Bitcoin network difficulty fell ~5.43 percent from 213492501107.51336670 to 201893210853.05895996 in its second adjustment following the second halving of the Bitcoin block reward subsidy. The first adjustment following the halving was a very slight increase in difficulty. Paired with the bleeding and breaking occurring among fiat/Bitcoin interfaces it looks like the short term forecast is "there will be lulz."
Category Archives: Fiat/BTC interfaces
Bitfinex Breaks: Fiat Exchange That Never Had Anything To Do With Bitcoin Finally Goes Away
To quote from 2013 :
I. Self-moderated "support thread", filled with a bunch of socks posting nonsense. This is standard scammer operating procedure.
II. Running stolen, bug ridden software (the old Bitcoinica codebase) that has already proven itself useless in the marketplace (three times!)
III. Scammers themselves admit to crediting "investors" infinite USD/BTC to execute the naive users.
It's true that scammer tags aren't really given out much anymore, but that's no reason to allow well known scammers run amok. You have been warned.
To quote from 2016 :
We are investigating the breach to determine what happened, but we know that some of our users have had their bitcoins stolen. We are undertaking a review to determine which users have been affected by the breach. While we conduct this initial investigation and secure our environment, bitfinex.com will be taken down and the maintenance page will be left up.
Sorry for your loss.
Coinbase Engineering Director Jokes That Roger VERified Their Coins Are Safe
Coinbase Director of Engineering Charles Lee1 (WOT:coblee) today joked on Twitter that Roger Ver has VERified the Coinbase coins are safe. Roger similarly VERified that the coins at Mt Gox were safe and present in their reserves up until the moment Mt Gox died and even then for a bit of time after that. The history of Roger VERified jokes stretches back to December of 2012.
In December 2012 Roger Ver (WOT:nonperson) used his access to the administrative panel of Blockchain.info in order to compromise the supposedly secret information of a user of that service following a dispute over a payment error made by an unrelated venture of Roger Ver's (archived). The payment error was for 4.5119 Bitcoin, an amount that summed to less than 50 United States dollars at a time when buying that amount of Bitcoin was still an easy task.2
Compounding Roger Ver's mistake was his attempt at a cover up insisting that he was a sufficiently special snowflake to have all threads discussing the matter retitled, locked, and deleted (archived). At the time MPOE-PR (WOT:hanbot) wrote of his efforts:
We're not discussing the "change the thread title" part of your statement. We're discussing the "better yet, lock the thread and ask the mods to delete it" part of your statement.
It is not this thread that is causing undue alarm. The alarm is very much due, this BS of divulging customer details is widespread to the point of universality. Aurum did it, MtGox did it, the list is pretty much "everyone except MPEx". This has to cease, universally, as it has no place in BTC.
The other thing that has to cease is the unwarranted delusions of self importance. You personally are not great enough to request moderators to delete the signs of your stupidity "so as not to harm bitcoin". Should you want to request it, do it in the adequate terms, which are "I've been really stupid, please delete this before it ruins my reputation".
That aside, you personally are not big enough to harm Bitcoin, for one, and moreover this "too big to fail" mentality and the corresponding expectation of throwing everything to the wind for the sake of propping up random doods with self-awarded VIP status is completely irrational.
Since the Blockchain.info episode Roger Ver has continued his pursuit of pennies at the expense of potential fortunes. He publicly defended the insovlent Mt Gox, engaged in premature passport shennanigans that greatly restricted his ability to travel, further sold his illusion of credibility in the XTCoin and ClassicCoin pushes, and jumped on the ether huffing train shortly before their huffing bag detonated. Sorry for your Roger VERified loss.
Of "Litecoin" infamy. Litecoin was this "better Bitcoin" endorsed by Wired Magazine in August 2013 much like DogeCoin and Ethereum would later be "better Bitcoins" endorsed by mainstream media rags until they sunk. ↩
It was indeed less that four years ago that a person could acquire 5 whole Bitcoins for less than the price of a nice restaurant meal. ↩
Coinbase And Reddit Work To Hide Blood From Users
With rumours of insolvency still buzzing on social media, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong took to Twitter to announcing that the company "has all funds to cover user deposits." Apparently cryptographic proof is too hard for the company to present to the public. (archived) Irate users quickly responded with calls for independent audits as Ether huffers still wonder why the exchange refuses to credit their Ethereum Classic tokens to their accounts. Armstrong reminded users that Coinbase "is not a wallet" and users can store their funds in a multisig vault – the exact same type of setup that failed to protect users of Evolution darknet market when it collapsed in an exit scam. The official Coinbase site still bills itself as a digital currency wallet, and offers a "wallet app" on the Google Play store. The companion announcement on reddit quickly was upvoated to the front page. Sorry fork, your loss.
Bleeding Coinbase Raises Fees
Coinbase continues to exhibit signs of bleeding funds, having announced on their website that fees will increase to 3.99% for credit and debit card purchases in most countries where their service is offered beginning August 5th. (archived) It is not known if the decision to change their fee structure is due to losing money from their recent etherape. Sorry fork, your loss.
Aspiring Bitcoin Trapstar Robbed At Knife Point
Earlier this week, a Florida man was robbed of $28,000 dollars cash during a Bitcoin deal gone wrong. Steve Manos (WOT:nonperson), met two men at midnight in the parking lot of a Boston Market "restaurant". Manos gave one of the men $28,000 cash in a brown paper bag, after which time a knife was pulled. The two men then ran from the scene. One suspect, Andre Allen (WOT:nonperson) was arrested because phone number. Manos gave Allen's to authorities. Beware the dangers of Bitcoin trapping with individuals outside the WOT. Sorry for your loss.
EU Trying A Bitcoin Registry Seeing How Regulation Fails
The EU supposes that if they can't actually regulate Bitcoin, they can make a registry for it. The proposed central registry would be fed data through all cyrptocurrency wallet providers and exchanges operating within European Union member nations. Law enforcement agencies across the Europe Union would have access to the registry under the pretense anti-terrorism.1 Sorry for your laws.
Ether Huffing Ecosystem Loses 10% Mining Interest Overnight, Hashrate On Bailout Free Chain Climbing
Since Ethereum "Time Travel" hard forked away from Ethereum "Classic" the total mining interest in the two chains is down ten percent. Similarly ten twenty percent of the mining interest in the Buterin blessed1 chain featuring a time-travel hard fork attack to "undo" the whole DAO episode appears to have moved to the Classic chain. Mircea Popescu published a guide to pricing the various forks of the original Ethereum scam coin this morning.
At the point Ethereum forked it was still very much like its predecessors Dogecoin and Litecoin in being of little utility beyond service as a vehicle for disposing of actual forms of money. Like those two, Ethereum has Buterin while Litecoin had Charles Lee and the Dogecoin had Jackson Palmer and Alex Green/Moolah.io serving as their chiefs of inviting the herd to tour the woodchipper. Thanks to the passage of time blessing it with a history, Bitcoin is unlike its alternatives in many ways2 that make projecting their fork experience on to Bitcoin untenable. Sorry fork, your loss.
This is the other reason why you can't have Altcoins. Any Altcoin is going to be far too new to develop the adversarial relationships between various interests that protect the chain. ↩
Gresham's law is a thing. ↩
Hastert Fights Suit Over Unpaid Hush Money
After being inducted and convicted over his efforts to pay hush money, serial child molester and former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Dennis Hastert (WOT:nonperson) is fighting a lawsuit over hush money he failed to pay. Hastert, a former locker room predator who imposed his sexual will on aspiring grapplers before enjoying a national political career, is being sued for breach of contract over 1.8 million United States dollars he failed to deliver.
The suit alleges Hastert managed to make 1.7 million United States dollars out of a promised 3.5 million before FBI agents spooked the old coach into ceasing his cash withdrawals. Hastert's attorneys allege the aspiring grappler who had received coach's locker room attention violated the contract first when he told the FBI about the former Speaker of the United States House of Representative's coaching methods. The former Speaker's attorney also argues that the suit was filed after the statute of limitations.
Florida Money Laundering Case Against Espinoza Dismissed
Michell Espinoza, arrested in an undercover sting for selling $1,500 worth of bitcoin had his case dismissed today. Surprisingly Espinoza's legal defense strategy was the same exact one Pascal Reid attempted to use to before being lowered into pederasty. Espinoza's case was dismissed on the ground that Bitcoin wasn't money under Florida law. Judge Teresa Mary Pooler wrote in her ruling:
The court is not an expert in economics, however, it is very clear, even to someone with limited knowledge in the area, the Bitcoin has a long way to go before it is the equivalent of money.
This may haven given Pascal Reid ample ground for an appeal to void his plea bargain, if he wasn't so eager to turn rat.