Bitcoin’s plunge extended to more than 25 percent Friday as the frenzy surrounding digital currencies faced one of its biggest tests yet.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency approached $10,000 as this week’s selloff entered a fourth day with increasing momentum. It touched a record high $19,511 on Monday. Other cryptocurrencies also tumbled, with bitcoin cash crashing more than 35 percent and ethereum losing more than 23 percent over the past 24 hours, according to coinmarketcap.com.
The losses represent a major test for the cryptocurrency industry and the blockchain technology that underpins it, which have rapidly entered the mainstream in recent weeks. Bears cast doubt on the value of the virtual assets, with UBS Group AG this week calling bitcoin the “biggest speculative bubble in history.” Bulls argue the technology is a game changer for the world of investment and finance. Both will be closely watching the outcome of the current selloff.
“The sharks are beginning to circle here, and the futures markets may give them a venue to strike,” said Ross Norman, chief executive officer of London-based bullion dealer Sharps Pixley Ltd., which offers gold in exchange for bitcoin. “Bitcoin’s been heavily driven by retail investors, but there’ll be some aggressive funds looking for the right opportunity to hammer this thing lower.”
Traders who bought the currency on futures exchanges using collateral may start facing margin calls following the price decline. Two venues launched products in recent weeks that required hefty security, with Cboe needing 44 percent to clear contracts, and the CME 47 percent. Brokers set safety nets even higher.
“There’s no doubt people who got in on margin will face some pressure here,” Norman said by phone from London. “The volumes weren’t huge, so it won’t be a major price driver, but for those caught on the wrong side it will hurt.”
Crypto Mania
Many of the recent news stories and market moves connected to cryptocurrencies appear to carry hallmarks of the mania phase of a bubble. Long Island Iced Tea Corp. shares rose as much as 289 percent after the unprofitable Hicksville, New York-based company rebranded itself Long Blockchain Corp. Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said on Thursday bitcoin isn’t functioning like a normal means of payment and is being used for speculation.
Still, cryptocurrencies are attracting established players. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is setting up a trading desk to make markets in digital currencies such as bitcoin, according to people with knowledge of the strategy. The bank aims to get the business running by the end of June, if not earlier, two of the people said.
The deep web, invisible web, or hidden web are parts of the World Wide Web whose contents are not indexed by standard search engines for any reason.
The opposite term to the deep web is the surface web. The deep web includes many very common uses such as web mail, online banking but also paid for services with a paywall such as a video on demand, and much more.
This part of the Internet is known as the Deep Web, and it is about 500 times the size of the Web that we know.
The Deep Web vs. The Dark Web
Deep Web is the portion of the Internet that is hidden from conventional search engines, as by encryption; the aggregate of unindexed websites
The Dark Webon the other hand, is defined as “the portion of the Internet that is intentionally hidden from search engines, uses masked IP addresses, and is accessible only with a special web browser: part ofthe deep web.” The key takeaway here is that the dark web is part of the deep web.
Deep Web Search Engines:
Here are some Deep Web Search Engines that crawl over the TOR network and bring the same result to your regular browser.
Understand onion routing is to start with the concept of proxy servers. A proxy server is a server that relays your connection through that server, which basically adds a step in the path of your data packets.
If someone traced your IP address, they’d see it as the proxy server’s IP address instead of your home address.
But proxy servers aren’t exactly anonymous. They keep logs of all the traffic that passes through, which means that they can actually point back to you if necessary.
For most activities, the proxy server is fine even though it’ll add a bit of latency to your connection. Your anonymity would not be entirely protected, however, if your proxy service was hit with a subpoena for your IP information.
Onion routing is like an advanced form of proxy routing. Instead of routing through a single unprotected server, it uses a network of nodes that constantly encrypt your data packets at every step.
Only at the end of this “chain” of onion nodes does your data become decrypted and sent to the final destination. In fact, only this “exit node” has the power to decrypt your message, so no other node can even see what you’re sending.
Who is playing most with Deep web
It is extremely easy to access the dark web and even easier to be detected on it if you don’t take precautions. If you are new to the deep web, this guide will help you on your way.
According to researchers, only 4% of the internet is visible to the general public.
Meaning that the remaining 96% of the internet is made up of “The Deep Web”.
Dark Web or Dark Net is a subset of the Deep Web where there are sites that sell drugs, hacking software, counterfeit money and more. We explain this further down the article if you are not up to speed.
According to the recent survey conducted by researchers Daniel Moore and Thomas Rid (in their book Cryptopolitik and the Darknet), it is found that 57% of the Dark Web is occupied by unauthorized contents like Pornography, Illicit Finances, Drug Hub, Weapon Trafficking, counterfeit currency flow and many more.
Before doing anything on the Dark Web or even learning about it, make sure you are protected with a VPN and Tor.
If you are looking to access hidden marketplace’s or darknet websites (with a .onion domain) then dark web access is done using the TOR network with the TOR browser bundle. TOR is the most widely used dark web browser.
How to Access Dark Web:
Step 1: VPN (Virtual Private Network) and make use of it hide your activities, use it ALL of the time, no matter if you are on TOR or not. This site here reviews the best VPN’s for use with TOR.
You should be taking your anonymity and security very seriously if you are visiting the Dark Web, especially if you are viewing any Darknet Markets.
Do not fool yourself and think that the ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) and Law Enforcement are not trying to track those who use Tor to access the Dark Web, they are, and they are good at it so don’t make it easy for them.
By using the simple VPN app, your dark web activities will be hidden from your ISP and government agencies as all of your internet usage will be encrypted. No one will even know you are using TOR, let alone browsing for darknet markets.
What’s even better is that the VPN will give you a fake IP address, in another country if you like, so even if Tor is compromised then the trace just leads back to somewhere else that can’t be linked to you.
How to Legally Accept a Drug Package as Per Police and Prosecutors
The other benefit of using a VPN is to prevent hackers stealing your identity and or personal files and photos from your computer.
You need to use a good VPN that keeps NO LOGS, fast performance, preferably accepts bitcoin as payment, has a kill switch for DNS leaks, and is compatible with TOR.
Step 2: Deep web site are not accessible by common browsers like Internet Explorer or Google Chrome. To get dark web access you will need to download the dark web browser called TOR browser bundle. Only get it from the official TOR website, never download it from anywhere else!
Now close all of your browsing windows and all apps connecting to the internet like Google Drive, Skype, OneDrive, iCloud etc.
Then open your VPN app and connect to another location other than where you are at, make sure to use theOpenVPN protocolas it is the most secure.
Open up your normal favorite browser and then download TOR
STEP 3: From here, you now have a good level of anonymity and security and you are able to gain access to .onion websites through your dark web browser.
Now you have dark web access you should Click HERE to view the Darknet Market List so you can visit some of the best black market websites on the Deep Web.
If you do want to check out some dark net markets then you should follow the guide for that specific market as it will show you step by step what to do to sign up, browse etc.
If you are looking for the biggest list of hidden deep web links go here so you can find exactly what you are looking for. We have compiled one of the biggest lists of tested .onion sites on the dark web complete with a search function, website name, description, categories, site status and even a screenshot of the landing page so you can see if your site is online or dead.
Keep it in Mind
DO NOT change the TOR browser window size unless you like living dangerously. The FEDS have programs that can match identities on random things such and matching time online and other things with the browser window size, I shit you not. If you don’t change the size then it is the same as most other people.
Please remember that TOR isn’t necessarily 100% anonymous, you should turn off JavaScript within the dark web browser settings to help.Disconnect your webcam or block the camera with some black tape. Hackers and governments have ways of getting into your computer and turning on the video and cameras.
You can have intimate images of you be used as blackmail or extortion, or even worse, used by the feds.
Disconnect your microphone or cover it with tape to muffle it good. The same goes for the microphone as the camera, the last thing you want is to be recorded saying incriminating things at home.
NEVER use your real name, photos, email, or even password that you have used before on the dark web. This is the fastest way to be tracked. Use an anonymous email account and aliases that have nothing to do with you that you have never used before.
In this post we will review different types of health technologies, weigh the benefits and risks and discuss how one’s safety and privacy can be affected by exploited vulnerabilities in these technologies.
Health Technology in the Digital Era
With the accelerated development of health technologies over the past decade, both patients and providers have entered an era in which much of our information is stored, processed and transmitted digitally. Whether we like it or not, we have become more dependent on technology to access and receive care, and our providers rely on it to diagnose and deliver care.
This rapid progress has gone beyond the confines of hospitals and clinics and has moved health technology into the patients’ hands and homes. The way we communicate and access health information from the comfort of our living room has turned digital. We can use patient portals to schedule appointments and communicate with our providers or to access and share our health data with guardians and loved ones.
We carry devices on our bodies to monitor and mitigate medical conditions, or we bring our smartphones to track and share our workouts and collect our vital signs as part of our daily routines. There are mobile apps that help us monitor our sleep, manage our stress, calculate our insulin doses and remind us to take our medications.
However, a manufacturer’s rush to market or lack of concern about risks leads to products designed with functionality in mind and security and privacy as an afterthought. To the extent that security is often retrofitted to the products or services that have already been introduced on the market.
Not All Health Data Is Protected Equally
Patients and individuals who use health technologies may be unaware of how their information is collected, used or disclosed to third parties. Data privacy policies associated with these technologies are not all the same, may not be clear to the user or may even inaccurately state how personal information is used and handled. Even if some policies do address these issues, such language may be buried under pages of legal jargon or worded in such a way that makes it difficult for a layperson to understand and assess potential risks. In addition, technology companies may lack adequate controls or not implement them effectively in regard to protecting your information.
What about cybersecurity? Data leakage and hacks are an everyday concern in this day and age. Total security does not exist. Thus, any health technology could conceivably suffer from a vulnerability that could be maliciously exploited — especially if the manufacturer is not required or does not have the capability to respond or proactively address these security flaws.
Weighing the Benefits and Risks
Both medical and consumer health technologies have a promising future in improving the health and overall wellbeing of individuals. But, with the benefits come new risks to the security of these systems and the privacy of the data they hold and transmit. We must remember that we all play important roles in protecting the confidentiality of our digital health footprints, ensuring that technology is used to our benefit and cannot be used against us. The same way we protect our personal and financial information, we must care to protect our health information and the safety of the technologies we use.
Some of the best features in today’s health technologies are ease of use and portability, which in so many cases require the internet and a smartphone to enable them. Not by coincidence, mobile phones and applications have increasingly become some of the favorite targets of hackers. Why? Because a smartphone is a mini-computer with superpowers. It has a microphone that can listen to you, a camera that can see you, a GPS that can locate you and an antenna to connect from anywhere. And it contains so much of your information, including your telephone, address, emails, photos, contacts and access to bank accounts and credit cards. This is a dangerous combination if not secured properly. Essentially, the smartphone is a part of our daily lives and contains a treasure trove of information.
With health and wellness technologies (i.e., those that are not specifically designed to diagnose, cure, treat, mitigate or prevent a disease or medical condition), we as users have a greater responsibility for what we choose to use and where we deposit and share our personal and health information. These technologies may hold and transmit information that, in the wrong hands, could potentially be used to harm us in many other ways.
With different types of health technologies we have different degrees of control over what is stored and how we can protect our information. Keep your eyes peeled for our next and last installment in this series, where we will discuss what we as patients and health technology users can do to protect ourselves and our information.
For last-minute shoppers, tech toys hold a special appeal. They’re crowdpleasers, and generally available with two-day shipping—or faster—from any number of online retailers. Stapling on internet connectivity also might make these flashy kids gadgets sound all the more appealing; it’s not just a teddy bear, it’s a machine learning teddy bear. On the other hand: don't.
This is not a screed against technology generally, or even tech as it relates to kids; there are plenty of responsible, safe ways for children to navigate and benefit from the internet. Instead, it’s an important reminder that toys with an online connection are at their core just another IoT device, often replete with the same ills and vulnerabilities. Plus, they have the added horror of occasionally pointing a microphone or camera at your child.
“Generally, people may not make that leap" that an internet toy is just another part of the IoT landscape, says Tod Beardsley, research director at security firm Rapid7. But hackers who target poorly secured internet-connected devices don’t distinguish between, say, a generic webcam and a Wi-Fi action figure. “A lot of the infrastructure looks like regular old Linux or Android. An attacker doesn’t care; inside it’s just a computer,” Beardsley says.
Hacker Heaven
That makes internet-connected toys prime candidates to join a so-called botnet, an army of zombie machines used by hackers to launch denial-of service-attacks against websites, servers, or other pieces of internet infrastructure. Remember that afternoon last fall when the internet shut down for the better part of an afternoon across the US? A botnet made that possible.
To which you might say, OK, sure, but that doesn’t sound so bad, at least in terms of how it affects my joke-telling conversational robot for tweens. Which, fair! But there’s a reason the FBI this year issued a warning about internet-connected toys, and it’s not just the threat of getting caught up in botnets.
“These toys typically contain sensors, microphones, cameras, data storage components, and other multimedia capabilities—including speech recognition and GPS options,” the agency wrote. “These features could put the privacy and safety of children at risk.”
That's not just hypothetical alarmism. When Mattel rolled out its talking, Wi-Fi enabled Hello Barbie doll in 2015, the product proved easily hackable; an attacker could have stolen anything from passwords to actual snippets of conversation before the toy giant rolled out fixes. More recently, the Norwegian Consumer Council found that it was trivial to track kid-focused smartwatches from multiple companies, and even use them to communicate with children who wear them.
'Maybe Santa gets to know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. But not toy companies.'
MARC ROTENBERG, EPIC
The list goes on, including real-world consequences. In March, a line of IoT teddy bears called CloudPets left two million messages recorded by the fluffy buddies exposed in an online database, where anyone could have listened to them—not to mention sifted through 800,000 emails and passwords that were exposed as well. The list goes on, but you get the point.
Not every internet-connected toy is insecure, just like not every home webcam falls prey to hackers. But the IoT industry in general has a long way to go in terms of overall security, and toys as a subcategory are no exception. Besides, hackers aren’t even your biggest concern—more often than not, the companies themselves are.
Privacy First
Last year, several advocacy groups jointly filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against two specific products made by Genesis Toys, My Friend Cayla and i-Que Intelligence Robot, alleging that they “unfairly and deceptively collect, use, and share audio files of children's voices without providing adequate notice or obtaining verified parental consent.” The toys have already been banned in Germany, and stripped from the shelves of Target and Toys R Us. (You can still find them on Amazon, albeit in limited quantity as of this post.) Genesis Toys did not respond to a request for comment.
Privacy advocates say that those two specific complaints speak to broader concerns about the industry.
“Companies that are selling internet-connected toys are not just profiting from selling the device,” says David Monahan, campaign manager for Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a group dedicated to ending child-targeted marketing. “They’re profiting by collecting and monetizing a lot of sensitive information from kids.”
While the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule, known as “COPPA,” puts limits on that sort of data-harvesting, it mostly ensures that parents have to give consent before data collection happens. In the frenzy of setting up a Christmas gift, it’s easy to tap ‘yes’ without realizing exactly what it is you’ve agreed to.
"Internet connected toys are a privacy nightmare," says Marc Rotenberg, president of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Maybe Santa gets to know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. But not toy companies."
Make It Work
If you are going to give an internet-connected device—or already bought one and can’t find the receipt to return it—the most important thing you can do is to understand exactly how it works, what it collects, and what it does with that information.
“If you look at the privacy policy and feel like you’d need a lawyer to understand it, that’s a red flag,” says Monahan.
That diligence extends to securing the device, as well. “Internet toys tend to be replete with default user names and passwords,” says Beardsley, which makes hacking them, well, child’s play. Take the time to customize the device setup, creating a unique password, and also figure out if and how the manufacturer pushes software updates, which often contain critical security patches.
'If you look at the privacy policy and feel like you’d need a lawyer to understand it, that’s a red flag.'
DAVID MONAHAN, CCFC
Be aware, too, of how these toys function. “Anything that has an input sensor, like a camera or a microphone, has to be on in order to work as advertised,” says Beardsley. In the same way that an Amazon Echo or Google Home listens constantly—but only sends data back to a server after hearing a ‘wake word’—a toy that uses a camera to detect colors, say, is likely always watching. And it may not be clear under what circumstances it communicates what it sees and hears over the internet, or what it stores.
In fact, that Echo comparison proves apt for other reasons. Those devices raise privacy hackles as well, but least when you interact with Alexa or Google Assistant, you understand the risks. “As adults, we make decisions around making transactions online, we know what kind of information we’re putting out there that might be vulnerable,” says Monahan. “Kids don’t really understand that. They can’t make a conscious choice about sharing that information.”
Those potential issues even led Mattel to cancel a highly touted upcoming product. Its Aristotle AI assistant was designed as a sort of Echo for the stroller set, until the company nixed it in October over privacy concerns.
And at that point, what more do you need? When even the toy companies are having second thoughts, it's well past time to pull the plug on connected gifts.
Do you follow Bitcoin? At the start of December, the price of the cryptocurrency rocketed up to over $19,000 per coin. Early investors with nerves of steel now have portfolios worth thousands, if not millions of dollars.
But the question on everyone’s lips is this: is it too late for me to invest in Bitcoin?
The price of an individual Bitcoin plowed through previous records, almost hitting the magical $20,000 level for the first time. At this point, buying a whole Bitcoin is simply beyond the means of most people. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bother at all. Consider the following.
Limited Supply
The Bitcoin total supply limit is 21 million coins. Of those 21 million coins, some four million are already considered irretrievably lost (thrown away, willfully destroyed, held on encrypted drives with lost passwords, and so on).
Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto is mooted to have mined 1 million Bitcoin (a cool $19 billion at the recent $19,000 high) before publicizing the blockchain. There are also several people known to hold huge amounts of Bitcoin, and I’m sure more than a few governments have substantial holdings too.
According to career investor Ronnie Moas, there are probably “between 3-5 million Bitcoin” in actual circulation. That number does increase incrementally as miners “release” more Bitcoin. But that is still only 12.5 coins per block, and the vast majority now go to mining pools.
Bitcoin is a scarce resource, then. Another factor of consideration is the sheer number of users. Between Q3 2014 and Q3 2017, the number of Blockchain wallet users rose from 1.9 million to 14.7 million. And given the enormous leaps observed in December, it is fair to say that the overall number of Bitcoin users will have risen further.
All in all, it means more users competing for less Bitcoin — and we all know what that means for prices.
More Investors Incoming
The number of people investing Bitcoin is rising too.
Exact numbers are extremely difficult to arrive at, though. Some estimates peg the number of users to the number of wallets. Using the bitinfocharts website, we can break down Bitcoin distribution by wallet address.
Check out the table below. We can see that there are around 13.7 million wallets holding less than 0.001 BTC, and two holding between 100,000 to 1,000,000 (they actually hold 127k and 119k, and are the wallets for two crypto-exchanges). That aside, this table tells us that there are nearly 25 million active wallets.
A more recent University of Cambridge study [PDF] estimates that there are between 2.9 to 5.8 million active cryptocurrency users, with the vast majority using Bitcoin. The study also estimates there to be between 5.8 million and 11.5 million “active” wallets.
The biggest change, however, is the recent introduction of Wall Street to the Bitcoin trading environment. The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) added Bitcoin futures to their trading options on Sunday, December 10. The price immediately soared by over 25 percent, causing a temporary trading halt, as well as crashing the CBOE website due to demand (a mini-DDoS of sorts).
The combination of Bitcoin and Wall Street trading will introduce a significant number of individuals to cryptocurrencies.
SMS Bitcoin
But it isn’t just Wall Street that has climbed aboard the Bitcoin hype-train. There are a number of blockchain startups that will bring banking facilities to the previously unbanked. These services will bring credit opportunities to those otherwise unable to obtain financing solutions. Furthermore, several startups are attempting to sell and trade Bitcoin via SMS. While only 30 percent of the world have consistent access to the internet, SMS is ubiquitous in almost every country.
The SMS Bitcoin services are targeting the African continent as a major untapped Bitcoin marketplace. Residents of countries with repressive governments or societal unrest also present opportunities for Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) to protect wealth.
Stability
Bitcoin is infamously volatile. The price volatility is a major contributor to Bitcoin and other cryptos’ derision as a serious investment. While the introduction of Bitcoin futures to the CBOE caused an immediate 25 percent price spike, there is hope that the influence of Wall Street trading will have a calming effect on the overall price volatility of Bitcoin. In turn, this will allow other cryptocurrencies (commonly referred to as altcoins) to gain traction.
Financial Predictions
What will the Bitcoin price be in one year? $20K? $50K? Even more than that? It all depends on what you read. Here are five Bitcoin price predictions from a range of individuals.
Saxo Bank: $60,000 in 2018, before crashing back to $1,000 before 2019
John McAfee: $1,000,000 by 2020
James Altucher: $1,000,000 by 2020
Winklevoss twins: $152,000, unspecified date
Masterluc: (legendary crypto-trader) $40,000-$110,000 by 2019
Quite the range of predictions, but one thing is sure: Bitcoin will continue to rise for at least another year, if not two. As with all investments, knowing when to bow out is part of the problem. And the whales (those holding a significant amount of Bitcoin) always have the drop on the rest of populace.
As it stands, Bitcoin is already a top-30 world currency, with a current market capitalization of over $250 billion. It is widely expected to surpass the $1 trillion mark before 2020. A vast increase, but this would move the Bitcoin price toward the Winklevoss twins’ per-coin estimate.
Overall Awareness
Overall Awareness ties into the “more investors incoming” section but needs a few words of its own. The hype surrounding Bitcoin makes it feel like everyone is at it. Your grandma, the postman, your dentist — everyone. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Check out this absolutely non-scientificgraph.
Bitcoin is generating an enormous amount of interest and has a huge market capitalization, but global adoption rates are still below 1 percent of the population. That’s right. And even 1 percent estimates are shaky. Consider the University of Cambridge study we looked at earlier. Even at the maximum estimate of 11 million active wallets, that’s only roughly 0.14 percent of the global population.
We are still at the tip of the global awareness and uptake iceberg. At most, we are just entering the “public awareness” phase. Public awareness increases, mania and FUD skyrocket, and greed and delusion set in. The Bitcoin price will continue to rise dramatically throughout this time until something spooks the market — and the capitulation begins.
So, Should I Invest?
I’m not a financial organization. Nor am I in any way qualified to give investment advice. I invest in and trade small amounts of Bitcoin and other altcoins.
My advice is simple: do your research, do not believe everything you read, and do not invest money you cannot afford to lose.
By using the simple VPN app, your dark web activities will be hidden from your ISP and government agencies as all of your internet usage will be encrypted. No one will even know you are using TOR, let alone browsing for darknet markets.
