Bluff Magazine reports (archive) that Bryan Micon of the defunct poker website Seals with Clubs was charged Monday with operating an unlicensed interactive gaming system for his part in the operation of SwC. The charge comes two months after operational security concerns forced the original SwC poker site offline citing operation security concerns by way of the Nevada Gaming Commission and their thugs who took a sledge hammer to Micon's front door. Continue reading
Category Archives: North America
Prosecution Shenanigans Continue as Ulbricht Sentencing Approaches
As the scheduled May 15th sentencing for Ross Ulbricht approaches Preet Bharara's office is once again engaging in brinkmanship and shenanigans aimed at subverting actual applications of justice. At the sentencing hearing the prosecution plans to present new evidence, which apparently wasn't good enough for the trial, that supposedly links six overdose deaths to drugs allegedly purchased on the Silk Road. Ulbricht's attorney Josh Dratel has requested the sentencing be delayed another month to prepare a response to the government's latest assertion. Continue reading
MtGox Trustee has 200k Bitcoins, Creditors to Line Up as Bankruptcy Progresses
As of the third creditors meeting on April 22, 2015, the approximately 100,000 creditors from 130 countries who were swindled by Robert Marie Mark Karpeles and his Bitcoin-fiat exchange MtGox Co., Ltd. – despite the numerous and several warnings and warning signs,1 – can now file claims through bankruptcy trustee Nobuaki Kobayash of law firm Nagashima Ohno & Tsudematsu. Continue reading
Not the least of which was the consistent $10+ spread between Mt Gox and Bitstamp that persisted throughout 2013, with the premium going to Gox of course, indicating that the Japanese firm was delaying withdrawals, most probably on account of a fractional reserve deposit scheme ↩
Vessenes Foundation Draws Near Its End, Vessenes Out As Chairman
The decline of the Vessenes Bitcoin Foundation continues with their developers leaving for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab's Digital Currency Initiative. In what appears to be an attempt to revitalize their image by amping up their star power the Vessenes foundation has replaced Peter Vessenes as their chairman with First Kid co-star Brock Pierce.
Windows Servers Pwn'd By JPEG Uploads
The Register reports that researcher Marcus Murray has demonstrated an attack which allows malicious parties to take control of servers running modern versions of Microsoft Windows Server by uploading JPEG images. Murray demonstrated this attack at the RSA San Francisco conference and asserts he used this same method on a photo upload portal to crack a United States Government agency's web server. This is one of many ways Microsoft Windows has shown itself to be unsafe for any purpose.
Tennessee House Votes To Allow Bitcoin Campaign Contributions
The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports that the legislators of the Tennessee State House have voted 61 to 28 in favor of allowing Bitcoin to be accepted as a campaign "gift" in state elections. The bill passed the Tennessee Senate last month and awaits the Governor's signature which could render it law, though given that application of the Gubernatorial veto is rare in Tennessee as it takes the same simple majority from each house of the General assembly which initially passed the bill to override the veto. Continue reading
Theymos Complies With Yet Another Subpoena
Theymos of the Bitcoin Talk forum today revealed he recently received a subpoena to which he satisfied a request for posts made by current and ex-employees of BFL in addition to the content of their private messages.
He writes (archive): Continue reading
New York Update: Former NYSE CEO to TeraExchange Former FDIC Chair to itBit
As hard as the State of New York seems to be working to separate itself from Bitcoin in the manner the United Kingdom has, a number of relics from the fiat world are trying to latch on to a simulacrum of Bitcoin shaped in the fiat world's image.
- TeraExchange, represented at the CFTF session on digital currencies has taken former New York Stock Exchange CEO Duncan Niederauer as an advisory director.
- Sheila Blair, former chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has joined New York based itBit exchange on their board. A formal announcement on the subject is expected in the next several days.
Readers are reminded that New York and Manhattan in particular overtly present a hostile legal and regulatory environment unsuitable for actual Bitcoin businesses.
CaVirtex Reopens Under Coinsetter
Just two short months after closing its doors following an apparently humiliating "potential compromise," CAD-BTC exchange CaVirtex has re-opened its doors under the purview of US-based Bitcoin exchange Coinsetter. Yes, that would be Jaron Lukasiewicz's Coinsetter, he being the fellow who thought that Ripple was a good idea apparently because he had too much money on his youthful hands.
For users of the revived CaVirtex, the only visible difference is a new landing page promoting the new partnership. Once past this landing page, the excessive familiarity reveals itself in a number of now factual errors, to the point where the exchange still advertises itself as a "Canadian Corporation" and that "all voting shareholders of CAVIRTEX are Canadian" despite its most recent claims to the contrary.
Another claim that the revamped CaVirtex is making is that they've employed "the Securicoin® system," which appears to be little more than Coinsetter slang for "cold storage" even though it claims to be "Wall Street grade,"1 and that over 50% of user funds are being held in insured Xapo Vaults.2
Trading volume at CaVirtex has been slow to rekindle since trading resumed on April 8, 2015, with the website claiming a meager 372 BTC traded over the past week. This figure is to be taken with a grain of salt, however, given that CaVirtex apparently traded at least a fraction of a bitcoin for as cheaply as CAD $0.01 during the last 7 days. (cache)
No word yet on whether Coinsetter plans to honour obligations to non-voting shareholders who were stripped of 4,000 BTC when CaVirtex delisted on Havelock Investments on December 31, 2013. According to CaVirtex's delisting notice, these investors own 10% of the company. At this time, it appears they may be left out in the rain.
Police Send Spyware To Lawyer For Whistle-Blower
FSPD Chief Lindsey
Police in Fort Smith Arkansas have been caught embedding malware in a collection of documents requested by the lawyer for a whistleblower reporting on misconduct in the department. Attorney Matt Campbell reports that upon the return of a drive he provided to the Fort Smith Police Department for the purpose of receiving evidence, three common pieces of spyware targeting Microsoft Windows computers were implanted into a sub folder on the drive. The spyware includes a keylogger, backdoors, and a command and control utility.
Campell is representing whistle-blower Don Paul Bales in a lawsuit against the Fort Smith Police Department for retailing against Bale's reports of illegal practices within the department concerning employee termination and payroll procedures. Arkansas State Police have declined requests by Campbell to investigate the incident claiming that any potential violations would be merely "misdemeanors" insufficient to involve their investigators. Similarly local Sebastian County Prosecuting Attorney for the 12th District of Arkansas Daniel Shue has declined to investigate citing a lack of resources even though their own web page declares Shue's office is "one of the busiest Prosecuting Attorney’s offices in the state." (archived) It remains to be seen if this can be investigated and prosecuted at the Federal level. Continue reading