Larcenous Winkelvii Exchange Hits $2200/BTC, Recants

Shortly before Qntra experience significant downtime this week due to a hardware failure, the Gemini "exchange" reversed a trade that had on Friday November 13th taken the traded price of Bitcoin on that exchange to 2200 United States dollars per Bitcoin. Gemini's "account review team" along with their "executive management" by their own reports conspired to brand the trades a "customer error" and reversed the trades leaving some other parties to these trades with zero or negative balances as they had continued trading after the earlier trade. Winkelvii apologists are blaming fiat market "obvious error rules" for the reversal, though the volume of the trades that took Gemini out of concordance and to 2200 United States Dollars was only 80 Bitcoins suggesting a critically thin order book which makes all attempts at actually trading on that exchange the result of erroneous judgement.

Mizzou and Yale Experience Acute Unrest

Two major American Universities have been thrust into a state of unrest due to activism in the name of "social justice" and "diversity" late this fall semester. Yale University's crisis was triggered by duelling emails concerning Halloween costumes, while trouble at the University of Missouri began with a isolated incidents of drunks using racial slurs and has escalated into a series of boycotts hindering campus services. Continue reading

Former GAW Supporters Promote Perpetual Energy Scam

BadBitCoin.org, a self declared "scam fighter" and erstwhile attempt at a Bitcoin Better Business Bureau, defended the GAW miners scam well past its point of collapse. Now the operators of that site have taken to shilling for a new take on the classic perpetual motion/free energy scam on their twitter account.

Fiat Broker Broker Scottrade Hacked

This evening Fiat stock broker and online investment management portal Scottrade revealed it was hacked in an email to customers. The advised customers that critical personally identifying information was in all probability taken from their servers. In the email they offer that they have evidence they were breeched roughly around 2013 and 2014 without being more specific. Numerous fiat based financial services providers this year have not only had to weather attacks to their own infrastructure, but attacks which leveraged information attained in other breaches degrading their ability to provide services at all. Information publicly disclosed on the Scottrade breach so far was offered in an email to customers which availed them of a dubious credit monitoring service. Users of fiat services like Scottrade and of supposedly Bitcoin services that swear allegiance to customs of the fiat identity theft tradition are advised to stop doing that before you find yourself insolvent. The full text of the email is available below: Continue reading

USMS Schedules Final Silk Road Auction

The United States Marshals Service has announced its final Silk Road auction to sell 44,341 Bitcoins. The Auction will be held November 5th. The Bitcoins will be sold in 21 lots of 2,000 with a 22nd lot of 2,341 Bitcoin. Per the Marshals service this is the last planned sale of Bitcoins criminally seized from Ross Ulbricht by Preet Bharara and his co-conspirators. The full details of the sale along with a calendar of sale milestones is reproduced below: Continue reading

Pumpkin Extortion Attempt Squashed

The Daily Mail reports (archive) a 53 year old ex-soldier has been jailed after he attempted to blackmail an elderly pumpkin farmer into paying him £50,0001 in bitcoin. Fearing for his livelihood, farmer David Bowman reported the threat to police and was then instructed by the UK's Foods Standards Agency to plough the field of concern, resulting in the loss of £120,0002 of stock. Continue reading


  1. Approximately $75,000 USD. 

  2. Approximately $182,000 USD. 

Editor Under Fire

A heavily redacted document detailing the deposition of CoinFire editor Michael Johnson regarding what were threats presumably made by Homero Joshua Garza of GAW Miners and his cohorts has been released. While the document does not mention Mr Garza by name, it is clear to anyone familiar with the GAW Miners and Paycoin debacles that many of the numerous gaps in the document are a reference to him and his partners in crime.

The original PDF document is available here, and the text of that document is quoted below. It outlines threats of assassination as well as Michael Johnson's eagnerness to work with LEA due to concerns for his own safety as well as that of family, friends and colleagues. Continue reading

FDA Regulatory Overreach Allows Price Gouging

Recently news has been circulating that condemns Turing Pharmaceuticals for price gouging United States consumers of pyrimethamine1 an antimalarial which sells for under ten cents per dose in markets other than the United States where generic forms are available. Pyrimethamine is very popular in areas of the world where malaria is endemic due to its efficacy against most strains of the falciparum and vivax species of the Plasmodium malaria parasite, but in the United States it is typically used to treat toxoplasmosis in immunocompromised patients making it a niche treatment. Turing Pharmaceuticals managed to get a contract to exclusively market pyrimethamine in the United States thanks to FDA regulations. Because the FDA allows them exclusive marketing rights they can set prices arbitrarily, and if they can they must. Continue reading


  1. trade name Daparim, released in 1953