Monthly Archives: August 2017

The Attack on Global Privacy Leaves Few Places To Turn – WIRED

Posted: August 4, 2017 at 12:53 pm

Digital privacy has had a very bad summer. As China and Russia move to block virtual private network services, well over a billion people face losing their best chance at circumventing censorship laws. First, China asked telecom companies to start blocking user access to VPNs that didn't pass government muster by next February. More recently, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a law to ban VPNs and other anonymous browsing tools that undermine government censorship.

As citizens of these countries and people around the world scramble to understand the repercussions, US-based companies that operate in the countries have been swept up in the controversy. Apple complied with a Chinese government order to remove VPNs from its Chinese iOS AppStore, and the company that runs Amazon's cloud services in China this week said it would no longer support VPN use. Even hotels around China that offered VPN services to foreign visitors are largely curtailing the practice.

China and Russia's recent actions aren't new movements toward censorship, but they are escalations. And they leave citizens with few viable options for accessing the open internet.

While the suppressive efforts share the same end goal, they do take different forms. China has laid the foundation for its "Great Firewall" for more than two decades, attempting to control citizens' internet access on a very large scale. Creating and upgrading such a system over time takes massive resources. While Putin has praised the approach, Russia doesn't have a comparable apparatus. Instead, since about 2012, the Kremlin has gradually built up a web of legislation that shapes and controls the Russian internet through legal force more than technical control.

"These crackdowns and ratcheting up of internet censorship in China tend to ebb and flow, and so it is possible that eventually we may see VPNs sort of silently reappear," says Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "In Russia what theyre doing is theyre passing more and more draconian laws that are extremely difficult to implement. The reason for this is it makes sure that at any given time everyone is breaking the lawanyone that the government wants to target and wants to lean on for information is in violation of the law."

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Both approaches have made Russia and China insular markets, challenging for international companies to operate in. Apple, which has been accused of hypocrisy for pushing back against government surveillance in the US while complying with VPN takedown requirements in China, worked for years to enter the Chinese market. "We would obviously rather not remove the apps, but like we do in other countries we follow the law wherever we do business," company CEO Tim Cook said in an earnings call on Tuesday. "We strongly believe participating in markets and bringing benefits to customers is in the best interest of the folks there and in other countries as well."

The VPN crackdowns in China and Russia came as no surprise to those who follow digital rights closely. "We expected it at some point, it wasn't like we didnt know where it came from," says Robert Knapp, the CEO of the Romanian VPN provider CyberGhost, which had its app removed from the iOS AppStore in China. "We had seen the Chinese government putting more and more pressure on VPN providers in a technical senseblocking our IPs, blocking the server infrastructure we were using, detecting traffic from certain sources."

After years of investing in technical control, China now seems focused on experimenting with regulatory enforcement as well. In the Xinjiang region of western China, reports indicate that the government is requiring citizens to install spyware on their smartphonesostensibly for anti-terrorism initiativesand is doing random stops to check whether local residents have complied. They have also arrested citizens over conversations in private chatrooms, indicating that the local government may be actively taking advantage of the spyware. "We are extremely alarmed. This is about as far as a nation-state has gone to submit its people to monitoring," Jeremy Malcolm, a senior global policy analyst at EFF, said of the situation in Xinjiang.

For its part, the Russian government has moved swiftly since 2012 to regulate both infrastructure and content such that is has extensive control of the internet at this point. After the Russian government took broad control of television and media in the early 2000s, the internet was the only place left for free communication. "Now the government is trying to close in on that," says Rachel Denber, the deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division at Human Rights Watch. "Its the logical progression of things. Once you go down the road of trying to expand state control over online communication, [banning VPNs] would be the next post to hit."

The Russian government may also be reacting to the current geopolitical situation, in which the country has been called out for hacking numerous Western countries , particularly leading up to democratic elections. "The authorities may also be looking ahead to the 2018 [Russian] presidential election, and they might want to take preemptive steps to ensure that no opposition mobilization takes place online," Denber notes.

For now there are still some ways around the Chinese and Russian governments' internet barriers, if you're willing to accept the risk. iPhones can only download apps from the App Store (unless a unit is jailbroken, which is not impossible but technically difficult, and introduces a host of security vulnerabilities). Android phones, though, can still sideload VPN apps from third-party app stores, since users aren't required to get apps from the Play Store. Google doesn't even operate its Play Store in China. For now, it's also easier to download desktop VPNs than mobile ones.

Other anonymizing tools besides VPNs remain a viable option as well, like the Tor Browser . That may carry more risk in Russia, though, given the recent arrest of someone who ran an Tor exit nodea gateway between the service and the internetthe country recently [lost a Tor exit node] for participating in protests. Using Tor Browser in China, meanwhile, requires extensive technical skill, to get around the Great Firewall.

It's also possible to install VPNs on devices while in other countries, and then use them in Russia or China. And end-to-end encrypted messaging services like Signal are a totally separate way of communicating and potentially receiving uncensored information without dealing with VPNs at all.

Experts report that both China and Russia may enact anti-VPN enforcement through checkpoints and arrests to intimidate citizens. "We are still used in Russia, we still count downloads, our Russian community is actually still growing," CyberGhost's Knapp says. "But instead of simply blocking VPN traffic, the Russian government is pulling another string now. They forbid it and they are going to enforce itmaybe brutally enforce it."

There could be unforeseen side effects as well. At the same time that eliminating these tools helps governments expand surveillance and control access to information, banning them also has the potential to degrade countries' overall security posture. Institutions that don't have access to VPNs could be at increased risk of being infiltrated or breached by foreign attackers. And if repressive governments set their sights on encryption next, they could undermine the integrity of basic economic drivers like secure digital transactions.

The dangers of banning VPNs are clear and pressing from a human rights standpoint. But countries that pursue it regardless may find they lose more than they intended.

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The Attack on Global Privacy Leaves Few Places To Turn - WIRED

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Bitcoin Slide Looks Limited Even After Cryptocurrency Splits …

Posted: at 12:53 pm

Bitcoin might be dividing into two separate blockchains, but its downward slide has so far been contained, signaling confidence the biggest cryptocurrency will come out of the split unscathed.

The debate over how to scale bitcoin came to a head Tuesday as some cryptocurrency miners started using software called Bitcoin Cash and splitting a new blockchain off the old one.Blockchain is the technology used for verifying and recording digital currency transactions.

Bitcoins price should reflect the split by discounting the new coin, according to Charles Hayter, who runs the cryptocurrency data platform CryptoCompare. He likened it to a stock trading ex dividend -- when the buyer isnt entitled to collect a dividend on the shares.

After four days of gains, bitcoin was down $157,or 5.4 percent, to $2,729 at 11:05 a.m. in New York. Earlier in the day, the cryptocurrency fell as much as 8.4 percent,its biggest decline since July 25. Bitcoin cash futures rose 19 percent to $331, according to CoinMarketCap.com.

The price of bitcoin has risen ahead of the split on the expectation that youll get that extra cash from bitcoin cash, so it should drop after the split, Hayter said. This has happened before in other blockchains. Its a trading event where theres number of hoops you have to jump though and people are trying to make a profit.

Bitcoin Cash started gaining traction in the past week, just as miners fended off another split by rallying behind the scaling mechanism known as SegWit2X. Bitcoin Cash wants to increase the block size -- the files in which transactions are recorded -- while SegWit2X would transfer some of the operating power outside of the main blockchain. In other words, Bitcoin Cash would be one lane with bigger cars, while SegWit2X would be two lanes with smaller cars.

The great majority of miners and developers support bitcoin, while ViaBTC, which has almost 6 percent of bitcoin processing power, is the mining pool backing bitcoin cash.

Read More: Bitcoin Moves a Step Closer to Acceptance

Theres a role for both of these coins, said Cathie Wood, the New York-based chief investment officer at ARK Investment Management, which oversees the first exchange-traded fund with indirect exposure to bitcoin. One is much more natural for store of value and the other one for a means of exchange.

Some are less bullish. Ryan Taylor, chief executive officer of Dash Core, the sixth-biggest cryptocurrency, sees little chance that bitcoin cash will succeed in the long term.

First, Bitcoin Cash has not solved scaling. It has merely kicked the can down the road with slightly larger blocks, but still lacks a credible technology to scale to massively larger numbers of users,he said in an email. Second, bitcoin will retain the network of integrated services that make the bitcoin network useful to businesses and consumers.

Bitcoin holders are set to receive the same amount of bitcoin cash as they have in bitcoin if the exchanges and wallets they use support the new coin. Exchanges including Kraken and ViaBTC have said theyll support both, while others like Coinbase and Poloniex have said they wont, citing uncertainty that bitcoin cash will have lasting market value.

Kraken said that its working on crediting accounts with bitcoin cash, and that its sites login function is down due to heavy traffic. While some miners are already using the Bitcoin Cash program, the real differentiation of the two blockchains will emerge when they mine more than 1 megabyte in one block, Hayter said. Bitcoins block limit is 1MB while Bitcoin Cashs is 8MB.

Video: Prospects of Bitcoin Splitting Into Two

Im not as concerned about this except for the administrative nightmare that some people are going to have to go through or have gone through already pulling out of the various exchanges that werent going to support it, ARK Investments Wood said.

Bruce Fenton,founder of Atlantic Financial Inc. and a board member at the Bitcoin Foundation, said both currencies should trade heavily Tuesday.

There are some very large holders who own bitcoin, who dont like bitcoin and do like bitcoin cash, he said. But you also have a lot of people who cant stand bitcoin cash, and as soon as they have the ability to get those coins theyre going to sell them on the market.

It could be a crazy day, he said.

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What You Should Know About Cryptocurrency – Lifehacker Australia

Posted: at 12:53 pm

Cryptocurrencies are having a moment. Youve probably heard a thing or two about Bitcoin and Ethereum. Namely, their prices seem to be skyrocketing (or plummeting, depending on the day). Theres more to the story, and as the investing cliche goes: dont buy what you dont know. So lets find out more.

Cryptography has to do with coding to keep data secure, and cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual asset that uses cryptography as a security measure. For that reason, its hard to counterfeit. Bitcoin is one of the first cryptocurrencies to hit the scene. It was launched in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym that could be a person or a group (it was open source and peer to peer). The thing is, theres no central agency (like the government) that issues or regulates these cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin, the decentralized digital currency dominated by white men, seemed on the verge of

Which is why its been such an attractive option for shady business activities, like money laundering. You can buy and sell it just like any other investment, from company stock to Beanie Babies. But while companies have IPOs, or initial public offerings, cryptocurrencies have ICOs, initial coin offerings, and any entity can launch it as an investment. The Atlantic illustrates the problem with not having a central authority regulating these currencies:

Last month, the technology developer Gnosis sold $12.5 million worth of GNO, its in-house digital currency, in 12 minutes. The April 24 sale, intended to fund development of an advanced prediction market, got admiring coverage from Forbes and The Wall Street Journal. On the same day, in an exurb of Mumbai, a company called OneCoin was in the midst of a sales pitch for its own digital currency when financial enforcement officers raided the meeting, jailing 18 OneCoin representatives and ultimately seizing more than $2 million in investor funds. Multiple national authorities have now described OneCoin, which pitched itself as the next Bitcoin, as a Ponzi scheme; by the time of the Mumbai bust, it had already moved at least $350 million in allegedly scammed funds

As they put it, ICOs are catnip for scammers because there are no checks and balances the way there are with IPOs. So if youre going to invest in a coin, which is an iffy enough move as it is, you certainly want to make sure its not just any random cryptocurrency that could just be a scam.

So what about tokens like Bitcoin or Ethereum, which are popular, widely covered options? (And that are actually used as currency.) Are they smart investments?

Some people say investing is like playing the lottery. Thats not entirely accurate, though. Long-term, broad investing, the kind of investing weve advocated here and the kind that will help you build a nest egg over time, is very different from speculative, active trading, which is a lot more like gambling. Cryptocurrency, a volatile, unpredictable investment, falls into that category.

Many people dont invest because it seems overly complicated. But if you want to build wealth,

With active trading, youre taking a guess at how a specific investment (or investments) will trade on a short-term basis. The goal isnt to simply keep up with the stock market like it is with long-term investing; the goal is to make a bunch of money and get rich quickly. And you know, some Bitcoin and Ethereum investors did get rich quickly! Seems like a good deal, right? But the thing is, the price of these cryptocurrencies often swings from one extreme to another. (In one day in June, the price of Ethereum plummeted from $319 to $0.10!)

Plus, any time the value of something skyrockets too quickly, a bubble often follows, and thats exactly what Forbes contributor Clem Chambers predicts:

Crytocurrencies, of which bitcoin is the leader, will fall back in value and more than the fat drop bitcoin has already had.

Despite its reputation for getting constantly hacked, cryptocurrency like Bitcoin remains a hot

Not to mention, theres also the old investing adage, buy low and sell high. If you bought Ethereum right now, youre buying high. If you still need reasons to avoid it, though, the Motley Fool makes a good case for keeping digital currency out of your portfolio: your investment options are limited, there arent any safety protocols, and most of us dont really completely understand how they work. Most people have no clue how Bitcoin or Ethereum work, or understand how theyre challenging monetary theory. Thats a dangerous formula for volatility and potential money loss, writer Sean Williams says.

The bottom line: get rich quick schemes rarely work out well. Sure, people occasionally win the lottery, but for most of us, investing shouldnt feel like playing the lottery. It should be a long game, allowing you to gradually build wealth over time with much less risk.

That said, if youre going to invest in cryptocurrencies anyway (maybe you dont want to replace your entire retirement portfolio, you just want a small taste), heres how to go about it.

Website Coinbase seems to be the most popular option for buying Ethereum, Bitcoin, or Litecoin. Its also the easiest, according to Inc.coms Brian Evans. You have to verify your account and then you can add different payment methods for buying your tokens (bank accounts, wire transfers, credit or debit cards). Evans explains:

Other options for exchanges that will take U.S. dollars for coins are Kraken, and Gemini in the U.S. Typically you will need to verify your account with a drivers license and add other details to expand your buy limits. Since cryptocurrencies are hard currencies, the exchanges dont want to risk getting ripped off, since you cant reverse a cryptocurrency transaction once its done.

These websites will also let you sell your coins when youre ready. If you have extra cash to invest on hand, it might be an interesting experiment. Ive dabbled in day trading myself, just to understand it better, and while I earned a decent return in a short amount of time, I also lost a lot of money after that. Over time, it all evened itself out. Some short-term investors have much better luck; others have much worse luck. The point is, you dont want to put most of your money to work this way.

You might get lucky with these new, shiny investments, but in reality, wealth building is pretty boring: buy some broad, diverse funds and hold onto them over the years. Its not quite as sexy as cryptocurrency, but its probably a safer bet for your hard-earned cash.

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What You Should Know About Cryptocurrency - Lifehacker Australia

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InvestFeed Unveils New Cryptocurrency-Based Social Investment Platform – CoinJournal (blog)

Posted: at 12:53 pm

investFeed, a social investment network for digital currency traders and enthusiasts, has released the first version of its new platform; a combination of Facebook, cryptocurrency and the Bloomberg Terminal, according to CEO Ronald Chernesky.

The New York-based startup, which launched in 2014, said the social network aims to integrate cryptocurrencies into the traditional financial world and create an access point that is open, transparent, and rewards-based for all our users and content contributors.

The release of the new platform comes nearly a month after the company pivoted from US equities to digital currencies amid strong demand from its 15,000+ user base.

Chernesky said that the companys strong belief in the future of cryptocurrencies prompted our decision to pivot from equities to decentralized digital assets.

We feel that investFeeds future should fully embrace the greatest technological breakthrough since the Internet. We decided to refocus our offering in order to take advantage of the vast opportunities in crypto, including the exponentially-growing number of people globally interested in trading, finding accurate ticker prices, and seeking out peer ideas.

Andrew Freedman, CTO of investFeed, added that the switch from equities to cryptocurrencies will attract a millennial user base that has shown disinterest in traditional investments. Millennials are more excited by this new technology because they feel empowered by the ability to participate in markets without traditional third party interference, he said.

The new investFeed platform combines social network features, such as private messaging and comment posting, information sharing, and digital asset trading analytics and insights.

Through a data partnership with Bravenewcoin.com, the platform also showcases a list of 235 high-performing cryptocurrencies and their associated price tickers, channels, pairings and weighted averages in USD.

The company said it will soon add more features, including buy and sell functionalities, instant notifications on user-assigned price alerts, as well as alerts on moves made by peers and high performing traders.

One of our goals was to give mainstream users a simple, aesthetically pleasing UX and remove the technical barriers and complicated language associated with blockchain and cryptocurrency, said Chernesky.

Just like we linked every top online stock trading brokerage to our original platform, we will begin to form relationships with digital asset exchanges so that users can link their accounts on investFeed and make informed decisions, using the most accurate market data possible.

The end-goal is to become the one-stop shop for everything cryptocurrency, and unite a growing community in one of the most nascent industries of our generation.

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Bitcoin Cash: Currency Soars to $700, Lawsuit Looms | Fortune.com

Posted: at 12:52 pm

A new version of bitcoin hit the market on Tuesday and, on its second day of trading, it has already tripled in price and its market cap is now third biggest of all digital currencies.

Known as Bitcoin Cash, the new currency arrived via a so-called " fork " in which a faction of people who run the software that controls bitcoin started a breakaway version.

The price of Bitcoin Cash hovered between $200 and $300 for most of Tuesday and then suddenly shot up. As this screenshot from CoinMarketCap shows (look to the right of the graph), Bitcoin Cash has also appreciated in relation to bitcoinone unit of the new currency is now worth about 30% of the original one:

Meanwhile, the price of the original bitcoin has, contrary to the fears of many bitcoin owners prior to the split, maintained its value. On Wednesday, bitcoin was trading around $2,700, which is not far from its all-time high of $3000.

As for Bitcoin Cash, it can be seen as a new asset class that achieved a valuation of $12 billion literally overnight (Update: as of mid-afternoon, the price had fallen to closer to $450 for a market cap closer to $8 billion.)

It's unclear if Bitcoin Cash will be able maintain its value since, like other digital currencies, its real world use is limited and its value derives primarily from what investors assign to it.

And part of Bitcoin Cash's surge in value may be tied to a liquidity issue arising from a decision by some exchanges to refuse to distribute the new currency to their customers.

The creation of the fork in bitcoin's blockchainthe software ledger that permanently records all transactionsby a minority of bitcoin operators followed a period of bitter infighting in the bitcoin community.

The details are esoteric (they center on the size and processing speed of the "blocks" on the blockchain), but the upshot is there are now two bitcoin blockchains, each with its own currency.

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Upon the creation of the new chain, the breakaway faction chose to award Bitcoin Cash on a one-for-one ratio to every owner of bitcoin. So if a person owns five bitcoins, they are entitled to five units of Bitcoin Cash.

This scheme has been complicated, however, by the decision of the world's biggest bitcoin exchange, Coinbase, not to support Bitcoin Cash. For practical purposes, this means the millions of people who maintain a wallet on Coinbase did not receive the new "Cash" and, as of now, there is no way for them to do so.

Coinbase has clearly stated the company is not taking customers' Bitcoin Cash for themselves, but its decision to withhold the new currency has led one prominent legal scholar to suggest the company will be sued.

And, indeed, that now looks likely to transpire. An activist group, which claims Coinbase's decision is akin to a brokerage withholding new shares from its investors, warns it will commence a class action suit after August 15 if the company doesn't release the Bitcoin Cash.

Meanwhile, an attorney named Priyanka Ghosh-Murthy told Fortune she intends to file a complaintinvoking negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, and unjust enrichmentin Florida by the end of the week.

Coinbase, which set out its decision on Bitcoin Cash in a July 27 blog post, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Update : On Thursday afternoon, Coinbase reversed course and said it would support Bitcoin Cashbut only starting in January, 2018.

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‘Bitcoin cash’ prices fall by 57 percent, while some investors must wait until 2018 to receive their tokens – CNBC

Posted: at 12:52 pm

Two of the world's largest digital currency exchanges have changed their minds and decided to support the new asset "bitcoin cash", but customers will have to wait until January 2018 to gain access to their tokens.

"We've examined all of the relevant issues and have decided to work on adding support for bitcoin cash for Coinbase customers," David Farmer, director of communications at Coinbase, posted online on Thursday. An almost identically worded press release was posted by GDAX.

"We are planning to have support for bitcoin cash by January 1, 2018, assuming no additional risks emerge during that time."

Coinbase, which claims to have 9 million users, and its subsidiary the Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX) initially told customers they could not safely support the new crypto currency created on Tuesday on their exchanges, citing concerns about the asset's stability and security.

However, the exchanges decided to change their stance due to customer demand and trading volumes, among other reasons.

Charles Hayter, chief executive and founder of digital currency comparison website CryptoCompare, says there is also an economic reason for the shift in stance.

"Some exchanges are realising that they are missing out on trading fees and also seeing an exodus of clients to platforms that do support bitcoin cash," he told CNBC via email.

Some Coinbase and GDAX customers are unhappy with the exchanges' decision and took to Twitter to express their frustration. Others decided to withdraw their funds from the exchanges due to their initial stance.

"Bitcoin cash" was created on Tuesday after the underlying bitcoin technology known as the blockchain underwent a "fork", meaning it split to create a new digital currency. This happened because the community disagreed on how to increase the blockchain's capacity and reduce transaction delays.

Every bitcoin investor was entitled to the same number of "bitcoin cash" tokens, but not every exchange or bitcoin payment company is accepting the new coin, or allowing it to be traded.

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'Bitcoin cash' prices fall by 57 percent, while some investors must wait until 2018 to receive their tokens - CNBC

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Coinbase says it will support Bitcoin Cash after all but it isn’t committed to trading yet – TechCrunch

Posted: at 12:52 pm

Coinbase, one of the worlds largest (if not the) largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has reversed its stance on Bitcoin Cash and said it will introduce support for the fork next year.

Coinbase was among numerous exchanges to opt out of trading Bitcoin Cash after it came into existence on August 1 on the grounds that it wasnt proven or safe. Beyond refusing to facilitate trading, Coinbase also said it wouldnt allow customers storing original Bitcoin on its platform to claim their Bitcoin Cash entitlement. Those who wanted it were told to remove their coins and go elsewhere to do that.

But now the company which was started by former Airbnb engineer Brian Armstrong (pictured above) and is reportedly raising funding at a $1 billion valuation has changed its stance slightly. It told customers via email that it will introduce support for Bitcoin Cash by January 1.

Once supported, customers will be able to withdraw Bitcoin Cash. Well make a determination at a later date about adding trading support, Coinbase said.

In other words, lets see what happens before we commit to trading

Thats almost certainly a response to anger from Coinbase customers, who threatened to move their coins elsewhere and, in some cases, take legal action over their Bitcoin Cash entitlement. (Tl;dr people like free stuff, especially people who are into crypto.)It is unclear exactly what impact this had on the Coinbase business, but signs arent great.One analytics firm estimated that its cold storage reserves dropped to half of their previous level following customer withdraws.

Yet, despite that, a number of Coinbase investors told Business Insider that they arent overly concerned about the pushback, while the overall future of Bitcoin Cash itself is unclear. Principally thats because the fork has the same mining difficulty as Bitcoin, but asmaller fraction of its hashrate.

Right now, Bitcoin Cash became the third largest cryptocurrency based on total coins in the market on day one, but its $7 billion market cap trails Bitcoin ($44 billion) and Ethereum ($21 billion) by some way. Its situation mayhave changed by January, too, while also Coinbase has tended to take a conservative approach to bringing new currencies on.

Right now it offers trading for Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin the latter of which was only added this past May despite gaining significant attention in 2013. Indeed, Litecoins founderhad been director of engineering at Coinbase for nearly four years before leaving this summer that gives some insight into how stringent its policy is.

Note: Article corrected to note that Litecoin founder Charlie Lee is no longer with Coinbase.

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Bitcoin Has Split Into Two Cryptocurrencies. What, Exactly, Does That Mean? – Slate Magazine (blog)

Posted: at 12:52 pm

This picture taken on April 7, 2017, shows a man walking past a signboard informing customers that bitcoin can be used for payment at a store in Tokyo.

AFP/Getty Images

If you owned bitcoin prior to Aug. 1 and slept in a little that morning, you would have woken up to find your stash had doubledsort of.

Before Aug. 1, there was a single bitcoin currency simply called bitcoin, or BTC. Like most cryptocurrencies, bitcoin avoided having a central bank that verified transactions by maintaining a constantly verified ledger of transactions that was distributed across thousands of computers. This ledger is called the blockchain, and up until Aug. 1, there was only one of it. That day, at 8 a.m. Eastern, an alternative coin called Bitcoin Cash, or BCC, was born when the bitcoin blockchain split in two. Bitcoin Core, as the original currency is now called, and Bitcoin Cash have identical ledgers until Aug. 1. Now each currency maintains a separate ledger, and since cryptocurrencies are represented by their blockchains, that means bitcoin has effectively split in half, giving each user a bank account filled with both currencies.

The question of why bitcoin split is a deeply political one, as much about the philosophy of what bitcoin should be as it is about practical concerns of payment speed and per payment surcharges. As David Z. Morris described in Future Tense in June, the dispute centers on the maximum size allowed for any block in the blockchain. This is a technical point, but you can think of it as arguing over how many transactions are allowed on one page of the ledger. The original limit, imposed by pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto either as doctrine or temporary fillerdepending on whether you support BTC or BCCwas 1 MB of data. This low limit is leading to delays in the amount of time it takes a transaction to be verified, which is itself leading to higher surcharges for premium verification. (For a primer on how this all works, click here.)

If transaction time were the only issue, though, there wouldnt be a three-year-long flame war and a battling subreddits, one for each coin. There are two other issues. One is that the BTH folks think that allowing larger blocks hinders small players from mining bitcoins, centralizing power in the hands of large mining entities. Bitcoin was created as an alternative to centralized currencies, however, so greater centralization is a serious accusation. Point for BTC.

BTC has proposed a size increase of its own, one that comes with an even greater philosophical change. Segregated Witness, also known as SegWit2x, aims to fit more transactions on one page of the blockchain ledger by doubling the size of the page (that is, doubling the blocksize limit), and by reserving all space on the page for transactions. Right now, each page (each block) contains transaction details (Alice gave Bob 2 BTC), and signatures (I, Alice, agree to give Bob these 2 BTC). Instead of making the page much longer, SegWit2x wants to create more space on the page by erasing the signatures and reserving that space for transactions. Many believe this proposal changes the fundamentals of bitcoin more than BCC does, and in terms of structure of the chain, they are right. Thats why some supporters of BCC oppose the name alternative coin, they view what theyre doing as closer to Satoshis vision than BTC. Point for BCC.

However, the Highlander there can be only one approach is a false choice. To understand why, we need to look at the recent history of another cryptocurrency, Ethereum. Back in June 2016, $50 million were siphoned away from the Ethereum blockchain by some clever thieves. However, the thieves werent quite as clever as they thought. Because of the way they drained the money, they had to wait 28 days before they could withdraw it and, presumably, retire to some tropical locale. In that time, Ethereum made a hard choice, one that Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum, called the single most important moment in cryptocurrency history since the birth of Bitcoin. Rather than let the thieves make away with the money, a large portion of Ethereum users forked the blockchain so that the transactions that stole the ETH never happened.

A lot of people were upset by this. It violated the spirit of the blockchain. The purists split off and started their own cryptocurrency called Ethereum Classic (ETC). A year later, both currencies are still used (though ETH is worth far more than ETC) and are fairly stable. In fact, their combined value is greater than the original value.

The same thing seems to be happening with bitcoin. According to Quartz, BCC is already the third most valuable cryptocurrency, behind BTC and ETH. And, just like the Ethereum split, the BTC-BCC market is worth more than the original market was. However, while there can be more than one currency, thats not to say there will be. It took six hours for the first BCC block to be mined, a process which usually takes about 10 minutes on BTC. That block was 1.9 MB, larger that BTC would allow, but the next block on BCC was only .04 MB, stoking fear that not enough miners had adopted BCC. Whether the achievement of BCCs debut as a new cryptocurrency is a Pyrrhic victory for the founders or a resounding success will hinge on the answer to that question.

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Bitcoin Mobile SIM Card Top-Ups Now Available in 136 Countries – Bitcoin News (press release)

Posted: at 12:52 pm

Bitcoin remittance service Sobit has been launched to enable users to charge their prepaid mobile SIM cards using bitcoin. The service supports over 600 operators in 136 countries.

Also read:Rollout of 260,000+ Bitcoin-Accepting Stores in Japan Begins

Sobit was jointly developed by Japans leading reward site operator Ceres Inc and the Tokyo-based bitcoin and blockchain venture company Janom LLC.

Ceres has already partnered with other prominent bitcoin companies including Bitflyer, Bitbank, Coincheck, and Breadwallet on other cryptocurrency projects. Janom launched a bitcoin remittance service called Cointip in November 2016 and the company also partnered with Keepkey LLC to obtain exclusive distribution right of Keepkey products in Japan.Ceres Inc recently announced the launch of Sobit:

With Sobit, you can charge your prepaid SIM card using just bitcoin. You dont need any accounts, credit cards etc. Just a wallet with available bitcoin. Sobit supports prepaid SIM cards from over 600 operators in almost 140 countries.

Users first enter their phone numbers to use Sobit, even though the system should correctly detect the operator of each phone number most of the time, the company conveyed. Once the right operator is selected, the user can check the rates, choose the desired top-up amount, type in their email address and send bitcoin through the QR code provided or via their bitcoin wallets. The company states:

We will charge your phone as soon as your bitcoin transaction gets one confirmation, which may take up to 10 minutes (it depends mostly on your bitcoin wallet and fee settings).

Users will also get an email confirmation with their order details. While you should get your top-up immediately, for some countries or operators, there may be significant delays, even up to 24 hours, Sobit cautioned.

Currently, only payments equivalent to $100 maximum per day will be accepted due to technical reasons, the company added.

On Sobits website, 136 countries are listed. In the U.S., supported operators include Verizon, T-mobile, AT&T, H2O, and Net10. In the UK, they include Orange, T-mobile, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone. In China, they are China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom.

Would you use Sobit? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock,Sobit,Ceres

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Bitcoin Mobile SIM Card Top-Ups Now Available in 136 Countries - Bitcoin News (press release)

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Astronauts Film ‘Star Wars’-like Docking of Spaceship With Space Station – Inverse

Posted: at 12:51 pm

Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) captured the crewed Soyuz spacecraft firing thrusters and spewing cryogenic snow into space as it docked with the ISS last week, a scene befitting of a Star Wars space maneuver.

NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik tweeted out a video of the July 28 event, which can be watched below. Bresnik praises the piloting of Russian Soyuz Commander Sergey Ryazanskiy, who carefully unites the pointed nose of the Soyuz spacecraft with the ISSs docking port.

Docking two spaceships is essentially an orbital ballet culminating in a collision, wrote Bresnik.

These docking maneuvers have become commonplace, but a screen full of blasting thrusters and chunks of cryogenic snow is a vivid reminder of how extreme the space procedure truly is. This docking occurred while both spacecraft were racing around Earth at 17,150 miles per hour.

Until SpaceX and Boeing complete their respective crew modules which are both slated to launch in 2018 the only way any human can travel into space is aboard the Soyuz spacecraft and accompanying rocket.

NASA currently pays Russia some $70 to $80 million per seat on the Soyuz. This might be costly, but it comes with an impeccable record of safety and success. Russian engineers designed and first launched the Soyuz in the mid-1960s. After two fatal incidents soon after its inception, the craft has performed safely for nearly 50 years, both launching astronauts into space and bringing them home.

When the SpaceX Dragon and Boeing Starliner come online next year, NASA estimates that the price per seat will be a bit cheaper than a trip upon a trusty Soyuz rocket, at $58 million.

For now, there is a Soyuz spacecraft attached to the ISS at all times to serve as a lifeboat. If the ISS experiences an emergency say the station gets pummeled by an unforeseen asteroid chunk or wayward satellite astronauts can flee from the station via the Soyuz.

Such a dramatic evacuation would likely be as Star Wars-like as the docking, complete with blasting thrusters and a violent descent to Earth.

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Astronauts Film 'Star Wars'-like Docking of Spaceship With Space Station - Inverse

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