Cryptocurrency Daily Discussion - August 6, 2019 (GMT+0)

Daily Discussion - August 6, 2019 (GMT+0)
Vergecurrency's X17 mining algorithm is being exploited since 2+ months
I bought $1000 worth of the Top Ten Cryptos on January 1st, 2019 (July 2019 Update)
RenVM Testnet Launch | Bringing Interoperability to DeFi
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Spotted...960 BTC buy order on Binance...that’s over $11 million. Kaching!

Daily Discussion - August 6, 2019 (GMT+0)

Posted: 05 Aug 2019 05:14 PM PDT

Welcome to the Daily Discussion. Please read the disclaimer, guidelines, and rules before participating.

Disclaimer:

Though karma rules still apply, moderation is less stringent on this thread than on the rest of the sub. Therefore, consider all information posted here with several liberal heaps of salt, and always cross check any information you may read on this thread with known sources. Any trade information posted in this open thread may be highly misleading, and could be an attempt to manipulate new readers by known "pump and dump (PnD) groups" for their own profit. BEWARE of such practices and exercise utmost caution before acting on any trade tip mentioned here.

Rules:

All sub rules apply in this thread. The prior exemption for karma and age requirements is no longer in effect.
Discussion topics must be related to cryptocurrency.
Comments will be sorted by newest first.

submitted by /u/AutoModerator
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Vergecurrency's X17 mining algorithm is being exploited since 2+ months

Posted: 05 Aug 2019 11:00 PM PDT

Although my time is very limited currently there is always enough time to take a quick look at my favorite snake oil project Vergecurrency. Currently ranked around CMC 70 still one of the bigger projects, and basically a prime example how inferior tech, copy paste, some teenie style hype and false promises still lead to mulitmillion dollar valued coins.

A quick look at the block explorer was enough: one entity overtook the X17 mining algorithm months ago. See here: https://miningpoolstats.stream/verge-x17

The publicly known pools do not find blocks on this algorithm anymore. What is happening?

An unknown entity mines very fast subsequent blocks up to the current limit (6 blocks in 6 seconds is maximum I observed) on three different addresses. Since these mined blocks are special it is very easy to track how many blocks are mined every day by this entity: https://verge-blockchain.info/tx/651eb493f494d786bd633d1f07625b209540419cb6ad072710dbbc526364d236

You see the 0 XVG in the mining output transaction? All lead here: https://verge-blockchain.info/address/D5rspBySU33gsw15bHZ9Re1gQFmjYUPtuz

Take a quick look on the timeframe of the possible 500tx viewable in this explorer, calculate profit in 24hour with exploiting XVG. You also see these fast subsequent blocks are a pattern, no coincidence. ~570 blocks a day, mean 416.100XVG, or at current rates ~2.300$ a day.

Here is a list of the three addresses that are used for exploiting X17:

https://verge-blockchain.info/address/DF2ZaVNoxY7G92Ke5U1LfGhgkfdZWUqjnn ( 10135842.1 XVG so far )

https://verge-blockchain.info/address/D5bWnS2rViqGyEtiPjviRgmWhocdCGxBFh ( 10137386.2 XVG so far )

https://verge-blockchain.info/address/D5kzjye6MEC9uwJ4YwhZaEEJE3BTNryGML ( 10016095.5 XVG so far )

So in total the attacker silently mined 30.289.000 XVG over 2+ months, or ~212.000$ with unknown effort.

I can just assume all algorithms are vulnerable but the attacker wants to make profit and fly under the radar.

Stay safe and don't trust shiny whitepapers, fabulous advertising or snake oil community updates. Just trust the unfiltered underlying tech. Also dive your own favorite projects chain. Blockchains are awesome! :)

Edit: a XVG official commented trying to damage control. The link explaining how time drifts on blockchains can be used to exploit a chain and how they are created is no answer to the observations you can make on their X17 algorithm. In fact the attack explanation in this link should be close to what is happening on the chain.

I can also tell you, now after they tried to sell snake oil again, that the suprnova.cc admin who noticed the exploits in 2018 confirmed it already ;)

----

Want to tip a beer?

XMR: 49F7nLH6XcS8Nk3g8Y7NxtKqGw4nkKCuyamQK31owMFbF6xB8PD3PhWQYkfnq9wbi4AYYBoEYc1VXTYRQXgxVXKAJ5oMWnV

submitted by /u/Flenst
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I bought $1000 worth of the Top Ten Cryptos on January 1st, 2019 (July 2019 Update)

Posted: 05 Aug 2019 07:50 AM PDT

EXPERIMENT - Tracking Top 10 Cryptocurrencies of 2019 - Month Seven - UP 74%

Full blog post

tl;dr - July was a down month, but still up +74% in 2019. Bitcoin wins the month, overall Litecoin holds the smallest of leads, all cryptos in positive territory for the year except Stellar and XRP.

The Experiment:

Instead of hypothetically tracking cryptos, I made an actual $1000 investment, $100 in each of the Top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap as of the 1st of January 2018. I then repeated the experiment on the 1st of January 2019. Think of it as a lazy man's Index Fund (no weighting or rebalancing), less technical, more fun (for me at least), and hopefully still a proxy for the market as a whole - or at the very least an interesting snapshot of the 2019 crypto space. Trying to keep it simple and accessible for beginners and those looking to get into crypto but maybe not quite ready to jump in yet.

The Rules:

Buy $100 of each the Top 10 cryptocurrencies on January 1st, 2019. Run the experiment two years. Hold only. No selling. No trading. Report monthly. Compare loosely to the 2018 Top Ten Experiment.

Month Seven - Up 74%

https://i.redd.it/q1zu3e4m3ne31.png

July hit the 2019 Top Ten portfolio hard, with a nearly -40% drop since the end of June. All cryptos are in the red except Bitcoin and Tether. June showed sideways movement, but July decisively breaks the five month win streak (or more preciously, a four-month-win-plus-one-month-sideways streak). That said, the 2019 Top Ten portfolio is still up +74% on the year.

Ranking

https://i.redd.it/dsoc7m9u3ne31.png

Lots of movement this month. All of the Top Ten cryptos moved except Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple. Of note, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash which switched places with each other again, Stellar reclaimed its spot in the Top Ten, and EOS dropped two spots to #8.

Tron is now alone as the only Top Ten dropout and has been replaced by Binance Coin.

July Winners - Bitcoin, easily. All others (except Tether) were down double digits, with most falling over -20%.

July Losers - Tron, easily, losing nearly 1/3rd of its value, down -32% in July. EOS had a rough month too, dropping -26% and two places in the rankings.

For those keeping score, here is tally of which coins have the most monthly wins and loses during the first seven months of this experiment: Bitcoin distinguished itself from the pack this month by achieving its second monthly victory of the year. Bitcoin SV still has the most monthly loses: three out of the first seven months.

https://i.redd.it/mbqz58n04ne31.png

Overall update – Litecoin holds the smallest of leads, all cryptos in positive territory except Stellar and Ripple

Similar to last month, although Bitcoin makes the headlines, it's actually Litecoin that continues to perform best, up +214% on the year. My initial $100 investment in Litecoin is now worth $321. But for the second month in a row, Bitcoin made up a ton of ground, finishing July just a few percentage points behind Litecoin.

Stellar is at the bottom, down -28% so far in 2019, followed by Ripple, down -10%.

Total Market Cap for the entire cryptocurrency sector:

https://i.redd.it/y6pm81g64ne31.png

For the first time since February, the total crypto market cap decreased, losing about $13B in July. Still, the overall market cap remains over $300B, an increase of +143% since the beginning of 2019.

Bitcoin dominance:

https://i.redd.it/79c40ey84ne31.png

Bitcoin dominance leaped again in July, and now is close to 68%. This sets another record for Bitcoin dominance so far in the 2019 and 2018 Top Ten Experiments.

Overall return on investment from January 1st, 2019:

https://i.redd.it/aizrumub4ne31.png

In July I saw my overall return shrink by about $400, quite a hit. If I cashed out today, my $1,000 initial investment would return $1,744, a +74% gain. Not at all bad compared to the stock market: the return I would have received from investing that same $1000 on January 1st, 2019 in the the S&P 500 is about +17%, same as last month (see below).

Implications/Observations:

Although the overall market ended down on the month, it's still up 143% on the year. What's noteworthy this month is the absolute chasm that's opened between the performance of the market overall and the Top Ten cryptos that I started with at the beginning of 2019. My Top Ten group? Up 74%. That's only half the return of the overall market. Remember, in May, the gains from the Top Ten and the entire market were both exactly the same amount: +114%. This month, not even close. For two straight months, focusing only on the Top Ten has been a losing strategy. This is reminiscent of last year as at no point in the Top Ten 2018 Experiment did the Top Ten strategy outperform the overall market.

I'm also tracking the S&P 500 as part of my experiment to have a comparison point with other popular investments options. The S&P 500 was flat in July, still up +17% since the beginning of 2019. Solid gains, but of course nothing like what we've seen in crypto so far this year. The initial $1k investment I put into crypto would have yielded +$170 had it been redirected to the S&P compared to the $744 I'm currently up with the 2019 Top Ten Cryptos.

https://i.redd.it/dalip23i4ne31.png

Conclusion:

July was an obvious down month for crypto. I've been a bit delayed on the update this month so as I'm putting this together, crypto's been on a bit of an upward run, with Bitcoin looking like it's about to test $12k. The monthly nature of these updates prevents me from getting caught up in the daily fluctuations of the crypto market and allows a bit of perspective. Taking a step back, it looks, at this point at least, like July was a bit of a speedbump, but by no means signals a crypto bear market - the overall trend of the first half of 2019 is unmistakably positive.

If you're just finding this experiment now, here's the backstory: On the 1st of January, 2018, I bought $100 each of the Top Ten cryptos at the time for a total investment of $1000 to see how they would perform over the year. I tracked the experiment and reported each month. The result? I ended 2018 down -85%, my $1000 worth only $150.

After last year's experiment ended, I decided to do two things:

Extend the Top Ten 2018 Crypto project one more year. The experiment is now in its 19th month. You can check out the latest update here.
What you're reading now is the 7th report of a parallel project: this year I repeated the experiment, purchasing another $1000 ($100 each) of the new Top Ten cryptos as of January 1st, 2019.

Thanks for reading and the support for the experiment. I hope you've found it helpful. I continue to be committed to seeing this process through and reporting along the way. Feel free to reach out with any questions and stay tuned for progress reports.

submitted by /u/Joe-M-4
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RenVM Testnet Launch | Bringing Interoperability to DeFi

Posted: 05 Aug 2019 04:46 PM PDT