by Ramin Mazaheri
I can easily prove the leftist utility of bitcoins by relating one question I commonly hear: “Ramin, can you please take this medicine to my family the next time you visit Iran?”
The US produces more than half of all new medicines, but there is an embargo on Iran (and Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, etc.): With bitcoins, Iranians can circumvent these criminal, terroristic restrictions and get medicines which sick people are being cruelly denied.
So I see that bitcoins can save lives. Today.
Iran needs medicine, Cuba needs concrete, Venezuela needs toilet paper – bitcoins can be used for all these things…IF the left would immediately get involved with them.
One thing is absolutely, undeniably clear about bitcoins: The market is absolutely exploding for them in a way absolutely unseen in any field since the dot-com boom.
This process began in April, and it is fascinating. The mainstream media has only just picked up on this fact.
That means the average person is totally unaware of the technological and philosophical innovation/revolution which supports bitcoins: technically, it’s the Nakamoto consensus (a distributed consensus algorithm), but the marketing phrase is “block chain technology”.
And crucially for the future success of bitcoins: Leftists have no idea what heck is going on.
I think bitcoins could be the biggest financial weapon seen in ages to contest capitalism. Therefore, if the left cedes this current formational period of cryptocurrency to the right, or to individualistic libertarianism, it will be an enormous setback for society, socialism and anti-imperialism.
But you won’t read that in Western mainstream media – you only hear about making money with bitcoins. To be fair, that has been incredibly newsworthy as well.
Bitcoin has minted billionaires since May
I’m late to the bitcoin party – I imagine that everyone except the inventor feels that way – but it is mind-blowing to see the spectacular growth rate charts this year of not just Bitcoin, but all the cryptocurrencies. Click on those links and look at the tail end of those growth charts – you will be staggered.
If you have even heard about Bitcoin, you might have only heard the word “volatility”. However, take a medium-term view, and you’ll find that Bitcoin itself (capital B, and the industry leader) has gained more some $50 billion in market capitalization since March. That is a gain bigger than the size of Ford Motor Company…in less than 7 months. Besides Bitcoin, a hundred others are booming as well.
People like to rank bank size by balance sheet – its assets. But banks generally hold $10 in assets for every $1 in capital. This means that market capitalization – the total market value of a company’s outstanding shares of stock – is a more accurate assessment of its worth. Add up the market capitalization of all the bitcoins and you get $135 billion – that would make them the 9thth-largest bank in the world.
Again…this has happened in just seven months. Are you interested yet?
Yes, there is drastic short-term volatility – I had to postpone publishing this article to write this one, which explained China’s correct ban on IPOs (which can be “pump and dump” scams to con investors), and their freeze on exchanging bitcoin for yuan to make sure there wasn’t an exodus of much-needed capital (and which is not a “ban on bitcoins”).
But the long-term pattern is clear for all bitcoins: not much beyond novelty interest for five or so years, and then WHAM – straight up since May.
The reason for this is actually the rise of the #2 bitcoin, Ethereum, which offered a technological adaptation which has created tremendous ease, flexibility and more potential uses for bitcoins.
Why the heck haven’t you heard about this?
Here’s Bloomberg getting excited about it in July; here’s less forward-thinking Fox News Business getting on board in August, complete with a financial analyst boasting how her father was a mob enforcer (an excellent soil to grow a fervent capitalist/anti-socialist).
The mainstream media is just starting to get clued in about bitcoins, but not really. That’s because they are terrible when it comes to crypto-currencies.
They are terrible because they are attached to the current neoliberal/austerity dogma; they accept the Western worldview without thinking.
And one really needs to break with that dogma to see two things clearly: 1) the current Western financial system rests upon never-arrived trickle-down Reaganomics, nothing-backed Quantitative Easing, formerly-illegal stock buybacks, and near-recession growth in the “real economy” since the 2008 Great Recession began. 2) Mainstream media cannot see that those are the reasons why bitcoin was deemed necessary to create, why it is fervently supported, and why there has been a flood of scores of billions into the safe(r) haven of bitcoins.
But those in the non-mainstream media and those who aren’t in the 1% (and I am in both categories) have every reason to question the current order. Question that order, and you will despise it, despise it and you will invest and use bitcoins…even if it all crashes.
I’m aware that’s a bold statement, but they talk of bitcoin “evangelists” because it really is a faith-based movement: They are on jihad – war against (high finance) sin. LOL, it’s too bad that many of them think they’ll be Raptured Up when not just capitalism dies but all governments as well – I’m on board with only the former….
Block chain – it’s going to change a lot of things, and I mean A LOT
What is bitcoin?
Well, that is not really the key question. Most people know it is a “crypto-currency”, an e-currency, a cyber-currency, etc.
The key question is: what makes this product special, right? The answer is: bitcoin is when “block chain” technology was unveiled.
“Bitcoin” is just the main product name out there right now, but “block chain technology” is being described as a “foundational” technology. Like…the wheel, or the internet.
This link explains block chain technology from a purely scientific perspective. But if you don’t have 10 minutes or a fast internet connection…:
In a few sentences: It’s a decentralized ledger system. To give an example: you pay Visa, and Visa records the transaction on their ledger. Visa has the only copy – it is centralized. With block chain, you have a chain of thousands of computers all verifying your transaction and making that record public – there are thousands of permanent copies.
It is open, it is communal, it relies on consensus and it takes away the power of Visa by ending their monopoly over the information. Monopolies create opportunities for corruption, especially private monopolies, which have no government oversight to protect the People. Who does not already view banks and credit cards as havens of corruption?
People predict that block chain technology will revolutionize innumerable fields like, for example, music royalties, making it actually possible to earn a living at making music: 10 million computers will be monitoring all the world’s radio stations, and Lionel Ritchie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling” is played by 97.9 WLUP FM radio in Chicago. Then, 9.8 million computers will correctly register and confirm among each other that Lionel Ritchie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling” was just played, and thus Lionel is owed a royalty by 97.9 WLUP. The current system is: 97.9 FM WLUP tells the royalty companies they played “Dancing on the Ceiling”…and just trust them that they only played it once that day. Or it’s something not too far from that. The point is: no SINGLE computer is responsible for holding the information in block chain, and the permanent record is perpetually public…unless the entire world decides to ban the internet/stop using electricity.
This also has great potential for the way we vote: 10,000 computers will examine an electronic ballot and agree on its validity. If some hacker tries to force in 900,000 votes for Ramin Mazaheri, 98% of the computers will correctly realize that this is not a valid vote and signal that the system has been breached. While good governance certainly loses out in this particular scenario, at least democracy will be upheld.
But what appears clear is that there have been enough technological breakthroughs in computing to give rise to a revolutionary new process (block chain). It’s like Ford creating the assembly line…for publicly-monitored high-speed computing. Block chain is the technological/philosophical breakthrough, and applying that to the financial process and ending their current monopoly is what bitcoiners are investing in.
So bitcoins are not the big deal – block chain is. I would say that if you don’t see the big deal about block chain, then you don’t see why Bitcoin is different. So learn a bit more and think about it – you’ll see that by making everything permanently public, the public wins instead of the moneyed class.
With socialism, Bitcoin can be a semi-capitalist tool against capitalism
To me and many others, the political beauty of block chain is the decentralization of power. This means, in turn, the empowerment of the individual, which, I note, is the goal of communism/socialism. Empowerment of the individual, and creating a society where individuals can reach their full potential, is perhaps the fundamental tenet of Marxism. The mainstream media certainly has misled people for decades on that….
What I wish every wayward libertarian bitcoiner would realize is this: The philosophy of block chain is already being applied politically in modern socialist countries!
This excellent article on Cuba’s 2030 Plan for social and economic policy shows how the 2030 Plan is, “the most studied, discussed and re-discussed documents in the history of the Revolution,” per Raul Castro.
In 2007 Cuba’s government created “Great Debate” forums to discuss their common future and so people could propose solutions. That produced the Guidelines, which were made public for 6 months. Nine of 11 million people participated in the ensuing debates, and 68% of the guidelines were amended. The redraft went to their (far, far more representative) National Assembly.
This is block chain – open, communal, consensus, decentralized – in democratic governance!
China is very similar – they spend prolifically on surveys and public opinion polls because their democracy is driven by data. This excellent article details their communal, responsive, finely-tuned system for formulating and slowly implementing government policies in another example of “block chain governance”.
And the results for China are undeniable: Popular support for government policies, voter participation rates, trust & satisfaction rates with the government, the belief that the government is run for the people’s benefit instead of special interests: these rates are all staggeringly higher in China than in Western nations because reams of popular data support the legislation implemented by the government.
Do we not realize that bitcoiners also have been duped by TINA -There Is No Alternative – just like the average person?
Leftists must explain to early bitcoin adopters – who are guiding the development of bitcoin, who could be filthy rich, who are open to new ideas, who could help design systems to help money flow to embargoed countries – that the problem is not “all governments”, it is “Western, capitalist governments”.
“Public opinion is our guideline for action,” was said by Mao; Macron just ignored public opinion to ram through a 2nd rollback to the labor code to change France to a part-time, high-poverty, high-inequality, high instability, artificially-low unemployment rate, US-emulating economy. Again, bitcoiners, it is YOUR government, not ALL governments.
But, in a shock to no one who reads my articles, the West’s fake-leftists have no idea what the heck is going on about most anything, including bitcoins and the block chain revolution.
Leftists must embrace bitcoins immediately and without reservation
Right now, bitcoins are continuing the rather unfortunate trend in the US of libertarians being at the crest of the political wave. Their anti-authority/pro-liberty/anti-spying stance is, after all, quite compatible with countless aspects of socialism in the digital age. True leftists have repeatedly lamented that fake-leftists dismiss libertarianism, the Tea Party, Trumpers, etc., without even examining their ideologies and giving credit when it is justified.
But this is the reality: The potential of bitcoins to empower the individual AND the collective is greatly threatened by the libertarianism/voluntarism which currently dominates the bitcoin community of early adopters. Their view is typical of the Arizona rancher who forgets that he sits on stolen Apache land, refuses to pay for air conditioning in government offices or schools and cares for nothing but ensuring his own prosperity.
In short, American libertarianism is synonymous with “radical individualism”: that’s why during the recent two hurricanes CNN could interview an economist for a segment asking, “Is price gouging during emergencies a good thing?” and actually get away with it.
No, you must be banned from selling bottled water for $99 per case in hurricane-hit areas; yes, the government should requisition your stocks for trying, you anti-social bastard. But this idea of “my rights, my rights, MY RIGHTS”, this complete abdication of collective solidarity, is widespread in America, and CNN likely added a few more converts….
During the hurricanes the US media constantly repeated: “Now THIS is where the government should step in,” as in, “Finally, we have a good use for regulation”. This is a renunciation of the idea that an individual has social responsibility, and it is morally appalling.
Again, bitcoiners, the problem is YOUR capitalist government: Cuba’s hurricane preparation is the best in the region, with officials who were tasked with post-Hurricane Katrina saying “We could be learning from them.” You are 15 times more likely to be killed by a hurricane in the US than if you are in Cuba, and that’s despite the international blockade on things like building materials leading to innumerable, dangerous old buildings. Bitcoin can circumvent this and reward good governance; too many bitcoiners think “good governance” is an oxymoron.
Well, if bitcoin is going to improve the world – and the many bitcoin evangelists swear that it will (and I believe them) – they must leaven their quest for personal empowerment/MY rights with the moral demand for collective unity that is only found in socialism.
How can bitcoin ‘stop the betrayals of high finance’ if all they do is create a bitcoin cabal?
I have proven that block chain in governance already exists in socialism. Many people have noted the way science and society have reflected each other throughout human history, so this is more confirmation that socialists like Cuba and China are firmly in the vanguard.
Block chain exists in socialism, but not in the extremist-individual ideologies of capitalism or libertarianism. It exists in anarchism, yes, but bitcoin’s anti-statist “voluntarism” is so self-centered so as to not be worthy of “anarchism”.
Therefore, if the true Left doesn’t get immediately involved in the bitcoin discussion and swing some minds towards socialism…I don’t see how bitcoins will truly be different from oligarchical capitalism?
Yes, this may be “gold rush fever”, but many talk of a market capitalization of $1-$5 trillion dollars. That’s because this is not just a corporation – a whole new industry is being created, so it’s bigger than Amazon…plus Apple, plus Facebook, plus….
So, to the early adopters poised to be filthy rich because your tech, gamer and Dungeons and Dragons friends clued you in early on bitcoins and were fortunate enough to have money to invest: You may not voluntarily want to redistribute your bitcoin wealth…but society needs you to.
And if you don’t, we deplorables in the 99% will win and take that commodity/way to store value in the end, too, because redistribution is collective justice, if not individual justice.
Bitcoin users – will you be price gouging when the 21 million bitcoins are completely mined? If so, why don’t we just stick with Visa, Western Union and the Pentagon?
Are you engaging in immoral bitcoin stock speculation, and “gaming” the market to make a quick killing? Then how are you any morally superior to all the other lazy, immoral high finance punks who make a living at “the rich man’s gambling”?
And now to the painfully few leftists, especially socialists/Marxists, who take the time to cursorily examine Bitcoin and say: “Bah, this is just pure capitalism. Therefore, it must be bad.”
Well, simply revisit my story about Iran and medicines. A Third World Socialist looks at bitcoins and says: “Yes, Bitcoin is capitalist from the perspective of ivory tower ideology, but this has enormous potential as a weapon for anti-imperialism and against rapacious capitalism. And we need and want victory – not just change – now.”
Every dollar in bitcoin is a dollar not in the hands of high finance!
It is in the hands of the rapidly-expanding bitcoin collective, which has no “Central Bank President”. Every dollar worth of bitcoin sent to Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Palestine – and Poland, the Philippines, and South Korea – is a dollar which has circumvented the imperialist/fascist centers of the US, England, France, Germany and Japan. A bitcoin dollar avoids the big banks, the SWIFT system of American financial power, the gangster credit card companies and the central banks of the neo-imperial nations!
Governments are claiming that bitcoin can be used to “fund terrorism”. First of all, paper money is used to fund terrorism – should we ban that? Secondly, this is an obvious smear campaign designed to scare away the average person, and to provide justification for unjust crackdowns on bitcoins.
This is an enormous development on 3 enormous levels
Or maybe I’m wrong? Bitcoin is, of course, highly speculative. But the fact is that 150 top companies have already signed on with bitcoin #2, Ethereum, so they are going to be around a long time and will make money for investors.
But Bitcoin (capital B) is really the big deal that needs to be supported. It’s the rebel, the revolutionary, the one that governments fear they can’t control, and the one that was designed from the start to be a currency which cannot be manipulated by bankers or central bankers.
That’s why giving $100 to them is more of a leftist action then donating $100 to Amnesty or some other charity. Bitcoin already is a major tool against capitalism – if we can make it too big to stop, the results could be globe-changing.
But it needs to be supported with investments.
Heck, you might make a ton of money and become a leftist benefactor thanks to bitcoin!
And it’s useful: Can you exchange it for dollars? Of course, otherwise what’s the point?
Can you buy things in a store with it? Yes, increasingly – but some merchants would rather pay Visa’s 1-3% fees per transaction instead of around $0.25 per transaction (it fluctuates).
A lot of migrant workers don’t know that this exists, so they keep losing $30 to Western Union or $45 to their bank in order to chivalrously send their slave wages back home. We need to get them aware of this.
So, the much-ballyhooed showdown (well, I’m ballyhooing it) between “bitcoin socialism” and “bitcoin libertarianism” is actually going to be fought and won in the next few years. Socialists need to get involved now, and realize that bitcoins are a space where we can evangelize for leftist economics with enormous potential results.
People love to take bitcoin to the extreme (yes, will not be using ONLY bitcoins in our lifetime) and that obscures the very immediate, very real ways bitcoin can help RIGHT NOW, which I proved with Iran and medicines.
I currently understand bitcoins as an ethical advancement perhaps unseen since Islamic finance, so I’ll continue to be a journalist tracking a big story and continue to share the wealth and tell people about bitcoin/block chain.
And that’s the final key: unlike other capitalist ventures, where you keep your newfound knowledge a secret for exploitation, this whole bitcoin currency/method of savings/societal change only works if more people learn about it, use it, and faithfully hold their stocks long-term in order to make it “too big to fail”.
Fiat/paper money is based on faith – in government. Bitcoin is based on faith – in each other.
That is socialism.
Wake up! Bitcoins are radical, indeed, and we’ve barely begun.
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television. He can be reached on Facebook.
Leftism is two things, anti-white racism and gay-pride-anal-sex-pedophilia.
Leftism 2017
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/IuvAGJV5E-w/maxresdefault.jpg
http://christsassembly.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Upset-child.png
What is considered as “Left” nowadays is something completely degenerate and has nothing to do with real or traditional socialist / communist ideas. Nothing in common with soviet/eastern european communism or early marxism too.
After the dissolution of USSR, the worldwide left movement either disappeared or morph into a new degenerate edition that not only is pro-capitalist (as they have renounced socialist policies and business nationalisation) but also have an unhealthy obsession with the promotion of homosexuality,
pseudo-environmentalism, mass migration, and human “rights”. The pseudo-leftists also are against national and popular sovereignty as they support transnational globalist institutions and organisations (such as the EU).
The so called “leftists” are a valuable tool of the capitalist-globalist elites.
” The pseudo-leftists also are against national and popular sovereignty as they support transnational globalist institutions and organisations (such as the EU).”
Well, at one level they are right, nationalism was, in part, a cause for the demise of the USSR:
THE DEMISE OF THE USSR IN THE FACE OF NATIONALISM
“The Soviet Union throughout its history suffered from deeply entrenched problems from this natural transfer of the “nationalist problem” from Imperial Russia. In particular, the fateful decision to set up a federal structure along ethno-territorial lines and to maintain strong linguistics and cultural distinction among many of the constituent units created an inherent weakness in the state” (Tuminez 83).
Indeed, the breakup of the Soviet Union did so precisely along the ethnic lines carved amongst its former republics. The responsibility lies with nationalism – which, under intense growth fueled by the political and ideological liberalization of Gorbachev, grew uncontrollable.”
Some psycho billionaires (and others wannabe’s) may think of a Global Communist, non national, entity as boring but it could help alleviate the all pervasive and debilitating class war.
@ Anonymous
What makes you so sure it was nationalism the culprit for the dissolution of the SU? In the referendum of 1991, ALL participating republics registered votes from 73% (Russian Federation) the lowest, to 98% (Turkmenistan) the highest, in favour of retaining the USSR.
It was not nationalism, it was a coup d’état by the ruling cliques.
@ Anonymous
Correction on the USSR referendum:
The Ukraine had the lowest vote to retain the USSR, still a healthy 71.5%.
1) As for USSR, it collapsed as it abandoned socialism.
The raison d’être of USSR was socialism, without it it would have dissolved as it did.
Gorbachev started the process of privatisation and dissolved the Party’s central role causing a chain reaction. In the same time, he abandoned eastern european communist governments causing their collapse and surrender to the West.
Then the various elites in the Soviet states started to grab the state owned property and became oligarchs and various regional communist secretaries and party bosses became dictators (as in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Belarus etc)
2) EU is a construction of the capitalists industrialists to create a large common market where corporations, products and people will move “freely”.
Guess who benefits…..
The large corporations conquer new markets and exploit the relatively cheaper workforce of the less developed countries. With no tariffs, countries are flooded with products from the same multinationals who have the power to dominate. As local factories and jobs disappear in the weaker countries, people are becoming unemployed and migrating to the stronger North and compete with the local workforce suppressing the wages. In addition to this, a large part of Northern Industries have relocated to the Third World.
The various pseudo-leftists, euro”communists”, social-democrats etc support EU because it supposedly has created “peace” in Europe. But this is absurd.
EU is guilty (together with US) for the destruction of Yugoslavia and the bombing of Serbia, the conflict in Ukraine and Georgia, and the impoverishment of not only the European South (Greece, Portugal etc) but of millions of European people in all the countries (such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland etc).
The idea of internationalism and showing solidarity to other peoples of the world is a good cause. Despite of ethnic/cultural/linguistic differences, we are all people and have similar problems.
But supporting EU which is a monstrous globalist construction that benefits only the rich and impoverishes the majority is absurd.
“The idea of internationalism and showing solidarity to other peoples of the world is a good cause. Despite of ethnic/cultural/linguistic differences, we are all people and have similar problems.”
Competition between Communist nations would be … Capitalism.
The cultural differences you refer to, insofar as that encompasses religion, is exactly what Stalin realised as odious and the reason for his religious purges.
Unfortunately inculcation from birth to magical incantation of all forms is a very powerful brew to set one man against another and a reason for his failure – many do hanker after the ultimate payoff after all..
I think most people agree that the “nationalism question” was not the primary cause of the fall of the USSR, but that it was a hugely important issue which needed constant attention.
“Socialism” is not just economic, it is cultural as well – you cannot have socialism without constant efforts to erase the ancient social divisions caused by tribal identities. In this vital aspect of socialism, Iran is 100 times more socialist than European nations.
The nationalism question was repeatedly ignored by “European liberal democrat” Gorbachev, unlike Stalin and other Soviet leaders (who were actually communist).
The first nationalist uprising was in 1987, when Gorby replaced the head of the Kazakh communist party with an ethnic Russian. Ideologically, there is nothing wrong with that – it is socialist progress – but it’s not progress if it fails, LOL! Gorby’s choice had never even lived in Kazakhstan, so clearly it was the wrong move at the wrong time. (Sidebar: what’s also interesting about Gorby is that he only lived in Western nations – he never lived in another communist nation.)
Over the next couple years similar unrest was seen in Armenia, Crimea and then the least-supportive region of the USSR – the Baltics.
http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1985-2/gorbachev-and-nationalism/
When the “fatal error” was made in December 1987 to immediately cut half of all government purchases of goods (another drastic & terrible move by Gorby), then you had economic chaos, then you shortages, then you had inflation…and then you had people saying “to hell with Moscow, we can run our own affairs better”, and thus the Nationalism Question became very difficult to deal with.
But, as was already pointed out, despite all the chaos created by Gorby’s capitalist/Western reforms, there was still massive popular support for the USSR and for communism over capitalism in 1991…but not in the newly-uncensored media who were in the hands of corrupt Black Marketers.
So…we see that there were a lot of key issues at play – nationalism, media, introducing capitalism, incompetent leadership – and it’s this interplay that created the tragic implosion of the USSR.
What’s certain is that – just like in the US or France today – the nationalism question (ethnic divisions) can create a divisive society which feels on the brink of a civil war, and which provides a distraction/diversion/safety valve away from the creation of a modern socialist society which benefits the 99%.
Terrific comment Ramin.
” the nationalism question (ethnic divisions) can create a divisive society which feels on the brink of a civil war, and which provides a distraction/diversion/safety valve away from the creation of a modern socialist society which benefits the 99%.”
Yes, divide et impera. The old Romans knew it well.
in other words a bunch of useful idiots – like all my gay friends in the US. They still worship their queen Hitlery
if you have nothing intelligent to say, then remain silent
read
think
maybe you will learn something
The Saker
Leftism is anal sex pedophilia?
I would hope this 1st comment gets erased/banned.
Erase this comment too.
Pure nonsense not worthy of The Saker.
I agree and I apologize
The Saker
Conflating leftism and homosexuality is absurd. It will be a good day when people realise that.
You can start today: Marine Le Pen’s right-hand man is a homosexual, and he he just broke with her to start his own party, the Patriots.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/world/europe/france-florian-philippot-national-front.html
So, clearly, there are plenty of homosexuals in the right. I would assume the breakdown is exactly even, but this is a boring subject started by a troll, obviously.
Banksters officially declare war on Bitcoin!
http://bit.ly/2wuyUVR
So, the human race could not devise an ethical monetary system until the computer combined with networking technology was invented and the Distributed Consensus Algorithm appeared.
So, Bitcoin is about to bring real socialism into the world, create political peace and harmony and all wars will cease.
Pilot – Magic (1975 – HD)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzlK0OGpIRs
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Everyone beware bitcoin. Beware what and who it is, and what it leads to. You are a dupe if you like the idea.
So we are told Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto, who published the invention on 31 October 2008 to a cryptography mailing list in a research paper called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”.
Well, not so. Read this 1996 complete description, and look at who they worked for. the NSA.
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm
All online activity, the internals of your computer, your TV and your digital radio, even in your new car, your sat nav. are all entirely transparent, penetrate-able and recorded. Facebook’s biggest income is from data provision to western governments (Assange in London ‘If you own an iphone, you are f****d).
Bitcoin is not vaguely anonymous, except for this short period while governments start the process of replacing ‘hard’ fiat with digi fiat. Governments are deliberately beating a froth about it. When that transfer process is complete, you will be taxed at source from your bank account, you will not be able to avoid a bank bail in, the banks will own everything you have and governments can completely control individuals and populations by simply turning if your ability to buy and sell.
Bitcoin is NOT a currency. It is a trap. The banks are years ahead of you. Wake up, damn it.
Not surprising, MIT has always been closely tied to what people like to refer to as the “Deep State”. Interesting to see the appearance of the Wall Street and international law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson in this document. They handle private equity, mergers and acquisitions and other big money financial services for all the big investment banks: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, etc.
Personally, I believe that the idea that technology will provide ultimate freedom from the bankers is something of a dead end. The big money players can already hire the best technologists in the world.
The best way to beat the bankers, is also the simplest. Don’t take their money. Pay off debt and don’t take on more. Reject the high consumption consumer lifestyle and live within your means. Develop alternative localized market systems to replace the globalized market.
viva la revolution Ramin, you convinced me!
How would you pay for medicine in Puerto Rico, with all the power out?
This is the problem with BTC. It only works as a currency so long as ALL other infrastructure is operational. There are multiple scenarios where this does not happen.
It’s principle function now is as a method of circumventing restrictions, including taxes and sanctions at this time of monetary transition and warfare.
Otherwise, BTC is much more likely to become useless or worthless compared with other currencies, in the same way as an e-book ‘kindle’ is not as physically or temporally robust a paper book.
PG, all the power out is a risk ranging from temporary inconvenience to a theoretical permanence that would cause a fairly drastic rise in death rates in a matter of a few short years, if not months.
Anyone who has lived in a third world country is accustomed to regular unpredictable electrical blackouts. People cope. Stoicism has usefulness in that regard.
But acceptance of no more electricity again is acceptance of plunging local or more widespread depopulation….a dark age. Your right: Bitcoin will be useless in a dark age. So will a lot of other things. Like your car.
The only way I’d go “all-in” on cryptos would be if I were a cyber whiz and 40+ years younger and personally involved in an alt coin development. Then, if I came out way ahead, I’d be insane not to diversify. Buy a home for cash, etc…..maybe a business or farm as well.
Meanwhile I’d avoid the most commonplace error I note in the whole debate: Absolutism. 100% ALL -IN for it……. OR …at the other extreme….100% rigid skepticism and refusal to admit certain already proven advantages that are already occurring and being practiced DAILY by millions of people.
In my view, it’s a hot potato that’s up for grabs, and like a lot of things, which way it goes (either more control and slavery or more freedom) depends very much on what happens next with the consciousness and either good or ill intent of hundreds of millions of people, or billions, ultimately.
Investment-wise the result next decade or two could either see $1 million a bitcoin or ZERO.
It is said there are only 35 million millionaires in the world. This seems low, to me. But nevertheless, that is more than the number of Bitcoins allowed to exist, it is said, by the design of it. Clearly there are not enough to go around, and if this thing sticks (like a few of the dotcoms that survived and grew) through ever growing use some people will come out way, way ahead and others will kick themselves if they struggle financially the rest of their lives, and not worry about it if they are OK.
It wasn’t “them”…and they survived just fine without it, thank you. Fine. They sat it out. So what???
Ether or some other crypto not yet invented could knock Bitcoin out of the top spot. The majority are frauds like dot.coms that didn’t do anything except excite the imagination and clean people out.
But Ramin isn’t even talking about this aspect. He’s talking about the social implications, the political implications, the strategic implications.
I agree with mundanomaniac. We are fundamentally here to grow rich in spirit and understanding, more so than in material wealth….or crypto-wealth that isn’t even material! But presently it can be exchanged for material!
I think we should be reasonably but not rigidly skeptical, at least until we understand better ALL the implications and players and good and evil at work….and play our minor or major part….or abstain.
And 1-5% percent net liquid investable into comprehending and riding a new wave is neither foolhardy nor guaranteed of anything.
Avoid aboslutism, IMHO.
Limber up your mind. Cautiously.
Don’t do a thing if none of this resonates and you have no interest in understanding anything about it, either its promise or its pitfalls. If you do stick 1-5% in be prepared to LOSE IT ALL or come out further ahead than you ever expected……..during certain windows in time…..and either pat yourself on the back for being a genius (in which case your swollen ego may become your down fall) or just feel great at the heights and then be humbled if you hung on all the way down.
Even with the power out,
If you still have a battery loaded, you can start up your bitcoin program on a mobile phone or a Raspberry Pi ($50,-), and create a new bitcoinwalletnumber.
In this wallet, you put exactly the amount of money that the supplier of medicines abroad needs, and then you write your public key and secret key on a piece of paper, and send it by snail mail.
Dream on…, electricity down means web down and very soon no more snail mail either.
How on earth are you going to put the electricity down, everywhere?
If that happens, life on earth is gone.
Bro93 makes very good points about “absolutism” when it comes to bitcoins.
I brought up just that issue in a previous article I wrote:
Europe’s unsolved debt crisis will legitimize bitcoins in October
http://www.greanvillepost.com/2017/09/17/europes-unsolved-debt-crisis-will-legitimize-bitcoins-in-october/
Rik and others make a good point that a sustained, global power outage does indeed render bitcoins useless…but this purely theoretical as that can never happen.
I don’t think it’s too late to invest in bitcoins, as I see it as being socially beneficial. It’s like donating 100 euros to a charity….And, as Bro 93 said, if you are lucky enough to have enough money to be investing in anything in a big way, and you choose to invest TOTALLY in bitcoins…LOL, that’s quite a risk – can’t put all eggs in one basket, but bitcoin is so cool that you should by an egg.
“Rik and others make a good point that a sustained, global power outage does indeed render bitcoins useless…but this purely theoretical as that can never happen.”
LOL, ROFL!!! Can never happen?
Ramin please have a look at these links and understand why to never say ‘never’;
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/X-class-flares.html
https://watchers.news/2017/09/06/x-class-solar-flare-september-6-2017-cme-produced-strongest-flare-of-solar-cycle-24/
http://www.history.com/news/a-perfect-solar-superstorm-the-1859-carrington-eventDd
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
Enjoy!
Puerto Rico power outage for six months. Will that do you?
A medium of exchange must be valuable everywhere, at all times, and in all situations. When it isn’t able to work it is valueless.
Currencies have ALWAYS been simple, physically stable and controlled by the ‘king’, or politically stable.
BTC is intrinsically extremely complex, physically unstable and not controlled by anybody.
The ‘kings’ will kill it at some point, or take it if it serves a purpose. Or turn it off. If you can’t see this coming, you must also believe that the future will be free of ‘kings’.
Part of life only. Mainly the spoiled, too much energy consuming meat eaters of our modern world who think that milk is made in a factory and horse steak is the meat that horses like to eat (truly, I kid you not!).
You may well have heard about how much loads are carried by the electric network of Europe? A former EDF director explained some time ago that in Europe electric energy is constantly traded between member states and that because of this countries like France quite often transport so much energy over their network that it’s near max design loads.
According to him this creates the risk that when one of the parallel lines goes offline the remaining lines may get so much overloaded that they may burn up immediately. This will cause a domino effect that may easily take out half of western Europe’s network. Repairs may take years because there is not enough material available for repairs of that scale.
Besides this kind of incidents or accidents there’s always a slight chance of sabotage/terrorism leading to the same scenario, and then there’s of course NEMPs, or the sun surprising us with a nice big X-class CME (Coronal Mass Ejection). The latter two will not only take out all of the networks, but also all unprotected electronics. In other words, your Raspberry Pi will be full of fried components, especially all LSI and semi-conductors…
Cheers!
My Raspy is so unbelievably cheap, that I have 2 spare ones lying around.
I live on a ship, so I take electricity from the batteries, which won’t be fried by a solar flare.
Neither will the solar panels, and if none of my two generators are running during the solar-flare, their electronics wont be fried neither.
They won’t be running both on the same moment anyway.
My transformer to 220 Volt is an expensive one, so it is protected, I hope.
(If not, I still have a little one in un-use at the moment.)
So is the modem for the Astra2connect. http://www.onastra.com/16664016/en
I suppose that they have protected their satellite from solar-flares, but I am not sure.
People like me, off the grid, you’ll find anywhere on the world, for various reasons.
Just have a look in any port of Puerto Rico.
(maybe they’ve fled, but they will come back)
People who live on boats are I suppose indeed part of the lucky few, but they are definitely not part of the the ‘spoiled, too much energy consuming meat eaters of our modern world who think that milk is made in a factory and horse steak is the meat that horses like to eat’.
Nor are they by definition very rich.
I mean, you spent all your money on a house.
Anyway, If such a scenario happens Visa will also be of no use.
So, solar-flares as a anti Bitcoin argument is a nonsense argument.
I have to add on to my previous comment.
If such a scenario happens, with a solar-flare, and all the world is offline, and all the networks are gone, than the first few that manage to come back, making new networks with their Raspberry pi’s and the old cables, which are still there, will find out that Visa and others will be gone for a long time, probably forever, but Bitcoin is still there.
You only need two nodes coming back online.
@ rik
A currency has to be ubiquitously available and ubiquitously accepted.
If none of the guys with pi’s and nodes have eggs for sale, what good is your currency if you need to buy eggs? For you to survive, or for an economy to function in any meaningful sense, suppliers of all sorts of daily necessities have to hold or accept the currency you are offering.
Bitcoin is principally an illegal medium used to avoid the restrictions of law, in one form or another. It does not operate as a currency.
I’m telling you now, it will be one of the levers used to bring down the freedom of the internet. “The internet needs to be channelled through official control, because bitcoin has reduced tax revenues so that we can’t pay for your health service, roads etc”.
“If such a scenario happens, with a solar-flare, and all the world is offline, and all the networks are gone, than the first few that manage to come back, making new networks with their Raspberry pi’s and the old cables, which are still there”
Nope, first back on the air will be our good old radio hams. And I will be communicating with them, with my three 100 W Trio Kenwood rigs that are secured in a grounded faraday cage with all the necessary accessories… ;-) These will do digital work through a modem, who knows we could hook up your R Pi’s if they’re not all grilled. All electronics, connected or not, that is not specifically EMP protected will be dead. Cars with critical electronics will most be dead as well. No kidding.
What I would do to have protection against an economic collapse, or whatever nasty event, is buy real, old fashion, money. Maple Leafs, silver Eagles or Wiener Philharmonic will do fine. They can also be sent per snail mail, they work without needing or wasting energy (once past coining and transport), they’re proven value (silver and gold have kept stable value for thousands of years), it’s definitely too early to say the same about crypto-currency, and they’re of such high purity that you can use them to make colloidal silver.
So when the SHTF let’s see what will work best, bitcoins or silver Maple Leafs. My money is on the latter. And ehh, I’ll let you do the wiring to the local bakery shop and some others so you can pay them with BCs. Oops, I hope their Raspberries would still function as well.
@ jac Cuse
Yup. Most people here don’t seem to remember what 56k modems were like, and what we could run on them, or that all the architecture of mining and trading bitcoins runs fluidly on relatively massive internet speeds. Bitcoin is made possible by a pretty powerful legion of internet infrastructure. Batteries and raspberry pi, and you’ll be dead of starvation before you open your digi-wallet.
After a disaster, no one is rich. All you have is your health, your wits and your family. And, in the season, raspberry pie.
You’re talking here about what is best described as the end of civilisation.
What good is it to make your point about the uselessness of Bitcoin technology, because we cannot use it after civilisation has ended?
We cannot use Visa, nor dollars in such a case either.
Anyway, if such a scenario does happen, it will be the decentralised systems, who will be able to recover first, for obvious reasons.
BTW Bitcoin is NOT an illegal medium used to avoid the restrictions of law.
If that were the case we would better outlaw the $100 bill.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/debunked-bitcoin-facilitates-crime
“Anyway, if such a scenario does happen, it will be the decentralised systems, who will be able to recover first, for obvious reasons.”
No, it will be the local systems that will be functional first. Locals helping each other, bartering or trading with locally introduced tokens, etc. This is not new or fantasy but happened in recent years in modern countries like Argentina.
Bitcoins will be useless for many reasons. Here I’ll paste some of the comment made by Proper Gander, maybe you’ll understand when reading twice:
“A currency has to be ubiquitously available and ubiquitously accepted.
If none of the guys with pi’s and nodes have eggs for sale, what good is your currency if you need to buy eggs? For you to survive, or for an economy to function in any meaningful sense, suppliers of all sorts of daily necessities have to hold or accept the currency you are offering.”
Well yes, I agree.
In such a scenario it will be local systems that functions first.
Which is in fact decentralised systems that functions first.
But as soon as you have more then 10 people in such a local system, a method for trading goods and services might come in handy.
Dollar is useless or not available, so we need locally introduced tokens indeed, like in Argentina.
So you need a mayor, or someone important, that everybody trusts.
And an accounting system, with people taking care of that.
In that case It would come in handy, if you can replace these people with a piece of software, that does the same job, and everybody trust, because you cannot fraud it.
So I have some skills, I can catch seals, with my boat, and sell the meat and fur, but I am hungry now, and I want to buy some eggs, and I have no money.
Someone else on the shore, has got chickens, but no money as well, and does not like seals.
However, there is someone, who makes beer, and he likes seals, but I do not like the beer, but the chicken-farmer likes beer.
So I can make my personalised seal tokens, on the website https://www.theworldexchange.net/, (this website works offline) promising futures of seal, print them on a piece of paper, and sell them to the bartender for some egg tokens, with which I buy some eggs.
et voila. No need for a mayor, nor bookkeepers.
Only I have to keep my raspberries in some cage of Faraday. :-)
Yes Sir, you got it! :-)
Beste Rik, Groeten van another cloggie living in SW France,
JC
@ Ramin
It was with a liberal amount of perplexity that I read the title. Is Ramin batting for a Ponzi capitalist scheme? Any self-respecting old-fashion leftist wouldn’t have a bar of it – what is he up to?
Yes, circumventing banks and capitalist governments is a sound socialist proposition, but what about financing the promoters of a fast get rich scam? You know, Hitler used the “socialist” word but his rule was everything but and you know very well what the current crop of “socialists” are like. Are the promoters using similar tactics to entice people into the bitcoin crusade to make it a huge Ponzi swindle?
I would wholeheartedly join but only if there were guarantees similar to bank deposits backed by government guarantee up to a certain amount.
I beleve Russia is comming with a crypto Ruble next year, backed by Rubles :-)
Can you point me to a reliable source to join Bitcoin? now you have explained so well how it works.
First, you’ll need a wallet to hold your Bitcoins. There are plenty of apps for that. Some live on your smartphone (check your friendly app store), which seems more secure than a web site.
Then, you need to buy some Bitcoins — generally with fiat. There are a bunch of different ways to do this. I used CoinMama — https://www.coinmama.com — which will accept a credit card. Using other sites (there are a number of options), you can use your bank account to buy Bitcoin.
With those two steps, you can have your own little stash of Bitcoin.
Thank you for your reply Acacia, that gets me started.
For anyone who believes in modern pharmaceutical medicine and/or believes that Bitcoin is out of the hand of the banksters I do have some good news: I have some bridges for sale and a tall tower of real quality scrap metal in Paris. Cheap! ;-)
Seriously, Iran is blessed with that kind of embargo, nobody should want any of that proven not helping at all crap that modern medicine is. Big Pharma does nothing else than succesfully selling us synthesized molecules that try to mimic a natural substance that they know works and so they can patent it. The problem is that in most cases the synthesized molecule is a slow killer.
Just one simple example of how easy realhealthcare could be. Almost everybody with a modern diet lacks magnesium. Supplementing is easy with the very cheap salt magnesium chloride, whether orally taken or otherwise. But Big Pharma won’t tell you the extraordinary and huge importance of magnesium. They only make it available in tiny packages of 20 grams (2/3 of an ounce) for a 7 day cure at the cost of about 3 Euro. For a little more than twice that sum I buy 25 kg (55lbs) food grade magnesium chloride. Who do they think they are kidding? The supplement business jumped on the bandwagon selling equally expensive pots of pills often containing magnesium that is not as bio-available or good as plain magnesium chloride. Madness!
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/10/22/modern-medical-scandal.aspx
Then Bitcoin. You really think that BC is something else than the latest bankster ponzi scheme? The banksters litterally wage war on and kill everybody who tries to work around them, whether it are countries like Libya with it Gold Dinar plans, JFK with his backed US bank notes, Saddam and the Petro-Euro, or anyone who tries to emit or print his own currency. Why would crypto-currency be different? Because it’s theirs! At first they seemed against these currencies, but recently several central banks decided it’s OK. LOL!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F89zKhUu1s&t=1m16s
Enjoy!
Although I have some fractiions, plus ETH, I wouldn’t bet my shirt on it in the long run. Yes, it’s useful sometimes, but it always has the same problem:
Any attempt to emulate gold & silver with cryptos ( creating an artificial scarcity/limitation, growing energetic cost to mine the remaining ones,etc..) will fail in the long run because even if you have a limited amount of bitcoins, you can also create an infinite number of new, competing crypto currencies. But you can’t create an infinite number of new precious metals to compete with gold.
So some cryptos will resist time and be useful for some applications (although very volatile), but none will ever be considered as real “money”, only a commodity
Crypto currencies backed by precious metals solves the problem. It is blockchain that is important.
A crypto backed with and pegged to gold – so there is no speculation – has been started by Muslims.
Thats not surprising, as Islamic finance rules are actually sane and ethical, LOL. As are their socioeconomic policies…when they aren’t puppets of the West. This
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogeraitken/2017/05/02/dubai-trading-platform-onegram-in-500m-gold-backed-crypto-venture-sharia-compliant/#4b5829bcbf56
It’s interesting to note the tight relationship between bitcoins and gold – both have risen together. Many say that gold’s recent increase is partially due to bitcoin. Well, the main thing is that the West’s “real economy” is so weak, even if the high-finance “fake economy” is so bullish…and that’s why people are putting money into things they think are stable, like gold and Bitcoin. I talk more about that in a previous article – I reposted that link just a few comments above this one, if somebody is interested.
Block chain is indeed the big deal – bitcoin is just block chain applied to finance.
The BRICS nations are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
These five nations are peace promoting nations standing together, and they would surely help if requested to do so.
The article states Iran needs medicine, Cuba needs concrete, Venezuela needs toilet paper.
Questions need to be asked why Iran has not manufactured its own medicines?
Has Iran reached out to China and Russia for assistance?
China and Russia are advanced technological and industrial manufacturing giants and have good rapport with Iran. Russia has excellent relations with Venezuela.
Now, how is it that only the USA is able to manufacture these medicines?
As the world has weapons smugglers, I ask where are the medicine smugglers, if and when they are needed?
Iran claims to have been without cancer treatment medicine for decades, so what is going on!
I agree. Bitcoin can be a sort of payment, something that helps us transfere values. But the real value is in the goods and services that is produced. Production is wealth. The problem with the present system is that this wealth that is produced ends up in with the rich. Maybe bitcoin can help distribute better, but do not forget bitcoin does not help produce values. The night I went out and picked 10kg of raspberries and made jam, I created more wealth than those who bought bitcoins cheap and are now selling them with profit. They got the wealth from other peoples labour, but this wealth was not made by the bitcoin speculator.
Totally true, and tastes much better than Raspberry Pi! :-)
Iran does manufacture their own medicines. Historically, Iran’s educational system has focused extensively on producing engineers and doctors. That’s changed, thankfully, but there is no lack of medical know-how.
However, they cannot compete with the US: the US is the biggest beneficiary of “brain drain” from other countries, they have the biggest and richest pharma companies, they have no blockade against them.
The international blockade against Iran has indeed forced us to create the “Resistance Economy”, which is so great – without it, you are just another peon in the global capitalist system.
But 1/2 of all new medicines – the latest and greatest – are produced in the US. That’s just the reality of their dominance in this field. That fact, and the fact that the US-led blockade denies Iran medicine in order to kill innocent people and turn people against the 1979 Revolution – this cannot be held against Iran.
Because what’s the only thing that could get the blockade lifted? Renouncing the 1979 revolution; returning to client state status; supporting Zionism. A resounding ‘no’ to all that is repeatedly declared the Iranian People.
Bitcoin is a good tool to get more medicine smuggled. The bitcoin Monero – which is guaranteed anonymity – seems like the best coin out there to make sure people are not sanctioned for helping to “illegally send” medicines to Iran, for example. I don’t think bitcoins should be anonymous – you must be taxed & regulated by society – but I’m for a coin like Monero if it means upending illegal, terroristic sanctions on counties like Iran. People will say that Monero is only of drug lords…well, if you mean heroin, that’s bad, if you mean vaccines, that’s good.
Who on the left is talking about using Monero for cancer drugs to Iran? Not many people, but we will, Inshallah. Bitcoin cannot be “anti-government”, but it is definitely a huge tool to fight the oppression of certain governments.
@ Ramin
Ramin, if you seriously want to help people with cancer why not guide the leaders of Iran to the wealth of alternative treatments?
Google for alternative cancer treatment, people like Gerson, Budwig, Hoxley, just to name some old names. A new one, former traditional oncologist, Dr Tulio Simoncini. Succesfully treats his patients with some of the most powerful anti cancer substances that cost almost zilch and are available in Iran as well: Sodium bicarbonate and iodine tincture. Look it up, it’s not a joke! No need for US junk medicine paid for by Bitcoins.
BTW, please look up the 5 year survival rates of traditional cancer treatments and you will be shocked by how low the true, non corrected (Big Pharma likes to ‘correct’ all kinds of results including that of their studies) numbers are.
Good luck!
Dr Simoncini, oh please, give me a break.
In memoriam Marjolein Bouwman:
https://cryptocheilus.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/marjolein-bouwman-02-01-1983-02-11-2008/#more-738
Declared totally cured after treatment by dr. Simoncini.
Died three months later, her body full of cancer.
She is not the only one.
Cancer is NOT a fungus, simple as that.
I do believe alternative treatments might sometimes be helpful, but unfortunately, because there is no checks and balances nor regulation in this alternative scene, 90 percent of these doctors are totally scam, and of the remaining 10 percent you just do not know it yet.
If I had a terminal disease right now, from which the regular doctors could not cure me, how must I crawl trough these millions of websites, from whom I know that the majority are scam?
The alternative people, they sing dr Simoncini into heaven, even after he’s been exposed nearly ten years ago. Somehow this kind of information never reaches them.
How am I going to trust the rest of what they tell me?
It’s most despicable earning (a lot of) money of the despair of dying people.
(But you could say, they won’t need it anymore, anyway.)
Nobody said that cancer is a fungus, but a reaction of our own body trying to protect us from fungus. Study what Raymond Royal Rife found in the 20’s and we can easily conclude that Simoncini is looking in the right direction. You naming me a couple of unsuccesful healings by alternative treatments, well, though, but no treatment will always be succesful. But I can give you the numbers of success or more so lack thereof of traditional medicine, as well as the WORST of true horror stories. Now a personal experience, my mother had several melanomes and bad skin leasions caused by traditional medication. We took it in our own hands and stopped all medication and replaced by quality supplements and high dose vitamin c. Then topical application with iodine tincture on the melanomes and leasions. Slowly but gradually they change colour and then disappear. Some bad skin leasions just dropped off leaving practically healthy skin. She’s nearing 90 years old and blood values have become 100% OK and blood pressure came down to 110/70. Our family doc can’t believe it, but don’t you think that he’ll follow the example. Impossible, it’s not protocol. What happened to her brother in the no 1 accademic medical centre in the Netherlands (AMC Amsterdam). I won’t even try to explain because you wouldn’t believe me. Two years of total failures and screw ups on a basically healthy man almost killing him. This by the top in cardiology. So how is he going to trust the rest of what they tell him? He experienced personally how they made one mistake after the other while telling him that the treatment had been OK.
Ramin Mazaheri:
You just mentioned something that reminded me of the history of the US war on drugs. Whilst it seems that this so called war on drugs is a scam (three letter agencies involved in the drug trade to finance illegal activities and getting rid of undesired people). Once upon a time opiods (if I’m not mistaken Heroin as well) had been used in medicine. Now similar prescription drugs are produced and sold for lots of money, which ends up in the hands of big pharma. The effect of those prescription drugs oxycontin / oxycodone seem to be similar to the effect of Heroin, because that’s the stuff people end up with after oxycontin / oxycodone.
If I remember correctly then I had read in an article that Cuba has successfully invented some treatment for cancer (or at least some forms of cancer).
Pushing Bitcoin is pushing the Deep State mid-term plan to do away with physical money. Bitcoin itself was an invention from the same place that gave us Google- and was based on a perfected vision of an ‘ideal’ gold-based like currency. It is world class mathematical theory of one essential aspect of economics.
But why Bitcoin? Because the Deep State wants to complete your ***slave*** status by having explicit control of your financial transactions- and physical money prevents this. Don’t give me utter nonsense about cryptocurencies being ‘anonymous’. This is simply the current ***sugar*** to ensure initial rapid adoption of cryptocurrencies. Anonymous usuage is not a fundamental part of cryptocurrency trading- when the time is right the Deep State will take official control of Bitcoin authentication.
However at this time, GCHQ and the NSA do monitor all Bitcoin transactions. For the hard of thinking, let me point out for the umpteenth time that neither of these agencies has any interest in ‘ordinary’ ‘law enforcement’. They couldn’t care less about dark web drug selling for instance, except to add further intelligence to their databases. ***We*** are the targets of our intelligence agencies, not ‘crooks’.
Of course today, many cryptocurrencies represent excellent short term (and maybe mid-term) investments. Just like the early days of the internet, when net tech shares were sold for nothing, and later became worth a fortune, the major cryptocurrencies have seen astonishing rise in value across the last couple of years- and the mathematical theory behind the major ones ensures a rise in value well above inflation for some time to come.
But a warning. While Bitcoin et al represent the purest of evil- the death of our last freedom- even the cynical use of them for profit has some dangers as world Empire powers thrash against one another to comprehend and rationalise the future of no physical money. China and Russia would rather not end up backing another ‘dollar’ thank you very much, tho both adore the ‘police state’, ‘orwellian’ purpose of cryptocurrencies. So, for instance, if China says “no” to Bitcoin, it is only cos the Chinese government would like a cryptocurrency of their own devising.
PS again anyone pushing Bitcoin as a polical act ‘against’ the Deep State reveals their actual agenda. The Deep State has agents literally everywhere- but Game Theory makes spotting them easy since to make a ‘powerful’ move they have to reveal too much about themsleves. If they ‘hide’ by never making such a move they may as well not exist. Bitcoin is the exact ***opposite*** to real socialism- for real socialism allows a collective to make things better for the people at a grass roots level. Bitcoin et al, by ending real physical money, ends any future possibility for this.
The ‘socialism’ Bitcoin represents is Blairite Fabian ‘socialism’ where the largesse of the State determines the life experience of the vulnerable. This is the vision of the future the BBC pushes every day- and apparently Press TV too.
Hear, hear! Thanks Twilight.
Twilight, we may not cuss on the blog otherwise I would say bull/horse puckey. :-)
I’m an avid crypto girl and it feels as if you’re quite accusatory to folks like me, which you say game theory has outed as deep state agents.
“PS again anyone pushing Bitcoin as a polical act ‘against’ the Deep State reveals their actual agenda. The Deep State has agents literally everywhere- but Game Theory makes spotting them easy since to make a ‘powerful’ move they have to reveal too much about themsleves. If they ‘hide’ by never making such a move they may as well not exist. Bitcoin is the exact ***opposite*** to real socialism- for real socialism allows a collective to make things better for the people at a grass roots level. Bitcoin et al, by ending real physical money, ends any future possibility for this.”
Some of us were there .. in the early beginnings of Bitcoin, where we could only buy alpaca socks and friends sent friends 10,000 Bitcoin to buy pizza. There was nary a deep state agent in sight, nor were there any men in black, and I’m the furthest away from a deep state agent than what you can find. If your play in game theory points to us folks, people like me, as government agents, I would question your grasp of the theory. What I am though, is someone with a fairly deep knowledge of the subject and can discourse about it with some intelligence.
The idea to say Bitcoin is socialist, or capitalist or any ist or ism, is people projecting their ideology on something they don’t understand. Bitcoin is neutral, electronic cash amongst other things, and a currency that is not issued by a government.
What Ramin is proposing here, is that crypto currencies can be very effectively used on the Left side of the House.
The simplest explanation for Bitcoin is Electronic Cash, not minted by a government player. Those that put their trust in cash minted by their Governments have forgotten examples like Cyprus. How short are the memories here.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-28/weve-all-been-warned-cyprus-bail-model-coming-country-near-you
I’ve mined Bitcoin, and there were no governments players, just excellent sofware and hardware engineers, mostly of the anarco capitalist ideology.
You may as well say a piece of paper is socialist. It is just not valid commentary. Every country wants their own crypto currency of course. Why are they floating their own? Perhaps because they cannot own Bitcoin, or Ethereum or Lightcoin or Ripple, or NEM, or NEO or …. etc., Of course they want to use crypto currencies. It is the best technology since sliced bread. They want to use crypto as a cheap way of issuing money, and most of governments today still don’t get the concept and the technology of a Blockchain.
Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), said that “it would actually not be in our powers to prohibit and regulate” bitcoin and other digital currencies – while he is referring to a legal framework, this is probably the first little bit of truth that he probably ever spoke in his life. https://www.coindesk.com/mario-draghi-european-central-bank-has-no-power-to-regulate-bitcoin/
If one looks at Bitcoin in a vacuum as the only one of its kind, and one does not have knowledge of the technological advances being done now as part of the new asset class of cryptos, the business environment being built around cryptos and the full crypto space, one simply would not know what he or she is talking about. We are in the midst of a technological jump that is greater than Bitcoin, but Bitcoin was the first part of the jump.
Those that rail against Bitcoin, usually do not have a fact to prove what they are saying, just theories. They have not used it, they have not mined it, they have not attended a conference, they have not spoken to a Bitcoiner, they have not seen a crypto currency transaction, they have not studied the matter, and they don’t realize that most cash today, is actually electronic cash. The estimate is that only 3% of circulating cash today is in the form of physical cash. What most do not get, is that the technological act of development of Bitcoin was an act of defiance as an antidote to the inequities and corruption of the traditional financial system
Here fellow posters. Have some eduation; https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/blockchains-how-they-work-and-why-theyll-change-the-world
“The idea to say Bitcoin is socialist, or capitalist or any ist or ism, is people projecting their ideology on something they don’t understand. Bitcoin is neutral, electronic cash amongst other things, and a currency that is not issued by a government. ”
Rest assured that practically no currency is issued by ‘the government’, but you probably knew that already. The chance that the same people behind the ‘our’ ‘money’, the Fed, BIS, WB, IMF and ECB are running or will take control over successful crypto currencies is not a small one.
Oh, they are trying and really, something like Bitcoin will always be in the cross hairs and fighting for its life. It was no accident (or at least we think so), that China bans ICO’s and exchanges, and Jamie Dimon rails against Bitcoin all in the same week. But, at least Jamie Dimon has no idea of the power of a blockchain. The community quickly sniffed out that while we had a lower price for 2 weeks or so, their European office was buying all the Bitcoin they could lay their hands on at the price dip. I did not see that myself (and I seldom believe what I don’t see myself), but it was reported widely by reputable people in the crypto industry.
@Twilight
I agree with a number of your points, but I don’t quite see how some of your claims will play out.
How, exactly, does the Deep State have “explicit control” over Bitcoin? How, exactly, will the Deep State “take official control of Bitcoin authentication”?
Please be specific and technical, if possible.
Well said Twilight.
France is an anti imperialist state and bitcoin is liberty, so says our author.
LOL, when did I ever say France was an “anti-imperialist state”?
What I did posit was the theory that the EU/Euro was conceived as a way to counter US imperialism.
/why-no-petroeuro-or-frances-historic-effort-for-an-anti-austerity-eurozone/
However, just because they were fighting US imperialism doesn’t make them “anti-imperialist”, because France is neo-imperialist today: France does not renounce imperialism at all….
Anyway, Amaranth has written for The Saker about bitcoins and is extremely knowledgable. I would advise embracing her thoughts on the subject than the totally groundless speculation that any pro-bitcoiner is a Deep State operative. And my views do not represent those of Press TV, obviously.
“Why the heck haven’t you heard about this?”
I have heard about it.
In the past year I have read at least two long articles, in the LRB and, I think, The Nation.
And it is mentioned fairly often at this blog.
But I still cannot understand it.
If others are as bamboozled as I am as to what this is, that may explain the deafening silence re Bitcoin on the left, and elsewhere.
Katherine
I’ve been ranting and raving about bitcoin on here and many other places for years.
If Bitcoin’s true fate is achieved, if our enemies fail to subvert it, then not only will it make all us early investors Rich, but it will also deal a crippling blow to the Empire’s ability to fund and launch their next major war… which is probably directed against Syria or Iran (or both.) It will also finally bring about the death of the Central Banks, something which has been a long time coming.
Pray. Pray that Bitcoin overcomes the challenges it faces.
And buy Bitcoin, don’t forget to buy Bitcoin either. If we are successful, then the price point will be somewhere between 100 – 500 Thousand USD per Bitcoin, likely settling somewhere in the middle.
Love,
-Geoff
I have just read (most of) the article, and I still don’t have a clue as to what Bitcoin is.
What is the point of Bitcoin if it is described in terms of billions of $$$ instead of billions of Bitcoins?
Also, what does being filthy rich have to do with being a leftist?
Even if I wanted to buy Bitcoin, I wouldn’t know how to do it. Where does it exist? On my computer: On someone else’s computer? How can I buy anything with it?
I think if you want to push the bitcoin idea, you need to publish a step-by-step how-to.
As for computers monitoring everything that goes on in the world and coming up with some kinds of answers . . . do we really want this?
Who is doing this?
Bitcoin is still a mystery to me.
But if it’s good for Cuba, I guess it’s good for everyone.
Katherine
@ Katherine
I will try to answer some of your questions, as best I can.
What is the point of Bitcoin if it is described in terms of billions of $$$ instead of billions of Bitcoins?
Bitcoin trades against many other asset classes, pretty much like gold or other currencies. (Japan, for example, now recognizes Bitcoin as a currency.) It is described in billions of $$$ by various sites as a convenience, so people can quickly understand its price in relation to the most generally-accepted currency in the world: the dollar. This value is just what it happens to be trading against the dollar at any given moment. There are other crypto-currencies like Dash or Ark whose value is often expressed in terms of Bitcoin units. So, the $$$ figure has to do with a convention in the world of trading, not with any intrinsic feature of Bitcoin. Bitcoin itself doesn’t depend on the dollar.
Also, what does being filthy rich have to do with being a leftist?
I would say nothing, and in fact the two contradict one another. It is more that Ramin, in his usual whimsical-but-serious way, is joking about this, but in this way also trying to get Leftists to understand the stakes involved with cyptocurrencies.
Even if I wanted to buy Bitcoin, I wouldn’t know how to do it. Where does it exist? On my computer: On someone else’s computer?
It exists in a wallet, which has an address, and on a global network of Bitcoin nodes. The wallet could be on a web site, on the net, or it could be in your cell phone, or you could write down its address on a piece of paper and go from that. Look at this chart:
https://bitnodes.21.co
This is a map of all the nodes in the Bitcoin network. 9400+ as I write. Each one of these nodes has a complete copy of the blockchain database. The people running these nodes support their nodes by charging tiny transaction fees. There is massive redundancy and no central authority. Nobody “owns” the whole system.
This network is probably more robust than your bank or credit card accounts. Let’s say, for example, that the entire US power grid were wiped out tonight by that mythical doom porn Kim Jong EMP attack, leading to total chaos, no power in the US for months, etc. I doubt this will ever happen, but let’s just pretend it does. What would happen to your Bitcoins? Answer: markets would of course go wild, but nothing would happen to your Bitcoins. They still live on the Bitcoin network, which just lost a few thousand nodes but continues to function as before, thanks to it being a massive distributed system.
How can I buy anything with it?
Many different ways. You can donate money to The Saker using Bitcoins (see the QR code in the sidebar of this page). You could go to a shop that accepts Bitcoin, use your cell phone wallet app to scan a QR code at their cash register, and your Bitcoins go to their wallet to pay for the good/service you consumed.
I think if you want to push the bitcoin idea, you need to publish a step-by-step how-to.
There are many different ways to do this. It depends where you live, how you want to pay for BTC, etc. You can find guides in the Internet. See my earlier post on this page for some more details.
As for computers monitoring everything that goes on in the world and coming up with some kinds of answers . . . do we really want this?
My feeling is: no, but if there is adequate security and it provides a better way of doing things like money, I’m at least interested in exploring it. Bitcoin offers some level of anonymity. There are other cryptos that offer more. In five years, maybe we will all move from Bitcoin to a more secure crypto, or maybe Bitcoin will be good enough. There are lots of options.
Who is doing this?
Tens of thousands of people working together in a joint effort to try and figure out the future of money, free of central banks, govts, etc. That’s the collective dream, at least.
Dear Acacia,
Thanks very much.
Your post does answer a lot of my questions.
It does seem that crypto-currencies may be only for the technically sophisticated, and also committed—that is, they actually enjoy dealing the cyber-cosmos as such (not just as a means to do something, such as email edited chapters).
That said, when it comes to cyber-sophistication, I am way below average.
Katherine
This anti-war aspect of bitcoin – deprive the System of your money and they cannot fund war – is a very real, and often heard virtue of bitcoin.
It might be utopian, but it should definitely not be dismissed just because it’s utopian.
And remember: high finance-forced austerity kills as well, in the form of worse hospitals, worse social services, etc. Austerity is a war, and I am not a raving bitcoin evangelist for pointing out the simple fact that investing there is more ethical than investing in a regular bank.
Since Bitcoin by design is an electronic fiat currency based on limited issuance, it is primarily suitable as a vehicle for financial speculation, similar to precious metals. However, the worlds of speculative finance and Socialist or Communist ideology have nothing whatsoever in common and each largely repudiates the other.
Financial speculation creates no wealth and simply results in wealth redistribution within the financial economy. It results in further wealth inequality and is therefore harmful to society as a whole. This is the exact opposite of the goals of Socialism/Communism. The goals of which are the advancement of interests of the working classes and society as a whole. The advancement of the individual at whatever cost, is the goal of Objectivism, “Libertarianism”, etc. this ideology is completely opposed to communal philosophies.
The author states:
True leftists have repeatedly lamented that fake-leftists dismiss libertarianism, the Tea Party, Trumpers, etc., without even examining their ideologies and giving credit when it is justified.
I have had many conversations with persons holding these views. It is a complete waste of time. The discussions tend to stall on first principles and definitions, such as “voluntary transaction”, “freedom”, “initiation of force” and the definition of property. You will find no support for any responsibility or obligations to society. These are ideologies based on simple materialistic greed.
In fact, to the Right, the source of all the worlds problems is in fact Socialism. Whether governments, central banks, corporations, etc. it’s all Socialism. They believe Capitalism has been corrupted and replaced by Socialist policies.
Even when Left and Right see the same problem, the solutions each side proposes tend to be radically different. In the end, both sides of the debate tend to conclude that they would prefer the status quo to the solutions proposed by their opposites.
@ Jonathan
Thank you for your sobering comment. Indeed, crypto currencies may be ideologically neutral and can be used by anyone – left, right and centre – for a particular useful purpose, e.g. transaction payments and transfers. But, lacking a fixed convertible standard, is prone to speculative manipulation and turn up to be another tool for sucking the blood of ordinary people as the existing financial system is.
As I said in a previous comment, crypto currencies may offer a way out of our dependence on central banks issuance of money from nothing and how they distribute that money to increase the wealth of the privileged 0.1% by financial schemes such as “quantitative easing” designed to favour the rich, but they (C.C.) are as flawed an are as speculative as the central banks fiat currencies backed by nothing. At least, under the current cash currency system there is the element of anonymity to escape Deep State surveillance and some protection of the intrinsical value attached to physical money.
As somebody pointed out, BC technology may be a Trojan horse to condition us to accept the coming doom: cashless society. It’s already being trialled in India, funded and sponsored by USAID. Well, you know what USAID is for…
freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/cashless-agenda-accelerates-india
I don’t quite follow your logic. You say that “crypto currencies may offer a way out of our dependence on central banks issuance of money from nothing and how they distribute that money to increase the wealth of the privileged 0.1%” But you also say that cryptos are as flawed as fiat currencies issued by central banks.
Cryptos like Bitcoin specifically address the whole issue of central control and sound money. In this regard it cannot be manipulated like the dollar, the yen, or the euro are being manipulated today. The Bank of Japan, for example, is today creating $45 Billion per month. This is the near future of CB policy, and it’s the pretty clearly the antithesis of sound money.
I understand your concern about surveillance — I am very concerned about this too — but I don’t yet see hard evidence that we need to be concerned about it vis-à-vis cryptos. I hear a lot of worry that sounds more like paranoia than anything else, but I do think we should interrogate this on the basis of informed argument, not just fearful speculation.
If you can give a specific, detailed, technical account of why surveillance is an real issue for Bitcoin, I’m all ears.
The block-chain invention is indeed comparable with the invention of the wheel, or better the book-printing press.
In those days the monks were the only ones who could read and write, and suddenly their monopoly position was broken, and they were out of a job.
The same will happen to our banksters, thanks to the blockchain.
But beware, beware, if you are one of these people, that thinks of becoming rich quickly.
It is still fiat money.
The price is, what the lunatic pays for it.
Nobody knows what the price will do.
It could be $100.000 tomorrow and $0.20 The day after.
So do not put your pension money, or borrowed money in the Bitcoin.
Only invest with money, that you do not really need.
Just to avoid some tears afterwards.
This being said.
Like the book printing technology, the block-chain evolves.
Nowadays, we have a little printer on the corner of our desk, instead of a machine that takes half of the classroom.
With the block-chain these developments go a lot quicker.
We have already thousands of bitcoin copies, with which you can also trade goods and services, we do not need the Bitcoin per se.
We have the Litecoin, that is much quicker in trading and much cheaper in fee than the Bitcoin.
We have the Ether,which is head and shoulders above the Litecoin.
And we have the Ripple ($0.20), that puts the Ether in its underwear, and consequently the Bitcoin in its naked skin :-).
Ripple is owned by a company, but also open source, so we will see its derivatives tomorrow.
Who knows what the day after tomorrow will bring for new technology.
It took us ten years to get accustomed to the Bitcoin,
It will probably take another ten years for the public to realise that the Bitcoin is already old-fashioned.
But all of these coins, without any exception are still fiat.
There is no real value.
It’s just thin air.
As soon as a real government, or organisation or whatever, will put out a crypto-currency, backed by real assets, (oil, copper, gold, eggs) we will see the end of the fake fiat money, the Dollar, Euro Peso etc, including the Bitcoin.
I think this will happen eventually.
BTW. luckily the Bitcoin is not left, nor right.
“As soon as a real government, or organisation or whatever, will put out a crypto-currency, backed by real assets, (oil, copper, gold, eggs) we will see the end of the fake fiat money, the Dollar, Euro Peso etc, including the Bitcoin.
I think this will happen eventually.
BTW. luckily the Bitcoin is not left, nor right.”
Yes! And Left and Right can live happily together.
So happy some of us just ‘get it’. We ‘grok’.
LOL Amaranth – left and right cannot live happily together!
Up with the left! Down with the right!
However, I do agree that bitcoin is “not left, nor right” – it is just a tool. Who holds the tool decides how it is used.
Down with the right!!!!!!
“The block-chain invention is indeed comparable with the invention of the wheel, or better the book-printing press.”
Untrue. The wheel did reduce the energy necessary to transport people and matter. It was a simple, universal and a rather cheap solution. The blockchain, in itself a darn useful method of checks and balances in digital transactions, is not simple, definitely not universal and even less cheap.
Vasco da Gama, Kinterra and others already provided reasons and links. The energetic needs of a globalized Bitcoin system would quite possibly create the horror situation as painted by this former director of Electricité de France, because it would require a strongly beefed up network, or risk burning up. Even if it worked, the energy waste would be worse than what should be acceptable by anyone concerned.
What we need is a true uncompromised movement/revolution to get rid of the shackles that the criminal financial cartel put around our ankles. Not another time and energy wasting and still unreliable albeit super uncrackable protocol replacing other unreliable fiat currencies and/or traditional contracts.
Contracts are as reliable as the man who undersigned them, Aethereum’s blochchain won’t change that fact. Fiat currency, in whatever form, will remain exactly that: Fiat currency. History doesn’t know of any fiat currency that remained reliable or survived for any substantial period of time. Only real money did.
The whole matter feels like a déjà vu: Remember the promises at the introduction of the (personal) computer? Life would become more efficient, information would become digital, and waste of paper and work would be greatly reduced. LOL.
That didn’t turn out very well. Paper consumption went up like 20 fold. We’ve never received so much paper from our governments and other institutions ever before, not to mention the incredible volume of commercial junk.
Remember the good old Agfa, Kodak or Fuji 1 hour services? Where you could drop off your film and have quality prints one hour later? They’re gone because some idiots decided that they would fill their pockets selling us ‘photo’ printers and digital cameras. And thus we’ve had to go out to buy special photo paper, special photo cartridges (costing an arm and a leg) and then we had to spend time to print the photos (most of them looking like crap!).
Of course there was/is the possibility to use online services, you’d say. Well, this is even worse if your local ADSL connection only supports 128 or 256 kbit uploads, while your selection of 50 pics to upload is well over 300 MB. Get my drift? It get’s even better if your modem disconnects whenever there’s not enough local bandwidth. When finally everything went well and the prints arrive after more than a week they still look like crap compared to the traditional prints from our good old 1 hour Kodak service… ;-)
Let me tell you that nowadays because of these modernisms millions of photos are never printed and many get lost, because of accidentally wiped memory, crashed hard disks, etc. and that the pictures that do get printed have never been more expensive in time, energy and money than ever before. That was ‘progress’? Well, at least we got some of these promised reductions in waste albeit by other means.
There are truly wonderful uses of modern technology as this blog easily proves. Writing and editing a letter, spreadsheet or design has never been easier, but we should be more careful about discarding what we have and replacing by high tech same old even worse.
Some facts about bitcoin as of 12th September 2017:
16.561.625 > 78.86% – Total bitcoins in circulation
21.000.000 > 100.00% – Total bitcoins to be ever mined
source > https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins?timespan=all
Of the 16.561.625 bitcoins:
0.00088% addresses control 17.49%
0.01000% addresses control 20.47%
0.10000% addresses control 21.90%
0.94000% addresses control 28.02%
for a total of:
1.05088% addresses control 87.88% or ~14.554.356 bitcoins
source > https://howmuch.net/articles/bitcoin-wealth-distribution
If the remaining 21.14% bitcoins to be mined in the future land in different hands than those in control currently, those hands will still represent 69.31% of all bitcoins that can ever exist.
Further: 0.11088% addresses will control 59.86% or ~9.941.789 bitcoins, which will still represent 47.21% of all bitcoins ever. And these are very very big “ifs”.
So much for decentralization of wealth, since it is virtual I’m not too bothered. It’s social revolutionary value is already tainted from these facts alone.
Now talking about blockchain technology is another game altogether…
I don’t know if those numbers are true (thanks for posting the link), but I certainly agree that a “bitcoin cabal” must already exist.
Swaying these owners from the libertarianism/voluntarism and towards socialism is a must…otherwise how is bitcoin any different from the current oligarchical cabal?
If the bitcoin cabal won’t listen…we’ll just take their bitcoins in the end, like any other commodity which the 99% must benefit from.
I disagree that it’s “social revolutionary value” is too “tainted” from these facts: it’s early in the game, and things can change with grassroots efforts. I think such a view is too utopian and not grounded in reality, because the alternative – supporting the status quo – is far more tainted….
It is indeed one advantage of the system, the information is public and verifiable:
> https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-rich-list/
As of 20 September the top 1000 addresses (0.21% of a total 480.582 unique addresses) accumulate 5.668.642 bitcoins (34.20% of a total 16.577.738 bitcoins). The numbers previously merely represented a different segmentation for analysis.
The lists above provide links for each individual address for public inspection. Data validated by around ~9500 nodes. A quarter of which are based in the US.
> https://bitnodes.21.co/
Now I did not say “too tainted”, i did not quantify because truly it is hard to measure the social consequence, present and future. In a way what I’m saying is that the train has left the station in terms of bitcoin allowing some sort of decentralized emancipation, or fulfilling its branded dream.
As a leftist myself (under your definition) I definitely agree with many good points you’ve been advancing in regards to the blockchain though. And I support your efforts in bringing awareness, I’m just not as hopeful as you are with respect to fundamentally leveraging this technology towards social justice goals given its current stage (that is maintaining aside assorted benefits here and there relative to conventional fiat during sudden crisis).
Three anecdotes about my left: when information technology arrived and became massively accessible we were oh so skeptical about it, oh so used to old management habits. when social networks boomed likewise somber comments everywhere about the privacy issues. when cryptocurrencies crept in mostly visions of capitalist control laced with ignorance.
Today, we hardly support open source and are far in the depths of MS control. A good deal of my comrades ceased inviting for a birthday party if not via fakebook. Most discussions bringing bitcoin to the table proceed about gold and end-of-civilization scenarios. Lets see what a happens with respect to artificial intelligence.
The issue here is the quality of our collective skepticism, it is quite inconsequential, it is as if for relevant parts of the time we dismiss the most important fact that this is the capitalist social organization, we hardly scientifically develop the means provided in this context in due time.
You explicitly mention “swaying” libertarians/voluntarists, i complement swaying the vanguard itself is in order, many opportunities missed already. Hopefully cryptocurrencies are not a lost cause yet, but maybe the actual technology to coopt is the blockchain, there is more time in that front.
Is a crypto-currency like cyber scrip?
Someone issues it and a group of people agree to use it?
Katherine
Katherine
Yes.
But let’s not dismiss scrip. It works very well within the community that agrees to use it, and as a substitute for barter it’s great, like any currency.
The issues arise with the issuing authority. What’s to prevent the issuer from creating a lot of scrip, i.e. inflation of the currency, making the scrip less valuable compared to goods and services? Fixed quantity is one of two answers to this issue. The Lincoln Greenback was fixed quantity. I like it as an example of a great currency. It was accepted, it worked, and people knew there would never be a sudden influx of greenbacks appearing.
The second answer to the specter of inflating the currency is to make it convertible to something else, like gold, which has a historic strong appeal for just such purposes, and is itself a relatively fixed quantity.
Bitcoin has the same characteristic of the greenback except not in practical terms today because the coins don’t all exist yet. And as we see, the value is acting like a commodity – i.e. it’s being bought in hopes of its price going up, and not spent because who would spend it when its price is going up?
So as a currency, at this moment, it’s pretty useless, if what you want is a reliable measure of the value of things you want to buy and sell. As a commodity, it’s a brilliant investment, as long as its price goes up – and riding the true brilliance of the true blockchain revolution, with a cachet tied to that revolution, it presumably will go up, maybe hugely, who knows.
One day, perhaps a few years after all the coins are mined, and one bitcoin will buy one “something” pretty much all over the world, and pretty much year after year, we’ll be able to say what one bitcoin is worth.
Alternately, if by some magic all bitcoin holders now and in the future would agree to redeem one bitcoin for one certain something relatively fixed in quantity, like gold, and if everyone in the world agreed with that valuation, then bitcoin would trade with gold at roughly the same value all over the world, and bitcoin’s price would stabilize and stop changing. It would then be useful as a currency.
And if gold stayed relatively stable in trades against most of the major currencies that weren’t in trouble at the time, but it started taking more bitcoins to buy gold, we would know that bitcoin’s value was dropping. One would try to find the reason for this, but the result would be that bitcoin would be in trouble as a currency, and its “value” would have gone down, and would perhaps go even lower as people began to unload it.
~~
Money is a measure, with which we can trade real things accurately and fairly. But money is also itself measured, by all the real things. Money above all has to be as reliable as the fact that eating food will keep you alive, for example. Once it drops below that reliability, people will barter food rather than use the currency in question.
In ultimate terms there is no inherent value to anything, it’s relative to demand and supply, buy and sell. But there is usefulness of the tools at hand in the time and place.
Since we ourselves live and die and are not permanent here, a very slowly changing set of relative values is enough for us to talk in terms of value as being reliable, and to live and plan and act as if the value will remain the same over the very long term – and for many people to believe that a certain value is innate or inherent, or even fixed forever.
This slowness of change by the way is what allows the bankers to skim value from a currency, and – one can only hope – gets them hanged when they overreach and people notice.
And because of this trait of the money-handlers to steal some of the money they handle, I suggest that the more fixed in quantity a currency is the more useful it becomes as money. As real money, which acts not just as a medium of exchange but also as a store of value.
The test of sound money is if it starts to act as savings, inheritance, etc, and drops out of circulation. But this is not a problem, money can be subdivided into infinitely small fragments. The “valuableness” of money should go up over time, as it proves its reliability by being fixed in quantity.
It could be argued that this is what’s happening with bitcoin, by the way, as people hold it rather than spend it, but we don’t know for sure until all the coins are here.
The amount of money itself doesn’t matter, it’s the unchanging nature of that quantity that matters.
If the quantity of the currency/money never changes, it becomes a yardstick against which to measure things. Bitcoin will eventually come into this state. What it will then buy and sell, remains for the marketplace to establish.
“But let’s not dismiss scrip. ”
I didn’t mean to dismiss scrip with my question.
Just trying to get a better idea of what the elephant is.
” perhaps a few years after all the coins are mined, ”
This idea of the Bitcoins being “mined” is a mental stumbling block for me.
What does that actually mean?
Thanks for the detailed response.
Katherine
I offer this explanation:
Katherine selects a number from 1 to 100, if I try and say a number there is a chance of me guessing the correct one of 1%. If we are 100 people trying and agree not to repeat the same number we are assured to find the correct number in a fraction of the time running through all the possible numbers. We are also assured that the chance of someone in that group guessing correctly is exactly 1%. For the correct guess a reward is given. Later on the number of people attempting to guess Katherine’s number increases to 150, so Katherine has agreed that whenever that comes the range of numbers also increase to 150 to keep the chances of 1% by participant equal. The reward given is also established in a way that no matter how many participants along the time the maximum amount reached will stay the same, and decreases in a set order being halved from time to time.
All of this is arbitrary but this example has the basic properties of what is happening when crypto mining from the pov of its participants.
The final leap: it is not an individual that selects a number from a range. The “number” to be guessed is the a calculated result of a limited collection of events occurring in the blockchain (ie. transactions, creation of addresses/wallets), being unpredictable, but most importantly, also depends on all previous collection of events since genesis. Only after this unpredictable result is found by the group of “miners” and validated can another set of blockchain events be processed. And the cycle repeats.
This system, as is, is arguably wasteful, since processing energy input is all consumed in justifying itself, providing for all its infrastructure and its potential, materialized and unmaterialized, but nothing else (all the energy spent by the miners attempting to find the “number” and didn’t will never get it back and realized no productive work whatsoever). To consider it wasteful is also a consideration of when humans exploit nature (mineral extraction) they, also being subject to degrees of chance, don’t have a say in defining it, as opposed to the algorithm supporting the blockchain.
@ Vasco da Gama
This is a good basic sketch of how mining works. Given your definition of “productive work”, though, mining the earth for gold and silver would be equally wasteful. I would also add that as you pointed out in an earlier post, 78.86% of all Bitcoins have already been mined. Once we approach 100%, the kind of waste that you describe will drop off and the Bitcoin system will be about exchanging BTC and validating transactions.
I’m arguing that knowing that some volume of earth is void of such and such minerals can still be considered energy transfer, whereas knowing that some hash calculation is wrong is self contained only served that purpose and is dully forgot for no possible future dividend. I also know there were attempts to reuse all that hashpower towards some useful parallel goal, but i’m just taking it to the extreme to reveal the point.
Your second point is interesting indeed: miners will be done when all 21M bitcoins are mined, but they will spend exponentially more energy for the same cost since reward is halved. Only at scale can someone participate in its later phase. The system is terribly unforgiving to late adopters. This format encourages the kind of exclusivity that it would never allow level participation.
Since all of this is product of the human mind and arbitrariness and not something tumbling from the sky (geological conditions) I’m hard pressed to swallow it’s inefficience.
Puerto Rico sure could of used some good ol’ bitcoin after the cash ran out and the electrical grid went down.
How do bitcoin work when there is no electricity?
Not.
Thanks Ramin, for sharing your ideas.
What struck me most, is the intro. Apparantly, despite the JCPOA (the ‘nuclear deal’), there is still an embargo on delivery of medicines.
This is an act of war.
On civilians.
Of course I know the background idea: deprive the civilians so much, that they will throw over the government themselves, and jump crying into the caring (and enslaving) arms of the Hegemon.
Well, has this plan ever worked out?
I was on the bus, a lady behind me was talking about stacking shelves at the super-market six nights a week. She loved her job she said, and just about manages to live, without shopping (clothes etc/ . The lady said she was not computer illiterate, and did not know what she would do otherwise..
I bought carrots and potatoes and salad from a farmer at a market this morning, and paid her the correct amount in coins, the kind you hold in your hand that is, and then pass into someone else’s hand. I don’t know what I would do otherwise. This is all true,
Thank-you for this discussion. I admittedly know less than the crypto experts- however I have been seriously studying by reading and listening to the crypto pro and con “experts”. My usual method is to take in all the information I can- staying in “beginners mind’- forming no judgements or opinions. Then I mull and mull all the information over in my thoughts- still staying in ‘beginners mind’. During this process a certain intuitive feeling begins to arise. This is ultimately what I listen to- not the experts, not even the so called ‘facts’. I listen to what arises from considering all the facts- an inner compass or honing instinct informs me from a deeper source than my intellect.
At this point in the process I sense that cryptos are a lure. (This does not mean there are not fortunes to be made in the short term.) Cryptos are NOT being imposed by the gov- in fact China has outlawed them (which I see as a decoy). They are being hailed as a ‘brave new world’ by liberals and conservatives who promote crypto currency as a new found frontier of freedom from the evil system of debt enslavement. Who doesn’t want that?
Pull back the curtain and dig deeper to find there are numerous documents to show that this idea has been in the works in various nefarious central bank think tanks for a while. There is already the idea of a ‘fed coin’ and a ‘one coin’. Smart contracts in digital currency have been created in hyper ledger. Stages of implementation are in the works, including many decoys to continue to make people think they are outside the system while in reality the net is ready to drop, centralizing everything through the central bank of the central banks- the Bank of International Settlements.
Crypto has allowed some early investors to make a lot of money- they are in the game and highly invested and doing lots of free promotion to normalize and mainstream crypto currency. All this is being allowed to happen while China, who the IMF designated as the country to develop the block chain for a global currency, is ever so quietly doing precisely that.
It takes 178 kilowatt hours of electricity for one bitcoin operation (the same as needed to power a house for a year). In fact the system currently uses as much electricity as the entire country of Ireland. Quantum level computer, and quantum satellites are needed to cut down on the vast use of power the current crypto currency system requires. China is getting all the technology in place and is soon to launch 20 satellites which transmit photons invulnerable to hacking. They are working on a quantum submarine.
De-cashing is already occurring in India and Sweden. People in the US love to flash their phones to pay for a coffee. People are getting comfortable with and even rallying for digital currency. Meanwhile, the central banks and many governments are (by design) insolvent and we are on the verge of a domino type economic collapse. worldwide people are already hurting and things are worsening through hyperinflation and lack of jobs. Personal and government debt is astronomical, and there is no way the debt can ever, ever be paid back. The system is broken and cannot be repaired. A global economic crisis is looming. Where will this all go?
A (faux) savior one world government with a brand new universal crypto currency is in the making. All you will need to sign up is a chip.
k
@ kinterra
It is true that the existing system of global finance has been discussing various forms of digital cash and smart contracts for a while, but I have not seen any hard evidence that they are somehow conspiring behind the scenes to, as you put it, drop a net over cryptocurrencies.
I agree with you that the central banks and the nation-states to which they are vampirically attached would like very much to control the world of cryptos and they will probably issue their own coins at a certain point in the near future. However, it seems to me that they are all relative latecomers to this game, and mostly scratching their heads about how to make their play.
My sense is that cryptos are not being secretly developed by central banks, the BIS, etc. as you suggest. Rather, they are being developed by a loose federation of software engineers who are at bottom driven by a kind of anarcho-libertarianism. Some of these developers may have done work in the financial services industry, but I’ll bet that if we profiled 50 of these guys and studied their CVs, only a small percentage would actually have that kind of experience.
The analogy I see here is Linux. It is a free, open-source operating system that is produced by a very large community of engineers. Their commitment is to build what they think is the best possible OS and make it free. The Saker has written about Linux and why he uses it. I think the same could be said about Bitcoin and many of the cryptos. Linux is not some kind of “front” for Microsoft and Apple, who are quietly waiting to throw a net over the whole Linux community and get them to pay for a proprietary one-vendor “solution”. As the saying goes: the genie is out of the bottle.
China has cracked down on cryptos for the simple reason that they have a big problem with capital flight. They have serious problems with corruption and the environment. Many wealthy Chinese want to get out, but they need a way to get their money out too, and to evade capital controls when they try to smuggle their money out by buying an expensive piece of overseas property (e.g., in Canada). Cryptos are a way to do that, thus Beijing took steps to throttle them.
You haven’t sourced your statement about the energy consumption for “one bitcoin operation”, so I’m not sure what you mean by this nor can I evaluate it as a claim. It is true that a lot of energy is being used now to mine Bitcoins, but as Vasco da Gama mentioned earlier on this page, only about 21% of all possible Bitcoins remain to be mined. Once we approach 100%, this kind of energy-intensive activity will drop off, and the Bitcoin system will consume a lot less power.
As for quantum computing, that is a very speculative and complicated thing, and won’t be “real soon now” as its boosters often claim. It’s a little like nuclear fusion and AI, which we’ve heard about for decades but remain big science projects. It’s one of those “By the 2040, we will see … ” type things that keeps receding into the future, and will likely have little impact on cryptos in the immediate future.
As for de-cashing and digital currencies, yes that is happening, but the devil is in the details, so to speak. There is now discussion of “fiat cryptocurrencies” which would be issued by central banks. To me — and I think many people involved in cryptos — such initiatives are basically anathema to the whole concept of a cryptocurrency. The US could issue a “Fed Coin” but I suspect they haven’t yet because people would rightly mock it and few would actually use it. If I could choose between Bitcoin, which is truly decentralized, sound money, and some sort of FedCoin that is controlled by a central bank and can be debased by them, why would I bother with the latter?
All of that said, I agree with your conclusion that a global economic crisis is looming. The current system is a house of cards. However, if the coming economic crash were used as an occasion to introduce some new, heretofore unknown digital currency as a “savior”, would you buy it? Or, would you buy gold, silver, and Bitcoin? Personally, I would opt for the latter.
Acacia,
I appreciate your response. Far be it from me to squelch anyone who has even a fragment of hope for the future. But since we are in dialog I will offer that I feel a bit of naivety on your part when you say:
“…. they are all relative latecomers to this game, and mostly scratching their heads about how to make their play.”
This just does not sound like the globalist bankers who have been successful at manipulating society and culture since the 1600’s, and whose machinations continually demonstrate horrific and heinous conniving.
Also I would not underestimate China’s technological advances in Quantum computing. The Chinese are both very secretive and very ahead of the game in terms of electronic warfare and technology. There is a major meeting of the Communist Party in two weeks at which they will develop the five-year plan for China, which may shed some light on this.
Would I buy the one world currency willingly? NO, of course not but will there be a choice? Look at what is happening in Venezuela. The most oil rich nation in the world has been taken down. They tried to mine bit coin but there was not the energy source to support it. This situation was created by the usual suspects as was WWI, WWII, Libya, Yugo, Syria, etc, ect. No I don’t think they are scratching their heads wondering how to compete with Bitcoin. They already have us eating out of their hands.
That said I truly hope you are right and I am overlooking the good willed Linux genre crypto genius warriors who are going to defy the evil to the core globalist bankers who command most of the world’s resources and liberate humanity. They will have a quite a fight on their hands.
Below are a couple of recent links which cite the electric usage as being the same as that of a small country. BC is not the only crypto using vast energy resources. Other systems are running up big tabs as well.
Cheers,
k
:https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2216023.new
https://hothardware.com/news/ethereum-and-bitcoin-energy-consumption-surpass-entire-countries-power-budgets
@ kinterra
I understand if you feel my argument for cryptos and statement about globalist bankers comes across as a bit naïve. The stakes are high and I certainly agree with you that we’re talking about going up against a ruthless system of power that — as you point out — has been very successful for several centuries now.
That said, I guess I still have some hope because I just don’t see how the existing system of financial power could take control of a truly distributed system like blockchain. As you know, the existing financial system works by centralizing the power in the hands of a small group of people who all belong to the same club. They could try to regulate cryptos by imposing capital controls (this is coming, probably), or they could ban exchanges, as the Chinese govt has recently done, or they can trash talk it as a “fraud” as some investment bankers have done, but just today I read that Chinese investors don’t care and are simply going around the regulations. Meanwhile, the Japanese govt last week licensed 11 new Bitcoin exchanges, and 17 more are awaiting review.
Have you read Nakamoto’s white paper on Bitcoin? If not, I highly recommend it. Note especially how the blockchain as a system changes the game dramatically for financial institutions, how it redefines the nature of “trust” and how it resists attacks. Look, in particular, at §11, in which Nakamoto demonstrates that the probability of a successful attack drops off exponentially as the blockchain grows, and keep in mind that this white paper was written years ago, when the blockchain was far smaller than it is today.
If you still feel that TPTB are going to take control of this system, here’s another analogy: Bittorrent, streaming services, and cyberlockers. Every day, there are hundreds of millions of people involved in sharing content though these services, on thousands of web sites. Some of these trackers are huge, hosting more peers than the populations of New York and Los Angeles combined. An entire generation of young people have grown up with these systems, and today just take them for granted. Look at how long The Pirate Bay has survived, against all odds. These systems have survived because they are massively decentralized. The entire database for one of these sites can fit on a USB stick. Are TPTB really going to shut all of this down? Are the tens of millions of people who use those systems going to just give up and go away? I don’t see that happening.
Regarding Quantum computing, sure, China may surprise us with some sexy science news, but bear in mind there’s a big difference and often years of time lag between an “ooh ahh scientific breakthrough” and commerically-available systems that people are using in the real world. Also, the Chinese don’t have a very strong track record for designing and building such systems, at least not in China. It is true that China has a large number of supercomputers, but where are the Chinese-designed microprocessors and operating systems? Oh right, over 90% of the processors in those Chinese supercomputers are from Intel. As for an OS, we’ve been hearing for years that China will develop their own to replace Microsoft, but their Red Flag initiative went bankrupt, and as of 2016 almost 92% of all desktop machines in China are still running Windows (presumably with good ‘ol NSA backdoors in place). As for the programming languages on the Chinese internet, it’s all PHP, ASP (which is Microsoft), and Rails. Alas, no web development “with Chinese characteristics” then. To tackle these existing markets with their own kit, they will need to first design, build, and popularize said kit, and for that they will likely need to tackle the brain drain problem (e.g., Chinese engineers fleeing the country), and I don’t see any of that happening soon. So, I wouldn’t hold my breath for some commercial-market quantum breakthrough from China.
Concerning the electricity required for Bitcoin, thanks for the links. I looked at the first article but it seems the author does not distinguish between the phase of “discovery”, in which new Bitcoins are being “minted” and the “post-discovery” phase after 99+% of all Bitcoins have been mined and the network is engaged in exchange and validation of transactions. Remember, there are only 21 million BTC total, nearly 80% of which have already been mined. At a certain point, it may not even be worthwhile to try and discover those last 0.5% of the remaining Bitcoins, unless you’re tapping into solar power. Something similar has happened with Ethereum. You can mine it on your PC at home, but you have to keep buying more powerful hardware and spending more money on the electric bill. The people involved in this cost everything out, and if the ROI numbers look bad, they close down their mining rigs. Thus, I don’t see that the energy requirements will continue to go up. If anything, I gather that in a few years they will begin to go down significantly.
Finally, you mention Venezuela as an example of how things can go wrong. This is indeed a scary scenario, though I don’t see how the ability to mine cryptos would make much difference for them. Cryptos are an emerging system of exchange, with too much volatility, and whose market cap remains modest compared to traditional equities. They are still mostly for specialists, and while this is changing quickly I feel it won’t happen soon enough to really help turn around a very serious political and economic crisis such as Venezuela. There is also a lot of puzzlement about what cryptos are about. As the other comments on Ramin’s article make clear, many people don’t yet grok cryptos.
Personally, I feel that the basic concepts of cryptos are not that complicated in practice, but I know that thinking people are rightly skeptical and reticent to embrace things they don’t understand. It takes time to figure this stuff out.
kinterra:
All you will need to sign up is a chip.
With all the advancements of technology you can skip the part with a chip. We’re already at the stage where the use biometric data is discussed.
What happens when bitcoins are lost?
http://festyy.com/q8Gni9
I read through this bit coin story by Ramin Mazaheri, and I still don’t comprehend what bit coin is.
Nor do I comprehend what it has to do with my left hand.
Is it just a couple of dots in a computer somewhere?
Can I get them in hand?
How does it work. If I have to pay $20,000 for one, how is that going to help me?
How does one send one to anyone?
Where do you change them back into nice Communist US dollars?
It still resembles a racket in my mind.
@Ivan88
Bitcoin is a virtual currency that lives in a wallet on the Internet. The actual bits aren’t just in “a computer somewhere” but are replicated in 9000+ computers all over the world (and even some in orbit, I gather).
Your wallet has an address. But, you can also write down the address of your Bitcoins on a piece of paper. So if your house, your PC, your whole city, or the electrical grid in your country were destroyed by an earthquake/tsunami/nuclear attack/meteor strike/etc., your Bitcoins are backed up on thousands of other computers on the network elsewhere in the world, and you can get access to all your coins using the address that you scribbled down on that piece of paper.
This means, no, you cannot get Bitcoins in hand. They are to money what digital recording is to music and movies.
Since they are virtual, you don’t have to buy one Bitcoin, you can but 0.00125 or unit you like. You could buy $20 or $20.02 or $20,000.01 up to whatever limits the exchange allows.
You send them by giving the address of somebody’s wallet to the app that you use for your own wallet. The app debits your pile of Bitcoin, and credits the payee’s wallet. However, you’re not going through any financial institution. No big banks are involved. It’s P2P.
You change them back into nice Communist dollars through an exchange. You can even buy gold with Bitcoin.
There is also a view that the Central Banks, IMF, and security agencies have been deeply involved in getting the cryptocurrencies set up as a means to eliminate cash and move to a new system (they control). Getting people to accept any new system is probably the biggest hurdle, so this is a means to facilitate that. Listen to Lynnette Zang discuss this at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X79mEtZEo_8
You should get sceptical if Bloomberg, Fox News and banks start cheerleading for bitcoin and other crypto currencies. Are you aware that many bankers are calling for the abolition of cash? Cash in your hands is freedom. A coin can’t be traced and you can buy bread in the next bakery. With bitcoin I wouldn’t be too sure. According to scientists Glyphosophate is safe. Personally I do neither trust those who want to tell me that bitcoin is safe, nor do I trust those scientists who’re trying to tell me Glyphosophate is safe. For some purposes bitcoin may have advantages. Replacing traceable Visa payments with an (hopefully) untraceable alternative.
… but they talk of bitcoin “evangelists” because it really is a faith-based movement: …
You’re correct with your observation that bitcoin is faith based.
Fiat/paper money is based on faith – in government. Bitcoin is based on faith – in each other.
Sadly this conclusion is wrong. All money (coins / paper money as well as digital money) is faith based. The faith is based in the money! If a potential trading partner doesn’t accept your money you’re screwed.
This also has great potential for the way we vote: 10,000 computers will examine an electronic ballot and agree on its validity. …
Forget about electronic voting. Paper ballots and lots of stakeholders to check the process is still the way to go. Take for example the electronic voting process of the US. Who can guarantee that an electronic vote is accounted for correctly. The display may show you that you voted for A, but registered the vote for Ramin Mazaheri. President Ramin Mazaheri wouldn’t be that bad at all, if he had some technical and economic advisors of integrity.
When it comes to economics I’ll stick with articles of Peter Koenig, Michael Hudson and a few others who have a more sound understanding of that topic than many MSM economists.
Hi Ramin,
I always start reading your analysis but cannot finish them (that’s my bad). But this one I was able to finish reading. Thank you for bringing attention to bit coIn.
I would like to make a small not about medicines. They are any ways fraud. They main aim is to make profit not cure the disease and bit coin cannot solve that I think.
Bitcoin and the crypto-currency basket essentially represent a ponzi-scheme which has unfortunately deceived many a “libertarian” on the premise that they represent “freedom” because they are not (officially at least) controlled by the world’s Central Banks who wield grotesque economic oppression.
Unfortunately, the above thinking is delusional for the following reasons:
– In order to be able to deal/trade in these crypto-currencies you need access to a man-made virtual network. So if you are unable to access the network, for whatever reason, how does one exercise one’s so-called economic freedom to trade in these cryptos?
– The cryptos are “created” out of thin air (actually create is a misnomer because cryptos don’t exist!) and given value by sentiment. Are we comfortable from a Godly/ethical perspective to the effective assumption of God-like qualities…it is the absolute, restricted domain of the One-God to create out of nothing and give meaning/value to things yet unfortunately those who support cryptos have unwittingly traversed into this forbidden territory, effectively creating partners to the One-God and undermining His sovereignty!
– Just as fiat paper and digital currencies, that are in the official domain of the Central Banks, lack intrinsic value so do the cryptos. The key mode that the Zionists have employed to steal from the masses en-masse is to manipulate the fiat money supplies – printing gargantuan quantums of fiat money, reducing the purchasing power of the fiat money in the possession of the masses, and ever concentrating economic power with the banks. This manipulation by a few is not prevented by cryptos especially given the lack of intrinsic value and the fact that its existence is premised on non-existence!
Real money represents commodities with intrinsic value; you can feel it; you take tangible possession of it and you can at least physically fight to protect it (if say you are under threat from theft). Cryptos don’t exist and if the Zionists (and their lackeys) decide to cut you off from the “network” how are you going to fight to protect your crypto “wealth”?
My sense is that the crypto-currencies have been created by the Zionists to sucker people in to “invest” in them to ultimately deploy an even more effective economic enslavement mechanism but unfortunately many people have abandoned their critical thinking faculties and blindly jumped onto the ponzi-scheme bandwagon.
If we want to realise true economic freedom we need to:
– Return to using the money endorsed by the One-God and His Messengers; money that has intrinsic value (such as gold, silver and other applicable commodities).
– Employ an interest-free monetary system, which will prevent the unfair accumulation/concentration of wealth in the hands of those who possess capital.
– Have a genuine free market of buyers and sellers, a market in which monopolies, or any economic agent for that matter, do not have free reign to manipulate and exploit. A market in which justice and fairness are the underlying principles that are inviolable.
If you are interested, here are a couple of articles by Hugo Salinas Price on the fraud that are crypto-currencies:
http://www.plata.com.mx/mplata/articulos/articlesFilt.asp?fiidarticulo=309
http://www.plata.com.mx/mplata/articulos/articlesFilt.asp?fiidarticulo=321
Also, a book by Sheikh Imran Hosein on what a legitimate and just monetary system entails:
http://www.imranhosein.org/media/books/dinarbook.pdf
Store of value; one must understand what a store of value is.
I for one, do not think Bit-coin, or any other crypto-currency is a store of value; ponzi scheme(?), maybe; but not a store of value.
Gold and silver are a store of value and have more than 5,000 years of proof to back that up.
Put simply; a store of value is, whenever everything goes to shit, what you hold is still worth something.
I remain unconvinced crypto will be worth a plug nickel when and if it all collapses; which increasingly, seems the direction we’re headed.
If one wants to understand money and debt; read David Graeber’s; Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
It’s brilliant and also dispels the myth of barter.
Economist’s like to obfuscate economics and make a relatively simple concept complicated; it’s not!
Common sense is often the genuine path forward; but only if one is capable of critical thinking.