As the Silk Road show trial continues with Preet Bharara's team and Judge Forrest doing everything they can to suppress evidence that might allow for reasonable doubt, while permitting accusatory evidence without regard for its origin the battle has moved on to challenging the defense's witnesses. Continue reading
Category Archives: People
Barret Brown: The Myth of Plea Leniency
Last week journalist Barret Brown was sentenced to 63 months in prison after entering a guilty plea. In contrast to Government approved journalists handling information unfavorable to the regime, Barret Brown was charged as an accessory to activities he reported on while New York Times reporter James Risen was not charged as an accessory for the "espionage" he reported on. Being completely at the whims of the sentencing court the court determined: Continue reading
Reddit Drops "CryptoCurrency Engineer"
Ryan X. Charles has announced that he is no longer working for Reddit, a "social media" platform with questionable practices. He was hired in December of last year and tasked with producing yet another scam-coin. Redditnote has not materialized during the two months of Charles' employment, and although his statement implies that it will be abandoned, there is no official affirmation at this time. It is now unclear as to how Reddit will make good on its promise to "give back" 5 million dollars.
Greece Taps Anti-Bitcoin Video Game Economist as Finance Minister
One piece of fallout from the recent SYRIZA win in Greece's election is the appointment of Yanis Varoufakis, most notable for tinkering with Valve's Steam video game marketplace to the position of Finance Minister. Yanis Varoufakis is much less notable for in the spring of 2013 writing one of the many essays naively assailing Bitcoin as some sort of impossible fantasy incapable of anything, an essay that safely could have remained entirely without note. Unfortunately someone decided to promote him from advising ways for an arcade could extract more money from chumps to managing the finances of a populated area that is still by some miracle, in some form a sovereign state with a government. Let us consider some excepts beginning with the title: Continue reading
CSM Profiles Homero J Garza, Serial Entrepreneur
Today the Christian Science Monitor published an profile of Homero "Josh" Garza featuring selection from an interview they conducted before the North American Bitcoin conference. Most of the information in the profile is not going to be new to anyone who has been following the GAW saga, but the profile covers Garza's history of serial entrepreneurship from Optima Technology and Great Awk Wireless to GAW Miners. Continue reading
The Crypto-Mises Podcast Third Episode Is Now Available
Daniel Krawisz and Michael Goldstein of the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute have released the third episode of their podcast. The duo discuss malinvestments such as Litecoin, BFL and other well known scams as opposed to the few good investments and companies in the Bitcoin space to date such as Satoshi Dice and the Silk Road. The pair finish the episode with a startup idea of their own.
The third episode is available stream via YouTube, iTunes podcast subscription and to download in MP3 format.
Winklevii Intend New York Based Exchange
The Winklevoss twins are reportedly working on a New York based Bitcoin exchange that will exist in submission to all United States regulations. This is in spite of New York doing everything it can to write itself outside of Bitcoin in both its regulatory environment and legal climate.
Group Proposes Bitcoin Wallet Privacy Ratings Criteria
A group referring to itself as the Open Bitcoin Privacy Project has recently released a draft set of criteria for comment that they would like to use for evaluating and rating different Bitcoin wallets from a privacy perspective. The criteria include a number of points about wallet behavior alongside a number of other factors. The heading under which their proposed criteria fall include: Continue reading
Robert Faiella AKA BTCKing Sentenced To Four Years In Prison
Robert Faiella, better known as BTCKing and Charlie Shrem's partner in crime, was today sentenced to four years in prison for the part he played in selling USD $1 million worth of bitcoin to Silk Road users.
Using Shrem's BitInstant service, Faiella fulfilled orders by Silk Road users who wished to purchase bitcoins so as to then use them to buy their drug of choice via the Silk Road. Pleading guilty, former plumber1 Faiella told the court that his decision to act as a broker to people looking to purchase bitcoin came as a result of having no other way to support his family. Continue reading
Mushrooms anyone? ↩
Gavin Andresen On Future Blockchain Security: I Dunno LOL!
Undeterred in his attempt to fork the Bitcoin network, Gavin Andresen today posted an update to his blog in which he attempts to spread fear by implying users will switch to "substitute goods" or in other words an altcoin unless an increase to the blocksize is made. That portion of his update, bolding by USGavin himself, reads: Continue reading