The price of bitcoin keeps hitting new all-time highs, recently topping $24,000, which means things are getting a little nutty. The coiners want bitcoin to shoot to the moon. And the no-coiners want Tether to get taken down and the nonsense to end, like it should have three years ago after the 2017 bubble.
I’ve now got hundreds of new Twitter followers, most of them bitcoiners repeating the same boilerplate phrases like “have fun staying poor,” “gold is a Ponzi too” (it’s not) and proclaiming me the U.S. dollar is going to collapse, which would be a shame as bitcoin is mainly traded in dollars.
Caught up in the whirlwind, Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital, has gotten a tattoo—a large moon and a rocket with the letter “B” on it. Fortunately, the “B” is relatively small, so he can easily get that part lasered or covered up if bitcoin crashes, which it will, because that is the fate of all Ponzi schemes.
Here is the news:
Ledger creates a target list for SIM swappers
In July 2020, hardware wallet provider Ledger was hacked, with the hackers gaining access to its customer database. The database has been circulating for five months now, and the hacker has just dumped it on RaidForums, a site dedicated to sharing hacked databases, for the whole world to access—at no charge.
“The first confirmed price I saw for this database was 5 BTC,” the hacker wrote. “Today you can get it for free.”
The database contains the emails, physical addresses, and phone numbers of 272,000 Ledger buyers along with emails of 1 million additional users.
Essentially, Ledger, a company dedicated to security, has given hackers access to a massive target list for SIM swappers and phishing campaigns. Ledger is very, very sorry for the leak.
Coinbase plans to go public
Coinbase, the most valuable U.S. crypto firm, has filed confidentially for an IPO with the SEC. When the crypto exchange last raised private funding in 2018, it was valued at $8 billion. It is probably worth plenty more now, with investors going mad over tech stocks.
The San Francisco company has tapped Goldman Sachs to bring it to market, meaning that that the bank will lead the syndicate of banks underwriting the deal. (Cointelegraph)
Several VCs have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Coinbase, and it makes sense that at some point they want to realize the returns on their investment, probably before this bubble blows.
According to Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, the IPO “is entirely about a16z and the other VCs unloading their ownership-bags, not cryptocurrency bags, before the space implodes because Tether finally gets killed.”
FinCEN to impose new rules on exchanges
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has unveiled new rules aimed at closing anti-money laundering loopholes for regulated cryptocurrency transactions. The rules call for additional customer verification and more reporting.
According to the proposed rule, if a user makes a deposit or a withdrawal of over $3,000 involving a non-custodial wallet, exchanges have to record the name and physical location of the wallet owner. Crypto exchanges also have to report to the U.S. Department of Treasury any deposit or withdrawal over $10,000.
The rule is devastating to regulated crypto exchanges. In a lengthy Twitter thread last month, when he first learned of the new rule coming down the pipes, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong publicly attacked the new regulation. He knows serious KYC requirements will kill a lot of his business.
Nouriel Roubini responded by bashing Armstrong as a contemporary Gordon Gekko—a character in the 1987 Oliver Stone movie “Wall Street”—putting his profits ahead of the need to enforce regulations to stop the financial activities of criminals, tax evaders, terrorists, drug dealers and human traffickers.
Coming soon: Mt. Gox bitcoins
Tokyo bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox went bankrupt in early 2014, and its former users are still waiting to get some portion of their funds back. Their long wait may soon be over. Recently, the Mt. Gox trustee submitted a draft plan for the rehabilitation of creditors.
If the Tokyo District Court gives the plan a thumbs up, that means 140,000 bitcoin may soon flood the market. The price of BTC has gone up substantially since 2014, so no doubt claimants will want to sell as quickly as possible—and that could create a bear market, pushing down the price of BTC. (Coindesk)
Unless there’s enough real cash left in the system—which is unlikely, because if there was, we wouldn’t need 20 billion tethers—Tether will need to issue an additional 2.5 billion tethers to absorb those bitcoin.
Tether surpasses $20 billion
Tether has now crossed $20 billion worth of tethers in circulation. Paolo Ardoino, Bitfinex and Tether CTO, bragged about it on social media. He tweeted: “#tether $USDt 20 BILLION!”
Patrick McKenzie, the software engineer who last year wrote this brilliant article explaining Tether, says all he wants for Christmas is for “Tether to unwind explosively.”
As Tether keeps issuing more and more tethers to pump bitcoin’s price, remember that the whole point in all this is to lure real dollars into the system. Look, the price keeps going up! You too can get rich! Buy bitcoin!
As David Gerard explained in a recent blog post, bitcoin price pumps are almost always immediately followed by a sell off. If you’re still not convince how the game works, CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju provides proof.
He points out that when bitcoin hit $20,000, it was a coordinated pump fueled by stablecoins—127 different addresses depositing stablecoins to exchanges in one block of transactions on Ethereum minutes before the first price peak. “Price is all about consensus,” he said.
Porn Hub only accepts crypto now
Visa and Mastercard said they will stop processing payments on Pornhub following a report in the NYT about illegal content on the site uploaded by unverified users. Mastercard has cut off ties completely, while Visa says it has cut off ties pending an investigation. (Decrypt)
According to Vice, Pornhub purged 70% of its content in an attempt to get the card providers back. How else will it stay in business? The site still accepts crypto—and cash via checks and wires—but apparently that’s not enough. There’s no way it can function without the credit card payments. More proof that bitcoin is a failed payments system.
Other news
The Dread Pirate Roberts is sorry, so please let him go. President Trump is weighing granting clemency to Ross Ulbright, the founder of the Silk Road. (Daily Beast)
“If Ulbricht’s supporters really cared about the war on drugs or libertarian ideals, they’d be demanding that the nearly half a million people currently in U.S. jails for drug offenses should be pardoned too.” (Vanity Fair)
A NY judge says Reggie Fowler’s defense team can withdraw from the case. Their client hasn’t paid them in a year. Fowler has 45 days to find a new lawyer who is also willing to risk not getting paid. (My blog)
Binance reportedly puts zero actual effort into keeping U.S. customers out. The info comes by way of a U.S. user who created a BFX account (no VPN), transferred bitcoins to BFX and sent some out from there. (Twitter)
If you want to cash out your USDT on Kraken, the exchange apparently only takes two types: Omni or ERC-20. (Twitter)
Eric Peters, CEO of One River Asset Management, has set up a new company to invest in crypto. His firm will bring its holdings of bitcoin and ether to about $1 billion as of early 2021, he said. (Bloomberg)
Michael Saylor wants to lure Elon Musk into bitcoin. (Decrypt)
Amy Castor 