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Thread: This Time Is Different - Part II: What Bitcoin Really Is

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    This Time Is Different - Part II: What Bitcoin Really Is

    To me and many others, bitcoin is not a technical revolution as much as it is a triumph of political and economic incentives.
    -Two Bit Idiot

    “Systems like Ethereum (and Bitcoin and NXT, and Bitshares, etc) are a fundamentally new class of cryptoeconomic organisms?—?decentralized, jurisdictionless entities that exist entirely in cyberspace, maintained by a combination of cryptography, economics and social consensus”
    -Vitalik Buterin
    In Part I we took a look at “What Bitcoin Isn’t”, where all the usual comparisons and analogies around Bitcoin were shown to be poor fits in explaining what the phenomenon really is, ending on the obvious next question:

    What is Bitcoin then?

    Money is one of those “aquarium characteristics” of life. Aside from worrying about our bills or investments, the general structure of “money” is a background medium that underpins everything and for the most part we don’t really pay attention to it. Other examples are the base utilities like electricity and running water.

    As we live our lives in these “aquariums”, we don’t really question the nature or the delivery mechanisms of these structural/cultural mediums we’re immersed in, unless they stop working or until they undergo a radical change.

    A brief history of monetary innovation
    What we are experiencing today is a technological innovation that is moving the nature of money itself from one form to the next and that is something that has only happened a few times throughout recorded history. It is because we are talking about a fundamental restructuring of the nature of money, and not an asset bubble occurring within the confines of the prevailing monetary system, that we can apply the “This time is different” label to Bitcoin.

    Centralized, opaque, debt-based, money is being disrupted by decentralized, open source, competitive crypto-currencies.

    This disruption has occurred out of necessity, given the irreparable harm central bank policies have inflicted on the citizenry over the last century, reaching what can only be considered a crack-up crescendo of targeted inflation, QEternity, ZIRP and NIRP, the war on cash and capital controls over the last 10 years. The most fitting label for all this is Chris Martenson’s “financial repression”.

    During the era of debt-based money/fiat currency whenever an asset bubble occurred, “this time is different” was never actually different. Galbraith’s observation from the Part 1 bears repeating and it holds up:

    The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version. All financial innovation involves in one form or another, the creation of debt secured in greater or lesser adequacy by real assets.”
    (emphasis added)
    But as mentioned in Part 1: Bitcoin is not a debt based bubble. Leverage doesn’t account for the majority of the price action, at least not yet. As I write this, CBOE futures went live this week. Also, most exchanges are offering margin and a lot of traders are dumb enough to try using it, but that is not the driving factor pushing Bitcoin adoption. These emerging stories of people mortgaging their homes to buy bitcoin are “newsworthy”, and thus still sporadic. Debt would be a driving force of the bubble when it’s systemic.

    Looking at Bitcoin as a technology shift, there have only been a handful of really big shifts in money throughout history: We had barter, then either money then debt, or debt and then money.

    Anthropologist David Graeber (Debt: The First 5,000 Years) makes a case that contrary to conventional theory, barter did not beget money, but rather debt in the form of obligations came first. This was the first true abstraction of deferring present consumption into future value. Owing somebody something, whether it was returning a favour, or later, some symbolic representation of that favour, and that was the progression toward “money”.

    Graeber’s larger point is that debt, the first big monetary innovation after barter, has been used ever since by a small minority of people to enslave the rest of the populace.

    It’s a compelling argument. In either case, aside from subsequent innovations such as the creation of the banknote, which facilitated transmission of value at a distance, and double entry accounting, nothing much has happened in the structural shape of money since the last big innovation, which was the rise of fractional reserve banking.

    Everything since then, from various fiat currencies, to credit cards to the magnetic strip or PIN chips have been variations on a theme, the theme being debt is money. As long as the various modern welfare states continue to spend more than they receive, they have to keep creating and monetizing more debt in order to keep the wheels on the system as a whole.

    Crypto-currency is not debt
    Crypto-currency is built on mathematics, open source, consensus and decentralization. These attributes combine to give us a monetary system with defining characteristics which set it apart from the current, fiat based model:

    Inelastic
    It’s Inelastic because as we all know there are only a set amount of coins that will ever be created. This is in stark contrast to the supply of money in fiat terms. As somebody jokingly tweeted the chart I included from Part 1 “Wow look at that bitcoin price! Oh wait, that’s the chart of the money supply”?—?more on this below.

    [img]https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*XoU9Nh5XVZJBsr0c.png[/img]

    This inelasticity makes Bitcoin and any other similarly constructed crypto-currency….

    Deflationary
    A deflationary currency is closey related to being inelastic, but we need to look specifically at the deflationary aspects of Bitcoin because conventional economic thought is that “deflation is bad”, and it is?—?if you’re using debt for money.

    The reason why is because debt-based money, enabled by fractional reserve banking allows monetary units to “exist in two places at once”, so to speak. When I first started thinking about and researching all this economics and history stuff, it was in the immediate aftermath of the crashing of the dot com bubble. It was then when I realized that I had no understanding of economics, or finance and ultimately, money. So I began a “deep dive” into these matters which continues to this day.

    One of the first books I read about it was Ferdinand Lips “Gold Wars”. Lips, Swiss banker, and expert on the Classical Gold Standard was reputed to have been the cryptic and anonymous “Friend of Another (FOA)” financial and gold markets commentator of the late 90’s (foreshadowing of Satoshi Nakamoto?).

    When I pulled out my copy of the book recently I found I had scribbled the following into the back cover after I had finished reading it:

    “Gold, like every other ‘normal’ thing cannot be in two places at once. Fiat money, however, is credit, redeemable into nothing, that is simultaneously counted as ‘money’ by multiple parties?—?this works as long as the bubble is growing?—?but can’t work if it starts to contract. If N parties hold the same ‘fiat’ and one suddenly uses it to retire debt, N-1 parties have the carpet pulled from underneath them. Because under a paper fiat money system, reducing debt (either by paying it off or defaulting) reduces the money supply”
    My understanding of this today, is that Bitcoin is inelastic and thus deflationary. It has no counter-party risk (but there is consensus risk, but fiat has it as well), and it solves “the double-spend problem”. Fiat money, by contrast is one big double spend problem. The defining characteristic of inflationary debt-based money is mathematically and cryptographically eliminated under crypto-currency.

    Under an inelastic or hard-backed monetary regime, such as the era the Classical Gold Standard (when there was no income tax and mild deflation) or the one emerging today, deflation is virtuous, not the other way around.

    By contrast, debt-based inflationary money creates a treadmill economy, which perniciously pushes assets up the wealth inequality ladder, as the Plutocrats on top spend their compounding wealth on buying up assets, while the lower tiers (the non-super rich) must continually and incrementally spend more of their purchasing power on staying alive.

    Many conventional economists say deflationary currencies wouldn’t work because:

    1) There wouldn’t be enough “monetary units” to go around to purchase all the good and services available within the economy, and

    2) It leads to HODLING, or hoarding. The theory states that people wouldn’t spend any money today, because doing so would forgo the increased value the money would have tomorrow.
    Detlev S. Schlichter’s “Paper Money Collapse” is a dispassionate, objective look at why fiat money always goes to zero, every time, throughout all history, no exceptions and what would happen in an environment with a deflationary currency instead:

    “A monetary system with a money commodity of essentially fixed supply will experience secular deflation. A growing economy, with an entirely inflexible money supply will exhibit a tendency for prices to decline on trend, and for money’s purchasing [power] to steadily increase. But the key question now, is why should this be a problem? We have already seen that historically secular deflation was rather minor and that it certainly never appeared to present any economic difficulties. [ What economists today fear in a ‘deflationary death spiral’ scenario is debt collapse and accompanying contraction of the money supply, not deflation itself?—?markjr] No correlation between deflation or recession or stagnation is evident under commodity money systems. We will now show that there are no reasons on conceptual grounds to consider deflation to be a problem”
    Which he then spends the rest of the book doing exactly that. From personal experience, as a merchant who has been accepting bitcoin payments since 2013 I know that the increasing price of bitcoin has not slowed down transaction volume or aggregate payments received (in dollar terms):

    A deflationary currency sees prices drop over time as purchasing power increases.

    [img]https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*_eFs7xwwmbCPPEWz.png[/img]

    easyDNS Bitcoin sales and transaction trend lines 2013?—?present (2017)

    The chart above depicts the trendlines of transactions in Bitcoin on easyDNS from 2013 to present. I haven’t put the Bitcoin price trend line in there but we all know what it looks like, if it were in the graph it would be a hockey stick with the inflection point starting around Jan 2016. We clearly see the pricing in BTC dropping as the price rises, yet the transaction volume and sales in CAD remain steady, with a moderate uptrend.

    Bitcoin is Transparent
    It’s Transparent in two ways, first is the blockchain, where we can see the flow of bitcoin and all the transactions; and second the underlying code is open source.

    Anybody can look at any block in the blockchain, and anybody can pull down the source code that actually runs all this and read it for themselves.

    Contrast this radical transparency with, say, The Federal Reserve, which has an exclusive monopoly on the creation of money, creates it out of nothing and then lends it to the State and charges interest on it. Further, it is owned by a cartel of private banks and operates with no oversight. This is the crux of the current monetary era. For the longest time it was possible to dismiss criticisms of this system as “conspiracy theory”, but given that the damage Fed policies have caused to the economy, especially since the GFC is felt by all but a few, it is increasingly difficult to ignore this reality.

    Anybody who actually analyzes this system going beyond the mainstream narrative of what The Fed is supposed to be doing would come up with the same conclusion I did some time ago:

    “if smart, scholarly people happen to believe that government fiat money is both feasible and beneficial to society, and they put serious thought into devising such a system, what they will not come up with is one run by private central banks issuing debt-based money. They just won’t. Any critical analysis would grasp that such an architecture would become a parasitic cancer on the entire society. When you realize this, it’s hard not to posit a far-reaching conspiracy to institutionalize inequality. While I am a big believer in the maxim “never ascribe to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidy” it to me falls short in this case. When we look at the structure of the entire monetary system and realize that it’s the worst way possible to design a such a system if you have the best interests of the wider society in mind then you can’t help but ask ‘in whose interests was it designed and implemented?’”
    Antifragile
    Nassim Taleb, in his seminal work by the same title, invented the term “antifragile”, describing any phenomenon that gets stronger when it encounters volatility. The “imminent death of Bitcoin” is probably the one thing that has been predicted even more than the “imminent death of the Internet”, which was a popular recurring theme back in the late 90’s or so.

    Both technologies? - ?the Internet and then crypto-currency are decentralized, largely open source protocol stacks that have transformed our civilization.

    These qualities make crypto currency something that is anathema to the previous paradigm’s debt-based fiat. As such, it poses an existential threat to existing incumbents, be they technocrats, banksters, career politicians, or complicit corporate cartels, whose position depends on their proximity to and relationships with the money centre apparatus that creates money and preferentially distributes it out amongst this network.

    What does it all mean?

    When we ask ourselves this question we’re back to Graeber’s assertion that the entire monetary system is a control mechanism that uses debt to keep the wider populace in line.

    This was largely tolerated by a general population that was largely ignorant of the working dynamic of the money system and how it enslaves them. Keynes himself observed that

    “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
    For a long time Keynes was right. Then, as the century-long debt super-cycle started to crescendo a couple of key events happened.

    The first was the Global Financial Crisis 2007–2009 and the purported “near-death experience” of the modern economy. Wall Street was bailed out, who used the money to give themselves bonuses, while the middle-class was decimated and continues to be ground into poverty to this day. There was incongruence in this picture, on one hand incompetence and financial recklessness was rewarded while the rule-following middle class were penalized.

    [img]https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*6Zcuuf1wyWx87KAY.png[/img]

    The 95 White Papers
    It was at this moment, that the Satoshi White Paper appeared on the scene, and proposed a different way to structure the monetary system.

    Nobody really noticed. But it set off a chain of events as sure as Martin Luther’s “95 Theses” set in motion the secular decline of another hitherto undisputed hegemonic central power: The Catholic Church. In that time the result was The Reformation and the Catholic Church never regained its central power position.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau...1212_bitis.jpg

    One document galvanized an entire movement, and the harder the Papacy pushed back on Luther to try to contain it, the faster Protestantism spread?—?there’s that antifragility again.

    Protestantism presented enough benefits to enough royal houses throughout Europe that when weighed against the authoritarian and decadent papacy, the upside to the new paradigm looked better than the old system?—?and that is precisely what it is happening, again, today, in the monetary sphere.

    For the first few years after Satoshi’s paper, Bitcoin didn’t really break into the public consciousness but the wheels were certainly in motion and those people who had a lot at stake and were coming to gain a visceral understanding of the hypocrisy and capriciousness, not to mention the destructiveness of the current monetary regime were paying close attention.

    It wasn’t until another event, years later, that people would begin to see the efficacy of crypto-currency in protecting wealth and savings. That event was the Cyprus bail-in. The framework for “containing” that event was quickly adapted by other nations, slipped into the “back pocket” to be used down the road. It became law here in Canada:

    “In the unlikely event that a systemically important bank depletes its capital, the bank can be recapitalized and returned to viability through the very rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital.”
    This provision, originally from the Harper government has been reiterated under Trudeau the 2nd.

    Of course, the language here is telling, belying the assumption on the part of the political elites that the rabble is ignorant and easily fooled. Similar to how barely “one man in a million” can diagnose inflation, they assumed even fewer would know that “certain bank liabilities” are the depositors’ savings.

    But people do know what that means. Now it was clear?—?unless we owned a bank we were all pretty much on our own, and even worse, whenever those banks went off and painted themselves into a corner of insolvency, we were the ones who were going to have to make them whole. Banks are “too big to fail”, everybody else is expendable.

    Bitcoin is a hole …in a burning building
    “I had the thought that Bitcoin is like a hole in the wall of a burning building. The burning building is the petrodollar. The Bitcoin hole in the wall doesn’t meet any standard definition of a door. It wouldn’t pass a building inspection and it may not last long. It will most certainly be replaced by something else in the long run. But in the short term, no one inside that burning building really cares about any of that and the ones that first smelled smoke are already pouring through it. Many more will follow and some, sadly, will die in the fire. There are other exits from the building too, some may be safer than others, but the most important thing is getting out of the burning building as quickly as possible.
    — from the comment thread on Zerohedge for Part 1 of this article (the only thing I would add to this is that the other exits lead to other burning buildings?—?markjr)

    And this finally brings us to what I think Bitcoin really is. It’s a type of capital / currency flight. In a way, (and I didn’t coin this analogy but I can’t find who did) all fiat currencies are experiencing a hyper-inflationary collapse against Bitcoin. It makes a certain amount of sense, the logical outcome for the vast monetary printing of the last century is an inflationary blowout. But that conjures up images of Weimar Germany and wheelbarrows full of cash, the recent Zimbabwe collapse or perhaps Brazil?—?where banks installed a second clock to display the value of your money eroding while you waiting in line, it all seems so unthinkable here.

    And yet, here we are with Bitcoin in a bubble, stocks in a bubble, bonds in a bubble, real estate?—?in a bubble, is everything in a bubble? Or are we experiencing a slow motion breakdown in the underlying fiat regime in a typically cavalier and nonchalant Western way? Not some James Rawles “end of civilization” novel but rather a mass exodus into anything perceived as “an asset” whilst Bitcoin surpasses them all because of a combination of inertia and the fact that’s it’s effectively an antidote to a global parasitic economic blight?

    Having said this, even if this were true, it doesn’t mean “the price of bitcoin will go up…forever”. Even true hyper-inflationary episodes themselves usually last about 12 to 18 months, after which a new currency regime comes in to replace it.

    What we could be seeing here are the early innings that usher in the end of USD as the world reserve currency and the beginning of “what comes next”. The fact that USD hegemony will eventually end is no surprise to anybody, even mainstream economists. However “eventually” has this vexing habit of showing up sooner than most people expected.

    So while there have only been a handful of monetary innovations throughout history, there have been many currency regimes, rising, overshooting, collapsing and giving way to the next.

    What may be unique about this one is that we’re rare witness to a double faceted shift: the technology shift from a debt based fiat money system to a decentralized crypto currency regime; along with the demise of the prevailing currency regime.


    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-1...bitcoin-really
    "Paper is poverty, it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1788
    "The greatest threat to the state is when the people figure out they can exist without them." - Twisted Titan
    "Some Libertarians are born, the government makes the rest."
    "Voting is nothing more than a slaves suggestion box, voting on a new master every few years does not make you free."

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    Re: This Time Is Different - Part II: What Bitcoin Really Is

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
    There is one simple rule to follow when understanding the tragic history of economies: Never put blind faith in a system built on an establishment-created foundation. You would think this would not be a difficult concept to grasp being that we have so many examples of controlled economies and collapse to reference over the centuries, but in our era more than ever the allure of a virtual world with promises of endless wealth and ease is overwhelming.
    http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau...171213_alt.jpg

    Yes, I am referring primarily to cyptocurrency "tulip-mania" (sorry bitcoiners, the description is too fitting, it isn't going away), but not this issue alone. I am also referring to a far-reaching problem of which cryptocurrencies are a mere reflection.
    Namely, the fact that humanity is swiftly losing sight of what a true economy is and what it is supposed to accomplish.It is because of this reality that crypto is thriving.
    First, let's be clear, fiat currencies are one of the first machinations of the virtual economy. Once paper currencies printed from thin air by central bankers were separated from tangible backing and accepted by the masses as "valuable" and worth trading labor for, the seed of financial cancer was planted. Today, there is one final step needed for the establishment to accomplish complete tyranny in global trade and that is to disconnect the masses fully from private transactions. In other words, we must be tricked into going digital, where privacy is an absurd memory.
    Virtual economics is appealing for several reasons, most of them bad.
    Americans and much of the west in particular are increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of real production. The latest generation coming into political and social influence, the millenials, is a perfect example. Surveys show American millenials more than any other generation lack basic workplace competency skills, including scoring low on arithmetic and reading comprehension. Often portrayed as "tech savvy" in popular culture and the media, millenials are quite inept when it comes to core skills that fuel strong business and trade, which is part of the reason why the U.S. is falling into the shadow of foreign workforces.
    Millenials in the West also exhibit abysmal technical skills in international testing and lag far behind foreign peers. This has come as a surprise to many mainstream economists and social analysts, primarily because millenials are also considered the "most educated" generation ever. But, of course, we have not only been given a virtual economy in recent decades, but also a virtual educational system. A majority of millenials are lacking when it comes to key production skills and entrepreneurship methods because they have been trained to dismiss such skills as negligible. In other words, millenials have been conditioned to be academic idiots.
    Why go through the struggle and hardship required to become an effective producer of tangible necessities when it is far easier to join a collectivist drive for socialism and a structure in which little to no work is required to obtain such necessities? Why not steal from a productive minority and spread it thinly enough to keep the unskilled majority fed? It is only within this kind of culture that virtual production, a virtual society and virtual "money" is seen as an ideal solution.

    The notion is becoming more and more prevalent in our popular media, and I believe this is rather symbolic (or ironic) of our conundrum.
    For example, consider the book Ready Player One, a pop-culture craze and archetypal zeitgeist for millenials soon to be released as an intended Hollywood blockbuster directed by Steven Spielberg. The novel depicts the world of 2045, a world in which fossil fuel depletion and "global warming" have triggered economic and social decline (Remember in the 1980s when they used to tell us that global warming was going to melt the polar icecaps and we would be under water by the year 2000?). A totalitarian governing body controlled by corporate behemoths rules over the dystopian sprawl.
    In response to an ever painful existence in the real world, the masses have sought to escape to a virtual world called "the Oasis," created by a programming genius. The Oasis becomes a nexus for the global economy and a virtual society.
    This sounds like a rousing background for a story of rebellion, and it is about that... sort of. Unfortunately, here is where the disturbing ties between our world and the fictional world of Ready Player One meet. The "rebellion" is for all intents and purposes also virtual, and for millenial audiences in particular, this is supposed to be inspiring.
    Perhaps this is why cryptocurrencies are so appealing to the millenial crowd in particular. Think about it — the dismal economic doldrums of Ready Player One exist NOW; we don't have to wait until 2045. Millenials are already feeling disaffected, indebted and disenfranchised, and most of them are also skill-less. Self reliance to them is an idea so alien it rarely if ever crosses their minds. So, how do they fight back? Or, how are they tricked into thinking they can fight back against a virtual system that has left them in the gutter? Why, with a virtual community and a virtual currency, of course.
    Millenials and others think that they are going to rebel and "take down the banking oligarchs" with nothing more than digital markers representing "coins" tracked on a digital ledger created by an anonymous genius programmer/programmers. Delusional? Yes. But like I said earlier, it is an appealing notion.
    Here is the issue, though; true money requires intrinsic value. Cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value. They are conjured from nothing by programmers, they are "mined" in a virtual mine created from nothing, and they have no unique aspects that make them rare or tangibly useful. They are an easily replicated digital product. Anyone can create a cryptocurrency. And for those that argue that "math gives crypto intrinsic value," I'm sorry to break it to them, but the math is free.
    In fact, for those that are not already aware, Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 hash function, created by none other than the National Security Agency (NSA) and published by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST).

    Yes, that's right, Bitcoin would not exist without the foundation built by the NSA. Not only this, but the entire concept for a system remarkably similar to bitcoin was published by the NSA way back in 1996 in a paper called "How To Make A Mint: The Cryptography Of Anonymous Electronic Cash."
    The origins of bitcoin and thus the origins of crytpocurrencies and the blockchain ledger suggest anything other than a legitimate rebellion against the establishment framework and international financiers. I often cite this same problem when people come to me with arguments that the internet has set the stage for the collapse of the globalist information filter and the mainstream media. The truth is, the internet is also an establishment creation developed by DARPA, and as Edward Snowden exposed in his data dumps, the NSA has total information awareness and backdoor control over every aspect of web data.
    Many people believe the free flow of information on the internet is a weapon in favor of the liberty movement, but it is also a weapon in favor of the establishment. With a macro overview of data flows, entities like Google can even predict future social trends and instabilities, not to mention peek into every personal detail of an individual's life and past.
    To summarize, cryptocurrencies are built upon an establishment designed framework, and they are entirely dependent on an establishment created and controlled vehicle (the internet) in order to function and perpetuate trade. How exactly is this "decentralization", again?
    TOTAL information awareness is the goal here; and blockchain technology helps the powers-that-be remove one of the last obstacles: private personal trade transactions. Years ago, a common argument presented in favor of bitcoin was that it was "completely anonymous." Today, this is being proven more and more a lie. Even now, in the wake of open admissions by major bitcoin proponents that the system is NOTanonymous, people still claim anonymity is possible through various measures, but this has not proven to sway the FBI or IRS which have for years now been using resources such as Chainanalysis to track bitcoin users when they feel like doing so, including those users that have taken stringent measures to hide themselves.
    Bitcoin proponents will argue that "new developments" and even new cryptocurrencies are solving this problem. Yet, this was the mantra back when bitcoin was first hitting the alternative media. It wasn't a trustworthy assumption back then, so why would it be a trustworthy assumption now? The only proper assumption to make is that nothing digital is anonymous. Period.
    With the ludicrous spike in bitcoin prices, champions of the virtual economy are unlikely to listen to any questions or criticisms. I have never argued one way or the other in terms of bitcoin's potential "market value," because it does not really matter. I have only ever argued that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are in no way a solution to combating the international and central banks. In fact, cyrptocurrencies only seem to be expediting their plan for full spectrum digitization and the issuance of a global currency system.
    Bitcoin could easily hit $100,000, but its "value" is truly irrelevant and consistently hyped as if it makes bitcoin self evident as a solution to globalism. The higher the bitcoin price goes, the more the bitcoin cult claims victory, yet the lack of intrinsic value never seems to cross their minds. They have Scrooge McDuck-like visions of swimming in a vault of virtual millions.They'll only accuse you of being an "old fogey" that "does not understanding what the blockchain is."
    The fact is, they are the one's that do not really understand what the blockchain is — a framework for a completely cashless society in which trade anonymity is dead and economic freedom is destroyed.
    Ask yourself this: Why is it that central banks around the world (including the BIS and IMF) are investing in Bitcoin and other crytpocurrencies while developing their own crypto systems based on a similar framework? Could it be that THIS infusion of capital and infrastructure from major banks is the most likely explanation for the incredible spike in the bitcoin market? Why is it that globalist banking conglomerates like Goldman Sachs lavish blockchain technology with praise in their white papers?And, why are central bankers like Ben Bernanke speaking in favor of crypto at major cryptocurrency conferences if crypto is such a threat to central bank control?
    Answer — because it is not a threat.
    They benefit from a cashless system, and liberty champions are helping to give it to them.
    Above all else, the virtual economy breeds weakness in society. It encourages a lack of tangible production. Instead of true producers, entrepreneurs and inventors, we have people scrambling to sell real world property in order to buy computing rigs capable of "mining" coins that do not really exist. That is to say, we may one day soon be faced with millions of citizens expending their labor and energy in order to obtain digital nothings programmed into existence and given artificial scarcity (for now).
    It also encourages false rebellion. Real change requires actions in the real world. Removing banking elitists and their structures by force if necessary (and this will probably be necessary). Instead, freedom activists are being convinced that they will never have to lift a finger to beat the bankers. All they have to do is buy and mine crypto. The day will come in the near future when the folks that embrace this nonsense will wake up and realize they have wasted their energies chasing a unicorn and are ill prepared to weather the economic reset that continues to evolve.
    To maintain a real economy in which people are self reliant and safe from fiscal shock, you need three things: tangible localized and decentralized production, independent and decentralized trade networks that are not structured around an establishment controlled system (like the internet is controlled), and the will to apply force to protect and preserve that production and those networks. If you cannot manufacture a useful thing, repair a useful thing or teach a useful skill, then you are essentially useless in a real economy. If you do not have localized trade, you have nothing. If you do not have the mindset and the community of independent people required to protect your local production, then you will not be able to keep the economy you have built.
    This is the cold hard truth that crypto proponents do not want to discuss, and will dismiss outright as "archaic" or "not obtainable." The virtual economy is so much easier, so much more enticing, so much more comfortable. Why risk anything or everything in a real world effort to build a concrete trade network in your own neighborhood or town? Why risk everything by promoting true decentralization through localized commodity-backed money and barter systems? Why risk everything by defending those systems when the establishment seeks to crush them? Why do this, when you can pretend you are a virtual hero wielding virtual weapons in a no risk rebellion in a world of electronic ones and zeros?
    In truth, the virtual economy is not legitimate decentralization, it is a weapon of mass distraction engineered to kill legitimate decentralization.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-1...my-end-freedom




    The Cabal...........“Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty back together again”.

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    Re: This Time Is Different - Part II: What Bitcoin Really Is

    The Globalist One World Currency Will Look A Lot Like Bitcoin


    http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau.../picture-5.jpg
    by Tyler Durden
    Jul 27, 2017 10:55 PM


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    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
    This week the International Monetary Fund shocked some economic analysts with an announcement that America was "no longer first in the world" as a major economic growth engine. This stinging assertion falls exactly in line with the narrative out of the latest G20 summit; that the U.S. is fading away leaving the door open for countries like Germany and China to join forces and fill the power void. I wrote about this rising relationship between these two nations as well as the ongoing controlled demolition of America's economy in my article 'The New World Order Will Begin With Germany And China'.
    I find it interesting that the IMF is once again taking the lead on perpetuating the image of a failing U.S., just as they often push for the concept of a single global currency system to replace the dollar as the world reserve. The most common faulty counter-argument I run into when outlining the globalist agenda to supplant the dollar with the Special Drawing Rights basket system is that "the IMF is a U.S. government controlled organization that would never undermine U.S. authority." Obviously, the people who make this argument have been thoroughly duped.

    The IMF is constantly and actively undermining America's economic position, because the IMF is NOT an American controlled organization; its loyalty is to globalism as an ideology as well as the international financiers that dominate central banking. America's supposed "veto power" within the IMF is incidental and meaningless — it has not stopped the IMF from chasing the replacement of the the dollar structure and forming the fiscal ties that stand as the root of what they sometimes call the "global economic reset."
    To illustrate how the IMF narrative supports the globalist narrative, I suggest comparing the 2009 "predictions" of George Soros on China replacing the U.S. as the world's economic engine to the IMF's latest analysis on the decline of America.
    The IMF cares only about centralizing everything, from currency to trade to governance. If the sacrifice of the old world system (the U.S. dollar) is required to create their new world system, then that is what they will do. If you have read my article 'The Federal Reserve Is A Saboteur — And The "Experts" Are Oblivious', then you understand that the Fed is also perfectly on board with this plan for a global reset. The central bankers, regardless of the nation they happen to reside, stick together and function as agents of larger controlling organisms like the Bank for International Settlements.
    The agenda is not really veiled in secrecy, as it has been openly admitted to on numerous occasions by globalist media outlets. Mohamed El-Erian, former CEO of PIMCO, recently praised the concept of using the IMF SDR as a world currency mechanism and as a means to combat "the rise of populism." However, the most "honest" of these incidences of admission was, of course, the article Get Ready For The Phoenix published in the Rothschild controlled magazine The Economist in 1988; an article which announced the beginning of a new global currency mechanism using the SDR as a bridge starting in 2018.
    I have noticed in the past month that there has been a concerted disinformation campaign on the internet attempting to debunk the article from The Economist by stating that it "never really existed" and is merely a product of conspiracy websites. So, I will put that claim to rest right now, permanently, by pointing out that magazine and research archives completely unrelated to "conspiracy theory" have the Phoenix issue on record. It is undeniable — the article was indeed published by The Economist and does in fact exist.
    Moving on...

    Critics of the notion of a single global monetary framework tend to dismiss any evidence of the plan, usually due to their poor understanding of how currencies rise and fall and a poor understanding of the current monetary climate. They will argue that the SDR basket does not have the capacity to replace the dollar and that there is no other mechanism in the world with the liquidity to do so. In other words, "Where is this global currency going to come from?"
    The fact is, it already exists, and it is right under their noses.
    When The Economist wrote about a global currency being launched in 2018, they perhaps did not have a precise inkling back then on how it would come about. They do mention clearly the strategy of using the IMF's SDR as a stepping stone to that global currency, calling it the "Phoenix," as an example. They also mention the decline of the U.S. as being necessary in the wake of this shift into complete centralization.
    These two events are taking place right now, with the American economy in steady and ever steeper destabilization, as well as the rise of the SDR basket as a "stopgap" for nations seeking to decouple from the dollar as the world reserve. But what about the currency itself? The SDR might be the framework that will reign in various nations under one nefarious economic umbrella, allowing the IMF to dictate currency exchange rates at will until their one world system can be established, but what will the average person ultimately be using as a unit of trade and how will the globalists maintain monetary subjugation over the public?
    Cryptocurrency and the creation of blockchain technology is the answer.
    http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau..._globalist.jpg
    When The Economist wrote about a global currency being initiated in 2018, they were not making a prediction, but a proclamation — a self fulfilling prophecy. This does not mean that the new currency will develop in an obvious and open way. In reality, I can't think of very many 4th generation psy-ops as clever as cryptocurrencies.

    Consider this; after 2007/2008, the weakness of globalism and economic interdependency is exposed for all the world to see. It is a sacrifice the international banks are willing to make, because through the credit and derivatives crash they can now enforce extreme monetary policies. These policies will do nothing to save the general economy, but they will jeopardize the very currency and debt frameworks of some nations, including the U.S. The stage is set for a new and even greater crisis, a crisis which will soften the public to the idea of a single world monetary system and a single economic authority.
    The massive flow of data which the globalists covet as a means of "total information awareness" is a double-edged sword. Sovereignty and liberty activists grow in awareness and in number and influence. Millions begin preparing to weather the potential crisis being engineered by the globalists. Methods of counteracting an economic downturn or currency implosion are fielded. Activists start bartering and buying up precious metals as a shield, and as an alternative unit of trade. The alternative market, at least the core of it, is born.
    What is a power hungry cabal to do? How do they stop the natural progression of the revolution against them? Well, they don't stop it; instead, they attempt to redirect it to work for them. That is to say, they trick the liberty movement into helping them while letting us think we are poking them in the eye.
    Enter cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Bitcoin arrives seemingly from nowhere, conjured by a magical crypto-wizard by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto, a label supposed to represent a person or group of people that no one has ever seen or heard from. We are simply meant to have faith that they don't work for the NSA or a similar entity. But who cares who they are, right!? It doesn't matter because bitcoin is such a work of art it is nearly infallible — the perfect countermeasure to a monetary world lorded over by the dollar and the Federal Reserve.
    Numerous libertarians and anarchists collectively orgasm. They join what appears to be a grassroots effort to bring bitcoin and blockchain technology into the mainstream. They stop trading as many of their fed notes for gold and silver as before and buy digital nothings instead. To question the validity of the idea elicits dramatic displays of indignance from the bitcoin cult bordering on zealotry. The "smartest guys in the room" know bitcoin is the solution to everything — don't you want to be one of those guys, too? Bitcoin is the way, the truth, the life...
    Some of us are unconvinced, and even rather suspicious, and with good reason. For example, the advancement of cryptocurrencies into mainstream consciousness has been helped expertly by the corporate media, which frankly, does not make sense if they are a real threat to the central banking monolith. As they say, when the real revolution happens, it will not be televised. Bitcoin is televised everywhere.
    On top of this, nearly all major international banks are ingraining blockchain tech and cryptocurrencies into their business models, including globalist foundation banks like Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs LOVES blockchain technology; they even refer to it as the "new technology of trust." Just take a look at their rave reviews on how it will change the world here.
    What is Goldman's favorite aspect of the blockchain and crypto? The fact that every single transaction is compiled, cataloged and tracked in the blockchain "ledger."
    For years, one of the major original selling points of bitcoin was that it was "anonymous." It always surprised me that so many people in the liberty movement bought into this scam. Surely after the revelations exposed by Edward Snowden and organizations like Wikileaks, it is utterly foolish to believe that anything in the digital world is truly "anonymous." The feds have been proving there is no anonymity, even in bitcoin, for some time, as multiple arrests using bitcoin tracking have indeed occurred when the FBI decided it was in their interest. Meaning, when the feds want to track bitcoin transactions, they can, and it does not matter how well the people involved covered their actions.
    The early promise of anonymity in cryptocurrencies was a lie.
    Thus, we have the reason why central bankers and international financial conglomerates are piling into bitcoin like it's the hottest tech stock on the Nasdaq. Imagine a trade system in which every single transaction is compiled and nothing is private; that is the blockchain. Now, anonymity might not matter much when you are dealing with regular people, but what about when you are dealing with governments with the tendency towards corruption and the power to imprison and confiscate?
    The loss of all privacy in trade ISthe next quantum leap in monetary centralization, and cryptocurrencies achieve this in spectacular fashion. Not only this, but complete loss of privacy becomes rationalized, because without "transparency" the blockchain does not properly function. This is what makes the blockchain different from all other digital trade mechanisms - with the blockchain, surveillance of transactions is no longer a violation of privacy rights, it is expected.
    While the fantasy is that crypto is about decentralization and freedom, it is actually a key to institutionalizing the opposite. I believe the incredible amount of capital being dumped into blockchain developments by major financiers and verbal support from central bankers is a signal that blockchain technology IS the basis for the currency system of the "new world order."
    While there is something to be said for crypto and its potential to limit fiat money, I still remain skeptical. Mainly because anyone can create a cryptocurrency out of thin air. Just look at the confusion building over bitcoin vs. ethereum; which tulip is worth more, everyone wonders? Being that crypto is not tangible and is completely based on perceived value according to perceived demand rather than real demand, I think it is fair to argue that cryptocurrencies rely entirely on hype and fad in order to maintain market strength. Not that regular fiat currencies are any better, but isn't that the point?
    So where does it end? If ethereum replaces bitcoin like Facebook replaced MySpace, how is stability in any digital currency provided? Through the force of government and the backing of international banks, obviously. And whichever cryptocurrency system the bankers choose to back or create, that currency will destroy the value of all other crypto around it. Again, perception, not tangible value, rules over bitcoin and its peers, and institutional power often rules over perception.
    The proclamations of The Economist of a world currency launch by 2018 are happening today, right on schedule, right in front of us. The blockchain is going to "change the world;" this has been excitedly announced by the very same banking elites the blockchain was supposedly engineered to defeat. When the next reserve currency system is established using the SDR basket as a foundation, I have no doubt it will be digital and based on the same exact tech that today's activists wrongly assume will set them free.

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



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    Re: This Time Is Different - Part II: What Bitcoin Really Is

    https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/

    List of 1355 different cryptos.................



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    Re: This Time Is Different - Part II: What Bitcoin Really Is

    The Globalist Plan To Blame Bitcoin For Biblical Level Collapse In 2018

    December 12, 2017 by Jeff Berwick
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    They won't teach you in your government schools, but every major economic and financial collapse is planned. It doesn't happen by accident.
    I covered this in my book, Shemitah Trends (available for free to TDV subscribers or here on Amazon), and we began to uncover their occult timeline for financial collapses with the Shemitah and Jubilee this decade.
    By any measure, we are now at the most extreme time in history in money, finance, banking, equities, bonds, real estate and other sectors.
    We’ve never seen money printing across the board like we’ve seen in the last decade.
    https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https:...12/chaart1.jpgInterest rates are at record lows and even at ludicrous negative rates in some countries. They have never been lower in 5,000 years.
    https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https:...12/chaart2.pngBy almost any measure, the US stock market is at or past extremes. Like the price/sales ratio which has never been higher.
    https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https:...12/chaart3.pngUS government debt has doubled in the last eight years like a banana republic and has gone nearly “hockey stick”.
    https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https:...12/chaart4.jpgAll of these extremes can’t continue to go further into extremes forever and will all have to come crashing down.
    When? That’s the billion dollar question. I’d say million dollar question, but a million dollars barely buys you a house in the US anymore.
    As always, I look for the clues directly from those who currently control the world for the answers.
    And I keep gravitating back to this Rothschild owned Economist magazine front cover from 1988.
    https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https:...12/chaart5.jpgHow could the globalist banksters plan thirty years ahead for a massive change in the monetary system, you might ask? Well, look no further than Bilderberg, where decades before the Eurozone and euro currency were created, they were in planning for it.
    With nearly everything at historic extremes something has to crack soon. Could 2018 be the planned year for it? A total currency reset and ushering in of a new world currency?
    Some crackpots on the internet believe bitcoin is a globalist invention. They clearly do not understand power, control, or what bitcoin is.
    If they did, they’d know that bitcoin is the antidote to the New World Order, not the gateway. That’s because most of their power resides over control of the issuance of currency which they cannot control with bitcoin.
    Instead, what their game plan may be, is to put trillions of dollars into bitcoin to blow it up to massive extremes. Jamie Demon of JPMorgan has hinted at it going to $100,000 before going to zero.
    Saxo Bank also just released their “Outrageous Predictions for 2018” in which they say bitcoin will be “thrown to the wolves.”
    In it, they say:
    "Bitcoin peaks in 2018 with Bitcoin above $60,000 and a market capitalisation of over $1 trillion as the advent of the Bitcoin futures contract in December 2017 leads to a groundswell of involvement by investors and funds that are more comfortable trading futures than tying up funds on cryptocurrency exchanges.
    China launches an officially backed cryptocurrency that entails less energy-intensive mining. The smoother functioning of the state-run protocols for actual payments and price stability, as well as the the heavy hand of state intervention, drives a decreasing interest in all cryptocurrencies and completely sidelines the Bitcoin and crypto phenomenon from a price speculation angle even as the technological promise of the blockchain gallops on.
    After its spectacular peak in 2018, Bitcoin crashes and limps into 2019 close to its fundamental “production cost” of $1,000."
    They predict, similar to Jamie Demon, that bitcoin will rise to $60,000 and then be burnt at the stake by the governments and central banks and end up at $1,000.
    And, Danielle DiMartino Booth, who spent nine years as an adviser to Richard Fisher at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, was recently asked, “Would governments necessarily allow private-based cryptocurrencies to coexist with government-based cryptocurrencies?”
    The following was her response:
    "I would have to say no. What we have seen with the parabolic thousand point increase, and we are at a thousand points at 8:26pm EST on November 29th, Bitcoin crossed the $10,000 mark and it didn’t even take it 12 hours to go across the $11,000 dollar mark. What we are witnessing is clearly a bubble that is going to implode on its own weight. I think that we can all hopefully agree on that; we are all adults in the room. But I think that central bankers know good and well that once these cryptocurrency bubbles burst, laying in their wake will be a very refined technology that allows central bank cryptocurrencies to rise up where they have left off. To your question, do I think that they will be allowed to coexist? – I think not."
    In other words, a connected insider is also of the view that the game plan is for bitcoin to crash, whether by design or not, and then to implement their own fiat cryptocurrency, backed by violence, and use violence to try to stop people from using non-state cryptocurrencies.
    This makes me believe that the globalists have chosen bitcoin to be the “fall guy” for the coming collapse… one in which they will then institute their own fiat cryptocurrency that they can control and issue.
    Interestingly, on the front cover of the Economist from 1988, the phoenix standing in a pile of burning fiat notes has a coin with the number 10 on it around its neck and the title says “Get Ready For A World Currency.”
    That 10 could also be construed to be a “1” and a “0”, or, in other words, binary. Computer code.
    But, if so, how could they have known that this would happen at this time, 2018, before the internet even existed in 1988?
    Some speculate that the globalists use black magic to foresee the future. Some also speculate that they know secrets to creating reality.
    In fact, we all create reality. The law of attraction is one example.
    Perhaps they tried to create reality but, because it is an imperfect art, they accidentally created bitcoin… which could potentially take down their entire system.
    How beautiful would that be?
    In any case, it is becoming quite clear that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have been chosen as the scapegoat for the coming, preplanned collapse.
    If so, though, they’ll have to increase the size of the bitcoin and cryptocurrency bubble much larger than the current $450 billion market capitalization in order for it to be believable. The dot com bubble was $10 trillion, so they’d have to pump the crypto markets at least another 5-10x higher to get it anywhere near the same ballpark.
    Bitcoin at 5x higher than its current level brings it in line with Jamie Demon’s “$100,000 before it implodes” level.
    We will see soon enough how things play out. I expect 2018 will see cryptocurrencies go parabolic followed by a spectacular historical crash of all markets.
    If so, we’ll be ready and prepared to profit from it.
    You can prepare and profit from it too by subscribing to the TDV newsletter HERE. We just released the December issue today and it is packed with over 50 pages of information on how to survive and profit during and after the dollar collapse.














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    https://dollarvigilante.com/blog/201...e-in-2018.html



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    Re: This Time Is Different - Part II: What Bitcoin Really Is

    I've had arguments with Brandon Smith way back in 2013. He hasn't changed his views much regarding crytpo currencies. Similar to Mike Adams, ignorance filled with hubris.

    This is where Brandon is full of shit:

    Here is the issue, though; true money requires intrinsic value. Cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value. They are conjured from nothing by programmers, they are "mined" in a virtual mine created from nothing, and they have no unique aspects that make them rare or tangibly useful. They are an easily replicated digital product. Anyone can create a cryptocurrency. And for those that argue that "math gives crypto intrinsic value," I'm sorry to break it to them, but the math is free.
    There IS NO SUCH THING AS INTRINSIC VALUE. Value is subjective. Example you are in a shipwreck, you are able to save the gold, but not food and water. How valuable is the gold to you at that point?

    He also fails to recognize the infrastructure that crypto currencies have created. Mines are not free, just look at how much an ASIC miner costs. The power used to perform the computations is not free. The satellite up links to broadcast the blockchain across the world is not free.

    Brandon has a one track mind, and should be taken with a gain of salt when he drifts into economics which he is ill suited to delve in. Survival tactics absolutely he's a good read, but managing money not so much. I put him in the same category as Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey hates gold.
    "Paper is poverty, it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1788
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    Re: This Time Is Different - Part II: What Bitcoin Really Is

    Ification is the process of being. It involves the conversion of a verb to a noun. Is bitcoin a verb or noun?

    noun
    noun/
    noun: noun; plural noun: nouns; noun: common noun; plural noun: common nouns; noun: proper noun; plural noun: proper nouns

    a word (other than a pronoun) used to identify any of a class of people, places, or things common noun, or to name a particular one of these proper noun.
    If you said noun is the bitcoin a people? A place? Or a thing?

    peo·ple
    ˈpēpəl/
    noun
    plural noun: people; noun: people; plural noun: peoples

    1.
    human beings in general or considered collectively.
    "the earthquake killed 30,000 people"
    synonyms: human beings, persons, individuals, humans, mortals, (living) souls, personages, men, women, and children; informalfolks
    "crowds of people"
    the citizens of a country, especially when considered in relation to those who govern them.
    noun: the people
    "his economic reforms no longer have the support of the people"
    synonyms: citizens, subjects, electors, voters, taxpayers, residents, inhabitants, (general) public, citizenry, nation, population, populace
    "the American people"
    those without special rank or position in society; the populace.
    noun: the people
    "he is very much a man of the people"
    synonyms: common people, proletariat, masses, populace, rank and file, commonality, plebeians; More
    derogatoryhoi polloi, rabble, riffraff, (great) unwashed, (common) herd, proles, plebs;
    humoroussheeple;
    historicalthird estate
    "a man of the people"
    a person's parents or relatives.
    noun: one's people; plural noun: one's peoples
    "my people live in West Virginia"
    synonyms: family, parents, relatives, relations, folks, kinsmen, kin, kith and kin, kinsfolk, flesh and blood, nearest and dearest
    "her people don't live far away"
    the supporters or employees of a person in a position of power or authority.
    noun: one's people; plural noun: one's peoples
    "I've had my people watching the house for some time now"
    US
    the state prosecution in a trial.
    plural noun: People; noun: the People
    "pretrial statements made by the People's witnesses"
    2.
    the men, women, and children of a particular nation, community, or ethnic group.
    "the native peoples of Canada"
    synonyms: race, (ethnic) group, tribe, clan
    "the peoples of Africa"
    place
    plās/
    noun
    noun: place; plural noun: places; noun: Place

    1.
    a particular position or point in space.
    "there were still some remote places in the world"
    synonyms: location, site, spot, setting, position, situation, area, region, locale; More
    venue;
    technicallocus
    "an ideal place for dinner"
    country, state, area, region, town, city;
    locality, district;
    literaryclime
    "foreign places"
    a particular point on a larger surface or in a larger object or area.
    "he lashed out and cut the policeman's hand in three places"
    a building or area used for a specified purpose or activity.
    "the town has many excellent eating places"
    informal
    a person's home.
    "what about dinner at my place?"
    synonyms: home, house, flat, apartment; More
    accommodations, property, pied-à-terre;
    rooms, quarters;
    informalpad, digs;
    formalresidence, abode, dwelling (place), domicile, habitation
    "a place of her own"
    a point in a book or other text reached by a reader at a particular time.
    "I must have lost my place in the script"
    2.
    a portion of space available or designated for or being used by someone.
    "they hurried to their places at the table"
    synonyms: seat, chair, space
    "a place was reserved for her"
    a vacancy or available position.
    "she won a place to study German at the university"
    synonyms: job, position, post, appointment, situation, office; employment
    "I offered him a place in the company"
    the regular or proper position of something.
    "lay each slab in place"
    a person's rank or status.
    "occupation structures a person's place in society"
    synonyms: status, position, standing, rank, niche; More
    datedestate, station
    "I know my place"
    a right or privilege resulting from someone's role or position.
    "I'm sure she has a story to tell, but it's not my place to ask"
    synonyms: responsibility, duty, job, task, role, function, concern, affair, charge; More
    right, privilege, prerogative
    "it was not her place to sort it out"
    the role played by or importance attached to someone or something in a particular context.
    "the place of computers in improving office efficiency varies between companies"
    3.
    a position in a sequence, in particular.
    a position in a contest.
    "his score was good enough to leave him in ninth place"
    North American
    the second position, especially in a horse race.
    British
    any of the first three or sometimes four positions in a race (used especially of the second, third, or fourth positions).
    the degree of priority given to something.
    "accurate reportage takes second place to lurid detail"
    the position of a figure in a series indicated in decimal or similar notation, especially one after the decimal point.
    "calculate the ratios to one decimal place"
    4.
    (in place names) a square or a short street.
    "our new restaurant is in Hilliard Place"
    a country house with its grounds.
    thing
    THiNG/
    noun
    noun: thing; plural noun: things; noun: the thing; noun: one's thing; plural noun: one's things

    1.
    an object that one need not, cannot, or does not wish to give a specific name to.
    "look at that metal rail thing over there"
    synonyms: object, article, item, artifact, commodity; More
    device, gadget, instrument, utensil, tool, implement;
    entity, body;
    informalwhatsit, whatchamacallit;
    thingummy, thingy, thingamabob, thingamajig, doohickey, doodad, dingus
    "the room was full of strange things"
    personal belongings or clothing.
    "she began to unpack her things"
    synonyms: belongings, possessions, stuff, property, worldly goods, effects, personal effects, trappings, paraphernalia, bits and pieces, luggage, baggage, bags; More
    informalgear, junk;
    goods and chattels
    "I'll come back tomorrow to collect my things"
    objects, equipment, or utensils used for a particular purpose.
    "they cleared away the last few lunch things"
    synonyms: equipment, apparatus, gear, kit, tackle, stuff; More
    implements, tools, utensils;
    accoutrements
    "his gardening things"
    anything (used for emphasis).
    noun: a thing
    "she couldn't find a thing to wear"
    used to express one's disapproval or contempt for something.
    "you won't find me smoking those filthy things"
    all that can be described in the specified way.
    "his love for all things Italian"
    used euphemistically to refer to a man's penis.
    2.
    an inanimate material object as distinct from a living sentient being.
    "I'm not a thing, not a work of art to be cherished"
    a living creature or plant.
    "the sea is the primal source of all living things on earth"
    used to express and give a reason for one's pity, affection, approval, or contempt for a person or animal.
    "have a nice weekend in the country, you lucky thing!"
    synonyms: person, soul, creature, wretch; More
    informaldevil, bastard
    "you lucky thing!"
    3.
    an action, activity, event, thought, or utterance.
    "she said the first thing that came into her head"
    synonyms: activity, act, action, deed, undertaking, exploit, feat; More
    task, job, chore
    "I've got several things to do today"
    thought, notion, idea;
    concern, matter, worry, preoccupation
    "I've got other things on my mind just now"
    remark, statement, comment, utterance, observation, declaration, pronouncement
    "I keep remembering things he said"
    incident, episode, event, happening, occurrence, phenomenon
    "quite a few odd things happened"
    circumstances, conditions, or matters that are unspecified.
    "things haven't gone entirely according to plan"
    synonyms: matters, affairs, circumstances, conditions, relations; More
    state of affairs, situation, life
    "how are things with you?"
    an abstract entity, quality, or concept.
    "mourning and depression are not the same thing"
    synonyms: characteristic, quality, attribute, property, trait, feature, point, aspect, facet, quirk More
    "one of the things I like about you is your optimism"
    fact, piece of information, point, detail, particular, factor
    "there's another thing you should know"
    an example or type of something.
    "the game is the latest thing in family fun"
    informal
    a situation or activity of a specified type or quality.
    noun: a thing
    "your being here is just a friendship thing, OK?"
    informal
    a romantic or sexual relationship.
    "Phil and Lisa had been having a thing"
    informal
    an established or genuine phenomenon or practice (typically used in expressions registering surprise or incredulity).
    "according to media reports, sleep texting is now a thing among serious smartphone addicts"
    4.
    informal
    what is needed or required.
    "you need a tonic–and here's just the thing"
    what is socially acceptable or fashionable.
    "it wouldn't be quite the thing to go to a royal garden party in boots"
    synonyms: fashion, trend, style, rage, fad
    "it's the latest thing"
    5.
    informal
    one's special interest or concern.
    "reading isn't my thing"
    synonyms: what one likes, what interests one; More
    informalone's cup of tea, one's bag, what turns one on
    "books aren't really my thing"
    6.
    informal
    used to introduce or emphasize an important point.
    "the thing is, I am going to sell this house"
    synonyms: fact of the matter, fact, point, issue, problem
    "the thing is, I'm not sure if it's what I want"

  14. #9
    Bitcoin Miner Ares's Avatar
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    Re: This Time Is Different - Part II: What Bitcoin Really Is

    Is Software a noun or a verb?

    Is Ziero0 a sockpuppet for Palini?
    "Paper is poverty, it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1788
    "The greatest threat to the state is when the people figure out they can exist without them." - Twisted Titan
    "Some Libertarians are born, the government makes the rest."
    "Voting is nothing more than a slaves suggestion box, voting on a new master every few years does not make you free."

  15. #10
    Unobtanium Serpo's Avatar
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    Re: This Time Is Different - Part II: What Bitcoin Really Is

    Quote Originally Posted by Ares View Post
    I've had arguments with Brandon Smith way back in 2013. He hasn't changed his views much regarding crytpo currencies. Similar to Mike Adams, ignorance filled with hubris.

    This is where Brandon is full of shit:



    There IS NO SUCH THING AS INTRINSIC VALUE. Value is subjective. Example you are in a shipwreck, you are able to save the gold, but not food and water. How valuable is the gold to you at that point?

    He also fails to recognize the infrastructure that crypto currencies have created. Mines are not free, just look at how much an ASIC miner costs. The power used to perform the computations is not free. The satellite up links to broadcast the blockchain across the world is not free.

    Brandon has a one track mind, and should be taken with a gain of salt when he drifts into economics which he is ill suited to delve in. Survival tactics absolutely he's a good read, but managing money not so much. I put him in the same category as Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey hates gold.
    I guess if the power stays on everything is fine,if not then bitcoin dosnt exist at all.

    I dont care if the power goes off with gold/silver because they will still exist.

    Intrinsic value.

    If you love bitcoin then that person will be biest and have arguments for bitcoin.



    You should also know that there are better cyptos now then bitcoin but still bitcoin gets all the glamor. This is suspicious to me.

    i expect arguments from bitcoiners because they have to have an argument to support it, especially when it is worth so much, this is human nature.



    The Cabal...........“Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty back together again”.

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