Amidst the speculative boom for NFTs and crypto-currencies, one decentralized technology foundation is taking the long view by investing in deep history and the far future

Today, the Filecoin Foundation announced a 50,000 FIL grant to the Internet Archive – the largest single donation in the digital library’s 25-year history.

“Holy Crow! This is a big deal,” said Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive’s founder. “And what are we going to do with it? We’re going to invest it in making the Internet Archive more decentralized, so that our digital history is available from thousands of computers, not just a few. The idea is to make a robust and private Internet that has a history that will persist over decades and maybe centuries.”

Filecoin is a decentralized storage system designed to preserve humanity’s most important information. The creators of Filecoin envisioned an independent foundation that would serve as the long-term governance body for the Filecoin ecosystem. In awarding the grant to the Internet Archive, Filecoin Foundation board chair, Marta Belcher, stressed the two organizations’ “common goal of preserving the web and fostering its future.”

It was back in 2015 that Protocol Labs‘ founder, Juan Benet, first visited the Internet Archive, to share his vision for an academic conference dedicated to preserving “humanity’s greatest treasures using decentralized storage.” Building on these conversations, the Internet Archive organized the  Decentralized Web Summit in 2016 in San Francisco, the first gathering of its kind. Back then, a decentralized web was mostly a concept, with little working code.

Decentralized technologists, Trent McConaghy of Ocean and Juan Benet of Protocol Labs at the 2016 Decentralized Web Summit at the Internet Archive in San Francisco.
Since 2016, the Internet Archive has worked with several decentralized tech startups to create a decentralized prototype of the digital library. And when the Filecoin main net took off in 2020, stored in Filecoin servers were public domain audiobooks and films from the Internet Archive. Together, the two organizations created the Filecoin Archives, a community-led project to curate, disseminate and preserve important open access to information often at risk of being lost.

“It’s wonderful to see Filecoin come of age. We started six years ago by putting out a call to make a Decentralized Web, a web that would serve us better than the current web–one that is now starting to be dominated by just a few tech behemoths. Can we make a game with many winners?” asked Kahle. “Filecoin has made a huge step forward by deploying decentralized storage at the exabyte level. That’s very different from AWS (Amazon Web Services). It has many participants, not just one player. And its protocols are open-source. We want to see more technologies like this. This was the original vision of the Decentralized Web that the Internet Archive was hoping for five, six years ago. And it’s starting to come to fruition and Filecoin is a leader in that area.”

Although purveyors of cryptocurrencies are often accused of being driven only by short-term gain, in this group Kahle sees a different motivation. “This donation by the Filecoin Foundation is significant financially for the Internet Archive, but I’d say it’s a more interesting one than that,” said the Internet Hall of Fame engineer. “It’s a donation by a new generation of technologists that are building interesting new technologies…bringing the Archive along with it to make it so that history is preserved –that the Internet Archive makes it into this next generation. That is an interesting thing! You don’t often see that. But the Filecoin Foundation, Filecoin and IPFS, and Juan Benet himself have always been interested in preserving history and how history can be woven into the present and the future of these technologies.”

https://blog.archive.org/2021/04/01/filecoin-foundation-grants-50000-fil-to-the-internet-archive/

Recent scams show there are holes in Apple’s safety net

March 30, 2021

Phillipe Christodoulou wanted to check his bitcoin balance last month, so he searched the App Store on his iPhone for “Trezor,” the maker of a small hardware device he uses to store his cryptocurrency. Up popped the company’s padlock logo set against a bright green background. The app was rated close to five stars. He downloaded it and typed in his credentials.

In less than a second, nearly all of his life savings — 17.1 bitcoin worth $600,000 at the time — was gone. The app was a fake, designed to trick people into thinking it was a legitimate app.

But Christodoulou is angrier at Apple than at the thieves themselves: He says Apple marketed the App Store as a safe and trusted place, where each app is reviewed before it is allowed in the store.

Christodoulou, once a loyal Apple customer, said he no longer admires the company. “They betrayed the trust that I had in them,” he said in an interview. “Apple doesn’t deserve to get away with this.”

Apple bills its App Store as “the world’s most trusted marketplace for apps,” where every submission is scanned and reviewed, ensuring they are safe, secure, useful and unique. But in fact, it’s easy for scammers to circumvent Apple’s rules, according to experts. Criminal app developers can break Apple’s rules by submitting seemingly innocuous apps for approval and then transforming them into phishing apps that trick people into giving up their information, according to Apple. When Apple finds out, it removes the apps and bans the developers, the company says. But it’s too late for the people who fell for the scam.

Crypto scams are also common on Google’s Android and on the Web. But their presence on the Apple App Store is more surprising because Apple says it curates the store and checks each app, which creates high levels of consumer trust. The 15 to 30 percent commission Apple collects on all sales on the App Store goes to fund the “highly curated” customer experience, the company has said.

“User trust is at the foundation of why we created the App Store, and we have only deepened that commitment in the years since,” said Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz. “Study after study has shown that the App Store is the most secure app marketplace in the world, and we are constantly at work to maintain that standard and to further strengthen the App Store’s protections. In the limited instances when criminals defraud our users, we take swift action against these actors as well as to prevent similar violations in the future.”

The ability of apps to morph into something else entirely after they are approved by the App Store raises questions about the effectiveness of Apple’s review process to stop scammers. Apple wouldn’t say how often these scams appear, or how often it removes them. But it did say it removed 6,500 apps for “hidden or undocumented features” last year. Apple touts user safety as its defense against accusations from lawmakers, regulators and competitors that the company uses its monopoly over app distribution on iPhones anti-competitively.

“Apple frequently pushes myths about user privacy and security as a shield against its anti-competitive App Store practices,” said Meghan DiMuzio, executive director of the Coalition for App Fairness, which was formed to fight Apple’s power over its App Store. “The truth is, Apple’s security ‘standards’ are inconsistently applied across apps and only enforced when it benefits Apple.”

Apple acknowledged there have been other cryptocurrency scams on the App Store but wouldn’t say how many. Apple wouldn’t say whether fake Trezor apps had sneaked into the App Store in the past, or whether new apps called “Trezor” will be flagged as potentially fraudulent in the future.

Coinfirm, a U.K.-based company that specializes in cryptocurrency regulations and conducts fraud investigations, says it has received more than 7,000 inquiries about stolen crypto assets since October 2019. Fake apps in Google’s Android Play Store and Apple’s App Store are common, said Pawel Aleksander, the company’s chief information officer.

Coinfirm said five people have reported having cryptocurrency stolen by the fake Trezor app on iOS, for total losses worth $1.6 million. There have been three reports of fake Trezor apps on Android that stole a total of $600,000 in cryptocurrency.

Apple would not name the developer of the fake Trezor app or provide the developer’s contact information. Apple wouldn’t say whether it was turning over the name to law enforcement or whether it investigated the developer further. Apple also wouldn’t say whether that developer had developed any other apps in the past or had connections to other developer accounts under different names.

“We don’t allow apps that mislead users by impersonating another app, developer or company, and when we discover an app that violates our policies, we take appropriate action,” said Google spokesperson Colin Smith.

Google said it knows of two fake Trezor apps that have appeared on the Google Play store. It removed both. It didn’t say how the Trezor apps made it onto the store. The company didn’t say whether it notified law enforcement, or how many other scam apps it has found on the store. It didn’t say whether it investigated the developers. Analytics firm App Figures was able to find eight fake Trezor apps that have appeared on the Play Store.

Of all the Internet scams, the theft of cryptocurrency is one of the most lucrative for thieves. Millions of dollars in digital currency can be pilfered in a split-second, and high-profile crypto heists have netted thieves as much as $530 million, which occurred in the Coincheck hack in 2018. In 2014, Apple banned crypto wallets on the App Store but then restored them the same year. Apple does not allow cryptocurrency mining apps, and it places extra restrictions on crypto wallet apps.

'Fortnite’ maker Epic faces uphill antitrust battle with Apple

To better secure their investments, people who own cryptocurrencies transfer their investments to “hardware wallets,” which are like USB thumb drives that store the secret and sensitive information a thief would need to steal someone’s cryptocurrency.

Hardware wallets plug into a computer via a USB connection. By typing in a PIN and sometimes an additional passphrase, the hardware wallet can be accessed and used to make transactions. If a hardware wallet is lost or destroyed, the information can be restored with a secret “seed phrase.” Some people keep the seed phrase in a safe-deposit box, hoping they’ll never have to use it, or etched on durable metal that can survive a fire. Scammers use phishing to trick people into giving up their seed phrases.

Trezor, based in the Czech Republic and owned by a company called Satoshi Labs, is a well-known maker of hardware wallets. Trezor doesn’t have a mobile app, but crypto thieves created a fake one and put it on Apple’s App Store in January and the Google Play Store in December, according to those companies, tricking some unsuspecting Trezor customers into entering their seed phrases.

Kristyna Mazankova, a spokeswoman for Trezor, said the company has been notifying Apple and Google for years about fake apps posing as a Trezor product to scam its customers. Trezor has never had a mobile app, though the company is working on one. She said the process of reporting the apps is “painful” and that representatives of Apple and Google haven’t been in contact.

Mazankova said Trezor notified Apple about a copycat app on Feb 1. Apple removed the app on Feb. 3, but it appeared again days later, according to Christodoulou, before it was removed again.

The fake Trezor app got through the app store through a bait-and-switch, according to Apple. Though it was called Trezor and used the Trezor logo and colors, it represented itself as a “cryptography” app that would encrypt iPhone files and store passwords, according to Apple. The developer of the fake Trezor app told Apple’s review team it “is not involved in any cryptocurrency.” Apple approved the app and it appeared in the App Store on Jan. 22, according to mobile analytics firm Sensor Tower.

Some time later, unbeknown to Apple, the Trezor cryptography app changed itself into a cryptocurrency wallet. Apple does not allow these sorts of changes, but Apple says it does not know when they occur. It relies on users and customers to report it when it happens, the company said.

After Trezor reported the fake app to Apple, Apple says it removed the app and banned the developer. Two days later, another fake Trezor app appeared. Apple removed that app, too. Apple did not say how it found out about the fake apps, but said it removed them because they were fraudulent.

Sensor Tower said the Trezor app was on the Apple App Store from at least Jan. 22 to Feb. 3 and appears to have been downloaded about 1,000 times. The app was downloaded about 1,000 times on Android, but Sensor Tower did not collect data on exactly when it became available.

James Fajcz, a reliability engineer at a paper company who lives in Savannah, Ga., also had his cryptocurrency stolen by the fake Trezor app, he says. In December, as he saw prices of the digital tokens rising, he purchased about $14,000 worth of Ethereum and bitcoin on Coinbase and Binance with money from his savings.

He wanted to make sure his investment was secure, so he purchased a Trezor Model T hardware wallet and downloaded an app on his iPhone called Trezor, which asked for his seed phrase. The app didn’t connect to his Trezor wallet, and he figured it didn’t work.

Weeks later, he purchased more Ethereum on Coinbase. He plugged in his Trezor device, but nothing was there. He went on the Trezor support forum on Reddit for answers. A Reddit poster informed him: There is no Trezor app. “My jaw dropped to the floor. My heart sank,” he said. “I realized what I did.”

Fajcz said he called Apple’s support line. An Apple representative said the company was not responsible, Fajcz says. “This was a trusted app on the App Store claiming to be the best and most trusted app store on any system anywhere,” he said. “And this nefarious app gets on the platform? I feel Apple should be held partially or fully responsible for that.”

Over a few years, Christodoulou had amassed 18.1 bitcoin. At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, each was worth about $5,500. By October, the price was starting to skyrocket, topping out at $60,000 early this year.

Christodoulou had hoped his bitcoin holdings would help save his dry-cleaning business, which was decimated during the pandemic. On Feb. 1, he wanted to be able to check his bitcoin balance using his phone, instead of a computer. So he checked the App Store, downloaded the fake Trezor app and entered his seed phrase.

Immediately afterward, he plugged his Trezor hardware wallet into his computer and logged in to check his balance. It was all gone.

That evening, Christodoulou went into the App Store again to look more closely at the reviews. Before it was removed, the Trezor app had 155 reviews on the App Store for a rating of close to five stars, according to App Figures, the analytics firm. When Christodoulou opened up the written reviews, he read complaints from other people who had been scammed in the same way. The five-star ratings that helped make the app seem legitimate must have been fake, he concluded.

Christodoulou called Apple customer support and a representative said he would escalate it to a supervisor. He said he also notified Apple and filed a report with the FBI. Lauren Hagee Glintz, an FBI spokeswoman, declined to comment on the report.

Chainalysis, a commercial blockchain analysis firm, reviewed documents provided by Fajcz and Christodoulou and confirmed that their cryptocurrency was moved from their wallets to a suspicious account. Both thefts appeared related, said Madeleine Kennedy, a spokeswoman for Chainalysis. “There’s evidence this is a substantial scam bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars,” she said.

Only one of Christodoulou’s 18.1 bitcoin was spared because he transferred it to a bitcoin savings service called BlockFi. At the time of the theft, his 17.1 stolen bitcoin were worth $600,000, but they soon went up in value to $1 million.

Christodoulou says he’s taking medication and seeing a psychiatrist. “It broke me. I’m still not recovered from it,” he said.

He still hasn’t heard from Apple.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/30/trezor-scam-bitcoin-1-million/

That's not decentralization, that's idea crowdsourcing.
No matter what the crowd says, in the end, it's one guy or a group that takes the decisions, the people who come with a different project will simply look at their drawing boards and sigh, they will not be able to make their own car.
You could have got a better example from the new forum software that is in testing, everyone can come with ideas, can run the test, can post their feedback, does it make it a decentralized software or will the forum be decentralized? No!

Tell me what part of this is true for your examples:

I realized for the past years that you're sometimes over-enthusiastic about changes that can be done with the model bitcoin runs on but you have to understand that not everything in this world needs decentralization, a blockchain or a token and that some things are far better of without one.

And the new Tesla will look like this probably:


I wonder how much people will push this decentralization madness, I can't wait to hear when the army will be decentralized.

Costs and efficiency.
History has thought us that simple solutions are the best, people look for the best choice at the money value, if you want custom stuff you go to companies that build custom cars and pay the extra $, for mass producers this would be impossible while keeping a low price.
Having a product come in three hundred versions will put an enormous strain on the logistical chain to supply 1000 different optional packages for each car, making some of them a money pit, that's why all car manufacturers offer just a few options for the same element, not five hundred colors and not 10 types of seats or 20 headlights designs for the same model.
And those decisions on what to offer need to be taken in a centralized mode or there will be chaos, manufacturing a car is not the same as creating firefox add-ons.

Probably not. Cryptocurrencies might be able to reduce inefficiencies or increase transparency, but those problems don't seem to be major contributors to the lack of affordable housing.

Your chart needs to go back further. The housing situation was not normal between 1992 and 2009, so your chart may be misleading. Also, the chart's title contradicts the chart itself. The chart clearly shows that new housing starts are not flattening out.

The idea that a new cryptocurrency can "fund" something is a misconception.

Anyway, those are my opinions.

You need to get rid of the impression that some new token will solve the problem of world hunger or living space, because these problems are far more complex than having someone create a new coin that will magically change that for the better. Proof of this are the thousands of coins that have been created so far, but on the fingers of one hand you can count those that have some purpose in real life.

The problem of real estate prices and the rising cost of rent are just part of the problem that exists in the US, but it is part of their economic strategies over the past 50 years that are now becoming more pronounced - after all, everyone has to pay for their mistakes. In 50 years (probably even earlier) the descendants of today's people will have to bear the consequences of today's decisions.

This is very simple - TO KEEP WEALTH YOU JUST HAVE TO AVOID GIVING IT AWAY TO OTHERS

Is there any other country that has enacted a similar mandate?

In 2019, the company stated in an annual filing that Mr. Coates’s daughter, Denise Coates, the co-chief executive, had earned more than $420 million

Bright lights, big city.

"And lack of affordable rental housing," says University of Cincinnati researcher Mike Eriksen, Ph.D.

The West Shell Associate Professor of Real Estate from the Carl H. Lindner College of Business recently published a report entitled, "The Location of Affordable and Subsidized Rental Housing Across and Within the Largest Cities in the United States" with the Mortgage Bankers Association's Research Institute for Housing America.

Covering subsidies to employment and population growth in the top 50 American cities, the report starts to unpack the intertwined complexities that have contributed toward the general trend towards unaffordability in large metropolitan areas in the United States over the past 20 years.

"Across the largest 50 cities, median rent has increased 175% faster than household incomes," said Eriksen. "For low and middle income populations in these regions, housing is getting more expensive at a faster rate."

One subset of the issue Eriksen examines is subsidies—which make up $50 billion in annual federal expenditures. On average, one subsidy is available for three otherwise income eligible households, but that statistic changes drastically to one in nine eligible households in the fastest growing metro areas.

Looking at Cincinnati, Eriksen found the region to have the best of all worlds.

"With the expected spend on rent being 30% of household income, Cincinnati is actually the most affordable region in the country when you measure the dollar gap between median rent and expected housing spend of a moderate-income household," he said.

Unfortunately, Cincinnati also leads large cities in the percentage of renters considered low-income according to federal guidelines, Eriksen shared.

For Eriksen, this report scratches the surface on uncovering what equitable housing opportunities could mean—and look like in practice—in cities of any size growing at any rate in the United States. He says more research is needed to help untangle the knotty mess of housing inequality and understanding the economic obstacles for renters and first-time homebuyers alike.

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-rent-faster-household-income-years.html

Now we need to come up with a plan, by using ICO, IDO, IEO to force the tax payer pay the price too, what’s your take, can we force the inflation to come totally loose control to the point food price is no longer measurable with fiat paper money?

Topic: Since bitcoin is a "virtual commodity", why not create a bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF)? You could make 1 ETF share represent 1 BTC. If someone could successfully do this it would certainly help with regard to exchanging BTC for fiat currencies. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Satellite phones are much expensive even now but when we are talking about the future then its certainly possible and no one can stop an individual from spending his/her money that is what we need to adapt to bitcoin and decentralized cryptos, these speculations and profit-making are not even in the satoshi's vision which are just formed due to its volatility all the time.

Network connectivity is nothing more than a problem that needs to be solved, and the solution may not be satellite. It can rely on any network connected to the Internet (a third-party network) to send transactions, but the problem remains is whether Bitcoin will have value as a means of payments?


Let us take the case of Myanmar: if there is no person to buy bitcoin, then its value in Myanmar is zero, regardless of the possibility of sending it or its value in the rest of the world.

When major problems arise, people search for food, drink, and security and exchange them with each other.

Money loses its value when there is no demand for it. The Lebanese pound, Zimbabwean dollar and Venezuelan bolívar

Bitcoin is already pretty much challenging - as technology - for average merchant.
Then the normal shops will not officially accept bitcoin, since it's banned (you expect to have no internet, and still bitcoin accepted?!)

So you'll want that the merchant as person to accept your bitcoin, reading info from the internet via your satellite phone, using a technology he doesn't understand and you do.
He will have to trust you too much... It's not gonna happen.