Bitcoin, Ripple and Ethereum Suffer Price Drop After Indian Cryptocurrency Ban Announcement (Metro.co.uk)
The price of Bitcoin has nosedived by 11 percent today to its lowest point since November 2017 amid a growing backlash against cryptocurrency trading. This dramatic drop came after India announced a ban on the buying and selling of virtual currencies. Since the beginning of 2018, the value of the world’s largest cryptocurrency plunged by almost half in a ‘bloodbath’ which saw £31 billion shaved off the total value of the market. Bitcoin dropped to a miserable low of $9,022 (£6,343) today, which is a long way from the high of almost $20,000 it hit at the end of last year. It slid more than 26 percent last month in its worst monthly performance since January 2015.
Cryptocurrency: Cash App Update Allows Users To Instantly Buy And Sell Bitcoin (International Business Times)
People who have the Cash App can now buy and sell bitcoin for free on the platform. The new feature comes as the hype over cryptocurrency continues. The bitcoin feature is available to all Cash App users under its latest update, except those in New York, Hawaii, Wyoming and Georgia. The update allows users to buy and sell bitcoin instantaneously on the app. The app now includes a bitcoin symbol in the upper right-hand corner when tapping Cash Card.
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Samsung Confirms It’s Now Making Cryptocurrency Mining Chips (CoinDesk)
Samsung has confirmed it is now manufacturing bitcoin mining chips after reports to that effect surfaced this week. South Korean news outlet The Bell first revealed the news on Jan. 30, stating that Samsung was kicking off manufacturing in January, aiming to provide application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) to an unnamed Chinese mining firm. A company spokesperson has since told TechCrunch: “Samsung’s foundry business is currently engaged in the manufacturing cryptocurrency mining chips.”
DAEX Foundation Launches New-Generation Distributed Cryptocurrency Clearing Ecosystem to Protect Investors’ Asset Security (Business Wire)
SHANGHAI–(BUSINESS WIRE)–DAEX Foundation recently launched DAEX (Digital Assets Exchanges), a new-generation distributed cryptocurrency clearing ecosystem. DAEX is committed to building a credible cryptocurrency clearing ecosystem that provides distributed and decentralized technology-based secure assets storage services for developers and investors of cryptocurrency trading platforms. DAEX has established partnerships with institutions such as 360 Capital and the Qtum Foundation. As the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies went up so quickly starting 2017, both traditional financial institutions and Internet giants began to pay attention to blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.
A Lot of People will be Burned’: Bitcoin Lost a Whopping $44 Billion of Value in January, and it’s Not Over Yet (Financial Post)
Bitcoin is proving that cryptocurrencies can erase wealth as fast as they create it. Its January slide knocked US$44.2 billion off the US$200 billion in market value generated in all of last year, the biggest one-month loss in dollar terms in the short history of digital assets. “Once we got to US$10,000, crypto had adopted this Teflon persona of late that it’s always going to find a base and go back up again,” Stephen Innes, head of Asia Pacific trading at Oanda, said by phone from Singapore. “When we’re talking in the realm of riskier assets, and something shaves off 50 perc ent of its value, it tells me there’s going to be an extension lower.
What is Dentacoin (DCN)? A Beginner’s Guide (Coin Central)
What is Dentacoin (DCN)? Dentacoin (DCN) is the first blockchain concept designed to help make the global dental industry more affordable. Following a decentralized, Ethereum-based smart contract protocol, the DCN token rewards users through a system that inspires community contribution. Ultimately, the project’s mission is to make quality dental health care available to the nearly 80% of the world’s population without it. By removing the middleman (big insurance companies) and placing authority back into patient’s/dentist’s hands, costs can be significantly reduced. One way this is accomplished is through the establishment of smart contracts directly between patients and dentists.
IOS Token Better Than Ethereum? (Crypto Daily)
IOS Token is a new cryptocurrency that is quickly finding itself among the top and most popular of the virtual currencies. IOS Token claims to be a secured and scalable blockchain that actually works. They use their innovative Efficient Distributed Sharding Technology, which essentially partitions the network into sub spaces. It does this by randomly assigning different nodes to work together. It does this in order to make the system faster and more efficient. The developers are using some of the latest technology to really make this system the best it can be. What really makes IOS Token stand out among other cryptocurrencies is their brand new Consensus Mechanism. Instead of proof of stake, they are using proof of believability which just takes the former slightly further than before.
Ripple price: Why is Ripple XRP falling today? Why is it Crashing in Value? (Express.co.uk)
Ripple (XRP) is hovering just above $1 today with its market capitalisation sliding down towards $40billion, according to CoinMarketCap. This latest crash comes less than a month after the cryptocurrency reached its all time high of $148.5billion, when it was worth about $3.84. January’s decline came after 12 months of relentless growth for Ripple, in which its price surged more than 35,000 percent from $0.006 at the start of 2017. The initial collapse, on January 4, was blamed on the South Korean Government, which has repeatedly threatened to ban crypto trading.
A Giant Botnet is Forcing Windows Servers to Mine Cryptocurrency (ZDNet)
A massive cyptocurrency mining botnet has taken over half a million machines, and may have made its cybercriminal controllers millions of dollars. The whole operation is powered by EternalBlue, the leaked NSA exploit which made the WannaCry ransomware outbreak so destructive. The Smominru miner botnet turns infected machines into miners of the Monero cryptocurrency and is believed to have made its owners around $3.6m since it started operating in May 2017 — about a month after EternalBlue leaked and around the same time as the WannaCry attack.
