2017-2018, and it is only by 2019 that the exchange’s market share dropped to 7,3%.

Stellar burst into the top 10 cryptocurrencies after destroying 55 billion tokens

Stellar team reported destroying 55 billion of tokens. They took this decision after analyzing the plan of blockchain implementation. The coins that got destroyed were mainly the ones for airdrop (out of 43,5 billion only 6 remained), as well as operational fund (out of 16 billion, 11 remained) and affiliate programs (12 billion out of 25).

This was announced at Meridian conference in Mexico, Stellar Development Foundation announced the burning and in two hours the token rate increased by 16% from $0,069 to 0,083. Currently, correction took place and Stellar’s price is $0.0806.

The developers said that no further coin burning is planned. In total, 55 billion (worth of $4 billion) of XML were destroyed.

Einstein Exchange shuts down with the debt of 16 million

Einstein Exchange clients say that the exchange’s management and employees stopped replying to requests and complaints, and the users cannot get access to their funds.

Currently, the management of the exchange has been transferred to the British Columbia Securities Commission (Canada). The total damage estimate is $16 million.

When the exchange was registered its management provided judicial evidence of possessing assets to satisfy all withdrawal requests, however refused to provide the location of the funds.

Currently the office of the exchange is closed, there is no access to their website and investigators cannot establish the location of Michael Ongun Gokturk, the exchange founder. The pages of the exchange in social networks are buried under complaints of dissatisfied customers.

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Ethereum developer confirmed the date of hardfork

The next upgrade of Ethereum blockchain called Istanbul, which the users have been waiting for over six months, will be implemented before the end of the year. This has been announced by their developer Peter Szilágyi in Twitter.

The hardfork is scheduled to take place at block 9069000 which should be generated around December, 4, 2019.Fot this new client Geth has already been launched, which already has hard fork.

The peculiarity of the upgrade will be implementing of ProgPoW, programming algorithm aimed at eliminating the advantage of ASIC-miners over GPU-miners.

But the users look more forward to the next upgrade Berlin which is scheduled for the first half of 2020.

North Korea accused of money laundering with the help of cryptocurrencies

The UN Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea led an investigation which discovered the connection between the country and the Hong Kong blockchain company Marine China.

According to the representatives of UK Security Council, the country’s leadership has been using various strategies with cryptocurrency to evade from international sanctions. It is reported that North Korea made at least 5,000 transactions using stolen cryptocurrenies. It was made to make establishing the source of the money more complicated.

It is believed that the North Korean hackers were using phishing attacks and computer viruses to steal digital currencies and then laundered and cashed it in Singaporean banks. The Committee has not named the total amount of stolen funds.

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Morgan Creek CEO: sell Amazon shares, buy bitcoin

Morgan Creek Capital CEO Mark Yusko said that bitcoin is the next groundbreaking technology, and that it is currently the greatest wealth-creation opportunity there is. At the same time, he called Amazon shares “dead money for a decade”.

Morgan Creek Capital is known for investing $5 million in Google in 1996. At the time, Google was the sixteenth-most used search engine and not known by many. Later on, this investment turned into $200 million.

BRICS can create its own cryptocurrency

BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are considering a possibility to launch a payment system based on cryptocurrency. It would be used for mutual payments between countries – association members.

The idea was introduced by Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) at the BRICS forum in Brazil. According to him, the members of the association's business council supported this suggestion.

Bitcoin keeps falling. When will this stop?

Bitcoin will test again the resistance of $8,600 level, and in case of breaking it, it will carry on falling, according to Aayush Jindal, NewsBTC analyst. The closest targets are marks of $8,500 и $8,300. Jindal thinks that for a full turn, the price needs to settle over $8,880.

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Trading volume on BitMEX hit 2019 low

The daily trading volume on the largest crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX has dropped down to 86,850 BTC — lowest since the November 2018. This was brought to attention by CL, Twitter analyst.

“This market is officially lifeless,” — he wrote in his account.

BitMEX is the platform with the highest liquidity in the world for cryptocurrency derivatives trading.

Venezuelan government to gift the retirees with cryptocurrency for Christmas

Nicolás Maduro, the President of Venezuela, said that all the country’s retirees and officials will get 0.5 El Petro (around $30) as a Christmas gift.

El Petro is a national cryptocurrency of Venezuela. As the government of the country says it is fully backed by oil. The government is trying to use El Petro in the country’s economy and for trading with other countries, however, with not much success so far.

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USA can launch their own cryptocurrency

The Federal Reserve is looking into developing a digital currency in the US. It was announced by its Chairman Jerome Powell in a letter to lawmakers this week in his reply to the letter from Congressmen French Hill and Bill Foster. They are concerned that the Chinese cryptocurrency on which the Chinese government is already working can jeopardize the USA’s position in the world’s economy.

Powell specified that so far the Federal Reserve “not identified potential material benefits of a general purpose central bank digital currency to the implementation of monetary policy" and is only studying the rationale for creating it.

Tether and Litecoin have the largest portion of whales

IntoTheBlock said what percentage of the most popular cryptocurrencies is owned by the largest owners. Tether and Litecoin turned out to be the most centralized: 63% of USDT is owned by 132 addresses, and 47% of LTC is owned by 131 address.

The data for the other large crypto currencies looks like this: ETH — 151 addresses own 39%,
Bitcoin Cash — 112 addresses own 29%, Bitcoin SV — 103 addresses own 24%, and 39% of Cardano is owned by only 41 addresses.

PayPal CEO said he has bitcoins

Dan Schulman, the CEO of payment processor PayPal, revealed that he owns only one cryptocurrency, bitcoin. He also said that BTC is an “interesting idea”, and blockchain is a “promising technology”.

“As for cryptocurrency, it is still very volatile, and that they do not have much demand for it by merchants because merchants operate on very small margins. What they need to do is to turn it to fiat immediately. There is a charge for turning it into fiat, that is why any advantages in price will be eaten up by this conversion fee”, Schulman said.

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Bitcoin crashes below $7,000

Last Friday the world’s first cryptocurrency lost over 10% om price and crashed below $7,000 on a number of exchanges. Such low price of bitcoins is registered for the first time since May this year.

Against this background, the “fear index” has dipped down to extreme values at the level of 20. According to the site Alternative.me it can mean a possible growth of the cryptocurrency.

Binance CEO refutes rumors about the raid in Shanghai office of the exchange

On November, 21 media announced that the largest office of Binance in Shanghai shut down after a police raid. Many analytics connect this news to the cryptocurrencies losing prices, including bitcoin’s dropping below $7,000.

Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, refuted this information, calling this information a FUD block.

“No police, no raid, no office. Hope you didn’t pay to read that FUD block.” — he wrote in his Twitter-account.

The USA can make Facebook’s cryptocurrency a security

The House of Representative of the USA introduced a new bill about acknowledging managed stablecoins such as Libra as securities.

"Managed stablecoins, such as the proposed Libra, are clearly securities under existing law. This legislation simply clarifies the statute to remove any ambiguity. Bringing clarity to the regulatory structure of these digital assets protects consumers and ensures proper government oversight going forward", — stated Sylvia Garcia, one of the bill's authors.

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Fraudsters are selling Gram. Telegram warns users

Pavel Durov’s team said that selling of Gram tokens has not started yet, and asked users to not fall for scammers’ tricks.

“Some websites offer Gram for sale and pretend to be connected with Telegram. Please be advised that these sites are not official and have no relation to Telegram. Gram has not yet been given to anyone and Telegram is not selling Gram”, - states the official Telegram-channel of the company.

Cryptocurrency worth of $4.4 billion stolen in 2019

According to the research company CiperTrace, the amount of theft and scamming in the sphere of cryptocurrency reached $4,4 billion since the beginning of the year.

The report says that in Q3 of 2019 criminal have stolen the minimal amount during the past years. However, in comparison with the last year, the losses increased by $2,7 billion.

The company’s experts also named the largest crypto crimes of the year: the cryptocurrency pyramin PlusToken ($2,9 billion) and shutting down of the exchange QuadrigaCX ($195 million).

Andreas Antonopoulos: governments place a damper on bitcoin price

Andreas Antonopoulos, famous bitcoin enthusiast, said that governments act to lower bitcoin’s price, but this is not a conspiracy, it’s just their “job”.

“We know for a fact that when the bitcoin bubble started to go up really fast in 2017, the U.S. Treasury decided to fast-track the deployments of futures markets in order to stop that bubble. A lot of people see that as conspiracy, but if you look at the mandate of institutions like the Treasury, that’s actually their job”, Antonopoulos said in his interview with crypto blogger Ivan on Tech.

According to the analyst, this allowed investors to open positions for on lowering the price of bitcoin which balanced the market, as well as reduced its volatility.

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Bank of America named bitcoin the best asset of the decade, billionaires invest into BTC, and ethereum’s volatility is at its lowest

Bank of America: bitcoin is the best investment of the decade

Bank of America Merrill Lynch named bitcoin the best asset for investment of the decade. 1 dollar invested in 2010 would now be $90,026.

For comparison, 1 dollar invested in American stocks during the same period would have the price of $3.46. Myanmar's national currency was named the worst asset, since 2010 $1 invested in it now has a value of just $0.004.

Yet another billionaire bought bitcoins

The number of billionaires investing in cryptocurrencies is steadily growing.

Financial expert Bill Pulte announced his purchase of 11 BTC (around $78,000). He is the CEO of investment company Pulte Capital Partners and is worth about $11 billion. Pulte thinks the main advantage of bitcoin is an opportunity to make a transaction to any part of the world without a middleman. According to the billionaire, bitcoin canmake the life of the poor easier and make the world a better place.

Ethereum’s volatility drops to the level of 2016

Ethereum has been trading in the narrow range of $140-150 for a long time now. According to CoinMetrics.io, ETH’s volatility index dropped to 2016’s lowest.

On December, 8 Ethereum has undergone Istanbul hard fork, which did not lead to the cryptocurrency’s price growth, despite expectations

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Ethereum’s price is threatened, and the number of bitcoin hodlers is growing

Ethereum is threatened: Plus Token pyramid’s assets started moving

The organizers of a cryptocurrency pyramid Plus Token moved 789 525 ETH (about $105 million) to an unknown address. Twitter account Whale Alert paid attention to the transfer.

Matteo Leibowitz, the Block’s analyst, thinks that scammers can buy Ethereum futures for sale, crash down the spot price and close future contracts with a profit.

In the summer the Chinese police managed to detain the suspects in the Plus Token ponzi scheme case, but access to wallets could not be obtained.

The price of unspent UTXOs in loss hits a record high

The number of unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) in loss rose to all-time highs above $45 million, according to a research by Glassnode.

This indicates the rise of the number of “hodlers” - people who hold bitcoin despite its price decrease.

Federal Reserve: over 50% of bitcoin transactions are illegal

Lael Brainard, member of the United States Federal Reserve Board of Governors, said that 25% of all bitcoin users participate in illegal operations.
“One study estimated that more than a quarter of bitcoin users and roughly half of bitcoin transactions, for example, are associated with illegal activity”, — the representative of FR said at an ECB event.

She also said that only a third of exchanges meet the requirements for AML (anti money laundering), CFT (combating the financing of terrorism) and KYC (know your customer) procedure.

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Hackers steal 2 million NULS token, Ethereum hard fork scheduled for January,1 and Craig Wright “proved” he is Satoshi Nakamoto

Hackers steal 2 million NULS tokens

Threat actors hacked and official account of the NULS projects and transferred 2 million of tokens. 550 thousand of them have already entered the market, the NULS team says.

At the same time the exchange rate of the coin has stayed almost the same – the currency lost in price just 0.58%. The developers are going to make a hard fork of altcoin to prevent hackers from spending the rest 1,45 million of tokens. The hacking took place because of the NULS 2.2 version security vulnerability.

Ethereum hard fork to take place on January, 1

Ethereum’s hard fork is scheduled for block 9,200,000 which is expected to be mined by January 1, 2020. The update is designed to delay the Difficulty Bomb by 4 million blocks (equivalent to 611 days).

The developers asked nod owners to update their software before December 30, 2019.

Craig Wright “proved” that he is Satoshi Nakamoto

The Australian scientist Craig Wright demonstrated “proof” that he is the bitcoin’s creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

During an interview with Modern Consensus, Wright showed an article to explain the choice the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym. The article is about a philosopher Tominaga Nakamoto who lived in 18 century. The printed out document, made according to Wright in 2008, also contained the following handwritten notes:

“Nakamoto is the Japanese Adam Smith. Honest Ledger + Micro Cash. Satoshi is Intelligent History. Not too hard.”

He explained that Tominaga Nakamoto wrote about “honest money and the rational nature of things”. Wright compared his with Adam Smith – one of the founders of the theory of economics.
Craig Right publicly claimed that he was the creator of bitcoin in 2019 about hasn’t yet provided sufficient evidence to prove it.

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Tone Vays: bitcoin will kill altcoins

Bitcoin’s hash rate growth will eliminate most of altcoins, trader Tone Vays says.

He noted that since December 2017, bitcoin’s hash rate has grown by 800%, which was not the case with altcoins. The trader has also added bitcoin’s dominance index went from 50% to 70% in 2019, and next year it will be 85%.

“I think we have another 10-15% in Bitcoin to gain on the sh*tcoins as it continues towards 90% and 95% and then 98%”, - Vays said.

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Dear beloved subscribers, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Our team wishes you an endless cash flow, sincere kindness, incredible success, interesting ideas and great health for new achievements!

We believe in you and genuinely hope that you will amass wealth, be reasonable with spending and enjoy work-life balance.

As a tradition, we wish hodlers the growth of crypto market, arbitragers – only successful schemes, and we wish miners always work with profits.

Already today you can start building your invincible financial fortress the walls of which will protect you against storms and turmoil. This fortress will help you and your family live the same lifestyle despite all the disruptions behind the fortress wall.

It is time for New Year’s resolutions and goals. Achieving them will make your life interesting, bright and successful.

Happy holidays!

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Why will altcoins disappear and what will become of bitcoin in 2020

Tone Vays: all altcoins will disappear

Analyst Tone Vays famous in crypto community thinks that the price of the most popular altcoins will drop to zero because they are worthless and cannot substitute for bitcoin.

“Who will use Litecoin when we have Lightning Network, who will use Ethereum when we have side chain Liquid Network? Will people use Binance token? I don’t know because it’s useless”, — Vays said.

He also added that he doesn’t expect to see bitcoin cost over $10,000 in 2020.

Bloomberg: bitcoin will become stronger in 2020

Bloomberg’s analysts published a report with cryptocurrency predictions, according to which bitcoin will become stronger in 2020. The experts note that bitcoin become more and more popular as investment against a weak dollar and global uncertainties.

According to them, limited number of coins and halving of the block reward in May 2020 will account for increasing price of BTC.

“Bitcoin's initial reaction to the U.S. airstrike was a good test of our premise that the first-born crypto is maturing toward a digital version of gold”, — the report says.
On January 3, bitcoin reached its seven weeks’ maximum after U.S. military attack near Baghdad which killed Iraqi general Qasem Soleimani.

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CME launched bitcoin options, and bitcoin network continues to grow

CME Group launched bitcoin options

Chicago exchange CME Group launched bitcoin options trading on January, 13.  The core of the instrument are bitcoin futures contracts introduced by the company in December 2017. After the latter were launched, BTC price started going down from its historic high of $20,000 and hasn’t bounced back to that level yet.

On January,14 bitcoin grew by 4,61%, and the majority of TOP-100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization demonstrate positive dynamics.

127 million of BTC addresses appeared since the end of 2017

Despite bitcoin market being bullish, since 2017 the network got 127 million addresses. According to Decentralized, sometimes the number of new addresses registered within 24 hours reached over 300,000.

“For a sense of scale, the number of people holding more than 0 bitcoin in Jan 2011 was a mere 70,0000. Today that number is north of 28 million — a 400x growth over the decade”, – the company’s analysts write.

They add that the average day in 2019 saw Bitcoin processing over 300,000 transactions in comparison to a mere 5000 in 2011.

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Bitfinex tranferred $1 billion in BTC, and why it is too late to buy BTC

Bitfinex exchange transferred $1 billion in BTC with $80 commission

Cryptocurrency platform Bitfinex confirmed that it was them who made the mysterious transfer of 123,447 BTC (around $1,1 billion) registered by bitcoin enthusiasts. According to the company’s CTO Paolo Ardoino, the transaction was a part of a transfer of 150 thousand BTC to the platform’s hot wallet.

As a result of this operation, the second largest bitcoin address has emerged. It should be noted that the commission for the transfer of $1 B was just $80.

Why it’s too late to buy bitcoin now

In the near future bitcoin’s price will not longer increase, BK Capital Management’s co-found Brian Kelly thinks. He notes that
the growth rate of addresses in the network lags behind bitcoin’s price increase.

"The Bitcoin price got a little bit ahead of the address growth. So, just like I said about Apple, just like I said about the 'triple Qs' in 2000. When an asset goes straight up, that's means a lot of the news is priced in", — he explains.

According to Kelly, back in December the situation was the opposite, when the BTC price was on a decline, the number of addresses continued to increase. He adds that this was a strong buy signal that turned out to be spot-on.

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Miners earned $5 billion in 2019, there is a drop of interest to bitcoin as the price rises, and Peter Schiff lost his coins

Miners made an estimated $5 billion in revenue during 2019

As the specialists of The Block counted. Of that figure, $4.89 billion was in the form of block rewards and the rest – some $147 million – was made via transaction fees. The calculations were made based on bitcoin’s price at the time of mining.

For comparison, in 2018 miners got $5,26 billion in revenue, and in 2017 – $3,19 billion. The block reward will be 12,5 BTC until May 2020, and will drop to 6,25 BTC after halving.

Interest to bitcoin is dropping as the price rises

Google Trends is considered as one of the main
metrics of interest in cryptocurrencies among the masses. Almost all the time the number for “bitcoin” searches was growing after the price’s growth, however now the tendency is broken.

This was brought to attention by Twitter user Haejin. Since the beginning of January, BTC has risen in price by $ 2’000, and altcoin capitalization has grown by 50%, while the number of Bitcoin searches in Google has decreased.

Crypto skeptic lost access to his bitcoin wallet

Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, famous for his negative feedback about cryptocurrencies, said that he had lost access to his wallet. Interestingly, he blames the wallets software in the loss of the coins.

“I just lost all theBitcoin I have ever owned. My wallet got corrupted somehow and my password is no longer valid. So now not only is my Bitcoin intrinsically worthless; it has no market value either. I knew owning Bitcoin was a bad idea, I just never realized it was this bad!”, -Schiff tweeted.

Crypto community suggested that the businessman simply forgot his password and does not want to admit it.

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