#guy has like tens of thousands stashed on his bank account

[kneelingshadowsalome]

This is young recruit König's apartment btw

[ashtraythief]

the phone call jared had with gen where he throws his phone because gen suspects jensen, lol. i can see her calling him dick stupid there!!!! or honestly you could come up with a better moment :)

No, this was honestly my first thought too 😅 So here it is!

Underneath It All, Chapter 6, Outtake, Jared POV

Gen called while Jared was in his office. With Jensen laid up with his foot and Jared still dealing with the Tapping mess—Danni was in San Francisco right now, cleaning shit up—Jared was working from home a lot.

“So,” she said slowly. “Aldis and I went through his finances.”

“And?” Jared was pretty sure that Jensen had some kind of money issues. He was insistent on making money and despite his protests of not being Jared’s kept boy, he let him pay a lot—not that Jared minded, but the contradiction drove him nuts. And since Jensen refused to give up information, Jared had asked Aldis and Gen to check. It hadn’t been a problem for Chad to get a look at Jensen’s wallet and his credit card information and Jared trusted Aldis would find whatever else Jensen was hiding, maybe an offshore account in the Caymans or in Switzerland or wherever art thieves stashed their money.

He knew Jensen would be spitting mad if he found out, so they’d done all of this very covertly. After Jensen had stolen from Jared, Aldis had already found the info that was in the police, FBI, and interpol files, so Jared knew the basics, but whatever was going on with Jensen now, it could impact Jared. So he needed to now.

“And there’s nothing,” Gen said.

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“I mean, the credit cards are new, nothing suspicious there, but there’s also not a lot of money. He pays them off with an account that has currently thirty thousand dollars in it, and the money in there came from several cash deposits under ten grand.”

Under ten grand and the bank didn’t have to report it to the IRS. Depositing cash like that was a natural precaution that Jensen would definitely have taken.

“So nothing means…”

“Nothing means his money trail is barely a month old, when he came back to the states, and we have no idea where the rest of it is.” Gen paused. “If he has any.”

“I could have cash stashed somewhere,” Jared said. “He fenced Tapping’s jewels in San Francisco for cash, so maybe the rest is in cash too.”

After Jared knew that Jensen had robbed Tapping, he’d had his contacts in San Francisco ask around and one of their guys had talked to a fence who’d bought the jewels from Jensen.

“Sure,” Gen said slowly. “And maybe his stolen stuff from Europe is still over there. But Jared, this is weird. The way these accounts are set up… It’s too clean. Too careful.”

There was something in the tone of her voice that made Jared’s hackles rise. “What do you mean?”

“It feels government clean,” Gen said.

“No,” Jared bit out. “Jensen is very careful, he could have done it.”

“Jared, the cops would do it exactly like that.”

“Gen—”

“I’m just saying, we should consider the possibility, dig a little deeper.”

“We’ve dug enough,” Jared said. If they dug deeper, eventually Jensen might catch on and Jared had a feeling that Jensen would absolutely not appreciate that.

“What harm would it do? We’ll be careful if you don’t want to piss him off,” she said with a snort.

“For fuck’s sake, Gen, no, he’s not a cop.”

“Are you sure? We can’t put it past them to try this way.”

“I had Chad run his prints, I’m not stupid,” Jared said exasperatedly. “Trust me, he is who he says he is.”

“Just because he’s not a cop doesn’t mean he is who he says he is. Or he is who he says he is, but he could still work for the cops. Seriously Jared, the guy sounds like he’s practically perfect for you and the whole thing with Tapping is just awfully convenient.”

Jared started pacing to redirect the anger building up in him. “Yes, I know, but—”

“And then he just decides to stick around, change his mind just like that? Do you know everything he did in San Francisco? What if they approached him for information, huh? What if they have something on him?”

“I fucking know that he could still be here to get information. I know, okay? I know I have enemies and he wouldn’t be the first to come at me like that. But trust me, Gen, it’s not like that. I practically had to drag him into my bed…”

“But he let himself be dragged. And then he robbed Tapping just in time to warn you?”

“I know it’s suspicious timing. But—”

“Jared, I’m just saying—” Gen said soothingly and that placating tone was worse than anything.

“That’s enough,” Jared bit out, fighting not to snap at her and not succeeding. “I fucking know what I’m doing, okay? Jensen’s the best lay I found in years—” ever, really, and that alone still didn't explain why Jared didn't want to let Jensen out of his sight, “—and I’m not giving him up just because you think there’s something off about him.”

Gen let out an exasperated huff. “But you think there’s something off about him too. You fucking asked me to look into his finances. And you’re still letting him stay at the house! Why can’t he get his own place, huh? This is just inviting him to search the place. Honestly, he can’t be that good in bed.”

Jared dragged a hand through his hair, fighting for control. “Fuck, Gen no, it’s not...”

“Come on Jared, you can’t be this dick-stupid. But If you won’t dig deeper, I will.” And with that the line went dead.

The fucking audacity. The problem was that Gen was his friend and he knew she was looking out for him and he also couldn’t deny that she was right. Jensen was hiding something, nothing like she insinuated, but something, and Jared couldn’t figure out what it was and maybe he couldn’t trust him after all—“Fuck!” 

The phone flew through the air and shattered against the wall.

Jared sucked in a sharp breath, started pacing again to calm down. This fucking thief was going to drive him fucking nuts. 

[terabitweb]

Original Post from Krebs on Security Author: BrianKrebs

“BriansClub,” one of the largest underground stores for buying stolen credit card data, has itself been hacked. The data stolen from BriansClub encompasses more than 26 million credit and debit card records taken from hacked online and brick-and-mortar retailers over the past four years, including almost eight million records uploaded to the shop in 2019 alone.

An ad for BriansClub has been using my name and likeness for years to peddle millions of stolen credit cards.

Last month, KrebsOnSecurity was contacted by a source who shared a plain text file containing what was claimed to be the full database of cards for sale both currently and historically through BriansClub[.]at, a thriving fraud bazaar named after this author. Imitating my site, likeness and namesake, BriansClub even dubiously claims a copyright with a reference at the bottom of each page: “© 2019 Crabs on Security.”

Multiple people who reviewed the database shared by my source confirmed that the same credit card records also could be found in a more redacted form simply by searching the BriansClub Web site with a valid, properly-funded account.

All of the card data stolen from BriansClub was shared with multiple sources who work closely with financial institutions to identify and monitor or reissue cards that show up for sale in the cybercrime underground.

The leaked data shows that in 2015, BriansClub added just 1.7 million card records for sale. But business would pick up in each of the years that followed: In 2016, BriansClub uploaded 2.89 million stolen cards; 2017 saw some 4.9 million cards added; 2018 brought in 9.2 million more.

Between January and August 2019 (when this database snapshot was apparently taken), BriansClub added roughly 7.6 million cards.

Most of what’s on offer at BriansClub are “dumps,” strings of ones and zeros that — when encoded onto anything with a magnetic stripe the size of a credit card — can be used by thieves to purchase electronics, gift cards and other high-priced items at big box stores.

As shown in the table below (taken from this story), many federal hacking prosecutions involving stolen credit cards will for sentencing purposes value each stolen card record at $500, which is intended to represent the average loss per compromised cardholder.

The black market value, impact to consumers and banks, and liability associated with different types of card fraud.

STOLEN BACK FAIR AND SQUARE

An extensive analysis of the database indicates BriansClub holds approximately $414 million worth of stolen credit cards for sale, based on the pricing tiers listed on the site. That’s according to an analysis by Flashpoint, a security intelligence firm based in New York City.

Allison Nixon, the company’s director of security research, said Flashpoint had help from numerous parties in crunching the numbers from the massive leaked database.

Nixon said the data suggests that between 2015 and August 2019, BriansClub sold roughly 9.1 million stolen credit cards, earning the site $126 million in sales (all sales are transacted in bitcoin).

If we take just the 9.1 million cards that were confirmed sold through BriansClub, we’re talking about $2.27 billion in likely losses at the $500 average loss per card figure from the Justice Department.

Also, it seems likely the total number of stolen credit cards for sale on BriansClub and related sites vastly exceeds the number of criminals who will buy such data. Shame on them for not investing more in marketing!

There’s no easy way to tell how many of the 26 million or so cards for sale at BriansClub are still valid, but the closest approximation of that — how many unsold cards have expiration dates in the future — indicates more than 14 million of them could still be valid.

The archive also reveals the proprietor(s) of BriansClub frequently uploaded new batches of stolen cards — some just a few thousand records, and others tens of thousands.

That’s because like many other carding sites, BriansClub mostly resells cards stolen by other cybercriminals — known as resellers or affiliates — who earn a percentage from each sale. It’s not yet clear how that revenue is shared in this case, but perhaps this information will be revealed in further analysis of the purloined database.

BRIANS CHAT

In a message titled “Your site is hacked,’ KrebsOnSecurity requested comment from BriansClub via the “Support Tickets” page on the carding shop’s site, informing its operators that all of their card data had been shared with the card-issuing banks.

I was surprised and delighted to receive a polite reply a few hours later from the site’s administrator (“admin”):

“No. I’m the real Brian Krebs here

Correct subject would be the data center was hacked.

Will get in touch with you on jabber. Should I mention that all information affected by the data-center breach has been since taken off sales, so no worries about the issuing banks.”

Flashpoint’s Nixon said a spot check comparison between the stolen card database and the card data advertised at BriansClub suggests the administrator is not being truthful in his claims of having removed the leaked stolen card data from his online shop.

The admin hasn’t yet responded to follow-up questions, such as why BriansClub chose to use my name and likeness to peddle millions of stolen credit cards.

Almost certainly, at least part of the appeal is that my surname means “crab” (or cancer), and crab is Russian hacker slang for “carder,” a person who engages in credit card fraud.

Many of the cards for sale on BriansClub are not visible to all customers. Those who wish to see the “best” cards in the shop need to maintain certain minimum balances, as shown in this screenshot.

HACKING BACK?

Nixon said breaches of criminal website databases often lead not just to prevented cybercrimes, but also to arrests and prosecutions.

“When people talk about ‘hacking back,’ they’re talking about stuff like this,” Nixon said. “As long as our government is hacking into all these foreign government resources, they should be hacking into these carding sites as well. There’s a lot of attention being paid to this data now and people are remediating and working on it.”

By way of example on hacking back, she pointed to the 2016 breach of vDOS — at the time the largest and most powerful service for knocking Web sites offline in large-scale cyberattacks.

Soon after vDOS’s database was stolen and leaked to this author, its two main proprietors were arrested. Also, the database added to evidence of criminal activity for several other individuals who were persons of interest in unrelated cybercrime investigations, Nixon said.

“When vDOS got breached, that basically reopened cases that were cold because [the leak of the vDOS database] supplied the final piece of evidence needed,” she said.

THE TARGET BREACH OF THE UNDERGROUND?

After many hours spent poring over this data, it became clear I needed some perspective on the scope and impact of this breach. As a major event in the cybercrime underground, was it somehow the reverse analog of the Target breach — which negatively impacted tens of millions of consumers and greatly enriched a large number of bad guys? Or was it more prosaic, like a Jimmy Johns-sized debacle?

For that insight, I spoke with Gemini Advisory, a New York-based company that works with financial institutions to monitor dozens of underground markets trafficking in stolen card data.

Andrei Barysevich, co-founder and CEO at Gemini, said the breach at BriansClub is certainly significant, given that Gemini currently tracks a total of 87 million credit and debit card records for sale across the cybercrime underground.

Gemini is monitoring most underground stores that peddle stolen card data — including such heavy hitters as Joker’s Stash, Trump’s Dumps, and BriansDump.

Contrary to popular belief, when these shops sell a stolen credit card record, that record is then removed from the inventory of items for sale. This allows companies like Gemini to determine roughly how many new cards are put up for sale and how many have sold.

Barysevich said the loss of so many valid cards may well impact how other carding stores compete and price their products.

“With over 78% of the illicit trade of stolen cards attributed to only a dozen of dark web markets, a breach of this magnitude will undoubtedly disturb the underground trade in the short term,” he said. “However, since the demand for stolen credit cards is on the rise, other vendors will undoubtedly attempt to capitalize on the disappearance of the top player.”

Liked this story and want to learn more about how carding shops operate? Check out Peek Inside a Professional Carding Shop. Want to help this site continue to produce useful, impactful journalism? Consider donating!

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Go to Source Author: BrianKrebs “BriansClub” Hack Rescues 26M Stolen Cards Original Post from Krebs on Security Author: BrianKrebs “BriansClub,” one of the largest underground stores for buying stolen credit card data, has itself been hacked.

[courtneyvbrooks87]

This Anti-Bitcoin Op-Ed Just Took the QuadrigaCX Dialogue to a New Low

This Anti-Bitcoin Op-Ed Just Took the QuadrigaCX Dialogue to a New Low

Writing for Foreign Policy, David Gerard levies the following taunt: “Forget Bitcoin, try your mattress – cryptocurrency is about as safe as keeping your money in a sock under someone else’s bed.”

David Gerard Lays into Bitcoin

Clearly, David Gerard is not a fan of cryptocurrency.

Yeah, tell that to the guy whose kids are playing with his change for a cup of coffee.

You’re going to need a bigger mattress.| Source: Archives of Mount Holyoke College

No really. What if your money doesn’t fit under your mattress?

It’s happened to many people before.

Hyperinflation Happened in Germany after World War I

Hyperinflation destroyed the German economy after The Great War. | Source: Public Domain

And it’s no joke.

It’s very serious when something like this happens.

The French Third Republic levied its first income tax to pay for the war.

But German Emperor Wilhelm II and the unanimously approving German parliament chose to suspend the convertibility of Deutschmarks to gold.

They financed the war with debt and monetized the government’s debt with paper notes.

The results were strange and ground German economic productivity to a halt.

Hyperinflation Happened in Zimbabwe in the 90s

That’s a lot of zeros. | Source: Wikimedia Commons

Look at the issue date on those.

And you thought the Fed made a lot of money in 2008.

An entire nation’s money worn so thin there’s nothing left after years or decades of state-run banks stealing their money’s buying power by making more of it to pay the lavish bills of whoever’s got the most guns. And a nation usually has to be in really bad shape politically, under the heel of a dictatorial government for its currency to debase so badly.

Hyperinflation is Happening in Venezuela Now

Venezuela’s economy has been roiled by million-plus percent inflation. | Source: Flickr

This image of Venezuelan bolívar fuerte 50,000, 20,000, 10,000, and 5,000 Bs.F. banknotes is on Flickr with the caption:

“El dinero representa poder, también energía. Sólo que con él no se compra la paz.”

“The money represents power, also energy. Only with him peace is not bought.”

Power and energy cannot buy peace. It’s true. El precio de la libertad es la eterna vigilancia.

Sometime last year in late 2018 the Venezuelan government converted the bolívar fuerte to the bolívar soberano at a rate of 1 Bs.S. to 100,000 Bs.F.

So that 50,000 bolívar bill pictured above is now a fiddy cent piece.

The Strange and Terrifying World of Hyperinflation

It’s ridiculous and strange to be sure.

When hyperinflation hits, there is a sudden exponential growth in the amount of circulating currency including that in banks’ reserves and subsequent exponential growth in prices.

More and more zeros start getting added to the prices of everything, and then there is a government reaction and re-denomination of the currency that drops all the zeros back off again, acknowledging that adding the zeros to all the money didn’t make it worth more.

It made the money worth massively less.

While brazenly redistributing massive amounts of wealth from the people furthest downstream in the economy from the source of new fiat money flooding into it…

To the people furthest upstream and closest to the source of the new money, the ones who got to spend each new round of money first before it debased the currency.

First World Problems: Could Hyperinflation Happen to You?

Hyperinflation isn’t necessarily just a problem in third-world countries. | Source: FRED

Sure, maybe you’re reading this from a first-world country, wondering: “Could hyperinflation actually happen to me?”

Maybe.

People facing hyperinflation are the use cases for Bitcoin:

Gerard says in his Foreign Policy op-ed:

“Bitcoin, its advocates keep saying, is the future. But in practice, it looks a lot like the distant past. Back then, you could lose your savings if your banker ran off with your money or died without revealing where it was stored. Today, there’s numerous protections in place for consumers—unless, that is, your cash is in bitcoin.”

For people who live in one of the many national economies of the world facing a currency crisis, they might be more likely to lose their savings or find the banker has run off with their money if they keep it in their national bank accounts or even its cash banknotes.

So Don’t Talk To Me About Mattresses, Mr. Gerard

David Gerard really shouldn’t joke about keeping money in a sock under a mattress. For 10 million Americans, something like that is the closest to a checking or savings account they have. They are the unbanked. You have heard of the homeless.

Some estimates place their numbers at around half a million in the United States.

But the FDIC estimates as many as 10 million American adults are bankless.

Rest in Peace, Gerald Cotten

Gerard goes on to say:

“In Canada, the Quadriga cryptocurrency exchange has gone into bankruptcy protection, leaving its customers bust. An exchange is roughly like a bank for bitcoin; they make your money easier to use in practice. But unlike a bank, there’s usually no guarantees, protections, or reassurances that your money and its holder won’t disappear to a remote island. Quadriga’s founder, Gerald Cotten, apparently died in December. Quadriga finally revealed the news in January, and shortly after the exchange applied for protection from nearly $190 million in outstanding liabilities as it scrambled to find any lurking assets.”

This was a very unfortunate turn of events for a lot of people, not least of whom was Gerald Cotten, who died at a young age from Crohn’s disease while running an important business.

Warning: Minimize Your Exposure to These Risks!

Bitcoin was envisioned primarily as private digital coins with built-in bank security. | Source: Shutterstock

This amazingly proverbial story should serve as fair warning to people getting into the crypto space that you might want to think about how you minimize the exposure of your crypto assets to these kinds of risks.

Bitcoin was envisioned primarily as private digital coins with built-in bank security, so that you would not have to trust any institution or third party to safeguard your own bitcoins for you.

Letting an exchange hold the keys to your cryptocoins and trusting them not to make a stupid mistake, not to get hacked, not to steal your coins and disappear, not to die – is missing out on one of the great features that make cryptocoins highly valued and sought after commodities.

Fiat Money Has Critical Bottlenecks Too – By Design

People holding currencies that are devalued like those banknotes above have also put their trust in a third party to safeguard their money as a reliable store of value. | Source: Shutterstock

People holding currencies that are devalued like those banknotes above have also put their trust in a third party to safeguard their money as a reliable store of value.

When their cash and savings disappeared because the banks stole it by relentlessly pumping reserves full of new money, the problem was a bottleneck problem like the bizarre policy of making Gerald Cotten solely responsible for extremely critical information for tens of millions of dollars’ worth of crypto assets.

In the case of these hyperinflationary events, the bottleneck isn’t an information bottleneck, it’s a bottleneck of control. Only a very select few elite financial bureaucrats get to control the total amount of fiat currencies that aren’t strictly backed by a one to one ratio of a reserve of some hard commodity like gold.

With Bitcoin, the total amount of bitcoins is limited by the protocol, and anybody with a computer capable of running the software can play by the same rules as everybody else to earn bitcoin (though these days mining is restricted to specialized computers).

Punching Down in the Wake of the QuadrigaCX Saga is Bad Form

Gerard proceeds to make the dubious claim that Bitcoin has failed over a cryptocurrency exchange owner dying and his customers losing tens of millions of dollars. It’s got to be one of the least considerate screeds I have read in the cryptosphere.

I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but boy does it show some lack of awareness. Or at least where I’m from this would be considered very cold and profoundly inconsiderate:

“This wasn’t a unique problem. Quadriga’s collapse follows from the nature of bitcoin and why it failed as an electronic form of cash, leaving people worldwide stranded in its wake. Most financial institutions with thousands of customers and millions of dollars in holdings have bureaucratic and technical systems in place for such misfortunes. Unfortunately, Quadriga did not—and that’s sadly typical of exchanges.”

“Does Gerard have anything better to say?,” I’m wondering at this point in the article, than to kick Bitcoin while a bunch of people are hurting and suffering from enormous losses from a terrible situation? What’s the lesson to learn from this?

I’ve already written what I think is an important lesson not to learn the hard way from this and given some practical advice to people interested in saving some of their money using bitcoin, as well as an overview of why people in many places around the world will be motivated to use cryptocurrency.

Does Gerard have anything better than a quip about stashing your cash in your bed?

Spoiler: He does not. He just thinks it’s a fine time to roast Bitcoin on Foreign Policy by calling out the terrible, costly mistakes of an exchange owner who just died and using that to gloat over the failure of Bitcoin. The dialogue has really sunk to a new low.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to, CCN.

Original Source http://bit.ly/2NfPEuk

[mccartneynathxzw83]

This Anti-Bitcoin Op-Ed Just Took the QuadrigaCX Dialogue to a New Low

This Anti-Bitcoin Op-Ed Just Took the QuadrigaCX Dialogue to a New Low

Writing for Foreign Policy, David Gerard levies the following taunt: “Forget Bitcoin, try your mattress – cryptocurrency is about as safe as keeping your money in a sock under someone else’s bed.”

David Gerard Lays into Bitcoin

Clearly, David Gerard is not a fan of cryptocurrency.

Yeah, tell that to the guy whose kids are playing with his change for a cup of coffee.

You’re going to need a bigger mattress.| Source: Archives of Mount Holyoke College

No really. What if your money doesn’t fit under your mattress?

It’s happened to many people before.

Hyperinflation Happened in Germany after World War I

Hyperinflation destroyed the German economy after The Great War. | Source: Public Domain

And it’s no joke.

It’s very serious when something like this happens.

The French Third Republic levied its first income tax to pay for the war.

But German Emperor Wilhelm II and the unanimously approving German parliament chose to suspend the convertibility of Deutschmarks to gold.

They financed the war with debt and monetized the government’s debt with paper notes.

The results were strange and ground German economic productivity to a halt.

Hyperinflation Happened in Zimbabwe in the 90s

That’s a lot of zeros. | Source: Wikimedia Commons

Look at the issue date on those.

And you thought the Fed made a lot of money in 2008.

An entire nation’s money worn so thin there’s nothing left after years or decades of state-run banks stealing their money’s buying power by making more of it to pay the lavish bills of whoever’s got the most guns. And a nation usually has to be in really bad shape politically, under the heel of a dictatorial government for its currency to debase so badly.

Hyperinflation is Happening in Venezuela Now

Venezuela’s economy has been roiled by million-plus percent inflation. | Source: Flickr

This image of Venezuelan bolívar fuerte 50,000, 20,000, 10,000, and 5,000 Bs.F. banknotes is on Flickr with the caption:

“El dinero representa poder, también energía. Sólo que con él no se compra la paz.”

“The money represents power, also energy. Only with him peace is not bought.”

Power and energy cannot buy peace. It’s true. El precio de la libertad es la eterna vigilancia.

Sometime last year in late 2018 the Venezuelan government converted the bolívar fuerte to the bolívar soberano at a rate of 1 Bs.S. to 100,000 Bs.F.

So that 50,000 bolívar bill pictured above is now a fiddy cent piece.

The Strange and Terrifying World of Hyperinflation

It’s ridiculous and strange to be sure.

When hyperinflation hits, there is a sudden exponential growth in the amount of circulating currency including that in banks’ reserves and subsequent exponential growth in prices.

More and more zeros start getting added to the prices of everything, and then there is a government reaction and re-denomination of the currency that drops all the zeros back off again, acknowledging that adding the zeros to all the money didn’t make it worth more.

It made the money worth massively less.

While brazenly redistributing massive amounts of wealth from the people furthest downstream in the economy from the source of new fiat money flooding into it…

To the people furthest upstream and closest to the source of the new money, the ones who got to spend each new round of money first before it debased the currency.

First World Problems: Could Hyperinflation Happen to You?

Hyperinflation isn’t necessarily just a problem in third-world countries. | Source: FRED

Sure, maybe you’re reading this from a first-world country, wondering: “Could hyperinflation actually happen to me?”

Maybe.

People facing hyperinflation are the use cases for Bitcoin:

Gerard says in his Foreign Policy op-ed:

“Bitcoin, its advocates keep saying, is the future. But in practice, it looks a lot like the distant past. Back then, you could lose your savings if your banker ran off with your money or died without revealing where it was stored. Today, there’s numerous protections in place for consumers—unless, that is, your cash is in bitcoin.”

For people who live in one of the many national economies of the world facing a currency crisis, they might be more likely to lose their savings or find the banker has run off with their money if they keep it in their national bank accounts or even its cash banknotes.

So Don’t Talk To Me About Mattresses, Mr. Gerard

David Gerard really shouldn’t joke about keeping money in a sock under a mattress. For 10 million Americans, something like that is the closest to a checking or savings account they have. They are the unbanked. You have heard of the homeless.

Some estimates place their numbers at around half a million in the United States.

But the FDIC estimates as many as 10 million American adults are bankless.

Rest in Peace, Gerald Cotten

Gerard goes on to say:

“In Canada, the Quadriga cryptocurrency exchange has gone into bankruptcy protection, leaving its customers bust. An exchange is roughly like a bank for bitcoin; they make your money easier to use in practice. But unlike a bank, there’s usually no guarantees, protections, or reassurances that your money and its holder won’t disappear to a remote island. Quadriga’s founder, Gerald Cotten, apparently died in December. Quadriga finally revealed the news in January, and shortly after the exchange applied for protection from nearly $190 million in outstanding liabilities as it scrambled to find any lurking assets.”

This was a very unfortunate turn of events for a lot of people, not least of whom was Gerald Cotten, who died at a young age from Crohn’s disease while running an important business.

Warning: Minimize Your Exposure to These Risks!

Bitcoin was envisioned primarily as private digital coins with built-in bank security. | Source: Shutterstock

This amazingly proverbial story should serve as fair warning to people getting into the crypto space that you might want to think about how you minimize the exposure of your crypto assets to these kinds of risks.

Bitcoin was envisioned primarily as private digital coins with built-in bank security, so that you would not have to trust any institution or third party to safeguard your own bitcoins for you.

Letting an exchange hold the keys to your cryptocoins and trusting them not to make a stupid mistake, not to get hacked, not to steal your coins and disappear, not to die – is missing out on one of the great features that make cryptocoins highly valued and sought after commodities.

Fiat Money Has Critical Bottlenecks Too – By Design

People holding currencies that are devalued like those banknotes above have also put their trust in a third party to safeguard their money as a reliable store of value. | Source: Shutterstock

People holding currencies that are devalued like those banknotes above have also put their trust in a third party to safeguard their money as a reliable store of value.

When their cash and savings disappeared because the banks stole it by relentlessly pumping reserves full of new money, the problem was a bottleneck problem like the bizarre policy of making Gerald Cotten solely responsible for extremely critical information for tens of millions of dollars’ worth of crypto assets.

In the case of these hyperinflationary events, the bottleneck isn’t an information bottleneck, it’s a bottleneck of control. Only a very select few elite financial bureaucrats get to control the total amount of fiat currencies that aren’t strictly backed by a one to one ratio of a reserve of some hard commodity like gold.

With Bitcoin, the total amount of bitcoins is limited by the protocol, and anybody with a computer capable of running the software can play by the same rules as everybody else to earn bitcoin (though these days mining is restricted to specialized computers).

Punching Down in the Wake of the QuadrigaCX Saga is Bad Form

Gerard proceeds to make the dubious claim that Bitcoin has failed over a cryptocurrency exchange owner dying and his customers losing tens of millions of dollars. It’s got to be one of the least considerate screeds I have read in the cryptosphere.

I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but boy does it show some lack of awareness. Or at least where I’m from this would be considered very cold and profoundly inconsiderate:

“This wasn’t a unique problem. Quadriga’s collapse follows from the nature of bitcoin and why it failed as an electronic form of cash, leaving people worldwide stranded in its wake. Most financial institutions with thousands of customers and millions of dollars in holdings have bureaucratic and technical systems in place for such misfortunes. Unfortunately, Quadriga did not—and that’s sadly typical of exchanges.”

“Does Gerard have anything better to say?,” I’m wondering at this point in the article, than to kick Bitcoin while a bunch of people are hurting and suffering from enormous losses from a terrible situation? What’s the lesson to learn from this?

I’ve already written what I think is an important lesson not to learn the hard way from this and given some practical advice to people interested in saving some of their money using bitcoin, as well as an overview of why people in many places around the world will be motivated to use cryptocurrency.

Does Gerard have anything better than a quip about stashing your cash in your bed?

Spoiler: He does not. He just thinks it’s a fine time to roast Bitcoin on Foreign Policy by calling out the terrible, costly mistakes of an exchange owner who just died and using that to gloat over the failure of Bitcoin. The dialogue has really sunk to a new low.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to, CCN.

Original Source http://bit.ly/2NfPEuk

[teiraymondmccoy78]

This Anti-Bitcoin Op-Ed Just Took the QuadrigaCX Dialogue to a New Low

This Anti-Bitcoin Op-Ed Just Took the QuadrigaCX Dialogue to a New Low

Writing for Foreign Policy, David Gerard levies the following taunt: “Forget Bitcoin, try your mattress – cryptocurrency is about as safe as keeping your money in a sock under someone else’s bed.”

David Gerard Lays into Bitcoin

Clearly, David Gerard is not a fan of cryptocurrency.

Yeah, tell that to the guy whose kids are playing with his change for a cup of coffee.

You’re going to need a bigger mattress.| Source: Archives of Mount Holyoke College

No really. What if your money doesn’t fit under your mattress?

It’s happened to many people before.

Hyperinflation Happened in Germany after World War I

Hyperinflation destroyed the German economy after The Great War. | Source: Public Domain

And it’s no joke.

It’s very serious when something like this happens.

The French Third Republic levied its first income tax to pay for the war.

But German Emperor Wilhelm II and the unanimously approving German parliament chose to suspend the convertibility of Deutschmarks to gold.

They financed the war with debt and monetized the government’s debt with paper notes.

The results were strange and ground German economic productivity to a halt.

Hyperinflation Happened in Zimbabwe in the 90s

That’s a lot of zeros. | Source: Wikimedia Commons

Look at the issue date on those.

And you thought the Fed made a lot of money in 2008.

An entire nation’s money worn so thin there’s nothing left after years or decades of state-run banks stealing their money’s buying power by making more of it to pay the lavish bills of whoever’s got the most guns. And a nation usually has to be in really bad shape politically, under the heel of a dictatorial government for its currency to debase so badly.

Hyperinflation is Happening in Venezuela Now

Venezuela’s economy has been roiled by million-plus percent inflation. | Source: Flickr

This image of Venezuelan bolívar fuerte 50,000, 20,000, 10,000, and 5,000 Bs.F. banknotes is on Flickr with the caption:

“El dinero representa poder, también energía. Sólo que con él no se compra la paz.”

“The money represents power, also energy. Only with him peace is not bought.”

Power and energy cannot buy peace. It’s true. El precio de la libertad es la eterna vigilancia.

Sometime last year in late 2018 the Venezuelan government converted the bolívar fuerte to the bolívar soberano at a rate of 1 Bs.S. to 100,000 Bs.F.

So that 50,000 bolívar bill pictured above is now a fiddy cent piece.

The Strange and Terrifying World of Hyperinflation

It’s ridiculous and strange to be sure.

When hyperinflation hits, there is a sudden exponential growth in the amount of circulating currency including that in banks’ reserves and subsequent exponential growth in prices.

More and more zeros start getting added to the prices of everything, and then there is a government reaction and re-denomination of the currency that drops all the zeros back off again, acknowledging that adding the zeros to all the money didn’t make it worth more.

It made the money worth massively less.

While brazenly redistributing massive amounts of wealth from the people furthest downstream in the economy from the source of new fiat money flooding into it…

To the people furthest upstream and closest to the source of the new money, the ones who got to spend each new round of money first before it debased the currency.

First World Problems: Could Hyperinflation Happen to You?

Hyperinflation isn’t necessarily just a problem in third-world countries. | Source: FRED

Sure, maybe you’re reading this from a first-world country, wondering: “Could hyperinflation actually happen to me?”

Maybe.

People facing hyperinflation are the use cases for Bitcoin:

Gerard says in his Foreign Policy op-ed:

“Bitcoin, its advocates keep saying, is the future. But in practice, it looks a lot like the distant past. Back then, you could lose your savings if your banker ran off with your money or died without revealing where it was stored. Today, there’s numerous protections in place for consumers—unless, that is, your cash is in bitcoin.”

For people who live in one of the many national economies of the world facing a currency crisis, they might be more likely to lose their savings or find the banker has run off with their money if they keep it in their national bank accounts or even its cash banknotes.

So Don’t Talk To Me About Mattresses, Mr. Gerard

David Gerard really shouldn’t joke about keeping money in a sock under a mattress. For 10 million Americans, something like that is the closest to a checking or savings account they have. They are the unbanked. You have heard of the homeless.

Some estimates place their numbers at around half a million in the United States.

But the FDIC estimates as many as 10 million American adults are bankless.

Rest in Peace, Gerald Cotten

Gerard goes on to say:

“In Canada, the Quadriga cryptocurrency exchange has gone into bankruptcy protection, leaving its customers bust. An exchange is roughly like a bank for bitcoin; they make your money easier to use in practice. But unlike a bank, there’s usually no guarantees, protections, or reassurances that your money and its holder won’t disappear to a remote island. Quadriga’s founder, Gerald Cotten, apparently died in December. Quadriga finally revealed the news in January, and shortly after the exchange applied for protection from nearly $190 million in outstanding liabilities as it scrambled to find any lurking assets.”

This was a very unfortunate turn of events for a lot of people, not least of whom was Gerald Cotten, who died at a young age from Crohn’s disease while running an important business.

Warning: Minimize Your Exposure to These Risks!

Bitcoin was envisioned primarily as private digital coins with built-in bank security. | Source: Shutterstock

This amazingly proverbial story should serve as fair warning to people getting into the crypto space that you might want to think about how you minimize the exposure of your crypto assets to these kinds of risks.

Bitcoin was envisioned primarily as private digital coins with built-in bank security, so that you would not have to trust any institution or third party to safeguard your own bitcoins for you.

Letting an exchange hold the keys to your cryptocoins and trusting them not to make a stupid mistake, not to get hacked, not to steal your coins and disappear, not to die – is missing out on one of the great features that make cryptocoins highly valued and sought after commodities.

Fiat Money Has Critical Bottlenecks Too – By Design

People holding currencies that are devalued like those banknotes above have also put their trust in a third party to safeguard their money as a reliable store of value. | Source: Shutterstock

People holding currencies that are devalued like those banknotes above have also put their trust in a third party to safeguard their money as a reliable store of value.

When their cash and savings disappeared because the banks stole it by relentlessly pumping reserves full of new money, the problem was a bottleneck problem like the bizarre policy of making Gerald Cotten solely responsible for extremely critical information for tens of millions of dollars’ worth of crypto assets.

In the case of these hyperinflationary events, the bottleneck isn’t an information bottleneck, it’s a bottleneck of control. Only a very select few elite financial bureaucrats get to control the total amount of fiat currencies that aren’t strictly backed by a one to one ratio of a reserve of some hard commodity like gold.

With Bitcoin, the total amount of bitcoins is limited by the protocol, and anybody with a computer capable of running the software can play by the same rules as everybody else to earn bitcoin (though these days mining is restricted to specialized computers).

Punching Down in the Wake of the QuadrigaCX Saga is Bad Form

Gerard proceeds to make the dubious claim that Bitcoin has failed over a cryptocurrency exchange owner dying and his customers losing tens of millions of dollars. It’s got to be one of the least considerate screeds I have read in the cryptosphere.

I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but boy does it show some lack of awareness. Or at least where I’m from this would be considered very cold and profoundly inconsiderate:

“This wasn’t a unique problem. Quadriga’s collapse follows from the nature of bitcoin and why it failed as an electronic form of cash, leaving people worldwide stranded in its wake. Most financial institutions with thousands of customers and millions of dollars in holdings have bureaucratic and technical systems in place for such misfortunes. Unfortunately, Quadriga did not—and that’s sadly typical of exchanges.”

“Does Gerard have anything better to say?,” I’m wondering at this point in the article, than to kick Bitcoin while a bunch of people are hurting and suffering from enormous losses from a terrible situation? What’s the lesson to learn from this?

I’ve already written what I think is an important lesson not to learn the hard way from this and given some practical advice to people interested in saving some of their money using bitcoin, as well as an overview of why people in many places around the world will be motivated to use cryptocurrency.

Does Gerard have anything better than a quip about stashing your cash in your bed?

Spoiler: He does not. He just thinks it’s a fine time to roast Bitcoin on Foreign Policy by calling out the terrible, costly mistakes of an exchange owner who just died and using that to gloat over the failure of Bitcoin. The dialogue has really sunk to a new low.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to, CCN.

Original Source http://bit.ly/2NfPEuk

[vanessawestwcrtr5]

This Anti-Bitcoin Op-Ed Just Took the QuadrigaCX Dialogue to a New Low

This Anti-Bitcoin Op-Ed Just Took the QuadrigaCX Dialogue to a New Low

Writing for Foreign Policy, David Gerard levies the following taunt: “Forget Bitcoin, try your mattress – cryptocurrency is about as safe as keeping your money in a sock under someone else’s bed.”

David Gerard Lays into Bitcoin

Clearly, David Gerard is not a fan of cryptocurrency.

Yeah, tell that to the guy whose kids are playing with his change for a cup of coffee.

You’re going to need a bigger mattress.| Source: Archives of Mount Holyoke College

No really. What if your money doesn’t fit under your mattress?

It’s happened to many people before.

Hyperinflation Happened in Germany after World War I

Hyperinflation destroyed the German economy after The Great War. | Source: Public Domain

And it’s no joke.

It’s very serious when something like this happens.

The French Third Republic levied its first income tax to pay for the war.

But German Emperor Wilhelm II and the unanimously approving German parliament chose to suspend the convertibility of Deutschmarks to gold.

They financed the war with debt and monetized the government’s debt with paper notes.

The results were strange and ground German economic productivity to a halt.

Hyperinflation Happened in Zimbabwe in the 90s

That’s a lot of zeros. | Source: Wikimedia Commons

Look at the issue date on those.

And you thought the Fed made a lot of money in 2008.

An entire nation’s money worn so thin there’s nothing left after years or decades of state-run banks stealing their money’s buying power by making more of it to pay the lavish bills of whoever’s got the most guns. And a nation usually has to be in really bad shape politically, under the heel of a dictatorial government for its currency to debase so badly.

Hyperinflation is Happening in Venezuela Now

Venezuela’s economy has been roiled by million-plus percent inflation. | Source: Flickr

This image of Venezuelan bolívar fuerte 50,000, 20,000, 10,000, and 5,000 Bs.F. banknotes is on Flickr with the caption:

“El dinero representa poder, también energía. Sólo que con él no se compra la paz.”

“The money represents power, also energy. Only with him peace is not bought.”

Power and energy cannot buy peace. It’s true. El precio de la libertad es la eterna vigilancia.

Sometime last year in late 2018 the Venezuelan government converted the bolívar fuerte to the bolívar soberano at a rate of 1 Bs.S. to 100,000 Bs.F.

So that 50,000 bolívar bill pictured above is now a fiddy cent piece.

The Strange and Terrifying World of Hyperinflation

It’s ridiculous and strange to be sure.

When hyperinflation hits, there is a sudden exponential growth in the amount of circulating currency including that in banks’ reserves and subsequent exponential growth in prices.

More and more zeros start getting added to the prices of everything, and then there is a government reaction and re-denomination of the currency that drops all the zeros back off again, acknowledging that adding the zeros to all the money didn’t make it worth more.

It made the money worth massively less.

While brazenly redistributing massive amounts of wealth from the people furthest downstream in the economy from the source of new fiat money flooding into it…

To the people furthest upstream and closest to the source of the new money, the ones who got to spend each new round of money first before it debased the currency.

First World Problems: Could Hyperinflation Happen to You?

Hyperinflation isn’t necessarily just a problem in third-world countries. | Source: FRED

Sure, maybe you’re reading this from a first-world country, wondering: “Could hyperinflation actually happen to me?”

Maybe.

People facing hyperinflation are the use cases for Bitcoin:

Gerard says in his Foreign Policy op-ed:

“Bitcoin, its advocates keep saying, is the future. But in practice, it looks a lot like the distant past. Back then, you could lose your savings if your banker ran off with your money or died without revealing where it was stored. Today, there’s numerous protections in place for consumers—unless, that is, your cash is in bitcoin.”

For people who live in one of the many national economies of the world facing a currency crisis, they might be more likely to lose their savings or find the banker has run off with their money if they keep it in their national bank accounts or even its cash banknotes.

So Don’t Talk To Me About Mattresses, Mr. Gerard

David Gerard really shouldn’t joke about keeping money in a sock under a mattress. For 10 million Americans, something like that is the closest to a checking or savings account they have. They are the unbanked. You have heard of the homeless.

Some estimates place their numbers at around half a million in the United States.

But the FDIC estimates as many as 10 million American adults are bankless.

Rest in Peace, Gerald Cotten

Gerard goes on to say:

“In Canada, the Quadriga cryptocurrency exchange has gone into bankruptcy protection, leaving its customers bust. An exchange is roughly like a bank for bitcoin; they make your money easier to use in practice. But unlike a bank, there’s usually no guarantees, protections, or reassurances that your money and its holder won’t disappear to a remote island. Quadriga’s founder, Gerald Cotten, apparently died in December. Quadriga finally revealed the news in January, and shortly after the exchange applied for protection from nearly $190 million in outstanding liabilities as it scrambled to find any lurking assets.”

This was a very unfortunate turn of events for a lot of people, not least of whom was Gerald Cotten, who died at a young age from Crohn’s disease while running an important business.

Warning: Minimize Your Exposure to These Risks!

Bitcoin was envisioned primarily as private digital coins with built-in bank security. | Source: Shutterstock

This amazingly proverbial story should serve as fair warning to people getting into the crypto space that you might want to think about how you minimize the exposure of your crypto assets to these kinds of risks.

Bitcoin was envisioned primarily as private digital coins with built-in bank security, so that you would not have to trust any institution or third party to safeguard your own bitcoins for you.

Letting an exchange hold the keys to your cryptocoins and trusting them not to make a stupid mistake, not to get hacked, not to steal your coins and disappear, not to die – is missing out on one of the great features that make cryptocoins highly valued and sought after commodities.

Fiat Money Has Critical Bottlenecks Too – By Design

People holding currencies that are devalued like those banknotes above have also put their trust in a third party to safeguard their money as a reliable store of value. | Source: Shutterstock

People holding currencies that are devalued like those banknotes above have also put their trust in a third party to safeguard their money as a reliable store of value.

When their cash and savings disappeared because the banks stole it by relentlessly pumping reserves full of new money, the problem was a bottleneck problem like the bizarre policy of making Gerald Cotten solely responsible for extremely critical information for tens of millions of dollars’ worth of crypto assets.

In the case of these hyperinflationary events, the bottleneck isn’t an information bottleneck, it’s a bottleneck of control. Only a very select few elite financial bureaucrats get to control the total amount of fiat currencies that aren’t strictly backed by a one to one ratio of a reserve of some hard commodity like gold.

With Bitcoin, the total amount of bitcoins is limited by the protocol, and anybody with a computer capable of running the software can play by the same rules as everybody else to earn bitcoin (though these days mining is restricted to specialized computers).

Punching Down in the Wake of the QuadrigaCX Saga is Bad Form

Gerard proceeds to make the dubious claim that Bitcoin has failed over a cryptocurrency exchange owner dying and his customers losing tens of millions of dollars. It’s got to be one of the least considerate screeds I have read in the cryptosphere.

I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but boy does it show some lack of awareness. Or at least where I’m from this would be considered very cold and profoundly inconsiderate:

“This wasn’t a unique problem. Quadriga’s collapse follows from the nature of bitcoin and why it failed as an electronic form of cash, leaving people worldwide stranded in its wake. Most financial institutions with thousands of customers and millions of dollars in holdings have bureaucratic and technical systems in place for such misfortunes. Unfortunately, Quadriga did not—and that’s sadly typical of exchanges.”

“Does Gerard have anything better to say?,” I’m wondering at this point in the article, than to kick Bitcoin while a bunch of people are hurting and suffering from enormous losses from a terrible situation? What’s the lesson to learn from this?

I’ve already written what I think is an important lesson not to learn the hard way from this and given some practical advice to people interested in saving some of their money using bitcoin, as well as an overview of why people in many places around the world will be motivated to use cryptocurrency.

Does Gerard have anything better than a quip about stashing your cash in your bed?

Spoiler: He does not. He just thinks it’s a fine time to roast Bitcoin on Foreign Policy by calling out the terrible, costly mistakes of an exchange owner who just died and using that to gloat over the failure of Bitcoin. The dialogue has really sunk to a new low.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to, CCN.

Original Source http://bit.ly/2NfPEuk

[bobbynolanios88]

This Anti-Bitcoin Op-Ed Just Took the QuadrigaCX Dialogue to a New Low

This Anti-Bitcoin Op-Ed Just Took the QuadrigaCX Dialogue to a New Low

Writing for Foreign Policy, David Gerard levies the following taunt: “Forget Bitcoin, try your mattress – cryptocurrency is about as safe as keeping your money in a sock under someone else’s bed.”

David Gerard Lays into Bitcoin

Clearly, David Gerard is not a fan of cryptocurrency.

Yeah, tell that to the guy whose kids are playing with his change for a cup of coffee.

You’re going to need a bigger mattress.| Source: Archives of Mount Holyoke College

No really. What if your money doesn’t fit under your mattress?

It’s happened to many people before.

Hyperinflation Happened in Germany after World War I

Hyperinflation destroyed the German economy after The Great War. | Source: Public Domain

And it’s no joke.

It’s very serious when something like this happens.

The French Third Republic levied its first income tax to pay for the war.

But German Emperor Wilhelm II and the unanimously approving German parliament chose to suspend the convertibility of Deutschmarks to gold.

They financed the war with debt and monetized the government’s debt with paper notes.

The results were strange and ground German economic productivity to a halt.

Hyperinflation Happened in Zimbabwe in the 90s

That’s a lot of zeros. | Source: Wikimedia Commons

Look at the issue date on those.

And you thought the Fed made a lot of money in 2008.

An entire nation’s money worn so thin there’s nothing left after years or decades of state-run banks stealing their money’s buying power by making more of it to pay the lavish bills of whoever’s got the most guns. And a nation usually has to be in really bad shape politically, under the heel of a dictatorial government for its currency to debase so badly.

Hyperinflation is Happening in Venezuela Now

Venezuela’s economy has been roiled by million-plus percent inflation. | Source: Flickr

This image of Venezuelan bolívar fuerte 50,000, 20,000, 10,000, and 5,000 Bs.F. banknotes is on Flickr with the caption:

“El dinero representa poder, también energía. Sólo que con él no se compra la paz.”

“The money represents power, also energy. Only with him peace is not bought.”

Power and energy cannot buy peace. It’s true. El precio de la libertad es la eterna vigilancia.

Sometime last year in late 2018 the Venezuelan government converted the bolívar fuerte to the bolívar soberano at a rate of 1 Bs.S. to 100,000 Bs.F.

So that 50,000 bolívar bill pictured above is now a fiddy cent piece.

The Strange and Terrifying World of Hyperinflation

It’s ridiculous and strange to be sure.

When hyperinflation hits, there is a sudden exponential growth in the amount of circulating currency including that in banks’ reserves and subsequent exponential growth in prices.

More and more zeros start getting added to the prices of everything, and then there is a government reaction and re-denomination of the currency that drops all the zeros back off again, acknowledging that adding the zeros to all the money didn’t make it worth more.

It made the money worth massively less.

While brazenly redistributing massive amounts of wealth from the people furthest downstream in the economy from the source of new fiat money flooding into it…

To the people furthest upstream and closest to the source of the new money, the ones who got to spend each new round of money first before it debased the currency.

First World Problems: Could Hyperinflation Happen to You?

Hyperinflation isn’t necessarily just a problem in third-world countries. | Source: FRED

Sure, maybe you’re reading this from a first-world country, wondering: “Could hyperinflation actually happen to me?”

Maybe.

People facing hyperinflation are the use cases for Bitcoin:

Gerard says in his Foreign Policy op-ed:

“Bitcoin, its advocates keep saying, is the future. But in practice, it looks a lot like the distant past. Back then, you could lose your savings if your banker ran off with your money or died without revealing where it was stored. Today, there’s numerous protections in place for consumers—unless, that is, your cash is in bitcoin.”

For people who live in one of the many national economies of the world facing a currency crisis, they might be more likely to lose their savings or find the banker has run off with their money if they keep it in their national bank accounts or even its cash banknotes.

So Don’t Talk To Me About Mattresses, Mr. Gerard

David Gerard really shouldn’t joke about keeping money in a sock under a mattress. For 10 million Americans, something like that is the closest to a checking or savings account they have. They are the unbanked. You have heard of the homeless.

Some estimates place their numbers at around half a million in the United States.

But the FDIC estimates as many as 10 million American adults are bankless.

Rest in Peace, Gerald Cotten

Gerard goes on to say:

“In Canada, the Quadriga cryptocurrency exchange has gone into bankruptcy protection, leaving its customers bust. An exchange is roughly like a bank for bitcoin; they make your money easier to use in practice. But unlike a bank, there’s usually no guarantees, protections, or reassurances that your money and its holder won’t disappear to a remote island. Quadriga’s founder, Gerald Cotten, apparently died in December. Quadriga finally revealed the news in January, and shortly after the exchange applied for protection from nearly $190 million in outstanding liabilities as it scrambled to find any lurking assets.”

This was a very unfortunate turn of events for a lot of people, not least of whom was Gerald Cotten, who died at a young age from Crohn’s disease while running an important business.

Warning: Minimize Your Exposure to These Risks!

Bitcoin was envisioned primarily as private digital coins with built-in bank security. | Source: Shutterstock

This amazingly proverbial story should serve as fair warning to people getting into the crypto space that you might want to think about how you minimize the exposure of your crypto assets to these kinds of risks.

Bitcoin was envisioned primarily as private digital coins with built-in bank security, so that you would not have to trust any institution or third party to safeguard your own bitcoins for you.

Letting an exchange hold the keys to your cryptocoins and trusting them not to make a stupid mistake, not to get hacked, not to steal your coins and disappear, not to die – is missing out on one of the great features that make cryptocoins highly valued and sought after commodities.

Fiat Money Has Critical Bottlenecks Too – By Design

People holding currencies that are devalued like those banknotes above have also put their trust in a third party to safeguard their money as a reliable store of value. | Source: Shutterstock

People holding currencies that are devalued like those banknotes above have also put their trust in a third party to safeguard their money as a reliable store of value.

When their cash and savings disappeared because the banks stole it by relentlessly pumping reserves full of new money, the problem was a bottleneck problem like the bizarre policy of making Gerald Cotten solely responsible for extremely critical information for tens of millions of dollars’ worth of crypto assets.

In the case of these hyperinflationary events, the bottleneck isn’t an information bottleneck, it’s a bottleneck of control. Only a very select few elite financial bureaucrats get to control the total amount of fiat currencies that aren’t strictly backed by a one to one ratio of a reserve of some hard commodity like gold.

With Bitcoin, the total amount of bitcoins is limited by the protocol, and anybody with a computer capable of running the software can play by the same rules as everybody else to earn bitcoin (though these days mining is restricted to specialized computers).

Punching Down in the Wake of the QuadrigaCX Saga is Bad Form

Gerard proceeds to make the dubious claim that Bitcoin has failed over a cryptocurrency exchange owner dying and his customers losing tens of millions of dollars. It’s got to be one of the least considerate screeds I have read in the cryptosphere.

I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but boy does it show some lack of awareness. Or at least where I’m from this would be considered very cold and profoundly inconsiderate:

“This wasn’t a unique problem. Quadriga’s collapse follows from the nature of bitcoin and why it failed as an electronic form of cash, leaving people worldwide stranded in its wake. Most financial institutions with thousands of customers and millions of dollars in holdings have bureaucratic and technical systems in place for such misfortunes. Unfortunately, Quadriga did not—and that’s sadly typical of exchanges.”

“Does Gerard have anything better to say?,” I’m wondering at this point in the article, than to kick Bitcoin while a bunch of people are hurting and suffering from enormous losses from a terrible situation? What’s the lesson to learn from this?

I’ve already written what I think is an important lesson not to learn the hard way from this and given some practical advice to people interested in saving some of their money using bitcoin, as well as an overview of why people in many places around the world will be motivated to use cryptocurrency.

Does Gerard have anything better than a quip about stashing your cash in your bed?

Spoiler: He does not. He just thinks it’s a fine time to roast Bitcoin on Foreign Policy by calling out the terrible, costly mistakes of an exchange owner who just died and using that to gloat over the failure of Bitcoin. The dialogue has really sunk to a new low.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to, CCN.

Original Source http://bit.ly/2NfPEuk

[adrianjenkins952wblr]

This Anti-Bitcoin Op-Ed Just Took the QuadrigaCX Dialogue to a New Low

This Anti-Bitcoin Op-Ed Just Took the QuadrigaCX Dialogue to a New Low

Writing for Foreign Policy, David Gerard levies the following taunt: “Forget Bitcoin, try your mattress – cryptocurrency is about as safe as keeping your money in a sock under someone else’s bed.”

David Gerard Lays into Bitcoin

Clearly, David Gerard is not a fan of cryptocurrency.

Yeah, tell that to the guy whose kids are playing with his change for a cup of coffee.

You’re going to need a bigger mattress.| Source: Archives of Mount Holyoke College

No really. What if your money doesn’t fit under your mattress?

It’s happened to many people before.

Hyperinflation Happened in Germany after World War I

Hyperinflation destroyed the German economy after The Great War. | Source: Public Domain

And it’s no joke.

It’s very serious when something like this happens.

The French Third Republic levied its first income tax to pay for the war.

But German Emperor Wilhelm II and the unanimously approving German parliament chose to suspend the convertibility of Deutschmarks to gold.

They financed the war with debt and monetized the government’s debt with paper notes.

The results were strange and ground German economic productivity to a halt.

Hyperinflation Happened in Zimbabwe in the 90s

That’s a lot of zeros. | Source: Wikimedia Commons

Look at the issue date on those.

And you thought the Fed made a lot of money in 2008.

An entire nation’s money worn so thin there’s nothing left after years or decades of state-run banks stealing their money’s buying power by making more of it to pay the lavish bills of whoever’s got the most guns. And a nation usually has to be in really bad shape politically, under the heel of a dictatorial government for its currency to debase so badly.

Hyperinflation is Happening in Venezuela Now

Venezuela’s economy has been roiled by million-plus percent inflation. | Source: Flickr

This image of Venezuelan bolívar fuerte 50,000, 20,000, 10,000, and 5,000 Bs.F. banknotes is on Flickr with the caption:

“El dinero representa poder, también energía. Sólo que con él no se compra la paz.”

“The money represents power, also energy. Only with him peace is not bought.”

Power and energy cannot buy peace. It’s true. El precio de la libertad es la eterna vigilancia.

Sometime last year in late 2018 the Venezuelan government converted the bolívar fuerte to the bolívar soberano at a rate of 1 Bs.S. to 100,000 Bs.F.

So that 50,000 bolívar bill pictured above is now a fiddy cent piece.

The Strange and Terrifying World of Hyperinflation

It’s ridiculous and strange to be sure.

When hyperinflation hits, there is a sudden exponential growth in the amount of circulating currency including that in banks’ reserves and subsequent exponential growth in prices.

More and more zeros start getting added to the prices of everything, and then there is a government reaction and re-denomination of the currency that drops all the zeros back off again, acknowledging that adding the zeros to all the money didn’t make it worth more.

It made the money worth massively less.

While brazenly redistributing massive amounts of wealth from the people furthest downstream in the economy from the source of new fiat money flooding into it…

To the people furthest upstream and closest to the source of the new money, the ones who got to spend each new round of money first before it debased the currency.

First World Problems: Could Hyperinflation Happen to You?

Hyperinflation isn’t necessarily just a problem in third-world countries. | Source: FRED

Sure, maybe you’re reading this from a first-world country, wondering: “Could hyperinflation actually happen to me?”

Maybe.

People facing hyperinflation are the use cases for Bitcoin:

Gerard says in his Foreign Policy op-ed:

“Bitcoin, its advocates keep saying, is the future. But in practice, it looks a lot like the distant past. Back then, you could lose your savings if your banker ran off with your money or died without revealing where it was stored. Today, there’s numerous protections in place for consumers—unless, that is, your cash is in bitcoin.”

For people who live in one of the many national economies of the world facing a currency crisis, they might be more likely to lose their savings or find the banker has run off with their money if they keep it in their national bank accounts or even its cash banknotes.

So Don’t Talk To Me About Mattresses, Mr. Gerard

David Gerard really shouldn’t joke about keeping money in a sock under a mattress. For 10 million Americans, something like that is the closest to a checking or savings account they have. They are the unbanked. You have heard of the homeless.

Some estimates place their numbers at around half a million in the United States.

But the FDIC estimates as many as 10 million American adults are bankless.

Rest in Peace, Gerald Cotten

Gerard goes on to say:

“In Canada, the Quadriga cryptocurrency exchange has gone into bankruptcy protection, leaving its customers bust. An exchange is roughly like a bank for bitcoin; they make your money easier to use in practice. But unlike a bank, there’s usually no guarantees, protections, or reassurances that your money and its holder won’t disappear to a remote island. Quadriga’s founder, Gerald Cotten, apparently died in December. Quadriga finally revealed the news in January, and shortly after the exchange applied for protection from nearly $190 million in outstanding liabilities as it scrambled to find any lurking assets.”

This was a very unfortunate turn of events for a lot of people, not least of whom was Gerald Cotten, who died at a young age from Crohn’s disease while running an important business.

Warning: Minimize Your Exposure to These Risks!

Bitcoin was envisioned primarily as private digital coins with built-in bank security. | Source: Shutterstock

This amazingly proverbial story should serve as fair warning to people getting into the crypto space that you might want to think about how you minimize the exposure of your crypto assets to these kinds of risks.

Bitcoin was envisioned primarily as private digital coins with built-in bank security, so that you would not have to trust any institution or third party to safeguard your own bitcoins for you.

Letting an exchange hold the keys to your cryptocoins and trusting them not to make a stupid mistake, not to get hacked, not to steal your coins and disappear, not to die – is missing out on one of the great features that make cryptocoins highly valued and sought after commodities.

Fiat Money Has Critical Bottlenecks Too – By Design

People holding currencies that are devalued like those banknotes above have also put their trust in a third party to safeguard their money as a reliable store of value. | Source: Shutterstock

People holding currencies that are devalued like those banknotes above have also put their trust in a third party to safeguard their money as a reliable store of value.

When their cash and savings disappeared because the banks stole it by relentlessly pumping reserves full of new money, the problem was a bottleneck problem like the bizarre policy of making Gerald Cotten solely responsible for extremely critical information for tens of millions of dollars’ worth of crypto assets.

In the case of these hyperinflationary events, the bottleneck isn’t an information bottleneck, it’s a bottleneck of control. Only a very select few elite financial bureaucrats get to control the total amount of fiat currencies that aren’t strictly backed by a one to one ratio of a reserve of some hard commodity like gold.

With Bitcoin, the total amount of bitcoins is limited by the protocol, and anybody with a computer capable of running the software can play by the same rules as everybody else to earn bitcoin (though these days mining is restricted to specialized computers).

Punching Down in the Wake of the QuadrigaCX Saga is Bad Form

Gerard proceeds to make the dubious claim that Bitcoin has failed over a cryptocurrency exchange owner dying and his customers losing tens of millions of dollars. It’s got to be one of the least considerate screeds I have read in the cryptosphere.

I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but boy does it show some lack of awareness. Or at least where I’m from this would be considered very cold and profoundly inconsiderate:

“This wasn’t a unique problem. Quadriga’s collapse follows from the nature of bitcoin and why it failed as an electronic form of cash, leaving people worldwide stranded in its wake. Most financial institutions with thousands of customers and millions of dollars in holdings have bureaucratic and technical systems in place for such misfortunes. Unfortunately, Quadriga did not—and that’s sadly typical of exchanges.”

“Does Gerard have anything better to say?,” I’m wondering at this point in the article, than to kick Bitcoin while a bunch of people are hurting and suffering from enormous losses from a terrible situation? What’s the lesson to learn from this?

I’ve already written what I think is an important lesson not to learn the hard way from this and given some practical advice to people interested in saving some of their money using bitcoin, as well as an overview of why people in many places around the world will be motivated to use cryptocurrency.

Does Gerard have anything better than a quip about stashing your cash in your bed?

Spoiler: He does not. He just thinks it’s a fine time to roast Bitcoin on Foreign Policy by calling out the terrible, costly mistakes of an exchange owner who just died and using that to gloat over the failure of Bitcoin. The dialogue has really sunk to a new low.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to, CCN.

Original Source http://bit.ly/2NfPEuk

[inhandnetworks-blog]

Hoarding Nickels as Metal Prices Soar

www.inhandnetworks.com

It’s a common recession-era trope: hard-hit Americans are “clutching every last nickel.” But there’s good news for these frugal nickel clutchers: they may be buying into the investment opportunity of a lifetime.

That’s because the U.S. nickel, melted down, is now worth more than seven cents, thanks to soaring metals prices. And with the coin’s value rising, an eccentric group of investors is quietly working to cash in before the rest of the country catches on.

Meet the nickel hoarders.

Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now

This small, secretive community of coin enthusiasts is spread throughout North America, but they gather on an insidery Internet forum called Realcent.org, where they use handles like “PennyPauper” to debate the intricacies of the copper market and swap tips on converting their savings accounts into basements full of nickels.

It may sound nutty, but their logic is fairly sound: U.S. nickels are made up of 75 percent copper and 25 percent nickel, a composition whose market worth first surpassed face value in 2006. Now, with a bullish metals market and a weakened dollar driving the coin’s value upward, hoarders see an opportunity for arbitrage—pestering cashiers for specific change and sweet-talking bank tellers into selling them boxes from the back room. “It’s like everyone is just giving out diamonds for free and nobody knows it,” says one hoarder, who estimates that he has up to $15,000 worth of nickels stored away in various “secure locations.” (Incidentally, he requested anonymity so as to avoid attracting attention from would-be robbers.)

If history is any indication, the hoarders may not have long. In 1965, with the price of silver climbing, the U.S. Mint diluted the composition of both the dime and the quarter. It did the same thing to the penny in 1982 when copper became too expensive. In every case, the composition change caused the value of the original coin to skyrocket: pre-1965 dimes can now sell for $3.50 each, the quarters are valued at more than $8, and pre-1982 pennies are auctioned off in mass quantities on eBay for nearly three cents apiece. “Somebody who kept a thousand dollars’ worth of change 50 years ago could now exchange that bag for $28,000,” says Curtis Penner, a hoarder from Alberta, Canada. And with the U.S. Mint losing tens of millions of dollars on nickel production, Penner believes it’s only a matter of time before the coins get debased, turning his nickel stash into a gold mine.

Of course, federal law currently prohibits melting down nickels (and pennies), thus making it impossible to realize the coin’s true value. But as coin values climb, pressure on the U.S. Mint to lift the melt ban is getting stronger, and hoarders think the Treasury will eventually give in.

The bottom line: if all goes according to plan, it won’t be long before hoarders can start selling off their caches to scrap-metal companies and late-to-the-action investors.

In the meantime, some have already figured out how to make a tidy profit off the nickel rush. Adam Youngs, 23, runs Portland Mint, an Oregon business that sells nickels in bulk to serious hoarders: $10,000 worth of Jeffersons for $10,888. “It’s very hard for an individual to get that many nickels on his own,” says Youngs, pointing out that some banks have already begun rationing the coins and imposing fees for large orders. He estimates that since he launched the company two years ago, he has served about 10,000 people—and the number is growing every day.

Youngs isn’t the only one who’s noticed a recent uptick in interest. Lately, Realcent has been filled with nervous chatter about anonymous competitors lurking in their neighborhoods. “Well, my teller at my only pickup bank told me that she has another coin guy ordering boxes,” reads one post, and it concludes, “Folks if it’s happening in my backyard, time to hold onto your socks.” Underlying the anxiety is a stark statistic: if just 10 percent of the American population catches on, hoarders will be able to acquire only an estimated $34 (face value) worth of nickels before every last one has been removed from circulation.

So why risk their windfall by talking to NEWSWEEK about the nickel’s secret value?

In Youngs’s case, the answer is obvious: higher public awareness equals more potential clients for Portland Mint. But individual investors have their reasons too. As one hoarder puts it, “I already have a position in nickels, so it works to my advantage if demand goes up.”

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[workreveal-blog]

Families are undone by bank and the way of India's fund disaster

New Post has been published on https://workreveal.biz/families-are-undone-by-bank-and-the-way-of-indias-fund-disaster/

Families are undone by bank and the way of India's fund disaster

By using midday, Soni Mishra* has taken off her dupatta (head scarf), wiped the make-up off her sweaty face, and phoned her husband twice to make sure he can gather their son from college. Mishra, along with at least a dozen different Ladies, has been queuing for 2 hours in baking heat at a Dena Financial institution department in Mumbai, hoping to deposit a package deal of cash she has brought with her,  So Families are undone by the bank and the way of India’s fund’s disaster.

For the beyond 15 years, Mishra, a housewife, has been saving for a rainy day. “Every month, my husband gives me a few cash for the family costs. I spend a maximum of it. However, I save a few rupees in case of an emergency. I shop for my son’s training, for his destiny. My husband also keeps, of the path. However, I shop, so I’ve my cash in case there’s a problem in my lifestyles.”

Mishra wants to deposit her 500, and 1,000 rupees (£11.91) notes at the Financial institution, before 30 December. With a purpose to crack down on corruption, tax evasion and black markets, the top minister, Narendra Modi, announced remaining month that the excessive value banknotes, which bank account for roughly eighty% of the entire cash inflow in India, were to be withdrawn. However, the notes may be deposited earlier than the year quit cut-off date.

  Indian finance

In India

Thousands and thousands of Girls like Mishra hold bundles of cash stashed away in hidden biscuit tins or Tupperware, beneath sinks, or at the back of wardrobes. A few acquire tens of thousands of rupees through the years, hoping to pitch in for their kids’ weddings or training or shop for old age.

Thousands and thousands of Girls like Mishra hold bundles of cash stashed away in hidden biscuit tins or Tupperware, beneath sinks, or at the back of wardrobes. A few acquire tens of thousands of rupees through the years, hoping to pitch in for their kids’ weddings or training or shop for old age.

“Every woman saves,” Mishra says. “You in no way recognise what problems you’re going to have, and we all maintain money inside the house, in a safe or a field hidden somewhere. It’s security for a female. Because of this assertion, I now feel very insecure.”

Though they have big amounts of cash, Girls are kept out of the banking system. More or less eighty% of Indian Ladies don’t have a Financial institution account. Culturally, dealing with the family income is seen as a male preserve, so bills tend to be in the guy’s call and a vast majority of Ladies aren’t worried about making large monetary decisions.

With the coins crackdown, Ladies’ savings are at threat. Many wills must hand their cash to their husbands to deposit in a Bank. If their financial savings exceed 2.5 lakh rupees (£2,950), they will need to pay a 45% tax, and a penalty of as much as two hundred% if the Financial Institution finds an earnings mismatch. With little get right of entry to dependable facts, and little enjoy of the banking gadget, Ladies nationwide had been thrown into the panic with the aid of Modi’s statement.

The Gaurav Girls’ crisis centre in Bhopal, a town in imperative India, received more than two hundred requests for help in 5 days from Women with forex issues. “Lamentably, a lot of the Ladies who come right here don’t have Bank money owed, and many of them don’t have records approximately what to do now,” says Shivani Saini, coordinator at the centre.

“lots of them aren’t allowed to watch Television so that they don’t understand what Modi has stated. Many assume they can make most effective deposit their coins at the banks near their youth homes – they don’t recognise that you may visit any Bank and deposit cash. Now, their husbands are scaring them, announcing, ‘Why did you hide so much money from me? The police are going to come back and seize you.’”

as a minimum two Women who got here to the disaster, the centre was overwhelmed and thrown out of their houses for hiding cash from their husbands. “The instant they screen to their spouses that they have coins stored up, the men start pressuring them to hand it over. One woman got here right here with six kids at 6 am. She was kicked out for lying to her husband, and she or he had nowhere else to head. In desperation, Girls are promoting their 1,000 and 500 rupee notes reasonably-priced, accepting 800 rupees or 300 rupees in exchange.

Aid donors are more and more spending public money to inspire private funding in poorer nations, but it’s far doubtful where these finances are going and what impact they may be having on improvement desires, in line with an important new file posted on Thursday.

A few donors and development banks have claimed: “mixed-finance” can assist plug the distance in investment needed to meet the sustainable development desires (SDGs), considered one of that is to stop extreme international poverty through 2030.

bank

Proponents argue that conventional Resource isn’t always developing speedy sufficient, but it could be used to encourage private traders to place their personal cash into initiatives that otherwise appear volatile. Styles of blended finance consist of guarantees, coverage and some loans.

The file, from unbiased studies group development Initiatives, said that the dialogue “had been primarily based on petite evidence so far”. It warned that donors increasing this investment now are “doing so with inadequate facts”.

Harpinder Collacott, government director at Improvement Projects, stated: “The data available … is just too restrained for excellent selection-making. We do no longer recognise how we should be scaling up Aid investments in this place, making sure it has the effect we want it to.”

The document analysed the confined facts to be had on mixed finance and argued that even at high charges of growth, it would be almost impossible for it to plug the SDG funding hole – that’s estimated to be as excessive as $three.1tn (£2.49tn) yearly via 2030.

Most of the cash thus far, the document introduced, has supported investments in wealthier growing international locations and places with decrease poverty fees. Power, production and mining initiatives obtained an awful lot of this finance.

“improvement actors should no longer, therefore, see blending as a ‘[magic] bullet’,” the report concluded.

It said a not exceptional reporting standard had to be developed and that donors ought to discover a way to reveal more records on who in the long run blessings from this finance.

“Transparency isn’t pretty many worldwide institutions reporting to the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] – it is crucial for duty at the local stage,” careworn Dan Coppard, studies director at development Initiatives, who stated it changed into “tough” to hint this type of spending to the floor.

“It mostly bypasses governments in developing countries and goes right to the non-public quarter,” Coppard introduced, noting that the complexity of some funding systems can make following the crash even harder.

The file comes as OECD donors are thinking about changes to the regulations on what spending can count number as Resource. A proposal being mentioned would develop the rules to permit assist for personal area funding, which includes Varieties of combined finance, to matter.

A 2016 OECD report argued: “mixed-finance gives massive, to a significant part untapped ability for public, philanthropic and private actors to improve the scale of investment in developing countries.”

In July, a senior govt at the arena Financial institution’s global Finance Organisation (IFC) argued: “those instruments can incentivise private finance for investments with healthy social and improvement blessings that would otherwise now not materialise due to higher real or perceived threat.”

A 2016 file from the UN secretary preferred puzzled the impact of combined finance. “There may be inadequate proof and the ongoing debate on whether ‘blending’ mobilises additional non-public flows, helps country wide sustainable improvement priorities or increases sustainable development impact,” the document stated.

Civil society organisations and NGOs have also formerly warned that There might be little evidence to guide spending greater Useful resource money to sell private funding. The lack of transparency around this expenditure has long been a factor of grievance.

“We shouldn’t pull away from development assistance leading to commercial gain,” stated Coppard, so long as There is additional proof of poverty discount. but he said proposed adjustments to the Useful resource rules “vast warrant scrutiny”.

The “guiding principle”, argues the document, should be to make certain this finance “increases available assets for concentrated on poverty”, rather than encouraging “personal funding … as a result in its own proper”.

fund

in line with an OECD survey, Useful resource donors helped “mobilise” $36.4bn in personal area investments among 2012-14.

The United Kingdom supported investments worth $2.7bn in 2014 – typically through the CDC, the authorities’ primary vehicle for supporting the single quarter in growing international locations.

Examples of combined finance consist of subordinate loans or equity stakes ensure in which the donor consents to repay a loan if the borrower can not, political hazard insurance, and technical help to behaviour feasibility research for the investment potential of a mission.

  Diaspora communities can be important players in development finance. Just last year, the Calvert Foundation and some financial institutions in India launched an, which allows US-based retail investors, including Indian Americans, to transfer funds the growth of social enterprises in India while earning a financial and social return. Sapna Shah, senior manager, strategic relationships,