Category Archives: Fiat/BTC interfaces

Coinbase Partnering Up For Facial Verification As Relevance Continues Sinking

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Coinbase has partnered with a bio-metrics firm to enable facial recognition of customers as part of KYC compliance measures. (archived)

Officials from Jumio stated:

“Adding bio-metric facial recognition to Netverify was inspired by a need that impacts organizations across many industries, especially financial services with account opening and money transfers,” said Jumio CEO Stephen Stuut. “As evidenced by the millions of unauthorized accounts that were opened at Wells Fargo, it’s critical to look beyond existing multi-factor authentication solutions whenever any digital transaction takes place. The addition of biometric facial recognition, combined with ID verification, will not only help ensure that the individual in front of the screen is who they say they are.”

Coinbase is touted on the site as giving "customers a secure and seamless way for both investment managers and consumers to trade and exchange Bitcoin or Ethereum for traditional currency." Customers can have total confidence that their data and funds are 100% safe in the vaults of Buterin's waterfall.

Not Quite News Roundup Xtend 13 (TM)(R)

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Welcome to the thirteenth edition of the Qntra Not Quite News Roundup Xtend (TM)(R). The below events are alleged to have happened, but they are decidedly innocent of newsworthiness.

  • After 108 years the Chicago Cubs won the World Series1 against the Cleveland Indians.
  • CNN fired contributor and interim Democratic party chair Donna Brazile for leaking debate questions to the Hillary Rodham-Clinton campaign.
  • Rumours of China banning Bitcoin tempered the recent bull run reported by fiat/Bitcoin interfaces though after settling it still requires ~711 United States dollars to acquire a whole Bitcoin via this route.
  • Enthusiasm for the Zcash/Z-Cash/ZNC altcoin has already faded as scheduled. Who knew it would only take another week of mining subsidies hitting the market to crash the price?
  • Donald Trump-Clinton was rushed off the campaign stage in Reno, Nevada by the Secret Service.
  • Playboy Playmate Dani Mathers faces charges relating to a "body shaming" incident.
  • The University of Missouri Football team lost their 11th consecutive game in conference play. The team is now set to lose every game in their conference for the first time since 1971. This follow the University surrendering to a strike by the football team last year.

Sorry for your loss.

  1. Despite the name this is not an international contest. In the last World Baseball Classic, an actual international contest, the Dominican Republic won while the United States was eliminated by Puerto Rice, an island it occupies.  ↩

Bitfinex Publicity Spree Touts Changes But Security Unmentioned

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Bitfinex announced a recent swath of updates on reddit yesterday, none of which focused on their abysmal security or protection of customer funds.(archived) The changes mostly focused on cosmetic enhancements of the sort designed to hold a child’s attention for long periods of time, and keep them focused on pouring more money into the token scheme they hope will eventually help them recover losses.

Alternate Bitcoin Implementation Apes Reference Client In Removing Network Alert System

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The developers behind the "Core" fork of the reference Bitcoin client announced that they would be retiring the legacy "Alert" system in their client fork. The patch to remove the legacy Alert system from the reference client was already under consideration by the Bitcoin Foundation in November of 2014 and was considered a standard part of any reasonable build by the end of 2014.

Naturally, though being two years late to the party, the developers of the "Core" fork make no mention of the Alert system's previous removal from the reference Bitcoin client in their announcement. Further, developers of the "Core" client fork announced their intentions to fire the Alert system twice as part of their announcing its retirement.

Sorry for your loss.

Chinese fiat/Bitcoin Interface BTCC Opening US dollar Market And Remaining Closed To US

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The Chinese fiat/Bitcoin interface formerly known as "BTC China" announced they would be opening a United States dollar market. They attribute their decision in part to the Bitfinexodus. creating a pliable user base in search a place that isn't named Bitfinex. Naturally BTCC made it clear that while they welcome trading of the United States dollar, they have no plans to accept United States persons as customers. United States persons simply invite too many problems.

CenturyLink Acquiring "Level 3" As Internet Transit Routes Consolidate

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In a far lesser heralded acquisition than anything involving consumer recognizable names, CenturyLink began the process of buying Level 3 communications. Both providers mostly provide Internet pipes to smaller Internet service providers and other business customers though CenturyLink maintains a token number of residential customers.

Mainstream Media: Clinton Emails Already "Baked In" To Polls

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On this day, the ninth day before the United States presidential election, the talking heads of the United States mainstream media-political complex are in concert adopting a single position on the damage from the latest revelation of Clinton Criminality. Apparently the political damage to Hillary Rodham-Clinton from this latest news is already "baked in" to Hillary Rodham-Clinton's polling numbers, and this damage has been for some amount of time, perhaps even since the beginning of time itself.

This "baked in" theory spontaneously emerged among several dozen "independent" mainstream talking heads simultaneously. Naturally there is *no way* that this introduction of the "baked in" line could have been coordinated.

Not Quite News Roundup Xtend 12 (TM)(R)

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Welcome to the twelfth edition of the Qntra Not Quite News Roundup Xtend (TM)(R). The below events are alleged to have happened, but they are decidedly innocent of newsworthiness.

  • The price reported by fiat/Bitcoin interfaces has been bullish on the Bitcoin and bearish on the fiat sides with United States dollars sinking to less than 1/700th of a Bitcoin per and Chinese rembini to less than 1/4850th of a Bitcoin per.
  • The United States Department of Defense was recently revealed to be the largest purchaser of Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey. The Department utilizes the distiller's "By the Barrel Program" which includes tours of the distilling facility and meetings with the taster and master distiller in order to select particular barrels for purchase. Barrel pricing varies from 9,000 to 12,000 United States dollars per barrel due to variations in volume and is related to the premium pricing in effect for bottled "single-barrel" whiskies. A barrel is roughly equivalent to 250 bottles of the traditional 750 ml volume commonly referred to as a "fifth" and is only enough whiskey to sustain a dedicated solo hard drinker for a period of four to nine months.
  • Facebook may be in hot water with the Feds for playing a part in violations of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 through its practice of allowing any schmuck with a couple bucks to place a targeted advertisement. For its part Facebook protests that targeting people for their "ethnic affinity" in Facebook Ads is not that same thing as actually discriminating based on race. The timing of WaPo making a fuss of this is extremely suggestive.
  • Polish fiat/Bitcoin interface Bitcurex moved to shut down after your loss.
  • This week's altcoin drawing unwarranted attention is variably known as "Zooko Cash", "Z-Cash", and "ZEC" and drawing attention for having been released after substantial hype. ZEC is similar to Monero in that its privacy "features" fail against sufficiently panoptic observers. ZEC tokens found their way to markets soon after the Genesis block's minting and individual tokens are presently trading for more than individual Bitcoins due to scarcity though the exchange rate has been falling rapidly as more ZEC are mined and released to market. A full 10 percent of ZEC are set to be awarded to parties other than miners. With this kind of debut the stage is set for unprecedented levels of "your loss", we are very sorry for it.
  • Aspersing "Bitcoin" news outlet CoinJournal is in full "your loss" coping mode after Barclays SFYL'd their fiat bank account.
  • Vladislav Surkov's email was allegedly hacked. Mainstream sources are crediting "Ukranian activists" for the hack despite the CIA telling NBC News it was going to try this exact sort of thing on October 14th. Apparently Surkov used Microsoft Outlook.
  • "Open Transactions", which is Ripple before Ripple was a thing, was finally attached to a n00b friendly interface. The interface is attached to the "Stash Bank In A Box" hardware product. Sorry but you're late.
  • The United States and its coalition forces are continuing to support the Medes and other Persians in their effort to take Nineveh from the Assyrians.
  • The strained relationship between the GOP and their Presidential candidate has yielded a most unfair benefit. In down ticket races nearly all of their attack ads against Democratic party candidates also get to contain anti-Hillary attack ads while few down ticket Democratic party advertisements dare to attack Donald Trump-Clinton and the down ticket candidate at the same time.
  • In the mainstream media, the second most important political story of the week is receiving unsurprisingly little coverage.

Peace in our time.

FBI Reopens Investigation Of Hillary Rodham-Clinton's Emails After Wikileaks Reveals Deleted Emails Still Exist

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News emerged today that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation is re-opening their investigation of Hillary Rodham-Clinton's email habits and sloppy sysadmin record during zher tenure as Secretary of State. Public justification for this decision is based on the revelation included in the Wikileaks leaks that the 30,000 or so "missing" emails which hindered the initial investigation were backed up in numerous separate physical locations. This fact was either undiscovered by the FBI earlier through their lesser competence than the Wikileaker or intentionally ignored.

Or perhaps the decision to reopen the investigation was made because along with a certain humorous question being raised by the latest batch of Wikileaks, emails related to Doug Band's work for "Bill Clinton, Inc"(TM)(R) showed that some high ranking FBI officials had questionable relations with the Clinton family business.

Hillary Rodham-Clinton's electoral rival Donald Trump-Clinton today shockingly managed to stay on point in a speech where he repeatedly hammered Hillary on the stump for inhering the transcendental concept of corruption on Earth.

UPDATE: The official story is now that the new emails were found while investigating Clinton family friend Anthony Weiner for sexting a minor child.