Ep. 75 Hostile Takeover
On this episode of the Unhashed Podcast: The steem blockchain was just subject to a hostile takeover by Justin Sun of Tron. Can Jeff Bridges save the old validators now? Scammers have been impersonating coindesk staff in order to extract money out of unsuspecting merchants. Have you ever been curious how we would use this evil super power were we given the chance? And...Trace Mayer is getting the brunt of Bitcoin hate for shilling MimbleWimbleCoin, a discount version of the Grin chain. Whos grinning now?
Weekly News Wrap Up:
The Steem blockchain ran into some drama this past week. Justin Sun, of Tron fame, decided to buy SteemIt Inc, the Ned Scott founded company that built Steemit on top of the Steem Blockchain. For those who dont know, Steem is a social network of sorts somewhat like a mashup of reddit and facebook. You can upvote content based on how much steem you have staked in the network. Once word got out that Justin had bought Steemit Inc, the validators on the steem network forked the consensus rule to not allow the 40% of tokens owned by SteemIt inc to vote on the network. However, Justin called around to all his buddies at the exchanges, including Binance, Huobi, and Poloniex, and had them vote to remove the old validators and vote in Tron run validators.
North Korean hackers stole $250 million worth of cryptocurrency from an exchange and two Chinese nationals helped them launder $100 million of it using prepaid iTunes gift cards and other methods, according to the US Department of Justice. The US Treasury Department says the scheme is tied to the Lazarus Group, a criminal enterprise linked to North Korea and its efforts to steal cryptocurrency and various other high-profile cyberattacks.
Scammers Impersonating Coindesk Staff on Media to Scam People (we can also talk about this general problem within the bitcoin community)
Famous Bitcoin whale Trace Mayer was seen shilling MimbleWimbleCoin at the Unconfiscatable conference. Apparently the coin had seen a 50% premine, of which a large portion was distributed in an airdrop to Bitcoin holders who bothered to register. Presumably Trace Mayer was one of them.
Insurance giant Lloyd's of London is backing a new policy protecting cryptocurrency held in hot wallets. The liability policy is said to be a new type of insurance with a dynamic limit that increases or decreases in line with the price changes of covered crypto assets. With limits starting from £1,000 (US$1,280), the policy is designed to protect investors and traders against losses arising from the theft of crypto held in online, or "hot," wallets. The firm told CoinDesk that in making a claim"the customer would inform, supply us with certain details such as what they felt happened (i.e. PC hacked, lost phone etc.) as well as fill out a police report." Coincover would then investigate the claim and "endeavor to pay out within 48 hours" if the claim is approved. The policy would not cover crypto assets "willingly" sent to the wrong address, the firm added.
Price Analysis:
Number go up
One Final Note:
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