@pluralistic I am not sure that Bitcoin mining is the thing that is an environmental crime. It is not the use of energy that impacts the environment. It is certain types of creating energy that negatively impacts the environment, such as burning fossil fuel. The human kind knows how to create energy without that. It is the fact that we are not transitioning from burning fossil fuel to renewables fast enough and that we're even subsidizing burning fossil fuel what is an environmental crime.

@pluralistic No, buying carbon credits would NOT make its crimes nonfraudulent. All use of #CarbonCredits is fraud. Carbon credits are and always were a deliberate and intentional fraud, and everyone in the carbon credit business is well aware of that.

@pluralistic I think that's a case of:
If it can be destroyed by the truth,
it ought to be destroyed by the truth.
10/10, no notes.

@pluralistic As is crypto’s wont, even the scams are (badly) copied from traditional finance. From Matt Levine I learnt this pattern of selling private information about public information to move stocks is called Activist Short Selling. Still controversial and SEC _can_ come after you.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-24/why-activist-short-selling-is-a-controversial-trading-strategy

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-07-26/andrew-left-wasn-t-short-for-long

@pluralistic

{Russian accent}

I give bitcoin. Is good. Don't afraid.

@pluralistic This media arrangement highlighted by @pluralistic is fascinating. Basically, an investment firm is financing an investigative journalism outfit focused on publicly-traded businesses; the journalism side only uses publicly available information; the journalists apparently share their findings early with the $ guys so they can short or buy the target's stock; and then the story gets published (which then affects the stock price in a way that hopefully benefits the investors).

They're trying to come as close as possible to insider trading without actually breaking the law. My question is, even if the source material is publicly available, does advance knowledge that the story will be coming out itself constitute insider knowledge? https://hntrbrk.com/about-us/

@pluralistic

As usual, you inspired me to write my own thing. Feel free to share :)

https://wintertrabex.substack.com/p/schemes-scams-frauds-waste-abuse

@pluralistic

I'm old enough to remember bitcoin's early days when there was hope it would be a non-fiat currency.

Then, I gradually saw how people wanted it less as an alternative fungible form of money, and more as a vehicle for a pyramid scheme.

I also didn't know just how much recklessness financial investors liked to get up to, that the SEC would infrequently put a stop to.

Nor did I have any idea of just how much electricity it would use up in pursuit of the scam.

Here's the scam. Terawulf is a publicly traded company that purports to do "green" Bitcoin mining. Now, cryptocurrency mining is one of the most *gratuitously* climate-wrecking activities we have. Mining Bitcoin is an environmental crime on par with opening a brunch place that only serves Spotted Owl omelets.

Despite Terawulf's claim to be carbon-neutral, it is not. It plugs into the NY power grid and sucks up farcical quantities of energy produced from fossil fuel sources.

2/