Gsbt

Cryptocurrency  Tether, a cryptocurrency pegged 1-to-1 to the U.S. dollar, was allegedly hacked this week to the tune of $31 million. Tether functions to convert U.S. dollars to a type of cryptocurrency. The project’s token (USDT) is pegged to the dollar and is used in exchange trading. The idea behind Tether is that instead of having to sell your bitcoin or other token for a fiat currency, you can convert it to USDT, and either hold it in USDT or else transfer your USDT to another exchange and use it to purchase tokens there. As for the exchanges, USDT allows them to trade in something akin to dollars, without requiring them to have a bank account. Tether operates on the “Omni Layer Protocol,” which itself operates on top of the Bitcoin network, and uses Bitcoin addresses. According to a  blog post  on the project’s website, $31 million worth of USDT was sent to an unauthorized Bitcoin address on November 19, 2017. In the blog post, Tether also noted it released a ...

Blockstream  Blockstream is  introducing Simplicity , a new programming language for blockchain-based smart contracts, intended for inclusion in Blockstream’s sidechains and eventually in Bitcoin. The new language was presented by its creator, Russell O'Connor, Infrastructure Tech Developer at Blockstream, at the ACM SIGSAC Workshop on Programming Languages and Analysis for Security ( PLAS 2017 ). "Simplicity is a blockchain programming language that is so simple, it fits on a t-shirt,” O'Connor told  Bitcoin Magazine . “It is critical that smart contracts behave in ways that all participants expect, and applying formal verification to Simplicity allows us to achieve that.” Simplicity is still a Blockstream Research & Development project, but there’s potential for its use in Blockstream products in the future, according to the company’s announcement. “Simplicity is flexible enough that I anticipate many new, domain-specific, languages will generate Simplicity, an...

So you want in on bitcoin? Guide for Noobs Simple and Not A Lot of Money setup an account on coinbase.com, buy your coins, walk away until next year or later, fees are ~1.5% which is $1.5 USD for a $100 USD of coinnote coinbase does have an option to buy via credit card instead of a bank account, fees are ~4% when you do that, your credit card company may charge more if it considers it a cash transfer Guide for Not Noobs Less Simple -setup an account on coinbase.com, move dollars into your account, setup an account on gdax.com (same company, same login), move your cash from coinbase to gdax, buy your coins on GDAX at Market, fees are cheaper 0.25% versus 1.5% -consider buying alternative coins supported by coinbase No Fees -all of the above but use GDAX's Limit/Buy, zero fees, but you have to wait for the market to dip below your buy price More Money Available -setup several Limit/Buy orders at different price points to capture dips when you are away More Control but M...

Smartphone device  Image Source:  EverythingApplePro, YouTube Apple’s hot new iPhone X has it all. From design and display quality to features and performance, the tenth-anniversary iPhone is a class-leading smartphone through and through. The design in particular has been praised to no end. In fact, even some of the iPhone X’s harshest critics ( myself included ) have come around to love the controversial “notch” design with the phone’s display. Of course, the sleek design and gorgeous display are only half of the equation here. The software side of the user experience is even more important, and the iPhone X delivers there as well. Benchmark test scores are off the charts, and we’ve seen time and time again what the iPhone X’s A11 Bionic processor is capable of. But savvy Apple fans know that despite how impressive the iPhone X’s performance is compared to most devices out there, there’s something that has been holding the phone back. Now, that issue has caused the iPhon...

Android device  You thought you were completely disconnected from any location tracking by  Google  and your phone when you went into your phone’s location services and toggled them off, right? You’d be wrong! Hah…ha…haaa…ugh. According to a report from  Quartz , Google has been doing a bit of location tracking on Android phones even if you told them not to by turning off your phone’s location services. And we’re talking about any of the modern Android phones you might own, so yes, you are included in this conversation. Quartz  found that Google has essentially been pinging nearby cellular towers and retrieving that info through the Firebase Cloud Messaging service that manages push notifications and messages. Again, this is all still happening even if you have turned off location services on your phone. This collection of location via cell tower can happen over both WiFi and cellular data connection too, by the way. The data collected is encrypted, but the ...

Bitcoin  In October 2017, LendEDU, a marketplace for financing loans, credit cards and other financial products, polled 1,000 Americans asking a series of questions related to Ethereum, Ripple and initial coin offerings (ICOs). They did this to gain insight into the average American’s perception of cryptocurrency.  The poll  was conducted by online polling company OnePoll, which acted as a third party and was able to provide an age and gender breakdown of respondents. The poll was answered by 1,000 Americans ages 18 and up over two days, from October 27 to 30. Ethereum : At the time of writing, with a market capitalization of $28.49 billion, Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency, about one-fourth the market capitalization of Bitcoin. Since the start of 2017, the price of ether has grown from $7.98 to $298. 31.60 percent of Americans have heard of Ethereum and 18.20 percent of Americans are planning to invest in ether (ETH) The survey show...