One of the men responsible for moderating content on the now defunct AlphaBay darknet market will be in jail until 2031. According to a Sept. 1 statement from the U.S. Department of Justice, 26-year-old Bryan Connor Herrell was sentenced to 11 years in prison for conspiring to engage in a racketeer-influenced corrupt organization, for his role as a moderator on AlphaBay. The platform was one of the largest online marketplaces for drugs as well as guns, credit card data, and other illegal items, paid for with cryptocurrency. “This sentence serves…
Month: September 2020
Who cares about privacy? Not crypto users, says Coin Metrics
The overwhelming majority of crypto transactions do not include privacy tokens, with most traders choosing to move funds transparently rather than privately. According to crypto analytics firm Coin Metrics’ Sept. 1 State of the Network report, the combined daily transactions of three privacy coins, Zcash (ZEC), Monero (XMR), and Grin (GRIN), equated to only 6% that of Bitcoin (BTC), despite the coins offering substantially more privacy. “User apathy towards privacy is probably the biggest shortcoming of the current anonymous transactions systems,” the report stated. “Despite great technological advancements in crypto-currency…
How can DeFi projects avoid getting cloned and dying?
Crypto startup investor and IDEO Managing Director Ian Lee has revealed how DeFi protocols can avoid being cloned and drained of liquidity by improving upon their design and governance from the start. When SushiSwap forked from Uniswap on Friday, August 28, it suggested the beginning of a wave of similarly cloned DeFi protocols due to their open-source natures. Projects that take years of research and development, undergo several security audits, and attract millions in seed funding can simply be cloned with little or no recourse. In a blog on Substack,…
‘We’re getting paid to produce Bitcoins’ reveals Texas BTC miner
Texas crypto miner operator Layer1 Technologies has been able to sell back its power supply for 8X the price. According to a Sept. 1 Bloomberg report, Layer1 reported nearly 700% profits from selling excess electricity from its ‘Bitcoin Batteries’ – large-scale energy storage systems used on the firm’s crypto farms in Texas. When the power demand for air conditioning is highest in Texas — where it’s regularly above 37 degrees Celsius (100 in Fahrenheit) in the summer — Layer1 reduces or stops crypto mining as needed to send any unused…
Alleged second teen mastermind behind Twitter’s ‘Bitcoin giveaway’ hack
The FBI executed a search warrant against a 16-year-old Massachusetts resident in connection with the massive Twitter breach. According to a New York Times report, on Sept. 1 authorities raided the home of a 16-year-old boy who may have played an “equal, if not more significant role” in the infamous July 15 hack, which resulted in millions of followers of high-profile Twitter accounts being falsely offered a 2-to-1 ‘giveaways’ for any Bitcoin (BTC) sent. The investigation revealed he may have posed as a Twitter employee or contractor to fool legitimate…
Band Protocol CEO says that a single Chainlink data request costs $450
Band is one of Chianlink’s main competitors in the oracle space that is based on Cosmos technology. In a recent Cointelegraph interview, Soravis Srinawakoon, the CEO of Band Protocol, said: “If you look at Chainlink, one data request right now can take almost $450 because someone needs to submit the request data to ask for the data. Let’s say 20 data providers need to receive that, respond to that with 20 transactions, and then the aggregation contract to do all the computation before returning the final result, all of these…
The company behind Zcash just made its new source code public
The Electric Coin Co., or ECC, the entity responsible for the advancement of privacy coin Zcash (ZEC), unveiled new code for the blockchain and crypto community. The company opened its Halo 2 source code — “an updated, more efficient version of ECC’s recursive proof composition that eliminates the need for a trusted setup in Zcash,” said a Sept. 1 blog post from the ECC. “It may also advance a promising scalability solution for Zcash and other blockchains,” the post added, noting the Halo structure adds speed, among other things. Initiating a…
PornHub now accepts Bitcoin and Litecoin
Pornhub now accepts Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC) as payment for its premium services. The company has been accepting Verge since 2018, later adding several other cryptocurrencies, but this is its first foray into the major leagues. Pornhub’s vice president Corey Price said in the press release: “As a leader in adult content with over 130 million visitors per day, Pornhub is excited to now offer two widely-used and leading digital currencies for our users. Our team continues to pave the way for tech development, testing and implementing new technology…
A legal asset after all? Governments are cashing in on seized crypto
It is customary for government officials around the world to profess their disdain for crypto on the grounds that it is widely used to facilitate crime and finance terrorism. Although (government-backed) cash still remains criminals’ preferred financial tool by a wide margin, it is true that nefarious actors also turn to digital assets. When corrupt plans go sideways, law enforcement and other government agents can find themselves in possession of hefty sums of crypto. It appears that reports of such instances are becoming more common as crypto adoption widens. In…
Another Electrum user is claiming that their coins were stolen
Details of a previous Electrum wallet hack surfaced following the massive 1,400 Bitcoin (BTC) theft that hit headlines a few days ago. “I had a similar situation 2 months ago,” a Github user named Cryptbtcaly posted on the social media platform on Aug. 31. The user claimed someone pilfered 36.5 BTC from one of their wallet addresses. The BTC reportedly ended up spread across five different addresses. “Some of the stolen Bitcoin went to Binance, but they ignore my appeals and do not return,” cryptbtcaly added. Details of a larger hack…