Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: economics – Page 171

Have there been successful Transaction Malleability attacks?

First, let’s get some basics out of the way…

What is Transaction Malleability?

Here are 2 explanations of transaction malleability: [Coindesk] [TechTalk]

In a nutshell, Transaction Malleability is a weakness in the original Bitcoin implementation that enables a bad actor to change the unique ID of a bitcoin transaction before it is confirmed on the Blockchain. Such a change makes it possible for someone to pretend that a transaction didn’t happen, if all necessary conditions are in place.

As the Coindesk article points out, a successful attack requires certain conditions that make a successful attack difficult or even unlikely. Many analysts referred to it as a bug that should eventually be fixed, rather than an urgent issue.

Was This Flaw Addressed

Transaction malleability was addressed (for Bitcoin) with the introduction of Segregated Witness (SegWit) in August 2017. 1, 2

But Was There a Successful Attack?
Attack? Yes. Successful? It’s doubtful…

In March 2017, five months before SegWit was implemented, a mining pool that administers 2% of worldwide activity launched a malleability attack. No one lost money – and some individuals believe that they did this to emphasize urgency and hasten the adoption of SegWit.

What About Lightning Network?

The Lightning Network is a ‘Level 2’ network overlay, currently being adopted by miners (depending on the service or exchange, it is being incrementally activated in the first months of 2018). To function properly, it requires that transaction malleability be solved. But, in the event that a miner is not SegWit compliant, it can resolve the malleability problem in other ways.

1 SegWit should not be confused with SegWit2x, an upgrade process that was cancelled a few months later in November. 2017

2 In the TechTalk article linked above, the author concludes:

“Transaction Malleability is fixed with Segregated Witness by no longer taking into account signatures when calculating the transaction’s fingerprint. Fixing Transaction Malleability means that the Lightning Network can work smoothly.”

Philip Raymond co-chairs CRYPSA, hosts the New York Bitcoin Event and presents at
Crypto Conferences around the world. Book a presentation or consulting engagement.

The increasing use of artificial intelligence is stoking privacy concerns in China

State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) and Tencent Research surveyed 8.000 respondents on their attitudes toward AI as part of CCTV’s China Economic Life Survey. The results show that 76.3 per cent see certain forms of AI as a threat to their privacy, even as they believe that AI holds much development potential and will permeate different industries. About half of the respondents said that they believe AI is already affecting their work life, while about a third see AI as a threat to their jobs.

A China Central Television and Tencent Research survey found that three in four respondents are worried about the threat that artificial intelligence poses to their privacy.

A National Machine Intelligence Strategy for the United States

This event will be webcast live from this page.

The Technology Policy Program invites you to the launch of our upcoming report, A National Machine Intelligence Strategy for the United States.

The United States is at the precipice of a defining moment in history. Over the past five years, progress in machine intelligence (MI) has greatly accelerated. From the defeat of Go champion Lee Sedol by DeepMind’s AlphaGo program to the first deployments of fully-autonomous vehicles on public roads, recent events are challenging us to re-evaluate what may soon be possible for computerized systems. MI systems have already begun to quietly pervade a growing share of businesses, governments, and individual lives around the world, and we are only just beginning to grasp the impacts that this technological revolution will have on our economy, our society, and our national security. In our paper, we outline they key elements of a comprehensive national strategy for the United States to promote the safe and responsible development of MI, and to maintain U.S. leadership in MI technology.

Forces of change: The future of mobility

The transition toward a new mobility ecosystem could have wide-reaching impacts that span a host of industries and players, including—but not limited to:

Global automotive OEMs face momentous and difficult decisions. OEMs will need to determine if they should evolve from a (relatively) fixed capital production, first-transaction, product-sale business into one centered on being an end-to-end mobility services provider. This would represent a profound business model change and the development of entirely new capabilities to be competitively and sustainably viable.

The traditional capabilities of vehicle manufacturers and suppliers will likely need to expand, collaborating with autonomous vehicle technology suppliers, software developers, and others to provide a much broader range of product choices.12 There are complex economics in being able to manufacture vehicles similar to today’s mass-produced driver-owned cars, highly customized personally owned autonomous vehicles, and utilitarian pods for urban environments. Manufacturers will likely require not only today’s traditional supply chains but new manufacturing capabilities that allow advanced, low-cost, efficient customization. They will need to determine if they should redesign their business model to compete in all four future states or to focus on one segment.

ICOs & Altcoins rise and fall—yet, Bitcoin endures

At the end of 2017 and the first months of 2018, we witnessed a surge of interest in Initial Coin Offerings or ICOs. Perhaps the word “interest” gives too much credit to ICOs. Most are scams. ICOs are pushed through by vendor hype, rather than pulled through by investor research. They are almost all pump-and-dump schemes.

But what about Bitcoin? It is not a scam, but questions remain about regulation, intrinsic value* and its likelihood to be superseded by something better. Bitcoin skeptics point to two facts: (1) Bitcoin is open source, and so anyone can create an equally good altcoin. (2) Newer coins incorporate improvements that overcome governance and scaling issues: cost, transaction speed, the burgeoning electric needs of miners, or whatever…

While both statements are true, they miss the point. This is not a VHS-vs-Beta scenario. Bitcoin has achieved a 2-sided network and it is free to fold in every vetted improvement that comes along. For Bitcoin, all those other coins are simply beta tests.

Even the functional tokens will unwittingly feed their “improvements” into Bitcoin. For this reason, it is a safe bet that Bitcoin will reign supreme for years to come—perhaps even long enough for the dominos to fall.

Why I rarely consult to ICOs or prospective ICO investors

I recently presented at cryptocurrency expos in Dubai and Gujarat. As a result of these presentations, my organization now receives ICO pitch decks, white papers and business summaries—15 or 20 each week. About ⅔ are sent by investors asking for advice as an investment opportunity, while ⅓ are from issuers seeking accreditation from CRYPSA or at least a quote than can be used as a comfort statement.

The market potential for consulting to issuers and high-rolling investors is very alluring. Figuring that we could certify gems and advise the dogs (help them to create a more legitimate token), we put together a business plan to address a massive new consulting opportunity. But guess what?

… They are ALL dogs! That’s right! ICOs are scams. They are not the same as ‘altcoins’, which is a term more commonly used for open source forks of legitimate cryptocurrency platforms.

Now, the SEC has begun to investigate ICOs and for good reason. Most are thinly veiled scams to fleece widows and orphans by ducking under securities regulations. Others are MLM scams, proprietary mechanisms (in which founders or early partners hold all the cards), or they are simply poor/fake implementations of Blockchain services.

How to spot an ICO scam (Hint: They are almost all scams!)

What fraction of ICOs are scams? More than 97% according CRYPSA. To preserve our reputation, we have suspended a high profit project to endorse the hidden gems. Despite scores of applicants, we simply cannot find any worthy of accreditation, with the exception of a few Bitcoin forks. But, these forks are altcoins, and not really ICOs.

Nearly all ICOs that we analyzed fall into one of these categories…

  • Veiled securities offerings, designed to duck under securities regulations
  • Created for the express purpose of pump & dump (without clearly disclosing caps, reserves or pre-mined stakeholders)
  • A non-functioning coin that can only gain value through MLM. (This is not necessarily criminal, but outside our research and advisory mandate. Such coins are unlikely to provide value without quick, speculative trades and market timing that amounts to “dumb luck”).

So, what are the signs that an ICO is a scam? Is there anything you can do—short of hiring an expert—to evaluate each new proposal that comes along?

We don’t advise or recommend holding such risky tokens—but for those attracted to the siren call of ICOs, here are six common tale tell signs that you are dealing with a scam:

  • If you received an announcement of an ‘Air drop’ or a coupon to get 25 or 50% bonus coins, it is a scam
  • If the value of coins is influenced by your ability to find new investors, it is a scam
  • If the coin is not based on Satoshi’s blockchain reference code, or is not open source, peer-to-peer and permissionless, then it is very likely a scam. (There are certain, limited exceptions)
  • If the coin is based on Tangle, then it is a scam—or at least, it is functionally useless—and therefore it is a bad investment risk
  • If the coin was pre-mined, then it is a scam. All mining by principals, insiders and early buyers must be disclosed and must be at least a full month after the first widely available public announcements
  • If any advertisement, announcement, affiliate contact or press release ends up in the hands of someone who did not independently contact the issuer for information and a prospectus, it is most definitely a scam

Are you like me?

Because most initial coin offerings exhibit these traits, I pass on opportunities to consult or present at organizations and conferences that cozy up to ICOs. This decision limits my participation at many crypto venues, but my conscience is clean and my Bitcoin future is secure.

Resist the siren call and keep your wits about you. You, too, can also avoid the illusory trap of ICOs. Run, hide or just ignore them. “These are not the coins that you are looking for.” (with apologies to Obi-Wan Kenobi and Alec Guinness).

* Related:

Philip Raymond chairs CRYPSA, publishes A Wild Duck and hosts the New York Bitcoin Event. He was featuerd at cryptocurrency conferences in Dubai, South Africa and India. Click Here to inquire about a presentation.

Would an ethical government surrender control of monetary policy?

Godfrey Bloom is a member of the British Parliament. His in-your-face style of educating and shocking his peers has made him a controversial politician. He has occasionally been escorted out of the assembled parliament because of his rowdy rhetoric.

Consider the video below. Bloom offers a critical, but simple and clear explanation of the Fractional Reserve banking system used in the US and Europe. This gets to the heart of the matter! [continue below video]…

Conclusion (mine, and not Mr. Bloom’s): It is in the interest of governments to use a form of money that they cannot manipulate, print, spend, hide or lend without first earning, taxing or legitimately borrowing — and then balancing the books, openly.

Bitcoin is such a currency. Any country that adopts an open source, permissionless, and completely transparent monetary instrument will demonstrate to citizens and taxpayers that they respect their constituents and that they commit to balance their books like any state, corporation, NGO or household.

Would an ethical government surrender control of its own monetary policy? H*ll, yes! This is how a government avoids rampant inflation and the burden of non-consensual debt to future generations. It is also how a government makes taxation, redistribution and spending transparent and accountable. It is how a government restores trust.

We have been raised with centuries of dogma that teach us to accept inflation, and a constantly escalating public debt. Sometimes, the path forward is not immediately obvious. But history doesn’t lie. When trusted nations with large economies manipulate interest rates, borrow without a lender, or inflate a nation out of a crisis (what the US calls “quantitative easing”), the long term effect is certain to be no different than Argentina, Zimbabwe, Venezuela or Germany between the wars. It is a recipe for disaster. It places every citizen and their future children into debt-bondage.

Moving away from the Gold Standard in the 1970s was a risky maneuver. The risk was not abandoning a precious metal with intrinsic value—but rather it placed the full faith and credit of our economy in the hands of transient politicians, rather than in a capped commodity with certain and immutable properties.

Bitcoin is the new gold. It is capped, transparent, open-source, vetted and without a mechanism for quick or covert manipulation (the US calls this “raising the debt ceiling” and they do it every few months!). We may not move to an economy based on Bitcoin today or tomorrow, but that day is coming. Thankfully, it’s coming!

Philip Raymond co-chairs CRYPSA, publishes A Wild Duck and hosts the New York Bitcoin Event. He was speaker at Cryptocurrency Conferences in Dubai, South Africa and India. Click Here to inquire about a presentation.

Health and the crypto-economy. Health Blockchain

AI and blockchain, the main innovations in #Longevity, are united in DAYS.exchange platform.

DAYS tokens are to be sort of guarrantee for longevity services effectiveness.

DAYS.exchange partner supported Longevity Impact Forum.

The first step to rhe most effective healthcare, based on blockchain consensus regarding health span technologies.

Thanks omar fogliadini, ondřej pilný, ben kraus, alex lightman, avi roy, liz parrish, george kyriakos sergei sevriugin edgar kampers kirill zhukov philippe van nedervelde anton dziatkovskii darr aita.