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Coinomi Bezos. The delightful Adriana H follows up on Tim’s massive scoop of yesterday. (In which a third-party spellchecker integrated with crypto wallet Coinomi supposedly leaked a user’s private key to a hacker, who stole around $60,000.) Now, the wallet-maker claims that the purported victim of the attack made the whole thing up, and says that there was no evidence of a loss of funds. Indeed, Coinomi claims the alleged victim demanded 17 bitcoins to keep quiet. Try to get to the bottom of the whole mess, here.
Tim under fire. Our boy Tim C came under heavy XRP-army Twitter fire after he published an article apparently brimming with FUD. Ripple investors have been wetting themselves over recent news that R3, a partner of cross-border payments platform SWIFT, would integrate XRP, Ripple’s de facto cryptocurrency, into its platform. But Tim collared an R3 top dog who said that … wasn’t the case. Watch as the trolls descend on our poor Timbo and consume his very flesh. But first, read his story here.
Munster does it again! That’s right: I’ve written a story! This time, it’s about a peer-to-peer crypto exchange, Hodl Hodl, that claims to have built a better prediction market. I love prediction markets, which have been a lifetime fascination since I wrote what family and a friend have described as the definitive piece on Augur a few months ago. Hence my fascination with Hodl Hodl, whose “Prediction” prediction market supposedly removes Augur’s weak link—the human “reporters” called upon to validate the outcome of bets. How? Guess you better read my story, eh? You can do so, absolutely free, right here.
The Monzo silent treatment. Timbo Copeland also tapped a board member of mobile banking giant Monzo, who explained why the company has yet to integrate crypto payments into its platform—despite a broad push cryptowards by its hated rival, Revolut, which allows users to store cryptocurrencies alongside their dollars, shekels and lire. The answer dredged up for little Timmy? Monzo doesn’t think the nocoiner freaks that use its app could care any less about cryptocurrencies. Sad.
Other stuff
J’deny. Ripple spokesperson Miguel Vias has denied allegations that the recent listing of its XRP token on crypto exchange Coinbase was pay-to-play. “We’re happy to go on the record,” tweeted Vias. “The listing of XRP...was Coinbase’s independent decision—we did not give them anything to make it happen.”
A previous tweet by investor Alistair Milne featured a screenshot in which Coinbase’s comms director, Elliott Suthers, offered to discuss the “matter”—of whether the listing had been paid for— “off the record,” striking some cynical commentators as suspicious. But now, thank Moloch, all has been resolved.
Or not. Whether or not Coinbase paid for placement, it appears to be under fire nonetheless. Investigations into its recent acquisition of Neutrino, a surveillance company whose employees include hackers accused of abetting various human-rights abuses, has set off the hashtag #deletecoinbase. By our last check (6pm GMT), the fiery campaign had yielded around… let’s call it 420 separate tweets—DOUBLE what it was two hours ago. At around 200 tweets an hour, that’s only 2,770 sleeps until the movement expands to all of Coinbase’s 13,300,000 users!
Venezuela isn’t your crypto “use case.” José Rafael Peña Gholam, an actual Venezuelan, berates the crypto companies and news sites that have fetishized Venezuela’s catastrophic financial meltdown, using it as a pretext to plug their crypto solutions. It’s well worth the read, here.
Closed doors. A New York Times report into how Big Tech is making inroads into crypto, sheds light on the level of secrecy the companies—namely Facebook—have imposed upon their projects. Take this paragraph:
“Facebook has been coy about what it is building. The team is in an office with separate key-card access so other Facebook employees cannot get in, according to two Facebook employees.”
Sounds like a pleasant working environment.
Written by Ben M, Decrypt’s answer to Bubba the Love Sponge. Send requests for my “tape” to ben@decryptmedia.com