Minh Nguyen who previously was most notable for starting the venture capital funded spam fountain Plaxo has allegedly murdered his ex-wife's husband. Nguyen allegedly killed the man in the victim's own home. Plaxo raised $28.3 million in venture capital funding trailblazing new frontiers in spam proliferation before being acquired by Comcast in 2008.
Category Archives: Shitware
LizardStresser Hacked, Customer Details Leaked
The Guardian reports that the Lizard Squad's LizardStresser serviced has been hacked, and reports of arrests of various members of the group continue to trickle in. All customer user names and passwords were stored as plaintext on the server. Postmortem statistics reported on the service include: Continue reading
Roger Ver and America's Emigration Dilemma
Last week Roger Ver revealed that the United States Embassy in Barbados has denied his requests for a visa to attend some Bitcoin related conferences in the United States. As reported by Ver his requests for a visa are denied because in the Embassy's determination he lacks sufficient connections to his new homeland of St Kitts and Nevis to prevent him from overstaying his visa and essentially immigrating back into the United States illegally. This incident highlights a number of ways in which the United States acts on the international stage not as a peer state with others, but as a rogue state. Continue reading
The Xoom Theft and the Future of the Dollar
Despite Xoom's vague assertion that "it doesn't think that customer data or customer money was involved in the Dec. 30 theft," the heist –consisting of an amount of dollars most holders of the currency can only dream of ever obtaining, as the vast majority of dollars are held by 1% of users, marks another foreboding blow to the future of USD. The value proposition for the average person just isn't there, and for the users attempting to send their hard-earned cash to families in need back home, dollars are looking downright evil. In fact, the only real use for dollars would be doing something illegal. "It's a mirage, basically. Stay away from it," say Bitcoin's major investors. Some are even speculating that dollars could be used to fund terrorism and pose threats to national security. What nation's security? The. Clearly, dollars will never work as a currency.
Remittance Company Xoom Loses Corporate Cash To Fraud
Xoom's Chief Financial has resigned amid news that $30.8 million in corporate money had been transfered overseas. Xoom's primary business is allowing individuals in the United States to send money to people outside of the country.
This case continues to highlight the extreme vulnerability too fraud faced by companies handling United States Dollars. This company whose entire business was foreign money transmission lost when facing the inherent structural deficiencies of the fiat banking and money transfer system. It seems unlikely that the fiat monetary system can survive its backbone of insecurity.
BitStamp Wallet Now Officially "Hacked"
A total of 18,867.62695929 BTC were moved from BitStamp's hot wallet to a wallet that is outside of their control. A statement attributed to Nejc Kodrič appears on Coindesk which differs from the one available on Bitstamp's own site. The Statement attributed to Nejc Kodrič on CoinDesk: Continue reading
2014 Story of the Year: Mt Gox Finally Dies
This year's biggest story in Bitcoin actually predates the founding of Qntra. Back in February Mt Gox finally closed its doors. Since Jed McCaleb opened it for Bitcoin Trading in July of 2010, through its astounding three years of incompetence and mismanagement under Mark Karpelès Mt Gox had served as a central source of drama and uncertainty in the Bitcoin space. Continue reading
Bloomberg: FBI Investigating Companies For Retaliatory Cyber Attacks
According to Bloomberg the FBI is investigating companies for violations of the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act amid rumors that companies are taking offensive action in retaliation against "attacks" on their information technology infrastructure.
Collected Points From the NSA's Recent Document Dump
Numerous media outlets are going deep into the NSA's recent Christmas Eve document dump while Der Spiegel is supposing itself to cover new Snowden documents.In addition to the unsurprising post-Snowden revelation that NSA analysts routinely acted outside of their legal ability to monitor, a number of technical revelations came out about the NSA's surveillance abilities as they care to disclose them two years ago. As this document dump was an official agency disclosure take it with a grain of salt or several trucks full of salt as you feel necessary. Continue reading
Coinbase Tracing User Transactions
Coinbase has been banning user accounts that send Bitcoin to gambling sites, such as Satoshi Dice or Seals With Clubs. Earlier today a reddit user made a post stating Coinbase banned his account for allegedly purchasing cannabis products with coins purchased from the service. The user provided screenshots of email correspondence with the Coinbase support team, which states the remaining coins in the user's wallet may be withdrawn, but will not be able to utilize the purchase or selling services Coinbase provides. Continue reading