Regulating Cryptocurrencies

Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin emerged not just from three decades of computer science research, but also from two interrelated cult-like ideologies of the right, libertarianism and Austrian economics. Governments are generally happy with computer science research until it gets in the way of law enforcement, but non-kleptocratic governments tend to be unhappy with both libertarianism and Austrian economics, particularly when they get in the way of law enforcement.

Below the fold, a look at the varying approaches governments are taking to the problems they perceive cryptocurrencies pose.

Ten Hot Topics

The topic of scholarly communication has received short shrift here for the last few years. There has been too much to say about other topics, and developments such as Plan S have been exhaustively discussed elsewhere. But I do want to call attention to an extremely valuable review by Jon Tennant and a host of co-authors entitled Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing.

The authors pose the ten topics as questions, which allows for a scientific experiment. My hypothesis is that all these questions, while strictly not headlines, will nevertheless obey Betteridge's Law of Headlines, in that the answer will be "No". Below the fold, I try to falsify my hypothesis.

Review Of Data Storage In DNA

Luis Ceze, Jeff Nivala and Karin Strauss of the University of Washington and Microsoft Research team have published a fascinating review of the history and state-of-the-art in Molecular digital data storage using DNA. The abstract reads:

Molecular data storage is an attractive alternative for dense and durable information storage, which is sorely needed to deal with the growing gap between information production and the ability to store data. DNA is a clear example of effective archival data storage in molecular form. In this Review , we provide an overview of the process, the state of the art in this area and challenges for mainstream adoption. We also survey the field of in vivo molecular memory systems that record and store information within the DNA of living cells, which, together with in vitro DNA data storage, lie at the growing intersection of computer systems and biotechnology.

They include a comprehensive bibliography. Below the fold, some commentary and a few quibbles.

Storing Data In Oligopeptides

Bryan Cafferty et al have published a paper entitled Storage of Information Using Small Organic Molecules. There's a press release from Harvard's Wyss Institute at Storage Beyond the Cloud. Below the fold, some commentary on the differences and similarities between this technique and using DNA to store data.

Immutability FTW!

There's an apparently apocryphal story that when Willie Sutton, the notorious bank robber of the 1930s  to 1950s, was asked why he robbed banks, he answered:

Because that's where the money is!

Today's Willie Suttons don't need a disguise or an (unloaded) Thompson submachine gun, because they rob cryptocurrency exchanges. As David Gerard writes:

Crypto exchange hacks are incredibly rare, and only happen every month or so.

Yesterday Bloomberg reported:

Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, said hackers withdrew 7,000 Bitcoins worth about $40 million via a single transaction in a “large scale security breach,” the latest in a long line of thefts in the digital currency space.

Below the fold, a few thoughts:

Demand Is Even Less Insatiable Than It Used To Be

In Demand Is Far From Insatiable I looked at Chris Mellor's overview of the miserable Q2 numbers from Seagate, Nearline disk drive demand dip dropkicks Seagate: How deep is the trough, how deep is the trough?, and Western Digital,  Weak flash demand and disk sales leave Western Digital scrabbling to claw back $800m a year. This quarter was equally dismal. Below the fold, the gory details.

Lets Put Our Money Where Our Ethics Are

I found a video of Jefferson Bailey's talk at the Ethics of Archiving the Web conference from a year ago. It was entitled Lets Put Our Money Where Our Ethics Are. The talk is the first 18.5 minutes of this video. It focused on the paucity of resources devoted to archiving the huge proportion of our culture that now lives on the evanescent Web. I've also written on this topic, for example in Pt. 2 of The Amnesiac Civilization. Below the fold, some detailed numbers (that may by now be somewhat out-of-date) and their implications.