The EU supposes that if they can't actually regulate Bitcoin, they can make a registry for it. The proposed central registry would be fed data through all cyrptocurrency wallet providers and exchanges operating within European Union member nations. Law enforcement agencies across the Europe Union would have access to the registry under the pretense anti-terrorism.1 Sorry for your laws.
Coinbase Fumbling Through Ether Huffing Fork Experience
Early this morning on Twitter, Coinbase's "exchange" GDAX announced they will temporarily maintain sole custody of the Classic portion of their Ether huffers' forked tokens for several weeks. The exchange released an announcement:
100% of ETC associated with ETH balances at the time of the hard fork are secured in GDAX cold storage.
We plan to allow withdrawal of an amount of ETC that corresponds to ETH balances at the time of the hard fork. We'll be working on this feature over the coming weeks and will provide updates via this Twitter account.
The freeze has some users on social media wondering if early post fork shenanigans at Coinbase might have threatened the firm's solvency. Sorry fork, your loss.
Ether Huffing Ecosystem Loses 10% Mining Interest Overnight, Hashrate On Bailout Free Chain Climbing
Since Ethereum "Time Travel" hard forked away from Ethereum "Classic" the total mining interest in the two chains is down ten percent. Similarly ten twenty percent of the mining interest in the Buterin blessed1 chain featuring a time-travel hard fork attack to "undo" the whole DAO episode appears to have moved to the Classic chain. Mircea Popescu published a guide to pricing the various forks of the original Ethereum scam coin this morning.
At the point Ethereum forked it was still very much like its predecessors Dogecoin and Litecoin in being of little utility beyond service as a vehicle for disposing of actual forms of money. Like those two, Ethereum has Buterin while Litecoin had Charles Lee and the Dogecoin had Jackson Palmer and Alex Green/Moolah.io serving as their chiefs of inviting the herd to tour the woodchipper. Thanks to the passage of time blessing it with a history, Bitcoin is unlike its alternatives in many ways2 that make projecting their fork experience on to Bitcoin untenable. Sorry fork, your loss.
This is the other reason why you can't have Altcoins. Any Altcoin is going to be far too new to develop the adversarial relationships between various interests that protect the chain. ↩
Gresham's law is a thing. ↩
US Standards Institute Prepares To "Ban" SMS 2 Factor Authentication
Following their brief foray into the clandestine manufacture of methamphetamine, the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology is prepared to "ban" SMS based 2nd factor authentication schemes. What will replace it in their next guidance is yet to be determined, but almost certainly biometrics, more Google-esque one time password schemes, or both. With the IRS completely having to scrap their system which failed in authenticating tax filers, the United States is forced to Microsoft their own systems iterating their holes to be more selectively exploited.
Japan Mass Stabbing: 19 Killed 25 Injured
Twenty six year old Satoshi Uematsu (WOT:nonperson) allegedly stabbed 44 of his former coworkers and clients today killing 19 and injuring 25 at a residential facility for the disabled west of Tokyo. Police allege that Uematsu gained entry to the facility by breaking a window and that when he left he was able to make it to the police station to surrender peacefully. Notably Uematsu managed to kill 10 more people than the German aspie whose solo Munich shopping mall putsch has renewed security cooperation between France and Germany. Local media attribute to Uematsu an utterance that approximately translates to "All disabled should cease to exist." The strict knife control laws suffered by the Japanese people failed to prevent this incident. Peace in our time.
Hastert Fights Suit Over Unpaid Hush Money
After being inducted and convicted over his efforts to pay hush money, serial child molester and former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Dennis Hastert (WOT:nonperson) is fighting a lawsuit over hush money he failed to pay. Hastert, a former locker room predator who imposed his sexual will on aspiring grapplers before enjoying a national political career, is being sued for breach of contract over 1.8 million United States dollars he failed to deliver.
The suit alleges Hastert managed to make 1.7 million United States dollars out of a promised 3.5 million before FBI agents spooked the old coach into ceasing his cash withdrawals. Hastert's attorneys allege the aspiring grappler who had received coach's locker room attention violated the contract first when he told the FBI about the former Speaker of the United States House of Representative's coaching methods. The former Speaker's attorney also argues that the suit was filed after the statute of limitations.
Florida Money Laundering Case Against Espinoza Dismissed
Michell Espinoza, arrested in an undercover sting for selling $1,500 worth of bitcoin had his case dismissed today. Surprisingly Espinoza's legal defense strategy was the same exact one Pascal Reid attempted to use to before being lowered into pederasty. Espinoza's case was dismissed on the ground that Bitcoin wasn't money under Florida law. Judge Teresa Mary Pooler wrote in her ruling:
The court is not an expert in economics, however, it is very clear, even to someone with limited knowledge in the area, the Bitcoin has a long way to go before it is the equivalent of money.
This may haven given Pascal Reid ample ground for an appeal to void his plea bargain, if he wasn't so eager to turn rat.
Corn Pain On Farm Plain Continues
While corn futures fell precipitously today with this years crop losing 10 billion United States dollars on paper, there were more reasons for pain in the plains. Wheat hit a nine year low reaching 4.36 United States dollars per bushel.1 Wheat plantings were estimated by the USDA to only measure 50.8 million acres, a 50 year low. Meanwhile the acreage of corn plantings surpassed early season estimates coming in around 94.1 million acres2 which projects to a potential 194 million more bushels3 of corn this year than markets were expecting.
The drought typical of the Middle West in La Nina years never materialized in spite of a dry spell from late May to early June teasing the possibility.
Soybean plantings appear to be lower than the USDA and the market expected, likely the result of reasons relating to competition obvious to farmers. The cherry on top of all this pain is that domestic use of all crops for livestock feed is continuing to fall and expected to continue to fall as imports continue their rise. Sorry for your loss.
For out less agriculturally inclined readers a bushel used to be a measure of volume equivalent to eight gallons. Now markets measure weight which varies by crop and moisture content. A market bushel of wheat is 60 pounds at a 13.5% moisture content. Or in the only metric that matters ~92,000 kilocalories. ↩
Up 550,000 over the March estimate. ↩
56 pound at a 15.5% moisture content for ~139,00 kilocalories per bushel. ↩
Ethereum-iverse Bleeding Money
Corn futures fell precipitously early Monday morning as harvest expectations continue to improve. Meanwhile ether huffers saw a brief spurt of activity and the "Ethereum Classic" fork's price started dipping sharply across exchanges. Late Sunday evening, a huffer announced on reddit that he was filing a complaint with the SEC, but showed no sign of having ever read Mircea Popescu's excellent guide on interacting with such institutions. Other developing lulz revolve around a list of VC's flushing their money down the toilet on blockchain "tech", and reports of Ethereum "Whales" supporting the Dao Liberator financially. Sorry fork, your loss.
On Eve Of National Convention Democratic Party Ousts Chair
On top of all the other lulz happening with the United States major socialist party on the eve of their national convention, the Democratic party has ousted chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (WOT:nonperson) from both her office as chairwoman and from the convention. News of her ouster comes on the same day she announced her intention to resign the office of chairwoman after the convention. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is also the congressional representative from Florida's 23rd district and faces a primary challenge on August 30th.
While the adversarial takeover and slaughter of the traditional GOP has left Donald Trump-Clinton a commanding position in the presidential race, the long planned coronation of Hillary Rodham-Clinton appears to be bringing still greater destruction to her party. Both socialist parties are grievously wounded, but Hillary's campaign has largely depended on the strength of the Democratic party to carry her. By contrast Donald's campaign gutted the Republican party and with his nomination secured he gets to ride the party's remains with his existing campaign infrastructure to the November general election.
Peace in our time.