roadrunner

Darknet marketplaces exist on a constant knife edge, never more than an exit scam, LE bust, or DDoS away from going down. Even by their usual frenetic standards, though, November was quite a month for DNMs, with high drama and intrigue aplenty. Despite a number of marketplaces disappearing off the map, a new study shows the ecosystem to be stronger than ever. Also read: John McAfee Weighs in on Maximalism, Epstein’s Death, and ‘the Greatest Gift Since Fire’ The Darknet Will Not Be Downed “The drug market has become increasingly digitally enabled. Drugs purchased online can be transported across Europe and delivered to consumers by post and parcel services.” So reads the forward to the latest EU Drug Markets Report released by Europol last week. The 260-page report makes for heavy bedtime reading, but darknet vendors eager to optimize their opsec will find useful clues in there on how to frustrate law enforcement. As the report acknowledges: There are notable challenges in identifying postal items containing drugs. For example, the total volume handled every day by a major postal centre such as the Mail Centre Vienna amounts to 4 million items. Furthermore, there is currently no mechanism in place for the reporting of suspicious parcels akin, for example, to the existing one for reporting suspicious financial transactions. Although systems are in place for service providers to remove and destroy suspicious parcels, they do not have a legal obligation to inform police authorities. As an indication of the quantity of drugs moving through the mail each day, the report notes that “Since August 2016, about 8,500 postal items containing illicit drugs have been identified at international airports across Germany, amounting to a total of 404 kg of illicit drugs (287 kg amphetamine and 111 kg MDMA, as well as cocaine and cannabis) and 307 250 MDMA/ecstasy tablets.” While Europol was applying the finishing touches to its painstakingly researched report, the darknet was undergoing one of its most turbulent months to date. The following rundown records November’s key DNM talking points. Double-Crossing and DDoSing on the Darknet Nov 4: Silk Road admin and drug dealer turned informant Curtis Green receives his first restitution check from jailed fed turned criminal Carl Mark Force. Wow, look what i just got in the mail. Carl mark Forces first if many restitution checks to me. he owes me thousands and I get a check for 25 dollars? He does only make 12 cents an hour.. If it wasnt so sad, id laugh. but hey, i cam buy lunch now. #freeross pic.twitter.com/Zcv2DlHSGQ — Curtis Green (@ilovepoker) November 4, 2019 Nov 14: Cryptonia, one of the most popular DNMs goes down. At the time of writing, three weeks on, it is still offline, despite an admin promising that it will return and that users will receive the funds they are due. It’s believed to be gone for good. Nov 15: Dread, the darknet’s main forum for all things DNM-related, goes offline and stays down for the next 10 days. Nov 22: The Independent discovers that DNM vendors are offering Black Friday deals, seemingly unaware that this has been a thing since the Silk Road days. Nov 22: Data scientist Andrea Baronchelli shares “Collective Dynamics of Dark Web Marketplaces.” The report analyzes “24 episodes of unexpected market closure through a novel datasets of 133 million Bitcoin transactions involving 31 dark markets and their users, totalling 4 billion USD.” It found that “coordinated user migration from the closed market to coexisting markets guarantees overall systemic resilience beyond the intrinsic fragility of individual markets. The migration is swift, efficient and common to all market closures.” The hydra theory is true it would seem: lop off one darknet market and two will spring up to replace it. Nov 23: Nightmare market is hacked, and its homepage defaced to display the dox of a Belarusian said to be a former admin of the site. The site exit scammed four months earlier, with the hack the final act of the crippled DNM’s long goodbye. Nov 25: An admin for Grey Market, one of the smaller DNMs, claims that their computers were seized by LE and that anyone who used the market in the past week is compromised. Whatever the case may be, Grey Market is still online at press time. Nov 25: Dread returns to the darknet, with admin Hugbunter explaining in a PGP signed message the technical reasons for its lengthy downtime. He also notes that someone claiming to be the FBI asked them to “place a ban on opiate related posts on the site, following a case of a 15 year old who overdosed on fake oxys laced with fent.” A couple of days later, the feds sign their own PGP message claiming that it wasn’t them that asked for fentanyl discussions to be purged. Curiouser and curiouser. Nov 26: Darknet monitoring site Dark.fail reveals that 8chan successor 8kun’s Tor hidden service has remained online despite its clearnet site being DDoSed. Darknet markets haven’t been so fortunate, with Point/Tochka in particular spending days at a time offline. At the time of publication, the popular DNM and its Github repository have been down for a week. The site has been frequently offline all year, with DDoS attacks to blame. When Dread returned to life two days earlier, citing DDoS attacks, its admin wrote “If any of the attacks were to be LE, I’d put a bet on this one.” Could feds be behind Point’s hiatus as well? Law enforcement's April takedown of Wall St. cryptomarket was very effective at igniting a year of chaos in the darknet. Four major markets disappeared in the seven months following: Nightmare, Berlusconi, Samsara, now Cryptonia. Only Berlusconi's arrest is confirmed. — dark.fail (@DarkDotFail) November 25, 2019 3 Down, 30 to Go In total, three darknet markets disappeared in November: Berlusconi, Samsara, and Cryptonia. Despite this coup for law enforcement, these DNMs were merely the tip of the iceberg: with another 30-odd sites listed on dark.fail, there’s still plenty of places for cryptocurrency users to acquire their wares. At present, Empire Market appears to be soaking up most of the business, just as it has been all year. Darknet markets are interlinked with bitcoin because BTC remains the most popular means of paying for goods and services on them. There’s another reason, though, why the two have synergies: the distributed design of DNMs gives them a utility akin to that of Bitcoin nodes. If one market disappears, or is found to be acting dishonestly, users will bypass it and route their business through the honest majority. In this manner, DNMs have proven incredibly resilient. Individually, each one is centralized, but collectively they form a decentralized market whose uptime since 2011 has rivaled Bitcoin itself. Do you think the latest darknet market closures will affect supply, or will new DNMs appear to replace them? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Europol. Did you know you can verify any unconfirmed Bitcoin transaction with our Bitcoin Block Explorer tool? Simply complete a Bitcoin address search to view it on the blockchain. Plus, visit our Bitcoin Charts to see what’s happening in the industry. The post The Darknet Just Had One of Its Wildest Months Yet appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Making donations is a great way for the cryptocurrency community to spread acceptance for peer-to-peer electronic money to new people and institutions. And options for giving with bitcoin cash to your supported causes are expanding all the time, with organizations such as Save the Children joining in. Also Read: Alcor Life Extension Foundation Now Accepts Bitcoin Cash Donations Save the Children Adds More Crypto Capability Save the Children, which helps protect children from the effects of war and violence, has announced today the relaunch of its cryptocurrency fundraising capability effective 3 December, 2019. The global humanitarian organization is now able to accept multiple digital assets in automated fashion through its website including bitcoin core (BTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), ethereum (ETH), zcash (ZEC), litecoin (LTC) and the gemini dollar (GUSD). The organization initially accepted bitcoin donations in 2013, in response to Typhoon Haiyan that struck Southeast Asia and devastated the Philippines. By accepting multiple cryptocurrencies, Save the Children is now offering more supporters with diverse cryptocurrency portfolios the ability to support the charity in a tax efficient way. The organization explains that the IRS classifies cryptocurrency donations as property, meaning they are not subject to capital gains tax and are tax deductible on the donor’s tax returns. “Beyond cryptocurrency contributions, what if blockchain technology could be used to make supply chains more efficient, transactions more transparent and end world poverty through decentralized universal basic income as a form of unconditional cash vouchers? That would be a dream worth HODLing on to,” stated Ettore Rossetti, Senior Director of Social & Digital Innovation of Save the Children. He added, “Since our founding 100 years ago, Save the Children has reached more than 1 billion children. Perhaps the next Bitcoin billionaire can help us reach the next billion children.” Save the Children is working with The Giving Block, which helps equip nonprofits with the tools and techniques to effectively raise funds with cryptocurrency. The organization’s crypto donations relaunch is part of the Bitcoin Tuesday initiative, which offers a cryptocurrency twist on Giving Tuesday, a day held on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving that encourages philanthropy. Discussing this year’s campaign, Alex Wilson, Co-Founder of The Giving Block said, “Giving Tuesday inspires millions around the world to support and give to the causes that matter to them. But, despite the enhanced tax benefits that crypto donations can offer donors, the day has failed to capture the attention of crypto donors in years past.” His colleague, Co-Founder Pat Duffy added that, “Bitcoin Tuesday will introduce a largely traditional audience to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, driving crypto adoption. When nonprofits accept crypto donations, the world sees crypto as the force for good we know it to be.” Bitcoin Cash Donation Options Are Expanding Among the many organizations participating in Bitcoin Tuesday, as listed on the initiative’s website, you can see a number that should be familiar to the Bitcoin Cash community. These include the Tor Project, which advances human rights and freedoms by deploying free and open anonymity and privacy technologies, as well as the Liberland Aid Foundation, which is the humanitarian arm of the Free Republic of Liberland. If you are looking to donate using bitcoin cash you should also check out the options available on Freedom.Bitcoin.com. Here you can stand up for liberty, freedom, and inalienable human rights by supporting causes that include Free Ross Ulbricht, Defense Distributed Defense Fund, and Eatbch. The last is easily recognized as the Bitcoin Cash community’s favorite charity because the nonprofit organization has been using BCH to help feed people throughout Venezuela and South Sudan. Free Ross Ulbricht is focused on the case of the young man with no criminal history who was sentenced to over 40 years in prison without parole for creating the Silk Road website, an online marketplace using cryptocurrency and the Tor browser enabling anonymous exchange of a variety of goods. The Defense Distributed Defense Fund helps support the costly legal battle of the creator of world’s first gun made with a 3D Printer. In the last couple of years the ability to donate with bitcoin cash has expanded to even more fields. For example, in August the Alcor Life Extension Foundation began accepting BCH donations for its cryonics research and operations in Scottsdale, Arizona. Alcor was convinced by Bitcoin.com’s executive chairman Roger Ver to add BCH acceptance, the same person who convinced Alcor to accept BTC payments back in 2014. A popular website that focuses on U.S. court documents and the litigation system, the Free Law Project’s Courtlistener.com, started accepting BCH for donations in June. Courtlistener captures hundreds of thousands of visitors every month by making high quality legal data widely available. The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia and similar free knowledge projects, partnered with Bitpay in January to accept BCH and BTC donations. Bitpay works with many large non-profits to allow them to accept cryptocurrency donations, and reported that donations have increased dramatically in the last couple of years, especially at the end of the year as people look for tax benefits. The service reportedly processed several multi-million dollar donations to non-profits in 2018. In September 2018 the French office of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) started accepting donations in 9 of the most popular cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin cash. Even some religious groups accept BCH, like an evangelical church from the largest city in Switzerland, ICF Zurich, which began accepting voluntary offerings from its parishioners using cryptocurrency in January 2018. What do you think about Save the Children accepting bitcoin cash donations? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Bitcoin.com Markets, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com. The post Save the Children Now Accepts Bitcoin Cash Donations appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

When it comes to causing sensation in the crypto space, there are few figures like 2020 Libertarian presidential candidate John McAfee. The controversial crypto champion took time out with news.Bitcoin.com to discuss his presidential campaign, the clampdown of regulators on crypto, and even the futility of BTC maximalism. Not to mention his spin on the popular ‘Epstein didn’t kill himself’ meme. Also Read: McAfee Envisions DEX in a World Where Crypto Won’t Be Traded for Fiat A Growing Surveillance State Asked about the recent FBI arrest of Ethereum Foundation member Virgil Griffith, and the climate of the crypto world in general, rogue politician and freedom advocate John McAfee is at no loss for words. “You know, we’ve turned into a surveillance police state in America, where anything that threatens what the FBI or the CIA determines is national security — it can be defined as anything now,” he remarks. “For example, the FBI is defining ‘extremist groups,’ and they’re giving an example of people who believe that the United States government would lie and use devious practices.” “Seriously it’s gone crazy. My heart goes out to the man [Griffith], I mean he did no less than me when I was in Cuba and offered to assist in blockchain to get around U.S. sanctions.” Ethereum Foundation member Virgil Griffith, recently arrested for traveling to North Korea to deliver a presentation on blockchain technology. America’s Feudalist Regression Regarding the perceived descent of America into totalitarianism, McAfee notes that it’s been going on for some time, but that an acceleration is happening. He cites the U.S. constitution. “The interpretation of the constitution has gone insane. I mean, in the constitution we have certain rights — the right to public assembly, for example — that’s a right, not a privilege,” he then elaborates: And yet, try going to any city in America. A couple hundred people. Assemble in the park and you know, do a thing. They’re gonna come and say ‘where’s your permit?’ Permit? If you have to have permission to exercise a right, then it’s not a right, people. It’s a privilege. “[This interpretation] requires two classes of citizens: those with no rights, and those who have the right to hand out privileges … And the second class, those that have the right to give permission or to grant privilege also have the ‘right’ to grant themselves permissions and privileges.” The cyber security expert then reiterates that the privileged class controls this paradigm and relies on methods of funding that are unconstitutional and illegal. He tells news.Bitcoin.com that America was the “industrial power of the world” even prior to the institution of the income tax in 1913. The New York City skyline in 1912, before the income tax. “That’s why the government is now after me. I mean I haven’t paid taxes for 10 years, eight of which the government ignored me. I’ve already paid over $50 million in taxes in my lifetime. I have not received $50 million in services. If anything I should be the one asking for a f*cking refund.” McAfee continues: Income taxes in my mind and heart, as I see the reality around us, are unconstitutional, illegal, and it pushed us back into a feudal society of over 1,000 years ago. Because what is a feudal society? One in which you belong to the king. He suggests that other, more voluntary methods of taxation are too troublesome for the state, and would require effort on the government’s part. The lazy solution is simply to make everyone a slave to the king via income tax, forced to do the reporting themselves. A tax which is increasingly spent on draconian spying and surveillance. “90% of all the surveillance budget for all the covert programs goes to watching … American citizens,” McAfee details. “This is where we’re spending our money. We are paying to watch ourself. We are paying to suspect ourself as being the enemy.” He remarks sardonically: “We don’t trust you people. You might be a terrorist. You might be some insidious sub-human with an idea that will throw a monkey wrench into our perfect system of graft, bribery and corruption.” 2020 Crypto Campaign McAfee has himself stated he’s not running to win the United States presidency. “If anybody believes I can win, stop taking the drugs, or get back on your medications, I’m not sure which … However, it doesn’t really matter who gets the presidency in my mind.” When news.Bitcoin.com asked what role crypto and cyber security play in his campaign, he stated: The only reason I am campaigning is because of crypto. I think that the blockchain and privacy coins and distributed exchanges have the ability to free people from government control if people have the courage to do the right thing. The right thing, as the rebel septuagenarian soon clarifies, is non-compliance. “When countries start, or when nations start creating their own cryptocurrencies like China, or companies like Facebook, those aren’t true cryptocurrencies. Those are crypto surveillance systems that allow governments and corporations to monitor every penny that you spend. And if we know that, and go well, f*ck me then I’m not gonna use them. Even if the government says you must use the crypto dollar, just say F you.” “You can use a privacy coin like Monero and a distributed exchange, and then suddenly governments know nothing about your finances — how much you made, how much you spend — and therefore have to rely on your word for what you made and what you spend, with no way to audit that word. Now what do you think people are gonna do?” McAfee’s Decentralized Exchange Regarding his recently launched decentralized exchange, McAfee DEX, McAfee emphasizes: “I take no KYC, I don’t take any information from customers. No name, no email address, nothing. We hold no money, we hold no tokens. We’re just a hole between you and the blockchain and that hole makes it all look nice and neat. That’s what our portal does.” “Our logic is on the blockchains, so it can’t be removed. If the SEC does catch up with me, my only word will be: ‘God, I’m sorry I wasn’t thinking, I didn’t know. But unfortunately it’s done now and I can’t change it. I can’t stop it.’ We charge nothing for listing a coin … we don’t charge maker fees. One quarter of one percent taker fees. That’s barely — even if we’re hot and everybody uses us — barely going to cover our development costs.” McAfee reiterates: And yet, somebody had to do it, because if we don’t have exchanges like this then we’re dead in the water, people … You try shutting down a distributed, decentralized exchange — which mine is — it cannot be done. Technically, politically, legally, it can’t ever be taken down, and that’s my gift. Whackd Coin and the Epstein Meme McAfee chuckles heartily at the mention of his new WHACKD token, a crypto created to raise awareness about the suspicious death of convicted sex offender and billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein. The maverick politician has also recently gotten the name of the coin tattooed on his arm, in case he is suicided by political powers. “Well, the tattoo is not a joke, I’ve got the tattoo here,” he reassures, “but the coin is a joke.” “The fact that the government is even attempting to maintain the deception that [Epstein] hung himself is shocking. It is so obvious a man, six-foot-one, hanging himself from a five-foot-seven-inch bunk … You’re certainly not going to break your neck that way. ” The coin, which McAfee hopes will help to unravel the already tenuous official government story, features a 10% burn every transaction (it’s “whacked”) and one in every 1,000 transactions is completely destroyed. “I made this coin … Just to keep it going,” he details. “If we push this, this will unwind something extremely important that we need to see. We need to see the truth of what happens behind that f*cking curtain … nobody believes he committed suicide.” On Crypto Tribalism, Centralized Exchanges, and the Gift of Fire McAfee says he’s got time for one more question and then he’s got to go. Asked about BTC maximalism and tribalist noise in the space, he relates that while he’s got nothing against Bitcoin (“I’m not dissing bitcoin at all. Who talks it up more than me?”), he does note weaknesses: “Let us all get real, bitcoin maximalists … as a currency it is an ancient, creaky, impossible f*cking technology that has no privacy. That has no smart contracts.” McAfee goes on to imagine a bank behaving as the bitcoin blockchain, with account information publicly available to anyone who asks. Non-KYC/AML, peer-to-peer platforms do exist, and enable private trading of cryptos forked from the BTC chain, like Bitcoin Cash, however, and the BCH blockchain is home to many privacy-focused developments and innovations. Still, the author concurs: mere hodling or trading of BTC on centralized exchanges is no revolution. As McAfee emphasizes again, “That’s bitcoin, people. You know you will never f*cking use it if you have an alternative, and you have 11,000 f*cking alternatives now. The altcoin world.” He says that 95% of transactions are happening outside of centralized channels, for things like drugs, houses, bulletproof vests, pizza and shoelaces. He points to DAI, Monero, and Ethereum. He drives his point home: “You’ve gotta have control. That frees you … Free yourself first, then make your f*cking money. But stop this nonsense of trying to flip from this to that, waiting for the market to go up, day trading.” You’re killing us, people. If you have those coins, buy something with it … Nothing you can’t buy with crypto if you search … You are wasting away the greatest gift that humanity has been given since fire. What do you think of McAfee’s thoughts on crypto and freedom? Let us know in the comments section below. Images credits: Shutterstock, McAfee 2020, fair use. Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section. You can also enjoy the easiest way to buy Bitcoin online with us. Download your free Bitcoin wallet and head to our Purchase Bitcoin page where you can buy BCH and BTC securely. The post John McAfee Weighs in on Maximalism, Epstein’s Death, and ‘the Greatest Gift Since Fire’ appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

As far as prices are concerned, 2019’s cryptocurrency markets fared much better than the year prior. Currently, the entire market capitalization of all digital assets is hovering just above the $200 billion mark. The following is a look at the cryptocurrency market’s biggest gainers and worst losers so far in 2019 to get some perspective of possible outcomes and historical trends as the year ends. Also Read: Gocrypto SLP Token Starts Trading on Bitcoin.com Exchange The Biggest Percentage Changes in Crypto so Far There’s one more month left in 2019, and digital currency fans are curious about how markets will finish at the year’s end. So far, most cryptocurrencies did well this year and outperformed most traditional financial investments. For instance, as far as percentage changes over the course of one year in USD, six out of the 10 largest market valuations are up in value. Bitcoin core (BTC) is up 77% during the one-year period, and ethereum (ETH) is up over 27%. BTC and ETH are followed by BCH (25%), LTC (36%), BNB (190%), and BSV (1.5%) which are all up this year as well. 2019’s top ten losers includes XRP which is down -40%, EOS (-5%), and XLM (-64%). Still, BTC is down 63% from its all-time high (ATH) and ETH is down 89% from the coin’s ATH. Nearly every top 10 crypto is roughly two years away from its ATH, but BNB and BSV are only five months away from their price highs. The 10 largest crypto market valuations’ biggest losers include XRP, XLM, and EOS. The top percentage gainers of 2019 have not existed as long as most coins that are more than a year old or older. So cryptocurrencies like luna coin (LUNA), omnitude (ECOM), and morpheus (MRPH) are all up 5,000% or more. Cryptos that have been around for more than a year indicate that tierion (TNT) is the highest gainer with 318% followed by binance coin (BNB) seeing a 190% gain this year. Regardless of the recent price slump, more than two-thirds of the entire cryptoconomy has done well this year. BTC is up 77% so far this year and historically every December since 2015, the crypto has rallied 30% or more. Other digital currencies with notable gains that have been around longer than 2019’s new coins include tezos (149%), firstblood (137%), and centrality (118%). As far as changes per year in USD value is concerned for 2018, BTC is down 72%, but for 2016 investors, BTC is up 89%. For ETH markets, the 2018 change is down 82%, but investors who got in two years prior are still up 756%. Out of the 20 largest coin capitalizations, today monero (XMR) is the best older coin to obtain as it’s up 2,258% since 2016. Binance coin (BNB) is the top performer so far out of the 10 largest coin market caps in 2019. Further Price Contraction or a Santa Claus Rally? Many traders also wonder if BTC will follow the same trend it has during the month of December in the last four years. Historical price movement trends show BTC has climbed 30% or more in December since 2015. Crypto traders call it the ‘Santa Claus Rally’ but market participants are uncertain it will happen. BTC prices are down 21.5% in a 30-day timespan and a 30% increase would bring prices a touch above last month’s losses. In addition to the possible December rally, the end of 2019 means the BTC reward halving is getting much closer. The monthly MACD on #bitcoin just had a bearish cross. Yikes. pic.twitter.com/kOB65aOAq3 — Byzantine General (@ByzGeneral) December 1, 2019 Despite historical rallies, traders have noted the BTC/USD 30-day moving average convergence divergence (MACD) shows a bearish cross. In late June, BTC came close to touching $14K per coin, but since then has been jumping back and forth between two parallel trendlines. Traditionally the upper trendline merges swing highs in price and the lower trendline connects the swing lows. “We essentially went from $5,000 dollars to $13,500 in 3 months and now, like the swing of a pendulum, the market wants to know where the bottom is again. In my opinion, we are in the early stages of a bull market, you’ll see that the bottom this time around is much higher than $5,000. We will find higher lows all the way back to all-time highs,” blockchain investment firm KR1 executive George McDonaugh said on November 26. Traders are hoping for a December rally this year because BTC has spiked more than 30% every December since 2015. Overall, BTC and five other top 10 cryptocurrencies have done well so far but the year is not over yet. Moreover, a wide variety of other coins have seen decent percentage gains while a slew of other cryptos are definitely on life support. The month of December may continue to highlight the more recent crypto price contraction or if digital currency traders are lucky, they may get another ‘Santa Claus Rally.’ Where do you see the cryptocurrency markets heading from here? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. Disclaimer: Price articles and market updates are intended for informational purposes only and should not be considered as trading advice. Neither Bitcoin.com nor the author is responsible for any losses or gains, as the ultimate decision to conduct a trade is made by the reader. Always remember that only those in possession of the private keys are in control of the “money.” Cryptocurrency prices referenced in this article were recorded at 1:56 p.m. EST on December 2, 2019. Images credits: Shutterstock, Trading View, Bitcoin.com Markets, Wiki Commons, and Pixabay. Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section. You can also enjoy the easiest way to buy Bitcoin online with us. Download your free Bitcoin wallet and head to our Purchase Bitcoin page where you can buy BCH and BTC securely. The post Despite the Recent Slump, Crypto Prices Improved a Great Deal in 2019 appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

The Vertcoin (VTC) blockchain was 51% attacked on Sunday, December 1, which saw 603 VTC blocks replaced by 553 blocks from the attacker. This is the second time the ASIC resistant Vertcoin chain was ambushed, as the network suffered a 300-block reorg a year ago. Also read: Cryptocurrency Projects Aiming to be ‘ASIC Resistant’ Have Little Success Vertcoin 51% Attacked Again Vertcoin, a fork of the Bitcoin protocol, is an alternative cryptocurrency that’s been around since January 2014. The community and developers behind the project believe VTC is different because it claims to be ASIC resistant. However, throughout October and December 2018, the Vertcoin network dealt with a series of 51% attacks and a number of blockchain reorganizations (reorg). Vertcoin dealt with 51% attacks and reorgs in October and December. A 51% attack is when a single entity (miner) takes more than 50% of the network’s hashpower, allowing them to reorg blocks and double spend coins. The 300-block reorg on Vertcoin last year cost more than $100,000 from double spends. The situation invoked VTC developers to change its proof-of-work algorithm to another algorithm called Lyra2rev3. Less than a year later on December 1, 2019, the Vertcoin chain suffered another 51% attack. James Lovejoy, Vertcoin’s lead developer, explained the situation: On Sunday, 1 December 2019 15:19:47 GMT 603 blocks were removed from the VTC main chain and replaced by 553 attacker blocks. We note that 600 blocks is the current confirmation requirement for VTC on Bittrex. There were 5 double-spent outputs in which ~ 125 VTC (~$29) was redirected. Each of the double-spent outputs are coinbase outputs owned by the attacker and it is unknown to whom the coins were originally sent before being swept to an attacker address after the reorg. Cloud-Mining Service Nicehash Blamed Again Similarly to last year’s attack, the captured hashrate was blamed on Nicehash. The company sells hashpower to individuals and acts as a hashpower broker marketplace that connects sellers and miners. Lovejoy remarked that he noticed on November 30 “a large upswing in hashrate rental prices for Lyra2rev3 on Nicehash.” “This was combined with workers connected to Nicehash’s stratum server being sent work for unknown (non-public) Vertcoin blocks,” Lovejoy added. Last year’s attack was blamed on Nicehash too when observers said “there’s too much hashrate for rent at too low a price, resulting in zero capex and low opex to do attacks.” Despite being ASIC resistant, cloud-mining services are now able to offer customers significant portions of CPU and GPU-based hashrates. Resisting mining centralization has been a huge concern for a variety of blockchains and the Monero (XMR) network has had its share of grievances as well. Last year XMR saw multiple forks as developers tried to bolster ASIC resistance. In May 2018, the Bitcoin Gold (BTG) project suffered a 51% attack and lost $18 million in one fell swoop. A large portion of the BTG double spends from the attack was stolen from Bittrex, eventually causing the U.S. exchange to delist BTG. With Sunday’s Vertcoin attack, Lovejoy emphasized that “it is possible that Bittrex was the original target.” However, the double spends were aborted because Bittrex had their wallet disabled. “It is also possible that no double spend was ever intended, and the attack was a proof of concept or sabotage attack,” Lovejoy added. Lovejoy said the post-attack analysis of the Nicehash order book at the time of the attack had shown “a large upswing in hashrate rental price” from both U.S. and EU markets. But after the attack, the rental price subsided, Lovejoy stressed, returning to the baseline market equilibrium. What do you think about Vertcoin getting attacked again? Why do you think attacks like these happen? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. Image credits: Shutterstock, Vertcoin logo, and Lovejoy’s Github gist. Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here. The post Vertcoin Network Sabotaged by Another 51% Attack appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Some major regulatory developments in the crypto space have transpired this week. Not only has Germany passed a bill allowing banks to sell and store cryptocurrencies, but South Korea and Thailand are also amending their laws to better regulate the crypto industry. We also cover crypto news involving the governments of China, Japan, and the U.S., including the arrest of an Ethereum Foundation member. Also read: Regulatory Roundup: China Rekindles Cleanup, US Widens Oversight, India Defers Decisions German Bill Authorizes Banks to Deal in Crypto A bill has reportedly been passed in Germany allowing banks to sell and store cryptocurrencies for customers. Starting in 2020, financial institutions in Germany will be able to offer cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, alongside traditional investments such as stocks and bonds. They can also provide crypto custody services to customers. The bill proposes eliminating the requirement for banks to use third-party custodians to manage cryptocurrencies. Banks are currently required to use “external custodians or special subsidiaries” to store cryptocurrencies. They will need to procure a license to offer crypto services. Meanwhile, banks in Germany have increasingly been passing on the burden of negative interest rates to their retail and corporate clients. A recent survey by the country’s central bank, the Deutsche Bundesbank, shows that 58% of surveyed banks are already charging some clients negative interest rates. South Korea Creating Legal Framework for Crypto Cryptocurrency businesses will also soon be directly regulated in South Korea. A new bill passed by the South Korean National Assembly’s national policy committee will bring crypto exchanges directly under the supervision of the Financial Services Commission’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). The bill amends the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information to establish a legal framework for cryptocurrencies, classifying them as digital assets. Among other obligations, the bill requires crypto exchanges to register with the FIU and establish a system that complies with the standards set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Thailand Seeks to Become More Crypto-Friendly Another Asian country that is planning to amend its cryptocurrency regulation is Thailand. The existing Thai crypto regulation went into effect in May 2018, installing the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as the main regulator of the industry. SEC Secretary-General Ruenvadee Suwanmongkol reportedly said on Nov. 25 that the regulator is studying whether the current regulation has any areas impeding the growth of the digital asset industry. She was quoted by the Bangkok Post as saying, “The regulator must be flexible to apply the rules and regulations in line with the market environment,” adding: Laws should not be outdated and should serve market needs, especially for new digital asset products, and be competitive with the global market. We need to explore any possible obstacles. Under current laws, sellers and promoters of unauthorized digital tokens will be fined up to twice the value of the transactions or at least 500,000 baht ($16,534). They could also face a jail term of up to two years. Further, crypto traders will be liable for a 7% value-added tax (VAT) and 15% withholding tax on capital gains, the news outlet detailed. Retail investors, however, will be exempt from VAT if they trade crypto assets through authorized exchanges. US Arrests Ethereum Foundation Member This week the U.S. government has taken two notable actions affecting the crypto industry. The first action, which has resulted in outrage across the crypto community, is the arrest of 36-year-old Virgil Griffith, a well-known member of the crypto community who worked with the Ethereum Foundation. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alleges that the American citizen, who is a resident of Singapore, violated the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) by teaching North Koreans to evade sanctions. He is charged with conspiring to violate the IEEPA, which carries a maximum term of 20 years in prison. Secondly, the Western District of Washington court has denied a motion to quash an IRS summons for a crypto trader’s Bitstsamp transaction data. The judge ruled that “the IRS’ request for those records does not infringe upon the petitioner’s Fourth Amendment rights.” China’s Report and Japan’s Tax Law Following the blockchain hype initiated by President Xi Jinping and a subsequent announcement by the central bank’s Shanghai Head Office, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) published a financial stability report for 2019. It reveals that 173 domestic crypto trading and digital token platforms have “exited without risk” after the cleanup announcement issued in September 2017 by seven Chinese regulators. Over in Japan, the Cabinet has answered a question regarding the use of cryptocurrency for tax payments. While the Japanese inheritance tax law allows real estate and properties to be used to pay taxes, the answer explains that crypto assets cannot be used for this purpose. What do you think of the regulatory developments in Germany and other countries featured in this regulatory roundup? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here. The post Regulatory Roundup: Germany to Let Banks Sell and Store Crypto, Laws Changing in Asia appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

For those standing very close to the crypto charts, it might be easy to get discouraged by the gloomy nature of recent markets. However, new comparisons of the current halving cycle to those in the past have emerged and might put some wind back into the sails of traders, hodlers, and cryptocurrency enthusiasts in general. Also Read: As Halving Interest Grows, Spectators Discuss Miner Hoards and Capitulation Miners Unfazed as Halving Approaches Though crypto prices took a big dip in November, with BTC falling 30% from a high of $9,486 to a bottom of around $6,575, hash rates on both the BTC and BCH chains have held relatively steady as the next block reward halving approaches. Data also points to miners hoarding coins in view of the upcoming subsidy reduction, as the event is generally viewed as price favorable. In combination with these factors, new analysis has emerged which might suggest that in spite of the recent bearish climate, things might be more on track than previously supposed. Source: https://twitter.com/ChartsBtc/status/1199458935591198721 Comparing Halving Cycles The image above aligns the block reward halving points of three cycles (the latter half of pre-halving and the first half of post-halving), with the three cycles anchored at a common line of 100% of the cycle low. The first two cycles which are completed, and the pre-halving phase of the current cycle are displayed. Interestingly, the movements in the latter half cycles appear to follow a similar trend. As creator of the graphic, @Chartsbtc, states on their Twitter post: Each cycle is 210,000 blocks (~4 years). This chart starts half way through the cycle and goes half way into the next cycle. This is my attempt to show the lows prior to halving and the peaks post halving but keep everything centered around the halving. The graphic is compelling, and has many hoping for great moves price-wise in 2020 and beyond. Discussing the methodology of creating the graphic further, @Chartsbtc explains why the green price action line does not touch the 100% cycle low level: “The low was a intraday price and the chart only plots the closing prices to the nearest 105th block. I wish I actually had prices per block.” They further note that viewers should “Keep in mind that each cycle peak will likely be lower than the prior one.” Even so, should the trend repeat BTC could see a post-halving peak around $80,000. Still, this is all speculation, and other factors must be kept in mind. Into 2020 With the Bitcoin Core halving estimated to be taking place in mid-May, 2020, and the Bitcoin Cash halving to likely occur a month earlier, speculation of course abounds. Other factors playing into market perception and possibly price, such as proliferating development surrounding the BCH chain, and a trend of businesses dropping BTC as a payment method due to fees and congestion (not to mention an overall shift in attitude in the BTC community from user to mere hodler), could also have unexpected affects. If the projections of the above halving data are correct, however, everyone may be in for an interesting ride in 2020. Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or as a recommendation, endorsement, or sponsorship of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article. Images courtesy of Shutterstock, fair use. Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here. The post How the Upcoming Bitcoin Halving Compares to Previous Cycles appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Online payments service Skrill has introduced a new feature allowing users to directly exchange cryptocurrencies. The crypto-to-crypto option gives you the opportunity to use bitcoin core (BTC) stored in your wallet to buy and sell eight other supported cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin cash (BCH). Also read: Pornhub Suggests Crypto Payments After Paypal Censors Model Payouts Buy Crypto With Crypto Skrill, formerly known as Moneybookers, is popular in Europe where it’s used for online payments with 15,000 merchants as well as international money transfers. The U.K.-based e-wallet provider is one of those established payment systems that have opened to decentralized digital currencies in the past couple of years. The company recently tweeted: Buying and selling crypto with Skrill just got even better. Introducing crypto-to-crypto – a new feature that lets you use your bitcoin balance to buy and sell the other 8 cryptocurrencies we offer. Having an in-app coin swap option is a great addition to any payment platform as users can save on fees for additional exchange transactions involving fiat. Bitcoin.com’s own non-custodial wallet lets you exchange between BTC and BCH within the app through an integration with the automated coin swap platform Sideshift. Skrill pleasantly surprised crypto enthusiasts when it introduced the option to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies last summer. Its app, available for both Android and iOS devices, lets you purchase crypto with over 100 payment methods and conversion of 40 different fiat currencies into BTC, BCH, EOS, ETH, ETC, LTC, XLM, XRP, and ZRX. The platform, along with another well-known e-money service, Neteller, is part of the London-headquartered Paysafe Group. Its operator, Skrill Limited, is a company registered as a money service business regulated by Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority and licensed to operate within the European Economic Area (EEA). No Additional Verification Required To take advantage of the new service, you need to create an account providing your name, country of residence, local fiat currency, and valid email address. As a regulated entity, Skrill has some security and identity verification procedures in place but its website states that buying cryptocurrency does not involve any additional verification. Certain fees apply to crypto trading operations. There’s a €0.99 fee on crypto purchases and sales up to €19.99, transactions between €20 and €99.99 are charged €1.99, and 1.50% commission is due for those above €100. Peer to peer trades are charged with a flat 0.50% fee for euro, U.S. dollar or other currency denominated transactions. Withdrawals to a local bank account or via global Swift transfers are now charged €5.50, while the fee for withdrawals to a Visa card account is 7.50%. Note that some fee changes will come into effect on Jan. 15, 2020. For instance, the upload funds fee will become 2.50% for non-EEA countries. The regular upload fee for local and global payment methods including BTC is currently 1.00%. After the specified date, the domestic transactions fee will be 2% per transaction and the currency conversion fee may be as high as 3.99% per transaction. What do you think about Skrill’s new crypto-to-crypto feature? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The Local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here. The post Skrill Now Lets You Swap BTC for BCH appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

As I write this article on July 3, 2002, I am already hearing out my window the occasional pops of micro-explosives enthusiasts getting a head start on their annual excuse to play with things that go bang and supposedly celebrate their freedom. Tomorrow, libertarians across the country will use the holiday as an opportunity to grouse to disinterested relatives around the barbecue grill about how little freedom we actually have left, or really ever had. LP lifers often say there is no magic bullet to get the kind of society we want, and it will take decades of hard work in the political trenches, and of course, many many donations to the party, before we ever see progress. Conversely, I propose that a nutty guy named Jim Bell has already designed the magic bullet; it just needs to be forged and we will start seeing dramatic positive change immediately. **The following article is an opinion piece written in 2002 by the libertarian author Robert Vroman. This is the first part of the Jim Bell System debate series and the revisited version written by Vroman can be read here. Vroman is well known for his editorial work writing for anti-state.com. ‘The Jim Bell System’ first published on anti-state.com on July 11, 2002, in response to the assassination politics (AP) debate. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any opinions, content, accuracy or quality within the Op-ed article.** Since this is a fairly controversial topic, I will start with a psychological self-analysis as a disclaimer. My primary long-term goal is to live forever. I’m convinced that the exponential improvements in medical technology will curve upwards to infinity within the next century. This means surviving the relatively primitive period between then and now is the major stumbling block. As an atheist, I am faced with the conclusion that this is the only life I have. Therefore I have an enormous incentive to minimize risks to my health and well being, just as a Christian has incentive not to sin; we both would be gambling our presumed eternal life, an unacceptable wager. One such risk I will choose to decline is taking up arms against the United States government. Thus the powers that be who may read this article can rest assured that I will be exhibiting more or less cowardly behavior for the next 75 years or so, and present no security threat whatsoever. I am simply predicting what will happen and am no more responsible for the outcome than an astronomer who reveals that an asteroid is on course to wipe out DC. Hopefully, the destruction of this particular doomsday rock will be localized around the tyrants. With that said, I present the following dangerous idea. My secondary long-term goal is to live free. By that I mean living in a stable, secure, anarcho-capitalist society. The obvious obstacle to this goal is the existence of the State. The problems I face generally in eradicating this persistent pest are that: The State is actively retarding the progress of science, thus making my immortality timetable more and more dicey. There aren’t a whole lot of capital resources or individuals enlightened enough to be on my side. If I die in the process, either from fighting a revolution or from allowing the state to last too long, stalling out science, it will all be for naught (from my perspective anyway) The challenge then is to devise a plan to remove this obstacle, balancing the considerations of speed, cost, and safety. In a recent article John T. Kennedy made the excellent point, using the example of a porcupine, that in order to avoid being eaten, one need not necessarily be anywhere near as powerful as the predator, only become an overpriced meal. The historical example of Switzerland in WWII comes to mind. Clearly, with a concentrated effort, the Nazi war machine could have decimated the small neutral country. In fact, Hitler boasted early on in the war that he would “be the butcher of the Swiss.” However, the Swiss militia system was able to mobilize a half million trained riflemen within 48 hours of that pronouncement. Once entrenched in foreboding Alpine terrain, they were ordered to defend the border “to the last cartridge.” The Fuhrer decided to pass on that challenge and instead waltzed through Denmark and France, countries with little to no civilian gun culture. For our purposes, the State is the predator, and we are the prey. Kennedy mentioned (with appropriate caveats) that Assassination Politics would be one possible method to grow some quills, and raise our price beyond the power monger’s ability to pay. Briefly, the AP system, as I envision its probable implementation, would operate something like this. You come across, say, “www.jimbellsystem.com” and see a long list of names next to dollar amounts. You are then invited to select a name and then submit a guess as to the exact date this person will expire, in exchange for some standard betting fee, like $1, via some as yet undeveloped digital cash scheme. Your dollar is then added to the total on the master list. You can repeat this process as many times, on as many names as you like, or even submit a new name. Strong cryptography protects your anonymity in all cases. ‘The Jim Bell System’ first published on anti-state.com on July 11, 2002. Then when someone on the list inevitably is reaped, the site operator examines all the winning bets (if any) and divides the prize evenly among them, after taking a small percentage as commission. The prize money is then forwarded to anonymous digital cash accounts that the winning bettors indicated when they submitted their entries. In other words, it’s just a standard betting pool system except with paranoid security, and a rather macabre theme. However, the catch is that once a particular name gets some serious cash associated with it, say $1M+, there will be a strong motivation for an unscrupulous bettor to tip the odds dramatically in his favor via direct intervention in the subject’s death. The further catch is that many of the average, non-homicidal bettors will be aware that such unscrupulous opportunists exist and will play the game without any real ambition to randomly pick a correct date, but instead place bets to drive up the prize on persons they despise. The theory goes that politicians will be high on everyone’s shit list, and be the first to rack up attention-getting prize pools. To be wildly optimistic, it is proposed that there will be so many people with a pet peeve against a specific politician, whether they are consciously anarchist or not, that the system will foster a niche industry in assassination, and the collective actions of the market will thereafter make it incredibly dangerous for anyone to seek positions of power. Thus, the people who currently constitute the entity known as government will either die or fearfully resign en masse, and the State will disintegrate. The fully idealistic conclusion is that this will result in permanent, defensible anarchism, since AP can be just as easily applied to any neo-statists who show up afterward, or any foreign aggressors, assuming there are any states left lacking sufficient internet connectivity to have previously ousted their own rulers. That’s the summary, I will now debunk the many criticisms of the system, which fall into three broad categories: Practical failures Moral failures Strategic failures In the first category are objections along practical lines for its basic operation. First of all, is it technically feasible? I am not a programmer, nor even done much homework in the area of encryption/digital cash, however, there are people out there who are certainly experts who seem to think that both of those concepts have a very strong future. For further information on relevant technical matters, I direct you to J. Orlin Grabbe, who does not to my knowledge endorse any form of AP, but does treat the reader to some creative selections of soft porn. Since I am under-educated in this field, I, unfortunately, will have to pass on any specific technical objections. Logically, though, it seems reasonable to compare the operation of this system to something like a drug cartel. South American drug lords are well known for having top-notch computer systems to keep track of their own affairs, as well as keep tabs on what competitors and Federales are up to. Such cartels are historically very good at surviving against ever increasing law enforcement budgets and political pressure. Since AP’s main business is in computers, and it will most likely be very profitable, it leads me to think that electronically evading cops by similar means may not be a hopeless task. The second practical objection I will cover is a worst-case scenario, where, in its desperation, the state retaliates against AP by banning non-governmental digital cash entirely. Feds shuts down Paypal and anything like it, and only allow e-cash that’s connected to the magnetic stripe on your National ID, and every transaction monitored. This unfortunate news bulletin can be handled several ways by AP’s patrons. To go back to our drug cartel analogy, keep in mind that many millions of people around the world flout the law daily to buy, sell and consume illegal pharmaceuticals. Distributors of drugs are everywhere if you know where to look. It is not so hard to imagine an identical network of underground suppliers could meet the demand for anonymous currency, for any number of purposes, not just AP. This could take the form of cash servers completely off the fed grid, or front companies that accept government e-cash and launder it for discreet uses. Depending on the exact nature of whatever new authoritarian legislation gets handed down, any number of solutions could present themselves, and those same millions of current lawbreakers will no doubt solicit them just as eagerly. And the added bonus is there is no physical evidence to be unconstitutionally searched and seized, as is the threat in the drug trade. A few kilobytes of data are probably easier to hide than a trunk full of plant extracts. In the same vein, the State might get extremely paranoid, and attempt to ban all encryption lacking FBI backdoors. Assuming that civil libertarians are not sufficiently “concerned” to prevent this, more important is the basic impracticality of enforcement. Analogy: It is 2050 and in an understandable appeal to public safety, the Feds outlaw recently invented personal invisibility cloaks. Stormtroopers arrive at my apartment building and question my neighbors. “We have a warrant for the arrest of Robert Vroman for the alleged possession of an illegal invisibility cloak. Have you seen him? No? Hmm.” Again my technical ignorance may get in the way, but if I can hide the content of my message, how hard is it to hide the source and destination? Internet-savvy outlaws will undoubtedly provide encryption services under the Gestapo’s nose, just like their outlaw digicash cousins, and their outlaw drug peddler ancestors. But then what if the State, facing imminent destruction, lashes out blindly and tries to shut down the whole friggin internet? Or what if they establish martial law in the scariest uber-polizei-stadt since Adolf was dancing jigs? These and other Orwellian nightmares are possibilities. However, one must consider that any path to anarchism will eventually take us to a point to where the State is cornered and crazed, and thus this is not the fault of AP. On the bright side though, if it is AP that takes us to that juncture, any measures the State take will be short-lived and futile. While they may be able to hold off an armed rebellion or mass non-compliance and make our lives miserable for an indefinite period, AP will march along inexorably chowing down on their human resources and scaring them off, until there’s simply no one left to give orders or receive them. The third practical objection wonders if anyone will actually put money into AP, above or below ground. Clearly, there will have to be a significant and constant cash flow to keep the wheels turning and the heads rolling. Finding customers is probably the least of our worries. First, on the list are the usual suspects of political extremists. Hardcore lefties in all their myriad flavors: commies, left-anarchists, eco nuts, feminazis, etc. Then your hardcore righties: militia psychos, pro-life zealots, Klansmen, dirty cops, uber-moralists, etc Following with miscellaneous baddies: well heeled foreign terrorists, cultists, sleaze corporations, garden variety sociopaths, drug lords, etc And that’s just the fringe. I propose that humans as a whole are not very good people. If they were, surely we would not be in the prevailing unacceptable state of affairs. Fortunately one of the main selling points of libertarianism is that it’s the superior system given any level of general morality. In the short term though, AP is well served by the relatively low level evidenced by reality. I predict that given a consequence free chance to hurt someone they despise at low monetary cost, a large percentage will sign up. American citizens donate many millions to political parties every year; clearly they take this stuff seriously. How bad do they want their guy to win? Remember, no one will ever know if you place that bet. You can protest the senselessness of it all in public, wring your hands over the latest poor public servant killed in the line of duty, and then go home and secretly sign the death warrant of that Congress asshole who wants to cut your kid’s daycare. Seriously, look at the kind of people around you, who wouldn’t jump at the chance at that kind of power? Practically anyone with any political opinions at all can name some office holder they’d rather see gone. It should be no challenge to get enough people with the same name in mind to bet a few bucks and reach a tempting pot. These people may not be betting against the worst statists in the order an Ancap might prioritize them, but the point is, it doesn’t matter who they bet on, as long as they hit any power holders, because most likely the success of AP will not come from systematically executing every politician, but instead drive them into hiding from fear of their name rising on the list. No matter what direction the fire is coming from, it will keep everyone in Washington’s head down. ‘The Jim Bell System’ first published on anti-state.com on July 11, 2002. But just to drive the point home, forget about Americans who might unexpectedly turn uniformly patriotic and override their petty partisan proclivities. For an easier challenge, let’s toss AP into the mix of some stormy banana republic below the equator. Giving AP to practically any 3rd world country would be like letting the rival faction leaders duel with grenades in a shower stall. Every wannabe El Presidente will openly encourage their followers to bet against the competition and undoubtedly receive the same in return. If you find Somalia encouraging, imagine the entire developing world forced to go the same route. So I think I’ve established that there will be sufficient demand, the other side of the coin is of course supply. Again, we are well stocked. Last I read, the home of the brave here has some 2 million people imprisoned, 40% of which are deemed ‘violent’. Furthermore, approximately 1% of all violent crimes result in a prisoner. This says to me that there is an abundance of dumb mean folks in this country. One characteristic of the violence prone is they tend to be poor. I imagine that few such criminals actually enjoy risking their life and freedom day after day in robbing random people for watches and wallets. How many would gamble on that One Big Score, if payday were a sure thing? To name a few, we’ve got the obvious examples, Mafiosos, Hell’s Angels, Islamo-fascists, McVeigh acolytes, etc, plus a virtually bottomless supply of standard small time thugs and starving junkies. In other words lots and lots of people who wouldn’t think twice about killing anyone for the right price or cause, all being simultaneously offered heaping mounds of cash with no names being mentioned, no questions asked, and no one to have to trust. All guaranteed and anonymous. And the best part is, there’s no need for the ideologically pure to go fling ourselves against leviathan in some ill conceived revolution. I’m sometimes disturbed by the martyrdom complex some Ancaps seem to exhibit; holing up with their favorite rifle and apparently just waiting for the JBTs to show up someday and take down as many with them as possible. Much safer to just pay otherwise worthless people to do the dirty work instead. To wax poetic, the great melting pot of human society has got scum floating on the top, and scum settled on the bottom. It sure would be great if we could let them thin each other’s ranks, with minimal bystanders getting plugged. Then again, why count on the competence and boldness of American crooks? Watch the experiment unfold south of the border and see who takes the gamble. In parts of the world where life is cheap, AP might be a chief industry, and provide an excellent test pad for its 1st world conquest. If there are other practical failures I have missed, I will have to address them in a follow up article. On to the alleged moral failures. I do not think my audience will contest the notion that tax is theft, enforced regulation is aggression, and basically everything the government does, from bombing foreign kids, to propagandizing local kids, is wrong. Libertarian logic goes on to say that you have a basic right to defend your person and property from aggression, and that if a given level of force is insufficient to deter that aggression, you may justifiable escalate without bound until the aggression is so deterred. Furthermore, you are fully within your rights to contract out your defensive needs to other parties. If the aggressor you are facing is so overwhelming that you can neither personally defend yourself nor openly seek protection services, then it becomes necessary to devise clever systems like AP. Still, some are concerned that indirectly paying someone to preemptively kill a politician is dangerously close to initiation of force, even if the institution he represents is admittedly oppressive. First of all maybe you hate the state and have a T-shirt to prove it, but bear no ill will to the lowly 9-to-5er in the local bureaucracy with no real decision making power. Surely that misguided paper shuffler does not deserve to get axed along with the household name tyrants. Fear not, because AP only recognizes the power of the dollar, and unless someone, somewhere is willing to part with a small fortune in order to doom the government peon, he is probably just as safe as every other person listed in the phone book. The stronger complaint is that no politicians deserve to die, and we should instead get the backing of legions of converts and politely present our leaders with one way tickets to somewhere far away and leave them be. If that were plausible, I’m all for it. Since its not, there’s no reason to protest the forceful alternative. I am not obsessed with justice or vengeance. I would be perfectly happy to let every reigning politician resign without further punishment, even those that knowingly ordered or caused innocent deaths. For example, I have no desire to expend energy exhuming FDR’s corpse and dragging it around the town square, as my grandfather often insists should be done. In other words, out of sight, out of mind. The only thing that matters is that the rulers leave power, their offices dismantled. Going back to my earlier criteria, I will back whatever method of eviction is the quickest, cheapest, and safest (for me), regardless of the consequences said method brings down on the evictees. If AP is the Q, C, and S, then I shed no tears over however many leaders get snuffed before the rest discover their positions cannot protect them. If any of you have a soft spot for some politician who is “really an ok guy deep down, he just doesn’t get it yet” then hopefully he will be among the first to ‘get it’ and work his damnedest to disappear from public consciousness as fast as possible. Imagine this scenario: You just went to considerable cost to move into a nice new neighborhood. The day after you move in, you receive the following note in the mail: Your options are A) pissing away your down payment and leaving, only to find Vroman’s relatives run similar scams in every other neighborhood B) coughing up the 2 grand every year, and futilely trying to convince your sheeple neighbors to petition Boss Vroman to leave you all alone C) killing a few thugs and eventually going down in a hail of lead, D) spend your 2 grand hiring someone to snipe Boss Vroman when he least expects it. So which will it be, Ex-pat, LP, Waco, or…AP? Whether you buy that as sufficient excuse or if instead, you buy into Bob Murphy’s pacifism plan, is actually quite irrelevant. Here is the clutch argument. Why Ancaps should not oppose AP is that the fate of anarchism and AP are inextricably entwined. It is obvious that if the system works at all, it will be very profitable to the operators. In Ancapland there will be no law enforcement per se to crack down on a proposed AP operation. Thus it is inevitable that some profit-seeking anarchists, with no fear of state reprisal, will eventually start one or more AP servers. No matter what route is taken to anarchism, peaceful evangelism or other, the end result will be a society devoid of central authority, and with an AP system in existence, due to simple profit motive. Furthermore, even if the consequences of AP are a hell on earth comparable with the worst examples of grotesque statism, that is also irrelevant, because AP is unstoppable. Even if we all converted to minarchism so that we could have the benefits of pseudo-libertarianism, while still having a violence monopolist to counteract AP, that changes nothing. AP can destroy any state, minimal or monstrous. No matter what the ultimate outcome wrought by AP, there are no steps we can take that will avoid it. Even embracing the current police state, if that were a serious option, would not provide significant long term resistance to the looming threat of AP. There is nothing short of 100% popular refusal to participate that will prevent AP from tearing down every political office in the world, and given human psychology, that 100% won’t materialize. Thus the only question is whether AP is useful enough for transition purposes that someone develops it now, or uses other methods to destroy statism first, and wait for AP to show up on its own. It’s like this. Person A is holding person B hostage at gunpoint. You, being a pacifist, would like to save person B, without killing bad guy A. Unfortunately for your humanitarian plans, person B is a part time ninja, and as soon as the immediate threat of the gun is gone, he is going to snap A’s neck instantly. You also have a gun. So whether you shoot A yourself, or somehow non-lethally disarm him and unleash B’s hands of death, A will die. Thus given the certainty of A’s death (and deserved at that) the primary concern should be the other two people in the equation. If you attempt to disarm A, you could get shot, leaving B still trapped and you dead. Or you could just easily shoot A, saving both yourself and B, but troubling your conscience. That’s all I have to say about moral issues. Lastly, there are the criticisms that claim that AP will successfully kill politicians, moral or not, but the real problem is that the system will result in something no better than the current regime. There are common cries that AP will get ‘out of control’. I see two ways this could happen. Foremost is that the operators of AP will somehow appoint themselves de facto rulers in the resulting power vacuum and twist the tool to assassinate their personal enemies at will. This is clearly impossible because if they were able to operate their servers despite the pressure of a state, clearly someone else can operate a competing server despite the pressure of the rogue AP-ists, and if said rogues build themselves a personality cult in a bid for world domination, they make themselves ridiculously easy targets for AP v2.0. The better reason this is impossible is because ideally the AP system would be so well designed that it would run autonomously, so as to avoid there being any actual operators for the state to arrest. Thus there are no operators to go bad in the post-state world either. The other possible unintended consequence, opposite that of crypto-dictatorship, is the Randian fear about war of all against all, i.e. ‘bad’ anarchism ala Mad Max. I see little reason to worry about this possibility. If society degenerates to the point that putting a $100 bet on someone dying tomorrow results in a very real possibility that you will be right, then this would imply that AP players are so widespread and killing so unremarkable, that you might as well just whack the person yourself and save the C-note. At this point, AP will fall into disuse for being an unnecessary middleman in the homicide business, except for those rare hard to find targets, as was its original purpose. Therefore, AP has a feedback loop that prevents it from being practical as a means of facilitating petty murders. In conclusion, AP is pragmatically sound, ethically justified, and strategically prudent. The only question is when. Watch out State, you’re on a collision course with an extinction level event. I have foreseen it. Check out the second editorial about this subject written by Vroman here. What do you think about Robert Vroman’s predictions? What do you think about this subject? Let us know what you think about this opinion piece in the comments section below. **The article above is an opinion piece written in 2002 by the libertarian author Robert Vroman debating ‘The Jim Bell System’ with Adam Young and Bob Murphy. Vroman is well known for his editorial work writing for anti-state.com. ‘The Jim Bell System’ first published on anti-state.com on July 11, 2002, in response to AP debate.** Op-ed Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any opinions, content, accuracy or quality within the Op-ed article. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any information in this Op-ed article. This article is a reprint of an archived editorial that was originally published on August 15, 2002. Image credits: Shutterstock, anti-state.com archive links, Pixabay, Fair Use, and Wiki Commons. Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section. You can also enjoy the easiest way to buy Bitcoin online with us. Download your free Bitcoin wallet and head to our Purchase Bitcoin page where you can buy BCH and BTC securely. The post The Jim Bell System appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Since BTC prices slid below the $8K price range, mining operations have been making less revenue. On Sunday, December 1, only 13 mining rigs with an average electricity cost of $0.12 per kWh are profiting at current prices. Of course, miners from China and other regions pay far less per kWh but older mining rigs currently struggle for profits. Also read: Gocrypto SLP Token Starts Trading on Bitcoin.com Exchange High-Powered Mining Rigs Are Still Profitable at Current Prices, Older Devices Not So Much Mining the SHA256 algorithm is still profitable, no matter which coin you mine, whether it be BTC or BCH. For instance, on Sunday it’s between 0.4-3% more profitable to mine on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain according to Coin Dance statistics. During the last three hours, the BCH hashrate has been around 4.14 exahash per second (EH/s), while the BTC chain has had around 98.03 EH/s. In the last seven days, BTC has averaged around 87.34 EH/s and BCH has seen 2.60 EH/s. The past two weeks’ cryptocurrency markets have seen deep losses while BTC slipped below $8K and BCH hovers around $213 per coin. Current prices make it so only 13 mining rigs are profiting today if they pay $0.12 per kWh. This includes the Bitmain Antminer S17 Pro with 53 terahash per second (TH/s), Bitmain Antminer S17 Pro (50 TH/s model), Innosilicon T3+ (52 TH/s), Bitmain Antminer S17e (64 TH/s), Strongu STU-U8 Pro (60 TH/s), Ebang Ebit E11++ (44 TH/s), and Microbt’s Whatsminer M20S (68 TH/s). SHA256 miner profits on December 1, 2019, at $0.12 per kWh. At current prices, BTC and BCH miners paying only $0.05 per kWh can choose between a variety of 70 profitable devices. At $0.05 per kWh, any mining rig that can process more than 11 TH/s with decent power efficiency can still make money. Much larger profits between $5-10 per day come from high-powered mining rigs that can process more than 40 TH/s with power outputs between 1500W to 6000W off the wall. With electrical costs at $0.05 per kWh or under, the top mining rigs stem from manufacturers like Bitmain, Microbt, Strongu, Innosilicon, and Bitfury. Machines making below $5 per day are manufactured by firms such as Canaan, Ebang, Holic, and average around 20-38 TH/s. SHA256 miner profits on December 1, 2019, at $0.05 per kWh. Microbt Plans to Launch an 81 TH/s Bitcoin Miner In addition to the top machines that process the SHA256 algorithm, Bitmain’s Antminer S17+ (73 TH/s) will be shipping in December. The 73 TH/s Antminer has a power consumption of 2920W according to specifications. Moreover, regional reports from China reveal that a new Microbt Whatsminer is on the way that processes higher hashrates than the 73 TH/s S17+ model. The company’s current Whatsminer M20S (68 TH/s) can make a touch over $7 per day if electrical costs are at $0.05 per kWh or below. However, a shareholder of Microbt named Wu Gang says that the firm is releasing a M30S model. The shareholder said the new machine will “deliver 81 TH/s” with a “power consumption at 38 watts per terahash.” Wu Gang, a Microbt shareholder, discloses information about a new 81 TH/s M30S. Wu also told the Wechat community that the M30S will be supported by Samsung 8nm chips but reports explain that the Japan-South Korea Trade War has put a strain on these efforts. Microbt was founded in 2016 by former Bitmain employee Yang Zuoxing. He was purportedly the processor design director and helped developed Bitmain’s popular S7 and S9 models. After leaving Bitmain, Microbt was sued for allegedly infringing upon Bitmain’s patent for mining rig technology. Moreover, last month, Yang Zuoxing was purportedly held in custody by Chinese police in regards to Bitmain’s intellectual property (IP). Microbt shareholder Wu Gang did not disclose when the Shenzhen-based mining chip manufacturer will release the M30S. What do you think about the SHA256 mining rigs that are profiting at current prices? What do you think about the Microbt M30S that allegedly processes 81 TH/s? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or as a recommendation, endorsement, or sponsorship of any products, services, or companies. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article. Image credits: Shutterstock, and Asicminervalue.com. Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here. The post Despite Bitcoin’s Price Drop, High-Powered Mining Rigs Still Profit appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

A fully operational crypto-focused bank based in Switzerland is expanding into nine other markets. With a banking and securities dealer license from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, its services include crypto custody, trading, and asset management. The bank has launched its investment business including a cryptocurrency index. Also read: Swiss Crypto Bank SEBA Launches With Range of Services International Expansions SEBA Bank AG, formerly SEBA Crypto AG, is a crypto-focused bank headquartered in Zug, Switzerland. The bank recently became fully operational and started onboarding Swiss clients after obtaining a banking and securities dealer license from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). The bank has announced that it is extending service to “clients from selected foreign jurisdictions” in December. A spokesperson for the bank told news.Bitcoin.com that the selected jurisdictions are the U.K., Italy, Germany, France, Austria, Portugal, Netherlands, Singapore, and Hong Kong. SEBA Bank aims to build a bridge between the traditional banking world and the crypto world. Its services include custody storage, trading and liquidity management, asset and wealth management, transaction banking, and tokenization. They are aimed at professional investors, family offices, banks, asset managers, and blockchain companies. The spokesperson further clarified to news.Bitcoin.com that the bank accepts BTC, ETH, ETC, LTC, XLM and NEO for its custody service. As for trading, it accepts BTC, ETH, ETC, LTC, and XLM. Investment Solutions and Crypto Index The bank launched its investment business on Tuesday along with its index for crypto assets called the SEBA Crypto Asset Select Index (SEBAX). The bank has selected MV Index Solutions Gmbh (MVIS) to maintain the index and act as its administrator. Gentwo Digital was also brought on board to implement the specific restructuring requirements of the first investment solution, SEBA noted. SEBA Crypto Asset Select Price Index as of Nov. 28. Source: MVIS SEBAX “is a dynamic, risk-optimized index with a broad market exposure of the crypto asset market,” the bank described. Its objective “is to provide an investable index for the most secure, reliable and tradable crypto assets,” MVIS detailed. “The selection of the constituents is monitored on an ongoing basis. The index applies advanced techniques to reduce concentration into single constituents and to deliver enhanced diversification.” SEBAX’s November components. Source: MVIS According to its fact sheet, the index was established on July 2 and currently has five components that are rebalanced monthly. It is calculated daily with the constituent prices converted to USD. A maximum of eight crypto assets ranked by market capitalization are selected for inclusion in the index. MVIS has contracted with Cryptocompare Data Ltd. to maintain and calculate the index. In November, the index components are 48.46% BTC, 26.70% ETH, 18.28% LTC, 3.43% XLM, and 3.13% ETC. Crypto assets have to meet specific criteria to be eligible for the index and must rank within the top 30 coins by market capitalization. “Stable coins and privacy coins are excluded,” MVIS explained. Also excluded are crypto assets with less 90 days of pricing history, those that are not listed on any of the eligible exchanges, and those that fail the index’s technical maturity and safety criteria. What do you think of SEBA Bank expanding internationally? Let us know in the comments section below. Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or as a recommendation, endorsement, or sponsorship of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article. Images courtesy of Shutterstock, SEBA Bank, and MVIS. Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here. The post Swiss Licensed Crypto Bank Expanding Into 9 Markets appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Careful not to rush too much with stimulus, the Chinese government nevertheless realizes that its behemoth economy is invariably slowing down. New loan interest rate cuts have been announced recently to encourage bank lending and borrowing in the private sector. With a brewing liquidity crisis, however, not all effects might in the end turn out to be desirable. And also, does China have the money? Also read: Another Bank Run Highlights China’s Brewing Financial Crisis Key Loan Rates Lose 5 Basis Points The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) cut a key interest rate last week, part of continuous efforts to shore up the economy. The Chinese central bank lowered the its one-year loan prime rate by just five basis points, true to its strategy to loosen monetary policy in incremental steps. The benchmark rate, state-run lenders were instructed to take as a reference value, went down from October’s 4.20 to the current 4.15%. The five-year prime rate, used to determine rates on new mortgages, also lost five basis points to 4.80%. People’s Bank of China PBOC applied the same five-basis-point step to decrease its one-year medium-term lending facility, at which it provides funds to other banks, to 3.25% as Reuters reported in early November, as well as its seven-day reserve repo used to inject liquidity into the banking system. These measures were described in a report by the South China Morning Post as “fine-tuning of economic stimulus” and a “series of small steps,” an indication of the government’s believe that the growth slowdown may hit bottom next year, at around 6%. That could happen if a trade deal is reached with the U.S. before the 2020 presidential election there. In October, new lending in China fell to its lowest level this year and during a credit analysis conference it sponsored, the People’s Bank ordered Chinese lenders to better serve the real economy. It’s unlikely, however, that these marginal rate cuts are going to bring a substantial change in China’s economic outlook and many observers expect the PBOC to move further in the same direction. But there’s a chance that the ‘small steps’ might turn out to be wrong, as has already happened in the West where interest rate cuts have not revived growth but have created bubbles instead. Does China Have the Money? Meanwhile, a detailed report has been published by Statista, exploring the state of the Chinese money market and providing an idea about the financial resources the People’s Republic has at its disposal. The data shows that in 2018 the money reserves held by the PBOC had reached approximately 33.1 trillion yuan ($4.7 trillion) and its gold reserves amounted to 59.56 million ounces. This year China’s reserve position in the International Monetary Fund increased from $8.49 billion to $8.51 billion, as of October. The U.S. dollar remains the most traded currency in China’s foreign exchange market, followed by the euro and the yen. But with China’s currency reserves reaching $3.07 trillion at the end of 2018 and the country’s growing share in global trade, the importance of the Chinese fiat has been increasing. The yuan is now directly convertible to a growing number of other national currencies and even accepted by major oil exporters such as Iran, for example. Beijing and Moscow have been working to reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar with Russia planning to issue a yuan-denominated bond as early as this year. Several Russian banks have already joined China’s version of Swift. Yuan notes and coins According to Statista, the M2 supply in China, including not only cash and checking deposits but also less liquid assets such as savings, amounted to 182.67 trillion yuan at the end of 2018. With signs of a growing liquidity crisis and even a couple of bank runs, however, the financial sector is likely to create more trouble for Beijing next year. Since 2017, when bank deposits were at 169.3 trillion yuan ($24 trillion at current exchange rate), a number of banks have failed to file their annual reports. While interest on deposit accounts has remained generally low, around 1.5% in 2018 and 1.75% on one-year deposits in 2019, many small banks have been finding it hard to access credit on the interbank lending market, where the weighted average interest rate reached 2.55% in September. In order to preserve liquidity, some of them have been forced to increase interest payments on deposits to over 4%, raising questions about sustainability. It has become clear that the PBOC will not closely follow in the footsteps of the U.S. Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank. China is likely to bet more on fiscal rather than monetary policy next year, boosting government investment in the economy instead of cutting interest rates indefinitely, as already indicated by Premier Li Keqiang. A Politburo speech by the President of China, Xi Jinping, revealed that blockchain development will be a key area of interest for Beijing. And while the yuan’s share in bitcoin trading volume remains low since the 2017 crackdown on crypto exchanges – it constituted 0.1% of bitcoin transactions globally as of August 2018, according to Statista – blockchain expenditure in China has been projected to grow from $83 million in 2017 to a forecasted $1.42 billion by 2022 and a digital yuan is in the making. The economic and financial agenda of the most populous country will be determined during the upcoming Central Economic Work Conference, an annual meeting convened by the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the State Council towards the end of the year. The forum usually takes place behind closed doors and the people of the People’s Republic will learn their government’s 2020 growth target sometime next spring. Do you think China will have the financial resources to deal with a potential crisis? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The Local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here. The post ‘In Small Steps’ China Cuts Benchmark Interest Rates appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Let me re-emphasize that I have neither the knowledge nor the will to implement this system. I certainly don’t like the State, but I would rather concentrate my energies on constructive rather than destructive solutions. That said, I still think governments everywhere are going to be staring down the barrel of an encrypted gun in the near future, and this article attempts to explain why, in response to numerous objections received since my last article. **The following article is an opinion piece written in 2002 by the libertarian author Robert Vroman. Vroman is well known for his editorial work writing for anti-state.com. ‘The Jim Bell System Revisited’ first published on anti-state.com on August 15, 2002, in response to “The Jim Bell System” debate. This is the second installment of the series written by Vroman. Check out Bob Murphy’s and Adam Young’s response to Vroman’s editorial. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any opinions, content, accuracy or quality within the Op-ed article.** I also want to point out some areas where I think Jim Bell is completely off base. First of all, his insistence that AP is somehow residing in a loophole of the American legal system that only he is aware of, is absurd, as rightly pointed out by many of his critics. I have no delusions that AP would somehow survive its “day in court” or that even if, due to some arcane technicality, AP is a legal enterprise that that would stop the State from pursuing it relentlessly. Furthermore, I am mystified by Bell’s fascination with confrontation and martyrdom (as exemplified by his personal life) and do not think AP will be started by the self-sacrificing, or that it’s even necessarily a good idea to have that mindset when designing the system. Bell also overestimates the enthusiasm that ordinary people will have for AP by a long shot. I still have reasons to believe there will sufficient customers, but they are not going to be primarily heartland regular Joes, who Bell envisions watching AP’s deadly progress with amusement. Bell also gives some slightly cockeyed responses to a number of objections to his invention. In fact really the main thing I take away from his writing is the system itself, not necessarily any of his justifications. My friend and business partner, Bob Murphy presented some powerhouse arguments against my pet theory in our recent columnist debate over the infamous Assassination Politics concept. I contend that under closer examination, his insightful questions can be answered satisfactorily. Additionally, Adam Young has presented a thoroughly researched historical analysis against AP, which I will address first. Young has three main points. First, that assassination has been ineffectual in the past for destroying states. Second, assassinations will instead create a backlash against anarchism by government and citizens alike. Third, he does not like the moral implications of the very likely possibility of collateral damage from sloppy AP prize-hunters, given the relatively poor caliber of historical attempts. The opinion piece ‘The Jim Bell System Revisited’ written by Robert Vroman first published on anti-state.com on August 15, 2002. The first point, despite all its exhaustive research, is I’m afraid to say, totally erroneous because the mechanism by which AP kills its victims is fundamentally different then assassination campaigns of the past. I am not at all surprised to read that a handful of suicidal ideologues gunning down a few unlucky aristocrats failed to exorcise the nation state. Assume for the moment that AP’s basic functions materialize (I will get to Murphy’s objections later). The pool of assassins has instantaneously expanded from only insane political extremists, to every single violent opportunist in the world who can access a computer. AP represents a veritable full scale war against the State, fought by the scum of society and funded by every partisan malcontent across the political spectrum. A dozen assassinations per century is certainly not going to give any politicians second thoughts about their career choice, any more than the dozen or so plane hijackings in the past 50 years makes me nervous seeing a turban in business class. However, logically speaking there must be some tipping point at which the body count is the most pressing statistic a politician has in mind. AP will surpass this tipping point, where history’s basket case revolutionaries were doomed to fail. The State will, of course, respond in nasty ways, but inevitably these will prove ineffective in the face of an impenetrable network supporting a sustained and widespread offensive. Secondly, Young fears that AP will re-enforce the stereotype of anarchists as the 19th-century mad bomber and 20th century Starbucks arsonist. This will then erase any chance of our winning hearts and minds via soul-stirring online essays, and worst of all, get the lot of us gulagged. What he fails to realize is the absolute lack of a reason for there to be any connection between anarchists and AP. If AP were actually launched, I for one would certainly not be publicly cheering it on (I probably wouldnít even risk staying in the country, having written this article). The people who will be donating will not be doing so for anarchist reasons, they will not assume they are furthering anarchism, they will not make the connection. The targets also, will not probably be prioritized as an anarchist would. Ancaps are too small a group for our bets (if any) to be a major impact, thus if occasional bettors are caught, they are statistically unlikely to be one of us. The assassins will also not be Ancaps, unless any of you have a mercenary streak youíre not revealing. If all goes well the admins will either not exist or remain anonymous, and thus their political angle is irrelevant. With no anarchists predominantly involved in any of the core functions of AP, or visibly supporting it, I don’t see why Young thinks that the State will blame anarchists for the rise of AP. In fact, if my predictions are correct, the assassins will primarily be the existing criminal class. If the State picks any scapegoats, it will be black militancy, or drug users, or the militia movement, etc, i.e. the people who are actually attacking them. The Government did not condemn anarchists for WTC, they blamed Islamic fundamentalists. Ancaps aren’t being rounded up in detention camps, Arabs are. Despite the fact that anarchists have often said things in the aftermath that amount to “they had it coming to them.” Which is more or less what Iím saying here. Anarchists will have just as much to do with AP as they did with WTC. The people who are going to suffer the brunt of the State’s reaction are the actual instigators of violence, and if I read my audience correctly, that will not be any of you. Do you particularly care (aside from general aversion to Statist crusades) if the State launches a crusade against crack heads and professional killers? If the non-betting population experiences revulsion from AP at work, its outrage will be directed at a disparate collection of political interests and unrelated thugs. The State will undoubtedly ramp up its enforcement regime in response to AP, however, there is no reason that anarchists would be singled out, when there are more direct threats available. If the State does pick Anarcho-Capitalists as the source of all evil, instead of some other arbitrary group like, say the Republic of Ganjastan, then I advise us all to leave or prepare to be martyrs. At some point, things are going to get uncomfortable for non-statists whether it’s Ashcroft Inc’s regularly scheduled programming, or an AP frenzy whipped totalitarian drive. I plan to be an ex-pat at that time in either case. We can always come back in the aftermath, and start the equivalent of Awdal Roads Company in the former US of A. The third is the issue of collateral damage, which can be creatively ameliorated within the AP protocol. Its conceivable AP players might get in the habit of waiting for a number of high priced targets to get in the same building, and then truck bombing the whole structure to claim multiple big prizes, without concern for the dozens of non-targets cut down along the way. The moral failure here, I believe, lies solely with the assassin. However, my opinion is irrelevant, because if the bettors themselves feel they are responsible and they have a conscience, they will not bet for fear that the target they put money on will take a hundred un-targeted coworkers down with him. Thus AP needs to alleviate the moral obstacles bettors will face in order to have the maximum revenue flow possible. The answer is to allow for pools to be started with any number of stipulations. For example, the prize for politician Z might include the following rule: “If any bystanders are killed in the death of the target, 90% of the prize money will be donated to a fund for their next of kin. The remaining 10% will be distributed evenly to correct guessers via the normal method.” Or some such wording that would serve to greatly motivate the assassin to be careful in planning his attack. By this scheme, there could be multiple prize pools for the same target, each with different disclaimers. For example, in addition to the 90% victim payout pool for Mr. Z, there might be a no questions asked pool for the same guy. Presumably, the fewer rules there are attached to the prize, the more likely an assassin will be to take a chance at winning it. Thus bettors have to balance their moral qualms about collateral damage versus their desire to see results. If they care more about bystanders, they should bet into the rules heavy pool, if they care more about eliminating the target, bet into the open ended pool. Unless there is overwhelmingly more money in the “kill by any means” pool, the mere existence of the “kill carefully” pool, should convince the assassin to be as discrete as possible so as to win both prizes. So even if AP bettors are on the whole more bloodthirsty than socially conscious, the few with some scruples will be able to have a large impact on how AP players go about their operations. In fact if AP players really did tend toward wanton destruction in order to hit their marks, it might be in the best interest of people, who either exist in close proximity to a top target, or have a general compassion for bystanders, to bet into the constrained pool, even if they have no desire to see the target dead, but for no other reason than to be sure that when he does die, the assassin will hopefully be motivated by the money in the conditional pool and avoid civilian casualties. Young denounces AP on the grounds that it uses a tactic of the State, i.e. “terror”, against the State itself, and this is a reprehensible flaw. Saying that AP is terror because it kills tyrants, is like saying shooting a mugger is terror. Well, yes. If you were unfortunate enough to live in a neighborhood inhabited by gangs, and got a reputation for shooting harassers without hesitation, this would effectively “terrorize” the gangsters into leaving you in peace, or so goes the “armed society is a polite society” school of thought. However, AP does not even qualify as terror in the political sense. The precise political science definition of terrorism is “a group that uses force against an intermediate target in order to bring about a desired decision from an ultimate target”. In other words, a terrorist is ill-equipped to directly attack the hated government, so instead he blows up a school bus, and issues a public ultimatum that unless the government meets some of his petty demands he will strike again. The logic being that the government is incapable of protecting every school bus all the time, and the terrorist has nothing else to do but plan his next bombing, so he can essentially strike at will. He hopes that eventually the State will tire of this harassment and acquiesce, usually because the population becomes exasperated at the governmentís ineffectual attempts to stop the attacks, and it is in danger of losing its power, not due to any compassion for the school kids. AP does not follow this model, primarily because, unlike the terrorist, it can indeed strike the ultimate targets directly and does not need to play deadly games with intermediate symbols. If anything, AP should be described as guerrilla warfare. Even if the effects of AP end up being terrorist in the popular sense, this is wholly different from say Al Quaeda plotting together in some dusty bunker. AP is a decentralized system unlike anything ever before. Without a central decision making body like a terrorist cell, the targets selected by the AP patronizing public will reflect its user’s ideologies. AP will only use explicitly terrorist tactics, if its users overwhelmingly have terrorist inclinations themselves, which given the superior abilities provided by AP, is an unproductive course of action and a waste of money. I hope that is a decent response to Young’s excellent article. On to Mr. Murphy’s piece. First Murphy doubts the feasibility of AP with the very legitimate concern that if the system were truly an impenetrable secret to all investigators, there is nothing stopping the AP operators from pocketing all the donations, yet claiming winners had been paid, resting on the impossibility of discovery, and the robbed winner’s desire to remain anonymous (since he’s probably got blood on his hands). A better scam might involve creating artificially high bounties, and then only paying out what’s actually in the pot. Since if there are multiple bets on the same day, the prize is split evenly between them, the assassin will not know if he has been cheated or if there are actually were enough other random guessers to dilute his prize down to the share he actually gets. The administrators could also skim off a healthy chunk too, and no one would be the wiser. This would probably be the best way to for the admins to dishonestly game the system, so that they enrich themselves; the assassins are disappointed but not given proof of treachery; and the bounties are higher than normal, thus enticing more gullible thugs. So is this really a problem? Seems to me the system still works exactly as planned whether the admins are honest or not. The only problem is getting people to trust the system in the first place, which I’ll cover in a minute. If we assume that the admins’ purpose in creating AP is to make as fat a profit as possible, then they will not want to blatantly rip off hitmen, for fear that word will inevitably get out among the criminal population that AP isnít on the level. However, even in an extreme case where the admins do embezzle every penny, it doesnít matter. Since very few people involved with AP will be actually killing anyone, only a tiny minority of users will feel they have been cheated, while the greater number will be convinced they got their money’s worth. Thus they will continue to use the system. Future assassins not in communication with their gypped colleagues will also be led to believe others have been paid. Thus everything still works, money goes in, prizes are accumulated, and targets are eliminated. If the admins really are capable of hiding all evidence and expertly conning the system, then the system will indeed be conned, and so well conned, that it will continue to run despite being conned over and over. The only problem is if this possibility prevents people from ever starting to bet and becoming convinced they are being dealt with fairly. There are two answers to this: the AP business can slowly build trust with less extreme versions of itself, and also the overlooked fact that people have a surprisingly high tolerance for potentially fraudulent online services. To establish itself as an authentic operation, AP might be introduced not as a full fledged death machine but instead as a low key betting pool system whereby users could put money on sporting events or guess the day certain celebrities will get divorced, and other trivial wagers. The selling point is the hardcore anonymity feature for users in harsher nanny states. In this relatively low risk phase, winners could have the option of being publicly announced for ego’s sake, and this would prove the system operated as intended. Then gradually more and more sinister bets would be allowed until it becomes completely un-moderated and AP is born. Such a system would not be nipped in the bud, as Murphy predicts, as there are countless underground betting organizations currently in operation, and proto-AP would arguably be even more secure from law enforcement, by benefit of its exclusive existence on the internet with solid encryption and no face to face contact among users. Even at the intermediate semi-morbid phases its possible proto-AP would not garner significant government attention. Look at this http://www.stiffs.com. Clearly harmless, but the fact it has garnered no legal complaints is a good indicator that real-AP would be able to go on the offensive for some time before the Feds figured out where the threat is coming from. I also still think the best idea is to design an autonomous system with no publicly identified administrators even in the proto phase, whether this will become feasible with future developments in cryptography remains to be seen. Even if AP did not go to the trouble of gradually building a customer base, it does not necessarily mean it will fail. Examine the case of online gambling. Here we have people putting their money on games where the “house” can completely manipulate the odds in its own favor simply by changing a few lines of code, and the user will never know unless he takes detailed notes on winning percentages. They do not even have a reputation at stake like a traditional Las Vegas casino, which could do the same with its electronic slot machines. If a Vegas outfit says its slots payout 99% or something, people who have no good reason to trust that, still play by the thousands. Many people are unaware that the Nevada Gaming Commission even exists, and virtually none have any idea how good a job they do at enforcing gambling regulations. And inexplicably they play online versions of these same dubious games too, where they have far less control, and nowhere near the trust of a “reputable” brick and mortar casino. Online gambling rakes in millions, despite obvious security holes and opportunities for abuse. An indicator that even if AP is not foolproof as far as protecting bettor’s money from the admins, people will still donate and predict. Maybe they’re just stupid, and maybe the online casinos are actually honest. Murphy also points out that if politicians resort to holding Congress inside a NORAD bunker, then any information about deaths inside the mountain can be easily manipulated by the government, thus disrupting the rewarding of correct guessers. I doubt this will be an effective countermeasure against AP. If the outside world never knows that the Feds are lying about death dates, then potential assassins would not be aware their successful hits might be in vain. They would then still have the motivation to mount their attacks, and only afterward realize the government’s press corps has cheated them out of their prize. However, the people donating money have still gotten what they want: a dead politician, and thus will continue donating. Since the assassin will presumably either be dead, captured or in hiding, he will not be able to warn anyone that the government is using information warfare against AP. Thus the system continues as planned. On the other hand, if it becomes common knowledge that the government is not a reliable source of information, then it will be up to the assassin to make the real death date known. Perhaps acquiring a tissue sample from the victim and anonymously forwarding to independent media, or videotaping the kill shot with some kind of provable date stamp. This means the assassin has to take extra risk in getting close enough to the body to grab some proof, or accidentally providing incriminating evidence on tape, and also risk further exposure in contacting the media. If the AP server is run autonomously, it will have to be programmed to take into account the relative trustworthiness of misinforming government sources versus potentially nutcase indy media, and then make a decision as to the actual date of death. If the information is too ambiguous, then it might extend prize percentages to predictions on neighboring days, based on the probability of being correct. In light of this possibility, the assassin would be smart to take out high interest loans and dump his entire net worth into bets on days all around the planned kill date. This opinion article first published on anti-state.com on August 15, 2002. In light of this development, the assassin will have to take more risks and thus insist on a higher prize before taking his chances. Thus this government strategy will only serve to increase the equilibrium price of assassinations, just like their moving into the bunker itself. Matt Apple brought up a similar potential scam on the forum: “Another problem is the targets could fake their deaths. Suppose I’m a powerful person you’ve targeted. I just buy a day and then fake my death on that day. I put out a phony death certificate, maybe I even provide some gruesome staged photos of me lying dead. The media reports me dead and the operator releases the dough to the “guesser” ie me. As soon as the anonymous transaction is completed I appear on camera at a live press conference and announce that the plans of the evil electronic terrorists have been foiled and that in an ironic twist I’m donating the bounty they had on my head to the FBI. If this happened just once then all the people pumping up those bounties will lose their faith in the system.” If the media is so blatantly lied to, then more so than the AP bettors, the media itself will not believe future death reports. They will want to take pictures at the autopsy or do whatever it takes to have ironclad proof that this guy really is dead. If the media becomes an overt tool of the state, there will still be people who demand an objective news source, whether they are AP sympathizers or not. This demand will support the Matt Drudges of the world who will find a way around mainstream hegemony, and AP can be programmed to ignore statist media. Murphy doubts that my army of gutter trash will be able to make a dent in the ruling class. Perhaps he’s right that the average street hoodlum will only be successful in killing mid level bureaucrats that the State can’t afford to lavish security on. However, if that were true, is it really such a crucial flaw? If AP bettors come to realize that the tiptop of the pyramid can find impenetrable missile silos to hide in, then it’s no longer cost-effective to chase them with ever higher donations. Like any institution, the State clearly needs support personnel, and even if they do choose to hide in Mt. Cheyenne, they still need people on the ground at the very least to crack heads and collect taxes to keep the lights on down in their hole. If AP bettors become frustrated that the juicy targets are out of range, the next level down is going to take the brunt of it in the face. It might be fun to be a stormtrooper, but if suddenly you, due to lack of options, become the priority target for the assassination market, maybe its time to turn in your badge and go back to a vocational school. Additionally if you are an ordinary citizen who has up to this time not been involved with AP at all, but suddenly you notice that the tax collectors who stay above ground are getting executed with alarming frequency, you might be more inclined to gamble on fudging your returns or not paying at all, and hoping that the constant harassment provided by AP will prevent the revenue harvesters from noticing you. If the State is denuded of its agents and means of interaction, then it is just as harmless as if it had been chopped up directly. However, it would naturally be more efficient to strike the root. AP would reach its end goal quickest, with the least collateral damage, if assassins were able to hit the politicians even in their super-bunkers. There’s an argument that there is some upper bound beyond which additional funds will no longer influence the odds of an assassination taking place. Meaning that if $500M is not enough to convince anyone to take a chance on the target, $5B probably won’t either. That may be the case for individuals, but not for groups of AP players. If a mercenary or terrorist group became interested in mounting a multi-person operation like the WTC attack, then the higher the bounty gets, the more equipment they can buy and more personnel they can recruit for the plan. If say, there were multi-million dollar bounties on Saddam Hussein (a safe example) and all his top generals and lieutenants, making their bunker a concentrated mega bounty, it could become worthwhile for some para-military unit to risk a raid. The highest paid professional mercenaries in the world are employed by Sandline International and, according to the UN (who wants to ban their line of work), they make no more than $300,000/yr. That’s not chump change, but for someone who rides shotgun in a chopper chasing down African guerrillas for a living, the extra risk driving into Baghdad might be worth the hazard pay offered by AP. Taken to its logical conclusion, if there were enough extremely high bounties on a country’s leaders, who were all clustered into one spot, no matter how well defended, it could be cost-effective for army sized forces to be mobilized to seize the prize. So even if the top brass did hole up in the ultra bunkers, entire legions of militiamen or other adventurous chaps might come a-knocking to snag all those billions. Murphy goes on to say that the average Americans will be horrified by the idea of AP. True, the 50% of the population who don’t bother to vote probably will not feel their time is well spent influencing the political system by AP or any other method. Of the other half, probably the majority has no deep interest in the issues or understands anything beyond doing one’s civic duty. Of that slim percentage that actually has strong to passionate views, whatever they may be, therein lies AP’s demographic. What Bob fails to realize is that AP bettors will not know what they are doing, long term. Very few people are going to consciously decide they want to get rid of government and put money on it. Instead, they will donate money against specific politicians in the hope it will help advance whatever pet cause they clutch so dearly. Think if AP were in place back in the 2000 election. Are you a greenie who can’t stand the thought of oilman GW raping poor Gaia? Give AP some of your weed money and see what happens. Are you a good ol’ boy who thinks eco-feminist Al Gore will send the beloved US of A the way of the Roman Empire? Put off buying that new truck and see what AP can do. Even the most authoritarian bastard who ever cast a ballot can list some Statists of a slightly different breed than rub him the wrong way. Do you doubt the gun culture would pass up on an opportunity to bury some liberals, or for the religious right hypocrites to take out some of the godless queers in Washington, or radical feminists putting their 79 cents on the dollar against Deep South carpetbaggers? And more importantly than private citizens, don’t forger corporate-statists, like Big Ass Subsidies Inc who’s pocket politician might lose to the candidate who’s platform calls to spend the loot on some other boondoggle. Surely they can afford a million dollar write off if their spot in line at the trough is at risk. The point is that maybe Mrs. Soccer Mom has no strong opinions and would never think of placing a bet, but there are many, many people with strong political views, regardless of what they are. Surely the more diehard or less moral will see that they increase the chances of their guy winning, if the enemy is scared off by a rising AP tab. And the boiling frog effect comes into play as AP makes its mark on the world. When the state predictably increases its enforcement measures, more people will see it in their best interest to bet against encroaching fascists. If you doubt Americans will buy into this system in relevant numbers, I will repeat the point from my first article that Murphy did not address. I can concede that Americans will refuse to play, or that the Feds will manage to protect themselves (I don’t) but that does not mean AP cannot be effective. Ignore the NATO countries for a minute. Imagine AP taking root in some exotic locale like Nigeria for example. I bet a lot of those relatively well to do white farmers might take the opportunity to go online and put some money against Mugabe. I also think that one of his sadistic henchmen might be able to do the math to see that the AP prize is greater than his entire combined future earnings. The downside of the Third World is the lack of communications infrastructure, but in the coming years, ever cheaper electronics will make that less and less of an obstacle. The upside, of course, is that the leaders are rather absurdly unashamed of their predations, and very frequently there are large contingents of people who adamantly hate them. Furthermore add that these States have less sophisticated means of combating online activity it disproves of, and the fact that the population is used to politicians forcefully attempting to grab the throne. The conclusion is that many of the potential objections that apply to America and the “civilized” world are not to be found at all south of the equator. This could be an interesting testbed for the protocol. If it works, we get another blossoming Somalia. If it fails, well, the country was a hellhole before anyway. Murphy says that if AP works well enough to destroy the state, it wonít stop there and will completely shred civilization. He claims for example that just as disgruntled citizens can axe politicians at will, laid-off workers can axe their cost cutting former employers and that any defenses the private individuals can use, will be even easier for the state to use. This is wrong on both counts. Not only is it harder for capitalists to be killed, they can defend themselves from AP easier. First of all, there are vastly more high ranking business owners than there are high ranking bureaucrats. If the AP betting population suddenly gained an all consuming irrational desire to destroy capitalism, it would take a far greater monetary investment against businessmen than politicians, to reach that tipping point where targets are scared away from their positions. Furthermore, each individual businessman has a much smaller pool of people affected by his decisions. Whereas everyone in the country has to deal with the onerous decrees of the gang in Washington, there are many orders of magnitude fewer people dependent on any given board of directors. Presumably, people who don’t work for that company will not be very inclined to donate money, just as not many Americans would bet against Italian party chiefs. Therefore if the boss does manage to royally piss off the workers, he has much fewer potential bettors against him. These are people who have just lost their source of income (with no welfare to look forward to), and have fewer co-conspirators; they will not be able to produce nearly as enticing bounties as those that public officials will accrue. Keep in mind that people who bet against politicians will be expecting their incomes to rise in the absence of taxes, and thus be more likely to bet higher. More importantly, the boss knows who they are. If murder is being considered it’s likely due to them being whipped into a fury by some mafia goon union boss. The CEO has much more money at his disposal than an unemployed working class gang. If the union leader agitates his followers to wreak AP based revenge against the CEO, he canít expect to survive either. Anyone who attempts to rally workers to donate their already dwindling cash reserves into pointless vengeance will see his own name rising on the list faster than the CEO’s. The population of an entire state will be large enough that the number of independent people willing to put money against their powerful enemies will not require there be anyone egging them on. In order for smaller interest groups to get their petty revenge, a more coordinated effort is required. Harder still is that the potential victims have a much more conveniently sized body of suspects to watch, compared to politicians who are being targeted by anonymous bettors hiding among millions or billions. And better still, if the CEO knows whom he fired and who is threatening him, then everyone else knows as well. Would you hire workers who had paid for the assassination of their last employer? If a group of people are fired and their ex-boss is subsequently the target of a fat AP prize, then the entire group will immediately be blacklisted by every other employer. This will provide a huge incentive for individual workers not to toe the union line. Their own reputation and future employability rests on breaking their professional relations civilly or at least without bloodshed. This situation might instead just serve to impress upon corporations the need to be more careful in their hiring and firing. Only take on workers you really need, and only let them go after careful consideration, and in that event, possibly firing them in smaller batches, rather than mass layoffs. Nevertheless, this may indeed grant more power to workers. We must remember that not all corporations are nobly building wealth in spite of government machinations. Occasionally there really are scumbags who abuse employees, is it such a disaster if such people fear lethal retaliation for their misdeeds? Another dystopian fear is that AP will support murders between non-famous people over petty frustrations. A scumbag husband wants to get out of a divorce without losing half his wealth, so if he thinks an AP bet worth a quarter of his wealth will get the job done, and does so. An unrelated party kills the wife, scumbag cuts his losses nicely, and the wife is horrendously aggressed against with no chance of justice for her family. Yes, this is a problem that AP would exacerbate. Choosing your spouse carefully has always been good advice. However, if the wife’s lawyers checked the AP records and found there had been a substantial prize, despite her being a generally well liked individual, they would decide that the “unrelated” killer might not be such a random tragedy after all. And proceed to hire detectives to investigate the ex-husband’s financial records to find a similarly sized hole. Even if he expertly hid all his transactions with encryption and such, the sheer lack of other suspects may lead an arbitration committee to demand the husband prove his innocence. I assume hiring an assassin to initiate aggression will be a crime in Ancapland, but I will let others debate that. Like the threatened businessman who knows who his potential threats are, in the case of an innocuous unknown being the victim of AP, it will be easy to discover the few or single person that has the motivation to invest the significant money involved. AP, in fact, hurts the chances of the anonymous petty murderer, because the record of one’s prize is public. Anyone who cares to investigate the death of an AP victim can see exactly how much it cost. If the victim had few enemies, it is a simple matter to make the connection between the specific sum and the likely suspects. Compare this to the case of a low level bureaucrat that Murphy complains is just as vulnerable as the rest of us. He is right in saying that it doesn’t require one big bet, only lots of little bets. However, unless the bureaucrat has managed to piss off all those people placing the little bets, they won’t happen, and he is safe. If the bureaucrat has managed to do so then there’s probably a reason he deserves it. People in the phone book though, probably do not have multitudes of enemies, and thus are safe from all but an exceptionally wealthy psychopath, which I imagine are few and far between. As for the extortion scheme that Jim Bell rather awkwardly argued against and Bob accurately deflated. The problem there is that the extortionist needs to have enough money of his own to actually place the bet that will attract assassins to his victim. Fortunately, extortionists usually ply their trade because they don’t have any money. The thug could bluff, but if called on it, he has no bargaining chips in this case, like an old fashioned significant other duct-taped in the basement. If he actually does have the money and the victim calls his bluff, if he goes through with his threat, he has just spent a shit load of money to kill someone for no reason, and with no return benefit to the extortionist. Not a very profitable scam. If he does convince the target to play along, he still has to communicate his threat. Such exchanges usually involve some amount of negotiation, or complicated instructions that require communication. The extortionist has to sacrifice a lot of anonymity to pull his crime off. This weakness gives the presumably deep pocketed target plenty of opportunities to spend some of that ransom on private detectives to locate the extortionist. The criminal, in this case, has no human shields to prevent a raid. The benefit of AP is to allow anonymous assassination contracts, in both the case of the vengeful labor leader, and the crafty extortionist, both lose that shield and leave themselves wide open to retaliation from the greater resources of their chosen enemies. Another concern mentioned on the forum, is that the State, with its trillions of revenue will actually invest money into AP to off its political opponents. This is a pretty ridiculous proposal. First of all, the enemies of your enemies are not necessarily your friends. If the State pays an AP assassin to shoot some, say, ultra-lefty criticizing them, are we really that much worse off? In fact, I’d be overjoyed to see politicians taking out AP bets against their opponents for the most part. Why should a democrat spend valuable campaign money on advertising when he could just pay to have his republican opponent drop out of the race permanently? Libertarians are rare enough that I doubt we present a serious enough threat to the State compared to their fellow parasites scrambling for the best suck spot, that theyíd spend money to attack Harry Browne instead of their opponent in the primary who has a real chance of ousting them. Another problem with this supposed counter strategy is that it’s entirely unnecessary. If the State really wants to kill someone, they already have all the tools; they don’t need to spend money on AP. They could just give Lon Horiuchi his normal paycheck and have him snipe whoever they don’t like. It’s not as if they ever get in trouble for it, even when they aren’t exactly subtle. It doesn’t make sense for them to pay for secrecy they don’t need. Finally, this plan would backfire, because if the admins are anarchists, and they take a commission, then the State, by playing AP, is directly enriching someone who will re-invest his profit against State targets. Also, the assassins donít care who they kill if the money’s right. The State is also enriching people who will be just as happy to come back and shoot Statists, now with more resources to plan hits too. Bob concluded by essentially saying that the only way to anarchy is an enormous campaign of rational evangelism. He disapproves of the whirlwind anarchy in Somalia and similar power vacuums. I disagree. I see much more hope for building Ancapland out of the lawless ashes of a Somalia, than of gradually subliming the promised land out of the monolithic State in an America. If AP does prove the alarmists right, and crashes society into an apocalyptic period, (I do not think this is the case) still, such a turn of events will be in the long run an easier path to Ancapism than the intellectual erosion strategy. Murphy points out the example of the bloodless revolutions in Eastern Europe. To which I respond derisively, what revolution? They traded hard-line Russki-communism for soft line Euro-socialism. That’s even more of a joke than American style Republicrat lesser-evilism. Stasi agents all retired on embezzled millions, and now the Great Terror War is inviting domestic espionage back in force all across the Continent. The only revolution that arguably has ever made recognizable progress is the American experiment, which is notable for killing employees of the previous regime by the thousand. If Thomas Jefferson could have emailed digicash to pub brawlers in London, or scheming heirs in Buckingham palace, mad King George’s confused reign would have come to a deserved end before he could futilely attempt to reclaim his rebellious colonies. The point being, in order to get anarchism, I don’t think it’s a question of getting the balls to start sledge hammering the Berlin Wall and hope the Kalishnikov toting border guard respects the numbers presented by all your fellow civil disobeyers. If the only fall out is a different set of thugs being in charge tomorrow, there will, of course, be less State resistance than if the entire thug industry is being called into question. If you want real change as in no more thugs, ever, then the top thugs aren’t going to budge until they have no other choice. The ultimate conclusion then is that if anarchism takes a revolution of the non-bloodless variety, there’s no reason why the fighters shouldn’t be backed up by a means to get at the higher ups. Or better yet, replace the fighters entirely with anonymous assassins and strike exclusively at the heights of power. I know I don’t want to spend much time huddling in trenches. It undoubtedly sounds arrogant, but I would say that less than 1% of the global population has any concept of how the world (i.e. economics) really works, and of those that do, most have got it horribly wrong. However, when they are forced to suddenly make do for themselves in the absence of authority, as is the case of Somalia, Ancapism spontaneously appears without the presence of wise graduate student mentors preaching Mises. It sure would be nice, naturally, if Bob could go over and warn them off from accepting UN overtures of providing “stable governance”, but the point is they were able to find profitable anarchism on their own, with little to no knowledge of economics and certainly no deep respect for pacifism. All it took was the total destruction of their state, the means notwithstanding. On the other hand, if Murphy expects to get some percentage of the population to side with him before picking up a hammer, he will definitely be taking the long uphill route. Murphy says that a generation growing up surrounded by headlines full of dead famous people will be disastrous. I fail to see how this could be more damaging than the scores of generations stretching back into history that grew up with headlines of how great the State is. The Somalians lived through generations of war, where life was made quite cheap, yet now they are Africa’s best chance. If AP worked perfectly and stripped the state away by force in a relatively short time frame, people will be thrust into unfamiliar territory. No doubt in their confusion they will attempt to recreate State functions. These will be torn down again and again. Like a child getting its hand slapped every time it reaches for the hot stove, AP will discipline the world that concentrations of power are bad. In the meantime, if Murphy is able to patiently explain to the bewildered why this is the case, so much the better, but either way, there will be no more State, and they will not have a choice in the matter. Murphy is essentially advocating a Taking Children Seriously approach to enlightening the collectively childlike population. I would rather just smack them until they stop and maybe explain briefly afterward why. Lastly, it seems clear to me that AP is superior because it is a market process. People exchange value for perceived value. They invest their money for the benefit of removing aggressive people from society. On the other hand, Murphy is advocating an “educate the masses” routine that depends solely on him and his colleague’s dedication to the cause. Not to disparage his efforts, honestly, if anyone can do it, the current crop of anarchist intellectuals has got my fullest confidence. However, I really don’t think anyone is going to listen until they are already living in it. I see the economic wizard’s role as after the fact guides in the new wonderful world of anarchism wrought by AP and other market strategies. Once everyone is stuck in their regional equivalents of Somalia, and wondering what the hell just happened, Bob and co, will step in and say, “Hey, isn’t this great, look how much more we can get done now!” And people, who have been forced to find alternatives to formerly government offered services, and no longer obey regulations or sacrifice taxable income, will sit up and finally notice Bob, and say, “What the fuck? Why haven’t we always done this? Thanks, Bob!” Bob will then smile knowingly and go on a world wide lecture tour. Then from time to time, a few clueless bastards will try to “get all the guns and take over”. AP will mercilessly smite them. Life goes on. In the meantime, I await the next round of objections. **The article above is an opinion piece written in 2002 by the libertarian author Robert Vroman debating ‘The Jim Bell System’ with Adam Young and Bob Murphy. Vroman is well known for his editorial work writing for anti-state.com. ‘The Jim Bell System Revisited’ first published on anti-state.com on August 15, 2002, in response to ‘The Jim Bell System’** Op-ed Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any opinions, content, accuracy or quality within the Op-ed article. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any information in this Op-ed article. This article is a reprint of an archived editorial that was originally published on August 15, 2002. Image credits: Shutterstock, anti-state.com archive links, Pixabay, Fair Use, and Wiki Commons. Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section. You can also enjoy the easiest way to buy Bitcoin online with us. Download your free Bitcoin wallet and head to our Purchase Bitcoin page where you can buy BCH and BTC securely. The post The Jim Bell System Revisited appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

On November 26, a new Silk Road video was published that reveals underreported and never-before-seen information. The film called the “Silk Road Case: The Real, Untold Story” contains over 400 references to direct evidence from a wide range of sources. The organization Freeross.org published the video on Youtube and called it “the most comprehensive, researched narrative about Silk Road and Ross Ulbricht’s case.” Also read: The Silk Road Investigation: A ‘Pattern of Bad Behavior and Double Agents’ New Silk Road Documentary Discusses How Ross Ulbricht Handed the Reins Over to Another Individual Since the Silk Road marketplace was seized and Ross Ulbricht incarcerated, many facets of the case have remained a mystery to this day. The video published on Youtube on November 26 by the nonprofit organization Freeross.org tries to unravel some of the riddles behind the Silk Road investigation. “Silk Road Case: The Real, Untold Story” contains information that has never been publicly released before as well as underreported information from sources derived from various subjects, court filings, transcripts, trial exhibits, and affidavits. The Silk Road investigation was dubbed the ‘Schumer’s case’ after New York Senator Chuck Schumer read the infamous gawker.com article. Chuck Schumer (left) and gawker.com article photo (right). When Ross started the Silk Road, he called it a “free-market economic experiment” and he wholeheartedly believed “people should have the right to buy and sell whatever they wanted, so long as they weren’t hurting anyone else.” Just a few months after the market launch, the news outlet gawker.com published an article about the Silk Road, which went viral and eventually reached the ears of politicians and law enforcement. New York Senator Chuck Schumer called for immediate action against the Silk Road marketplace and at the time, it was called the ‘Schumer’s case.’ Ross Ulbricht’s laptop at a museum. Photo credit: Josephine Walsh Because Ross lacked the technical knowledge and programming abilities to run a marketplace as large as the Silk Road, he started asking friends for help. A close friend didn’t want anything to do with the market, so Ross turned to an anonymous individual. “A stranger provided the needed help and eventually took control of the site entirely,” the video’s narrator highlights. Moreover, the unknown Silk Road leader did an interview with the press shortly after Ross handed the market over. “I was in his corner from early on and eventually it made sense for me to take the reins,” the new DPR explained during his interview. In November 2011 following the transition, Ross told his close friend in an online chat room: Glad that’s not my problem anymore. Most people are unaware that after Ross gave up the reins, the new unknown leader of the Silk Road announced his infamous screen name on February 6, 2012. The newly appointed administrator told the public his name was the “Dread Pirate Roberts” (DPR) from the film “The Princess Bride.” Similarly to the movie script, DPR passed his name down to each successor and with the Silk Road, it’s still unknown how many DPRs existed. Magical Tux, Rogue Agents, and How the Justice System Failed Miserably After detailing that there were other players who filled the DPR role, the recently published video also discussed how the former Mt Gox CEO Mark Karpeles was a top suspect in the Silk Road case. Lots of the film’s narration stems from public information sources and explains how Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan thought that Mark Karpeles was involved with the market operations. From left to right: Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan, Mt Gox CEO Mark Karpeles and his assistant Ashley Barr. Der-Yeghiayan discovered a website on the clearnet called silkroadmarket.org that taught people how to use the market. According to Der-Yeghiayan’s investigation, its URL was registered with XTA.net. Then subpoenas revealed that XTA.net was owned by Mark Karpeles’ firm Mutum Sigillum. Der-Yeghiayan stated that Karpeles operated “hundreds of websites,” which “[made him] well-suited to operating a site such as the Silk Road.” The HSI agent’s reports also found that Karpeles used similar software to program his websites. In April 2012, Der-Yeghiayan believed that Karpeles and one of his associates, Ashley Barr, operated the Silk Road and controlled the DPR handle. The two rogue agents: DEA agent Carl Mark Force (left) and Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges (right). The comprehensive film also explains how another federal agent took control of the Silk Road case and took all of Der-Yeghiayan’s evidence. The video details how the same federal agent “leaked investigation details to two Baltimore agents” who eventually went rogue. DEA agent Carl Mark Force and Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges were later found guilty for manipulating the case and stealing millions of dollars worth of bitcoins. The two-hour film contains a lot of information from the server takedown, the setup and arrest of Ross Ulbricht, the deletion of evidence during the investigation and how the entire case was an abomination of justice. If you are interested in watching the “Silk Road Case: The Real, Untold Story” in its entirety, check out the video below. Have you seen the film “Silk Road Case: The Real, Untold Story”? What do you think about the fact there were multiple DPRs and the connection made with Karpeles? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. Image credits: Shutterstock, Silk Road Case: The Real, Untold Story, Freeross.org, Josephine Walsh, Wiki Commons, and Fair Use. Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here. The post Film Reveals Never-Before-Seen Information About the Silk Road Case appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

The Bitcoin Fund’s initial public offering (IPO) filing has been accepted by Canada’s Ontario Securities Commission. Despite previously rejecting it, the Canadian regulator finally accepted the fund’s IPO prospectus after a public hearing and a favorable ruling. Also read: Bitcoin ATMs Installed at 5 Major Malls in the US The Bitcoin Fund IPO Crypto-focused Canadian investment fund manager 3IQ Corp. announced on Thursday that it has filed a preliminary prospectus for the IPO of The Bitcoin Fund. More importantly, the prospectus dated Nov. 27 has been receipted by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) after previously rejecting it. The IPO will offer two classes of units at $10 each. The Bitcoin Fund is a closed-end investment fund established as a trust under Ontario’s laws, the company explained, adding that “the units will be an eligible qualified investment for registered investment accounts.” The fund’s investment objectives are to provide investors with long-term capital appreciation and exposure to bitcoin and its daily price movement in USD, the announcement details. Founded in 2012, 3IQ already manages two other private digital asset funds for accredited investors in Canada. It will act as The Bitcoin Fund’s investment and portfolio manager. The crypto-focused company has been working to bring a public bitcoin fund to market for Canadian retail investors since 2016. Success After a Long Battle 3IQ Corp. originally filed a preliminary prospectus for the IPO of The Bitcoin Fund with the OSC’s Investment Funds & Structures Projects branch (IFSP) in October last year. However, the staff raised a number of concerns after reviewing it, arguing that the fund was not in the public interest of Canadians. This resulted in the IFSP director rejecting the fund’s prospectus in February. The company then requested a hearing and a review of this decision. After a public hearing and several meetings, OSC Commissioner Lawrence P. Haber ruled that the staff’s concerns “do not warrant denying a receipt for The Bitcoin Fund’s prospectus.” The commissioner believes that it is not the role of securities regulators to approve or disapprove of the merits of the underlying investment being offered to the public — bitcoin in this case. Among other bullish statements, he said, “there is sufficient evidence of real volume and real trading in bitcoin on registered exchanges in large dollar size.” After addressing each point of concern raised by the staff, the commissioner ordered the IFSP director to issue a receipt for the fund’s prospectus unless new evidence was found to warrant a rejection. Several weeks later, the company announced that the regulator has finally issued a receipt for the fund’s prospectus. Nonetheless, the staff noted that “there are remaining steps for completion before a final offering prospectus can be receipted.” Particularly, Commissioner Haber’s order reveals that the final prospectus would include additional information regarding the offering such as pricing information and details regarding underwriters. The order further states: 3IQ also confirmed that it does intend to offer units of the fund to Canadian retail investors in all provinces and territories of Canada. The company has clarified that the preliminary prospectus is subject to completion or amendment, and the sale will commence after the regulator has issued a receipt for the final prospectus. What do you think of the OSC finally accepting the IPO filing for The Bitcoin Fund? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here. The post Canadian Regulator Green-Lights Bitcoin Fund IPO appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Since bitcoin hit its all-time high (ATH) in December 2017, crypto enthusiasts have wondered if BTC will touch or surpass it again. After the ATH in November 2013 at $1,156 per BTC, it took 1,170 days to touch the next ATH at $19,891 per coin. To many observers, the downtime has been very long after the rough crypto winter of 2018, but so far it’s only been 711 days since the last price high. Also Read: Bakkt’s Bitcoin Futures Shatters Records Amid Spot Market Turmoil BTC Traders Patiently Wait for the Next Bull Run Digital currency and BTC prices rebounded after the fall in 2018 but not everyone is convinced the bearish sentiment is over. Optimism exists because on December 7 at approximately 8:05 EST, BTC prices dropped to a low of $3,306 per coin but since then BTC has regained at least half of the percentage losses. Positivity jumped back in the summer when BTC rose 320% from the December 2018 low to a high of $13,311 on June 27. But after that, expectations dropped when BTC prices slid to the $7K region during the last week of October. The dip made people wonder if the crypto winter was still alive and well. However, on October 24 BTC prices popped again from a low of $7,446 to a high of $10,021 on October 26. Since then BTC prices have been dragging low again and 27 days later the value dropped under $7K to a low of $6,400. BTC has gained 5-7% in the last seven days and most digital asset markets seem to be in a recovery phase after the drops in value. One way to figure out how much longer it will be until the next ATH is by measuring how long it’s been since the last BTC price high. Historical data shows that between November 30, 2013 when BTC surpassed $1,100 per coin it took 1,170 days to surpass the 2013 ATH on February 13, 2017. Various factors drove the price up in 2013 like Mt Gox bots, the Cyprus banking crisis, and Chinese demand. Similarly, feverish retail demand, excitement for regulated BTC futures, economic hardships in Greece and Venezuela, South Korean demand, and the initial coin offering (ICO) boom helped fortify the 2017 ATH. When the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) initiated its BTC futures markets and CME Group (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) followed with its BTC derivatives products, spot markets were on fire. From February 13 to December 17, 2017, BTC jumped 1,629% to its current ATH of $19,891 per coin. BTC prices all time. 711 Days Since the December 17 All-Time High Another set of factors helped the price slide after touching near $20K per BTC. Crypto enthusiasts witnessed the regulatory crackdown in South Korea, heightened regulatory guidelines in the U.S., EU and other regions worldwide, and the ICO market got slammed with regulations and criminal enforcement. Still, there are 459 days left if we look at the days between the 2013 ATH to when it touched again in 2017. So far there’s only been 711 days between the ATH of $19,891 per BTC. Since the network launch on January 3, 2009 up until November 30, there’s been approximately 3,983 days between. Data also shows that BTC has been on the up roughly 3,573 days of its existence which turns out to be 89% of its life cycle. During the downtimes, however, crypto enthusiasts grow very impatient and this is quite prevalent on social media and forums at the end of 2019. Investing in cryptos is really not good for health, years of bear markets followed by a few days of bull run hysteria — And FUD all along,” one person remarked on Twitter this week. “707 days of bear market — I think we need a break please,” another crypto proponent said on Sunday. On November 25 after BTC prices were drifting downward another trader on Twitter stated: In terms of [percentages], we’re almost exactly where we were this many days after the bottom in 2014. The explosion out of the bear market was too quick and too irrational. This prolonged correction is normal. Markets never repeat, but they rhyme. This is just the 3rd verse. The wait has been long and many people believe that being patient will reap the most rewards as the overall value of cryptocurrencies, in general, is headed northbound. As news.Bitcoin.com’s Graham Smith reported on November 24, data shows that despite the market turbulence, BTC’s support lines remain intact. Just as no one was certain when the bear market would end after the 2013 ATH, this time around enthusiasts and traders are still guessing wildly. Analysts can log trendlines and trace historical patterns and we can measure days between ATHs as well, but we are mostly dependent on guesstimates and faith. What do you think about the days between the 2013 ATH and the current days between the $19K BTC ATH and now? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. Disclaimer: Price articles and market updates are intended for informational purposes only and should not be considered as trading advice. Neither Bitcoin.com nor the author is responsible for any losses or gains, as the ultimate decision to conduct a trade is made by the reader. Always remember that only those in possession of the private keys are in control of the “money.” Images via Shutterstock, Trading View, Bitcoin.com Markets, JP Morgan, and Coinlib.io. Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section. You can also enjoy the easiest way to buy Bitcoin online with us. Download your free Bitcoin wallet and head to our Purchase Bitcoin page where you can buy BCH and BTC securely. The post 459 Days Until BTC Hits Its Longest Streak Without a New All-Time High appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Crypto exchange Sideshift’s SLP token, SAI, has scored remarkable gains in value this week. Its price jumped well over 30% on Thursday, from $0.0310 per coin early on Nov. 28 to over $0.0450 a few hours later, and to a record high of 0.0473 on Friday, Nov. 29. Also read: Gocrypto SLP Token Starts Trading on Bitcoin.com Exchange SAI Maintains New Higher Price Range SAI is the native token of Sideshift AI, an automated coin swapping platform that allows users to quickly exchange around two dozen cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin cash (BCH), bitcoin core (BTC) and several stablecoins. Of course, it supports SAI as well, which exists as a Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP) token, an ERC-20 token and on the Liquid inter-exchange settlement network. It has a limited supply and only 210 million SAI will ever be minted. The token is currently used to pay out rewards that can be earned by becoming a Sideshift affiliate. The exchange plans to increase its implementation in interactions with its services and other vendors. That includes rewards for takers of exchange orders, rebates when using SAI to pay fees, discounts for SAI merchant payments, paying employees, contractors, service providers, and partners in SAI. In the future, the crypto may be used to “buy-and-burn” Sideshift AI profits, offer trade incentives, and create merchant discounts, the platform’s website details. For the better part of the past 10 days, SAI’s price stayed in the range between a low of $0.0272 and a high of $0.0346, data provided by markets.Bitcoin.com shows. A significant upward movement began on Thursday, Nov. 28, when the price jumped from around $0.0308 to a record high of 0.0473 the following day, an increase of close to 35% for a little over 24 hours. Following a modest correction, the token is trading at around $0.0464 at the time of writing, preserving most of its price gains. Currently SAI has a market cap of over $568,000 and a 24-hour volume of $4.45 million. Exchange Listings and SAI’s Utility Increase Its Value SAI is currently trading at three cryptocurrency exchanges – Sideshift AI, Coinex, and the Bitcoin.com Exchange. A major factor for the token’s price increase may have been the recent announcement of its upcoming listing on a fourth platform. Last Sunday, Nov. 24, Cryptophyl revealed it will be listing SAI in the first days of next month. The exchange also plans to airdrop 50,000 SAI tokens to holders of its own token, DROP. Users who have the coin in their wallets are eligible to receive token airdrops. The SAI-BCH market will go live at 09:00 UTC, Dec. 3, the announcement detailed. Andreas Brekken, the developer who launched Sideshift, told news.Bitcoin.com that the platform is excited to have its SAI token as one of the first SLP tokens listed on the Bitcoin.com Exchange. While price discovery is an efficient process, he noted, it can take time for market participants to research tokens and to have that reflected in the market. Commenting on SAI’s recent price spike, he further elaborated: The price increase of SAI is a result of buying pressure, likely from buyers having had time to research the utility of SAI and the promises of an automated coin swap service that doesn’t require users to register an account to perform trades. SLP tokens based on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain have been growing in number and approximately 5,000 have been created so far. They are issued by various projects and designed with a myriad of uses in mind. As news.Bitcoin.com reported in October, transactions using the SLP framework have increased significantly during the course of this year as well. The whole ecosystem has been expanding and besides many options to buy SLP tokens, you can also freely trade and safely store them. Bitcoin.com has been an active supporter of the adoption of the Simple Ledger Protocol, a system allowing anyone to create tokens based on the BCH network in a permissionless manner. One of the main reasons for the launch of Exchange.Bitcoin.com was to provide SLP projects with a platform to list their various SLP tokens. An example of joint efforts in that direction is the integration of Sideshift, the issuer of the SAI token, with the Bitcoin.com wallet, which allows you to swap BTC and BCH within your mobile wallet app. Have you used Sideshift and the SAI token so far? Share your experience in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The Local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here. The post Sideshift SLP Token SAI Gains Over 30% in Less Than 24 Hours appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

On Friday the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) announced the arrest of Ethereum Foundation member Virgil Griffith for allegedly “assisting North Korea in evading sanctions” by teaching “his audience how to use blockchain technology.” After the Manhattan U.S. Attorney revealed the news, the cryptocurrency community erupted in outrage. Also read: German Banks Authorized to Store and Sell Cryptocurrency in 2020 US Attorney’s Office Arrests Virgil Griffith for Teaching Blockchain Technology to North Koreans The U.S. Attorney SDNY and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced charges against Virgil Griffith on November 29 detailing that the American citizen violated the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Griffith is a well known member of the cryptocurrency community and worked with the Ethereum Foundation. U.S. law enforcement agencies allege that Griffith traveled to North Korea (DPRK) and gave “a presentation and technical advice on using cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to evade sanctions.” “Despite receiving warnings not to go, Griffith allegedly traveled to one of the United States’ foremost adversaries, North Korea, where he taught his audience how to use blockchain technology to evade sanctions,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers said. “By this complaint, we begin the process of seeking justice for such conduct.” Ostensibly Griffith also traveled to the DPRK to present at the Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference despite the Department of State denying him permission to travel to DPRK. “At no time did Griffith obtain permission from OFAC,” the SDNY press release stressed. U.S. citizens and businesses are not permitted to transact with persons and companies on the OFAC list. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list is a record of individuals and companies that are tied to targeted or sanctioned countries. “At the DPRK Cryptocurrency Conference, Griffith and other attendees discussed how the DPRK could use blockchain and cryptocurrency technology to launder money and evade sanctions,” the SDNY statement stressed. Griffith was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport on November 28 and reportedly attended court the next day. ‘A Government Corrupt at the Core’ After the cryptocurrency community caught wind of the news about Griffith’s arrest many people were angered at the U.S. government’s actions. “Teaching about blockchain technology is illegal now in the Land of the Free,” remarked Shapeshift’s CEO Erik Voorhees on Twitter. Some people mentioned how Griffith openly tweeted about getting a Visa to DPRK and that the U.S. government took notice. “Virgil’s situation was avoidable to be sure — But this may be a sign of things to come,” Coin Metric’s founder Nic Carter opined. “Ultimately anyone writing code or creating resources for crypto can be alleged to be helping hostile jurisdictions avoid sanctions under this loose standard, whether or not they intend to,” he added. The notorious U.S. presidential candidate John McAfee said that the American government was dishonest. “Virgil Griffith arrested for teaching North Korea how to avoid U.S. sanctions by using cryptocurrency and the Blockchain. See what our Government has become — A government corrupt at the core, declaring publicly available information a national secret,” McAfee exclaimed. Another person responded to McAfee’s statement and said: “Arrested for opposing the Wall Street/London Cartel.” The 36-year old Griffith is a resident of Singapore and citizen of the United States and his charges carry a maximum term of 20 years in prison if convicted. “The charge in the Complaint is merely an accusation,” explain the law enforcement agencies handling the case which include Counterintelligence, Export Control Section, and the Southern District’s Terrorism and International Narcotics Unit. What do you think about the U.S. government’s charges against Virgil Griffith? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. Image credits: Shutterstock, Twitter, U.S. Attorney SDNY, Wiki Commons, and Fair Use. Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section. You can also enjoy the easiest way to buy Bitcoin online with us. Download your free Bitcoin wallet and head to our Purchase Bitcoin page where you can buy BCH and BTC securely. The post Crypto Community Erupts Over Ethereum Foundation Member’s Arrest appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

On November 28, the creator of doublespend.cash, a web portal that tracks and collects double spend attempts on the Bitcoin Cash network, explained that only 1 out of 1,105 double spends succeeds when they broadcast one second after the first transaction. The website’s creator highlighted that in most cases “only when submitted simultaneously, can a double spend succeed.” Also read: German Banks Authorized to Store and Sell Cryptocurrency in 2020 BCH Proponents Discuss Double Spends, Honoring the ‘First Seen,’ and Current Zero-Confirmation Security Bitcoin Cash (BCH) participants have always been intrigued by zero-confirmation transactions and concepts like double spend proofs that could strengthen instant transactions. Essentially a double spend is when someone tries to spend the same BCH to two different addresses. Even though it’s not common, double spends on digital currencies like BTC, BCH, and BSV can occur. The website doublespend.cash tracks attempts and successful double spends on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain. A Reddit user called Dagurval, a Bitcoin XT software developer and the creator of the data site, explained on Thursday that in order for double spends to succeed, they have to be sent simultaneously. “Only 1 out of 1,104 double spend attempts succeeded when broadcast more than 1 second later,” the developer announced on Reddit. “The chart ‘Time between first seen and second seen’ shows the time difference between seeing the first transaction and the double spend,” Dagurval told BCH supporters. The developer added: It demonstrates that in most cases, only when submitted simultaneously can a double spend succeed. It also shows that miners honor the ‘first seen’ policy. After Dagurval posted the data, the BCH community discussed the risks of double spends and debated certain scenarios between a double spender and a merchant. “Good to know, so it means 0-conf is quite safe and [double spend] proofs will make it safer,” one user remarked. Others were not so convinced and said that “unless you can measure how many of these are deliberate attempts of fraud, you can’t somehow imply security from this figure.” “What [the data] means is that a merchant willing to wait three seconds to see if a duplicate transaction appears is roughly 99.9% safe in accepting an unconfirmed low-value transaction,” Reddit user Jessquit wrote in response to the implication of security. The discussion was a popular debate on the subreddit r/btc, as the conversation would have likely been censored on the subreddit forum r/bitcoin. Dagurval’s doublespend.cash statistics also had people discussing the idea of double spend proofs, a concept a few BCH developers have been experimenting with over the last few years. The Bitcoin Snack Machine and the Quest for Double Spend Proofs In July, news.Bitcoin.com reported on Flowee the Hub lead developer Tom Zander’s implementation of a double spend proof-of-concept. The protocol documentation was also authored by the software developer Imaginary Username and programmer Mark Lundeberg also contributed. BCHD and Openbazaar developer Chris Pacia wrote documentation for a system called the Double Spend Alert. In 2015, former Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn wrote about the subject in a paper called “Double spending in Bitcoin and how to make it harder.” Hearn’s research noted Gavin Andresen and Bitcoin XT developer Tom Harding’s work on double spend relaying. Harding has researched the subject a great deal and he discussed a double spend relay detection system in his presentation Native Respend Resistance at the 2018 Satoshi Vision Conference in Tokyo. The quest for stopping even the 1 out of 1,105 successful double spends that are spent simultaneously has been something developers have strived for since Bitcoin was first created. Even Satoshi Nakamoto discussed the topic of zero-confirmation acceptance back in July 2010. In a well known bitcointalk.org thread called the “Bitcoin Snack Machine,” Satoshi said: “I believe it’ll be possible for a payment processing company to provide as a service the rapid distribution of transactions with good-enough checking in something like 10 seconds or less.” During the vending machine conversation, Satoshi also talked about honoring the ‘first seen’ policy and a race between transactions sent fractions of a second ahead of each other. “The network nodes only accept the first version of a transaction they receive to incorporate into the block they’re trying to generate,” Satoshi said at the time. “When you broadcast a transaction, if someone else broadcasts a double-spend at the same time, it’s a race to propagate to the most nodes first. If one has a slight head start, it’ll geometrically spread through the network faster and get most of the nodes.” What do you think about the website doublespend.cash and the discussion about the 1 out of 1,105 double spends sent 1 second after? What do you think about the concept of double spend proofs? Let us know what you think about these subjects in the comments section below. Image credits: Shutterstock, doublespend.cash, Fair use, and bitcointalk.org. Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section. You can also enjoy the easiest way to buy Bitcoin online with us. Download your free Bitcoin wallet and head to our Purchase Bitcoin page where you can buy BCH and BTC securely. The post Bitcoin Cash Double Spend Statistics Invoke 0-Confirmation Debate appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Next year German banks will be able to manage cryptocurrencies like bitcoin after the fourth EU money laundering directive goes into effect. The directive passed in the German parliament, Bundestag, allows banks in the country to act as cryptocurrency custodians rather than rely on third-party custodial services. Also read: Germany Barely Avoids Recession, Economy Remains Stagnated German Banks Will Soon Be Able to Manage Cryptocurrencies According to the regional financial news publication Handelsblatt, in 2020 banking institutions from Germany will be able to manage cryptocurrencies for customers. Under newly enacted legislation, banks in Germany will be able to receive, store, and sell digital assets like bitcoin cash (BCH) and ethereum (ETH). Directive 2015/849 is an amended regulatory approach that was issued by the European Parliament and German politicians. The fourth EU money laundering directive highlights the fact that “electronic money products is increasingly considered to be a substitute for bank accounts.” Handelsblatt reporter Felix Holtermann reveals that the new directive’s “deletion of the so-called separation bid” makes it so German banks can handle cryptocurrencies without needing to use a third-party custodian. Prior to erasing this part of the guidelines, the directive would have required banks to use “external custodians or special subsidiaries” to store the cryptocurrencies. In 2020, German banks will be able to offer cryptocurrency solutions alongside bonds, equities, and traditional stocks. The banks will need to procure a license to offer digital asset custodial services, but the directive extends application deadlines. The consulting firm DLC’s executive Sven Hildebrandt believes the initiative puts Germany ahead of the game. “Germany is well on its way to becoming a crypto-heaven,” Hildebrandt remarked. “The German legislator is playing a pioneering role in the regulation of cryptocurrencies.” The cofounder of the crypto data aggregator website Coingecko, Bobby Ong, says that banks offering these types of services open financial institutions to a lot of opportunities. Ong explained on Friday: Just like how banks sell gold, stocks, unit trusts, and insurance directly to retail consumers now, I see no reason why banks will not offer cryptocurrencies for sale now. What’s taking these bankers so long? It’s a big gold mine waiting to be tapped. While Some Welcome the New Guidelines, Other Are More Critical of the Fourth EU Directive Local reports underline that the German banking association Bundesverband deutscher Banken (BdB) “welcomed the new regulation.” “Credit institutions are experienced in the safekeeping of client assets and in risk management, are committed to investor protection and have always been controlled by the financial supervision,” the banking association said. BdB added that the new directive makes it possible for investors to invest in digital assets domestically rather than searching elsewhere for foreign funds. The CEO of Binance Changpeng Zhao (CZ) emphasized after the German bank crypto announcement that “smart banks do this” and “Bitcoin [is] still not dead.” Other critics don’t find the fourth EU money laundering directive so inviting and friendly. “With the new AML law, it affects the whole EU — combine this with negative interest rates for billions of euros which are sitting in their bank accounts — Next year everyone in the EU will get a bill for holding fiat in their bank accounts,” a skeptic wrote. The fourth EU money laundering directive. Another detractor against German banks holding cryptocurrencies is Baden-Wuerttemberg executive Niels Nauhauser. The financial analyst told the Handelsblatt that the new directives will add more strain to consumer protection advocates. “If [German banks] are allowed to sell cryptocurrencies and keep them for a fee, they run the risk of turning their assets at risk of a total loss to their clients, without them knowing what they are getting into.” Nauhauser also stressed that banks already have to inform customers about the costs and risks associated with investment vehicles like bonds and equities. The Baden-Wuerttemberg analyst underlined that direct sales of digital assets will need the same attention. What do you think about German banks being allowed to store and sell digital currencies? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. Image credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Fair Use and the fourth EU money laundering directive. Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section. You can also enjoy the easiest way to buy Bitcoin online with us. Download your free Bitcoin wallet and head to our Purchase Bitcoin page where you can buy BCH and BTC securely. The post German Banks Authorized to Store and Sell Cryptocurrency in 2020 appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Three researchers have published a paper at Cornell University’s arxiv.org proposing a system called Optical Proof of Work (OPOW) to potentially be employed in Bitcoin mining. According to the paper, “heavy reliance on electricity has created scalability issues, environmental concerns, and systemic risks.” The authors state that silicon photonics could be used to shift mining costs away from energy-intensive to hardware-based costs, lowering the economic and environmental impact, adding greater security, and “democratizing” mining. Also Read: Canadian Company Commissions 3 Bitcoin Mining Units to Restart Oil Well Optical Proof of Work The system proposed by authors Michael Dubrovsky, Marshall Ball, and Bogdan Penkovsky is described as “a novel POW algorithm, Optical Proof of Work (OPOW), to eliminate energy as the primary cost of mining. Proposed algorithm imposes economic difficulty on the miners, however, the cost is concentrated in hardware (capital expense-CAPEX) rather than electricity (operating expenses-OPEX).” In other words, the paper’s proposal is that photonics could potentially enable much more energy efficient mining, which might have a number of effects on the industry. The “Optical Proof of Work” paper states that “Rapid growth and improvement in silicon photonics over the last two decades has led to the commercialization of silicon photonic co-processors (integrated circuits that use photons instead of electrons to perform specialized computing tasks) for low-energy deep learning. OPOW is optimized for this technology such that miners are incentivized to use specialized, energy-efficient photonics for computation.” Many questions remain as to the proposed implementation, however, centering on the economic realities of market competition and economies of scale, as well as changes at the algorithm level which would need to take place. Also, although the proposal is to make mining hardware much more specialized and difficult to acquire, unique from system to system (to disincentivize risks like 51% attacks), footnotes in the paper admit there could be exceptions. “Although not impossible, a coordinated effort to rent on the order of half of the hardware on a network would be difficult to hide and owners of hardware have an incentive not to rent to attackers, as the hardware is likely to lose value if the network is attacked.” Dubrovsky’s Thoughts on the Proposal Michael Dubrovsky, Co-Founder of Powx, and one of the three researchers behind the paper, shared some insights regarding the project with news.Bitcoin.com via email, detailing: “Our first live implementation will be with a partner network that will start using OPOW Q1- Q2 2020. We’re hoping to see broader adoption (eventually Bitcoin) after the first implementation proves the concept.” When asked about how photonics might affect competition in the industry, and whether large mining operations wouldn’t simply use their current energy capacity to power even more miners, he replied: It’s a bit counterintuitive. The additional [hardware] miners will buy with their energy savings will add some marginal energy use but if the hardware is ultra-energy efficient, you still get a huge energy savings. “There’s a section on this in the whitepaper but we go into it in more detail in our upcoming academic paper,” Dubrovsky elaborated. “We will release V1 in a few months. Heavyhash is not that complicated so it doesn’t require a massive library of code. We’ll also publish chip design files for our prototypes.” A prototype photonic miner setup without wiring. Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.05193.pdf The paper describes heavyhash as a custom hash function and states: “In its simplest form, OPOW is the Hashcash algorithm with our custom hash function, Heavyhash, designed specifically to run efficiently on optical accelerators while preserving all POW-necessary cryptographic security properties.” Some commenters on Dobrovsky’s Twitter post on the subject voiced concern with a proposed changeover which, in the researcher’s words, would be a soft fork to the existing protocol. It’s clear that both protocol-level and economic doubts remain, including questions regarding the totally new field of competition that would presumably be created for the best photonic chip, hardware, etc. Whether or not mining could ever be democratized in the sense of helping “the little guy” remains to be seen, and only the future will tell if photonics can indeed bring about significant change in the bitcoin mining industry. Do you think photonics has potential to change the bitcoin mining industry? Let us know in the comments section below. Images credits: Shutterstock, fair use. Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section. You can also enjoy the easiest way to buy Bitcoin online with us. Download your free Bitcoin wallet and head to our Purchase Bitcoin page where you can buy BCH and BTC securely. The post Photonics Bitcoin Mining Tech Aims to ‘Democratize’ Energy Use appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Not too long after embracing blockchain, Beijing has made it clear, one way or the other, that it didn’t mean Bitcoin. Increased scrutiny over the cryptocurrency sector and harsh measures against some companies have been implemented to supposedly protect citizens from scams. Sources say the government offensive has scared a lot of people employed in the industry and many have chosen to work from their homes rather than at the office. Businesses have been avoiding online chatter after rumors that a popular messenger is being watched closely. Also read: Another Bank Run Highlights China’s Brewing Financial Crisis Blockchain Not Bitcoin When Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), told a Politburo meeting in October that the country has to gain an edge in blockchain development, many in the People’s Republic, and beyond, took that as a bullish statement for the whole crypto industry. But blockchain is basically a cryptographic database technology that many governments have been vowing to exploit, a part of Bitcoin but not what makes it decentralized, permissionless money. Anyone who thought the Chinese leadership had cryptocurrencies in their plans should already know that was not really the case. For example, the digital yuan China is developing will certainly not be peer-to-peer electronic cash in the sense bitcoin is, and it won’t even be fully based on blockchain, as the Chinese have admitted. But if there’s one thing it is likely to be, that’s a tool allowing the Beijing government to exert greater control over money flows in what may soon be the world’s largest economy. Decentralized cryptocurrencies are simply not compatible with the concept of sovereign money, which a major geopolitical power such as China would like to uphold, not undermine. While it may be true that some Chinese projects have used the green light for blockchain development to promote their fraudulent schemes, it’s not the scams that took the brunt of the government pressure. “To let the average person know support for blockchain is not support for crypto, they started coming down hard on crypto,” a source from the industry, who wished to remain anonymous, commented for news.Bitcoin.com, further adding: A few companies like MXC, Whatsminer, Biki, Biss, and Binance, have been watched by the Chinese authorities. Whatsminer and Biss top management got arrested, I think. Apparently they are cracking down on crypto exchanges, targeting over 30 of them. Reports claimed that Binance, the largest among these platforms, had its office in Shanghai closed following a police raid. And although the world’s leading crypto exchange rejected them, denying it had a permanent office in the Chinese metropolis, few in the industry believe that the company, which maintains presence in numerous jurisdictions like Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malta, doesn’t have an operation in mainland China. Pressure on Binance Scares Many On Monday, Twitter commentator @DoveyWan shared a report by a Shanghai TV channel about the Binance office shut down. “It quoted both original news and Binance’s response of the fake news,” she said. The report also clarified what Binance’s office in Shanghai actually was. According to the TV station, it’s an outsourced customer representative team operating under an entity called Babi Finance which, as the tweet claims, is a Binance investment. Another Asian source contacted by news.Bitcoin.com commented: Apparently, the Shanghai Binance crackdown really scared a lot of people there. Crypto workers aren’t going to their offices anymore. They’re cracking down in Shanghai and Shenzhen, especially on crypto exchanges. Employees in China are working from cafes or their homes. It’s not surprising that Bitsoda, another Chinese crypto exchange, also closed down. “This week many companies are operating remotely. It’s a stopgap measure,” the industry source added. Besides, not only Shanghai and Shenzhen have been under government pressure. Noting that around 40 crypto exchanges have been visited by the authorities for allegedly breaking the established rules, the Sohu news outlet reported last week that that the Beijing police had raided the office of the trading platform Biss and arrested dozens of suspects. The message Beijing is sending is clear. And if someone has forgotten, an order issued by seven government regulators back in 2017, including the People’s Bank of China, effectively banned cryptocurrency trading platforms and coin offering projects from the mainland. Not all exchanges have suffered equally in the latest crackdown, however. While Binance has been targeted, other major players have reportedly been spared. According to the source acquainted with the situation on the ground, companies with ties to the government are doing fine. “It’s probably a temporary thing,” the source remarked, but “In China you need to have connections to operate safely.” Do you think the crackdown on crypto companies in China is only a temporary action? Share your thoughts on the subject in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The Local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here. The post Crypto Employees in China Work From Home to Avoid Government Pressure appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Popular U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase received a patent November 19, for an AI-driven compliance system which would monitor customer accounts, flagging those deemed non-compliant and recategorizing them for corrective action. Described as a “compliance determination and enforcement platform and method,” the new system would monitor a long list of KYC/AML-related details, including “level of due diligence that has been performed on the user account.” Also Read: US Government Worried Crypto Can Shift Power to Private Sector Coinbase Granted Patent The new patent for Coinbase’s “Self-learning compliance determination and enforcement platform” was filed on Sept. 21, 2016 and was granted just over three years later, last week, on Nov. 19. The patent details that “The compliance model core includes a factor entering module, a compliance score model, a comparator, and a flagging unit,” and will review user account details including but not limited to: age, “due diligence,” balance, transaction volumes, geographical location, previous reviews, if and how a user has verified identity, email domain, number of addresses, “number of bitcoin addresses transacted with,” number of bank accounts, IPs, phone numbers, verification attempts, and “the other party in the transaction.” The patent describes an enforcement mechanism, noting: “the user accounts that fail compliance are flagged to indicate non-compliant accounts … corrective action is executed only for the accounts that are flagged as non-compliant accounts.” If and when Coinbase intends to implement the newly patented system is unknown. While KYC and AML requirements and enforcement are the norm in mainstream crypto exchange these days, some seemingly arbitrary factors to be calculated by AI, such as “due diligence” are a cause for concern in those questioning the merits of such systems. Not to mention the sheer level of personal and private details to be examined. The Crypto Space Expresses Misgivings About the System Redditor u/Zinclepto addresses the Coinbase patent in a recent post writing: KYC measures in this space are extreme and beyond what’s required by law. Where does the line get drawn? He continues: “At what point do people stand for privacy anymore? These measures take control away from individuals and give them to financial establishments whose goals are self serving. Do people just simply not care about individual liberties anymore? If people do care, why are we collectively being so silent while this occurs?” Another Redditor says “Reported to authorities if the transaction is more than 2k? Wow that can’t be serious,” addressing a focal point in the patent that details: …the investigator also determines whether the transaction that has resulted in non-compliance is larger than $2000 USD (a predetermined amount). If the transaction is larger than $2000 USD, the investigator … considers filing a report with the relevant authorities. Other commenters call for permissionless, peer-to-peer trading privately, while still others question the very legality of the proposed practices. “You don’t have to do business with conbase. Find another exchange,” one user replies. KYC/AML Worldwide The phenomenon of ever-constricting KYC and AML requirements is not limited to Coinbase, however, and as regulations on crypto are still vague and lack uniformity in many political jurisdictions, exchanges are pressured to adhere to the strictest interpretations of laws possible to legally protect themselves. The inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF) continues to exercise great influence over the crypto space, since the release of its new guidance in June, and governments have little choice but to begin implementations to adhere to prescribed policies. What do you think of the new Coinbase patent and KYC/AML regulations? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The Local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here. The post Coinbase Patents AI Compliance System to Monitor and Flag Accounts appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

Armchair theorists love postulating the reasons behind bitcoin’s latest price rise or sell-off. From China FUD to exchange hacks, anything and everything is fair game for blame. Plustoken is the latest bitcoin bear-maker that’s being credited with the last three months of downward price action. But is the revenue from a ponzi coin really responsible for bitcoin’s drop, or are there broader forces at play? Also read: US Judge Denies Customer’s Plea to Quash IRS Bitstamp Inquiry Anatomy of a Scam In June, the ringleaders of Plustoken were arrested by Chinese police, putting an end to a ponzi scheme that is estimated to have netted almost $3 billion from gullible investors. The magnitude of major scams is often exaggerated for dramatic effect, but Plustoken’s numbers appear to check out: blockchain analysis has shown that at least 187,000 BTC – or about 1% of Bitcoin’s total circulating supply – was siphoned away by Plustoken. The nature of Plustoken’s scam isn’t particularly interesting; get rich quick schemes are a constant menace within the cryptosphere, luring in unsophisticated investors who have little experience of cryptocurrency. Not everyone hoodwinked by the project was an easy mark, however: many supposedly shrewd investors were also snared by the promise of guaranteed returns of up to 30%. Although little known in the western cryptosphere, Plustoken was a big deal in the east, heavily promoted on Wechat and reaching a market cap of $17 billion and $340 a token. The Plustoken story gets interesting upon its leaders’ arrest. Authorities might have detained the main culprits, but what they hadn’t seized was the bitcoins. After lying dormant for several months, the ill-gotten gains began to move through the blockchain and pretty soon were showing up on cryptocurrency exchanges. Plustoken marketing materials Two Pluses Make a Minus Hackers and con artists regularly liquidate cryptocurrency on exchanges in a bid to flee to fiat or swap coins so the blockchain trail goes cold. They’re generally savvy enough to offload their hot crypto in small tranches to avoid causing slippage – for their sake, if not the market’s. With a haul of 187,000 BTC, however, the Plustoken scammers had no easy way of liquidating quickly without affecting spot prices. As a result, they stand accused of wreaking havoc twice over, following up their initial scam by triggering a sustained sell-off. Ergo is a cryptocurrency researcher with a fascination for blockchain forensics. He’s also the leading source of knowledge on the whereabouts of the bitcoins Plustoken’s team trousered. I’ve been seeing a lot of Twitter FUD opining on miner capitulation in the last few days. This got me thinking… could the selling by the PlusToken scammers have had an abnormal effect on this market cycle? pic.twitter.com/VZGjyQAxaF — ∴ Ergo ∴ (@ErgoBTC) November 21, 2019 In October, Ergo published his analysis of the scammers’ attempts to launder their coins by moving them through Wasabi’s mixer. In total, 19,000 BTC were obfuscated in this manner, with a total of 54,000 BTC being moved through various mixers, often with poor privacy results due to the ease with which the large inputs and outputs could be linked. On November 21, Ergo laid out his thesis that the movements of Plustoken’s bitcoins are indicative of sustained and heavy selling pressure which has coincided with the market downturn that took BTC below $6,500 for the first time since May. Bigger Than Mt. Gox Ergo’s research has confirmed the initial estimates of 187,000 BTC raised by Plustoken to be correct. The team also amassed $120 million in ETH, which is currently unmoved, and $69 million in EOS which is also dormant. To put Plustoken’s bitcoin haul into perspective, it is more than 40,000 BTC larger than the Mt. Gox coins that are due to be issued to creditors upon settlement of the bankruptcy case. The crypto community has been nervously awaiting the release of the Gox coins, anticipating that their unlocking will crash the market. Given these long-standing fears, it is reasonable to attribute a similar outcome from the Plustoken coins being sent to exchanges. Cryptocurrency exchanges seem to be the final destination for the Plustoken bitcoins, with Huobi among the exchanges to receive deposits that can be traced back to the ponzi scheme. Ergo estimates that 1,300 BTC a day have been offloaded in this manner on exchanges, purely from Plustoken, adding: “To put that in perspective, that is over 60% of the daily block reward in sell pressure.” Based on the number of remaining coins to be offloaded, it is estimated that there could be another 6-8 weeks of heavy selling. If so, it will be into the new year before the market sees relief. With another scamcoin, Cloud Token, still being shilled on Chinese social media and raising millions of dollars of bitcoin, and the $49 million of ETH hacked from Upbit this week on its way to cryptocurrency exchanges, there may be more pain to come. Do you think Plustoken is resopnsible for the market downturn over the last three months? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock. Did you know you can verify any unconfirmed Bitcoin transaction with our Bitcoin Block Explorer tool? Simply complete a Bitcoin address search to view it on the blockchain. Plus, visit our Bitcoin Charts to see what’s happening in the industry. The post Is Plustoken to Blame for Bitcoin’s Sell-Off? appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article

On Wednesday, November 27, the U.S. Federal Reserve pumped $108 billion into the American economy using overnight repo tactics and 15-day repos. The central bank explained the move will stimulate more liquidity into the faltering U.S. economy, but economists from the St. Louis Federal Reserve branch say too much money-printing could lead the country into “economic ruin.” Also read: US to Strictly Enforce Crypto Rules Similar to FATF Guidelines New York Fed Injects Billions Into the Financial Sector The Federal Reserve has been pumping money into the American economy for weeks on end and many economists believe the stimulus won’t help. The central bank has slashed interest rates multiple times during the last few months and injected more than $270 billion to the balance sheet since September. The Federal Reserve is now adamant that interest rates will remain unchanged for now, but federal debt has surpassed $22 trillion this year. To tackle this issue the central bank has been injecting billions into the economy using repurchase agreements (also known as repos) with primary dealers, which are authorized by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Essentially, the Federal Reserve purchases massive amounts of securities and Treasuries in order to adjust the supply of reserve balances. The New York Fed calls the practice “fine-tuning the supply of reserves in the system.” On Wednesday, the FOMC authorized more stimulus intervention, which was done using two different repo schemes. Reports reveal that the NY Fed purchased “all of the securities it was offered” by injecting $87.95 billion in overnight repos and $21 billion in 15-day repos. Wednesday’s stimulus pumped a grand total of $108.95 billion into the American financial system and the NY Fed thinks operations like these will continue until mid-2020. Of course, after the massive money printing spree, free-market economists and crypto activists stressed that central bankers are doomed. The founder of Northmantrader.com, Sven Henrich explained that these days, central banks can’t even survive without the money injections. “The global economy is on crutches,” Henrich remarked on Thursday. “This is why it requires constant central bank intervention and hence the talk of fiscal stimulus everywhere — The plain truth is that it can’t do without. Organically it already is in recession — Intervention/stimulus/debt keeps kicking the can.” The market analyst added: 10 years after the financial crisis we’re exactly back to where we started: Requiring intervention, low rates and QE. Except now the world has $250 trillion of debt. And the only solution is to do more of the same — Genius. The "Call of the Day" comes courtesy of Pictet, which says: The Fed’s three rate cuts in 2019 are not enough to change the dynamics and trigger a V-shaped rebound; policy makers will have to resume rate cuts with a 25 bps cut in June, followed by three cuts of similar magnitude. — Robert Burgess (@BobOnMarkets) November 27, 2019 St. Louis Fed Paper: ‘This Type of Policy Often Ends in Economic Ruin’ Even economists that work within the Fed’s infrastructure think that burgeoning U.S. debt and massive central bank printing could lead to “economic ruin.” Scott Wolla, of the St. Louis Fed, and Kaitlyn Frerking, from the University of Missouri, in their latest research paper state that “the U.S. government debt is currently on an unsustainable path.” “Trends that are unsustainable will not continue because the economy will adjust, sometimes in abrupt and jarring ways,” the paper by Wolla and Frerking notes. “While governments never have to entirely pay off debt, there are debt levels that investors might perceive as unsustainable,” the St. Louis Fed paper highlights. “A solution some countries with high levels of unsustainable debt have tried is printing money. In this scenario, the government borrows money by issuing bonds and then orders the central bank to buy those bonds by creating (printing) money. History has taught us, however, that this type of policy leads to extremely high rates of inflation (hyperinflation) and often ends in economic ruin.” Economist and gold bug Peter Schiff believes all the QE (quantitative easing) tactics are an “abject failure” and the central bank’s financial fires cannot be watered down. “Soon the markets are going to discover that QE is permanent and that there’s never going to be a real reduction in the balance sheet,” Schiff recently wrote. “The balance sheet is going to grow into perpetuity and I think we’re going to have a dollar crisis. I think we’re going to have a sovereign debt crisis. I think this is going to end very poorly for people who have been enjoying the paper gains in this stock market bubble.” Despite the warning signs, left-wing leaders and Modern Money Theory (MMT) supporters like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, and Bernie Sanders are advocating the Fed print money to pay off government debt. According to believers in MMT, as long as the overall debt is paid off using government-issued tender and the inflation rate stays stable, ‘defaulting’ is near impossible. Politicians from both the left and the right seem to concur in unison that government deficit spending is fine. As of right now, central banks like the Federal Reserve also agree with the notion of deficit spending tactics and continue to orchestrate massive repos and monetary easing. What do you think about the Fed’s latest easing tactics? Do you think people will continue to seek a safe-haven in cryptocurrencies and precious metals? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. Image credits: Shutterstock, Twitter, Wiki Commons, Fair Use, Pixabay, and Yahoo Finance. Are you looking for a secure way to buy Bitcoin online? Start by downloading your free Bitcoin wallet from us and then head over to our Purchase Bitcoin page where you can easily buy BTC and BCH. The post Despite St. Louis Branch Warnings, New York Fed Pumps $108 Billion Into US Economy appeared first on Bitcoin News. View the full article