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These protocols control loan books in the billions of dollars. Their lending standards, their borrowers / lenders’ addresses, and their liquidation levels are completely transparent as it is all published publicly to the blockchain. We can evaluate the health of their loan books in real-time. Depositors in these protocols can process all the relevant information about the health of these protocols before they deposit their funds. Contrast that with the opaque nature of centralised lenders, where the depositors only have slick marketing campaigns to consider.

From Number Three. (Any views expressed in the below are… | by Arthur Hayes | Jul, 2022 | Entrepreneur’s Handbook.

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Wallets are what 11:FS accurately label “the centre of gravity in web3”. They work by storing a user’s data and private keys which prove that the user owns and controls their digital assets and they allow users to interact with smart contracts and tokens.

 

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Although several attempts have been made to solve this issue on social media platforms, it’s clear that some kind of globally acceptable approach is required to get a grip on these important issues around account fraud and spam bots. Whether it’s Elon Musk’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat, social media sites need smart ways to check who we are that don’t violate a person’s individual right to privacy and security.

From This is how Elon Musk can securely achieve his mission of authenticating Twitter users:

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The popularity of the person-to-person (P2P) payment apps Zelle, Venmo and CashApp was bound to have a downside, and it has now surfaced for all to see. The scam artists and fraudsters have discovered that the convenience of these apps and widespread use even among older adults is a ripe opportunity.

From P2P Payment Scams Posing New Brand & Reputational Risks for Banks:

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He’s a tireless campaigner for the open Web — which is why every word he’s ever written is available, for free, on his blog — even if has also been published inside some paywalled or corporate silo. I’ve followed his example: I’ve written a lot of stuff that has appeared behind paywalls and other enclosed spaces (like Substack), but it’s always also been available on Memex, hosted on my own server.

From Monday 2 May, 2022 – by John Naughton – Memex 1.1:

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restrict access to porn that is, strictly speaking, legal.

From Inside the secret, often bizarre world that decides what porn you see | Financial Times:

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Bitcoin is the regime’s currency, primarily designed for foreign crypto enthusiasts.

From Opinion | El Salvador’s Bitcoin Paradise Is a Mirage – The New York Times:

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Remittances account for more than 20 percent of El Salvador’s G.D.P., because of a large diaspora mainly based in the United States. But, according to the Central Bank of El Salvador, only 1.5 percent of remittances went through digital wallets in April

From Opinion | El Salvador’s Bitcoin Paradise Is a Mirage – The New York Times:

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A paper published in April by the National Bureau of Economic Research concludes that “despite the legal tender status of Bitcoin and the large incentives implemented by the government, the cryptocurrency is largely not an accepted medium of exchange in El Salvador.”

I am fascinated, terrified and compelled by the continually unfolding story of the “missing crypto queen” Dr. Ruja Ignatova as told by the outstanding Jamie Bartlett in his book on the same, based on his BBC podcast series (which, and I cannot stress this enough, is a must-listen). When Jamie’s book was released earlier this year, the BBC quoted me, kindly labelling me “crypto author”, saying that “Getting rid of a few billion dollars’ worth is much harder than you think” which was an accurate precis of my opinion.

If you don’t know the story, it is about a massive Ponzi scam called OneCoin. I urge you to listen to every minute of every episode, even the ones that are very hard to listen to when you hear from people who have lost their life savings to the scam. Several billion euros were slurped up in the scam and are now unaccounted for.

(And when you listen to these tales or people being taken in by the scam, don’t harden your heart and go all caveat emptor on their asses. It could, and does, happen to anyone. Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple and a tech god, got taken for seven Bitcoins in a scam.)

There is a fair bit of money laundering going on in “crypto”, of course. The BBC quoted Chainalysis, saying that criminals laundered almost nine billion dollars worth of cryptocurrency in 2021, up around a third on the previous year. They also said that money from offline crime, such as cash from drug trafficking, converted into cryptocurrency to be laundered is not included, and this could be something of a growth area, so it is reasonable to observe that billions of naughty dollars are sloshing around the blockchain.

But why? If you are trying to move a few hundred big ones maybe the blockchain is a good. But as to my point to the BBC, when a few billion starts to shift from here to there, companies such Chainalysis and Elliptic are on it. It is really, really difficult (considerably more than Ozark-level difficult) to sneak the big money under the radar.

Consider the wonderful story of the couple in New York — Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife, Heather Morgan, 31 — who were arrested trying to launder several billion dollars worth of Bitcoin.  The husband and wife team (who I guarantee you will be the centre of a Netflix mini-series) were arrested by the FBI for consipiring to launder cryptocurrency stolen from the 2016 hack of virtual currency exchange Bitfinex. The Feds seized over $3.6 billion in cryptocurrency tied to the hack.

The media (and, I have to say, me) were fascinated by Heather Morgan’s rapper persona, Razzlekhan. She was on various social media platforms and made music videos for YouTube. She even wrote blog posts for Forbes! I’m not expert on the genre but I looked at a couple of her music videos and they weren’t very good. In fact, the only thing that she is worse at than rapping is money laundering, since while the Feds had spent years steadily tracking theproceeds of the Bitfinex hack, what in the end led them to kick down the door of the couple’s Wall Street apartment was the $500 Walmart gift card that Ms. Morgan had ordered and when the cops searched the apartment, they found fake passports, burner phones (apparently in an envelope marked “burner phones”) and $40,000 in cash.

(Pro-tip: Never put the burner phones in an envelope marked “burner phones”, that’s the first the Feds look for.)

 

 

 

(I’ve read the Chainalysis report and it further points out that of the estimated $14 billion in criminal proceeds that ended up in cryptocurrency last year, most of it ends up at a “surprisingly small” group of purpose-built money laundering services.)

 

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Meta’s Novi pilot — a money-transfer service using the company’s own cryptocurrency digital wallet — will end on Sept. 1, the service said on its website, a link to which it texted to its users.

From Meta Platforms (META) to Shut Down Novi Service in September in Crypto Winter – Bloomberg.

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Known as the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework, the provisional agreement includes rules that will cover issuers of unbacked crypto assets, stablecoins, trading platforms and wallets in which crypto assets are held, according to the European Council.

From EU agrees on MiCA regulation to crack down on crypto and stablecoins.

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Stefan Berger, European Parliament member and rapporteur for the MiCA regulation — the person appointed to report on proceedings related to the bill — broke the news on Twitter, saying that a “balanced” deal had been struck, which has made the EU the first continent with crypto-asset regulation.