#Bitcoin—and
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emptywheel.bsky.social
In proof we're all getting old, Jack Abramoff is getting sentenced again, this time for kind of crypto-related fraud that has become fashionable in certain DC quarters.

Both sides rec probation, in part bc of age (66) which seems young for crypto fraud.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Abramoff also assisted Andrade in generating media attention for AML Bitcoin by hiring foreign advisors to set up meetings for Andrade with foreign government and private sector contacts, including in Panama, London, continental Europe, and San Francisco. Andrade and Abramoff misleadingly characterized the meetings as promising business opportunities with partners imminently interested in exploring or partnering with AML Bitcoin. In truth, these potential partners—such as the Port of San Francisco, the Panama Maritime Authority, and the Panama Canal—had no interest in using or working with AML Bitcoin. Abramoff also worked with Andrade to generate media attention for AML Bitcoin by falsely stating that the NFL and NBC had reviewed and rejected AML Bitcoin’s Super Bowl advertisement for being too controversial when neither entity had actually rejected the advertisement. Abramoff and Andrade perpetuated this false Super Bowl rejection campaign to drive attention and investment to the AML Bitcoin project. Separately, in 2017, Abramoff engaged in lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C. in connection with the marijuana industry. Abramoff did not register as a lobbyist, despite knowing that he was required to do so, and he took affirmative steps to not register as a lobbyist.
November 12, 2025 at 9:17 AM
nycitymouse.bsky.social
And his bitcoin
November 11, 2025 at 3:48 PM
niamoru.bsky.social
I bet 1 bitcoin that Roadhog's mighty feet smell and taste like a juicy pork chop !
November 9, 2025 at 8:37 AM
ketanjoshi.co
To me, this is one of the key aspects of generative AI's broader environmental, social and climate harm: it cannot exist in an efficient, lean and narrowly applied way.

It only ever looks like it "works" when it's brute-forced: just like Bitcoin. The harm is baked into its characteristics.
Artificial Intelligence Wants to Sell You Stuff While the World Burns
Meta is betting on generative AI for a new generation of aggressive advertising. It requires immense energy, much of which will likely come from fossil fuels.
newrepublic.com
November 11, 2025 at 8:35 PM
texasobserver.org
Our top story, from @candicebernd.bsky.social: State regulators don't want you to know about the 60-plus Bitcoin mines guzzling public water and electricity—even though consumers are already paying the price.
Crypto's Cryptic Texas Takeover
State regulators don't want you to know about the 60-plus Bitcoin mines guzzling public water and electricity—even though consumers are already paying the price.
www.texasobserver.org
November 12, 2025 at 3:00 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
The WSJ story: www.wsj.com/finance/curr...

The Trump-affiliated companies are Trump Media, which has a large stake in bitcoin in addition to its media operations, and American Bitcoin, which buys bitcoin outright and mines it.
The Year’s Hottest Crypto Trade Is Crumbling
Some investors are saying “told you so,” while others are doubling down, as a selloff in bitcoin and other digital tokens hits crypto-treasury companies.
www.wsj.com
November 9, 2025 at 3:10 PM
marygillis.bsky.social
The most interesting thing about Sim is his obsession with Bitcoin, and that's still the most boring kind of obsession an off-putting rich dude can have.
November 11, 2025 at 7:10 AM
edzitron.com
Me in March, me in August. Nobody bothered to see if CoreWeave even has the capacity to serve its OpenAI deal, or cared that Core Scientific, who had never built AI data centers, didn't seem to have the capacity either
www.wheresyoured.at/core-incompe...
www.wheresyoured.at/ai-bubble-20...
As of now, Core Scientific holds, according to CEO Adam Sullivan, "the largest operational footprint of Bitcoin mining infrastructure," and per the above analyst quote, it's very obvious that you can't just retrofit a crypto mining rig to start "doing Al," likely because the GPUs are different to the ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) used in crypto mining, meaning the server hardware is different, which means the entire bloody thing is different. Nevertheless, CoreWeave's S-1 repeatedly mentions that it's made an agreement with Core Scientific for "more than 500 MW of capacity." Right now, however, it's unclear how much capacity Core Scientific actually has, despite both its and CoreWeave's suggestions. Core Scientific, as of February 2025, had approximately 166,000 bitcoin miners — which, I should add, are likely all application-specific chips that only mine bitcoin!, which means that none of that has (or, potentially, any of their data center operations have) anything to do with GPUs or compute for Al. Even if the deal goes through, CoreWeave's second big loan, which likely sits at around $8 billion, will come due in October 2025, just as OpenAI begins to pay its fees for compute...which assumes that the compute will be available. Having spoken to some infrastructure providers, there are doubts that this will be the case — and plans are reportedly being made to provide redundancy if CoreWeave fails to deliver on time.
November 11, 2025 at 5:49 PM
mattpeterson.bsky.social
WSJ reports the recent fall in crypto hurts bitcoin treasury companies, like Strategy, which are basically leveraged bets on BTC.

Also, not in the story but important: Trump family wealth is tied up in this strategy. Eric Trump and Don Jr have significant stakes in bitcoin treasury companies.
The hottest crypto trade has turned cold. Some investors are saying “told you so,” while others are doubling down. It was the move to make for much of the year: Sell shares or borrow money, then plow the cash into bitcoin, ether and other cryptocurrencies. Investors bid up shares of these “crypto-treasury” companies, seeing them as a way to turbocharge wagers on the volatile crypto market. Michael Saylor pioneered the move in 2020 when he transformed a tiny software company, then called MicroStrategy MSTR 1.99%increase; green up pointing triangle, into a bitcoin whale now known as Strategy. But with bitcoin and ether prices now tumbling, so are shares in Strategy and its copycats. Strategy was worth around $128 billion at its peak in July; it is now worth about $70 billion.
November 9, 2025 at 3:08 PM
jeremycaradonnayyj.bsky.social
This tech-bro, hoodie-wearing, Bitcoin truther is single-handedly destroying decades of leadership and reputation-building in Vancouver.

It will be up to the City of Victoria to lead on climate and environment in B.C.
natashabulowski.bsky.social Natasha Bulowski @natashabulowski.bsky.social · 1d
SCOOP: Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim is planning to eliminate the city's sustainability and climate department under the guise of a push to prevent increases to property taxes in his proposed 2026 budget.
Great source work by Marc Fawcett-Atkinson to uncover this
www.nationalobserver.com/2025/11/11/n...
Vancouver mayor plans to eliminate city's climate and sustainability department
Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim is planning to eliminate the city's sustainability and climate department under the guise of a push to prevent increases to property taxes. Canada's National Observer learned a...
www.nationalobserver.com
November 11, 2025 at 8:15 AM
gilduran.com
In 2022, Peter Thiel protégé Balaji Srinivasan—formerly of Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase—envisioned a Second American Civil War.

He predicted it would be triggered by Bitcoin.

This is how it would work:
“It’s a mistake to think a Second American Civil War would look anything like the first Civil War, or like World War 2 for that matter. It’d be nothing like the movies with huge movements of uniformed soldiers, tanks, and planes. Instead it’ll just be a continuation and escalation of what we’ve seen over the last several years: a network-to-network war to control minds, rather than state-to-state war to control territory.” — The Network State: How To Start a New Country by Balaji Srinivasan https://a.co/eRihuJi
November 11, 2025 at 5:03 AM
hongkongfp.com
A Chinese woman who masterminded a multibillion-dollar bitcoin scam and evaded authorities for years was sentenced to 11 years and eight months in jail by a UK court Tuesday. In full: buff.ly/LgKgOgT
UK court jails Chinese bitcoin fraud mastermind for over 11 years
A Chinese woman who masterminded a multibillion-dollar bitcoin scam and evaded authorities for years was sentenced to 11 years and eight months in jail by a UK court Tuesday.
buff.ly
November 12, 2025 at 5:28 AM
rossz28.bsky.social
I can only hope that the next Vancouver mayor is a lot more like here and not fucking douchebro Ken Sim aka "Mayor Bitcoin".
November 11, 2025 at 9:31 PM
bleepingcomputer.com
A Chinese woman known as the "Bitcoin Queen" was sentenced in London to 11 years and eight months in jail for laundering Bitcoin from a £5.5 billion ($7.3 billion) cryptocurrency investment scheme.
“Bitcoin Queen” gets 11 years in prison for $7.3 billion Bitcoin scam
A Chinese woman known as the "Bitcoin Queen" was sentenced in London to 11 years and eight months in jail for laundering Bitcoin from a £5.5 billion ($7.3 billion) cryptocurrency investment scheme.
www.bleepingcomputer.com
November 11, 2025 at 5:08 PM
richardkadrey.bsky.social
Since then, the mine’s owner (allegedly) bought a load of heating pads and set up a warm room for the cats to sleep in. As always these days, it's hard to confirm this. But I really want it to be true.
a photo of cats hunkered down on loads of computer gear with the headline, "Hundreds of stray cats caused a bitcoin mine in Inner Mongolia to lose millions in just one week by curling up on the GPUs for warmth."
November 11, 2025 at 2:36 PM
molly.wiki
thank you Anthony Scaramucci for this extremely relatable analogy about people buying bitcoin on margin
“The margin is a spear coming out of the steering wheel of your sports car, and you’re in the south of France on an icy road in the mountain terrain by Monaco,” said SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci in an interview. “And when you need to hit the brake, that’s when the leverage hurts you the most.”
November 7, 2025 at 5:36 PM
tokyovice.bsky.social
I love LA (for a short stay). Join me for a discussion of #Bitcoin, #Japan, cybercrimes and #Satoshi Thursday in Little Tokyo.
Find out the meaning of #MtGox as well.
If you don’t give a hoot about cryptocurrency come for the #truecrime connection
The Devil Takes Bitcoin
rafu.com/2025/11/an-e...
An Evening with Author Jake Adelstein at JACCC - Rafu Shimpo
Jake Adelstein, best-selling author of “Tokyo Vice” and the inspiration behind the hit HBO series, will give a presentation and reading on Thursday, Nov. 13, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. (doors open at 6 p....
rafu.com
November 12, 2025 at 10:54 AM
tobiasstl.bsky.social
I reckon I could do Gilgamesh on 3x speed if I had a pound of red meat and a bitcoin.
November 11, 2025 at 8:46 AM
ianfraser.bsky.social
Cryptoqueen Qian Zhimin, 47, sentenced to 11 years and eight months for money laundering after arriving in the UK with £5 billion worth of Bitcoin, which she bought with funds embezzled from more than 100,000 Chinese pensioners.
Cryptoqueen who fled China for London mansion jailed over £5bn Bitcoin stash
Qian Zhimin bought cryptocurrency using funds stolen from thousands of Chinese pensioners, say police.
www.bbc.co.uk
November 11, 2025 at 6:01 PM
ssteingraber1.bsky.social
I am like the last person in the anti-fracking community to post about this today bc it’s so cowardly, outrageous, and contrary to science that I…can’t even.

NY Gov Kathy Hochul just APPROVED both the NESE fracked gas pipeline pushed by Trump AND the fracked gas Bitcoin monstrosity at Seneca Lake.
November 8, 2025 at 1:19 AM
conorsen.bsky.social
Bitcoin and $TSLA dropping:
November 5, 2025 at 1:27 AM
brianmfloyd.bsky.social
just a wild pivot. sure. www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/c...
Heritage announced Jan. 10 that it would begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for products and services, sold directly to customers via its e-commerce platform. The new Bitcoin Treasury Policy would also allow the company to hold bitcoin in its treasury and use it to pay vendors, the press release said. The company introduced two whiskeys available to customers paying in crypto in June: House of Doge Bourbon and Bitcoin Bourbon. Press releases indicate that Heritage saw the benefits of cryptocurrency outweighing the risks, in part because the cost to produce their goods is less than the price they sell them for. That creates a "cushion" that other investors who purchase bitcoin with cash don't have, the company noted in an excerpt of their Bitcoin Treasury Policy Statement. "The benefits of attracting a new set of buyers, consumers and fans along with the margin cushion the Company can create, coupled with the potential to see bitcoin increase in value, more than offsets the risk of loss if the price of bitcoin were to fall at any one time or over a given period of time," the statement read. But there's another piece to the puzzle, Leung said. Heritage has launched a treasury with hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of $IP, a token that enables users to buy and sell pieces of intellectual property, in partnership with a company called Story. In an interview with CNBC, Story CEO and Co-Founder SY Lee explained that the appeal of investing in IP tokens is that it offers investors exposure to both a strong asset class — intellectual property — and artificial intelligence infrastructure expected to support intellectual property rights into the future. Heritage made $IP its primary reserve asset in August, raising money from private investors and partners to create a treasury reserve worth approximately $361 million based on the token's price on Aug. 10, according to a company press release.
November 10, 2025 at 4:31 PM
skepteis.bsky.social
Heroes. All of them.
In Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of China, a Bitcoin mining center suddenly went offline. The reason was not a technical problem; stray cats, drawn to the warmth of the GPUs, had curled up on the machines, blocking the cooling systems and shutting everything down. Below this text are two images with rows of cats sitting on server racks.
November 11, 2025 at 9:25 PM
aleshakills.bsky.social
Remember that Paypal would not have been successful without sex workers. Patreon would not have been successful without sex workers. Bitcoin, Gift Rocket, Cash App, Throne, Gumroad - all of these businesses build their success on sex work, and then when they got money, chased the sex workers out.
November 10, 2025 at 8:37 PM
czedwards.bsky.social
This is just delicious.

From the SF Chronicle (I use my apple news subscription, so no link except to apple news): Cryptobro wants a Fuck You Peons statue on Alcatraz, proposed the project over a year ago, set up a funding platform.

Cryptobro has raised $5. Yes, 5. 500 pennies. 20 quarters.
An AI generated image of supposedly Alcatraz Island, with San Francisco and the Golden Gate bridge in the background. A Humongous statute of a naked man holding a torch is on the top of the island, as a proposed sketch of a Promethian Collosus. The text reads: =49% More than a year after announcing plans to build a 450-foot statue of the Greek Titan Prometheus on Alcatraz Island, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur has raised just $5 toward the project. Ross Calvin, founder of the Denver-based bitcoin-mining firm Parhelion and head of the American Colossus Foundation, launched the campaign on Geyser Fund, a Bitcoin-based crowdfunding platform, in March 2024. The project, called "The Great Colossus of Prometheus" on Alcatraz, seeks $450 million to build what Calvin describes as "a monument to American manifest destiny." The nickel-bronze statue and an underground Prometheion Museum aim to celebrate technology and human ingenuity.
November 11, 2025 at 1:49 AM