Cryptocurrency News

[LFC]

Bitcoin dropped badly after Elon Musk said it will no longer be accepted by Tesla plus other news. It shouldn't shock anyone that something this speculative can be whipsawed pretty easily.

Overnight, a broad selloff of prominent cryptocurrencies has vaporized billions of dollars in value. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency affected, is off more than 18 percent in the last 24 hours. Currently, it's worth just over half what it was in mid-April. Over the past week, more than $600 billion has been wiped out of a wide range of more than 7,000 cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, ether, and meme coins like dogecoin, according to CoinGecko.

The causes for the selloff are myriad. The first shot across the bow came last week when Tesla CEO Elon Musk declared that his company would no longer be accepting bitcoin for car purchases. The change happened less than two months after he said that Tesla would accept bitcoin, and the about-face came as Musk declared his concerns over the environmental damages being wrought by the energy-intensive cryptocurrency. (His thinking on the matter may have been influenced by an Ars article about a private equity firm that revived a zombie power plant just to mine bitcoin.)

The next jolt to crypto-markets came this past Sunday when Musk suggested that Tesla either had or would be selling its bitcoin holdings, which amounted to $1.5 billion when they were disclosed back in early February. Musk's market-moving tweet was a cryptic “Indeed” posted in reply to @cryptowhale, who had said, “Bitcoiners are going to slap themselves next quarter when they find out Tesla dumped the rest of their #Bitcoin holdings.” That single word sent bitcoin tumbling. On Monday, Musk clarified that “Tesla has not sold any Bitcoin.” After that, the cryptocurrency regained some of its value.

The rally was short-lived, though. On Tuesday, China issued a warning that financial institutions in the country shouldn’t process or participate in crypto-transactions or offer related services. “Prices of cryptocurrency have skyrocketed and plummeted recently, and speculative trading has bounced back. This seriously harms the safety of people's property and disturbs normal economic and financial orders,” the regulators said in a statement.

[LFC]

W...T...F!!! (bold mine)

A company looking to build a massive solar project in Butte, Montana claims it would provide 300MW of renewable power and cost $250 million, Gizmodo reported. That’s according to Madison River Equity LLC, whose parent company also manages cryptomining outfit Atlas Power. As Gizmodo reports, Madison would build the solar array, then sell it to Atlas, which hopes to use it to power its cryptocurrency mining operations. If the solar farm, dubbed the Basin Creek Solar Project, is actually built, it could be one of the largest in the US, but it raises questions about the impact of such projects, and about crypto’s impact on energy.

[LFC]

Amazon may be accepting Bitcoin by the end of this year.

Amazon has plans to accept the cryptocurrency bitcoin by the end of 2021, according to an anonymously sourced report in the London newspaper City A.M. And while this is just the word of one anonymous “insider” at the Seattle-based mega-retailer, bitcoin’s price skyrocketed overnight and it’s creating a lot of buzz in the world of cryptocurrencies—a world built on little more than buzz.

[snip]

The insider claims that bitcoin will be the first of roughly eight cryptocurrencies Amazon will start accepting, eventually including coins like ethereum, cardano and “bitcoin cash” in the mix. The source told City A.M. that Amazon’s crypto plans have been in motion since 2019 and it “won’t take long” for the company to accept crypto.

But wait! There's more!

Amazon even has plans to develop its own cryptocurrency, according to the source. And the company might make it possible to earn rewards for paying with what the insider calls Amazon’s “native coin.” Amazon did not immediately respond to an inquiry from Gizmodo about its crypto plans early Monday.

Bezosbucks?

[Deleted]

Bezosbucks .... shouldn't that be Bezos sucks ?

[goldenvalley]

Apparently taxation of cryptocurrency transactions is a hang up in the infrastructure bill.   I don't quite understand how this all works.

The initial plan that set off the controversy, crafted by Portman with the help of Treasury Department officials, is aimed at increasing tax compliance in the purposefully opaque cryptocurrency sector. Estimates have found it would raise roughly $28 billion over 10 years — funding that is crucial for paying for the broader infrastructure package.

The proposed cryptocurrency changes consist of two key parts. One would include digital assets such as crypto in requirements to report payments worth more than $10,000 to the Internal Revenue Service. That idea has generated little controversy.

The second part would clarify the definition of a broker for players in the cryptocurrency market, which would require them to file a type of 1099 form for transactions on certain kinds of digital assets.

Cryptocurrency industry groups are largely open to extending 1099 reporting requirements to established crypto trading brokers, such as Coinbase, a publicly traded exchange platform for cryptocurrencies. But they have alleged that the legislation as written would also give the Biden administration authority to require the same of bitcoin “miners” who are crucial for validating transactions on the decentralized network, as well as software developers and others. Industry groups have warned that software developers and miners do not have the capacity to send 1099s to the IRS, because intrinsic to cryptocurrencies’ function is that these kinds of producers have no knowledge of who their users are.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote on Twitter that “issuing more 1099s is a great idea” and that Coinbase is happy to do so. But, he added, the bill’s definition of brokers would appear to include miners and developers which “makes no sense” and could drive it outside of the United States.

Apparently some see climate change implications:

Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are produced — or “mined” — in different ways. The most established form of cryptocurrency comes from “proof of work,” which requires users to solve a mathematical equation to validate transactions. Bitcoin, the best-known form of cryptocurrency, depends on “proof of work” mining. But other forms of cryptocurrency, including potential emerging rivals to bitcoin, are pursuing other methods of validating transactions on the decentralized network, and could prove less energy-intensive. Since these would be subject to the new reporting requirements under the Warner plan, even though the traditional forms of mining would not be, Wyden late Thursday bashed the competing amendment as “government-sanctioned safe harbor for the most climate-damaging form of crypto tech.” Other experts dispute that, however.

This is a new form of finance and exchange (at least to uninformed people like me).  I think the federal government and maybe some more international form of government needs to get a handle on how this all works to keep it from becoming an even more shadowy form of doing business that can run anyway it likes without oversight, protection of consumers, and ability to tax what would be taxable if done under the traditional forms of exchanging money in the course of doing business.

[LFC]

Biden is looking to regulate crypto more strongly. It will be interesting to see how it shakes out.

Cryptocurrency has an SEC problem — and it just got bigger.

The Biden administration is taking a more hands-on approach to the highly volatile, little understood, and barely regulated cryptocurrency industry. Cryptocurrencies are decentralized digital currencies secured by blockchain technology. Bitcoin, ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies have become almost as accessible as government-issued currency in recent years, but the government offers few consumer protections for them.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — led by Gary Gensler, who taught a class on cryptocurrency at MIT — is trying to make the case that it can and will regulate whatever cryptocurrency investment schemes it decides fall under its purview. The relative newness and rapid expansion of the cryptocurrency industry have put it in a regulatory gray area. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) classifies crypto as property. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) considers crypto to be a commodity. And the SEC has said that digital assets “may be securities, depending on the facts and circumstances.” A security is a financial asset that can be traded, like stocks and bonds, and which is governed by several laws designed to prevent fraud and protect investors.

The SEC appears to have decided that an upcoming offering from Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, meets its definition of a security. And it’s showing that it will step in and regulate it accordingly — and, by extension, regulate the rest of the crypto finance industry more assertively.

[LFC]

The Chinese gov't doesn't sound like it's a fan of crypto.

Chinese government agencies including the country's securities regulator and the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said in a statement on Friday that all cryptocurrency-related business activities are illegal and vowed to clamp down on illicit activities involving digital currencies.
The agencies said that overseas crypto exchanges would be blocked from providing services to Chinese residents through the internet.

Bitcoin (XBT) fell about 5% on the news. Ethereum, another leading cryptocurrency, was down 9%.

The agencies said that China would develop "new systems" to counter risks posed by cryptocurrencies. China will gradually start shutting down crypto mining operations, and no new mining projects will be permitted, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a separate statement.

The announcements are the latest in a series of tough measures from China on cryptocurrencies.

[growell]

Sept 24, 2021 16:12:11 GMT LFC said:

The Chinese gov't doesn't sound like it's a fan of crypto.

Chinese government agencies including the country's securities regulator and the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said in a statement on Friday that all cryptocurrency-related business activities are illegal and vowed to clamp down on illicit activities involving digital currencies.
The agencies said that overseas crypto exchanges would be blocked from providing services to Chinese residents through the internet.

Bitcoin (XBT) fell about 5% on the news. Ethereum, another leading cryptocurrency, was down 9%.

The agencies said that China would develop "new systems" to counter risks posed by cryptocurrencies. China will gradually start shutting down crypto mining operations, and no new mining projects will be permitted, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a separate statement.

The announcements are the latest in a series of tough measures from China on
cryptocurrencies.

Don't take a word they say at face value. This is China.

About China and crypto.

I was always of the impression that China profited immensely from cryptography mining. Sure several'qu' have been banned explicitly from mining due to low hydro electric power, but I have friends mining happily with the ever so cheap electricity in other locations over there.
Now if you already own equipment then it is a good way to earn some extra income. Ethereum is very popular since you only need a few GPUs with a hash rate of 25M plus to get started.
If the PLA and thus Beijing wanted to crush cryptography mining then I am sure all the mining consortiums, the guys that in effect pay you for the use of your computer, would already be blocked by the great wall. They have not yet been blocked - I know this for a fact.
This probably means people will be safe as long as they do not advertise it or blog anti government material.
It gets more interesting with the digital yuan coming on line but I think mining will be allowed to continue, at least for several months, maybe much longer.

Now if you want to start mining from scratch it is not easy. Bitcoin requires powerful ASIC number crunchers that suck a lot of electricity. A machine will cost $600US and your 30ampere mains will only allow 6-8 machines and you will earn say $250 a day.
Ethereum uses Video cards but the price of cards in China for a 32 hash rate card is over 1000 bucks and to get to 250usd a day will mean acquiring about 200 of them. Better cards mean more expense but the time to clear the initial outlay will not change much.

Bitcoin and Ethereum have dropped but financial articles are saying do not panick, the Chinese rules were factored in to the price weeks ago. I do not necessarily believe this either because there were no statements about disclosure. Could be damage limitation.

As always anywhere the big boys who heat up lakes with mining heat exchanges are the ones that earn a lot.

[growell]

Sept 26, 2021 12:23:37 GMT growell said:

Sept 24, 2021 16:12:11 GMT LFC said:

The Chinese gov't doesn't sound like it's a fan of crypto.

Don't take a word they say at face value. This is China.

About China and crypto.

I was always of the impression that China profited immensely from cryptography mining. Sure several'qu' have been banned explicitly from mining due to low hydro electric power, but I have friends mining happily with the ever so cheap electricity in other locations over there.
Now if you already own equipment then it is a good way to earn some extra income. Ethereum is very popular since you only need a few GPUs with a hash rate of 25M plus to get started.
If the PLA and thus Beijing wanted to crush cryptography mining then I am sure all the mining consortiums, the guys that in effect pay you for the use of your computer, would already be blocked by the great wall. They have not yet been blocked - I know this for a fact.
This probably means people will be safe as long as they do not advertise it or blog anti government material.
It gets more interesting with the digital yuan coming on line but I think mining will be allowed to continue, at least for several months, maybe much longer.

Now if you want to start mining from scratch it is not easy. Bitcoin requires powerful ASIC number crunchers that suck a lot of electricity. A machine will cost $600US and your 30ampere mains will only allow 6-8 machines and you will earn say $250 a day.
Ethereum uses Video cards but the price of cards in China for a 32 hash rate card is over 1000 bucks and to get to 250usd a day will mean acquiring about 200 of them. Better cards mean more expense but the time to clear the initial outlay will not change much.

Bitcoin and Ethereum have dropped but financial articles are saying do not panick, the Chinese rules were factored in to the price weeks ago. I do not necessarily believe this either because there were no statements about disclosure. Could be damage limitation.

As always anywhere the big boys who heat up lakes with mining heat exchanges are the ones that earn a lot.

Correction. Top of the line ASIC miners cost $6000usd in China not $600. In the states they will cost much more and it will not all be postage from the Chenzhen factory.

[LFC]

Sept 26, 2021 12:23:37 GMT growell said:

Sept 24, 2021 16:12:11 GMT LFC said:

The Chinese gov't doesn't sound like it's a fan of crypto.

Don't take a word they say at face value. This is China.

After reading this I realized I wasn't even thinking about the mining aspect of it, only the usage. I can understand them blithely allowing mining to go on, as long as the crypto is converted to something else less secret. My thoughts went immediately to its use and ability to keep transactions secret which sounds like exactly the thing China would want to suppress.

[LFC]

Both TrumpCoin and MAGACoin are rumbling around in some state or another. From July:

Magacoin, the pro-Trump cryptocurrency, has received over 1,000 sign ups since its launch last week, The Guardian reported on Thursday.

Most of the people who signed up only have 100 magacoins, the initial amount offered to everyone who registered, The Guardian said, citing data from a self-described hacktivist. Magacoin's creator so far holds the vast majority of coins - the token's website says around 75 million coins have been created in total.

Magacoin was created in reaction to Trump's loss in the November 2020 election, and the total amount of coins is a nod to the almost 75 million people who voted for him. It is designed to support candidates linked to the Make American Great Again slogan, and help fund their future campaigns and elections.

Magacoin is not yet a traded crypto coin and was not listed on major cryptocurrency tracking platforms at the time of writing.

This is not the first Trump-supporting cryptocurrency - TrumpCoin was created to support the former president and his followers, has over 6 million coins in circulation, and boasts a market cap of $383,500, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Public figures like radio hosts, bloggers, and local MAGA personalities who agree to promote the coin can receive 1,000 free tokens through an ambassador program, the website shows. Multiple people have taken up this offer as well, The Guardian said.

A security breach on a website linked to magacoin uncovered user data including email addresses, passwords, IP addresses, and cryptocurrency wallet addresses - and revealed that several prominent right-wing personalities have become magacoin ambassadors, the Guardian reported.

Trump has not expressed support for TrumpCoin or magacoin. He has historically not been supportive of cryptocurrencies in general - he said bitcoin "seems like a scam" last month, and ranted about bitcoin and crypto on Twitter in 2019.

Now others seem ready to shear the sheep a bit more by using fake celebrity accounts to push fake TrumpCoin. Bold of a big truth mine.

QAnon world is being flooded with a currency scam in the form of ‘Trumpcoins’ peddled by fake celebrity accounts purporting to be Elon Musk, Mel Gibson, Kirstie Alley, and even Denzel Washington.

As hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng explain in this week’s episode of Fever Dreams, the Trumpcoin boasts a “Keep America Great” logo and “sort of a Trumpian face on it” that “looks like maybe something Caligula might’ve stamped a coin with back in the day.” It’s going for $30 on Telegram—the social media app where the alt-right fled after the Jan. 6 riot as Twitter banned Q content—and puppet accounts are promising the little coins will skyrocket in value as soon as Trump retakes his rightful office, maybe to as much as $400 or even $10,000, send money now. Or, as the fake Denzel Washington account promises buyers, “THE LAST DAY IS HERE. The countdown has started. It’s all part of the show, a show that will leave everyone speechless. Today is the last day and after this a lot of things will change...check the availability and order here at official Trumpcoins dot com.”

The fake accounts are gaining enough traction that real-life D-listers like Kirstie Alley have been forced to put out Tweets clarifying that they are not, in fact, selling Trumpcoins on Telegram in their spare time. Meanwhile, an anti-Trumpcoin faction is trying to warn Q-believers against the grift, and claiming the Trumpcoins are being promoted by accounts originating in Southeast Asia.

As Sommer notes, “I think the lesson of Trumpcoin is that when you have a situation like QAnon, these people have already self-identified as extremely gullible. And so a lot of people are then going to come in and sort of try to feed at the trough there.”

[LFC]

Bitcoin mining using stolen energy. That's different.

A There Will Be Blood-style drama unfolds in Canada, where a Bitcoin mining operation illegally tapped an unused natural gas well near a wealthy neighborhood in Alberta. The company Link Global might have gotten away with pilfering gas, if not for noise complaints from area hot tub owners. This story has everything.

According to a CBC News report from August, Greystone Manner residents began suffering an annoying noise that is “like a plane engine warming up on the tarmac” last fall.

“We have a hot tub in the back,” one person told CBC News, complaining about the airplane-like sound disturbing the peace. “There’s a premium you pay for this kind of place,” they added.

The neighbors convened, CBC News reports, and discovered that Link Global had not notified anyone, not even the public utility commission or the well’s owner Maga Energy. Taking without telling the owner—stealing, in other words. Now the Alberta Utilities Commission is reportedly pursuing a $5.6 million (USD) fine for revenues from electricity and bitcoin as well as penalties. It found that the company operated two under-the-radar power plants, one for 426 days.

The secret energy plants reportedly powered four 1.25 MW generators, enough to power roughly 6,000 homes in Texas. Or, consuming roughly 7,400 cubic feet of natural gas per hour, each.

Bitcoin mining consumes massive and constantly intensifying volumes of power because (to over-simplify), mining bitcoin is a race to solve a complex mathematical problem; whoever’s high-powered machinery solves the problem first gets a block of 6.25 bitcoins. Therefore any estimate of power-per-bitcoin will be rough, but the New York Times currently calculates that mining one would consume enough energy to power an average household for nine years.

Power theft isn’t new to the industry. Earlier this year, Ukrainian authorities reportedly raided a mine accused of siphoning power right from the grid. A similar report comes from England, and one involves Malaysian law enforcement steamrolling over 1,000 machines after discovering their owners had stolen around $2 million of electricity.

[LFC]

A JRR Tolkien rip-off cryptocurrency just got shut down by his estate.

The estate of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, has successfully vanquished a cryptocurrency that styled itself as “The One Token That Rules Them All.”

The JRR Token cryptocurrency launched in August, with a website that featured rings, hobbit holes, and a wizard with an uncanny resemblance to Gandalf.

But the Tolkien estate, which handles the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings fantasy novels, quickly stepped in to lodge a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the global forum for intellectual property policy.

It noted that the cryptocurrency’s website domain name infringed its trademarks. Tolkien’s novels have been made into a trilogy of Hollywood films, directed by Peter Jackson and starring Ian McKellen.

In response, lawyers for Matthew Jensen, JRR Token’s Florida-based developer, said that “token” was a generic term, should not be confused with the surname Tolkien, and it did not infringe any intellectual property.

But the WIPO administrative panel decision concluded that there was no doubt that the developer was “aware of Tolkien’s works and created a website to trade off the fame of these works.”

The Tolkien estate said it had now recovered the JRRToken.com domain name and had obtained the developer’s undertaking to stop all operations under the JRR Token name and delete any infringing content from all relevant websites and social media accounts.

[LFC]

Interesting attempt to launder stolen crypto. So far it seems to have worked and it has worked in the past.

Hackers who made off with roughly $15 million in ethereum from Crypto.com are attempting to launder the funds through a so-called ethereum “mixer,” known as Tornado Cash, according to a new report from crypto security company Peck Shield. Mixers run interference on the blockchain to make it difficult for outsiders to track where stolen funds might end up.

Crypto.com halted all withdrawals from the platform for 14 hours on Monday and made users reset their two-factor authentication after “unauthorized activity” was detected on the network. But CEO Kris Marszalek insisted that all funds were “safe,” without admitting the company had been hacked.

The laundering attempt, first reported by CoinDesk, is visible on the Ethereum blockchain through the service Etherscan. The hackers sent 334 transactions to Tornado Cash on Monday night ET. It’s not clear where the money ultimately landed. At least not yet.

The nature of decentralized finance (DeFi) on the blockchain means that it’s relatively easy to see when money is moving from one crypto wallet to another, even if you don’t know who owns the wallets. But services like Tornado Cash are marketed as a way to confuse the public ledger of a given blockchain, in this case Ethereum, as a way to throw people off the trail and protect the user’s privacy.

Other crypto “mixers” have been shut down in recent years. Bestmixer halted operations in 2019 after a visit from European police who alleged it laundered roughly $200 million in bitcoin, and Larry Dean Harmon, who ran the mixer Helix, was raided by the FBI in 2021. Harmon pleaded guilty in August to laundering $300 million in crypto.

Crypto.com did not respond to a request for comment overnight about the hack, previously stating publicly on Tuesday that “all funds are safe.” But there’s a big difference between not getting hacked (something Crypto.com keeps suggesting with its confusing choice of words in public statements) and getting hacked but topping up the customer accounts that lost money. The latter seems to be the case here, but Crypto.com won’t admit it, likely out of fear that bad publicity about poor security practices in the crypto space leads to plummeting prices for cryptocurrencies.

[LFC]

More crypto hacking.

North Korean hackers took off with at least $400 million worth of digital assets in at least seven online heists on cryptocurrency platforms last year, according to a new report by Chainalysis.

The investigation found that 2021 was one of the most successful years on record for cyber-criminals in the so-called “Hermit Kingdom” with the value of stolen cryptocurrency rising by 40 percent from 2020 to 2021. Up to 58 percent of the stolen cryptocurrency was Ether, while Bitcoin made up just 20 percent of the loot. The remaining 22 percent was altcoins or ERC-20 tokens, blockchain-based assets that run on the Ethereum platform.

The targets were primarily investment firms and centralized exchanges. Using a sophisticated arsenal of phishing lures, code exploits, malware, and advanced social engineering to sneak out cryptocurrency from the organizations’ online wallets into addresses linked to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Once the funds were secured, they were converted into other cryptocurrencies and mixed into other wallets in an attempt to cover their tracks. Eventually, the laundered cryptocurrency is converted into “conventional” cash using crypto-to-fiat exchanges based in Asia.

The precise identity of the hackers isn’t known, but Chainalysis believes many of the recent attacks were carried out by the Lazarus Group, a cybercrime collection with strong links to the North Korean government of Kim Jong-un, according to US intelligence. The Lazarus Group is thought to have emerged around 2010, but they gained public notoriety when they hacked Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014. The hackers stole personal information about Sony Pictures employees and demanded the Sony film studio withdraw its upcoming film The Interview, a 2014 comedy starring James Franco and Seth Rogen about a plot to assassinate Kim Jong-un.

[LFC]

Bitcoin took a beating in the current market. I'm sure it will bounce back, and down, and back, and down...

Bitcoin dropped to a six-month low on Saturday, extending a steep fall recorded in the previous session as the cryptocurrency market was swept up in a powerful shift by investors out of speculative assets.

The price of the biggest digital token by market value fell 4.3 percent on Saturday morning in Europe to $35,127, the lowest level since July 2021. Bitcoin has now lost almost a quarter of its value this year.

Other cryptocurrencies have also come under intense selling pressure, with an FT Wilshire index of the top five tokens excluding bitcoin down 30 percent in the first month of 2022.

The cryptocurrency rout comes as investors have dumped shares in tech companies on expectations the US Federal Reserve will move to rein in loose pandemic monetary policy to combat inflation. Global stock markets posted their biggest declines in more than a year this week, with the fast-growing companies that powered the rally from the depths of the coronavirus crisis enduring intense falls.

Investors now forecast the Fed, the world’s most influential central bank, will raise interest rates three to four times this year, something that has sent bond yields surging. Higher yields on low-risk assets like US government bonds make the potential returns that can be earned through speculative investments like cryptocurrencies look less appealing, analysts say.

Andrew Sullivan, managing director at Outset Global in Hong Kong, said Asia was seeing “huge volumes going through in a number of markets as investors move to cash” on Friday, as technology shares in the region fell.

The sharp sell-off in digital assets also came a day after the Russian central bank announced on Thursday draft proposals seeking to ban all cryptocurrency trading and mining. The proposed regulations would also block cryptocurrency investment by banks and forbid any exchange of cryptocurrency for traditional currencies in Russia, one of the world’s largest centers for crypto mining.

[LFC]

Google is getting into blockchain.

Here's a fun new report from Bloomberg: Google is forming a blockchain division. The news comes hot on the heels of a Bloomberg report from yesterday that quoted Google's president of commerce as saying, "Crypto is something we pay a lot of attention to." Web3 is apparently becoming a thing at Google.

Shivakumar Venkataraman, a longtime Googler from the advertising division, is running the blockchain group, which lives under the nascent "Google Labs" division that was started about three months ago. Labs is home to "high-potential, long-term projects," basically making it the new Google X division (X was turned into a less-Google-focused Alphabet division in 2016). Bavor used to be vice president of virtual reality, and Labs contains all of those VR and augmented reality projects, like the "Project Starline" 3D video booth and Google's AR goggles.

This was a reasonably simple explanation of blockchain.

Just like "algorithms," "AI," and "5G," "blockchain" is often used as the go-to buzzword for rudderless tech executives hoping to hype up investors or consumers. A blockchain is really just a distributed, P2P database, sort of like if BitTorrent hosted a database instead of pirated movies and Linux ISOs. The database is chopped up into blocks, and each new block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, forming a chain of records that protect each other against alterations. On a traditional database, transactions are verified by the database owner, but on a blockchain, nobody owns the database, so each transaction needs to be verified by many computers. This is the big downside of blockchains: everyone's constant transaction verifications use a massive amount of electricity and computing power.

The decentralized nature of blockchains means nobody can take down your database, which cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin leverage to make a wealth transaction system that no government controls. But it's not always clear why you would add all the complication and energy usage of a blockchain to your project.

[LFC]

To quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "And there was much rejoicing."

Facebook’s long-term stablecoin project, Diem, is finally shutting down. On Monday, an outside investment firm, Silvergate Bank, confirmed it was buying $182 million worth of Diem assets from the tech giant, marking the end of a long-coming—and pretty tumultuous—exit.

“Despite giving us positive substantive feedback on the design of the network, it nevertheless became clear from our dialogue with federal regulators that the project could not move ahead,” reads a statement from Diem CEO Stuart Levey on the project’s former website. “As a result, the best path forward was to sell the Diem Group’s assets, as we have done today to Silvergate.”

Facebook’s proposal for Diem—then going by the name “Libra”—first rolled out in the summer of 2019 with the goal of creating a “simple global payment system and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people.” But because this is a Facebook brand, just about everyone was pretty skeptical; regulators from the EU and the U.S. alike expressed skepticism about the project, with Europe’s antitrust watchdog opening a probe into the effort not long after it was first announced.

Then came headaches from partners. Some of the project’s initial backers, like PayPal, Mastercard and Visa jumped ship following months of regulatory scrutiny, and things only got worse from there. First came the name change, and then came the narrowed scope: what was first supposed to be a globally-supported cryptocurrency became one that was only available in the U.S. after it failed to get approval from Swiss payment regulators. Executives on the team responsible for overseeing Diem’s push into the mainstream, like David Marcus, left the company soon after. The Novi blockchain wallet that Facebook had created to carry the digital currency announced towards the end of last year that it would be trialing payments with Pax Dollars (USDP), instead of Diem like originally planned.

[LFC]

Another massive theft of crypto.

Yet another thunderous crypto theft has descended from the heavens, predictably threatening to bankrupt everyone involved. The aptly named Wormhole, a DeFi cross-chain protocol, announced Wednesday that it had been the victim of a previously unknown exploit, the likes of which allowed a hacker to suck some $325 million worth of crypto from the platform’s coffers.

[LFC]

I can't remember any theft of non-crypto currency, or any asset for that matter, of this magnitude outside of the invasion of another nation.

Bitcoin. NFTs. A PPP loan. And a rapping tech entrepreneur.

A New York City couple were arrested Tuesday morning by federal agents on charges of laundering some $4.5 billion stolen in a massive 2016 cryptocurrency exchange breach.

[LFC]

A fool and his money...  (TDB may be paywalled / Wayback machine link)

‘Let’s Go Brandon’ Crypto Coin Turns Into Total Dumpster Fire

The MAGA-themed “Let’s Go Brandon” Ethereum cryptocurrency has fallen on tough times.

So much so that the value of all 330 trillion coins totals just a few thousand dollars combined, according to the trading sites CoinMarketCap and Crypto, a far cry from the days of pro-Trump investors believing they could strike it rich in the ever-complex world of crypto.

That represents a 99.5 percent decline over the last 30 days, leaving a singular LGB coin effectively worthless.

[AnBr]

www.salon.com/2022/02/16/nfts-arent-art--theyre-just-the-of-cryptos-latest-scam/

[LFC]

I was chatting with a small group and made a crack about the Prosperity Gospel folks going crypto with Christ Coin! The instant I hit <Enter> I realized I should have google it first. Surprise (not)! This is from 2017. It didn't take them long.

Christ Coin has launched as the first Christian cryptocurrency. Built by Life Change, Christ Coin has a mission to meet the spiritual and practical needs of anyone, and unite Christians together as one community for the purpose of reviving hope, repairing lives, and rebuilding dreams. Built by a team of Christian entrepreneurs, Christ Coin is groundbreaking in its ability to build a global Christian community via cryptocurrency.

[LFC]

Others are trying to push religion based crypto even further.

[goldenvalley]

Apparently living next to a cryptocurrency mine is a pain.

It started as a low hum one day last spring. Then it got louder, and soon some residents said the noise was like a jet engine idling on a nearby tarmac.

The unincorporated clutch of homes and churches at the base of the Appalachian Mountains offers expansive vistas of lush farmland, thick woods and towering ridges in all directions. Neighbors know one another. Most residents have family bonds spanning generations or moved to this tranquil patch to escape city noise.

Instead, the noise came to them in April last year when the Tennessee-based firm Red Dog Technologies opened a plant in Limestone to mine (or create) new bitcoin, the original and still-largest cryptocurrency.

Companies forced out of China began scouting new locations across rural America. Appalachia, more accustomed to coal-caked helmeted workers than tech-savvy blockchain enthusiasts, saw an influx of miners.

But while supporters tout economic benefits such as an expanded tax base and job creation, residents in areas that initially welcomed crypto mining are now experiencing buyer’s remorse.

Kent Harris, a Washington County commissioner, looks back on his vote authorizing the Limestone crypto mining operation and shakes his head.

“It looks like a German POW camp,” Harris said of the bitcoin mine, which is surrounded by barriers, cameras and fencing topped with razor wire.

“I have never regretted a vote like this one. I sure wish I could take it back,” he said.