Regulators in the United Kingdom have announced they will begin applying anti-money laundering rules on digital currency exchanges. The British treasury offers that the move will magically promote innovation and lessen criminal activity. This move however in reality means something other than what Reuters' press release on behalf of the Treasury supposes. Continue reading
Category Archives: Bitcoin
Bitcoin Foundation Reaches Release
The Bitcoin Foundation chaired by mod6 and ben_vulpes has announced its first release milestone. The release dubbed 0.5.3.1 by the foundation consists of a set of patches applied to the original 0.5.3 Satoshi codebase and recipe for combining it all into a static Bitcoin daemon build. This release removes a substantial amount of cruft from the original 0.5.3 release including hooks for Qt and Windows builds along with the problematic alert system and universal plug and play. This release works on Linux with supported release for other platforms planned in the future. The release tarball is available here.
Largest Bitcoin Bet Resolved
The largest Bitcoin bet in terms of absolute value, where on BitBet.us Mircea Popescu laid down 1000 BTC of his own funds on the proposition that Bitcoin would outperform Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway class A stock has been resolved as "No" with Bitcoin's exchange rate having suffered over the past 12 months. A year ago Mircea announced the bet on his blog Trilema and further declared that to hedge the bet he had sold Berkshire. Asked about how he felt about the bet's final outcome he offered: Continue reading
Coinbase Compliance Chief Resigns
The Washington Free Beacon reports that the Chief Compliance Officer of Coinbase has resigned. Chief Compliance Officer Martine Niejadlik resigned Coinbase after spending a bit more than a year with the organization. The Free Beacon notes that recently investors and regulators have been critical of Coinbase's "outreach" efforts where Coinbase has noted that Bitcoin does not respect international sanctions as well as Coinbase's failure to definitively achieve licensing in every US state it claims to operate.
Polish Bitcoin Embassy Closed
According to a post on a Polish language Bitcoin forum the Polish "Bitcoin Embassy" has closed. The operators report physical assault on at least one person affiliated with their effort along with a number of threatening communications directed at the embassy. The original announcement: Continue reading
Missouri Secretary of State Orders Slaughter to Pay Civil Penalties
AMC/VMC 'CEO' Kenneth Slaughter has been ordered to pay civil penalties of over $30,000 for multiple violations of Missouri Securities Act. Violations include, but are not limited to: offering/selling unregistered securities, making untrue statements and omitting to state material facts. Continue reading
Highlights From February 2015's State of Bitcoin
mod6 released the Foundation’s monthly State of Bitcoin Address on the Foundation’s mailing list. The Bitcoin Foundation accomplished a good amount throughout the month of February: Continue reading
Overdose Case Leads to Money Laundering Charges
A law enforcement investigation into drug overdoses in the Grand Forks, North Dakota area has lead to one of the case's defendants facing money laundering charges in addition to the drug related charges, for reasons that seem to entirely involve the particular defendant having at one point used Bitcoin for something. The 20 year old defendant's drug related charges include "conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute controlled substances resulting in serious bodily injury and death." Continue reading
Seals With Clubs Shutters
On an announcement replacing their normal front page one of Bitcoin's longest tenured poker sites, Seals with Clubs, has decided to close their doors citing "Operational Security" concerns. They cite without specifics several events which occurred around February 11th, 2015 as being the catalyst for the decision, offering that if Seals with Clubs continued as presently structured it would be "in a perpetual state of jeopardy." They are advising users to withdraw their funds as soon as possible. Continue reading
Your Disk Controller and You
A recent publication by Kaspersky Lab (mirror) describes the first publicly-confirmed instance of a Microsoft Windows 'trojan' capable of infecting hard disk drive firmware. For every word that's been written on the subject so far, ten thousand words of disinformation, FUD, and general-purpose obscurantist rubbish are floating about – eagerly passed around by spambots disguised as 'independent bloggers' and fleshy meat-puppets alike. Expect no shortage of 'product' from the well-funded – but, interestingly, not especially competent – FUD agency charged with spreading confusion and misplaced skepticism after this and every other Snowden-related tidbit. Continue reading