sloth unleashed

Pernambuco. Geoctroyeede West-Indische Compagnie (GWC) gold Klippe 6 Guilders (Florins) 1646 MS63 NGC, KM6.3, Fr-2, LMB-O4. Lozenge after BRASIL, period after VI. A fairly horizontal strike on both the obverse and reverse, and crudely produced---as is the case for all of these corresponding issues. An important factor in their rarity is the fact that they were only legal tender in the colony and not in the mother country of Holland, where they had to be converted into Dutch Guilders (and where these "Brazilian Ducats" were commonly melted). Similarly, within the colony, Portuguese or Brazilians were also at risk if found to be carrying this rival currency, therefore, many were converted and melted as well.

www.engadget.com

www.engadget.com

The artworks, created by Oslo-based Snøhetta, become progressively more abstract as the value of the notes increase, with the 50 kroner note depicting an idyllic scene and the 1000 kroner note a windswept sea of purple... 

arstechnica.com

For the first time in Bitcoin's five-year history, a single entity has repeatedly provided more than half of the total computational power required to mine new digital coins, in some cases for sustained periods of time. It's an event that, if it persists, signals the end of crypto currency's decentralized structure.

Researchers from Cornell University say that on multiple occasions, a single mining pool repeatedly contributed more than 51 percent of Bitcoin's total cryptographic hashing output for spans as long as 12 hours. The contributor wasGHash, which bills itself as the "#1 Crypto & Bitcoin Mining Pool." During these periods, the GHash operators had unprecedented powers that circumvented the decentralization that is often held up as a salient advantage Bitcoin has over traditional currencies. So-called 51 percenters, for instance, have the ability to spend the same coins twice, reject competing miners' transactions, or extort higher fees from people with large holdings. Even worse, a malicious player with a majority holding could wage a denial-of-service attack against the entire Bitcoin network.

Like tremblers before a major earthquake, most of GHash's 51-percent spans were relatively short. Few people paid much attention, since shortly after a miner loses the majority position, it also loses its extraordinary control. Then, on June 12, GHash produced a majority of the power for 12 hours straight, a sustained status that enables precisely the type of doomsday scenario some researchers have warned was possible.

arstechnica.com

Following the MtGox Bitcoin exchange losing millions to a hack and filing for bankruptcy, anonymous attackers took over the personal blog and reddit account of MtGox CEO Mark Karpeles on Sunday. After seizing control, the hackers posted (Pastebin) a message to the two spaces detailing their findings and the reasoning behind the attack.

"It’s time that MTGOX got the bitcoin communities [sic] wrath instead of Bitcoin Community getting Goxed," the message reads. "This release would have been sooner, but in spirit of responsible disclosure and making sure all of ducks were in a row, it took a few days longer than would have liked to verify the data... Included in this download you will find relevant database dumps, csv exports, specialized tools, and some highlighted summaries compiled from data. Keeping in line with fucking Gox alone, no user database dumps have been included."

Forbes reports the 716 megabyte file placed on Karpeles' site included items like his home address, CV, and an Excel spreadsheet that seems to document more than a million trades. But the most interesting piece of information shared is a summary of 18 different currency balances—with 951,116 bitcoins listed. In light of the 850,000 bitcoins supposedly lost in the recent attack, the hackers concluded this figure demonstrates fraud. The footnote reads, "That fat fuck has been lying!!"

Despite the hack making noise around the Internet today, this leak is not yet guaranteed evidence of foul play. As Forbes notes, the balances could be a case of awful bookkeeping (it's not too far-fetched that MtGox was unaware of the hack for awhile), and Karpeles has yet to return that site's request for comment.

www.ft.com

The price of Bitcoin on Mt Gox slumped to less than half the rate on other exchanges on Monday as the Tokyo-based hub continued to frustrate users’ attempts to withdraw holdings of the virtual currency.

Concerns over Mt Gox, the world’s oldest venue for trading and storing Bitcoin, have been mounting since mid-January, when reports of delays in withdrawals of Bitcoin and other currencies began to surface.

Last week the company blamed a bug in the Bitcoin software for delays and said it would not allow any withdrawals of coins from its vaults until it could be sure transactions had been completed properly – a statement that prompted many to claim the problem lay with Mt Gox’s own systems rather than with the open-source software itself.

On Monday a two-man protest outside the company’s Shibuya headquarters entered a second day. “So many things do not make sense. It’s hard to find an innocent explanation,” said Kolin Burges, a Glasgow-born programmer who flew in from London last week in the hope of putting pressure on Mt Gox to return “hundreds” of coins kept in a trading account.

On Monday evening the price of Bitcoin on Mt Gox staged a recovery from its daily low of $220, rising as high as $390 after an announcement from the company that a fix was in hand, and that withdrawals “at a moderated pace” should be resumed “soon.” Still, the price remains a long way short of the $642 rate quoted by CoinDesk, which averages prices across leading global exchanges excluding Mt Gox…

www.philly.com

Billy Baeder, a Royersford currency collector, who co-owns a car-repair shop, holds what could be the most valuable piece of currency printed since 1929: a 1933 Silver Certificate with the serial number A00000001A...

To reduce profiteering from currency arbitrage, the U.S. military devised the MPC program. MPCs was paper money denominated in amounts of 5 cents, 10 cents, 25 cents, 50 cents, 1 dollar, 5 dollars, 10 dollars, and starting in 1968 20 dollars. MPCs were fully convertible to U.S. dollars upon leaving a designated MPC zone, and convertible to local currencies when going on leave (but not vice versa). It was illegal for unauthorized personnel to possess MPC, and that policy, in theory, eliminated U.S. dollars from local economies. Although actual greenbacks were not circulating, many local merchants accepted MPC on par with US dollars, since they could use them on the black market. This was especially evident during the Vietnam War when the MPC program was at its zenith. To prevent MPC from being used as a primary currency in the host country and destroying the local currency value and economy, MPC banknote styles were frequently changed to deter black marketers and reduce hoarding, as the old style would become worthless. Many veterans can recount a conversion day or C-Day.

C-days in Vietnam were always classified, never pre-announced. On C-day, soldiers would be restricted to base, preventing GIs from helping Vietnamese civilians—especially local bars, brothels, bar girls and otherblack market people—from converting old MPC to the newer version. Since Vietnamese were not allowed to convert the currency, they frequently lost savings by holding old, worthless MPC...