E31: China Did What?

A better world won’t be won with votesgunsbombs or tanks. It will be won with encryption3D printingdronesand bitcoin. – @coollikeme

I’m back from my long holiday break. Thanks for all the love from my listeners and questions about the new episode. Sorry for the extended time off, it’s something a father and family man has to do. Believe it or not, I try and have as much zen in my life as I can, and it was great for me to just take the time off of the podcast. I wasn’t away from bitcoin though, I went from euphoria to despair with you guys.

In my quality time with my kids I even taught them to read some bitcoin charts and now they love green candles! My wife had me painting and building furniture since she’s a few weeks away from having our 4th kid . When the baby comes (we didn’t find out the sex, so it’s just “the baby”) I will take another week off to get my schedule worked out. Please stick with me during these couple of months as my life gets jostled around. Thank you.


Bits and Pieces

Trending Topics bitcoin price crash and PBOC

My take on the recent rally
LineRider on YouTube

Hilarious new youtube channel called LineRider. He or she has done 5 videos so far of a little motorcycle guy riding the charts of different cryptos. They are all really funny. The Factom or Ethereum one might be my favorite.

Coinbase CEO Brain Armstrong Backs Segwit

From learning more about SegWit I think we should activate it. It’s prob the best path forward for bitcoin at this point. https://t.co/oNLSYcf3vn

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) January 6, 2017

Confiscation of Gold in Europe

Zerohedge went on a blocking spree after they were called out my me and other for shilling Ethereum. They must understand that they are the biggest news outlet in bitcoin. I wouldn’t be surprised if the authors have a position. The comments section of Zerohedge have been growing a bit more bitcoin friendly, but it’s still a bastion for dusty gold bugs. If bitcoin doesn’t get much love from their readers, I’m sure they had a huge laugh at Ethereum. Also, zerohedge gets a lot of help from bitcoiners retweeting their stories on bitcoin, if we are all blocked now, that just hurts them.

Zerohedge had a recent article on the EU discussing gold confiscations on grounds of cracking down on terrorist financing. This is similar to how they introduce all their policy. They float the idea and within a couple of years it’s policy, just like the bailins from Cyprus now being mandatory.

MongoDB Exploit

Hundreds of TBs of data have been lost in a recent wave of MongoDB attacks. This is up the alley of bitcoin because the attackers exported and deleted the database, only leaving a ransom note behind. This is a good write up.

CPA Talk at my Bitcoin Meetup about the IRS

I had to pry it out of him a little bit, but he finally said that the IRS is probably only going to care about unreported income. Small amounts of capital gains aren’t going to worry them yet. Maybe in 5 years when bitcoin’s price is at $500,000 they’ll really care about the capital gains, but their primary focus seems to be income. Please consult a CPA for tax help.


Altcoinville

Ethereum had another bug in a “major” app, being the Ether Camp Hackathon tokens this time. They have to redistribute new tokens. Ethereum has had a good rally here, but there’s no good news from Ethereum at all to justify this. I think what’s happening is a residual rally, echoing bitcoin, as last years ethereum bulls and some newbs, buy in. They won’t be happy over the next couple months as it resumes its downtrend.


Featured Story

PBOC Visited Chinese Exchanges

CNY volume is examined by Neil Woodfine, the coordinator of the Beijing Bitcoin Meetup.

BTCC did a fantastic job communicating. Start on this tweet, it’s a thread of 5.

Please check back tomorrow, working on a chart to demonstrate what I was talking about. Until then you can see one of my blog posts about this topic from a couple of months ago.

Bonus Video


Flash Point

The FBI and CIA produced some weak as hell evidence to show Russian involvement in an election day hack, publicly available malware. The MSM is really pushing this, but it’s too stupid to be serious. How do they expect to get away with it? The state of propaganda is getting worse and very transparent, which leads me to believe that we are near some large moment in history.