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Crypto Pundit John Mcafee Hacked but Hodling
The markets have shown declines across the board this morning, possibly due to a sell-off during the Asian trading session following government regulation in South Korea. bitcoin and all of its brethren slid overnight by an average of around 12%, and only seems to have survived.
News can be a big influence on the nascent cryptocurrency market, as can social media, such as Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. One such crypto aficionado who has taken to social media in recent weeks to air his views is outspoken British-American computer programmer and businessman John McAfee.
Hodl or Die
In an article on , bitcoin bull McAfee remained confident and told those holding the digital currency to keep doing so, despite it off its record high in the past two weeks. McAfee, who founded the self-named anti-virus company in 1987, took to Twitter, where he has been spending a lot of time lately, and posted:
For you who are long term investors like myself: (those who always make the most returns), bitcoin is still the crypto giant. It is at a low price, and will never be cheaper. It will be ten times this price in 2018. Remember – it has the lowest circulating supply of any coin.
Known his for candid comments, McAfee stated at the end of November that he would eat his own manhood if a bitcoin was not worth a million dollars by 2020. He has since become quite a character in the crypto sphere.
Hacked Off
In an ironic twist, the former cyber security chief found himself at the wrong end of the digital divide today when his account was hacked. McAfee has been using the account to post daily altcoin recommendations, which have largely resulted in somewhat predictable pumps and dumps. Critics have labelled this as market manipulation, but in an unregulated market such as crypto, anything goes. recently changed the daily coin recommendation to a weekly occurrence.
The hackers had started to post their own coin recommendations using McAfee’s account, which had over half a million followers at the time. Coins pumped during the incursion were BAT, NXT, and Siacoin.
He replied with the following post after users started posting screenshots onto social media:
Urgent: My account was hacked. Twitter has been notified. The coin of the day tweet was not me. As you all know… I am not doing a coin of the day anymore!!!!
In an attempt to extricate himself from the digital abyss, McAfee did post the following:
Though I am a security expert, I have no control over Twitter’s security. I have haters. I am a target. People make fake accounts, fake screenshots, fake claims. I am a target for hackers who lost money and blame me. Please take responsibility for yourselves. Adults only please.
What the hack does is highlight the nature of things in crypto land. It will hopefully serve as a warning that nobody, not even the ex-boss of a cyber security firm, is immune. Take care of your coins!
What are your thoughts on John McAfee: crypto legend or market manipulator? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Images courtesy of Twitter/@officialmcafee and Wikimedia Commons.
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Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork : Price Swings and the Aftermath
It only seems like a couple of days ago that we were all huddled around our computer screens in nervous anticipation. The countdown tickers onscreen marked the inexorable march towards an event that could change the world. Fingernails were being bitten down to bloody stumps, until finally… zero hour!
So much has happened since then that… What? It was only a couple of days ago! Oh, so did anything happen?
Not Immediately
The alotted time came and went, but there were no signs of any action. So we kept waiting. Twenty minutes later we got confirmation that the split had occurred. But that didn’t make much difference. So we kept waiting.
Half an hour after that we heard that bitcoin Cash balances had become active on the Bittrex exchange.
PSA: BCC Balances are now active…
— Richie (@richiela)
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It seemed like everyone we knew wanted to dump BCC, but the rush to do so meant that it was next to impossible to access any service by which that was possible.
The quoted price was fluctuating between $420 and $214, but at that stage, we still didn’t really have anything solid to base this market value on.
bitcoin Was Doing Just Fine, BTW
A lack of hash-power and the refusal of blocks under 1MB in size meant that the bitcoin Cash blockchain was stubbornly refusing to move. However, while this was going on (or not going on), the bitcoin blockchain just kept pottering along as though nothing had happened. Because of course, it hadn’t.
still no fork on the blockchain. It might take a while because of so little hashing power focused on finding >1mb blocks
— Vaultoro J.Scigala (@Vaultoro)
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So we kept waiting.
Could This bitcoin Cash Thing Fall at the First Hurdle?
And we kept waiting. Several hours later we got confirmation that the first BCC blocks . And then the pump began.
Prices surged, at one point topping $750. But we still couldn’t identify any real human beings who had been able to sell. Certainly, many Bitcoinist staffers were desperately asking where it was possible, but all avenues seemed to be blocked.
Site access was crashing under the weight of logins, wallets were “down for maintenance”, and exchanges were telling us all just to calm down until they could ascertain BCC’s viability.
BCH deposits + withdraws may not be available for several days. We won't enable funding until we think it's safe.
— Kraken Exchange (@krakenfx)
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The Aftermath
The price came back down but has remained between $300 and $500, which is pretty impressive really. The value of your bitcoin plus your bitcoin Cash is more than the value of your bitcoin alone used to be. Nobody can complain about free money.
bitcoin prices dropped very slightly just prior to the split, but all that did was correct the slight surge it had experienced in the days leading up to it. It’s now holding pretty steady (in bitcoin terms) at around the $2750 mark. Back to a sustainable growth value.
Here at Bitcoinist Towers we are still trying (and failing) to sell. Confirmations are taking around two hours and are expected to continue at this rate for the next three months until the hashing difficulty is recalibrated.
will mine around one block every 2 hours for the next three months.
— Dennis (@Xentagz)
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What Happens Now?
Well, we may see another boost in interest if miners don’t follow through with the 2MB block size increase to bitcoin Classic (don’t make me call it that) in November.
Other than that, whether BCC steadies or drops out of sight depends on how many people get behind it. For now, it is holding its own. It is still the fourth biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, so maybe now isn’t yet the time to bet against it.
The only other thing that remains to be seen is whether Coinbase can get back a decent percentage of the after their decision not to support the new token. Perhaps not a great idea, for a company looking for a new round of investment.
How did you fare after the hard fork? Were you able to sell your bitcoin Cash or are you holding on to it? Let us know in the comments below.
Images courtesy of ViaBTC, Twitter
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