Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

You cannot shame the shameless.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

The revolution will be supervised.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Come on, man.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Republicans don’t trust women.

This really is a full service blog.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

The words do not have to be perfect.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Bark louder, little dog.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Friday Night Snark Zone Open Thread: Kleptocurrency (Birds of A Feather)

Friday Night Snark Zone Open Thread: Kleptocurrency (Birds of A Feather)

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Money launderers, drug lords, counterfeiters, sexual predators for profit — as we call them, our Base!

Real-world proof-of-concept hits a roadblock…

… “We are committed to helping El Salvador in numerous ways including for currency transparency and regulatory processes,” a World Bank spokesperson wrote in an email to The Washington Post. “While the government did approach us for assistance on Bitcoin, this is not something the World Bank can support given the environmental and transparency shortcomings.”

The rejection is the latest sign that President Nayib Bukele’s ambitions to bring El Salvador into a new age of prosperity through the use of volcano-powered bitcoin may be less realistic than he would like to admit. El Salvador’s new law, which will require merchants to accept bitcoin as a form of payment beginning in three months, was passed with little debate just days after Bukele proposed the idea at a Miami bitcoin conference [*]. Now as the government begins to figure out exactly what the experiment will entail, global financial institutions are expressing hesitation….

Some critics believe that Bukele’s attention-grabbing announcement was intended to distract from the fact that he is facing international condemnation for his party’s ouster of the country’s top judges and attorney general. El Salvador also pulled out of an anti-corruption agreement with the Organization of American States this month, heightening fears of an authoritarian power grab…

* You remember — the Covid-19 superspreader event.

Wild wild West, baybee!…

… For years, Chinese miners like Jiang were enabled by the glut of cheap — and often dirty — electricity in China, where a massive fleet of coal-fired plants and hydroelectric dams fueled the country’s rise into an industrial behemoth. At their height in 2018, China’s bitcoin prospectors accounted for 74 percent of the world’s bitcoin production.

But this year, Chinese authorities are cracking down on cryptocurrency to dial back energy consumption and meet their climate goals, sending miners scattering. And increasingly, miners are decamping for places like Texas, South Dakota or Canada, launching a mass migration with implications for the evolving industry and the new communities that will house it.

There also are questions about how much local energy grids can handle…

Jiang recently pulled tens of thousands of his machines out of Chinese regions including Inner Mongolia, which has not only banned mining but encouraged citizens to call a government office to report illicit mining.

“You know they’re getting serious,” Jiang said, “when they set up snitching hotlines.”…

That sudden chill, Chinese bitcoin miners and executives predict, will only deepen. The Chinese government has appeared uneasy not only about the industry’s carbon footprint but also the intrinsically uncontrollable, decentralized nature of cryptocurrency.

Yemu Xu, the co-founder of Bella Protocol, a cryptocurrency banking service provider, said Chinese miners who see the writing on the wall have been trying for years to migrate to countries such as Iran and Kazakhstan to cut costs. In the past year, interest has grown in countries that have not only cheap power but also “stable political regimes, mature regulation and better policy support.”…

Q: Have they been keeping up with the energy-grid news out of Texas?

A: You don’t understand, normie: Our beans, they are magic:

Reader Interactions

63Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Money launderers, drug lords, counterfeiters, sexual predators for profit — as we call the, our Base!

    Also, too, Putin.

  3. 3.

    Anne Laurie

    @Baud: Money launderers, drug lords, counterfeiters, sexual predators for profit — as we call the, our Base!

    But isn’t Crime Lord Vladimir included in at least three of those four categories?

  4. 4.

    Ken

    I’d think El Salvador could use up a fairly large percentage of Bitcoin’s 7-transactions-per-second capacity.  Somewhere around one thousand percent, if each person in the country only does one transaction a day.

  5. 5.

    MattF

    So… it’s somewhat like accepting payments in tulip futures, except more volatile and, by design, there’s nothing even remotely identifiable as an asset involved… so, yeah, sure. Maybe deliberate dysfunction has a market value. That would explain a lot.

  6. 6.

    craigie

    This is 100% about accepting dark money. Of course it will backfire, because they are morons, but their motivation is obvious.

  9. 9.

    sab

    What am I missing in move from China to Texas because the electric power is more dependable? Huh? Possibly because kleptocracy is less enforced? ( low bar meet bar on the ground.)

  11. 11.

    Baud

    @MattF:

    Information obtained in the context of an UWO cannot be used in a criminal proceeding.

    “I obtained my wealth through the illegal arms trade and murder for hire. There, explained.”

  14. 14.

    J R in WV

    I suspect the Chinese bit-coin miners are deluded about the cost of electricity in Texas, even in a west Texas oil field with natural gas being burned off. The cost of the generation facility, even if the gas is free (which it isn’t) the cost of generation over time will not be cheap.

    Best of luck, idiots!

  15. 15.

    Danielx

    Annnnd…the NRCC publicly declares itself an easy mark. Kind of surprised TFG hasn’t declared Bitcoin as the 21st century’s best opportunity; it seems to be  a scam of the sort he loves.

  16. 16.

    debbie

    Is there enough “flared natural gas” in all the country to power this mining? If so, why the hell are they allowing all this wasteful flaring?

  18. 18.

    debbie

    @J R in WV:

    The grid is currently in perilous shape because Abbott is too stupid to join the national grid. If Texas this summer has to go through what they did last winter, his presidential aspirations will be shot to shit.

  19. 19.

    The Moar You Know

    What am I missing in move from China to Texas because the electric power is more dependable? Huh? Possibly because kleptocracy is less enforced?

    @sab:  China will not allow the existence of a method of making money within its borders where said money is untrackable, untraceable and most importantly, because of the first two, can’t be controlled and taxed. Frankly I approve of their stance. No nation state worthy of the name should allow it.

  21. 21.

    Another Scott

    @debbie: Obligatory…

    JuanitaJean:

    I Love Yew Texas

    June 16, 2021 By: Juanita Jean Herownself

    We are still under a warning that if we’re not sweating, they’re gonna come and take our air conditioning. It was 97 degrees at my house today.

    Click over and embiggen the graphic…

    It’s supposed to be 97F in Austin on Saturday and Sunday. And it’s not even July yet.

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  25. 25.

    Barney

    Time to dig up the gold standard, so to speak, of bubbles:

    But the most absurd and preposterous of all, and which shewed, more completely than any other, the utter madness of the people, was one started by an unknown adventurer, entitled
    “A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.” Were not the fact stated by scores of credible witnesses, it would be impossible to believe that any person could have been duped by such a project. The man of genius who essayed this bold and successful inroad upon public credulity, merely stated in his prospectus that the required capital was half a million, in five thousand shares of £100 each, deposit £2 per share. Each subscriber, paying his deposit, would be entitled to £100 per annum per share. How this immense profit was to be obtained, he did not condescend to inform them at that time, but promised that in a month full particulars should be duly announced, and a call made for the remaining £98 of the subscription. Next morning, at nine o’clock, this great man opened an office in Cornhill. Crowds of people beset his door, and when he shut up at three o’clock, he found that no less than one thousand shares had been subscribed for, and the deposits paid. He was thus, in five hours, the winner of £2,000. He was philosopher enough to be contented with his venture, and set off the same evening for the Continent. He was never heard of again.

    https://www.econlib.org/library/Mackay/macEx.html?chapter_num=3#book-reader

    After inflation since 1720, that’s about £420,000 in five hours. So, people have always been gullible. But back then they had the excuse that this ‘finance’ stuff was new-fangled.

    (And Tom L. will no doubt be along to tell me the report of this was unreliable. :( )

  28. 28.

    sab

    @Another Scott: We ( spouse and me) ask ourselves daily why northern Ohioans fled to Texas in the seventies, eighties and nineties because of the climate.

    Texas is habitable without air-conditioning three months a year. I grew up in northish Florida when standard residential air-conditioning was a window unit in the master bedroom. I do know southern heat with minimal air-conditioning. Our schools were not air conditioned.

  30. 30.

    J R in WV

    Many years ago a good friend and I toured Colorado and Wyoming ( and a brief pass through NE Utah ) collecting minerals and rocks. We covered several thousand miles in 3 weeks, camping and driving, hiking and prospecting. We saw quite a few drilling sites all over the place.

    The most typical thing we saw was gas flares from vents a few yards from the drilling towers, and big flat platforms with liquid waste burning with hot blue flames. Looked like sterno under a container of hot food at a buffet line. I suppose that the volume of heat generated was enormous just from a few of those drilling sites. And of course, Texas, way south of where we were touring, has way more drilling sites than any other state in the US.

    I’ve seen huge tracts of land from commercial aircraft with “perforations” on a regular pattern for long distances, as we flew over some of these tracts for 45 minutes at high-altitude airliner speeds. Thousands of drilled holes, with few if any pump-jacks or gas Christmas trees at well heads. So even in West Texas the likelihood of needing to run pipelines into drilling sites is between slim and none.

    Not that I care if these financial pirates make out any money at all!!

  31. 31.

    West of the Rockies

    “… lead the charge…”  How very brave of them.  Such courage.  Oh, sure, it shits on the environment, but if it means sweet, sweet dollars, why not?//

  33. 33.

    NotMax

    FYI (WaPo link).

    Last April, as veterans hospitals struggled to find masks to protect their workers and patients from the coronavirus, a veteran reached out with promises to help.

    “Unlike most vendors we are commitment [sic] to providing support during this time and are offering a COVID-19 discount to agencies who need large quantities of these items shipped,” Robert Stewart Jr. wrote to a contracting officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs. “I am glad I can help . . . support our men/women in uniform and vets.”

    In fact, Stewart, 35, had no masks and no ability to get them. On Wednesday, he was sentenced in federal court in Virginia to 21 months in prison for using fraudulently obtained covid-19 relief loans in part on fruitless efforts to deliver. Source

  34. 34.

    West of the Rockies

    @Danielx:  Maybe a Nigerian prince will want to donate kabillions if the NRCC will just forward their account info.

  36. 36.

    mrmoshpotato

    Q: Have they been keeping up with the energy-grid news out of Texas?

    A: You don’t understand, normie: Our beans, they are magic:

    The coming grid-taking-a-shit won’t be caused by weather.

  37. 37.

    Another Scott

    Since Bitcoin is FDIC insured, there’s really no issue. Right? Right??

    DoJ (from February):

    A federal indictment unsealed today charges three North Korean computer programmers with participating in a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy to conduct a series of destructive cyberattacks, to steal and extort more than $1.3 billion of money and cryptocurrency from financial institutions and companies, to create and deploy multiple malicious cryptocurrency applications, and to develop and fraudulently market a blockchain platform.

    A second case unsealed today revealed that a Canadian-American citizen has agreed to plead guilty in a money laundering scheme and admitted to being a high-level money launderer for multiple criminal schemes, including ATM “cash-out” operations and a cyber-enabled bank heist orchestrated by North Korean hackers.

    […]

    Yes, I would like to buy an entry in a very slow ledger that requires 1569.96 kWh per transaction* and keep it in a place where pirate nation states can steal it at any time. Where do I sign up??!!

    * – Equivalent to the power consumption of an average U.S. household over 53.81 days.

    Grr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  39. 39.

    Delk

    Wait until the gqp goes all in on Bitcoin and then start the rumor that cryptocurrency funds critical race theory.

  40. 40.

    sab

    Pet issues. My new pitbull does not have lime disease or heartworms. She had her worst shots. She behaved like a perfect little lady.  Gets spayed in a month. She is old enough that not doing it has serious health implications.

    My favorite cat is on the cusp of hyperthyroid. That explains why this old cat has been zipping around like a maniac for months. Doctor who could treat him is retiring this year, so yeah he is  signing on for treatment.

    Timid new cat still lurking, in ever broadening range. My he hates unfamiliar humans. He likes cats though. Also too dogs.

  41. 41.

    Mike in NC

    Abbott just signed a law allowing any Texan to open-carry a gun without requiring a concealed carry permit. Just gets crazier and crazier there.

  43. 43.

    Another Scott

    More from the White House today. WH.gov:

    This is a serious concern, especially because of what experts are calling the “Delta” vir- — the “Delta” variant. It’s a variant that is more easily transmissible, potentially deadlier, and particularly dangerous for young people.

    But the good news is, we have the solution.The science and the data are clear: The best way to protect yourself against these variants are to get fully vaccinated.

    So, please, please, if you have one shot, get the second shot as soon as you can so you’re fully vaccinated. And if you haven’t gotten vaccinated yet, get vaccinated now. Now. Don’t put it off. It’s free. It’s easy. It’s convenient.

    And as I said many times, text your ZIP Code to the numbers 438829 — 438829 — to find the sites where you can get vaccinated closest to you. Get your free Uber or Lyft ride to and from vaccination sites. I want to thank Uber and Lyft for their cooperation.

    Use the extended hours at thousands of pharmacies in June, including thousands that are open 24/7 on Friday of this month. Most pharmacies now offer walk-in vaccinations. No appointment is needed.

    Employers with less than 500 employees: The federal government is providing you a tax credit to give your workers paid time off to get vaccinated and recover if they need be.

    And for anyone who still questions, that’s okay if you still have questions. But act — act now. Act now. Talk to your family and friends who’ve gotten the vac- — gotten vaccinated. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist.

    (Emphasis added.)

    Spread the word.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  44. 44.

    Gravenstone

    @bluehill: I’m sure they’ll offer an especially warm welcome to Chinese immigrants. I mean it’s not like their ilk haven’t been spending the last year plus villainizing the country or anything..

    Eta: and the comment box is a hot mess on Android. It’s scaled waaay too large for the screen and you have to go fishing for it once you’re ready to actually submit the comment.

  47. 47.

    sab

    @zhena gogolia: I wish he wasn’t horrified by humans. If he wants good food ( we won’t starve him) Cat treats are better than cat dish food. Sweet guy led astray by bad humans. Common in cat world, which is a rough place,

  49. 49.

    trollhattan

    My crypto power supply proposal is this: collect the waste heat from all the Bitcoin “mines” and use the heat to drive turbines that generate electricity to power all the world’s competing crypto currencies.

    You’re welcome.

  50. 50.

    sab

    @MagdaInBlack: He is wandering all over the house.  Only one of the six cats has issues. That is Meg the equally timid girl. Whenever Meg rushes to the issue Starscream ( hyperthyroid) rushes to the defense. Meg is concerned mostly with pristine litter box. Cats are very weird

  52. 52.

    sab

    @MagdaInBlack: Psycho Dobby?

    Our new dog is Ponyo. Named for a charracter in Japanese anime who was a goldfish who wanted to be a litle girl.Our new girl is brownish orange and possibly wants to be human. But she is still a dog, although we totally adore her. Such a good good dog.

    Dobby was the house elf in HarryPotter Two.   We call him Dobby the psycho house demon. We are all terrified of this terrified little cat. The whole situation is horrible.

  53. 53.

    sab

    Dobby the house demon wanders our house a lot. He mostly seems comfortable, but he is terrified of humans he encounters. So I mostly avoid him. Most of my cats and all of my dogs like him, or at least trust him

  60. 60.

    Another Scott

    @sab: Obligatory…

    Dog wanted out. Was insufficiently cautious so MURDERBALL got out too. Ran to capture cat. Got cat. Funky latch on back door has slipped, locking me out. Cat escapes. Recover cat, stepping in dog shit in bare feet. Call daughter until she wakes and answers to let me in.

    — FBIDidARICO!Hat (@Popehat) June 17, 2021

    (MURDERBALL is Popehat’s rapidly growing black kitten.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  61. 61.

    Jay

    You guys seen this?

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxm7Hu-IHJs

    Got my second shot yesterday,

    Moderna right arm, (thanks Dolly)

    Pfizer left arm,

    Not sure what gang tats I am supposed to get,

    competing sleeves on each arm?

    still disappointed with my WiFi reception but my personality has become more magnetic,

  63. 63.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @sab: A couple of generations ago I briefly resided in a commune in west Baltimore. There were other pets about, but one cat that lived in the basement. Food would be left for her, but she freaked out whenever she saw a human (she’d smell cooking & slither up the steps but once the door was opened fled at warp speed). Some speculated that a former (unnamed) communard had fed the poor thing some acid. but most likely she’d been abused in a more banal fashion.

    I don’t think she ever got over it. I should ask my friend who was the house’s last resident.

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