Major cryptocurrencies remain in the red as the market experienced another poor week.
At press time the total market cap is $123 billion, a drop of more than $10 billion compared to last week.
At the moment, Bitcoin stands at around $3,850 which is more than a 40 percent drop in only a few weeks or 81 percent from its all-time high price of over $20,000 just a year ago. Ethereum and XRP are down more than 90 percent.
In the past week, for a short time, the crypto market showed signs of improvement. However, this didn't last long, and the prices kept declining in the following days.
Dash Introduces a New Upgrade
Dash will make all of its cryptocurrency transactions instant. With the new upgrade, Dash InstantSend transactions are going to be carried immediately, and the transaction will be permanent and secure.
Dash is the first to introduce this feature on the crypto market, which is a significant step for the cryptocurrency and the whole crypto community.
The new upgrade could ease up the use of digital assets and make them more usable for all kinds of merchant transactions.
Around 90 percent of all Dash transactions are expected to become InstantSend with this new upgrade. The remaining will be able to use it manually by paying the extra fee.
U.S. Government Will Attempt to De-Anonymize Privacy Coins
The United States government is reportedly researching new ways of tracing online privacy coin transactions.
According to a document recently filed by a branch of the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, their principal objective is to design a product that is going to support the implementation of blockchain forensics for cryptocurrencies such as Monero or Zcash, data analysis, as well as information sharing.
The pre-solicitation document calls for solutions concerning the issue, as privacy cryptocurrencies cause a threat to the government when they are being used more often in illicit crimes, particularly on the dark web.
Satoshi Nakamoto's P2P Foundations Account Active After 4 Years
After four years of silence, to everyone's surprise, Satoshi Nakamoto's P2P Foundation profile became active on November 29.
After adding as a friend Wagner Tamanaha, a marketing expert based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on the platform, someone behind the profile posted a single word, "nour."
Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym used by the unknown creator of Bitcoin.
The profile on the Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives website hasn't been active since 2014 when it got hacked and allegedly the personal information and passwords of the creator of Bitcoin were leaked and sold on the dark web.
The connection with Tamanaha remains unclear even to him, apparently.
He made a post on Steemit (written in Portuguese) about the mystery, saying he had requested to join Satoshi Nakamoto's friends list a year ago and only just heard back now.
As for "nour," there are a couple of theories.
Some people on social media have pointed out that nour is the word for "light" in Arabic.
Or, as one Reddit user theorized, perhaps the post is really saying "no u r," which could be taken to mean "we all are Satoshi Nakamoto."
Low Interest in Cryptocurrencies Has Small Effect on Crypto Miners
Kaspersky Lab's newly published 2018 Security Bulletin shows that despite the decline in the general interest of cryptocurrencies, the threat of crypto mining still prevails.
However, the price surge has its influence and caused a slump in these cyberattacks.
According to the research, the year started off with an immense growth in attacks, and in the next months, since March 2018, it slowly started decreasing but the numbers remain high.
Moreover, it was also revealed that cybercriminals use botnets as a mean of spreading the malicious software.
Among other discoveries, the report discloses a list of the countries that were hit the hardest by these attacks.
First on the list is Kazakhstan, followed by Vietnam and Indonesia.
The researchers concluded that the threat is more dominant in countries with weak regulations and a low level of digital literacy among users.
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That's it for our summary of this week's major crypto news headlines. This is the 23rd post in our crypto news series. Catch up on the latest installments here:
