17-year-old Virginian Pleads Guilty to Tweeting About Bitcoin and ISIS

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The Bitcoin badmouthing continues as reports are coming in that Ali Shukri Amin of Manassas, Virginia1 is pleading guilty to "conspiring to provide material support to terrorists" by helping fellow Virginian Reza Niknejad2 to fundraise for his jihadi mission in Syria3 using the one and only cryptocurrency. Leveraging some 4,000 Twitter followers and a personal blog, the honors student and "promising young man"4 from Osbourn Park High School is apparently a "public safety" concern and now faces upwards of 15 years in prison. Despite being only 17-years-old, Mr. Amin is being tried as an adult in the United States District Court Eastern District of Virginia.

Mr. Amin's lawyer, one Joseph Flood of Sheldon, Flood & Haywood P.L.C., now finds himself in the unenviable position of being just as much of a failure as Ross Ulbricht's lawyer, Joshua Dratel.

  1. Not to be confused with the smaller Manassutten, Virgina, home of the ever-so-bear-wary garbage police.  ↩

  2. Who is still "at large." ↩

  3. To fight with ISIS against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. ↩

  4. According to none other than Andrew McCabe, assistant director of the FBI's Washington field office.  ↩

Exodus From New York Begins

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In the wake of New York's adoption of regulations which seek to regulate rather than submit to Bitcoin, Erik Voorhees has taken his altcoin exchange startup ShapeShift.io and taken it out of New York. Voorhees previously acquired the fledgling accountless Bitcoin gaming site Satoshi Dice leading it to a long reign as the most popular Bitcoin gambling site of the time. Stock in Satoshi Dice was traded on MPEx as S.DICE where it similarly enjoyed a long reign of popularity until Voorhees sold the site in full to close the security as part of a settlement with the United States Security and Exchange Commission over his first Bitcoin startup FeedzBirds. The exodus of businesses from New York, the United Kingdom, and other jurisdictions that wish to regulate themselves out of relevance in the Bitcoin space is likely to continue.

Bharara Seeks To Prosecute Silk Road Trial Commenters

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PreetPopehat has obtained a subpoena pushed through by Preet Bharara's office seeking information on a number of persons who commented on a May 31st article by Nick Gillespie published on Reason Magazine's website. The article in question concerned Ulbricht's pre-sentencing letter to Judge Katherine Forrest. Preet Bharara's office intends to prosecute the emotionally distraught commenters under the Federal Statute prohibiting the interstate communication of threats. This is the same statute under which just days ago a conviction won by Federal prosecutors from another office was overturned and sent for retrial under more restrictive jury instructions as criminal threats must be demonstrated to have a culpable state of mind on the part of the speaker for them to be actually criminal. Let us consider each of the eight instances of speech that Preet Bharara wants to prosecute as criminal: Continue reading →

US Government Shuts Down US Government Drug Manufacturing Operation

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The United States Food and Drug Administration has shut down a drug lab operated by the National Institute of Health in order produce drug samples used in clinical trials. The National Institute of Health responded to the shut down by announcing a suspension of operation for their Pharmaceutical Development Section and revealed that the contaminated product which the Food and Drug Administration ordered the shut down over was a common injectable solution of albumin used for facilitating the delivery of pharmacologically active chemicals that had become contaminated by fungus. At this point it is clear that the endemic decay affecting the apparatus of the United States Government is not restricted to its facilities for deploying violence but has indeed spread mycelium even into operations tasked with promoting the health and well being of the public.

Exodus from Wall Street: HSBC lays off 50,000 employees

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Reports are coming in that HSBC, the third largest bank in the world and one of the most profitable, in a marked attempt to tighten its belt in the face of regulatory and economic pressures, is preparing to hand out pink slips to some 50,000 of its employees from its less profitable divisions.

With a particular focus on Britain, Brazil, the United States, Turkey, and Mexico, CEO Stuart Gulliver plans to cut $290 billion in assets on a risk adjusted basis by 2017. The cuts will be sharp and deep, with a full one-sixth of UK staff, around 7,000 – 8,000 jobs, headed for the chopping block. Redundant staff and other non-productive assets from Europe and the Americas will largely be redeployed as the firm continues to shift its focus towards Asia in general and China in particular.

It would appear that the current state of the world, what with the digitisation of finance as heralded by Bitcoin and the excessive regulatory burden and generally grim economic prospects of western socialist democracies, is even leading HSBC to consider moving its headquarters back to Honk Kong, where the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation was originally established in 1865 by Sir Thomas Sutherland.

Given that Hong Kong is taking a considerably lighter and hands-off approach to Bitcoin regulation, whereas Britain and others are doing everything in their power to stave off the inevitable, the former British colony would seem to be a safer and saner home for the bank. For now.

Online Drug Trade Booming Despite Silk Road Shut Down & Ulbricht's Subsequent Life Sentence

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2015's Global Drug Survey (archive) – which collected data from over 100,000 respondents across 50 countries via platforms such as The Guardian (archive) and Fairfax Media (archive) – has revealed what most people already knew: that people are increasingly turning to online darknet markets to facilitate the purchase of drugs and use bitcoin to pay for them; 2014 saw an increase in the number of newcomers to the darknet markets; people experienced less physical violence, threats to personal safety, blackmail and threats to reveal one's identity when buying drugs online and more often received the correct product. However, darknet marketplace participants experienced more theft, pricing volatility and waited longer to receive their orders. Questions and data released in the report include: Continue reading →

Bandits Stick Up Craigslist Bitcoin Seller

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The dangers of trapping has once again reared its head in the city of New York with CNBC reporting (archive) a 28 year old man who attempted to sell bitcoins via craigslist met with a purported buyer who then lead him to a vehicle to finalise the transaction. Hidden in the back seat of the car was another man who ordered the seller to transfer the bitcoins to his wallet at the point of a gun. In addition to the USD $1,100's worth of bitcoin, the bandits stole the man's mobile phone. Continue reading →