Core Magazine November 2017 by Crypto Core Media

BLOCKCHAIN NEWS

MAGAZINE “I am hoping the McAfee Coin will be that one thing that will give people the power to create a new world.” - John McAfee on the purpose of his McAfee coin project.

ICOs are ‘biggest

scam ever’

says

John McAfee call National Cryptocurrencies: Fiat in disguise

“We must first ensure that cryptocurrencies can be used as actual money without any security risks or technical difficulties”

Interview with the UTRUST team

A blockchain-based national cryptocurrency is nothing more than fiat with a new jacket and a fake mustache.

ICOs are ‘biggest scam ever’ says “Wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort The Wonderful World of Altcoins

Crypto Core Media

Core Group is the name given to our multi medium ‘Crypto’ project built from the ground up by real people. As blockchain enthusiasts, our executives are community members, investors and managers in a vast network of technologies. We are a well advised panel with the highest moral and ethical values, personally handpicked by both CEO and Founder. We work diligently to inform all new and existing participants in the world of Cryptocurrency. Using a variety of platforms, we report on project improvements, ground breaking achievements and fraudulent activities. We embed a sensible moral code to ensure there are no misunderstandings regarding our motivations. Our revenue is derived from trading crypto currencies and sales generated by content creation across our media channels. Funds raised from the sale of our asset are used to improve our treasury portfolio and expand our business model. Crypto Core Media An information portal of truth, honesty and integrity. We report on the latest technological advancements within the blockchain protosphere and maintain a level headed, objective analysis of crypto currencies, asset tokens, ICO’s, regulatory advancement and related achievements. Core Media Properties include the Crypto Core Media news portal, Core Radio and our Core Magazine monthly digest.

Core Magazine

Table of Contents John McAfee Exclusive | A Rare Call

ICOs are ‘biggest scam ever’ says

“Wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort

ICOs banned in South Korea

Dubai is Issuing Its Own State Cryptocurrency

Hundreds Attended MOYA ICO Meet-Up In Lagos

Bittrex’s Bitshares Bombshell: Bittrex Delists Five Pairs

After a $230 Million ICO, The Tezos Project is Entangled In Bitter Legal Dispute

National Cryptocurrencies: Fiat in disguise

Bitcoin Cash Community Set “Smooth Hard Fork” for November 13

Hackers Made $63,000 Mining Monero Exploiting Unpatched Windows Servers

CBS-Owned Showtime Websites Caught Using Visitor’s CPUs to Mine Monero

Hydrominer: Eco Friendly Crypto Mining Facility In Austria

Crimean Government Employees Fired for Mining Bitcoin Using State-Owned Computers

Cloudflare Is Cracking Down on Websites Using Visitor’s CPUs to Mine Monero

Hackers Use Organizations’ Amazon Cloud Computer Resources to Mine Bitcoin

Can cryptocurrency mining replace online advertising?

Monaize: First Atomic Swap Made Ahead of dICO

SuperNET Asset Migrates To Komodo Blockchain With First Revenue Sharing Dividend Announced

John McAfee Predicted Highest Bitcoin Value 24 Hours Before It Happened On Crypto Core Radio

Enterprise Ethereum Alliance Adds Dozens of Members, Including Russia’s Largest Bank

Bitcoin.org Co-Owner Goes on Twitter Storm on Changing Bitcoin’s Whitepaper

The Wonderful World of Altcoins

EDITORIAL

Here we go again. Another month, another issue, another opportunity to learn about the amazing world of blockchain technology! As crypto continues on its explosive ride towards mainstream adoption, we continue to strive to keep you informed and to earn our place amongst the community as one of the leading blockchain-centric media outlets. You may have noted some changes to your beloved CORE magazine over the last issues, both in terms of organization and in terms of design. That’s because we’ve been experimenting with new styles and ideas in order to provide you with the most relevant content and the best reading experience possible! So what exactly have we been up to? Well, for starters, we’re working with a top-notch designer and a new, valued team member, Ignacio Figueroa. A previous issue has also counted with the collaboration of Paul Dobre, from CryptoCompare. This has resulted in a much more pleasant and accessible layout that gives the magazine a whole new look and vibe! Of course, the visual side is important but content is king. We have been working towards making the content on the magazine exclusive. So far, the magazine has been composed uniquely of articles and stories on Coremedia along with a few interviews. However, we feel that you deserve more, especially those buying the physical version! From now on, the magazine will feature exclusive articles along with other forms of unique content. While we’ll still include the most relevant news stories from the previous month, the focus will be on creating new and unique content. This month, for example, we have exclusive articles about cryptocurrency mining, advertising, national cryptocurrencies, ICOs and more, an insightful interview with UTRUST’s CEO, Nuno Correia, along with more exclusive content. If you have suggestions or questions about the magazine, feel free to email me at kanoptx@coregroup.info

Exclusive

John McAfee Exclusive | A Rare Call J

ohn McAfee is notorious for his bad boy antics, despite having been a household name for several generations of computer users across the globe. You probably recognize the name from his security software that somehow managed to sweet talk its way into at least one of your computers at some point in your life.

that security. He turns out to be a human, and a marvelously flawed one at that.

Although I have, in the past, described McAfee as a cross between the recent Charlie Sheen and the timeless Bill Gates, I had a chance to reassess Mr. McAfee in my most recent encounter with him. The opportunity to peer into his world came abruptly, in There is an especially ironic flare to Johnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reckless the form of a 27 minute phone call that started at abandon because if you are anything like millions of roughly 2:00 am by my clock, and roughly 4:00 am people, John McAfee is a name you would probably according to his. associate with safety, security, or invincibility against would-be intruders. This is why it comes with a I should share the fact that McAfee had a scheduled delightful shock to discover the man behind all appointment with me, for a phone interview, on a Core Magazine

Exclusive

Thursday at 8:00 pm, that he missed without cancellation or notice. So when the phone rang, several days after the missed interview slot, in the middle of the night, it was both to my dismay and to my delight that John McAfee was on the line.

and failures of big businesses. McAfee was sincere when he expressed the will to help the consumers have a say in what they consume, and the desire to see the people get a little bit of what they actually want. McAfee aims to make it possible for regular humans to participate in the action of McAfee And The Offensive First Strike choosing who succeeds next. It makes sense that the majority of voices should have a more of a say I was suddenly out of breath. I have always prided in matters of society since we are society’s main myself in being an open minded girl, and I thought ingredient. nothing could surprise me. Somehow, in this correspondence, I had become a smaller version of “I thought, why not let the people who will be myself; a flustered and sheepish thing. I felt myself using emerging technologies decide who gets shrinking in the looming shadow of the shocking funded or not...If people, via the token, through John McAfee. I panicked for what felt like an eon, consensus get to look at things and say ‘This is but it was only about 3 seconds in reality. something I would like my Kids to have, and their kid’s kids and for many generations to come’. Then John McAfee was on the phone! I cursed him I promise you if the consensus says ‘I want this’ silently for getting the upper hand by calling me then the people are going to buy it and we will at a time when I would be guaranteed to be caught have something far more human oriented, and far off guard. His first point was already on the board. more converging rather than diverging. Something positive for the human soul, if you want to use that I relaxed, asked permission to record the call and word.” McAfee explained. thus began the “interview”. I wasn’t able to get to the prepared list of questions I had meticulously “I am hoping the McAfee Coin will be that one typed up for the missed appointment, in fact, thing that will give people the power to create a McAfee rattled on about many topics varying from new world.” - John McAfee on the purpose of his his assortment of chosen alcoholic beverages for McAfee coin project. the hour, to his inebriated buddy who had crashed on the couch before the start of the call. If you have the impression that I was in full control of the interview, you are mistaken. After McAfee I had waited for an interview with McAfee so I scooped away all of my reluctance with his brilliant could leverage all of his expertise in the arena of view on humanity, he shoveled it all back on just as cryptocurrency, however, it was a steep challenge quickly. He drew in a deep breath of what may or to direct the conversation towards anything of the may not have been a cigarette- whatever it was, he likes. was smoking it. The McAfee Coin After a few minutes of semi conscious ramblings, I was able to derail his train of thought long enough to inquire about the highly anticipated McAfee coin project which focuses on redesigning the way venture capitalists distribute their funds. Perhaps the only moment during our entire call that revealed John to be a passionate human with a piercing radiance around him, was when he spoke of the underlying goals of the McAfee coin project.

John mentioned a friend, a retired Green Beret Veteran that he wanted me to talk to. I heard John say to an unknown person “Someone just broke in and I am trying to fend them off ”. He chuckled.

This was followed by some shuffling and muttering about how I should really talk to this old buddy who had risen to the 72 year old partying challenge. More shuffling, then McAfee tells me he woke up to get a cigarette, a can of beer, a red wine and a He explained that in venture capitalism, the very Scotch. As he rattled on about his libations, there rich few have always had control over the successes was suddenly an audible shift in Mr. McAfee’s 10

Core Magazine

Exclusive

tone. The slurring party-animal quickly morphed At the end of the call, I could not believe the into a more coherent McAfee, and his voice was weirdness I had just been drawn into. I thought strong and surprised. out loud “What WAS that? What just happened?” “Good God I’m sorry I am sorry, I was joking. It was Feeling freshly disillusioned by the lack of material a joke, I have this reporter on the line…” There I could pull from the maniacal chat, I sent McAfee was a burst of jolly laughter from two or more the following message after reawakening: men, it was impossible to decipher their exchanged words, but it was a muffled great time. John came Me: I want 15 minutes please of focused Q&A. back to our call and explained “My friend, he is Are you capable of behaving for 15 minutes? = ) great security, he came in his shorts, his underwear, 10:19 AM with a gun.” McAfee let out a boisterous laugh and McAfee: absolutely not. It’s far better to write was joined with equally gregarious chuckles from a human story than the sterile garbage current his guests. cryptocurrency news vomits out. Write the story you listened to last night...and after it’s published For whatever reason, John and his entourage of you can interview me again. slightly pickled sidekicks seemed to have found their early morning rendezvous far too interesting I believe I have earned round three, Mr. John for a simple Q&A form of communication. To McAfee, sir. my amusement, I got to listen in to the after hours wind-down between old friends. Listen to the audio here: https://soundcloud.com/ coremediaradio/john-mcafee-a-rare-phone-call It is well known in crypto circles that it takes something akin to what my male colleagues refer Lorilikes to as ‘steel balls’ to do a live interview. Doing so Email lorilikes@coremedia.info unprepared, dredged from the depths of an alcohol induced semi coma at 4:00 in the morning, leads me to believe that John McAfee takes great pleasure in making people squirm while he calmly sips his scotch without a wince.

Core Magazine

The Interview

hese questions were created for UTRUST CEO Nuno Correia, and CIO Filipe Castro and CTO Artur GoulĂŁo. Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s your Name and Position with UTRUST ? Nuno Correia, CEO and founder of the UTRUST project

in the future, the idea has been planted and the advantages have been demonstrated. However, in order to bring this concept to the masses, we must first ensure that cryptocurrencies can be used as actual money without any security risks or technical difficulties. How will UTRUST solve this problem?

UTRUST solves the aforementioned problem by removing one of the major roadblocks to cryptocurrency mass adoption: The lack of security in online Cryptocurrencies are here to stay. Even cryptocurrency payments which deters if the technology changes completely merchants and clients alike from using What problem inspired the creation of UTRUST ?

Core Magazine

The Interview blockchain-based currencies.

fiat-pegged coins. Merchants, on the other hand, will be able to receive fiat To do this, UTRUST employs a next- currencies directly in order to protect gen escrow and dispute resolution themselves from the volatility associated service that ensures merchants receive with cryptocurrencies. their payment after the item is delivered. This allows clients to pay with various What regions of the world do you think cryptocurrencies without being subject to are the most promising, in terms of any kind of risk and provides merchants cryptocurrency adoption? Why? with the option of choosing fiat or crypto. Several countries will have a harder time adapting to cryptocurrencies, either due How will the payment protection mech- to technical or financial illiteracy or due anism work in the UTRUST Platform? Can to the restrictive laws employed in said you walk us through the mechanism? regions. However, these are the places that will likely benefit the most from the global Using the UTRUST platform, a client will cryptocurrency adoption movement. In be able to create an account and to load it a the end, we think the revolution will be wide selection of cryptocurrencies. When global. shopping online, the user can choose UTRUST as a payment method for the item at hand and use one of the coins on What do you think about the regulatory his account. The payment will be held by changes constantly showing up in headUTRUST until the user confirms that the lines about ICO bans and cryptocurrency item has been received. Once the process crackdowns in China? Do these issues is complete, the merchant will receive the have a positive or negative impact on payment in crypto or fiat, according to his the future of UTRUST? preference. It’s hard to say. While we are taking How will UTRUST tokens work? What every precaution possible to ensure made you choose Ethereum over other everything is done within the boundaries platforms? of the law, other projects may not be as thoughtful. This can severely impact UTRUST tokens will provide multiple public opinion when it comes to ICOs advantages, the most relevant being the and cryptocurrencies in general. exemption of platform fees. Moreover, the token will feature a deflationary monetary system that aims to reward If you could give one piece of advice to early supporters. your peers and supporters, regarding succeeding in business, what would that We chose Ethereum due to its popularity advice be? as a widely used smart contract platform. Not only is Ethereum popular, it also has a strong development team behind it. As Mark Cuban once said: “Work like there is someone working 24 hours a day Will users be able to make fiat payto take it away from you.” ments on the platform? Users will be able to pay with cryptocurrencies only. These include Core Magazine

Blockchain News

ICOs are ‘biggest scam ever’ says “Wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort

ordan Belfort, a former Wall Street stockbroker and fraudster who was immortalized by Leonardo Di Caprio in the movie “Wolf of Wall Street” recently stated that Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are the ‘biggest scam ever’ and added that they will blow up in the cryptocurrency community’s face.

the highest order on everyone. Probably 85% of people out there don’t have bad intentions, but the problem is, if five or 10 percent are trying to scam you, it’s a fucking disaster.”

“[ICO] promoters are perpetuating a massive scam of

Belfort, who in the past reportedly agreed with Jamie

He went on to compare the current excitement for ICOs, which sees startups, corporations, and While speaking to the Financial Times, Belfort, individuals participate, to that of 1970s “blind pools” who spent nearly two years in prison for securities where brokerages raised funds from investors, without fraud, stated that ICOs are going to end up wrecking even disclosing how the money would be spent. amateur investors and will “blow up in people’s faces.” Belfort sees ICOs blowing up in such a way, that he even stated they are “far worse” than everything he He notably stated: was ever doing.

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Blockchain News

Dimon when he stated bitcoin was “a fraud” revealed that his comments were aimed at scammers who are trying to use ICOs to manipulate and scam eager investors. He added:

Earlier this year, in an interview with The Street, Jordan revealed that he thinks bitcoin is a fraud because the cryptocurrency isn’t backed by central banks. To him, per the interview, bitcoin isn’t a safe currency as people can steal it from him, and is only backed by “nothing “Everyone and their grandmother wants to jump in other than a program that creates artificial scarcity.” right now. I’m not saying there’s something wrong with The idea, Belfort revealed, is bizarre to him. the idea of cryptocurrencies, or even tulip bulbs. It’s the people who will then get involved and bastardise It’s clear that the Wall Street fraudster won’t be the idea.” buying any bitcoin. Meanwhile, people in countries like Zimbabwe, where the government has failed, are Belfort isn’t a bitcoiner buying bitcoin at nearly twice the global average on the Golix.io exchange. This time, Belfort criticized the current ICO mania, which saw over $3.2 billion raised so far this year Francisco Memoria according to data from CoinSchedule, but the “Wolf Email franciscom@coremedia.info of Wall Street” has in the past attacked bitcoin as well.

We are evolving

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Blockchain News

ICOs banned in South Korea

nitial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are now considered The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) illegal in South Korea according to CNBC and and the Canada Securities Administrators (CSA) local sources. stated in August their intentions to regulate ICO tokens as securities. This lead many ICO projects to The country’s financial regulator, South Korean stop accepting investors from the US, but it wasn’t Financial Services Commission (FSC), announced all bad. It seems Canada legislation was sincere in its today that ICO crowdfunding is now illegal and intention of facilitating and integrating decentralized “stern penalties” will be applied to any institution or ledger technologies in a regulated form, and the way party involved in creating an ICO. was paved for the first legally regulated ICO in Canada, impak Coin (MPK). Shortly after those events the The decision was a resulted of a meeting held today People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced that by the Seoul cryptocurrency task force. Created in participation in ICOs was now deemed illegal. Being July, the taskforce initial purpose was to determine the biggest crypto market of the world, the closing if bitcoin needed regulation but it seems they turned down of China’s crypto token market send rippling their attention to the exponential growing crypto effect felt throughout the crypto community and token market. Considering ICOs as a “violation of the market prices. capital market law,” the ban was justified as a way to prevent financial frauds that are sometimes associated South Korea and Cryptocurrencies with ICOs. Cryptocurrencies are very used and popular in South The FSC also declared that margin trading is now Korea. Hosting the world’s largest Ether market, banned from cryptocurrency exchanges and anti- South Korean Bithumb is one of the top five Bitcoin money laundering (AML/KYC) regulations will be and cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. It looked reinforced. On-site inspections of cryptocurrency obvious that South Korea was one of the markets service providers, like cryptocurrency exchanges, will that had most to gain from the void left by China’s be conducted according to the Korea Communications ICO ban, but it seems it wasn’t destined. Let’s hope Commission and the South Korean Ministry of that South Korean regulators can follow the good Science. examples left behind by Canada, providing flexible legislation and support in regulating ICOs, and Japan, “All kinds of initial coin offerings (ICO) will be where bitcoin is considered a legal payment method banned as trading of virtual currencies needs to be and crypto exchanges are permitted to operate only tightly controlled and monitored.” - South Korean under safe regulations for the clients. Financial Services Commission Nuno Teodoro Governments and ICO Email nunoteodoro@gmail.com The crypto 2.0 space is getting a lot of attention from world governments and financial regulatory entities. 16

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Blockchain News

Dubai is Issuing Its Own State Cryptocurrency

ubai, the largest and most wealthy city in the Dubai and Blockchain United Arab Emirates (UAE), will have its own News of Dubai adopting their own cryptocurrency cryptocurrency. might not come as a big surprise to some of the readers. Dubai is so fond of cryptocurrencies that its The new cryptocurrency, emCash, is the result of a crown prince, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin partnership between Emcredit, a subsidiary of Dubai Rashid Al Maktoum, plans to make Dubai the first Economy, and Object Tech Group Ltd, a UK-based Blockchain-powered city by 2020. blockchain startup. According to Ali Ibrahim, Deputy Director General of Dubai Economy, emCash will Many sectors have already started adopting blockchain be based in the latest blockchain technology and be in order to make this plan a reality. Dubai’s biggest used “for various government and non-government bank, Emirates NBD, will introduce blockchain services, from their daily coffee and children’s school technology into cheques until the end of the year fee to utility charges and money transfers.” in order to minimize fraud. Object Tech Group was also assigned to created digital passports to be used at Emcredit will be responsible for launching emCash the Dubai International Airport, creating the world’s and creating a dedicated wallet, emPay. The first “gateless border”. Even the real estate market company is designing emCash to support contactless has adopted blockchain and you can now buy luxury payments between Dubai citizens, using near- properties with bitcoin. field communication (NFC) protocols, along with solutions for mobile devices. And now, if all goes as planned, Dubai will become the first to adopt a national cryptocurrency. Seeing as In the future, there are plans to enable peer-to- emCash is still in an embrionary stage, it is uncertain peer lending as well as record credit ratings for the how it will be implemented into society. If they blockchain-based currency. Although still unknown, decide to create a private blockchain, it might lose there is a strong probability that emCash blockchain some of the benefits of having a decentralized system, will be private, given that distributed systems like privacy and lack of censorship. But one thing is cannot be controlled or watched by the government. certain, Dubai is a pioneer financial technology hub Emcredit CEO, Muna Al Qassab, comments: and is establishing itself as the blockchain world capital. “Customers can choose between two payment options on the emPay platform – the existing dirham payment or Nuno Teodoro emCash. While the dirham payment goes through normal Email nunoteodoro@gmail.com settlement procedures, intermediaries and costs, emCash payments are settled directly between the user and merchant. emCash thus gives real time value movement and merchants can pass the cost benefit to the emCash holder.” Core Magazine

Blockchain News

Hundreds Attended MOYA ICO Meet-Up In Lagos

oya Networks, the Pan-African company that is set to roll out high-speed internet connection across the African Continent, organized a MeetUp in Lagos on Friday to introduce investors and community members to the upcoming crowdsale (Token Exchange Campaign). Facilitated by Core Media, the event was attended by more than 200 people. Participants were taken through the MOYA Network ICO Whitepaper by Bami Jinadu, a well-known ICO expert in Nigeria. He highlighted how most ICOs are start-ups but unlike MOYA Network which is an already established business and merely introducing the Blockchain dimension.

Nigeria and ICOs Jinadu explained what to look for in an ICO before investing in it. He mentioned features like the team behind the project, Escrow, refund policy among others as some of the things investors should look out for. It is worth mentioning how so many Nigerians have fallen victim to scam coins and fake ICOs. The situation has given crowd sales a bad name in the Africa’s most populous nation with many people reluctant to invest in ICOs.

Bami, however, urged participants to do the necessary due diligence when investing in any ICO, despite “We are all aware how Africa is struggling with a crappy highlighting that “there are a lot of potentials in the internet connection, however, the MOYA business model is MOYA Network business idea.” the solution to this headache,” Bami told the investors, lauding the idea of a continental submarine Cable MOYA Network Business Model internet service. When Afrikanus Kofi Akosah of Core Media took his turn, he explained that MOYA Networks is a Submarine Cable company that will be selling affordable capacity to ISPs, business, and government. Currently, internet service is very expensive in Africa which is also the reason why the speeds are slow and limited. “MOYA Networks will provide high-speed internet capacity at lower prices to African countries,” Afrikanus noted. “MOYA Networks is the only company which has acquired a license from the Africa Coast to Europe Submarine to supply internet service across Africa.” 18

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Blockchain News

He also announced how MOYA Networks is eager to let Africans hold MKT Tokens and are therefore offering 40 percent discount to those who attend the Meet-Up and purchase tokens. Carrey Phillips, CEO of MOYA Networks answered investors questions via Skype. Responding to how MOYA Network will compete at lower prices with established companies like MainOne, MTN and Glo all of which have their own submarine cables landing in Lagos, Carrey stated: “We’ll use new technologies like IP based to deliver lowpriced capacity. There is plenty of space for innovative capacity providers and the requirements are exploding with existing applications and new ones under development.” Frisco d’Anconia Email frisco@coremedia.info

This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project, This space is for my project,

press@coregroup.info

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Blockchain News

Bittrexâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bitshares Bombshell: Bittrex Delists Five Pairs

n October 3rd, Julian Yap of Bittrex stated that the following pairs would be delisted on October 13th: BTC-BTA, BTC-BTS, BTC-DAR, BTC-DRACO and ETH-BTS. The biggest market capped coin being delisted, Bitshares, has come as a huge shock to cryptocurrency community. Bitshares is considered to be one of cryptocurrencies legacy coins; a popular coin, especially in the Chinese

community, that offers a decentralized exchange and a range of pegged assets like BitUSD and BitGOLD. Bitshares market cap, despite the recent trade-off, is sitting at $100 million, but once peaked at $900 million earlier this year. As you can you, according to this graph, transactions increased tenfold for the Bitshares blockchain in the past year.

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Blockchain News

Bittrex, now the largest in volume amongst all alternative cryptocurrencies, is now a significant player to watch with its announcements now making huge impacts. The price, as a result of the news, plummeted dramatically as investors seek to minimise their losses.

The bombshell has sparked an angry mob on Bittrex’s slack and Bitshares Reddit, with hundreds of messages asking for clarity and some kind of statement on why Bitshares is being delisted. As per usual with all delistings, Bittrex has failed to comment on why Bitshares is being delisted. Theories abound as to why Bitshares was delisted, with no clear violation of Bittrex’s removal policy. One such theory is circulating as a possible reason.

However, the main reason for such delistings is most likely new regulatory rules forced on centralized exchanges. As Bittrex is based in the US, it must abide by new SEC guidelines. Any cryptocurrencies that are close to being labeled a security may now come under fire and authorities may force centralized exchanges hands to remove those coins. The clearest evidence of this comes from Sigwo of Darcrus, another coin being delisted, who stated, 22

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“Well, Bittrex didn’t notify me they were delisting Darcrus today. We were asked to provide courses of action and we were supposed to discuss today. I see Bittrex decided...It was not for volume. The question came because of their lawyers and the buyback and burn program portion of projects. Other projects that have this structure are also under scrutiny.”

Blockchain News

Although Bitshares do not do buybacks, it is interesting to see that Bittrex were influenced by their lawyers to question certain projects and their practices. The current news of the Bitshares delisting comes as a shock to the whole cryptocurrency community as all projects look inwards to see if their project might be labeled a security. Time will time if this is the beginning of a surge of delistings from Bittrex and other high-volume exchanges. However, what is clear is that the current centralized exchanges we have at present won’t cut it in terms of protecting our right to trade freely. What is needed is a pure decentralized exchange. A decentralized exchange would allow users to trade freely without the fear of their coin being delisted from the exchange.

news of delistings, hacks, and closures forced by governments, the need for decentralized exchanges is becoming ever more important. While there are some decentralized exchanges, like EtherDelta, the WAVES Decentralised Exchange, the NXT Asset Exchange and BitShares Asset Exchange, these exchanges only are decentralized within their own blockchain, meaning, they must use proxy tokens to trade with other cryptocurrencies. This is a good temporary solution, however, the Komodo team has developed a way to trade from blockchain to blockchain without a medium of exchange. This is done by atomic cross-chain swaps. As Komodo’s technology is revealed in the future, we may see such delistings in the future as less important as atomic cross-chain trading will become the norm.

The need for a decentralized exchange has 3rdstryker always been important, but with the recent Email 3rdstryker@coremedia.info



Love your home, care for life, get cryptocurrencies, have fun! Core Magazine

Blockchain News

After a $230 Million ICO, The Tezos Project is Entangled In Bitter Legal Dispute

nly three months have passed since the Tezos Project finished their record.breaking Initial Coin Offering (ICO) with a $232 million result. Even after their widely praised ICO success, the revered Tezos project leaders are burdened by a heated dispute, according to a recent report by Reuters. The Tezos’ founders, Arthur and Kathleen Breitman are in a battle against Johann Gevers, the president of the Swiss foundation whose role was to manage the Tezos ICO and to assist in the development and promotion of the Tezos network. The foundation that Gevers runs has only 3 board members, including himself. The letter that the Breitmans sent went not only to Gevers but also to his 2 other board members.

increase in the price of Bitcoin and Ether. Now, the Breitmans, who are still in control of the source code through a company based in Delaware, have taken action to get Gevers out of the picture. An attorney for the Breitmans sent shocks through the foundation when a 46-page letter was delivered on Sunday to the two other members of the three person board at the foundation. The letter demanded an immediate removal of John Gevers and requests a more of a “substantial role” to be assigned to Arthur and Kathleen Breitman. They propose a restructure that would impose limitations in the responsibilities of the foundation. The 46page document includes pointed comments accusing Gevers of “self-dealing, self-promotion and conflicts of interest”.

According to Swiss law, Gevers should operate his foundation independently. Even so, the foundation is holding all the funds from the ICO, which grew to Gevers told Reuters he will not step down. over $400 million in value thanks to the accentuated 24

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Blockchain News

“As Arthur has done to others before me, this is an attempted character assassination.It’s a long laundry list of misleading statements and outright lies.” Johann Gevers commented

recognizes governance as one of the main selling points for the Tezos ICO, the recent situation can be seen as highly ironic, given that the project itself is already having governance issues prior to the launch of the actual blockchain.

Gevers also said his own board was acting illegally by asking him to step aside for a month while they Disturbing Details: Donations VS Investments investigate. The fundraiser’s terms, which all participants were In response to these shocking developments, Gevers made to agree to before sending any money called informed Reuters that he has filed a complaint with their contributions “a non-refundable donation” and Swiss regulators about the email request he received not a “speculative investment”. Clearly this could mean asking him to step aside. Reuters reports increase the disastrous results for those hoping to turn a profit if discomfort, saying: things crumble at the Tezos virtual palace. “A spokesman for Switzerland’s Federal Department of Home Affairs, which oversees the agency that supervises foundations, told Reuters that asking a board member to step aside must be done at a board meeting, not via email.”

If contributions are deemed a donation, instead of an investment, the money raised might not fall under jurisdiction of financial regulators in the United States. This means that people who contributed may be turned away, their funds gone, without recourse if Gevers emphasized how the Breitmans are trying to the situation escalates. take control over the foundation as if it was their own private entity. He further asserts that the Breitmans are Other Business Activities attempting to bypass the foundation’s legal structure, and interfering with management and operational The U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority day to day work resulting in costly delays in finishing (FINRA) mandates registered securities professionals the Tezos project for a much awaited launch of their to provide notice expressed in writing to their employer actual product. if they conduct outside business activities when there is “reasonable expectation of compensation.” According “They’re unnecessarily putting the project at risk,” Gevers to FINRA records, Breitman was registered at the said. same time as writing his Tezos white paper as it was released in 2015 that outlined a specific salary for In a written statement received by Reuters, the Breitman- which he did not report as “other business Breitmans repeated the accusations found in the legal activities.” His employer at the time was Morgan letter Gevers received. Stanley who declined to comment. They stated that their priority “remains the successful For the Tezos empire, it is disappointing that what launch of the Tezos network.” appears to be a flare up of personality conflicts at the top of the leadership tower may ultimately sink the The launching of the Tezos network along with its ship. Scrutiny continues, undoubtedly. coin release, has been delayed without a rescheduled date on the calendar. Tezos contributors are still Lorilikes empty handed, and although it comes as a painfully Email lorilikes@coremedia.info suspenseful blow, contributors agreed to terms of use during the Tezos initial coin offering where it is plainly written that there’s no guarantee that the ICO participants will ever get a single token. Despite the bitter actions against him, Gevers stays committed to resolving the squabble. When one Core Magazine

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National Cryptocurrencies: Fiat in disguise

ational cryptocurrencies seem to be a new trend in 2017 with more and more countries joining the hype train and announcing their plans to issue a blockchain-based national currency. Among these, we have seen Singapore announce the completion of the first stage of its Singapore dollar (SGD) tokenization on the Ethereum blockchain. We have also seen announcements from Dubai and Russia, among many others.

cryptocurrency different from a regular fiat currency. To start, cryptocurrencies are issued by a decentralized network miners who follow a predetermined issuing schedule regardless of outside influences. This same decentralized nature ensures that transactions cannot be censored or reversed. Moreover, with cryptocurrencies, we also get to choose our level of privacy. Bitcoin allows our transactions to be fully verifiable and transparent, while coins like Zcash give users the ability to hide every detail about a transaction. This power of choice allows cryptocurrencies to be used on many levels. Charity institutions, for example, can leverage bitcoin to provide a transparent record of donations. On the other hand, a merchant can choose to use Zcash in order to hide their transactions from competitors.

The overall reactions from the media and crypto community have been positive. While some even look at these recent news as a victory for blockchain technology and Bitcoin itself, the prospect of tokenized or blockchain-based national currencies is a scary one at best. Not that blockchain-based national currencies themselves are a bad idea, but to have these currencies issued and controlled by the same institutions they should be replacing, is. So, how would a national cryptocurrency differ from regular cryptocurrencies? Well, letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s start with the So, why are these national blockchain currencies most important factor: issuance. Unlike Bitcoin, a so bad? Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s start by defining what makes a government-issued cryptocurrency would mean that 26

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issuance is controlled by a centralized institution. This would make the cryptocurrency as prone to inflation as any fiat currency is. Even if a specific issuance schedule is defined in the code, in a private blockchain system, this rule can be changed at will. This same centralized structure would also allow governments and financial institutions to control transactions at will, reversing and censoring them according to their preference. This is the same issue that made Wikileaks adopt Bitcoin donations in the first place, a move that led to the best possible outcome. One of the most problematic prospects when discussing the possibility of a blockchain-based national currency is surveillance. Although there haven’t been many details regarding how these blockchain fiat currencies will work, we assume that wallet creation will not be an open feature. Users will most likely have to associate their wallet account with their private information.

This means that governments and banks would be able to track every transaction made, especially if these fiat cryptocurrencies replace physical cash which is currently the only anonymous payment method available apart from cryptocurrencies. We feel that this is the biggest threat when discussing this topic. Not only would governments have access to an extremely efficient tracking mechanism (the blockchain), they would have it under the guise of “cryptocurrency”, a concept associated with freedom and privacy. This is misleading and, to an extent, fraudulent. So, what we left with? A currency where inflation is still possible and where transactions can be censored, reversed and watched. Does it sound familiar? That’s because it is. A blockchain-based national cryptocurrency is nothing more than fiat with a new jacket and a fake mustache. @Kanoptx

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Bitcoin Cash Community Set “Smooth Hard Fork” for November 13

n November 13, 2017, the Bitcoin Cash (BCC) network will hard fork to make a few performance adjustments, according to Bitprim’s Juan Garavaglia. The goal is to fix the network’s Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm (DAA) and tests are already being conducted.

being mined every minute, or every few hours. This is not what users want. Also, Bitcoin Cash is now thousands of blocks ahead of Bitcoin and it is screwing up the coin issuance schedule.”

So far, no alternative algorithm has been chosen, but Garavaglia and the Bitcoin ABC team are searching The hard fork is reportedly going to be a smooth one for one, while testing proposals from developers such as Garavaglia assures that it has support and is only as Tom Harding, Neil Booth, and Amaury Séchet. meant to upgrade the protocol, unlike the hard fork Although an algorithm hasn’t been chosen yet, the that led to Bitcoin Cash’s creation in August. team is confident on having an answer that can be successfully implemented on November 13. The network’s DAA, per Garavaglia, allows difficulty to adjust faster than every 2016 blocks if miners are According to Garavaglia’s comments on Bitcoin.com, unable to find blocks in a timely manner. Its original the fork has been under discussion for a while, and goal was to help BCC survive as a minority chain, the timing has nothing to do with the approaching Garavaglia said. SegWit2x hard fork on the Bitcoin network. Moreover, he detailed that extreme amounts of hashpower were Now, however, the algorithm’s effects are leading to being added to tested algorithms to see how difficulty a miner “gold rush” whenever mining difficulty drops, adjusts in these scenarios. which then makes it rise as quickly as it fell. While speaking to Bitsonline, Garavaglia explained: Community’s reaction “So we have this situation of extremes where blocks are It’s been noted that the development team working on 28

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Bitcoin Cash is in contact with miners and exchanges, to ensure a smooth hard fork. Forum discussions across the Bitcoin Cash community also point to a consensus, as most BCC supporters were already asking for a solution to the protocolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s difficulty algorithm. The DAA has been a serious problem for Bitcoin Cash, so much so that various individuals point to

it as a priority. Garavaglia noted that so far every algorithm being tested has been performing better than the current DAA. Wences Cesares, a member of PayPalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s board of directors and the CEO of bitcoin wallet Xapo, has also pointed to an incredibly high number: $1 million in 5-10 years, while speaking at the Consensus 2017 conference in New York.

Who will win the race? Litecoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Neo, Monero, IOTA, Qtum, Cardano, Zcash, Stratis, Waves, Komodo, SmartCash, Ardor, Decred, PIVX................

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Hackers Made $63,000 Mining Monero Exploiting Unpatched Windows Servers

s previously covered by Core Media, malicious actors are increasingly using cryptocurrency miners to get paid using computer resources of other people’s machines. This year, over 1.65 million computers were infected with crypto miners, while in 2013 the number of infections was of 205,000. Recently, according to a report published by Slovakian security software firm ESET, hackers have been found to have infected hundreds of Windows serves with a cryptocurrency miner, and managed to make over $63,000 in Monero over three months. According to ESET, the infected machines were in Thailand, Germany, Taiwan, and Morocco, among other countries. These were running Windows Server 2003 and, as such, the hackers managed to exploit them using relatively unsophisticated attacks. In fact, the firm’s report points to widely available techniques, and simple modifications done to opensource software.

mining botnet on May 26, with several waves of attacks being conducted until September 1. The botnet, according to Quartz, is currently performing very little mining activity, which researchers say is typical behavior before more attacks are launched. Using people’s CPUs to mine Monero Earlier this month, Core Media covered the Pirate Bay’s Monero mining experiment, in which the piracy website ran a cryptocurrency miner that used visitors’ computer resource to mine Monero as a way to experiment alternative revenue sources. More recently, CBS-owned Showtime websites – Showtime.com and Showtimeanytime.com – were found running similar Monero mining code without telling its users about it. Who put the code on the websites isn’t clear, but someone made money off of it, and involved companies refused to comment.

Hackers mine Monero because it allows them to To create a Monero mining botnet, the hackers get away with it, as transactions are completely exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft IIS 6.0, a type anonymous and the cryptocurrency uses proofof web server software, that was discovered in March. of-work algorithm called CryptoNight, which Unpatched machines didn’t close the loophole and, as allows them to make a profit while mining the such, remain vulnerable. ESET’s researchers wrote: cryptocurrency using people’s CPUs. “This vulnerability is especially susceptible to exploitation, Francisco Memoria since it’s located in a webserver service, which in most Email franciscom@coremedia.info cases is meant to be visible from the internet and therefore can be easily accessed and exploited by anyone” Researchers said they first observed the Monero Core Magazine

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CBS-Owned Showtime Websites Caught Using Visitor’s CPUs to Mine Monero

ecently, Core Media covered The Pirate Bay’s Monero (XMR) mining experiment, in which the piracy website ran a cryptocurrency miner that took advantage of visitors’ computer resources to mine the privacy-centric cryptocurrency Monero, as a way to experiment alternative revenue sources and, eventually, get rid of ads on the website. Now, it’s been found that CBS-owned Showtime websites – Showtime.com and Showtimeanytime. com – secretly ran similar Monero mining code without notifying users about it, just like The Pirate Bay. In fact, both scripts were written by Coinhive, a legitimate website that offers webmasters JavaScript they can add to their pages to mine the cryptocurrency.

Another possibility is that Showtime’s systems were compromised and, in an attempt to make money off of it, the hacker simply added the Monero mining code and tried to blame someone else using the HTML comment tags.

Notably, however, Showtime websites charge users a subscription fee if they want access to their content, which includes original programming, Hollywood movies, and sports. As such, these don’t even need to add ads to their content, let alone run a Monero miner that, according to reports, consumed as much as 60 percent of visitors’ CPU capacity.

Companies refuse to comment

As soon as news outlets started reporting on the hidden code, Showtime websites quickly removed it. According to a Twitter user, the code was placed between HTML comment tags that seemingly point to web analytics firm New Relic. Given that CBS had no reason to run the miner, it’s possible that a rogue agent placed the code on the website without both New Relic and CBS being aware of it.

New Relic did comment on the situation but didn’t add a lot of information. When The Register reached out, New Relic’s Andrew Schmitt stated that security is taken extremely seriously, and added:

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When contacted by Gizmodo and The Register, both Showtime and New Relic tried not to comment on the situation. After being pressed by Gizmodo, a Showtime spokesperson bluntly replied that the company declined to comment.

“Upon reviewing our products and code, the HTML comments shown in the screenshot that are referencing newrelic were not injected by New Relic’s agents. It

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appears they were added to the website by its developers.â&#x20AC;?

As covered by Core Media, malicious actors are increasingly trying to mine cryptocurrencies at other Coinhive, protecting the privacy of its users, only peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s expense, as over 1.65 million computers were stated that a personal email address was used to set up infected with crypto miners this year, while in 2013 the account the code belonged to, fueling the theory the number of infections was of 205,000. that a malicious hacker compromised Showtime and added the code. Francisco Memoria Email franciscom@coremedia.info

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Hydrominer: Eco Friendly Crypto Mining Facility In Austria

ining cryptocurrencies can be a very profitable operation, especially if one was to get access to cheap electricity. That is the case of China, where most of mining operations are located and where roughly 60% of bitcoin mining occurs. Although recent developments might force mining pools to close or change geographically, currently four of the five biggest bitcoin mining pools are located in China.

renewable energy, in this case hydro power, in order to power their mining facility. Not only is hydro-based mining ecologically friendly, especially if compared to the coal fuelled mining operations in China, it is also very profitable, allowing for an 85% reduction in electricity costs when compared to the average price in Europe.

In order to power the operation, mining equipment The centralization of mining poses a big threat to the will be put inside sea freight containers which will decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies, seeing as be near the hydropower stations. The water is not miners have the power to group together and make only used to power but also for cooling the mining decisions for the whole network. However, this might equipment (maintaining lower temperatures is not even be the biggest problem. Due to the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s essential for prolonging mining equipment lifespan laxed environmental policies, mining in China has a and also may also help reduce energy costs). detrimental impact on the environment. In an effort to reduce the harmful effects of mining on our world, HydroMinerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s focus is on GPU mining and its plan a project named HydroMiner is working on providing is to mine Ethereum (40%), Ethereum Classic (20%), a more environmentally-friendly solution. Zcash (20%), and Siacoin and other cryptocurrencies (20%). But this is only an estimate, seeing has the HydroMiner is a cryptocurrency mining company decision as to what cryptocurrency to mine is made by located in the Alpine region of Europe. What software algorithms. The algorithm will choose which distinguishes them from the rest is the fact they use cryptocurrency is more profitable to mine at any given 36

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moment and HydroMiner will also be flexible about ambitious plans for the future: what mining pool it chooses to join, depending on factors like payouts and liquidity. “We want to expand to at least 20 Containers within the next 12 months, our goal is to be one of the biggest miners The token sale for H2O, the HydroMiner crypto in Europe, using environmentally friendly energy.” token, will start on the 18th of October following a successful pre-sale that ended in just 36 minutes. This HydroMiner has rented its second power station in token allows its holders to receive the profits from said Austria and plans on renting the third one until the mining operations. end of the year. Conclusion “The wide interest in our project is stunning, a lot of people would like to see the crypto world build upon an Bitcoin and Ethereum mining are now consuming as environmentally friendly form of mining.” - Nadine much energy as entire nations. And as cryptocurrency Damblon, HydroMiner CEO mining continues to thrive as an industry, the need for green energy powered mining is crucial. Hydro Most of the proceeds of the token sale will be used power is an excellent option between renewable to buy hardware, equip containers and rent new energy resources. It is most effective, natural, and hydropower stations. Profits from the HydroMiner environmentally friendly. Not only that, it is also a very facilities will be distributed between investors (80%), simple and easily controllable technology. Let’s hope the team (10%), and token buy-backs (10%). more projects like HydroMiner take steps toward more environmentally conscious mining. The project now counts with several members but it was co-founded by the two Damblon sisters. In Nuno Teodoro a recent interview, Nadine Damblon stated their Email nunoteodoro@gmail.com

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Crimean Government Employees Fired for Mining Bitcoin Using State-Owned Computers

ccording to a report from Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, two Crimean government employees were recently fired for using state-owned computers to mine bitcoin. The employees were the head of the IT department under Crimea’s Council of Ministers, and the head of that same department’s technical support and hardware division.

future. He stated:

Reportedly, the Crimean government employees installed “malicious software” on the government’s server, and used over a dozen computers to mine bitcoin. At a press conference in Sevastopol, chairman of the Anti-Corruption committee of the Republic of Crimea, Alexander Akshatin, announced that the two employees that got caught mining the cryptocurrency had now been fired.

Other crypto mining schemes The cryptocurrency ecosystem’s value surged this year and, as such, cryptocurrency mining schemes are on the rise, as bad actors are trying to make a few bucks off of other people’s systems.

“They thought that there was nothing wrong with that. But if we were not on the alert and some limited information went through this channel, you understand the extent to which this could all turn out. Fortunately, this did not happen.”

Earlier this year, a computer systems manager at New York City’s Department of Education (DOE) was fired for mining bitcoin with the DOE’s computers, Akshatin further revealed that his committee and according to a disposition. As recently covered by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) managed Core Media, a group of hackers made $63,000 to catch the two employees before they managed mining Monero using unpatched Windows servers, to cash out their earnings, which according to the and this year over 1.65 million computers have been chairman were “less than one bitcoin.” He added that infected with cryptocurrency miners. the employees used state-owned computers to mine bitcoin earlier this year, stating it was: “in February- CBS-owned showtime websites – Showtime.com and March 2017, a bitcoin was $1800, now it costs $4000. Showtimeanytime.com – were recently targeted with Even half a bitcoin is some money.” a so-called “malvertising” attack, in which someone implemented Monero mining code in them, so that Notably, Akshatin claimed that if it was known it would use visitors’ CPUs to mine Monero using government employees were mining crypto using Coinhive. state-owned equipment, others would do the same and, as such, he had to dismiss the two who mined in Francisco Memoria order to deter anyone from attempting to do so in the Email franciscom@coremedia.info 38

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Cloudflare Is Cracking Down on Websites Using Visitor’s CPUs to Mine Monero

ontent delivery network and internet domain provider Cloudflare recently banned a torrent website for using a cryptocurrency miner that used visitor’s CPUs to mine Monero (XMR) in an attempt to monetize the platform, making it clear the company is now cracking down on websites who use cryptocurrency miners without giving users a choice. Cryptocurrency miners are now being used thanks to the code provided by Coinhive, as an alternative to displaying ads or asking for bitcoin donations. The Pirate Bay quietly added the JavaScript code to its main site, which turned out to be a controversial move as some users didn’t appreciate not being warned about it.

News about Cloudflare’s crackdown on websites using the miner came to light recently, as the admin of torrent site ProxyBunker told TorrentFreak that the company had removed all its relevant domains due to the use of a hidden Monero miner in its code. ProxyBunker is a site that links to several domains that offer proxy services for piracy-related websites, such as The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents, Torrentz2, and more. It initially tested the Monero miner for four days without anything happening, and then officially it on October 1. Two days later, Cloudflare abruptly ended the experiment by deleting the site’s domains. “Late last night, all our domains got deleted off Cloudflare without warning so I emailed Cloudflare to ask what

was going on,” ProxyBunker’s admin explained. Cloudflare cited possible terms of service violation to ban the domains, without pointing out the actual violation. ProxyBunker’s admin wasn’t happy with the explanation, and contacted Cloudflare about the ban. Justin Paine, the head of trust and safety at the CDN provider, replied and explained that, given that users didn’t have a choice, it was considered malware: “Multiple domains in your account were injecting Coinhive mining code without notifying users. ... We consider this to be malware, and as such, the account was suspended, and all domains removed from Cloudflare.” ProxyBunker’s admin attempted to explain users could opt out but Cloudflare maintained its position until the torrent site’s admin agreed to remove the miner in order to be reinstate. He was, however, warned that if similar activity is discovered on his account again, it will be permanently blocked. Other mining schemes using Coinhive’s code have been recently reported. Notably, CBS-owned Showtime websites briefly ran a Monero miner, in what is believed to have been a “malvertising” attack. More recently, hackers managed to make $63,000 in the cryptocurrency by exploiting unpatched Windows servers. Francisco Memoria Email franciscom@coremedia.info Core Magazine

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Hackers Use Organizations’ Amazon Cloud Computer Resources to Mine Bitcoin

ccording to a recent report by security intelligence didn’t think hackers would be targeting them. The group RedLock, hackers managed to break into companies were notified by RedLock. Amazon Web Services (AWS) servers and, once they did, they used their access to execute a cryptocurrency Cryptocurrency mining craze mining command to mine bitcoin. This is just the latest case of bad actors trying to use The hackers managed to gain access to Amazon’s other people’s resources to mine a cryptocurrency. cloud servers after discovering that the administration Recently, as reported by Core Media, two Crimean consoles of some organizations weren’t password government employees were fired for mining bitcoin protected. RedLock’s report pointed to a command using state-owned computers. using a Google-created, open-source technology whose goal is to make writing apps for the cloud Moreover, a group of hackers made $63,000 mining easier, Kubernetes. It reads: Monero (XMR) using unpatched Windows servers, and CBS-owned showtime websites – Showtime.com “Upon deeper analysis, the team discovered that hackers and Showtimeanytime.com – were recently targeted were executing a Bitcoin mining 2command from one of with a “malvertising” attack, in which someone the Kubernetes containers. The instance had effectively implemented Monero mining code to use visitors’ been turned into a parasitic bot that was performing CPUs to mine the cryptocurrency. nefarious activity over the internet.” The mining craze has been fueled by this year’s Usually, hackers attempt to slip into corporate servers cryptocurrency market capitalization boom, as it to steal data, that they then on the dark web, or give reached a $150 billion sum, with bitcoin itself having to state-actors looking for intel. Notably, the affected a $76 billion market cap, as each coin is trading at companies were multi-billion dollar businesses, Aviva $4,611.66 at press time, according to data from and Gemalto, so using their servers to mine bitcoin is, Cryptocompare. at best, odd. Francisco Memoria The breach was discovered along with hundreds of Email franciscom@coremedia.info other administration consoles unlocked across AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. These were likely the result of careless system administrators who

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Can cryptocurrency mining replace online advertising?

ecently, Pirate Bay and CBS Showtime websites were found mining the Monero (XMR) cryptocurrency. This initiative hijacks the userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s CPU processing power in order to generate revenue as an alternative income source to online advertising.

In order to disable the miner, one could block the minerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s URL through an ad-blocker extension. Another alternative is simply disabling Javascript on the browser, although this option can lead to many features on the websites at hand not working properly.

The experiments didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t last much as both websites have already removed the miner. Pirate Bay only ran the miner for about 24 hours and, according to TorrentFreak, only on the search results and category listing pages. In the case of CBS Showtime, which charges users for their content, there is a theory that a malicious hacker compromised Showtime and added the code.

Can cryptocurrency mining replace online advertising?

Coinhive is currently the only service providing in-browser cryptocurrency mining. Using the miner is fairly easy for the webmaster as they only need to register an account and embed some lines of code into the desired pages. The use of this miner comes at a cost, according The code run on both websites is provided by to coinhive page the webmaster will earn 70% Coinhive, a legitimate service that offers the of the XMR payout while they keep 30% for possibility to webmasters to run Javascript based service operating costs and profit. miner onto their pages to generate revenue that is shared between both parties. As an alternative webmasters could compile the mining algorithm for the browser to 42

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avoid splitting profits. For the less savvywebmasters, however, Coinhive seems to offer a fair deal as they give out the majority of profits while providing a stable service.

Although the cryptocurrency miner alternative is far less intrusive and even unnoticeable depending on the kind of hardware the user has, it is still possible for problems to arise if too many resources of According to BBC report many websites the computer are used. This could possibly were found running the coinhive miner damage the user hardware as it will degrade without the websites owners permission, this faster the more it is used. is suspected to be an attack from hackers onto this websites. When asked about the We can consider the following scenario for malicious use of its code, coinhive replied: XMR mining: A streaming website with 100.000 visits per day, each visitor with an “We had a few early users that implemented the average of 10h/s, each visit with an average script on sites they previously hacked, without the of 1h duration that would give a network site owner’s knowledge,” it said in a message to the with an hashing power of ~42Kh/s which at BBC. “We have banned several of these accounts current difficulty and considering no costs and will continue to do so when we learn about with electricity as the users are supporting the such cases.” power of the machines is a profit of around ~2000$ per month. The use of miners is already known for spiking the resource usage which leads to user It is worth noting that this could only be a complaints. Although this was true for both viable alternative to online ads into websites cases, it is possible to throttle the amount of with a high visit time, like streaming websites, resources the miner uses in order to make it as the miner is only working if the user has the run smoother on the machine. website open into the browser. For instance, in news websites where the user quickly reads Reaching some sort of balance, cryptocurrency the content and closes the website, the profits miners could be a viable solution as they are would be slim to none. far less intrusive than online ads which are often excessive and flashy, leading to a poor If conducted in an explicit manner and with user experience and an increase in bandwidth enough throttle, the web miner could be well use. We asked Bisola Asolo, founder of received as much of the processing power Mycryptopedia what he thought about crypto goes unused when browsing the web and the mining as an alternative revenue source for user wouldn’t be bothered by sparing some websites. He stated: processing cycles in order to avoid the wellknown online ads that we’ve grown to despise “I personally think in-browser cryptocurrency over the years. mining is very practical alternative to online advertising. As long as users were made @Knoptx completely aware and agreed to it, then I don’t see the problem.”

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Know our Core Group Asset Blockchain: Waves Total supply 1,000,000

their market price and destroyed, reducing the total supply of tokens and creating demand through the purchase.

The tokens that were initially sold in batches on NXT platform were used both to fund the current levels of ventures and crypto asset portfolio. Last price offered was equal to $4 at the moment of migration. Issuer will never sell the tokens any lower.

The CORE buy-back and burn program will see 50% of the revenue created by the Core Group ventures used to buy back and destroy tokens publicly. Income generated is considered to be revenue once it outweighs the current expenses of the enterprise.

Current numbers: • 576,712 Tokens in Public Circulation • 194,101 Team Fund for partnerships, business development, campaigns, bounties, airdrops • 134,383 Tokens Available for sale and future asset portfolio, ventures growth • 93,435 Unswapped Tokens from NXT platform • Burned 1,369

Token Details CORE token is useful and acts as wealth storage at the same time:

1. All media services can be paid in CORE tokens at a discount. 2. Secure Vault silver coin pre orders and purchases are available by CORE token ownership on Waves Platform * Unswapped tokens will be reserved for latecomers 3. 50% of profits from all media ventures will be used till the end of the year 2017. On first of January 2018 to market buy and burn each month, reducing all unswapped tokens will be burnt on the Waves supply and making the token more valuable. blockchain, effectively reducing supply. From January 4. The Token is backed by our asset-portfolio and 2018 we will also make an effort to be listed on 75% of profits made from it, now and in the future traditional exchanges. will be used to market buy and burn each month, reducing supply and making token more valuable. The Core Group (CORE) token is a key aspect of Value of asset portfolio on 01.09.2017 ~600,000 $ the Core Group organization. Its purpose is simple, it allows the holders to be part of our enterprise, reaping We have chosen Waves platform because it is simple, the benefits through a buy-back & burn program. easy to understand and for use by everyone. It offers powerful features like instant, decentralized asset-toThe Buy-back & Burn program is an increasingly asset exchanges whilst being focused on innovative popular alternative, more legally friendly to “dividends” developments of technology at the same time. We in the cryptosphere. Instead of distributing revenue believe all these things are very important to meet throughout holders, shares are market bought back at with mainstream adoption in the end. 44

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Monaize: First Atomic Swap Made Ahead of dICO

he clock is counting down for the first dICO (decentralized Initial Coin Offering), a milestone in cryptocurrency history. The Komodo platform will be hosting the Monaize dICO; Monaize being a new age banking platform that will allow companies and freelancers to manage all their banking needs on their mobile phone. Ahead of the dICO, the Komodo team has been at work preparing behind the scenes. As of yesterday, the very first atomic swap using the Monaize token was completed. According to JL777, “The first MNZ atomic swap just completed. If you look at the timestamps, you will find out some interesting things.” The timestamps are available here. These atomic swaps will be the method in which users will invest in the dICO on November 10. Polycryptoblog, Komodo’s community manager, had this to say about the first MNZ atomic swap: “The Monaize dICO launched on the Komodo Platform revolutionizes many previously centralized features found in cryptocurrency, from decentralizing the exchange, allowing participants to get involved privately through a decentralized mixer and the use of cross chain atomic swaps to decentralize the liquidity offered to a new altcoin. The first atomic swap of MNZ is another milestone bringing us one step closer to the finishing line.”

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After the first swap was made, other Komodo staff were able to replicate the swap. While the speed of the swaps may differ with each userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s internet speed, the average is just over 30 seconds. Furthermore, JL777 also added code into the dICO that allows tokens purchased using KMD to get a discount at 20%. Centralised ICOs, hosted on a website, are usually sent to ICOs investors manually or distributed via Ethereum smart contracts. The difference here is that the discount for early bird investors is within the code for the atomic swaps itself.

The biggest challenge, however, is the Graphic User Interface (GUI) which needs to be ready for the upcoming dICO. According to JL777, the current GUI is doing successful atomic swaps. The GUI for the test dICO will be available in the superNET slack once it is ready. While the GUI is set to be ready before the November 10, there are jobs still available within the Komodo camp for more GUI developers for other parts of the Komodo ecosystem.

While there is still much work to be done before the deadline, the Komodo team are confident the dICO According to JL777, lead developer of the Komodo will be ready in time. If all is successful, we will project, the building blocks for the first dICO are on see the very first dICO in cryptocurrency history. schedule. In fact, next week the Komodo team will Even as a spectator, this is very exciting, for it may be conducting a test dICO in order to ensure the well give us a glimpse into the future of ICOs and dICO will run smoothly. In order to test the system, cryptocurrencies in general. users will be encouraged to buy as much MNZ as possible. The idea behind this is to find and fix issues 3rdstryker and ensure whale investors cannot game the system. Email 3rdstryker@coremedia.info The users that buy the most MNZ in the test dICO will receive 1 BTC for their efforts, collectively.

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Suprenet News

SuperNET Asset Migrates To Komodo Blockchain With First Revenue Sharing Dividend Announced

he Komodo team has recently announced that the SuperNET assets sitting on the NXT blockchain will now be migrated to the Komodo blockchain. The announcement comes as great news for the longtime serving veterans of Komodo as the assets have been lying idle on the NXT blockchain for quite some time.

NXTcoinsco, sharkfund0, crypto777, jl777hodl, pangea, privatebet and MGW.

The above 10 will be swapped to the corresponding KMD asset chains. In order to redeem, transfer the asset to the SuperNET account NXT-MRBN8DFH-PFMK-A4DBM with a permanent message that has the KMD format address they JL777, lead developer for the Komodo Platform, want the asset chain coins sent to. The transfers will stated, be processed prior to any dividends that are sent out, which means if you don’t transfer before the payout “It is time, finally to start the asset migration from date, you will miss out on that payout. However, I NXT. The following are the KMD asset chains cannot promise any specific date for the conversion, that correspond to NXT assets: only that if you do the above asset transfer before payouts, you won’t miss any payouts.” SuperNET, NXTprivacy, InstantDEX, Core Magazine

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venture holders. Also announced was the very first revenue sharing dividend which is scheduled for December. The first payout will move through crypto777; a total of 50 BTC. 12 BTC will move through the superNET asset. All of the superNET assets above are claims to future revenue for particular parts of the Komodo ecosystem. Komodo has many projects lined up, including a decentralized atomic swap exchange named BarterDEX, a mixer named Jumblr and decentralized poker named Pangea Poker to name a few. All of this technology will gain revenue and as a result of holding that asset, holders receive dividends. The main asset is named â&#x20AC;&#x153;superNETâ&#x20AC;?; an asset that embodies a little bit of all Komodo The migration will complete the separation from the NXT blockchain, a process which began well before products future revenues. While all the components NXT moved resources towards their new project, of superNET may confuse the average user, the ARDOR. After the ARDOR announcement, NXT superNET asset is a one-stop shop that covers the has been steadily declining in value relative to other whole platform. If, however, the present reader wishes projects due to the lack of support for the blockchain. to find information on these assets, all the information Because of this, the decentralized exchange on the is available on the NXT forums (keeping in mind this NXT blockchain has very little volume apart from information may be old) and the superNET website. ARDOR and SuperNET assets. The migration to the Additional good news in the Komodo camp, on top Komodo platform was inevitable. of hasty progress on the BarterDEX and preparations The asset transfers will be only available until March for the first dICO (Monaize), Komodo has just been 1st, 2018; a small time period due to the lack of added to the new South Korean exchange UPbit. support for the NXT blockchain. It is strongly advised Currently, there is a KMD/BTC market which is to swap before the due by date as there is no assurance currently trading, as well as an upcoming fiat pair any assets left on the NXT blockchain will hold any for the South Korean Won. This news is significant because the South Korean market is debatably the value at all. biggest in the world at the current moment. SuperNETx2 holders will receive 1 SuperNET asset as well as 1 REVS asset. Furthermore, the assets that 3rdstryker back NXTventure will be distributed to all NXT Email 3rdstryker@coremedia.info 48

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John McAfee Predicted Highest Bitcoin Value 24 Hours Before It Happened On Crypto Core Blockchain News

rue to his unpredictable, party-animal image he confirmed willingness to talk with us, however his actual appointment time was never scheduled in stone- so he left a salivating audience of crypto enthusiasts wondering “When?”. When McAfee called into the number that was provided, our host Lootz wasn’t expecting the call- it was a day past the initial time we had been aiming for. The Crypto Core Radio host was relaxing into an afternoon siesta, when his nap was interrupted by the ring of his telephone. Naturally when Lootz answered the phone, mid-afternoon on a Wednesday, the voice of John McAfee didn’t ring the familiar bell, because he asked for Lori- that’s me, I had invited him to speak on the show. McAfee was told he dialed the

wrong number, because Lootz and I are certainly not roommates. The phone rang again. This time the fog was lifting for Lootz and it dawned on him that John McAfee was on the phone and he quickly snapped out of sleepy mode and as calmly as possible he asked McAfee to hold a moment. McAfee had previously expressed his willingness to speak to us only if we used his preferred communication methods, due to security concerns. The request created a unique circumstance even for Lootz who has 25 years experience in broadcast. Fortunately, Lootz had been testing his equipment for the occasion just one day before and he was able to begin recording the impromptu conversation with THE John McAfee- the most popular name in crypto Core Magazine

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and the world famous name in mainstream computer than any sort of reality. These are all temporary. As virus protection. bitcoin grows larger the ability to manipulate it will disappear.” McAfee has grown famous for his edgy, party animal behaviors and he is extremely vocal about his life-in- You Can also listen to the whole first interview, the-fast-lane. As the maker of a revered household here: https://soundcloud.com/coremediaradio/johnname whose empire was built on safety and privacy, mcafee-crypto-core-media-exclusive his outspoken style is a baffling contradiction. While there really is no comparison to the one and only Lorilikes McAfee, his impact on society is an eyebrow-raising Email lorilikes@coremedia.info cross between Charlie Sheen and Bill Gates. If you follow the news related to cryptocurrency you are likely aware of John McAfee’s heated opposition to the vocal Chase Bank CEO, Jamie Dimon who regularly bashes Bitcoin. On CNBC News, McAfee fired back at Dimon with a sensible response in a live interview where he argues that Bitcoin is certainly not a fraud, and is a fixture that will be prominent in the finance arena, indefinitely. He backs up his certainty with absolute facts of the market. During the interview with Core, McAfee made many bold predictions including his impeccably timed stab at the price. He said:

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“A month ago when bitcoin was down to almost $3,000 and people kept going ‘the bubble has burst.’ I kept saying IGNORE IT. What happens in the short term is meaningless. It will come back. I predicted bitcoin would hit $5,000 before the end of the year and I am certain that I will be correct in that.” He continued the thought, “The more people adopt bitcoin as their medium of exchange, the more the price will go up. This is simply a fact of life. I am very confident in my prediction that we will see 5,000 soon”. The next day bitcoin zoomed past $5,000.00.

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When McAfee considered the topic of his polar opposite, Chase Bank Chairman Jamie Dimon, McAfee had an audible chuckle. He implied that Dimon is a true fraud. “People get panicked when people like JP Morgan chairman calls bitcoin a Fraud. He knows the power that he has, in the press.” McAfee commented further. “Don’t worry about temporary fluctuations- even if it drops by half. That has more to do with scare tactics 50

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Enterprise Ethereum Alliance Adds Dozens of Members, Including Russia’s Largest Bank The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), the world’s largest open-source blockchain initiative that was formed earlier this year, has recently announced it added 48 new members, including Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

increase the transparency and improve the trust between banks and corporate clients.”

Kravchenko further added that Sberbank plans to work with Russian banks that aren’t, at least for now, members of the EEA, and that the bank’s entrance Essentially, the EEA is an industry-supported into the consortium is part of an attempt to go beyond consortium that aims to bring Ethereum to an the use cases it has already tested. This means these enterprise-grade level by supporting, promoting, and projects will include other business areas, including building Ethereum-based technologies. Along with retail, lending, and “everything that’s possible.” the 48 new members, it also announced four new working groups, as well a new committee. This brings HPE, on the other hand, has perhaps unsurprisingly the consortium’s combined total to 14. joined the EEA, as it has recently been working with blockchain technology on the distributed ledger Among the plethora of new members the EEA just startup R3. The company’s global financial services added, only a few immediately stand out. These industry lead, Markus Ogurek, stated: include the University of New South Wales, which recently unveiled a customer loyalty research initiative “Joining the EEA is a significant step for Hewlett Packard involving cryptocurrencies, the Hewlett Packard Enterprise in making blockchain enterprise-ready and Enterprise, and Sberbank. accelerating our customers’ journey to production. Our commitment to the EEA will help enterprise-grade Sberbank is notably the first Russian bank to join the blockchain technology adoption and will enable clients to EEA. The bank recently revealed that it has already innovate in most demanding applications.” completed two blockchain proofs-of-concept - one for letters of guarantee and one for letters of credit The EEA’s members represent a wide variety of - while working with other banks, regulators, the business sectors, including technology, healthcare, minister of economy, and the country’s International government, energy, marketing, insurance, and even Chamber of Commerce. pharmaceuticals. Among some of its new members are organizations such as the Singapore University Speaking to CoinDesk, Sberbank’s head of trade of Social Sciences, Sipree, Inc., SmartContract, TenX finance and correspondent banking, Evgenly PTE LTD, Trail of Bits, Trellis, and WeChain. Kravchenko, stated: Francisco Memoria “The next step for our blockchain team will be operations Email franciscom@coremedia.info with foreign-based financial institutions and other banks, to do some international transactions, to see how we can Core Magazine

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Bitcoin.com and Calvin Ayre See Bitcoin Cash As “Real Bitcoin”, Adopt Same Definitions

oger Ver’s Bitcoin.com, and the Calvin Ayre Media group, which includes cryptocurrency news website CoinGeek, recently issued a joint press release promoting the same definitions on the cryptocurrency scene to “promote clarity.” These two organizations recently published pieces stating that Bitcoin Cash is, to them, the “real bitcoin,” that is, the one that is more in line with Satoshi’s original whitepaper.

Move met with criticism The move and the report published by both organizations has been met with a lot of criticism from various users on social media. For one, some believe that Bitcoin Cash shouldn’t use Bitcoin’s name in the first place, as it might confuse new users getting into cryptocurrency.

The release makes it clear Bitcoin.com and Calvin Ayre are cementing a partnership that wants to educate people on why Bitcoin Cash (BCC) is, reportedly, the only blockchain that can “do it all.” It states:

Moreover, naming a piece “Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin” is certainly just going to make things worse for someone who’s still learning about bitcoin and blockchain technology. Others see the whole piece as propaganda.

“The Calvin Ayre Media Group (which includes CoinGeek. com) intends to work with Roger Ver and his Bitcoin.com group to educate the world on why the Bitcoin public block chain (BCC) is the only one that can do it all.” Recently, Bitcoin.com published a piece titled “Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin” – which can also be found on CoinGeek - that attempts to clarify why the organizations see Bitcoin Cash as the cryptocurrency that’s more in line with Satoshi Nakamoto’s whitepaper. Among its arguments, it points out that both Bitcoin’s original chain and bitcoin Cash have low fees, and in both transactions are fast and irreversible. It also points out that around October 25, and in midNovember, two bitcoin hard forks are coming, and neither will give it these properties. It does, however, A few even decided to point out inaccuracies in the neglect to mention decentralization and the risks of graphs contained in Bitcoin.com’s piece. Bitcoin, or any other cryptocurrency, being centralized. Bitcoin.com has also announced an updated stance on the symbols and monikers it plans to use following this year’s hard forks. Per the website, it will be using “BCC” for Bitcoin Cash, and may use “SW1” for bitcoin, “SW2” for the SegWit2x chain, and “SWG” for the Bitcoin Gold chain. Similarly, the two organizations’ joint press release states that the two will now refer to Bitcoin Core as ‘SegWit Core’ and encourage other industry media outlets to do the same. It reads: “Hence going forward Bitcoin.com and CoinGeek.com will refer to this groups as ‘Segwit Core’ and would encourage other Bitcoin media to do the same.” 52

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Bitcoin.org Co-Owner Goes on Twitter Storm on Changing Bitcoin’s Whitepaper

hose who want to learn more about bitcoin whose market cap is now of nearly §100 billionusually turn to Satoshi Nakamoto’s whitepaper to do so. Recently, in an attempt to help new users properly understand bitcoin, through a Twitter storm on an account believed to belong to Bitcoin.org and Bitcointalk co-owner Bitcoin Cobra, changing Nakamoto’s original whitepaper was suggested so it won’t “promote flawed understanding of bitcoin” that is, according to him, responsible for the “longest

chain is bitcoin” fear uncertainty and doubt (FUD). In another tweet, Cobra went on to state that the community needs to work together to update the

whitepaper so that new users don’t start with a flawed assumption of the cryptocurrency’s system. The move, as one would expect, was met with a lot of criticism as users accused him of promoting his own agenda in bitcoin’s civil war. His response was to point to well-known Bitcoin Cash supporters - Bitcoin.com CEO Roger Ver and Bitmain CEO Jihan Wu - and state that they suffer from “Satoshi worship disease,” just like “white paper literalists” do. Next, Cobra went ad hominem and tweeted out that Satoshi wasn’t perfect and made mistakes that sometimes pushed dangerous ideas. In another tweet, he pointed out that bitcoin needs to stop being treated as a religion, and Satoshi as a prophet. Notably, he then added that “Satoshi must be forgotten and his influenced should disappear.” Various Twitter users agreed with Cobra and pointed out that other outdated projects have been improved upon. Some used ARPANET, and some used Ford’s Model-T as examples. Others, however, pointed out Core Magazine

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changes to Satoshi Nakamoto’s whitepaper. In a post, he stated that Bitcoin.org’s page with the whitepaper has been getting a lot of traffic, and as such would be good to add mentions to things now present in bitcoin’s ecosystem, such as the existence of pools.

that changing the whitepaper would be the same as creating an altcoin. Not the first time Cobra suggests changing the whitepaper Back in 2016, Cobra used Github to suggest

According to Cobra, at some point the paper would, per his belief, start making more harm than good because it “tricks people into believing they understand Bitcoin.” Cobra’s suggestion was met with criticism and suggestions of a new, updated document that clearly stated it wasn’t the original whitepaper, while linking to it. Francisco Memoria Email franciscom@coremedia.info

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The Wonderful World of Altcoins By Jon Prints

Let’s explain something before I continue. It’s not really for any specific purpose in relation to the rest ne of the major elements that attracts so many of this article, but I find it interesting, and it will people to cryptocurrency is the possibility ultimately help you understand what we’re talking of making money, easily, from right behind your about here. computer. And they’re not necessarily wrong to Bitcoin, the king of them all. The market cap alone is assume that you can do this! But in order to make a mind boggling. It creates extended debates on what respectable profit – you need to be in the right place at defines value when mentioned and even turns friends the right time, and of course have the right electronic into enemies. equipment at hand. Well, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Bitcoin Let’s dive right in. First, It’s important to know that isn’t the only player in the game. This is where the majority of electronic currencies operate on what’s Alternative Currencies, better known as “Altcoins” called the proof of work property. So, here’s what come in. And there aren’t just a few. As of October happens: A new block is proposed by the network. 18th, 2017 there were 1,178 altcoins listed on A header of the most recent block and nonce are coinmarketcap.com. That’s a lot of value. And if you combined and a fresh new baby hash is created. After don’t know what a Market Cap is. In this case, it’s that, Proof-of-Work is complete and a new block is what the sum of the total amount of a specific coin added to the ever expanding blockchain and broadcast in circulation is worth (i.e. SuperCoolCoin has 1 to the network. thousand coins in circulation. Those 1 thousand coins

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are worth $50 USD. That’s SuperCoolCoin’s market cap)! And I’d tell you what the current market cap of those 1,178 currencies I mentioned is, But that’s not what we’re here to talk about, and I’ve got a Cornish hen in the oven.

or wherever you’re reading this. Because, while all of these coins are running active blockchains, the lowest measurable market cap on the list is $64 USD. There is cause for sufficient excitement however, because as I’m writing this article, the total value in USD of all the coins on that list is an impressive 171 billion Most Altcoins are mined with GPUs (Graphics dollars. Now that’s certainly nothing to shake a stick Processing Units) just like the ones used to play at. Unless you’re just angry you don’t have a sizable graphically intensive video games, just like the ones in piece of that fortune. the Xbox hooked up in your little brother’s (or in your room). It’s true that even Bitcoin began its journey Mining Altcoins being mined on simply CPUs, and then subsequently Since the beginning, starting with Bitcoin, we’ve GPUs. There was a period in the history of Bitcoin seen a similar scenario play out over and over. On the when you could mine Venezuela’s entire GDP in just a developer side, coins are mostly geared for modest few days (time displaced of course). But unfortunately distribution through mining. On the user side, mining we ran head-first into a road-block. turns into a vicious battle. One of the fundamental properties of Bitcoin, and It’s every man or woman for themselves. And every one of the key tenets behind Satoshi Nakamoto’s day, miners devise better ways to use increasingly original whitepaper. Something known as difficulty. more robust technology in order to hash blocks as fast as possible. This is where we can explain what an With each batch of coins that gets pulled from these ASIC is. ASIC is an acronym for “application specific dark, winding hypothetical mines of numbers that our integrated circuit”. Which can simply be translated machines toil inside – We encounter something called into a computer that does only one thing, and one thing “difficulty”. It could get pretty complicated, but we alone. In this case, that one thing is cryptocurrency can simplify the explanation of all it for the purpose mining. Before that, there were FPGAs, which were of this article. I’m going to paraphrase a statement the precursors to the ASIC, but I’m getting off track. I came across that I felt explained the phenomenon more than succinctly. The difficulty on a mining network is the relative measure of how difficult it is to find a new block of coins compared to the easiest it can ever be. There we have it! So, now that we have all that out of the way. We can move on to the big show! Altcoins So just a short time before, I mentioned that Bitcoin isn’t alone. And I talked about this thing called a Market Cap. Surprise! That’s where the next chapter in our short anthology begins! In case you didn’t know, Bitcoin is open source. What that means is that literally anyone can modify, alter or replicate the codebase at the behest of the community that exists around it. I also mentioned that there were 1,178 coins listed on coinmarketcap.com right now.

As far as standard proof-of-work cryptocurrency goes, there really is no competition for an ASIC (except perhaps more ASICs). I’ll explain this on a very small scale. Basically, what happens is that an ASIC (or a few hundred of them) arrive on the network of Hypothetical Coin A. Those coins get mined like they’re going out of style. The difficulty Well, if you were astounded and maybe even a little shoots up, and it becomes extremely difficult to mine excited. You can rest firmly back on your chair, couch, a single block of whatever coin you’re trying to mine 56

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without equal or superior hashing power. I won’t go into much more detail than that (as far as algorithm, etc), but that’s simply part of the lifecycle of most standard Proof-of-Work based cryptocurrencies that have been created, including our beloved Bitcoin. If a coin can survive this period, it’s safe to say that it’s going to be around for a little while. To use a turn of phrase, in the early days of Altcoins, this was called “Pump and Dump”. And the fact that so many coins survived this part of crypto’s history is a testament to their relative strength as a financial entity. Fortunately, this hasn’t been a bad thing overall. Because of this, many altcoins mined by ASICs are predominantly priced by the amount of electricity it takes to mine them. This created a healthy ecosystem of hashing and has allowed many people to create an entirely new income stream that was essentially unthinkable before Bitcoin. Different Altcoins will enter the market that change the landscape with improvements to their respective codebases, bringing prices up and down. And the same practices that take place on massive commodities markets like NASDAQ or NIKKEI take place on altcoin markets as well. Granted, this is a relatively limited explanation of the “scene” as a whole for a few reasons. Partially due to the fact that I could spend days explaining the nuances of how crypto markets work, and partially due to the fact that there are things I don’t wish to explain due to the nature of mine and Core Group’s position and as arbiters of truth and goodwill in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. So let’s move on, shall we? When a coin rises above the cost it takes to mine it, real financial innovation takes place. Sure, electricity plays a large part in market price. But the community largely dictates the price of these coins based on each individual property or innovation, be it groundbreaking or just plain silly. You may be familiar with the Dogecoin boon, where we saw something that was started as a joke turn into a fullfledged financial empire. Even now, in mid-October 2017, Dogecoin’s market cap sits at an impressive $118 thousand dollars (USD). It’s hard not to see Bitcoin’s influence on these prices. After all, these “snow caps” would plummet if Bitcoin were to do the same.

But regardless of any level of uncertainty this, or any new technology can harbor, even pundits are now beginning to embrace the blockchain as the prices of the coins behind it climb even higher. At this point, the importance of blockchain technology is hard for even the staunchest critics to deny. There are still those who refuse to acknowledge the predominantly positive impact that the creation of Bitcoin and the subsequent technological world around it has done for the world thus far, but this has been the case for countless advances in our cultural history. For the most part, people fear what they don’t understand. That’s why we’re here to help try and explain it all to you. Cryptocurrency may be complex in it’s design, but it’s certainly not impossible to understand. For example, you don’t need to know how a television works to use one. So when you look at cryptocurrency in black and white, it’s can be just as easy to use as any banking system. It’s also important to remember that this is a technology that’s new to all of us, and overall it grants us a level of financial freedom that was the stuff of dreams before now. Science fiction. So if you make the choice to delve into the world of cryptocurrency, whether you use a CPU, GPU, ASIC or even your home computer for Proofof-Stake mining. Always remember that you’re not alone, and right now we’re all standing on the same ground floor with you. There are lots of forums and websites out there to ask questions on, or browse for information you might be interested in like bitcointalk.org or cryptocurrencytalk.com. Just always remember to be careful and be aware that there are predators everywhere on the internet (not just around cryptocurrency), and if something sounds too good to be true - it probably is. If you’re absolutely unsure about something, you’re certainly welcome to contact us here at Core too! As time goes on, the Proof-of-Work mechanism has given way to more advanced versions of verifying transactions and providing rewards. One of the first examples was “Proof-of-Stake”, where simply holding onto a number of coins would gather what the coin network calls “weight”. When the time became sufficient, new coin blocks would be created from the ones you already had. It’s important to note that while Proof-of-Stake may not seem to be related to mining in any way. In essence, Proof-of-Stake IS Core Magazine

mining, just in a technically different way. If you’d like to mine a Proof-of-Stake coin, they’re low maintenance, “green” as in they don’t require any extra equipment or power, and for most - they’re easy to grasp and a good place to start. Branching out from Proof-of-Stake, there are many derivations of mining. From Gridcoin Research, which operates on a “Proof-ofResearch” protocol that rewards miners for scientific computations performed by CPUs and GPUs instead of the traditional protocol. Siacoin, for example, rewards miners by renting cloud storage on its blockchain. While Siacoin was released to mixed reviews for various reasons, people are certainly anticipating the release of Filecoin. Which uses a similar concept; utilizing data storage as the predominant driver behind its hashing mechanism. The protocol even introduces some new and interesting concepts like “Proof-of-Replication” and “Proof-ofSpacetime”, which could be some interesting entries into the upcoming market. Always remember, If you want to mine, you can “join the fray” too. If you have a willingness to learn, you too can join the network of people standing behind what could be one of the most important projects being developed right now. Whether it be the tried and true Bitcoin to any of the top currencies dominating the scene right now. From Ethereum to ZCash. If you do get started, there is certainly no lack of diversity. Some coins, you’ll only be able to mine with an ASIC. Other’s you’ll be able to mine with GPUs like the Radeon RX Vega

I’ll mention an obvious coin first. It’s weathered many a storm. But eventually, due some an impressive codebase, and a complete community takeover. Monero secured its legacy on the crypto scene. It was certainly one of the more “odd” candidates for crypto adoption, but the impressive Cryptonight algorithm eventually won over the masses. Monero isn’t exclusively a CPU coin, however, the “edge” you get from mining with a GPU rather than a good ole fashioned CPU. And really – the story does actually have a certain mystique, if for nothing the abundance of false information we have on the mysterious group of coins related to monero. This is an easy coin to mine, requiring only a small DOS program and some cores (CPUs). Another interesting coin is one that has magical powers. Of course I’m talking about The Coin of the Magi (MAGI). Powered by the M7M algorithm, the exclusively CPU mined coin that aims to keep out the botnets that dominate the Monero network by adopting a more utilitarian model. The interesting feature used in M7M is a form of hash-rate “throttling”. If a computer begins to consume too much hash, the network will throttle it – giving other miners a chance for a piece of the pie. Magi hasn’t always been like this, but I have to say it’s at an interesting intersection in it’s development.

A respite from the superhighway of ASIC based Proof-of-Work alts. Not all is what it seems, however. This is the wild-wild-west of mining, and the quarries run deep. 58

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That’s the beauty of mining Altcoins. You have a variety of choices, and if you’re lucky – you’ll be in the right place, at the right time, and you’ll see a revolution being born. The key is to not be afraid. If anything, Core is CPU Mining here to guide you into this mysterious world Despite all this talk about ASICs and the full of giant blocks of random numbers - so sheer power involved within the struggle for feel free to ask us anything! dominance in our predominantly Proof-ofWork based world of coins, there still exist Fin algorithms that “take it easy”, so to speak.

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