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Thread: 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

    Quote Posted by indigopete (here)
    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.
    Yes - I am aware that the 1998 paper I reference does NOT represent the blockchain "distributed database using untrusted and unreliable parallel computers" technology. Yes, that paper presumes a more old fashioned collection of trusted bank computers hidden from view.

    As I wrote in my opening post:
    Quote 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.
    The distributed nature, requiring less trust and allowing for the use of open software and protocols, of blockchain technology, as introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto in his 2008 paper, is an important advancement, and has seemed to provide a technology that would free humanity from the grasp of the elite banksters.

    It will not free us, just as the printing press, firearms, electricity, radio, TV, and the Internet has not freed us. Rather all these technologies have all been coopted by, and largely controlled by from nearly their inception, institutional extensions of the elite.
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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)
    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.
    That's not what I am complaining about.

    Quote Posted by indigopete (here)
    Technologies are not supposed to be 'saviours' in and of themselves.
    I didn't say they were.

    Quote Posted by indigopete (here)
    Similarly, the technology called "bitcoin" has the potential to liberate large parts of the financial markets from the control of a few players.
    That's the dream ... that dream will fail, but not in a simple way. Rather it will remain, as have earlier technological advances, a complex struggle between humanity striving for their own freedom, and the elite striving to extract the wealth of labor, resources and ingenuity from this planet and its people.

    Quote Posted by indigopete (here)
    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.
    Please don't put words in my mouth that I did not say nor imply.
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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)
    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.
    My hunch is that the rise this Monday was a combination of
    1. people converting their new found "wealth" (the newly created Bitcoin Cash they got, matching their Bitcoin holdings) back into Bitcoin,
    2. "investors" who might have held back for the last few weeks, waiting to see what became of this fork, and
    3. more manipulation by the "big boyz" from behind the curtain.
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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)
    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.
    A dollar is debt-based because in theory it represents a debt owed to someone, and the paper is supposed to have no inherent value of its own. It was originally just a receipt that the storekeeper signed when you wanted to come back and exchange it for something. Bitcoins aren't created or traded on the idea of a Bitcoin being debt that is owed, but something that does have inherent value because those trading it have agreed upon a value and the free market proves it correct.

    Like Indigopete said above, our financial systems are layers upon layers, so going back through the history we could impose all sorts of interpretations upon the US dollar, but in the end is it really worth anything more than what we simply say the paper itself is worth? In that respect it is similar to Bitcoin: only worth what we agree it's worth, with no other use or value besides that. You can't eat, ride it, it or even trade it in for slightly less useless gold anymore.

    Quote (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.)
    I was only talking about Bitcoin. There is a hard limit programmed into the blockchain for the maximum number of Bitcoin. I'm sure you're familiar with how all that works. I was just pointing out that this, combined with increase in demand over time, is why the price will keep getting driven up, until something breaks the pattern.


    Quote 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.
    That hasn't always been true in the US, especially during the periods when we had no central bank. If Bitcoin lives up to its ideals, it will also be decentralized.

    By the way, think of the positive benefit of a nationalized bank that is controlled directly by the elected government: we could loan money out to projects that we as a nation have elected people to accomplish, such as the wall. Why not? If we are going to nationalize anything I say we should start with the banks.

    The federal reserve banks are corrupt and doing exactly what you say, controlling investment. At least Congress would be more accountable if they voted on what to invest money into directly.

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

    Any form of "currency", whether it be bits, sea shells, gold coins, or credits in a bank account, can be used by a debt based monetary system.

    The question is how the major supply of that currency is generated. The current market cap of Bitcoin is about $55 Billion, and of the other crypto-currencies quite a bit less. This is tiny compared to the "market cap" of US Dollar denominated instruments, which include the bonds, mortgages and other debt paper of many individuals corporations, nations and other governments, the stocks issued by many corporations, major pension and insurance accounts. The US Dollar market cap is on the order of a quadrillion dollars, or about 20,000 times larger.

    The manner in which Bitcoins and the lesser crypto-currencies have been generated so far will bear about as much resemblance to the manner in which most digital transacted money is generated as various early individual efforts to "index" parts of the Web bear to the present day CIA-friendly Google search engine.

    My point is, in part, that Bitcoin will not live up to its ideals ... not even close ... not a chance.
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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.

    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 was very concerned about communist Chinese influence over Bitcoin too, considering 90% of transactions on exchanges are out of China. Since I don't speak Chinese I had to look for articles and analyses already done by people with similar concerns, and I found something that eased my concerns somewhat: Corrupt Chinese government officials themselves are responsible for much of the money bleeding out of their country, just as wealthy Americans had been stashing their money in off-shore accounts. However they have already put some barriers in place to complicate this for the common Chinese "citizen" or "comrade" or whatever they consider themselves in their communist hierarchy.

    The NSA was likely just reading the writing on the walls and preparing to co-opt what would have been inevitable anyway. In the 1990's didn't we already have credit card systems sending data over telephone lines? That's already money traveling over telecoms. The Internet is just the next obvious step.

    I'd give Bitcoin 50/50 odds of staying decentralized. There are concerns but I don't see any reason to lose complete hope yet.

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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)
    I'd give Bitcoin 50/50 odds of staying decentralized. There are concerns but I don't see any reason to lose complete hope yet.
    I'd give Bitcoin less than 1 chance in a 100 of even surviving the shift to the "big time." Just as Marc Andreessen's Mosaic browser has faded into history, so will Bitcoin, once the "big boyz" unveil the new world monetary system, to replace the failed US Dollar Reserve based world monetary system.
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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)
    Any form of "currency", whether it be bits, sea shells, gold coins, or credits in a bank account, can be used by a debt based monetary system.
    They can, but in actual point of fact here I don't understand why you are calling Bitcoin itself a debt-based currency. How are you defining "debt-based"?

    Quote The question is how the major supply of that currency is generated. The current market cap of Bitcoin is about $55 Billion, and of the other crypto-currencies quite a bit less. This is tiny compared to the "market cap" of US Dollar denominated instruments, which include the bonds, mortgages and other debt paper of many individuals corporations, nations and other governments, the stocks issued by many corporations, major pension and insurance accounts. The US Dollar market cap is on the order of a quadrillion dollars, or about 20,000 times larger.
    I don't get your point, starting off here talking about how the currency is generated (which is the mining process) but then going off into market caps and saying Bitcoin is tiny by comparison. Yes, Bitcon's current market cap is tiny in comparison to the US dollar, but I also agree with what you said to begin with, that whether or not it's debt-based depends on how it's generated. The market cap isn't how the currency is generated.

    Quote The manner in which Bitcoins and the lesser crypto-currencies have been generated so far will bear about as much resemblance to the manner in which most digital transacted money is generated as various early individual efforts to "index" parts of the Web bear to the present day CIA-friendly Google search engine.
    The difference is that the US dollar is generated by the Federal Reserve, in unlimited, unpublished quantities, and this the centralized bank of the US and has enormous central power.

    What is the equivalent centralized power in the world of Bitcoin?

    The closest thing to a centralized power in Bitcoin is communist China, which is what I've been talking about above. China is trying to corner the market but it hasn't done anything to radically change how this whole decentralized blockchain system works .... yet.

    ¤=[Post Update]=¤

    Quote Posted by Paul (here)
    Quote Posted by A Voice from the Mountains (here)
    I'd give Bitcoin 50/50 odds of staying decentralized. There are concerns but I don't see any reason to lose complete hope yet.
    I'd give Bitcoin less than 1 chance in a 100 of even surviving the shift to the "big time." Just as Marc Andreessen's Mosaic browser has faded into history, so will Bitcoin, once the "big boyz" unveil the new world monetary system, to replace the failed US Dollar Reserve based world monetary system.
    You may be absolutely correct, but it depends on everyday geek developers and what kind of pushback they can give. You shouldn't throw in the towel so quick! You give away victories to the enemy that way. They should have to fight for every inch on every front.

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

    i always thought that the notion of Bitcoin being decentralized was just a facade for people wanting to move away from the system to buy into. I always thought that there wasn't a way for TPTB would ever let this happen.

    maybe they can't control it, and have other means to dominate the world and finance is no longer needed? I am a layman when it comes to what the elite are actually doing. it is a bit overwhelming to rustle through the crap that is being put online and decipher what is truth and what is controlled opposition.

    i personally think that bitcoin is a way to get away from the dollar and cash all together. it reminds me of the movie Fortress. all in a barcode aka bitcoin per say.

    something is fishy about bitcoin to me, that is for sure. I do appreciate the conversations being had about cryptocurrency though.

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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)
    They can, but in actual point of fact here I don't understand why you are calling Bitcoin itself a debt-based currency. How are you defining "debt-based"?
    Bitcoin as it currently exists is not a debt-based currency. If I wrote that it was, my words were woefully botched.

    My expectation (which is not shared with most in the crypto-currency world) is that the world's monetary system will shift from using the US Dollar as its "reserve currency" to using crypto-currencies as the technology implementing the main currency or currencies.

    Generating crypto-currencies by paying those running the distributed compute nodes in newly generated coinage is a short term expedient during the current early phase of crypto-currencies, when it is important to get technical savy early adopters involved.

    The fundamental power to control civilization using debt-based monetary systems is a power that the elite will not let go of.

    They get to control whose project's, wars, technologies, businesses, etc get funded and whose don't. They get to run their favorite boom-and-bust games, where they gain control over more resources both on the rise and the fall. They get to collect interest on the money they "lent" into existence, to control the livelihoods of those individuals, corporations and governments who are in debt trying to make payments, and to collect the repossessed collateral when the bust bankrupts the individual, corporation or government.

    I am anticipating that digitized currencies, settled using the blockchain technology running on the computing, networking and storage resources of cooperating consortiums of service, governmental, corporate and financial institutions, handling high volumes for very low cost very quickly, world-wide, will form the basic "currency technology" of the new world monetary system.

    The bankster's will still decide when to boom and when to bust, who gets funding and who goes bankrupt.

    Quote Posted by A Voice from the Mountains (here)
    I don't get your point, starting off here talking about how the currency is generated (which is the mining process) but then going off into market caps and saying Bitcoin is tiny by comparison. Yes, Bitcon's current market cap is tiny in comparison to the US dollar, but I also agree with what you said to begin with, that whether or not it's debt-based depends on how it's generated. The market cap isn't how the currency is generated.
    The market cap doesn't generate currency. But when the elephants decide to run where the mice were scurrying about ... the dynamics become those of the elephants, not the mice.

    Quote Posted by A Voice from the Mountains (here)
    The difference is that the US dollar is generated by the Federal Reserve, in unlimited, unpublished quantities, and this the centralized bank of the US and has enormous central power.
    That's the common view ... one that I would disagree with.

    Dollars are not printed as Parker Brothers prints Monopoly money.

    Dollars are almost always lent into existence. Lending involves two offsetting book entries. The lender gets a bond, mortgage, IOU or other form of debt paper representing the debtors promise to pay certain amounts under certain conditions at certain times in the future. In return for that, the debtor gets some immediate monetary credit.


    Quote Posted by A Voice from the Mountains (here)
    What is the equivalent centralized power in the world of Bitcoin?
    Current bitcoin does not have such a debt-based central power.


    Quote Posted by A Voice from the Mountains (here)
    Quote Posted by Paul (here)
    I'd give Bitcoin less than 1 chance in a 100 of even surviving the shift to the "big time." Just as Marc Andreessen's Mosaic browser has faded into history, so will Bitcoin, once the "big boyz" unveil the new world monetary system, to replace the failed US Dollar Reserve based world monetary system.
    You may be absolutely correct, but it depends on everyday geek developers and what kind of pushback they can give. You shouldn't throw in the towel so quick! You give away victories to the enemy that way. They should have to fight for every inch on every front.
    Of course us geeks will continue to fight for human freedom.

    On the large scale, the bulk of humanity will continue to be mostly controlled, and most of the victories of us geeks will be limited and local, as is the case in most guerilla warfare.

    Just figuring out what's going on (as this thread exemplifies) in the face of all the confusions, myths, and conflicting memes will ensure that we never win, even as the irrepressible urge to freedom of the individual human being ensures that we never lose.

    The first duties of anyone engaged in love or war are to understand one's self, and to understand the other.

    False bravado, based on false myths (such as I am finding rampant in "Bitcoin mythology" and am trying to dispute and dispell here), is an anathema to such understanding.
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    Default Re: Bitcoin, the war on cash, Clif High, and the NSA's long range plans

    Any crypto has no intrinsic value until you convert it into the debt-based currency of choice.

    To that end there is very little room for arbitrage since BTC traded in yen holds a similar value in dollars, despite moving values of the two currencies.

    This is what I was getting at earlier. There is little underlying financial impetuses for the price moves on BTC. Compare the dollar index chart with BTC price chart, the dollar doesn't move while BTC soars over any time frame. No correlation.

    With that type of sentiment, you are bound to get these wild swings in pricing. As it matures I feel this could get more volatile, since more buyers and sellers will be in the market.

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

    There's nothing wrong with so called "debt based" money per say. Debt based money is an essential component of any economy that changes in size because the monetary base is always an interplay with economic activity.

    The problem is that the liquidity providers are highly centralised (basically you need a banking license) and that they charge interest on the liquidity when in fact it has to initial value other than that which the debtor provides as an underwriter.

    But even there there are lots of new approaches on the horizon. For example the Bitshares platform decentralises that whole liquidity provision process so that it's granular and no longer in the hands of a private entity. There are even cryptocurrencies that track the value of national currencies so that you can hold value in any denomination that suits the particular economic activity concerned.

    I don't think we can say bitcoin has been successful or it hasn't. It's only 8 years old. It takes a couple of generations for genuine change to manifest itself and it comes in many forms at many levels. Also the whole "centralised/decentralised" way of appraising things is very un-instructive since it implies that one is good and the other is bad which is nonsense. Just because a service provision or access to a resource is centralised doesn't automatically mean that corruption is involved. There have been huge successes for both approaches.
    Last edited by indigopete; 8th August 2017 at 15:03.

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

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-0...-bitcoin-price

    Quote It was over three years ago, back in May 2014, when we wrote "How Bots Manipulated The Price Of Bitcoin Through "Massive Fraudulent Trading Activity" At MtGox" in which we first demonstrated one of the more striking observed "bot-driven" bitcoin manipulation schemes, in this case related to the infamous collapse of the now defunct Mt.Gox bitcoin exchange.

    As we wrote at the time, a number of traders began noticing suspicious behavior on Mt. Gox. Basically, a random number between 10 and 20 bitcoin would be bought every 5-10 minutes, non-stop, for at least a month on end until the end of January, by what appeared to be two algos, named later as "Willy" and "Markis." Each time, (1) an account was created, (2) the account spent some very exact amount of USD to market-buy coins ($2.5mm was most common), (3) a new account was created very shortly after. Repeat. In total, a staggering ~$112 million was spent to buy close to 270,000 BTC – the bulk of which was bought in November.



    "So if you were wondering how Bitcoin suddenly appreciated in value by a factor of 10 within the span of one month, well, this is why. Not Chinese investors, not the Silkroad bust – these events may have contributed, but they certainly were not the main reason. But who did it? and why?"

    Of course, in the end this alleged manipulation did not help Mt.Gox which eventually collapsed in what has been the biggest case of cryptocoin fraud in history.

    We bring up this particular blast from the past, because in the latest case of bitcoin market abuse - with Bitcoin trading at all time highs above $3,000 - Cointelegraph reports of rumors swirling about a trader "with nearly unlimited funds who is manipulating the Bitcoin markets." This trader, nicknamed "Spoofy," received his "nom de guerre" because of his efforts to “spoof” the market, primarily on Bitfinex.

    Of course, spoofing is what Navinder Sarao pled guilty of last year, when regulators inexplicably changed their story, and instead of blaming a Waddell and Reed sell order for the May 2010 flash crash, decided to scapegoat the young trader who allegedly crashed the market due to his relentless spoofing of E-mini futures (and also making $40 million in the process of spoofing stock futures for over five years).

    It now appears that a spoofer has once again emerged, only this time in Bitcoin.

    For those unfamiliar, spoofing is simple: it is the illegal practice of placing a large buy order just below other buy orders, or a large sell order just above other sell orders, then cancelling if it appears that the order is about to be hit or lifted. The idea is to make traders think that somebody with deep pockets is getting ready to buy or sell, in hopes of moving the market. If traders see a sell order of 2000 Bitcoin they may rush to panic sell before the whale crashes the price. And vice versa on the bid-side.

    As an example of Spoofy's trading pattern, here is a breakdown of a typical "trade" by the mysterious entity as noted by BitCrypto'ed who first spotted the irregular activity: Spoofy is a regular trader (or a group of traders) who engages in the following practices:

    Places large bids ($2 million and up) for Bitcoin, usually just under a smaller bid order, only to remove them once someone starts to sell. These orders usually have a lifetime of minutes, or sometimes as short as 5–10 seconds to manipulate the price up (more common)
    Places large asks ($2 million and up), for Bitcoin when he wants the price to go down, or stop going up (less common)
    Occasionally ‘Spoofy’ will allow orders deep in the orderbooks to remain for a few hours, usually $50–$100 below the current price. For example, during the recovery above $2,000, he had roughly 4,000 BTC of false orders in the $1,900 range that were unlikely to execute, and ultimately were never executed.
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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)
    TC traded in yen holds a similar value in dollars, despite moving values of the two currencies.

    This is what I was getting at earlier. There is little underlying financial impetuses for the price moves on BTC. Compare the dollar index chart with BTC price chart, the dollar doesn't move while BTC soars over any time frame. No correlation.
    I like to think of the BTC market as being somewhat like the market for Picasso paintings, or, in their time, Beanie Babies. The volume of money at the fringe, making sudden moves in or out, is substantially larger in proportion to the volume of money tending to act as stabilizing ballast in the market, than is the case in more stable markets. Also, as Carmody notes in his post, some of that hot money on the fringe seems to be deliberately agitating the market, which is a lot easier to do in the Bitcoin market than in, say, the market for ten year US Treasuries.

    Or, another analogy, a skiff in a storm moves about a lot more than an aircraft carrier in calmer weather, both because the skiff is smaller and the weather is more violent. The controversies surrounding crypto-currencies are more violent, and the stable money in them serving as ballast is much smaller, than in the larger Dollar denominated stock and bond markets.
    Last edited by ThePythonicCow; 8th August 2017 at 17:28.
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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)
    There's nothing wrong with so called "debt based" money per say. Debt based money is an essential component of any economy that changes in size because the monetary base is always an interplay with economic activity.
    Whether debt-money, as a mechanism, is good or bad isn't the point, indigopete.

    A key point of mine is that debt-money has been for hundreds of years at least, and in my expectations will continue to be, one of the most powerful tools for controlling human civilization that the elite bastards have.
    Last edited by ThePythonicCow; 8th August 2017 at 17:30.
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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)
    Clif is selling (over selling) cryptos and silver ... so that's part of the elite's next bubble/scam.
    Just to be clear, I am not predicting that silver will actually be a real "core asset" in the next monetary system ... only that there are some elites who would like some of us to think that.

    Many, perhaps the majority, of Clif High's boldest predictions to not come to pass. Rather they turn out to be, or at least seem to be in light of hindsight, examples of grand fakes, leading those who enjoy listening to articulate old codger computer geeks (such as myself) astray in our expectations.
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    Default Re: Bitcoin, the war on cash, Clif High, and the NSA's long range plans

    .
    Blockchain technology has a bright future; Bitcoin perhaps not so much.

    What I am increasingly expecting is that blockchain technology, just like some other major technologies in prior years, will become an important component of transactional systems, world-wide.

    I expect that Bitcoin will turn out to have been a way for blockchain technology to be developed, in its early years.

    I also expect that blockchain technology will find a wide variety of uses, rather in the way that SQL relational databases, cloud data storage, and http protocol based web browsers have in recent decades (all technologies on which the ProjectAvalon.net forum depends.)

    Blockchain technology is fundamentally a way of implementing robust distributed transaction databases, using a loose consortium of somewhat untrusted computers connected by a network. The transaction history is robustly maintained and updated, without requiring any single point of trust or exposing any single point of failure. It enables world-wide, fairly rapid, quite inexpensive, transaction processing.

    For example, here's a new article explaining how China plans to use blockchain technology when collecting taxes: China Will Use Blockchain To Collect Taxes.

    The phrase "the blockchain" is misleading:

    I do not expect that there will be "one blockchain", holding all that is recorded about each of us and all transactions we make. Blockchains are vastly, many orders of magnitude, to cumbersome to do that.

    Rather I expect that, just as now with SQL relational databases, there will be many, many blockchains, handling various bits and pieces of our online affairs and records.

    Activity that primarily involves individual clients interacting with a single provider (for example, posting on ProjectAvalon.net <grin>) will continue to be stored in SQL relational databases or similar, just as such activity is now.

    But much of the activity that spans multiple providers or interactions between multiple clients and providers, will migrate from such SQL databases to blockchain technology, over time, as that technology provides a more suitable foundation for conducting and recording such transactions.

    What does this have to do with the New World Monetary System?

    Part of moving us from the current US Dollar centric monetary system to whatever comes next will involve physically (or electronically) replacing what people use now, with something representing the tokens of value in the next system.

    Rather clearly, as can be seen from the rapid development and deployment of computer, networking, smartphone and other such technology, world-wide, over the last few decades, our overlords are keen to get humanity connected into the Web.

    I have no doubt that this includes getting our monetary transactions, savings and debts online.

    So ... whatever are the new currencies that we adopt, to replace the US Dollar, there will be a strong web-centric element to them. Blockchain technology is clearly intended to be used in such systems. This will apply both at the individual level, such as when I purchase some electronic trinket on eBay from a small vendor in China, and at the international level, such as in the manner of holding and transacting national central bank reserve holdings. In the later case, something more "webified" and robust will replace T-Bills and SWIFT.
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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)
    I am anticipating that digitized currencies, settled using the blockchain technology running on the computing, networking and storage resources of cooperating consortiums of service, governmental, corporate and financial institutions, handling high volumes for very low cost very quickly, world-wide, will form the basic "currency technology" of the new world monetary system.

    The bankster's will still decide when to boom and when to bust, who gets funding and who goes bankrupt.
    So you think this is more of an issue with blockchain tech in general than Bitcoin in particular?

    Edit: Nevermind, I read your later posts so I understand what you are saying now.

    Quote The market cap doesn't generate currency. But when the elephants decide to run where the mice were scurrying about ... the dynamics become those of the elephants, not the mice.
    It would only take the sale of about 1%, or maybe not even that, of the total Bitcoin being held in order to trigger a crash, from what I've read. But if there is still demand after such a sell-off, the price will eventually go back up just like it did back in 2014. The demand for Bitcoin (so far) is separate enough from purely long-term investments that I think even that kind of crash wouldn't necessarily be fatal, again as long as that demand is still there. That demand to circumvent the centralized system is like the constant trickle voltage that is charging the capacitor, so to speak.


    Quote That's the common view ... one that I would disagree with.

    Dollars are not printed as Parker Brothers prints Monopoly money.

    Dollars are almost always lent into existence. Lending involves two offsetting book entries. The lender gets a bond, mortgage, IOU or other form of debt paper representing the debtors promise to pay certain amounts under certain conditions at certain times in the future. In return for that, the debtor gets some immediate monetary credit.
    Right, the debt still exists, but we don't get to see all of it because we don't even have any public accounting for what is brought into circulation. Last I heard, as of a few years ago, the Fed and US Mint literally stopped publishing the amount of money put into circulation every quarter. We all know this is a disastrous monetary policy. The debt still exists, they are keeping track of it, and this is obviously going to create a major problem somewhere along the line. It devalues our entire currency and makes people work hard as hell for a little of nothing.


    Quote Posted by mgray (here)
    Any crypto has no intrinsic value until you convert it into the debt-based currency of choice.
    That's not true. There are sites online where you can purchase physical gold directly with Bitcoin. There are a surprising number of things you can already buy directly with Bitcoin online, and in Japan it's officially legal tender in physical stores.
    Last edited by A Voice from the Mountains; 12th August 2017 at 02:50.

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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)
    Quote Posted by mgray (here)
    Any crypto has no intrinsic value until you convert it into the debt-based currency of choice.
    That's not true. There are sites online where you can purchase physical gold directly with Bitcoin. There are a surprising number of things you can already buy directly with Bitcoin online, and in Japan it's officially legal tender in physical stores.
    Actually, I don't think you're disagreeing with mgray, A Voice from the Mountains.

    Apparently you both agree that a crypto currency, in and of itself, in its native "bucket of crypto bits" form, is worth nothing more than a bucket of bits.

    But you likely both agree that, at present, crypto currencies can be exchanged for interesting things, such as the gold you cite in your example.
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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)
    Actually, I don't think you're disagreeing with mgray, A Voice from the Mountains.

    Apparently you both agree that a crypto currency, in and of itself, in its native "bucket of crypto bits" form, is worth nothing more than a bucket of bits.

    But you likely both agree that, at present, crypto currencies can be exchanged for interesting things, such as the gold you cite in your example.
    Well maybe I'm just trying to put a different spin on it, because I don't see the "bucket of bits" as inherently different than the "rectangle of paper" or the "block of relatively useless metal." In fact gold is less in demand industrially, and is less rare in the Earth (so I've read) than silver. So go figure on that one.


    Also maybe this is a generational thing. You have to remember that the younger generations have grown up with digital money already and it's just as normal and "base line" to them as any other form of currency. Credit cards over the telephone line, credit cards over Internet data, electronic withdrawals from your bank account through an ATM, etc. The idea of a "bucket of bits" as money is not at all alien to us. It's normal.
    Last edited by A Voice from the Mountains; 12th August 2017 at 04:21.

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