Key Highlights

• ETH price failed to stay above the $146 support and declined heavily against the US Dollar.
• There is a short term bearish trend line formed with resistance at $128 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via Kraken).
• The pair may correct a few points towards $130, but it is likely to extend declines below $120.

Ethereum price declined heavily during the past few hours against the US Dollar and bitcoin. ETH/USD could test $110 or $105 if it fails to recover above $128 and $136.

Ethereum Price Analysis

Yesterday, we saw a solid support near the $144-146 zone for ETH price against the US Dollar. The ETH/USD pair recently failed to break the $150-151 zone and a bearish trend line. It resulted in a sharp bearish reaction and the price declined below the $146 and $144 supports. Sellers gained control and pushed the price below the $130 level. There was even a close below the $130 level and the 100 hourly simple moving average. A low was formed near $122 and later the price started consolidating losses.

An initial resistance is the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the recent drop from the $151 high to $122 swing low. Moreover, there is also a short term bearish trend line formed with resistance at $128 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD. If there is a break above the trend line and $128, the price may recover further. The next key resistance is near the $126 level. The stated level represents the 50% Fib retracement level of the recent drop from the $151 high to $122 swing low. A proper close above the $136 level is needed for a decent recovery in the near term.

Looking at the chart, ETH price clearly made a sharp U-turn below the $146 support. As long as the price is below $136, there is a risk of more losses. A break below $122 and $121 may push the price towards $110.

Hourly MACD – The MACD for ETH/USD is slowly moving in the bullish zone, but the overall bias is still negative.

Hourly RSI – The RSI for ETH/USD is currently recovering from the oversold zone.

Major Support Level – $121

Major Resistance Level – $136

Upcoming forks in Ethereum and Ethereum Classic have given opportunity to scammers. Two alleged “hard fork” versions are trying to steal money from users of both. Ethereum Nowa claims to be forking away from ETH. Ethereum Classic Vision claims to fork away from ETC. These forks are allegedly in response to regularly scheduled network upgrades in both blockchains.

Accordingly, the team at Guarda, which offers a web-based solution similar to Coinomi, wrote to CCN to report that both of these forks are scams. The official web wallets both Ethereum Nowa and Ethereum Classic Vision have provided are scams. They attempt to capture private keys. Unsuspecting users may have already lost money using this method.

Firefox and MetaMask have caught on to the scams. Ethnowallet was identified by Firefox as a “deceptive site.”

Thankfully, this reporter’s MetaMask extension caught Ethereum Classic Vision.

Capturing Private Keys

MyEtherWallet.com is a popular web-based crypto wallet solution. It only requires a web browser. The user does not have to be online. It does not share private key or transaction information with the MyEtherWallet.com servers. MyMonero.com and Coinb.in work similarly.

Guarda investigated the alleged prospective ETH forks. Users are promised that they will be able to fork their coins and get money on the alleged new chains. Importantly, Guarda discovered that both of these alleged crypto projects were capturing private keys and transferring the data back to their servers. This is a no-go for any wallet implementation that doesn’t expressly tell you that it’s storing your coins for you.

There are other ways to fork coins. Importantly, we don’t have any reason to believe these chains will exist. But given their track record already of trying to capture people’s ETH and ETC private keys, it’s unlikely that any legitimate forks will result.

As the report from Guarda states:

When accessing the Ethereum Nowa website, the users can click on the “Wallet” button – this will redirect you to the page of Ethereum Nowa wallet creation/importing your old wallet. This is exactly where the trap lies.

Ethereum Classic Vision looked more solid at the first glace, but the analysis on the code performed by our team has shown that the piece of code provided actually sends your private key data on the Ethereum Classic Vision servers, masking it as an API token.

Read the full report, which contains technical details of the ECV attack, below.

Ethereum Scammers Trying to… by on Scribd

Featured image from Shutterstock.

 It took up to 24
hours before the Ethereum Classic (ETC) hack was discovered to be ongoing on January
5 2019. The hack allowed single users to control up to 60% of mining energy
which ultimately created a longer Blockchain that gave these users an avenue to
double spend. According to data collected by CoinMarketCap, Ethereum Classic
(ETC) is the 18th-largest digital currency. This recent report has raised
concerns within the crypto community, which is understandable. There’s concern
that Bitcoin (BTC) may be next in line.

Ethereum Classic (ETC) Price Today – ETC / USD

Experts Think ETC Is No More Immutable

According to the president of Blockchain at the Columbia
University, Nir Kabessa, while it is a difficult move to hack bigger digital
assets, attacks on the larger cryptos are not out of reach anymore. With the
hash power securing the Ethereum Classic (ETC) and market cap of ETCs token supply now less than 1/20th of the
Ethereum (ETH) main chain, it isn’t particularly surprising that the ETC token
was successfully attacked by cyber criminals.

Ethereum Classic (ETC)
value was actually supposed to be absolutely immutable. But it isn’t immutable
anymore which might compromise the mission and alteration of the community’s
definition of what immutability means. If the Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH)
Blockchains are eventually 51% hacked, the distributed ledger community, in
general, should seriously consider a re-evaluation of the security profile of
the Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm. Overall,
coordinating attacks against the larger,
cornerstone networks is definitely going
to much more difficult in all ramifications.

Blind to the Pitfalls of the Proof-of-work Consensus
Algorithm

According to the co-founder of Qtum Jordan Earls, who is
also the co-chairperson of the Smart Contracts Alliance, the latest 51% attack
on the Ethereum Classic (ETC) software could see countless updates in the PoW
(Proof-of-Work) consensus model. However, many networks are still blind to the
pitfalls of the PoW model. This recent attack highlights the naivety and danger
of using the PoW consensus system which has been
regarded as the standard for the sector.

Earls believes that the (PoS) Proof of Stake model maintains
freedom and censorship-resistance of the PoW (model), but with no risk of 51%
attacks on Blockchains.

No Proof-of-Stake Hacks Yet

While many people have expressed their doubts over the
security of the PoS consensus model, there have
been no reports of 51% attacks on PoS networks at
this point which says something. However, the Senior Market Analyst at
eToro, Mati Greenspan, believes that the experts and crypto-centrists that are predicting the demise of
Bitcoin (BTC) should not be believed or
taken seriously. According to the market analyst,
this recent 51% attack could actually
reinforce the market trust.

The 51% attack is the most common attack in crypto. This can also be known as a reorganization to create a double spend or
erase previous transactions to allow you to
get your tokens back. According to Coinbase no,
less than 15 reorganizations (some of
which contained suspicious double
spending activity amounting to the tune of $1.1 million) has been siphoned from the Ethereum Classic (ETC)
network. This attack has ultimately brought up conversations on security issues
and token monopoly particularly for the
smaller digital currencies.

Related

Researchers from crypto exchange Gate.io report they have confirmed that a 51 percent attack successfully occurred on the Ethereum Classic (ETC) blockchain. The company published an analysis of their findings Jan. 8.

Gate.io Research has published its analysis of ETC transactions on its platform during the alleged attack, claiming it has detected seven rollback transactions — four of which were reportedly conducted by the attacker, transferring a total of 54,200 ETC in total (worth $271,500 at press time).

Gate.io reports that the incident occurred over a period of 4 hours between 0:40 and 4:20 Jan.7, 2019 UTC, during which the transactions were normally confirmed on the blockchain and then subsequently invalidated after the malign network rollback. After providing details of three ETC addresses purportedly used by the attacker, Gate.io continues to explain:

“Gate.io’s censor successfully blocked [the] attacker’s transactions at the beginning and submitted them to [a] manual exam. Unfortunately, during the 51% attack, all the transactions looked valid and confirmed well on the blockchain. The examiner passed the transactions. It caused about 40k ETC loss due to this attack.”

Gate.io states it will compensate its users’ losses, stating “Gate.io will take all the loss for the users.” The exchange also advises other crypto trading platforms to block transactions stemming from the identified suspect addresses. The exchange also states it has raised its ETC transaction confirmation number to 500 and launched a more robust 51 percent detection security mechanism.

Today, Jan. 9, Chinese blockchain security firm Slow Mist also published a report also confirming a 51 percent attack and containing and the same rollback transactions reported by Gate.io.

As previously reported, several major crypto exchanges — United States-based Coinbase and Japanese exchanges bitFlyer and Coincheck — have have all temporarily suspended withdrawals and deposits of ETC as early as Jan. 5. The exchanges all reportedly moved to respond to unusual hashpower activity indicating a potential 51 percent attack, as well as Coinbase’s own findings of double spending and “chain reorganizations.”

The ETC dev team initially responded by refuting that a 51 percent attack had taken place, stating that double spends had not been detected. At the time, they claimed that majority control over the network’s hashrate was “most likely selfish mining,” attributable to the testing of new 1,400/Mh ethash machines by application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) manufacturer Linzhi.

As reported, a 51 percent attack can occur on blockchains that use a proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm, and essentially entails a user or group seizing control of the majority of mining power to monopolize control over the network. This, in particular, can allow the threat actor to reverse transactions with the view to double spend — by transacting crypto for fiat currency, and then rolling back the deed to recuperate the spent crypto, while pocketing the fiat.

While the theoretical risk of majority attacks exists, practically seizing control of a large hashrate blockchain is widely considered to be prohibitively expensive at present. The PoW-based Bitcoin blockchain has not to date been compromised by a hijack of the network’s hashrate, but some developers have nonetheless made the case for investigating potential PoW change.