Concerns About United States Coal Industry Intensify

Peabody coal, the largest coal mining concern in the United States, faces concerns that it could follow its smaller competitors into bankruptcy (archived). Patriot Coal, Walter Energy, and Alpha Natural resources filed for bankruptcy last year while Arch Coal filed for bankruptcy on January 11th of this year. While oil has dominated the mainstream news cycle, the energy extraction industry as a whole is leading the fiat march to suffering. Continue reading

IMF: Bitcoin Features Present "Risks" To Us

In a recent blog post the International Monetary Fund presented a key feature of Bitcoin as a "risk" to its agenda, namely the one where Bitcoin allows people to transact without regard for various controls states would like to impose (archived). They further advocated the populist misconception that Bitcoin exists for the poor who have been excluded from existing financial services due to their poverty.

Bitstamp Bans Russia

Bitstamp declared in an email that they are banning access from all IP addresses originating from the Russian Federation to their website.. The email was posted on Bitcointalk citing a draft proposal, via Coindesk, for Russia to restrict surrogate money. Coindesk claims upon speaking with the deputy minister of finance, Alexey Moiseev, that there are plans to create laws to punish any individual attempting to convert cryptocurrency into Rubles. However, no official law has yet to be implemented banning the use of Bitcoin in Russia, and a draft proposal to amend the use of surrogate money was published on a Russian news outlet which states (translated):

cryptocurrency, production of which is not carried out on the territory of the Russian Federation, will no longer be money substitutes

If ratified the aforementioned amendments would not go into effect until sometime 2017, thus cryptocurrency produced outside of Russian jurisdiction would technically be legal. Bitstamp's preemptive banning of Russian customers, similar to that of Satoshi Dice blacklisting US-based IP addressed, seems completely unwarranted. It has yet to be confirmed whether or not the funds of Russian customers are accessible for withdrawal or have been "frozen" by the exchange.

Lightning Network Code Finally Public

Code for the Lightning network daemon has been made public for the first time on Github (archived). The daemon at present is limited to operation on its own special testnet-L where transaction ids are normalized to prevent malleability. The daemon's README warns against deploying the daemon on the live Bitcoin network or any altcoins in its present state. Blockstream's publication of this code comes as fiat concerns grow more desperate to project their own failings on to Bitcoin through their latest "ClassicCoin" forking effort.

Fiat Feeling Pain Below The Corn Belt

A movement is building in the Middle West to compel the United States Government to raise the amount of debt that qualifies for restructuring under Chapter 12 "family farm" bankruptcy terms (archived). This push comes amid widespread fear from agricultural lenders concerned that the present limits would push many of the year's anticipated farm bankruptcies into either Chapter 7 liquidation or a far more expensive Chapter 11 reorganization, alternatives which would make their receiving eventual repayment far less likely. Depressed prices for corn and other staple agricultural products in the United States along with declining export sales are leading to grim prospects for 2016 on the farm. Sorry for your loss.