This week, mainstream media covered the Bitcoin Cash SV furor, Bitcoin mining in Iceland, and North Korea’s attempts to use cryptocurrency to avoid US sanctions. Plus, we have a little something sweet to finish off the week that reminds us why we’re all in this crazy game we call crypto in the first place.
Bitcoin Cash SV Gets the Axe
In case you’ve been living in a cave for the past week you’ll know that Binance caused a stir, and a wave of copycat behavior, when it delisted Craig Wright’s pet project Bitcoin Cash Satoshi’s Vision. This action was the result of insults and lawsuits between Wright, his supporters, and his opponents and led to…insults and lawsuits between Wright, his supporters, and his opponents. This playground stuff even made it as far as the Financial Times (registration necessary), who summarised the lead up to the delisting quite neatly, stating that the feud was between “those who support Craig Wright’s claims to be bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto and the other 99.9 percent of cryptoland”. Nice.
Bitcoin Not Welcome in Iceland
Iceland has been a haven for Bitcoin miners seeking a naturally cold climate in which to bash out the computations that keep the blockchain running, but a report from Al Jazeera suggests that environmentalists are concerned by the rise in the country’s mining activities. Iceland’s energy comes from hydroelectric dams, something the country is proud of, and so to have it used to mine something that isn’t exactly environmentally friendly has not gone down well.
There is nothing particularly new in the story, with the same old arguments trotted out about Bitcoin being funding terrorism and the like, but overall the story is quite balanced and doesn’t denigrate into a fact-free Bitcoin bashing session, which has to be applauded.
Sky News gave us a nice juicy headline and then used the subtitle and the rest of the article to play it down. We already know that North Korea is behind a great deal of cryptocurrency hacks, perhaps even the majority of them, but this is small fry compared to their vastly bigger cyber attacking operations. Indeed, the report’s authors concede that North Korea’s actual holdings of cryptocurrencies could be as little as $15m, but then this wouldn’t make for as big a headline. Not that this all matters because as the mainstream media has told us on many occasions, Bitcoin is going to zero so where’s the harm? Unless they’re wrong…
It’s Been a Busy Week for Institutional Finance
We couldn’t go without dropping in another couple of headlines that have made the rounds this week, headlines that illustrate just how bad Bitcoin is and how we should put our money and faith in lovely, friendly traditional finance.
Suddenly arguments between charlatans and cartoon cats don’t seem so bad after all. See you next week for more Crypto in the News.
