Today Cryptome released 122 pages of documents (local mirror plaintext) related to Ross Ulbricht's Silk Road trial which had been sealed due to the ongoing investigation of Carl Mark Force IV. The order to unseal (local mirror) came into effect with his arrest. For what it is worth Preet Bharara's minions can be seen pleading to Judge Forrest that the terminally corrupted Baltimore investigation some how touches their investigation in no way. The full extracted text of the unsealed documents is below: Continue reading
Category Archives: Bitcoin
Obama Orders War On Computing And Bitcoin With New "Emergency" Order (Full Text)
Today United States President Barack Hussein Obama has issued an executive order under which he claims emergency power in order to direct the Treasury Department to take action against the property of persons engaged in "malicious" computing related activity. The description of activities determined to be malicious under the order includes is so vague as to potentially include any user of a computing system, but especially targets the normal work of security researchers in civilian employment as Rob Graham (local archive) highlights. The declaration of National Emergency establishes "hackers" as a clear and present danger to the point that people who have merely associated with or even unknowingly contributed any form of support to "hackers" can be subjected to sanctions typically reserved for war criminals, terrorists, and the leaders of drug cartels. Continue reading
BitPay showing more signs of trouble, no longer St. Petersburg Bowl sponsor
The merchant services space hasn't quite taken off the way "the community"1 anticipated. Despite the mass-adoption-via-merchant-adoption expectations of some folks, it turns out that spending Bitcoin doesn't send the price "to the moon" but rather ironically depresses the price as merchants cash out their coins to cover operating costs.2 I know right, who could have predicted ?! Continue reading
Those who talk about Bitcoin, eg. Reddit. These folks are, of course, in no way part of Bitcoin. ↩
This is quite the opposite of how fiat works, wherein the economy really does suffer if the velocity of money slows down. Bitcoin, on the other hand, rewards those who can delay gratification. Beautiful, isn't it ? ↩
OpSec Lessons From Carl Mark Force IV
Yesterday's news about two Federal Agents arrested for various allegedly corrupt and self serving actions has introduced a substantial number of complications that could jeopardize the government's case on appeal. The charging document (plain text document image) rather than merely affecting the future disposition of the Ulbricht Silk Road case offers a number of lessons on operational security people involved with can take to heart as well as a good number of laughs. Continue reading
March Bitcoin Foundation Update
March was an eventful month for the Bitcoin Foundation as mod6's latest update informs us. The highlight of the month was the release of a Bitcoin software reference implementation as version 0.5.3.1 which includes a build script to create statically linked binary executables from the foundation's source code release. Since the month's release work has continued on building and testing the reference software on a number of platforms, and work to continue porting the software to more software platforms and hardware architectures is planned for the future. Now that the foundation has released a reference implementation, they plan to develop a roadmap of future development goals and projects to pursue next. The full statement contains a number of acknowledgements recognizing the substantial number of people who have contributed to the Foundation success and accomplishments it has enjoyed in its first five months.
Blockchain Hits Milestone, 2/3rds of all Bitcoins Mined
Today block 350,000 was mined to the Bitcoin blockchain. Its commitment to the chain means 14,000,000 bitcoins will have entered circulation so far out of the 21,000,000 total coins. The mining of the final third of the Bitcoin monetary base will be a very different affair than the first third. Hobbyists running commodity general purpose computers have been replaced by specialists operating in data centers and running single purpose mining hardware which, incidentally, is becoming increasingly commodified. The next block subsidy halving is scheduled for block 420,000, by which point 15,750,000 coins will have been mined.
Federal Agents Who Persecuted Ulbricht Arrested
Two Federal Agents involved in the undercover operation to bust the Silk Road have been arrested for stealing money taken over the course of the Investigation. Arrested were DEA Agent Carl Mark Force IV and Secret Service Agent Shaun Bridges. Mister Force IV in particular is alleged to have stolen a number of Bitcoins from the Silk Road and taken possession of them personally instead of remanding them to Government custody as was expected of him as his theft occured in the course of his undercover work. Agents of the fiat system simply can not resist the allure of better money. Given that the investigating agents could not be trusted to not take Silk Road proceeds for their own use, the serious question of what other liberties were taken during the investigation remains.
Update: The full unsealed complaint is available here. Uncompressed images of the pages may be browsed here.
Sheep Marketplace Arrest
ChangeTip Hires Bitcoin Subreddit Moderator
Today Bitcoin subreddit moderator BashCo has disclosed taking a part time with ChangeTip, a social media company that has a substantial presence on Reddit. The disclosure, mirrored in full below, includes substantial flattery towards his new employer such as: Continue reading
Shavers Enters Not Guilty Plea
Yesterday the criminal case against Trendon Shavers has finally progressed to the point that Shavers could enter a plea of not guilty. This is in spite of his Ponzi scheme collapsing a full year before the arrest of Ross Ulbricht who has already been tried and convicted. Both Shavers and Ulbricht are targets selected for criminal prosecution by United States Attorney Preet Bharara. Criminal charges were filed against Shavers back in November 2014 in Manhattan after Shavers lost in a civil case brought by the SEC in September where he was ordered to pay 40 million dollars in damages. The SEC's civil case occurred in Shaver's home state of Texas. Continue reading