Crypto Amendments Locked Out of Infrastructure Bill in the House
And OnlyFans Listens to its Fans
Crypto Amendments Locked Out of Infrastructure Bill in the House
In yet another blow to the crypto community, on Tuesday the US House of Representatives voted to lock out any further amendments to the language or debate surrounding the content of the newly passed Infrastructure Bill. Crypto lobbyists, devastated by last minute provisions that would now ambiguously re-define crypto operators as “brokers”, are reeling at the possibility of the announced $28 Billion in estimated revenue the IRS intends to raise through this umbrella tactic.
But they are not giving up easily. Representatives from both sides of the aisle are beginning to speak out in support.
"I continue to explore all options to improve the flawed cryptocurrency language in the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, including through the budget reconciliation process or standalone legislation,"
said Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) in a statement on Tuesday. A floor vote on the infrastructure package is expected on September 27. NBTV highly encourages the crypto community to flood their House reps with calls before then, with many think tanks estimating a 20-30% chance of getting the crypto provision amended if enough House reps can be persuaded to act.
OnlyFans Listens to its Fans
OnlyFans announced last week that they would be banning sexually explicit content from their website, effective October 1st. The announcement, as predicted, was met with an uproar from both viewers of the website and its content creators, many of whom are sex-workers who make their livelihood on the website. But in an unpredictable turn of events, OnlyFans reversed their position on Wednesday tweeting, “We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community and have suspended the planned October 1 policy change. OnlyFans stands for inclusion and we will continue to provide a home for all creators”. Founder, Tim Stokely, also revealed that the initial decision to ban content at all was because “...banks that work with the platform did not want to be associated with sex work”.
“Use Bitcoin... or Don’t.” ~ El Salvador
President Bukele of El Salvador announced the latest update to the country’s acceptance of Bitcoin as its official currency this week stating, “In contrast to the original law, the government will not force any of the nation’s residents to receive the cryptocurrency as a form of payment” This announcement was made in response to the many businesses and people of the nation who have denounced Bitcoin and publicly stated their refusal to accept the digital currency. In a massive show of swagger, President Bukele tweeted:
“The awkward opposition always plays one-step chess. They have bet everything to scare the population about the #LeyBitcoin and they may accomplish something, but only until September 7. Once in force, people will see the benefits, they will be left as liars and they will lose double.”
Many wonder why, if they do intend to ignore article 7, they don’t just remove it from the law. It would be a great way to unite they crypto community over El Salvador’s involvement in Bitcoin.
Nym Doesn’t YOLO with Privacy
American whistleblower, Chelsea Manning, has taken a position at privacy startup company Nym as a security consultant. Nym was founded in 2018 with a mission “to establish privacy as a default for online communications”. Their work involves identifying underdeveloped technology and engineering solutions to make the internet a safer place. Among their focuses is metadata leakage — the inherent risks everyone faces when sharing literally anything on the internet, whether it be documents, messages or pictures. The Nym Mixnet project is one such solution in-progress that aims to protect and obscure metadata traces as data goes through a network. It hopes to deter “traffic analysis by an adversary capable of watching the entire network, including the NSA”. Chelsea’s role as auditor will be to search for privacy leaks within the system and set parameters before its scheduled launch later this year. Nym CEO, Harry Halpin, said:
“While trusting software with their money is one thing people are learning to do with Bitcoin and DeFi, brave whistleblowers and revolutionaries like Chelsea Manning have to trust software with their lives ... So rather than ‘YOLO’ and launch only to wreck their users, we’re working with the best people alive to keep our users safe and secure.”
Poly Network Hacker Leaves His Manifesto
With over $600 million worth of crypto stolen, the Poly Network hack is now in the books as the largest network hack in DeFi history. This week, the money was finally returned, the hacker releasing the final key along with a manifesto. Published via tweet, the attacker said:
“WHY DO WE FALL? SO WE CAN LEARN TO PICK OURSELVES UP. THIS INCIDENT MUST BE A SERIOUS LESSON TO MANY OF US, OR EVEN THE WHOLE DEFI COMMUNITY”
The monologue continued by detailing that the only reason for the delays was “to unlock the USDT.” After this proved unsuccessful, they released the keys eventually and gave a final statement, “I AM QUITING THE SHOW” [sic], and asking that any remaining funds be distributed “...TO THE SURVIVORS”. Though panic-inducing, ultimately this hack was indeed one that taught a lesson — though crypto is the clear way of the future, we still have a long way to go in terms of tightening up security. Trusting code may be better than trusting middlemen, but in a world where hacking can be considered a competitive sport, we need constant vigilance to make sure that code is robust. Lucky for us, this story had a happy ending... sort of.
By Will Sandoval, NBTV Associate Producer, and Naomi Brockwell.
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