This week’s summary of various cryptocurrency news and developments:
New developments:
A bitcoin scaling meeting may take place in May
According to CoinDesk, a small group of bitcoin industry leaders, developers, and miners plan on discussing the cryptocurrency’s future in a meeting taking place in New York, in May. A notice including a list of potential guests was posted to a private mailing list in which some of bitcoin’s biggest names participate. Some of the possible attendees include Bitcoin.com owner Roger Ver, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, and Blockchain CEO Peter Smith.
The meeting follows weeks of an increasingly heating bitcoin scaling debate that most believe is centered mainly on the best for the people’s money. Others, however, believe the debate is about economic issues as some may, for example, be profiting from high transaction fees.
A second bug exploit sent over 100 Bitcoin Unlimited nodes offline
Last week, DeepDotWeb reported a lot of Bitcoin Unlimited’s (BU) nodes got knocked offline due to a bug-related attack. This week, it appears over 100 nodes disconnected from the network following a bug-related DoS (Denial-of-Service) attack. At press time, there are currently 796 BU nodes online, according to Coin.Dance. These events have proven to be suspicious, as a Bitcoin Core developer had, at the time of the first attack, claimed there were other unfixed bugs.
BU’s team in response decided to go ‘closed source’, but it looks like the code was actually “accidentally” published via Launchpad.
Coinbase does not support other exchanges’ bitcoin hard fork statement
Coinbase’s CEO, Brian Armstrong, recently came out against a statement signed by around 20 different bitcoin exchanges, in which they said that, in the event of a hard fork, Bitcoin Core would be listed as BTC, and Bitcoin Unlimited would be listed as BTU, regardless of value. Armstrong said: “It doesn’t make sense to say BTC can only be modified by one development team. If there is overwhelming support from miners and users around any new version of the software (regardless of who wrote it), then I think that will be called Bitcoin (or BTC).”
This does mean, however, that in the event of a hard fork users can be misled, as some exchanges can list Bitcoin Core as BTC, and others Bitcoin Unlimited as BTC.
Darknet updates:
Darknet market Alphabay to start accepting ether payments
As reported by DeepDotWeb, starting May 1, darknet marketplace Alphabay will start accepting ether payments. The move is justified by a spike in value, which according to Alphabay staff shows there is a growing interest in the currency. Back in 2016, Alphabay started accepting Monero – a currency Wired dubbed “the drug dealer’s cryptocurrency of choice” – which helped the privacy-centric currency rise to fame. The market’s staff also said there was more to come in “the near future”, so we ca expect more updates soon.
Millions of Bitcoin user accounts are being sold on the darknet
According to Hackread.com, darknet vendor “DoubleFlag” is selling bitcoin user data stolen from 11 different bitcoin forums that has been acquired between 2011 and 2017. The data is being sold for $400, less than half a bitcoin. Stolen data comes from a few popular websites such as BTC-E, BitcoinTalk.org, and MerlinsMagicBitcoin, and from some other websites that aren’t active anymore. Each account’s data includes date of birth, email address, username, phone number, website URL, location and password. Some of the passwords, those who used SHA-1 hash, have been decrypted.
World affairs:
Coinbase saw a green light to trade ethereum and litecoin in New York
This week, the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) approved Coinbase’s application, allowing the exchange’s users to now trade Ether and Litecoin in New York, making it the first organization to offer Litecoin in the state. In the announcement, Financial Services Superintendent Maria T. Vullo said: “DFS has proven that the state regulatory system is the best way to supervise and cultivate a thriving fintech industry, like virtual currency. New York will remain steadfast in pushing back against federal encroachment efforts like the [Office of the Controller of the Currency’s] proposal to impose a one-size-fits-all national bank charter that increases risk and seeks to usurp state sovereignty.” The Gemini Trust Company, run by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, was the first company to provide ethereum trading in the state, Coinbase is the second.
Financial:
Bitcoin at $925,86, as hard fork concerns users
According to CoinMarketCap, one bitcoin is currently worth $925,86 as a hard fork possibility worries a lot of users. Nevertheless, the coin has shown its resiliency, as the possibility of it splitting into two separate blockchains didn’t take too heavy of a toll in the cryptocurrency’s value.
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