The 9th most popular website in the world, Pornhub, now accepts Bitcoin and Litecoin for the purchase of premium x-rated content. Pornhub is owned by the MindGeek company, which also owns the popular RedTube and YouPorn sites, as well as the Brazzers production company.
The biggest crypto exchange in South Korea and the fifth largest in the world, Bithumb, was reportedly raided by police. The raid is apparently connected to a token sale and failed corporate takeover by a Singaporean firm. The exchange’s chairman has been accused of fraud and illegal money transfer. Some have blamed this week’s falling crypto prices on the raid. Late last month, another major exchange in South Korea, Coinbit, was also seized by police for wash trading charges.
Kazakhstan’s minister of Digital Development announced that the country is set to confirm $714 million worth of investment funding in a major new mining facility. Thirteen mining farms are already operating in the Central Asian nation. The country claims to account for 6% of crypto mining around the world.
We reported months ago on malicious Electrum servers sending messages to users urging the download of malicious wallets. Electrum then patched the issue and the matter was considered ended. However, last week a user reported launching their 2017-vintage Electrum wallet, getting the message and following it, then losing 1,400 BTC. The moral is to always keep your wallet software updated.
Before we conclude, this week’s “Bitcoin quick question” is how do I keep my bitcoin transactions private?
Maintaining privacy is not an easy task when it comes to Bitcoin transactions, as the accounting ledger is completely transparent.
There are several layers of privacy. The first and easiest one is to ensure you are using a hierarchical deterministic wallet such as the popular hardware wallets, Ledger and Trezor. These types of wallets change your wallet address after you receive transactions, therefore making it harder to track your transactions.
Another layer would be to use CoinJoin services or privacy-oriented wallets such as Wasabi or Samourai.
The most advanced layer would be to run your own full node, meaning download and sync the Bitcoin blockchain, while relying on the TOR privacy network as well.
If you want to know more about using Bitcoin anonymously, visit the link in the description below.
Have a question you want us to answer? Just leave it in the comment section below.
And a huge thanks to eToro for supporting us in putting this video together.
That’s what’s happened this week in Bitcoin. See you next week.