{"id":10550,"date":"2018-10-25T20:48:55","date_gmt":"2018-10-25T20:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/?p=10550"},"modified":"2018-10-25T21:21:16","modified_gmt":"2018-10-25T21:21:16","slug":"news-crypto-media-pay-to-play-bitmain-ipo-troubles-sia-centralises-proof-of-work-initiative-q-stretches-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2018\/10\/25\/news-crypto-media-pay-to-play-bitmain-ipo-troubles-sia-centralises-proof-of-work-initiative-q-stretches-the-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"News: Crypto media pay-to-play, Bitmain IPO troubles, Sia centralises proof-of-work, Initiative Q stretches the truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

I may have to re-evaluate Initiative Q’s scam level — their new pitch is “This is a new currency and payment network built by ex-PayPal guys, called Initiative Q.” That’s the current suggested text on their website<\/a> for spamming your friends with<\/a> … and it’s a lie\u00a0\u2014 Q’s founder sold his fraud-detection startup to PayPal, but that’s it. I’ve also seen one where they were founders<\/i> of PayPal.<\/p>\n

Crypto media is better than you may have thought \u2014 Corin Faife of Breaker posed as a PR person and asked crypto news outlets if they’d take money to cover a project, and nearly half refused!<\/a> So that’s nice. The majority wanted payment of between $240 and $4500 — in filthy fiat, not even in cryptos. The pay-for-play sites are: NewsBTC, Bitcoinist, Cryptovest, Globalcoinreport, AMB Crypto, CoinIdol, BTCManager, Blokt, CryptoPotato, Coinspeaker, Cointelligence and CryptoNinjas. CoinTelegraph wouldn’t run an article for payment themselves, but they did refer them to other sites in the “Cointelegraph Media Group.” This should surprise absolutely nobody\u00a0\u2014 for instance, CoinIdol asked me directly for money to do a book review. Outlets that flatly refused were BraveNewCoin, Coinjournal, CryptosRus, CCN, Mineable, Oracle Times and ZyCrypto.<\/p>\n

A couple of Bitmain IPO pitch decks seem to have listed current investors who weren’t actually investors<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Digital Sky Technologies Global and GIC Private Limited. A disgruntled new investor is suing.<\/p>\n

Crypto Baroness Michelle Mone fails to realise that spurious and badly-spelt threats to sue a finance newspaper<\/a> for reporting when they catch her in a contradiction are unlikely to go well. Even with the finest “definition lawyers” known to humanity.<\/p>\n

Another Conservative MP gets into crypto, then quits\u00a0\u2014 Stephen Hammond joins IronX,<\/a> then leaves after four days when someone notices and asks about it.<\/a><\/p>\n

“There are two ways to make money from bitcoin: with luck and with difficulty. Unfortunately for those who missed out on the cryptocurrency\u2019s rapid rise in value, the difficult route \u2014 mining \u2014 is proving costly.<\/a>”<\/p>\n

You may remember an incendiary blog post from May,<\/a> by David Vorick of Sia\u00a0\u2014 detailing the monopoly Bitman holds over crypto mining hardware. Evidently, Sia have decided “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” \u2014 they’ve just hard-forked Sia so that only Sia themselves can sell you the mining hardware<\/a> for their coin! Now, you might say “that’s 100% centralised, why are they bothering with reprehensible garbage<\/a> like proof-of-work in the first place,” but you’d be entirely correct.<\/p>\n

After pulling 630 million tethers<\/a> back into their treasury, Tether have just destroyed 500 million<\/a> of them.<\/p>\n

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tfw when Crypto Capital Corp, the MSP for Bitfinex, also seems to work with\/operate a literal DIY Ponzi scheme website, but no one cares because they aren't paying attention and don't see how absurd this is: pic.twitter.com\/WRtgPdNqQG<\/a><\/p>\n

— CasPiancey (@CasPiancey) October 24, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n