ryanw shares a report from BleepingComputer: A new DeadBolt ransomware group is encrypting QNAP NAS devices worldwide using what they claim is a zero-day vulnerability in the device's software. The attacks started today, January 25th, with QNAP devices suddenly finding their files encrypted and file names appended with a .deadbolt file extension. Instead of creating ransom notes in each folder on the device, the QNAP device's login page is hijacked to display a screen stating, "WARNING: Your files have been locked by DeadBolt." This screen informs the victim that they should pay 0.03 bitcoins (approximately $1,100) to an enclosed Bitcoin address unique to each victim.

After payment is made, the threat actors claim they will make a follow-up transaction to the same address that includes the decryption key. This decryption key can then be entered into the screen to decrypt the device's files. At this time, there is no confirmation that paying a ransom will result in receiving a decryption key or that users will be able to decrypt files. The DeadBolt ransomware gang is offering the full details of the alleged zero-day vulnerability if QNAP pays them 5 Bitcoins worth $184,000. They are also willing to sell QNAP the master decryption key that can decrypt the files for all affected victims and the zero-day info for 50 bitcoins, or approximately $1.85 million.

MattSparkes shares a report from New Scientist: Quantum computers would need to become around one million times larger than they are today in order to break the SHA-256 algorithm that secures bitcoin, which would put the cryptocurrency at risk from hackers. Breaking this impenetrable code is essentially impossible for ordinary computers, but quantum computers, which can exploit the properties of quantum physics to speed up some calculations, could theoretically crack it open.

[Mark Webber at the University of Sussex, UK, and his colleagues] calculated that breaking bitcoin's encryption in this 10 minute window would require a quantum computer with 1.9 billion qubits, while cracking it in an hour would require a machine with 317 million qubits. Even allowing for a whole day, this figure only drops to 13 million qubits. This is reassuring news for bitcoin owners because current machines have only a tiny fraction of this -- IBM's record-breaking superconducting quantum computer has only 127 qubits, so devices would need to become a million times larger to threaten the cryptocurrency, something Webber says is unlikely to happen for a decade. The study has been published in the journal AVS Quantum Science.

The International Monetary Fund is pushing El Salvador to ditch bitcoin as legal tender, according to a statement released on Tuesday. CNBC reports: IMF directors "stressed that there are large risks associated with the use of bitcoin on financial stability, financial integrity, and consumer protection, as well as the associated fiscal contingent liabilities." The report, which was published after bilateral talks with El Salvador, went on to "urge" authorities to narrow the scope of its bitcoin law by removing bitcoin's status as legal money. In Sept. 2021, the Central American nation became the world's first country to adopt the cryptocurrency as legal tender, alongside the U.S. dollar.

The IMF report went on to say that some directors had expressed concern over the risks associated with issuing bitcoin-backed bonds, referring to the president's plan to raise $1 billion via a "Bitcoin Bond" in partnership with Blockstream, a digital assets infrastructure company. Part of El Salvador's nationwide move into bitcoin also involved launching a national virtual wallet called Chivo that which offers no-fee transactions and allows for quick cross-border payments. For a country where 70% of citizens do not have access to traditional financial services, Chivo is meant to offer a convenient onramp for those who have never been a part of the banking system.

IMF directors agreed that the Chivo e-wallet could facilitate digital means of payment, thereby helping to "boost financial inclusion," though they emphasized the need for "strict regulation and oversight." Many Salvadorans have reported cases of identity theft, in which hackers use their national ID number to open a Chivo Wallet, in order to claim the free $30 worth of bitcoin offered by the government as an incentive to open a digital wallet. For months, the IMF has bemoaned Bukele's bitcoin experiment. [...] El Salvador has also been trying since early 2021 to secure a $1.3 billion loan from the IMF -- an effort which appears to have soured over this bitcoin row. The country will need to figure out some other backstop to shore up its finances. The IMF predicts that under current policies, public debt will rise to 96% of GDP by 20216, putting the country on "an unsustainable path."

First, he forgot his PIN -- then he started looking for hackers. From a report: In early 2018, Dan Reich and a friend decided to spend $50,000 in Bitcoin on a batch of Theta tokens, a new cryptocurrency then worth just 21 cents apiece. At first, they held the tokens with an exchange based in China, but within weeks, a broad crackdown on cryptocurrency by the Chinese government meant they would soon lose access to the exchange, so they had to transfer everything to a hardware wallet. Reich and his friend chose a Trezor One hardware wallet, set up a PIN, and then got busy with life and forgot about it. By the end of that year, the token had sunk to less than a quarter of its value, come back up, and then crashed again. Reich decided he wanted to cash out, but his friend had lost the paper where he'd written the PIN and couldn't remember the digits. They tried guessing what they thought was a four-digit PIN (it was actually five), but after each failed attempt, the wallet doubled the wait time before they could guess again. After 16 guesses, the data on the wallet would automatically erase. When they reached a dozen tries, they stopped, afraid to go further. Reich gave up and wrote off the money in his mind. He was willing to take the loss -- until the price started to rise again. From a low of around $12,000, the value of their tokens started to skyrocket. By the end of 2020, it would be worth more than $400,000, rising briefly to over $3 million. It would be hard to get into the wallet without the PIN -- but it wasn't impossible.

And with potentially millions on the line, Reich and his friend vowed to find a way inside. The only way to own cryptocurrency on the blockchain is to have sole possession of a private key associated with a block of currency -- but managing those keys has been a, sometimes high-stakes, challenge from the beginning. [...] The cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis estimates that more than 3.7 million Bitcoins worth $66.5 billion are likely lost to owners. Currency can be lost for many reasons: the computer or phone storing a software wallet is stolen or crashes and the wallet is unrecoverable; the owner inadvertently throws their hardware wallet away; or the owner forgets their PIN or dies without passing it to family members. As the value of their inaccessible tokens rapidly rose in 2020, Reich and his friend were desperate to crack their wallet. They searched online until they found a 2018 conference talk from three hardware experts who discovered a way to access the key in a Trezor wallet without knowing the PIN. The engineers declined to help them, but it gave Reich hope. "We at least knew that it was possible and had some directional idea of how it could be done," Reich says. Then they found a financier in Switzerland who claimed he had associates in France who could crack the wallet in a lab. But there was a catch: Reich couldn't know their names or go to the lab. He'd have to hand off his wallet to the financier in Switzerland, who would take it to his French associates. It was a crazy idea with a lot of risks, but Reich and his friend were desperate. Gripping story.

The cryptocurrency market had around $130 billion wiped off its value over the last 24 hours as major digital coins continued their multi-day sell-off. From a report: Bitcoin was last down around 4% at $33,755.57, according to Coin Metrics, while Ether plunged 7% to $2,239.08. Earlier in the morning both fell to their lowest points since July and are each about 50% off their all-time highs. Cryptocurrencies are moving in tandem with stocks, which have continued to fall since the beginning of the year and just came off of their worst week since March 2020. Investors have been selling risk assets like technology stocks as they prepare for tighter monetary policy from the U.S. Federal Reserve and higher interest rates. "Looking forward, our most immediate concern is how equities markets respond to this week's Fed meeting," said Leah Wald, CEO at digital asset investment manager Valkyrie Funds. "A consolidation in traditional assets would catalyze a potential recovery in bitcoin, ether and other altcoins. Realistically, though, digital asset traders tend to be willing to take on more risk than traders in other asset classes, so we do expect some volatility in the coming days and weeks."

As the price of bitcoin drops to $35,149, "The entire country of El Salvador is riding the cryptocurrency wave," reports The Street, "even in its choppiest waters." The first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, the Central American nation just "bought the dip" once again and acquired 410 bitcoin (roughly $14.8 million USD), its president tweeted Friday....

Bitcoin, which nearly topped $70,000 in November, has now lost more than 40% of its value... El Salvador had previously "bought the dip" when, last September, its worth fell by more than 10%... "150 new coins!" Bukele wrote on Twitter. He said that, at the time, the country had a total of 700 bitcoin.
The Street also shares an interesting detail on how the bitcoin is purchased: It is not clear what type of funds, be they state or private, were used to secure the bitcoin for El Salvador, but the country's 40-year-old President Nayib Bukele is said to buy the country's bitcoin using his phone. The nation's embassy did not immediately respond to TheStreet's request for clarification.

New submitter NoMoreDupes shares a report from CoinDesk: The crypto market was in a sea of red on Friday as bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, tumbled more than 10% over the past 24 hours. It appears that global investors have entered the year with a reduced appetite for risk, and so the correlations between speculative assets such as cryptocurrencies and equities have increased, which results in widespread losses. Bitcoin is down roughly 40% from its all-time high of almost $69,000, while the S&P 500 is down about 7% from its peak, compared with a 10% drawdown in the Nasdaq 100 Index.

Alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) led the way lower on Friday given their higher risk profile relative to bitcoin. Ether, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, was down about 13% over the past 24 hours, compared with a 14% drop in AVAX and a 16% drop in FTM over the same period. Despite the losses, some analysts still foresee a short-term bounce. "We expect BTC to find a bid around the $35K mark, close to 50% from the top. In the short term, we can bounce to challenge the $45K-$50K zone, but the overall outlook remains bearish as liquidity remains tight," Pankaj Balani, CEO of Delta Exchange, a crypto derivatives trading platform, wrote in an email to CoinDesk.

Following through on a plan he announced before he took office, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Thursday that his first paycheck, which arrives on Friday, will be converted from US dollars into cryptocurrency. The transaction will take place on Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, and will convert Adams' pay into Bitcoin and Ethereum. From a report: "New York is the center of the world, and we want it to be the center of cryptocurrency and other financial innovations," Adams said in a statement. "Being on the forefront of such innovation will help us create jobs, improve our economy, and continue to be a magnet for talent from all over the globe."

Intel, one of the world's largest chip makers, is likely to unveil a specialized crypto-mining chip at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in February, according to the conference's agenda (PDF). CoinDesk reports: One of Intel's "highlighted chip releases" at the conference is entitled "Bonanza Mine: An Ultra-Low-Voltage Energy-Efficient Bitcoin Mining ASIC." The session is scheduled for Feb. 23. This brings the company into direct competition with the likes of Bitmain and MicroBT in the market for bitcoin mining ASICs, or application-specific integrated circuits, for the first time. [...] Unlike its competitor Nvidia, Intel has said it doesn't plan to add ether mining limits on its graphics cards.

Opera has launched its Web3 "Crypto Browser" into beta with features like a built-in crypto wallet, easy access to cryptocurrency/NFT exchanges, support for decentralized apps (dApps) and more. From a report: The aim is to "simplify the Web3 user experience that is often bewildering for mainstream users," Opera EVP Jorgen Arnensen said in statement. A key feature is the built-in non-custodial wallet that will support blockchains including Ethereum, Bitcoin, Celo and Nervos from the get-go. It also announced partnerships with Polygon and others. The idea is to let you access your crypto without the need for any extensions, with the option of using third-party wallets as well. You can purchase cryptocurrencies via a fiat to crypto on-ramp, swap crypto directly in-wallet, send and receive it and check your wallet balance. It even has a secure clipboard that ensures other apps can't data when you copy/paste. The other primary function is support for Web3, aka blockchain-based decentralized internet, aka the buzzy new thing among crypto enthusiasts (and skeptics). On top of providing extra security via blockchain encryption, it allows users to access things like GameFi "where you can earn as you play your way through all sorts of metaverses," Opera notes. It also offers a "Crypto Corner" with the latest blockchain news that also "lets you grow your Web3 skills," according to Opera.

Intel, one of the world's largest chipmakers, is likely to unveil a specialized crypto-mining chip at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in February, according to the conference's agenda. From a report: One of Intel's "Highlighted Chip Releases" at the conference is entitled "Bonanza Mine: An Ultra-Low-Voltage Energy-Efficient Bitcoin Mining ASIC." The session is scheduled for Feb. 23. This brings the company into direct competition with the likes of Bitmain and MicroBT in the market for bitcoin mining ASICs, or application-specific integrated circuits, for the first time.

New submitter Ol Olsoc writes: "When the Mozilla Foundation took to Twitter on New Year's Eve to announce it was going to begin accepting cryptocurrency donations, it likely didn't think about potential blowback from one of its founders, but that's what it got," reports TechRepublic. "In response, Mozilla has said it's pausing cryptocurrency donations." Wikipedia is now discussing whether it should stop accepting Cryptocurrency as well.

Mozilla co-founder Jamie Zawinski has some strong feelings about the matter, [telling TechRepublic]: "Anyone involved in cryptocurrencies in any way is either a grifter or a mark. It is 100% a con. There is no legitimacy." I cannot disagree with him. Zawinksi tweeted scathing criticism of a Mozilla tweet late last month promoting cryptocurrency donations. They first started accepting bitcoin for donations in 2014.

Here's where Wikipedia comes in: "Shortly after Zawinski's tweet and Mozilla's change of heart, Wikipedia editor GorillaWarfare opened a request for comment on Wikimedia's meta-wiki calling for the organization to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations, citing Zawinski's tweet and Mozilla's reaction," reports TechRepublic. "Zawinski has read the Wikipedia talk page about the discussion and says he hopes it indicates the beginning of a trend."

He added: "I'm actually a bit surprised (and pleased) to see that the conversation seemed to be going in an anti-cryptocurrency direction. Good for them."

Further reading: Wikipedia Faces Pressure to Stop Accepting Crypto Donations on Environmental Grounds (CoinDesk)

The Observer reports: For bitcoin enthusiasts in Kosovo with a breezy attitude to risk, it has been a good week to strike a deal on computer equipment that can create, or "mine", the cryptocurrency. From Facebook to Telegram, new posts in the region's online crypto groups became dominated by dismayed Kosovans attempting to sell off their mining equipment — often at knockdown prices. "There's a lot of panic and they're selling it or trying to move it to neighbouring countries," said cryptoKapo, a crypto investor and administrator of some of the region's largest online crypto communities.

The frenetic social media action follows an end-of-year announcement by Kosovo's government of an immediate, albeit temporary, ban on all crypto mining activity as part of emergency measures to ease a crippling energy crisis....

Kosovo has the cheapest energy prices in Europe due in part to more than 90% of the domestic energy production coming from burning the country's rich reserves of lignite, a low-grade coal, and fuel bills being subsidised by the government. The largest-scale crypto mining is thought to be taking place in the north of the country, where the Serb-majority population refuse to recognise Kosovo as an independent state and have consequently not paid for electricity for more than two decades.... Kosovans spent the final days of 2021 in darkness as domestic and international factors combined to cause energy shortages and rolling blackouts across the country....

Since the Kosovan authorities made the decision, police and customs officers have begun conducting regular raids, seizing hundreds of pieces of hardware. While a 60-day state of energy emergency remains in place, the prospect of upcoming regulation and energy bill price rises leaves the future anything but certain. "There are a lot of people who have invested in crypto mining equipment and it's not a small investment," cryptoKapo said. "People have even taken out loans to invest and the impact now is very bad on their lives."

Former Twitter CEO and Block founder Jack Dorsey has announced plans to create a "Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund" with Chaincode Labs co-founder Alex Morcos and Martin White, who appears to be an academic at the University of Sussex. CoinTelegraph reports: The announcement was sent on a mailing list for Bitcoin developers, bitcoin-dev, at 13:45 UTC on Wednesday from an email address appearing to belong to Dorsey. The announcement stated the fund will help provide a legal defense for Bitcoin developers, who are "currently the subject of multi-front litigation." "Litigation and continued threats are having their intended effect; individual defendants have chosen to capitulate in the absence of legal support," the email stated, referencing open-source developers who are often independent and, therefore, susceptible to legal pressure.

The announcement went on to describe the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund as a "nonprofit entity that aims to minimize legal headaches that discourage software developers from actively developing Bitcoin and related projects." "The main purpose of this Fund is to defend developers from lawsuits regarding their activities in the Bitcoin ecosystem, including finding and retaining defense counsel, developing litigation strategy, and paying legal bills," it stated. Initially, the fund will include volunteers and part-time lawyers for developers to "take advantage of if they so wish," although, the email also states that "the board of the Fund will be responsible for determining which lawsuits and defendants it will help defend." According to the email, the fund's first project will be to take over the existing defense of Ramona Ang's "Tulip Trading Lawsuit" against developers for alleged misconduct over access to a Bitcoin (BTC) fortune.

China's state-backed Blockchain Services Network (BSN) plans to roll out infrastructure at the end of this month to support the deployment of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a major step to creating a Chinese NFT industry that is not linked to cryptocurrencies. From a report: Although Beijing has banned cryptocurrencies, He Yifan, chief executive of Red Date Technology, which provides technical support to BSN, told the South China Morning Post that NFTs "have no legal issue in China" as long as they distance themselves from cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. The infrastructure, named the BSN-Distributed Digital Certificate (BSN-DDC), to differentiate it from crypto-transacted NFTs, will offer application programming interfaces for businesses or individuals so they can build their own user portals or apps to manage NFTs. Only Chinese yuan is allowed for purchases and service fees. "NFTs in China will see annual output in the billions in the future," He said in an interview.

Wikimedia, the non-profit foundation that runs Wikipedia, is facing internal opposition to its policy of accepting cryptocurrency as a form of donation, primarily for environmental reasons. From a report: A proposal to the foundation from contributor Molly White, who goes by the user name GorillaWarfare, argues that accepting donations in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, bitcoin cash and ether signals endorsement of digital coins, which are "inherently predatory" as investments and don't align with the foundation's commitment to environmental sustainability. The contributor argues that Wikipedia risks damaging its reputation by accepting crypto donations, citing the recent decision by non-profit peer, Mozilla, to pause accepting donations in crypto. Wikimedia currently accepts bitcoin, bitcoin cash, and ether via BitPay. White singled out bitcoin and ether's need for enormous amounts of energy, while noting that there are other "eco-friendlier" cryptocurrencies, although they are less widely-used.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A defunct hydro plant in Costa Rica is getting a new lease on life by powering crypto mining, and bringing clean energy to a rapidly expanding business. More than 650 machines from 150 customers operate non-stop from this plant next to the Poas River, just outside of capital city San Jose. Costa Rica generates nearly all its energy from green sources, where the state has a monopoly on energy distribution. But the government stopped buying electricity due to surplus power in the country, forcing the plant to reinvent itself.

Eduardo Kooper is the owner of Data Center CR and the plant. "We had a lot of power, but we did nothing with it. We had to pause activity for nine months. We looked for many alternatives -- from making fried food, frozen food -- everything that used a lot of energy. Just a year ago, someone told me about Bitcoin, blockchain, and digital mining." Kooper, skeptical at first, learned that the crypto mining business requires a lot of energy, much of which comes from fossil fuels. The company invested $500,000 to venture into hosting digital mining computers. "Our market is the international miner who is looking for better conditions," said Kooper. "That miner is looking for clean energy, cheap energy that is economically viable, and looking for internet connection, where he finds it is where that miner is going to go."

The value of bitcoin fell under the $40,000 mark in early morning trading today. From a report: The popular cryptocurrency sold off sharply this morning, while rival tokens like ether also lost value. Currently worth $39,831 per coin, bitcoin is off 4.3% and ether 5.1%, according to Coinbase data. While it is always risky to cover price changes in the crypto world, the fall in the value of bitcoin has crossed the threshold from notable to material. Yahoo Finance indicates that bitcoin's recent all-time high saw the cryptocurrency trade as high as $68,789.62 per coin. Today's price puts bitcoin's current drawdown at just over 42%. That's twice the swing required for bitcoin to have entered a technical bear market, and four times what it would need to meet the requirements of a correction.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix draws princes, movie stars and world-famous athletes every year to party on Yas Island, the entertainment hub about 30 minutes from the center of downtown. Mingling among them last month was a figure charting an unlikely ascent: a former McDonald's burger-flipper and software developer who, practically overnight, has vaulted into the ranks of the world's wealthiest people -- cryptocurrency pioneer Changpeng Zhao. CZ, as he's known to cryptophiles, is quickly becoming a fixture in the United Arab Emirates, meeting with royalty in Abu Dhabi who are eager to bring his Binance exchange to the country, according to people with knowledge of the situation. He has scooped up an apartment in Dubai and hosted dinners near the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, and on the city's Palm Jumeirah island -- making him the most prominent personality in the nation's booming crypto scene.

In a region known for dizzying wealth, Zhao, 44, fits right in: His net worth is $96 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. It's the first time Bloomberg has estimated his fortune, which exceeds Asia's richest person, Mukesh Ambani, and rivals tech titans including Mark Zuckerberg and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Zhao's fortune could be significantly larger, as the wealth estimate doesn't take into account his personal crypto holdings, which include Bitcoin and his firm's own token. Binance Coin, now called BNB, surged roughly 1,300% last year. Binance's success underscores the vast riches being created in the unshackled cryptoverse, even with recent declines, but controversy has swirled around the firm. Banished from China -- where it was founded -- the company faces regulatory probes globally. The U.S. Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service are investigating whether one entity Zhao controls, Binance Holdings, is a conduit for money laundering and tax evasion, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Mike Melanson's "This Week in Programming" column looks at what happened after Mozilla founder Jamie "jwz" Zawinski slammed the group for accepting donations in cryptocurrency (which Zawinski called partnering "with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters.") Peter Linss, one of the creators of the Gecko browser engine on which Mozilla Firefox is based, also stepped in to back up Zawinski, saying that he was 100% with him and that Mozilla was "meant to be better than this."

When Mozilla first announced it would accept Bitcoin donations in 2014, it cited Khan Academy, Electronic Frontier Foundation, United Way, Greenpeace, and Wikimedia Foundation among its moral and upstanding cryptocurrency-accepting compatriots. Of that list, just Greenpeace has since stopped accepting cryptocurrency donations, telling the Financial Times earlier this year that "as the amount of energy needed to run bitcoin became clearer, this policy [of accepting cryptocurrency donations] became no longer tenable."
Thursday the Mozilla Foundation announced it was pausing cryptocurrency donations to review whether the idea "fits with our climate goals" — a fact the column also addresses: Mike Shaver, another Mozilla project founder, also tweeted his support, writing that he was "glad to see this reflection happening."

In a follow-up blog post to the ordeal, Zawinski doubled down on his condemnation of Mozilla's cryptocurrency acceptance, writing that "cryptocurrencies are not only an apocalyptic ecological disaster, and a greater-fool pyramid scheme, but are also incredibly toxic to the open web, another ideal that Mozilla used to support" — an idea also espoused in many of the comments on the initial Twitter thread.

Meanwhile, although Mozilla says that it is pausing the ability to donate cryptocurrencies during its review, the donations page still lists BitPay among its payment methods.