Monthly Archives: May 2017

On Friday, ransomware called WannaCry used leaked hacking tools stolen from the National Security Agency to attack an estimated 200,000 computers in 150 countries. On Monday, researchers said the same weapons-grade attack kit was used in a much-earlier and possibly larger-scale hack that made infected computers part of a botnet that mined cryptocurrency.

Like WannaCry, this earlier, previously unknown attack used an exploit codenamed EternalBlue and a backdoor called DoublePulsar, both of which were NSA-developed hacking tools leaked in mid April by a group calling itself Shadow Brokers. But instead of installing ransomware, the campaign pushed cryptocurrency mining software known as Adylkuzz. WannaCry, which gets its name from a password hard-coded into the exploit, is also known as WCry.

Kafeine, a well-known researcher at security firm Proofpoint, said the attack started no later than May 2 and may have begun as early as April 24. He said the campaign was surprisingly effective at compromising Internet-connected computers that have yet to install updates Microsoft released in early March to patch the critical vulnerabilities in the Windows implementation of the Server Message Block protocol. In a blog post published Monday afternoon, Kafeine wrote:

In the course of researching the WannaCry campaign, we exposed a lab machine vulnerable to the EternalBlue attack. While we expected to see WannaCry, the lab machine was actually infected with an unexpected and less noisy guest: the cryptocurrency miner Adylkuzz. We repeated the operation several times with the same result: within 20 minutes of exposing a vulnerable machine to the open web, it was enrolled in an Adylkuzz mining botnet.

The attack is launched from several virtual private servers which are massively scanning the Internet on TCP port 445 for potential targets.

Upon successful exploitation via EternalBlue, machines are infected with DoublePulsar. The DoublePulsar backdoor then downloads and runs Adylkuzz from another host. Once running, Adylkuzz will first stop any potential instances of itself already running and block SMB communication to avoid further infection. It then determines the public IP address of the victim and download[s] the mining instructions, cryptominer, and cleanup tools.

It appears that at any given time there are multiple Adylkuzz command and control (C&C) servers hosting the cryptominer binaries and mining instructions.

Figure 2 shows the post-infection traffic generated by Adylkuzz in this attack.

Symptoms of the attack include a loss of access to networked resources and system sluggishness. Kafeine said that some people who thought their systems were infected in the WannaCry outbreak were in fact hit by the Adylkuzz attack. The researcher went on to say this overlooked attack may have limited the spread of WannaCry by shutting down SMB networking to prevent the compromised machines from falling into the hands of competing botnets.

Proofpoint researchers have identified more than 20 hosts set up to scan the Internet and infect vulnerable machines they find. The researchers are aware of more than a dozen active Adylkuzz control servers. The botnet then mined Monero, a cryptocurrency that bills itself as being fully anonymous, as opposed to Bitcoin, in which all transactions are traceable.

Monday's report came the same day that a security researcher who works for Google found digital fingerprints tying a version of WCry from February to Lazarus Group, a hacking operation with links to North Korea. In a report published last month, Kaspersky Lab researchers said Bluenoroff, a Lazarus Group offshoot responsible for financial profit, installed cryptocurrency-mining software on computers it hacked to generate Monero coins. "The software so intensely consumed system resources that the system became unresponsive and froze," Kaspersky Lab researchers wrote.

Assembling a botnet the size of the one that managed WannaCry and keeping it under wraps for two to three weeks is a major coup. Monday's revelation raises the possibility that other botnets have been built on the shoulders of the NSA but have yet to be identified.

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Massive cryptocurrency botnet used leaked NSA exploits weeks ...

What is cryptocurrency: 21st-century unicorn or the money of the future?

This introduction explains the most important thing about cryptocurrencies. After youve read it, youll know more about it than most other humans.

Today cryptocurrencies have become a global phenomenon known to most people. While still somehow geeky and not understood by most people, banks, governments and many companies are aware of its importance.

In 2016, youll have a hard time finding a major bank, a big accounting firm, a prominent software company or a government that did not research cryptocurrencies, publish a paper about it or start a so-called blockchain-project.

Virtual currencies, perhaps most notably Bitcoin, have captured the imagination of some, struck fear among others, and confused the heck out of the rest of us. Thomas Carper, US-Senator

But beyond the noise and the press releases the overwhelming majority of people even bankers, consultants, scientists, and developers have a very limited knowledge about cryptocurrencies. They often fail to even understand the basic concepts.

So lets walk through the whole story. What are cryptocurrencies?

Where did cryptocurrency originate?

Why should you learn about cryptocurrency?

And what do you need to know about cryptocurrency?

Few people know, but cryptocurrencies emerged as a side product of another invention. Satoshi Nakamoto, the unknown inventor of Bitcoin, the first and still most important cryptocurrency, never intended to invent a currency.

In his announcement of Bitcoin in late 2008, Satoshi said he developed A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.

His goal was to invent something; many people failed to create before digital cash.

The single most important part of Satoshis invention was that he found a way to build a decentralized digital cash system. In the nineties, there have been many attempts to create digital money, but they all failed.

After seeing all the centralized attempts fail, Satoshi tried to build a digital cash system without a central entity. Like a Peer-to-Peer network for file sharing.

This decision became the birth of cryptocurrency. They are the missing piece Satoshi found to realize digital cash. The reason why is a bit technical and complex, but if you get it, youll know more about cryptocurrencies than most people do. So, lets try to make it as easy as possible:

To realize digital cash you need a payment network with accounts, balances, and transaction. Thats easy to understand. One major problem every payment network has to solve is to prevent the so-called double spending: to prevent that one entity spends the same amount twice. Usually, this is done by a central server who keeps record about the balances.

In a decentralized network, you dont have this server. So you need every single entity of the network to do this job. Every peer in the network needs to have a list with all transactions to check if future transactions are valid or an attempt to double spend.

But how can these entities keep a consensus about this records?

If the peers of the network disagree about only one single, minor balance, everything is broken. They need an absolute consensus. Usually, you take, again, a central authority to declare the correct state of balances. But how can you achieve consensus without a central authority?

Nobody did know until Satoshi emerged out of nowhere. In fact, nobody believed it was even possible.

Satoshi proved it was. His major innovation was to achieve consensus without a central authority. Cryptocurrencies are a part of this solution the part that made the solution thrilling, fascinating and helped it to roll over the world.

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If you take away all the noise around cryptocurrencies and reduce it to a simple definition, you find it to be just limited entries in a database no one can change without fulfilling specific conditions. This may seem ordinary, but, believe it or not: this is exactly how you can define a currency.

Take the money on your bank account: What is it more than entries in a database that can only be changed under specific conditions? You can even take physical coins and notes: What are they else than limited entries in a public physical database that can only be changed if you match the condition than you physically own the coins and notes? Money is all about a verified entry in some kind of database of accounts, balances, and transactions.

How miners create coins and confirm transactions

Lets have a look at the mechanism ruling the databases of cryptocurrencies. A cryptocurrency like Bitcoin consists of a network of peers. Every peer has a record of the complete history of all transactions and thus of the balance of every account.

A transaction is a file that says, Bob gives X Bitcoin to Alice and is signed by Bobs private key. Its basic public key cryptography, nothing special at all. After signed, a transaction is broadcasted in the network, sent from one peer to every other peer. This is basic p2p-technology. Nothing special at all, again.

The transaction is known almost immediately by the whole network. But only after a specific amount of time it gets confirmed.

Confirmation is a critical concept in cryptocurrencies. You could say that cryptocurrencies are all about confirmation.

As long as a transaction is unconfirmed, it is pending and can be forged. When a transaction is confirmed, it is set in stone. It is no longer forgeable, it cant be reversed, it is part of an immutable record of historical transactions: of the so-called blockchain.

Only miners can confirm transactions. This is their job in a cryptocurrency-network. They take transactions, stamp them as legit and spread them in the network. After a transaction is confirmed by a miner, every node has to add it to its database. It has become part of the blockchain.

For this job, the miners get rewarded with a token of the cryptocurrency, for example with Bitcoins. Since the miners activity is the single most important part of cryptocurrency-system we should stay for a moment and take a deeper look on it.

Principally everybody can be a miner. Since a decentralized network has no authority to delegate this task, a cryptocurrency needs some kind of mechanism to prevent one ruling party from abusing it. Imagine someone creates thousands of peers and spreads forged transactions. The system would break immediately.

So, Satoshi set the rule that the miners need to invest some work of their computers to qualify for this task. In fact, they have to find a hash a product of a cryptographic function that connects the new block with its predecessor. This is called the Proof-of-Work. In Bitcoin, it is based on the SHA 256 Hash algorithm.

You dont need to understand details about SHA 256. Its only important you know that it can be the basis of a cryptologic puzzle the miners compete to solve. After finding a solution, a miner can build a block and add it to the blockchain. As an incentive, he has the right to add a so-called coinbase transaction that gives him a specific number of Bitcoins. This is the only way to create valid Bitcoins.

Bitcoins can only be created ifminers solve a cryptographic puzzle. Since the difficulty of this puzzle increases with the amount of computer power the whole miners invest, there is only a specific amount of cryptocurrency token than can be created in a given amount of time. This is part of the consensus no peer in the network can break.

If you really think about it, Bitcoin, as a decentralized network of peers which keep a consensus about accounts and balances, is more a currency than the numbers you see in your bank account. What are these numbers more than entries in a database a database which can be changed by people you dont see and by rules you dont know?

It is that narrative of human development under which we now have other fights to fight, and I would say in the realm of Bitcoin it is mainly the separation of money and state.

Erik Voorhees,cryptocurrency entrepreneur

Basically, cryptocurrencies are entries about token in decentralized consensus-databases. They are called CRYPTOcurrencies because the consensus-keeping process is secured by strong cryptography. Cryptocurrencies are built on cryptography. They are not secured by people or by trust, but by math. It is more probable that an asteroid falls on your house than that a bitcoin address is compromised.

Describing the properties of cryptocurrencies we need to separate between transactional and monetary properties. While most cryptocurrencies share a common set of properties, they are not carved in stone.

1.) Irreversible: After confirmation, a transaction cant be reversed. By nobody. And nobody means nobody. Not you, not your bank, not the president of the United States, not Satoshi, not your miner. Nobody. If you send money, you send it. Period. No one can help you, if you sent your funds to a scammer or if a hacker stole them from your computer. There is no safety net.

2.) Pseudonymous: Neither transactions nor accounts are connected to real world identities. You receive Bitcoins on so-called addresses, which are randomly seeming chains of around 30 characters. While it is usually possible to analyze the transaction flow, it is not necessarily possible to connect the real world identity of users with those addresses.

3.) Fast and global: Transaction are propagated nearly instantly in the network and are confirmed in a couple of minutes. Since they happen in a global network of computers they are completely indifferent of your physical location. It doesnt matter if I send Bitcoin to my neighbour or to someone on the other side of the world.

4.) Secure: Cryptocurrency funds are locked in a public key cryptography system. Only the owner of the private key can send cryptocurrency. Strong cryptography and the magic of big numbers makes it impossible to break this scheme. A Bitcoin address is more secure than Fort Knox.

5.) Permissionless: You dont have to ask anybody to use cryptocurrency. Its just a software that everybody can download for free. After you installed it, you can receive and send Bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies. No one can prevent you. There is no gatekeeper.

1.) Controlled supply: Most cryptocurrencies limit the supply of the tokens. In Bitcoin, the supply decreases in time and will reach its final number somewhere in around 2140. All cryptocurrencies control the supply of the token by a schedule written in the code. This means the monetary supply of a cryptocurrency in every given moment in the future can roughly be calculated today. There is no surprise.

2.) No debt but bearer: The Fiat-money on your bank account is created by debt, and the numbers, you see on your ledger represent nothing but debts. Its a system of IOU. Cryptocurrencies dont represent debts. They just represent themselves. They are money as hard as coins of gold.

To understand the revolutionary impact of cryptocurrencies you need to consider both properties. Bitcoin as a permissionless, irreversible and pseudonymous means of payment is an attack on the control of banks and governments over the monetary transactions of their citizens. You cant hinder someone to use Bitcoin, you cant prohibit someone to accept a payment, you cant undo a transaction.

As money with a limited, controlled supply that is not changeable by a government, a bank or any other central institution, cryptocurrencies attack the scope of the monetary policy. They take away the control central banks take on inflation or deflation by manipulating the monetary supply.

While its still fairly new and unstable relative to the gold standard, cryptocurrency is definitely gaining traction and will most certainly have more normalized uses in the next few years. Right now, in particular, its increasing in popularity with the post-election market uncertainty. The key will be in making it easy for large-scale adoption (as with anything involving crypto) including developing safeguards and protections for buyers / investors. I expect that within two years, well be in a place where people can shove their money under the virtual mattress through cryptocurrency, and theyll know that wherever they go, that money will be there. Sarah Granger, Author, and Speaker.

Mostly due to its revolutionary properties cryptocurrencies have become a success their inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, didnt dare to dream ofit. While every other attempt to create a digital cash system didnt attract a critical mass of users, Bitcoin had something that provoked enthusiasm and fascination. Sometimes it feels more like religion than technology.

Cryptocurrencies are digital gold. Sound money that is secure from political influence. Money that promises to preserve and increase its value over time. Cryptocurrencies are also a fast and comfortable means of payment with a worldwide scope, and they are private and anonymous enough to serve as a means of payment for black markets and any other outlawed economic activity.

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What is Cryptocurrency: Everything you Need to Know

Cryptocurrency

The attackers behind WanaCrypt0r/WannaCry were not the only cybercriminals putting DoublePulsar and EternalBlue to use this weekend, as Proofpoint spotted the stolen NSA tools being used with the cryptocurrency miner Adylkuzz.

The Adylkuzz attack may not only have been larger than WannaCry, but could have been one of the mitigating factors that helped shut down that ransomware attack, wrote a Proofpoint security researcher who goes by the alias Kafeine. The mining campaign was after the cryptocurrency Monero.

Initial statistics suggest that this attack may be larger in scale than WannaCry, affecting hundreds of thousands of PCs and servers worldwide: because this attack shuts down SMB networking to prevent further infections with other malware (including the WannaCry worm) via that same vulnerability, it may have in fact limited the spread of last week's WannaCry infection, he said.

The Adylkuzz campaign began sometime between April 24 and May 2. Because it started before WanaCryptor hit on May 12, Kafeine thinks some companies mistakenly believed they were being victimized by the ransomware when in fact it was Adylkuzz.

Some of the clues that a system is under attack by this malware include loss of access to shared Windows resources and slower PC and server performance. Like WannaCry, Adylkuzz takes advantage of Windows vulnerability MS17-010 on TCP port 445, Kafeine reported. The attack itself originates from several private servers that are scanning on port 445 for victims.

Once EternalBlue finds a target computer it installs the DoublePulsar backdoor which then injects Adylkuzz.

Proofpoint came across this attack when it was searching for WannaCry by setting up a computer vulnerable to EternalBlue.

While we expected to see WannaCry, the lab machine was actually infected with an unexpected and less noisy guest: the cryptocurrency miner Adylkuzz. We repeated the operation several times with the same result: within 20 minutes of exposing a vulnerable machine to the open web, it was enrolled in an Adylkuzz mining botnet, he wrote.

Proofpoint was able to find several web addresses that received Monero deposits starting on April 24. About $43,000 in Monero was tracked being deposited.

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Cryptocurrency miner Adylkuzz attack could be bigger than WannaCry - SC Magazine

Forbes

For First Time, Bitcoin Accounts for Less Than Half Of Market Cap Of ... Forbes In this turning point, the first cryptocurrency finally succumbs to seven different trends that could prevent bitcoin from ever rebounding to its former dominance. Ripple's XRP Token Sets New All-Time Price HighCoinDesk Bitcoin Dominance Drops Below 50% as Ripple's XRP Market Cap ...Finance Magnates Altcoin watchCoinTelegraph CryptoCoinsNews -The Merkle -CryptoNinjas all 15 news articles »

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For First Time, Bitcoin Accounts for Less Than Half Of Market Cap Of ... - Forbes

It is clear by now to even the most hardened skeptic that cryptocurrency, the class of assets of which bitcoin is the paradigm, is much more than a passing fad. Yes, the field may once have been too closely associated with survivalists, cranks, and bit players in the story of the founding of Facebook, but as of April 2017, by which time the combined market value of all such currencies was $27 billion, writing off the whole field looked very much like a form of blindness.

It isnt merely that $27 billion is an impressive big number (though it is). It is that along the way to this size, the industry has generated new ways of doing business and thinking about doing business which are in turn proving themselves. Cryptocurrency isnt a fad: its an ecosystem.

Accordingly, a little more than nine years after the publication of the landmark paper by Satoshi Nakamoto, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance has issued its first global cryptocurrency benchmarking study. It offers the public an empirical picture of the current state of this still maturing industry.

The graph below illustrates the dramatic growth of the industry in little more than one year, from February 2016 through March 2017.

Bitcoin retains its dominance, though there are significant challengers included in the yellow space at the bottom of that graph. The most important of these challengers is Ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, as the Centres report says.

Ninety-eight percent of the participating exchanges, wallets, and payment companies surveyed supported bitcoin. Ether came in a distant second place by that metric, at 33%. Litecoin (LTC) came in third, at 26%.

Some key points in the report concern the exchanges sector of the industry. This sector has the highest number of operating entities in the broader industry and the highest employment numbers. It also shows significant geographical dispersion.

As to that dispersion, the authors of this study collected data from 51 exchanges in 27 countries. They observe that the countries include all world regions. Europe has the largest sheer number of exchanges followed by the Asia-Pacific area: but North America, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa all have exchanges.

Large and Small Exchanges

The likelihood that a cryptocurrency exchange will hold a formal government license is inversely related to its size. The smaller are licensed entities, the larger tend not to be. In geographical terms, the Asia-Pacific region has upheld its reputation for laissez-faire. Eighty-five percent of cryptocurrency exchanges in that region have no license. On the other hand, a full 78% of exchanges in North America have a formal government license or authorization.

The study also looked into the distribution of the (traditional) currencies supported by the cryptocurrency exchanges. The graph above illustrates the result of that inquiry. The U.S. dollar is dominant, and the other figure is high because many small exchanges service local markets and make cryptocurrencies more available in many countries, they naturally specialize in their local currencies.

There have been scandals and failures among the centralized exchanges, and a priori one might have expected those events to generate an exodus to peer-to-peer exchanges. Yet there has been no such exodus. Only 2 of the 51 exchanges surveyed might be described as P2P.

One of the problems with running a small cryptocurrency exchange is that it can be difficult to obtain or maintain banking relationships. Larger exchanges have this risk factor under control, the report says.

Wallets and Miners

The humbly named wallets for such currencies are also a critical part of the ecosystem, and a focus of the report.

It observes that they have evolved from simple software programs to sophisticated applications that offer a variety of technical features and additional services that go beyond the simple storage of cryptocurrency.

More than four fifths of wallet providers (81%) are based either in North America or in Europe, which seems high since on 61% of wallet users are in one of those two areas.

Finally, in their concluding observation, the authors of the report say that they expect that as block awards decrease the cryptocurrency miners will have to use innovative economic incentives in order to continue providing hashing power to secure the system, powering a new security-driven direction in its evolution.

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The Cryptocurrency Ecosystem: A New Benchmark Study - AllAboutAlpha.com (blog)

It is not surprising to see Boost VC takes this course of action.

Cryptocurrency ICOs have always attracted a lot of speculators and investors. Tim Draper shocked the world by announcing he will partake in such an ICO soon. It now appears Boost VC will be following his example from this moment forward. The company announced they will directly invest in ICOs in the future. This change will help the company to keep tabs on innovative cryptocurrency projects.

It is somewhat surprising to learn Boost VC is taking this route. The company is known for investing in cryptocurrency startups through traditional funding. Going after initial Coin Offerings appears to be a rather risky decision. A lot of these projects may not be successful in the long run, putting investors money at stake. Then again, even entities such as Boost VC have to take risks now and then.

It is true ICOs are being used frequently to fund startup development these days. Although many people assumed these offerings would be a threat to institutional investors, that has not been the case. In fact, it appears these investors have been quite happy about the way things are going. There are only so many startups to invest in through traditional means. Initial Coin Offerings often raise millions of dollars in quick succession. More importantly, they do so in a decentralized manner.

Boost VC wants to keep tabs on talent developers to build the next protocols of the Internet. A lot of those developers may be linked to cryptocurrency ICOs right now. Any company building low-level protocols to create a decentralized internet are of great interest to Boost VC right now. Moreover, Boost VC is a fan of projects looking to build less volatile cryptocurrencies. Unfortunately, volatility is still a big part of cryptocurrency right now.

As one would expect, the company will make a small financial contribution to ICOs. Projects can receive between US$25,000 and US$100,000, depending on what they are building exactly. Moreover, this funds will be used as a way to create an eventual token sale in the future. This does mean project developers will have to produce working code once they attract the companys attention. This is quite an intriguing development, to say the least.

It is not surprising to see Boost VC takes this course of action. Notorious Bitcoin investor Tim Draper recently unveiled he will partake in an upcoming ICO. It is evident institutionalized investors are trying to be part of the next big thing. That also means they will need to take slightly bigger risks. Investing in an ICO is a great way to diversify, but it also increases the chances of yielding a negative return on investment.

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Boost VC Will Follow Tim Draper's Lead And Directly Invest In ... - newsBTC

Couple of years ago, when I first heard about Bitcoin, I rejected the idea entirely, believed that there is no way for that to survive. When you read about inventors through the history, they faced resistance. Same rejection faced the newcomer once it was declared in 2008 by the anonymous writer Satochi nakamoto. However, today, Bitcoin imposed itself as the best trade in the markets as it has reached 18,000,000% in 8 just years.

Cryptocurrencies sounds complicated, especially if we want to know more about the security of this system and the legal aspects. In this article wefocus on Bitcoin as the leading first coin of its type followed by tens of other cytpocurrencies. We will discover all about cryptocurrencies, its history, the legal situation, usages; moreover, how to analyze and trade cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency is a digital currency asset, executed only electronically and not physically. It is not issued or subsided to any governmental body; instead, it is decentralized currency using block chains cryptography to circulate peep to peer without the supervision of central banks, in a short time with low cost. That is thedefinition for the Cryptocurrency.

First let me demonstratethe genesis of cryptocurrency. On November 2nd, 2008, just one month after the collapse of financialmarkets, a paper titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System was published under anonymous blogger Satochi Nakamoto. The general idea of the 9 pages piece explained cryptocurrency as a system that can execute all financial transitions online without going through the banking system by inventing a cryptic system, prohibits the doubling of the same transaction.

It is obvious that the banking system holds a lot of complications, despite modern technology. The reasons are infinity: tax system, terrorism, money laundering, high cost of money transfer, long and complicated phase before money delivery and insolvency of third world countries leading them to restrict money transfer in many cases. In other words, Satoshi Nakamoto tried to find a solution for the dinosaur banking system.

Cryptocureny as Bitcoin using what is called Block Chains in case the coin holder decides to transfer it to another.Block Chains are a ledger of cryptocurrency deals arranged in data batches called blocks. That occurs through cryptographic algorithmic equations called chains. In other words these chains are like serial numbers for every transaction, which enables miners to monitor the process.

The cryptocurrency trading process include four parties; the issuer (as Bitcoin), the currency buyer (transferor), the new buyer (transferee) and between the transferor and the transferee there is the Miner. The word Miner came from the verb mine like gold mining or coal mining.Miners do not representany central bank or governmental authority, they are private parties getting paid from the transferor upon the agreement of the issuer in order to ensure the credibility and validity of the transaction.

Today, thousands of transactions are taking place per second for transferring cryptocurrencies and soon it will be millions and billions a second. Unlike FOREX brokers, investment banks and central banks that have back office to follow clients transactions , The cryptocurrency issuer cant monitor every single transaction; as a result, they have agreements with private technological companies, the miners, which are responsible to monitorthese peer to peer transactions.

During the usual bank money transfer, transaction details revealed to banks only to thetransferring parties, the cryptocurrencys code (chain) is revealed to any Miner wishes to revise it. As central banks have the monitory over every money transfer transaction, Miners also fulfill the role of central banks in monitoring the transactions made by cryptocurrencys holder. The question is; since it is decentralized process and everyone can watch any process, which miner has the priority to revise the money transfer transaction so that it can benefit from the reward? The answer is THE FASTEST miner who can hunt the flying transaction FIRST.

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency issued in 2009. It is owned by a company called Saint Bitts located in Saint Kites Island. According to Bitcoin issuer, the Bitcoin will issue no more than total of 21 million unit of it.

However, some banks are reluctant; some other central banks are resilient enough to accept dealing with the facts on the table. The Bank of Japan was the first bank to take the initiative and accept Bitcoin as a yet legalized mean of payment, with some concerns regarding the security of the block chain system. The surprise here is that the Peoples Bank of China allows Bitocin wallet brokers to work onshore and trading Bitcoin for Yuan and to placeBitcoins ATM machines in public places, but with some restrictions on transferring money outside the mainland. Other countries like Switzerland, Netherlands, France, Portugal, Argentina, Thailand, and even some African countries start to accept cryptocurrency. Nevertheless, most banks are discussing Bitcoin matters seriously; no country set the appropriate legal framework for it.

You might have heard a lot of stories about people that made fortune after boughtBitcoins and forgot aboutit, like the man who bought a pizza in Italy for 9 Bitcoins and now the shop owner that sold him the pizza became so rich for, or the guy thatbought Bitcoins for$27 and the value rose to$800 000. Believe it! It started with $0.01 and now its worth $1800. But how can we trade Bitcoin?

Now, if you want to trade FX or stocks it is very simple. You only have to make one click from the computer mouse; however, the cryptocurrencies trading system is still not complete. The reason FX and stocks are dynamics is becouse they canperformed instantly by theclearance authority. Clearance authority will let you do transactions instantly, and clear the ledgers between buyers and sellers by the end of the year. Bitcoin dynamic is still not resilient yet, it will incur you some effort. Firstly, in order to buy you have to open a wallet account with one of the granted mediators, second you can now buy or sell the cryptocurrency from other peer dealing with the same mediator; nevertheless, it is not done by one mouse click. You have to offer your coins for selling if you want to sell, or search for seller if you want to buy. After that you have to contact the other peer to conduct the deal. In addition, you can transfer coins directly through a mobile app peer to peer to a shop or someone holdsthe same app on his mobile and will exchange it for dollars or any other agreed merchandise. Recently, two FX brokers started to put some cryptocurrencies on their trading platforms. This feature gives you the choice to speculate on the cryptocurencies with the marginal system without own it.

Here is the most important part. As we are looking for true qualitative and quantitative methods to analysethis asset, it is important to classify cryptocurrency under one of four major classes of financial markets which are (stocks, fixed income, currencies, and commodities). Definitely no one needs time to discover that it does not belong to the fixed income class; moreover, it is not listed on the stock exchange (as currency not company). Yet it is called currency or coin, we cannot consider it blindly as FX asset. Why? Simply because when we analyze the usual FOREX currencies, we need some fundamental data as the countrys GDP, CPI or the latest central bank minutes.

Apparently cryptocurrencies lackthose things. In order to find out the answer we should see how people are using it. For instance, at the beginning, majority of users were gamblers, specially whenthe price was under 1 USdollar. By that time, stores owners liked that idea and started to adoptthese currencies as mean of payment. Eventually it became widely used by speculators and merchandise traders in addition to safe haven seekers thatturned to assets like Bitcoin as an absolute store of value just like gold.

From that point we can compare cyrptourrencies to other classical safe havens assets like Gold or USD. By Comparing Bitcoin chart to Gold chart you can find out that Bitcoin had pulled the rug from Gold as a safe haven.

From 2009, the starting date of Bitcoin to mid 2011, gold was bullish andBitcoin had no big momentum by that time, but then in phase 2, from the end of 2012 to 2016 goldwas bearish whileBitcoin surged constantly. Despite the fact that the first two phases havenegative correlation between gold and Bitcoin, the third phase started to make both assets moving in the same direction slightly, or at least gold was choppy while the Bitcoin climbed.

Comparing BTC/USD to the dollar index, from 2009 to 2014 as the Bitcoin was stagnate, and no major movement over it, the DXY actedthe same. Starting from 2015 the Dollar and Bitcoin have positive correlation.

I should mention that some cryptocurrencies companies have been listed on NYSE as GrayScal, which was listed in 2015 at$49 a share and today trades at$190. We can realize easily that the listed companies charts are correlated to the currency price, same as the correlation between the OSX index and oil price. With market capitalization of $28B for Bitcoin, this new industry looks prominent as much as the renewable energy industry or it may even lead the financial sector in the future .

An important question may arise, how could Bitcoin price be sometimes volatile, despite it is basically a store of value and banks do not clear short transactions? The answer is found in this article earlier, I have said that there are current brokers offering a marginal trading to the BTC upon CFDs. The Contracts For Differences (CFDs) are contracts that offeryou to tradethe asset without owning it. That kind of contracts can explainthat some banks do not acceptclearing process of Bitcoin short trades.

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Rising Cryptocurrency VS Falling FOREX - FX Empire

Cryptocurrency exchange platform suspends deposits, withdrawals, and orders as users continue to wait for an update regarding the situation. Read more...

In the past few days, the internet is in chaos, thanks to the WannaCry ransomware wave. While those with obsolete and out-of-date operating systems found their computers infected, and files encrypted, a section of Bitcoin community has been facing an entirely different yet serious issue since May 4, 2017. For some, their favorite cryptocurrency exchange Celery froze its operations without offering any explanation.

It has been over a week now, and the cryptocurrency platforms page continues to read the same message,

All withdrawals, deposits, and orders are currently halted. For further updates, please visit our company updates.

Anyone looking for a reason behind the sudden suspension of activities by visiting the company updates section is none the wiser, for they come across a different version of the same message which goes on to say,

All withdrawals, deposits, and orders are currently suspended. Please refer to this page for all further updates.

These messages have gotten people worried, for this is not the first time the community has come across such words. On multiple occasions, the message was a sign of something worse to come. However, users hope that the things are different this time and everything will go back to same as before, soon.

Celerys social media accounts arent of much help either as the company doesnt seem to be that active on Twitter. It is about time Celery updated the community about whats happening, along with an estimated timeline for resumption of services.

There might be many reasons behind the recent developments, starting with something as simple as liquidity issues to serious things like problems with the regulatory authorities or even hacking incidents. However, with no official word from the platform, it is not wise to jump to conclusions but patiently wait for answers.

Meanwhile, it will be great if the Celery team decides to spare a few minutes and share an update or show at least some signs of activity so that the affected community members can breathe easy.

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Celery Cryptocurrency Platform Suspends Operations, Updates Awaited - newsBTC