Advertisers are fleeing Twitter in droves now that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has taken over control.

Ever since officially closing the $44 billion deal, Musk has been busy gutting the company's executive suite and dissolving its board. Senior executives, as well as Twitter's advertising chief Sarah Personette, have departed as well.

After all, Musk has been very clear about his disdain for advertising for years now.

The resulting uncertainty has advertisers spooked — major advertising holding company IPG has already advised clients to pull out temporarily — and the billionaire CEO is in serious damage mode.

Now, Reuters reports, Musk is spending most of this week meeting with advertisers in New York, trying to reassure them that Twitter won't turn into a "free-for-all hellscape."

According to one of Reuters' sources, the meetings have been "very productive" — but plenty of other marketers are far from satisfied.

Advertisers are reportedly grilling Musk over his plans to address the rampant misinformation being spread on the platform, a trend that Musk himself has been actively contributing to since the acquisition.

And if he's succeeding in ameliorating advertisers in private, he's antagonizing them publicly. On Wednesday, Musk posted a poll asking users whether advertisers should support either "freedom of speech," or "political 'correctness'" — a type of false dichotomy that echoes the rhetoric of far-right conspiracy theorists and conservative pundits.

"Those type of provocations are not helping to calm the waters," an unnamed media buyer told Reuters.

Some are going public with the same sentiment.

"Unless Elon hires new leaders committed to keeping this 'free' platform safe from hate speech, it's not a platform brands can/should advertise on," Allie Wassum, global media director for the Nike-owned shoe brand Jordan, wrote in a LinkedIn post.

So far, Musk's plans for the social media platform remain strikingly muddy. In addition to the behind-the-scenes advertising plays, he's also announced that users will have to pay to retain their verification badge, though he's engaged in a comically public negotiation as to what the cost might be.

He's also hinted that previously banned users — former US president Donald Trump chief among them — might eventually get a chance to return, but only once "we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks."

The move was seen by many as a way to wait out the impending midterm elections. After all, Twitter has played a huge role in disseminating misinformation and swaying elections in the past.

While advertisers are running for the hills, to Musk advertising is clearly only a small part of the picture — even though historically, social giants like Twitter have struggled to diversify their revenue sources much beyond display ads.

Musk nodded to that reality in a vague open letter posted last week.

"Low relevancy ads are spam, but highly relevant ads are actually content!" he wrote in the note, addressed to "Twitter advertisers."

Big picture, Twitter's operations are in free fall right now and Musk has yet to provide advertisers with a cohesive plan to pick up the pieces.

While he's hinted at the creation of a new content moderation council made up of both "people from all viewpoints" and "wildly divergent views," advertisers are clearly going to be thinking twice about continuing their business with Twitter.

With or without advertising, Twitter's finances are reportedly in a very deep hole. The billions of dollars Musk had to borrow to finance his mega acquisition will cost Twitter around $1 billion a year in interest alone.

The company also wasn't anywhere near profitable before Musk took over, losing hundreds of millions of dollars in a single quarter.

Whether that picture will change any time soon is as unclear as ever, especially in the face of a wintry economy.

But, of course, Musk has proved his critics wrong before. So anything's possible.

READ MORE: Advertisers begin to grill Elon Musk over Twitter 'free-for-all' [Reuters]

More on the saga: Elon Musk Pulling Engineers From Tesla Autopilot to Work on Twitter

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Elon Musk Meeting With Advertisers, Begging Them Not to Leave Twitter

A team of neuroscientists at the University of Wisconsin claim to have found a way to control how high mice can get on a given amount of cocaine.

And don't worry — while that may sound like a particularly frivolous plot concocted by a team of evil scientists, the goal of the research is well-meaning.

The team, led by University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Santiago Cuesta, was investigating how the gut microbiome can influence how mice and humans react to ingesting the drug.

The research, detailed in a new paper published this week in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, sheds light on a vicious feedback loop that could explain cases of substance abuse disorders — and possibly lay the groundwork for future therapeutic treatments.

In a number of experiments on mice, the researchers found that cocaine was linked to the growth of common gut bacteria, which feed on glycine, a chemical that facilitates basic brain functions.

The lower the levels of glycine in the brain, the more the mice reacted to the cocaine, exhibiting abnormal behaviors.

To test the theory, the scientists injected the mice with a genetically modified amino acid which cannot break down glycine. As a result, the behavior of mice returned to normal levels.

In other words, the amino acid could curb cocaine addiction-like behaviors — at least in animal models.

"The gut bacteria are consuming all of the glycine and the levels are decreasing systemically and in the brain," said Vanessa Sperandio, senior author, and microbiologist from the University of Wisconsin, in a statement. "It seems changing glycine overall is impacting the glutamatergic synapses that make the animals more prone to develop addiction."

It's an unorthodox approach to treating addiction, but could be intriguing — if it works in people, that is.

"Usually, for neuroscience behaviors, people are not thinking about controlling the microbiota, and microbiota studies usually don't measure behaviors, but here we show they’re connected," Cuesta added. "Our microbiome can actually modulate psychiatric or brain-related behaviors."

In short, their research could lead to new ways of treating various psychiatric disorders such as substance use by adjusting the gut microbiome and not making changes to the brain chemistry.

"I think the bridging of these communities is what's going to move the field forward, advancing beyond correlations towards causations for the different types of psychiatric disorders," Sperandio argued.

READ MORE: How gut bacteria influence the effects of cocaine in mice [Cell Press]

More on addiction: Study: Magic Mushrooms Helped 83% of People Cut Excessive Drinking

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Scientists Found a Way to Control How High Mice Got on Cocaine

Droning On

Someone thinks it's a great idea to fly 500 drones over New York City to create a huge ad in the sky on Thursday evening. Because New Yorkers certainly don't have any historical reason to mistrust unknown aircraft over their skyline, right?

As Gothamist reports, the drone swarm is part of a "surreal takeover of New York City’s skyline" on behalf of — we shit you not — the mobile game Candy Crush.

Fernanda Romano, Candy Crush's chief marketing officer, told Gothamist that the stunt will "turn the sky into the largest screen on the planet" using the small, light-up drones.

Though this is not the first time the Manhattan skyline has been used as ad space — that distinction goes to the National Basketball Association and State Farm, which did a similar stunt this summer during the NBA draft — local lawmakers are ticked off about it nonetheless.

"I think it’s outrageous to be spoiling our city’s skyline for private profit," Brad Hoylman, a state senator that represents Manhattan's West Side in the NY Legislature, told the local news site. "It’s offensive to New Yorkers, to our local laws, to public safety, and to wildlife."

Freak Out

Indeed, as the NYC Audubon Society noted in a tweet, the Candy Crush crapshoot "could disrupt the flight patterns of thousands of birds flying through NYC, leading to collisions with buildings" as they migrate.

Beyond the harm this will do to birds and the annoyance it will undoubtedly cause the famously-grumpy people of New York, this stunt is also going down with very little warning, considering that Gothamist is one of the only news outlets even reporting on it ahead of time.

While most viewers will hopefully be able to figure out what's going on pretty quickly, the concept of seeing unknown aircraft above the skyline is a little too reminiscent of 9/11 for comfort — and if Candy Crush took that into consideration, they haven't let on.

So here's hoping this event shocks and awes Thursday night city-goers in a good way, and not in the way that makes them panic.

More drone warfare: Russia Accused of Pelting Ukraine Capital With "Kamikaze" Drones

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Huge Drone Swarm to Form Giant Advertisement Over NYC Skyline

Spying @ Home

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic drove a wave of working from home, companies have been relentless in their efforts to digitally police and spy on remote employees by using what's known as "bossware." That's the pejorative name for software that tracks the websites an employee visits, screenshots their computer screens, and even records their faces and voices.

And now, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an agency of the federal government, is looking to intervene.

"Close, constant surveillance and management through electronic means threaten employees' basic ability to exercise their rights," said NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, in a Monday memo. "I plan to urge the Board to apply the Act to protect employees, to the greatest extent possible, from intrusive or abusive electronic monitoring and automated management practices."

Undoing Unions

In particular, Abruzzo is worried about how bossware could infringe on workers' rights to unionize. It's not hard to imagine how such invasive surveillance could be used to bust unionization. Even if the technology isn't explicitly deployed to impede organization efforts, the ominous presence of the surveillance on its own can be a looming deterrent, which Abruzzo argues is illegal.

And now is the perfect moment for the NLRB to step in. The use and abuse of worker surveillance tech in general — not just bossware — has been "growing by the minute," Mark Gaston Pearce, executive director of the Workers' Rights Institute at Georgetown Law School, told CBS.

"Employers are embracing technology because technology helps them run a more efficient business," Gaston explained. "… What comes with that is monitoring a lot of things that employers have no business doing."

Overbearing Overlord

In some ways, surveillance tech like bossware can be worse than having a nosy, actual human boss. Generally speaking, in a physical workplace employees have an understanding of how much privacy they have (unless they work at a place like Amazon or Walmart, that is).

But when bossware spies on you, who knows how much information an employer could be gathering — or even when they're looking in. And if it surveils an employee's personal computer, which more often than not contains plenty of personal information that a boss has no business seeing, that's especially invasive.

Which is why Abruzzo is pushing to require employers to disclose exactly how much they're tracking.

It's a stern message from the NLRB, but at the end of the day, it's just a memo. We'll have to wait and see how enforcing it pans out.

More on surveillance: Casinos to Use Facial Recognition to Keep "Problem Gamblers" Away

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US Gov to Crack Down on "Bossware" That Spies On Employees' Computers

Observatory Offline

The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) Observatory in Chile has been hit with a cyberattack that has taken its website offline and forced it to suspend all observations, authorities there said.

Even email services were limited in the aftermath, illustrating the broad impact of the hack.

Nested high up on a plateau in the Chilean Andes at over 16,000 feet above sea level, ALMA is one of the most powerful and advanced radio telescopes in the world. Notably, ALMA helped take the first image of a black hole in 2019, in a collaborative effort that linked radio observatories worldwide into forming the Event Horizon Telescope.

Thankfully, ALMA's impressive arsenal of 66 high-precision antennas, each nearly 40 feet in diameter, was not compromised, the observatory said, nor was any of the scientific data those instruments collected.

In High Places

What makes ALMA so invaluable is its specialty in observing the light of the cooler substances of the cosmos, namely gas and dust. That makes ALMA a prime candidate for documenting the fascinating formations of planets and stars when they first emerge amidst clouds of gas.

Since going fully operational in 2013, it's become the largest ground-based astronomical project in the world, according to the European Southern Observatory, ALMA's primary operators.

So ALMA going offline is a distressing development, especially to the thousands of astronomers worldwide that rely on its observations and the some 300 experts working onsite. Getting it up and running is obviously a top priority, but the observatory said in a followup tweet that "it is not yet possible to estimate a date for a return to regular activities."

As of now, there's no information available on who the hackers were, or exactly how they conducted the attack. Their motivations, too, remain a mystery.

More on ALMA: Astronomers Think They Found the Youngest Planet in the Galaxy

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Hackers Just Took Down One of the World's Most Advanced Telescopes

Spaceplane Buddy

After launching into orbit roughly three months ago, China's top-secret spaceplane has released a mysterious object, which is now circling the Earth behind it, SpaceNews reports.

There's very little we know about China's "reusable experimental spacecraft," except that it launched atop a Long March 2F rocket back in August. We don't know its purpose, what it looks like, or what cargo it was carrying during launch — but it's an intriguing development, nonetheless, for China's reusable launch platform.

Mysterious Object

The object was released between October 24 and October 31, according to tracking data being analyzed by the US Space Force's 18th pace Defense Squadron.

We can only hazard a guess as to what the mysterious object's purpose is. According to Harvard astronomer and space tracker Jonathan McDowell, it "may be a service module, possibly indicating an upcoming deorbit burn."

Based on the size and weight of payloads Long March rockets usually carry, China's mysterious spaceplane is likely similar to the Air Force's X-37B spaceplane, which is similarly shrouded in mystery and currently on its sixth mission.

We also don't know when the Chinese model will make its return back to Earth, but given recent activity at the Lop Nur base in Xinjiang suggests, it may land there in the near future, according to the report.

It's a puzzling new development for China's secretive spacecraft — but it does raise the possibility of a renewed interest in spaceplanes, a potentially affordable and reusable way to launch payloads into orbit.

More on the spaceplane: China Launches Mysterious "Reusable Test" Spacecraft

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Chinese Spaceplane Releases Mystery Object Into Orbit

Chinese scientists are reportedly planning to send monkeys to its new Tiangong space station for experiments that will involve the animals mating and potentially reproducing, the South China Morning Post reports.

It's a fascinating and potentially controversial experiment that could have major implications for our efforts to colonize space: can mammals, let alone humans, successfully reproduce beyond the Earth?

According to the report, the experiment would take place in the station's largest capsule, called Wentian, inside two biological test cabinets that can be expanded.

After examining the behavior of smaller creatures, "some studies involving mice and macaques will be carried out to see how they grow or even reproduce in space," Zhang Lu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said during a speech posted to social media earlier this week, as quoted by the SCMP.

"These experiments will help improve our understanding of an organism’s adaptation to microgravity and other space environments," he added.

Some simpler organisms, including nematodes and Japanese rice fish, have been observed reproducing in space.

But more complex life forms have struggled. In 2014, a Russian experiment to see whether geckos could produce offspring in space failed when all the critters died.

And the failure rate for mammals, so far, has been total. Soviet Union scientists got mice to mate during a space flight in 1979, but none of them gave birth after being returned to Earth.

In other words, getting monkeys to reproduce on board a space station will be anything but easy. For one, just dealing with living creatures in space can pose immense challenges. The astronauts will "need to feed them and deal with the waste," Kehkooi Kee, a professor with the school of medicine at Tsinghua University, told the SCMP.

Then there's the fact that astronauts will have to keep the macaques happy and comfortable, something that experts say will be challenging since long term confinement in the spartan environments of space habitats could cause immense stress for the simians.

And even if astronauts successfully set the mood for the monkeys, the physics of sex in space are predicted to be challenging.

"Firstly, just staying in close contact with each other under zero gravity is hard," Adam Watkins, an associate professor of reproductive physiology at University of Nottingham, wrote in a 2020 open letter highlighted by the SCMP. "Secondly, as astronauts experience lower blood pressure while in space, maintaining erections and arousal are more problematic than here on Earth."

With its new space station in nearly full operation, China isn't shying away from asking some big questions — but whether these experiments will play out as expected is anything but certain.

READ MORE: Chinese scientists plan monkey reproduction experiment in space station [South China Morning Post]

More on sex in space: Scientists Say We Really Have to Talk About Boning in Space

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China Plans to Send Monkeys to Space Station to Have Sex With Each Other

Jeff Bezos' former housekeeper is suing the Amazon founder for workplace discrimination that she says forced her to literally climb out out the window of his house to use the bathroom.

In the suit, filed this week in a Washington state court, the former housekeeper claimed that she and Bezos' other household staff were not provided with legally-mandated eating or restroom breaks, and that because there was no "readily accessible bathroom" for them to use, they had to clamber out a laundry room window to get to one.

In the complaint, lawyers for the ex-housekeeper, who is described as having worked for wealthy families for nearly 20 years, wrote that household staff were initially allowed to use a small bathroom in the security room of Bezos' main house, but "this soon stopped... because it was decided that housekeepers using the bathroom was a breach of security protocol."

The suit also alleges that housekeepers in the billionaire's employ "frequently developed Urinary Tract Infections" that they believed was related to not being able to use the bathroom when they needed to at work.

"There was no breakroom for the housekeepers," the complaint adds. "Even though Plaintiff worked 10, 12, and sometimes 14 hours a day, there was no designated area for her to sit down and rest."

The housekeeper — who, like almost all of her coworkers, is Latino — was allegedly not aware that she was entitled to breaks for lunch or rest, and was only able to have a lunch break when Bezos or his family were not on the premises, the lawsuit alleges.

The Washington Post owner has denied his former housekeeper's claims of discrimination through an attorney.

"We have investigated the claims, and they lack merit," Harry Korrell, a Bezos attorney, told Insider of the suit. "[The former employee] made over six figures annually and was the lead housekeeper."

He added that the former housekeeper "was responsible for her own break and meal times, and there were several bathrooms and breakrooms available to her and other staff."

"The evidence will show that [the former housekeeper] was terminated for performance reasons," he continued. "She initially demanded over $9M, and when the company refused, she decided to file this suit."

As the suit was just filed and may well end in a settlement, it'll likely be a long time, if ever, before we find out what really happened at Bezos' house — but if we do, it'll be a fascinating peek behind the curtain at the home life of one of the world's most powerful and wealthy men.

More on billionaires: Tesla Morale Low As Workers Still Don't Have Desks, Face Increased Attendance Surveillance

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Jeff Bezos' Housekeeper Says She Had to Climb Out the Window to Use the Bathroom

You know that "research" going around saying humans are going to evolve to have hunchbacks and claws because of the way we use our smartphones? Though our posture could certainly use some work, you'll be glad to know that it's just lazy spam intended to juice search engine results.

Let's back up. Today the Daily Mail published a viral story about "how humans may look in the year 3000." Among its predictions: hunched backs, clawed hands, a second eyelid, a thicker skull and a smaller brain.

Sure, that's fascinating! The only problem? The Mail's only source is a post published a year ago by the renowned scientists at... uh... TollFreeForwarding.com, a site that sells, as its name suggests, virtual phone numbers.

If the idea that phone salespeople are purporting to be making predictions about human evolution didn't tip you off, this "research" doesn't seem very scientific at all. Instead, it more closely resembles what it actually is — a blog post written by some poor grunt, intended to get backlinks from sites like the Mail that'll juice TollFreeForwarding's position in search engine results.

To get those delicious backlinks, the top minds at TollFreeForwarding leveraged renders of a "future human" by a 3D model artist. The result of these efforts is "Mindy," a creepy-looking hunchback in black skinny jeans (which is how you can tell she's from a different era).

Grotesque model reveals what humans could look like in the year 3000 due to our reliance on technology

Full story: https://t.co/vQzyMZPNBv pic.twitter.com/vqBuYOBrcg

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) November 3, 2022

"To fully realize the impact everyday tech has on us, we sourced scientific research and expert opinion on the subject," the TollFreeForwarding post reads, "before working with a 3D designer to create a future human whose body has physically changed due to consistent use of smartphones, laptops, and other tech."

Its sources, though, are dubious. Its authority on spinal development, for instance, is a "health and wellness expert" at a site that sells massage lotion. His highest academic achievement? A business degree.

We could go on and on about TollFreeForwarding's dismal sourcing — some of which looks suspiciously like even more SEO spam for entirely different clients — but you get the idea.

It's probably not surprising that the this gambit for clicks took off among dingbats on Twitter. What is somewhat disappointing is that it ended up on StudyFinds, a generally reliable blog about academic research. This time, though, for inscrutable reasons it treated this egregious SEO spam as a legitimate scientific study.

The site's readers, though, were quick to call it out, leading to a comically enormous editor's note appended to the story.

"Our content is intended to stir debate and conversation, and we always encourage our readers to discuss why or why not they agree with the findings," it reads in part. "If you heavily disagree with a report — please debunk to your delight in the comments below."

You heard them! Get debunking, people.

More conspiracy theories: If You Think Joe Rogan Is Credible, This Bizarre Clip of Him Yelling at a Scientist Will Probably Change Your Mind

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That "Research" About How Smartphones Are Causing Deformed Human Bodies Is SEO Spam, You Idiots

Latest Feud

Another day, another Elon Musk feud on Twitter — except now, he's the owner of the social network, and he's beefing with a sitting member of Congress.

The whole thing started innocently enough earlier this week, when firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY, and better known by her initials, "AOC") subtweeted the website's new owner.

"Lmao at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that 'free speech' is actually a $8/mo subscription plan," the New York Democratic Socialist tweeted in a post that, upon Futurism's perusal, appeared to load only half the time.

Sweat Equity

Not one to be shown up, Musk later posted a screenshot of an AOC-branded sweatshirt from the congressperson's website, with its $58 price tag circled and an emoji belying the billionaire's alleged affront at the price.

In response, Ocasio-Cortez said she was proud her sweatshirts were made by union labor, and that the proceeds from their sales were going to fund educational support for needy kids. She later dug in further, noting that her account was "conveniently" not working and joking that Musk couldn't buy his way "out of insecurity."

Yo @elonmusk while I have your attention, why should people pay $8 just for their app to get bricked when they say something you don’t like?

This is what my app has looked like ever since my tweet upset you yesterday. What’s good? Doesn’t seem very free speechy to me pic.twitter.com/e3hcZ7T9up

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 3, 2022

Bricked

To be clear, any suggestion that Musk personally had anything to do with any Twitter glitches on AOC's part would seem ludicrously petty. But then again, this is a guy who once hired a private detective to investigate a random critic.

Occam's razor, though, suggests that it was probably AOC's mega-viral tweet that broke the site's notoriously dodgy infrastructure. Of course, that's not a ringing endorsement of the site that Musk just acquired for the colossal sum of $44 billion.

More on Twitter: Twitter Working on Plan to Charge Users to Watch Videos

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AOC Says Her Twitter Account Broke After She Made Fun of Elon Musk

Lidos native token LDO has skyrocketed by more than 24% in the last 24 hours, hitting a weekly-high of $0.66 cents.

Meanwhile, Lidos Staked Ethereum token, called stETH, appears to have grown in value with Ethereum. Both rose a little over 5% overnight with the staked version trading at $1,091 and Ethereum trading at $1,127.

The current gap between Ethereum and stETH does, however, still represent a discrepancy of roughly 3% for Lidos staked token.

While this is significant, at the height of its de-peg last month, stETH fell 6% short of the mark, according to a report by blockchain analytics company Nansen.

Lidos surging LDO token is for protocol governance, enabling holders to help manage fees and token distribution, approve and remove Lido node operators and vote on governance proposals in the Lido DAO.

Anyone can become an Ethereum 2.0 validator, provided they have 32 Ethereum to lock up to activate the software and earn rewards for storing data, processing transactions, and adding blocks to Ethereum.

For those lacking those funds, though, Lido offers another option.

Lido is a staking pool that allows people to stake any amount of their ETH through smart contractsautomated self-executing financial contracts. Users earn yields in stETH, which currently cannot be redeemed 1:1 for Ethereum, though after the merge it will be. It can also be lent, staked and traded for other tokens.

Staked Ethereum is issued by Lido to represent Ethereum that has been locked up in Ethereums Beacon Chaina network that in August will be merged with Ethereums mainnet in an upgrade that will transition the entire network to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and, reportedly, render the network 99.95% more energy-efficient.

Lido was at the center of controversy last month after crypto lender Celsius froze withdrawals to stop a bank run that could have further depleted the price of stETH. It came to light that Celsius had staked customer funds on Lido and currently holds at least $449 million worth of stETH in a public wallet, according to Nansen.

Lido currently ranks as Ethereums fourth-largest DeFi protocol with a total value locked (TVL) of $4.79 billion. The platform also accounts for the lions share of depositors (31.6%) on the Beacon Chain.

Despite centralization concerns, 99.8% of Lidos DAO voted to keep the protocols Ethereum staking capacity uncapped.

Lidos view is not a popular one, with many, including Ethereums founder Vitalik Buterin, Beacon Chain community manager Superphiz, and Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan all publicly tweeting that staking dominance would lead to centralization.

In response, Lido insists its staking is not contrary to the ethos of Ethereum, stating that it was formed to prevent centralized exchanges from gaining the lion's share of staked Ethereum and to keep Ethereum decentralized.

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Lido Token Jumps 24% as Staked Ethereum Slowly Repegs - Decrypt

HBO has revealed the trailer for The Anarchists, an HBO Original six-part documentary series directed by Todd Schramke and produced by Blumhouse Television. You can watch the trailer using the player below.

The Anarchists debuts Sunday, July 10 (10:00-11:00 p.m. ET/PT) with new episodes airing subsequent Sundays at the same time on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max.

In 2015, Jeff Berwick, a Canadian entrepreneur turned provocateur, launched a conference in Acapulco, Mexico in hopes of promoting anarchy in its purest form an ideal espousing the absence of government with absolute individual self-rule.

The event, called Anarchapulco, draws an international array of libertarians, fugitives, and families seeking to unschool their children to protect them from the bureaucracies of modern life, as well as crypto-currency evangelists and others attracted to the idea of creating a stateless community, free from governments and central banking systems.

Unfolding over six years, The Anarchists chronicles a strange and deadly series of events. What begins as an impulsive one-off gathering, turns into a full-on, annual event, growing in size and attracting sponsorship from crypto-currency companies featuring speakers such as Ron Paul and BitCoin investor Roger Ver.

And when rule-avoidant freedom activists come together in one of the most dangerous cities in the world, utopian ideology collides with the unpredictability of human nature. Relationships are fractured, rivalries are forged and ultimately, lives are lost.

With intimate access to the main players, The Anarchists features candid, first-hand accounts from Berwick, the reluctant figurehead of the movement; anarchy activists Lisa and Nathan Freeman who left the United States with their children to find a freer life in Mexico; and John Galton and Lily Forester, American fugitives on the run from drug charges, among others.

The docuseries follows individuals engaged in this movement with full access to the drama that ensues as a community tries to live alongside tourists and drug cartels with only the principles of anarchy as their guideposts.

The loosely defined ideology proves unable to hold the community together and many of the radical expats eventually find their dream of an anarchist paradise crumbling around them.

Ultimately, this stranger-than-fiction tale evolves from a critique of our modern culture into a dramatic observation of the limitations of ideological thinking and the consequences of rejecting consensus.

The Anarchists is directed by Todd Schramke. The executive producers are Jason Blum, Jeremiah Crowell, Kim Kylland and Todd Schramke for Bird Murmur, Chris McCumber, Jeremy Gold, Mary Lisio, James Buddy Day, Andre Gaines, and Allen Bain.

The co-executive producer is Ben Parry. For HBO, the senior producer is Tina Nguyen and the executive producers are Nancy Abraham and Lisa Heller.

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The Anarchists Trailer Revealed by HBO - VitalThrills.com

Bitcoin.com has collected $33.6 million in a private sale of its community-facing token as it bids to scale its ecosystem dedicated to the cryptocurrency industry.

The private token sale was led by top investors in the space including Digital Strategies, KuCoin Ventures, Blockchain.com, ViaBTC Capital, Redwood City Ventures, 4SV, and BoostX Ventures.

The financing round for Verse, a rewards and utility token for the Bitcoin.com ecosystem, was also bankrolled by many industry leaders that came together to further solidify the project. This includes individual thought leaders and influencers like Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, and David Wachsman.

The relatively big funding highlights how the blockchain and crypto publishers are growing in prominence. In Bitcoin.coms case, the company claims that it has created nearly 30 million wallets alongside over five million monthly active users.

As such, Bitcoin.com decided to tap into its customers loyalty with the launch a mechanism to reward them for buying, selling, spending, swapping, investing, and staying informed about crypto. That mechanism is Verse, a cross-chain token built on the ERC-20 standard with a focus on expanding into low-fee, EVM-compatible chains.

Two thirds of Verse tokens are reserved for the community in the form of a development fund and ecosystem incentives and rewards. The latter includes staking rewards, airdrops, yield for liquidity providers on the soon to be launched Verse DEX, and more.

Bitcoin.com is a crypto news and information site that provides a variety related services, with an emphasis on Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, including a media outlet, crypto casino and a mobile wallet for both of these cryptocurrencies.

As of April 2014, it has been owned by a man named Roger Ver. Ver is a famous and controversial figure in the cryptocurrency world. Nicknamed Bitcoin Jesus, and later Bitcoin Judas, he is most notable for spearheading the creation of Bitcoin Cash, which came into being via a hard fork of Bitcoin in August 2017.

Since 2015, Bitcoin.com has been a leader in introducing newcomers to crypto and guiding them along their crypto journey. So far weve built an incredible portfolio of products and services that count more than 4 million monthly active users and 30 million self-custody wallets created. Today, were proud to announce VERSE, a utility and rewards token for everyone who participates in the ready-built Bitcoin.com Verse ecosystem said Dennis Jarvis, Bitcoin.com CEO. VERSE is user-centric and adds tremendous value across our range of crypto products and services including the Bitcoin.com self-custody wallet app, the Bitcoin.com Exchange, the Verse DEX, Bitcoin.com News, and our upcoming crypto-enabled debit card. Were also extremely excited to announce the Verse public token sale, which is scheduled to begin in June.

Eric Weiss, Managing Partner, Digital Strategies: In our view, the utility of the Verse token in conjunction with the Bitcoin.com brand and broad suite of tools will create a powerful moat for its ecosystem. Were thrilled to be part of this journey with Bitcoin.com and Verse.

Justin Chou, Chief Investment Officer, KuCoin Ventures: The next wave of growth in crypto will be led by strong global brands that create real-world products for millions of people. Bitcoin.com will accelerate the development of products and partnerships that expand their reach globally.

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Bitcoin.com bags $33M in private sale to expand token ecosystem - FinanceFeeds

Aftera very successful 2021, Kurt Wuckert Jr. kicked off the new year with a special edition of theCoinGeek Weekly Livestreamfrom Las Vegas, Nevada. Kurt is leading a contingent of BSV blockchain companies that have attended and are exhibiting at the biggest consumer electronics event in the world. He talked about the event, how the BSV booth is faring and who would win in a Brazilian jiu-jitsu showdown between him and Roger Ver.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held annually at the Las Vegas Convention Center, kicked off on January 5 and will run for three days. Theeventattracts the crme de la crme from augmented and virtual realities, the Internet of Things, smart homes, smartphones, computing, self-driving cars, and other consumer electronics. This year, itdrewabout 2,200 exhibitors, and the BSV ecosystem was well represented.

As Kurt revealed on the livestream, the BSV contingent congregated in its own booth on the first day of CES, showcasing their products and discussing why BSV is above Ethereum, BTC, and others such projects.

As a co-host of the booth, Kurt spent the first day interacting with several dozen people, answering questions about theBitcoin Civil War, explaining why not everyone needs to run a node, and much more.

And then we go through the white paper, and I quiz them at the end. Its really good, he quipped.

Kurt revealed that the BSV booth, which featured entities including Bitcoin Association, VXPASS, CoinGeek, Ayre Ventures, Omniscape, Haste Arcade, and Built By Gamers, had attracted a lot of traction at the event. Its been super busy, he stated, with many tech enthusiasts being massively interested in how they can build a metaverse that sources and recordsall data on-chainin real-time and at very low fees. The likes ofEthereumdont have the capacity to offer this, despite being the network that most people are exposed to initially.

Apart from explaining the massive power of BSV, the startups also got to show off the capabilities of their apps and platforms. Among the most popular wasOmniscape, the XR platform built on BSV blockchain by Transmira. At a time when the metaverse is the biggest buzzword in tech, Omniscape is showing the world that BSV is the only logical choice to host the metaverse.

Transmira founder and CEORobert Rice showed a crowd of awestruck people how Omniscape allows users to digitally drop NFTs in real space and using digital avatars.

Aside from the events at CES, Kurt answered questions related to everything else happening in the space, as he always does. They includedthe efforts by the Ira Kleiman lawyersto force a retrial in the case they lost horribly to Dr. Craig Wright. Kurt believes that a retrial is next to impossible.

However, the efforts by the lawyers will go a long way in vindicating Dr. Wright and his victory over Ira, especially since anti-BSV people had tried to spin the trial to look like it ended in an Ira victory. Winners dont appeal, said Kurt.

Kurt also addressed theSuperAsset token protocoldeveloped by Attila Aros and what it does better than other protocols. A big fan of Attila, Kurt admitted not being quite well-versed with the protocol. Still, he believes that the rise of varying protocols is a testament to the rapid growth of tokenization on the BSV blockchain.

And as he had had to do with many people who visited the BSV booth at CES, Kurt delved into the decentralization myth withBTC. While the number of people who run nodes is big, the core decisions are still made by a few insiders. Most node operators just upgrade their software as instructed, in what is a de facto tyranny of ambiguity. Despite being a global project, BTC has five GitHub maintainers. They wield a lot of power over the community, including what improvement proposals will move forward to get voted on.

Thats not how Bitcoin is governed. Bitcoinis supposed to be governedby proof of work. Its not in BTC and in my opinion, what makes Bitcoin decentralized is that nodes can join and leave the network as they please, they can sync right up with the chain, they can attempt to mine blocks, they can govern the chain with proof of workbut none of that happens in BTC, he explained.

Kurt concluded the livestream with a unique audience question who would win in a Brazilian jiu-jitsu battle between him andRoger Ver. Roger has been in the Bitcoin community for several years and was among those who previously championed increasing the Bitcoin block size. However, he got derailed with BCH and didnt want to fully implement Satoshis vision of unbounded block sizes.

Roger is a big guy, has a brown belt in jiu-jitsu, and has been involved in the martial arts and combat discipline for decades. Despite this, Kurt is confident that he would get the better of Roger.

Id bet on me. Im pretty big and Im good at jiu-jitsu, Kurt noted.

Stay tuned for more footage and insight from CES on special editions of CoinGeek Weekly Livestream on the second and third days of the event. On day 2, Kurt will hold the livestream from the venue, including showing Robert Rices presentation, where he will be debuting really first of its kind cool stuff.

Watch: CoinGeek Weekly Livestream episode with Transmiras CEO Robert Rice

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeksBitcoin for Beginnerssection, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoinas originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamotoand blockchain.

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CoinGeek Weekly Livestream: A special edition from the CES Day 1 in Las Vegas - CoinGeek

The financial ecosystem has seen a major transformation since the advent of blockchain technology, and particularly bitcoin. Blockchain technology has enabled businesses to transition from centrally governed systems to more democratic and decentralised systems.

The year 2021 was an exciting one for the decentralised finance (DeFi) space with the total value locked (TVL) in DeFI applications skyrocketing from $22 billion on January 1, 2021, to $220 billion by the end of the year. TLV is the total of all assets deposited in the DeFi protocols that are earning interest, new coins, or other such rewards. The broader crypto market also grew, pulling the DeFi market up along the way.

So what does 2022 look like for DeFi? Experts believe DeFi and decentralised platforms, like Decentralised Exchanges (DEXs) and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), will make significant strides this year as they are the underlying infrastructure of Web 3.0, the third version of the internet. Here are the key trends they predict in 2022:

Mass adoption:

The current macroeconomic situation has unlocked new avenues in the world of crypto for the masses -- novices and seasoned traders alike. Traditional physical systems are quickly being replaced by decentralised systems requiring minimum human intervention. But will there be mass adoption?

As Ahmed Al-Balaghi of Biconomy pointed out to Cointelegraph: More scaling solutions will become essential to the mass adoption of DeFi products and services."

Al-Balaghi said while most DeFi applications go live on multiple chains, making them cheaper to use, it adds more complexities for those who are trying to learn and understand how they work.

"To start the second phase of DeFi mass adoption, we need solutions that simplify onboarding and use DApps that are spread across different chains and scaling solutions," he said.

Another expert Alex Tapscott of Ninepoint Digital Assets Group highighted that in just one year, the DeFi industrys market capitalisation has ballooned 30 times to $150 billion. The next decade, he said, will see a billion people, many of them unbanked, get onboarded to financial markets for the first time ever via DeFi applications.

Regulatory action: one of the impedances to institutions is the lack of clarity on regulation and compliance. As various countries brainstorm how to tackle this issue effectively, 2022 is expected by many to be the year when we finalise the rules.

Co-founder of Swarm Markets, Timo Lehes, believes regulation will be imperative in 2022 as those bearing fiduciary duties will not be able to access DeFi through unregulated channels.

Across DeFi, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) solutions and wallets with inbuilt KYC and cross border rules checks will help to increase institutional exposure in the year ahead, said Rachid Ajaja, CEO and Co-Founder of AllianceBlock, in a conversation with CryptoNews. AllianceBlocks Cross-Border Regulatory Compliance Rules Engine allows traditional institutions to access opportunities in DeFi in a compliant way through pre-trade international checks, he added.

CDO of DappRadar, Dragos Dunica, believes despite the regulatory challenges that DeFi is about to be faced with, the sector is well poised to remain unthwarted and continue growing. Governments may even launch their own DeFi platforms and initiatives.

Interoperability of NFTs, DEXs, GameFi, and Liquidity Mining:Once regulatory hurdles are cleared, experts believe the sector will be able to offer increasingly innovative product services to investors. NFTs are expected to top that list.

The NFT craze is gathering steam and we could see the best of it in 2022 in spaces beyond in-game collectibles, artworks, and sports memorabilia. It is expected to grow over 1,000% in 2022 alone, per a Forbes prediction.

In the blockchain-based gaming industry, Axie Infinity has cemented its name among the biggest success stories of 2021. From 38,000 active users in April 2021, the game saw a massive influx touching 2.7 million users in mid-November. This is expected to give a massive boost to GameFi (in-game finance), and DeFi platforms will inevitably be a part of this development.

Liquidity Mining and Yield Farming are two more areas where experts see vast potential. DEXs require a liquidity pool for their smooth functioning, which is crucial in maintaining healthy solvency. The current debacle faced by liquidity providers is the loss caused by the change in crypto prices as they constantly fluctuate. (Also called impermanent loss).

The rise of DeFi platforms has also boosted the concept of stablecoins in the Indian crypto circles. As Nischal Shetty of WazirX pointed out in a Fortune India article, more Indians are thronging the stablecoin market and most DeFi companies have tied up with Indian cooperatives to offer peer-to-peer services and are planning to open more branches and even ATMs.

"...interoperability could also be a game-changer in DeFi. Interoperability could just improve the overall user experience in DeFi, providing a way for users to easily transact between chains and choose the one that suits them most," Ankitt Gaur of EasyFi Network told Cointelegraph.

However, most experts agreed that how DeFi grows in the near future will largely depend on the user experience and the simplification of the onboarding process.

Most of the world has never used a DeFi product. It is up to the entrepreneurs and businesses to build the software tools that make DeFi easy, safe, and useful enough for more people to want to get involved, Roger Ver of Bitcoin.com told Cointelegraph.

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Mass adoption, regulation, other key trends: What's in store for DeFi in 2022? - CNBCTV18

As concerns around the use of the Ethereum blockchain rise, many have turned to the Cardano Ecosystem as a solution to the increasing fees and slower transactions that have resulted from the influx of users. ADAX founders have recognized Cardano for its scientific approach to smart contracts, which are believed to redefine the future of DeFi, with a new approach to doing business.

As a result, ADAX is stepping up to provide a suite of Cardano-tailored DeFi solutions and a trading venue that facilitates token swaps, NFT trading and more.

The team behind ADAX shares that the end goal of this project "is simply to create a benchmark of a liquidity/swapping solution that the Cardano community could easily adopt and re-used for future projects.

The platform aims to achieve this vision by using a trustless protocol to conduct censorship-resistant token swaps while leveraging social-sentiment-based trading tools.

Since the platform is fully decentralized, users also maintain full control of their tokens. This feature can be compared to a centralized exchange, where users must give up their private keys to be managed by the platform.

Other features the ADAX founders highlight are:

The ADAX platform strives to follow industry best practices to ensure the user experience is frictionless and easy to use.

ADAX enables users to execute smart contract-based trades both instantly and cheaper than the Ethereum network. Without using an order book, the platform removes all intermediaries and complex procedures from the process.

A partnership with Stockgeist.AI, a market sentiment monitoring platform, allows ADAX traders to adjust investments based on early signs of social sentiment. Data is collected from social media sites like Twitter and Discord to determine which tokens are gaining traction and which are losing.

Widespread wallet integrations include the full support of Yoroi, GeroWallet and CardsWallet, and several additional API-based integrations on the horizon.

Compared to most liquidity pools, the ones on ADAX do not rely on constantly shifting ratios, with impermanent loss common in low-volume assets. These factors result in undercutting early liquidity providers' risk and reward-based justification.

The ADAX initial exchange offering (IEO) occurred in June 2021 on ExMarkets.com, one of the first platforms to implement Cardano native token support. The team shares that this IEO was "tremendously successful," as was their oversubscribed private sale.

More is in store for the platform, as ADAX continues to leverage strategic partnerships, working with Mate Tokey, one of the co-founders of Bitcoin.com, and Roger Ver, who many know as 'Bitcoin Jesus.' Other efforts to increase the platform's reach have included partnerships with Black Dragon and Charli3, the decentralized open-source oracle for Cardano. These partners have acted as marketing, innovation and technological partners.

Other notable relationships include GeroWallet, a Cardano WAllet, and MELD, a non-custodial banking protocol.

Disclaimer. Cointelegraph does not endorse any content or product on this page. While we aim at providing you all important information that we could obtain, readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company and carry full responsibility for their decisions, nor this article can be considered as an investment advice.

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One decentralized exchange is positioning itself as the UniSwap of Cardano with a suite of Cardano-tailored DeFi solutions - Cointelegraph

NICOSIA, Cyprus, July 06, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Recently, ADAX has announced that Roger Ver, the founder of Bitcoin.com, joins the ADAX investor board (related link on CryptoNews). Since the project's inception, ADAX has racked up an impressive list of accomplishments. The automated decentralized exchange has already made a number of headlines announcing its partnerships with big names from within the DeFi industry. It has also undergone a successful bout of private and public token sales, as well as token listings. The most recent recognition of its integral role within the Cardano ecosystem has been the addition of Roger Ver (https://twitter.com/rogerkver), the so-called 'Bitcoin Jesus', to its community of dedicated believers.

One of the early crypto enthusiasts, Mr Ver is best known for his early support of startups such as Bitcoin.com, Kraken, Ripple, Blockchain.com, BitPay, ZCash that subsequently grew into industry titans. Mr Ver has been a proponent of the Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System since 2011, tailoring his investment strategy to support projects that demonstrate high growth potential. Following this principle, Mr Ver has once again decided to invest early, with an expectation that ADAX decentralized exchange is likely to play a substantial role within the future Cardano-based DeFi industry.

Mr Ver's investment in ADAX follows the news of Mate Tokey, also a co-founder of Bitcoin.com, joining the decentralized exchange as a strategic advisor. There is already widespread expectation within the crypto community that with the help of Messrs Ver and Tokey ADAX is likely to demonstrate exponential growth and a substantial increase in early adoption. This expectation is reinforced by other notable developments, such as ADAX's recently signed partnerships with Black Dragon, a fundraising and marketing group, as well as Charli3, a decentralized oracle within the Cardano ecosystem.

ADAX (PRO) token, listed on ExMarkets, is currently one of the few freely tradeable Cardano native tokens, which has been on a firm upward trend ever since its private and public sales. In a clear demonstration of the dedication of the project's community, over 12m tokens have already been allocated to the staking pool.

Story continues

Social Links

Twitter: https://twitter.com/adax_pro

Telegram: https://t.me/adaxcommunity

Media Contact

Company: ADAX

Contact: Dovydas P, CMO

E-mail: team@adax.pro

Website: https://adax.pro

Address: 3 Demetrakopoullou Street, Office 203, Nicosia 1090, Cyprus

SOURCE: ADAX

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ADAX Announces that Roger Ver, the Founder of Bitcoin.com, Joins the Investor Board - Yahoo Finance

Blockstreams Samson Mow wants to move the conversation away from Bitcoins (BTC) performance in transactions per second and toward its role in ushering in a new financial paradigm, that is, serving as a permissionless medium for the store and transfer of value.

Mows argument is that VPTS [value transacted per second] not TPS [transaction per second] is what really counts.Calculations for the video were reportedly made using on-chain data by the editor of the Blockstream engineering blog, who goes by Grubles on Twitter. The editor similarly tweeted that Bitcoin scales just fine. 1 BTC can store an infinite amount of value.

The video, according to afollow-up tweetfrom Mow, was inspired by a stupid XRP marketing video comparing their sh*tcoins TPS [transaction per second] to Bitcoins.

Blockchain.com datashows thatas of Dec. 1, the total estimated value of transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain was estimated at $4.627 billion. This figure hit $5.15 billion, close to its all-time-high, on Nov. 5.

TPS has long been presented as a purported Achilles heel for Bitcoin, whose capacity maxes out at a lower threshold than competitor coins like Ether (ETH). This is notably the line taken by Bitcoin Cash (BCH) evangelists like Roger Ver, who tout the asset as a better currency for retail adoption in small-scale transactions.

Mows line on Bitcoin has been consistent, arguing that those who are interested in everyday transactions can use second-layer solutions like the Lightning Network. Bitcoin in itself, he says, has an altogether different purpose:

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Bitcoin moves $500K around the globe every second, says Samson Mow - Cointelegraph

A recent decision by the Court of Appeal has clarified when a claimant can bring an action for defamation against a person domiciled outside of the UK.

In the case of Wright v Ver [2020] EWCA Civ 672, the Court considered (1) the proper interpretation and effect of section 9 of the Defamation Act 2013, and (2) whether England and Wales was clearly the most appropriate place for the claimant to bring an action for defamation.

The claimant, Dr Craig Wright, was a prominent computer scientist, Australian national and citizen of Antigua and Barbuda, who moved to the UK in 2015. He famously claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto the creator of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. However, this was not an issue in the dispute and Nakamotos true identity remains unproven. Roger Ver, the defendant, was the Bitcoin investor and commentator US born, resident in Japan and a citizen of St Kitts and Nevis. Formerly colleagues, Dr Wright and Ver fell out in a disagreement over how to develop Bitcoin. As a result, Ver published a video on YouTube on 15 April 2019, claiming that Dr Wright falsely claimed to be Nakamoto.

Dr Wright commenced an action for defamation against Ver. At first instance, the High Court ruled that England and Wales was not clearly the most appropriate place to bring his action. Dr Wright appealed to the Court of Appeal.

The Court considered section 9 of the Act. Dingemans LJ, in his judgment, considered a number of factors that were relevant in determining whether England and Wales was clearly the most appropriate jurisdiction in which to bring an action for defamation. These factors included:

Based on these factors and the evidence before it, the Court concluded that England and Wales was not clearly the most appropriate jurisdiction for Dr Wright to bring the claim. The YouTube video had been published almost four times more in the US than the UK. Dr Wright had a global reputation, which was just as likely to be affected in other jurisdictions where the publication took place. The question of whether Dr Wright was the inventor of Bitcoin was a global issue. Although Dr Wright claimed that most of his business peers were based in the UK, the evidence indicated strongly that his most important relationships were based in the US. Dr Wright was employed by a UK based company however, that company was part of a multinational group.

This judgment is particularly relevant to individuals who have global reputations. It is not enough for a claimant to claim a tenuous link to England and Wales. It is for precisely this reason that section 9 was enacted. What is clear from this case is that evidence at this early stage is key. Claimants will have to consider carefully whether they can prove a clear link with England and Wales, by taking the factors above into consideration and showing that it is the most appropriate jurisdiction. This is an important strategic question, but also one that is highly fact specific.

In particular, a potential claimant should consider whether a statement has been more impactful inside England and Wales, or elsewhere. Evidence of the statements impact in England and Wales will be critical to the Courts assessment. The reach/readership of the publication, social media reactions, witness statements and media publications are all types of evidence that a claimant ought to collate when making their case.

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Bitcoin battles and jurisdiction under the Defamation Act 2013 - Lexology

In the wake of John McAfees arrest in Spain this week, RT host and alt-finance commentator Max Keiser asked his 234,000+ Twitter followers Whos the bigger con? John McAfee or Craig Wright? Maybe he should look at the ideas hes been selling over the years himself.

Keiser is in the only BTC is Bitcoin camp. He once ran a campaign to become mayor of London, promising to base the citys economy on Bitcoin. Though he touts BTCs infrastructure as an alternative to todays financial system, much of his commentary is on the topic of BTC price (he has at various times predicted $28K, $100K, even $400K per unit).

CoinGeek has a whole article on the raging War on Bitcoin, for background. In it, we can see the motives and whats at stake for those involved.

Unlike Dr. Wright, Keiser is neither a software developer nor a computer scientist with a deep understanding of the technologies he promotes. Though the Maxcoin asset carries his name, he wasnt part of the development team. He is a media personality. His job is to be popular, contrarian, and provocative. It has also involved a lot of digital asset promotion, much of which is about where he sees their prices heading.

The only assets Keiser hasnt ever been particularly bullish about are national fiat currencies. Hes anti-big bank and central banking, and often exhorts his viewers to look at alternatives, such as cryptocurrencies and precious metals.

Maxcoin: His name is on the label

Keiser was/is most famously involved with the Maxcoin projectan altcoin named after himself that launched in 2014. The coin eventually crashed and was rebooted in 2017, and still exists today. Though Keiser has at times been close to and distant from the coins developers, hes still listed as a team member on its current website.

Keisers commentary on Maxcoin also frequently mentioned price increases coming soon. Some of his tweets regarding Maxcoins price in the earlier days appear to have been removed.

For the record, Maxcoins price as of October 7, 2020, is $0.00194569. Tough luck if you were a long-term holder who bought on the advice of Max Keiser.

Heres a chart showing the all-time price history of Maxcoinif it looks familiar, its because almost every altcoin has followed a similar trajectory:

Did Keiser truly believe Maxcoin ran on superior technology, and that its price would go up? Or did he know that, just by saying so on TV, it would generate more buzz and consequently higher prices, at least temporarily?

Maxcoins David Serrano, who says the following history of the coin is just his opinion, gives the following description on the current Maxcoin Project site itself:

Luke & Jordan create and launch Maxcoin. A new alt-coin with fantastic features such as Keccak, Schnorr & KGW. It was widely promoted, and created quite a buzz after the Live launch on the Keiser Report. As you could imagine, the price quickly shot up, but corrected just as hard, leaving many speculators and investors high and dry. With no pre-mine or funds to dig into development, a crowd funding effort was made but unfortunately, after a few unsuccessful attempts, the developers were also left high and dry. Maxcoin was a burning mess of burnt speculators, no funds for future development and a dwindling developers team. Maxcoin as a cryptocurrency may have been ahead of its time with Keccak, Schnorr and KGW, but it was not prepared or backed up for success.

In 2014, Keiser said his portfolio was mostly Bitcoin, but that altcoins offer great ways to gain exposure to different segments of the crypto universe. As I said before, the market as a whole is set for 100x growth so theres plenty of upside.

He was then asked if promoting altcoin investment was ethical, and replied Im like Warren Buffet. I talk about the coins I myself own including Maxcoin.

Keiser has also devoted plenty of airtime in the past to Quark (current price $0.00564) and Startcoin (current price $0.005617).

Keiser is smart enough to know that if he talks about a coin, its price will pump (if only briefly). If, as he said, he talks about the coins he owns, hes increasing the value of his investment by giving it attention.

Keiser has eased off on the altcoin promotion in recent times, probably sensing a shift in regulatory mood post-2017. He has also criticized John McAfee and others who promote the coin of the day scams, as in this particularly prescient post:

In 2019 Keiser switched completely, saying altcoins are finished. Hes gone all-in on BTC and made some more price predictions on BCH and BSV:

Bitcoin Cash, the Roger Ver abomination, is going to ten bucks. Bitcoin Satoshi Vision, from Craig Wright, thats going to ten bucks. Most, or all of these altcoins, are going to pennies, or theyre going to go out of existence, because all of that cash is going to flow to Bitcoin.

Its still all about the price, though. Whether implicitly or explicitly, Keiser is telling his audience what they should and shouldnt invest in.

If Dr. Craig Wright is a conman, hes doing it all wrong

Were not saying Max Keiser has broken any laws. And well assume he declares all his income and pays his taxes. Hes also a lot less reckless than John McAfee. But his attacks on Dr. Craig Wright not only arrive apropos of nothing, its also irresponsible to draw a connection between Wright and paid altcoin promoters.

Dr. Wright does not tell anyone to buy BSV, and he never tells anyone theyll get rich from doing so. In fact, most of his advice is the oppositehe spends most of his media time telling people to build something, and to get out there and work if they want to be rich.

Wrights message has always been that Bitcoin provides the infrastructure, but that even the best infrastructure does nothing by itself. He frequently criticizes speculative trading and HODLing (hoarding Bitcoin in the hope someone else will make the price increase).

Dr. Wright, unlike Max Keiser, has never released a brand new coin. BSV is Bitcoin, traceable all the way back to the Genesis Block of January 2009. Other assets, like BTC and BCH, claim the name Bitcoin and their backers will understandably attack anything claiming legitimacy over theirs. Keiser is a BTC promoter and price pumper, and whether hes paid to do that or whether his gain is simply his own investment, that fact should form the context to any claims he makes about rivals.

Follow CoinGeeks Crypto Crime Cartel series, which delves into the stream of groupsfrom BitMEX to Binance, Bitcoin.com, Blockstream and Ethereumwho have co-opted the digital asset revolution and turned the industry into a minefield for nave (and even experienced) players in the market.

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeksBitcoin for Beginnerssection, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoinas originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamotoand blockchain.

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Hey Max Keiser, Who's the bigger con? - CoinGeek