The Justice Department is creating a new team to investigate and prevent hackers from using cryptocurrency exchanges to remain anonymous while extorting money from victims of their attacks, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Wednesday. From a report: The main goal of the new enforcement team is to take down the infrastructure and "criminal supply chain" that allows hackers to carry out ransomware attacks in which victims' data is frozen until they pay a ransom, Monaco said. "Cryptocurrency exchanges want to be the banks of the future," Monaco told the Aspen Cyber Summit. "We need to make sure that folks can have confidence when they use these systems."

Brazil's Federal Deputy Aureo Ribeiro has revealed that Brazilians could soon be able to buy houses, cars and even McDonald's with Bitcoin. From a report: The South American nation is preparing to vote on a cryptocurrency regulation bill which is expected to be presented to the Plenary of the Chamber of Deputies within the next few days. "We want to separate the wheat from the chaff, create regulations so that you can trade, know where you're buying and know who you're dealing with," Ribeiro said.

"With this asset you will be able to buy a house, a car, go to McDonald's to buy a hamburger -- it will be a currency in the country as it happened in other countries." Bill 2.303/15, which calls for the regulation of virtual currencies, was approved for presentation last week. If it gets the thumbs up from the Chamber of Deputies this week, then Brazil looks set to follow El Salvador's example and make Bitcoin legal tender. Further reading: In Brazil, Bitcoin Acceptance Comes With More Regulation.

We thought the carnage was over for popular decentralized finance, or DeFi, staking protocol Compound, but as it turns out, millions more than we thought are at risk. About $162 million is up for grabs after an upgrade gone very wrong, according to Robert Leshner, founder of Compound Labs. CNBC reports: At first, the Compound chief tweeted Friday that there was a cap to how many comp tokens could be accidentally distributed, noting that âoethe impact is bounded, at worst, 280,000 comp tokens,â or about $92.6 million. But on Sunday morning, Leshner revealed that the pool of cash that had already been emptied once had been replenished â" exposing another 202,472.5 comp tokens to exploit, or roughly $66.9 million at its current price.

On Wednesday, Compound rolled out what should have been a pretty standard upgrade. Soon after implementation, however, it was clear that something had gone seriously wrong, once users started to receive millions of dollars in comp tokens. For example, $30 million worth of comp tokens were claimed in one transaction. The saving grace of the entire debacle, however, was the fact that the pool of cash that was open to exploit -- something called the Comptroller contract -- had a finite amount of tokens. The problem is that this leaky pool got a fresh influx of cash, and 0.5 comp tokens are being added roughly every 15 seconds, according to Gupta. "When the drip() function was called this morning, it sent the backlog (202,472.5, about two months of COMP since the last time the function was called) into the protocol for distribution to users," Leshner wrote in a tweet Sunday morning. Leshner noted that this brought the total comp at risk to 490,000 comp tokens, or about $162 million.

There are a few proposals to fix the bug, but Compound's governance model is such that any changes to the protocol require a multiday voting window, and Gupta said it takes another week for the successful proposal to be executed. In the meantime, this pool of cash is once again up for grabs for users who know how to exploit the bug. Compound made clear that no supplied or borrowed funds were at risk, which is some consolation. "No user funds are or were at risk so it's not that big of a deal," said Gupta. "Everyone kinda got diluted but didn't lose anything directly."

"Cyber criminals using a ransomware-as-a-service scheme have been spotted complaining that the group they rent the malware from could be using a hidden backdoor to grab ransom payments for themselves," reports ZDNet: REvil is one of the most notorious and most common forms of ransomware around and has been responsible for several major incidents. The group behind REvil lease their ransomware out to other crooks in exchange for a cut of the profits these affiliates make by extorting Bitcoin payments in exchange for the ransomware decryption keys that the victims need. But it seems that cut isn't enough for those behind REvil: it was recently disclosed that there's a secret backdoor coded into their product, which allows REvil to restore the encrypted files without the involvement of the affiliate. This could allow REvil to takeover negotiations with victims, hijack the so-called "customer support" chats — and steal the ransom payments for themselves.

Analysis of underground forums by cybersecurity researchers at Flashpoint suggests that the disclosure of the REvil backdoor hasn't gone down well with affiliates. One forum user claimed to have had suspicions of REvil's tactics, and said their own plans to extort $7 million from a victim was abruptly ended. They believe that one of the REvil authors took over the negotiations using the backdoor and made off with the money.

Miami is a city "that unblushingly loves rule-breaking and money," according to a new article in New York magazine, wondering whether Miami could ever really replace Silicon Valley as "a more natural home — and maybe even an accelerant — for the next generation of disruption fiends." On December 4, Delian Asparouhov, a venture capitalist in San Francisco, posted, "ok guys hear me out, what if we move silicon valley to Miami," and Miami mayor Francis Suarez, lying in bed at home in Coconut Grove, replied, "How can I help...?" Ever since, Suarez has been on a mission to rebrand Miami — long a place to spend money, rather than earn it — as a haven for founders who feel underappreciated in more calcified urban climes. He bought (with money from a venture capitalist) billboards in San Francisco featuring his Twitter handle and an invitation to "DM me." As he put it, "I saw the tsunami coming, got out my surfboard, and started paddling."

The flood of new Miamians who have arrived, full or part time, during the pandemic includes tech investors (Peter Thiel, David Sacks), cryptocurrency bulls (Anthony Pompliano, Ari Paul), new-media tycoons (Bryan Goldberg, Dave Portnoy), start-up founders (Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, Steven Galanis), and many more who aren't yet billionaires but think the Magic City will give them their best shot... The boom is visible in the city's crane-spiked skyline, too, with deals for Spotify, Microsoft, Apple, and TikTok either signed or in the offing. In greater South Florida, a related incursion by the finance industry — Goldman Sachs, Citadel, Elliott — is in full swing... In July, according to Redfin, Miami was the top migration destination for home buyers in the U.S., while San Francisco had the largest homeowner exodus. Suarez told me about a playful text he recently received from the mayor there, London Breed: "Stop stealing my techies." He says he replied, "Sorry, London, I love you, but no."

Already, Suarez has made gains in turning Miami into the most cryptocurrency-friendly city in the U.S. In the past six months, the world's largest bitcoin conference happened here; a crypto exchange called FTX paid $135 million for the naming rights to the NBA arena (edging out the hometown porn studio BangBros); and a city-sanctioned currency called MiamiCoin debuted, generating millions in fees for municipal coffers. Suarez also accepts campaign contributions in bitcoin. He's running for reelection this November and looks certain to win, thanks in part to hefty donations and cheerleading from Silicon Valley eminences...

The tech case for Miami isn't wholly persuasive. (The most notable local start-up is a company that sells kibble.) But it is infectious.
The article notes, for example, that "For all his enthusiasm, Suarez acknowledges that a robust tech ecosystem needs one thing he can't simply market into existence: a standout university" (with a world-class engineering department to fuel startups). Suarez's solution appears to be offering Miami land parcels to Florida Polytechnic University for a possible satellite campus teaching DeFi/crypto/blockchain/NFT technologies.

The article also points out the possibility of global warming-induced hurricanes and rising sea levels, the city's widening income gap and rising cost of living, and Miami's record number of pediatric-ICU COVID admissions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: More than 6,000 Coinbase users had funds stolen from their accounts after hackers used a vulnerability in Coinbase's SMS-based two-factor authentication system to breach accounts. The intrusions took place earlier this year, between March and May, the exchange said in a data breach notification letter it has filed with US state attorney general offices. Coinbase said the attacks could exploit this bug only if they knew the victim's username and password. "While we are not able to determine conclusively how these third parties gained access to this information, this type of campaign typically involves phishing attacks or other social engineering techniques to trick a victim into unknowingly disclosing login credentials to a bad actor. "We have not found any evidence that these third parties obtained this information from Coinbase itself," the company said. Coinbase said it would reimburse all users who lost funds in these intrusions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: How about paying for your Taco Bell order with Dogecoin? Or some of Whole Food's avocado ice cream with Bitcoin. That's the goal of a new partnership between crypto payment processor BitPay and Verifone, one of the world's largest providers of those little machines you use to pay via a credit card or Venmo at a checkout line. Later this year, the newest Verifone terminals will start accepting payments for U.S. merchants from a range of cryptocurrency wallets and tokens, the companies said in a statement Tuesday. Terms of the agreement weren't disclosed.

Widespread use of tokens for purchases has been a goal that has long eluded the crypto industry, with most users focusing on speculation and merchants scared off by the price volatility of the digital assets. BitPay said it will provide greater protection from price swings since the funds will be settled promptly into the merchant's bank account in traditional currency once a transaction is completed. BitPay already processes more than 60,000 transactions a month, more than half of them in Bitcoin, according to the company. By comparison, Visa handles an average of 150 million transactions a day. While the companies didn't say which merchants will be included, some brands that Verifone works with already include American Eagle Outfitters, Macy's, Williams Sonoma, Taco Bell and Whole Foods.

"Bitcoin miners, under fire for their sizable environmental footprint, are forging partnerships with owners of struggling nuclear-power plants with electricity to spare," reports the Wall Street Journal: The matchups have the potential to solve key issues facing each industry, executives and analysts say: Electricity-hungry bitcoin miners want stable and carbon-free power, while nuclear plants facing competition from cheaper power sources need new customers.

Talen Energy Corp. has entered into a joint venture with bitcoin-mining company TeraWulf Inc., which has started land development for a mining facility the size of four football fields next to its Pennsylvania nuclear plant. Nuclear generator Energy Harbor Corp. will provide power to a Standard Power mining center in Ohio starting in December... New nuclear projects are eyeing cryptocurrency miners as well: Startup Oklo Inc., which plans to build a small-scale fission power plant that can run on used nuclear fuel, has signed a 20-year supply deal with hardware and hosting firm Compass Mining.

"Both industry's challenges are the other industry's positives," said Sean Lawrie, partner at consulting firm ScottMadden Inc....

"At the core of bitcoin mining is energy and energy infrastructure," said Paul Prager, chief executive of TeraWulf.

"What if we told you there was a hamster who has been trading cryptocurrencies since June — and recently was doing better than Warren Buffett and the S&P 500?" asks NPR: Meet Mr. Goxx, a hamster who works out of what is possibly the most high-tech hamster cage in existence.

It's designed so that when Mr. Goxx runs on the hamster wheel, he can select among dozens of cryptocurrencies. Then, deciding between two tunnels, he chooses whether to buy or sell. According to the Twitch account for the hamster, his decision is sent over to a real trading platform — and yes, real money is involved.
Last Monday, after 100 days the hamster's portfolio was up 48%, reports one site, "before Bitcoin tumbled, which brought the rest of the crypto market down with it." But the hamster's portfolio is still up nearly 30% since he started trading in June, the article points out, "outperforming Bitcoin, the S&P 500, and even Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway."

The hamster's business partner adds that profits aren't yet enough to cover the initial investment on Mr. Goxx's cage. And there's other issues...

"Since Mr. Goxx is an honorable business rodent, he must calculate with about 35% tax being subtracted on all his returns, so there is still some work left before he can really talk about making money."

The cryptocurrency-ATM company Coinmover has over 100 machines in stores in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Washington state — and plans to have 1,250 machines in 18 states by the end of the year, reports the Boston Globe.

Right now each machine is selling "an average of about $40,000 in cryptocurrency each month." There's a nationwide surge in easier ways to buy cryptocurrencies, with bitcoin ATMs leading the way. According to the industry tracking site Coin ATM Radar, there were about 6,000 such machines in the U.S. at this time last year, but over 26,000 today, with hundreds more installed every week. And that only counts "pure" bitcoin ATMs, the ones that only sell cryptocurrency. In addition, thousands of traditional cash-vending ATMs have been modified to support crypto purchases as well. Then there's Coinstar, which makes the coin-counting machines found in many US supermarkets. About 7,500 of these machines now sell bitcoin, and that number is expected to reach 10,000 by year's end. Researchers at a different site, How Many Bitcoin ATMs, have added these hybrid machines to the mix, and estimate there are over 42,000 bitcoin vending machines in the US today....

Financial technology giant NCR has entered the game. Last month NCR acquired Boston-based LibertyX, one of the first bitcoin ATM companies. These days, LibertyX mainly makes software to add crypto vending capabilities to standard ATMs and retail point-of-sale devices — the modern equivalent of cash registers. NCR is one of the world's leading makers of ATMs and point-of-sale devices. The LibertyX acquisition doesn't just mean thousands more crypto-capable ATMs. It could also mean that thousands of retail stores could sell crypto just like candy bars. It's already happening. LibertyX has deals with retailers CVS, Rite Aid, and 7-Eleven to enable bitcoin purchases at selected stores. A customer uses a LibertyX smartphone app to punch in the amount he or she wants to buy, up to $500 per day. A barcode appears on the phone's screen. A clerk scans the barcode and the customer hands over the cash. It's instantly added to the customer's bitcoin account, less a $4.95 transaction fee.

LibertyX claims this service is now available at over 20,000 retail stores...

According to a survey from the University of Chicago, 13 percent of US adults bought or sold cryptocurrency during the past year. That's nearly 33 million people. How many more will buy in, when thousands of retail stores and ATMs become bitcoin trading posts? We're about to find out.

Slashdot reader Striek writes: VoIP.ms, a Canadian VoIP provider [also serving the US], has been under a sustained, and presumably massive DDoS attack which started on the September 16th, 2021. The attack has been disruptive enough to be covered by major media outlets, including Hacker News, ZDNet, Ars Technica, BleepingComputer, CTV News, and The Toronto Star.

They have so far refused to pay a ransom demand, which has grown from 1 bitcoin at the outset ($45,000 USD at that time), to 100 bitcoin now, or $45 million. Similar attacks have occurred recently on several UK based VOiP providers.

With DDoS attacks against VOiP infrastructure difficult to defend against — or at least more difficult than your bog-standard denial of service, this may be setting a worrying trend.
Bleeping Computer reported Monday that the attack was "severely disrupting the company's operation: As customers configured their VoIP equipment to connect to the company's domain name, the DDoS attack disrupted telephony services, preventing them from receiving or making phone calls. As DNS was no longer working, the company advised customers to modify their HOSTS file to point the domain at their IP address to bypass DNS resolution. However, this just led the threat actors to perform DDoS attacks directly at that IP address as well.

To mitigate the attacks, VoIP.ms moved their website and DNS servers to Cloudflare, and while they reported some success, the company's site and VoIP infrastructure still have issues due to the continued denial-of-service attack.
ZDNet has been following the story: In an update on Wednesday, VoIP.ms apologized to customers and confirmed it was still being targeted by what it described as a 'ransom DDoS attack' . VoIP.ms says it has over 80,000 customers in 125 countries.
And in addition, this afternoon the company's Twitter account announced that "Our main U.S. upstream carrier is currently experiencing major issues on their network affecting inbound and outbound calls and messaging to US numbers. We have already been in contact with their senior leadership team and they are on it along with their whole NOC."

Epik's massive data breach is already affecting lives. Today the Washington Post describes a real estate agent in Pompano Beach who urged buyers on Facebook to move to "the most beautiful State." His name and personal details "were found on invoices suggesting he had once paid for websites with names such as racisminc.com, whitesencyclopedia.com, christiansagainstisrael.com and theholocaustisfake.com". The real estate brokerage where he worked then dropped him as an agent. The brokerage's owner told the Post they didn't "want to be involved with anyone with thoughts or motives like that."

"Some users appear to have relied on Epik to lead a double life," the Post reports, "with several revelations so far involving people with innocuous day jobs who were purportedly purveyors of hate online." (Alternate URL here.) Epik, based outside Seattle, said in a data-breach notice filed with Maine's attorney general this week that 110,000 people had been affected nationwide by having their financial account and credit card numbers, passwords and security codes exposed.... Heidi Beirich, a veteran researcher of hate and extremism, said she is used to spending weeks or months doing "the detective work" trying to decipher who is behind a single extremist domain. The Epik data set, she said, "is like somebody has just handed you all the detective work — the names, the people behind the accounts..."

Many website owners who trusted Epik to keep their identities hidden were exposed, but some who took additional precautions, such as paying in bitcoin and using fake names, remain anonymous....

Aubrey "Kirtaner" Cottle, a security researcher and co-founder of Anonymous, declined to share information about the hack's origins but said it was fueled by hackers' frustrations over Epik serving as a refuge for far-right extremists. "Everyone is tired of hate," Cottle said. "There hasn't been enough pushback, and these far-right players, they play dirty. Nothing is out of bounds for them. And now ... the tide is turning, and there's a swell moving back in their direction."
Earlier in the week, the Post reported: Since the hack, Epik's security protocols have been the target of ridicule among researchers, who've marveled at the site's apparent failure to take basic security precautions, such as routine encryption that could have protected data about its customers from becoming public... The hack even exposed the personal records from Anonymize, a privacy service Epik offered to customers wanting to conceal their identity.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Bitcoin's massive power consumption is the cryptocurrency's dirty secret. To mine bitcoin, computers across the globe chew through enough electricity to power a medium size country, somewhere on the order of the Netherlands or Poland depending on the estimate. In fact, electricity has become such a significant factor that one private equity firm owns a power plant to mine bitcoin. The company, Greenidge Generation, said at one point that they could mine one bitcoin for less than $3,000. Even today -- at $40,000 per bitcoin, some 30 percent off its peak -- the potential for profit is real. Which is why an investor-owned utility has dropped a containerized data center outside a coal-fired power plant 10 miles north of St. Louis. Ameren, the utility, was struggling to keep the 1,099 MW power plant running profitably when wholesale electricity prices dropped. But it wasn't well suited to running only when demand was high, so-called peaker duty. Instead, they're experimenting with running it full-time and using the excess electricity to mine bitcoin.

Ameren executives reportedly blame wind and solar power for the load variability that taxes the 55-year-old power plant. The utility claims that mining bitcoin could reduce its carbon footprint by allowing it to run its plants more consistently rather than ramping them up and down, which they say can increase emissions. "We have pretty dramatic changes in load minute by minute, second by second at times," Warren Wood, the utility's vice president of regulatory and legislative affairs, told E&E News. But when it's running full-time, they only have to take power away from the mining operations. Wood said it takes about 20 seconds to divert power back to the grid.

Ameren attempted to get rate payers to foot a portion of the bill for its experiment, but Missouri's consumer advocate pushed back. "If Ameren Missouri wants to enter into speculative commodities, like virtual currencies, then it should do so as a non-regulated service where ratepayers are unexposed to the economics of them," Geoff Marke, chief economist for the Missouri Office of the Public Counsel, wrote in a filing. "This endeavor is beyond the scope of intended electric utility regulation, and, if allowed, creates a slippery slope where ratepayers could be asked to put up capital for virtually anything." The utility says that if its bitcoin experiment pans out, it could attach similar containerized data centers to wind and solar farms to soak up excess electricity profitably in times of high supply or low demand. The coal-fired power plant that's being used in the experiment is scheduled to be shut down in 2028. Ameren says that so far it's pleased with the project, which has mined 20 coins and mints a new one at a rate of one every 15 days or so. Whether the math continues to work depends largely on the cost of running the plant and the price of bitcoin, which is highly volatile. Based on today's prices, the company has made about $800,000 since it switched on the miners in April.

Twitter will let users send and receive tips using Bitcoin as part of a broader push to help users make money from the service. From a report: Twitter also said Thursday that it's looking into authenticating users' nonfungible tokens -- digital goods ranging from high art to pictures of digital apes. Some users already showcase NFTs on their profiles, but there's no easy way to authenticate if the person displaying a picture actually owns it. "There's this growing interest among creators to use apps that run on the blockchain," said Esther Crawford, a product executive building Twitter's creator features. "We want to help creators participate in the promise of an evolving decentralized internet directly on Twitter." The updates are part of a strategy at Twitter to court creators by giving them more ways to share their work on the service, and more ways to make money. Twitter has offered a tipping feature for months, but it has been in a limited test. On Thursday, the company said it's rolling out tipping globally. The company also offers some creators a subscription tool, called Super Follows, which lets them charge others on the service for exclusive content.

Crypto heists are becoming increasingly common, but forensic investigators are getting savvier at figuring out who is behind specific accounts. From a report: Paolo Ardoino was on the front lines of one of the largest cryptocurrency heists of all time. He was flooded with calls and messages in August alerting him to a breach at Poly Network, a platform where users swap tokens among popular cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Binance and Dogecoin. Hackers had made off with $610 million in crypto, belonging to tens of thousands of people. Roughly $33 million of the funds were swiftly converted into Tether, a "stable coin" with a value that mirrors the U.S. dollar. Ardoino, Tether's chief technology officer, took note. Typically, when savvy cybercriminals make off with cryptocurrency, they transfer the assets among online wallets through difficult-to-trace transactions. And poof -- the money is lost. Ardoino sprang into action and minutes later froze the assets.

"We were really lucky," he said. "Minutes after we issued the freezing transaction, we saw the hacker attempt to move out his Tether. If we had waited five minutes more, all the Tether would be gone." Two weeks later, Tether released the money to its rightful owners. And after threats from Poly Network, the online bandit gave up the rest. The seizure pokes a hole in the long-held belief that cryptocurrency is impossible to trace. Cryptocurrency is computer code that allows people to send and receive funds, recording the transactions on a public ledger known as a blockchain, rather than retaining account holder info. Because of the lack of user data, cryptocurrencies like bitcoin have been hailed as a safe haven for criminal activity. Fueled by anonymity, the shadowy industry allows hackers, tax evaders and other bad actors to launder money secretively, outside of the traditional banking system. Online scammers made off with $2.6 billion in 2020, according to a Chainalysis report. That year, ransomware attacks more than quadrupled.

But forensics investigators are getting savvier at scrupulously mapping activity on blockchains and figuring out who is behind specific accounts. This has sparked a "novel cottage industry of data providers" who are able to track cryptocurrency accounts flagged for illicit activity, said Zachary Goldman, a lawyer at WilmerHale specializing in novel payment technologies. "That's never really been available before." Through tracking, agents have recouped stolen crypto funds in a handful of high-profile cases. In June, the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized the $2.3 million in bitcoin ransom Colonial Pipeline paid to hackers who infiltrated the company's computer network. Investigators used the blockchain to follow the flow of the ransom payment to track the perpetrators. In 2020, the crypto exchange KuCoin recovered almost all of the $281 million stolen by suspected North Korean hackers and refunded customers.

Robinhood plans to start a cryptocurrency wallet next month, the company announced on Wednesday. Engadget reports: The tool will allow you to send and receive digital currencies, as well as trade them and move them off the app. If you want to take part in the test, you'll need to join a waitlist. Robinhood plans to trial the feature with a small number of users first before expanding availability to more people gradually.

The company told The Verge it expects everyone will have access to their own wallet sometime in 2022. In the meantime, you can see progress on the wallet by following Robinhood's Twitter account and blog. The company promised to share whatever feedback early users provide on the product with the community. Initially, the wallet will support Bitcoin, Ethereum and even Dogecoin. The wallet will use a custodial system, which means Robinhood will manage the keys you need to unlock it. That said, you'll have the option to move your cryptocurrencies to other platforms should you so choose.

"China fired a fresh regulatory shot at its tech giants on Monday," writes Reuters, "telling them to end a long-standing practice of blocking each other's links on their sites or face consequences." The comments, made by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) at a news briefing, mark the latest step in Beijing's broad regulatory crackdown that has ensnared sectors from technology to education and property and wiped billions of dollars off the market value of some of the country's largest companies.

China's internet is dominated by a handful of technology giants which have historically blocked links and services by rivals on their platforms. Restricting normal access to internet links without proper reason "affects the user experience, damages the rights of users and disrupts market order," said MIIT spokesperson Zhao Zhiguo, adding that the ministry had received reports and complaints from users since it launched a review of industry practices in July. "At present we are guiding relevant companies to carry out self-examination and rectification," he said, citing instant messaging platforms as one of the first areas they were targeting.

He did not specify what the consequences would be for companies that failed to abide by the new guidelines.

Foreign Policy magazine explores just what happened after El Salvador adopted bitcoin as legal currency and launched its official government-approved bitcoin wallet Chivo: Chivo launched just after midnight on Sept. 7. The system started failing at three a.m. Server capacity was increased, and app installations were not re-enabled until 11:30 a.m. Transactions failed through the day; customer service lines were jammed; Chivo ATMs ran out of cash. Shortly after ten a.m., the price of bitcoin crashed by $10,000 in three minutes...

After protests on Sept. 6, more than 1,000 people marched on the Legislative Assembly on Sept. 7, jumping barriers placed early that morning to keep them out. One group of protestors set some tires on fire. Opposition politicians attended the day's session in "No Bitcoin" shirts. The protests were not against bitcoin itself. People protested the forced acceptance, the complete lack of transparency from the government, and the dysfunctional Chivo payment system — "people are against how things are being done in the name of bitcoin," local businessman Patrick Murray said....

[T]he Bitcoin Law, and the disastrous launch of Chivo, has frightened the bond markets; El Salvador's sovereign debt dropped almost five cents in a single day, ending Sept. 7 trading at 87.6 cents on the dollar. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are already reluctant to supply further funding because of the Bitcoin Law...

Traders were reluctant to accept bitcoin. "I'd rather lose the sale," one trader told La Prensa Grafica. Others didn't trust money they couldn't hold in their hands. Street vendors may not even have phones. Many of their customers are illiterate. Some government offices didn't accept bitcoin payments. Transfers from Chivo to bank accounts were not reliable. The Chivo ATMs didn't work well — one machine had a reported three successful cash withdrawals in a day. Even transfer of bitcoins in and out of Chivo had problems...
"El Salvador's Bitcoin Law Is a Farce," blares the headline on the article, saying El Salvador's system "doesn't work, the currency crashed, and the public hates it."

"Fears of criminals bringing in dirty bitcoins and exchanging them for clean dollars, draining the $150 million trust that was set up as a buffer between bitcoins and dollars, have not come to pass — because Chivo doesn't work well enough."

States on Friday took action against Celsius Network, accusing the company, which purports to be one of the world's largest cryptocurrency lenders, of offering residents unregistered securities. From a report: Texas filed a notice seeking a hearing to determine whether to issue a cease and desist order against the company. The action means Celsius will have to show why it shouldn't be ordered to stop offering its products to state residents. The hearing is scheduled for February 14. Separately, New Jersey ordered Celsius to stop offering some of its products, which it also described as unregistered securities, effective November 1.

The moves against Celsius come on the heels of similar actions against New Jersey-based competitor BlockFi taken by states including New Jersey, Texas and others in July, and in the week after Coinbase Global Inc. disclosed that the Securities and Exchange Commission had threatened to sue it if it offered its own yield product to depositors. Celsius had more than $24 billion in "community assets" at the beginning of September, the company said, which would make it one of the world's largest crypto lenders and interest-account providers, if not the largest. The company offers customers a yield of nearly 9% for deposits of U.S.-dollar stablecoins, such as Tether and USD Coin, as much as 6.2% for Bitcoin, and varying rates of interest on other cryptocurrencies.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: China's campaign against the cryptocurrency industry is now targeting miners who tried to disguise themselves as data researchers and storage facilities to stay in business, according to people with knowledge of the situation. Inspections intensified this month in several Chinese provinces, targeting illegal mining activities in colleges, research institutions and data centers, said the people who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter. Concern over the country's power supplies for the upcoming winter season is one reason for the urgency, they said. The new round of scrutiny could further depress the amount of crypto mining occurring in China, which for years had been the dominant player and as recently as April had a 46% share of the global hash rate, a measure of computing power used in mining and processing, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.