Bitcoin giveaway scams
Even gifts, such as giveaways, do not escape scams as criminals exploit names of famous people or news related to important projects, claiming to be giving cryptocurrencies to all those who will participate.
The scam is very simple: an article is written with some information about the person or a recent event that actually happened and then a website is built where the whole page is completely false and structured in such a way as to invite the user to send their crypto.
The modus operandi of these scams is to succeed in convincing the victim to send their crypto by means of a proven claim, i.e. to double their funds by simply sending a specific crypto to a specific address.
But of course this will not happen and you will lose your crypto.
Considering that we are talking about crypto and blockchain it is quite easy to unmask fake transactions, so in these cases simply take the criminal’s address and analyze it in a block explorer to check all the transactions and whether they match the web page.
Phishing
One of the scams that unfortunately spreads and is very successful is phishing, a technique that aims to make the victim believe that they are interacting with the official platform of a service so that they can enter their credentials.
In this case, the criminals use fake platforms to recover victims’ e-mails and passwords, as happened in the recent case involving Ledger.
The victim receives an email inviting them to enter or update their device. Usually, this email contains a link that leads to a copy of the website, in which without the victim’s knowledge the victim enters the credentials and hands them over to the criminals.
How to defend oneself against phishing?
First of all, it is necessary to check and compare the sender of the email with the original ones and in case of discrepancies, it is better to delete the received email. It is important to never click on any link within the email itself because not only can it lead to a misleading page, but it can even contain a virus that will hide in our pc.
Ransomware
Finally, a frequent occurrence this year has been the phenomenon of ransomware, i.e. being forced to pay a ransom, usually in Bitcoin, to restore the systems of a company or, worse, a public administration.
The phenomenon is certainly on the rise, as the data report, and this pandemic has done nothing but increase this possibility since everyone is at home and does not have adequate knowledge of the measures to be taken to protect themselves from their homes.
The problem increasingly involves large companies, as in the case of the Argentinean telephone company. All it takes is opening an infected file within the company network to infect all the PCs in the entire company without being able to do anything.
In this case, the ransomware starts to encrypt all the files on the PCs, preventing access to them.
The only way to get them back is to have the file encryption key to unlock them.
And this is where the criminals offer the solution, inviting the victims to pay the ransom.
How to defend oneself against ransomware?
The first defence is to use preventive and always up-to-date tools such as antivirus, especially those specialized in identifying these threats.
Another recommendation is not to open suspicious attachments and as a last protection is to have an up-to-date backup system.
Even gifts, such as giveaways, do not escape scams as criminals exploit names of famous people or news related to important projects, claiming to be giving cryptocurrencies to all those who will participate.
The scam is very simple: an article is written with some information about the person or a recent event that actually happened and then a website is built where the whole page is completely false and structured in such a way as to invite the user to send their crypto.
The modus operandi of these scams is to succeed in convincing the victim to send their crypto by means of a proven claim, i.e. to double their funds by simply sending a specific crypto to a specific address.
But of course this will not happen and you will lose your crypto.
Considering that we are talking about crypto and blockchain it is quite easy to unmask fake transactions, so in these cases simply take the criminal’s address and analyze it in a block explorer to check all the transactions and whether they match the web page.
Phishing
One of the scams that unfortunately spreads and is very successful is phishing, a technique that aims to make the victim believe that they are interacting with the official platform of a service so that they can enter their credentials.
In this case, the criminals use fake platforms to recover victims’ e-mails and passwords, as happened in the recent case involving Ledger.
The victim receives an email inviting them to enter or update their device. Usually, this email contains a link that leads to a copy of the website, in which without the victim’s knowledge the victim enters the credentials and hands them over to the criminals.
How to defend oneself against phishing?
First of all, it is necessary to check and compare the sender of the email with the original ones and in case of discrepancies, it is better to delete the received email. It is important to never click on any link within the email itself because not only can it lead to a misleading page, but it can even contain a virus that will hide in our pc.
Ransomware
Finally, a frequent occurrence this year has been the phenomenon of ransomware, i.e. being forced to pay a ransom, usually in Bitcoin, to restore the systems of a company or, worse, a public administration.
The phenomenon is certainly on the rise, as the data report, and this pandemic has done nothing but increase this possibility since everyone is at home and does not have adequate knowledge of the measures to be taken to protect themselves from their homes.
The problem increasingly involves large companies, as in the case of the Argentinean telephone company. All it takes is opening an infected file within the company network to infect all the PCs in the entire company without being able to do anything.
In this case, the ransomware starts to encrypt all the files on the PCs, preventing access to them.
The only way to get them back is to have the file encryption key to unlock them.
And this is where the criminals offer the solution, inviting the victims to pay the ransom.
How to defend oneself against ransomware?
The first defence is to use preventive and always up-to-date tools such as antivirus, especially those specialized in identifying these threats.
Another recommendation is not to open suspicious attachments and as a last protection is to have an up-to-date backup system.
Riot Blockchain signs a contract to buy 15,000 miners from Bitmain
The American mining company Riot Blockchain has signed another contract with Bitmain to buy 15,000 miners. According to a December 21 press release, Riot Blockchain expects the new purchase to increase bitcoin's overall hashrate by 65%.
The purchase cost Riot $ 35 million. The company acquired 3,000 S19 Pro Antminer miners and 12,000 S19j Pro Antminer miners. Riot expects to receive new miners from May 2021 to October 2021.
With the launch of new miners, the company expects the hash rate to increase from 2.3 exaches per second (EH / s) to 3.8 EH / s.
In 2020, Bitmain and Riot entered into a partnership to supply new miners. In October 2020, the companies announced a 2,500 Antminer S19 Pro deal in addition to the previous 5100 and 8,000 Antminer deals in September.
According to The Block, with the price of bitcoin rising above $ 20,000, the demand for mining equipment is growing rapidly again. Since early December, Bitmain has raised miner prices by at least 20%.
The American mining company Riot Blockchain has signed another contract with Bitmain to buy 15,000 miners. According to a December 21 press release, Riot Blockchain expects the new purchase to increase bitcoin's overall hashrate by 65%.
The purchase cost Riot $ 35 million. The company acquired 3,000 S19 Pro Antminer miners and 12,000 S19j Pro Antminer miners. Riot expects to receive new miners from May 2021 to October 2021.
With the launch of new miners, the company expects the hash rate to increase from 2.3 exaches per second (EH / s) to 3.8 EH / s.
In 2020, Bitmain and Riot entered into a partnership to supply new miners. In October 2020, the companies announced a 2,500 Antminer S19 Pro deal in addition to the previous 5100 and 8,000 Antminer deals in September.
According to The Block, with the price of bitcoin rising above $ 20,000, the demand for mining equipment is growing rapidly again. Since early December, Bitmain has raised miner prices by at least 20%.
$ 1.4 billion in BTC went through mixers in 2020 - Crystal Blockchain report
Bitfury Group's Crystal Blockchain platform has released an annual report with totals and statistics for 2020. Key points from the report:
- In 2020, $ 1.4 billion in BTC went through mixing services (mixers). This is $ 500 million more than last year.
- In 2020, the amount received by darknet users increased by $ 300 million - the figure reached $ 1.6 billion, of which $ 533 million was sent from exchanges.
- The total value of BTC received in 2020 by all virtual asset service providers (VASP) was $ 272.9 billion, up from $ 154.3 billion a year earlier. The number of transactions decreased from 120 million to 109 million, but the average transaction size increased.
Bitfury Group's Crystal Blockchain platform has released an annual report with totals and statistics for 2020. Key points from the report:
- In 2020, $ 1.4 billion in BTC went through mixing services (mixers). This is $ 500 million more than last year.
- In 2020, the amount received by darknet users increased by $ 300 million - the figure reached $ 1.6 billion, of which $ 533 million was sent from exchanges.
- The total value of BTC received in 2020 by all virtual asset service providers (VASP) was $ 272.9 billion, up from $ 154.3 billion a year earlier. The number of transactions decreased from 120 million to 109 million, but the average transaction size increased.
Bitcoin continues to fly aboriginally and make great profits. Whoever bought with us and did not sell anything along the way, as we recommended, congratulations from the bottom of my heart! You are handsome, and the years of waiting have not been wasted.
This is tough, but many still do not believe in growth and sit in dollars, although today the price reached as much as 28420. But in any case, there is still an alt season ahead, where you can easily make a fortune. Now all the attention is on the dominance of military-technical cooperation.
This is tough, but many still do not believe in growth and sit in dollars, although today the price reached as much as 28420. But in any case, there is still an alt season ahead, where you can easily make a fortune. Now all the attention is on the dominance of military-technical cooperation.
The 3 main drivers of growth for the Ethereum market are related to its utility and plans to launch an institutional product based on ETH, which was recently announced
Ethereum 2.0 phase 0 was launched on December 1 after potential validators have collected enough ETH. The initial target of 524,288 ETH for blocking in the smart contract for staking has been met and users continue to send their Ether.
According to Dune Analytics, $ 1.2 billion has been blocked in the contract so far.
DeFi based on Ethereum
⚠️ Another reason dates back to 2020: decentralized finance or simply DeFi.
Numerous ETH-based DeFi applications have had great success this year, such as:
📍Yearn. finance
📍Chainlink
📍Wrapped Bitcoin
📍Compound
📍Uniswap
📍SushiSwap etc.
However, some of these projects, such as YAM, have also failed due to the high investor interest in them.
In addition, several DeFi apps fell victim to hackers this year, losing large amounts of ETH from their users.
⚠️ Another likely reason for the rise in ETH is the ongoing rally in BTC.
Over the weekend, the largest cryptocurrency managed to climb from below $ 25K to show a short-term rise above $ 28K, and then retrace to a level above $ 26K 🤑📈
In addition, the third major currency, XRP, has come under fire over the past week after the US regulator, the SEC, filed a lawsuit against Ripple, accusing it of selling XRP as an unlisted security for the past eight years and making more than a billion dollars from those sales. US dollars.
Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen and CEO Brad Garlinghouse have also been indicted by the regulator.
These two factors also likely played a role in ETH's rise.
Ethereum 2.0 phase 0 was launched on December 1 after potential validators have collected enough ETH. The initial target of 524,288 ETH for blocking in the smart contract for staking has been met and users continue to send their Ether.
According to Dune Analytics, $ 1.2 billion has been blocked in the contract so far.
DeFi based on Ethereum
⚠️ Another reason dates back to 2020: decentralized finance or simply DeFi.
Numerous ETH-based DeFi applications have had great success this year, such as:
📍Yearn. finance
📍Chainlink
📍Wrapped Bitcoin
📍Compound
📍Uniswap
📍SushiSwap etc.
However, some of these projects, such as YAM, have also failed due to the high investor interest in them.
In addition, several DeFi apps fell victim to hackers this year, losing large amounts of ETH from their users.
⚠️ Another likely reason for the rise in ETH is the ongoing rally in BTC.
Over the weekend, the largest cryptocurrency managed to climb from below $ 25K to show a short-term rise above $ 28K, and then retrace to a level above $ 26K 🤑📈
In addition, the third major currency, XRP, has come under fire over the past week after the US regulator, the SEC, filed a lawsuit against Ripple, accusing it of selling XRP as an unlisted security for the past eight years and making more than a billion dollars from those sales. US dollars.
Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen and CEO Brad Garlinghouse have also been indicted by the regulator.
These two factors also likely played a role in ETH's rise.
The first SEC pre-trial conference on the case against Ripple will take place on February 22. Meanwhile, a large-scale boycott of XRP is only gaining momentum, many companies and exchanges refuse to work with this cryptocurrency. Grayscale especially distinguished itself, which out of 35 million XRP has already sold 9 million and is clearly not going to stop there. Although the chart already gives quite a bullish picture.
I brought you news.
If you take a close look at the Top-100 CoinMarketCap, you will notice that about a third of all coins are somehow connected with DeFI protocols or smart contracts on the air. That is, it is definitely a trend that is driving the market higher.
But there is one and important problem that hindered development - the cost of gas / transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. Of course, when you know where you can iksanut this does not repulse, but to attract an ordinary user this is a problem.
For example:
Average cost per 1inch transaction - 15 $
Balancer transaction - $ 10
Uniswap v2 - $ 12
Release NFTs collection on Rarible - $ 350
What to do about it and how to attract new users?
This question was thought about earlier, which is why we are smoothly moving on to ETH 2.0 + the release of the protocol with the strange name Optimism is expected. This protocol will be used in the first phase by Defi projects Aave, Uniswap, and SNX.
This will lead to the fact that the cost of transactions will be almost equal to 0 and there will be practically no sense in using centralized instruments.
If you take a close look at the Top-100 CoinMarketCap, you will notice that about a third of all coins are somehow connected with DeFI protocols or smart contracts on the air. That is, it is definitely a trend that is driving the market higher.
But there is one and important problem that hindered development - the cost of gas / transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. Of course, when you know where you can iksanut this does not repulse, but to attract an ordinary user this is a problem.
For example:
Average cost per 1inch transaction - 15 $
Balancer transaction - $ 10
Uniswap v2 - $ 12
Release NFTs collection on Rarible - $ 350
What to do about it and how to attract new users?
This question was thought about earlier, which is why we are smoothly moving on to ETH 2.0 + the release of the protocol with the strange name Optimism is expected. This protocol will be used in the first phase by Defi projects Aave, Uniswap, and SNX.
This will lead to the fact that the cost of transactions will be almost equal to 0 and there will be practically no sense in using centralized instruments.
Plantain for BTC
Every time BTC starts to "decentralize to the people" or grow in a negative direction, go to the plantain site.
https://www.bybt.com/Grayscale
Grayscale Bitcoint Trust Flows shows how much BTC flows towards the GBTC fund on weekdays.
On Friday, "Grayscale" gained another 5130 BTC at the current rate. We are waiting for Monday and the buy anyprice anyway button.
Every time BTC starts to "decentralize to the people" or grow in a negative direction, go to the plantain site.
https://www.bybt.com/Grayscale
Grayscale Bitcoint Trust Flows shows how much BTC flows towards the GBTC fund on weekdays.
On Friday, "Grayscale" gained another 5130 BTC at the current rate. We are waiting for Monday and the buy anyprice anyway button.
🎉50,000 users have been waiting for this!
🔥January 27, new Nimbus functionality goes LIVE!
💎Nimbus launches a new DeFi platform that lets you participate in top financial opportunities with crypto - IPOs, Startup Financing, and more. All via one DAO-governed ecosystem and one token: NBU.
NBU lets you partake in 10+ pools with clear mechanisms behind each, including:
✅IPO participation
✅Startup Crowdfunding
✅Arbitrage-Trading (its centralized version is used by 50,000 people)
✅P2P lending, and more
What else you should know?
🔷Major Liquidity Providers support
🔷Anti pump&dump strategy in place
🔷DAO where only 10% governance tokens belong to Nimbus
🔷Proven security and compliance, top team
‼️🚀Don’t miss the Launch: 8:00 AM CET, January 27
🤑Get your NBUs while the price is low: http://app.nimbusplatform.io
Chat: t.me/Nimbus_Platform_ENG
News: t.me/nmbplatform
Web: nimbusplatform.io
🔥January 27, new Nimbus functionality goes LIVE!
💎Nimbus launches a new DeFi platform that lets you participate in top financial opportunities with crypto - IPOs, Startup Financing, and more. All via one DAO-governed ecosystem and one token: NBU.
NBU lets you partake in 10+ pools with clear mechanisms behind each, including:
✅IPO participation
✅Startup Crowdfunding
✅Arbitrage-Trading (its centralized version is used by 50,000 people)
✅P2P lending, and more
What else you should know?
🔷Major Liquidity Providers support
🔷Anti pump&dump strategy in place
🔷DAO where only 10% governance tokens belong to Nimbus
🔷Proven security and compliance, top team
‼️🚀Don’t miss the Launch: 8:00 AM CET, January 27
🤑Get your NBUs while the price is low: http://app.nimbusplatform.io
Chat: t.me/Nimbus_Platform_ENG
News: t.me/nmbplatform
Web: nimbusplatform.io
🌶 Key News of Governance Tokens
- Yearn proposes to create another 6,666 YFI (1 YFI ~ $ 31,000) to fund future protocol developments.
- Maker approves higher debt ceilings for ETH-A and WBTC-A.
- Aave suggests adding support for 1INCH control token.
- Index Coop votes to continue further research proposed by Pulse Inc. flexible leverage index (FLI).
- Curve discusses how to distribute the commission received from the asset exchange through Synthetix.
Governance tokens give their owners the right to influence decisions, protocol, product or roadmap of functions, as well as changes in governance parameters. ... Another common form of project management is token-based treasury management.
- Yearn proposes to create another 6,666 YFI (1 YFI ~ $ 31,000) to fund future protocol developments.
- Maker approves higher debt ceilings for ETH-A and WBTC-A.
- Aave suggests adding support for 1INCH control token.
- Index Coop votes to continue further research proposed by Pulse Inc. flexible leverage index (FLI).
- Curve discusses how to distribute the commission received from the asset exchange through Synthetix.
Governance tokens give their owners the right to influence decisions, protocol, product or roadmap of functions, as well as changes in governance parameters. ... Another common form of project management is token-based treasury management.