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MPs’ Bid to Amend El Salvador’s BTC Bill Raises Questions About State & Freedom
An audacious bid from two opposition lawmakers to amend key clauses in El Salvador’s forthcoming bitcoin (BTC) adoption law is accompanied by furious debate among the international crypto community.
Two MPs from the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMNL) party – Anabel Belloso and Dina Argueta – yesterday announced they were seeking to launch a private member’s bill in the National Assembly that, if accepted, would repeal sections of the Bitcoin law, which is now more than two months from promulgating. One controversial section, number 7, obliges merchants to accept BTC at the request of a customer – in effect forcing businesses to accept BTC, provided they have access to a PC or a smartphone.
But Belloso and Argueta told reporters that the proposed amendment would, in the former’s words, ensure that BTC “is not mandatory to use” – and go even further.
“The amendment stipulates that salaries, bonuses, and pensions continue to be paid in dollars and not with this cryptocurrency and that it is not recognized as legal currency,” she said.
Belloso added,
“We are not against technological modernization, but you should not play with people's finances.”
Her posts divided opinion in ensuing threads, with some expressing their “thanks,” but others pointing out the futility of salary-related insistences – particularly as the government this week has already ruled out the notion of companies paying their employees in BTC. Others still accused the FMNL of “hypocrisy,” and said other – larger – opposition parties had put forward “more credible” arguments.
The FMNL was once the driving force in Salvadorian politics, and produced presidents who ruled from 2009 to 2014. However, the party suffered a crushing defeat in 2019, when the incumbent Nayib Bukele came to power. And in legislative elections held earlier this year, it took another battering, with its representation in the lower house reduced to just four seats.
Bukele’s ruling coalition has 64 out of 84 seats, 56 of which are held by his own Nuevas Ideas Party – meaning that barring a major backbench rebellion or an (equally unlikely) concerted opposition effort, the Belloso-Argueta bill may not even make it past the committee stage and onto the floor of the lower chamber.
Regardless, the bill has already succeeded in stirring debate among international crypto thinkers.
Jake Chervinsky, General Counsel at Compound Labs, opined that it “would be great if this could go forward, or at least if we advocated in favor of it.”
But Castle Island Ventures partner Nic Carter claimed:
“If you’re steadfastly opposed to state monetary coercion, and your best way to instrumentalize that view is to demean bitcoiners, I’m going to question the sincerity of your opposition to coercion.”
Chervinsky, however, questioned the wisdom of this assertion.
The Coin Center Executive Director Jerry Brito, meanwhile, went on the offensive, claiming that “El Salvador’s Bitcoin law is a disgrace.”
He wrote:
“It forces citizens to accept bitcoin whether they want to or not. This is intuitively wrong to any liberal. I’m surprised that so many smart and principled people have nevertheless applauded and defended this law. They are confusing the ends of liberty with the means of bitcoin and I hope they’re doing so merely in error.”

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2021-06-20 20:00:33

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___

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2021-06-17 20:58:32

Ledger Hack Saga Continues: Scammers 'Gifting' Fake Hardware Wallets
With scammers reaching for increasingly creative measures to steal cryptoassets, customers of hardware wallet maker Ledger are being sent fake 'replacements' for their devices.
A fake Ledger Nano X was allegedly sent to a Reddit user who disclosed the accompanying letter written by scammers posing as the company’s CEO Pascal Gauthier.
“As a victim of the latest Data Breach I have signed up reddit only to post this,” the user, who goes by the name of jjrand, said. “So beware guys, this is really some next level of scam attempt.”
Ledger indeed came back with a reply to the user.
“It's a fake device, do not use it. We've been investigating this scheme already,” Nicolas Bacca, Co-Founder of Ledger, said. Bacca attached a link for a phishing attack warning posted May 10 this year - meaning that this scam has been making rounds for a while now.
The letter makes reference to the massive data dump Ledger had suffered last year, which it self had followed the June data breach. At the time, a database containing some 1 million email addresses of Ledger users and more than 270,000 physical addresses and phone numbers was dumped on Raidforums, a website for sharing hacked databases. This created targets out of these users for various scam attempts.
“For this reason for security purposes, we have sent you a new device you must switch to a new device to stay safe," the letter reads. "There is a manual inside your new box you can read that to learn how to set up your new device. For this reason, we have changed our device structure. We now guarantee that this kinda breach will never happen again,” the scammers wrote.
The detailed-oriented Cryptoverse hasn't failed to notice the awkward and repetitious syntax, as well as poor grammar, neither of which are staples of a professional company within their communications - but one does need to keep in mind that many users are also not native English speakers.
“Why would a CEO use the word 'kinda'? The horrible grammar alone gives it away,” commented one Redditor who goes by the name of RFV1985.
Ledger’s user received the hardware in packaging that was at least somewhat more convincing than the letter’s contents, as indicated by the posted pictures.
The manual that came with the device encourages users to plug in the fake device to their PC, open a folder, run the featured app, and then launch the recovery phrase to import their existing wallet to the new device. Once they do this, it is most likely the scammers take over control of the real wallet and are enabled to steal the cryptocurrency it contains.

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2021-06-17 20:00:47

This Is When MicroStrategy Might Sell Bitcoin According to Arthur Hayes
Former CEO of major crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX, Arthur Hayes, discussed the only time the US-based software developer MicroStrategy (MSTR) could be forced to sell their bitcoin (BTC), now worth billions of USD.
In his recent blog piece, Hayes noted how MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor "had the gall" in 2020 to issue USD 1.6bn worth of bonds and use the proceeds to buy BTC.
Hayes went on to explain that 0.75% coupon convertible bond is due in December 2025, and zero-coupon bond in February 2027, stating that:
"If MSTR doesn’t have the cash flow to pay back the principle, or cannot access the corporate bond market, then and only then would MSTR be forced to sell assets."
The question of what yield would it be uneconomical to refinance the bond is driven by the performance of BTC versus the growth in the US money supply - which is dictated by the Federal Reserve.
If one observes the historical returns of the past five years, the refinancing rate for a five-year bond would need to be greater than 5,808% or 1,162% per year. "At that rate, a company is effectively shut out of the corporate bond market." However, this situation is "highly unlikely" for MicroStrategy as it has a viable cash-generating business.
"That is because many institutional bond investors lack common sense," argued Hayes. "They follow a set of investment mandates blindly." So, they could hate BTC "to its core," but if MicroStrategy's corporate paper shows an attractive yield compared to their benchmark, these investors will "buy the issue up to their concentration limits."
Given that MicroStrategy is a major, listed, audited company, its issues must be owned regardless of what its CEO does with the proceeds, writes Hayes, describing this as "the reflexive power of passive index investing," and adding:
"It’s quite smart to use the sloth of the professional investing community to invest in a concept that aims to disintermediate them."
Per Hayes, Saylor will not desert the investors, will continue leading the portfolios "through the rough seas," and will continue "gorging on cheap corporate debt as long as institutional investors invest."
As for the question if Saylor is irresponsible or a genius, Hayes said that the answer typically depends on the price of BTC, because the CEO has transformed his company into "a pseudo-Bitcoin ETF" (exchange-traded fund).

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2021-06-12 20:00:47

'Locked-Out' Users Sue Coinbase For North of USD 5M
Six Coinbase users are taking the crypto exchange giant to court to seek more than USD 5m in compensation for themselves and other users who were allegedly locked out of their accounts for several months or longer at a time.
According to a complaint filed on Friday in San Francisco, USA, federal court, and first reported by Decrypt, the plaintiffs - Michael Leone, Joseph Treseder, Travis Reece, David Beavers, Fazal Us Saboor Ali, and Keisha Pinkney - accuse the exchange of preventing them from accessing their accounts for arbitrary reasons and prolonged amounts of time, as they have been unable to “invest, spend, save, earn, and use or even withdraw their funds” from the platform.
The exchange violated its “duty to provide access to the Coinbase platform to conduct authorized transactions,” they claim.
Therefore, they seek "any and all available relief, including equitable relief and recovery of damages caused by Defendants’ actions," said the document, adding that "the amount placed in controversy by the Complaint exceeds, in the aggregate, USD 5 million, exclusive of interests and costs."
The case highlights ongoing reported Coinbase's customer support issues. All plaintiffs claim that they, after they were barred from using the service, they contacted customer support, which, in most cases, responded with an automated response which said that their issues were “under review.”
In some cases, customers were forced to go through the identity verification process once more, while other claims revolve around login issue, as some of the plaintiffs claim to have received error messages when trying to log in to the platform - even though the support staff claimed that the account issues had been solved, they said.
In some cases, the plaintiffs claim, they had regained access to their accounts but found that they had no crypto funds, or their accounts were erased without explanation.
As a result of such "negligence," the plaintiffs and class members were locked from trading and in some cases, regained access only when the value of their cryptoassets has dropped significantly.
“Defendant’s conduct amounted to gross negligence where they breached the duties as alleged herein and by failing to create and enforce an adequate plan to prevent security breaches and lock outs that prevent Plaintiffs and the Putative Class from accessing their Coinbase accounts and/or funds where they know that, “as a newer asset class, crypto is widely considered to be volatile –with the potential for significant upward and downward movements over shorter time periods,” and knew or should have known that their breaches would likely inflict substantial damages upon its consumers,” the complaint reads.
In late March, Alesia Haas, the company’s chief financial officer (CFO), said that the exchange is hiring new customer support agents, as well as making investments on the product side "to reduce the friction that we see a lot of customers call in and offer complaints about."

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2021-06-09 21:00:27

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