Mad drama has once again hit the Bitcoin community as news—both good and bad—continues to stack up. This week’s attention saw Apple drop Blockchain.info’s web-wallet from their app store citing “an unresolved issue” sparking a massive controversy and even destroyed iPhones (including one shot with a rifle at long range.) Fiverr partnered with BitPay to allow customers to buy short-work services for bitcoins.
Last, but not least, MtGox suspended BTC withdrawals in the wake of what the exchange cited as “a bug in Bitcoin,” triggering a massive backlash from the Bitcoin Core developers and the community itself—only to have the problem spread to other exchanges when a hacker decided to start using the vulnerability (which primarily affects exchanges using poorly-written wallets) in a Bitcoin network-wide DDoS attack attempt.
Bitcoin market value has fallen from a high of $830 during the day of the last Bitcoin Weekly to plummet to $665 during this one—having crossed through a low as deep as $591.37 on Monday—according to Bitcoinaverage.com’s charts. MtGox suspending of BTC withdrawals, Bitstamp suspending withdrawals, and the discovery of the DDoS attempt have severely depressed the value of BTC on the market this week.
Massive DDoS attempt using transaction malleability strikes network-wide for Bitcoin
What started with MtGox quickly spread to the rest of the network when a malicious party decided to start using the now publicly known transaction ID malleability attack against other exchanges. The damage count so far is that MtGox still will not transact BTC withdrwals and BitStamp has frozen BTC withdrawals as well.
During the initial kerfuffle, numerous Bitcoin luminaries sided against MtGox’s ham-handed Monday press-release that blamed the Bitcoin protocol for the problem. Bringing out possibly one of the best-possible snarks in reply from Blockchain’s CSO, Andreas Antonopoulos, via Twitter, “A DnD geek wrote a currency exchange in PHP and three years later we’re still paying a price for that.”
On Tuesday, Bitstamp froze BTC withdrawals as well and Antonopoulos made statements via Twitter and to Coindesk about the nature of the highly-coordinated transaction malleability attack that had become network-wide.
Antonopoulos and others have continually stressed that the attack occurring does not affect bitcoin funds, the Blockchain itself, or even the Bitcoin protocol. The attack only affects poorly-written wallet software that does not account for transaction malleability—however, this sort of network-wide attack does have long-reaching issues such as bloating the Blockchain and slowing transactions. Antonopoulos himself has written a thorough explanation of what the problem is and how its resolved on Blockchain.info’s blog.
It’s not a killer, but it’s not healthy that it’s happening either.
Soon, other Bitcoin-related services began to say their piece including Coinkite posting, “We would like to reassure all of our customers that transaction malleability does not in any way impact our wallet implementation at Coinkite.” Coinbase responded by doing an audit of their wallet software and made it safer, “We also looked into the technical details of the transaction malleability issue and just this morning added additional security measures to our software to further prevent such an attack.”
The weather right now is rough for bitcoin—somewhat foggy with a great deal of traffic rushing about—but with this level of interaction between exchanges and Core Bitcoin developers the issues related to the attack will be easier to describe and report on.
SiliconAngle will keep you updated.
Microsoft beats Google to the punch, giving BTC conversion on Bing
In what seems to be a real coup for Microsoft, the software-giant’s competing search engine Bing has beaten Google to putting BTC conversion directly into the search engine. Currently typing “1 btc to usd” into Bing will produce a result that queries Coinbase for an answer:
Typing the same into Google only displays results of web search related to getting a conversion but no conversion.
This one goes to Microsoft.
Fiverr partners with Coinbase to accept bitcoins for gigs
Bitcoin web-wallet and merchant-processor Coinbase is joining forces with person-to-person service seller Fiverr to allow customers to order services with BTC.
Coinbase has published their excitement on their blog, describing the integration:
Fiverr is one of many merchants that have embraced the power of bitcoin to not only provide frictionless transactions, but also reduce transaction fees which usually amount to 3%. And in doing so, Fiverr is also opening itself up to new, first-time customers who are actively making purchases with bitcoin.
Fiverr’s blog includes images of the transaction process—with a BTC address and QR code supplied via the Coinbase integration. While at this time “gigs” (or the small jobs done by Fiverr service workers) can be paid for with bitcoins, the workers themselves cannot withdraw bitcoins yet.
The addition of Fiverr to the merchant lineup of the bitcoin ecology is a huge step forward given the poor proliferation of service-related websites that accept bitcoin. It will be even bigger news when a site such as Fiverr also begins paying service workers in cryptocurrency.
Apple’s dismissal of Blockchain.info app fans the flame of controversy
Apple has been removing bitcoin-related apps from the app store for a while now, culminating in the removal of Blockchain.info’s mobile wallet and sparking a wave of controversy about the walled-garden approach of the computing giant and its problem with Bitcoin.
As news continues to surface, Apple noted that Blockchain lost their web-wallet “due to an unresolved issue.” Blockchain responded with a scathing blog post accusing Apple of censorship and raking the company across the coals for removing the application.
Much of the controversy revolved around Apple’s distain for Blockchain’s app being capable of bitcoin transactions, a feature that Apple does not permit in most apps put into its store. As a result Apple claims that Blockchain’s wallet application snuck in by showing a preview version that lacked the bitcoin transaction function that was then added later after the review process.
The removal struck a nerve and sparked a fit of fury in the Bitcoin community including driving some enterprising enthusiasts to destroy their iPhone’s on camera. Leading to possibly one of the most powerful revisitations of Apple’s “Think Different” advertisement campaign in 1997 displayed in the YouTube montage below.
BitScan launches largest merchant directory in mobile app
Bitcoin mobile app publisher Bitscan is boasting a merchant directory of over 5800 merchants in over 130 countries and just partnered with transaction-provider BitPay. The app provides an all-in-one bitcoin dashboard for iOS—Android and Chrome apps planned soon—that allows customers to connect to merchants, merchants to announce themselves, and speculators to track their BTC holdings across multiple exchanges.
In short, BitScan aims to be the Renaissance mobile app for bitcoin consumers and merchants.
“While bitcoin’s utility as a store of value is clearly recognized, its adoption as a medium of trade is immature and for the wider public it remains something of an enigma,” said Rob Wilson, CEO of BitScan. “People don’t know how to get it, how to store it or where they can spend it. At the same time bitcoin merchants are finding it hard to get found or connect with their customers. BitScan aims to pull this all together. We hope and believe the applications we are building will help accelerate bitcoin across the chasm to mainstream acceptance.”
Listing and promoting a business on BitScan’s directory or linking in through the classifieds marketplace is free. And, to grow their already hefty listings, BitScan is offering a bounty from referrals for bringing businesses on board who are not already in the directory.
Adding yet another service under their belt, BitScan also runs a news service called BitBuzz designed to encourage writers to enter the cryptocurrency beat by rewarding contributors using a micropayments system that leverages bitcoin’s small-payments capability. The service is described as allowing bloggers to get paid “on an enduring basis for blogging about bitcoin.”
New mobile apps and services—especially professionally designed—will do a lot to expand the adoption rate of bitcoin and make the economy more healthy as a whole. Although iOS is a poor place to publish a bitcoin app right now (due to Apple’s poor acceptance) the soon-addition of Android and Chrome to BitScan’s platform coverage will go a long way to making them possibly a premiere app.