Techdirt: Guy Who Accidentally Stopped WannaCry Ransomware Detained After Defcon »
Update, Techcrunch: FBI arrests WannaCry hero for alleged role in Kronos banking malware »
Techdirt: Guy Who Accidentally Stopped WannaCry Ransomware Detained After Defcon »
Update, Techcrunch: FBI arrests WannaCry hero for alleged role in Kronos banking malware »
Early yesterday morning bitcoin’s blockchain forked — meaning a separate cryptocurrency was created called bitcoin cash.
Techcrunch: WTF is bitcoin cash and is it worth anything? »
The Register: Greek police arrest chap accused of laundering $4bn of Bitcoin »
At some point, and probably sooner than we think, the current left and right offerings of the major parties, including (perhaps especially) the populist, will start to appear ludicrous and unworkable. New political movements and ideas will arrive before long for this industrial revolution, especially once the majority of the population will soon have grown up online. It will be a politics that offers solutions to the challenges society will face, and be bold enough to steer technology rather than be led by it, to harness it rather than dismiss it, to see it as a motor of social change, not just a job maker.
The Guardian: Forget far-right populism – crypto-anarchists are the new masters »
The past year, there have been very mixed signals about Bitcoin and virtual currencies from the EU. They range from the opinion that it is too early to regulate, as we cannot tell how they will develop – to demands for mandatory registration of all players and all transactions.
This piece might give you a picture of the current state of the debate: EU Parliament states Virtual Currencies cannot be anonymous »
Bitcoin user numbers and investment are set to double every 12 months, commentator Willy Woo has forecast.
Citing data from Google, the increasingly controversial Woo calculates that Bitcoin doubles its users every 371 days.
The Cointelegraph » Bitcoin User Base Doubling Every 12 Months: Google Trends »
Wired: Meet the innovators fighting for your right to privacy online »
Cryptocurrency will cripple governmental ability to collect taxes, and they won’t see it coming. When it’s already happened, expect major changes to take place in how society is organized on a large scale – but also expect governments to act in desperation to retain control. (…)
The deployment of cryptocurrency is to tax collection what deployment of end-to-end encryption is to mass surveillance.
Rick Falkvinge: How cryptocurrency will cripple today’s governments – and they won’t see it coming »
EU Observer:
It is too early to regulate the so-called block chain technology that underpins virtual currency Bitcoin, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) said on Tuesday. “At this stage, it is premature to fully assess the changes that the technology could bring and the regulatory response that may be needed,” ESMA said. It added that the new technology may benefit the financial sector by reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
There are at least four levels of hardfork that can take place, and the most likely is that enough miners just switch to a non-Core bitcoin distribution with a higher or dynamic blocksize limit – the second easiest level of hardfork.
Rick Falkvinge: My impressions of Satoshi Roundtable »