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Cybercriminals are increasingly moving away from bitcoin as their preferred digital currency in favor of lesser-known cryptocurrencies because of prolonged transaction delays, surging transaction costs and general market volatility, experts tell CyberScoop.
Although cybercriminals have been slowly moving away from bitcoin for months, researchers say a noticeable shift towards alternative coins — such as Monero, Dash and ZCash — occurred when bitcoin's value skyrocketed over $19,000 for one bitcoin in mid-December. The price has drastically fluctuated between $12,000 and roughly $19,000 since then.
"Many cybercriminals emulate the operational best practices of legitimate businesses in order to minimize their overhead costs and maximize returns, and in the case of high transaction costs with bitcoin, it makes perfect sense to look at other coins with smaller overheads," said Richard Henderson, a global security strategist with endpoint cybersecurity firm Absolute.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:34AM
Not sure what qualifies as "non-volatile asset" for you, but the vast majority of goods and assets tend to depreciate in value over time. And those that can potentially increase in value often involve some risk too, because they tend to have unpredictability depending on the speculation of investors.
Currency doesn't need to be the best investment long-term, but to function as a currency, it generally needs to have relatively stable value on shorter time scales. If your currency can lose significant value in even a few minutes it takes to complete a transaction, that's not a currency people are going to want to use because they can't depend on the integrity of pricing in transactions to fulfill the basic function of a currency as standard valuation for goods.