Tag: cryptocurrency

What are crypto debit cards: How they work and where to use them

A common complaint about cryptocurrencies has been the difficulty users face in utilizing them for everyday transactions. But crypto debit cards have bridged the gap between crypto and traditional finance (to an extent), allowing you to spend your cryptocurrencies at millions of merchants worldwide. These cards indicate a significant transformation, where the traditional financial system becomes closely integrated with the one based on blockchains.

Crypto debit cards are as legitimate as regular debit cards, making everyday transactions seamless. From shopping online to dining out, crypto debit cards combine convenience and accessibility with rewards and security. These cards are an advancement in the convergence of crypto and traditional finance.

This crypto debit card guide for beginners explores how these cards work, their benefits and how to use them effectively.

What is a crypto debit card?

A crypto debit card is a payment card that lets users spend cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin BTC$97,603 or Ether ETH$3,583.76 directly from their wallets. Similar to traditional debit cards, you can use these cards both online and at merchants that accept regular card payments. 

Issued by crypto platforms in partnership with payment processors such as Visa and Mastercard, these cards simplify spending by eliminating the need to manually convert crypto to fiat before purchases. This feature facilitates enhanced payment flexibility, facilitating online and offline transactions, including at retail establishments that may not support direct cryptocurrency payments.  

Moreover, some crypto cards provide incentives, offering rewards for purchases you make with the card. You can also use these cards to make withdrawals at crypto ATMs.

Cryptocurrency-linked cards are vulnerable to the same security threats as traditional debit and credit cards. Therefore, you need to ensure the safety and privacy of your card and its details.

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IMF Offers a Glimpse at the Perils of Central Bank Digital Currencies

With Bitcoin climbing over $100,000, both investors and government officials are taking a closer look at digital money. The problem is that there’s a huge difference between an independent currency designed to resist surveillance and control, and one crafted by a central bank to enable exactly that. A new handbook from the International Monetary Fund embraces the potential of cryptocurrency while highlighting the dangers inherent in state dominance of the means of storing and exchanging value.

The IMF handbook’s opening chapter discusses how central bank digital currencies (CBDC) could keep government financial institutions relevant. “With digitalization and falling cash usage in parts of the world,” the authors write, “central banks are considering CBDC to ensure a fundamental anchor of trust in the monetary system.” Also discussed is the potential for CBDCs to “potentially help lower barriers to financial inclusion in countries with underdeveloped financial systems,” to “channel government payments directly to households,” and “to help reduce frictions in cross-border payments.”

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Operation Choke Point 2.0: How The Feds Are Seeking To ‘Debank’ Targeted Industries

A federal initiative that began during the Obama administration with the goal of debanking certain industries disfavored by federal officials has apparently been resurrected and is taking aim at cryptocurrencies.

Operation Choke Point was started by the U.S. Dept. of Justice in 2013 as a way to put pressure on banks to sever their ties, without due process, with legal businesses like gun dealers, cannabis dispensaries and payday lenders which the administration found objectionable.

That initiative was ended by President Trump in 2017 but under the Biden administration, it appears that Operation Choke Point 2.0 has begun with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) sending letters to U.S. banks in 2022, urging them to “pause all crypto-related activity.”

Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) told Fox Business that the regulatory abuse is real and that President-elect Trump will put an end to this type of regulatory abuse.

Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently described the practice of debanking as “a privatized sanctions regime” on The Joe Rogan Experience, saying, “There’s no rules, there’s no court, there’s no decision process, there’s no appeal. Who do you go to to get your bank account back?”

And if the tune of Operation Choke Point 2.0 sounds familiar, there are also familiar faces as well.

Palmetto State News reports that Michael Eakes is the founder of the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) and Self-Help Credit Union, which operates five credit unions in South Carolina and was also an inaugural member of the FDIC’s Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion when it was started in 2006.

Another member of the advisory committee is Michael Calhoun who is president of the Center for Responsible Lending and a former employee of Self-Help Credit Union.

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Governments must tax or ban Bitcoin to maintain deficits: Minneapolis Fed

A recent research paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis suggests that assets such as Bitcoin should be taxed or banned to help governments maintain deficits. 

In an economy where the government tries to maintain permanent deficits using nominal debt, the presence of Bitcoin BTC$66,910 creates problems for policy implementation, the Minneapolis Fed said in a working paper released on Oct. 17.

Bitcoin introduces a “balanced budget trap,” an alternative state where the government is forced to balance its budget, the Fed wrote. 

The researchers used Bitcoin as an example of a fixed-supply “private-sector security” without “real resource claims.” They concluded that it should be banned or taxed to solve the conundrum. 

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FBI Will “Neither Confirm Nor Deny” The Existence Of Bitcoin-Creator Satoshi’s Records

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has reportedly responded to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from a journalist implying that Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto was a “third party individual” for whom it could neither confirm nor deny it had records.

According to an Aug. 13 X post by investigative journalist Dave Troy, the FBI issued a “Glomar response” to his request for information on Satoshi —- neither confirming nor denying the law enforcement agency had records identifying the pseudonymous Bitcoin creator.

Troy said he intended to appeal the FOIA response but claimed the FBI had made an “interesting assertion” by implying Satoshi was a “third party individual.”

“I submitted as a broad general subject request, with full context, so it is the bureau and not me that is asserting that this is an individual,” said Troy. “[M]y intent is not to establish the identity behind the pseudonym, but rather to get what info the bureau may have on the subject. If that helps establish identity somehow, fine, but that’s not my primary question.”

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‘Bitcoin Jesus’ Roger Ver Charged With $50 Million Tax Evasion

Authorities in Spain have arrested cryptocurrency entrepreneur Roger Ver, once known as “Bitcoin Jesus,” after the U.S. Department of Justice charged him with tax evasion.

Unsealed Monday, the indictment alleges that Ver evaded paying taxes to the tune of nearly $50 million, conducted mail fraud, and filed false tax returns.

The DOJ says in its indictment that Ver allegedly lied to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) about how much Bitcoin he and his companies really owned. 

According to the feds, Ver was expected to file tax returns that reported capital gains from the sale of his “worldwide assets.” These assets included Bitcoin.

But the indictment alleges that despite Ver and his companies owning 131,000 Bitcoins, the crypto entrepreneur provided or caused to be provided false or misleading information—including the Bitcoin he personally owned—to a law firm and appraiser  helping him expatriate his American nationality. 

When he sold the Bitcoin in 2017, he allegedly did not inform the IRS about the gains he had made, despite the fact that the Bitcoins were held by U.S. corporations he was in charge of—named MemoryDealers and Agilestar.

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The Sinister Links Between Jeffrey Epstein, CBDCs, & Bitcoin

The purpose of this article is to create awareness of the urgent threat of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), to discuss and describe Jeffrey Epstein’s potential involvement in both funding CBDCs as well as his possible role in changing the underlying purpose of Bitcoin, rendering it unusable as a cash alternative for day-to-day transactions.

The article also provides a snippet from my book, The Final Countdown, which goes into detail and further provides practical advice for avoiding CBDCs. 

The CBDC Threat

Imagine a future where every dollar you spend is tracked – not by a bank, but by the government. This isn’t a distant sci-fi scenario; it’s a real possibility with the advent of Central Bank Digital Currencies, or CBDCs. These are not just new forms of money; they are potentially powerful tools for monitoring and controlling human behavior.

The concept is simple yet profound – a digital currency issued by the government that can be programmed with specific rules. For instance, your savings could be frozen if your online activities don’t align with governmental standards, or mandatory spending could be enforced to stimulate the economy. This level of control could extend to everyday choices, dictating the groceries you buy or the vacations you can access, all based on a digital scoring system.

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$40 billion worth of crypto crime enabled by stablecoins since 2022

Stablecoins, cryptocurrencies pegged to a stable value like the US dollar, were created with the promise of bringing the frictionless, border-crossing fluidity of bitcoin to a form of digital money with far less volatility. That combination has proved to be wildly popular, rocketing the total value of stablecoin transactions since 2022 past even that of Bitcoin itself.

It turns out, however, that as stablecoins have become popular among legitimate users over the past two years, they were even more popular among a different kind of user: those exploiting them for billions of dollars of international sanctions evasion and scams.

As part of its annual crime report, cryptocurrency-tracing firm Chainalysis today released new numbers on the disproportionate use of stablecoins for both of those massive categories of illicit crypto transactions over the last year. By analyzing blockchains, Chainalysis determined that stablecoins were used in fully 70 percent of crypto scam transactions in 2023, 83 percent of crypto payments to sanctioned countries like Iran and Russia, and 84 percent of crypto payments to specifically sanctioned individuals and companies. Those numbers far outstrip stablecoins’ growing overall use—including for legitimate purposes—which accounted for 59 percent of all cryptocurrency transaction volume in 2023.

In total, Chainalysis measured $40 billion in illicit stablecoin transactions in 2022 and 2023 combined. The largest single category of that stablecoin-enabled crime was sanctions evasion. In fact, across all cryptocurrencies, sanctions evasion accounted for more than half of the $24.2 billion in criminal transactions Chainalysis observed in 2023, with stablecoins representing the vast majority of those transactions.

The attraction of stablecoins for both sanctioned people and countries, argues Andrew Fierman, Chainalysis’ head of sanctions strategy, is that it allows targets of sanctions to circumvent any attempt to deny them a stable currency like the US dollar. “Whether it’s an individual located in Iran or a bad guy trying to launder money—either way, there’s a benefit to the stability of the US dollar that people are looking to obtain,” Fierman says. “If you’re in a jurisdiction where you don’t have access to the US dollar due to sanctions, stablecoins become an interesting play.”

As examples, Fierman points to Nobitex, the largest cryptocurrency exchange operating in the sanctioned country of Iran, as well as Garantex, a notorious exchange based in Russia that has been specifically sanctioned for its widespread criminal use. Stablecoin usage on Nobitex outstrips bitcoin by a 9:1 ratio, and on Garantex by a 5:1 ratio, Chainalysis found. That’s a stark difference from the roughly 1:1 ratio between stablecoins and bitcoins on a few nonsanctioned mainstream exchanges that Chainalysis checked for comparison.

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Eye-Ball Scanning Digital ID Company Worldcoin Integrates With Reddit, Telegram, and More

Worldcoin, the eye-ball scanning protocol co-founded by Sam Altman, is cracking open a wider integration network by adding support for platforms such as Minecraft, Reddit, Telegram, Shopify, and Mercado Libre to its World ID offering. This comes on the back of the cohesive upgrades it has already sealed with Discord, Talent Protocol, and Okta’s Auth0.

Digital ID systems, like the one used by WorldCoin, raise significant privacy concerns due to the sensitive nature of the biometric data they collect and store. The other issue is that identity becomes immutable.

Consider a scenario where your digital identity becomes inaccessible, perhaps due to regulatory action or technical issues. In conventional financial systems, including traditional cash and most cryptocurrencies, you can simply create a new wallet and start over. However, with systems tied to unique biometric identifiers, such as iris scans, you can’t easily replace your identity. Unlike a plot from a science fiction movie, obtaining a new iris scan is not a feasible option.

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Police Raid Man’s Home For Heating It With S9, Charged With Intentional Climate Change

The Bitcoin mining industry is being thrown into chaos as a Canadian man has been arrested for heating his home with an Antminer S9. The man posted a video of his setup on Twitter which lead to law enforcement visiting his home and arresting him. He faces up to 3 months in jail and $600 in fines for “Causing distress to the community” and “intentionally warming the climate.”

The officers raiding the home arrived heavily armed, and even shot the man’s dog who was barking in the hallway after they kicked the door down. Body cam footage shows police laughing after shooting the dog, and one officer exclaimed, “Wow I finally got my first one.” Unfortunately, in Canada, shooting peoples pets is a protected action under qualified immunity.

Canada has been a hotbed for Bitcoin mining, but now many miners are fearful they too will be charged with similar charges. The Canadian government has been unclear about what their intentions are and whether this applies to all Bitcoin miners or just people who post their miners on Twitter. There are also rumors that the Canadian government is going to be rolling out an emissions system to test miners for carbon production, and will be requiring registration.

Many have pointed out how similar Bitcoin miners are to other applications such as space heaters, large data center servers, and just about any application that consumes electricity. Bitcoin miners produce just as much carbon as electric vehicles, yet they are being treated very differently, suggesting the move is targeted. Despite that, the issue of climate change is of upmost concern. If sea levels rise, it will destroy all the billionaires beach front property and secret Caribbean islands.

Elizabeth Warren applauded the move and stated, “1 s9 running emits 4 units of climate change an hour. 1 Bitcoin transaction emits 16 units of climate change. We must be like Canada and stop the madness.” Senate Republicans are currently organizing to censor Warren’s comments on the subject until she passes a basic literacy test.

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