The U.S. Department of Justice Establishes a Crypto Enforcement Division

What Is the Purpose of the Crypto Enforcement Division?

The main goal of a Crypto Enforcement Division is to reinforce the ability of the Department of Justice to fight crimes related to crypto. On October 6th, the DOJ made the announcement about the new unit. The unit  will only focus on financial crime strictly involving crypto. 

The US Deputy Attorney General made the statement at the beginning of October at the Aspen Cyber Summit. Lisa Monaco said that the team would reinforce the DOJ’s ability to hinder financial markets that permit the flourishing of cybercriminals.

What Are the Targets?

It was also stated that the Department of Justice would set an initiative in motion to center on civil cyber fraud. On the same day, she announced that they were launching the national team of crypto enforcement. They have already started fighting the misuse of platforms dedicated to crypto, and they have shown excellent results. It was also stated that the Crypto Enforcement Division wouldn’t hesitate to hold  the platforms that help criminals to launder money in any way accountable. Another point they made clear: they’ll go after platforms assisting criminals to hide criminal proceeds. Crypto has become a crowded space, and new threats appear every day. 

Who Will Be Part of the Crypto Enforcement Division?

At the same summit, Monaco also stated that the team would include as many experts on cybersecurity as experts on anti-money laundering. That particular mix of expertise is made to ensure the protection of consumers for online related crime to finances. 

Since crypto exchanges are set to become the banks of the future, there’s a need to make sure that users can trust these platforms when using their services. Companies that receive federal funds will also be pursued if they don’t follow the recommended cybersecurity standards . 

A Case of Success for the DOJ

The US Department of Justice is chasing cybercriminals, particularly those dealing with cryptocurrency. The latest success story is the case of Larry Harmon, a man from Ohio who got convicted. He was running a Bitcoin mixer for years. Harmon was in charge of a tool that helped “blurring” the source of Bitcoin funds. He pleaded guilty to the charges of money laundering through the service he was in charge of. However, law enforcement wasn’t able to trace them.

Conclusion 

We’re currently experiencing new challenges when it comes to the crypto space, especially when we talk about cybersecurity and its regulations. Although there are still many aspects of it to be defined, one thing is for sure; when dealing with crypto, just like when dealing with fiat money, you should always be careful; scams are gradually becoming an everyday reality even in the virtual space.

Facebook Metaverse

The prominent social media pioneer, Facebook, is investing a significant amount of $50 million in creating the Facebook Metaverse. But let’s start at the beginning; what exactly is a Metaverse? “Metaverse” is the word used to describe an online space within the digital environments. A space with social media, virtual reality, and online games. It’s a mix of “meta,” which means “after” or “beyond” and the word “universe”. The Facebook Metaverse developers are trying to get ahead of the critics by making conscious investments and having meaningful partnerships. The budget planned for the next couple of years is $50 million. The budget will be directed towards initiatives related to the project and collaborations. The Facebook Metaverse goal is to create a space for work, social interactions, and games, among other things.

Who’s in Charge of Facebook Metaverse?

CEO of Facebook, declared that the social network pioneer was on the way to transforming into a metaverse firm. Now, the company is actively investing money into that statement. For instance, the team revealed plans to invest 50 million over the following two years to give life to the Facebook Metaverse. 

The concept of the metaverse is already known in the crypto industry. Decentralized projects try to create future worlds and experiences online out of the control and supervision of centralized entities. Facebook is an excellent example of that. In simple terms, the Facebook metaverse will be about shared virtual spaces where users can interact together and coexist. 

What Will Be the Benefits of It?

Developers declared that by opening the door to gaming and social experiences, the metaverse has excellent potential to improve the way we work. Also, they believe that it will create new economic opportunities for users all over the globe. Therefore, it will be somehow similar to the way decentralized autonomous organizations operate. DAOs are built so that their goal is to disrupt the traditional model of companies as we know it.

What Can We Expect From It?

This is a very ambitious and revolutionary project. That’s why the thought does not convince some metaverse developers of Facebook being the one leading its development. There’s a lot of criticism of its record regarding the user’s privacy, and it’s one of the primary sources of misinformation. The company said in previous days that the Facebook metaverse would be built responsibly. They plan to work with expert advisors in the government and industry. For instance, the goal is to work through potential issues and new opportunities in the Facebook metaverse.

Involving communities of civil and human rights has been a must in this project since the very beginning. Most importantly, there’s a need to guarantee that these technologies will be built in a way that is empowering and inclusive.

$12 Million Hack in pNetwork Because of a Bug in DeFi

A bug in the DeFi (decentralized finance) protocol of pNetwork was exploited to steal crypto; this time, the theft amounted to $12.5 million. The hacker, who still hasn’t been identified, stole 277 wrapped Bitcoins. The info was disclosed on Sunday by pNetwork’s developer’s team. They informed through Twitter that the attack was made through a bug in the codebase of the protocol. The aforementioned bug was used to attack the tokens of pBTC, which are a wrapped Bitcoin version of pNetwork. The stored crypto was on BSC (Binance Smart Chain). They also let the users know that all the other funds in the network were safe.

One of the many decentralized finance applications on the market is wrapped assets. In the cryptocurrency industry,  there is a growing ecosystem called DeFi. That ecosystem offers a lot of the same services that traditionally one could find in a bank or brokerage. The main difference is that there are no centralized institutions.

What Is A Wrapped Asset?

In the case of Bitcoin, the users have to lock it up on its original blockchain and issue a “wrapped version” that is possible to process on different networks. That version tracks the original asset’s price while being compatible with other blockchains. 

The Solution From The pNetwork Team

On the website, pNetwork has around $190 million worth in different crypto, all locked in the cross-chain bridges of the protocol. Fortunately, most of the crypto in the network remained safe during the attack. Only the pBTC tokens on the Binance Smart Chain suffered from the hack. Not so long after they discovered what was going on, the group of developers declared that they had pinpointed the bug. The team also stated that they had already been working on a possible fix for it, and they were waiting for everyone to review it.

A Different Approach

Meanwhile, the developers offered the hacker a “clear” bounty of $1.5 million to return the stolen funds. It isn’t clear at this point if their appeal to the better nature of the hacker paid off or not. It is not clear whether the attacker even responded to their offer if it got rejected or simply ignored. They tried to approach the situation through a statement on their Twitter account. The message was directed to the hacker, calling him “the black hat hacker,” They were offering a bounty as high as $1,500,000 if he returned the funds.

The team reassured the users that they were already working to fix the problem for those who were affected. Again, the only users who suffered from the attack were the holders of pBTC on the Binance Smart Chain. No further statements have been made regarding the subject so far, except the reassurance that they will keep working on the matter.

The Biggest Crypto Theft in History

A Bit of Background

The industry of DeFi has been growing at a fast pace, which makes crypto theft more attractive for hackers. Just three years ago, the value of it was barely $800 million. By February 2021, the sum was up to $40 billion. No wonder why more people are trying to make money in this sector, just as others are trying to take advantage of it. 

A group of hackers stole about $600m in cryptocurrency last week from Poly Network. The blockchain site said they took advantage of one of the vulnerabilities between contract calls in the system, which allowed them to take thousands of tokens like Ether. A few hours later, the hackers restored the funds, first in small amounts, then in millions. The site also declared that the sum of money hacked was one of the biggest in the history of decentralized finance. Among the currencies taken were $267m of Ether, $252m Binance coins, and $85m in USD Coins.

Poly Network allows the users to make token transfers that are tied to a blockchain in a different network as decentralized finance. Binance’s chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, said the group was cooperating with all the security partners to help the situation since his firm was aware of what was happening. When analyzing the multiple hacks, the main vulnerabilities in the DeFi sector can be identified. 

How Does Crypto Theft Work?

Usually, the attacker studies the project’s business model and the third-party services implemented. Mistakes in the business model and the third-party services are two of the main issues hackers take advantage of. Despite the simplicity of smart contracts, they’re still a new concept in the technology universe, and it requires a different paradigm of development. Commonly the developers in charge don’t have the skills for coding necessary for the task and end up making big mistakes. It’ll most likely end up in huge losses for the regular users. Security audits are implemented to eliminate part of the risk, but they can only help so much.

Final Thoughts

Whatever was the reason for the breach, the Network was lucky enough to get back almost all that was taken this time. Although, this will represent significant losses for the company since its security was breached and the trust of the users. We also have to keep in mind that it is always up to the user to decide if the risk of getting involved is worth it or not. Whenever choosing a platform, you should be conscient that there’s always a risk. Nobody can guarantee 100% safety of your assets, but some have better security methods implemented than others. Make sure you research enough through your options to make the decision you feel most comfortable with.

About Support and Resistance Levels

What are support and resistance levels?

The support and resistance levels are an essential tool to play a part in every financial market. Here is where the bullish and bearish forces collide, offer and demand, and only the winner prevails. It is the market makers setting these levels according to a trend. In simple terms, these are the levels where the price stops and continues with a different movement. Support is the level at which the price slows its decline to rise again. Resistance is the level at which the price stops growing and begins its descent.

Support and Resistance in Trading

The more times the price has carried out this behavior at these levels, the easier it will be to predict the price movement in the future. That is added to the fact that support and resistance levels are considered psychological levels. That is, traders tend to buy or sell at those points, which helps to strengthen them. Traders must pick the best positions to place their support and resistance levels; otherwise, the chart can turn out to be impossible to read. Also, it is essential to learn how to draw supports and resistances correctly.

What to Look After

One of the main problems when analyzing support and resistance is identifying the moment of change or break. While there are some accepted percentages, there is not a consensus. Given the high volatility of the markets, this has to be considered together with other indicators. It’s important to use supports and resistances as a signal and assess all circumstances affecting the value.

Advantages of Using These Indicators

We could name many advantages when we talk about using support and resistance levels. Let’s sum it up in three main ones. One, it’s easy to use; even if you’re a newbie in the world of trading, it will be easy to keep up with this. If you find yourself having difficulties, there are many online articles explaining how to work with it, such as this one. Second, well-defined resistance and support points can potentially save you from significant losses. And last but not least, adjusting objective purchase and sale prices and not being subject to news or rumors can help you remove the human error factor.

Conclusion 

In the end, we can conclude that every tool that you can use in your favor will be an ally in your quest to accomplish your goals. Although, that is no guarantee that you’ll end up becoming a millionaire overnight. It would be best if you tried learning about all these tools and constantly read about the markets. Also, you should never go straight into trades. Try testing yourself and your strategies first with a demo account. This way, you’ll be able to identify and correct your mistakes without suffering losses.

A Quick Guide to Dogecoin

What is Dogecoin?

Also known as “DOGE,” Dogecoin is a digital open-source currency that is based on the Internet meme featuring a Shiba Inu. It’s an entertaining, enjoyable cryptocurrency with a greater allure as it is based on a meme of a dog.

How Can It Be Mined?

In many ways, it is different from the usual proof-of-work protocol of Bitcoin. One of these differences is the use of Scrypt technology. The total supply of the altcoin is uncapped, which translates to there not being a limit to the amount of coins that can be mined. A participant can mine on Mac, Linux, or Windows.

About the Creation of The Coin

It was released in December 2013, initially as a joke to make fun of the constant growing speculation everywhere about crypto at the time. Its creators, Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, software engineers, promote the currency as a “fun and friendly internet currency” because of its origins. Another key participant in the growing success of the coin is the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, who constantly mentions it or talks about it. He mainly does it on his Twitter account, which makes it more prevalent in a significant way. After posting on social media that this is his preferred coin, the currency became popular.

What Can I Use Dogecoin For?

So far, it has been used to tip people producing or sharing content of quality. It is possible to tip Dogecoin to a group of people that uses cryptocurrency. There are websites called “faucet” where you could get some Dogecoin for free. This to interact with Dogecoin groups or communities.

How Can I Buy It?

It is possible to buy or sell it at any trade where digital currency is available. Also, to save it in a wallet for Dogecoin. Also, through communities in which it is accepted.

What is Sharding and How Does it Work?

The Reasons Behind Sharding

Sharding could help the current limitations that Ethereum’s current features create, such as requiring nodes to get transactions verified. This process makes it all slower and time-consuming, which significantly delays the transactions that can be verified simultaneously. It all comes down to having a scaling problem since the network has a hard time processing the volume of transactions being held. That could change through Sharding.

How Does Sharding Work?

Sharding is a method of splitting, distributing, and storing data among multiple databases. It is necessary when a dataset is too big to be contained in only one database. The main goal of Sharding is to break  all the nodes that work together in Ethereum into smaller groups. These mini-groups are called Shards. In their core, nodes will verify the history of the transactions contained in the shard inside. So, instead of transactions being verified by the whole network, a boundless number of shards can be created to process transactions on a smaller scale. This translates into the possibility of the network to scale without a limit.

Whose Idea Was It?

Starting from the idea of expansion, one of the co-founders of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, wrote an essay elaborating on the concept of Sharding at the beginning of 2018. They’re still working on more improvements. Vitalik proposed even more upgrades for Ethereum in an ambitious three to five years after it merged with PoS.

When Will All of This Come Into Action?

Since it’s been set for scalability in the long term, the most promising strategy of Ethereum must count as a separate upgrade. It must be separate from the rest due to them not wanting to do all the things that could be potentially dangerous at once. First, the merge to proof-of-stake and then the rest, so the people in charge can pay special attention to it and focus.

About the Future

Just as the internet evolved, the network’s evolutión was the result of many crucial steps. Sharding is a significant one in the growth and improvement of Ethereum. If it turns out to be triumphant, it could potentially make the process of thousands of transactions more accessible. This would help the developers of decentralized apps would have a better platform to run their projects.

Cardano Explained – What is Cardano and How Does it Work?

What is Cardano (ADA)?

Since its release in 2015, Cardano has been a platform based on a specially sketched proof-of-stake blockchain protocol for consensus called Ouroboros. This permits ADA, its token, to be received and sent securely and simply. All the time while making sure the smart contracts on the blockchain of Cardano are safe.

About the founders

With his background in mathematics and experience with cryptocurrencies since 2011, Charles Hoskinson is the founder of Cardano. His first involvement in the industry, professionally speaking, didn’t happen until 2013. Then he created a very successful lecture about Bitcoin that was attended by thousands of students. He also participated as one of the co-founders of the network for Ethereum. 

What makes it different from the others?

When comparing other decentralized blockchain platforms with similar aspirations and goals, such as creating new tools and protocols, Hoskinson understood the need for a different type of blockchain. It should be secure, scalable, durable and stable. This significantly improves the chances of foreseeing a potential pitfall because it can dispute daring ideas before being validated. In 2020 it had an upgrade that focused on making its blockchain even more decentralized by 50-100 times more than others. This would allow many other assets to be available on its network.

Circulation

At the time of writing this article, there was a circulation of a bit more than 31 billion ADA. In total, there’s a maximum supply of 45 billion. When the network was launched, 2.5 billion ADA were assigned to IOHK, and 2.1 billion to Emurgo, the company in charge of the Cardano protocol. Additionally, 648 million ADA were granted to the Cardano Foundation. Its goal is to promote the platform and grow volumes of adoption. 

Security

The platform is secured through Ouroboros, which is a proof-of-stake protocol. It claims to be more energy efficient than others like Bitcoin, requiring about four times less energy, due to the fact that Ouroboros main goal is to obtain the kind of growth that is ethical and sustainable in the long run. It’s been described as a distinctive merge between technology and mathematically verifiable processes, a mechanism in which participants are rewarded for getting involved.

Binance Coin

Binance, launched in July 2017, is a global cryptocurrency exchange. Its aim is to bring the crypto exchange to the foreground of global financial activity. Besides being the most important crypto exchange in the world, Binance introduced a whole ecosystem of functionalities for its audience. The network of Binance includes Academy, Binance Chain, Research Projects, and Trusted Wallet. All these products are powered by blockchain technology to start a new era of finance in the world. Most of the Binance projects involve the cryptocurrency Binance Coin; this coin is an integral part of their successful functioning. 

The CEO and founder of Binance is Changpeng Zhao. He joined Bloomberg as head of tradebook futures advancement in 2001. He worked for the company for four years, and after that, Zhao become an investment partner at Fusion Systems. For ten years now, Zhao has been closely involved with cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Since 2017, he has been the CEO of Binance after he successfully launched it. 

Binance is a one-of-the-kind ecosystem of blockchain-based decentralized networks. In many countries, Binance has become the leading crypto exchange and, while the company’s side organizations are of significant interest to many as well. Binance’s drive for development is one of the company’s most outstanding advantages. The company’s initial purpose was a crypto exchange, although today it has progressed in a number of different spheres. On their website, they mentioned that their goal is to be the infrastructure services provider for the whole blockchain ecosystem. The company also benefits from increased investor interest in Binance Coin. There was a significant price surge at the beginning of 2021, which placed the coin on the map of cryptocurrency investors.

Currently, in circulation, there are 153,432,897 BNB coins out of the total amount of 170,532,785. At first, the coin was among the many tokens run on the Ethereum blockchain. However, later on, the company presented its own blockchain; the coins are secured by BFT (Tendermint byzantine-fault-tolerant) consensus mechanism and are issued from the Binance blockchain.