Cryptsy, Shapeshift, Gatecoin, Bitfinex. What do all these exchanges have in common? More than 130,000 BTC ($73,818,875 at today’s prices) has collectively been stolen from them in 2016. Hacks and heists at bitcoin exchanges happen so often that it’s becoming less surprising when a new one takes place. However, just because the routine has dulled the impact doesn’t mean it isn’t being felt. When a heist does happen, investors still face significant losses, negative news continues to drive away consumers and new pressures emerge for entrepreneurs looking to launch new products. Jerry Brito, executive director of Coin Center, told CoinDesk that these sorts of events make his organization’s job harder. The non-profit cryptocurrency…
The Bitcoin ecosystem is divided into multiple camps. With the lingering scalability issues, and other proposals representing an immediate solution to this problem, there is an interesting mid shift taking place. As it turns out, the majority of miners is still supporting Bitcoin Core in the block size debate. But they are losing ground at a rapid pace. Right now, there are different proposals on the table to solve the Bitcoin scalability issue. One thing everyone seems to agree on is how the block size will need to be increased. By how much that increase will happen, remains to be seen, though. Bitcoin Core, which is the main branch of development, is working on Segregated Witness who would warrant a 2 MB block size. Based on block size voting results, only…
Bitcoin has been in the government’s crosshairs across the world since it became popular. Now, a new warning has surfaced on Bitcoin.org – the quasi-official Bitcoin website expressing concerns about a potential threat. The latest update on the website cautions the Bitcoin community to be “extra careful” while downloading the new updates. With a new Bitcoin Core release around the corner, the website anticipates an attack by government-sponsored hackers on the Bitcoin Network. The Chinese Bitcoin community is speculated to be the most vulnerable to these attacks mainly due to two reasons. China is a major contributor to the Bitcoin network in terms of hashing power and trading activities. China has been the main focus of various…
A forthcoming bitcoin software update will be the first to feature code that could be later activated and included as part of an effort to scale transaction capacity on the bitcoin blockchain. Called the “most significant code change” in version 0.13.0, the new code added for Segregated Witness will not activate the change, but rather be the next step in preparing it to be eventually deployed, potentially in version 0.13.1. The software update is expected to be released in the coming weeks. While the feature has been tested extensively, bitcoin developers are seeking to democratize testing by activating the feature on the bitcoin testnet and in “regression testing mode”, allowing a wider range of developers to test it out for themselves…
A new post on the open-source Bitcoin.org website indicates its contributors have reason to believe the online resource may be targeted by malicious actors following an upcoming software release by Bitcoin Core developers. Bitcoin.org contributor Cobra-Bitcoin published a post today in which he indicated that certain resources the website intends to post following the Bitcoin Core development update could be the target of unspecified “state-sponsored attackers”. At issue, the post asserts, is that Bitcoin.org generally posts binaries, or executable software versions of Bitcoin Core software releases, for developers who do not want to compile the source code issued by the open-source development team. The offering is aimed at developers who do not want…