War broke out in Ether.camp this week when one of the participating parties accused another party of cheating. Artchain members say that ether.camp awarded the $50,000 prize from the competition to coindash.io, whom they maintain used vote rigging and other underhanded tactics to game their position in the hackathon standings. Social media users could vote for their favorite team in the competition via "likes" on facebook or twitter and could also signal their support for a particular team by sending ETH to a designated address. Artchain alleges that some sort of bot was used to garner votes by coindash and that ether.camp organizers may have been complicit in the scheme. If the allegations prove true, this would be the second major issue to surface for the platform this month, after it was discovered that their "Hacker Gold Token" contained a critical bug that required a complete rewrite.
Author Archives: shinohai
Shinohai Shitcoin Roundup Xtend: VERified Mining Scam And More
Bitcoin Unlimited and Roger Ver ally GBMiners made rounds in the news this week, when a link was discovered between Amit Bhardwaj and Gainbitcoin, a "cloud mining" Ponzi scheme, which absolutely no one could have predicted. Qntra had previously reported on ViaBTC using the same scheme to prop up support for the "Unlimited" Bitcoin fork. Gainbitcoins promises a 10% return on their 1.5TH/s "mining contracts" priced at 1 BTC, which at currently network difficulty should produce and output of < 0.04 BTC per month. Evidence from a bitcointalk thread indicates Gainbitcoins is merely a regurgitation of the Hashocean scam.
A report by the Chinese CERT listed Ripple as one of the most insecure "cryptocurrencies" tested in a group. Other altcorns tested included Dogecoin, Dash, and everyone's favorite flaming-tire-in-a-shitpit, Ether. (archived)
"21co" CEO Balaji Srinivasan (WoT:nonperson) deleted all the tweets from his twitter timeline, leading some to speculate.
Litecoin added segwit support concurrent with an announcement from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong (WoT:nonperson) that activating segwit would be "good for Bitcoin" and hopefully draw a new segment of users back to their exchange after suffering problems due to an IRS investigation of its user base.
"Reputation" Base Altcoin Fails On Broken Function Before Launch
Gold spray paint could not hide the corn and semi-liquid shit innards of Hacker.camp's Hacker Gold token (HKG) , an "experiment" that has seemed to have failed before proper launch . The whitepaper produced by this effort seemed they believed it more to be a wot reputation token of some sort, completely ignoring the stable wot already in place where it matters. A significant bug was found in the transferFrom() function, so now users are forced to trade one worthless coloured coin for another one that really fixes the entire thing, because Vitalik says so, honest. (archived)
Backpage.com Stops Serving Adults
Backpage.com has officially shut down its adult service page section as of Tue, with a link from the pages leading to a message regarding US censorship – hours before US Senate hearing on the site.
When browsing attempting to browse to any of the adult services section, one is greeted with this message:
CENSORED
The government has unconstitutionally censored this content. What happened? Find out
Protect internet free speech. Visit Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Cato Institute.
Use your social media to support #FREESPEECH.
Donate to Children of the Night, an organization dedicated to rescuing children from prostitution.
The site has been attacked by the Senate morality police before, leading to a brief shutdown in 2010. Links to various statements from Backpage officials could be found under the sites media section.
Shinohai's 2016 End Of The Year Shitcoin Roundup Xtend (TM)(R)
Bitfinex ends the year by a plague of bugs that cause balances to display improperly in their UI, possibly the result of using tokens to make users believe they actually own Bitcoin.
Coinbase has reportedly suffered a number of payment failures due to their use of Gavin Andresen's BIP70 implementation. The security researcher who discovered the bug presented a complicated workaround which could be avoided by ignoring Coinbase altogether and paying merchants from Bitcoin wallets one controls the private keys to.
La Superintendencia de Sociedades, a regulatory agency in Columbia, has declared Bitcoin illegal and says that the peso remains the only valid currency for any transaction. The Banco de la República has also stated that they are the only institution that can issue any form of currency.
A Scottish altcoiner named David Low, oblivious to the failure of Auroracoin, is certain his invention of Scotcoin will bring about independence from their Limey overlords. Mr Low, who plans on offering his altcorn to the Scottish government, has said new users can claim 1000 coins for free after which they may purchase more at the low, low price of £1.65 per thousand.
BTC38 Does Buterin Inspired "Rollback" After API Keys Compromised
Chinese altcoin exchange BTC38 has reportedly suffered an attack that resulted in a 1.5 million RMB (Appx. $220,000 USD) Sorry For Your Loss.
A post on 8btc.com stated:
“As a result of the server logic problems on 21st Dec, more than 10 million Bitshares, over 10 million NXT and some BTC/LTC were stolen from the exchange’s hot wallet (estimated total loss of 1.5 million RMB). We shut down the server immediately and stayed up all night to fix the problem. We have reviewed our wallet deployment plan and made new adjustments. We will take full responsibility for the total loss of the digital asset (market buyback).” The most important assurance is that all funds are safe in the hands of BTC38.
BTC38 explained the delay to calm down the market:“As we are currently redeploying the wallet, the service for certain coins will be resumed gradually.”The hack comes on the heels of an attack earlier this year, in which BTC38's API keys were compromised, resulting in the exchange taking a lesson from the Vitalik Buterin playbook and "rolling back" trades. A security review was announced at that time time which apparently did little to prevent the latest breach. The exchange assures users that this time, however, the loss of hot wallet funds would not impact any customer balances.
Chinese Altcoin Exchange BTC38 Serves 1.5 Million RMB Of Your Loss
Chinese altcoin exchange BTC38 has reportedly suffered an attack that resulted in a 1.5 million RMB (Appx. $220,000 USD) Sorry For Your Loss.
A post on 8btc.com stated:
“As a result of the server logic problems on 21st Dec, more than 10 million Bitshares, over 10 million NXT and some BTC/LTC were stolen from the exchange’s hot wallet (estimated total loss of 1.5 million RMB). We shut down the server immediately and stayed up all night to fix the problem. We have reviewed our wallet deployment plan and made new adjustments. We will take full responsibility for the total loss of the digital asset (market buyback).” The most important assurance is that all funds are safe in the hands of BTC38.
BTC38 explained the delay to calm down the market:“As we are currently redeploying the wallet, the service for certain coins will be resumed gradually.”
The hack comes on the heels of an attack earlier this year, in which BTC38's API keys were compromised, resulting in the exchange taking a lesson from the Vitalik Buterin playbook and "rolling back" trades. A security review was announced at that time time which apparently did little to prevent the latest breach. The exchange assures users that this time, however, the loss of hot wallet funds would not impact any customer balances.
FUCKGOATS Schematics Released As Devices Ship
The Festivus gifts continue to flow from Saint Stanislav's labs, with release of code sufficient for users to audit and create their own FUCKGOATS.
asciilifeform:
" … it is everything you theoretically need to make YOUR OWN FUCKGOATS" (log)
The vpatches are avaible at the following locations:
http://nosuchlabs.com/fg/fg-genesis.vpatch
http://nosuchlabs.com/fg/fg-genesis.vpatch.asciilifeform.sig
http://nosuchlabs.com/fg/fg.jed
http://nosuchlabs.com/fg/fg.png
http://nosuchlabs.com/fg/trng_tw.png
More information on FUCKGOATS can be found at the No Such lAbs website: http://nosuchlabs.com/
Shinohai Round Up Ready Shitcoin Crop (Spoiler: The crop is poo corn)
This is a Shitcoin roundup. These blips are caused by corn surfacing in the slow-boilng liquid shit that constitutes their essence.
- Eth huffers continue to struggle to keep their coin from plummeting below $7.50 USD in "value" this week.
- Roger Ver continues seeking mining support for Buttcoin Unlimited and the toppling of theymos so that he might gain control of reddit's r/bitcoin. Ver also made a $25k gift to freeross.org to further boost his standing with the redditears and sjw's.
- Coindesk released a dismal "reader's choice" list of "influential people" in Bitcoin and "Blockchain". None of the persons listed were to be found in deedbot's WoT, the lone exception being The DAO hacker, who was voted #1.
Coinbase Targeted In Cryptsy Class Action
A nationwide class action lawsuit has been filed against Coinbase (D.CBSE) by Silver Law Group and Wites & Kapetan, P.A. of Florida, alleging the company violated laws by allowing Cryptsy exchange operator Paul Vernon to launder stolen funds through their service.
The lawsuit states that:
Coinbase failed to satisfy its regulatory requirements or perform any reasonable investigation into the suspicious activity in Mr. Vernon’s and Cryptsy’s Coinbase accounts. Although the exact amount remains undetermined, the lawsuit estimates that the value of the digital funds laundered through Coinbase exceeds $8,200,000.00. Mr. Vernon is believed to have absconded with those funds when he abandoned Cryptsy and fled to China in late-2015.
James D. Sallah is also named as a plaintiff in the suit. Sallah was named Receiver of the remaining Cryptsy funds seized by the courts after Mr. Vernon absconded to China, and is pursuing action against individuals believed to have assisted Big Vern in his scheme. If you or a loved one suffered Sorry For Your Loss you are encouraged to contact the attorneys listed above.