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If the porn people won’t use Bitcoin, then who will? Maybe taking payment cards away from sites such as PornHub will stimulate evolution in user journey and ease of use for Monero et al and push them into the mainstream at last.

(It won’t, of course. What will actually happen is that the porn and gambling guys will get together and launch an over-18 version of Libra which, as it will be the only way to pay for these services, will soon become the currency of choice for adult services.  You read it here first. Pretty soon, the average person will have a digital wallet full of Facebucks and Buttbucks and precious little else.

From Send lawyers, guns and Bitcoin passwords | 15Mb:

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A cannabis dealer has forfeited bitcoins worth about $3 million after they were seized by the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau. However, a bigger stash of 6,000 bitcoins belonging to him, worth about $200 million at the current price, are still inaccessible to the bureau.

From CoinStats – Cannabis Dealer Forfeits $3 Million in Bitcoi…:

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To bypass protections banks use to block such attacks, the crooks used device identifiers corresponding to each compromised account holder and spoofed GPS locations the device was known to use. The device IDs were likely obtained from the holders’ hacked devices, although in some cases, the fraudsters gave the appearance that they were customers who were accessing their accounts from new phones. The attackers were also able to bypass multi-factor authentication by accessing SMS messages.

From “Evil mobile emulator farms” used to steal millions from US and EU banks | Ars Technica:

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The scale of the operation was unlike anything the researchers have seen before. In one case, crooks used about 20 emulators to mimic more than 16,000 phones belonging to customers whose mobile bank accounts had been compromised. In a separate case, a single emulator was able to spoof more than 8,100 devices

From “Evil mobile emulator farms” used to steal millions from US and EU banks | Ars Technica:

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Manned space missions might remain limited in number, government-dominated, and heavily regulated, but people have already found the will and the means to smuggle contraband past the authorities. Can you imagine what space travel will look like when competing private companies regularly carry thousands of passengers who want what they want no matter the whims of the powers that be?

From Space, the Final Smuggling Frontier – Reason.com:

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Over time, tech firms will build a more complete social and economic system, competing more aggressively with the state and further diminishing its ability to deliver material assistance to its citizenry. They are already attempting to end the state’s monopoly on issuing currency. In the present moment of state profligacy, cryptocurrency evangelists are urging investors to flee national currencies for the security of what they propagandistically call “decentralized finance” (the aggressive tenor of the abbreviation—“DeFi”—is not accidental). Apple and Google already offer banking services, while Facebook’s embryonic currency, the libra, could provide a means of exchange for two billion Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp users. (WeChat Pay and Alipay already perform this function for China’s private online societies.)

From [Essay] The Silenced Majority, By Rana Dasgupta | Harper’s Magazine:

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And over a hundred years later, Edward Prescott delved into the topic, too. In a 1999 paper (which mentions the Cheque Bank), Prescott discusses the idea of opening up an inexpensive type of bank account called an Electronic Transfer Account (ETA) so that all Americans, particularly the unbanked, might receive Federal benefit payments digitally. (Prescott was skeptical that ETAs might work out. The program, introduced in 1999, was discontinued in 2018 and has been replaced with a prepaid debit card program.)

From Moneyness: The unbanked, the post office, and fintech in the 1880s:

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So that lays out the cast of characters in 1880. It includes exclusionary banks, hoards of unbanked, a set of opposed economists in Jevons and Fawcett, fintechs like the Cheque Bank, and a post office on the verge of issuing a novel product; postal orders.

2020 seems very much like 1880. To help connect the large population of American unbanked to the financial system, a number of modern day Fawcetts (Morgan Ricks, Mehrsa Baradaran, Rohan Grey) have floated public payments solutions including a return of postal banking, central bank digital currency (CBDC), or central bank-accounts-for-all.

From Moneyness: The unbanked, the post office, and fintech in the 1880s:

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Chairman of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) Naci Ağbal, found a significant statement about digital coins. Ağbal stated that it is an R&D project initiated by the CBRT and that they are working on it. Ağbal announced that they will organize a test study for digital money.

Digital money good news came from Ağbal 
Speaking at the TBMM Plan and Budget Committee, Ağbal made a digital money statement following the questions directed to him. In the continuation of his announcement Ağbal gave the good news that pilot tests for digital money will begin in the second half of 2021.

“There is an R&D project initiated on digital money. Currently, the conceptual phase of this project has been completed. We aim to start pilot tests in the second half of 2021. We aim to start pilot tests in the second half of 2021. “

From Digital Money Statement by CBRT Governor Naci Ağbal: “We Aim to Start in 2021” | Coin Bulletin:

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Chairman of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) Naci Ağbal, found a significant statement about digital coins. Ağbal stated that it is an R&D project initiated by the CBRT and that they are working on it. Ağbal announced that they will organize a test study for digital money.

Digital money good news came from Ağbal 
Speaking at the TBMM Plan and Budget Committee, Ağbal made a digital money statement following the questions directed to him. In the continuation of his announcement Ağbal gave the good news that pilot tests for digital money will begin in the second half of 2021.

“There is an R&D project initiated on digital money. Currently, the conceptual phase of this project has been completed. We aim to start pilot tests in the second half of 2021. We aim to start pilot tests in the second half of 2021. “

From Digital Money Statement by CBRT Governor Naci Ağbal: “We Aim to Start in 2021” | Coin Bulletin:

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