#imagine how easy it would be for hackers to scam everyone
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9-1-1 Criminals Au?
Ps Your blog is awesome! 🤩
Thank you <3 I initially read this as Criminal Minds but I am way more excited about the FireFam entering the criminal underbelly of Los Angeles.
Let’s Go!
Albert - Hacker. It may seem cliched, but daddy’s money buys a whole lot of tech and a whole lot of boredom. What started out as a hobby became a full-time job when he moved in with his brother and he has to admit: being a master criminal is way more fun.
Athena - Madam. No matter how these men and women find her, she will make sure you are taken care of. There is always a place to sleep, food to eat, and you are free to leave at any time - but why would you want to leave the oldest profession known to man? If you mess with one of hers, they will never find your body and she won’t lose a wink of sleep.
Bobby - Capo for the LA Mafia. He’s been in this game long enough that he saw the transition from analog to digital. Gone were the days of selling drugs on the street and bribing the local PD to look the other way (though there’s still plenty of that). Now, it’s Craigslist and Internet scams. Frankly, he misses the old days but it beats a 9-5 job.
Buck - Soldato (Kidnapping). You might think that kidnapping and intimidation are easy but it takes a lot of people skills and no small amount of creative thinking. Not every wealthy socialite will walk down a dark alley alone. And not every kidnapping happens in the comfort of your home. But he can find you anywhere.
Chimney - Soldato (Drugs). When his buddy suggested running drugs as a side-hustle between jobs, this was not the path he imagined his life taking. But damn, does it feel good to be a part of a family, to have a purpose, and to find something he’s really good at (like, crazy good). You want to know anything about any street drug, he can tell you the composition, the country of origin, and who sold it to you with the smallest taste.
Eddie - Soldato (Arms). As a former solider, Eddie knows the damage a gun can do in the wrong hands. But as far as he’s concerned, everyone is the wrongs hands. Military connections make it easy to buy and sell the latest technology and every cent of it goes to keeping his son safely hidden from the world he freely inhabits.
Hen - Soldato (Protection). She knows how the world works. She knows how the world underestimates her. So why not use it to her advantage. She doesn’t need a gun to let you know that if you don’t do what she asks, people will get hurt. Besides: having a friend on every street corner who’s too afraid to speak up, comes in very handy in her line of work.
Maddie - Master Thief. Quick on her toes, and clever in a pinch, she claims to be able to steal anything from anyone at any time. She’s yet to fail. Though she is generally a freelance artist (and what she does is certainly a form of art), if you’ve got a big enough score, she’s up for any challenge.
Michael - Bodyguard/Killer for Hire. He’s secretly a softy, he just likes hurting people. They make a nice loud *crack* when something breaks. He met Athena when she hired him to protect her employees and even though he takes jobs all over, if one of hers calls him for help, he’ll drop everything. Loyalty is number one in his books.
Bobby basically runs this side of Los Angeles. With his four soldiers, they deal in everything from drugs, to money, to guns, and back again. Hen and Bobby both met their wives through Athena’s call business (though, under slightly different circumstances), and Michael has roped them all in under his banner of loyalty. Of course, a family that commits crime together, stays together (or so Maddie and Chimney raised their siblings to believe).
The mob doesn’t normally get involved in high-profile thievery, preferring to keep their business as under the radar as possible. But when Michael’s boyfriend suggests the score of a lifetime, it’s too good to pass up.
Metropolitan hospitals have everything a criminal could want: drugs, money, and desperation. Plus, a local businessman has just re-entered the country from Africa, complaining of stomach pains, and someone needs to alleviate him of his extra appendages. Sure, there’s a few special circumstances to work around, but imagine being able to steal from under the nose of the government.
Athena gets the names, Albert makes the passes, Maddie gets them inside and Buck gets them out. They are a well-oiled machine until a nurse gets away and tries to alert the authorities - but that’s why Michael is waiting outside the door to take care of any potential problems.
It’s the biggest score of their lives and it takes months to off-load everything they get away with (which leaves some of them a little antsy until they have the cash in their hands).
They’ve never done a job like this before (and they likely never will again) but nothing brings people together like the threat of prison and a building full of riches.
Family is everything. But money is pretty damn great, too.
Prompt Me with AUs
#911 fox#911 on fox#mafia au#alternate universe#au#prompts#bobby nash#athena grant#hen wilson#chimney han#evan buckley#eddie diaz#maddie buckley#michael grant#albert han#cj writes things#midnight-raven#cj answers things
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@romancedeldiablo just reminded me the entire cybersecurity/information security industry is having the greatest field days ever since this whole Covid-19 triggered a mass work from home exodus.
I have so much to say about it and all the security issues that are occurring. This mostly pertains to the US. This isn’t meant to scare anyone, they’re just food for thought and a bit of explanation about my industry.
PSA: Not all hackers are bad, just a reminder. There are very legitimate reasons for hacking such as compliance and research. When I talk about hackers here, I’m talking about the bad ones who are exploiting without permission and for malicious reasons.
The main thing about this whole working from home thing is that most organizations don’t have the infrastructure to support their entire workforce. Not every company uses Google Drive or OneDrive or DropBox.
This means that companies with on-premise servers, isolated servers or networks are screwed. Imagine trying to connect to your friend’s computer who lives on the other side of the world and controlling their mouse. Can’t do it. Gotta download something on both ends to do it. Now imagine that for 500 people at home who are trying to connect to a single server. You’d need to open that server/network up to the internet. That has its own risks because without controlling WHO can access the server, you’re basically allowing anyone (hackers especially) to go in and take all your data.
But then you ask, “Isn’t that what passwords are for?” BITCH look at your own passwords. Do you really think 500 people will have passwords strong enough to withstand a rainbow table attack or that the server won’t shit itself when receiving 500 connections from unknown locations by means of a not-often used method? Hackers only need to exploit one password (for the most part) while the company needs to ensure ALL 500 are protected. That’s difficult as all hell and if it were that easy, I wouldn’t have a job.
Then there’s shit like Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and RADIUS servers that’ll secure the network connection so it can’t be hijacked and do authentication respectively. Here’s the problem. VPN solutions need to be downloaded on the client system (your computer). When your organization has very technically illiterate people, that becomes a nightmare. ‘Cause you have to set up their accounts on the VPN system and set the permissions for each of them so they can only access what they’re allowed to access otherwise Bob from sales now has access to the HR system with everyone’s social security numbers. It’s very time consuming and can get very complicated. Even worse is that VPNs often require licenses. When you only have 50 licenses and suddenly 500 people want access, you’re screwed. But you can always purchase more licenses, no problem. Here’s the rub. Suddenly, this VPN tunnel needs to accept connections from 500 people. This tunnel is only strong enough to accept 50 concurrent sessions. When 10x that amount get on, guess what? The tunnel shits itself and basically the company has DoS’d itself. Now no one can get any work done until IT figures out how to get 500 people on a system that’s only capable of supporting 50.
Fuck, almost forgot about RADIUS. There’s DIAMETER, too, but shut up about it. It’s an authentication system but depending on how it’s set up, you’ll have to also set up the users. That’s an extra step and it’s a pain in the ass if RADIUS somehow isn’t connected to AD and the user has different passwords and shit.
Not to mention hackers suddenly gaining access to all this information because they’ve already infected people’s home computers and routers prior to the work from home stuff. There’s very limited way for IT to control what happens on a personal computer, so these personal computers can have no anti-virus or security software. This means all data is in danger because someone decided Windows Defender is annoying. (Windows Defender is pretty great, btw.)
Physical robberies are occurring a little more because there’s no one to protect the stores and such. Physical security is taking a hell of a beating.
There’s been an increase in phishing scams around COVID-19. Unemployment sites are probably being (and probably already have been) hacked and the data is being stolen. I think there were some people who were creating fake unemployment sites to steal PII. There are e-mails going out to people saying stuff like, “Your computer has been infected with the CORONAVIRUS. Click here to clean it up.” And you’re wondering, “What sort of morons…?” Don’t. It’s very easy to give in to your panic. Hackers don’t hack computers solely. They hack into human emotion, into the psyche. Anyone can fall for their shit.
The thing with Zoom? Basically they’re so insecure, people are hacking them without issue. How? Because people are silly and put out links, chat logs are saved onto insecure machines that have already been hacked, there are a bunch of exploits available for Zoom, etc.
Healthcare organizations. Oh boy. So, we all know healthcare organizations are working their damnedest to save people suffering from COVID-19. Every second counts and any delay in that process could mean life or death. They work hard. Here’s the thing. There has always been a delicate balance between security and usability. Too secure and it’ll make it difficult for the end user to do their job. Usable without security just makes it easier for an attacker to do their job. Why am I talking about this?
Healthcare organizations usually hold sensitive information. Health information. Social security numbers. Birth dates. Addresses. Insurance information. Family member information. So much stuff. They are a beautiful target for hackers because all that shit is right there and it’s accessible. Healthcare organizations, by and large, do not put a lot of emphasis on security. That’s changing a bit, but for the most part, the don’t care about security. They do the bare minimum because guess what? Every additional control can add time to a doctor or healthcare worker’s routine. Computer lockscreen every 5 minutes? Now the doctor has to re-logon every 5 minutes. This adds about 15 seconds to their rountine. Multiply that several times over for every patient that comes in assuming a doctor will need to log in at least 3 times during a single visit. That can clock in at at least an hour throughout the day. A hour that they could’ve spent doing something else. So imagine more controls. Password needs to be reset. Need to badge in. Log into this extra program to access this file. Call IT because this thing locked them out. Each one of these normal controls now feel insanely restrictive. The ease of use isn’t there and so organizations might look at reversing these security controls, potentially making things even less secure than before in the name of efficiency.
Don’t @ me about HIPAA. I will start rants about how non-prescriptive and ineffective it is to actually get proper security implemented.
LOL @ internet service providers. Internet speeds are dropping due to the amount of traffic they’re getting. Commercial internet really wasn’t prepared for this. Those poor bastards.
Some organizations outsource their IT teams. Those people (Managed Service Providers aka MSPs) are not prepared for this nonsense. It’s popular now to go after these guys for hacking. An MSP usually works for multiple organizations. So, why try going after 50 organizations individually when you have just one organization with poor security controls managing everything from one place? You’d logically go after the one rather than 50. It’s easier.
MSPs are now overworked because they also have to work from home to connect to systems that can’t support so many people connecting to it on personal computers that the MSP can’t log into like they normally would to fix any issues. This makes them tired. What happens when you’re tired? You make more mistakes. And that’s exactly what hackers go after. Once they’re in the MSP’s system, the hacker can now potentially gain access to the 50 clients’ systems. Easy win.
Shadow IT and alternate solutions. This is another doozy. Imagine all your files and shit are on your company’s network. No one is able to access it because there isn’t any VPN or remote sharing system or FTP server set up for this stuff, but you still need to do your job. So, what do you do? Obviously, you start making stuff on your own computer using whatever you’re comfortable with. Google Drive. Dropbox. Box. Slack. That shitty PDF reader you downloaded three years ago and didn’t update.
Now imagine sharing it through things like your personal e-mail which may or may not have been hacked without your knowledge. Or maybe the recipient’s been hacked without anyone’s knowledge. Maybe your files are normally encrypted if they’re on the company network. Now you’re off of it and nothing’s encrypted. Maybe you forget it delete a file or 80 off of your system which has been infected. Or maybe you pasted shit on pastebin or github and it’s available to the public because that’s just easier. Now anyone searching can find it. This is how database dumps are found sometimes and they’re really entertaining.
Shadow IT putting in alternate solutions without the company’s knowledge is always a fucking nightmare. I get that people need to do their jobs and want to do things a certain way, but can you not be selfish and put everyone at risk because you decided your way or the high way?
That sounds awfully familiar…it feels like a situation that we’re going through right now…hey, wait a minute…
Long story short, this whole working from home thing opens up a lot of security issues. Most companies are ill-equipped to handle IT issues, let alone cybersecurity/information security/IT security issues, but because of that, we’re seeing a lot of interesting things happening. Such as finding out New Jersey’s unemployment system runs on a 60+ year old programming language.
Holy shit I can talk about this all day. I’ve definitely glossed over a lot of stuff and oversimplified it. If anyone wants me to talk about any specific topic related to this or cybersecurity or information security in general, drop an ask. I’m always, always more than happy to talk about it.
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How to trade Bitcoin for cash – Make extra cash trading crypto
So much of what we are hearing at this point in the news that reports on it is the absolutely amazing price of over $3,800 USD that a single Bitcoin is worth today. This is crazy if you have been following bitcoin for as long as I have been.
I have seen this cryptocurrency go to the moon and back down to earth and now in those terms it has accelerated all the way to pluto. So what’s the deal how long will it last? That’s anybody’s best guess. The truth is that nobody knows, it could keep going or it could crash back down to earth tomorrow. This is the nature of the beast and beast is what Bitcoin has become.
How to trade Bitcoin for cash – Here’s what I did The easiest way to start using and trading Bitcoin is to download the official wallet and you will want to start by encrypting your wallet, make sure you choose a secure passphrase and be careful where you store the passphrase, because you don’t want to lose track of this or have anybody else steal it from you. When you first install the Bitcoin-qt application, it will take a good while to “sync” to the network. Keep in mind that this “syncing” is you download the whole digital ledger onto your computer, this is how it works. You will have a digital list of every single transaction that has ever occurred, neat hey?
Now you will have a Bitcoin wallet address and you can purchase Bitcoin from just about any currency and then send it to your wallet address. You can then buy products, make payments and receive them as well. That said, if you want to trade bitcoin, this is the best deal I have found.
Make $37,000 dollars like I did trading Bitcoin. Click here to learn all you need to know to get started today!
Satoshi Nakamoto Did Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin? Who is this person, nobody knows and nobody has taken credit, however there are rumors that whoever this person is, that they created this awesome feat. Hackers all around the world have tried to break the code and even the brightest hackers and coders have not been able to find a means to do it, some would say that every hole imaginable has been patched almost at like a superhuman manner.
Did Artificial Intelligence Create Bitcoin? There are rumors out there that satoshi nakamoto is an alias for some type of artificial intelligence that is responsible for creating Bitcoin. The truth is we don’t know for sure but the fact that nobody is able to hack Bitcoin and that it is coded so beautifully, that is every hole in it’s security is plugged seemingly before it can be exploited, hints at some sort of intelligent design or some type of AI that has not been pointed to yet. We really don’t know but some of the best minds in technology are unable to hack Bitcoin and it leads some to say this could be a possibility.
Related: Bitcoin price is falling – Is now a good time to buy?
Bitcoin is so much more than just a currency, it’s really a new way of living and one that knows no bounds with respect to the ginormous banks that have for so long dominated what we refer to as the monetary system. Bitcoin is not anything like a dollar and this is what makes its power so huge.
We are no longer bound by their rules, we have an opportunity for real change, for the ability to prosper without control, to make the decisions without someone approving them. This is the blockchains job. We can think of Bitcoin as a giant ledger whereas monetary responsibility is transferred to the owner and the peers that operate the network. Cool right?
This is not your traditional currency and that is what makes it so delicious. We are living in the age of where we are going to witness the transfer of wealth like nobody has seen before. It’s crazy and I love it.
Nobody is going to watch your cookie jar like the banks have been in control of for so long those days are literally numbered with the advent of this technology. Remember napster? This is the napster of currency where it’s peer-to-peer formula and the trust those that use it gives it its value.
So if you are ready to jump into this world there are options for you. You can do so many different things and it’s not just Bitcoin, there are literally tons of options for you, you could trade Litecoin instead which has also been on the upslope with value against the US dollar.
What gives Bitcoin it’s value? Everyone who uses it, and trusts in it, not much of a difference with it and paper money issued by the United States treasury for example. What gives paper currency it’s value? Paper currency used to be based on and backed by gold, however this is no longer the case. There is also the derived scarcity of Bitcoin as it has a cap and will never exceed 21 000 000 Bitcoins. This of course could be subject to change, but as far as the right now it will never exceed the 21 million coins and that could create a scarcity of this unique digital currency in the far future.
What encryption does Bitcoin use? Because the of the nature of SHA-256 encryption on which Bitcoin is based, it is inconceivable as of now to have the ability to break this encryption, but the advent of quantum computer of possibility of such computational behemoths may be able to break this encryption in the not-so-distant future, this could present a problem, however it may make Bitcoin “fork” and utilize a more secure encryption, or even image the possibilities of using the power of quantum mechanics for making possible unbreakable encryption in the future. This will likely be the topic for another post so this is all I will discuss it for now.
There are issues with Bitcoin and there are many ways that Bitcoin being only as secure as the computer and user that is using it. Some exchanges utilize “cold storage” wallets where they store the Bitcoin, making it unreachable to potential hackers and if you lose your password for your wallet, you actually may be up the digital creek without a paddle so to speak. So you must be very careful and it is advised that if you have a Bitcoin instance running, that you backup your data often and make sure you never lose the password you have encrypted your wallet with.
People have lost a lot of digital currency by their hard drives failing or losing the passwords. The has also been much scamming going on with Bitcoin and you have to be careful what online exchanges you are using, because if they are hacked and the Bitcoins stolen, most will not honor stolen Bitcoin, which means that you are out of luck. Mt. Gox is an example of one hacked platform where countless users lost money. Cryptsy is another platform that screwed me out of some currencies, and there’s no way for me to recover, so make sure that you use a reputable exchange or you may be sorry.
Is Bitcoin more than just a form of digital currency? Bitcoin is much more than a currency and another not so well known fact is that even messages can be hardcoded into transactions and through chains of messages you could even put files. Wikileaks even has used Bitcoin to attach all of the cablegate leaks into the blockchain which is super interesting. In fact, some of the first transactions that were done in Bitcoin were the hardcoded cablegate Wikileaks documents, which raises questions as to who may have played a role in the development of Bitcoin.
Was Julian Assange the creator of this digital currency? Nobody knows for certain, but this points to how Bitcoin could ultimately be a great tool to stop censorship in its tracks, which is a great thing. Once hardcoded into the Bitcoin Ledger, it will always be there unless the encryption is somehow broken, super cool, right?
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The post How to trade Bitcoin for cash – Make extra cash trading crypto appeared first on Technology Watchpost .
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Congratulations NOEL! You’ve been accepted as IAPETUS.
This was the hardest decision we’ve ever had to make. Both of the applications for Jack were so damn good and we went back and forth on it. But, the way Jack idealizes Alma in your expanded connection has what hooked us, Noel! The way you ended Jacks bio to everything written about Alma, to this “He’d expected a gun to his face; instead, he’d gotten a lifeline.” This, this line right here had us SOBBING. We can’t wait to see you bring Jack to life on the dash!
Welcome to Mutants Rising! Please read the checklist and submit your account within 24 hours.
Out of Character Information:
NAME/ALIAS: Noel :~)
PRONOUNS: They/them
AGE: 24
TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: CDT / GMT-5
In Character Information:
DESIRED ROLE: Jack Mizuno
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Cismale, he/him
DETAILS & ANALYSIS:
I see Jack as someone with an identity whose boundaries are constantly in flux, and the consequences of that endless/unsure sense of self. Someone (largely) unrepressed, unrepentant, unashamed, whose depth comes from his own unknown limitations, and the exhilaration that comes with exploring that edge. What could he do, what will he do? He hardly knows himself, but rather than being a problem, it’s a challenge, a philosophical question. He shares his brain with so much all the time, and sometimes the space between himself and everything else is more a suggestion than a defined line.
He’s like one of those kids raised in excessive, grotesque wealth, except with information instead of money; information, which is often power. Definitely someone who never learned to shut up, turn down the drink or the job or the daring glance. No one can be tapped into the Internet like that, an endless sea of screaming neon and screens and signs and meaning and nonsense and desire, and not be a little bit unhinged. He combats this with a straight-forward, analytical nature, a temperament capable of riding the crest of all that data without drowning. Most of the time.
Ultimately, Jack is someone with immediate access to anything and everything he could ever want to know, and a personality just morally flexible enough that he wouldn’t for a moment think to feel ashamed using it against someone.
BIO: (cw: neglect, violence, addiction, drugs, suicidal ideation)
Jack’s power had started as a party trick.
It was the first time he’d been invited to a sleepover. The other boy’s parents probably felt bad for him, the kid with no mom and no friends and an always-absent father, but the specifics didn’t matter much. He’d been hungry for their attention, anyone’s attention, and when the opportunity was given to him he intended to leave an impression. Do you have a computer room? There’s something you should see. He’d rested one hand on the mouse, one on the keyboard, scowling-serious like the hackers he’d seen on TV. The posture was more for the visual than anything else; he wasn’t going to need to press a single key tonight. Give me a name. Someone you hate.
One brush of his thumb against a wire, and the screen flickered a hundred colors. Garbled words and images, resolving into a series of personal photos, emails meant for someone else’s eyes. A social security card. A private world cracked open for him, as easy as asking please.
It was the last time he’d let anyone watch him work. The other kids had looked at him in horror, his still hands, the blank look on his face. Blank as the static on a broken TV, or the waxy face of a corpse. Freak. Mutant. It didn’t bother him— other people’s opinions rarely bothered him— but it made the reveal less effective. Distracted from the point, which was: Look what I can do. And, more importantly: What can you give me for it?
Jack had been glad when they'd moved states not long after. Moving every few months was mostly an annoyance, but it did give him an unlimited supply of second chances at first impressions. By his teens, he’d perfected his routine. Cash for information. Blackmail, answers to tests, access to any secret. Any question answered, for the right price. Even if he had nothing to spend the money on but video games, candy, cigarettes and (eventually) drugs, whatever— it was the power that got to him, the real fun of the exchange. Before long his clientele had expanded from his fellow students to the local teachers. Then their friends. Then, a more dangerous kind of customer. More dangerous friends. If his father noticed his new schedule of late-night outings, he never mentioned it. Richard Mizuno had never been much of a parent, coming and going with no notice, sometimes for weeks on end. When they were sleeping in the same house, he didn’t seem to notice Jack’s movements around him at all.
Jack got caught when he was fifteen. A client looking for dirt on a cheating spouse recognized him, his dark hair, those blank eyes. Hey, aren’t you Mizuno’s kid? It was inevitable, running in circles adjacent to criminals, that he’d eventually run into someone who knew his own criminal father. Rich was a small-time con man and a big-time gambler. What money he made never lasted long in his pockets; it was rare that he made more than he lost, and outrunning his debts had been what kept them on the move through Jack’s childhood. That evening, his father called him into the kitchen and passed him a cigarette over the cheap plastic table where they’d never eaten a meal together. That evening, his father looked at him with interest for the first time in his life.
Once again his ability was a party trick, this time for his father’s benefit. Something to show off to strangers in the back rooms of clubs and anonymous private basements. Look what I found on you. Imagine what I could find on your enemies. Blackmail was a dirty business, but it paid better than the various scams his father had been working through the years. Pretty soon, they were making good money, more in a week than they’d previously seen in months. For the first time, they signed an actual lease on an apartment. He swapped out his Craigslist bed frame for one from Ikea. Soon, all Jack’s evenings were spent scowling in corners, the prop for his father’s grand reveal, and his mornings were spent sleeping through classes. He didn’t need to be present for the actual deals, but his dad liked leaving an impression, and silent boy genius hacker was a pretty memorable one.
That routine lasted nearly three years. The Mizunos made a name for themselves as the ones who could get dirt on anyone, anytime, and bore no strict alliances; it was more lucrative that way. Their reputation began to precede them. Even at a young age, Jack knew enough about the world— enough from watching his father, and the men who came after him— to know it could never end well. Inevitably, his dad made a gamble on the wrong person, and got a bullet in the head for his trouble. Jack took what was left of their money and ran as far as he could run, all the way to the opposite coast, into the familiar arms of an anonymous face and an unfamiliar town.
In another life, that would have been his lesson to take a sharp right turn and set down some more legitimate roots. As it was, he’d spent his years honing his abilities, learning how to control them and sell them to the highest bidder. The money was too easy, the satisfaction of a new impossible puzzle cracked— it was addictive, all-encompassing. Where most people only accessed a trickle of information at a time, their own personal corner of infinity, Jack bathed in it. All the world’s secrets at his fingertips, if he did things right, if he kept at it. Every puzzle had its solution. He could have anything and everything in the world he could want, and at that moment all he wanted was more.
He was so cocky. Cocky, and empty, and often bored. Sometimes high. It was a dangerous combination. First, he got run out of New York with his life, just barely. He’d bet on the wrong person, someone who knew that all it took to get him to do something was telling him he couldn’t. Nothing more attractive than a locked door and a challenge. Nothing better than proving someone wrong. Next stop, Chicago, where he hadn’t fallen into old habits as much as his only habits. It started with some high-powered mutant at a house party, looking him up and down with a raised brow— This guy? Really?— and it was like he lost his fucking mind. People could call him any name in the books and he wouldn’t bat a pretty eyelash, but questioning his abilities set him off like a rabid dog, what little common sense he had disappearing behind a smirk. All the mutant had to do was cock his head and ask, Can you? And Jack had said, Try me.
Jack would show them. He would show everyone in the entire world if he had to. And that was how he’d found himself on the wrong side of the Blackburn Syndicate.
EXPANDED CONNECTIONS:
ALMA: When Jack looked up from his crouch on the floor of the Blackburn server room and saw Alma, pure rage in a five-foot-two frame and looking ready to snap his neck, he’d laughed. In the split second between seeing their face and recognizing it, his mind tried the odds of getting out of that room alive and came up with the equivalent of an error message. So this was it, his penultimate moment, the last bad decision in a history of bad decisions. He’d lived his life from one increasingly risky gamble to the next, always left unsatisfied and searching for the next big thing-- assuming he didn’t get his face kicked in first. Not a great way to live if longevity was a priority, but he’d been running long enough on hubris to ignore that part. Until now. Now, it seemed the ever-chaotic universe had found a small justice to be done, one small moving part of chaos to put back in its place. He was going to be powered down for good. All that was left was to let go, with the finality of an animal going limp in the mouth of its mother, submitting to the inevitability of the narrative he’d always seen coming.
Jack wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel. Disappointed? He should be. He’d gotten caught before he could deliver the product to his client. He’d failed the job. But he’d gotten into the Blackburn servers first, cracked open the deepest secrets of one of the most secretive gangs. The rest of the job was just… transportation. This was his biggest challenge to date, and he’d— somehow, incredibly— pulled it off. Which was how he’d found himself laughing in the face of the inevitable, expression lit only by the blinking red and blue lights of the monitor below him and his hands nested in a tangle of wires like the hair of a lover.
He can’t imagine what she saw in him at that moment. A scruffy kid in old clothes living out of a hotel on the South Side, spending his days chain-smoking out the bathroom window while he waited for his phone to ring. Those days, he’d always had this feeling like he was about to vibrate out of his skin, worst of all when he was waiting for a job. Bouncing between all these intense, erratic impulses, always on the edge of shaving his head or robbing a bank or jumping in front of a car. He was a ball of tightly-would energy with no container, spinning and ricocheting and destroying everything it touched, and getting himself banged up in the process. An attack dog without a leash, biting its own tail into infinity. Jack was on his way to a dead end, full-speed, and changing paths wasn’t an option. Stopping felt like drowning; moving, outwitting every challenge, outrunning all consequences, at least it had a rush.
Until Alma Rosario looked at him and said, I’ve been looking for someone like you. He’d never been looked at like that before, like they were taking the whole measure of him, like they knew what he was and what he was meant to do. You’re with us now. Like he’d been theirs the whole time, and everything up until that moment was just practice for the real work of his life. He’d expected a gun to his face; instead, he’d gotten a lifeline. Someone who gave a fuck about him in a way no one ever had before. A cool hand on his shoulder, a direction to point his focus, and a leader who took his restlessness and alchemised it into blood-deep loyalty. The rest of the world could get fucked, but Alma Rosario had spared his life in more ways than one, and he’d follow them to the ends of the Earth.
EXTRA:
Jack speaks English, Japanese and Polish. The last he learned from his friend group in high school, who he had nothing in common with apart from a mutual interest in doing drugs and World of Warcraft. A fun side-effect of his ability is a natural aptitude towards languages, which could be cool if he ever cared enough to do something with it. In reality, he’d only learned Polish so he could talk shit as well as the rest of them during games.
At one point in his childhood he’d gotten really good at card tricks as an outlet for his fidgeting. It didn’t stick, but he still has the muscle memory.
There is an irony to the fact he ended up in the Blackburn Syndicate, the most holier-than-thou of the gangs, considering he doesn’t give a fuck about mutant rights. He’s never cared about politics or paid much attention to life outside his circle, and the interiority of his ability has spared him from the abuse other mutants experience on the day-to-day.
The last romantic interest he expressed in a girl was Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion; to be fair, he was 12 at the time.
There was a period at the beginning of his work with the Blackburn Syndicate where he lived in Alma’s guesthouse, because he had nowhere to go, and had been kicked out of his hotel for not caring enough to pay their bills. While he didn’t spend much time with Alma personally, being literally taken in off the street solidified his trust in their promise that Blackburn takes care of its members.
Jack was born on August 6, 1990 (which makes him a Leo sun, Scorpio moon, Capricorn rising.) Yes, this is a year to the day the internet went public.
His mother left him with his father when he was five. He doesn’t remember anything about her, but if she was thoughtless enough to leave her child with a man like his dad, he doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t think about her much anymore.
Jack has a secret obsession/fascination with the arcane and occult. Possibly because it’s one of the few topics that remains mysterious, no matter how much digging he does.
His home computer has a Sailor Moon-themed keyboard. It is wholly incongruous with the rest of his place, which has as much personality as a cheap motel room.
Jack reads everyone in Blackburn’s emails. Because he can. Occasionally their texts, too, if he really doesn’t like them, or distrusts their motivations. (He distrusts most people’s motivations.)
On that note, he considers it part of his job to keep some amount of dirt on everyone he knows, from bank account details to embarrassing archived Myspace profiles. The only one he affords their privacy is Alma.
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/remusjlupin/jm/
ANYTHING ELSE: N/A
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happy birthday choi twins💖
my oneshot here https://archiveofourown.org/works/15769038
#yooran#yooseven#yoosung kim#mysme 707#mysme saeran#mysme yoosung#choi twin birthday#choi twins#choi twins birthday#saeran choi#saeyoung choi#unrequited yooseven#choi bday#hhhhhhhh help#my art
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How to trade Bitcoin for cash – Make extra cash trading crypto
So much of what we are hearing at this point in the news that reports on it is the absolutely amazing price of over $3,800 USD that a single Bitcoin is worth today. This is crazy if you have been following bitcoin for as long as I have been.
I have seen this cryptocurrency go to the moon and back down to earth and now in those terms it has accelerated all the way to pluto. So what’s the deal how long will it last? That’s anybody’s best guess. The truth is that nobody knows, it could keep going or it could crash back down to earth tomorrow. This is the nature of the beast and beast is what Bitcoin has become.
How to trade Bitcoin for cash – Here’s what I did The easiest way to start using and trading Bitcoin is to download the official wallet and you will want to start by encrypting your wallet, make sure you choose a secure passphrase and be careful where you store the passphrase, because you don’t want to lose track of this or have anybody else steal it from you. When you first install the Bitcoin-qt application, it will take a good while to “sync” to the network. Keep in mind that this “syncing” is you download the whole digital ledger onto your computer, this is how it works. You will have a digital list of every single transaction that has ever occurred, neat hey?
Now you will have a Bitcoin wallet address and you can purchase Bitcoin from just about any currency and then send it to your wallet address. You can then buy products, make payments and receive them as well. That said, if you want to trade bitcoin, this is the best deal I have found.
Make $37,000 dollars like I did trading Bitcoin. Click here to learn all you need to know to get started today!
Satoshi Nakamoto Did Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin? Who is this person, nobody knows and nobody has taken credit, however there are rumors that whoever this person is, that they created this awesome feat. Hackers all around the world have tried to break the code and even the brightest hackers and coders have not been able to find a means to do it, some would say that every hole imaginable has been patched almost at like a superhuman manner.
Did Artificial Intelligence Create Bitcoin? There are rumors out there that satoshi nakamoto is an alias for some type of artificial intelligence that is responsible for creating Bitcoin. The truth is we don’t know for sure but the fact that nobody is able to hack Bitcoin and that it is coded so beautifully, that is every hole in it’s security is plugged seemingly before it can be exploited, hints at some sort of intelligent design or some type of AI that has not been pointed to yet. We really don’t know but some of the best minds in technology are unable to hack Bitcoin and it leads some to say this could be a possibility.
Related: Bitcoin price is falling – Is now a good time to buy?
Bitcoin is so much more than just a currency, it’s really a new way of living and one that knows no bounds with respect to the ginormous banks that have for so long dominated what we refer to as the monetary system. Bitcoin is not anything like a dollar and this is what makes its power so huge.
We are no longer bound by their rules, we have an opportunity for real change, for the ability to prosper without control, to make the decisions without someone approving them. This is the blockchains job. We can think of Bitcoin as a giant ledger whereas monetary responsibility is transferred to the owner and the peers that operate the network. Cool right?
This is not your traditional currency and that is what makes it so delicious. We are living in the age of where we are going to witness the transfer of wealth like nobody has seen before. It’s crazy and I love it.
Nobody is going to watch your cookie jar like the banks have been in control of for so long those days are literally numbered with the advent of this technology. Remember napster? This is the napster of currency where it’s peer-to-peer formula and the trust those that use it gives it its value.
So if you are ready to jump into this world there are options for you. You can do so many different things and it’s not just Bitcoin, there are literally tons of options for you, you could trade Litecoin instead which has also been on the upslope with value against the US dollar.
What gives Bitcoin it’s value? Everyone who uses it, and trusts in it, not much of a difference with it and paper money issued by the United States treasury for example. What gives paper currency it’s value? Paper currency used to be based on and backed by gold, however this is no longer the case. There is also the derived scarcity of Bitcoin as it has a cap and will never exceed 21 000 000 Bitcoins. This of course could be subject to change, but as far as the right now it will never exceed the 21 million coins and that could create a scarcity of this unique digital currency in the far future.
What encryption does Bitcoin use? Because the of the nature of SHA-256 encryption on which Bitcoin is based, it is inconceivable as of now to have the ability to break this encryption, but the advent of quantum computer of possibility of such computational behemoths may be able to break this encryption in the not-so-distant future, this could present a problem, however it may make Bitcoin “fork” and utilize a more secure encryption, or even image the possibilities of using the power of quantum mechanics for making possible unbreakable encryption in the future. This will likely be the topic for another post so this is all I will discuss it for now.
There are issues with Bitcoin and there are many ways that Bitcoin being only as secure as the computer and user that is using it. Some exchanges utilize “cold storage” wallets where they store the Bitcoin, making it unreachable to potential hackers and if you lose your password for your wallet, you actually may be up the digital creek without a paddle so to speak. So you must be very careful and it is advised that if you have a Bitcoin instance running, that you backup your data often and make sure you never lose the password you have encrypted your wallet with.
People have lost a lot of digital currency by their hard drives failing or losing the passwords. The has also been much scamming going on with Bitcoin and you have to be careful what online exchanges you are using, because if they are hacked and the Bitcoins stolen, most will not honor stolen Bitcoin, which means that you are out of luck. Mt. Gox is an example of one hacked platform where countless users lost money. Cryptsy is another platform that screwed me out of some currencies, and there’s no way for me to recover, so make sure that you use a reputable exchange or you may be sorry.
Is Bitcoin more than just a form of digital currency? Bitcoin is much more than a currency and another not so well known fact is that even messages can be hardcoded into transactions and through chains of messages you could even put files. Wikileaks even has used Bitcoin to attach all of the cablegate leaks into the blockchain which is super interesting. In fact, some of the first transactions that were done in Bitcoin were the hardcoded cablegate Wikileaks documents, which raises questions as to who may have played a role in the development of Bitcoin.
Was Julian Assange the creator of this digital currency? Nobody knows for certain, but this points to how Bitcoin could ultimately be a great tool to stop censorship in its tracks, which is a great thing. Once hardcoded into the Bitcoin Ledger, it will always be there unless the encryption is somehow broken, super cool, right?
Make $37,000 dollars easy – Click here to learn all you need to know to start trading Bitcoin today – Don’t miss out
The post How to trade Bitcoin for cash – Make extra cash trading crypto appeared first on Technology Watchpost .
https://technologywatchpost.com/how-to-trade-bitcoin-for-cash/
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Photo
How to trade Bitcoin for cash – Make extra cash trading crypto
So much of what we are hearing at this point in the news that reports on it is the absolutely amazing price of over $3,800 USD that a single Bitcoin is worth today. This is crazy if you have been following bitcoin for as long as I have been.
I have seen this cryptocurrency go to the moon and back down to earth and now in those terms it has accelerated all the way to pluto. So what’s the deal how long will it last? That’s anybody’s best guess. The truth is that nobody knows, it could keep going or it could crash back down to earth tomorrow. This is the nature of the beast and beast is what Bitcoin has become.
How to trade Bitcoin for cash – Here’s what I did The easiest way to start using and trading Bitcoin is to download the official wallet and you will want to start by encrypting your wallet, make sure you choose a secure passphrase and be careful where you store the passphrase, because you don’t want to lose track of this or have anybody else steal it from you. When you first install the Bitcoin-qt application, it will take a good while to “sync” to the network. Keep in mind that this “syncing” is you download the whole digital ledger onto your computer, this is how it works. You will have a digital list of every single transaction that has ever occurred, neat hey?
Now you will have a Bitcoin wallet address and you can purchase Bitcoin from just about any currency and then send it to your wallet address. You can then buy products, make payments and receive them as well. That said, if you want to trade bitcoin, this is the best deal I have found.
Make $37,000 dollars like I did trading Bitcoin. Click here to learn all you need to know to get started today!
Satoshi Nakamoto Did Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin? Who is this person, nobody knows and nobody has taken credit, however there are rumors that whoever this person is, that they created this awesome feat. Hackers all around the world have tried to break the code and even the brightest hackers and coders have not been able to find a means to do it, some would say that every hole imaginable has been patched almost at like a superhuman manner.
Did Artificial Intelligence Create Bitcoin? There are rumors out there that satoshi nakamoto is an alias for some type of artificial intelligence that is responsible for creating Bitcoin. The truth is we don’t know for sure but the fact that nobody is able to hack Bitcoin and that it is coded so beautifully, that is every hole in it’s security is plugged seemingly before it can be exploited, hints at some sort of intelligent design or some type of AI that has not been pointed to yet. We really don’t know but some of the best minds in technology are unable to hack Bitcoin and it leads some to say this could be a possibility.
Related: Bitcoin price is falling – Is now a good time to buy?
Bitcoin is so much more than just a currency, it’s really a new way of living and one that knows no bounds with respect to the ginormous banks that have for so long dominated what we refer to as the monetary system. Bitcoin is not anything like a dollar and this is what makes its power so huge.
We are no longer bound by their rules, we have an opportunity for real change, for the ability to prosper without control, to make the decisions without someone approving them. This is the blockchains job. We can think of Bitcoin as a giant ledger whereas monetary responsibility is transferred to the owner and the peers that operate the network. Cool right?
This is not your traditional currency and that is what makes it so delicious. We are living in the age of where we are going to witness the transfer of wealth like nobody has seen before. It’s crazy and I love it.
Nobody is going to watch your cookie jar like the banks have been in control of for so long those days are literally numbered with the advent of this technology. Remember napster? This is the napster of currency where it’s peer-to-peer formula and the trust those that use it gives it its value.
So if you are ready to jump into this world there are options for you. You can do so many different things and it’s not just Bitcoin, there are literally tons of options for you, you could trade Litecoin instead which has also been on the upslope with value against the US dollar.
What gives Bitcoin it’s value? Everyone who uses it, and trusts in it, not much of a difference with it and paper money issued by the United States treasury for example. What gives paper currency it’s value? Paper currency used to be based on and backed by gold, however this is no longer the case. There is also the derived scarcity of Bitcoin as it has a cap and will never exceed 21 000 000 Bitcoins. This of course could be subject to change, but as far as the right now it will never exceed the 21 million coins and that could create a scarcity of this unique digital currency in the far future.
What encryption does Bitcoin use? Because the of the nature of SHA-256 encryption on which Bitcoin is based, it is inconceivable as of now to have the ability to break this encryption, but the advent of quantum computer of possibility of such computational behemoths may be able to break this encryption in the not-so-distant future, this could present a problem, however it may make Bitcoin “fork” and utilize a more secure encryption, or even image the possibilities of using the power of quantum mechanics for making possible unbreakable encryption in the future. This will likely be the topic for another post so this is all I will discuss it for now.
There are issues with Bitcoin and there are many ways that Bitcoin being only as secure as the computer and user that is using it. Some exchanges utilize “cold storage” wallets where they store the Bitcoin, making it unreachable to potential hackers and if you lose your password for your wallet, you actually may be up the digital creek without a paddle so to speak. So you must be very careful and it is advised that if you have a Bitcoin instance running, that you backup your data often and make sure you never lose the password you have encrypted your wallet with.
People have lost a lot of digital currency by their hard drives failing or losing the passwords. The has also been much scamming going on with Bitcoin and you have to be careful what online exchanges you are using, because if they are hacked and the Bitcoins stolen, most will not honor stolen Bitcoin, which means that you are out of luck. Mt. Gox is an example of one hacked platform where countless users lost money. Cryptsy is another platform that screwed me out of some currencies, and there’s no way for me to recover, so make sure that you use a reputable exchange or you may be sorry.
Is Bitcoin more than just a form of digital currency? Bitcoin is much more than a currency and another not so well known fact is that even messages can be hardcoded into transactions and through chains of messages you could even put files. Wikileaks even has used Bitcoin to attach all of the cablegate leaks into the blockchain which is super interesting. In fact, some of the first transactions that were done in Bitcoin were the hardcoded cablegate Wikileaks documents, which raises questions as to who may have played a role in the development of Bitcoin.
Was Julian Assange the creator of this digital currency? Nobody knows for certain, but this points to how Bitcoin could ultimately be a great tool to stop censorship in its tracks, which is a great thing. Once hardcoded into the Bitcoin Ledger, it will always be there unless the encryption is somehow broken, super cool, right?
Make $37,000 dollars easy – Click here to learn all you need to know to start trading Bitcoin today – Don’t miss out
The post How to trade Bitcoin for cash – Make extra cash trading crypto appeared first on Technology Watchpost .
https://technologywatchpost.com/how-to-trade-bitcoin-for-cash/
0 notes
Photo
How to trade Bitcoin for cash – Make extra cash trading crypto
So much of what we are hearing at this point in the news that reports on it is the absolutely amazing price of over $3,800 USD that a single Bitcoin is worth today. This is crazy if you have been following bitcoin for as long as I have been.
I have seen this cryptocurrency go to the moon and back down to earth and now in those terms it has accelerated all the way to pluto. So what’s the deal how long will it last? That’s anybody’s best guess. The truth is that nobody knows, it could keep going or it could crash back down to earth tomorrow. This is the nature of the beast and beast is what Bitcoin has become.
How to trade Bitcoin for cash – Here’s what I did The easiest way to start using and trading Bitcoin is to download the official wallet and you will want to start by encrypting your wallet, make sure you choose a secure passphrase and be careful where you store the passphrase, because you don’t want to lose track of this or have anybody else steal it from you. When you first install the Bitcoin-qt application, it will take a good while to “sync” to the network. Keep in mind that this “syncing” is you download the whole digital ledger onto your computer, this is how it works. You will have a digital list of every single transaction that has ever occurred, neat hey?
Now you will have a Bitcoin wallet address and you can purchase Bitcoin from just about any currency and then send it to your wallet address. You can then buy products, make payments and receive them as well. That said, if you want to trade bitcoin, this is the best deal I have found.
Make $37,000 dollars like I did trading Bitcoin. Click here to learn all you need to know to get started today!
Satoshi Nakamoto Did Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin? Who is this person, nobody knows and nobody has taken credit, however there are rumors that whoever this person is, that they created this awesome feat. Hackers all around the world have tried to break the code and even the brightest hackers and coders have not been able to find a means to do it, some would say that every hole imaginable has been patched almost at like a superhuman manner.
Did Artificial Intelligence Create Bitcoin? There are rumors out there that satoshi nakamoto is an alias for some type of artificial intelligence that is responsible for creating Bitcoin. The truth is we don’t know for sure but the fact that nobody is able to hack Bitcoin and that it is coded so beautifully, that is every hole in it’s security is plugged seemingly before it can be exploited, hints at some sort of intelligent design or some type of AI that has not been pointed to yet. We really don’t know but some of the best minds in technology are unable to hack Bitcoin and it leads some to say this could be a possibility.
Related: Bitcoin price is falling – Is now a good time to buy?
Bitcoin is so much more than just a currency, it’s really a new way of living and one that knows no bounds with respect to the ginormous banks that have for so long dominated what we refer to as the monetary system. Bitcoin is not anything like a dollar and this is what makes its power so huge.
We are no longer bound by their rules, we have an opportunity for real change, for the ability to prosper without control, to make the decisions without someone approving them. This is the blockchains job. We can think of Bitcoin as a giant ledger whereas monetary responsibility is transferred to the owner and the peers that operate the network. Cool right?
This is not your traditional currency and that is what makes it so delicious. We are living in the age of where we are going to witness the transfer of wealth like nobody has seen before. It’s crazy and I love it.
Nobody is going to watch your cookie jar like the banks have been in control of for so long those days are literally numbered with the advent of this technology. Remember napster? This is the napster of currency where it’s peer-to-peer formula and the trust those that use it gives it its value.
So if you are ready to jump into this world there are options for you. You can do so many different things and it’s not just Bitcoin, there are literally tons of options for you, you could trade Litecoin instead which has also been on the upslope with value against the US dollar.
What gives Bitcoin it’s value? Everyone who uses it, and trusts in it, not much of a difference with it and paper money issued by the United States treasury for example. What gives paper currency it’s value? Paper currency used to be based on and backed by gold, however this is no longer the case. There is also the derived scarcity of Bitcoin as it has a cap and will never exceed 21 000 000 Bitcoins. This of course could be subject to change, but as far as the right now it will never exceed the 21 million coins and that could create a scarcity of this unique digital currency in the far future.
What encryption does Bitcoin use? Because the of the nature of SHA-256 encryption on which Bitcoin is based, it is inconceivable as of now to have the ability to break this encryption, but the advent of quantum computer of possibility of such computational behemoths may be able to break this encryption in the not-so-distant future, this could present a problem, however it may make Bitcoin “fork” and utilize a more secure encryption, or even image the possibilities of using the power of quantum mechanics for making possible unbreakable encryption in the future. This will likely be the topic for another post so this is all I will discuss it for now.
There are issues with Bitcoin and there are many ways that Bitcoin being only as secure as the computer and user that is using it. Some exchanges utilize “cold storage” wallets where they store the Bitcoin, making it unreachable to potential hackers and if you lose your password for your wallet, you actually may be up the digital creek without a paddle so to speak. So you must be very careful and it is advised that if you have a Bitcoin instance running, that you backup your data often and make sure you never lose the password you have encrypted your wallet with.
People have lost a lot of digital currency by their hard drives failing or losing the passwords. The has also been much scamming going on with Bitcoin and you have to be careful what online exchanges you are using, because if they are hacked and the Bitcoins stolen, most will not honor stolen Bitcoin, which means that you are out of luck. Mt. Gox is an example of one hacked platform where countless users lost money. Cryptsy is another platform that screwed me out of some currencies, and there’s no way for me to recover, so make sure that you use a reputable exchange or you may be sorry.
Is Bitcoin more than just a form of digital currency? Bitcoin is much more than a currency and another not so well known fact is that even messages can be hardcoded into transactions and through chains of messages you could even put files. Wikileaks even has used Bitcoin to attach all of the cablegate leaks into the blockchain which is super interesting. In fact, some of the first transactions that were done in Bitcoin were the hardcoded cablegate Wikileaks documents, which raises questions as to who may have played a role in the development of Bitcoin.
Was Julian Assange the creator of this digital currency? Nobody knows for certain, but this points to how Bitcoin could ultimately be a great tool to stop censorship in its tracks, which is a great thing. Once hardcoded into the Bitcoin Ledger, it will always be there unless the encryption is somehow broken, super cool, right?
Make $37,000 dollars easy – Click here to learn all you need to know to start trading Bitcoin today – Don’t miss out
The post How to trade Bitcoin for cash – Make extra cash trading crypto appeared first on Technology Watchpost .
https://technologywatchpost.com/how-to-trade-bitcoin-for-cash/
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New Post has been published here https://is.gd/mNCtcT
I Got the Mark of the Beast – And It Will Hold My Bitcoin
This post was originally published here
“What happens when you need an MRI?”
Someone answers for me: “You die an excruciating death… Actually, they remove them painfully quickly or the machine does.”
I’m sure these paranoid, exaggerated remarks didn’t help as I sat down at the folding table in front of a large man with a 14-gauge needle. I was sweating through my shirt.
“Are you gonna pass out?” he asks.
“I don’t think so.”
It’s literally right on my face – in the form of a septum piercing – that I’m pretty familiar with needles.
“Three, two and one,” the man with the needle said as he pushed it into the squishy part of my left hand, between my thumb and index finger.
It was all of one second of pain, and then it was over. I hardly even bled.
And just like that, I was now officially a cyborg.
So, what the hell am I doing here? Well several years ago, in 2014, I stumbled on this guy, Martijn Wismeijer, aka Mr. Bitcoin, who had gotten a microchip implant that he then programmed to hold his cryptocurrency.
I doubt I really knew much about the transhumanism movement back then, but I have always been fascinated with robots and the idea of melding robots into humans or vice versa. This seemed right up my alley, as even back then, I was basically covering crypto full-time, so I started reaching out but communication eventually dropped off and it was all but forgotten.
Until this January, when Bryan Bishop, the Bitcoin Core developer that’s known for his tremendously fast typing and in turn his transcriptions of conferences, mentioned BDYHAX to me. “There’s a lot of transhumanists in the bitcoin community,” he said.
But the conference’s agenda had already piqued my interest – “Implantable Tech Area.”
I’m there.
Freedom of…
Bishop’s right – at least anecdotally, that there’s an overlap between the body hackers and the bitcoiners. Transhumanism does, in fact, link them. Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney seems to have been one, since he cryogenically froze his body, hoping that sometime in the future he might be able to be resuscitated.
It probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise that folks that believe technology can create a better future as it relates to money, payments, shit just about everything, would think that technology can also make humans themselves better.
Take Bishop’s recently revealed designer baby venture.
Funded with his bitcoin savings, Bishop’s project, recently written about in MIT Technology Review, looks to allow parents to genetically engineer their babies to have features like muscles without ever picking up a dumbbell or enhanced memory.
If that sentence sounds weird – almost like adding apps to your smartphone – it’s because it kinda is. There’s mounting criticism and concern over the practice, especially after a Chinese biophysicist named He Jiankui claimed he’d made the first genetically edited babies.
If you give your imagination even a tiny bit of wiggle room, you can see why.
Do parents have the right to choose how their children look and act? This can’t be a cheap procedure; will everyone be able to edit their children to be smarter or will it only be the rich that benefit? Will we lose some humanity if everyone edit’s themselves for the flavor of the week?
Yet for all those dystopian futures (that I very much see and worry about), ultimately some of this could no doubt be beneficial and save hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of lives.
For instance, one of Bishop’s first examples – something we talked about in the Fall last year – was making humans resistant to HIV.
Future humans will think we’re barbaric if we resist this kind of medical achievement.
While I’m not so interested, and even slightly disturbed, by genetic beauty enhancements such as muscles or blue eyes, I worry these concerns could push this type of biohacking into the shadows.
And that’s a shame.
Bodies and money
We’ve seen a similar thing happen in the cryptocurrency space.
There are hacks, scams, fucking idiots and all sorts of bad things lurking in the blockchain scene, and typically that’s made many turn up their noses to the whole industry. They lump it all together and mark it “useless,” “nefarious,” “shit.”
And I get it. I look around the crypto industry, after being here for six years, and see rot. I see individuals who only want to make quick money at the expense of others; I see companies touting their disrupting finance but actually enstating the same, arbitrary, discriminatory rules as legacy banks.
Where the fuck did the ethos go?
I’ll tell you. It might be hard to see through all the “sky is falling” – or during a hype cycle all the glitz of free money – but it’s in Venezuela, helping people literally starving because of their corrupt government, hold onto some value. It’s in the lightning torch, hopping all around the world, showing people the power of a stateless digital currency.
And because those instances exist, I’ll take some of the bullshit.
Because that’s what I’m here for – an alternative to the systems that were created without my input and sometimes do not work for – to be more clear, work against – me and other individuals.
“We’re all already attuned to this, we want freedom, we don’t want to be told what we can and can’t do with our bodies, what we can or can’t put into our bodies, and people don’t want to be told what they can and can’t do with their money,” Chad Creighton, a vice president at blockchain development consultancy BlockSaw, who was at BDYHAX, said.
While our bodies and our money could seem like apples and oranges, they’re really not. Because what we can do with our bodies is directly determined by what we can do with our money.
Case in point, for some in the biohacking space, healthcare is too costly and big pharma, insurance providers, even doctors are working against the people, the individuals who need care. For cryptocurrency aficionados, the great monolithic entity to disrupt is the Federal Reserve, state monetary policy, the banks.
There’s an overlapping “distrust of formal institutions,” Bishop told me. “They have gotten so large and bureaucratic, it’s sometimes more practical to go your own way and see what you can get done. Even more specifically, some people see certain regulations directly interfering with people’s right to live.”
He gives the example of a DIY biohacker figuring out a way to make insulin cheaper and then offering that to diabetics, which would be technically illegal.
As with all these anarchist attempts, Don Andres Ochoa, a biotechnologist and data scientist speaking at the event, gave the best rallying cry:
“Fuck it, let’s fix the problem ourselves.”
Scared of needles?
These two fields of research “are not directly useful to each other, but there’s a common source of inspiration,” Bishop said.
And they do mix together at a certain point. For instance, because of the controversy surrounding designer babies today, Bishop is cognizant that cryptography-backed privacy tech will likely play some role – if nothing else, at least as it relates to anonymous payments for the service.
Still, all this stuff seems outrageous to the majority of people.
“Right now, the idea or concept of body hacking is literally bleeding edge (ha),” said Amal Graafstra, the founder and CEO of VivoKey, the maker of the implant I got.
With implants, as with cryptocurrency, “the overlap is directly related to people’s sense of adventure,” he continued.
Case in point, Jerrah Cameron, a Denver-based programmer, who stumbled upon the body hacking scene only about a month ago and already has three implants – two small chips and this larger NFC chip, for which he had a gnarly one-inch slice on the side of his right hand.
For the novelty these devices provide so far – I currently have my chip programmed to take an NFC-enabled phone to my “receive bitcoin” QR code, making it fast and easy for someone to send me a tip – most people won’t want to get poked, he said.
That’s why he’s working on an application that would allow the chips to be used as payment mechanisms, housing first the tokens needed for apps like Apple Pay, Google Pay or Venmo, and then in the future even cryptocurrencies.
And VivoKey is also working on something similar.
In a week or so, Graafstra and his team plan on releasing an API that can allow developers to program one of their chips (yes, the one I have! squee) to act as an authenticator key. With this, users should be able to request that their chip be tapped to verify any send or transfer of crypto within a wallet.
“The idea was to develop a completely autonomous secure element under the skin,” Graafstra told CoinDesk.
And the company also offers a chip (not the one I have) that can actually complete key generation and the signing of a transaction all within the chip. That’s currently in private beta and requires quite a lot of programming to make it all work, so it’s not ready for mainstream use yet.
So for now, my hand isn’t worth any more than it was when I was just a boring old human (although it has facilitated $2 worth of bitcoin).
Implant procedure images via Bailey Reutzel for CoinDesk
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How to make your Twitter account more secure in an age of hacks
Keeping your apps update can help stay secure. (Pixabay /)
Last night, a number of high-profile and verified Twitter users all shared a curious message at roughly the same time. They included big names such as Elon Musk and Bill Gates. The suspicious tweets promised to double any amount of Bitcoin sent to a specific wallet ID listed in the tweet itself. On its face, it screams of a scam, but these are verified accounts for certifiably rich people—some users took a chance. Quickly, the wallet had racked up more than $120,000 in bitcoin transactions, none of which will ever be doubled or even returned.
It was a massive security breach from Twitter. The company scrambled to delete the offending tweets and investigate. For a while, all verified Twitter users couldn’t send tweets at all in an effort to prevent the fraudulent message from propagating even further and duping more folks out of crypto currency.
We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 15, 2020
Early reports claim the issue began when hackers got access to an internal tool meant for Twitter employees. Twitter’s official statement claims “social engineering” played a large part in the heist, though details are still sparse from the official investigation.
Even if you didn’t lose any Bitcoins to the scam, it’s a worrying event. After all, this was a large scale-attack on one of the biggest media platforms in the world at the moment. If they can poke around inside Elon Musk’s account, why not yours?
This hack is also slightly different than those in the past. It’s not hard to imagine a famous person—or their social media handler—clicking on a phishing link or reusing a password, but that wasn’t the case this time. “It’s important to note that none of the people who owned the accounts affected this time around actually did anything wrong,” says Georgia Weidman, author and founder of the digital security firms Bulb and Shevirah. Still, this event is a good time to reevaluate your own Twitter security to try to make sure you’re not part of the next hack. Here are some tips to help tweet more securely.
Set up two-factor authentication
When someone is inside your account, they can send tweets, but they can also access your information. If they simply log in because they have your passwords, they can operate as if they’re you. As with most apps, two-factor authentication can help prevent this from happening since it puts an extra step between a hacker and your information.
The most familiar way to enable 2FA involves giving the app your phone number so it can text you a code when you log in from a new device. While this is a big jump up from no authentication, it is possible for hackers to impersonate or compromise your phone provider and get a hold of that code. According to Weidman, however, that’s pretty unlikely unless you’re a high-value target. “You’re going to be more likely to run afoul of hackers looking for sheer numbers,” she explains. “It’s unlikely they’re going to target you specifically since you’re not as valuable as someone like Elon Musk. It’s too much work.”
If you want maximum protection from 2FA, you can use a physical device such as Google Authenticator. There’s an increasing number of authenticator apps on the market, and choosing one adds another layer of decision making to the process.
Be mindful of what you send via DM
Twitter’s direct messages have never claimed to be the most secure method of communication on the web. Like Facebook Messenger, the messages aren’t end-to-end encrypted, which means anyone who intercepts them could feasibly get at their contents. But, in this case, encryption wouldn’t have helped. Since the attackers had access to the accounts, they almost certainly had access to direct messages, which would be the case with most services.
You can delete your sensitive direct messages, but that won’t delete the message from the receiver’s account. When you delete a Twitter DM, you get a dialog explaining that you’re only deleting the message for yourself and it will still show up in the other person’s account unless they also delete it. So, if they’re compromised, then so are you.
Use a password manager
By now, you may be sick of hearing about how you should be using a password manager. “Passwords should be strong, complex, and unique,” says Weidman. “It can be really difficult to keep track of 50 passwords like that, which is why you want a manager.” Check out our guide to password managers if you want to get started.
Keep your apps and operating systems updated
Security updates happen all the time when it comes to apps and even your operating system. It’s easy to neglect them because they can be time-consuming to apply. They are, however, crucial for staying ahead of hacks. “This goes beyond the apps themselves and to the platforms they’re running on,” says Weidman. “Keep your phone and computer updated.”
Delete old accounts
Remember that political parody account you set up during the 2012 election? It probably doesn’t have much in the way of security, which could make it an easy get for a hacker. If you have old accounts sitting around that you never plan to use, delete them instead of letting them sit around forever. If you don’t want to lose that content even though you’re not actively posting to it, make sure that its security settings are up to date.
Watch for weird behavior
Clicking links from accounts you don’t recognize is bad news. Clicking links from friends who are acting slightly odd is also bad news. If someone you know asks you to click on something, verify that it’s a real link—you can even text them to make sure it’s legit.
If you suspect an account is malicious or trying to trick you, report it instead of interacting with it. You don’t want to make yourself more of a target by showing your willingness to engage.
Check out the Twitter security dashboard
In recent years, Twitter has padded out its own security and privacy dashboards. Taking an occasional cruise through your settings can’t hurt. For instance, do you know what your tweet location settings are right now? If you don’t, you can dig into them here and make sure you’re not giving up more location data than you’re comfortable with.
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Text
How to make your Twitter account more secure in an age of hacks
Keeping your apps update can help stay secure. (Pixabay /)
Last night, a number of high-profile and verified Twitter users all shared a curious message at roughly the same time. They included big names such as Elon Musk and Bill Gates. The suspicious tweets promised to double any amount of Bitcoin sent to a specific wallet ID listed in the tweet itself. On its face, it screams of a scam, but these are verified accounts for certifiably rich people—some users took a chance. Quickly, the wallet had racked up more than $120,000 in bitcoin transactions, none of which will ever be doubled or even returned.
It was a massive security breach from Twitter. The company scrambled to delete the offending tweets and investigate. For a while, all verified Twitter users couldn’t send tweets at all in an effort to prevent the fraudulent message from propagating even further and duping more folks out of crypto currency.
We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 15, 2020
Early reports claim the issue began when hackers got access to an internal tool meant for Twitter employees. Twitter’s official statement claims “social engineering” played a large part in the heist, though details are still sparse from the official investigation.
Even if you didn’t lose any Bitcoins to the scam, it’s a worrying event. After all, this was a large scale-attack on one of the biggest media platforms in the world at the moment. If they can poke around inside Elon Musk’s account, why not yours?
This hack is also slightly different than those in the past. It’s not hard to imagine a famous person—or their social media handler—clicking on a phishing link or reusing a password, but that wasn’t the case this time. “It’s important to note that none of the people who owned the accounts affected this time around actually did anything wrong,” says Georgia Weidman, author and founder of the digital security firms Bulb and Shevirah. Still, this event is a good time to reevaluate your own Twitter security to try to make sure you’re not part of the next hack. Here are some tips to help tweet more securely.
Set up two-factor authentication
When someone is inside your account, they can send tweets, but they can also access your information. If they simply log in because they have your passwords, they can operate as if they’re you. As with most apps, two-factor authentication can help prevent this from happening since it puts an extra step between a hacker and your information.
The most familiar way to enable 2FA involves giving the app your phone number so it can text you a code when you log in from a new device. While this is a big jump up from no authentication, it is possible for hackers to impersonate or compromise your phone provider and get a hold of that code. According to Weidman, however, that’s pretty unlikely unless you’re a high-value target. “You’re going to be more likely to run afoul of hackers looking for sheer numbers,” she explains. “It’s unlikely they’re going to target you specifically since you’re not as valuable as someone like Elon Musk. It’s too much work.”
If you want maximum protection from 2FA, you can use a physical device such as Google Authenticator. There’s an increasing number of authenticator apps on the market, and choosing one adds another layer of decision making to the process.
Be mindful of what you send via DM
Twitter’s direct messages have never claimed to be the most secure method of communication on the web. Like Facebook Messenger, the messages aren’t end-to-end encrypted, which means anyone who intercepts them could feasibly get at their contents. But, in this case, encryption wouldn’t have helped. Since the attackers had access to the accounts, they almost certainly had access to direct messages, which would be the case with most services.
You can delete your sensitive direct messages, but that won’t delete the message from the receiver’s account. When you delete a Twitter DM, you get a dialog explaining that you’re only deleting the message for yourself and it will still show up in the other person’s account unless they also delete it. So, if they’re compromised, then so are you.
Use a password manager
By now, you may be sick of hearing about how you should be using a password manager. “Passwords should be strong, complex, and unique,” says Weidman. “It can be really difficult to keep track of 50 passwords like that, which is why you want a manager.” Check out our guide to password managers if you want to get started.
Keep your apps and operating systems updated
Security updates happen all the time when it comes to apps and even your operating system. It’s easy to neglect them because they can be time-consuming to apply. They are, however, crucial for staying ahead of hacks. “This goes beyond the apps themselves and to the platforms they’re running on,” says Weidman. “Keep your phone and computer updated.”
Delete old accounts
Remember that political parody account you set up during the 2012 election? It probably doesn’t have much in the way of security, which could make it an easy get for a hacker. If you have old accounts sitting around that you never plan to use, delete them instead of letting them sit around forever. If you don’t want to lose that content even though you’re not actively posting to it, make sure that its security settings are up to date.
Watch for weird behavior
Clicking links from accounts you don’t recognize is bad news. Clicking links from friends who are acting slightly odd is also bad news. If someone you know asks you to click on something, verify that it’s a real link—you can even text them to make sure it’s legit.
If you suspect an account is malicious or trying to trick you, report it instead of interacting with it. You don’t want to make yourself more of a target by showing your willingness to engage.
Check out the Twitter security dashboard
In recent years, Twitter has padded out its own security and privacy dashboards. Taking an occasional cruise through your settings can’t hurt. For instance, do you know what your tweet location settings are right now? If you don’t, you can dig into them here and make sure you’re not giving up more location data than you’re comfortable with.
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WHO
Name: Jack Mizuno
Dossier: Iapetus
Age: 30
Mutant Risk Level: Two
Affiliation and Occupation: The Blackburn Syndicate, Informant
Gender/Pronouns: Cis male, he/him
Faceclaim: Sen Mitsuji
POWER
INTERNET MANIPULATION: The ability to access and manipulate the internet. Mutants with this ability can access everything from the internet, its protocols, its structure, the dark net, communication, data transfer, and even the electricity running through the wires that connect to devices. Jack can hack into and view classified information with ease due to years of honing their ability. If they are hacking into the Internet of Things, that which connects all devices, mutants are practically unstoppable with what they can access unless a device is not connected.
AESTHETIC
They are monitors caked in layers of smoke, wires twisting underneath door frames, and ring shaped stains on every surface. They are deleted files and digital paper trails and eyes watching your every keystroke. The cold stare that greets you in a freshly pressed suit, the light reflecting off of their shoes as they pace the outskirts of a room. They are the mist that wakes before dawn and the neon haze that lurks in alleyways when the clock ticks closer to the night. They are the one who knows your deepest secrets and won’t think twice about telling the world.
BIOGRAPHY
(cw: neglect, violence, addiction, drugs, suicidal ideation)
Jack’s power had started as a party trick.
It was the first time he’d been invited to a sleepover. The other boy’s parents probably felt bad for him, the kid with no mom and no friends and an always-absent father, but the specifics didn’t matter much. He’d been hungry for their attention, anyone’s attention, and when the opportunity was given to him he intended to leave an impression. Do you have a computer room? There’s something you should see. He’d rested one hand on the mouse, one on the keyboard, scowling-serious like the hackers he’d seen on TV. The posture was more for the visual than anything else; he wasn’t going to need to press a single key tonight. Give me a name. Someone you hate.
One brush of his thumb against a wire, and the screen flickered a hundred colors. Garbled words and images, resolving into a series of personal photos, emails meant for someone else’s eyes. A social security card. A private world cracked open for him, as easy as asking please.
It was the last time he’d let anyone watch him work. The other kids had looked at him in horror, his still hands, the blank look on his face. Blank as the static on a broken TV, or the waxy face of a corpse. Freak. Mutant. It didn’t bother him— other people’s opinions rarely bothered him— but it made the reveal less effective. Distracted from the point, which was: Look what I can do. And, more importantly: What can you give me for it?
Jack had been glad when they'd moved states not long after. Moving every few months was mostly an annoyance, but it did give him an unlimited supply of second chances at first impressions. By his teens, he’d perfected his routine. Cash for information. Blackmail, answers to tests, access to any secret. Any question answered, for the right price. Even if he had nothing to spend the money on but video games, candy, cigarettes and (eventually) drugs, whatever— it was the power that got to him, the real fun of the exchange. Before long his clientele had expanded from his fellow students to the local teachers. Then their friends. Then, a more dangerous kind of customer. More dangerous friends. If his father noticed his new schedule of late-night outings, he never mentioned it. Richard Mizuno had never been much of a parent, coming and going with no notice, sometimes for weeks on end. When they were sleeping in the same house, he didn’t seem to notice Jack’s movements around him at all.
Jack got caught when he was fifteen. A client looking for dirt on a cheating spouse recognized him, his dark hair, those blank eyes. Hey, aren’t you Mizuno’s kid? It was inevitable, running in circles adjacent to criminals, that he’d eventually run into someone who knew his own criminal father. Rich was a small-time con man and a big-time gambler. What money he made never lasted long in his pockets; it was rare that he made more than he lost, and outrunning his debts had been what kept them on the move through Jack’s childhood. That evening, his father called him into the kitchen and passed him a cigarette over the cheap plastic table where they’d never eaten a meal together. That evening, his father looked at him with interest for the first time in his life.
Once again his ability was a party trick, this time for his father’s benefit. Something to show off to strangers in the back rooms of clubs and anonymous private basements. Look what I found on you. Imagine what I could find on your enemies. Blackmail was a dirty business, but it paid better than the various scams his father had been working through the years. Pretty soon, they were making good money, more in a week than they’d previously seen in months. For the first time, they signed an actual lease on an apartment. He swapped out his Craigslist bed frame for one from Ikea. Soon, all Jack’s evenings were spent scowling in corners, the prop for his father’s grand reveal, and his mornings were spent sleeping through classes. He didn’t need to be present for the actual deals, but his dad liked leaving an impression, and silent boy genius hacker was a pretty memorable one.
That routine lasted nearly three years. The Mizunos made a name for themselves as the ones who could get dirt on anyone, anytime, and bore no strict alliances; it was more lucrative that way. Their reputation began to precede them. Even at a young age, Jack knew enough about the world— enough from watching his father, and the men who came after him— to know it could never end well. Inevitably, his dad made a gamble on the wrong person, and got a bullet in the head for his trouble. Jack took what was left of their money and ran as far as he could run, all the way to the opposite coast, into the familiar arms of an anonymous face and an unfamiliar town.
In another life, that would have been his lesson to take a sharp right turn and set down some more legitimate roots. As it was, he’d spent his years honing his abilities, learning how to control them and sell them to the highest bidder. The money was too easy, the satisfaction of a new impossible puzzle cracked— it was addictive, all-encompassing. Where most people only accessed a trickle of information at a time, their own personal corner of infinity, Jack bathed in it. All the world’s secrets at his fingertips, if he did things right, if he kept at it. Every puzzle had its solution. He could have anything and everything in the world he could want, and at that moment all he wanted was more.
He was so cocky. Cocky, and empty, and often bored. Sometimes high. It was a dangerous combination. First, he got run out of New York with his life, just barely. He’d bet on the wrong person, someone who knew that all it took to get him to do something was telling him he couldn’t. Nothing more attractive than a locked door and a challenge. Nothing better than proving someone wrong. Next stop, Chicago, where he hadn’t fallen into old habits as much as his only habits. It started with some high-powered mutant at a house party, looking him up and down with a raised brow— This guy? Really?— and it was like he lost his fucking mind. People could call him any name in the books and he wouldn’t bat a pretty eyelash, but questioning his abilities set him off like a rabid dog, what little common sense he had disappearing behind a smirk. All the mutant had to do was cock his head and ask, Can you? And Jack had said, Try me.
Jack would show them. He would show everyone in the entire world if he had to. And that was how he’d found himself on the wrong side of the Blackburn Syndicate.
CONNECTIONS
LENOX SYED, Annoyance: There’s nothing that annoys Jack more than dealing with the illusion maker. While they live in their own world filled with screens, they’re plagued by the illusion Lenox inserts into their brain. If it was up to them, they would send one of Alma’s bruiser’s after them but this peace treaty has them holding back from their own desire. One of these days they’ll get their revenge.
ILIE LACEY, Target: While there are some that claim too much time spent in front of screens is bad for your health, Jack will disagree. In their spare time, they found a treasure trove of information on the Ilie. It almost seemed too good to be true but after digging a little deeper, they realized just how much of a hold they could have over the other mutant. Seeing the other dance around to whatever whim Jack throws at them all for the sake of saving their ego is entertaining. And as much fun as it is to have them under Jack’s watchful eye, they can feel themselves growing bored of the game.
RAHIM AVERY, Amusement: The grimace that crosses Rahim’s face whenever they have to enter Jack’s space is enough to make them smile. They’re aware of the others distaste of them, not that Jack is keen on Rahim, but it’s fun to play with them while they're forced to work together. The thought of diving in their past is a temptation itching at the back of Jack’s mind and each day it gets harder to ignore it.
ALMA ROSARIO, Salvation: It wasn’t Jack’s best idea to hack into the Blackburn servers. In fact, it was their dumbest one to date. They accepted the job without thinking twice about the repercussions, the money was too good to be true and they had grown tired of living in alleys. That was until one of Alma’s bruisers dragged them out by their hair and threw them in front of her. She gave Jack two choices: either work for her or never work again. She gave them what they lacked; a home, a job, a support system. Alma saved them from being another mutant statistic and they won’t forget it.
IAPETUS is CLOSED for applications. He is taken by NOEL.
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I Got the Mark of the Beast – And It Will Hold My Bitcoin
“What happens when you need an MRI?”
Someone answers for me: “You die an excruciating death… Actually, they remove them painfully quickly or the machine does.”
I’m sure these paranoid, exaggerated remarks didn’t help as I sat down at the folding table in front of a large man with a 14-gauge needle. I was sweating through my shirt.
“Are you gonna pass out?” he asks.
“I don’t think so.”
It’s literally right on my face – in the form of a septum piercing – that I’m pretty familiar with needles.
“Three, two and one,” the man with the needle said as he pushed it into the squishy part of my left hand, between my thumb and index finger.
It was all of one second of pain, and then it was over. I hardly even bled.
And just like that, I was now officially a cyborg.
So, what the hell am I doing here? Well several years ago, in 2014, I stumbled on this guy, Martijn Wismeijer, aka Mr. Bitcoin, who had gotten a microchip implant that he then programmed to hold his cryptocurrency.
I doubt I really knew much about the transhumanism movement back then, but I have always been fascinated with robots and the idea of melding robots into humans or vice versa. This seemed right up my alley, as even back then, I was basically covering crypto full-time, so I started reaching out but communication eventually dropped off and it was all but forgotten.
Until this January, when Bryan Bishop, the Bitcoin Core developer that’s known for his tremendously fast typing and in turn his transcriptions of conferences, mentioned BDYHAX to me. “There’s a lot of transhumanists in the bitcoin community,” he said.
But the conference’s agenda had already piqued my interest – “Implantable Tech Area.”
I’m there.
Freedom of…
Bishop’s right – at least anecdotally, that there’s an overlap between the body hackers and the bitcoiners. Transhumanism does, in fact, link them. Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney seems to have been one, since he cryogenically froze his body, hoping that sometime in the future he might be able to be resuscitated.
It probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise that folks that believe technology can create a better future as it relates to money, payments, shit just about everything, would think that technology can also make humans themselves better.
Take Bishop’s recently revealed designer baby venture.
Funded with his bitcoin savings, Bishop’s project, recently written about in MIT Technology Review, looks to allow parents to genetically engineer their babies to have features like muscles without ever picking up a dumbbell or enhanced memory.
If that sentence sounds weird – almost like adding apps to your smartphone – it’s because it kinda is. There’s mounting criticism and concern over the practice, especially after a Chinese biophysicist named He Jiankui claimed he’d made the first genetically edited babies.
If you give your imagination even a tiny bit of wiggle room, you can see why.
Do parents have the right to choose how their children look and act? This can’t be a cheap procedure; will everyone be able to edit their children to be smarter or will it only be the rich that benefit? Will we lose some humanity if everyone edit’s themselves for the flavor of the week?
Yet for all those dystopian futures (that I very much see and worry about), ultimately some of this could no doubt be beneficial and save hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of lives.
For instance, one of Bishop’s first examples – something we talked about in the Fall last year – was making humans resistant to HIV.
Future humans will think we’re barbaric if we resist this kind of medical achievement.
While I’m not so interested, and even slightly disturbed, by genetic beauty enhancements such as muscles or blue eyes, I worry these concerns could push this type of biohacking into the shadows.
And that’s a shame.
Bodies and money
We’ve seen a similar thing happen in the cryptocurrency space.
There are hacks, scams, fucking idiots and all sorts of bad things lurking in the blockchain scene, and typically that’s made many turn up their noses to the whole industry. They lump it all together and mark it “useless,” “nefarious,” “shit.”
And I get it. I look around the crypto industry, after being here for six years, and see rot. I see individuals who only want to make quick money at the expense of others; I see companies touting their disrupting finance but actually enstating the same, arbitrary, discriminatory rules as legacy banks.
Where the fuck did the ethos go?
I’ll tell you. It might be hard to see through all the “sky is falling” – or during a hype cycle all the glitz of free money – but it’s in Venezuela, helping people literally starving because of their corrupt government, hold onto some value. It’s in the lightning torch, hopping all around the world, showing people the power of a stateless digital currency.
And because those instances exist, I’ll take some of the bullshit.
Because that’s what I’m here for – an alternative to the systems that were created without my input and sometimes do not work for – to be more clear, work against – me and other individuals.
“We’re all already attuned to this, we want freedom, we don’t want to be told what we can and can’t do with our bodies, what we can or can’t put into our bodies, and people don’t want to be told what they can and can’t do with their money,” Chad Creighton, a vice president at blockchain development consultancy BlockSaw, who was at BDYHAX, said.
While our bodies and our money could seem like apples and oranges, they’re really not. Because what we can do with our bodies is directly determined by what we can do with our money.
Case in point, for some in the biohacking space, healthcare is too costly and big pharma, insurance providers, even doctors are working against the people, the individuals who need care. For cryptocurrency aficionados, the great monolithic entity to disrupt is the Federal Reserve, state monetary policy, the banks.
There’s an overlapping “distrust of formal institutions,” Bishop told me. “They have gotten so large and bureaucratic, it’s sometimes more practical to go your own way and see what you can get done. Even more specifically, some people see certain regulations directly interfering with people’s right to live.”
He gives the example of a DIY biohacker figuring out a way to make insulin cheaper and then offering that to diabetics, which would be technically illegal.
As with all these anarchist attempts, Don Andres Ochoa, a biotechnologist and data scientist speaking at the event, gave the best rallying cry:
“Fuck it, let’s fix the problem ourselves.”
Scared of needles?
These two fields of research “are not directly useful to each other, but there’s a common source of inspiration,” Bishop said.
And they do mix together at a certain point. For instance, because of the controversy surrounding designer babies today, Bishop is cognizant that cryptography-backed privacy tech will likely play some role – if nothing else, at least as it relates to anonymous payments for the service.
Still, all this stuff seems outrageous to the majority of people.
“Right now, the idea or concept of body hacking is literally bleeding edge (ha),” said Amal Graafstra, the founder and CEO of VivoKey, the maker of the implant I got.
With implants, as with cryptocurrency, “the overlap is directly related to people’s sense of adventure,” he continued.
Case in point, Jerrah Cameron, a Denver-based programmer, who stumbled upon the body hacking scene only about a month ago and already has three implants – two small chips and this larger NFC chip, for which he had a gnarly one-inch slice on the side of his right hand.
For the novelty these devices provide so far – I currently have my chip programmed to take an NFC-enabled phone to my “receive bitcoin” QR code, making it fast and easy for someone to send me a tip – most people won’t want to get poked, he said.
That’s why he’s working on an application that would allow the chips to be used as payment mechanisms, housing first the tokens needed for apps like Apple Pay, Google Pay or Venmo, and then in the future even cryptocurrencies.
And VivoKey is also working on something similar.
In a week or so, Graafstra and his team plan on releasing an API that can allow developers to program one of their chips (yes, the one I have! squee) to act as an authenticator key. With this, users should be able to request that their chip be tapped to verify any send or transfer of crypto within a wallet.
“The idea was to develop a completely autonomous secure element under the skin,” Graafstra told CoinDesk.
And the company also offers a chip (not the one I have) that can actually complete key generation and the signing of a transaction all within the chip. That’s currently in private beta and requires quite a lot of programming to make it all work, so it’s not ready for mainstream use yet.
So for now, my hand isn’t worth any more than it was when I was just a boring old human (although it has facilitated $2 worth of bitcoin).
Implant procedure images via Bailey Reutzel for CoinDesk
This news post is collected from CoinDesk
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How to trade Bitcoin for cash – Make extra cash trading crypto
So much of what we are hearing at this point in the news that reports on it is the absolutely amazing price of over $3,800 USD that a single Bitcoin is worth today. This is crazy if you have been following bitcoin for as long as I have been.
I have seen this cryptocurrency go to the moon and back down to earth and now in those terms it has accelerated all the way to pluto. So what’s the deal how long will it last? That’s anybody’s best guess. The truth is that nobody knows, it could keep going or it could crash back down to earth tomorrow. This is the nature of the beast and beast is what Bitcoin has become.
How to trade Bitcoin for cash – Here’s what I did The easiest way to start using and trading Bitcoin is to download the official wallet and you will want to start by encrypting your wallet, make sure you choose a secure passphrase and be careful where you store the passphrase, because you don’t want to lose track of this or have anybody else steal it from you. When you first install the Bitcoin-qt application, it will take a good while to “sync” to the network. Keep in mind that this “syncing” is you download the whole digital ledger onto your computer, this is how it works. You will have a digital list of every single transaction that has ever occurred, neat hey?
Now you will have a Bitcoin wallet address and you can purchase Bitcoin from just about any currency and then send it to your wallet address. You can then buy products, make payments and receive them as well. That said, if you want to trade bitcoin, this is the best deal I have found.
Make $37,000 dollars like I did trading Bitcoin. Click here to learn all you need to know to get started today!
Satoshi Nakamoto Did Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin? Who is this person, nobody knows and nobody has taken credit, however there are rumors that whoever this person is, that they created this awesome feat. Hackers all around the world have tried to break the code and even the brightest hackers and coders have not been able to find a means to do it, some would say that every hole imaginable has been patched almost at like a superhuman manner.
Did Artificial Intelligence Create Bitcoin? There are rumors out there that satoshi nakamoto is an alias for some type of artificial intelligence that is responsible for creating Bitcoin. The truth is we don’t know for sure but the fact that nobody is able to hack Bitcoin and that it is coded so beautifully, that is every hole in it’s security is plugged seemingly before it can be exploited, hints at some sort of intelligent design or some type of AI that has not been pointed to yet. We really don’t know but some of the best minds in technology are unable to hack Bitcoin and it leads some to say this could be a possibility.
Related: Bitcoin price is falling – Is now a good time to buy?
Bitcoin is so much more than just a currency, it’s really a new way of living and one that knows no bounds with respect to the ginormous banks that have for so long dominated what we refer to as the monetary system. Bitcoin is not anything like a dollar and this is what makes its power so huge.
We are no longer bound by their rules, we have an opportunity for real change, for the ability to prosper without control, to make the decisions without someone approving them. This is the blockchains job. We can think of Bitcoin as a giant ledger whereas monetary responsibility is transferred to the owner and the peers that operate the network. Cool right?
This is not your traditional currency and that is what makes it so delicious. We are living in the age of where we are going to witness the transfer of wealth like nobody has seen before. It’s crazy and I love it.
Nobody is going to watch your cookie jar like the banks have been in control of for so long those days are literally numbered with the advent of this technology. Remember napster? This is the napster of currency where it’s peer-to-peer formula and the trust those that use it gives it its value.
So if you are ready to jump into this world there are options for you. You can do so many different things and it’s not just Bitcoin, there are literally tons of options for you, you could trade Litecoin instead which has also been on the upslope with value against the US dollar.
What gives Bitcoin it’s value? Everyone who uses it, and trusts in it, not much of a difference with it and paper money issued by the United States treasury for example. What gives paper currency it’s value? Paper currency used to be based on and backed by gold, however this is no longer the case. There is also the derived scarcity of Bitcoin as it has a cap and will never exceed 21 000 000 Bitcoins. This of course could be subject to change, but as far as the right now it will never exceed the 21 million coins and that could create a scarcity of this unique digital currency in the far future.
What encryption does Bitcoin use? Because the of the nature of SHA-256 encryption on which Bitcoin is based, it is inconceivable as of now to have the ability to break this encryption, but the advent of quantum computer of possibility of such computational behemoths may be able to break this encryption in the not-so-distant future, this could present a problem, however it may make Bitcoin “fork” and utilize a more secure encryption, or even image the possibilities of using the power of quantum mechanics for making possible unbreakable encryption in the future. This will likely be the topic for another post so this is all I will discuss it for now.
There are issues with Bitcoin and there are many ways that Bitcoin being only as secure as the computer and user that is using it. Some exchanges utilize “cold storage” wallets where they store the Bitcoin, making it unreachable to potential hackers and if you lose your password for your wallet, you actually may be up the digital creek without a paddle so to speak. So you must be very careful and it is advised that if you have a Bitcoin instance running, that you backup your data often and make sure you never lose the password you have encrypted your wallet with.
People have lost a lot of digital currency by their hard drives failing or losing the passwords. The has also been much scamming going on with Bitcoin and you have to be careful what online exchanges you are using, because if they are hacked and the Bitcoins stolen, most will not honor stolen Bitcoin, which means that you are out of luck. Mt. Gox is an example of one hacked platform where countless users lost money. Cryptsy is another platform that screwed me out of some currencies, and there’s no way for me to recover, so make sure that you use a reputable exchange or you may be sorry.
Is Bitcoin more than just a form of digital currency? Bitcoin is much more than a currency and another not so well known fact is that even messages can be hardcoded into transactions and through chains of messages you could even put files. Wikileaks even has used Bitcoin to attach all of the cablegate leaks into the blockchain which is super interesting. In fact, some of the first transactions that were done in Bitcoin were the hardcoded cablegate Wikileaks documents, which raises questions as to who may have played a role in the development of Bitcoin.
Was Julian Assange the creator of this digital currency? Nobody knows for certain, but this points to how Bitcoin could ultimately be a great tool to stop censorship in its tracks, which is a great thing. Once hardcoded into the Bitcoin Ledger, it will always be there unless the encryption is somehow broken, super cool, right?
Make $37,000 dollars easy – Click here to learn all you need to know to start trading Bitcoin today – Don’t miss out
The post How to trade Bitcoin for cash – Make extra cash trading crypto appeared first on Technology Watchpost .
https://technologywatchpost.com/how-to-trade-bitcoin-for-cash/
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Sex On Tape: Call To Police!
Yesterday I did a bit of sifting through my junk mail folder. I rarely remember to do this but apparently – now and then – you should. I say this because last year I missed four incredibly important emails and each time it created quite an awkward work situation; in two of the cases the person involved thought I was ignoring them and in the others I completely missed out on some rather nice opportunities.
So now, every week or so, I skim through my junk email folder and check that there’s nothing interesting and/or urgent from legitimate senders who have somehow been blacklisted by my Mac Mail. It’s usually just a few dozen of messages from shoe companies, phone card top-up providers and cosmetics manufacturers in China who seem to think I’m a makeup brush retailer. Sometimes they are from scammers saying I’ve won money or I need to send money or I need to do something else that always – quite frankly – seems like a bit too much effort. Nevertheless, if I’m stuck for things to do (ie: I have loads of stuff to do but don’t want to do it) then I quite like to spend a few joyous minutes searching for threatening emails and then reading them out with comedy voices. These emails are never actually addressed to me – in the last week I’ve had emails sent to Tonya Recommends, Emily Farr and – amazingly – Peaches McTaff – but still. They’re in my box which means I own them. (On a sidenote, I’d love, more than anything, to meet someone called Peaches McTaff.)
Anyway, I got sent the below and it really tickled me. Especially the “I’ll call to police!” part. It made me go right back to the start of the email and re-read it all in the voice of Aleksandr Orlov from Compare the Meerkats.
I have to say that scamming emails, though obviously pretty dark in intent and potentially destructive in the wrong hands, are often very amusing. The malapropisms, the typos, the hilarious phrases that have simply become lost in translation; I worry about cyber crime a lot, but there’s nothing like a ridiculous email to lighten the mood.
This one, as you’ll find out, relies on the recipient being something of a racy internet user – watching saucy vids and, I assume, doing various things to themselves whilst they watch them. I can genuinely say that I have never watched sexy films on the internet, mainly because I’d rather spend hours on Rightmove looking at houses I can’t buy (floorplans are my porn, baby!); but if I did, then I’m not sure I’d do stuff to myself in front of the computer. What if I was accidentally connected to my mother via Skype? What if, somehow, I was uploading myself onto Facebook Live?
If there’s one thing you can take away from this post, it’s this: don’t do any naughty business in front of your computer without taping over your spyhole first. (“Taping over your spyhole” might sound like a euphemism: it’s not. I mean the camera hole in the top of the computer and if you didn’t know that was there, I suggest you spend an evening acquainting yourself with your machine. Again, not a euphemism.)
So here’s Aleksandr and his scam – I’ve made some notes in brackets as we go along.
“I’ll begin with the most important. [Please do.]
I hackled your device and then got access to all your accounts…
It is easy to check – I wrote you this email from your account. [He/she didn’t.] Also I have an old password for the hacking day: xxxxxx.
[OK let’s pause already: what is the hacking day? Is this another one of those “national days of” celebrations, like #nationaldoughnutday or #worldunicornday? Should we be celebrating hackers?]
Moreover, I know your intim secret, and I have proof of this.
You do not know me personally, and no one paid me to check you. [To be honest I’m quite disappointed that nobody paid to have me checked. Am I worth so little? I feel like a television baddy when they find out that the price on their head is only $2000.]
It is just a coincidence that I discovered your mistake.
In fact, I posted a malicious code (exploit) to an adult site, and you visited this site… [Nope, not me. Now Aleksandr, had you written to me and said “I posted a malicious code to a Velux blinds discount site, and you visited this site…” I would have been properly worried.]
While watching a video Trojan virus has been installed on your device through an exploit.
This darknet software working as RDP (remote-controlled desktop), which has a keylogger,
which gave me access to your microphone and webcam.
Soon after, my software received all your contacts from your messenger, social network and email. [I have no idea what most of this means but the Trojan, Darknet and Keylogger now residing in my device make me feel slightly uneasy. They sound tough and mean, like they might all carry those hammers with spikes sticking out of them. Is my laptop screen the portal to another – Lord of the Rings style – universe?
“Darknet? Darknet, you imbecile! Come closer and bring me the Orb of Clustertron.”
“Y-y-yes, Trojan sire. Here it is, the Orb, oh mighty one.”
“Darknet! Where is the Orbal Octicular Augmentor?”
“The…the what sire?”
“The Orbal Octicular Augmentor, fool! You know, the looking glass that makes viewing the Orb possible!”
“The…magnifying glass you mean? Keylogger has it, sire…”]
At that moment I spent much more time than I should have. [To be fair, Alek, I spend much more time than I should have doing a lot of things. Don’t beat yourself up about it.] I studied your love life and created a good video series. [Oh thank the lord – can I buy it off you please? Creating original Youtube content that people actually watch is killing me off. If you have video and I’m the star, I’ll pay good money.] The first part shows the video that you watched, [Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper singing Shallow, live. I know it must be that because I watch it multiple times a day.] and the second part shows the video clip taken from your webcam (you are doing inappropriate things). [This is probably true, to be fair.]
Honestly, I want to forget all the information about you and allow you to continue your daily life.
And I will give you two suitable options. Both are easy to do.
First option: you ignore this email.
The second option: you pay me $700(USD).
[Third option: you turn it into a blog post and make everyone read out my email in the voice of one of the meerkats from the Compare the Market.]
Let’s look at 2 options in detail. [OK.]
The first option is to ignore this email.
Let me tell you what happens if you choose this path.
I will send your video to your contacts, including family members, colleagues, etc.
This does not protect you from the humiliation that you and
your family need to know when friends and family members know about your unpleasant details. [Most confusing sentence structure I’ve ever seen – I can’t even unpick the meaning from this mess.]
The second option is to pay me. We will call this “privacy advice.” [Or extortion, but carry on.] Now let me tell you what happens if you choose this path. [Does it take me through Fall Forest, over Winter Mountain and out to Summer Lake like in Dora the Explorer?] Your secret is your secret. I immediately destroy the video. [Uh huh.] You continue your life as if none of this has happened.
Now you might think: “I’ll call to police!” [No, I don’t think anyone will actually think this because it’s not a sentence that exists. The grammar is completely incorrect. Still, this is my favourite line in the whole of your email. I like to imagine lots of people reading the same scam and then looking up from their screens and saying – “I know! I’ll call to police!”
“Pauline? Pauline! Come up here. I’ve got something shameful to tell you.”
“What is it Bob? Tell me you haven’t been vacuuming your penis up the hoover hose again?”
“Worse, Pauline. Much worse. And someone has filmed it, that’s the bad thing.”
“Oh Bob, when will you learn, love?”
“He’s threatening to take it public if I don’t pay seven hundred dollars.”
“What are you going to do, Bob?”
“I don’t know Pauline, I just don’t. If work see me using the office-issue hole punch to gently pincer my testicles whilst wearing a scuba diving mask I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“I wondered where the hole punch had gone Bob! I needed to file the electricity bill and I had to just rest it in the ring-binder, untethered!”
“Sorry Pauline, I really am. I just don’t know what to do. Any ideas?”
“Hmm. I know!”
“What?”
“I’ll call to police!”]
Undoubtedly, I have taken steps to ensure that this letter cannot be traced to me,
and it will not remain aloof from the evidence of the destruction of your daily life.
I don’t want to steal all your savings. [This sentence is proof that Google Translate is never your friend] I just want to get compensation for my efforts that I put in to investigate you. [Flipping Poirot, here!] Let us hope that you decide to create all this in full and pay me a fee for confidentiality.
You make a Bitcoin payment (if you don’t know how to do it, just enter “how to buy bitcoins” in Google search)
Shipping amount: $700(USD).
Getting Bitcoin Addresses: xx
(This is sensitive, so copy and paste it carefully) [Oops. I replaced it with an XX. This is like when you opt to use the Safari strong password and then the computer forgets it and it was something like Sf%!!hjkh6789cdDcDD34?4 and you are locked out of Gmail forever.]
This is a one-time offer that is non-negotiable, so do not waste my and your time.
Time is running out.
Bye!”
I think that the sign-off might be my second most favourite part. So cheery! So familiar! I sort of wish that he/she had signed off with a name, no matter how fake.
Bye!
Leslie xx.
The post Sex On Tape: Call To Police! appeared first on A Model Recommends.
Sex On Tape: Call To Police! was first posted on February 6, 2019 at 10:41 pm.
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Sex On Tape: Call To Police! published first on https://medium.com/@SkinAlley
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The Rise of Cryptocurrency Ponzi Schemes Scammers are making big money off people who want in on the latest digital gold rush but don’t understand how the technology works. A Bitcoin ATM at a shopping mall in Sydney, Australia Last month, the technology developer Gnosis sold $12.5 million...
http://markethive.tv/?p=472
The Rise of Cryptocurrency Ponzi Schemes
The Rise of Cryptocurrency Ponzi Schemes
Scammers are making big money off people who want in on the latest digital gold rush but don’t understand how the technology works.
A Bitcoin ATM at a shopping mall in Sydney, Australia
Last month, the technology developer Gnosis sold $12.5 million worth of “GNO,” its in-house digital currency, in 12 minutes. The April 24 sale, intended to fund development of an advanced prediction market, got admiring coverage from Forbes and The Wall Street Journal. On the same day, in an exurb of Mumbai, a company called OneCoin was in the midst of a sales pitch for its own digital currency when financial enforcement officers raided the meeting, jailing 18 OneCoin representatives and ultimately seizing more than $2 million in investor funds. Multiple national authorities have now described OneCoin, which pitched itself as the next Bitcoin, as a Ponzi scheme; by the time of the Mumbai bust, it had already moved at least $350 million in allegedly scammed funds through a payment processor in Germany.
These two projects—one trumpeted as an innovative success, the other targeted as a criminal conspiracy—claimed to be doing essentially the same thing. In the last two months alone, more than two dozen companies building on the “blockchain” technology pioneered by Bitcoin have launched what are known as Initial Coin Offerings to raise operating capital. The hype around blockchain technology is turning ICOs into the next digital gold rush: According to the research firm Smith and Crown, ICOs raised $27.6 million in the first two weeks of May alone.
Unlike IPOs, however, ICOs are catnip for scammers. They are not formally regulated by any financial authority, and exist in an ecosystem with few checks and balances. OneCoin loudly trumpeted its use of blockchain technology, but holes in that claim were visible long before international law enforcement took notice. Whereas Gnosis had experienced engineers, endorsements from known experts, and an operational version of their software, OneCoin was led and promoted by known fraudsters waving fake credentials. According to a respected blockchain engineer who was offered a position as OneCoin’s Chief Technology Officer, OneCoin’s “blockchain” consisted of little more than a glorified Excel spreadsheet and a fugazi portal that displayed demonstrably fake transactions.
And yet, OneCoin attracted hundreds of millions of dollars more than Gnosis. The company seems to have targeted a global category of aspirational investors who noticed the breathless coverage and booming valuations of cryptocurrencies and blockchain companies, but weren’t savvy enough to understand the difference between the real thing and a sham. Left unchecked, this growing crypto-mania could be hugely destructive to one of the most promising technologies of the 21st century.
This danger exists in large part because grasping even the basics of blockchain technology remains daunting for non-specialists. In a nutshell, blockchains link together a global swarm of servers that hosts thousands of copies of the system’s transaction records. Server operators constantly monitor one another’s records, meaning that to steal money or otherwise alter the ledger, a hacker would have to compromise many machines across a vast network in one fell swoop. Even as the global banking system faces relentless cyberattacks, the more than $30 billion in value on Bitcoin’s blockchain has proven essentially immune to hacking.
That level of security has potential uses far beyond digital money. Introduced in July of 2015, a platform called Ethereum pioneered the idea of more complex and interactive applications backed by blockchain tech. Because these systems can’t be altered without the agreement of everyone involved, and maintain incorruptible records of every change, blockchains could eventually streamline sensitive, high-value networks ranging from health records to interbank transfers to remote file storage. Some have called the blockchain “Cloud Computing 3.0.” Using most of these blockchain applications will require owning the digital currencies linked to them—the same digital currencies being sold in all these ICOs. So, for example, to upload your vacation photos to the blockchain cloud-storage service Storj will cost a few Storj tokens. In the long term, demand for services will set the price of each blockchain project’s token.
While a traditional stock is a legal claim backed up by regulators and governments, then, the tokens sold in an ICO are deeply embedded in the blockchain software their sale helps create. Knowledgeable tech investors are excited by this because, along with the open-source nature of much of the software, it means that ICO-funded projects can, like Bitcoin itself, outlast any single founder or legal entity. In a 2016 blog post, Joel Monegro, of the venture capital fund Union Square Ventures, compared owning a blockchain-based asset to owning a piece of digital infrastructure as fundamental as the internet’s TCP/IP protocol.
Almost all groups launching ICOs reiterate some version of this idea to potential buyers, in part as a kind of incantation to ward off financial regulators. The thinking is that, if they are selling part of a platform, rather than stakes in any company, they’re not subject to oversight by bodies like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. But in practice, ICOs are constantly traded across a variety of online marketplaces as buyers breathlessly track their fluctuating prices. In this light, they look an awful lot like speculative investments.
Buyer expectations may matter more to regulators than technical hair-splitting. Todd Kornfeld, a securities specialist at the law firm Pepper Hamilton, finds precedent in the landmark 1946 case SEC v. W.J. Howey Co. Howey, a Florida orange-growing operation, was selling grove plots and accompanying “service contracts” that paid faraway landowners based on the orange harvest’s success. When the SEC closed in, Howey argued they were selling real estate and services, not a security. But the Supreme Court ultimately disagreed, establishing what’s known as the Howey test: In essence, if you give someone else money in the hope that their activities will generate a profit on your behalf, you’ve just bought a security, no matter what the seller calls it.
Knowledgeable observers tend to agree that some form of regulation is inevitable, and that the term ICO itself—so intentionally close to IPO—is a reckless red flag waved in the SEC’s face. The SEC declined to comment on any prospective moves to regulate ICOs, but the Ontario Securities Commission has issued an advisory that “assets that are tracked and traded as part of a distributed ledger may be securities, even if they do not represent shares of a company or ownership of an entity.” According to Kornfeld, even those who believe they are conducting ICOs in complete good faith could face serious repercussions when regulators do act, especially if prosecutors think they’ve made misleading statements. “If [prosecutors] think that you’re really bad,” he says. “They can say, hey, you deserve 20 years in jail.”
While it’s easy to see the lie in OneCoin’s fictional blockchain, entirely sincere claims about such a nascent sector still can strain the limits of mere optimism. Many experts, for instance, believe that Gnosis’s use of the blockchain to aggregate data could become a widespread backbone technology for managing complex systems from traffic to financial markets. But the $12.5 million worth of GNO sold in the Gnosis ICO represented only 5 percent of the tokens created for the project, implying a total market value of nearly $300 million. Most tech startups at similar stages are valued at under $5 million.That astronomical early valuation alone could become bait for an aggressive regulator. Many founders of legitimate blockchain projects have chosen to remain anonymous because of this fear, in turn creating more opportunities for scams.
Much of the money flowing into these offerings is smart, both in that it comes from knowledgeable insiders, and in a more literal sense: Buying into ICOs almost always requires using either Bitcoin or Ethereum tokens (OneCoin, tellingly, accepted payment in standard currency). Jeff Garzik, a longtime Bitcoin developer who now helps organize ICOs through his company Bloq, thinks their momentum is largely driven by recently minted Bitcoin millionaires looking to diversify their gains. Many of these investors are able to do their own due diligence—evaluating a project’s team, examining demo versions of their software, or scrutinizing their blockchain after launch.
But as cryptocurrency becomes more mainstream, ICOs will present greater risks to larger numbers of people. There are few barriers to participation aside from knowing how to conduct a Bitcoin transaction, and the space mostly lacks the robust independent analysis performed by underwriters in the IPO market, which can help tamp down overoptimism. The risk isn’t just to individual investors; many argue that the mania of the late-1990s internet bubble ultimately slowed the entire sector down by making investors skittish for years afterwards. Imagine how much worse things might have been if the whole thing had been entirely unregulated.
Careful regulation, then, could protect blockchain projects from a hugely damaging bust. And the model is genuinely utopian enough to deserve nurturing. Cryptographic tokens effectively make all of a platform’s users part-owners. Anyone selling goods for Bitcoin, for example, has had a chance to benefit from its huge price boost over the past year, while Facebook and Google users have not shared in those companies’ growth.
The Gnosis team is taking this very long view. Their token sale was halted after that furious 12 minutes by an Ethereum-based bot that knew exactly what the fundraising goal was. It even returned more than $1 million to eager buyers who missed the cutoff. Gnosis’s co-founder Martin Koppelman says the company wants to use its remaining tokens not to enrich its creators, but to attract developers and users. That’s similar to the way that Uber has used cash subsidies to recruit riders and drivers, except that once those new recruits hold Gnosis tokens, they will have a serious stake in the platform’s future.
Article Produced By
David Z. Morris
David is a writer based in Florida. He has written for Fortune, Aeon, and The Japan Times.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/cryptocurrency-ponzi-schemes/528624/
Susan Bennett
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That’s ridiculous. You’re a ridiculous man.