Your Daily Crypto News on Steemit October 23, 2017

MIT uses Blockchain for Digital Diplomas!
Mining: Websites abuse Internet Users as Crypto Diggers!
MasterCard expands its B2B Blockchain Payment Tools!
ETH Course Analysis for Week 42/2017!

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) uses the blockchain during a pilot project for the awarding of digital diplomas to over 100 graduates.

In a statement, the university stated that the diplomas could be sent to future employers using the app "Blockcerts Wallet". The app also ensures that they are originals and no changes have been made.

The blockchain-based project was created by a collaboration between MIT, Cambridge and the software company Learning Machine.

Mary Callahan, Deputy Dean, said about the project:

Chris Jagers, CEO of Learning Machine, said MIT is one of the first universities to issue "certified documents in a format that can continue to exist, even if the institution itself is no longer there."

The Blockcerts system uses the bitcoin blockchain, because "security is placed on other qualities such as speed, cost and ease of use".

Through the blockchain the documents are provided with a time stamp, so that students can prove that they already have a required degree.

Other educational institutions are also increasingly interested in using the blockchain for data storage. Malta's Ministry of Education and the Australian University of Melbourne also test the use of Blockcerts.

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More and more website operators are capturing the visitors' computing power in order to secretly dig up digital currencies.
Users usually only get it when suddenly the laptop fan starts or the smartphone battery empties.
In addition to porn sites and file sharing portals also make serious sides with. Even on the homepage of Cristiano Ronaldo ran a mining script.

One click, and the web page loads. Everything looks as usual. But then the fan of the laptop quietly begins to buzzing. The battery drains much faster than usual, and the Task Manager indicates that the processor is fully charged. The computer is running on high speed, and the user has no idea what that is.

Guilty could be a small script on the open webpage. With a few lines of program code, the site operators turn the devices of visitors into digital money printing machines. They tap the computing power and let smartphones, laptops and PCs dig in the background Bitcoin or other digital currencies. According to an Adguard study, more than 500 million users have visited such sites. The IT security companies Kaspersky and Palo Alto also see this as a serious problem.

One of the best known cases is the file sharing portal The Pirate Bay. Anyone looking for legal or illegal content unintentionally provided their processor power to the operators of the site to generate units in Monero's digital currency. Users usually only noticed that the laptop battery lost energy rapidly or the smartphone became hot. In a blog entry, The Pirate Bay speaks of a test. They wanted to abolish the advertising ads. Meanwhile, the script has disappeared from the platform.

File sharing portals, porn sites, and Cristiano Ronaldo

More and more website operators are discovering crypto mining as an alternative source of income for classic ads. This method is especially interesting for portals with a dubious reputation, for instance for file sharing platforms or porn sites. These often have difficulties finding advertisers. After all, sex videos and illegal downloads are not an appropriate advertising environment for many products.

But also supposedly serious sides put on crypto-mining. Thus, the US station CBS integrated a corresponding script on its streaming portal Showtime.com. Up to 60 percent of the visitors' CPU performance should have been used for crypto mining. Especially for streaming pages the method is worthwhile. Finally, users stay on the site for a long time to watch movies or series.

Even football star Cristiano Ronaldo, an estimated annual income of 80 million euros, had visitors to his official website digging for Monero. However, in both cases it is unclear who is behind it. Possibly, overbearing administrators or criminal hackers are to blame. In the meantime, the script can not be found on Showtime.com or on Cristianoronaldo.com.

In the background works a script called Coinhive

The Pirate Bay, Showtime and Ronaldo all put on the same script: Coinhive. 30 per cent of the scrapped sum goes to the developers, 70 per cent the site operators keep. Basically, such scripts are legal, but the lack of consent is a problem. The programmers at Coinhove recommend page operators to inform users about what happens in the background. "Long-term user acceptance is much more important than short-term profits," says the project's website. In mid-October, the developers released another script called Authed Mine. Users must agree to this before the website uses the computing capacity of the user.

The adblock company Adguard has searched the 100 000 most visited pages on the net for scripts like Coinhive and has found 220. In three weeks they will have earned $ 43,000. Crypto Mining was particularly threatened on illegal or two-lane portals. But also some media and message pages let their visitors dig for digital money.

Adguard creates such analyzes primarily to sell their own product. The company promises that its advertising and tracking blockers can protect against crypto-mining. Anti-virus makers are similar in process by regularly publishing studies in which they warn of malware and criminal hackers. They hope that insecure users spend more money to protect themselves. Therefore, the results should be viewed with some skepticism.

Chrome users can protect themselves with an extension

Cypto Mining via a browser is so popular that a whole series of clones are created by Coinhive. They are called Crypto-Loot, Minemytraffic, Coinhave, Ppoi or Coinblind. In addition, there are several plugins for the widespread content management system Wordpress, which likewise misrepresent the visitors' computing performance. The same can happen if you install certain browser plugins. So already have several Chrome extensions unintentionally mined Monero .

But there is now resistance: Cloudflare, an American company that protects sites of hacker attacks, has classified secret mining as malware. The company refuses to protect sites using such scripts. Also the anti-virus manufacturer Malwarebytes blocked crypto miner on the computers of its customers. In addition, Google engineers are thinking about notifying Chrome users in the future when a web page suddenly consumes a lot of processor power. For the Google browser there is already an extension called No Coin, which protects the computer from digital gold diggers.

The credit card giant MasterCard is pushing ahead its blockchain projects. A number of blockchain payment tools were presented for the first time last year and are intended to be made available to banks and retailers in the future.

In a press release, the company announced its intention to work with the technology as a part of an offer to "tackle the challenges of speed, transparency and the costs of cross-border payments" in business-to-business transactions (B2B).

MasterCard revealed its blockchain work for the first time in October 2016, which aims at the release of systems based on smart contracts and payment processing processes. At the time, the blockchain lead Justin Pinkham said the company is looking for partners who want to work with the platform of the company.

Acquisition of partners

MasterCard is currently working to encourage other companies to handle their billing and transactions through the Blockchain APIs. The aim is to alleviate some of the friction that may arise during cross-border payment processes.

Ken Moore, MasterCard Labs' executive vice president, said in a statement:

The company intends to combine its Blockchain APIs with other services so that partners can develop their own applications and create unique transactions. In addition, MasterCard also increased its efforts to secure intellectual property rights around its uses of technology as well as its work with the Enterprise Astraleums Alliance for the use of use cases. The whole thing should lie outside the reach of the traditional payment environment of MasterCard. A recent patent application clarifies this intention. The company is aware of the fact that it wants to create a uniform payment system that could be used by the blockchain as a tool for B2B payments.

Since October 16, the price has fallen to EUR 248.99 (USD 293.45) and currently stands at EUR 252.00 (USD 296.99).

Image based on data from Kraken.com

Summary

The Ethereum course has fallen during the week.
Since the 18th of November, the course has been shown in a descending triangle pattern, which will be followed until October 25th.
The short-term support is EUR 247.52 (EUR 291.71), the short-term resistance is EUR 258.91 (USD 305.14).

Two Hard Forks have the Course of Ethereum under control: On the one hand, the course has fallen since the Byzantium. On the other hand, Bitcoin Gold has a further important share: many investors hope for more Bitcoin Gold by investing a large stakes before the 25th of October, this Hard Fork being very cautious. This is, of course, at the expense of other crypto-currencies and therefore also at the expense of Ethereum: the week was characterized by a downward trend, which has since 18 October moved into a downward triangle pattern. Although the price could temporarily overcome the exponential moving mean values over a (blue) or two (red) days, it has again fallen below these mean values over the course of the day.

The MACD (second panel) is accordingly negative. More specifically, the MACD line (blue) is negative, while the signal (orange) is still just above the zero, but will soon fall below the zero line.

At 40, the RSI (third panel) is clearly bearish.

The analysis of movements in the 60 mins. chart speak a bearish language. The most important weekly support is the short term minimum and the minimum triangle pattern, which is EUR 247.52 (USD 291.71). The most important Resistance this week is described by the Resistance of the Triangle Patterns is EUR 258.91 (USD 305.14). A rise above this value would indicate a sustained end of the downtrend.

The long term course development

To see the current development in a larger context, we first consider the 240 mins. chart:

Image based on data from Kraken.com

We see that the last week's up-stream was broken. On the basis of the price minima achieved since the end of September, an upward trend can be seen, which is, however, significantly flatter and is likely to be tested again in the near future. The course is, of course, below the exponential moving mean values over one (blue) and two weeks (red), which have also crossed bearish a few days ago.

The MACD is negative, after all, the MACD line is slightly above the signal. The RSI is clearly bearish at 36. In the medium term, the situation is also bearish. Support is the same as in the 60min chart - a submission would mean a sustainable end to the flat uptrend. Resistance is described by the temporary price maximum on 18 October and is EUR 267.99 (USD 315.84). Exceeding this resistance may mean re-entering the up-stream.

Let's take a look at the 1D chart

Image based on data from Kraken.com

The course is still in the triangle pattern. The current downtrend suggests a new test of the support of the triangle pattern. Prior to this, however, the exponential moving average support must be broken over the last two months (red). Currently the same is tested.

The MACD is positive, but the MACD line has fallen below the signal. The RSI is slightly bearish with 45.

Overall, the long-term forecast is neutral to bearish. Both support and resistance are further described by the Triangle Pattern. Key Resistance is EUR 318.88 (USD 375.81), the most important support is EUR 229.80 (USD 270.83).

Disclaimer:

The course analysis is from the morning MUT time zone and can have changed since. The price estimates presented in this post are not a recommendation to buy or sell. They are merely an estimate of me.