I've been taking a lot of time off work, that's usually when I check my crypto news feed so it's been a while. I saw a lot of interesting stories last night.
Main event:
https://financefeeds.com/another-win-xrp-sec-v-ripple-case/
https://news.bitcoin.com/sec-v-ripple-court-denies-secs-request-personal-records-not-connected-to-xrp/
https://cryptoslate.com/sec-v-ripple-takes-new-turn-setting-xrp-up-for-potential-future-growth/
Ripple wins huge battle in the war for XRP
I knew that when XRP crashed from 60 to 22 cents (losing all the gains it made in Nov/Dec due to the SEC lawsuit) this was the perfect time to buy. It was so obvious: lawsuits take forever and the XRP community panicked hard and fled like scared little children. Too bad I would never speculate on XRP just out of the principal of the thing, but whatever.
You know what I wasn't expecting?
Interestingly, Magistrate Judge Hon. Sarah Netburn denied the SEC access to Larsen and Garlinghouse’s personal banking records. She affirmed that obtaining such information was not “relevant or proportional to the needs of the case.”
“The SEC has not presented any evidence the individual defendants have hidden transactions or that the documents produced to support an inference of hidden transactions… The SEC’s belief that the individual defendants’ banking records might show evidence of a speculative transaction that could have occurred is not a foundation on which to order expansive discovery into personal financial accounts,” said Judge Netburn.
Haha, get wrecked, SEC!
Here we see the red-tape of our legacy systems in full-force. How frustrating and annoying it must be to need a judge's permission to "do your job" only to get bitch-slapped in the face like this. Financial Privacy? What's that?
Need I remind everyone that if XRP wins this case that's good for the entire cryptosphere. Even if they lose or settle it could open up a new world of regulations and approved security listings/ETFs. At this point it's hard to imagine a scenario where the cryptoverse doesn't come out on top. The SEC and all the other regulators are just too slow. We can code circles around all of them.
If anything, this lawsuit simply puts a hold on the ability for Ripple to dump any coins on the market. You know what that means! The price of XRP can only go up. Let's not forget my metric for full market greed: When XRP flips ETH and becomes the #2 coin: we are in extremely dangerous mega-bubble territory. I was thinking this lawsuit was going to mess up that prediction, but I'll be damned... it seems even more likely now.
Honestly, XRP is starting to grow on me.
Like a benign tumor that the doctor tells me I don't have to worry about. I don't like that it exists, but hey it's a huge upgrade from cancer. At the end of the day the XRP community is strong as hell, and even if Ripple gets wiped off the face of the Earth, they aren't going anywhere, just like we didn't go anywhere after we got backstabbed by dirty dirty Steemit Inc.
Community stronk.
Everyone (including yours truly) talked so much trash about XRP at the inception. Why is anyone giving this centralized dumpster-fire any credence whatsoever? Turns out: we were wasting our breath.
This is the superpower of crypto!
It doesn't matter how centralized or shitty the opening distribution of a network is. Bitcoin was 100% centralized to the founder in the beginning. All you need is a community to rally together and start building value. That's it. Time is the water that allows these organisms to grow.
Once a network has that, what happens?
It's only a matter of time before the platform gets more and more decentralized; more and more fair for all parties involved. XRP may yet redeem itself as the years tick by. Doesn't mean I'll jump on that bandwagon but I'll certainly respect the process.
Another day, another dummy.
Goldman Sachs Predicts 'Big Evolution' Coming to Cryptocurrency Regulation
The title of this trash made me laugh.
When I clicked on it I knew exactly what I was going to get.
What's the "big evolution", you say?
Emphasizing that his company operates within the rules set by regulators, the Goldman Sachs CEO noted: “I’m not going to speculate on where the rules will go for regulated financial institutions, but we’re going to continue to find ways to serve our clients as we move forward.”
So... your not going to speculate? You're just going to make vague pointless statements? Please, tell me more!
“We continue to think about digital currencies and the digitization of money in a very proactive way,” he opined, mentioning specifically that his firm “can help clients facilitate custody positions in digital assets.”
Aka we will find as many ways as possible to trick this ocean of dumb money into unilaterally 100% letting us control all their Bitcoin for them. lol... ass. See, this is why CZ is cool: at least he's a libertarian and actually embracing decentralization unlike all these other cop-faced assholes.
“As our clients have demand to be involved in this space we can continue to find ways to support our clients … That’s the lens that we’re really looking through.”
This fucking guy has a masters degree in saying nothing.
Goldman Sachs recently brought back its bitcoin trading desk and will be offering a “full spectrum” of bitcoin investments. The firm is seeing huge institutional demand for bitcoin.
I'll bet you are.
Would you like to hear more dumb people say dumb stuff?
Why of course I would, Internet, whatcha got?
An ECB Board Member Attacks Bitcoin, Says It 'Does Not Fulfill the Basic Properties of Money'
Ah shit! Dats a good one! Guys are you hearing this? If you ignore the entire legacy economy that Bitcoin is connected to, and we ignore the thousands upon thousands of networks that Bitcoin has spawned in a decade, if we ignore everything except this one tiny thing that might prove our point... well then we must be right! That's science! Eliminate all variables until our conclusion is correct! Occam's Razor at its finest! Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Would you like to hear more dumb stuff?!
Yes Pleaze!
Paypal Cofounder Peter Thiel Thinks China Is Using Bitcoin as Financial Weapon Against the US
AH! CHINA! CHINA BAD! FUCKING COMMIE BASTARDS!
According to Paypal cofounder Peter Thiel, the Chinese government, which detests the U.S. dollar’s reserve currency status, could be using bitcoin as a financial weapon against the U.S. While he concedes that China has no intentions of making the yuan renminbi a reserve currency, Thiel still thinks the Asian country may have longed bitcoin because it weakens the dollar’s influence.
Hm, you know what I think weakens the dollar's influence? Trying to rape and pillage the world for generations in the most sickening display of imperialism the world has ever seen! But that's just me! What does this genius have to say!? Hold your breath for deez logic bombs to implode your brain!
According to Thiel, a self-professed bitcoin maximalist, bitcoin has now become the second reserve currency that China uses to fight the dollar’s influence. Consequently, Thiel thinks the U.S. government should start asking tough questions about “how this works.”
Okay... um... what?
So you're a Bitcoin maximalist... but China is using Bitcoin as a weapon against America... but now USA needs to learn "how this works" to avoid the Bitcoin atomic bomb nuking the Petrodollar? No further questions, that all makes perfect sense!
1:15
Wow! God says go to your backyard and start digging?! That makes perfect sense!
In dismissing China’s digital renminbi project, Thiel said:
Some internal stablecoin in China…that is not a real cryptocurrency, that’s just some sort of totalitarian measuring device.
But... those other CBDCs... those are legit right? lol.
My guess is we will not be the leader in this forefront, where an authoritarian regime like China sees nearly all upside from having the capacity to issue currency or take away currency.
OMFG!
AMERICA WOULD NEVER TO THAT! FREEDOM! MURICA! WHY IS EVERYONE SO JEALOUS OF OUR FREEDOM!?!?! WHY!
YES, plllleeeeaaaazzzzzeeeee.
Report Claims the FBI Uses Bitcoin Mixers During BTC Forfeiture Processing
Wait a tick... wouldn't that be like the government doing stuff that they specifically tell their own citizens not to do? Rules for thee but not for me? NAH! Murica.
The U.S. government is far from transparent and a newly published report shows just how shady the feds can be these days. The author Joshua Davis explains with great detail that the FBI has been evading “transparency and accountability” specifically when law enforcement has been handling funds from a seizure. For years now, the FBI, the United States Department of Justice (DoJ), and FinCEN have said that the use of bitcoin mixers should be criminalized.
I am shocked!
Are you shocked right now?
I am shocked!
Speechless even!
The report shows that the FBI seized 39.67 BTC from a man in Tucson, Arizona, and the case involved unauthorized SIM swaps. According to Davis’ findings, the FBI sent updates to the victims and “made it seem as if the cryptocurrency had been already sold.” However, blockchain data shows this wasn’t the case and the victims were told a “clerical error” was made.
LOL HOLY SHIT!
Haha now I actually am intrigued. Da gubment got caught stealing Bitcoin from scammers instead of giving it back to the victims? That's next-level epic status right dere! I'm glad I read this one now instead of just commenting on the title like a lazy asshole!
FBI Overpaid Bitcoin Miners by a Factor of 4700% Interestingly, Davis’ findings indicate the blockchain tells a tale of how the transactions the Feds sent were sent “to themselves,” from an address that sent “more than 800,000 transactions,” and the funds derived from an address that sent more than 43 million BTC. The tell-tale signs of a bitcoin mixer being used to obfuscate bitcoin transactions.
“To be 100% clear the FBI does not need a money transmitter license to act as a lawful Bitcoin tumbler because government agencies are exempt from needing to obtain a Money Services Business (MSB) license,” Davis’ report insists. “Instead what I’d like to humbly point out is that the law requires funds to be “safeguarded against waste, loss, unauthorized use, or misappropriation.” As far as those four things to safeguard against, Davis found that “waste” seemed to have been chosen instead of transparency.
wow... WOW!
Shady and incompetent? That's government for you. This is a great time to remind everyone that using a Bitcoin mixer/tumber is largely irrelevant and pointless. It would have been so much easier to turn the Bitcoin into Monero on a centralized exchange, make a single transaction on-chain with Monero, and then shuffle that money back into Bitcoin on yet another centralized exchange. By the sound of this analysis, this would have been a cheaper and more private way of going about it... not to mention easier. So funny they are using the same services they say should be illegal. Nice try, gubment.
“I just hate that feeling when I’m treated like a child who needs to stop complaining and trust the authority figure,” the author wrote. “Yes, we do need to trust authority figures, but those authority figures should earn our trust. Authority figures should also try their best to be as transparent as possible.”
Spoken like a true child that doesn't understand how the system works, only how they were told it's supposed to work within the public-school system. Grow up kid, the big girls and boys are waiting for you to wake up.
Would you like to ice the cake of this shit sandwich?
YES PLEASE! Yum yum yum.
Former U.S. law enforcement agents Shaun Bridges and Carl Force. Findings suggest that the recently seized Silk Road stash of 69,370 bitcoins taken from “Individual X” shows the unknown person was likely Shaun Bridges.
AH HAHAHAHA! ha... ehem
If you recall I did a post on Citizen X. Why would the government not reveal the identity of this person? Oh, no big deal, after attempting to frame Ross Ulbricht with bogus charges of hiring a hitman, the guys that organized this frame-job stole a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin and the FBI doesn't want anyone to know how deeply this corruption runs. No big deal. God damn... what an amazing article. Top notch.
Would you like to end with good news?
Sure that sounds nice.
“You’d have to shut down the Internet” to ban Bitcoin, says SEC’s Hester Peirce
We love you, Crypto Mom!
Isn't it hilarious that there exists, in this dimension, a SEC commissioner that is just constantly railing on the regulators and telling them they just need to give up? I think it's pretty hilarious.
“I think we were past that point very early on because you’d have to shut down the Internet,” Peirce said, adding, “I don’t see how you could ban it. You could certainly make the effort. It would be very hard to stop people from [trading Bitcoin]. So I think it would be a foolish thing for the government to try to do that.”
Suck it, Dalio
The statement came on the heels of Ray Dalio, a billionaire investor and founder of Bridgewater Associates, arguing that there’s “a good probability” that governments around the world would ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
“We’ve seen other countries take, I would say, a more productive approach. We really need to turn that around. And I’m optimistic, with a new chairman coming in with a deep knowledge of these markets, that is something we could do together—build a good regulatory framework.”
And what is the context of this framework?
Truly, this is the funny part. Really think about it. Who are the regulations for? The government says they are to protect the people, but in reality it's just a matter of centralized controls and maintaining the status quo and legacy levers of power.
Regulations exist to continue developing the bridge between the legacy economy and the crypto economy. They have absolutely no place inside of the crypto economy itself, as will become painfully obvious.
This is why regulations are a great thing: they keep the entire cryptosphere honest. Every time a crypto gets too centralized the regulators will come along and try to control it. What they don't realize is that they can't corner the market this way, they are simple plugging the centralized attack vectors of the new system and pushing us back to a solution that literally can't be regulated.
They are the virus that makes us stronger, and the bridge between the two systems is more like a symbiotic relationship than a parasitic one. We really get the best of both words when we employ decentralized solutions.
Conclusion
Lots of crazy news recently. BNB broke $500 and keeps climbing steadily without any dips to punish any of the buyers. XRP is killing it... which is hilarious for a lot of reasons. The government (FBI) shows its true colors and gets caught stealing from those who were scammed. Every day is a new day for someone to act like they know what they were talking about but still manage to say something ridiculous. That's just crypto for ya. This train won't be slowing down anytime soon.
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