Crypto news this week – 28 Feb
Did you miss us? We took some time off to add more flavour to our videos (and a new face), but we’re back at it, covering all things regulation and other hot topics in the crypto space.
Let’s jump right in and check in on a segment we covered previously: crypto in Wyoming.
Wyoming leading the pack
The US state of Wyoming passed several bills aimed at making the state an attractive destination for cryptocurrency and blockchain businesses. Once the bill is signed into law, it’ll recognise digital assets as property and will allow banks to act as crypto custodians.
Tick tock, India
According to recent developments, the Supreme Court has granted the Indian Union Government a final opportunity to make policy decisions about cryptocurrencies and their functions within four weeks. If they don’t provide a regulatory framework for crypto in time, the Supreme Court is set to release their own judgement.
Passing the Lightning torch
The Lightning Network Trust Chain has gone viral in the crypto world. The idea behind the chain is simple: Users around the world use a peer-to-peer network to send payments to each other using the Lightning Network. Each time a user ‘passes the torch’, they add 10 satoshis to the original amount. A satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin, representing one hundred millionths of one BTC, which is eight places after the decimal point (0.0000001).
The #LNTorch has been passed around using the hashtag #LNTrustChain on Twitter. Currently, it’s sitting with British cryptographer and crypto-hacker, Adam Back. All eyes are on Elon Musk to receive the torch next.
Want to get involved? Place your bet on how many satoshis it’ll reach until the chain breaks through our Twitter poll.
Bitcoin for a tweet
A beta app, Tippin, has released a new Chrome extension available to Google browser users that allows them to send small Bitcoin transactions when ‘liking’ a tweet. Users can also now send Bitcoin payments via the Lightning Network, enabling feasible transaction fees at large scale for the first time.
From the Galaxy to the moon
Samsung has confirmed its latest phone, the Galaxy S10, will include a dedicated secure storage function designed for cryptocurrency private keys. Samsung explained, “Galaxy S10 is built with defence-grade Samsung Knox, as well as a secure storage backed by hardware, which houses your private keys for blockchain-enabled mobile services.”
Louder for the people at the back, Elon
In an interview with investment firm ARK, earlier this month, Musk responded specifically to questions about his thoughts on cryptocurrency. He said he believes Bitcoin’s structure “is quite brilliant”, adding “if crypto bypasses currency controls, paper money is going away. And crypto is a far better way to transfer value than a piece of paper, that’s for sure.”
#AskLuno
You asked, and we listened.
Does Luno offer protection to its customers against dusting attacks?
The term ‘dust’ refers to a tiny amount of a coin or token. This amount is usually so small that people tend to just ignore it. In the case of Bitcoin, the smallest unit of the currency is 1 satoshi (0.00000001 BTC), and we could refer to a few hundreds of satoshi as dust.
In other words, dust is a tiny transaction or amount that’s not even worth sending because it’s much smaller than the transaction fees you’d incur to make the transaction in the first place. Within cryptocurrency exchanges, dust is also the name we give to small amounts of coins that ‘get stuck’ and are not tradeable. Most people don’t take notice of the dust in their wallets and rarely worry about its origin.
A dusting attack refers to a new kind of malicious activity where hackers and scammers try and break the privacy of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency users by sending tiny amounts of coins to their personal wallets. They then start to track those funds, and all transactions of those ‘dusted’ wallets which allow them to link addresses and to eventually determine the companies or individuals behind those wallet addresses. This knowledge can later be used to construct targeted phishing attacks or attacks such as cyber-extortion of unaware victims.
To mitigate this, at Luno we proxy our customer addresses. This makes it difficult for attacks to follow and trace identities. As an additional safety precaution, our customers have the ability to add receive addresses to their Bitcoin wallet in order to have multiple addresses.
What an exciting past couple of weeks in the crypto space. Stay tuned for more on the hottest topics in crypto, and let us know what you thought of this episode by reaching out to us on Twitter or directly on YouTube. Join the conversation #AskLuno on social media and stand the chance to win that hot, hot swag.