If Nostr could implement Twitter Circles, which Elon killed, that would be amazing. It was nice being able to limit post visibility to certain followers.
Prediction: The DoJ will pursue bitcoin miners for unlawfully operating "unlicensed money transmitting businesses" in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1960(a).
If custody or control is not required for liability, then miners are next on the chopping block.
You heard it here first :)
The Biden administration has mandated that starting in 2028 light bulbs must achieve 120 lumens per watt (up from 45 today).
Soft white and multicolored LEDs may not be able to meet the new standard.
https://m.primal.net/KwDZ.png
I don't have a Lightning address since Phoenix left. I took it off my profile. So I have no idea how this is possible or where these sats are going...
https://m.primal.net/JwAN.png
Whenever I have to work on weekends, I remind myself that at least I don't have to landscape outside when it's 95 degrees. I have no idea how those people do it.
Timaros is kinda boring. I didn't finish it either. But I will finish any and every interview with Danielle di Martino Booth about it; really get a kick out of that one
Lyft driver is telling me she got drunk at Applebee's last night and she doesn't remember how she got home but the car ain't dent and that's what's important
My ex-Mormon mentor just told me that when he was 13, he confessed to a bishop that he liked to look at Victoria's Secret magazines. The bishop said that's almost as bad as murder, made him promise to stop, and then put his name on a signed list of good boys. Later, he had to put on a white jumpsuit and was dunked multiple times in a hot tub mounted on 12 white cattle statues. This process allowed dead people who'd been waiting hundreds of years to finally get into heaven.
I have a Start9 but am too dumb to figure out how to use it to Zap you people. I don't know with whom I'd have to open channels. And receiving non-custodially seems nearly impossible.
I do miss Phoenix tbh
I was at a law firm earlier this week with marble halls adorned with magnificent paintings. On an ornate coffee table was a book specifically about the firm's artwork.
This would not impress me as a client knowing I'm paying for all that. But it impresses some people.
I used to work at a fancy law firm, but I vastly prefer working somewhere without all the frills where the focus is getting results efficiently and effectively.
More and more clients prefer that approach, and I want to be where the puck is heading.
I wish I understood you better. Did you give up on Bluesky or something? Are you more optimistic on Twitter now? What are your thoughts on the future of Nostr?
Sometimes witnesses being deposed think they can win their case right then and there if they answer questions a certain way.
IMO a more appropriate framing is you start a deposition with 100 points, and your goal is to lose as few as possible.
The most frustrating misunderstanding in bitcoin these days is conflating mempool rules with consensus rules.
Your mempool rules cannot stop consensus-valid transactions because consensus-valid transactions can skip the mempool.
I think people are confusing mixers with CoinJoin coordinators.
As is the case with miners, CoinJoin coordinators never obtain possession, custody, or control of the coins for which they facilitate transmission.
The case law isn't extensive, but it doesn't seem to take much to be a money transmitting "business."
Intuitively, I'd expect that liability under 18 U.S.C. § 1960 for the "business" requirement depends on the extent of money transmission. Is money transmission an object of the business, or is it merely incidental or accidental? Let's look at some cases I found that discuss the “business” requirement, which seems to be construed quite broadly. But first, I note that in 2021 Congress expanded the definition of "money transmitting business" to include "any other person who engages as a business in the transmission of currency, funds, or value that substitutes for currency, including any person who engages as a business in an informal money transfer system[.]” William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, P.L. 116-283, 134 Stat. 3388 (Jan. 1, 2021). Many of the cases below, therefore, won’t reflect the statutory language currently in effect:
United States v. Banki, 685 F.3d 99, 114 (2d Cir. 2011) (vacating conviction under section 1960 because the district court denied defendant’s motion to define “business” for the jury). The court reiterated Second Circuit precedent that “to find a defendant liable for operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, a jury must find that he participated in more than a ‘single, isolated transmission of money.’” Id. (citation omitted).
United States v. Elfgeeh, 515 F.3d 100, 108 (2d Cir. 2008) (affirming § 1960 conviction of defendant who ran a hawala, an informal money transmitting business, out of his ice cream shop). At trial, the defense argued that the hawala was merely a “service” to Brooklyn’s Yemeni community rather than a “business” under section 1960. Id. at 111. One defendant testified that “the hawala service was for Yemeni-Americans only, that he transmitted money only for individuals, not for businesses, and that he charged individuals for his service only in order to cover the banking fees charged by commercial banks for the transmissions and to cover the costs of delivering the money on the receiving end.” Id.(citations omitted). “The government had countered this defense with testimony by the New York State Banking Department representative, who testified that a money-transmitting business need not take in revenue, and need not be profitable, to trigger the licensing requirement.” Id. The jury apparently found the defense’s arguments unconvincing and convicted both defendants of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1960(a). Id. at 107. The defendants did not raise the issue on appeal, and the convictions were affirmed for other reasons. Id. at 108.
United States v. Velastegui, 199 F.3d 590, 595 n.4 (2d Cir. 1999) (reversing dismissal of charge of illegal money transmitting under section 1960 but noting in dicta that the court’s “holding does not mean that an agent could face federal criminal prosecution for innocent conduct in mistakenly transmitting money that it had received on behalf of a licensed principal, or for an isolated instance of improper transmittal of money. First, section 1960(a) requires that the unlicensed entity be ‘an illegal money transmitting BUSINESS’ (emphasis added) which insures that persons or entities cannot be prosecuted for a single, isolated transmission of money”).
United States v. $215,587.22 in United States Currency, 306 F. Supp. 3D 213, 216, 220 (D.D.C. 2018) (rejecting argument that “a government-affairs and public-relations ‘consultancy’ [] is beyond the reach of the money transmitting statute as a matter of law” where the consultancy allegedly “distributed more than $8.4 million on behalf of clients through hundreds of wire transfers and checks to many different individuals, vendors, and financial institutions while charging a fee”). See also id. at 220 (“In a similar vein, the Szlaviks suggest that applying § 1960 to businesses that transfer funds as part of work they do for clients would subject other professional services firms, including law firms, to misguided prosecutions and civil forfeiture actions. This concern may well be valid. But the Court’s job at this juncture is to decide whether the government has statutory authority to seek forfeiture based on the conduct alleged in its complaint. It is not to predict how the government might choose to exercise its authority in future cases.”) (citations omitted).
United States v. Neumann, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 147582, at *13, (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 17, 2022) (rejecting Defendant’s argument that the “Government did not adequately allege that he conspired to operate a ‘business’ under § 1960 as it only allege[d]that he participated in four isolated transactions with the [cooperating witness]”). The court held that the “the allegations in Count Five alone are sufficient because the Government alleges that on multiple occasions, Defendant accepted cash amounts from the CW and gave him back a check for a similar amount minus a ten percent commission Defendant retained as fee ‘for laundering the cash.’ (Indictment ¶ 10.).” Id. at *15-16.
United States v. 47 10-Ounce Gold Bars, 35 1-Ounce Gold Coins, & 3,069 1-Ounce Silver Coins, No. CV 03-955-MA, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2906, at *17 (D. Or. Jan. 28, 2005) (denying government’s motion for summary judgment in civil forfeiture action that “Crowne Gold operated a money transmitting business”). “While these records and other evidence in Exhibit 7 may show that Crowne Gold sold gold holdings and transferred the proceeds as directed to third parties, the bank records in Exhibit 7 do not establish that money transmission was an integral, not collateral, part of Crowne Gold's business in 2002. Many businesses receive and transmit funds as payment as a part of their business.” Id. at *16. Thus, the court held that“[t]he evidence is not adequate to establish that it is more probably true than not true that Crowne Gold was a ‘network of people who engage as a business in facilitating the transfer of money’ or to connect the gold and silver seized with purported money transmitting activities.” Id. at *17.
Disclaimer: I could've been tripping out on shrooms for all you know while I wrote this, so don't rely on it.
That's an interesting argument. Jameson Lopp made similar comparisons between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.
nostr:nevent1qqstfku6k3gpjketg68qnsvaxtdcyuge4rdce6stj4k9fuarwua3k5gpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdupzpkg3j83suqzyfw2zcr5zet28pve279chvnpzwklwp0vexal06sr4qvzqqqqqqymnl9uf
In my world, an argument is just [premise + facts/reasoning -> conclusion], which can comprise math and physics. It's possible the Monero people have a responsive argument that also invokes math and physics.
I always think of the 1(b) definition, but perhaps most people think of 1(c) when they hear that word. https://image.nostr.build/0233bb3cfc49f25c0453a8b6e0316594416f302696a1086f6151eb769c96653a.jpg
That's an interesting argument. Jameson Lopp made similar comparisons between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.
nostr:nevent1qqstfku6k3gpjketg68qnsvaxtdcyuge4rdce6stj4k9fuarwua3k5gpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdupzpkg3j83suqzyfw2zcr5zet28pve279chvnpzwklwp0vexal06sr4qvzqqqqqqymnl9uf
I will say this only on Nostr: my conviction in Bitcoin has been seriously rattled over the last few days.
What have I got myself into? Is Bitcoin doomed to failure due to its unfavorable privacy properties? Can it get co-opted and turned into fed surveillance coin? What if the Monero bros were right? Privacy on Bitcoin now seems as elusive as a dream.
And on a separate matter, as Matt Corallo just pointed out to Marty Bent, miner centralization is worse than we previously thought (many miners, it turns out, are just proxies for AntPool). Also concerning is the amount of hash power residing in the United States. And worst of all is that miners aren't even TESTING Stratum v2 to potentially alleviate these vulnerabilities.
Although I'd prefer to sink with the ship, I couldn't sell my bitcoin even if I wanted to. No exchange wants tainted coins at this point, and I have no way of calculating taxes due to my poor recordkeeping (I'm stuck in the U.S.).
I think for now I will focus on my fiat savings. I'm 31, which (although quite ancient for homosexuals) should theoretically give me time to save myself if my high conviction in bitcoin was misplaced. But should bitcoin fail, it would be an extremely painful setback.
I suppose it would be for many of you as well. I just wish I could share your optimism, but my mind is poisoned with doubts.
"Phoenix obviously is not a MSB and they are not doing anything illegal." lmao topnotch legal analysis right here
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I need to log onto Nostr more often just to get these Lyn Alden Nostr exclusives
nostr:nevent1qqsq2ma4j53ahm6ygkwjtsh5ymvpa7mqu6xuw4cv67p0rjhnr9m467gpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdupzp64suatdx2uqhn2xfu7cgjuqgqcrqadp864uxkv6wckf43atj860qvzqqqqqqyzu79lx
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