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EOS, Ethereum and Ripples XRP Daily Tech Analysis July 21st, 2020 – Yahoo Finance

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

EOS

EOS fell by 0.83% on Monday. Partially reversing a 3.17% rally from Sunday, EOS ended the day at $2.5685.

It was a choppy start to the day. EOS rose to a late morning intraday high $2.6196 before hitting reverse.

Falling well short of the first major resistance level at $2.6431, EOS fell back to sub-$2.57 levels before finding support.

EOS briefly revisited $2.60 levels again before sliding to a late intraday low $2.5402. Steering clear of the first major support level at $2.5013, EOS recovered to $2.56 levels to limit the downside.

At the time of writing, EOS was down by 0.26% to $2.5618. A bearish start to the day saw EOS fall from an early morning high $2.5675 to a low $2.5618.

EOS left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

EOS would need to move through the $2.5761 pivot level to support a run at the first major resistance level at $2.6120.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for EOS to break back through to $2.61 levels.

Barring an extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level and Mondays high $2.6196 would likely cap any upside.

Failure to move through the $2.5761 pivot would bring the first major support level at $2.5326 into play.

Barring another extended sell-off, EOS should continue to steer clear of sub-$2.45 levels. The second major support level at $2.4967 should limit the downside.

First Major Support Level: $2.5326

Pivot Level: $2.5761

First Major Resistance Level: $2.6120

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $6.62

38% FIB Retracement Level: $9.76

62% FIB Retracement Level: $14.82

Ethereum fell by 1.32% on Monday. Partially reversing a 1.44% decline from Sunday, Ethereum ended the day at $236.1.

It was also a choppy start to the day. Ethereum rose to an early morning intraday high $239.8 before hitting reverse.

Falling short of the first major resistance level at $241.69, Ethereum slid to a late intraday low $233.85.

Ethereum fell through the first major support level at $234.97 before moving back through to $236 levels.

At the time of writing, Ethereum was up by 0.11% to $236.35. A mixed start to the day saw Ethereum fall to an early morning low $235.77 before striking a high $236.46.

Ethereum left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

Story continues

Ethereum would need to move through the $236.6 pivot to support a run at the first major resistance level at $239.32.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Ethereum to break back through to $239 levels.

Barring an extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level and Mondays high $239.8 should cap any upside.

Failure to move through the $236.6 pivot would bring the first major support level at $233.37 into play.

Barring another extended sell-off, Ethereum should continue to steer clear of sub-$230 levels. The second major support level at $230.63 should limit any downside.

First Major Support Level: $233.37

Pivot Level: $236.60

First Major Resistance Level: $239.32

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $257

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $367

62% FIB Retracement Level: $543

Ripples XRP slid by 2.45% on Monday. Reversing a 0.20% decline from Sunday, Ripples XRP ended the day at $0.19502.

Tracking the broader market, Ripples XRP rose to an early morning intraday $0.20068 before hitting reverse.

Ripples XRP fell through the first major support level at $0.1965 and the second major support level at $0.1932.

Finding late support, Ripples XRP moved back through the second major support level to cut the deficit on the day.

At the time of writing, Ripples XRP was down by 0.04% to $0.19494. A relatively bearish start to the day saw Ripples XRP fall from an early morning high $0.19497 to a low $0.19429.

Ripples XRP left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

Ripples XRP will need to move through the $0.1960 pivot to support a run at the first major resistance level at $0.1997.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Ripples XRP to break back through to $0.199 levels.

Barring a broad-based crypto rally, the first major resistance level and Mondays high $0.20068 should cap any upside.

In the event of a breakout, Ripples XRP should test the second major resistance level at $0.2044 before any pullback.

Failure to move through the $0.1960 pivot would bring the first major support level at $0.1913 into play.

Barring another extended crypto sell-off, Ripples XRP should avoid the second major support level at $0.1875.

First Major Support Level: $0.1913

Pivot Level: $0.1960

First Major Resistance Level: $0.1997

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $0.3638

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $0.4800

62% FIB Retracement Level: $0.6678

Please let us know what you think in the comments below.

Thanks, Bob

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

EOS, Ethereum and Ripple’s XRP Daily Tech Analysis July 17th, 2020 – FX Empire

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

For the day ahead

Ethereum would need to move the $234.11 pivot to support a run at the first major resistance level at $238.46.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Ethereum to break back through to $235 levels.

Barring an extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level and Thursdays high $239.16 should cap any upside.

Failure to move through the $234.11 pivot would bring the first major support level at $229.07 into play.

Barring another extended sell-off, Ethereum should continue to steer clear of sub-$220 levels. The second major support level at $224.72 should limit any downside.

Major Support Level: $229.07

Pivot Level: $234.11

Major Resistance Level: $238.46

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $257

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $367

62% FIB Retracement Level: $543

Ripples XRP fell by 1.58% on Thursday. Following on from a 0.92% drop on Wednesday, Ripples XRP ended the day at $0.19436.

A mixed start to the day saw Ripples XRP rise to an early morning intraday high $0.19772 before hitting reverse.

Falling short of the first major resistance level at $0.1978, Ripples XRP slid to a late morning intraday low $0.18857.

Ripples XRP fell through the days major support levels before finding support late in the day. A recovery to $0.1930 levels saw Ripples XRP break back through the third major support level at $0.1908. The second major support level at $0.1944 pinned Ripples XRP back.

At the time of writing, Ripples XRP was up by 0.01% to $0.19437. A mixed start to the day saw Ripples XRP rise to an early morning high $0.19478 before falling to a low $0.19437.

Ripples XRP left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

Continued here:

EOS, Ethereum and Ripple's XRP Daily Tech Analysis July 17th, 2020 - FX Empire

Binance Compares Tron with Ethereum: Which Is Faster? – Somag News

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

The cryptocurrency giant Binance has released a new report on Tron from popular platforms today .

Butera Vitalikor by such established names I Etherea founded by Justin Sun has a longstanding rivalry between Tron. These two blockchain platforms, which compete especially in dApp (decentralized application), are also competing with each other about fixedcoins.

Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world in terms of trade volume, has released a general evaluation report on the Tron network today. Binance examines the mobility in the Tron network in this report and makes some general comparisons between Tron and Ethereum.

In this study on Binance Tron, he also examined the fixedcoins in the Tron network, their number and usage areas. Tron, which started to support Tether s USDT fixed coin with the TRC-20 standard, started to challenge Ethereum with this move.

The production of USD 2.8 billion USDT in a short time in the Tron network has also angered this competition. But the Ethereum especially Tronan yet fully in USDT can not hold head also need to specify. Because the total value of ERC-20 based USDTs in the Ethereum network is over $ 6 billion. In addition, there are almost 1.5 million addresses in the Ethereum network with USDT, which puts Ethereum in front of Tron.

At this point, Binance takes the focus from USDT and converts it to USDC. Of the building; He pointed out that as of July 2, 5 million 483 thousand USDT transactions were made in the Tron network , emphasizing that this is two times more than USDC transactions in the Ethereum network . The company also has 377 thousand USDT in the Tron network ; In the Ethereum network, it does not neglect to state that there are 178 thousand addresses with USDC .

After making a comparison over the amount of USDT and USDC in the Binance Ethereum and Tron networks, it also examines the usage areas of these fixedcoins. Stating that fixedcoins such as USDT and USDC are generally used for arbitrage between exchanges, Binance team points out that Tron is faster and cheaper than Ethereum in this regard . However, it should be reminded that the number of exchanges that support the ERC-20 standard is higher than the number of exchanges that support the TRC-20 standard.

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Binance Compares Tron with Ethereum: Which Is Faster? - Somag News

Bitcoin prices unfazed as major Twitter hijacking ripples through social media and digital currency community – MarketWatch

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

Bitcoin prices on Wednesday evening were virtually unchanged, even as unknown hackers were perpetuating a massive scam to lure bitcoins away from owners.

Scammers were engaged in a sprawling hack that compromised the Twitter Inc. TWTR, -0.13% accounts of a parade of high-profile individuals and entities, including Tesla Inc.s TSLA, -4.54% CEO Elon Musk and Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A, +0.91% BRK.B, +0.94% billionaire Warren Buffett. Hackers used the accounts to solicit bitcoins from individuals by promising to double the amount sent to a bitcoin wallet address. Former President Barack Obamas Twitter account also was hacking, underscoring the breadth and sophistication of the hacking (see an attached screenshot of the tweet).

Bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.07%, however, was seeing little in the way of significant movement, with the value of the worlds most popular digital currency off 0.4% at $9,209.77, and futures for bitcoin trading on the CME Group were up slightly, around 0.5%, in electronic trade, after the June contract settled at $9,190, according to FactSet data.

In a stated via its platform, Twitter said that it was aware of a security incident on its platform. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly.

Bitcoin has a long history of hacking by perpetrators looking to abscond with other peoples digital currencies. The cryptographic asset also has a history of individuals hacking bitcoin exchanges.

Last year, popular exchange platform Binance said it discovered that hackers stole 7,000 Bitcoins from a single digital wallet, totaling some $40 million, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

Hacks have been a primary reason that many have been circumspect about the future of the cryptocurrency, which introduced the world to blockchain technology. According to WSJ, more than $1.7 billion in bitcoin has been publicly reported stolen, since the inception of the coin back in 2009, including the historic Mt. Gox hack.

It isnt clear if any coins have been lost in this episode, but some have speculated that the perpetrator of this Twitter attack may have gotten some $100,000 in coins sent to their account.

Meanwhile, other cryptos that also tout the blockchain ledger technology, the signature element of bitcoins, also were seeing little price movement.

Prices of Ether, the currency that runs atop the Ethereum ETHUSD, -0.31% platform, were off 1% at $238.07, those for XRP XRPUSD, +0.32%, the currency pegged to Ripple, were down 0.5%, trading at 19.7 cents.

Bitcoin prices unfazed as major Twitter hijacking ripples through social media and digital currency community - MarketWatch

$10.9 Billion Bitcoin Stash Proves Satoshi Is Still the Biggest Whale – Cointelegraph

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

A recent report by blockchain tracking and analytics provider, Whale Alert, revealed that the miner known as Patoshi mined over $10.9 billion or 1,125,150 BTC during Bitcoins infancy in order to protect the network from a 51% attack.

Patoshi has been confirmed to be the anonymous Bitcoin creator known as Satoshi and the early blocks mined by Patoshi also include the first BTC transaction to Hall Finney, a well known developer and early Bitcoin contributor.

Whale Alert was able to come to this conclusion by reviewing previous research conducted by independent researcher and cryptographer Sergio Lerner. Lerner coined the term Patoshi miner back when a cryptographic pattern that revealed most of the early Bitcoin mining was done by one individual with access to modified mining software.

The Patoshi Pattern. Source: Whale Alert

In the chart above, the Patoshi pattern is visualized and it reveals that the straight lines are using the standard Bitcoin mining software and the saw-like lines are attributed to Patoshi.

This same pattern allowed Whale Alert to discover that the Patoshi miner adjusted its speed between blocks in order to keep the average block time at 0.6 blocks per 10 minutes.

Based on the patterns left by the miner on some of the code that is stored in each Bitcoin block, Whale Alert also concluded that this early Bitcoin mining operation was composed of up to 48 computers and one of them was responsible for coordination.

According to Whale Alert, there are two reasons for adjusting the speed, to either keep the block time near the 10 minute mark or to protect the network from a 51% attack.

Satoshi kept his share of the hashrate at a steady 60% as the network grew and a 51% attack was a major threat for Bitcoin at that time, as it has been for newer cryptocurrencies in recent times.

It seems likely that Satoshi was trying to protect the Bitcoin network but as it became less prone to malicious attacks he reduced Patoshis block creation rate to 1 block per 10 minutes.

Blocks mined per 10 minutes per Patoshi chain. Source: Whale Alert

Many analysts believe Satoshi stopped mining at block 54,316 once he deemed the network sufficiently decentralized. However, there have been some irregularities in later blocks that span up until May 2010 or block 112,500, but currently these cannot be confirmed as Patoshi or Satoshi.

The actions of the Patoshi miner appear to be meticulously calculated and geared towards the protection of the network as the global Bitcoin hashrate increased and mining picked up. It seems unlikely that this same entity would want to sell some of the Bitcoin supply and this would have a deteriorating effect for the BTC network. Whale Alert concludes as much by saying:

The timing of the shutdown, the mining behavior, the systematic decrease in mining speed and the lack of spending strongly suggest that Satoshi was only interested in growing and protecting the young network. The bitcoin mined by Patoshi were possibly a mere byproduct of these efforts and it is unlikely that the remainder will ever be spent, although the question remains why Satoshi didnt simply burn them in this case.

According to an early Bitcoin developer, Satoshi feared a 51% attack so much that he even had a GPU ready to defend the network, although it was not used to keep mining somewhat balanced.

Lerner also believes that the Patoshi miners actions were not motivated by financial gain and according to Lerner, Satoshi won't use his coins ever.

Link:

$10.9 Billion Bitcoin Stash Proves Satoshi Is Still the Biggest Whale - Cointelegraph

Bitcoin and Cardanos ADA Weekly Technical Analysis July 20th, 2020 – Yahoo Finance

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

Bitcoin

Bitcoin fell by 0.95% in the week ending 19th July. Partially reversing a 2.50% gain from the previous week, Bitcoin ended the week at $9,231.2.

It was a bearish start to the week. Bitcoin fell from a Monday intraweek high $9,350 to a Wednesday intraweek low $9,026.6.

Bitcoin fell through the first major support level at $9,095 before finding support in the 2nd half of the week.

3 consecutive days in the green cut the deficit for the week, with Bitcoin recovering to $9,200 levels.

3-days in the red, however, were enough to leave Bitcoin in negative territory for the week.

Bitcoin would need to move back through the $9,200 pivot to bring the first major resistance level at $9,380 into play.

Support from the broader market would be needed for Bitcoin to break back through to $9,300 levels.

Barring an extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level and last weeks high $9,380 would likely cap any upside.

In the event of a breakout, Bitcoin could take a run at $9,500 levels before any pullback. The second major resistance level at $9,526 would likely cap any upside, however.

Failure to move back through the $9,200 pivot would bring support levels into play.

A pullback through to sub-$9,100 levels would bring the first major support level at $9,055 into play.

Barring an extended crypto sell-off, however, Bitcoin should steer clear of the second major support level at $8,879.0. The 23.6% FIB of $8,900 should limit any downside in the week.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin was down by 0.36% to $9,197.9. A mixed start to the week saw Bitcoin rise to an early Monday high $9,238.2 before falling to a low $9,191.2.

Bitcoin left the major support and resistance levels untested at the start of the week.

Cardanos ADA fell by 2.23% in the week ending 19th July. Following a 29.24% rally from the previous week, Cardanos ADA ended the week at $0.12409.

It was a mixed start to the week. Cardanos ADA rose to a Monday intraweek high $0.1369 before ending the day in the red.

Falling short of the first major resistance level at $0.1468, Cardanos ADA slid to a Thursday intraweek low $0.1169.

Steering clear of the first major support level at $0.10116, Cardanos ADA recovered to $0.12 levels to limit the downside.

4-days in the red that included a 3.49% loss on Thursday and 3.01% fall on Friday delivered the weekly loss. A 6.61% rally on Tuesday limited the downside for the week, however.

Cardanos ADA would need to move through the $0.1260 pivot to support a run at the first major resistance level at $0.1350.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Cardanos ADA to break back through to $0.130 levels.

Barring another extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level and last weeks high $0.1369 would likely cap any upside.

In the event of another breakout, the second major resistance level at $0.14596 and $0.15 levels could come into play.

Failure to move through the $0.1260 pivot could see Cardanos ADA see a 2nd consecutive week in the red.

A pullback through to sub-$0.12 levels would bring the first major support level at $0.1150 and 23.6% FIB of $0.1125 into play.

Barring an extended broader-market sell-off, however, Cardanos ADA should steer well clear of sub-$0.010 levels. The second major support level at $0.1060 should limit any downside.

Story continues

At the time of writing, Cardanos ADA was down by 0.92% to $0.12294. A bearish start to the week saw Cardanos ADA fall from an early Monday high $0.12444 to a low $0.12267.

Cardanos ADA left the major support and resistance levels untested at the start of the week.

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

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Bitcoin and Cardanos ADA Weekly Technical Analysis July 20th, 2020 - Yahoo Finance

Uncovering The Money Laundering Attempts Of Bitcoin Fraudsters Behind The Recent Twitter Scam – Forbes

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

A snap-shot investigation to follow the funds connected with yesterdays Twitter Hack of Jeff Bezos, ... [+] Elon Musk, and several celebrities to review where the fraudsters have transferred the funds into.

Performing an initial investigation to follow the funds related to the Twitter TWTR hack that happened on July 15 to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kanye West, Bill Gates and numerous other celebrities and executives of large technology companies, it is evident the many of those funds already hit reputable exchanges that might freeze the funds.

During the Twitter hack, the fraudsters, posing as celebrities, falsely informed users that they have decided to partner up with a mysterious organization called "CryptoForHealth" in order to 'give back to their community.' The scam has been covered extensively by several news outlets including Forbes contributors like Jasse Damiani, that reviewed the initial steps just after the hack.

As different celebrities were sharing and resharing those posts that turned out to be fraudulent, some of their followers decided to open up their own wallets and pay as well. More than $130,000 later, most of the posts had been removed, the website of CryptoForHealth shut down. Twitter stepped in to forbid some users to tweet, but it is high time to recover the funds to the victims or at least specify to which exchanges they have been sent.

Despite a common misperception as Bitcoin represents a pseudo-anonymous network, transactions performed on it are both visible to the general public and traceable. Addresses can be directly connected to particular exchanges.

As scammers are still moving funds between cryptocurrency wallets, investigators from all over the world have stepped in with the goal to identify types of exchanges and freeze the funds on different accounts.

From the initial review, it is evident that much of the funds have been transferred to Binance. In a recent statement to TechCrunch, Binance Security Team informed that they have been aware of the situation and launched an investigation, which is visible to the crypto community as their team marked several cryptocurrency wallets as fraudulent.

Earlier today, an article released by Cointelegraph revealed that addresses used by the hackers had previously been linked to Coinbase and BitPay, common names in the cryptocurrency exchange and merchant sphere.

According to our initial analysis the funds have reached many exchanges, but the core of the funds originated from the main Binance address. It is now clear that scammers were sending funds back and forth between different cryptocurrency addresses in an attempt to confuse law enforcement agents, wash them. Once completed fraudsters have sent a large parts of the funds to an address belonging to Binance yet again, which has been rather quickly discovered and flagged by the exchange.

Secondary besides Binance, it seems though that multiple exchanges like Bittrex, as well as MercadoBitcoin in Brazil have received funds from this scam already, said Sven Martinsson, the Founder & CEO of VALEGA Chain Analytics - a Blockchain Investigations and analytics firm working out of Finland.

Even though the investigation remains novel, due to the transparency of the open blockchain of Bitcoin, it is possible to follow different transactions to a different account at cryptocurrency exchange platforms. Being personally engaged in one such crypto exchange platform, competent and motivated compliance team members have a portfolio of tools and processes to stop such transactions in case they are being spotted. The fraudsters seem to know that so that there is a race for the fraudsters to try to exchange the funds to fiat currencies as soon as possible and Blockchain investigators to mark as many wallets as quickly as possible to freeze those funds.

Even though the identity of the scammers remains yet unknown, there are tools in place which allow for visualizing transactions between different accounts and exchanges that use the publicly available data and connect wallets to crypto exchanges.

Here are a couple of examples of how the fraudsters anticipated to hide their tracks. Everything starts on the left side in the middle of the graph, which represents the first address to which the scammers asked users to pay. Each additional connected line of dots represents their effort to hide their tracks and mix funds between different wallets and exchanges.

A more comprehensive description has been placed below each picture which represents a print screen out of a Blockchain Analytics Software.

Even though if this initial graph might not be the easiest to read, it represents the initial ... [+] address cryptocurrency address listed on the hacked addresses (red dot at the lower part of the picture on the left side). Once the scammers received the funds they started to distribute the funds to multiple different wallets. (the second line, looking from the left to the right). While receiving those funds scammers have been trying to transfer funds to more and new addresses to try to wash them to possibly exchange them back to FIAT currency. Green dots represent the addresses that already have been flagged as fraud, green represents addresses that have not YET been flagged in the system as of 6:30 PM CET. When expanding a few of those as an example, it is possible to see that a few were sent to an address that had not yet been associated with fraud or suspicious activities.

Zooming in closer to different dots allows us to directly view the cryptocurrency wallet address which has been used. It is connected to a particular wallet provider or a platform (with strong but not utmost certainty). In order to review where funds were directed and how much was sent.

Expanding further, one of the addresses gives an immediate hit on another Binance address (This ... [+] addresses has already been flagged by the exchange as of 6:30 PM CET)

It is visible that scammers used some of the addresses multiple times (the split the funds to ... [+] different addresses and send them to a new address) and not yet all of the wallets have been flagged as fraud.

Investigations performed by compliance teams take time as they are most likely performed by individuals who are working for different exchange platforms or geographies, so sometimes the funds are able to be transferred to an account before they are being flagged as fraudulent. Red accounts have been already marked as fraudulent.

By the time Binance, when this chart has been recorded most certainly the team behind Binance has ... [+] taken the appropriate countermeasures and flagged a Cryptocurrency wallet as Darknet wallet. Before this cryptocurrency wallet has been flagged, unfortunate significant amount of funds have passed across it to other addresses.

The fraudsters didnt stop at one platform there. Within hours, one of the cryptocurrency wallets in ... [+] which funds have not been moved, has finally initialled a transfer. (It is the red-dot at the bottom, which starts with Cpf)

Following each transaction and the connected spiderweb of transfers between cryptocurrency addresses helps to spot a time period in which fraudsters will try to wash funds with a legitimate exchange. As stated below, fraudsters launched a transfer to MercadoBitcoin in Brazil as well as Bittrex.com already.

The more paths have been explored the more exchange have been listed to which funds have been ... [+] transferred. This time funds were sent to a suspicious cluster (in yellow) of entities (mainly with tumblers and gambling companies, an easy way to launder money) Using the weakness of mostly national law enforcement agencies., fraudsters have approach many exchanges around the globe like MercadoBitcoin (an exchange in Brazil). Furthermore a Binance address to the left now considered a darknet entity.

This review is just a snapshot of the current stage of transfers performed by the fraudsters as of the afternoon of July 17th. It does not display traces in full to avoid obstructing justice or investigations. Even though it has been a Twitter hack and not a Bitcoin hack, the pseudo-anonymity of bitcoin and visibility of each transaction with tools like the wallet explorer does prove that the Crypto community is not helpless and knows more and more with each transaction the fraudsters perform. It is important to underline that it was not Bitcoin that got hacked, it was Twitter. Bitcoin was just the chosen means of payment.

Sven will release a collected investigation free of charge to anyone who can identify themself as an investigator in the process.

Disclaimer:

The transaction investigation remains ongoing. For security reasons and not to interfere with investigations, this is just a teaser to provide insights into different tactics of criminal networks. Exchanges in question have the appropriate means to stay compliant and do their reporting accordingly. This is NOT an attempt to defame or point any fingers and the statements are assumptions, not yet evidence. It remains a visualization of investigation that affected many users and the account holders on Twitter.

For transparency purposes - The contributor of this post is a Head of Compliance in one of the leading Cryptocurrency Exchanges in the Nordics called Safello.

He serves as a board advisor to Valega Chain whose team has launched an investigation to follow the stolen funds on his request. Statements about how Blockchain Analytics Tools work have been performed on the example of Valega Chain Analytics and should not be generalized to other Blockchain Analytics Tools as all of them have their own criteria, tools, and internal processes.

Uncovering The Money Laundering Attempts Of Bitcoin Fraudsters Behind The Recent Twitter Scam - Forbes

Is High-Frequency Trading the Reason Bitcoin Has Become Boring? – Cointelegraph

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

The Bitcoin (BTC) market has been quiet lately. A little too quiet.

As of Tuesday Bitcoins volatility levels had dropped to levels unseen since 2017. In recent weeks, Bitcoin has fallen behind as investors piled into altcoins such as Chainlink (LINK) and Cardano (ADA) .

One possible explanation for Bitcoins consolidation may be an increased presence of high-frequency trading (HFT) firms in crypto in recent months. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Bitfinex explained that he believes HFT is a major reason behind Bitcoins low volatility.

In crypto, we are back to the old days of HFT before it became the zero-sum game that it has become today. In crypto HFT firms can make a lot of money deploying relatively straightforward plays, such as cross-exchange arbitrage and exploiting the spread between one exchange and another.

HFT is a trading method that uses algorithms to transact a large number of orders in fractions of a second. It has existed in the cryptocurrency space for a long time. But just as billionaire Paul Tudor Jones revealed his Bitcoin holdings recently, other institutional investors are increasingly joining the market. This may explain the greater use of HFT.

Bitfinex, which claims to be huge for HFT in crypto, recently revealed that between 80 percent and 90 percent of volume on Bitfinex was now generated by HFT firms. Bitfinex partnered with Market Synergy and has been offering institutional standard cryptocurrency connectivity.

Bitfinex concludes the growing use of HFT represents increasing maturity in the digital asset space. But why would Bitcoin volatility go down with increased use of HFT? Ardoino explains the increased liquidity due to the surge of HFT tradings leads to low volatility:

As Bitcoin becomes an established asset class, we anticipate the high levels of volatility associated with cryptocurrency to recede, he explained. There is generally an inverse correlation between liquidity and volatility; i.e., higher liquidity tends to lead to lower price volatility.

The increasing presence of HFT firms in crypto seems to have added more liquidity to crypto exchanges. This provides sufficient orders for both sides of the order book and increases market efficiency, contributing to prolonged low volatility price consolidation in Bitcoin

Bitcoin is famous for moving aggressively for a short period of time. Last year, Tom Lee of Fundstrat reminded investors that the majority of Bitcoin (BTC) gains come in the ten best trading days of the year. However, the growing presence of HFT may be changing the rule of 10 best days as well.

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Is High-Frequency Trading the Reason Bitcoin Has Become Boring? - Cointelegraph

Where, Oh Where Has Bitcoin Volatility Gone? Part 2 – Cointelegraph

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

At the same time that volatility and short-term implied volatility have been sucked out of the market, longer dated options (six months or so until expiration) are still pricing closer to their historical average volatility in the 70% range. This steepness in implied volatility term structure suggests one of two things: Investors expect that this period of low volatility will be transitory and that a catalyst in the next couple of months will once again rock markets, or perhaps sellers of options are just not willing to make a longer-term bet, and as such, are not providing any supply in these longer-term options. The result is a steepness in term structure that could present an opportunity for the volatility-savvy trader.

Implied volatility is an interesting asset to trade. Most individual investors who use options as part of their investment strategy do so for the purpose of speculation or protection. They might even employ income generation strategies by selling options against their holdings. They tend to be focused on prices: What level do they think this asset can get to before expiration? Where would they be willing to sell it or buy it? While the nuances of volatility and options pricing may not be obvious to everyone, every trade that a trader makes is implicitly taking a stand on implied volatility.

On the other side of the individual investors trades are option market makers. These players think of almost nothing but implied volatility. The goal of a market maker is to keep their net position as flat as possible while collecting a bid/ask spread on each trade. The likelihood of order flow being balanced on every single option strike and expiry is essentially zero, so they use implied volatility curves and term structure to relate option prices to each other, keeping their risks balanced even if their position becomes a hodgepodge of long and short calls and puts at all different strikes and expirations. Option market-makers prefer to have all their risks balanced out, but when customer order flow is concentrated in one direction, sometimes that is simply not possible.

The result of this unbalanced order flow, with investors happily selling short-dated options while being skittish to sell longer dated options, has led to extreme steepness in the implied volatility term structure in Bitcoin (BTC) options. As of this writing, according to data analytics service Skew, the implication in options prices (as illustrated by forward implied volatility, which is the calculated volatility between two specific expiries) shows the expectation that volatility will realize 30% in the next week, the last week of July will see volatility of 50%, the month of August will see 60%, and the month of September will see 70%.

Perhaps the market is right and has great insight about when the current low volatility environment will end. But more likely, order flow is at such an imbalance between expiries that market-makers have twisted the term structure to levels that present some positive expectancy opportunities.

If traders wanted to express the opinion that the current cycle of low volatility reinforced by continued short-dated option selling will continue, they would do well to sell both calls and puts on various strikes with expiration dates in six to eight weeks, just after the inflection point where implied volatilities really start to drop off.

If the current environment continues, they will likely see gains not just from collecting decay on the option premium, but also from implied volatilities rolling down the term structure surface. If they wanted to, or needed to, for margin purposes, they could hedge some of the risk of an unexpected event by buying a few options in much longer dated expiries and a few contracts in cheap, short-dated expiries as well.

No one can predict exactly when the next high-volatility market event will come, but its likely not tomorrow. It is more likely to happen within the next month, and even more likely than that within the next two months.

It is very reasonable for volatility term structure to be upward sloping, but the current steepness in that slope implies a specific time frame for the reemergence of increased volatility coming in early August. Its entirely likely that this implication is priced into the Bitcoin options market not because its the actual forecast, but because there are plenty of investors willing to sell two-week options, while there are few willing to sell one-month and two-month options.

If a trader has the appetite for this risk and believes that there is no specific reason that realized volatility should double within the next several weeks, they could theoretically get paid a hefty premium for selling those options.

This is part two of a two-part series on Bitcoin volatility read part one on the rise and fall of BTC volatility here.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, readers their own research when making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

This article was co-authored by Chad Steinglass and Kristin Boggiano.

Chad Steinglass is the head of trading at CrossTower, an exchange operator. He has over 15 years of experience trading equity, index and credit derivatives. He was an options market-maker at Susquehanna and Morgan Stanley and the head trader for a division of Guggenheim. He was also a portfolio manager of capital structure arbitrage at Jefferies. He is an expert in market dynamics, market microstructure and automated market-making and trading systems.

Kristin Boggiano is president and co-founder at CrossTower, an exchange operator. Kristin is a structured products, regulatory and digital asset expert who brings over 20 years of experience as a trading and regulatory lawyer and over nine years in digital asset trading and regulation. Prior to founding CrossTower, Boggiano was a chief legal officer of AlphaPoint, managing director of an algorithmic trading platform at Guggenheim, and special counsel at Schulte Roth, where she founded the structured products and derivatives division and led the regulatory group for Dodd Frank. Kristin is also the founder of Digital Asset Legal Alliance and Women in Derivatives. She earned her law degree and MBA from Northeastern University and her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College.

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Where, Oh Where Has Bitcoin Volatility Gone? Part 2 - Cointelegraph

Most-wanted Wirecard executive reportedly owns significant sums of Bitcoin Report – Yahoo Finance

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

The former chief operating officer at disgraced payments firm Wirecard has reportedly brought "significant sums" of bitcoin following his escape from Germany, according to reporting by a leading German business newspaper Handelsblatt.

Jan Marsalek was a key figure behind the breakdown of Germany-based Wirecard, which has made headlines for filing for insolvency and allegations of improper accounting tied to billions of dollars that went missing from its balance sheet.

As per German publication Handelsblatt, Marsalek has been missing for weeks and he "is said to have brought significant sums to Russia in the form of bitcoins from Dubai, where Wirecard had dubious operations" as per a translation of a Sunday evening report. The report says he is in Moscow under the supervision of Russian military.

Marsaleks fascination with cryptocurrencies has been documented, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.

"Mr. Marsalek liked engaging in late-night discussions about cryptocurrencies and their ability to move money without a trace," a July report noted.

2020The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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Most-wanted Wirecard executive reportedly owns significant sums of Bitcoin Report - Yahoo Finance

Twitter Hack Used Bitcoin to Cash In: Here’s Why – CoinDesk – CoinDesk

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

Someone hacked Twitter Wednesday and used bitcoin to capitalize on it.

Bitcoin is an alternative money system based on the value of censorship resistance. In other words, Bitcoin was built from the ground up to evade third-party interference (think banks, governments and law enforcement), making it a natural tool in the hands of a world-class hacker.

Bitcoins value proposition can be broken into a few categories, all based on the technology under the hood.

Once the hacker gets it, its theirs

Bitcoin is electronic. A popular meme for bitcoin is magic internet money, which, in a sense, it is. Bitcoin operates natively online you can send bitcoin from your phone or computer to anyone else, just about anywhere in the world, in a few clicks, without anyone being able to stop you. And once youve sent it, you cant get it back.

That feature or in this case, a bother is a prime reason the Bitcoin blockchain exists. Bitcoin relies on what are called Peer-to-Peer (P2P) transactions so it cant be confiscated by middlemen such as law enforcement. Once the coins are in someone elses wallet, count them as good as gone.

Bitcoin is pseudonymous

Like many Twitter handles, Bitcoin is pseudonymous. We cant link an address to a personal identity very easily.

Stolen U.S. dollars (USD), on the other hand, would be near impossible to get into and out of a bank account without being flagged. Traditionally, money is moved from one account to another through a third party.

Legacy systems have the upside of being able to reverse transactions and attach identities to them. That is clearly a disadvantage to hackers. (Notably, reports surfaced of the hacker running a similar campaign on CashApp for USD).Bitcoin transactions, by comparison, are a lot harder to control.

Bitcoin is liquid

Bitcoin is also traded online in a lot of places. Holding bitcoins in your wallet wouldnt be worth much without people to swap dollars for bitcoins. Launched in 2009, bitcoin is the most established and most highly traded digital asset. Its also available on popular financial apps such as CashApp or PayPal.

Its common sense that the attackers would choose bitcoin. Bitcoin is the most censorship resistant and liquid asset in existence, Blockstream CSO Samson Mow said in a private message.

All this to say the Twitter hacker chose the right cryptocurrency to get U.S. dollars.

But bitcoin can be tracked and traced

Addresses can be tracked, however. And they can also be blackballed by others. By nature, the Bitcoin blockchain is 100% transparent. That means the ins and outs of transactions from one party to another are viewable for all to see with a little know-how.

For example, popular cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase would not allow users of its service to transfer funds to the Twitter hackers address.

Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis says the 12 or so bitcoins (worth about $110,000 at the time) the hacker netted are already on the move. But we can see where they are going. Some firms are even able to match meatspace identities with blockchain ones based on small details hackers overlook.

Having said that, there are tools available to people who really want to obfuscate their transactions, and whoever perpetrated this particular heist seems to be prepared to take measures to protect their loot.

At the end of the day, its important that people be wary of promises of free money on the internet whether that comes in the form of dollars, pounds or bitcoin.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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Twitter Hack Used Bitcoin to Cash In: Here's Why - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

Bitcoin SV DevCon 2020: Leveraging Bitcoin services to thrive – CoinGeek

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

The number of applications built on Bitcoin SV is steadily growing, as more developers and businesses leverage the networks low fees and massive scalability. At the inaugural Bitcoin SV DevCon virtual event, the founders of Money Button, Codugh and Tokenized joined Brendan Lee to talk about how their services are being utilized by the Bitcoin ecosystem, their unique features and what the future holds.

For Codughs Shashank Singhal, his interest in blockchain technology dates back to 2016. While he and his fellow cofounder Andrew Snow built briefly on the Ethereum blockchain, its inability to scale proved to be a hindrance.

We need a blockchain that can handle a large volume of transactions. Weve seen from apps like WeatherSV that BSV can handle massive transactions on-chain. Low fees on BSV allow for micro transactions which is essential to us. The dedication to a stable protocol means we can be certain that we wont encounter any big changes or struggle in the future.

Money Button has become one of the most popular wallets in the Bitcoin space, but as founder Ryan X. Charles revealed, its more than just a wallet. Charles delved into some of the advanced features and how developers are exploiting them to develop their platforms.

Money Button now boasts of over a million button swipes and is now integrated into more than 150 active applications. Some of the renowned apps using Money Button include Twetch, Cityonchain, and PowPing. Charles singled out Baemail for its innovative use of Money Button, being the first app that made use of the advanced features such as the encryption of data inside a Bitcoin transaction.

Despite the platforms immense success, Charles believes that Bitcoin appsMoney Button includedare still very niche.

I dont think weve reached a mainstream audience yet. We still have a long way to go to reach a genuinely mainstream audience. Thats why we spend a lot of time worrying about user experience because we want to ensure that ordinary end users can use the app.

Tokenized CEO James Belding concurred with Charles, pointing out that we are just scratching the surface of whats possible with Bitcoin. Belding remarked, I think the concept of smart contracts has barely been touched in terms of where it needs to go to become a mainstream competing product.

Tokenized allows users to tokenize any ownership certificate, from high value assets like stocks and bonds, to loyalty points, tickets and gym membership.

The three founders also shared the advanced features their firms have been working on. Money Buttons invisible button has opened up a world of possibilities, allowing app developers to customize the user experience. Codugh has been in a closed beta, with Singhal calling on developers to sign on to the waitlist. The wider release is scheduled to take place in three months, he revealed. For Tokenized, the focus has been on e-money, with the company submitting a whitepaper to the Bank of England that lays out how e-money on the Tokenized platform would function.

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

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Bitcoin SV DevCon 2020: Leveraging Bitcoin services to thrive - CoinGeek

How long does it take to mine a Bitcoin? – Decrypt

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

Bitcoin (BTC) uses the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus algorithm as the basis of its security. This means that like many other cryptocurrencies, a network of cryptocurrency miners is used to discover blocks and add pending transactions to them, to render them irreversible.

The block discovery process, which takes approximately 10 minutes per block, also results in the minting of a fixed number of new Bitcoin per block. This is currently set at 6.25 BTC per block, but halves approximately every four years (210,000 blocks), reducing the number of Bitcoin minted with each newly discovered block.

This BTC is provided as an incentive to the miner (or miners if using a mining pool) that discovered the block.

Although it takes 10 minutes to discover each block and each block yields a 6.25 BTC reward for the miner that successfully discovered it, it's important to understand that the entire Bitcoin mining network is essentially competing in this block discovery process.

This means that only a single miner in the entire mining network will actually successfully discover the blockand since there are potentially tens of thousands of Bitcoin miners in operation, the odds of single-handedly discovering a block is quite low.

For this reason, the vast majority of Bitcoin miners work together as part of a mining pool, combining their hash rate to stand a better chance of discovering a block. Then, regardless of which miner in the pool actually discovers the block, the rewards are distributed evenly throughout the pool.

Consequently, a miner that contributes 1% of a pool's hash rate, will also receive 1% of the block rewards it accrues.

F2Pool is currently the largest pool by hash rate share, contributing around 20.52 EH/s of the total Bitcoin hash rate of 123.39 EH/s. This 16.6% hash rate share essentially means that around 16.6% of all newly minted BTC are mined by this poolequivalent to 149.4 BTC per day.

An individual miner that contributes 1% of the pool's hash rate (~205 PH/s) would earn approximately 1.494 BTC per day. This means a miner would need close to 132 PH/s of hash rate to mine an average of 1 BTC per day at current difficulty levels.

To put this into perspective, this is the equivalent of 1,200 Antminer S19 Pro mining rigscurrently one of the fastest ASIC miners on the market. The total cost for this setup would likely be somewhere around $2.4 million, assuming a unit price of $2,000/ea.

For those with a smaller budget, it would take a single Antminer S19 Pro a total of 1,200 days to generate 1 BTC in rewards when working with a mining poolthat's the equivalent of generating 0.0000833 BTC/day in rewards.

To calculate how long it would take another mining rig to generate 1 BTC in rewards, you can simply plug its hash rate into the following equation: 1 / (hash rate (in PH/s)) * 0.0076. This result will produce the number of days it will take to generate 1 BTC in rewards at current difficulty levels.

Although most Bitcoin miners tend to focus their efforts as part of a mining pool, it's also possible to go it alone.

Unlike Bitcoin mining pools, which essentially guarantee smaller regular payouts and eliminate most of the risks involved with Bitcoin mining, solo mining is more of a gamblebut can also be more rewarding. Since solo miners don't need to pay any mining pool fees, the overall mining profitability can be slightly higher than working with a pool, particularly for those running a sizeable mining operation.

Statistically speaking, a solo miner looking to generate 1 BTC per day would need to contribute just over 0.11% of the total Bitcoin hash rate. As we previously mentioned, this is equivalent to around 132PH/s or the combined output of 1,200 Antminer S19 Pro mining units. On average this mining operation would discover a block yielding a 6.26 BTC reward every 6.25 days, which averages out to 1 BTC/day.

Because even gigantic 1,200 rig mining operations would take almost a week to discover a single block, miners with just a few machines would likely go years without discovering a block, making the practice extremely risky in most cases.

The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.

Originally posted here:

How long does it take to mine a Bitcoin? - Decrypt

The Origins of the World’s Oldest Bitcoin Metric, Explained – CoinDesk – CoinDesk

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

The concept of bitcoin days destroyed (BDD) was introduced in 2011, two years after the creation of the worlds first cryptocurrency,bitcoin. People were already beginning to create blockchain metrics to measure on-chain transaction activity and value.

Once the first cryptocurrency metric was created, BDD was quickly followed by a plethora of other unique metrics including unspent transaction output (UTXO), market value to realized value (MVRV) and spent output profit ratio (SOPR). Despite the sophistication of cryptocurrency data and analysis since 2011, BDD remains a fundamental metric to understanding and valuing bitcoin.

[BDD] is a metric that reflects the collective action of long-term [BTC] holders, said CoinDesk senior research analyst Galen Moore on a special podcast episode about the metric. Whats the psychology of the long-term holder? You can see that in a collective way [through BDD] in a way I dont think is possible in other asset categories.

Moore interviewed Coin Metrics Lucas Nuzzi on July 7, to learn more about BDDs use cases and limitations. In a follow-up discussion July 9, Moore noted no other financial asset enables traders and investors to see the activity of long-term asset holders as transparently as bitcoin.

To this, CoinDesk research intern Duy Nguyen noted the motivations behind why long-term holders are moving funds at any given time is still largely a guessing game that requires further off-chain analysis beyond the scope of BDD.

The Origins of the World's Oldest Bitcoin Metric, Explained - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

News.Bitcoin.com Lead Writer Jamie Redman Named One of the Best Crypto Bloggers | Featured – Bitcoin News

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

Lead Writer at News.Bitcoin.com, Jamie Redman has made Redeeem.coms list of twelve influential go-to crypto bloggers. Redeeem says the list comprises names behind some of the most informative crypto news articles.

In its citation, Redeeem says Jamie Redman, who is also a crypto meme designer, is one to follow for crypto enthusiasts. Redeeem also lists some of Redmans best works to date.

A decentralized crypto fan, Redman has been in the crypto space since 2011 and has written over 3,300 articles since 2015 with just News.Bitcoin.com alone.

Redman believes the community should be focused on moving forward instead of squabbling endlessly.

Commenting on this recognition, Redman said:

Its an honor to be named by Redeem.com as one of the top twelve crypto bloggers among some of the writers I respect and read regularly. Blockchain and cryptocurrency solutions are hard to understand and its up to writers to break it down for people and make comprehension easier.

Redman adds that crypto writers have played an extremely important role when it comes to the adoption of crypto assets, as our words describe the myriad of benefits this technology has to offer.

Meanwhile, also making Redeeems 12 Best Crypto Bloggers list is Pete Rizzo, a former editor with Coindesk and Roger Huang, cryptocurrency writer with Forbes. Also, two female crypto bloggers, Portia Burton from the blog Blockchain Explainer, and Angeline Mbogo from the news outlets Bitcoin Africa, Afritechnews.

Crypto bloggers remain instrumental in pushing back against some misrepresentations and mistruths often peddled by ignorant but influential individuals.

Bloggers have also called out the mainstream media when it publishes misleading stories about bitcoin or the general crypto space.

The recent hacking of verified Twitter accounts and the associated donation scam gave fresh ammunition to cryptocurrency critics. Bloggers like Redman and many others have been on hand to set the record straight.

What do you think of Redmans recognition? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, blog.redeeem.com, Mike Townsend

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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News.Bitcoin.com Lead Writer Jamie Redman Named One of the Best Crypto Bloggers | Featured - Bitcoin News

Why Decentralized Finance Through Bitcoin Can Be A Great Thing For The World – Programming Insider

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

It has been an established statement that cryptocurrency or the bitcoin runs in a decentralized network.

The term decentralization has been there is the society for quite long now. It is an important term which is actually something greater than what we actually know. The concept of decentralization has always been an important idea that has never been very clear. Here we will try to clarify the idea of decentralization.

A Trustless System

Well, this is one of the best systems, as there is no authority linked to it and no one is responsible for anything. You can withdraw and deposit whatever amount you want easily in your crypto wallet.

A trustless system is a system that allows you to do anything with your money and no one except you are responsible for whatever happens to your crypto asset. Here you do not send the money to another user, you send the crypto to another address.

In the case of the trustless system, the system is such that you can use which no one would care about. In the case of a bank, one is always responsible send just a limited amount of money is transferred. But in the case of cryptocurrency, the entire amount which could be a huge amount can be sent to anyone. But in the case of bank transactions that are not possible, while on the other hand, you can send money from were to wherever you want. You can send cryptos in large amounts from one part of the earth to the other. While the geographical limitation is there in banks, it takes a lot of pain to transfer any money to any other country.

Although this system is trustless which means you can send and receive money from people who you have never met or ever had any conversation with such people.

Low Risk

If you are a little careful with the kind of investment you do or the way you use your cryptocurrency, you will get to know that actually the risk is very less in the crypto market. Keep reading to know the impact of crypto currency in global economy then you would be able to do some low-risk investment.

Cryptocurrency is highly volatile hence the risk associated with the cryptocurrency is really high. But you have also seen millionaires and billionaires, so how do you think they escape the risk of the cryptocurrency?

It sounds really difficult to deal with such a volatile kind of cryptocurrency, but even then, people do become a millionaire. It is just because they know when to trade and how to trade. The price and the value of the bitcoin would rise and fall wherever necessary but then you will soon realize that if you trade properly, you will be able to do great business.

If you know when to use your crypto and when to trade crypto, then you will also know that when would you meet a crash in the market and when would you be able to sell off the shares.

The Legitimacy of the Crypto Market

Some people think that the crypto market is not a legal market, it is because a lot of the darknet activities happen through this platform. But this does not mean that it is actually an illegal activity. Many of the countries have actually made the use of bitcoin legal and they want to encourage more and more people to use crypto.

During the COVID-19 it has been seen that in many of the countries the fiat currency was not been able to cope with the financial crisis in the market. While some places like South Africa and Venezuela accepted the cryptocurrency like bitcoin to bring back the economic condition of the country. They believed that it is not possible because the value of bitcoin fluctuates while the fiat currency remains what it is, hence they feel it is not possible.

It can be concluded looking at the economic condition of the world that using the decentralized currency is the best kind of currency that must be used. This will help you to get back the economic condition of the country properly.

Why Decentralized Finance Through Bitcoin Can Be A Great Thing For The World - Programming Insider

Money Reimagined: This Isn’t Good for Bitcoin – CoinDesk – CoinDesk

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

No, blockchain does not fix this.

By this I dont mean centrally controlled databases that are vulnerable to attack, the problem highlighted by this weeks massive Twitter hack.

I mean the meta problem of yet more bad publicity, with the word bitcoin again associated with fraud and unsavory behavior, a picture that cryptocurrency advocates will again struggle to avoid. That problem will indirectly but greatly contribute to ongoing public pressure for regulatory constraint on the cryptocurrency industry, which will impede innovation in the sector and its prospects to bring positive change to a broken financial system.

A related problem is that Crypto Twitter is an echo chamber. It is too smart for its own good. Within that nerdy hive mind, form doesnt matter. Its all about substance.

Youre readingMoney Reimagined, a weekly look at the technological, economic and social events and trends that are redefining our relationship with money and transforming the global financial system. You can subscribe to this and all of CoinDesksnewsletters here.

Bitcoin isnt a crime, its just code.

The hack will open eyes to the failings of a centralized system.

Decentralization is now inevitable.

Oh, how I wish those sentiments, expressed repeatedly over Twitter this week, were absorbed by normies. Sadly, it wont be the case.

In two consecutive tweets, Blockstack CEO Muneeb Ali laid out the challenge between what should be and what, sadly, will be.

Might the spectacular breach of Twitters defenses eventually convince people to abandon the centralized internet platforms that control their data? Maybe. But many in the mainstream will share the views of New York Magazines Josh Barro, who argued, poorly, that the hack wouldnt have happened if we banned cryptocurrencies.

Barro is a smart, influential columnist, respected on both sides of the political divide. Its counterproductive to call him a would-be Communist moron, as this Crypto Twitter member did, alongside many others derogatory comments. It signals more about the critic than the criticism, helping perpetuate negative stereotypes of the crypto community.

A far better response came from Ideo CoLabs Ian Lee, who highlighted Barros error in conflating technology with a crime.

But in the age of social media, constructive nuance like that gets lost in the noise of ad hominem attacks and invective.

Thats a problem because Twitter is a powerful factor in public debate. The performance of the conversation the form, as much as the substance matters for how public opinion develops.

And that matters because public opinion feeds into regulation, which in turn can impede innovation.

DeFi in the crosshairs?

This comes amid signs U.S. regulators are focusing on some of the more innovative crypto financial engineering projects.

On Monday, news broke that the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity and Futures Trading Commission had forced two separate settlements, worth $150,000 each, out of Abra Global, the crypto-based provider of synthetic digital asset products.

Abra, which counts American Express and Indian billionaire Ratan Tata among its investors, has long been seen as one of the most innovative companies in the crypto industry. It launched in 2014 with what was then a radical idea for a crypto-collateralized synthetic stablecoin enabling peer-to-peer remittances from the U.S. to the Philippines. (Abra wasnt providing an actual token to users, but a contract giving them rights to a fixed-dollar value worth of underlying bitcoin, a deal it achieved via some sophisticated hedging techniques and by using the intermediary-free Bitcoin blockchain as the settlement layer.)

More recently, Abra took the same synthetic assets model to offer non-custodial derivative-like investment exposure to a range of assets, including both crypto tokens and traditional financial instruments. In effect, it allowed anyone in the world to place bets of any size on the direction of U.S. stocks and bonds.

Thats what got Abra into trouble. The SEC determined it was offering security-based swaps, which precluded it from selling to U.S. customers not classified as accredited investors. Although Abra took steps to geofence the American market from its product, the regulators found it hadnt done enough.

The fines wont derail Abra, which has a growing global base of customers. But the action underscores the challenges for crypto companies doing innovative things in the U.S. against what continues to be a somewhat hostile posture from the SEC. (The CFTC has generally taken a more accommodating stance toward cryptocurrency innovation. Its former chairman, Christopher Giancarlo, is now driving the charge for the U.S. government to embrace a tokenized version of a digital dollar.)

In particular, there are risks for the Decentralized Finance, or DeFi, movement. Abra is not formally a DeFi provider, but its model using underlying cryptocurrencies as collateral to assure stability and blockchains for an intermediary-free, low-friction settlement rail shares similarities with this burgeoning industry.

Theres no reason to suggest DeFi leaders like MakerDAO and Compound are in breach of securities, derivatives or money transmission laws. But you can bet that Washington regulators now have their eyes on an industry thats bringing services such as collateralized lending and interest rate benchmarking traditionally the domain of highly regulated financial institutions into a decentralized setting.

The DeFi industry was perhaps too small to matter to regulators before this. But, although the $2.6 billion in value now locked in DeFi contracts is still just a fraction of the trillions in traditional lending markets, its now big enough to get on regulators radars.

'Collateral' damage

This is why the Twitter fallout matters. If cryptocurrency continues to be a dirty word in Washington, political pressure will come to bear on the agencies seeking to regulate the industry.

DeFi is not immune from all that.

To be sure, the industry could benefit from more smart regulation. Legal clarity and reliable protection from scammers could help expand DeFi adoption and drive progress from a speculative ecosystem to one that generates valuable credit products and risk management tools.

But if the regulatory backlash is too blunt, it could do great harm to innovation. DeFi development can and will continue offshore. But as Abras experience shows, the global digital economys borderless nature makes it hard for companies to comply with regulations everywhere even when they want to. So the regulatory risk will continue to dangle over the heads of innovators.

Thats a pity, because while participants face real risks in the freewheeling, unregulated world of DeFi, the ideas generated there offer an exciting reimagining of the financial system. Whether it ends up looking anything like the current Ethereum-based DeFi ecosystem or something else, the prospect of reducing gatekeeper friction in finance is appealing in a world where exclusion from credit often defines the difference between rich and poor.

DeFi leaders have lawyered up in a bid to stay compliant. Some of the issues they face were discussed in a DeFi regulation workshop CoinDesk hosted during our virtual Consensus: Distributed event in May. There, Ropes & Grey attorney Marta Belcher eloquently argued that regulators may even be in breach of developers First Amendment constitutional rights if they constrain efforts to writing open-source code for decentralized communities.

But do not underestimate the power of Washington or the extent to which social media-infused hysteria can energize those who wield that power.

This is why the messaging around events like this Twitter attack matters. At times like this, crypto thought leaders should all try to take the high road.

CoinDesk Research covers quarterly data in crypto markets including volatility, correlation, volume and returns of the CoinDesk 20 list of crypto assets. In this report, we also cover derivatives markets, synthetic bitcoins, BTC versus ETH, central bank digital currencies and the return of aging bitcoin mining equipment; and look at the relationship (or lack thereof) between online sports betting and crypto markets. Sign up to download the free report.

A history lesson

A common theme here at Money Reimagined is the current financial system tends to serve those with access to financial assets while creating barriers for those on the lower rungs of society. This is a particularly important issue for assessing the impact of the Federal Reserves massive quantitative easing program in response to the COVID-19 crisis. I continue to believe the real risks from that program, at least for now, lie far more with asset price inflation, and its accompanying impact on income inequality, than with inflation. Global demand for dollars is just too big and the economic fallout from the pandemic too great for any monetary oversupply to unleash an accelerated increase in consumer prices.

So, it was quite impactful for me this week to discover the annotated historical charts on equality presented in a colorfully named site Id never encountered before: WTFHappenedin1971. The reference to 1971 is, of course, the so-called Nixon Shock, the moment when the U.S. took the dollar off its peg to gold, abandoning the core anchor of the Bretton Woods global financial system established in 1944. It was also when the worlds central banks suddenly gained fiat monetary powers, an unimpeded capacity to create money, the very powers the Fed is now drawing on to fight the COVID-19 recession.

The classic hard money, anti-1971 argument is that central banks degrade peoples wealth by inflating the monetary base, though strong arguments are made on the other side that fiat monetary creation power enables them to better manage economic cycles, and that a contained amount of inflation is necessary to achieve that. That debate hasnt been resolved for centuries and may never be. Perhaps its less controversial to talk about the unequal distribution of that monetary policys impact. This chart from WTFHappenedin1971 shows the effect on income equality since those monetary powers were given to central banks half a century ago.

Notably, the chart is from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank typically described as progressive and that earns a Left rating on the spectrum provided by AllSides.com. Its not the only one from a left-leaning organization thats included in The WTFHappenedin1971 site. Another from the Economic Policy Institute shows a striking divergence between productivity expansion and the relative stagnation of real wages since 1971.

In other words, a site thats implicitly making the typically conservative argument for a return to the gold standard or to bitcoin-like hard money principles is cleverly drawing on the observations of the left to make its point. The American left typically favors government activism via money and fiscal policy to attack poverty, not strict constraints on monetary issuance.

Libertarians argue, with some validity, the left simply doesnt see how fiat money inflation hurts the poor by eating into their buying power. But the left says thats offset by the benefits of higher income from jobs created via monetary stimulus and easier credit.

Where might these positions align around this clear inequality divide? Around something that I see as a bigger reason to embrace decentralized, peer-to-peer cryptocurrencies than the strict scarcity function of bitcoins monetary policy: the excessive power of financial intermediaries. Inequality has gone hand in hand with the financialization of the American economy, where finance and financial groups have held increasing sway over the economy.That trend accelerated dramatically in the post-1971 era because of the political and economic clout that Wall Street earned for itself as the de facto agents of monetary and financial regulatory policy. Disintermediating that is where the real opportunities lie for crypto.

Global town hall

CHIMERICA. Before there were reserve-backed stablecoins like tether and USDC, there were currency boards. Under that rigid currency peg model, a countrys monetary authority commits to hold in reserve the full value of its currency in some other countrys currency and promises holders of the local currency to honor any redemption requests at a fixed exchange rate. Some currency boards have failed spectacularly Argentinas is the case par excellence but some have been a force for stability and growth. Hong Kongs Linked Exchange Rate System, which has pegged the Hong Kong dollar to the U.S. dollar since 1983, is mostly an example of success. Thats probably because, unlike Argentinas agricultural export-driven economy, Hong Kongs revolves around finance, which thrives on stability. Ending the peg would be extremely harmful to that economy, which is why hawks within the Trump Administration were reportedly keen to undermine it in retaliation for Chinas increasing control over HKs citizens. This week less trigger-happy souls apparently won the day as Trump ruled out taking such action.

Presumably, someone demonstrated to Trump the enormous harm such actions would have on American financial interests. The peg creates strong synchronicity between U.S. banks and the many foreign-owned banks (including U.S. subsidiaries) based in Hong Kong. Hurting them would diminish the United States global financial clout. It might also incentivize China to retaliate by dumping its giant holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds to accelerate the end of the dollars reserve currency status. However, as withU.S. interests in the Hong Kong peg, such actions by Beijing would be counter to Chinas interests in financial stability. Whether they like it or not, both countries are joined at the hip by intertwined policy structures, forming what the financial historian Niall Ferguson and the economist Moritz Schularick described as Chimerica.

HOME SWEET BANK. If theres a number from this past week that matters for the prospects of U.S. economic recovery, its 2.98 percent. Thats the record-low level to which U.S. mortgage rates dropped as the continued economic crisis and the Feds relentless monetary expansion efforts pushed benchmark bond yields ever lower. This powerful market shift has the potential to work as a countervailing force for economic recovery. Some 65 percent American households own their home, and theres now an incentive for them to refinance their mortgages or take out a home equity loan, creating financial liquidity thats much needed in these difficult times. Americans might not have direct access to the Fed stimulus dollars slushing around financial markets, but in this way they can turn the equity in their home into something of a bank.

MODELING VALUE. Valuing crypto assets has been a challenge for some time. How does one put a value on a token without an explicit return built into it, such as a promise of interest payments or dividends, or a real-world utility function such as oil or some other commodity? Well, analysts are still trying to figure that out, with multiple methodologies being applied. In this report, the first of two on crypto valuation by Coin Metrics, partners in our new Research Hub, Kevin Lu and other members of the team lay out a series of quite different approaches. All have some merit. But of course the lack of consistency makes it hard to settle on a commonly held market view. Should we be worried about that? How can something be considered valuable if theres no consensus on how to measure that value? Never fear, says Coin Metrics, this is a process that takes time. And to back that up, they conclude with this statement: The Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602, was the first corporate entity to issue bonds and shares to the public, and in doing so became the worlds first formally listed public company. It then took a period of over 300 years for the necessary foundational concepts to be developed until the formal discipline of equity valuation was established in the 1930s.

Relevant reads

Everything We Know About the Bitcoin Scam Rocking Twitters Most Prominent Accounts. Among Crypto Twitter dwellers, for whom the meme flow of the cryptocurrency community is like a lifeblood, Wednesdays massive hack against the social media platform felt profoundly disorientating. CoinDesk reporter Danny Nelsons tick-tock breakdown makes for compelling reading on how the crisis rapidly mushroomed.

Hong Kong Citizens Turn to Stablecoins to Resist National Security Law. Hong Kongers may not yet need to fear the end of their currencys dollar peg, but many are now fearing surveillance of their HK dollar transactions after the introduction of a new security law that aims to quell opposition to the Chinese Communist Party. Our reporter David Pan discovered that a number of them appear to have found a payment solution to avoid Beijings prying eyes: stablecoins.

Bank of England Considering a Central Bank Digital Currency, Governor Says. The Bank of England was one of the first major central banks to explore the prospect of a digital currency after bitcoins invention sparked interest in such ideas. The project then went into a kind of hiatus while former Governor Mark Carney started floating even bigger ideas with his proposal for a new digital international hegemonic currency to replace the dollars reserve role. Now, under new Governor Andrew Bailey, a British CBDC is back on the table, as CoinDesks Sebastian Sinclair reports.

Five Years On, Ethereum Really Is the Minecraft of Crypto-Finance. In the 2010s, the online world-building game Minecraft enjoyed surging popularity among pre-teens and teenagers a generation that included a young Russian-Canadian called Vitalik Buterin. This opinion piece from Camila Russo, author of the new book The Infinite Machine, offers a reminder of just how young Buterin was (19 years old) when he invented Ethereum.

Russian Activists Use Bitcoin, and the Kremlin Doesnt Like It. In Russia, it often seems President Vladimir Putin controls everything most importantly, national elections, in which he routinely earns overwhelming majorities in the popular vote. But as CoinDesks Anna Baydakova reports, he cant control Bitcoin, which gives Putins opponents a type of freedom they otherwise struggle to obtain.

How a Digital Dollar Can Make the Financial System More Equitable. If we want digital dollars to foster a more equitable financial system, design is everything, say Patrick Murck and Linda Jeng, both lawyers at Transparent Systems. They offer a radical proposal for achieving such results: a cooperative model that puts community ownership and governance, rather than centralized or corporate control, at the core of the digital currency network.

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Money Reimagined: This Isn't Good for Bitcoin - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

Tech watchdog calls on Facebook Oversight Board members to demand real power or resign – TechCrunch

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

A new policy-focused nonprofit that emerged from the recent wave of big tech scrutiny is calling for members of Facebooks Oversight Board to either step up or step down. In an open letter, Accountable Tech urges the five U.S.-based Facebook Oversight Board members to demand the Board be given real authority or quit their positions.

Each of you were selected to serve on this Board because of your outspoken commitment to free expression, human rights, and democratic values, the letters authors write. Now is the time to uphold those principles. We humbly ask that you refuse to be complicit in this Facebook charade that you demand sweeping and immediate changes, or walk away.

Accountable Tech is a progressive project founded by grassroots campaign organizer and director of the 2017 Tax March, Nicole Gill, and Jesse Lehrich, who served as foreign policy spokesperson for Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential bid. Lehrich worked on the Clinton campaigns response to Russian disinformation efforts that year, giving him a front row seat to emerging online threats to U.S. elections.

Facebook specializes in window dressing, Gill told TechCrunch. They have been touting the Oversight Board for years as this grandiose solution, but the platforms problems are more urgent than ever, and the Board is powerless.

A handful of other groups also signed the open letter, including the Center For American Progress Action Fund, Free Press and the Sierra Club. The letter cites findings from Facebooks recent civil rights audit that cast doubt on the boards real power and also notes the oversight bodys delayed timeline. First announced in late 2018, the board wont be up and running in time for the 2020 election.

Responding to criticism, the Facebook Oversight Boards head of communications Dex Hunter-Torricke defended the boards timeline as necessary given its mandate to evaluate many of the most challenging content issues on Facebook and Instagram. Hunter-Torricke added that the boards decisions on what content should be allowed or removed will be final and binding.

Building an institution capable of making thoughtful decisions on issues with enormous significance for communities around the world is something that takes time, Hunter-Torricke said. The Board is moving as quickly as possible to go operational, while acting with care.

Because it is ostensibly tasked with making decisions about what content should be removed from Facebook and Instagram, in theory the board could have played a role in ridding those platforms of election-related misinformation a looming threat with November around the corner. But restrictive bylaws coupled with a focus on reviewing content takedowns rather than content left up meant the oversight effort was widely regarded as toothless from the outset.

Board aside, Facebook is making some efforts to at least disseminate useful voting information to users, a defensive posture the company feels more comfortable in compared to playing offense against potential rule breaking. Last week, the company rolled out info labels on all voting-related posts from federal elected officials that link to vetted election information, a feature that will soon expand to all voting posts in the U.S.

In early June, Accountable Tech launched a memorable Facebook ad campaign targeting the companys employees on their own platform. The ads, which urged Facebook workers to hold the company to account, came a day after some employees staged a virtual walkout to protest a now-infamous post in which the president threatened to shoot people protesting the police killing of George Floyd.

Facebook also faced scrutiny recently for hosting Trumps false claims about mail-in voting and those falsehoods remain live on the platform without context or correction. These instances and others are cause for concern as the stakes for social platforms during the 2020 election inch higher and higher, worries made explicit by the open letters authors.

As we enter an unprecedented election seasonamid a global pandemic, an inflection point for racial justice, and a crisis of truthwe cannot accept Facebooks toxic status quo, much less a toothless Oversight Board that lends it a false air of legitimacy.

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Tech watchdog calls on Facebook Oversight Board members to demand real power or resign - TechCrunch

Recovery from Covid-19 will be threatened if we don’t learn to control big tech – The Guardian

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

Last Wednesday, Twitter suffered the biggest hacking attack in its history. A scammer got into its system, probably by hacking the account of someone working in the company, and acquired some of the special privileges that internal staff possess in order to do their work. This enabled the intruder to take over the accounts of some very prominent Twitter users, including Barack Obama, though not interestingly Donald Trump, to send out invitations to donate Bitcoin to a particular cryptographic wallet that would then return twice the amount donated.

Youd have to be pretty dumb to fall for this, though apparently some people did. In fact, it was just a variation on a known scam-genre. What made it distinctive was the spoofing of accounts of prominent people.

We now know a bit about how this was accomplished, essentially via activating a password-reset process. Twitter says theres no evidence that most users passwords were compromised. Its less forthcoming about whether the direct messages (DMs) sent by the compromised accounts were accessed. If they were, this might turn out to be a really big deal because, scandalously, DMs are still not encrypted.

Although the scam itself was laughable, the implications for Twitter and the world are not. When it launched in 2006, Twitter looked like a rather sweet joke but it has now morphed into a blend of things, both positive and negative: the worlds newswire; a conduit for all kinds of good, bad and indifferent information; a battleground for what the Oxford scholar Philip Howard once called Lie Machines; and Donald Trumps megaphone.

So what happens on Twitter now really matters. In 2013, for example, a hacker took over the Associated Press account and falsely reported that there had been two explosions in the White House and that President Obama had been injured. The stock market briefly dropped like a stone.

The pandemic has made us realise the extent to which the internet is the critical infrastructure of 21st century life

One of the things the pandemic has done is to make everyone realise the extent to which the internet and the services that run on it has become the critical infrastructure of 21st-century life. A survey of 2,000 Americans conducted last week, for example, found that 77% of those interviewed said they dont know what theyd do on a daily basis without the technology; similar experiences are reported everywhere.

The kinds of lockdown weve experienced would have been impossible to manage in the pre-internet age. Take just one example. Last December, Zoom had 10 million daily meeting participants; by last month, that figure had grown to 300 million. Much the same is reported for Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Ciscos Webex and other conferencing tools.

There are, however, a couple of major downsides to this massive increase in our dependence on the technology. The first concerns what security specialists call the attack surface the different points where a hacker can try to intrude on, and exploit, an environment. The key to computer security is to reduce the attack surface as much as possible. However, the pandemic has forced us to make it as large as possible.

We now have hundreds of millions of non-technical employees working from home on insecure laptops, using flaky (and often hackable) network connections to ferry sensitive or confidential data to and from their physical workplaces. In other words, the lockdown has created a hackers dreamworld an unimaginable forest of low-hanging fruit.

The result? Cybercrime is one of the fastest-growing businesses. An IBM spokesman was reported the other day as saying the company had seen a 6,000% increase in Covid-related spam at the height of the pandemic. A typical example (from US experience): an email dispatched to people who are desperate for PPP [the US Paycheck Protection Program]. It installs malware into their computers, steals all their information [and] says, If you dont pay us a ransom we will infect you and your family with Covid-19. Hospitals in Europe dealing with coronavirus patients have had ransomware attacks. The FBI is reporting a massive increase in attacks. And so it goes on.

Social media platforms are unable to control, effectively, the volume of conspiracy theory, disinformation and garbage

The second, and potentially more lethal, downside of the pandemic comes from the failure of social-media platforms to curb virus-related disinformation. It has become abundantly clear since 2016 that Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter are unable to control, effectively, the volume of conspiracy theories, disinformation and other garbage that pollute their privately owned public spaces.

At the root of this incapacity lie two factors. One is the sheer scale of the volume of content that has to be moderated; machine-learning technology can help with this but it is clearly not up to coping with the malign ingenuity of manipulative humans. The other is that the business models of the platforms, which prioritise user engagement, militate against more robust editorial control.

Given that, as societies try to recover from the pandemic, an alarming scenario begins to loom. It goes like this: a vaccine is invented and countries embark on massive vaccination programmes. However, conspiracy theorists use social media to oppose the programme and undermine public confidence in the vaccination drive. It will be like the anti-MMR campaign but on steroids.

What we have learned from the coronavirus crisis so far is that the only way to manage it is by coherent, concerted government action to slow the transmission rate. As societies move into a vaccination phase, then an analogous approach will be needed to slow the circulation of misinformation and destructive antisocial memes on social media. Twitter would be much improved by removing the retweet button, for example. Users would still be free to pass on ideas but the process would no longer be frictionless. Similarly, Facebooks algorithms could be programmed to introduce a delay in the circulation of certain kinds of content. YouTubes recommender algorithms could be modified to prioritise different factors from those they currently favour. And so on.

Measures such as these will be anathema to the platforms. Tough. In the end, they will have to make choices between their profits and the health of society. If they get it wrong then regulation is the only way forward. And governments will have to remember that to govern is to choose.

John Naughton is an Observer columnist

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Recovery from Covid-19 will be threatened if we don't learn to control big tech - The Guardian

The Synagogue of Satan And Destroying The Right To ‘Free Speech’ | Final Call News – FinalCall.com News

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Danzig

[Editors note: The following article contains excerpts from an hour-long message delivered by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan as Part 22 of his 52-week Lecture Series The Time and What Must Be Done. This message originally aired on Saturday, June 8, 2013. To order this message in its entirety on MP3, DVD and CD, call 1.866.602.1230, ext. 200, or visit store.finalcall.com. We urge readers to visit The Final Call Channel on http://www.youtube.com and view the full lecture, Part 22 of the The Time and What Must Be Done series.]

In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.

During this critical time, when The Old World is going out, and The New World is coming in, we must beacquaintedwith the ruler of the old world thats going out, and we must get acquainted with The New Ruler of The World that is coming in. The world that is going out is a world that God gave Divine privilege to, to rule the people of our planet for 6,000 years. And, the 6,000 years of the rule of thiscontraryworld and people is now up. And The New Ruler is in the world: He is The God of The New World; and He comes to make Himself known, and to manifest Satan so that the people of the Earth may fall away from Satan and get ready to prepare themselves to become a part of that which God makes new.

Synagogue of Satans schemes to destroy the First Amendment right to free speech

We want to focus again on that Synagogue of Satan. I want to speak about the charge of anti-Semitism, and what that charge leads to.

The First Amendment ofThe United States Constitution reads as follows: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.And so, I would like to put before you the following questions:

How does one go from engaging infree speechthat we assume is protected by The First Amendment of The Constitution, to finding ones self facing possiblycriminal penalties?

How does sucha wicked claim of anti-Semitismmovethe accused onefrom speaking or writing the truth, and then to legal jeopardy?

What isa legal mechanismby which theseattack dogs ofThe Synagogue of Satanactivate the governmental apparatus toseek out, punishanddestroythose that are labeled as an anti-Semite or as a hate groupand destroy their right to free speech in the process?

We want to look at the criminal effect of being labeled anti-Semitic. We want to look at how these private Jewish organizations who do the labeling, like theAnti-Defamation LeagueandThe Southern Poverty Law Center, manipulate the government law enforcement agencies like theFBIand theIRSto target and harass those who are so labeled. Then, we want to see how they work to effect their scheming, with the disproportionate number of members of the Jewish community working as DAs (or district attorneys) or federal and state prosecutors and judges, in the United States court system where these cases will ultimately be tried.

It begins with someone,anyone, who holds a controversial view, and speaks or writes about it in public.Controversialmeans contrary to the popular version of the truth.

However, instead of engaging in honest and open public dialogue and debate about the issue that the spokesperson raises, as is called for and encouraged by the United States Constitution,private interest groups start with the labeling:Hes a hate teacher, with a hateful message.And then the group he belongs to: If they dont repudiate the spokesperson fast enough, they also get called a hate group that promotes intolerance.They dont have to prove it, they just have to say it over and over againand then the drumbeats get amplified by their brethren who controlthe media.And if that person does not apologize quick enough after that, they start to pick away at his supporters. And those who would defend that person: If they are not strong enough to stand up to the slander, they begin to fall away and distance themselves; and some may even start repudiating and apologizing for their former friend and ally.

Still, if he refuses to bow down: They connect certain inflammatory terms that are intended to generate real hatred, and even retribution, against the person who is speaking these controversial points. They start with:He hates! Hes intolerant!and that escalates to,Hes threatening, and he incites hatred in others!And then the wordviolencegets thrown in, and thenhate crimesare mentioned; and ultimately, you hear the wordsdomestic terrorism.This is all calculated to get the public to put so much pressure on that individual; that they, and their supporters, relent, apologize and retreat.

And this is why I say to my great brothers and sisters in The Twitter Army:No matter what vile speech comes at you, no matter what threats are made against my life by those who hate The Truth that we are speaking, never ever get down in the gutter, or threaten anyone with violence, because they are building a record of what we are saying! So, if you threaten anyone with violence, or you act like you wish to do them evil because they desire to domeevil, then one day you might hear this again in a court of law.

The Synagogues efforts to modernize government persecution of individuals and groups

If we continue to stand on our principles and exercise our freedom of speech, these members of The Synagogue of Satan then get their brethren in The Judicial Branch of government, in the IRS, and their brethren in the Congress and the Senate, and even up to the White House or the Justice Department, and they begin to act in a conspiratorial manner to charge, condemn, try and punishand even killthose who are so charged. This government persecution of individuals and groups who speak boldly about the wrongs in American society was started underJ. Edgar HooversF.B.I. Counterintelligence Program [COINTELPRO].

Although that Program was exposed, and it was said that certain controls were ultimately put on the activity of the FBI; but yet, those wicked policies still continue even up to this very momentof courseThe Synagogue of Satanstepped in tore-establish the worst of Hoovers illegal operations.In August of 1999, under the administration of President Bill Clinton, federal surveillance of those labeled hate groups was restricted to those who committed, or were linked to, actual crimes. According to published reports, hisAttorney General Janet Reno said: It is important that you not focus on a group unless you have a reasonable indication that they are engaged in criminal conduct.But then 29 Jewish leaders led by the Anti-Defamation Leagues Abraham Foxman went to the Justice Department, and told them this is too timid an approach. It was reported that Foxman stated:We want better surveillance and infiltration if necessary the concern, Mr. Foxman said, wasmodernizing the regulations, so federal authoritiescan deal not only with getting the man, but with preventing the crime.

So now, they have their way: A position was created inside the Justice Dept. which they say is to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. [Based uponThe Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004] Secretary of State John Kerry appointed a man namedIra Formanas the newSpecial Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism.

What will happen with these positions, except to coordinate the government surveillance and infiltration of those who have been labeled anti-Semitic?There are real anti-Semites in this country that hate the Jewish people, and there is nothing wrong with monitoring arealanti-Semitic hate group.But when you have that intention formeandThe Nation of Islam, then we have tocharge youandchallenge youto prove your claim.

You have a long history of lying on The Nation of Islam. And it is time that we throw down the gauntlet now, and make you come before the American people and the world, and prove your charge. And if you cannot,and you cannot, then youre going to have to pay for all these years that you have poisoned the minds of the American people; destroyed progress of tens of hundreds and thousands of peopleand you thought you got away with it.

Not today

In The Preface ofThe Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Volume 2, The Historical Research Department provides us with historical proof on how Jews at the highest organizational levels havealwayslabeled The Nation of Islam as anti-Semitic. For example, they write that in 1942, a secret Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith file titledTemple of Islam Infiltrationstates:A Negro employed byusus here is The Anti- Defamation Leagueprovedquite instrumental in a F.B.I. raid on the Chicago mosque resulting in 82 arrests.So, this has been going on a long time.

And what did you mean,Mr. Abraham Foxman, when you said,Louis Farrakhan is the only African-American leader?Your words exactly, sir, as they appear in aHaaretznews article published in April 2013:The last time an African-American leader stood up to anti-Semitism was Martin Luther King Jr., who said its a sin. The only leadership that now exists inthat community the African American communityisLouis Farrakhan. Farrakhan can assemble 20,000 people several times a year, and he flaunts his anti-Semitism. Whats worse, they deny it exists, so theres no one to talk to.

I interpret that as meaningThe Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan are the only ones we dont control;I interpret that to mean thatLouis FarrakhanandThe Nation of Islammay very well beThe Last Man Standingin the way ofyour successful capture of Black leaders, your successful capture of Black professionals and Black businessmen, your capture of Black artists, and your capture of heads of state and government that bow to your commands!Then ifweare The Last Man Standing, then you are calling on all of your forces to concentrate their attention on Louis Farrakhan and The Nation of Islam.

Well, concentrate with everything youve got, because The God that we serve will answereffectivelyandefficiently, and will ultimately destroy your power.

A party from amongThe Synagogue of Satanthat designs to ruin Gods Warner among us

Look at whats written in theHoly Quran, Surah4 Al-Nisa(The Women), verses 111-112:And whoever commits a sin, commits it only against himself. And Allah is ever Knowing, Wise. And whoever commits a fault or a sin, then accuses of it one innocent, he indeed takes upon himself the burden of acalumnyand amanifest sin.

Now, what is acalumny? A calumny is the making of a false and defamatory statement in order to damage someones reputation. It is slander, it is character assassination, and it is vilification.

ToThe Anti-Defamation League, The Southern Poverty Law Center, a.k.a. The Synagogue of Satan:You are the sinner! You want to put your evil onan innocent man; you say I am the hateryoure wrong! We can prove that you are the hater, and youve been the hater of us ever since youve been onour planet. You are the liar; you are the one that is creating violence and hatredit is you. You manipulate your media brethren, turning them into tools of your wicked ideas and policies.

Well now your day has come.In the Holy Quran, Surah 104is calledAl-Humazah(The Slanderer):Woe to every slanderer, defamer! Who amasses wealth and counts itHe thinks that his wealth will make him abide. Nay, he will certainly be hurled into the crushing disaster; And what will make thee realize what the crushing disaster is? It is the Fire kindled by Allah, Which rises over the hearts. Surely it is closed in on them, In extended columns.

What will make thee know what the great and utter destruction is? It is The Fire, inthe heart of the slanderer; that leads that slanderer to The Fire of Hell.

Inverse 113ofSurah 4, The Holy Quransays:And were it not for Allahs grace on thee and His mercy,a party of themhad certainly designed to ruinthee. And they ruin only themselves, and they cannot harm thee in any way. And Allah has revealed to thee the Book and the Wisdom, and taught thee what thou knewest not, and Allahs grace on thee is very great.

I rely on The Wisdom of that scripture, because as I said: This Synagogue of Satan is comprised not only of members of the Jewish community, but you have Gentiles, you have Blacks, you have AsiansYour Synagogue is big. And a lot of the people that are members of The Synagogue are unwitting pawns in The Wicked Game of this Satanic group.

Remember these words of The Quran:a partyand thats you, Synagoguefrom among themcertainly designed to ruinthee.Thee here meansMuhammad; thee, here, means what he represents. And if you dont think that I am a part of Muhammad, then watch and see. Your evil is designed to ruin me, and to ruin The Nation of Islam. But you ruin only yourself. So keep on planning and watch what happens to you, and what you represent.

A Who is Anti-Semitic? roll call

Let us take a look at all the Black leaders that have been charged with anti-Semitic behavior because they dared to utter a word of criticism against Jewish misbehavior and mislabeling. Lets take a look at Who is anti-Semitic?I bet you wont even believe this:Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee University;W.E.B. DuBois; Marcus Mosiah Garvey;and, yes:The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.the man that said, anti-Semitism is a sin, yet you all referred to him, at one point, as an anti-Semite!Malcolm X, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, President Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Julian Bond; Kwame Ture, formerly known as Stokely Carmichael;Andrew Young; Kweisi Mfume, former member of Congress, and former leader of the N.A.A.C.P.; The ReverendsAl Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Joseph Lowery; The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee called SNCC; The Black Panthers; The Universal Negro Improvement Association, which was Mr. Garveys movement; and,The Nation of Islam.

But it doesnt stop there! They accusedMahatma Gandhi[a leader for Indias independence], of being an anti-Semite. Also: HistoriansJohn Hope FranklinandJ. A. Rogers; WritersJames Baldwin, Richard Wright, Julius LesterandAlice Walker; and entertainersMichael Jackson, Spike Lee, Ice Cube, Arsenio Hall, Muhammad Ali, Public Enemy, Oprah Winfreythis is just a few. Look at the great company that Louis Farrakhan is in.

You meaneverybodyis a hater of the Jewish people? Stop It!

Now lets call the roll of those White people that you have called anti-Semiticbeginning with U.S. presidents: President Harry Truman, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President Richard M. Nixon,President Jimmy Carter, President Gerald Ford, President George H. W. Bushand PresidentBarack Obama. Also, a listing of White leaders, historians, inventors, writers, clergymen, philosophers, etc.:H. L. Mencken, George Bernard Shaw, Henry Adams, H. G. Wells, Edgar Degas, T. S. Eliot, Immanuel Kant, Tacitus, Philostratus, Cicero, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Hitler, Edward VIII, Aleksander Pushkin, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Richard Wagner, Bobby Fischer, and The Reverend Billy Graham.

These members ofThe Synagogue of Satan have always known that a Day of Reckoning was coming; and so over time, they put themselves in positions of power in every nation of the Western Hemisphere. This was done to monitor The Awakening ofThe Gentilesthe masses of so-called heathens, savages andgoyim; as well as the masses of Blacks. So anyone that rises and criticizes: They put fear in them by charging them with being anti-Semitic. Even if theyknewthat what we were saying is the truth, most would be afraid and would not stand up under the heat of Jewish power.

Well, today we are calling you out, and asking you to use your inordinate power, because The God that we represent wants to crush you and your power. Hes here to bring in a Brand New Worldand Hes chosen the despised and the rejected, unloved and unwantedBlack man and woman of Americato be The Cornerstone of a Brand New Reality.

The trick of anti-Semitic labeling confirmed

During an August 14, 2002 interview on her showDemocracy Now! (democracynow.org), host and executive producer AmyGoodmaninterviewed former Israeli MinisterShulamit Aloni. Pay attention to Miss Goodmans words introducing her guest:Yours is a voice of criticism we dont often hear in the United States. Often when there is dissent expressed in the United States against policies of the Israeli government, people here are called anti-Semitic. What is your response to that as an Israeli Jew?AndMinister Shulamit Alonianswered:Well, its a trick, we always use it.When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country people are criticizing Israel, then they are anti-Semitic. And the organization is strong, and has a lot of money, and the ties between Israel and the American Jewish establishment are very strong and they are strong in this country, as you know. And they have power, which is OK. They are talented people, and they have power and money, and the media and other things; and their attitude isIsrael my country, right or wrong,identificationand they are not ready to hear criticism. And its very easy to blame people who criticize certain acts of the Israeli government as anti-Semitic, and to bring up the Holocaust, and the suffering of the Jewish people, and that is [to] justify everything we do to the Palestinians.

This anti-Semitic labeling is atrickthat they use! But look at how many people have been destroyed on account of such a trick!

Where did you learn such tricks? Did you not learn this from your FatherYakub, who taught you a System of Tricks and Lies? Look at howeasyit is for you to lie, and put your wickedness on innocent persons. What is the meaning of atrick? Atrickisa cunning, or skillful, act or scheme intended to deceive or outwit someone; a mischievous practical joke; a skillful act performed for entertainment or amusement; an illusion; a clever or particular way of doing something.

Its really amusing to Satan when he can tell a lie, and we operate on that lie, and act in a manner that we would never act if we had only knownThe Truth. They are entertained by playing tricks on unsuspecting, ignorant people. And this is why it isanimperativethat The Synagogue of Satan must be called out, and Satan and his Synagogue must be made known.

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The Synagogue of Satan And Destroying The Right To 'Free Speech' | Final Call News - FinalCall.com News

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