Private Equity Moris Beracha Wuani

By Moris Beracha .-  The bitcoins and the main cryptocurrencies in the market were designed with some important security patterns, which make them quite difficult to steal. The fundamental aspects of cryptocurrencies include protecting user privacy, avoiding asset theft and avoiding harmful practices such as double spending. However, there are some failures that are sought out by hackers, which allow them to take over and empty some accounts, leaving losses, in some cases, of thousands or millions of dollars. According to the Bit2me cryptocurrency and blockchain academy, about a billion US dollars in Bitcoin have been stolen to date. They recall the thefts in Mt Gt I and II, for a total of 769,408 bitcoins; the 173,655 bitcoins seized by the FBI when closing Silk Road; the robbery known as “Pony” Botnet, which stands out due to the number of machines involved, and which amounted to a total of US $ 220,000 in various types of cryptocurrencies th...

By Moris Beracha .-  There are food and sweet vending machines all over the world. Therefore, this market has become the target of some developers, who are working to enable people to pay for products into vending machines with cryptocurrencies. It can be highlighted that the energy drinking company “Red Bull” installed the first energy drink machine that only accepts bitcoins (BTC) in 2016, amid the Paralelni Polis congress of hackers in Prague, the Check Republic. Then, the price of tokens dropped and many companies that planned to develop this type of technology decided to turn a blind eye, until in 2019 they decided to take up said systems. In this sense, it is important to mention that a Brazilian programmer and hardware hacker created a Coca-Cola vending machine accepting payments in BTC. The machine also accepts Lightning Network (LN) transactions. According to the TheNextWeb site, “this machine has been assembled by using a water pum...

By Adrian Zmudzinski Youniqx Identity AG, a subsidiary of the Austrian State Printing House, has developed a cryptocurrency hardware wallet, reveals a press release published on July 29. Per the report, the hardware wallet — named Chainlock — enables the offline storage of private keys allowing access to cryptocurrency wallets. The device is reportedly capable of generating the private key, and is also water and heat resistant. The wallet in question will be available via the firm’s partners, including Tokenize Exchange in Singapore and Coinfinity in Central Europe. The release further claims that the Austrian State Printing House is specialized in identity document manufacturing that “implements and offers personalisation solutions for identity documents such as the highly secure Austrian passport.” The printing house has been active in document management for over two-hundred years. As Cointelegraph recently reported, Daimler, the German multi...

By William Suberg   United States president Donald Trump would cause a Bitcoin ( BTC ) price crash if he banned it, but the law would likely prevent him, economist and trader Alex Krueger concluded on Twitter July 15. Trump, who announced his distaste for cryptocurrency in general last week, initially failed to impact market sentiment. A subsequent breakdown over the weekend sent Bitcoin below $10,000 . Publishing a dedicated thread on the chances of Trump banning the cryptocurrency, Krueger argued he could theoretically have some success. By targeting entry and exit points for retail and institutional investors, the president would turn Bitcoin into an isolated, more illiquid asset as it is used by lay consumers.  “Trump could also go after fiat onramps, by simply forbidding banks to service crypto exchanges, or by requiring banks to not service exchanges unless conditions XYZ are fulfilled (and make that practically impossible),” Krueger ...

By Ana Alexandre     The operator of now-defunct Bitcoin ( BTC ) exchange BitFunder, Jon Montroll, has received a 14 months prison sentence following federal charges of obstruction of justice and securities fraud , finance and trading industry news outlet FinanceFeeds reported on July 12. The proceedings against Montroll began last year. In July 2018, Montroll pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, admitting that he provided false balance statements to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in an investigation of the fake 6,000 BTC BitFunder hack in 2013. The proceedings against Montroll ended on July 11, 2019, wherein Judge Richard M. Berman of the New York Southern District Court ruled to imprison Montroll for 14 months and determined 3 years of supervised release. Although Montroll’s counsel argued in favour of a probationary sentence, the government made a case for a sentence from 27 to 33 months’ imprisonment. Recentl...

By Vildana Hajric   While U.S. lawmakers zero in on Facebook Inc.’s ambitious plan to upend the global financial system via its cryptocurrency project, technical indicators are flashing major warning signals when it comes to the price of digital assets. Based on the GTI VERA convergence-divergence indicator, the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index -- which tracks some of the largest digital assets and is comprised 30% of Bitcoin -- received its first sell signal since early June. The indicator detects positive and negative trends, and the last time it flashed a warning sign on June 4, the index fell about 10% in one trading session.  It’s been a volatile month for crypto assets. Prices surged in June after Facebook announced plans to launch its own digital coin called Libra, which the company hopes will one day trade much like the dollar. The launch added to optimism that digital assets are becoming more widely adopted by mainstream instituti...

By Helen Partz European crypto exchange Bitstamp has set up its own Lightning Network (LN) node to boost the network’s capabilities, the company tweeted on July 8. As a second layer over the blockchain of the biggest cryptocurrency, bitcoin (BTC), the LN is designed to enable fast and zero-fee transactions by creating payment channels between users. Specifically, the network aims to address bitcoin’s scalability problem by keeping the majority of transactions off-chain. By launching its own LN node, Bitstamp aims to promote the growth of the network, as well as encourage the crypto industry to adopt the technology, the firm wrote in an official announcement. Bitstamp said that bringing more nodes to the LN will keep the network active, describing the nodes as its basic building units. As more nodes generate payment channels, the total network liquidity increases, which in turn increases the transactions capabilities on the network, Bitstamp explained. Most recently, LN ser...

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s markets watchdog is proposing banning the sale of derivatives based on crypto-assets to retail consumers from early 2020 due to what it considers the prevalence of market abuses. Prices of crypto-assets - which include currencies like bitcoin as well as tokens representing other tradeable assets - are very volatile, and there is a lack of a clear investment need for products referencing them, the Financial Conduct Authority said on Wednesday. The FCA “considers these products are ill-suited to retail consumers who cannot reliably assess the value and risks of derivatives or exchange traded notes (ETNs) that reference certain crypto-assets,” it said in a statement on its public consultation on the proposed ban. Such a blanket ban on crypto derivatives will force customers to use unregulated providers offering less protection, said Jake Green, a financial regulatory partner at law firm Ashurst. “The real question is whether the FCA is sho...

Bitcoin fell nearly $2,000 in a matter of minutes in a sharp crash, a reminder of the cryptocurrency’s volatility even as it has soared this month to its highest level since last year’s boom-and-bust cycle. In late New York trading hours on Wednesday, bitcoin fell from $13,850 to under $11,900 in under an hour, according to Refinitiv data. That took some of the sheen off a rally that has seen bitcoin jump from just over $5,000 at the beginning of May, evoking memories of the cryptocurrency’s last boom-and-bust cycle. By Thursday morning in London bitcoin was tumbling again and trading at around $11,500. Some attributed the slump to a brief shutdown of Coinbase, a San Francisco-based platform which is among the most popular of cryptocurrency exchanges. But Alistair Milne, chief investment officer of the Altana Digital Currency Fund, said that the rapid correction was “inevitable — you simply don’t go up this quickly and sustain it forever, followed by consolidation”. ...

by Vijaya Bharti  Russian Finance Ministry Shows Hope for Crypto Trading in the Country Russian Finance Ministry considers the allowing of crypto trading, a representative of the ministry reveals. As per the report, Alexei Moiseyev, the Deputy Minister of Finance, tells the status of crypto trading in Russia. He said that the ministry has not yet reached the final decision. As a result, crypto trading might be possible in Russia. Previously, a bill surfaced in the ministry on circulation of digital currencies in the Russian Federation. The bill prohibited the utilization of crypto assets as a payment method. The bill surfaced in May this year. Similarly, Anatoly Aksakov is the Duma Financial Committee’s head. He calls the decision which is yet pending as a compromise. Additionally, he points out that the country Russia will adopt a bill in favour of cryptocurrencies. Precisely, FATF is the Financial Action Task Force recommending Russia to adopt the bill. The b...

Facebook is set Tuesday to unveil a bid to bring cryptocurrency payments into the mainstream, reportedly with the endorsement of governments and financial giants. The world's biggest social network is expected to outline details of a virtual currency launching next year that it hopes will avoid the rollercoaster volatility of "blockchain" technologies such as bitcoin. Facebook is setting up a consortium called "Libra" which, according to the Wall Street Journal, has been joined by more than a dozen companies including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Uber. The companies along with venture capitalists and telecommunications firms will reportedly invest around $10 million each into the consortium. Facebook has been trying to ward off hostile regulatory scrutiny after a series of privacy abuses and the spread of fake news. The consortium will be managed externally and will seek to build trust among consumers by pegging the virtual coin to a basket of c...

By Mark Williams Blockchain is one of those tricky concepts known by many but understood by few. Despite this, it has been heralded as a true game changer with the ability to revolutionise traditional transactions and processes. Some even compare its potential to that of the internet. But what does blockchain technology do, and how is it impacting the world of work? What is a blockchain? A blockchain is a distributed digital ledger where transactions are recorded and stored in chronological order. When a transaction takes place, a new block is added. Each new block contains information about the transaction and a unique hash – much like an encrypted ‘digital fingerprint’ – for both the new block and the previous block. So, each new block is cryptographically linked to the previous block, creating a chain of blocks all the way back to the original ‘genesis’ block. Instead of being managed by a central entity, the blockchain is distributed openly across...

By  Marie Huillet As many as 50,000 servers worldwide have allegedly been infected with an advanced  cryptojacking  malware that mines the privacy-focused open source cryptocurrency turtlecoin (TRTL). The news was  revealed  in an analysis by international hacker and cybersecurity expert group Guardicore Labs on May 29. As reported, cryptojacking is an industry term for stealth crypto mining attacks which work by installing malware that uses a computer’s processing power to  mine  for cryptocurrencies without the owner’s consent or knowledge. Having first detected the campaign in April and traced its origins and progress, Guardicore Labs believes the malware has infected up to 50,000 Windows MS-SQL and PHPMyAdmin servers over the past four months worldwide. The analysts backdated attacks to late February, noting the campaign’s precipitous expansion at a rate of over “seven hundred new victims per day.” Between April 13 and May 13, t...

By Daniel Palmer Canada-based messaging app firm Kik has launched a crypto crowdfunding campaign to support a likely court battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over its 2017 initial coin offering (ICO). Announced by Kik founder and CEO Ted Livingston and Patrick Gibbs, a partner at law firm Cooley LLP, on the UnChained Podcast Tuesday, the campaign is being launched in the hopes that “a lawsuit would eventually result in a new Howey test for crypto tokens, to determine which ones are a security.” A dedicated website – dubbed Defend Crypto – has already been set up allowing supporters to contribute to the fundraising effort, that its founders say is not only in support of Kik but many crypto firms that face potential action from the U.S. regulator. The site offers donation options in 19 cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and XRP, as well as less standard options like augur (REP), DAI and, of course, Kik’s kin (KIN) token. ...

Cryptocurrency is taking another step towards the mainstream as mobile carrier AT&T announced it would accept payments in crypto today, according to a  release from the company. Customers can pay their mobile bills via BitPay when they pay online or in app. BitPay is one of the largest cryptocurrency payment processing firms, processing bitcoin transactions. AT&T hasn't gone all in on crypto yet, as of now the option to pay through BitPay is only extended to bill transactions. Though the move may seem positive for crypto users, Joe McCann, a former crypto hedge fund  manager at Passport Capital, told The Block the move seemed to come out of left field and speculated that perhaps the company has internal data showing more millennials utilizing crypto payments. "What upside does AT&T have in supporting crypto payments?" he asked. McCann's questions of internal data may not be off-base, as Kevin McDorman, vice president, AT...

By Darryn Pollock Despite Bitcoin being the oldest, most well established, and functional cryptocurrency around, there is no doubting that there are some issues that need resolving. Those issues have been placed under the magnifying glass in more recent times with the emergence of other cryptocurrencies that are looking at being better than Bitcoin. Teenage Bitcoin millionaire Erik Finman has said that the major cryptocurrency needs to resolve some of this issues surrounding it or else it will die. He has pinpointed four issues which he believes need to be fixes, and they range from its complexity with regards to use, high transaction fees, slow processing speeds and in-fighting among development teams. Long term dead   Despite making his fortunes off some savvy and early investing in Bitcoin, Finman said in December last year that he believes that Bitcoin is “Long Term Dead”, but added that cryptocurrencies in general are here to stay. His four issues t...