why the fuck would anyone want a raisin catalog

archive: https://archive.is/5aTxJ

Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely. Disregarding all of bitcoin's shortcomings, a financial instrument that brings out the worst in people—greed—won't change the world for the better.

• news accompanied by another crypto scam
• price faked via >"$10b" of dubious stablecoin pseudodollars created out of thin air
• no liquidity, trading super thin (even more pumpable)
• public still not buying in
• (yet)
• lol

nothing has changed in my last few posts on the subject https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/

Those top players represent a mere 0.01% of all bitcoin holders and yet they control 27% of the digital currency, the Wall Street Journal reported. That compares to the old-fashion dollar, where the top 1% controlled 30% of total U.S. household wealth, according to Federal Reserve data.

Cross-posted from "US hacker sentenced to five years in the slammer for laundering the proceeds of nearly 120,000 stolen bitcoin worth $10,800,000,000 at today's prices" by @BrikoX@lemmy.zip in !legalnews@lemmy.zip

No, less. No wait, more. No, it's less again.

This seems to have been overshadowed by election news. For context, this area is in the downtown business core and is perpetually busy with foot traffic.

bonus HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42014013 :

archive: https://archive.ph/osPSg

Hi,

For reasons too absurd to explain, this Wednesday I'm invited to a virtual "coffee break" with the speaker of one of Spain's cryptoexchanges, https://bit2me.com/. The event is organized by Cinco Días, one of the main economic newspapers in the country.

I'm looking for a list of potential questions I might ask if I have the chance. I already have the basics ("how's this different to a tulip", "what super-legitimate uses, apart from paying for drugs, hitmen, sex trafficking, launder money, evade taxes and inflate bubbles", "what about the electricity usage", etc), and given that BBVA (Spain's second largest bank) and Telefonica (Spain's main telco) are investing money, I also want to ask how they're handling the child porn they have in their servers.

If anyone has more suggestions, I'm all ears.

archive: https://archive.is/Ji6cs

This is somewhat tangential to the usual fare here but I decided to make a post because why not.

I’ve been listening to the back catalog of the Judge John Hodgman podcast, and this ep came up. This ep is the second crypto based case after “crypto facto” in ep 333.

John Hodgman is a comedian, probs best known for being the “I’m a PC” guy in the “I’m a Mac” ad campaign from ancient times. In the podcast, he plays a fake judge that hears cases and makes judgements. In this ep, “Suing for Soul Custody,” he hears a case in which a husband wants to sell his soul on the blockchain, while his wife does not want him to do that.

Some good sneers against the crypto bro husband (in both this case and the other I linked). Brief spoilers as to the rulings in case you don’t want to listen:

Note: I like John Hodgman. He’s funny. He’s not really inside the tech space, but he is good friends with Jonathan Coulton, who is. If all you know of him is the “I’m a PC” ads, he has an entertaining wider catalogue worth checking out.