Welcome on board.

Welcome on board.

Welcome on board.

Peter Schiff thinks $60,000 could be Bitcoin's final line of price support before imminent collapse.

The SEC has initiated a new phase of discussions regarding a proposed rule alteration for the trading of options on Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) while also inviting public input on the matter.

As BlackRock's ETF inflows streak ends, Bitcoin faces volatility, testing critical resistance levels and potentially reshaping market dynamics.

The infamous "Buy Bitcoin" sign held up by Christian Langalis during Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s Congressional testimony in 2017 has been sold for a staggering $1 million.

Late January, the U.S. Department of Commerce published a notice of proposed rulemaking for establishing new requirements for Infrastructure as a Service providers (IaaS) . The proposal boils down to a 'Know Your Customer' regime for companies operating cloud services, with the goal of countering the activities of "foreign malicious actors." Yet, despite an overseas focus, Americans won't be able to avoid the proposal's requirements, which covers CDNs, virtual private servers, proxies, and domain name resolution services, among others. identity-sIt’s long been the case that access to certain services, whether on or offline, will only be granted when customers prove their identity. Often linked to financial products but in many cases basic money/goods transactions carried out online, handing over a name, address, date of birth and similar details, can increase confidence that a deal will more likely than not go according to plan. In some cases, especially when buying restricted products, proving identity can be a condition of sale. Yet, for many years, companies operating in the online space have been happy to do business with customers without knowing very much about them at all. In some cases, where companies understand that a lack of friction is valuable to the customer, an email address has long been considered sufficient. If the credit or pre-payment card eventually used to pay for a product has enough credit and isn’t stolen, there seems very little to be concerned about. For many governments, however, any level of anonymity has the capacity to cause concern, and if that means unmasking everyone to identify a few bad actors, so be it. Improving Detection and Prevention of Foreign Malicious Cyber Activity Perceived and actual threats from shadowy overseas actors are something few countries can avoid. Whether in the West or the East, reports of relatively low-key meddling through to seriously malicious hacks, even attacks on key infrastructure, are becoming a fact of modern life. After being under discussion for years, late January the U.S. Department of Commerce published a notice of proposed rulemaking hoping to reduce threats to the United States. If adopted, the proposal will establish a new set of requirements for Infrastructure as a Service providers (IaaS), often known as cloud infrastructure providers, to deny access to foreign adversaries. The premise is relatively simple. By having a more rigorous sign-up procedure for platforms such as Amazon’s AWS, for example, the risk of malicious actors using U.S. cloud services to attack U.S. critical infrastructure, or undermine national security in other ways, can be reduced. The Bureau of Industry and Security noted the following in its announcement late January. The proposed rule introduces potential regulations that require U.S. cloud infrastructure providers and their foreign resellers to implement and maintain Customer Identification Programs (CIPs), which would include the collection of “Know Your Customer” (KYC) information. Similar KYC requirements already exist in other industries and seek to assist service providers in identifying and addressing potential risks posed by providing services to certain customers. Such risks include fraud, theft, facilitation of terrorism, and other activities contrary to U.S. national security interests. While supposedly aimed at external threats, only positive identification of all customers can eliminate the possibility that an ‘innocent’ domestic user isn’t actually a foreign threat actor. Or, according to the proposal, anyone (or all people) from a specified jurisdiction at the government’s discretion. Upon notification by IaaS providers, that could include foreign persons training large artificial intelligence models “with potential capabilities that could be used in malicious cyber-enabled activity.” Scope of IaaS and Customer Identification Programs Under the proposed rule, Customer Identification Programs (CIPs) operated by IaaS providers must collect information from both existing and prospective customers, i.e. those at the application stage of opening an account. The bare minimum includes the following data: a customer’s name, address, the means and source of payment for each customer’s account, email addresses and telephone numbers, and IP addresses used for access or administration of the account. What qualifies as an IaaS is surprisingly broad: Any product or service offered to a consumer, including complimentary or “trial” offerings, that provides processing, storage, networks, or other fundamental computing resources, and with which the consumer is able to deploy and run software that is not predefined, including operating systems and applications. The consumer typically does not manage or control most of the underlying hardware but has control over the operating systems, storage, and any deployed applications. The term is inclusive of “managed” products or services, in which the provider is responsible for some aspects of system configuration or maintenance, and “unmanaged” products or services, in which the provider is only responsible for ensuring that the product is available to the consumer. And it doesn’t stop there. The term IaaS includes all ‘virtualized’ products and services where the computing resources of a physical machine are shared, such as Virtual Private Servers (VPS). It even covers ‘baremetal’ servers allocated to a single person. The definition also extends to any service where the consumer does not manage or control the underlying hardware but contracts with a third party for access. “This definition would capture services such as content delivery networks, proxy services, and domain name resolution services,” the proposal reads. The proposed rule, National Emergency with Respect to Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities, will stop accepting comments from interested parties on April 30, 2024. Given the implications for regular citizens, many of whom are already hanging on to what remains of their privacy, the prospect of handing over highly sensitive information just to obtain a product trial is a real concern. The potential for leaks grows with each disclosure, as does the possibility of personal information ending up for sale on the dark web. Which is where the threat actors will obtain other people’s credentials to masquerade as regular users when subjected to a Know Your Customer process. For IaaS services themselves, the largest will have few problems implementing customer identification programs and may even consider them useful. On one hand, they can help to stop threat actors and on the other, take the opportunity to build a database containing the personal details of every single customer.

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Welcome on board.

Welcome on board.

Welcome on board.

Welcome on board.

Bitcoin price hovers at $66,980, up 1%, with eyes set on $70,000. Institutional investors drive record $40M investment in Fidelity's Bitcoin ETF, amid mixed market signals

Jack Dorsey's payments company Block has shifted its focus from designing chips to developing a full Bitcoin mining system.

American authorities have charged crypto mixer Samourai Wallet founders for allegedly operating an unlicensed money transmitting business.

Since the fourth Bitcoin halving took place resulting in Bitcoin issuance dropping from 900 to 450 per day miners have seen daily revenue hit a record high of over $100 million, said CryptoQuant the on-chain data analytics firm based in South Korea.

In a joint press release on Monday, the Premier League and Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment revealed the first-ever online piracy conviction in Vietnam. The news came as a surprise, as did comment published in local media attributed to a government official. It may seem like a small step, but admitting that Vietnam has a manga piracy problem, one that causes "hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to copyright owners," is a big step forward. manga-banned-sThe joint press release issued Monday by the Premier League and Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) was unusual right from the start. Published early on Monday, even the timing was a break from the norm, but the content was even more surprising. Following criminal referrals by the Premier League and ACE, an operator of BestBuyIPTV – a platform that has appeared on the USTR’s Notorious Markets report for the past five years – had been convicted at the People’s Court of Hanoi. For a country where criminal referrals have traditionally disappeared into the ether, that could be a very big deal. Sentencing Details Are Somewhat Puzzling The press release clearly identifies Le Hai Nam as “the operator” of BestBuyIPTV. He entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to 30 months in prison and ordered to pay the equivalent of $4,000. Whether that was a straightforward fine or something else isn’t clear, but more than $24,000 in illegal profits were identified, confiscated, and then seized by the state, while $12,000 in restitution was paid according to the indictment. Having learned more about the case and its challenges since Monday, the conviction seems to represent a minor miracle in itself. In isolation, however, there’s an irreconcilable gap between the scale of the infringing and the punishment handed down. For reasons that aren’t addressed, the court suspended the entire sentence, i.e no prison time at all. Assuming the restitution was split 50/50, that’s $6,000 each for the Premier League and ACE, while $24,000 – the bulk of funds – simply evaporated into the public purse. It’s a baffling situation, but clearly the conviction is the main prize here; it could be priceless. Legal Process Took Four Years Information made available to TorrentFreak suggests that the Premier League filed a complaint with authorities in June or July 2020, requesting an investigation and criminal prosecution of not one, but two Vietnamese nationals, one of which was Le Hai Nam. The other, whose name we’ll refrain from revealing here, was considered the operator of BestBuyIPTV while Nam appears to have controlled the restreaming side of the business. Communications with customers show involvement in both reselling and direct sales, however. Estimates of how much BestBuyIPTV was making overall were not made available to us, but a third party estimate provides some basis to throw some figures into the air to compare with the $14,000 paid in restitution. In common with similar services who use subscriber numbers as part of their marketing, BestBuyIPTV’s homepage boasted 900,000 subscribers, between 10,000 and 12,000 resellers, and around 2,000 restreaming affiliates. If we assume these figures are highly inflated and then broadly avoid counting revenues twice, a conservative estimate would run to a seven-figure sum, and quite possibly eight. The other remarkable aspect to this case can be viewed from two different directions. Either there was a complete lack of awareness on the security front, or maybe none of those involved actually cared. Given the technical skills on display concerning the service itself, the former seems to be out of the question. That leaves the latter, and probably one of the easier identifications for the Premier League in recent years. Of course, that’s just a small part of the puzzle; gathering evidence to support convictions is painstaking work and more may be needed to bring this particular battle to an end. Official Admits Manga Piracy Problem As regularly reported over the past few years, Vietnam is home to some of the world’s largest pirate sites. In the United States, with site-blocking legislation back on the political agenda, the spotlight is on FMovies, one of the world’s leading movie and TV show streaming sites. For some time, however, copyright holders in Japan have been reporting several other Vietnam-based or Vietnam-operated platforms responsible for staggering levels of piracy. They specialize in Japanese comics, known as manga, and local cartoons, better known as anime. After recently renewing an anti-piracy partnership with Hollywood, publishers and anti-piracy group CODA are independently working flat out to solve what at times has looked like an unsolvable problem. However, unusual comments published in local media may suggest some light on the horizon. Hundreds of Millions of Dollars Pham Hoang Hai is the director of the Radio, Television and Electronic Information Testing Center, which operates within the Department of Broadcasting and Electronic Information under the Ministry of Information and Communications. In comments published recently in local media, Hai said that around 100 websites are known to offer football matches illegally in Vietnam, together responsible for around 1.5 billion views in the 2022/2023 season. He also commented on sites dealing in other content, around 200 generating around 120 million views. And then something else, which as far as we know is the first public comment that acknowledges the scale of manga piracy traceable to Vietnam. “Recently, we discovered a number of websites with servers located abroad that violate comic book copyrights,” Hai said. “There have been a number of Japanese organizations working with the Ministry of Information and Communications, reporting comic book violations. Wars in cyberspace have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to copyright owners.” In isolation, that may not sound like a particularly important comment and with no context, a suspended sentence and measly restitution could easily be dismissed on the same grounds. Only time will tell whether these seeds will grow into something more substantial but in Vietnam, where signs of progress are extremely rare, any achievement in the right direction holds significant value.