Cryptocurrency News Now!: You failed McAfee

Saturday, September 1, 2018

You failed McAfee

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don't wish it were easier; wish you were better."

- Jim Rohn

MARKET

COIN	PRICE	24H

BTC	$7,053.758406	+1.52%

ETH	$285.523523	+2.13%

XRP	$0.338041	+2.31%

BCH	$561.006501	+4.04%

EOS	$6.568501	+5.78%

*Information as of 9:30 AM EST

NEWS

You failed McAfee

McAfee Admits His Bitfi Bitcoin Wallet is not 'Unhackable'

BOLD CLAIM

Bitfi is a manufacturer of a Bitcoin hardware wallet whose executive chairman is John McAfee
The company was so confident in its product that it made the claim that the wallet is unhackable
It is risky to make such certain claims, some people see the claim as a challenge...

PROVEN HACKABLE

On Thursday, a group of security researchers was able to penetrate the Bitfi wallet proving that it is in fact hackable
The researchers use what is known as a cold boot attack to gain access to the secret phrase and 'salt' value that are used to send coins out of the wallet

RETREATING FROM THE CLAIM

After the news broke that the wallet was successfully hacked, Bitfi removed all claims of its wallet is unhackable from its marketing material
In addition, the company discontinued its $250,000 bounty program and is putting in efforts to recruit a new security manager

In response to the exploit Bitfi tweeted:

“Effective immediately, we will be removing the “unhackable” claim from our brand which has caused a significant amount of controversy. While our intention has always been to unite the community and accelerate the adoption of digital assets worldwide, we realize that some of our actions have been counterproductive to that goal.”

ADOPTION

Japanese Social Media Company LINE Launches its Own Cryptocurrency

LINK

The Japanese social media giant LINE announced on Friday the launching of its new cryptocurrency token called LINK
LINK tokens are associated with a blockchain which will be a platform for decentralized applications (think Ethereum)
The blockchain is already live, the company mined the genesis block more than a week ago and still operates all of the block producing nodes

LINE's CEO Takeshi Idezawa said in the announcement:

“Over the last seven years, LINE was able to grow into a global service because of our users, and now with LINK, we wanted to build a user-friendly reward system that gives back to our users. With LINK, we would like to continue developing as a user participation-based platform, one that rewards and shares added value through the introduction of easy-to-use dApps for people’s daily lives.”

TOKEN DISTRIBUTION

LINK will only be available for trading on LINE's own cryptocurrency exchange, BITBOX
The company will not be having an initial coin offering, rather will distribute the tokens through user rewards
Off the bat, the tokens will only be distributed to users outside of Japan, Japanese customers will continue to receive traditional rewards points

LINE & CRYPTO

LINE, a messaging app that boasts over 200 million active users, is definitely interested in exploring blockchain technology and crypto
In July, LINE launched their own cryptocurrency exchange platform called Bitbox
Earlier this month, LINE announced that it has launched a $10 million venture fund via its subsidiary unblock corp.

RESEARCH

Cryptocurrency-Related Jobs See Consistent Growth Despite Market Decline

CRYPTO JOB-TRENDS

According to CNBC, Recruitment firm Robert Walters has seen a 50% increase in the number of available blockchain or cryptocurrency roles in Asia since 2017
Interestingly, however, Bitcoin-specific jobs have actually seen a decline in interest as the rest of the blockchain job market continues to grow
To explain the decline in Bitcoin-specific job interest, Robert Walters concluded that this area of the crypto industry follows prices much closer and is highly volatile

Julian Hosp, a co-founder at crypto startup TenX, explained his experience in the cryptocurrency job market:

"[when] crypto is doing well...we get huge inbound from people [who] feel, 'I need to jump on this wave. And then when … crypto go[es] down — and we saw this at the very beginning [of 2018] and we're seeing this right now — people [think], 'Oh no, this is a dying industry, I shouldn't go in there.' So it's completely emotional."

SMOOTH SAILING FOR FINANCIAL FIRMS

In addition, Robert Walters explained that startups are much more affected by crypto market prices than the crypto divisions of established financial firms
Justin Chow, head of business development at Cumberland, commented that for capital market professionals and established financial firms, declining prices are "not a big deal"

Further, founding partner at the NEO Foundation Wayne Zhu mentioned that strict Asian regulations are causing a steady inflow of crypto job applicants for financial firms:

"People think, 'Where [can I] actually close deals, [where can I] actually help companies to get money, to get liquidity and the money they need to grow [my] business?'"

NEWS

Firefox to Push Back on Crypto Mining Malware Issue

FIGHTING MALWARE

Cryptojacking, meaning the use of an unknowing victim's computer to mine cryptocurrencies, has become a huge issue in 2018
Now, announced this week, Firefox will soon block crypto mining malware scripts in an attempt to increase performance on the popular browser
In addition, Firefox will also be preventing trackers and other "harmful practices" from degrading the user experience
For the crypto community and Firefox users in general, protection like this is a massive benefit

JOINING THE CROWD

This move by Firefox makes the browser join alongside other browser services, like Google and Opera, that have already rolled out similar features
So far, Opera has implemented miner protection on its mobile and desktop browsers but Google has only gone so far as to ban crypto mining apps from its Google Play Store
As for within the crypto space, Brave browser has made significant strides to make browsing more private and more secure while offering a token of its own called BAT

BREW BITS

Eminem's latest album will allegedly feature a Bitcoin shoutout on the ninth track.
Japan's National Police Agency (NPA) will fund development of new software to help track individuals behind illicit crypto transactions.
Ethereum core devs choose to delay "Difficulty Bomb" and will reduce block rewards from 3 ETH to 2 ETH.

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LEARN THE LINGO

DEX

noun

A decentralized exchange (DEX) is defined as a place where cryptocurrencies are traded directly person-to-person, without a company holding their money or crypto for them.

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