Tommy Robinson was finally released from his super max, isolation prison. Insanity. Good to seem him out and very good to hear his voice again. I give a bit of a run down on Web 3.0, the decentralisation of applications and web sites. This is the next generation on from using monolithic sites like Facebook and Google. It’s no wonder that these Goliaths tried to crush this nascent tech with their illegal crypto advertising ban.
Once again I’m explaining why 3speak.online is different and why I’m posting my material there instead of YouTube. One announcement: on the 6th of October I’ll have $50 to hand out for great comments on my videos. This is rotating promotion from 3speak giving me the power of their account to award upvotes on comments. I’ll be upvoting comments left within the last week on 6th October!
Here’s another little bonus that won’t make it as a full podcast on its own: I flew around Beit Shemesh the other day and talked about Pewdiepie and the ADL.
I recorded this over a week ago, the video went up quickly on 3speak but it’s taken me a while to get back into the grove with updating my own website. I’ve got to say that I’m increasingly of the opinion that Steem provides a better blogging platform than my own site. I will explore the reasons why in the future but for now I’m still updating here.
It’s been quiet here. Videos and podcasts will return soon. Meanwhile I’m now very much more involved in promoting the 3speak video site (follow them on twitter, hint hint). I’ve been uploading my videos there for a while and earning from them. But not just 3speak. I’m focusing a lot of energy on the move from old, centralised Web 2.0 toward decentralised Web 3.0. I’ll explain this better in the coming weeks.
I have written, over on a Web 3.0 Travel Site called Travelfeed, a review of the HT6 Boutique hotel I stayed at in Rome (HT6 is really the name of the hotel). It ranks amongst the highest in Rome I’d say! Travelfeed is another site based on the Steem blockchain. That makes it de-centralised: the database of information into which my post goes is stored on multiple computers owned by many different people.
Unlike writing a review on TripAdvisor, when people like and share my review, I am rewarded with a small amount of the cryptocurrency Steem. That’s easily exchangeable for real money if I want. Here’s the start of the review:
I’ve just finished a four night stay in Rome at the HT6 Boutique Hotel in Rome with my two kids and my parents. I found this hotel on Hotels.com and reserved the rooms without a cancelation penalty.
The hotel has around 30 rooms and is located in the heart of Rome’s Jewish Quarter and right next to the impressive Rome Synagogue. The hotel is about 100m from a security barrier so technically taxis can’t drive right up to the door. On arrival in a big minibus for 6 people, the Italian Military Police (Carabinieri) allowed us to drive right up to the door. When we left, the bell boys carried our luggage out for us.
There’s also been a huge amount of work done and progress made on our Crypto Class Action against the Tech Goliaths, but not all of it can be spoken of yet.
And here’s my latest video, a quick edit of drone footage (done on my phone, not my proper editing software on the computer.
Up until now there seems to have been a sort of Stockholm syndrome mentality within crypto insiders. Some crypto insiders believe there were lots of scams and the whole industry needed to feel guilty about them. They just took the punishment from these huge mega corporations and felt they deserved some of it! Evidence just doesn’t back this up. We have to fight that mentality which seems to be a very strongly held belief in a myth. You can read more about why this is a hoax here.
This article in Decrypt contains a very interesting revelation from a Facebook spokesperson:
While the suit names Facebook, Google and Twitter directly, Hamilton said he considers Facebook the principle offender, and alleged that the tech giant instigated the ban.
In comments to Decrypt, a Facebook spokesman who did not want to be quoted by name said the social network would look into any cases where unfairness is alleged. The spokesman added that the initial ban had been intentionally broad to better understand the crypto market; the intent had been to create clearer policy around what constitutes acceptable crypto advertising.
The spokesman added that the initial ban had been intentionally broad to better understand the crypto market;
Does this phrase: “the initial ban had been intentionally broad to better understand the crypto market” mean Facebook decided to ban an entire industry before they even understood it? That would be an astonishing admission. Or are they just gaslighting now?
In the meantime JPB Liberty has received an acknowledgement of our initial letter sent to Google in Australia. They confirmed Google Australia was talking with Google in the US and a few other details.
We were also covered by Nadja Bester of BeInCrypto with an excellent and detailed explanation of the case.
If you want to join the fight, instructions below. We’re always looking for class members as no-win-no-fee participants and at the same time, if you want a financial stake in this project, you can send money by PayPal or various crypto and you will receive a cryptographic token representing your share in the damages.
Andrew Hamilton wrote this, it needs to be more widely disseminated. It directly refutes the malicious terms and conditions Facebook put into action when they banned cryptocurrency (and associated blockchain projects) from advertising online in January 2018.
Facebook’s deceptive and malicious cyryptocurrency advertising ban terms and conditions.
I’ve been running @jpbliberty‘s Class Action Lawsuit against Facebook, Google and Twitter’s Crypto Ad Ban for over a year now.
The one objection I hear most, including from people in the Crypto Industry itself, is: “But there were so many scams”. I’ve heard people saying that over 80% of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) were scams.
Well ITS A BIG LIE!
“But there were so many scams”
– Everybody who bought Facebook’s big lie
And one that was used by Facebook etc to cover their own illegal conduct.
I’ve done a detailed investigation of this issue and found that the level of scams in late 2017 / early 2018 was quite low and most Crypto Projects and actual ICOs were legitimate.
The allegation that most Crypto Industry projects were scams and billions were lost in ICO scams is patently false and lacking in any real evidence. ICOs were just a new way of startups raising money from private investors which has gone on since the dawn of investing.
It is mostly just 3rd hand hearsay and trolling of competing projects. The number and value of actual scams compared to the size of the crypto industry is small.
Official Government Statistics on Scams
The Australian consumer regulator (ACCC) did a detailed study of scams in 2018 and put out an official government report.
This is what the report finds:
Out of $489M in scam losses only a tiny percentage (1.25%; $6.1M) related to cryptocurrency in any way.
Of that 2/3rd were just other scams asking to be paid in cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency investment scam losses were less than half a percent of total losses ($2.1).
Most of those were just impersonating cryptocurrency projects. Twice as much losses were from scams impersonated the Australian Tax Office!
I have not been able to find a single example on the ACCC’s scamwatch site of an actual cryptocurrency project ICO which was a scam.
Compared to the size of the Crypocurrency Industry, even in Australia, the percentage of scams is very low.
Huge numbers of legitimate Crypto projects
This is an amazing infographic (source) showing a huge number of legitimate cryptocurrency projects competing with the existing tech players in every area. I did not put this together, but have looked into many of the projects listed and have not found a single scam.
Big Lie comes from one flawed report
Tellingly for a Big Lie, all the news allegations about a very high percentage of ICOs being scams can be traced back to a single flawed report by a group called Statis.
I don’t know who they are and they have no official status. But under the terms of their own report they classified Reddit posts about an ICO that other people said was a scam as an ICO scam. They also admit the vast majority of money lost on so called ICO scams was in just 3 scams. Thus they vastly inflated both the number of ICOs and the number of scams based unverified, defamatory hearsay and trolling. Anyone can say another project is a scam. It doesn’t make it so.
Failed projects are not scams. 95% of all tech startups in all areas will fail. That is the nature of innovation and capitalism.
And I’m not the only one calling out the vast overuse of the word “scam” in the Crypto Industry. Here is Naomi Brockwell (@skycorridors on Steem) on the topic with a follow up video here.
Technical requirements make real ICO scams rare
An ICO in late 2017 / early 2018 required smart contracts to be set up on the Ethereum (or other) blockchain. A simple Reddit post does not constitute an ICO. And other people calling it a scam on social media doesn’t make it one. The level of unjustified and defamatory attacks on other projects in the Crypto Industry is high. It is not evidence of a real scam.
The technical requirements for actually sending money to an ICO and receiving ICO tokens during late 2017 & early 2018 were pretty high and certainly not for naive investors.
Having purchased or mined Ethereum (ETH);
Sending the ETH to your own cryptocurrency wallet;
Sending ETH from your own wallet to the ICO wallet.
No one without a decent understanding of Crypto could even work out how to do this! So the people who lost money in real ICO scams knew about crypto in detail and were, in that sense, experienced investors.
I note here that because of the very large amounts of money which early crypto true believers made and were looking to reinvest, the huge numbers of projects available to invest in, and the practical limitations on individual investor’s time, the strategy of just putting some money in everything your heard of, without doing due diligence, was a legitimate investment strategy.
Yes, you might lose some money to scams, but it made sure you had money early in the projects which would be hugely successful and make up for all the other failed and (few) scam projects. This is the essence of the entire venture capital business model. If you want a safer investment, invest in companies that are regulated and on the stock market Enron or Bear Stearns (oh… wait..)
So this is the BIG LIE which Facebook used to cover its own illegal banning of all crypto industry ads on 30 Jan 2018.
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