📌 Ethereum Classic 51% Attack, Blockchain's Occam Problem, and KodakCoin's Last Laugh

MUST READS  Ethereum Classic Hackers Steal Over $1.1M With 51% Attacks There are widespread reports that Ethereum Classic (ETC) is under an ongoing 51% attack. On Monday night, Coinbase detected at least $1.1 million worth of double-spends: payments effectively written out of history, amounting to theft from their recipients. Need a primer on 51% attacks and what they mean (or don't mean) for you? Here's Haseeb Qureshi's hot take.   Code Meets Money: The Match That Made Bitcoin Digital wallet provider, Abra, has teamed up with Unbankd to produce Code Meets Money, a cryptocurrency explainer created in the style of a graphic novel for Bitcoin's 10th Birthday. Take a break and check it out here.   🔐 Proof of Keys Explained: Bitcoin's First Planned 'Bank Run' Do your bitcoins really exist? The answer might seem like an obvious "yes," but the brewing of last week's "Proof of Keys" movement, argued that the answer isn't so clear... You see, a person's control of their tokens depends on where and how their bitcoin is stored. Folks leave their bitcoins on exchanges, but millions (er, billions) of dollars have been stolen from exchanges by way of hacks over the years. Not to mention, it means users don't really have full control over their money — a fact many might not realize. Here's a quick breakdown of the interesting movement determined to give you more control and security over your bitcoins.    SPONSORED  Former Teacher Now an Expert Trader – Learn How He Did It As a schoolteacher, Jason Bond was $250,000 in debt, working side jobs grinding 90+ hours a week but still stuck with no hope… Until he put his passion and hunger for success into the stock market, where he learned THREE simple patterns that would forever change his life. Jason gained 188% in 2015, 30% in 2016, 284% in 2018 and is on pace to do it again in 2019. You owe it to yourself to take a minute and watch exactly how Jason did it. He's trained thousands of people to do exactly what he did. Learn how RIGHT HERE.  DEEP DIVE  🎙️ [PODCAST] The Bearish Case for Ethereum The bull run of 2017 was kind to Ethereum... ICO mania led to the issuance of countless tokens... and the price rose from $9 to nearly $1,500 in January of '18. But there are dark shadows over Ethereum: scammers have exploited the platform, unregistered securities have been issued, and the promise of a new wave of decentralised applications has not materialised. In this interview, Peter McCormack talks to Tuur Demeester about his recent Tweetstorm breaking down why he is so against Ethereum. Tune in as they discuss the culture of the developer community, reckless approaches to security, risks for investors and the challenges Ethereum faces with scaling and moving to proof of stake. (To provide a little more background, here's a recent story tackling Ethereum's quest for transparency and governance)   Blockchain's Occam Problem Consultancy firm McKinsey & Company is attempting to throw some cold water on Blockchain mania. Companies, regulators, and financial technologists have spent countless hours exploring Blockchain's potential, but despite billions of dollars of investment, and nearly as many headlines, McKinsey believes it has yet to become the game-changer some expected. Ultimately... time will tell.   The Real Bitcoin FUD Hey Bitcoin critics, instead of rehashing debunked arguments over and over again, read this article to adopt some of the more intricate (yet overlooked) FUD.   A New Blockchain Project is Generating 20% of Daily Bitcoin Transactions Recently, Bitcoin developers noticed some strange activity on the blockchain. Specifically, a large number of unidentified transactions were discovered accounting for over 20% of daily Bitcoin transactions, making it more expensive to make money transfers due to the limited availability of block space. Over the weekend, it become more widely known that the entity behind these transactions is VeriBlock, a project that piggybacks on the Bitcoin blockchain in an effort to better secure alternative crypto asset networks.    SPONSORED  Claim Your FREE Masterclass on Cryptocurrencies Today An eccentric millionaire from New York has just released a video that will shock seniors around the country. You see, if you're like the average American senior…you can expect to collect $1,369 in Social Security benefits. But this millionaire has found an ingenious new way for anyone… To turn a small amount equivalent to a tiny percentage of their benefits (7% to be precise)... into a retirement fortune. WARNING: This isn't for everyone. It's only for those who are brave enough to try something new. If that's you, click here to see it.  REGULATORY FRONT  The Revolution Needs... Rules? The Winklevoss twins certainly stirred up some emotions on Crypto Twitter this week with their latest Gemini NYC ad campaign (exhibit A & exhibit B). Here's a recent stream from the one and only Nathaniel Whittemore making sense of it all...   📝 Colorado Senators File Bill to Exempt Cryptos from Securities Laws On Friday, senators Stephen Fenberg (Democrat) and Jack Tate (Republican) jointly filed a bill dubbed the "Colorado Digital Token Act," proposing that digital tokens with a "primarily consumptive" purpose should be exempted from securities laws provided they are not marketed for "speculative or investment" purposes.    TWEET OF THE WEEK  Other Articles You May Enjoy KodakCoin, one of the biggest punchlines of the ICO mania, may have the last laugh   Dark overlord hacking group delivers on threat to release sensitive 9/11 documents; gets banned from Steemit   This startup is challenging Google Maps — and it needs you   250 crypto companies to watch in 2019   [UPDATE] Fortnite & Crypto   The 100 most influential people in crypto   CEO of Coinbase Brian Armstrong speaks out, and has a few words to say   Binance revives token launch platform with new projects every month in 2019   Market outlook fundamentals vs. price   A french graffiti artist has hidden $1000 of BTC in his latest project 🎨   Russia to buy billions of BTC next month, Russian economist says The CoinSnacks weekly digest is a manually curated newsletter that delivers fresh content covering cryptoassets and the evolving blockchain community for investors around the world. The digest is curated by CoinSnacks employees and sent once a week. CoinSnacks | 5500 Military Trail Suite 22-250 | Jupiter, Florida | 33458 Unsubscribe | View in Browser

Code Meets Money: The Match that Made Bitcoin 👀

01/09/19

Read in Browser

In celebration of Bitcoin's 10th birthday...

After months of brainstorming, planning and designing, we are so excited to launch something special from a fruitful collaboration between Unbankd and Abra. We both believe education is an extremely important piece to the crypto puzzle. So, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the launch of Bitcoin's network, we created an illustrated book that breaks Bitcoin down in three lucid parts:

🕵 The Beginning: Get to know the foundation that was laid up until the launch of Bitcoin!

🎢 The Rise: Ride through the ups and downs of the past decade on the Bitcoin rollercoaster.

🔮 The Future: Envision a global economy with true economic freedom made possible by Bitcoin.

We hope you love reading this as much as we loved making it! After you're done enjoying it, send it to those relatives that were asking you about Bitcoin over the holidays. Or maybe those friends who don't quite get why you talk about crypto all the time. Who knows, maybe this will end up as a book on your coffee table one day.

CHECK IT OUT 🚀

---

SUBSCRIBE	FEEDBACK	ADVERTISE

303 5th Ave SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414

The above is not intended to be investment advice.

Copyright © 2018 Unbankd, All rights reserved.

If you don't absolutely love us, drop us.

Mitigation Approach Regarding ETC Reorgs/51% Attacks

Hi, As you may be aware ETC recently had a series of reorgs and we wanted to provide some advice on mitigating the impact of such attacks. Please note that this email primarily applies to anyone who received ETC in the past few days, plans to in the future, runs an exchange, or operates a mining pool. If this does not apply to you then you can safely ignore this message. Firstly, please note that this is not a situation unique to ETC and is how all PoW networks work, and the general strategy below helps to provide protection against double spends on all PoW networks. We are suggesting that you increase confirmations for any transactions to a minimum between 2,500 to 5,000 blocks. As you may know, each block on a PoW-based chain requires a certain amount of work or cost to mine, in the case of the reorgs on ETC it is relatively cheap to do the ~100 block double spends that we have seen. If we compare ETC's network to Bitcoin we find that roughly every 2,500 blocks is equivalent to 1 Bitcoin block in rough terms of cost to mine. We therefore suggest 2,500 to 5,000 blocks to achieve the same guarantees as 1 to 2 Bitcoin blocks. If you are doing particularly large transactions we suggest you wait a number of blocks roughly equivalent to the value you're transferring. For example, 1 block on the ETC network costs slightly less than ~4 ETC to mine, so if you were to perform a transaction of 40,000 ETC it would be recommended that you wait at least 10,000 blocks before considering the transaction as confirmed. Thank you for taking the time to read this email, please note that this is only mitigation advice and you should perform your own research and follow all of your own best practices. Please feel free to reach out if you're an exchange or mining pool that needs further info. ETC Cooperative | 636 Avenue of the Americas, New York This email was sent to contacto1745.send-mail@blogger.com | Unsubscribe | Forward this email to a friend

ConsenSys challenges

To view this email as a web page, go here.

Sponsored by   January 9, 2019 CONSENSYS CONTROL: Ethereum development studio ConsenSys announced it was revamping its operations last year, following a prolonged crypto bear market. "ConsenSys 2.0" is aimed at seeking efficiencies where possible, and includes a new focus on tapping external investors and spinning out its different ventures – but this may prove difficult.  Former employees and prospective investors say convincing outsiders to fund ConsenSys-backed projects would be challenging due to the way these projects are structured. In particular, ConsenSys generally holds at least half, if not more, of the equity in each of its spokes. "You’re effectively investing in Joe Lubin’s company and it’s unclear what his relationship, and what ConsenSys’ relationship, is to that company," one anonymous investor told CoinDesk. "You want to invest in a company where the owners and founders are building it, because they are the most motivated." Full Story TORRENT TOKEN: Tron is bringing a crypto-powered business model to the file-sharing platform it bought last summer, BitTorrent. While many seemed to jump to the conclusion that Tron would make BitTorrent a paid service, in fact it’s giving users an option to spend the new BitTorrent Token (BTT) to improve their user experience. A white paper addresses this directly: "Participation in  BTT transactions is required to be both fully disclosed and optional for end users." It also promises a broad universe of possibilities, saying “By introducing a mechanism for value storage and exchange we aim to greatly broaden the universe of possible participants – either service requesters, service providers or both." Tron and the BitTorrent Foundation envision three core business lines - content delivery, file storage and privacy-protecting proxy services – that could potentially be decentralized through BitTorrent if a value instrument were to be built in.  Full Story​ EASY LIGHTNING: Now bitcoin users can send someone a lightning payment without the hassle of setting up channels. Revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, Stockholm-based startup Bitrefill is launching a new service called Thor that allows people to give lightning channels to someone else with no setup on the recipient's side. Lightning was created to allow cheaper, off-chain bitcoin payments. Bitrefill’s John Carvalho told CoinDesk: “Thor allows people to connect to the lightning network whether they have bitcoin or not. All you have to do is download one of the supported wallet apps, install it, and then either you or a friend can come to Bitrefill and purchase a channel opening.” What Thor allows users to do is outsource the technical work for opening a channel, which can be paid for with bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum, dash or dogecoin. Bitrefill will then maintain active channels for 30 days. “The idea here is to be able to allow everyone to get on the lightning network and running a hot wallet,” Carvalho said. Full Story​ CoinDesk’s Crypto-Economics Explorer aggregates data points across the industry to measure the size and opportunity of crypto markets. In addition to price and market cap, CoinDesk’s explorer provides users with a comprehensive way to view the crypto-economic forces that shape an asset’s market maturity, growth, and potential. Exchange interest is also valuable to understand the trading dynamics. We observed exchange volume for each cryptocurrency on Wednesday, January 9. The top five coins by exchange volume: BTC ETH EOS LTC XRP BTC remains on top, with more than double the volume of ETH at second place. They are followed by EOS, LTC, and XRP. It’s important to note that exchanges can often reflect speculative behavior rather than organic economic value within the blockchains. For more research insights, check out the CoinDesk Crypto-Economic Explorer here. SPONSOR SECTION   The Oxford Blockchain Strategy programme is developed for business leaders, innovators, and future thinkers with an interest in blockchain. This programme gives you a fundamental understanding of blockchain, and its implications and effects on your business strategy.  Visit the programme page to learn more.   DROP INCOMING? Bitcoin has seen indecisive price action near the crucial resistance of $4,130 that could encourage renewed selling. The prospects of a continued rally would drop sharply if prices close below the previous day's low of $3,934. Full Story​ BEST OF THE BEST WIRED: The 51 percent attack on ethereum classic has placed a focus on a well-known flaw of blockchain tech: namely, that a single party can successfully divert funds if they control 51 percent of the network’s hash power, says a piece in WIRED. The article provides a brief overview of the multi-day attack, which has seen at least 12 instances of double-spend attacks, with around $1.1 million stolen in total, according to Coinbase. And while ethereum classic developers could reverse the transactions with a software upgrade, doing so “would go against the project’s raison d’etre.” Ethereum classic, after all, started back in 2016 after the DAO attack. While the ethereum mainnet forked off to restore funds stolen by the DAO hackers, the ethereum classic community opted to continue on with the original chain – lost funds and all. The DAO attack was different from the current 51 percent attack however, and the most recent attack arguably has had a more serious impact on the blockchain. THE REST SINGAPORE BUSINESS REVIEW: The Monetary Authority of Singapore has updated its guidance for crypto startups looking to launch initial coin offerings (ICOs) with a tighter focus on consumer protection, reports the Singapore Business Review.  In particular, these expanded guidelines more strictly enforce existing anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) policies, ensuring that any companies looking to issue tokens will follow know-your-customer requirements. Moreover, crypto tokens will have to follow specific requirements. While these restrictions may seem onerous, the Singapore Business Review argues that they indicate the nation's support for blockchain technology, as "Implementing balanced, sensible guidelines is part of a steady evolution of the country's regulations towards cryptocurrencies."  CNBC: Ripple is steadily building itself a niche in the world of interbank payments, says CNBC. The company recently announced it had signed up 200 customers and saw a 350 percent increase in the number of customers sending live payments over the last year.  The company's ability to send cross-border payments quickly and efficiently is seen as a plus, but banks using the existing Society of Worldwide InterBank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system are not likely to give up their dominance in the field quickly. That has not prevented XRP from being treated as a speculative asset however. The cryptocurrency saw its price balloon in the 2017 bull market before dropping heavily the next year.  Speaking to this price movement, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse told CNBC that "People got really excited about the potential of a new platform and the hype got ahead of the reality. That unequivocally has happened in this space. There's religious fervor around all of them — some people seem to think these are the crusades and this is a holy war [that] is being fought." WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER Copyright © 2018 CoinDesk. All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: 250 Park Avenue South New York, NY, 10003, US Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list