Tag: wallet

Crypto Wallet Launches Testnet Trades for 300million Telegram Users

Button wallet which happens to be a non-custodial and multi cryptocurrency provider has announced that it is launching a free testing service on the Telegram Open Network (TON) this would be in an effort to further drive the adoption of Cryptocurrency amongst 300 million telegram users.

6.6 testnet of gram tokens have been said to been offered through the client application as giveaways— the native currency of Telegram’s TON blockchain platform — this would be for users that activate its wallet, Forbes reported on Aug, 26.

Bringing in “a TON” of people

The Button Wallet’s co-founder and CEO, Alex Safonov said that the giveaway of the gram tokens is targeted at achieving mass adoption as this would encourage its users to have practical experience of transactions with digital assets with zero risks. He said :

“Cryptos’ biggest obstacle is mass adoption and what we’ve created will help people comfortable with trading cryptocurrency without using real money.”

Safonov also made an indirect reference to the “fanfare surrounding Facebook’s libra digital currency” — a crypto payments network that the social media giant intends to integrate into its widely used apps such as Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. 

There has also been anxiety around the apparent bug which has beset pro-democracy activists and Telegram users in Hong Kong, who reportedly fear that the issue could expose them to the Chinese authorities.  

Image via Shutterstock

Crypto Wallet and Data Giant Reported to Raise $50M Funding Round

According to a report by Yahoo Finance, Blockchain (not to be confused with the name for the technology), is raising a VC fund to invest in both equity and crypto.

A reporton Wednesday mentioned two sources had confirmed that Blockchain is in discussions with investors to raise a total of $50 million USD as the target for the fund.

Blockchain managing partner, Sam Harrison who was previously a principal at investment firm Naspers Ventures had suggested further that the fund is already in existence and is also backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, a Blockchain investor.

According to Harrison’s LinkedIn profile it states:

“Co-founded Blockchain.com Ventures – A Venture Capital Fund anchored by Blockchain.com, the world’s largest non-custodial wallet platform & Lightspeed Venture Partners.”

Crunchbase reported that Blockchain has successfully raised $70 million over four rounds, this is including a $40 million Series B that saw the support of Richard Branson and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

The company had also launched a platform for exchange which is called The PIT recently, and last year it was said to have released its first-ever hardware crypto wallet. According to the firm’s website says its wallet app has been downloaded over 41 million times and is being used worldwide.

Image via Shutterstock

VeChain Releases New Official Block Explorer and Sync Ledger Wallet Interface

The VeChain Foundation has announced the release of a new official block explorer and sync ledger wallet interface, which are in-house developed solutions maintained by the major development team. According to the foundation, the explorer will be available by the end of November, while the Ledger wallet will be available within two weeks starting from Monday, Oct 21, 2019.

According to the announcement on 20 Oct, users can use VeChain Insight, which is a functional and serverless explorer developed by the VeChain core development team to inquire about accounts, blockchain information, tokens, and transactions before the release of official block explorer in late November.

The  Foundation also implored the community to be committed to supporting the ecosystem builders of the VeChainThor Blockchain, believing that with the community’s technical and non-technical support, the management teams and developers will focus on deriving a functional business, monetization and sustainable growth model for their VeChainThor projects.

The report also noted that the Foundation appreciated their soon-to-be one-time partner Totient Labs who contributed earnestly to the VeChain Ecosystem by building much-loved tools and services. However, Totient Labs decided to discontinue their VeForge services to VeChain including the VeForge Explorer and the VeForge Vault on Oct 21.

Since the vault will be discontinued, ledger users will not be able to access their tokens in VeChain wallets in the meantime. However, users are implored to be certain that their VET and VIP180 tokens are entirely safe and secure on the blockchain.

Bitcoin Purchase Made Possible By Dropbit Through Apple Pay and Google Pay

It is now possible to purchase Bitcoin on Dropbit wallet through Apple Pay or Google Pay. This news was announced in a Medium post by Coin Ninja on November 5. Prior to this announcement, Dropbit was only used to send and receive Bitcoin, which can be done by using just the phone number of the recipient.

This new integrated feature will make a nocoiner become a newcomer with just some easy-going steps, the news said, noting that this was only possible through a principal collaboration with Wyre, a crypto payment company.

As stated in the news, the whole process involved in this new feature is not more than 2 minutes from the installation of the app to the initiation and completion of a purchase order. In this case, even a user with little or no technical knowledge can leverage the feature. Every interested user can purchase up to $500 worth of Bitcoin, which will be sent immediately and directly into their Dropbit wallet.

As opposed to other crypto exchange providers, no KYC is needed to ensure that a user can access the feature.

Coin Ninja also added that despite the buy Bitcoin option incorporated in the Dropbit wallet app, a new version of the app has been released, which will provide a locked preview of Lightning Network for all users. The latest release is version 3.0.

Image via Shutterstock

Forbidden Wealth: 80,000 Bitcoin Abandoned for Nearly a Decade

A Bitcoin wallet address said to be associated with the now-defunct Mt. Gox Exchange holding an estimated 80,000 Bitcoin worth around $800 million, is said to be untouched revealed by a sourceon Feb 17. The asset is shown to have remained untouched since the days after the hack of the once renowned exchange.

With the funds on the wallet already tainted and duly tagged as high risk making it quite difficult to cash out, spectators are left to wonder if the wallet will ever see withdrawal or transfer of funds as all eyes are well fixed on it from the period after the hack.

As the years after the Mt. Gox disaster continues to roll by, the situation still leaves a bitter taste in the cryptocurrencyworld. Recalling the year 2011, when the now liquidated exchange suffered a high profiled hack and breach of security of the exchange at a time when it boasts of a whopping 70% of Bitcoin’s overall global trade volume.

The official accepted report claimed hackers exploited the already breached Mt. Gox admin account to crash the price of Bitcoinon the exchange. With price artificially pushed down, the hackers went to town, buying up super cheap Bitcoin in large quantities.

Accounts of the exchange users were also targeted, and an estimated loss of 25,000 Bitcoin was stolen from 478 accountstotaling to a huge $8.75 at the time of the hack.

Recent news credited to a Redditor (jwinterm), claims the Bitcoin address, the sixth-largest Bitcoin Address associated with the original Mt. Gox hack has been unearthed. With a balance of 75,957.20 BTC, clearly showing no single satoshi has ever been moved out of it.

Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm that has been keeping a close watch on the stolen Bitcoin while speaking to Decrypt, suggested that the issues surrounding the address have kept the funds in a state of being treated as a poisoned chalice that should be distanced from.

According to Chainalysis representatives Maddie Kennedy, it is of the opinion that there exist two assumed possibilities why the funds have not been moved, which includes loss of access to the address or simply the fear of moving the funds without being tracked down.

Image via Shutterstock

Circle's New APIs Simplify Complex Crypto Concepts For Mass Institutional Adoption

Circle, the main stablecoin leveraged by Coinbase, has expanded its services to programmable functionality of its USDC stablecoin.

Circle revealed three new APIs for businesses in a blog post on March 10. The new tools for developers are aimed to facilitate the use of USDC by traditional businesses and additionally create a digital replacement to traditional fiat channels. API tools allow software developers to build on top of and interact with an application.

Programmable Dollars For Business

The first API update, Circle’s Payments API, facilitates the use of credit card and debit card payments by businesses to then settle payments in USDC. This should greatly expedite the time it takes for businesses to receive funds from weeks to days.  

Circle will also allow its users to receive cryptocurrency payments without running nodes via its Wallets API. This API provides a simplified layer of familiarity for traditional business to effectively leverage complex concepts in cryptocurrency such as gas fees or private keys. 

Finally, Circle’s Marketplace API allows customers to use USDC in other ways. For example, businesses can use the API to “top up” customer funds, enable peer-to-peer payments, or pay suppliers.

In the blog post, Jeremy Allaire, CEO, Circle said, “Until recently, for a business to take advantage of this infrastructure it has often been complicated and confusing. Crypto wallets, exchanges, blockchain transaction management, gas fees, private key security, banking connectivity, and compliance hassles have all been technical and operational impediments to the average internet business jumping into digital currency.”

Circle is currently offering early access APIs, but production APIs are on the way.

A Catalyst for Institutional Adoption

With the launch of the new APIs, Circle aims to simplify the world of digital payments so that company can setup and begin using an account with the same ease that they might open a business bank account.Allaire said  “Companies should be able to then easily upload their dollars to the internet, convert them into digital currency dollars, and start storing and using these stablecoins for everyday payments.” 

Circle Sold OTC Business to Re-focus on Stablecoins

As reported by Blockchain.News on Dec 18, Circle had announced that they would approach 2020 with a renewed deep focus on stablecoins and the powerful potential they hold for people, enterprises, and governments globally.

On Dec. 17, the founders of Circle announced in a blog post, the sale of its Circle Trade OTC business to Kraken. Spokespersons from Circle stated that they are confident that Kraken will continue to deliver a best-in-class OTC liquidity service to its former customers. 

Along with the sale of the OTC business, Circle made a number of organizational changes to help align their operation and talent to match its stablecoin platform service focus and future roadmap. Notably among these changes was the successful sale and restructuring of Poloniex, its exchange business, to a standalone company backed by an Asian investment group. It appears that Cirlce has made good on their goal to focus on moving forward by building on Circle’s core services which support its stablecoin. At the time Allaire said, “These APIs will be offered as services to businesses and developers everywhere who will be able to take advantage of the innovation and efficiency of stablecoins without the cost, complexity, and risk of implementing this infrastructure themselves.”

Image via Shutterstock

Did Satoshi Nakamoto Move His Bitcoin Yesterday? No, But Craig Wright Shot Himself in the Foot

On Wednesday a Twitter bot reported that a Bitcoin transaction came from a wallet that possibly belonged to Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of the network and author of the Bitcoin whitepaper.

The recorded movement came from an address containing coins that were mined barely a month after the launch of the Bitcoin mainnet in 2009, at this time it is suggested that only three people could have known about BTC, one of them being Satoshi.

Beyond the age of the wallet, there is really no indication that this movement was Nakamoto.

Not long after the Whale Alert bot tweeted, the Bitcoin network experienced a 7% sell-off. In a tweet of his own, Bitcoin software engineer Jameson Lopp dismissed the BTC transaction pointing to the script behind the account.

The “Patoshi Pattern” is the name given to the analysis used to determine which blocks were most likely mined by Nakomoto. According to the hash rate analysis, it is still possible but unlikely that the transaction was performed by Nakomoto himself.

Craig Wright Shoots Himself in the Foot

The always controversial Craig Wright, the instigator of the BSV fork, has denied moving the 40 BTC from one of the original Satoshi wallets despite listing the wallet among the 16,000 wallets he allegedly owns and has provided in a court document.

The address, 17XiVVooLcdCUCMf9s4t4jTExacxwFS5uh was listed in a court document in the Kleiman vs Wright lawsuit.

Calvin Ayre, the BSV billionaire, tweeted that he had spoken with Craig Wright and he has denied moving the 40 BTC from the 11-year-old address.

Ayre’s revelation may prove tricky for Wright. Although Wright did provide the list of addresses he has insisted that he does not have access to the private keys. If he had moved the coins there would have been strong legal ramifications but consequently, by denying he moved BTC from a wallet he claims to own he has all but proven he is not Nakamoto and has provided false information to the courts.

Perhaps in the unlikely chance that Nakamoto did move the coins himself, it was his goal to expose this alleged con artist once and for all.  

Image via Shutterstock

Blockchain Startup Developed Solution to Crypto's Irreversible Transaction Problem

An Israel-based blockchain startup has developed a way to retrieve crypto funds sent to wrong addresses. The startup has developed a new technology that could prevent the loss of funds caused by human error when sending Bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies. The mistake is common as wallet addresses are represented by a unique and random string of alphanumeric characters that can easily be entered incorrectly.

Users at Fault of losing crypto assets

According to research, 55% of respondents said that they had experienced stressful human errors when sending crypto assets, and 18% revealed that they had lost money through such kind of sending errors. The new technology is an important solution to challenges facing most non-technical customers using cryptocurrencies.

Kirobo’s Retrievable Transfer feature functions by developing a new layer solution onto existing blockchain protocols. This gives crypto-service providers and customers new capabilities. Users are now able to cancel a transaction if they sent funds to wrong addresses. Asaf Naim, Kirobo CEO, said: “Our aim is to make blockchain transactions as simple and as secure as online banking.”

The company’s logic layer provides a unique transaction code that the recipient must enter in order to receive funds from the sender. Until the recipient has entered the appropriate code, the sender may retrieve the money at any time.

Loss of funds normally happens when a sender includes an error in the long string of alphabetic characters that make up crypto addresses. A way to increase efficiencies and make transactions less risky could assist in encouraging new users of cryptocurrencies.

Adam Levi, DAOstack CTO, and adviser to Kirobo stated that by removing the fear from cryptocurrency transactions, Kirobo would boost the increasing adoption of cryptocurrencies.

Kirobo stated that it does not store or hold a user’s private keys. The unique code simply governs whether or not the transaction would be finalized. The feature also can operate offline in case Kiboro’s servers go down.    

The company’s platform has obtained support from the Israel Innovation Authority, the arm of the Israeli government, whose responsibility is to foster industrial research and development. Kirobo also has been audited by the Scorpiones Group cybersecurity firm.

Now Kirobo’s Retrievable Transfer feature is available for Bitcoin transfers on crypto wallets from France-based company Ledger. The firm expects to roll out the support in other crypto wallets over the coming months.

Avoiding Loss of Funds

Anyone using crypto assets needs to know about crypto scams and related risks to stay safe while using crypto.

Cryptocurrencies keep breathing headlines and attracting users and investors from all over the world. However, when users deal with cryptos, they are exposed to higher risks than any other internet user. It has become more vital to stay informed on how to prevent unfortunate events from happening and avoid losing hard-earned crypto coins.

Cardano Releases New Daedalus Wallet for the Shelley Testnet Ahead of Shelley Hard Fork

Input Output (IOHK), the blockchain engineering company behind Cardano has released the new Daedalus wallet for the Shelley testnet, less than a week after the Cardano Virtual Summit.

The new version 1.2.0-STN1, enables users to try out the new functions brought by the new Shelley update in a sandboxed environment using test-ADA. New features, including delegation, stake pools, and rewards distribution will also be available in the sandboxed environment to simplify the staking process. 

IOHK announced in a tweet:

“The new Daedalus wallet (1.2.0-STN1) is now available from the Cardano testnets site; remember, for your own security, only download Daedalus from official IOHK or Cardano sites.”

With new delegation features added to the Daedalus test wallet, users on the Shelley testnet can create a Shelley wallet, and leverage testnet Faucet to delegate ADA from their wallet to a stake pool. 

As for the weeks ahead, the new Daedalus testnet functionality will be added during the Shelley roll out, according to IOHK. These features include the expansion of stake pool functionality with the ability to display stake pool ranking based on the amount an ADA user plans to delegate. 

The addition of support will also be made for the transfer of funds from the old generation—Byron wallets to the new Shelley generation wallets, as well as claiming incentivized testnet rewards. 

Users will be able to earn testnet ADA with the new wallet, to see how the real rewards will work in the mainnet later this year.

The Shelley update and code was implemented to the Cardano mainnet just a week ago, however, the Shelley hard fork is expected on July 29. The incentivized testnet (ITN) rewards are to launch on August 3, and the staking functions on August 18, as Cardano’s upcoming milestones. 

IOHK mentioned that later this week, a full video would be available as an in-depth tutorial introducing the new features. 

The future of Cardano: Full decentralization and the “Voltaire era”

The Shelley hard fork marks the remaining step towards full decentralization on the Cardano blockchain. IOHK recently announced that it is launching a technology ecosystem fund—cFund, with Wave Financial Group, with investments made globally with a typical size of $250,000-$500,000.

In partnership with the crypto asset management fund Wave, the fund will total in $20 million which will provide money for companies and projects in the Cardano ecosystem. IOHK will be committing to half of the fund, $10 million, while Wave will be raising the other half.

Europol Empowers Victims with Tools to Fend Off Ransomware Attacks

Europol, European Union’s law enforcement agency, has put together an anti-ransomware initiative that has managed to intercept $630 million dollars and more in ransomware demands, since 2016.  

“No More Ransom” Demands 

The free scheme that they created, dubbed “No More Ransom,” is a decryption tool repository that helps victims combat cryptocurrency theft and ransomware attacks.  

Now hitting their fourth-year anniversary, the repository has much to celebrate. Not only has it managed to salvage $632 million dollars in ransom demands, but it has also generated mass traction in 188 countries. The repository currently boasts of over 4.2 million visitors and has added 28 new tools ever since. The compilation of tools can be attributed to 162 partners, who have worked together to offer ransomware prevention.  

Bitcoin Mixer Wallet Investigated By Europol 

With the increase of dark web trafficking and malicious ransom activities online, Europol has been working extra hard to track down hackers and put an end to cybercrime. Recently, in June, the law enforcement agency put a Bitcoin mixer Wasabi wallet on its radar because the malicious site address was promoting dark web transactions.  

What Is Wasabi? 

Wasabi is a light wallet that used a protocol dubbed “coinjoin” to mix Bitcoins. With coinjoin, the Wasabi wallet can merge different transactions originating from non-related users into one transaction. In a two-part report, Europol indicated that this Bitcoin mixing scheme had generated an influx of dark web transactions.  

The investigation is still ongoing and Europol is still working on cracking down on the dark web scam artists. 

Guide 101 to Preventing Ransomware Attacks

In order to fend off future ransomware attacks, Europol suggests some preventative guidelines that one can adopt when surfing the web. For example, a user should always keep a copy of their most important files backed up somewhere, whether it be in a cloud, on another offline drive, on a memory stick, or on another computer. Also, the law enforcement agency wrote on its website: 

“Use reliable and up-to-date anti-virus software, do not download programs from suspicious sources, do not open attachments in e-mails from unknown senders, even if they look important and credible, and finally, if you are a victim, do not pay the ransom!” 

Exit mobile version