After apparently reopening to a lack of fanfare Horea Vuscan is shuttering his operation btcXchange.ro for the second time.
Category Archives: Fiat/BTC interfaces
Social Engineering Bests Self Describe Securitist
An Austrian "cybersecurity researcher" was educated in the finer points of social engineering, after falling victim to a teenage redditard's Bitcoin scam. Christian Haschek agreed to give the kid $500 in Apple iTunes gift cards in exchange for nonexistent Bitcoin. Despite being a blogger on the subject of insecurity, Mr. Haschek never asked his attacker for a signed message to prove the existence of funds or his identity in the WOT. (archived) After having his identity traced through facebook, the stolen money was returned.
These lulz follow other not-quite-newsworthy trends this week, such as the arrest of 2 youths accused of social engineering their way into accounts of high-ranking U.S. intelligence officials. (archived)
BitcoinTalk Database In The Wild For Some Time Now, New Forum Software Years Late
A database containing over a half-million usernames and passwords of Bitcointalk users is being sold by a vendor. The breach actually occurred in May of 2015 through a social engineering attack, and the vendor shared a portion of the database with HackRead.com. The database contains a total of 514,408 accounts and the vendor indicated that decrypting the database's sha-256 password encryption was relatively easy using standard brute-force methods. Bitcointalk administrator Thermos (WOT:theymos) has promised an upgraded forum software, dubbed EpochTalk, since 2014 but as yet has not delivered on his promise despite spending in excess of $500,000 USD in donations from the community. (archived)
Update On Some Forking Losers
The latest attempt to organize a fork of the Bitcoin blockchain organized on the subreddit /r/btcfork is still underwhelming. The closest thing to an actual name attached to the project is that of noted hamplanet "community organizer" Marshall Long (WOT:nonperson) of GAW Miners and ClassicCoin infamy. The apparent mechanism for triggering their fork is now by setting a "flag day" as trigger mechanisms that require actual indicators of support are too much for them. This fork is setting itself up to be exactly Paycoin 2.0 with the addition of more economic failure modes inherent in being a Bitcoin hard fork. Can you smell what your loss is cooking?
Florida Appeals Espinoza Decision, Florida's Status At Stake!
The government of Florida, a peninsular territory that hangs from the United States mainland like a limp penis with collapsed veins from years of IV drug use and subject to swampy decay, has decided to appeal a decision by one of their judges and imperil their place in the future. The United Kingdom faced a similar dilemma and decided to walk the lonely road to irrelevance. Peace in our time, but who knows about Florida's.
After Years Of Rumours Coinbase Adds Litecoin Support, Kind Of
With rumours of Coinbase adopting Litecoin1 dating back to 2012, the time has finally arrived. Sort of. Coinbase has opened a market for trading a Litecoin versus United States dollar currency pair on their GDAX exchange. Anticipation that Coinbase would in some way do something with Litecoin peaked in August of 2013 when they hired Litecoin creator Charles Lee (WOT:coblee). Apparently Coinbase was just waiting for the right scamcoin to pop their altcoin cherry before letting the largely abandoned Litecoin take a ride with them. Sorry for your lost years.
Cost Of Wrong Kitty Litter Escalates Into The Billions Following Nuclear Waste Accident
The Los Angeles Times reports that the estimated cost of cleaning up a 2014 underground containment failure at a nuclear waste storage site in New Mexico is climbing past the two billion United States dollar mark (archived). The failure occurred at a facility located within an underground salt dome. A container holding Plutonium and Americium waste failed because organic kitty litter used as a binding agent reacted with the waste creating gas that lead to an explosion reportedly contaminating 35% of the space in the underground facility. Using inert mineral kitty litter would have prevented this accident.
The accident has lead to a cavalcade of fail1 as the facility's unsafety has lead to delays in sequestering waste from "temporary" storage at former nuclear weapons facilities including the notorious Hanford Site there. This means that in addition to the costs imposed by attempts to restore this salt dome to safety the accident has forced the United States Government to breach agreements with a number of state and local governments for failure to dispose of their nuclear trash according to agreed upon schedules. It has also threatened to bring the United States into violation of International Treaties with Russian and other nuclear powers on the reduction of weapons grade material.
The immediate cost of cleaning up after this breach is set to eclipse the Three Mile Island incident in absolute dollars, and the total cost imposed by the fallout is likely to eclipse Three Mile Island in inflation adjusted dollars. The latest alleged USMS auction of Silk Road-ish Bitcoins at 1.6 million United States dollars for 2700 Bitcoins can do nothing for the fiat order when it has debts like this. Sorry for your loss, but you should have read the label on that kitty litter.
This is not unlike the situation US farmers chose trading their windbreaks and their neighbor's orchards for a season's soybean harvest. ↩
PayPal Freezes Bundy Accounts Over Rebellion Against Federal Government
Paypal has frozen accounts associated with Cliven Bundy and his Nevada ranch. Cattle rancher and American Patriot Cliven Bundy was captured by Federal Forces in Portland while he was travelling to support his sons following their effort to liberate a portion of the high desert in Oregon. Cliven's sons Ammon and Ryan had already been captured in an incident which left Ryan injured by gunshot and Lavoy Finicum murdered by FBI stooges. Meanwhile the only Federal officer to face charges of terrorism in United States courts was indicted for playing with gift cards. Peace in our time.
Bitfinex Partners Up For Your Loss
Admitting defeat in all their attempts to use actual Bitcoin, Bitfinex announced on their blog yesterday they have decided to resort to more fractional reserve tricks and have hired BnkToTheFuture1 to assist them in their efforts to compensate customers for their socialized losses due to the devastating hack that occurred earlier this month. The announcement stated that BnkToTheFuture "will be providing a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) through which qualifying BFX token holders can contribute their tokens in exchange for an equity interest in compliance with their individual jurisdictions". BnkToTheFuture received over USD $70 million in investments from other pretend Bitcoin services such as ShapeShit.io and Uphold. Bitfinex said customers could learn more about this new type of suppository on the BnkToTheFuture blog (archived). Sorry for your loss.
Also spelled "BitcoinBuilderMtGoxCoin Market" ↩
Fratire Retailer Suffers Pervasive Malware Installation
Popular fratire retailer Eddie Bauer suffered a pervasive installation of malware that spanned all of its 350 retail locations according to Brian Krebs (archived). This is astounding normal in electronic fiat payment systems. Krebs however has not offered any words on his blog concerning a far graver malfeasance recently uncovered. Sorry for your loss.