Satoshi in 2009
A visionary. http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2009-January/015014.html Where do you stand? You invested in BitCoin? When? HODL!
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Hi my name is Edo and I’m a Bitcoin Hodler
There is no mistake. “Holder” implies that at some point you will release. With HODL, community people came up with a different concept that is still something we are not aware as a collective. With so many discussions and attention on Bitcoin value (currently 11.000€, compared to 3.800€ from September 1st) the usual questions and arguments have been raised again. It’s a bubble! It’s not backed by anything! You can’t touch it! …and so on. Us hodlers we are betting on a different thing. Or couple more. But let’s explain a couple of things, just assuming you lived in caves for the past few years: There will be only 21 million Bitcoins mined in total. There is no way to print more. To mine Bitcoins, you need to invest in hardware, time and (lots of) electricity. Let’s start with the miners who invested into having computers (nowadays it’s dedicated machines that have no other usage at all) perform calculations (while providing a service to the network) using tons of electricity and generating so much heat that needed more electricity to cool things down (with miners located in cold regions having it easier. No kidding, there were plans from Google to move some datacenters in artic regions to use the natural cooling temperatures). Once coins have been mined (and it’s a bloody competitive thing to do, with networks of miners getting together to mine the same data, faster, to get the block rewards, but this is another story), miners will most likely sell few of them to pay back the electricity company and other bills. The current rate of creation of new blocks is 12.5 Bitcoin every 10 minutes. The network adjusts its difficulty of the mining calculations on regular intervals and block rewards will drop by half, making a mining operation less profitable, if the Bitcoin exchange value doesn’t go up by double. Because the electricity price won’t go down, you need to expect Bitcoin price to double at any halving of block reward. A block reward today [Read more...]
on Airline fraud
An interesting infographic has been released by Accertify (https://lnkd.in/eCTSkBc) on typical frauds attempted. Pretty sure that air travel is not the only form of travel affected. The thrill of getting on a plane with a ticket you won't be paying for. Playing your chances with destiny, boarding and sitting in business class. Some goosebumps when the plane finally lifts off. The victory celebration while enjoying some champaign at 10.000 feet. Landing gets you back into reality. You stole the trip. It's done. And then: https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/153-detained-for-ticket-fraud-following-worldwide-law-enforcement-operation
Catalunya data breach
While Yahoo and Equifax still rule the first lines of the news, 5.5 million records from the whole Catalán census (who can vote) have been stolen. https://politica.elpais.com/politica/2017/09/27/actualidad/1506538071_962894.amp.html (In Spanish)
Carding (aka Cardin)
While millions are spent in new smart solutions to detect fraudulent activity, knowledge sharing happens on the free. Can't decide if it's sad or ironic. But for sure it's interesting. (Won't advertise the forum, ping me for more info) (Only legit please!!!) Edo out
Bringing friendly fraud to the next level?
http://www.thestarpress.com/story/news/crime/2017/10/01/couple-admits-stealing-1-2-million-amazon/720381001 Triangulation + fake identities + policy abuse... What intrigues me is the level of stupidity reached into getting in serious trouble. For sure they didn't read the book first...
Amazon Kindle Countdown Deal
I got a nice promo idea on the Kindle store called countdown deal. You decide to discount your book for few days, where the first one is the most discounted and then it has small increases, day by day, until reaching the original price. Only after it was approved I found out that: It works only on the .com It doesn't display the discounted price but the original. Once added to the cart, upon viewing your cart, you should see a discount. Stay tuned...
About Bitcoin
I'm really amused when in 2017 people still have no clue about it. Things like: - It's just a Ponzi scheme - It's a bubble - It doesn't have intrinsic value - I can't afford to buy it now and the best: - Wow then you must be rich! and I'll leave this for later: - Criminals use it! Let's start from the first one: A Ponzi scheme denominator is that initial investors are paid with the money from the new investors. For Bitcoin it is true in a form. There is no Mr.Ponzi. Satoshi Nakamoto is a mere pseudonym of who wrote down the rules along what Bitcoin works (aka the Blockchain). If he dares move one of the first mined bitcoins, we would all know. We know those initial blocks mined by him and we would detect a movement. I personally don't know if the market would panic and crash or if it would gain more confidence and attract even more investors. So no, no Ponzi scheme. It's a bubble. Really? Well, it's a bubble that went from zero to 3800€ worth (more or less, today). And I think it's not stopping. The best recommendation I ever had was from L. who told me to never place in Bitcoin more than what I could afford to lose. It was worth 35€ when he told me this. On the next point, I have to agree. Bitcoin doesn't have any intrinsic value. Nor does a Van Gogh or a Picasso. It's just paint. We, humans, assign a price to these masterpieces. Same we do with Bitcoin. Yes, you can afford it now. Why? Because Bitcoin is a unit but it has 8 zeros after the comma. The smallest unit, in honor of the inventor, is called a satoshi and is a 0.00000001 of a Bitcoin or, today, 0.000038€. I bet you can get more than few satoshis with the small change between the pillows of your sofa. Witch bring us to me. I'm not rich. Selling my investment today wouldn't grant me to buy the apartment I live in. But here is the thing, I'm not selling. No no. For the last one, I'll leave you this [Read more...]
On common terminology…
E-commerce speaks multiple languages, but of course, English is king everywhere. Between words that translated mean something slightly different, accents and regions where people just love acronyms, the Babylonian situation often creates some hilarious combinations of "excusable ignorance" and "inexcusable lack of logic". Let's not agree to disagree here. Please. If you have a better definition, by all means, we should all collectively push for it. What's your fraud rate? Sorry, I don't understand your question. Do you want to know my fraud pressure? The chargeback rate? The net chargeback rate? The fraud chargeback rate? The actual loss rate? Do you want a combined "fraud rate" for all the countries and tenders? Does it make sense that I dilute my good order population with also transactions that cannot be charged back? I'll always remember one day when my friend T. came to visit. In 30 seconds we exchanged numbers and immediately knew where the other stand. Imagine meeting an old school friend. Of course, you can (and will) talk for hours about everything, but a straightforward quick communication like "got married and then divorced, working for X doing Y, yadda yadda yadda. And yes, one of the numbers was what WE called fraud rate. But acknowledging the mistake, when T and I talk about "fraud rate" we actually mean real fraud chargebacks, pre-disputing. If you want, "gross fraud rate" as once disputes take place, the result will be "net fraud rate". But when I asked "what's your fraud rate" to other colleagues, I got the weirdest answers. Very basically, if your customers recur to making a chargeback for service related issues your CS couldn't handle, sorry, but that had absolutely nothing to do with fraud. Those chargebacks count for other rates, not the fraudulent one. Of course, a fraud analyst and a fraud manager know ALL these rates on the top of their head. This is one of the first metrics your superiors want to see. Because we trained [Read more...]
Publishing the book
The book has been published since a month now and feedbacks keep arriving. Both on Amazon and on Facebook, it generated a sparkle of interest from not only the industry of risk management, as I expected, but also some real fraudsters. One of them actually hinted me few subreddit that are crowded with stories like in my book. The actual situation is way worse than what I described and it motivates me to write a second book. Maybe next year ;)