News: Coincheck hack, YouTube ads with crypto miners, Cobinhood exchange goes Tether-only

• CCN’s writeup of the Coincheck hack. At $530 million, it was the largest cryptocurrency theft ever. Only their NEM wallet was hacked. The big security issues was that Coincheck kept way too many coins in hot wallets, live and accessible on the Internet. The stolen coins have been marked as being from the hack, which warns other exchanges not to take them; NEM has ruled out a fork to cancel the transaction.

• Make sure to use your adblock on YouTube — even Google is incompetent to block crypto-mining malware in advertisements.

• Tether’s actual use is to evade the banking system. Taiwanese exchange Cobinhood goes Tether-only after its local banks all cut it off from actual money. Users’ outstanding USD balances will be converted to Ether.

• Why are there so few women in crypto? Gosh, I bet human females must just not be as smart as men or they’re not into tech, it’s just biotruths — or perhaps there’s some sort of stupendous cultural problem such that the male Bitcoiners think organising an official conference after-party in a strip club is a good and welcoming idea. Who knows, really.

 

Petition to ban unsolicited drunk men from explaining Bitcoin to me 2018

— Pigeon Fancier (@isabelzawtun) January 6, 2018

emergency tinder bio update pic.twitter.com/DY5WvaIOt3

— monicaheisey (@monicaheisey) January 24, 2018

 

• John Reed Stark, who’s in private practice now, but worked for twenty years in enforcement at the SEC: Beware ICO Lawyers: As Regulatory Gatekeepers, You’re the Next SEC Target.

• Nouriel Roubini: “The idea that hundreds of cryptocurrencies could viably operate together not only contradicts the very concept of money; it is utterly idiotic.”

• “Bitfinexed” on Bitfinex’s history of promising audits and not delivering them.

 

Audits don’t generally prove anything, except when your auditor runs away screaming, deletes a press release, and removes all mentions of you from their web site

— Tony “Abolish (Pol)ICE” Arcieri 🦀 (@bascule) January 25, 2018

One bitcoin is currently worth 11,100 USDT. One USDT is worth one USD, as long as you don't actually ask for the USD.

— Trolly McTrollface (@Tr0llyTr0llFace) January 23, 2018

 

• Lightning talks at Linux.conf.au yesterday: Benno Rice, 25:10 on, nicks and extends my Bitcoin joke. The rest of the talks are good too.

 

 

• There’s an interview with me about Bitcoin in Jungle World, a German left-wing political magazine, 25 January 2018. I’ll link it, and the original interview in English, when the paywall comes down.

• Jungle World also has a piece on bitcoin use by the alt-right. It’s a pretty good article, at least through Google Translate, though I think it overstates the ideological attraction of bitcoin for the alt-right — because the alt-right are stupid neo-Nazis, and, despite not being so keen on leaving the basement, are much more like boot-Nazis than tie-Nazis. I think they like Bitcoin mostly because they’re getting kicked off PayPal.

 

Yeah dude give all your money to the anonymous Pepe bitcoin investor. I am 100% sure he will 10x your money once you hand it over pic.twitter.com/42vKbcLzvc

— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) January 26, 2018

Cryptographers experiencing what hackers went through in the 90’s when the media redefines a key part of their identity into something else.
“Oh you’re a crypto expert? Which ICOs did you back?”

— Jeff Moss (@thedarktangent) January 26, 2018

If real estate agents used Bitcoin arguments:
Client: "This house is in a horrible neighbourhood, it's overpriced, has only one window and there's no furnace."
Agent: "Allow me to explain how concrete binds bricks together"
Client: "What"
Agent: "You don't understand real estate"

— Trolly McTrollface (@Tr0llyTr0llFace) January 26, 2018