Crypto - Bitcoin XRP ETH DarkMoon NFTs

[Rolodex]

It's ETFs for Bitcoin only, as I understand it. There are a lot of shitcoin cryptos out there which are stupid, but Bitcoin is the granddaddy that's stood the test of time. If funds like Fidelity are going to be trading the ETF's I think, with education - as in any investment - it could be a good place for money. Yeah it's probably more volatile than, say, Apple stock, but the key is not to check it every freaking hour.

We've had Bitcoin for a number of years and this will be good, I think. The SEC and government in general (esp the IRS) needs to catch up. I think it's been/felt like the wild west bc of so little regulation compared to old-timey investments.

[Suranis]

Anything where it can take a week or more for transactions to go through, unless you pay the miners extra money to speed things up, is not something that has "stood the test of time." Hell in some cases it costs more to make the transaction than the amount of the transaction itself.

Plus its nowhere near as energy efficient to transact money using it than traditional banking because it demands vast amounts of computer power to run. It cannot handle 1000 times less transactions per second than the traditional banking system.

Plus, it now costs more to make a Bitcoin than the Bitcoin is worth.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg ... -is-worth/

It is a terrible solution to a problem that does not exist. The way it works is terrible for monetary transactions.

It's kept alive by the power of money laundering and dirty money. Too many bad people find it too convenient to use to let it die.

[John Thomas8]

Grifting for gawd (Leon is a bit raw):

[RTH10260]

Opened a separate thread in the Computer section on this new domain name server concept at https://thefogbow.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2529

ps. HNS is also the name of the cryptocurrency used to purchase and position domains on the blockchain.

What are Handshake (HNS) domains, and how do they work?
HNS aims to provide a decentralized alternative to the traditional domain name system (DNS) — here’s how.

A particular topic of interest in the blockchain space is the emergence of blockchain-related projects in the domain name system (DNS) and domain ecosystem. Handshake, in particular, has been gaining attention among decentralized technology enthusiasts for its potential to revolutionize how people think about and interact with domains, especially in the context of Web3.

What is a handshake (HNS) domain?

Handshake (HNS) is a decentralized, permissionless naming protocol that allows for peer-to-peer communication and provides an accessible alternative to centrally managed domain names, such as .com, country-code domains and other generic domains.

As a decentralized peer-to-peer domain naming protocol, Handshake aims to serve as a DNS chain alternative to the current default root chain. Also, the creation of top-level domains (TLDs) such as .agency, .gov, .edu and the like are currently managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and are subject to an application process.

As such, before an applicant can have a new TLD created in the root DNS, they first have to apply for the top-level domain, win an auction for it, and await approval. The current process is tedious, complex and expensive — not to mention highly centralized. This makes the system vulnerable to hackers and nonresistant to corruption and censorship.

Handshake hopes to change the system and provide alternative Handshake top-level domains that are much more efficient, affordable and secure. The goal is to be able to use blockchain technology to allow Handshake domains to bypass the current ICANN-overseen system and help build a more decentralized domain landscape online.

Handshake (HNS) vs. traditional DNS

As mentioned, the current DNS infrastructure is heavily reliant on ICANN’S root zone. This means that for HNS domains to be resolved, there must first be a Handshake-aware resolver in the resolution chain.

The way DNS works, however, is quite similar to HNS. The only difference is the root zone file that the internet trusts and reads from, hence the need to introduce a Handshake alternative.

The goal isn’t to switch to the Handshake root zone entirely, as doing so would render current TLDs (.com and others) unless they also claim and recreate their TLDs on the Handshake blockchain. Suffice it to say that this is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Compatibility is another potential issue. There are thousands of TLDs, and they continue to increase as the internet expands. What Handshake has done to ensure that the new decentralized root zone will be compatible with these other TLDs is to reserve them for managing organizations to claim over the next three years.


https://cointelegraph.com/news/what-are ... -they-work

[RTH10260]

SEC scores big win in lawsuit against crypto exchange Coinbase

Published Wed, Mar 27 202410:31 AM EDTUpdated 10 Min Ago
MacKenzie Sigalos Dan Mangan

• The Securities and Exchange Commission scored a major win in its lawsuit against Coinbase.
  A judge ruled that the SEC’s claim that the cryptocurrency exchange engaged in unregistered sales of securities could be heard by a jury at trial.
  Coinbase shares were trading around 2.5% lower on news of the ruling in Manhattan federal court.

The Securities and Exchange Commission scored a major win in its lawsuit against Coinbase

on Wednesday, as a judge ruled that its claim that the cryptocurrency exchange engaged in unregistered sales of securities could be heard by a jury at trial.

Coinbase’s shares fell around 2.5% on news of the ruling in Manhattan federal court rejecting its bid to dismiss the SEC’s complaint.

The regulator first filed suit against Coinbase in June, alleging the company was acting as an unregistered broker and exchange. The agency also demanded the company be “permanently restrained and enjoined” from continuing to do so.

“The ‘crypto’ nomenclature may be of recent vintage, but the challenged transactions fall comfortably within the framework that courts have used to identify securities for nearly eighty years,” U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla wrote in her ruling.

“The Court finds that the SEC adequately alleges that Coinbase, through its Staking Program, engaged in the unregistered offer and sale of securities,” Failla wrote.

The judge elsewhere in that ruling agreed to dismiss the SEC’s claim in the lawsuit that Coinbase acted as an unregistered broker by making its Wallet application available to customers.

The company responded to CNBC’s request for comment with a link to a series of posts on social media platform X by Coinbase’s chief legal officer, Paul Grewal.



https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/27/sec-sco ... nbase.html

[chancery]

Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years.



Judge Kaplan's statements at the hearing were wild, worth reading.

Innercity press's coverage is excellent, but as usual the threading is erratic, you'll need to poke around.

[pipistrelle]

My favorite part (from defense): Let him meet a partner and have a baby.

[Rolodex]

Here's the beginning of the thread. Great read, and kaplan did not mince words. I was a bit surprised when he said 25 years because he clearly thought this was an egregious and unique case.

[Sam the Centipede]

Here's the beginning of the thread. Great read, and kaplan did not mince words. I was a bit surprised when he said 25 years because he clearly thought this was an egregious and unique case.

Surprised low or surprised high?

The ICP thread quotes the judge:

Judge Kaplan: I know the Probation Department recommends 105 years, and the Government 40 to 50 years. That would be more than necessary.

Personally I am never in favor of very long sentences for anybody, unless it is necessary to keep them out of society because they are a monster who will act violently and horribly. 25 years is effectively taking away a young person's middle age and family life or an old person's remaining life, which I consider excessive. I would probably never wish for more than 10 years for anyone for anything, especially as (almost) anybody can change. If they reoffend, then perhaps bring the hammer down.

But that's a separate issue. People here seem to evaluate in terms of comparability with other sentences. I guess 25 is enough?

[Rolodex]

Here's the beginning of the thread. Great read, and kaplan did not mince words. I was a bit surprised when he said 25 years because he clearly thought this was an egregious and unique case.

Surprised low or surprised high?

The ICP thread quotes the judge:

Judge Kaplan: I know the Probation Department recommends 105 years, and the Government 40 to 50 years. That would be more than necessary.

Personally I am never in favor of very long sentences for anybody, unless it is necessary to keep them out of society because they are a monster who will act violently and horribly. 25 years is effectively taking away a young person's middle age and family life or an old person's remaining life, which I consider excessive. I would probably never wish for more than 10 years for anyone for anything, especially as (almost) anybody can change. If they reoffend, then perhaps bring the hammer down.

But that's a separate issue. People here seem to evaluate in terms of comparability with other sentences. I guess 25 is enough?

I thought between 30-40, lower end of what US asked. I have never really paid attention to this kind of thing before (what gov't asks for in term of sentence) the trump era, so I am unfamiliar with how much judges deviate from guidelines/prosecution ask. I guess it's like any "bargain" - ask for more than what you really want and happily settle for less.

I guess they'll put him in a fed prison close to his parents? Supposedly the cushiest fed is in Pensacola so I wonder if they'll beg to go there.

[chancery]

Personally I am never in favor of very long sentences for anybody, unless it is necessary to keep them out of society because they are a monster who will act violently and horribly. I would probably never wish for more than 10 years for anyone for anything, especially as (almost) anybody can change. If they reoffend, then perhaps bring the hammer down.

I generally agree. The are way too many long and very long sentences. This is especially true in state courts, but there are also some federal statutes with wacky mandatory minimums that lead to bad results. But it gets complicated. Sentences for white collar crime have a way of being too lenient.

What Kaplan did here was fine. A federal prisoner who behaves himself will be released after serving 85 percent of his sentence. In SBF's case that would bring his actual sentence down to about 21 years. SBF is 32 now, and will be 53 when he's released. That's hard time by any measure, but the sentence is compassionate in that it allows the possibility of some good years, decades even, after SBF is released.

However I do think that this is one of the rare circumstances in which there was a decent argument to be made for a super-long sentence that would have kept SBF on ice until he was in his mid-sixties.

The government argued that there was every reason to fear that SBF would use his talents to commit egregious crimes again, and for that reason the sentence should be in the 30-40 year range, for the sake of protecting society. Kaplan didn't directly address this, but some of his comments suggest that he didn't really disagree.

I am not diminishing the harm. The brazenness of his actions. His exceptional flexibility with the truth. His apparent lack of any remorse. I want to add one further thought. I did not think it a fruitful use of time to spell out every lie

When not lying, he was evasive, hair splitting, trying to get the prosecutors to rephrase questions for him. I've been doing this job for close for 30 years. I've never seen a performance like that.

So I think that I would have been fine with a 40 year (35 years with good time) sentence as well. However, I'm glad it's not my job to make the sentencing decisions, and in fact it's a very good thing that we have judges who can make a measured decision even for bad crimes, rather than reflexively deciding to "throw away the key."

[RTH10260]

Personally I am never in favor of very long sentences for anybody, unless it is necessary to keep them out of society because they are a monster who will act violently and horribly. I would probably never wish for more than 10 years for anyone for anything, especially as (almost) anybody can change. If they reoffend, then perhaps bring the hammer down.

The government argued that there was every reason to fear that SBF would use his talents to commit egregious crimes again, and for that reason the sentence should be in the 30-40 year range, for the sake of protecting society. Kaplan didn't directly address this, but some of his comments suggest that he didn't really disagree.

His current talents will not be of any use in even ten years from now. He was embedded in totally new technology and played with it. This technology will be stale news in a decade. Also SBF will not get the opportunity to keep up with the leading bleeding edge while incarcerated. Nor will he be able to network with people that will be mastering the then newest technology in a couple of decades.

[FiveAcres]

And his parents, who seemed like they were supporting everything he did, despite knowing better, will be past doing so when he gets out.

[chancery]

The government argued that there was every reason to fear that SBF would use his talents to commit egregious crimes again, and for that reason the sentence should be in the 30-40 year range, for the sake of protecting society. Kaplan didn't directly address this, but some of his comments suggest that he didn't really disagree.

I am not diminishing the harm. The brazenness of his actions. His exceptional flexibility with the truth. His apparent lack of any remorse. I want to add one further thought. I did not think it a fruitful use of time to spell out every lie

When not lying, he was evasive, hair splitting, trying to get the prosecutors to rephrase questions for him. I've been doing this job for close for 30 years. I've never seen a performance like that.

I wrote the highlighted passage because I thought that Judge Kaplan had adressed this, but couldn't find the quote. It turned up in a BBC interview with Jennifer Taub:

"There is a risk that this man will be in a position to do something very bad in the future and it's not a trivial risk, not a trivial risk at all," he said.

Also this:

"He knew it was wrong. He knew it was criminal. He regrets that he made a very bad bet about the likelihood of getting caught but he's not going to admit a thing," the judge said.

The interview with Taub is here:https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-us- ... type=share

The BBC article is here: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68677487

[chancery]

And his parents, who seemed like they were supporting everything he did, despite knowing better, will be past doing so when he gets out.

[John Thomas8]

[RTH10260]

Bitcoin’s halving countdown continues with one week to go

by James Hunt LAYER 1S •
April 13, 2024, 5:01AM EDT Published 1 minute earlier on

Bitcoin’s next halving event, when the miners’ block subsidy reward gets cut in half, is now just one week away, according to The Block’s halving countdown.

The estimated time remaining would see Bitcoin’s fourth halving arrive on April 20, with the block subsidy dropping from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.

Bitcoin’s next halving event is now just one week or approximately 1,000 blocks away, according to The Block’s Bitcoin Halving Countdown page.

The estimated countdown is based on Bitcoin's average block generation time of 10 minutes, setting a potential date of April 20 at around 9 a.m. UTC (5 a.m. ET), to reach the next halving block height of 840,000, as things stand. Bitcoin’s next halving event will see the subsidy reward for miners on the network drop from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block.

Bitcoin halvings are programmed to occur automatically every 210,000 blocks — roughly every four years. Once a halving event occurs, miners receive 50% fewer bitcoins as a subsidy reward for every block of transactions they mine and add to the blockchain. However, they continue to earn additional transaction fee rewards for each block mined as normal.

There have been three halving events in Bitcoin's history, reducing its block subsidy inflation from 50 BTC to 25 BTC in 2012, then to 12.5 BTC in 2016 and 6.25 BTC at the last halving on May 11, 2020. In the long term, there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins in existence.

The halving events will continue until the last bitcoin is expected to be mined around the year 2140. After this, miners will only earn from transaction fees.


https://www.theblock.co/post/288015/bit ... week-to-go

[raison de arizona]

Oh my.

Hulk Hogan’s social media accounts & website promoted a $HULK crypto token today, jumping on the recent celeb memecoin trend

it pumped big, millions of dollars, & then dumped

all the posts are now deleted. there’s a new post now claiming that the posts were not from him

[RTH10260]

Sam Bankman-Fried funded a group with racist ties. FTX wants its $5m back
The Guardian reveals FTX trustees, in charge after the CEO’s downfall, allege payments were made with looted funds

Jason Wilson and Ali Winston
Sun 16 Jun 2024 12.00 CEST

Multiple events hosted at a historic former hotel in Berkeley, California, have brought together people from intellectual movements popular at the highest levels in Silicon Valley while platforming prominent people linked to scientific racism, the Guardian reveals.

But because of alleged financial ties between the non-profit that owns the building – Lightcone Infrastructure (Lightcone) – and jailed crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, the administrators of FTX, Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto exchange, are demanding the return of almost $5m that new court filings allege were used to bankroll the purchase of the property.

During the last year, Lightcone and its director, Oliver Habryka, have made the $20m Lighthaven Campus available for conferences and workshops associated with the “longtermism”, “rationalism” and “effective altruism” (EA) communities, all of which often see empowering the tech sector, its elites and its beliefs as crucial to human survival in the far future.

At these events, movement influencers rub shoulders with startup founders and tech-funded San Francisco politicians – as well as people linked to eugenics and scientific racism.

Since acquiring the Lighthaven property – formerly the Rose Garden Inn – in late 2022, Lightcone has transformed it into a walled, surveilled compound without attracting much notice outside the subculture it exists to promote.

But recently filed federal court documents allege that in the months before the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto empire, he and other company insiders funnelled almost $5m to Lightcone, including $1m for a deposit to lock in the Rose Garden deal.

FTX bankruptcy administrators say that money was commingled with funds looted from FTX customers. Now, they are asking a judge to give it back.

The revelations cast new light on so-called “Tescreal” intellectual movements – an umbrella term for a cluster of movements including EA and rationalism that exercise broad influence in Silicon Valley, and have the ear of the likes of Sam Altman, Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk.

It also raises questions about the extent to which people within that movement continue to benefit from Bankman-Fried’s fraud, the largest in US history.



https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... fic-racism

[RTH10260]

The Stormtrooper Scandal review – inside the Star Wars art sale that wrecked lives
This look at how a charmless impressario and a bevy of cryptobros made millions from an NFT scheme – only for it to collapse into a legal nightmare – is just mind warping

Lucy Mangan
Thu 20 Jun 2024 23.30 CEST

Here’s a tricky ethical conundrum – how much can you command yourself to care about the suffering of a monumental dickhead? Do you say a breezy “Not at all!” and move on with your day? Do you say “I have limited resources and prefer to expend them on non-dickhead entities, ta?” Do you say “No dickhead is all dickhead, just as none of us is entirely free of dickheadery ourselves – thus our common humanity demands of us always a degree of empathy and compassion?” Have a think, then test yourself again at the end of 90 minutes of The Stormtrooper Scandal. Send the results on a postcard to the usual address.

The Stormtrooper Scandal tells the tale of West London art curator Ben Moore, who came a cropper when he moved into the shadowy world of NFTs (non-fungible tokens, here in the form of digital art) and cryptocurrency without, apparently, knowing a damn thing about NFTs, cryptocurrency or the intellectual property that inheres to art of various kinds.

Moore had been putting on Art Wars shows – assemblies of Star Wars stormtrooper helmets customised by various artists, including big names like Damien Hirst, the Chapman brothers and Anish Kapoor – for several years since 2013 for charity. They improved his profile but didn’t bring him in any decent money. What to do, what to do?

Artist Bran Symondson, a friend of Moore’s, introduced him to the idea of selling as NFTs pictures of the helmets he had accrued over the years. As far as I understand it – and the film does such a good job of trying to explain it that if I haven’t then I can only apologise and/or suspect that trying to understand it is a fool’s game – this means taking a picture of a customised Stormtrooper helmet and giving that picture a unique digital identifier on a blockchain (think of it as an invisible watermark) so only one person can “own” it. The owner – or “owner” – can then trade it on the NFT open market with people who also understand or purport to understand what’s going on, what they’re getting and why it’s worth anything at all.

Anyway. Moore finds some “cryptobros” online who can help him with this, commissioning further artists to create non-physical customised helmets (and here I confess, I really do begin to part ways with an understanding of events). He then announces a massive “drop” of these items/non-items, and the hype starts building.



https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... cked-lives

[Suranis]

https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=lo ... offeezilla

Logan Paul files defamation lawsuit over Coffeezilla's coverage of his failed CryptoZoo project

A year and a half after threatening to sue YouTuber Coffeezilla (https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=lo ... eged-grift) for his series of videos exposing influencer Logan Paul's (alleged) role in (allegedly) scamming his large following with a failed blockchain game, Paul has followed through on the threat. Although he acknowledges in the lawsuit that the project was definitely a scam, Paul says that he too was duped by several "conmen" who he'd brought on as advisers.

In the lawsuit, Paul claims that Coffeezilla knowingly falsely accused Paul of being in on the scam in hopes of getting more attention on his videos. Paul is seeking more than $75,000 in damages.

In January 2024, Paul filed suit against the advisers he's described as "conmen". He's also pointed the finger at them while defending a potential class action complaint from defrauded investors. https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=lo ... oo-rugpull

Logan Paul v. Stephen Findeisen [archive] https://web.archive.org/web/20240629040 ... findeisen/

[Suranis]

Ok, this post will make you want to just chug a ton of brainbleach.

https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=ma ... p-memecoin

June 18, 2024

Martin Shkreli claims to have been behind a Donald Trump memecoin

After Arkham Intelligence announced a $150,000 bounty for anyone who could prove the identity of the person behind a Donald Trump memecoin called $DJT, blockchain sleuth zachxbt quickly rose to the occasion. He submitted evidence that Martin Shkreli, the "pharma bro" who spent years in federal prison for financial fraud and who was previously known for hiking the price of an anti-malaria drug 56×, was behind the token. This wouldn't have been Shkreli's first foray into the blockchain world, after he launched a "web3 drug discovery platform", and then later dubiously claimed to have been hacked for over $450,000 after his computer was infected by a trojan after he torrented a porn video.

Shkreli attempted to frontrun the news in a Twitter space, and came out with his own claims that he had collaborated with Barron Trump to create the token, and with Andrew Tate to pump its price. However, fellow felon and memecoin pumper Roger Stone subsequently crawled out of the woodwork to claim that neither Barron nor Donald Trump was involved with $DJT.

Shkreli has yet to provide solid proof that he created the memecoin, though zachxbt's research tends to be very strong. If true, Shkreli faces potential legal repercussions, as he is still on parole after his release in 2022. The terms of his parole require him to "refrain from engaging in self-employment which involves access to client's assets, investments, or money, or solicitation of assets, investments, or money", and to make financial disclosures to the courts. Shkreli was also banned from the securities industry in 2018, as part of a settlement with the SEC.

Theres a ton of links on this that I didn't bother carrying over.