Slashdot Mirror
Bitcoin's Fluctuations Are Too Much For Even Ransomware Cybercriminals (theguardian.com)
Bitcoin's price swings are so huge that even ransomware developers are dialling back their reliance on the currency, according to researchers at cybersecurity firm Proofpoint. From a report: Over the last quarter of 2017, researchers saw a fall of 73% in payment demands denominated in bitcoin. When demanding money to unlock a victim's data, cybercriminals are now more likely to simply ask for a figure in US dollars, or a local currency, than specify a sum of bitcoin. Just like conventional salespeople, ransomware developers pay careful attention to the prices they charge. Some criminals offer discounts depending on the region the victim is in, offering cheaper unlocking to residents of developing nations, while others use an escalating price to encourage users to pay quickly and without overthinking things. But a rapidly oscillating bitcoin price plays havoc with those goals, Proofpoint says.
"Ethical hackers"...
Sounds like normal retailers who accept bitcoin, do all the accounting and pricing in fiat (dollar, euro, etc) and if someone wants to use bitcoin then the real-time exchange rate is used to find the equivalent number of bitcoins. Many bitcoin accepting merchants never even see or touch a bitcoin, farming the payment processing out to a processor who determines the equivalent number of bitcoins and provides a payment address, when the coins show up and are verified the merchant is informed so they can deliver the goods/service and the merchant's account is credited with the dollars, euros, etc.
OK, bitcoin is seriously running out of use cases. Despite its reported "value," it's becoming more worthless by the day.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
shit man
I'd rather Make America Smart/Sane Again
Obviously a short-sighted bunch.
OMG facts!
Then: oh we want a currency with no central authority
Now: we want a commodity backed by a company called tether that is tied to the US dollar
idiots
Time to buy! I'm selling ALL my gold, stocks, bonds and putting a morgage on my house and putting it all into bitcoin. You suckers who don't understand simple economics can keep on getting fleaced while I will soon be rolling in the virtual doh. I haven't been this excited about an investment since I got in on the ground floor of Trump Vodka.
Maybe someone can help me. I think I need region-free ransomware, or some kind of region unlocker for my ransomware needs. I'll explain below.
One of the big things that most ransomware stories just gloss over, is how the attacker persuades the user to sudo apt-get install ransomware and enter their password. Why would I run ransomware?!
I decided to find out. I will be installing a few dozen ransomwares and comparing their attractiveness, to try to determine just what it is about successful ransomware, that makes people want to install it and use it. But I'm a bit more far-sighted than your typical ransomware user, in that I don't really want to pay ransoms or lose data. Or if there is some cool rush you get from paying, I'd still rather pay less. So I'd like to region detect as being in the cheapest region. Does anyone have some tips for doing that (and doing it well)?
OK, bitcoin is seriously running out of use cases. Despite its reported "value," it's becoming more worthless by the day.
"running out"? Its mostly been either a speculative instrument or a money transfer service. The former wants the volatility, the later doesn't really care so much since bitcoins are not held for any appreciable amount of time (immediately bought by person A, transferred, immediately sold by person B). The later is affected by the current high fees.
Buying pizza and other normal products and services is largely a stunt. Why would true believers use the bitcoins for ordinary purchases when they expect bitcoin prices denominated in dollars/euros/etc to jump up significantly? For the gray and dark markets, they're switching to other coins with better anonymity. Its sort of surprising ransomware had not done so, or maybe they still use bitcoin for "customer" convenience and convert to the more anonymous coins on their side?
So no, bitcoin is not very different now than in the past. These huge price drops are "normal". If I remember an Ars Technica article correctly the exponential price increases are typically (4 occurrences ?)) followed by a 75% drop in price. Ex the previous spike to around $1,000 a few years ago followed by a drop to around $250. If the pattern holds we might see something around $5,000 yet.
Plenty of places where you can short hedge if the fiat value means anything.
https://www.coindesk.com/the-f...
"We wanted to do a blockchain technology-related ETF, so not another bitcoin fund but something that takes advantage of the underlying ecosystem. So we developed a methodology in-house which measures seven quantitative factors and we run those factors on a universe of publicly traded [data]."
I trust them, they have quantified a universe after all.
this could just be because the 'anonymous' portion of the blockchain isnt so anonymous as the dumb criminals thought it was.
bitcoin goes up
slashdot: bitcoin is a bubble this proves it!
bitcoin goes down
slashdot: the bubble popped, this proves it!
bitcoin goes up after going down
slashdot: bitcoin is too volatile, must be worthless!
The dynamics are what destroys shit in an explosion.
A slow rise in pressure would not be a problem.
But a fast rise is a shock wave. A pushing one.
And a fast fall is too! A pulling one.
And if that happens repeatedly, especially when getting stronger and stronger, you reasonably can call it impending doom.
So yes, all that is correct.
and doesn't match with reality
the only people using bitcoin as a currency.
It's literally as simple as that. The huge fluxations are simply opportunites for huge profit.
eventually you will become a programmer of the blockchain. and then you will be empowered. and then you will innovate and invent new things
The blockchain and bitcoin are two very different things. Blockchain technology is highly likely to be part of our future. Bitcoin maybe not, it could easily be displaced some other coin with better security and better features. Bitcoin has various technical flaws, some make it insecure (ASIC mining), some make it impractical to use (fees). For example bitcoin is built on the assumption that miner cartels and governments can not manipulate it due to distributed mining (blockchain updates), ordinary people mining with their computers. Reality has deviated from this assumption, mining require expensive dedicated hardware (ASICs) that are only in the hands of relatively small number of people and they are overwhelming located in a single country and dependent upon inexpensive government supplied electricity. While cartel and government manipulation is unlikely, bitcoin's design assumes it to be virtually impossible. It is unlikely but plausible, the bitcoin blockchain is vulnerable.
A car analogy: Blockchain technology is like internal combustion engine technology. Bitcoin is like the Model T Ford, the first to get the attention of the public but entire replaceable by something newer, better performing and with more features. Network effect won't help bitcoin since there is little to no switching cost for a user to move to another coin.
On the nose.
I have been convinced for a long while that blockchain technology is important. What the last few weeks has convinced me is that Bitcoin itself is the walking dead. Because now that there is enough limelight to go around that some shines on its competitors, the low switching costs will mean Bitcoin will have to compete on its technical merit over the long haul. It cannot survive on the vacuous "gold standard of cryptocurrency" hype forever.
While we do not know exactly how "coin" will fit into the future ecosystems of blockchain technology, we have numerous reasons to suspect Bitcoin itself is ill-suited to succeed. Miners fleeing to greener pastures will drive the fees up and indirectly increase volatility, which will encourage normal consumers to shrug and choose something else. Eventually, it drifts down in transaction volume and price to where it is vulnerable to a run on the currency.
It has already started, in my opinion.
Without wanting to go into a discussion on technical merits, I see that many exchanges have started trading against Ethereum as well as bitcoin. Bitcoin transfers are also faster than bitcoin transfers, and MUCH cheaper. That alone will have a big influence because in the crypto community many people have started using ETH for storing value, making transfers and trading.
One day, people will wake up and figure out that there is nothing that bitcoin does that another coin does better, and that its only advantage has simply been that it was the first mover. When that happens, bitcoin will go down and another currency will be king.
Buying bitcoin, transferring it and selling it again is three transactions; That will take roughly four hours.
Which, by the way, is still faster than other form of "transfer without a central authority", like bank money transfer (from a day up to a couple of days).
As evidenced a few days ago, Bitcoin could easily gain or lose 10% or more of its value in those four hours.
Which, by the way, is still within the same kind of margin that some central authority money transfers end up costing.
No sane or intelligent person would attempt it, unless they were desperate to hide the movement of money.
How are you supposed to *hide* movements of money, on a system whose entire purpose of existence is to replace central authorities, with a system where every single movement of money is broadcast to the entire network and kept in a distributed ledger by all nodes ?
Well, okay, Joe Six pack your neighbor would have a little bit of difficulties mapping that transaction signed with public key "1XyZ" is actually you.
But that absolutely not beyond the reach of state-level actor.
The whole point of bitcoin protocol is not to make transaction secret.
The whole point of the protocol is to remove the central authority. Only you and the other end-point of a transaction decide what's going on. There's no central "Bitcoin, Inc." that can decide to block your transaction on a whim (as opposed to PayPal, Visa, etc.).
(Though in practice, some mining pools are dangerously close to that point, the protocol itself was initially designed with that goal in mind).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If you want to get in on the cryptocurrency mining scene, you need a good motherboard that allows for multiple GPUs: ASRock H110 Pro BTC+, ASUS B250, Biostar TB350-BTC, and GIGABYTE GA-H110-D3A.