Bitcoin Cracks $19,000

[Suzanimal]

I only had a wee bit in my wallet (around 5.00 last time I looked) so I decided to check it tonight and it's 30.70. Sweet.

 

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

i only had like 100 in bitcoin as play money, if I didn't touch it It'd be like 5000 dollars now

 

[Gaddafi Duck]

Yeah, Bitcoin is a bubble. I've heard all the arguments--but really the only useful aspect of Bitcoin is you can take your wealth across borders. But that's not unique to Bitcoin. Any crypto does that.

So really Bitcoin is similar to any other crypto out there, and some cryptos are better than Bitcoin. So Bitcoin's 'value' is completely dependent upon its social network. That's what Bitcoin is. I mean, I don't want to hold any meaningful wealth into something

Plus, I've noticed the Bitcoin exchanges magically crash their servers during periods of selling. Go look at a chart at CoinBase---the price drops $500-$1000 and then recovers, multiple times in an hour. It's insanely manipulated. With how sketchy these exchange servers are, it'll be exciting to see the selling snowball similar to how it did a few years ago when Bitcoin crashed over 90% and everyone forgot about it until recently. I've seen anecdotal evidence already of people's Bitcoin sales not being processed and failing. That's with normal activity---when there's a run on Bitcoin, you'll be at the back of the queue while the exchanges give preference to their buddies.

 

[Suzanimal]

i only had like 100 in bitcoin as play money, if I didn't touch it It'd be like 5000 dollars now

I noticed the paltry amount I had would've been 1,850.00 if I hadn't spent most of it. It was nice to see the few bucks I had left turn into 30.00, though.

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

Plus, I've noticed the Bitcoin exchanges magically crash their servers during periods of selling. Go look at a chart at CoinBase---the price drops $500-$1000 and then recovers, multiple times in an hour. It's insanely manipulated.

Then how did I make any money while the price dropped a few k over the past 24hrs ?

 

[tod evans]

Russia may turn to cryptocurrencies in oil trade to challenge sanctions & the petrodollar

https://www.rt.com/business/412619-russia-cryptocurrencies-oil-trade/


The gradual acceptance of digital currencies, with major exchanges about to launch bitcoin futures trading, may prompt some oil producing nations to ditch the US dollar in crude trade in favor of cryptocurrencies, an oil analyst says.
Russia, Iran and Venezuela have more than one thing in common. All three are major oil producing nations dependent on the dollar since the global crude market is traditionally dominated by contracts denominated in US currency.

Moscow, Tehran and Caracas are also facing US sanctions; penalties which are proving effective since the sanctioned countries are dependent on the US dollar to sell their crude.


A decentralized currency – allowing anonymous transactions along with blockchain technology support to facilitate oil contracts – may be the ideal tool to allow the oil producing trio to turn their back on the greenback.

“The advent of cryptocurrencies, therefore, represents a fresh catalyst for commodity-producing countries wishing to abandon the dollar as a means of payment for oil,” said Stephen Brennock, oil analyst at PVM Oil Associates, in a research note seen by CNBC.

Several oil producers have already voiced plans to ditch the dollar in oil trading. Last week, Venezuela announced it will launch its own cryptocurrency, the “Petro,” which will be backed by the country’s vast natural resource reserves.


Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during his weekly radio and TV broadcast Venezuela to launch ‘Petro’ cryptocurrency to fight Trump’s ‘financial blockade’
Russia, China and Iran are currently pursuing currency swap agreements to eliminate the US dollar from trade. One of the world's biggest crude importers, China, has also announced the launch of the petro-yuan to replace the greenback in oil transactions.


While currency swaps are being considered, cryptocurrencies, once they become less volatile, offer several advantages. Instead of using various national currencies, they provide a common currency for countries seeking to avoid using the dollar. They are also universal and flexible, easily convertible back to national currencies.

Cryptocurrencies provide yet another advantage to countries facing international sanctions. They are anonymous and decentralized, which limits the effect of US economic sanctions on trade deals for countries like Russia, Iran and Venezuela.

 

[Mordan]

Sure - shorting bitcoin seems like a safe bet. I mean, there's no way that the price of bitcoin will just keep going up, all the way to 100k or higher.

That would be impossible LOL

It is totally out of question. Bitcoin cannot go over 100k That would mean Bitcoin is worth more than physical dollars in circulation. That cannot happen. I repeat. Bitcoin will not be allowed to reach 100k.

while some people are thinking about using crypto to sell his oil....................

 

[tod evans]

MSM is trying to scare people away..


North Korea is hacking bitcoin exchanges as currency value soars, expert says

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/1...nges-as-currency-value-soars-expert-says.html

As bitcoin’s value continues to surge, North Korean hackers are taking advantage by targeting exchanges to gain financial profit, experts said on Friday as sanctions against Kim Jong Un's regime threaten to impede on economic development.

Bitcoin’s value has skyrocketed this year, especially in the last week when the volatile digital currency hit above $17,000 after the value see-sawed for a few hours. One bitcoin was worth less than $1,000 at the start of the year. The increasing price is not only attractive to investors, but to hackers working for the Hermit Kingdom, Ashley Shen, an independent security researcher, told Sky News.

NiceHash says it is investigating a security breach and the theft of the contents of the NiceHash "bitcoin wallet." The company said Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017 in a statement posted on its website that it had stopped operations and was working to verify how many bitcoins were taken. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
Bitcoin's value has skyrocketed this year. One bitcoin was worth less than $1,000 at the start of the year. It topped to $17,000 late Thursday. (Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
"We assume one of the reasons why Bitcoin is being attacked is because the price keeps increasing and we think it's reasonable for hackers [to target],” Shen told Sky News. "Digital currency might be easier to gain than physical currency. So I think it's reasonable."

Shen said she and other researchers have been tracking Lazarus, Bluenoroff and Andariel — hacking groups suspected of being backed by North Korea — and attacks done on banks in Europe and South Korea, an ATM company and bitcoin exchange. She told Sky News cyberattacks are usually conducted to gain confidential information, but they have been recently veered toward gaining digital currency.


"Before, when we tracked nation-state attackers, they usually perform cyberattacks which are aimed for confidential data and intelligence,” Shen said. "However, recently we've discovered that some of the APT [Advanced Persistent Threat] groups are trying to hack financial institutions like banks and Bitcoin exchanges to gain financial profit."

The expert said the cyberattacks have been unsuccessful, but believes they will continue because bitcoin’s increasing value makes it “a good investment.”

She added, “So I assume they will do more Bitcoin attacks and of course they will keep targeting banks because that's what they did before.”

A researcher who remained anonymous because she works for a South Korean bank also noted possible “financial difficulties” North Korea is facing because of the increase in hacks.

Kim Jong Un focused on developing North Korea's nuclear and missile program this year, but faced tougher sanctions because of it. (KCNA via Reuters)
"Just a few years ago the attacks were initiated to paralyze the society, but for some time now they've been hacking for money — so I kind of wonder if they are facing financial difficulties,” the researcher said.


North Korea has faced tougher sanctions since it conducted its sixth nuclear test in September. The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved sanctions against North Korea after the test. The Trump administration then imposed new sanctions in late November on a slew of North Korean shipping firms and Chinese trading companies.

South Korea also announced on Sunday 20 North Korean organizations and 12 individuals that will be placed in its own sanctions blacklist — its response to Kim’s latest ICBM launch.

Security firm FireEye also revealed in a report in September that hackers linked to North Korea have stolen bitcoins from at least three South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges since May 2017.

“Now, we may be witnessing a second wave of this campaign: state-sponsored actors seeking to steal bitcoin and other virtual currencies as a means of evading sanctions and obtaining hard currencies to fund the regime,” the report stated.

 

[jllundqu]

17,034

 

[jllundqu]

And holy hell my litecoins went BOOM! $195

 

[Suzanimal]

I noticed the paltry amount I had would've been 1,850.00 if I hadn't spent most of it. It was nice to see the few bucks I had left turn into 30.00, though.

And holy hell my litecoins went BOOM! $195

Nice!!!

I just checked mine and I'm up 8.00 from yesterday. Yay! I know it's not much but dang, I almost forgot I had that money to begin with.

 

[TheTexan]

It is totally out of question. Bitcoin cannot go over 100k That would mean Bitcoin is worth more than physical dollars in circulation. That cannot happen. I repeat. Bitcoin will not be allowed to reach 100k.

Haha ya totally. Definitely wont happen ever

 

[Created4]

Evidence points to Bitcoin being an NSA-engineered psyop to roll out one-world digital currency

it’s now becoming increasingly evident that Bitcoin may be a creation of the NSA and was rolled out as a “normalization” experiment to get the public familiar with digital currency. Once this is established, the world’s fiat currencies will be obliterated in an engineered debt collapse (see below for the sequence of events), then replaced with a government approved cryptocurrency with tracking of all transactions and digital wallets by the world’s western governments.

What evidence supports this notion? First, take a look at this document entitled, “How to make a mint: The cryptography of anonymous electronic cash.” This document, released in 1997 — yes, twenty years ago — detailed the overall structure and function of Bitcoin cryptocurrency.

Who authored the document? Try not to be shocked when you learn it was authored by “mathematical cryptographers at the National Security Agency’s Office of Information Security Research and Technology.”

The NSA, in other words, detailed key elements of Bitcoin long before Bitcoin ever came into existence. Much of the Bitcoin protocol is detailed in this document, including signature authentication techniques, eliminating cryptocoin counterfeits through transaction authentication and several features that support anonymity and untraceability of transactions. The document even outlines the heightened risk of money laundering that’s easily accomplished with cryptocurrencies. It also describes “secure hashing” to be “both one-way and collision-free.”

Although Bitcoin adds mining and a shared, peer-to-peer blockchain transaction authentication system to this structure, it’s clear that the NSA was researching cryptocurrencies long before everyday users had ever heard of the term. Note, too, that the name of the person credited with founding Bitcoin is Satoshi Nakamoto, who is reputed to have reserved one million Bitcoins for himself. Millions of posts and online threads discuss the possible identity of Satishi Nakamoto, and some posts even claim the NSA has identified Satoshi. However, another likely explanation is that Satoshi Nakamoto is the NSA, which means he is either working for the NSA is is a sock puppet character created by the NSA for the purpose of this whole grand experiment.

On top of the fact that the NSA authored a technical paper on cryptocurrency long before the arrival of Bitcoin, the agency is also the creator of the SHA-256 hash upon which every Bitcoin transaction in the world depends. As The Hacker News explains. “The integrity of Bitcoin depends on a hash function called SHA-256, which was designed by the NSA and published by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST).” THN also adds:

“If you assume that the NSA did something to SHA-256, which no outside researcher has detected, what you get is the ability, with credible and detectable action, they would be able to forge transactions. The really scary thing is somebody finds a way to find collisions in SHA-256 really fast without brute-forcing it or using lots of hardware and then they take control of the network.” Cryptography researcher Matthew D. Green of Johns Hopkins University said.

In other words, if the SHA-256 hash, which was created by the NSA, actually has a backdoor method for cracking the encryption, it would mean the NSA could steal everybody’s Bitcoins whenever it wants. (Call it “Zero Day.”) That same article, written by Mohit Kumar, mysteriously concludes, “Even today it’s too early to come to conclusions about Bitcoin. Possibly it was designed from day one as a tool to help maintain control of the money supplies of the world.”

And with that statement, Kumar has indeed stumbled upon the bigger goal in all this: To seize control over the world money supply as the fiat currency system crumbles and is replaced with a one-world digital currency controlled by globalists.

Lest you think that the cryptography of cryptocurrency is secure and bulletproof, consider this article from The Hacker News: Researchers Crack 1024-bit RSA Encryption in GnuPG Crypto Library, which states, “The attack allows an attacker to extract the secret crypto key from a system by analyzing the pattern of memory utilization or the electromagnetic outputs of the device that are emitted during the decryption process.”

Note, importantly, that this is a 1024-bit encryption system. The same technique is also said to be able to crack 2048-bit encryption. In fact, encryption layers are cracked on a daily basis by clever hackers. Some of those encryption layers are powering various cryptocurrencies right now. Unless you are an extremely high-level mathematician, there’s no way you can know for sure whether any crypto currency is truly non-hackable.

In fact, every cryptocurrency becomes obsolete with the invention of large-scale quantum computing. Once China manages to build a working 256-bit quantum computer, it can effectively steal all the Bitcoins in the world (plus steal most national secrets and commit other global mayhem at will).

 

[kpitcher]

Evidence points to Bitcoin being an NSA-engineered psyop to roll out one-world digital currency

Nothing new here, same scare tactics that have been around for years.

Bitcoin has promoted decentralized networks and shown the world how to do it. There are now 19 crypto currencies worth more than a billion in market cap. I don't see why anyone would go for a gov backed one when there are over a thousand alternatives right now.

Also the article has some half truths. The hacker news about RSA being cracked requires running things on the same hardware as the encrypted file. If you own the hardware then any software with a password is easily cracked.

The SHA256 problem is a known concern. If there is ever a way to break that then there is a serious financial concern for everyone involved to switch to a new version of bitcoin that will have a different mining algorithm. There are already dozens of different ones that are in use by alt coins.

Large scale quantum computing won't be cracking crypto in the immediate future. If some amazing breakthrough happens there have been discussions on how to quantum proof bitcoin already.

 

[kfarnan]

if they can hack btc, then all banking and online services are at risk. they use the same sha256.