January 2022 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

A Government Study Shows that Wall Street Megabanks Have Dramatically Shifted their Derivative Exposure to Corporations
by Gunnar Larson 28 Jan '22

28 Jan '22

The last thing a volatile stock market needs right now is more surprises from the dark corners of Wall Street. Unfortunately, we can guarantee you that more surprises are coming in the way of uncleared derivatives blowing up on the balance sheets of publicly-traded corporations. How do we know this? The information in the chart above comes from a study quietly released last July by the Office of Financial Research <https://www.financialresearch.gov/working-papers/files/OFRwp-21-03_counterp…> (OFR). That’s the federal agency that provides research to bank regulators to prevent systemic financial contagion from taking down the Wall Street megabanks and the U.S. economy in another replay of 2008. https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/01/a-government-study-shows-that-wall-s… -- *Gunnar Larson - xNY.io <http://www.xNY.io> | Bank.org <http://Bank.org>* MSc <https://www.unic.ac.cy/blockchain/msc-digital-currency/?utm_source=Google&u…> - Digital Currency MBA <https://www.unic.ac.cy/business-administration-entrepreneurship-and-innovat…> - Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ip) G(a)xNY.io +1-646-454-9107 New York, New York 10001

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The Long-Run Effects of Losing Failed Bank Auctions
by Gunnar Larson 28 Jan '22

28 Jan '22

*By:Amanda Rae Heitz* *Abstract: *Using a proprietary database of failed bank auction participants, I examine whether acquiring a failed bank creates shareholder value by using the losers’ post-acquisition performance as a counterfactual. While the market responds favorably to all failed bank acquisition announcements, in the three years post-acquisition, acquirers with Shared-Loss Agreements (SLAs), where the FDIC absorbs approximately 80% of losses, realize abnormal returns that are 19.8% lower than auction losers. Inconsistent with the effects of a winner’s curse, abnormal returns are not related to bidder competition. However, acquirers with SLAs have less lending risk than both failed bank auction losers and winners without SLAs, suggesting that the reduction in risk stemming from SLAs plays a role in explaining the divergence in long-run abnormal returns. The working paper is posted at https://www.fdic.gov/analysis/cfr/working-papers/2022/cfr-wp2022-01.pdf <https://lnks.gd/l/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJidWxsZXRpbl9saW5rX2lkIjoxMDEsInVy…> -- *Gunnar Larson - xNY.io <http://www.xNY.io> | Bank.org <http://Bank.org>* MSc <https://www.unic.ac.cy/blockchain/msc-digital-currency/?utm_source=Google&u…> - Digital Currency MBA <https://www.unic.ac.cy/business-administration-entrepreneurship-and-innovat…> - Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ip) G(a)xNY.io +1-646-454-9107 New York, New York 10001

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The Fairness of Fintech
by Gunnar Larson 28 Jan '22

28 Jan '22

Our financial system is experiencing a rapidly evolving technological revolution that offers <https://lnks.gd/l/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJidWxsZXRpbl9saW5rX2lkIjoxMDEsInVy…>tremendous promise and opportunity to consumers. But with all of this talk of the benefits of financial technology, artificial intelligence and machine learning, how can we make certain our banking system remains inclusive and accessible to everyone, most especially the UN-banked? In our latest episode of the *Banking on Innovation *podcast series, FDIC Chief Innovation Officer Sultan Meghji discusses the ‘fairness of Fintech’ with Chris Brummer, director of Georgetown University's Institute of International Economic Law. Listen Here: https://lnks.gd/l/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJidWxsZXRpbl9saW5rX2lkIjoxMDMsInVy… -- *Gunnar Larson - xNY.io <http://www.xNY.io> | Bank.org <http://Bank.org>* MSc <https://www.unic.ac.cy/blockchain/msc-digital-currency/?utm_source=Google&u…> - Digital Currency MBA <https://www.unic.ac.cy/business-administration-entrepreneurship-and-innovat…> - Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ip) G(a)xNY.io +1-646-454-9107 New York, New York 10001

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[log][paranoia][wrong] Chasing Encryption was: age
by Undiscussed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of 27 Jan '22

27 Jan '22

grarpamp's email address proposed a way to sign messages using age. You publicise a private key, and encrypt hashes to it. age ostensibly has a way to generate public keys from private keys, in this commit, haven't looked: https://github.com/FiloSottile/age/commit/f31d4eca473cb904174bc3658f84dbc1b… seems it would be fun to use the message signing approach. My local age is version 1.0.0~rc1 and does not yet have the -y option needed for making the encrypted signatures. $ age --version 1.0.0~rc1 I seem to already have a ~/src/age folder with git sources, so I tried to pull the latest changes and rebuild. Unfortunately, the latest changes are a different codebase from mine: ubuntu@ubuntu:~/src/age $ git remote -v origin https://github.com/FiloSottile/age.git (fetch) origin https://github.com/FiloSottile/age.git (push) ubuntu@ubuntu:~/src/age $ git pull fatal: refusing to merge unrelated histories It turns out my repo was on the master branch, which has somehow had its history entirely rebased. Whereas the branch renamed to main, has history that aligns with my history. $ git merge origin/main # fast-forwards fine $ git checkout -b main $ git merge origin/master # fails, unrelated histories repo commits: ubuntu@ubuntu:~/src/age $ git log origin/master | head commit 80a2ea62921170c29f66461b9c1221746ad9b0ab Author: Filippo Valsorda <hi(a)filippo.io> Date: Tue Sep 7 11:15:17 2021 +0200 Placeholder branch for Homebrew migration ubuntu@ubuntu:~/src/age $ git log origin/main | head commit 34118023094cf02fc68c84968df92a7495ce17e9 Author: Filippo Valsorda <hi(a)filippo.io> Date: Fri Jan 7 12:25:26 2022 +0100 cmd/age: offer a hint when the file was corrupted by PowerShell I would still like to find a way to offer a warning while doing the encryption, rather than at decryption time, but better than nothing. Updates #290 However!, unfortunately: ubuntu@ubuntu:~/src/age $ git log f31d4eca473cb904174bc3658f84dbc1b6dc195d fatal: bad object f31d4eca473cb904174bc3658f84dbc1b6dc195d The commit containing the -y option does not appear to be on any of the branches the server sent. I'm sure it is somewhere!

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age - simple encryption tool age-encryption.org
by grarpamp 27 Jan '22

27 Jan '22

>> https://github.com/FiloSottile/age > > I'm quite surprised that age's interface doesn't provide for signing > of messages. https://age-encryption.org/v1 For between participants, the payload is self authenticating by nature of the crypto... you received it, from somewhere, that may also have included some more identity inside, it decrypted, done. For standalone clearsign maybe user could encrypt a hash of the signable content, to a separate publicly published age secret keypair that they gave provenance, that anyone could then decrypt, but that is convoluted, and is in conflict with standard of teaching people to never publish any secret key. Much better to use pgp, signify, minisign or whatever else for public sigs. As for age, people can play with this key which will expire and be destroyed on or before 2022-04-30... age19nr5khmhtwe0jp0f2yvh2cevsqaev5tjkq0zw5t5ruy2uvrgfsysl7r6ch

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The key to society of sovereign individuals
by alessandrot＠tutanota.com 27 Jan '22

27 Jan '22

Dear Cypherpunks, We all know that Bitcoin and blockchain in general came with a lot of hype and many expectations - however, it didn't change much in the degree of our sovereignty as individuals. It didn't materialise our dreams of human society made of free, sovereign individuals, just as the Internet didn't. The root of the problem was not addressed by neither of mentioned inventions. The root of the problem is simple, very simple indeed - in every system, social or technological, the value of a human being is always only RELATIVE to other elements of the system. Look at the Internet - we are surveilled and manipulated in a way that extracts value out of us, we are monetised. Look at Bitcoin - a handful of early adopters captured every vital element of this system, from miners to exchanges, and extracts value from Bitcoin users-speculators just like a casino monetises the greed of its custiomers. Governments, banking sector, corporations, they all share one common characteristic - they monetise human beings, because by "monetisation" we mean value extraction. In none of those systems is a human life inherently, absolutely valuable - only relatively; some lives are more valuable, because they own the skills that are supportive for monetisation of others. We live in a pyramid of slavery since the dawn of time. But what if there was a way, a system, that distributes value almost equally to every human being? We can't expect that humans would create such a system. We are greedy by nature. But maybe we could build an algorithm that would somehow distribute wealth to humans impartially? Just as in other systems having money, having hashing power, having influence or whatever is an investment that yields returns, here an "investment" would be basically being human. It would be like Bitcoin, just each block reward would go to all humans that want it, equally. This reality can be closer than one might think. I have prepared a detailed design of such a protocol and I believe it to be the first to solve the Decentralised Identity Trilemma (http://maciek.blog/dit/) I've sent it to many people who I thought could be interested in my proposition - the response was a deafening silence, not even a single person did contact me back. Nobody believes in anything anymore but money. However, I hope that there are few idealists here that would like to read my proposition and, if they suspect it to be of any value, help me with exposing it to proper audience, since I have no voice of my own and we live in times when the importance of ideas is superseded by the fame of their authors. I don't want anything more. Here's my proposition: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ir3gbumhgzc8khy/Themis%20-%20algorithmic%20equali… -- Sent with Tutanota, the secure & ad-free mailbox.

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Libertarian morons love Peter Thiels bum
by professor rat 27 Jan '22

27 Jan '22

If there was a libertarian God it would be necessary to destroy it " . . . These apps, which also collect extensive information about their users, are backed by some of Silicon Valley’s best-known prospectors: Greylock Partners (Pray.com) Andreessen Horowitz (Glorify), and Peter Thiel (Hallow). Greylock, Andreessen, and Thiel are also all known for their investments in Facebook, which recently ramped up its own prayer offerings by rolling out a new tool called “prayer posts.” FROM 6. Markets in everything: these apps reserve the right to sell your prayers. At a link provided by Mercatus uber-moron, Tyler "State-Capacity-Asshole" Cowan at Marginal Fascism.

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Cryptocurrency: US Congress To Allow Treasury To Ban All Exchanges
by grarpamp 27 Jan '22

27 Jan '22

"The ability to store wealth across time, to decrease the risk of the catastrophes of the future, is the problem civilization set out to solve." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVym9wtopqs Peterson: CryptoPilled https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXvQcuIb5rU Peterson: CryptoPilled https://cryptobriefing.com/bitcoin-1m-ethereum-180000-2030-ark-invest/ US Congress: Yet another Omnibus Bill has been introduced in Congress, that contains provisions that seeks to prohibit crypto transactions, damage privacy and constitutional rights. Once again, we have to fight these laws. https://www.coincenter.org/new-bill-would-hand-treasury-blank-check-to-ban-… https://rules.house.gov/sites/democrats.rules.house.gov/files/BILLS-117HR45… Jim Himes put it in the bill. Jim Himes (D) - former executive at Goldman Sachs JP Morgan and their industry want all the wealth centralized. Without it, their monetary system falls apart. https://youtu.be/a2IP9ApZuUU After the Infrastructure bill debacle where anti-crypto laws were introduced in a must pass bill, now a new America COMPETES act has just been filed in Congress. This Bill on the surface seeks to make US more competitive against China. But hidden deep in its 2900 pages, this Bill contains provisions that give the Treasury unlimited powers to prohibit and block crypto exchanges. Currently, the Treasury cannot take unilateral decisions to block crypto transactions without a formal notice and a public process, and give a 120 day period to challenge any decision. However, under the new Bill, the Treasury can take decisions without any formal process, based solely on its own apprehensions. The new bill allows the Treasury headed by Yellen to block transmission of funds if the Treasury deems so. It can quickly order blocking any transaction or exchange without any review process or administrative controls. This gives the Treasury unchecked control over all crypto exchanges and transactions. This language was already included in a bill from last year, however there was opposition and it was removed. However yet again this has been sneaked into a must pass bill. The very idea of sneaking in such clauses in 2900 pages of incomprehensible regulations stinks. How are even the legislators going to read any of this?

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Anarcho-architecture forever
by professor rat 27 Jan '22

27 Jan '22

Some recent architectural practices - for example, Assemble in the UK, Recetas Urbanas in Spain, and Raumlaborberlin in Germany - have actually developed ways of working that are almost entirely focused on such a model of participation. Indeed, in September 2019, Raumlaborberlin built a “Utopia Station” in Milton Keynes, in the UK. This was a structure that combined steel scaffolding, metal staircases, striped awnings and salvaged windows to create a three-storey space. Inside, visitors were asked to provide their own suggestions for future urban development, which were then made into models and exhibited. Such a playful - and joyful - approach to citizen participation . . . https://anarchistnews.org/content/how-anarchist-architecture-could-help-us-… Such a contrast with the sort of brown-noser architect that would work for Rupert Moloch.

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Batshit Crazies in the crosshairs
by professor rat 27 Jan '22

27 Jan '22

So the real news here isn’t that " Eat your ass " Alex is headed for prison https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/jamie-raskin-basically-just-confirmed… Look for John Young tomorrow and you'll find a grave man. Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make Batshit-crazy

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