Welcome to the daily crypto news :

• India’s Income Tax Department Is Secretly Training Its Officials to Investigate Cryptocurrencies;

• Experts Claim Allegations on MakerDao Vulnerabilities Are Substantial;

• Bitcoin Crashes to New 7-Month Low But Bounces Off $6.4K Support;

• Lead Monero Maintainer Riccardo ‘Fluffypony’ Spagni Steps Down;

• Justin Sun Riles Community With $1 Million Donation to Greta Thunberg;

India’s Income Tax Department Is Secretly Training Its Officials to Investigate Cryptocurrencies

The Income Tax Department of India is secretly training its officials to investigate cryptocurrencies. An internal guidebook circulated by the department explains cryptocurrencies, their characteristics, the “dark side of Bitcoin” and the best investigation practices for tax officials.

The Indian government doesn’t consider cryptocurrencies as legal tender, but it also hasn’t declared them outright illegal. Crypto investors are therefore still doubtful on how to show their investments in their annual income tax returns. Due to all these circumstances, earning through cryptocurrencies is a gray area for the Indian crypto community.

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Experts Claim Allegations on MakerDao Vulnerabilities Are Substantial

At the start of December, the Maker Foundation hosted a number of governance polls on its website to ease rising concerns following allegations put forth by developer Micah Zoltu in regards to how hackers with enough financial resources could potentially carry out an attack on the MakerDAO network and steal close to $340 million.

As part of the initiative, the foundation’s interim risk team asked their global community of users if they should upgrade the platform’s native Governance Security Module from 0 seconds to 24 hours.

In its essence, the GSM allows MKR token holders to review any new changes that have been proposed for the MakerDAO ecosystem, thereby giving network participants a chance to act if any potential changes are deemed malicious.

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Bitcoin Crashes to New 7-Month Low But Bounces Off $6.4K Support

Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $6,500 on Dec. 18 in what is rapidly becoming a pivotal day for transaction analysis.

Long “squeeze up” could spark big BTC reversal

Data from Coin360 showed the largest cryptocurrency continues to erase its value on Wednesday after losing support at $7,000 as the week began.

At press time, BTC/USD traded at around $6,600 amid considerable volatility, having bounced back after dipping to $6,430 — its lowest level in over seven months.

Current levels are crucial for analysts, many of whom believed miners would defend $6,500, which constitutes a common production cost.

Even before the latest dive, sentiment appeared skewed towards Bitcoin going lower still. A Twitter survey by regular Cointelegraph contributor filbfilb revealed 70% of 3,600 respondents thought BTC/USD would find its “bottom” under $6,000.

Comparisons to market behavior in late 2018 also began to increase. Last December, Bitcoin reached a floor after a year-long bear market, subsequently bouncing from $3,100 to highs of $13,800.

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Lead Monero Maintainer Riccardo ‘Fluffypony’ Spagni Steps Down

Privacy-focused altcoin Monero (XMR) will see arguably its best-known advocate step down as the project’s lead maintainer in an upcoming reshuffle.

In a blog post on Dec. 16, representatives confirmed that Riccardo Spagni, known as fluffypony in cryptocurrency circles, will in the future serve as a backup maintainer. His replacement will be fellow developer Snipa.

Spagni moves to backup

“Fluffypony has served the Monero project well over its five years of existence, and he will continue to remain active in the community as a maintainer,” the blog post read. Regarding the choice of Snipa as a replacement, the post added:

“Snipa is a longtime contributor to Monero. He is best known for developing a popular piece of Monero pool software and supporting the network with well-connected nodes. He has substantial coding and auditing experience, and a desire to better Monero's processes.”

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Justin Sun Riles Community With $1 Million Donation to Greta Thunberg

Tron (TRX) founder Justin Sun has publicly pledged to donate $1 million to efforts by the young Swedish activist Great Thunberg to raise global awareness of the climate crisis.

Responding to the watered-down results of last week’s COP25 UN climate conference in Madrid, Sun tweeted on Dec. 18:

“As a young entrepreneur, I share @GretaThunberg’s passion to change the world. Crypto will contribute immensely on reducing carbon footprint by implementing decentralized settlement. I would like to personally commit USD$1 Mil to @GretaThunberg ’s initiative. #cop25”

COP25 ends in stalemate

The recent UN climate talks set the record for the longest-ever multilateral climate negotiations, yet ended in stalemate over key issues such as setting rules for a new global carbon trading market and adopting new, more ambitious emissions reduction targets.

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