Your Cryptocurrency Newsletter for January 13, 2021

If you are interested in cryptocurrencies, this newsletter is for you. [img]  [Learn more about RevenueStripe...](   [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [img]( [FeedBinary Newsletter]( [Facebook’s AI Mistakenly Bans Ads for Struggling Businesses]( New York-based businesswoman Ruth Harrigan usually sells her honey and beeswax products in souvenir shops. But with Covid-19 pausing tourism, she’s been almost entirely dependent on Facebook ads to drive online sales. On Nov. 11, this new financial lifeline was abruptly cut when the social media company blocked her HoneyGramz ad account for violating its policies. She couldn’t imagine what about her tiny honey-filled gifts would have triggered the problem. Friends told Harrigan to just wait a couple of days and the problem might resolve itself. She waited, until she lost an estimated $5,000 in revenue.“I was getting a little anxious thinking, ‘Oh my God, Black Friday is around the corner, most of my sales for the year happen in November and December and that’s it,’” she explained. “I said, ‘If I’m shut down any longer than this, it’ll cripple me.’” Harrigan is one of millions of small business advertisers who have come to rely on Facebook Inc. because the coronavirus has shut down many traditional retail channels. The social media giant has provided new sales opportunities for these entrepreneurs, but also exposed them to the company’s misfiring content-moderation software, limited options for customer support and lack of transparency about how to fix problems. Facebook’s human moderators have focused on election and Covid-19 misinformation this year, so the company has leaned more on artificial intelligence algorithms to monitor other areas of the platform. That’s left many small businesses caught in Facebook’s automated filters, unable to advertise through the service and frustrated because they don’t know why. The same weekend Harrigan’s account went down, Ivonne Sanchez, who runs a permanent makeup clinic in Ottawa, found her ads were blocked too, for what Facebook said was a “policy violation.” Her business, which had to shut down between March and June for the pandemic, was relying on Facebook to recover financially. The account was restored the next day without explanation, but “in the middle of a crucial shopping season, it left us shaken,” she said. “This experience makes us very nervous about investing dollars into a system that is operated seemingly by a bot.” “It just exploded. They turned up the AI recently — somebody changed something — and all of the sudden everybody was getting shut down.” — Justin Brooke, founder of Adskills.com Even if an ad account gets restored, businesses lose crucial momentum. Facebook’s advertising algorithm takes a couple of weeks to figure out which users may be interested in an ad, to refine the targeting. Jessica Grossman, chief executive officer of digital marketing firm In Social, said when her clients get hit, the hardest part is telling them their campaigns have to start over and their money won’t go as far. “Facebook almost doesn’t realize the impact of their own algorithm and what that means,” Grossman said. There seemed to be no logic to the account bans imposed on In Social’s clients, she added. A pizza vending machine company, a reusable water bottle company, a coffee delivery service, a business coach and a hair weave company were all suspended. “We know it can be frustrating to experience any type of business disruption, especially at such a critical time of the year,” Facebook said in a statement. “While we offer free support for all businesses, we regularly work to improve our tools and systems, and to make the support we offer easier to use and access. We apologize for any inconvenience recent disruptions may have caused.” Facebook often touts its commitment to small businesses, as it defends its ever larger hold over their economic future. On a recent earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said this was a “major focus” that’s “more important now than ever” as Covid-19 shifts commerce online. During a July ad boycott by major brands, Facebook’s revenue still grew, bolstered by small businesses rushing online to try to survive. The company added more tools this year for small businesses to sell directly to customers through its site, hoping these virtual shops become advertisers, too. But while business owners agree that Facebook is a lifeline during the pandemic, they say it’s also an unreliable partner. Facebook’s ban on political ads around the U.S. election, for instance, affected companies that have no connection to politics, like a business selling bracelets to benefit refugees. A seed company was also blocked for sharing a picture of Walla Walla onions — which were “overtly sexual,” according to Facebook’s AI.The company’s policies against cryptocurrency frequently trapped ads from a solar roof company, Human SOLR, because some of the acronyms used by the business are similar to cryptocurrency tokens. After that issue was resolved, Human SOLR’s ads were banned again for using phrases like “see if your roof qualifies.” Facebook’s software guessed the company was selling financial products, which are more regulated. After enough flags on the account, Brett Lee, who runs the business, gave up on Facebook ads. “My business is at a complete standstill,” said Lee, based in St. George, Utah. “My employees’ lives are at a standstill.”GFP Delivered, a Chicago-based produce company advertising a way for people to avoid the grocery store during Covid-19, had its Facebook ads shut down for two months without clear explanation, according to owner George Fourkas. He said he was able to fix the problem only after reaching out to old college friends who work at Facebook. [Read Full News]( The post [Facebook’s AI Mistakenly Bans Ads for Struggling Businesses]( first appeared on [Feed Binary](. [Read Full Story]( ------------------ You Might Like     [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( ------------------ [People Horrified By Story Of Man Who Lost Password To $220M Worth Of Bitcoin: ‘Panic Inducing To Read’]( Hundreds of people are commiserating with a man who has lost his password for accessing his 7,002 bitcoin, worth about $220m, and has just two attempts left before he is locked out forever. Speaking to The New York Times, Stefan Thomas, a German programmer living in California, revealed that he was gifted the bitcoin, which has fluctuated in value over the years before recently surging, as a reward for making an animated video about bitcoin in 2011.According to Thomas, he  lost the password to his IronKey, an encrypted hard drive that holds the keys to his digital wallet, the same year. Since then, Thomas told the outlet he has tried eight variations of his commonly used passwords in an attempt to gain access to his IronKey. Unfortunately, his chances are running out, as IronKey only allows users 10 attempts before it “seizes up and encrypts its contents forever,” The Times notes. Bitcoin is also unable to help, as it does not store passwords, but rather grants individuals who buy bitcoin a private key to their digital wallet – which only they have access to. “I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Thomas recalled of his various attempts over the years. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.” As of now, Thomas said he has put the IronKey in a “secure facility” in the hopes that cryptographers will eventually be able to help him access his digital wallet. In addition to keeping the password to his cryptocurrency safe, Thomas told The Times he also did it to protect his mental health. “I got to a point where I said to myself: ‘Let it be in the past, just for your own mental health,’” he explained. On Twitter, where his story has circulated, people are expressing their horror over Thomas’s plight. “Yo this is incredible,” New York Times political reporter Astead Wesley said in reference to the story in a tweet that has since been liked more than 6,000 times. Others have expressed the anxiety they felt after reading about Thomas’s dilemma. “My God. That’s stressing me out and I don’t even have a stake in this,” one person tweeted.Another said: “It’s too early to be confronted with secondhand anxiety this extreme.” Some readers have attempted to offer their help, with one person writing on Twitter: “Um, for $220m in locked-up bitcoin, you don’t make 10 password guesses but take it to professionals to buy 20 IronKeys and spend six months finding a side-channel or uncapping.“I’ll make it happen for 10 per cent. Call me.” Thomas is not alone in his situation, as The New York Times notes that there are numerous other individuals who have lost the passwords to their digital wallets over the years, with the article citing a statistic by cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis, which suggests that “20 per cent – currently worth around $140bn” of the existing 18.5m bitcoin “appear to be in lost or otherwise stranded wallets”. [Read Full News]( The post [People Horrified By Story Of Man Who Lost Password To 0M Worth Of Bitcoin: ‘Panic Inducing To Read’]( first appeared on [Feed Binary](. [Read Full Story]( ------------------ You Might Like     [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( ------------------ [China’s Digital Currency Poses Security Risks the West Can’t Ignore]( The regime in Beijing recently completed digital yuan testing in a seemingly innocuous manner. In the southern city of Shenzhen, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) distributed 10 million digital yuan to 50,000 residents in the form of virtual “red envelopes,” a whimsical reference to gifts of money received on the Lunar New Year.While the “Digital Currency Electronic Payment,” or DCEP, is China’s version of central bank-issued digital currency, it’s anything but whimsical.In a traditional electronic payments system, transactions can only occur between two bank accounts, or two accounts on a payment platform that are linked to bank accounts. With DCEP, transactions occur between two DCEP wallets, and neither wallet needs to be linked to a bank or a payments company. The DCEP appears to serve two main purposes: one is to increase the yuan’s international reach and become a leading global currency, potentially replacing the dollar, while the other is to allow Beijing to mine financial data from people who transact with the currency. Regarding the first goal, China’s efforts to expand global yuan adoption have been unsuccessful. As of September, the yuan’s share as an international payment currency sits below 2 percent, according to SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) data. That figure has barely budged from a year earlier, signaling that the yuan’s international “market share” has stalled. A new-fangled technology underpinning the yuan currency is unlikely to increase its popularity. Countries didn’t use the yuan not because it was technically inferior to any other currency in circulation; they prefer to transact in currencies that are liquid, freely convertible, and backed by a stable economy. Whatever deficiencies yuan had, the DCEP doesn’t change them. What about digital convenience? A common misconception is that DCEP is a cryptocurrency, but it’s centralized and doesn’t run on blockchain. It bears little resemblance to popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. It’s a digital form of payment. But the world already has digital payment platforms such as PayPal and Venmo. There are already highly sophisticated yuan-denominated mobile payment solutions out there, such as Alipay and WeChat. From the end user’s perspective, there doesn’t seem to be an advantage in using DCEP, which brings to mind a central question—what problem is the DCEP trying to solve? The DCEP turns out to be an answer to a question that nobody asked, at least nobody outside of Zhongnanhai. One quickly comes to the conclusion that the problem was a lack of control. Legacy payment solutions—paper or digital—don’t give the CCP the level of control and data it desires. The M0 money supply, which represents the amount of physical cash in circulation, can’t be traced and is the candidate to be replaced by DCEP. Even Alipay and WeChat—which can be traced by Beijing—are first and foremost controlled by business enterprises, not the CCP. China’s supposed goals of internationalization of the yuan and digital convenience appear to be red herrings. Or at best, they are secondary. Control of data—at first among Chinese consumers, then international consumers—seems to be the primary objective. The DCEP could “create unprecedented opportunities for surveillance,” according to a recent study published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)’s International Cyber Policy Center. The ASPI report acknowledges that China’s DCEP is no lock to become a mainstream global payments platform. But Western governments can’t afford to simply ignore the threat. “The initial impact of a successful DC/EP project will be primarily domestic, but little thought has been given to the longer term and global implications,” the report states. “DC/EP could be exported overseas via the digital wallets of Chinese tourists, students, and businesspeople. Over time, it is not far-fetched to speculate that the Chinese party-state will incentivize or even mandate that foreigners also use DC/EP for certain categories of cross-border RMB transactions as a condition of accessing the Chinese marketplace.” This should give Western leaders pause. Think about the current hand-wringing over Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei across the Western Hemisphere. The Huawei debate is largely driven by security risks—that Huawei would grant the CCP troves of foreign data. [Read Full News]( The post [China’s Digital Currency Poses Security Risks the West Can’t Ignore]( first appeared on [Feed Binary](. 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