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...