Monero’s XMR Breaks Through $300 Despite its Mining Controversy
Monero’s XMR has been seeing massive gains recently. This is despite a piece of malware that has been concerning the cryptocurrency crowd. XMR tested the $300 resistance level on Thursday after seeing its second consecutive bullish market sentiment.
What is Monero’s XMR?
Monero is an open-source cryptocurrency created in April 2014. It focuses on privacy and decentralization. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and FreeBSD.
Monero’s token, XMR, has enjoyed a steady increase in adoption since its release. Dark web marketplaces including AlphaBay and Oasis have embraced the cryptocurrency, reportedly due to popular demand.
Monero’s Malware Controversy
Monero hit the headlines recently thanks to a piece of malware mining it in secret on Android devices. The malware redirects users to websites that tap into a device’s processing power to mine the Monero cryptocurrency.
For example, U.S. online news publication, Salon has adopted this unconventional alternative to ads to make money. They are using a reader’s computing power to mine Monero.
The way they do is by giving readers that don’t want ads to appear on content an option to “suppress ads.” This allows Salon to use a reader’s unused computing power to mine virtual currency.
XMR Price Action
XMR saw similar types of patterns in terms of gains and pullbacks as other major cryptos in the past month. XMR/USD has pierced through the 50% Fibonacci retracement level of $273. It is testing the $300 level at the time of writing.
The pair remains below the daily Ichimoku cloud. However, the Tenkan line appears to be crossing above the Kiju line, signaling the medium-term bullish momentum to continue.
On the other hand, the future cloud remains bearish.
Monero is the 13th largest cryptocurrency by market cap. At $4,720,573,463 it trails behind Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Cardano, Stellar, NEO, EOS, IOTA, Dash, and NEM.
Monero’s market operates like that of many other cryptocurrencies. Those interested in investing in the cryptocurrency can purchase it outright through exchanges including Binance, Bitfinex, and Kraken.
According to their website, with Monero, you are “your own bank. Only you control and are responsible for your funds. Your accounts and transactions are kept private from prying eyes.”
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Number of Crypto Hedge Funds Skyrocketing – Big Players Are Coming
16Fintech research house Autonomous NEXT has been researching crypto hedge funds — which have more than doubled in number in the four months leading up to today, February 15th. The firm recorded a record high of 226 global hedge funds, up from 110 global hedge funds on October 18th. That itself was up from 55 funds on August 29th and just 37 at the start of 2017. Assets under management hit between $3.5 and $5 billion, according to the Autonomous NEXT.
The surge in funds comes at a somewhat volatile time for cryptocurrencies. After hitting a record high of $20,000 in December, Bitcoin lost nearly 70% of its value — briefly slipping below $6,000 in January. The coin has since recovered some of those falls, sitting at just above $10,000 as of today. (Read our article Hedge Fund Investor: Bitcoin Already Hit Bottom, Ready to Surge to learn more about Bitcoin price predictions for the near-future).
Rival cryptocurrencies have also seen declines. The market cap of all virtual currencies — their price multiplied by the number of coins issued — currently stands at around $465 billion, according to Coinmarketcap, down from more than $830 billion in early January.
“While the softer prices of crypto assets does create a more difficult environment for investors, I do not think it will pause the influx of funds and other financial institutions building products in the space,” Autonomous NEXT partner Lex Sokolin said. “It would take the extreme case of the entire space contracting by 80% and high regulation before the flow of funds turns around.”
Some invest in just Bitcoin, taking both long and short positions, some buy several different cryptocurrencies, and others exploit the arbitrage between different exchanges’ prices. These different approaches mean that some players are, despite the markets, making a profit. Token Capital’s $500 million EKT Active Fund, which invests in initial coin offerings (ICOs) made 6.5% in January, a spokesman for the company said.
BitSpread, a Cayman-registered hedge fund, returned around 4.8%. BitSpread, with more than $100 million under management, makes money by market-making and exploiting arbitrage across different exchanges rather than going long or short. The company’s founder Cedric Jeanson said the fund’s market-neutral strategy meant it could make money even if the price of Bitcoin and its rivals collapsed. Since its launch in May 2017, the company has turned profits every month.
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CoinHoarder Steals Over $50 Million in Cryptocurrencies Using Google Ads
According to a report published Wednesday, February 14th by Cisco’s Talos Intelligence Group, a team of Ukrainian hackers dubbed CoinHoarder has stolen more than $50 million in cryptocurrency from users who were under the impression they were accessing Blockchain.info, one of the most popular providers of virtual currency wallets.
The report details how thieves preyed on their victims using a simple technique: Buying Google ads on popular search keywords related to cryptocurrency “to poison user search results” and snatch the contents of crypto wallets. This meant people Googling terms like “blockchain” or “Bitcoin wallet,” saw links to malicious websites masquerading as legitimate domains for Blockchain.info wallets. Fooled into believing they had come to the right place, victims then entered private information that allowed the hackers to gain access to their actual wallets and take their virtual currency.
The poison ads included “spoofed” links with small mistypes like “blokchien.info/wallet” and “block-clain.info,” which sent visitors to pages that mirrored actual websites of the company Blockchain, which runs both the domains Blockchain.info and Blockchain.com. According to Cisco’s report, the legitimate sites appeared lower in the results than the “poisoned” links.
“The attackers needed only to continue purchasing Google AdWords to ensure a steady stream of victims,” the Talos team — led by Jeremiah O’Connor and Dave Maynor — said in their report. Cisco, which investigated the “massive phishing campaign” for more than six months in partnership with Ukraine’s Cyberpolice, noted that the Coinhoarder group’s method has since “become increasingly common in the wild, with attackers targeting many different crypto wallets and exchanges.”
The Coinhoarder thefts occurred over the course of three years but surged at the end of 2017 as Bitcoin prices soared close to $20,000, with $10 million stolen between September and December. In one run, the hackers made off with $2 million in the span of fewer than four weeks, the Talos researchers said. Further, it’s very likely the value of the steals total much more than $50 million now, as Talos based its calculations on cryptocurrency prices at the time of the theft.
Cisco found that the Coinhoarder scam disproportionately ensnared those from underbanked regions where cryptocurrency has caught on as an alternative means of storing wealth: Residents of African countries such as Nigeria and Ghana made up the majority of those who landed on the malignant websites.
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