Ep. 57 Winnie the Pooh and Bitcoin Too!
On this episode of the unhashed podcast: Is Winnie the Pooh the best thing to happen to the bitcoin price all year long or is China’s blockchain craze another non-sequitur? Now that Crypto Capital is completely fucked, are there any other Drug cartel money launderers than Bitfinex can turn to for banking services? And...Bitmain is back with a brand new mining farm in Texas! But the real question is: what did they do with their giant bag of Bitcoin Cash?
Weekly News Wrap Up:
In a bit of world news, leftist Peronists recently took power in Argentina. Overnight after the election win, they instituted capital controls and changed the limit of how many dollars people can buy from $10,000 per month to $200 per month. With banking shenanigans going on in other parts of the world too (like Lebanon) Will we start to see people in countries like these turning more to Bitcoin en mass or will it continue to be only on the margins for the foreseeable future?
Blockchain Blockchain Blockchain - All President Xi and the rest of the PRC can talk about lately is Blockchain! The CCP wants people to pledge allegiance to the party on a blockchain. The word on the street is that China will be the first country with a digital currency. And the man himself President Xi said that china should “seize the opportunity” afforded by blockchain technology”. We thought we had reached peak blockchain in 2017/18, are we due for another bout?
The Blockstream Green Wallet has added early access Tor integration. Within the newly updated version of the wallet is an optional, in-app onion routing network (Tor) integration for both Android and iOS users. Before this update, Android users could use Orbot as a proxy, but there wasn’t a reliable way for iOS users to use Tor while accessing other apps. Fundamentally, Tor obfuscates a user’s IP address from their other information by sending it through a relay of other encrypted servers before it reaches the IP’s intended destination online. Enabling Tor will mean that the Blockstream servers will not know the wallet user’s IP address or what country they are connecting from. And not just that — everyone in a user’s network will be blinded to the fact that they are accessing a Blockstream Green wallet.
Popular web browser Opera has announced an integration that will allow users to transact and make payments in bitcoin directly through its Android browser. The new features are the finalization of a beta announced on July 10, 2019, which first allowed users to send and receive bitcoin (as well as TRON) from its Crypto Wallet product, a cryptocurrency wallet built into the Android version of Opera. And the capitulation continues: before that beta release, the Crypto Wallet within Opera’s Android browser only provided support for ether and other ERC-20 tokens. The addition of bitcoin better positions the browser to gain a foothold in a rapidly growing Web 3.0 market. Users will interact with the Bitcoin blockchain through the built-in Opera Crypto Wallet, essentially making it possible for Android users to transfer and receive bitcoin directly from the browser. (source)
On October 21, 2019, Chinese bitcoin mining giant Bitmain launched mining headquarters in Rockdale, Texas, in collaboration with the Rockdale Municipal Development District and Canadian blockchain firm DMG Blockchain Solutions. The Texas facility will be located on a 33,000-acre site, and Bitmain will be working to increase its power output from the current 25 MW level to a maximum of 300 MW. DMG will be in charge of keeping the site fully functional, working with both Bitmain and the municipal development district to recruit on-the-ground workers and ensure the maintenance of the facility’s tools and equipment. “Being chosen by the world’s leading bitcoin mining company is a great testament to the capabilities of DMG’s mining team,” DMG CEO Dan Reitzik said in a statement shared with Bitcoin Magazine. “Over the past several months, Bitmain visited many large facilities throughout North America, including DMG’s flagship facility in British Columbia, Canada.” (source)
Just launched in Berlin Saturday, the new HTC Exodus 1s promises to be the first smartphone to put a full Bitcoin node in the users’ pockets. The device is a technical and spiritual successor to the Exodus 1 (which integrates a hardware wallet), whose uniqueness and value proposition on the smartphone market is given by the preinstalled Zion Vault app. Through this feature, users can perform one-touch downloads of the Bitcoin blockchain. “The Zion Vault app makes it very simple to download the entire Bitcoin ledger.” said Decentralized Chief Officer Phil Chen in an interview with Bitcoin Magazine. Interestingly, the Bitcoin Core client doesn’t come preinstalled and will not get downloaded in a pruned form in the phone’s 64 GB internal storage. Instead, users must purchase an additional SD card, insert it in the device, and then access the Zion Vault app. According to Chen, a worst-case scenario for complete synchronization and download would take 1-2 weeks — but with broadband internet speed, the process should be “a lot quicker.” (source)
On October 19, 2019, the team behind video game portal Satoshi’s Games presented Lightnite: an online multiplayer third-person shooting game whose microtransactions are entirely powered by the Lightning Network. This is the grandest and most ambitious project of the team thus far, and it promises to bring more bitcoin adoption to the video game community. Just days after battle royale king Fortnite released new maps and environments to explore in Chapter 2, Lightnite lead developer Carlos Roldan and his team have attempted a coup which strikes directly at the monetization model. During the 2019 Lightning Conference, the Satoshi’s Games developers are selling early access passes for Lightnite. This is part of the plan to crowdfund the project, and all contributions are being processed by a self-hosted BTCPay server. (source)
Bitfinex, a prominent bitcoin exchange, has filed an application to subpoena a former bank executive in an attempt to recover millions of dollars in frozen funds. Bitfinex filed its application on October 18, 2019, with a district court in the state of California. In this motion, Bitfinex singles out the bank TCA Bancorp’s former vice president, Rondell “Rhon” Clyde Monroe. In addition to Monroe’s testimony, Bitfinex is seeking a documented list of all of Monroe’s former communications with payment processor Crypto Capital. Bitfinex and Crypto Capital have a complicated history. In April 2019, Bifinex faced legal action from the New York Attorney General’s Office over the allegation that Bitfinex was using $850 million acquired from Tether (which is owned by the same parent company, iFinex) to mask losses. In its recent subpoena application, Bitfinex claims that these losses were the result of theft or criminal mismanagement by Crypto Capital. Without signing a formal agreement, Bitfinex entrusted $880 million with Crypto Capital and since then has been unable to access it. In a bid to avoid disclosing these difficulties to its users, Bitfinex initiated the scheme to “borrow” money from Tether. At the same time, Ivan Manuel Molina Lee, the president of Crypto Capital, was reportedly extradited into Polish police custody from Greece on October 25. Polish media sources have reported Lee’s entrance into Poland, escorted by a police detachment, in connection to money laundering for Colombian drug cartels through Bitfinex. Following the arrest, Stuart Hoegner, general counsel at Bitfinex, issued a statement noting that Lee was detained by authorities in Greece several months before he was extradited to Poland and that Oz Yosef, another principal at Crypto Capital, has been indicted on three criminal counts by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Yosef, also known as Oz Joseph, has also been tied to a Panama shell company. Hoegner also added context around Crypto Capital’s connection with Bitfinex. “Crypto Capital processed certain funds for and on behalf of Bitfinex for several years,” per Hoegner’s statement. “During that period, Bitfinex relied upon various systemic representations from Crypto Capital, including from Molina and Yosef, that proved to be false. Among those representations, Crypto Capital regularly referred to its integrity, banking expertise, robust compliance programme and financial licenses.” To make up for the $850 million loss, Bitfinex conducted a $1 billion private token sale in May 2019. (source1)(source2)
Price Analysis:
Number go up!