World Bank slams bitcoin, declines to help El Salvador’s cryptocurrency plan

Bank faults bitcoin's “environmental and transparency shortcomings.”

Plundering of crypto keys from ultrasecure SGX sends Intel scrambling again

Intel's speculative execution flaws go deeper and are harder to fix than we thought.

 On Tuesday, two separate academic teams disclosed two new and distinctive exploits that pierce Intel’s Software Guard eXtension, by far the most sensitive region of the company’s processors.

Abbreviated as SGX, the protection is designed to provide a Fort Knox of sorts for the safekeeping of encryption keys and other sensitive data even when the operating system or a virtual machine running on top is badly and maliciously compromised. SGX works by creating trusted execution environments that protect sensitive code and the data it works with from monitoring or tampering by anything else on the system.

Key to the security and authenticity assurances of SGX is its creation of what are called enclaves, or blocks of secure memory. Enclave contents are encrypted before they leave the processor and are written in RAM. They are decrypted only after they return. The job of SGX is to safeguard the enclave memory and block access to its contents by anything other than the trusted part of the CPU.

Raiding Fort Knox
FURTHER READING
Intel’s SGX blown wide open by, you guessed it, a speculative execution attack
Tuesday’s attacks aren’t the first to defeat SGX. In 2018, a different team of researchers broke into the fortified Intel region after building on an attack known as Meltdown, which, along with a similar attack known as Spectre, ushered in the flurry of processor exploits. A different team of researchers broke SGX earlier this year.
Intel mitigated the earlier SGX vulnerability by introducing microcode updates. However, these mitigations did not last, as two new attacks have sent Intel scrambling anew to devise new defenses. Intel released the new updates on Tuesday and expects them to be available to end users in the coming weeks. Depending on the computer, the fix will either be installed automatically or will require manual intervention. Users, particularly those who rely on the SGX, should check with the manufacturer of their machine and ensure that the update is installed as soon as practical.

aka_STEVE_b

World Bank slams bitcoin, declines to help El Salvador’s cryptocurrency plan

 

jamey19
El Salvador made Bitcoin the national currency... it's not going away any time soon.

Well , that seals it then - El Salvador .   the 3rd world country where 99% of it's people don't own a computer, internet  nor running water.  El Slavador, the country who's human rights index is even lower than Iraq & Palestine.

Xavier Zepherious
TECH
Miami’s mayor looks to woo Chinese bitcoin miners with low energy prices and clean nuclear power

kram36

aka_STEVE_b

World Bank slams bitcoin, declines to help El Salvador’s cryptocurrency plan

 

In other words, the "World Bank" doesn't like for you to be your own bank and have currency they can't touch or manipulate.

Xavier Zepherious
Goldman Sachs(US)
 

• USAA

  Based in Texas, USAA is a renowned financial service company for the US military. It is a Fortune 500 company that caters to active, honorably separated, retired, and enlisted personal of the United States military.  This bank also allows civilians to open bank accounts with them. Over the past few years, USAA has invested over 150 million in Coinbase, and this makes it easy for its customers to interact with this world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
   
  Royal bank of canada
  national bank of canada
  Barckleys(UK)
   
   
  -------------------------
  JP Morgan Chase is about to accept crypto 
  

SensMachine
Crypto is the reason why there is a GPU shortage, it needs to die. How many more years of shortage do we have to endure? If crypto remains, I fear that it will be permanent.

Red_Infern013
Plenty of things are killing the planet far worse than crypto mining.

danlw

kram36

SensMachine
Crypto is the reason why there is a GPU shortage, it needs to die. How many more years of shortage do we have to endure? If crypto remains, I fear that it will be permanent.

How can 25% of GPU sales to miners cause the shortage? What about the other 75%?
 
https://forums.evga.com/Cryptocurrency-Miners-Bought-700000-GPUs-in-Q1-2021-m3396925.aspx

 
Easy.  Let's say through all the market research, GPU manufacturers expect 75,000 gamers to purchase graphics cards.  And so the entire supply chain is set up to support 75,000 graphics cards.  But then a black swan event occurs and suddenly 25,000 miners want a graphics card.  Now the total demand is 100,000 where supply is 75,000 units.  That is a shortage.
 
My next argument is the fact that GPU prices across the board have gone down with a decrease in crypto price.  Just look at camelcamelcamel and it is the same story for a lot of cards.  Has supply gone up enough to justify the price slump?  Or has the fact that crypto has lost half its value caused the price slump?