Note from the Publisher:  We know that when we cover digital currencies, and really anything other than bitcoin, it may be a little lost on our audience, but we do it anyway because we think digital currencies will have a profound long term economic effect, even if not so much in the short term.  The second most traded digital currency - ethereum - has had quite a few setbacks recently and took a 10% drop on 10/12 because of an ongoing "dos attack".  I am NOT A CODER, so all I know is that it's an external programming attack and that's not good. 

One of the big things about digital currencies - and one of the important structures of bitcoin originally - was that it was an open source project, meaning that there are no central server/s where it originates and the entire world has access to it - and to its security.  In fact, bitcoin was developed so that those creating security initiatives EARNED bitcoin for their good deeds.  So bitcoin remains the "gold standard" (pardon the irony) of digital currencies for now.  Etherum is having issues right now.  They may or may not be overcome.  For the beginner investing in digital currencies, best to stick to bitcoin for now, methinks. 


Ethereum Classic lost more than 10% of its value today with price standing just above $1 as the network comes under sustained dos attack.


The attacks are similar to those experienced by Ethereum over last month. A programmer is exploiting gas mispricing for certain op codes to drain nodes of memory and other resources thus slowing them down. Who or why is a matter of speculation. For ETC, considering the dramatic price movement, it could well be financially motivated and might not even be the original attacker, but a copycat.

For the original Ethereum attacker, prime suspicion goes to Bitcoin Core developers who have previously shown willingness to play dirty by DDoSing Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin Classic nodes. Attack, for an apparently stagnant bitcoin that is still stuck on a never ending blocksize debate, is, of course, the best defense, but it may well be the case that the network is actually being thoroughly tested by legitimate projects who wish to see the developers’ reaction while under pressure."

Read Full Article at Cryptocoinnews