European leaders are planning to crack down on the use of bitcoin, prepaid credit cards and other methods of anonymous payment in response to the Paris attacks last week, Reuters reported Thursday. It's part of a crisis plan that aims to dismantle suspected terrorist financing networks after the massacre, claimed by the Islamic State group, killed 129 people and wounded hundreds.

Interior and justice ministers from throughout the European Union are scheduled to meet in Brussels Friday, where they will encourage the leaders to “strengthen controls of nonbanking payment methods such as electronic/anonymous payments and virtual currencies and transfers of gold, precious metals, by prepaid credit cards,” according to a draft obtained by Reuters.

Bitcoin is the most popular form of digital cryptocurrency, with users able to transact in relative anonymity with fees lower than those generally imposed by credit card processors. It's frequently used as part of criminal dealings, though it's not clear to what extent ISIS is doing so. The terrorist group also survives thanks to criminal activity, oil sales and donations from officials and wealthy individuals in Arab countries allied with the U.S.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also set up a commission to fight terrorist financing Wednesday. Putin issued a notice to Russia's central bank, prosecutor's office and regional authorities instructing them to immediately report any suspicious financial activity that could be linked to terrorism. Among those encouraged by Putin's stance was President Barack Obama, who, after years of frosty relations over a number of issues, deemed the Russian leader a “constructive partner” in the global fight against ISIS.

The concept of buying Bitcoin at retail stores is quite an appealing one, as it removes most of the friction associated with obtaining digital currency in the first place. While these services are limited to particular regions for the time being, buying Bitcoin for cash does not mean people will remain completely anonymous. LibertyX lets users buy BTC from over 19,000 stores in the US, but users will need to go through an identity verification process, removing any form of anonymity.

Purchasing Bitcoin with cash is one of the faster ways to obtain digital currency these days, although very few countries actively offer such a service. The only exception to that rule is LocalBitcoins, a peer-to-peer trading platform connecting buyers and sellers directly, allowing them to set up their own payment methods.

Unlike LocalBitcoins, LibertyX is not trying to target the entire world, but just the United States for now. Their business model is rather elegant: walk into any of the 19,000+ supported stores and purchase Bitcoin over the counter. The only requirement is for users to sign up to the LibertyX service ,a  process that should not take all that long.

However it is important to note that, during the LibertyX purchasing process, users will need to verify their identity. An ID scan will have to be made at some point, to comply with the KYC and AML regulatory framework in the United States. Additionally, users will need to link their mobile phone number to the account as well, which will be used to deliver PIN codes to pick up Bitcoin purchases.

Regardless of how one wants to use the purchased digital currency, this verification process will always remain in place. For those people looking to buy bitcoin and spend it on the darkweb, it is important to note you have zero anonymity when purchasing Bitcoin from LibertyX, as they have a complete record with personal information, the date of purchase, and the transaction detailing where the funds came from and which wallet it was sent to.

Most people might argue there is no need for real anonymity in the Bitcoin world at this stage, but some people prefer to remain as anonymous as possible. It is possible to use coin mixing services to receive “clean” bitcoins after your LibertyX purchase, but those platforms should only be used at one’s own risk.

LibertyX provides a very convenient service for people to get their hands on Bitcoin without going to an exchange or ATM. But for those who want to preserve some shred of anonymity = for whatever reason – it is not the perfect solution. Not that there is anything wrong with that, mind you, as anonymity is not natural to the Bitcoin ecosystem. 

The city of Memphis will now have a Bitcoin ATM as the firm Coinsource installs three new machines in the state of Tennessee. The company is the largest Bitcoin ATM provider in the U.S. and has averaged over one installation per week in 2016.

Memphis Bitcoin ATM One of Three in Tennessee

logo2-id-fa176b8a-9aee-44f6-9ad5-4672e628e52e-300x300Memphis, in Tennessee's southwest, will get its first Bitcoin automated teller machine. Additionally, the company Coinsource installed two Bitcoin ATMs in the city of Nashville. Coinsource has established 60 Genesis Coin brand cryptocurrency ATM across the U.S. since its inception.

"The demand for bitcoin ATMs has never been higher than it is today. The most rewarding part of our job is to answer the call when requests come in for new locations, so it is exciting to make history in Tennessee," said Coinsource CEO and co-founder Sheffield Clark. "Our reach in the South is growing. So far, we have 60 machines across eight states, and look forward to gaining a foothold in even more new cities around the country."

Bitcoin ATMs in Tennessee via Coin ATM Radar

U.S.-Based Coinsource Will Soon Focus on International Expansion

Coinsource CEO and Co-Founder Sheffield Clark According to Coin ATM Radar, there are 482 installed Bitcoin ATMs throughout the United States. Coinsource, which Clark founded in February 2015, owns a large share of these devices. Bitcoin ATMs have provided people with easier access to cryptocurrency using cash. Additionally, with an automated teller machine that dispenses bitcoin all users need is a wallet to store the funds.

Coinsource says its mission is to make "buying and selling bitcoin as immediate and natural as withdrawing or depositing fiat from a traditional ATM." The company claims it has first-class customer support and some of the lowest transaction fees in the market.

Only weeks after the execution of a hard fork to mitigate various DoS (denial-of-service) attacks, the Ethereum network and its developers are struggling to deal with yet another major flaw. This time, major issues in regards to smart contracts have emerged, which have rendered the efforts of decentralized applications in the Ethereum network purposeless.

On November 1, the Ethereum development team and the founder of Solidity warned users and developers against a bug that allowed variables to be overwritten in storage.

Variables in a smart contract are agreements made between two or more parties. Thus, if an attacker can gain access to the storage and alters the variables, crucial agreements in decentralized applications can be affected and funds may be extracted, which may pressure developers to discard previous smart contract-based projects to recompile contracts.

Ethereum developers including Ansel Lindner stated that the development of an Ethereum application is failing to operate because of this bug.

"Imagine spending a year building an app for eth, just to find out the thing doesn't work," wrote Lindner.

He further noted that much like the memory bugs in Geth that continued to negatively affect the network for weeks, the recent smart contract bug will most likely lead to a series of other potentially fatal bugs.

"I could agree that it's a molehill on the side of a big mountain of other similar potentially fatal bugs," Lindner added.

Reitwiessner explains that luckily, Ethereum multi-signature wallet contracts are not affected. However, contracts containing two or more contracts will high likely be affected.

"The following contracts may be affected: Contracts containing two or more contiguous state variables where the sum of their sizes is less than 256 bits and the first state variable is not a signed integer and not of bytesNN type," Reitwiessner wrote.

Reitwiesnner recommended developers to deactivate and remove funds from already deployed smart contracts and compile new agreements using the Solidity release 0.4.4. Failure to do so may result in the loss of funds and may hugely impact decentralized applications that rely on these contracts.

To date, the Ethereum development team have discovered 10 vulnerable Ethereum smart contracts, 7 of which were exploitable.

At its core, bitcoin is about giving users better control of their money.

Often called "programmable money", bitcoin has scripts that limit how future bitcoin transactions can be spent (and that control variables like who can spend them). One such script ensures the correct person is spending the bitcoin by checking if the correct signature was used before unlocking and sending the funds.  This week, Blockstream core tech developer Russell O'Connor revealed he's been testing a couple of new scripts on an Elements Alpha sidechain (which is pegged to the bitcoin testnet) that could add new functionality.

Called "covenants", the new style of scripts potentially opens up possibilities for how bitcoin users can control, or restrict, spending of their money — possibly for their protection. (This is an idea that was previously explored by researchers Malte Möser, Ittay Eyal, and Emin Gun Sirer). One use case for these scripts is to help users rein in their coins in the case of a hack (an all too common occurrence in bitcoin).

When asked what he thinks of the new covenant work, Eyal said it was potentially a boon to bitcoin users who may be worried about losing their bitcoins or otherwise having them compromised or stolen.

Extending bitcoin's scripts

The idea is notable as a script that can limit how bitcoins can be spent hasn't been implemented in bitcoin before, a fact noted by Eyal.

In particular, there are two new covenant scripts that Blockstream explored, each of which take parameters and outputs whether the script is valid, or whether or not the transaction is currently spendable based on its restrictions.

It's worth noting that bitcoin's scripting system is currently quite simple for security's sake. There aren't limitless rules in bitcoin right now because new additions can be potentially dangerous and developers note that they take time to test.

This is where sidechains may come in handy, although they are not yet pinned to the main blockchain.

Bitcoin startup Blockstream has been working on these interoperable blockchains for experimenting with new features that could potentially be added to bitcoin since June of last year, and this is an example of how these new chains can be used to test new features.

These new proposed opcodes may work as the foundations for new functionalities, ones that could even come to help stop bitcoin exchanges and users from losing stolen funds.

 

Umbra, launched for privacy, is a new crypto currency aimed at privacy. With so many ways to use it, it's no wonder so many are using it today- it was built primarily for security and has many secondary features, like opening up a chat lobby or creating a marketplace

that's completely anonymous. Interested? Let's take a look at it.

 

Privacy

Built for privacy, the Umbra project was created open-source and has more security features than most crypto currencies do, on top of having excellent usability. Umbra allows you to stack additional security measures on top of the existing ones built into the client, so attackers have multiple barriers to break to find who you are and more. Plus, the messaging platform is built for Tor and L2P, so you can carry out your transactions with even more security!

 

Encrypted Messaging

Encryption is one thing built into the Umbra platform, and it's one of the most integral features that provide security to it. Many messages do provide good security and good quality, but many of them expose your IP to centralized servers. Umbra allows you to message with decentralized nodes that don't expose your IP, making the platform a much better choice if you plan on doing something with that

level of secrecy. As mentioned before, Umbra features L2P and Tor, so it's possible to further encrypt yourself! Their messaging platform provides most of the normal things in such a service, with private and public channels, and even direct messages!

 

ShadowCash

Umbra's system uses ShadowCash, an anonymous cash system that allows nearly completely anonymous transactions while still allowing seamlessly easy transactions to occur. Similarly to Monero, ShadowCash operates on dual-key stealth addresses and ring signatures for security. It's even possible to stake ShadowCash, at an annual rate of 2%. You an also receive transactions through both a public and secret address; funds can be seamlessly transferred to either wallet in seconds. If you wish to opt in for more secure transfers, it's recommended that you use the private wallet, and everyday transactions are more easy to use through the public wallet.

 

Marketplaces

Online marketplaces require lots of anonymity and security, and Umbra realizes this. While it is still under development and is still constantly being tested, their decentralized marketplace has already received lots of hype and support from various large media outlets, and it's expected that the marketplace will become the first of its kind - an inter-dependent, decentralized marketplace that will forever change the way people look at markets.

 

Conclusion

Umbra has many very secure and easy-to-use features that don't require lots of crypto experience, and the client GUI is especially friendly to new users in the Crypto world as well as the more experienced. With so much potential and so many ways to use their platform, Umbra is looking like it'll become a hit among the crypto community in no time!

 

ShadowCash Specifications

Block time: 60's

Difficulty re-target: every block

Nominal stake interest: 2% (PoSv3 – static inflation annually)

Min. stake age: 8 hours (no max age)

P2P port: 51737

RPC port: 51736

 

Read more about the Shadow project here. Information about Umbra can be found here. 

The recent DDoS attack on some of the major websites on the internet has renewed interests in the decentralized internet. While there are multiple initiatives concerning blockchain technology and decentralized network in development, the DDoS attack is expected to accelerate the process.

The CTO of Golem, Piotr Janiuk has recently explained that by decentralizing the internet using peer to peer technology the chances of such attacks can be minimized. He believes that the attack was a result of an attacker or a group of attackers exploiting one or more single points of failures on the internet.

One such decentralized internet project is known as SAFE Network where safe stands for Secure Access for Everyone. The SAFE Network is powered using the unused hard drive space, processing power and data connection of its users. It uses MaidSafe crypto tokens as a medium of exchange on the network. By distributing data and processing power across the network, decentralized internet platform ensures much higher security and privacy to its users.

MaidSafe's CEO David Irvine was quoted by a tech publication saying,

"DDOS depends on a target, in SAFE the target is everyone's computers. An analogy would be DDOS is like swatting a large fly, in SAFE the large fly is a mass swarm of mossies which makes it hard even with 8 arms filled with fly swatters."

DDoS attacks involve hitting a server with tons to requests with an intention of overloading it and shutting it down. By doing so, the attacker effectively brings down the applications running on that server. However, in the case of MaidSafe, the Opportunistic Caching feature creates copies of requested data. This, in turn, speeds up the websites and other data feeds as the number of requests increases. Such a feature can make conventional DDoS attacks ineffective against decentralized internet protocols.