A New Approach to Thwarting “Selfish” Bitcoin Miners

Selfish mining is an attack on the Bitcoin network that has been known to be possible for several years. By propagating new blocks slowly (on purpose or by accident), a loophole is opened for miners to unfairly increase their profits in relation to other miners. However, researchers Cyril Grunspan and Ricardo Pérez-Marco claim that by broadcasting the presence of orphan blocks, selfish mining can become a thing of the past. Grunspan, a professor at Paris’ ESILV graduate school of engineering, and Pérez-Marco, the director of research at the National Center…

After the Fork: Here’s How Exchanges Are Dealing With Bitcoin Cash

The smoke is still clearing from Bitcoin Cash’s hard fork, but exchanges have already moved in to add support for the products of the skirmish. On November 16, 2018, what was intended to be a routine hard fork upgrade of the Bitcoin Cash blockchain became a struggle for hashing power and chain dominance as Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision (SV), led by Craig S. Wright, attempted to wrestle control over the Bitcoin Cash blockchain from its original client, Bitcoin ABC. Bitcoin ABC (thus far) has strong-armed Bitcoin SV with its mining power…

ICO Issuers Settle Registration Charges With SEC

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has agreed to settle charges with two startups that sold tokens through Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) in 2017. The companies were charged by the SEC for running their ICOs after the regulator clearly defined such offerings as unlicensed securities in its DAO Report of Investigation. The startups indicted by the SEC are Boston-based Airfox, which sold $15 million worth of tokens, and Paragon Coin, which raised $12 million selling tokens.  “We have made it clear that companies that issue securities through ICOs are…

Progress Report: Lightning Network Surpasses $1M BTC Capacity, 4,000 Nodes

The Lightning Network continues to post steady growth. According to data from 1ML, the network is now supported by roughly 4,070 nodes, which house just over 12,500 payment channels, an average of 10.91 channels per node (at time of publication). Most of this growth has come in the later half of 2018, as the average age of each node is just 137 days old. With infrastructural growth, the network is also seeing an uptick in liquidity. At the time of writing, the network’s collective capacity now stands at 223.65 BTC, which, at…

“We Did This With Gold”: Could VanEck Be Bitcoin’s Best Bet for an ETF?

Gabor Gurbacs is confident that the approval of a bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF) is inevitable. And he’s optimistic that the VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Strategy will be the first to deliver one to the world. The director of Digital Asset Strategy at VanEck/MVIS, Gurbacs, as of late, has become a leading voice on the space’s ETF pursuit at a time when industry chatter on the topic has never been louder. If you haven’t found him extolling the benefits of a bitcoin ETF on Twitter, you may have come across his…

One Day After the Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork: Takeaways and Latest Developments

Bitcoin Cash, the “big block” project that forked away from the Bitcoin blockchain in August 2017, “hard forked” (split) into two different coins: “Bitcoin Cash ABC” (BCH ABC) and “Bitcoin Cash SV” (BCH SV). At the time of writing, the Bitcoin Cash ABC chain has more accumulated proof of work, and its native currency, BCH ABC, is trading higher on (futures) exchanges. Most Bitcoin Cash ABC proponents, therefore, feel victorious — though many Bitcoin Cash SV proponents have not yet conceded defeat. Well over a day since the split, here…

West Virginia Secretary of State Reports Successful Blockchain Voting in 2018 Midterm Elections

The Secretary of State of the U.S. state of West Virginia Mac Warner reported a successful first instance of remote blockchain voting in an official announcement Nov. 15. Warner stated that in the 2018 midterm elections, 144 military personnel stationed overseas from 24 counties were able to cast their ballots on a mobile, blockchain-based platform called Voatz, adding: “This is a first-in-the-nation project that allowed uniformed services members and overseas citizens to use a mobile application to cast a ballot secured by blockchain technology.” Voting for the general elections on…

Crypto Initiative Donates Monero to Bail Out Immigrants in ICE Detention

The Bail Bloc initiative has started using cryptocurrency raised through charity to help people get out of U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) pretrial incarceration, according to a tweet posted by a Bail Bloc co-founder Nov. 15. ICE is a law enforcement agency of the federal government of the U.S, the mission of which is to monitor cross-border crime and illegal immigration. In 2017, the agency conducted 143,470 overall administrative arrests, 92 percent of which resulted in a criminal conviction or a pending criminal charge. In ICE detention people are…

Bitcoin Scam Compromising Google and Target Accounts Came from Third Party App

A recent Bitcoin scam on Twitter that compromised several major companies verified accounts came from a third-party app, tech news outlet the Next Web (TNW) reports Friday, Nov. 16, citing social media officials. Speaking to TNW, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed that the attack came from an outside software provider and not from Twitter’s own system. However, the official refrained from naming the app. The spokesperson reportedly explained that the attackers exploited a third-party marketing solution to launch a Bitcoin (BTC) giveaway from several verified accounts, including Google’s G Suite and…

TRON Launches Accelerator Program for DApp Developers

Decentralized Internet project TRON (TRX) is launching a $1 million accelerator program to support developers building DApps and products on the TRON protocol, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph Nov. 16. The initiative aims to facilitate consumer adoption of blockchain technology through TRON’s ecosystem following the recent acquisition of peer-to-peer file sharing service BitTorrent, Project Atlas, and payment service Poppy app. TRON’s protocol currently processes more than one million transactions and 600,000 wallets. The startup will purportedly accept submissions to its accelerator through December, while the winners will…