The recently discovered vulnerability in Intel chips that paves the way for two dangerous exploits — Meltdown and Spectre — is worrisome for nearly every computer user. But for many people, their computers aren't only the place where they store data, they're also their personal banks.
Bitcoin and other popular cryptocurrencies are often stored in wallets — programs that allow owners to access their coins as well as send and receive them. And these wallets, in nearly all their forms, are also in danger.

Simply put, since Meltdown and Spectre can theoretically be used to steal your data, that means they can also be used to steal your cryptocurrency private keys — and that's typically all an attacker would need to empty your wallet.
All PC and mobile users, regardless if they hold Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, should most definitely upgrade their operating systems and browsers to the latest versions. We have an overview of the steps you can undertake to protect yourself from these vulnerabilities here.
But if you're dealing with cryptocurrencies, there are a couple of additional things you should know.
The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, has outlined what the Intel vulnerability means for its users in a blog post on Friday.
The company claims it has prepared for all sorts of possible attacks — be it an attack on its virtual machines running on Amazon Web Services or any other computers in its network.
"We evaluated the impact to Coinbase and we worked closely with AWS to ensure that all of the hosts running our workloads were patched and, as we continue to cycle those workloads, we don’t migrate to unpatched hosts. This effectively mitigates the risk of a cross-VM attack on our systems. We are also patching all of our base operating systems to further mitigate the risk of this vulnerability being used to escalate privilege by an attacker who can gain access through other means," the post said.
As for the steps users should take, they include the ones listed above (patching your OS and browser), and Coinbase also suggests users to store their coins in Vaults, which are a feature on Coinbase that makes your funds a lot more secure than storing them on a trading account.
Popular open-source Ethereum wallet, MyEtherWallet, issued a short warning on Twitter as well.

China's clampdown on Bitcoin continues, and the virtual currency's prices keep plunging. As of early morning on Wednesday, the price of Bitcoin went down to around $500 across major exchanges, its lowest in nearly a month.

Bitcoin Prices Plunge After China Cracks Down on Currency

The price of bitcoin surged to $1,000 last month, but it dipped far below that mark just as quickly.
Baidu, China's largest search engine, announced this week that it would no longer accept the digital currency as a form of payment, triggering a steep drop in the price of bitcoin. The announcement, which was posted on the Baidu website, followed a decision from China's central bank to prohibit financial institutions in the country from processing or insuring bitcoin transactions.

Baidu’s website-acceleration platform decided to suspend Bitcoin payment acceptance from Friday, as recent large fluctuations in Bitcoin’s value makes it unable to safeguard users’ interests,” Baidu said in a statement on its website, translated via Bloomberg.
The price of bitcoin, which hit $1,000 for the first time at the end of November and peaked at $1,200 on some exchanges shortly after, has since plummeted to the low $700-range. Its fluctuations can be seen in the chart, below, from Blockchain.info, which aggregates prices across exchanges:
On BTC China, the country's largest bitcoin exchange that previously helped drive up the currency's price worldwide, the price of bitcoins dropped below $700 at one point, and is currently valued at around $775. The chart, below, from Bitcoincharts.com, shows the drop as measured in Chinese yuan.