EPISODE 177 - FLAGSHIP 70

This week's top story - Tether is in trouble again. Is this a tale of sound and fury signifying nothing like the Bitcoin Maximalists such as Adam Back would like you to believe? Or is there something more going on here? Before we get to that story we talk about Vitalik, Elon, some scams and more.

• Rapid Fire
  • Coinbase Custody now offers their first chain swap with KIN. Offline storage and insurance coverage Mainnet KIN is now available on Coinbase Custody
  • NYTimes is now routinely reporting on crypto. In this case it's 1q thefts—roughly 1.2 billion Cryptocurrency Thefts, Fraud Hit $1.2 Billion in First Quarter-Report
  • Electrum wallet botnet infects 152,000 users, steals $4.6mill USD In response to this, attackers then started DDoSing legitimate Electrum servers in an attempt to trick older clients into connecting to malicious nodes, while legitimate nodes becoming overwhelmed. Rapidly Growing Electrum Botnet Infects Over 152,000 Users; Steals $4.6 Million
  • Ethereum.org has gone through a redesign relaunching as a work in project like Ethereum itself being iterated by the community just like Ethereum. r/ethtrader - ethereum.org completely redesigned Bitcoin whale moved $212 million in cryptocurrency - for just $3.93
• Vitalik and Elon chat on Twitter (Story 1) Elon Musk on Twitter
  • Elon Musk on Monday sent out a one word tweet, Ethereum. Then apparently said jk. Then Vitalik got involved and said to come to Devcon in Denver. THe internet erupted. How absurd is it that someone can just say one word on the internet and have the internet in an uproar.
  • Then Elon asked what should be developed on Ethereum and Vitalik replied with a mini tweet storm on projects with different use cases he likes on the Ethereum platform
  • MolochDAO, Ethereum Name Service, Ethresear.ch, Hurricaneguard.io were all named.
  • then a bunch of trolls on twitter said dumb things about tesla and crypto. Justin Sun got in there to mention Tron, all the regulars (Pomp, Ari David Paul, Neeraj)
  • hope something comes of it at some point
• Crypto_Brahma Scam - Brent
  • I don't know anything about who this was before - but I looked into it a little bit because of this letter I came across on Twitter to his "group" .
  • He ran a paid Discord group where you could join and get some trading advice and get gems from him. ONLY 35 MONTHLY MEMBERS....but he was actually running two of these exclusive groups simultaneously.
  • It was called the fucking Moon Club
  • Apparently at some point he decided to do a fund.
  • ANNNNNNNND It's gone.
  • https://twitter.com/The_CryptoArnie/status/1123215814998540289/photo/1
  • Literally he took everyone's money, gambled it via a bad call on Margin trading, and then sent a letter saying that he'd totally get everyone their money back. He just needed to clear his head so that he could trade in a stress free environment. Timeline - 5 Months. LOLOL
• Millions in Crypto Stolen first quarter 2019.... and its gonna need laundering (Karim)
  • Article based on a report by company called CipherTrace, 'Q1 2019 Cryptocurrency AML Report'
  • Estimates $356 million stolen, and payments from US based exchanges to offshore crypto wallets up 46%
    • $16m from Cryptopia in January
    • CoinBene and DragonEx (Singapore) combined $46m in March (ETH backed)
    • Bithumb in S Korea $13m in EOS stolen and (allegedly) another $6m in Ripple
      • Company described it as an "accident involving insiders" lol
    • Coinbin also S Korea forced into bankrupcy after loosing $26m, blamed an insider
    • And then there's QuadrigaCX...
      • The report 'tentatively' categorized the $190m as theft as opposed to hack or exit scam
  • Bottom line this money has...