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 that...

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 Yogita Khatri Cryptocurrency exchange Binance said it is revamping security measures after losing some 7,000 bitcoin worth over $40 million in a hack earlier this week. “Significant” changes related to its application programming interface (API), two-factor authentication (2FA) and withdrawal validation are being made, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said in a blog post published on Friday. The exchange did not disclose more details regarding these efforts, but said it is also improving its risk management and know-your-customer procedures to fight phishing, among other additional security measures at the back-end. Binance will take action of some of the measures within this week and in the coming weeks in order to resume services at the earliest, according to the post. Zhao said tentatively, the exchange is looking to resume withdrawals and deposits “early next week.” Binance will also be adding support for hardware-based 2FA devices such as YubiKey “very soon,”...

By Adrian Zmudzinski The United Arab Emirates ( UAE ) and Saudi Arabia have announced an agreement to cooperate on the creation of a cryptocurrency , UAE official news agency Emirate News Agency reports on Jan. 19. According to the report, the Executive Committee of the Saudi-Emirati Coordination Council has held a meeting in UAE capital Abu Dhabi, with 16 members in total from both countries, in order to discuss the join initiatives in the Strategy of Resolve. The Strategy of Resolve is comprised of seven initiatives, including civil aviation, financial awareness youth training, and the development of a cross-border digital currency. According to the article, the cryptocurrency “will be strictly targeted for banks at an experimental phase with the aim of better understanding the implications of blockchain technology and facilitating cross-border payments.” The joint cryptocurrency project will also research the effect of a central currency on financial po...

ETC Wallpaper - Ethereum Classic Cryptocurrency By Adrian Zmudzinski | Cointelegraph     The Ethereum Classic 51 percent attacker has reportedly returned $100,000 to cryptocurrency exchange Gate.io, a post on the official exchange’s blog reports on Jan. 12. The company further noted that they tried contacting the attacker but didn’t get any reply until now, and that they do not know the reason why the funds have been returned. The exchange declared: “If the attacker didn't run it for profit, he might be a white hacker who wanted to remind people the risks in blockchain consensus and hashing power security.” A white hat hacker is a hacker with a strong professional ethic who uses his hacking abilities for good and not for personal gain. The jargon file , a staple of hacker culture, further explains: “The term white hat [stands] for an ally or friendly security specialist.” On Jan. 9, Gate.io published their analysis of the 51 percent attack, fi...

The SEC this year has kept up a steady stream of actions against private-equity firms By Chris Cumming Evidence is building that the Securities and Exchange Commission has moved on from the era of trying to reform private equity through enforcement actions. The SEC last week released its strategic plan for the next four years, which offers an important window into how the commission views the markets and its role as regulator and enforcer. The plan is heavy on efforts to protect retail investors and adapt to changing technology, including issues like improving cybersecurity and tracing initial coin offerings. But it dedicates almost no time to private markets, institutional investors, or fee and expense abuses, areas that were often highlighted as priorities under the previous SEC regime. Instead, the SEC is focused on ways to protect retail investors, a point Jay Clayton has repeatedly emphasized since taking over as the regulator’s chairman last year. Goals in the ne...

By Moris Beracha/ Crypto.BI According to a quarterly report released by Cipher Trace, the quantitative investment firm, specializing in the systematic trading of cryptocurrencies, in the first half of 2018, more than $760 million in cryptocurrency was stolen from exchanges, nearly three times more than in 2017. The growth in the demand for currency in the industry of services has driven, according to this report, money laundering of coins. Also, the services that clean dirty funds are widely available, said CipherTrace, and some have even advertised through Google AdWords. Likewise, many exchanges, and new ones are opening all the time, have security vulnerabilities. And cryptocurrencies, once stolen, often cannot be returned or even traced to the thieves. “There are so many cryptocurrencies now, and they are worth so much money, and there are so many exchanges globally where you can cash out, that we’ve seen not just traditional cyber gangs, but we’ve seen a new s...

By Clem Chambers  One of the first thoughts anyone looking at bitcoin will have is the amount of energy used by miners to maintain the blockchain. Apparently, some people think that bitcoin and blockchain will boil the seas dry with its energy consumption. Bitcoiners would say this is FUD--the modern equivalent of BS or just straight lies and is often used as an out of hand rebuttal of argument. FUD stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt and used to be an old strategy in marketing to confuse your competitors and keep them from buying your product in a corporate environment generally ruled by a culture of CYA (cover your rear) and fear. Bitcoin using too much energy is thus pure FUD as it originates in the sectors that will lose more or be disrupted most by the blockchain, the latest being the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), a core piece of the global banking infrastructure. Let’s have a quick look at banking’s footprint. According to the world bank th...

By Clare Dickinson Private-equity firms are catching up with their financial services peers when it comes to technology, with cybersecurity and the cloud identified as investment priorities for the year ahead, according to an industry survey. Banks and asset managers have already begun to use artificial intelligence and machine learning in parts of their business; trading units within banks are looking at how to make money from cryptocurrencies; and many financial services institutions have partnered with fintech startups. But private equity has been slow to embrace these innovations. That seems set to change, according to fund administrator Augentius, which asked buyout and real estate firms about their use of technology. Ian Kelly, chief executive of Augentius, said: “It’s fair to say the old stereotype of the industry lagging behind when it comes to seeing the importance of technology is now firmly outdated. The results underline how attitudes have shift...