Minneapolis-based cybersecurity firm Jamf Threat Labs found a crypto-jacking program well hidden in pirated copies of Apple’s Final Cut Pro. Jamf warns Apple chip speed will make Macs increasingly popular targets for malware attacks.
In its report, Jamf said:
“During routine monitoring of our threat detections in the wild, we encountered an alert indicating XMRig usage, a command-line crypto-mining tool. While XMRig is commonly used for legitimate purposes, its adaptable, open-source design has also made it a popular choice for malicious actors.”
The Apple software cybersecurity company found that unauthorized copies of Apple video editing software are a Trojan Horse. Unbeknownst to any petty cyber thieves who pirated the Apple software, it was running XMRig to mine crypto

The last year saw the fall of the Terra-Luna ecosystem, BlockFi, Celsius, Voyager Digital, 3AC, and Alameda-FTX. But it’s not the end of cryptocurrency. Like the Internet after the Dot Com bust, crypto is still just getting started.
Sure, it’s true that several crypto firms went down in 2022. But it seems worse in the headlines than it is in reality. Cryptocurrency’s critics in news journalism and the traditional finance industry are treating the failure stories as representative of the entire industry.
The cryptocurrency community likes to use the term “FUD” to describe the proliferation of negative crypto news. In some ways, that’s natural and understandable in terms of vigilance, transparency, and threat detection.
Fud is an acronym to describe crypto news articles or

The crypto market seems to have priced in last year’s string of crypto company bankruptcies. But the crypto firms that survived will still be paying off bank loans to cover their positions for some time.
Crypto prices continue to edge upward while the market bears and bulls regroup.
Even the recent bankruptcy of Genesis hasn’t dampened crypto investors’ enthusiasm.
Regulators Worry
Meanwhile, at least two banks with a high-profile roster of cryptocurrency companies for customers are staying afloat with money from home loan banks.
That may be a bullish signal for cryptocurrency in the big-picture view. It could signal traditional finance appetite for crypto exposure despite the risks. It is also, however, a source of consternation for economic planners and regulators.

They

The price of Ethereum, BNB Coin, Solana, and other DeFi altcoins kept running this week. New data in a report out from DappRadar reveals there were more NFTs sold in 2022 than the year before.
DappRadar: NFTs Sales in 2022 Soared
In more good news for cryptocurrency’s DeFi platforms, NFTs sold last year topped sales numbers from the year before. A new report from on-chain analytics firm, DappRadar, reveals the extent that NFTs are reshaping digital ownership in the 2020s.
101 million nonfungible tokens were sold in 2022. That was a staggering 67% increase over the number of NFTs sold in 2021.
These figures are extremely revealing of the popularity and staying power of NFTs. Just like Bitcoin and smart contract blockchains before them, NFTs’ critics in 2021 said the

As global influencers rubbed elbows at Davos, the IMF issued recommendations for crypto to global regulators. Depending on who you ask, crypto regulation could hurt the industry or open up vast new markets for normie investors.
In a note published over the week, the International Monetary Fund wrote:
“During times of stress, we’ve seen market failures of stablecoins, crypto-focused hedge funds, and crypto exchanges, which in turn raised serious concerns about market integrity and user protection. And with growing and deeper links with the core financial system, there could also be concerns about systemic risk and financial stability in the near future.”
The IMF’s preferred approach to counter these concerns is increasing global crypto regulation:
“Many of these concerns

Shiba Inu was the most popular crypto in new wallets over the past week, an on-chain analytics firm recently found. Banking was a boring subject for the Baby Boomer generation, but in the Internet of programmable money, finance is fun.
If asked to guess what they thought was the most popular first coin for new crypto adopters over the past week, many people would probably guess Bitcoin. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Neither is it the number two crypto by market cap, the peer-to-peer network computer, Ethereum (ETH).
Shiba Inu Is Currently Cryptocurrency’s Most Popular Starter Coin
On-chain data discovered by Nansen reveals the most popular non-stable coin digital asset for newly funded crypto wallets over the past seven days was Shiba Inu.
Over that period, Nansen

ETH’s price is rallying throughout the past couple of weeks. But that’s not the only news adding to Ethereum’s bullish momentum this month. The decentralized computer network is closing in on 100 million Ethereum addresses.
Crypto prices continue to swell with capital inflows as we enter the second half of January. Positive macroeconomic data continues to work its magic on asset valuations across the board.
The S&P 500 Index and NASDAQ Composite have continued their new year rally with crypto prices in tow. The strengthening correlation between crypto prices and stock prices indicates crypto’s maturity and adoption at this stage.
But the reviving Ethereum price action is not the only long-term bullish indicator materializing at the moment. Activity and usage of the

The cryptocurrency rally this month was so robust that traders are looking out for the price bottom. Is the market there yet, or will bears take the prices back down to key optical support at $20K?
Here are four new bullish indicators for the BTC price.
Solid MA Crossover in New Bitcoin Addresses
On-chain intelligence and insights firm Glassnode has spotted a bullish technical signal in Bitcoin addresses. The 30-day simple moving average (SMA) has charted above the 200-day SMA since the beginning of November. That’s a leading bullish indicator for the price of the underlying asset.
The SMA crossover event persisted through the Alameda-FTX scandals. It continues now amid the bankruptcy of Digital Currency Group subsidiary Genesis.
That signals increased demand for BTC and

The cryptocurrency market staged an early recovery at the beginning of 2023, but many remain skeptical as to whether the ongoing rally will last.
Some exchanges, including Coinbase and Crypto.com, continue with their staff cuts in a bid to weather the macro bear market, but others remain resilient. Case in point – Binance.
BNB Coin is the native token of the exchange. It’s a base layer cryptocurrency and operates as the base unit of currency for the Build ‘N’ Build Chain (formerly: Binance Smart Chain) or BNB Chain. It also works as originally intended, as a utility token for the exchange, offering users perks like discounts on trading fees and a nerdy cult of intensely deflationary tokenomics.
The following summary outline is not a precise BNB Coin price prediction. But

While crypto prices rallied last week, the public learned House Republicans are forming a cryptocurrency subcommittee. The announcement may spell the beginning of the end of U.S. regulatory ambiguity on blockchain and digital assets.
“Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. And when he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?” — Clarence, “It’s A Wonderful Life” (1946 Christmas drama about a banking panic).
Addressing a Big Hole
Rep. Patrick McHenry, a Republican from North Carolina’s delegation, said Thursday he’s planning to create the new crypto subcommittee.
He says it will address “a big hole in how we structure the committee” to reckon with crypto. McHenry was referring to the House Financial Services Committee, for which he is the

Almost sixty years after MLK gave the speech, crypto embodies Dr. King’s dream. It makes a dream much like his substantial and available to us in code and computer network design.
How Bitcoin Currency Is About The Same Dream As MLK
“I was a drum major for justice, peace, and righteousness.” -MLK
Bitcoin is a technology united around equal and open access to financial opportunity and infrastructure. Crypto is designed to make prejudice irrelevant and discrimination impossible because of or over its networks.
The agnosticism of the valuable working elements of the network to the user is the pride of crypto. One could imagine MLK happy about its development.
Moreover, the idea of a financial intermediary that does not need to interact with any of the identifying information

The Bitcoin price has taken a battering over the past year. But at the same time, its volatility is at a historic low. Will BTC critics finally admit it’s a currency yet?
Crypto markets are making a rebound in January, but there’s no certainty as to whether the bottom is in. Nearly all the major cryptocurrencies are up by double digits on the seven-day chart.
The Bitcoin price has soared over 20% to breach the $20,000 level.
Crypto Markets Explode to Start 2023: BTC Surges 23%
Crypto markets seem to be reacting favorably to the latest CPI report. The official U.S. inflation measure saw prices edge down in December, calming global recession fears.
But the explosion of crypto prices has a long way to go before anyone can speak of a steady Bitcoin price recovery.

Still, one

There’s a crypto study out of South Korea recently of Chinese Bitcoin arbitrage traders and Korea’s “kimchi premium” on Bitcoin prices. Its characterization of the cross-border Bitcoin trade and recommendations miss some key economic foundations.
A recently published crypto study by Incheon National University and the Bank of Korea is making the rounds. The authors found a strong correlation between the “kimchi premium” and international remittances to China.
‘Kimchi Premium’ Is The Persistently Higher Bitcoin Price in South Korea
The kimchi premium is the higher Bitcoin and crypto prices in South Korea. That’s because of the higher relative demand for Bitcoin within the Korean economy against fiat payments. It’s also a result of lower BTC supply.
The paper’s authors infer

The scale of the financial damage to crypto investors last year was colossal. Not just from FTX International going under but also the rest of them: Three Arrow Capital, Celsius, Genesis, Gemini, Voyager Digital, and BlockFi.
The Bitcoin price still hasn’t recovered from the ongoing streak of crypto bankruptcies, although it deleted some of the losses from the FTX fiasco. Over crypto exchanges, BTC kept taking steep discounts all year. Every new bankruptcy headline plunged the Bitcoin price lower.
There’s no telling whether the most recent Bitcoin price rally to $21K is a breakout or a January bull trap. Meanwhile, last year’s insolvencies continue to unravel in bankruptcy and criminal court.
Bankruptcy lawyers said Wednesday that FTX has found $5 billion in liquid assets.

Two weeks into the year, and crypto markets are rebounding. The Bitcoin and Ether price are each up some 20% on the seven-day chart. But a recent study of altcoins aims to give crypto investors pause before they go trading the rally.
When the market makes a move like this, crypto traders often shuffle. They make trades to scoop profits, make hedges, or take long positions in the coin they think will gain the most next.
This can result in an increase in volatility in crypto exchange markets. Furthermore, traders anticipate each other’s moves. As a result, the market can become increasingly volatile with self-fulfilling, short-range expectations. While this may seem complicated, crypto trading is worth a world of difference in ROI.
There is a Broad Range of Risks and Reward

The DeFi world, along with the rest of the cryptoverse, is still in the grip of fear and dread. 2022’s crypto winter continues with no clear end on the horizon. With still no sight of a near-term market bottom forming, some investors have even taken to wondering if DeFi is dead on arrival altogether.
But there are some inspiring data about the health and usage of the most prominent DeFi ecosystems today. The winners will go on to keep playing through the next big crypto rally. They give crypto investors, developers, and entrepreneurs alike great hope for the future of decentralized finance.
As goes the price of Bitcoin, so goes the price of the rest of the cryptocurrencies on the market. So the falling price of all the major DeFi altcoins out there in 2022 was more about

Financial markets for everything, including crypto, remain on pause as we mark off the first week of 2023. At this time of global economic uncertainty, people are holding their cash close. Here’s why it’ll be increasingly important for governments to hold their Bitcoin close.
Bitcoin’s price barely budged after the release of the latest jobs report. It moved less than a percent, holding above $16,900 as the job data suggested more rate hikes.
Bitcoin Is Poised To Become The World’s “Primary Monetary Good”
Let’s set aside investors’ woes over the crypto price winter for a moment and consider the reality of Bitcoin in 2023. People used to question whether the cryptocurrency was even here to stay. Now, successful investors and even banking giants have acknowledged its

The Federal Reserve and FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) released a joint statement on Tuesday, Jan 3. The paper describes the risks of holding digital assets. But here are some of the ways crypto is addressing those risks with network design and code.
The Fed and FDIC say that with crypto, there is a “risk of fraud and scams among crypto-asset sector participants.” But there are also several countermeasures and security techniques in crypto. Furthermore, cryptocurrency actually uses these to reduce the risk of fraud or scams.
No one is claiming that cryptocurrency is completely incorruptible. Neither is it said that crypto is immune to fraud, scams, or cyber-criminal exploits of the code. There’s no perfect software solution, just as there is no perfect

With the turnover of the new year, Bitcoin price analyst predictions are out. Meanwhile, a survey of the damage from the protracted 2022 crypto winter shows 70K fewer BTC wallet addresses with $1 million USD worth of Bitcoin or more.
It has now been over a year since Bitcoin’s (BTC) last all-time price high of $68,789 on November 10, 2021. Since then, at today’s fair market price on crypto exchanges of around $16,900 for the coin, the Bitcoin price had declined 75% from the record high.
That was just 13 months ago, but the return on the investment depends entirely on the individual cost basis and whether it’s in a loss or a profit at BTC’s current prices. They have remained consistently below $20,000 now since September. Crypto prices across markets keep taking massive

Solana has rallied for the week as the network continues to gain more users. Excitement over the new memecoin, Bonk Inu (BONK), coincided with the cryptocurrency’s rally. The asset is moving in stride, brushing off recent losses in connection with the FTX’s collapse.
Solana is pulling through tough times. It’s rough for the Ethereum competitor, the DeFi ecosystem especially, as it is tough for the entire industry out there in this biting crypto winter.
The gains for Solana have pushed the coin up to $13.50, meaning a 40+% weekly surge. It had been trading below double digits by the end of December. So that’s a rally for Solana on the 5-day pane after a long, drawn-out tumble over the 30-day, 6-month, and 1-year view.
1. How Solana Is Weathering Its FTX Connections
Bonk Inu

Crypto traders are converting worthless NFTs into tax breaks. They’re using a service started just for that purpose. Others are taking advantage of IRS tax loopholes for tax breaks on their losses from BTC, ETH, and others this year.
That’s how bad the crypto winter is getting as the frost sets into planet earth’s northern hemisphere. But in a sign of persistence and entrepreneurial spirit, crypto markets are reacting. NFT buyers are now helping people with their underwater smart contracts. They’re helping sellers unload their junk NFT and get an official receipt for their tax breaks.
Investors Are Taking Losses on NFTs for the Tax Breaks
It’s not unlike what happened after the 2008 financial crisis. Back then, billions of dollars in mortgage-backed, fixed-income

Other than PayPal’s launch of the MetaMask integration, which is positive news for Ethereum, recent news about the world’s largest smart contract blockchain is mostly a yawn.
Compared to last year this time, ETH is trading at a 68% discount, highlighting the exacerbated bear market of late.
But it’s also worth outlining that it was the cryptocurrency market’s most boisterous bubble with its most catastrophic collapse, knocking out one crypto business and altcoin after another in the wake of its fall.
What Will Happen With Ethereum (ETH) in 2023?
Will Ethereum– and its peers, Bitcoin (BTC) and Binance Coin (BNB) – rally in 2023, remain in an extended bear market, or capitulate even further in Q1 or Q2 of next year?
As long as Bitcoin’s coattails are in the crypto exchange

In 2022 Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the bevy of altcoins riding on the original gangster cryptocurrency’s very long coattails weathered their most brutal crypto winter to date. Of course, the cryptocurrency industry is eager for an end to the long, drawn-out Bitcoin price winter.
From Bitcoin miners and mining pools to Layer-2 chain developers like the Lightning Network to crypto day traders and crypto investors – confidence is shaken, fear and greed are high, and the metaphorical blood just keeps pouring out into the streets. When will it end?
2023 Bitcoin Price History Was a Doozy and a Half
The sharp market correction after the $69K ATH in November 2021 was reasonable, understandable, and even expected by many. When the price fell to the $30,000 handle in May, it was

Ethereum (ETH) was on an absolute rampage to finish October with 20% 7D gains and record ETH short liquidations. Adding to the Web3 blockchain’s tailwinds, Alphabet Inc.’s Google just unveiled Blockchain Node Engine with support for Ethereum.
In Blockchain Node Engine, Google boasts a fully managed node-hosting service for Web3 developers. Google Cloud touts Cloud for Web3 as a way for blockchain devs to:
“Build and scale faster with simple, secure tools and infrastructure for Web3. Get co-sell and growth opportunities, like promotion on Marketplace, and support for on- and off-chain governance.”
The power, resources, and reliability of Google Cloud, together with a blockchain dev environment and the host, could prove a potent mix for new Web3 projects.
How Google Cloud

The correlation between Bitcoin and stocks may be decoupling. And the original cryptocurrency might be working as advertised as an inflation hedge. With inflation soaring, BTC is tracking more like spot gold than US stocks.
At the 30-day view Sunday, the bitcoin price was down 3.11% for the period at UTC 17:30. Stocks, on the other hand, were facing much steeper losses for the month. The S&P 500 Index was down 6.7% for the 30-day period. High-tech sector losses for the past month were deeper. The NASDAQ 100 was down 8.77%.
BTC-Stock Correlation Drops, Gold Rises
Instead of equities, Bitcoin has been acting more like gold over the 30-day view. With the world economy wobbling, gold is holding up best over this timeframe. Spot gold was only down 1.27% over the same period, to

Consumer price inflation has clocked in above 8% in the latest CPI print. Consumer inflation in the US has remained near or above 8% for the entire year of 2022 so far. It reached its highest point in June, with a 12-month percentage increase above 9%.
The US government sprang into action over the persistence of rising consumer prices, increasing Social Security benefits to keep pace.
Social Security Gets +8% Cost of Living Adjustment
Inflation is a phenomenon with generational, demographic, and cultural effects. It is now leading to an unprecedented COLA (cost of living adjustment) to Social Security, the US pension fund program, and the largest public pension program in the world.
The soaring inflation rate has been rough on the US dollar economy. Higher prices squeeze

Stocks started off the week in a rally, with wide benchmarks like the S&P 500, NASDAQ Composite, and Dow Jones posting gains.
But the rally fell off with a sharp pullback Friday on new worries of increasing Fed rate hikes. The retracement was nearly enough to wipe out the gains from earlier in the week, but not quite.
Stocks Yikes: Strong Jobs Data Could Mean More Fed Rate Hikes
As Joe Rennison and Isabella Simonetti at the New York Times explain, new hires slowed some in September, but not as much as expected.
The strength of the labor markets to add new hires is good economic news, but it could also indicate inflationary Fed lending over the dovish regime is still coursing through the economy. As a result, the Fed is expected, based on the new labor numbers, to continue

The Bitcoin closed a daily candle above $20,000 on Tuesday, marking the highest daily close in about 24 days. That’s after trading range-bound from the $19K to $20K level for the latter half of September.
Foreign pressure on the Fed to slow rate hikes and a low supply of bitcoin on crypto exchanges rallied the price of BTC.
The Near Term Assessment of Bitcoin Traders
As markets watch the price of BTC move on crypto exchanges this month, traders are assessing bitcoin’s near-term prospects. BTC’s three-months price doldrums represents a market ambivalence caused by a range of determinants of supply and demand. Hashrate is running high, long-term holders aren’t selling, the exchange supply is low, and institutional interest continues to expand cautiously.
In the near term,

The IRS is going after crypto owners who fail to report gains on their taxes. The US tax authority got a court order Thursday enjoining an NYC bank to turn over records on potential crypto tax dodgers.
While crypto markets appear in the throes of “winter” against buys made last November to date, half of the bitcoin holders are holding at a profit. The IRS requires US taxpayers who sell bitcoin or any cryptocurrency at a profit to report it. And it is willing to use all means available to enforce compliance.
The government seized $3.5 billion in crypto last year alone.
Here are three things to know about filing and paying US income taxes on cryptocurrency capital gains.
Cryptocurrency is Considered Property by the IRS
The Internal Revenue Service considers cryptocurrency to

Bitcoin price retested the $18K support level Friday. That’s the third time in a week, with the crypto failing to pass resistance at $19.5K twice on the 5-day chart.
The crypto exchange price for a piece of the world’s original blockchain currency continues to consolidate at around $19K. That has been the trend for Bitcoin (BTC) over the month of September.
Over the six-month chart, year-to-date, and one-year view, bitcoin is deeply in the red. It’s the third prolonged capitulation in the crypto’s history, called a “crypto winter” by longtime traders.
Yet despite the deep freeze on prices, here are three reasons why Bitcoin is oversold like crazy right now.
The Bitcoin Hash Rate Hit All-Time High in September
Bearing in mind that exchange market prices are ultimately