Blockchain and Crypto Week In Review

The blockchain cannot be considered just as a revolution. It is a shift in power from centers to the edges of the mesh. If you’ve missed the top stories of this week, this post provides a comprehensive look at the stories that made headlines. A lot has happened in the cryptocurrency and blockchain world. Here is a quick round-up of this week’s related stories you may have missed:

The Government of Ukraine Plans To Legalize Cryptocurrencies

The Government of Ukraine Plans To Legalize Cryptocurrencies

The government of Ukraine has started a state policy to legalize cryptocurrencies and precisely manage and monitor the fintech area as a wheel of a new public policy produced by the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. The process may take up to three years to achieve but ultimately, businesses built around digital assets would become a legal part of the country’s market.

The new regulatory policy will be executed in two steps. The constitutional standing of cryptocurrencies, exchanging platforms and other objects administering with digital assets must be defined in 2018 and 2019. After this, the government of Ukraine will examine the business to recognize trends and notable concerns in order to put forth satisfactory schemes to regulate the entire sector.

Canadian Exchange Supposedly hacked

Canadian Exchange hacked for 813 Bitcoin

MapleChange, a relatively less known Canadian cryptocurrency exchange, claims to have been hacked for 813 Bitcoin on Sunday morning, although this has not been confirmed. Soon after releasing news of the hack, MapleChange shut down their social media channels within Telegram and Discord. This led to several Twitter users accusing them of being the ‘hackers’, misrepresenting information of the hack, and planning an exit scam. Soon after, this is the response given by MapleChange Twitter admin justifying the reason for closing their social media accounts.

MapleChange had just released a sleek, updated 2.0.0 version of their exchange a day before the hack. This hack came as a surprise to several of their users especially considering this new UI and UX update that happened in the foreground. Such a major hack soon after the update also led to several questions such as why MapleChange didn’t have any insurance for such emergency losses to refund customers. They kept a firm stance that they would not refund any customers for their Bitcoin (BTC) losses.

Oyster Pearl (PRL) Founder Perpetrates An Exit Scam

Oyster Pearl (PRL) Founder Perpetrates An Exit Scam

Oyster Pearl (PRL) founder has perpetrated an exit scam after printing millions of PRL tokens and trading them instantly on Kucoin. It seems that the transferDirector function was used on the Oyster Protocol token contract. This provided the new director to re-open the ICO for PRL and re-issue new tokens (1 ETH = 5000 PRL / .04 per PRL).

Bruno Block, an anonymous founder and chief architect of Oyster Pearl, has scammed his community. The founder printed millions of new tokens and sold them on KuCoin for an estimated ~300,000 USD. The only person with the authority to print new tokens was Bruno Block. Not only this, the other people of the Oyster Pearl project seem to have been taken by shock as well.

CoinTicker Crypto Tracking App Installs Backdoors On Mac Computers

cointicker-installs-backdoors-mac-computers

CoinTicker, a Mac menu-bar app that presents the latest prices of many cryptocurrencies is installing two backdoors on Mac computers. The app, at first seems a reliable application that could likely be beneficial to people who have invested in cryptocurrencies. Once downloaded, the app presents an icon in the menu bar that gives data about the current price of Bitcoin. The app’s options enable the user to modify the display, displaying data about a broad class of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Etherium, and Monero.

This functionality appears to be verifiable but in reality, the app is actually installing two backdoors known as EvilOSX and EggShell. These backdoors easily avoid requests for authentication to root because of the apps legitimate behavior.

Bitcoin Turns 10 Years Old

Bitcoin Turns 10 Years Old

A decade ago, Bitcoin’s secret founder Satoshi Nakamoto promulgated a paper called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” On Wednesday, the world’s leading cryptocurrency celebrated its 10th birthday. On 18 August 2008, the domain name bitcoin.org was listed. Later in the year 2008, on 31 October, a paper written by Satoshi Nakamoto an unknown personality or group of people was published. The paper was Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. This paper described various ways of using a peer-to-peer network to create what was defined as “a system for electronic transactions without depending on trust”.

Satoshi Nakamoto is considered to be an alias for the person or people who invented the original BTC protocol in 2008 and started the network in 2009. Nakamoto was responsible for generating the bulk of the official BTC software and was busy in making changes and posting technical information on the bitcoin forum. There has been stirring speculation about the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.

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