[Banken drohen Bitcoin-Besitzern mit Kündigung]

Gut zu sehen dass das leidige Thema auch mal von Medien außerhalb der Krypto-Bubble aufgegriffen wird:

Banken drohen Bitcoin-Besitzern mit Kündigung

Wer Gewinne von Kryptobörsen aufs eigene Bankkonto transferieren will, blitzt bei heimischen Finanzinstituten schnell ab. Selbst kleinere Beträge können zum Problem werden

Die Akzeptanz von Kryptowährungen wie Bitcoin und Ethereum steigt. Davon zeugt auch die Steuerreform, die künftig klare Regeln für den Besitz und die Veräußerung der digitalen Münzen vorsieht. Zu den österreichischen Banken dürfte diese Akzeptanz allerdings noch nicht durchgedrungen sein. Diverse STANDARD-Leserinnen und -Leser berichten von Problemen, wenn sie ihre legal erzielten Euro-Gewinne von Kryptobörsen auf ihr Bankkonto überweisen wollen oder umgekehrt zu diesen Beträge überweisen.

[...]

Sobald wird sich nichts ändern, aber dass da mal ein bisschen Aufmerksamkeit auf die Problematik gelenkt wird ist schon mal ein guter erster Schritt.

While reading this thread about Mastercard acquiring CipherTrace I came across the following claim:

2012
CipherTrace CTO Shannon Holland builds his first liquid cooled Bitcoin mining rigs with custom ASICs and firmware.

Which had me wondering -- is there any record of when the first ASIC miner prototypes started mining the Bitcoin blockchain? From what I remember the first to actually ship ASIC miners, albeit in a very limited capacity, was Avalon in early 2013. I'm aware of Friedcat / Bitfountain and Bitfury starting development on ASICs as early as 2012 but if I'm not mistaken even they weren't able to start mining before 2013? Not to mention Butterfly Labs...

Anyway, any insights on this? Was Shannon Holland connected to any of these projects or were early prototype chips made available to parts of the community before the blueprints hit the foundries? I'm genuinely curious as that part of mining history eludes me and I remember ASIC miners being kind of a big deal when they first entered the scene in 2013.

Aus gegebenen Anlass: Hat hier jemand aus Österreich zufällig Erfahrungen welche Banken tendentiell krypto-freundlich gestimmt sind? Ich kann jetzt leider aus persönlicher Erfahrung bestätigen das die Raiffeisenbank es nicht ist

Kürzlich ist mir nämlich ein Brief per Einschreiben ins Haus geflattert das neben einer Transaktionsanfrage auf Basis des Finanzmarkt-Geldwäschegesetzes folgende Zeile enthielt:

An dieser Stelle informieren wir Sie, dass Transaktionen in Verbindung mit sog. Kryptowährungen über Konten der Raiffeisenbank ________ aus geschäftspolitischen Gründen nicht erwünscht sind.

Was nicht einer gewissen Ironie entbehrt nachdem die Raiffeisenbank Bank International (separate Firma, ich weiß) erst vor ein paar Monaten eine Kooperation mit Bitpanda angekündigt hat um einen eigenen RBI Coin zu testen:
https://www.rbinternational.com/de/insights/blockchain-meilenstein-bitpanda-partner.html


Jedenfalls ist es wohl an der Zeit Bank zu wechseln. Man könnte sagen aus privatpolitischen Gründen :O)

Ich hab gesehen das die Erste Sparkasse (bzw. Erste Asset Management) sogar einen eigenen Crypto Asset Analyst hat [1], was mich gerade etwas positiv in Richtung Erste Sparkasse stimmt. Allerdings wäre viel Blabla und nichts dahinter auch nichts neues und wer weiß ob die gEsChäFtsPoLitIk der Erste Asset Management mit jener der Erste Sparkasse übereinstimmt. Bei der ING-DiBa und Bank Austria hab ich soweit ebenfalls Presseausschreibungen zum Thema Bitcoin gefunden, allerdings teilweise nichts wirklich Aktuelles und wer weiß wie's in der Praxis ausschaut.

[1] https://newsroom.sparkasse.at/2021/02/01/was-steckt-hinter-dem-hoehenflug-von-bitcoins/86115


Meinungen, Erfahrungen?

I rarely start new threads of my own, but I just found this theory on r/wallstreetbets which would make for yet another case for decentralized marketplaces and cryptocurrencies, much bigger than Robinhood and other trading platforms restricting free trade: counterfeit shares.

Here is my hypothesis: I think the hedge funds, clearing houses, and DTC executed a coordinated effort to put Game Stop out of business by conspiring to create a gargantuan number of counterfeit shares of GME, possibly 100-200% or more of the shares originally issued by Game Stop. In the process, they may have accidentally created a bomb that could blow up the entire system as we know it and we're seeing their efforts to cover this up unfold now. What is that bomb? I believe retail investors may more than 100% of GME (not just 100% of the float, more than 100% of the actual company). This would be definitive proof of illegal activity at the highest levels of the financial system.

Check out the link for the whole argument:
https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l97ykd/the_real_reason_wall_street_is_terrified_of_the/

Even if we never find out whether their hypothesis is true, it brings to light another important aspect of blockchain based markets: Transparency.

No matter how shitty an ICO you dumped your money in, at least you were always able to see how many tokens there are and where they went. Now with the classical stock market you have so many opaque processes involved that you may never know for sure how many shares are in circulation without an in-depth investigation at the highest level.


Think about it. It's overleveraged fractional banking all over again, just with shares and securities instead of fiat.


If it turns out to be a false hypothesis, an insane conspiracy theory, if you will, it still goes to show that blockchain transparency goes a long way.

If it turns out to be true though... aside from the disastrous economic implications... it will proof that it's time to do for stocks what Bitcoin did for fiat currencies.


What do you guys think? Valid hypothesis or insane conspiracy theory?

[i]

Heads up, I just received a phishing email from scammers pretending to be the Stellar foundation. Claiming that "a time-based staking algorithm has been implemented into the Stellar Ledger" there's a button inviting you to "Become a Validator"; however you'll get redirected to steliar.org instead of stellar.org. There you'll find a blog post pointing you towards their "Account Viewer Tool" and... well, you can fill out the blanks.

Stay safe folks and don't get scammed!

A couple of security researchers just presented a talk at the 35C3 regarding a couple of security vulnerabilities in common hardware wallets:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1OBIGslgGM


Most notably they found the following vulnerabilities:

1) Flashing the Ledger Nano S with custom firmware without the device noticing (starting @ 17:00)

2) A sidechannel attack allowing to remotely read the PIN entered into Ledger Blue devices (@ 28:30)

3) Extracting the menomic seed phrase and PIN from Trezor One devices (@ 35:00)


1) and 3) require direct physical access to the device while 2) require an attacker to be rather close by, so obviously the security level is still way beyond regular software wallets.


Keep in mind that vulnerabilities found in these devices do not imply that other hardware wallets are more secure. As mentioned in the last few minutes of the talk, the researchers found other vulnerabilities in other wallets as well, the ones they presented are merely a collection of the most interesting ones. Still it will be interesting to see if and when these vulnerabilities will be fixed (responsible disclosure appears to have been made, with the Trezor CTO participating in the Q&A towards the end of the video).

Just a heads-up, SatoshiLabs just sent out a newsletter that the first 1:1 Trezor One clones have been finally spotted in the wild:

https://blog.trezor.io/psa-non-genuine-trezor-devices-979b64e359a7

For the longest time I expected the likes of an evil maid attack [1] to be of mostly theoretical concern, but while a different issue this problem is of similar concern. As of now it seems to be unsure whether these clones are malicious, but I personally wouldn't take any chances.

To any newbies reading this: Be reminded that buying hardware wallets anywhere but from the original vendors is a huge security risk. That's true for any sort of hardware wallet, not just Trezor.

[1] https://doc.satoshilabs.com/trezor-faq/threats.html#evil-maid-attack-replace-the-trezor-with-a-fake