Crypto scammers have used YouTube to steal USD $150K worth of Bitcoin from victims, by impersonating SpaceX and Elon Musk. 

According to a 9 June report on Bleeping Computer, scammers hacked genuine YouTube accounts and added branding to make them look like Elon Musk’s official SpaceX channel. 

Archived footage of Musk was then used to put on fake ‘live events’, in which people could scan a QR code to pay Bitcoin (BTC) and ‘join the live conversation’. 

Capitalising on the interest surrounding SpaceX, following its recent launch of the world’ first private manned spacecraft, it’s not surprising the event proved popular. 

In fact, at least 80,000 people watched the ‘live stream’, presumably fooled by the con, and 15.31 BTC was handed over by victims. One Bitcoin address received 29 transactions consisting of 4.08 BTC, worth nearly $40K, while the other received 84 payments consisting of 11.23 BTC, worth nearly $110K. 

It’s not the first time Musk has been impersonated in crypto scams, and in February he took to Twitter to urge people to report scams as soon as they saw them. However, things aren’t so easy, with scammers becoming ever more sophisticated and seemingly one-step ahead of the platforms. 

Musk isn’t alone in being used by crypto scammers either. It is an increasingly troubling issue for many celebrities and high-profile business people. In February, Qatari billionaire Wissam Al Mana launched legal action against Facebook in response to his image being used on crypto scam adverts appearing on the social media platform. Last year Kate Winslet, Andrew Forest, Bill Gates, and Richard Branson were also hijacked by crypto scammers behind the audacious fake Bitcoin investment scheme known as “Bitcoin Code” or “Bitcoin Profit.” 

AYO.NEWS says:

It really does seem that the major social media platforms are failing to stem the tide of sophisticated crypto scams, so it’s critical that people employ their own due diligence before parting with crypto. 

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020

Earlier today a whale moved a massive $1.3 billion in Bitcoin (BTC), sending the crypto world into a frenzy of speculation. 

With BTC still hovering just below the magic $10K mark, according to blockchain.com data, an unknown Bitcoin trader moved over 132,255 BTC, worth approximately USD $1.3BN, in three transactions over the space of a few minutes. 

Many suspect the unknown entity was an exchange or custodial service, with some suggesting Coinbase as a likely candidate. 

Though a record in terms of fiat value, it is not the biggest movement in terms of number of BTC – that record was set way back in 2011, when a mind blowing 500,000 BTC was shifted. Of course, at the time it was ‘only’ worth $1.32 million. However, at today’s prices, it would be worth a jaw dropping $4.9 billion! 

AYO.NEWS says:

With so much instability in the world right now, and the COVID-19 crisis seemingly having triggered mass social unrest and an unprecedented economic catastrophe, many are expecting Bitcoin to embark on a dramatic bull run. 

Just yesterday we reported that the European Central Bank (ECB) is preparing for a tsunami of job losses and bad debt across the continent, while in the United States record unemployment and spreading social unrest is the backdrop for constant money printing, as the authorities attempt to stave off economic and financial collapse. 

Was today’s major BTC movement a signal of further preparations on the part of crypto firms? Interesting times.

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020

The European Central Bank (ECB) is preparing for a COVID-19 induced bad debt tsunami that could well prompt many to turn to Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptos. 

Europe prepares for economic meltdown

As the ECB doubles its COVID-19 stimulus support measures to a staggering €1.35 trillion, officials are bracing an unprecedented economic crisis.

According to a 10 June Reuters report, insider sources have confirmed the ECB is planning to set up a ‘bad bank’ to handle what could be hundreds of billions of euros of unpaid loans resulting from a COVID-19 induced economic collapse. 

It seems the ECB is expecting mass unemployment across the continent, as thousands of businesses collapse in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdowns, and a resulting mass defaulting on debt obligations, including credit cards, personal and business loans, mortgages, and car financing agreements. 

Needless to say, for a continent that was already carrying an estimated USD $500 billion bad debt before the crisis hit, the results could be utterly catastrophic. And that’s not even taking into account the growing likelihood that more waves of COVID-19 will force further lockdowns.

To try and mitigate the effects of the upcoming financial crisis, the ECB is said to be looking at setting up an asset management company, or so-called ‘bad bank’, to protect other lenders from the worst impacts. 

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the US Federal Reserve is also accelerating its money printing, even though its balance sheet now stands at an eye watering $7.16 trillion. Illustrating the gravity of the situation, $3 trillion has been added in just three months. 

Crypto world watches with sense of inevitability

Despite many in the traditional financial world having their heads buried very deeply in the sand, cryptocurrency advocates have been watching events unfold with a sense of inevitability. 

Last month, as the 629,000 BTC block was mined during the halving, a message was inserted by f2pool reading “NYTimes 09/Apr/2020 With $2.3T Injection, Fed’s Plan Far Exceeds 2008 Rescue”. The message was a nod to the note left in the Genesis block back in 2009, by the enigmatic Satoshi Nakamoto, that read “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”

These ominous messages are a reminder that Bitcoin was created out of the ashes of the 2007-2008 Financial crisis, as an alternative to what many saw as a doomed fiat monetary system. Now, as a crisis of a magnitude of order greater in scale approaches, many think we will now see Bitcoin truly come of age. 

Indeed, over the past few months we’ve seen a flood of experts and analysts make startling predictions of an imminent Bitcoin (BTC) bull run. Just yesterday we reported that Cane Island Alternative Advisors’ Timothy Peterson had noted an “almost perfect” correlation with 2013, when Bitcoin embarked on a 700% bull run, and pointed out that if the correlation continues, it could result in $75K BTC within weeks. 

Will the traditional monetary and economic system manage to recover from the COVID-19 crisis by hiding a mountain of bad debt and furiously printing more money? Or will we see the wheels finally come off and a systematic collapse, resulting in a dramatic ascendency of cryptocurrencies and digital assets like Bitcoin (BTC)? 

With 2020 looking more like a dystopian science fiction movie everyday, all bets are off. 

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020

Through a variety of partnerships with some of the biggest teams in the sports world, cryptocurrencies have started to become more and more used in promoting sports and in online betting.

While cryptocurrencies have many implementations, especially in the financial sectors, the sports industry has also started embracing their use.

Sports teams and organizations have used digital tokens for different purposes, such as giving fans exclusive access to limited content and items, creating fan tokens, buying tickets, and so forth. Back in 2014, the NBA team Sacramento Kings allowed fans to purchase tickets and merchandise with Bitcoin (BTC). In June 2019, the Portuguese football club, Benfica, collaborated with the cryptocurrency platform, Utrust, to accept crypto payment for merchandise and tickets. Supporters were able to use Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Utrust tokens to make purchases on the platform.

Also, some of the biggest teams in Europe, such as Juventus, Paris Saint-Germain, West Ham, and Roma, have used the tokenization power of blockchain provided by their partnerships with the blockchain-based, fan engagement website Socios to enable fans to create their own fan tokens.

Fans could then use their tokens on the platform to vote on matters such as changing the club’s jersey or accessing exclusive content and collectibles.

Socios’s platform is powered by its proprietary cryptocurrency called Chiliz. The company made headlines when it announced that Chiliz will be listed on the top cryptocurrency exchange, Binance.

This partnership represented a huge stride for the development and adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency use in the world of sports. According to Socios CEO Alex Dreyfus, there are more than 3.5 billion sports fans worldwide, which can mean a huge untapped sector for cryptocurrencies.

For many centuries, sports and betting have gone hand in hand. As the world is transiting online, online sports betting sites have also appreciated in popularity.

The transactional benefits of cryptocurrencies enabled many of these sites to facilitate fast gambling and betting for punters from all over the world, as cryptos do not rely on banks. While most sportsbook sites usually accept only Bitcoin or Ethereum, the 1xBit site, for example, supports over 20 types of cryptos, including QTUM, Stratis, NEO, EOS, Monero, Zcash, and many others.

Crypto betting sportsbooks have become quite successful in the past few years, some of them becoming major sponsors for well-known sports teams. For example, two major English Premier League football teams were sponsored by crypto gambling sites.

Arsenal received sponsorship in 2018 from the gambling platform CashBet. Through the collaboration, the company advertised its native crypto, CashBet Coin, during the Premier League season when Arsenal played its home games at the Emirates Stadium.

Online sports betting has also benefited from the introduction of cryptos as payment options. Cryptocurrencies are a more convenient way for punters to make transfers to and from their betting accounts, as there is no personal name, address, telephone number, etc., linked to the asset. While some crypto gambling sites ask for additional data when registering, 1xBit is a fully anonymous sportsbook. Signing up is just one click away, and you do not have to provide any sensitive information. What’s more, new users can benefit from a generous welcome bonus of up to 7 BTC.

Accounts can easily be funded through a variety of cryptos, with more than 20 options to choose from. Of course, you are not limited to using only one crypto when betting, as all 1xBit users have multi-currency accounts. As the sportsbook only accepts cryptos, all transactions are feeless and facilitate fast payouts.

1xBit features a multitude of sports, including traditional and esports matches and tournaments, where you can find high odds on many events.

Could Bitcoin (BTC) hit USD $75,000 within weeks? As impossible as it sounds, one analyst says it could happen. 

According to Cane Island Alternative Advisors’ Timothy Peterson, BTC is now displaying an “almost perfect” correlation with 2013, when Bitcoin embarked on a 700% bull run, which if repeated from today’s price would give an incredible $75,000 within weeks.

Peterson claims Bitcoin’s recovery from its mid-March lows of $3,600 has tracked 2013’s price action almost perfectly. 

The 2020 #bitcoin recovery has tracked the 2013a recovery almost perfectly. Are we weeks away from $75,000? pic.twitter.com/3u3xjDMmgl

— Timothy Peterson (@nsquaredcrypto) June 7, 2020

Despite the world of crypto being very different now than in 2013, when there was basically just one major exchange, the now defunct Mt. Gox, many notable figures have been making dramatic Bitcoin price predictions over the past few months. 

Last week we reported Blockstream Co-founder and CEO Adam Black had become the latest crypto heavyweight to predict BTC is set for a major bull run, while the previous week popular social media trader, investor and entrepreneur Credible Crypto had claimed the last 896 days were “simply one massive re-accumulation phase before the run to 100K+ bitcoin”. 

Notably, Greyscale’s Bitcoin Trust is also engaging in an unprecedented Bitcoin buying spree, scooping it up faster than it can be mined, and Robert Kiyosaki, author of New York Times bestseller Rich Dad Poor Dad, has advised people to buy Bitcoin to save themselves from a coming economic crash. 

On the flip slide, many analysts are convinced Bitcoin will stay muted, unable to maintain even a breakout from the $10K barrier. Indeed, last week Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin took to Twitter to diss Bitcoin and urge the crypto community to move on, and even outspoken crypto advocate John McAfee has backtracked on his prediction of $1m Bitcoin, claiming it was just a joke.   

AYO.NEWS says:

$75K Bitcoin within weeks sounds insane, but then again, global lockdowns and quarantines would have sounded insane in January, and some of the scenes we’re seeing from the United States right now are straight from a dystopian science fiction movie, so who the hell knows anymore? Crazy times. 

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020

Major US-based crypto exchange Coinbase was temporarily overwhelmed by a traffic spike during Bitcoin’s latest surge towards $10K. 

Exchange overwhelmed by 5x normal traffic

According to a 6 June blog post from a Coinbase software engineer, the exchange saw its autoscaling overwhelmed when hit by 5x normal volume for more than 4 minutes at around 16:05 PDT on 1 June, as the price of Bitcoin (BTC) neared $10K. 

The traffic spike hit several internal Coinbase services, increasing latency, and leaving many users unable to login. Apparently, the request error rate hit 50% at one point during the incident. 

At 16:20, Coinbase redeployed the API, increasing the number of machines dealing with the traffic. Though this led to another two-minute outage, the exchange was back fully operational shortly after. 

It is the fifth time Coinbase has gone offline during the past three months during significant Bitcoin (BTC) price moves. 

Coinbase failing users at most pressing times

On 1 Just, when Bitcoin rallied from around $9,600 to $10,380 in under an hour, Coinbase users were unable to access their accounts. On 9 May, two days before the halving, BTC crashed by nearly $2,000 in under 24 hours, and again, Coinbase users found the service unavailable. On 29 April, BTC rose almost 12%… and yet again users were locked out. And, on 12 March, during that month’s crash, some Coinbase users found themselves unable to login and make trades.

Coinbase has said the issues were caused by “connectivity issues” on 1 June, 9 May, and 29 April, and network congestion on 12 March.

AYO.NEWS says:

To a casual observer, this may not seem like a big deal, but it is potentially very serious. Coinbase is proving itself unreliable just at the times when it is most important for traders to be able to access their accounts – obviously leading to significant potential losses for some. 

Furthermore, these outages are rapidly eroding trust in the platform, with some social media users openly speculating that the United States’ busiest exchange is intentionally crashing its own website to manipulate the markets. 

While Coinbase’s technical explanations may well be perfectly valid, with several major exchanges already being accused of market manipulation in the law courts, Coinbase can’t afford to be looking suspicious right now. 

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020