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

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    United States Administrator ThePythonicCow's Avatar
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    Default Bitcoin, the war on cash, Clif High, and the NSA's long range plans

    This long post has four major parts:
    • The NSA has been planning for money to "go electronic" for decades.
    • The new global monetary system will be centrally controlled and debt-based.
    • Clif High may be a "salesman" for this new monetary system.
    • The claimed "basis" (most valued fungible assets) of this new system will include silver.
    ===

    Part 1: The NSA has been planning for money to "go electronic" for decades.
    NSA Paper (1998): Transactional Money Comes to the World Wide Web.
    The bastards in power have been spending the last several decades moving humanity into the nearly instantaneous, ubiquitous, electronic, digital world of the World Wide Web (aka the "Matrix"), a massively surveillable and controllable, at both large scale group levels and individual "person of interest" levels.

    They have moved, or are now moving, our "news", entertainment, shopping, politics, education, social media, health (aka sickness management), marketing, distribution and sales to a world of dominated by smart phones, computers and a massive World Wide network.

    If you stop for just a minute to think about it, it should be overwhelmingly obvious that "they" would want to move transactions, of money and of contract, to the Web as well.

    In 1996, over 20 years ago now, the National Security Agency (NSA) spelled out just such a plan, in some detail, anticipating the release of Bitcoin in 2008 by over a decade. That NSA paper, HOW TO MAKE A MINT: THE CRYPTOGRAPHY OF ANONYMOUS ELECTRONIC CASH, is still available on MIT's website, 20 years later.

    This NSA paper does not spell out the distributed nature of the database used by Bitcoin and subsequent crypto-currencies. Rather this paper presumes that one or banks will provide the robust and secure transactional databases needed to implement this. But other key crypto-currency features are there.

    I was alerted to this 1998 NSA crypto-currency paper by this article: Is Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies the result of a government experiment imagined 12 years before Satoshi white paper?, which in turn includes this Youtube video:


    ===

    Part 2: The new global monetary system will be centrally controlled and debt-based.

    The severe transaction volume limitations on Bitcoin are forcing, and will continue to force, most transactions to occur off the main blockchain. The elite bastards have no intention of empowering 7 billion people to make arbitrary person-to-person transactions in volume, anonymously, outside of banking control, and for nearly zero cost.

    No one with just a smartphone, and few without an expensive crypto-currency mining rig, can actually afford, even now, the time, money, electrical power and technical expertise required to run a first class node on most such crypto-currency blockchains.

    As the size of the blockchain databases increase, as their technology becomes more complicated, as the transaction volumes increase, and as the regulatory constraints become more cumbersome, this will become increasingly so. All ordinary individuals, businesses and governments, except for a few large central banks and sovereign governments, will rely on major service providers to handle this electronic computational, storage and communication traffic ... just as they do now.

    The hype that a crypto-currency system removes the control of central powers over the monetary system is just that ... hype.

    Also, besides the issue of who controls the transaction systems that move money, and increasingly contractual obligations, between parties, there is also the question of how "wealth" is generated. This boils down to the question of who decides, and by what means do they determine, which projects (building a bridge, bombing a village, running a world-wide drug cartel, ...) will be funded.

    That will be done just as it is now ... by central banks controlling how much is lent into existence and to whom, mostly working through the retail banks, governments and corporations that they control, thanks to their control over the creation of debt and money.

    We live in a debt-money based system and I see no way, short of a major collapse of our "civilization", that this will change. It is working far too well for the elite bastards.

    ===

    Part 3: Clif High may be a "salesman" for this new monetary system.

    I love listening to Clif High ... he's my kind of old fart computer geek. However ...

    In 2008, Clif High was predicting a summer of hell and a bloody revolution in America in 2009, followed by alien wars by 2011.

    In 2009, Clif High was predicting alien contact and an American Revolution, and other catastrophic earth and solar changes, leading to the death of a billion people, all by 2011.

    In 2010, Clif High was predicting escalating tensions in a "crocodile teeth" pattern (the same pattern he is forecasting, now in 2017, for the dollar price of bitcoin), building to a peek and a major release event, Nov 8-11, 2010, involving something such as a November 2010 "global thermonuclear war as the Allies take on the TPTB and their stooges, the Israelis and the American Military Empire. "

    In 2011, Clif High was predicting food hyperinflation, earth changes including “planetary earthquakes”, social chaos, and government collapse.

    Other predictions by Clif High for the period 2009 through 2012 included massive world wide volcanos, a massive increase in UFO sightings, and the collapse of the US Dollar and economy.

    In April of 2013, Clif High was predicting a "Global Coastal Event" (GCE) by May of 2013. This GCE would be "every much to be the greatest event in our current human history".

    Clif High went somewhat more quiet in 2014 and 2015 (based on frequency of threads mentioning him on ProjectAvalon.net)

    In early 2016, Clif High was predicting that 2016 would be a "Year of Chaos, Nuclear Fallout, Megaquakes, Epidemics, Weather Wars".

    By late 2016, Clif High was anticipating that "At some point in 2017, probably past mid-year, we’re going to be looking at hyperinflation so bad that the DOW will be measured around $100,000 to $125,000." Since there are still four months remaining in 2017, as I write this, this could still happen ... but I'm not expecting it.

    Currently, in mid 2017, Clif High is predicting major increases in the Dollar price of Bitcoins and silver, orders of magnitude greater than present. ... Perhaps, based on the success (or lack thereof) of his some of his previous predictions, I shouldn't invest all my (puny) life savings in Bitcoin and silver.

    My guess is that Clif High is hyping forecasts that serve the interests of some of the elite bastards. Other "alternative media analysts" that I enjoy following, such as Jim Willie, are making similar forecasts about silver and/or bitcoin. So I conclude that therefore, for some reason, the elite bastards want to hype the future of silver and bitcoin.

    I also have listened, many times, over many years, to Clif High describe the Perl and C code that implements his Webbot, and I have ocassionally purchased one of his Webbot reports. I have some 40 years of expertise in such scripting and code myself. My guess is that Clif High's webbot is less than he presents it to be, and that he uses the "magic of code that few could understand", but that is rather mundane in its abilities, to mystify and obfuscate the true origins of his analysis and forecast.

    ===

    Part 4: The claimed "basis" (most valued fungible assets) of this new system will include silver.

    Note, if you listen to Clif High's most recent silver forecasts, such as his interview a couple of days ago with Greg Hunter at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmWg7NRx-Ow, you will hear Clif High proclaim what are (in my view) several often stated but quite deceptive myths about Bitcoin. Clif claims that the powers that be are powerless to monitor or control Bitcoin, that Bitcoin is a store of wealth replacing gold, and that the distributed database over multiple independent mining computers can be made fast enough, since it's "just software". He nearly ignores the fundamental debt-money basis of our global monetary system, which will (in my view) continue to be the dominant way that "digital money" (and the corresponding debt obligations) are created in the world's coming new monetary system. In Clif's view, debt generation is a property of the existing, failing, system, which will not apply to crypto currencies.

    But there was a new (to me) twist to what Clif says in this interview (listen at about 19 minutes, then 23 minutes, into the above Youtube link). Clif High predicts that there will be silver crypto-currencies that are not based on stored silver, but on reliable industrial supplies of silver. This resembles the "petro-dollar" in my view ... some 10 to 100 US Dollars reliably got you a barrel of oil over the last half century. It seems that Clif High is predicting that holding a unit of one of these silver cryptos will reliably get you an ounce of silver for your factory in China or India. But Clif High leaves out one-half of that equation ... why would the silver miners want to receive such a crypto for the silver they deliver? The Saudi's and other OPEC nations wanted to receive US Dollars because the US military/financial/intelligence agencies bought/sold/compromised/assassinated/bribed/blackmailed/bombed/terrorized/etc the leaders of OPEC nations into taking US Dollars for their oil. The US Dollars spent by the world's nations on oil imports ended up flowing back to the New York money center to purchase US Treasuries, most of which the oil exporting nations will never receive fair value for. Clif High offers us no clue what would provide the balancing transaction for these silver crypto currencies - where would they flow to - what would the silver miners do with the huge stash of these crypto currencies that they accumulated?

    ===

    In short, and the reason I decided to make this long post:
    • For many years, Clif's been selling a collection of views that some elite want to be sold.
    • I have started listening to Clif not for real insight, but for clues as to what the elite's next bubble/scam is.
    • Clif is selling (over selling) cryptos and silver ... so that's part of the elite's next bubble/scam.
    Just as my gut instincts served me well, leading me to get into, then get out of, Silicon Valley dot-com stocks in the 1990's, and to get into and then get out of, single-family residential real estate (a small McMansion in Silicon Valley), similarly my gut sense is that there will necessarily be a "new" "Tulip Mania", forming yet another bubble and bust. That's how things work, in a debt-money based monetary system. Something has to be hyped as having expanding future value ... until the elite crash that market too, and pick up real assets for pennies on the dollar.

    US Treasuries have been one of the assets serving in this role since the early 1970's, as their steadily falling interest rate manifested a steadily rising value of Treasuries ... a steadily expanding future value that encouraged the deepest stashes of saved wealth, the central banks of major nations, to remain mostly in US Treasuries.

    Several "stores of wealth", including these US Treasuries, mortgage backed securities, securitized student loan and auto loan debt, corporate lending for stock buy backs, corporate and government pension plans, interest rate and foreign exchange derivatives, and seemingly unending rising stock market valuations ... will all see dramatic declines in actual delivered real wealth with the coming monetary reset.

    Always, always, there must be something "new" to replace the promises of future wealth that are dashed when the previous "store of wealth" collapses. Only that way can people, businesses and governments be enticed to enter into ever rising debt again, following the collapse of previous wealth stores.

    It sure looks to me to be that silver and cryptos are shaping up to be key parts of that new "promise for a shining future." Also somehow in ways not yet clear to me, I also expect that new forms of energy and new space faring and mining technologies will become part of this promise.

    Back to the opening part of this long post ... the above linked 1998 NSA paper provides good evidence that the world-wide "webification" of monetary transactions has been a key element of the elite's plans for the world's new monetary system, to replace the US Dollar, after its collapse as forecast on the January 1988 cover of The Economist magazine, almost 30 years ago now.
    Last edited by ThePythonicCow; 7th August 2017 at 15:16.
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    Default Re: Bitcoin, the war on cash, Clif High, and the NSA's long range plans

    Well put, Paul.

    What I see with BTC is replacing a fiat currency, which (at this point) still has the full-faith of the US, with a fiat currency based on nothing more than code and hype.

    Why BTC is now at $3,350 today as opposed to $2,600 a day ago? I have no idea, since it trades on whims and no economical modeling.

    I think Clif's pumping of BTC and other cryptos comes from him being an early mover on these. So like many on Wall Street, he is talking up his own book.

    Following his story over the years he has talked of being dirt poor and whatever, now he has restored an RV and has moved to a bigger property. It appears he has come into some serious BTC profits.

    Thanks again for the detailed post Paul.
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    Default Re: Bitcoin, the war on cash, Clif High, and the NSA's long range plans

    I am still puzzled how Satoshi Nakamoto has been able to keep his/her/their cover.

    It is possible the NSA or another intelligence service is behind Bitcoin.

    That's why i heavily wash my cryptocoins.

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

    Quote Posted by mgray (here)
    Well put, Paul.

    What I see with BTC is replacing a fiat currency, which (at this point) still has the full-faith of the US, with a fiat currency based on nothing more than code and hype.

    Why BTC is now at $3,350 today as opposed to $2,600 a day ago? I have no idea, since it trades on whims and no economical modeling.

    I think Clif's pumping of BTC and other cryptos comes from him being an early mover on these. So like many on Wall Street, he is talking up his own book.

    Following his story over the years he has talked of being dirt poor and whatever, now he has restored an RV and has moved to a bigger property. It appears he has come into some serious BTC profits.

    Thanks again for the detailed post Paul.
    Cliff High could be preforming a pump & dump scheme. However he could also just be a Bitcoin "believer"

    Many people exploit crypto currencies.

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

    Well Paul you prodded me into writing today on BTC and how price discovery is a myth.

    The price went up $70 while I was writing the post. Why? No one knows.
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    Default Re: Bitcoin, the war on cash, Clif High, and the NSA's long range plans

    Quote Posted by mgray (here)
    I think Clif's pumping of BTC and other cryptos comes from him being an early mover on these. So like many on Wall Street, he is talking up his own book.
    I'm pretty sure you're right on that ... Clif is talking his book.

    A few months ago, Clif quipped that he had (if I remember right) some 80 or 800 (?) bitcoin that he had obtained very early on for almost no cost, and that he had the key for on some old disk drive(s) that he had not even looked at for years. He figured that money was still there, if and when he bothered to dig up the key. Unstated was that if he hadn't bothered yet to go looking for the key, then he likely had quite a bit more bitcoin, in more recently active accounts. Certainly if I thought I had the keys to that much bitcoin, I'd not be posting here on Avalon. Rather my entire focus would be on making sure I still had those keys and access to that money, as it would make a major change in my life style and wealth.
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    Default Re: Bitcoin, the war on cash, Clif High, and the NSA's long range plans

    What's also interesting to note are his remarks on gold. In his opinion, gold will initially rise 3-4 fold but eventually lose is luster due to overabundance on this planet. That is something that I first heard from David Wilcock. As such, red flags are going up for me...
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    Default Re: Bitcoin, the war on cash, Clif High, and the NSA's long range plans

    A fraud may cry wolf twice before no one believes him. C High is exceptional in that he can cry wolf a few dozen times and still have a large audience hunting for wolves. The last time I believed in him was when he said the D Jones would go over 20000 and immediately drop back never to see 20000 again. Considering that years ago I took his global coastal event quite seriously, I have to laugh at myself.
    No doubt he and many others are working for the elites. They are assigned to identities that possess different extraordinary skills and experiences and the target population is those who think they are awaken ones.
    So be humble when you think you know the government conspiracies, and you are spending an enormous amount of time listening to the top alternative shows. To know the truth you have to be a researcher youself.
    Last edited by syrwong; 7th August 2017 at 14:29.

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


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

    Paul, everything else aside, I'm having trouble equating the current debt-based fiat system to Bitcoin. Bitcoin's value is supposed to be based on the fact that (1) quantities are permanently and forever limited, and (2) demand will increase as more and more people use Bitcoin, and more businesses accept it as currency. Gold has not been something you can eat or get much other practical use out of either historically, except for jewelry, but that hasn't stopped people from agreeing upon a more or less arbitrary value in order to conduct trade on a society-wide basis.

    The globalist bent on world digital currency is a great concern to me in Bitcoin investment too. But I think there are many smart developers who are trying to avoid the traps being laid. For example, there was a big push from a big American Bitcoin exchange, backed by Wall Street bankers, to change the Bitcoin protocol in order to reduce the number of nodes running the block chain, requiring these nodes to be larger to handle more traffic, and thus limiting nodes to people (or rather corporations) who have the resources (like bankers) to pay for such things. The push-back was significant enough from developers that it had to drop the argument.

    At any rate, you must also consider that unless we reverse our technological/Internet integration trends, it is going to be impossible to separate currencies from the Internet and eventually digital currencies in one form or another are going to be nearly impossible to suppress anyway. Rather than avoiding them entirely we may as well try to construct one democratically, with smart developers from all over the world, as has been occurring so far.

    China, Japan, India, Russia, Europe and the US are all pursuing different policies right now with Bitcoin and it is creating a bit of a mess. Bitcoin Cash just split from the standard Bitcoin blockchain, and Japan is clearly moving to favor the Bitcoin Cash fork. China has monopolized Bitcoin exchanges and Japan obviously does not want to be beholden to a digital currency manipulated by their arch rivals. These kinds of power plays create a much more complicated horizon than simply globalists vs. little people.
    Last edited by A Voice from the Mountains; 7th August 2017 at 18:17.

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

    Quote Posted by mgray (here)
    Why BTC is now at $3,350 today as opposed to $2,600 a day ago? I have no idea, since it trades on whims and no economical modeling.
    Bitcoin is in demand by several different groups for different reasons, sometimes we'd need insider info to determine what they are thinking.

    1) China is exerting tremendous pressure on Bitcoin and the Chinese or Chinese servers already conduct about 90% of all exchange activity. The price of Bitcoin can fluctuate wildly with a single policy statement by the Chinese government. I have seen it twice already just this year, and Chinese government announcements have been the cause of the biggest Bitcoin crashes.

    2) Japan has just moved toward a new fork from Bitcoin called Bitcoin Cash, and is implemented it in stores.

    3) Wall Street bankers are investing in Bitcoin, no doubt for bad reasons. Pump and dump or else subversion and influence for the long-term would be my guess. "If you can't beat em, join em."

    4) The Trump administration has been cracking down on crime on the dark web, which will impact Bitcoin demand by drug, weapon, human trafficking cartels, etc. AlphaBay, the largest dark web market in the world, was recently shuttered by Jeff Sessions. The FBI no doubt has their servers and lots of additional leads now.


    Some people buy to diversify their assets, as a long-term investment gamble, some engage in more rapid trading for short-term profits, some are buying to actually conduct untaxed transactions on both the regular Internet and dark web. If the Euro crashes, you can predict increased demand in Bitcoin. If even it looks as though the EU might dissolve, Bitcoin demand increases. The Greek crisis greatly increased demand. Also in Latin America, prior to the situation in Venezuela for example, citizens began pouring their savings into Bitcoin. Announcements related to the technology also cause fluctuations. If you monitor the "pulse" of the geeks developing the protocols it can give some indication of what is happening. But you can't really predict what China is going to say tomorrow.

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

    Yes I have written about all these being the reason behind it rising, but on a day-to-day basis and the moves today (Monday) there is no economic or financial reason for it to jump today. That's what I am getting at. It rises more on whim.
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    Default Re: Bitcoin, the war on cash, Clif High, and the NSA's long range plans

    There are some who believe Bitcoin's relative volatility will match that of fiat currencies within the next couple of years or so. Here's one article: http://woobull.com/bitcoin-volatilit...ncies-by-2019/




    I'm skeptical simply because I think the whole market is in serious trouble for all forms of currency. There are "flash crashes" going on in the silver market to suppress prices and all kinds of weird stuff lately. By 2019 fiat currency may also be more volatile. What is happening in Venezuela right now is a warning to the world.

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

    The only way anyone should indulge in purchasing Bitcoins and such other trash is if the sellers accept the fictional bits from the buyer's computers in payment. Tit for Tat.

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

    Paul, while concurring with many (most ?) of your observations regarding the cryptocurrency phenomenon, I have to say I come to almost diametrically opposite conclusions regarding their origins, nature and ultimate intent. It’s quite perplexing how you cite example after example of how bitcoin *doesn’t* remotely resemble a centrally controlled, one-world, debt-backed global monetary system and then finally conclude that’s exactly what it is, based on what ?…..that it’s ‘over hyped’ and that a retired Microsoft troubleshooter with a cult following promotes it ?

    I don’t think you make a very strong case. In particular I find the following points notably void of consistency or analytical completeness:

    Quote Posted by Paul (here)
    [*]The NSA has been planning for money to "go electronic" for decades.
    Why is this always banded about as a stick with which to beat cryptocurrencies with ? The nature of money isn’t defined by whether it manifests physically or electronically. Both are simply a token counter in some broader ledger of economic credit or debt. What is a Gold coin ? Just a physical bitcoin in that sense - it’s performing exactly the same monetary function except it has a problem with travelling through wires so anyone wanting to transact on an electronic platform where the bulk of the world’s trade occurs is going to need a non-physical token of some kind.

    It isn’t the “NSA” who’ve been planning for money to go electronic for decades - it’s anyone who fancied spending “more time with their kids” rather than trucking it out to the nearest Amazon warehouse with a bucketfull of banknotes to exchange for their new PC.

    Quote Posted by Paul (here)
    [*]The new global monetary system will be centrally controlled and debt-based.
    So the fact that bitcoin is not centrally controlled and not debt-based makes it a candidate for the elite’s “one world currency” ? (Not to mention the fact that bitcoin is not even a ‘single’ blockchain-based currency but one of hundreds).

    Quote Posted by Paul (here)
    [*]Clif High may be a "salesman" for this new monetary system.
    Clif High may be a salesman for lots of things but the fact that he gets some things right and so much else wrong probably means he is what he appears to be - somebody trying to predict the future and having about as much success as most of us on the wrong side of a few glasses of finest Italian Barolo. I doubt Clif High is the new Christine Lagarde in waiting.

    Quote Posted by Paul (here)
    In 1996, over 20 years ago now, the National Security Agency (NSA) spelled out just such a plan, in some detail, anticipating the release of Bitcoin in 2008 by over a decade. That NSA paper, HOW TO MAKE A MINT: THE CRYPTOGRAPHY OF ANONYMOUS ELECTRONIC CASH, is still available on MIT's website, 20 years later.

    This NSA paper does not spell out the distributed nature of the database used by Bitcoin and subsequent crypto-currencies. Rather this paper presumes that one or banks will provide the robust and secure transactional databases needed to implement this. But other key crypto-currency features are there.
    Ok. Lets take a closer look at that paper - one that I am quite familiar with having scrutinised it many times for the exact same reasons that you are citing it here.

    It sets out a conceptual design (note, conceptual, not implementational) for a partially decentralised, encrypted network capable of supporting peer to peer transactions. However there are two big elephants in the room that make this NOT a blueprint for the current bitcoin implementation. The first is kind of obvious if you look at Figure 1: there is a great big bank in the loop. i.e. this is a blueprint for debt-backed money, not an unbacked bearer-token. The second is that the transaction protocol is (by implication) encrypted so that the actual transacting engine is hidden from view. So again, citing this paper as a piece of evidence undermines your case that bitcoin is some “NWO global currency by stealth”, rather than supports it IMO.

    Having said that, there is a type of cryptocurrency that does bear much better comparison to its design parameters and that is the so called “Cryptonote” protocol which forms the basis of currencies like Bytecoin, Monero and Boolberry. Like Satoshi, nobody actually knows conclusively what the origin of this protocol was. Its creation is attributed originally to a pseudonominous author named Nicolas van Saberhagen and it differs from Bitcoin in that its transacting engine is not transparent and its address balances are only accessible to those holding private keys. If you’re looking for a suspicious, potentially back-doored candidate based on that NSA paper then this is a much more likely actor since whatever bitcoin is or isn’t, its entire state is at least transparent and auditable by all and sundry.

    Quote Posted by Paul (here)
    The severe transaction volume limitations on Bitcoin are forcing, and will continue to force, most transactions to occur off the main blockchain. The elite bastards have no intention of empowering 7 billion people to make arbitrary person-to-person transactions in volume, anonymously, outside of banking control, and for nearly zero cost….The hype that a crypto-currency system removes the control of central powers over the monetary system is just that ... hype.
    With respect, this is a gross generalisation IMHO. The true picture - not just for bitcoin but for any monetary base - is much more complex as I’m sure you must know, but apart from that the statement that bitcoin’s impact on centralisation is “just hype” is surely nonsense by any measure.

    For a start, it isn’t debt-backed. The monetary base is issued by a decentralised mining process which does not rely on willing parties queuing up to sign mortgage bonds. Secondly, there isn’t a central authority deciding who can mine and who can’t. (There are semi-centralised ‘pools’ but even these are unregulated and unlimited). Thirdly, whatever bitcoin’s limitations regarding transacting capacity, they do not impact its properties as a decentralised monetary base, nor remotely return it to anything that looks like a national central bank.

    Quote Posted by Paul (here)
    Also, besides the issue of who controls the transaction systems that move money, and increasingly contractual obligations, between parties, there is also the question of how "wealth" is generated. This boils down to the question of who decides, and by what means do they determine, which projects (building a bridge, bombing a village, running a world-wide drug cartel, ...) will be funded.

    That will be done just as it is now ... by central banks controlling how much is lent into existence and to whom…We live in a debt-money based system and I see no way, short of a major collapse of our "civilization", that this will change. It is working far too well for the elite bastards.
    All I can say is try it.

    Try using it and living on it - you’ll see that this statement is well wide of the mark. Sure, the commercial gateways are still controlled by the likes of Visa and MasterCard (e.g. if you live off a bitcoin-backed debit card) but that doesn’t suddenly make your weekly grocery purchase “debt backed”. The financial system is complex with many layers stacked on top of one another. Bitcoin (and the other cryptos) is a base layer but how much of it forms the broader flesh of the commercial realm is up to us - the users - not central banks. So I don’t agree with your blanket pessimism on this point.
    Last edited by indigopete; 8th August 2017 at 01:34.

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

    Quote Posted by A Voice from the Mountains (here)
    Paul, everything else aside, I'm having trouble equating the current debt-based fiat system to Bitcoin. Bitcoin's value is supposed to be based on the fact that (1) quantities are permanently and forever limited, and (2) demand will increase as more and more people use Bitcoin, and more businesses accept it as currency.
    Whether or not the quantity of something is supposedly limited or not has little bearing on whether or not a monetary system supposedly based on that something is really a debt-based system or not.

    (And as an aside, the quantity of crypto-currencies is hardly limited. There are more and more Initial Coin Offerings introducing more crypto-currencies into the market, some of which are becoming competitive with Bitcoin for places for those wanting to hold some crypto-currencies to "invest". For example, the quantity of Bitcoin essentially just doubled in this last week ... as everyone that had a Bitcoin also now has a Bitcoin Cash as well.)

    The initial stock of Bitcoin has been created by miners, yes (apparently), rather as the stock of gold has been at times such as the 1849 Gold Rush in California. However that's not how most people ever got their money. Most people, most projects, most businesses, most governments, get their money as a result, directly or indirectly, of where the big banks decide to lend, or not to lend. That will not change. The Bitcoin story, that it's independent of all that, is a story that has been useful in the early life of crypto-currencies, but that story will not hold true, once crypto-currencies "hit the big time."
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    Default Re: Bitcoin, the war on cash, Clif High, and the NSA's long range plans

    Quote Posted by Paul (here)
    Most people, most projects, most businesses, most governments, get their money as a result, directly or indirectly, of where the big banks decide to lend, or not to lend. That will not change. The Bitcoin story, that it's independent of all that, is a story that has been useful in the early life of crypto-currencies, but that story will not hold true, once crypto-currencies "hit the big time."
    You're painting a very simplified and unrepresentative picture of how these technologies are evolving - basically that there's "bitcoin" and there's "everything else" (being the global fractional reserve lending system). The reality is that the derivative layer of the cryptocurrency field is advancing just as fast - if not faster - than the base monetary layer and is just as diversified. Sure it's peppered with scams but it's also rich with new approaches which are having an equivalent impact on centralised lending as bitcoin did on the issue-mechanism of the monetary base.

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

    Quote Posted by indigopete (here)
    Paul, while concurring with many (most ?) of your observations regarding the cryptocurrency phenomenon, I have to say I come to almost diametrically opposite conclusions regarding their origins, nature and ultimate intent.
    The early adopters of crypto-currencies have such intentions, yes. I've been involved with, and have held, Bitcoin since 2010. These intentions were part of the attraction for me, too.

    But just as the early adopters of the Internet (which also included myself) intended that the Internet would be a free and open means for ordinary people to communicate, free of surveillance and control from existing large governments and corporations, these early intentions did not, and will not, hold up.

    Most people get their Internet now via major, controlled, institutions such as Google, Facebook, Netflix, Youtube, Twitter, Wikipedia, and whatever are the (apparently even more controlled) institutions behind the Great Firewall of China.

    The first Part of my opening post provides an interesting piece of evidence, a paper on the MIT website from 1998, written for the NSA, laying out a plan for converting the monetary system to a digital currency. We are well along that path.

    ===

    I am well aware that my view on Bitcoin disagrees with the views of most who are involved in Bitcoin.

    I now think that predominant view is wrong (nice hope, won't happen.)

    I do not disagree with the predominant view of Bitcoin out of ignorance of what that view is.
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    Default Re: Bitcoin, the war on cash, Clif High, and the NSA's long range plans

    Quote Posted by indigopete (here)
    You're painting a very simplified and unrepresentative picture of how these technologies are evolving - basically that there's "bitcoin" and there's "everything else" (being the global fractional reserve lending system). The reality is that the derivative layer of the cryptocurrency field is advancing just as fast - if not faster - than the base monetary layer and is just as diversified. Sure it's peppered with scams but it's also rich with new approaches which are having an equivalent impact on centralised lending as bitcoin did on the issue-mechanism of the monetary base.
    Yes, the "webification" of monetary and contractual transactions, and the rich technology base that is being developed to support moving such transactions to the web, is a fertile area of technology development.

    I have, I believe, been quite clear and consistent in my view, which in this respect seems to agree with your view, that there is much more to this technology than just the particular crypto-currency known as Bitcoin.

    If you think I haven't been clear on this matter ... then either my writing has been poor, or you might be misreading my posts.

    The whole enchilada of monetary and contractual transactions is, in my estimation, moving to the Web and moving to "blockchain" technology. This is a major step for our civilization, comparable to the previous move to Double Entry Bookkeeping, thanks to the work circa 1494 of a Venician monk Luca Pacioli.

    The elite bastards are driving this transition, and the early propaganda to the contrary is in my view hype that will soon be overrun by reality, which will be the continuation of a debt-money monetary system controlled by a few powerful elite.
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    Default Re: Bitcoin, the war on cash, Clif High, and the NSA's long range plans

    Quote Posted by Paul (here)
    But just as the early adopters of the Internet (which also included myself) intended that the Internet would be a free and open means for ordinary people to communicate, free of surveillance and control from existing large governments and corporations, these early intentions did not, and will not, hold up.
    Well, I'd say you're wildly over categorical with your conclusions - both with regard to the crypto phenomenon and with the internet itself.

    Contrary to your assertion, the "early intentions" of the internet have probably held up beyond the original creator's wildest dreams. It's just that everyone gets a stake in it - localists and globalists. That's what you're really complaining about, that it's not exclusive.

    In that regard, I suppose the irony of the context of this very exchange won't be lost on you ! (even though is appears so from your last post).

    Technologies are not supposed to be 'saviours' in and of themselves. They are tools for societies to deploy as they see fit. They should be judged on that basis and not on whether they facilitate a particular outcome that one section of society favours. We are here, discussing these topics freely. That in itself is a successful outcome as far as the phenomenon known as "the internet" is concerned. The rest is politics.

    Similarly, the technology called "bitcoin" has the potential to liberate large parts of the financial markets from the control of a few players. Don't blame bitcoin if there isn't instant eradication of poverty and peace on earth. It works as intended. Now lets move on to the next problem.
    Last edited by ThePythonicCow; 8th August 2017 at 02:26. Reason: fix quote

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