Bitcoin, the war on cash, Clif High, and the NSA's long range plans

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by SiriusB (here)

I heard an interview the other day where the guy was saying that there won't be just self driving taxis, but the taxi robot will own itself, making decisions to reap the most amount of profit for itself.

Thats correct. That why they gave the A.I. Sophia the Saudi Citizenship on Future investment Fund. They need a legal title to do business.

Certainly if corporations can have legal status equivalent to, or in some cases (such as Election Donation Laws in the US) superior to humans, then, yes, one might expect robots to have a similar first class legal status in due time as well.

[Carmody]

Posted by Jayke (here)

Posted by apokalypse (here)
this whole thing BTC reach 20+ by Jan/feb is BS? let alone 50k or 100k within 1-2 years..?

Price is reflective of demand so it just depends how far the deep state wants to push it. I’m still seeing articles being released building bitcoin awareness, and still hearing people—who generally have no interest in conspiracy theory/alt media topics—eager to get started in bitcoin.

The media are currently bringing in their biggest authority pieces to promote bitcoin-style technology, like this article from yesterday...Bank of England to create own digital currency

I always thought 50k was optimistic but swinging between 20k and 10k could carry on for some time.

There’s a study that looks into lunar phases and stock returns (http://personal.lse.ac.uk/yuan/papers/lunar.pdf). It’s a full moon on the 2nd January. Full moons have historically proven to show lulls in stock market activity, new moons are when lots of the action happens (as new moons create a similar state of psychology to Mercury retrogrades). It’ll be easier to determine the fate of bitcoin at the end of January after the next wave of crypto-junkies get drawn into the marketplace.

I went to Binance, as I could get onto Binance.

The thing I found about Binance, is that they just rebuilt their servers to a much higher level of speed or number of transactions per second capacity.

After about 1.5-2 weeks of studying Binance for many (between 10 and 14 hrs) hours per day, 7 days a week, I've noted a few things.

One, they admit to doing what seems sensible, on the surface. Which is where they trade against bitcoin as that is the traditional method. This method seems to evolved as this was originally the only crypto coin. Makes sense, so far, right?

Well, They admit that the way to pursue this, is to have one big pool of cash or crypto values in numbers. Basically, a pool of mathematical calculations they commit to and keep track of. The actions of their many trading members, right?

Every single coin is traded against BTC.

so the value of the trade that one commits to is 'across'...BTC, or across bitcoin, as a ratio.

XXX/BTC, or YYY/BTC, ZZZ/BTC. About 100 altcoins vs BTC.

The connection point that runs through them all, is BTC.

So they have a single pool of BTC coins, going in, or out.

You may have a wallet at the given Binance site, for, obstinately speaking, holding your given crypto. Specifically the given crypto coin.

Your trade value for your given altcoin (altcoin means anything but BTC[bitcoin])...is floated. That is the part that does not 'track' the external world, of the value of the given altcoin elsewhere..

Now, with the extra fast interface (new Binance servers) and the huge number of transactions per second...and the ability to pay very low rates per transaction...

..bots become effective. Trading bots.

In this case, all bots in binance favor one currency. BTC, Bitcoin.

And, if Binance has everything valued in bitcoin that their pool they operate under..is a bitcoin pool....and that they, if running bots, pay no fees, just clock ticks on the servers..then..something might happen that seems to have happened at Binance, over the past 48 hrs.

And that is a incredible festering level of BOT contamination of the trading platform that SPECIFICALLY tracks Bitcoin price changes to perfection...that the biggest value coins can have their pricing charts overlaid and their is ZERO difference between them. ZERO.

For example, Stellar Lumens (XLM), Ripple(XRP), anything that is truly a volume threat to BTC, and the given binance BTC pool..those track BTC and each other, to perfection. It is blatant beyond belief.

The next thing is that the money can go into the coin, ripple, stellar, etc, but it can't come out. What I mean is that when the price of bitcoin goes down, the price of ripple should go up, yes? Or when bitcoin goes down, the price of Stellar would go up, yes?

and so on, for the rest of the coins.

Well, they do, but ONLY if the price differential is very very high, and only if it has been in differential for over 5 minutes. 5 minutes. That is a huge amount of time, for a cryto currency to be stable in the face of a pairing price change.

Now, when the price of Bitcoin goes up, the price (expressed as a ratio, the trade ratio we are talking about) of all the altcoins should go down, right? Well, they do and they do it IMMEDIATELY to almost the very SECOND that the best price tickers out there..show a price increase in Bitcoin.

So they drop the price of the altcoin in SECONDS via sell tactics, but only increase the price value in the given altcoin in about 5 MINUTES. As a matter of fact, sometimes the price of the altcoin goes up when bitcoin goes up, just for about a minute though, so people can get trapped in a false sense. This is the bots incrementally playing with the buy-sell limits of others so they can predict the spread and the time of the spread, so they can play with the data -for maximum gain (into Bitcoin).

Over the past 2 days, this new system at Binance has been increased in speed and is now set to rape, 100% rape ..of all altcoins to favor Bitcoin. Thus, no altcoin can be used to accumulate value, no interest or attempt to buy an altcoin at binance is capable of being successful. The entire site is forced into being like a porcupine quill for Bitcoin. And this shift happened about 2 days ago and is now wholly blatant and self evident in any act or attempt to trade anything into any form of an upward trend. People's best attempts to trade their coin up is defeated.

Binance is now fully, off the rails, a parasite in the budding crypto industry. And they will have no shortage of new people trying to get into the board. They even said they had to temporarily suspend applications to enter the trading platform.

I'll be clear again..a $400 decrease in the price of bitcoin, held for 5 minutes, and no subsequent shift upward in the value of the altcoin. ZERO. Literally. Then, a two second $4 flutter upward trend in the price of bitcoin, and the altcoin is Immediately slammed downward, in about 5 seconds. I'm not kidding.

Go look for yourself. Get out the cyrptocompare website listing for bitcoin, keep the price in a open window in the corner.....and go to binance and look at the XRP price in the trade window..and watch it happen, hour after hour.

It is blatant manipulation in the extreme that was not there, not so obviously, even 2 days ago. Now, binance is just a bot riddled nightmare of bitcoin price tracking with no room for humans to get involved...otherwise... they will lose.

So I checked on that, to see if binance was a bot haven. Well, this sort of complaint has gone on before, in October and November. (in my very short attempt to look for such complaints)

When the servers were clogged and the board was not operating very well, the humans could win over the bots. With their new highly efficient trading platform, it's 100% bot central and is effectively dead to the entire crypto ecosystem.

We are looking at either Binance raping their customers, or external forces entering the fray and raping Binance customers.

The world economy of the future is at stake so my money (identifying culprits) is equally on Binance bots and externally applied bots.

For example, Apparently Japan has bought into Bitcoin, in the corporate sense, in a big way. Or the people of the east coast of the USA, or the city of London, whom have invested in bitcoin, etc. They could be the bot players.

The finacial ecosystem that has moved toward incorporating bitcoin and controlling it, they would want to crush all altcoins as much as possible.

I mentioned that they would sit up and take notice of XRP and this 'halfway to bitcoin' scenario that has occurred and that they would fight back. Heck, the trading platforms themselves have a vested interested in fighting back in as many ways as they can. At least in the idea of making money today.

AS for Binance, their internal half fee thing (lowest fees out there, apparently) is due to their pooling of all your funds into a giant Bitcoin pool.

AND, to add , they lock you up and delay transfers out of your personal wallets when the given currency gets too hot in price. They give excuses for that. They delay you until they recover the difference due to price fluctuations.

I thought I'd write this out, so folks unfamiliar with the crypo market can get a look inside one of the major trading platforms.

Like I said earlier, if one invests in a given altcoin, and tries to play the dips and peaks on a daily basis..as of now, on Binance...it is likely that at least half and to 2/3rds of your investment is set to be siphoned off into bitcoin accounts of others, via attrition in price fluctuation, as the trading platforms are designed to eat your effort and intent...across 'the spread'. (the spread=value change over time)

And if they can't get a spread, they create one. An entirely falsified spread.

So there is a price manipulating whale on binance. And it looks a lot like it is Binance themselves.

Edit: the flip happened about 3am yesterday (Friday night, IIRC). IT looks like a brick wall shift, like someone inaccurately taped together two charts. In minutes bitcoin went up a certain amount, and all the altcoins dropped a certain amount. And the emphasis in direction (of the giant sucking sound) shifted into this high gear that it is right now.

[Callista]

Here is a very funny (3min) vid about Bitcoin - enjoy!

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=aeMv9uKpAZg

[Carmody]

I think that part of the mystery is that it is becoming more and more clear that bitcoin is being decoupled from the price of the altcoins of large value.

that the older methods of bitcoin coupling as the legacy fiat of the marketplace are ending. On late Sunday and early monday the day traders across the world (specifically the east) start getting through their morning java and ..start going to work on bitcoin and the altcoins.

THEN we will see the direct coupling model persist. IMO.

This weekend the model was failing. Some tried to trade as if the coupling was there, like me, but I failed to get anywhere.

As in no more lunch money shakedowns on a daily basis for the now big altcoins. Bitcoin is big but the altcoins are growing up and starting to branch out on their own.

The market is now more obviously entering the flux phase of the cloud of potential.

Nobody knows what this means or how to handle it. It's as if the market has grown from scratch to require the fiat of bitcoin --to bounce off of.

Now what?

Altcoins, get out of the house. You're on your own.

[Cidersomerset]

The Bitcoin Psyop

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=FkhUn7nh33Q

Published on 19 Jan 2018


TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES: https://www.corbettreport.com/bitcoin...

Yes, the blockchain is truly revolutionary. Yes, bitcoin is Tulipmania 2.0. Yes,
cryptocurrency is a nail in the coffin of the bankster parasites. Yes, digital
currency is a tool of the totalitarian tyrants. No, these statements are not
contradictory. But don’t worry if you think they are. You’re just a victim of
"The Bitcoin Psyop."

[Hervé]

This interesting map gives, at a glance, a strong indication as to whom bitcoin is actually a financial tool of:

January 19 2018

[Foxie Loxie]

Oh, WOW! Amazing map!

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Hervé (here)
This interesting map gives, at a glance, a strong indication as to whom bitcoin is actually a financial tool of:

Yup - well said - Bitcoin is (in part) a project of Western intelligence.

The underlying distributed ledger technology, such as seen in blockchains, hashgraph and git source control, is becoming a key technology that extends the data sharing and communication of the Internet to also creating and recording a distributed consensus, across potentially long, slow (at the speed of light, signals take about one and a half hours to get from Saturn to Earth), and unreliable communication links, between humans, digital intelligence (AI bots and such) and other intelligent biological beings (aliens).

But the particular application of this important distributed ledger technology in the form of Bitcoin, and some of the "alt-coins" that are easily exchanged with Bitcoin, have all the earmarks of being a project of Western intelligence.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That's the premise of this thread, that Bitcoin is a project of Western intelligence. It shows on the map that Hervé posted above, and it shows in that Bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies are the primary focus of Clif High this last year, because Clif High has an established history of working for what might be other such projects. For further discussion of why I have doubts about Clif High, see:

• the opening post of this very thread,
• my Post #1695 on the "Q Posts" thread, and
• RunningDeer's response in Post #1700 of that same "Q Posts" thread.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yet another confirmation of these suspected connections between Western Intelligence and Bitcoin has just shown up, from another quarter.

Yesterday several English language websites posted variations of a Sputnik News article that reports some recent remarks made by Natalya Kaspersky — former CEO of Kaspersky Labs and current CEO of InfoWatch. You can find this Sputnik News article at: Bitcoin is a 'Project of US Intelligence,' Kaspersky Lab Co-Founder Claims.

One of Natalya Kaspersky's slides in her talk read:

Bitcoin is a project of American intelligence agencies, which was designed to provide quick funding for US, British and Canadian intelligence activities in different countries. [The technology] is 'privatized,' just like the Internet, GPS and TOR. In fact, it is dollar 2.0. Its rate is controlled by the owners of exchanges,

As with most major operations, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are not serving just one agenda. Not just (1) Western intelligence agencies are involved; but also (2) major financial institutions and central banks are involved, (3) the next "new world monetary system", that replaces King Dollar, will almost surely have an important element of such cryptocurrency technology, and (4) the underlying distributed consensus and ledger technology has long term importance for the mix of human and digital (aka artificial) intelligence that it will take to "conquer" and extract resources from the rest of our solar system.

[Anchor]

For context please refer to my previous post I smell a Rat

Having a large amount of people investing in crypto is quite useful to those who wish to take that money from said large amount of people.

The Bitfinex and Tether scam is currently the biggest elephant in the room and the main reason Bitcoin has a high "valuation"

Today I read something that has pushed this illusion of value even further: http://stockemperor.com/currencies/t...us-government/

Tether has now issued over 2 billion in USDT, with 0.7 billion of that "minted" this year (2018).

We all believe them when they say it is all backed by real USD reserves like they claim don't we! Dont we? Yeah right...

I recommend giving serious thought to maintaining a position such that you have cashed out at least enough to cover your base costs for this adventure together with the taxes associated with the gains in your local jurisdiction.

Or, quite simply, be prepared to loose it all and go through the stress of seeing a crash happen with your assets tied up in it.

By loose it all I mean both the money you put in and all the time and energy you put into it.

Stop reading now unless you want to know about what I am doing with it all. I am still long on bitcoin, ripple and dash. I don't care about crashes. I did sell a bunch of gains before last Tuesday. I am no longer "trading" as I found it was too stressful. I was winning at it overall and making "gains". It was fun - well it started that way - but in the end I decided that when you take it all into consideration I was basically loosing at life - one can't be outside having fun being alive if you are glued to charts and stressing over mistakes.

John.. / Anchor..

[ThePythonicCow]

By the way, one long standing claimed advantage of the blockchain protocol used by Bitcoin, that it is "democratic ... not centralized" is (in my view) deeply misleading.

To overly state the matter:

Bitcoin is not democratic!

... not any more than the Internet is necessarily and fundamentally democratic just because a key low level protocol, the CSMA/CD (Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detection) protocol used on ethernets is essentially de-centralized.

The protocols used to keep data synchronized across multiple network nodes (multiple computers connected by a network) are at a fundamentally lower level than the "democratic" vs "centralized" properties that matter to us humans, to our activities, property and organizations.

Remarkably fair and democratic social, political, economic, monetary, etc institutions can be built on top of computer/network systems that use centralized protocols, and vice versa. More over, what was once fair and democratic can become brutally tyrannical, and vice versa.

It is deeply misleading ... in this case likely a deliberate part of the psyop ... to project the supposedly "democratic" or "de-centralized" technical properties of the data synchronization layer of a network of computers onto the manner of interactions of humans and their social/political/economic/... groups that happen to be using that network.

[Morbid]

Posted by Hervé (here)
This interesting map gives, at a glance, a strong indication as to whom bitcoin is actually a financial tool of:

January 19 2018

this map is quite misguiding. in russia crypto is not illegal.

[Hervé]

Maybe:

• Bitcoin ban in Russia

• Bitcoins cannot be used in Russia - Prosecutor General’s Office

• Bitcoin mining still remains illegal in Russia, as the only currency that can be issued within the country is the Ruble. Users are, however, free to buy, sell, and transfer the digital currency with no restrictions applied.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Hervé (here)
Maybe:

In reading these articles, which include announcements of cryptocurrency bans in Russia from 2014, and subsequent shifts to "regulating, not banning", I am seeing much the same pattern that I see, in various ways, elsewhere, such as in South Korea in the last few weeks.

The threat of Draconian banning measures seems present, but usually seems to be followed up by more nuanced responses, including banning some of the more egregiously fraudulent crypto-currency activity, while at the same time endeavoring to integrate crypto-currencies into the existing legal, regulatory, tax, financial and monetary structures, institutions, and practices.

In short: "Yes, crypto's are coming, but no, they aren't going to allowed free run outside of the main power structures."

The underlying, core, blockchain technology may provide cryptographically strong protection from hacking the agreed upon ledger of settled transactions, however the manner in which that particular capability is integrated into the various institutions and practices of our civilization is far more complex, and subject to an extensive and growing number of "hacks" by those with sufficient power.

Similarly, while the underlying TCP/IP protocol of the Internet was and remains quite resistant to any single point (or limited number of points) of failure such as might arise from a nuclear war (an original motive of DARPA for developing this protocol), the World Wide Web that sits above this has a far more complex and evolving, over space and time relation to the more powerful entities on this planet. In other words, the average Twitter, Google, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, banking, email, ... user on the Web is far, far removed from being an independent actor operating freely outside of state or corporate influence or control.

Similarly, the providing of what would have been super-computers back when I started my computer career, in the 1960's and 1970's, to everyone and their great aunt, in the form of powerful desktop PC's and handheld smartphones and tablets, is far, far removed from providing everyone with truly independent and substantial computing power, outside of the control and reach of the most powerful agencies, nations, and corporations, such as the NSA, China, Apple, Google, and Intel.

As I noted a few posts above, Bitcoin is not democratic! One particular layer of the protocol that uses blockchains is quite resistant to hacking by "non-state"(and otherwise not powerful) actors, but I have little doubt that powerful state (and corporate, and digitally intelligent, aka "AI") actors will be deeply involved in the entire eco-system.

Similar co-opting of what initially seemed to be tools supporting human freedom has occurred with other technology over the centuries, such as guns, schools, farming, medicine, and books.

I can confidently predict that the struggle of liberty versus tyranny will continue.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Paul (here)
As I noted a few posts above, Bitcoin is not democratic! One particular layer of the protocol that uses blockchains is quite resistant to hacking by "non-state"(and otherwise not powerful) actors, but I have little doubt that powerful state (and corporate, and digitally intelligent, aka "AI") actors will be deeply involved in the entire eco-system.

Posted by turiya (here)
"Sure crypto currencies may be decentralized, but the blockchains are centralized... "

"The bankers don't want to destroy Bitcoin, they want to control it."

These two quotes from turiya's Post #99 on the The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI thread call out something that is basic, simple, and obvious ... that I've been overlooking in the work on this thread.

The blockchain algorithm that is used to update the record of transactions on a blockchain such as Bitcoin's is distributed - yes. Multiple "bitcoin miners" have to agree on what transactions will be added to the Bitcoin blockchain, each 10 minute cycle.

However ... the Bitcoin blockchain itself is a single item, a globally agreed upon, continuously growing, ledger of transactions. That blockchain, the blockchains of similar cryptocurrencies, will be a useful tool in constructing a world-wide monetary system.

The globalists are no doubt salivating ... and have been salivating for quite some time.

[Michelle Marie]

Point of interest...

This article I was reading about the Red Cross refers to Swtzerland being the "keystone" and indicates that the BIS in Switzerland (Bank of International Settlements) controls all central banks and created Bitcoin in an attempt to control currency. Is the author speculating?

Red Cross -- Switzerland "Keystone" and BIS created crypto currencies

http://www.astoundingelements.com/qa...-keystone.html

MM

[Michelle Marie]

Posted by Morbid (here)

Posted by Hervé (here)
This interesting map gives, at a glance, a strong indication as to whom bitcoin is actually a financial tool of:

January 19 2018

this map is quite misguiding. in russia crypto is not illegal.

Asking Bill about Ecuador. Is it illegal there as the map indicates?

MM

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Paul (here)
In short: "Yes, crypto's are coming, but no, they aren't going to allowed free run outside of the main power structures."

The underlying, core, blockchain technology may provide cryptographically strong protection from hacking the agreed upon ledger of settled transactions, however the manner in which that particular capability is integrated into the various institutions and practices of our civilization is far more complex, and subject to an extensive and growing number of "hacks" by those with sufficient power.

Similarly, while the underlying TCP/IP protocol of the Internet was and remains quite resistant to any single point (or limited number of points) of failure such as might arise from a nuclear war (an original motive of DARPA for developing this protocol), the World Wide Web that sits above this has a far more complex and evolving, over space and time relation to the more powerful entities on this planet. In other words, the average Twitter, Google, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, banking, email, ... user on the Web is far, far removed from being an independent actor operating freely outside of state or corporate influence or control.

...

As I noted a few posts above, Bitcoin is not democratic! One particular layer of the protocol that uses blockchains is quite resistant to hacking by "non-state"(and otherwise not powerful) actors, but I have little doubt that powerful state (and corporate, and digitally intelligent, aka "AI") actors will be deeply involved in the entire eco-system.

Similar co-opting of what initially seemed to be tools supporting human freedom has occurred with other technology over the centuries, such as guns, schools, farming, medicine, and books.

I can confidently predict that the struggle of liberty versus tyranny will continue.

Rob Kirby, one of the more respected and established commentators in the precious metals markets for many, many years, comments on Bitcoin and Blockchain technology between the 1:20 and 9:35 marks in the following video:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ul4KZyYk3fo

Rob Kirby does an excellent (if somewhat hesitant in his choice of words) job of spelling out the key selling points of Bitcoin that I think are wrong.

Kirby buys into the notion that blockchain technology is fundamentally distributed and hence quite resistant to central control. A key point of mine, in the post of mine that I quote above, is that such claims conflate (jumble together) the multiple layers of a complex system. It is entirely possible to build economic, financial, monetary, legal or other transaction or property systems that are deeply under the central control of the most powerful amongst us, and to do so using in part technology that has some underlying layer that happens to be widely distributed. As I noted above in slightly different words, Internet Packet (IP) routing is deeply decentralized and distributed amongst billions of routers, computers, smart phones, smart devices and other such devices connected to or implementing the Internet infrastructure. That doesn't keep an Amazon, Google, or Facebook from exerting massive centralized control over portions of the Web that have grown up, on top of this Internet.

Kirby also buys into the notion that cryptocurrency "mining" is and will continue to be an essential part of the success of whatever cryptocurrencies succeed. "Mining", aka "proof of work", is a deliberately and extraordinarilly inefficient means of updating the blockchain. Many thousands of computers compete to find a random lucky number that when, inserted into the next block of transactions, will cause the checksum, aka hash, of that block to have enough leading zeros. This method of updating the blockchain requires many of these computers to synchronize, over the Internet, to come to agreement as to which one of them found one of these lucky numbers that works for the next block, and thus to agree on which new incoming requests to add a new transaction to the blockchain will be included in that next block. This entire mechanism is several orders of magnitude too slow, too energy intensive, too data storage intensive and too data communication intensive to be the long term successful winner for distributed consensus mechanisms. Once extended from just this planet to the solar system, where some planets are hours away at the speed of light, this mechanism becomes essentially useless. Alternatives are becoming visible that radically alter the economics of such distributed consensus mechanisms, such as the delegated proof of stake behind EOS, or the (unfortunately patented) hashgraph algorithm.

Kirby is wrong, in my view, in claiming that "mining", aka proof of work, is essential to the success of cryptocurrencies, and he is sufficiently clueless in his (lack of) awareness of the distributed consensus algorithms as to not even be wrong about what sort(s) of such algorithms have the properties required for at least two of the major uses that I anticipate: (1) the transaction fabric of the world's monetary system over the coming century (or centuries), and (2) the consensus fabric of a distributed network of digitally intelligent devices and digitally connected humans, spreading out over our solar system.

Kirby is also wrong, in my view, to be following the forecasts and analysis of Clif High in this area. I spelled out my doubts of Clif High in earlier posts on this and other threads, and recently summarized those doubts in this post, twelve days ago now.

===

The primary reason that post the above video of Rob Kirby is that it clearly and succinctly spells out the current dominant view of the merits and future potential of Bitcoin, with which I disagree on a couple of fundamental points.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Paul (here)
Imagine if all that was able to be "front run" by a vastly more integrated and powerful system, a system sufficiently "intelligent" that it could go from first seeing the rules of the game of chess, to beating chess grandmasters and the previously most powerful chess computers ... in four hours: Alpha Zero Teaches Itself Chess 4 Hours, Then Beats Dad.

Oh - my gracious. Perhaps AlphaZero wasn't so smart after all. Miles Mathis has analyzed one of the games in which Google's AlphaZero beat the previous best chess computer, Stockfish8, after only 4 hours of self-taught learning playing against itself.

You can find Miles analysis under the title "Addendum January 23, 2018" in the last five pages of his paper Like Everything Else, Chess is Fixed (pdf). Miles is working off this Youtube video that shows all the moves and provides some basic commentary of its own.

In this game, AlphaZero is playing as black, and Stockfish8 as white. By Miles' analysis, Stockfish8 plays surprisingly poorly thoughout the game, not at all like the supposed "chess genius" that it is. It is the contention of Miles that this highly touted victory of the new AI abilities of AlphaZero is a con job - that Stockfish8 threw the game. AlphaZero shows some sense of positional power, but Stockfish8 is remarkably weak in developing its position, and wastes a bunch of moves just moving the same piece (sometimes a bishop, sometimes its King) back and forth. But for one pawn, by one square, Stockfish8 never got any piece past the middle of the board.

Supposedly, AlphaZero won 28 out of 100 games against Stockfish8, and drew the remaining 72 games, with Stockfish8 never winning. Google is only releasing 10 of these 100 games to the public. One (well, at least myself and Miles) might wonder if Google is hiding something by not publishing the other 90 games.

Miles concludes "that this big computer match was manufactured to make Google look good. In other words, another piece of propaganda. On a larger scale, it was meant to sell AI, which they have been pushing for years."

They were hyping AI with out-sized claims back when I took my computer science degree, in the late 1970's, and apparently they are still at it.

[ThePythonicCow]

.
A most excellent explanation of Bitcoin: Bitcoin Doesn’t Exist – The Full Story.

If you're not sure what all this cryptocurrency, blockchain, bitcoin, etc is all about, and have a couple of hours to spend reading a well written explanation that's a pleasure to read - then this is the article you should read.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Michelle Marie (here)
Asking Bill about Ecuador. Is it illegal there as the map indicates?

MM

I was surprised to see that... and I have no idea!