- This Bloomberg article on IBM’s Blockchain(tm) efforts is a complete puff piece, but it does underscore IBM’s purpose in selling you Blockchain(tm) — to sell other stuff to you. (I’ve also been told in detail about how hard Microsoft’s Azure Blockchain salespeople try to sell you Sharepoint.) It is not philosophically impossible that there will one day be an IBM Blockchain(tm) instance that is profitable to anyone other than IBM …
- Cryptocurrency isn’t a Ponzi! It’s a platform for Ponzis. Sergei Mavrodi, perpetrator of the MMM Ponzi that helped sustain Bitcoin’s price in 2015, is launching his own “cryptocurrency” — actually an Ethereum token. “The time for change is now! We can do a lot!! Financial apocalypse is inevitable.” Certainly for anyone who signs up for this.
- First Bitcoin lost the drug dealers. Now it’s losing the credit card thieves.
- Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain. This article has two inaccuracies: it’s only been eight years, and transactions haven’t been four cents since before the transaction clog started in 2015. Apart from that, it’s absolutely spot-on. “In conversations with bitcoin entrepreneurs and investors and consultants, there was often a lack of knowledge or even interest in how the jobs were being done today or what the value to the end user was.” Eight years in, it’s entirely reasonable to ask: “where’s the beef?”
- From “Bitfinexed”: Meet ‘Picasso’, the Painter on GDAX. “The name ‘Picasso’ is because he’s essentially, painting the charts for Bitcoin however he damn well pleases. This is why I believe TA is pointless with Bitcoin, and crypto-currencies in general.”
- “Bitfinexed” also links this claimed narrative of the most recent Bitcoin bubble and crash. “The 12 million dollar and 13 million dollar spoofs are how you tell the bottom. The entire market is a single group of traders, and it dies with them.” The price of cryptos is entirely made of manipulation.
- Well, this was a pleasant surprise! And certainly didn’t hurt sales any:
Have been reading this very festive book and now even more convinced that the whole crypto “currency”, ICO, Blockchain fandango is mostly flimflam dreamed up by extreme libertarian fantasists pic.twitter.com/OI1S43osY3
— Rory Cellan-Jones (@ruskin147) December 26, 2017
Snap! pic.twitter.com/sg6wkX4K5s
— Dave “Data isn't the new oil” Birch (@dgwbirch) December 26, 2017
- And don’t forget, if you’re in India, or have friends in India: Kindle India has Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain at one-quarter price, INR 103.50 instead of the usual INR 414, for December only! Tell everyone!
- And the ePub is half-price on Smashwords until January 1st! (Kindle users can convert it to MOBI with Calibre. On Android, I favour FBReader. On iOS, iBooks should handle it fine — this is literally the same ePub file that’s available on iTunes.)
- And now, the weather:
how to get disowned by your whole family this Christmas!! pic.twitter.com/rIunN3nW0n
— Buttcoin (@ButtCoin) December 24, 2017
https://twitter.com/GMPaiella/status/945374251548278786
my friend the only crypto currency you wanna get your hands on is this: bird seed. There is a lot of birds and they all gotta eat
— wint (@dril) December 26, 2017
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