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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.
We can't go back. The Sun is setting on this empire. Maybe the next one will get it right.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Cybercriminals = criminals that use computers.
Banks that don't use computers = haven't existed in decades. all banks us computers, yet we don't call them Cyberbanks.
Nobody says Cyberbusiness, or Cyberschool, or Cybermedicine.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
"Ethical hackers"...
Indeed. You have to admire criminals that are willing to accomodate their victims' ability to pay.
Also, ransomware has some positive benefits. For so many areas of computer security, the cost of poor practices is externalized onto the innocent. This is true of data breaches, insecure devices used as spambots, etc. But with ransomware, the cost lands directly in the lap of the people failing to secure their systems and failing to run backups. So ransomware directly incentivizes better security practices that benefit everyone.
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.
Except because of transaction times, overhead, time until cashing in the coins, and volatility, it's impossible to accurately pay a value of X USD/X GBP/X Euro in bitcoin. Even Steam, a service that sells virtual goods and could therefore just take "tried to pay X" as good enough, no longer accepts bitcoin.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
So, when you get home one day and find your place picked clean, will you post an open thank you note to the burglars for teaching you an important lesson about what happens when you don't put bars on the windows?
Except because of transaction times, overhead, time until cashing in the coins,
Even shitty exchanges lock in the price at the time of your purported transaction. This has little to do with it.
volatility
This is half of the problem. The simple fact is nobody's going to pay you a bitcoin for a sandwich when that bitcoin could, tomorrow, buy three sandwiches. That's just fucking retarded.
The other half of the problem is the technology is shit, and transaction fees are beyond the realm of fucktarded. Nobody's going to pay you $20 in fees to buy a fucking sandwich.
Of course, magic woo is coming to fix BLOCKCHAIN and probably your local hosts file to boot, SOON(TM).
BTC isn't fucking currency, and anybody who says it is will probably offer you a great deal on a bridge that was only driven over by a little old lady going to church on Sundays.
It has no value other than speculation. It's a fiat currency with no backing from anyone. There is no government or other organization saying "no matter what happens to the currency, we'll honor it for X value." It's just a string of bits of computer code and mass stupidity. The fact that there's a lot of stupid greedy people propping it up is the only reason this is happening. Mass stupidity is still stupidity.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
It's more like an unlocked door with the key under the doormat and the door open wide.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.