ITEMS TAGGED WITH CRYPTOCURRENCY | HotHardware

If you've been following cryptocurrency news over the past few months, then you know that Bitcoin has been on an incredible winning streak. On August 26th, Bitcoin was at $4,300. Three months later, Bitcoin's price has more than doubled. At this moment, Bitcoin has breached yet another high, sitting at $9,065. At the beginning of the month, Bitcoin crossed the $7,500 threshold and hit $8,000 just over a week ago. Today's milestone shows that Bitcoin's growing momentum could allow it to hit $10,000 by year's end. This latest push means that Bitcoin's market cap is now sitting at $151 billion. BITCOIN...Read more...Every few weeks we talk about Bitcoin hitting another record high, and today is no different. Earlier this month, Bitcoin hit a new high of $7,500, sending its market cap soaring above $120 billion. But things got a bit interesting when the scheduled SegWit2x hard fork, which was set to take place this month, was abruptly canceled last week. A number of community leaders and cryptocurrency miners withdrew their support for SegWit2x, which put the fork in limbo. However, a small group of miners have decided to ahead with the fork anyway, which is now set to take place today. With this uncertainty,...Read more...Bitcoin mining is a very common practice today with the price of the cryptocurrency soaring to over $7,000 earlier this month before settling back down in the $6,000 range. With prices soaring more and more people are getting into mining, there has been a marked effect not only on pricing and availability of video cards, but on electricity consumption as well. Most computer users simply plug in their PC and leave it connected never thinking about how much power that machine is slurping. According to Digiconmist, it would be profitable for Bitcoin miners to consume over 24 terawatt-hours of electricity...Read more...If you recently jumped on the Ethereum bandwagon, you might want to sit down for this news. A security vulnerability has been discovered in the Parity wallet service deployed by Parity Technologies. According to a security alert issued by Parity Technologies today, the vulnerability was found within the standard multi-signature (multi-sig) wallet update that was deployed with the Parity Wallet back on July 20th. A multi-sig setup requires that more than one key be used to both initiate and broadcast ETH transactions. What's astounding is the July 20th update was rushed into place after another...Read more...There is strength in numbers, and that is part of what is driving an increase in cryptocurrency mining malware. The idea is to infect as many mobile devices as possible, and tap into the combined computing power to crunch numbers for profit. Unfortunately, this seems to be a trend (on both mobile and PC)security outfit Trend Micro says it found apps with malicious cryptocurrency mining capabilities on Google Play. This is not the first time these kinds of apps have appeared in Google Play, and it probably will not be the last. What they have in common is that they use dynamic JavaScript loading...Read more...Bitcoin has been on an enviable winning streak this year, and reached a new intraday high earlier today. Bitcoin hit a record high of $6,183.98 at around 10:30 AM EST this morning, which comes just after the cryptocurrency pushed through the $6,000 barrier on Friday. Currently, Bitcoin is trading at around $6,080, giving it a market cap of just over $100 billion. This is a meteoric rise from the start of the year, when Bitcoin was trading at just $968. Not even negative commentary from some in the financial industry has been enough to dull the luster of Bitcoin. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon declared...Read more...An increasing number of websites have turned to embedded cryptocurrency mining to generate revenue in place of (or in addition do) ads. One of the problems with this approach is that websites are not always transparent about this. And in other cases, legitimate websites that have been hacked could be running mining software on visitors' PCs without their knowledge. This has gotten the attention of Google, which is considering ways to prevent mining software from running in its Chrome browser. Websites that take this approach use an online JavaScript-based miner called Coin Hive. What this does...Read more...Something big is happening in the cryptocurrency market. Ethereum, the second largest digital coin behind Bitcoin, is receiving a major change to its codebase on Sunday, and nobody knows what exactly will happen. The update amounts to another hard fork, which for the most part have gone well for Ethereum miners and its investors. But there is always that unknown. "I expect that nothing will happen," Ethereum Foundation developer and designer Alex Van de Sande told CoinDesk. "Nothing happened with previous hard forks, except for one."Image Source: Flickr (BTC Keychain) The exception Alex refers...Read more...It looks like another major hack has been perpetrated against a major company, this time the hack was of pay TV network Showtime's streaming platform, ShowtimeAnytime.com. The platform allows users with a subscription via a cable network to stream shows via a browser from anywhere. People with no TV subscription can also pay for the streaming service alone making it appealing to cord cutters. Word is that last week the ShowtimeAnytime platform was hacked and code created by Coin Hive that runs on JavaScript was inserted into the platform. Interestingly, this is the same Coin Hive code that was...Read more...Abnormally high GPU pricing has been an issue for a long time now, but things really hit a peak when AMD launched its Radeon RX Vega series last month. Immediately, the graphics cards were nearly impossible to find, and those that were in stock were found with seriously inflated prices - sometimes with a nearly $200 premium due to price gouging merchants playing the supply and demand game. Unfortunately, it also appears that consumers looking at picking up an NVIDIAgraphics cardare also now starting to feel the burn of a higher street price. While AMD cards are often sought out first...Read more...What is a blockchain? When considering cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum, it's best to first understand the underlying technology and framework that makes their existence possible. At its core, a blockchain is a what is described as a "shared ledger" technology that is used to record the complete history of transactions that have been made. More importantly, this ledger cannot be altered in any way, making it ideal for historical analysis and peer review. When it comes to everyday transactions -- be they financial, inventory or even account-based, traditionally, each party that is involved...Read more...Bitcoin is living up to its billing as a volatile currency. It was a big deal last month when Bitcoin first flirted with a $2,900 valuation. Just a couple of weeks later, it jumped past the $4,000 mark, setting yet another new high in the process. More recently, Bitcoin has hit a rough patch, causing its value to fall as low as $2,915.15, its lowest level since it surge in early August.Cryptocurrency investors seemingly panicked in the wake of negative news this week. It started with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon calling cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin a fraud. Speaking at the Delivering Alpha conference,...Read more...Update, 9/15/2017: We've updated our Ethereum mining benchmark numbers in this article to include AMD's recently released Radeon RX Vega graphics cards. Head here for that updated data or journey on for the full guide.Cryptocurrencymining is a big buzz topic in technology these days. And why not? Utilizing your computer to digitally mine what seems like free money only begs the question, "where do I sign up?" Your machine will actually be "mining" or processing transactions for a decentralized currency, the hottest variant of which is called Ethereum. Poised to overtake the industry...Read more...Just a day after JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon unleashed a fury of attacks on Bitcoin (and cryptocurrencies in general), another salvo is incoming. It was reported last week by Caixin that China was contemplating shutting down cryptocurrency exchange trading, and further confirmation of that order arrived today. The news sent Bitcoin into another tailspin, extending its losses for a fifth straight day, its longest losing streak in over a year. BTC China, the second largest exchange in China, announced that as to today, it will no longer accept new user registrations. It also announced that the...Read more...

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ITEMS TAGGED WITH CRYPTOCURRENCY | HotHardware