CRYPTO: It may have been fraud, but savers did NOT diversify

Sunday, November 17, 2024

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/life-savings-of-an-entire-small-town-recovered-from-the-depths-of-a-cryto-scam-by-fbi/

Life Savings of an Entire Small Town Recovered from the Depths of Cryto-Scam, Thanks to FBI
By Andy Corbley – Nov 7, 2024

*** begin quote ***

A Wichita courtroom rang out with sobs and cheers when over two dozen people learned that their life savings had been recovered after being lost by a local bank.

Over $8 million in children’s university funds, retirement accounts, funds for eldercare, and bequeathments to children and grandchildren were returned after the FBI located and seized a cryptocurrency wallet linked to an account in the Cayman Islands.

The bank’s founder Shan Hanes, claims he had unintentionally lost it all by investing in a sophisticated cryptocurrency scam, though he ultimately lost his defense and received 24 years in prison for defrauding depositors and investors.

In August, Heartland Tri-State Bank was put into receivership by federal regulators after being drained of cash. The FDIC paid out $47 million to everyday depositors and other investors, but the rural, community-owned bank had 30 shareholders who had carefully planned long-term accounts that were not insured.

*** end quote ***

While I am happy that the insured depositors were made whole, they should have diversified their deposits.

One lady had 250k$ in one IRA account.  That far exceeds the risk she should be taking.  Four partial roll over accounts of 50k$ each would have mitigated her losses.  She was lucky to get it back.  Yeah, it makes for more paperwork, but look at the alternative,

There are accounts available with private insurance up to ¼ million last time I looked.

In short, having large sums of money requires you to take a modicum of care.

Don’t trust anyone.  (Even me!)  Verify!  Lawyers and accountants may seem expensive, but are cheap in the long run.

YMMV but I know what I do and preach.  

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CRYPTO: Britcoin ain’t bitcoin, but is a shot across the bow of personal liberty

Monday, February 20, 2023

https://unherd.com/2023/02/the-tyranny-of-digital-currencies/

The tyranny of digital currencies
Central banks are creating their own surveillance state

BY Thomas Fazi 

*** begin quote ***

Should we really be surprised that the Treasury and Bank of England are exploring whether to launch a state-issued digital pound? Sunak, after all, was the chancellor who first floated the idea of backing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) — already dubbed “Britcoin”. Nor was he alone: 11 countries, including China, Nigeria, The Bahamas and Jamaica, have already launched their own digital currencies, while more than 100 others, representing over 95% of global GDP, are deciding whether to follow suit. In the United States, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has launched a pilot programme; the European Central Bank hopes to make a decision about the creation of a digital euro this autumn.

One might think that, amid a global cost-of-living crisis, these bodies would have other, more pressing concerns. But central bankers are never ones to miss an opportunity — and in fractious times like these, uncertainty is the most profitable opportunity in the business.

*** end quote ***

There is NO reason to allow the central banks to assume this much power over people’s daily live.

The Canadian Gooferment freezing the protesting truckers bank accounts, as well as anyone who donated to them, is just a taste of what ANY Gooferment can do using it’s central bak to “moderate” speech and behavior.

Resist!

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? . . .” — Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Before it becomes too late to do anything.

The camel’s nose, the slippery slope, or “give ‘em an inch” are all warnings about this.

Don’t think it can’t happen here.  Look at the 1913 gold seizure as an example.  “Bank holiday” my ass.  These useless drones aka politicians and bureaucrats are mini-tyrants if you don’t stop them first.

#endthefed is the battle cry.

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CRYPTO: How. pump and dump works

Tuesday, December 27, 2022

https://www.swanbitcoin.com/bitcoin-vs-altcoins/?_kx=IWOpEJ3MdJD5dZLIsudeBZ-NlMo_qMksrwV7e5nO7_M%3D.KzLKES

Coinbase and the Insider Exchange Dump
Bitcoin is very different from all other cryptocurrencies. In fact, it shouldn’t even be considered the same asset class.
Sam Callahan
May 18, 2022

Crypto

# – # – # – # – # 

ALTCOINS = <synonym for excrement> COINS!

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CRYPTO: Be afraid; Be very afraid; the Gooferment crypto is a trap

Wednesday, July 20, 2022

https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/central-bank-digital-currencies-are-coming-what-will-consequences-be

Central Bank Digital Currencies Are Coming – What Will The Consequences Be?
by Tyler Durden
Friday, Jul 15, 2022 – 04:20 PM

*** begin quote ***

Currencies are the lifeblood of trade and the economy; if a currency fails, the entire economy fails. Yet, most people rarely think about the health or buying power of the money in their pocket. People don’t research how often currencies actually falter and how common it is for inflation or stagflation to strike nations. They just assume that the money they have will be as useful tomorrow as it is today. They also assume that money will never change in a dramatic way.

This lack of interest in how money works is likely due to the fact that people are not taught how their money is created. It’s not discussed in schools, the truth is avoided in colleges and the mainstream news rarely mentions it. People think our government and treasury handles all of that, but the reality is that our government does NOT create our money; at least, it’s not in charge of the process. Central bankers are, and they operate from a “quasi-independent” position.

*** and ***

The public would never readily accept CBDCs as money unless their existing money lost most of its buying power and the current system was in the gutter. This is how new levels of empire are born; a major crisis allows for the elites to consolidate control while the people are distracted by their own private disasters. The big picture is changed while each person is terrified by their own small picture calamity.

*** end quote ***

The Gooferment’s digital currency can be switched off from HeadQuarters and then all the little people are screwed!

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CRYPTO: BITCOIN provides a “financial parachute”

Thursday, March 17, 2022

https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/surviving-off-crypto-when-cash-fails/?ftag=CAD-04-10aai6g&bhid=28093491592028715072518150828614&mid=13749287&cid=2046605583

Surviving Off Crypto When Cash Fails
Many Ukrainians and Russians lost access to their bank accounts in the days following Russia’s invasion.
Daniel Van Boom  
March 15, 2022 5:27 p.m. PT

*** begin quote ***

Fedosov is one of approximately 5.5 million Ukrainians who own cryptocurrency. His ability to live off bitcoin and ether is music to the ears of cryptocurrency proponents. They point out that situations like Fedosov’s, when the financial system stutters or fails, are the precise reason bitcoin was created. Using a cryptocurrency wallet — as opposed to going through an intermediary exchange like Binance — holders can access their cryptocurrency with nothing more than an internet connection and a 12-word seed phrase.

*** end quote ***

I find this story is a warning to everyone.

It costs a little in opportunity costs, but it could be a life saver.

How about a “flat tire in a strange place” without a credit card machine?

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LIBERTY: What liberals and conservatives really mean!

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

http://ncc-1776.org/tle2016/tle895-20161023-02.html

Reprinted from Issue 606 (February 6, 2011)
A Brief Synopsis by Cathy L.Z. Smith  

*** begin quote ***

The liberals meant that they knew better how to run my life, that their hearts were better and more compassionate than mine, and that what was mine was actually theirs to distribute to those their hearts they deemed worthy.

The conservatives meant that they knew better how to run my life, that their minds were better and more productive than mine, and that what was mine was actually theirs to distribute to those their minds they deemed worthy.

*** end quote ***

Soon true and so sad.

People should be allowed to run their own lives and accept the consequences of their actions.

End the “(pseudo) War on (some) Drugs”!

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CRYPTO: Crypto can’t be trusted

Thursday, November 18, 2010

*** begin quote ***

Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2010 17:47:43 -0700

From: Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net>

Subject: Getting Crypto Wrong

Neal Ungerleider, How Haystack Risked Exposing Iranian Dissidents,

FastCompany.com, 20 Sep 2010

http://www.fastcompany.com/1690075/haystack-austin-heap-iran-fail

In 2009, Iran was in turmoil, and the Islamic Republic was blocking and monitoring sites used by opposition groups — until a team led by American IT specialist Austin Heap built a program, Haystack, and touted it as a secure and anonymous Web portal for Iranians. *The Guardian* lauded it, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally praised Heap. The U.S. government even gave him rare permission to export his cryptological software to Iran. Among an elite group of beta testers — and many more unauthorized users — Haystack was a godsend.

Then in Sept. 2010, security experts discovered a problem: Iranian authorities, the very ones Haystack was supposed to circumvent and shield against, were exploiting massive holes in the encryption scheme to snoop on dissidents.

[Beware of anonymity-bearing gifts. As we have noted here before, ALWAYS look a gift (trojan) horse in the mouth. PGN]

*** end quote ***

It all comes back to how do you know the stuff works?

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TECHNOLOGY: Printers with e-mail addresses

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2010/06/hp-introduces-printers-with-e-mail-addresses-cloud-access.ars

HP introduces printers with e-mail addresses, cloud access
By Casey Johnston

*** begin quote ***

Hewlett-Packard has announced a new line of printers designed to work directly with smartphones and cloud services without the need for a computer intermediary. The printers are designed to take print jobs that are e-mailed to them or uploaded to a cloud service they can access. HP hopes the increased accessibility will encourage the use of printouts, as files can increasingly be carried on a single pocket device.

The new range of printers have Web access, either wired or wireless, removing the need for a print server or connection to a computer. They have touchscreens and e-mail addresses, and can print documents that are e-mailed to them from any source, as well as items from Web services like Google Docs. Users can schedule print jobs on the printers and set up regular print runs of their documents, like weekly menus or itineraries.

*** end quote ***

(1) SPAM! Can you think of junk mail faxes? How long do you think it will take for “Dr (Mrs.) Faith Zenwakolo, a dying woman who has decided to donate what I have to charity through any thoughtful and selfless someone” to guess what the email address is? Or whatever the complicated “security structure” that’s put in place to “protect” it. Wanna bet you’ll get HP advertisements?

(2) I want to print a sensitive document to my HP printer. Email? Unless it’s encrypted — in transit and at each place of residence — and the User controls the keys, and there’s no backdoors.

(3) And is there storage on the printer? How does it get erased?

Seems like a lot of questions!

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TECHNOLOGY: Email is worse than a postcard!

Saturday, September 26, 2009

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/09/whoa_nbc_producer_to_antiacorn.html

September 26, 2009
Whoa; NBC Producer to anti-ACORN group employee: ‘Bite me, Jew boy?’
Rick Moran

*** begin quote ***

When Stone received an email urging Congress to defund ACORN from Alex Rosenwald, director of media outreach for Americans for Limited Government, the following sentence came back to Rosenwald from Stone’s account: “Bite me, Jew Boy!”

*** and ***

   But Stone’s response email-provided to POLITICO-did not have any anti-Semitic comment. In fact, it had just one line: “Take me off this list!” (There are also subtle differences, including number of dashes, between the two emails).

   “Somebody, on the other end, I’m assuming, took the return stamp from the email and then put in this hateful message,” Capus said. “I don’t know who did it. It’s outrageous to suspect that somebody from NBC News would do it.”

*** end quote ***

I always rant that email should be secured. It’s the vendors, the ISPs, and the technology community that has to do it. We can’t leave it to the users.

Like IPv6, the technology industry has been sitting on its hands for decades. FIgure it out boys and girls!

(Or should that be girls and boys. Do girls come before boys? Or is always alpha order?)

We have had the capability to do encryption for stuff for eons. PGP can encrypt messages. At the very least it can give you a hash of the message that proves if it’s been tampered with!

Then we’d completely avoid these little distractions about “who did it”.

Time has come for the technology folks to get their act together.

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CRYPTO: Never underestimate the ingenuity

Friday, December 5, 2008

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/20580

11 Stamp Stories Worth Retelling by the mag – November 30, 2008 – 11:11 AM

By David A. Norris

*** begin quote ***

A Penny For Your Mischievous Thoughts

According to legend, Sir Rowland Hill got the idea for the Penny Postage program one day while watching a barmaid tearfully plead with a mailman. Unable to afford the shilling demanded for postage, she begged simply to hold the letter sent by her beloved brother. Hill then watched as the girl scanned the envelope intensely, as if trying to read its contents mentally. Touched, Hill coughed up a shilling and gave her the letter. The girl stopped crying, but instead of being grateful, she became nervous. After the postman left, she confessed that the letter was blank. Her brother’s message was contained in secret marks made on the envelope. Apparently, the two had devised a system whereby they could send each other messages through the post for free.

*** end quote ***

Never hear that one. BUT, it certainly doesn’t surprise me. At all. If you can’t keep drugs out of prisons, don’t underestimate people’s ability to “game” the system.

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