Why Canada is cultivating an M-pesa moment for bitcoin
As mentioned the other day, I am on the go this week due to it being half term. Nonetheless, I wanted to quickly draw readers’ attention to the following Globe and Mail piece by Tim Kiladze, mostly because it quotes me. For those who don’t know, the Globe and Mail is one of Canada’s most […]
The FATF recognises its human rights blind spot
For a while now, people like me, Ian Grigg and David Birch (top rank blockchain/payments experts) have been moaning on Twitter about how anti money laundering and Know-Your-Customer rules, despite being developed in good faith, have started to backfire on the system. Rather than curbing criminal financing, in many instances all they have done is add […]
Stuff I’ve been reading
Finance/Markets: The World Socialist Website is a feed available on Bloomberg. Are Pfizer’s lawyers getting a bit twitchy? (Q4 release adds some potentially concerning language: “…or further information regarding the quality of pre-clinical, clinical or safety data, including by audit or inspection…”) Used cars are still doing nicely. Big avocado news. Algos don’t do war […]
Guest Post: Let’s not make whistleblowing as difficult as possible
This is a contribution from Frank di Mauro, the founder of HaYa, an app and platform that facilitates whistleblowing and discrete communications. The Blind Spot has no stake in HaYa. The two entities are benefiting from cross promotion and access. (Frank gets promotion, The Blind Spot gets enterprise access to the HaYa platform.) In the […]
An important operational note
But first some housekeeping. I’m going to be honest. While I’m ramping up the website I just don’t have the bandwidth to do a daily aggregation post. I still find them really worthwhile to do, however, so I’m going to set them to occasional mode. They’re worth reading if you’re interested in my general perspective […]
WW3 Watch: The fertiliser angle
A lot of people are asking, if Russia doesn’t have hostile intentions against Ukraine, why the troop build up? This is an absolutely fair question. Not least because the troop build-up has been happening for many months. One under-appreciated factor in the whole story, however, is the role being played by natgas and fertiliser markets. […]
WW3 Watch: The Kobayashi Maru tell
We continue to live in an utterly polarised media landscape. The West, according to Russia, has become obsessed with hyping up war… (exhibit A) While the Western media has become obsessed with building the narrative that Russia will use a false flag (yes, that favourite of the Alex Jones universe) to justify war (Exhibit B): […]
Samizdata: Thoughts about vaccine mandate protests
First a quick note to apologise for lack of content the last couple of days. I’ve been struck by a bad case of sinusitis (but not the dreaded C disease). I’ve not really been following the news too closely the last 24 hours as a result, but I did want to share a few observations […]
Stuff I read so you don’t have to
(I think I will be adding occassional commentary notes to this aggregation. Also, just to clarify, the idea behind the title is that it’s a daily list of references that are informing my thinking on any given day. Just sharing the rough work. But I agree with feedback that the title is confusing, so I’m […]
Solar storm hits 49 of Musk’s Starlink satellites
A few days ago, I was speaking to someone with links to Washington, who noted that if and when tensions between the West and Russia/China really escalate, the first proper flash point could be in space and not on the ground. They then went on to speculate that any fallout from something like an electromagnetic […]