Role of Crypto/Cybercurrencies in the PTB's loss of control?
- Thread starter Ryan
- Start date
I can already hear the protests, but it's not bitcoin, it's not sanctions, inconceivable!
axj
The Living Force
You still do not understand that freezing Bitcoin wallets is not possible (unlike Tether) and that the Bitcoin code is open source (unlike Tether), making it impossible to secretly implement backdoors and such.
And as you have been told over and over, there are no "sanctions on Bitcoin".
"Sinking inflation into crypto" implies massive price increases. The question will be whether it will be possible to use those gains freely.
I think you could do better at communicating here. I went through your last series of posts, but I don't see any evidence for what you're saying. I think it would help if you could write out clearly how you see that there are sanctions on Bitcoin. One trick is to write it as if you were explaining it to someone who has no clue what you're talking about.
Isn't it interesting how so many alt-finance commentators with their so-called "more unbiased" take on things end up walking a huge circle and predicting scenarios that result in a new dominance of the USD, rather than its collapse? Exactly the position the banksters and deep state envision. So curious.
Regarding what Webb writes specifically, such as:
There's a massive assumption here: how exactly is Bitcoin going to be "united" to the dollar? The monetary policy that governs Bitcoin is essentially sovereign. Even if the developers are bribed or bought into making code changes that benefit a particular group of participants over another, this will immediately result in a hard fork (ie. separate copy but with identical history) of the coin and each separate group will use that fork.The Alt-Worlds Premiere Digital Doomer said:
So, in a situation with two 'sovereign' currencies (USD and Bitcoin), the type of exchange that describes the dynamic between them is a little more complicated than sell/buy; it's more like an import/export market. A rate of exchange between the two currencies has to be decided upon, and the monetary policy of each currency affects the other only indirectly. In a hypothetical genuine 'free market' scenario, if two countries are trading goods and one country suddenly inflates their currency massively, the currency exchange rate between the two countries will adjust in order to keep the purchasing power of each consistent.
As Webb correctly points out, the US is aiming to maintain the previous arrangement that has given them imbalanced purchasing power relative to the rest of the world, fuelling the US' standard of living at everyone else's expense. However, simply creating a Bitcoin strategic reserve won't accomplish this. It would be no different to the US suddenly creating a platinum strategic reserve and beginning to buy up platinum.
What the US can achieve is to create a sort of 'buffer' against the future shock of USD collapse by purchasing as many assets as possible while they still retain an unearned purchasing power advantage (UPPA). Enter Tether/Circle, which is what Webb and hlat (I think) have been trying to point out. Tether and Circle act as USD proxies in the crypto world, providing a way for the US to leverage its UPPA in the crypto markets in the same way as in other markets. However, that cannot affect the supply/demand dynamics of Bitcoin itself. It can only push up the price in USD terms, as axj pointed out.
What we are looking at in the very near future is a huge collapse of the USD as the rest of the world unwinds their USD holdings in response to the stark reality that the US will never repay the debt it has been 'borrowing' from the rest of the world. As this process accelerates, USD exchange rates will become uncoupled from the political considerations that have been artificially influencing them, and the USD will plummet against most of the rest of the world's currencies (although more slowly against its immediate vassal states like Japan and the 'Five Eyes'). This will drastically change trade flows in the real economy (raw materials, energy etc), but it's likely that a period of adjustment will precede this as well, and is in fact already taking place vis a vis events such as the Saudi petrodollar abandonment.
The question around Bitcoin is whether other countries decide that the system is sufficiently secure and impartial enough to allow the US to have a smaller "unfair advantage" in purchasing power as result of advance currency stockpiling, while the system balances out in the future. As has been mentioned regarding mBridge, it would appear that the BRICS nations are not convinced, or at very least are going to ensure there is a "backup" currency amongst themselves should any problems emerge at Bitcoin's protocol level, which is not impossible given its likely origins. In the case of El Salvador, there are bold, young countries willing to take a risk that Bitcoin could form one important part of a multi-polar world economy; a risk that might pay off given China's large BTC holdings. In both scenarios, the prognosis for the USD is dire, with the pro-Bitcoin one giving them a little extra slack.
So regardless of Ms Webb's generally impressive journalistic form, I think she's completely off track regarding this.
Some reading on sanctions and bitcoin. We won't need to talk about it, and instead can see what happens.
Cryptocurrency Markets Aren’t Liquid Enough for Mass Russian Sanctions Evasion - Chainalysis
Do crypto markets have enough liquidity for mass sanctions evasion or capital flight by Russian oligarchs? Learn more from Chainalysis.
Some reading on Tether scam. Tether is created out of nothing at will, and then used to buy any amount of bitcoin and any crypto. If they wanted to, they can buy all bitcoin on offer. They can also crash bitcoin by selling all the bids. It's interesting that FTX/Alameda was collapsed a year after they were outed as 1 of the main players in the Tether scam.
Is Bitcoin Really Un-Tethered?
This paper investigates whether Tether, a digital currency pegged to the U.S. dollar, influenced Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices during the 2017 boom. U
papers.ssrn.com
Tether Papers: This is exactly who acquired 70% of all USDT ever issued
We catalogued every USDT distributed by Tether in the past seven years to present the most transparent research on the stablecoin to date.
protos.com
Tether timeline: The complete history of crypto's most stubborn stablecoin
This is Tether's timeline in full, starting in 1996 when its now chief financial officer was caught selling fake Microsoft software licenses.
protos.com
Jim Daniels
Jedi
After it became apparent the Bitcoin Developers had been captured by Wall Street criminals, adherents to Satoshi's original vision already did fork Bitcoin.
The original fork was called "Bitcoin Cash". You can see how it's doing here...
Then, a group of rebellious Developers forked Bitcoin Cash off into Monero.
Monero is the currency Satoshi described in the first paragraph of his infamous White Paper. Bitcoin no longer abides these principles...
It's now expensive and super-difficult to convert Bitcoin to spendable cash without going through FedGov regulated third party financial institutions.
This is why I defected to the heretical gnostic Church of Monero, and why Bitcoin Maxi fanatics hate me.
Jim Daniels
Jedi
Meme of the day for ridiculing Bitcoin Maxis.
axj
The Living Force
Monero was created in 2014, Bitcoin Cash only in 2017.
It is good that you are informing yourself, but none of those are "sanctions on Bitcoin". And as has been mentioned before, sanctions on individuals or countries are much less effective in bitcoin than in the banking system. There is no central authority in bitcoin that can freeze accounts and there are ways to anonymize one's bitcoin holdings.
Jim Daniels
Jedi
Doh! You are right!
I hate being wrong. Thank you for correcting me!
I read somewhere (probably on Reddit or Monero.town) that XMR was a fork of BCH, and just accepted it without investigation.
Turns out, XMR history is very complicated, and it hard-forks every six months. I didn't even know that. I just always update the software on my node when notified, and never noticed there was a six-month pattern.
Open source does not exclude introducing bugs and regressions, even deliberate ones, unfortunately, that are hard to catch during the code review and can be exploited for privilege escalation, etc. Unintentional ones happen all the time, even in the Linux kernel, which has countless eyeballs watching the source code.
Honestly, I don't even understand how BitCoin or blockchain technology in general can be considered useful in the CBDC scenario. You can have database systems that are much more performant, scale horizontally and vertically, and support multi-regional deployments, with 1m transactions per second on a single server (!) achieved decade ago. Deploy something like that in VISA-certified data centers that even have their own armed security forces, and you're set without wasting so many resources. Small contracts are only a way to create more obstacles for yourself if your objective is total control.
But I understand that this was about the hype train that many decidents onboarded during the recent marketing boom. Especially that one could get tempted by the "rich over night" tales of Photoshop-flared folks that got rich by sheer luck.
I guess what @hlat meant by sanctions is that, in practice, you just cannot do anything usable with BitCoin when not converting it to fiat. This conversion can be blocked even tomorrow for selected addresses. In addition, as the ledger is public, all the transactions for the given address can be traced, and peer addresses also blocked. Of course, one can argue that this could happen for gold and silver as well. But it's quite easy to find someone who will sell me a chicken, a honey jar, or a few liters of milk for a 1 ounce coin, even if prohibited. Ordinary folk just don't understand the value proposition of having a share of the cost of the electricity wasted solely for the accounting system to work. Feels "too much Ponzi" to be recognized as a store of value.
I'd also add a channel for funneling DoD "black hole" funds:
axj
The Living Force
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And you might be surprised how many companies accept direct crypto payments, without having to convert it to fiat first. Real estate companies, online precious metal dealers, etc. I am not saying that it is a good thing, but it is not worse than using credit cards or bank transfers either - all of it is fully digital.
There are ways to anonymize your Bitcoin, so that nobody knows who owns it. One way are the so-called "Bitcoin mixers" and an even more secure way is to simply go in and out of a fully anonymous cryptocurrency like Monero on a decentralized (anonymous) exchange.
And you might be surprised how many companies accept direct crypto payments, without having to convert it to fiat first. Real estate companies, online precious metal dealers, etc. I am not saying that it is a good thing, but it is not worse than using credit cards or bank transfers either - all of it is fully digital.
Jim Daniels
Jedi
Central Bank Digital Currencies are more useful for human enslavement than credit/debit cards because usage of private company credit/debit cards is optional.
Central Banks can legally mandate the use of their digital currencies, like they do with Dollars.
This is one of the reasons why Wall Street mega-corporations took control of Bitcoin, to prevent that protocol from escaping regulatory capture.
Jim Daniels
Jedi
Most people don't even know it is illegal to attempt to make Bitcoin transactions private.
www.therage.co
US Recommends 30-Year Prison Sentence For Alleged Bitcoin Fog Operator
The case that put blockchain analysis on trial is moving forward with the sentencing of alleged Bitcoin Fog operator Roman Sterlingov – but not everyone's convinced that the government's got the right guy.
www.therage.co
