- It’s 2019. If you’re still holding cryptos — repent! Sell them all and buy copies of my book (US, UK) for everyone you know, and everyone you don’t know!
The government of Georgia will hold a special official event for state Senator Michael Williams — author of a 2017 bill for Georgia to accept Bitcoin for taxes — so that he can explain his secret crypto mining technology to goverment employees! That is to say — he’s just reported to jail after his indictment for insurance fraud. He’s charged with falsely claiming $300,000 of Bitcoin miners had been stolen from his office, and lying to investigators.
Bitmain recently fired half its employees — now, founders and co-CEOs Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan may be stepping down.
A stablecoin user is shocked that the Paxos Standard has to obey anti-money-laundering laws. The aggrieved trader in question literally quotes Paxos’ email explaining that the problem is “the inbound Huobi transactions valued at 9,965 each, occurring multiple times within a single day” — that is, the trader’s blatant structuring to move a large amount of money, but keep each transaction under the $10,000 reporting requirement. If you don’t think the Bank Secrecy Act applies to cryptos, you’re in for an educational time.
In the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority is investigating 18 businesses involved in the sale of cryptocurrencies. This is out of the 67 they were investigating in November.
The case of the Estate of Dave Kleiman v. Craig Wright survives another motion to dismiss (PDF) — with the judge granting that Bitcoin is sufficiently money-like that a claim of conversion is a possible claim to make. I mentioned this last week, but I just spotted one interesting thing in the PDF — the claims of misappropriation had passed the three-year statute of limitations, because Ira Kleiman, executor of his brother’s estate, was apparently contacted by an auditor from the Australian Tax Office concerning Wright in April 2014. Wish I’d known that for Chapter 6 of the book …
It looks like the money Bitfinex/Tether had deposited at Deltec in the Bahamas was there just long enough for Deltec to issue that letter certifying the money’s existence — and was withdrawn soon after. Also, the money may not even have been present at the time of Deltec’s letter.
MY PRICE PREDICTION FOR 2019: Bitcoin will remain tradeable for actual money, at various prices. Larry Cermak goes through some ridiculous Bitcoin price predictions for 2018 — a pretty good roundup, though somewhat incomplete in not at least mentioning Mr McAfee’s bold and famous price prediction, even if that was for 2020. Keep in mind that the ridiculous price predictions are all attempts to get a headline, to make Bitcoin look good to the general public — because the entire game is to get new actual money coming in, since the incoming supply of actual money dropped precipitously when all the suckers from the bubble went home.
“Normally people would be pulling their hair out”: How are Bitcoin backers handling the crash? Apparently by claiming “my mouth isn’t filled with blood, it’s victory wine.”
“Fund managers specialising in cryptocurrencies are appealing for patience from investors.” I bet they are. Specifically, Pantera and Galaxy Digital. “The asset class continues to show signs of maturity,” Galaxy alleged in a November letter to investors. Michael Novogratz of Galaxy told his aggrieved investors that instititutional investors!! will get into cryptos big time in the first quarter of 2019: “That’s when prices start moving again,” apparently.
In theory, there should be no connection between what happens with cryptocurrencies and what happens with enterprise blockchain.
In reality, "blockchain" has always just been an attempt to ride crypto's cool factor. So if coins crash, people stop caring about blockchain. https://t.co/mC67ZutkoS
— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) December 19, 2018
Cryptocurrency failed so hard as “electronic peer-to-peer cash” that a lot of newbies are literally unaware it was ever anything other than a speculative “investment.” From Reddit /r/CryptoCurrency — surprise and amazement at the idea of a market, where you could buy stuff with cryptos!
Morrison Cohen LLP’s MoCo Cryptocurrency Litigation Tracker is regularly updated — last update 17 December 2018 — and is a heartwarming read.
Stephen Palley wrote a piece on insurance against Bitcoin losses for the American Bar Association last year, and it’s finally up on the ABA website.
Nancy Nakamoto: The Princess Bride and The Mystery of the Tether Business Model.
Nic Carter’s Fifteen dead cryptocurrency predictions, twelve months on is surprisingly good for a Bitcoin maximalist take.
In January 2018 I posted about where ICO “advisors” come from — usually, it’s a paid celebrity endorsement deal, where you let them use your name and photo for a pile of tokens. The ICO was wiix.io, and the WXC token is another decaying altcoin; I’m pleased to say none of the people who were cc’d on that email with me signed up as advisors. But assume other outside “advisors” just sold their names.
10. @davidgerard, @JorgeStolfi and friends at /r/buttcoin provide a much-needed service in shedding light on the crypto space's worst excesses, and good crypto communities should welcome their scrutiny.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 31, 2018
Uzbekistan representing (by Jamesv1985) [image] https://t.co/uKGHujkKix pic.twitter.com/8ve8wIUCIi
— r/Buttcoin (@r_Buttcoin) December 29, 2018
I was chatting to a fellow CTO a few months ago who had a client who asked how you add a column to a blockchain. He realised the client thought it was just a database.
— Paul Lomax (@PaulLomax) December 27, 2018
Showerthought: When measured in forks per second, Bitcoin scales quite well.
— Emin Gün Sirer (@el33th4xor) January 1, 2019
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