Bitcoin yesterday saw a spectacular recovery as it surged over 15% in a day. An unusual day even for bitcoin, the price started at $6,629, dropped until it reached below the $6,500 mark before surging throughout the afternoon to reach a peak at $7,413.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Kaspersky Report Finds Crypto Mining Attacks Dropped in 2019 
• Fed Official: 50% of Bitcoin Transactions Involved With Illegal Activity
• Forbes Now Lets You Use Cryptocurrency to Get an Ad-Free Reading Experience

At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $7,093.12 (6.94%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $3.49 bn. As for ether (ETH), it is trading at $127.39 (4.28%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $689.713 mn. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index is currently tracking at 2,199.50 (0.43%).

Kaspersky Report Finds Crypto Mining Attacks Dropped in 2019

A new report from security firm Kaspersky has shown that cryptocurrency mining attacks fell sharply during 2019 but that ransomware involving crypto is on the rise. 

According to the “Kaspersky Security Bulletin ‘19” report, the total number of mining malware infections fell drastically in 2019. While the overall number of “unique malicious objects” reported by Kaspersky rose 13.7% on the year, mostly related to web-skimmer files designed for stealing credit cards,  web-miner infections declined 59% from 5.638 million infected machines to 2.259 million. 

However, certain crypto-mining malware scripts still made the top 20 list of threats, particularly applications that force a users’ computer to mine cryptocurrency in the background.

Fed Official: 50% of Bitcoin Transactions Involved With Illegal Activity

An official from the United States Federal Reserve’s board of governors said that roughly half of bitcoin transactions are associated with illegal activity. 

In a panel speech made Dec. 18 honoring Benoit Coeure, a member of the executive board of the European Central Bank, Fed official Lael Brainard said cryptocurrency is still strongly steeped in illicit behavior. She cited an academic study on bitcoin and its user base made earlier in the year and highlighted the role exchanges have played with slack KYC policies. 

According to Brainard:

“Only a third of the most popular exchanges require ID verification and proof of address to make a deposit or withdrawal. This is troubling, since a number of studies conclude that cryptocurrencies support a significant amount of illicit activity.”

Brainard added that roughly half of all bitcoin transactions are related to illicit activity or conducted against the law.

Forbes Now Lets You Use Cryptocurrency to Get an Ad-Free Reading Experience

Partnering with Unlock, Forbes has launched a cryptocurrency-powered ad-free experience for its entire website, allowing users to pay a flat fee in ether (ETH) to not see ads on the platform for some time.

An announcement published by Unlock details that Forbes deployed two locks on its website. One offers its users an ad-free experience for a month on Forbes.com, while the other offers the same ad-free experience for a week.

To get the ad-free experience, users will need to use a browser with a cryptocurrency wallet, such as the Opera browser, or a wallet giving them access to decentralized applications, like MetaMask or Coinbase wallet.

Don’t Get Hacked This Christmas

Everybody uses the internet on a daily basis nowadays via multiple devices, including smartphones and laptops. It’s easy to have a lot of crypto inside a hot wallet for regular use, even if protected by a password.

As they’re connected to the internet, hackers can get to them and to your private data. As seen in this video, hacking someone nowadays is as easy as getting them to click on a link, getting them to connect their device to an unsecured WiFi connection, or even picking up a call from an unknown number via an app.

It’s extremely hard to tell if a link is malicious or not, if a WiFi is secure or not, or if the unknown number calling is a stranger who dialled the wrong number, or a malicious hacker gaining access to our phone.

Notice something all of these types of hacks have in common? The internet. They can all be performed without physical access to your phone and can see the hacker brute force your passwords to steal your cryptocurrency. Christmas isn’t about getting hacked and New Year’s isn’t about security-obsessive resolutions.

The solution revolves around the most high-end secure chips on the market, being used inside a hardware cryptocurrency wallet to give you peace of mind. That wallet is Ledger, and can support a variety of cryptoasset and even let you passively earn crypto while storing them securely offline.

As Christmas is a time of giving, Ledger has launched its Christmas Pack. For the price of a Ledger Nano X, you’ll get a FREE Ledger Nano S – which can serve as a great gift to like-minded crypto users, or be a perfect backup solution.

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