Authored by William D. Eggers and Paul Macmillan of Deloitte, a document titled "Gov2020: A Journey into the Future of Government" details possible and probable changes to our society which await future would be governments. These changes, categorised as drivers which change the context in which government operates and trends which result in a shift in how government currently acts includes topics such as: Continue reading
BitGo Bug Results In Loss Of User Funds By Way Of 85 BTC Fee
BitGo Software Engineer Benedict Chan has detailed a bug in the company's recovery script which earlier today caused the loss of 85 BTC to new /r/bitcoin user rstn. The bug caused the bulk of rstn's coins to be included as a fee. Chan writes (archive): Continue reading
New Web of Trust Web Explorer
At the third annual Bitcoin Conference mike_c unveiled a new web based explorer for the #bitcoin-assets Web of Trust maintained by Kakobrekla's assbot. In his announcement mike_c gives an overview of many of the tool's new features and some of the historical context that created an impetus for this tool's creation. The Btc Alpha WoT Explorer went live to the public overnight.
Ransomware Inception
CBC News reports (archive) that a Quebec family which paid a bitcoin ransom not once but twice still failed to recover their treasured family photos despite paying 5 BTC.
Upon reading the Cryptowall notification that their files had been encrypted and that a ransom was required to be paid if they wished to reclaim them, the couple took their PC to a local repair store which confirmed the legitimacy of the threat. Continue reading
MtGox Trustee has 200k Bitcoins, Creditors to Line Up as Bankruptcy Progresses
As of the third creditors meeting on April 22, 2015, the approximately 100,000 creditors from 130 countries who were swindled by Robert Marie Mark Karpeles and his Bitcoin-fiat exchange MtGox Co., Ltd. – despite the numerous and several warnings and warning signs,1 – can now file claims through bankruptcy trustee Nobuaki Kobayash of law firm Nagashima Ohno & Tsudematsu. Continue reading
Not the least of which was the consistent $10+ spread between Mt Gox and Bitstamp that persisted throughout 2013, with the premium going to Gox of course, indicating that the Japanese firm was delaying withdrawals, most probably on account of a fractional reserve deposit scheme ↩
Vessenes Foundation Draws Near Its End, Vessenes Out As Chairman
The decline of the Vessenes Bitcoin Foundation continues with their developers leaving for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab's Digital Currency Initiative. In what appears to be an attempt to revitalize their image by amping up their star power the Vessenes foundation has replaced Peter Vessenes as their chairman with First Kid co-star Brock Pierce.
Windows Servers Pwn'd By JPEG Uploads
The Register reports that researcher Marcus Murray has demonstrated an attack which allows malicious parties to take control of servers running modern versions of Microsoft Windows Server by uploading JPEG images. Murray demonstrated this attack at the RSA San Francisco conference and asserts he used this same method on a photo upload portal to crack a United States Government agency's web server. This is one of many ways Microsoft Windows has shown itself to be unsafe for any purpose.
Garza & Friends: Additional Emails Detailed
A cache of hundreds of thousands of emails leaked from the office of GAW Miners totalling 5.1 GB in size spanning the time period May 2014 through January 2015 detail the lengths Homero Joshua Garza has gone to in order to maintain his fraudulent business activities.
While Qntra has previously published articles specific to Garza himself, this article will focus on the people in the periphery, their communications with Garza and their eagerness to conduct business with him unwittingly or perhaps even choosing to ignore the obvious red flags in order to turn a nice dollar. Continue reading
Tennessee House Votes To Allow Bitcoin Campaign Contributions
The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports that the legislators of the Tennessee State House have voted 61 to 28 in favor of allowing Bitcoin to be accepted as a campaign "gift" in state elections. The bill passed the Tennessee Senate last month and awaits the Governor's signature which could render it law, though given that application of the Gubernatorial veto is rare in Tennessee as it takes the same simple majority from each house of the General assembly which initially passed the bill to override the veto. Continue reading
Mining Difficulty Decreases Off The Back Of All Time High
With what is the eighth adjustment in the Bitcoin mining difficulty for 2015, the difficulty has decreased to 47,610,564,513. This represents a reduction of -3.71% from April 5th's all time high of 49,446,390,688. The global hashrate as of today's change stands at 340,809,696 GH/s. Today's change marks the third time the mining difficulty has decreased during 2015, something which only occurred twice during all of 2014.