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

There are scammers out there impersonating us in the Discord arena, we need your help to find them if you can.

• Rapid Fire
  • UNICEF launches crypto fund
    • UNICEF can now receive, hold, and disperse donations of ether and bitcoin cryptocurrencies. Funding open source technology benefiting children and young people around the world
  • Median US Income by year in BTC
  • Vitalik Buterin claimed that Ethereum will be more secure than Bitcoin after it moves to proof of stake over the next few years.
    • POS introduces a system where validators can be questioned. So you can challenge a block for being illegitimate .
    • "This is how the blockchain becomes more expensive to attack. If someone wants to really bring the network down, they would have to create a lot of malicious blocks. To do so, they would have to stump up a huge amount of ether as collateral—which they would lose if challenged. This makes a major attack much more expensive to run, which Buterin claimed, would be an improvement on proof of work."
  • McAfee started a decentralized "no restrictions" crypto exchange.
    • Called the McAfee DEX, completely decentralized crypto exchange running on the Ethereum blockchain.
    • no KYC, opened in Beta, only ERC=20s. Nothing on the exchange will ever be monitored, recorded, or restricted.

• Hearthstone Player Blitzchung speaks out and gets banned by Blizzard. Gods Unchained responds with an invite to $500k tournament

  Update: Gods Unchained hit by cyberattacks after speaking out

  • Earlier this week Hearthstone player, Blitzchung, spoke out against Hong Kong in a Twitch interview saying "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!" in a gas mask. Blizzard then removed him from the Hearthstone Grand Masters tournament taking away his prize money ($10,000) and effectively banning him from future tournaments. Tencent, a Chinese conglomerate has a large stake in Activision/Blizzard
  • Gods Unchained reaches out and says they will reimburse his lost winnings plus invite him to their upcoming $500k tournament. Went on to say that Blizzard will exploit their players if it is in their immediate financial interest. And how Gods Unchained has built uncensorable items with an open economy and market.

• IRS FAQ on Virtual Currency Transaction

  • It's being treated as property for general tax purposes.
  • You must recognize capital gains or losses on Virtual currency sales
  • If you held it for 1 year or less you pay via short term, and 1 year or more it's long term capital gains. This starts the day after it was received.
  • They are basing gain or loss on USD.
  • You get to include all fees you get charged while acquiring the currency in value. It's unclear if you get to claim network fees here, but it sounds like you can.
  • Getting paid in Virtual Currency is income. Paying someone in Virtual currency means you have to recognize your gain or loss on that.
  • They say a lot that you need to determine the fair market value of the currency based on the day you get it, but don't give any specific guidelines for doing it with regards to crypto.
  • If you DON'T receive coin through a hard fork you don't have income. If you DO get coins in a hard fork you do have income. Soft forks produce no value.
  • Hard forks are considered ordinary income, not capital gains, again based on fair market value when it happens. This is going to be wildly hard to track - but you are supposed to base it on the day that you can actually sell it / transfer it
  • If you get paid / goods / or whatever for a currency with no market value you have to base its value on the goods you got.
  • Gifts are not taxable income, but have a value placed on them when you get them.
  • Donations don't recognize gain/loss and do count as donations based on fair market value.
  • Transfers between your own wallets do not cause realization of gains.
  • Doesn't make sense in current form

  Problems the community has noticed:

  • The rules on hard forks are a little unclear.
  • Someone could theoretically hard fork you into a massive tax liability as an attack.
  • They determine that having the public / private keys is enough to determine ownership, so as long as I send that to the person I attack I guess I can make them get taxed?

• Is Ethereum legal?

  • In a talk at DevCon5, Vlad Zamfir gave a warning about Ethereum. Developers need to start thinking about it's legal status, rather than hoping it is so disruptive governments are forced to accept it.
  • "Ethereum was born into a counter-cultural movement, a cypherpunk movement. In Ethereum, we went much farther than Bitcoin and said we didn't just want to do this for money, but for everything."
  • The issue is smart contracts are basically an esoteric legal form, marked as understood as legal contracts. He went on to ask "how does our anti-legal revolution react with the established legal order?"
  • He is posing this question that is important. If blockchain creators keep acting brazenly with no respect for the law, it will provoke a reaction from the governments.
  • Three scenarios: Ethereum gets co-opted, regulated, or competed out of existence. Governments could create a centralized system that runs electronic contracts, making payments happen automatically. Could be faster and cheaper and more tempting to businesses
  • He then closes the talk saying "we (ethereum) are pretty disruptive and it's inevitably going to come to a head. What we're doing is too radical and revolutionary for the established legal order to ignore"

• More problems for Libra

  • Mark Zuckerberg To Testify Before Congress on Facebook's Libra Cryptocurrency
    • House Financial Committee will be meeting with Zuck(Bucks) Oct 23rd.
    • The hearing is tentatively called "An Examination of Facebook and Its Impact on the Financial Services and Housing Sectors"
  • Paypal doesn't show up for a meeting on Libra, and then quits the Libra foundation.
    • Facebook had a meeting about regulation pressure.
    • 27/28 people that signed up showed up for the meeting.
  • Tim Apple slams Libra as a power grab.
    • “No. I really think that a currency should stay in the hands of countries. I’m not comfortable with the idea of a private group setting up a competing currency,” Cook told the publication in an interview published today. “A private company shouldn’t be looking to gain power this way.”

This week the team talks about cryptocurrency news regarding Libra, scams and more.  

• Rapid Fire
  • IKEA just allowed an invoice to be paid via the Ethereum blockchain (This was a stablecoin of some kind)
  • BlockOne was fined 24M by the SEC.
  • Siacoin only had to pay 225k
  • CEO of Beaxy Exchange disappears, looks like they're insolvent.

• (Crypto Exchanges Creating a Token Rating System)
  • Coinbase Blog - "Introducing the Crypto Rating Council"
    • Create system that rates tokens on how close they are to a security
    • "Although the U.S SEC has issued helpful guidance...
      • Analysis requires fact-intensive analysis by knowledgeable experts
      • Analysis is difficult, expensive, and will lead to judgement calls & disagreements
    • So Coinbase brought together industry leaders, securities law experts to create
      • "a scalable, points-based rating system centered around a set of several dozen, yes / no factual questions."
      • Question derived directly from SEC guidance and case law
      • They say they focused on "objective, repeatable, fact-driven questions"
    • Council Members
      • Anchorage
        • Part of the Libra association
        • Basically a crypto vault were transactions are validated by Quorum
        • No usernames/passwords/phonenumbers nothing a hacker could use or get
        • "clients whitelist devices held by their employees, who use the Anchorage app to submit transactions. You’d propose selling $10 million worth of Bitcoin or transferring it to someone else as payment, and a minimum of two-thirds of your designated co-workers would need to concur to form a quorum that approves the transfer."
        • Also uses behavioral analysis, biometric signals, network signals. Its human AI mix
      • Bittrex
      • Circle
      • Coinbase
      • DRW Cumberland
      • Genesis
      • Grayscale Investments
      • Kraken
    • Scores range between 1 and 5 (5 being most like a security)
    • Expected to change over time, and open to feedback
    • Crypto Rating Council
      • Bitcoin - 1.0
        • Absence of a marketed token sale & marketing efforts
        • decentralized development and usage
        • Anonymity of the Project Team
        • Litecoin, Monero
      • Ethereum - 2.0
        • Current functionality of the platform
        • Absence of investment-like language or marketing
        • Decentralized development and usage
        • Zcash
      • EOS - 3.75
        • Absence of investment-like language or marketing
        • Current functionality of the platform
        • Raised funds in excess of what would reasonably be necessary for development of the platform
        • Decentraland, Hedera Hashgraph, Loom Network, Stellar, Tezos
      • XRP - 4.0
        • Usage of securities-like language
        • Sale of tokens or token interests prior to the existence of token utility
        • Marketing of the token suggesting an opportunity to earn profits
        • Decentralized development and usage
        • CEO of Ripple has said its pretty clear XRP is not a security
• Ohio is no longer accepting BitPay
• (Libra Update, Thing Looking....Not Great)
  • We know there's been tons of official opposition
    • Federal Reserve, Treasury Department
    • House and Senate banking Committes, EU antitrust officials,
    • Indian and Chinese officials, and French straight out said they'd stop it
  • WSJ Report Tuesday that
    • Visa, Mastercard, and “other financial partners that signed on to help build and maintain the Libra payments network” are now reconsidering whether they should remain involved.
    • Apparently FB been asking them to help and show support, and they are declining
    • "Their reluctance has Facebook scrambling to keep Libra on track."
  • Prior August reporting said Libra partners were wary that pushing Libra would "attract broader regulatory scrutiny of their activities"
    • Lo and behold, DOJ requested Visa, Mastercard, Stripe & PayPal to provide a "complete overview of their money-laundering compliance programs and how Libra will fit into them.”
  • Here's the rub
    • None of the 28 association members have committed beyond nonbinding letters
    • The $10 million that FB asked for each member for development? No one has paid it
  • Multiple flanks
    • FB facing heat from DOJ opening an antitrust investgation. Also the FTC and multiple states, like multiple
      • Led by NY AG, but Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, NC, Ohio, Tennessee, and DC involved
    • Federal investigation getting cooperation from Snapchat
      • Legal team for years kept a dossier of "ways that the company felt FB was trying to thwart competition"
      • The tile of the documents....Project Voldemort
        • Allege things like Instagram effectively barred users from linking to their Snapchat profiles in their bios.
        • Also that Snapchat content was prevented from trending on the platform
        • Supressed search results of snap-related searches
    • But apparently FTC has contacted "dozens of tech executives and app developers”
    • Investigators also looking into Onavo
      • VPN FB bought in 2013
      • Later pressured into shutting it down amid reports it was sucking up lots of data about user app usage
      • Its apparently this data that clued them in on WhatsApp posing a potential threat, and pushing them to buy it
      • They were also using Onavo to monitor how people used Snapchat, how many snaps a day they sent

• Fair Win Story
  • What is fair win? Well shit I might as well let them tell you word for word - Blockchain + gambling, blockchain + game, establish industry standard interface, 70% income anti-subsidy investor players.
  • So this is being listed as a $150M Ponzi Scheme. Posted about on medium by Philippe Castonguay
  • First red flag - the team consisted of a famous piano player (Dang Thai Son) and an instagram influencer's (Jessica Vu) pictures.
  • Dude found typos and bugs all over the contract.
  • He also found that the contract had been drained for 2600 ETH once on 7/27 with an old exploit.
  • He then finds an exploit where you can essentially swap out an invite code and steal ETH from depositors to the contract.
  • They got a group together to decide what to do and exposed the scam last week.
  • And of course as soon as they announced the problem, team drained the accounts.

Another week, another flagship. This time, all 3 of the guys are on the show, as Brent's sniffles have subsided and he's pumped up to talk crypto with the crew. Today we go over how Kik's ditching its messaging service to focus on crypto, how Telegram is about to bamboozle libra, as well as the entire crypto space, in the most cool-guys-don't-look-at-explosions way possible, and we're taking a look at 640 crypto projects that haven't pubished a single line of code in over a YEAR. We also (lightly) touch on the price of bitcoin (so that it doesn't trip and fall further down) and we answer a mailbag question concerning halvenings asked by yours truly, America's favourite editor, Jason.

Dive into the cryptoverse with us on this week's Flagship Friday.

• Rapid Fire

  • https://www.binance.us/?ref=35015918

  • Kik is Killing it Messaging App to Focus on Crypto

  • Blockchain Transparency Institute says Kraken and Coinbase have clean trading volumes.

    • In the same report they revealed that 73% of exchanges are faking 90% of their volume.

  • Facebook Libra is pushing it's release date back

    • Zuck has refused to commit to the planned 2020 launch date. Bogged down by regulators saying it poses a risk to financial stability and could be used in financial crimes and a threat to sovereign currencies.
    • Zuck posted on FB that FB is taking a more cautious approach bringing forward projects that are "sensitive to society" and allowing a period of consultation and "working thru the issues" Kumbaya

  • Bitcoin Lightning Network hits 10k nodes.

    • 3.1% increase over last 30 days.
    • Unlike BTC network more nodes on Lightning Network will make it more efficient

• Justin Sun seeks Andrew Yang’s attention

  • First off he did announce on Tuesday during a live stream that he's going to reschedule his lunch with Buffett "very soon"
    • of note which I hadn't realized - he had actually invited Trump
    • “Mr. President, you are misled by fake news. #Bitcoin & #Blockchain happens to be the best chance for US! I'd love to invite you to have lunch with crypto leaders along with @WarrenBuffett on July 25. I guarantee you after this lunch, nobody will know crypto more than you!”
  • Then he started making overtures at Yang
    • So apparently this started when Yang announced on debate that he was doing UBI pilot program
    • Yang’s initiative to UBI $1k to 10 ppl per mth for 1 yr, I'll pledge UBI $1k to 100 ppl per mth in 2020! I'll pick 1 to attend lunch w/ me & @WarrenBuffett 2020! I'll let Yang assist me in picking the lucky 100! Join us! #YANG2020 @AndrewYang
    • Mini rant - lots of ways to be and succeed, Credit where it is due. hate him still

• Bakkt? Yes.

  • What is Bakkt?
  • Owned by ICE (Intercontinental Exchange), NYSE's parent company. Bitcoin futures exchange and digital assets platform opening 2018. Was planning on launching in 2018 but postponed it for a year due to volume of interest and regulatory issues.
  • Bakkt Launched a few days ago. This has been a hinge point for many people on whether institutions are going to go ballistic grabbing Bitcoin Futures contracts.
  • In less than 24 hours they did have $600k in contracts bought. That's actually kinda slow to me.
  • However, the price of Bitcoin went down.
  • Already scammers put up a fake website called BakktLaunch.com for an ETH and BTC giveaway lol

• 640 Crypto Projects haven't published a single line of code this year

  • Based on a research of 2,000 startups by the Coincodecap project, 640 were completely inactive. (32%)
  • analysis of Coincodecap, which links exchange rate success with code commits, reveals that the assets belonging to the inactive projects have a market capitalization of $415 million.
    • Proton Token with more than $80 million in market cap didn’t push any code since 2018
    • One of the reasons for the weak activity is that creating a new blockchain project can be relatively simple, especially if the token is built over the Ethereum network.
  • Exchanges with most inactive projects
    • Crex24 - 30
    • Coin Exchange - 39
    • YoBit - 62

• Google's Quantum Supremacy

  • We know Quantum computing is coming.
  • Google partnered with NASA to execute a Quantum computation.
  • They were able to produce exactly one calculation in 3 min 20 seconds that it would take the most advance supercomputer today (Summit) 10,000 years to complete.
  • Here's the tricky thing - this claim was made in a paper on NASA's site, and it was taken down.
  • What does this mean for crypto?
  • Well nothing new really, maybe some of these core dev teams need to work on quantum resistance sooner, but we know it's coming. The timeline, according to the Quantum Devs and big crypto names (charles, Andreas) ranges from 10 to 30 years to crack current encryption.
  • What we do know is that it won't be easy.

• How Telegram quietly snuck its blockchain past regulators

  • Everyone is super mad at Libra, Congress, EU, everyone clamped down hard
  • Meanwhile, Telegram Open Network (TON)
    • POS network promising to integrate blockchain payments to...365m users...
    • By the end of October no less
  • Even though they raised $1.7B they barely acknowledged it much less talk about it
    • "On September 8, Telegram dumped half a million lines of code for TON, hundreds of pages of new documentation, and a beta"
  • Theres little time to figure out everything, but if they deliver on "high speed and decentralization", it will be the largest blockchain launch in history
  • Check out these quotes
    • German Central Bank - "We do not possess any specific information on TON. That's why we cannot comment on this app.”
    • European Central Bank - “It looks like another crypto experiment, not really an issue for regulators/ overseers at this stage,”
  • Of course TON Labs argues it has to do with the centralized vs decentralized nature of each
    • VP Pavel Prigolovko said "If there is one person who manages the payment system, it is this person who must comply with all the laws and regulations of the regulators, and if there is no central agent, then there is no one to present the requirements to,”
    • The main challenge will be to get enough tech savy Gram holders to become validators. (CryptoPeaStew shoutout and reminder UltimateNodes.io)
      • Supposedly they have developed industrial-grade solutions to run the validation process
  • They're also responding to concerns about Data storage & privacy in a simple way -
    • We dont collect or store data, its decentralized and public, so fully transparent. All transaction details will be public like on any other public ledger
  • Lastly some concerns over BlackMoon
    • exchange whose cofounder, Ilya Perekopsky, is Telegrams VP
    • Already said they will be one of the first to list Grams

Welcome once again to Flagship Friday! Although one day late, we're still calling it Flagship Friday to keep our tradition alive. Flagship Extended Weekend didn't sound all that nice.

Tune in as Karim and Adam (Brent's got the sniffles :') dive into EOS and its latest scandal, talk about North Korea's crypto project and the Federal Reserve's intervention on the economy, along with some juicy commentary and rants by Karim, our in-house "important things" expert. So if you wanna hear Karim spit some fire preaching and Adam PASSIONATELY agreeing with him, put on your headphones and press play cause this episode is a feisty one. 

Dive into the cryptoverse with us on this week's Flagship Friday.

• Rapid Fire

  • Netflix has an upcoming series on crypto. Altcoins to be exact. Will be interviewing Vitalik, Charles, and Da Hongfei (NEO)

  Alcoin Documentary Coming In Late 2019

  What To Expect From Netflix's Upcoming Crypto Series

  • EA tweets out “invest in Crypto”. New character in Apex Legends

  Electronic Arts on Twitter

  • Istanbul, the Ethereum mainnet update has a release date after most recent maintenance update. Istanbul is Ethereum’s long-debates hard fork. First update will be by in October or November and the second update will be 1Q 2020. That update will include ProgPoW (progressive proof of work)

  Ethereum reveals launch dates for testing Istanbul

  • J.P. Morgan's nlockchain-based network grows to over 330 banks. It's called the Interbank Information Network. Deutschbank is big players. They are using Quorum, a permissioned version of the Ethereum blockchain.

  J.P. Morgan's blockchain-based network grows to over 330 banks

  • Ethereum celebrates the end of August with more than 75 million unique addresses.

  [cryptoslate.com/ethereum-celebrates-successful-august-with-more-than-75-million-unique-addresses/](Ethereum Is Sweet)

  • Ethereum has had a steady rise Q1 of 2018. Basically looks like a 45 degree angle since then. Back in July of 2017 it was at roughly 2 million addresses.

• Here Comes The Federal Reserve

  • overnight borrowing rates shot up, forcing the New York Federal Reserve to come to the rescue with a special operation aimed at easing stress in financial markets

    • First wanted to understand overnight rate

      • Amount of cash a bank has can fluctuate a lot based on daily activity, they can have shortage or surplus of cash at the end of the day.
      • Banks with surplus can lend money overnight to banks with shortages to maintain reserve requirements
      • Interest rate that large banks use to borrow and lend from one another.
      • This rate is targeted by the central bank, which is also a participant in the market (lending and borrowing)
      • Since this is the base borrowing rate it can be used as a predictor of short term rates for broader economy. Goes up when liquidity decreases

    • Fed target rate for July? Between 2% and 2.25%. On Monday it hit 5%, which was up from 2.29% previous week, it kept surging until 10% high on tuesday

       

    • Called an overnight repo operation, where Fed eases downward pressure on markets by purchasing treasuries and other securities

    • Managed to inject $53b into the system

    • One theory was for the stress is a large quarterly withdrawal by US companies to pay Taxes (estimated around $100b total)

    • On wednesday Fed had to pour an extra $75b, so $128b, getting rates to lower to 3% (still above target rate)

    • Bigger pic, we now have a $1 trillion federal deficit so Government borrowing has climbed (Tax revenue decreased because of tax cuts, but bipartisan surge in spending)

• EOS Troubles Brewing

  https://www.coindesk.com/everyones-worst-fears-about-eos-are-proving-true?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=coindesk&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=Organic

  • A few weeks ago one of it's early supporters, EOS Tribe, a small company that participated in the launch of the first EOS chain called it quits as an EOS block producer. In a post made on Steemit Eugene Luzgin said "We at EOS Tribe have never participated in the game of vote trading and stayed true to our principles, and hence while we leave EOS as Block Producer, we are also free to speak truth and give warnings to the rest." WHOA. Shots fired!!
  • You guys covered in your EOS 101 how there were issues with governance and that it's pretty centralized. 21 block producers at any time that make governance decisions, establish consensus on the chain, and earn substantial rewards. This has always been a concern and now the most technically proficient BPs are receiving little to no rewards at all.
  • Luzgin called it a braindrain. What does he mean by that exactly?
  • Most of the BPs are in located in China
  • May 8th 2019 they burned $167 million in EOS for the worker proposal system, which was a way to fund EOS dapp development
  • EOS NY proposed an EOS user agreement which was adopted y 15 of the 21 BPs at the time but nothing against vote-buying was in the agreement
  • two forks already, Telos and Worbii. Telos has a token cap at 40k and number of innovations to ensure potential BPs actually serve. Worbii created with certain consumer protections and more of a focus on the financial industry.
  • not saying EOS is a sinking ship but touting themselves as the Ethereum killer is a bit much.

• North Korea Is Building Its Own Bitcoin
• Cubans flock to cryptocurrency to shop online, send funds

• [https://decrypt.co/9379/sec-files-suit-against-icobox-founder-over-14-million-ico](ICOBox Gets Slapped With $14 Million Fine From SEC)

The CryptoBasic crew is back from the dead!

Last week Brent had the amazing idea of recording an episode while sitting on the passenger seat of his car and talking to the rest of us through his mobile data connection, all while recording NOT through an actual microphone, but an external recorder. This trainwreck of a sentence itself should be, I believe, enough explanation as to why last week's Flagship didn't happen. This week however, all's set to go and we're back at it again!

Tune in to find out what's up with plagiarization accusations against Binance, learn about bitcoin hitting the ONE BILLION USD in a single transaction milestone, discover the true identity of Karim's CryptoBasicStalker, and find out why our co-host Adam Levy ditched this episode. Spoiler alert: he's got the heartache blues. 

Dive into the cryptoverse with us on this week's Flagship Friday.

What have we released?

Interview with Marius

Interview with CryptoCanary

• Rapid Fire
  • Russell Okung - Left Tackle for the Chargers - Changed his Twitter Handle to Pay me in Bitcoin
  • Substratum Officially Dead after raising 13.8M just a couple years ago - lays off last working engineer Dan Weibe
  • Burger King in Germany now accepts Bitcoin. Fanduel now accepts Bitcoin via BitPay.
  • [LINE Wins Japan License for Crypto Exchange](https://www.coindesk.com/messaging-giant-line-wins-japan-license-for-crypto-exchange-business)(https://www.coindesk.com/messaging-giant-line-wins-japan-license-for-crypto-exchange-business)
  • https://np.reddit.com/r/GirlsGoneBAT/

• (Someone moved $1 billion in a single bitcoin transaction)
• Bullish or Bullshit - Binance caught plagiarizing Bit Mex's Documentation on Futures?
• (Trump demands Fed to cut interest rates to zero 'or less') 

• New Data Gives Insight Into How Iranians Use Bitcoin 

(+Mailbag Section!)

We're starting the week off with an exciting interview, as we've got Marius Kramer, number #1 writer on Quora for cryptocurrencies and fund manager on Emberfund! We talk all kinds of bitcoin, and of course, all kinds of shitcoin. Marius shares his insights on today's crypto market and its future, goes over his process of evaluating a project and -get this- goes over ALL of the top 300 coins. All of them. If your favourite kinda-red-flaggy coin is on his shit list... then you're probably gonna have to rethink your investments.

Join Brent and Marius for a trip to the cryptoverse on this episode of the CryptoBasic Podcast!

Check out Marius' page on Quora: 

https://www.quora.com/profile/Marius-Kramer

On today's show, Brent is joined by Kevin Ting, co-founder of CryptoCanary, a website focused on consolidating opinions and reviews of various projects in the cryptocurrency/blockchain world, providing users with a community-driven platform for researching before investing. Kevin talks to us about how the platform works, what shapes a crypto project's rating, how they deal with "review-bombing" issues and inaccurate reviews and what the project's near future looks like. If you wanna know how your preferred shitcoin that "will be the next ethereum, bro, I swear" fares against the rest of the space, go to cryptocanary.app. Before you do that though, make sure to tune in to today's CryptoConvos episode!

Links from the show:

CryptoCanary's telegram channel: https://t.me/cryptocanaryapp/

CryptoCanary's website: https://cryptocanary.app/?=cryptobasic

Kevin Ting on Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/kevinhting/

Quick diclaimer - we are not financial advisors. The CryptoBasic Podcast provides entertainment only. Every investment has inherent risk. 

Any Flagship Friday is a happy Flagship Friday when we've got shit to talk about Craig Wright, scamlord extraordinaire, Satoshi Suck-a-moto, the douchebag to end all douchebags. And guess what: this is a happy Flagship Friday. :)

So, JOIN US on this episode to listen to us talk shit about Craig Wright and discuss his defeat in court, something that we've been longing for for quite some time. 

Also, the wonderful People's Republic of China is making a step towards transparency and democracy with launching its own cryptocurrency! Maybe...! Does something smell fishy...? 

Anyway - on the side of good news, we're talking official crypto banks in Switzerland, crypto bird feeders and more!

Dive into the cryptoverse with us on this week's Flagship Friday.

---

Rapid Fire

- Wikipedia is a verified Brave browser publisher. Considering they send emails out every year asking for donations, this is another great way to donate to Wikipedia. -https://twitter.com/batgrowth/status/1166228879444459521?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.notion.so%2Fcryptobasic%2FFlagship-Friday-8-30-19-11c48208b4f6492e8868966bbe44fb6c 

- Venezuelan pharmacy, Farmarket, has added Dash as a payment option in 22 locations.: https://dashnews.org/dash-integrated-into-venezuelan-pharmacy-chain-farmarket-with-22-locations/ 

- US Air Force Partners With Constellation Blockchain Firm: https://www.coindesk.com/us-air-force-partners-with-blockchain-firm-to-automate-data-management 

- Interactive Bird Feeder With Crypto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otpqipL3H8Q 

- Interactive Bird Feeder where for $0.50 USD you can feed the birds with BTC, LTC, Dogecoin or NANO. Birds that pop in are House Sparrows, Collared Doves, Great Tit, and Blue Tit.
- Located in Slovakia.

---

- Craig Wright Loses Case again Ira Kleinman
- A Reporter named Katie Ananina was in the courtroom for the case and was live Tweeting it on Monday.
- Wright's lawyers continue to argue Wright can't provide proof YET (remember he was moving the goalposts - this time to Jan 21, 2020)
- They just kept begging for more time in different ways.
- Kleinman family lawyer gets to recap all CSW lies, including the phrash "Dr. Wright is dishonest. He is a Serial Forger"
- He even kinda quotes Twain - "The problem with not telling the truth is to remember the lies you previously said"
- Finally the judge says this "Dr. Wright did not impress me as someone telling the truth. All of his testimonies have been rejected on this matter". Why isn't that perjury?
- 50% of all patents are given to Dave's estate. 50% of all the supposed BTC is ordered paid as well, which is about 480K BTC.

https://twitter.com/PeterMcCormack/status/1166086602441068544?s=20 

https://twitter.com/PeterMcCormack/status/1166086602441068544?s=20 

---

- Alleged Capital One Hacker Accused of Secretly Mining Cryptocurrency: https://cointelegraph.com/news/alleged-capital-one-hacker-accused-of-secretly-mining-cryptocurrency 

- individual accused of perpetrating a massive-scale hack of credit card issuer Capital One
- hacked cloud customers’ servers to mine cryptocurrency for herself.
- Exploited the fact that some people misconfigured the webapp firewalls on the servers they rented
- Online she posted that “if I had a partner I could have them take over my crypto-jacking enterprise and be a stay at home.”
- Thompson allegedly gained access to 140,000 Social Security numbers, 1 million Canadian Social Insurance numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers, as well as data pertaining to customers’ credit scores, credit limits and balances.

- World's First Licensed Crypto Bank Seen As Game-Changer: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-28/worlds-first-licensed-crypto-bank-seen-game-changer-switzerland 

- Reported from ZeroHedge the co-founders of Sygnum crypto bank have hailed the award of Swiss banking license as a game changer.
- Could open the floodgates of integration of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets into established financial sector.
- First time this type of license has been granted WORLDWIDE. Obviously Zug is a crypto hub so the fact that Switzerland is the first country in the world to do this is not a surprise.
- The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority was skeptical bc they wanted to safely and reliably integrate the worlds of crypto and mainstream finance.
- Sygnum even created its own digital payment token backed by the Swiss franc.
- Curious what you guys think about the implications of this

- Telegram Pushes Ahead With Plans for ‘Gram’ Cryptocurrency: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/technology/telegram-cryptocurrency-gram.html 

- Telegram doing their own crypto like Libra
- Called the Gram, and they told investors they are ready to send out first batches withing a few months
- Leaked, investors had signed NDA lol, this is anonymous but NYT
- 200m to 300m global users
- They raise $1.7b in 2018 but unlike FB have mostly kept project secret
- A spokesman for Telegram did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
- "company was created by Pavel Durov, a self-described libertarian who fled Russia after clashing with the government and being forced to sell off his first successful social network, VKontakte.'
- NYT say they saw a pitch for Gram that said it would be decentralized like BTC so it can skirt government regulations. That they will be governed by decentralized network once released (and telegram no control)
- Telegram promised in legal documents that it would deliver Grams to investors by Oct. 31, 2019, or return the money!
- Pre offering btw was 2.89b Gram for $1.7B

---

Crypto Around the World

- "Argentina's New Shitcoin": https://decrypt.co/8695/argentina-reward-waste-management-with-new-wastecoin-called-jellycoin 

- a "wastecoin" called JellyCoin has been created by Argentina to reward waste management.

---

- Chinese Government Crypto? Yes! No. Maybe? Bullish or Bullshit?!?!
- Forbes - Alibaba, Tencent, Five Others To Receive First Chinese Government Cryptocurrency: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2019/08/27/alibaba-tencent-five-others-to-recieve-first-chinese-government-cryptocurrency/#1c559cc61a51 

- China's central bank will launch a state-backed cryptocurrency and issue it to seven institutions in the coming months
- Source was Paul Schulte, independent researcher (head of financial strategy for China Construction Bank until 2012)
- Industrial & Commercial bank of China, Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, alibaba, Tencent, and Union Pay
- Forbes says it was confirmed by second anonymous source, said it may launch for their big shopping day (singles day, Nov 11)
- “China is barreling forward on reforms and rolling out the cryptocurrency,” “It will be the first central bank to do so.”
- Not Launching a Cryptocurrency in November: China’s Central Bank: https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/08/28/not-launching-a-cryptocurrency-clarifies-chinas-central-bank/ 
- The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) called the coverages “inaccurate speculation,”
- Reuters attempted to reach all the seven institutions for confirmation. Alibaba declined to comment, while others did not respond.

THAT'S A SCAM

- SUB Shuts doesn Telegram Group - Co-Founder Deletes Twitter: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/cui4a8/substratum_shuts_down_its_telegram_group_since/ 
- Trevon James Facing SEC Charges: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/cui4a8/substratum_shuts_down_its_telegram_group_since/ 
- This was kinda amazing. The title to HIS OWN VIDEO it this - "Trevon James Facing SEC Charges for Bitconnect | Jail Time?!"
- The first link in his shownotes is something called Trontopia.
- Spends a decent amount of the video talking about how he shouldn't have even been able to promote it because he didn't create it so its not his fault he didn't make it.
- He's not getting a lawyer
- Top comment on his youtube "Trevon now works for the feds. For life. Watch yo back round here" lolol
- He has 176 Patrons on Patreon. KIDDING ME??
- He literally has a video that says "CAN I REPEAT THE SUCCESS OF BITCONNECT ON MY CHANNEL NOW" as his latest release. "I'm gonna try to recreate the huge euphoria of Bitconnect with a Decentralized Application" which then cuts to "Hey its not on me dawg" with throwing his hands up.
- LA man pleads guilty to $25 mill BTC money laundering scheme
- 25 year old LA man operating an unlicensed biz. $25 mil exchanged over 2 years. Kunal Kalra, known as Kumar, skeclemayne, and coinman.

Los Angeles man pleads guilty to $25 million Bitcoin money laundering scheme | Micky: https://micky.com.au/los-angeles-man-pleads-guilty-to-25-million-bitcoin-money-laundering-scheme/ 

• Rapid Fire
  • Pro Crypto Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne resigns. 
  • Banano has released their whitepaper, and I'm pissed it's not called a Yellow Paper. Holy shit I clicked on it and it's a yellow paper. Pepe is on the cover. Omg it's animated lol
  • Horizon State (HST) Folds - maybe we should have a that's a scam rapid fire?
  • Lumiflux and his Dust Attack
    • Someone on reddit posted a reminder that this would not work on Monero.

• (2020 Presidential candidate Andrew Yang is in favor of blockchain voting) - K

  • Running on Dem ticket, outsider type

  • On his site in his policies he has "modernize voting" section

    • With current tech we shouldn't have to wait in line at polling stations
    • Machines being used are just as vulnerable to tampering/hacking
    • "Americans should be able to vote via their mobile device, with verification done via blockchain. This would dramatically increase participation in all elections, whether local, state or federal."
    • "It is 100% technically possible to have fraud-proof voting on our mobile phones today using the blockchain."

    Modernize Voting - Andrew Yang for President

• Bitcoin & The Hong Kong Protests - K

  • Going into 11th weekend of protests, 1.7m people marching (about 25%)

  • One of the Crypto ATM providers, Genesis block, giving out water bottles and umbrellas

    • Funded by international BTC donations

    • Bottles themselves have QR code to donate more btc to fund more supplies (rant)

    • Overall ATM providers say they see a decrease in volume (about 10%) and premium price in HK dollars

• Ukrainian Power Plant Officials Accused of Unauthorised Cryptocurrency Mining - K
  • There is definitely a demand for cheap power, operations setting up in
    • SBU discovered cryptocurrency mining operations at one of the country's nuclear plants
      • alleges that the internet connection installed to facilitate the mining operation posed a significant security risk
      • local court said confidential data about the plant’s operation has also been leaked online.
    • Iceland, thanks to its near-endless geothermal energy
    • Canada - Hydroelectricity
    • Iran - Subsidized energy
  • So the people working at the plant saw a chance to pay no power costs
  • Saw this in Venezuela as well since government subsidizes power
  • A miner in China serving 3.5yrs for stealing energy from a train network for a 50 rig set up (rental near train lines)

• Moscow's blockchain voting system cracked a month before election - K

  • French security researcher, Pierrick Gaudry, has found a critical vulnerability in the blockchain-based voting system
  • Officials planned on using it for the elections...next month

  • Gaudry figured how to derive private keys from public keys

    • He basically said its because they used a method which uses encryption key sizes that were too small to be secure.

    • Dude's Quote

      It can be broken in about 20 minutes using a standard personal computer, and using only free software that is publicly available

    • We dont know exactly what he could do with the private keys, protocols not in English yet.

    • "In the worst case scenario, the votes of all the voters using this system would be revealed to anyone as soon as they cast their vote."
  • TBF - This was thanks to officials posting it on Github and asking researchers to attack
    • Moscow officials agree key is too small, that it was only for trial period. They said they would go from 256 bits to 1024
    • Gaudry thinks they need 2048
    • And Gaudry will get $15k (1m Ruble)

• Long Story of a Scam - Reddit - B
  • Guy under the username Montana02115 named Dean starts it.
  • User reporting is IdkWutImTalkingAbout
  • Asks him about some project called NKN.
  • Dude says he works with a team that handles private sales of equity for IEOs etc and invites the guy to his Team Speak.
  • Gets welcomed to the research team.
  • Sends a SAFT for a token called Perlin -
    • WTF is a SAFT? Well it stands for Simple Agreement for Future Tokens. This is basically a pinky promise to deliver tokens when something is operational. Since it's "later" it skirts the acredited investor rule.
  • They then ask people what they want to contribute. The people really do send ETH transactions, and are either also scammed or in on it. First one is for 1100 ETH.
  • That's the only transaction he saw, and they said they'd collected 11K ETH so far, so this guy sends 10 ETH, all of his money, and he gets sent a Perlin token. Well it looks like it's a fake token that's been created to LOOK like Perlin.
  • The token even was being held in a Binance wallet, but of course whoever made it could have sent it there.
  • Perlin hasn't had their token generation yet.
  • He brings that up and is instabanned from the group. Then he convinces them to let him back in, and they're doing another one for a token called Sovrin which also hasn't had a Token Gen. They scedule another sale, and he isn't there and gives some excuse.
  • Miraculously no one else is there either so they decide to have it the next day. That day when he said he was low on funds he got banned from the chat.
  • Reddit figured out who the guy was and he created his own subreddit called BinanceIEO
• List of scams - A

• Messari.io - B

  • I saw that Cardano joined the Messari Disclosures Registry so it piqued my interest.
  • They focus on transparency for these projects.
  • They also have their own market cap numbers
  • They have a methodolgy for prices and for supply numbers that is interesting.

  • They use - Maximum, Diluted to 2050, Outstanding, Liquid, Ciruculating