News: KodakCoin, FCA investigations, Ripple on TV, EU motion, Arizona blockchain veto

Monthly beg cycle: This blog runs on sponsorship! I use the Guardian model — no paywall, but if you sign up, it keeps the good stuff coming. $5/mo is like buying me an appreciative drink monthly! (I have some $20 sponsors who haven’t sent me their email or postal address for the goodies — please message me through Patreon.)

• I’m participating in a panel discussion on Saturday 9 June at the York Festival of Ideas: “Cryptocurrency: Hype or technological revolution?” — it’s free, but you’ll need to register. And one on Monday 2 July at Intelligence Squared “Blockchain: Quantum leap forward or digital snake oil?” in London — £30 full or £15 student, tickets still available. I love doing talks and panel discussions and so forth — feel free to email me and ask.

• The KodakCoin SAFT is go, apparently! I got a very dull email telling me they’d send me a link to buy KodakCoin futures from Cointopia. But it hasn’t come yet. Anyone else? I’d love screenshots of relevant pages, reports of what checking they do on accredited status, that sort of thing — please email. KodakCoin also released a full white paper last month, with no announcement. I finally obtained the January white paper that only went to selected journalists … and I’m working on a post about both, which will include the January white paper.

 

Look at them ICOs that's the way you do it
You write the solidity on the ETH
That ain't workin that's the way you do it
Money for nothin & lambos for free
Now that ain't workin that's the way you do it
Maybe get a blister on your little finger
Maybe get a subpoena from the SEC

— Colin Platt #⃣🆙 #DePi (@colingplatt) May 23, 2018

 

• Ripple Labs altruistically donates $4m of XRP to a daytime TV celebrity — but remember, Ripple Labs totally has nothing to do with XRP, except of course for the extensive list of XRP-related things they’re up to their necks in.

• If you want or have a US security clearance, trading in Bitcoin could be a problem for it. “The question is whether owning Bitcoins or lesser-known cryptocurrencies such as Ripple and Ethereum is an indicator of risky personal behavior.”

• Eva Kaili’s bad EU Parliamentary Motion — which I dissected a few months ago — has passed committee. Thankfully it’s non-binding.

• Arizona’s awful pro-cryptocurrency bill passed the legislature, but got vetoed by the governor.

• Looks like regulator attention is the fashion — in the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority is investigating 24 different cryptocurrency promotions (archive), and seven whistleblower reports this year alone.

• Here’s a bitcoin “trader” talking about the sort of manipulation that just saw a Justice Department criminal probe — at 1:20, he asks “What is the problem of driving the prices up?” Gosh, maybe you could ask the CFTC. Oh, and this is the best time to buy Bitcoin.

 

CNBC Africa “Cryptotrader” host @cryptomanran says the DOJ’s crackdown on #bitcoin is actually a buying opportunity for $BTC pic.twitter.com/QeazR3fcXq

— CNBC's Fast Money (@CNBCFastMoney) May 24, 2018

 

• BITCON: The Lose All Your Money Game! “Replicates bitcoin investing in a fast paced card game. You play the cryptocurrency market up and down like a roller coaster and try and not get stuck with too much bitcoin when the bubble pops.” No, we don’t expect they’ll exit scam the Kickstarter …

• Bitcoin has seen 44 full-history forks since Bitcoin Cash — and they are all useless.

• “TL;DR Do you know any profitable B2B blockchain business? Yeah, me neither.“

 

The great thing about "Blockchain" is, that you instantly know that nothing useful will follow and you can stop reading.

— tante (@tante) May 24, 2018

 

• Nicholas Weaver: The Risks of Cryptocurrencies, in Communications of the ACM. “If Bitcoin is the ‘Internet of money,’ what does it say that it cannot be safely stored on an Internet connected computer?”

• Blockchain regulation and GDPR — an interview with Dr Michèle Finck. (In which she namedrops my book.)

 

https://twitter.com/dobes/status/999788736673017856

 

• CoinCenter — the ones who tried and failed to find an “economist” to say Proof-of-Work was good actually — say that treating decentralized tokens as securities would amount to a ban on U.S. trading, because regulation would be too hard. Sounds good — when can we make this happen?

• Janne M. Korhonen has expanded his excellent comment on my Proof-of-Work post into a full writeup of why Bitcoin is actively bad for renewable energy — inflexible demand, because miners have to run flat-out to compete. “For the foreseeable future, the cheapest source of steady 24/7 electricity supply will be coal or gas, except in few locations that are blessed with extremely abundant hydropower reserves.”

 

cryptocurrencies are the nerd equivalent to rolling coal

— memento hikikomori (@_zellyn) April 20, 2018

 

I have yet to encounter a problem in technology or any other industry that is solvable only by a linked list of British Thermal Units.

— Antifa Comptroller (@EmilyGorcenski) May 22, 2018

 

• The most $100% accurate explanation of Bitcoin you will ever watch anywhere. 2’35” well spent.

 

 

https://twitter.com/MattBruenig/status/999673129160060928

 

https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/999688320417386496

https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/999688916100788229

 

why do cryptocurrency nerds follow me??? i am critical of your math beanie babies created by computers playing numberwang, and that is goddamn obvious.

— ☭ꙮGatekeeper Blocker Eevee (╯°w°)╯彡💻🌋ꙮ☭ (@ComradeEevee) May 20, 2018

 

On Bitcoin Pizza Day please remember that if someone asks you to send them one pizza with a promise to send you ten back they are legitimate businessmen running a very real promotion.

— Buttcoin (@ButtCoin) May 22, 2018

 

pic.twitter.com/WEouB1rvcj

— pixelatedboat aka “mr tweets” (@pixelatedboat) May 24, 2018