Bitcoin Guru

The Moment of Truth The wait is almost over; Lamden's mainnet launch is fast approaching. September 16th, 2020 will be an inflection point, marking the transition from a technology promised to a technology delivered. We at Lamden have been working nonstop to deliver on the unfulfilled promises of blockchain. Instead of modifying an existing technology, we decided to design and build a novel blockchain architecture from scratch. As a result, our Python-native modular blockchain delivers a revolutionary leap in performance, efficiency, and usability. The moment of truth and the reveal is drawing near. Blockchain of today is one of complexity, high congestion, and outrageous fees. Lamden's mission is to unleash a disruptive solution upon these challenges and make blockchain fast, user-friendly, and cost-effective. One day, we will look back and remember September 16th, 2020 as a pivotal moment for blockchain and its revival. The Road Traveled We at Lamden took the road less travel...

Mitiga, an incident readiness and response company, has discovered that a product available on Amazon Web Services Marketplace contained Monero mining malware. Mitiga published their findings, noting that they discovered the malware when conducting a security audit for a financial services company. "Mitiga's security research team has identified an AWS Community AMI containing malicious code running an unidentified Monero crypto miner," according to the Mitiga's blog post. "We have concerns this may be a phenomenon, rather than an isolated occurrence." Malware on AWS Marketplace Unfortunately, the AWS marketplace allows anyone to sell virtual services on its marketplace. Although the marketplace is full of verified vendors, it also contains offerings from unverified community members. Mitiga discovered that one community member was selling a Windows 2008 virtual server that secretly used the computing power of anyone who downloaded it to mine Monero in the b...

Digital currency tax reporting service CryptoTrader.Tax suffered a breach, resulting in 13,000 rows of data and 1,082 unique customer email addresses stolen. The breach reportedly took place on April 7, but the platform did not make an official announcement at the time. Instead, it contacted the individuals affected directly. The incident only came to light after CryptoTrader.Tax co-founder and CEO David Kemmerer confirmed that the data breach happened. How it happened An individual familiar with the matter was quoted by CoinDesk saying the hacker was able to gain access to a CryptoTrader.Tax employee's account. The employee worked in marketing and customer service, which allowed the hacker to access customer names, emails, payment processor profiles, and messages to customer service on the platform. Once the hacker accessed this information, they allegedly took screenshots of the data, and subsequently posted them on a dark net forum to show others that they had personal identific...

Goldman Sachs is seriously considering its own cryptocurrency, possibly a stablecoin, as it significantly expands its digital assets team and appoints a new head to spearhead efforts. Matthew McDermott, Goldman's new digital asset global head, confirmed the U.S. investment bank was exploring whether to launch its own digital asset, CNBC reported Thursday. "We are exploring the commercial viability of creating our own fiat digital token, but it's early days as we continue to work through the potential use cases," he said. Last month McDermott hired Oli Harris as head of strategy. Harris was instrumental in JPMorgan's blockchain, Quroum, as well as its settlement coin, JPMCoin. McDermott said he is already looking at how blockchain can make savings in the inefficient repurchase, or "repo", market used by banks to lend money to one another, as well as credit and mortgage markets. He also said Goldman might consider collaborating with its rival, JPM, as well...

A number of congressional lawmakers have written to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), urging a proactive policy for taxing digital currency that avoids hampering proof of stake technology. In a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, Representatives David Schweikert, Bill Foster, Tom Emmer and Darren Soto set out how current policy is holding back progress in the sector. Explaining how taxing staking rewards as income could lead to excessive tax burdens, the lawmakers appeal for an alternative approach that supports and encourages innovation. "It is possible the taxation of 'staking' rewards as income may overstate taxpayers' actual gains from participating in this new technology. It could also result in a reporting and compliance nightmare, for taxpayers and the Service alike." According to the letter, staking rewards can be more effectively taxed when they are sold, with those validating transactions rewarded by creating new tokens. The lawmakers argue that...