"Earlier this month, OTM producer Sarah Abdurrahman, her family, and her friends were detained for hours by US Customs and Border Protection on their way home from Canada. Everyone being held was a US citizen, and no one received an explanation. Sarah tells the story of their detainment, and her difficulty getting any answers from one of the least transparent agencies in the country." Continue reading →
"Rapper Khaled Ahmed has drawn attention to airport security and detention practices after he tweeted about his experience of being removed from a connecting flight by unidentified security officials on Monday. Khaled says he was detained, questioned, and had his belongings confiscated without explanation. Khaled is a Libyan-American hip-hop artist who performs under the moniker 'Khaled M.' He first rose to prominence in the hip-hop community with his songs about the Arab spring and events in his ancestral homeland of Libya. After the incident, Khaled M described the experience and expressed his frustration with his repeated run-ins with flight security." Continue reading →
"Under the title 'adversary propaganda themes', the document lists what it calls 'examples of potential propaganda themes that could be employed against UAV operations'. It states: 'Attacks against American and European persons who have become violent extremists are often criticized by propagandists, arguing that lethal action against these individuals deprives them of due process.' In the eyes of the US government, 'due process' – the idea that the US government should not deprive people of life away from a battlefield without presenting evidence of guilt – is no longer a basic staple of the American political system, but rather a malicious weapon of 'propagandists'." Continue reading →
"Dwolla got its start from a simple idea: that credit card fees are too expensive for merchants and consumers. CEO and cofounder Ben Milne took his frustration really far, building an entirely new payment network to get around credit cards and PayPal. Rather than charge a percentage, Dwolla is free for transactions under $10 and just 25 cents for anything over that amount. Over a billion dollars has changed hands through Dwolla in 2013 alone, and the company has the backing of top investors including Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Plus, why it's keeping its headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa." Continue reading →
"The emerging cryptographic monetary standard entirely bypasses the age of fiat money and the age of central banking. It takes money out of the realm of public policy and central planning and places it in the hands of the people actually using it. Of all the features of Bitcoin, this one is perhaps the most beautiful. It has emerged from within the social order and was not imposed from above. How long will it take before the full implications reveal themselves? It took email some 20 years to go from obscure to common. Digital phone technology needed about the same swath of time. Bitcoin, however, could be different. Information travels farther and faster than ever before." Continue reading →
"Mark Zuckerberg beat the twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss to the punch in launching Facebook. Now someone else seems to be stealing a march on their plan to launch an investment scheme for bitcoin. The Winklevii’s scheme, unlike SecondMarket’s, is for a public ETF traded on a major exchange open to retail investors. But the SEC may not approve it any time soon because it has yet to work out oodles of legal questions about the cryptocurrency. At a conference last week, the brothers were vague, telling attendees that regulators could set parameters on bitcoin 'over the next 6 to 12 months.'" Continue reading →
"The upstart stock exchange SecondMarket has made a name for itself allowing investors to buy shares of hot private companies like Twitter. Now that those companies are going public, SecondMarket is turning its attention to the next new thing — bitcoin. On Thursday, SecondMarket is expected to begin raising money for an investment fund — the first of its kind in the United States — that will hold only bitcoins, giving wealthy investors exposure to the trendy but controversial virtual currency. The fund, the Bitcoin Investment Trust, aims to provide a reliable and easy way to bet on the future price of bitcoin, a currency generally traded on unregulated, online exchanges based overseas." Continue reading →
"Would-be clients of upscale escorts in Birmingham, UK now have way to pay for escort services that's just as discreet as cash and more secure: Bitcoin has officially entered the realm of sex work. The world's oldest profession met the world's youngest currency as escort agency Passion VIP announced it now accepts payment for its adult companionship services in bitcoin. Located in the second most populous British city (after London), Passion VIP is hoping the introduction of bitcoin payments will open up a new market by giving clients an alternative payment method." Continue reading →
"The SEC, on the same day it issued the final rules on general solicitation that become effective September 23, issued proposed rules that would substantially complicate the general solicitation process. We don’t know when and if the proposed rules will go into effect, but if they are adopted in the form in which they were proposed, they will substantially change the landscape in an unfavorable way for companies that want to generally solicit. In other words, the proposed rules are a take away, a retrenching of the statutory work that Congress did in the JOBS Act." Continue reading →
"The federal securities laws define the term accredited investor in Rule 501 of Regulation D and as amended by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act as: [..] a natural person who has individual net worth, or joint net worth with the person's spouse, that exceeds $1 million at the time of the purchase, or has assets under management of $1 million or above, excluding the value of their primary residence; a natural person with income exceeding $200,000 in each of the two most recent years or joint income with a spouse exceeding $300,000 for those years and a reasonable expectation of the same income level in the current year; or [..]" Continue reading →