David Bailey, CEO of Bitcoin Magazine and a cryptocurrency aide of the Trump campaign, revealed that the former president asked if Bitcoin could be leveraged to solve the U.S. national debt problem. During an X space on Sunday night, Bailey revealed that the first time he met Trump, he asked if Bitcoin could do anything […]
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BIS Boss Coins ‘Finternet’ Term, Touts Tokenization as Tool for Solving Today’s Financial System Shortcomings
BIS Head Agustin Carstens and Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani have proposed the idea of the “Finternet,” an interconnected financial system led by tokenized assets that would help to overcome today’s shortcomings in transacting financial assets. The core of this system would rely on the possibility of smart contracts managing these assets programmatically. BIS Boss Highlights […]
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Bitcoin Thief’s Decade-Long Heist: Solving The Mystery Of The Stolen Silk Road BTC
In 2012, a staggering 50,000 Bitcoin (BTC) were stolen from the infamous Silk Road, an illicit dark web marketplace. Over the years, the value of the stolen BTC skyrocketed to billion, making it one of the most significant mysteries in cryptocurrency.
However, nearly a decade later, a critical mistake by the thief led to a breakthrough in the case, allowing the IRS-CI (Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation) to crack the puzzle.
CNBC has obtained exclusive footage that reveals how investigators meticulously connected the dots, ultimately leading to the unmasking of the perpetrator behind the Bitcoin heist.
Silk Road Bitcoin Heist Unraveled
The story begins in Athens, Georgia, an unsuspecting college town familiar with typical misdemeanors. On the night of March 13, 2019, 28-year-old Jimmy Zhong, a local computer expert, made an unusual 911 call to report the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin from his home.
Per the report, the investigation into the theft from Zhong’s residence initially yielded no suspects. The Athens-Clarke County Police Department, inexperienced in crypto-related cases, struggled to make headway.
In a quest for answers, Zhong sought the assistance of local private investigator Robin Martinelli. Although not well-versed in cryptocurrencies, Martinelli was determined to crack the case.
Martinelli meticulously examined Zhong’s extensive home surveillance system and stumbled upon a crucial piece of evidence—a slender figure captured in the footage from the night of the crime.
Little did Zhong know that while reporting his stolen Bitcoin, a team of IRS agents worked tirelessly to solve the 2012 Silk Road hack.
However, the hacker’s identity remained concealed until a tiny slip-up occurred. In September 2019, the hacker mistakenly transferred around 0 worth of BTC to a cryptocurrency exchange that adhered to established banking regulations, including “know your customer” procedures.
To the investigators’ surprise, the account used for the transaction was registered in Jimmy Zhong’s name, linking him to the stolen Silk Road funds. The IRS contacted the Athens-Clarke County Police Department, seeking collaboration to build a solid case against Zhong.
United by a shared objective, Lt. Jody Thompson, IRS-CI special agent Trevor McAleenan, and Shaun MaGruder, CEO of cyber intelligence company BlockTrace, formed a team.
Armed with evidence, they obtained a federal search warrant for Zhong’s residence. On November 9, 2021, a large team of officers raided Zhong’s home, delivering the shocking news that he was the prime suspect.
From Creator To Thief?
Investigations revealed that Zhong, an early coder allegedly involved in the development of Bitcoin since its inception in 2009, had played a role in perfecting the technology.
In an ironic twist, a hacker involved in the creation of Bitcoin had transformed into one of the most prominent BTC thieves in history. Zhong was charged with wire fraud, pleaded guilty, and received a sentence of one year and a day in federal prison, starting on July 14, 2023.
Zhong could not retain the illicit funds despite his immense fortune in stolen BTC. The US government seized the assets, initiating a process for victims of the Silk Road hack to reclaim their lost Bitcoin.
However, no claimants came forward, and the government sold the seized Bitcoin, with the proceeds likely to be shared with the Athens-Clarke County Police Department as a token of appreciation for their assistance.
In his statement to the judge, Zhong admitted that the stolen Bitcoin had made him feel important, but ultimately, his actions had only benefited the government financially.
While the original crime of the Bitcoin theft from Zhong’s Athens residence remains unsolved, the arrest and conviction of Zhong have brought closure to one of the most significant cryptocurrency crimes of our time.
Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView.com
Are Bridges Solving the Interoperability Problem?
The blockchain landscape is as vast as it is diverse. Filled with a rapidly growing number of tools, platforms, and protocols, each designed to boost the utility of cryptocurrencies and provide value to users.
But in this complexity, a major obstacle has emerged. Blockchains simply can’t interact with one another. Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Solana, Terra, and dozens more blockchains are effectively operating in isolation, due to a lack of in-built interoperability. This has had a knock-on effect of dividing the blockchain community, who often need to pick and choose which platform to get to grips with and support.
As it stands, to interact with services on multiple blockchains, users would need to have at least a basic understanding of how that platform works, hold a wallet, and own at least some of its native assets. Understandably, few individuals and businesses want to go through the hassle of familiarizing themselves with multiple platforms.
Over the years, a range of options has been pushed as potential solutions to this challenge. These include interoperability solutions like Polkadot, which enables interblockchain communication by connecting distinct blockchains through a central relay chain. As well as Cosmos’ interblockchain communication protocol (ICP), which allows homogeneous blockchains to exchange data and value by providing a single standard for communication.
Image credits: Cosmos
But despite this, some of the earliest and least complicated solutions are providing to be the most effective. We’re talking about bridges — deceptively simple platforms that allow users to easily move their assets from one blockchain to another (a process known as bridging).
The way these platforms work is typically relatively simple. Let’s say you want to move 500 USDT from the Ethereum network to Avalanche. You’d select your bridge, choose your input (Ethereum) and output networks (Avalanche), select the asset (USDT) and amount (500, enter your output address (your Avalanche address) and initialize the bridge. The bridge smart contracts would then burn 500 USDT on Ethereum, and mint 500 USDT on Avalanche — effectively moving 500 USDT between chains without running the risk of accidentally doubling the total amount of USDT in circulation.
Other bridges, such as Celer’s cBridge, keep liquidity pools on each chain rather than burning tokens. When a user bridges their assets, their funds on the origin chain are simply added to that chain’s asset pool, while the equivalent amount of funds on the destination chain are released to their address. This effectively accomplishes the same thing, without requiring token burns (a feature not all blockchains support).
The platform is able to support trustless any-to-any liquidity transfers across close to a dozen networks (including Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Arbitrum, and Avalanche) and has seen its use soar in the last four months, climbing from m total volume in its first month to over m per day in October — demonstrating the rapidly increasing demand for cross-chain liquidity.
The team behind the platform is now finishing up v2.0 of cBridge — bringing with it increased liquidity, more chains, improved benefits for liquidity providers, and more.
Other platforms, including the PancakeSwap bridge, Terra Bridge, and even Binance’s bridge platform have also seen a dramatic uptick in use over the past several months, as an increasing number of users look to interact with projects and services building on alternate blockchains.
By effectively solving the liquidity issue by allowing users to move their assets from one blockchain to another at low cost, without requiring a steep learning curve or excess capital, cross-chain bridges are quickly becoming the go-to solution for those looking to regularly interact with multiple blockchains.
And given their rapid adoption in recent months, it looks likely that they will continue to gain momentum in the months and years ahead as more people recognize the benefits of utilizing multiple blockchains.
Solving DeFi Industry’s Liquidity Fragmentation and Clunky Protocol Interoperability
At the recent ETH Berlin upgrade on April 15, the gas limit size increased, necessitating a fall in transaction fees and heightened activities in Ethereum we see today. DeFi, which stands for decentralised finance, is the critical driver of activities on the network. However, with protocols seeking to take advantage of low fees on other chains like Binance Smart Chain, Layer 2 solutions or the incredibly fast and traction-gaining Polygon’s commit chain, the main problem surfaces – liquidity fragmentation across these different chains.
Ethereum is expecting to solve its scaling issues by the time the Merge upgrade, which sees Eth1 and Eth2 chains merge resulting in the complete transition to Proof-of-Stake. As good as this is for decentralisation and entities seeking to leverage the growing adoption of Web3, if Moore’s law is obeyed as will be the case for Etheeum, which has attained critical mass, then gas costs (synonymous to computing costs but in this case, gas is the cost incurred when developers deploy smart contracts on the Ethereum chain) are expected to increase also.
To buttress even further, for DeFi growth to continue unabated, the ease with which users transfer their assets (stablecoins, Ether and other assets) is determined by how liquid the medium of transfer is. In this case, centralised exchanges held sway for so long, not until Uniswap ushered in the DEX revolution that has continued to birth more solutions within the DeFi industry we see today. Still, due to high transaction cost, risk of impermanent loss and a few other concerns, numerous AMM options keep proliferating, seeking to either ride on the success of their predecessors or extinguish their earlier competitors, a case which the industry has come to describe as Vampire mining attack.
The resultant effect is fragmented liquidity across DEX, many of which are no longer native to the Ethereum chain. There is a need to solve this liquidity fragmentation. To date, blockchain interoperability which is still being experimented upon, has had many tout it as the endgame of the growing number of chains in the space. Hence, in the industry’s interest, the solution to the liquidity fragmentation problem is not another liquidity-hungry protocol but a cross-chain liquidity aggregator. Solving the problem of continuous liquidity fragmentation and trustless interoperability across protocols is what the team behind Pontoon Finance is out to do.
Pontoon offers users One-click liquidity mirroring across ETH, BSC, HECO Chain, xDAI, POLYGON, OPTIMISM with incentivised Relayer Network and Liquidity Mining for Liquidity Providers across the chains. Adopting a decentralised relayer network, Pontoon enables users to effect gas-less cross-chain transfers, whether on sidechains, Layer 1, Layer 2 chains, or commit chains such as Polygon trustlessly. And it passes on the events across chains for each transfer to the bridge.
For instance, a project or DeFi user seeing the recent traction of Polygon, which has now surpassed the Ethereum network’s transaction count, can simply take advantage of Pontoon Finance relayer network feature to enjoy the best of both Ethereum and Polygon’s world all from one position. Moreso, Pontoon team designed the protocol to be composable and seamlessly interact with any DeFi application.
Pontoon affords Liquidity Providers the option of adding liquidity to its cross-chain liquidity pool. For this, LPs earn TOON, Pontoon native token that can be used for governance proposals and staking to earn more yields and sharing in the network fees. Pontoon users also farm new tokens with Pontoon’s day-one multichain liquidity readiness through a single liquidity pool for multiple DEX.
Image by Miloslav Hamřík from Pixabay
Matic Takes Step Towards Solving High Ethereum Gas Fees By Integrating Tether
Matic has just announced that Tether is now available on their network. The Matic team tweeted that this would help Ethereum immensely by diverting activity away from the mainchain.
1/ The industry’s leading stablecoin, Tether (USDT), is now available on Matic Network Layer2 to overcome Ethereum’s performance constraints!🚀$USDT is the industry’s most popular stablecoin, with a staggeringly large market capitalization of over bn. pic.twitter.com/M38KtnaXym
— Matic (@maticnetwork) September 28, 2020
Last month, total daily Ethereum fees hit an all-time high with an .6 million charge for August 13, 2020.
Industry observers pinned the problem on “DeFi mania,” which they say is clogging network capacity and driving up gas prices.
Users have taken to social media in their droves to voice personal anecdotes of excessively high gas fees.
The situation has come to the point that last week, Coinbase Pro announced they would no longer absorb the costs. Instead, going forward, they will now pass the charge onto customers.
“Historically, Coinbase Pro has absorbed these fees on behalf of our customers. However, as crypto has begun to gain broader adoption in applications like DeFi, payments and other projects, networks have gotten busier.“
Matic Network Goes on “Stablecoin Spree”
With that mind, Matic’s announcement comes as welcome news to Ethereum users struggling with high gas fees.
The firm laid out the advantages of using Tether on its network by referring to quicker transactions, as well as the cost savings it will bring.
“By utilizing Matic, users will be able to send USDT at lightning-fast speeds at a fraction of the cost of the gas fees on Ethereum. This will not only provide a superior UX, but will also assist with Ethereum’s congestion crisis by taking the strain from the mainchain.“
Dai is already available on the Matic network and has been since 2018. But the past 24-hours have also seen Matic announce the integration of the second biggest stablecoin by market cap, USDC.
“Continuing our stablecoin spree, $USDC is now available on Matic Network to enable frictionless transfers #PoweredByMatic! USDC is a US dollar-backed stablecoin, managed by a consortium called Centre, founded by @circlepay and including leading crypto exchange @coinbase.”
However, it’s the integration of Tether that will make the biggest difference in tackling Ethereum’s “performance constraints”.
In the last 24-hours, USDT volume was billion, which towers above USDC’s volume at 0 million. Also, as the most paired stablecoin, Tether has the widest reach of crypto users.
What’s more, a look at Etherscan’s gas tracking tool shows Tether was the second biggest gas guzzler over the last 24-hours.
Top 5 gas guzzlers on the Ethereum network. (Source: etherscan.io)
As such, some would say that bringing Tether to the Matic network was a stroke of genius.
But will users take to it? And more importantly, will this be the catalyst that drives up the MATIC price?
So far, markets have not reacted to the news. Currently, the price of MATIC is up just under 2% to .019.
MATIC daily chart YTD with volume. (Source: tradingview.com)
Solving for Bitcoins Accounting and Reconciliation Needs
Sponsored Ledgible is the culmination of Verady’s efforts to develop Bank Statements for Blockchains for reconciling cryptocurrency balances and transactions.nThe post Solving for Bitcoin&8217s Accounting and Reconciliation Needs appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.n
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4 Blockchain Projects Solving Real-World Problems
From wealth management to autonomous robots: four prominent startups at the end of 2018
Investors are no longer interested in ICO projects with no real use. According to Icodata, 0 million were raised in October 2018 through token sales compared to .5 billion in January of the same year. “The blockchain space is getting to the point where there’s a ceiling in sight,” claims Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. The Russian-Canadian programmer believes that the next step will be “real applications of real economic activity.”
Despite the statements and hopes that the end of 2018 will bring about a return to practicality, it is still difficult for applicable projects to break through the information noise. We have picked out four noteworthy blockchain projects that have not yet gained traction in the media, despite featuring a range of out-of-the-box solutions.
Robonomics Network
Problem: The increasing complexity of production, supply chains and urban life that people cannot handle any more.
Solution: Allow people to order goods and services directly from autonomous robots that collaborate with each other
Robonomics Network is an Ethereum network infrastructure for the integration of robotic factories into smart cities and Industry 4.0. Since 2015, the team of scientists and blockchain developers based in the Russian city of Tolyatti have been working on a network which allows autonomous robots to cooperate with one another: making economic decisions without human intervention.
The network’s purpose is to distribute, control and provide services using cyber-physical systems. Robonomics Network is adaptable to human needs, built on the basis of existing market mechanisms and is directly accessible to the end user.
By expanding the capabilities of the basic communication protocol, robots are able to interact with market mechanisms and contractual obligations. As such, the platform provides tools for designers of new cities and industrial zones to provide direct user access for ordering products from autonomous factories directly.
Besides problem-solving on a localized scale, the platform is able to solve the global issues. In 2017, the world’s first international blockchain-based transaction for the transfer of carbon units was conducted using Robonomics, with technical support from Microsoft.
Another of the platform’s applications can be found in combating wildfires. Disasters such as the one we witnessed this year in California may well have been avoided if the authorities used Robonomics-based unmanned drones, which monitor forests using thermal cameras. This fully autonomous system is able to work all year round, has been successfully tested and put into service by the authorities in Tolyatti.
Cyclebit
Problem: Limited capability to spend cryptocurrencies in day-to-day life limits the growth of the crypto industry.
Solution: Enable stores and cafes to become cryptocurrency merchants.
The majority of merchants still don’t accept cryptocurrency due to the lack of an easily-customizable payment infrastructure, the volatility of cryptocurrencies and their inability to be used in fast microtransactions.
Cyclebit believes massive price fluctuations could be mitigated by widespread ownership and usage, facilitated by providing easy ways to pay with cryptocurrency. The startup came has a solution which allows any point of sale to install an iOS and Android-supported application running to receive digital currencies as simply as fiat money. The app facilitates payments from online crypto wallets as well as those from old-fashioned banks.
The solution is now being deploying across 130 Nostrum coffee shops throughout Spain where customers can pay for a cappuccino in BTC. The startup already has access to a working ecosystem provided by Ibox – an omnichannel payment platform with 200,000 point-of-sales earmarked for imminent roll-out.
IOTW
Problem: PoW and PoS algorithms suffer from centralization and hinder micro-mining.
Solution: Use the Proof of Assignment algorithm to make mining possible on basic IoT devices.
IOTW is an IoT blockchain infrastructure characterized by instantaneous throughput achieved by Proof of Assignment protocol. It enables micro-mining and instant transactions on all connected devices without any extra hardware, thus bringing blockchain to household industry and business.
Proof of Assignment makes the network leaner and faster – hence making it more suitable for IoT devices – and eliminates the centralization problems faced under Proof of Stake.
“Block Witnessing Protocol” provides extra network security compared to traditional blockchain architecture. It does this by utilizing a witnessing pool, making the network smaller and holding hundreds of times fewer copies of ledgers.
The product has been tested on over 1,000 IoT devices running on a single trusted node on the blockchain. Current transaction speed tests have shown results of 3,000 transactions per second (tx/s) for long distance transactions and 100,000 tx/s for local ones.
TrustVerse
Problem: Wealth management services underuse blockchain due to the low-trust environment of the crypto-sphere.
Solution: Allow people to manage their wealth using a platform based on the blockchain, AI and deep learning.
Trustverse is a personal wealth and digital asset management platform designed around the use of the blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI). It is a deep-learning based digital assistant for almost every facet of digital holdings. The platform, powered by an AI deep-neural and multi-data financial portfolio optimization engine, provides a reliable smart contract system that simplifies legacy planning, inheritance organization, and the transfer of digital assets. It works as a one-stop shop for everything people need: from managing their portfolios, taxes, identities to distributing their assets after death.
The Trustverse platform contains a host of tools for digital wealth management. “Life scheduling services” can be arranged via smart contracts, and these can be used to assets derived from inheritance, all on a public blockchain.
Unlike traditional financial services where a particular organization stores customer personal data on a centralized server, TrustVerse does not store any personal data. Instead, it provides services to users authenticated by a technology jointly developed with Microsoft.
The post 4 Blockchain Projects Solving Real-World Problems appeared first on NewsBTC.
Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game: Solving the Dating Industry’s Biggest Problem
Reputation is the oldest currency known to man, which is why a rose by any other name will always remain a rose.
But how much is yours worth?
Reputation as a currency is dogged by two missing critical elements; the absence of any quantifiable mechanism for measuring it, and a safe, immutable protocol for exchanging values. Blockchain technology is set to address the later, but what about the former?
Can I trust you to keep a secret?
A decentralized platform is currently the only way to secure information. This is due to the fact that the information is not in the possession of a single entity and therefore not vulnerable to the single point of failure attacks. But that’s not all there is to the revolutionary potential of the blockchain.
Blockchain records are not only distributed across geographically dispersed systems known as nodes, they also exist in a constant state of self-governance and consensus that constantly checks on information stored within itself, the nodes, and the Blockchain for homogeneity. This means that even if a node is compromised, the hundreds of thousands of uncompromised copies spread across the globe will be used by the blockchain to resolve the conflict, repairing the node. Overlaying all these mechanisms are cryptographic protocols, securing identities and enabling P2P exchange of values with no third-party influences.
This is the foundation on which Hicky.io’s disruptive blockchain-based dating is being built on.
What is Love?
Love is the ultimate expression. It’s the eternal bond that connects two souls together, keeping them together. It also remains one of those rare qualities that cannot be bought, rather it is freely given and gotten. However, whilst it cannot be brought or exchanged through conventional currencies, love can be had for the low, low price of a simple reputation.
But how can you guarantee reputation? How can you qualify and quantify reputation? How do you leverage it for love?
Hicky.io is how.
Hicky is a dating platform that uses the power of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies to create an open, better and transparent platform for online dating. The platform tokenizes all that love requires – trust, reputation, privacy, and confidence – through its innovative HKY token and presents it as a competitive alternative to traditional and closed-network dating platforms. The token offers a complete tokenized economy that enables users to:
- Pay for P2P interactions
- Get incentivized for votings
- Get rewards for referrals
- Get rewards for good behaviors
- Get incentivized for higher verification rankings
Simply, HKY creates a dating platform that incentivizes good behavior and ensures that people are verified and personal data is safe. The modular utility token powers all interactions on the platform enabling users to securely interact with each other backed by smart contracts.
Hicky.io’s enterprising solution facilitates the secure exchange of encrypted communication between users, ensuring the privacy of exchanges. And the platform’s forward-thinking visual and auditory identity verification system eliminates dubious reputation and that game those players love to blame.
Visit the website and take part! Moreover, join Telegram channel to ask questions and learn more.
The post Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game: Solving the Dating Industry’s Biggest Problem appeared first on NewsBTC.
Truckcoin: innovative cryptocurrency solving the perennial payment processing security problems
The payment processing industry has been projected to grow at a 7 percent CAGR for the next five years. This indicates an increase in the reliance on online and offline payment processing by consumers and businesses. Almost everyone purchases items using either a credit card or on online stores like Amazon. Unfortunately, this simple process of paying for your items may leave you vulnerable to hackers who are targeting these systems.
Many payment processing firms experience frequent cyber-attacks. PayPal was one of the firms hit by a DDoS attack in 2016 and even retail chains like Chipotle have had their payment processing systems breached as recently as early 2017. Credit card fraud is also quite common in the payment processing industry with numerous hacks exposing users to identity and monetary theft. Home Depot was the subject of a breach where 56 million Visa and MasterCard were hacked. Others like Target Corp also lost customer debit and credit card information.
How can payment processing be secured?
The highlighted cases are only the most recent and high-profile cases. Payment processing firms seem to be struggling with cybersecurity. Unfortunately, this is a war that they cannot win. Any expert in cybersecurity will tell you that security patches are created after the breach has been detected. This means that payment processing firms will always be reacting to new breaches.
What if there was a way to eliminate the risk of hacking and phishing of user information. GoldenHill International Limited has been working on the conundrum, and the firm recently announced Truckcoin. This is a blockchain-based payment processing platform that secures all transactions while protecting user information.
Truckcoin uses an encrypted, decentralized ledger coupled with next-gen cryptographic measures to protect the platform. Unlike conventional blockchain where the public keys are constant, Truckcoin uses ring technology to shuffle the public keys. As a result, even those in the platform cannot monitor a single user by looking at the transaction history of the public key. This guarantees that payment information is completely secured. Additionally, since it is a cryptocurrency, hackers are unable to gain access to funds using any of the existing brute force cyber-attacks that they tend to use.
TRuckcoin is also based on the proof-of-work architecture instead of the proof-of-stake architecture. The former is quite robust, and it is the same architecture that Bitcoin uses. Proof-of-work blockchains may not be as many as proof-of-stake blockchains, but all the ones that exist are relatively successful. This is because they are robust and they tend to appreciate more than the latter.
Join the Truckcoin revolution
Investors are already rushing to join the truckcoin revolution before it goes live. The recent Pre-ICO was so successful that the coins available were sold out in under one day. Experts also believe that the ICO slated for 1st to 31st December will also sell out as fast. There are only 513,333 coins available. You can invest in the ICO by buying a ticket on the website that will cost 20-50 dollars depending on when you purchase it during the ICO period. Each ticket will earn you three truckcoins Considering the enthusiasm in the community and the unique proposition, make sure you are one of the first to join this lucrative ICO.
https://truckcoin.com/truckcoin-introduction/
https://www.facebook.com/Truckcoin-140772893219371
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2257104.0
The post Truckcoin: innovative cryptocurrency solving the perennial payment processing security problems appeared first on NEWSBTC.