Following up on yesterday's issue, which covered a presentation at the MIT Bitcoin Expo from Ledger's Charles Guillemet (I embarrassingly spelled Charles' last name wrong twice yesterday, smdh) in which he walked the audience through several ways the Ledger security team was able to successfully hack Trezor hardware wallets. As I said yesterday, a lot of these types of attacks are pretty well known and assumed to be executable on any hardware wallet if an endeavoring hacker has physical access to your device.

Trezor has released an official statement rebutting and clarifying some of the claims made in Charles' presentation. Peep it here.

Orwellian Watch

Over the course of the last 18 hours, there has been some terrible news coming out of Venezuela and Mexico, which each highlight the over encroachment of the State in people's lives and the everyday function of civil society.

First, in Venezuela, news broke late yesterday that the prominent journalist Luis Carlos Díaz went missing and has been presumed kidnapped by Maduro's thugs. All because he was speaking his mind in the face of mass injustice. This instance highlights one of the extremes that can be reached when a State's power goes unchecked for too long. When backed into a corner with nowhere to turn, the State will lash out, attempt to silence dissent, and whip everyone into line telling them to accept their fate as slaves under an oppressive system.

The second instance of State creep over the last day is directly related to Bitcoin. It seems as though the Mexican Central Bank would like to ban citizens from using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and leave that "privilege" to institutions like governments and banks. Despicable if you ask me. Their reasoning seems to be that people are too dumb for their good and need the hand-holding of historically incompetent institutions to interact with this freedom-enabling tech that makes said institutions obsolete. I hope the public outcry is Mexico is loud enough to prevent this from happening. Though I must admit, I am not optimistic the Mexican government + central bank will have their ears open to hear the uproar.

My thoughts are with any of you freaks facing these hardships in Venezuela and Mexico right now. Especially with Luis Carlos Díaz and his family. I cannot imagine what they're going through right now.

Every one of you freaks sitting pretty in a first-world economy should take notice of the small steps that lead to these extremes lest you get too complacent and let the Orwellian overreach come to you and yours. For example, Canada is already starting to creep me out.

Final thought...

I had some of the most brutal, angsty haircuts a teenager could have. Smh young Marty.