Today’s Bitcoin in Brief provides some leisurely Sunday reading for anyone who has a life to live outside of crypto. We curate the best stories from the past 24 hours and condense them into a daily digest so you can stay in the loop in less time than it takes to boil a kettle. In today’s episode: Twitter scams are back, monero goes fork crazy, and stablecoins go head-to-head.
51 Flavors of Monero
Monero forked this week to move away from the Cryptonight algorithm that Bitmain’s ASIC Antminers can now pummel. Not everyone in the monero community was in favor of the hard fork though, and some miners have elected to stick with the original algorithm. As a result, no less than four monero forks were created in a single day: monero original, monero 0, and, just to confuse matters, two named monero classic. Throw in monero V and monero C and there’s now a flavor of monero for everyone.
Crypto Scammers Just Won’t Stop
Fake accounts perpetrating crypto scams have plagued Twitter this year. It looked like the platform had finally gotten to grips with the worst of them, but scammers are an enterprising bunch. A loophole means that verified accounts can change their name to mimic others, with the fraud exacerbated by the fact that the blue checkmark adds authenticity. One verified account has been posing as Bitfinex to con the gullible out of their ether.
A Stablecoin to DAI For
Stablecoin pairing is becoming a thing. Last month, Bittrex paired tether with trueusd, giving users a choice of dollar-pegged tokens. Surprisingly, Ethfinex has now done the same with tether and DAI, an ethereum-based stablecoin. The surprising part is the fact that Ethfinex’ parent exchange, Bitfinex, is the de facto owner of tether, and yet, in the Ethfinex blog, we read:
The requirements for a stablecoin…is today mainly being met by USD Tether — a centrally issued alternative collateralised by USD held in a bank account. DAI instead removes this centralised risk point, and is slowly becoming popular in the Ethereum community with decentralised exchanges as a primary trading pair.
Did Ethfinex just refer to its parent’s stablecoin as a “centralised risk point?” On Saturday, the exchange also listed 12 new ethereum tokens.
Biostar Launches the Mother of All Motherboards
The hardest part of GPU mining is finding a means of connecting all those high performance cards. Biostar’s new dedicated motherboard will enable miners to connect upto eight GPUs. It’s believed to retail for around $150 – around the same price as those GPUs will fetch after they’ve been overclocked and mined 24/7 for six months.
Circle Cleans Up Poloniex’ Mess
Circle has published an update on its “journey” six weeks into is Poloniex takeover. It’s a vague and wordy missive, but reading between the lines the tl;dr goes as follows: “We’ve inherited a total mess. Please bear with us while we clear the backlog of support tickets.” It will be interesting to see how the exchange evolves under Circle’s stewardship, but before the fun can begin in earnest, there’s spadework still to be done.