Anyone have an idea when the STEEM withdrawals will be restored at Polo?> > So You Want To Become A Bitcoin Millionaire?)submitted by Luke Dashjr - Bitcoin Expert - announcementTech & Science BitcoinAn online giveaway of 1,000 bitcoins (worth $580,000) has prompted speculation that it is part of an elaborate money laundering scheme by hackers who stole $70m worth of the cryptocurrency from an exchange.On Tuesday, August 2, the popular cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex (BFX) revealed that it had suffered a major hack, resulting in the loss of 119,756 bitcoins.On Wednesday, an anonymous Reddit user announced the giveaway under the moniker rekcahxfb—a reversal of BFX hacker.“Post your [bitcoin] address below,” the post read.“One lucky winner will receive 1000 BTC [bitcoins] after one week from now.” Tech & Science - Get the best of Newsweek delivered to your inboxSome Reddit users were quick to point out how such a giveaway could work as a guise for money laundering, encouraging other users not to get involved.“He’s going to send the money to an account he controls so that identity can trade uninhibited, claiming it only received stolen funds instead of actually stealing them,” one user speculated.Another user stated: It provides an additional ‘plausible deniability’ to any prosecution.

Receiving stolen funds is a lesser crime than hacking, and theft of tens of millions of dollars.”Following the news of the hack of BFX, the price of bitcoin fell by around 20 percent amid fears from investors about more hacks.It is not yet clear how the hack took place or who was behind it and hacks to other exchanges, such as MtGox in 2013, have still not resulted in the lost funds being recovered.All trading has been suspended on Bitfinex, as well as all withdrawals from the exchange, while an investigation is carried out.“The theft is being reported to—and we are co-operating with—law enforcement,” BFX said in a blog post following the theft.litecoin and bitcoin comparison“We are deeply concerned about this issue and we are committing every resource to try to resolve it.”unete bitcoinIn just a couple days, the Bitcoin community will celebrate its next block halving.bitcoin ether market cap

Every four years, as coded by its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, the Bitcoin network is scheduled to reduce coin supply by 50%.In 2012, it went down from 50 bitcoins per block to 25 bitcoins per block, and in a few days, it will become just 12.5 coins per block.bitcoin speculation redditGiven the coded eventual limit on all bitcoin (the max is 21 million), and this reduction in supply approximately every four years (more precisely, every 210,000 blocks), you might think this means Bitcoin is now even more rare... after all, miners who solve a block will only be awarded 12.5 coins, not 25 as they are today.iptv server bitcoinYet just days away from this momentous hurdle for the world's largest cryptocurrency, the price is not skyrocketing.bitcoin cours 2014

On popular US-regulated exchange Coinbase, Bitcoin is down US $30 over the last 24 hours.Why isn't it skyrocketing in anticipation of permanently lower new coin supply?I don't know for certain, but some in the community are taking a contrarian view of the block halving - they don't like it at all from a technical viewpoint.As Coindesk recently: "One miner ... has expressed serious concern that, when the drop in the block subsidy occurs, it could trigger a chain of events that could lead to an inevitable hard fork.Chandler Guo is the founder of Bitbank, a China-based digital currency company that runs one of the largest mining operations in the world, BW. accounts for approximately 10% of the total hashrate, an impressive feat considering it launched only two years ago.Guo said he fears that if the price of bitcoin does not appreciate significantly before or immediately after halving, too much hashrate will drop off the network due to unprofitable mining, making transaction verification virtually impossible.

As you can probably deduce, Guo is an influential miner due to the sheer amount of hashrate he commands, so his view on this should not be casually dismissed without reflection.Even if this nightmare scenario miner drop-off doesn't occur after the halving, sending the price of a non-functional Bitcoin network to $0, there are problems in the community worth thinking about.It's become a toxic place, for one.Posts are routinely censored or deleted from the leading reddit community dedicated to Bitcoin discussion, causing less censored alternates to spring up.A string of passionate Bitcoin advocates and technical engineers have been replaced by a largely anonymous chorus of troll accounts on reddit and Twitter, where everything from blocksize proposals, to Bitcoin accepting businesses, to media types like little old me get pounded over the rocks relentlessly.Even the community-driven podcasts and shows have taken on a darker turn, leading to interviews where the guest is often mocked or grilled over their technical knowledge of the blockchain.

Some in the community have even quietly speculated as to whether Bitcoin has been a sustained victim of some kind of bizarre astroturfing campaign to make cryptocurrency seem illegitimate.I don't know why any governments or banks would want to make a technology where people mine money in their basement or dorm room seem goofy... I have no idea at all why they would want to discredit such an idea!All of this matters only because currency is, in part, a social network and an acceptance network... and a community.And more recently, I find myself getting drinks with the Ethereum guys, not the Bitcoin worriers.They tell better jokes.Well, okay, they tell jokes.They explain things when you have a technical question, rather than shooing you away or questioning your loyalty to the project.They aren't yet obsessed with the price of their currency, ether.This makes them better at proselytizing their product and their vision of where this industry might venture.A broad overview in today's Guardian, entitled "Blockchain: the answer to life, the universe and everything?", did a phenomenal job of exploring how Ethereum's blockchain - yes, a blockchain completely outside of bitter libertarian Bitcoin loyalist land - might just be able to solve many of society's and many of the business community's lingering problems in the years ahead.