Crypto Basic Podcast: Teaching You The Basics of Bitcoin and the World of Cryptocurrency. CryptoBasic

Welcome to the show people! Today the gang assesses a hot topic - a user claimed on reddit that Binance "took" money from him and it blew up. Even CZ commented and got blasted. Also, we take a look at an admittedly cringy article listing the "7 deadly sins of CZ". What a day. Tune in now!

Relevant Links:

• Reddit user calls out Binance for "accidentally" taking 12061.48 and won't give it back.
• CZ Responds to the reddit user
• The user posts some so called proof proof
• Some more so called proof
• Another user piggy backs off of the hype and posts "7 Deadly Sins of Changpeng Zhao"
• Wayback machine of CZ calling out OKcoin
• So What happened?
• Text of the Post
• background on the 28th of January I happend to be trading on the futures platform. Due to a mistake by binance my orders weren’t executed and I was liquidated.
• Well I opened a ticket demanding back my funds. After a couple months of mails every 2 or 3 days. Binance denied everything and weren’t giving back the money, so I opened another ticket. This time I didn’t ask for a refund up front. Binance straight up told me it was their mistake and that they would compensate me 3bnb. Well I didn’t take that well, so I asked for my full amount back.
• Binance went in to a defensive mode and decided mixing up different cases would settle the issue. (Binance had messed up again and I lost 3600 USDT, so they compensated me 1018 USDT) they told me they had already compensated me and that I shouldn’t ask for more. When I called them out on the fact that the cases weren’t related, they told me they weren’t going to give me the 12061.48 USDT back anyway.
• I pointed out that by admitting their mistake in this ticket they broke their own policy. It states that Binance has to execute a trade. After I mentioned this they went silent, I have bugged support every 2 days, but I have not received anything as of yet and it has been almost a month.
• I wanted more people to know as Binance is the biggest in the industry, and they bury the negative very easily. I need your help in demanding an answer for Binance her mistakes.
• He explained more a little further down
• In response to if he got liquidated
• I did, but it is more complicated than that. I was trading on the futures platform. My positions weren’t doing well so I made the decision to close them.
• I have a screenshot of the positions before they were closed and after they were closed. Anyways I closed the positions market bought them. (I was shorting) well you’d think that was it. I screenshotted the fact that I had just 12k left. And it showed no open positions. After 4 hours however I get notifications from my phone that I were about to be liquidated, I opened my phone and my positions were still open. And were almost all liquidated.
• Binance told me that I experienced the “app disconnection issue” I don’t know what this means. They however told me it is only common on the app and that is my responsibility for not trading on pc.
• Support shows up to respond
• https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/ga027j/binance_accidentally_took_1206148_and_wont_give/foxrfbp/
• CZ Actually shows up to respond.
• https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/ga027j/binance_accidentally_took_1206148_and_wont_give/foyfpeh/
• The guy posts a couple of screenshots that really don't say much, tells me he posted proof.
• Binance support ends their conversation back and forth few hours later.
• We've already given you the verdict multiple times. You have not provided any more solid evidence that there was a mistake on Binance's side, nor that this error directly caused you to lose any money. Sorry, you can't pressure us into giving you money, be it through misleading social media threads or threatening self-harm as was done in the first ticket. We're happy to approach this legally.
• So what's this article about CZ?
• The article starts out with the picture of CZ in shorts and a suit jacket with a giant red circle around it. Remember he was respecting the shit out of the Bermuda culture while he was there, that's where the picture from. So I'm sure this article is good.
• Envy
• I dunno this is pretty loose, but they say this is a sin because OKCoin had fake trading volume, and CZ was their CTO. The article he references was published in 2013, and CS started working there in 2014. CZ left after only 9 months and cited "differences" rather than your normal bullshit nice guy thing.
• Lust
• They're really stretching here, but they link to an old post by CZ where he actually goes off on OK Coin. I didn't know this.
• I dunno what happened with OK coin and Roger Ver, but that is the crux. Some of the key points from this - CZ wasn't paid when he left, his signature was forged after he left, and he was urging them to stop their shady shit by not honoring a deal with Roger and Bitcoin.com.
• He then goes on to confirm how they are faking volume, how they are
• using bots
• they were playing with their reserve and might not have it
• They encouraged employees to trade
• had bad security.
• This guy's angle is "CZ knew about this and went along with it" somehow.
• Greed
• So now they say he is misleading by calling Binance "the leading cryptocurrency exchange" and then post a screenshot of Coin market cap showing that binance is number 23. I have no idea how he got this number, as they're not below 7 on any of the ways to slice the data.
• He finally makes his first good point - Binance has ridiculous withdrawal fees.
• Then he posts all of the shitty ICOs that Binance helped launch and how they tanked.
• Pride
• Alright finally he starts making some points that I can get behind. CZ said on twitter that when you raise funds for a project you need to set aside funds to battle fud. He's 100% right. Then Justin sun said he'd donate 100 BTC to fight fud, so CZ matched it?
• Binance is apparently a part of a PR firm's client list called Cryptoken.
• So this guy emailed them I guess to hit his gotcha moment. Lol. Spoiler - he didn't gotcha.
• Sloth
• This one he puts a bunch of dots together that show CZ and Justin sun know each other, and then posits that that means they're friends. Obviously the easiest way to know someone isn't justin's friend is to find multiple points of social contact.
• Gluttony
• Here apparently the bad thing that CZ did was put a tweet that would donate $1 for every retweet to fight covid 19. Well they only got 10k retweets so CZ donated $2M. Wow what a dick. Then he links a video with a thumbnail of CZ with Devil horns that is deleted to nosequitur attack their charity org.
• Wrath
• Thesis here - no one seems to know where they are located. Uhhh you're fuckin kidding
• Then he shouts out chico crypto in the comments.
• Oh god I realized it's on the steem fork.
• So what do we think of CZ boys?

Today Adam is joined by Nathan Sexer and Sebastien Borget from The Sandbox, a community-driven platform where creators can monetize voxel ASSETS and gaming experiences on the blockchain. Tune in to learn what their goals are, what amazing partnerships they've managed to secure and how they're planning to bring blockchain gaming to the forefront.

Check them out over at sandbox.game!

Welcome to the show! Today the gang goes over a very interesting scenario found on twitter - what would the world look like during this pandemic, but with blockchain? Would we be better or worse off? We've got a few thoughts on that. Tune in to find out!

Notes:

Some of the interesting points from the thread:

• Here's the post from Ownejj and some quotes

• User Ketifus said

• User dontlikecomputers said

• User Karma_z says

• User BitsAndBobs304

• Brent example 1
• Is Bitcoin the global currency? No, but it's still the largest network. Another more versatile coin could be the global currency
• What role does fiat play in this society, if any at all? Fiat is a thing of the past, and there was all kinds of weird things that happened with stablecoins
• What other things are we assuming for your example? Governments have accepted the crypto, there wasn't a revolution or anything.
• How would it be different?
• Governments will still be accepting taxes, they just won't have the ability to print new money. Taxes will be accepted in a couple of different currencies, but stored in national transparent reserves.
• There will be a privacy currency, but most business will be done on a public ledger that's traceable.
• The government could announce that any and all obligations are halted, and they'd have a full accounting of what those obligations are. They all get pushed back, and smart contracts could be updated to increase the back end obligations.
• Governments could instantly distribute funds to any confirmed citizens on chain to solve for necessities. If they didn't have the funds they could appeal to DAOs by issuing bonds to them.
• Liquid democracy could show the true public reaction to the opening of the government, rather than astroturfing and vocal minorities.
• Brent example 2
• Is Bitcoin the global currency? It's the world's most used currency, but governments still cling to their fiat
• What role does fiat play in this society, if any at all? Citizen have a weird mix of cash and crypto
• What other things are we assuming for your example?
• How would it be different?
• In a world where there was a balance between Fiat and Crypto, and the government was printing money - I think it would actually move people away from crypto. People won't turn down free money, and in this situation it would be more of a competitive market. Could the communities of the cryptocurrencies step up and match a government bailout? Or do we just throw citizens to the wolves?

How to talk about your world, and what would be different:

• Is Bitcoin the global currency?
• What role does fiat play in this society, if any at all?
• What other things are we assuming for your example?

Welcome to the Crypto Basic Podcast! This time around we're going over a truly unexpected turn of events which baffled even the most economically savvy of us (Karim. That's just Karim.) Oil went negative! A never before seen event, we try to make sense of it and pose the important questions: 1. What the hell? 2. What's the reason? 3. What will the repercussions be? All of this and more on today's show, so tune in now!

• Interesting topic to learn about and extrapolate from
• We have just witnessed an oil price crash like never before taking prices of West Texas Intermediate into deeply negative territory.
• WTI Crude Oil Spot Price is the price for immediate delivery of West Texas Intermediate grade oil
• reached minus US$40.32 a barrel
• How can a price turn negative?
• industry has not been able to slow production fast enough to counter the drop in demand.
• global demand for oil has reduced by 29 million barrels a day (100 to 71)
• Storage can stabilize prices, but its nearing capacity
• WT mainly stored at Cushing Facility in OK, now almost full
• 62m Barrel capacity - Can fill half tanks in the US
• Worlwide, current rates of supply/demand have estimates of inventories increasing by 1.6B barrels in first half of 2020, but only 1.6B barrel capacity still available
• Context - Amount of production that could be stored if exports dry up
• US - 30 days, SA - 18, Russia - 8
• Nigeria, largest producer in Africa....1.5 days
• Traders with contracts to take delivery of oil in May fear they won't be able to store it. They are willing to pay not to have to take it and have nowhere to put it.
• June contracts and later are still positive, so supply demand imbalance may be corrected
• Fun Trivia - Guess what the name of the other price benchmark for oil
• It stayed around $25, they can be put on ships and taken to storage anywhere
• Responses
• Halliburton (oilfield engineering) said that the pandemic has created so much turmoil in the industry that it "cannot reasonably estimate" how long the hit will last.
• OPEC-Plus - Responded by cutting output by 9.7m barrels per day, which ends the duel between Russia and SA
• But note still significantly less than the drop in demand
• Oil importing countries taking advantage and filled up what they could in storage
• Investors using Giant oil tankers for storage
• Record 160m barrels stored this way, each can hold up to 2m barrels.
• Of course this is bidding up charter rates, more than doubling to $350,000 a day
• Last time we saw something close was 2009, about 100m barrels
• Shiff Quote on Gold
• The oil price is now negative $3 per barrel. What is happening now in the #Oil market will soon happen in reverse in the #gold market. In oil the shorts are trying to deliver, but the longs don't want it. In gold the longs will try to take delivery, but the shorts won't have it!
• Sources
• Understanding what just happened with oil prices
• Oil crash explained: How are negative oil prices even possible?
• The world's on the brink of running out of places to put oil
• Supertankers drafted in to store glut of crude oil
• Why TikTok is Now the No. 1 Social Media App

Welcome to the Crypto Basic Podcast! This time around we're going over one of the hottest topics of today, given the obvious circumstances: what's the safest way to handle assets during the coronavirus economic crash? What assets provide the most security, and could Bitcoin, as the flagship of the cryptoverse, be one of them? All of the above and more on today's episode. Tune in now!

• Report in the Economic Bulletin from the Kansa City Fed
• "In recent years, some have questioned whether Bitcoin could also serve as a safe haven. We compare the behavior of government bonds, gold, and Bitcoin from January 1995 through February 2020"
• They point out that historically during times of financial stress people tend to shift towards safer assets
• Safe Haven defined - an asset which is uncorrelated or negatively correlated with riskier assets during times of stress
• US Gov securities considered "quintessential safe haven against stock market." but they point out some studies have found Gold behaves this way as well
• "In theory, Bitcoin’s fixed supply and algorithm-based issuance allow it to be independent from traditional markets, which could make it a desirable asset in times of economic stress."
• They examine 10-year Treasury note & Gold by looking at correlations of daily returns compared to SP 500
• 1995 to 2020, and they chose this spread to have an equal pre and post bitcoin period
• Comparison
• Bunch more charts, essentially showing that
• 10 year Treasury negative and statistically significant correlation across all stress periods
• gold has only behaved like a safe haven in certain periods of financial stress
• Bitcoins correlations with the S&P 500 are not statistically significant in any period and positive in all but one
• Extra tidbit on current downturn, Bitcoin again has a positive, statistically significant correlation, suggesting it performed like a risk asset in March rather than a safe haven.
• "Overall, our results suggest that the 10-year Treasury has generally exhibited safe-haven behavior, gold has occasionally exhibited safe-haven behavior, and Bitcoin has never exhibited safe-haven behavior since its introduction"

Note: We are not financial advisors.

Stablecoins are a part of the crytpocurreny space for better or for worse. What happens in a future where more people are using digital assets? What does the stablecoin environment do to the US Dollar? Are stablecoins like Tether and Libra a systemic threat to fiat currency?

These questions are investigated by the Crypto Basic Podcast team - what place do stablecoins have in a future, and what can Tether do to get more users? Does the podcast agree with the G20’s assessment of Stablecoins in general? Where can you go to learn more about the study that was released? Well the podcast has answers for you.

Pertinant Links -

• Are Stablecoins a systemic threat?
• Published Study by FSB
• G20 Website
• Financial Security Board
• The FSB is inviting comments on this consultative document and the questions set out below. Responses should be sent to [email protected] by 15 July 2020. Responses will be published on the FSB’s website unless respondents expressly request otherwise.



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Welcome to this week's Crypto Basic News episode! Tune in to listen to the gang talk about the progress of blockchain adoption, Cryptopia's big win in court, new lawsuits against 11 crypto companies in new York and much more!

• Rapid Fire
• Reddit may be devising a point system on the blockchain
• Redditor MagoCrypto posted the video, which is a walkthrough of a new build of the Reddit app that shows a feature with mention of community points. When delving into the FAQs of the wallet feature there appear to be pages on distribution, wallet, backup and recovery, and on the blockchain
• Crypto Funding Dropped Considerably in March Due To COVID
• VC funding for crypto projects was reduced to March 2019 levels after COVID swept the nation.
• Aside from a Bakkt $300 Million deal with Microsoft, the total VC funding was $117 million
• Former UFC fighter Ben Askren shows support for Bitcoin Halving.
• He was sponsored by Litecoin back in January 2020 for a fight and changed his Twitter handle to "Bitcoin Halving May 13th". Ya love to see it. Also of note, UFC partnered with Dapper Labs in February, a company that builds digital collectibles on the blockchain.
• It appears Bank of America is partnering with Ripple
• Question: "What do you see as the things sort of coming down in the next sort of five to 10 years that our clients should maybe start thinking about or even getting ready for?"
• Answer: "So not just the capability but the actual experience and ability to get things done anytime, anywhere because we are an around the clock society. And the second one is the ability to integrate. And Derrick touched on this a lot, it's not about our platform and our capabilities, it's about you as a client and the infrastructure you have and the ability for us to integrate, whether that's with platforms and capabilities that we built or partnerships that we have with the likes of Ripple or Swift. These are Fintechs that we're partnering with. They've come through all of our rigor of legal and compliance and we're able to leverage our banking as a platform to deliver that to you. So I really think the future is all about client experience and integrated platforms versus siloed products and capabilities. And then of course we've for Bank of America talk a lot about intelligent treasury, which brings all of that together. And you touched on this, Jonathon, as being an advocate for our clients and helping them navigate this changing environment. So I'm really excited and looking forward to see what the next few years bring."
• April Rent Stats Are In And They Aren't Looking So Good
• March logged 81% of renters paying by the 5th
• Real-life Examples of Blockchain-Based Digital TransformationsWe know that blockchain architecture is a great way to collect, store, and share data
• Article from Security Blvd looks to give real life examples of blockchain implementation
• US Air Force & Data Security
• Majority of military networks are centralized systems with thousands of connected devices, so vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
• They contracted Cyber-security firm Xage Security - uses a blcockhain-based system to regulate the terms of nodes joining the system & tracking their activity
• Non-profits & transparency
• One of the primary concerns with charities is corruption, trust, allocation of funds
• Blockchain powered charity platform GiveTrack allows donors to track their specific donations to see how/what impact is being made
• Blockchain also makes crossborder transfers easy
• Visa
• Launched B2B payment netowrk, using blockchain to process payments without an intermediary
• Information also stored using blockchain record-keeping, everything is transparent and secure. in 60 countries already
• Spotify & Royalties
• Industry shifted from download to streaming, making royalties very complicated
• Medichain uses smar contracts to improve attribution, uses end-to-end protocols for registering, identifying, and tracking creative works online
• Used to be an open media library to virtually sign & timestamp content, then spotify bought it
• Metlife & Medical Insurance
• Company in Singapore created an app (Vitana) to help women with Gestational Diabetes
• 20% of women there develop this during pregnancy, so how to get payment without filing paperwork
• Practitioner enters positive test results into medical data, app automatically triggers smart contract that deposits a payment into patients bank account
• Crytopia Exchange Users Score Big Win In Court
• Crypto Exchange Users Get Big Win in CourtOf course we all remember May 2019 the exchange went into liquidation after a May 2019 "hack" of NZD $30 million (equivalent of $17.85 Mill USD)
• Because the exchange operated as a trust by handling the cryptocurrencies on behalf of the account holders and holding these in separate trust accounts, Justice Gendall took the view that the digital assets should be classed as property.
• Justice Gendall said, "I reach the conclusion that the cryptocurrencies here situated in Cryptopia’s exchange are a species of intangible personal property and clearly an identifiable thing of value. Without question they are capable of being the subject matter of a trust."
• Account holders will be reimbursed of their balances.
• Apparently the founder of Cryptopia, Adam Clark, suspects it was an inside job. "A hacker somehow knew where everything was. Someone walked in with all the keys and deleted the logs on the way out," Adam told Stuff, adding "They didn't take the untraceable currency. It wasn't about spending the money, it was about fucking the company. They had direct access."
• New York: 11 cryptocurrency companies suedEleven cryptocurrency companies were sued in a New York court due to violating cryptocurrency laws.
• Including Binance, Fundacion Tron, BitMEX, KuCoin
• group of investors filed multiple lawsuits against 11 cryptocurrency companies alleging that they were tricked into buying unregistered securities in the United States.
• Lawsuit include 42 defendants in 16 countries
• Among the names that would appear in the documents are Brendan Blumer (Block.one), Dan Larimer (Block.one), Vinny Lingham (Civic), Justin Sun (Tron), Changpeng Zhao (Binance) and Arthur Hayes (BitMEX),
• Part of the suit is that they were told they were utility tokens, no need to register as securities with the SEC
• "One fact to note is that the law firm that is the cause is the same one that sued Bitfinex in October 2019 for alleged manipulation of the cryptocurrency market and the renowned Kleiman case against Craig Wright in which a lawsuit for a billion dollars was introduced."
• This would take years and has multiple jurisdictions (China, Singapore, Switzerland, Israel, Japan, Canada, & Estonia)

• Decentralized exchange Bisq Is Hacked For $250k+"A Critical security vulnerability" was found and tradin was halted on Tuesday. 4000 XMR and 3 BTC were stolen from 7 different victims.
• "In plain words, this exploit was the result of a flaw in the way Bisq trades are carried out, not in the way funds are stored (i.e., there is no honeypot since Bisq is P2P)," Bisq stated.
• The attacker was able to intercept cryptos coming to users' default fallback address, which is the address where cryptos are sent to upon a failed trade

r/CryptoCurrency - I have created a list of cryptocurrency scams happening right now. I ended up losing some money last week and I don't want anyone to lose as well. So I researched on various scams taking place. If I have missed any please comment below..I will add it.

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Hi all! Welcome to this week's edition of Crypto Basic News. This time around we're going over Microsoft's new crypto mining patent, an April fools guessing game, celebrating Banano's 2 year anniversary, and more. Tune in!

• Rapid Fire
• Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad tweeted something regarding the current state of the economy
• Ethereum-based game The Sandbox sells out third presaleThey recently contacted us. It seems similar to a blockchain-based Minecraft. And not gonna lie, the trailer looked pretty cool.
• Much like Decentraland you can buy virtual plots of land. Sold out faster than it's February presale. 3,330 ETH, equivalent to 440k. 12,384 LAND parcels to be exact.
• A total of 166,464 LANDS will ever be available in the map that will form The Sandbox metaverse. LAND is the basic sandbox unit on the platform’s map and each LAND comprises 96x96 meters in the game world.
• Fourth LAND presale will be announced later this year as well as the game release.
• Bitcoin outperformed Dow & S&P in Q1BTC started at $7,182 at the beginning of the year. Pushed up to $10.4k and dipped below $5k for a moment a few weeks ago. It's currently at...Karim? Bitcoin is actually only down 10% in Q1. S&P lost 20% and the Dow 23%.
• Folding@Home is now the world's fastest supercomputer
• CoinMarketCap gets bought out by Binance. Annnd speaking of CoinMarketCap...
• Also, CMC had a decent April Fool's joke. And they responded to my tweet about it with a decent joke as well. -A
• April Fools or Not April Fools? - Brent
• BItcoin Creator also founded Monero, research suggests.
• Github has decided to bury Bitcoin's code inside an arctic mountain to preserve it for at least 1,000 years.
• Craig Wright Victorious in Kleiman Case After Signing with Satoshi's Keys
• FDIC has warned you not to withdraw cash from your bank account - No depositor has lost money from FDIC insured banks since 1933.
• Dead ICO Sub r/gemsprotocol has been repurposed to sell rare gems
• Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance has decided to delist all leveraged tokens from its platform amidst claims of lack of understanding from its users.
• Microsoft Files Patent for New Crypto Mining System - K
• Patent filed last week titled Cryptocurrency System Using Body Activity Data
• According to the patent, Microsoft’s cryptocurrency would make use of body activity data
• "a brain wave or body heat emitted from the user when the user performs the task provided by an information or service provider, such as viewing an advertisement or using certain internet services, can be used in the mining process."
• They argue this could replace massive computation work because the data that is gathered from the body activity can be regarded as proof of work, "a user can solve the computationally difficult problem unconsciously"
• It also says that the system could be coupled to the users device, and let it know if the right conditions were met and award cryptocurrency to the user (whose body activity data is verified)
• Anyway, black mirror y'all
• 2 Year Anniversary of Banano
• Banano was originally launched on April 1st and forked from Nano.
• Some platinum hits:
• Made monKeys - you can generate a monkey avatar from a public key lol.
• They have functioning Wallets, Gambling Dapps, and everything you'd expect from developers.
• Remember folding at home last week? Actually Banano has been involved for over a year.
• They even introduced plans for CamoBanano - a privacy layer lol.
• their yellow paper was the best ever.
• Definitely my favorite meme coin. Maybe someday they're gonna crack the top 1000 on coin maket cap.
• Corona Virus Update, The Fed and Unemployment - K
• Economists at the Fed's St. Louis district project 47 million employment reductions
• That would be a 32.1% unemployment rate
• We already had a record 3.3m Americans file initial jobless claims, then that just doubled to 6.6m (previous number/record was like 330k)
• Two complications leading to this spike are
• 66.8 million workers in “occupations with high risk of layoff.” They are sales, production, food preparation and services.
• Other research also identified 27.3 million people working in “high contact-intensive” jobs such as barbers and stylists, airline attendants, and food and beverage service.
• Great depression peak was 24.9%
• Speaking of the Fed, they're printing about $1 million every secondbalance sheet has increased by $586 billion—to $5.25 trillion—in the week of March 18–25
• This means that on average, the Fed has been printing roughly $970,000 every second during that time period
• Fed has been printing the equivalent of Bitcoin’s market cap every 35 hours
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Welcome to another edition of Crypto Basic News! Our editor is SO busy in quarantine that he forgot to post this episode so you're getting it with a few days of delay. We still love him though. He may or may not be the one writing this description. Anyway, today we're talking about shady senators dumping stocks after a private coronavirus briefing, Steemit developers forking into a new platform called Hive due to Justin Sun's shenanigans, and much more. Oh, and coronavirus. Surprise surprise. Tune in now!

• Rapid Fire
• Global cryptocurrency wallet usage has tripled in the last three years.
• 10 mill in 2016 to 40mil end of 2019.
• Devs Plot Launch of Telegram’s Blockchain Without Company’s Involvement
• So says the TON Community Foundation, a group of more than two dozen software developers and investors, who are now discussing possible ways to launch the Telegram Open Network (TON) without the messaging platform's participation.
• Coinbase Wallet integrates DeFi directly into app. Users will be able to borrow and lend crypto with interest thru the app now.
• Which US cities own the most crypto? Let's hear your guesses.
• Congress Bill Looks to create a digital dollar (B?)
• ANNNNND ITS GONE
• https://www.coindesk.com/digital-dollar-stripped-from-latest-us-coronavirus-relief-bill
• Fed Pledges asset purchases with no limits, Bitcoin and Gold Spike - K
• Federal Reserve said Monday it will launch a barrage of programs to help stimulate the economy
• Unlike previous crisis where there was a commitment to a set amount of balance sheet expansion, this time they are indicating no limits
• The Fed also will be moving for the first time into corporate bonds
• Also a lending program for Main Street businesses ($300 Billion) to support flow of credit
• “The central bank is shifting from being not just the lender of last resort, but now it is the buyer of last resort. Don’t ask how much they will buy, this is truly QE infinity.”
• -Chris Rupkey, chief finacial economist at MUFG Union Bank
• will lower the interest rate on its repo operations to 0% from 0.1%. (The operations are conducted daily to provide banks short-term funding)
• All this backed by Treasury department so Fed doesnt lose money
• bitcoin jumped from $5,860 to $6,628 in an hour, Gold went from from $1,494 to $1,524 over the same time frame.
• Four US Senators caught dumping stocks after a private briefing on Corona Virus - B
• There was a Senate Intelligence Committee briefing on the Corona Virus, and right after that meeting there were 4 Senators that immediately started to sell off positions.
• The names of the senators: Richard Burr, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. , Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga. , James Inhofe, R-Okla
• Richard Burr even had a meeting with some fellow rich people (membership to join this group that he had the meeting with is $500, up to $10k) and said this "There's one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history," he said, according to a secret recording of the remarks obtained by NPR. "It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic."
• Burr's private comments were dire, his public comments made it sound like this was under control.
• So I saw a mention of one of the Senators being married to the Chairman of the NYSE. I was trying to remember where I heard that before. Kelly Loeffler! Holy shit she was the CEO that was in charge of BAKKT.
• Then, Karim remember this bitch wasn't even elected.
• Coronavirus crisis may highlight the overlap between the surveillance state and the cryptocurrency industry. - K
• Israeli tech company NSO Group is working on new product to monitor spread of Corona, with nearly a dozen companies testing the product
• NSO, is best known for selling spyware to Saudi Arabia and other governments
• NSO Group’s surveillance technology has attracted widespread criticism for covertly accessing phones, activating cameras and collecting location data.
• NSO Groups to pranks seem to have significant ties to the crypto industry
• co-founders Omri Lavie and Shalev Hulio have invested in the bitcoin startup Simplex
• Eddy Shalev (investor) has invested in the non-custodial wallet startup Portis, the exchange platform eToro and the privacy startup QEDIT.
• Coinbase famously sparked industrywide backlash in 2019
• it acquired Neutrino, founded by three former members of a controversial Italian surveillance vendor called Hacking Team.
• Coinbase said those people would transition out of the company, but no update and they refused to comment when asked.
• So just a reminder that cryptocurrency is just a tech, a tool, not innately a tool of liberation/freedom/etc, could be the opposite too, a tool of surveillance, or control
• Update on some Justin Sun / Steemit Drama - B
• So we talked about Justin trying to take over the Steem blockchain a few weeks ago. It looks like he was actually completely successful.
• Steemit developers quit because of the takeover.
• Justin has been hiding any posts on Steem critical of the new Steem ownership, and downvoting them as, well.
• The Steem community essentially capitulated, and forked into a new platform called Hive.
• Hive is going to be airdropped at 1:1 on Steem accounts.
• However, they bricked the Steemit Inc. coins to the tune of 60M, which is what Justin was able to get control of.
• They are proposing that anyone that switches to Hive and moves their coins loses their stake on Steemit lolol.
• Which is of course what Hive is doing.
• From Crypto Mining to Coronavirus Research - K
• CoreWeave is the largest U.S. miner on the Ethereum blockchain,
• redirecting the processing power of 6,000 specialized computer chips toward research to find a therapy for the coronavirus.
• GPUs will be pointed toward Stanford University's Folding@home program.
• Long standing, use donated processing power to simulate protein folds to try to cure different disieases
• Recently announced specific project to boost coronavirus research
• "Their protein simulations attempt to find potential 'pockets' where existing [U.S. federal agency Food and Drug Administration (FDA)] approved drugs or other known compounds could help inhibit or treat the virus,"
• This addition has essentially double the power of the entire network, GPUs designed to handle repetitive calculations
• According to Venturo, those 6,000 GPUs made up about 0.2 percent of Ethereum's total hashrate, earning roughly 28 ETH per day, worth about $3,600 at press time.
• Tulip.tools founder Johann Tanzer put out a call to action to Tezos bakers (miners) and offered a modest 15 XTZ ($20ish) to the leading contributor to Folding@home
• 20 groups of Tezos miners are now contributing a slice of their hashing power to the cause. (and the pot grew to $600ish with other people donating as well)
• GPUs are flexible, but ASICs really cant participate. More powerful than GPUs, but only at one thing (so we probably wont see a lot of btc mining groups helping)
• FOLDING@HOME UPDATE ON SARS-COV-2
• Shots Fired!
• Wikipedia and Cardano having some issuesCharles Hoskinson, CEO of Cardano, is the latest figure in crypto to assert that Wikipedia is censoring his platform. He made a nearly 10 min video regarding the situation. Accusing Wikipedia to be a community-run free encyclopedia, hostile towards crypto.
• David Gerard, a crypto-hater and Wikipedia editor, says that Cardano is self promoting, and needs to be covered by the mainstream media, not the crypto press.
• Hoskinson said coins like Spankchain can have an article on Wikipedia. Spankchain does not have a Wikipedia page.
• Some Cardano members tried to include a blurb on Ourobouros, the algorithm that powers Cardano.

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Hello and welcome to Crypto Basic News! This week we're cozying up in quarantine, staying calm and collected, and we're talking about all kinds of stuff like Tezos getting into digital card games, millions of dollars being usurped through the MakerDAO smart contract mechanism, and of course, we talk COVID-19, from its health risks to its massive possible socioeconomic effects.

Wash your hands and then click play to tune in!

• Rapid Fire
• Apparently it's alt season according to that index we talked about a few weeks ago????
• 50 Days Out From Bitcoin Halvening
• IRS Deadline has been extended by 90 days (July 15th)
• Coinbase CLO Resigns to Oversee US National Banking System
• WHO impersonators are trying to steal your bitcoinThe fake email claims funds will be used to “enable all countries to track and detect the disease...send personal protective equipment to frontline health workers...enable communities to prevent infection and care for those in need...and accelerate efforts to fast-track the development of lifesaving vaccines.”
• Tezos gets in the digital card game space (Adam)
• Coase, a company launched by Tezos aims to solve with its new game, Emergents
• Coase’s innovation: Let people easily acquire and swap the cards they actually want
• Alpha will be available in April
• For Coase co-founder Zvi Mowshowitz – who is also a 2007 inductee to Magic Hall of Fame – both distribution approaches leave a lot to be desired.
• Emergents will take a radically simple approach: Let people buy the cards they want.
• Brian David-Marshall, a third co-founder, said Coase has "an economic model for doing a collectible card game on the blockchain that captures a lot of what makes physical card games great."
• Coase will be the primary and secondary marketplace all in one. Like bitcoin on Square’s Cash App, Coase will be the seller and the buyer for Emergents cards, essentially acting as a market maker.The company is using bonding curves, much like Ethereum's token-swapping platform Uniswap, to distribute the cards. Cards will have a fixed supply and their prices will swing with demand, determined by an algorithm. New cards will come out and be sold on the site at a low price.
• Vitalik tweeted out a pic of what he thought the next 5-10 years of eth2 would look like
• Millions of Dollars of value was usurped from the MakerDAO smart contract. (TOP STORY)
• I didn't want to use the word stolen, but this is an exceptionally rough spot. This happened right around this time last week.
• Apparently for a full 3.5 hours someone had a monopoly on the liquidation market of the MakerDAO.
• So lets do a recap of how the maker DAO creates liquidity. RECAP QUICK - REFERENCE 101
• With multiple people, there will automatically be a bidding war because the price of ETH exists in the world.
• With only one person, they were able to bid on the ETH being liquidated at $0 worth of DAI. How did only one person get to be the only bidder? Well people ran out of liquidity. There wasn't enough DAI sitting there to buy the ETH. ETH fell so fast that people couldn't liquidate their holdings and were forced to sell. The network was too congested to let keepers work fast enough, leaving this group in the only position to buy.
• They're using the term "Steal" $4M worth of ETH from the contract, but honestly this isn't really stealing. The contract functions this way.
• Since no one else could bid, normally the liquidation penalty on ETH contracts was 13%, but this raised it an liquidated all kinds of positions with a 50% penalty. People woke up to their collateral gone with no recourse.
• The Maker DAO is now creating a fund that would be the last resort in these scenarios that anyone can participate in, and they're making being a "keeper" easier for the general public. They've also programmed Coinbase's USDC as an emergency collateral device.
• CoronaVirus & The economy (everyone)
• 
  

• Monopoly Rules - Top on R/CC
• Bill Ackman calls for Trump, CEO to temporarily shut the country down
• SUB-STORY - Federal Reserve cuts rates to zero and launches massive $700 billion quantitative easing program - (K)
• In an emergency move Sunday, the Federal Reserve announced it is dropping its benchmark interest rate to zero and launching a new round of quantitative easing.
• Fed also slashed the rate of emergency lending at the discount window for banks by 125 basis points to 0.25%, and lengthened the term of loans to 90 days.
• The Fed also cut reserve requirements for thousands of banks to zero.
• Actions by the Fed appeared to be the largest single day set of moves the bank had ever taken
• Before action took place over months like in 08, this was multiple programs, QE, and rate cuts, all in one day
• Fiscal vs Monetary policy
• EARN IT Act could be an attack on Encryption - K
• Communications Decency Act Section 230 - Historically given tech companies minimal liability for how people use their platforms
• EARN IT Act would force companies to "Earn" protection from liability by showing they are following recommendations for combating child sexual exploitation
• Bi-Partisan Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal (Dont expect anything good from these two)
• Would create a panel of law enforcement officials, attorneys general, online child sexual exploitation survivors and advocates, constitutional law scholars, consumer protection and privacy specialists, cryptographers, and other tech experts to collectively decide what digital companies should do to identify and reduce child predation on their platforms
• Could include things like scanning content to identify abusive photos/videos
• But could also include things like communication surveillance
• So if this was law, companies couldn't offer end-to-end encryption and be protected from liability
• Either A) accept liability for anything that happens, B) put in a backdoor for law enforcement, C) just avoid end to end encryption all together
• A note about LIbretarian anti government views (Panel picking) and Legal Creep (Patriot act, RICO and asset forfeiture)
• Exit
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