Vinny Lingham, CEO of Civic, on January 11, 2019, predicted that the cryptocurrency might fall below $3,000.

Lingam states that the market would either breakdown or breakout. Bitcoin is trying to decide which way to go, therefore would trade sideways until the crypto finds a breakout or breakdown direction.

On Thursday, within just a few minutes Bitcoin shed $250 out of $4000.  The volatility pattern of the Bitcoin took a new turn.  The gains that were made earlier got canceled out.  The price movements of Altcoins reacted intensely to the price drop of Bitcoin. Almost all the cryptocurrencies in the top twenty list by market capitalization shed 11.3% on Friday.

Recent research has identified that hackers are using methods to calculate the private keys of cryptocurrencies. They make use of a unique cryptanalytic attack.

However, these attacks occur only in cases where the developers have not executed their codes properly or in situations that involve faulty hardware that functions with multi-signature. Those networks that are properly implemented do not suffer these attacks.

It so happens that anytime a crypto holder is involved in a transaction, they create a cryptographic signature. They make use of Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA). A nonce is generated by the algorithm.  This arbitrary number is to be used for just once. It is important for the software to sign up with a different nonce each time otherwise hackers will be able to calculate the private key of the signers.

Hackers continually monitor the blockchain watching for repeated nonces. Thus, they will be able to extract money from compromised keys. Hackers will be able to calculate the keys from signatures that make use of different signatures, but similar nonce. In cases, where the nonces have similar strings in the beginning and end of the signatures then the hackers can exploit it.

The digital signature nonce is different from the nonce used in the cryptocurrency mining process. The chances for exploitation of nonce are more when the values are very shorter than it should be.

Lattice is an advanced mathematical approach that can be used to crack the wallet addresses to identify the private keys. Several cryptanalytic techniques make use of the lattice algorithms as a building block.

This need not set most of the cryptocurrency users into a world of worry, because, a hack is possible only when there is a bug in the digital signature code.  The security scheme will be secure for as long as it is executed according to the protocol and documented methods. The amount of time and electricity required for this process is too high to make it profitable for attackers.