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Cryptocurrency scams cost owners $7.7B in 2021, driven by DeFi-based “rug pulls”
Crypto scams were once again the largest form of crypto crime, with over $7.7 billion worth of cryptocurrency taken from victims worldwide.
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 123 posts.
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Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore
Ethereum isn't fun anymore. There I said it. And although, the last time I developed an app using it has been more than a year ago, I stand by my word. Developing dapps on Ethereum has become ann
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Non-Fungible Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift, like Dave Chappelle, is leveraging the power of the Internet to take control of their art.
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The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme
With over $20b in assets under management Celsius Network is the biggest centralised lending platform in the crypto space.
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Is Web3 anything?
The term “web3” seems pretty fluid and is being used as a label for a bunch of disparate ideas. Given that it’s a decentralized group describing a decentralized movement, that lack of focus isn’t exactly surprising. Almost by definition it’s going to end up being different things to different people.
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Shorting Bitcoin
I just bought put options on MicroStrategy ($MSTR) , Coinbase ($COIN) , and Purpose Bitcoin ETF ($BTCC-B.TO) , all at a strike price not far off the current (late June) price, expiring around Christmas. Here’s the thinking.
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The Tether Ponzi Scheme
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U.S. insurrectionists received $500k in bitcoins from French donor
Did you know that Alt-right groups got $500k in bitcoins a month before the capitol riot? Read the entire report here and find out who the secret donor is.
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Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history
We’ve lost far too many hackers to suicide. What if Satoshi was one of them?
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Why Zulip will not get on the blockchain bandwagon
This week, Discord teased plans to integrate a crypto asset wallet. After backlash from their user community, Discord clarified that the feature isn’t ready to ship “for now”. With many popular social and chat apps already on the blockchain bandwagon (including Facebook, Telegram, Signal, Twitter and …
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Why Web3?
Over the last month, there has been a ton of debate and conversation about web2 vs web3 with many leading voices raising doubts about web3. Debate and doubt are healthy. And web3 enthusiasts, particularly on Twitter, remind me of missionaries trying to recruit the unwashed to their belief system. Frankly, it is all…
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The Web3 Fraud
By now effectively all ;login:’s readers have heard the term “web3” and “dapps” bandied about as if they are some great revolution. They are not. The technical underpinnings are so terrible that it is clear they exist only to hype the underlying cryptocurrencies. The actual utility of these “decentralized” systems is…
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Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists
Mostly the reason I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists as an institution is that their primary value add is marketing, their due diligence is a joke, and they are functionally equivalent…
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How Iran Uses Bitcoin Mining to Evade Sanctions and “Export” Oil
The US imposes an almost total economic embargo on Iran, including a ban on all Iranian imports and sanctions on Iranian financial institutions.
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Ethereum Services Are Centralized
EDIT: I would have fleshed this out more had I known it would be so widely circulated, but to address some common criticisms:
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Smart contracts on Bitcoin
While Bitcoin is the gold standard in crypto, Ethereum has been the innovator, bringing new ideas, particularly smart contracts, to the table. Smart contracts allow developers to easily build things on a blockchain and we have seen a proliferation of new things built on the Ethereum blockchain as a result. But what if…
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Fictional Cryptocurrencies
I said they were fictional! Stop trying to invest in them!
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Metakovan, the mystery Beeple art buyer, and his NFT/DeFi scheme
At the end of the day, this is a straight-up ICO-style index fund to speculate on NFTs.
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Is Web3 Bullshit?
And is that even the right question?