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Episode 218 - The decade in investing, Google targeting crypto, and more. Jan 03, 2020

Show notes

Welcome to the first Flagship of the decade! Unfortunately Adam's preoccupied with other biznis this week, so Brent and Karim are here to start 2020 off, going over the stories that we missed over the holidays. In this episode we talk about Google possibly targeting crypto on their platforms, about the past decade's investing rundown, about Brent finally (maybe) tracking down the guy that scammed him and much, much more - only on the CryptoBasic Podcast.

Rapid Fire
KARIM QUESTION
VICE has an episode out on Crypto, I haven't watched but I love Vice.
You can now send Crypto to EMAIL addresses in Coinbase accounts. This is contained within Coinbase, and honestly I have no idea why this took so long.
Is Google Targeting Bitcoin / Crypto?
Many youtubers have been de-monetized over the last few weeks that have their channels primarily dedicated to crypto content. It appears google is targeting links in exchanges. This was huge channels like Ivan on Tech, Boxmining, Data Dash, etc.
Youtube DID release a statement saying it was in error.
They also took Metamask off of their Play store. This isn't the first time Metamask has been shut down, but last time it was because there was a clone that was doing something wrong. This time it was for "mining" and metamask lost their appeal.
Currently there is an Early Access version of Metamask with 0 reviews, so don't download this version until you are told.
Bitcoin Kicks Off 2020 More Secure Than Ever as Hash Rate Hits Recordmultiple monitoring resources including Blockchain and Coin Dance confirmed hash rate was higher than ever on the first day of the new year.
119-143 quintillion hashes per second
wtf is quintillion? - 1q Pennies laid out flat would cover the earth 2.5x over
One quintillion is one thousand quadrillions, which is one thousand trillions
It would take between 25,000-100,000 galaxies like our own to total a quintillion stars
Bitcoin Declared Legal Commodity in Chinese CourtThis was in Mid July!
Originally shared by Dovey Wan, someone Adam loves following on Twitter that ISN'T Justin.
This is the second such case in China that made this ruling
"the cryptocurrency meets the virtual property requirements because it has value, is scarce, and disposable"
This whole thing was based on a lawsuit on TaoBao, which is like AliBaba without the english version. They had a FXBTC exchange, and and the case dragged out so long that the planiff, Mr. Wu (really). lost 2675 BTC, but was only suing for $11,000 originally. It looks like this might have been a "you canceled my trade so I lost money" thing. He had an order in when the exchange shut down so he never HAD the BTC.
So while they did rule that BTC was property, they did not rule in Wu's favor.
This decade in investing - Karim
According to a recent report by Bank of America Securities, if you invested $1 in bitcoin at the start of the decade, it would now be worth more than $90,000.
anybody stuck with a spare kyat — the local currency of Myanmar (previously Burma) — won't be too happy.
Due to ethnic conflicts, violence, instability, $1 in kyat at the beginning of the decade worth just 4 tenths of one US cent today
Stock Markets
Greece
continued to struggle in the wake of its debt crisis.
$1 dollar invested in the Greek equity market in 2010 is now worth only 7 cents.
United States was the best stock market in the world, with $1 in American stocks now valued at about $3.46. That's a gain of nearly 250%.
Also best bonds, A 30-year Treasury that was worth $1 in 2010 is now valued at about $2.08.
Turkey had the worst bond of the decade. A dollar in benchmark Turkish bonds at the beginning of 2010 is now worth only 61 cents.
In 2010, no bonds had negative yields. 2019 had $17 trillion's worth of sovereign debt sporting a negative yield
Central Banks
The Brazilian central bank was the most active — with 25 rate cuts and 24 rate hikes since 2010.
Bank of Japan was the quietest central bank. It lowered rates once in the past ten years — to negative territory in 2016.
As interest rates have fallen, investors have flocked to gold, which was the top commodity of the 2010s. $1 of gold in 2010 is now worth $1.34.
crude oil was the worst commodity. A dollar's worth of oil is now valued at just 74 cents.
Opera becomes first major browser to allow native sending of BTCThis is direct Peer to Peer inside of the Opera browser.
October 21st
Not only Bitcoin - it also allows Tron .
They already allowed ETH previously to this, but it was the first Native BTC browser.

Wikipedia became a verified Brave Publisher

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/ecm7a5/teen_arrested_for_stealing_over_1m_in/This literally may have been the guy that hacked me.
This was just a couple of weeks ago.
This teen has been charged with 87 Counts of Grand Larceny, and he clearly targeted Crypto between Jan 20 and May 19.
He even got $1M from just 2 victims.
Police seized 6 iPhones, two Rolex's, and a monogrammed Gucci Wallet in addition to a bunch of high end jewelry at his residence
Google Knows what you were doing in 2010 Right on Jan 1.

THAT'S A SCAM

Cryptocurrency Investors Want Dead Executive Exhumed - K
Gerald W. Cotten died last year, clients at Quadriga CX unable to gain access to at least $250m
Operations encrypted and he's the only one who knew the password
Quadriga based in Nova scotia, lawyers assigned by court to represent clients asking to exhume body and conduct an autopsy
“to confirm both its identity and the cause of death.”
lawyers requested that the exhumation and autopsy be completed “by spring of 2020
firm announced his death on Jan. 14 in a Facebook post that said he had died more than a month earlier — on Dec. 9, 2018
while traveling in India.
died of complications from Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel disease that is rarely fatal.
Replacement CEO said no access to passwords, couldnt find keys or cold storage
FBI and IRS looking into the firm, Accounting Firm assigned to go over company for possible sale said Quadriga did not appear to possess any “basic corporate records,” including accounting records.
They had also transferred tons of crypto into personal accounts of Cotten on other exchanges, with no business justification
Exit
Please join the conversation in the Discord. We're in there all the time.
Rate us on iTunes.
Follow CryptoBasicBrent on Reddit.
We are not Financial advisers.

Episode 217 - CryptoConvos: Grant Blaisdell Dec 24, 2019

Show notes

Welcome to this episode of the CryptoConvos series of the Crypto Basic Podcast! Today we've got Grant Blaisdell of Coinfirm on the show, here to talk all about what they do and how they do it over at Coinfirm, a crypto exchange risk assessment service. He goes in depth about the mission of Coinfirm to eliminate the crypto world's tarnished, scammy reputation, as well as help people reclaim their stolen crypto. Grant was super compelling to talk to, and his chat with Brent made for an excellent episode. Tune in to discover more!

Find Grant and Coinfirm on the following links:

Coinfirm's website

Reclaim Crypto

AMLT Token Network on Twitter

Grant's Twitter

Grant's Instagram

Episode 216 - New Ethereum upgrade, India proposes banning crypto, and a vibrant week for scams. Dec 14, 2019

Show notes

Welcome to Flagship Friday, where we go over the most important crypto news of the week. This time around we're talking about Ethereum's new Istanbul upgrade, about India proposing banning cryptocurrency, and we're going over scams. A lot of them. You'll have to tune in and see.

Rapid Fire
Jack Dorsey Tweet Thread For Open Sourced Social Media Standards
BitMex Gets Sued By Seed InvestorBasically saying their $30k investment should be worth $50M now, so they're suing for $300M
Charles Hoskinson decided he wanted to fight Chico Crypto? Jesus. I think it's not happening now.
In a very un-ripple move (at least for my bias) they are rolling out a digital marketplace for music where the creator gets 100% of proceeds. Called XSongs
Coinbase's debit card has added a stablecoin.
Craig Wright Tries To Avoid Paying $658k Legal Fees
Matic Massive DumpAfter rising 180% in 2 weeks, Shed 70% of its value in minutes on Tuesday
A trader pointed out holders of the coin "basically became 1% poorer every 15 seconds for 30+ minutes in a row"
there was speculation of it being a p&d within the Matic Team but then CZ refuted that claim pretty quickly
the Matic COO tweeted out that he woke up to this nightmare and claiming it had nothing to do with them. They would post a detailed analysis and will come out stronger than ever" (He's indian, lost in translation slightly)
Matic was one of Binances IEO's, initial exchange offering, and CZ raised the question on if exchanges should interfere in situations like this in the future. What do you guys think about that?
Major bank ING looks to offer cryptocurrency custodyDutch Bank ING is working on plans to offer its customers secured cryptocurrency storage
Reuters relays that crypto custody will be among one of ING's many blockchain initiatives in the near future.
Fidelity launched their custody service a few months ago too, but that was more for institutional investors
Ethereum Has Successfully Upgraded to IstanbulThis is basically a group of 7 Eth Improvement protocols, the first of which just lists the rest of them.
One will change how the storage of data is calculated, making smart contracts able to execute functions easier.
One will
One will change some of the pricing to prevent spamming attacks.
There are two protocols that allow cheaper use of the SNARK and STARK tech, which is the zero knowledge proof ability similar to zk-SNARKS like on Zcash or ZEN.
They also add the ability to do atomic swaps of ZCash and Eth by allowing the chain to verify the Equihash Proof of work protocol (maybe this is to help secure the POS that is coming?)
They mention that this will propel them above 3000TPS, which is "higher than visa" which might matter if they weren't trying to be a computer.
We're not at 2.0 yet, and there will be a Berlin update in the future.

Crypto Around the World

Proposed Cryptocurrency Ban In IndiaDuring recent monetary conference Reserve Bank of India reiterated its stance on banning privately-owned cryptocurrency in India
According to RBI governor Shaktikanta Das, issuing currency is a sovereign mandate and this should not be given to private companies
Das also revealed that RBI held internal discussions with Central banks and is considering the possibility of coming out with India’s own digital currency (but thats its very early)
RBI had previously announced that no banks could deal with entities or consumers dealing with crypto, gave them 3 months to settle their services
Worth noting that there are internal challenges to this ban at their supreme court, we'll see how it rules

THAT'S A SCAM

SEC Charges Shopin CEO With Fraud Over Unregistered $42mil ICOShopin CEO name is Eran Eyal
So what was Shopin? It was one of the ICO craze companies that was built to track and store customer data across shopping platforms. Solving the problem of having 50,000 accounts I guess?
They didn't build anything at all.
They listed partnerships that they don't appear to have made, called them partnerships with "multiple retailers" and they even listed an advisory role with a "prominent Silicon Valley Blockchain Entrepreneur"
So I'm not really sure how this works, but he has already pleaded guilty to fraud with another separate case that was brought by the NYAG in 2017. He had a previous company called Springleap that he defrauded of $600k, and he has to pay that back in the form of 125k in restitution and 475k in judgements. Apparently 450k of crypto has been seized to pay for this.
The SEC lawsuit is significantly higher, and it expects to charge him with an unregistered security offering, as well as bar him from acting as an officer of any company in the future.
He also took 500k in funds from the ICO for the following reasons, none of which were related to the thing. "Rent, shopping, entertainment, expenses, and a Dating Service"
Three Men Arrested, 5 Charge in New Jersey $722 Million Cryptocurrency Ponzi Scheme Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of New Jersey Release
defrauded investors out of 722m promising huge returns if they joined investing club
while privately calling their clients “sheep” and “idiots,”
defendants operated BitClub Network, which they promoted as "the most transparent company in the history of the world” and “too big to fail.”
Looks like they were just promising a BTC mining setup
They got thousands of people according to Carpenting (US Attorney for NJ)
One of the people arrested in Germany, the other in Colorado, the other in FL, and the last in California
indictment said the defendants operated BitClub Network from October 2014 until this month
They would essentially show false figures and were told they were Bitcoin mining earnings
February 2015, for example, Mr. Goettsche directed one of his conspirators to “bump up the daily mining earnings starting today by 60 percent,”
Person responded “That is not sustainable, that is Ponzi” territory and a “fast cash-out Ponzi … but sure,”
Sep 2017 Goettsche (main dude) then told another conspirator to drop earnings significantly
in January 2015 that “we are building this whole model on the backs of idiots.”
In one video they said $3,599 investment can yield...250k over 3 years! Conservatively!
They never bought mining equipment
Plus Token Is A Top Ten Holder of ETHWe reported on Plus Token some time ago and thankfully it has been shut down but before it was all said and done the ponzi scam holds nearly 800k Ethereum worth close to $120mil. Still, Plus Token scammed nearly $3billion so this is a just a fraction of what was scammed.
It's unsure if Chinese authorities has control of this address or not.

Episode 215 - CryptoSenators, CryptoConvictions and of course CryptoHacks. Dec 06, 2019

Show notes

Welcome to this week's Flagship Friday, our weekly series where we discuss all the latest news from the cryptoverse! This episode actually covers the past two weeks, as we skipped last week due to Thanksgiving. So, tune in to hear about crypto CEOs being appointed as senators, crypto developers being arrested for working with North Korea and what the 5 biggest trends for cryptocurrency in 2020 will be. All of the above -and more- in this episode of the Crypto Basic Podcast.

Rapid Fire
Georgia Governor Appoints Bakkt CEO Loeffler as New US SenatorSo I'm gonna be honest, I didn't realize Senators could be appointed.
Kelly Loeffler stepping in for Johnny Isaakson. Was appointed against the wishes of Trump who wanted someone else.
She'll be stepping down from her position to take the seat. Unclear who takes the helm at Bakkt but it will likely be Adam White, COO & former Coinbase exec.
Dwight Schrute talks Mona Foundation and Bitcoin
Mona Foundation educates children in need globally. Rainn Wilson, Dwight talks about why you should donate it to help these children. Also trolls bitcoiners a bit jokingly saying its useless and quoting mark cuban who said it was more useless than a banana lol.
You can now vote for what Juventus dances when they score a goal with SociosAlex Dreyfus who used to be heavily involved in poker started Socios, a few years ago. You get fan tokens and can vote on stuff with teams they have signed on and one of them is Juventus where you can actually vote what their next goal celebration will be
Binance Makes A Deal In IndiaBinance acquired WazirX, an Indian cryptocurrency exchange with 200k users.
To launch multiple fiat-to-crypto gateways allowing traders to use the Indian Rupee
Thailand is putting visas on the blockchaineVisa to help streamline entry into the country. Aussie startup Sharering will provide its blockchain tech and will enable millions of tourists to apply securely for a travel visa online. Could be a big step for real blockchain adoption.
FBI arrested a cryptocurrency developer for speaking in North Korea (Tweeted about making this bullish or bullshit - honestly I wanted to really dive into this story as almost a "main story")- K
So is Virgil Griffith a friendly unofficial liason to NK a la Rodman, or helping evade sanctions?
On November 28, Griffith was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport.
Could have been traveling for holiday cuz he lives in Singapore
Formally arrested for a trip he made in April 2019
Acoording to SDNY Justice Department, he supposedly described how blockchain and cryptocurrency technology could be used by the DPRK to launder money.
The U.S. federal government says Griffith’s presentation in North Korea constituted a transfer of technology,
violates the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and Executive Order 13466
Americans can’t export any goods, services, or technology to the DPRK without a license from the Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)
Who is Virgil Griffith
gained notoriety in the hacker community for creating WikiScanner
linked anonymous edits on Wikipedia to the organizations where those edits originated, using the public IP addresses that are logged by Wikipedia.
Showed how companies like Exxon would spin oil rig disaster on their Wikipedia pages, he said he did it to create PR disasters for these companies
In 2003, the educational software maker Blackboard sued to prevent him from presenting research on security flaws in the company’s software.
In 2006 he wrote a paper showing how easy it was to get Mother Maiden names from public records (so stop using it as a security question)
2014, Griffith received a Ph.D. in computation and neural systems, moves to Silicon Valley and start working on Ethereum
The criminal complaint says he was encouraged by organizer to talk about potential money laundering and sanction evasion because thats what would resonate with audience
So in his talk "Blockchain and Peace" he talked about blockchain being used to achieve "achieve independence from the global banking system."
Here's the brutal part tho...he did ask US State Department because he knew it violated sanctions. Got denied, he went anyway by traveling through China
He tweeted a photo of his visa, writing on Twitter: "Visa to DPRK fixed without passport number.”
He also apparently spoke with FBI agent after trip, allowed them to inspect phone
Justin Sun Buys Poloniex(Adam OBVIOUSLY ADAM) Also title is backwards?
On Nov 13th Sun admitted to investment in crypto exchange Poloniex.
Nov 29th Poloniex acquires Tron Networks largest decentralized exchange. Deal is unknown and what financial value was generated.
Dec 3rd Digibyte founder, Jared Tate, posts a twitter thread criticizing Tron and its acquisition of Poloniex
Seven hours later Poloniex replies by delisting Digibyte from their platform after a "careful review"
Cred on Twitter
The 5 Biggest Trends In Cryptocurrency For 2020 - K
Fun story, this is from 'Benzinga' so financial news basically, and they got it by talking with the co-founder of a tracking and tax crypto comany (Accointing, Alex Lindenmeyer)
The Halvening
from 12.5 to 6.25 BTC
months surrounding the 2012 halving, bitcoin price went from less than $10 to more than $100
in 2016 it was 400 before halving, double that by the end of the year
On the other hand, As bitcoin mining becomes less lucrative, the number of miners competing for a block will fall as will the hash rate necessary for mining until an equilibrium is reached.
But likely to see a lot of volatility based on speculation\
Enter Libra
Their goal was summer of 2020....if they get there =) (just found out Kushner family is one of the financial supporter, mini rant)
If it does come in it will be huge though, people who wouldnt touch crypto will have access, think about older people on FB or non tech younger people.
The Feds
Federal Reserve revealed Central Banks have been exploring the potential of a digital dollar
IRS has been more clear about what crypto entails for coming taxes
Market Consolidates
Even with price falls number of cryptos in market has gotten to 2300
Fewer than 33% have a trade volume of more than $100,000
With more regulation and structure a lot of the scammy bottom feeders may get squeezed out
Crypto And Fintech Hook Up
overarching theme of all of these trends is that cryptocurrency is growing up, becoming mainstream and finally finding actual use cases,
Libra itself is (or was) stacked with members from various fintech companies.
But mainly they added this section to plug his company,

THAT'S A SCAM

Recap of some the Top HACKS of 2019 (not like people pretending to be dead) (from a changelly blog)Bitrue
June - 5M Stolen
They had ADA and XRP stolen, but were able to reach agreements with the exchanges that the funds were sent to to Freeze the funds and recover them.
We didn't cover this hack
Exchange Status - Open
Cryptopia
January 2019 - 16M
We covered this one and ran quite a bit of "told you so" material!
We still don't know how the hackers got the funds, but it's also just as likely that it was an exit scam.
The company went bankrupt, and still owes creditors 2.7M.
Exchange Status - Closed
Bithumb
March - 19M Stolen.
We covered this back then, this was the hacker we made fun of because they stole EOS and XRP.
This wasn't the first time they were hacked, and though they never caught the culprit they believe that since they were previously hacked by the Lazarus NK group, that it might have been related.
They covered the hacked funds and took the loss.
Exchange Status - Open
BitPoint
July - 32M
This one got BTC, BCH, ETH, and LTC stolen.
Bitpoint was one of the biggest Japanese exchanges... they're where a ton of coins were sold to payoff MtGox creditors.
While they promised to pay their customers back on a 1:1 basis, I cannot find any information on them actually following through. They did reopen operations in August.
Exchange Status - "Temporarily Suspended"
Binance
May - 40.5M
We definitely covered this one. Funduhs are Safeuh.
This hack was on BTC where 7,000 of them were stolen, plus BTC from other accounts adding up to somewhere near 7200 BTC.
This is when we gave them props for being so transparent.
They covered all losses, and created a fund to handle it in the future.
Exchange Status - Open
UpBit
November - 48.5M
Upbit is based in South Korea
Was hacked exclusively of ETH
This was fairly recent, and they suspended all trading and moved funds to cold wallets.
Again they have promised to fully compensate their users, but the exchange is still down.
Quick google of upbit says they're the most trusted crypto exchange.
Exchange Status - Operational, and withdrawsl appear to be available.

Episode 214 - CryptoConvos: Andreas M. Antonopoulos Nov 27, 2019

Show notes

Welcome to another episode of CryptoConvos, where today we have a VERY special guest who needs no introduction to most of our listeners!

He is very well known in the cryptoverse for his educational work and to-the-point, in-depth analysis of various aspects of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. He has published several books about crypto and has been attending conferences as a speaker since as early as 2012. Join us in welcoming Andreas M. Antonopoulos to the CryptoBasic Podcast!

Karim and Adam sit down with Andreas to discuss all kinds of issues, ranging from the political aspects of crypto's rapid development to the future of crypto's adoption within the framework of contemporary economic trends and infrastructure. However, we wouldn't want to spoil the episode for you, so tune in for an engaging and interesting conversation!

Find Andreas on the following links:

Andreas' Twitter

Andreas' Official Website

Andreas' publications on Amazon

Episode 213 - China sets up blockchain committee, blockchain university course is launched, and interest rates hit the negatives. Nov 23, 2019

Show notes

Welcome to this week's Flagship Friday, where we discuss all the happenings in the crypto space of the past week! Tune in to find out what China is up to again, what a political simulation revealed about the crypto-Yuan's flexibility and potential, and much, much more. Also, we've got a couple of announcements... a certain Greek SOMEONE will be joining us for an interview next week, so be sure to stay updated! Also, we're excited to announce that we're nearing this year's broadcast of the Crypties award show! Everything's brewing in the discord, so make sure to join!

Dive into the cryptoverse with us on this week's Flagship Friday.

Rapid Fire
Fidelity gets bitcoin custody and trading license from NY regulatorFidelity obtains a trust license from the New York Department of Financial Services to offer Bitcoin custody service to New York residents. Additionally, Fidelity also received the license to operate a trading platform on which New York’s institutional investors can securely purchase, sell, store or transfer Bitcoin.
NEO launched blockchain course in St. Petersburg State UniversityThe course aims to provide insights into distributed ledger in general and Neo technology in particular, and help students building skills in developing with core components of Neo technology.
Poloniex closing US accounts December 16thPoloniex is closing US accounts by 12/16/2019 Make sure you have your funds out, this isn't like the Binance closing - they are going to make things harder and charge fees past that date.
Coinbase is going to offer insured IRAs - This is pretty sick.
comes with $200 million of inusrance by Lloyds which is the most you can get
Former CFO of Facebook has bank account shut down without explanation. (Roelof Botha - though he left the company in 2003. Dude was 31!) A bunch of other crypto-related people also got their account shut down including Justin Sun.
Reminder from Reddit - Jed McCaleb can sell 750m XRP this year, and 1B XRP next year. - B
Here's a quick recap of the Jed situation with XRP - Basically he was given 9B XRP as the founder of the project. He Left the project and forked to Stellar. When he did, he was planning to sell his XRP. There had been an agreement of some kind in place about how much he could sell, but he incorrectly assumed he could do what he wanted with his assets, they were frozen on an exchange, and he wasn't able to sell them.
The lawsuit said that first he had to donate 2B XRP to a charity. However, he'd been TRYING to do this for a long time and the suit stopped him.
Then he had limits on what he could sell of his (and his family's) remaining 5.4B XRP.
During year 2, 3, and 4 Jed could sell 20k XRP per month.
Year 5 and 6 he could sell 750m XRP for the year. (where we are now)
Year 7 he could sell 1B XRP
Year 8 he can sell 2B
Obviously this can have lasting implications on the price.
Trump summons Powell to discuss rates amid WH attacks on Fed (and a discussion on interest rates) - K
President Donald Trump summoned Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to the White House on Monday
Fed official statement is that Powell told Trump same thing he said to congress
The economy is in good shape,
Fed will likely suspend rate cuts for now (3 cuts this year)
Speculation is Trump is putting pressure to cut rates more aggressively
Trump has openly criticized Powell for keeping interests too high, says economy would be even better if they were negative like Japan and Europe
The Fed’s benchmark rate is in a range of 1.5% to 1.75%, an extremely low level by historic standards
Trump has complained that negative rates in Japan and EU put us at competitive disadvantage.
maybe keeps dollar relatively stronger which hurts exports a bit, but only part of the story
NEW GAME - What am I thinking about now?
In a speech last week, Trump said, referring to negative interest, “Give me some of that.... I want some of that money. Our Federal Reserve doesn’t let us do it.”
More importantly, what is the purpose of controlling interest rates? When should they be lowered
Originally thought to be short term solution, but has spread and cemented. (EU-2014, Japan in 2016)
Currently $16T in negative-yielding debt worldwide
This is a sign of risk aversion and fear from investors, willing to lose money to lower risk
Five central banks have interest rates set below zero:
Japan: -0.10%
Sweden: -0.30%
European Central Bank: -0.40%
Denmark: -0.70%
Switzerland: -0.80%
Germany recently issued world's first 30yr zero-coupon bond, flopped and sold less than half issued
Theres also the fear that near zero or negative rates limit ability to respond to recession
Top 10 coins now vs The day we started the podcast - B
When we started - BTC, XRP, ETH, BCH, ADA, NEM, LTC, TRON, XLM, IOTA
Now - BTC, ETH, XRP, TETHER, BCH, LTC, EOS, BNB, BSV, XLM.
Notes - ETH passed XRP by a pretty substantial margin.
Tether was 37th Overall market Cap back then with 1.4B, and is now 4B strong. Jesus.
Cardano :(
Tron Sorry Adam
BNB was barely even around, and was down all the way at 31.
NEM has fallen substantially, but I didn't keep up as to why.
China sets up national committee for blockchain standards A
China has launched a national standards committee for blockchain technology in a bid to drive “high-tech innovation” in the area. The committee has been set up and will be run by the Standardization Administration of China (SAC), which coordinates standardization work across the country.
“help high-tech innovation”, “promote high-levels of openness” and “lead high-quality development.”
“establish and improve the standards system of relevant fields, and formulate forward-looking, high-quality standards that are leading, systematic and rigorous.”
The news comes as cryptocurrencies were recently branded “illegal Ponzi schemes” and “financial fraud” by a television program on Chinese state-run channel CCTV-1. As Decrypt reported, Chinese current affairs show Focus Report said 102 cryptocurrencies were scam “pyramid schemes” while calling over 755 tokens “air coins” and “money-grabbing schemes.”

Crypto Around the World

In Wargames run by Harvard, North Korea was able to use the digital Yuan to circumvent US Sanctions. B
This was essentially a high level roleplay from a group of former high ranking US officials and takes place in 2021.
In the game North Korea had just completed a missile test, and they got all their materials with the Yuan.
They talk about the need to weaponize the US dollar, and the digital Yuan hurting that ability.
The overarching theme was that the digital currency landscape will probably have a weakening affect on the US enforcing their sanctions.
All of this centers around SWIFT, and in order to push the adoption of another option North Korean hackers in the example were able to steal $3b from the SWIFT messaging system to promote it instability.
was a cool exercise, and we've linked to the 1.5 hour video.
German Bank Goes Negative - K
According to multiple local press outlets including the Süddeutsche Zeitung
VRF Bank in Northern Bavaria now charging 0.5% negative interest rates on small deposits
This is because of the cost for the bank to park money at European Central Bank
Before only deposits above 100,000
Just take a time out to think about this, inflation aside we are losing right away by saving

Episode 212 - Brave 1.0 is released, Samsung blockchain is released, CEO of CoinUp... won't really be released anytime soon. Nov 15, 2019

Show notes

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this week's Flagship Friday! We do apologize for last week's absence but Brent had to scramble off to NY and Karim and Adam just couldn't figure out a recording time. Lovely lads.

Anyway, enough about our inability to function - today we're looking at topics like Brave 1.0 and the Samsung Blockchain being released, Bitcoin's all time highs going under investigation, scams galore (who would've thought?) and much, much more. Bonus: we don't talk about Libra OR Craig Wright. This is truly an exceptional episode.

Dive into the cryptoverse with us on this week's Flagship Friday.

Rapid Fire
Brave 1.0 has been released
Iphone and Ipad users now have full access to Brave 1.0 which now gives access to Brave Rewards, Brave Ads, and Brave Shields.
Previously in beta, Brave has 8.7 monthly active users and 300k verified publishers already.
Ledger Vault secures $150 mil Crime Insurance Policy
Ledger Vault, the custody are of hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger has developed a crime insurance policy with broker and risk advisory firm, Marsh and insurance company, Arch Insurance Unlimited
Ledger now provides a crime insurance program and protects against third-party theft of the master seed and private keys—even insider theft caused my collusion
Iran Offering Bounties For Illicit Mining Operations
Previously reported, Iran is a hot spot for crypto mining with low costs per kilowatt per hour. The Iranian government had to slap a tariff to stop exporting electricity.
Now they are offering bounties for up to 20% of damages to anyone who reports illegal mining operations within the country.
Coinbase has announced new confirmation requirements.
Basically your transactions will get faster for most coins they changed. BTC cut in half, Zcash cut 33%, ETC cut about 40%ish (But still a ton of confirmations)
LTC has doubled.
Pornhub models were all blocked from using Paypal and had to switch their payout methods. (Use Case)
John Mcafee Launches WHACKD — An Epstein didn't kill himself crypto
It will be launched on McafeeDex.com, his own exchange lol.
Was BTC manipulated to reach its historic highs? -K
Peer-reviewed study "Is Bitcoin Really Untethered) by UTexas John Griffin, and Ohio state U Amin Shams
Bitfinex appears to have massively manipulated the price of Bitcoin in 2017
"By mapping the blockchains of Bitcoin and Tether, we are able to establish that one large player on Bitfinex uses Tether to purchase large amounts of Bitcoin when prices are falling and following the printing of Tether."
One player associated with more than half of the USDT/BTC exchange
One of the authors' main hypotheses posited that Bitfinex creates Tether regardless of demand from cash investors. As such, any "additional supply of Tether can create an inflation in price of Bitcoin
Bitfinex of course denied, said paper lacked academic rigor "updates or not"
Coin telegraph has a counter articleCircle CEO tweeted response
“Exchanges use omni-bus wallets that pool all customer balances and transactions on and off the exchange. So an analysis that shows that ‘a single wallet’ was involved in flows from Bitfinex to other exchanges is meaningless. All it shows is that traders were trading,”
People saying all markets are manipulated, which fair. But tether not really addressed imo
History of Bitfinex and Tether (black brant shoutout) highlights
2016 Bitfinex loses 120k btc ($70m), becomes insolvent, just takes 36% from everyone, and they got BFX token, tracking $ denominated loses
Not Coinbase after threatning to sue allegedly
BFX tanks, Bitfinex offers to redeem for equity in the company, conveniently at $1 per share. Then they repurchased them at $1
They were banking through Taiwan, those banks dont have access to US financial system
So they were using Wells Fargo as intermediary
Wells Fargo announced they would no longer clear USD wires to/from Bitfinex
Bitfnx sues, unsuccessfully.
When they lost banking, there were $55m Tether, now $4b
They finally got accepted by Noble Bank in PR
Turns out board didnt want them, worried about Bitfinex ruining relationship with BNY Mellon, a holding bank for banks outside US (inside system). Would kill them
But Tether lead a $2m Series A investment in Noble
Tether deposits hundreds of millions, people figure out who and why, kills Noble Bank, they move to Deltec Bank
So bitfinex was using a company called CryptoCapital Corp
Appears to be a money laundering operation
basically identified banks with poor compliance controls, opened account pretending to be in real estate, then shuffled money until they got shut down and repeat
customer would want to deposit money with Bitfinex, they would contact Crypto Capital Corp, who would give them the name, account number, and bank of a shell corporation (with names like “Global Trade Solutions A.G.”), with instructions to wire the shell corporation money with a lie designed to not rouse suspicion from their banks.
Reginald Fowler, CCC's principal architext, was skimming 10% of all the deposits
Dude invested $25m on Alliance of American Football, which crashed
In court Bitfinex claims they thought CCC made money of interest (because they barely charged for service)
Then in 2018 regulators froze some of the shell corporation bank accounts and liquidity crisis ensued
Accuses them of using Bitfinex deposits to slowly rebalance that gap ($2.1b on hand is 74% of outstanding
Fowler has been arrested in the US. Ivan Manuel Molina (President) extradited from Greece to Poland on suspicion of money laundering for drug cartels
Samsung block chain has officially launched. - B
First I really like their video.
Second they're releasing a SDK, which is a Software Development Kit. It makes it easier for companies to build their assets on the chain.
The Samsung ecosystem for DApps is supporting ETH.
Your Keystore Wallet CAN use BTC as well.
This is still in the Samsung Store, not Google Play
From the YT Video's Top comments
Jesus christ i dont understand a single comment on this video
Now i know how my grandparents feel when i talk about technology.😆
The video says NO MIDDLEMAN!! The video also introduce a new middleman his name??.....SAMSUNG I'm confused already🙂
Also funny - the video might spoil the next note. It shows a phone with a camera completely embedded in the screen .
$24 million worth of bitcoin in a SIM swap attack - K
This according to a WSJ report
Michael Terpin, hit on Jan 7, 2018
1500 BTC stolen near peak, here's how
They took control of phone number and used forgot psswd to get email access
They hacked his wallet, and immediately moved and sold tokens
"Once a hacker can breach a user's email account, they can scour for proof of asset holdings and subsequently target trading apps, bank accounts, and crypto wallets."
Dude was hit with a SIM swap 7 months earlier!
He added additional security with AT&T, like asking for 6 digit pin to make changes
He also switched from text authentication to Google authentication
He kept a portion of his virtual cash in a digital vault called a “native wallet,” which required a string of 12 random words to unlock.
The hackers were able to cobble the code together once they hijacked his phone and wormed into his email
Apparently a lot of young kids, one was a valedictorian, got caught cuz one police department showed interest
Terpin suing AT&T for 224m (200 punitive) for negligence, trying to get them to change this
ATT tried to dismiss but a July judge ruled suit can move forward
Random, turns out someone else is suing ATT for the same thingCalifornia Blockchain Entrepeneur Seth Shapiro
alleging that a couple of the firm’s employees had perpetrated a nefarious SIM-swap scheme that resulted in the former losing $1.8 million
alleged that he is currently in possession of chat logs that clearly show the AT&T employees and hackers discussing their plans to use the stolen funds to acquire their dream cars and other valuable objects
This guy had also asked ATT to prioritize his call and account because he was high risk
Someone is fucking with EOS -B
There's a token called EIDOS that's massively clogging up the EOS network.
It seems intentional, and done to prove a point.
They have a twitter account - @enumivo Their handle is "Soon - something out of nothing" lol.
The whole point of the airdrop is to do maximum transactions. Size doesn't matter.
Moving EOS around mines you tokens for the coin.
Current block producers don't seem to care.

THAT'S A SCAM

Be careful what you wish for: the first Cardano copycat emerges
Funny title because Hoskinson joked about making it when we saw Cardano Cash and Cardano vision
Cardano Gold emerges, scam
frequent spelling mistakes and number errors on the project’s homepage
"as seen in...." bestcoins, coinhills, foxico, olink..... all fake lol
Lists advisor, who says hes unaffiliated
CEO of South Korean exchange, CoinUp, receives 16 years in prison
Mr. Kang-Mo defrauded investors out of 450 billion won ($384 million)
Him, alongside a slew of other execs are receiving varying sentences with the lowest being 6 years in prison.
They promised CoinUp customers up to 200% returns on crypto purchased just 4-10 weeks after purchase.
They shilled projects that had a very small chance of increasing in value.
At one point Mr. Kang-Mo photoshopped a pic of him next to Moon Jae-In that was then displayed in CoinUp offices presumably to mislead potential investors. LOL
1930777613_7j3Wq6Ce_rrrrr.jpg
Rants
Funny story, one of the ways we get stories is sort by top on reddit for week. I misclicked year.
Reddit User posts his portfolio from the ICO craze
Electrify.Asia: -95%
Oyster Pearl: -99.96%
Swarm City Token: -98.11%
ZCash: -93%
OMG: -93%
Request: -93%
Storj: -91%
Kin: -98%
FunFair: -94%
Polymath: -98%
Bitcoin Gold: -97%
TenX: -98%
Raiden Network: -96%
Synero AMP: -99.6%
Power Ledger: -95%
Viuly: -99.6%
Garlicoin: -94% (Invested 26k holyshit)
Iconomi: -94%
Augur: -86%
Digix Dao: -93%
Breaker: -96%
Coinmine Red Flag - they are now offering 6.5% APR On holding mined funds in their wallet.

Episode 211 - China goes bullish on blockchain, Uber Money is a thing, and.. happy birthday Bitcoin! Nov 02, 2019

Show notes

Come one, come all, to this week's Flagship Friday, where we cover the week's crypto news and happenings!

Today we're taking a look at Uber getting into the crypto world with Uber Money, we're taking a look at China that, in true China fashion, goes bullish on blockchain in the most authoritarian, orwellian way possible, and finally - we're celebrating! Big Daddy Bitcoin is 11 years old as of today!

All of the above and more on today's episode!

Dive into the cryptoverse with us on this week's edition of Flagship Friday!

Rapid Fire
- Bitcoin Is 11 Years Old!!
- Mt. Gox Bitcoin Refunder Pushed Back Deadline to Spring 2020
- Congressman Tom Emmer Introduces A Bill To Limit SEC's Reach
- Substratum CEO bought a $1.5M house while tweeting about how everyone should buy SUB
- A German engineering consultancy DMT has launched CERA, a blockchin-based certification scheme that tracks raw materials.
  - Volkswagen and the United Nations are on its advisory board in hopes that CERA can be a universal standard for the raw materials industry.

Uber Is Creating Its Own Payments Service Called Uber Money
- On Monday, October 28th Uber launched it's own payments service called Uber Money initially aimed towards its 4 mill drivers.
- Can store money, track transaction history and make electronic payments. One cool feature is the overdraft protection of up to $100. So if a driver is strapped for cash, they can fill up their tank with gas so they can go out and work.
- No cryptocurrency element. Crypto can be murky with the law, and expensive and slow if transferring small amounts.
- Financial firms have actually been improving their own tech to make mobile payments faster and cheaper.
- Uber could one day offer a bank account to consumers.
- “We wanted to help everybody understand that there’s a new part of Uber that’s focused on financial services, and that has a mission of giving people access to the type of financial services they were excluded from,” Uber Money head Peter Hazlehurst told CNBC.
- Industry observers see this as a way to bind users to their platform to keep them engaged—a customer retention play as well.
(Charting the course of Bitcoin, 11 years and counting)
- Bitcoin white paper was published Oct 31 2008 (all we know about author is it wasn't CW)
- coinbase blog post examining 11 indicators btc is gaining momentum, creating econ opportunity, increasing global utility
- Comparisons with other tech
  - Email (1972) - Took till 1997 to surpass 10m people
  - TV (1927) - By the end of the 1940s only 2% of families had one
  - BTC (2008) - 27m in US by 2019, 9%
- Google Trends
  - Interest has been spreading across the world, with countries taking turns on the top spot for highest relative interest
  - 2009, Austria had the highest relative interest, followed by Kazakhstan (2010), Estonia (2011), Finland (2012), Ghana (2015), Nigeria (2016), and South Africa (2017).
  - In 2018 more americans typed in Bitcoin than royal wedding or election results
- Over 55,000 computers in 96 countries running full nodes
- Buying $10/mo in btn over past 4 years (Oct 2015) would have a yield 595%
  - $480 to 3337...sponsored by coinbase =)
- Demand for Bitcoin in economically volatile regions reached record highs in 2019
  - Local Bitcoins exchange volume in Venezuela, Argentina, & HK spiking
- Okay so we all know Bitcoin is the most secure blockchain
  - Now at 108m terahashes per second
  - "Bitcoin is far and away the largest computational network ever created,"
    - Source is legit but had to check this claim
    - Multilple articles from 2013, 2015 talking about how many times more powerful than 500 supercomputers bitcoin was
Get your cows, BUT ON BLOCKCHAIN
- There's a lot of issue with supply chain, more than I ever knew.
- Being launched by Wong Supermarket, which is apparently Chilean, you'll be able to scan your meat via an app, and see where its been.
- There's a company behind this is called SUKU, which is a US based supply chain company with founders from Deloitte.
- They're actually developing on the Quorum chain, which is the JP Morgan permissioned chain.
- “You have a large group of consumers that want to buy sustainability, and want to buy transparent products from brands. But they don’t do it today – they don’t trust what the brands are saying. There’s a $1 trillion market sitting there for companies and brands to take if they can speak the same language as those consumers do.”
- This would even track the animal welfare and everything. If they say "We have vaccinated every animal" it would then need to be confirmed by the correct observing party.
- Apparently Wong is kinda like a Whole Foods, but it was bought by a conglomorate called Cencosud and people were pissed.
WTF is going on with Bitmain
- Bitmain is a huge mining firm, one of the biggest in existence.
- They've ousted the co-founder and executive director - his name is Micree Ketuan Zhan.
- Coindesk got the following from an anonymous source for an internal E-mail from Jihan Wu-
- “Bitmain’s co-founder, chairman, legal representative and executive director Jihan Wu has decided to dismiss all roles of Ketuan Zhan, effective immediately. Any Bitmain staff shall no longer take any direction from Zhan, or participate in any meeting organized by Zhan. Bitmain may, based on the situation, consider terminating employment contracts of those who violate this note.”
- There isn't any information on WHY.
- He actually owned more shares than the more well known Jihan Wu .
- There was an all hands meeting on Tuesday to discuss this, and CoinDesk was even able to get some info from that.
- Wu had stepped away from Bitmain in December of 2018 as an active day to day participant, but obviously is back at it. Apparently the two had a massive falling out, and it resulted in what Wu described as a power struggle in the meeting, and they had been since 2015.
- The major layoffs in 2018 were a key point of contention, Zhan didn't want to fire anyone, and Wu didn't see the company surviving if they didn't, so Zhan tried to seize control as the sole CEO at that time .
- So he starts throwin shade, saying Zhan was insecure and he let him have his chainman role etc, but that this resulted in pulled credit lines, and calling up of credit. If Bitcoin hadn't bounced back, maybe there was no saving the company after that.
- Bitmain has had declining hashrate share and it continues to do so.
- Apparently Zhan wanted to move into AI, which isn't really their niche and wanted to raise funds and dedicate current funds to do it. I guess this was the big divide.
- He's also banned from the offices.
- Maybe this will hurr their chances at their planned US IPO?

Crypto Around the World

China goes bullish on blockchain
- China Now Banning Anything Calling Blockchain A Scam
- Business Insider article
- Xi said last week that China should accelerate the development of blockchain technology
  - called for greater research and investment
  - Quoted saying it will play an important role in next round of tech innovation and industrial transformation
  - And that China wanted to gain an edge over other major countries in R&D
  - and in a wider goal, demanded deep integration with other information technologies , including AI, big data, & IOT.
- Official at Central Bank urging commercial banks to 'step up their application'
  - So of course that caused a market boom
  - People's Daily (State newspaper) tried to tamper enthusiasm
  - “Blockchain’s future is here but we must remain rational, The rise of blockchain technology was accompanied by that of cryptocurrencies, but innovation in blockchain technology does not mean we should speculate in virtual currencies.”
Croatia's UBIK NGO Moves Governance To Blockchain
- Starting Nov 1st Croatia's NGO is moving it's governance onto the Ethereum blockchain in the form of a DAO using Aragon.
- UBIK is a Croatian blockchain and cryptocurrency association. If you belong to it you will have the right to 10 reputation tokens
- Board members will get 100 tokens
- UBIK executed a blockchain vote earlier in the year but it was using QR codes in a temporary wallet not on Ethereum. They were trying to keep it simple for non-technical users.
- UBIK requires a proper blockchain wallet to use like Metamask or Frame. Less straightforward so there might be some onboarding for the less savvy users.
- DAO will be used to group decisions and will be first blockchain in the world to do such a thing in an official capacity. DAO will also keep the funds in DeFi earning 5-10% annually to offset fees for the org.

Exit

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Episode 210 - Google's quantum supremacy, Zuckerberg testifies, and the CryptoBasic community gets attacked. Oct 26, 2019

Show notes

Welcome to another Flagship Friday, where we discuss the most important happenings in the crypto community weekly!

Today we're talking a lot about what the big ol' giants have been up to, with Google's quantum computer running big ol' data pretty quickly, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg doing a big ol' testimony for like, what, the billionth time? Also, we're taking a look at a... questionable feature of the Lightning Network and talking about something very unfortunate that happened to the CryptoBasic community last week - we got attacked by scammers.

Dive into the cryptoverse with us on this week's Flagship Friday.

Rapid Fire
- [Ripple Adds Four Members to Regulatory Team, Joins Blockchain Association](Ripple Adds Four Members to Regulatory Team, Joins Blockchain Association)
  - Including Treasury Department experience, and CFTC Senior Advisors
Bakkt Follows Up Record Volume With Another Forecasted All-Time High
- Yes, maybe in the short term a lot of the volume is shorting BTC but that doesn't really matter. What matters is the institutional money is starting to flow in.
- Wednesday 640 traded contracts (new ATH). Day before was 85 lol. Previous record was 224.
- Institutional investors made long positions of over 1k BTC in October, up from 500 BTC the previous month.
Bakkt To Launch Options Trading in December
- Dec 9th launch and fully regulated and approved by its backer, The Intercontinental Exchange and the CFTC, the governing agency on derivatives.
- Hopes to bring trust and utility to digital assets
Boris Johnson has pledged to deliver Brexit by October 31st. $10k has been put on Brexit not happening by the end of the month on the Augur platform. Only 5% on it actually happening.
- Augur is a decentralized prediction market that depends on "wisdow of crowds" and has been pretty on point thus far.. Predicted Dems taking the house, price of BTC above 4k October 22nd, Justin Trudeau winning Canada reelection, etc.
What's an atomic swap?
- Binance Academy posted an article explaining what an atomic swap is. Basically it allows two different cryptocurrencies to be exchanged quickly. You can trade them directly from your personal wallets.
- Essentially peer to peer trades across different blockchains.
- This allows for users more security by not having to put it on a third party exchange and also cuts one step out for most alt coins by not having to convert it into one of the bigger coins like BTC or Eth to then convert it to the coin you wanted initially.

(Zuckerberg Testifies) -K
- House Financial services committee
- Now positioning Libra as a reaction to China's plan to release a similar cryptocurrency
  - Before it was about it being international, here playing to US lawmakers
  - "Libra will be backed mostly by dollars and I believe it will extend America’s financial leadership,”
- Apparently 4 lawmakers had sent letters to members asking not to participate (maybe why we saw mass exodus)
- FB also distinguished LIbra from their wallet, and clarified "Facebook’s intention not to sell data about Calibra wallet users to third parties"
  - "if america doesnt lead on this others will"
- Friday, October 19, three new bills were introduced aimed at undermining Facebook’s efforts
  - Keeping Big Tech Out of Finance Act
  - “Stablecoins are Securities” bill (would affect a ton of exchanges)
  - “To Prohibit The Listing of Certain Securities,”
    - appears to seek to prevent stablecoins like libra from entering the capital markets space
User Loses 4 BTC in Lightning Network - B

So this is pretty complicated, but user ZipoTim from reddit posted that he has lost 4 BTC from the lightning network.

So this is super complicated, but basically here's how this works. If you ever upload an old version of a transaction, the "penalty" is to let the other user keep all of the funds from the lightning channel.

This is to prevent double spend on the lightning network, since there's no consensus lightning algorithm, there is an exploit where you could send a transaction through the LN, and then send an old version of your LN Node, but with a force close transaction listed before the sent amount gets processed.

For this reason, LN operators are told not to keep backups, but that's completely counter-intuitive to sys admin as I understand it.

The user claims there was a power outage so their timestamp was affected?

So I guess there's still a real possibility he was trying to do something shady and it backfired. He was using the LN to run some sort of online Gambling business. Apparently he sold his apartment for 4 BTC, and lives in Bulgaria.

Apparently some of the money didn't belong to him.

This seems like there may have actually been malicious intent here to me - but at the same time it seems really easy to lose a ton accidentally.

r/Bitcoin labeled the post with reckless flair. Classy.
Google’s ‘Quantum Supremacy’: A Surprising Potential Application - K
- So one critique of Googles "quantum supremacy" is that its not very useful yet
  - What is Quantum supremacy?
    - Wikipedia - the potential ability of devices to solve problems that classical computers practically cannot.
    - to perform a single calculation that no conventional computer, even the biggest supercomputer, can perform in a reasonable amount of time.
  - What google achieved again was
    - Calculatin whether the output of an rng algorithm was truly random
    - Googles Quantum computer did this in 3m 20sec
    - According to the paper the IBM Summit-3, most powerful commercially-available computer would take about 10,000 years
      - Peak Speed is 200,000 teraflops
      - Equivalent in human terms = 6.3b people, all make a calculation at the same time, every second, for a year = 1 second of Summit-3
- Google's research could lead to improvements behind proof-of-stake cyptocurrencies
  - POS entails random selection of nodes to become validators
  - So the obvious question is how to ensure node selection is truly random
  - Even this calculation could add security and piece of mind to tons of clients, like ensuring dice arent loaded
  - They do quote a Mathematician from California Davis saying its overkill
    - but concedes he could be wrong and respects certified randomness as complex
Bullish or Bullshit - Ex-CFTC Chair Says Trump Admin Popped BTC Bubble in 2017 - A
- Christian Giancarlo, the former CFTC chair who left in April after a five year term gave CoinDesk an interview earlier this week.
- Direct quote: “One of the untold stories of the past few years is that the CFTC, the Treasury, the SEC and the [National Economic Council] director at the time, Gary Cohn, believed that the launch of bitcoin futures would have the impact of popping the bitcoin bubble. And it worked.”
- Futures were announced Dec. 1 2017 on Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and the CBOE Futures Exchange and went live on Dec. 18th 2017.
- Direct quote: “We saw a bubble building and we thought the best way to address it was to allow the market to interact with it,”
- Direct quote:
“If you do believe it’s a ridiculous price but you don’t own, there’s no way to express that view,” Giancarlo told CoinDesk, adding:

“If you don’t have that derivative, then all you’ve got are believers [and] it’s a believers’ market.”
- Giancarlo believes that permitting bitcoin futures in 2017 helped keep the market free and he believed that it showed the power of markets to bring discipline to prices.
The average life expectancy for a fiat currency is 27 years.? - K
- Blog post by John Paul Koning exploring this often referred figure
- Starts tracing claim back from advertising, some books (particularly from Gold proponents) finally to a guy named Matt Hewitt (since removed)
- He did do some math
  - counted 176 currencies that are still in circulation, and 599 that aren’t.
  - 27 years is the average lifespan, if you dont count the 176
- Also out of the 599 they didnt just explode, mostly deliberately replaced
  - For example Dutch gulder, French franc, and Italian lira were swapped for new monetary unit - Euro. Currency holder were fairly compensated
  - When Kenya, Tanzania, & Uganada separated from East African Currency Board they created new currencies, citizens could exchange EA shillings for new currency

THAT'S A SCAM

Former NBA Player defrauds $825k in Bitcoin scam
- Isaac Austin, former NBA player, who retired in 2004 was a trustee for his own BTC trading company. Managed to get a Ghanaian firm to hand over $11,000 per BTC. $800k was transferred to his account from the firm and has yet to be touched. Claimed he would pay back investments and then some at close of trading.
- The victim says Austin gave a whole raft of excuses including; that he’d suffered a heart attack, transferred coins to the wrong wallet, was in queues at banks, and that banks were holding the funds.
Our Scam - B
- "Do yo know anyone who is selling ETH or that has it? I left my ledger at the office and am meeting a client, I went on btcpop but they want to charge me 27% to borrow it for an hour till I'm back and that's insane " - Scumbag Scammer .
- He was able to clone mt 4 digit number on my discord ID and make his name similar, then he cropped my user picture.
- There were a bunch of red flags that unfortunately didn't end up stopping Tony. The caller ID came up as someone other than me (won't name the name because I suspect it's spoofed).
- Tony asked for voice verification and the scammer dodged.
- Said he had 4000 BTC so he didn't need to rob.
- Said something about using his iPhone
- After making excuses he dais that Adam would send him a discord message, and made a new account with Adam's name.

Please join the conversation in the Discord. We're in there all the time.

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Episode 209 - Telegram's in trouble, Libra gets ghosted, and more. Oct 19, 2019

Show notes

Another week, another Flagship!

This week, the CryptoBasic Avengers have assembled to talk shit about big tech. The roasting session begins with Telegram and ends with Libra, given the fact that all bullshit leads to the Big Zucc. Additionally, Epic Games is starting to get its feet wet with crypto and eToro is making... interesting strides in the world of bot trading. All of the above and more on today's episode, so tune in!

Dive into the cryptoverse with us on this week's Flagship Friday.

Rapid Fire
- Crypto Question Added to 1040 Form for 2019.
- $550M Worth of ETH is locked up in various DeFi Solutions at the moment
- Satoshi is officially a word in the Oxford Dictionary
  - Oxford added 650 words to the their English dictionary and one of them was Satoshi. "The smallest monetary unit in the Bitcoin digital payment system, equal to one hundred millionth of a bitcoin.
  - Bitcoin was added in 2013.
  - Other words added were whatevs and chillax lol
- Bitcoin Mining Revenue Jumps By $1bil in 2 months
  - Took 8 years to reach $5 billion revenue,
  - One year after that it reached $10 billion in August 2018
  - And now it's about to eclipse $15bill in early 2020.
- Booking.com Latest Firm To Drop Out Of Libra
  - Booking.com left on Monday of this week and now 21 of it's original 28 backers are still there. Seven backers have all left within the past week.
  - Happened on the same day FB was in Geneva with all the other companies formally signing on.

Telegram In Hot Water With The SEC
- SEC has formally instructed Telegram Group to halt the sales of cryptocurrency Gram
  - "filed an emergency action and obtained temporary restraining order against two offshore entities"
- Why? - "conducting an alleged unregistered, ongoing digital token offering in the U.S. and overseas"
  - Remember they raised $1.7 billion
- So by failing to register the sale of tokens back in Jan 2018, which are considered securities, they are in violation of the Securities Act of 1933
- “Our emergency action today is intended to prevent Telegram from flooding the US markets with digital tokens that we allege were unlawfully sold,”
  - failed to provide investors with info regarding business operations, financial condition, risk factors, & management
- And remember this quote from a NYT article we covered a few weeks ago on the show
  - "Telegram promised in legal documents that it would deliver Grams to investors by Oct. 31, 2019, or give back the money."
  - Making matters worse, violation of Securities Act may mean Telegram has to forfeit the $1.7b it raised
  - “We have repeatedly stated that issuers cannot avoid the federal securities laws just by labeling their product a cryptocurrency or a digital token,”
- So what are they going to do?
  - Telegram Looks to Cut Deal With TON Blockchain Investors After SEC Order
  - They notified investors that the TON project will launch later, to April 30 2020
  - From an email to investors
    - "We disagree with the SEC’s legal position and intend to vigorously defend the lawsuit. We are proposing to extend the deadline date in order to provide additional time to resolve the SEC’s lawsuit and work with other governmental authorities in advance of the launch of the TON network.”
  - The investors (token holders) have to agree to delay, and there are two groups (2 rounds of investing)
  - 2nd round investors have till Oct 23 to sign & approve, If investors choose not to sign they can get back approximately 77% of their money. 1st round investors got different communication
  - Court hearing scheduled for Oct 24
Libra Time! Like we said last week, I guess Libra gets its own section.
- Booking.com has dropped out of the Libra foundation.
- Mercado Pago drops out of the Libra foundation
- Ebay has dropped out of the Facebook Libra foundation.
- Stripe has dropped out of Facebook Libra foundation.
- Visa has dropped out of Facebook Libra foundation
- Mastercard has dropped out of Libra Foundation
- Warren Davidson - US Senator (R)-Ohio: Facebook should drop the Libra project and Adopt Bitcoin.
NANO has released a plugin for Unreal Engine .
- Tons of game son this engine - Assassin's Creed, Batman games, Borderlands, literally hundreds of games.
- I checked out the Demo, it was super cool. The game had a real time wallet transaction list. You paid to join the game in Nano, and then every monster you killed earned you nano in real time, transferred to your wallet as soon as you killed the monster.
- Then you could spend nano to buy items in the game.
- Imagine a Fortnite or other battle royale game where you spent a little money to join, and first place got it all.
- A reddit user pointed out 0 spending $500 and give them their allowance there.
CFTC Chairman gives opinion on Ether
- CFTC Chairman Heath Tarbert has said ether is a commodity
- Speaking to Yahoo Finance he made the following statement
  - “We’ve been very clear on bitcoin: bitcoin is a commodity. We haven’t said anything about ether – until now, It is my view as chairman of the CFTC that ether is a commodity.”
- Concerning currencies created by hard forks
  - “It stands to reason that similar assets should be treated similarly. If the underlying asset, the original digital asset, hasn’t been determined to be a security and is therefore a commodity, most likely the forked asset will be the same. Unless the fork itself raises some securities law issues under that classic Howey Test.”
eToro Launches a Crypto Trading Bot that is 100% Based on Twitter sentiment.
- I hate that this thing might work.
- It uses an AI to scrap Twitter for sentiment on crypto assets and allocates the portfolio accordingly.
- Requires a $2k min investment.
- It's in partnership with the TIE Data Analysis firm.
- Current Allocations
  - DONT OPEN
    
    47% DASH
    
    25% EOS
    
    21% XRP
    
    5% IOTA
    
    2% ETC
- I was a little bit disingenuous - There are only 13 monitored assets.
  
  BTC, ETH, XRP, IOTA, BCH, NEO, ETC, DASH, EOS, XLM, LTC, ZEC, ADA
- They've also said they're eliminating 90% of all posts because they believe they come from bots. HOLY SHIT.
- They also have to program the AI to figure out if EOS referrs to, say, the EOS blockchain or the EOS camera.
- They said they know there's a ton of XRP shills out there, for instance, pushing an XRP tweetstorm every day, but they compare it to the previous day to make any decisions on allocation

THAT'S A SCAM

S Korea/US bust giant child porn site by following bitcoin trail (Maybe it's not a scam but thought it should go here)
- SK man arrested, 337 others charged in global sweep
- rescued 23 victims since march 2018
- Jong Woo Son, 23, operated a Darknet market that accepted Bitcoin and distributed more than 1mill sexually explicit videos involving children. Serving 18 months in prison in SK. Seems low.
- “Our agency’s ability to analyze the blockchain and de-anonymize Bitcoin transactions allowed for the identification of hundreds of predators around the world,” Fort said. “The scale of this crime is eye-popping and sickening.”
- IRS Criminal Investigation Division also claimed credit. Don Fort, chief of the division

Shots Fired!
- Tone Vays was on a Panel with CSW and he showed up wearing a shirt that said "We are all Satoshi Nakamoto - Except Craig S. Wright".
- The panel was actually amazing they all hated each other. Watch it here.