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posted by cmn32480 on Friday January 05 2018, @10:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the stable-and-anonymous dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow8317

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.

Source: https://www.cyberscoop.com/bitcoin-hype-pushers-hackers-to-stash-their-money-in-lesser-known-cryptocurrencies/


Original Submission

Related Stories

Salon Asks Ad-Blocking Users to Mine Cryptocurrency 44 comments

The news outlet Salon is allowing Adblock-using visitors to opt-in to using the JavaScript-based Coinhive tool to mine the cryptocurrency Monero:

Other sites have used cryptocurrency mining in lieu of (or in addition to) advertising. Sometimes, it's done surreptitiously without users' consent — The Pirate Bay admitted to secretly adding Coinhive integration last year, and hackers have planted mining malware on other sites. In this case, it's an opt-in program; a spokesperson tells FT that testing started on Monday.

Salon has an FAQ explaining this move.

Also at Ars Technica.

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Wi-Fi at Starbucks Buenos Aires Has Computers Mine Crypto-Currency
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Original Submission

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Friday January 05 2018, @12:25PM (20 children)

    by anubi (2828) on Friday January 05 2018, @12:25PM (#618293) Journal

    Cybercurrency still puzzles me.

    I still can't help but remember buying Circuit City DIVX disks... then one day... poof! All I had left were coasters.

    To me, this looks too much like that milk jug "pog" fad that went around about 20 years ago.

    Or the value of these "Magic-The Game" cards. Where someone with a printing press is making a mint.

    Some people pay great value for pieces of cardboard with a pattern of ink on them... with the faith that someone else will tender great value for it.

    Faith-based currency?

    Are we really that gullible, or am I really that dumb?

    To make things worse, I don't know the answer to the question I just posited.

    My ignorance makes me way too afraid to put my own money on the table... yet I bemoan not having seen this sooner.

    I fear the same kind of delusion I had when I invested a lot of my resources in oil a decade ago. I had bought into "peak oil" hook, line, boat, motor, fisherman, and sinker. And I truthfully thought I was making a sound investment, backed by the energy and usefulness of the petroleum so invested in. Being in California during the Grey Davis Energy Crisis, I knew good and well what happens when energy demand exceeded availability... care to recite how much a megawatt/hour of energy would sell for? But I did not invest at that time because I knew good and well the California energy shortage was completely manufactured in Sacramento, and it would go away as fast as it was made.

    I thought Peak Oil was for real. My delusion cost me most of my retirement. I actually TRUSTED the President of the United States of America when he proclaimed that if there is anything Americans needed to hear loud and clear: that we were Running Out of Oil. And this from an Oil family, no less.

    See what I got for trusting what my Government said?

    A fancy suit speaking in front of impressive looking Seals of State does not mean the speaker is telling the truth. I did not have the intelligence to differentiate the importance of a statement from the President of the United States of America from the statement of a poppet valve. And I still bemoan my gullibility.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by rigrig on Friday January 05 2018, @01:24PM

      by rigrig (5129) Subscriber Badge <soylentnews@tubul.net> on Friday January 05 2018, @01:24PM (#618307) Homepage

      Some people pay great value for pieces of cardboard with a pattern of ink on them... with the faith that someone else will tender great value for it.
      Faith-based currency?
      Are we really that gullible, or am I really that dumb?

      This goes for all currency: if tomorrow everybody decides they only accept bitcoins, our banknotes are just a pile of paper. (Not to mention the few bits in some computer at a bank which we somehow trust)
      Chances of this happening to traditional currencies are much lower, but I'll take one bitcoin over 200 quintillion Zimbabwe Dollars...

      --
      No one remembers the singer.
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday January 05 2018, @02:05PM (14 children)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday January 05 2018, @02:05PM (#618316) Journal

      Faith-based currency?

      What do you think the dollar is based on? The days when it was based on gold are long gone.

      Of course the value of gold is to a large part also based on faith (there is an utility value of gold, but it's much lower than its price).

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday January 05 2018, @03:14PM (8 children)

        by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Friday January 05 2018, @03:14PM (#618339) Journal

        Faith-based currency?

        What do you think the dollar is based on? The days when it was based on gold are long gone.

        I truly don't understand those who long for the days of the gold standard, as if it was more stable or "real" or something. As you yourself point out, the value of gold is volatile too and not primarily based on utility value. The scarcity argument only goes so far too, since there are many things that are rare. (It's true that lack of scarcity with printed money introduces a theoretical fear of hyperinflation, but anyone who has studied monetary history knows hyperinflation feedback loops tend to occur in very specific circumstances -- often having to do with debts denominated in foreign currencies.)

        Anyhow, the dollar's value isn't just "based on faith." It's based on taxation. As long as the U.S. government can demand taxes be paid in dollars, and that taxes have to be valued in dollars, dollars are going to be a convenient method of exchange in the U.S., thereby giving them utility value as a currency. This sort of utility value is no less valuable (and arguably much more so) than gold's. Yes, at some point all governments eventually fail, but as I've often noted, if the U.S. government were to "go down" in the foreseeable future, chances are that the kind of things with value will be those with real practical value in a survival situation -- food, basic supplies, medical supplies, ammunition and guns, etc. Convincing somebody to take your shiny hunk of gold in such a situation might become just as difficult as convincing them to take your dollar -- what they really want is something that they can use... or something they know someone else can use directly that they could trade.

        • (Score: 2) by Wootery on Friday January 05 2018, @03:19PM (1 child)

          by Wootery (2341) on Friday January 05 2018, @03:19PM (#618343)

          Abbreviated version: All value is contextual. 'Inherent value' is a contradiction

          • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday January 05 2018, @03:34PM

            by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Friday January 05 2018, @03:34PM (#618351) Journal

            That's a pretty good summary. But, at least for humans, some things do have at least some inherent value. Food and water for example. Their value may fluctuate significantly depending on supply, but as long as humans want to stay alive, their value will never disappear completely. Gold's utility value, on the other hand, mostly has to do with advanced tech and desire to wear shiny adornments (particularly shiny ones made from a malleable material that can easily be worked by hand). There are a lot of situations where gold's utility value may effectively go to zero.

        • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 05 2018, @05:23PM (3 children)

          by Immerman (3985) on Friday January 05 2018, @05:23PM (#618398)

          As far as the dollars value being not just based on faith, I have one word for you: hyperinflation. Happens all the time, and can reduce you life savings to a day's wages practically overnight. At the very least the value of the dollar is based on faith that the government won't rapidly devalue it.

          • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:22AM

            by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:22AM (#618611) Journal

            Might want to bother to actually read the post you're replying to. Hint: the word hyperinflation occurred multiple times in my previous post.

          • (Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday January 06 2018, @07:51AM (1 child)

            by anubi (2828) on Saturday January 06 2018, @07:51AM (#618667) Journal

            You hit on exactly what drove me to invest in petroleum.

            Going back ten - twelve years, I was seeing a home-debt bubble of epic proportions. I thought we had no choice to collapse the dollar so all those loans could be paid off. And I did not want to be left with devalued dollars.

            I really can't find much use for Gold. It may be good for electrical contacts or jewelery, but its by no means uniquely qualified for that. Its main claim to fame seems to be historical... the faith that somebody will give me something valuable for it - but in and of itself, I can see little use for the stuff. Maybe make a passable fishing sinker?

            I figured oil was about the only stable investment... as its value is predicated on the energy / chemical utility it possesses. And I was of the strong belief ( Matthew Simmons - "Twilight in the Desert" ) that we are rapidly depleting a resource which was made by geological processes in geological time. It will not be replenished in my lifetime, that's for sure. And I do remember when Grandpa's wells on the farm ran dry. But we knew the rain would come and the well would work again. I knew in these instances, there will not be a rain of that sort. Well run dry, it stayed dry.

            Even to this day, I remain puzzled over why oil was such a bad investment and Bitcoin shoots up so. And why people bid up the price so high of that derived from nothing, and can easily return to nothing, and even while existing has no use other than to say you have some.

            All I can figure out is maybe this whole thing is yet another charade to get the workingfolk to buy this up, then one day pull the rug out... taking their life savings. Legally.

            --
            "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
            • (Score: 4, Interesting) by deimtee on Saturday January 06 2018, @10:55AM

              by deimtee (3272) on Saturday January 06 2018, @10:55AM (#618705) Journal

              It's not politically correct to believe it (because the conclusion is that oil is practically unlimited), but you should read "Power from the Earth" by Thomas Gold. If you assume that what he wrote is even partially correct then it explains a lot about oil availability/prices. Follow it up with "Deep Hot Biosphere" for the complete picture.

              Personal opinion: He was right.
              Comets are supposedly primordial, but contain copious hydrocarbons, carbonates, and hydrated minerals. It is unreasonable to assume that the aggregation that became the Earth did not also contain similar elements/chemical compounds. If so then they would be, in general, of lower density than rock/metal, and as such would slowly make their way to the surface, collecting in inverted impermeable 'basins', ie, oil reservoirs.

              --
              If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday January 05 2018, @09:07PM (1 child)

          by bradley13 (3053) on Friday January 05 2018, @09:07PM (#618517) Homepage Journal

          "the dollar's value isn't just "based on faith." It's based on taxation"

          Um...this would be the government that spends far more than its income, by something north of $500 billion per year? The government with acknowledged debts exceeding the annual GDP of the entire country, and unfunded liabilities at least 10 times that? The US will never be able to pay back its debts, except by borrowing money from someone else. Eventually, that carousel is going to stop, and the result will be financial carnage.

          BitCoin, or Monero, or whatever: they work through a combination of enforced scarcity plus the fact that people are willing to trade things for them. That's pretty much the practical definition of a currency. There is no cloud of debt hanging over them. The current volatility is due to the fact that they haven't yet found their permanent role in society, and is unfortunately magnified by speculation. Over time, left to develop, they will stabilize.

          The danger to digital currencies is that governments will try to strangle them in the crib. Governments are jealous of their power, and much of that power is tied to their currencies. This is especially true of countries whose financial foundations are shakier than publicly acknowledged: mainly the US, Japan, most members of the EU, and possibly China. I expect to see these countries try to outlaw or co-opt digital currencies in the course of the next year or two. How successful such efforts might be, well, it's hard to predict.

          --
          Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
          • (Score: 4, Disagree) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:19AM

            by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:19AM (#618608) Journal

            Short reply: government budgets don't work like your household budget. Nor like corporations. Government budgets that are sovereign in their own currency creation work differently from government budgets that aren't (e.g. state governments, EU member states). Government debt denominated in the sovereign currency is very different from government debt denominated in foreign currencies.

            Read a macroeconomics textbook. Yes, all governments will eventually collapse... Yes. But worrying about debt in the way you're framing it just doesn't take into account the way money creation and dynamics work with sovereign governments in the real world.

            As for the digital currencies... Maybe one or more will eventually stabilize. But right now they are better seen as volatile investment vehicles. I sincerely doubt Bitcoin is ever going to be the answer, even if we settle on a digital currency decades into the future. And the scarcity thing in Bitcoin right now is a positive for investors but will eventually cause major deflation which is an economic disaster long-term if it were actually adopted as primary currency.

      • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday January 05 2018, @09:04PM (4 children)

        by Thexalon (636) on Friday January 05 2018, @09:04PM (#618514)

        Faith-based currency?

        What do you think the dollar is based on? The days when it was based on gold are long gone.

        Two things:
        1. USAians have to come up with a certain number of dollars for the benefit of the IRS. And if they don't, people with guns can come by to take things from you. Yes, even if your transactions aren't dollar-denominated but "in-kind".
        2. On paper money, you'll see the words "This bill is legal tender for all debts, public and private". Which means that if you're trying to settle a debt in the US (say, a restaurant bill) and offer US dollars to pay for it, then you legally attempted to pay your debt and your creditor cannot both refuse your payment and go after you for it. And again, people with guns will come by to explain all of this to you if necessary.

        Yes, that means that in essence, the value of the US dollar (and other fiat currencies) depends on a credible threat of violence to enforce it.

        Both of those mean that it's very convenient for everyone in the US to do the vast majority of their transactions in US dollars. Using another currency isn't illegal or anything, just more hassle, unless you're trying to engage in tax evasion.

        That said, the value of gold is also in part a social value rather than usage value: While gold is very handy for certain industrial uses, most of the demand for it is and has always been basically for bling.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @07:56AM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @07:56AM (#618670)

          Interesting...

          Which means that if you're trying to settle a debt in the US (say, a restaurant bill) and offer US dollars to pay for it, then you legally attempted to pay your debt and your creditor cannot both refuse your payment and go after you for it.

          I have seen motels that won't take cash. They demand a credit card.

          I wonder if I offered cash... they would not take ... so I just pull around and take the family into the motel room - busting and replacing the lock if I have to... and they call the cops.

          Well, I offered cash. They did not take it, so the debt is settled?

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:16AM (2 children)

            by deimtee (3272) on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:16AM (#618710) Journal

            No, you will get your ass thrown in jail. They refused you a oom, you committed "break and entry". There never was any debt.
            If they let you stay, and then the next day refuse cash payment but demand a credit card, that might fit your scenario better.

            --
            If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
            • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:21AM (1 child)

              by deimtee (3272) on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:21AM (#618711) Journal

              Not an oom. They refused you a room

              I need a new keyboad with a woking r.

              --
              If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
              • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 06 2018, @05:13PM

                by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday January 06 2018, @05:13PM (#618825) Journal

                A keyboard with an r that makes Chinese food?

                --
                The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @03:22PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @03:22PM (#618344)

      Right now I think cryptocurrencies are still in their infancy. I don't think Bitcoin is The One, and it's shown some severe scaling problems. Ethereum probably is not The One either. The idea in the abstract seems sound. Gold works as a currency because it has certain properties that make counterfeiting difficult without access to advanced metallurgy: malleability, density, color, etc; and gold has an essentially finite supply. Cryptocurrencies also have features to make counterfeiting difficult and to create an essentially finite supply.

      The challenge we have with fiat currencies is that they're controlled by international bankers, and this gives the international banker class incredible power via monetary policy. For the past 40 some odd years and counting, wages have been stagnant despite skyrocketing GDPs. The international banker class is failing at negotiating with us. The math shows that they take and take and take and take. They accumulate, and if this continues, it's back to the dark ages. During the dark ages that the international bankers want to reign in, we'll have chairmen and chairwomen and CEOs and COOs instead of kings and queens and barons and dukes.

      Cryptocurrencies may have started as technical curiosities, but they show promise in democratizing monetary policy. Cryptocurrencies are a way of exercising political authority as the inherent right all intelligent beings have of secession. (Apologies to the person who has a similar sig.) The international bankers want us to be slaves and serfs. Cryptocurrency says, “No. I withdraw consent. I am seceding from the fiat money fractional reserve systems controlled autocratically by the international bankers.”

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:05AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:05AM (#618707)

        During the dark ages that the international bankers want to reign in, we'll have chairmen and chairwomen and CEOs and COOs instead of kings and queens and barons and dukes.

        Yeah, but the guillotine still works the same. Brexit/Trump is only the very mild first step of rebellion. If they don't pull their heads out of their asses, we will chop them off.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @07:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @07:33PM (#618462)

      I still can't help but remember buying Circuit City DIVX disks... then one day... poof! All I had left were coasters.

      You bought that shit? How old were you? Even in tech-poor areas of the country you couldn't escape conversations on what a bad idea divx was.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @08:41PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @08:41PM (#618501)

      Cybercurrency still puzzles me.

      I explained it earlier:
      https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=23291&page=1&cid=614885#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday January 05 2018, @02:03PM (1 child)

    by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Friday January 05 2018, @02:03PM (#618315) Journal

    Thanks for the heads up! I've been looking for a second cryptocurrency to mine, so I'll check out Monero especially since some ACs here seem to like it. I think Dash and ZCash are also on the mining pool I use.

    I assume that by “cybercriminals” and misogynerds and homosexual men and all sorts of other categories of “failed men” they mean people who have more experience than I and have devoted more time to looking into these currencies, especially taking into consideration any given currency's technical design and capability to create a credible monetary system outside of the control of the MotU/TPTB/Illuminati/patriarchy/kyriarchy.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @09:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @09:21PM (#618521)

      Zcash, zclassic and zencash are probably all nsa/mossad coins and based on the same 6 keys, if you care about that. Dash is a well run project. i like monero because privacy is a dependency of freedom.

  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday January 05 2018, @03:35PM

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Friday January 05 2018, @03:35PM (#618352) Journal

    So this year, I thought I came up with a great idea.... I'd buy some Bitcoin, print up a bunch of paper wallets, and then transfer value to each of them. Then I give the wallet as a gift. So I purchased about $40 in BTC from Coinbase. I was charged like $2.00 for the transaction which I thought was fine. I then transferred $4.00 to the first wallet.... but I totally misread the decimal place for the fees. And I was charged $30.00 for the transfer. *eeek*

    After a couple of days and of looking around I decided to repeat my experiment with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) instead of Bitcoin (BTC). So I bought $20 of BCH. And I sent $2.00 to the next user and it told me the fee would be $0.05.

    And, as far as I can tell, while you're told what network fees will be before you actually execute the transaction, you can't know what the network fee is until after you've got the coin in and and want to transfer it.

    I still had fun, and I learned a lot, but feel like I wasted $30. (And the point of this was to create a fun gift, which was successful. Not to be invested in cryptocurrency...)

    --
    This sig for rent.
  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday January 05 2018, @03:45PM (2 children)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Friday January 05 2018, @03:45PM (#618356) Journal

    Even calling a lot of uses of Bitcoin "currency" is somewhat disingenuous. A lot of transactions merely make use of Bitcoin as a very temporary intermediary -- because many people don't want to hold on to Bitcoin longer than necessary.

    That's the problem with a volatile "currency." One of the main advantages of currency is relative stability of value. You don't have to spend time when you're trading to figure out how much your sheep is worth in the current market, compared to the bags of grain you're trying to acquire. You don't have to worry about how long those bags of grain will hold their value or what the next harvest will look like. Many goods fluctuate in value seasonally or whatever.

    Aside from ease of transaction, people choose to store value in currency often because it has less volatility. No currency is ever completely stable in value, but that's a primary strength. And, you know, Bitcoin still has way too many unknowns to depend on it as a store of value. For just one example, there are still plenty of early buyers out there who hold significant amounts of Bitcoin -- if they decide to sell off in large numbers at some point, it could drive the value WAY down very quickly. And we've seen other disasters in the past few years that have also driven value changes.

    But again, many people aren't holding it yet as a currency -- they're holding it as an investment. Those using it as currency often are just using it as an intermediary currency... and if the value is changing so quickly that transaction delays mean that you can't guarantee the value is the same when you start the transaction as when you end it... well, that's NOT by any means a reasonable "currency." No wonder people are migrating to other options.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday January 05 2018, @05:29PM (1 child)

      by Immerman (3985) on Friday January 05 2018, @05:29PM (#618402)

      Actually currency is a really bad store of value - as it's value is almost always falling, sometimes very rapidly (hyperinflation). Pretty much any other non-volatile asset makes for a better store of wealth. The value of currency is in its liquidity - pretty much anyone will accept a common currency in exchange for X, whereas if all your wealth is stored in vintage Betty Boop reels you may run into difficulties trying to buy bread today.

      • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:34AM

        by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:34AM (#618613) Journal

        Pretty much any other non-volatile asset makes for a better store of wealth.

        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.

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