{"id":8886,"date":"2018-07-31T22:13:57","date_gmt":"2018-07-31T22:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/?p=8886"},"modified":"2018-07-31T22:18:59","modified_gmt":"2018-07-31T22:18:59","slug":"news-tron-paying-bittorrent-seeders-crypto-miners-in-games-sim-hijacking-blockchain-is-useless-bitcoin-is-useless-james-mickens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2018\/07\/31\/news-tron-paying-bittorrent-seeders-crypto-miners-in-games-sim-hijacking-blockchain-is-useless-bitcoin-is-useless-james-mickens\/","title":{"rendered":"News: TRON paying BitTorrent seeders, crypto miners in games, SIM hijacking, blockchain is useless, Bitcoin is useless, James Mickens"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>TRON <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2018\/07\/27\/news-intelligence-squared-podcast-sec-rejects-bitcoin-etf-emusic-are-broke-ethereum-ponzis-incompetent-as-well-as-bad-brock-pierce-on-australian-tv\/\">bought BitTorrent, Inc.,<\/a> and now TRON wants to give BitTorrent users <a href=\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/tron-wants-to-give-bittorrent-users-financial-incentives-to-seed-180731\/\">financial incentives to seed files on BitTorrent.<\/a> I, for one, greatly look forward to Hollywood and crypto <em>fighting to the death.<\/em><\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>California police have arrested a college student, part of a gang who stole $5 million in crypto \u2014 including from people attending Consensus \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/a3q7mz\/hacker-allegedly-stole-millions-bitcoin-sim-swapping\">by SIM hijacking.<\/a><\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Abstractism<\/em> was a game sold on Steam that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/articles\/2018-07-30-steam-game-abstractism-turns-pcs-into-cryptocurrency-miners\">included a crypto miner.<\/a> It&#8217;s been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamesn.com\/abstractism\/steam-crypto-mining-game-tf2-scam\">kicked off Steam,<\/a> and so have three companies associated with it.<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2018\/07\/31\/news-tron-paying-bittorrent-seeders-crypto-miners-in-games-sim-hijacking-blockchain-is-useless-bitcoin-is-useless-james-mickens\/crypto-mining-game\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-8895\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/crypto-mining-game.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"400\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8895\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Companies are shocked to realise that blockchain \u2014 an expensive and useless idea that has soaked up millions of dollars for zero return\u00a0\u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2018-07-31\/blockchain-once-seen-as-a-corporate-cure-all-suffers-slowdown\">may not be a good technology.<\/a> &#8220;Many companies will halt their blockchain tests this year. The pullback could hurt IBM and Microsoft, analyst says &#8230; The expectation was we\u2019d quickly find use cases.&#8221;<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Paul Krugman points out the obvious yet again: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/07\/31\/opinion\/transaction-costs-and-tethers-why-im-a-crypto-skeptic.html\">Bitcoin has no use cases.<\/a> You&#8217;d think there wouldn&#8217;t be much of a market for money that made the process of using it harder, not easier \u2014 and that&#8217;s precisely what we observe. That said, Krugman will be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chainxchange.com\/speakers\/\">speaking at ChainXchange<\/a> in Las Vegas on 14 August.<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>James Mickens: <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/15RTC22Z2xI\">Blockchains Are a Bad Idea: More Specifically, Blockchains Are a Very Bad Idea.<\/a> Yes, <a href=\"https:\/\/mickens.seas.harvard.edu\/wisdom-james-mickens\">that James Mickens.<\/a><\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>This is, uh, quite an amazing essay by crypto Twitter regular Beautyon on <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/v2s0R\">why the US Government Cannot Regulate Bitcoin!!<\/a> All it lacks is claiming the Constitution has a gold fringe.<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>My article on eMusic&#8217;s terrible ICO token offering has been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hypebot.com\/hypebot\/2018\/07\/emusic-releases-suspect-blockchain-ico-plan.html\">reprinted in Hypebot.<\/a><\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>A nice <a href=\"https:\/\/coagulopath.com\/attack-of-the-50-foot-blockchain-david-gerard\/\">blog review of the book<\/a> by Ben Sheffield. &#8220;If you own bitcoin, litecoin, or ethereum, Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain will make you want to dance near the fire escape.&#8221;<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"und\" dir=\"ltr\">\ud83e\udd14 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/WSRJ70XaFR\">pic.twitter.com\/WSRJ70XaFR<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Buttcoin (@ButtCoin) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ButtCoin\/status\/1024021965089267713?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 30, 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<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I&#39;ve been in a sporadic conversation with the person that owns <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BuzzfeedCrypto?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@BuzzFeedCrypto<\/a>. Today they asked me to name my price. I think the negotiations are going well. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/e3vdCUF0MA\">pic.twitter.com\/e3vdCUF0MA<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ryan Mac \ud83d\ude43 (@RMac18) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RMac18\/status\/1022903825840185347?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 27, 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<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Reminder that the executive chairman of Bitpay is a chemtrail enthusiast. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/bipNz3TNBr\">pic.twitter.com\/bipNz3TNBr<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Buttcoin (@ButtCoin) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ButtCoin\/status\/1023008390526763009?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 28, 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>I particularly commend the James Mickens video.<\/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":[797,800,746,74,571,41,799,6,798,295,744],"class_list":["post-8886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-abstractism","tag-beautyon","tag-bittorrent","tag-blockchain","tag-emusic","tag-hypebot","tag-james-mickens","tag-links","tag-paul-krugman","tag-steam","tag-tron"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8886","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=8886"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8897,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8886\/revisions\/8897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}