Cryptocurrencies Price Analysis: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple Where Are They Heading? – Coingape

The market cap for the entire cryptocurrency industry dropped by a total of over $10 billion during just the past few days, largely driven by Bitcoin dropping back beneath $7,000 to reach the current $6,773 trading price.

This week will be extremely important for Bitcoin (and the rest of the market) because a drop beneath the $6,700 level could cause Bitcoin to unwind toward the $6,000 level. However, with the Bitcoin block halving only 27 days away, it is unlikely that Bitcoin should stay beneath $7,000 for too long.

BTC/USD Daily CHART SHORT TERM

Looking at the daily chart above, we can see that Bitcoin ran into resistance at the $7,400 level last week which caused the cryptocurrency increase to stall and reverse. It went on to drop back beneath $7,000 until finding support at the $6,800 level which had provided strong resistance in March 2020 (now turned to support).

In todays trading session, Bitcoin dropped further beneath this support as it dropped as low as $6,550. It has since recovered slightly as it attempts to remain above the .236 Fibonacci Retracement support at $6,765.

Bitcoin is still considered as neutral at this moment in time but a close beneath $6,765 would turn it bearish in the short term.

If the sellers do push lower, the first level of support is expected at $6,500. Beneath this, support can be found at $6,320 (.382 Fib Retracement), $6,000 (.5 Fib Retracement), and $5,600 (.518 Fib Retracement).

On the other hand, if the bulls rebound from the current $6,765 support, the first level of resistance is located at $7,000. Above this, resistance lies at $7,174, $7,400, and $7,676 (1.618 Fib Extension).

The RSI has recently dipped beneath the 50 level to show that the momentum is starting to shift back into the bearish favor. If it continues to dip lower this will indicate that the bearish momentum is increasing and we can expect further declines.

ETH/USD Daily CHART SHORT TERM

Ethereum managed to climb as high as $176 in last weeks trading period as it ran into resistance at a short term 1.414 Fibonacci Extension level. It went on to reverse from here as it dropped into support at $160.

In todays trading session, we can see that ETH has fallen further lower from $160 to reach the current support at $154 which is provided by a .236 Fibonacci Retracement level.

Etheruem is also considered to be neutral right now and would still need to break beneath $140 before we can consider it to be bearish. It would need to close above $180 to be considered as bullish in the short term.

If the sellers do push ETH beneath the current $154 support, we can expect immediate support at $150. Beneath this, added support lies at $142 (.382 Fib Retracement), $132 (.5 Fib Retracement), and $122 (.618 Fib Retracement).

On the other hand, if the bulls can hold $155 and push higher, resistance lies at $160, $172, $176, and $187.

The RSI is still trading along with the 50 level as indecision looms within the market. If it does drop beneath 50 we can expect the bearish pressure to increase and ETH to fall beneath $150.

XRP/USD Daily CHART SHORT TERM

Looking at the daily chart above, we can see that XRP managed to climb as high as $0.20 in last weeks trading session. However, it was unable to overcome this resistance, provided by a bearish .382 Fibonacci Retracement level, causing the market to roll over and fall.

It dropped as low as $0.18 today but has since recovered slightly to trade above the .236 Fibonacci Retracement support at $0.184.

XRP remains neutral until it can break above the $0.20 level. A break beneath $0.17 would likely turn XRP bearish in the short term.

If the sellers push lower, support can be found at $0184 (.236 Fib Retracement), $0.18, and $0.17 (.382 Fib Retracement). Beneath this, support lies at $0.159 (.5 Fib Retracement) and $0.147 (.618 Fib Retracement).

On the other hand, if the bulls regroup and push higher, the first level of resistance is located at $0.2. Above this, resistance lies at $0.211, $0.22, and $0.229 (bearish .5 Fib Retracement).

The RSI is also trading at the 50 level as indecision is seen within the market. If the RSI can remain above 50, this will be a very promising sign for the XRP bulls.

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Cryptocurrencies Price Analysis: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple - Where Are They Heading?

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Bitcoin saw a sharp 6% price drop this week as it breaks beneath $6,800 again.Ethereum witnessed a 4% price decline after rolling over at $172 to reach the current $155 trading price.Ripple saw a small 2.3% price drop as failed to break above $0.2 to reach $0.186.

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Yaz Sheikh

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Coin Gape

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Cryptocurrencies Price Analysis: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple Where Are They Heading? - Coingape

The Best Privacy Coins: Crypto Briefing’s Top 10 – Crypto Briefing

Privacy coins have been lauded by some as necessary to protect users basic right to privacy. So, what are the top 10 privacy-centric cryptocurrencies?

Privacy cryptocurrencies occupy a sacred place in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

While most cryptocurrency transactions are traceable on the blockchain, privacy coins utilize a range of protocols to obscure the addresses of transacting parties. Some privacy cryptocurrencies are private by default. Others offer identity-preserving features as an option.

Some exchanges have even delisted many coins due to regulatory pressures to implement strict KYC requirements. But if protecting ones identity is a highly valued commodity, its important to understand how each of the top privacy coins operates.

Monero is the privacy coin with the largest market cap, at around $1 billion at press time.

Monero uses the CryptoNight Proof-of-Work protocol to make the network ASIC resistant. The protocol also obscures wallet transaction details and user amounts on the public blockchain. A truly fungible cryptocurrency, XMR coins transaction histories cannot be traced.

CryptoNight uses ring signatures and stealth addresses to hide transaction details. All transactions are private by default.

RingCT (Ring Confidential Transactions), an enhancement of CryptoNight, implements ring signatures to obfuscate transactions on the network by mixing them with other spendable transaction inputs.

The blockchain displays the validity of transactions, but only the sender and receiver involved in a particular transaction can see the amount of coins transferred in a transaction.

Monero is widely considered the most important of this category of cryptocurrencies.

Zcoin uses a protocol known as Sigma to preserve user identity. Sigma removes the ability to link coins with transaction histories. Only the parties to a transaction have knowledge of the exchange of funds.

The privacy-focused coin has integrated Tor into its network to hide users IP addresses. The development team also added Dandelion++ to improve IP address protection when a transaction is broadcast.

The team is currently building toward the launch of Lelantus, an upgrade that would improve the protocols scalability, privacy, and ease of use.

Lelantus will usher incompletely untraceable transactions. Called HOOMP, Hierarchical One-out-of-Many-Proofs, the algorithm significantly improves on the performance of the One-Out-of-Many Proofs (OOMP).

OOMP is a building block of many other upcoming privacy protocols, such as Beam, Anonymous Zether, JP Morgans Many to Many proofs, and Moneros Triptych and Triptych-2.

On average, Zcoin developers found a 10x faster proving time, as well as a reduction in verification time, using HOOMP. This feature could make it one of the most important privacy coins in the market.

Bytecoin bills itself as the worlds first private untraceable cryptocurrency. To ensure user privacy, Bytecoin deploys CryptoNote technology.

The protocol utilizes ring signatures to bundle transactions as well as making addresses unlinkable through the generation of non-repeating, one-time address.

Bytecoins privacy credentials are only enhanced by the fact that the more widely known Monero is a fork of the BCN project.

Grin is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency without censorship or restrictions. The project deploys two methods to ensure transaction privacy for its users.

First, the Grin blockchain does not store amounts or addresses involved in transactions. Transactions are relayed through a sub-set of peers prior to being broadcast.

Secondly, using Mimblewimble allows past transaction data to be erased. That not only contributes to the privacy of transactions, but it also helps the blockchain scale. Beam is another project that uses the Mimblewimble protocol.

To ensure privacy and fungibility, the Litecoin Foundation has considered implementing the protocol on the LTC blockchain. According to the foundation:

We have started exploration towards adding privacy and fungibility to Litecoin by allowing on-chain conversion of regular LTC into a MimbleWimble variant of LTC and vice versa. Upon such conversion, it will be possible to transact with MimbleWimble LTC in complete confidentiality.

Super Zero is the native token for the SERO Dapp platform. SERO uses Super-ZK for privacy, and is reportedly 20 times faster than the Sapling upgrade of zk-SNARKs.

Its protocol claims to be the first to support smart contracts that use zero-knowledge proofs.

Dash, a fork of the Bitcoin protocol that began life as Xcoin in 2014, has an optional privacy feature that allows users to hide transaction details if they want to through the networks mixing mechanism. Dashs privacy feature is called PrivateSend.

It has become a very popular way to transact in Venezuela. The feature, an implementation of CoinJoin, mixes coins with other transactions, to obscure the origin of the funds.

Dash is not, strictly speaking, a privacy coin and does not market itself as one.

In fact, the companys website promotes it as instant, global, and easy to use. Transactions cost less than one cent and are near-instant.

Zcash is another widely-used coin with optional privacy.

Zcash transactions can take two forms: transparent or private. In private transactions, address details are hidden.

Zcash is a fork of the Bitcoin protocol, adding a privacy layer through a cryptographic proof known as zk-SNARKs. Zero Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge allows transactions to be verified without any knowledge of the wallet addresses involved or the amounts transferred.

According to the Zcash team:

Zero-knowledge proofs allow one party (the prover) to prove to another (the verifier) that a statement is true, without revealing any information beyond the validity of the statement itself. For example, given the hash of a random number, the prover could convince the verifier that there indeed exists a number with this hash value, without revealing what it is.

Horizen is a technology platform with optional privacy features that aims to enable an application-rich and inclusive ecosystem to provide people with freedom and everyday usability.

ZEN is the platforms native cryptocurrency.

Like other privacy coins, its privacy features are optional, offering both T-Addresses (transparent) and Z-Addresses (private). Z-Addresses utilize zero-knowledge cryptography to allow users to obfuscate transaction amounts and sender and receiver addresses.

Komodo was a source-code fork of Zcash, enabling the project to implement the zk-SNARKs protocol.

The platform allows third party projects to use the protocol, making privacy a possibility for any blockchain network. If a project wishes to adopt Komodos privacy as a feature, it can also choose whether to make it optional or mandatory.

Komodo developers built Pirate Chain in mid-2018. Pirate Chain (ARRR) has mandatory transaction privacy using the zk-SNARKs protocol. The Komodo team claims to be one of the most private blockchains in operation.

The Komodo website outlines that Moneros ring-signature protocol leaves traces of metadata, which the zk-SNARKs protocol does not.

Verge, originally DogecoinDark, uses an anonymous network layer and the Tor anonymity tool to hide IP addresses and user locations.

The Wraith Protocol upgrade brought the ability to accommodate stealth addressin to the Verge network. The upgrade offers senders and receivers the ability to choose to have transactions recorded to the public or the private ledger.

Not only are the locations of senders and receivers private by default, but it also offers stealth addressing.

For these reasons, Verge is a payment option accepted by Pornhub, an ideal use case for privacy coins.

Privacy coins remain an important part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the increased regulatory scrutiny of privacy-enhancing features in the cryptocurrency markets, privacy-focused projects will continue to be important tools against privacy infringements.

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The Best Privacy Coins: Crypto Briefing's Top 10 - Crypto Briefing

ROIMAX The Online Trading Brand Is Expanding Its Cryptocurrency – AiThority

ROIMAX aims to provide traders with all the educational materials they need to make knowledgeable trades, and to equip them with the trading tools they need to succeed

The online trading brand continues on its quest to provide the best conditions for traders wanting to get involved in the cryptocurrency market. This comes in a period of great uncertainty generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, one that requires traders to find alternative investment tools. Cryptocurrencies are uncorrelated instruments and can serve as an efficient diversification tool for every trader and with the ROIMAX improved offer, things had been taken up a notch.

Global leading trading technology

Traders working withroimax.iocan trade with confidence and benefit from a proprietary platform that integrated some of the most superior technology. With a combination of power and speed, they can optimize their efficiency on the market and trade on any type of device, given the platform is web-based.

Given that trading cryptocurrencies come with a specific set of challenges, ROIMAX had anticipated the need for a personalized trading offer. The platform is tailored towards helping traders perform in one of the most volatile markets.

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Fully aware that clients need access to a wide range of trading features, ROIMAX acts as a trading partner by offering 1-on-1 trading sessions with an account manager who will guide traders every step of the way and equip them with high-quality tools for proper trading.

By this opportunity by ROIMAX is aiming to base relationships with new traders, who are looking for an easy but educated entrance to the trading world.

Wide range of trading instruments and resources

Whats different as opposed to other online brokerage companies has to do with the focus on providing access to a rich list of trading instruments. Most of the popular brokers offer access to a handful of cryptocurrency contracts, but ROIMAX covers tens of different cryptocurrency CFDs denominated in US Dollar, Euro, CAD, or GBP. Aside from crypto-to-fiat contracts, there is a more diverse set of crypto-to-crypto contracts, based on Bitcoin, Ether, or Tether.

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The main difference in trading cryptocurrency CFDs is the ability to use up to 1:40 leverage, as it is with ROIMAX, and only profit from the falling and rising of market valuations. The company stands strong for customers by also providing access to a comprehensive Trading Academy, with a full range of resources to help them find opportunities and take the trading experience to the next level.

Uncertain periods require traders to adapt quickly to fast-changing circumstances. The offer set into place by ROIMAX wants to provide clients with an alternative to the traditional assets (stocks, bonds, commodities, etc.) in the form of cryptocurrency-based CFDs. Given the volatility in all financial markets, traders need to diversify their portfolio and cryptocurrencies are uncorrelated instruments that can help them spread the risk.

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ROIMAX The Online Trading Brand Is Expanding Its Cryptocurrency - AiThority

How Cryptocurrency Can Save and The Man Who Is Helping – Net Newsledger

COVID-19 has impacted the world and its global markets drastically. Fears the virus spread will lead to a pandemic that could slow the global economy are dragging down stock prices; the S&P 500 index is in the red by 10 percent since the beginning of 2020.

Meanwhile, cryptocurrency over-the-counter (OTC) trading volume has been on the rise since the virus became a constant part of the news cycle. We have been seeing a significant uptick in volume over the last 60 days, said Michael Leon, a trader at Chicago-based Althena Investor Services, which specializes in serving OTC clients. Upticks in week-over-week volume for cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase and Kraken are also being seen, according to data from CoinGecko.

Many people are now looking to invest in cryptocurrency but are hesitant as they know nothing about the marketsthats where Nicky Taschew, a young German entrepreneur is stepping in.

VolumeX, a company he started with friends in the cryptocurrency world, educates people on digital currency and teaches them how to invest and create an additional income stream from markets like Bitcoin and blockchain technologies. With revolutionary trading tools, VolumeX delivers consumers an easy and comfortable entry into the world of digital currencies.

Taschew and his friends, who he began working with in 2015, made over 15 million in sales in three years working for different crypto companies. With all the experience and dynamic connections they had, the group organically decided to form their own company.

As the Head of Marketing and Branding, Taschew is behind every single content and market move VolumeX makes and played a large role in developing its unique module education system. Though he studied international business and psychology in college, Taschew originally planned on being a professional table tennis player. Fluent in french, german, English and Bulgarian, it was only after meeting an Austrian girl through a dating app that he was introduced into the world of cryptocurrency.

Currently, the company educates thousands of affiliates and customers regarding financial growth through introducing them to Bitcoin services and helping customers with the groups knowledge and techniques in order to create an additional income stream.

VolumeX is now one of the biggest cryptocurrency opportunities in German, Austrian, and Swiss markets. With the surge of the cryptocurrency markets with declining trust in traditional governments, this is a perfect opportunity to grow their market share. In 2020, they are looking to expand to international clients and markets and help more people understand digital currency and empower them to change their lives.

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How Cryptocurrency Can Save and The Man Who Is Helping - Net Newsledger

Cryptocurrency Market overview with demographic data and industry growth trends by 2025 – WhaTech Technology and Markets News

Cryptocurrency Market has recently added by Supply Demand Market Research to its vast repository. This intelligence report includes investigations based on Current scenarios, Historical records, and future predictions

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The rapidly changing market scenario and initial and future assessment of the impact is covered in the report. Experts have studied the historical data and compared it with the changing market situations.

The report covers all the necessary information required by new entrants as well as the existing players to gain deeper insight.

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In conclusion, the Cryptocurrency Market report is a reliable source for accessing the research data that is projected to exponentially accelerate your business. The report provides information such as economic scenarios, benefits, limits, trends, market growth rate, and figures.

SWOT analysis is also incorporated in the report along with speculation attainability investigation and venture return investigation.

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Cryptocurrency Market overview with demographic data and industry growth trends by 2025 - WhaTech Technology and Markets News

Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin Predicts Megatrend of Cryptography in 2020s – Herald Sheets

He shared this in a thread of tweets that attracted a series of reactions from the cryptocurrency community members.

In his point of view, the megatrend of cryptography in the 2010s was elliptic curves, pairings and general purposes ZKPs/SNARKs. Regarding the megatrend of cryptography in the 2020s, he said it will be lattices, LWE, multi-linear maps, homomorphic encryption, MPC, and obfuscation.

Prediction: The megatrend in cryptography of the 2010s was elliptic curves, pairings and general purpose ZKPs/SNARKs. The megatrend of the 2020s will be (in addition to broad adoption of the above) lattices, LWE, multilinear maps, homomorphic encryption, MPC and obfuscation, Vitalik Buterin shared

He furthered by stating the theme that will be common in both 2010s and 2020s megatrends of cryptography. He said:

The common theme in both is the rise of cryptographic primitives that operate over boolean or arithmetic circuits as a mathematical representation of computation, and hence cryptographic constructions becoming general purpose.

In response to his take on the expected megatrends of cryptography in the 2020s, one of his followers said, Yes. And possibly some of these areas merging.

Vitalik Buterin responded thus;

Oh cryptography is all going to merge into a big jumble of heres how we efficiently represent everything as polynomials and here are the 73 clever things you can do with a polynomial https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1248706367520755717

Another inquisitive Twitter user, who is a supposed Chainlink (LINK) community member, asked the co-founder of Ethereum how the cryptographic project (Chainlink) could fit into his prediction in the 2020s. He asked, How does Chainlink fit into this Vitalik?

Vitalik Buterin responded by saying:

Possible serious answer: with obfuscation, it might be possible to authenticate HTTPS responses (ie. data from websites) without needing trusted hardware.

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Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin Predicts Megatrend of Cryptography in 2020s - Herald Sheets

How Cryptography Revolutionizes Secure IoT Design and Zero-Trust Manufacturing – IoT World Today

Date 5th May 202002:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time Duration 1 Hour

Tight budgets and product development lifecycles make it nearly impossible to consider all the necessary factors for embedding strong security throughout a devices lifecycle. But when customer privacy and safety are at stake, it has to happen.

Cryptography has emerged as a flexible and highly scalable solution to enable critical authentication, encryption and signing capabilities for lightweight IoT devices. However, most product developers and manufacturers dont know where to start.

Join Keyfactors Senior Director of IoT Product Management, Ellen Boehm, and Senior Vice President of Product Management, Mark Thompson, to discuss effective strategies to cryptographically bind identity to devices at scale and establish integrity throughout the device lifecycle.

In this webinar, youll learn about:

Sponsored By:

Featured Speakers:

Mark Thompson, Senior Vice President of Product ManagementBio: As the Senior Vice President of Product Management at Keyfactor, Mark is responsible for strategic management of the companys product portfolio and market adoption. Prior to Keyfactor, Mark was Sr. Director of New Product Introduction for Aclara Technologies, and the product manager for Aclaras Metrum line of LTE products. He was at Aclara since 1998 where he developed the STAR network product line and developed and ran product marketing for several wireless communication solutions for gas, water, and electric utilities. Mark founded the Wi-Fi Alliance Smart Grid Task Group, which is responsible for the certification program for Smart Energy Profile 2.0 running on Wi-Fi devices.

Ellen Boehm, Senior Director of IoT Product ManagementBio: Ellen leads the product strategy and go to market approach for the Keyfactor Control platform, focusing around digital identity security solutions for the IoT device manufacturer market. Ellen has 15+ years experience leading new product development with a focus on IoT and connected products in Lighting controls, Smart Cities, Connected buildings and Smart Home technology.

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How Cryptography Revolutionizes Secure IoT Design and Zero-Trust Manufacturing - IoT World Today

What You Need to Know about Cryptocurrency… – Coinspeaker

Most of the weaknesses of crypto security are attributable to the human factor, particularly a failure to adequately secure personal crypto wallets.

For years, crypto proponents have touted the security of cryptography and blockchain-based digital currencies. These are supposedly extremely difficult to hack. Thats why its puzzling why theres never a shortage of news that involves hacking or theft of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

In mid-2019 Taiwan-based Binance, the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange based on transaction volume, admitted that they became the victim of a large scale data breach, which resulted in the loss of over US$40 million worth of cryptocurrency. Binance said that over 7,000 BTC was stolen from the companys hot wallet. Also, in early 2019, the Ethereum Classic blockchain was reportedly compromised.

Cryptocurrency hacking and theft may only be a small part in the cyber threat index, but they are a significant risk worth getting acquainted with. Strategies range from the simple to the sophisticated and large-scale, all of which emphasize the need for cybersecurity mindfulness.

Blockchain unhackability may no longer be a bragging right for cryptocurrency advocates. In January 2019, Coinbases security team observed irregular activities in the Ethereum Classic network, as the alternative currencys history of transactions appeared to be under attack.

A hacker managed to take control of the Ethereum Classic networks computing resources. This enabled the rewriting of the transaction history, which led to double spending of crypto coins. The hack allowed the hacker to steal coins equivalent to $1.1 million.

This attack is dubbed as the 51%, wherein a hacker succeeds in controlling more than half of the computing capacity of a cryptocurrency network (half+1%). Armed with more computing resources than everyone else in the network combined, the hacker gains the ability to tamper with the blockchain.

Once the consensus mechanism is compromised, its difficult to guarantee the integrity of the system. If its any consolation, though, 51% attacks have only worked on smaller cryptocurrencies so far. There were reports of such attacks on Vertcoin, Monacoin, Verge, and Bitcoin Gold, but none on Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ripple, and other top digital currencies.

This blockchain-defeating hack requires humongous computing power, which has to be at least 51% of the entire cryptocurrency network, hence the name. Multiple superfast computers working together or millions of devices infected by cryptojacking malware would be needed. This tremendous computing power requirement is the reason why 51% attacks have mostly focused on less popular cryptocurrency, since their underlying network of computing resources is correspondingly small.

The attack does not directly snatch coins from wallets. What happens is that the attacker generates an alternative and isolated version of the blockchain. The attacker builds blocks that are not broadcasted (which in normal situations ought to be broadcasted) to other miners. This results in a forkone that is followed by the regular miners and another by the attackers miners.

Eventually, the attacker will take advantage of the isolated alternative blockchain to reverse transactions or enable double spending. This is done by broadcasting the isolated blockchain to the network and, with the superior computing resources, outpace other miners in completing blocks. Since most blockchain-based cryptocurrencies are designed to defer to the rule of the majority, the regular miners are forced to acknowledge the faster, longer, and heavier alternative blockchain version (created by the attackers miners) as correct and switch to it as the new canonical transaction history.

The setting of a new transaction history does not mean that new crypto coins are created out of nothing. Rather, the hack makes it possible to re-use coins that were already spent or transferred to other wallets. In the process, previously confirmed transactions can be reversed or ongoing transactions may be voided to give way to a new transaction history. The latter can mean the loss of coins held by an original owner to recognize a new holder based on the new transaction history.

Hackers messing with blockchains sounds highly alarming. However, 51% and other similar attacks are extremely challenging to undertake, especially when used on the leading digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ripple. The 51% attack against the Verge blockchain back in April 2018 only succeeded because of a flaw in the Verge blockchain protocol, which made it possible to quickly generate a longer version of the blockchain.

Thats why cybercriminals still turn to the usual attack methods to steal bitcoin and other crypto assets. These attacks usually involve social engineering and malware.

One early example of a social engineering attack on Bitcoin happened in 2013 when 4,100 coins were stolen from the now-defunct digital wallet Input.io. The attacker succeeded in deceiving the sites owner to provide the details needed for a password recovery request via email. The attack has since put Input.io out of commission.

When it comes to the use of malicious software, there are several possible variants. The most popular of which involves a clipboard hijacker or a malware that copies the information stored in the clipboard when someone copies something. Hackers take advantage of the natural instinct of most cryptocurrency owners to do the copy-paste combo when inputting their private keys to set up their online crypto wallets.

Attackers may also employ screenshot takers and keyloggers to steal login credentials and access online wallets. There are also those that use compromised crypto-trading add-ons written in JavaScript. Moreover, attackers may also use slack bots, which send fake notifications about nonexistent wallet issues in an attempt to convince the target to enter their private keys.

These crude attacks may not be as advanced direct assaults on blockchains, but they work because of the human factor in security weakness. Many still fail to use strong passwords, two-factor authentication, and other security measures. Others continue frequenting unsafe websites, exposing themselves to various kinds of malware.

Cryptocurrency security is far from perfect. However, security issues are not enough to discourage the use and further development of this new class of digital assets. Most of the weaknesses of crypto security are attributable to the human factor, particularly a failure to adequately secure personal crypto wallets. Yes, Bitcoin and other cryptos are hackable, but this is not reason enough to ditch the idea of decentralized currency.

Having obtained a diploma in Intercultural Communication, Julia continued her studies taking a Masters degree in Economics and Management. Becoming captured by innovative technologies, Julia turned passionate about exploring emerging techs believing in their ability to transform all spheres of our life.

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What You Need to Know about Cryptocurrency... - Coinspeaker

Silk Road Founders Bearish Prediction on Bitcoin: The Primary Cryptocurrency Could Go To As Low As $1,200 – CryptoPotato

According to Ross Ulbricht, best-known for creating and operating the darknet market website Silk Road, Bitcoins price is headed downward. Using the Elliot Wave Theory for his analysis, Ulbricht believes that there might be more pain ahead, taking the price significantly lower.

In a detailed blog post, Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the infamous Silk Road dark market, pointed out that Bitcoins price may be headed lower.

According to the popular Elliot Wave Theory, the price for the primary cryptocurrency could decrease to as low as $1,200. However, its worth pointing out that this is the bottom range of his analysis, as the movement of the current Wave II could take the price to anywhere between $2,800 and $1,200.

Supposedly, the current wave marks a correction which often ends in the price range of the previous fourth wave of one less degree. This wave is the one from back in 2014 and the two previous bear markets reduced the prices by 86% and 94%.

An equivalent reduction by wave II would take prices to $2,800 or $1,200. Wave A of II reduced prices by 84%. An equivalent reduction by wave C of II would take prices to $2,200. Ulbricht explains.

However, Ulbricht also says that its hard to estimate the duration of the wave and that its rather imprecise. He explains that there are two probable scenarios, the first of which ends around June or July of this year, while the second one could drag on into 2021.

Ulbricht says that a break below the major low of $3,200, which is where Bitcoin traded back in December 2018, would be a solid confirmation of the pattern. This is when he will be trying to determine when the final low is in.

To invalidate this theory, Bitcoins price would have to increase towards $14,000 which is the high of 2019. Yet, he says that at this point that seems like a very unlikely scenario.

Its also worth noting that the theory Ulbricht is using is so far playing out. During December, he said:

A drop below the beginning of wave 2 (around $4,200) would invalidate the impulsive count of wave (5) because wave 4 cannot overlap wave 2 This would indicate a much greater likelyhood that our second scenario is playing out.

Bitcoins price has indeed dropped below $4,200 on March 12th-13th when it touched $3,600.

Featured image courtesy of Vanity Fair

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Originally posted here:
Silk Road Founders Bearish Prediction on Bitcoin: The Primary Cryptocurrency Could Go To As Low As $1,200 - CryptoPotato

Leading Digital Asset Manager Says Ripple and XRP Connection Key Reason for Exclusion From Crypto Index – The Daily Hodl

Morgan Creek Capital Management founder and CEO Mark Yusko is revealing why XRP is not included in the firms cryptocurrency index fund.

In a new interview with Thinking Crypto, the hedge fund manager says the primary reason is concern over how centralized the crypto asset is.

I still struggle with the XRP-Ripple structure or how cash flows are created or shared. But thats a topic for another day.

Yes, there is a point at which, if they had enough distribution of XRP, it could qualify for the index.

Morgan Creeks Digital Asset Index Fund, which was created to give investors a crypto version of the S&P 500, offers Morgan Creek clients exposure to the 10 largest cryptocurrencies minus XRP, which is the third-largest cryptocurrency, with a market cap of $8.2 billion.

Yusko also notes that the hedge doesnt own Stellar (XLM), 13th-largest cryptocurrency.

The Stellar network is an open-source payments platform for all kinds of digital currencies. It was co-founded by Jeb McCaleb, the former co-founder and chief technology officer of Ripple.

The Stellar Development Foundation owns 30 billion of the 50 billion XLM in existence. Yusko explains,

We exclude anything thats too closely held. So we dont own Stellar and we dont own XRP.

Ripple owns more than half of the 100 billion XRP in existence. While most of the coins are locked in escrow, Yusko says his firm remains concerned about potential price manipulation.

Featured Image: Shutterstock/IM_VISUALS

Continued here:
Leading Digital Asset Manager Says Ripple and XRP Connection Key Reason for Exclusion From Crypto Index - The Daily Hodl