{"id":5216,"date":"2018-02-21T23:33:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-21T23:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/?p=5216"},"modified":"2018-02-22T13:28:10","modified_gmt":"2018-02-22T13:28:10","slug":"news-venezuelan-petro-bitfunder-arrest-long-blockchain-bad-blockchain-legislation-daicos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2018\/02\/21\/news-venezuelan-petro-bitfunder-arrest-long-blockchain-bad-blockchain-legislation-daicos\/","title":{"rendered":"News: Venezuelan Petro, BitFunder arrest, Ethereum security holes, Long Blockchain, bad blockchain legislation, DAICOs"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>No, nobody can make sense of Venezuela&#8217;s Petro, because it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elpetro.gob.ve\/Whitepaper_Petro_en.pdf\">doesn&#8217;t make sense<\/a> as a cryptocurrency. Functionally, it&#8217;s best thought of as a sovereign country doing a bond issue, backed by as-yet-untapped oil, with the bonds being crypto tokens. Yes, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elpetro.gob.ve\/\">sale website<\/a> didn&#8217;t actually <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ivanacostarubio\/status\/966048904579026944\">work at launch.<\/a> Yes, it&#8217;s only a cryptocurrency for marketing and, ahahaha, liquidity reasons \u2014 a way to evade sanctions, and get <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NicolasMaduro\/status\/966126242574602245\">$735m so far<\/a> in hard currencies. Yes, the US has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-venezuela-economy-cryptocurrency\/u-s-warns-investors-over-venezuelas-petro-cryptocurrency-idUSKBN1F52AB\">threatened to sanction<\/a> anyone trading these things.<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Gonna be messed up when we find out Hugo Chavez was Satoshi and he left his private keys hidden in a delicious empanada in his desk drawer.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Buttcoin (@ButtCoin) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ButtCoin\/status\/966177107838734339?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 21, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Turns out that adding &#8220;blockchain&#8221; to your name <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/2018\/02\/wolf-richter-blockchain-stocks-completely-disintegrate.html\">isn&#8217;t a sure-fire stock price pumper<\/a> any more. And Long Blockchain, formerly Long Island Iced Tea, is geting <a href=\"http:\/\/fortune.com\/2018\/02\/20\/nasdaq-delist-long-blockchain-bitcoin-iced-tea\/\">delisted from NASDAQ.<\/a> But \u2014 they&#8217;re planning an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsday.com\/business\/long-blockchain-shamyl-malik-bitcoin-1.16882882\">iced tea spinoff!<\/a><\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Bitsonline has posted a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bitsonline.com\/singapore-research-ethereum\/\">story<\/a> about a National University of Singapore paper on Ethereum Virtual Machine vulnerabilities. They haven&#8217;t linked the paper or named the researchers, and I can&#8217;t find it in a quick Google. Does anyone know anything about this? <b>Edit:<\/b> <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1802.06038\">Finding The Greedy, Prodigal, and Suicidal Contracts at Scale<\/a> by Ivica Nikolic, Aashish Kolluri, Ilya Sergey, Prateek Saxenaa and Aquinas Hobor.<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>You probably don&#8217;t remember BitFunder. It was a Bitcoin-based stock exchange that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.coindesk.com\/bitcoin-stock-exchange-bitfunder-announces-closure\/\">collapsed in 2013.<\/a> (And I didn&#8217;t know <a href=\"https:\/\/ftalphaville.ft.com\/author\/Kadhim%20Shubber\">Kadhim Shubber<\/a> used to write for CoinDesk!) It turns out the SEC is getting around to a lot of stuff. Including BitFunder, whose founder, Jon Montroll, they&#8217;ve just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sec.gov\/news\/press-release\/2018-23\">charged with fraud.<\/a> Apart from operating unlawfully as an unregistered securities exchange\u00a0\u2014 like, at what point would it not be obvious that the SEC takes a particular interest in people trading securities\u00a0\u2014 they allege that &#8220;Montroll defrauded exchange users by misappropriating their bitcoins and failing to disclose a cyberattack on the exchange\u2019s system and the resulting bitcoin theft.&#8221; If the SEC is finally getting around to the backlog from the Golden Age of Bitcoin, the Buttcoin Foundation&#8217;s popcorn futures are absolutely assured.<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2018\/02\/21\/news-venezuelan-petro-bitfunder-arrest-long-blockchain-bad-blockchain-legislation-daicos\/sarkeesian-popcorn\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5239\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/sarkeesian-popcorn.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5239\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Today in Stupid Blockchain Legislation Tricks, California <a href=\"https:\/\/legiscan.com\/CA\/text\/AB2658\/2017\">gives us:<\/a> \u201c(c) &#8216;Blockchain technology&#8217; means distributed ledger technology that uses a distributed, decentralized, shared, and reciprocal ledger, that may be public or private, permissioned or permissionless, or driven by tokenized crypto economics or tokenless.&#8221; I think that would cover a shared Google spreadsheet, and certainly every Git repository in the state. I tried reading through the proposed legislation and fell into a coma in about five seconds \u2014 can anyone work out what the industry push here is, and what new thing this is supposed to achieve?<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2018\/02\/16\/a-bad-eu-motion-coming-up-for-vote-2017-2772rsp-distributed-ledger-technologies-and-blockchains-building-trust-with-disintermediation\/?ho1\">proposed EU motion<\/a> I wrote about on Friday is up for its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.emeeting.europarl.europa.eu\/committees\/agenda\/201802\/ITRE\/ITRE(2018)0221_1\/sitt-7666191\">committee vote tomorrow,<\/a> and if you check <a href=\"http:\/\/www.emeeting.europarl.europa.eu\/committees\/download.do?docUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.europarl.europa.eu%2Fmeetdocs%2F2014_2019%2Fplmrep%2FCOMMITTEES%2FITRE%2FRE%2F2018%2F02-21%2F1144650EN.pdf\">the PDF<\/a> you&#8217;ll see the line &#8220;having regard to the question to the Commission on xx (O-xx \u2013 B8-xx),&#8221; has made it to the final draft with the placeholders left in. This is top quality legislative work with months of preparation. Very blockchain.<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s not a current news item, but \u2014 the <a href=\"https:\/\/legislature.vermont.gov\/statutes\/section\/12\/081\/01913\">Vermont blockchain legislation<\/a> is not perfect, but is a model of clarity by comparison to either the Californian legislation or the EU motion. (Summary: if you commit something to a blockchain, the blockchain can be used to show you committed it.)<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>What&#8217;s worse than a <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/the-dao\/\">DAO,<\/a> and yet worse than an <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/icos-magic-beans-and-bubble-machines\/\">ICO?<\/a> Combining the two, for a DAICO! Preston Byrne details why this wizard wheeze is perhaps <a href=\"https:\/\/prestonbyrne.com\/2018\/02\/12\/live-free-or-daico\/\">not so smart.<\/a><\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/prestonjbyrne\/status\/963251054249902081<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;m scheduled for a couple of conference presentations on blockchain in the enterprise. I&#8217;ll let you know more when the detail is nailed down.<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>I also have a box of books here! (Just twenty copies. I&#8217;ve had quite enough of <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/pf\/\">boxes of magazines under the bed forever,<\/a> thanks.) I&#8217;ll be offering signed copies at \u00a313 plus postage and packing when I work out how much said P&#038;P will be &#8230;<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Still delighted by tweeted photos of the book!<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I finished this today. It\u2019s a compelling &amp; entertaining elucidation on why Bitcoin\/crypto\/blockchain is a load of bunkum. Nice work <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/davidgerard?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@davidgerard<\/a>! <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/566el1kA5p\">pic.twitter.com\/566el1kA5p<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Benedict Cohen (@benedictC) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/benedictC\/status\/965349016727965698?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 18, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Is anyone else with an ad blocker still getting Salon&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2018\/02\/13\/salon-mines-in-readers-browsers-usual-false-claims-in-faq-about-unused-computing-power\/\">offer to mine Monero<\/a> when you go to <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2018\/02\/17\/news-tether-in-the-netherlands-and-puerto-rico-coinhive-thefts-cftc-pump-and-dump-bounties-the-market-is-stupid\/\">salon.com<\/a>? I&#8217;m using <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/gorhill\/uBlock#installation\">uBlock Origin<\/a> and I&#8217;m not getting it.<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">New bitcoin atm in DC <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Blh1Ql7ru5\">pic.twitter.com\/Blh1Ql7ru5<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Neeraj K. Agrawal (@NeerajKA) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NeerajKA\/status\/965352549061742592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 18, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<br><br><div align=\"center\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/bePatron?u=8420236\"><img src=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/become_a_patron_button.svg\" alt=\"Become a Patron!\" title=\"Become a Patron!\" width=217 height=51><\/a><br><p style=\"align:center;\" class=\"patreon-badge\"><i>Your subscriptions keep this site going. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/bePatron?u=8420236\">Sign up today!<\/a><\/i><\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No, nobody can make sense of Venezuela\u2019s Petro, because it doesn\u2019t make sense. Plus more bad blockchain legislation, and SEC charges for fraudulent behaviour dating back to the Golden Age of Bitcoin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[476,482,478,480,479,466,9,481,6,477,483,421,36,296],"class_list":["post-5216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-bitfunder","tag-bitsonline","tag-california","tag-daico","tag-dao","tag-europe","tag-ico","tag-jon-montroll","tag-links","tag-long-blockchain","tag-national-university-of-singapore","tag-petro","tag-preston-byrne","tag-venezuela"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5216"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5243,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5216\/revisions\/5243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}