Ill be the first to admit, I dont understand Crypto. At this point I hope, in the very near future, we get to a place where Crypto is our biggest national issue, challenge, or problem. That is not to say, for people invested in, employed by, etc. Crypto isnt a big deal. If its important to you, its important. I have come to understand that, but the collective does face much darker and more imminent threats. So, as I said, hopefully we get to a better place.
Here’s a great documentary on bribery -and look at that; it was made just before crypto was used!
Maybe the GENIUSes in Congress will want to look at requiring decentralized id and legal intermediaries for digital currencies.
Inside the Senate’s last-ditch fight to save the GENIUS Act
Here’s a mini-doc on how Trump fixed a campaign funding shortfall with cash from Egypt (before he and his bois had found out about crypto…)
To be fair, ALL money is fake. Historically, humans have preferred an economy that relied upon trade. Not countries, individuals. The farmers brought some of their eggs to the butcher in exchange for beef. They also exchanged them to buy a bolt of cloth to make clothes, etc.
When kingdoms introduced currency, most people had little desire to use it. So the kings created taxes, something that can only be paid using the currency they created. In order to pay those taxes, the farmer, butcher, etc. now had to use that currency in their daily transactions. Thus, currency is actually worthless (fake) until someone artificially creates the need for it.
This theory is probably an oversimplification, but not too much. The myth and aura around money was created to make it seem much more complex and important than it actually is. This benefits the establishment, allowing them to mislead us. And it works, imo.
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It all just seems a bit redundant and unnecessary to me. I could give a rip if it exists or not, but it should be regulated and, in no way, comingled with U.S. Treasury, nor insured by FDIC. The whole thing has a real “try hard” vibe to me. I never trust anyone or group of anyones who are working just a bit too hard to convince me something is good. Especially if they tell me “its not what it looks like” when I say ponzi scheme. Every time someone says “its not what it looks like”, its, invariably, EXACTLY what it looks like!!
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It can be difficult to see the consequences of being blacklisted, having a bad credit score (and foresee it, given that they haven’t ramped it up to a really bad level yet; once they have everybody coraled in credit scoring systems, that’s pretty inevitable…) You might not be able to open a bank account because of a lien -how are you to receive money to make rent payments to a landlord? How can you get paid for work you did without it getting garnished?? This is why we are fighting for a right to digital currencies. Remember when the credit card companies turned off the ability of wikileaks to collect donations? They were able to fall back to bitcoin to keep plugging. You have the cash and venmo apps, but it’s child’s play for a government to shut down accepting payments for them (and if it’s for something like violent criminal activity, I’m for that -but using decentralized id and legal intermediaries, so that there is a legal review of the actions of any government…)
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A second issue with paying by credit charge is that it is often impossible to get a charge to go through internationally. If you don’t need to do international payments, it’s not an issue for you. But presumably there is a need by consumers to do such payments more and more (unless Bunker Boy succeeds in enacting a tariff disaster!)
I don’t like Bunker Boy’s use of BRIBEcoins, and would like to see decentralized id and legal intermediary requirements put an immediate end to that jig. But I also did not like the Biden administration’s policy of strategic hegemony of the dollar (often having a bank close an account with no explanation whatsoever for merely transferring some money to coinbase, for example, to speculate on a rise in bitcoin…) The Repubs are on a chaos trip, but the Dems have been on a slow march to eventually having the same thing as the CCP’s tyrannical credit scoring system.
Both of the monopoly parties like tech authoritarianism; politicos like the outsized power they can abuse by proxy. Law enforcement drinks the Kool Aid that, being the “good” guys, they will never abuse such power; guys like James Comey, saying that encryption “breaks a compact” that we have had with governments -nonsense! The application of laws regarding secret messages at the time of the founding of this country respected their secrecy.
Or the way we presently have a “trust us” policy with the NSA, with no unbiased monitoring to see if that power is ever abused for political agenda or personal gain. The NSA needs a civilian review board (sort of like impanelling a jury, but its members reach a very high bar of not being likely to be induced, are paid a full-time salary, and are rotated out on a staggered basis…) that can confidentially report to the House Intel committee whenever they see something fishy at the NSA.
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People in the dollar hegemony camp usually have a “trust us” philosophy about government oversight. I think the government should be charged with preventing the abuse of power used to perpetrate violence or corruption, but its citizens (through legal intermediaries and civilian impanelled committees…) need to also be keeping an eye on the government.
PS: I am NOT a bitcoin maximalist. As we should see a competitive assortment of fiat currencies, we should see an assortment of digital ones, each with its niche specialty, competing for utility. Though I will readily concede: MANY are scams.
The fact that Blackrock has bought up much of bitcoin makes it unattractive from a State control aspect (and if you don’t think Blackrock takes marching orders from the Feds, I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in buying from me..)
But I won’t go along with governments being left to their own devices to make us live under regressive credit-scoring regimes!
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Another reason I’m not a bitcoin maximalist:
Yeah -that is really worth burning carbon for!
[“Proof of Stake” currencies are greener; though proof of work could be used to work on meaningful problems for mankind, but presently they are not; they are just used to solve arbitrary inane puzzles…]
Turks segment
The argument in this segment that bitcoin is “too expensive” is quite defective; since you can buy a sliver of bitcoin, you can afford it.
The issue of bitcoin and other non-stable currencies is their volatility…
Jackson saying regular people will never use Bitcoin because it’s over 100K is just embarrassing. Its perfectly emblematic how unknowledgable TYT is on the issue of crypto. They need to either hire an expert to educate their commentators, or just shut up about it.
Cenk has such a cynical opinion of the crypto industry. He just seems to think it’s a 100% pure scam and the only thing they are interested in is scamming people. His commentary is the scammers gave congress a bunch of money and then congress said “yes thank you for giving me money, I will now pass your bill word for word that you wrote because you gave me money and I LOVE CORRUPTION”. This just seems so simplistic.
You could use this argument for anything. You could claim that medicare for all is a scam. All of the people who support it only do so because they want to scam you. Whenever Congress passes M4A, you could say it’s because the scammers paid off congress, and the DOGS in congress passed the bill making it easier to scam American citizens because Congress loves corruption.
Yes! They clearly need to enlist a crypto guru to vet their points before they air them. By sharing such defects in facts will only serve to undermine their concerns, being that they will be later dismissed as uninformed.
Crypto is just a form of money; when you have grievances on the way money is abused, you can’t go like: crypto is money on steroids -so it must be REALLY bad!
No! It’s a form of money, and we need to make such topics about the abuse of money.
Now an issue they should be rallying around with the recent legislation is that there is no tracking of identity in a manner that respects privacy (and this is where crypto can outperform traditional finance!) When you have a bank account and do wire transfers, you are relying on privacy protections furnished by your [central authoritative] financial institutions -which is slim to none! (none in the case of “Swift” transfers -I welcome readers to read about that…)
The way privacy needs to be managed in digital currencies is through technology called “decentralized id”, which would be backed by third party legal intermediaries you can CHOOSE and you pay for with a sliver of transaction fees.
Is any of the recent crypto legislation talking about a way to move towards that? Nope! THAT is the news story. You can wield power through crypto and there is later almost no accountability for illegal actions that were enabled by it. It’s the reason Trump loves his BRIBEcoin…
This is something I’ve thought about. One solution can be as follows:
If a person wants to view porn, they will do the following:
- Purchase $1000 of crypto (any public blockchain of their choosing)
- Keep it on a single address for the duration of 1 year.
- Sign a message with the private key of said address, and give it to the porn site at time of registration. The porn site can then use basic cryptography to validate the signature with absolutely no monetary cost to the porn site.
It won’t prove that they are 18 years of age, but it will prove that they are at a maturity level in their life where they are able to keep 1K locked up for a year. Maybe that’s a good enough approximation for being 18? This would be super easy to implement on all the major blockchains.
Well, let’s take porn. While it is often characterized as consensual activity. it very well might not be. Example: when a women gets enslaved, beaten, and tortured to within a fraction of her life, to produce porn videos.
Over the top?
Here’s a documentary on it.
So if the perpetrators of such violence are using crypto to profit from it, you can get why accountability for when money gets abused to conduct such violent crime is so important. Crackpot libertarians dismiss such regulations as unnecessary.
Money is power; crypto is a form of money; we need laws that STOP the ABUSE of power -it’s that simple.
At the same time we do not want to march in lockstep to a credit scoring system that is similar to what the Chinese have done. Buy things that are frowned on by the State and you end up without a sustainable job or housing…
What a gas!!
“Yes, there I was, having all sorts of dots being connected to Epstein -and these guys damaged my reputation and my BRIBEcoin along with it!”
If he wants to lodge a complaint of reputational damage, then the Epstein files would become germane to such a case.
I’m pondering the lofty legal argument that would be made: “Your honors, the plaintiff is a scumbag, pure and simple.,..”
Trump’s counsel could ask for any Epstein evidence to be sealed, but he/they would be nervous about more eyes seeing it…
Yeah, yeah, yeah; <eyeroll>it’s “decentralized”…</eyeroll>
And Blackrock how has more than half of it; look at how that worked out. The largest equity holder, that in theory should not be able to exist in its present form.
You guys think they talk to Treasury? Yah’ think??
Newsflash: there are other cryptos, and some rely on a greener Proof of Stake mechanism…