A Reddit user posted a website they made displaying the staggeringly low costs of carrying out a 51% attack on coins with few nodes or low security. Bytecoin could be taken over allowing users to double-spend the same funds twice for as little as $557 an hour, while Bitcoin Gold could be attacked for $3,800 an hour.
Other sites have tackled the 51% attack cost estimates before, but with a fatal flaw: They assumed the attackers were buying the hardware, when really it can just be rented remotely. While the hardware required to attack the Bitcoin network would cost $1 billion with hourly electricity costs of $500,000, other coins are not quite as secure.
Bamberg cybercrime specialists have sold over 1,000 Bitcoin and other coins for more than €12 million ($13.9 million) since February 2018. The cryptocurrencies were seized from a platform that had 30,000 users and is the highest sale of seized Bitcoin in Germany.
‘Emergency Sale’ Due to Volatility
The US Securities and Exchange Commission are holding the SEC Investor Conference in Atlanta this year on June 13 at Georgia State University.
There will be a town hall event followed by break-out events wherein attendants can meet with members of the SEC for a more informal discussion on issues regarding regulation in the world of fintech, mutual funds, fraud prevention, and cryptocurrency.
A page on the official SEC website advertises the event as follows:
“Meet the people who help make Wall Street work for Main Street. All five SEC Commissioners are coming to Atlanta to meet with you: young people, the military, urban and rural, those saving for retirement, and seniors—the diverse, the dynamic people of the southeast region.”
All five SEC commissioners will be in attendance including Chairman Jay Clayton, who had a speech earlier this year about cryptocurrencies and ICOs at Princeton University on April 5. When asked if he thought ICOs were inherently fraudulent Clayton said “absolutely not”, stating that his hope was the regulation introduced by the SEC would have a positive impact on the cryptocurrency space by stamping out bad actors and allowing legitimate projects to thrive.
Many members of the cryptocurrency community have been concerned recently that the SEC is gearing up to classify cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum as securities, meaning that the tokens represented an underlying asset as opposed to being utility tokens. The security classification would have disastrous effects on the market with strict regulations on taxes and even who can or cannot legally own and invest in crypto.
However, Clayton set some minds at ease by saying it was ICO tokens that the SEC were really looking at, not Bitcoin. Meanwhile, the Ethereum co-founder has stated that he is “extremely comfortable” that Ethereum does not qualify as a security.
The confusion over how to classify crypto-tokens and on the processes involved in ICO investment, in general, are the reason discussions like the one being held in June are necessary, and the SEC Bitcoin and ICO session may help to clarify the government’s stance on some of the pressing legal issues being widely discussed in the cryptocurrency community.
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