Author: Altcurrencyhelp

The Million Dollar Bitcoin Treasure Hunt

If you’ve ever seen the movie ” Ready Player One ” there is something of a real life crypto version of the key quest afoot.

If you’ve ever seen the movie ” Ready Player One ” there is something of a real life crypto version of the key quest afoot. More of an augmented reality game mixing bits of the digital and physical world. Some think it’s a wild goose chase, while others see it as an epic trek to fame and fortune. No matter the outcome the hype has been brewing!

Called ” Satoshi’s Treasure ” this cryptocurrency treasure hunt involves the search of 1000 keys that make up the wallet address worth $1 million dollars in BTC. The wallet key was split into 1000 keys with the ” magic of Shamir ” and one only needs 400 keys to reconstitute the private key. With such a blockchain of possibilities, it’s easy to get treasure hunting fever.

Image from https://satoshistreasure.xyz/

Satoshi Treasure Keys Found So Far

Keys Found So Far Since 5/14/19

To date 60,000 people have signed up for the Satoshi Treasure newsletter, that releases notifications, says co-creator Eric Meltzer of Primitive Ventures. The most interesting part of this team based exercise is that interconnectivity of the community involved. Many see it as much a treasure hunt as they do an educational experience.

John Cantrell, a software engineer cracked the 1st key fragments and then promptly disclosed on Twitter and GitHub how he did such so others could learn. Since then Cantrell has joined with other teams and created a free tool called ” Ordo ” that helps teams organize clues and give proper credit to contributors. So far the biggest team using Ordo is up to 600 members!

Team Up To Collect 400 Keys!

Since this isn’t a solo endeavor, it highly encourages teams to respect fellow players. There are some rules to follow for Satoshi’s Treasure. Mainly that no clues will be hidden on private property, that no clue will require destruction of any sort, and 3rd and final show respect for fellow players.

The rules even go as far to state, that if any unsportsmanlike behavior is discovered that keys may be revealed to everyone. Which of course would result in starting over or even losing depending on how many keys were had verses keys left.

One thing is certain, many are excited and the excitement is creating more interest in cryptocurrency! So what are you waiting for? Is your team going to win? If so, don’t forget to donate some here! 🙂

Weak Passwords Means Stolen Crypto

Weak passwords and poor security results in automatic altcoin theft.

A blockchain sleuth has been guessing Ether private wallet passwords and using a private node to check for known addresses to then empty the associated altcoin wallets. Currently according to Etherscan, the wallet has around 45,000 Ether or roughly $7.3 million dollars. A consulting firm based in the US called ” Independent Security Evaluators ” ( ISE ) published the report on the Ether sleuth titled ” Ether Combing “.

Bad Private Keys And Weak Passphrases

Accidents and mistakes happen and if you’re not knowledgeable, you could create the perfect storm and lose all your funds. Some ether wallets were found to not have a password set, which will result in the emptying of such a wallet. The RPC of Ethereum nodes is not to be exposed, yet when they are, nodes can be compromised. It’s important to stay ” in the know ” and keep updated on how to prevent cryptocurrency scams.

This problem is not just with Ether. It’s a blockchain wide problem, with so many now using technology they aren’t 100% or in many cases 50% aware of altcoin wallet safety precautions. There tends to be an ethical delima says ISE in what to do when coming across unsecured wallets. The IFS says best practice is if any such wallet is found, to leave it be. Doing ANYTHING with an unsecured wallet could lead to criminal charges.

Wallet Security Is Important To Practice

Use wallets that are well-known and trusted among the community. Otherwise you could be setting yourself up for failure on someone’s else’s mistake. However, even that’s not enough sometimes, as they is inherent risk with popular products. Looking at IOTA wallet being compromised by a Oxford developer who stole 10 million euros in March 2019, he was arrested.

Open source doesn’t always mean safe, since code can be hidden in plain sight to those not exercising due diligence. Luckily ISE and other researches will continue to search and sift wallets for issues and raising alarm. Highlighting faulty private keys and other security risks. Hopefully it turns into a collaborated effort among the community. As always, if you need altcoin wallet help, it’s just a click away!

Brave Browser Rewards Users And Websites

Brave browser puts advertising on the blockchain. Learn more about how Brave lets users and websites earn the cryptocurrency BAT.

A new kid is on the block, and it’s the Brave browser! Brave is a browser with innovative privacy features combined with a blockchain based digital advertising platform. The Brave browser can be used to tip Basic Attention Tokens to users via participating in viewing advertising. The BAT can also be tipped from the users to the website as form of appreciation for content providers. The blockchain of possibilities keeps growing!

Advertising On The Blockchain

Instead of forcing users to view ads as payment for viewing the website. Brave offers a new approach, to allow users to choose what ads they see and how frequently. While paying the ad viewer 70% of the BAT ad revenue, with the other 30% going to Brave. No information is collected from the user and ads are viewed via the desktop notifications, rather than over or next to web content. Brave even allows for the content creators to earn money from user tips directly or monthly user views.

Web Browser Privacy Upgraded

With a privacy browsing mode that includes ” private tabs with Tor “, it’s easy to see why this web browser stands out from the rest. According to Brave’s website, it’s browser can match the popular browser choices with correctly configured settings and extensions, out of the box. Brave will automatically use https when possible. The browser claims to even block known plugins that are security risks, by default!

Couple this with decentralized search or AHREF’s search engine user profit sharing and the future of altcoins keeps looking bright!

What Is Cryptojacking?

What is cryptojacking? Cryptojacking is the unlawful use of a device to mine cryptocurrency. The act of forcing someone’s device to mine cryptocurrency doesn’t need to be that tech savvy. Many cryptojacking issues result from the code residing on a website, once users land on the website, the script goes to work, tricking the user’s device to begin mining cryptocurrency!

Many cryptojacking scripts aim to use fractions of user’s resources in order not to be discovered. Since a noticeable slowing of device ability would be a tip off as to malicious activity. Coinhive was a popular malicious service used to cryptojack unsuspecting users, and certainly wasn’t the only services used, but the most popular. Coinhive announced it’s abrupt termination of the script on March 8th 2019. The scripts used often is javascript, so using javascript blocking extensions is one level of defense.

How Cryptojacking Affects SEO

Cryptojacking mainly affects SEO by harming user trust and brand perception, it has been used before as negative SEO while adding to the attackers wallets at the sametime. As users don’t know if it’s because the website was hacked or because the website is just being malicious. In any rate it harms user trust which will result in less web traffic and more back button clicks. Sending signals to Google and other search engines that the search result was not helpful for their search.

As a result there is a good chance the decrease in web traffic will result in keyword ranking loss. If this hasn’t happened already due to Google placing a huge red warning screen stating that the website might of been hacked. Akin to having a health code violation and being forced to place a big letter F on the storefront, a hacked warning sign message is about the same result, no customers.

How To Identify And Prevent Cryptojacking

One of the tale tale signs of cryptojacking is an increase CPU cooling fan usage. If you hear your cooling fan revving up faster than normal for longer periods of time, there could be cause for alarm. 3rd party browser extensions can help prevent the use of javascript and even just the mining code itself, research into extensions like PrivacyBadger, Adblocker, MinerBlock, NoCoin, could prove useful.

As with any malware prevention opening email attachments and clicking on links in emails should always be done with caution. Install antivirus software you trust or that has been rated highly by trusted sources. And with the weakest link of any technology security chain being the human element, teach coworkers and employees about these phishing and cryptojacking techniques.

PayPal Proceeds With Blockchain Startup Investment

If you’ve been following cryptocurrency news, you’ve heard PayPal’s name get thrown around. Now the online payment company is actually following through with interest in blockchain technology, by investing in Cambridge Blockchain, a startup that helps manage sensitive data on the shared ledgers. In a extension of Series A funding, PayPal has invested an undisclosed amount with recent filings from the SEC saying Cambridge Blockchain has raised $3.5 million in the last 9 months from several investors.

PayPal now joins the ranks of HCM Capital ( who handles the iPhone manufacturing for Apple as well as Digital Currency Group. Along with PayPal, Omidyar Network ( a philanthropic investment firm ) was apart of the $3.5 million investment. In a statement to the press about the investment, a PayPal spokesperson said,



“We made an investment in Cambridge Blockchain because it is applying blockchain for digital identity in a way that we believe could benefit financial services companies including PayPal. Our investment will allow us to explore potential collaborations to leverage blockchain technology.”


Cambridge Blockchain Works With Luxembourg Government

In a move that could only be called ” planned ” or ” synchronicity ” PayPal’s headquarters for Europe was moved to Luxembourg and granted a banking license there. PayPal has been working with LuxTrust, which is backed by the government of Luxembourg and other financial institutions in the area. So while PayPal has been talking about blockchain involvement for some time, it looks like they’ve been planning for involvement even longer.

Through the trial by fire of GDPR, Cambridge Blockchain has learned some valuable hands on experience. Cambridge claims they can help reduce the massive duplication of KYC-ing that goes on today. Commons has be quoted saying,


“If you are looking to help get some traction for a distributed identity system, it’s great to have a partner like that.”

Search Engine On The Blockchain?

With the latest news of AHREFs announcing it will be entering the search engine landscape, with a twist, a profit sharing modality.

If we are to follow AHREFs correctly, to have the kind of accountability needed for search engine profit sharing based on content, one can see how the blockchain would naturally come to mind. It’s not disclosed how AHREFs would handle such a feat however they swear it’s not an April 1st joke.

AHREFs indexing is pretty good, from experience, it’s 2nd to Google, but it’s just that, second to Google, and even Google misses things still. That means there is a good chance of the 3rd party indexing issue where the bigger more deeper the pockets, the better the indexing. If a more community based approach is had, this could be a very positive endeavor. When 3rd party website indexing is more complete, a more accurate view of the internet can be seen, from backlinks to keyword rankings.

There are two types of website indexing, the kind of crawling a company will do to gather data to sell as a service. And the kind where search engines will crawl a website and rank webpages for keywords that users search for. Website indexing optimization is something the SEO community is very concerned about. If a website doesn’t get indexed by searchbots then the website will not show up on search engine result pages ( SERPs ).

There Are Other Decentralized Search Engines

A couple players in the decentralized search landscape come to mind, and hope to remove the monopoly currently had in search. However like any good idea, it’s a matter of execution and popularity. The biggest issue is marketing and incentives, how can you attract users to NOT use Google? That’s at the heart of what many are currently trying to accomplish, incentivizing the whole landscape of using the internet.

  • Presearch – is more of a community based search engine, tokens are earned by usage, contribution and promotion of the platform.
  • DeSearch – is a community based search engine as well, based more around security and privacy of users and businesses. Creating a ecosystem of data purchasing.

Whoever figures out the best platform to reshape search, will dictate the new norms, with the help of the very users who made the platform possible. The future is moving away from ” king of the hill ” mindsets and more of a ” planetary ” involvement. Of course, nothing will get rid of the importance of researching the right keywords and delivering content users want to read.

Hurdles To Cryptocurrency Mass Adoption

Currently cryptocurrency is growing, it’s come a long way from the infancy stage it was in, back in 2013, however it’s still in it’s toddler stages now, and needs more ethics and socialization experience. There’s no arguing that the blockchain technology alone can help humanity in a variety of ways, but if not steered correctly by us, the people, then we have a bigger problem as it’s used against our freedoms.

Right now, we have the ability to really level the playing field of economics, we can create the universal basic income of the future, today and deliver a whole new source of revenue to those who would actually utilize it to create a better tomorrow.

Trust Is Cryptocurrency Transparency

We need more trust, since we need more people to want to be a part of this technology and really community. We cannot obtain those newcomers if we aren’t being honest and open about how the technology we’re developing actual can help and not what it could do if everything falls into place correctly, we need a current feature plan, not tomorrows, yet.

All many outside of the blockchain community see right now, are hacked exchanges, slow blockchains, mining hardware that costs way too much to learn with now, and issues where even multi million dollar altcoin exchanges aren’t able to maintain their cryptocurrency wallet passwords, why would the average person feel it’s for them confidently?

Usher In The Age Of Altcoin Knowledge

The people need to learn, they cannot learn without the information properly organized for them, not conveniently anyways. We the cryptocurrency community, can help that, by answering the important questions and then some, by guiding the newly interested to the altcoin information they deserve!

No Cryptocurrency Will, That’s A Big Problem

With the recent issue with QuadrigaCX lost cryptocurrency millions, it’s a good time to bring up the importance of having a backup plan, in case of your untimely demise / passing from this plane of existence, in other words, a will, for cryptocurrency.  Since your funds will still be there, long after you aren’t to tell those pesky altcoin wallet passphrases…

While cryptocurrency wallet passwords, aren’t the thing to keep in your password vault, they are something you might want to safe guard another way. The good ole fashion, pen and paper, come to mind, laminate and tuck away with the birth certificate and social. Whatever way you choose, make sure you choose wisely, as it’s a pretty hard lesson to learn.

Altcoin Passwords Are Valuable

In fact, they’re just as valuable as the altcoins they guard are worth, since without it, you don’t have said altcoins.  Without a cryptocurrency will, that altcoin password, becomes a heated debate or worse, so regardless of having a company, or a family,

It’s probably a good idea to create some sort of: 

  • Safe cold storage method for your altcoin password
  • A cryptocurrency will, explaining who gets what

So to sum it up, if you have cryptocurrency, and you don’t have a cryptocurrency will to explain who gets what and how they can obtain said altcoins, then you’re playing with fire.

To Hodl Or Not To Hodl

Back in 2013, altcoins weren’t really talked about as much as Bitcoin was, but whenever altcoins were mentioned, it was in the form of ” Holding “, ” Bagholders “, ” Hodor ” and ” Hodl “.  What these phrases really meant, was to hold onto your altcoin, as they would increase in value someday, like Bitcoin ( at least that was the hopes of many who listened ).

The Altcoin BagHolder Scam Saga

Sadly, many of those Hodlers, were part of altcoin scams, and a good bit were scammed out of many of altcoins, due to things like, fake exchanges, fake software, giving out private wallet keys, forks to newer versions and not so well marketed redemption websites to exchange old version altcoins for new, ( like many even thought that was a thing when they ” bought ” these at 1st ).

This is why it’s smart to research altcoins before you even think about using them as an investment vehicle, as many aren’t even real or aren’t setup for longevity or scale-ability. Also, stay alert to various types of altcoin scams, and learn about altcoin scam prevention.

There Is Value In The Right Altcoin

Upon proper research, one will see many fields of technology being improved by blockchain technology and the incentive that cryptocurrency additions can bring to funding and startups in the right positions. However, make sure there is substance to back up altcoin hype, as it just takes a well marketed concept to fund someone’s pockets and run, so the more hasty something sounds, often the more suspicious one should be.

Ethereum was once offered at $10 an altcoin token, and look at it now, bag holders of Ethereum have been very happy, but then you have other altcoins that seem legit, but don’t add up in the end, and that’s where the risk verses the research comes into play, understand your altcoin, and you will understand the risks involved. It’s alot like playing poker, in some senses, you need to read marketing bluffs and hype to see the real progress or lack thereof.