Satoshi Nakamoto imagined a trustless, transparent financial system without the need for intermediaries like banks mediating everyday transactions. Nakamoto’s philosophy reached its zenith with the emergence of smart contracts and decentralized finance (DeFi). The DeFi sector grew significantly, and its total volume locked (TVL) surpassed $250 billion in 2021. Despite turbulent market conditions, DeFi’s TVL hovered…

National Security Agency (NSA) director of cybersecurity Rob Joyce told attendees of a recent UK security conference that ransomware attacks are down in roughly the last two months, and that trend can be traced directly to sanctions placed on Russia. Criminals that operate out of the country are struggling to find ways to cash out…

If you’re anywhere near the tech or financial space, you’ve likely been hearing terms like DeFi, blockchain, and smart contracts more and more frequently. Ever since cryptocurrencies and other decentralized technologies came on the scene, they’ve been the subject of much speculation and debate among engineers and business leaders. Some tech thinkers suggest that blockchain is…

There are many lessons emerging from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and others yet to be discerned. One insight that the war has reinforced concerns the tremendous strategic value of semiconductors. These tiny silicon chips offer a huge warfighting advantage for the Ukrainians — but also should remind the United States of the urgent need to…

Cryptocurrency is the most exciting and unpredictable financial frontier in today’s world. The opportunities for crypto-based businesses are enormous, but so are the attendant risks. Protecting you from these downfalls is what crypto insurance is all about. Although it will safeguard your business from cybercriminals, it will also give your customers valuable peace of mind.…

The crypto market is covered in red again. This week the price of bitcoin price fell 2.4% and Ethereum’s price is down 5.0%. Cardano ADA fell 9.8%, XRP XRP lost 6.14%, and Solana slumped 12.4%. Meanwhile, the price of BNB BNB rose 7.4%. The waters are still murky after the mid-month roiling of the crypto…

Quantum computers will eventually break much of today’s encryption, and that includes the signing algorithm of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Approximately one-quarter of the Bitcoin ($168bn) in circulation in 2022 is vulnerable to quantum attack, according to a study by Deloitte. Cybersecurity specialist Itan Barmes led the vulnerability study of the Bitcoin blockchain. He found the…

Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has released a report saying the federal government lacks sufficient information on ransomware attacks and the use of cryptocurrency in ransom payments. The report also found that current reporting of such attacks is fragmented across federal agencies and that lack of comprehensive…

On April 5, IBM unveiled IBM z16, the company’s next-generation system with an integrated on-chip artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator to deliver latency-optimized inferencing. With this innovation, clients will be able to analyze real-time transactions at scale. IBM z16 is even more valuable for mission-critical workloads such as credit card, health care and financial transactions. Inference is…

The governance vote on Do Kwon’s proposal to relaunch the Terra blockchain and create LUNA 2.0 tokens has passed. This will result in the creation of a new blockchain that will airdrop tokens proportionally to those affected, following the sudden collapse of the TerraUSD (UST) algorithmic stablecoin. In total, 65.5% of the total votes supported Kwon’s…

During the COVID-19 pandemic, an increasing number of people have relied on media and technology to inform, entertain and educate themselves, do business, and socialize. But the shift in usage patterns does not automatically mean that everyone understands what the metaverse is. Fewer than one in five (16%) of Americans can define the term: some…

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has released a public consultation document, Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework and Amendments to the Common Reporting Standard. The document responds to a request from the G20 to develop a framework to assist in the automatic exchange of information related to cryptoassets, arising from concerns about the rapid adoption…

The attack against the Ronin Network in March was quickly speculated to be one of the largest cryptocurrency hacks of all time. Approximately $540 million was stolen from the cryptocurrency and NFT games company in a combination of USDC and Etherium, with $400 million of the stolen funds owned by customers playing the game Axie…

Despite the crypto slump, banking giant JPMorgan says bitcoin is massively undervalued. Maintaining its estimate of bitcoin’s fair value at $38,000, the bank today reiterated the assessment it gave the asset in February when the cryptocurrency was trading around $43,400. This price is approximately 28% higher than its current level of $29,757. In a note to…

The Conti ransomware operation has undergone some significant organizational structure changes in the past months after the brand became toxic due to its affiliation with the Russian government. The Conti operation has been highly successful, helping cybercriminals make billions of dollars after breaching the systems of hundreds of major organizations. While it appeared to be very…

Whistleblowers from the Terra community have made allegations that some of the most prominent figures in the cryptocurrency industry, like FTX CEO Samuel Bankman-Fried and Jump Crypto CEO Kanav Kariya, were responsible for TerraUSD’s (UST) colossal crash and de-peg. Whistleblowers in the Terra community have come forward with details of an insider deal that destroyed stablecoin…

The number of decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain projects grew massively during the past year, but their increased popularity has also piqued the interest of cyberattackers – who managed to steal at least an estimated $1.8 billion in 2021. The blockchain is a digital ledger that records transactions in a way that is difficult to…

The logistics landscape is changing. Like the employment market in the pandemic, the need to unexpectedly adjust creates the opportunity to re-think. Sometimes the change is tactical – a reversible reaction – and things return to normal. Other times it leads to be a more structural change. Anticipating the forward shape of the supply chain means…

Despite being around for roughly 13 years and currently in the midst of a market crash, crypto feels like it’s still in a goldrush phase. As hopeful investors pile in with dreams of making big money, many still lack any real knowledge about what they’re getting into. A survey by software developer Oxford Risk last year…

Have we just seen a cryptocurrency meltdown or just another blip in a highly-volatile global coin market in urgent need of a regulatory reboot? Over $500 billion (£400bn) of crypto value was wiped out in less than a fortnight resembling the dot-com boom of 20 years ago. And we all know what happened then. At…

A Discord bot widely used by NFT projects, most notably the very popular (and very recently breached) game Axie Infinity, was compromised leading to scam messages being passed to users. A hack of the “Mee6” bot used to moderate Discord channels led to scam messages being passed in these communities, with the hackers posing as…

CNBC’s David Faber reported Monday that Broadcom had been gearing up to announce its acquisition of VMware as soon as Thursday, but the news could come sooner after several reports said the two companies were in talks. Some material terms still need to be finalized, and a deal could fall through, Faber said on CNBC’s “Squawk…

Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates isn’t a fan of cryptocurrency. Gates, now fourth-richest person in the world with a net worth of $125 billion, said during a Thursday Ask Me Anything exchange on Reddit that he doesn’t own any digital currency. “I like investing in things that have valuable output. The value of companies is based on how…

Amid threats of recession, chief information officers say they are prioritizing technology that drives efficiency, mitigates ongoing supply-chain struggles and contributes quickly to the bottom line. Tech leaders at Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., Carhartt Inc. and other companies say they are monitoring a number of factors, including the financial markets, inflation and supply-chain uncertainties as they…

The entire cryptocurrency space continues to evolve rapidly, having surpassed $3 trillion market capitalization for the first time in 2021. Further, global blockchain spending has surged 7 times over the past four years to an estimated $6.6 billion in 2021, and is projected to more than triple by 2024. That’s impressive given the seeds of…

As bitcoin enters a new bear market, the mining sector is feeling the pain. Specifically, miners are seeing their profit margins dwindle as Bitcoin’s price falls and Bitcoin’s mining difficulty continues to rise. Bitcoin mining revenue potential, defined as its hashprice, has fallen some 68% from its 2021 peak and 58% from 2021’s average. Two things…

Venus Protocol, a decentralized money market, announced on Thursday evening that about $11 million had been lost due to people exploiting the historic collapse of the Luna cryptocurrency and its sister stablecoin UST. The team behind the Venus Protocol released a statement confirming suspicions that had been floating around for hours about the potential mishandling of…

Russia is known for its potent cyber-warfare capabilities. So it is no surprise that Moscow launched cyberattacks against Ukrainian targets in the lead up to its invasion in late February. Russian hackers went after a variety of Ukrainian targets in the private and public sectors, but one cyber weapon aimed at a specific military target…