To date, the United States Marshal Service has allegedly held three auctions for a portion of the 144,000 bitcoins confiscated in the wake of the October 2013 Silk Road bust. These auctions are claimed by Qntra to have allegedly occurred due to the continued refusal by the USG to respond to FOIA requests for further information on the alleged winners of the Bitcoin auctions. To that end, Qntra conducted and has now concluded its own investigation into the identity of the winner of the largest sum of bitcoins in the auction held by the USMS on the 5th of March 2015. That person's identity can now be revealed as real estate advisor, property manager, investor and entrepreneur Larry Dean Silvey. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: March 2015
Blythe Masters To Head Wall Street Invasion
In what seems like a Wall Street invasion of Bitcoin, it was announced today Blythe Masters of precious metal price suppression infamy has accepted the position of Chief Executive of Digital Asset Holdings LLC. The company will build software to build a platform for trading "digitized versions of traditional financial intruments" such as CDOs or Options.
The Wall Street Journal which detailed the announcement in a recent article quoted Masters: Continue reading
Czech Ministry Fingers Heist Suspect
Czech Republic based Bitcoin exchange Bitcash.cz was allegedly hacked on November 11, 2013 and approximately 4000 bitcoins were stolen. The operator or operators almost succeeded in their efforts to remain anonymous with impunity, were it not for disgruntled users that named some suspected perpetrators in online forums. According to the 2014 yearly report of the analytics departmentt of the Czech Ministry of Finance, one of the named persons opened new bank account (in a Czech bank) and immediately transferred to there non-trivial amounts from an EU Bitcoin exchange, thus prompting a closer look from the Department. It concluded with a money laundering criminal complaint, which is currently waiting for court proceedings.
Mystery Startup Allegedly Raises Funds
A "stealth" startup, 21 Inc. is being reported to have allegedly raised 116 million United States dollars. The founder supposes the venture will do something to trigger mainstream Bitcoin adoption. A glance at their job advertisements (archived) suggests that this might just be another cloud mining venture as they appear to be looking for an "ASIC Design Engineer" and other hardware related positions.
Windows 'Stuxnet' Patch Left Vulnerability Open
Five years after Microsoft issued a patch (archived) to "close" the vulnerability that allowed the Stuxnet virus to propagate, Microsoft today issued another patch which purports to finish closing that same vulnerability. Reportedly rather than actually resolving the vulnerability the patch issued in 2010 merely increased the difficulty threshold for exploiting the open vulnerability. Continue reading
Alleged USMS Auction Winner Leaves Eldritch Message
Reuters reports that an auction for 50,000 BTC held last week by the USMS was allegedly won by three bidders who each took home 27,000, 20,000 and 3,000 BTC respectively. Spokesman for the USMS Lynzey Donahue confirmed with Reuters via email that the transfer of the coins is complete, but did not specify who the winners are. The distribution of the 50,000 BTC believed to have been purchased at auction is as follows: Continue reading
Bitcoin Stash Baffles Dutch Police
Police in the Netherlands have arrested three persons allegedly involved in cannabis cultivation and money laundering. During a raid in Sneek, Friesland police seized 135 cannabis plants, cash, jewels, and assorted other items. Allegedly a financial investigation shows the suspects received "440,000 euros" in Bitcoin, though how they received it apparently remains a mystery. Dutch legal treatment of cannabis involves a "tolerance policy" allowing for limited retail commerce in cannabis though production and wholesaling to retailers is prosecuted.
Digital Hawala For The Poor
Former Netscape director Bill Barhydt has decided to enter the remittance market using Bitcoin as the underlying technology of his platform Abra. Migrant workers who are employed seasonally will send earnings to their family back home through services the likes of Western Union and MoneyGram. These brokers tend to charge upwards of $15 for a $100 or more cash transfer. Abra believes these fees on remittances can be reduced by using Bitcoin and what they noted as their own version of a hawala network. Continue reading
Tor Developers Set Funding Goal
The Daily Dot reports that the developers of the Tor software and network have decided to set an ambitious fund raising goal for this year. Specifically they aspire to reduce the portion of their funding which comes from the United States government to under half of their total. Last year roughly three quarters of their funding came from the United States Government. This follows another piece published by Yasha Levine on March 1st where Levine highlighted that the "activists" behind Tor, Open Whisper Systems, and other popular "privacy" ventures receive funding from the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a Federal Agency born in the CIA which specializes in propaganda and psychological warfare. Continue reading
Bitcoin Mining Gains In Difficulty, Network Grows Stronger
With what is the fifth adjustment in the Bitcoin mining difficulty for 2015, the difficulty has increased to a new all time high of 47,427,554,951. Today's increase of 1.59% over February 22nd's difficulty of 46,684,376,317 represents the smallest gain for the network so far this year. The hash rate as of today's change stands at 339,499,662 GH/s.1
An average over the last 504 blocks. ↩