Autor Cointelegraph By Martin Young

Monero crypto of choice as ransomware ‘double extortion’ attacks increase 500%

Monero crypto of choice as ransomware ‘double extortion’ attacks increase 500%

Uverejnil používateľ | apr 20, 2022 |

A new report by blockchain analytics firm CipherTrace highlights the growing role that privacy-focused cryptocurrencies such as Monero are playing in the rising tide of ransomware.“Current Trends in Ransomware” delves into trends observed during 2021 but was only released this week. The firm revealed there was almost a 500% increase in “double extortion” ransomware attacks from 2020 to 2021. These are cyber attacks in which malicious actors steal a victim’s sensitive data in addition to encrypting it.The report echoes similar findings from analytics firm Chainalysis which reported that overall ransomware crypto payments topped $600 million for the period.The new research found that last year saw increasing demands for ransom payment in Monero (XMR), with attackers adding premiums for payments made in Bitcoin (BTC) ranging from 10 to 20%. At least 22 ransomware strains (from an incomplete list of more than 50) only accept XMR payments, and at least seven of them accept both BTC and XMR, it added.“Higher prices for BTC are most likely seen by the ransomware actors as a premium for dealing with the increased risk in using an easily traceable cryptocurrency like BTC.”The report cited a Russian-speaking ransomware gang called Everest Group which claimed to have hacked the U.S. Government in October last year. According to CipherTrace, Everest Ransomware is “currently trying to sell the data for $500,000 in XMR.”Another example was the Russian DarkSide group responsible for the U.S. Colonial Pipeline attack in May 2021. The ransom could be paid in either XMR or BTC, but the cost was higher for the latter.The REvil ransomware group also switched from demanding BTC to demanding payments in XMR only in early 2020.Related: Don’t blame crypto for ransomwareMonero is a privacy-based cryptocurrency that uses a combination of technologies such as mixers, ring signatures, and stealth addresses that obfuscate sending and receiving wallets. This is why it has become the primary asset of choice for those demanding ransoms.For that reason, Monero and other highly privacy-focused cryptocurrencies such as Dash and Zcash have been delisted by some exchanges in countries such as the U.K. and Japan.The Monero blockchain will be hard forked in July to further enhance its anonymity and privacy properties.

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a16z's Chris Dixon tops ‘Midas List’ by turning $350M into $6B in 2021

a16z's Chris Dixon tops ‘Midas List’ by turning $350M into $6B in 2021

Uverejnil používateľ | apr 13, 2022 |

Crypto venture capital firms have been investing at unprecedented rates recently and Andreessen Horowitz is one of the industry’s leaders making huge returns on their investments.Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) general partner Chris Dixon has topped the Forbes “Midas List” of the world’s best venture capital investors in 2022.Seldom does a crypto or Web3 funding round finalize without a16z being involved somehow. According to an April 12 report by the publication, Dixon turned the $350 million Crypto Fund I into realized and unrealized gains of $6 billion in 2021. That equates to an eye-watering 17.7x gain according to “sources with knowledge of the fund’s financials.”Jack Dorsey may not want to give him props. But @cdixon and a16z’s $350M first crypto fund closed 2021 up 17.7x, a source tells @Forbes. @bhorowitz predicts in 10 years, he’ll be considered “the best investor of his generation.” pic.twitter.com/XdqwDWEcZ2— Alex Konrad (@alexrkonrad) April 12, 2022By comparison, the overall cryptocurrency market itself only managed a 200% gain from $780 billion on January 1, 2021, to $2.3 trillion by the end of December of the same year.a16z got into crypto early, leading a $25 million funding round into Coinbase in 2013. By the time Coinbase went public in April 2021, the firm held a 15% stake following 14 more funding rounds. The shares were worth $10 billion on the first day of trading resulting in a 60x return for the company. However, this was several years before Dixon’s crypto fund was launched in June 2018 with $300 million raised in total at the time according to Crunchbase.There have been other notable investments by a16z including decentralized exchange Uniswap, the Avalanche blockchain, NFT creator Dapper Labs, and Ethereum staking platform Lido, all of which have surged in valuation or collateral since. Dixon, who rarely appears for interviews, told Forbes:“My job is not to predict the future. My job is to be smart enough to know who the smart people are who will.”The company is currently raising funds for the world’s largest crypto fund worth a whopping $4.5 billion. In January, the firm said it planned to raise $3.5 billion for the fund, in addition to another $1 billion for Web3 seed investments.Journalist Alex Konrad said that a16z “plans to roll back its crypto fund into the firm — making crypto core to its main funds, akin to cloud or the internet.”Related: Venture capital year in review 2021: Cointelegraph Research TerminalConcerns have been raised by some crypto industry observers that too much venture capital involvement and investment in a project may erode its decentralization. a16z’s holdings of the UNI tokens and sway in governance votes for  has been a particular issue. But either way, the crypto industry’s most prominent VC firm is still hunting for new investment opportunities in the sector.

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67% of Cardano holders underwater and most bought less than 1 year ago

67% of Cardano holders underwater and most bought less than 1 year ago

Uverejnil používateľ | apr 8, 2022 |

As Cardano (ADA) prices fall back towards the psychological one dollar level, more and more investors are finding themselves with unrealized losses by holding on to the digital asset.Cardano’s ADA token has had a bearish week. The price has fallen 11.4% since Monday resulting in more holders being in the red. More significantly, ADA is now 64.7% below its September 2 all-time high of $3.09 and is in danger of falling below a dollar over the next few days should the trend continue.According to IntoTheBlock’s “in/out of the money” indicator, more than two-thirds, or 67% of ADA holders, are underwater. A quarter of Cardano investors are in the green, and 9% of them are at a breakeven point.The indicator identifies the average cost at which the tokens were purchased and compares it to the current price, which was $1.09 at the time of writing.The analytics provider reported that 3.41 million ADA addresses are in the red compared to just 1.25 million in the green.In/Out of the Money: IntoTheBlockA related metric is the amount of time the token has been held. The vast majority, or 76% of ADA holders, have held it for between one and 12 months. Just 11% of Cardano investors have held the token for more than a year, and those are the ones that are still in profit.From a technical standpoint, ADA has turned bearish and could quite quickly revisit its 2022 and yearly low point of around $0.80, which occurred in mid-March. This would plunge even more investors into the red unless they sell at a loss.The slide in prices could be tied to the network not living up to high expectations set around the launch of smart contracts.  In terms of the numbers of decentralized applications (DApps), Cardano is still something of a wasteland with DeFi Llama reporting that there are just ten DeFi protocols running on the network with a combined total value locked of around $233 million. Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson however believes that many Cardano dApps are waiting for the Vasil hard fork in June to launch. The “Basho” phase of the Cardano upgrade roadmap will focus on scalability and smart contracts with new technology called Hydra to boost network throughput even further. Related: Cardano Foundation and the University of Zurich expand academic blockchain researchIn terms of other fundamenta Cardano is looking relatively strong. Network demand surged to record capacity earlier this year when the much-hyped SundaeSwap decentralized exchange was launched.Santiment reported that Cardano was the most developed crypto project on GitHub in 2021, and Cardano NFT bonds were unveiled this week, providing another investment vehicle on the network.However, unless there is a significant turnaround in trading sentiment, the ADA selloff may start to accelerate, putting more holders deeper underwater.

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Crypto billionaires increase by 60% in a year: Who made Forbes annual list?

Crypto billionaires increase by 60% in a year: Who made Forbes annual list?

Uverejnil používateľ | apr 6, 2022 |

The Forbes crypto billionaires list has been updated, and the number of individuals who have made vast fortunes in digital assets has increased substantially.The crypto elite list now has 19 billionaires on it, which is seven more than last year and expands the list by 58%. The publication released its latest crypto richest on April 5, but the king of the crop remains unchanged.Binance CEO and founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao is still the richest man in the industry and now the 19th richest in the world due to his relatively newly accrued wealth. The outlet has downgraded CZ’s fortune from an estimated $96 billion last year to a current estimation of $65 billion. This still makes him the most affluent person in the industry, however.FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has secured the second spot after “CZ” with a whopping $24 billion in estimated net worth. He has been dubbed the “Crypto Robin Hood,” as he has repeatedly stated that he wants to give the majority of this fortune away. But with $24 billion still on hand, he’s clearly not managed to do so yet. Coinbase CEO and founder Brian Armstrong is in third place with $6.6 billion. Ripple’s Chris Larsen and the Winklevoss twins from Gemini remain on the list with around $4 billion to their names. Newcomers to the crypto billionaires list include FTX co-founder and chief technology officer Gary Wang with a net worth of $5.6 billion from his 16% stake in the company. and Nikil Viswanathan and Joseph Lau, co-founders of the blockchain and Web3 company Alchemy. The pair reportedly have a net worth of $2.4 billion each, ranking them at eleventh. OpenSea NFT marketplace co-founders Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah are also newcomers on this year’s crypto-rich list with an estimated net worth of $2.2 billion apiece.There are several other notable names on the list, including Song Chi-hyung, the founder of South Korea’s Upbit exchange, who is reportedly worth $3.7 billion. Executive vice president of South Korea’s Dunamu, Kim Hyoung-nyon, owns an estimated 13% of Upbit, giving him a net worth of $1.9 billion.Related: 3X as many crypto figures make it onto Forbes 2021 billionaires list as last yearMicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor has remained a crypto billionaire with an estimated net worth of $1.6 billion. Company stock has quadrupled in the last two years following a big Bitcoin bet that has paid off.Forbes originally published the first crypto elite list back in 2018 when just a handful of executives made the grade. Back then, the bar was much lower, with a wealth figure of $350 million to get on the list.

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Visa should be 'scared': Lightning Labs raises $70M to add stablecoins

Visa should be 'scared': Lightning Labs raises $70M to add stablecoins

Uverejnil používateľ | apr 6, 2022 |

Bitcoin software firm Lightning Labs has secured a large funding round enabling it to further develop the Lightning Network for faster, cheaper Bitcoin and stablecoin transactions.The $70 million Series B funding round was led by Valor Equity Partners, with participation from Baillie Gifford, Goldcrest Capital, and several other angel investors. Lightning Labs builds additional features and software for the Lightning Network (LN), Bitcoin’s layer-two transaction solution.The funding will be channeled into a new protocol it has developed called Taro, which will enable stablecoins to be transferred using the LN, according to reports. Lightning Labs will not issue stablecoins, but the infrastructure will allow them to be sent over the network.Stablecoin transactions were made possible with the Bitcoin Taproot upgrade in November 2021, which also introduced smart contract capabilities.The firm believes that Taro will enable further Bitcoin adoption as it potentially allows the unbanked in developing countries to send money using stablecoins.Speaking to Forbes, Elizabeth Stark, CEO and co-founder of Lightning Labs, said, “That’s really significant because the potential here is for all the world’s currencies to route through Bitcoin over the Lightning Network.” Speaking to Tech Crunch, she added:“If I were Visa, I’d be scared because there are a lot of people out there that have mobile phones, but now don’t need to tap into the traditional system.”Lightning Labs raised $10 million from its Series A in September, which followed a $2.5 million seed round in 2018.The LN is currently being used extensively in El Salvador, the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender. It has also been put into action on the payments platform Strike and the tipping tool on Twitter. The current network collateral is 3,693 BTC, worth around $167 million, a 5.8% increase over the past month, according to the stats. Related: First publicly listed, purpose-built Lightning Network company launches new accessible platformStablecoins are now an integral part of the digital currency ecosystem and are slowly being accepted by global regulators. The latest to give fiat-pegged assets the green light is the United Kingdom’s Economic and Finance Ministry which intends to adjust the existing regulatory framework to incorporate stablecoins as a payment method.

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