Snippings

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When traditional markets face stress, they halt trading. Crypto just melts down. Whether that’s a feature or bug depends on your perspective (and your position).

From: YQ on X: “How a Tariff Announcement Turned Into Crypto’s $19 Billion Liquidation Cascade” / X.

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I lean toward a third explanation: complexity blindness. When systems work 99.9% of the time, we forget about the 0.1%. And in leveraged markets, that 0.1% is when fortunes are made and lost.

From: YQ on X: “How a Tariff Announcement Turned Into Crypto’s $19 Billion Liquidation Cascade” / X.

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I don’t know if you use Discord (I use it sometimes when playing Dungeons & Dragons online with friends) but it is a free app for text, voice, and video communications. It has more than 150 million monthly active users some half a billion registered accounts. If you’ve got teenage children, ask them for a demo.

Discord recently stated that an “unauthorised party” had compromised one of Discord’s third-party customer service providers and obtained usernames, email addresses, billing information, IP addresses and customer support messages. Another day, another data breach. Indeed, but it caught my eye because Discord also said that the attacker also gained access to a number of government ID images (eg driving licences, passports). Now, you might wonder why they would be storing this kind of personally-identifiable information in a honeypot ideally architected for criminals of all kinds. Well, it is because they use age estimation technologies to determine whether users are over 18 or not. If a user is determined to be under 18 and barred from certain parts of the service, the user can appeal – and this involves sending copies of passports and other documents off to web sites from where they will almost invariably be hacked.

This is ridiculous way to operate an online economy. 

The way that things should work is that when you create an account and need to show that you are over 18, or a US citizen or a member of the Manchester City supporters’ club, then you should be required to present a verifiable credential that attests to whatever specific attribute is needed. It is none of Discord’s business what your name, address, date of birth, nationality, driving status or anything else: all they need to know is whether you are over 18 or not.

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Andrew Cole, executive chair of Glow Services, which helps UK telcos tighten their financial controls, said the company had tracked cases where more than 2,000 phones had been ordered from a single address in one week.

“You see these people do thousands of applications a week,” he said. “They have fraudulent bank accounts; they use different telephone numbers; they will use other people’s ID to do credit checks . . . they’re very sophisticated”.

From: UK telcos step up efforts to combat ‘epidemic’ of handset fraud.

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The investigation began in 2016 following the seizure of £30,000 in cash in Alum Rock, Birmingham, which kickstarted an incredibly detailed money laundering investigation.
As a result, officers from the Regional Economic Crime Unit alongside teams from West Midlands Regional Organised Crime Unit and HMRC all joined forces and uncovered over £5.3million had been laundered in cash between 2012 and 2016.

From: Jail for man who laundered over £5million in cash | West Midlands Police.

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Finland has revealed more details about its upcoming national digital identity wallet, scheduled to be released by the end of 2026.
The Scandinavian country is planning to publish an electronic ID function within the digital wallet at the same time. The eID will be released by the National Police Board as an official document that allows users to verify their identity or age without sharing too much information.
The wallet will also offer a mobile driving license (mDL) issued by the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency (Traficom). The mDL is pending the adoption of the EU Driving Licence Directive.

From: Finland reveals details on digital ID, Denmark shares secret of digital govt success | Biometric Update.

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What’s more, by putting personal data in the hands of an individual, SSI has the potential to lower frustration levels of consumers who have to juggle dozens of passwords and accounts sitting in centralized databases that offer little transparency into how data is stored, shared, or monetized.

From: Rethinking Identity Security: The Rise of Wallet-Based Credentials – WSJ.

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Discord began using facial age assurance to check the age for users in the UK and Australia earlier this year. The company said facial images and ID images “are deleted directly after” ages are confirmed, but Discord’s website noted that if verification fails, users can contact the trust and safety team for a manual review.

Under the under 16s social media ban to come into effect on 10 December, the Australian government has outlined that it expects platforms such as Discord – which is one of the platforms that has been asked to assess if it is required to comply – should have multiple options for assessing a user’s age, and a way for them to quickly appeal an adverse decision.

Platforms can ask for ID documents as part of the age assurance scheme, but it cannot be the sole method of age assurance offered by the platforms under the policy.

From: Proof-of-age ID leaked in Discord data breach | Games | The Guardian.

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From the beginning, states learned to use their constitutional banking powers as a lucrative revenue stream. They charged fees for bank charters, bought shares in banks themselves, and levied special bank taxes. By the 1830s, more than a dozen states derived over 10% of their total revenue from banks – in Massachusetts and Delaware, it was more than half.

From: Community First – by Marc Rubinstein – Net Interest.

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Here you go. “Know your agent: Enabling autonomous financial services“. Birch, David and Hoffart, Jelena. Journal of Digital Banking, Volume 10, Number 2. Autumn/Fall 2025, pp. 123-134(12).