« First...102030...1,3291,3301,3311,3321,333...1,3401,3501,360...Last »

The CIA was secretly in control of an encrypted software sold to foreign governments – The Daily Dot

Posted on by

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) secretly owned a cryptography firm called Crypto AG that was used by governments around the world, according to a new report.

The revelation of the CIAs ownership of the companyand its ability to snoop on who was using the products for decadeswas reported by the Washington Post and ZDF, a German public broadcaster, on Tuesday.

Crypto AG, a Swiss firm, sold equipment to more than 120 countries over decades, the report says, and the CIA and West German intelligence rigged the companys devices so they could easily break the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages.

Among other things, the ownership of the company allowed the CIA and West German spies to see information from Iran, Argentina, and Libya.

A classified CIA report obtained by the news outlets called the Cyrpto AG situation the intelligence coup of the century, adding: Foreign governments were paying good money to the U.S. and West Germany for the privilege of having their most secret communications read by at least two (and possibly as many as five or six) foreign countries.

The company was liquidated in 2018.

You can read more of the Washington Post and ZDF investigation here.

READ MORE:

Continue reading here:
The CIA was secretly in control of an encrypted software sold to foreign governments - The Daily Dot

Quantum Cryptography Market research report features advanced and sophisticated threats to boost growth 2019-2026 – WhaTech Technology and Markets…

Posted on by

Quantum Cryptography Market research report provides details about Industry Chain structure, Market Competition, Market Size & Share, SWOT Analysis, Technology, Cost, Raw Materials, Consumer Preference, Development & Trends, Regional Forecast, Company & Profile, and Product & Service.

ReportsnReports has recently added a new research report to its expanding repository. The research report, titled Quantum Cryptography Market, mainly includes a detailed segmentation of this sector, which is expected to generate massive returns by the end of the forecast period, thus showing an appreciable rate of growth over the coming years on an annual basis.

The research study also looks specifically at the need for Quantum Cryptography Market.

This report sets out analysis of the Quantum Cryptography Market providing intelligence on the main drivers, opportunities and challenges facing the sector. It considers the status and prospects of the major applications for Quantum Cryptography Market

Download a FREE Sample Copy of Quantum Cryptography Market Report atwww.reportsnreports.com/contactme=2455408

Report Scope::

The scope of this report is broad and covers global markets of quantum cryptography, which is used globally in various types of applications. The market is segmented by deployment protocol, algorithm type, component, application, end-user vertical, and by region.

Revenue forecasts from 2019 to 2024 are presented for each deployment protocol, algorithm type, component, application, end-user vertical, and regional market.

The report also discusses the major players in each of the regional markets for quantum cryptography.

It explains the major market drivers of the global market of quantum cryptography, the current trends within the industry, and the regional dynamics of the quantum cryptography market. The report concludes with a special focus on the vendor landscape.

It includes detailed profiles of the major global vendors in the quantum cryptography industry.

Report Includes:

86 tables An overview of the global market for quantum cryptography Analyses of global market trends with data from 2018, estimates for 2019, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2024 Assays the role of quantum cryptography to help secure private messages and communication of confidential information across different verticals Information on underlying technologies driving the industrys growth along with primary factors ? current trends, regulatory updates, and other macro-economic factors ? that can influence the market Insights into initiatives taken by government and institutions around the world to build quantum computers that can break down non quantum-based cryptography Snapshot of technological advancements in next-generation wireless network technologies Detailed profiles of key companies in the global quantum cryptography market, including Crypta Labs Ltd., Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Infineon Technologies AG, Microsoft Corp., Quintessence Labs Pty Ltd., and Toshiba Corp.Summary:

Quantum cryptography uses quantum mechanical properties to complete cryptographic tasks. The Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) technology in quantum cryptography is based on Heisenbergs uncertainty principle.

Therefore, an unauthorized third partys attempt to intercept the secret keys used for encryption will produce an irreversible change in the quantum states before they are retransmitted to the intended destination. This will cause an abnormally high error rate in the transmissions between the sender and intended recipient, alerting the recipient of the unauthorized third partys attempt to intercept the keys.

Quantum cryptography is used across industries such as government and defense,banking and financial services, IT and telecommunications, and retail, among others.

The increasing number of cyberattacks, along with the pressing need to secure data and cybersecurity funding should drive the growth in the global market of quantum cryptography. Governments and institutions around the world are directing financial resources toward build quantum computers that can instantly break non-quantum-based cryptography.

This also has created an increased interest in quantum cryptography as many companies are seeking to install quantum cryptographic systems to protect their data. The IT and telecommunication sector should be the largest contributor to the global market of quantum cryptography because enterprises in this segment continuously generate big data.Protection from cyberattacks is vital.

Please share your specific interest to serve you better | Download PDF Brochure atwww.reportsnreports.com/contactme=2455408

Recent Industry Trend:

The report contains the profiles of various prominent players in the Global Quantum Cryptography Market. Different strategies implemented by these vendors have been analyzed and studied in order to gain a competitive edge, create unique product portfolios and increase their market share.

The study also sheds light on major global industry vendors. Such essential vendors consist of both new and well-known players.

In addition, the business report contains important data relating to the launch of new products on the market, specific licenses, domestic scenarios and the strategies of the organization implemented on the market.

Scope of the Report:

Through following the Quantum Cryptography Market through depth, the readers should find this study very helpful. The aspects and details are depicted by charts, bar graphs, pie diagrams, and other visual representations in theQuantum Cryptography Market study.

This intensifies the representation of the pictures and also helps to improve the facts of the Quantum Cryptography Market industry. At a substantial CAGR, the Quantum Cryptography Market is likely to grow.

Quantum Cryptography Market reports main objective is to guide the user to understand the market in terms of its definition, classification, industry potential, the latest trends, and the challenges facing the Quantum Cryptography Market.

And More

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

See original here:
Quantum Cryptography Market research report features advanced and sophisticated threats to boost growth 2019-2026 - WhaTech Technology and Markets...

The Threat of IoT Device Exploitation Due to RSA Certificate Weaknesses – EU Today

Posted on by

In late 2019, a research report was published that pointed out the existence of numerous weak RSA certificates in active use on the Internet. While the RSA algorithm is secure, many organisations were using it improperly, which would allow an attacker to generate fake, verifiable RSA certificates.

For users trusting these weak certificates, this vulnerability has significant impacts. A fake RSA certificate used in HTTPS has significant implications for website security since it could allow an attacker to impersonate a trusted site. For Internet of Things (IoT) devices trusting self-signed, vulnerable certificates, this vulnerability could open them up to compromise, potentially enabling an attacker to add them to a botnet performing Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks or to steal sensitive data collected and processed by these devices.

How RSA Certificates Work

RSA certificates are one example of public key cryptography. Public key or asymmetric cryptography uses two different encryption keys: a private key and a public key. The private key is used for decrypting messages or generating digital signatures, and the public key can encrypt data or verify digital signatures.

These two keys are related. The public key is calculated from the private key using a one-way function. These one-way functions are based off of a mathematically hard problem, meaning that a certain function is relatively easy (of polynomial difficulty) to perform, but its inverse is much harder (exponential difficulty).

In the case of RSA, this hard problem is the factoring problem. The factoring problem is based off of the assumption that it is fairly easy to multiply two large prime numbers together but relatively hard to determine these two factors with knowledge of their product. With modern systems, this assumption is valid and the system is secure as long as an attacker does not know either of these two factors.

The RSA Certificate Vulnerability

Recent research by KeyFactor demonstrates that this assumption (that an attacker doesnt know the secret factors used in an RSA calculation) may not always be valid. A study of 75 million RSA public keys in active use revealed that 1 in every 172 of these keys shared a common factor.

These shared factors are a problem for the security of these RSA secret keys since they would allow an attacker to determine both prime factors used in the calculation. With this data, they could derive the private key associated with a given public key. Of the 75 million keys studied, the researchers were able to derive private keys for 435,000 of them.

The cause of these weak RSA keys is attributed to the growth of IoT devices. These IoT devices commonly have significant power restrictions and limited entropy. Since entropy is crucial to the generation of strong random numbers, these devices are often generating the same random numbers when trying to identify prime numbers for use in RSA certificates. As a result, these certificates are much more likely to share prime factors, making them vulnerable to attack.

Implications of the Vulnerability

RSA certificates are used for a variety of different purposes. The nature of asymmetric cryptography means that these certificates can be used to establish a secure communications channel with another party (by sending them a message encrypted with their public key) or to verify the identity of a messages sender (by checking if a digital signature sent with the message is valid).

However, these uses of asymmetric cryptography assume that only the owner of a public key has knowledge of the corresponding private key and the prime values used in the calculation of the public key. With the newly-revealed weaknesses of RSA certificates currently in use, this assumption is not valid for 1 of every 172 certificates.

The implications of this are significant for web security since encrypted HTTPS webpages use digital signatures to prove their identity to a visitor. If an attacker can derive the private key for the digital certificate associated with a particular webpage, they can create valid HTTPS connections with visitors to that webpage. This could allow the attacker to collect sensitive data entered by the user into the site or serve pages with embedded malicious code for the unsuspecting user to run.

In the case of this study, the vast majority of vulnerable certificates were self-signed keys used by IoT device manufacturers. Certificates generated by reputable certificate authorities (CAs) were generally secure. However, the use of insecure certificates by IoT manufacturers is concerning. Compromised IoT devices are already commonly used in DDoS attacks, and this weakness may allow cybercriminals impersonating legitimate IoT servers to trick additional IoT devices into joining their botnets. This would hurt both the owners of these devices and the targets of the resulting DDoS attacks.

The Importance of Strong Cryptography

In the study by KeyFactor, the source of the weaknesses in RSA certificates was poor use of the RSA algorithm. While the algorithm itself is currently considered secure if properly used, it depends upon the prime factors used in its calculations to be random and unknown to an attacker. Generating these large, prime, random factors requires a strong source of entropy, and IoT device manufacturers simply werent using enough entropy in their calculations.

As a result, the private keys of hundreds of thousands of RSA certificates currently in use can be derived by an attacker, allowing the attacker to impersonate the owner to anyone trusting that certificate. These vulnerabilities could open up IoT devices to being exploited and added to DDoS botnets.

Follow EU Today on Social media:

Gary Cartwright

Gary Cartwright is publishing editor of EU Today.

An experienced journalist and published author, he specialises in environment, energy, and defence.

He also has more than 10 years experience of working as a staff member in the EU institutions, working with political groups and MEPs in various policy areas.

Gary's latest book WANTED MAN: THE STORY OF MUKHTAR ABLYAZOV: A Manual for Criminals on How to Avoid Punishment in the EU is currently available from Amazon

https://www.amazon.co.uk/WANTE...

Original post:
The Threat of IoT Device Exploitation Due to RSA Certificate Weaknesses - EU Today

60% of Enterprise Ill-Equipped to Detect and Respond to Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Degradation or Breach, Research Finds – PR.com

Posted on by

51% Claim Low Ability to Detect and Respond to Digital Certificate and Key Misuse

Connectivity and the number of digital identities within the enterprise has grown exponentially thanks to continued cloud, mobile, DevOps and IoT adoption, said Chris Hickman, chief security officer at Keyfactor. The complexity of managing those identities while keeping them securely connected to the business has created a critical trust gap in many cases the keys and certificates designed to build trust are instead causing outages and security breaches.

Digital certificates and keys ensure authenticity across enterprise user, application and device identities. Cryptographic algorithms encrypt the data associated with those identities, providing secure communication and exploit protection. Two-thirds of respondents say their organization is adding additional layers of encryption to comply with industry regulations and IT policies; however, shorter certificate validity has doubled the management workload on short-staffed IT and security teams.

Additional key findings:

Connected IoT increasing risk: 60% say theyre adding additional layers of encryption technologies to secure IoT devices, but 46% admit low ability to maintain IoT device identities and cryptography over device lifetime.

A rise in security incidents: on average, organizations have experienced a Certificate Authority (CA) or rogue man-in-the-middle (MITM) and/or phishing attack five times in the last 24 months, with a 40% likelihood of a MITM or phishing attack over the next 24 months; 73% of respondents admitted that digital certificates have and continue to cause unplanned downtime and outages.

Staffing shortages: on average, 16% of the IT security budget is spent on PKI deployment annually, yet just 38% of respondents say their organization has enough IT security staff members dedicated to PKI deployment.

Cryptography related security incidents undermine trust: 76% of respondents say failure to secure keys and certificates undermines the trust their organization relies upon to operate.

Cryptography lacks a center of excellence: Despite the rising cost of PKI and growth of cryptography-related incidents, just 60% of companies have the ability to drive enterprise-wide best practices.

Our 2019 report was a wake-up call in many ways it was the first report of its kind to investigate the role that digital certificates and keys play in creating trust inside and outside organizations, said Dr. Larry Ponemon, founder of the Ponemon Institute. In many ways I was optimistic that wed see progress this year as more executives invested the resources needed to close the gap between standard practice in PKI and best practice. This years report shows that while progress has been made in a few areas, that gap is actually growing wider.

This report reinforces cryptographys importance within the security agenda, said Hickman. In many cases, PKI remains a manual function with ownership split across IT and security teams. Growing connectivity has created an exposure epidemic. Without a clear PKI in-house or outsourced program owner and process to close critical trust gaps, the risk of outages and breaches will continue to rise.

The study was conducted by Ponemon Institute on behalf of Keyfactor and included responses from more than 600 IT and infosec executives and practitioners in the United States and Canada across 14 industries, including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, retail and automotive.

To view a complete copy of the report, visit: http://keyfactor.com/ponemon2020.

About KeyfactorKeyfactor empowers enterprises of all sizes to escape the exposure epidemic when breaches, outages and failed audits from digital certificates and keys impact brand loyalty and the bottom line. Powered by an award-winning PKI as-a-service platform for certificate lifecycle automation and IoT device security, IT and InfoSec teams can easily manage digital certificates and keys. And product teams can build IoT devices with crypto-agility and at massive scale. Exceptional products and a white-glove customer experience for its 500+ global customers have earned Keyfactor a 98.5% retention rate and a 99% support satisfaction rate. Learn more at http://www.keyfactor.com.

ContactsKeyfactor Media ContactSarah Hancesarah.hance@keyfactor.com216.785.2291

MRB Public Relations Media ContactAngela Tuzzoatuzzo@mrb-pr.com 732.758.1100

See more here:
60% of Enterprise Ill-Equipped to Detect and Respond to Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Degradation or Breach, Research Finds - PR.com

Germany tightens restrictions on Huawei, refusing ban – Capacity Media

Posted on by

10h | Natalie Bannerman

Members of German Chancellor Angela Merkels Christian Democratic Union (CDU)have backed a position paper on 5G networks that proposes tougher rules on foreign vendors.

Taking a leaf of out the UKs book, German law makers seem to be favouring a rules-based approach to dealing with the likes of Huawei and its involvement in 5G networks.

According to Reuters, the document was drafted by Christian Democratic leaders to try and address the growing concerns of those in the party who view Huawei as a threat to national security. The paper aims to enable Germanys coalition government to come to an agreement on 5G, after many months of debate.

Sources told Reuters that several lawmakers support the four-page document which instead of employing any individual bans, sets out the principles of a risk-management approach.

The paper reportedly states: State actors with sufficient resources can infiltrate the network of any equipment maker. Even with comprehensive technical checks, security risks cannot be eliminated completely - they can at best be minimised. At the same time, we are not defenceless against attempts to eavesdrop on 5G networks. The use of strong cryptography and end-to-end encryption can secure confidentiality in communication and the exchange of data.

All three of the countrys network operators are customers of the Chinese vendor, so completely excluding the company could prove risky.

Bearing that in mind, the document clearly distinguishes between access, transport and core networks, which are sensitive parts of the infrastructure allowing Huawei components to be handled different in the various parts of the network.

The paper does on to suggest using products from a range of vendor to avoid a monoculture as well as changes to the countrys telecoms and IT security laws for trustworthiness to be integrated into them.

Equipment makers can only be trusted if they verifiably fulfil a clearly defined security catalogue that rules out any influence from a foreign state on our 5G infrastructure, it said.

The paper would also give operators until 2025 to remove any equipment from its 4G networks that come from vendors who fail certification checks. It also pushes for Germany to implement a European industrial policy to ensure that its own companies can build all elements of internationally competitive and secure 5G networks.

In related news, Merkel is said to be in the early stages of discussion with Ericsson and Nokia to bolster the market position of European 5G vendors.

According to Handelsblatt, Merkel is pushing for European technological independence and is set to meet the companies later this month.

Original post:
Germany tightens restrictions on Huawei, refusing ban - Capacity Media

What’s in the latest Firefox update? Firefox 73 adds to usability and accessibility options – Computerworld

Posted on by

Mozilla this week released Firefox 73, a minor upgrade whose most notable addition was a new default setting for page zooming.

Software engineers working on the open-source browser also patched six vulnerabilities, half of them labeled "High," Mozilla's second-most-serious threat rating. As usual, some of the flaws might be used by criminals.

"We presume that with enough effort some of these could have been exploited to run arbitrary code," the firm wrote of two of the bugs.

Firefox 73 can be downloaded for Windows, macOS and Linux from Mozilla's site. Because Firefox updates in the background, most users need only relaunch the browser to get the latest version. To manually update on Windows, pull up the menu under the three horizontal bars at the upper right, then click the help icon (the question mark within a circle). Choose "About Firefox." (On macOS, "About Firefox" can be found under the "Firefox" menu.) The resulting page shows that the browser is either up to date or describes the refresh process.

Mozilla last upgraded the browser on Jan. 7, or five weeks ago.

From this point forward, Mozilla will refresh the browser every four weeks. Firefox 74 will end a gradual reduction to the intervals between upgrades: Mozilla announced the release speed-up in September, when it said the original six-week span would be shortened to five weeks, then to four.

Firefox's faster release tempo comes at a price: the distinct possibility that each upgrade will boast fewer new features, fewer improvements and enhancements. Firefox 73 is proof, as Mozilla was able to highlight just two changes evident to end users.

The first was a new user-set global default for the page zoom level. Rather than monkey with zoom for each site individually - to, for instance, zoom in to make text more readable for older eyes - users can set a default level higher or lower than 100% as the new baseline.

To change the default zoom (which remains at 100% if the user declines to modify it), users must open Preferences (on macOS) or Options (Windows), then under the "General" tab locate "Language and Appearance." Select the desired default zoom from the box under "Zoom."

That number - 110%, for instance - becomes the new baseline for all sites. Users can still manually increase or decrease zoom with keystroke combinations or from the menu.

Firefox 73's new zoom default lets users set a baseline to, for example, zoom in to 120% on every site. For anyone who is constantly zooming, this saves tons of time.

The other addition trumpeted by Mozilla in Firefox 73's release notes was labeled "readability backplate" and designed to collaborate with Windows' high contrast mode. The latter is a setting that replaces the original colors of, say, a website's text and background, with high contrast combinations for easier reading by people with vision issues.

Previously, Firefox has simply disabled background images when the user enabled high contrast mode. In Firefox 73, the readability backplate "places a block of background color between the text and background image," Mozilla said. "Now, websites in High Contrast Mode are more readable without disabling background images."

Mozilla, like other browser makers, is knee-deep in putting an end to the outdated encryption protocols of TLS (Transport Layer Security) 1.0 and 1.1.

More than a year ago, in October 2018, Mozilla announced that the two standards, TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1, would lose Firefox support in March 2020. That's next to now.

In a Feb. 6 post, Thyla van der Merwe, the cryptography engineering manager at Mozilla, promised that the upcoming Firefox 74 would give the boot to the pair. "Expect Firefox 74 to offer TLS 1.2 as its minimum version for secure connections when it ships on 10 March 2020," she wrote.

Although van der Merwe said that Firefox would retain an override button (which has been appearing on warnings when users try to reach a website encrypted by TSL 1.0 or TSL 1.1), she noted that with telemetry trends being what they were, "It's unlikely that the button will stick around for long."

The next version, Firefox 74, will release on March 10.

Read the original here:
What's in the latest Firefox update? Firefox 73 adds to usability and accessibility options - Computerworld

What is the most popular cryptocurrency? – Fox Business

Posted on by

CoinList co-founder and president Andy Bromberg discusses the trajectory Libra and Bitcoin could take in 2020.

Bitcoin is largely believed the be the most popular cryptocurrency.

The crypto coin made national news in 2017when its value unexpectedly skyrocketed to $19,873 per share, highlighting the general idea of cryptocurrency and blockchain on a global scale before it was largely being considered as an alternative currency option.

6 REASONS BITCOIN HAS NEARLY TRIPLED IN 6 MONTHS

"The most popular crypto is Bitcoin ... because it was the first one to be widely used and is generallyconsidered the safest to own,"Alex Mashinsky, CEO at Celsius Network, a crypto lending and depository company, told FOX Business. "Bitcoin is up 9 million [percent]in the last decade, outpacing Wall Street top performer Netflix, which returned 4,000 [percent]during the same time."

One Bitcoin is worth nearly $10,000 as of Feb. 8, according to Google Disclaimer.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF CRYPTOCURRENCY?

Mashinsky noted that cryptocurrencies are becoming increasingly popular because they "bypassall the fees and tolls banks [that] credit cards and financial platforms charge us today. These new rails enable new services and products to be created that act in the best interests of the user and the community and not the banks and Wall Street."

HACKERS STOLE $41B OF BITCOIN ON ONE OF THE WORLD'S LARGEST CRYPTO EXCHANGES

"The young crypto community is trying to create these new services and convince hundreds of millions of users to move their assets to the new rails," he added.

A collection of Bitcoin tokens (REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/Illustration)

Richard Dennis, founder and CEO of a cryptocurrency calledTemTum, noted that while the "speed of settlement, which takes several days on the traditional banking system," it takes only about an hour with cryptocurrency, and banking hours are not an issue.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX BUSINESS APP

The popularity of cryptocurrencies is clear to see," he said, adding that benefits include "greater security, faster payments and audible qualities" that have "made the industry take notice of cryptocurrencies so much so that national states and central banks and frantically working on trying to catch up and deploy this technology for their people."

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS

Other popular cryptocurrencies include Ethereum, XRP, Tether, Litecoin, Monero and EOS. Even Facebook announced plans to start a cryptocurrency called Libra --- an idea that came under strong government scrutiny and quicklylost support.

Read this article:
What is the most popular cryptocurrency? - Fox Business

The Ten Most Prominent Figures in the Cryptocurrency World – Entrepreneur

Posted on by

Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are an incredibly young industry despite this it already has many heroes

February10, 202012 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Although cryptocurrencies are based on blockchain technology, where each transaction is a strict set of accurate digits that form a cryptographic hash, people are still creative in the industry. These professionals all come from differing backgroundsone person might have come from working in development, whilst another from economics, or a director from an executive corporate environment, but one thing they all have in common is their imagination and willingness to think outside of the box. Each of our heroes are united by that rare quality of being visionaries with the ability to spot and seize and act upon the technological opportunities of the future. For each of them their victory is to analyse, to innovate, to build, and to implement an effective action strategy for success.

Today, weve gathered the top 10 most influential people in the cryptocurrency marketthe creators of the largest projects that have influenced the development of the entire industry.

The creator of Bitcoin

Age: Unknown

Rocking in as the undisputed number one on our list is Satoshi Nakamoto the creator of Bitcoin, and the most mysterious personality in the cryptocurrency industry. Indeed, not only does nobody know whether it is one person, or a group of developers, the very fact that of whether this legendary figure actually exists has often been called into question. Is Satoshi Nakamoto just a pseudonym?

Be that as it may, it was Satoshi Nakamoto who developed the Bitcoin protocol and created the first version of the software.

Of course, theres a wealth of speculation as to real identify of Nakamoto, and several theories have come to light to unmask him. Indeed, as we seek to unmask his true identify, lets take a look at the two leading suspects.

Nick Szabo is one of the rumoured candidates for the Nakamoto crown. Szabo is a well-known cryptologist and lawyer, the developer of smart contract technology, the Bit Gold algorithm of decentralised virtual currency and the publication of which appeared just a few short months before Nakamoto's article on Bitcoin.

Craig Wright is one of the most scandalous candidates for being the real Satoshi Nakamoto. In 2015, this Australian entrepreneur told the world that it was he who created the unique technology and filed more than 150 patent applications for the authorship of distributed registry technology, smart contracts, and six cryptocurrencies. In his favour, the patents were undisputed, and this didnt lead to any legal consequences.

The founder of Ethereum

Age: 26 years old

Buterin gained his fame as the creator of the world's second-largest digital currency in terms of capitalization: Ethereum. Buterin is a true child prodigy:at the tender age of just 7, he wrote his first computer game using Excel macros! Then, aged 10 he studied C ++ and began developing full-fledged games. Blockchain arrived into his life in 2011, and by 2013 hed already realized the shortcomings of Bitcoin. This gave him the idea to create his own unique cryptocurrency platform, and by 2014 he had funded and launched his project Ethereum through an online crowd-sale.

It can be said that it was Buterin who indirectly initiated the ICO (initial coin offering)-hype, made the Ethereum code open-source (made it available to the general public). This allowed hundreds of developers to write their own projects on the Ethereum blockchain, while saving resources and time. Tokens created on Ethereum are called ERC-20 (Ethereum Request For Comments and 20)today there are more than a thousand.

The founder of VK and Telegram

Age: 35 years old

Pavel Durov is the talented Russian entrepreneur and the developer best known for founding the social networking site VK, and then later Telegram. At just 22 years of age, Durov had already launched his social network VKontakte, but at 28 he was forced to leave the project due to disagreements with shareholders. This allowed him to focus on Telegramthe messenger that brought Durov worldwide fame. By the end of 2017, Telegram was already worth more than $1 billion, which made its creator a dollar billionaire.

Until 2018, the name of Durov wasnt associated with cryptocurrencies, however, in that Telegram announced the development of the Telegram Open Networka secure embedded proxy and blockchain platform anonymizer. Durov plans to launch messaging and data storage services on it, as well as payment tools in his own cryptocurrency of the GRAM project. They will also add the ability for developers to create their own applications. 2018 also marked the time when the messenger attracted $1.7 billion from more than 170 investors for the development of new two projects: the Gram cryptocurrency, and the TON blockchain platform.

The founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance

Age: 43 years old

The Chinese Canadian Changpen Zhao is one of the most prominent figures in the crypto industry. Hes the founder and CEO of Binance,the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, as of April 2018, an international cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in Hong Kong. Changpen Zhao is better known in the cryptocurrency community as CZ. And, CZ has an enormous following. His Twitter account has almost half a million crypto zombie followers who feast on reading his hundreds of articles and posts and hanging on his every word. With an estimated net worth, according to the Forbes rich list, of$1.2 billion,Zhao earned his first billion dollar in less than six months and is today one of the richest representatives of the crypto industry.

Since the beginning of his career, CZ has specialised in tradinghe first worked in the IT department of the New York Stock Exchange, and then moved on to Bloomberg to develop a service for traders. Thanks to the experience of the fundraising, it took the Binance exchange only 180 days to become the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange. Today, according to the exchanges blog, the average daily trading volume of Binance is $2,852,591,354, with more than 15 million traders from around the world trading on the exchange. Additionally, Binance is one of the few exchanges that provides margin and futures trading services.

The co-founder of Coinbase

Age: 35 years old

Brian Armstrong is the founder and CEO of Coinbase, a California cryptocurrency exchange. Brian has been interested in development since his high school daysas a teenager he studied the Java and CSS programming languages, and then, having received two degrees in computer science and economics, he worked as a programmer for major companies.

In 2012, after receiving venture capital funding, he launched Coinbaseone of the worlds first cryptocurrency exchanges. Today, Coinbase is one of the most popular platforms for exchanging fiat money for cryptocurrencies. Traders can buy Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ether and Litecoin using their regular bank cards. In August 2017, when cryptocurrency fever first swept the world, the mobile version of the Coinbase exchange in the AppStore became the most downloaded application in the US.

The CEO and founder Coinmarketcap

Age: 33 years old

Brandon Chaz is a 33-year-old US programmer, and the founder of Coinmarketcap, the largest online cryptocurrency aggregator. This site consolidates data from all exchanges and based on this data determines the value of cryptocurrency. Users can learn basic information about cryptocurrencies: capitalization, price, number of circulating coins, trading volume in 24 hours, percentage of price change per hour, 24 hours, and per week.

The name of Brandon Chez is associated with the largest crash in the cryptocurrency market in history. On January 8, 2018, almost all cryptocurrencies fell in value by 15 per cent or more, and the market capitalization decreased by $100,000,000,000. Chez was figured as the culprit; it turns out that on February 7, his Coinmarketcap excluded data from South Korean exchanges without warning, the prices of which are consistently above the world average, and resultantly, the value of Bitcoin fell, pulling down all the other cryptocurrencies along with it.

Litecoin creator

Age: Unknown

Charlie Lee is a talented programmer and computer scientist from Japan, an iconic figure in the crypto industry, and the creator of the third cryptocurrency in history: Litecoin. Before Litecoin, Lee worked as a developer for Google. He learnt about blockchain in 2011 by reading an article on Bitcoin. The innovative technology was incredibly interesting to him, and he immediately bought one Bitcoin for $30. In that same year, in October 2011, Lee created the open source cryptographic protocol Litecoin, an early Bitcoin spinoff of Altcoin, and also got a job at the largest Coinbase exchange. In the summer of 2017, Charlie Lee left Coinbase and completely focused on developing Litecoin.

The main purpose of Litecoin is payments on the Internet. In addition, like Ethereum, on Litecoins blockchain developers can create their own applications.

The Founder of PLATINCOIN

Age: 38 years old

Alex Reinhardt is a serial entrepreneur, and venture investor from Germany. Alex is the founder of more than 10 projects in the IT and fintech industries with a total capitalisation of over200 million. In 1996, when Alex was 15 years old, his family emigrated to Germanyand lived on social security benefits for the first few years. None of the family knew German, so they faced many challenges, were living hand to mouth, and facing a difficult future. It was Reinhardt who pulled the family up by the bootstraps and used his charisma to help him to urgently learn to speak the German language. The rest, as they say is history, and by the 11th grade, in 1998, Alex had begun to earn thousands of marks by selling products to German pension funds. Between 2002 and 2013, he was involved in attracting investments in start-ups and young companies, and in just over 10 years hed raised more than500,000,0000 for them.

In 2015, he survived the betrayal of partners who had effectively bankrupted his business. Huge debts and the necessity to pay bills became a call to action, so by using all his experience and innate talent as a salesman, as well as his brilliant experience in crypto trading, Alex launched his most successful project to datePLATINCOIN. PLATINCOIN is a global cryptosystem that includes more than 10 high-tech products and services. The audience of the company's product audience is more than 500,000 people around the world, and every day there are more and more users.

The main goal of all PLATINCOIN products is to make cryptocurrencies accessible to every user in the world and give people a simple tool to enter the financial market, which today is more than 2 billion people are deprived of.

Libra director, and the former president of PayPal

Age: 46 years old

David Marcus is an American entrepreneur born in Paris. Since April 2012, David has been the director of PayPal. In August 2014, he became the vice-president of messaging products at Facebook where he heads the Facebook Messenger unit. In parallel with his work on Facebook, David actively studied blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and in 2017 became a member of the board of directors of the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange. Since 2018, David has been responsible for the Facebook blockchain business, and since June 2019 he has headed the Calibra project.

Calibra or Libra is a new cryptocurrency developed by Facebook and other companies. Libra is perhaps one of the most controversial blockchain projects, and opinions are divided about it. On the one hand, some sees the Facebook initiative as a threat to the anonymity and decentralisation of the blockchain, whilst, on the other hand, others see it as the long-awaited breakthrough for the technology.

According to a white paper published in the summer, Libra is a global currency based on blockchain technology, the value of which is tied to a basket of real world currencies (for example, US dollar, euro, Japanese yen). The cost of Libra is equal to the weighted average exchange rate of these currencies. The initial issue of Libra is scheduled for this year in 2020.

CEO of Bitcoin.com

Age: 40 years old

Roger Ver is a true crypto world legend. Known as the Bitcoin Jesus for his promotion of Bitcoin, Roger made his first profit by buying and reselling hard drives on his summer school holidays. The business grew, and in 1999, Ver launched an online personal computer accessory shop, which he still runs to this day.

When Roger Ver found out about Bitcoin in 2011, he started investing heavily in technology and also began conducting educational activities. He posted advertisements on roadside billboards and posted them on the Internet, he lectured to schoolchildren and distributed free tokens. It was then that he earned the title of the Bitcoin Jesus.

Ver is quite the colourful character, and between these two stages of his life, Ver spent 10 years in prison forillegally selling explosives,ran for the California State Assembly from the Libertarian Party, left the US for Japan, and renounced US citizenship.

In the crypto community, Roger Ver is known as an ardent supporter of Bitcoin Cash: one of the famous forks of Bitcoin. Right after the spinoff, Roger announced that this digital asset was developing exactly along the path that was originally intended for Bitcoin. His main bugbear with Bitcoin is what he claims is its too small block size and his gripe with the low transaction speed.

And remember, cryptocurrency:Its money 2.0, a huge, huge, huge deal. Chamath Palihapitiya, venture capitalist

Continue reading here:
The Ten Most Prominent Figures in the Cryptocurrency World - Entrepreneur

Cryptocurrency Adoption: How Businesses Are Adapting to the Blockchain Revolution – Cointelegraph

Posted on by

There are many reasons why people own cryptocurrencies. One is to store cryptocurrencies as value due to the limited supply of coins like Bitcoin. Some people store cryptocurrency for speculation meaning they aim to make a profit when a coins value increases against the United States dollar or other coins.

One of the major reasons why people own Bitcoin is to be able to make daily transactions, from shopping in a grocery store to travelling around the world. But are businesses keeping up with the crypto revolution? Lets take a look.

The travel industry is one of the biggest industries in the world. According to Travel Agent Central, its the worlds second-fastest growing industry. About $1.7 trillion is expected to be spent in the travel industry this year.

With this development, a growing number of travelers who own cryptocurrencies are expected to pay for hotel rooms or for flights from their crypto wallets. A growing number of companies are adapting to this development. For example, both parking reservation company Parking Access and airport shuttle booking company Shuttlefare recently added the Bitcoin payment service provider BitPay to their websites, allowing customers to use cryptocurrency as a payment method.

Humans have relied heavily on banks to make daily payments and securely store their money. Banks are also responsible for investing assets to create more wealth. The number of people using banks is on the rise every year, according to the Global Findex database of the World Bank: 1.2 billion adults opened a bank account from 2011 to 2017.

The traditional financial industry has not been without some challenges in the past few years, with central banks of countries like Venezuela and Zimbabwe printing fiat currencies to address crumbling economies, and market leaders like Deutsche Bank caught in money laundering scandals. Many people are beginning to doubt if the traditional banking system will even continue in the coming years.

With services like PayPal and Alipay offering fast transaction speeds, the crypto space will have to compete in order to partially or completely replace the traditional banking system.

The greatest advantage the cryptocurrency space has is its promise for a transparent banking system. Decentralization and immutability ensure that everyone in the network understands what is occurring within the system a feature lacking in the current banking. Banks understand this, which is why some entities such as Bank of America are using a single, blockchain-centred network to house banking records and to authenticate personal and business data.

Related: The Unstoppable Trajectory: Stablecoins Are Evolving Traditional Finances

The online shopping industry is on the increase as more people are choosing to receive goods from the comfort of their homes rather than trekking to a nearby grocery store. With the online shopping market size expected to reach $4 trillion in 2020, more cryptocurrency companies will need to be involved to make a worldwide adoption of cryptocurrencies a reality.

Related: New Year 2020 Crypto Shopping Guide for Filthy Rich Hodlers

Blockchain can help to improve supply chains in terms of secure and transparent payment service as well as in the online shopping industry. For example, a user can scan a QR code on a container of orange juice to see the products journey to the store, which helps to fight counterfeit goods.

Related: How Can Blockchain Disrupt Supply Chains in the Fashion Industry?

Some companies are also offering an easy way to shop some of the largest online stores, including Amazon. For example, Olodolo enables users to shop on AliExpress while paying in various cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin Cash, Ether and Litecoin.

The cryptocurrency revolution is moving fast, but to help this happen, we need to increase the number of businesses around the world that accept cryptocurrencies as a means of payment. From online shopping to traveling around, we have seen how a lot of businesses are adapting to the crypto revolution.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Oluwatobi Joel is a U.S.-based freelance copywriter, community manager, blockchain expert and serial entrepreneur. He has worked with various blockchain startups as a marketing strategist.

Read the original:
Cryptocurrency Adoption: How Businesses Are Adapting to the Blockchain Revolution - Cointelegraph

The Emergence of a China-Backed Cryptocurrency in the Era of the Digital Yuan – The National Interest Online

Posted on by

The Peoples Republic of Chinas Belt and Road Initiative has provided an interesting window into the economic practices of the PRC in developing nations. While the Belt and Road Initiative, often referred to as BRI, promises immense growth potential for those involved in its construction, it has also brought the PRCs predatory lending practices, also termed debt-trap diplomacy, to light. These actions provide an excellent context to potential future PRC actions in the cryptocurrency market, particularly given the increasing potentiality of a PRC-backed cryptocurrency.

The rise of PRC-backed debt-trap diplomacy

Debt-trap diplomacy can most clearly be seen in the example of Sri Lankas Hambantota Port. The Sri Lankan government eagerly took on multiple loans in the hundreds of millions of dollars from PRC-backed banks to fund the development of the Hambantota Port starting in 2007. However, the increasing amounts of debt and rising project costs surrounding the fledgling port caused Sri Lankan officials to accept an agreement for a PRC State-Owned Enterprise to take a dominant equity share in the Hambantota Port. These actions eventually culminated in the Sri Lankan government handing the port and fifteen thousand acres of land around it to the PRC for 99 years in 2015. Similar examples of debt-trap diplomacy can be seen in other developing countries throughout the world, to include Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and even South America.

The actions of debt-trap diplomacy coincide directly with strategy from a 1999 book titled Unrestricted Warfare by Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. Unrestricted Warfares Chapter 5 directly states that the great masters of warfare techniques during the twenty-first century will be those who employ innovative methods to recombine various capabilities so as to attain tactical, campaign and strategic goals. Debt-trap diplomacy embodies the very definition of innovative methods with PRC loans enabling the PRC to possess a commercial port along a critical waterway just several hundred miles away from India, a noted strategic rival.

Therefore, the development of a PRC-backed cryptocurrency must be given close scrutiny within the context of the global cryptocurrency market. The PRC has demonstrated an ability to leverage its assets to an eventual strategic advantage, showcasing this example of economic warfare through the Hambantota Port. Consequently, the use of a digital economic asset to disrupt a global market is one that does not require a far leap of the imagination.

The growth of cryptocurrency in China

Cryptocurrency emerged just over a decade ago, with an individual by the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto laying out his or her framework for a peer-to-peer version of electronic cash in 2009. Blockchain technology emerged from this creation, allowing for the formation of a publicly-available distributed transaction ledger for digital currencies. The Chinese have enthusiastically received the idea of the blockchain, spurred on by a multitude of other factors such as the welcoming of a non-PRC backed commodity as well as relatively low prices of hardware and electricity, among others. These low prices of both hardware and electricity enable China to comprise a critical role in global Bitcoin mining operations, accounting for over two-thirds of all mined bitcoins in recent past months. This initial embrace of digital currencies continues to rise even to this day, with particular increases in searches for the keyword Bitcoin coinciding with interests towards U.S.-China trade talks.

The popularity of cryptocurrencies in China remains high despite regular PRC bans of digital currencies. This popularity can be attributed to the Chineses populaces a mobile-first mindset, with the Chinese pioneering the acceptance of technology-driven societal changes to include tools such as digital payment systems and bike-sharing services through popular organizations such as Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent.

The rising dragon: the emergence of the digital yuan

Some may consider it ironic that the PRC constantly issues notices prohibiting the use of cryptocurrencies while simultaneously praising digital currencies through platforms such as President Xi Jinping and the PRC-run newspaper Xinhua. However, these types of actions speak more to a PRC desire to dominate the cryptocurrency space and not to internal PRC confusion. Having this viewpoint allows for additional clarity of the PRCs actions. Through this, it becomes easily understandable that the PRC is simply attempting to capture a large part of the global digital currency market with its own state-backed cryptocurrency through its relative suppression of private digital currencies.

The PRC has been developing its concept of the digital yuan since as early as 2014. Tests of a blockchain-backed digital currency were conducted in late 2016, with the eventual report announcing that these trials helped to reduce circulation costs, increase transparency, and curb money laundering and tax evasion. These efforts were further bolstered with the creation of a PBOC-backed Digital Currency Research Institute in mid-2017. In fact, this Digital Currency Research Institute is even based in the same building as the PRC-backed China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation, the PRCs equivalent of a state mint. During theyear 2018,the PBOC announced in its official magazine, China Finance, that it haddevelopeda digital currency;the magazineanalyzed the necessity of issuing a true PRC-backed digital currency. The following year, the PRC established its national cryptography law, which granted the Communist Party authority over three defined encryption categories: core, common and commercial.

With an already-developed stranglehold over the internal Chinese market, the PRC has set the stage for the emergence of its cryptocurrency. The tactic of limiting access to private cryptocurrencies as early as 2013 and as recently as 2019 has enabled the PRC the time and the opportunity to develop its own cryptocurrency, which we will surely see at least glimpses of in the year to come.

Into the future

The PRCs expanding soft and hard power has catapulted the PRC into the global political and economic stage. Huge infrastructure projects such as the BRI have helped solidify this power alongside corresponding growth in the PRCs military might. The development of a PRC-backed cryptocurrency is interesting to note within this context, given the critical importance of China in global cryptocurrency mining operations and markets.

Chinas influence on the global cryptocurrency market is one that must not be underestimated, with some figures having China accounting for over 90 percent of all global trading volume pre-PRC ban on bitcoin trading several years ago. Since then, popular Chinese Bitcoin exchanges such as Bitfinex, OkCoin, and BTCC have comprised over 45 percent of total global digital currency market share at one point or another, though these exchanges are frequently blocked/closed in China to this day. These significant numbers showcase how dependent the global cryptocurrency ecosystem is on China as a cryptocurrency market and as a cryptocurrency miner.

The rise of the digital yuan has a variety of far-reaching effects within the global cryptocurrency market. One way that a PRC-backed cryptocurrency might be utilized would be to allow for competitive trade advantage. With the practice of devaluing the yuan already one practiced by the PRC, the devaluation of a PRC-backed cryptocurrency could increase its power over other cryptocurrencies, and therefore, the cryptocurrency market at-large. Another example of such an advantage would be that the digital yuan could have the potential for individual currency holders to have a deposit directly at the PBOC, allowing the PRC to be the predominant, if not only, supplier of digital money to retail customers. This, in turn, would enable the PRC to use monetary easing as it sees fit, thus further increasing PRC dominance of the global cryptocurrency market. Additionally, the proposed centralized digital yuan, which some may say goes against the very core of cryptocurrency ideals, potentially enables the PRC to increase control and access over its monetary policy and population, respectively. On the same note, the PRC would have access to information from all users of the digital yuan, a notion raising privacy concerns worldwide. These are just several ways that would empower the PRC to conduct economic warfare in multiple ways through its use of a PRC-backed cryptocurrency.

Conclusion

While China may not completely unveil its digital currency in 2020, one can surmise that the world will begin to see some portions of the digital yuan being unveiled this year. In fact, recent announcements have already pointed to plans for Alibaba, Tencent, Union Pay, and four others to be the first to be issued the digital yuan. The digital currency landscape could truly be changed if China were to be the first major economy to adopt a native digital currency, with the digital yuan potentially lording significant influence over the global cryptocurrency market. In conclusion, 2020 will most likely see the unveiling of the digital yuan, a cryptocurrency that must be monitored carefully in order to prevent widespread disruption and destruction to the global cryptocurrency market at large.

Hugh Harsono is currently serving as a U.S. Army Officer. He is a regular contributor to TechCrunch, Tech in Asia, and the U.S. Army War College War Room, with a specialty in startups, emerging technologies, and economics in Asia. The views stated here do not reflect officials positions of the U.S. Army or U.S. Government.

Read more here:
The Emergence of a China-Backed Cryptocurrency in the Era of the Digital Yuan - The National Interest Online


« First...102030...1,3291,3301,3311,3321,333...1,3401,3501,360...Last »