El Salvador and Bitcoin: news, gossip, rumours and reading the tea leaves

El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law takes effect on 7 September! Is everything in place and ready? Of course it isn’t. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 2 years ago

Summer reading for the cryptocurrency skeptic: pt 1

Phew, what a scorcher! Why not sit back with a book or ten on the most fascinating subject in the world: financial shenanigans. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 2 years ago

El Salvador Bitcoin: Bukele scrambles to get something into place by 7 September

You might think it’s rank incompetence to release an official national payment system without an API … and you’d be correct. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 2 years ago

Bitcoin myths: immutability, decentralisation, and the cult of "21 million"

Decentralisation was always a phantom. Every process in Bitcoin tends to centralisation. Plus: a history of Bitcoin Cash. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 2 years ago

El Salvador passes its Bitcoin Law – and it's a Tether scam

The El Salvador Bitcoin scheme is a barely-planned smash-and-grab. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 2 years ago

Everybody Hates Chia

“WE SCAMMED YOU GUYS AND YOU CANT DO S—T ABOUT IT HA HA. All you moon bois have been scammed and you cant do s—t about it.” | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 2 years ago

Bitcoin crashed today – it was market shenanigans, not China

Asset bubbles are fragile, but we still have Tether. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 2 years ago

Facebook's Diem stablecoin moves to the US, and hooks up with Silvergate Bank

The Diem USD stablecoin will be issued by Silvergate Bank — the national bank of crypto. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Tether publishes two pie charts of its reserves

Does nine lines of text on two pie charts satisfy Tether’s agreement with the New York Attorney General to publish a breakdown of its reserves? | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Stilgherrian: The 9pm Dumb Anarcho-Capitalist Blockchain Scams with David Gerard

“The following episode of The 9pm Edict contains strong language, financial crimes, and some sad truths about humanity.” | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

I Don't Speak German #85: Crypto Fascists, with David Gerard

This podcast is not about Bitcoin — it’s about Nazis. But neo-Nazis like Bitcoin, ‘cos they keep getting kicked off the actual-money payment processors. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Tether produces a new attestation – it says nothing useful

Tether releases an audit of their reserves! Done by proper accountants! Well, actually an attestation. Well, functionally a press release. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Bank of America: ‘Bitcoin's dirty little secrets’ – full report

The BofA report is imperfect, but it’s worth a look over. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Book Review: Chuck Tingle: Not Pounded by My Book “Non-Fungible Tingler”

Dr. Tingle has spoken — and in a good and proper world, that should just about wrap it up for NFTs. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

NFTs: Crypto grifters try to scam artists, again

Banksying the unbanksied. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Tether printer go brrrrr - cryptocurrency's substitute dollar problem

I don’t know precisely what tiger iFinex and Tether are riding, but it clearly has teeth. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Stablecoins through history – Michigan Bank Commissioners report, 1839

“Gold and silver flew about the country with the celerity of magic; its sound was heard in the depths of the forest, yet like the wind, one knew not whence it came or whither it was going.… | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

2021 in crypto and blockchain: your 100% reliable guide to the future

Crypto: “Take us seriously!” FinCEN, Treasury: “Sure!” Crypto: “No, not like that,” | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

SEC sues Ripple Labs, claiming XRP is a security

Perhaps they could change the ticker from XRP to RIP. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Number go up New Bitcoin peak, three years after the last: what's happening here

John McAfee did promise to eat his own dick if BTC didn’t hit $500,000 by the end of 2020. So maybe this is a last ditch McAfee penis pump. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Bitcoin piles up so many layers of ideas that are bad, wrong or just don't work

Christoph Bergmann of BitcoinBlog.de interviewed me about Facebook’s Libra (now Diem), about Libra Shrugged and about Bitcoin. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Facebook's Libra is now Diem; STABLE says stablecoins must get banking licenses

The US has a fair chance of obliterating the US crypto trading stablecoin market in the quest to rein in Facebook’s bad idea. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Facebook's Libra may launch January 2021, with US dollars only – what this means

Paypal-but-it’s-Facebook, with US dollars. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Coinbase drops margin trading – because Bitcoin doesn't scale

Coinbase told the CFTC that their internal systems use a ledger in an ordinary database … because the Bitcoin blockchain couldn’t possibly scale to their transaction load. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Blockchain: Magic (Probably) Doesn’t Happen: Sam's Class, 21 Nov 2020 [video]

A talk to Sam Bowne’s class CNIT 141: Cryptography for Computer Networks, at City College of San Francisco. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

FTAV Unofficial Tech Chat: David Gerard answers your crypto market questions

I still refuse to use my shift key in chat. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Calibre, ePub and epubcheck: the curse of editing XHTML

What I actually did to make the ePub for Libra Shrugged. There’s almost certainly bits I could have done better some other way. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Filecoin: Must die, bye bye, bye bye

Filecoin: Must die, bye bye, bye bye. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Libra Shrugged: How Facebook Tried to Take Over the Money

Kindle and paperback: Amazon US — Amazon UK — and other Amazon stores worldwide Preorder on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords and other ebook stores PDF from Google Books DRM-free Audiobook: coming soon Sili… | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Uruguay: E-Peso (2017) – another CBDC trial

Another CBDC trial that I didn’t cover already. This will be in Libra Shrugged. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Central Bank Digital Currency: Bahamas Sand Dollar, Eastern Caribbean DCash

Who technically backs the e-money on your phone is much less interesting than what you can do with it. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

China's DC/EP central bank digital currency: what we know

If Facebook’s Libra project ever has a real-world result, it’ll be China’s DC/EP. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

The crypto market as a single unified scam

Everybody is excited by the novelty of it all and think that with so many different games they can surely find one where they can win. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Balaji Srinivasan's plan to save journalism

A venture capitalist on how to save journalism — or save venture capitalists from journalism, in any case. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Facebook's Libra was dead as of July 2019

As soon as a blockchain scheme gets in front of adults — it’s dead. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Voice: Twitter for EOS, with a Real Names policy and KYC to get an account

With the real names policy, Voice might repeat the stratospheric success of Google Plus! | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Libra as “stablecoin”: the early history of stablecoins

I wrote a short history of stablecoins for the prospective Libra book, but decided it was a bit of a digression. So I’ve posted it to the blog for your amusement instead. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

CoinDesk's new scammer identity protection rule

Do you want to rock the boat, or become the boat? Or, at least, the rudder? | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

What the collapse of Wirecard means for crypto

Of course Wirecard were into crypto. Just a little, you understand. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Bancor releases smart contract security hole, hacks self, loses some user funds

“20. Bancor reimplemented math.” | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Saudi Arabia goes blockchain! ... maybe? Who knows

Ginned-up non-news keeps the content engines churning. Quick! More copy! There’s ads to fail to sell! | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

How does this keep happening? It is a mystery. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

DRM on JPEG images on the blockchain

If you could put two flies crawling up a wall on the blockchain, I’m pretty sure crypto day traders would bet on fly futures. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 3 years ago

Telegram ICO: most Russian investors take 72% payout, Telegram takes $500m loans

This is bad enough that Telegram Messenger itself might be affected. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 4 years ago

The dForce and Hegic DeFi exploits, and why Smart Contracts are bad

The problem with DeFi is not the technology, though that’s bad too — it’s that people are greedy and foolish. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 4 years ago

Facebook's Libra: national currency tokens, a new white paper – what this means

Facebook is slowly being dragged, kicking and screaming, to running Libra like an ordinary, compliant payments processor — PayPal, but it’s Facebook. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 4 years ago

Telegram ICO: SEC prevails, Telegram restrained from issuing Grams

I strongly suspect that about wraps it up for the Telegram ICO. | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 4 years ago

Number go down – Corona-chan loves Bitcoin

Last chance to buy under $100k! | Continue reading


@davidgerard.co.uk | 4 years ago