Daily Archives: February 6, 2017

In the world of cryptocurrency, there is a lot of focus on bitcoin and other major currencies. However, there are quite a few altcoins who take the concept of creating a scarce supply to extreme measures. Although scarcity alone does not give a cryptocurrency intrinsic value by any means, it goes to show it can create an illusion of value over time.

The current cryptocurrency with the absolute lowest supply of coins to be recorded so far is bitGold. Its supply only has 10.2299 coins right now, all of which are quite valuable. In fact, the market cap of US$14,473 may look small, but it does mean every BTGOLD is worth over US$1,400. Unfortunately, bitGold only had less than US$100 worth of trading volume in the past 24 hours, making this cryptocurrency less than attractive to investors.

Rather than trying to create an altcoin with a fancy name, 42-coin simply illustrates the available coin supply. All 41.9999 coins have been brought into circulation, establishing a market cap of US$32,019. Not necessarily a favorite altcoin either, as its volume is even lower than bitGold right now.

Quite a few altcoins have tried to piggyback on the Bitcoin name, including bitBTC. With a supply of 43,8132 it is almost as scarce as 42-coin and generates slightly higher trading volumes. The market cap of US$46,854 is not bad, considering bitBTC has no real world use yet.

Not every altcoin with a smaller supply is worth next to nothing. Jinn is one of the few currencies bucking the trend as every one of the available 56,703 coins is worth US$6.56 each. This puts its market cap at well above the US$280,000 mark right now. Dont be surprised if you have never heard of Jinn, though, as its use cases are virtually non-existent.

One of the surprise entrants on the list of low-supply yet valuable alternative cryptocurrencies goes by the name Byteball. Under the GBYTE ticket, a total supply of 100,000 coins has been made available. With every coin surpassing the US$87.24 value, the market cap is on its way to surpass US$9m. Byteball also generated nearly US$120,000 in trading volume over the past 24 hours, making it quite successful in its own right.

When ZCash launched not too long ago, it became clear the supply of this currency would remain somewhat limited for quite some time. With just over half a million coins in circulation right now, the price per ZEC found a new home around the U$38.82 mark. It is intriguing to see this privacy-centric currency reach a market cap of nearly US$23m in such a short amount of time, though. ZCash continues to generate a fair amount of daily trading volume as well, making it quite a popular cryptocurrency.

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Top 6 Rare Cryptocurrencies - The Merkle

SibCoin is developed on a fork of Dash cryptocurrency platform. Dash is currently the sixth largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization.

The cryptocurrency industry is flooded with hundreds of altcoins. The open source nature of many cryptocurrency platforms offers an easy way to create and deploy new altcoins. However, unless these altcoins serve a specific purpose or solve a particular problem, they will eventually fade into oblivion.

SibCoin, short for Siberian Chervonets is one such altcoin which is out there on a specific mission meeting the blockchain needs of the Russian community. SibCoin is developed on a fork of Dash cryptocurrency platform. Dash is currently the sixth largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization. The highly successful SibCoin recently broke the record after its masternode network volume surpassed that of its parent coin. With increasing adoption, the gap between Dash and SibCoin continues to widen.

Unlike other cryptocurrencies, SibCoin has a unique advantage. The digital currency is created by a group of Russian developers, for the Russian community. In a country where the Western concepts are taken with a pinch of salt due to decades of mistrust, a home-grown cryptocurrency is much easier to accept.

Also, in Siberia and many other Russian cities, people feel that their contributions to the countrys economy are underappreciated. They are also fed up with corruption and bureaucratic inefficiencies plaguing the system. They believe that blockchain, with its transparency, can be a solution to all these issues.

SibCoin has broken the barrier which Bitcoin was unable to surpass since its inception. The creators of SibCoin have made further improvements to the Dash protocol by employing additional encryption algorithms to make it much better and more adaptable among the Russian population. At the same time, the SibCoin team is also involved in active promotion and awareness campaigns across Russia to familiarize the population to SibCoin and blockchain technology in general.

As the SibCoin community grows, the cryptocurrency could turn out to be the driving force behind the countrys blockchain revolution.

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SibCoin Meets the Needs of Russian Cryptocurrency Community ... - newsBTC

While some countries are busy trying to come up with laws to regulate the use of cryptocurrencies, others are busy coming up with laws to legalize digital currencies. In light of the events by the European Commission, member countries of the European Union are coming up with laws to regulate Bitcoin. Russia has however not made such steps, instead its doing the opposite. Last year Russia announced that it considers Bitcoin transactions and exchanges as legitimate in the eyes of the law. This was good news to the Cryptocurrency world considering that Russia is a country where laws relating to capital control are more strict than in most countries.

Dmitry Marinichev, Russias internet ombudsman, has made suggestions to bringthe use of cryptocurrencies to residents of Crimea. With Crimea in need of investors, Mr. Marinichev believes that opening of Cryptocurrency exchanges will help to attract new investors to this region. For this to be successful, a free economic zone will have to be created within the peninsula. Mr. Marinichev also had this to say on regulation of Cryptocurrencies in Russia: Today Crimea is an exclusive economic zone, which makes it possible to start with the opening of Cryptocurrency exchanges operating there absolutely legally. As a result we will see the actual legalization of Cryptocurrencies.

The head of the Working Group For the Assessment of Risks of Cryptocurrencies in the state of Duma of the Russian Federation, Elina Sidorenko highlighted that using Cryptocurrency instruments for international transactions would improve the banking climate on the peninsula. There is truth to that sentiment because major players in the banking industry do believe that the blockchain technology, which is the technology behind cryptocurrency, is the future of global financial system.

There is a significant number of regions in Crimea, which are unbanked. Residents of these unbanked regions of Crimea now have good news because transactions involving digital currencies do not need banks to be validated. Cryptocurrencies are completely decentralized and the blockchain technology ensures that transactions are validated, hence detecting any fraudulent or unauthorized transactions. Alex Fork, CEO of Humaniq had this opinion on the unbanked regions: Unbanked regions usually consist of a financially poor population. the most important thing is to provide them with a new technology available absolutely free of charge.

There have been countries, mostly in the European union, that in recent times are trying to regulate digital currencies because of criminals using them to commitillegal operations. These unbanked regions provide a chance to experiment and finally make a sound decision regarding digital currencies. The residents of these unbanked regions also get a chance to enjoy the exciting advantages of cryptocurrencies. This move by Russia provides a win-win situation for both the regulator and the residents. Its always good news in the cryptocurrency world when a new country joins.

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Cryptocurrency: Now in Crimea - Eastern Daily News

The cryptocurrency community is currently under threat! A new malware is reportedly making rounds on the internet, infecting computers and stealing cryptocurrency from compromised machines.

The yet to be named malicious software was detected by Cyren, the internet security company. According to the companys latest blog, published during the last week of January 2017, the malware disguises itself as an email communication from reputed banking institutions. These emails appear like fund transfer notifications, and they are found to originate from bots in the United States and Singapore. The attachment contained in these emails are embedded with a versatile keylogger malware.

The next time somebody receives an email from reputed banking institutions like Emirates NBD or DBS, they are better off not knowing what the attachment contains unless of course, they are sure about its authenticity. If the user ends up clicking on the malware-containing executable email attachment, the malware executes itself, creating a filename.vbs file in the Windows startup directory. Once the file is created, the attachment deletes itself.

Whenever the computer restarts, the saved .vbs file runs a script, executing the malware. The malware scours the computers registry for passwords and other sensitive information. It goes through the installed browsers and email clients, gathering stored information, usernames, passwords, browsing history, cache, cookies, etc. At the same time, it also looks for well-known cryptocurrency wallets on the computer.

Cyrens lists the vulnerable wallets on its blog,

Among the wallets it tries to find: Anoncoin, BBQcoin, Bitcoin, Bytecoin, Craftcoin, Devcoin, Digitalcoin, Fastcoin, Feathercoin, Florincoin, Freicoin, I0coin, Infinitecoin, Ixcoin, Junkcoin, Litecoin, Luckycoin, Megacoin, Mincoin, Namecoin, Phoenixcoin, Primecoin, Quarkcoin, Tagcoin, Terracoin, Worldcoin, Yacoin, and Zetacoin.

The infected machines stay vulnerable for a long time as the malware creates hooks for mouse and keyboard, logging every keystroke and mouse movement. Even if the software fails to find any sensitive data in the cache, it can easily capture usernames, passwords, etc., as and when it is typed and send it to the command and control server. This leaves the individuals accounts vulnerable to hacking.

Few media reports indicate that this particular malware was reported earlier in 2015 as well. At that time, it was distributed along with pirated video games. The extensive list of targeted cryptocurrencies and the convincing appearance of the email communication makes it much dangerous, capable of targeting a wider group of audience.

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Malware Alert! A Banking Email That Steals Cryptocurrencies ... - newsBTC

The privacy-focused digital currency monero has captured the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which has expressed concerns overits use among criminals.

Joseph Battaglia,a special agent working at the FBIs Cyber Division in New York City, said during an event last week that widespread use of the increasingly popular cryptocurrency might impact the way the agency conducts investigations.

Addressing a group of about 150 law students at New York's Fordham University, hesaid:

"There are obviously going to be issues if some of the more difficult to work with cryptocurrencies become popular. Monero is one that comes to mind, where its not very obvious what the transaction path is or what the actual value of the transaction is except to the end users."

Launched in April 2014, monero (XMR) is a cryptocurrency with enhancedprivacy features. A fork of the Bytecoin codebase, monero leverages identity-obscuring ring signatures to make it unclear which funds have been sent by whom and to whom.

The cryptocurrency saw its price soar in 2016, climbing from about $0.50at the beginning of the year to about $12, a 2,760%increase.

Since 2013, the agency has seen "enormous growth" in the number of cases involving digital currencypayments, according to Battaglia. Of those, 75% involved bitcoin, he said, though he mentioned litecoin and monero as other cryptocurrencies the agency has encounteredthus far.

TheFBI Cyber Division looks into a diverse range of online criminal activity.

In 2015, the agency reportedransomware losses of$18mfroma single type of software. Since at least last October, the agency has been investigating a $1.3m bitcoin theft tied to the hacking of theBitfinex exchange.

Battaglias statements came afterhis "high-level" account of a typicalcryptocurrency investigation given at theevent, which oneof a series of blockchain workshops co-hosted withIBM.

Other panelists included Brigid McDermott, vice president of blockchain business development at IBM; Dan Ramsden, a Fordham Business School adjunct professor; and Gregory Xethalis, a partner at law firmKaye Scholer.

Following the event, the special agent said he couldn't provide additional details specifically pertaining to the FBIs investigative techniques surrounding monero when asked by CoinDesk.

Duringthe panel, however, Battaglia described the FBI as "a reactionary organization", addingthat, instead of trying to predict the direction that cryptocurrency use might go, the agency has adopted await-and-see approach.

Battaglia concluded:

"Were going to look at what catches on, and what becomes mainstream, and then were going to keep an eye on that, because usually not long after that is when you start to see some of the fraud and some of the more nefarious uses of that technology."

Photo credit: Bruce Gilbert / Fordham University

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The FBI is Worried Criminals Might Use the Private Cryptocurrency Monero - CoinDesk