Author Archives: Aaron 'BingoBoingo' Rogier

Butterfly Labs Allowed to Reopen

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The Kansas City Business Journal is reporting that the judge in the Federal Trade Commission's case is allowing Butterfly Labs to continue business operations under court supervision. From the court order of Judge Brian Wimes:

"Plaintiff fails to show any continuing violation of the alleged misconduct. Plaintiff argues defendants' past conduct suggests they are likely to return to this business model and related representations in the future. But, as previously discussed, the court disagrees."

Butterfly Labs will be required to submit monthly reports to the court outlining progress in shipping products, processing refunds, and improving corporate governance. Other litigation against Butterfly Labs continues including cases in both Missouri and Kansas.

Vice Fingers Alleged Silk Road 2.0 Mole Account

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Vice Motherboard is alleging that the account used by the FBI inflitrator into the Silk Road 2.0 was named 'Cirrus', and that the user had notably at one point been a staff member of the original Silk Road. This conclusion was reached through a process of elimination. Vice also reports that some people involved in Darknet markets had suspicions about this user for some time.

Judge Rejects Florida Man's Bid to Dismiss Case

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Florida Judge Fleur Lobree dismissed Pascal Reed's motion to drop illegal money transfer charges in an case relating to him selling roughly $25,000 worth of Bitcoin to a Secret Service agent in a sting last winter. Reed's lawyer argued that as merely a token of value applying Florida's money transmission laws to individuals as opposed to corporations would set a horrifying precedent:

"The statute was intended for the exchange of money for money, If you extend it to anything of value, then any customer using a credit card to buy something, anyone holding a yard sale and accepting cash, is a money transferer."

According to Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle two other people were arrested as a result of this sting targeting "individuals engaged in high volume Bitcoin activity."

Silbert Syndicate Wins 48,000 BTC at auction

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Barry Silbert has self disclosed on twitter that his bidding syndicate has won 48,000 BTC in the recent United States Marshal's Service auction. Tim Draper had earlier announced winning the other 2000 BTC up for bidding. Silbert's tweet:

Announcement: Pleased to share that the syndicate organized by & our trading division won 48k bitcoin auctioned by US Marshals

9:32 AM – 9 Dec 2014

Blockchain.info Discloses Vulnerability Window

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On their blog, Blockchain.info has disclosed that a routine update left them serving insecure code to customers using their wallet between 12:00 AM and 2:30 AM GMT today. All customers who used the Blockchain.info web wallet to interface to create wallets, generate addresses, or send transactions are reported to be affected. The problem given the scope appears to be that Blockchain.info was serving weak pseudo-random number generating software.

Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl Preview

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Today the 2014 NCAA College Football bowl match ups were announced and the University of Central Florida Knights (9 wins, 3 losses) will be facing the North Carolina State Wolfpack (7 wins, 5 losses) in the Bitcoin St Petersburg bowl. The St Petersburg bowl which presently carries the Bitcoin name was born in 2008 as the magicJack bowl, before serving as the Beef 'O' Brady's bowl from 2009 to 2013. The game will begin at 8:00 pm Eastern time December 26th at Tropicana field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team and air on ESPN. Let's take a look at the teams: Continue reading →

Sergio Demian Lerner Hired By Vessenes' Foundation

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Vessenes' Bitcoin foundation today announced it has hired Sergio Demian Lerner as the foundation's "Core Security Auditor" and he is intended to work on security aspects of the Bitcoin Core fork of Satoshi's Bitcoin implementation. Sergio Demian Lerner is scheduled to appear at the laBITconf bitcoin conference in Buenos Aires on December 7th, 2014. The Vessenes' foundation also announced its intention to offer release candidates for version 0.10 of their Bitcoin client in the next week.

Von NotHaus Gets House Arrest

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Reports are coming out that Bernard Von NotHaus has been sentenced to six months of house arrest. He was convicted in 2011 for minting a precious metal backed private currency called the Liberty Dollar which he intended to have rival the Federal Reserve note. Von NotHaus had been described by prosecutors and law enforcement officials as a terrorist for encouraging private persons to barter with silver and gold coins as an alternative to using United States Dollars. The Liberty Dollar was introduced in 1998. Von Nothaus was warned in 2006, raided in 2007, indicted in 2009, convicted in 2011, and finally sentenced December 3rd 2014. Von Nothaus had faced potentially 40 years in prison and a loss of millions of dollars, but the United States Attorney only managed again, a sentence of six months of house arrest.