This week, at least two seperate bugs related to Monero (XMR) were reported by crypto community members. The first one allegedly lead to a Ledger hardware wallet user losing around 1,680 XMR (nearly $80,000, as of press time) of his funds after making a transaction. The other vulnerability allowed hackers to make fake XMR deposits to cryptocurrency exchanges. Anonymity above all: What is Monero and how it works Monero is a cryptocurrency with an additional focus on anonymity. It was launched in April 2014, when Bitcointalk.org user thankful_for_today forked the codebase of Bytecoin into the name BitMonero. To create the …

Charlie Lee, Litecoin’s (LTC) creator, declared that he will focus on making the major cryptocurrency more fungible in a tweet Jan. 28. Lee stated in the tweet that “fungibility is the only property of sound money that is missing from Bitcoin & Litecoin,” adding that “the next battleground will be on fungibility and privacy.” The tweet’s conclusion is that the developer wants to zero in on implementing private transactions in Litecoin, stating: “I am now focused on making Litecoin more fungible by adding Confidential Transactions.” In reply to another tweet in the same thread, Lee explained that confidential transactions could …

Following concerns that startup Haven Protocol was a “crypto exit scam,” an alleged member of its team reassured the community that the project was intact in a Twitter thread Jan. 21. Haven Protocol community members had raised the alarm over the intermittent silences and lack of code transparency from a core developer of anonymity-oriented altcoin Haven (XHV). According to one of the tweets in the thread from team member “Donjor” Jan. 21, the controversy was sparked by an intervention from a Haven marketing contributor in a thread on public chat channel Discord. The contributor, who goes by the moniker of …

The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has proposed an air traffic management blockchain, according to a paper published on the agency’s official website on Jan. 10. The proposed system would employ an open-source permissioned blockchain to enable secure, private and anonymous communication with air traffic services. The document notes: “This framework features certificate authority, smart contract support, and higher-bandwidth communication channels for private information that may be used for secure communication between any specific aircraft and any particular authorized member.” The engineering prototype of the system reportedly employed the Hyperledger Fabric and demonstrated that such infrastructure could …

Ten years ago, on Jan. 3, 2009, the Bitcoin (BTC) network was created as Satoshi Nakamoto mined the genesis block, also known as block number zero. However, the identity behind the Bitcoin creator has remained one of the biggest mysteries in the crypto community since the original white paper was published by Satoshi in October 2008. Various journalistic investigations have attempted to unveil the person or group of individuals responsible for creating the top digital currency, but Satoshi’s real identity remains unknown to date. On his P2P Foundation profile — which went inactive in late 2010 — Nakamoto identifies as …

Mastercard has filed a patent for a method of anonymizing transactions on a blockchain, according to an application published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Dec. 9. The filing outlines that “the use of one or more intermediary addresses to obscure the source and destination of funds in a blockchain transaction” can be used in order to “increase anonymity of entities associated with blockchain addresses.” The proposed technical solution would entail a series of “anonymization request[s]” designed to anonymize the transactions themselves, rather than just the user behind any individual wallet. This would “result in showing the …

Taiwan’s legislature has passed amendments to existing anti-money laundering (AML) and counter terrorism financing (CFT) laws to place new requirements on crypto exchanges. The development was reported by FocusTaiwan, the English language news website of Taiwan's national news agency, on Nov. 2. Under the new changes to Taiwan’s Money Laundering Control Act and Terrorism Financing Prevention Act, the Legislative Yuan — the Taiwan-based unicameral legislature of the Republic of China — has given Taiwan's Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) the authority to bar anonymous crypto transactions. The FSC can now demand that exchange operators require their customers to register using real-names: …

Dutch multinational banking and financial services corporation ING confirmed the release of its open source blockchain tool Zero-Knowledge Set Membership (ZKSM) in a press release Monday, Oct. 21. ZKSM, which functions as a privacy “improvement” to distributed ledger technology (DLT), such as blockchain, aims to provide validation of certain alphanumeric data without compromising that data’s overall security. According to ING, the tool allows a blockchain to confirm a piece of data belongs to a specified set, while not revealing its full characteristics. For example, as the press release elaborates, an E.U. citizen could prove he or she is from the …

This week, the developers of Monero (XMR) patched a bug that could allow an attacker to ‘burn’ the funds of an organization’s wallet. The breach was initially revealed by a community member, and XMR developers were quick enough to fix it before any damage was done. Anonymity above all: How Monero works Simply put, Monero (XMR) is a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin (BTC), but with an additional focus on anonymity. It was established in 2014, when bitcointalk.org user thankful_for_today forked the codebase of Bytecoin into the name BitMonero. To establish the new coin, he used ideas that were first outlined in …

XMRWallet.com, an open-source, client-side Monero wallet provider, has released a new web-based wallet for the Tor web browser, the company announced in a Reddit post on Aug. 28. The post notes that there had been a high demand for such a wallet from XMR users. Now they can send and receive the private and untraceable cryptocurrency through what claims to be the first Monero web wallet for the distributed and anonymous Tor network. Within the Tor network, Monero (XMR) is the cryptocurrency of choice among many users. For the advocates of a truly decentralized future and financial anonymity, the pairing …

The U.S. Congress Subcommittee on Terrorism and Illicit Finance has discussed various methods of terrorism financing with cryptocurrency, according to an official press release on the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee September 7. In order to monitor threats and methods of terrorist financing, the hearing considered major means of transferring funds by terrorists, including traditional financial institutions and semi-formal methods, such as the hawala exchange system, as well as cryptocurrencies. However, while al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other terrorist groups have all attempted to raise funds through crypto, they have not had great success, as Congress concluded in …

Members of the European Parliament along with blockchain experts met Tuesday, September 4, to discuss possible regulations for Initial Coin Offerings (ICO). At the recent EU event entitled “Regulating ICOs — Is the Crowdfunding Proposal what we were looking for?” the attendees examined the potential complications currently arising in the ICO industry. Ashley Fox, a British Member of the European Parliament, pinpointed three main issues to consider at the meeting: challenges faced by ICOs in raising capital, the existing regulatory approaches on the matter, and the future perspectives of the industry. In his testimony, Peter Kerstens, chairman of the the …