Up to 60 Pizza Hut stores across Australia are reported to have been used as part of a bitcoin mining and click fraud botnet during most of 2013. The incident lead to numerous stores halting trade and in some cases resulted in store computers and PoS devices remaining offline all day while the machines were reimaged. Continue reading
Gavin Andresen: "Expect Chaos & Drama"
Having rubbed shoulders with the likes of Bono at last week's Web Summit, Gavin Andresen spoke briefly with CNBC. Continue reading
Hashfast to Liquidate
The Bankruptcy Court of the Northern District of California has ordered the auction of HashFast assets, and among the assets to be sold will be causes and claims against co-founder and CTO of Hashfast Simon Barber.
Flashback: Gavin Andresen
You should save the "Gavin is trying to impress evil institutional investors" mud-slinging for when I get around to laying out the argument for increasing the block size, because that would be closer to the truth.
Gavin Andresen, October 09, 2013, from Bitcointalk
Bitcoin Declaration of Sovereignty Filed
Today Mircea Popescu filed a declaration on the matter of Bitcoin sovereignty. Full text appears below: Continue reading
Is Blake Benthall Responsible For Each Silk Road 2.0 Theft?
From the Blake Benthall complaint:
16 a. On or about September 10, 2014 and September 11, 2014, Defcon sent a series of messages to his support staff, reporting, in sum and substance, that a computer hacker had stolen all of the Bitcoins from the Silk Road 2.0 marketplace server. Defcon's messages indicated that the stolen funds had been held on the Silk Road 2.0 server to cover user balances available for withdrawal.
b. On or about September 10, 2014, Defcon provided his support staff with the Bitcoin address where he believed the hacker had transferred the stolen funds to (“Bitcoin Address- 1”). I have checked publicly available information on the Blockchain regarding Bitcoin Address—1, which indicates that, on or about September 10, 2014, hundreds of transfers were made to that address, for a total of approximately 2,987.8 Bitcoins, the equivalent of approximately $1,412,000 in United States currency based on the prevailing exchange rate that day.
Trendon Shavers (aka pirateat40) Faces Criminal Fraud Charges
A smaller note in yesterday's busy day for Preet Bharara, criminal fraud charges were announced against Trendon Shavers, also known as pirateat40, for running a Ponzi scheme. In Preet's own words: Continue reading
Irish Man Caught Up In Operation Onymous Alleged To Own US $2.3M In Bitcoin
A 33 year old Irish man caught up in Operation Onymous is alleged to have USD $1.5M stashed away in bank accounts located in Switzerland, Belize and Poland as well as USD $2.3M in bitcoin according to the Irish newspaper the Herald. Continue reading
Coin.org Sold For US $75,000 To Digital BTC
Coin.org has been sold for US $75,000, making it the largest price paid for a .org domain so far in 2014 according to DNJournal. The Coin.org domain was purchased by digital BTC, an Australian bitcoin mining/software company. The sale was brokered via Domain Guardians, also known for having brokered the purchase of BTC.com. BTC.com went up for sale in July of this year and in August was sold to con/scam artist Josh Garza of GAW Miners for US $1,000,000. Continue reading
Buterin's Waterfall, a Likbez
Product: Price of BTC under control. Life for USG. (Examples: Bitstamp and Coinbase)
- BTC dumped by agents on public markets (The Ethereum raincloud)
- A portion of the "energy" sustains the agent's "businesses"
- USG Confiscators such as the National Security Agency and Department of Justice collect BTC pooling at the bottom (Silk Road v1 and V 2.0, Various Chumpatrons like pirateat40, vanilla idiots).
- BTC plundered via Judicial and other means (e.g. malware) goes to loyal agents who know what is expected of them.
- GOTO 1 (via evaporation)