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Democrats Must Embrace Bitcoin To Survive

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1 month ago

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I, like many of you, am processing the results of the recent U.S. election in which Donald Trump won handily both the electoral college and popular vote. As pundits discuss, left mainstream media personalities mourn, and yes many Trump supporters cheer ecstatically, as a progressive Bitcoiner it’s entirely clear to me: If the Democratic Party wants a future in America, it must embrace Bitcoin.

Let me explain what I mean. Not only do I think is it imperative for the party to embrace Bitcoin if it wants to survive, but after this decisive Trump victory, I think many within the party, and those independent voters who dip in and out of voting for democratic candidates, are looking to make a drastic change and go back to the drawing board.

Bernie is back, and he has something to say. 

Now that Biden’s term is coming to a close, and Harris conceded the race in defeat, Bernie isn’t mincing words with his criticism of the democratic party and priorities. “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.” Many within the party, and former Bernie supporters who perhaps are not in the party or supportive any longer, have been beating this drum for a while: Democrats favor coastal elites, who opine about progressive politics and “wokism” intellectually, while paying lip-service (and patronizing various other minority groups) to working class americans. After losing to Donald Trump twice, many democrats, progressives, and certainly independent and democratic american voters are wondering, where do we go from here?

Trump is a tour de force. A charismatic figure that has truly altered the course of American politics in ways the GOP, strategists, journalists, and the political establishment never thought was possible. The democratic party has been struggling to come up with answers against Trump and MAGA populism after 2016. While mainstream media may continue to cast his victories as the product of racism, sexism, or other beliefs steeped in identity politics, the same they did in 2016, many within the party are accepting that the strategies around identity politics, anti-Trump, and some moral high ground are decisively ineffective.

While we all will be analyzing data, voter profiles, trends, etc over the next several months, many journalists, including some quite influential progressive leaning media outlets including Pod Save America, Breaking Points, and beyond conceded that the Democratic Party must return to being the party of working people and focus on the economy and inflation, which was one of the most important issues for voters at the polls this year. The Democratic party period from 2016-present has focused heavily on identity politics, what many deem as “wokism” and more, which I wouldn’t discredit out right. Much of this is important. But, the weight and prioritization of these issues over economic and other hardships Americans face has been the issue. Many democrats and progressive knew this, but now we have data and election results to prove that it is not a winning strategy for the party, particularly in the presidential election.

Being a progressive and Bitcoiner is quite a unique position to be in, and it’s helped me analyze the world and predict certain trends and outcomes in interesting ways that often times bitcoiners, or progressives outside of the bitcoin bubble, miss. In fact, I’m not alone. Many of the outspoken progressives and left-leaning folks in the bitcoin space were former Bernie bros, inspired by Occupy Wall Street and other populist economic messages around wealth inequality, corporate capture in America, Big Bank bailouts and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Many of us have been turned off by the party’s pivot away from these battles, even to the point where Senator Elizabeth Warren has been working with and funded heavily by Big Banks, not to mention her and many others extreme hostile takes against the revolutionary technology born in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis: Bitcoin.

Here’s my take: Not only must the Democrats embrace Bitcoin to have a political future in America–I think many current and former members would be much more open to it. Rep. Ro Khanna is one leading example of a progressive democrat who understands where the Democratic Party has been losing ground to the Republicans on economic issues and Bitcoin. At the Bitcoin conference in Nashville this past summer, Rep Khanna stated, “Being against Bitcoin is like being against cell phones or the laptop, or semi conductors, it’s a technology.” Bitcoin is for freedom.”

Bitcoin advocates and campaign funding played a huge part in this year’s presidential election. While most democrats and the Harris campaign chose to mainly ignore Bitcoin and the industry, with some neutral or vague support of technology mentioned here and there, after a hostile four years under the Biden administration, this appears to be an error they couldn’t afford to make. Many progressives and democrats may continue to speak out against the industry and the campaign financing and superpacs that brought in Big Crypto Money (which campaign financing and then bitcoin the technology are two different things), but it’s an issue that can no longer be ignored, and almost weekly seems to be growing more and more bi-partisan (including ownership of Bitcoin in America, shown to be exceptionally broad and diverse across the political spectrum from a recent survey conducted by Colin Brown, Troy Cross, and Andrew Perkins).

Donald Trump and the GOP have used and garnered the single issue crypto voters in big ways. Campaign promises include protecting the right to self-custody, a U.S. Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, to support the crypto and bitcoin mining industries, Free Ross, and more. We’ll see if he makes good on these promises, and it’s unclear how big of an impact Trump’s pro-crypto positions had on the election outcome, but it’s not negligible. And if anything, it also symbolized what we saw was very important for American voters– a big shift from the current administration, and big promises regarding the economy and economic prosperity for America.

As the Democrats head back to the drawing board to determine the future of the party and their priorities, many are ready to go big, unburdened by what has been (sorry, had to) with the Hilary, Biden, Harris neo-liberal coalitions. And there’s one good place to start–the economy, stupid! Affordability, inflation, and hope in a brighter economic future for middle class and working families are winning priorities and what Americans at the end of the day show up in huge numbers to vote for. Bitcoin has a significant role to play in this approach and messaging, as an inflation hedge, incredible savings technology for working families, censorship resistant payments (should progressive activists find themselves in positions to need resistance money against Donald Trump’s authoritarian policies), and beyond. If the Democrats are serious about getting back to some of their roots as the party of working class people, including an olive branch to former independent and Bernie supports who are passionate about fighting for financial freedom and a better living for working class Americans, Occupy, and beyond, they will find Bitcoin is an incredible tool to that end. With Bitcoin there is no barrier to ownership, no middleman, not broker or bank you must use or be “accredited” by

Permissionless, freedom money. Can this be a rallying cry for the next chapter in the progressive movement and for Democrats to utilize on the campaign trail? It almost seems inevitable…a when, not an if…that the Democratic party capitulates to Bitcoin and the American people’s demands, or face extinction. Myself, Margot Paez, and others from The Progressive Bitcoiner will certainly be here to advocate for a rebirthing of the progressive movement, powered by Bitcoin. 

This is a guest post by Trey Walsh. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

​ If the Democratic Party is to have a future in US politics, it must embrace Bitcoin going forward. 

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Crypto News

Russian State Duma Deputy Proposes Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

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1 hour ago

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December 9, 2024

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Today, Russian state-owned domestic news agency, RIA Novosti, reported that State Duma Deputy Anton Tkachev proposed creating a strategic bitcoin reserve for Russia, claiming they have obtained a copy of the document.

Tkachev, from the New People party, sent the proposal to Russia’s Finance Minister, Anton Siluanov, to create a bitcoin reserve similar to Russia’s traditional currencies reserves.

“I ask you, dear Anton Germanovich, to assess the feasibility of creating a strategic reserve of bitcoin in Russia by analogy with state reserves in traditional currencies,” the document reportedly stated. “If this initiative is approved, I ask you to submit it to the government of the Russian Federation for further implementation.”

“In conditions of limited access to traditional international payment systems for countries under sanctions, cryptocurrencies are becoming virtually the only instrument for international trade. The Central Bank of Russia is already preparing to launch an experiment in cross-border settlements in cryptocurrency,” the document reportedly goes on to explain.

Tkachev’s document explains that creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve could enhance Russia’s financial stability, noting that traditional currency reserves such as the dollar, euro, and yuan are all subject to inflation and sanctions, and that a new alternative independent of any individual country is needed.

This development continues the trend of countries looking to build a strategic bitcoin reserve, including the United States, El Salvador, Brazil, Poland, and others. An initiative led by the United States and President-elect Donald Trump, the U.S. is looking to build a strategic bitcoin reserve of over 1 million bitcoin, which appears to have caught the attention of certain Russian officials.

Just five days ago, Russian president Vladimir Putin publicly stated that no one can ban or prohibit the use of Bitcoin, and that it will continue to develop. Earlier this year, Putin also signed a new law legalizing Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining within the country.

​ The document would see Russia create a bitcoin reserve similar to its traditional currency reserves. 

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Wabisabi Deanonymization Vulnerability “Disclosed”

Published

5 hours ago

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December 9, 2024

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GingerWallet, the fork of WasabiWallet maintained by former zkSNACKs employees after the shut down of the Wasabi coinjoin coordinator, has received a vulnerability report from developer drkgry. This vulnerability would allow the total deanonymization of users inputs and outputs in a coinjoin round, giving a malicious coordinator the ability to completely undo any privacy gains from coinjoining by performing an active attack.

Wasabi 2.0 was a complete re-design of how Wasabi coordinated coinjoins, moving from the Zerolink framework utilizing fixed denomination mix amounts, to the Wabisabi protocol allowing dynamic multi-denomination amounts. This process involved switching from homogenous blinded tokens to register outputs to claim your coins back, to a dynamic credentials system called Keyed Verification Anonymous Credentials (KVACs). This would allow users to register blinded amounts that prevented theft of other users’ coins without revealing to the server plain-text amounts that could be correlated and prevent linking ownership of separate inputs.

When users begin participating in a round, they poll the coordinator server for information regarding the round. This returns a value in the RoundCreated parameters, called maxAmountCredentialValue. This is the highest value credential the server will issue. Each credential issuance is identifiable based on the value set here.

To save bandwidth, multiple proposed methods for clients to cross-verify this information were never implemented. This allows a malicious coordinator to give each user when they begin registering their inputs a unique maxAmountCredentialValue. In subsequent messages to the coordinator, including output registration, the coordinator could identify which user it was communicating with based on this value.

By “tagging” each user with a unique identifier in this way, a malicious coordinator can see which outputs are owned by which users, negating all privacy benefits they could have gained from coinjoining.

To my knowledge drkgry discovered this independently and disclosed it in good faith, but the members of the team who were present at zkSNACKs during the design phase of Wabisabi were absolutely aware of this issue.

“The second purpose of the round hash is to protect the clients from tagging attacks by the server, the credential issuer parameters must be identical for all credentials and other round metadata should be the same for all clients (e.g. to ensure that the server isn’t trying to influence clients to create some detectable bias in registrations).”

It was brought up in 2021 by Yuval Kogman, also known as nothingmuch, in 2021. Yuval was the developer to design what would become the Wabisabi protocol, and one of the designers in actually specifying the full protocol with ‪István András Seres‬.

One final note is the tagging vulnerability is not actually addressed without this suggestion from Yuval as well as full ownership proofs bound to actual UTXOs as proposed in his original pull request discussing tagging attacks. All of the data being sent to clients isn’t bound to a specific round ID, so a malicious coordinator is still capable of pulling a similar attack by giving users unique round IDs and simply copying the necessary data and re-assigning each unique round ID per-user before sending any messages. 

This is not the only outstanding vulnerability present in the current implementation of Wasabi 2.0 created by the rest of the team cutting corners during the implementation phase. 

​ A major vulnerability in Wabisabi has been publicly revealed that would allow a malicious coordinator server to deanonymize users. 

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MicroBT Unveils New-Gen WhatsMiner M6XS++ Series at Bitcoin MENA 2024

Published

11 hours ago

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December 9, 2024

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Abu Dhabi, December 9, 2024 – MicroBT, a world-leading Bitcoin ASIC manufacturer, has once again showcased its technological prowess and innovation-driven approach by introducing the latest WhatsMiner M6XS++ series at the Bitcoin MENA 2024 Conference in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

During the conference, Dr. Zuoxing Yang, the Founder and CEO of MicroBT, delivered a keynote address titled “Lead Great and Green Mining Forward.” In his speech, he unveiled advancements in solar power mining technology, highlighted the innovative heat utilization in hydro-cooling mining systems, and introduced the new WhatsMiner models.

The mining industry stands at a pivotal juncture, with green mining emerging as a forefront trend for the future. Dr. Yang emphasized the transformative potential of solar mining, predicting a significant reduction in electricity costs for solar power mining to approximately 3.4 cents USD per kWh by 2025. Furthermore, WhatsMiner’s groundbreaking high-temperature water outlet hydro-cooling technology is pushing the boundaries of comprehensive heat recovery. This technology enables the WhatsMiner hydro-cooling system to either minimize mining cooling needs or repurpose heat for advanced applications, such as industrial steam production, seawater desalination, and heating systems, thereby reinforcing MicroBT’s prominent position in the green mining sector.

Subsequently, Dr. Yang unveiled the latest generation of WhatsMiner products. The air-cooled M60S++ boasts a hashrate of up to 226 TH/s with a power efficiency of 15.5 J/T. The hydro-cooled M63S++ offers a hashrate of up to 478 TH/s, maintaining the same power efficiency of 15.5 J/T. The immersion-cooled M66S++, meanwhile, provides a hashrate of up to 356 TH/s, also with a power efficiency of 15.5 J/T.

Additionally, the WhatsMiner line includes the air-cooled M61S+ with a hashrate of up to 236 TH/s and a power efficiency of 17 J/T. The hydro-cooled M64S+ and M65S+ feature hashrates of up to 236 TH/s and 440 TH/s respectively, both with a power efficiency of 17 J/T. Notably, the outlet water temperature for both the M64S+ and M65S+ can reach up to 80°C.

In conclusion, Dr. Yang proudly announced MicroBT’s steadfast dedication to pioneering sustainable and eco-friendly mining practices, heralding a new era of green mining excellence and visionary leadership. With the unveiling of the latest WhatsMiner products, MicroBT stands poised and confident to decisively spearhead the green mining revolution.

​ MicroBT Unveils New-Gen WhatsMiner M6XS++ Series at Bitcoin MENA 2024 

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