The Coin Flipped: “The blockchain ensures that coins can’t be forged or spent more than once. But it does so by making everyone in the Bitcoin economy a witness to every transaction. Every criminal payment is, in some sense, a smoking gun in broad daylight.” Andy Greenberg in Wired: Inside the Bitcoin Bust That Took Down the Web’s Biggest Child Abuse Site. “They thought their payments were untraceable. They couldn’t have been more wrong.”

+ The Bit Crowd: “Gwyneth Paltrow and Mila Kunis joined a Zoom in January to encourage 5,000 women in the audience to break into the male-dominated world of crypto.
‘We have watched a lot of these bros get together and earn a lot of money,’ said Paltrow, sporting a black turtleneck, sun-kissed glow and a disarming smile. ‘We deserve to be in this space just as much.'” WaPo (Gift Article): Famous women join the crypto hustle, but it could cost their fans. (If you want to be a billionaire tech bro, the key seems to be dropping out of Stanford.)

+ Darkest Before the Dawn: “The device incorporates a thermoelectric generator, which can pull electricity from the small difference in temperature between the ambient air and the solar cell itself.” Solar panels that can generate electricity at night have been developed at Stanford. (This proves Corey Hart was ahead of his time.)

+ We’ve Got Clearance, Clarence: “If something is goofy enough, if it involves a Sharpie, or an open plea to the Proud Boys, or the blurting out of a crackpot QAnon theory, then it doesn’t rise to the level of real or substantial political discourse. We would likely have taken Ginni Thomas’ texts more seriously if they implicated actual legal theories as opposed to advocating for the immediate release of the Kraken.” Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick: Why the Clarence and Ginni Thomas Scandal Vanished From the News.

+ Pill Cutters: “The city has received 5,988 doses this year — and had to return nearly 60% of them before they expired, Philip said. That’s roughly 3,500 doses.” We’ve got the drugs to save people from Covid. But people aren’t using them. SF Chronicle: Health officials return thousands of life-saving COVID drugs, plead with public to use them.

+ Tiger Balm: “No matter what you think of Tiger — love him or despise him — of all of his achievements and accomplishments, this is the most remarkable. How he recovered so quickly, how he says he is playing golf so well again, how he got himself ready to compete here this week, it’s the stuff of legend.” So far, so good.