Cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb officially announced that they will be delisting Monero (XMR) from their trading platform as of June 1. According to local media outlet Newsway, Bithumb’s delisting auditory board decided to permanently remove the coin after it was provisionally delisted in April. Recently, Monero has been in the spotlight due to reports of Telegram users using XMR to purchase illegal pornographic material — much of which involved minors. Monero reportedly the Nth room’s favorite crypto Due to the security infrastructure that protects the identities behind XMR transactions, Monero was allegedly the preferred crypto used by the sexual video ring. …

Is Bitcoin’s current rally just a bull trap, or is it actually headed for the moon? Trader Alessio Rastani and co-founder of Wintermute Trading, Yoann Turpin, explain why Bitcoin’s upward momentum may be impulsive in nature rather than corrective. Don’t miss the latest episode of Cointelegraph’s crypto market discussions for further analysis of the long term future of Bitcoin and a glance at which altcoins are looking promising at the moment! Bitcoin to Keep Going Higher? Rastani is a believer in Elliott Wave Theory. According to Investopedia, Elliott Wave Theory is a method of technical analysis that identifies impulsive and …

When Norwegian millionaire Tom Hagen reported that his wife had been kidnapped in October 2018, included was a ransom note demanding $10 million worth of the cryptocurrency Monero. Now, after Hagen’s arrest by local authorities on April 28 on suspicion for the murder of Anne-Elisabeth Hagen, it seems as if the ransom demand could have simply been a way to cover up the crime. The case has gripped the nation and Reuters reported on April 29 that Police Lawyer Aase Kjustad Eriksson told a news conference that, after an 18 month investigation, the police have now had “reason to suspect …

Incognito is a new privacy and interoperability project that seeks to anonymize the tokens of every other blockchain. As part of that goal, it is launching private versions of leading Ethereum (ETH) decentralized finance platforms. Announced on April 24, the pKyber initiative is the first part of Incognito’s initiative to make DeFi private. First theorized in October, pKyber began full-scale testing on April 24. The team plans to release this to the Incognito mainnet on May 7. How does it work? Incognito is a standalone blockchain that focuses on private transactions. Its privacy technology is based on the same technologies …

An independent film touting the virtues of the privacy coin, Monero (XMR), briefly topped the U.S. box office charts earlier this month. The film accomplished this feat with a total gross of just $3,430 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Unabridged lecture on privacy coins tops US box office Monero Means Money, a self-distributed feature-length film praising the virtues of XMR momentarily stole the top-ranking slot at the U.S. box office. The film claims to “raise awareness for electronic and financial privacy rights.” With cinemas in lockdown, Monero Means Money’s $3,430 gross had the film sitting at the top of the box …

Slovakian cybersecurity firm ESET has reported some success in disrupting the workings of a previously undetected Monero (XMR)-mining botnet in Latin America. In an announcement on April 23, ESET said the malware had infected over 35,000 computers since May 2019, with 90% of compromised devices located in Peru. Researchers have had some success in tackling the threat ESET researchers have dubbed the botnet VictoryGate, noting that its main activity has been illicit Monero mining — also known as cryptojacking. This is the industry term for stealth crypto-mining attacks that work by installing malware that uses a computer’s processing power to …

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, voiced a low opinion of the idea of cryptocurrency mining via mobile phones. Tweeting on April 13, Buterin said mining on mobile phones “is a fool’s game,” referring to the announcement by mobile phone manufacturer giant HTC to allow users to mine Monero (XMR) through its blockchain phone, Exodus. Ethereum’s co-founder added the following in reaction to the announcement: “[It] goes against everything we know about hardware economies of scale and more likely to trick users with false hope than help them.” Furthermore, he added that “staking on phones,” on the other hand, is …

A kind of ransomware — a malware that encrypts user data and asks for a ransom to restore access to it — switched from Bitcoin (BTC) to Monero (XMR) to better protect the hackers’ identities. According to an April 11 report by cybersecurity news outlet BleepingComputer, using Monero will make it harder for law enforcement to track ransom payments to the hackers behind Sodinokibi. As the article mentions, Europol strategy analyst Jerek Jakubcek explained during a February webinar how anoncoins influence legal investigations: “Since the suspect used a combination of TOR and privacy coins, we could not trace the funds. …

Huobi Korea announced on April 8 that they would be ending support for Monero (XMR) trading starting on April 9, 2020. They stated that this was due to "low trading volumes and anonymity functions". They did not, however, reference the recent Nth room case, in which South Korean media has speculated the exploitation ring used XMR to complete anonymous transactions. According to the South Korean newspaper, Sisa Journal, headlines covering the sexual exploitation case remained rampant in the country, with many news outlets suggesting that Monero has been used for criminal acts, specifically in the Nth case. The quoted case …

Mobile phone manufacturer giant HTC will allow users to mine Monero (XMR) cryptocurrency through its blockchain phone, Exodus, according to an announcement made on April 10. The announcement said that thanks to the partnership with the ASIC chip design firm Midas Labs, the Taiwanese company would be able to mine Monero through an application called DeMiner, which will be available for download in Q2 2020. Saving costs in mining activity Due to growing concerns that cryptocurrency mining activity involves high energy consumption, and therefore high costs, HTC ensures that these levels can be reduced by transferring work to mobile devices. …

Consumer attitudes are changing towards banknotes and credit cards as reports suggest that the deadly coronavirus can spread by their use. The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) has, therefore, urged the central banks to consider developing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). BIS believes that under the current circumstance, CBDCs will quickly gain prominence. However, it has warned that this move could have a “severe impact on unbanked and older consumers.” Chamath Palihapitiya, the billionaire CEO of venture capital firm Social Capital, believes that the setting is right for Bitcoin (BTC) to shine. However, he does not find Bitcoin as the …

Cybersecurity firm, Guardicore Labs, revealed the identification of a malicious crypto-mining botnet that has been operating for nearly two years on April 1. The threat actor, dubbed ‘Vollgar’ based on its mining of the little-known altcoin, Vollar (VSD), targets Windows machines running MS-SQL servers — of which Guardicore estimates there are just 500,000 in existence worldwide. However, despite their scarcity, MS-SQL servers offer sizable processing power in addition to typically storing valuable information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details. Sophisticated crypto-mining malware network identified Once a server is infected, Vollgar “diligently and thoroughly kills other threat actors’ processes,” …