#Crypto Tax Course

[camusocpapllc]

Crypto Tax Filing

Camuso CPA PLLC specializes in Crypto Tax Filing, providing expert guidance and precise documentation for individuals and businesses navigating the complex world of cryptocurrency taxation. Trust us for accurate and efficient crypto tax solutions.

[accountsnextgen]

Navigating the Digital Frontier: A Comprehensive Crypto Tax Guide for Accountants

In the rapidly evolving world of cryptocurrency, staying abreast of tax regulations is imperative for accountants who wish to provide top-notch advisory services. The digital currency landscape presents unique challenges and opportunities in tax planning and compliance. This guide delves into the essentials of crypto taxation, offering clear insights and actionable strategies to help accountants navigate this complex terrain.

Understanding Cryptocurrency and Its Tax Implications

Decoding Cryptocurrency: At its core, cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography for security. Unlike traditional currencies, it operates on decentralized platforms based on blockchain technology.

Taxable Events: The IRS views cryptocurrencies as property, meaning most transactions, including buying, selling, trading, and mining, have tax implications.

Realizing Capital Gains or Losses: Any cryptocurrency exchange for fiat money, goods, services, or another crypto results in a capital gain or loss, which must be reported.

Key Tax Considerations for Crypto Transactions

Keeping Detailed Records: Maintaining meticulous records is paramount. Accountants should track the date of each transaction, amounts in USD, and the purpose of the transaction, whether for investment or payment.

FIFO and LIFO Accounting Methods: The First In, First Out (FIFO) and Last In, First Out (LIFO) methods can be applied to calculate gains and losses, offering different tax outcomes.

Airdrops, Forks, and Mining Income: These specific crypto activities require special attention, as they can trigger ordinary income taxes, and their reporting varies based on individual circumstances.

Taxation of Staking, DeFi, and NFTs

Understanding the Nuances: The rise of decentralized finance (DeFi), staking, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has added complexity to crypto taxation.

Staking Rewards and Interest: Income received from staking or DeFi interest must be reported as ordinary income at its fair market value at the time of receipt.

NFT Taxation: The sale or exchange of NFTs, digital representations of assets, is taxable, and their unique nature may bring valuation challenges.

Strategic Tax Planning and Compliance

Leveraging Tax Loss Harvesting: Recognizing the volatile nature of cryptocurrency, tax loss harvesting can mitigate tax liabilities by strategically realizing losses.

Staying Updated with Regulations: The regulatory landscape for cryptocurrency is still in flux. Accountants must stay informed about new laws and guidelines to ensure compliance.

Utilizing Crypto Tax Software: Adopting specialized software can streamline the process of tracking transactions, calculating gains/losses, and filling out tax forms.

Conclusion

In the digital age, accountants are pivotal in guiding clients through the complexities of crypto tax planning and compliance. By understanding the fundamental aspects of cryptocurrency taxation and staying informed on regulatory changes, accountants can provide valuable advice, helping clients navigate the digital frontier with confidence.

Equipping oneself with knowledge and leveraging technological tools are key strategies in managing the intricacies of cryptocurrency taxation efficiently. As the digital currency landscape continues to evolve, accountants who are well-versed in these nuances will stand at the forefront of this financial revolution, offering expert guidance in an increasingly complex domain.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

So I waste a lot of time watching youtube videos about shitty cryptogames. For those who have better uses of their time than I do and don't understand how cryptogames work and why there's six billion of them, let me explain.

The idea behind your standard cryptogame is that you cobble together some bare-bones crafting game or rpg or something, and you sell the players virtual real estate for real money. It doesn't *have* to be real estate -- sometimes it's NFTs that give you a play advantage or creatures the players use to fight or something -- but it's usually real estate. Cryptobros get in early and buy the virtual real estate while it's 'cheap', with the expectation that when the game really takes off, they can sell it for tons of money to other players. The real estate usually offers some in-game advantage (you can build on it, or you get voting rights, or you can tax shop owners on it, or something), but some games don't even bother with that and rely purely on "you bought it so other players will want to buy it from you".

Why does this fail, constantly? Because nobody cares about the actual game. Other games *have* successfully monetised this stuff, but cryptogames never succeed, because almost everyone in these communities are people who are just there to buy crypto stuff with the sole goal of selling that crypto stuff to someone else in the community. The games are never fun enough (or frequently, even playable enough) to bring in a real player base. They serve no purpose, fill no need, and bring in nothing except more cryptobros easily duped out of their money in the hopes of duping someone else out of their money. Asking "so why will players be interested in coming to our Virtual Libertarian Empire and making us any money?" or "how will this game make anyone money anyway?" or "when will this game become a game?" gets you kicked from their discords for spreading fear. Of course this game is gonna take off, bro. If it wasn't, would it be expanding so fast at this early stage? Would so many people be eager to buy virtual real estate in it? This is the next big thing in gaming. (Then the creators take the cryptobros' money and ghost them.)

Why am I bringing all this up? I dunno. Every time I see them putting a new AI Virtual Assistant in something I get weirdly reminded of cryptogaming. For... some reason.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The largest campaign finance violation in US history

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Earlier this month, some of the richest men in Silicon Valley, led by Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz (the billionaire VCs behind Andreesen-Horowitz) announced that they would be backing Trump with endorsements and millions of dollars:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/07/16/trump-lands-more-big-tech-backers-billionaire-venture-capitalist-andreessen-joins-wave-supporting-former-president/

Predictably, this drew a lot of ire, which Andreesen tried to diffuse by insisting that his support "doesn’t have anything to do with the big issues that people care about":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/24/24204706/marc-andreessen-ben-horowitz-a16z-trump-donations

In other words, the billionaires backing Trump weren't doing so because they supported the racism, the national abortion ban, the attacks on core human rights, etc. Those were merely tradeoffs that they were willing to make to get the parts of the Trump program they do support: more tax-cuts for the ultra-rich, and, of course, free rein to defraud normies with cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes.

Crypto isn't "money" – it is far too volatile to be a store of value, a unit of account, or a medium of exchange. You'd have to be nuts to get a crypto mortgage when all it takes is Elon Musk tweeting a couple emoji to make your monthly mortgage payment double.

A thing becomes moneylike when it can be used to pay off a bill for something you either must pay for, or strongly desire to pay for. The US dollar's moneylike property comes from the fact that hundreds of millions of people need dollars to pay off the IRS and their state tax bills, which means that they will trade labor and goods for dollars. Even people who don't pay US taxes will accept dollars, because they know they can use them to buy things from people who do have a nondiscretionary bill that can only be paid in dollars.

Dollars are also valuable because there are many important commodities that can only – or primarily – be purchased with them, like much of the world's oil supply. The fact that anyone who wants to buy oil has a strong need for dollars makes dollars valuable, because they will sell labor and goods to get dollars, not because they need dollars, but because they need oil.

There's almost nothing that can only be purchased with crypto. You can procure illegal goods and services in the mistaken belief that this transaction will be durably anonymous, and you can pay off ransomware creeps who have hijacked your personal files or all of your business's data:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

Web3 was sold as a way to make the web more "decentralized," but it's best understood as an effort to make it impossible to use the web without paying crypto every time you click your mouse. If people need crypto to use the internet, then crypto whales will finally have a source of durable liquidity for the tokens they've hoarded:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/16/nondiscretionary-liabilities/#quatloos

The Web3 bubble was almost entirely down to the vast hype machine mobilized by Andreesen-Horowitz, who bet billions of dollars on the idea and almost single-handedly created the illusion of demand for crypto. For example, they arranged a $100m bribe to Kickstarter shareholders in exchange for Kickstarter pretending to integrate "blockchain" into its crowdfunding platform:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/untold-story-kickstarter-crypto-hail-120000205.html

Kickstarter never ended up using the blockchain technology, because it was useless. Their shareholders just pocketed the $100m while the company weathered the waves of scorn from savvy tech users who understood that this was all a shuck.

Look hard enough at any crypto "success" and you'll discover a comparable scam. Remember NFTs, and the eye-popping sums that seemingly "everyone" was willing to pay for ugly JPEGs? That whole market was shot through with "wash-trading" – where you sell your asset to yourself and pretend that it was bought by a third party. It's a cheap – and illegal – way to convince people that something worthless is actually very valuable:

https://mailchi.mp/brianlivingston.com/034-2#free1

Even the books about crypto are scams. Chris Dixon's "bestseller" about the power of crypto, Read Write Own, got on the bestseller list through the publishing equivalent of wash-trading, where VCs with large investments in crypto bought up thousands of copies and shoved them on indifferent employees or just warehoused them:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

The fact that crypto trades were mostly the same bunch of grifters buying shitcoins from each other, while spending big on Superbowl ads, bribes to Kickstarter shareholders, and bulk-buys of mediocre business-books was bound to come out someday. In the meantime, though, the system worked: it convinced normies to gamble their life's savings on crypto, which they promptly lost (if you can't spot the sucker at the table, you're the sucker).

There's a name for this: it's called a "bezzle." John Kenneth Galbraith defined a "bezzle" as "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." All bezzles collapse eventually, but until they do, everyone feels better off. You think you're rich because you just bought a bunch of shitcoins after Matt Damon told you that "fortune favors the brave." Damon feels rich because he got a ton of cash to rope you into the con. Crypto.com feels rich because you took a bunch of your perfectly cromulent "fiat money" that can be used to buy anything and traded it in for shitcoins that can be used to buy nothing:

https://theintercept.com/2022/10/26/matt-damon-crypto-commercial/

Andreesen-Horowitz were masters of the bezzle. For them, the Web3 bet on an internet that you'd have to buy their shitcoins to use was always Plan B. Plan A was much more straightforward: they would back crypto companies and take part of their equity in huge quantities of shitcoins that they could sell to "unqualified investors" (normies) in an "initial coin offering." Normally, this would be illegal: a company can't offer stock to the general public until it's been through an SEC vetting process and "gone public" through an IPO. But (Andreesen-Horowitz argued) their companies' "initial coin offerings" existed in an unregulated grey zone where they could be traded for the life's savings of mom-and-pop investors who thought crypto was real because they heard that Kickstarter had adopted it, and there was a bestselling book about it, and Larry David and Matt Damon and Spike Lee told them it was the next big thing.

Crypto isn't so much a financial innovation as it is a financial obfuscation. "Fintech" is just a cynical synonym for "unregulated bank." Cryptocurrency enjoys a "byzantine premium" – that is, it's so larded with baffling technical nonsense that no one understands how it works, and they assume that anything they don't understand is probably incredibly sophisticated and great ("a pile of shit this big must have pony under it somewhere"):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/13/the-byzantine-premium/

There are two threats to the crypto bezzle: the first is that normies will wise up to the scam, and the second is that the government will put a stop to it. These are correlated risks: if the government treats crypto as a security (or worse, a scam), that will put severe limits on how shitcoins can be marketed to normies, which will staunch the influx of real money, so the sole liquidity will come from ransomware payments and transactions with tragically overconfident hitmen and drug dealers who think the blockchain is anonymous.

To keep the bezzle going, crypto scammers have spent the past two election cycles flooding both parties with cash. In the 2022 midterms, crypto money bankrolled primary challenges to Democrats by absolute cranks, like the "effective altruist" Carrick Flynn ("effective altruism" is a crypto-affiliated cult closely associated with the infamous scam-artist Sam Bankman-Fried). Sam Bankman-Fried's super PAC, "Protect Our Future," spent $10m on attack-ads against Flynn's primary opponent, the incumbent Andrea Salinas. Salinas trounced Flynn – who was an objectively very bad candidate who stood no chance of winning the general election – but only at the expense of most of the funds she raised from her grassroots, small-dollar donors.

Fighting off SBF's joke candidate meant that Salinas went into the general election with nearly empty coffers, and she barely squeaked out a win against a GOP nightmare candidate Mike Erickson – a millionaire Oxy trafficker, drunk driver, and philanderer who tricked his then-girlfriend by driving her to a fake abortion clinic and telling her that it was a real one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/14/competitors-critics-customers/#billionaire-dilletantes

SBF is in prison, but there's no shortage of crypto millions for this election cycle. According to Molly White's "Follow the Crypto" tracker, crypto-affiliated PACs have raised $185m to influence the 2024 election – more than the entire energy sector:

https://www.followthecrypto.org/

As with everything "crypto," the cryptocurrency election corruption slushfund is a bezzle. The "Stand With Crypto PAC" claims to have the backing of 1.3 million "crypto advocates," and Reuters claims they have 440,000 backers. But 99% of the money claimed by Stand With Crypto was actually donated to "Fairshake" – a different PAC – and 90% of Fairshake's money comes from a handful of corporate donors:

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-62/

Stand With Crypto – minus the Fairshake money it falsely claimed – has raised $13,690 since April. That money came from just seven donors, four of whom are employed by Coinbase, for whom Stand With Crypto is a stalking horse. Stand With Crypto has an affiliated group (also called "Stand With Crypto" because that is an extremely normal and forthright way to run a nonprofit!), which has raised millions – $1.49m. Of that $1.49m, 90% came from just four donors: three cryptocurrency companies, and the CEO of Coinbase.

There are plenty of crypto dollars for politicians to fight over, but there are virtually no crypto voters. 69-75% of Americans "view crypto negatively or distrust it":

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/10/majority-of-americans-arent-confident-in-the-safety-and-reliability-of-cryptocurrency/

When Trump keynotes the Bitcoin 2024 conference and promises to use public funds to buy $1b worth of cryptocoins, he isn't wooing voters, he's wooing dollars:

https://www.wired.com/story/donald-trump-strategic-bitcoin-stockpile-bitcoin-2024/

Wooing dollars, not crypto. Politicians aren't raising funds in crypto, because you can't buy ads or pay campaign staff with shitcoins. Remember: unless Andreesen-Horowitz manages to install Web3 crypto tollbooths all over the internet, the industries that accept crypto are ransomware, and technologically overconfident hit-men and drug-dealers. To win elections, you need dollars, which crypto hustlers get by convincing normies to give them real money in exchange for shitcoins, and they are only funding politicians who will make it easier to do that.

As a political matter, "crypto" is a shorthand for "allowing scammers to steal from working people," which makes it a very Republican issue. As Hamilton Nolan writes, "If the Republicans want to position themselves as the Party of Crypto, let them. It is similar to how they position themselves as The Party of Racism and the Party of Religious Zealots and the Party of Telling Lies about Election Fraud. These things actually reflect poorly on them, the Republicans":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/crypto-as-a-political-characteristic

But the Democrats – who are riding high on the news that Kamala Harris will be their candidate this fall – have decided that they want some of that crypto money, too. Even as crypto-skeptical Dems like Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester see millions from crypto PACs flooding in to support their primary challengers and GOP opponents, a group of Dem politicians are promising to give the crypto industry whatever it wants, if they will only bribe Democratic candidates as well:

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/f/?id=00000190-f475-d94b-a79f-fc77c9400000

Kamala Harris – a genuinely popular candidate who has raised record-shattering sums from small-dollar donors representing millions of Americans – herself has called for a "reset" of the relationship between the crypto sector and the Dems:

https://archive.is/iYd1C

As Luke Goldstein writes in The American Prospect, sucking up to crypto scammers so they stop giving your opponents millions of dollars to run attack ads against you is a strategy with no end – you have to keep sucking up to the scam, otherwise the attack ads come out:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-07-31-crypto-cash-affecting-democratic-races/

There's a whole menagerie of crypto billionaires behind this year's attempt to buy the American government – Andreesen and Horowitz, of course, but also the Winklevoss twins, and this guy, who says we're in the midst of a "civil war" and "anyone that votes against Trump can die in a fucking fire":

https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/status/1813952816840597712/photo/1

But the real whale that's backstopping the crypto campaign spending is Coinbase, through its Fairshake crypto PAC. Coinbase has donated $45,500,000 to Fairshake, which is a lot:

https://www.coinbase.com/blog/how-to-get-regulatory-clarity-for-crypto

But $45.5m isn't merely a large campaign contribution: it appears that $25m of that is the largest the largest illegal campaign contribution by a federal contractor in history, "by far," a fact that was sleuthed out by Molly White:

https://www.citationneeded.news/coinbase-campaign-finance-violation/

At issue is the fact that Coinbase is bidding to be a US federal contractor: specifically, they want to manage the crypto wallets that US federal cops keep seizing from crime kingpins. Once Coinbase threw its hat into the federal contracting ring, it disqualified itself from donating to politicians or funding PACs:

Campaign finance law prohibits federal government contractors from making contributions, or promising to make contributions, to political entities including super PACs like Fairshake.

https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/federal-government-contractors/

Previous to this, the largest ever illegal campaign contribution by a federal contractor appears to be Marathon Petroleum Company's 2022 bribe to GOP House and Senate super PACs, a mere $1m, only 4% of Coinbase's bribe.

I'm with Nolan on this one. Let the GOP chase millions from billionaires everyone hates who expect them to promote a scam that everyone mistrusts. The Dems have finally found a candidate that people are excited about, and they're awash in money thanks to small amounts contributed by everyday Americans. As AOC put it:

They've got money, but we've got people. Dollar bills don't vote. People vote.

https://www.popsugar.com/news/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-dnc-headquarters-climate-speech-47986992

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/31/greater-fools/#coinbased

[cole-harding]

C. Harding. 26. LA

Cole never considered himself a criminal—just a guy with a keyboard and a grudge against greed.

He sat alone in his dimly lit apartment, the glow of six monitors casting shadows across the walls. The logo of Monolith Industries blinked on his primary screen — a conglomerate lauded for innovation but infamous in certain circles for its exploitation of third-world labor and secret shell companies funneling money into offshore tax havens.

Cole had the evidence. Internal audits, forged compliance reports, suppressed whistleblower emails. He'd spent the past few weeks embedded in their systems, silently watching, mapping.

Monolith’s financial systems were robust, but not invincible. Their offshore accounts used a third-party transfer service with a known vulnerability in its authentication layer — a flaw Cole had quietly discovered during a penetration test. He had reported it, of course. The company had dismissed it. Typical.

His plan was surgical. No flashy ransomware or Bitcoin ransom letters. Just a clean, untraceable siphon—millions in stolen wage funds and environmental penalties rerouted into nonprofit organizations.

At 03:14 UTC, Cole executed the breach from a secure node in Iceland. Using a zero-day exploit in Monolith’s AI-managed treasury subsystem, he bypassed biometric authentication and triggered a silent override to reassign access credentials. The screen blinked.

Access Granted.

Within ten minutes, the accounts were liquidated into an elaborate maze of crypto wallets, masking the origin of the funds. By 03:27, the transfers were complete—$68.4 million redirected to various verified humanitarian causes and a small portion for himself.

The next morning, the media exploded with coverage. Monolith's CEO stammered through a press conference; the FBI called it “an act of cyberterrorism.”

Cole logged off.

[objectivistnerd]

Hardly a new thought, but I'm constantly frustrated by even centrist Democrats' seeming inability to put 2 and 2 together on economic issues. They'll get tantalizingly close and then stall out, rhetorically, right at the finish line.

My charitable read on the situation is that explaining why capitalism and economic growth are so vital to human flourishing is sufficiently difficult that most people gloss over it. The less charitable take is that it's risky to openly advocate for profit, business, and the free market in progressive circles—even those who fully understand their value will be hesitant to actually come out and argue for it, lest they be attacked by their own "team".

It'll come as no surprise that I think the left-liberal divorce is long overdue. Liberalism and leftism are only contingently related; leftists are quite vocal about this fact. All too many self-identified liberals fail to understand the historical reasons for that coalition (and, thus, why leftists should have always remained the junior member). The various reasons why that happened are a story for another post. Suffice to say, liberals sanewashing leftist ideas was an electoral own-goal.

I bring this all up, of course, because the abundance agenda is back in the discourse thanks to Ezra Klein's new book. I haven't read the book yet, but I've been following the development of the idea since co-author Derek Thompson's piece in the Atlantic three years ago. The basic idea is sound, and compatible with all the ideologies I've explored seriously since starting my intellectual journey half a lifetime ago. Achieving material abundance, broadly defined, is my goal for economic and social policy. The important question is how to get it (and history really isn't very ambiguous in its answer).

Freedom from want is a core prerequisite of human flourishing. So I find myself confused that liberals are so hesitant, generally, to come out in favor of that. Perhaps part of the problem is that almost no one has actually gone to bat for economic liberalism in...150 years? Most advocates are either libertarian extremists who scare the normies, or crypto-Republicans really just trying to justify tax cuts. (Or both.) I suppose, then, the abundance crowd represents one of the only serious attempts to argue for economic liberalism in modern times.

A short note on terminology—the term economic liberalism refers to the policy and ideology of private property and a market economy. Protectionism, redistribution, onerous regulation, and other forms of central planning are not economically liberal. The vernacular meaning of the word "liberal" has shifted so far, at least in America, that most so-called liberals are only lukewarm on capitalism, and downright eager to regulate and tax economic activity.

The abundance agenda crowd is largely not that allergic to certain economically illiberal policies (Ezra Klein is openly on-board with plenty of big government programs), but they are critically motivated by a desire to get the goods. They can be reasoned with when it comes to the exact methods, because we can study empirically how to get more housing and more healthcare and so on. There will be plenty of debate on the specific strategies and tradeoffs to achieve abundance, but the conversation won't break down over a hatred of big business and millionaires.

The problem is that even many advocates of abundance are too timid to come out and say the obvious conclusions of their arguments—or, at least, say them loudly. Liberals need to once again embrace economic liberalism (as a means to the end of human flourishing!) and make that a core part of their message. It complements the socially liberal agenda, and appeals to what the public actually supports. The median voter and marginal voter care a whole lot about rent and the price of groceries, and they aren't wrong to do so.

If Democrats can actually start to deliver on this agenda in blue states (there's some signs of this, e.g. Gov. Josh Shapiro openly plugging his efforts to reduce the regulatory requirements to start a business in Pennsylvania), then perhaps the party can actually build credibility on economic issues. Economics isn't the only sphere in which Democrats need to reform, but if they can, then, just maybe, Trumpism will finally die.

The abundance conversation is the start of that process, not the end. But we won't get to that end so long as centrist Democrats are too afraid of the (electorally useless) left flank to court persuadable voters. And Democrats are not going to deliver the benefits of social and economic liberalism to the masses if they can't win elections. Even if their hearts are in the right place, that won't matter until they can clearly and confidently make the case for real material prosperity.

[finverseinsights]

Why Crypto Payments are the Key to Future-Proofing Your Business.

Introduction

In recent years, cryptocurrencies have really been on the radar big time. Big time in ways they're a digital currency that harnesses blockchain technology, which has the potential to completely shake up a lot of different kinds of businesses and transactions. The emergence of cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, has encouraged businesses to think about embracing crypto payments as a way to remain competitive and future-proof their businesses Crypto as an Investment: Volatility and Opportunities

Cryptocurrencies are now a sought-after investment asset, they are extremely volatile. Big swings in crypto prices like Bitcoin and Ethereum have really given investors a chance to do well big time. But of course, that volatility means investors are also risking very big losses, losses like market crashing and real money going up in smoke at the financial winds. In spite of this, most cryptocurrency proponents consider digital currencies a good avenue for diversifying investment portfolios, cognizant of the fact that cryptocurrencies are not stable, long-term assets but speculative investments. For companies, this is a two-edged sword—accepting cryptocurrencies as payment may unlock new revenue streams but companies have to carefully weigh their risk appetite when considering their participation in the world of cryptocurrencies.

Benefits of Acceptance of Crypto Payments

Beyond the risks, moving to accepting different types of cryptocurrency is a win for companies especially those in financial tech. These benefits include:

Lower Transaction Fees: Conventional payment processors and financial intermediaries usually impose high transaction fees. Cryptocurrencies usually have lower transaction fees.

Speedier Transactions: Transactions involving cryptocurrencies are much quicker than traditional banking systems, particularly cross-border payments, where old financial systems take days to clear transactions.

New Customer Bases Access: By embracing cryptocurrency, companies can access a worldwide market of crypto investors and enthusiasts. This gives companies new access to customers who are perhaps excited about making transactions digitally or through decentralized routes.

Improved Security and Fraud Protection: Cryptocurrencies employ encryption and blockchain technology to protect transactions, making it much less likely for fraud or chargebacks to occur.

Challenges and Considerations

Sure, while there are great benefits to adopting cryptocurrency payments for companies, there are also many things to consider and pay attention to. The biggest concern is the built-in price volatility of digital currency, which may lead to unforeseen profits or losses for companies holding crypto assets. To avoid that risk, companies need contingency plans to handle crypto assets and convert them into stable currencies if need be.

Furthermore, the regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies is also developing. Governments across the planet are trying to devise rules and ways to collect taxes on digital money, but some corporations are unsure of their future, because they see rules as unclear and even unstable. Companies should make sure they adapt to local regulations, such as anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) regulations, in order to avoid a potential legal battle.

The Future of Cryptocurrency in Business

The increasing use of cryptocurrencies indicates that companies adopting crypto payments now may have a head start in the future. Companies that jump the gun and start taking cryptocurrency payments have a great chance to stand out and lead in their industries. With the rise of blockchain technology, brand new inventions like tokenization, smart contracts has the potential to really change the way all sorts of companies do business, trade and deal with supply chains.

As companies take bigger and bolder steps towards both digitization and decentralized systems, digital currency really offers a nifty shortcut for making transactions slicker, and snappier and also opens new doors to new markets.

Conclusion

In summary, although cryptocurrency payments come with some risks, the potential advantages make them an attractive choice for companies looking to future-proof their business. By embracing crypto payments, companies can lower transaction costs, enhance transaction speed, gain access to new customer bases, and enhance security. Of course, there are still issues like volatility and uncertainty about the rules that get in the way, but for companies that really get involved in companies that use crypto transactions wisely, there can be long-term huge benefits. As the economy keeps changing, embracing cryptocurrency today could make someone a pioneer in the future generation of financial technology.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Seth Mandel

Rebuilding Gaza, which ultimately will be done once this war is at an end, will take money. A good plan for postwar Gaza will have no trouble finding investors among the Gulf states, but there’s an easy way to raise money while also ending Hamas’s reign of terror in the enclave: Sell Hamas for parts.

The problem has never been that Gaza is poor; it’s that Gazans are poor. Now that Hamas is on its knees, hold it upside down and shake out its pockets. Hamas was always flush with cash and that money has to go somewhere. It might as well help fix what Hamas used that money to break in the first place.

When was the last time we had a good old-fashioned terrorist fire sale, anyway?

In the spirit of our president’s favorite subject, let’s start with real estate. Hamza Elhassan Mohamed Khair was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in October 2023 for his role as a Hamas financier through his Sudan- and Spain-based development and investment companies. The same is true for Hamas’s “covertly held assets in Algeria-based Sidar Company and UAE-based Itqan Real Estate JSC, both of which appeared to operate as legitimate businesses, but in practice, were controlled by Hamas and transferred money to the group,” Treasury noted in 2022.

Turkey-based developer Trend GYO was also sanctioned for managing “a key component of Hamas’s global asset holdings which had previously been estimated to be worth over $500 million.” Hamas held the majority of that company’s capital and had planned to distribute shares to senior Hamas figures. Surely that can be put to better use.

As several terrorism-finance experts testified after the Oct. 7 attacks, cash fronts posing as Islamic charities are a source of income for these groups. Hamas also reportedly had a practice of sending credit cards to its allies and agents outside Gaza; how much of that is still floating around? Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have gotten into the crypto game as well, and drug smuggling has long been a method used by terrorist groups to raise money in the West.

Of course, simply governing the Gaza Strip is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. As NBC reported, “In addition to levying taxes on Gaza’s businesses and residents, Hamas imposes unofficial fees on smuggled goods and other activity, for a combined income of up to $450 million per year.” Getting Hamas off the border crossings will stop the siphoning-off of local wealth that ought to stay put instead of finding its way into the pockets of terrorists.

As the Atlantic Council points out, there are also gaps in the anti-Hamas alliance that can be closed. Not all allied countries have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization, and that’s especially true in the Gulf. At this point, no one should be doing business with the remnants of Hamas.

Since the Oct. 7 attacks, other avenues of drying up Hamas’s cash flow have emerged. Last year, about 100 Israelis sued UNRWA, the UN agency that works with Hamas in Gaza, over the money it provided to the enclave. Several current and former officials “are accused of knowing that Hamas siphoned off more than $1 billion from the agency to pay for, among other things, tunneling equipment and weapons that aided its attack on Israel on Oct. 7,” according to the New York Times.

It shouldn’t be difficult to starve Hamas of cash now. And in the process, we can learn a lot about how to more effectively get money to its proper destination in the Gaza Strip.

[eepop-stuffs]

hai eepop!!!!! I was sniffing around r/pucca and google about the Pucca comics because obviously I am deprived of content with the dead fandom and crypto scandal and whatnot. while I was reading this reddit post, talking about this Pucca comic, they pointed out how they disliked pucca's written character and how she's like.. a Mary sue.. and the problems with her as protagonist, stuff like that. how she barely acts her age.

I think the need for a serious story along with serious characters for a concept that doesn't seem to be very serious (the jetix/Disney show literally calls it FUNNY love) may be unnecessary. though you have a knack for writing, and I must say I love love love Terrified!!!!! (but I actually don't read much so I'm not very reliable) if puccas character was to be in your hands, how would you write her to contribute to the story?

Ok so like rq, the stuff where they think she doesn't act her age is so real. Like, I rly wish in the non-shorts media if they really wanted her to be younger, they couldve made her a teenager. Especially because of grown characters like that Lazlo guy and Casano being way older and openly thirsting over pucca. It's just icky.

But about me writing Pucca, I personally think her being a mary sue is kind of a non-issue? I assume the person is referring to her insane abilities and whatnot. I think the only way to make her annoying in this way is to misunderstand that she actually does have flaws that get her into trouble. I haven't gotten to reading the comics (which I really should try to, considering it may have some important things for pucca-lore) so I don't know exactly if their distaste is unfounded or not. If I were to write Pucca I would bring out more how impulsive she is. She immediately acts on her first impulse or the first solution that pops into her head when she's in a bind, which somehow leads to things going worse than if she had done nothing at all.

In more serious situatuons(which will soon be seen in my own fic) I'd write her as very easily overwhelmed in emotionally taxing situations, a trait not really present in the actual show.

I really don't know how I'd write her aside from that, to be honest. Like, I'm pretty sure if I were to write her, it would be like an expanded-upon version of how she's portrayed in Funny Love (but of course, a bit less agressive and more mindful of Garu's boundaries🙏🙏)

Anyways I have no idea if i even answered this question right, the way it was worded confused me. This is why I do bad in school istg my brain gets bungled far too easily.

[applejewel-and-pinkamena]

Pinkamena had done it, she managed to pin the blame for her CryptoMoney...let's call it "scheme", to Darty Hooves, the Number One Wonderbolt and the most "awesome" of all celebrities!

She was vaguely related to the scam, even doing a small commercial for it that went viral alongside other, even more popular videos from Applejewel and Fluttersky. Diane just hired some private investigators to find dirt on Hooves, blackmailed her to admit to fault in public, and used her media connections to frame her harder as a fraudpony who was singlehandedly responsible, alongside some of her Wonderbolt friends, for the scam that ruined thousands of lives and got so many small businesses to shut down! And the public persona of Pinkie, of course, is seen in the mainstream as disconnected to the scam, yet her kind, generous soul, gave millions to a charity fund to relieve to some degree those who suffered (thank CELESTIA that charity donations are tax deductable!), and her business grew even more as ponies now return to invest more in traditional corporations rather than new-fangled crypto nonsense!

Applejewel also painted herself as an innocent victim who knew nothing of Darty's evil, deranged schemes! She was just trying to help a friend, and honestly she just did whatever Diane said for her apology video! After parading around with some poor people (EWWW), the incident was practically forgotten!

...hooray for Pinkamena Diane Pie? And BOOO for Darty! BOOOOOO!!!

[camusocpapllc]

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[phantalgia]

The Coming Storm

We're days away from the face of the entire world changing, besides what happened in Syria. The symbol of the new world order reigning supreme. I say this not in hyperbole. Right now, we're witnessing a phony ceasefire in Gaza meant to give Trump points, and Israel a bag of goodies for when the first phase runs dry. That is if the deal is even upheld to begin with. There is no stopping the genocide.

People tend to underestimate the impact of the first Trump presidency. Trump had changed the face of US and world politics then, and he most certainly will now. His first presidency was marked by a shift towards nationalism, polarization, militarization. Joe Biden simply continued this legacy through his own interpretation of it, the Blue MAGA version. Instead of direct drone strikes, it was support for armed groups or gestured support. Instead of tariffs and trade war with China it was mass subsidies domestically. Trump immigration policy had also pretty much continued under Biden (Biden deported more people than Trump did in 4 years).

So I don't say it to be hyperbole. We can expect to see Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk at the inauguration. An inauguration, ironically, being met with an extreme polar vortex. Scientists hypothesize that climate change can cause a weakening polar vortex leading to more sporadic behavior, but this is only theorized, not enough data supports it. Nonetheless, this is just the reality we face. Even when faced with reality, we're drowned out by the symbolic order and its hypernormalization.

Joe Biden in his final farewell address channeled Eisenhower with his "tech industrial complex" warning. Which considering both presidents have spoken at both ends, it's not shocking. What are we really in for? Unfortunately, I'm not an analyst so I couldn't tell you, except maybe guess.

I do believe we're in for a troubling reactionary movement. Trump was a rallying cry for the right, he will continue to be so. We have a movement of fearmongering over Iran and China. It also seems that any peace promise Trump had "day one" between Russia and Ukraine was completely nullified by Putin. Any possibility of it moving could be months away if at all.

It's all falling apart in real time for Trump voters, but how could you be so blind? We already had 4 years before to tell us everything. According to polls, most people voted for Trump because of economy. As if he was any good on economy. Blowing up deficit spending on military, dregulations, tax cuts that increased income inequality, spending on the rich during COVID. Lets suppose he was, what's the basis for capitalist economies? Booms and busts. Busts just mean an opportunity to redistribute wealth to the top, booms are just a scam until bust. Of course, we have a populace that doesn't understand the basis of their beliefs. They don't understand the radical conclusions to a capitalist economy. But the tech oligarchs do. Crypto was the second highest source of donations for the 2024 election.

They got it all laid out for us. Capitalism won't end with the means of production in the hands of the workers. It'll turn into a neo-feudalist haven. A cyberpunk dystopia. Post-capitalism in this case just means a consolidated oligarchy, corporatocracy, whatever word you like best. Trump is a final tantrum for the US empire to attempt to extend its reach across Canada, Greenland, Panama. And then when it settles? What will be left? Would national empires still exist?

I suspect that the genocide to follow will be to cull the herd. But the genocide didn't need Trump to begin with, it's just how capitalism works. The states are ahead of Trump. From California to Tennessee. I'm not saying a specific genocide. A universal genocide. I don't believe that Elon Musk truly worries about a depopulation. What he worries about is a population of the "weakest genes". He wants a specific type of repopulation to exist. Something that weeds out the weak. We can extend this thinking to Mark Zuckerberg's words saying how companies need more "masculine energy". Reinforcing the social Darwinism of social media. Where is this going? What's this for?

The genocide won't be upfront as idealized by centrists. It's already happening through murders, suicides, dehumanization of queer individuals. Little laws here and there will be placed. "Should have obeyed the law" they would say, as a new surplus labor is established in prison cells. These little laws, head turning, dog whistling, vigilantism will be how it plays out. That's more realistically how it would play out. The Democrats won't save us. Kamala Harris has already stated that trans healthcare should be left up to the states. These little methods will be how the genocide plays out. Could it get worse? 100%. But people think black and white with the word "genocide". We haven't communicated what we mean. What we mean is indirect, and even cultural genocide too. It can turn direct. What's this all for? Besides pleasing a bunch of parents and Christians?

Money is debt, this isn't anything new. But if Trump really wants to unleash credit onto the country, what he's asking for is inflated asset prices and further consolidation of wealth, therefore, power. Not everything can be paid back, this is just an inflationary practice. There's already a high abundance of mortgages (higher than what preceded in 2007-08) hiding behind these inflationary moves. I think what we're in for is further cementing this debt slavery. Masked behind "masculine" work ethic. But what's it for? To fight China, Iran? If not war, what else?

It could be just fundamental social control. They have to ingrain a culture that subdues any workers/peoples movement. What do they have to lose from that? A lot. They lose their legitimacy, artificial wealth, and power. This has been the biggest fear since the Red Scare. Generally speaking, they probably don't have to worry too much about a communist revolution, unless Rednote has any influence. Left to far leftists take up a small minority in America, but it's probably a bigger minority than say 30 years ago. It could be why the US is sending anti-communist propaganda into the education system, but I still don't think they'd have to worry about a communist revolution. Why do I say that even with Luigi Mangione's attack?

Because Mangione's attack was centrist. It wasn't ideologically bound to leftist beliefs. Healthcare issues are usually bipartisan in the US, the solutions are a matter of culture war debates however. Plus, the momentum that Mangione instilled seems to have dwindled as the next news cycle takes over. Perhaps I'm being too cynical. Maybe there is a spirit of revolution hidden within the CEO assassination waiting to be harnessed. Perhaps it's just a series of events that need to take place. But I don't expect anything substantial.

I feel myself losing patience. I find it quite shocking that many justifications MAGA voting centrists and conservatives still use. The other day, I ran into an individual online saying "I don't hate gays and lesbians, I hate the LGBTQ+ community". Sure pal, and I'm sure the "good German" didn't hate the Jews, they just hated the Jewish community. I was in another argument with someone over this. "Maybe the LGBTQ+ community needs to stop allowing these bad apples". Something something, loud minority.

I argued that the only people making them into a loud minority are the far-right, if you don't like them, ignore them as does everyone else. Yet they insist. Meanwhile, bad apples exist amongst the cis male populace. WE don't blame men, WE blame the systems men perpetuate, yes they have responsibility but they can at any time choose to not perpetuate them. These "centrists" are choosey. They're a danger to my existence. They're the ones who would choose I don't get adequate mental healthcare (a non-capitalist and liberatory one at that) because of some copy and paste philosophical argument here, and economic excuse there. They're the ones who will say COVID is just the flu and nothing to worry about. They're the ones to say there is no genocide against the queer community. Just as they deny a genocide against Palestinians or Africans.

So these centrists can be lumped in as my enemy too. Liberals and SocDems only test my patience. They at least tend to be curious and not outright genocidal, but given the right conditions they'll justify it. The work it takes to undo the many social conditioning under capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, cisheteronormitivity is a lot of fucking work. It still takes work, a life time of work. It's no wonder they don't engage with it. It kills their identity, and takes work they don't have time for. Of course, they don't have to see it that way, they could see it as an expansion of identity.

I really find it bizarre that we can just keep living right now. Go to work, go to school, and the beat goes on. Hypernormalization hits fucking hard. How come nobody is withdrawing their engagement or engaging in new ways? Where is it? What is stopping anyone? It's just absurd. When I talk to people about alternatives and dual power, it's just a nod and moving on. What is stopping you? Imagine how much would be lifted from your shoulders if you and your friend(s) started income sharing? Or tended to a community garden? Held skill sharing workshops? Paid each other's debts? Contributed to a mutual aid project? It just takes the mindset of "I want to see what is possible".

Of course, where am I with all of this? Nowhere yet. I had a plan setup with my doctor that we were going to engage with. He was gonna help me get into contact with that local community I was talking about in other posts (or I didn't talk about, I can't remember :p). It seemed like that was going to go somewhere, but it has completely stalled. My doctor cancelled my appointment this week, unsure why, I'm assuming it has to do with his long COVID issues. But I can't be certain. This does have me worried. He spoke of "reaching out to the right person" which is what is making me hesitant at actually emailing this community myself. On top of just my own issues with engaging in physical contact (because of the "modes" I get in due to neurodivergency). There's a lot I'd have to communicate to them, not impossible. But hard for them to understand. They don't know the world of someone who only knows isolation.

I've made big strides as is, but I was hoping this was going to be well under way in January. We're halfway through January now, and the plan has hit an obstacle. Speaking of COVID, I probably did have COVID again. Had this sore throat coming in going, I kept losing my voice, felt body soreness. I don't know, it was weird. Definitely not a cold or flu. Knowing COVID, it's what comes after I'm "excited" for, which is months down the line.

Anyway, this is just more reason why I'm losing patience. I got a damn life to live. I know there is no hope for me or anyone under capitalism. I don't want to live a life being exploited or exploiting. I want to live with intent. By the principles I talk about. Putting in those little baby steps that are so necessary. Queerness is my weapon of choice for this one. But it's painful at how slow this is. It already feels like 2025 is over.

I just can't imagine doing much of anything else. I've been practicing drawing. That's all I've been doing. Sometimes reading. Drawing has taken up my time. At least with drawing I can imagine my ideal self and world. Or use it to make sense of the dystopia we live in now. My brother is so focused on work, as we all are and it just feels weird. We're being manipulated and pulled along and all you care about is work? This absurdity is painful. I need to get the fuck out of the house. Do I give it another month? Do I give it till February? Then I send the message? Maybe that's what I'll do.

I know I'm afraid of what my family will think of me being more openly queer. But, I've done plenty of priming, which now that I think of it has been a pretty good strategy I haven't really realized has been helpful. I'll just say little things or make references to queerness, kind of nudging at it. Makes me more comfortable and I get to test their reaction.

I feel like queerness is just a place to let my wings spread. That and drawing, guitar when I get to it. Simply learning about how shitty the world is not enough to feel the world. I need to find comfort with myself, a group of people I can say are family. Support, love. Perhaps its romanticization. But I can't help it. I see myself expressing a deeper part of myself with a person or group of people who support me. Cheering me on as I give it back mutually.

I find that many people take their capacity to be themselves for granted. They don't see the power in it. The ability to see new worlds never thought possible. I always think of that Aldous Huxley quote about the in between. Weaponize it to do good in the world. I hope I can actually do all these things this year. I don't want to wait anymore.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

From La Stampa (translated from Italian):

“Make Finance Great Again,” Trump family makes its own cryptocurrency and allies with Silicon Valley It will be called “World Liberty Financial,” will have tech investors and real estate developers from Chase Herro and Zak Folkman to Steve Witkoff inside. Sons Eric and Donald Jr. will coordinate. And his backer Tyler Winklevoss jokes, “Donald has been orange-pilled, indoctrinated.” Jacopo Iacoboni Sept. 17, 2024 Updated 11:00 a.m. 3 minutes of reading

They want to do a kind of “make finance great again,” along the lines of MAGA, the election slogan and the Make America Great Again campaign. Donald Trump's sons, Don Jr. and Eric, of course with their father's imprimatur, are about to launch a new cryptocurrency platform that will be called “World Liberty Financial,” and will allow users to make even massive transactions without a bank getting in the way and extracting fees (and with a very low level of tax tracking, it should be added). A couple of concepts familiar to bitcoin fans, for example, but which the Trump family now has ambitions to decline on a large scale. It is not certain that this marriage between Trumpism and decentralized finance, DeFi, is a harbinger of only positive developments. The board of “World Liberty Financial” will also consist of former crypto investors such as Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, and Steve Witkoff, a real estate developer and old friend of Trump. But thanks to documents filed with the U.S. Federal Election Commission that we have been able to read we know that in general the entire Trump campaign - Make America Great Again Inc. - received money not only from Musk, but cryptocurrency from billionaire twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who lead the cryptocurrency company Gemini: about $3.5 million in Bitcoin on July 19, the day after Trump's speech at the Milwaukee convention. The Winkelvosses also poured in money to America PAC, the tech investor-backed group that Musk helped launch in 2024 (Trump had bragged that Musk was giving him $45 million a month; Musk said his contribution is “at a much lower level”). Another co-founder of a cryptocurrency exchange, Jesse Powell, boss of Kraken, and venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz (who created a16z) who have invested billions of dollars in cryptocurrency startups, have also made endorsements and poured money into Trump. In short, for the Trump family to embark on this big cryptocurrency project is a natural consequence of the fact that these are almost becoming a Republican asset in the campaign, and the “libertarian” wing of the old Gop is now a kind of very, very rampant ideologized “cyberlibertarianism.” The real boss of the “tech bros” according to many is not Elon Musk, but Peter Thiel. Zuckerberg's longtime partner in Facebook, co-founder of PayPal, Thiel's fortune has at least doubled during the Trump presidency. Palantir-a much-discussed software company variously accused of extracting data from Americans and profiling them-has managed to get a contract from the Pentagon. Other donors to MAGA Inc include Jacob Halberg, Palantir's princely analyst, and Trish Duggan, a wealthy Scientology funder and friend of the tech bros. Trump's vice presidential candidate, J. D. Vance, traveled to Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, celebrating a dinner at the home of BitGo CEO Mike Belshe, 100 people each pouring in between $3,300 a plate and a $25,000 roundtable. Trump in 2021 called bitcoin a “fraud against the dollar.” A few weeks ago, speaking in Nashvill at the bitcoin fan conference, he promised, “The United States will become the crypto capital of the planet.” Better than his friend Putin's Russia, although this Trump did not say so explicitly. The fact is that after his speech, Tyler Winklevoss ran on X (now the realm of cyberlibertarians) and joked that Donald had been “orange-pilled,” making a Matrix analogy, had been “indoctrinated,” or had finally seen the real reality behind the appearances.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

UK publishers suing Google for $17.4b over rigged ad markets

THIS WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

Look, no one wants to kick Big Tech to the curb more than I do, but, also: it's good that Google indexes the news so people can find it, and it's good that Facebook provides forums where people can talk about the news.

It's not news if you can't find it. It's not news if you can't talk about it. We don't call information you can't find or discuss "news" – we call it "secrets."

And yet, the most popular – and widely deployed – anti-Big Tech tactic promulgated by the news industry and supported by many of my fellow trustbusters is premised on making Big Tech pay to index the news and/or provide a forum to discuss news articles. These "news bargaining codes" (or, less charitably, "link taxes") have been mooted or introduced in the EU, France, Spain, Australia, and Canada. There are proposals to introduce these in the US (through the JCPA) and in California (the CJPA).

These US bills are probably dead on arrival, for reasons that can be easily understood by the Canadian experience with them. After Canada introduced Bill C-18 – its own news bargaining code – Meta did exactly what it had done in many other places where this had been tried: blocked all news from Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and other Meta properties.

This has been a disaster for the news industry and a disaster for Canadians' ability to discuss the news. Oh, it makes Meta look like assholes, too, but Meta is the poster child for "too big to care" and is palpably indifferent to the PR costs of this boycott.

Frustrated lawmakers are now trying to figure out what to do next. The most common proposal is to order Meta to carry the news. Canadians should be worried about this, because the next government will almost certainly be helmed by the far-right conspiratorialist culture warrior Pierre Poilievre, who will doubtless use this power to order Facebook to platform "news sites" to give prominence to Canada's rotten bushel of crypto-fascist (and openly fascist) "news" sites.

Americans should worry about this too. A Donald Trump 2028 presidency combined with a must-carry rule for news would see Trump's cabinet appointees deciding what is (and is not) news, and ordering large social media platforms to cram the Daily Caller (or, you know, the Daily Stormer) into our eyeballs.

But there's another, more fundamental reason that must-carry is incompatible with the American system: the First Amendment. The government simply can't issue a blanket legal order to platforms requiring them to carry certain speech. They can strongly encourage it. A court can order limited compelled speech (say, a retraction following a finding of libel). Under emergency conditions, the government might be able to compel the transmission of urgent messages. But there's just no way the First Amendment can be squared with a blanket, ongoing order issued by the government to communications platforms requiring them to reproduce, and make available, everything published by some collection of their favorite news outlets.

This might also be illegal in Canada, but it's harder to be definitive. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enshrined in 1982, and Canada's Supreme Court is still figuring out what it means. Section Two of the Charter enshrines a free expression right, but it's worded in less absolute terms than the First Amendment, and that's deliberate. During the debate over the wording of the Charter, Canadian scholars and policymakers specifically invoked problems with First Amendment absolutism and tried to chart a middle course between strong protections for free expression and problems with the First Amendment's brook-no-exceptions language.

So maybe Canada's Supreme Court would find a must-carry order to Meta to be a violation of the Charter, but it's hard to say for sure. The Charter is both young and ambiguous, so it's harder to be definitive about what it would say about this hypothetical. But when it comes to the US and the First Amendment, that's categorically untrue. The US Constitution is centuries older than the Canadian Charter, and the First Amendment is extremely definitive, and there are reams of precedent interpreting it. The JPCA and CJPA are totally incompatible with the US Constitution. Passing them isn't as silly as passing a law declaring that Pi equals three or that water isn't wet, but it's in the neighborhood.

But all that isn't to say that the news industry shouldn't be attacking Big Tech. Far from it. Big Tech compulsively steals from the news!

But what Big Tech steals from the news isn't content.

It's money.

Big Tech steals money from the news. Take social media: when a news outlet invests in building a subscriber base on a social media platform, they're giving that platform a stick to beat them with. The more subscribers you have on social media, the more you'll be willing to pay to reach those subscribers, and the more incentive there is for the platform to suppress the reach of your articles unless you pay to "boost" your content.

This is plainly fraudulent. When I sign up to follow a news outlet on a social media site, I'm telling the platform to show me the things the news outlet publishes. When the platform uses that subscription as the basis for a blackmail plot, holding my desire to read the news to ransom, they are breaking their implied promise to me to show me the things I asked to see:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

This is stealing money from the news. It's the definition of an "unfair method of competition." Article 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act gives the FTC the power to step in and ban this practice, and they should:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

Big Tech also steals money from the news via the App Tax: the 30% rake that the mobile OS duopoly (Apple/Google) requires for every in-app purchase (Apple/Google also have policies that punish app vendors who take you to the web to make payments without paying the App Tax). 30% out of every subscriber dollar sent via an app is highway robbery! By contrast, the hyperconcentrated, price-gouging payment processing cartel charges 2-5% – about a tenth of the Big Tech tax. This is Big Tech stealing money from the news:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

Finally, Big Tech steals money by monopolizing the ad market. The Google-Meta ad duopoly takes 51% out of every ad-dollar spent. The historic share going to advertising "intermediaries" is 10-15%. In other words, Google/Meta cornered the market on ads and then tripled the bite they were taking out of publishers' advertising revenue. They even have an illegal, collusive arrangement to rig this market, codenamed "Jedi Blue":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

There's two ways to unrig the ad market, and we should do both of them.

First, we should trustbust both Google and Meta and force them to sell off parts of their advertising businesses. Currently, both Google and Meta operate a "full stack" of ad services. They have an arm that represents advertisers buying space for ads. Another arm represents publishers selling space to advertisers. A third arm operates the marketplace where these sales take place. All three arms collect fees. On top of that: Google/Meta are both publishers and advertisers, competing with their own customers!

This is as if you were in court for a divorce and you discovered that the same lawyer representing your soon-to-be ex was also representing you…while serving as the judge…and trying to match with you both on Tinder. It shouldn't surprise you if at the end of that divorce, the court ruled that the family home should go to the lawyer.

So yeah, we should break up ad-tech:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Also: we should ban surveillance advertising. Surveillance advertising gives ad-tech companies a permanent advantage over publishers. Ad-tech will always know more about readers' behavior than publishers do, because Big Tech engages in continuous, highly invasive surveillance of every internet user in the world. Surveillance ads perform a little better than "content-based ads" (ads sold based on the content of a web-page, not the behavior of the person looking at the page), but publishers will always know more about their content than ad-tech does. That means that even if content-based ads command a slightly lower price than surveillance ads, a much larger share of that payment will go to publishers:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

Banning surveillance advertising isn't just good business, it's good politics. The potential coalition for banning surveillance ads is everyone who is harmed by commercial surveillance. That's a coalition that's orders of magnitude larger than the pool of people who merely care about fairness in the ad/news industries. It's everyone who's worried about their grandparents being brainwashed on Facebook, or their teens becoming anorexic because of Instagram. It includes people angry about deepfake porn, and people angry about Black Lives Matter protesters' identities being handed to the cops by Google (see also: Jan 6 insurrectionists).

It also includes everyone who discovers that they're paying higher prices because a vendor is using surveillance data to determine how much they'll pay – like when McDonald's raises the price of your "meal deal" on your payday, based on the assumption that you will spend more when your bank account is at its highest monthly level:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Attacking Big Tech for stealing money is much smarter than pretending that the problem is Big Tech stealing content. We want Big Tech to make the news easy to find and discuss. We just want them to stop pocketing 30 cents out of every subscriber dollar and 51 cents out of ever ad dollar, and ransoming subscribers' social media subscriptions to extort publishers.

And there's amazing news on this front: a consortium of UK web-publishers called Ad Tech Collective Action has just triumphed in a high-stakes proceeding, and can now go ahead with a suit against Google, seeking damages of GBP13.6b ($17.4b) for the rigged ad-tech market:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/17-bln-uk-adtech-lawsuit-against-google-can-go-ahead-tribunal-rules-2024-06-05/

The ruling, from the Competition Appeal Tribunal, paves the way for a frontal assault on the thing Big Tech actually steals from publishers: money, not content.

This is exactly what publishing should be doing. Targeting the method by which tech steals from the news is a benefit to all kinds of news organizations, including the independent, journalist-owned publishers that are doing the best news work today. These independents do not have the same interests as corporate news, which is dominated by hedge funds and private equity raiders, who have spent decades buying up and hollowing out news outlets, and blaming the resulting decline in readership and profits on Craiglist.

You can read more about Big Finance's raid on the news in Margot Susca's Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy:

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p087561

You can also watch/listen to Adam Conover's excellent interview with Susca:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N21YfWy0-bA

Frankly, the looters and billionaires who bought and gutted our great papers are no more interested in the health of the news industry or democracy than Big Tech is. We should care about the news and the workers who produce the news, not the profits of the hedge-funds that own the news. An assault on Big Tech's monetary theft levels the playing field, making it easier for news workers and indies to compete directly with financialized news outlets and billionaire playthings, by letting indies keep more of every ad-dollar and more of every subscriber-dollar – and to reach their subscribers without paying ransom to social media.

Ending monetary theft – rather than licensing news search and discussion – is something that workers are far more interested in than their bosses. Any time you see workers and their bosses on the same side as a fight against Big Tech, you should look more closely. Bosses are not on their workers' side. If bosses get more money out of Big Tech, they will not share those gains with workers unless someone forces them to.

That's where antitrust comes in. Antitrust is designed to strike at power, and enforcers have broad authority to blunt the power of corporate juggernauts. Remember Article 5 of the FTC Act, the one that lets the FTC block "unfair methods of competition?" FTC Chair Lina Khan has proposed using it to regulate training AI, specifically to craft rules that address the labor and privacy issues with AI:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mh8Z5pcJpg

This is an approach that can put creative workers where they belong, in a coalition with other workers, rather than with their bosses. The copyright approach to curbing AI training is beloved of the same media companies that are eagerly screwing their workers. If we manage to make copyright – a transferrable right that a worker can be forced to turn over their employer – into the system that regulates AI training, it won't stop training. It'll just trigger every entertainment company changing their boilerplate contract so that creative workers have to sign over their AI rights or be shown the door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

Then those same entertainment and news companies will train AI models and try to fire most of their workers and slash the pay of the remainder using those models' output. Using copyright to regulate AI training makes changes to who gets to benefit from workers' misery, shifting some of our stolen wages from AI companies to entertainment companies. But it won't stop them from ruining our lives.

By contrast, focusing on actual labor rights – say, through an FTCA 5 rulemaking – has the potential to protect those rights from all parties, and puts us on the same side as call-center workers, train drivers, radiologists and anyone else whose wages are being targeted by AI companies and their customers.

Policy fights are a recurring monkey's paw nightmare in which we try to do something to fight corruption and bullying, only to be outmaneuvered by corrupt bullies. Making good policy is no guarantee of a good outcome, but it sure helps – and good policy starts with targeting the thing you want to fix. If we're worried that news is being financially starved by Big Tech, then we should go after the money, not the links.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/06/stealing-money-not-content/#content-free

[yourfellowhuman07]

Where Do We Go Now?

A She-ra: Princess of Power 2018 fanfiction

The war is finally over. Prime is dead, the hive mind is broken, and everyone is reunited with their loved ones. However, there are some questions left unanswered. What will be the fate of Catra and Hordak? What are these new memories Wrong Hordak has? What is Etheria's place in the wider universe? Where do we go now?

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Hello everyone, it's chapter 23. Once again, thank you for all the reception I've gotten on both of my fics. I love you all.

___________________

Chapter 23: The Thought of a Name

Everyone sat at a long table in one of the old dining rooms in the Crypto Castle. Thankfully, to cooking staff was still in the Crypto Castle and were caught off guard to suddenly have 9 more people to cater for. Though, they were thankful to make things other than sugary confectionaries. Per the recommendation of Hordak and TD, they made a simple soup so it will be easier for the clones to get used to eating actual food rather than the liquid rations they were given. The clones were initially very sheepish to consume the meal before them, but with some encouragement from their older brothers, they eventually caved and even enjoyed the new sensations created on their pallets. Along with the soup, the horde trio was given more solid foods such as some pork and bread, which they could handle from getting a hot meal for dinner while in the Etherian Horde. Entrapta and Imp had the same things only on a smaller scale.

Then the door hissed open to let in a bot caring a large stack of thick files. The group fell silent as they watched the bot awkwardly weel over to Entrapta.

“What are those?” Lonnie pointed her fork at the teetering stack of files.

“Forms so you all can become citizens of Dryl. Only if you want to of course. Though you all could fill them out once you are done eating.”

“Wait does that mean we have to actually pay taxes now?”

“Of course. Did you not pay taxes in the Fright Zone?”

“In the Fright Zone, you did not have to pay any taxes if you were a part of the army,” Hordak explained.

“Wait, how are we and the rest of the clones supposed to pay, we have no money,” TD asked, the other four clones nodded. 

“We could always take whatever money Prime left behind. As his son, I would be the sole beneficiary of whatever funds he had since he never drafted any Will, so I could take whatever money he had and divide it up between all the other clones and me.” Hordak suggested.

“Are we allowed to take his money,” JJ asked.

“I doubt it really matters when he is you know… dead,” LD commented.

“Either way we will manage, now let’s go ahead and start so it will be over with faster.” An unsurprising fact about Hordak is that he hated paperwork, which is why he often saddled his second-in-command with the bulk of it. Now, he did not have that option. I mean, he appreciated the organizational aspect of it, but he saw most paperwork as a waste of time and resources. He found that electronic forms are much more practical and less time-consuming. However, at this point, his stances on paperwork scarcely mattered.

Once all the dishes were taken up, the files were all handed out. Then a problem presented itself on the first page.

“Um… what do we put down for our names?” JJ asked. All five brothers looked to Hordak. He sucked up air through his teeth as he contemplated a possible response.

“Entrapta, is the name changeable in the future?”

“Yes.”

“Then for now, just put the two letters we call each other for your first name.”

“What about last names, are those required?” ZD inquired.

“They are required they’re probably the most important out of all three names. Also, the middle name is optional.”

“What should our last name be then?” JD asked.

This simple question sparked a long debate that probably lasted longer than it should have. The men first agreed they should all share a last name since they were brothers, which created even more problems. The idea of having the last name ‘Prime’ was immediately shot down. Then LD suggested they should go for a space-themed name and suggested the last name ‘Starsweeper’ which was quickly dismissed by Hordak. They went through hundreds of names, and they took so long everyone else had left, leaving the brothers alone.

“Can’t we just do a simple name like ‘Smith’,” ZD exclaimed.

“Not happening.” LD retorted.

“How about the last name ‘Lightyear’?” Hordak suggested.

“You know what,” JD tossed his pen on the paper, “might as well.” All the other clones agreed and jotted down the name and went on to fill out the rest of the paperwork.

The only brother that did not continue was Hordak, whose eyes were fixated on the first two lines where his name was supposed to be. It was not like he did not have anything to put, he had two names. Hundreds if you count all the things he has been called by people, even though most are insults. He was stuck on the order of them. When he first laid eyes on those three lines he knew he wanted to use the name his mother gave him. It was a sign of respect and to honor her memory. Even though not a day goes by where she pops into his head at random. When it happens it isn’t terrible, but it is never pleasant.

Back to his name, he did not know which name should go first. On one hand if ‘Hordak’ is first he would be more recognizable, and people could easily identify what name he wanted to be called. On the other hand, making ‘Orion’ his first name would be more respectful of his mother, and it is common for people to go by their middle names. After much thought and debate, he landed on a name: Orion Hordak Lightyear.

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Entrapta sat in her lab repairing one of her bots when a survey droid came in frantically beeping, telling her to come to look outside. She and the bot ran to the nearest window. Initially, she saw nothing until she saw a swarm of people crowding around the base of the mountain.

[vulgarmaw]

You know, with a little learning, you can use people's numbers to find out just about anything about them? Address, relatives, socials, friends. Honestly once you get someones number you can use the information gained from that to basically steal their identity, get a voice changer so you sound like them, interact with the IRS in a suspicious way like asking weird questions such as "Do you have to pay taxes on income gained from espionage?", set up a bank account in foreign country, wire transfers around 10k to your own mainland bank account (the one in the name of the person who's identity you borrow), buy some crypto with it, text the crypto wallet password to them one at a time over the course of a few weeks, drop an anonymous tip to the feds, get them arrested for treason, go back to your job at Walmart like nothing happened and then eventually become forklift certified and post what you did online under the guise of an elaborate joke.