If all of these other network nodes would signal SegWit support, things may look very different.




The bitcoin network has far more nodes than people anticipate. In fact, there are quite a few types of network nodes that hardly ever get mentioned. Breadwallet, Bitcoin wallet for Android, and Bitcoin Knots nodes are just some examples. Although these instances do not support either SegWit or Bitcoin Unlimited, that does not mean they can be ignored. In fact, they are all valuable additions to the ecosystem.

Most people are only interested in the number of BU and SegWit nodes. It appears there are 1,411 BU-capable nodes, which is quite a significant number. Additionally, there are 251 Bitcoin Classic nodes in operation today. While those numbers may sound great, they pale in comparison to overall Bitcoin Core nodes. Contrary to what people assume, there are 53,310 Bitcoin Core nodes in operation to this very date. This translates to 93.22% of all network nodes supporting Bitcoin Core

Plenty of Bitcoin Core Nodes To Go Around

This does not mean all of these Bitcoin Core nodes actively signal for SegWit, though. Instead, only a minority seem to do so at this time. Additionally, it is important to take into account spinning up extra nodes is not all that difficult. It is possible a lot of these nodes are running on a cheap VPS plan somewhere. Moreover, these numbers also include full network nodes with closed ports.

It is not surprising these numbers put the Bitcoin Unlimited node numbers in a bad daylight. After all, a lot of nodes are not even supporting that project right now. In fact, Bitcoin Core has a much firmer grip on the node ecosystem than people would give it credit for at first. While it is feasible for big miners to build node farms with ease, these numbers still seem to indicate Core is the right way to go.Then again, this chart also highlights potential centralization efforts of node farms, which isn’t a good sign.

If all of these other network nodes would signal SegWit support, things may look very different. Then again,  it would still be up to individual miners to show support as well. Until the 95% activation threshold is reached, the status quo will continue. Metrics like these are certainly interesting, although it does not address the stalemate in the ecosystem. It does show there is much more to the bitcoin ecosystem than meets the eye, though.

http://www.newsbtc.com/2017/03/24/actual-overview-network-nodes-shows-bitcoin-core-leading-93/

ACI Worldwide recently announced a partnership with Payment21. ACI Vice President Andy McDonald said that the partnership will enable their clients to offer bitcoin payments, “without exposing their merchants to price volatility.”

The new opt-in service uses ACI’s UP eCommerce Payments solution, a network of more than 130 Payment Service Providers (PSPs), supplying 56,000 merchants worldwide. Merchants can now accept anti-money laundering (AML) compliant Bitcoin payments using Payment21’s award-winning technology.

According to the announcement, the team-up has resulted in a platform that “allows PSPs and merchants to quickly and easily add bitcoin payments to their checkout pages, without additional integrations.”

- ACI Worldwide

Based in Naples, Florida, ACI Worldwide has 57 offices scattered throughout the world, providing payment infrastructure to over 5,100 organizations, including more than 1,000 of the largest financial institutions and intermediaries. Forbes magazine ranks ACI 45th on their list of “America’s Best Small Companies.”

The company is a “Universal Payments company,” claiming “the broadest, most integrated suite of electronic payments solutions in the market.” ACI powers US$14 Trillion in payments and securities every day, and is valued at more than US$2.5 billion.

Payment21 is a Swiss bitcoin payments company owned by Moving Media Gmbh, registered as a financial intermediary with the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), and an International Sales Organization (ISO) in the USA.

The startup is focused on “the compliance needs of enterprise level businesses and the legal prerequisites of their banking partner,” and is targeting publicly-traded companies, licensed gaming enterprises, concessionary wireless network providers and authorized investment funds as potential clients.

Payment21 received the Constantinus Award last June, for their merchant software called the “Bitcoin Cashier System.” The platform is designed to tackle Know Your Customer (KYC) and AML regulations instigated by the US Banking Secrecy Act.

Bernhard Kaufmann, the general manager of Payment21 said that the service, “together with no chargeback risk,” makes enabling bitcoin payments an effective solution for merchants that are seeking to address traditional points of friction, “including delays and costs associated with cross-border payments.”

- Payment21

Individual merchants, notably bitcoin exchanges and bank-like companies such as Coinbase, already enforce AML compliance. However, this will be the first time a PSP network has offered a competing solution.

Several industry experts, including the International Monetary Fund, (IMF) and the US Federal Reserve Bank, have all noted a lack of AML compliant merchant solutions holding back Bitcoin adoption.

Last January the IMF published a discussion note called “Virtual Currencies and Beyond: Initial Considerations,” where they define Bitcoin and discuss its role at great length. The note concluded that applying AML controls to transactions can help prevent several “abuses.” However, one of the challenges is “who should bear these obligations.”

Douglas King, a Payments Strategist and Risk Expert at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, published a paper in 2016 that also discusses Bitcoin and AML compliance risks. “The pseudonymous nature of Bitcoin transactions heighten Bank Secrecy Act (BSA)/Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Act compliance risks,” King wrote, “making it especially challenging for these new businesses to establish banking relationships.”

- Douglas King, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

https://bravenewcoin.com/news/new-aml-compliant-bitcoin-processing-service-available-to-56000-merchants/

Waves has partnered with Indacoin, which offers credit card bitcoin purchases with no registration required.



Waves, a decentralized blockchain platform for custom tokens which raised over $16 million at a crowdsale in June 2016, has implemented credit card purchases for bitcoin within its lite client via a partnership with Indacoin. Users can already deposit bitcoin to their Waves wallet using the bitcoin gateway, and the gateway processes bitcoin transfers and exchanges them for the native Waves bitcoin token, WBTC.

Credit card processing has been outsourced to Indacoin, an instant exchange platform that allows fast and easy purchase of bitcoin. Indacoin has been offering credit card purchases, with no registration required, since 2014.

‘Bitcoin is the reserve currency of the cryptocurrency world, and so it makes sense that it should be freely available within the Waves ecosystem,’ explains Waves CEO Sasha Ivanov. ‘Indacoin has made it possible to buy bitcoins quickly and easily – something that will be necessary as we target mainstream adoption and facilitate entry into the rapidly-growing blockchain crowdfunding sector.’

Indacoin deals with the problem of chargebacks through an enhanced verification process. To ensure that the owner of the card really does want to purchase bitcoin, a call is placed to the buyer’s mobile and a four-digit code provided for confirmation on the site. A spending limit applies for first-time buyers, which is progressively raised for later transactions. Visa and Mastercard credit/debit cards can be used.

The developers promise that in the future, credit card purchases of the platform’s native token WAVES will be enabled, as well as BTC, and it will be possible to trade WBTC and WAVES against other tokens on the platforms decentralised exchange (DEX).

http://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/exchange/decentralized-blockchain-platform-waves-adds-credit-card-bitcoin-purchases/

A day after WikiLeaks released the second volume of its Vault 7 data, the organization described Apple as “duplicitous” for saying it had fixed security flaws.

Information unveiled on Thursday, titled Dark Matter by WikiLeaks, focuses on CIA spying methods directly affecting Apple.

Responding to the latest claims, the company stated it had “fixed” the security weak links concerned, something WikiLeaks refuted.

“Apple's claim that it has "fixed" all "vulnerabilities" described in DARKMATTER is duplicitous. EFI is a systemic problem, not a zero-day,” it wrote on Twitter.

Echoing the lack of trust in Apple was entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, who has been vocal on Vault 7 since the publication of the first vat of evidence earlier this month.

Dark Matter details how Apple consumer devices contain “back doors” which allow them to be monitored, while the company’s “entire supply chain” could be subject to interference from the CIA.

“While CIA assets are sometimes used to physically infect systems in the custody of a target it is likely that many CIA physical access attacks have infected the targeted organization's supply chain including by interdicting mail orders and other shipments (opening, infecting, and resending) leaving the United States or otherwise,” WikiLeaks summarizes.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/vault-7-volume-ii-apple-patch-claims-duplicitous-says-wikileaks

BATS Global Markets, a global stock market exchange based in the US, plans to appeal the March 11 decision of the Securities Exchange Commission to turn down the approval of the Winklevoss twins’ Bitcoin ETF COIN.

In June, the Winklevoss twins switched the exchange listing of its Bitcoin ETF from the Nasdaq to BATS Global Markets, selecting BATS to introduce the first Bitcoin ETF to the public.

Since then, officials and executives of BATS have been heavily involved in both the development and approval process of the COIN ETF.

If the COIN ETF had been approved by the SEC earlier this month, it would have meant that the BATS exchange would have been authorized to facilitate the trading of Bitcoin ETF and introduce the digital currency to a new market composed of institutional investors, hedge funds and investment firms.

Essentially, the vision of the Winklevoss twins was to release an instrument for use with Bitcoin that would provide higher liquidity for high-profile investors and buyers.

Bitcoin ETF denial appeal

Earlier this month, Cointelegraph reported that the SEC officially denied the approval of the COIN ETF. The market responded immediately as Bitcoin price plunged from $1,350 to $980 within minutes.

The Bitcoin community and industry anxiously awaited the highly anticipated announcement from the SEC, which took over four years of discussion, evaluation and analysis.

Ultimately, the SEC denied the approval of the COIN ETF due to regulatory issues surrounding Bitcoin. SEC officials stated that the commission can’t protect investors trading Bitcoin because it is decentralized in nature.

The market recovered quickly after the denial of the ETF because the community realized that a Bitcoin ETF wasn’t necessary, to begin with. As Bitcoin and security expert Andreas Antonopoulos wrote:

“The ETF was denied because Bitcoin can't be regulated, can't be surveilled. Feature, not bug.”

More importantly, Antonopoulos emphasized that Bitcoin was designed specifically to provide an alternative financial ecosystem that exists outside of the realm of the regulated finance industry.

Therefore, the idea of creating an instrument such as an ETF that would encourage Bitcoin users to rely on the market that the digital currency aims to defeat isn’t practical and doesn’t supplement the vision of Bitcoin.

In that sense, it is unlikely that the SEC will overturn their decision to deny the approval of the COIN ETF. Bitcoin still operates on the same structure built on a peer to peer protocol. While regulatory frameworks and policies can control Bitcoin markets to some extent, it isn’t possible for lawmakers to regulate Bitcoin itself.

More importantly, the SEC cited the lack of regulations in overseas markets and the ambiguity in hard fork contingency. The two factors still exist and will be an issue for the SEC.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bats-objects-to-bitcoin-etf-ruling-plans-to-appeal-decision

Andrew Parker, a partner at Spark Capital, a New York-based venture capital firm which transformed various early-stage startups including Twitter, Tumblr, Stack Exchange and Foursquare into successful corporations, has stated that Blockchain technology is overhyped and isn’t quite applicable to a wide range of applications.

Over the past three years, multi-billion dollar banks and financial institutions have focused on building Blockchain-based platforms and networks. However, not a single bank has successfully demonstrated the applicability of the Blockchain in large-scale commercial operations.

Banks are outdated and aren’t compatible with innovative technologies

One of the issues banks and financial institutions have found with Blockchain technology is that it only operates securely and efficiently with its counterpart. If Bitcoin is considered as an example, Blockchain within the Bitcoin protocol and network operates as a database and it is one of many technologies which underpin Bitcoin.

Replicating the structure of Bitcoin’s Blockchain technology and utilizing it to process transactions without Bitcoin and its other technologies is like taking out an engine from a car and expecting it to travel across a distance without the presence of other components such as wheels and external frames.

Blockchain technology hasn’t been utilized to its full potential because banks haven’t found a method of applying one of Bitcoin’s underlying technologies to their existing infrastructure. It could be because the existing infrastructure of banks and financial institutions are outdated and simply aren’t compatible with innovative technologies. However, the major reason is that banks underestimated the trade off between functionality and security.

When flexibility is prioritized ahead of security, Blockchain networks can’t be immune to hacking attacks or external threats, unlike Bitcoin or other public Blockchain-based networks such as Monero.

As Jerry Cuomo, IBM's vice president of Blockchain technology, stated in a recent interview, companies like IBM that are focusing on the production of private Blockchains can’t guarantee full immutability.

Why Parker believes Blockchain is overhyped

Parker noted that Blockchain is essentially a solution in search of a problem and this particular model isn’t appreciated in the realm of venture capital and early-stage investment.

If developers and startups start to develop technologies like Blockchain technology without a clear business model or a vision to secure an actual user or consumer base, for investors, it is difficult to allocate their funds for financial support.

In an interview with Digiday, Parker stated:


His perception of Blockchain as a database technology is technically accurate and conceptually appropriate as its purpose within Bitcoin is to act as a database which stores transactions.

The reality is that for banks and financial institutions, centralized Blockchain networks will function more efficiently and with necessary safeguards, they will have some level of immunity towards external attacks.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/blockchain-is-overhyped-and-not-quite-applicable-vc-andrew-parker

Bitcoin and security expert Andreas Antonopoulos noted that the execution of a hard fork solution like Bitcoin Unlimited isn’t necessarily the difficult stage of development. The challenging task is maintaining and running the software without coming across major security threats and internal bugs.

Over the past few weeks, an increasing number of miners in China have begun to show their support toward Bitcoin Unlimited. Most notably, Bitmain’s Jihan Wu, who operates the largest mining pool in terms of hashrate, switched to Bitcoin Unlimited and led various controversial discussions over the Bitcoin Core development team’s Segregated Witness and the impact of off-chain transactions on miner profitability.

Chandler Guo, another key figure in the Chinese mining scene, announced his support for Bitcoin Unlimited and told the community that he will personally try to convince other miners within the region including BW and XBTC to join the Bitcoin Unlimited family.

The move of miners in China toward Bitcoin Unlimited and their opposition to Core’s cautious approach toward bitcoin development is separating the industry and community into two.

Probability of hard fork and what comes next

Generally, the vast majority of members of the Bitcoin community believe that the probability of Bitcoin Unlimited being forked by miners is relatively low, despite the support coming from China and the region’s mining pools.

However, Antonopoulos emphasized that the execution of the hard fork is the easy step in the development phase. The more challenging task technically and economically is running the software without causing a negative impact to users, businesses and miners.

So far, Bitcoin Unlimited hasn’t shown and demonstrated the ability to run its software with a level of caution and sophistication Bitcoin requires. Two bugs have already been publicly discovered and the latest bug was fixed in an undisclosed update, which means that the software was altered by a closed group of developers.

The idea that a closed group of developers is running the Bitcoin software is dangerous in theory as Bitcoin Core operates an open community of developers that maintain the Bitcoin protocol. The difference in efficiency is evident as Core has shown its ability to prevent issues from affecting the network while Bitcoin Unlimited developers failed to do so.

Various experts and developers including BitGo engineer Jameson Lopp stated that developers within the Bitcoin industry will never run an unstable software as they are wholly responsible for the stability of the infrastructure and systems they run.

Therefore, if Bitcoin Unlimited is forked and causes multiple-hour down time for miners, developers like Lopp will be made responsible for the damage to users and businesses.

The abovementioned reason is essentially why Bitcoin exchanges including Bitstamp, Bitfinex and BTCC are considering the Bitcoin Unlimited token as an altcoin or an alt-asset, and not as Bitcoin. For Bitcoin Unlimited to prove the legitimacy of their code and software, the developers need to enable peer review and develop the software with an open community.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/forking-is-easy-maintaining-bitcoin-unlimited-is-hard-andreas-antonopoulos

A Seattle Bitcoin merchant is seeking to move the local cannabis scene forward from cash-only payments by using the virtual currency instead.

The aptly-named POSaBIT is currently installed at six outlets in the Washington State capital, with several others beyond.

Customers use their credit or debit card to purchase Bitcoin, which is then used to pay for goods at the point of sale.

“I saw an industry that was in dire need of a credit solution,” CEO and co-founder Ryan Hamlin, an ex-Microsoft executive, told local news resource Seattle Weekly. “I said, ‘Software has got to be able to solve this problem.’”

The service monetizes its features by charging a $2 flat fee per transaction, with an upper purchase cap of $150 Hamlin says is designed “to limit any exposure to Bitcoin abuse.”

POSaBIT means Washington follows in the footsteps of neighboring Oregon, which gained a sanctioned Bitcoin-based cannabis purchasing solution from First Bitcoin Capital last October.

Conversely, the state has recently tightened its virtual currency business laws, requiring a money transmitter license which saw well-known exchange Bitfinex close its doors to residents from March 1.

Fellow exchange and wallet provider Coinbase was recently forced to exit nearby Hawaii for the same reasons.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-lets-posabit-solve-cash-only-cannabis-in-washington-state

The online marketplace revolution
Online marketplaces are a massively popular phenomenon. Web sites, such as Amazon and eBay, have been very successful and their success translated into multi-billion-dollar capitalizations.

It is known, though, that the biggest room in the world is that for improvement. They were revolutionary for their time, offering the users an unprecedented opportunity of trading almost any items across the globe. But by now it is clear that the currently leading online marketplaces are far from perfect.

High fees, frequent fraudulent refunds by the sellers and unreliable listings are just some of the most popular criticisms that the likes of eBay and Amazon receive from their users. Too much happiness of the users, though, a new kind of trend is currently emerging on the scene, enabled by the Blockchain technology - decentralized peer-to-peer marketplaces.

The appearance of cryptocurrencies has enabled direct payments between users, without the need for any intermediaries. From there, adding the transfer of physical items to the transaction was just one small step, and it has been successfully made by numerous platforms.

Today, we take a look at one of the most popular exemplars of this new paradigm - the Bitify market. Our team has actually conducted a purchase from a user there to go through the whole ‘customer experience’ and we will be happy to share it with you.

Bitify customer experience
As soon as you enter the website, you are greeted with a login/signup window, as well as a sneak peek of some of the featured items which are currently listed on the market:

You can signup using the regular username/password pair, or via your Facebook, Google, Twitter or Windows Live accounts. When signing up, make sure that you enable Google two-factor authentication, as it is an essential security layer in 2017.



The actual process of signing up is straightforward: after filling in all the blanks, you will receive an automated confirmation email from Bitify, that will allow you to log into the marketplace. After that, there are two possible ways to search for items to buy.

One is to look through the lists of goods featured on the homepage. You will find all kinds of stuff in there: software product keys, accounts registered at online services, guides on different topics, various trinkets and whatnot. The second way of browsing is handy when you need something specific: Bitify has a search feature, which comes with an ability to narrow down to particular categories of goods:



After a long period of browsing and deliberating, we at Cointelegraph have made our decision to purchase this beautiful German tankard to satisfy all our drinking needs:



After you’ve selected the item you want to buy and committed to paying for it, you have a 48-hour window to conduct the actual payment. The website will let you know how much you have to send - in either BTC or LTC equivalent, depending on your choice. The sum will include the price of the item itself, the shipping cost - if applicable - and, if you choose to use it, the escrow service fee.

The escrow is a feature which is highly recommended by Bitify. Here is how it works: instead of sending your Bitcoins/Litecoins directly to the seller, you send them to Bitify instead. The company then holds the coins for a period long enough for the items to be shipped and for you to ensure that whatever you ordered has arrived in adequate condition.

After you successfully receive your order and confirm it with Bitify, they release the money from the escrow and send it to the seller, thus concluding the deal. This is an efficient measure of customer protection that ensures that there is no room for fraud from any of the parties. Currently, escrow may be used for any items, and it costs an extra one percent fee per each deal.

Anyway, back to our experience. We have sent $101.2 worth of Bitcoins for Bitify to hold them for us, as we chose to use the escrow feature. After that, we’ve got in touch with the seller via the built-in messaging system and briefly discussed the shipping process. A couple of days later, the tankard was on its way.

The length of time that you’ll have to wait for the item to arrive depends on the exact post service but for us, it took just a little over two weeks, decent enough. Lo and behold, the successfully delivered tankard:







We have confirmed that the item is in perfect condition, and released the money from the escrow - it has been automatically sent to the seller. After that, all we had to do was to leave our positive feedback on the seller’s profile page and thank them for a deal well done.

Overall, the experience was a very intuitive and a straightforward one. Thanks to a simple interface, built-in messaging system and an escrow service, there was little room for any problems, and, true enough, we had none.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get the chance to see the process from a seller’s standpoint, but, judging by how simple it was for us, and the fact that our counterparty didn’t issue any complaints, it’s easy to imagine that their experience has been similarly pleasant.

The verdict
The Cointelegraph team has enjoyed using Bitify and recommends the service to buyers and sellers alike. As far as we can tell, it is a secure, convenient and cheap-to-use place to trade goods with fellow cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/forking-is-easy-maintaining-bitcoin-unlimited-is-hard-andreas-antonopoulos

Political turmoil in the U.S. and Europe has caused plenty of consternation in the equity markets. One surprising result of the increased attention to geopolitical risk, however, has been the relatively muted response in gold.

Gold – and to a lesser extent gold miners and silver – has historically displayed a strong negative correlation with the rest of the market. On some of the worst days in 2008 and during the Greek Crisis in the eurozone, virtually the only S&P 500 companies in the green were the gold miners.

This negative correlation between gold and the rest of the market was extremely valuable for investors because it enabled them to easily hedge their portfolios without having to take on short positions. The correlation coefficient between the gold miners and the broader stock market over the last 5 years is -0.68. When markets go down, gold and the miners go up.

But if chaos is good for safe haven assets like gold, why is gold still nowhere near the highs of a few years ago?

I think there is something else, not yet widely discussed, happening to gold. Some analysts today espouse the view that gold is no longer a safe haven asset, holding instead that gold has become securitized and now deserves to be treated like a common ETF asset rather than a separate store of value.

But if this were the case, what are people using as a safe haven asset instead? Well, I’ll get to that in a minute, but first let’s talk about the recent performance of gold and the miners.

In the last 6-12 months, gold and miners have seen sideways performance – an abysmal return compared to equities. Part of this is because the stock market is up, but it is also worth noting that even on down days, miners and gold itself have frequently been down, or at best neutral. Since August, for example, Newmont Mining is off 20%, and it hasn’t seen any substantial rally even with the increased uncertainty surrounding geopolitical events around the globe. The correlation coefficient between gold and the markets has come down from around -0.7 to around -0.4 in the last month or so. So what is happening to gold? Is the price just going to keep chopping sideways due to the metal falling out of favor as hedge funds and other investors bailout and return to equities or fixed income?

In theory, if inflation rises as the economy recovers, then gold should also start to recover. However, while the long run value of gold is probably fine, the metal may have lost some of its value as a safe haven because of a new alternative safe haven currency: Bitcoin.

Before we go any further, let me state clearly and for the record, that I am not advocating Bitcoin as an investment – see last week’s column. But I do think Bitcoin is drawing some traditional holders of gold and thus lowering the price of gold.

Bitcoin has been in the news a lot lately as their usage seems to be on the upswing. The U.S. government has begun issuing regulations surrounding the trade in Bitcoin, and it recently rejected a Bitcoin ETF. With the increase in this type of stories, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Bitcoin have seen greater price volatility. What is noteworthy is that Bitcoin seem to have usurped at least some of gold’s status as a safe haven asset in the current political climate.

It’s been a rough year for the world. Brexit in the UK, legislative chaos in the US, North Korean missile tests, and Chinese belligerence should all have investors on edge. Historically, these kinds of concerns would have had investors headed for the safety of gold. But investors who previously speculated on gold now may have turned to Bitcoin – an instrument whose price has leapt higher in the last year. 



There is no conclusive evidence that Bitcoin prices are responding to political distress, and there certainly isn’t enough data to say with conviction that Bitcoin has become even a partial substitute for the massive market in gold. To prove either of these things, we would need substantially more data in order to run a battery of statistical tests.

But it’s a plausible hypothesis. If true, it would be a headwind for the metal and its miners going forward. And it would be a major change from the past, with enormous ramifications for markets and monetary policy.

http://dealbreaker.com/2017/03/is-bitcoin-outshining-gold/

Whether or not you know what blockchain is, you have probably heard of the seemingly mysterious cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Bitcoin and its underlying blockchain network are quietly making headlines around the globe. The recent success of Bitcoin and the security of blockchain may have some consumers considering an investment in the new denomination, but others are still wary. Newly released data further legitimizing the currency could be just the thing to push the undecided into the realm of Bitcoin proponents, however.

In 2008, Bitcoin was introduced by an anonymous group of programmers under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto, and then it was released to the public as an open-source software in 2009. Unlike other online payment services like PayPal and Venmo, Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer network that takes place privately between two users — there is no intermediary involved. The virtual currency is completely decentralized from any external influence, and all transactions are accounted for through a blockchain ledger.

While Bitcoin is thoroughly anonymous, all transactions on the blockchain ledger are available publicly. Using the time and date of a particular transaction, individuals could potentially match someone’s online address to their identity. However, all transactions made through Bitcoin are encrypted with military-grade cryptography, ensuring that the deals are secure.

Sending and receiving bitcoins is already as easy as sending an email, and it’s poised to get even easier thanks to BitPay.
THE WAY TO PAY

Bitpay is a payment processing service that allows users to spend bitcoins within a larger network of merchants. With Bitcoin’s unexpected rate of growth leading to longer delays in transactions and higher fees, Bitpay developers were pushed to accommodate the sudden popularity of Bitcoin.

“This friction is making us get more creative in how we do user experience design for delayed payment states on the BitPay platform,” co-founder Stephen Pair explained at the Distributed: Markets 2017 conference. “Our designers and engineers are constantly attuned to how we can make using Bitcoin intuitive,” he added.

The frequent updates appear to be paying off as the company recently released a series of charts revealing a positive trend in Bitcoin usage. The data shows a significant increase in the number of Bitcoin payments being processed daily and in the value of the payments being processed.





Experts attribute this to the “wealth effect.” Essentially, people who bought Bitcoin when it was significantly cheaper want to spend it now that the value is high. The trend also affects what people are buying with bitcoins. Bitpay merchant CheapAir, a site that sells plane tickets, hotel reservations, and car rentals, has noticed a higher upper limit in the spending of their Bitcoin customers.



This increased movement of bitcoins from consumers to companies highlights an important moment in the history of the cryptocurrency. While people initially saw bitcoins as something they could hoard, they’re now seeing them as something to spend.“Bitcoin [is being used] as a store of value, as a currency hedge, and as a payment method for economies without widespread credit card or banking access,” James Walpole, BitPay’s marketing manager, told Quartz.

If these trends continue, the increased acceptance of the cryptocurrency as an alternative payment method might be enough to push it all the way into the mainstream.

https://futurism.com/all-the-evidence-you-need-that-bitcoin-is-turning-into-a-real-currency/

The bitcoin ETF may still rise.
After a March 10 Securities and Exchange Commission ruling that nixed an official exchange-traded fund for bitcoin, many saw the issue as settled. But Bats BZX Exchange, which would have listed the ETF on its exchange, has revealed it will appeal the SEC’s decision.
The SEC turned down the ETF earlier this month because the online exchanges that bitcoin is traded on are not regulated, and therefore susceptible to fraud and other manipulation. (Read: Everything You Need to Know About the Bitcoin ETF.) Had the ETF been approved, it would have tracked the price of bitcoin and made buying and selling them as simple as a stock transaction.
The ETF, known as the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, was created by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who were made famous (and quite rich) thanks to their lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg over their involvement in Facebook’s creation. The two brothers have been trying for years to bring bitcoin to the mainstream, and the failure to get approval for their ETF is a big blow to that cause.
Although bitcoin has been around since 2009, it didn’t really become part of public consciousness until 2013, at which point its value skyrocketed from around $140 in late October of that year to more than $1,100 a month later, according to Coin Desk. But almost as fast as the price shot up, it crashed back down. Since then, it has taken more than three years for bitcoin’s price to make it back to the $1,100 mark, finally reaching it in January.
One bitcoin currently trades for $1,047, down from $1,258 before the SEC’s ruling. Large price swings in short time frames like that have happened frequently in bitcoin’s past, and that volatility was another reason the SEC declined to accept the Winklevoss ETF. Unlike other currencies such as the U.S. dollar or the Euro, whose values change incrementally and in a fairly predictable fashion, price fluctuations in bitcoin can be absolutely monstrous and it isn’t always obvious what is making the price move.One thing to note is that even though Bats will appeal the decision, there is no guarantee that the SEC even has to act on it in any way, let alone actually reconsider its choice. But if the ETF is approved, it would likely move bitcoin from being seen as a curiosity on Wall Street to being something investors see as worth legitimate attention for the first time.

http://fortune.com/2017/03/23/why-the-winklevoss-bitcoin-etf-may-not-be-dead-yet/

In late February about 200 executives, coders, and developers gathered in the downtown Brooklyn office of JPMorgan Chase & Co. to hear an all-day pitch for a new industry group called the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. Ethereum? It’s the ghostly sounding name for a so-called blockchain technology similar to the one that made the digital currency bitcoin possible. Its inventor, Vitalik Buterin, released his software to the world in 2015, not long after dropping out of the University of Waterloo, in Canada. Less than two years later, JPMorgan, BP, Microsoft, International Business Machines, and ING are among the companies in the group experimenting with it.

Buterin didn’t attend the EEA meeting, but he had a video message to deliver. Except the EEA couldn’t get the video to play, because the computer hosting it crashed. As the crowd began to stir, a frozen frame of Buterin’s face came on-screen, then he disappeared. After the tech crew scrambled for 30 minutes, they finally got it to work.

It’s an apt metaphor for a technology that’s come with enormous promises but suffered setbacks almost from its inception. Last year, hackers stole $60 million worth of ether, the digital currency linked to Ethereum. The heist was a huge black eye—chances are, if you’ve heard about Ethereum, it’s because of the hack. And yet it isn’t dead. The reason: Unlike bitcoin, this blockchain isn’t really about currency. Its advocates think it could be a universally accessible machine for running businesses.

“Ethereum gives you a new way for the computer to interact with the real world and how money moves,” says Emin Gun Sirer, an associate professor of computer science at Cornell University. “It’s potentially a huge game changer whose value has yet to be tapped.”

Think of Ethereum as a way for people to make agreements and automate enforcement

To understand what the excitement is about, it helps to start with bitcoin, because without it, there would be no blockchain. Previous attempts to create digital money that could be sent as easily as email ran into a problem: How do you guarantee that each virtual dollar is unique, so the sender can’t spend the same cash more than once? For bitcoin, this is solved with blockchain, which is simply an online ledger book that’s distributed on computers around the world. It tracks and verifies every use of bitcoin. To give people an incentive to maintain the blockchain on their machine, it awards a number of new bitcoins to the first computer to verify a transaction. It’s like a banking system that runs itself—but its main use is just letting people move currency from point A to point B.

Ethereum’s ledger does more. It can store fully functioning computer programs called smart contracts: If person A performs job B for company C, it will trigger a payment of D back to A … and so on. As with bitcoin, the ether currency is a lure to get people to lend the system their computing power, and you need it to participate in a contract. Think of Ethereum itself as a way for people to make agreements and automate enforcement, all on a distributed network of computers. Once you can create contracts—which in essence are just operating procedures—you can use them to manage almost any kind of enterprise or organization.

For example, John Hancock Financial is experimenting with a tailored version of Ethereum to keep track of compliance with know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering regulations in its wealth management unit. Airline industry giant Airbus SE wants to know if its supply chain management can be shifted to a blockchain. Like David Hasselhoff, Ethereum is popular in Germany: Power producer RWE AG and online bank Fidor Bank are investigating ways to integrate it into their businesses.

The 2016 ether theft showed that though Ethereum may be powerful, it’s still new and prone to mishaps. One of the first things people used ether for was to invest in a kind of decentralized venture capital fund built with an Ethereum smart contract. Investors could vote on how the fund’s ether would be used; hackers found a bug in the contract that forced the fund to funnel its ether to them.

After much consternation, there was a vote in the Ethereum community, supported by Buterin, to edit the blockchain’s transaction history so it appeared as if the hack had never occurred. Blockchain purists were so enraged at the idea of fiddling with the ledger, they began supporting an alternative form of Ethereum, which they took to calling Ethereum classic.

Buterin is unapologetic. “In general, the Ethereum community is on board with the notion that we do not have to do things exactly the way that things are done in other crypto communities,” he says. “I did not create Ethereum to let hackers get away with $60 million.”

This is the stuff of passionate debates on Reddit forums, but it may not matter to corporate users, because many of them don’t want to work on the fully public Ethereum blockchain anyway. JPMorgan just released a version of Ethereum known as Quorum. Developers around the world can work with it, but only companies invited to participate will be able to record transactions and contracts on it. The Airbus blockchain would be similarly walled off.

These blockchains would run alongside the main version of Ethereum, which anyone can use. “We’ve built an unstoppable, uncensorable world computer,” says Joe Lubin, founder of ConsenSys, a Brooklyn company that develops blockchain applications, speaking of Ethereum. Andrew Keys, head of global business development for the company, still sees the technology as a grass-roots tool for cutting out intermediaries of all kinds—from law firms to online social networks. “Our digital identity is on Facebook, and Mark’s getting paid,” he says, referring to Facebook Inc. co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. “Instead of them housing that, we’ll have self-sovereign identity with peer-to-peer transactions.” In other words, instead of using Facebook to control who can and can’t see their family photos, people could one day set the rules themselves using smart contracts.

Ethereum is still a long way from that kind of success in either its public or private forms. The public version needs significant upgrades to be able to handle anything like the volume of interactions on the internet today. Ethereum’s leaders, in their response to the hack, offended a substantial part of the blockchain development and programming community, which isn’t that big. On the business side, corporations have to be convinced that they won’t be giving away trade secrets through their use of a ledger shared with other companies. At the same time, they’ll need to keep the technology open enough so that anyone can put their ideas into the same Ethereum ecosystem. “I don’t want to build AOL,” says Amber Baldet, blockchain program lead for JPMorgan. “I want to build the World Wide Web.”

The bottom line: Ethereum could present a whole new way to run a business, but there are some serious kinks to work out.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-23/post-bitcoin-technology-has-geeks-giants-and-hackers-excited

Bitcoin scams on the rise, helicopter parents have a negative impact on children's financial habits and a New Jersey-based Morgan Stanley team leaves for Merrill Lynch.
As the price of Bitcoin has surged along with its growing integration with established financial markets, so are the scams surrounding the digital currency. Security firm ZeroFox has reported a surge of Bitcoin-related crimes in March, with 3,618 URLs linked to scams, shared over 8,742 social media posts, The Verge is reporting. The scams ranged from basic phishing attempts to elaborate pyramid schemes, all using the Bitcoin logo to lure unsuspecting victims. They're pretty basic, according to ZeroFox, either tricking users into installing malicious apps or promising free money in exchange for an initial payment. The rise in scams coincides with Bitcoin reaching all-time highs in price, including being worth more than an ounce of gold for the first time. “In the end Bitcoin, just like social media, depends on community-based trust,” ZeroFox data scientist Phil Tully said. “When certain members of these communities violate that trust, it can ruin a good thing for everyone.”
Helicopter Parents Hurt Children's Financial Aptitude

It can be tempting for parents to over-focus on their kids and go with the so-called “helicopter parenting” style. But that style of parenting can have a negative impact on children’s financial habits, according to T. Rowe Price’s 2017 Parents, Kids & Money Survey. Rather, kids who have the freedom to manage their own money have better money habits, found T. Rowe Price, which surveyed 1,015 parents of 8- to 14-year-olds and their kids. The 44 percent of parents who let their kids manage their own money were less likely to: have kids who spend their money as soon as they get it (40 percent versus 53 percent for parents who don’t let kids control); have kids who lie about what they spend their money on (29 percent versus 49 percent); have kids who expect their parents to buy them what they want (52 percent versus 65 percent); and have their children feel ashamed because they have less than other kids (30 percent versus half). Kids who control their own finances are also more likely to say that they talk to their parents about money, at 76 percent, and that they have learned about money from their grandparents (55 percent), teachers (45 percent), or other family members (32 percent). “Giving them real life money experiences brings finances out of the conceptual and puts it into practice,” said Roger Young, a senior financial planner at T. Rowe Price and father of three.
Sizable Morgan Stanley Team Leaves for Merrill Lynch

A Morgan Stanley team with $343 million in client assets under management has left to join Merrill Lynch. Michael Greenstone, John Araneo, Margie Manning and Anita Srivastava will be part of the thundering herd in the Glen Rock, N.J. office. All of the advisors moving have many years of experience, led by Greenstone, who became an advisor in 1980.
http://www.wealthmanagement.com/technology/beware-bitcoin-scams

Accenture Plc, a professional services firm, recently stated it can help make blockchain applications safer, and speed up their deployment in specific sectors, such as the financial one. The company recently unveiled a system in which users would rely on hardware security modules (HSM) to secure their data.

Blockchain technology has been tested by a wide variety of companies, including several financial institutions, such as India’s central bank. These, according to the report, want to bring the prototypes they tested onto the real world, but don’t see digital wallets as sufficiently secure, as these have, in the past, been hacked.

Moreover, as blockchain startup Tierion put it, blockchain technology may not (yet) be ready for some sectors. Accenture seems to be speeding up the process, by providing financial institutions a system that allows blockchain users to store their security credentials in HSMs, or processors specifically designed to safeguard their credentials.

Regarding Accenture’s new technology, Martha Bennett, a principle analyst working for technology market research company Forrester, said:


Accenture’s contribution

Accenture’s new technology currently works with HSMs from a security company named Thales, and with blockchain applications that use code from the Hyperledger group, led by the Linux Foundation.

According to the company, coding technology that allows blockchain applications and HSMs to work together has proven a time-consuming and complex task. This technology, however, allows banks to apply blockchain technology in a more secure way, which could help speed up blockchain adoption by financial institutions, as security will no longer be an issue.

In the future, the company wants to make the technology work with all types of blockchain prototypes, and with other security modules, so that its use spreads to other financial institutions.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/accenture-says-can-make-blockchain-applications-reliable-secure/

Deloitte’s employee-only restaurant in its Toronto offices will now begin accepting bitcoin for lunch.
The Toronto office of Deloitte Canada is now accepting bitcoin as a method of payment at its internal restaurant, open to employees and their guests.

One of the ‘Big Four’ accounting giants, Deloitte made headlines after installing a bitcoin ATM (BTM) at its Toronto offices in September last year. While the unveiling of the BTM took place in front of gathered Deloitte employees on the 6th floor of Deloitte’s building, the BTM was soon relocated to the lobby on the 2nd floor, making it accessible to the public.



The effort to install a BTM was in the works for a couple of months, revealed Illiana Oris Valiente, strategy lead of Deloitte’s Rubix. As a blockchain development hub, Rubix consists of a team that exclusively develops blockchain applications under the company’s roof.

“We thought it was really important to show people how to get access to bitcoin because it is really the entry point to understand the broader implications of the blockchain,” Valiente stated.

Tremendous Adoption

Deloitte has now pointed to “tremendous adoption and understanding” of bitcoin as a result of the BTM. Pushing for the adoption of the cryptocurrency further, Deloitte is now accepting bitcoin at Bistro 1858, the company’s internal restaurant.

The idea is to further awareness of bitcoin among employees by further its use cases. Bitcoin can now be purchased the BTM to then be used as payment for a meal at the restaurant.

Ian Chan, a partner at Deloitte said:


Deloitte co-runs Bistro 1858 with a hospitality company and is roping in the services of prominent bitcoin payments processor BitPay, to accept and settle transactions with the cryptocurrency.

Spearheading the effort for bitcoin adoption within Deloitte, Valiente, who is also the co-founder of Rubix, added:


The Toronto office of Deloitte Canada is now accepting bitcoin as a method of payment at its internal restaurant, open to employees and their guests.

One of the ‘Big Four’ accounting giants, Deloitte made headlines after installing a bitcoin ATM (BTM) at its Toronto offices in September last year. While the unveiling of the BTM took place in front of gathered Deloitte employees on the 6th floor of Deloitte’s building, the BTM was soon relocated to the lobby on the 2nd floor, making it accessible to the public.

The effort to install a BTM was in the works for a couple of months, revealed Illiana Oris Valiente, strategy lead of Deloitte’s Rubix. As a blockchain development hub, Rubix consists of a team that exclusively develops blockchain applications under the company’s roof.

“We thought it was really important to show people how to get access to bitcoin because it is really the entry point to understand the broader implications of the blockchain,” Valiente stated.

Tremendous Adoption

Deloitte has now pointed to “tremendous adoption and understanding” of bitcoin as a result of the BTM. Pushing for the adoption of the cryptocurrency further, Deloitte is now accepting bitcoin at Bistro 1858, the company’s internal restaurant.

The idea is to further awareness of bitcoin among employees by further its use cases. Bitcoin can now be purchased the BTM to then be used as payment for a meal at the restaurant.

Ian Chan, a partner at Deloitte said:

After placing a BTM in our offices and seeing Deloitte personnel downloading a wallet and buying their first fraction of a bitcoin, it seemed natural to enable the next step of the use case under our own roof.

Deloitte co-runs Bistro 1858 with a hospitality company and is roping in the services of prominent bitcoin payments processor BitPay, to accept and settle transactions with the cryptocurrency.

Spearheading the effort for bitcoin adoption within Deloitte, Valiente, who is also the co-founder of Rubix, added:

By allowing individuals to buy and sell bitcoin with our BTM, and now to buy their lunch with bitcoin, we’re demonstrating that the blockchain experience for the front-end user is not all the complicated.

“What is important to realize, however,” she added,” is that the back-end technology has fundamentally changed,” pointing to blockchain technology’s many use-cases beyond bitcoin.
Deloitte: Going Big on Bitcoin and Blockchain

All of the ‘big four’ accounting and services giants have made it publicly known that they are researching and developing blockchain applications of their own for a number of objectives including benefiting their clients.

KPMG has partnered technology giant Microsoft to co-launch blockchain development labs in Germany and Singapore. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has been more active in the space, deeming blockchain technology a “once in a generation opportunity” for financial services. After partnering Blockstream and Digital Asset in early 2016, the services firm sought to expedite the rollout of blockchain technology in mainland China in July 2016. By the end of the year, PwC launched ‘Vulcan’, its own blockchain platform.

Ernst & Young partnered the Bitfury Group, a bitcoin mining and blockchain tech giant, late last year to develop blockchain services and applications. This year, EY Switzerland began accepting bitcoin as payments for all of its services.

Deloitte arguably leads the pack in adopting and developing blockchain technology, with some 800 professionals across 20 countries exclusively working on blockchain-related prototypes in a number of areas including digital banking, payments, reward programs, real estate and trade reporting.

The firm believes 2017 to be the “make-or-break” year for blockchain technology globally and is pouring resources into aggressive development by opening blockchain-exclusive labs in New York and Dublin.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/deloitte-accepts-bitcoin-for-toronto-office-restaurant/

The so-called Large Bitcoin Collider (LBC), a tool set up to find and gain access to Bitcoin address funds through private key discovery, recently passed over 1,000 trillion key searches.

LBC, which developers describe as “a distributed effort to find at least one collision of private Bitcoin keys,” is creating around 2,000 tn such addresses, matching them against a known list of addresses containing funds.

“In the rare event of a collision, the funds on the address in question would become accessible to the collision finder,” its website states.

Far from being a malicious effort, the Collider is being used to demonstrate the true strength of Bitcoin’s security.

“[The] current consensus is "that's impossible" and that is a gauntlet thrown down,” developers continue.


As a distributed effort, the LBC is open to any user wishing to contribute. Pools are even organized to increase the chances of “success,” while the legal implications of keeping discovered funds vary by user location.

On that subject, however, the developers take a more hands-off approach.

“Depending on your jurisdiction, this may be considered theft and is therefore illegal,” the website continues.


The project has so far unearthed a small amount of Bitcoin.

Cointelegraph this week provided readers with practical advice on how to secure their Bitcoins, specifically in the wake of the WikiLeaks Vault 7 revelations.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/ultimate-white-hat-hacker-large-bitcoin-collider-passes-1000-trillion-addresses

Bitcoin is trading up 1.2% at $1,049 a coin as of 7:37 a.m. ET after aggressive selling on Wednesday slammed the cryptocurrency below the $1,000 level for just the second time since the beginning of Febraury.

Traders continue to grapple with the possibility that developers could set up a "hard fork," or alternative marketplace for bitcoin, as well a crackdown on trading in China and the US Securities and Exchange Commission's upcoming rulings on bitcoin ETFs.

Thursday's buying appears to be technical-based as a good deal of support comes into play in the $1,000 area. The cryptocurrency has not put in a close below that level since Febraury 9.

2017 has been a voltile year for bitcoin. It rallied 20% in the first week before crashing 35% amid fears China was going to crackdown on trading. Bitcoin then rallied another 75% from mid-January until mid-March, putting in a record high $1,327 on the morning of the SEC's rejection of the Winklevoss ETF.

The cryptcurrency has fallen about 20% since then as participants remain on edge over the possibility of an alternative marketplace and the two upcoming SEC rulings on bitcoin ETFs, the first which is due no later than March 30. Neither is expected to be approved.

Bitcoin has been the top-performing currency in each of the last two years.



http://uk.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-spikes-above-1000-2017-3?r=US&IR=T

Should the bitcoin network suddenly split into rival networks, those negatively impacted in a shake-up may be unable to turn to courts for recourse.

In conversation with CoinDesk, legal experts discussed the more notable claims that have emerged amidst escalating discussions about a potential bitcoin hard fork, a process by which a portion of the network could migrate to new software, possibly creating two separate blockchains – and two bitcoin tokens – in the process.

In recent days, bitcoin's miners and developers have shown an increasing determination to back separate visions for the technology's path forward, in the process claiming that certain actions taken by the other party could result in legal consequences.

On one side, miners have put forth the idea they could sue developers for changes to bitcoin's consensus algorithm, should it result in their inability to operate profitably. On the other hand, developers have implied miners could face repercussions should they act aggressively, or maliciously, to disrupt one of the two resulting blockchains.

First and foremost, lawyers queried by CoinDesk reported that jurisdiction was likely to prove the biggest hurdle in any lawsuit, given the disparate locations of bitcoin's key participants.

Stephen Palley, counsel at Washington, DC, law firm Anderson Kill, told CoinDesk:


Andrew Hinkes, a lawyer at Florida law firm Berger Singerman offered a similar concern.

On either side, he noted that courts are bounded by geographies, something that internet-based economic networks united by blockchains are not.

"There are only certain people that I can sue in a Miami court. The court has to have subject matter jurisdiction, and then you have to have the right person to sue there," he said.

Hinkes went on to use the example of an anonymous developer named Voldemort, famed for his authorship of bitcoin's MimbleWimble proposal, as an example, noting that jurisdiction would be hard to prove if identity can't first be established.

"I don't know who Voldemort is. That would be a problem. A lot of devs are outside the US. If I want to sue a guy in China, where most of the miners are, I have to sue there," he continued.

Still, lawyers surveyed reported a much wider host of issues that would suggest such legal claims would likely be byzantine, if not impossible, in practice should a fork result in any claims.

Developer risk low

In discussions, one trend that emerged was the idea that miners would likely be unable to sue protocol developers given the absence of a defined contract between the parties.

According to Marco Santori, fintech lead at Cooley LLP, such claims would be barred, at least in the US.

"Purely economic damages, which are the only damages that I could imagine a miner would suffer, require that there be a contract between the plaintiff and the defendant," he told CoinDesk. "I’m not aware of any such contract between miners and protocol developers."

Hinkes agreed that the lack of a direct contract between the parties would prove problematic, should a mining group (as an example) try to sue.

"This has all been done with the tacit understanding that these things can change. There's never been guarantees the consensus algorithm won't change. In short, they're going to have hard time trying to find a person who promised that," he said.

Here again, Hinkes brought up the fact that, while developers can release new code to the bitcoin network, they aren't able to force anyone else to run it, meaning that proving such a connection would be problematic.

Possible options

Yet, there could be options.

Hinkes perhaps offered the most in-depth assessment of this scenario, suggesting three potential ways that developers might be sued.

These included claims of tortious interference (a process by which someone not involved in an existing contract takes a wilful action that disrupts it), equitable estoppel (a form of law where parties rely on statements from other parties) and an injunction (whereby a court would explicitly bar a party from certain actions).

Of the three, Hinkes speculated that a tortious interference claim could have the most merit, though he repeated that jurisdiction and identity issues were likely complexities.

"By propagating new code, you can say you directly damaged me. But, you have to say that you had an agreement. If you're a miner, who is that agreement with? What about the investors? Who do they have an agreement with? There's some issues there," he said.

Equitable estoppel, he reasoned, would break down should the party seeking recourse be unable to prove a defendant had a pre-existing position on an issue, and that the direct change in this position resulted in economic harm.

Likewise, injunctions, he said, were likely to be similarly ineffective, as they would require developers to be found and served in a location that may be hard to determine.

Miner threat

Of the two groups, lawyers surveyed seemed to suggest that miners were perhaps more likely to be held liable for actions, though they acknowledged this depended on how nefarious any steps taken could be deemed.

"It would depend upon what those malicious actions were. Merely moving hashing power from one fork to another wouldn't be sufficient," Santori said.

Should the action be sufficiently malicious, however, Hinkes noted there are still roadblocks. Namely, someone from a law enforcement agency would need to take up the case and be willing to venture into its complexities on the basis it could be fruitful for future case law.

He also suggested that precedent here is uncertain, given that it's a commonly held notion that a so-called minority blockchain (one that was small enough to be attacked and taken offline) is expected to fall away in the event of a fork.

"Any time you attack the property of another person you still have to prove and qualify damages. Does the minority chain have any value at all?" he asked.

Still, Hinkes and Palley suggested that even if the actions could be construed as criminal, jurisdiction would likely prove another difficult impediment.

"Let’s say you could convince a US court that you’re entitled to relief, aren’t most miners offshore, in China and elsewhere? It's not impossible, but it's highly unlikely," Palley said.

Where there's a will

Yet, some suggested that the right amount of creativity (and the right situation) could combine for an effective legal case.

For example, BakerHostetler fintech lead Carol Van Cleef speculated that a criminal prosecution could be possible, depending on the financial stakes involved and the extent to which the parties were aggrieved by any outcome.

Van Cleef said simply:


http://www.coindesk.com/fork-fallout-a-bitcoin-split-could-become-a-legal-mess/

Vault7 is the codename WikiLeaks gave to a planned series of releases of documents detailing the electronic surveillance and cyber warfare practices of the CIA.

The famous whistleblowing website claims that it is going to be “the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.”

Part one of the series, codenamed “Year Zero,” was released on March 7, 2017. It is a set of over 8,000 documents that offers some alarming evidence of the CIA’s ability to hack into various electronic devices and use them for surveillance and cyber warfare activities.

What is worse is that the reports of the CIA’s hacking arsenal are said to circulate among former contractors and hackers of the US government in an “unauthorized manner.” That means that they could have been seen and used by potential malicious actors outside of the agency.

This is a new development in the ongoing process of uncovering the extent of the reach that the United States’ intelligence agencies have over the private data of both the US citizens and foreign nationals. It started in 2013 with Edward Snowden revealing the details of such programs as PRISM and XKeyscore employed by the US National Security Agency (NSA) for global surveillance.

Now the Year Zero has revealed that the CIA possesses similar capabilities when it comes to cyber surveillance and warfare.

Specific tools at the CIA’s disposal
Here is a non-comprehensive list:

- Smartphone traffic interception. Allegedly, the CIA can plant their software both onto iOS and Android operating systems of modern smartphones. After a device is compromised, the CIA can then intercept outgoing traffic, such as audio and instant messages, before it is encrypted by the phone.

Even the messaging apps which offer end-to-end encryption, such as Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal, may be jeopardized, as there is a chance that the agency’s software is able to bypass their encryption by using keylogging.

- It has been reported in Year Zero that the CIA was looking into the possibility of hacking AI-controlled vehicles. Although there is no solid proof that the agency does possess such capabilities, if it did, it would “permit [them] to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.”

- Weeping Angel. This piece of cyber weaponry is allegedly able to infect Samsung Smart TVs and turn them into covert listening devices. A compromised television set can put itself into a “fake-off” mode, where it appears to have turned off, but is still able to use its microphone to record conversations in the room and then transmit them to the CIA, all unbeknownst to the owner.

- PC backdoors. Year Zero has referred to CIA’s capabilities of infecting computers which run on the Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems. Compromised systems can then be used to hide other malicious software under the DLL of legitimate applications. And before you get the idea of switching to Mac OS or Linux - those are reported to be affected too.

Am I being spied on?
There is a good chance that you own at least one device which may be affected.

Smartphones that run on the Android and iOS operating systems, Windows, Mac OS and Linux computers, Samsung Smart TVs - especially the separately mentioned Samsung’s F8000 series - have all been reported to have associated surveillance software developed for them.

It is important to note, that unlike the bulk data collection which the NSA engages in - according to Edward Snowden’s leaks - the tools revealed by the Year Zero report are more likely to only be used for targeted surveillance. That means that if you aren’t on terrorist or criminal lists, the CIA is unlikely to be using its arsenal of cyber weapons to spy on you.

However, the software still has its vulnerabilities and the fact that the exploits are circulating among contractors outside of the agency means that your devices may potentially be compromised by non-government actors, like, for example, hackers looking to access your private data.

What can I do to enhance the security of my devices?
Based on the advice by several security experts, here are some of the precautions you make take to protect your electronic devices.

• First of all, make sure to update the operating systems of your gadgets to their latest versions. Android, iOS, Windows and others are all regularly patched by the respective companies in order to fix the discovered security weaknesses. That means that having the latest version of the OS installed minimizes the risk of the CIA or other agents being able to use the backdoor to spy on you. Some of the older models of the smartphones do not support the latest security updates - in that case, it may be the time to switch to the latest models.

• Install an antivirus program on every device where one is available. It is known that some of the backdoors in our gadgets are put there by the actual developers, in collusion with the intelligence agencies. Because of that, those backdoors are unlikely to be eliminated by the security updates to the operating systems. However, antivirus companies do not have a stake in keeping the security flaws alive - on the contrary, their reputation depends on being able to eliminate them. That means that if it is at all possible to patch a certain hole in the security of a device - a good antivirus is going to do it.

• Don’t let strangers get unauthorized access to your devices. It has been revealed in the leaks, that physical presence may be needed in order to initially infect a device with CIA’s spyware.
  Make sure that you use messaging apps which offer end-to-end encryption of communications - such as WhatsApp or Telegram. That way, even if your device is compromised, your conversation will have a higher chance of remaining private, compared to using less secure applications.

• If you own a Samsung Smart TV - feel free to unplug it after use. The CIA is unable to use electronic devices with no power supply - yet.

What can you do to really stay off the radar?
If everything else fails, go the pre-industrial way: ditch all electronics and hide in the woods.

We have outlined some of the ways to beef up the security of your devices, but it may still not be enough. Maybe, the tools revealed in the Year Zero are just a tiny fraction of what the CIA has at its disposal. Or maybe they are old backdoors, which have been replaced with newer, much more advanced ones - the ones, which you can’t do anything about.

Well, in that case, there is really only one thing you can do in our technology-ridden world - get rid of all electronic devices and go live in the woods. Here are some of the best practices for surviving in the wild.

It basically boils down to keeping in mind the four basic needs for survival:

• Shelter. Depending on available materials, the level of preparation and outside temperature, it can be anything: a tent, a wigwam, an igloo, or a cave. If you are using a natural shelter, make sure there are no bears sleeping in it, before making it your new home.

• Fire. Actually, scratch that. Smoke plumes can reveal your location and, ultimately, lead the CIA back to you. Learn to eat your food raw.

• Food. Try your best not to starve: consume plants (just not the poisonous ones), mushrooms, fish. Also, improvise: you can create weapons from almost anything, including condoms, to hunt both game and possible CIA spooks.

• Water. Just don’t settle near rivers in Flint, Michigan, and you should be OK as far as water goes.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/vault7-are-your-bitcoins-safe