Our London Correspondent Nick Ayton aka the Sage of Shoreditch interviews a professional scammer, comments on the latest Ethereum meetup, new Criminal Coin ICO, and Satoshi spotted in Wimbledon.

Ethereum London MeetUp now the world’s biggest

Now it’s official. The Ethereum London Meet Up run by Stefan Tual and other core industry colleagues is now the largest Ethereum group in the world with over 4,166 members. Go London, maybe the next meetup should be at Olympia.

With Berlin, New York and Manila pressing hard it will take a big effort for London to maintain its top spot. Enjoy the limelight boys as tough competition is ahead and we have SegWit coming up that could have consequences for the entire crypto market.

New Criminal Coin really is what you think

So many ICOs, so many Tokens. CT caught up will serial offender Ray ‘the fence’ Pinkerton who has just launched Criminal Coin to find out how it works

CT: Ray, what is the idea behind Criminal Coin?

Ray ‘the fence’: It’s quite simple really. Do you know how hard it is to convert stolen goods into money? Very, and I should know…

CT: I assume that is why they call you ‘the fence’?

RP: Hard working robbers come to me to move their goods and make em liquid, to give em some dosh. But it ain’t easy. So I needed a mechanism and decided to launch Criminal Coin and do my own ICO.

CT: How did it go?

RP: Well, as you can imagine there are many robbers and people that steal our stuff, many industries that rob us of our hard earned money and people are fed up.

CT: You mean burglars?

RP: No, I mean bankers, financial advisers and yes robbers, fraudsters…as most large organizations and institutions steal from us one way or another. They are no better than the average ‘cat burglar’ in many ways they are worse because they hide behind so called rules and regulations that don’t protect anyone

CT: So what do investors receive when they buy a Criminal Coin

RP: We are calling it CrimCoin as it has a nice ring to it don’t yu fink. Each CrimCoin costs £0.25pence in the Queens money and investors get access to our CrimExchange services, where stolen goods are available to buy a bit like how eBay works. But the currency of the exchange platform is CrimCoin and once you invest, you can buy the stolen goods with CrimCoins. Robbers open up an anonymous account and put up their goods up for sale.

Apart from your normal household goods, TVs, HiFi and computers we are finding a lot of stolen pensions, mortgage product and asset backed financial products as they carry high-profit margins. We are getting a lot of car loans right now that are worth more than the cars. Nobody knicks cars anymore, who wants to steal a hybrid as they make rubbish get away cars.

CT: So its going well then Ray

RP: Very, although we did have some ex-banker chap who created loads of fake accounts and another chaps trying to rig the exchange rate of CrimCoin both we had to remove from the exchange. I am trying to run an honest business here and next year we go global as there is huge demand from overseas fellow ‘fencers.’

Just think a global market for criminals to share and manipulate each other, making money from stealing wealth and assets from others…hardly original Ray as we have one of these - its called the Fractional Reserve Banking system.

CT Interviews professional scammer Naughty Boy Knobbs

Cointelegraph caught up with professional scammer and master mind of what many are calling fake ICOs Nigel ‘naughty boy’ Nobbs who explains how easy it is to get people to part with their crypto.

CT: It was good of you to agree to speak to us.

Naughty Boy: I don’t have much time, you see those two blokes in dark suits. They work for the SEC and they hate me…

CT: How many ICOs have you scammed?

NB: I have been involved in several. It is not easy to get an ICO away and the ‘crypto police’ can give you a hard time if you are not prepared. ICOs are growing in popularity because people have made so much profit from crypto recently they are sitting on profits and they tend to invest in everything. All you need are a few geeks to front your business and you are away.

CT: What do you mean exactly?

NB: The typical ICO investor is new to cryptocurrencies and don’t really understand it. Although 99 percent of ICOs are genuine where the founders want to build something, normally a Blockchain of some kind, these new investors don’t understand the documents they are reading. They don’t make an effort to understand the technology or what management are trying to do.

On most ICO websites there are downloads of Business Plans, White Papers and Terms available. I did a survey of ICOs a found that less than 50% of investors downloaded the documents, and 50 percent of those people didn’t understand what they were reading and did bother to join the Slack channel and ask questions.

CT: Surely this is bad for ICOs.

NB: Well yes in a sense regulators are saying unsophisticated investors are being taken for a ride…But no because most people don’t understand the financial products they buy today in so called regulated markets, for car leasing, mortgages, pensions and savings products. Even if you bother to read the T&Cs they are so long and complex you still have no idea of what you are really buying and there are so many caveats the financial industry can sell you a rubbish product that is aimed to protect them not you.

Therefore ICOs are no different to any other financial product or instrument. Although some products you are forced to buy through legislation and the law – such as being insured. A good thing right. But the terms and conditions are geared for the organization to make money and only pay out if certain conditions are met. They look for reasons not to pay out.

CT: What you are saying is you take part in ICOs to attract investors?

NB: Yes exactly. We come up with an idea to reinvent an industry or build a new Blockchain and we don’t know if it will work. Then we take the investors crypto and convert it into fiat currency to hire smart developers. Its called entrepreneurship. It’s called breaking new ground. Inventing new things.

That’s is exactly what insurance companies do. They design a new insurance product, but they don’t know if it works until the claims come in. It is the best guess. Same for pension products, they have no idea if the pot of money you will have in say 25 years time is enough to live on. It’s a scam of a different kind.

CT: So you are not running off with the money then?

NB: Not at all.

CT: So why did you call yourself an ICO scammer?

NB: I didn’t, it is the regulators, bankers and VC community that call me an ICO scammer. As they believe all ICOs are essentially a bunch of weak propositions from young entrepreneurs where many of the projects will fail. Sounds like normal business to me.

Look at Venture Capital they bet one investment will win over nine failures. They are betting with investors money, it is a punt…but they take your fees, hook you up with expensive debt and take 80 percent of the equity… So what is the difference? Investment bankers do the same with our savings and pensions, they place bets and even if the bets don’t work they take their fees and profits.

CT: So what you are saying is ICOs are a far better opportunity for everyone.

NB: Well, yes. With an ICOs nobody is forcing you to invest, no intermediary is making a decision for you and you can invest small amounts all by yourself.

This is a new type of investment model, for the people where the crowd can decide for themselves. But investors do need to pay attention to the Business Plan and read the White Paper that should explain the business problem they are trying to solve and how their token works.

Seems Naughty Boy has a point here.

New evidence that the Bitcoin source code was already here

It is now thought the original Bitcoin source code was planted in the tomb of Seshat the Egyptian goddess of writing, knowledge and wisdom, and the keeper of all Records and Libraries. Mistress of the House of Books and Code.

It is believed the scrolls that we first discovered in 1931 in her tomb at Luxor containing an ancient language called Serpentine that closely resembles the syntax and logic of the modern computer languages and maybe the genesis of “Serpent” used to program Smart Contracts in the world of Ethereum. But what did the Egyptians use this ancient language for and why?

It would seem the Egyptians knew a thing or two about encryption having already come up with the hieroglyph code they were on their game. Seshat was not merely the keeper of knowledge and secrets she apparently suffered from what was called an Elliptic complaint where she would castrate her male servants for speaking. A set of what appears to be instructions was also discovered near a casket of Seshat that listed several phrases and expressions that include: Merkels, Chainus, Nunces, Nodus, Coinus and Peerus. It is all starting to a bit familiar if you ask me.

Another ancient Egyptian story talks about mankind evolving telepathically using the ‘third eye’ pineal gland. The inhabitants of the Pyramid country Egypt talk about one to one relationships (peer-2-peer) where the hieroglyphs depicts people communicating through the third eye only, and pictures of the Gods providing oversight to keep the peace, leaving it to the people to manage things day to day.

Sounds an awful like the principles of Blockchain, what do you think?

Satoshi spotted again in SW 19

As ‘30 LOVE’, ‘40LOVE’ GAME SET and MATCH Federer…rang out I caught a glimpse of him. Vitalark Buttering was sitting a few rows in front of me in Center Court at Wimbledon. I immediately recognized the famous rucksack with a rather tired and sorry looking “Bitcoin Sold Here” sticker.

CT: Vitalark, how have you been? We haven’t heard from you in ages!

VB: I knew he would be here you know.

CT: Satoshi?

VB: Of course Satoshi, he pretends to be anti-establishment but I found out he owns a debenture for center court and has been a member of the All England Club since 2008. It was the same year when it all started.

CT: Bitcoin?

VB: No not Bitcoin, 2008 was the year Satoshi played in the junior event here as the first Japanese player ever to play in the Wimbledon Championships. His dad was a Tennis Coach based at the Sydney Harbour Club where he would hang around with some Aussie computer geeks.

He is starting to suspect I am following him now.

CT: Why do you say that?

VB: I received this.

Vitalark showed me a court summons that said: ‘Under the UK Stalking Act, Mr. Vitalark Buttering is not allowed within six feet of Mr. Satoshi Nakamoto.’ Look up there on the member’s balcony it’s him, and with that he was gone dashing through the crowds his rucksack moving side to side into the crowd.

Goodluck, Vitalark, will bump into you at the British Grand Prix no doubt.