Category Archives: Cryptocurrency

The U.S. Secret Service has seized cryptocurrency worth more than $102 million in 254 fraud-related investigations. What criminals want to do is sort of muddy the waters and make efforts to obfuscate their activities, said the assistant director of the Secret Services Office of Investigations. What we want to do is to track that as quickly as we can, aggressively as we can, in a linear fashion.

A senior executive with the U.S. Secret Service, David M. Smith, talked about cryptocurrency in an interview with CNBC, published Tuesday.

Smith is a senior executive and special agent currently serving as the 28th Assistant Director of the U.S. Secret Service Office of Investigations, where he leads the agencys global investigative mission, comprising 161 offices and over 3,000 employees.

The Secret Service is responsible for detecting, investigating, and arresting any person who violates certain laws related to financial systems. In recent years digital assets have increasingly been used to facilitate a growing range of crimes, including various fraud schemes and the use of ransomware, its website describes.

Smith told the news outlet that Secret Service agents and analysts are actively tracking the flow of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on the blockchain, elaborating:

When you follow a digital currency wallet, its not different than an email address that has some correlating identifiers.

And once a person and another person make a transaction, and that gets into the blockchain, we have the ability to follow that email address or wallet address, if you will, and trace it through the blockchain, the assistant director affirmed.

According to statistics compiled by the agency, the Secret Service has seized more than $102 million in cryptocurrency since 2015 from criminals in connection with 254 cases of fraud-related investigations, the publication conveyed.

Smith noted that One of the things about cryptocurrency is it moves money at a faster pace than the traditional format, stressing that fast transaction speed makes crypto attractive to both American consumers and criminals. What criminals want to do is sort of muddy the waters and make efforts to obfuscate their activities, he noted. What we want to do is to track that as quickly as we can, aggressively as we can, in a linear fashion.

The assistant director explained that once the Secret Service detects an illegal activity, it works to dig a little deeper into those transactions and deconstruct them. Smith said:

You send me something bad on an email, I know theres some criminal activity associated with that email address, I can deconstruct, find whatever tidbits of information that you used when you initially logged in or signed up for that email address.

Smith further shared that investigators are finding more and more thieves converting stolen BTC and other cryptocurrencies into stablecoins. He opined: Because, you know, the criminals, theyre humans too. They want to avoid some of that market volatility associated with some of the major coins.

What do you think about the Secret Services work to crack down on crypto-related fraud? Let us know in the comments section below.

A student of Austrian Economics, Kevin found Bitcoin in 2011 and has been an evangelist ever since. His interests lie in Bitcoin security, open-source systems, network effects and the intersection between economics and cryptography.

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US Secret Service Has Seized Cryptocurrency Worth Over $102 Million in 254 Fraud Cases Regulation Bitcoin News - Bitcoin News

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With changing times, the world is slowly shifting its investment strategies from gold to stock trading to cryptocurrency. The first decade of the cryptocurrency experiment has boomed far beyond anybody's wildest expectations. And while leading economists believe that it is a game-changing strategy and have coined it as the future of finance, environmentalists have raised their eyebrows in the recent past due to its impacts on the environment.

On Earth Day 2022, heres a quick explainer of how cryptocurrency impacts our environment and how the crypto community is transitioning into a sustainable future.

The first generation cryptocurrencies used something called the 'proof of work', in which separate parties verify the records and transactions stored in a blockchain. Although crypto trading is entirely paperless, this 'mining' process to verify each transaction, involved a high amount of electricity and machinery to process complex algorithms.

Bitcoin, one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, uses around 70,000 computers to run its software and requires roughly 1997.16 kWh for a single transaction, consuming nearly as much electricity as an average family in the U.S. would use for a month.

For this reason, many companies, including Elon Musk's Tesla, stopped accepting payments in Bitcoin at the end of 2021.

Subsequently, sustainable or 'green' cryptocurrencies have exploded in the market in recent years in an attempt to march towards a cleaner, greener future. Such cryptocurrencies mark a minimal carbon footprint, as they do not require vast amounts of energy to process their transactions.

These cryptos employ something called the 'proof of stake' that ensures trust in a more old-fashioned currency: money. This consensus mechanism minimises the computational power required to verify the transactions.

Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum, which has recently transitioned to proof of stake, is hoping to reduce total energy use by 99.95% since proof-of-stake remains around 2,000 times more energy-efficient than proof-of-work. With the transition, the energy expenditure of Ethereum is expected to be roughly equal to the cost of running a home computer for each node on the network. Till recently, Ethereum used 2,000 computers to run its software and consumed roughly 178 kWh per transaction, which equals six days of electricity consumed by an average family in the U.S.

Several other cryptos have even begun opting for renewable sources for mining their currencies. Research from the University of Cambridge shows that the renewable share of these energy mining reservoirs is already as high as 78%.

Environmentalists have also suggested shifting operations next to oil fields, where they can tap waste methane gas or near wind farms to use excess wind energy.

While there certainly are umpteen challenges ahead, crypto definitely has the potential to lead us toward a greener planet.

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Earth Day 2022: Here's How the Decade's Favourite TrendCryptocurrencyis Striving to Contribute Towards Sustainability | The Weather Channel - Articles...

Wrapped Bitcoin's WBTC/USD price has decreased 5.02% over the past 24 hours to $39,484.00, continuing its downward trend over the past week of -3.0%, moving from $40,488.43 to its current price.

The chart below compares the price movement and volatility for Wrapped Bitcoin over the past 24 hours (left) to its price movement over the past week (right). The gray bands are Bollinger Bands, measuring the volatility for both the daily and weekly price movements. The wider the bands are, or the larger the gray area is at any given moment, the larger the volatility.

Wrapped Bitcoin's trading volume has climbed 24.0% over the past week along with the circulating supply of the coin, which has increased 1.04%. This brings the circulating supply to 280.51 thousand, which makes up an estimated 100.0% of its max supply of 280.51 thousand. According to our data, the current market cap ranking for WBTC is #16 at $11.07 billion.

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Cryptocurrency Wrapped Bitcoin Down More Than 5% Within 24 hours - Benzinga - Benzinga

Ridley Scott, the director of blockbuster heavyweights such as Alien, Gladiator and Blade Runner is reportedly developing a new film which will explore the development and creation of the Ethereum cryptocurrency. Ridley Scott's production company, Scott Free Productions will help bring a film adaptation of Camila Russo's best-selling book The Infinite Machine to life.

Camila Russo will act as an executive producer on the film and was recently quoted saying:

I can't imagine a better team to turn the riveting story about the people behind the most revolutionary technology since the internet, into a feature film that will capture the hearts of our generation.

With the advancement of Cryptocurrencies and their technology in recent years, the development of this film couldn't come at a better time. With many analysts expecting Cryptocurrencies to rocket even higher in the coming years, Ethereum is one of the top contenders, behind Bitcoin for being mass adopted worldwide.

Currently no title, release date or other details have been revealed yet. But as we learn more we'll keep you posted!

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Ridley Scott developing new film about the creation of the Ethereum cryptocurrency! - Scified

Over the past 24 hours, Bitcoin Cash's BCH/USD price has fallen 4.07% to $319.47. This continues its negative trend over the past week where it has experienced a 6.0% loss, moving from $340.63 to its current price.

The chart below compares the price movement and volatility for Bitcoin Cash over the past 24 hours (left) to its price movement over the past week (right). The gray bands are Bollinger Bands, measuring the volatility for both the daily and weekly price movements. The wider the bands are, or the larger the gray area is at any given moment, the larger the volatility.

The trading volume for the coin has tumbled 60.0% over the past week while the circulating supply of the coin has risen 0.34%. This brings the circulating supply to 19.04 million, which makes up an estimated 90.68% of its max supply of 21.00 million. According to our data, the current market cap ranking for BCH is #27 at $6.09 billion.

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Cryptocurrency Bitcoin Cash Down More Than 4% Within 24 hours - Benzinga - Benzinga

What brought the altcoin Shiba Inu into the investor conciousness was its crazy rise from obscurity in January 2021 to a high of $0.00008841 on October 27, 2021. This rise in value was around 121,000,000% in less than a year.

However, if investors were hoping its rise was to continue, they were mistaken. Now, the memecoin is approaching a deadline which could mean it never reaches these heights again.

As of April 19, the value of Shiba Inu coin is, $0.00002515, around four times lower compared to its aforementioned peak. For it to hit even $0.01, Shiba Inus token would need to increase in value by nearly 40,000% from where it is at the time of this writing ($0.00002515) on April 19, 2022.

Accounting website The Motley Fool believes there is nothing new or interesting about Shiba Inu to make it valuable, let alone hit $0.01. They argue that between 93% and 99% of payment altcoins surrender their maximum value between 12 and 24 months after reaching their peak.

Shiba Inu coin was recently minted on the Robinhood crypto website, which is expected to drive up demand for the coin. While some analysts are expecting its failure, some cryptobros are already heralding the coin and the new Dogecoin, the memecoin that blew up last year.

However, as ever with cryptocurrency trying to predict which will rise and fall is nigh impossible.

Since Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies blew up in 2018, many others have tried to replicate the success. These are the altcoins, simply alternative coins.

Altcoins include all cryptocurrencies that are not Bitcoin. According to aggregate site statista, there are over 10,300 altcoins globally. These range from tiny coins that are only just beginning to joke coins like Dogecoin. Originally started to troll crypto users, Dogecoin became a beast of its own. It had next to no value until the coin was taken up by Reddit, from which its value increased tenfold.

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Cryptocurrency USA: can Shiba Inu be the highest rising altcoin this year? - AS USA

The term Web3 is creating quite the buzz lately, especially among those interested in technology, cryptocurrency, and venture capital.Heres an introduction to what some people are calling the internet of the future. No one really knows what it is yet, but from an estate planning standpoint, I have some predictions.

To understand Web3, its helpful to go back in time and review the history of the internet.

In the 1990s, we were calling the internet the information superhighway. Although it was confusing and overwhelming to most, many Americans began to dial up nonetheless. Children were being taught how to surf the web alongside adults who learned how to use email and conduct basic web searches for the first time. The internet was very much a blank slate with a steep learning curve. However, many people intrinsically knew this was the next big thing that would change our lives forever. This era of the internet is referred to as Web 1.0.

In the mid-2000s, we entered the age of Web 2.0. Major platforms like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter emerged. They began to make the internet a more convenient place to connect, interact, and transact. However, critics began to question whether these few companies were beginning to amass too much power. In recent years, we witnessed lawsuits in which tech giants were slammed with billion-dollar fines for harvesting personal data and breaching data privacy laws.

Although the public enjoys taking advantage of free services and centralized data, many are questioning the role of these tech giants and whether their control over data is too great. Should we democratize and create information exchange silos on the internet once again?

This is where Web3 comes in, and why its causing a brouhaha amongst tech speculators.

The internet would be decentralized sans tech giants in the future of Web3. We could be looking at the rise of new social platforms, search engines, and marketplaces built and owned by the collective, rather than by a corporation.

End users would reclaim their power and control over their own data. They could possibly move around from platform to platform on the internet using a single personalized account, rather than having to log into multiple different accounts for each respective company and platform.

We could be given tokens for participating, which can then be used to vote on decisions regarding how a platform should change or improve, or demand what features we want to be offered. These tokens could even accrue real value and build our wealth.

How will this be possible? How will all this be secure? Web3 will be built using blockchain technology. Yes, thats right. Its the same technology that is used by cryptocurrency right now. One of the reasons why cryptocurrency and decentralized finance are so popular today is because they cut the middleman out of determining value and executing trades on the internet.

Web3 may be the pathway to cutting the middleman out of the internet, data, and information exchange itself. The internet could become a place that is run by the collective, using digital tokens as its currency.

Although the idea of Web3 could make any average persons eyes glaze over, those who are ahead of the curve and understand crypto are getting excited and placing their bets on Web3.

Do you remember the very beginning of the internet? We would dial-up through America Online (now AOL) in the 1990s and the most we could really do was visit our friends Geocities pages. Everything felt clunky and awkward, and a lot of us didnt even really know what the internet was for. It turned out that the experts werent wrong, and today, the internet pretty much runs our lives.

Web3 could very much be a parallel to this. Its something that remains to be seen, and there is no universal understanding of what Web3 is, or what it will look like. We may be decades away from Web3 becoming our reality, but it behooves us to start thinking about how blockchain technology will revolutionize how we conduct our personal business.

One aspect of this is estate plans. Its entirely possible we could have blockchain-based estate plans. You could, in theory, set up smart contracts that dictate that your digital assets will be passed automatically to your spouse or beneficiary upon a specified trigger event, such as your death. These assets would not go through the probate court as they would today.

In other words, in the age of Web3, we could be looking at a possibility in which the effectuation of an estate plan could become decentralized.

Although we may be decades away from a new reality like Web3, the estate planning industry is already taking steps in this direction.

For instance, California has enabled the small-estate affidavit, which allows for estates valued under $166,250 to bypass probate. More states could follow suit. On a grander scale, more and more states are adopting laws that enable the digital execution of wills. This is made possible by legally recognizing e-signatures and e-notaries. These types of regulatory changes make it possible for wills to be effectuated automatically and digitally.

The digital age is here, and one thing you can do now is protect your assets (both physical and digital) with an estate plan. We are hearing too many jaw-dropping stories about hundreds of millions in cryptocurrency fortunes being lost in the ether due to a lack of proper estate planning. Crypto is popular amongst young adults, demonstrating the need for estate plans to be established earlier in life as well.

Have a plan in place for how to protect your digital assets, how you plan to pass them on if anything were to happen to you, and leave instructions for how they can be accessed and used. Estate planning is the key in this digital age.

Cody Barbo, Founder & CEO,Trust & Will

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What is Web3? The future of the internet, cryptocurrency, and estate planning - Fast Company

This article was translated from our Spanish edition using AI technologies. Errors may exist due to this process.

Sam Bankman-Fried understands Elon Musk. The cryptocurrency billionaire, owner of the FTX exchange platform, gave an interview to Bloomberg TV in which he said that social networks have a broken model that can be repaired using block chain technology (fundamental to the industry). of NFTs and cryptocurrencies). According to the 30-year-old , the problem is in the moderation policies of the networks: "What is the moderation policy for all social networks? Are they like three types? It is the people who run three companies who choose what what gets censored and what doesn't. That's a broken model... We saw a social network choose not to censor misinformation in 2016 and got burned for that decision, then we saw them choose censorship in 2020 and get roasted for that decision."

According to the businessman, the problem with the networks is that each one is independent of the other, even when they belong to the same company like Facebook and WhatsApp, which are part of Meta: "There is no possibility of seeing a tweet on Facebook. If you send a message someone on Facebook, even WhatsApp can't read it, being from the same company. It's a really messy system where there's no interoperability between the different platforms."

For Bankman-Fried, the use of blockchains could solve the problem and even encourage competition: You put the actual underlying messages directly on the blockchain. What that means is that any platform could, in theory, access those same sets of messages. So whether you're using Facebook, Twitter or any other platform they're all based on all the messages They would be different interfaces living in the same universe.

A few weeks ago (before buying shares of Twitter and launching a crusade to take control of the social network ), Elon Musk published a post questioning whether the platform "adhered to the principles of freedom of expression."

Asked by Bloomberg TV interviewers if he had already spoken with Elon Musk about his proposal, Sam Bankman-Fried replied: "I haven't spoken directly with Elon about this, but I would be excited to."

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Cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried would be thrilled to talk to Elon Musk about Twitter - Entrepreneur

Last month, a cryptocurrency blockchain platform built for a popular play-to-earn online video game was hacked. The hackers stole more than $600 million in digital currency from the blockchain, called Ronin (its technically a sidechain, meaning a blockchain that acts as a bridge to other blockchains), in what has been described as the second-largest cryptocurrency heist to date.

As more industries make use of so-called blockchains, which are really just digital ledgers for storing data, the high-profile theft has raised new concerns about just how effective existing blockchain safeguards and protocols are at protecting the digital wallets of millions of traders.

Right now, its the wild west, Alan Mislove, professor of computer science at Northeastern, says of the blockchain-based crypto trade.

Alan Mislove, professor of computer science at Northeastern. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Not all blockchains are used for the purpose of trading cryptocurrencies. But because they effectively decentralize tradingor remove the intermediaryblockchain technology has been pitched as a way to move beyond traditional banking toward a more democratized system founded on the principles of inclusion, transparency, and security. Whereas traditional ledgers in banks require special permission or access to be audited, blockchains can be permissionless and wholly transparent (or public). Transactions are verified by participants in the blockchain, instead of a central authority, who are in turn rewarded in the currency.

How secure is this process? It depends. Blockchain companies often rely on a public-private key pair encryption, Mislove says. Blockchain users have a public key and private key that they use to perform certain tasks. Only the owner knows what the private key is, but everyone else knows the public key.

The challenge becomes keeping those private keys private, Mislove says. As they are obtained by an attacker, theres nothing stopping a hacker from stealing those funds.

Some blockchain users store their private key on a physical device to keep it safe. Others use cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Coinbase, that secure the private keys on users behalf.

But Coinbase, the industrys largest exchange, has seen an uptick in hacking of accounts. Once criminals gain access, they can drain a users account of its cryptocurrency in a matter of minutes, according to CNBC.

Ravi Sarathy, professor of international business and strategy at Northeastern. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

Typically how it happens is somebody would break into a crypto exchange, Mislove says. But another common way is that the hacker would attempt to phish users to trick them into giving them their private keys.

In the case of the Ronin blockchain theft, hackers were able to get access to so-called validator nodes, which are computers tasked with authorizing blockchain transactions. By hacking these computers, the attacker was able to approve fake withdrawals from accounts valued at more than $600 million.

Mislove says he doesnt know the details of the Ronin hack, but speculates it could have happened by means of traditional hacking.

Oftentimes the way they break into those servers is through phishing, malware, etc., he says. In other words, social engineering.

But other cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin (also the industrys first), are proving to be unhackable, says Ravi Sarathy, professor of international business and strategy at Northeastern.

Bitcoin, one of the very first blockchains to enter public usage, has never been hacked, Sarathy says.

Sarathy says he thinks the Ronin hack, while an unfortunate event, can help companies fortify their servers and rethink how transactions get approved.

I think it just means that people are going to have to be more careful about how they set up validation, particularly on permission blockchains, Sarathy says.

Sarathy says hes a blockchain optimist.

I think blockchains value is broader than cryptocurrency when you think about things like decentralized voting and financial inclusion, for example, Sarathy says. The applications are virtually endless.

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu.

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What the $600M cryptocurrency heist means for future of blockchain security - Northeastern University

Hackers are increasingly targeting DeFi (Decentralized Finance) cryptocurrency platforms, with Q1 2022 data showing that more platforms are being targeted than ever before.

In 2021 alone, about $3.2 billion worth of digital assets were stolen, which was already an explosion compared to previous years.

However, the trajectory for 2022 looks to be even more aggressive, with almost $1.3 billion already stolen during the Q1 alone.

The new report comes fromChainalysis, which is seeing a massive rise in successful cyberattacks against cryptocurrency platforms, with attacks primarily focusing on DeFi platforms.

A whopping 97% of all cryptocurrency stolen this year are from DeFi platforms, leaving a mere 3% to exchanges. While two years ago, DeFi accounted for only 30% of all digital assets stolen.

Most of these attacks relied on exploiting code vulnerabilities or a security breach on the platform allowing cryptocurrency theft.

DeFi platforms are completely decentralized and free of intermediaries, exchanges, and brokers, using a system of smart contracts on a blockchain to offer lending, trading, insuring, and interest-earning.

DeFi platforms need to rely on transparent, open-source development models to convince investors of their trustworthiness, which allows researchers to analyze the smart contracts and services for bugs.

However, this also allows threat actors to examine the same code and potentially find and exploit a bug before its fixed. Unfortunately, theres commonly a bug that lies undetected and unfixed, which malicious actors can use to siphon peoples funds in a flash.

Another issue with DeFi platform security used to be the possibility to manipulate the market during a loan action, driving the value of the borrowed token down via excess slippage and then repurchasing it at a deflated price.

This special flash loan attack unfolds in seconds and may simultaneously involve multiple DeFi platforms.

In 2022, most protocols switched to using decentralized price oracles, which are resistant to manipulation, so the problem appears to have been addressed.

Stealing cryptocurrency is one thing, but obscuring the path to your pocket and making it usable withoutgoing to prisonis another.

According to Chainalysis data, threat actors passed most of the stolen assets in 2022 through risky laundering services such ascoin tumblersand illegal exchanges on the dark web.

Tumblers, or mixers, are services that attempt to anonymize cryptocurrency transactions by mixing received crypto with coins from other users and services. The mixer will then take a commission from the received cryptocurrency and send the rest to another wallet address owned by the threat actor, hoping to evade law enforcement.

In 2021, a significant 25% of all cryptocurrency stolen from DeFi platforms wasreturned to the victimsafter some time, serving as an atypical white-hat hacking exercise.

So far this year, no funds stolen from DeFi platforms have been returned, so the threat actors werent interested in making security statements but money.

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Cryptocurrency DeFi platforms are now more targeted than ever - BleepingComputer