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88 Years Ago, FDR Banned Gold. Will a Bitcoin Ban Be Next? | Mises Institute

Posted by M. C. on April 7, 2021

We’ve seen Russia recognize the value of gold as a check against the weaponization of the dollar. Could bitcoin be next?

https://mises.org/power-market/88-years-ago-fdr-banned-gold-will-bitcoin-ban-be-next

Tho Bishop

Today is the eighty-eighth anniversary of Executive Order 6102, signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States.” The order was one of the several disastrous responses to the Great Depression that succeeded in escalating the financial crisis. Later in the year, the US Congress would pass a resolution retroactively supporting the legislation; however, it was the determined autocratic leadership of FDR that made way for these unprecedented measures. It would be a crime for Americans to hold gold for over forty years, until President Gerald Ford reversed the order in 1974. 

This episode has several lessons for the current financial environment, particularly given the acceleration of tyranny-by-expert rule that has taken over much of the worst this past year.

The underlying legislation that evoked by FDR’s executive order was the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917—a by-product of World War I—despite the fact that the US was in no way in a period of war in 1932. Similarly, we have seen war on terror–inspired financial legislation increasingly used against American citizens. For example, in the name of “fighting terrorism” the US PATRIOT Act significantly increased know-your-customer laws, empowering federal regulators to use the traditional banking system to better track the economic behavior of American citizens.

In the eyes of the federal government, “antiterrorism” legislation was quickly expanded to include additional missions—such as stopping money laundering and drug crimes. Increasingly, these bogeymen have been used by policymakers around the world to erode financial privacy assets—such as cash and secret Swiss bank accounts.

On the domestic side, we have increasingly seen US corporate actors demonstrate their loyalty to the progressive political zeitgeist by proactively cracking down on various dissident political figures and conservative action groups. Bank of America, for example, has debanked various gun manufacturers and also turned over client data following the January 6 protests at the US Capitol. These moves could prove useful if BoA needs another federal bailout from a Biden-Harris administration, but highlights the degree to which the modern financial system can be weaponized against a state’s political enemies.

The same playbook is being increasingly used to target bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that are beyond the reach of the state.

Earlier this year, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen indicated that cryptocurrencies are in her crosshairs, telling an industry roundtable that

[t]he misuse of cryptocurrencies and virtual assets is a growing problem…. I see the promise of these new technologies, but I also see the reality: cryptocurrencies have been used to launder the profits of online drug traffickers; they’ve been a tool to finance terrorism.

European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde has also called for global regulation of cryptocurrencies, responding to increased interest in these alternative assets. Of course, the increased interest in assets like bitcoin is itself a direct response to the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, ECB, and other global central banks responding to government-caused economic shutdowns in 2020.

While central bankers often publicly dismiss the role of nonpoliticized assets like gold and bitcoin in financial markets, in their own circles they understand the dangers that exist in allowing the public the option of opting out of their financial schemes.

For example, at an annual Federal Reserve conference in 2016, the late Marvin Goodfriend noted the role that cash played in limiting what antisaving policies a central bank could pursue. He advocated the abolishment of cash in return, and drew comparisons to the elimination of the gold standard. In 2018, an IMF report warned that cryptocurrencies could reduce demand in fiat money, and recommended “rigorously applying measures to prevent money laundering and the financing of terrorism” in an attempt to undermine this consumer behavior.

In addition, central banks have sought to compete with the convenience of digital currency by developing their own versions. China—whose central bank has been one of the most aggressive in credit expansion since 2008—has recently released a “digital yuan,” while the ECB is working on a “digital euro.”

As I noted in 2017, this could set up a “next generation” of global currency war between private crypto and state digital currency. Since it is the nature of a state to defend its power, we should expect to see regulators and central bankers around the world escalate regulatory and legal pressure against financial assets beyond their control.

As FDR’s gold crackdown showed, tyrants know the importance of controlling money in a time of crisis.

Thankfully, so far bitcoin has demonstrated resilience against the most forceful of state actions. For example, in countries like Morocco—which has banned bitcoin entirely—peer-to-peer trading of bitcoin has skyrocketed.

What will be interesting to see is whether countries that are suspicious of international governing organizations—such as the IMF, EU, and UN—recognize the political value of private money as a check against globalist political hegemony.

We’ve seen Russia recognize the value of gold as a check against the weaponization of the dollar. Could bitcoin be next?

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EconomicPolicyJournal.com: How the Government Will Shutdown Bitcoin

Posted by M. C. on March 7, 2021

It is a rigged game in favor of the insiders and you are not one of them. There is no way that the Fed is going to want to compete with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies when the Fed is ready to introduce a Fedcoin.

I don’t doubt the Treasury and Fed are polling right now to test and see what story the public finds as the most acceptable justification for shutting down cryptocurrencies.

https://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2021/03/how-government-will-shutdown-bitcoin.html

As a follow up to my post, Harvard Professor Warns Central Banks Will Never Allow Bitcoin to Go Mainstream, David Brown emails:

It would be helpful to understand the details when you say “The hammer is there whenever they want to use it”. The bitcoiners will say BTC is uncontrollable. My sense is, the devil is in the details. I have yet to hear a clear discussion of the “plumbing” of how they will clamp down, and the bitcoiners’ counter-arguments. It would be very enlightening.

RW response: 

Well, bitcoiners would like you to focus on the “plumbing.” 

They have all kinds of fancy arguments of this kind and that. 

From another commenter at the post who talked about the plumbing:

Point being is that the selling point for bitcoin is that its payments are completely uncensorable as a result of the CPU cycles. Nothing and no one can stop you from sending a payment over the bitcoin network to whomever you want to.

Second level solutions can be built on top of bitcoin so you can buy your coffee, but having an unchangeable; indisputable, uncensorable way to send value is extremely valuable, even if you never buy coffee with it.

But shutting down bitcoin, in a way, is simple so you could never be able to buy coffee with it. It doesn’t matter what the plumbing is. Here is the law that could be enacted:

“The government hereby makes it illegal to conduct transactions in bitcoin.”

This instantly eliminates the ability for bitcoin to be used in retail transactions or in banking—or for an individual to be paid wages in bitcoin. If there are severe penalties, and there would be, what retailer or bank or cafe or other business is going to accept bitcoin in a transaction?

As for the uncensorable element, again we are talking about plumbing that has nothing to do with human exchanges.

Making bitcoin illegal would push bitcoin into the shadows, uncensorable or not. What are you going to do with bitcoin if it is in the shadows? Being a bitcoin dealer would be an extremely high-risk business. Transaction costs would soar. Indeed because of the nature of bitcoin transactions, the risk on any given exchange being exposed would be a lifetime proposition.

Bitcoiners focused on the “plumbing” fail to look at the situation from the non-plumbing transaction part of the exchange.

I hasten to add that as a first step, I don’t expect the government to shutdown bitcoin or other cryptocurrency trading right away. The first step will be more regulations to identify bitcoin holders.

In a discussion I had just yesterday on another topic with some Silicon Valley people, we talked for a bit about bitcoin. Our thinking went this way:

There is a massive amount of money to be made in shutting down bitcoin.

If you short it before the shutdown, you could make a lifetime-size amount of money that puts you on easy street if you are leveraged. 

When the major league insiders are ready, this is what will happen.

Right now the more buying of bitcoin, the better for them. The more liquid the market, the more bitcoin can be shorted when the time is right. And the time will eventually come. 

It is a rigged game in favor of the insiders and you are not one of them. There is no way that the Fed is going to want to compete with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies when the Fed is ready to introduce a Fedcoin.

I don’t doubt the Treasury and Fed are polling right now to test and see what story the public finds as the most acceptable justification for shutting down cryptocurrencies.

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The Dangers Lurking behind a Digital Euro | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on February 27, 2021

https://mises.org/wire/dangers-lurking-behind-digital-euro

Thorsten Polleit

Neosocialist China does it, Sweden does it, and many other states want to do it, too: to issue digitized central bank money for everyone. The European Central Bank (ECB) is also working on such a scheme. It wants to launch “digital euro central bank money” as soon as possible. Many economists praise the project as an “innovation,” as an important and indispensable step in an increasingly digitized world.

The ECB is also keen to make its intentions known, declaring that a digital euro will be accessible for everyone, robust, secure, efficient, and compliant with applicable law. However, it should be clear that the path to becoming a surveillance state regime will accelerate considerably if and when a digital euro is issued. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

A digital euro is not “better money” than the euro that is already in circulation today. The planned digital euro is fiat money, just as much as euro cash and euro bank balances represent fiat money: they are all created “out of nothing” by the ECB, which has the monopoly of euro production. Just as is the case with the existing euro, the quantity of digital euros can be increased at any time, it is backed by nothing, and the digital euro carries a 100 percent risk of devaluation. As noted earlier, a digital euro would be a fiat euro.

The digital euro can either be “account based”—you keep it in an account held with the ECB—or it can be “token based”—money users receive a “token” that can be transferred from smartphone to smartphone via an app. Hoping for “anonymity” in payment transactions would be futile in both cases, one has to fear.

A look at China probably shows where the journey is headed: the Chinese digital central bank money is supposed to have a “controlled anonymity.” In other words, “only” the People’s Bank of China—that is, the Chinese Communist Party—should have access to the payment transaction data.

The ECB says the digital euro is a “complement” to cash and bank balances. But that’s not convincing. Because those who pay in cash obviously find it convenient and want to ensure their anonymity. Otherwise, they would pay electronically, i.e., transfer balances through PayPal, Apple Pay, or debit or credit cards.

In this context, it should be noted that people don’t just hold cash for payment purposes. They also demand it to protect themselves against bank failures, for example, or they also hold cash to be liquid even in the event of power outages, to be independent of online banking.

That said, the suspicion that the ECB is more interested in taking cash out of circulation cannot be refuted easily. But if only electronic payments are possible, what little remains of “financial privacy” will be gone. The citizen becomes completely transparent, much to the liking of the state and its beneficiaries.

As soon as cash has been pushed back or stripped away entirely, monetary policymakers can implement an uninhibited negative interest rate policy to devalue debt. Customers can no longer get out of the “bank balance sheet”; the final escape door is then locked. 

It is unlikely that a digital euro will prevail naturally against cash. Rather, the ECB will have to make the use of cash unattractive: by raising the costs of cash by increasing fees at ATMs or through upper limits for cash payments, or through social stigmatization of cash (keywords: money laundering, terrorist financing, etc.).

The digital euro does not compete with crypto units such as bitcoin. After all, a digital euro is—as already mentioned—fiat money issued by the state, which is exactly what all those who are looking for better money do not want to hold.

Rather, the target group for the digital euro includes those who are basically content with the euro as it currently is and those who are worried about a potential banking crash. This group probably represents a fairly large number of people who come into question as a potential target clientele for the digital euro.

The plan is to allow for a 1:1 exchange of euro cash and commercial bank balances with digital euros. Economically speaking, this means that the ECB de facto insures the liabilities of the euro banks: the ECB transfers its creditworthiness, which is beyond any doubt stellar, to euro commercial banks.

With a 1:1 exchange option nobody has to worry about losing their money balances held at euro commercial banks, as the ECB has the monopoly of euro production. The ECB cannot go bankrupt; it can create euros at any time to settle its payment obligations, regardless of the amount.

That said, no one needs to worry that their balances held at a commercial bank could be lost if the bank goes bankrupt and the deposit protection fund fails. If a digital euro is publicly accepted, the scenario of euro commercial banks collapsing becomes unlikely; the euro money and credit system would be supported more than ever by the omnipotence of the ECB.

As is well known, in their Communist Manifesto (1848) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels named ten “measures” the implementation of which would lead to communism. The fifth measure reads as follows: “Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state by a national bank with state capital and exclusive monopoly.” The issuance of a digital euro and the resulting consequences are undoubtedly another crucial step in bringing the Marxists’ vision of their desired revolution to fruition. Author:

Thorsten Polleit

Dr. Thorsten Polleit is Chief Economist of Degussa and Honorary Professor at the University of Bayreuth. He also acts as an investment advisor.

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Paul Krugman’s Hilarious 2015 Bitcoin Prediction and the Value of Intellectual Humility

Posted by M. C. on February 12, 2021

A $7,500 investment in bitcoin in 2015, when economist Paul Krugman described it as “bubble” rooted in “libertarian ideology,” today would be worth $1.2 million.

https://fee.org/articles/paul-krugman-s-hilarious-2015-bitcoin-prediction-and-the-value-of-intellectual-humility/?fbclid=IwAR25-qgFHz6Izee_loYXUwAd-N-SgUy5M1omV0R2dgr6N6lzPYECjx7bkBw

In 1998, Paul Krugman predicted that by 2005 it would be clear that “the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”

The prediction was so wrong and so widely circulated that Snopes has a page fact-checking the claim and affirming its veracity.

The internet is a vast place, but one would be hard-pressed to find another prediction that missed so badly. Which is why I was surprised to stumble across a 2015 prediction on bitcoin that whiffed just as wildly.

Coincidently (or perhaps not), this comment also comes from Krugman.

During a July 2015 roundtable discussion, Krugman was asked for his take on “disruptive digital currencies such as bitcoin.”

In a rambling two and a half minute response, Krugman described bitcoin as a currency rooted in “libertarian ideology,” a bubble that was just waiting to pop.

“It’s a technically sweet solution to a problem, but it’s not clear that problem has much economic relevance,” the Nobel Laureate explained.

The problem is, it’s clear Krugman didn’t understand those technical issues. He goes on to compare bitcoin to credit cards.

“If you’re looking for the idea that a currency doesn’t have to be something physical, it can be something virtual, that’s the system we already have,” he says. “If I want a way to make payments electronically, that’s, you know, credit cards.”

Krugman’s response suggests he had not actually studied bitcoin and didn’t really understand its value proposition or unique properties. Bitcoin has many of the same attributes as fiat money—it is easily transferable, divisible and fungible—but unlike fiat money, its supply is predictable and strictly limited.

Hubris among intellectuals isn’t exactly unheard of, but it’s a bit astonishing coming from Krugman, whose history is replete with whacky predictions and bad advice.

By design, bitcoin is increasingly difficult to create (“mine”). And, we know for a certainty that just 21 million bitcoins will be produced. This inherent scarcity makes bitcoin a far more durable form of currency than fiat money, an attribute that has nothing to do with credit cards.

Instead of discussing the attributes of bitcoin or even going into its weaknesses, Krugman mostly scoffs at cryptocurrencies and offers this bit of financial advice.

“Bitcoin looks like it really is a bubble in multiple senses,” Krugman says. “Certainly, [there’s] not a reason to hold that currency.”

If you listened to Krugman and decided to not buy bitcoin in 2015, you probably feel a bit like Blockbuster after turning down a $50 million offer to buy Netflix.

When Krugman made this prediction in July 2015, bitcoin was trading at roughly $300. On Thursday morning, bitcoin was trading at $47,500. This means that if you decided to ignore Krugman’s advice and buy 25 bitcoins for $7,500, you’d have nearly $1.2 million today.

To be fair to Krugman, predicting the future is hard. We live in a complex world with infinite moving parts. But we should acknowledge that.

Let’s look at it another way. Krugman was earning a $225,000 annual salary from City University of New York in 2015 (to study income inequality), a sum that does not include earnings from other ventures (book royalties, his New York Times column, etc.). If for one year Krugman bought bitcoin instead of stocks with ten percent of his income (pre-tax), he could have purchased 75 bitcoin for $22,500. That single investment would have netted him a $3.6 million profit.

To be fair to Krugman, predicting the future is hard. We live in a complex world with infinite moving parts. Our knowledge of the world—systems, choices, products, risks, etc.—is limited.

But we should acknowledge that. This awareness, the Nobel Prize winning economist F.A. Hayek pointed out, will in turn teach us a certain amount of intellectual humility.

“To assume all the knowledge to be given to a single mind…is to disregard everything that is important and significant in the real world,” Hayek wrote in The Use of Knowledge in Society.

Krugman’s response is stark contrast to how fellow progressive Noam Chomsky responded when asked about bitcoin during a 2015 interview.

Alas, admitting the limits of knowledge is not something Krugman is known for. And it comes through when he all but sneers when asked about bitcoin, provoking laughter from the audience and the moderator.

This is a stark contrast to how fellow progressive Noam Chomsky responded when he was asked about bitcoin during a 2015 interview. Chomsky expressed skepticism, but he also acknowledged he hadn’t studied bitcoin closely.

“My first mind is that I don’t know enough to answer,” Chomsky said. “I looked into it to an extent, and the guesses seem to be pretty uncertain.”

It’s a far more refreshing answer than Krugman’s glib take.

Hubris among intellectuals isn’t exactly unheard of, but it’s a bit astonishing coming from Krugman, whose history is replete with whacky predictions and bad advice that turned out to be rather embarrassing. This ranges from a 2002 plea to intentionally create a housing bubble to fight recession (how did that housing bubble work out?), to empirical failures of his macroeconomic models, to the aforementioned claim that the internet’s economic impact would be “no greater than the fax machines.”

Again, it’s okay to be wrong about things. We’re human, we all make mistakes. But recognizing this basic truth should breed humility, not arrogance, and the ability to admit when we’re wrong.

Krugman remains a crypto skeptic, evidenced by columns in 2017 and 2018, and that’s okay. At least it looks like he’s done more homework since then. His primary hang-up is the idea that bitcoin is “untethered” in contrast to gold (which has intrinsic value) and fiat money (which is backed by government promises).

“If speculators were to have a collective moment of doubt, suddenly fearing that Bitcoins were worthless, well, Bitcoins would become worthless,” writes Krugman.

This is true, of course, but it could also be said of any currency (even gold).

I’ll admit that I had similar skepticism about bitcoin for years. Its value as a flexible but durable currency designed to be scarce was elusive and difficult to fully believe.

I don’t feel that way anymore. The value proposition as a durable currency resistant to inflation is real, especially at a moment when fiat money looks precarious because of mass pumping.

I bought my first crypto this week. Time will tell if the investment was wise or foolish.

But I promise one thing: If I’m wrong, I’ll admit it

Jon Miltimore
Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times. 

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EconomicPolicyJournal.com: WARNING: Bitcoin is Extremely Trackable and is Resulting in an Investigation In Relation to the Storming of the Capitol

Posted by M. C. on January 16, 2021

https://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2021/01/warning-bitcoin-is-extremely-trackable.html

 From Jenna McLaughlin at Yahoo (my bold):

On Dec. 8, someone made a simultaneous transfer of 28.15 bitcoins — worth more than $500,000 at the time — to 22 different virtual wallets, most of them belonging to prominent right-wing organizations and personalities.

Now cryptocurrency researchers believe they have identified who made the transfer, and suspect it was intended to bolster those far-right causes. U.S. law enforcement is investigating whether the donations were linked to the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

While the motivation is difficult to prove, the transfer came just a month before the violent riot in the Capitol, which took place after President Trump invited supporters to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” and “take back our country.”

Right-wing figures and websites, including VDARE, the Daily Stormer and Nick Fuentes, received generous donations from a bitcoin account linked to a French cryptocurrency exchange, according to research done by software company Chainalysis, which maintains a repository of information about public cryptocurrency exchanges and whose tools aid in government, law enforcement and private sector investigations. Chainalysis investigated the donations after Yahoo News shared the data points about the transaction.

According to one source familiar with the matter, the suspicious Dec. 8 transaction, along with a number of other pieces of intelligence, has prompted law enforcement and intelligence agencies in recent days to actively investigate the sources of funding for the individuals who participated in the Capitol insurrection, as well as their networks. 

The connection to the storming of the Capitol is very sketchy from what is reported above but it shows you how links can develop when using Bitcoin.

Note well: This was a private organization that just tracked activity on the Bitcoin blockchain.

I repeat Bitcoin is extremely trackable.

#BrownPaperBags –RW

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John McAfee just withdrew his famous 2020 prediction about Bitcoin, now says the cryptocurrency is essentially obsolete – NaturalNews.com

Posted by M. C. on January 14, 2020

Bitcoin is clearly not a store of value, and recent research by Princeton scientists found that Bitcoin isn’t anonymous, either

https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-01-12-john-mcafee-withdrew-famous-2020-bitcoin-prediction-obsolete.html

by:

(Natural News) There was a time when John McAfee of antivirus fame predicted that Bitcoin would reach $1 million by 2020. But he’s since changed his mind and decided that Bitcoin will eventually reach $0 because the cryptocurrency is based on “ancient” technology.

Part of McAfee’s former $1 million claim included a personal promise; if it didn’t “shoot the moon,” then McAfee was going to remove his genitalia. But now McAfee claims that this was all just a ploy for attention, and that he never actually intended to do this.

Though McAfee founded one of the largest cybersecurity firms back in 1987, he’s now on the run from authorities. And during a rare interview he gave from an anonymous location recently, McAfee told all about his “adventures,” as well as his newfound opinions on Bitcoin.

“Bitcoin was first,” McAfee wrote in a recent tweet disavowing the cryptocurrency that he once hailed. “It’s an ancient technology. All know it. Newer blockchains have privacy, smart contracts, distributed apps and more. Bitcoin is our future? Was the Model T the future of the automobile?”

Back in May, McAfee endorsed Dogecoin, a newer cryptocurrency that he likes because of its name, apparently. Just a few months later in August, McAfee warned his Twitter followers not to bail on Bitcoin because, “You know in your heart Bitcoin cannot lose.”

So, McAfee really is kind of all over the place when it comes to Bitcoin and the cryptosphere, endorsing one crypto one day and another the next. Reports indicate that he also has a history of accepting cash to pump altcoins, which one source indicates has given him an incentive to bash Bitcoin.

For more related news about the collapse of Bitcoin, be sure to check out BitRaped.com.

Bitcoin is on the way out

McAfee did, however, blow the lid on Bitcoin back in 2017 when he admitted that Bitcoin is centered around artificial work, even while attempting to endorse it.

During an interview with Jamie Dimon, McAfee stated that it costs “over one thousand dollars per coin to create a Bitcoin,” and that the process involves “proof of work” mining. Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, described this as a computation wheel spinning operation where the Bitcoin algorithm contains artificial and needless complexity designed to make Bitcoin mining more difficult than it otherwise needs to be.

At one point in time, it only cost about a penny to mine Bitcoin, yet now it costs more than $1,000, which begs the question as to why this is the case. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Rush To A Cashless Society Only Serves Globalist Interests

Posted by M. C. on December 2, 2019

 I have long held that current popular cryptocurrencies are nothing more than a beta test for a global digital currency system controlled by the elites.

http://www.alt-market.com/index.php/articles/4013-the-rush-to-a-cashless-society-only-serves-globalist-interests

Brandon Smith

In 2017 I published an article called ‘The Globalist One World Currency Will Look A Lot Like Bitcoin’. In it, I warned that the trendy marketing of cryptocurrencies to the general public by the mainstream media was extremely suspicious and contrary to the notion that the establishment was “terrified” of Bitcoin or blockchain tech putting them out of business. I also warned of the deep involvement of international banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan in the progress of blockchain infrastructure and more specifically Goldman Sachs and the IMF’s love affair with digital monetary systems. Goldman Sachs even referred to the blockchain as “the new technology of trust…”

Clearly, the banking elites are not worried about this technology. In fact, they have been investing in it heavily. But why?  I have long held that current popular cryptocurrencies are nothing more than a beta test for a global digital currency system controlled by the elites.

This is not to say that many people are familiar with using Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. In fact, only a tiny percentage of the population ever comes into contact with or trades crypto. What I am saying is, the terminology, the idea of cryptocurrencies, is now widespread.

Thanks to a vast amount of media attention, Bitcoin is a household brand even though most people have never owned a bitcoin (or a portion of a bitcoin). Whale investors have hyperinflated the price of Bitcoin and certain other coins to levels beyond all reason as demand by the investment world and average people for the mechanism is minimal at best. These price explosions, though brief, have spurred public curiosity. And, in the minds of many if something is considered valuable, no matter how ethereal or arbitrary the measure, there must be a reason…right? Therefore, in the minds of bitcoin cheerleaders high market prices prove by default that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are necessary and desirable and anyone who is critical or skeptical is merely “upset” that they “missed out on the opportunity”.

I have always said when asked about my position on Bitcoin and crypto that if you want to try to make money on one of these coins and think you can play the market, then by all means, the more power to you. But, for those who thought that cryptocurrencies are a tool for activism and fighting the central banks, all I can say is you have been duped.

Over the course of a decade, the masses have been acclimated to the idea of a digital currency system. They are now being acclimated to the idea that physical currencies should be done away with and replaced with the “more efficient” blockchain tech – Death to the dollar, death to the Fed and death to the globalists say activists as they cheer for the new digital landscape! But this is not what is really happening. The death of the dollar and physical cash is only the primer for a new and even more invasive world order.

In the past two years the agenda for a cashless system and a one world currency has gone mainstream. The plans that liberty analysts were once called “conspiracy theorists” for talking about ten years ago are now out in the open. The latest barrage of propaganda was launched by the governor of the Bank Of England, Mark Carney, who openly warned of the end of the dollar’s world reserve status, comparing it to the end of the Pound Sterling’s reserve status after WWII. He also noted that the dollar could be replaced by a new digital currency system and that this would be advantageous the banking system.

This piggybacks on comments made by globalist and PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian in 2017, who stated in an op-ed that the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights basket system could be used to replace the dollar as world reserve and that this would help to “fight the rise of populism”.

Next, Facebook introduced the concept of the “Libra” digital currency, which Mark Carney also suggested central banks would be watching closely. Libra, in my view, is a test designed to lure wider public into using digital currency on a regular basis. As noted, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies gained exposure but not preference. Where they failed to infiltrate the daily trade of the average citizen, Libra could eventually succeed…

Trichet’s argument for an IMF dominated crytpocurrency was surely welcomed in Beijing, where the Chinese have long supported the proliferation of the SDR and have called for the SDR to replace the dollar. The Chinese are not the only one’s. The Russian government has also called for the IMF to take over the global monetary system with the SDR basket.  Russia has all but decoupled from the dollar, dumping it’s US treasury holding, stockpiling a large supply of gold and removing the dollar in bilateral trade agreements with other nations.

Last year Europe began establishing a new alternative to the US controlled SWIFT payment system. Germany in particular criticized the US system as a geopolitical weapon. Now, an association of major banks in Germany and in the EU is calling for a digital Euro based on the blockchain ledger.

The IMF has been openly publishing white papers that agree with the assessment that a global digital currency is needed, and with former IMF head Christine Lagarde now in charge at the ECB, it is likely that a Euro cryptocurrency system will soon make a public appearance.

In the meantime, multiple central banks are pursuing a cashless system and digital currencies of their own. China has announced a national digital currency system will be realized in the next 18 months. The Swiss central bank is exploring digital currency options, and Russia is considering launching a cryptocurrency as well.

The rhetoric coming from the mainstream media and the banking establishment is that physical methods of payment will soon disappear. This is being called the “democratization of money”, and the “multipolar world order”; I’m sorry to say that it’s the exact opposite.

The claim is that the end of cash and specifically the end of the dollar will result in more choice in the monetary world. But the end of physical cash is actually a removal of choice and the result is MORE centralization. The banking elites are so excited about the digital currency model because it removes all privacy from trade. As I have outlined in past articles, cryptocurrency and blockchain tech have no anonymity whatsoever despite claims originally circulated by proponents and cypto-activists. It is also clear that central banks intend to introduce their own highly managed currencies and most other coins will be buried in the process.

The multipolar and multilateral world order memes are also a fraud. China, Russia, Europe and other nations are demanding an alternative to the dollar, but if that alternative ends up being a digitized version of the SDR basket under the IMF’s control as these countries have suggested, then this means total global centralization, NOT decentralization.

Real decentralization would mean the removal of bureaucratic oversight and micromanagement. It would mean that physical currencies backed by gold and silver could be offered as an alternative option, not just cryptocurrencies or fiat backed by nothing. After all, gold and silver have far more individual investors worldwide than cryptocurrencies do. How about some real competition instead of price suppression of metals by the likes of JP Morgan?

It would mean localized currencies and payment systems backed by hard commodities, not one worldwide currency and payment system backed by nothing. It would mean nations breaking from dependence not just on the dollar, but also breaking from globalist institutions like the IMF, BIS and World Bank. The globalists are attempting to sell us on slavery by packaging it as “free markets”. The solution is to not use the systems they promote and be ready to fight tooth and nail for real decentralization.

Be seeing you

CASHLESS Society Coming SOON! - The Federal Reserve Is ...

No Cash=No Provacy.  Let’s follow China’s lead.

 

 

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EconomicPolicyJournal.com: Trump’s Signals He May Start Going After Bitcoin

Posted by M. C. on July 12, 2019

The “Crypto” in cryptocurrency once meant privacy from government snooping in our spending habits.

That ship is long gone. Anyone who thinks the government would let that happen better get their prescription changed.

Today’s alternative currencies are much closer to commodities as they are not based on a standard like gold.

Today’s alternative currencies, such as Zuck’s ‘Libra’ are meant to be anything but private. Zuck’s and the government’s goal is to know more about your finances than you do.

The government is becoming ultra protective of the dollar now that Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and others are looking to purchase oil in something besides the US petro-dollar. Note the similarity to the countries named and the countries with which the US wants to go to war.

https://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2019/07/trumps-signals-he-may-start-going-after.html

The below seemingly came out of the blue, but really not surprising.

Trump’s controls do not want paper currency competition.

The regulations are coming.

–RW

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It’s No Bitcoin: Facebook’s Libra Currency Is Tied to Government Currencies | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on July 2, 2019

Ah, but … and here is the rub, the Libra is not a naturally limited good, as Bitcoin is, but can be multiplied to infinity. It is not stabilized by reference to a basket of commodities as Hayek recommended. Rather, it will be defined by a changeable basket of fiat currencies!

In other words the Zuckerberg’s Libra can be inflated to worthlessness, as has the Continental through the dollar since 1776.

https://mises.org/wire/its-no-bitcoin-facebooks-libra-currency-tied-government-currencies

In 1975 Hayek eventually gave a lecture entitled “Choice of Currency,” in which he articulated for the first time the provocative demand that the state monopoly on money should be repealed. The publication of the monographs Free Choice in Currency and The Denationalization of Money followed a year later, in which he expanded in greater detail on his ideas on competition between private money issuers. …

What shape would an order reflecting these power-sharing principles take, and how could it emerge? Hayek argues that such an order would take shape if the following liberties were granted:

Fast forward nearly a half century and Hayek’s call for the denationalization of money seems to be a real possibility, not just a crank libertarian position safely ignored by the monetary authorities.

The coming of the block chain technology and cryptocurrencies certainly suggest that the original post-World War II Bretton Woods “settlement” of the status of money, that gold and US dollars, redeemable in gold, were the basis for international settlements, failed. As have later revisions of the idea. Thus, an era of monetary uncertainty may give rise to possibilities for market-oriented reforms.

Bitcoin, as an example of “virtual gold,” gains its value from the limited number of units of that cryptocurrency and the expense in “mining” more of those units, not unlike real gold. While Bitcoin is the best known of the cryptocurrencies, CoinMarketCap.com lists over a thousand crypto currencies that are traded (though a significant percentage of these are actually ICOs — Initial Crypto Offerings — a way to raise funds for a particular project). Much of the power of the cryptos is that they can be easily, and privately, bought, sold, and exchanged.

Hayek predicted that normal market forces would apply to the goods we use to facilitate exchange (“currencies”) if only governments would get out of the way. In a free market for money he suggested that major financial institutions would sponsor competing currencies, probably defined by “baskets” of commodities. He speculates on how the market would maintain the value and stability of such currencies, far better than any political system of legal tender.

To some degree, this seems to be happening with cryptocurrencies.

And then along comes the 900 pound gorilla. Facebook, with two billion users, has decided to enter the cryptocurrency market with its Libra coin. Since the Libra would be usable as a currency on Facebook itself, the company probably has calculated that it will have a strong competitive advantage over any of the competing currencies.

Ah, but … and here is the rub, the Libra is not a naturally limited good, as Bitcoin is, but can be multiplied to infinity. It is not stabilized by reference to a basket of commodities as Hayek recommended. Rather, it will be defined by a changeable basket of fiat currencies!

That’s right. Facebook and Libra’s cooperating founding organizations (including PayPal, Visa, Uber …) hope to provide a stable cryptocurrency by tying it to a group of government currencies! According to Techcrunch:

A Libra is a unit of the Libra cryptocurrency that’s represented by a three wavy horizontal line unicode character ≋ like the dollar is represented by $. The value of a Libra is meant to stay largely stable, so it’s a good medium of exchange, as merchants can be confident they won’t be paid a Libra today that’s then worth less tomorrow. The Libra’s value is tied to a basket of bank deposits and short-term government securities for a slew of historically stable international currencies, including the dollar, pound, euro, Swiss franc and yen. The Libra Association maintains this basket of assets and can change the balance of its composition if necessary to offset major price fluctuations in any one foreign currency so that the value of a Libra stays consistent.

Well, that’s it. Zuckerberg is no Hayek. And the Libra is no Bitcoin.

 

 

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Australia Inserting Nano-Chips in $50 & $100 Bills to Track Underground Economy & Coming Barter System | Armstrong Economics

Posted by M. C. on January 4, 2019

The IMF is advocating the end of paper money to kill the underground or black economy solely to aid the hunt for taxes and to PREVENT bank runs. If there is no paper money, how can you run to the bank in a panic demanding to withdraw your money? 

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/economics/australia-inserting-nano-chips-in-50-100-bills-to-track-underground-economy-coming-barter-system/

by Martin Armstrong

While the BitCoin people have hated me for not agreeing with them that a private currency could displace the currencies of all nations and BitCoin would be the new “reserve currency” killing the dollar, to me they are in serious need of help. They have ZERO comprehension of governmental power and ZERO understanding of what is going on behind the curtain. The IMF has come out and stated that each nation should issue their own cryptocurrency and these fools cheers claiming I am not with it and do not get this new age of technology. Sorry, but these people are really clueless if not perhaps undercover people with a mission to get people willing to surrender their final liberty – paper money.

While cryptobugs advocate gold is dead and BitCoin will conquer the financial world, they miss the point entirely. The IMF is by no means embracing cryptocurrencies for the same reason these people have claimed it will bypass central banks. The IMF is advocating the end of paper money to kill the underground or black economy solely to aid the hunt for taxes and to PREVENT bank runs. If there is no paper money, how can you run to the bank in a panic demanding to withdraw your money? They also argue eliminating paper money will end crime… Read the rest of this entry »

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