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Bitcoin
I think my mam and dad used to drive a Carl Mark Force IV when we lived in Australia, as it happens.Comment
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Bitcoin
The Carl Mark Force IV comprised Carl Mark, Frederick Engel, George Heggle, and Michael Bakun.Comment
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Bitcoin
Matt Levine (who is consistently brilliant) focuses on the aspect of this that troubles me the most (I'm used to dirty cops).
The jury that convicted Dread Pirate Roberts wasn't told of ANY of the shenanigans that form the basis of this indictment. And those shenanigans clearly played a role in the overt acts of which DPR was convicted.
I think he has promising grounds for an appeal here.Comment
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Bitcoin
Ulbricht/Dread Pirate Roberts has just been given a life sentence, which is nuts independently of the other issues.Comment
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Bitcoin
That seems unnecessarily severe. He's not quite 'a kid', but still.Comment
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Bitcoin
What does 'life' mean in this case? Any chance of parole after, say, 20?Comment
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Bitcoin
What am I missing? He ran a billion-dollar drugs market. In what possible world at all related to current reality does he skate on that?Comment
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does he *what*, Toro?!Comment
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Bitcoin
Skate on it. Get away easily.Comment
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It's life without any chance for parole.Comment
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Bitcoin
This Sand Hill Exchange story is hilarious.
Gee, I wonder why the SEC had a problem with you establishing an unregulated derivatives exchange and then fabricating trade data.A month earlier, we were app developers with an idea. Everyone’s calling a tech bubble. Let’s make a game for crowdsourcing predictions on startups. We wanted a stock-market type of experience, where people could throw pocket change on valuation wagers.
Facebook says, “Move Fast and Break Things.” Without any outside investment, we built Sand Hill Exchange. We moved fast. And boy, did we break things.
We listed sixty pre-IPO companies and signed our friends up as beta testers. Early orders sat unmatched in the order book. Nobody wants to play in a market with zero users, we realized. So we gave participants the illusion of liquidity.
We created bots to trade against incoming orders. They were like my friends. I even named them! My favorite was the “Jesse Livermore” bot. Opportunistic to a fault.
The bots would run every day and place orders against each other so the market looked like it was exhibiting lots of price movement and volume. For added credibility, we randomly generated trading histories for each company going all the way back to last year. So we had historical price and volume in addition to streaming quotes for chart data.
We pasted descriptive text cribbed from the websites of banks and registered exchanges to make our website look like a serious business. The Sand Hill Exchange Twitter account broadcasted information about market activity and stats. Our CEO relayed this to influential accounts, including a public discourse with Mark Cuban.Comment
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Bitcoin
Matt Levine finally weighs in on Sand Hill, because the SEC finally published its enforcement action. Fun stuff.
Meanwhile, Sand Hill itself is back up as a no-money fantasy startup site, including a mea culpa from the founder that still doesn't seem to acknowledge that setting up a derivatives exchange and fabricating trade data is not innovation, it's fraud.Comment
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Bitcoin
Not exactly bitcoin, but who could have guessed that a firm claiming to hold bullion for goldbugs would be a scam?Yes, paper which is remarkably useful for buying things and storing value in a liquid and universally accepted format.Sam Painter of Augusta, Ga., said he became a Bullion Direct customer after reading “The Creature from Jekyll Island,” a book that blames the Federal Reserve for everything from economic policy failures to wars. “It really opened my eyes,” he said. “The dollar is just out there without anything to support it. You believe it’s worth a dollar, and I believe it’s a dollar. But it’s really just paper.”Comment
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Any chance of a C&P, GY? Can't be bothered registering for one article.Comment
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Bitcoin
Basically it's a company that makes Raspberry Pi-alikes with embedded bitcoin mining software/hardware and sells them for $400 to idiots. And it's all wrapped up in the usual "if we say blockchain enough people will think they're changing the world" bollocks.Comment
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Bitcoin
Ah. Cheers.Comment
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Bitcoin
Oh, wow, the SEC didn't mention this bit in the press release.Classy. Though that may have been less to do with fraud and more to do with bitcoin collapsing.On or about September 11, 2014, GAW Miners announced the creation of the limited edition “Remember” Hashlet with the logo of “9/11” to commemorate those whose lives were lost in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Garza announced that GAW Miners would only sell 500 Remember Hashlets, and would donate all of the proceeds (approximately $10,000) to “the 9/11 memorial fund.” He specified that “GAW will in no way be profiting from any sales related to the cause.” After selling approximately 2,290 Remember Hashlets for a total of approximately $48,000, GAW Miners donated only $10,000 to a 9/11 related charity.Comment
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Bitcoin
The Bitcoin Exchange around the corner has moved from its expensive storefront to (one assumes), smaller digs elsewhere. The place is up for rent.Comment
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Bitcoin
There's a Bitcoin ATM in the East Village that charges only USD 7.50 per withdrawal.Comment
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Bitcoin
....about half the cost of those off-brand ones you find in seedy bars and convenience stores.Comment
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