Crypto Industry News:

The Pentagon's Defensive Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently commissioned a report to investigate the actual decentralization of the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains. The company that handled the contract - Trail of Bits - found evidence that both blockchains have serious security vulnerabilities.

The reason why the Pentagon became interested in the topic and commissioned its research through DARPA is to be the recent intensification of hacker attacks, the result of which are multi-million losses.

A report by Trail of Bits revealed that despite many assurances, in fact, Bitcoin and Ethereum's blockchains are far from decentralized. In the case of Bitcoin, the computing power sufficient to influence transactions is in the hands of four entities, while in the case of Ethereum - only in two.

The report also questioned the professionalism of miners and the mining efficiency of the two largest cryptocurrencies. According to its content, Bitcoin and Ethereum miners do not get involved in the mining process at all, which results in the lack of any penalties for being dishonest. As if that were not enough, according to analysts from Trail of Bits, the Stratum protocol used to coordinate the so-called mining pools are unencrypted and unauthenticated.

Trail of Bits has tested "mining pools" and found that they "either use permanently assigned passwords, the same for all accounts, or require no password to be entered."

Moreover, over 60% of Bitcoin traffic goes through three ISPs. According to specialists from DARPA and Trail of Bits, this phenomenon has repeatedly been the cause of successful hacking attacks that exploited weaknesses unrelated to the blockchain itself, including on Ronin Wallet and the final, famous attack on Harmony (ONE).

Technical Market Outlook:

The ETH/USD pair has been rejected from the level or $1,280 after the Pin Bar candlestick was made at the top of the move. The bears had managed to push the price below the level of 50% retracement of the last wave up ($1,080) and are getting ready for another push to the downside. Other supports are seen on the levels of $1,072, $1,048 and $1,008. The larger time frame chart trend remains down and as long as the key short-term technical resistance is not clearly violated, the outlook remains bearish.

Weekly Pivot Points:

WR3 - $1,602

WR2 - $1,421

WR1 - $1,352

Weekly Pivot - $1,194

WS1 - $1,119

WS2 - $951

WS3 - $891

Trading Outlook:

The down trend on the H4, Daily and Weekly time frames had broken below the key long term technical support seen at the level of $1,420 and bears continue to make new lower lows with no problem whatsoever. So far every bounce and attempt to rally is being used to sell Ethereum for a better price by the market participants, so the bearish pressure is still high. The next target for bears is located at the level of $1,000. Please notice, the down trend is being continued for the 11th consecutive week now.