Crypto players were quick to respond to the news that hackers breached the U.S. Treasury Department.

According to a report from Reuters, a sophisticated hacking group backed by a foreign government reportedly Russia, according to three people familiar with the investigation was able to breach the U.S. Treasury Department as well as the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, or NTIA, with the Department of Commerce.

The incident happened less than a month after Donald Trump fired Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs. However, Reuters stated that the hackers had been monitoring NTIA staff emails run on Microsofts Office 365 for months. Other government agencies may also have been breached, but sources did not provide additional details.

In response to the attack on such a powerful government agency, crypto players pointed out the advantages of Bitcoin (BTC).

"Bitcoin never gets hacked,"saidKraken's head of business Dan Held on Twitter. Bitcoin bull Anthony Pomp PomplianoechoedHeld's sentiment, saying"Bitcoin has never been hacked."

Blockfolio took aim at the NTIAs cybersecurity, implying the agency used dated algorithms for its cryptographic security:

Its unclear whether any funds have been compromised as a result of the breach. At the time of publication, the hack seems to be limited to information potentially stolen from government agencies emails.

Jokes on them, said MyCrypto founder and CEO Taylor Monahan. The treasury's already been hacked by internal actors. The statement may reflect the United States government printing more money in 2020 than for nearly entirety of the country's existence.

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'Bitcoin never gets hacked' crypto players respond to US Treasury breach - Cointelegraph

Ten years ago today, the pseudonymous programmer (or programmers) Satoshi Nakamoto logged into the forum bitcointalk.org one last time, and left the Bitcoin community for good. The day prior Nakamoto wrote a final message to the crypto community by offering a quick build and telling developers that theres more work to be done on denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

When Satoshi Nakamoto was around, Bitcoins inventor was a mysterious enigma and often led developers in the right direction from 2008 to 2010. Bitcoins creator also left a final message to the community when he/she or they added to the thread on bitcointalk.org called: Added some DoS limits, removed safe mode. The message was written over a decade ago on December 12, 2010, and Nakamoto stressed that theres more work to do.

Theres more work to do on DoS, but Im doing a quick build of what I have so far in case its needed, before venturing into more complex ideas, Nakamoto said at the time. The build for this is version 0.3.19. Added some DoS controls. As Gavin and I have said clearly before, the software is not at all resistant to DoS attack. This is one improvement, but there are still more ways to attack than I can count. Im leaving the -limitfreerelay part as a switch for now and its there if you need it. Removed safe mode alerts, safe mode alerts was a temporary measure after the 0.3.9 overflow bug, Bitcoins creator added.

Nakamoto further wrote:

We can say all we want that users can just run with -disablesafemode, but its better just not to have it for the sake of appearances. It was never intended as a long term feature. Safe mode can still be triggered by seeing a longer (greater total PoW) invalid block chain.

While bitcoin (BTC) was swapping for $0.20 per coin, Nakamoto left a great number of technical replies on the forum that month, which addressed the current Bitcoin build at the time. In fact, during the first two weeks of December 2010, Nakamoto was very active on the forum.

No one knows why the inventor left so abruptly, but Nakamoto had shown he was a bit upset the day before his very last bitcointalk.org forum message. This was because bitcoin was mentioned in a viral pcworld.com article called: Could the Wikileaks Scandal Lead to New Virtual Currency?

At the time, Wikileaks was blocked by a U.S. financial blockade and because Paypal, Mastercard, and Visa stopped servicing the nonprofit whistleblowers, Wikileaks leveraged bitcoin donations.

From Nakamotos responses to the Wikileaks subject, one can assume the crypto inventor was very annoyed by the attention the small little network was getting at the time.

It would have been nice to get this attention in any other context, Nakamoto stressed. Wikileaks has kicked the hornets nest, and the swarm is headed towards us.

Bitcoin was changing fast, and Nakamoto seemed to know that he was steadily losing some of the control and people were making up their own minds on how the cryptocurrency should be back then. The same day the Wikileaks article from pcworld.com published, Nakamoto also thanked Hal Finney in a post called: minimalistic bitcoin client on D language?

Six days prior to Nakamoto speaking about the pcworld.com editorial, he responded to someone who said bring it on, after hearing that Wikileaks was considering cryptocurrency acceptance. Again, Nakamoto seemed flustered and wasnt a big fan of onboarding the nonprofit whistleblowing organization led by Julian Assange.

No, dont bring it on, Nakamoto insisted. The project needs to grow gradually so the software can be strengthened along the way. I make this appeal to Wikileaks not to try to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy. You would not stand to get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring would likely destroy us at this stage, the inventor added.

Nakamotos appeal did not sway Wikileaks and soon after, the nonprofit began accepting bitcoin donations. Bitcoins inventor has not been heard from in over a decade, but there are a number of ostensible emails and messages from the creator that many assume stem from his legitimate accounts. For instance, when Newsweek published a story about Dorian Nakamoto being Bitcoins creator, a post published to p2pfoundation.ning.com on March 7, 2014 says: I am not Dorian Nakamoto.

Moreover, ever since Nakamoto left, there have been many self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamotos and even clues and messages that have been widely debunked. There are tales from individuals like Craig Wright, a man who has claimed to be Bitcoins inventor for the last five years. Although, Wrights stories have been widely dismissed and debunked by the greater cryptocurrency community.

There was also that time when Bloomberg columnist, Matthew Leising, told people about a so-called Satoshi and published an alleged tell-all about the nakamotofamilyfoundation.org and an individual dubbed: Duality. The patent holder and Hawaiian resident named Ronald Keala Kua Maria said he is Satoshi on a variety of website domains bearing the name Bitcoin and Satoshi.

A man with intense hair like Fabio believes he is Satoshi Nakamoto, but nobody believed Jrg Molts absurd story. In mid-August 2019, a PR firm called Ivy McLemore and the Pakastani Bilal Khalid said he was Bitcoins inventor. Of course, Khalids story was considered ridiculously unfathomable as well. A Belgium native called Debo Jurgen Etienne Guido has told the crypto community he is Satoshi Nakamoto on numerous occasions.

It has also been said that the 47-year-old cartel boss Paul Le Roux could have been Satoshi as well. Still, none of these suspects and self-proclaimed individuals have ever provided a smoking gun pointing in their direction and have always failed to sway the greater crypto community.

As far as recorded history is concerned, Satoshi Nakamoto left the Bitcoin community ten years ago on December 12, 2010, with his final message about adding some DoS controls. Almost everything else from that point forward has been suspect and lacking evidence of legitimacy.

After Bitcoins inventor published the post, the creator must have been curious about the responses and may have been prepared to write one last message. Nakamoto logged into bitcointalk.org on December 13, 2010, logged off, and has not been seen on the forum since then.

What do you think about the last message Satoshi Nakamoto wrote? Let us know what you think about this story in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, p2pfoundation, bitcointalk.org, pcworld.com,

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Ten Years Ago Satoshi Nakamoto Logged Off - The Final Message from Bitcoin's Inventor | Featured - Bitcoin News

Ripple-backed bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange Bitso has announced a $62 million investment round led by venture capital firms Kaszek Ventures and QED Investors.

The Mexico-based exchange, which recently passed 1 million users, is looking to expand across Latin America with a focus on Brazil, where it launched earlier this year.

Bitso is planning expansion across Latin America, with a focus on bringing bitcoin and ... [+] cryptocurrency services to Brazil.

Unlike many cryptocurrency exchanges that have doubled-down on bitcoin services this year amid its growing reputation as digital gold, Bitso is looking to develop its cryptocurrency-based remittance business in one of the world's largest cross-border money markets.

"We're looking to provide access to financial products in a similar way to a bank," Bitso chief executive and co-founder Daniel Vogel said, speaking over the phone.

"The level of access to traditional financial services in these regions is low and the prospect of using cryptocurrency and stable coins for cross border remittances attracted Kaszek and QED."

As much as 70% of Latin Americas population are thought to lack access to a bank account, research has shown.

"Crypto has more opportunity in regions like Latin America than the U.S. where the banking infrastructure is more sophisticated," said Nicolas Szekasy, co-founder and managing partner of Brazil-based Kaszek Ventures, speaking over the phone. "We've been looking into the space for years and we have strong conviction that Bitso is the way to go."

The investment represents the first foray into cryptocurrency for both QED Investors and Kaszek Ventures.

"QED has long kept a pulse on the crypto market and Bitso in particular," said Nigel Morris, co-founder and managing partner at QED Investors, in a statement. "The power crypto has to disrupt and innovate traditional financial services is inexorable and we look forward to using our operating knowledge and expertise to help Bitso achieve exactly that."

Vogel, who said Bitso is looking to double its 1 million users in Brazil, stressed the importance of Bitso's diverse staff, adding "local knowledge helps when building a business and customer base."

Bitso has become the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in Argentina since launching there in February, an achievement Vogel puts down to the company's focus on regulatory compliance.

"One of the reasons we were able to take over Argentina so quickly is because we're one of the only exchanges there that's regulated," Vogel said. "We're very strongly focused on regulation as a company, we think it's a great way to provide trust with our customers."

In October 2019, Ripple, the company behind the third biggest cryptocurrency by value XRP, led an investment round in Bitso that included major U.S.-based crypto exchange and wallet provider Coinbase, Jump Capital as well as existing investors such as Digital Currency Group and Pantera Capital.

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Ripple-Backed Bitcoin And Crypto Exchange Bitso Reveals $62 Million Funding Round To Conquer Brazil - Forbes

Didi Taihuttu, his wife, and three kids bet all they have on bitcoin.

In 2017, CNBC spoke to the Dutch family of five when they were in the process of liquidating their assets from a profitable business and 2,500-square-foot house, to their shoes and trading it all in for the popular cryptocurrency and a life on the road.

Nearly four years and 40 countries later, Taihuttu and his family still don't have bank accounts, a house, or all that much by way of personal possessions. All of the family's savings remain tied up in highly volatile cryptocurrencies.

"We stepped into bitcoin, because we wanted to change our lives," said the 42-year-old father of three.

When the price of bitcoin collapsed in 2018, Taihuttu added more to his investment portfolio. He says he was always a firm believer that the cryptocurrency was poised for a major rebound. "I think in this bull cycle, we are going to see a minimal peak of $100,000. I won't be surprised if it hits $200,000 by 2022."

I won't be surprised if [bitcoin] hits $200,000 by 2022.

The price of bitcoin reached an all-time high on Monday, as it closed in on $20,000. And some analysts say the cryptocurrency still has a lot of room to run higher.

Mike Novogratz, CEO of investment firm Galaxy Digital, thinks this comeback rally is only just getting started. He sees bitcoin rising to $60,000 by next year.

And Tom Fitzpatrick, global head of CitiFXTechnicals, said the charts signaled that bitcoin could reach $318,000 by December 2021, in a report meant for Citibank's institutional clients and obtained by CNBC.

Taihuttu bought the bulk of his bitcoin holdings when it was was trading at around $900 in early 2017, just months before it reached nearly $20,000 a coin.

Even as bitcoin peaked, the family stayed invested in the cryptocurrency. Once the bubble burst, and the price tumbled down to about $3,000 in early 2018, Taihuttu and his family weren't deterred. "When bitcoin dipped, we started to buy more."

When I asked Taihuttu on our Skype call whether he was worried that we could be in the midst of another bitcoin bubble, he doubled down on his investment. "I don't see demand going down," he added. "I think we're headed for a supply crisis."

Part of what's different about bitcoin's rally in 2020 versus 2017 is that institutional investors are now adopting bitcoin, lending it newfound legitimacy and helping to erase the reputational risk of investing in the cryptocurrency.

"The 2017 rally was largely driven by retail investors, whereas this year we're seeing a massive influx from corporate entities and institutional money managers," said Mati Greenspan, portfolio manager and founder of Quantum Economics.

Old-school, billionaire hedge fund managers Stanley Druckenmiller and Paul Tudor Jones now own bitcoin and big fintech players like Square and PayPal are also adding crypto products.

This kind of mainstream adoption is hugely important, because cryptocurrencies like bitcoin aren't backed by an asset, nor do they have the full faith and backing of the government. They're valuable because people believe they're valuable. So it goes a long way when bitcoin gets buy-in from some of the biggest names on Wall Street.

The surge in interest from mainstream financial players hasn't just reformed bitcoin's image, it's also fomented a supply shortage.

"The basic reason for the two rallies are the same," Greenspan said. "It's a matter of digital scarcity. There is a strictly limited supply of bitcoin available in the market, so when everyone is buying and nobody is selling, it can cause tremendous upward pressure on the price. What's different this time are the players involved."

The 2017 rally was driven by retail speculation, and in 2020, it's the billionaires and corporations that are buying bitcoin en masse.

"When PayPal starts to sell bitcoin to its 350 million users, they also need to buy the bitcoin somewhere," said Taihuttu. "There will be a huge supply crisis, because there won't be enough new bitcoins mined everyday to fulfill the need by huge companies."

And that interest from institutional investors doesn't appear to be slowing down. Six out of 10 investors surveyed by Fidelity in June believe digital assets have a place in investment portfolios.

Mike Bucella, general partner at BlockTower Capital, told CNBC in a recent interview on "Power Lunch" that retail investors are actually the ones missing out on the bitcoin rally this year.

"If you dig a layer deeper in the derivatives market, you notice that most of that derivatives flow has transitioned from the crypto native exchanges of 2017 to institutional products, like the CME," said Bucella. "I think this really firmly indicates that retail actually missed out on this rally this year. It's been primarily and firmly an institutional bid."

But not all retail investors are missing out.

Taihuttu put a couple hundred thousand dollars into cryptocurrency in 2017, while the price of bitcoin was still trading lower, and he has mostly stayed all in on his investment.

Despite 2020's massive returns and all the recent bullish calls around bitcoin price targets, the fact remains, a speculative asset like bitcoin is prone to seismic price moves in a very short space of time.

In 2018, the massive sell-off in cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, was swift, brutal and worse than the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000.

2020 may look different than 2017's rally, but as an asset, bitcoin behaves in a cyclical manner. Each successive high is higher, and the lows are not quite as low, but bitcoin is certainly not immune to another major correction.

Though for Taihuttu, the bitcoin play isn't all about making a profit. He's already given half of his money away to charity, and his family of five has spent the last four years traveling the world, in order to spread the gospel of decentralized digital currencies.

Originally posted here:
This family bet everything on bitcoin when it was $900 and bought more when it crashed in 2018 - CNBC

Is bitcoin an emerging safe haven asset in an increasingly uncertain world, or just another speculative instrument, a tech-ed up tulip for the digital age?

This question is central to bitcoins latest boom, which has coincided with a sell-off in the U.S. dollar and less luster for gold as the Covid-19 pandemic rages, sovereign liabilities balloon, the U.S. experiences its most tumultuous transition of power since the 19th century, and geopolitical risks grow in the Middle East and East Asia. At the same time, risk is clearly on for global investors: equity markets keep soaring while U.S. Treasury yields are climbing, with government stimulus and vaccine optimism driving bets on global reflation.

GeoQuants data helps us hazard an answer.In short: while bitcoin appears more like a speculative reflection of geopolitical risks than protection against them, it does get traction as a hedge against (growing) U.S. country risks. Meanwhile, gold continues to hold its ground as a safe haven asset, while the US dollar is losing it.

First, the caveats: bitcoin has only been actively traded since 2017, a short period coinciding with unique political flux in the United States, broader geopolitical uncertainty, a mostly-frothy run for global markets, and now, a global pandemic. A world where the U.S. is home to both growing (geo)political risks and investors most popular hedges against them i.e. the worlds reserve currency, risk free sovereign debt, and deepest equity marketswill complicate any analysis of geopolitics and safe haven assets, never mind one over a limited time series.

That said, the periods instabilityprovides an auspicious analytical backdrop, while the fact that GeoQuant generates daily political risk data at both the country and global leveland does so systematically with limited analyst interventiongives us a good shot at meaningful insight.

To keep things simple, we examined daily relationships between our topline Global and U.S. Political Risk indicators and the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY); Gold in dollar terms (XAU/USD); and Bitcoin in dollar terms (BTC/USD), all from 1 January 2017 to present. U.S. Political Risk is our topline risk score for the U.S. derived from our 22 fundamental political risk factors. Global Political Risk a proxy for broader geopolitical risks in the international systemis a GDP-weighted average of Political Risk scores for all 75 countries in the GeoQuant system.

Correlations (day/day) between GeoQuant geopolitical risk indicators and BTC

Gold has far and away the strongest positive relationship with both Global and U.S. Political Risk, correlating at 0.72 and 0.94 respectively, day-on-day. Bitcoin correlates at only 0.28 with Global Political Risk but increases to 0.65 versus U.S. Political Risk, while the DXY shows very weak correlations with both (-0.15 and 0.09). In this period, then, gold appears to have gained from higher geopolitical and U.S. country risks; bitcoin more from the latter than the former; and the U.S. dollar neither.

At the same time, although we may expect higher political risks to hurt U.S. equity markets, recent years have shown just the opposite: the benchmark S&P 500 is correlated at a positive 0.35 with Global Political Risk and 0.80 with U.S. Political Risk since 1 January 2017.Again, excepting some ephemeral periods during the U.S.-China trade war, equity markets have basically ignored, if not welcomed, a higher political risk environment.

At least in part, this dynamic isdriven by the everything rally in contemporary U.S. markets: as political risk has increased, so too has the S&P 500, bonds, gold, bitcoinand, of course, the Feds balance sheet. But it also complicates our story: if higher political risks have brought gains for haven (sans USD) and speculative assets alike, how do we know where bitcoin falls?

Digging a bit deeper, we see two important trends.First, when it comes to global/geopolitical risks, bitcoin looks a lot more like equities than it does like goldmore of a speculative play than a safe haven.Indeed, while the relationship between Global Political Risk and the S&P 500 in gold terms is firmly negative at -0.71 (implying that rising geopolitical risk drove S&P 500 values down relative to gold),this is only barely true for the S&P 500 in terms of bitcoin, with the correlation just -0.03. In sum, even when equities actively ignore growing geopolitical risks, gold does not, while bitcoin basically washes out.

By contrast,in the context of U.S. country risk, bitcoin looks more like gold than equities:U.S. Political Risk correlates at -0.53 with the S&P 500 in gold terms and a very similar -0.50 with the S&P 500 in terms of bitcoin. As such, given growing political and social instability in the worlds largest financial and consumer market, bitcoin does look more like digital gold, particularly given a persistent decline in the U.S. dollar. In fact, when compared directly, bitcoin is actually more aligned with higher U.S. Political Risk than gold on a daily basis (i.e. risk correlates at 0.41 with bitcoin in gold terms, per the figure below).

GeoQuant

This dynamic will be critical to bitcoins future, especially as the distribution of crypto investors shifts from East Asia toward North America and the specter of more forceful U.S. intervention in crypto looms larger.Whether U.S. regulation is tilted more toward co-optation (i.e.USD-backed digital currency, laChina) or coercion (i.e.restricting bitcoin miningand transactions also la China) remains to be seen, but its arrival is inevitable if bitcoin persists as an alternate store of value for American investors. Thus far, Chinese regulation has actually helped fuel the current bitcoin boom by limiting supply. Yet stronger intervention by the U.S.still the worlds most powerful sovereignwill push bitcoin a lot further from a border-less currency toward a more politicized medium of exchange. And that may ultimately be its undoing, at least for bitcoins true believers.

Crypto advocates often debate bitcoins raison dtre as protection against a future doomsday or as the currency of a glorious future. Our data suggests a less millenarian fatethough one more enduring than a tech-ed up tulip.

Link:
Digital Gold and Geopolitics: Bitcoin as a Political Risk Haven - Forbes