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John Lennon’s Son Says Bitcoin Empowers People, Gives Him Optimism in Ocean of Destruction

25/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

Sean Ono Lennon, the son of the Beatles’ John Lennon, says bitcoin gives him optimism amid the “ocean of destruction” this year. He believes that the cryptocurrency empowers individuals the way they have never been empowered before.

Bitcoin Gives Sean Lennon Optimism

Sean Ono Lennon is the son of the Beatles’ lead vocalist, John Lennon, and Japanese singer Yoko Ono. Sean talked about bitcoin with Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert on the Orange Pill podcast published Sunday.

After discussing several aspects of bitcoin and many events that happened this year, Lennon opined, “it’s such an interesting time and so many things have been flipped upside down.” The British-American musician and songwriter said: “honestly talking to you guys about bitcoin is one of the only things this year that has given me more optimism and happiness about my faith in the near future and just humanity in general.” Lennon continued:

I do feel like ultimately bitcoin is something that empowers individuals. It empowers people in a way they’ve never been empowered before.

Lennon proceeded to compare bitcoin to gold, presenting several reasons that the cryptocurrency is better than gold. Recently, many other investors have come to the same conclusion, including famed hedge fund managers Paul Tudor Jones, Bill Miller, and Stan Druckenmiller.

“Even if they have gold, they would have to carry that in a sack and someone could just steal it from them. But something that transcends the physical world it means that you have total agency you have total self-sovereignty and … as long as you can remember your key phrase then you are good to go,” Lennon described to Keiser and Herbert. He concluded:

In an ocean of destruction that was this year, I find bitcoin to give me a kind of optimism.

Do you agree with Sean Lennon about bitcoin? Let us know in the comments section below.

The post John Lennon’s Son Says Bitcoin Empowers People, Gives Him Optimism in Ocean of Destruction appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Hackers Paradise: Yet Another Defi Protocol Exploited for Nearly $20 Million in DAI

25/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

Decentralized finance (defi) protocol Pickle Finance was hacked for $19.7 million of the stablecoin DAI over the weekend, as the defi industry appears to be turning into a hackers paradise.

Pickle’s native token (PICKLE) plunged 62% on the news, falling from $23.27 to $8.70 when the hack was first reported on Nov. 21. At the time of writing, the token has since rebound 29% in 24 hours to $18.51, according to Coingecko data.

This is the fourth hack to hit the defi space in just two weeks. Akropolis, Value Defi and Origin protocol were exploited for a combined total of $15.7 million in flash loan attacks.

Pickle Finance is a yield aggregation service that rewards users who provide liquidity to its various pools of stablecoins with interest and token disbursements in ether, other stablecoins or its native digital asset PICKLE.

It is not clear whether Pickle Finance suffered a flash loan attack, but management admitted in a blog post that “this was a very complicated attack and involved many components of the Pickle protocol.” It took the protocol’s dev team of 10 people more than four hours to figure it out.

The hacker targeted Pickle Finance’s DAI pjar product, a concept akin to yearn.finance’s vaults, and drained 19,759,355 of the U.S.-dollar-pegged stablecoin DAI. This specific jar harvests yield from DAI deposits made via the decentralized lending protocol Compound.

Cyber-security expert Dmytro Volkov told news.Bitcoin.com that the defi hacking frenzy was a result of hurried project development.

“Most of the defi projects’ hacks are based on vulnerabilities connected to errors in the source code. Errors in applications occur for various reasons, and it is errors that cause vulnerabilities and subsequent hacks of these applications,” said Volkov, who is also chief technology officer at crypto exchange Cex.io.

“Cybercriminals look for errors in the defi protocols and exploit them for their own ends. As defi projects become more popular and the greater the amount of capital that flows through them grows, the more this field will attract hackers, and the more hacks there will be,” he added.

Pickle Finance said in a Nov. 24 tweet that it has a “small chance” of recovering the stolen money.

What do you think of defi industry’s latest hack? Let us know in the comments section below.

The post Hackers Paradise: Yet Another Defi Protocol Exploited for Nearly $20 Million in DAI appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Threshold Met: Proof-of-Stake ‘Beacon’ Chain Starts in 7 Days

24/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

The Ethereum network’s ETH 2.0 contract has crossed the threshold needed to initiate the upcoming upgrade. Currently, there’s more 694,368 ether worth over $422 million resting in the contract, as developers hope the proof-of-stake launch will begin on December 1.

At the end of the first week of November, the Ethereum Foundation initiated the first process of the highly anticipated Ethereum 2.0 (ETH 2.0) upgrade specifications, which detailed the initial rules of the genesis phase 0. The genesis phase 0 contract specification noted that there needed to be approximately 524,288 ETH and at least 16,384 validators to invoke the proof-of-stake process.

The requirements needed to kickstart Ethereum 2.0 for December 1, mandated that the threshold be met by November 24, 2020. Additionally, a web portal called Launch Pad was published so users can learn how to be an ETH validator and secure the blockchain.

The requirements needed to spark the genesis phase 0 process were officially completed on the 24th and there’s now 694,368 ether worth $422 million in the contract.

The contract address has seen approximately 16,736 transactions of around 32 ether per transaction. 32 ETH is what is needed to become a validator and earn a stake on the Ethereum chain. At the current exchange rate of $608 per ether, it costs close to $20k per staking validator. Roughly the last 25% of the ether needed to meet the threshold was deposited into the contract in less than a four-hour timespan.

Screenshot from an editorial called “The Genesis of a Beacon Chain” written by Ben Edgington.

Following the deposit milestone, a great number of Ethereum proponents and developers celebrated. “We reached it,” said Ethereum 2.0 R&D member Hsiao-Wei Wang. “Thanks to all the Eth2 teams and the community that wrote the history. And thanks to the Ethereum critics who made us stronger. Don’t forget to update your Eth2 client in a couple days,” Wang added.

The “Eth 2.0 Deposit Contract – Progress Meter Bot” also tweeted about the landmark occasion and stated:

We have liftoff. Thank you to the devs, the researchers, educators, and community members who made this happen. See you on December 1st @ noon UTC.

Many Ethereum supporters also understand that the Ethereum 2.0 genesis phase 0 will initially start with the “Beacon” blockchain, a baby-step that will make it so the upgrade will have less of an impact on the main network. The ETH 2.0 upgrade will start in seven days’ time and the Beacon chain will begin the first of four initial phases.

Estimates say that Ethereum 2.0 validators could earn about 20% in annualized rewards. After the requirements were filled, Ethereum proponent Tom Shaughnessy said that the Ethereum 2.0 launch “got more attention in an hour than every other layer 1 did this entire year put together.”

Ethereum Foundation member Hudson Jameson tweeted about how the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon chain launch will happen the day prior, and what needs to happen in order to create a successful launch.

“The beacon chain marks the beginning of the transition to Eth 2.0, but that doesn’t mean that everything immediately changes,” Jameson wrote. “Eth 2.0 is a multi-year process and the first few pieces of that process won’t heavily affect the current Ethereum mainnet.”

Jameson also stressed that whatever happens, the Ethereum community should be impressed with the Ethereum 2.0 development team. He also explained when he thought the Beacon chain launch would begin.

“My opinion (not an official stance of the Ethereum Foundation) is that we will launch between December 1st and December 5th,” Jameson concluded. “I base this on how quickly deposits are coming in as of the last 48 hours.”

At the time of publication, ethereum (ETH) is trading for $608 per ether, as the token has gained 26% during the last seven days and 49% in the last 30 days.

What do you think about the culmination of the highly anticipated Ethereum 2.0 launch? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

The post Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Threshold Met: Proof-of-Stake ‘Beacon’ Chain Starts in 7 Days appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Video: Coordinating Bitcoin Upgrades With Poolin’s Alejandro De La Torre

24/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

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The guest for this episode of Bitcoin In Asia is Alejandro De La Torre, vice president at Poolin. De La Torre and Poolin have launched taprootactivation.com to improve on the communication and transparency of the Taproot activation process. Bitcoin Magazine’s Aaron van Wirdum covered the initiative here, and in this Interview, De La Torre and host John Riggins explored additional context around it.

De La Torre has been in the Bitcoin data and mining space since 2014 when he founded SendChat, later acquired by wallet and data service Blocktrail, where he led business development until the company was acquired by Bitmain. Inside of Bitmain, De La Torre co-founded BTC.com and led its European office during the SegWit upgrade process. Now, back with former BTC.com colleagues at Poolin, De La Torre leads its global business development initiatives.

Poolin operates out of Beijing and is currently the second-largest pool in terms of Bitcoin hash power. Their services have expanded over the past year to include facilitating additional financial services products for their miner customers, and they have partnered with BlockFi and Three Arrows Capital, among others, for those expanded services.

In addition to discussing taprootactivation.com, De La Torre talked about lessons learned during the SegWit and blocksize debates, Bitcoin upgrade activations and the changing competitive landscape in the Bitcoin mining pool business.

The post Video: Coordinating Bitcoin Upgrades With Poolin’s Alejandro De La Torre appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Video: Securing Bitcoin With Zach Herbert Of Foundation Devices

24/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

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On this episode of the Bitcoin Magazine Podcast, host Christian Keroles and Zach Herbert, the CEO and co-founder of Foundation Devices, sit down to discuss the company’s launch and its first product, the Passport hardware wallet.

During the conversation, Keroles and Herbert dive into the design editions for the Passport as well as Herbert’s ideas about multisig, hardware wallets in general, Bitcoin mass adoption, user safety and more.

Topics discussed in this episode include:

Foundation devices’ outlook
The timeline for Passport
Geeking out over Bitcoin multisig security
The use of QR codes vs. Micro SD cards
Why the specific design choices for Foundation Devices were made
What it’s going to take to get Grandma comfortable with using multisig
Ledger email hacks
Why Herbert hates seed phrases

The post Video: Securing Bitcoin With Zach Herbert Of Foundation Devices appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.