William P. Crowell, Former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency, Joins LookingGlass Advisory Board – HSToday

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LookingGlass Cyber Solutions, a leader in operationalizing threat intelligence, today announced the addition of William (Bill) P. Crowell to its Advisory Board. This announcement is the first in a series of new appointments the company will be making toward advancing its vision and expertise in next-generation cybersecurity products.

Crowell served as Deputy Director of Operations at NSA, Chairman of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Senior Advisory Group, and as a member of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Advisory Board. Through these experiences, Crowell spent years investigating and improving military command and control, intelligence and security systems. Currently, Crowell is a partner at Alsop-Louie and an independent consultant specializing in information technology, security and intelligence systems. He brings a wide range of experience having served as Chairman, Director, President and CEO of a variety of technology companies, including Broadware Technologies, SafeNet, Inc., Cylink Corporation, ArcSight, Inc., Narus, Inc. and Six3 Systems, among others.

I have witnessed firsthand the expertise and insights Bill brings to the table, said LookingGlass CEO, Gilman Louie. With decades of experience and a deep understanding of both offensive and defensive cyber, Bill will serve a vital role in advising the growth and success of LookingGlass.

I have a long association with LookingGlass and consider them a leader in cyber threat intelligence, said Crowell. Im looking forward to joining the Advisory Board and am particularly excited about the LookingGlass products and capabilities which I believe have great appeal in todays market.

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William P. Crowell, Former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency, Joins LookingGlass Advisory Board - HSToday

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NSA Warned Russia to Stay Out Of 2020 Election And Got SolarWinds Hack Instead – NPR

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Gen. Paul Nakasone, the National Security Agency director, told NPR ahead of the 2020 elections that the U.S. was "going to expand our insights of our adversaries. ... We're going to know our adversaries better than they know themselves." Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

Gen. Paul Nakasone, the National Security Agency director, told NPR ahead of the 2020 elections that the U.S. was "going to expand our insights of our adversaries. ... We're going to know our adversaries better than they know themselves."

Back in November, Kevin Mandia, CEO of the cybersecurity firm FireEye, opened his mailbox to find an anonymous postcard. It had a simple cartoon on the front. "Hey look, Russians," it read. "Putin did it."

He might not have given it a second thought were it not for one thing: His company had recently launched an internal security investigation after officials discovered someone had tried to register an unauthorized device into its network. That inquiry eventually led to the discovery of something even more worrisome: the breach of a Texas-based network monitoring company called SolarWinds.

U.S. officials now believe that hackers with Russia's intelligence service, the SVR, found a way to piggyback onto one of SolarWinds' regular software updates and slip undetected into its clients' networks. That means potentially thousands of companies and dozens of government departments and agencies may have been compromised.

President Biden was concerned enough about the attack that he brought it up in his first official call as president on Tuesday with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. It is unclear how Putin responded, but Russia has denied involvement in the past.

"We'll be poised to act"

A little over a year ago, the head of U.S. Cyber Command and the NSA, Gen. Paul Nakasone, began to talk openly about America's cyber operations and something he called "defend forward." The strategy is aimed at going toe-to-toe with adversaries in their networks instead of waiting for them to come and hack Americans here at home.

"Defend forward is a DOD strategy that looks outside of the United States," Nakasone told NPR as Cyber Command prepared for the 2020 elections. To impact adversaries, he said, the U.S. was "going to expand our insights of our adversaries. ... We're going to know our adversaries better than they know themselves. ... We're going to harden our defenses and ... we'll be poised to act."

At the time, the decision to talk about American cyber forces seemed like a classic deterrence strategy. Traditionally the NSA's mission was kept secret; Nakasone broke from that partly to assure Americans months before the 2020 elections that Cyber Command was prepared to defend U.S. networks while at the same time making clear to adversaries that U.S. cyber operators were primed.

Then Nakasone went a step further. He revealed in an NPR story large portions of Operation Glowing Symphony, an offensive cyber campaign the U.S. launched against ISIS that went a long way toward hobbling the terrorist organization's media and recruitment operation. If Russia were wondering just how skillful U.S. cyber operators were, Nakasone appeared to be saying, here's a little preview.

"It's a little bit different in cyberspace," Nakasone said at the time, "because you have foes that can come and go very, very quickly. They can buy infrastructure, they can develop their capabilities, they can conduct attacks. And what you have to do, from what I've learned, is you have to be persistent with that, and making sure that whenever they do that type of thing, you're going to be there and you're going to impact them."

In that spirit of low-grade confrontation, a few weeks before Americans cast their ballots in the 2020 election, NSA operators gave their Russian counterparts a little tweak: They sent individualized emails to specific Russian hackers, just to let them know U.S. cyber forces had their eye on them. It was an electronic version, in a sense, of that postcard that went to FireEye's Mandia.

Did Nakasone's discussion of U.S. cyber capabilities inspire Russian hackers to do something epic just to prove they could? Kiersten Todt, managing director of the Cyber Readiness Institute, said that while that might have played a small role, Russian cyber forces hardly needed an excuse to try their hand at compromising American networks.

"I think the Russians are emboldened to work against us and come after us for lots of reasons," she said. "And not the least of which could be us saying, 'Hey we're going to, you know, have a secure and safe 2020 election,' that would inspire them to say, 'Oh, no you're not, and while you are focusing on the election, we're actually going to come into your networks.' "

And that's what SolarWinds did it gave them entree into a roster of networks so they could look around to see what they could find. Even without any prodding from Nakasone, cybersecurity experts say, it was inevitable a supply chain hack such as this would happen.

The next-generation hack

There was a simpler version of this kind of breach back in 2013 when criminal hackers, not nation-states, got into the electronic registers at Target Corp. and stole credit card information. The theft made national news, and, for many Americans, it was an early harbinger of how hacking could affect them directly.

It turns out, the hackers didn't compromise Target's network that was too hard. Instead, they cracked into the network of the company that serviced Target's heating, ventilation and air conditioning system and stole its credentials, which allowed them to roam around Target's system unnoticed.

The HVAC contractor was part of the store's vast supply chain. Experts say we should see the SolarWinds hack as a more sophisticated version of that. Breaking into the Treasury Department is too hard, so the intruders found a comparatively easier mark a company whose job it is to monitor the very networks that were compromised.

With the SolarWinds breach, hackers have made clear that something doomcasters have been warning about for years has finally arrived. If adversaries pick the right contractor to hack, everyone that company works with is potentially vulnerable, too, said Richard Bejtlich, a former military intelligence officer who is now the principal security strategist at Corelight, a cybersecurity firm.

"If you were one of those organizations that had enough money to say, 'We want to have inventory management, we wanted to have network management, let's go with SolarWinds,' well, suddenly, that's opened you up to a whole new set of problems," he said.

That's why this is called a supply chain hack.

Bejtlich expects that in the coming weeks more companies will come forward and disclose they were part of this hack, too. So far the tally includes not just SolarWinds but also Microsoft and a cybersecurity firm called Malwarebytes. The NSA and U.S. Cyber Command haven't said anything about the attack publicly and declined to comment for this article.

They are part of a roster of intelligence officials still trying to assess the damage. Cyber officials told NPR that the investigation is in its earliest stages, but what they have determined so far is that to launch the attack and not be noticed, the SolarWinds breach had to have been planned long in advance. They said that likely hundreds of Russian software engineers and hackers were involved and that they spent time in the various networks for at least nine months before FireEye and later Microsoft discovered the breach.

"We think they were surprised it worked so well," one source who is helping trace the damage told NPR. He declined to be identified further because he is not authorized to speak about what they are discovering. "We think that once they got into SolarWinds and were inside their clients' network they had trouble deciding where to go next. It was successful beyond their wildest imaginations, and they didn't have enough people to work it all."

Biden has asked his new national security team for an assessment of the SolarWinds attack. He wants to know how it happened, how far it went and how to fix it. These kinds of reviews are standard operating procedure when administrations change hands.

Among the questions officials will try to answer is whether the SolarWinds hack was a straightforward espionage operation or something more sinister. Were the hackers just looking for information, or have they inserted backdoors into systems across the country that could allow them to turn things off, or change information with just a couple of keystrokes?

Another thing investigators would like to know: whether the hackers themselves sent that postcard to FireEye's Mandia.

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NSA Warned Russia to Stay Out Of 2020 Election And Got SolarWinds Hack Instead - NPR

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What to expect from NASS and NASED conferences – Politico

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With help from Martin Matishak

Editors Note: Weekly Cybersecurity is a weekly version of POLITICO Pros daily Cybersecurity policy newsletter, Morning Cybersecurity. POLITICO Pro is a policy intelligence platform that combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the days biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.

State and local officials are meeting this week to discuss how to approach cybersecurity and election security issues in a chaotic time.

Two House panels announced the lawmakers who will lead key cyber subcommittees during this Congress.

Democratic lawmakers want answers from the NSA about an old scandal that they say has taken on new urgency in light of SolarWinds.

HAPPY MONDAY and welcome to Morning Cybersecurity! Cant believe we banished Pluto from the planet club when it was already dealing with this. Send your thoughts, feedback and especially tips to [emailprotected] and be sure to follow @POLITICOPro and @MorningCybersec. Full team info below.

STATES TAKE STOCK The 2020 election may (finally) be over, but election security remains a top issue for state officials, and its one of several cyber topics that they plan to discuss at a pair of conferences this week. The National Association of State Election Directors is meeting all week, while the National Association of Secretaries of State meets Tuesday through Friday. To say that officials have their plates full would be an understatement, but scattered in between panels about online notarization, corporate transparency and pandemic emergency orders are sessions that will help shape states cybersecurity priorities for the next year and beyond.

Secretaries of state will hear from the lawmakers whose committees oversee elections, including the Democrats pushing a sweeping election security and reform bill and the Republicans vehemently opposing it. House Administration Committee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and incoming Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) are likely to receive a frosty reception as they discuss the For the People Act (H.R. 1 and S. 1), a Democratic bill that includes major election security provisions. State election officials have consistently opposed new federal rules covering voting technology and election administration.

NASS will also hear from Brandon Wales, the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which coordinates cybersecurity assistance to states on issues including ransomware and election security. And secretaries will meet behind closed doors to discuss the cybersecurity lessons from the 2020 election cycle.

Over at NASED, two top CISA officials overseeing election security work will discuss lessons from 2020 and priorities for 2021. Other NASED sessions will cover information sharing, incident response, misinformation and pandemic disruptions. Speaking of misinformation, NASS will hold a session about strategies for correcting false election claims.

NASS cybersecurity committee will hear about the value of collaborating with independent security researchers. State IT officials will discuss their collaborations with security companies, including two that run vulnerability disclosure programs. Researchers have spent years urging state officials to launch VDPs so good-faith experts can report flaws in state government systems, and officials are increasingly overcoming their doubts about trusting outside researchers.

Election officials across the country are committed to protecting the sanctity and integrity of the vote, and Im looking forward to this opportunity to share best practices with my colleagues, Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a co-chair of the cyber committee, told MC.

A second panel discussion during the cyber committee meeting will look at the state and local cybersecurity landscape. From ransomware to pandemic-related digital services, state and local officials face a growing array of cyber challenges, and multiple organizations have repeatedly urged Congress to provide grant funding.

MEET THE GAVEL-WIELDERS We now know who will be leading two key cyber-related subcommittees in the 117th Congress, giving outside experts, federal officials and fellow lawmakers a sense of who theyll need to persuade to advance priorities from international norms to bolstering CISA.

Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) will chair the House Homeland Security Committees Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Innovation Subcommittee, panel chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) announced on Friday. Clarke, who previously led the subcommittee during the 111th Congress, is no stranger to cyber issues, having sponsored or cosponsored bills to improve critical infrastructure security and expand the cyber workforce. She has also urged a focus on cyber hygiene and a nuanced approach to regulation informed by industry input.

Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), a freshman lawmaker, will be the cyber subcommittees top Republican, according to a statement from panel ranking member John Katko (R-N.Y.). Republicans promised to prioritize cybersecurity as the pre-eminent national security threat of our time that demands an evolved approach. Fun fact: Three of the four leaders of the full committee and cyber subcommittee now hail from the same state for what appears to be the first time.

The homeland panels cyber subcommittee will have its hands full in this Congress as it deals with the SolarWinds cyber espionage campaign, CISAs response to SolarWinds and the agencys overall readiness, the supply chain threats posed by foreign-linked telecom companies and many other issues.

William Keating (D-Mass.) will lead the House Foreign Affairs Committees Europe, Energy, the Environment, and Cyber Subcommittee, according to the panels chair, Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.). Democrats just added cyber to this subcommittees name for the first time, although it already handled the issue as part of its previous emerging threats mandate. Keating hasnt said much about cybersecurity, but in 2017, he criticized then-President Donald Trumps refusal to acknowledge Russias responsibility for its 2016 election cyberattacks.

Among the issues on Keatings plate will be scrutinizing the State Departments creation of its new cyber diplomacy bureau. The outgoing Trump administration green-lit a plan to create the bureau in its final days, but Democratic lawmakers, the Government Accountability Office and some former officials have raised concerns about the plan, saying it fails to coordinate the full spectrum of cyber issues. Republicans have not yet announced their ranking member for the foreign affairs panels cyber subcommittee.

ONCE IS A FLUKE, TWICE IS A COINCIDENCE A group of House and Senate Democrats is pressing the NSA for answers about the spy agencys involvement in the creation of a digital vulnerability that made its way into the firewalls of technology vendor Juniper Networks. Their missive signals a growing awareness on the Hill of the dangers of supply chain attacks, in which hackers compromise software used by their real targets. In a Jan. 28 letter to NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone, the lawmakers led by incoming Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and including new House cyber subcommittee chair Clarke asked for details about the NSAs probe of the Juniper breach.

The American people have a right to know why NSA did not act after the Juniper hack to protect the government from the serious threat posed by supply chain hacks, the lawmakers wrote. A similar supply chain hack was used in the recent SolarWinds breach, in which several government agencies were compromised with malware snuck into the companys software updates.

The group asked Nakasone to answer a series of questions and made requests for additional information, including a Juniper lessons learned report that an NSA official mentioned to Wyden, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, during a 2018 briefing. The spy agency has yet to make the report available.

MAKING GOOD PROGRESS A U.N. group charged with developing international norms of responsible behavior in cyberspace wrapped up its latest session last week, and the State Departments cyber team praised the groups chief for presiding over a valuable meeting. We appreciate Brazilian Ambassador Guilherme Patriota for effectively chairing the latest session of the @UN Group of Government [sic] Experts on #cyber this week, the cyber office said on Twitter, adding that the GGEs work will help all UN member states understand the importance of cyber norms and the value of helping developing nations build the capacity to defend themselves.

The GGE, a small group championed by the U.S. and other Western nations, faces competition from a separate U.N. body created in 2018 at the urging of Russia. The newer Open-Ended Working Group, or OEWG, has drawn criticism from Western diplomats and independent cyber experts, who accuse Russia of using it to launder dangerous policies that would restrict internet freedom.

HERES TO YOU Colorados chief election official has bestowed an award on former CISA Director Chris Krebs for his leadership of the governments cyber agency during the 2020 election cycle. Krebs fought back against election domestic and foreign misinformation, and fortified election cybersecurity, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) said in a statement. At times Krebs pushed back on misinformation spread by the former President, which ultimately cost him his job. His courage, commitment, and leadership are one of the reasons the 2020 Election was the most secure in our nations history.

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE:

Ian Wallace has joined the State Department as a senior adviser in its cyber office. Wallace previously served as a senior fellow in the digital innovation and democracy program at the German Marshall Fund.

TWEET OF THE DAY Patch your bodies as soon as possible!

Nearly a third of victims in the SolarWinds campaign didnt use SolarWinds software and were instead hacked through a different vector. (Wall Street Journal)

By breaching the federal court system, the SolarWinds hackers may have accessed highly sensitive sealed documents. (Associated Press)

A far-right activist with a security clearance helped Russian hackers spread hacked documents stolen during Frances 2017 election. (Southern Poverty Law center)

A social media campaign used fake, AI-generated profiles to attack Belgiums plan to ban Huawei from its 5G network. (CyberScoop)

If hackers stole your identity and used it to get unemployment benefits, you might soon get a shocking tax bill. (Krebs on Security)

Thats all for today.

Stay in touch with the whole team: Eric Geller ([emailprotected], @ericgeller); Bob King ([emailprotected], @bkingdc); Martin Matishak ([emailprotected], @martinmatishak); and Heidi Vogt ([emailprotected], @heidivogt).

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What to expect from NASS and NASED conferences - Politico

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A Top Biden Cybersecurity Aide Donated Over $500000 to AIPAC as an NSA Official Mother Jones – Mother Jones

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In mid-January, a week before being sworn in as president, Joe Biden announced that he would appoint Anne Neuberger as the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology on the National Security Council. Cybersecurity experts praised the move, citing it as a clear sign the Biden White House would be serious about countering cyber-threats. The New York Times described Neuberger, who became the National Security Agencys cybersecurity chief in 2019, as a rising official at the agency. She had run its Russia Small Group, which launched a preemptive strike against the Kremlins cyber operatives during the 2018 elections, and in addition to focusing on preventing cyber-assaults on the US government and military, she had overseen the development of new impenetrable cryptography. But the glowing reviews left out an unusual piece of her story: In recent years, Neuberger, through a family foundation, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby known as AIPAC, for its efforts to influence the US government and public opinion.

National security experts tellMother Jones that the hefty donations from Neubergers foundation to AIPACa strong ally of an Israeli government that is deeply involved in cyber and intelligence issues of importance to the US government and that has spied on the United States and been a target of US spyingraise concerns. (NBC News reports the same.)*

Neuberger hails from one of the wealthiest families in the United States. Her father is billionaire investor George Karfunkel, who was in the news last summer for making a curious donation of Kodak stockworth up to $180 millionto an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Brooklyn that seemed to barely exist. Karfunkel was listed in New York State records as the synagogues president and chief financial officer, and the transfer of this stockwhich would have yielded Karfunkel a tremendous tax deductionoccurred during a wild buying spree of Kodak stock triggered by a leaked announcement that the Trump administration might be handing Kodak an unprecedented $765 million loan. (That deal never came through.) Members of Congress have demanded answers about Karfunkels highly unusual stock transfer.

From 1993 to 2007, Anne Neuberger worked at American Stock Transfer and Trust, a financial services firm cofounded by her father in 1971, eventually becoming a senior vice president of operations. Her husband, Yehuda Neuberger, was also a top official at the firm and a board member. Anne Neuberger then switched from the private sector to the government. After serving as a White House fellow and working for the secretary of the Navy as an adviser on IT programs, she landed at the NSA in 2009 and helped develop its Cyber Command. Media profiles of her in the years since have focused on the novelty of an Orthodox Jewish woman who grew up in a Hassidic neighborhood in Brooklyn (and whose grandparents on both sides were Holocaust survivors) becoming a leader at the NSA and have noted that her parents were on the 1976 Air France flight that was hijacked by the Palestinian Liberation Organization and diverted to Uganda, where the passengers were eventually rescued by Israeli commandos.

Twelve years ago, Neuberger and her husband created the Anne and Yehuda Neuberger Foundation to carry out the charitable and religious purposes of the Associated Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, according to its tax records. Neuberger was vice-president of the foundation; her husband, the president. Neither received compensation from the outfit.

In 2010, the foundations first full year of operations, it received $1,183,050 in contributions and handed out $383,100. Of that, a quarter of a million went to the Womens Network for Single Parents in Brooklyn. (Neuberger is the founder of Sister to Sister, a group that assists divorced women within Orthodox Jewish communities.) The foundation made an $83,000 gift to the Associated Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore. Computer Sciences for the Blind in Brooklyn was awarded $25,000. And the foundation donated $25,000 to AIPAC for operating support.

The following year, the Anne and Yehuda Neuberger Foundation dished out $284,500 in gifts, according to its tax filings. The list included another $25,000 to AIPAC and also $3,500 to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a hawkish, pro-Israel think-tank in Washington.

In subsequent years, the foundation upped its contributions to AIPAC. From 2012 through 2018the last year for which tax records for the foundation are availablethe Neubergers provided $559,000 to AIPAC. And this money, according to those filings, financed lobbyingeither lobbying to influence a legislative body or to influence public opinion. The tax records do not provide any specifics about the AIPAC activity the foundation financed. (The contribution amounts listed for AIPAC on the Neuberger Foundations IRS submissions line up exactly with the amounts the foundation declared as expenditures for lobbying. A nonprofit charitable foundation is allowed to pass money to a lobbying shop, as long as the amount donated is a moderate percentage of its overall giving.)

There is a Neuberger family connection to AIPAC. Yehuda Neuberger is chair of AIPACs Baltimore executive council. In 2011, Rabbi Steven Weil, then executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, hailed his outstanding reputation as a leader of AIPAC. Four years later, as part of a fierce AIPAC effort, Yehuda Neuberger lobbied Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) to oppose the multilateral Iran nuclear deal the Obama White House had negotiated. (During the political fight over the Iran deal, the NSA, according to theWall Street Journal,eavesdropped on Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposed the accord, and revealed to the White House how Mr. Netanyahu and his advisers had leaked details of the U.S.-Iran negotiationslearned through Israeli spying operationsto undermine the talks and had coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal.)

Around 2014, the management of the Neuberger Foundation shifted. Anne Neuberger, who was still at the NSA, moved from vice president to secretary/treasurer, and Yehuda Neuberger, the president, became vice president. Marc Terrill, the president of the Associated Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, who had previously been a director of the Neubergers foundation, took over as president. (According to tax records for 2014, Terrill made $700,109 in total compensation as head of the Associated Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore that year.) The Neuberger Foundation and the Associated Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore share an address and phone number in the Charm City.

In its 2015 tax filing, the Anne and Yehuda Neuberger Foundation reported a major development: it received a $93 million gift. The source of this large contributionwhich came in the form of stock in one publicly traded companywas the Chesed Foundation of America, an organization run by George Karfunkel that started that fiscal year with assets of $148 million. (The tax filings do not disclose what stock was involved in this transfer.) In subsequent years, the Anne and Yehuda Neuberger Foundation increased its donations into the seven-figures range.

In fiscal year 2017, the foundation experienced another significant change in its finances: it started the year with $88 million in assets but ended with $33 million. It handed out about $1.5 million in donations that year, and its tax filing did not explain this drop. Still, in assets, it remained over 30 times the size it was at its inception in 2010.

As the Neubergers foundation grewbolstered by this large infusion from George Karfunkels foundationAIPAC remained a beneficiary. In fiscal year 2018, it doled out $1,925,000 in donations, which included $75,000 for AIPAC.

In Washington, AIPAC is regarded as a powerhouse lobbying force. It describes its mission as a bipartisan effort to strengthen and expand the U.S.-Israel relationship in ways that enhance the security of the United States and Israel. But a top AIPAC official once said that its job is generally to support the policies of the government of Israel. In 2005, two senior AIPAC officials were charged with espionage and accused of handing US defense secrets to an Israeli official, but four years later, the case was dropped when pre-court rulings complicated the Justice Departments case by compelling prosecutors to prove the pair had intended to harm US interests.

In recent years AIPAC has been widely seen as a supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right and hardline policiesperhaps to such an extent that it has, as one critic put it, engaged in mission-distortion or mission-neglect. AIPAC, for example, has provided Netanyahu a platform for attacking Democrats and US policies with which it disagrees. The Israeli government has moved right. AIPAC has gone with it, Ilan Goldenberg, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington, noted last year. In his new memoir, former President Barack Obama criticized AIPAC for reflexively siding with Israel in policy disputes. He wrote that AIPAC embraces the view that there should be no daylight between the U.S. and Israeli governments, even when Israel took actions that were contrary to U.S. policy. He observed that US officials who adopted a different approach could expect to be targeted by the AIPAC and its political arm: Those who criticized Israeli policy too loudly risked being tagged as anti-Israel (and possibly anti-Semitic) and confronted with a well-funded opponent in the next election.

On cyber mattersAnne Neubergers fieldIsrael is an important player. It has become a cybersecurity powerhouse. The nation is home to NSO Group, one of the most notorious cyber-surveillance firms, which manufactures the infamous Pegasus phone spyware, which can allow a security service or other actor to gain total control of a mobile phone and use the device to surveil its user. According to a 2018 report, At least six countries with significant Pegasus operations have previously been linked to abusive use of spyware to target civil society, including Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Last year,Haaretzreported that the Israeli government had encouraged NSO to sell Pegasus to the United Arab Emirates and several Persian Gulf states.

Though Israel is a US ally, it has spied on the US government, and the CIA has considered Israel a top counterintelligence threat. And it is not hard to conceive of cyber-related conflicts that could arise between the two states. So should a Biden administration national security official in charge of US cyber policy be supporting an influence group aligned with the Israeli government? Its unwise at best, says John Sipher, a former CIA official. In her world, when people think of cyber-threats, Israel is always there, even if its an ally. It is surprising that someone in cyber who understands Israeli capabilities would not want to steer clear of these politics.

Several other national security expertswho asked not to be namedsay that the foundations donations to AIPAC create, at the least, an appearance problem for Anne Neuberger. They point out that the Israeli government does maintain an aggressive campaign of espionage against the United States and has a deep interest in US cyber policy.

A former senior intelligence official says, Anne is a very smart and competent professional. I was very impressed with her work and never had any question about her integrity That said, such a donation, if true and publicized, would raise a lot of eyebrows within the government and beyond, especially since the two dimensions involvedIsrael and cyberhave their own history. A second former senior intelligence official adds, Is this disqualifying? Probably not. But its not good.

A senior congressional aide who oversees national security issues says, If you donate half a million dollars to a lobbying group, that indicates a pretty strong preference. And a foreign policy expert with close ties to the Biden administration notes, One question this presents is whether she would recuse herself from decisions that could impact Israel.

Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert on government ethics, notes that ethics laws are primarily aimed at preventing an officials financial interests from having an impact on his or her government work. Neubergers past financial contribution to AIPAC does not create that kind of ethics issue, she says. But Clark notes that it could raise raise a question regarding her impartiality. Clark points out that because cybersecurity issues involve Israel and because AIPAC promotes strong US-Israeli cooperation on a wide range of issues, including cyber, the public needs to know whether the actions of Neubergers foundation overlap with her government responsibilities. She adds, Will we know what the foundation has spent or is spending its money on? Will we know what projects the foundation is supporting? Will the foundation accept donations?

Marc Terrill, the president of the Neuberger Foundation, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. When reached byMother Jones, Yehuda Neuberger said he was not available to discuss the foundation.

On Monday, Mother Jones sent a list of questions about the Neuberger Foundation and its AIPAC donations to the NSC and Anne Neuberger. The queries included: Did Neuberger or her foundation know specifically what lobbying the donations subsidized? What was the source of the initial $1,183,050 the foundation kicked off with? What was the stock valued at $93 million that her fathers foundation donated to the Neuberger Foundation? Why did the foundation receive such a large gift? Does the Neuberger Foundation consult with Karfunkel regarding any of its donations? Has Neuberger filed a financial disclosure form regarding her new position at the NSC? Does it include information related to the Neuberger Foundation? Did she file a financial disclosure form at the NSA?Did it include information related to the Neuberger Foundation?

Mother Jones also asked, Is it appropriate for a high-ranking intelligence official or a NSC official to contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to AIPAC, a lobby regarded by critics as often aligned with the policy interests of a foreign government? Is there a potential conflict of interest for a senior official in charge of cyber policy who donates money to an American group that is seen as supportive of a foreign government highly involved in cyber-surveillance and cyber-warfare issues?

An NSC spokesperson said that she would respond to the query and requested time to do so. Two days later the NSC declined to answer any of those questions. The NSC spokesperson said, As a senior NSC employee, Ms. Neuberger will abide by the Executive Order on Ethics Commitments By Executive Branch Personnel.

The NSA did not respond to a similar set of questions.

UPDATE: After this article was published, Emily Horne, an NSC spokesperson, sent Mother Jones the following statement: We note that NBC has pulled down their own version of this story, saying it fell short of their reporting standards, and look forward to Mother Jones doing the same. The women and men of the NSC are patriotic, dedicated, and serve their country with distinction. Being forced to endure public smear campaigns should not be part of working on behalf of the American people. NBC News moved its story on Neuberger to its archives and said that the article did not meet the networks reporting standards because it cited only unnamed sources raising questions about the Neuberger Foundations donations to AIPAC and because Neuberger was not given adequate time to respond to our reporting. This Mother Jones article cited both named and unnamed sources, and Mother Jones gave Neuberger two days to respond to a query about her foundation and the AIPAC donations. She did not respond. Mother Jones also contacted the president of the foundation, and he did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Mother Jones stands by our reporting.

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Companies Pay Criminal Penalties And Compensation For Undermining Competition – JD Supra

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[co author: Markus Speidel]

Berlitz and CLCI admitted to violating 18 U.S.C. 371 by discussing, agreeing to, and facilitating the submission of false and misleading information to the National Security Agency (NSA) between March and December 2017. The charges relate to a multiple award indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract vehicle for foreign language instruction, under which the NSA awarded three prime contracts. To qualify as technically acceptable, offerors needed the capacity to provide language training in all six specified geographic areas. Following award of the IDIQ contracts, the awardees would then compete against each other for individual delivery orders to provide training in a particular language at particular locations.

According to their stipulations, Berlitz and CLCI submitted invoices and received payments based on non-competitive bids. In furtherance of the conspiracy, and to qualify as technically acceptable when it otherwise would have been ineligible for award, CLCI falsely and misleadingly claimed the capacity to perform training services at a particular facility in Odenton, Maryland a facility that turned out to be solely owned and operated by its competitor, Berlitz. Berlitz provided CLCI with a floor plan to the Odenton facility, which CLCI submitted as our Odenton, MD location in its proposal. In exchange for this favor, CLCI agreed not to bid against Berlitz for any delivery orders involving language training near the Odenton facility. CLCI memorialized the agreement with a draft letter in an email to Berlitz. On two separate occasions in August 2017, the companies maintained the agreement by email exchanges, confirming that CLCI would not bid on a delivery order NSA sent out for instruction in Maryland.

Under the deferred prosecution agreements, which resolved the charges, both companies agreed to cooperate fully in any related criminal investigation and prosecution, and to implement a compliance and ethics program to detect and prevent future violations. Both companies also agreed to pay criminal penalties, $147,000 for Berlitz and $140,000 for CLCI, and victim compensation to NSA to the tune of $57,000. Violations of 18 U.S.C. 371 carry a maximum company fine of $500,000.

Takeaway: Contractors and prospective contractors would do well to heed the lessons here. When submitting information to the government, truthfulness is paramount. And it should go without saying that colluding with other competitors to stifle competition is illegal. Companies that violate these legal and ethical norms not only face criminal penalties, but also may end up suspended or debarred from government contracting. Companies should ensure their regular ethics training addresses these and other aspects of integrity in the bidding process.

*Markus Speidel is a Law Clerk in our Washington, D.C. office and not admitted to the bar.

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Companies Pay Criminal Penalties And Compensation For Undermining Competition - JD Supra

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NSA fumes over the violation of coronavirus safety protocols – GhanaWeb

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Sports News of Monday, 1 February 2021

Source: GNA

Coronavirus active cases are rising in Ghana

The National Sports Authority (NSA) has expressed dissatisfaction over the unacceptable behaviour of fans and the blatant disregard for COVID-19 safety protocols during a match-day 11 encounter between Hearts of Oak and Great Olympics played at the Accra Sports Stadium, last Saturday.

In a press statement signed by Mr Charles Amofah, Head of Public Relations of NSA, it said despite all the measures that have been put in place such as spaced out marked seats to ensure social distancing, fans were found jubilating, singing, hugging each other when their team scored, thus ignoring the safety protocols.

"In view of this, the Authority is using this medium to inform the Ghana Football Association(GFA) and the clubs using the facility that it would not hesitate to resort to matches being played behind closed doors, in order to ensure total adherence to the COVID-19 safety protocols.

"The Authority would like to assure the general public of its commitment to ensuring strict compliance with the COVID-19 safety protocols, in collaboration with the law enforcement agents deployed to our facility," the statement said.

In other related development, the President of the Republic, Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo has entreated the NSA and GFA to ensure the compliance with a 25% capacity rule in our stadium with spectators adhering to social distancing rule and the wearing of masks.

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SolarWinds Is Not the ‘Hack of the Century.’ Its Blowback for the NSA’s Longtime Dominance of Cyberspace – Common Dreams

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Last month, the private security firm FireEye discovered a widespread breach of government and corporate computer networks through a so-called "supply chain" exploit of the network management firm SolarWinds, conducted by nation-state-level hackers, widely thought to be Russia. Most coverage of the breach featured ominous headlines and quotes from current and former government officials describing it as the biggest hack of modern times. Occasionally, buried in one of the closing paragraphs, there was an official quoted admitting that, so far, only "business networks" were known to be compromisedsensitive but unclassified email systems and data on job descriptions and HR functions.

"Like our nuclear policy before it, the stated goal is deterrence, but the actual goal is to create a cover for unchecked aggression and dominance."

These stories lack context of the true state of cyber espionage over the last few decades. The SolarWinds hack is certainly a large and very damaging breach, but one could almost pick at random any five or ten of the hundreds of codename programs revealed in the Snowden documents that would top it. The mother of all supply chain attacks (that we know of publicly) may have been the clandestine American role behind CryptoAGwhich allowed the NSA to sell scores of foreign governments broken cryptographic systems through which it was possible to crack the encryption on their top-level government and military communications for decades. And of course the first, and one of the only, actual cyberattacks in history was the Stuxnet program conducted by Israeli and American services against Iranian nuclear centrifuges.

Yet the American public may be left with the impression that Russian hacking poses a uniquely aggressive and destabilizing threat to the international order, and therefore must be punished. News coverage has been leadened with apoplectic quotes from senior officials and lawmakers that the breach represents "virtually a declaration of war," that we need to "get the ball out of their hands and go on offense," that "we must reserve our right to unilateral self-defense," and even that "all elements of national power must be placed on the table" (All elements? Tanks? Nuclear weapons?). This kind of hyperbolic reaction cannot be driven by sincere shock at the idea of a government hacking into and spying on another governments networks. More plausibly, it is driven by outrage at the idea of any other nation challenging the United States' overwhelming dominance to date in network espionage.

The Pentagon has so far responded to the breach by proposing a rearrangement of the organizational chart for our cyber army. And if history is any guide, Congress will respond as they have to past intelligence failures: by throwing more money at the bureaucracy to feed its legion of private contractors. In other words: more of what contributed to this breach in the first place. The ever-growing feeding frenzy for beltway bandits not only increases the attack surface for foreign hackers, it ensures that Congress does not have the capacity (even if it had the will) to understand and oversee increasingly complex supply chains to ensure basic security standards for the very companies who will be called on to fix these vulnerabilities. Few were even aware of the ubiquity of SolarWinds presence across so many of our government networks, and the lax security practices of this key software provider have only come under scrutiny retroactively. According to reports, the update server for SolarWinds softwarean incredibly sensitive key piece of any software supply chainwas publicly accessible by a default password that had leaked to the internet in 2019, and the company had been warned both by its employees and by independent security researchers.

Here another tragic irony emerges: whatever internal channels were used to warn of these security lapses were clearly not effective, but if a whistleblower had taken this kind of sensitive national security information to the presspublication of which perhaps could have forced action and prevented a major act of espionage against our governmentthey would have put themselves at risk of prosecution under the Espionage Act.

"If reports are true that Russia was behind SolarWinds, and was using its access to case physical infrastructure networks in the U.S., their motivation may have been to gain a small measure of deterrence against the overwhelming superiority of American offensive capabilities."

So while the pundits clamor for retaliation and Washington bickers about rearranging the desks at Fort Meade, we still do not get a debate on alternatives that might better serve the American people. In secret, and without public consultation, the NSA long ago decided to use our privileged position sitting atop the internet backbone not to secure it; to level up the safety of key systems for all its users (but to poke more holes in it); and to stockpile exploits and hoard vulnerabilities in order to dip its hands into nearly every network, communications protocol, and computer system of consequence on the planet, both foes and allies alike.

Even our defensive strategy has become a policy of aggression. Dubbed "defend forward," it has us maintaining backdoors and software implants on key infrastructure systems around the world, as a way of keeping a loaded gun pointed at any real or potential adversary. Like our nuclear policy before it, the stated goal is deterrence, but the actual goal is to create a cover for unchecked aggression and dominance. If reports are true that Russia was behind SolarWinds, and was using its access to case physical infrastructure networks in the U.S., their motivation may have been to gain a small measure of deterrence against the overwhelming superiority of American offensive capabilities.

The wisdom of such an aggressive posture towards the global internet was one of the key questions Edward Snowden posed to the public after his disclosures. We should not fail to consider it as we increasingly get a taste of what the rest of the world has been subjected to by American spies for decades.

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SolarWinds Is Not the 'Hack of the Century.' Its Blowback for the NSA's Longtime Dominance of Cyberspace - Common Dreams

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Tracing the popularity of online Blackjack game European Gaming Industry News – European Gaming Industry News

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Tracing the popularity of online Blackjack game

Blackjack is one of the oldest games of casinos. Incidentally, it has been ranked as one of the top five games at online casinos. Blackjack is very easy to understand and play. Owing to its popularity and simplicity, it has been able to attract a lot of players to the casino sites. Moreover, there have been famous films and TV shows that featured blackjack. The critically acclaimed film 21 based on the true story of the MIT Blackjack Team has introduced players to the technique of card counting which helped the team squeeze out millions from the famous Las Vegas casinos. You can access Blackjack and its variants at https://casino.winissimo.com/blackjack/.

Get actively involved with the game

Blackjack requires constant involvement of the player at every stage of the game. You have to carefully plan your moves once the dealer deals the card. Whether you want to hit, stand, split or double, you have to prepare a well-researched strategy to play the game and use certain tricks and techniques to maximise your winnings. Unlike other table and card games like roulette, baccarat, slots, etc. that rely on chance, Blackjack requires a strong combination of luck and strategy.

Take advantage of exclusive promotions and benefits

Online games lure players with exclusive and lucrative incentives and offers. Some offer special VIP features to loyal and existing customers. Online Blackjack has a line up of cash prizes, bonuses and incentives for their free and demo games so that beginners and inexperienced can play the games to improve their skills and maximise their winnings whilst learning to maintain their bankroll.

Brush up on the important basics and strategies

The players can look for online guides and sites to equip themselves with the basics of the game. They can watch videos by gaming experts that talk about various strategies and techniques on how to make the best use of the game and beat the dealer and competitors. The rules of the Blackjack including its variants are the same across the world. In traditional casinos, you can use the chart to decide the best move or strategy for the game. The chart acts as a guideline for understanding and learning about Blackjack. The online casinos have an in-built chart which you can rely on while dealing with cards for the game.

Make maximum use of the odds

House edge is an important factor to be considered for selecting any casino game. You should always remember that the house edge will always favour the casino. At every game, the casino will have an upper hand over the player. You should never go for games which have a high house edge value. Because you will result in losing the game. You will end up spending more than you can afford which will exceed your bankroll limit. You should choose games with a low house edge value. The average value stands under 1% but it can reach 2 to 3% depending on the technique you have applied. When compared to other casino games, Blackjack enjoys having a low house edge value which makes it favourable among young players.

Get your excitement level high

Blackjack can be thrilling and fun. You will face many scenarios where you have to make different moves to beat the dealer. Sometimes you have to make a risky decision at the drop of your hat. And sometimes you just have to leave it to luck to decide the fate of the game. All these situations are enough to put your mind into action and boost your adrenaline rush.

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How True was the Story Behind the Hit Blackjack Movie 21? – Film Threat

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Blackjack, also known as 21, is the theme of the 2008 hit movie 21. Its loosely based on the novel, Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich, a true story about the activities of The MIT Blackjack Team during the 1980s. But how much of the movie is true to life?

The main difference between the true story and the movie is the historical accuracies, like the use of mobile phones which didnt exist in the early 80s. Another obvious discrepancy shows Blackjack being played at the Red Rock and Planet Hollywood Casinos in Las Vegas but they didnt open until the mid-2000s. If mobile phones did exist at the time, the MIT team would likely be gambling at online sites like those found at sister casinos.

In both real life and the movie, the players successfully manage to pull off a mass scale card-counting scam, despite none of them being experienced gamblers or from a criminal background. In the movie, they are all highly talented students with exceptional maths brains from one of the top universities in the USA and are tutored by a card-counting mastermind.

In real life, the team was formed by three individuals, with the brains behind the initiative being Bill Kaplan, a Harvard Business School Graduate. Having already recruited and trained a similar team in Vegas, he formed the MIT Blackjack Team employing the same business principles and practices as before. Unlike the movie, students were recruited from sources other than the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Kaplan himself was from Harvard as well as Jane Willis the real-life Jill Taylor in the movie.

One of the first to join Kaplan was JP Massar, whose interest in gambling led him to attend a university short course entitled How to Gamble If You Must. His chance meeting with Kaplan was timeous and together they managed the team throughout the 1980s. The third person, John Chang, an MIT Electrical Engineering graduate joined them in late 1982. Chang remains involved in counting cards but has since been blacklisted in most casinos.

In the movie, exceptionally bright and talented students, especially in the field of Mathematics are observed by Micky Rosa, a professor of the university, who recruits and teaches them the art of card counting and other winning strategies. He puts them through a rigorous round of training before introducing them to the Blackjack tables but doesnt play himself, rather observing and training his protegees whilst making a tidy profit from their winnings.

In the movie, the main character, Ben Campbell is a Maths genius with phenomenal numbers skills. His ambition to study at Harvard is scuppered due to lack of funds, which makes him an easy recruit, and very soon he is raking in the money. His initial intention to make just enough to fund his studies is overtaken by his success, the excitement of the game, and his disagreement with Micky Rosa.

His real-life counterpart, Jeff Ma, was one of the youngest MIT Blackjack Team recruits and very soon swapped his intentions to attend Harvard for the Blackjack table, which he found more rewarding and exciting. The movie has been criticized for its casting of Ben as Jeff Ma since Ma is of Chinese heritage and bears no resemblance to Ben.

In the movie, Bens father passed away, but in fact, Jeffs father is very much alive and was a guest at the 2008 movie premiere. The money Bens mother offered him towards his studies in the movie didnt happen in real life as Jeff came from a wealthy family and could have afforded to study.

Jill Taylor, another of Professor Micky Rosas recruits, persuades a reluctant Ben to join the team and an on-screen romance develops. However, Jill Taylors real-life counterpart had no romantic connection to Jeff Ma. She and was simply brought into the team at the same time as her boyfriend and nothing ever occurred between the two.

Bens constant weekend absences in Vegas jeopardizes his relationship with his two best friends resulting in them kicking him out of their project group. Highly upset and frustrated, he haphazardly loses $200,000 at the casino. In truth, John Chang declared that this would never happen as any member of the MIT Team would be too disciplined and controlled to do anything like this.

In the movie, Cole Williams is the Casino Security Chief who is tasked with watching the players, and, in particular Ben, after it becomes obvious that he isnt playing a straight game. Ben gets beaten up by Williams and ordered to stay away from the Casino. In reality, this would never happen as major casinos typically use professional security companies such as the real-life Griffin Investigations. Their employee, Andy Andersen, was instrumental in bringing down the MIT Team after following and observing them over several years.

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Common Types of Blackjack You Can Try Playing – Gameindustry.com – GameIndustry.com

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Blackjack is one of the most classic probability games as it is both based on skills and also provides higher profits compared to other table game. It may take time to understand the game altogether, but there are several variations to test your skills once you get a full grasp of it. The ability to play different variations of Blackjack is also beneficial as it helps you beat the Dealers hand. Most of the variations result from changes in rules, but there are others with different gameplay. This article will explain the different Blackjack variations.

American Blackjack

Also known as classic Blackjack, the American Blackjack is the most played form of Blackjack worldwide. Players can play with up to 8 decks, and the player and the Dealer are dealt two cards each, where one of the cards, known as the hole card, is facedown for the Dealer.

The player wins the hand if they have exactly 21 for the card totals. If the card total exceeds 21, then the player loses the hand. You must also have a total higher than that of the dealer for you to win.

European Blackjack

European Blackjack is one of the most interesting blackjacks to play. Unlike the American Blackjack, the player is dealt with two cards that face up and the Dealer gets one face-up card. Also, dealers in European Blackjack do not receive a hole card until the player decides to play their cards. This variation also has several other aspects and more restrictions compared to American Blackjack.

Progressive Blackjack

Progressive Blackjack has a gameplay similar to that of regular gameplay, but the player can make more money by winning the jackpot. However, the player has to place an additional bet for the jackpot. All the other gameplay rules of the progressive Blackjack are similar to playing regular Blackjack except for the variations where cards are hit, split, doubled or stand.

Atlantic City Blackjack

This game is played with eight decks. Another difference with other blackjack variations is that the Dealer is allowed to peek at his hole, plus they are allowed to stand on a soft 17. Late surrender and insurance are also allowed, plus respliting the cards is allowed up to 3 hands.

Spanish 21

Spanish Blackjack allows up to six or eight deck cards. The cards lack the cards with ten-value to increase the house edge, meaning the game begins with only 48 cards. Like the Atlantic City blackjack, the Dealer in Spanish 21 can peek at his /her hole card, plus late insurance and surrender are allowed. The Dealer will win the hand if it is a Blackjack or 21. This variation also allows surrendering after doubling down to increase the players chances of winning.

Blackjack Switch

Players in this blackjack variation can switch between two pairs of cards. The player receives two hands of cards, and all are dealt face up. Instead of the usual 3:2 payout, the payout for this blackjack variation is 1:1. The Dealer will win if he/she has a Blackjack, but the player has a chance to keep the bet amount if they have a blackjack before switching.

Vegas Strip Blackjack

Most online players enjoy playing this blackjack variation. Vegas strip blackjacks gameplay is similar to that of the American hole card version as it allows the Dealer to peek at his/her hole card. The Dealer in this variation must also stand on the soft 17. The game is played on four decks and allows doubling down after splitting the aces. The player can also split their cards, but to a maximum of three times.

Pontoon

Pontoon is an Australian Variation with a gameplay similar to that of Spanish 21. This game also adds fun typical Blackjack by changing the Hit, Stand, and Blackjack names to Pontoon, Twist, and Stick. You can also find a Blackjack game called Pontoon in online casinos, but it is different from the land-based Australian version that uses Spanish decks.

Super Fun 21

This blackjack version played with one deck is a version that guarantees players both fun and wins. The game rules are similar to those of the Classic Blackjack, but it has some variations in the payout structure. For example, a players natural Blackjack always beats the Dealers natural Blackjack in this variation.

When it comes to the money, a Diamond Blackjack gets a 2:1 payout, and the Blackjack pays equally rather than the usual 3:2. This game also allows the player to hit, double, stand and split no matter the number of cards.

Live Dealer Blackjack

It is possible to play blackjack with live dealers through various online casinos. Players in live dealership blackjack are dealt two cards each. Queens kings picture cards and so jacks count as ten, while the aces have a varying value (1 or 11) depending on the other card in your hands. Like some of the other blackjack variants, players in live dealership blackjack can split, double down and also surrender.

Parting Words

Though not all are easy to play, the above blackjack variants provide you with options. Playing different variants will expose you to different rules, table layouts and improve your gaming experience massively.

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Las Vegas Strip Finishes Bad Year with Bad December – Casino.Org News

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Posted on: January 28, 2021, 09:25h.

Last updated on: January 28, 2021, 10:45h.

The Las Vegas Strip is the main artery of the US gaming industrys heartbeat. But in 2020, it was nearly on life alert.

The main drag capped off the most difficult year with yet another poor performance. Gross gaming revenue (GGR) on the Strip last month was $292 million. This figure is a nearly 51 percent reduction from December 2019.

Statewide, casinos kept $683.7 million of gamblers money during the final month of 2020. That represents a 35 percent year-over-year drop.

Slot machines led the way, with the terminals winning $459 million. Penny slot revenue was down more than 38 percent. Baccarat tables generated revenue of $63.2 million, and blackjack $48.4 million. The table win for those games was respectively down 17 percent and 55 percent from December 2019.

Oddsmakers held $40.6 million of the sports wagers placed. It was a lone bright spot on the December report, with sports betting revenue increasing nearly 12 percent.

Las Vegas Strip casinos reported GGR of $3.73 billion in 2020, their lowest haul since 1999. The casino floors won 43 percent fewer gaming dollars during the 12-month period.

COVID-19 resulted in Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) forcing the states casinos to close their operations in mid-March. They remained dark until early June.

While the gaming floors resumed business, domestic and travel restrictions ravaged visitor volumes. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority will later today release full-year travel statistics. But through 11 months in 2020, visitor volume was down 54.5 percent.

Nevadas economic engine and largest taxpayer and employment sector has been devastated by the continuing impacts of the pandemic, Nevada Resorts Association President Virginia Valentine told The Nevada Independent.

Fewer people meant fewer gamblers. Blackjack, craps, roulette, and baccarat all posted more than 40 percent year-over-year GGR declines.

Not one metered-market area in the 2020 full-year gaming revenue report from the Nevada Gaming Control Board showed a gain from 2019. The market that fared the best during the pandemic was Lyon County (-13.4 percent), which accounts for a negligible amount of the state gaming industry.

The coronavirus vaccine has arrived but in limited numbers. Its distribution in Nevada has been slow compared with other states.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and US Census Bureau, Nevada ranks No. 44 in vaccination speed. Just 4.9 percent of the states population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

By comparison, Nevadas neighbors are faring better. Oregon has administered at least one dose of the vaccine to 6.5 percent of its residents, Utah 6.3 percent, California 5.5 percent, and Arizona 5.3 percent.

A critical component of our recovery depends on the distribution and acceptance of the vaccine, Valentine added. The sooner hospitality employees, which represent roughly one in every four Nevada jobs, can be vaccinated, the swifter we can restore our tourism-based economy, welcome back large events and trade shows, reopen dormant businesses, and bring more Nevadans back to work.

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Las Vegas Strip Finishes Bad Year with Bad December - Casino.Org News

Live Dealers Lend A Hand In Boosting PA iGaming Revenue To New Heights – Penn Bets

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The iGaming industry relies on computer speed and operations that no person could hope to duplicate, but Pennsylvanias record month for online casino gaming in December got a boost from human hands and faces.

The record revenue of $71.6 million last month among 13 online operators represented a 19.8% increase over the month before. Just like in land-based casinos, slots continue to be the biggest revenue producer, representing $46.2 million of the total, but those games arent the ones with the biggest spike.

Table games revenue, boosted by nine sites now featuring live dealers for blackjack and other games as part of their options, reached $22.6 million in December. That was a 25.9% increase from the month before.

Live dealer games first arrived at four sites in October, with five others adding them since then. Since September, monthly online table games revenue has increased 53.6% compared to 15.8% for slots.

All kinds of things can factor into online revenue increases, especially in a state like Pennsylvania where the industry was still growing throughout 2020.

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BetMGM only just arrived in December as the 13th iCasino site, which alone added $5.7 million in revenue to the state total. And December was an unusual month for gaming, in that all land-based casinos were shut down by COVID-related government order starting Dec. 12, pushing gambling enthusiasts onto their computers and smartphones if they wanted to indulge customary habits.

When weighing everything, however, live dealer games were undoubtedly a factor. Their availability was one of the biggest changes throughout the fall for iCasino patrons, even if the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board doesnt break out how much table games revenue comes in that format instead of the wide options that still exist for completely automated blackjack, roulette, and other games.

Evolution is the company that partners with multiple online operators to provide live dealer games, and it began doing so in New Jersey in August 2018. Dealers in a studio run games at the same tables seen in a casino while multiple players wager on their computers and phones, and players able to hear the dealers speak can type in a live chat to interact with them and one another.

The games proved highly popular in New Jersey. While it took many months to set up computers and a studio in Philadelphia to provide the same opportunity in the Keystone State, Evolutions live dealers were added in October by PlaySugarHouse, BetRivers, DraftKings, and Hollywood Casinos online offering.

Rush Street Interactive operates the PlaySugarHouse and BetRivers sites, and it explained in a statement at the time, Many online players prefer live dealer options because they watch the action as it happens, which gives them a higher level of trust in the outcome.

For its two sites, which added live dealer options Oct. 21, Rush Street has seen table games revenue climb from $1.67 million in September to $2.52 million in October, $2.79 million in November, and $3.43 million in December. Its December slots revenue of $15.9 million, meanwhile, was only modestly above Septembers $14.4 million.

Mattias Stetz, Rush Street Interactive chief operating officer, said the company has been pleased with customers support for live dealer options and it is expecting to add still more of such games. He wasnt attributing the more than doubling of table games revenue since September to that aspect alone, however.

Live dealer has generated incremental revenues, but it doesnt explain the entire increase as the casino vertical overall is still growing in Pennsylvania, Stetz said by email.

Since those first four sites began presenting live dealers, the feature has been added by Unibet, Caesars, FanDuel, PokerStars, and BetMGM.

Most of those operated for many months without live dealers, but for the states iCasino latecomer, BetMGM, it took only a week after it launched to add them.

Weve seen great successes with our live offering in New Jersey and are expecting similarly strong numbers in Pennsylvania, Matthew Sunderland, BetMGM vice president of gaming, announced last month.

As of now, the Parx, BetAmerica, Wind Creek, and PlayLive! online casinos are still without live dealers, although it could be only a matter of time before they also add them.

Such options are expected to become commonplace wherever iGaming is authorized around the country, as Evolution is developing a studio in Michigan to partner with the online casinos that are just now getting underway there.

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Yes, bitcoin could be the new GameStop – CNBC

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It has been a volatile few months for bitcoin.

On Friday alone, the cryptocurrency briefly shot 20% higher after billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk changed his Twitter bio to "#bitcoin."

Though it quickly gave up those gains, there are parallels between bitcoin's swift move higher and the GameStop stock mania, which continues to dominate the global news cycle.

The battle of hedge-fund short sellers versus retail traders who are coordinating on social media to drive the price higher could be a sign of what's to come for the world's biggest cryptocurrency.

Data from crypto news and analysis company The Block shows that hedge funds are short bitcoin by more than $1 billion.

That term "shorting" means that traders and hedge funds are betting that the price of bitcoin will go down. Those short positions ramped up starting in October 2020, just as bitcoin's latest rally began to take hold.

Meanwhile, individual investors are still buying into bitcoin, among other cryptocurrencies, as they bet that the price will go up.

Sound familiar?

Retail brokerages including Robinhood have extended trading restrictions on stocks such as GameStop, and as of Friday, the trading app is also limiting trading in cryptocurrencies.

Unlike GameStop, a brick-and-mortar mall business that was closing stores even before the pandemic led to widespread shutdowns, analysts say the fundamentals underlying bitcoin tell a more promising story.

Analysts at JPMorgan think the price of bitcoin could rally as high as $146,000, and the global head of CitiFXTechnicals says the charts signal that bitcoin could reach $318,000 by December.

Part of what's different about bitcoin's rally in 2020 versus its last run higher, in 2017, is that institutional investors are now adopting bitcoin, lending it newfound legitimacy and helping to erase the reputational risk of investing in the cryptocurrency.

"We've seen the majority of folks like insurance firms, asset managers, hedge funds and corporate balance sheets come into the market in 2020," said Michael Bucella, general partner at crypto firm BlockTower Capital.

The surge in interest from mainstream financial players hasn't just reformed bitcoin's image, it's also fomented a supply shortage.

"There is a large and emerging group of institutions that have an enormous capital base that are reallocating to this space," Bucella said. "And if you think about the supply-demand model of a commodity, the supply curve is declining over time to effectively zero, and the demand is increasing exponentially."

There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins in existence, because, like other cryptocurrencies, it was built around the principle of a finite supply. The total number of mined bitcoin is at roughly 18.6 million, so it's nearing its maximum threshold.

And that interest from institutional investors doesn't appear to be slowing down.

"There's a lot of demand, and there's not enough supply of bitcoin for every financial institution to have their own reserve to serve their clients," said McKenzie Slaughter, a member of the Black Women Blockchain Council.

The GameStop saga has been driven by a large group of Reddit day traders, at least some of whom are motivated by wanting to stick it to Wall Street. They coordinated online to pile into GameStop in order to drive the price of the stock higher, with the specific purpose of causing hedge funds to lose money.

That same underlying anger and frustration over how institutional investors make profits has also played a role in bitcoin's rise. A big part of the cryptocurrency's intrinsic value is derived from the fact that it isn't tethered to any one governmentnor is it pegged to other currencies.

Investing in an independent cryptocurrency such as bitcoin, therefore, means you are putting your money toward a technology and a currency that could one day replace the modern financial system. This is certainly not lost on retail traders looking for the ultimate way to cut institutional investors out of the equation.

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Yes, bitcoin could be the new GameStop - CNBC

Silver Is the New GameStop as Musk’s #Bitcoin Stalls – CoinDesk – CoinDesk

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Bitcoin (BTC) quickly settled back into the past couple weeks range between roughly $30,000 and $36,000, after a short-lived price spike Friday when Elon Musk, the electric-vehicle and private-spaceflight entrepreneur whos also reportedly the worlds richest person, added #bitcoin to his Twitter profile.

The longer we stay at the current level, the stronger the base to bounce back up, Matt Blom, head of sales and trading for the exchange firm EQUOS, wrote early Monday. Bitcoin prices finished January up 14% on the year.

Last weeks Reddit-fueled trading in GameStop bore uncanny similarities to the fevered, anything-goes trading culture that has long defined cryptocurrencies. The five-fold jump in prices for dogecoin (DOGE) a blockchain-based token representing little more than a doggie-faced meme showed some of that retail-trader-driven mania spilling over into digital markets.

During an audio chat late Sunday on the app Clubhouse, Musk said he was a supporter of bitcoin and that its on the verge of getting broad acceptance by conventional finance people. He added that the most entertaining and ironic outcome would be if DOGE became the currency of earth in the future.

Where will markets go next? The news of Indias proposed crypto ban has made some bitcoin investors nervous, CoinDesks Tanzeel Akhtar reported Saturday. Meanwhile, Chinese traders late last week were already speculating on which cryptocurrencies might be the next to get a major price pump, CoinDesks Muyao Shen reported.

Prices for the digital token XRP (XRP) have nearly tripled in the past five days. They had fallen 67% in December, when U.S. securities regulators brought charges against Ripple Labs, which uses XRP in its payments network.

In traditional markets on Monday, stocks were higher in Europe and Asia, but the real action was in silver, where prices have climbed 16% over the past three days to about $30 an ounce amid a Reddit-fueled buying frenzy. Gold strengthened 0.9% to $1,860 an ounce.

Bitcoin price chart puts Elon Musk's #bitcoin moment into context.

Market Moves

The "Grayscale premium" is shrinking, and analysts are speculating why.

The "Grayscale premium," a closely watched gauge in the bitcoin market, has recently fallen to a historically low level.

A growing number of cryptocurrency analysts are watching a steep contraction recently in a closely-tracked ratio in the bitcoin market known as the Grayscale premium.

This premium represents the difference in market prices for bitcoin and the price implied by the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), one of the most popular vehicles for investing in the cryptocurrency via the stock market. (EDITORS NOTE: Grayscale Investments, which sponsors GBTC, is a unit of Digital Currency Group, which also owns CoinDesk.)

Whats getting attention now is that the Grayscale premium last week fell to as low as 3.5%, from upwards of 40% late last year, according to Ycharts.

Many observers say one explanation for the premium might be the lack of alternatives, especially since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to approve a bitcoin-focused exchange-traded fund in the U.S. When the premium is elevated, its seen as a sign of just how eager retail stock traders are to bet on bitcoins price.

So the recent decline might be explained by signs that greater competition is on the way: BlockFi, a major hub for crypto lending, has filed to start a new bitcoin trust, CoinDesks Danny Nelson reported. According to The Block, Osprey Bitcoin Trust will list on over-the-counter markets in coming days. In Canada, the investment firm Ninepoint Partners completed an initial public offering of a cryptocurrency fund worth a reported C$230 million (US$180 million).

Yet there may be another factor: Flagging demand for bitcoin with prices over $30,000, double their level just a couple months ago. Some institutional investors who were betting on the price to keep mooning may have lost their nerve, and the premium collapsed as they rushed to exit positions.

The dissipation of this premium is further evidence of the internal stresses of the markets on bitcoin, Greg Cipolaro, global head of research for NYDIG, a digital-asset investment firm, wrote Friday in a weekly report.

He noted that the gap has also compressed between spot prices for bitcoin and futures contracts traded on the Chicago-based CME possibly another indication that traders are taking less market risk in the face of heightened volatility.

Bitcoin Watch

"A BTC bull and believer"

Bitcoin's daily chart shows the cryptocurrency probing bearish trendline hurdle.

The rally triggered by Tesla CEO Elon Musk adding #bitcoin to his Twitter profile quickly fizzled, but Su Zhu, CEO of the cryptocurrency investment firm Three Arrows Capital, says that long-term, its very bullish.

Elon news is a watershed moment for crypto as the wealthiest man in the world and operator of the worlds most successful companies is now a BTC bull and believer, Zhu told CoinDesk in a Telegram chat.

Denis Vinokourov, head of research at the London-based prime brokerage Bequant, expects range-bound trading to continue for a while. He points to healthy market signs, including growth in blockchain-based trading and lending systems of decentralized finance (DeFi). Flow into exchange-traded products remains strong, he said.

Everyone is looking for catalysts but I dont think any new catalysts per se are required, Vinokourov told CoinDesk.

Token Watch

CoinDesk 20 Returns in January

Stellar (XLM), the payments token, surged 143% in the first month of the year to dominate the CoinDesk 20 set of digital assets. Ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain, gained 77% on the month. Bitcoin rose 14%.

CoinDesk 20 returns in January, versus the U.S. dollar. (Note there are only 17 shown here, because the other three are dollar-linked stablecoins whose value usually doesn't fluctuate much.)

What's Hot

Crypto industry booms but doesn't quite "Zoom," while Elon Musk gets immortalized on the Bitcoin blockchain.

One of the biggest questions facing the crypto industry over the past year has been whether the companies and their new-tech platforms could Zoom where suddenly everyone starts using the product. Last week showed theres plenty of progress still to be made on that front. The industry groaned under the newfound attention from ready customers, some of them ostensibly fleeing the trading platform Robinhood following a series of anger-inducing trading suspensions. Outages were reported at crypto trading venues including Coinbase, Kraken, Binanceand Voyager. New York Department of Financial Services Superintendent Linda Lacewell tweeted that, as the states virtual-currency regulator, she was actively monitoring market volatility.

Elon Musks Twitter account got a hat tip in the form of a message encoded into the Bitcoin blockchain. The phrase, In retrospect, it was inevitable, was written by a clever bitcoin miner into the record for data block 668197, shortly after the worlds richest man updated his profile to include the hashtag #bitcoin.

Bitcoin blockchain explorer reveals message encoded into blockchain data block 668197 quoting Elon Musk's Twitter account.

Analogs

The latest on the economy and traditional finance

The hedge fund Greylock is known for making bets on the government debt of troubled nations like Argentina, Lebanon and Venezuela. Now, according to Bloomberg, Greylock, led by and CEO Hans Humes, has filed for bankruptcy protection, apparently seeking the courts help to wriggle out of its own liabilities. The proceedings reportedly will allow Greylock to terminate its $100,000-a-month office lease in Manhattan. (Bloomberg)

Reddit user DeepFValue who helped direct WallStreetBets campaign on is a 34-year-old former insurance-marketing executive who has just made $20M from gains on GameStop shares and options. (WSJ)

Fundamentals have never mattered less as GameStop saga makes a mockery of the idea that markets provide an efficient form of capital allocation in the economy, James Mackintosh writes in column. (WSJ)

For public companies, there are benefits to having no supply caps: Data show a rise in shelf registrations for potential securities sales, as CEO prepare to take advantage of buoyant market conditions. (WSJ)

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Silver Is the New GameStop as Musk's #Bitcoin Stalls - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

This investor in both gold and bitcoin says only one offers real long-term safety – MarketWatch

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Spoileralert: I own both gold and Bitcoin in my portfolio.

As a longtime participant and observer of the shifting currents of monetary policy and financial markets, I believe both can play vital roles as repositories of value, especially in a world plagued by economic and political uncertainty.

But although they share some similarities, there are important differences that persuade me that contrary to growing opinion, bitcoin BTCUSD, +0.02% will not supplant gold GC00, -0.07% as the choice of investors seeking long-term safety.

Admittedly, bitcoin advocates have some momentum on their side, as its price hit a record above $40,500 in early January. After a recent pullback, bitcoin still trades around $30,000. Prominent institutional investors have become bitcoin fans; BlackRock, the worlds largest money manager, called it a durable mechanism that could take the place of gold to a large extent.

Yet, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of golds demise have been greatly exaggerated. Bitcoin is certainly a legitimate asset and has the potential to be a true store of value joining a select group of assets, commodities and currencies that can be saved, retrieved and exchanged without deteriorating in value.

However, gold has at least a 2,500-year head start as a widely-accepted, global medium of exchange and value. Compared to bitcoin, the gold market enjoys great depth and liquidity. The total amount of physical gold held by investors and central banks is an estimated $3.7 trillion. Thats nearly seven times the market capitalization of all bitcoin created. Both gold and bitcoin enjoy highly liquid markets, but golds average daily volume in 2020 was $125.3 billion, or 30 times bitcoins daily spot volume of $4.1 billion.

I own gold for insurance to offset the effects of inflation and as a safe haven to offset any steep losses in other parts of my portfolio. Bitcoins role in my portfolio is that of a speculative asset, rather than to protect wealth. I became interested while I was director of the U.S. Mint and wanted to understand cryptocurrencies, and the best way was to try it. Since leaving government service, I have become an investor in bitcoin.

While both gold and bitcoin can be seen as islands of security in an ocean of financial turbulence, we must understand their similarities and significant differences.

In both cases, their value is supported, in part, by scarcity. Gold is limited by physical supply and the difficulty of extraction, while bitcoin creation is capped at 21 million by its source code. These qualities, as well as the deep, liquid markets I noted earlier, mean that both gold and bitcoin have the potential to retain value, and in fact appreciate, during difficult economic cycles.

And unlike government-made currencies like the U.S. dollar, whose value derived from confidence in the issuing government and laws requiring citizens to accept it, gold and bitcoin have other uses, and the markets generally determine their value.

Gold, however, has an unmatched long-term record as a store of value. Economists have shown that, over the past 50 years, gold more than held its own in times of low inflation and rallied strongly during periods of high inflation. Since bitcoin has only existed since 2009 and its active trading market is even more recent, it is too soon to tell how its value will hold up over time.

The differences between gold and bitcoin are meaningful. For one, bitcoin is volatile, having fallen more than 20% from its Jan. 8 high. Over the same period, gold declined about 3%. This lack of volatility is one reason investors gravitate toward gold.

The run-up in bitcoin over the last year may largely be due to a new class of investors, attracted to a more transparent regulatory environment. Many new bitcoin owners are institutions, including private-equity firms, hedge funds, insurance companies, pension funds and endowments. Once this initial institutional surge of buying normalizes, bitcoins price escalation may not be sustainable.

Another advantage of gold is that one can take physical delivery, while digital currency exists as an electronic ledger entry. Weve heard about the British investor claiming to have accidentally thrown away a hard drive containing a cryptographic key to about $300 million in bitcoin that may now reside in a trash dump in South Wales. Its hard to imagine misplacing that amount of gold coins or bars. By holding physical gold, the investor owns its full value and has no counterparty risk.

Furthermore, despite expectations that Bitcoin would be used for everyday transactions, that degree of wide acceptance has not yet occurred. Bitcoin is more likely to be used as money in countries where there is little confidence in government currency and will take longer to be widely accepted as money in economies where government money is generally trusted, like in the U.S., Japan and across Europe.

While these differences explain why bitcoin wont entirely replace gold, both make sense in a well-managed portfolio. The continuing economic uncertainties wrought by COVID-19, the lower-for-longer interest rate policies of central banks, and the volatility of the highly valued equity market make a strong case for owning assets whose value is not tied to economic vagaries or government policies.

As an investor, why should I have to choose between the two? I think there advantages to owning both.

Edmund C. Moy was the 38th director of the United States Mint and is now chief market strategist at Valaurum, a company that enables investors to buy gold in small, more affordable increments.

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This investor in both gold and bitcoin says only one offers real long-term safety - MarketWatch

Behind the Bitcoin Bubble – The Wall Street Journal

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To figure out if youre in a bubble, you need to find the source of the hot air. Obvious for GameStop , but for bitcoin, not so much.

In July 2018, we wrote about the cryptocurrency company Tether, which issues tokens called tethers that trade under the symbol USDT and should be valued at $1making the currency a stablecoin. Tethers creators might have manipulated bitcoin, a University of Texas paper suggests, by issuing tokens willy-nilly unbacked by real dollars and then buying bitcoin to jack up its price. (The company claims the research is flawed.)

At the time, Tethers total value was some $2.7 billion, and its website claimed: Every tether is always backed 1-to-1 by traditional currency held in our reserves. So somewhere there should have been $2.7 billion in real moneythats how a stablecoin is supposed to work. In November 2018, New York state Attorney General Letitia James invoked the Martin Act to begin an investigation into iFinex, which owns Tether and the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange, in connection with ongoing activities that may have defrauded New York investors. The company has disputed the attorney generals claims, denied it misled customers, and said it will fight any action. An appellate court last year rejected its challenge to the probe.

Bitcoin peaked at the end of 2017 at $19,000 and over the next year collapsed to $3,200. Welltheyre baaack! On Friday Elon Musk was the latest to pump Bitcoin, which briefly reached almost $38,000. And there are now some $26.4 billion of USDT tokens, $18 billion of which were created since March 2020. Why the increase? No one has a good explanation.

All that glitters is not gold. In 2019 Tether subtly updated its claim to say reserves may include other assets and receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties. Tether has even admitted it only has 74% of the cash or cash equivalents to back its stablecoin. Hmmm. Basically unbacked.

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Behind the Bitcoin Bubble - The Wall Street Journal

Bitcoin and Inflation: Everything You Need to Know – CoinDesk – CoinDesk

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Crypto enthusiasts often talk about bitcoin as a hedge against inflation. Why?

The argument is that central bank money printing will lead to inflation or the decrease in the value of money over time. Bitcoin, by contrast, has a fixed limit of 21 million coins that can ever be created. This limited supply allows bitcoin to resist inflation.

The COVID-19 pandemic presented the ideal conditions to test this theory once countries across the world began injecting trillions of dollars into their economies. Many countries, including the U.S., printed money to meet stimulus requirements for its citizens.

Yesterday, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell said the central bank welcomes higher inflation in 2021 as a sign that the economy is picking up again after the pandemic-slump.

Governments hoped an expansionary monetary policy, whereby central banks increased the amount of money available to people, would keep economies moving amid prolonged shutdowns of certain sections of the economy. By June 2020, stimulus action taken by countries had surpassed $10 trillion, according to a McKinsey Global report. U.S. government-spending alone amounted to $6.5 trillion in 2020, up 48% from the previous year.

Theres a crazy amount of money being printed right now, so the value of money is going down. Assets with limited supply, like bitcoin, real estate or shares/stocks, those price tags are going up, Oki Matsumoto, CEO of Monex Group told CoinDesk.

Its true that despite dramatic drops in global economic output and unemployment, market jitters drove asset prices up: the stock market ended the year with record gains. Even bitcoin, considered a fringe asset, had a historic price run, gaining more than 250% by the end of 2020.

These gains were partly influenced by traditional investors who saw bitcoins potential to work as a hedge against inflation.

And yet, the kind of inflation investors were expecting isnt here, at least not yet. In fact, U.S. inflation remained stable through 2020. Some economists dont believe that inflation in America will be running rampant any time soon. Others think a little post-pandemic inflation might even be a good thing.

What is inflation, anyway?

It depends on whom you ask.

The U.S. Federal Reserve defines inflation as the increase in the price of goods and services over time, but many associate it with a change in the money supply, or the total amount of money in circulation.

In the bitcoin world, they dont use the term inflation quite the way that economists do, as a general increase in consumer price. Instead, they tend to use it to mean an increase in the money supply, said economist and CoinDesk columnist Frances Coppola.

The crypto argument that printing more money leads to inflation does sound compelling, Michael Ashton, inflation consultant and JPMorgan alum, told CoinDesk. When there is a change in the relative quantity of two goods, the one that is increasing in quantity tends to get cheaper, he said, adding that this happens with foreign exchange all the time.

The reason why the Mexican peso has been cheap relative to the U.S. dollar for a long time is because the supply of Mexican Pesos has consistently outpaced the supply of U.S. dollars, Ashton said. Because here are a lot more pesos than dollars out there, he explained, the value of the peso in exchange markets goes down.

Thats part of the crypto argument. They say, Were gonna limit how fast cryptocurrency supply can grow and since we are printing all these dollars, then that means that the dollar has to depreciate a lot relative to crypto. Therefore, the price of crypto should rise over time, Ashton said.

Calvo said the view that you can control the price levels of goods and services through money supply is not limited to the crypto world but shared by investors in general, and for good reason. When you look at many countries over a long period of time, you can see some association between the increase in money supply and inflation, Calvo added.

But Calvo, Coppola and Ashton all agree that increasing the amount of money in the economy with a stimulus package, for example does not guarantee a rise in price levels.

If you increase your money supply, you may or may not get an increase in the consumer price level depending on what else is going on in the economy at the time. So there are a number of other factors to consider, Coppola said.

Money is printing, is inflation soaring?

Not really, at least in the U.S.

The U.S. Federal Reserve has an inflation target of 2% measured using the consumer price index (CPI). In 2020, despite inflationary fears due to pandemic-related spending, the U.S. inflation rate hovered around 1.5%, well below target.

One explanation for the relative stability of U.S. inflation is money velocity, which quantifies how fast money changes hands in an economy. If the money supply is increased, but people dont spend a lot of money quickly, inflation can remain in balance.

After the pandemic hit, consumer spending suffered around the world, with countries including the U.S., India, Japan and Germany reporting large drops in household spending. As multiple states in the U.S. went under lockdown, people stayed home instead of dining out, celebrations and gatherings stopped, and travel came to a screeching halt.

People spending less meant the demand for goods and services in general had dropped. Global energy demand declined 6% in the first few months of 2020, its biggest drop since World War II, according to the international energy agency (IEA).

Weaker demand and significantly lower oil prices are holding down consumer price inflation, the Federal Reserve wrote in its June 2020 monetary policy report.

The World Bank, in fact, projected a fall in global commodity prices.

It is under these prevailing conditions that the U.S. government was distributing stimulus funds.

So people are accumulating money, but it is not reflected in the price level, Calvo said.

Ashton explained this may be because money velocity is very low. People are not getting rid of U.S. dollars fast enough, so the price levels dont increase dramatically.

When you drop a ton of money into peoples bank accounts, they cant spend it instantly. So, mathematically, you have to have a declining money velocity. Thats what happened, Ashton said.

What about outside the U.S.?

American inflationary fears may be in part due to whats happening in other parts of the world. Some investors may be looking at countries like Argentina and Venezuela where printing money has led to very high inflation.

What investors are doing, in general, is looking ahead and saying, were seeing a lot of money going into the economy. Therefore, there is a risk that it could happen in the United States; therefore, we need to invest in things that will protect us from that inflation, if it happens. Thats the conventional inflation is coming, we need to protect against it argument, Coppola said.

But in the countries they are looking at, things work differently, Coppola added.

Venezuela and Argentina are hyperinflationary economies where price levels grow rapidly and excessively triggered by an increase in the money supply or a shortage in supply relative to demand.

In Venezuela, for instance, printing money led to jaw dropping increases in food prices last year. The international monetary fund (IMF) reported that the inflation rate in Venezuela was a whopping 6500% in 2020.

In hyperinflationary countries, years of political and economic instability have exhausted the option of printing money without leading to uncontrollable inflation, Calvo said. Coppola added that countries struggling with hyperinflation have other contributing issues like high foreign exchange debt, war, occupation or something political.

Argentina, for example, has had a long and complicated economic crisis riddled with astronomical debt obligations and political instability that often has citizens scrambling to convert their Argentine pesos into sturdier assets or currencies.

In Argentina, the minute [the government] starts increasing the money supply, very quickly, you see the consequences in the price level, Calvo said, adding, Some countries have the privilege of printing money if necessary. Nothing happens. Argentina doesnt have that privilege.

Interestingly, the pandemic has not particularly spurred inflation in Argentina either. By mid-2020, inflation in Argentina had reached a two-year-low, according to a Focus Economics report.

Because Argentines were also under lockdown during the pandemic, the slowed economy and low demand combined with increases in government spending hasnt caused a major rise in price levels, Calvo said.

If inflation isnt soaring, why are people hedging against it?

People may be buying bitcoin as a hedge against future inflation, and theyre not crazy to do so.

According to a statement made to the media by Federal Reserve Vice Chair Richard Carida, the Federal Reserve will continue to maintain near zero interest rates until inflation rises enough to meet its 2% target.

U.S. policy makers know exactly what theyre doing, said Phillip Gillespie, chief executive officer of crypto liquidity provider B2C2 Japan.

They are basically going to suppress the interest rates and let inflation run higher, Gillespie told CoinDesk.

But economists are saying that as the country reopens and spending picks up, reining in price levels to maintain the inflation target will be one of the biggest challenges in the Federal Reserves 108-year history.

So naturally, investors are reacting to all the inflation doom and gloom by betting against it, turning an alternative asset like bitcoin into the 2020 breakout star of inflation hedging in the process.

Bitcoin inherited a lot of the same selling points that made gold a preferred inflation hedge like scarcity and portability, according to J.P. Koning, Canadian financial writer and founder of the popular blog Moneyness.

But when it comes to serving as a hedge against inflation, bitcoin is hardly alone.

If you look around your house, everything is an inflation hedge, Koning said. Your house itself is an inflation hedge, your table, your personal capital, your education are all inflation hedges because all of those things will rise in value as the purchasing power of the currency falls.

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Bitcoin and Inflation: Everything You Need to Know - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

Bitcoin White Paper – Miami – City of Miami

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Published on January 26, 2021

The City of Miami is dedicated to becoming a model 21st century city. We think that means embracing and supporting disruptive technologies that challenge the status quo and improve how we interact with one another. Bitcoin, the decentralized financial network that allows individuals worldwide to store and send value to one another without intermediary agents like banks or payment processors, is a technology we believe will transform the world.

Bitcoin is the invention of a pseudonymous computer programmer called Satoshi Nakamoto. In October 2008, the still unknown Satoshi published a white paper called "Bitcoin: A Peer-To-Peer Electronic Cash System," outlining his proposal and the mechanics of what we now commonly refer to as Bitcoin's "blockchain." The Bitcoin network has run continuously and without incident since its launch on January 3, 2009. The network currently secures over $600 billion in value and its native cryptocurrency (bitcoin with a lowercase "b" or "BTC") is seen by many experts as the next great store of value and akin to a digital gold.

The City of Miami is actively exploring how we can best utilize Bitcoin and related technologies and are committed to supporting and attracting businesses and entrepreneurs innovating in the space.

Read the Original Bitcoin White Paper(PDF,231KB).

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Bitcoin White Paper - Miami - City of Miami

What the crypto bill means for bitcoin investors – Mint

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A new bill listed for introduction in Parliament seeks to bar all private cryptocurrencies in India. It comes nearly a year after the Supreme Court quashed a Reserve Bank of India ban on crypto-related payments. Mint decodes what the bill means for crypto investors.

How does fiat money compare to crypto?

Traditional currency is maintained in paper or metal form, such as notes and coins, or in electronic form in account entries made by banks. Cryptocurrency is also a form of electronic money. The difference is that the record of cryptocurrency is maintained simultaneously by thousands of computers instead of a centralized entity such as a bank. Thus, the record of cryptocurrency cant be tampered with by any person or authority. Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin also tend to have limited supply. This has raised their price in the face of large money printing by central banks around the world following the covid-19 pandemic.

What sets blockchain apart from crypto?

Blockchain is a technological system that is used for maintaining records in a manner that they cannot be easily tampered with. The system can be applied to any type of record like educational certificates, land, or as in case of cryptocurrency, money. Governments globally have taken a positive view of blockchain and a negative view of cryptocurrency. This also appears to be the view taken in the crypto bill to be tabled in the Parliament. However, experts argue that the two cannot be separated. They say blockchain is powered by cryptocurrency and cannot function effectively without the latter.

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Does India consider crypto as a legitimate currency?

In 2018, the Reserve Bank of India banned banks from processing payments linked to cryptocurrency. This ban was overturned by the Supreme Court in March 2020 as violative of the freedom of business and profession under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution. Since then, the cryptocurrency sector has operated in a legal vacuum in India.

What does the govts crypto bill propose?

The bill listed by the government, for introduction in the Parliament, seeks to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies and lay the groundwork for an official digital currency. Such official currencies are being contemplated by several central banks around the world, including China. Cryptocurrency professionals have argued that cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether operate on public ledgers and hence cannot be called private cryptocurrencies. The detailed provisions of the bill have not yet been released to the public.

Should you sell your cryptocurrency?

The detailed legislation will offer more clarity on whether you should sell your cryptocurrency. The bill, however, mentions that certain exceptions may be made to preserve the underlying tech of cryptos (blockchain). Not all bills introduced in the Parliament are passed in the same session. The bill could be referred to a panel or deferred to a later session. Earlier investments in cryptos cannot be criminalized because of Article 20 (1) of the Constitution, which prohibits the state from passing retrospective criminal laws.

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What the crypto bill means for bitcoin investors - Mint

r/WallStreetBets Shows Bitcoin’s In The Game – Bitcoin Magazine

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The financial space is a juicy island ruled by a few to serve their own interests, tightly controlled to stay as is. That we already know, and it is more or less commonly accepted, even though we dont see or acknowledge the mechanisms that are used to keep it this way.

What the Reddit community r/wallstreetbets (WSB) achieved last week was truly brilliant. It coordinated a myriad of actions from the little guys to overturn the big guys investment strategies. The fact that its members made money or that hedge funds lost some is beyond the point. Whats exhilarating to see is the fact that coordinated action can have huge systemic effects, even in the kingdom of crony capitalism, Wall Street.

Moreover, their action was so imprvisible that after that big punch to the face of the Boardroom Cartel, the overlords of Wall Streets felt so cornered they had to immediately react with the most despicable and yet normally hidden tactic: more control, more manipulation, more coercion, more corruption. But this time they acted under the spotlight, in plain sight, and everyone paying attention was a witness to the completely unfair advantage they have over everyone else in this game: they do whatever they want to push things in the direction that fits their needs.

As a reminder, some hedge funds decided to short the GameStop stock, but WSB members coordinated their action to long the price and pushed the market up as much as to push the hedge funds positions to liquidation, pushing the price even higher. As a result of the market going in the wrong direction (i.e., hedge funds not making money), Robinhood was forced (by whom?) to close access to trading the GameStop stock. (About half of Robinhood users had a position on GameStop.) Now these users can only sell their positions to push the market back down again. Thats how far flagrant manipulation can go to keep the hedge funds investment strategies in the green.

WSB did manage to expose the systemic corruption of the financial and monetary system.

But even though WSB won a battle, its still fighting an uphill war. As we have seen, Wall Street has enough versatility and ammunition to fight back and to crush this upheaval in the long run. As long as the little guy uses the same weapons as the big guys, and continues to fight on his masters battlefield, like the heavily-regulated financial markets, he doesnt stand a chance.

This series of events have been eye-opening, both to the fact that coordinated action can compete with powerful cartels, and to the fact that the money game we all play is completely rigged.

For so long, the promoted motto has been to try and win the game, but we now understand the game itself has to be overthrown for it to be replaced with another, more fair and open game.

This saga attracted the Bitcoiners attention and sympathy toward the effects of WSBs coordinated actions. They also shared the amertume of playing a rigged game and being openly cheated by the consequences of government-imposed, unsound money and systemic corruption.

Bitcoin is a serious contender in this rigged game of fiat money and market manipulation. It proposes a new set of monetary rules, this time engraved in widely-distributed code, to get back power that has been concentrated in the hands of governments and corporations and put it back in the hand of every little guy to build a truly open market.

I can already feel the Bitcoin submarine reaching the surface to welcome the WSB community, and I hope we can all share some knowledge on how to create a better game together.

Maybe some of them will get onboard

This is a guest post by Arkantos. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

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r/WallStreetBets Shows Bitcoin's In The Game - Bitcoin Magazine