Warning over fake Bitcoin Foundation sites scamming …

Summary:Fraudsters are targeting Bitcoin users with phoney The Bitcoin Foundation websites and sending potential victims to a fake Bitcoin wallet designed to phish their credentials.

The latest ruse to scam Bitcoin owners out of their holdings is websites posing as The Bitcoin Foundation and capitalising on concerns over the cryptocurrency's falling price.

The Bitcoin Foundation said on Monday that it has seen a spike in complaints to its helpdesk over a fraud campaign where scammers direct Bitcoin users to spoofed versions of the foundation's site.

The two scam domains the foundation is aware of are: bitcompensation.com and bitsecuretransfer.com. According to whois.is, both were registered in mid-November by what appears to be the same person.

"The Bitcoin Foundation's website is being cloned and spoofed at web addresses and domains that have absolutely nothing to do with the Bitcoin Foundation," it said.

"If you are contacted and directed to a page that looks like the screenshot below, please close your browser as you are about to be scammed out of your Bitcoins."

Both sites present a 'compensating the users' campaign, purportedly run by the foundation and another fictitious organisation, and urge users to supply their bitcoin address in a field in order to redeem their 'gift'.

The campaign attempts to trick less knowledgeable users who feel they've "lost too much" as a result of Bitcoin's falling price over recent months. This time last year, it was trading at over $1,100; today it's worth $380.

"Since the price of the bitcoin went down a lot, members of the bitcoin community have lost too much," the scam sites read. "To decrease these loss and to sustain our coin, we, The Bitcoin Foundation together with Blockchain, are going to offer to each of our members a random amount of coins."

Continue reading here:
Warning over fake Bitcoin Foundation sites scamming ...

Cryptocurrency | Bitcoin News and Views

Readers may recall an article published on this website not two days ago, in which we embarked on a foray into the world of bitcoin, in order to show how the average investor with little to no knowledge of the cryptocurrency goes about throwing money ... [...]

Paul Solman: Our Bitcoin story on the NewsHour is proving so popular that we've decided to post longer excerpts of our main interviews. Earlier Wednesday, we published our conversation with Bitcoin Education Project's Charles Hoskinson. This one is ... [...]

Stockholm, Sweden's KnCMiner AB, the stratospheric Bitcoin mining start-up that gained huge recognition earlier this week for producing the world's first 28nm Bitcoin miner, and believed to be the world's fastest 28nm concept to silicon ever made, will ... [...]

BTC-e is one of the most well-known cryptocurrency exchanges on the Internet and features in the Bitcoin Price Index. In light of difficulties in withdrawing funds from Mt. Gox, more people are turning to the Bulgaria-based exchange to buy and sell digital coins. We take a look at just what you can do with this exchange.To start with, BTC-e has a good range of trading options. On the fiat side users can trade for US dollars (USD), Russian Roubles (RUR), and Euros (EUR).The range of digital currencies is even larger with: Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Namecoin (NMC), NovaCoin (NVC), Terracoin (TRC), PPCoin (PPC), and Feathercoin (FTC). The allowed trading pairs are shown in the table below:EURRURBTCLTCNMCNVCTRCPPCFTCUSDYESYESYESYESYESNONONONOEURNOYESYESNONONONONORURYESYESNONONONONOBTCYESYESYESYESYESYESThe main page of the site, the trading interface, gives you a candle chart of the selected trading pair.All trading pairs are displayed through HTML buttons, and include the current exchange rate. Each of them updates in real time, and if you watch for long enough youll see a green or red highlight when the rate changes, depending on whether it has increased or decreased.The rates are shown in the format of Buying/'Selling, e.g. BTC/USD=120 would mean a bitcoin is worth 120 USD. Despite this, trading in both directions is possible.An honourable mention goes to the real time chat box shown beside the trading data lovingly known as the troll box. This is a place where regular users inhabit and much sarcasm ensues!From the trading page you can see a recent history of trades for the currently selected trading pair.For each direction, there are fields you may fill to create a buy or sell order. If you accept the price that the forms are automatically filled with, your order will be completed immediately as long as there are sufficient funds on offer at the given price.If you decided to set your own price, youll have t [...]

ATLANTA and STOCKHOLM, Oct. 5, 2013 /CNW/ - Stockholm, Sweden's KnCMiner AB, the stratospheric Bitcoin mining start-up that gained huge recognition earlier this week for producing the world's first 28nm Bitcoin miner, and believed to be the world's... [...]

Cryptocurrency made the leap from being an academic concept to (virtual) reality with the creation of Bitcoin in 2009. While Bitcoin attracted a growing following in subsequent years, it captured significant investor and media attention in April 2013 ... [...]

Bitcoin -- a cryptography based digital currency, or "cryptocurrency" for short -- has had its fair share of ups and downs, but today is the most used digital currency. A Bitcoin trades for around $120 USD at current rates and offers secure, nation ... [...]

US fugitive Edward Snowden's defense fund, launched recently by WikiLeaks to raise money for the legal protection of the NSA leaker, has announced it now accepts donations in virtual currency Bitcoin. The Journalistic Source Protection Defence Fund... [...]

Here is the original post:
Cryptocurrency | Bitcoin News and Views

Cryptocurrency exchange EXMO.COM

Bitcoin is a digital currency created in 2009. The main difference of bitcoins from other types of digital currency is its total openness: its source code is open for public perusal and has been repeatedly verified by security experts. There is no central authority that issues new bitcoins or controls money operations: all the transactions are available for tracking by all bitcoin users and are verified automatically. Despite that, one can preserve the anonymity of payment by not using the real personal information but only bitcoin addresses.Bitcoin is a digital currency created in 2009. The main difference of bitcoins from other types of digital currency is its total openness: its source code is open for public perusal and has been repeatedly verified by security experts. There is no central authority that issues new bitcoins or controls money operations: all the transactions are available for tracking by all bitcoin users and are verified automatically. Despite that, one can preserve the anonymity of payment by not using the real personal information but only bitcoin addresses.

As theres no central controlling body, your account cannot be blocked if you keep bitcoins on your computer, what is considered one of the major system advantages. Nobody is able to prevent you from sending or receiving money transfers. At the same time transactions are completed almost immediately and are charged with minimum fees or are free. You can forget about bank working hours, non-working days or money transfers that take days to be executed. You can manage your funds any day, at any time and in whatever way you see fit. In this manner the reliability of a bank or a bitcoin account keeper is stipulated by the verified mathematical algorithms and cryptography mechanisms.

You may not worry about your funds because in contrast to other currencies there cannot be issued an indefinite number of bitcoins, and thats why inflation and consequent decrease of the purchasing power of your savings are totally excluded. There can only exist a certain number of bitcoins, and once 21 million bitcoins have been issued, their mining will stop.

The way of creating new bitcoins is of a special interest: bitcoins are equally distributed among those who support the Bitcoin network with their computing power, verifying and protecting users transactions. Everyone can take part in this process, but in order to do this a very powerful computer hardware is required.

Bitcoins success drew great attention to it and there started to emerge new digital currencies that partially or totally copied the essence of Bitoin, sometimes bringing to the market new interesting possibilities. Nevertheless, Bitcoin is still the most known and popular cryptocurrency.

If on some web or in a shop you see written Bitcoin accepted here or just a Bitcoin sign, it means that at that place you can pay for requested services, goods or make a donation using bitcoins. You can also accept bitcoins as a payment for your services or products. Bitcoins are easily exchanged for other currencies (e.g. roubles or dollars) on special exchange platforms or exchange bureaus, as well as on this page.

If you want to get a deeper understanding of how Bitcoin functions or of its technical features, we recommend you to take a look at our F.A.Q. about Bitcoin and read the specialized article on Wikipedia.

In order to buy bitcoins or other cryptocurrency, please replenish your account making a deposit in roubles (or in any other currency that you wish to give for Bitcoin).

You can do this quite easily just clicking on Refill my account below the exchange field and choosing from the dropdown list the currency, the method (the payment system) and the desired amount.

After that you will be able to buy bitcoins or any other cryptocurrency.

Read the rest here:
Cryptocurrency exchange EXMO.COM

A Name Matters: Cryptocurrency Names and Ratings

It has been mentioned before that the success of an alternate cryptocurrency depends on 5 primary things:

But it was quite unexpected that the name of the coin does play the most important role over the long term, since its the only one thing from the five features, mentioned above, that cannot be changed, or significantly improved.

A Bitcointalk.org member using the moniker alt19 explained:

You can add an infrastructure, you can add innovative features to any coin, theoretically, but you cannot change the past, you cannot change the history that is in price logs and in a peoples memory.

So lets try to build a rating of the cryptocurrency names of real coins, based on various criteria:

This story is based on the ideas of Bitcointalk community members. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you will find the thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=655461.0

Do you think the name of a coin matters? Whats your favorite name? Log in below using your favorite social network and weigh in on the discussion.

Visit link:
A Name Matters: Cryptocurrency Names and Ratings

Cryptocurrency cruncher cranks prime number constellation

Beginner's guide to SSL certificates

Bitcoin mining, our own Simon Rockman wrote last January, is essentially a brute-force attack on the generating algorithm.

Bitcoin, and all the other alt-coins, is training a skillset for building password-cracking hardware that is both powerful and portable, he wrote.

It looks like cryptocurrencies are also helping to spot some useful prime numbers, according to the folks behind Riecoin.

Riecoin is a fork of Bitcoin but uses distributed contributions, rather than offering the chance for standalone mining. Participating in currency's gestation also has a by-product of highly-verified prime sextuplets. As the Riecoin folk note, there's a US$1million prize up for grabs for anyone who can prove The Riemann Hypothesis' suggestion that prime numbers occur in some sort of pattern.

As prime numbers are rather handy when encrypting data, there's some value in knowing more about them. Detail-oriented Reg readers will, by now, have noted that Riecoin and Riemann Hypothesis are rather similar: that's no accident, as the currency is named in homage to the mathematician.

Riecoin claims that its cluster of distributed coiners have, during November, twice broken the world record for creating a prime sextuplet, a collection of six prime numbers packed together as tightly as possible.

On November 17 the Riecoin swarm cranked out a sextuplet in 70 minutes. A week later, it beat that record and produced longer primes while doing so. There's more detail about Riecoin and the maths behind it in this FAQ.

Riecoin's also a cryptocurrency and is traded on several exchanges, at a value of aboiut 0.0000175 bitcoin.

Top 5 reasons to deploy VMware with Tegile

Read this article:
Cryptocurrency cruncher cranks prime number constellation

086 PRIVACY InfoSec Bitcoin CryptoCurrency Philosophy Anarchy Anonymous Naughty Sexy Kitty Cat Tech – Video


086 PRIVACY InfoSec Bitcoin CryptoCurrency Philosophy Anarchy Anonymous Naughty Sexy Kitty Cat Tech
http://www.twitter.com/VanosEnigmA + http://www.facebook.com/VanosEnigma http://www.facebook.com/JCCVWJusticeCourtComedyInVirtualWorlds https://www.facebook.com/pages/CCBP-Canari...

By: VanosEnigmA Enigmaisland

More here:
086 PRIVACY InfoSec Bitcoin CryptoCurrency Philosophy Anarchy Anonymous Naughty Sexy Kitty Cat Tech - Video

Bitcoin might fail but the blockchain is here to stay

Bitcoin could end up being the MySpace of cryptocurrency, but the underlying technology powering new payment methods is here to stay. That's according to Brock Pierce, a tech entrepreneur with his eyes firmly fixed on cryptocurrencies.

"By having a baseline protocol that allows you to innovate around finance, a lot of interesting things can happen," he says. The protocol Pierce is talking about is the blockchain -- a public, transparent ledger that gives a chain of transactions that is secure and reliable.

"This protocol is going to democratise the global financial system," Pierce explains to the audience at WIRED Retail. In South America and Africa the blockchain, be it through Bitcoinor another cryptocurrency, has huge transformative potential.

Pierce also believes that the technology could have an impact on other processes. Voting systems that used the blockchain could ensure that elections were free of corruption and easier to run.

He compares the use of Bitcoin in the developing world to Africa's "jump" to mobile communications. With little in the way of fixed line networks many countries went straight to mobile phones -- similar things could happen with Bitcoin. Pierce ought to know, he's the cofounder of Crypto Currency Partners (CCP) which has invested in 25 crypto projects so far this year.

One market already using the blockchain to bypass traditional banks is international money transfer. People who move abroad to find work and want to send money home are hampered by expensive international transfer speeds, but cryptocurrency removes this barrier.

"This innovation is more substantial than the internet. The blockchain is going to have an even larger impact. As to what currency does it -- that's difficult to say."

"I think that people are starting to recognise the value of the blockchain, whether that be large banks becoming incredibly friendly to the blockchain and the innovation it represents. The opportunities it creates are substantial enough that I don't see this trend coming to an end."

Originally posted here:
Bitcoin might fail but the blockchain is here to stay