Hemorrhaging social gaming "company" Zynga is seeking to top up on its diminishing funds by doing a sale and leaseback on its headquarters in San Francisco's Design district. This bezzle buck bolus should allow Zygna to continue bleeding well into the future. Zynga paid 340 United States dollars for each of the building's 670,000 square feet of floor space and may make up to 800 dollars per square foot in the sale based on local pricing trends (archived). This is a situation which could have created an opportunity to liquidate the firm and minimize losses for everyone, but it seems Zynga leadership has decided the bleeding must continue.
Category Archives: Altcoins
US "National Security" Crippling Business Opportunities
News emerged today that Western Digital's planned acquisition of SanDisk has hit a snag with Chinese giant Unis withdrawing its potential investment in the deal over concerns about a United States "National Security" probe. Unis was set to bring 3.775 billion dollars to the table through an investment in Western Digital before the United States government introduced this friction. An optimistic press release was issued today asserting that Western Digital is still committed to making the deal, but without the additional money from Unis resources to make the synergy as sweet as possible may be lacking.
John Deere Cuts Sales Expectation Amid Continued Corn Belt Pain
The already dismal outlook for United States agriculture got dimmer today as John Deere cut its sales forecast for the rest of the year (archived). Paired with the decline of the United States energy industry it is becoming clear that actual, productive economic activity the sectors of the United States economy most fundamental to sustaining civilized life is stalling.
4th Amendment Champion Dies Under Uncertain Circumstances
This past weekend United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died under uncertain circumstances at a resort in Texas. Initial reports suggested Scalia died of a heart attack and then later clarification came to instead describe the cause of his death as the cessation of continued heart beats. Scalia was found with a pillow over his head wearing unwrinkled pajamas (archived). It has not yet been determined if an autopsy will be ordered to rule out the very real possibility of foul play.
Antonin Scalia's most pertinent legacy was his staunch defense of 4th amendment privacy rights, frequently rejecting "law enforcement" abuses of the American people. As technology has pushed the ways "law enforcement" could abuse the constitutional restraints on their power, Scalia was often a dissenting voice on the court insisting that adding a computer to an abuse of due process doesn't make it any less of an abuse. With the criminal overreach of law and law enforcement in the United States, the fourth amendment restrictions on police action were one of the few legal means of recourse available against injustice by the law.
The departure of Antonin Scalia drastically weakens the opportunity for actual justice in the Ross Ulbricht case should its appellate journey take it to the Supreme Court.
Austrian Minister Seeks Constitutional Protection For Cash Payments
With many governments and businesses in Europe moving to abandon physical cash in favor of trackable electronic payments, Austrian Deputy Economy Minister Harald Mahrer has called for consitutional protection of the right to transact in cash for privacy reasons (archived). The European Union is currently debating restrictions on banknotes and coins in the name fighting of "terrorism" though central banks noise about negative interest rates suggests that European finance ministers advocating against physical cash may have ulterior motives.
As ClassicCoin Client Hits Release, Miners Formally Reject It
With the client designed to fork ClassicCoin from Bitcoin hitting release, numerous outlets are reporting a group representing pools with a substantial amount of the Bitcoin network hashrate have signed a letter formally rejecting the Classic fork. Who could have forseen ClassicCoin enjoying the same failure mode as XTCoin:
For all the ways the manufactured crisis around the ClassicCoin hard fork push is made to seem more polished than the XTCoin manufactured crisis, the results of the effort somehow seem still more underwhelming.
Maybe it's the part where back in August fiat markets were just starting to show indicators of an impending downturn, but now things are solidly falling apart? Could it be the full depth of the wealthlust inspired in various fiat "law enforcement" agents upon their exposure to Bitcoin's promise coming to light? How about the months long game of good cop/bad cop various fiat backed start ups have been playing in an effort to see just how many forks they might be able to sell some Bitcoin holders on. Perhaps it is just the fact that Bitcoin absolutely trounced fiat in every way that matters over the course of 2015.
If it seems like various fiat interests, outlets, and agents are getting more desperate in their attempts to alternately dismiss or insert crises into Bitcoin, it is because they are. That line Satoshi inserted into the Genesis block:
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks
is still there seven years later. That bit about what awaits fiat attempts to hard fork Bitcoin into something else remains one year later. Actual Bitcoin interests have abided the turmoil presented by various fiat/Bitcoin interfaces. By contrast fiat interests are struggling to handle fiat/Reality interfaces and are coping, as is their custom, through various forms of theft (archived). In the moral contest between Bitcoin's indifference to the hungry mouths of the world and fiat's theft from the mouths it promises to feed, there seems to be a clear winner. Sorry for your loss.
– From "Fiat Market Slide, fiat/Bitcoin Interfaces Follow In Friday Trading" published on Qntra January 16th, 2016
Embattled Ferguson Defies United States Department Of "Justice"
The embattled city of Ferguson in the frontier province of Missouri has refused to issue its consent to a "consent decree" sought by the United States Department of "Justice" which would end the troubled city as a going concern (archived). Since civil unrest struck Ferguson the small city north of St Louis has suffered financially with Moody's dropping Ferguson's credit rating seven steps, from a respectable Aa3 to Ba1 "junk" status all in one fell swoop this past September. The city with 21,000 residents and a roughly 12 million United States dollar annual budget if it consented to the decree would have been forced to, among other things, raise its level of "law enforcement" officer pay to the to 25th percentile for the region. The payroll bump alone is projected to generate approximately a million dollars worth of expenses for the city on its own. Other costs would include monitoring fees paid to the Department of "Justice" and an inevitable stand off with the firefighter's union over their salaries if a pay raise for police officers goes through. Ferguson's city government has resigned itself to Federal monitoring and other onerous provisions of the agreement, but they are taking a stand on the financial aspect as the numbers involved could lead to no outcome other than the dissolution of the city.
Steam Legacy Demolished
This morning a demolition crew used approximately 120 pounds of explosives to demolish the old Grainger steam plant's smokestacks in Horry County (archived). Gabe Newell was unavailable for comment.
US Department Of Education Driving Tuition Increases
A working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the United States identifies financial aid policies of the United States Department of Education as the primary driver of runaway tuition increases (archived). Rather than being driven by payroll of other costs to higher education institutions, the availability of easy federal money instead has institutions raising tuition in order to grab every cheap dollar they can. Of course this creates the substantial moral hazard wherein the easy money for institutions becomes a millstone by which fledgling Americans are chained by debt to the Federal government.
Falling Aluminum Prices And Unforgiving Electricity Prices Force Noranda Aluminum Bankruptcy
Today Noranda Aluminum, a wholly owned subsidiary of Apollo Global Management, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Contributing to the Noranda Aluminum's dire position is an inability to buy electricity for its New Madrid, Missouri smelter that justifies continued smelting at current aluminum prices. Aluminum is at present trading pennies above its 52 week low of 0.65 United States dollar per pound. Aluminum last traded consistently above 1 United States dollar per pound in 2011, then briefly traded around 1 dollar per pound around February to March of 2012, and since then aluminum prices have been locked into a clear, if fitful, downward trend.