Bitcoin had a tumultuous year in 2014. The headline news all year was the greatest collapse in the exchange rate since 2013 (remember in April '13 when Bitcoin went from $260 to $50?). There were also scams enacted on a massive scale – the size of which had not been seen since 2012. Very few businesses flourished, and many floundered. All in all, just another year in the single most fun and exciting phenomenon of our lifetime. Continue reading
Gavin Andresen On Future Blockchain Security: I Dunno LOL!
Undeterred in his attempt to fork the Bitcoin network, Gavin Andresen today posted an update to his blog in which he attempts to spread fear by implying users will switch to "substitute goods" or in other words an altcoin unless an increase to the blocksize is made. That portion of his update, bolding by USGavin himself, reads: Continue reading
Prosecutors Seek to Bar DPR Interview From Jury – Updated
In Wired Andy Greenberg writes that the Preet Bharara's team prosecuting the Silk Road case wants to bar the Jury from being exposed to the only interview done with the Dread Pirate Roberts of the Silk Road. The interview done by Andy Greenberg for Forbes is notable for sounding to Department of Homeland Security agents a lot like Mark Karpelès and containing a number of answers from the Dread Pirate Roberts which supports the argument presently being advanced by the defense that in spite of founding the Silk Road and being caught holding the bad for the Silk Road Ulbricht had little to do with the Silk Road for most of its history. Continue reading
NYSE Minority Contributor in CoinBase's Latest Fundraiser
In a release today CoinBase announced that among the contributors to its latest fundraising round were the New York Stock Exchange and others.
Preview of Obama's Internet Law Enforcement Proposals
Tonight Obama takes to the pulpit for his speech nominally designated the "State of the Union" though so far his earlier attempts had more the impression of being a wish list of changes Obama would like applied to the Union. Ready to go on the White House website he even has a pdf of changes he would like to make to the federal law in order to deter "Cyber crime" further through empowering law enforcement. Continue reading
Spammer Escalates to Murder
Minh Nguyen who previously was most notable for starting the venture capital funded spam fountain Plaxo has allegedly murdered his ex-wife's husband. Nguyen allegedly killed the man in the victim's own home. Plaxo raised $28.3 million in venture capital funding trailblazing new frontiers in spam proliferation before being acquired by Comcast in 2008.
LizardStresser Hacked, Customer Details Leaked
The Guardian reports that the Lizard Squad's LizardStresser serviced has been hacked, and reports of arrests of various members of the group continue to trickle in. All customer user names and passwords were stored as plaintext on the server. Postmortem statistics reported on the service include: Continue reading
British Banker's Association: Bitcoin A Threat to Sterling, May Aid Terrorists
Just like the seasoned freedom fighter who decapitates his victim without hesitation, so too does Bitcoin. Riding high upon the war horse that is its network, a bitcoin dismounts so that it may grab a fiat currency by the hair so as to tilt the victim's head back before slitting its throat. As the life blood of fiat begins to drain away, its issuers and supporters cannot believe nor accept what is happening to it. Continue reading
Assbot Gains Web of Trust Functionality
Recent downtime for nanotube's gribble bot on Freenode demonstrated a critical single point of failure in Bitcoin infrastructure. Today as a remedy to the problem Kakobrekla unveiled asswot functionality in assbot greatly increasing the robustness of the infrastructure Bitcoin business builds on top of. In an important improvement in the authentication model, all Web of Trust operations are now authenticated by decrypting one time passwords. The one time passwords expire within 15 minutes of being invoked, but assbot supports receiving decrypted passwords out of order.
Roger Ver and America's Emigration Dilemma
Last week Roger Ver revealed that the United States Embassy in Barbados has denied his requests for a visa to attend some Bitcoin related conferences in the United States. As reported by Ver his requests for a visa are denied because in the Embassy's determination he lacks sufficient connections to his new homeland of St Kitts and Nevis to prevent him from overstaying his visa and essentially immigrating back into the United States illegally. This incident highlights a number of ways in which the United States acts on the international stage not as a peer state with others, but as a rogue state. Continue reading