One cryptocurrency project is using Monero (XMR) to give undocumented immigrants a better shot at a fair treatment in the United States judicial system. The Bail Bloc project collects cryptocurrency to help people get out of pretrial incarceration for cases with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Unlike conventional charities, Bail Bloc doesn’t want your money — it wants your computer processing power. Cointelegraph reached out to Bail Bloc co-creator Grayson Earle for deeper insight into the initiative. Detainees make bail with Monero Users download a special app that uses between 10% and 50% of their overall processor …

The cryptocurrency industry was initially headlined as anonymous digital cash. While experts were keen to point out that this was not exactly the case, Bitcoin (BTC) found initial popularity in darknet markets such as Silk Road, where merchants sold illegal goods ranging from light drugs to, allegedly, hitman services. Founded in 2011, Silk Road thrived for the next two years until the Federal Bureau of Investigation shut it down in 2013. Authorities later revealed that completely free blockchain explorers aided their investigative efforts. Bitcoin’s transaction ledger is completely open for the public to view. What the blockchain does lack is …

While much of the mainstream media decided against running pranks this year due to the seriousness of the coronavirus crisis — the crypto community decided to have some fun anyway. One of the earliest, and funniest, was CoinMarketCap listing ‘Toilet Paper Token’ as the number one cryptocurrency above Bitcoin — the circulating supply, naturally, was ‘out of stock’. Satoshi predicted the COVID-19 outbreak CryptoPotato broke the news that Satoshi Nakamoto predicted the coronavirus outbreak in the original Bitcoin whitepaper. It was a pretty convincing story too, thanks to a cleverly fabricated image of the ‘introduction’ to the whitepaper where Satoshi …

The coronavirus pandemic has only worsened this week and has engulfed almost the whole world. Several countries in Europe and the US have been the worst affected outside of China where the virus started. While the world attempts to tackle the spread of the virus by lockdowns, it is having a huge negative impact on the economy. In order to support the economy, the US announced a stimulus package of $2.2 trillion, which is the largest in history. Meanwhile, the Fed’s balance sheet continues to swell and has crossed $5 trillion in assets. While these efforts are a great morale …

Since dropping to $24.05 during the strong marketwide correction that occurred on March 12, Monero (XMR) has rallied 99.5% and currently trades at $49. The recent recovery occurred on consistently strong purchasing volume and the altcoin has spent the last 10 days trading in an ascending channel. XMR USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView At the time of writing the XMR/USDT pair has pulled back slightly after touching the main trendline of the ascending channel at $50.96 but the pattern of higher lows has remained intact since March 20 even as pullbacks occur. In the event of a pullback, there is …

Privacy is a core characteristic of cryptocurrencies. Despite mainstream conception, however, it is not the primary goal of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) or Ether (ETH), and is more of an ancillary benefit of using cryptography. The situation is altogether different for cryptocurrencies that seek to maximize anonymity when transacting on the network. Networks like Monero (XMR) and ZCash (ZEC) have soared in popularity, making up part of the handful of leading cryptocurrencies by market cap based on strong guarantees of privacy. Both blockchains offer users virtually complete privacy assurances — Monero with the CryptoNote technology suite, and ZCash deploying the …

An engineer at Baidu, China’s equivalent to Google, has been jailed for mining Monero on around 200 of the company’s servers. According to a March 16 report by local media outlet, Abacus News, the employee eventually sold the Monero for around 100,000 yuan ($14,300). Large-scale crypto-jacking Senior engineer, An Bang, was employed by Baidu to maintain its search engine. However, between April and July 2018, he downloaded and installed scripts to mine the cryptocurrency, Monero onto around 200 of the company’s servers. Baidu contacted the police when it noticed unexpected activity levels across many of the servers. By the time …

A new coin is hoping to provide stiff competition to rivals such as Monero and Zcash by delivering “the first fully private hybrid chain with staking.” DAPS, which stands for Decentralized Anonymous Payment System, says it has developed ground-breaking technology that properly addresses the issues seen in other privacy coins, resulting in a truly trustless setup. A trustless setup occurs when a user can create a wallet or node without any exchange of information with another user or node. Some privacy coins require you to “trust” the setup information given to you — and trust that the giver of that …

New Monaco-based cryptocurrency debit card supplier Bitsa has just expanded its prepaid card with major privacy-focused altcoin Monero (XMR). By enabling Monero support on its Bitsa Card, the company unclocks “all types” of XMR-based card transactions in physical stores and online, including card-to-card transfers and Monero conversion to euro (EUR), Bitsa announced on Feb. 21. Launched in Q3 2019, Bitsa Card supports a total of 12 cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) alongside EUR bank transfers and payments so far, Bitsa COO Luis Vaello said in an email to Cointelegraph. Bitsa Card is one of the world’s first crypto card providers to …

With increasing speculation in the crypto community that cryptocurrency markets are on the cusp of the next major bull season, it can be easy to lose sight of the maturation that the crypto ecosystem has undergone to get to the present moment. When comparing the current crypto markets against the climate preceding the previous bull run, many top markets have seen volume gains by a factor of multiple thousands, evidencing a significant expansion in market liquidity. Daily BTC trade up 519 times since 2017 As of Feb. 15, 2017, Bitcoin (BTC) was the single-most traded crypto asset, having generated $89.76 …

A major global company that helps fight illicit cryptocurrency-related activity does not think that privacy in crypto markets is necessarily bad. Despite representing one of the primary sources of crypto transaction data for federal agencies like the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI, Chainalysis does not exactly oppose the privacy and decentralization of crypto. “Complete transparency is not necessarily an ideal place” Jonathan Levin, co-founder and CSO at blockchain and crypto analytics firm Chainalysis, reiterated his stance to privacy in crypto, claiming that full transparency of cryptocurrency transactions might not turn out to be the best situation. Speaking in an …

A Japanese court has demanded a man who infected website visitors with cryptocurrency mining malware face justice — after acquitting him. As local daily news outlet The Mainichi reported on Feb. 7, the Tokyo High Court overturned a previous ruling which cleared the man, who was not named, of any wrongdoing. Visitors “not informed” of malware According to the original indictment, the 32-year-old web designer installed the Coinhive miner on his own website in October 2017. It was active for a month, using visitors’ devices to mine cryptocurrency for his own benefit — a practice known as “cryptojacking.” The man …