What’s up today? (Part 1)

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Just think how many Spotify streams you’d need to launder $4billion

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In dollars? There are 86,400 seconds in a day:

Did a Bulgarian playlister swindle their way to a fortune on streaming service?

The potential amount of total ‘listens’ that a single individual premium Spotify account could rack up within this playlist across a 30-day month? If they were playing songs continually, 24 hours a day, seven days a week?

Just over 60,000.

60,000 monetised tracks ‘listens’ across 1,200 premium accounts in the same month period?

A total of 72 million plays.

A conservative estimate of Spotify’s per-track average payout to recorded music rights-holders is $0.004 per play.

Multiplied by 72 million, and you get the potential monthly payout of the ‘Soulful Music’ scam.

$288,000.

What’s more: if bots were being used to skip tracks on Spotify before they finished – at the all-important 30-second monetisation point – you would be able to squeeze in 103m plays across 1,200 accounts in 30 days.

Total potential payout at $0.004 per play?

$415,000.

Now, remember that these calculations are across just one playlist:

The evidence we’ve gathered strongly suggests that one party sucked a vast amount of money – as much as $1 million-plus – out of the Spotify royalty pool, and away from legitimate artists and labels.

And the best/worst part of all? They probably didn’t break any laws in the process.

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There are certainly avenues for it in the music industry, but it certainly wouldn’t be the vehicle of that—how do I say it politely—highly niche rap genre.

For context $4Bn is about the size of the entire UK music industry. So umm, a touch difficult to hide!

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But if you were a couple who happened to pull off this heist, and one of you fancied yourself as a rap artist, then this fits.

You can’t tell anyone, so you have to do it all yourself. Much better than going to some shady ML outfit who would easily work out you had $4.8bn and then get out the thumb screws. Seems more likely than folks who had this going to this pair of amateurs and handing over the keys.

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And it may be one of many avenues.
Makes more sense that they are not complete idiots, Id shake my booty on camera and make a fool of myself if that is what was required :rofl:… maybe.

4 billion is going to take a fair bit of ingenuity no matter what you come up with.

Who needs all $4bn? Reminds me of a really poor quality counterfeiter of US dollars who should have got away with it.

He never spent more than one bill in the same place and evaded capture for years. He was only caught because when his press was damaged in a fire he chucked all the gear out into the street rather than disposing of it more carefully!

A film was made based on him which was on recently: Mister 880

He had the last laugh though because he made more from his story than from all the counterfeiting!

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I figured they must have been laundering through the production of all of it somehow. Those lavish videos and studio recordings. If they started or bought video production and recording studios, sounds like they had ties to the art and fashion industry too, those fronts are the only ones they use, charging what they like for real estate, equipment, wages, services etc, whilst also providing services to the general public too. Just a guess though.

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Starship right now being lifted onto the booster using the “chopsticks” ahead of the announcement Elon is giving tomorrow

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She ran a Forbes column on “cybersecurity”, also gave conferences on social engineering with a list of related accomplishments. Worked her way into Bitgo which Bitfinex had contracted to secure the funds. Bitgo have been cooing for years that their “systems were not breached, and its software functioned correctly during the Bitfinex hack”. They were right… instead they were simply socially engineered. A warning for all projects I guess… technical security is not sufficient.

Thoroughly debunked years ago, but scam accounts like Bitfinexed liked to keep that one on life support for as long as they could sell it.

In other news… another project claiming the “SAFE Network”, “Safe Project” and “SAFE Token” names. Unfortunately a rather large well known one this time. Recourse possible?

https://twitter.com/gnosisSafe/status/1491359822180401152

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Thanks for the heads-up. We’re taking a close look at it.

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Hard as it may be a complete rebranding may be in order. Whatever you do Maidsafe team …

image

but if rebranding, then don’t keep it SAFE … pardon the pun.

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They are even using a nice shade of blue.

It does feel like they are ripping us off. We were here first.

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“Gnosis Safe is a smart contract wallet running on Ethereum that requires a minimum number of people to approve a transaction before it can occur (M-of-N)”

From their website. All it appears to be is a smart contract and a multisig web wallet.

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I was referring to reports that the two of them held the keys “in the cloud” per some news reports which is how the coins apparently were recovered.

That makes no sense if they had they are the hackers and as you say she ran a Forbes column on security.

Or am i misunderstanding, are you saying that the reports of the two of them keeping the keys online is incorrect?

The plan has been to abandon “SAFE COIN/TOKEN” anyway right? Hence SNT to cover until then.

Idk much about Gnosis other than they have been around for a while but they don’t really seem to be very relevant, or are they?

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I’ve seen a screenshot of the indictment which confirms they kept the keys to wallets holding $4bn in encrypted files in a cloud account. FBI got access to the cloud account through subpoena, then cracked the encrypted files.

EDIT: Here’s the full statement of facts which describes how they laundered the BTC, including what was stored in the cloud account (eg wallet keys and a spreadsheet of the logins to multiple cryptocurrency exchanges used to launder the BTC etc). It even has pictures, well worth a read:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1470186/download (PDF).

Seems like the hard part is not revealing the connection between yourself and the funds or anything used to launder them. That’s a lot of vulnerable points to keep secret with all that KYC/AML, but then if you keep them all in a cloud account you own anyway :man_facepalming:.

There’s logic in that (ie access anywhere, maybe while on the run crossing borders) but your encryption & passphrase has to be uncrackable. Yet if the prize is billions in BTC and you’re up against the computing power of a nation state. :man_shrugging:

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I think we are referring to two different events. The one I was referring to is from 2016 where Bitfinex was accused of storing the keys online.

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Farm while you brush.

https://twitter.com/mjtech01/status/1491180890365775872

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@Dimitar

EDIT: “Unamed buyer” who they promptly name :slight_smile:

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Starts in a couple of minutes

Direct from spaceX in 60 minutes Starship Update - YouTube

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