Bitstamp, the first and only fiat/bitcoin interface built out of two cans and a string, has announced they are moving their cans to new software which would put them on an XTCoin fork of the Bitcoin blockchain. The XTCoin effort has been dead in the water since September when MIT sacrificed their "technology review" in an attempt to make XTCoin politically palatable. There is no word on any potential plans by Bitstamp to add a third can or more string.
Category Archives: Altcoins
Clinton Found A Turkey!
In a clearly US-driven, desperate attempt to create some cover for a badly battered President Bahamas, Turkey uninspiredly decided to involve itself in the US-RU conflict over Syria. Transparently, the State Department judges that downing an old Russian plane might offer some opportunity to re-brand a multi-year string of painful humiliations the US president suffered on the global stage into a local conflict between local powers. As outright insane as this approach may be, it is perfectly consistent with the US tradition of denial and misrepresentation of failure, a tradition that ensured a century of constant, predictable and egregious failure while effectually preventing any possibility of learning, with the ultimately unsurprising result of ruining that country. Continue reading
North Carolina State Troopers On Food Stamps
In yet another example of provincial governments in the United States being unable to keep their promises of largess, a class action suit with half of North Carolina's State Police force joined as members alleges the state owes them substantial back pay and other promised compensation (archived). Some of the troopers are reportedly having to supplement their wages from the state with food stamps, Medicaid, and supplementary employment. North Carolina instituted pay freezes for state troopers in 2009. This move in addition to allowing the state to shift the burden of covering the cost of nutrition and medical care for trooper's families offers further savings to North Carolina's government as the lower frozen wage rate is used in retirement calculations for troopers leaving the force. Continue reading
Forever 21 Inc Tries Preventing Other Raspberry Pis From Running Software
Forever 21 Inc. raised $116mn in venture funding before a product or business plan was even announced. Earlier this fall the company announced the 21 Computer, a Frankenstein creation using a Raspberry-Pi 2 and a proprietary ASIC which will be obsolete soon given the continual difficulty increases. This computer can be bought for the low price of $400, which allows users to connect to 21 co.'s API a bastardization of the already functioning Web of Trust. Recently code was independently released allowing individuals to run the 21 co. software stack on a $40 Raspberry Pi, to which the CEO of 21 Inc. responded on reddit stating they will be patching the code to prevent non-21 Co. from connecting to their marketplace. Continue reading
Venture Capital Fuels Stupidity In Bitcoin Not Innovation
Venture Capitalists have been flocking to Bitcoin recently in what seems to be a poorly orchestrated fiat invasion. They intend to bring the problems of too much money to Bitcoin and its related "businesses". A very small fraction of the VC capital is hitting the market for Bitcoin, which may be an attempt to assert some sort of fiat control over Bitcoin through price suppression. Continue reading
EU Planning Bitcoin "Crackdown"
Reports are emerging that the European Union is planning some sort of "crackdown" on Bitcoin in the wake of the Paris mass shooting amid allegations that ISIS has some Bitcoins. This is in spite of the declared intention of ISIS and their actual movement to establish a precious metals based monetary system in their caliphate. Estimates floating around in the media suggest that if ISIS has a stash of Bitcoin, its value is roughly the equivalent of 3 million United States Dollars, a figure which is substantially lower than the value of some individual pieces of military equipment which has found its way to ISIS through the United States. Continue reading
Current Bitcoin-XT Incompatible with BIP-65
Last year Qntra reported on BIP-65 which adds a new opcode OP_HODL which prevents nLockTime transactions from being double spent before the nLockTime threshold is reached on the Blockchain. Miners following the developers of the "Core" Bitcoin client have been adopting BIP-65, with approximately 25% of the last found blocks claiming to be ready for the soft fork on the version string in the block header. If or when BIP-65 is triggered, it may spell trouble for Mike Hearn's Bitcoin-XT due to deliberate incompatibility. Continue reading
Larcenous Winkelvii Exchange Hits $2200/BTC, Recants
Shortly before Qntra experience significant downtime this week due to a hardware failure, the Gemini "exchange" reversed a trade that had on Friday November 13th taken the traded price of Bitcoin on that exchange to 2200 United States dollars per Bitcoin. Gemini's "account review team" along with their "executive management" by their own reports conspired to brand the trades a "customer error" and reversed the trades leaving some other parties to these trades with zero or negative balances as they had continued trading after the earlier trade. Winkelvii apologists are blaming fiat market "obvious error rules" for the reversal, though the volume of the trades that took Gemini out of concordance and to 2200 United States Dollars was only 80 Bitcoins suggesting a critically thin order book which makes all attempts at actually trading on that exchange the result of erroneous judgement.
US Supreme Court to Weigh Total Pre-Trial Asset Freezes
This week the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Luis v. United States in which the United States Department of "Justice" is arguing it may seize all of a defendant's assets including those with no possible "criminal taint" before a case goes to trial (archived). The Department of "Justice" is arguing that it may seize any property which could later be used to satisfy a judgement even though doing so completely obliterates the defendant's ability to mount a credible defense. The Department of "Justice" tried to use this argument against foreign national Kim Dotcom, and it was rejected by the local courts in New Zealand who recognized that actual justice and fair trials depend on the defendant having an opportunity to challenge the prosecution's allegations.
Preet Ups the Charges for Coin.mx Operators
Preet Bharara's office announced another round of charges for the operators of Coin.mx with the latest charges relating to a hack of JP Morgan and others (archived).