Feds Shut Down Bitcoin (And Other Stupid Headlines)
Imagine if you will, an obscure meth lab tucked away in some trailer park in rural North Dakota, with a bunch of vagrants tweaking out at all hours of the day and night - robbing, stealing, pawning, and doing just about anything that they can in order to get another sweet fix. Now, imagine a long-time sting operation finally goes into effect and the feds swoop in and arrest everybody involved with the meth production along with all of the collateral users in the area. Upon later investigation they find stacks and stacks of cold hard cash that people used in order to purchase meth. The cash....
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Undoubtedly many readers have seen this wallet before, we've linked to it a lot here in articles onCCN. Those are the "Silk Road Bitcoins" seized by a joint federal task force in the October take-down of the infamous online drug marketplace: Silk road. During the take-down that included crazy antics by undercover agents at a public library in a brazen heist to steal Silk Road operator Ross Ulbricht's laptop mid-session, the Feds were able to gain control of 29,655 Bitcoins from Silk Roads' servers. These Bitcoins belonged, in large part, to individual users of Silk Road from around the....
Sales tax on bitcoin would be a "monumentally stupid" idea, according to Andreas Antonopoulos, a bitcoin enthusiast, author, and expert - as pointed out today by Startup Smart. The words, which many in the community would agree with, come following a guidance related to bitcoin released by the Australian Tax Office earlier this year, which indicates the country's Goods and Service tax (known as the GST) is effectively applied twice to bitcoin transactions. "It's as monumentally stupid as it would have been in 1994 to classify the internet as a fax machine service, and put it under the....
Antivirus tycoon John McAfee says he has no hidden cryptocurrencies, no assets left as there were all seized by the Feds, no friends, and no regrets. He has shared his story from prison, where he says he has “never felt more free.” McAfee Says He Has No Cryptocurrencies, No Assets, No Friends but Also No Regrets John McAfee is still in a Spanish prison after he was arrested in October last year. He was charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with fraudulently pumping initial coin offerings (ICOs) and was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for....
It's still mind-boggling to think that Silk Road, a supposedly anonymous black marketplace for illegal goods, could operate for such a long period of time without police interference. New evidence has come to light, though, suggesting the Feds were actually involved in the operation for a long time before the website was taken down. A recent document released by The Smoking Gun makes clear that Steven Lloyd Sadler - a top drug kingpin from Silk Road - was actively working with the Feds. The anonymity of Silk Road's web presence actually made it easy for cops to make undercover drug deals....
The US government is looking for ways to obtain more sensitive personal information from its citizens. To do so, a proposal was made a few weeks ago to have companies build in a “backdoor” into their hardware and programs, through which the government can gain access to user data. However, even Michael Chertoff, former head of the Department of Homeland Security, thinks this approach is “a stupid idea”. A few weeks ago, the topic of “going dark”” was presented by FBI officials, and a solution was proposed. That solution would force manufacturers of hardware and software to build in....