joelkatz

Someone recently asked on reddit for a summary of the case for XRP. This was my response. What is XRP? XRP is a crypto-currency that trades on a public ledger. The software is developed and maintained

Is our banking system a "scam"? This post is a response both to several of Ron Paul's arguments against fractional reserve banking and a series of tweets between David Andolfatto and I. I'll

The problem Currently, the price of Steem dollars is down to around $0.76, which is significantly off the $1 they're supposed to be pegged to. I think the reason for this is that it takes 7 days to convert

Is cash really consistent with a free market? Bloomberg ran an article by Narayana Kocherlakota with the headline, "Want a free market? Abolish cash". The move to eliminate cash continues. But

There are a lot of questions that people need answers to before they should trust Bitfinex with any of their funds. Also, read to the end to see why US customers should not attempt to sell their BFX. Is

The Wall Street Journal ran an article, The Sinister Side of Cash, arguing that we should phase out all large bills because they're primarily used for crime. Sorry about the paywall, but it's worth reading

I just realized there's another huge problem with Bitfinex "socializing" the theft loss. The thefts were from segregated accounts All of the funds stolen from BItfinex were in segregated accounts.

If Bitfinex is insolvent, how are they taking deposits? And how can they allow withdrawals of new deposits? Bitfinex appears to be insolvent Bitfinex has imposed a haircut on all of their depositors. This

The problem: Bitcoins are notoriously difficult to store securely. The theft from Bitfinex shows that multisign is not a magic dust you can sprinkle over your wallet to render it immune from theft. Bitcoins

So who might actually be liable for the Bitfinex theft and what hope might the victims have? The thief Obviously, the thief or thieves are fully liable. If they are caught, they can certainly be sued.

We've heard from both Bitfinex and Bitgo that the compromise was entirely on Bitfinex's end and that no Bitgo systems were compromised. We all love to speculate from incomplete information. It's lots of

It now appears that the $70 million Bitfinex compromise may have been the direct result of a CFTC order requiring them to, effectively, store customer's funds in a hot wallet rather than a cold wallet.

I have seen quite a few people asking whether Steemit is a Ponzi or pyramid scheme and similar questions have been asked about other crypto-currencies. What is a Ponzi scheme? The term "Ponzi scheme"

People who we think work for our government might also work for other governments. A FBI electronics technician pleaded guilty on Monday to having illegally acted as an agent of China, admitting that he

This device was built by the Chinese government. It can be concealed inside a small electronic device such as an electric kettle or an iron. It looks for open WiFi, and if it finds it, it sends audio to

Huli Huli Chicken Wings Not only in Hawaii anymore The umami of teriyaki, the zestiness of barbecue My wife and I recently spent some time in Hawaii with our daughter and her boyfriend. During one of our

This article is a Steem exclusive focusing on how the way we are fighting financial crimes (KYC, BSA, AML) makes no sense, stifles innovation, violates rights, and doesn't actually fight crime effectively.

Do you want to keep religious protestors from disrupting your event? Here's an idea: Require people to sign a contract transferring their soul to the devil before they can enter the event. Make sure it

Actually, I love the XKCD cartoon about free speech. And I do often see it cited for an appropriate purpose -- to explain to someone that getting kicked out of a private, online community is probably not

Anonymity is under attack. The EU is considering building government databases to map wallets to individual identities: Here's the draft proposal from May of 2015: And now it seems they're adopting it: