This week a flood of transactions which has alternately been called a spam attack or a stress test has forced Bitcoin users to adapt to a competitive transaction fee market for the first time since early 2013 when blocksize was consistently near default soft limit of 250 kilobytes. Numerous Bitcoin users and businesses are adapting to the flood of transactions by increasing their own transaction fees. At the present there are more than seventy megabytes of unconfirmed transactions leading to more naive users on Reddit and other social media to revert to speculating about blocksize hardforks which would merely amplify the problems this sort of flooding attack poses. Continue reading
Category Archives: The Law
Chain Fork Reveals BIP Process Broken
This weekend the Bitcoin Blockchain experienced a forking incident due a discrepancy between what the expectations of a group developing a Bitcoin network client named "Bitcoin Core" and the actual behavior of Bitcoin miners. The developers of the Bitcoin Core client through a process they refer to as "Bitcoin Improvement Proposals" or BIPs introduced a "soft" forking change into their client which would be triggered through a voting mechanism. In this case miners had appeared to vote in favor of BIP 66, which would have enforced stricter encoding of signatures in an attempt to address the transaction malleability issue which is most notable for having been used as a scapegoat by Mt Gox while actually having little to do with their collapse. Continue reading
UK Gambling Commission Strongarms Some Bitcoin Based Gambling Websites
The UK Gambling Commission has written (archive) to what it perceives to be Bitcoin gambling venues operating illegally due to the lack of a licence. The UK Gambling Commission states that regardless of where such a business is located, it must hold a licence if it is to provide British consumers with its services.
Gambling Commission CEO Jenny Williams said: Continue reading
Europol & Eurojust Take Down Cybercriminal Group
Reports are coming in that five "high-level cybercriminal" suspects have been arrested for "cybercrime" related to the ZeuS1 and SpyEye2 malware programs. After eight house searches were conducted across four different European cities, the Joint Investigation Team,3 supported by Europol and Eurojust, took down this "very active criminal group" that is allegedly responsible for infecting consumer and banking computers with Trojans. By infecting target machines, harvesting bank credentials, and compromising bank account information, the unnamed members of the group were able to make off with upwards of EUR 2 million. Continue reading
ZeuS or Zbot is a trojan computer program that exclusively infects computers running Microsoft Windows. (Run moar winbloze!™) ZueS function by form grabbing or man-in-the-browser keystroke logging and is also used to install the CryptoLocker ransomware program that has plagued police departments, county prosecutors, municipal governments, public schools, gamers, and other private individuals since at least 2013. ZueS is spread through phishing schemes and drive-by downloads. ↩
SpyEye is still another trojan computer program that exclusively infects computers running Microsoft Windows. Are you noticing a pattern here yet ? Spyeye works quite similarly to ZueS and has been previously used to obtain personal and financial information from Verizon customers in the US as well as infecting Amazon's Simple Storage Service as a platform for launching botnet attacks from the cloud service provider. ↩
JIT member countries include Austria, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom, all of whom are also in the NATO Reich with the exception of Austria and Finland. ↩
Current Greek Capital Controls
Last Friday, Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras made a televised statement calling for a referendum on whether to accept the latest bailout deal offered by creditors. There were over 500 million euros withdrawn from ATMs on Saturday, with around 35% of ATMs running out of cash and being restocked at some point during the day. Continue reading
Bryan Micon Seals The Deal
The Las Vegas Review reports (archive) that in an effort to avoid jail time, Bryan Micon has agreed to plead guilty to a charge1 he is facing in relation to the running of the now defunct Seals with Clubs bitcoin based poker website. As part of that deal, Micon faces an as yet to be determined period of probation, a USD $25,000 fine and agreed to forfeit his computers, $900 in cash and 3.0996 BTC.
Reduced to a gross misdemeanour. ↩
Pressure in the United States Mounts to Ban Symbols of Rebellion Against Federal Government
Recently agitators in the United States along with officials in various government capacities have been exploiting a recent minor tragedy to in an effort to censor the most potent symbol of rebellion against the federal government of the United States. In mere anticipation of backlash retailers including Walmart, Ebay, Google shopping, and the Apple App Store have pre-emptively removed all merchandise with the image of the Rebel Flag from sale. What sort of crime could make the ultimate symbol of rebellion against the federal government of the United States, one which was actually flown in combat against the Axis powers in World War II. Continue reading
ISIS About to Introduce Altcoin into Circulation
The physical, gold based, alternative currency which ISIS announced its intentions to introduce into general circulation back in November are reportedly in the process now of being introduced into circulation. More on ISIS's intentions surrounding their coins is available in Qntra's November report on the topic which is reproduced below. Continue reading
Carl Mark Force IV to Plead Guilty
Carl Mark Force IV, formerly of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration has reportedly entered an agreement to plead guilty charges stemming from his theft of Bitcoin from the Silk Road marketplace. This plea agreement follows that of Shaun Bridges who was charged the same day as Force IV in an unrelated case of theft from the Silk Road. Force IV is expected to enter his guilty plea formally in court on July 1st, 2015. Working for a venture called CoinMKT Force IV further committed theft from one of that firm's customers by freezing the customer's account balance and repossessing the value for himself. Force IV converted most of his stolen and extorted Bitcoin value to the local currency of the United States and had the local currency wired to bank accounts under his control adding to the evidence prosecutors were able to use to damn Force IV.
FATF: Concerns Regarding Use Of Bitcoin By Terrorists
The Australian reports(paywalled) (archive) that a Financial Action Task Force meeting scheduled to run June 21st through 26th in Brisbane, Australia will include discussions regarding the possible use of Bitcoin by terrorists with the view that exchanges who turn bitcoin into fiat currency should be required to report transactions it perceives to be suspicious. At discussions held yesterday, the current head of FATF and former Australian public servant Roger Wilkins (archive) also shared concerns regarding the use of cash, saying: Continue reading