Crypto Skepticism of the Week Archives • Daily Ico News

Trade Bitcoin? Risk a $10 Million Fine and 30 Years in Prison for Violating Sanctions

I like to joke that any proof-of-work crypto like Bitcoin and Ethereum puts the control over transactions into the hands of organized crime and/or a few guys in China (the best humor being true, of course). So what if those few guys in China get in bed with the Iranian government? In that case, run-of-the-mill […]

In Search of ‘Real’ Blockchain? Good Luck with That

Last week, Kadena founder Stuart Popejoy questioned whether the IBM HyperLedger Fabric blockchain was a ‘real’ blockchain in this article on Cointelegraph. His argument has several provocative points, but his central concern is Fabric’s consensus mechanism. According to Popejoy, “A blockchain is, at its core, a decentralized immutable ledger of events or transactions in which […]

Typosquatting: Yet One More Threat to Your Crypto

Let’s say you want to log into your bank account. You type the URL in your browser, only you make a simple typo. Instead of an error page, however, you get a page that looks just like the bank login page you expect – it’s even TLS-secured. So you attempt to log in, only to […]

What’s Wrong with Facebook’s New Cryptocurrency?

I’m sure all you crypto fans out there have heard of Libra, the new crypto that Facebook is planning to roll out next year. What’s not to love? First, even though a consortium of big players is backing the venture, it’s shaping up to be a fully centralized, permissioned endeavor. In my book, that’s the […]

The Rumors of Cryptojacking’s Death are Greatly Exaggerated

Thank heavens for crypto, or we wouldn’t have two of the greatest cybersecurity scourges of the 21st century: ransomware and cryptojacking. Ransomware was the cybercriminal’s darling in 2017, followed shortly by illicit cryptomining aka cryptojacking in 2018. Now that crypto prices are in the toilet (relatively speaking), it seems that cybercrooks may be shifting back […]

Money for Nothing and your Bitcoin for Free

On June 3rd, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) dropped from $8,451 to $7,886 in ninety minutes, a drop of 7%. Thanks to the intrepid Redditor u/makoveli, we know precisely why this drop took place. As it turns out, a single individual (or perhaps a consortium trading as a unit) was responsible. This ‘whale’ moved 25,000 […]

Unavoidable Conclusion from Bitcoin Cash 51% Attack: ‘Bitcoin…has no value’

Earlier this month (May 2019), two mining groups joined together and mounted a successful 51% attack on the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) crypto. Perhaps you heard about this news, or perhaps you didn’t (I found out about it via this Cointelegraph article). The reason for the crypto community’s underwhelming response might be that the motivations of […]

Let’s Play the Hodler Game

Let’s play a game. Here’s how it works. I’m running the game in a room full of hundreds or even thousands of people, all of whom are looking to play in order to go home with a big wad of cash. I’m giving one person at a time a poker chip, as quickly as I […]

Things Crypto Scammers Say

There are basically two kinds of people in the crypto world today: scammers and their marks. Not a scammer? Well, then, you’re a mark. If you haven’t already fallen for one of the multitude of crypto scams out there, here’s a quick guide to identifying a scammer. If you hear somebody saying any of the […]

Four Reasons Why Crypto Exchanges Lie about Transaction Volumes

A few weeks ago, Bitwise Asset Management released a report that concluded that as much of 95% of the crypto trades at leading exchanges are fake (see the MIT Technology Review article or the Wall Street Journal article for summaries of the results). The question I’d like to ask here: why would crypto exchanges want […]

Category: Crypto Skepticism of the Week