Rapper Akon Created His Own Cryptocurrency City In Senegal Called ‘Akon City’

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: It’s official, Akon has his own city in Senegal. Known as “Akon City,” the rapper and entrepreneur tweeted Monday that he had finalized the agreement for the new city. Akon, who is of Senegalese descent, originally announced plans for the futuristic “Crypto city” in 2018 saying that the city would be built on…

Open Source Initiative Co-Founder Bruce Perens Resigns, Citing Move Toward License ‘That Isn’t Freedom Respecting’

Bruce Perens (Slashdot reader #3872) co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric Raymond in 1998. But on Thursday Perens posted “it seems to me that the organization is rather enthusiastically headed toward accepting a license that isn’t freedom respecting. Fine, do it without me, please. “I asked Patrick to cancel my membership, and I would have unsubscribed from OSI lists, including…

Chrome Extension Caught Stealing Crypto-Wallet Private Keys

A Google Chrome extension was caught injecting JavaScript code on web pages to steal passwords and private keys from cryptocurrency wallets and cryptocurrency portals. From a report: The extension is named Shitcoin Wallet (Chrome extension ID: ckkgmccefffnbbalkmbbgebbojjogffn), and was launched last month, on December 9. According to an introductory blog post, Shitcoin Wallet lets users manage Ether (ETH) coins, but also…

YouTube Goes To War With Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency

Google has decided to remove hundreds of bitcoin and cryptocurrency videos from YouTube in what’s being called a “crypto-purge” — leaving many who make bitcoin and cryptocurrency-related videos feeling unfairly targeted by the search giant. A YouTube spokesperson said the video-sharing platform has since reinstated the purged videos, however some content creators claim their deleted videos remain inaccessible. Forbes reports: The…

How a Whale Crashed Bitcoin To Sub-$7,000 Overnight

CaptainDork shares a report from NewsBTC: Bitcoin lost billions of dollars worth of valuation within a 30-minutes timeframe as a Chinese cryptocurrency scammer allegedly liquidated its steal via over-the-counter markets. The initial sell-off by PlusToken caused a domino effect, causing mass liquidations. PlusToken, a fraud scheme that duped investors of more than $2 billion, dumped huge bitcoin stockpiles from its anonymous…

WebAssembly Becomes W3C Standard, Reaches 1.0

An anonymous reader quotes Mike Melanson’s “This Week in Programming” column: WebAssembly is a binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine and this week, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) dubbed it an official web standard and the fourth language for the Web that allows code to run in the browser, joining HTML, CSS and JavaScript… With this week’s news,…

WireGuard VPN Is On Its Way To Linux

WireGuard has now been committed to the mainline Linux kernel. “While there are still tests to be made and hoops to be jumped through, it should be released in the next major Linux kernel release, 5.6, in the first or second quarter of 2020,” reports ZDNet. From the report: WireGuard has been in development for some time. It is a layer…

Price of Bitcoin Plummets Below ‘Psychological’ $7,000 Level After China Promises Crackdown

Friday Forbes wrote that price of Bitcoin had dropped 10% over the previous 24 hours, dipping below the “psychological” $7,000 level. That’s after starting the week at over $8,000, and less than a month after it rose to $10,000. Apparently cryptocurrencies had gotten some very bad news from China. Bitcoin rivals ethereum and bitcoin cash have led the market lower [Friday]…

Zero-Commission Trading is Coming To Crypto

Zero-fee trading first came to exchanged-traded funds and then to online stock and option transactions. Now the strategy is spreading into the cryptocurrency sphere. From a report: Seen as the most profitable sector of digital-asset world, trading platforms are feeling the pressure as industry heavyweights such as Binance and BitMex grab market share with both trading volume and coin prices sagging….

Next in Google’s Quest for Consumer Dominance — Banking

Google will soon offer checking accounts to consumers, becoming the latest Silicon Valley heavyweight to push into finance. The Wall Street Journal: The project, code-named Cache, is expected to launch next year with accounts run by Citigroup and a credit union at Stanford University, a tiny lender in Google’s backyard. Big tech companies see financial services as a way to get…