News: What Estcoin is for, the bear case for crypto, mining security, Bitfinex audits, NiceHash drops AMD.
Short bits from the past few days.
The SEC told you it was watching — now it’s calling ICO promoters: Protostarr, BenjaCoin …
Protostarr is an aspiring entertainment industry company that was running an ICO. The ICO has been shut down after a call from the SEC. And they’re not the only ones to get a call.
Kik’s ICO for a centralised “cryptocurrency:” a desperation move at the venture capital drying up
Startup funding is always a tricky one. How about an ICO for struggling instant messaging startup Kik to get money from crypto gamblers without diluting their ownership? Offering a “general purpose cryptocurrency” to take cryptocurrency “mainstream,” that’s only slightly completely centralised.
Entertainment on the Blockchain with ICOs, over at Rocknerd
Today’s blockchain post is over at my music blog, Rocknerd — about Opus (streaming record distribution on the blockchain), Viberate (live music on the blockchain) and Kim Dotcom’s k.im (Dotcom being Dotcom on the blockchain). All of these have an ICO, of course, and two have convicted felons!
Bitcoin versus American Express: a normal person’s reaction to $7 transaction fees
Bitcoin is clogging again, and transaction fees are going up again. I tweeted about this and a normal person I know, to whom this was news, worked out what this meant …
News: Storj doesn’t work, ICOs as lemon market, ICO regulation, ICO nutters
Storj doesn’t work and never will. And the hazards of journalism in an area where unbalanced people are dropping their life savings on digital Beanie Babies.
Hello, blockchain! IRS, Enigma hack, music, Brexit, boiler rooms
Let’s get a proper crypto blog going — the blog of the book — because yet another blog to run is just what I need …
(My commiserations to the cryptographers and cryptologists who read that fifth word and died a little inside. I’m afraid it’s becoming proper finance jargon. And even chlorine won’t clear it up.)
And Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain is now a college text.