Bitcoin mining pool BTC Guild has just announced their intention to cease operations no later than June 30, 2015. This was announced by eleuthria on tardstalk, where all dead and soon-to-be-dead businesses go to announce "official" news. Continue reading
Category Archives: Bitcoin
17-year-old Virginian Pleads Guilty to Tweeting About Bitcoin and ISIS
The Bitcoin badmouthing continues as reports are coming in that Ali Shukri Amin of Manassas, Virginia1 is pleading guilty to "conspiring to provide material support to terrorists" by helping fellow Virginian Reza Niknejad2 to fundraise for his jihadi mission in Syria3 using the one and only cryptocurrency. Leveraging some 4,000 Twitter followers and a personal blog, the honors student and "promising young man"4 from Osbourn Park High School is apparently a "public safety" concern and now faces upwards of 15 years in prison. Despite being only 17-years-old, Mr. Amin is being tried as an adult in the United States District Court Eastern District of Virginia.
Mr. Amin's lawyer, one Joseph Flood of Sheldon, Flood & Haywood P.L.C., now finds himself in the unenviable position of being just as much of a failure as Ross Ulbricht's lawyer, Joshua Dratel.
Not to be confused with the smaller Manassutten, Virgina, home of the ever-so-bear-wary garbage police. ↩
Who is still "at large." ↩
To fight with ISIS against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. ↩
According to none other than Andrew McCabe, assistant director of the FBI's Washington field office. ↩
Exodus From New York Begins
In the wake of New York's adoption of regulations which seek to regulate rather than submit to Bitcoin, Erik Voorhees has taken his altcoin exchange startup ShapeShift.io and taken it out of New York. Voorhees previously acquired the fledgling accountless Bitcoin gaming site Satoshi Dice leading it to a long reign as the most popular Bitcoin gambling site of the time. Stock in Satoshi Dice was traded on MPEx as S.DICE where it similarly enjoyed a long reign of popularity until Voorhees sold the site in full to close the security as part of a settlement with the United States Security and Exchange Commission over his first Bitcoin startup FeedzBirds. The exodus of businesses from New York, the United Kingdom, and other jurisdictions that wish to regulate themselves out of relevance in the Bitcoin space is likely to continue.
Popescu's Response to Bharara's Ulbrict Sentencing Commentary Inquisition
MasterCard Requests Regulation Break Bitcoin
In response to the UK Treasury’s call for information on digital currencies last November, MasterCard has submitted a letter in which asks for more regulation of cryptocurrencies. From the original text: Continue reading
Ministry of Games: Eulora Enters Public Beta
Business at a craft table with other players and NPCs.
On June 1st in the monthly report of the S.MG MPEx asset (also traded as pass-through on Havelock Investments), source code for Eulora client were published. Several days later also Windows binaries for the Eulora client followed. Work on releases for other platforms and on a game manual is ongoing. Continue reading
Foundation Report Brings Bitcoin Client Performance Improvement and Testing
This month's State of Bitcoin Address issued by the Bitcoin Foundation largely covers the submission and testing of two patches which promise to greatly reduce the memory usage of the Bitcoin reference client. The two major patches submitted are named "Orphanage Thermonuke" and "Transaction Orphanage Amputation" and in tandem they have the potential to seriously clamp down on Bitcoind's memory footprint and could lead to Bitcoin nodes running on more kinds of hardware. The patches work in tandem to drastically alter the Bitcoind client sync mechanism in a radical way. Continue reading
Some Other People Sentenced This Month in US Courts
A few hours ago Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to a life of incarceration for convictions related to operating a website. Let's look at some other sentences handed down by American courts recently:
Terry and Victoria Smith (archived) were sentenced to seven years in prison by a St Charles County, Missouri court for keeping their six year old child with autism in an excrement filled cage. The judge in the case, Ted house also imposed a fine of five hundred dollars on each parent. Back in 2010 police, paramedics, and a case worker visited the Smith's home after receiving a tip through a child abuse hotline and found the Smith's autistic son locked in the cage. The seven year sentence is the maximum that could be imposed in this case. Continue reading
Gavin Threatens to Quit Bitcoin Development and Join Hearn's Fork
Today on the Sourceforge hosted Bitcoin-development mailing list Gavin Andresen has threatened to leave his present group of Bitcoin software developers over their objections to his demands for a rapid hardfork of the Bitcoin network. In the event his demands are not met Gavin plans to join Mike Hearn's Bitcoin-XT project which is a fork of the Bitcoin client where Hearn implements patches that Gavin's current affiliated developers find too risky to implement in any mainline Bitcoin client. If Gavin defects to Bitcoin-XT he plans to work with Hearn to lobby merchants, miners, and businesses to move to Bitcoin-XT. Previously Mike Hearn was responsible for the March 2013 Bitcoin network crisis. The full text of Gavin's message is mirrored below for posterity. Continue reading
Former Vault of Satoshi Customers Can't Collect
The Brantford Expositor reports that Vault of Satoshi still has a number of customers whose funds have not been returned, even though Vault of Satoshi ceased operations back in February. Expositor reported Susan Gamble along with general allegations against Vault of Satoshi's operators present the story of a customer, Scott Campbell: Continue reading