Bitcoins and Cryptocurrencies

Criminal underworld is dropping bitcoin for another currency

Privacy coins such as monero, designed to avoid tracking, have climbed faster over the past two months as law enforcers adopt software tools to monitor people using bitcoin. A slew of analytic firms such as Chainalysis are getting better at flagging digital hoards linked to crime or money laundering, alerting exchanges and preventing conversion into traditional cash.The European Union’s law-enforcement agency, Europol, raised alarms three months ago, writing in a report that “other cryptocurrencies such as monero, ethereum and Zcash are gaining popularity within the digital underground.” Online extortionists, who use ransomware to lock victims’ computers until they fork over a payment, have begun demanding those currencies instead. On Dec. 18 hackers attacked up to 190,000 WordPress sites per hour to get them to produce monero, according to security company Wordfence.

For ransomware attacks, monero is now “one of the favorites, if not the favorite,” Matt Suiche, founder of Dubai-based security firm Comae Technologies, said in a phone interview.
 
Holy Shit! This is only an hour from me.

Anaconda entrepreneur Rick Tabish has told an Anaconda board that BitPower, LLC, has purchased the MSE Technology Applications site south of Butte.According to the draft minutes of the Tax Increment Financing Industrial District board meeting late in December, Tabish told the board members, “Bitcoin has also purchased MSE and will run 50 to 60 megawatts until the Anaconda facility is up and running.”

Tabish did not return phone calls. MSE Technology Applications Chief Executive Officer Helen Joyce also did not return multiple calls. BitPower LLC Vice President Scott Mosebach did not return phone calls.

NorthWestern Energy spokesperson Butch Larcombe said NWE “can’t comment on existing or potential customers.”

The meeting took place at 8:30 a.m. on Dec. 26. Tabish was there to speak on behalf of BitPower to request a lease agreement to build a server farm in Anaconda’s industrial area. (See related story.) Tabish has been the spokesperson for a separate deal in Anaconda's Mill Creek industrial district to construct a slag processing plant that's been in the works for a couple of years.

BitPower, LLC, reached an agreement with Anaconda’s school board last month to purchase the W.K. Dwyer Elementary School in the Smelter City to use as a training facility for the proposed Mill Creek server farm. The server farm will warehouse computers for bitcoin "mining."

Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, was started in 2008 by an anonymous entity known only as Satoshi Nakamoto. The bitcoin is not something you hold in your hand. Bitcoins are "mined" when a computer solves a puzzle and is awarded bitcoin. The more computers working together to solve the puzzles, the greater the likelihood of winning the bitcoin. Bitcoin is becoming increasingly recognized. Wall Street has begun to trade against it. Some companies, such as Microsoft, have begun to accept it for purchases.

This week, the value of a Bitcoin is approximately $15,000.

Anaconda-Deer Lodge County Chief Executive Bill Everett also told the Anaconda Leader in mid-December that BitPower investors had “purchased an industrial site in Butte” in mid-December.

Everett said by phone Wednesday that he “doesn’t have any details on that.”

Someone close to the situation speculated that there may be a nondisclosure agreement attached to the purchase agreement, and that is why no one is willing to talk on the record.

Mick Ringsak, an MSE supporter who oversaw the U.S. Small Business Administration for an eight-state region under President George W. Bush, said he’s heard “there is something happening,” at the MSE site.

Butte Local Development Corp. President Joe Willauer said the BLDC is not involved but he said he’s also heard “something’s happening" with the site.

But according to the Department of Revenue, MSE Technology Applications still owns the site at 200 Technology Way.

The Butte-Silver Bow County land board did not have record of a sale as of Wednesday.

Calls to B-SB Chief Executive Dave Palmer and Director of Community Development Karen Byrnes were not returned. Emilie Ritter Saunders, public information officer for the Commerce Department, said her office is "not aware of a potential purchase of MSE Technology Applications by BitPower, LLC."  

The 53-acre site, formally known as the Mike Mansfield Advanced Technology Center, fell on hard times in recent years and everything on it, down to the buildings themselves, went on the auction block late last year.

Built in the 1970s, MSE began as a federally funded operation to test “clean coal technology.” Its operations evolved to include other things over the years, but dependent on federal contracts, MSE struggled when those federal “earmarks” dried up a few years ago.

MSE’s owners — the Montana Economic Revitalization and Development Institute (MERDI) — have tried to save the complex with various deals, but efforts to save the property never came to fruition. 

A call to MERDI President and CEO Jim Kambich was not returned.

Ringsak said he doesn’t know if the buildings, along with about 15 acres of land, sold or not. The property includes its own generating station, which could be attractive to an electricity-dependent operation such as a bitcoin server farm.
Bitcoin coming to Butte MT

 
I wonder if anyone has every thought about an of the conspiracy theories related to Bitcoin. What calculations are all these GPU and CPU cycles really doing? How about how much power they are using to create these Bitcoins? It is generating big revenues for power companies and down the line. I read that Bitcoin is projected to use more electricity by 2019 than the entirety of the US.
 
I wonder if anyone has every thought about an of the conspiracy theories related to Bitcoin. What calculations are all these GPU and CPU cycles really doing? How about how much power they are using to create these Bitcoins? It is generating big revenues for power companies and down the line. I read that Bitcoin is projected to use more electricity by 2019 than the entirety of the US.
Very good point, though I would think Big Oil would have hatched up a scheme like this more than anything.  With the increasing need for power, and alternative energy trying to gain a bigger market share, having to generate large amounts of bitcoin so fast would require more than they could catch up to, so in comes Big Oil to save the day.This also brings up another point on the manipulation possibilities with cryptocurrencies.  

 
In a move that will certainly not end well for investors, the New York Stock Exchange has asked the SEC to approve five ETFs including 2x leveraged and inverse flavors, linked to Bitcoin futures - which launched in December on the CME and Cboe, according to a Thursday filing, which is in line with what we said mentioned in August, "we suspect a Bitcoin Futures ETF may actually occur before a Bitcoin ETF." The five "derivative of derivative" funds are as follows: 

  • Direxion Daily Bitcoin 1.25X Bull Shares
     
     
     
  • Direxion Daily Bitcoin 1.5X Bull Shares
     
     
     
  • Direxion Daily Bitcoin 2X Bull Shares
     
     
     
  • Direxion Daily Bitcoin 1X Bear Shares
     
     
     
  • Direxion Daily Bitcoin 2X Bear Shares
     
     
     



The target Bitcoin benchmark will be calculated as the last sale price published by the CME or CBOE on or before 11:00 a.m. EST, and "should not be expected to track the performance of the target benchmark for any period longer than one business day." 
Get some derivatives tied to it and do paper dumps like they do to other commodity markets.  Say goodbye to price discovery.https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-07/buckle-nyse-files-leveraged-inverse-bitcoin-etfs

 
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But without yours and my investment, since we have a good portion money from being cheap, it isn't taking off.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
But without yours and my investment, since we have a good portion money from being cheap, it isn't taking off.
@nodle just hasn't thought of the right bargaining chip yet.

 
But without yours and my investment, since we have a good portion money from being cheap, it isn't taking off.
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Do you have a Wall Street Journal account, these links to them I can't see the whole article without signing in.Anyways, bitcoin still seems the same high price as before.  Stocks are soaring, oil is soaring, bitcoin is doing the same, no stopping.  Sure would be a shame if our long history repeats itself like it has many times before and the law of figurative gravity happens...what goes up must come down.

 
Do you have a Wall Street Journal account, these links to them I can't see the whole article without signing in.Anyways, bitcoin still seems the same high price as before.  Stocks are soaring, oil is soaring, bitcoin is doing the same, no stopping.  Sure would be a shame if our long history repeats itself like it has many times before and the law of figurative gravity happens...what goes up must come down.
It's how life works though. I have been alive long enough and had enough economics classes, as well as history classes, to know that the only thing for certain is fluctuations. It's how it is, always has been and always will be.

 
Sorry, should have mentioned my "sure would be a shame" was being sarcastic.  At some point, it's going down, but who knows what will come of it after.
 
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