Miners

Sophisticated Mining Botnet Identified After 2 Years

Cybersecurity firm, Guardicore Labs, revealed the identification of a malicious crypto-mining botnet that has been operating for nearly two years on April 1.The threat actor, dubbed ‘Vollgar’ based on its mining of the little-known altcoin, Vollar (VSD), targets Windows machines running MS-SQL servers — of which Guardicore estimates there are just 500,000 in existence worldwide.However, despite their scarcity, MS-SQL servers offer sizable processing power in addition to typically storing valuable information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details.Sophisticated crypto-mining malware network identifiedOnce a server is infected, Vollgar “diligently and

Staking, Consensus and the Pursuit of Decentralization

Oh, the wonders of decentralized consensus — that dream of permissionless blockchains to be censorship-resistant, trustless, collaborative and egalitarian for a potentially global community of users. While lofty in ideals, consensus is foundational for each crypto network, which must agree upon that most basic question of who decides what on the network.Decentralized consensus in the form of a proof-of-work mechanism was at the core of Satoshi Nakamoto’s innovation when creating Bitcoin — all additional protocol elements stem from PoW’s ability to reach consensus regarding the digital ledger through the computational work

Bitcoin Stays Below $7K as Tone Vays Predicts Price Breakout in April

Bitcoin (BTC) began the day down 2% on April 4, but one trader remained confident in a bullish scenario unfolding next week.Cryptocurrency market daily overview. Source: Coin360Vays: I’ll buy BTC at $6,400Data from Coin360 and Cointelegraph Markets showed BTC/USD failing to establish support at $7,000 as the weekend began. On Friday, the pair returned to the $6,000 zone, hitting daily lows of $6,630 before a slight rebound to press time levels nearer $6,800.Bitcoin 1-day price chart. Source: Coin360Despite encouraging signs from investors, price momentum remained decidedly weak for Bitcoin, with bullish

Coronavirus & Bitcoin Price: Is China Losing Its BTC Mining Monopoly?

This week the price of Bitcoin (BTC) surged more than 15%, reaching a high at $7,200 before pulling back into the $6,800 range. Despite the recovery, Bitcoin still has a way to go in order to reach the $8,000 level seen before the coronavirus-triggered selloff on March 12.Cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360The drop had several consequences on the Bitcoin network. Having reached the $3,800 price range, the accentuated drop forced some Bitcoin miners to throw in the towel and shut down their operations due to mining becoming unprofitable.As miners have

Past Halvings in Review: Case for an Immediate Bitcoin Upsurge Is Flawed

The block reward halving of Bitcoin (BTC) has long been touted as an optimistic factor to drive the short-term price trend of BTC in the first half of 2020. Historical data, however, shows that the halving does not necessarily coincide with an immediate upsurge in the price of Bitcoin.On the Bitcoin network, miners create blocks that record Bitcoin transactions to essentially verify and confirm payment data using computing power. Through large-scale mining centers filled with ASIC mining chips and sophisticated equipment, miners use a large amount of electricity and have

Is Decentralized ASIC Production Possible?

The news about ASICs for Nervos CKB came out recently, as the time of writing, there are four ASICs announced, the Toddminer C1, Toddminer C1 Pro, Bitmain K5 and PA miner — the first batch of C1 was delivered on March 9, K5 and PA Miner are expected to be delivered in April and C1 Pro in May.Since mainnet launch, the total hashrate on CKB mainnet has been around 200TH/S on average, it is now gradually picking up (at the time of writing at ~500TH/S) with ASICs. Toddminer says C1+C1

What to Expect When You’re Expecting… the Bitcoin Block Halving

Many industry experts hold varied expectations for Bitcoin’s price following the block reward halving in May, proving 2020 is anything but mundane. “On both prior occasions, Bitcoin surged to a new all-time high within 12 months, with the latest coming in December 2017 when the price reached about $20,000, which was followed by a massive decline,” Bill Herrmann, CEO of alternative investment banking firm, Wilshire Phoenix, told Cointelegraph in an email on March 10. Herrmann also pointed out that Bitcoin’s market has matured compared to past years, noting that information available to