Scammers posing as Iranian authorities are offering passage through the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for cryptocurrency, Greek maritime risk management firm Marisks has warned. “These messages are a scam,” Marisks said, warning that they did not come from legitimate Iranian authorities, Reuters reported on April 21. Iran’s blockade of the Strait, which it briefly lifted, has closed the vital waterway to hundreds of ships carrying oil and gas, threatening to create energy shortages around the world. Roughly a fifth of the world’s supply of oil and liquefied natural gas must pass through the Strait. In response, the U.S. is blockading Iranian ports. At least one vessel is believed to…
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Buying Coffee With Bitcoin Is a Tax Burden: Cato
A daily cup of coffee could bring 100 pages of tax forms
With the proliferation of crypto spending debit cards, it’s easy enough to buy a cup of coffee with your bitcoins. The problem is that the purchase comes with a huge tax headache. Crypto sales of any kind, including using bitcoins for purchases, are treated as capital gains for tax purposes. So if you buy that cup of coffee every day, you’re looking at over 100 pages of tax forms, according to Nicholas Anthony, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Saying “the process is almost tailor-made to discourage the use of alternative currencies,” Anthony noted that “capital gains taxes require you to tell the Internal Revenue…
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Bitcoin Quantum Theft Freeze Proposal Draws Alternatives
BitMEX suggest canary in a coal mine approach
A controversial proposal to freeze older, dormant bitcoins to prevent them from being stolen by quantum computing attacks is generating a great deal of pushback, with several prominent sources suggesting alternatives. About 1.7 billion dormant bitcoins are locked using old encryption protocols that make them exceptionally vulnerable to theft by quantum computers, which will be powerful enough to break bitcoin’s encryption by brute force. Beyond that, 34% of the total bitcoin supply has an exposed public key that will be vulnerable to quantum threats unless transferred to new wallet addresses. A proposal yesterday by prominent bitcoin developers, including Jameson Lopp, suggested a three-stage freeze of older bitcoins over five years,…
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Proposal Would Freeze Bitcoins to Protect Against Quantum Theft
Quantum computers could break bitcoin encryption
A new proposal from five prominent Bitcoin developers would freeze coins in order to protect them from attacks by quantum computers, which are expected to be strong enough to break Bitcoin’s encryption and allow the theft of dormant tokens. Some 1.7 billion dormant bitcoins are locked using old encryption protocols that make them exceptionally vulnerable to quantum theft. That includes Satoshi Nakamoto’s 1.1 million bitcoin stash. The “Post Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sunset” proposal, or BIP-361, would have three stages. First, bitcoins would be sendable only to post-quantum secure addresses. That would take place about three years after BIP-361 goes live. Two years later, the second phase would freeze…
