You can now trade Bitcoin on your phone with Square Cash app (in New York) →

The Empire State gave Square a "bitlicense" so users can trade cryptocurrency through the app.

Square's Cash App has officially been approved by the State of New York to handle cryptocurrency transfers after expanding the feature to other states last year.

Users will now be able to trade Bitcoin using the app, which is only the 9th company to receive a virtual currency license or "bitlicense" by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Only Xapo, Genesis Global Trading, bitFlyer USA, Coinbase, XRP II and Circle Internet Financial have received licenses and two more have gotten charters.

"DFS is pleased to approve Square's application and welcomes them to New York's expanding and well-regulated virtual currency market," said Financial Services Superintendent Maria Vullo.

"DFS continues to work in support of a vibrant and competitive virtual currency market that connects and empowers New Yorkers in a global marketplace while ensuring strong state-regulatory oversight is in place."

The Square Cash app is battling Venmo and PayPal for finance app supremacy, shooting to the top of the App Store rankings recently. In addition to payments between friends or colleagues, the app will now allow customers to buy and sell Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

They are sure to gain more users following this recent announcement. Square, founded by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, has been a big backer of cryptocurrencies and announced back in January that the Cash App would soon be able to handle cryptocurrency transfers.

"The world ultimately will have a single currency, the internet will have a single currency. I personally believe that it will be Bitcoin," Dorsey told a newspaper in March.

Last fall, a Square spokesperson told Forbes that the company was looking into expanding access to cryptocurrencies and wanted to be able to facilitate all financial transactions, including those using digital currencies.

"We're always listening to our customers and we've found that they are interested in using the Cash App to buy Bitcoin. We're exploring how Square can make this experience faster and easier, and have rolled out this feature to a small number of Cash App customers," the spokesperson said. "We believe cryptocurrency can greatly impact the ability of individuals to participate in the global financial system and we're excited to learn more here."

Dorsey then officially announced the move in January, writing on Twitter, "Instant buying (and selling, if you don't want to hold) Bitcoin is now available to most Cash App customers. We support Bitcoin because we see it as a long-term path towards greater financial access for all. This is a small step." He also added in a link to a website explaining Bitcoin and its history.

The New York Department of Financial Services lauded the company for its efforts to help users "start, run, and grow their businesses." In addition to managing transactions, the company has both hardware and software that "manage inventory, locations, and employees; provide powerful business analytics; access financing; and utilize tools to engage with their customers."

"We are thrilled to now provide New Yorkers with Cash App's quick and simple way to buy and sell bitcoin," Head of Cash App Brian Grassadonia said.

"Square and the New York State DFS share a vision of empowering people with greater access to the financial system and today's news is an important step in realizing that goal."

*This article was featured on Download.com on June 21, 2018: https://download.cnet.com/blog/download-blog/you-can-now-trade-bitcoin-with-square-cash-app-in-new-york/

Here's why Apple is banning cryptocurrency mining on iPhones and iPads →

Apple has joined Google, Facebook and many other tech giants in banning stealthy cryptojackers from secretly using your device.

Despite its continued popularity, cryptocurrency continues to have a rough 2018, with multiple websites and platforms banning ads and apps that secretly use your device to mine for a variety of cryptocurrencies.

Apple quietly updated its App Store review guidelines, banning apps from running "unrelated background processes, such as cryptocurrency mining."

"Apps may facilitate virtual currency storage, provided they are offered by developers enrolled as an organization. In addition, apps may not mine directly for cryptocurrencies, unless the mining is performed in the cloud or otherwise off-device," the new rules say, adding that any apps offering initial coin offerings (ICOs) must "originate from established banks, securities firms, futures commission merchants, or other approved financial institutions."

Developers are still allowed to create apps that run cryptocurrency trades but they cannot "offer currency for completing tasks, such as downloading other apps, encouraging other users to download, posting to social networks."

As noted by Ars Technica, one of the reasons for the ban may be to keep the miners from depleting a user's battery life while running in the background. Apple has put a heavy focus on iPhone battery life lately, with iOS 12 offering even more insight into battery use.

Another reason could be the controversial nature of cryptocurrencies in general.

Cryptocurrencies were largely unregulated until last year, when the SEC began to sniff around following a number of obvious scams that cost investors millions. They took particular aim at ICOs, and warned investors that these cryptocurrency marketplaces were not regulated by the SEC.

The SEC shut down PlexCoin in December, calling it a "a full-fledged cyber scam" and released a statement in March reminding investors that while cryptocurrency is a vital source of innovation, it needs to be scrutinized more closely because the SEC has little regulatory power over them.

"The SEC staff has concerns that many online trading platforms appear to investors as SEC-registered and regulated marketplaces when they are not. Many platforms refer to themselves as 'exchanges' which can give the misimpression to investors that they are regulated or meet the regulatory standards of a national securities exchange," they said in a March 7 press release. 

"Although some of these platforms claim to use strict standards to pick only high-quality digital assets to trade, the SEC does not review these standards or the digital assets that the platforms select, and the so-called standards should not be equated to the listing standards of national securities exchanges."

Days after the statement, co-director of the SEC's Enforcement Division, Stephanie Avakian, announced that dozens of cryptocurrencies were under investigation. In January, Facebook banned all ads promoting cryptocurrencies and Google did the same in June 2018. Google also banned cryptocurrency mining extensions on the Chrome web store, which had been rife with crypto apps that plagued users by mining coins secretly and selling their data.

Google found that despite their rules allowing cryptomining as long as users were informed, "approximately 90% of all extensions with mining scripts that developers have attempted to upload to Chrome Web Store have failed to comply." Users also pilloried YouTube for pages overrun by cryptojacking mining code.

LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, and Snapchat have all banned ads featuring ICOs and more continue to look for ways to stop cryptojacking, which is ruining devices and jacking up energy bills. In November, a researcher found nearly 2,500 websites running some form of cryptojacking software designed to use your device to mine for a variety of coins‚but typically the cryptocurrency Monero.

Apps on iPhones, iPads, and MacOS found in the App Store are not allowed to use a device's processor to mine for cryptocurrency. Apple made security a key facet of their Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) presentation, highlighting a new feature called 'Intelligent Tracking Prevention' that is designed to stop websites from monitoring you as you browse the web.

Apple dealt with an issue earlier this year involving the Calendar 2 app, which was found to have been using people's devices to mine for Monero. One user reported the app using 200% of their device's CPU.

Critics have been divided on whether the constant stream of bad news about cryptocurrency has affected their price on the market. The price of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin all fell in March after news about potential SEC investigations broke and Google, as well as Facebook, announced their bans. But some say the prices have not fluctuated much and the scrutiny may help the more established cryptocurrencies over any new offerings.

*this article was featured on TechRepublic.com on June 12, 2018: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/heres-why-apple-is-banning-cryptocurrency-mining-on-iphones-and-ipads/

Report: Cryptojacking exploded 8,500% in 2017 as Bitcoin gained value →

Security provider Symantec said that nearly a quarter of the attacks it blocked in December 2017 were related to cryptojacking.

The rise in value and popularity of Bitcoin at the end of 2017 corresponded with a massive spike in blocked cryptojacking attempts, according to cybersecurity software firm Symantec.

In their report on the cybersecurity threat landscape in 2017, Symantec found that the number of attempted cryptojackings—wherein someone attempts to hijack your computing device to mine for cryptocurrency—skyrocketed by 8,500% in the last three months of 2017.

"Cyber criminals use coinminers to steal victims' computer processing power and cloud CPU usage to mine cryptocurrencies," Symantec wrote in their report. "Cyber criminals started trying to make money this way primarily because there was a huge rise in the value of cryptocurrencies in the last quarter of 2017, making this type of cyber crime extremely profitable."

Mining for cryptocurrencies requires a significant amount of processing power and ancillary costs that can be too expensive for the average person, prompting many hackers and cybercriminals to create coinminers that can hijack someone else's computer, often without their knowledge.

These coinminers bleed your computer's energy dry, slow down your computer and can cause the batteries in your device to break down. For large companies or corporations, the discovery of a coinminer in your system may result in massive CPU costs and require network shutdowns to remedy.

Sweden, which is attempting to become the first country with its own cryptocurrency, saw a 10,000% jump in cryptojacking attempts at the end of 2017, according to the TheLocal.se.

Another security firm, Check Point, said in January that it too had found a massive increase in cryptomining malware. The research found that "the tools can be hacked to dominate more power and generate more revenue, using as much as 65% of the end-users' CPU power," according to a report.

Kaspersky Lab's Yaroslava Ryabova noted that "Over the past six months, cybercriminals have raked in more than $7 million through injecting cryptominers."

Just last month, Tesla was forced to address this issue after a security firm found that their cloud environment was being used by hackers to mine cryptocurrency. The same security company, Redlock, found coinminers using the cloud at two other companies in October.

"The message from this research is loud and clear — the unmistakable potential of cloud environments is seriously compromised by sophisticated hackers identifying easy-to-exploit vulnerabilities," Redlock's CTO and head of the CSI team, Gaurav Kumar, said in a statement to Finance Magnates.

In its report, Symantec also noted that while most coinmining apps are used to hijack computers or phones, some have started to attack IoT (Internet of Things) devices as well.

"We observed a 600 percent increase in overall attacks on IoT devices in 2017, showing that while they didn't make headlines like they did thanks to the Mirai botnet in 2016, they are still very much a target for cyber criminals," Symantec said in the report.

The numbers will only rise as more criminals look to use the processing power of other devices to mine for more cryptocurrency, Symantec's director of security response Kevin Haley told The Verge.

"While a great portion of these threats are browser-based, hijacking PCs, Macs and smartphones, attackers are moving to obtain more processing power to drive greater profit," he said.

*this article was featured on the Tech Republic website on March 23, 2018: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/report-cryptojacking-exploded-8500-in-2017-as-bitcoin-gained-value/