Former stockbroker / Wall Street fraudster Jordan Belfort determined ICO (Initial Coins Offering) as "the greatest scam". A new form of fund-raising, ICO is, in fact, the sale of cryptographic tokens by start-ups in exchange for financing with the help of crypto currency, such as bitcoin and ether, to attract funding in the early stages. Earlier in September, the project of decentralized data storage Filecoin set an ICO record, raising $ 257 million. According to one tracker, the collection of funds by the ICO method in 2017 exceeded $ 3 billion.

Dr. Russell O'Connor of Blockstream, during the PLAS 2017 workshop in Dallas, USA, unveiled his work "Simplicity: A New Language for Blockchains", in which he described a new programming language called Simplicity. This typed functional programming language is intended to be an alternative to existing languages, which are used to develop smart contracts based on blockchain technology. One of the main differences between Simplicity and Bitcoin Script - a simple scripting language on which you can execute simple scripts (the prototype of smart contracts) in Bitcoin's locker is the lack of a problem with the lack of some opcodes.

Several blockchain companies recently advertised "legitimate" or "compliant" American regulators ICO. However, getting deeper into details, it quickly becomes clear that these ICO-teams do not understand the SEC's requirements and that their location of the tokens does not comply with the standards. This is not surprising. Most entrepreneurs (quite rightly) are more focused on building a business than on understanding regulation, and it's not just about businessmen in the blockchain industry. Nevertheless, companies that raise funds through the ICO are very at risk, and today entrepreneurs need to understand the regulatory requirements in order to avoid problems.

The BitCrypto'ed blog claims that the Bitfinex Exchange is engaged in a fictional trade (wash trading). The blog article, consisting of two parts, reports on the alleged illegal activities of the exchange. In the first part, the author explains how the process takes place and why it is profitable for the exchange, and in the second - what could push Bitfinex to carry out such operations.

The industry of video games is experiencing rapid growth, and the popularity of online broadcasts of major e-sports tournaments attracts an audience comparable in size to the audience of traditional sports events. Moreover, this phenomenon already claims for official recognition from far from virtual sports associations and committees: for example, the International Olympic Committee allows the holding of the first ever Olympic video game tournament in 2024. About 58 million people around the world call themselves professional gamers. The total profit of platforms that allow organizing cyber-tournaments is approaching $ 1 billion, and, according to some estimates, in just a few years it will gain another billion. This popularity of video games has led to the emergence of several related industries, one of which is the sale and purchase of virtual items, such as skins and weapons. If skins serve mainly to amuse the player's pride, then weapons often play a decisive role in virtual battles. Nevertheless, skins, which have no practical value even in the virtual world, are sold for quite real money. Some of them, considered rare, go to new owners for 15 thousand dollars.

On the eve of the launch of Bitcoin Gold fork, which is tentatively scheduled for November 1, a list of fraudulent websites, wallets and accounts in social networks was published on the site of the project developers. If you plan to receive Bitcoin Gold coins, be careful when obtaining coins and do not transfer data to access your wallet to third parties, especially if you did not take precautions and no longer transferred the real bitcoins to another purse.

Chinese exchanges and operators of crypto-currency wallets, disappointed with the opportunity to continue working in their country, are in search of new opportunities and partners in neighboring Asian countries. Many translate their crypto-currency business in whole or in parts. For example, an application for licensing is submitted to Japan, and offices are located in Singapore and South Korea. The largest players who once dominated the world's crypto currency market, are forced to seek refuge in neighboring countries. At least 19 companies have applied for licenses in Japan.

One of the government officials involved in the study of distributed registry technology, initiated by the US Treasury, insists on a deeper testing of the blockchain technology. In an article published this week in the Journal of Federal Financial Management, Craig Fischer, the head of the project group for the management of financial innovation and transformation (FIT) of the Treasury Department of the Ministry of Finance, proposed to investigate in more detail the technology of the distributed registry. He noted that the possibilities of its application will help improve the exchange of data and information.

The Initial Coin Offering (ICO) market is new and relatively small. In 2016, the world spent an ICO of $ 103 million, if you do not take into account the hacked and canceled ICO project The DAO. In the same year, the world market of venture investments amounted to $ 127 billion. Meanwhile, according to the portal CoinDesk, for the first half of 2017, ICO was held in the world for $ 1.13 billion, of which $ 797 million was in the second quarter. The results of the second half of the year promise to be even more impressive.

If you follow the news from the technology world, you've obviously heard many times about the Internet of things (Internet of Things or IoT). With the proliferation of smart home devices - from lighting devices to thermostats and cameras, and the use of other smart solutions in enterprises, the spread of IoT and the problems associated with it, it's becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. When you think about DDoS-attacks, then computers and servers infected with malicious programs and viruses that are controlled by a secret and anonymous server come to mind. However, the largest botnets and associated DDoS attacks that appear recently do not always spread through infected computers, servers or smartphones. Hackers found that it is much easier to compromise a vulnerable IoT device than to try to force a user to click on a malicious link or download an infected file.