Daily Archives: August 4, 2017

NATO Soldier Killed, 6 Injured in Afghanistan Suicide Bombing – One America News Network (press release)

Posted: August 4, 2017 at 12:57 pm

August 4, 2017 OAN Newsroom

A NATO soldier is dead and several others injured following a suicide bombing attack in Kabul.

The incident occurred Thursday, just a day after two American soldiers were killed in a Taliban claimed bombing in southern Afghanistan.

Reports say the ambushed convoy belonged to the U.S. military, and claim the suicide bomber was a member of the Taliban.

According to officials, the NATO soldier who died was not American, but no other details were released.

A NATO statement says those injured are being treated at a U.S. military hospital, and are in stable condition.

An Afghan policeman stands guard near to the site of a suicide bomber struck at a NATO convoy in Kandahar southern of Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017. A suicide bomber struck a NATO convoy near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Wednesday, causing casualties, the U.S. military said. (AP Photo)

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Judge sides with prosecution in Reality Winner NSA leak case | The … – The Augusta Chronicle

Posted: at 12:56 pm

A federal judge has sided with prosecutors in the case against former Fort Gordon contractor Reality Winner, finding that her defense team should be muzzled from speaking about any information deemed classified by the government, even if it has been widely reported in local, national and international media publications.

Winner has pleaded not guilty to a single count of violating a provision of the espionage act. She is accused of leaking a classified document to online media news publication, The Intercept.

That document was extensively reported on by The Intercept and numerous other news media organizations in stories on Winner, who is accused of leaking a national security document she allegedly obtained through her job with a NSA contractor on Fort Gordon.

The document is an analysis of the extent of Russias efforts to hack into state election boards. Russian meddling is the subject of U.S. Senate and House intelligence committees investigations and a special prosecutor who is looking into possible collusion between Trump supporters and the Russians during last years presidential campaign.

In his order released Thursday, Magistrate Judge Brian K. Epps wrote that determining what is classified information is a function of the executive branch of government, not the judicial branch.

Just because the defense team has expressed concern of accidentally mishandling classified information is no reason to relax the strict procedures required, Epps wrote. The defense is not prohibited in using classified information in Winners defense, but it must follow the strict procedures, he wrote.

Both sides have until Aug. 16 to weigh in on Epps proposed protective order that describes the closely guarded handling of materials in the case. A classified information security officer is in charge of ensuring such information is handled only by those on the defense team who have obtained security clearance, and only in a secured location.

The defense is to have free access to that location during regular business hours, although other times may be allotted with proper notice and consultation with the U.S. Marshals Service, according to the order.

Any notes or other papers the defense may create using classified information is not allowed outside of the security location. Any document filed with the court that contains or might contain classified information must be filed under seal. Only those portions deemed not classified by the classified information security officer will be unsealed for public review.

At the end of the case any such defense-prepared material will be destroyed by the classified information security officer. The confines of the protective order are a lifetime commitment and any violation is punishable not only by a finding of contempt but criminal prosecution.

The publication of any classified information does not change the classified status unless a member of the executive branch of government with the proper authorization declares the information to be declassified.

Winners trial is tentatively set to begin in October.

Reach Sandy Hodson at sandy.hodson@augustachronicle.com or (706) 823-3226

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Interactive Constitution: Grand Juries and the Fifth Amendment – Constitution Daily (blog)

Posted: at 12:56 pm

What are the basic underpinnings of a federal grand jury? In the excerpt from the National Constitution Centers Interactive Constitution, Paul Cassell and Kate Stith lookat their origin as related to the Fifth Amendment.

The first part of the Fifth Amendment reads as follows: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger

Cassell, a University of Utah law professor, and Stith, from the Yale Law School, explained the presence of Grand Juries in the Constitution, in a common interpretation of the Fifth Amendment:

The first of the criminal procedure clauses requires that felony offenses infederal courtbe charged by grand jury indictment. (A grand jury is a panel of citizens that hears evidence that the prosecutor has against the accused, and decides if an indictment, or formal criminal charges, should be filed against them.)

This is one of only a few provisions of the Bill of Rights that the Supreme Court has not held to apply to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (the others being the Third Amendments protection against quartering of soldiers, the Sixth Amendments requirement of trial in the district where the crime was committed, the Seventh Amendments requirement of jury trial in certain civil cases, and possibly the Eighth Amendments prohibition of excessive fines).

That the Court has been reluctant to apply the grand jury requirement to the states is unsurprising. While the origins of the grand jury are ancientan ancestor of the modern grand jury was included in the Magna Cartatoday, the United States is the only country in the world that uses grand juries. In addition to the federal government, about half the states provide for grand juriesthough in many of these there exist other ways of filing formal charges, such as a prosecutorial information followed by an adversarial but a relatively informal preliminary hearing before a judge (to make sure there is at least probable cause for the charge, the same standard of proof that a grand jury is told to apply). As early as 1884, the Supreme Court held that the grand jury is not a fundamental requirement of due process, and Justice Holmes lone dissent from that judgment has been joined by only one Justice (Douglas) in the intervening years.

Recent scholarship has upset the previous understanding that the grand jury was from its inception venerated because it was not only a sword (accusing individuals of crimes) but also a shield (against oppressive or arbitrary authority). In its early incarnation in England, the grand jury was fundamentally an instrument of the crown, obliging unpaid citizens to help enforce the Kings law. Over the centuries, the idea of a citizen check on royal prerogative became more valued. By the time of the framing of our Constitution, both the grand jury (from the French for large, in sizetoday grand juries are often composed of 24 citizens), and the petit jury (from the French for smalltoday criminal trial juries may be composed of as few as six citizens) were understood, in both Britain and the colonies, to be important bulwarks of freedom from tyranny.

Few in the modern era would espouse such a view. The former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals (that states highest court) famously remarked in recent years that because prosecutors agents of the executive branchcontrol what information a grand jury hears, any grand jury today would, if requested, indict a ham sandwich. While this is a useful exaggerationthe Supreme Court has held that federal grand juries need not adhere to trial rules of evidence, or be told of evidence exculpating the defendantfew prosecutors, fortunately, are interested in indicting ham sandwiches! Rather, the greatest advantage grand juries now provide (at least in federal courts, which are not as overburdened as state courts) is allowing the prosecutor to use the grand jury as a pre-trial focus group, learning which evidence or witnesses are especially convincing, or unconvincing.

At least in federal court, grand juries are here to stay. The institution is written into the Fifth Amendment too clearly to be interpreted away. Moreover, neither pro-law enforcement forces (for obvious reasons) nor allies of those accused (because occasionally grand juries do refuse to indictin the legal parlance, returning a no true bill) have reason to urge their abolition through amendment of the Constitution.

You can read more from Cassell and Stith on the Fifth Amendment, and matters of debate from different perspectives, at our Interactive Constitution at: goo.gl/dsDFKb

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The Second Amendment Won in Washington; Why Won’t the Supreme Court Enforce It? – Patriot Post

Posted: at 12:55 pm

The Right Opinion

Washington, DC, residents, you dont have to holster your Second Amendment rights anymore. Unfortunately, residents of many other states like California dont have the same ability that DC residents now do to protect themselves.

In a stirring victory for those who live in the nationals capital, a panel of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals recently threw out a DC ordinance that denied concealed carry permits to anyone who could not show a special need for self-defense, what is referred to as a good reason requirement. The problem is that other courts of appeal have upheld such restrictive laws and the U.S. Supreme Court has turned down appeals of those decisions, refusing to take up the issue of the Second Amendments application to carrying a weapon outside of the home.

This happened most recently at the very end of the Supreme Courts 2017 term in June when it refused to take upPeruta v. California,an appeal of a decision of the Ninth Circuit upholding Californias good reason requirement.

In a scathing dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas (joined by Neil Gorsuch) castigated the other justices for treating the Second Amendment as a disfavored right."He said it was long-past time for the Court to decide this issue and that he found it "extremely improbable that the Framers understood the Second Amendment to protect little more than carrying a gun from the bedroom to the kitchen.

In theopinionover the District of Columbias concealed carry law written by Judge Thomas Griffith of the DC Circuit, Griffith pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Courts first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment occurred in 2008 inDistrict of Columbia v. Heller, where the Court threw out DCs complete ban on handguns as unconstitutional.

That decision is younger than the first iPhone. The Supreme Court did not outline how the Second Amendment applies to the carrying of a weapon in public, but as Griffith says,Hellerreveals the Second Amendment erects some absolute barriers than no gun law may breach.

AfterHeller,DC implemented a complete ban on concealed carry. That was struck down in 2014 inPalmer v. District of Columbia. DC responded by restricting concealed carry permits only to those who could show a good reason to fear injury. That required showing a special need for self-protection distinguishable from the general community as supported by evidence of specific threats or previous attacks.

Living in a high-crime neighborhoodwasnta good enough reason for a concealed carry permit under DCs regulation. In essence, you had to prove you had a good reason to exercise your constitutional right, a bizarre situation unique in American constitutional jurisprudence.

DC argued, absurdly enough, that its ordinance did not violate any constitutional right because the Second Amendment doesnt apply outside of the home.

Judge Griffith dismissed this claim, saying that the fact that the need for self-defense is most pressing in the home doesnt mean that self-defense at home is the only right at the [Second] Amendments core.

Obviously, the need for self-defense might arise beyond as well as within the home. Further, the Second Amendments text protects the right to bear as well as keep arms. Thus, it is natural that the core of the Second Amendment includes a law-abiding citizens right to carry common firearms for self-defense beyond the home.

Even underHeller, governments can apply regulations on the possession and carrying of firearms that are longstanding, such as bans on possession by felons or bans on carrying near sensitive sites such as government buildings. But preventing carrying in public is not a longstanding tradition or rule.

This opinion goes into detail discussing the long American and English history applicable to weapons and self-defense, going back as far as the Statute of Northampton of 1328 whose text, as the court says, will remind Anglophiles of studying Canterbury Tales in the original. But the state of the law in Chaucers England or for that matter Shakespeares or Cromwells is not decisive here.

What is decisive is that the Supreme Court established inHellerthat by the time of the Founding, the preexisting right enshrined by the Amendment had ripened to include carrying more broadly than the District contends based on its reading of the 14th-century statute. According to Griffith, The individual right to carry common firearms beyond the home for self-defense even in densely populated areas, even for those lacking special self-defense needs falls within the core of the Second Amendments protections.

Unfortunately, other federal courts of appeals have upheld similar good reason laws for concealed carry permits. But as Judge Griffith points out, those courts dispensed with the historic digging that would have exposed that their toleration of regulations restricting the carrying of a weapon is faulty.

The constitutional analysis that should be applied to all government gun regulations is that they must allow gun access at least for each typical member of the American public. Because DCs restrictive good reason concealed carry law bars most people from exercising their Second Amendment right at all, it is unconstitutional. At a minimum, the Second Amendment must protect carrying given the risks and needs typical of law-abiding citizens.

The court drew together all the pieces of its analysis in this way:

At the Second Amendments core lies the right of responsible citizens to carry firearms for personal self-defense beyond the home, subject to longstanding restrictions. These traditional limits include, for instance, licensing requirements, but not bans on carrying in urban areas like D.C. or bans on carrying absent a special need for self-defense. In fact, the Amendments core at a minimum shields the typically situated citizens ability to carry common arms generally. The Districts good-reason law is necessarily a total ban on exercises of that constitutional right for most D.C. residents. Thats enough to sink this law under Heller I.

One of the judges on the DC panel, Karen LeCraft Henderson, dissented, arguing that the core right in the Second Amendment is only to possess a firearm in ones home and she saw no problem with DCs good-reason requirement.

That dissent, along with the contrary decisions of other appeals courts, shows why the Supreme Court needs to follow Justice Thomass admonition and finally settle this issue. As Thomas scolds in his dissent inPeruta:

For those of us who work in marble halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force, the guarantees of the Second Amendment might seem antiquated and superfluous. But the Framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense. I do not think we should stand by idly while a State denies its citizens that right, particularly when their very lives may depend on it.

Republished from The Heritage Foundation.

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Historic Battle of Athens Shows Importance of Second Amendment – Newsmax

Posted: at 12:55 pm

Some American political and human events in history are intentionally overlooked by those responsible for teaching and analyzing them.

The nation rightfully celebrates the civil rights movement and the March on Selma. Our children are taught about womens suffrage and Susan B Anthony. The left loves to evoke memories of the Vietnam antiwar demonstrations. Modern day movements such as gay and transgender rights, the Womens March, and the Occupy movements are celebrated in the media.

How many of you have ever heard about the major event that occurred in our country that shows the importance of your Second Amendment rights? The "Battle of Athens" was the perfect example of why our founding fathers were so brilliant as to include "the right to keep and bear arms" in our Constitution.

On August 1, 1946, there was a primary election in McMinn County, Tennessee. The two major towns in the county are Athens and Etowah. Political corruption and election fraud were concerns of the local citizens. The United States Department of Justice even investigated the allegations in the three elections prior. During those elections, most of McMinn Countys young men were off fighting World War II. There was even an incident where two servicemen home on leave were shot and killed by the sheriffs deputies.

At the end of the war, approximately 3,000 experienced veterans returned to McMinn County. The GIs had known about the troubles back home, even while fighting overseas. They were not happy about what had been going on. They organized and actually put forth an "all G.I." political ticket for the primary. These ex-servicemembers promised fair elections and ballot counts.

In response, the local sheriff brought in 200 armed deputies. Poll observers, mostly GIs, were intimidated and beaten. One poll watcher was even shot. Multiple other incidents occurred and the sheriff decided to take the ballot boxes to the jail for counting.

Not trusting the sheriff, the local veterans gathered firearms and ammunition. After organizing and planning, they surrounded the jail. There was many exchanges of gun fire. Sometime during the early morning hours of August 2, the GIs made their move. Using dynamite to damage the building, they forced the surrender of those inside. The GIs posted guards to secure the ballots. When the votes were counted, the corrupt officials had been voted out.

I encourage you to research and share this event as a celebration and illustration of law-abiding American citizens using our Constitutionally-protected firearms for the betterment of our society and protection of our freedom.

The Battle of Athens is a major event in American history that is wrongly ignored by our educational system, our media, and our government officials. That alone should demonstrate why we Second Amendment supporters should hold the event up for all to see.

Use the Battle of Athens as an example to show your children what free men should be willing to do to protect that freedom.

Use the Battle of Athens to demonstrate to the media why gun control is antithetical to the Constitution and our freedoms.

Use the Battle of Athens to let our leaders know that we are in charge.

John Cylc is an eight year U.S. Army veteran. He is also a contributor to LifeZette. To read more of his reports Click Here Now.

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McGovern: Free speech may mean free pass for Michelle Carter – Boston Herald

Posted: at 12:55 pm

The First Amendment and the winding road of the appellate process are the only things keeping Michelle Carter out of jail.

And the constitutional issue may be what sets her free forever.

Carter, who yesterday was sentenced to 212 years behind bars with only 15 months to actually serve was given a last-second reprieve by Judge Lawrence Moniz. He held off on the punishment at the behest of Carters attorneys who argued that she shouldnt be jailed for a conviction that may not stick.

This is a novel case involving speech, said Joseph Cataldo, Carters lead attorney. These are legitimate issues that are worthy of presentation to the appeals court.

The crux of the argument is that Carter didnt commit a crime when she convinced Conrad Roy III, through texts and phone calls, to get back in his truck as it filled with deadly carbon monoxide fumes. Her communications, according to Cataldo, were protected by the First Amendment.

Massachusetts does not have an assisted-suicide or an encouragement of suicide law in place, and this is violative of the First Amendment, Cataldo said outside court.

Some may remember that the Supreme Judicial Court already ruled on this case and allowed Carters involuntary manslaughter trial to move forward in 2016. However, the high court did not fully tackle the First Amendment ramifications that surround the case.

In his decision, former Justice Robert Cordy mentioned the First Amendment only three times all in footnotes and brushed over the idea that Carters speech may have been protected without a hefty analysis.

But other courts that have dug deeper into this thorny issue have come out differently. In Minnesota, for example, the states high court struck down a law that prohibited people from encouraging or advising suicide, finding that the statute violated the First Amendment.

Speech in support of suicide, however distasteful, is an expression of a viewpoint on a matter of public concern, and, given current U.S. Supreme Court First Amendment jurisprudence, is therefore entitled to special protection as the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values, the court wrote in its 2014 decision.

Cataldo has 30 days to file his notice of appeal, and from there the trial court record will be put together and a time frame will fall into place. It could take a year, or it could drag on longer. The SJC can, on its own, grab the appeal before the state Appeals Court hears it a move that would show the high court is particularly interested in the case.

I think that will happen here. Two years ago, SJC Chief Justice Ralph Gants told me that his court wasnt interested in calling legal balls and strikes. No, he said the SJCs job is to set the strike zone and dictate clear precedent that other courts in the commonwealth need to follow.

This is one of those cases. In our evolving digital age, where we can communicate with a touch of a button, its important to outline when a text or call or tweet becomes criminal.

Yesterday, Bristol prosecutor Maryclare Flynn seemed to notice that Moniz was about to set Carter free pending her appeal and made a last-ditch effort to change his mind.

This is not a suicide case, she said. This is not a First Amendment case.

Maybe not, but now a high court will have to decide whether or not its both.

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The Attack on Global Privacy Leaves Few Places To Turn – WIRED

Posted: at 12:53 pm

Digital privacy has had a very bad summer. As China and Russia move to block virtual private network services, well over a billion people face losing their best chance at circumventing censorship laws. First, China asked telecom companies to start blocking user access to VPNs that didn't pass government muster by next February. More recently, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a law to ban VPNs and other anonymous browsing tools that undermine government censorship.

As citizens of these countries and people around the world scramble to understand the repercussions, US-based companies that operate in the countries have been swept up in the controversy. Apple complied with a Chinese government order to remove VPNs from its Chinese iOS AppStore, and the company that runs Amazon's cloud services in China this week said it would no longer support VPN use. Even hotels around China that offered VPN services to foreign visitors are largely curtailing the practice.

China and Russia's recent actions aren't new movements toward censorship, but they are escalations. And they leave citizens with few viable options for accessing the open internet.

While the suppressive efforts share the same end goal, they do take different forms. China has laid the foundation for its "Great Firewall" for more than two decades, attempting to control citizens' internet access on a very large scale. Creating and upgrading such a system over time takes massive resources. While Putin has praised the approach, Russia doesn't have a comparable apparatus. Instead, since about 2012, the Kremlin has gradually built up a web of legislation that shapes and controls the Russian internet through legal force more than technical control.

"These crackdowns and ratcheting up of internet censorship in China tend to ebb and flow, and so it is possible that eventually we may see VPNs sort of silently reappear," says Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "In Russia what theyre doing is theyre passing more and more draconian laws that are extremely difficult to implement. The reason for this is it makes sure that at any given time everyone is breaking the lawanyone that the government wants to target and wants to lean on for information is in violation of the law."

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Both approaches have made Russia and China insular markets, challenging for international companies to operate in. Apple, which has been accused of hypocrisy for pushing back against government surveillance in the US while complying with VPN takedown requirements in China, worked for years to enter the Chinese market. "We would obviously rather not remove the apps, but like we do in other countries we follow the law wherever we do business," company CEO Tim Cook said in an earnings call on Tuesday. "We strongly believe participating in markets and bringing benefits to customers is in the best interest of the folks there and in other countries as well."

The VPN crackdowns in China and Russia came as no surprise to those who follow digital rights closely. "We expected it at some point, it wasn't like we didnt know where it came from," says Robert Knapp, the CEO of the Romanian VPN provider CyberGhost, which had its app removed from the iOS AppStore in China. "We had seen the Chinese government putting more and more pressure on VPN providers in a technical senseblocking our IPs, blocking the server infrastructure we were using, detecting traffic from certain sources."

After years of investing in technical control, China now seems focused on experimenting with regulatory enforcement as well. In the Xinjiang region of western China, reports indicate that the government is requiring citizens to install spyware on their smartphonesostensibly for anti-terrorism initiativesand is doing random stops to check whether local residents have complied. They have also arrested citizens over conversations in private chatrooms, indicating that the local government may be actively taking advantage of the spyware. "We are extremely alarmed. This is about as far as a nation-state has gone to submit its people to monitoring," Jeremy Malcolm, a senior global policy analyst at EFF, said of the situation in Xinjiang.

For its part, the Russian government has moved swiftly since 2012 to regulate both infrastructure and content such that is has extensive control of the internet at this point. After the Russian government took broad control of television and media in the early 2000s, the internet was the only place left for free communication. "Now the government is trying to close in on that," says Rachel Denber, the deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division at Human Rights Watch. "Its the logical progression of things. Once you go down the road of trying to expand state control over online communication, [banning VPNs] would be the next post to hit."

The Russian government may also be reacting to the current geopolitical situation, in which the country has been called out for hacking numerous Western countries , particularly leading up to democratic elections. "The authorities may also be looking ahead to the 2018 [Russian] presidential election, and they might want to take preemptive steps to ensure that no opposition mobilization takes place online," Denber notes.

For now there are still some ways around the Chinese and Russian governments' internet barriers, if you're willing to accept the risk. iPhones can only download apps from the App Store (unless a unit is jailbroken, which is not impossible but technically difficult, and introduces a host of security vulnerabilities). Android phones, though, can still sideload VPN apps from third-party app stores, since users aren't required to get apps from the Play Store. Google doesn't even operate its Play Store in China. For now, it's also easier to download desktop VPNs than mobile ones.

Other anonymizing tools besides VPNs remain a viable option as well, like the Tor Browser . That may carry more risk in Russia, though, given the recent arrest of someone who ran an Tor exit nodea gateway between the service and the internetthe country recently [lost a Tor exit node] for participating in protests. Using Tor Browser in China, meanwhile, requires extensive technical skill, to get around the Great Firewall.

It's also possible to install VPNs on devices while in other countries, and then use them in Russia or China. And end-to-end encrypted messaging services like Signal are a totally separate way of communicating and potentially receiving uncensored information without dealing with VPNs at all.

Experts report that both China and Russia may enact anti-VPN enforcement through checkpoints and arrests to intimidate citizens. "We are still used in Russia, we still count downloads, our Russian community is actually still growing," CyberGhost's Knapp says. "But instead of simply blocking VPN traffic, the Russian government is pulling another string now. They forbid it and they are going to enforce itmaybe brutally enforce it."

There could be unforeseen side effects as well. At the same time that eliminating these tools helps governments expand surveillance and control access to information, banning them also has the potential to degrade countries' overall security posture. Institutions that don't have access to VPNs could be at increased risk of being infiltrated or breached by foreign attackers. And if repressive governments set their sights on encryption next, they could undermine the integrity of basic economic drivers like secure digital transactions.

The dangers of banning VPNs are clear and pressing from a human rights standpoint. But countries that pursue it regardless may find they lose more than they intended.

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Bitcoin Slide Looks Limited Even After Cryptocurrency Splits …

Posted: at 12:53 pm

Bitcoin might be dividing into two separate blockchains, but its downward slide has so far been contained, signaling confidence the biggest cryptocurrency will come out of the split unscathed.

The debate over how to scale bitcoin came to a head Tuesday as some cryptocurrency miners started using software called Bitcoin Cash and splitting a new blockchain off the old one.Blockchain is the technology used for verifying and recording digital currency transactions.

Bitcoins price should reflect the split by discounting the new coin, according to Charles Hayter, who runs the cryptocurrency data platform CryptoCompare. He likened it to a stock trading ex dividend -- when the buyer isnt entitled to collect a dividend on the shares.

After four days of gains, bitcoin was down $157,or 5.4 percent, to $2,729 at 11:05 a.m. in New York. Earlier in the day, the cryptocurrency fell as much as 8.4 percent,its biggest decline since July 25. Bitcoin cash futures rose 19 percent to $331, according to CoinMarketCap.com.

The price of bitcoin has risen ahead of the split on the expectation that youll get that extra cash from bitcoin cash, so it should drop after the split, Hayter said. This has happened before in other blockchains. Its a trading event where theres number of hoops you have to jump though and people are trying to make a profit.

Bitcoin Cash started gaining traction in the past week, just as miners fended off another split by rallying behind the scaling mechanism known as SegWit2X. Bitcoin Cash wants to increase the block size -- the files in which transactions are recorded -- while SegWit2X would transfer some of the operating power outside of the main blockchain. In other words, Bitcoin Cash would be one lane with bigger cars, while SegWit2X would be two lanes with smaller cars.

The great majority of miners and developers support bitcoin, while ViaBTC, which has almost 6 percent of bitcoin processing power, is the mining pool backing bitcoin cash.

Read More: Bitcoin Moves a Step Closer to Acceptance

Theres a role for both of these coins, said Cathie Wood, the New York-based chief investment officer at ARK Investment Management, which oversees the first exchange-traded fund with indirect exposure to bitcoin. One is much more natural for store of value and the other one for a means of exchange.

Some are less bullish. Ryan Taylor, chief executive officer of Dash Core, the sixth-biggest cryptocurrency, sees little chance that bitcoin cash will succeed in the long term.

First, Bitcoin Cash has not solved scaling. It has merely kicked the can down the road with slightly larger blocks, but still lacks a credible technology to scale to massively larger numbers of users,he said in an email. Second, bitcoin will retain the network of integrated services that make the bitcoin network useful to businesses and consumers.

Bitcoin holders are set to receive the same amount of bitcoin cash as they have in bitcoin if the exchanges and wallets they use support the new coin. Exchanges including Kraken and ViaBTC have said theyll support both, while others like Coinbase and Poloniex have said they wont, citing uncertainty that bitcoin cash will have lasting market value.

Kraken said that its working on crediting accounts with bitcoin cash, and that its sites login function is down due to heavy traffic. While some miners are already using the Bitcoin Cash program, the real differentiation of the two blockchains will emerge when they mine more than 1 megabyte in one block, Hayter said. Bitcoins block limit is 1MB while Bitcoin Cashs is 8MB.

Video: Prospects of Bitcoin Splitting Into Two

Im not as concerned about this except for the administrative nightmare that some people are going to have to go through or have gone through already pulling out of the various exchanges that werent going to support it, ARK Investments Wood said.

Bruce Fenton,founder of Atlantic Financial Inc. and a board member at the Bitcoin Foundation, said both currencies should trade heavily Tuesday.

There are some very large holders who own bitcoin, who dont like bitcoin and do like bitcoin cash, he said. But you also have a lot of people who cant stand bitcoin cash, and as soon as they have the ability to get those coins theyre going to sell them on the market.

It could be a crazy day, he said.

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What You Should Know About Cryptocurrency – Lifehacker Australia

Posted: at 12:53 pm

Cryptocurrencies are having a moment. Youve probably heard a thing or two about Bitcoin and Ethereum. Namely, their prices seem to be skyrocketing (or plummeting, depending on the day). Theres more to the story, and as the investing cliche goes: dont buy what you dont know. So lets find out more.

Cryptography has to do with coding to keep data secure, and cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual asset that uses cryptography as a security measure. For that reason, its hard to counterfeit. Bitcoin is one of the first cryptocurrencies to hit the scene. It was launched in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym that could be a person or a group (it was open source and peer to peer). The thing is, theres no central agency (like the government) that issues or regulates these cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin, the decentralized digital currency dominated by white men, seemed on the verge of

Which is why its been such an attractive option for shady business activities, like money laundering. You can buy and sell it just like any other investment, from company stock to Beanie Babies. But while companies have IPOs, or initial public offerings, cryptocurrencies have ICOs, initial coin offerings, and any entity can launch it as an investment. The Atlantic illustrates the problem with not having a central authority regulating these currencies:

Last month, the technology developer Gnosis sold $12.5 million worth of GNO, its in-house digital currency, in 12 minutes. The April 24 sale, intended to fund development of an advanced prediction market, got admiring coverage from Forbes and The Wall Street Journal. On the same day, in an exurb of Mumbai, a company called OneCoin was in the midst of a sales pitch for its own digital currency when financial enforcement officers raided the meeting, jailing 18 OneCoin representatives and ultimately seizing more than $2 million in investor funds. Multiple national authorities have now described OneCoin, which pitched itself as the next Bitcoin, as a Ponzi scheme; by the time of the Mumbai bust, it had already moved at least $350 million in allegedly scammed funds

As they put it, ICOs are catnip for scammers because there are no checks and balances the way there are with IPOs. So if youre going to invest in a coin, which is an iffy enough move as it is, you certainly want to make sure its not just any random cryptocurrency that could just be a scam.

So what about tokens like Bitcoin or Ethereum, which are popular, widely covered options? (And that are actually used as currency.) Are they smart investments?

Some people say investing is like playing the lottery. Thats not entirely accurate, though. Long-term, broad investing, the kind of investing weve advocated here and the kind that will help you build a nest egg over time, is very different from speculative, active trading, which is a lot more like gambling. Cryptocurrency, a volatile, unpredictable investment, falls into that category.

Many people dont invest because it seems overly complicated. But if you want to build wealth,

With active trading, youre taking a guess at how a specific investment (or investments) will trade on a short-term basis. The goal isnt to simply keep up with the stock market like it is with long-term investing; the goal is to make a bunch of money and get rich quickly. And you know, some Bitcoin and Ethereum investors did get rich quickly! Seems like a good deal, right? But the thing is, the price of these cryptocurrencies often swings from one extreme to another. (In one day in June, the price of Ethereum plummeted from $319 to $0.10!)

Plus, any time the value of something skyrockets too quickly, a bubble often follows, and thats exactly what Forbes contributor Clem Chambers predicts:

Crytocurrencies, of which bitcoin is the leader, will fall back in value and more than the fat drop bitcoin has already had.

Despite its reputation for getting constantly hacked, cryptocurrency like Bitcoin remains a hot

Not to mention, theres also the old investing adage, buy low and sell high. If you bought Ethereum right now, youre buying high. If you still need reasons to avoid it, though, the Motley Fool makes a good case for keeping digital currency out of your portfolio: your investment options are limited, there arent any safety protocols, and most of us dont really completely understand how they work. Most people have no clue how Bitcoin or Ethereum work, or understand how theyre challenging monetary theory. Thats a dangerous formula for volatility and potential money loss, writer Sean Williams says.

The bottom line: get rich quick schemes rarely work out well. Sure, people occasionally win the lottery, but for most of us, investing shouldnt feel like playing the lottery. It should be a long game, allowing you to gradually build wealth over time with much less risk.

That said, if youre going to invest in cryptocurrencies anyway (maybe you dont want to replace your entire retirement portfolio, you just want a small taste), heres how to go about it.

Website Coinbase seems to be the most popular option for buying Ethereum, Bitcoin, or Litecoin. Its also the easiest, according to Inc.coms Brian Evans. You have to verify your account and then you can add different payment methods for buying your tokens (bank accounts, wire transfers, credit or debit cards). Evans explains:

Other options for exchanges that will take U.S. dollars for coins are Kraken, and Gemini in the U.S. Typically you will need to verify your account with a drivers license and add other details to expand your buy limits. Since cryptocurrencies are hard currencies, the exchanges dont want to risk getting ripped off, since you cant reverse a cryptocurrency transaction once its done.

These websites will also let you sell your coins when youre ready. If you have extra cash to invest on hand, it might be an interesting experiment. Ive dabbled in day trading myself, just to understand it better, and while I earned a decent return in a short amount of time, I also lost a lot of money after that. Over time, it all evened itself out. Some short-term investors have much better luck; others have much worse luck. The point is, you dont want to put most of your money to work this way.

You might get lucky with these new, shiny investments, but in reality, wealth building is pretty boring: buy some broad, diverse funds and hold onto them over the years. Its not quite as sexy as cryptocurrency, but its probably a safer bet for your hard-earned cash.

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InvestFeed Unveils New Cryptocurrency-Based Social Investment Platform – CoinJournal (blog)

Posted: at 12:53 pm

investFeed, a social investment network for digital currency traders and enthusiasts, has released the first version of its new platform; a combination of Facebook, cryptocurrency and the Bloomberg Terminal, according to CEO Ronald Chernesky.

The New York-based startup, which launched in 2014, said the social network aims to integrate cryptocurrencies into the traditional financial world and create an access point that is open, transparent, and rewards-based for all our users and content contributors.

The release of the new platform comes nearly a month after the company pivoted from US equities to digital currencies amid strong demand from its 15,000+ user base.

Chernesky said that the companys strong belief in the future of cryptocurrencies prompted our decision to pivot from equities to decentralized digital assets.

We feel that investFeeds future should fully embrace the greatest technological breakthrough since the Internet. We decided to refocus our offering in order to take advantage of the vast opportunities in crypto, including the exponentially-growing number of people globally interested in trading, finding accurate ticker prices, and seeking out peer ideas.

Andrew Freedman, CTO of investFeed, added that the switch from equities to cryptocurrencies will attract a millennial user base that has shown disinterest in traditional investments. Millennials are more excited by this new technology because they feel empowered by the ability to participate in markets without traditional third party interference, he said.

The new investFeed platform combines social network features, such as private messaging and comment posting, information sharing, and digital asset trading analytics and insights.

Through a data partnership with Bravenewcoin.com, the platform also showcases a list of 235 high-performing cryptocurrencies and their associated price tickers, channels, pairings and weighted averages in USD.

The company said it will soon add more features, including buy and sell functionalities, instant notifications on user-assigned price alerts, as well as alerts on moves made by peers and high performing traders.

One of our goals was to give mainstream users a simple, aesthetically pleasing UX and remove the technical barriers and complicated language associated with blockchain and cryptocurrency, said Chernesky.

Just like we linked every top online stock trading brokerage to our original platform, we will begin to form relationships with digital asset exchanges so that users can link their accounts on investFeed and make informed decisions, using the most accurate market data possible.

The end-goal is to become the one-stop shop for everything cryptocurrency, and unite a growing community in one of the most nascent industries of our generation.

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