Showing posts with label icebergs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label icebergs. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

15/1/18: Of Fraud and Whales: Bitcoin Price Manipulation


Recently, I wrote about the potential risks that concentration of Bitcoin in the hands of few holders ('whales') presents and the promising avenue for trading and investment fraud that this phenomena holds (see post here: http://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2017/12/211217-of-taxes-and-whales-bitcoins-new.html).

Now, some serious evidence that these risks have played out in the past to superficially inflate the price of bitcoins: a popular version here https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/15/researchers-finds-that-one-person-likely-drove-bitcoin-from-150-to-1000/, and technical paper on which this is based here (ungated version) http://weis2017.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/05/WEIS_2017_paper_21.pdf.

Key conclusion: "The suspicious trading activity of a single actor caused the massive spike in the USD-BTC exchange rate to rise from around $150 to over $1 000 in late 2013. The fall was even more dramatic and rapid, and it has taken more than three years for Bitcoin to match the rise prompted by fraudulent transactions."

Oops... so much for 'security' of Bitcoin...


Saturday, December 7, 2013

7/12/2013: WLASze: Weekend Links on Arts, Sciences & zero economics


This is WLASze: Weekend Links on Arts, Sciences and zero economics


Let's start with some art… Brilliant students work from the Bartlett School of Architecture of UCL who won the RIBA President's Medals Student Awards with a range of projects:
http://www.dezeen.com/2013/12/04/riba-presidents-medals-student-awards-2013-winners/
More here: http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture/news/bartlett-sweep-2013-riba-presidents-medals
I love the Kizhi Island piece:


The timeline itself is a work of art:



While on deezen, a fantastic feature on 'liquid light'
http://www.dezeen.com/2013/06/28/the-liquid-light-of-diego-garcia-by-viktor-westerdahl/
also via Bartlett School of Architecture graduate - Viktor Westerdahl


Innovative, imagination-driven and utterly detached from utilitarian constraints…


Edward Burtynsky's 'Water' reviewed in GuernicaMag is worth reading - fantastic photographer with a deep obsession for human impact on landscape: http://www.guernicamag.com/art/edward-burtynskys-water/
Some images of his work:

 
And his iconic...

From his Water series:

And his webpage: http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/

A quote from GuernicaMag: "Landscape, here, meaning not just the genre of art, but—more importantly—the medium of exchange through which we conceive and represent the physical environment and our relationship to it. A landscape is that which we see and the way in which we see it—a natural scene mediated by culture."

A bit too much of 'academism' there. I prefer to describe this work as forcing the landscape into the frame: powerfully transformative and, thus, powerfully narrative. The visual literally screams at us, and there is not a moment of reprieve from its potent brutality. Which makes it all amazingly beautiful... a sort of hot-cold ice...


And in the same vein of human transformation of landscape, here's AtlasObscura story on Goats of Cingino Dam: http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/goats-of-the-cingino-dam




Having mentioned ice above, here is another landscape photographer: Michael Quinn, profiled in MyModernMet blog: http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/michael-j-quinn-greenland-reflection



Now onto science: given the beauty of surreal Earth-scapes, time to move to astronomy and get us some Saturn-scapes
http://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2013/dec/05/saturn-north-pole-hexagon-jet-stream-nasa-video?CMP=twt_gu


Full story via NASA, absent annoying commercials: http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/cassini/saturn-north-pole-hexagon-20131204i.html#.UqOKMGRdVBw


What beats what: books vs films… I had a nice discussion with a friend recently about two films based on one same book… the merits of Stanisław Lem's original Solaris (the book) are indisputable. The merits of Tarkovsky's interpretation of Solaris (the movie) are of their own accord… and since no one remembers the first Solaris (the movie) by Boris Nirenburg, the debate was really about Steven Soderbergh's third version (the movie)… I am not a fan… my friend is… we had great breakfast chat about it…

Alas, in real life, merits of movies over books (unlike in the case of Tarkovsky's sheer genius) are dubious. And there is 'scientific' proof to this conjecture: http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/books-vs-films-the-infographic


So WLASze advice for the weekend - switch off that TV and grab a book…

And don't forget to smile, while reading… or reading for the sake of smiling… here's a candidate:
"‘Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder’: People who think they are drunk also think they are attractive" http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.2012.02114.x/abstract
That's right: we fancy ourselves as being hot, when we are drunk… which begs a question: what do we think about our beauty quotient when we are so drunk, we no longer believe we are drunk?..


Enjoy WLASze sensibly...