Bitcoin Guru

  Umbra, launched for privacy, is a new crypto currency aimed at privacy. With so many ways to use it, it's no wonder so many are using it today- it was built primarily for security and has many secondary features, like opening up a chat lobby or creating a marketplace that's completely anonymous. Interested? Let's take a look at it.   Privacy Built for privacy, the Umbra project was created open-source and has more security features than most crypto currencies do, on top of having excellent usability. Umbra allows you to stack additional security measures on top of the existing ones built into the client, so attackers have multiple barriers to break to find who you are and more. Plus, the messaging platform is built for Tor and L2P, so you can carry out your transactions with even more security!   Encrypted Messaging Encryption is one thing built into the Umbra platform, and it's one of the most integral features that provide security to it. Many messages do provide go...

The recent DDoS attack on some of the major websites on the internet has renewed interests in the decentralized internet. While there are multiple initiatives concerning blockchain technology and decentralized network in development, the DDoS attack is expected to accelerate the process. The CTO of Golem, Piotr Janiuk has recently explained that by decentralizing the internet using peer to peer technology the chances of such attacks can be minimized. He believes that the attack was a result of an attacker or a group of attackers exploiting one or more single points of failures on the internet. One such decentralized internet project is known as SAFE Network where safe stands for Secure Access for Everyone. The SAFE Network is powered using the unused hard drive space, processing power and data connection of its users. It uses MaidSafe crypto tokens as a medium of exchange on the network. By distributing data and processing power across the network, decentralized internet platform ensur...

During the last couple of months, bitcoin has had numerous ups and downs, yet the number of total investors has increased exponentially. Judging by this practice, it seems like there is a clear demand for the digital currency. In fact, the year of 2015 represented the year of venture capitalists, especially on the blockchain, after the number of investments in both bitcoin and its underlying technology has increased. As there is clearly some risk associated with the practice of trading and investing in bitcoin, numerous potential investors are staying away from it.   The supply of bitcoin is fixed Since the currency was first released back in 2009, its value has increased from next to nothing, up to 1,100 and its current value of around $600 at the time of writing. However, not many people are aware of the fact that the digital currency has a strict, limited maximum supply, of 21 million coins. Judging by this aspect, once all of the coins will have been mined, the coin will have t...

Conventional thinking about blockchain technology's use in stock markets may be wrong, according to one academic. The argument was put forward by Professor David Yermack, chairman of the finance department at New York University, this week at Imperial College London's first FinTech-focused academic conference. There, Yermack presented an unpublished report that argues blockchains will evolve differently in capital markets than widely expected. For example, according to Yermack, functions such as stock settlements will one day be carried out on public blockchains like bitcoin, as opposed to private or premissioned alternatives. Overall, Yermack, who teaches a cryptocurrency course at NYU’s Stern School of Business, offered a much broader vision for the use of blockchain in finance than what the industry is considering, as well as more critical takes on how incumbents are exploring the tech. Taking a dig at DTCC, for instance, Yermack said its report "Embracing Disrupt...

NAV's coin swap to set off a chain of game changing improvements "The goal of the NAV coin swap is to improve the performance of NAV for it's investors and give us the code base to launch NAV into a strong future. Our future will be development heavy; we pride NAV on being a tech strong coin and we like keep on the cutting edge of altcion technology – after all we are nerds."  Bip 32 is considered one of the key updates in moving crypto currencies forward into a modern user-friendly place. It is the capability to generate wallet addressed from a single private seed, which allows the user to regenerate key pairs from the seed if the wallet is lost. Thus back up frequency is reduced. This wallet generation method is compliant with web & mobile wallet standards. The NAV team has indicated the a mobile and web wallet build is high on their list of priorities. Bip 38 -passphrase protected private key Bip 38 is the capability to encrypt and enc...

  At this moment in time, Ethereum represents the basis of a popular digital currency, alongside with a decentralized platform meant to support apps that run as they are, without facing censorship, fraud or any form of third part interference.   However, during its reign so far, the network was forced to implement a hard fork, to prevent the theft of millions of dollars’ worth of DAO funds, after the systems had been hacked. Whenever a fork is suggested on the digital currency market, its purpose is to divide the supporters of two different ideas, and continue the branch which has the most supporters at the time of the fork.   Recent reports indicate that after the recent DDoS attack, Ethereum is planning to carry out another fork, in order to deal with the EIP150 gas cost changes being implemented. With this in mind, last month, on the 22nd of September, Ethereum representatives announced that the network was facing a strong DDoS attack, thus causing an immediate s...

The human brain, consisting of roughly 86 billion neurons, rivals the world’s best supercomputers in terms of magnitude, efficiency, and speed, using as little energy as a small 20-watt light bulb. Human evolution took tens of thousands of years to adapt noticeable brain size and architecture changes.   Evolution is a slow process that can take eons for changes to occur. Technology, on the other hand, is amazing in terms of how fast it is moving along, blending into the world seamlessly. The technological evolution notably occurs at a faster pace compared to biological evolution.   To further understand the situation, imagine a frog in a pot of water that heats up 1/10th of a degree Celsius every ten seconds. Even if the frog remained in that water for, say an hour, it would be unable to feel the minute changes in temperature. However, if the frog is dropped into boiling water, the change is too sudden and the frog jumps away to avoid fate.     Let's take a gig...

Beijing and Shanghai, China's two most populous and developed cities, are often reminiscent of two siblings. They are similar, but each has its own distinct character. In this light, some rivalry is as inevitable, and it's now spilling over into the country's blockchain industry. In Beijing, visitors are likely to meet "bitcoin maximalists", those who shrug at the idea an alternative blockchain or bank consortium could challenge the network effect of a $10bn digital economy. In Shanghai, the difference of attitude is pronounced – there, you are more likely to be told that bitcoin is passé. Metaverse, a company based in the Shanghai's Huangpu district, is in many ways representative of the city's new blockchain startups. Relatively unknown even in its home country, Metaverse has over 20 employees – no small feat for a blockchain startup that has been around for less than a year, and it recently held a blockchain token crowdsale, raisin...

  Blockchain is almost always right, and has an incredible number of associated opportunities – from storage, to coding, and far beyond. The most popular and supported example is the Ethereum smart contract, which has revolutionized the coding and cryptocurrency world forever. It showed thousands that crypto isn’t just for payments, but for coders and programmers alike. With so many choices, programmers or cryptocoiners may be wondering – what’s so great about the blockchain? In this article, we have all the information you need so you can make your own decision.   Blockchain has many pros – the fact that data can be stored on it is a huge one. A notable example is in the very beginnings of Bitcoin – the genesis block. What’s interesting about this specific block is that it doesn’t reference any other block, because there were not any blocks to reference, and so it has a lot of zero bytes. All blocks have a special section called...

When it comes to cryptocurrencies one treasured goal is the ability to remain private, which requires both an anonymous and fungible currency. At times, it seems fungibility is the holy grail of the ecosystem. Bitcoin definitely achieves most of the qualities of sound money, but some believe it needs a lot of work in the development of fungibility.   Privacy cannot work without the basics of a fungible asset as both fundamentals are mutually exclusive. The rise in popularity concerning both fungibility and anonymity can be seen with the latest trends in market trading and development.   Just recently Bitcoin.com spoke with Daniel Krawisz about his new bitcoin shuffler, Shufflepuff. Krawisz explained he was still in the developmental process but had achieved the first shuffled transaction on August 15th. The Coin Shuffle protocol finds other users to tumble their bitcoins as variants of this technology are the most common protocol for mixing Bitcoins.   On August 29th, ano...

Now more than ever, your online privacy is under attack. ISPs, advertisers, and governments around the world are increasingly interested in knowing exactly what you’re up to when you browse the web. Whether you’re a political activist or simply someone who hates the idea of third-parties scrutinizing your surfing habits, there are plenty of tools available to keep prying eyes off of your traffic.   In this post, I’m going to highlight 19 ways to increase your online privacy. Some methods are more complicated than others, but if you’re serious about remaining private, these tips will help shield your traffic from snoops. Of course, internet security is a topic in and of itself, so you’re going to need to do some reading to remain thoroughly protected on all fronts. And remember, even the most careful among us are still vulnerable to imperfect technology.   The Onion Router (Tor) If anonymity is what you're after, The Onion Router (Tor) is what you ...

Kim Dotcom has told the public many times that Bitcoin will be an integral part of Mega Upload 2 and Bitcache. Now, with the help from BnkToTheFuture, Dotcom is raising funds to scale the project. According to Max Keiser, the project is nearing 50 percent of its $1 million minimum goal. Over the course of the Summer, Kim Dotcom has been teasing his new "Mega" file-sharing project and Bitcache. Dotcom said every file transfer will be "linked to a tiny Bitcoin microtransaction." Now the infamous Mega creator is teaming up with investment platform BnkToTheFuture to raise funds. According to BnkToTheFuture CEO Simon Dixon, the Mega2 investment has raised half a million dollars using bitcoin only. Appearing on the Max Keiser show, Dixon explained there have been many investors who wanted to invest, but came to a barrier at its "Bitcoin only" stipulation. He also detailed that many "hardcore bitcoiners" have also asked about technical aspects of ...

The world of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency never has a dull moment. Now that Blockstream has officially appointed Adam Back as their CEO, a few interesting things are bound to happen soon. But Jeff Garzik, who runs his own company called Bloq, hinted at a potential partnership between both groups. Jeff Garzik Remains Keen on Blockstream The name Blockstream has been a topic of substantial controversy among Bitcoin enthusiasts over the past few years. Even though this group of developers and engineers is looking to improve the Bitcoin ecosystem, there are lots of people in the community who feel they are trying to bring Bitcoin down eventually. While there may have been some dubious discussions involving Blockstream in the past, they continue to receive a lot of support as well. Jeff Garzik, one of the most prominent people in the Bitcoin world, has high hopes for what the team is trying to achieve. In fact, he feels Blockstream will "help Bitcoin grow into the future". T...

Venezuela, the South American country famous for its cheap gas (fuel) prices, has experienced a surge in both Bitcoin volume and price. The country is in the middle of the worst economic crisis ever seen in its recent history. According to the Venezuelan consulting firm, Ecoanalítica, the country’s annualized inflation reached the 1.108% mark. The Venezuelan government has unofficially banned the country’s central bank (BCV) from releasing economic indicators such as inflation figures and price indexes. After much pressure from banks, consulting firms, and other institutions, the BCV reported an 180.9 percent inflation for last year. Consulting firm, Econoanalítica, criticized the methodology used by the BCV to calculate inflation. BCV altered the weight of several goods and services used to “embellish” the figure. Amidst this grim landscape, bitcoin has gone through highs and lows. In Venezuela Bitcoin and other currencies prices are calculated using the unofficial black market ra...

Investors have benefited from algorithmic ('algo') trading programs under many different circumstances, but these 'trading bots' can prove particularly valuable to those interested in cryptocurrencies. Bot trading has reduced user error, enabled more rapid processing of information and given traders more time and flexibility. However, it may hold even greater potential in the crypto markets due to their immature nature. Trading bots have been around for decades, seeing growing use in stock markets as digitization has taken hold. However, the digital currency markets are less than a decade old and with far less tenure than more mature markets, have had significantly less time to integrate algo trading. Tim Enneking, chairman of cryptocurrency investment manager EAM, highlighted the differences between high-frequency trading (HFT) in traditional markets and those for cryptocurrencies. He told CoinDesk: "When it comes to use HFT for stocks, milli – and even micro – se...

"We were all busy arguing about the block size, but everything else is crucial." That statement, by Cornell's Emin Gün Sirer, may have come in the middle of the second and final day of the Scaling Bitcoin conference, but it was perhaps the overriding theme of this year's edition of the digital currency network's developer summit. Despite the public visibility of a protest event scheduled in parallel with the conference, the content of this year's event did much to showcase that, for many developers, the "block size" is no longer a significant factor in discussions on how the network should increase capacity. Over the course of both days, talks largely moved on to more incremental discussion of the various "trade-offs" that should be considered when making changes to bitcoin's basic components and the complex ways they interact. Bitcoin Core developer Eric Lomborozo told CoinDesk: "All engineering requires trade-offs. We're tryi...

Nasdaq is looking to patent a way in which a blockchain can be used to record exchange transaction records. On 6th October, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USTPO) released an application for "systems and methods of blockchain transaction recordation", originally submitted by Nasdaq on 31st March. It is attributed to Tom Fay, Nasdaq's senior vice president of enterprise architecture, and Dominick Paniscotti, associate vice president for enterprise architecture. Essentially, the application details an exchange system comprising digital wallets, an order book and matching engine, with a "closed blockchain" utilized as a record of transactions that is updated in real-time as participants act. As the application details: "A match is identified between data transaction requests and hashes associated with the digital wallets associated with the respective data transaction requests are generated. The counterparties receive the hashes of the other party along wi...

You might not have noticed, but ethereum is under attack. What began over two weeks ago with spam attacks that led to large-scale ethereum node outages has escalated into a battle that has pitted the platform's developers against unknown antagonists. This might sound like an exciting Hollywood movie, but it's mostly been carried out on message boards and with code. Shots were first fired at ethereum's big developer conference, Devcon2, with a mysterious message written in German and delivered via transaction method payload. The message said "Go home", but to those who have been following the network's contentious changes this summer, the full meaning was clear. Since then, block creation and transactions have continued to be impacted, with nodes syncing up to the network more slowly. But while various fixes have since been implemented, the attacker continues to find vulnerabilities to exploit and, in turn, create new ways to launch denial-of-service (DoS) atta...

San Francisco, California (October 4, 2016) – Bitaccess is excited to announce the expansion of bitcoin sales to hundred of storefronts in select states across the US. Bitaccess customers can now buy bitcoin with cash by sending a bill payment directly to Bitaccess. This is now available at nearly 1,000 retail locations in California, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Georgia. Buying bitcoin instantly with the Bitaccess bill payment option is like paying any other bill. After creating an order online directly at the Bitaccess.co website, users are provided an invoice ID to present at the nearest bill pay location. Once payment is made, bitcoin will be sent directly to your personal wallet within 60 seconds. In just 3 steps, anyone can buy bitcoin instantly: 1 . Create an order online to buy bitcoin at https://bitaccess.co/ 2 . Choose a BTM, bill pay, or voucher location to make payment. 3 . Ask the merchant to make a cash bill payment directly to Bitaccess. Bitcoin is deposited in se...