Daily Archives: April 7, 2020

Bitcoin has rebounded this week, climbing along with gold and other safe-havens as major stock markets struggle.

The bitcoin price is up just over 2% over the last weekmaking strong gains yesterday as investors search for somewhere to put their cash.

However, one major cryptocurrency has outpaced bitcoin's gains over the last week and is still rocketing higher.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency investors have been hard hit by the coronavirus crisis but the bitcoin ... [+] price has begun to climb again this week--outpaced by just a handful of smaller cryptocurrencies.

The privacy-focused cryptocurrency monero, currently ranked as the 11th most valuable cryptocurrency on data site CoinMarketCap with a total value of just under $1 billion, has added almost 5% in the past weekbeating bitcoin's gains.

Monero, which masks the identity of users better than the likes of bitcoin, is up by over 6% over the last 24-hour trading period, soaring as the broader cryptocurrency market climbed.

The precise reason for monero's sudden surge wasn't immediately clear, though there have been a number of positive developments for the bitcoin rival over recent months.

Monero developers recently rolled out an update to its Carbon Chameleon software, designed to improve transaction execution and how the cryptocurrency works with the privacy networks Tor and I2P.

Monero and privacy coins have also recently gained support from some high profile figures in the tech and crypto industry.

"I think well also see privacy integrated into one of the dominant chains in the 2020s," Coinbase's chief executive Brian Armstrong wrote in a blog post back in January.

"Just like how the internet launched with HTTP, and only later introduced HTTPS as a default on many websites, I believe well eventually see a privacy coin or blockchain with built in privacy features get mainstream adoption in the 2020s. It doesnt make sense in most cases to broadcast every payment you make on a transparent ledger."

The monero price has surged over the last week, beating out bitcoin itself as the broader ... [+] cryptocurrency market bounces back.

John McAfee, the controversial and outspoken antivirus software developer and curve-ball U.S. presidential candidate, named monero as his cryptocurrency of choice earlier this year.

McAfee, who has reneged on his promise to "eat [his] own dick on national television" if the bitcoin price didn't hit $500,000 per bitcoin by the end of 2020, praised monero, along with ethereum, the second most valuable cryptocurrency after bitcoin.

McAfee made similar allusions to monero's technological superiority over bitcoin.

"Bitcoin was first. It's an ancient technology. All know it," McAfee said via Twitter before recommending monero to cryptocurrency users.

"Newer blockchains have privacy, smart contracts, distributed apps and more. Bitcoin is our future? Was the Model T the future of the automobile?"

The rest is here:
Just One Major Cryptocurrency Is Outperforming Bitcoin Right Now And Its Climbing Fast - Forbes

Investing has never been easier now that on-chain metrics enable market participants to determine who is on the other side of the trade. While this is only possible in the cryptocurrency market, IntoTheBlock maintains that this data can empower investors worldwide.

Contrary to popular belief, one of the biggest advantages of the cryptocurrency market is transparency. Through on-chain analytics anyone can determine how many investors are in a given asset, when they bought, and what their cost basis is. These key datasets are essential to determine which digital asset to invest in.

IntoTheBlock uses machine learning and statistical modeling to provide a view of a crypto assets profitability and capital stack. Bitcoin, for instance, is a great example of decentralization, which makes it ideal to consider as an investment vehicle, according to the firm.

The flagship cryptocurrency only has one whale that holds 1.4 percent of its circulating supply. This address has approximately 255,100 BTC and belongs to Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange Huobi. The other 98.6 percent of the total Bitcoin in circulation is distributed among investors and retail investors. The former holds 10.1 percent while the latter keeps 88.5 percent.

Not only Bitcoin is decentralized, but the amount of holders in the network is at all-time highs, according to IntoTheBlock.

The Ownership by Time Held model estimates that nearly 30 millon addresses have a balance in Bitcoin. Currently, almost 63 percent of those addresses are holding 10.8 million BTC for more than a year. This represents a 23.7 percent growth since last year.

IntoTheBlock added:

To give you more accurate information about this we can see that the number of Bitcoins that hasnt been moved in over 5 years is up from 3.6m BTC on April of 2019 to 3.95m BTC on April of this year.

Other assets such as Maker do not provide the same levels of decentralization as Bitcoin and most of its investors will be in the red if they were to sell their tokens today.

In fact, IntoTheBlocks Global In/Out of the Money model shows that 89 percent of the addresses holding MKR are losing money while only 3 percent of addresses are in the money.

On-chain metrics also reveal that of the 57,520 addresses holding Maker, just 13 of them control almost 65 percent of the circulating supply. And, there is one address that holds nearly 25 percent of the circulating supply.

IntoTheBlock maintains that this could suggest that if anyone were to buy MKR, there is one major address would probably be the one dumping their tokens at a profit.

The ability to determine how centralized an asset is, how large holders can manipulate its price, or how confident investors are is only possible with this new asset class. Although this is not enough data to consider whether or not a given cryptocurrency provides a good investment opportunity, counter-party analysis makes this decision easier.

Read more:
These are the main factors to consider before investing in the cryptocurrency market - CryptoSlate

Staking is a way for cryptocurrency users to generate passive income as they earn interest on their investments. And now, to meet the demands of its customers, popular exchange Bitfinex has launched a staking rewards program, according to a Tuesday announcement.

The new staking services will allow Bitfinexs users to earn interest of up to 10% per annum for depositing and holding their digital assets on the exchange.

For the time being, however, the staking program only features EOS, Cosmos (ATOM), and v.systems (VSYS). The exchange plans to add support for Tezos (XTZ) sometime in May.

Speaking about the development, Paolo Ardoino, Bitfinexs Chief Technology Officer, said the exchange is committed to engaging their existing customers and the broader crypto community with innovative products and features.

The Bitfinex Staking Rewards Program provides our users with another avenue to increase their holdings on our platform, he added.

Staked tokens will remain under the control of the exchange and will be secured like other cryptocurrencies on the platform. The company assures users that funds will be safely stored on the platform through the use of its secure in-house custody solution, so customers do not need to worry.

To celebrate the launch, the exchange is hosting a competition that allows participants to win a branded Bitfinex t-shirt.

Bitfinex is not the first cryptocurrency exchange to launch a staking rewards program. The likes of Kraken, Coinbase, and leading exchange Binance, have launched similar staking services offering users between 5 and 7% returns per annum.

While crypto staking seems attractive, it also comes with some risks. It is generally not advisable for users to store large amounts of cryptocurrencies on exchanges unless they are trading with the funds. An exchange is only secured until it is hacked.

Hackers are the nightmares of cryptocurrency exchanges. These nefarious players are always targetting exchanges, and one can never tell which trading platform will be the next victim. They have been several reports of exchanges like Mt Gox and Cryptopia that went bankrupt after suffering severe security breaches, which led to the loss of users funds.

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Bitfinex Launches Cryptocurrency Staking With Up To 10% Annual Returns - CryptoPotato

The theory goes that quantum computing could be used to crack out cryptocurrency wallets. Is this true?

What could quantum computing do to web services? Currently, there are supercomputers already in existence. They are so smart that they can find your Bitcoins by brute-forcing the seed phrases. The computers are so smart now that they can distinguish between two persons entering the same login and password on a login page, serving different e-mail inboxes. This is not a matter of what password is used, but what fingers are entering it.

Quantum computers use enormous calculating power to enable the magic of ultra-performance. However, quantum computers work differently and demand caution, so the area is more experimental than established.

In a classic computer, there are 0s and 1s as the data transmitters, called bits. The bit is the smallest unit of information. A set of differently working bits can make up the sequence containing information. In the quantum computer, the same unit of information is called a qubit. This is because, due to its quantum nature, it is not just a voltage orientation definition, it is more of a wave. This special particle full of energy has the ability to appear in two different positions simultaneously. The important thing here is that the qubits superposition eliminates once an observer is looking at it.

This allows the supercomputer, for instance, to test two possible options of the password instead of just one per each brute force attempt.

Also, qubits separated by distance can have similar physical properties and influence on each other.

Computer scientists from across the globe already used supercomputers (not the quantum ones) and computing networks to crack out someones seed phrases. This is not something you should do due to legal concerns but back in 2017, theLarge Bitcoin Collider was offering the public to join collective Bitcoin private keys crackdown.

They offer anybody to participate in an act of something that can be compared with collective brute force. And personal computers of people who joined are acting as hash power.

Collective hash power is calculating random Bitcoin private keys. Such calculation may lead to the participants discovering the private keys of several people who hold bitcoins. And the trick works they have found several addresses with small sums on them. However, most of the keys were the easy ones containing small amounts of bitcoin thrown there on purpose. Presumably, by some secretive coder who discovered those addresses earlier.

Google D-Wave quantum computer raised awareness at the beginning of 2019. After some corporations started using it in business, the new machine quickly gathered the aureole of omnipotence. News outlets inspired the usual noise about bitcoins fast death because of the seed cracking. However, in reality, the new computer is a sector-specific calculator. Google researcher at Imperial College of London, Dragos Ilie, said:

As you add more qubits the system becomes more and more unstable [though] researchers can try different approaches for solving these issues so maybe there are ways to mitigate these problems but right now we are quite far from breaking bitcoin.

It wont perform usual tasks written for old types of computers, because its not the usual one. The scientists barely made it perform casual tasks. It has lots of different constants and settings to count. For instance, if cubits are in the wrong position or two of them dont have direct contact, the logical chain falls apart.

The author of this piece is not a theoretical physicist. However, D-Wave looks like a machine that needs time before people understand how to present the tasks to it.

The ability of a quantum computer to solve the tasks faster than the classic dual logic computers is called Quantum supremacy.

In the fall of 2019, Google has claimed they proved to have the quantum supremacy by performing the specific task via a quantum computer. That task is a hard nut to crack for the usual computers, and the corporation tried to make some waves. However, their competitor IBM used their own supercomputer without any quantum parts and performed the same task faster, thus destroying Googles fairy tale by roots. IBM advises people to take Google with a large dose of skepticism.

The inability of such a computer to work on ultra high speed is taking roots in the noise correction.

Mikhail Dyakonov, a researcher from the Charles Coulombe Laboratory at the University of Montpellier, France, wrote an article for IEEE Spectrum. He claims that quantum computinghas a similar source for both weakness and potential:

While a conventional computer with N bits at any given moment must be in one of its 2N possible states,the state of a quantum computer with N qubits is described by the values of the 2N quantum amplitudes, which are continuous parameters (ones that can take on any value, not just a 0 or a 1). This is the origin of the supposed power of the quantum computer, but it is also the reason for its great fragility and vulnerability.

So the number of continuous parameters describing the state of such a useful quantum computer at any given moment is much, much greater than the number of subatomic particles in the observable universe.

This sounds similar to how the human brain works. Its number of connections between the neurons is far greater than the number of subatomic particles in the Universe. What humans seek in quantum computing seems to be their own brains accuracy level. The neuron connections can be compared with noise in a quantum computer. Being the ideal example of chaos, both the human brain and a quantum computer must perform better, but the quantum computer is stuck within its own complexity.

Dr. Subhash Kak from Oklahoma State University says that quantum computers usedifferent methods of calculating, and classic machines do better at what humans need. Modern quantum computers need a far greater number of cubits to operate before they can compete:

These companies are trying to build hardware that replicates the circuit model of classical computers. However, current experimental systems have less than 100 qubits. To achieve useful computational performance, you probably need machines with hundreds of thousands of qubits.

During the next few years, you have nothing to fear. The crypto coins on the cold wallets are safe, as long as you dont share the secret. As for the coins stored on exchanges and in hot wallets, there is no need for a supercomputer to crack them off.

Now, powerful computers are in possession by scientists and large corporations. They can perform experiments with finding your crypto keys. There is a certain possibility that quantum computers will be able to easily crack the cryptocurrency wallets in the future. Some of the most powerful datacenters, however, already can do such things without quantum computing.

They are obligated by law to avoid using the computational power to steal the coins. Thats why even if scientists find your bitcoin using the supercomputers or quantum computers, they dont have the right to take them away. Otherwise, its a theft.

Byt the time when computational power becomes available to ordinary hackers, your average crypto wallet will be upgraded to handle the threat.

Andreas Antonopoulossuggests that quantum-resistant crypto algorithmswill eventually emerge to protect users wallets. Notably, some of the cryptocurrency wallets already started using 16 or 24 words instead of 12 words as the Seed phrase. This way, they strengthen the security of the wallet in the longterm. Because, at the end of it, nobody knows whether the universal crypto cracking software emerges in the next 5 to 10 years or not.

Maybe, just maybe, theres some billionaire who puts his supercomputer power to cracking up all the possible Bitcoin private keys. If such a violent hacker finds your stash, you wont know about it until he spends it out.

Theoretically, there is a great possibility of creating a quantum computer set that can crack the cryptocurrency wallets. Here, even things like the Moneros hidden blockchain feature may not help to cover the money.

It will take a huge amount of different resources such as time, qubits and electricity to crack out any private key. Or the whole wallet, under current circumstances. There are billions of billions of addresses in the so-called address space. Even with supercomputers, the task is somewhat very hard to complete.

Jeff Fawkes is a seasoned investment professional and a crypto analyst. He has a dual degree in Business Administration and Creative Writing and is passionate when it comes to how technology impacts our society.

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Could Quantum Computing Be Used to Crack... - Coinspeaker