Crypto News Weekly: Bitcoin Core, PwC, Hard Forks And Much More

Blockchain and crypto world is full of innovations, assumptions and sometimes wildly wrong predictions. If you’ve missed the crypto news 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: Research says hard forks are hazardous to cryptocurrency stability, PwC says blockchain could solve planet’s environmental problems and much more. Here is a quick round-up of crypto news you may have missed:

Research Says Hard Forks Are Hazardous To Cryptocurrency Stability

Hard forks, the changes of the protocol can destabilize cryptocurrency’s value and they are hazardous to the stability of digital currencies, says a research. The hard forks are the changes in a protocol such that the software authenticating as per the old rules will see the blocks created as per the new rules as invalid. In a hard fork, all nodes are meant to work in accordance with the new rules which need to upgrade their software.

Researchers further explained that hard forks create a new blockchain that is discordant with its original rival—promoting two technologically irreconcilable cryptocurrencies. As such, hard forks may force governance failures that divide cryptocurrency users into two distinct groups: one that accepts a new technological change and one that rejects the status quo. only finite reviews of cryptocurrency forks have been published or documented. Also, many forks from the Bitcoin blockchain are never publicly recognized or accounted for, while others only exist for a few days or weeks. This includes more recent abilities for people to create their own fork from Bitcoin’s blockchain via software such as Forkgen. It makes very difficult to track all such forks.

PwC Says Blockchain Could Solve Planet’s Environmental Issues

PwC, a leading professional services networks in the world has released a research as a part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth series. The research named “Building block(chain)s for a better planet”, was published by the World Economic Forum in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the Stanford Woods Institute for the environment says that blockchain could solve planet’s environmental issues. This report emphasized the use of proof-of-work blockchains and it is hopeful about blockchain technology’s impact on the environmental issues.

Researchers concluded that blockchain technology has huge potential to create blockchain-enabled “game changers” that have the capability to give revolutionary solutions to environmental challenges. These game changers have the potential to optimize, the systems that are crucial for solving many environmental challenges. 

New York Attorney General: Cryptocurrency Exchanges Are Vulnerable To Manipulation

New York Attorney General has warned that cryptocurrency exchanges are vulnerable to manipulation and are not doing much to stop it. This was disclosed in the Virtual Markets Integrity Initiative Report published by the Office of the New York State Attorney General (OAG).

According to this report, cryptocurrency trading platforms have not registered under state or federal securities or commodities laws. They also have not implemented common standards for security, internal controls, market surveillance protocols, disclosures, or other investor and consumer protections. This report also blasted cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance and Kraken and said that they may be operating unlawfully in New York. This is not the first time that New York is in the crypto news.

A Major Bug In Bitcoin Core Could Have Crashed the Whole Network

Bitcoin Core, a free and open-source software that serves as a bitcoin node has patched a serious vulnerability. A major bug in bitcoin core could have crashed the network. Bitcoin core is considered to be bitcoin’s reference implementation and is the most used implementation by a large margin. A bug found in Bitcoin Core version 0.14, that also damages all upcoming versions, could have caused a great majority of current Core nodes to crash. Developers have released a patch that fixes Core version 0.16.2 and the recent 0.16.3. This fix requires an instant upgrade.

The patch release has also given a downgrading warning. Wallets created in 0.16 and later are not compatible with versions prior to 0.16 and will not work if users try to use newly created wallets in older versions. Existing wallets that were created with older versions are not affected by this. This vulnerability is monitored as CVE-2018-17144 and is called as a simple “denial of service” (DoS) attack. Bitcoin core developers have also suggested users to upgrade any of the vulnerable versions to 0.16.3 as soon as possible. The patch release has also given credit to the anonymous reporter who reported this vulnerability. This is the most important crypto news of the week.

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