Snippings

xxx

The Dark Forest is my favorite science fiction book. It introduces the concept of a “dark forest” — an environment in which detection means certain death at the hands of advanced predators. In this environment, publicly identifying someone else’s location is as good as directly destroying them. (This concept is also the inspiration for the Dark Forest game on the Ethereum testnet.)
In the Ethereum mempool, these apex predators take the form of “arbitrage bots.”

From Ethereum is a Dark Forest. A horror story. | by Dan Robinson | Medium:

xxx

xxx

It’s no secret that the Ethereum blockchain is a highly adversarial environment. If a smart contract can be exploited for profit, it eventually will be. The frequency of new hacks indicates that some very smart people spend a lot of time examining contracts for vulnerabilities.
But this unforgiving environment pales in comparison to the mempool (the set of pending, unconfirmed transactions). If the chain itself is a battleground, the mempool is something worse: a dark forest.

From Ethereum is a Dark Forest. A horror story. | by Dan Robinson | Medium:

xxx

xxx

On 21 September 1993 at about 16.00 in the afternoon, top Eurosceptic MP Sir Richard Body received a phone call from someone he believed was the then-prime minister.

From Impressionist Rory Bremner ‘saved Sir John Major’s bacon’ amid MPs revolt – BBC News:

xxx

xxx

The dealership recently sold two high-end sports cars—a 2017 Pagani Huayra Roadster and a 2019 Bugatti Chiron—to a customer who paid more than $6 million in bitcoin

From Bitcoin Looks to Gain Traction in Payments – WSJ:

xxx

xxx

Ursula von der Leyen’s proposed ‘secure digital identity’ would be a cornerstone of such a soft infrastructure

From EU Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act – ‘traffic lights’ are a positive step, but what about the soft infrastructure? – Data Sovereignty Now.

xxx

xxx

Sadly, for crypto maximalists, it might not mean crypto replacing central banks or central banks adopting permissionless public cryptocurrencies. It could instead mean central banks issuing their own, non-debt based, digital currencies, which could be used to provide a basic income for citizens and fund government spending without the need for debt.

From Will Cryptocurrency Matter in Ten Years? – Pairagraph:

xxx

xxx

Ant Group, the world’s largest fintech company, has been instructed to return to its roots of facilitating electronic payments, as China’s financial regulators expressed concerns about its forays into micro loans and other financial services.

From China orders Ant Group to return to e-payment roots as regulators rein in fintech’s unfettered expansion | South China Morning Post:

xxx

xxx

A new practice involves Tether’s USDT, a cryptocurrency linked to the value of the U.S. dollar. The original goal of the cryptocurrency was to solve the problem of excessive value volatility. In 2019, USDT surpassed Bitcoin as the most-traded cryptocurrency on the market by volume.

USDT is widely used in money laundering, gambling and other illegal activities, an executive at a blockchain platform told Caixin.

From How illegal online gambling launders $150bn from China – Nikkei Asia:

xxx

xxx

Many of these advertisements are posted by running points platforms, which would pay 500 to 1,000 yuan to each recruited member for their ID number, bank cards, mobile phone numbers and bank USB shield, which is a security tool that looks similar to a flash disk and acts as a shield to protect a user’s money in internet banking. If more information can be provided, such as a business license, business seal, business bank account and USB shield, the price can go up to 1,500 to 2,000 yuan for the whole set.

From How illegal online gambling launders $150bn from China – Nikkei Asia:

xxx

xxx

At a Shanghai forum in October, Mu Changchun, the head of the digital currency research institute under the central bank, clarified the difference between the digital yuan and payment services.
“WeChat and Alipay are wallets, while the digital yuan is the money in the wallet,” Mu said.

From China’s latest digital currency test doubles down on previous trial, nudging merchants and consumers to embrace e-yuan | South China Morning Post:

xxx