Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart Contracts

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Sharp price swings in cryptocurrencies are causing “destabilising” capital flows in emerging markets, and the use of crypto in place of traditional currencies poses “immediate and acute risks”, according to Tobias Adrian at the IMF. [ FT , paywalled] Better chatbots only amplify the ELIZA effect. When things do go wrong, the results can be disastrous: Babel Finance, the Hong Kong-based crypto lender that froze withdrawals on 17 June, has retained Kirkland and Ellis to advise on its restructuring. [ Bloomberg Law , paywalled] I predict Earth 2 will either drag their heels on adding teleporting and discover everyone hates it, or add it and discover the bottom falls out of the real estate market. If they ever add any features besides “land speculation simulator #294”, anyway. He was finally caught in Albania in August 2022. Özer, his sister Serap Özer, and his brother Güven Özer have all been sentenced to 11,196 years in jail — down from the 40,562 years the prosecutor had asked for. Number go up! [ BBC] New York takes on the securities fraud gig economy

The warnings of AI doom originate with LessWrong’s Eliezer Yudkowsky, a man whose sole achievements in life are charity fundraising — getting Peter Thiel to fund his Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a research institute that does almost no research — and finishing a popular Harry Potter fanfiction novel. Yudkowsky has literally no other qualifications or experience.We are quite certain that Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison were two of the rationalists who read that essay and headed straight for all the prescription amphetamines they could legally obtain. FTX had its own staff psychiatrist on hand, after all. With the sudden interest of the regulator, this is shaping up to be the story of 2018 in cryptocurrency, and so more depth of coverage in this subject would have improved these chapters somewhat - however, hindsight is 20-20, and this was not really a development that could have been predicted when the book was still being written. Did Sam do a small amount of his claimed kimchi arbitrage, but then get a loan of tethers to start Alameda and later FTX? resorted to “Ponzi borrowing” — borrowing cash to pay previous debts — which lasts only as long as there are more lenders. Come UST’s crash … there weren’t. This particular example was a constructed scenario rather than a rules-based simulation … Source: know the team that supplied the scenario … Meaning an entire, prepared story as opposed to an actual simulation. No ML models were trained, etc.

Do AI art and ChatGPT output qualify as art? Can they be used for art? Sure, anything can be used for art. But that’s not a substantive question. The important questions are who’s getting paid, who’s getting ripped off, and who’s just running a grift. In the meantime, here’s a yummy-looking recipe for pork belly bossam with radish and oyster kimchi. [ SCMP] The myth of the boy genius billionaireThat is: the open letter is the same small group of tech funders. They want to get you worrying about sci-fi scenarios and not about the socially damaging effects of their AI-based businesses. All of this would, of course, be resolved if GBTC was converted into a proper ETF. No wonder Grayscale is suing the SEC to try to force an ETF through. The only bit of Earth 2 that does anything right now is the virtual land trading system. Earth 2 is very proud of this, per the 2022 Update document:

We need your support to publish more stories like this. Send us money! Here’s Amy’s Patreon, and here’s David’s. Sign up today! The International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) recommends that regulators go after DeFi “developers,” in that they’re usually the protocol operators as well: “In reality, regardless of the operating model of the DeFi arrangement, ‘responsible persons’ can be identified,” said Tuang Lee Lim, chair of the IOSCO fintech task force. [ IOSCO Report , PDF; Bloomberg , archive] The compliance will cost a fortune by itself. Does Binance even have this much money in actual dollars? Remember that cryptocurrency and AI doom are already close friends — Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison of FTX/Alameda are true believers, as are Vitalik Buterin and many Ethereum people. But what about the AI drone that killed its operator, huh? In 2021, cryptocurrency exchanges located in San Francisco filed more Suspicious Activity Reports than all securities firms and casinos combined. [ Securities Analytics]Adrian has followed cryptocurrencies at the IMF for a few years now. “Crypto is being used to take money out of countries that are regarded as unstable.” Overall, Gerard's style is clearly influenced by his years spent writing about music. His depictions of some of the principals in the cryptocurrency space could easily be describing DJs and bands. This contributes to a comfortable, well-paced read that manages to be engaging whilst still imparting a lot of information. However, it is when he gets onto home ground, such as in the final chapter, that the author displays his most biting insight. The high rollers — as in real-world casinos, that phrase was always a euphemism for “money launderers” — will need a new home. Justin Sun would probably love to help, but does anyone trust him enough? It’s just that our technology is not within a million miles of that. Mashing the autocomplete button isn’t going to destroy humanity.