Earlier this week, a Florida man was robbed of $28,000 dollars cash during a Bitcoin deal gone wrong. Steve Manos (WOT:nonperson), met two men at midnight in the parking lot of a Boston Market "restaurant". Manos gave one of the men $28,000 cash in a brown paper bag, after which time a knife was pulled. The two men then ran from the scene. One suspect, Andre Allen (WOT:nonperson) was arrested because phone number. Manos gave Allen's to authorities. Beware the dangers of Bitcoin trapping with individuals outside the WOT. Sorry for your loss.
Author Archives: thestringpuller
LastPass Sucks, Always Sucked
Tavis Ormandy (WOT:nonperson) uncovered a serious security vulnerability in LastPass. Before disclosing the vulnerability to LastPass developers, Ormandy tweeted:
Are people really using this lastpass thing? I took a quick look and can see a bunch of obvious critical problems. I'll send a report asap.
Due to the number of suckers entrusting LastPass for every login, Ormandy received numerous panicked responses due to a postmortem published yesterday on a serious vulnerability that lets websites take passwords held by Lastpass at will. Peace in our time.
Royal Dutch Shell Shocked! Losses!
Declining oil prices significantly impacted the profits of Royal Dutch Shell, which reported the lowest earnings in over a decade. Reported profits sank 72 percent, for a total reported profit of $1.05 billion. Company leadership cites low oil prices, which traded around $44 per barrel last week which is up from $35.21 earlier this year, and $63.50 a year ago. The oil industry has shown no signs of recovery. Sorry for your loss.
EU Trying A Bitcoin Registry Seeing How Regulation Fails
The EU supposes that if they can't actually regulate Bitcoin, they can make a registry for it. The proposed central registry would be fed data through all cyrptocurrency wallet providers and exchanges operating within European Union member nations. Law enforcement agencies across the Europe Union would have access to the registry under the pretense anti-terrorism.1 Sorry for your laws.
Coinbase Fumbling Through Ether Huffing Fork Experience
Early this morning on Twitter, Coinbase's "exchange" GDAX announced they will temporarily maintain sole custody of the Classic portion of their Ether huffers' forked tokens for several weeks. The exchange released an announcement:
100% of ETC associated with ETH balances at the time of the hard fork are secured in GDAX cold storage.
We plan to allow withdrawal of an amount of ETC that corresponds to ETH balances at the time of the hard fork. We'll be working on this feature over the coming weeks and will provide updates via this Twitter account.
The freeze has some users on social media wondering if early post fork shenanigans at Coinbase might have threatened the firm's solvency. Sorry fork, your loss.
Florida Money Laundering Case Against Espinoza Dismissed
Michell Espinoza, arrested in an undercover sting for selling $1,500 worth of bitcoin had his case dismissed today. Surprisingly Espinoza's legal defense strategy was the same exact one Pascal Reid attempted to use to before being lowered into pederasty. Espinoza's case was dismissed on the ground that Bitcoin wasn't money under Florida law. Judge Teresa Mary Pooler wrote in her ruling:
The court is not an expert in economics, however, it is very clear, even to someone with limited knowledge in the area, the Bitcoin has a long way to go before it is the equivalent of money.
This may haven given Pascal Reid ample ground for an appeal to void his plea bargain, if he wasn't so eager to turn rat.
Miami Man Shot By Police With Hands Up, Survives
Friday while behavioral therapist Charles Kinsey was attempting to return a runaway autistic patient to a halfway house Miami he was shot by police. A 911 call to authorities was placed, in which the caller stated there was a man attempting to commit suicide in the street. When police arrived, the autistic patient was sitting in the street playing with a toy truck. Kinsey decided the best way to not get shot was to lay on the ground with his hands in the air, to appear as non-threatening as possible. Despite this strategy Johnathan Aledda fired three shots at the men, one bullet entered Kinsey's leg.
In the aftermath a second officer, Emile Hollant, was suspended after lying to investigators as part of a cover-up.
North Miami's police union representative John Riveria made a public statement trying to justify the shooting:
Many officers thought the white male had a firearm. Only much later, when we're able to Monday morning quarterback, do we find out that it's a toy. Only much later do we find out that the individual was autistic.
The justification seems to be a lie. In a cell phone video recording taken from a bystander at the scene, Kinsey can be heard yelling to officers the autistic patient was holding a truck and not arming a weapon. Even with alleged SWAT training Aledda not only missed his claimed target, he put a bullet in a black man.
In a moment of zen, Kinsey stated to a local news station:
When he hit me, I'm like, I still got my hands in the air.
I'm like, 'Sir, why did you shoot me?'
He said to me, 'I don't know.'
Coinbase Embraces Ether As Venture Continues Running On Fumes
Coinbase recently announced that they are adding support for directly huffing ether, allowing existing Coinbase customers to now use their bank accounts and credit cards to huff ether. As previosly noted, Coinbase is running on fumes which habituates those attached to the venture into huffing volatile organic componds as they desperately need income to account for their nominal $500mn valuation. Coinbase's uncontrollable burn and rate powerlessness over their addiction to external infusions of capital has forced the company to project their desire to huff the sweet vitriol onto their customers. Sorry for your loss.
HSBC Executive Arrested For Inside Trading
HSBC the bank known for being charged with enabling Latin American drug cartels to launder money, found one of its executives charged for insider trading Tuesday night. Mark Johnson, global head of foreign exchange trading as HSBC, was detained at JFK airport attempting to board a transatlantic flight to London. The complaint accuses Johnson of "defrauding client", and “corruptly manipulated the foreign exchange market to benefit themselves and their bank”.
In particular, Johsnon and his colleague Stuart Scott, who was also charged, made a $3mn profit by fraudulent trading in front of clients market buy orders, and then charging fees for their "work". They would essentially instantly profit from a price spike on their trades from client orders pushing the price up. Meanwhile Bitcoin regularly sees insider trading and the economic health that follows.
Roger VER-ified Censorship Free Paradise Censors
The convicted felon known as Roger Verified (WOT:nonperson), scraped the bottom of the reddit barrel when creating the lulz mine r/btc, in an attempt to create a forum for users interested in hijacking Bitcoin with bigger blocks. His claim was r/bitcoin, run by the scammer theymos (WoT: theymos), did not represent the views of the majority due to censorship. Verified further claimed his new lulz mine r/btc, was free of censorship, and thus represented an unbiased view. Upon publicly disclosing his subreddit's moderation logs, evidence quickly arose of an obfuscated censorship technique.
The automoderator bot, contrary to Roger VER-ified claims is optional. It is turned off by default, and upon being activated comes with a completely blank configuration. The logs reveal /r/BTC's automoderator deletes any comments from a user with -50 comment karma in that subreddit, a custom policy which required intentional implementation. Given the evidence Trilema reported earlier proving reddit is easily manipulated by bots, it is pretty clear the moderators are utilizing vote manipulation to censor unpopular opinions.