June 2021 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Cryptocurrency: ECB Spews Outright Lies about CBDC Privacy... WarOnCash, Electricity, Hacks
by grarpamp 23 Jun '21

23 Jun '21

Both Govt and Corp coins just like legacy Fiat and Banking, will Spy, Control, Sell, Share, Censor, Jail, Steal from, and Shut You and Freedom Down, obviously... so they outright lie to you about it, and attempt to pretext your brains into submission with some FUD and happy bullshit. If GovCorp is fighting distributed permissionless uncensorable unconfiscatable p2p cash defi, human rights, freespeech, monetary competition and choice, cryptography, open free markets, etc as hard as they are, and even harder yet to come... then the obvious answer and truth is that crypto must be incredibly good for you to have and use. So go do exactly that. https://www.coindesk.com/euro-central-bank-digital-currency-privacy-panetta The European Central Bank (ECB) is better suited than private companies to protect user privacy for the eventual adoption of a digital euro, according to an executive board member. From a report: In an interview with the Financial Times on June 14 and published Sunday, Fabio Panetta said his institution had no commercial interest in storing, managing or monetizing user data. The issue over privacy in the digital euro is a focal point for Europeans as are concerns of security, according to a recent survey by the ECB. "If the central bank gets involved in digital payments, privacy is going to be better protected," said Panetta. "We're not like private companies." The banker also said people felt safer when their information was handled by a public institution, adding the bank would do a better job. "There are many ways in which we can protect confidential data while allowing the checks foreseen by law to avoid illicit transactions, such as those linked to money laundering, the financing of terrorism or tax evasion," said Panetta. Central Bank Problems... https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-57520169 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtvg9/episodes/downloads Electricity usage is ABSOLUTELY NOT the reason GovCorp is shutting down cryptocurrency miners (ie: China), otherwise GovCorp would shutdown the BIGGEST user and inefficient waste of electricity on the planet... itself. What GovCorp is really doing is entering into abject fear survival fight phase, thus trying to shutdown the highly efficient competition of cryptocurrencies. Cryptos will win. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/a-real-estate-mogul-has-a-dollar100-m… "Frank McCourt, the billionaire real estate mogul and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is pouring $100 million into an attempt to rebuild the foundations of social media," reports Bloomberg: The effort, which he has loftily named Project Liberty, centers on the construction of a publicly accessible database of people's social connections, allowing users to move records of their relationships between social media services instead of being locked into a few dominant apps. The undercurrent to Project Liberty is a fear of the power that a few huge companies — and specifically Facebook Inc. — have amassed over the last decade... Project Liberty would use blockchain to construct a new internet infrastructure called the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol. With cryptocurrencies, blockchain stores information about the tokens in everyone's digital wallets; the DSNP would do the same for social connections. Facebook owns the data about the social connections between its users, giving it an enormous advantage over competitors. If all social media companies drew from a common social graph, the theory goes, they'd have to compete by offering better services, and the chance of any single company becoming so dominant would plummet. Building DSNP falls to Braxton Woodham, the co-founder of the meal delivery service Sun Basket and former chief technology officer of Fandango, the movie ticket website... McCourt hired Woodham to build the protocol, and pledged to put $75 million into an institute at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and Sciences Po in Paris to research technology that serves the common good. The rest of his $100 million will go toward pushing entrepreneurs to build services that utilize the DSNP... A decentralized approach to social media could actually undermine the power of content moderation, by making it easier for users who are kicked off one platform to simply migrate their audiences to more permissive ones. McCourt and Woodham say blockchain could discourage bad behavior because people would be tied to their posts forever... Eventually, the group plans to create its own consumer product on top of the DSNP infrastructure, and wrote in a press release that the eventual result will be an "open, inclusive data economy where individuals own, control and derive greater social and economic value from their personal information."

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Leaks: ADATA Storage Memory USB Chip Ransom Dumped
by grarpamp 23 Jun '21

23 Jun '21

Maybe some firmwares and tools for exploit researchers... https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/adata-suffers-700-gb-data-le… http://rgleaktxuey67yrgspmhvtnrqtgogur35lwdrup4d3igtbm3pupc4lyd.onion/ The Ragnar Locker ransomware gang have published download links for more than 700GB of archived data stolen from Taiwanese memory and storage chip maker ADATA. A set of 13 archives, allegedly containing sensitive ADATA files, have been publicly available at a cloud-based storage service, at least for some time. [...] Two of the leaked archives are quite large, weighing over 100GB, but several of them that could have been easily downloaded are less than 1.1GB large. Per the file metadata published by the threat actor, the largest archive is close to 300GB and its name gives no clue about what it might contain. Another large one is 117GB in size and its name is just as nondescript as in the case of the first one (Archive#2). Judging by the names of the archives, Ragnar Locker likely stole from ADATA documents containing financial information, non-disclosure agreements, among other type of details. The ransomware attack on ADATA happened on May 23rd, 2021, forcing them to take systems offline, the company told BleepingComputer. As the Ragnar Locker leak clearly shows, ADATA did not pay the ransom and restored the affected systems on its own. The ransomware actor claims stealing 1.5TB of sensitive files before deploying the encryption routine, saying that they took their time in the process because of the poor network defenses. The recently leaked batch of archives is the second one that Ragnar Locker ransomware publishes for ADATA. The previous one was posted earlier this month and includes four small 7-zip archives (less than 250MB together) that can still be downloaded.

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State of the World Lately...
by grarpamp 23 Jun '21

23 Jun '21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?=XP6CNrzSNhQ Wake up, fight back.

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Censorship: USA DOJ Seizes Multiple News Media Websites Across the Globe
by grarpamp 23 Jun '21

23 Jun '21

Amid the hypocrisies frauds censors authoritarian force theft and scams that all such governments and religions around the world rightly are, the US Govt and politicians exposes itself as the biggest censor on the planet not just at home but now plainly abroad, further downranking itself to the likes of China, Russia, and every other country that has wiped own its asshole with freespeech. Wake up, you're next. US Govt Seizes News Websites Across MidEast, Including Iran's PressTV https://southfront.org/the-end-of-global-internet-u-s-seized-foreign-domain… THIS WEBSITE HAS BEEN SEIZED. As nuclear-deal talks appear to be breaking down, SouthFront reports that the US Department of Justice has just seized a number of websites of Iranian, Palestinian, Yemeni, Iraqi news channels. A national security source familiar with the situation tells Fox News, the U.S. Government has seized approximately three dozen Iranian based websites. Source says the websites were spreading disinformation, via @davidspunt — Pat Ward (@WardDPatrick) June 22, 2021 According to the reports, at the moment, the list of victims of U.S. ‘democratic move’ includes: PressTV (Iran) In what seems to be a coordinated action, a similar message appears on the websites of Iranian and regional television networks that claims the domains of the websites have been “seized by the United States Government.” pic.twitter.com/JloU56LvpL — Press TV (@PressTV) June 22, 2021 PalToday (Palestine) Al-Masirah TV (Yemen) lol the feds seized Al Masiriah (Houthi media outlet) pic.twitter.com/0IOmjciPUR — Aram Shabanian (@AramShabanian) June 22, 2021 Al-Alam TV (Iran) Nabaa TV KafMedia (Iraq) LuaLua TV Today, we are once again facing the new round of application of the Overton window approach regarding freedom of speech. Washington has consistently been moving towards this unprecedented step. At first, disinformation campaigns, discrediting and blackmailing of independent media became the norm. Further, the persecution of journalists and editors became the common practice. Further, the Americans used to introduce personal and group sanctions, freezing ( in other words ‘stealing’) individual funds of undesirable persons. Further, there were arrests and even kidnappings of those who went beyond the American agenda. Realizing their impunity, the White House started to block the independent media and objectionable news agencies. The Big Techs, controlled by the White House, began to scour the information space from content that, according to Washington, could pose a threat to the promotion of the interests of the American elites. Since the above measures did not bring the desirable results, the Americans decided to take the next step and completely block domains of its ‘ foes ‘. This, as SouthFront concludes, is a signal to the whole world and an open declaration of US imperial dominance. More practically, it's also a signal that the US-Iran deal talks are about to be a dismal failure and that this may be a great time to buy oil.

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Supreme Court asked to consider limits on phone searches at border
by jim bell 23 Jun '21

23 Jun '21

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/06/22/supreme-court-asked…

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Ditching OpenPGP, a new approach to signing APT repositories
by Stefan Claas 22 Jun '21

22 Jun '21

Hi all, https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Apt/Spec/AptSign Regards Stefan

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Private, free-space communications by laser.
by jim bell 22 Jun '21

22 Jun '21

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-quantum-cascade-lasers-private-free-space.html "Free-space optical communication, the communication between two devices at a distance using light to carry information, is a highly promising system for achieving high-speed communication. This system of communication is known to be immune to electromagnetic interference (EMI), a disturbance generated by external sources that affects electrical circuits and can disrupt radio signals.le some studies have highlighted the possible advantages of free-space optical communication, this system of communication has so far come with certain limitations. Most notably, it is known to offer limited security against eavesdroppers. Researchers at Télécom Paris (member of Institut Polytechnique de Paris), mirSense, Technische Universität Darmstadt and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) have recently introduced a unique system for more secure free-space optical communication based on a technology known as quantum cascade laser, a specific type of semiconductor laser that typically emits mid-infrared light."

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Cryptocurrency: Iron Titans Rekd and Sink Like Stones
by grarpamp 22 Jun '21

22 Jun '21

>From TITAN To Titanic: Did DeFi Just Suffer Its First 'Bank Run'? https://www.rekt.news/iron-finance-rekt/ https://decrypt.co/73810/mark-cuban-hit-apparent-defi-rug-pull Less than a week ago, billionaire investor Mark Cuban proclaimed: "Crypto Businesses make more sense than you think and valuing tokens is easier and makes more sense than you think." He may well be correct, but just a few days later, his investment in TITAN - part of a "multi-chain partial-collateralized algorithmic stablecoin ecosystem" from IRON Finance - has hit an iceberg and sunk like the Titanic. I got hit like everyone else. Crazy part is I got out, thought they were increasing their TVL enough. Than Bam. — Mark Cuban (@mcuban) June 16, 2021 As the price of TITAN plunged to zero, Decrypt reports that IRON Finance called for all holders to withdraw liquidity from the pools after being hit by what it called a "bank run." >From over $60 to $0 in hours... Source While this collapse is getting a lot of attention due to Mark Cuban's involvement, it is not the first of this breed of so-called algorithmic stablecoins to hit the wall. I couldn't even begin to predict what will happen to the next algo stablecoin, I just appreciate them as they come pic.twitter.com/OXUHQOVoEo — Elmo's Pool 2 Fund (@0xElm0) June 17, 2021 So what triggered the collapse? Rekt.com reports that the incident started when TITAN became overpriced, perhaps due to users purchasing the token in order to farm TITAN pairs at ~50,000% APY. Some large TITAN sales were made and the price became volatile, making investors nervous, and leading them to also sell their tokens. The IRON stablecoin then lost it's peg due to TITAN dropping so rapidly. This created a situation in which users could now redeem a token worth 90 cents, for 75 cents of stablecoin and 25 cents of TITAN. An incredible arbitrage opportunity which required minting new TITAN tokens each time. The market was flooded with freshly minted TITAN, and a panic sale began, pushing down the TITAN price and therefore making the IRON stablecoin lose its peg even further. This vicious cycle could not be stopped until the $1 peg was regained. Despite briefly regaining the peg, the huge amounts of freshly minted TITAN flooding onto the market caused the price of TITAN to drop again, the peg to be lost, and the arbitrage opportunity to open back up. As long as IRON is not at peg, TITAN will continue to drop, and as long as TITAN continues to drop, IRON will not be at peg... and everyone ran for the door. Cuban told Decrypt via email: "Live and learn."

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[ot][spam][wrong] keyword practice
by Karl 22 Jun '21

22 Jun '21

Sent my last email with just an [ot] tag when it was really less of note than that. I'm having a lot of decision-making errors and most people would simply ignore a weird email like that. Practicing adding more tags [spam][weird][wrong].

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Cryptocurrency: Critics Wrong
by grarpamp 21 Jun '21

21 Jun '21

https://mises.org/power-market/3-common-criticisms-crypto-and-why-theyre-wr… https://mises.org/library/origin-money-and-its-value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_imputation https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-price-venezuela-doubling-18-days/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect Peter Schiff is a well-known critic of Bitcoin, and while he is an excellent resource on many economic and political topics, he misses the mark on cryptocurrency. To be fair, he is right that Bitcoin and other crypto assets are high risk and volatile, and he correctly points out that using leverage or going into debt to buy Bitcoin could end in financial disaster. However, he makes several errors in his analysis of Bitcoin. He is wrong about its scarcity and its ability to hedge inflation, but his largest mistake is his guiding principle: that Bitcoin (unlike gold) has no fundamental value. For example, Schiff is quick to point out that gold has uses outside of being money. It is used in electronics, dentistry, and jewelry to name a few. Given this, it's easy to see how - as Carl Menger noted - money could emerge in a free market from a state of barter. In short, gold had use cases independent of being money, but over time, it was recognized as a useful medium of exchange to facilitate more complex and indirect transactions. This led people to value it over and above its original use cases. Unlike gold, Bitcoin cannot be used in dentistry; it cannot be fashioned into jewelry; and it cannot be used in electronics. This leads to Schiff to claim that Bitcoin is unlike gold in that it has no fundamental (or objective) value. His mistake is obvious: there is no such thing as objective value, whether we're talking about gold or Bitcoin. Value is subjective and determined internally by individuals. Bitcoin has no objective value, but neither does gold. Yes, gold can be used to build electronics, but that only has value because consumers subjectively value electronics (See Menger’s Theory of Imputation). Schiff is also mistaken when he claims that Bitcoin provides no shelter from inflation. Yet, millions of people across the world have already used it to partly escape their failing currencies. In 2018, for example, the price of Bitcoin in Venezeulan bolívars was doubling every 18 days. It's important to keep in mind that any product can serve as a hedge against a devaluing currency—not just precious metals or cryptocurrencies. In the past, whiskey and cigarettes have been used for this purpose, as have many other consumer products. When a currency is failing, the demand for the currency declines and consumers rush to put their currency into physical products or other currencies. On the other hand, Schiff may be correct that a dollar crash could lead to a decline in Bitcoin prices (at least in the short term), but such an event would be so disruptive to many assets. The most recent example of these effects occurred on March 6, 2020. As the U.S. stock market crash deepened, both gold and Bitcoin sold off sharply. When the margin calls hit, everything got sold. The simple truth is that anything that's not a dollar or a promise to pay dollars (i.e., bonds) represents a hedge against dollar inflation. This does not make them immune (in the short term) from a collapse of the global reserve currency. Schiff’s last major mistake concerns Bitcoin’s scarcity. The ultimate supply of Bitcoin is fixed at 21 million units. Schiff discounts this limited supply by pointing out that thousands of crypto coins and tokens have been created since Bitcoin. These copies, he claims, prove that Bitcoin is not scarce. Would Schiff extend this logic to reproductions of the Mona Lisa? There is only one original, and it will remain scarce no matter how many copies are made. His stance also ignores the significant network effects that Bitcoin enjoys. Like other networks, the value increases as the number of participants grows. Numerous forks of Bitcoin have learned this lesson the hard way as their tokens have steadily lost value against the original. Finally, the existence of multiple cryptocurrencies is no more problematic than the existence of multiple precious metals. The total demand is simply divided between silver, gold, palladium, and others. It is likely that we are in a boom stage of crypto like the dotcom bubble. New coins are being created almost daily and most will not survive. It is up to the marketplace to determine if the price of Bitcoin will go up or down. The same is true for gold.

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