26th October 2023 > > The UK & Ledger Recover.

tl;dr

The UK is fighting hard to deter crypto tax dollars. Ledger Recovery gets my vote, and I am in!

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Kristalina Georgieva, head of the IMF – an organisation that is directly responsible for devastating the lives of some of the poorest on the planet in pursuit of an ideology that cannot be justified – has declared that interest rates will stay higher and longer than expected with the plea of “So please! Come to your senses, all of us!”

The imperative in the second and the subjunctive in the first, both within the same sentence – does that make any sense to anyone?

Regardless, this call to arms is a cast-iron guarantee that government-manipulated short-term interest rates are at their peak, and QE is heading back our way big-time.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Marinade Finance

Marinade Finance, a DeFi protocol on Solana, has got the UK regulator – the FCA – all excited and pleased with itself.

The FCA recently issued new guidelines regarding the promotion of cryptos, guidelines that were obviously needed when the infamous “When you see BTC on the side of a bus, you know it’s time to buy” advert pretty much called the top back in 2021. More details can be found here:

https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/fca-sets-expectations-ahead-incoming-crypto-marketing-rules

In principle, this is a fine idea, but unfortunately it has been badly worded and badly implemented. The impact has been to set back the cause of crypto adoption and the garnering of crypto tax dollars in the UK. How so you ask? Binance has stopped onboarding new UK customers, Bybit and PayPal have left the UK crypto market, and other centralised firms are increasingly restricting or closing UK related crypto operations.

Now decentralised Marinade has followed suit. If you click on their website from the UK, you get this message:

“Access to this site is unavailable in the United Kingdom due to compliance concerns relating to rules and regulations promulgated by the U.K. Finance Conduct Authority. Users may withdraw liquidity, claim delayed tickets or delay unstake via our SDK from here: https://github.com/marinade-finance/marinade-ts-sdk. Please direct any questions to Community Managers at: info@marinade.finance”

The bureaucrats at the FCA are undoubtedly pleased with this outcome, for there is little to no political will or ambition to foster and nurture the crypto industry in the UK.

Bui I would like to ask the architects of this anti-crypto environment just one question.

How does it feel to deliberately reduce the flow of tax dollars, with the inevitable result of fewer doctors and nurses?

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Whilst they grapple with their conscience over their unconscionable stance regarding cryptos, let me let you into a secret that passes them by, for they don’t understand the tech world.

Just turn on your VPN:

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Ledger Recover

Ledger have launched their controversial seed phrase recovery product:

https://www.ledger.com/recover/?get-started

Available only for the Ledger Nano X (for now), all the maxis got very upset when the idea was first mooted some months ago. When maxis get upset, that usually means that whatever they find upsetting is a darn good idea, in my experience. (*)

The process is this:

"STEP 1: Identity verification Verify your identity using a valid ID document and a selfie recording.

STEP 2: Creating the backup Connect your Ledger device and approve the creation of the backup for your Secret Recovery Phrase. Once approved, your Ledger device will encrypt the entropy of your Secret Recovery Phrase—a string of random 1s and 0s from which your Secret Recovery Phrase is computed. The encrypted entropy is fragmented into three pieces within the Secure Element chip. These fragments become the backup for your Secret Recovery Phrase. Ledger Recover only interacts with the fragments of the encrypted entropy, and never with your Secret Recovery Phrase in its readable format.

STEP 3: Securing the backup The fragments are securely distributed using end-to-end encrypted and authenticated channels to the Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) of three independent companies – Ledger, Coincover, and EscrowTech. Each fragment on its own is a useless set of random numbers.

STEP 4: Linking the backup to your verified identity Each fragment is linked to your verified identity from Step 1, so only you can request to retrieve the backup."

At £7.99 a month, this looks like a cheap insurance plan to me, so I have signed up.

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(*) In general, whatever the shouty people (we all know them when we see them) are complaining about is likely the right thing to support.