Category Archives: Fiat/BTC interfaces

Tim Swanson Misunderstands Reality Again

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Today Tim Swanson (WOT:nonperson) published yet another piece illustrating his fundamental misunderstanding of markets and the world writ large. In this latest piece Swanson supposes that a "Kimberly Process" might be possible for cryptocurrencies. 1 The Kimberly Process is a sort of anti-money laundering process applied to the market for gem diamonds. Through the Kimberly Process "bad guys" can't sell potential gem diamonds2 to "good guys" and the scheme appears to work for this purpose so long as no one cares to observe all the ways it doesn't.

The actual thing it does work for is slowing the flow of gem diamonds to the jewelry market avoiding the corn grower's problem and increasing the price of individual diamonds and profit margins for the De Beers family of Companies.3

Swanson's argument depends upon Bitcoin being some broken thing like gem diamonds when instead there's an actual market. Sorry for your laws.

  1. Swanson of course uses the term plural, this manner supposes a class of many cryptocurrency of which Bitcoin is but one member. To the contrary cryptocurrency is Bitcoin.  ↩

  2. As opposed to industrial diamonds which are an actual commodity.  ↩

  3. The De Beers cartel ended up falling from prominence around the time the Kimberly Process went into effect anyway because other people caught onto the part where gem capable diamonds aren't as common as De Beers cultivated illusions of their being.  ↩

Tim Draper (WOT:nonperson) Still Loves Theranos, Picked Up An Ether Habit

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Tim Draper (WOT:nonperson) the Silicon Valley figure who tried to legitimize the United States Government's theft by bidding in their auctions, apparently still loves Theranos. Theranos is notable for the quality of USG stooge it managed to con into investing further after Draper supplied CEO Elizabeth Holmes's (WOT:nonperson) firm its initial capital. Draper insists "Consumers still love" a company they likely never interacted with as it never made it to more than 40 of Walgreen's 8177 stores before Walgreens abandoned Theranos. It is uncertain whether Draper's expressions of feeling on this matter are genuine or instead reflect fear arising from the realization he lost a lot of Henry Kissenger's (WOT:nonperson) money.

In addition to continuing to love a firm which took his capital and later lost Henry Kissenger's money, Draper has taken to huffing ether. This revelation is notable for making public that Draper is at least one conveyance used by the criminal gang in Washinton, DC to refresh Buterin's waterfall. Sorry for your loss, and sorry Tim for calling your loss a loss.

Network Difficulty Up 6.83% As Halving Looms

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The Bitcoin network mining difficulty moved up nearly seven percent from 196,061,423,939.64996338 to 209,453,158,595.38098145 crossing two hundred billion and setting yet another all time high. Since we last checked in on prices reported by fiat/Bitcoin interfaces, it now requires another 200 more dollars to acquire a single Bitcoin. The long awaited end of the cheap Bitcoin appears to be nearing. Cheap ether however remains available at your local automotive parts store, look for cans labelled "starting fluid" though Qntra recommends against huffing the sweet vitriol. Sorry for your loss.

Garza, Stuart Fraser of Cantor Fitzgerald, and GAW Face Class Action Suit In US Court

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A group of investors hoping to actually recover funds from dead pyramid scheme GAW Miners and its officers filed a class-action lawsuit against the group in a US court. This is the second lawsuit to be filed against Homero J. Garza (WOT:nonperson), Stuart Fraser of Cantor Fitzgerald (WOT:nonperson), and the company originally known as Great Awk Wireless. The first indictment against Homero and GAW was issued on Qntra in October of 2014 following speculation on other venues associated with The Most Serene Republic back in August of 2014 Anno Domini. Blog comment defender of GAW and Garza "DirtFighter" (WOT:nonperson) was unreachable for comment while CryptoCoinNews, NewsBTC, CoinDesk, Bitcoinist, and other operations supposing they were Bitcoin news outlets at the time while either enabling or outright supporting the GAW scam were not solicited for comment.1

  1. Un-WoT'd nonpersons the lot of them.  ↩

Hoaxtoshi Update: Journalist Swindled Into Writing A #Longread

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The Hoaxtoshi Craig Steven Wright (WOT:nonperson) having broken a promise to offer cryptographic proof of Satoshi just unveiled his latest attempt to con people into believing revealed. The Hoaxtoshi collaborated with Andrew O'Hagan (WOT:nonperson), an alleged journalist, into having a #longread produced where over 35,000 words O'Hagan demonstrates the ways in which intimately spending six months with a con artist tends to lead to being conned. The Hoaxtoshi has yet to offer cryptographic proof of Satoshi. Instead it appears he will continue sweet talking isolated people into believing. This modus operandi is the same as when that younger man convinced your Grandma to trade six months of not being alone for everything. Accept no substitute.

Acquihired Changetip Can't Unload Actual Changetip "Business"

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CoinDesk would like you to know that their sibling under a shared corporate parent, ChangeCoin is still reporting trouble selling the micro transaction framework ChangeTip since its sale to Airbnb back in April. (archived) Changetip/Changecoin raised almost ~4 million US dollars in it's first round of investor funding before their lack of a sustainable revenue model became an issue. Qntra has previously reported on the woes facing failed spam service back in April. As part of their money in, nothing out philosophy they raised an additional $640,00 in January 2016 after announcing they had run out of funds before the sale.

When Qntra reported on Changetip's phasing in of withdrawal fees back in December 2015 Changetip's Victoria van Eyk (WOT:nonperson) offered the following in the comments:

Please stop this kind of hate. We're not a spamming service. In fact, people use our service for good all the time – just ask any of the 20 charities we support via our platform, or any of the bloggers and musicians who have been delighted at receiving donations for their content.

I'm sorry if you've experienced spam.

The 1% withdrawal fee has always been in the plan, and has simply been prolonged for over a year now. But of course you don't focus on the awesomeness of having used a free service, you choose to focus on the fact that we're only implementing it now.
And yes, transactions cost money to hit the blockchain. Usually anything of value costs value in return.

We didn't "employ a(n) /r/Bitcoin moderator in an effort to avoid complete shunning" – that is just simply inaccurate. We employed BashCo because he was a ChangeTip supporter from the very early days, and we like compensating people for their time, energy and effort.

From my personal point of view, it's sad to see such negative posts like this. The whole community seems to want bitcoin to succeed, but they lambast and throw insults at any company working hard to do it. It's a real shame.

The Bitcoin community had a huge opportunity to help shape ChangeTip into something beautiful to use to help bitcoin adoption forward, and largely has allowed negativity to consume this possibility.

-Victoria1

  1. The lack of a GPG signature or WoT presence makes this statement's authorship not definitively verifiable though information suggests it was actually her statement, this is a challenge for those attempting to do business as WoTless nonpersons.  ↩

Clinton And Major Socialist Party Data Released By Hero

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Hillary Clinton (WOT:nonperson) and the US Idiot Party proved their incompetence for the millionth time recently by managing to lose control over a bunch of secret (and a lot more merely embarrassing) documents.

It's true that the USG has a rich history of shredding incriminating evidence by the pail while "suspecting no foul play" through the convenient mechanism of "technological mishaps". Nevertheless, there's a difference between pretending to not know what backups are in order to get rid of embarrassing details of multi-billion dollar graft surrounding the world's most expensive airplane-submarine, and failing to lock the heart shaped brass fixture on the Super Secret Teenage Neutered Ninja Turtles diary.

As Clinton is already famous for managing to rape more laws than Petraeus (WOT:nonperson) while avoiding any sort of prosecution (unlike Petraeus), the USG Derpage Department kicked in high gear and regaled the world with a delightful narrative of "sophisticated hackers" and "Russia or China" involvement, to rival the recent embarrassment over similar (and similarly false) allegations, not to mention the script of whatever action-movie-of-the-week. The hacker apparently had WMDs!

Much to the embarrassment of the shitshow empire, the hacker actually read enough of #trilema to go public – and did so in style! guccifer2.wordpress.com hosts a trove of amusing stupidity (all in Microsoft formats) as well as supposedly "secret" documents as classified by the world's most incompetent empire. Apparently the "very sophisticated" attack wasn't sophisticated at all. Apparently the super cereal "presidential candidate" and Martha Stewart (WOT:nonperson) look-alike is very easily defeated! Apparently everyone working for the USG is fucking stupid!

Who could have ever predicted any of this ?!

Stay tuned for more incredible stories of the obvious!

WOTless Bitcoin n00b Scammed For Millions Of Fiat Tokens

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Sorry for your loss hit Dallas Cowboys running back Darren McFadden (WOT:nonperson) this week, as it was revealed that his longtime business manager Michael Vick1 (WOT:nonperson) was responsible for mishandling 15 million dollars entrusted to him, with 3 million being used to fund an unknown Bitcoin venture. A lawsuit filed against Mr. Vick and 10 John Does alleges that

Rather than securing for Plaintiff a lifetime of financial security as Defendant Vick promised Plaintiff, Defendant Vick covertly used Plaintiff's income as his personal slush fund to subsidize his own lifestyle and expenses and to invest in his own projects

McFadden have given Vick, a former family friend, power of attorney to assist him with financial choices in August of 2008. The schemes were uncovered when Vick attempted to sell a building to McFadden that had already been purchased with his own money.

  1. Not the NFL quarterback ↩

Bitcoin Difficulty Dials Back 1.63%

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In its march to cross 2 trillion Bitcoin network difficulty has decreased by 1.63 percent from 199312067531.24301147 to 196061423939.64996338 during its latest adjustment. The next mining subsidy halving is still on schedule with all of the chaos that entails. Expect anything,1 but it is likely that weaker miners will continue getting squeezed out with only small temporary dips in network hashrate. Weakening fiat markets in China and the fresh constraint on new coin market entry are likely to lead the way at fiat/Bitcoin interfaces with the weaker and more fraudulent fiat/Bitcoin interfaces potentially getting squeezed as well in the manner of Mt Gox. Sorry for your loss.

  1. Due to the likelihood of intensified fraud on the fiat side all manner of short term trends are possible.  ↩