Crypto Coin Investor

A former US secret service agent has pleaded guilty to stealing over $800,000 worth of bitcoin during an investigation into online drug marketplace Silk Road.

Shaun Bridges, 33, appeared in federal court in San Francisco and admitted to money laundering and obstruction of justice.

Silk Road operated for more than two years until it was shut down in October 2013 having generated more than $214m in sales of drugs and other illicit goods using bitcoin, prosecutors said.

Ross Ulbricht, Silk Road’s creator, who authorities say used the alias Dread Pirate Roberts, was sentenced to life in prison after a federal jury in Manhattan found him guilty of charges that included distributing drugs via online sales.

Bridges belonged to a Baltimore-based federal task force that investigated Silk Road. Another member of that unit, former US Drug Enforcement Administration agent Carl Force, has admitted extortion, money laundering and obstruction of justice.

An attorney for Ulbricht said those charges “remove any question about the corruption that pervaded the investigation of Silk Road”.

In court on Monday Bridges admitted his theft had made Ulbricht believe that another individual was stealing from Silk Road and helped lead Ulbricht to try to hire someone to kill that person.

The popularity of trading Bitcoin has now reached the point where none other than the New York Times sees fit to declare cryptocurrencies, or more specifically initial coin offerings, “The Easiest Path To Riches On The Web.” Not to be left out, CNBC this week published a brief tutorial on trading crypto with your smartphone and MarketWatch featured a teenage bitcoin millionaire who now forecasts a $1 million price target.

These are exactly the sort of headlines and stories that characterize a speculative mania otherwise known as a “bubble.” For anyone who was around during the dotcom mania this should quickly bring back memories of all the folks who flocked to day-trading tech stocks. But to really understand the mania you need to look no further than the primary argument in buying crypto in the first place. Investors here claim the value comes from the limited supply. The trouble is there is an unlimited number of types of coins that can be created!

What makes the “initial coin offering” craze that much crazier than the day-trading mania is that these are essentially nothing more than very thinly-veiled ponzi schemes. In fact, someone saw fit to to actually create a PonziCoin (at least they’re up front about it).

Now some will make the argument that it can’t be a bubble when so many are calling it a bubble. These folks should have learned this lesson during the housing bubble. The fact is it’s only a bubble once everyone acknowledges it’s a bubble. And by the time they do the game is up.

We’re seeing the very same thing in Bitcoin today. Crypto traders know it’s a bubble. Like every bubble (or ponzi scheme) they’re counting on a greater fool paying an even more insane price so they can realize a profit. But it looks like we may have already reached the point of maximum foolishness. Time will tell.

Bitcoin micropayments: Coming to smartphones—and toasters?—everywhere

Micropayments might not top your list of most compelling inventions, but they’re a sought-after capability. Small payments of less than a dollar, or even less than a cent, have the potential to shake up old, established business models, and open up new doors for the Internet of Everything.

Small digital payments have been tried again and again—in fact, Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee tried to embed micropayment capability into the original World Wide Web, but without success. So far, inherent transaction costs have been an unsurpassable hurdle.

Some argue that digital payment methods like bitcoin are the way forward.

Believe in Bitcoins my friends :)

The founder of Bitcoin is someone called Satoshi Nakamoto. Nobody knows who he is, what his real name is or where he lives. He holds 1 million bitcoins, equivalent to $1.1 billion. source

Central Banks Are Driving Many to Cryptocurrencies

Real life solarpunk: neighborhood microgrid in Brooklyn:

Solar Experiment Lets Neighbors Trade Energy Among Themselves

In a promising experiment in an affluent swath of the borough, dozens of solar-panel arrays spread across rowhouse rooftops are wired into a growing network. Called the Brooklyn Microgrid, the project is signing up residents and businesses to a virtual trading platform that will allow solar-energy producers to sell excess-electricity credits from their systems to buyers in the group, who may live as close as next door.

The project is still in its early stages — it has just 50 participants thus far — but its implications could be far reaching. The idea is to create a kind of virtual, peer-to-peer energy trading system built on blockchain, the database technology that underlies cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

(via Solar Experiment Lets Neighbors Trade Energy Among Themselves - The New York Times)