Free Republic

If you still can’t figure out what the heck a bitcoin is… I have one apple with me. I give it to you. You now have one apple and I have zero. That was simple, right? My apple was physically put into your hand. You know it happened. I was there. You were there. You touched it. We didn’t need a third person there to help us make the transfer. We didn’t need to pull in Uncle Tommy (who’s a famous judge) to sit with us on the bench and confirm that the apple went from me to you. The...

By using energy to validate transactions in a way that is independent of any existing grid or source, Bitcoin mining will save the climate. It’s in vogue to think that Bitcoin is accelerating the climate crisis. The common argument is that Bitcoin uses lots of energy, which must mean more carbon emissions, so as a result, it’s ruining the climate. Of course, critics also seem enraged at Bitcoin itself, believing it doesn’t do anything useful beyond facilitating a casino for Reddit memelords and “libertarian nerds” to get rich in. To these critics, Bitcoin is a totally useless, degenerate system that...

State-owned investment funds are reportedly making inquiries into buying Bitcoin (BTC). According to Robert Gutmann, CEO of New York Digital Investment Group, the firm has been having conversations with sovereign wealth funds about possible Bitcoin investments. Gutmann made this known while appearing at a virtual podcast with investment strategist and founder of Real Vision Raoul Pal. Pal also confirmed Gutmann’s revelation, stating that Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek was indeed a Bitcoin investor.According to Pal, Temasek which holds about $306 billion in assets under management, has been buying virgin Bitcoin from miners. Tweeting on Thursday, Pal characterized the imminent entry...

Yesterday, Bitcoin gained 0.48% against the US dollar, hitting the $54,331.0 level at the end of the session and breaking a two-day losing streak. Other cryptocurrencies did not follow suit, such as Ethereum which continued losing ground, falling by 0.85% and closing the session at the $1,668.77 level. Dogecoin followed, which fell by 2.72% against the US dollar and closed at the $0.053423 level. Recently, Elon Musk said that Tesla will accept Bitcoin as payment, making official an announcement he made some time ago that pushed up enthusiasm for crypto in the markets. "You can now buy a Tesla with...

On Monday (March 8), Norwegian industrial giant Aker ASA announced that it had “established Seetee AS (‘Seetee’), a new company dedicated to investing in projects and companies throughout the Bitcoin ecosystem.” In its press release, Aker said that Seetee, which will “keep all its liquid investable assets in bitcoin” and is “initially capitalized with NOK 500 million”, will focos on the following activities: “investing in and owning bitcoin” “joining the Bitcoin and broader blockchain community and establishing partnerships with leading players” “launching Bitcoin verification operations” “building and investing in innovation projects and companies in the Bitcoin and blockchain ecosystem” Aker...

The Democrats are set to pass yet another big-spending bill they claim is COVID-19 relief. As with previous bills during the pandemic, there’s less COVID relief in it and a whole lot of other things that have nothing to do with helping Americans struggling through the pandemic. It’s packed with reckless spending that will typify the Democrats’ control of Washington over the next couple of years. The very first congressional COVID “relief” bill struck me as big spenders treating it as a genie jumping out of a Christmas tree. That was the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, passed in late March...

Bitcoin could soon be the currency of choice in Miami. Commissioners in the Florida city are mulling whether or not to give public officials the option of receiving their salaries, or a portion of it, in Bitcoin and if they should allow the public to use the cryptocurrency to pay for city services, the Miami Herald reported. Mayor Francis Suarez, who’s trying to shape Miami into a tech hub, is ready to go all-in with Bitcoin but commissioners voted late Thursday to first study the use of the virtual currency and to find a vendor that could help with transactions...

Whatever your opinions on cryptocurrencies — from a dyed-in-wool fanatic to utter skeptic — the fact remains that these digital assets are becoming a more important part of the payments world. We are seeing this fact play out on the Mastercard network, with people using cards to buy crypto assets, especially during Bitcoin's recent surge in value. We are also seeing users increasingly take advantage of crypto cards to access these assets and convert them to traditional currencies for spending. To be clear, this data is not of any individuals — it's anonymized and in aggregate — but the trend...

Blockchain-based startup Presearch.io has released a decentralized search engine to help provide a more private alternative to Google. Taking a play out of privacy-centric web browser Brave’s book, it also rewards its users with it native crypto token, PRE. The Ethereum-based project uses searches powered by independent nodes to help protect the identity of the people who make queries for data. Moreover, it puts a dent in the monopolistic power of Google to organize and rank results. The project’s origin story begins in 2011, when Colin Pape’s ShopCity.com had its content buried by Google’s algorithm. The company filed a complaint...

THE GOD PARTICLE "God of Wonders" Biometric wonderments describes the vastness of my ability to transcend time and space for Eternity(IAM) "IS" My slide rule and plumb line while understanding is interscoped through the prism I call wisdom faceted in knowledge weighed intrinsically upon truth as it bears all in an eternal manner and sphere therefore the outcome is always miraculous and in this mystery you shall find my name EL ELYON . . . Judges 13:16-18 16And the angel of the LORD replied, “Even if I stay, I will not eat your food. But if you prepare a burnt...

Washington, D.C. — The Commodity Futures Trading Commission today announced the filing of a civil enforcement action in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York charging five entities and three individuals that own and operate the BitMEX trading platform with operating an unregistered trading platform and violating multiple CFTC regulations, including failing to implement required anti-money laundering procedures. This case is brought in connection with the Division of Enforcement’s Digital Asset and Bank Secrecy Act Task Forces. Among those charged are company owners Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Samuel Reed, who operate BitMEX’s platform through a...

If you're not familiar with the term "Bretton-Woods" and "Petrodollar", allow me to provide a brief summary. To help fund World War II, the US ratified the Bretton-Woods agreement, essentialy creating Fiat money (tying only a small fraction of Gold to the US Dollar). Since the US controlled 2/3 of the worlds gold, it placed the US Dollar as the world reserve currency and created the ability to print money on demand (then ultimately leading to a complete severing of gold and the beginning of the endless devaluation of the US Dollar) Bretton-Woods was terminated in 1971, and the Petrodollar...

Not to spoil your summer pool fun, but outbreaks of "crypto," a swimming-related diarrheal illness, are on the rise, according to a new report. From 2009 to 2017, there were nearly 450 outbreaks of crypto (short for cryptosporidiosis) reported in the U.S., which resulted in more than 7,400 illnesses, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). What's more, outbreaks of the illness — which is caused by a hardy parasite called Cryptosporidium — increased 13 percent per year over the eight-year study period, the authors said. Cryptosporidium causes profuse, watery diarrhea that can last...

Hackers have stolen over $40 million worth of bitcoin from Binance, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, the company said on Tuesday. Binance said the hackers ran off with over 7,000 bitcoin and used a variety of attack methods to carry out the "large scale security breach" which occurred on Tuesday. They also managed to get some user information such as two-factor authentication codes, which are required to log in to a Binance account.

The CEO of cryptocurrency firm BCB Group says Bitcoin’s massive pump was triggered by a single Bitcoin whale, in a coordinated effort to buy nearly $100 million worth of BTC across three crypto exchanges. Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie told Reuters a 20,000 BTC buying spree executed simultaneously on Coinbase, Kraken and Bitstamp is largely responsible for the surge, which briefly boosted the price of BTC above $5,000.“There has been a single order that has been algorithmically-managed across these three venues, of around 20,000 BTC. If you look at the volumes on each of those three exchanges – there were in-concert, synchronized, units of...

But the money was already gone........ Millions of dollars were missing when the CEO of a crypto exchange died without sharing the passwords to his accounts. Investigators recently cracked his laptop — only to find the money was gone. Gerald Cotten, the founder of QuadrigaCX, was thought to have had sole access to the funds and coins exchanged on it. After his death in December, his colleagues said that about $137 million in cryptocurrency belonging to about 115,000 customers was held offline in "cold storage" and inaccessible. The case has sparked numerous theories, including that Cotten faked his own death...

A high-profile Moscow economist has reportedly said the Russian government is looking to invest in Bitcoin next month. Australian crypto news website micky.com claims to have spoken with Vladislav Ginko, a lecturer at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow. “US sanctions may be mitigated only through Bitcoin use,” the site quoted Ginko as saying. “I believe that the Russia [government] will start diversifying its reserves with Bitcoin in February this year when US Congress will introduce… new sanctions against Russia,” he reportedly said. Ginko estimated that the first wave of Russian investment in crypto...

Following the release of a new regulatory framework for crypto businesses and blockchain projects, major cities in South Korea have started to build regional policies to fuel the growth of cryptocurrency-related companies. Country’s Second Biggest City Wants to be Like Zug This month, Oh Keo-don, the mayor of Busan, the second largest city in South Korea behind Seoul from the country’s ruling party, has stated that the regional government of Busan is focused on building the next “Crypto Valley” of the world in South Korea, inspired by the success of Zug, Switzerland. Mayor Oh emphasized that Zug already has more...

Though cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications seem to have taken the entire world by storm, there are few places where this new technology has been embraced like South Korea. In part, thanks to changing regulations within the country, the overwhelming sentiment seems to indicate that crypto will soon become fully integrated into everyday life in South Korea. But what is it that has made cryptocurrency take off in South Korea at such an unprecedented rate? By taking a closer look at overall trends and how they have impacted blockchain startups like Bezant, we also get greater insight into the success of...

If you’re looking to get a start working with one of the most promising emerging technologies there is, check out this list of employers hiring in blockchain now. The position blockchain is in now is comparable to the one cloud technology was in back in the early 2000s. While it has yet to penetrate the public consciousness, the tech and business sectors are both abuzz with the possible applications. Everything from identity verification to energy trading is possible (and already being done) with the technology. Mark Curtis, speaking to Siliconrepublic.com a while back, explained that the latest iteration of his...