Kalzumeus Software

Bank CEO: Retract your debanking piece? Me: No.

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 09:25:00 -0600

One day after testifying before the Senate Banking Committee on debanking, a bank CEO asked me to retract my essay on that topic. I declined.

Tether's Troubles in November 2022

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 10:25:00 -0600

Tether's November 2022 attestation, even if believed, strongly suggests it blew up (again) during the recent crypto route.

Tether Required Recapitalization In May 2022

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) — Fri, 20 May 2022 06:25:00 -0500

Tether's March 2022 attestation, even if believed, shows that it became insolvent during the May 2022 crypto downturn.

App Store Payments Will Have Increased Competition

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 10:25:00 -0500

Apple's App Store is reforming their guidelines about taking out-of-band payments. This will be very interesting for developers, especially in the games industry.

Solving The Vaccine Data Problem

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 19:01:00 -0500

VaccinateCA, the non-profit I have been running, expanded nationally to Vaccinate The States. Here's what we've learned in the last 100 days.

What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 11:35:00 -0500

I joined Stripe to work on building financial infrastructure for the Internet. Time flies. Here is what I've learned in the first four years.

An update on a pre-registered result about the coronavirus

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 08:00:00 -0500

A history of an anomaly in the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic, an independent research project about it, and what we need to learn about our next steps.

Dropping hashes: an idiom used to demonstrate provenance of documents

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 07:45:00 -0500

There exists an idiom called “dropping a hash” which is widely understood in the security community and not widely understood elsewhere. Somewhat surprisingly, there does not appear to be a canonical explanation. I have dropped hashes before and wrote this up to explain the significance of it to non-specialists.

The Working Group's White paper on Japan and covid-19

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 04:15:00 -0500

Author’s note: This is a copy of the white paper of the Working Group, a group of four pseudonymous professionals in Tokyo. I, Patrick McKenzie, was the primary author. It was distributed quietly during the week of March 25th, 2020. I have written an essay describing how this document came to be and demonstrating its provenance.

Tether: The Story So Far

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) — Mon, 28 Oct 2019 10:27:37 -0500

Tether is the internal accounting system for the largest fraud since Madoff. That is a robust claim, I know, but the evidence for it is overwhelming.