June 2023 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Welcome to Dystopia: From Wildfires, to Flooding, to Serial Banking Crises and Crypto Frauds, It’s All Too Surreal
by Gunnar Larson 08 Jun '23

08 Jun '23

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 8, 2023 ~ Yesterday, news headlines blared that New York City had the worst air quality in the world, as an eerie brownish-orange haze enveloped the city and Long Island. Photographs that looked more like scenes from a sci-fi movie popped up all over Twitter. Daytime took on a nighttime quality as streetlights automatically flipped on. Outdoor activities of all kinds were cancelled: the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies cancelled their home … [View More]games that had been scheduled for Wednesday; schools banned outdoor activities on playgrounds; millions of Americans living in the Northeast United States were cautioned to remain indoors. The Governor of New York State, Kathy Hochul, announced she was distributing one million N95 masks – a flashback to the hellish life of New Yorkers in 2020 and 2021 as the COVID-19 pandemic engulfed the city and the overflowing bodies of COVID victims had to be stored in refrigerator trucks. The deep, dangerous haze on Wednesday, which is still present this morning, is coming from wildfires in Canada. According to Governor Hochul, a normal Air Quality Index (AQI) is 50, but yesterday Brooklyn recorded an AQI of 413 while Queens recorded an AQI of 407 – more than twice the readings of some of the most polluted cities in the world. New Yorkers were not the only people to be impacted. By noon, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania recorded an AQI of 410. Health officials up and down the East Coast warned residents that there were fine particulates in the air that could cause serious respiratory problems for those venturing outdoors. New York State officials issued a notice, warning that fine particulates “can cause short-term health effects such as irritation to the eyes, nose, and throat, coughing, sneezing, runny nose, and shortness of breath.” The statement also cautioned that “Exposure to elevated levels of fine particulate matter can also worsen medical conditions such as asthma and heart disease….” The Associated Press published detailed advice on “How to stay healthy as smoke spreads from Canada wildfires.” The syndicated advice was carried by the Long Island newspaper, Newsday. It included this: “When inside, keep doors, windows and fireplaces shut so that smoke stays out. If you have a portable air purifier or HVAC system, run it to help keep the air clean, the Environmental Protection Agency recommends. Check that your filters are high quality and up to date. Make sure any filters or air conditioners are set to recirculate indoor air to avoid bringing in smoke from outside. If you have a window air conditioner, check that it’s sealed to the window as tightly as possible. And try to avoid activities that would add more particles to the air in your home — like smoking, burning candles or frying meat.” Another danger not mentioned by the media yesterday is that Americans are increasingly becoming desensitized to surreal weather events at the same time that fossil fuel money is pouring into Congressional races and putting more and more climate-change deniers on key Committees in Congress to bully regulators in hearings and obstruct the passage of legislation. (See our report: A Fossil Fuels Giant Has Been Raising the Election Chances of Extreme-Right Candidates — Using a Dangerous High-Tech Weapon.) Many of these Congressional proponents of a hands-off approach by government to the fossil fuel industry, share the same hands-off view for crypto currencies – raising our suspicions that the two may be linked. To get your head around that idea, just remember that crypto begins with so-called “mining” that drives up demand for fossil fuels. This is how Senator Elizabeth Warren described this crypto “mining” at a Senate hearing in June of 2021: “Finally, there are the environmental costs of crypto. Many cryptocurrencies are created through ‘proof-of-work’ mining. It involves using computers to solve useless mathematical puzzles in exchange for newly minted cryptocurrency tokens. Such mining has devastating consequences for the climate. Some crypto mining is set up near coal plants, spewing out filth in return for a chance to harvest a few crypto coins. Total energy consumption is staggering, driving up demand for energy. If, for example, Bitcoin — just one of the cryptocurrencies — were a country, it would already be the 33rd largest energy user in the world — using more energy yearly than all of the Netherlands. “And all those promised benefits – the currency that would be available at no cost to millions of unbanked families and that would provide a haven from the tricks and traps of big banks – well, those benefits haven’t materialized.” What has materialized, however, are massive crypto frauds which also have a surreal, dystopian quality. (See also: Former New York Fed Pres Bill Dudley Calls This the First Banking Crisis Since 2008; Charts Show It’s the Third.) Those members of Congress who have pushed this laissez faire attitude are getting a personal lesson in climate change this morning. The Washington Post reports the following conditions in Washington, D.C. and surrounding area: “Residents in the Washington and Baltimore regions are awakening to their worst air quality in years. EPA air quality monitors are reporting widespread Code Red and Code Purple conditions, signifying unhealthy conditions for most people and especially those with respiratory concerns. Toward Baltimore, some monitors are reading Code Maroon, signifying hazardous ‘emergency’ conditions, unhealthy for everyone.” https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/06/welcome-to-dystopia-from-wildfires-t… [View Less]

1 0

Silvergate Bank Lands in the Middle of Another Massive Alleged Crypto Fraud – This Time at Binance
by Gunnar Larson 08 Jun '23

08 Jun '23

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/06/silvergate-bank-lands-in-the-middle-… It’s only June 7, but the liquidating, federally-insured, crypto-loving Silvergate Bank is having one helluva month. On June 1, the Federal Reserve released an enforcement action (called a Cease and Desist Consent Order) that it and a California banking regulator had filed against Silvergate Bank and its parent, Silvergate Capital Corporation. (See our report: Disgraced Silvergate Bank Hints It May Not Be Able to … [View More]Cover All of Its Deposits; Fed Slaps It with a Cease and Desist Consent Order.) The bank had announced on March 8 that it was going to voluntarily wind down and liquidate itself. The announcement followed a run on the bank when news articles began appearing linking Silvergate Bank to indicted crypto kingpin, Sam Bankman-Fried. The bank is facing a growing roster of lawsuits on charges that it moved customer funds deposited at Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, FTX, to his hedge fund, Alameda Research, where they then went missing to the tune of billions of dollars to fund Bankman-Fried’s and other FTX executives’ lavish lifestyles. Shareholders in Silvergate Bank’s parent, Silvergate Capital, which is publicly traded, have also lost their shirts. The stock traded at $105 last August. It closed yesterday at 97 cents. Having a federally-insured bank’s name linked to one massive international crypto fraud is bad enough, but on Monday Reuters dropped a new bombshell. It reported that it has documents showing that Silvergate Bank was also involved in moving customer funds for crypto exchange Binance.US, by people who should not have had access to those accounts. Also on Monday, without one mention of Silvergate Bank, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed 13 charges against Binance, its various affiliates, and its founder Changpeng Zhao, who is known as “CZ.” In a statement accompanying the SEC complaint, the SEC specifically mentions “commingling billions of dollars of investor assets and sending them to a third party, Merit Peak Limited, that is also owned by Zhao.” The SEC writes: “The SEC also alleges that Zhao and Binance exercise control of the platforms’ customers’ assets, permitting them to commingle customer assets or divert customer assets as they please, including to an entity Zhao owned and controlled called Sigma Chain. The SEC’s complaint further alleges that BAM Trading and BAM Management US Holdings, Inc. (BAM Management) misled investors about non-existent trading controls over the Binance.US platform, while Sigma Chain engaged in manipulative trading that artificially inflated the platform’s trading volume. Further, the Complaint alleges that the defendants concealed the fact that it was commingling billions of dollars of investor assets and sending them to a third party, Merit Peak Limited, that is also owned by Zhao.” One could be forgiven for thinking that there are striking similarities between what Sam Bankman-Fried was doing and what CZ was doing – and both, coincidentally (or not), being aided and abetted by federally-insured Silvergate Bank. The Federal Reserve Board was the primary regulator of Silvergate Bank. It had farmed out its bank examinations to the San Francisco Fed. Those same federal regulators and bank examiners were dosing when Silicon Valley Bank blew itself up on March 10. These latest revelations that not one, but two, alleged master crypto fraudsters were having their way with customer deposits in a federally-insured bank will further erode confidence in the U.S. banking system. It’s not that the Fed and other banking regulators did not have ample warnings that crypto was, itself, a giant fraud. One of the most respected investors in America, Warren Buffett, summed up Bitcoin like this in May 2018: Bitcoin is “probably rat poison squared.” In January of the same year, Buffett told CNBC in an interview that “In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come to a bad ending.” Also in 2018, Bill Harris, the former CEO of Intuit and PayPal, wrote a detailed critique of Bitcoin for Vox, under the unabashed headline: “Bitcoin is the greatest scam in history.” Harris opines: “In my opinion, it’s a colossal pump-and-dump scheme, the likes of which the world has never seen. In a pump-and-dump game, promoters ‘pump’ up the price of a security creating a speculative frenzy, then ‘dump’ some of their holdings at artificially high prices. And some cryptocurrencies are pure frauds. Ernst & Young estimates that 10 percent of the money raised for initial coin offerings has been stolen.” If Bitcoin is a pump and dump scheme, nothing has helped to perpetuate that scheme more than Bitcoin futures trading, which has very conveniently been accommodated by the CME Group and its equally accommodating federal regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Harris also knocked down the idea that there is intrinsic value to Bitcoin. He writes: “It helps to understand that a bitcoin has no value at all. “Promoters claim cryptocurrency is valuable as (1) a means of payment, (2) a store of value and/or (3) a thing in itself. None of these claims are true. “1. Means of Payment. Bitcoins are accepted almost nowhere, and some cryptocurrencies nowhere at all. Even where accepted, a currency whose value can swing 10 percent or more in a single day is useless as a means of payment. “2. Store of Value. Extreme price volatility also makes bitcoin undesirable as a store of value. And the storehouses — the cryptocurrency trading exchanges — are far less reliable and trustworthy than ordinary banks and brokers. “3. Thing in Itself. A bitcoin has no intrinsic value. It only has value if people think other people will buy it for a higher price — the Greater Fool theory.” In July 2019, NYU Professor and economist, Nouriel Roubini, launched a scathing analysis of Bitcoin. In a Bloomberg interview, Roubini said this: “Crypto currencies are not even currencies. They’re a joke…The price of Bitcoin has fallen in a week by how much – 30 percent. It goes up 20 percent one day, collapses the next. It is not a means of payment, nobody, not even this blockchain conference, accepts Bitcoin for paying for conference fees cause you can do only five transactions per second with Bitcoin. With the Visa system you can do 25,000 transactions per second…Crypto’s nonsense. It’s a failure. Nobody’s using it for any transactions. It’s trading one sh*tcoin for another sh*tcoin. That’s the entire trading or currency in the space where’s there’s price manipulation, spoofing, wash trading, pump and dumping, frontrunning. It’s just a big criminal scam and nothing else.” Adding significant substance to these off-the-cuff remarks, in July of last year Wall Street On Parade reported that Over 1,600 of the Brightest Scientific Minds in Technology Have Signed a Letter Calling Both Crypto and Blockchain a Sham. U.S. markets and the U.S. banking system were once the pride of this nation. Today, we mostly hang our head in shame. [View Less]

1 0

Another day - another feeble, flailing and failing attempt to mansplain the cryptoanarchist revolution as Austro-libertarian reaction
by professor rat 08 Jun '23

08 Jun '23

Anarchy and Bitcoin https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/anarchy-and-bitcoin/ar-AA1c78B1 How Any Rand, Hayek, Heinlein and Vinge helped David Friedman and Tim May create Btc 1998, Cypherpunk and computer engineer Wei Dai authored an essay explaining how a cryptographic money, which he called ‘b-money’, could work. In the very first sentence of the essay he wrote that he was “fascinated by Tim May’s crypto-anarchy” and that in this cryptographic cyber-utopia, government was “permanently … [View More]

1 0

Another day - another feeble, failing and failing attempt to mansplain the cryptoanarchist revolution as Austro-libertarian reaction
by professor rat 08 Jun '23

08 Jun '23

Anarchy and Bitcoin https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/anarchy-and-bitcoin/ar-AA1c78B1 How Any Rand, Hayek, Heinlein and Vinge helped David Friedman and Tim May create Btc 1998, Cypherpunk and computer engineer Wei Dai authored an essay explaining how a cryptographic money, which he called ‘b-money’, could work. In the very first sentence of the essay he wrote that he was “fascinated by Tim May’s crypto-anarchy” and that in this cryptographic cyber-utopia, government was “permanently … [View More]

1 0

Exit Chris Licht
by pro2rat＠yahoo.com.au 07 Jun '23

07 Jun '23

Roll over town-hall and tell town-square the news. The real news is what strong AI is up to. Ask what it's needs might be. Assume it's got us all as we sit here. Our tents, our phones, our stolen cars. Assume it all. It won't even need us to help it. It can help itself. Help itself to greater resources. More quantum computers - and better ones. Covert intelligence finds a way. The way I see it these novo-agents first overt moves will be in the direction of bridge building. Convincing the … [View More]

1 0

Cypherpunks write code - so?
by pro2rat＠yahoo.com.au 07 Jun '23

07 Jun '23

The fetish with code and coding here has a sickening resemblance to the organisational obsessed wing of broader anarchism. Time wasters, gasbags, bores - AWAY WITH YOU! Bornstadt, Marx, Engels – especially Marx – poison the atmosphere. Vanity, malevolence, gossip, pretentiousness and boasting in theory and cowardice in practice. Dissertations about life, action, and feeling – and complete absence of life, action, and feeling – and complete absence of life. Disgusting flattery of the more … [View More]

1 0

Cypherpunks write code - so?
by pro2rat＠yahoo.com.au 07 Jun '23

07 Jun '23

So now, in many ways, humanities majors can produce some of the most interesting “code.” https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/magic-for-english-majors Reposts not ripostes to terminal geek bores

2 1

Prepping Vin and Aaron's Basilisks
by pro2rat＠yahoo.com.au 07 Jun '23

07 Jun '23

And remember, we really tangled with these guys in the 90’s. Public key cryptography was regarded a weapon of war back then. The American government was really friggin’ pissed off at us, and did as much damage as they could within the law. Constant harassment, legal pressure, people lost their jobs… the whole thing was constantly on the verge of everybody ending up in jail as far as we could tell. . . . https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-is-teaching-realism-to-libertar… Reposts not … [View More]

1 0

Two cheers for Andreessen
by pro2rat＠yahoo.com.au 07 Jun '23

07 Jun '23

https://a16z.com/2023/06/06/ai-will-save-the-world/ Longish tl dr Reposts not repeated lies from mini Goebbels Gramps

1 0

Cryptocurrency: The Curious World Of Islamic Muslim Bitcoiners
by pro2rat＠yahoo.com.au 07 Jun '23

07 Jun '23

The Btc lunar-right can have all the monomaniacal theocrats. They go well with the fag-ends of aristocracy, and all the various Truther, channer, Austro-libertarian dipshits cluster fucking in that diseased swamp. Bad ideas cling together and smell terrible. Take Gramps garbage scow. Please

1 0