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200,000 MINERS: Crypto miner manufacturer Bitmain plans to deploy 200,000 units of its own equipment to mine bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies this summer, taking advantage of cheap hydroelectric power sources in the coming months. The equipment is conservatively estimated to worth as much as $80 million, but it may be more profitable for Bitmain to mine cryptocurrencies itself than try to sell its products. New AntMiner S11 and S15 machines are expected to be used, which are marked as "sold out" on Bitmain's website. Taken more broadly, the move may signal a market shift, as miners prepare to begin investing in the space again. More than 600,000 bitcoin miners were estimated to have shut down operations last year. Full Story
CONFLICT OF INTEREST: Stewart McKelvey, the law firm representing troubled Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, withdrew from doing so due to a "potential" conflict of interest, it announced last week. While the firm said it was unaware of what this conflict was, a letter by Miller Thomson, one of two law firms appointed as representative counsel for Quadriga creditors, said the conflict is that Stewart McKelvey also represents Jennifer Robertson, the widow of Quadriga founder Gerald Cotten, and the executor of his estate. According to the Miller Thomson letter, representative counsel flagged this conflict twice, with Stewart McKelvey "eventually" acknowledging that a conflict existed and withdrawing shortly thereafter. Full Story
GOX GAP: Mt Gox creditors may soon start receiving their long-missing funds. Nobuaki Kobayashi, the rehabilitation trustee for the long-defunct exchange, announced Wednesday that he had made final decisions on whether or not to approve creditor claims, and informed the Tokyo District Court. Creditors will be notified if they are approved in the coming days, with a draft plan for distribution of funds expected by April 26. However, there’s a shortfall between what funds are still held by Mt Gox and the billions approved for creditor claims. It is not yet clear how this matter will be addressed. Full Story
LIGHTNING LOOP: Lightning Labs, the company behind the layer-2 protocol aimed at facilitating fast, yet small bitcoin transactions, has released a new feature aimed at scaling the technology. Called “Lightning Loop,” users can now receive larger amounts of bitcoin without having to close and reopen payment channels, reducing the number of fees they must pay. The feature works by transferring funds out of a payment channel and into a bitcoin wallet or exchange. Full Story
JACK’S CRYPTO: Square, the payments startup founded by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey, will hire three or four new engineers and a designer dedicated to improving the crypto ecosystem, Dorsey announced Wednesday. What’s more, these new employees will report directly to Dorsey, and have the option of being paid in bitcoin. And unlike other employees, these hires will not be tasked with Square’s own commercial interests, but rather, they will focus “on what’s best for the crypto community.” Full Story |
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| HISTORY REPEATING? Bitcoin could soon rise above $4,040, validating a recent bullish candle on the three-day chart. While that would open the doors for a rally to $4,200, any break above the long-term falling channel resistance at $4,070 could be short-lived while the 21-week moving average is still trending south. That said, the cryptocurrency could see a sustainable channel breakout later this year, as the charts are echoing a pattern seen prior to the bull market in October 2015. Full Story |
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BEST OF THE BEST
SELF DEFENSE: Researchers at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, say they have developed a blockchain network that can defend itself against 51 percent attacks , a ZDNet piece says. Called RepuCoin, the system rates miners’ hashing power by their "reputation," making rewriting data extremely difficult for bad actors. "When RepuCoin has operated for a year, attacking the system with 68 percent of its total mining power would take at least six months and would be at least 5,760 times as expensive as conducting the same attack on bitcoin," according to Monash Uni’s Dr Jiangshan Yu.
THE REST
FAKE WASABI: Anonymizing bitcoin wallet Wasabi has been targeted in what is likely an attempt to steal users’ crypto. A not-very-well-copied site features a download page offering versions of the wallet for macOS, Windows and Linux. The Windows option is the only one to automatically download a suspicious .msi file, reports The Next Web, though when examined with security software, no malware was identified.
MURKY CLOUD: Cloud computing systems have security gaps that hackers are keen to exploit, says a report from AT&T Cybersecurity, and cryptocurrency mining is one of the most popular methods of leveraging any weaknesses found . The firm, previously AlienVault, said it had recently investigated attacks involving mining malware that had reportedly infected Kubernetes’ server on Amazon Web Services to mine monero and possibly access customer data. AT&T Cybersecurity has also seen attacks targeting the control panels of web hosting solutions, giving attackers administrative control of web services to allow placement of mining code. |
WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER  |
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