Bitmain shuts down another office amid steep losses

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Top five ways to begin Monetary Sovereignty .

We’ve always been interested in doing Reviews here at Decrypt. The problem is so few consumer-facing crypto products were ready for the masses. That seems to be changing at last. We expect to see loads of neat-o stuff aimed at regular people in 2019.

To prove the point, today, the delightful and savvy Adriana Hamacher has cobbled together a clever guide of the top five digital wallets, aimed at crypto rookies. These are so easy to use that even our slavering, dribbling editor could set one up. And not a single Louis Vuitton in sight! [Ex. editor: Clear out your desk, Munster. You’re through.]

Ethereum’s Virtual Board Game

SpankChain CEO Ameen Soleimani has unveiled a new project designed to help struggling Ethereum devs earn their crust.

Writes award-winning (and handsome) Debrief writer Ben Munster:

Ethereum’s endgame is to reconstitute life AS WE KNOW IT as a rules-based game in which every facet of EXISTENCE is reified, repackaged, and redistributed by way of an all-encompassing algorithm, called MOLOCH. Kinda. Just read it, and prepare to have your mind BLOWN, lassy.

Breaching the ramparts  

Everyone knows that bitcoin was the first use of blockchain, rather than a middleman or bank, to create digital money. And most people who come to this site also know that Ethereum was next to come along and extend the use of blockchain to virtually anything that relies on a contract… which is literally the foundation of all business, politics and… most relationships between people. But the growing Ethereum platform, as noble and ambitious as it is, has been thwarted by scalability and speed. Well, this week, it’s facing a massive, much-anticipated upgrade, known as “Constantinople.” The grotesque Tim Copeland elucidates.

Other stuff

Bitmain continues its Earthbound descent

Coindesk reports that Bitmain is shuttering yet another overseas office, this time in Amsterdam, amid growing concerns over the Chinese mining giant’s profitability. The closure joins that of Bitmain’s Israel outlet, which shuttered in December. Among other recent bad news for the company was the reduction of on-site staff in Rockdale, Texas, and the reported removal of Jihan Wu from his role as CEO. As per, it’s all for Bitmain’s “long-term, sustainable and scalable business.” Of course it is.

De-burglary

The attacker who siphoned off $270,000-worth of funds from the Ethereum Classic network has returned $100,000 to crypto exchange Gate.io, which revealed the news in an announcement (Gate.io itself suffered a loss of $100,000). Though Gate.io has failed to contact the attacker, it speculates that the intruder was a white-hat hacker (hilariously/racistly misspelled as “white hacker by Gate.io)—interested only in exposing the network’s vulnerability. Yet that doesn’t explain why he/she/they kept $170,000, does it?

The Schlock

Crypto site The Block saw fit to publish a 10,000+ word transcript of an interview with its CEO, Mike Dudas, on Peter McCormack’s podcast What Bitcoin Did. The two exchanged fawning compliments and waxed rhapsodic about the power of journalism (seriously!) Dudas also cited his “great respect” for Decrypt. Other memorable quotes include...jk, I’m not going to parse through all that!