Monday, February 25, 2019

Constantinople's coming 📆

February 25, 2019

Ethereum's Constantinople and St. Petersburg Upgrades are Set to Activate This Week

After a vulnerability caused the project to delay in January, Ethereum's Constantinople and St. Petersburg upgrades are set to activate later this week at block 7,280,000.

An official blog post from Ethereum.org confirmed the event and outlined everything one should know before the changes.

The changes

Here's how Ethereum will be affected:

Ethereum's so-called "difficulty bomb" will be delayed
Mining rewards will drop from 3 ETH to 2 ETH
It will be possible to interact with addresses that have yet to be created
Certain actions will become faster and cheaper to do

The changes were originally going to be implemented under one name, Constantinople, but previous issues have caused another subsequent upgrade, St. Petersburg, to fix the problems before moving forward.

How to prep

Unless you are a miner or node operator, you do not need to do anything to prep for the upgrade.

Exchange wallets, hardware wallets, web wallets, and mobile wallets should all automatically upgrade any Ethereum holdings.

However, if extra work is needed, take caution as network upgrades are a common time for scammers to take advantage of non-technical investors.

EXCHANGE

Bitfinex Receives Stolen Bitcoin from the U.S. Government Almost 3 Years Later

In August 2016, a total of 119,756 Bitcoin were stolen from the Bitfinex crypto exchange in the world's largest hack since the infamous Mt. Gox collapse.

Now, almost 3 years later, officials at the exchange have received 27.66 Bitcoin from the U.S. government that was recovered from the hack.

The amount is worth just over $100,000 at the time of writing and accounts for 0.023% of the total attack.

Right to the victims

The returned money will be converted to U.S. dollars and promptly paid out to the holders of its Recovery Right Token (RRT) - an asset that has aided the exchange's recovery strategy.

Chief financial officer Giancarlo Devasini commented on the process:

"Over two years following the hack of the Bitfinex platform, today we see the results of a clear and robust response strategy and the efforts of the U.S. government. It gives us great pleasure to be able to reimburse our traders that were loyal to us and believed in us at a very difficult time."

EXCHANGE

South Korean Exchange Coinbin Calls for Bankruptcy Citing Embezzlement

South Korean exchange Coinbin, the company that acquired Youbit in 2017, has filed for bankruptcy with a loss of more than $26 million.

The company cited three reasons for its failure:

Increased debt
Strict government regulation
Executive embezzlement

According to Business Korea, however, higher debt levels were the direct result of misappropriated funds by one of Youbit's executives.

Lost keys and missing funds

The claims started after the executive allegedly "lost" private keys to over one hundred Bitcoin wallets and one Ethereum wallet last November.

The relationship between Coinbin and Youbit has since turned sour as the former seeks "civil and criminal complaints" against the executive.

BITS

But wait, there's more...

🌱 Accenture has announced a prototype blockchain-based application that lets users tip sustainable producers.
🚨 Cryptopia won't resume trading until balances are secure according to a new Discord message.
🍴 Tron will hard fork in February to implement "institutional-ready" features.

MEME