Bitcoin in Brief Friday: Satoshi’s Birthday and Tezos Turmoil

Welcome to the Friday edition of Bitcoin in Brief. The fourth instalment of this new feature from news.Bitcoin.com is the most eclectic yet, encompassing everything from Satoshi Nakamoto’s faux birthday to juicy snippets from the Tezos lawsuit. According to court documents, the project’s co-founder, Kathleen Breitman is a “one woman band”.

Also read: Bitcoin in Brief Thursday: Busted in Bangkok

• Happy Birthday Satoshi Wherever You Are

On Thursday, bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator was sent birthday greetings from all corners of the cryptosphere. The DOB Satoshi Nakamoto entered on his Bitcointalk forum profile is almost certainly not his true birthday. Nevertheless, April 5 now rivals January 3, when the genesis block was mined in 2009, as unofficial Satoshi Day.

It has been suggested that Satoshi chose this date because on April 5 1933 President Roosevelt signed an executive order “forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States”. Saving gold was henceforth a crime punishable with a $10,000 fine ($200k today) and upto 10 years in jail. Then again, perhaps people are reading too much into all this. For what it’s worth, if his Bitcointalk DOB was correct, Satoshi would be 43.

• Good News and Bad News for Tezos

This week Tezos eased closer to launching its mainnet, which is scheduled for Q3 of this year. That’s the good news. Meanwhile, juicy details have been emerging about the class action complaint filed against Tezos. That’s the bad news as far as Kathleen Breitman and husband Arthur are concerned. The plaintiffs are seeking their bitcoin and ethereum back plus monetary damages to cover the shortfall in the assets’ subsequent appreciation.

In particular, the class action complaint, filed on April 3, outlines evidence that Tezos was offering U.S. investors tokens that constituted a security. Amusingly, the criminal complaint includes quotes from r/ethtrader and r/tezos from Arthur Breitman, serving as a reminder that anything an ICO writes – in its whitepaper, on its website, and on social media – can and will be used as evidence against it. The class action filing also cites a Reddit AMA Kathleen Breitman held, highlighting the fact that she referred to herself as a “one woman band”.

• Binance Delists Centra, Bigs Up Malta

Binance has moved to delist centra (CTR), the token whose ICO founders were arrested on April 1 as one of them was trying to leave the U.S. As reported in Bitcoin in Brief on Tuesday, the CTR token subsequently plunged in price, while exchanges moved to distance themselves from a tainted asset that had been branded as a security. On a brighter note, Binance chairman CZ claims that over 20 crypto companies are looking to move to or invest in Malta, where his exchange is presently relocating.

Remarkably, people are still buying centra.

In other cryptocurrency exchange news, IDEX has just passed 100,000 users and claims to be accounting for over 50% off all ethereum DEX volume. Naturally it’s using this news to try and drum up interest in its ICO for a staking token that promises a profit share from future trading fees.

• This Week in Weird ICOs

On the one hand, ridiculous ICOs don’t deserve the oxygen of publicity they so desperately crave. But on the other, the Royal Wedding ICO is so crazy it warrants a mention. Apparently, the crowdsale enables “the people of the world to feel a part of the Royal Wedding, whilst being able to provide an engaging outlet for interested parties to not only contribute to a decentralised wedding gift, but also appeal to their financial prowess in the creation of an investment mechanism such as the Royale Coin.” One can only hope that’s the last time the words “decentralised wedding gift” are ever used. In comparison, Eric Voorhees’ suggestion that Tesla holds an ICO seems pretty sensible.

• IOTA Burns More Bridges

IOTA is going through a very messy public break-up with a team member. The project’s David Sønstebø has accused now-former employee Per Lind of all sorts of misdeeds. He’s also deleted a Medium post dating from 2016 in which IOTA welcomed Lind into the fold. Lind, for what it’s worth, has refuted the accusations that have been made against him. An unusually high proportion of the people David Sønstebø meets wind up betraying him, if the IOTA co-founder is to be believed. He really does have rotten luck.

• Buy the Dip

Finally, a trailer has appeared for a forthcoming crypto comedy called Buy the Dip. A “biting satire on the world of cryptocurrency” it looks every bit as silly as it sounds.

What other bitcoin stories caught your attention today? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, and Coincodex.

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