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My main takeaway from visiting Athens to talk at “Blockchain: Utopia or U-Turn?” has been a week sick in bed with con crud. So I don’t have much of a writeup beyond greece2.txt. But — Twitter photos!
(Me: “i should spend this weekend writing things, catching up” Ariel: “come to greece and hole up in the hotel writing? are you kidding me?”)
file under/ #cryptorave party
Σάββατο, 16 Ιανουαρίου κάπου στο κέντρο. https://t.co/xAhg47XPTk#onassisstegi pic.twitter.com/D3M97utHQl— ONASSIS STEGI (@Stegi_occ) February 18, 2019
Bitcoin's favorite critic @davidgerard shattering my echo chamber at @Stegi_occ . pic.twitter.com/iWcy1Fozaq
— Liam J. Kelly (@Liam_Gallas) February 17, 2019
"Banking on the blockchain is a bad idea" and other pills with @jemimajoanna. pic.twitter.com/8p8AQIpX7b
— Liam J. Kelly (@Liam_Gallas) February 17, 2019
Here’s @davidgerard being his usual excellent self and also being an extremely hard act to follow 😱 at @Stegi_occ pic.twitter.com/4yDcXj5fkJ
— Jemima Kelly (@jemimajoanna) February 17, 2019
Gladius settles unregistered ICO charges after reporting themselves to the SEC. “The SEC did not impose a penalty because the company self-reported the conduct, agreed to compensate investors, and will register the tokens as a class of securities.” Here’s the admin order.
https://twitter.com/kendo451/status/1097354006534545408
Pay-for-listing is still how exchanges work — “The Block has found that at least four projects received an ultimatum from KuCoin; pay up to $180,000 in volume-boosting fees, or face being delisted.” Listing fees are a subscription shakedown, not a one-off.
“BSV is a bit more interesting than your standard Bitcoin fork in that it’s propped up entirely by billionaire Calvin Ayre and the sunk cost fallacy.”
Gosh, how could Bitcoin just drop $300 in 15 minutes earlier today? It’s not like this is a completely known and repeatedly observed phenomenon.
"The Bitcoin ecosystem is so shady and all my transactional hubs seem untrustworthy! My solution to my Bitcoin-relared problem is, of course, more Bitcoin. LN will save me from untrustworthy transaction hubs." pic.twitter.com/o1lOniB37Y
— ⏐ Τhе Αnⅽⅰеnt Вооеr ⏐π(21691:4) (@KirinDave) February 24, 2019
Amy Castor: “I started writing my weekly newsletter, but ended up filling it with news on Quadriga.” Ernst & Young has scraped up about CAD$30m from QuadrigaCX’s payment processors — but banks don’t want to touch it, because they’re pretty sure it carries a hefty money-laundering risk.
A team of two law firms, Miller Thomson and Cox & Palmer, were picked on 14 February to represent the creditors, of the three teams who applied. Ernst & Young blame a ‘platform error’ for sending BTC to the dead CEO’s cold wallet. Also, EY is sucking up all the Quadriga money as fast as they can.
James Edwards (CryptoMedication) thinks Quadriga liquidated at least $400m — most of it from illegal entities.
Amy has a Patreon now — enough wine to blog about Quadriga doesn’t come for free! And there’s puppy food to pay for.
*cough* cc @davidgerard pic.twitter.com/iWDDpfpNvh
— Ariel T. Glenn (@arielglenn) February 15, 2019
Ripple Labs’ XRP-based xRapid solution for international payments turns out to … rely on SWIFT, its supposed competitor. xRapid only works economically as long as Ripple subsidises every step of every transaction. “Let’s see how long Ripple can pretend to be running a successful operation, whose business model is in reality to sell one dollar bills for 80 cents each.”
Frances Coppola: “‘R3 brought 50 banks into the XRP ecosystem’ is an illusion. But to understand why, we need to find out more about Instimatch and its clients.”
Shout out to @Tr0llyTr0llFace at @Stegi_occ — this is XRP gang. pic.twitter.com/h5ZwroRrqg
— Liam J. Kelly (@Liam_Gallas) February 17, 2019
Shellpay Internet Technology: “We will set up a cryptocurrency Special Economic Zone in Mongla, Myanmar! Look at this great promotional video!”
Mongla government: “Who are you again? We’ve never heard of you.”
Myanmar general public: “This is terrible garbage, you sound like awful people trying to violate our sovereignty.”
“What Does It Say when A Legal Blockchain eBook Has 1.7M Views?” Not so much when the views appear to be faked.
Camilla Hodgson: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam. Trading “platform” Crypto365 as a simple worked example — none of you will be surprised by any of this, but it’s an excellent example to show the not-yet-cynical.
Dave Birch thinks he’s worked out what on earth the JPMCoin is, and is for — not any sort of crypto, but something that meets the legal definition of “e-money,” for use in smart contracts on a Quorum instance. (Quorum is JP Morgan’s in-house fork of Ethereum.)
“The gold standard was a credit system just like our modern system. It was also built on promises both political and economic. Indeed, it was precisely because it could not keep its political and economic promises that the gold standard failed.” Solving the wrong problem: Bitcoin misunderstands money.
Aleksi Grym, Bank of Finland: “The difficulty in writing about Bitcoin is not figuring out how it works or getting the attention of an audience. It’s choosing the appropriate words to deliver an inconvenient truth to people who have spent time and money in a proposition that is fundamentally flawed.”
Martin Walker: Cryptocurrencies as zero-coupon perpetual bonds. “The otherwise closest investment in economic terms to Zero Coupon Perpetual Bonds, are pyramid schemes.”
Nicholas Weaver’s USENIX Enigma talk “Cryptocurrency: Burn it with Fire” is up now. “My really fun 20 minutes on why the entire space has no redeeming value and should just be burnt to the ground.”
Elon Musk has important information on why cryptocurrencies are cool — the only alternative is paper money, apparently.
@davidgerard Got it yesterday, finished it just now. pic.twitter.com/fZrB4nDvPM
— Gunnar (@gunnihinn) February 22, 2019
Am currently listening to Kraftwerk (“I program my home computer / to beam myself into the future”) whilst nodding in agreement with @DavidGerard that blockchain industry papers should basically be narrated by Philomena Cunk.
— nick rothwell (@cassieldotcom) February 18, 2019
From earlier this month, PR which accidentally reveals that Blockchain Magical Thinking is real. @dobes @rohan_p @ashabeeeee @davidgerard pic.twitter.com/LlL7ECB1q6
— Stilgherrian (@stilgherrian) February 20, 2019
Here's how bitcoin will be represented at this year's Rio Carnival:
(source: https://t.co/umNaRoozql, h/t @MadBitcoins) pic.twitter.com/545BYuZLbh
— RainDogDance (@RainDogDance) February 12, 2019
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