- Binance stops processing new Applications!
- Bank of England rejects its own Cryptocurrency!
- Ledger: Coins on Hardware Wallets safe from Hacker Attacks!
- New Coins on the Block: TRON (TRX)
- The Protection of Privacy - Part 1 (Bitcoin)
For all those who still want to jump on the crypto currency train, another door is closed because the popular Bitcoin exchange Binance stops accepting new customers for an uncertain time.
No Binance for new customers
As Binance announced yesterday, the crypto exchange will no longer process new registrations. The crypto stock exchange wrote to all possible new customers:
This puts the successful crypto exchange on the list of companies that had to temporarily suspend the admission of new customers. Even crypto exchanges such as CEX.IO, Bitfinex and Bittrex had to stop processing requests due to the flood of new registrations. Also Kraken announced to have operational difficulties by a wave of inquiries.
Who or what is Binance?
As the data from Coinmarketcap shows, Binance is the largest crypto exchange with a daily trading volume of 2.8 billion US dollars. It was not until July 2017 that the platform started buying and selling cryptocurrencies. Now it already has over 2.9 million users.
The Hong Kong based company is also popular because it can help its clients in various languages such as English, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, French and German. In addition, the crypto exchange offers in addition to the classic currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether and their own BNB cryptocurrency 96 more crypto currencies.
The team behind Binance is constantly working to improve services and this has led to increased quality and optimization of the technology. As a result, the number of new registrations increased significantly. But it also means that the relatively relaxed new customer review should have led to a large number of new applications. Whatever the main reason for the popularity of the stock market, growth at this rate is obviously no longer sustainable for the company, as long as the infrastructure of the Bitcoin exchange is not expanded.
This also explains Binance's response to my request to include STEEM and SBD.
Here is the mail I got from Binance support:
Personally, I find that a pity because I like Binance very much. I hope that in the future there will be significantly more decentralized crypto exchanges because I believe that these are the future and the right solution for the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
The Bank of England yesterday told the Financial Times Adviser that plans to issue its own cryptocurrency were finally shelved. Those responsible fear otherwise significant negative effects on the British financial system, which could destabilize them.
As recently as summer 2016, research results were published by the Central Bank of London according to which a digital currency of its own could have a positive effect on Britain's gross domestic product. The traceability of the transfers also increases the transparency of the cash cycles. The banks of the UK, on the other hand, expressed their concerns last year to lose large amounts of capital to this new market.
The announcement comes three days after the announcement that a UK central bank research unit is investigating its own cryptocurrency, which should be closely linked to the British pound. The research results are expected at the earliest in one year.
According to the spokesman for the FT Adviser had given up the plans, because it would allow citizens rather than with their checking accounts mostly on transfers by cryptocurrency. In the case of a state digital currency, consumers could also stop paying for their purchases the traditional way. Unless the banks had any funds left, there would be no more money for loans, which would have serious negative consequences. If the majority of Britons should no longer use conventional fiat money, one can no longer control the rate of the British pound by lowering interest rates or raising interest rates. There are concerns about the extent to which one can influence the course of a separate cryptocurrency at all. In addition, one feared by losing control of the British pound. This should be prevented, especially since the control of the regular currency is currently possible with simple means. In the case of interest rate increases, all new loans automatically become more expensive and the population's willingness to spend decreases.
Recently, the head of the central bank, Mark Carney, told the press that digital currencies in principle would not pose a risk to international financial stability. Although the price gains in December of the previous year were "significant", they would be very similar to the huge fluctuations in equities or other speculative commodity futures. Although the research on Bitcoin & Co. should continue to run, but no longer with the intention of eventually spend their own digital currency.
Currently there are two major security holes in the network: the attacks Meltdown and Specter. Almost all processors of the big providers should be affected. The hardware wallet provider Ledger has publicly promised its customers that they do not have to worry about the security of their stored coins.
As announced in the last few days, Meltdown and Specter have set two malevolent systems in quite a few processors worldwide. A vulnerability in a chip in the processor should allow attackers to access a lot of data.
Almost all major chip manufacturers and their products will be affected, including Intel, AMD and ARM. Affected operating systems range from Windows to MacOS to Linux and Android.
In a press release, the hardware wallet provider Ledger made clear yesterday that the equipment of Ledger not affected by the attacks described above, the coins stored there are so safe. So that the attacker can operate arbitrary code exploitation, d. H. external programs can be installed on the device against the will of the person being attacked. As long as only Ledger built-in apps are used to use the wallets, the devices can not be attacked.
In addition, the secure BOLOS operating system is built on secure chips that provide the necessary distance between the operating system and the apps configured on the device. In addition, the attacks are designed, among other things, to tap into and abuse the computing power of the attacked systems. However, the Ledger devices are designed primarily for security rather than computing power.
The security of the ledger and the coins deposited on it is guaranteed even if the computer connected to the device was the victim of the attacks. Ledger hardware wallets are designed to securely store and use cryptocurrencies regardless of their environment. The private key of the user is stored in the secure chip and performs its function only within this secure protective cover. Accordingly, the private key is not visible to the computer connected to the ledger.
It is time again for a New Coins on the Block edition, this time it's about TRON (TRX).
Only since September, TRON exists, but can claim the eighth largest market capital after a brilliant rally - what kind of project is this?
Of course, in a market where several new cryptocurrencies and tokens are gaining in market capital, TRON needs to be mentioned as well: only a few months ago, since the beginning of December, Tron has increased its value hundreds of times. Just yesterday, on January 4, the price almost tripled. Even for cryptocurrencies this is very remarkable. What kind of cryptocurrency or token is it about and why is it currently experiencing such a rise in value?
TRON - Restore a decentralized Internet
As for the motivation behind TRON, we look back to its primeval times: The Internet at the time when Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web no longer exists. While the Internet was originally very decentralized, over time the World Wide Web became more and more dominated by big companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google or Alibaba. This not only applies to websites, but also messenger services are in the hands of large companies.
Since data are the raw material of our time, this of course leads to a supremacy of giant companies. These earn on the user data and have in addition the sovereignty over the information transfer. Not the individual user, but these companies own the data generated by the user. In principle, this gives the big companies the power of censorship.
The goal of TRON is to counteract this centralization of the Internet and to give the individual user back their own data. To reach the goal, the people behind the project want to develop a blockchain-based protocol that should have TRX as its internal currency. With this currency and the protocol to be developed, a wide variety of content marketing opportunities are to be realized: From app stores to the realization of paid content, everything should be tradable via this blockchain on a peer-to-peer basis.
In order to achieve this, it is planned to develop its own Web 2.0 platform, a new social network and an internal digital currency. On the platform, any content in different formats can be uploaded and monetized. In addition, TRON wants to allow anyone over the network to initiate an ICO.
According to White Paper and registration possibilities on the website, the Tron platform should already be able to run, but so far it can not be seen as a wallet for Bitcoin, Ether and TRX. To be fair, TRON's makers also stress that their roadmap will take about 8-10 years to fully deploy. In different phases with names like Exodus, Odyssey or Eternit the individual milestones of TRON are to be realized. A decentralized data storage is to be realized as well as a decentralized trading center for digital content, a decentralized token exchange and finally an online gaming platform. Currently you are at the beginning of the phase Exodus.
TRX, TP and TRON 20 tokens - a multi-coin system
TRX or TRONIX tokens are required in the system to participate in the TRON network. So if someone wants to generate or consume content, they need TRX tokens. There will be a total of 100 billion tokens.
TRX tokens can be considered TRON POWER or TP. These non-tradable tokens are designed to give token holders more privileges in the TRON ecosystem. Since the team behind TRON hopes that this will reduce the volatility of the TRX value, the user should be paid to include TRX tokens with additional TPs.
Finally, in addition to these two variants of the TRON token, the TRON 20 tokens should also be mentioned, which are to be used for own ICOs based on ERC 20 in the TRON ecosystem.
Cooperations, media interest and speculation
So far that may be interesting - but does not explain in particular the increase. Also, TRON has been featured on Fortune Magazine, and Justin Sun, founder of TRON, listed on Forbes China's 30 Under 30 series, is not enough explanation.
One reason will certainly be that John McAffee announced this token at the end of December. John McAffee, who claims to have read all the white papers, recommended some time daily, currently weekly cryptocurrencies and tokens. Since John McAffee is a public person, many have heard his recommendation, so certainly some people have invested in his recommendation on this coin.
Another reason, however, seems to be an announcement on Twitter. Justin Sun, founder of TRON, has announced that a "very prestigious public listed company" will cooperate with them, a tweet that has been retweeted over 2,600 times. But who this company is can not be said so far.
On January 2, it was also claimed that NASDAQ-listed companies and companies with more than 100 million customers, among others, had requested partnerships. Recently, only with game.com the cooperation with a "leading online gaming platform" was announced. However, this seems to be still in the project status, so that at least one can not speak of a leading gaming platform.
According to TRON's media blog, Zhao Hong, Alibaba's Chief Data Mining Expert, is now working for TRON. He would be after Chen Zhiqiang, the second person from Alibaba, which joins TRON. Unfortunately, you can not find sources independent of TRON. For example, it is not possible to confirm via LinkedIn whether these people have ever worked at Alibaba.
Certainly, the use case of TRON is not uninteresting - even if one wonders if the Tor network in terms of decentralization and projects such as STEEM or SatoshiPay in terms of decentralized monetization in a similar score. However, the current price development is critical. At the moment, the project is no longer work in progress. So, what has been traded so far is an ERC20 token whose Smart Contract has no special feature adapted to the use case.
It is also noticeable that at least 35% of the ICO is held by the Tron Foundation. Although these are blocked in a publicly accessible address, a strong centralization of the tokens can not be denied. Thus, TRON presents itself ambiguous and should not be considered completely uncritical.
Surely you can not blame the rather extensive white paper for just providing a rough declaration of intent. It's extremely technical, so the reader can get an idea of the solution concept behind TRON. However, at least dubious, that different parts without reference to other papers have been adopted almost word for word in part: The description of the "TRON node" is very close to Section 3 ("IPFS DESIGN") of the IPFS white paper - Content Addressed, Versioned, P2P File System (DRAFT 3) by Juan Benet. Likewise, parts of the "Network Implementation of TRON Contents" part are taken from the white paper "twister - a P2P microblogging platform" by Miguel Freitas. In both cases, apart from a mention of the term IPFS, there is no reference to this preparatory work, which also contributes to the shallow aftertaste of this project.
If you still want to learn more about TRON, please refer to their website and the media blog.
Disclaimer: The information presented in this post is not a recommendation for purchase or sale. It is only an opinion of me the author. They serve merely to describe the project and are not to be understood as an investment analysis.
About the column
In this column I take a closer look at one aspect of cryptocurrencies: the protection of privacy. In each issue, I'll take a closer look at a cryptocurrency and see how the privacy of the user is protected.
Introduction
Anyone who has been in the crypto world for some time will sooner or later have come up against the criticism that Bitcoin is an anonymous means of payment and can therefore be used to finance illegal business such as money laundering, drug trafficking or terrorism. This statement is not correct. Of course you can send Bitcoin through the peer-to-peer nature of the network to any other participant, without an intermediary like a state has the opportunity to intervene in the transaction - but you are not anonymous.
Particularities
Bitcoin was the first functioning, decentralized cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is a pseudonym and the blockchain is completely transparent. This means that the Bitcoin addresses may seem cryptic to normal users and it is not clear who is behind a given address, but all transactions are publicly visible in the blockchain. Blockchain explorers such as Blockchain.info show all transactions that have ever occurred on the network.
Weaknesses
The privacy of Bitcoin users can be compromised if the identity of a Bitcoin address becomes known. In the Blockchain all touchpoints of each Wallet are recorded for all time. Accordingly, the blockchain can be scanned for interactions with this address and all payment traffic is open. There are companies that specialize in this analysis.
Identities are required, for example, for exchanges by regulators with KYC / AML (know-your-customer / anti-money laundering). Once the identity of a customer is known, blockchain analysis can be used to locate other wallets controlled by the same user. Even if the identity is unknown, you can still track which wallet is in contact with which others and how much money is going where.
This publicity of the network and the eternal documentation of the transactions can lead to further problems such as lack of fungibility, which I would like to highlight in a later article.
Current state of the technology
Bitcoin, with its first-mover advantage and market capitalization, has the most developers, nearly 500 (!), Which gives hope for much innovation. The anonymity issue is familiar to many Bitcoin enthusiasts and there are already some solutions available, such as MimbleWimble. It's likely to take some time before MimbleWimble is up and running. More acute problems like scaling take precedence over Bitcoin.
View in the future
Bitcoin will become more transparent. By analyzing the blockchain in conjunction with the regulators' KYC / AML policy, it will be possible to draw far-reaching conclusions about the identity and payment traffic of individual wallet addresses. Possible solutions are already in the room, but, as usual with Bitcoin, they will take their time to become active.
Summary
Bitcoin is not anonymous, but pseudonym. In order to protect privacy, either constantly new addresses must be generated by a user, or the Bitcoin protocol must receive an update. If you want to keep your identity secret, you should think twice about using Bitcoin.
If you missed the Crypto News from yesterday just click here!
I wish you all a lovely Saturday and a great Weekend!!!
ⓁⓄⓥⒺ & ⓁⒾⒼⒽⓉ
Best regards
@danyelk
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