Cryptowhispers: DDoS Attacks, Major Exec in Serious Crash, Twitter Drama

Cryptowhispers explores the wildcatting world of direct denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and why the socially maladjusted tend to flock to that particular vector … especially for coin projects they hate; a popular cryptocurrency trading application executive was involved in a serious car accident on the eve of an anticipated cross promotion at Comic Con; and what would a crypto gossip column be without Twitter drama.

Also read: Philippines Embraces Cryptocurrency: Exchanges Issued Provisional Licenses

Cryptowhispers at Comic Con San Diego 2018

Rumor has it a multibillion dollar smartphone cryptocurrency trading application executive was involved in a serious car accident Friday, July 20th, ahead of a major promotional reveal. The company has been on a tear this year in particular, expanding its offerings while staying hungry enough to try new, innovative marketing.

Its cross promotion over several days at the Comic Con International San Diego gathering, where an estimated 300,000 cargo-shorts wearing nerds descended upon the city’s convention center and famed Gaslamp District, was set to climax Saturday, early afternoon. The company partnered with Lionsgate to feature two products: the studio’s forthcoming movie and the app’s crypto platform.

Fans were led via social media in an effort to find literal money drops off campus, around San Diego’s downtown. At about 1 am that morning, just hours before the final drop, the very high up trading app executive emailed involvement in the accident and of sustained injuries bad enough to warrant an emergency room visit. That’s right, the executive, while under trauma examination and still at the ER, was sure to apologize for not being able to make the final event. Such dedication might be at least one reason said company is thriving.

Crypto Twitter Aflutter as Craig Wright is, well, Craig Wright

Vinny Lingham, voted one of the world’s top CEOs, founder of Gyft and Civic, and a Bitcoin Cash supporter, is the latest to be bounced by Mr. Wright, the controversial once-thought-to-be-Satoshi-but-admitted-he-wasn’t and prolific academic entrepreneur. He’s apparently clearing up follower space. Mr. Wright has also recently excommunicated Vin Armani of CoinText fame. Even prominent Bitcoin Cash developer, Amaury Séchet, has had enough of Mr. Wright’s social media theatre. 

With talk in some quarters of how Bitcoin Cash is controlled or centralized, those claims are increasingly becoming more difficult to sustain. BCH proponents are taking polar opposite sides on the coin going forward, and debate seems more of feature than a bug. But it does make trolls very happy. 

Mr. Lingham is taking the latest weirdness in stride, retweeting the spectacle. Mr. Wright has also more recently taken to outright bizarre diatribes against “anarchists,” insisting they had little-to-nothing to do with crypto’s development. Each tweeted rant usually ends with Mr. Wright “not giving a fack,” emphasis mine on the last word to underline his Aussie patois.   

DDoS Attack on Bitcoin Cash Projects

Avinoc.com is an initial coin offering (ICO) accepting bitcoin cash (BCH). Understanding how, in some quarters, trolls were prone to make incorporating BCH an issue of derision or worse for entrepreneurs, Avinoc gave previously hidden 5% post-deposit bonuses. They also used airdrop promotions, common in the ICO space, whereby the company hatched user missions, tasks, one of which involved promoting BCH and a faucet — a previous tradition in the community is to give away small amounts of BCH to entice folks into downloading a wallet and giving the BCH experience a try.

Word got out, and before its latest BCH faucet promotion could commence, the Avinoc site was held up by a direct denial of service (DDoS) attack vector, effectively preventing customers from using the site (now closing-in on 200,000). Rumors are the company relocated entry servers in anticipation of future malicious acts.      

A person familiar with the matter explained the attack lasted at least “a day. The website was down for several hours. Well, not really down, but unreachable. [The company] had another small one yesterday very early in the morning, but [they] were already able to handle that.” Bitcoin.com CEO Roger Ver voiced exasperation, “The fact [attackers] are willing to do such things shows that their morals are in the wrong place.” “Everyone [at the company] is a huge Bitcoin Cash fan, but […] it can be dangerous to publicly state this. […] the token contract creation [was purposefully delayed] in the hope to have it working on BCH, but the May hard fork was too little. [The company hopes] that OP_GROUP will be added ASAP [so they] can eventually move [the project] from ETH to BCH,” a personal with firsthand knowledge noted.

BTC Trolls Getting Desperate as BCHers Continue to Build

As ICOs go, Avinoc is a compelling idea, at least theoretically. They “have a working product for business aviation since almost 10 years ago. And it is a real competitive advancement for its users. However, the real problem of the Bizav is that is has more than 50% overhead ($150+Billion/year),” a person in the industry detailed. That’s “because there is no unified global data solution. And even the best product is always a competitor to all other solutions. So the only solution to crack that issue is to create something that is not a competitor.” Thus the reason for the company’s “blockchain based data layer. [Permissionless], every competitor can […] integrate it and eventually it will eliminate all the overhead.” Avinoc is also rumored to have moved servers out of Asia altogether, and to an undisclosed location in “the west.” An anonymous source ranted, “For real, those Core trolls should do something productive with their lives. The world is full of real enemies of freedom, there are plenty of actual real enemies worth to be fighting against.”

Placing the blame at the feet of BTC trolls comes only as an inference. The source has “some experience with regular DDoS attacks on Bitcoin sites, [and] usually one gets an email with some demand. This time we got nothing, so that clearly indicates that the DDoS was not to get a ransom.” This was very personal.

Rumors also include the company being bullish on BCH going forward, even with hater potential at annoyance level. The source insists, BCH is “the real Bitcoin, and frankly ETH is a mess compared to Bitcoin,” and the company sees “a great potential for it in the future.” A mainnet launch is in the works with the current token referred to as “just a placeholder,” as BCH is the company’s go-to.

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Images via Pixabay, Twitter. 

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