Quebec Regulator: Bitcoin Businesses Need A Licence

Operators of Bitcoin ATMs and exchanges in the province of the "economic shithole" known as Quebec, Canada must now obtain a licence from the Autorité des marchés financiers after amendments were made by the AMF to the Policy Statement to the Money Services Business Act.

The requirement of a licence now means that businesses operating Bitcoin ATMs and exchanges in Quebec will now be obligated to keep a record of financial transactions in addition to verifying the identity of customers. Continue reading

Bill Would Ban Federal Employees From Porn Breaks at Work

The Federal Times reports that if a new bill introduced by North Carolina Republican Representative Mark Meadows becomes law, the viewing of pornography on United States Government computers by its employees would be prohibited. It is unknown what effect this ban would have on the morale of United States Government employees seeing as in some of the more forlorn agencies it can take two to six hours of pornography viewing to make the workplace environment bearable.

Summary of MPEx Stocks & Funds January 2015

Monthly statements from stocks listed at the MPEx exchange have been released for January. Official reports are available at Trilema. Here are some highlights, with assets listed in order of market cap1 :

MPEx (S.MPOE, market cap 403,020) reported a net profit of 520 btc, with 500 btc coming from new account fees. The MPEx exchange has seen a slight uptrend in volume over the past several months, the January volume was the highest since April of last year. Continue reading


  1. Market cap data was calculated on 10 February 2015, current data is available at www.btcalpha.com/mpex/stocks/ 

Purported Silk Road 2.0 Dataset Up for Auction

Someone who describes their self as a having been "hired by Dread Pirate Roberts a/k/a Blake Benthall as lead programmer for Silk Road 2.0" is offering for sale a dataset which they allege contains numerous record relating to and source code for running the Silk Road in its second incarnation. The first portion of the sale is occurring on Darkleaks, an information market which is advertised as being trustless and provably fair. Continue reading

HSBC Clients Victims of Probable Social Engineering Attack

Private financial information on a number of customers of HBSC's Swiss operations have been leaked. The Guardian and the "International Consortium of Investigative Journalists" have latched on to the leaks in order to shame HSBC for providing financial services and to wealth shame HSBC customers for having money and desiring privacy at the same time. Continue reading

There is nothing new in the world. Except for the history you didn't know.

From the defunct Bruce Wagner1 Bitcoin podcast2 :

Bruce Wagner : When was the last time you chatted to satoshi
Gavin Andresen: Um… I haven't had email from satoshi in a couple months actually. The last email I sent him I actually told him I was going to talk at the CIA. So it's possible , that…. that may have um had something to with his deciding.

Yes, it is… possible.


  1. One of the Early Bitcoin Morons ™. Pedophile / gay prostitute / showman with the camera in demo mode. 

  2. Specifically, "The Bitcoin Show: Special Bitcoin Conference Coverage: 08/20/2011" – discussing an event in June 2011. The original website (onlyonetv.com) has been purged, but the podcast itself is still available from various sources including, ironically, Apple's iTunes.