After 146 years of continuous operations the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus has announced they will be ending circus operations in May of this year. In their 145th year the circus cut elephant performances from their programming due to regulatory pressure.
Category Archives: Closing
Weakened Kryder's "Law" kills Bit-company
Despite investment from the likes of Samsung, Pelion, DCM, First Round, Horizons, and Andreessen Horowitz, cloud storage provider Bitcasa CEO Brian E. Taptich announced on the now-defunct firm's webpage today (archived) that the firm had lost its bet on the unending continuation of Kryder's Law to power its growth by bringing its costs close to zero.
Over $22 mn in 2011 – 2013 turkey dollars1 was poured into the firm, which employed upwards of 50 staff at its peak in its efforts to offer unlimited on-the-go cloud storage for USD $10 per month. Under pressure from "abusers" of the service, Bitcasa dropped the unlimited storage offering and shifted to a more typical per-terabyte pricing strategy in late 2014, putting it directly in competition with better funded rivals like Dropbox, Box, and Google, and dooming it to failure.
There's no word on where former clients such as Hong Kong's Hutchison Telecom have turned to in their time of need, or whether Mr. Taptich has finally admitted to himself the poisonous mistake of taking bad money.
This is a more important clarification than it may first appear. Consider that a dollar traded at parity with bitcoin in 2011 and was only about $100 for most of 2013. ↩
Circle Exits Bitcoin/Fiat Exchange Business
Circle, the USG promoted fiat/Bitcoin interface faced by Jeremy Allaire, is exiting the currency conversion racket.
Last Remains Of ChangeTip To Be Buried
Spam "Bitcoin" tipping service ChangeTip has finally decided to bury the rotting corpse of its company, months after most of it's employees were acquired by AirBNB.
Reddit user Nick_Changetip stated the following in their reddit announcement:
In the spring of 2016, ChangeTip’s employees were acqui-hired by Airbnb, where most of us work today. Since then, we’ve been searching for the best outcome for ChangeTip, and unfortunately the only remaining option is to shut it down.
At the end of November 2016, all tipping functionality will be deactivated, and the site will be put into withdrawal-only mode for people to collect their funds. The site will remain up for a number of months to allow users to withdraw their funds, and we will be reaching out to users to notify them.
We recommend you close your ChangeTip account. You may withdraw any remaining funds via BTC withdrawal, or you can donate your funds to Charity when you close your account from the settings page.
The move marks an end to the lulz that have graced the pages of Qntra on several occasions. Victoria van Eyk (WOT:nonperson) was unable to be reached for comment on the announcement.
Clinton Thug Janet Reno Dies
Janet Reno, lead prosecutor of the first Clinton Administration's war on the American people has died. Janet oversaw terrorist campaigns against numerous victims including a the Branch Davidians, Montana Freemen, Richard Jewell, Wen Ho Lee, and an uncountable number of others. Her tenure as Attorney General opened with the immolation of 76 members of a religion of peace. Reno's cause of death is listed simply as "complications of Parkinson's disease" without further details being provided.
Failing Radioactive Waste Tanks At Hanford Site Put Pacific Coast On Edge
Various news sources are reporting that as the nuclear waste containment tanks at the Hanford Site along the Columbia River in Washington State age well beyond their 50 year service life leaks are increasing with at least one tank in a condition that could charitably be described as complete failure (archived). A United States Department of Energy Politruk described the horrific outcome as an "anticipated" side effect of efforts to empty the failed tank. The Hanford site is a part of Manhattan Project National Historical Park and administered jointly by the National Park Service and the Department of Energy. Continue reading
BitBet Settlement Transaction Broadcast And Confirmed
Today BitBet receiver David Francois signed and broadcast the transaction settling BitBet's outstanding affairs and the transaction was swiftly confirmed. The transaction
a0f12a33413ec3a38e3ae931068febec133b083d72810fc586a8b1c5f0d7922a
was confirmed a block height 408158. Further the BitBet auction winner has received the concern's non-cash assets though they do not appear to have put them to active use at this time. The raw transaction is presented below in the native hex format and decoded: Continue reading
The Parting Of ChangeTip Continues
Micro payment service ChangeTip continues to exhibit spasmodic death throes as it announced that users will be required to contact support if they wish to tip amounts in excess of 25 USD. Last week Qntra reported that the service itself is still seeking a buyer after the majority of it's employees were snapped up by AirBNB. ChangeTip support is limiting user deposits to $100 Users of the "service" still seem to be unaware that one can simply send any amount of Bitcoin desired to a person's public address without limits or incurring additional fees.
Darknet Market Nucleus Offline
Popular darknet market Nucleus has been offline for nearly a week, leading many users to speculate that yet another exit scam is in the works. The market was holding roughly 5,000 BTC in deposits for vendors and users. No message from /u/nucleusmarket has been forthcoming on reddit's r/darknetmarkets sub which seems to be the preferred meeting place on clearnet for users of such marketplaces.
BitBet Auction Closes
The auction to sell BitBet's non-cash assets has concluded with Znort987 offering the highest bid at 86 Bitcoin for the assets. The final hours of the auction saw a flurry of bidding activity that drove the final price nearly ten times higher than Saint Stanislav's 9 Bitcoins which was the high bid for much of the duration of the auction. Pete Dushenski was bidding actively before he ceded the contest of economic will to Znort987, and Dushenski further offered a statement on the matter after he surrendered the contest.
BitBet reciever David Francois stated to Qntra that he thinks the auction went pretty well. In his announcement of Znort987 as the auction winner Monsieur Francois stated that after payment is received he plans to publish settlement details within a few days and push the signed settlement payment to the Bitcoin network after the details have been available for public review.