Mark Rizzn Hopkins
@rizzn
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marketing lead @tbtc_project fellow @freeopsdao creator of @theCube , @IBM futurist. former political prisoner. crypto-anarchist.
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Crypto is a revolution.
That's why they fight us.
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Hey
@GDAX_Support
I wired $~300k this week. I understand you're under load, but when I call in for assistance, wait on hold for two hours, and then get disconnected in the middle of a conversation, it's hardly a satisfactory experience.
cc
@GDAX
@coinbase
@CoinbaseSupport
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There's a lot more to say about the case, and I probably will say more at some point, but what I'd like my case to highlight are two things: the encroaching state war on privacy, and the general brokenness of the criminal justice system.
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Here's the thing that makes this important to pay attention to and resolve: I'm a nobody.
I'm not Ross. I wasn't on the dark web.
I'm not Edward. I didn't work for the NSA.
I'm not Julian. I didn't break national secrets.
I'm just a regular bitcoiner caught in the crosshairs.
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Here's my calls to action:
- Learn more about my case here:
- Write me at Ross's letter writing parties Tuesdays at 7pm CST: .
- If you've political influence, pay attention to 18 USC 1960 abuse. It's a looming existential threat.
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@Srirachachau
The funny thing to me is that he's advocating piracy of his movie on the basis that is easily duplicated.
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That's why I'm publishing this thread before I go in. We need to keep in mind that the state is constructing felonies for us, and the blockchain has a long memory. We need to advocate for sensible government as well as our fellow fallen cypherpunks.
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You read that right. Did you know that transacting Bitcoin p2p is a federal crime punishable with up to five years imprisonment? I didn't either.
18 USC 1960, as interpreted by FinCEN back in the middle of 2019, says you must register federally to do so.
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As I write these words, Texas and other states are pushing BTC adoption, literally manufacturing felons.
I have to wonder if I’ll fall into a trap like those who get caught with weed while nationwide legalization efforts take place, serving time for something that’s now legal.
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And all this resides within a system that *did* go after Ulbricht, Assange and Snowden. Those of us who dwell in CT forget that it's a bubble, and what we do is very foreign to the rest of the world.
When the state turns on us, we find little sympathy from the general public.
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According to research conducted by the Blockchain Law Center, the frequency at which nobodies like me are being persecuted under this law is increasing year over year, each year. The DoJ even holds clinics on how to apply this law more liberally.
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That's a big part of why I've devoted a huge chunk of the time I've had between the raid and turning myself in this week to work at
@FreeRossDAO
. The principles at play in that organization are what will save us and our industry.
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If you only sorta kinda know me, you may not know that I've been in the crypto and bitcoin space since 2011.
One of the ways in which I've learned to network in the space is to put up an add on the OTC trading boards offering Bitcoin for sale.
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Why? Because the federal guidelines advise to get state-level licensing as a Money Services Business.
If you check with most state level guidelines, simply engaging in p2p activities does not rise to requiring a license, and thus one won't be granted.
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On October 23rd, I was raided by 15 armed agents, who waved guns and search warrants in the faces of my family, and proceeded to question us for five or six hours, and walked out with about $60,000 worth of my property (mostly electronics, laptops and phones).
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Apparently, I'll never be able to fully pay my debt to society.
Fidelity just locked my retirement account and refuses to allow me to make my contribution to it before the tax deadline for 2023.
Trying to go legit, and whatever gov't/banking cartel exists refuses to let me.
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The feds, at several points along the way, advised me that even though I was fully registered as a bitcoin seller with FinCEN paying a lawyer to get compliant in November, they did not consider my OTC operations to be legal.
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@ArmyStrang
Various Texas state agencies have been running surveys and studies on illegal immigration for decades in an attempt to document the economic damage it does, and every single time they note that it's always a net benefit to the economy.
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@dvellante
The main one that leaps out at me is where you say that "bitcoin's scripting language is arcane..."
Bitcoin isn't Turing complete. Bitcoin is written in C++, but has not scripting language of its own.
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@jared_kelly742
@kindanew
@squadtanamobay
@prankariatet
@novacat07
@business_jew
@OneFeIISwoop
TIL that New Orleans isn't a mostly black dominated city founded by the French, but an English white city. /s
Read a book, my dude.
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This was clearly a scare tactic to push me into taking the plea deal they were offering, but I was very clear with them that there was no world in which I was taking a plea deal that implicated my wife.
She was uninvolved, despite their allegations, and we have kids to think of
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They caved on that, and in return for taking my wife off the table, I accepted the plea agreement.
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When I was a full time journalist, it was a great way to learn who bitcoiners were at any point. When I moved towards consulting, it was great lead-gen.
When the pandemic hit and I sold my business in 2019, it was a great way to make ends meet while I found my next thing.
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I've always been just one of hundreds of thousands of OTC traders on websites like
@paxful
and
@LocalBitcoins
. One of the hundred or so site users I regularly dealt with at the time, as it turns out, was being used as a mule in a lottery scam.
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I proceeded to engage in a reverse-proffer and proffer meeting. I was told that they had enough evidence to convict me of my client's fraud, but because my wife shared a bank account with me, my wife as well.
This would be 35 years imprisonment for both of us.
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After speaking transparently with agents, I thought that this was going to be the end of it (as I was not involved with my client's fraud), but two months later, the agents returned with a "target letter," imploring me to come in and speak with the US Attorney's office.
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@ZoeJDolan
@fmanjoo
@Noahpinion
Perhaps. As a man, I'm unfairly entitled to be ignorant of such happenings. I won't learn about it unless I seek it out. It is unlikely to come find me.
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Fired a client today. A variety of reasons, but included was that their GM was a "blue lives matter" guy who thought COVID was a hoax, and felt it necessary to spread that viewpoint daily on Facebook.
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I'm out! Wifey is taking me to the RRC south of Dallas. I'll be off social media until they clear me.
Feels good to be back to the real world. Updates soon.
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Update: I'm headed in to the facility now, so I'm muting this thread. My twitter account will be operated by my family while I'm out, so be nicer than you normally are, they're normies not in the cryptotwitter bubble.
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I survived to the finals of
@cryptothegame_
.
If I win, I'll be using it to endow a prison reform/criminal justice reform DAO, in the tradition of the work I did with
@schlomo
et. al. at FreeRossDAO.
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I'm playing with an NFT burn mechanic limited edition series.
Themed around concepts of freedom & imprisonment, technological & organic xp.
FREERIZZN
250 in the series total.
Limit 3 per wallet.
Rewards at one and two burned.
.005 E
Allow list signup:
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@stealthygeek
An incredibly uncreative take on the trolley problem: come up with a problem that would never happen to prove nothing.
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Kara doesn't fib or suck up. This is the straight dope, as far as you can trust her judgement in such matters (and she has a pretty noted track record in that department).
Like almost everyone I have covered, he is sometimes arrogant, sometime fibs and freelances and so do they all. He’s also one of the more thoughtful ones and his employees said a lot by their loyalty. End of rant as I hate defending these (always) men, but I also need to be fair.
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Fact:
@SearsAuto
is the literal worst.
I took my car in for a basic oil change.
This turned into $1,200 in damages to the vehicle, including some visible physical damage.
Sears claims sent out someone to confirm, who flatly denies there is anything wrong.
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@Merryweatherey
@ErMao_Wu
@Merrydawg
You don't understand this well enough to satirize this. This is only amusing if you're ignorant.
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If you learned how network neutrality works from a comedian or a Burger King video, you don't get to have an opinion on the topic.
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@BTCHODL21M
I'm not sure what that means, here.
My sales occurred during a bear, and I've been fighting this case the entire bull.
I guess I'll be working during the rest of this bear, though.
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@AtsukoComedy
It is a fair question.
For some people, the answer is they have a moral compassion that isn't religion or is a different one. For others it is the law and threat of judgement from society and peers.
And for others, the it's "I kill as much as I want, which most days is none."
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@lalalandpod69
@CurtTigges
@202accepted
There's one study, by the NCRI, that is credible and academic, but not peer reviewed. Thus far they're the only source cited in this conversation.
I like the NCRI (have helped them author stuff in the past), but this study didn't ask the right questions or contextualize well.
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@AssassinHarambe
@Q_Review
What? Grifters are scam artists. Swindlers. People making a buck on shitty, disingenuous journalism, like The Federalist, FOX, or MSNBC. Or Andy.
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@stealthygeek
But please, keep back slapping yourself on how clever you were for coming up with this Solomon's choice question.
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@iTOKENZCrypto
It'll likely come as no surprise yard a lot of the teeth of this law come from the PATRIOT Act.
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@Mary_Plastic
@sbspalding
I'd like to help solve the PPE problem, if possible. Who can I speak with?
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@EveKeneinan
@Sam1
Yeah. Except content moderation isn't censorship, it's community management.
You're free to launch your own platform easily with tools like Mastodon on servers you control.
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@SpaceDrakeCF
@JohnWolfeYT
Prompt injection. And it depends on the implementation. AI isn't a monolith.
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@danheld
@JBarnaby30
@ErikVoorhees
@CryptoRocky
He tried to send you to prison?
There's a world of difference between professional shittiness and the persecution we are all facing.
Bad look on you, man.
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@SawyerHackett
That's not what that means - that means she's not pulling in undecideds and independents. She polls high with core constituents who will vote for whomever the DNC runs.
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@AssassinHarambe
@Q_Review
I didn't threaten anyone. Gawker is a company, we can kill those off. Andy's a people. Can't do much about him other than expose his affinity for those who preach genocide.
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When you have a thread go viral, I guess it's normal to get a bunch of requests to do influencer deals, but I don't really have a need for jeans or hotel vouchers right now, the govt is covering me on that for the next little while.
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@stealthygeek
The right answer is to save 1000 lives. The emotional answer is to save the one life with a face.
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I learned today my kitten, Jackie Chan, has cancer, and about a week to live.
This old girl, when I'm home, likes to sleep on my shoulder every night. I'm going to miss her. I do miss her.
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I'm leaving here in 9 days (or as some here say: "8 days and a wakeup").
I'm leaving behind a lot of good people here not meant for here.
Fair warning: I'm going to be talking a lot about this when I leave here.
Prisons are not a mark of a civilized society.
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@GDAX_Support
@GDAX
@coinbase
@CoinbaseSupport
I absolutely, 100% need to find out the status of my wire and when I can expect to be made whole.
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@lalalandpod69
@CurtTigges
@202accepted
I'm not purely academic, but I do find studies like that to be less credible, particularly when coming from finance focused research. I'm a "follow the money" guy, and that's the definition of vested interest.
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The price doesn't matter to me. I was here when it cost $11. I was here when it cost $60k. I avidly use bitcoin and web3 at both price points.
This technology kills fascism.
If you're not on board for that, reevaluate your priorities.
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I spoke at TalentNet Live about cognitive and AI in recruiting. It was generally well received, so that's cool.
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@JM_Metrailler
@JoshHochschild
@esperantistas
@murphaloid
Are we going to stop having math? Software? Internet? Food? Plumbing? Houses?
Jfc, use your brain. We know what we need to know 20 years from now you absolute walnut.
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@voxdotcom
Really poor article. Unasked questions, and poorly defended answers.
It would be better not to write a piece like this than to write it so poorly.
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I miss the days when a good chunk of the population wasn't enthusiastically a supporter of police brutality.
I miss the days when we could be friends with people without passing a political purity test to prove we have the exact same view on controversial cultural issues.
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@danheld
@JBarnaby30
@ErikVoorhees
@CryptoRocky
It's all government overreach. I'm not a BCHer, but every one of these things, even the unsympathetic cases, screw us all. Solidarity, man.
We must all hang together, or we will certainly all hang separately.
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@Cpin42
@feldman1938
According to IRS rules on reporting theft as income, you now owe a shit ton in taxes, congratulations.
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@bakemaster
@JeffSpringer300
@CharmedMagnolia
@AdamWeinstein
@ChelseaClinton
That's literally the findings of this story.
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@ISAMU_MkII
@VGC_News
Imagine being a guy who takes time to tweet about it.
Imagine being me, a guy who takes time to tweet about the guy who tweets about it.
Losers all the way down.
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@stealthygeek
Why do we eat cows instead of bunnies, otters and puppies?
Because they don't have a cute face? Or eating some meats are just too cruel?
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@TylerTinsley
@bohemphill
@Whispers_Doom
@waydownLo
@antoniogm
@Noahpinion
Oliver Stone isn't known for his, erm, accuracy.
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Zero respect for the maxi cult after their shameful display of support for Gensler.
They're using tools created by and for crypto-anarchists... while licking boots.
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