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The fungibility of bitcoin emerged as a central topic of debate on day one of the annual Scaling Bitcoin conference in Milan.

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A blockchain-based information exchange could remove friction and costs presented by intermediaries in existing health information exchanges, according to a Deloitte white paper on blockchain’s potential benefits for health care titled, “Blockchain: Opportunities for Health Care.”        

The post How Blockchain Technology Can Benefit Healthcare appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Was bitcoin innately libertarian? Or did its users make it so? CoinDesk's Corin Faife analyzes in this feature report.

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Long-time readers of CCN may remember me.  I was a technical analyst in 2014 reporting on Bitcoin price from a traders’ perspective.  I believe many readers will find my analysis a bit different from those of other technical analysts.  While I am familiar with the indicators used by many traders, I rely on geometry first […]

The post Bitcoin Price Weekly Update appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Carl Ferrer, chief executive officerof Backpage, a classified advertising website that accepts bitcoin and has been linked to facilitating sex trafficking, has been arrested on pimping charges, according to Reuters. Texas and California attorneys general said Ferrer was taken into custody in Houston, Texas on a California warrant. Backpage is the second largest classified advertising […]

The post Police Arrest Backpage CEO For Facilitating Sex Trafficking appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Imagine you've got a meeting with a client, and shortly before you leave, they send you over a confirmation and a map with directions to where you're planning to meet.

It all looks normal — but the entire message was actually written by a piece of smart malware mimicking the client's email mannerisms, with a virus attached to the map.

It sounds pretty far out — and it is, for now. But that's the direction that Dave Palmer, director of technology at cybersecurity firm Darktrace, thinks the arms race between hackers and security firms is heading.

As artificial intelligence becomes more and more sophisticated, Palmer told Business Insider in an interview at the FT Cybersecurity Summit in London in September, it will inevitably find its way into malware — with potentially disastrous results for the businesses and individuals that hackers target.

It's important to remember that Palmer is in the security business: It's his job to hype up the threats out there (present and future), and convince customers that Darktrace is the only one that can save them. It's a $500 million (£401 million) British firm, with an AI-driven approach to defend networks. It creates an "immune system" for customers that learns how businesses operate then monitors for potential irregularities.

But with that in mind, Palmer provides an fascinating insight into how one of the buzziest young companies in the industry thinks cybersecurity is going to evolve.

Smart viruses will hold industrial equipment to ransom

Ransomware is endemic right now. It's a type of malware that encrypts everything on the victim's computer or network, then demands a bitcoin ransom to decrypt it. If they don't pay up in a set timeframe, the data is lost for good.

AI-infused ransomware could turbo-charge the risks these attacks make — self-organising to inflict maximum damage, and going after new, even more lucrative targets.

"[We'll] see coordinated action. So imagine ransomware waiting until it's spread across a number of areas of the network before it suddenly takes action," Palmer said.

"I'm convinced we'll see the extortion of assets as well as data. So factory equipment, MRI scanners in hospitals, retail equipment — stuff that you'd pay to have back online because you can't actually function as a business without it. Data's one thing and you can back that up, but if your machine stops working then you're not going to be making any more money."

Malware will learn to mimic people you know

Using recurring neural networks, it's already possible to teach AI software to mimic writing styles — whether that's clickbait viral news articles or editorial columns from The Guardian. Palmer suggests that in the future, malware will be able to look through your correspondence, learn how you communicate, and then mimic you in order to infect other targets.

"Nadia's got something on her laptop that can read all her emails, reads her messages, can read her calendar, and then sends people messages in the same communication style she uses with them. So Nadia's always very rude to me so she'll send jokey messages ... but to you she'll be extremely polite. So you would receive, maybe, a map of this location of where to meet from Nadia — because it can see in her calendar that we're due to meet. And you'd open it, because it'd be relevant, it'd be contextual — but that map would have a payload attached to it."

It's like a more sophisticated version of a "CFO email" scam or "trust attack" — where a scammer, purporting to be a company employee, sends an email to the target asking them to make a money transfer. The FBI estimates that such attacks have cost businesses $2.3 billion (£1.84 billion) over the last three years.

The worst hacks won't be the most noticeable ones

In December 2015, a Ukrainian power station was knocked offline by an unprecedented hack. 80,000 people lost power as a result, and Russian state-sponsored hackers are believed to be responsible. It's a spectacular example of how vulnerable the modern world is to hack attacks — but Palmer thinks the most destructive hacks in the future may be far less visible.

"If you can disable an oil rig, people are going to notice. Everyone's going to get around to trying to fix it. If you really wanted to try and harm an oil and gas firm, to my mind what you would do is have your self-hunting, self-targeting malware go in there and then start to change the geophysical data on which they decide where they're going to buy mining rights. And over a long time you can make sure they're buying drilling rights in the wrong places, those wells are coming up drier than they should be, and do really serious harm to their business in a way they're much less likely to notice and be able to respond to."

He added: "You might think, 'okay, that's a good idea, we should go and look at our databases, and see if there's any funny software there.' But the attacks of the future could just as likely be in their internet of things sensors, their submarines, their scanning equipment that's collecting [the data] in the first place, and good luck finding those attacks."

It's the dark side of the artificial intelligence revolution

We're in the early days of an artificial intelligence revolution. The technology is being for everything from self-driving cars to treating cancer, and we're only just scratching the surface right now. But as it becomes ever-more advanced and ever-more accessible — it is, inevitably, going to be used for ill.

What's the timeframe for all of this? "I reckon you could train a neural network in the next 12 months that would be smart enough to [carry out a trust attack] in a rudimentary way," Palmer said. "And if you look at the progress people like Google DeepMind are making on natural speech and language tools, it's in the next couple of years."

The future is on its way, and there's nothing you can do about it.

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NOW WATCH: A regular guy tests out Apple’s wireless AirPod headphones — here’s what he thought

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Payments Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

Cross-border business-to-business (B2B) digital payments company Payoneer closed an $180 million Series E funding round, led by Technology Crossover Venture and including Susquehanna Growth Equity, one of the firm's early investors.

Payoneer plans to use the round to accelerate growth by expanding its workforce and growing its global presence. 

Strong investor interest points to the B2B payments ecosystem's vulnerability to disruption. Payoneer helps streamline the time-consuming, paper-heavy cross-border B2B payments process. 

• Cross-border payments are friction-filled for merchants. These transactions tend to be filled with heavy paper work, regulations, arbitrary processes. They can also be expensive with hidden costs and fees, 20% of small business remain unaware of how banks charge for these transfers, which could mean that they’re paying higher fees than necessary. 
• Payoneer helps resolve that, sparking interest among major companies. On top of having over 3 million users, there are thousands of corporations including Amazon, Google, and Airbnb using Payoneer's payout service. Consumers may be more open to using a service that is supported by these well known companies. 

Legacy firms are also eager to grab a piece of the fast-growing market, which will likely contribute to rapid change in cross-border B2B. For instance, in a move to expand its B2B capabilities, Western Union launched WU Edge, its cross-border digital business-to-business (B2B) payments platform, in April 2016. WU Edge supports fee-free, real-time transactions in 51 currencies and 13 markets, with the hopes of simplifying B2B cross-border payments.

This move will help Western Union keep a large presence in an industry that saw $155 trillion in business-to-business payments moved across borders during 2014, according to Bloomberg. Other firms could launch or expand similar programs. 

Payoneer is an emerging player in the much broader payments ecosystem, which includes card issuers, merchants, gateways, processors, and more.

Evan Bakker and John Heggestuen, analysts at BI Intelligence, have compiled a detailed report on the payments ecosystem that drills into the industry to explain how a broad range of transactions are processed, including prepaid and store cards, as well as revealing which types of companies are in the best and worst position to capitalize on the latest industry trends.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• 2016 will be a watershed year for the payments industry. Payments companies are improving security, expanding their mobile offerings, and building commerce capabilities that will give consumers a more compelling reason to make purchases using digital devices.
• Payments is an extremely complex industry. To understand the next big digital opportunity lies, it's critical to understand how the traditional credit- and debit-processing chain works and what roles acquirers, processors, issuing banks, card networks, independent sales organizations, gateways, and software and hardware providers play.
• Alternative technologies could disrupt the processing ecosystem. Devices ranging from refrigerators to smartwatches now feature payment capabilities, which will spur changes in consumer payment behaviors. Likewise, blockchain technology, the protocol that underlies Bitcoin, could one day change how consumer card payments are verified.

In full, the report:

• Uncovers the key themes and trends affecting the payments industry in 2016 and beyond.
• Gives a detailed description of the stakeholders involved in a payment transaction, along with hardware and software providers.
• Offers diagrams and infographics explaining how card transactions are processed and which players are involved in each step.
• Provides charts on our latest forecasts, key company growth, survey results, and more.
• Analyzes the alternative technologies, including blockchain, which could further disrupt the ecosystem.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the payments ecosystem.

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