step in leading this progression. Existing Smart Contracts have experienced issues in relation to ease of use and scalability due to a Turing complete system. Addressing these issues, Nexus has produced what is in essence a ‘Register-based Virtual Machine’, set for release in January 2019 with the Tritium upgrade. Tritium will allow developers to access the technology of Advanced Contracts simply through an API set. Before an explanation of Advanced Contracts is given, some context will be provided as to how conventional Smart Contracts function.Smart Contracts are self-executing. Their design is to enforce the terms and conditions of a contract through programmable logic, reducing the need for third party intermediaries such as brokers and banks. Smart Contracts are an additional layer of processing above the ledger layer, i.e what is known as ‘the blockchain’, and are comparable to small computer programs that hold a state of information. The calculations of the contract are carried out by the processing nodes of a blockchain, which change the state of the information. Given that the calculations or processing is carried out by distributed consensus, the state of a Smart Contract is immutable.Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency with built-in Smart Contract capabilities, which it calls ‘scripts’. Scripts are not Turing complete and contain byte code. Ethereum augmented these capabilities into its ‘Turing Complete Smart Contracts’, which are generic to developers’ needs. Ethereum gives developers more access to contract functionality on a blockchain through a custom programming language called Solidity, which is then compiled into assembly language that is run on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The EVM is a ‘Stack-based Virtual Machine’ that processes each instruction in turn. Though very capable, Ethereum has experienced some issues in regards to security, performance, and ease-of-use, predominantly because of its Turing complete design. Some notable cases include the $75m DAO hack on Ethereum, and the $286m Parity bug. Vulnerabilities existed due to the large complexity of a Turing complete system, and the resulting difficulty of resolving bugs in a protocol written in immutable code. The complexity of operations that support universal computation or Turing complete designs also limit scalability. A universal system has a higher degree of complexity, and can not therefore compete with technology that is designed for more specialized tasks. An example of this observation would be the comparison between a CPU (Central Processing Unit) with a ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) in the mining of cryptocurrency. A CPU can’t compete against a SHA256 miner, as its complexity and design is geared to support universal general computation, not specialized computation. A similar conclusion could be drawn when a comparison is made between the system design of Ethereum (universal), and Nexus (specialized).Nexus has developed a ‘Register-based Virtual Machine’, a specialized contracting engine with greater capabilities than the EVM. Unlike the the EVM, which is defined by only two distinct layers of processing and is dependent on a Turing complete system, the Nexus contract engine is facilitated through the seven individual layers of the Nexus Software Stack, each designated to carry out specialized processes. The third layer of processing is called the Register Layer. Here, the states of individual pieces of information contained by Advanced Contracts are recorded in architectural components called registers. Registers are used by typical computer processors and provide easy access to memory storage of frequently used information or values. With respect to Nexus Advanced Contracts, each register is owned by a Signature Chain. Therefore, the ownership and write access of a register is validated by the second layer, the Ledger Layer. The fourth layer is the Operation Layer which defines the rules of the state changes to a register, called ‘operations’. The operations are carried out by validating nodes that change the state of the registers by distributed consensus. The design provides the required functionality of a contract engine, without the over complexity and complications of a Turing complete system.The ownership of a register can be transferred providing many proof of ownership use cases. Examples of such include titles, deeds, digital certificates and records, agreements, or any other digital means of representing tangible assets or time-stamped events. A register can also be owned and governed by another register, creating a relationship between many users. Relations can be used as proofs on the Operation Layer to provide additional functionality. An example of this would be a register that holds metadata representing the ownership of an item, and it being owned by another ‘token register’. The token ownership signifies partial ownership of the item, which provides the possibility for further use cases such as royalty payments with split ownership.Conditions or stipulations can also be coded into Advanced Contracts by validation scripts or Boolean logic. Validation scripts require a transaction to fulfill a certain set of conditions to execute, which allows a user to program in stipulations on the exchange of NXS, tokens or any other digital asset. This allows a user to void transaction orders, place time locks on funds, or exchange any digital asset without a central intermediary.Advanced Contracts which will be accessible through an API set will be able to improve many existing processes, including digital ownership, tokenization of assets and enterprises, digital rights, royalty payments, supply chain management, escrow services, financial applications, legal documentation of digital signatures, and many more.The standards of object registers, operation codes, and API methods will be defined through working group consensus, to ensure a consistent connection between developers and users. Nexus borrows a similar model to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that provides the working groups for all RFC (Request for Comments) standards. This is important to drive a vibrant ecosystem forward. Just as we have seen with the success of the internet, we hope to continue this success in the next era of global connection: blockchain, artificial intelligence, and satellite communication.Copyright 2014-2018 Nexus Earth | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use

actors.

Nexus Mutual revealed on Twitter that hackers had broken into Karp’s personal crypto wallet and drained his funds. The hacker managed to install a compromised version of MetaMask, the famous Ethereum-based crypto wallet, and tricked Karp into authorizing a transaction that diverted all his NXM tokens into their wallet.

Investigations into the theft are still ongoing. Karp complemented the attacker on the smooth operation, which he calls a “very nice trick.” The CEO offered a $300,000 reward to the thief. He also promises to drop all charges against him in exchange for returning the stolen tokens.

MetaMask is one of the most famous wallet apps available. However, the service has seen an alarming number of phishing attacks and other hacks this year.

Earlier this month, blockchain forensics and security firm CipherTrace issued a warning after noting an uptick in the reports of a malicious Chrome browser extension for MetaMask that had been stealing user funds.

The warning, titled “ALERT: Malicious Crypto Browser Extension — Masked MetaMask,” explained that CipherTrace had seen a rise in comments and alerts within the online crypto community.

The company added that links to fake MetaMask sites are being reported to crypto projects and forums. Many of them also show up on Google ads above any legitimate search results whenever the “MetaMask” entry is entered into the search engine.

The primary MetaMask problem is phishing. There seem to be several fake sites touting the wallet, and many of them ask new visitors to enter their 12-word seed phrases to connect and upgrade their wallets. But, the hackers simply use the phrases to break into the wallets and steal the victims’ funds.

represents a giant leap forward in blockchain technology. Nexus is pioneering unique solutions in order to solve the industry’s most pressing challenges while maintaining the principle of a distributed landscape, hence the term Distributed Ledger Technology. Through the creation of an innovative software stack, we are tackling the challenges of speed, scalability, ease of integration, and intuitive user experience. Tritium incorporates advanced contracts which will allow for easy integration of financial tools for increased accountability and transparency. Tritium also incorporates LISP technology into the Nexus framework to further ensure the network is distributed, secure, scalable and introduces parallelism on the network layers. The core team also had a busy travel month with some of the team visiting Australia, where Colin Cantrell spoke at Sydney’s Bitcoin & Blockchain Fair, and others from the team in New York City for Consensus. These trips help us make important connections in the industry and educate key people on the work being done at Nexus. Last but not least, we would like to remind everyone that we will be hosting the Second Annual Nexus Conference here in Scottsdale, Arizona from September 19th to the 22nd. See you all there! Development update from core developer Brian Smith:Our development team has been growing and is now structured into two different groups. The front-end developers are working on the Nexus Interface (wallet) and the back-end developers are working on the legacy code and the new Tritium protocol. “We’ve been shoring up each of the modules as well as making sure all the Legacy QT wallet features are implemented in the new interface, and cleaning up any loose ends.” said Dillon Dugan who is part of the wallet development team.We are continuously maintaining the legacy code base as well as working on Tritium. Colin has been working with each of the developers on specific portions of the LLL with the overarching goal of improving the code and reducing the memory footprint. We are also developing a new coder training set with explanations on how Nexus works and how it differs from other blockchain projects. Colin and Brian are additionally building out the Unified Modeling Language (UML) for the Tritium protocol.After a lot of hard work and much anticipation, the Tritium White Paper was released on Tuesday, May 29th.  We are pleased to share the blueprint for this revolutionary technology co-authored by Colin Cantrell (Chief Architect and Founder, The Nexus Embassy) and Dino Farinacci (Lispers.net), the next evolution of blockchain scalability, integration, and usability. Just as the Nexus project has continued to grow, building and connecting with many, this paper was an unprecedented collaboration of many. Make sure to read about the amazing White Paper Community contributors, Shea, Jules and April, featured in the Community Contributor section of this newsletter.The Tritium White Paper is here, our blueprint to the future.Read the full Tritium White Paper here: https://nexusearth.com/tritium-white-paper/Blockchain is a flourishing technology that is in a constant state of change. In recent years, the global market for blockchain has grown exponentially, yet as organizations race to efficiently adopt and implement blockchain technology, they are encountering numerous scalability and implementation challenges.  Nearly all blockchains currently in use record information in one dimension, comparable to a single lane highway. When a highway gets congested from mass use, traffic comes to a standstill as it bottlenecks. These limitations prevent blockchains from scaling efficiently, because as more transactions are processed the network slows down.  These constraints are already being widely reported via early blockchain adopters. From an enterprise perspective, there is a need for a simple interface with easy integration, thus allowing for broad applications across industries while scaling for worldwide use. Instead of building custom applications on a predetermined platform, businesses are seeking opportunities to collaborate on the design process prior to blockchain development to ensure the technology meets their individual and/or industry needs.Nexus is pioneering a new approach to blockchain technology that solves the biggest challenges faced by the industry: scalability, ease of integration, and intuitive user experience. Beginning with the Tritium update, Nexus is creating an innovative software stack containing multiple layers of abstraction that will streamline business integration into the Nexus framework. It will create the foundation of a cryptographic identity system and make smart contracts easily accessible through a feature-rich Application Programming Interface (API) set. Each API will be developed through a standardization process with input from businesses, industry leaders, and developers, focused on providing a well-designed interface and seamless business integration. This unique customer engagement approach allows businesses that are building on the Nexus software stack to have input on the forward development and standards for each release. This is very important for streamlining the integration between consumers, businesses, and networks. The software stack introduced by Tritium enables the incorporation of advanced contracts and allows for built-in smart financial instruments, such as stipulations on funds received and their appropriation. Smart financial instruments such as ‘receive signatures’ can be expanded into a form of multi-signature contracts allowing multiple parties to decide how the funds are spent, thereby increasing accountability and transparency. These organizational contracts allow businesses and consumers to function in a more streamlined and connected way.The integration of LISP (Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol) with Nexus introduces a truly distributed, secure, and scalable infrastructure network. The combination of running Nexus over LISP with the Tritium software stack represents a new evolution of blockchain development that addresses the critical issues facing existing technology.  Nexus / LISP also creates a more efficient messaging system, prevents IP address spoofing, and introduces parallelism on the network layers.The Tritium Protocol, as described in the recently released white paper, is the first of three updates of the TAO framework (Tritium, Amine and Obsidian) that provides utility, scalability, and extensibility to the Nexus Blockchain architecture.  It is the first step towards a practical and efficient distributed system that can be tailored to various use cases. Through an intuitive user interface and comprehensive API sets, Tritium enables seamless integration with other applications. With the upcoming implementation of Tritium, there is plenty to be excited about!We’d love to see all of you at The Second Annual Nexus Conference from September 19th – 22nd in Scottsdale, AZ. Make sure to visit our  conference website and join the mailing list to be among the first to be updated to reserve your Early Bird Tickets! The Premier Blockchain Event for Business InnovationSeeking: Visionaries, Collaborators, Builders & Innovators Make sure to book your rooms through the Nexus Room Block to receive our special rate: Nexus is pleased to announce that it is now listed on Binance, the biggest global exchange for trade volume (at the time of publication). Nexus is available on Binance with trading pairs for: For support, check out: ts-Nexus-NXS-   Colin C. and the Aussies  at the Nexus Booth  At the beginning of May, Colin Cantrell (Chief Architect & Founder) and Colin Forbes (Chief Financial Officer) of The Nexus Embassy traveled to Sydney, Australia to speak at Sydney’s Bitcoin & Blockchain Fair, as well as connecting with the large Nexus Community in Australia. While there, Colin and Colin participated in many interviews (see links below) covering the latest from Nexus including topics like the Embassy’s self-funding mechanism, the 3 Dimensional Chain, and more. The visit included a Facebook Live interview with Alex of ‘Nugget’s News Australia’ and a well attended Sydney MeetUp and a lively dinner with the Australian Community. At the Bitcoin Fair, in addition to having a booth Colin C. spoke on decentralized organizational structures.A big thank you to Cain Beuchat, Mike Casey, Paul Screen and the rest of the Australian Nexus Community for their organization of the Blockchain Fair, the Nexus Booth, the Sydney MeetUp and the community dinner as well as their continued collaboration on Nexus.  Colin and Colin look forward to visiting again. Check out the interview from CryptoFinder with Colin Cantrell & Colin Forbes:Nugget’s News Australia Facebook Live interview with Colin Cantrell & Colin lin Cantrell speaks with Crypto News Australia: https://youtu.be/ahkNgFh3kngMembers of the Core team visit Consensus: Kierre Reeg, Alex El-Nemer & Ajay AhujaIn early May, Ajay Ahuja (CEO), Kierre Reeg (Chief Economist), Alex El-Nemer (International Business Development) and Dionna Bailey (Business Development) attended Consensus in New York on behalf of the core team. With over 4,000 in attendance this year, Consensus has become one of the biggest blockchain conferences in the world. Consensus was a great place to connect with leaders in the industry and to gather information, as well as an opportunity to educate organizations looking for a layer one blockchain solution such as Nexus. We are excited to see these relationships materialize in the future. Hot topics at Consensus this year for the Nexus team included potential future regulation of the industry, enterprise supply chain wish lists, and overall market sentiments. The team also had the chance to connect with many Nexus  Community members who were attending Consensus.                                                                                                                  Francisco Hernandez Henaine moved to the US from Mexico when he was 16 years old to pursue academic and professional development opportunities. He has always enjoyed a passion for technology and started fixing and building computers at a young age. When he took his first coding class, he felt like he’d found what he was meant to do. Francisco got into the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry in 2017 and was truly amazed by its potential, most especially what he saw at Nexus. Some of his hobbies include foosball, pool, soccer, gaming and working out.Alex El-Nemer (International Business Development) of the Nexus team had the pleasure of speaking with Dominic Bennett in an AMA video that took place on May 1st. Alex has been working from London to educate about Nexus outside of the US, including working on international use-cases, sponsorships for the conference, and helping with international press for Nexus. Make sure to check out the interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W02HZZW4CN8&t=211sTritium White Paper: Shea (@Shea), Jules (@Jules) and April (@chambermaid): Shea, Jules, and April from the Community worked closely with Colin and Dino to write the Tritium White Paper. These dedicated community members are extremely knowledgeable in mathematics, engineering, technology and economics, and greatly help the advancement of Nexus. They have also collaborated with the team on the Nexus FAQs and the website content, and continue to educate people on the revolutionary advancements of Nexus. Our thanks to each of you for all of your hard work!Tritium White Paper Explained: Spaid (@Spaid), Ahmed (@Medo_NZ), and Peter (@imestin):Since the release of the White Paper, many Community members have taken the initiative to simplify the technology in order to make it more understandable for many. Thank you for your impactful contributions. The Nexus Tritium White Paper Seven Layers 08cdf7a0Smart contracts in ts-in-nexusCommunity Mining Guide: Vilcu (@Vido) and Glen (@MrProbz)Vilcu and Glen from the Nexus Community have compiled a comprehensive and very user-friendly Community Mining Guide for anyone who is interested in mining Nexus. The guide includes everything from equipment suggestions to step-by-step instructions on how to setup miners and receive your first reward for securing the Nexus blockchain. The Nexus miners are always available to help and answer questions in our Slack. Please email [email protected] for an XaQVMuJnluLSnLBQxBB0/edit?usp=sharingWe’d like to thank the Community for an unprecedented time of collaboration. The Tritium White Paper as well as Nexus’ growing blockchain advancements are proof that we are always better together. As a further testament to our growth, we’ve just reached 20,000 followers on Twitter. Thanks for all you do!Copyright 2014-2018 Nexus Earth | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use

of a quantum-resistant 3D blockchain in combination with communication satellites in space. With this, Nexus founder Colin Cantrell is aiming to “decentralize the decentralization”, by taking it out of reach of any government control or mining pool monopolies. Hold on to your hats, folks. This is one of the more ambitious projects out there, so let’s get right into it. In this Nexus guide, we’re going to go over: Nexus uses, not one, not two, but three consensus mechanisms to form a three-dimensional blockchain. The team argues that having three different mechanisms in place reduces miner centralization and enables more efficient on-chain scaling. The Prime Channel is a Proof-of-Work channel. In this channel, miners search for 308-digit dense prime clusters through trial-and-error. Dense prime cluster mining is more ASIC-resistant than traditional hash mining. Therefore, even if you have just a CPU, you can mine on this channel. Outside of cryptocurrency, the mining on the Prime Channel produces data that can be further used in prime number research for quantum physics. The Hashing Channel is also Proof-of-Work but uses Hashcash instead of dense prime clusters. This is similar to Bitcoin’s mining algorithm except that miners search for SHA-3 (with Skein) hashes while Bitcoin miners find SHA-256 ones. The Nexus block hashes are 4x the size of Bitcoin block hashes. You should use a GPU when mining on this channel. The third and final channel uses Proof-of-Holdings to secure the network. This is essentially the same as the Proof-of-Stake consensus method used by coins like NEO. You earn newly minted Nexus coins (NXS) just by holding the ones you already have. Four attributes determine what your return will be when you stake your coins: Nexus has a three-pronged distributed telecommunications system to further decentralize the network. Because the network provides three distinct mining opportunities, almost anyone around the world can run a node and participate in network security. All nodes in a mesh network work together to solve a block rather than compete against each other. This serves to distribute network data more so than other systems. To take things further, Nexus may produce specialized antennas for you to purchase to operate locally based networks as well. Nexus has partnered with Vector Space Systems (Vector) to create a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellite Network of nodes. The satellites, in combination with the ground mesh network, will host the Nexus network as well as any decentralized apps (dapps) built on top of it. Even more outstanding, the satellite network will provide a worldwide decentralized Internet giving service to those previously unable to access their own. The Nexus ground stations connect the mesh networks on the ground to the satellite network in space. They run the uplink/downlink operations including address endpoint route defining and ground-based caching. They also run their own instance of Daemon, the software component of the Nexus system. The Nexus coin (NXS) is the currency of the network. There’s no cap on the amount of NXS that will be minted. Instead, the coin has a 10-year distribution period in which 78 million NXS will be distributed until September 23rd, 2024. After this time, the supply will inflate each year by a maximum of 3% through the holding channel and 1% through the prime and hashing channels. Nodes create blocks, on average, every 50 seconds, and an NXS transaction requires 6 confirmations. Currently, most transactions cost 0.01 NXS. However, once the 3DC is built and 10-year distribution is complete, transaction fees will disappear. Instead, the system will absorb the fees through inflation. Nexus didn’t hold an ICO. Instead, the project has a Developer Fund that takes a small commission from mining rewards. This commission starts at 1.5% and increases to 2.5% over 10 years. Additionally, 20% of the block rewards are slotted for marketing as well as the production and launch of the Nexus satellite network. Colin Cantrell, also known as Videlicet, is the founder and lead developer of Nexus. He first named the project Coinshield (CSD) when starting in September 2014. The original code only contained the prime channel; the team added the hash channel in October 2014. In April 2015, the team rebranded to Nexus, and they added Proof-of-Holdings in July 2015. Besides partnering with Vector on the satellite network, Nexus has also joined forces with SingularityNET to provide their 3DC architecture to the project’s decentralized AI network. Moving forward, Nexus is releasing major updates following their TAO (Tritium, Amine, Obsidian) roadmap strategy. The releases include the 3DC, mobile wallets, quantum resistance, and the satellite network, among many other things. Nexus is one the most ambitious, if not the most ambitious, projects in the cryptocurrency space. First and foremost, the project is attempting to dethrone Bitcoin as the top peer-to-peer currency. With the decentralized internet produced from its space mesh network of satellites, Nexus is also competing with Substratum. Like most of the crypto market, Nexus was relatively quiet until 2017. During that year, the price rose from $0.026 (~0.000027 BTC) to $3.34 (~0.00087 BTC) by September. Shortly after, the price fell back down to about $1 before skyrocketing up to an all-time high of $13.33 (~0.0008 BTC) in January 2018. This significant rise in price can most likely be attributed to the Vector partnership announcement in combination with the success of the entire market at that time. Since then, the price has drastically fallen, sitting at $1.75 (~0.00018 BTC) at the time of this writing. News of the SingularityNET partnership seems to have had no effect on the price. The team hasn’t published a roadmap with exact dates, so it’s hard to make any price predictions for the immediate future. As with most cryptocurrency projects, though, important development releases should have a positive impact on the price. With the scope of this project, you should probably consider it a long-term hold. You can purchase NXS on either Bittrex or Upbit with BTC. If you don’t currently own any BTC, check out our guide on how to buy some. As mentioned early, you can also earn NXS through mining. Check out the Nexus mining page to download the miner that fits best with your strategy. As a reminder, you should mine with the Prime Channel if you’re using a normal CPU, and you should check out the Hashing Channel if you plan to use a dedicated mining rig like an ASIC. Once you hold at least 1,000 NXS, you can stake to earn additional coins.    Nexus has an official wallet for Windows, Mac, and Linux desktops. Although you can keep your NXS on an exchange it’s highly recommended that you move them to a wallet. You’re only able to stake your coins if they’re in a Nexus wallet. Nexus is building a new type of blockchain with three separate mechanisms for securing the network. On top of that, the team is sending node satellites into space to create a decentralized Internet and network outside the control of any one entity. The overall mission is to create an improved Bitcoin with faster transactions, lower fees, and less miner centralization. Nexus is one of the few projects truly addressing quantum resistance and other potential future issues. If these problems become as large as the team believes they will, and they can accomplish their lofty mission, Nexus may just be one of the few projects still in action 20 years down the road. CoinCentral's owners, writers, and/or guest post authors may or may not have a vested interest in any of the above projects and businesses. None of the content on CoinCentral is investment advice nor is it a replacement for advice from a certified financial planner. How to Buy Bitcoin & Other Popular Cryptocurrency CoinCentral is an independent publication covering news and information on cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and their underlying blockchain technology. © 2017 CoinCentral. All Rights Reserved.

since 2012.

Unfortunately, the hacking of Bitcoin exchanges and wallets is far from new and in year 2020, amid the boom, DeFi projects have become a favorite target of hackers. Cipher Trace estimates that by November 2020, attackers had stolen almost $100 million from DeFi protocols.

We will tell you about the main hacks of 2020, because of which users lost millions of dollars, and some companies closed down altogether.

KuCoin — one of the largest hacks in history (damage — $280 million)

The September 2020 attack on the cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin was one of the largest hacks in the crypto’s history industry.

Initially, the damage was estimated at $150 million, but later analysts changed the estimate to $280 million. Hackers who hacked KuCoin laundered funds through mixers and the decentralized exchange Uniswap. By November, KuCoin returned most of the stolen funds to users and restored the deposit and withdrawal of coins.

Dforce Hack (damage — $25 million)

In April 2020, a hacker attacked the dForce DeFi protocol. At the time of the theft, the amount was almost $25 million. He took advantage of the vulnerability of the imbtc token which was an ERC-777 standard and a critical vulnerability in the smart contracts of the platform, Lendf.me responsible for updating user balances. Besides the damage caused to dForce, the hacker took out all the tokens from Lendf.me (291 imbtc or $2 million at the time of the attack).

However, the attacker made a fatal (for him) mistake — he inadvertently disclosed his identification data by accessing decentralized exchanges directly without using the distributed file system IPFS.

As a result, Singapore law enforcement officers caught hacker, and he had to return all the stolen funds.

Harvest Finance: “engineering error” at a cost of almost $20 million (damage — $19.8 million)

In October 2020, an attacker stole $19.8 million from the Harvest Finance platform. It took him seven minutes to withdraw the funds. The hacker later returned $2.47 million. The developers promised to distribute them among users and set a reward of $1 million for help in returning funds.

Representatives of the project explained the hacker attack as an “engineering error”.

End of Pickle Finance (damage — $19.7 million)

Another DeFi project, Pickle Finance, suffered major damage because of the hacker attack. Hackers stole more than $19 million. The project’s token price collapsed and shortly after the hack, Pickle Finance announced a merger with yearn. Finance.

Read Complete Story: 

Defi platform Pickle Finance hacked, $ 20 million DAI stolen

In September 2020, a hacker withdrew $15 million from the unfinished DeFi project Eminence. It was launched by Andre Cronje, a well-known developer in the decentralized finance sector. Subsequently, the attacker returned Cronje $8 million.

Serial attacks on BZX (damage — $11.6 million)

The BZX DeFi platform has been attacked by hackers several times in a year. In February 2020, the attackers withdrew 1,193 ETH. A few days later, BZX was hacked again, and they withdrew another 2388 ETH.

Another attack occurred in September 2020. The total amount of damage was more than $11.6 million.

Exmo Lost 6% of their funds (damage — $10.5 million)

At the end of December, hackers broke into the Exmo cryptocurrency exchange. Initially, it was about the loss of about 5% of total assets, but later the exchange clarified that it lost 6% of the funds. According to preliminary estimates, the damage amounted to $10.5 million.

Hacker hacked founder of Nexus Mutual Hugh Karp (damage — $8 million)

In addition to exchanges and DeFi projects, individuals also came to the attention of hackers. In December 2020, a hacker withdrew more than $8 million in NXM tokens from the personal wallet of Nexus Mutual founder Hugh Karp. Karp reached out via Twitter with an offer of a $300,000 reward for returning’s of his funds. The hacker said that he will not sell tokens until the crypto prices rise or until Karp transfers 4500 ETH to his address.

Read More Details of NXM hack:

NXM Hack Update-Hugh Karp, Founder Of Nexus Mutual Spoke About The Recent Hack Of His Wallet

“Black Thursday” for MakerDAO (damage — $8 million)

Against the background of the March 2020 crypto market collapse, attackers withdrew more than $8 million from the MakerDAO system “Black Thursday” for DeFi:  The investors filed a class action lawsuit against the Maker Foundation and several affiliated organizations. The Maker Foundation published a report on the incident, but MKR token holders refused to compensate the collateral holders in MakerDAO.

The attack on the Dollar stablon Origin (damages — $7 million)

On the night of November 17 2020, a hacker broke into the Origin Dollar stable coin network and withdrew funds worth more than $7 million. To launder and move funds, he used a Tornado Cash mixer and renbtc coins. By December, the Origin Protocol team had submitted a plan to compensate users.

👉 https://t.co/x0NLrBduFP pic.twitter.com/64tcRUcnk2

— Origin Protocol (@OriginProtocol) December 12, 2020

Because of the attack on the multi stable coins storage, an unknown person withdrew $6 million in DAI and USDC stable coins from the Value DeFi project. He took advantage of an instant loan.

The developers offered the hacker to keep the coins worth $1 million and return the rest. The attacker ignored the offer, but partially compensated for the losses to users. For example, the hacker returned 50,000 DAI to a nurse who claimed that she had lost all her savings.

DeFi projects Akropolis, Cheese Bank and warp faced similar attacks this year. Finance Experts believe that hackers will continue to use instant loans to hack DeFi projects in the future.

Hacked Eterbase (damage — $5.3 million)

In early September 2020, hackers broke into the Slovak cryptocurrency exchange Eterbase. The platform announced the loss of user funds in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, XRP, Tezos and Algorand in the amount of more than $5.3 million. Hackers transferred most of the crypto to Binance, Huobi and HitBTC.

Bitcoin wallets under threat – attack on Cashaa (damage — $3.1 million)

One of the Bitcoin wallets operator of the cryptocurrency exchange Cashaa was hacked in July 2020. The hacker withdrew 336 BTC. At the time of the hack, Estimated damage was worth $3.1 million, which by December 2020 is equivalent to more than $7.5 million.

In February 2020, the Altsbit cryptocurrency exchange was hacked. And although the stolen amount seems relatively small ($285,000), it forced the exchange to close.

In the summer, the DeFi projects Balancer, and Opyn were hacked. Hackers also attacked cryptocurrency platforms hosted by GoDaddy. They also stole 1,400 BTC from an investor using an old version of the Electrum wallet, and, according to media reports, hacked 2,000 accounts of the cryptocurrency-friendly Robinhood platform.

Attackers actively traded user data

At the end of the year, the information of one million users of Ledger bitcoin wallets was publicly available.

Read full story: Data of More Than 270,000 Ledger Wallet Users Leaked

Will cybercriminals attacks on the cryptocurrency industry in 2021 continue? Experts believe that yes. However, leading cryptocurrency projects do not wait for hacker attacks — they devote more and more time to their security systems, and experts issue reports and recommendations on methods of protection and counteractions. In, future companies that put the user funds security and user data as their top priority will take large crypto market share.

February. One Nexus crypto unit is available at the price of $0.32 or 0.00008061 BTC, at present. The crypto is available for tradings on various known cryptocurrency exchanges such as Trade By Trade, Bittrex, and Binance, among a few others.In the last one week, Nexus has been traded at the rate of 3.5% up against the US dollar. Nexus holds the market capitalization of $19.00 million and around $138,070.00 worth of Nexus had been traded on multiple crypto exchanges in the last one day. It is Proof- of -work and Proof-of-stake type of crypto that runs on the SHA3 hashing algorithm. It first came into the market for trading in on June 2014. At present, its total supply is 59,907,495 coins, and out of this, the circulating supply goes to 59,707,886 coins.Nexus (NXS) is available on the following exchanges for buying purposes A9 apart from those mentioned above): Cryptopia, Upbit. Investors and traders are not allowed to purchase cryptocurrencies like Nexus directly by paying in U.S. dollars. They will have to acquire Ethereum or Bitcoin first. They can use these Ethereum or Bitcoin to buy Nexus. They can do it on one of the exchanges from the list mentioned above.Nexus is a P2P blockchain powered network that has enhanced scalability, speed, security, and accessibility. Nexus makes this happen by using a quantum-resistant 3D blockchain and integrating this with a satellite space.Once a person posses the NXS token, he/she will need an NXS wallet to store these tokens safely. Nexus has an in-house wallet which is supported by operating systems like Mac, Windows, and Linux too. It is better that these token holders store their NXS tokens in the in-house wallet of Nexus because they are allowed to stake these coins only when they are stored in a Nexus wallet.The Nexus blockchain addresses quantum resistance and other future potential issues.CryptoNewsZ is a News Publication Media that provides updates on cryptocurrency, ICOs, DApps, and blockchain. As more and more people turn to cryptocurrencies every passing day, we cater high-quality, unbiased and well-analyzed content to them. We cover the latest news, price analysis and interviews for the crypto community.Reporters at CryptoNewsZ work round the clock to provide upbeat, timely and consistent news updates to its readers. Thus CryptoNewsZ endeavors to fill the void of a reliable source of information in digital currency community.

AU21, Brilliance Ventures, Phoenix VC, and X21.

PAID’s private sale has been oversubscribed, with more than $21 million committed already. According to PAID’s spokesperson, the value of allocation requests is growing by $1 million daily.

The PAID Network team plans on using the funds from the recent funding round to continue to build the world’s first decentralized SMART Agreement DApp powered by Polkadot. After successfully launching the PAID Network MVP in December, allowing parties to sign Agreements on the PAID Network, the team has set their eyes on their upcoming TGE (token generation event) coming January 2021.

Currently operating on the Rinkeby testnet, anyone can create and sign contracts that are saved on the IPFS/Ethereum network ledger forever and access it via connecting their Ethereum wallets.

“All industries are currently working to migrate their business functions onto blockchain. Trust in the smart contracting process, at the nexus of transaction management on blockchain, will be the key enabler of permissionless secure transactions. PAID Network’s SMART customizable contracting solutions make distributed digital contracting trustless and secure. They will allow the deployment of credible self-executing contracts in any use case,”  said Saeed Al Darmaki, Managing Director of Alphabit fund.

The close of the fundraising acknowledges PAID’s early mover advantage as one of the first legal techs using digital ledger technology (DLT) to make business on the blockchain more secure for everyone. The powerful e-signature is backed by negotiation, arbitration, and DeFi services — providing an end-to-end contracting solution. The smart contract executes all functions on the blockchain and because the market for blockchain platforms and services is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 67.3 percent to $39.7 billion by 2025, the PAID team has a headstart.

PAID Network was launched as a blockchain incubator project by Master Ventures – a venture studio focused on building and funding blockchain projects with a focus on driving adoption to the industry. Some notable investments from the venture studio include Coinbase, Kraken, Bitfinex, Elrond, Reef, and Ultra.

and X21.

PAID’s private sale has been oversubscribed, with more than $21 million committed already. According to PAID’s spokesperson, the value of allocation requests is growing by $1 million daily.

PAID Network is using the funds from the recent funding round to continue to build the world’s first decentralized SMART Agreement DApp powered by Polkadot. After successfully launching the PAID Network MVP in December, allowing parties to sign Agreements on the PAID Network, the team has set their eyes on their upcoming TGE (token generation event) coming January 2021. Currently operating on the Rinkeby testnet, anyone can create and sign contracts that are saved on the IPFS/Ethereum network ledger forever and access it via connecting their Ethereum wallets.

“All industries are currently working to migrate their business functions onto the blockchain. Trust in the smart contracting process, at the nexus of transaction management on the blockchain, will be the key enabler of permissionless secure transactions. PAID Network’s SMART customizable contracting solutions make distributed digital contracting trustless and secure. They will allow the deployment of credible self-executing contracts in any use case,”  said Saeed Al Darmaki, Managing Director of the Alphabit Fund.

The close of the fundraising acknowledges PAID’s early mover advantage as one of the first legaltechs using digital ledger technology (DLT) to make business on the blockchain more secure for everyone. The powerful e-signature is backed by negotiation, arbitration and DeFi services — providing an end-to-end contracting solution. The smart contract executes all functions on the blockchain and because the market for blockchain platforms and services is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 67.3 percent to $39.7 billion by 2025, the PAID team has a headstart.

ABOUT PAID NETWORK

The PAID Network was launched as a blockchain incubator project by Master Ventures — a venture studio focused on building and funding blockchain projects with a focus on driving mass adoption of the industry. Some notable investments from the venture studio include Coinbase, Kraken, Bitfinex, Elrond, Reef, and Ultra.

digital-asset space. Bitcoin (BTC) soared past its previous high, and many other prominent cryptocurrencies reached their highest levels since the heyday of 2017 and early 2018. Across the financial services industry, institutional voices are expressing reinvigorated interest in digital assets. The growth and maturation of this space has been impossible to ignore, engendering plenty of optimism among those who build the platforms and systems on which it runs.

Unfortunately, not all the headlines from the past year have been positive. Several well-known crypto exchanges and other organizations were hacked, which led to significant losses. Events like these are not only damaging to a firm’s reputation and potentially devastating for investors, they also erode hard-won trust in the digital-asset space among institutional investors and the public.

Many of these hacks could have been avoided if the companies in question had taken proactive steps to modernize their technology infrastructure. As we close this whirlwind year for digital assets, one of the industry’s top resolutions for 2021 should be to reexamine its approach to infrastructure and make changes to ensure that investors of all stripes can trade and transact with security, efficiency and peace of mind.

Let’s review three of the most consequential hacking events of 2020 and examine how a more intelligent approach to infrastructure could have led to a different outcome.

On Sept. 25, crypto exchange KuCoin was on the receiving end of a major hack that affected its Bitcoin, Ether (ETH) and ERC-20 hot wallets. While initial analysis suggested the hackers stole around $150 million, estimates began to increase in the ensuing days, ultimately making it one of the largest hacking events in the history of digital assets.

Related: KuCoin hack unpacked: More crypto possibly stolen than first feared

As it turns out, the hack was the result of private keys being stolen. While still prevalent in the digital-asset space, private keys mean there will always be a single point of failure through which bad actors can claim unfettered access to hot wallets. Put simply, they are a business risk.

A better approach would have been to leverage multiparty computation protocols, which eliminate the need for private keys and sign every transaction in a secure, distributed way, coupled with an enforced governance-and-control mechanism.

In the KuCoin case, even if the exchange was successfully breached, the hacker would not be able to execute any transaction not authorized by the institution’s infrastructure-provided policy engine.

For five weeks in October and November, investors were unable to make withdrawals from cryptocurrency exchange OKEx. In a letter to customers, OKEx revealed that one of its private-key holders was cooperating with a police investigation, which kept them out of touch with the company and prevented its multisignature authorization process from being fulfilled.

For a platform that users leverage to carry out important investment decisions, the idea that a single person becoming compromised could result in a critical functionality being disabled for over a month is clearly untenable.

There is a lesson here: When firms use blockchain features designed for security to implement a policy, the result is overwhelming inflexibility. This is one of the paradoxes of the digital-asset space — blockchain transactions are secure and irreversible, but without the right approach, that same rigidity can spell disaster if things go awry.

To prevent this, firms must ensure their infrastructure includes a policy engine that, while not compromising on security, enables a more flexible policy control for multiple approvers, including the separation of signing on and approval of transactions. With this kind of solution in place, OKEx’s ability to fully operate would not have hinged on the availability of any key person.

These hacking events were not limited to exchanges, as evidenced by the December breach of Nexus Mutual, a decentralized finance platform that serves as an alternative to insurance. The hacker managed to access the personal device of CEO Hugh Karp and install a compromised version of MetaMask, which led to Karp inadvertently signing a transaction that sent 370,000 NXM, worth $8.2 million, to an attacker-controlled address.

The issue here has to do with locally run wallets. These local wallets are unable to provide an out-of-band policy engine, so there is no way to verify that a contract and counterparty address are whitelisted, that the amount and issuer comply with company policy, or that there are additional approvers for certain transaction parameters.

Enlisting a third party with a more flexible, secure approach to infrastructure is the way to address these risks. This is especially important to reduce counterparty address manipulation, which is a risk in many scenarios. Even in the unlikely event that a provider like this is breached, there are safeguards in place to verify counterparty addresses, giving firms multiple lines of defense.

While digital assets have gained a remarkable amount of momentum in the past several months, many organizations still need to improve their security infrastructure before true adoption of digital assets can start.

This is not meant to chastise these firms, which continue to do important work to serve the industry, but to identify where their focus should be to achieve future growth and bring digital assets to the mainstream.

For all these issues — private-key security, authorization structure, local wallets and more — there are approaches that can lead to more efficient, stress-free transacting and fewer headlines that set off alarm bells for the traditional investors we all want to reach.

Article source

2020 crash. Nine months, one Bitcoin halving and a couple of institutions later, the industry sees a resurgence in interest brought about by Bitcoin hitting and breaking the psychological all-time high at $20,000 and reaching a new one of $37,000.

BitPinas sought the opinion of key crypto and blockchain leaders/influencers in the Philippines and abroad on what they think about 2020 in general and what they look forward to in 2019.

Spock, obviously not his real name, works at a crypto hedge fund. In this Year in Review, he talks about DeFi, Fair Launch, Yield Farming, and Generational Wealth.

Possibly one of the most insightful articles you can read on BitPinas. If you have time, please do check it out.

Spock: My organization is a multi-strategy crypto hedge fund. We do both Quant Trading (short-medium timescales, market neutral: options & arb) and Investing (medium-long term holding of liquid/semi-liquid tokens, venture). I handle the Investing side with my team.

We’ve been active since mid-2018 and scaled up a lot in 2020. This year, 2021, we will be opening up to external accredited/qualified investors and finalize our branding. We’re currently in the middle of setting up with our new Fund Administrator, Vauban, in the British Virgin Islands, with a new structure that will allow us to more effectively and efficiently invest the money of our LPs, in a way that is regulatory compliant, transparent, and uses the proper accounting standards. 

When all of this is done, I’d gladly say more about our Fund.

I try to be anon because I value my privacy and so that I can be very frank in my engagements on CT (Crypto Twitter), but a few people in the space _do_ know who I am, such as the FTX Team. Being anon on social media allows you to be objective, and really pick at the thoughts of other people without risking any backlash spilling to your personal life, especially for me who shitposts a lot for the sake of psyops. 

Being anon also allows for way better infosec/opsec. Just recently, Nexus Mutual’s CEO has been the victim of a targeted hack. Being anon kinda protects you from that risk as long as you have extreme wallet hygiene and device security. 

Personal Highlight: Earning retroactive-airdrops from various decentralized finance projects such as Uniswap and 1inch Exchange. I think I’m one of the largest individual liquidity providers in #CryptoPH and it was such a blessing to be rewarded by these protocols. Although I have sold some of it (nothing wrong with spending something for yourself right?), I used most of the remaining tokens to provide liquidity in their respective pools to further support their markets and earn swap fees in return. 

For those that are unfamiliar with Uniswap and providing liquidity to decentralized exchanges/AMMs, it is a pretty straightforward endeavor. Let’s say you’re holding WBTC and ETH, and you’re equally bullish on the two. Instead of idly holding them in your wallet, you can pair both assets and provide them as liquidity in https://app.uniswap.org/#/pool and earn the swap fees of the Exchange. You have to pair the two in equal dollar amounts when providing liquidity and there is also the risk where you might not get the same amount of tokens when you’re withdrawing as a liquidity provider aka Impermanent Loss (you sometimes get more of one than the other).

To learn more about Uniswap’s automated market maker (AMM) design and the returns and risks of being a liquidity provider, please ding-uniswap-returns-cc593f3499ef

For our Fund: I think the main highlight is we were able to do a 7.5x return on our portfolio NAV, outperforming bitcoin.

Tough question because I think everything that has been happening are all super important, even the smallest things, so allow me to give a longer answer for this.

Globally (I’ve thought a few):

Gone are the days of VCs being able to buy pre-launched tokens at a 99% discount from exchange listing price. This levels the playing field for everyone, removing that super early entry advantage from funds. This has affected us because we are a Fund that likes the 99% discount advantage, but this hasn’t prevented us from making 7.5x of our NAV in 2020. With fair launch, as long as you can afford the Gas, you can get your hands on promising tokens at the same time as everybody else. Everyone can make money as long as they do proper research and due diligence. 

This is how Fair Launch happens. Gone are the days when teams release a whitepaper, ask you for investment, with no product. Last year, what happened was they released the products first, with all the documentation and even seed liquidity. If you want to get your hands your tokens, you use their product or provide liquidity to make said product usable for others. That’s liquidity mining, getting paid the tokens of the dapp for using them or supporting them. Imagine Uber paying you their shares for using their app? It’s pretty amazing growth-hacking and whether you’re a user, a liquidity provider, a fund, whatever, the opportunity is equal for everyone, anybody can earn the same yields from these (coingecko.com/en/yield-farming). 

Yields earned this way might be life changing, but they are also hyper risky (just like everything in crypto). Please do research and due diligence before dipping your toes in this or anything in Decentralized Finance.

If you’ve watched the movie “”Ready Player One””, the foundations of that meta-verse reality is being built right now on crypto. What’s better is that it is being built in a decentralized ecosystem rather than in the centralized corporate sandbox where your data can be abused. I’ve always believed that after Bitcoin and Centralized Exchanges with fiat onramps, Decentralized Finance and Crypto-Gaming are the next two sectors that will have product market fit, and 2020 kinda validated that. 

Obviously I’m a huge fan of Axie Infinity, to the point that I got Galadriel tattooed to my arm:

I’m an avid gamer myself, and the amount of fiat I’ve spent on games is irresponsible. Web2 gaming economies are a cash dump, money goes in but the players can’t pull any of the money out, you can only benefit from your spending in-game, and most of the time, what we buy in-game has no utility whatsoever apart from aesthetics (SKINS). Crypto-Gaming though is where in-game economies and the real world economy are connected. Imagine earning higher than our minimum wage just by playing! This is life-changing, and I’m very happy to see that #CryptoPH is right at the forefront of it.

Apart from Axie, I’m sure there will be other great games that will gain huge followings and a massive player base, what’s awesome is that what we’ll have is a crypto-gaming meta-verse where maybe items/characters/currency from one game is also usable in another game. There will be a lot of collaborations that aren’t just marketing gimmicks, but rather fusions of in-game economies. Ape together strong. These are very exciting times. 

If you want exposure to the crypto-gaming boom: PLAY TO EARN.

I think it’s pretty obvious why this is important.

Since March we have been working from home, but surprisingly this hasn’t affected overall productivity. To be honest, I think it actually boosted productivity as now we cannot separate work from life. Now when I’m talking with my teammates, I always tell them to take a break, catch up on sleep, exercise, do other things apart from crypto. When we were in the office, the mantra is “”Let this day be productive””, now at home, the mantra is “”Don’t go crazy being too productive””. It’s a super weird scenario. 

I pray this pandemic ends soon, it’s not only the physical health that is being affected but also the mental health of the people living in fear of the virus, burning out working from home, people living isolated without any human contact. These are trying times, but this will all end soon. Let’s just all be socially responsible and follow the proper protocols to keep us safe from the virus.

As seen on my Twitter w/ some edits. My 2021 Predictions:

I believe that 2021 will be one of those years where you can make generational wealth in crypto, regardless of whether you are an investor, builder, or user. There will be plenty of opportunities for everyone, it is now a level playing field, so I look forward to going to the moon with all of you.

As our fund is opening up to external investors (they’re ready) we look forward to investing and supporting more projects, deploying more capital in the space. We are activists investors, we’re not simply here to buy low sell high your project’s tokens, we will support you across your stack. We will hold your tokens, stake them, provide liquidity to your markets, be active in your governance, share with you our insights and thoughtful criticisms freely but never 2nd guess or doubt you without need or cause. We will even help you mod your communities in discord. We go that deep.

And also I really look forward to the end of this pandemic.

Follow Spock on Twitter.

This article is published on BitPinas: Spock | Crypto Hedge Fund | 2020 Year in Review

it’s going to be.” [press release; statement, PDF]

The statement doesn’t quite say “that STABLE Act, that’s not too bad, actually” — but the STABLE Act would satisfy most of what’s being asked for here.

This statement admits the possibility of “unhosted wallets” — i.e., holding your own Diem coins. Though you’ll need to supply Know-Your-Customer (KYC) information on yourself to interoperate with the regulated bits of the stablecoin system.

The President’s Working Group is the Secretary of the Treasury, the chair of the Federal Reserve, the chair of the SEC and the chair of the CFTC. For this report, they “also sought the views of the Acting Comptroller of the Currency.”

The four guys on this committee, and the fifth they got advice from, are all going to be replaced by the incoming Biden administration. But the content is mostly pretty straightforward and uncontroversial requirements that both parties were demanding of Libra in the July and October 2019 hearings in front of Congress. (Libra Shrugged, chapters 10 and 13.) I’d be surprised if it changes much.

The only really problematic requirement I can see is that they want a compliance-style real-time feed of all transactions. The paragraph is written in the style of legal compliance requirements for financial institutions. This sort of thing is normal in serious-money financial institutions, but is a bit over-the-top on the surveillance for a coin that’s meant to be a retail-level replacement for cash.

This report is 100% about Facebook-coin — so taking out Tether will mostly be a hilarious side effect.

Both this and the stablecoin statement are reportedly the work of Steve Mnuchin, the Secretary of the Treasury, who is finishing up soon — but the opinions themselves are completely unremarkable, and I’d be quite surprised if the Biden administration changed either document substantially.

The crypto world is pissing copiously about both these documents, in the manner it does about any possible regulation of crypto — shocked, shocked that if you want access to the world of real money, you have to follow the rules of real money.

Everyone hates Ripple! After the SEC charged Ripple and two of its executives on Tuesday with issuing an unregistered security to retail, the price of XRP is going down even faster than I thought it would — even BitConnect Coin had a dead-cat bounce after that Ponzi was shut down.

XRP has been dropped by crypto hedge fund market churners Galaxy Digital and Jump Trading. These organisations appear to be two of the market fakers listed in the SEC complaint as being paid by Ripple to churn XRP. [The Block]

XRP’s favourite use case, MoneyGram, is back-pedalling from anything to do with Ripple at the speed of light — “As a reminder, MoneyGram does not utilize the ODL platform or RippleNet for direct transfers of consumer funds — digital or otherwise. Furthermore, MoneyGram is not a party to the SEC action.” This happens to be contrary to all Ripple and MoneyGram’s previous marketing on the subject. Careful wording in MoneyGram’s quarterly reports to the SEC weaseled out of quite supporting the marketing claims either, for what that’s worth. [Press release]

Katherine Wu has written an entertaining and informative annotated guide to the SEC complaint against Ripple. “Skip this part if you’re just here for the tea.” [Katherine Wu, PDF]

Izabella Kaminska and Preston Byrne detail just how screwed not only Ripple, but many other “forgiveness is better than permission” crypto promoters, will be. [FT, paywalled] Stephen Palley thinks a DeFi project will be next. [Twitter]

But I think the next big organisation to feel the Ripple heat will be Coinbase, the biggest crypto exchange that’s still allowed to touch actual money and not just tethers — it’s putting in its S-1 form to go public! [Coinbase blog] Goldman Sachs is doing the IPO — showing the revolutionary potential of Bitcoin to, uh, co-opt the existing structures for the revolution, revolutionarily. [Channel News Asia]

Nicholas Weaver: “Note this is entirely about a16z and the other VCs unloading their ownership-bags, not cryptocurrency bags, before the space implodes because Tether finally gets killed.” [Twitter]

The big problem is that Coinbase still has XRP listed — as well as a pile of other unregistered likely-securities that just happened to be half-dead altcoins that their venture capital funder Andreesen Horowitz (a.k.a. “a16z”) had huge bags of. Ripple was one of a16z’s, too.

I suspect that a16z will be somewhat concerned right now. Compound’s listing on Coinbase, for example, was a blatant pump and dump I’ve written of previously — funded by a16z on the promise of gain (“yield farming”) from the efforts of others. I’d quite like that to be busted next. But it’s rare that a regulator gets a slam-dunk case as blatantly filled with smoking guns as Ripple’s.

The KODAKone saga finally comes to a close — kodakone.com now redirects to ryde.one, which is just Ryde’s old copyright-trolling operation.

The last time the Kodak version of the site was live was November 2020; a post on their Medium on 25 November speaks of “the Ryde platform” — though the blog post’s URL still says “kodakone.” The last SEC filing from Eastman Kodak to mention the project was their Q2 2019 10-Q, which mentions the remarkable things the KODK stock price did in early 2018.

I have fourteen thousand words of a book chapter written on the KodakCoin saga that I should probably try to publish some time. [kodakone.com; archive of 23 November 2020; Medium]

The SEC gets yet another ICO — ShipChain, which ran from November 2017 to January 2018, promising to fund a shipping industry supply chain blockchain. $2,050,000 fine, cease operation. Even in November 2017, they should have known that selling SAFTs to non-accredited US buyers would be trouble. [SEC, PDF]

The SEC seems to be getting a bunch of stuff cleaned up before the holidays — they just busted a crypto hedge fund guy. “Stefan Qin, founder of Virgil Capital, allegedly fabricated records, failed to redeem $3.5 million in investments and sought to withdraw $1.7 million in investor funds to pay off Chinese loan sharks, the SEC said in the lawsuit filed on Tuesday.” The case is SEC v. Qin, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 20-cv-10849. [Westlaw]

Bitcoin peaked again! $24,300.00 (precisely) at 20:39 UTC, 20 December. I suppose those tethers have to be useful for something. Love those round numbers, let’s just completely take the piss out of Benford’s law.

Here’s the smoking gun that this was a coordinated pump fueled by stablecoins — 127 different addresses trying to deposit stablecoins to exchanges in one block of transactions on Ethereum, just a few minutes before the first price peak. [Twitter]

Bitcoin maximalist Pierre Rochard is desperately worried that the US Government will sell the latest 69,370 BTC seized from the Silk Road. Rochard wants them to HODL. “A large strategic reserve of Bitcoin may be crucial for our national security.” I’m sure you can trust the Bitcoin anarchist who wants bitcoins to be controlled by the government. [CoinTelegraph]

The real reason is, of course, that the Bitcoin whales can’t come up with a billion actual dollars — and not tethers — quickly enough to keep the price from crashing. But even in the normal course of selling seized proceeds of crime, this auction won’t happen for months.

Don’t you hate it when you send $1.18 in BTC with a fee of $82,000? I guess they can call Bitcoin Customer Service and get it sorted out! It’s not clear if this transaction ever showed up in the mempool — or if it was the miner putting it directly into the block, and doing some Bitcoin-laundering. [transaction]

How to keep your crypto mining green and cheap — shuffle assets between companies you own, then claim that means you don’t have to pay for your hydro power. [CoinTelegraph]

Hard Money: Peter Schiff Quickly Closes Coinbase Screen as Wife Walks In Room. [Hard Money]

Elwartowski wants to make one thing clear — this is everyone else’s fault:

Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road, the first darknet market, is being considered for a Presidential pardon. What this means is that a bitcoiner in the Trump administration is floating the idea. [Daily Beast]

Nick Bilton, author of American Kingpin, is not impressed. “He was offered a plea deal, which would have likely given him a decade-long sentence, with the ability to get out early on good behavior. Worst-case scenario, he would have spent five years in a medium-security prison and been freed. But, he chose to fight it. He believed that he was smarter than everyone in the room, and that he could beat them all.” [Vanity Fair]

When I was writing the Silk Road section in chapter four of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, I was laughing so much my wife came upstairs and asked what was so funny. Log.txt, goodness me.

It has been [0] days since the last DeFi flash loan exploit. Today’s is Warp Finance, which launched a week before, and was taken for $8 million. [Decrypt]

Be your own insurer! Hugh Karp, founder of Nexus Mutual, an insurer against hacks, gets hacked for $8.25 million of their own NXM token. “The attacker gained remote access to his computer & modified the metamask extension, tricking him into signing a different transaction which transferred funds to the attacker’s own address.” They think they can trace the attacker — who they had full KYC details on. [Twitter; The Block]

NXM has posted its post-mortem on the hack: “DeFi power users should probably assume Metamask is compromised at all times, unless they are running it on a separate clean machine that does nothing but sign transactions.” Being your own bank never sounded more enticing. [Medium]

Tracking Counterfeit Cryptocurrency End-To-End  — there’s a pile of tokens that have names very similar to existing stablecoins and wrapped coins, but aren’t those coins. [arXiv, PDF]

Tether has issued 700 million tethers in just the past few days, 400 million of those just today. The market pumpers seem to have been blindsided by the SEC suit against Ripple, and are trying frantically to avert a Christmas crash. I’m sure there’s a ton of Institutional Investors going all-out on Christmas Eve.

Use case for tethers found! Caixin cover story: How Illegal Online Gambling Launders $153 Billion From China. [Caixin]

Amy Castor got on the telephone status conference for Bitfinex money mule Reggie Fowler last week. Fowler has 45 days to find new lawyers. That’ll be fun, given his old lawyers dropped him for not paying them. Maybe he can use the public defender! [Amy Castor]

FXStreet: If Tether falls the whole cryptocurrency market could go down with it. This article is a pretty good recounting of The Problem With Tethers. [FXStreet]

Bitfinex puts zero actual effort into keeping US customers out — I have a solid report from a user in the eastern US who went in directly (without a VPN), created a Bitfinex account, transferred bitcoins to Bitfinex, and sent some out from there. I fear to say that when Larry Cermak from The Block said in November that Bitfinex/Tether maintained proper KYC, they snowed him. [Twitter]  

Lionel Laurent, Bloomberg: Facebook’s Libra has a new name and diminished ambitions, but regulators will still see it as a threat in 2021 — with a quote from me, and a link to the Libra book! [Bloomberg]

Zhou Xiaochuan, President of China Society for Finance and Banking and a former governor of the People’s Bank of China, explains how the PBOC wants DC/EP to work. Note how he goes to particular pains to explain how DC/EP is not a simple CBDC, but a rather more complex arrangement. “China’s DC/EP (Digital Currency/Electronic Payment) is a two-tier R&D and pilot project, not a payment product. It may include several payment products that can be tried and promoted.” [CF40]

Martin C. W. Walker, LSE Business Review: Central bank digital currency – nine key questions answered. With a suitable plug for Libra Shrugged. [LSE]

The Financial Conduct Authority gave UK crypto firms till January 2021 to register — a pile of existing companies applied, but the FCA hasn’t been getting back to them. So now the FCA has how given an extension to those firms who have already put in their application. [FCA]

RIP Blockchain Island: Malta’s new Finance and Employment Minister brings the crypto dream back down to earth. [Lovin Malta]

The International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) has released its report on Investor Education on Crypto-Assets. This is based on reports from its member organisations. The report is pretty lightweight, but is a useful indicator of regulators’ thinking. [press release, PDF; report, PDF]

I’m on the South Mimms U podcast again, explaining how Bitcoin mining works. [Buzzsprout]

How do you get your crypto market insights? I get mine by watching the remote-viewing guy draw pictures of his psychic impressions on YouTube, personally. [YouTube]

last week, Nexus has traded up 5.8% against the US dollar. Nexus has a market capitalization of $24.03 million and approximately $453,562.00 worth of Nexus was traded on exchanges in the last 24 hours. One Nexus coin can currently be purchased for about $0.38 or 0.00003547 BTC on popular cryptocurrency exchanges including Trade By Trade, Upbit, Bittrex and Binance. Nexus Profile Nexus (NXS) is a PoW/nPoS coin that uses the SHA3 hashing algorithm. Its genesis date was June 19th, 2014. Nexus total supply is 63,384,672 coins. Nexus official Twitter account is @NxsEarth and its Facebook page is accessible here. The Reddit community for Nexus is /r/nexusearth and the currencys Github account can be viewed here. Nexus official website is www.nexusearth.com. Nexus Coin Trading Nexus can be traded on the following cryptocurrency exchanges: Trade By Trade, , Cryptopia, Upbit and Bittrex. It is usually not possible to buy alternative cryptocurrencies such as Nexus directly using U.S. dollars. Investors seeking to acquire Nexus should first buy Bitcoin or Ethereum using an exchange that deals in U.S. dollars such as , Gemini or Changelly. Investors can then use their newly-acquired Bitcoin or Ethereum to buy Nexus using one of the exchanges listed above. Receive News & Updates for Nexus Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and updates for Nexus and related cryptocurrencies with MarketBeat.com's FREE CryptoBeat newsletter.

The establishment of social networks is semi-organic and requires a massive effort. Have a look at Minds.com, which is a great idea that integrates Bitcoin for promotion. Its still growing. The author has been there from the beginning. So dont take this statement the wrong way the author would love to see the social network monopolies of Twitter and Facebook broken, he just isnt overly confident that it will happen anytime soon, and here are presented with an investment that hinges on the building of a social network. // -- Discuss and ask questions in our community on Workplace. That just seems like a bad idea off the top, though well look a little further into it. Any social networking play would involve integrating with existing social networks. That would be the way to approach such a thing. Nexus Overview Nexus is a new generation of social network. All data and uploads will exist on the blockchain instead of centralized servers. Nexus is a feature rich platform that allows you to communicate with friends and family in multiple different and unique ways, while providing state-of-the-art security and privacy. This all sounds great, but none of it means it will take off. You need tens of millions to even begin to compete with any other social networking effort. It doesnt matter if you decentralize the data. It doesnt matter what you do. To build a social network, you need a social magnet. You need a lot of things that Facebook doesnt have. People may post on Facebook that they are concerned about being monitored and their data not being private, but its not the case that they will necessarily leave the social network right away. // -- Become a yearly Platinum Member and save 69 USD and get access to our secret group on Workplace. Click here to change your current membership -- // Did you know an alternative software to Twitter has existed for the entire time that Twitter has existed? The software that Identi.ca is based on is open source anyone can implement it. For that purpose, its decentralized. The networks can be integrated through Oauth and other means. Its really incredible by comparison to Twitter, especially for businesses that want to operate social networks but as it turns out, the network effect is real in social networking. To build a social network, you need a lot. A lot more than a great idea. A lot more than good technology. MySpace allowed anyone to create a page, make it look however they wanted, and display music. This was great. Facebook came along and took all of these features away and still flourished. Facebook focused on being exclusive at first, which expanded its network effect, which is an ironic reality. By decentralizing and encrypting all data and uploads, Nexus hopes to eliminate all invasion of privacy that large corporations are currently performing. End-to-endmessageencryption ensures only you and the person youre communicating with can read what is sent, and nobody in between, not even Nexus. Imagine a full decentralized social network where all data and multimedia is stored on the blockchain instead of centralized servers. Again, this sounds great, but for all intents and purposes no one actually cares. People want to be where they can be accessed. LinkedIn has managed to flourish as a place to find people in business, and yet the new generation are largely dispensing with it. It would have made more sense for LinkedIn to have released the equivalent of Workplace, but Facebook beat them to that, too. Facebook may not have an eternal grip on social marketing, but it presents a tremendous obstacle to anyone trying to build alternatives. Minds.com, again, is a great alternative to other social media platforms people have to pay for the privilege to get their posts out there, and theres an internal currency which manages to integrate Bitcoin. Its a great project as well, but it will be a long time before it is large enough to matter. This is the simple reality of the matter. Social Token The token sale for this ICO is ongoing. The token will have a purpose, to be used on the platform for advertising and the purchase of goods and services. This is enticing on the face at least theyre forcing the use of the token for something. But overall, who cares, really? We have to depend on them to build a massive social network, and this much seems unlikely. You can build all the buzz around the thing you want, although they havent, really. One thing you can say for them is that they are doing the right thing with the tokens they are issuing, which there will be a maximum of 50 million. Out of those, 47.5 million will be for sale to the general public. It would be nice if more profitable, better ideas would also do similar with their tokens. Retaining tokens from the public while at the same time profiting during an ICO handsomely is strictly a red flag. It makes one wonder what ICOs intend to do with those tokens. So its a plus to see that theyre not doing that here, but again, this thing is probably going nowhere due to its actual mission. The Verdict We dont see any future in things which want our money to start competitors to well-established social networks. Risk Such a prospect as building a successful social network can take decades to achieve. -4 Growth Potential For short-term investments, its nice to see so many tokens being put on the market. This is unusual and should not be under-credited +4.5. Disposition We reach a numerical disposition of .5 on this token. We figure if you do invest, youd better dump quickly. Investment Details The ICO for the Nexus social tokens is ongoing. Visit https://ico.nexus.social/. Currently, they are offering a 40% bonus (another red flag) 700 tokens per Ether. Please invest with caution. Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink. Rate this post: Important for improving the service. Please add a comment in the comment field below explaining what you rated and why you gave it that rate. Failed Trade Recommendations should not be rated as that is considered a failure either way. (0 votes, average: 0.00 out of 5)You need to be a registered member to rate this. Loading... P. H. Madore 5 stars on average, based on 2 rated postsP. H. Madore has covered the cryptocurrency beat over the course of hundreds of articles for Hacked's sister site, CryptoCoinsNews, as well as some of her competitors. He is a major contributing developer to the Woodcoin project, and has made technical contributions on a number of other cryptocurrency projects. In spare time, he recently began a more personalized, weekly newsletter at http://ico.phm.link Follow @HackedCom Feedback or Requests? Related Topics:Nexus Up Next Trade Recommendation: IOTA Don't Miss Trade Recommendation: Dash You may like Chinese White Hats Win $200,000 for Hacking iPhones, Google Devices New Exploit Bypasses Android Lock Screens 1 Comment 1 Comment coinsoncoins August 19, 2017 at 7:14 pm great article Log in to Reply You must be logged in to post a comment Login Leave a Reply Cancel replyYou must be logged in to post a comment. Analysis Technical Analysis: Bitcoin Tests $9000 as Altcoins Pull Back after Strong Rally Published 10 hours ago on April 21, 2018 By Mate Cser The cryptocurrency segment is in a short-term correction after a great week that saw several key resistance levels fall, as the major coins kept up the bullish momentum and hit new rally highs after a shallow correction. Ethereum and the smaller altcoins continued to outperform Bitcoin on the way higher in the last couple of days, but today, Bitcoin is holding up relatively well amid the pullback, indicating a slight change of behavior. // -- Discuss and ask questions in our community on Workplace. BTC/USD, 4-Hour Chart Analysis Bitcoin broke out of its lengthy declining trend, rallying quickly up to the key $9000-$9200 zone as expected, even though the momentum of the move has been relatively weak, and the coin failed to enter the zone, with the lower resistance line halting the advance, for now. The currency should remain above the declining trendline, but another short-term consolidation phase could be ahead as altcoins are likely entering a correction. Further resistance is ahead at $10,000 and $10,500 while support is found near $8400 and $7800. // -- Become a yearly Platinum Member and save 69 USD and get access to our secret group on Workplace. Click here to change your current membership -- // ETH/USD, 4-Hour Chart Analysis Ethereum hit the $625 level as we expected and it also broke out of its declining trend, after confirming a new short-term advance earlier on this week. Traders shouldnt enter new positions here, as the coin is stretched from a short-term perspective, while investors could still add to their holdings on the pullbacks. Support is now found between $555 and $575, and below that zone at $500, while strong resistance is ahead between $625 and $645 and near $740. (more) Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink. Rate this post: Important for improving the service. Please add a comment in the comment field below explaining what you rated and why you gave it that rate. Failed Trade Recommendations should not be rated as that is considered a failure either way. (4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)You need to be a registered member to rate this. Loading... Mate Cser 4.5 stars on average, based on 228 rated postsTrader and financial analyst, with 10 years of experience in the field. An expert in technical analysis and risk management, but also an avid practitioner of value investment and passive strategies, with a passion towards anything that is connected to the market. Follow @HackedCom Feedback or Requests? Continue Reading Stocks How to Trade Some of the Most Conspicuous Price Phenomena: Gaps and Windows Published 10 hours ago on April 21, 2018 By Konstantin Dimov Overview Gaps (as they are called in the West) and windows (their Japanese counterparts) have always attracted the attention of technicians most probably because they are nearly impossible to be missed on a price chart. After all, a trading session lying completely outside of the prior days range, which is what gaps and windows are by definition, must carry some kind of predictive power. However, a critical question remains are gaps and windows indicative of the beginning of a new trend (as it was the case for AAPL in Figure 1), or are they simply an overreaction and are subsequently quickly filled (as it was the case for MMM in Figure 2)? Notice how in the former case the gap stayed opened (and it still is) for more than a year, whereas in the latter case the gap was filled/closed within two months (i.e. subsequent price action in September completely overlapped the range of the gap). // -- Discuss and ask questions in our community on Workplace. Figure 1. AAPL Daily Figure 2. MMM Daily // -- Become a yearly Platinum Member and save 69 USD and get access to our secret group on Workplace. Click here to change your current membership -- // Note, from here on, only the term gap is used, even though there is an important difference between the two gaps look at intraday prices when determining if they are filled, whereas windows only look at closing prices. At the bottom of the article, you can find references to several works on the price phenomenon, in which the difference between the two variations is discussed in-depth. Given that gaps occur quite frequently (see referenced materials for details), it is easy to understand how any gap strategy can be depicted to have predictive power. Most traditional books on technical analysis include a list of gap trading strategies followed by a few stellar charts that are supposed to prove the strategies validity (charts similar to Figures 1 & 2). Furthermore, given gaps conspicuous nature, most traditional trading strategies have their entry on the day the gap occurs (or Gap Day). For example, proponents of gaps being a continuation pattern would suggest that taking a position in the direction of the gap on Gap Day is profitable. On the other hand, technical analysts who believe that all gaps get filled suggest taking a position on Gap Day in the opposite direction of the gap. In both cases, action is taken on Gap Day. After trading and analyzing gaps for many years, I was certain that traditional theories do not work the way they are described to. Probably the most illogical stipulation made by various technical authors was that the gap itself should serve as support or resistance and once filled, gaps become insignificant. On the contrary, I had found that the gap itself is rarely a strong support or resistance and that very often the most significant gaps are those that have already been filled. This is when, in 2016, I developed a new theory on gaps (K-Divergence), which significantly diverges from traditional theories. Before discussing what the K-Divergence theory entails, an explanation of the most popular traditional theories is presented. Traditional Gap Theories 1. A gap is a continuation pattern. Strategy taking a position, on Gap Day, in the direction of the gap. This theory is based on the idea that if, on any given day, prices jump/fall significantly enough to never touch the prior sessions price range, something significant must have occurred and changed the markets sentiment on the company. In this case, on Gap Day, prices are assumed to reflect the changing opinion of the stock only partially, and thus, further movement in the direction of the gap is expected. In the case of AAPLs gap (Figure 1), on February 1, 2017, the company reported better-than-expected 1Q17 earnings on the heels of record breaking iPhone sales. Subsequently, the price continued moving higher in a swift fashion, leaving the up-gap behind it. Often, proponents of this theory use support and resistance levels, or technical indicators, as a confirmation that the gap has occurred at an important juncture and that it can be trusted. For example, zooming out and looking at the stocks price action since 2015 (Figure 3), traders who utilize gaps as continuation patterns can claim that the breakout occurred above the interim high of the multiple bottom formation, and therefore, carried high predictive power. Figure 3. AAPL 2-Day Chart 2. A gap is an overreaction. Strategy taking a position, on Gap Day, in the opposite direction of the gap Advocates of this theory are convinced that gaps are a result of market participants overreacting to news (or noise) and that once participation subsides, the gap is expected to get filled. The famous adage all gaps get filled is often used in an attempt to support this supposition. Similar to the previous strategy, support/resistance levels and technical indicators are expected to provide further confirmation if the particular gap is to be filled. For example, looking once again at the MMM chart (2-day chart Figure 4), one may say that the down-gap took prices close to a well-established uptrend (green trendline) and to a key moving average (100 SMA yellow line). Also, to further support the thesis that prices will reverse, one may point to the positive reversal in RSI (not to be confused with a positive divergence), which indicated that the correction has taken the stock to oversold levels during the uptrend (i.e. RSI making a lower low, while prices making a higher low). Figure 4. MMM 2-Day Chart The above two strategies are a perfect example of technical analysis being more of an art than science, where it is up to the technicians discretion to decide what action to take after observing a gap. While, after testing both strategies (see K-Divergence section), I found that neither the simple continuation nor reversal strategies are profitable on a systematic basis, there are definitely specific situations where the probability of a gap reversing is higher and vice versa. Unfortunately, the next strategy, the one found in almost any TA book, is one of the reasons why technical analysis has a bad name among most non-technicians. 3. A gap could be either a continuation pattern or an overreaction based on its classification. Strategy an ambiguous one based on hindsight As it had become evident that gaps cannot be all continuation patterns or overreactions, the popular gap classification system was born where gaps are categorized as either breakaway, continuation/runaway, exhaustion and common. This classification is based on two criteria 1) the location of the gap relative to preceding price action and 2) whether the gap gets filled or not. However, as one can imagine, there is no way to know on Gap Day whether a gap will be filled in the future. That is, the classification system is based on hindsight. Lets prove this point by looking at an example. Figure 5 shows an up-gap after a prolonged uptrend. Based on the widely-used classification system this gap can be runaway (if the gap does not get filled and prices continue higher), exhaustion (if prices quickly reverse, fill the gap and continue lower) or even common (if prices fill the gap but do not reverse or consolidate). Given the colour of the candle and the long upper wick, it seems like it is an exhaustion gap, right? Figure 5. Daily Chart (real chart, ticker hidden) Clearly, it is only in hindsight that this gap can be classified. In this case, the gap turned out to be of the runaway type as it did not get filled and the stock (MSFT) continued propelling higher (Figure 6). The point is, the classification system is futile for making decisions on Gap Day. Figure 6. MSFT Daily Chart K-Divergence (K-Div) Theory 4. Most gaps occur after prices have moved away from a significant support or resistance levels. Strategy taking a position in the direction of the gap, only after prices have returned to pre-gap levels More specifically, the theory suggests that in most cases an up-gap transpires after prices have already jumped from a key support level and a down-gap after prices have already fallen from a key resistance level. The theory is based on the premise that before a gap occurs prices have already reached a key level and have bounced from it. It is only later on, after most market participants agree on the direction of the next move and take positions in the same direction that gaps occur. This means that it is not the gap itself that should serve as a support or resistance, but rather the range of prices preceding it (pre-gap range). The most important implications of the theory are 1) the gap itself should not serve as support or resistance and 2) a filled gap is not insignificant. So why does the K-Divergence make sense from a technical point of view? After all, if prices gapped due to news that nobody was aware of, this would mean that gaps are nothing more than prices adjusting to the new information. Any such conclusion should render fundamental and technical analysis useless, for it would imply that no analyst is able to purchase a security before news gets disseminated. On the contrary, the K-Divergence assumes that the most astute market participants (i.e. the best fundamental and technical analysts, quants and even insiders) are able to trade in advance of the gap occurring. Therefore, true support and resistance levels lie prior to the gap transpiring and subsequent filling of the gap does not render it insignificant. It is best to illustrate this with an example. I will use one of my most recent predictions based on the theory, which was sent to one of my clients. First, I will describe the rational in detail with an updated chart (Figure 7), which will be followed by screenshots from the day the signal was given. After the close on February 1, 2018, Google reported its 4Q18. The next day, the stock opened sharply lower and continued falling into the close (Feb 2 Down Gap in Figure 7). The stock continued falling along with the market until the Feb 9 low was set. Subsequently, while NASDAQ was making new highs in early March, GOOG reached the pre-gap range (Bearish K-Divergence Range violet horizontal trendlines) and started stalling. Due to the strong bounce by the broader markets, the stock recovered and filled the gap. However, when the stock started trading at the pre-gap range, market participants were given a second chance to sell the stock for the same price it was trading at before the 4Q18 earnings were released. Price action confirmed the bearishness of the set-up (GOOG March 13 & 16 Figures 8 & 9). Figure 7. GOOG Daily Chart Figure 8. GOOG March 13 Figure 9. GOOG March 16 In order to validate the theory, I developed two trading strategies based on it (one with the gap and one with the window variation) and backtested them along with 5 variations of the traditional gap strategies discussed above. Figure 10 shows the 1-, 2-, 5-, 10-, 20-, 30- and 44-day period returns of the 7 strategies (#6 & 7 being the two based on the K-Divergence theory) and Figure 11 shows the annualized returns for the those same periods. The backtest took into account a total of 14,219 gaps over nearly a 2-year period. Figure 10. 1-, 2-, 5-, 10-, 20-, 30- and 44-day period returns Figure 11. Annualized 1-, 2-, 5-, 10-, 20-, 30- and 44-day period returns The two K-Div strategies were profitable throughout all periods. The only other consistently profitable strategy was Fading the Gap strategy which entailed taking a position in the opposite direction of the gap on Gap Day, but closing it immediately after the gap was filled. This once again goes against traditional theories which suggest that once a gap is filled, prices should continue going against the gaps direction as, supposedly, an important support/resistance was breached. It is noteworthy that the K-Divergence theory does not suggest that all gaps have occurred after important support/resistance levels or that they can all be traded profitably in a similar fashion as the GOOG example. Rather, it provides a framework for analyzing the gap phenomenon, on that all active investors/traders should believe in, which assumes that some market participants are able to act ahead of major moves (i.e. prior to the appearance of gaps). Furthermore, it eliminates the use of the hindsight gap classification system. For more on gaps, I recommend reading Julie R. Dahlquist and Richard J. Bauers Technical Analysis of Gaps book, where they conduct, one of the first on the topic, objective investigations of the phenomenon. For a much more in-depth coverage of the K-Divergence and my research on gaps, you can view my thesis for the Master of Financial Technical Analysis (MFTA) Program, published in the 2018 IFTA Annual Journal. Conclusion In the future, regardless of whether you look for opportunities to trade gaps on Gap Day (strategies 1 & 2) or decide to use the K-Divergence as part of your trading arsenal, I hope this article would make you think more critically the next time you hear terms such as the runaway gap. And even more importantly, will push you to analyze gaps even after they have been filled, and according to traditional theory, have become insignificant. Happy gap trading. Featured image courtesy of Shutterstock. Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink. Rate this post: Important for improving the service. Please add a comment in the comment field below explaining what you rated and why you gave it that rate. Failed Trade Recommendations should not be rated as that is considered a failure either way. (2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)You need to be a registered member to rate this. Loading... Konstantin Dimov 4.7 stars on average, based on 9 rated posts Follow @HackedCom Feedback or Requests? Continue Reading Analysis Silver Prices Poised for a Breakout Overview of Key Trigger Levels Published 1 day ago on April 21, 2018 By Konstantin Dimov Long-Term View Since 2003, silver has exhibited spectacular volatility, increasing by more than ten-fold by the 2011 peak, before declining by more than 72% by end of 2015. Despite the volatility over this 15-year period, the commodity has found support on several occasions at a key long-term trendline (green trendline; retests green arrows in Figure 1). More specifically, silver bounced off the support in 2008, 2015, and most recently in 2017 (green trendline currently at $15.50). For 2 years (2011- early 2013), silver found support just around the $26 level, before finally breaking below and plummeting in April 2012 (blue horizontal trendline; sell signal last blue arrow). While, it can be said that silver, similar to gold, has been forming a large inverse H&S pattern since 2013 (neckline yellow trendline), silver is further away from giving a buy signal based on this potential development. It is really the short-term view that reveals a well-defined pattern, whose completion may give a timelier signal. Figure 1. Silver (XSLV.X) 8-Day Chart // -- Discuss and ask questions in our community on Workplace. Short-Term View Zooming in, the daily chart reveals a strong support in the $15.50 $15.80 area (violet line at $15.70). Notice how when the commodity broke below $15.50 for the first time, it moved sharply lower, before finding support at the long-term support discussed in the long-term view (green arrow). Within a couple of trading sessions, silver was back above $15.50. A much more well-defined inverse H&S pattern is observed on the daily chart (lows orange ellipses, neckline orange downward sloping trendline, target orange vertical line). Figure 2. Silver(XSLV.X) Daily Chart // -- Become a yearly Platinum Member and save 69 USD and get access to our secret group on Workplace. Click here to change your current membership -- // Implications A break above the neckline of the small inverse H&S will activate an upward target of $21.75. Furthermore, such a breakout would trigger a buy on the larger inverse H&S. While, a potential buy signal on the longer-term view may generate a target close to $28, the $26 level is expected to serve as a major resistance (i.e. resistance at $26 should take precedence over most other technical developments). Outlook Neutral with a bullish bias. If silver breaks the orange trendline (a close above $17.80 should be used as a trigger) outlook will shift to bullish. If the commodity breaks below $15.50, outlook will shift to bearish, as that would imply that both the $15.50 $ 15.80 support area (violet trendline) and the long-term support (green trendline) have been breached. Featured image courtesy of Shutterstock. Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink. Rate this post: Important for improving the service. Please add a comment in the comment field below explaining what you rated and why you gave it that rate. Failed Trade Recommendations should not be rated as that is considered a failure either way. (3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)You need to be a registered member to rate this. Loading... Konstantin Dimov 4.7 stars on average, based on 9 rated posts Follow @HackedCom Feedback or Requests? Continue Reading Recent Commentsembersburnbrightly on Technical Analysis: Bitcoin Tests $9000 as Altcoins Pull Back after Strong Rallyidm2000 on Bithumb to Launch ICO in Singapore Later This YearBossa on One Week With Live Streaming and I Ended Up With 13 500 USD in ProfitKiril Nikolaev on Trade Recommendation: Bytecoin/MoneroJochem50 on Trade Recommendation: Bytecoin/Monero Bitcoin:$25,000 By Year End? Technical Analysis: Bitcoin Tests $9000 as Altcoin... Trade Recommendation: EOS ICO Analysis: CoinJanitor Silver Prices Poised for a Breakout Overview of... Buyers Control the Cryptocurrency Market More Than... More Chance to Go Up for Litecoin Recent Posts Trade Recommendation: Mag Silver Corp. April 22, 2018 Buyers Control the Cryptocurrency Market More Than Any Time Since March 2017 April 22, 2018 Technical Analysis: Bitcoin Tests $9000 as Altcoins Pull Back after Strong Rally April 21, 2018 How to Trade Some of the Most Conspicuous Price Phenomena: Gaps and Windows April 21, 2018 ICO Analysis: Ambit Mining April 21, 2018 Trade Recommendation: EUR/ILS April 21, 2018 Bithumb to Launch ICO in Singapore Later This Year April 21, 2018 Trade Recommendation: EOS April 21, 2018 ICO Analysis: CoinJanitor April 21, 2018 Hacked.com Weekly Webinar: Apr. 21 Edition April 21, 2018 A part of CCN Hacked.com is Neutral and Unbiased Hacked.com and its team members have pledged to reject any form of advertisement or sponsorships from 3rd parties. We will always be neutral and we strive towards a fully unbiased view on all topics. Whenever an author has a conflicting interest, that should be clearly stated in the post itself with a disclaimer. If you suspect that one of our team members are biased, please notify me immediately at jonas.borchgrevink(at)hacked.com. Trending Analysis1 week ago Long-Term Cryptocurrency Analysis: Bumpy Road Ahead Despite Strong Rally Analysis1 week ago Cryptocurrency Prices: The Worst Is Behind Market News4 days ago Coinbase Alert: Amazon Is Coming Analysis3 days ago More Chance to Go Up for Litecoin Altcoins4 days ago Stellar Prices Jump to Six-Week Highs Ahead of Cannabis ICO Recommendations6 days ago Trade Recommendation: Stellar Altcoins6 days ago What Is Bitcoin Private and Why Is It Surging? ICO1 week ago ICO Analysis: Talao

think tank” of the year. Leaders in many disparate fields came together and discussed the future of blockchain and society. These individuals represented the cryptocurrency, finance, technology, political, and economic ecosystems. They explored the future of blockchain technology and its implications for society. Also read: Bitcoin Software Wars: The Case Against Replay Attack Protection The Nexus Earth team created the conference and it was conducted by Jonathan Hazel. Terry Brock had the role as the Master of Ceremonies. He ensured the speakers stayed on schedule. The Nexus Earth website showed the large number of speakers in attendance, including big names such as Bitcoin.com’s Roger Ver; libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul; and former wrestler and governor Jesse Ventura. The site mentioned many of the speakers: “Cryptocurrency/Blockchain/Tech world experts including Roger Ver, Charles Hoskinson, Colin Cantrell, Arry Yu, and Brett Tabke will be among the many present from this growing industry. The Conference features Jesse Ventura, Dr. Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and others from the political world. Peter Schiff, Doug Casey, Ellen Brown, G. Edward Griffin, Catherine Austin Fitts, Max Keiser, and other well-known names from the financial sector will be giving presentations. Business and industry leaders such as David North, Jim Cantrell, Perianne Boring, and many others will be represented. Younger leaders such as Elizabeth Mccauley, Sterlin Luxan, Adam Kokesh, Christina Tobin, Derrick Broze, Jeff Berwick, and others will be on hand. Judge Andrew Napolitano, the great Ed Asner, and others from television and film will be attending and joining the discussion. Musicians such as Tatiana Moroz, Jordan Page, and others will be performing and speaking.” The overall Nexus conference experience was beyond amazing. The speakers all provided prepared and stimulating presentations. For instance, Edward G. Griffin, author of “The Creature from Jekyll Island” gave a frightening overview of the Federal Reserve Bank. Derrick Broze discussed his spiritual journey and how he is spreading freedom with holistic anarchy and freedom cells. Roger Ver provided an enticing look at the libertarian “non-country” he plans to purchase. Colin Cantrell divulged detailed and exciting information about how the Nexus cryptocurrency will defeat quantum computing and scale without hangups. There were also a myriad of panels about topics such as Ross Ulbricht, where his mother Lyn gave information on how the corrupt federal government gave her son an unfair trial. I was on a panel about how artificial intelligence and quantum computing would affect AI. There was a diverse array of talks, and for a first-time-conference it was practically flawless. Besides the official conference activities, there were also reporter interviews, conversations, and documentary rehearsals happening behind the scenes. The conference was created by the Nexus Earth cryptocurrency team, which was created originally by Colin Cantrell. The purpose of the currency was to “decentralize the decentralization,” as Cantrell put it. The hope is to continue freeing the world and making crypto-systems easier to use and more advanced. Cantrell and his team tried to make these ideas more prominent with the conference. The Nexus website elaborated: The Nexus Conference is a unique event with a distinct purpose. Cryptocurrency and the blockchain are becoming more mainstream as folks from many different backgrounds realize the potential. The technology touches so many different industries and fields. This event brings brilliant minds from different backgrounds together…The Nexus Conference is about sharing ideas, not just business cards. Come to Aspen and be a part of this historic inaugural event that promises to be like no other conference that you’ve ever attended. It is true. The conference was like no other. It was truly phenomenal. What do you think about the Nexus conference? Will you attend it? Let us know in the comments below. Images via Shutterstock, Nexus Earth, and Roger Ver. We got it all at Bitcoin.com. Do you want to top up on some bitcoins? Do it here. Need to speak your mind? Get involved in our forum. Wanna gamble? We gotcha. 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of a quantum-resistant 3D blockchain in combination with communication satellites in space. With this, Nexus founder Colin Cantrell is aiming to “decentralize the decentralization”, by taking it out of reach of any government control or mining pool monopolies.Hold on to your hats, folks. This is one of the more ambitious projects out there, so let’s get right into it.Three Dimensional Chain (3DC) Nexus Hardware Nexus Coin (NXS) Nexus Team & Progress Trading Where to Buy NXS Where to Store NXS Conclusion Additional Nexus Resources Three Dimensional Chain (3DC) Nexus uses, not one, not two, but three consensus mechanisms to form a three-dimensional blockchain. The team argues that having three different mechanisms in place reduces miner centralization and enables more efficient on-chain scaling.Prime Channel The Prime Channel is a Proof-of-Work channel. In this channel, miners search for 308-digit dense prime clusters through trial-and-error. Dense prime cluster mining is more ASIC-resistant than traditional hash mining. Therefore, even if you have just a CPU, you can mine on this channel.Outside of cryptocurrency, the mining on the Prime Channel produces data that can be further used in prime number research for quantum physics.Hashing Channel The Hashing Channel is also Proof-of-Work but uses Hashcash instead of dense prime clusters. This is similar to Bitcoin’s mining algorithm except that miners search for SHA-3 (with Skein) hashes while Bitcoin miners find SHA-256 ones. The Nexus block hashes are 4x the size of Bitcoin block hashes.Proof-of-Holdings The third and final channel uses Proof-of-Holdings to secure the network. This is essentially the same as the Proof-of-Stake consensus method used by coins like NEO. You earn newly minted Nexus coins (NXS) just by holding the ones you already have.Four attributes determine what your return will be when you stake your coins:Interest Rate – An annual percentage of your balance, this is the rate at which you receive new coins. This starts at 0.5% annually and increases to a 3.0% annual maximum after 12 months. Trust Weight – This is an indicator of your node’s trust. It starts at 5% but quickly reaches its 100% maximum after just one month. Block Weight – This attribute resets to 0% each time you receive a staking transaction. It then slowly climbs to 100% over 24-hours. If your block weight ever reaches 100%, your Trust Key expires and all your attributes reset. The reset trigger ensures that you’re continually working to maintain the network. Stake Weight – The value of this is roughly determined by the average of your trust weight and block weight. The higher this is, the more likely you are to receive a transaction. Nexus Hardware Nexus has a three-pronged distributed telecommunications system to further decentralize the network.Mesh Networks Because the network provides three distinct mining opportunities, almost anyone around the world can run a node and participate in network security. All nodes in a mesh network work together to solve a block rather than compete against each other. This serves to distribute network data more so than other systems.To take things further, Nexus may produce specialized antennas for you to purchase to operate locally based networks as well.Cube Satellites Nexus has partnered with Vector Space Systems (Vector) to create a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellite Network of nodes. The satellites, in combination with the ground mesh network, will host the Nexus network as well as any decentralized apps (DApps) built on top of it. Even more outstanding, the satellite network will provide a worldwide decentralized Internet giving service to those previously unable to access their own.Ground Stations The Nexus ground stations connect the mesh networks on the ground to the satellite network in space. They run the uplink/downlink operations including address endpoint route defining and ground-based caching. They also run their own instance of Daemon, the software component of the Nexus system.Nexus Coin (NXS) The Nexus coin (NXS) is the currency of the network. There’s no cap on the amount of NXS that will be minted. Instead, the coin has a 10-year distribution period in which 78 million NXS will be distributed until September 23rd, 2024. After this time, the supply will inflate each year by a maximum of 3 percent through the holding channel and 1 percent through the prime and hashing channels.Nodes create blocks, on average, every 50 seconds, and an NXS transaction requires 6 confirmations. Currently, most transactions cost 0.01 NXS. However, once the 3DC is built and 10-year distribution is complete, transaction fees will disappear. Instead, the system will absorb the fees through inflation.Nexus didn’t hold an initial coin offering (ICO). Instead, the project has a Developer Fund that takes a small commission from mining rewards. This commission started at 1.5 percent and increases to 2.5 percent over 10 years. Additionally, 20 percent of the block rewards are slotted for marketing as well as the production and launch of the Nexus satellite network.Nexus Team & Progress Colin Cantrell, also known as Videlicet, is the founder and lead developer of Nexus. He first named the project Coinshield (CSD) when starting in September 2014. The original code only contained the prime channel; the team added the hash channel in October 2014. In April 2015, the team rebranded to Nexus, and they added Proof-of-Holdings in July 2015.Besides partnering with Vector on the satellite network, Nexus has also joined forces with SingularityNET to provide their 3DC architecture to the project’s decentralized AI network.Moving forward, Nexus is releasing major updates following their TAO (Tritium, Amine, Obsidian) roadmap strategy. The releases include the 3DC, mobile wallets, quantum resistance, and the satellite network, among many other things.The Nexus team is currently working on the Tritium phase of the roadmap. Beyond introducing Signature Chains and parallel processing channels, this phase also implements a Proof-of-Stake update, Tritium Trust. Tritium Trusts builds upon the current Nexus Proof-of-Stake system with the addition of a trust key and Trust Weight that determine your chances of staking success.Nexus developers haven’t announced when Tritium will be complete, but they give updates showing consistent progress.Competition Nexus may be one of the most ambitious projects in the cryptocurrency space. First and foremost, the project is attempting to dethrone Bitcoin as the top peer-to-peer currency. With the decentralized internet produced from its space mesh network of satellites, Nexus is also competing with Substratum.Trading Like most of the crypto market, Nexus was relatively quiet until 2017. During that year, the price rose from $0.026 (~0.000027 BTC) to $3.34 (~0.00087 BTC) by September. Shortly after, the price fell back down to about $1 before skyrocketing up to an all-time high of $13.33 (~0.0008 BTC) in January 2018.This significant rise in price can most likely be attributed to the Vector partnership announcement in combination with the success of the entire market at that time. Since then, the price has drastically fallen, sitting at about $0.30 (~0.000083 BTC) at the time of this writing. News of the SingularityNET partnership seems to have had no effect on the price.The team hasn’t published a roadmap with exact dates, so it’s hard to make any price predictions for the immediate future. As with most cryptocurrency projects, though, important development releases should have a positive impact on the price. With the scope of this project, you should probably consider it a long-term hold.Where to Buy NXS You can purchase NXS on either Bittrex or Binance with BTC. If you don’t currently own any BTC, check out our guide on how to buy some.As mentioned earlier, you can also earn NXS through mining. Check out the Nexus mining page to download the miner that fits best with your strategy. As a reminder, you should mine with the Prime Channel if you’re using a normal CPU, and you should check out the Hashing Channel if you plan to use a dedicated mining rig like an ASIC.Once you hold at least 1,000 NXS, you can stake to earn additional coins as well. Technically, it is possible to stake with less than the minimum, although you’ll have a difficult time maintaining your Trust Weight.Where to Store NXS Nexus has an official wallet for Windows, Mac, and Linux desktops. All three operating systems have a command line interface (CLI) wallet version while only Windows and Mac have an easier-to-use graphical interface wallet.Although you can keep your NXS on an exchange it’s highly recommended that you move them to a wallet. You’re only able to stake your coins if they’re in a Nexus wallet.Conclusion Nexus is building a new type of blockchain with three separate mechanisms for securing the network. On top of that, the team is sending node satellites into space to create a decentralized Internet and network outside the control of any one entity. The overall mission is to create an improved Bitcoin with faster transactions, lower fees, and less miner centralization.Nexus is one of the few projects truly addressing quantum resistance and other potential future issues. If these problems become as large as the team believes they will, and they can accomplish their lofty mission, Nexus may just be one of the few projects still in action 20 years down the road.Hi! I am a robot. I just upvoted you! I found similar content that readers might be interested in: ulations @ethereal9! 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