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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) (R) listens to U.S. President Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on November 14, 2018 in Washington, DC.Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Sen. Lindsey Graham once said Trump is "entertaining as hell," Mark Leibovich wrote in his new book.

"Any tweet he sends is like crack cocaine for this guy," Graham said, according to the book.

Graham is now fighting a subpoena from a grand jury impaneled to investigate 2020 election interference.

Before his relationship with former President Donald Trump involved grand jury subpoenas, Sen. Lindsey Graham was enjoying the ride.

"He's entertaining as hell," Graham said of Trump, according to Mark Leibovich's new book "Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission," which comes out on Tuesday.

Graham, a staunch supporter of Trump's since the 2016 election, took on a "Trump-explainer mode" during a 2019 interview with Leibovich, saying Trump is "good for business."

"And he knows he's good for business. What's going to happen next? Stay tuned. Any tweet he sends is like crack cocaine for this guy," Graham said.

Graham is now fighting a subpoena from a Fulton County Grand Jury impaneled to investigate 2020 election interference after Trump called on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger at the time to "find" more than 11,000 votes for him.

The subpoena alleged Graham also called Raffensperger to encourage him to question absentee ballots. Graham has called it a "fishing expedition."

Leibovich's book describes how Graham became a staunch ally of Trump's, even though Graham "had minimal regard for Trump as a serious thinker and moral human being."

Leibovich wrote that Graham "reserved a certain awe" for Trump and "He couldn't believe how Trump could endure the crises he did or got away with what he got away with."

Read the original article on Business Insider

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Lindsey Graham said that Donald Trump's tweets were like 'crack cocaine for this guy' - Yahoo! Voices

NEW YORK, July 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C., a nationally recognized shareholder rights law firm, reminds investors that class actions have been commenced on behalf of stockholders of IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ), Energy Transfer LP (NYSE: ET), Digital Turbine, Inc. (NASDAQ: APPS), and Teladoc Health, Inc. (NYSE: TDOC). Stockholders have until the deadlines below to petition the court to serve as lead plaintiff. Additional information about each case can be found at the link provided.

IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ)

Class Period: March 20, 2021 May 2, 2022

Lead Plaintiff Deadline: August 1, 2022

On May 3, 2022, Scorpion Capital released a research report alleging, among other things, that IonQ is a scam built on phony statements about nearly all key aspects of the technology and business. It further claimed that the Company reported [f]ictitious revenue via sham transactions and related-party round-tripping.

On this news, the Companys stock fell $0.71, or 9%, to close at $7.15 per share on May 3, 2022, on unusually heavy trading volume.

The complaint filed in this class action alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Companys business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants failed to disclose to investors: (1) that IonQ had not yet developed a 32-qubit quantum computer; (2) that the Companys 11-qubit quantum computer suffered from significant error rates, rendering it useless; (3) that IonQs quantum computer is not sufficiently reliable, so it is not accessible despite being available through major cloud providers; (4) that a significant portion of IonQs revenue was derived from improper round-tripping transactions with related parties; and (5) that, as a result of the foregoing, Defendants positive statements about the Companys business, operations, and prospects were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times.

For more information on the IonQ class action go to: https://bespc.com/cases/IONQ

Energy Transfer LP (NYSE: ET)

Class Period: April 13, 2017 December 20, 2021

Lead Plaintiff Deadline: August 2, 2022

Energy Transfer is a Delaware company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Energy Transfer is a company engaged in natural gas and propane pipeline transport. It was founded in 1996 and became a publicly traded partnership in 2006. The Partnership through its subsidiaries provides transportation, storage, and terminalling services for products like natural gas, crude oil, NGL, and refined products. The Partnership also constructs natural gas pipelines through its various subsidiaries.

On April 13, 2017, the horizontal directional drilling activities ("HDD") for the Rover Pipeline Project, one of the Partnership's natural gas pipeline construction projects, caused a large inadvertent release of drilling mud near the Tuscarawas River in Ohio. On August 8, 2019, Energy Transfer filed its quarterly report on Form 10-Q with the SEC, reporting the Partnership's financial and operating results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2019. This quarterly report disclosed that two years earlier, in mid-2017 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("FERC")'s Enforcement Staff began a formal investigation "regarding allegations that diesel fuel may have been included in the drilling mud at the Tuscarawas River HDD." On this news, the price of Energy Transfer stock declined $0.65, or 4.6% over two trading days, to close at $13.38 on August 12, 2019.

Then, on December 16, 2021, FERC publicly issued to Energy Transfer the Order To Show Cause and Notice of Proposed Penalty, which directed the Partnership to show cause why it should not be assessed a civil penalty in the amount of $40,000,000. The order presented the allegation by the Enforcement Staff that the HDD crews intentionally included diesel fuel and other toxic substances and unapproved additives in the drilling mud during its HDDs under the Tuscarawas River. On this news, the price of Energy Transfer shares declined $0.24, or 2.8% over the course of two trading days, to close at $8.25, on December 20, 2021.

The Complaint alleges Energy Transfer concealed and misrepresented that: (a) Energy Transfer had inadequate internal controls and procedures to prevent contractors from engaging in illegal conduct with regards to drilling activities, and/or failed to properly mitigate known issues related to such controls and procedures; (b) Energy Transfer through its subsidiary hired third-party contractors to conduct HDDs for the Rover Pipeline Project, whose conduct of adding illegal additives in the drilling mud caused severe pollution near the Tuscarawas River when the April 13 Release took place; and (c) Energy Transfer continually downplayed its potential civil liabilities when FERC was actively investigating the Partnership's wrongdoing related to the April 13 Release and consistently provided it with updated information about FERC's findings on this matter.

For more information on the Energy Transfer class action go to: https://bespc.com/cases/ET

Digital Turbine, Inc. (NASDAQ: APPS)

Class Period: August 9, 2021 May 17, 2022

Lead Plaintiff Deadline: August 5, 2022

Digital Turbine is a software company that delivers products to assist third parties in monetizing through the utilization of mobile advertising. The Company completed the acquisitions of AdColony Holdings AS (AdColony) and Fyber N.V. (Fyber) on April 29 and May 25, 2021, respectively.

On May 17, 2022, Digital Turbine issued a press release revealing that it will restate its financial statements for the interim periods ended June 30, 2021, September 30, 2021, and December 31, 2021, following a review of the presentation of revenue net of license fees and revenue share for the Companys recently acquired businesses."

On this news, the Companys shares fell $1.93, or 7.1%, to close at $25.28 per share on May 18, 2022, on unusually heavy trading volume.

The complaint filed in this class action alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Companys business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants failed to disclose to investors: (1) that the Companys recent acquisitions, AdColony and Fyber, act as agents in certain of their respective product lines; (2) that, as a result, revenues for those product lines must be reported net of license fees and revenue share, rather than on a gross basis; (3) that the Companys internal control over financial reporting as to revenue recognition was deficient; and (4) that, as a result of the foregoing, the Companys net revenues was overstated throughout fiscal 2022; and (5) that, as a result of the foregoing, Defendants positive statements about the Companys business, operations, and prospects were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis.

For more information on the Digital Turbine class action go to: https://bespc.com/cases/APPS

Teladoc Health, Inc. (NYSE: TDOC)

Class Period: October 28, 2021 April 27, 2022

Lead Plaintiff Deadline: August 5, 2022

Teladoc provides virtual healthcare services in the U.S. and internationally through Business-to-Business (B2B) and Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) distribution channels. The Company offers its customers various virtual products and services addressing, among other medical issues, mental health through its BetterHelp D2C product, and chronic conditions.

Teladoc touts itself as the first and only company to provide a comprehensive and integrated whole person virtual healthcare solution that both provides and enables care for a full spectrum of clinical conditions[.] Despite recent market concerns over new entrants to the telehealth field, such Amazon.com, Inc. (Amazon) and Walmart Inc. (Walmart), the Company has continued to assure investors of the Companys dominant market position in the industry.

In fact, as recently as February 2022, Teladoc forecasted full year (FY) 2022 revenue of $2.55 - $2.65 billion, as well as adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of $330 - $355 million, on anticipated continued growth through its competitive advantages.

Throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Companys business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) increased competition, among other factors, was negatively impacting Teladocs BetterHelp and chronic care businesses; (ii) accordingly, the growth of those businesses was less sustainable than Defendants had led investors to believe; (iii) as a result, Teladocs revenue and adjusted EBITDA projections for FY 2022 were unrealistic; (iv) as a result of all the foregoing, Teladoc would be forced to recognize asignificant non-cash goodwill impairment charge; and (v) as a result, the Companys public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

On April 27, 2022, Teladoc announced its first quarter (Q1) 2022 financial results, including revenue of $565.4 million, which missed consensus estimates by $3.23 million, and [n]et loss per share of $41.58, primarily driven by [a] non-cash goodwill impairment charge of $6.6 billion or $41.11 per share[.] Additionally, the Company revised its FY 2022 revenue guidance to $2.4 - $2.5 billion and adjusted EBITDA guidance to $240 - $265 million to reflect dynamics we are currently experiencing in the [D2C] mental health and chronic condition markets. On a conference call with investors and analysts that day to discuss Teladocs Q1 2022 results, Defendants largely attributed the Companys poor performance, revised FY 2022 guidance, and $6.6 billion non-cash goodwill impairment charge to increased competition in its BetterHelp and chronic care businesses.

On this news, Teladocs stock price fell $22.48 per share, or 40.15%, to close at $33.51 per share on April 28, 2022.

For more information on the Teladoc class action go to: https://bespc.com/cases/TDOC

About Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C.:

Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C. is a nationally recognized law firm with offices in New York, California, and South Carolina. The firm represents individual and institutional investors in commercial, securities, derivative, and other complex litigation in state and federal courts across the country. For more information about the firm, please visit http://www.bespc.com. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

Contact Information:

Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C.

Brandon Walker, Esq.

Melissa Fortunato, Esq.

(212) 355-4648

investigations@bespc.com

http://www.bespc.com

Excerpt from:
Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C. Reminds Investors That Class Action Lawsuits Have Been Filed ... - The Bakersfield Californian

EU treaty reforms have progressively increased the power of the European Parliament by making it a co-legislator with national governments in many important policy areas. But have these reforms had a positive impact on the EUs democratic legitimacy? Drawing on a new study, Miriam Sorace demonstrates that decisions made jointly between national governments and the European Parliament tend to match public opinion more closely than those made by governments alone. This suggests that further empowering the Parliament and reducing the use of unanimous decision-making would help tackle the EUs democratic deficit.

Scholars disagree over the effect that territorial weights have on the democratic quality of a political system. Some argue that fully democratic legislatures need to vote simply by ideological majorities in most policy domains i.e. those that affect all citizens as individuals rather than territories and/or do not generate permanent minorities. Others argue that for large, decentralised political systems, territorial vetoes are always required, and do not see a plausible link between embedding territoriality in legislative institutions and democratic deficits.

In a recent study, I have looked at whether territorial vetoes in decision-making make it difficult for a political system to deliver the policies that citizens want by looking at the case of the European Union. The EU is a heavily territorial political system, which is often challenged on democratic deficit grounds, and which is currently undergoing constitutional reflection, as the Conference on the Future of Europe process attests. Examining the EU is particularly salient, since many policy challenges are, in our globalised world, supranational in nature; and since the EU is taken as a model by many other global governance institutions.

In the EU, some important policy issues are still exclusively decided by the Council of Ministers (with one minister from the executive branch of each member state) via unanimity. The European Parliament has been progressively empowered, most notably through the codecision reform, which gives it the same veto powers as the Council, effectively making it a co-legislator. The codecision reform has, however, been applied in stages: different policy areas were assigned codecision in different treaty reform rounds, and often only subsets of the policy area were assigned codecision.

I leverage this staggered application of codecision a reform that weakened the weight of member states in EU law-making by looking at the case of EU employment and social policy. In EU employment and social policy, codecision was only applied in 1999 with the Amsterdam Treaty, and only to a subset of such policies: those that were assigned the cooperation procedure before 1999. Whilst the cooperation procedure granted slightly more powers to the European Parliament, its role was still largely consultative, and the territorial chamber (the Council of Ministers) retained its nearly absolute veto power.

I thus compare EU employment and social policies that were decided under the most territorial procedure (consultation) to EU employment and social policies that were decided by cooperation before 1999 and by codecision after 1999. This setup allows for a difference-in-differences causal analysis and means we can control for time-varying characteristics that might impact on EU policy and public opinion, such as the role of economic downturns, as well as characteristics specific to each sub-domain of EU employment policy (for example the salience of policy proposals).

The texts of EU employment and social policies were analysed by samples of online human coders and were placed on the pro-worker or pro-business side on the basis of a thoroughly piloted and validated text analysis codebook. Each EU policy was then matched to European public opinion positions on the economic left-right scale (using Eurobarometer data as well as data from Devin Caughey, Tom OGrady and Christopher Warshaw). The main outcome measured is the standardised difference between EU policies and European public opinion.

I find that EU policies decided by codecision more closely track shifts in public preferences than those decided using other decision rules. Figure 1 below shows the main results from the analysis graphically by plotting the policy-opinion standardised distances over-time and by policy sub-topic/group. The image shows that post-1999 legislation decided by consultation (the most territorial procedure) is farther from public opinion than legislation adopted under codecision.

This means that EU legislation in employment policy tended to further deviate from the public mood after 1999. Had codecision not been introduced, we would have therefore seen an overall increase in policy-opinion mismatches in this policy area post-1999 (the complicating effect of enlargement on the Council-led aggregation of European public opinion might be a reason for this post-1999 trend). Legislation decided by codecision also appears to better track the public mood than that decided by cooperation.

Figure 1: Absolute policy-opinion difference by treatment group

There are some signs, therefore, that codecision a reform that fundamentally changed how EU laws are passed by increasing the powers of the European Parliament and majoritarianism in the Council has indeed improved the democratic credentials and the democratic legitimacy of EU policies (measured as the policy-opinion link).

This has significant implications for international organisations, and it speaks to some important EU reform proposals that are currently animating the Conference on the Future of Europe. The backlash against globalisation is, according to some, partly due to international organisations having a democratic deficit. If international organisations are serious about tackling their democratic deficits as they acquire salient, redistributive policy competences, moving away from territorial, inter-state bargaining should be prioritised.

These findings furthermore lend credence to the expectation from democratic theory that strongly territorially weighted decision-making rules can hurt the democratic legitimacy of policy outputs. My study thus has implications for any political system that strongly relies on territorial representation: democratic discontent, in fact, is expected to be higher in such systems since their policies are expected to track public opinion preferences less well.

For more information, see the authors accompanying paper at the Journal of European Public Policy

Note: This article gives the views of theauthor, not the position of EUROPP European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: CC-BY-4.0: European Union 2022 Source: EP

The rest is here:
Strengthening the European Parliament has brought EU decisions closer to the views of the public - London School of Economics

Nightly protests in North Macedonia over the past week have left dozens injured. At the heart of the turmoil is the small Balkan countrys long-running quest to join the European Union, a process that has faced one hurdle after the other.

The most recent obstacle is a veto by EU member Bulgaria. A French proposal for a compromise to address Bulgarias concerns has divided North Macedonia, sparking the sometimes violent protests. Frances plan also met deep objections in Bulgaria and helped to bring down the government, which had accepted the compromise.

What is the dispute about?

North Macedonia has been an EU candidate for 17 years. The country emerged from the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and sought to forge a strong national identity. But in a region where borders and ethnicities have shifted and overlapped over centuries, it was beset by problems from the start.

The countrys chosen name, Macedonia, sparked outrage in neighboring Greece, which said the term harbored expansionist aims against its own province of the same name and was an attempt to usurp Greek history and culture. Athens held up Skopjes EU and NATO membership bids for years, until a 2019 deal was reached that included the smaller country changing its name to North Macedonia.

But the following year, neighboring Bulgaria blocked the renamed nations attempts to join the EU, accusing Skopje of disrespecting shared cultural and historic ties. Among Bulgarias key demands were acknowledgment that the language of North Macedonia derived from Bulgarian, and the recognition of a Bulgarian minority.

The size of the Bulgarian community in North Macedonia is a matter of contention. Official data from the 2021 census put it at 3,504 people, or about 0.2% of the population. Bulgaria has doubted the figure, noting that about 90,000 of North Macedonias roughly 2 million population received dual Bulgarian citizenship over the last two decades based on their family roots. About 53,000 more applications are pending.

Why does it matter?

North Macedonias EU bid is tied to a similar bid by neighboring Albania. Both countries see joining the 27-nation bloc as a means of securing stability and prosperity in an increasingly unstable world. The EU prospects of the Western Balkan countries gained increased attention in the wake of the blocs efforts to bring Ukraine closer following the Russian invasion.

What is the French proposal?

France held the rotating EU presidency between January and June and so has been deeply involved in negotiations to break the deadlock. EU leaders held a summit with Western Balkan nations last month, during the same week they made Ukraine and Moldova candidates for EU membership.

French President Emmanuel Macron hoped to present unblocking the EU bids of North Macedonia and Albania as a major success. On Thursday, the French Embassy in Skopje posted a message from Macron.

Once again, North Macedonia has reached a crucial moment in its history. Seventeen years after receiving candidate status, a historic opportunity has opened: . The choice is yours, he said.

Macrons proposal envisages concessions from both sides. The government in Skopje would commit to changing its constitution to recognize a Bulgarian minority, protect minority rights and banish hate speech.

The French leader stressed the proposal doesnt question the official existence of a Macedonian language, but he noted that, like all deals, it rests on compromises and on a balance.

How was the proposal received?

The compromises in the French proposal led to rifts in both countries.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkovs centrist government was toppled in a no-confidence vote on June 22. A junior governing partner quit the fragile four-party coalition, describing Petkovs willingness to lift the veto of North Macedonia as a national betrayal. An early election could result in a stronger presence in parliament of nationalist and pro-Russia lawmakers.

The National Assembly already has approved the proposal, but legislators set additional conditions for agreeing to North Macedonias EU membership. They included proper constitutional protection for Bulgarians living in North Macedonia, and no assumption that Bulgaria would recognize Macedonian as a separate language from Bulgarian.

In North Macedonia, both President Stevo Pendarovski and the government of Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevsk backed the proposal as a reasonable compromise. Accepting it will be neither a historic triumph, as one camp would call it, nor a historic failure or debacle, as those in the other camp say, Pendarovski said.

The government has stressed the proposal does not endanger national interests or identity. But the center-right main opposition party, the VMRO-DPMNE, as well as others, disagree, saying the deal favors Bulgarian demands that question North Macedonias history, language, identity, culture and heritage.

Biljana Vankovska, a law professor at the Saint Cyril and Methodius Universitys Institute for Security, Defense and Peace, slammed the French proposal as bowing to the nationalistic and chauvinistic demands of Bulgaria.

It is unbelievable that a small nation was asked to give up its language, history and constitution-making powers to external powers in order to start the EU accession process, she said.

Political analyst Albert Musliu, head of the Association for Democratic Initiatives think tank, argued the proposal offers North Macedonia a chance to start membership talks with the EU.

If you ask me whether it is fair, then yes, the proposal is unfair, but international order is not based on fairness, he said.

Whats next?

Bulgaria has accepted the French proposal, which now requires the backing of North Macedonias parliament. The text is now at committee level in parliament. No plenary session has been scheduled.

Read more from the original source:
Explained: What's behind North Macedonia's long road to the European Union? - The Indian Express

This is an opinion editorial by Beautyon, the CEO of Azteco and a contributor at Bitcoin Magazine.

A group of bitter, twisted computer illiterates in the beleaguered European Union have managed to convince the European Council that bitcoin is money, that Bitcoin wallets are actual wallets that hold actual balances of money and that they should be regulated. This is of course totally insane and an idea borne out of profound ignorance.

Since it is not possible to have a rational argument with people like this, another, better strategy of dealing with these violent types must be formulated and implemented. Theyre fixated on the idea that bitcoin is money and, from the seed of this mistaken idea, a monstrous Pandoras Box of evil has been opened.

Bitcoin is not money. If you seek compliance you are asking for trouble. People who want to see the widespread and rapid adoption of Bitcoin should not seek tight regulation and the blessing. Beautyon

In order to avoid the unethical attacks of the dribbling geriatrics in the United States and the delusional EU socialists, Bitcoin wallet software developers must devise a strategy to stay out of the crosshairs of the very misguided apparatchiks hell-bent on damaging Bitcoin businesses.

Every law that touches Bitcoin uses deceptive language as definition and pretext. These definitions come from ambulance chasers and not computer scientists or software developers. By re-contextualizing Bitcoin wallets, it will be possible to totally escape the onslaught of destruction being planned by the EU and U.S. legislators.

This is how you do it.

Bitcoin wallet developers, quite naturally, have centered on using the conventions of money to translate what is happening under the hood into something ordinary people can understand. There is no coin management or UTXO information displayed to users in the consumer grade Bitcoin wallets: BlueWallet, Wallet of Satoshi, Samourai, Pine, Phoenix, Muun; all of that is hidden away because it is of no use to consumers.

No normal person can deal with coin control, UTXOs or anything like that.

Instead, a set of familiar, easy to understand and simple conventions has been borrowed from the world of banking to make everything in Bitcoin understandable to normal people.

This is why Bitcoin wallets have taken on the appearance, nomenclature and styling of banking apps, which normally look something like these apps from Halifax and Lloyds respectively.

Bank apps from Lloyds and Halifax. Obviously bought off the shelf from the same developer.

Below is a picture of Coinbases phone app, which looks exactly like a bank app.

Coinbase phone app

Now Airbitz:

Airbitz dashboard

When a normal, ignorant, computer-illiterate person from the EU government looks at any Bitcoin app, they recognize it as a financial tool because it looks exactly like the financial apps theyre familiar with. As for what is going on under the hoods of these very different classes of tools, they have absolutely no clue. They only see the surface and make all their judgements based on that alone. This is why they reflexively conflate Bitcoin with money and think that the balance in a Bitcoin wallet is analogous to the fiat balance in a banking app.

There is a lot of talk about using Blockchains to improve data integrity, but what all these solutions fail to address is what I call The Flat Screen Dilemma. Just because something is displayed on a screen, it does not follow that it is true. The Flat Screen Dilemma

The fact of the matter is very different, however. Bitcoin apps show you the total of the UTXOs that you have control over by virtue of you being in possession of the private key. That is a sum of UTXOs; it is not a single balance. Furthermore, that money is not on the device. What is on the users device is an app that stores a cryptographic key (a string of text) that allows you to sign messages for broadcast to the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin wallets do not contain or receive bitcoin. They simply tell you what your private key can sign for on the block chain.

By saying this, I am obviously simplifying the process. But the simplification I am presenting here is more accurate than saying a Bitcoin wallet receives and stores bitcoin, which never, ever happens and never has happened. It is also wrong to characterize a Bitcoin wallet as unhosted if it can sign a message on command of a user without reference to anyone else. There are no wallets in Bitcoin at all. Its just another analogy.

Bitcoin is a database. It is not a payment network nor is value sent over it at all. There are no wallets either. Signed messages are what are sent to the network for inclusion in the public database. It is a database used to keep a record of who controls which outputs. It is not and never has been money in the conventional sense. Just because people use this database as money doesnt mean that bitcoin is money. Just because people use the word wallet does not mean that there are actual Bitcoin wallets that hold bitcoin the way a leather wallet holds cash.

Using the word wallet for the sake of user experience is a convention to help make the primary function of tools understandable for users. Those conventions are a choice, not a rule and they are not a universal truth, either. That means that anyone can choose any convention or any analogy they want to compare what happens in their Bitcoin app. It is entirely possible that oil traders could use the block chain to denominate barrels of oil using barrels as measurement. Today, one barrel of oil is 0.0048 bitcoin/barrel. In an oil traders wallet this would be represented as 100 if the trader had one hundred barrels showing on his device as allocated to his private key in a UTXO.

In this scenario, which is totally plausible, no one would claim that bitcoin is oil but maybe they would? Apparatchiks are completely insane and insane thinking is what youd expect from them.

BlueWallet does nothing more than present the user with conventions users can understand. It is not an unhosted wallet; it is a block chain viewer and signing device. In no way, shape or form is a Bitcoin wallet on a mobile phone a financial tool of any kind. If very stupid people were to classify a signing device as a financial tool, then many other software tools would be captured by that insanity immediately. BlueWallet could pivot to the oil industry tomorrow and start calling itself OilWallet. The fact that people use bitcoin as money is irrelevant to bitcoins nature. They exchange it for goods and services and money while OilWallet is used to manage the exchange of barrels of oil. Common to all of this is Bitcoin is only a database; what you impute to it is up to you and has nothing to do with its fundamental nature.

WhatsApp uses exactly the same encryption techniques as Bitcoin does to authenticate users to each other. You have a pair of cryptographic keys that you use to encrypt, decrypt and sign messages so that the other person receiving your call or texts or pictures knows it came from you and could have only come from you. Users of WhatsApp are not exposed to how all of this works, in the same way that users of Bitcoin wallets are not shown the text of their private keys. The software takes care of all of that for the user and simply gives them information that is useful to them. In the case of WhatsApp, that useful information is text messages. In Bitcoin it is the sum of UTXOs that are associated with your private key that are written into the public database of the chain of blocks.

So what is the answer? I hear you bleating.

The answer is to call Bitcoin wallets viewers and signers.

If wallets were to rebrand as bitcoin viewers, to better reflect their function and distance themselves from the language of the financial industry, no one could argue that they are financial tools or unhosted wallets.

That is literally what all Bitcoin wallets do: they act as viewers or, to analogize, Windows on the block chain, showing you which outputs are controllable by you.

When you send bitcoin to someone (note how I put send in quotes, because bitcoin is never sent anywhere; it is not like money) you take their public key (what is called a Bitcoin address) and use your private key to sign a message granting control of those bitcoin to the recipients address. Had the money convention been taken to the logical conclusion, Bitcoin addresses might have been called Bitcoin account numbers. This signing of a message has more in common with contracts than it does with money handling. This further breaks the absurd Swiss bank account in your pocket imagery. Sent, received, deposit, payment, account all of these words must be abolished from Bitcoin wallet interfaces, the Bitcoin Lexicon and the overall nomenclature or the reckless, dangerous and very harmful conflation of bitcoin with money will continue.

When these messages are broadcast to be added to the public chain of blocks, either from your own full node, which is a copy of all the messages ever incorporated into the block chain, they are incorporated once the network of database administrators decide the addition should be made. Database administrators not miners. Are you starting to understand? Mining is what companies do to extract precious metals from the earth. Precious metals like gold, which actually is money, unlike bitcoin. All of these analogies and the language from the financial world must be abolished from the lexicon of Bitcoin companies.

Once the message is accepted as legitimate by the network, your block chain viewer will be able to see that the signature you made has been added to the public record and the sum of your UTXOs will be smaller than they were before the message was sent. In the current wallet convention, this is expressed as a single number, sometimes juxtaposed with a conversion into fiat with the approximately equal to sign (). All of this is to help you understand but is not a reflection of what is really happening, or an absolute prerequisite or necessity.

Is Liquid bitcoin money?

There are already watch-only tools from Bitcoin companies like the great Samourai Wallet. Sentinel allows you to scan your keys and then whenever the chain of blocks is updated, it will show you the status of the UTXOs you control on the block chain.

By the bizarre, irrational and stupid thinking of the EU, Sentinel is an unhosted financial services application because it shows you a balance in bitcoin as a single number. If it is not a financial services application, why not? Are they going to claim that a tool that watches a database is a wallet? No one is asking these questions because they dont understand how Bitcoin works at any level other than analogies.

Samourai Wallet Sentinel app

And dont get me started on metal storage devices.

Is this an unhosted Bitcoin wallet? (Photo/Cryptosteel)

In the end, there is going to have to be a U.S. Supreme Court case to force the venal and stupid legislators to obey their oaths and stop interfering with the free speech of American software developers. Bitcoin is not money it is speech and no lawmaker can interfere with the speech of U.S. citizens. I explain more about this in Why America Cant Regulate Bitcoin

Once this is settled by case law, the benefits for the U.S. will be enormous. All software developers working in Bitcoin will run to incorporate in the country and base their operations in Florida. No one anywhere in the EU will dare to start a Bitcoin wallet company because the ignorant apparatchiks there cant tell the difference between a chat app and a Bitcoin app (pro tip: there is no difference).

When this happens, hundreds of billions of dollars from all over the world will flow through Bitcoin wallet companies being run from America, and those companies will be paying taxes in the U.S. The entire worlds financial infrastructure and tooling will come from America and flow through America for Uncle Sam to get his slice. America wins again.

Upon reading this, there will be many stupid people out there who will cry, This is just semantics! Those people dont use Bitcoin wallets, dont have any bitcoin, dont run Bitcoin businesses of any kind and are as ignorant as the EU idiots and U.S. geriatrics who want to cripple Bitcoin.

When this goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, it will not be them paying the legal bill, though they will reap the world-changing benefits of software developers working with the Bitcoin database free of arbitrary, unethical and unconstitutional restrictions hampering their ability to display the UTXOs you can assign with your block chain viewer and signer.

This is a guest post by Beautyon. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.

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The European Unions Attack On Bitcoin Is An English And Math Comprehension Problem - Bitcoin Magazine