Grin, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency built on the Mimblewimble protocol, has just suffered a 51% attack on its blockchain. According to a Nov. 7 tweet from crypto mining group 2Miners, an unknown group accumulated 57.4% of the total hash power of the Grin (GRIN) network on Saturday evening. 2Miners only had control of 19.1% of GRIN’s hash power, while sparkpool miners came in third at 18.9%. Grin Network Is Under the 51% Attack! Payouts are stopped. Please mine at your own risk only because the new blocks could be rejected.@grincouncil @grin_hub @Hotbit_news @Poloniex @kucoincom @gateio_info @CoinBene pic.twitter.com/6seDSRe8Qw — 2Miners (@pool2miners) November …

According to a Nov. 3 announcement from South Korea’s Financial Services Commission, or FSC, virtual asset service providers within the country will no longer be able to handle any digital assets that present a high money laundering risk. These updates were made as part of the guidelines under the Special Payment Act — regulation which specifically covers the legality of cryptocurrencies in South Korea. The FIU specifically called out “dark coins”, which are privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies, for having transaction records that are reportedly difficult for the group to trace. This could potentially affect the usage of privacy coins such as Zcash …

Brave Browser recently hit a major milestone: 20 million active monthly users, up from 8.7 million the same time last year. The number of active daily users has increased at a similar rate, from 3 million to 7 million. The number of verified content creators on the Brave platform has comparably expanded from 300,000 last year to nearly 1 million today. Brave is a privacy-focused browser that rewards participants for viewing ads using its Basic Attention Token (BAT). Many users choose to allot some or all of the tokens they earn to content creators across the web. These participants have …

The United States is girding its loins for an election that has cast a pall over a far longer timeframe than we ever should have let it. But then again, what did you expect when so many people spent so much of the past year cut off from their normal lives and circles, growing increasingly dependent on social media as a way of connecting with the outside world? That's not a recipe for sanity, even if it was a race between sane people. The phenomenon of modern information flow has gotten an enormous amount of attention since the last, similarly …

John McAfee, an eccentric millionaire, crypto enthusiast, and anti-virus expert, was recently detained in Spain on charges of U.S. tax evasion. He also faces charges arising from a series of questionable crypto promotions, from which he allegedly profited millions of dollars. Though he is currently in a Spanish prison, it did not stop him from sharing a few of his thoughts on recent developments in the crypto industry. With regard to PayPal's recent announcement, McAfee said “PayPal's acceptance of cryptocurrency signals, I believe, a new wave of cryptocurrency acceptance worldwide. Governments around the world will have to get used to …

Elvira Nabiullina, the head of the Bank of Russia, argued that there is a line between anonymity and privacy regarding the circulation of an upcoming digital ruble. Speaking at a press conference on Oct. 23, Nabiullina said that Russia’s digital ruble will not have the same level of anonymity as cash. However, the bank expects to strengthen user privacy, Nabiullina promised, stating: “Still, we shouldn’t confuse the anonymity with confidentiality of digital ruble transactions. Indeed, there will not be the same level of anonymity that is supported by cash transactions. But confidentiality is expected to be enhanced.” Nabiullina elaborated that …

The founder and operator of some of the first "mixing" services in crypto will have to cough up $60 million to United States regulators, even as he faces continued criminal charges. The U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, announced on Monday a $60 million fine against Larry Dean Harmon, the man behind Helix and Coin Ninja. Harmon was arrested in February for operating a stable of tumblers, or mixers, that Washington, D.C. prosecutors allege constitute unregistered money services businesses. Those charges against him say he laundered over $300 million in Bitcoin. According to today's announcement, "FinCEN’s investigation has …

Corey Petty, a chief security lead at Status messenger, told Cointelegraph that he believes there is no way to marry end-to-end encryption with the type of backdoor access law enforcement agencies continue to lobby for. He also believes that any prohibitive or restrictive measures will be fruitless as encryption is an abundant and readily available resource, unlike nuclear power: “If you take nuclear control across the globe as an example here, and how successful that's been in terms of keeping us from destroying ourselves, we were able to do that because developing nuclear weapons is very difficult and is reliant …

The European Central Bank launched a public consultation on a potential digital euro on Oct. 12. Developments on the central bank digital currency front in the Eurozone have picked up pace amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and the central bank has framed its introduction to the public consultation with the claim that the issuance of a CBDC could help "cushion the impact of extreme events — such as natural disasters or pandemics — when traditional payment services may no longer function." Earlier this month, a Bloomberg report claimed that the ECB applied to trademark the term "digital euro" on Sept. 22, …

Aztec, a privacy protocol developing on Ethereum (ETH), announced on Monday the launch of its second iteration, promising private transactions and smart contracts while being cheaper than standard transfers. The layer-two solution adopted by Aztec relies on zk-Rollups, similar to Loopring or ZkSync. All these protocols rely on zero-knowledge proofs to help Ethereum scale, but come with different benefits and focused use cases. Loopring focuses on the decentralized exchange experience, while ZkSync aims to be a generalized layer-two protocol that could boost Ethereum’s transactiona throughput. Aztec, in comparison, places a heavy focus on privacy while still allowing a certain degree …

Co-founder and managing partner at Electric Capital, Avichal Garg, is convinced the only way for the U.S. to catch up with China in the digital currency war is by embracing privacy-focused cryptocurrency. According to Garg, the Chinese are already far ahead of the U.S. in the digital currency race – their DCEP, or Digital Currency Electronic Payment, is due to launch by the end of the year. That is why developing a US digital dollar might not be enough to compete, given the long time it will take to develop it. “The Chinese system [...] is going to be out …

A new report from the U.S. Department of Justice alleges that crypto traders dealing with coins like Monero, Dash, and Zcash are engaging in “high-risk activities.” According to the report by the U.S. Attorney General's Cyber Digital Task Force called Cryptocurrency: An Enforcement Framework released on Oct. 8, anonymity enhanced cryptocurrencies (AECs) can undermine existing anti-money laundering (AML) and combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) regulations put in place by businesses engaged in virtual asset activities. The task force cited coins including Monero (XMR), Dash (DASH), and Zcash (ZEC). “The Department considers the use of AECs to be a high-risk …