In the midst of rising prices, Adam Singer showed his disapproval of the entire crypto space, describing it as cultlike. "Bitcoin went from a creative economic experiment to cult of over exposed, get rich quick neo goldbugs rooting for the end of the world," Singer tweeted on Thursday. Everyone is "watching the same chart 24/7 and taking online victory laps that would make Jordan Belfort blush every time their only holding has a >5% move," Singer added, referring to the infamous "Wolf of Wall Street" scam artist. Bitcoin prices on the move going into the halving With its block reward …

Google searches for “Bitcoin halving” have hit an all-time high, far exceeding the spike associated with the previous halving event by 350%. Searches for the Bitcoin (BTC) halving event have reached 100 on Google's normalized scale, indicating their highest-ever value. At the time of the last halving in 2016, this value was at 28. This means that the current level of interest is nearly 360% higher than it was four years ago. Google searches for “Bitcoin halving.” Source: Google Trends. Still a bear market The previous halving, which decreased the block reward from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC, happened on …

A security researcher has discovered another 22 Google Chrome web browser extensions built to steal their users' cryptocurrencies. Cybersecurity news outlet Naked Security reported on Friday that Harry Denley, a security researcher specializing in cryptocurrencies, discovered 22 more malicious Google Chrome extensions. The extensions he discovered impersonated well-known crypto firms such as Ledger, KeepKey, MetaMask and Jaxx. Their purpose is to trick users into giving away the credentials needed to access their wallets. Most of the phishing extensions have already been taken down as of press time. Per the report, most were down within 24 hours of Denley reporting them. …

While Google’s subsidiary, YouTube, is facing a lawsuit for promoting cryptocurrency scams, Google’s advertising platform continues to display fraudulent crypto ads through its advertising network. According to a report by Bitcoin (BTC) crypto exchange, CoinCorner, Google Ads was running an ad for CoinCorner’s phishing clone website, CoinCornerr.com. The issue was reported by CoinCorner’s marketing manager, Molly Spiers, on April 30. Google Ads promotes a crypto scam but doesn’t want to promote a real firm Spiers told Cointelegraph that CoinCorner’s team first noticed the fraudulent ad on Thursday morning after searching for “CoinCorner” on Google.com and Google.co.uk. According to the executive, …

On April 27, Brave browser filed a complaint urging the European Commission to take action against EU governments that fail to adequately protect their citizens. A recent report compiled by the Brave team concludes that most EU member states do not adequately staff their General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, enforcers: “Only five of Europe’s 28 national GDPR enforcers have more than 10 tech specialists. Europe’s GDPR enforcers do not have the capacity to investigate Big Tech.” Source: Brave Regulators can’t afford to fight for privacy Furthermore, the report stipulates that the enforcement agencies are underfinanced, which leads to reluctance …

Google Play market and Apple's AppStore will reportedly soon feature the Telegram Open Network (TON) operating system (OS), an end-to-end open-source infrastructure that allows developers and users to work with the TON blockchain. The TON OS will soon become available on smartphones and personal computers for mainstream users, a source close to Telegram told Russian news agency RBC on April 29. TON OS is not an alternative to existing operating systems, but will serve as an add-on for devices, making them able to support blockchain applications. Big plans for the future The source said that with TON OS, users can …

Google recently removed 49 phishing Google Chrome web browser extensions after receiving reports about their activity. Harry Denley, director of security at cryptocurrency wallet startup MyCrypto, explained in an April 14 Medium post how he got the extensions removed from Chrome’s store within 24 hours with the help of phishing-specialized cybersecurity firm PhishFort. The removed extensions include ones that targeted the owners of hardware wallets produced by Ledger, Trezor and KeepKey, and users of software wallets Jaxx, MyEtherWallet, Metamask, Exodus and Electrum. The extensions triggered the users to enter the credentials needed to access the wallet — such as mnemonic …

Interest in the forthcoming “halving” event on the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain has surged to levels higher than ever seen before. Data from Google Trends as of April 14 indicates that this year’s peak of interest in the event is 16% higher than back in 2016, the last time that halving occurred on the network. Worldwide Google search data for “Bitcoin halving” since April 2015. Source: Google Trends Breaking down the data geographically — this time focusing on the past 30 days — the top five countries showing the most interest are Luxembourg, Latvia, Estonia, Switzerland and Lithuania. A related and …

Michael Stay, a former software engineer with Google and the current CTO of smart contract and decentralized application (Dapp) firm, Pyrofex, claims to have successfully hacked a zip file containing the private keys to over $300,000 in Bitcoin (BTC). In a blog post, Stay says that his journey began when he received a message from “a Russian guy” on LinkedIn about six months ago. Software engineer contacted on LinkedIn regarding paper from 2000 The Russian had read a paper authored by Stay in 2000 describing a technique that he had used to successfully attack zip files. “He had read that …

In recent years, Google-owned video-sharing platform YouTube deleted and banned an array of cryptocurrency-related channels. The platform’s policy has driven cryptocurrency enthusiasts to look for decentralized alternatives to YouTube, which allow users to skirt censorship and even incentivize them with their own tokens. In a YouTube video published on April 1, a channel dubbed Bitcoin for Beginners reviewed some of the decentralized YouTube alternatives. When choosing the most relevant platforms, the channel host took into account their usability, track records and user interface as major criteria. Among the most popular decentralized video sharing platforms, the author noted LBRY, Bitchute, BitTube, …

In recent months, big-name players like Google and Apple have been going the extra mile to showcase their privacy features to the world. However, as most people are now aware, these multinational companies have business models that are centered around collecting and aggregating the data of their customers. In this regard, growing interest in privacy-first browsers like Brave clearly suggests a collective increase in internet users’ concern over how their personal information is being accumulated, stored and utilized on a day-to-day basis. Individuals all over the globe have become so accustomed to using free search, chat, video and other web …

The world’s largest technology companies have made concerted efforts to investigate and integrate blockchain technologies over the past few years. Partly driven by a massive boom in interest caused by Bitcoin’s stellar bull run in 2017, blockchain technology quickly became the new catchword in tech. A swathe of startups entered the fray during that period as entrepreneurs looked to cash in on the hype in the space. Bigger companies that weren’t looking into the benefits of the technology faced the risk of being left behind and began to carefully explore solutions to their own business mechanisms. Others had already begun …