Citizens of The Most Serene Republic of Bitcoin are celebrating the first anniversary of the unveiling and signing of Bitcoin's Declaration of Independence.
Category Archives: Bitcoin
ProtonMail Confirms Ongoing Profitability of Negotiations (For The Terrorists)
As reported by ProtonMail itself (archived), the Swiss security theatricians have followed FBI-recommended best practice and caved to the demands of terrorists: Continue reading
Theymos Threatens Coinbase's Social Media Privileges
Brian Armstrong, CEO of the YCombinator incubated startup Coinbase has been vocal in supporting BIP-101. He claims Coinbase will begin using full nodes with BIP-101 code patched in sometime in December if no other proposal reaches "consensus". Theymos who moderates the Bitcoin subreddit and Bitcointalk, threatened to ban Coinbase representatives if they were to begin promoting software that implemented BIP-101 to the public before a consensus is reached.
Fiat/Bitcoin Interfaces Experience Week of Extreme Price Volatility
Ransomware Ring Busted, "Decryptors" Rushed by Adware Vendors
Shortly after an FBI agent publicly encouraged ransomware victims to pay off their attackers, some arrests and leaks have lead to the release of a number of private keys maintained by some ransomware authors. Allegedly all of the keys for Coinvault and Bitcryptor ransomware have been acquired and persons alleged to have connections to the schemes have been arrested. Adware vendors Bitdefender (archived) and Kaspersky Labs (archived) have released free adware1 tools to decrypt files related to these ransomware products, though caution is advised as the decryption tools from these providers and those from others have the potential to be at least as malicious as the original ransomware.
It is important to accurately categorize software according to what it really does instead of what it is marketed as. Their free products advertise their paid products and their paid products advertise still more premium paid products. ↩
Interview with David Francois on Building a Real Bitcoin Business
Operating a Bitcoin business is difficult and, a lot of times is the first step down the road which brings pretty much 9x% to crime within six months to a year (archived). With the excess influx of Venture Capital into companies pretending as to have any involvement with Bitcoin, I sat down with David "davout" Francois CTO of Paymium, formerly known as Bitcoin-Central, to talk about the fundamentals from his personal experience in developing a Bitcoin company that can survive the ruthless climate of the world of Bitcoin. Continue reading
Ethereum Bet Update
The bet over Ethereum's ability to make it out of 2015 alive previously covered on Qntra has climbed to more than 209 Bitcoin in total wagers. The odds have shifted with 35% of the wagers now predicting Ethereum's demise while 65% largely in early wagers stands hoping Ethereum just might have a future. Since September 25th only 1.45807 Bitcoin in new bets have come in in favor of Ethereum. At present Ethereum is trading around 0.0016 Bitcoin per Ether token a in a substantial and sustained decline from their peak price in August. Further bad news came for Ethereum near the end of September when Buterin revealed his foundation backing Ethereum was spending at a rate that would leave it insolvent.
LSE Report Reveals Dismal Performance of VCs in Bitcoin
A new report by Dr. Garrick Hileman and Danqing Ying of the London School of Economics reveals some interesting and noteworthy facts and figures about the state of the fiat-facing Bitcoin economy – that Tacoma Narrows bridge of finance that exists largely in the minds of government regulators and social media "experts" – from which, some highlights: Continue reading
Carl Mark Force IV To Be Sentenced Monday, Prosecutors Request 87 Months Imprisonment
Insubordinate United States Government Drug Enforcement Agent Carl Mark Force IV will be sentenced at a hearing on Monday. Reports are that Prosecutors are only requesting a sentence of 7 years and 3 months of imprisonment for Force IV who committed crimes against the United States Government as opposed to Ulbricht's life sentence for simply seeking the freedom to act outside of the United States Government. Force IV announced his intention to plea guilty back in June.
Trouble Hits Purse.io Customers
Reports have been popping up on various social media forums claiming that funds held on behalf of users had been disappearing from the retail intermediary operation Purse.io beginning this weekend. In a blog post (archived) Purse.io reports account password reset emails were triggered in an unauthorized fashion, though they denied missing user funds until a recent update. Purse.io insists users of two factor authentication methods they support were unaffected, though there are reports on various forums disputing this as well as the scale of the theft.