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An enlightening conversation with Reason’s Jim Epstein, who just released a four-part YouTube documentary on the cypherpunk movement.

According to court documents, U.S. federal prosecutors are asking that one of Centra Tech’s co-founders, Robert Farkas, be sentenced to prison instead of his request for home confinement and community service.

From a hedge against inflation to its uncorrelated relationship with stocks, advisers have plenty of reasons to be interested in bitcoin.

Most of the the participants in the schemes failed to recoup their initial investments, the FTC said.

The Block previously reported that 69,369 bitcoins — nearly $1 billion in value — moved from wallet address 1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx, the fourth-largest bitcoin wallet. 

Now, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic is saying the moved bitcoin could be connected to the Silk Road darknet marketplace, which launched in 2011 and was shut down in October 2013. Site founder Ross Ulbricht was arrested at the time of the shutdown and was later sentenced to life in prison. 

“The Silk Road attracted close to 150,000 buyers and 4,000 vendors, and facilitated total sales of $183 million. The FBI seized approximately 174,000 bitcoins from Ulbricht, worth around $105 million by that time due to bitcoin’s growing value. These bitcoins were later sold at auction by the US government,” Elliptic wrote in the post.

Source: Elliptic

Another potential reason for the move could be that hackers seized control of the wallet, or the original wallet owner fears the threat of a hack.

“Either the password on the file has been cracked and the bitcoins taken, or the person controlling the funds might be worried about the possibility of it being cracked, and has therefore moved the funds to another wallet,” Robinson told The Block. 

As he expanded on in a blog post:

“The movement of these bitcoins today, now worth around $955 million, may represent Ulbricht or a Silk Road vendor moving their funds. However it seems unlikely that Ulbricht would be able to conduct a bitcoin transaction from prison. Alternatively, the encrypted wallet file may have been real, and the password has now been cracked – allowing the bitcoins to be moved.”

Whatever reasons spur the movement of bitcoin, Robinson writes in a blog post, exchanges should be on the lookout for bitcoin deposits that can be traced back to the address.

 

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The crypto exchange and finance platform said it got high ratings for privacy and security using standards developed by a U.S. government agency.

The price of bitcoin shot above $14,200 for the first time in 2020, bringing the cryptocurrency to a new high for the year.

Market data from TradingView indicates that major markets reached highs in the $14,260-$14,270 range. Coinbase, for example, saw a spike to $14,273.60 — at time of writing, BTC is trading hands on the U.S.-based exchange at around $14,170.

All told, bitcoin’s price is up about 3% on the day. 

The development comes as the U.S. presidential election results are still being tabulated, with incumbent President Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden both looking at the prospect of narrow victories. Equity markets appear to be reacting positively to the results thus far — the Nasdaq is up 4.45% at time of writing, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 2.75%.

The price of gold is down 0.76% at time of writing, according to Kitco data. 

 

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Ethereum stakers can now begin depositing the 32 ether (ETH) required to stake on Eth 2.0.

Bitcoin has broken fresh 2020 highs as uncertainty remains in the U.S. presidential election.

The next-generation version of the Ethereum blockchain moved closer to fruition on Wednesday with the launch of the Eth2 deposit address.

This address, as outlined in a blog post from the Ethereum Foundation, lets would-be staking participants ready their funds for the eventual launch of the so-called beacon chain, which constitutes the “Phase 0” launch of Eth. The beacon chain is a key component of Eth2, serving as a foundational layer to keep network participants in sync with one another while the network employs shards (which are essentially multiple blockchains) to enable greater transaction scalability. 

Per the blog post, the soonest Eth2’s genesis time — that is, official kick-off — is December 1 at 12:00 UTC. But that would require there to be some 524,288 ETH, provided by 16,384 staking participants, to be deposited ahead of that date.

Deposits are already taking place, according to the official Launchpad site for Eth2. At the time of writing, 1,893 ETH has been deposited. 

Today’s development has been years in the making, dating back to early ambitions for Ethereum’s long-planned shift from its current proof-of-work-based system to proof-of-stake. 

In recent months, developers and stakeholders have conducted a series of testnets that served as dress rehearsals for the launch and operation of Eth2. There was also a fair degree of variance in when, precisely, the launch date would be set, with some predicting that it wouldn’t occur until early 2021.

Developers involved with Eth2 stressed throughout that the launch’s timing would be contingent on the results of the final testnet, Medalla, and the resolution of bugs discovered along the way.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.