With 11 Million Users Coinbase Enables Instant Bitcoin Buying With a US Bank Account
Bitcoin exchange Coinbase announced that it will now allow users to buy bitcoin, ethereum, and litecoin instantly when paying with a US bank account.
Coinbase made the announcement in a blog post. Previously, customers who purchased cryptocurrency using a bank account had to wait several days — sometimes as long as a week — before they received access to their assets. Now, customers who pay for their cryptocurrency purchases using a US bank account can buy up to $25,000 worth of BTC, ETH, and LTC and receive access to their coins immediately.
This will be a welcome addition for consumers, many of whom desire to purchase ether so they can participate in initial coin offerings (ICOs), but new users in particular often do not realize they need to plan ahead to make sure their coins are available at the start of the ICO.
Full story at http://bit.ly/2yNIiZI
Source: CryptoCoinsNews
What Leaders Need To Know About The Power Of Cryptocurrency
Over the past few years, adoption of cryptocurrency has grown exponentially, primarily because of its attractiveness to people looking to use alternative money. Because all cryptocurrencies are decentralized, anonymous, and electronic, they’ve been called the currency of the future. Let’s take a look at a few of the areas where cryptocurrency is having an impact on the world.
Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, and remains the most prominent. Because of its growing popularity, it’s now being used every day, for ordinary transactions. Well-known businesses such as Etsy and Subway accept bitcoins as payment. The BitPay Visa debit card allows you to transform your bitcoins into conventional money within minutes, and use the card anywhere that accepts Visa. Another platform, ChainTrade, is using blockchain to revolutionize the trade of food and raw materials. This financial sector represents more than $2 trillion annually.
It’s no surprise, then, that there have been movements to legitimize cryptocurrencies as real forms of payment in countries like Japan and Russia. Japan has already accepted bitcoin as legal currency with numerous major retailers. Russia is seeking to recognize cryptocurrencies as legal financial instruments, which will allow them to deal with the problem of money laundering.
Major investors are also starting to consider cryptocurrencies as an investment. As Ron Quaranta, Chairman of the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance, explains: “Bitcoin and Ether and all these cryptocurrencies are representing a different type of asset class; a different type of tradable commodity. Investment managers are our fastest growing demographic.”
Full story at http://bit.ly/2yQnfpv
Source: Forbes
A Look at Five Different Cryptocurrency Hardware Wallets and Prices
As bitcoin and alternative digital currencies grow more valuable, the demand for hardware wallets has grown significantly. Currently, there are a lot more options than when the first bitcoin hardware wallets came out and a lot more features. Here’s a look at some of the most popular cryptocurrency physical storage devices out on the market today.
A cryptocurrency hardware wallet is a physical device that stores private keys in a protected area within the device. People appreciate hardware wallets because they act similarly to a paper wallet but are far more functional for spending and receiving purposes. To date, there really hasn’t been any major incidents of large-scale hardware wallet vulnerabilities or verifiable incidents of funds stolen by hackers. Hardware wallets are also resistant to viruses, and private keys cannot be removed from these devices in plaintext. Although no method is 100 percent secure, Bitcoiners believe there are many significant advantages of using a hardware wallet, and there’s a bunch of devices to choose from on the market.
Full story at http://bit.ly/2xUepCK
Source: Bitcoin News
Your Browser Could Be Mining Cryptocurrency For a Stranger
THERE’S SOMETHING NEW to add to your fun mental list of invisible internet dangers. Joining classic favorites like adware and spyware comes a new, tricky threat called “cryptojacking,” which secretly uses your laptop or mobile device to mine cryptocurrency when you visit an infected site.
Malicious miners aren’t new in themselves, but cryptojacking has exploded in popularity over the past few weeks, because it offers a clever twist. Bad guys don’t need to sneak software onto your computer to get it going, which can be a resource-intensive attack. Instead, the latest technique uses Javascript to start working instantly when you load a compromised web page. There's no immediate way to tell that the page has a hidden mining component, and you may not even notice any impact on performance, but someone has hijacked your devices—and electric bill—for digital profit.
The idea for cryptojacking coalesced in mid-September, when a company called Coinhive debuted a script that could start mining the cryptocurrency Monero when a webpage loaded. The Pirate Bay torrenting site quickly incorporated it to raise funds, and within weeks Coinhive copycats started cropping up. Hackers have even found ways to inject the scripts into websites like Politifact.com and Showtime, unbeknownst to the proprietors, mining money for themselves off of another site’s traffic.
So far these types of attacks have been discovered in compromised sites' source code by users—including security researcher Troy Mursch—who notice their processor load spiking dramatically after navigating to cryptojacked pages. To protect yourself from cryptojacking, you can add sites you're worried about, or ones that you know practice in-browser mining, to your browser's ad blocking tool. There's also a Chrome extension called No Coin, created by developer Rafael Keramidas, that blocks Coinhive mining and is adding protection against other miners, too.
Full story at http://bit.ly/2xUcnT5
Source: https://www.wired.com
The State of Cryptocurrency: What it is and How it Works
If you’re new to blockchain (or if you’ve never heard of it), it can seem a bit daunting. Cryptocurrency as an industry is in its infancy, but the barriers to entry are complex. Without a solid understanding of the premise of blockchain or the platforms on which cryptocurrencies are bought and exchanged, it can be difficult to enter the marketplace, and even harder to transact in it.
One of the first things to understand is that blockchain has nothing to do with bitcoin (cryptocurrency), which is a common misconception. Blockchain is the technology behind bitcoin, first invented to serve as a digital ledger to solve the double spending problem without the use of a singular authority or server.
The decentralized technology uses a peer-to-peer network to record and validate transactions (called blocks) across multiple computers so that the records cannot be altered, you can view it and add to it, but you can’t change the information that’s already there. It’s essentially an online database that anyone can use but no one owns, it’s able to stay relatively hack proof because of blockchains’ millions of users.
The gap in the market that remains is that between traditional financial services and cryptocurrency transactions. Bridging that gap will play a significant role in our ability to integrate cryptocurrency into our mainstream lives.
Full story at http://bit.ly/2xUd4vP
Source: Huffington Post
Will This Battle For The Soul Of Bitcoin Destroy It?
As Bitcoin hit a new record high less than two weeks ago, long-time “hodlers” (an inside joke in crypto based on a typo in a drunken Bitcoin Talk forum message in 2013) celebrated on Twitter and Reddit with jokes about buying Lambos, and a clip from Wayne’s World where the main characters frolic and chant, “We’ve got $5,000! We’ve got $5,000!”
On Saturday, the price surged to yet another all-time high, $6,194.88, according to Coinmarketcap.com, and the market capitalization briefly exceeded $100 billion.
The reasons for the jumps are unclear, but unless there's negative news, every day, at minimum, the price is likely to rise because of new money coming into the system. Every day on Coinbase alone, about 35,000 new accounts open -- a figure that sometimes reaches 50,000 -- and thousands of people in South Korea and Japan, two countries where Bitcoin has taken off, are also bringing new fiat money into the system.
But the market’s rosy outlook is in stark contrast to the prognosis many insiders give to Bitcoin right now: The almost nine-year-old cryptocurrency is facing its gravest test yet. Whether or not it will survive, or in what form, is anyone’s guess.
Full story at http://bit.ly/2yPrNME
Source: Forbes
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