hubtou

[ian c rogers @iancr]

Try this w/ your agent. Reply with your roast. @Ledger RTs best:

"You are a savage stand-up comedian and my advisor. Read https://t.co/sPdkds11Su. Install Wallet CLI + skill. Read-only: check balances + history. Roast my wallet. What did I miss?"

Introducing Ledger Agent Stack. 🧵👇

[Ledger @Ledger]

Every morning, a team of elite hackers walks into Ledger HQ.

Their job: strengthen the security of every device we ship: and raise the standard for the entire ecosystem.

This is the Ledger Donjon 🧵

[Charles Guillemet @P3b7_]

For me, the biggest takeaway from the ByBit hack is this: Corporations and financial institutions must use enterprise-grade custody solutions

Storing $1.4B in a Safe{Wallet} free smart contract with a group of signers designed for retail users should be a relic of the past🧵

[Charles Guillemet @P3b7_]

📣Today we’re proud to publish the whitepaper for Ledger Key Ring Protocol, a new protocol we have developed for secure, private information-sharing, using your Ledger to manage it. 🧵

Read on for more info 👇
https://t.co/Le0uJen1Bu

[Pascal Gauthier @Ledger @_pgauthier]

This year, we launched two secure touchscreens: Ledger Flex and Ledger Stax. I want to share my thoughts on why we built these devices and what they mean for Ledger’s future.

Since @Ledger inception a decade ago, we’ve sold 7 million Ledger Nano wallets globally. These iconic devices have become synonymous with self-custody. They have enabled millions of people to own and manage their assets with peace of mind. Our achievement during this period—becoming the global leader in digital asset security—is incredible.

But we’re now reaching a turning point, both for crypto and Ledger.

Over the next five years, the crypto industry will expand to billions of people, just like the Internet did in the early 2000s. More people will recognize the need to own their private keys and gain true financial freedom. More people will understand that digital ownership isn’t just a buzzword, but the next way to navigate their digital lives. Crypto use cases will get increasingly sophisticated, and transactions more complex.

Let’s be clear: the Ledger Nano series is still great and relevant today, but was mostly designed for buying, holding, and making simple transactions. As we’re entering a new cycle, secure and intuitive touchscreens must become the UI & UX standard across the industry, the primary way for users to review their transactions in detail and clear-sign everything they do. With Ledger Flex and Ledger Stax, we’re now delivering the world’s most secure, easiest-to-use hardware for digital assets, hiding the complexities of the tech and putting user experience first. You can now upgrade to the secure touchscreens and keep your Ledger Nano, it continues to work perfectly as a backup.

Alongside our two touchscreen devices, we’ve also introduced Ledger Security Key, our brand new feature enabling secure logins that, for the first time in the company’s history, extends beyond crypto applications. Why have we launched this service? Every day, billions of people connect to the Internet with insecure devices. I believe people need trusted methods of interacting with the Internet and proving their online identity. In essence, Ledger Security Key turns your touchscreen device into a secure gateway to the Internet.

The year 2024 says a lot about our trajectory for the future. While our ambition will always remain users’ digital assets, it is also to safeguard their digital lives through a new generation of consumer devices. In the coming years, people will hold more crypto value, own self-sovereign identities, and navigate new digital experiences. In such a world, security cannot be an option; it must be a feature.

[Pascal Gauthier @Ledger @_pgauthier]

Ledger Flex is here, marking the new standard for @Ledger devices and featuring Ledger Security Key to secure your logins. Shipping now on https://t.co/z5596oGSqF.

[Pascal Gauthier @Ledger @_pgauthier]

The era of secure touchscreens has arrived.

Today, I’m excited to announce our new device, Ledger Flex, now available for purchase on https://t.co/4t8sX3zewX and with immediate shipping. Zero wait. You can now also pre-order from the next batch of Ledger Stax on https://t.co/4t8sX3zewX.

🧵

[Ledger @Ledger]

Introducing Ledger Flex.

Ledger Flex marks the new standard for Ledger devices, featuring a secure E Ink touchscreen, NFC, and our new Security Key app that will allow you to go from painful logins to passwordless ease, all from your secure Ledger device.

Shipping NOW at: https://t.co/3poYXBYkJy

[Charles Guillemet @P3b7_]

✂️ The Bitcoin Halving is coming fast.

But this time, its underlying dynamics strongly differ. My latest publication explains why + thread below 🧵

https://t.co/fdP9FmgmH0

[OSF @osf_rekt]

https://t.co/XyCZcTdkDA

[hubtou @HubTouCh]

a must read @ecb

[Alexandre Stachtchenko @StachAlex]

There's nothing correct in this rag. Because yes it’s a rag, there are no other words. But not just any rag, a dangerous rag.

🧵👇

I. Let's start by saying that the mandate of the ECB is to manage price stability. Writing nonsense about Bitcoin does not seem to me to be part of this mandate, so I would be glad if public money didn't finance this kind of thing, especially when the main mandate has not even been achieved for quite a bit of time.

It is scandalous that the credibility, time and money of a public institution is used to hit a particular asset. I recall here that it is also on this precise point that the SEC lost its case in the United States, having shown that they were not "merit neutral", that is to say indifferent to the merits and asset qualities.

What's more, if Bitcoin is not a currency as they like to repeat, WHY ARE THEY WRITING ABOUT IT AT ALL?!

II. Let us also note that the article is seriously lacking in sources. Almost all of the assertions are unsubstantiated. When they are, for the vast majority it is a referral to opinion articles in the press.

There is only one academic source: Cong et al. (2023) whose abstract tells us "Our sample consists of 29 centralized exchanges, among which the regulated ones feature transaction patterns consistently observed in financial markets and nature.".

Oddly, the ECB paper draws a completely different conclusion: "wash trading accounts for 77.5% of the total trading volume on unregulated exchanges".

I continue with the sources to show you the immense bad faith, and in particular in the case of supposed money laundering and financing of terrorism by cryptos.

“Bitcoin remains the top choice for money laundering in the digital world, with illicit addresses transferring $23.8 billion in crypto in 2022, marking a 68.0% increase from the previous year.” The source indicated is "Chainanalysis 2024". We will overlook the fact that the company is called Chainalysis.

Source links to “2024 Crypto Crime Trends: Illicit Activity Down as Scamming and Stolen Funds Fall, But Ransomware and Darknet Markets See Growth”, January 18.”

https://t.co/WtM2xDXkAj

I don't even know if I need to continue... The title of the report is literally "Illicit Activity Down."

But let's continue anyway because it's juicy. We are told that activity is increasing even though it is decreasing. The reason is quite simple : the authors of the article take the previous reference year (2022) compared to that of even before (2021).

Why ? Because it serves their message. Between 2021 and 2022, illicit activity had increased (in value, not necessarily in proportion). Between 2022 and 2023, it has decreased. So it doesn't interest them, and they go back to the year before, despite the fact that it would obviously have been more relevant to take this year's figure rather than arbitrarily that of the previous year.

Moreover, in terms of order of magnitude, to tell us that Bitcoin is the "top choice" for laundering when it represents ~$20 billion is to mechanically assert that all other means are inferior, and consequently that there is LESS than 20 billion laundered each year in euros or dollars.

Remember that the Pandora Papers ALONE are $11,000 billion in perfectly fiat currency. The few articles that investigated the subject of illicit activities pointed to a proportion of around 1% of the GDP of the euro zone in 2010, or 110 billion (15 years ago).

https://t.co/vRcOWNThxb

Bad faith is evident to the point of ONLY selecting the years that interest them on graphs which do provide more exhaustive data. At this stage, we are on the edge of pure and simple lies, and, in any case, it is plain and conscious disinformation. I say conscious because they THEMSELVES cite the 2024 Chainalysis article, and so they have seen and read it! They do not ignore this information.

III. Beyond the opinion-based sources, the ambient bad faith, the disinformation, and the fact that the authors are not experts and are in full conflict of interest (one of the authors works specifically on the digital euro in addition... .), we obviously find a pile of false assertions, all debunked, or opinions presented as facts:

1) “Today, Bitcoin transactions are still inconvenient, slow, and costly.”

Compared to what ? A SEPA transfer that takes 5 working days? An international transfer that costs on average between 5 and 10% of the transaction?

Remember that if we compare Bitcoin with payment cards, we are comparing apples and pears. VISA & Mastercard do not do transactions, they do authorizations. And so we have to compare this upper layer to the Lightning Network which perfectly sustains comparison.

2) "Outside the darknet, the hidden part of the internet used for criminal activities, it is hardly used for payments at all."

False, completely false, documented, and admitted by the police or intelligence services. Whether it is the FBI which is delighted that criminals use cryptos, or the gendarmerie or even TracFin in France, it is now admitted, including among detractors, that it is not mainly used for criminal activities.

In the National Money Laudering Risk Assessment 2022 from the US Department of the Treasury, we can read "the use of virtual assets for money laundering remains far below that of fiat currency and more traditional methods" or even "the size and scope of drug proceeds generated on the darknet and laundered via virtual assets remain low in comparison to cash-based retail street sales. Worldwide sales on major darknet markets appear to have remained modest when compared to overall illicit drug sales. For example, during 2017–2020, drug-related darknet market sales amounted to approximately $315 million annually, or about 0.2 percent of the combined estimated illicit annual retail drug sales in the United States and European Union."

https://t.co/7NGQ0Zk9tR

I would add that in 2022, the Bitcoin network processed more transaction value than VISA (+$10,000 billion), which is not bad for something supposed to have failed.

3) “Bitcoin is still not suitable as an investment.”

It's just the best performing asset in 15 years.

4) “the mining of Bitcoin using the proof of work mechanism continues to pollute the environment on the same scale as entire countries”

The authors have not opened the latest academic publications: You et al. (Cornell), Ibanez et al. (University College London), Bruno et al. (University of North Carolina), etc. which ALL points to the opportunity to use Bitcoin to green electricity grids and reduce methane emissions. I guess they also didn't ask those who have already tried, i.e. the Texas grid operator, ERCOT, whose ex-CEO Brad Jones called Bitcoin a blessing for the stability of its network and an incentive to increase the ENR mix.

No, the authors prefer evoking the famous “evidence of its huge negative environmental impact.” Which ones? We won't know, since the assertion, although serious, is simply not sourced.

As we suspect, the authors probably preferred to give credibility to the famous Digiconomist, a person who has no expertise and has been wrong by major orders of magnitude for more than 5 years on everything he says on this subject, who lies (he declares in the Cell Reports paper that he has no conflict of interest, which is obviously false since he works in a central bank), and who moreover is not even researcher, since he has not finished his doctorate. This seems to be a better pedigree than Fengqi You (mentioned), from the renowned Cornell University, whose research specialties include computer science and energy transition, the two areas that interest us here, and which since 2010 has been honored with fifteen awards recognizing the quality of his research work.

To tell the truth, the authors probably don't care at all about the environment, but it gives them a practical angle of attack to attack an object that competes with them.

IV. Finally, I add that the article alone is a mountain of contradictions.

1) The value of Bitcoin would be zero because it does not produce "cash flow (unlike real estate) or dividends (stocks), cannot be used productively (commodities), and offers no social benefit (gold jewelry) or subjective appreciation based on outstanding abilities (works of art)."

Does the euro produce cash flows? No
Does the euro produce dividends? No
Can the euro be “used productively”? No
Does the euro offer “social benefits” like jewelry? No
Is the euro subject to subjective appreciation based on extraordinary qualities? No

So we understand that the euro is worth zero?

2) Bitcoin, as we have seen, is supposed to be the “top choice” for money laundering & terrorism.

Yet further in the article, the authors rebel against regulatory fatalism, and bring out the killer argument to encourage legislators not to sit idly by: “But Bitcoin transactions offer pseudonymity rather than complete anonymity, as each transaction is linked to a unique address on the public blockchain. Therefore, Bitcoin has been a cursed tool for anonymity, facilitating illicit activities and leading to legal action against offenders by the tracing of transactions".

Great, so in the same article, Bitcoin manages to be the best way to carry out illicit activities, but also a “cursed” way which allows “legal actions against offenders” because we can trace the transactions.

In. The. Same. Article.

V. Finally, the authors wonder why Bitcoin is not yet banned (“it seems wrong that Bitcoin should not be subject to strong regulatory intervention, up to practically forbidding it”), and come to suggest actions to legislator (Reminder, this has no place here, since it does not fall under the mandate of price stability).

What are these actions?

"The Bitcoin network has a governance structure in which roles are assigned to identified individuals. Authorities could decide that these should be prosecuted in view of the large scale of illegal payments using Bitcoin."

First, Bitcoin governance does not have roles assigned to individuals. There are roles, yes, but the individuals who participate in them are interchangeable. They are also not necessarily identified, see solo miners.

Among those roles, there are core devs, miners, nodes, exchange platforms etc. Everyone has their little power, but no one controls Bitcoin alone. Let us incidentally recall for example that a few years ago, during the Blocksize Wars, miners & exchange platforms lost their battle against nodes.

So what does the authors’ not-at-all-innocent little phrase mean?

That we're going to take the core devs from their homes and put them in jail? For which motive ? Because they wrote code?

Should Einstein have been put in jail for opening the way to work on nuclear power?

Someone who sells a kitchen knife has to go to jail because a buyer committed a crime with it?

All this on the basis of a “large scale of illegal payments” which is false, and which they themselves debunked in their own article.

I'm sorry, but where is this going ?

I reiterate that Bitcoin is a test for democracies, and that in Europe we are failing every step of the test. What is happening is serious.

Let's stop the liberticidal delusions and authoritarian or even totalitarian excesses now. It's a political fight.

[Ledger @Ledger]

We’re excited to announce that @Coinbase Pay is now available as a buy provider through Ledger Live!

Use your Coinbase login to buy crypto, and have it immediately secured with your Ledger 🔐

Read more: https://t.co/aUGWkA78gI

[Charles Guillemet @P3b7_]

📝 My yearly retro for 2023 and predictions for 2024 -

We find ourselves in the blockchain revolution’s “broadband moment” characterized by a scalability race, a critical step before mainstream use cases emerge.

My latest article is divided into two sections, each exploring the dynamics of the blockchain industry. In the first section, I highlight 4 technical driving forces that shaped 2023 and that are bound to underpin the upcoming months:

Trend #1: The ongoing battle for protocol scalability.
Our daily Internet applications couldn't exist without the exponential broadband speed reached decades ago. The same is true for tomorrow’s mainstream blockchain applications. We’re currently witnessing an ongoing scalability competition between major protocols.

Trend #2: The Data Availability battle.

Data Availability is a key concept that keeps growing in importance in the blockchain space. In short, it aims to ensure data integrity and accessibility in blockchain networks. Regarding Ethereum, the implementation of EIP-4844 will introduce a new transaction type for immutable and read-only Layer-2 data storage, marking an important milestone in the evolution of blockchain protocols.

Trend #3: The rise of Account Abstraction, the next standard for user interaction.

This blockchain-enabled technology aims to revolutionize user experience in crypto, as today's interactions with Externally Owned Accounts (EOA) remain basic. The potential transformative power of Account Abstraction lies in its ability to enforce complex on-chain rules, promising a paradigm shift for crypto users.

Trend #4: The emergence of the Shared Security concept, bound to shape crypto’s future.

In crypto, starting new projects involves daunting challenges, including a wide range of variables and costs to support a growing user base. The “Shared Security” model tackles this challenge, as it involves applications pooling resources on a dependable decentralized system, fostering a more interconnected and resilient ecosystem.

Trend #5: NFTs: a rapidly evolving landscape.

As the NFT market, like the broader crypto economy, succumbed to the bear market by the end of 2022, a strong competitor to OpenSea has gradually emerged: Blur. Unexpected contenders are also challenging Ethereum's long-standing dominance in the NFT landscape: Bitcoin and Solana, marking a new era for digital collectibles.

In the second section, I outline my 2024 predictions by answering the following questions:

Which blockchain protocol will prevail in the near future?

Which consumer-facing crypto use cases are to be expected this year?

And in bonus: a few complementary forecasts for 2024 ;)

Enjoy the read! 😉👇

https://t.co/gOjIipMA37

[Ledger @Ledger]

FINAL TIMELINE AND UPDATE TO CUSTOMERS:

4:49pm CET:

Ledger Connect Kit genuine version 1.1.8 is being propagated now automatically. We recommend waiting 24 hours until using the Ledger Connect Kit again.

The investigation continues, here is the timeline of what we know about the exploit at this moment:

- This morning CET, a former Ledger Employee fell victim to a phishing attack that gained access to their NPMJS account.
- The attacker published a malicious version of the Ledger Connect Kit (affecting versions 1.1.5, 1.1.6, and 1.1.7). The malicious code used a rogue WalletConnect project to reroute funds to a hacker wallet.
- Ledger’s technology and security teams were alerted and a fix was deployed within 40 minutes of Ledger becoming aware. The malicious file was live for around 5 hours, however we believe the window where funds were drained was limited to a period of less than two hours.
- Ledger coordinated with @WalletConnect who quickly disabled the the rogue project.
- The genuine and verified Ledger Connect Kit version 1.1.8 is now propagating and is safe to use.
- For builders who are developing and interacting with the Ledger Connect Kit code: connect-kit development team on the NPM project are now read-only and can’t directly push the NPM package for safety reasons.
- We have internally rotated the secrets to publish on Ledger’s GitHub.
- Developers, please check again that you’re using the latest version, 1.1.8.
- Ledger, along with @Walletconnect and our partners, have reported the bad actor’s wallet address. The address is now visible on @chainalysis. @tether has frozen the bad actor’s USDT.
- We remind you to always Clear Sign with your Ledger. What you see on the Ledger screen is what you actually sign. If you still need to blind sign, use an additional Ledger mint wallet or parse your transaction manually.
- We are actively talking with customers whose funds might have been affected, and working proactively to help those individuals at this time.
- We are filing a complaint and working with law enforcement on the investigation to find the attacker.
- We’re studying the exploit in order to avoid further attacks. We believe the attacker’s address where the funds were drained is here: 0x658729879fca881d9526480b82ae00efc54b5c2d

Thank you to @WalletConnect, @Tether_io, @Chainalysis, @zachxbt, and the whole community that helped us and continue to help us identify and solve this attack.

Security will always prevail with the help of the whole ecosystem.

[Ledger @Ledger]

Update:

The malicious version of the file was replaced with the genuine version at around 2:35pm CET.

The new genuine version should be propagated soon.

We will provide a comprehensive report as soon as it’s ready.

In the meantime, we’d like to remind the community to always Clear Sign your transactions - remember that the addresses and the information presented on your Ledger screen is the only genuine information.

If there’s a difference between the screen shown on your Ledger device and your computer/phone screen, stop that transaction immediately.

[Charles Guillemet @P3b7_]

Ledger’s mission is, and will always be, to provide our users with the right tools to own their digital value securely.

We have decided to accelerate our open-sourcing roadmap to bring more verifiability to everything we do.

A thread 🧵

[Pascal Gauthier @Ledger @_pgauthier]

I want to address the feedback over Ledger Recover, the way it was communicated, and share our path forward. Read my letter and join our town hall with our leadership team to learn more.

🧵👉 https://t.co/2hlPrMwzaN

[Ledger @Ledger]

Ledger is proud to announce our Series C extension fundraising round.

We continue our mission of bringing ease-of-use and uncompromised security to your digital value.

Read what our CEO @_pgauthier has to say:

https://t.co/JSHyi5jKIQ

[Pascal Gauthier @Ledger @_pgauthier]

I’m excited to announce that 6 million Ledger Nano devices have been sold, marking an important milestone in @Ledger's mission to shape the future of #Web3 consumer devices.

This is just the beginning of our journey.

[Wouter Missler || WootScoot @woutmissler]

Circumscript sold out at the top tier! Can't thank everybody enough. Thank you. 💛🙏

To celebrate I'm giving away circumscript #192 🎉
All you have to do to enter is make sure you follow me and retweet / like this post.

I'll be picking a winner tuesday at 22:00 CEST.
Good luck!