On today's episode:
We’ll do yet another update on the BTC Bitcoin price technical analysis
We’ll briefly touch on a very interesting situation playing out on the Steem blockchain right now that I could really use some help with
And the main story for today is an Emergency security issue right in the very core of most modern computer processors.
Today’s episode is brought you to by Ledger hardware wallets. Secure your cryptocurrencies today:
https://www.ledgerwallet.com/r/d1da
Follow me on Steemit and earn crypto for your best comments: https://steemit.com/@marketingmonk
Story - Market Roundup 1:22
Charts
Bitcoin is testing 14,376 for the second day running, so far it’s holding with a little candle tail hanging below.
Nice tight trading range for today and yesterday, good to see because it means the market is taking its time to decide which way it wants to go. It’s always good to pause after breakout, do a civilised test of the price that broke and then make the next decisive move.
That’s what I see happening here.
https://onchainfx.com/
Biggest winners
Tron / TRX up 97%
NEM / XEM up 45%
Ripple number 2 coin by market cap based on coins in circulation, and the number 1 coin if we multiply the coin price by the total supply of Ripple.
*Click heading on OCFX to sort coins
Biggest losers
Bitcoin Cash / BCH down 15%
ByteBall / GBYTE down 9.5%
Dash gets pushed outside the top 10 due to the big increase in the price of TRON.
Tron is a Chinese smart contract platform for developing decentralisation and a self proclaimed Web 4.0 technology.
According to their website they are aiming to build a system that allows people to distribution digital content and entertainment for free using a blockchain and decentralised storage technology.
They also say that the first TRON compatible App will be Peiwo, which is this thing https://www.peiwo.cn/
Peiwo apparently already has 10 million users so Tron had better have sufficient capacity to handle them is all I can say.
Story - Steem Drama 7:38
I really wanted to talk about the Steem blockchain today but the security breach is so important I’ve got to focus on that immediately.
Just briefly though there is a very interesting experiment that is playing out right now on the Steem blockchain.
It’s basically putting the community powered delegated proof of stake system through the ringer to see how it handles a crisis.
One user i posting 10 times per day and being upvoted by a couple of whales resulting in an abuse of the reward pool.
A war of downvotes has now ensued that I have also become tangled in.
However I’m more than willing to take a hit on my personal Steem rewards if it stops one individual from clearly abusing the system and upsetting the wider community.
As far as I can tell a number of good whales have come to my aid out of the blue so I appreciate them for that.
I’ll endeavour to go into detail on this situation in a future video but for now if you’re not already following me on Steem, please do because your upvotes will help prevent retaliation against my objection to this users abusive behaviour.
Story - Emergency Security Breach That Affects EVERYONE
https://spectreattack.com/ 11:01
Now onto the emergency announcement for the day.
I’ll start with the solution… store your major cryptocurrency holdings in a hardware wallet.
There’s a reason I went with Ledger as the sponsor today.
If you have your funds in a Ledger wallet like I do, you can respond to these security breaches with the emotion of curiosity rather than panic because no matter how severe the breach your money is safe.
None of the three big players, Microsoft, Intel or AMD mention this on their homepage. Maybe to prevent confusion.
They could at least give some basic preventative advice.
Most likely Microsoft will push a Windows update to deal with this in the short term, however the problem is at the most fundamental hardware level.
*Watch the 20 second video on the Spectre Attack page
https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/584653
CERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon University…
Suggest that the solution to this security problem is to replace your computer processor. The question is with what?
An AMD processor it seems:
https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/speculative-execution
Security flaws in software are more easy to fix via an update you just download, that’s why we call it SOFTware. So any of the software systems listed on:
https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/584653
Will no doubt be handled by a software update.
However, the hardware is physical and thus not as easily fixed. Hence the advice to replace your processor.
So check which processor your device has and then see if it’s on the affected list, it most likely is.
One thing I will say though to make you feel better is that there is something very specific that has to happen in order for this security issue to be exploited.
▶️ DTube
▶️ IPFS
@marketingmonk, respect to you for retaliating in this flag issue the Steem blockchain is having at the moment.
You addressed the actions done by @haejin in one of your latest episodes. And I was happy to hear you didn't give up on the Steem blockchain, but decided to take action.
You are the type of person I like to see here on Steemit and Dtube.
Keep the genuine content coming!
really good and detailed post. I hadn't noticed that on Steem, but I am happy to help in any way that I can.
regarding the security issue that you brought up, I agree that it is an issue. I think we will see more and more security issues regarding cryptos in 2018, and it may even be one of the reasons that the growth of the market slows down (if it does). I think hardware wallets are the best way around this too.
The content you are putting out is great! Every day, I analyse a new coin on my page. Let me know if there's any coin in specific that you would be interested in reading about.
Return bitcoin to the price of $ 14,500
The rise in market value was accompanied by a rise in the bitcoin price, where the price reached $ 15.093 on the Bitfinex trading platform. Currently, bitcoin is trading at $ 14,485 on the Bitfinex trading platform, while the global average is $ 14,550. This represents a one-day increase of 8 percent, with a market value of $ 253.2 billion. The move came in response to a report that Founders Fund, a venture capital firm created by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, has hundreds of millions of dollars of bitcoin as an alternative to overvalued technology valuation. Investors are likely to be optimistic that this report signals a new wave of institutional funds to the digital currency markets.
I will be supporting you as much as i can, watched the video about the silly people abusing the platform. Some people are to greedy and self centered.
Keep up the great work.
Chris - Thanks for the great update.
how do you think or your prediction about bitcoin price in 2018 whether it will be increasing or going down.
I just want to survey some people's opinions
it will increase. I'm sure
Increase
How do we trade if we move ALL of our coins to our hard wallets (I use Ledger Nano S)?
I leave funds distributed on three or four exchanges for safety also.
That is true. I moved a little steem to another crypto to lock in the price.... but if I have it on a hardware wallet...I could miss important moves. This breech/flaw is serious and sucks!
Yeah, this whole flagging thing is pretty confusing for the new users. These are my thoughts on the matter if you're interested. https://steemit.com/steem/@littlejoeward/flagging-war-who-is-to-blame-what-on-earth-is-going-on
Basically, we shouldn't use our flags as revenge weapons like haejin and berniesanders are doing. It creates a lot of pain in the crossfire.
Thank you for producing high quality content, Chris.
This Intel hardware security issue is really disappointing with exploits already being demonstrated on the internet. Makes me wonder how the cloud service providers are handling this. What is to stop someone from potentially signing up for services and knowingly installing an exploit. What of node and masternode operators that are hosted with a cloud service provider. Someone poking around might get lucky.
Google verified the issue saying in a blog post, “Testing also showed that an attack running on one virtual machine was able to access the physical memory of the host machine, and through that, gain read-access to the memory of a different virtual machine on the same host.”
I guess be glad that vendors have been aware and working on the fix for some time before the news became public.
Edit: Looks like all the major cloud providers have mostly finished applying a fix.
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/intel-cloud-vendors-shed-light-two-major-chip-security-issues-emerged-week/
Intel also announced fixes being worked on. It is definitely scary when we are depending on security to transact in the future. It comes to the point of thinking do we rely too much on technology.
do you see xrb?
very good post and very useful.
but what do you think about the price of sbd and steem at the beginning of this month,
What is your opinion?
Thank you, Chris. Another great episode!
I wrote a post yesterday regarding a possible #securityflaw with Steemit and my antivirus. You should check it out and let me know what you think.
Power to a civil blockchain, free market shall punish those trying to game the system. Great episode.
To be fair to @haejin he's posting TA that is very time relevant and often needs to be acted on immediately, so you could argue that his posting multiple times per day is justified
Interesting I tried to comment your video on d.tube but it wont let me hit the add comment button. Are there any restrictions on new accounts?
Not that I know of no.
today it worked. thx
great episode of cryptoverse today, so much happening in the cryptosphere, i still can't believe coinbase was the #1 downloaded app, blows me away ... keep up the great stuff / peace
Chris, will you be doing other workshops like this? I would be interested in attending but need some more advanced notice to travel. Thanks!
If I read this https://lwn.net/Articles/738975/ correctly, there is a fix for Linux 64 bit by hiding the kernel from the user space. Sounds like it will result in a performance hit. Someone more technical than I may be able to explain exactly how it works. Ubuntu (the Linux distribution I have) security team released this document https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityTeam/KnowledgeBase/SpectreAndMeltdown, stating: To address the issue, updates to the Ubuntu kernel and processor microcode will be needed. In the Timeline given, the release date is TBD.
Thank you for putting community first @marketingmonk :)
Used to prefer AMD over Intel when I built my computers.... since laptops it has been more to intel due to availability :/ Any idea if ARM devices are effected? (some android phones, raspberry pi....)
ARM is listed as one of the affected devices yes.
Sorry about the whale war, but very glad you are willing to standup for what is right! You have my vote!
I honestly didnt realize it was this bad.... I havent been following the gossip over the christmas season.
Good to see some kind whales are helping you out!
Best to you in 2018!
Keep doing what you are doing! I listen as often as I can!
Hey Chris - Thanks for all the awesome videos and sharing of information.
I recently joined Steemit thanks to you :)
Chris, this "Speculative Execution" portal is huge in my opinion. You were the first to point it out in my world. I've seen a few others cover it on YouTube but not as clearly as you. Thank you. I don't quite understand the implications of "ReSteeming" but yours will be my first. I hope you do not mind. I've been to the Intel site where they told the investors first. Google clearly acknowledges. I can't find anything at Microsoft. I believe much more will come out next week but things have grown silent. Why is that?
very interesting information on the Steem blockchain, thanks so much for posting.