Category Archives: Currencies

Banking Elites Are Using Crypto Bloodbath And FTX Fraud To Justify CBDCs, by Tyler Durden

Posted on December 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

Scandal has always been a good excuse for new laws, regulations, and other restrictions on liberty. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Central bankers and international corporate financiers have long been pretending to hate the very concept of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Etherium while at the same time investing heavily in blockchain technologies and infrastructure.  The purpose of the ruse is not clear, but more than likely it was an attempt at mass reverse psychology – “We don’t like crypto and digital currencies because we supposedly have no control over them; free market proponents should embrace them blindly because that is how you will beat us.”

In the meantime, while major banking firms are investing billions into various blockchain products, central banks and global institutions like the BIS and IMF have been developing their own systems.  In fact, the BIS notes with enthusiasm that around 90% of central banks around the world are already in the process of adopting CBDCs. 

But why would anyone want to use government and establishment bank controlled cryptocurrencies when they have access to Bitcoin and dozens of other coins that are supposedly independent?  Why trade freedom for more centralization?

First, existing cryptocurrencies are not as free as many people believe, with ample government tracking of blockchain transactions in place for years, the notion of the completely anonymous crypto user is a bit of a fantasy, and the idea that a product such as Bitcoin is going to “bring down” the central banks is becoming less realistic by the year. 

Second, the crypto market is highly unstable in part because it is still very limited.  While crypto use in America is higher than most other countries with around 12% of people using it as an investment (not as a currency), the rest of the world is mostly uninterested with an estimated global footprint of around 4%.  Of that 4% only a handful of people actually own the majority of the market; these people are known as “whales” and they have the ability to tip the market up or down with little effort.  

This happens in many other trade commodities and paper currencies also.  The point is, crypto is not immune to manipulation.   

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Cashless Society Talk Goes Mainstream in a Hurry and Should Be Trusted Like the NSA, by David Haggith

Posted on November 28, 2022 | 1 comment

Central bank digital currencies will allow governments to track every transaction, put conditions on the use of money and take it away for noncompliance with certain “social norms,” and in every way allow for the control of the citizenry. From David Haggith at thegreatrecession.info/blog:

We’re on the brink of a dramatic change where we’re about to — and I’ll say this boldly — we’re about to abandon the traditional system of money, and accounting, and introduce a new one…. The new accounting is what we call “blockchain.” It means digital. It means having an almost perfect record of every single transaction that happens in the economy, which will give us far greater clarity over what’s going on…. It also raises huge dangers in terms of the balance of power between states and citizens.

(from the following video)

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Posted in Banking, Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Governments, Tyranny

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The Rise and Fall of FTX (Part 2 of 3), by Scott Hill

Posted on November 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here’s further analysis of the FTX travesty, from Scott Hill at bombthrower.com:

Last week we covered the collapse of FTX as it happened but there’s a lot more to the story. How did FTX grow from a tiny Hong Kong bucket shop into a top three Crypto exchange over the course of just a few years? What was Alameda research and were they ever legitimate? Most importantly, how exactly does an exchange lose track of up to $10 billion worth of customer deposits?

Most of this material is still an educated guess, but the guessers are out there putting together clues from private discussions which have been leaked, the bankruptcy proceedings and first hand dealings shared on Crypto Twitter.

It’s worth noting that there is a whole deep state angle to this story.

I won’t go into it in this article because so little is known (see endnote – ed.)

What we do know is mostly confined to the fact that FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was the second largest donor to Democrat political campaigns since 2019. His Co-CEO for part of the FTX Empire, Ryan Salame, was a top 10 donor to the Republican party in the same period.

Sam Bankman-Fried met with SEC Chairman Gary Gensler seeking a “no action” letter on an enforcement matter in April, shortly before SBF began pushing the DCCPA, a bill which the Crypto industry mainly saw as a subtle crackdown on DeFi wrapped in a reasonable sounding regulatory framework.

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The Uncertainty in China Is Kryptonite to Global Markets, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on November 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

When things go wrong in China it has a global impact. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Few seem alive to the potentially consequential financial risks arising from uncertainties evolving in China.

One thing we know rather definitively is that markets don’t like uncertainty: uncertainty is Kryptonite to markets.

Another thing we know is that the events unfolding in China are generating uncertainty on multiple levels. Whatever policy decisions are made, the potential consequences generate waves of profound uncertainty.

Should authorities respond to exploding Covid caseloads with heavy-handed lockdowns, that will trigger production and shipping consequences for global trade. If restrictions are relaxed, the healthcare consequences are also uncertain, as China lacks the facilities such as ICU beds in sufficient quantities to deal with a contagious virus spreading in a populace with very little immunity.

The reactions of both authorities and the people generate an entirely different level of uncertainty. Authoritarian regimes are trapped: if their response is increasingly brutal repression, punishment and lockdowns, this risks changing the populace’s understanding of the social contract in a destabilizing dynamic.

But offering concessions opens the door to demands for further concessions, and this path is an equally destabilizing dynamic.

There are no positives for global markets in any of these developments, as each potential outcome has difficult-to-predict and control second order effects. Covid lockdowns have the potential to topple various supply-chain dominoes, and by weakening economic activity, they also have the potential to topple dominoes in the populace’s understanding of the social contract between citizens and the state.

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First to Go: The Money, by Bill Bonner

Posted on November 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

Every bubble the last few decades seems to have popped and then given rise to an even bigger bubble. The bubble currently popping will be the bubble to end all bubbles, and nothing larger will follow. From Bill Bonner at bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com:

(Source: Getty Images)

Bill Bonner, reckoning today from Baltimore, Maryland…

Yesterday, we took a look into the murky past, to see what lurked therein. Today, we turn our minds to the future, which may prove murkier still.

As we saw in China, during the 1930s and ‘40s, the government printed money to pay its bills. It ran up debt it couldn’t pay. And then, the hyperinflation of the 1950s opened the door to Mao’s communists. After that, it was one disaster after another.

Americans think they can continue to borrow and spend forever. Investors are trained to believe that stocks always bounce back. They think that if they just hold on, soon they will be making money again.

And if they owe money, they think they’ll soon be able to refinance at even lower rates.

But all that has changed. Now that we have inflation, it’s a whole new ballgame.  The Fed can still print money, but now it will cause consumer prices to rise even faster. Your stocks may go up, as they did from 1966 to 1982, but inflation will wipe out your gains. And when you go to refinance your house, you will be hit by a double-whammy. Falling house prices may have erased your ‘equity’…while rising mortgage interest increases your monthly payments.

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Posted in Banking, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Financial markets, Government, History

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Post-FTX Regulatory Crackdown Will Erode Liberties, Accelerate Path To CBDC ‘Social Engineering’, by Michael Washburn

Posted on November 25, 2022 | Leave a comment

An interesting issue is just how much governments can regulate cryptocurrencies. From Michael Washburn at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:

The collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, and the worldwide outcry over the billions of dollars wiped off the platform, are likely to trigger a massive regulatory reaction that would further erode citizens’ economic freedoms without addressing the issues that fostered demand for an alternative to the fiat dollar, economists have told The Epoch Times.

A detailed view of the FTX sign prior to a game between the Phoenix Suns and Miami Heat at FTX Arena in Miami, Fla., on Nov. 14, 2022. (Megan Briggs/Getty Images)

An international scandal has embroiled FTX and its founder, 30-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried, in the wake of the firm’s crash earlier this month precipitated by a run on the exchange. Since then, reports have emerged that Alameda Research, a crypto hedge fund established by Bankman-Fried, was trading billions of dollars from FTX accounts without clients’ knowledge.

FTX has filed for bankruptcy protection, Bankman-Fried has stepped down from his role as CEO, and John J. Ray III, the former CEO of Enron, has taken over the insolvent company with a plan to sell it off if a successful restructuring is impossible. An estimated 1 million customers and other investors are facing total losses of billions of dollars.

FTX, in a recent court filing, said it owes $3.1 billion to its top 50 creditors, and its collapse has rocked the $839 billion global crypto market. On Nov. 22, the trading value of bitcoin tumbled to $15,480, a two-year low, before edging up slightly to $15,909.

Ray has claimed that subsidiaries of FTX in the United States and abroad “have solvent balance sheets, responsible management and valuable franchises,” but so far the shock and alarm over the exchange’s implosion have shown no sign of abating.

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Posted in Currencies, Financial markets, Government, Law, Politics

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The Folly of Crypto Regulation, by William Gudal

Posted on November 24, 2022 | Leave a comment

Crypto is a jungle. Let it stay a jungle and buyer (and seller) beware. From SLL contributor William Gudal:

In the wake of the FTX explosion there is a cascade of calls for new crypto regulation. I, on the other hand, recommend zero regulation of any kind, now or in the future. Crypto is not a financial asset (or an asset of any kind) and therefore requires no regulation. Further, it is incapable of meaningful regulation; it is like holding a beach ball underwater.

In my years of observing human nature I have concluded that individuals are overwhelmingly possessed by three archetypical and primal instincts: sex, consumption of food and water, and the desire to pass a law, a rule or a regulation. Humans love telling people what to do and what not to do. This applies not just at the national level but extends all the way down to local governments and to voluntary social organizations. Nothing must excite a Congressperson more than the moment another 1200 page legislative bill receives the final passing vote and is sent off to the Government Publishing Office. These new laws stack up like cordwood, hundreds of years of them, and remain forever like lichen on a stone, ready to confuse and thwart the efficiency of the next new good idea. The bill signing ceremony where the President hands out a multitude of pens to the dazzled onlookers must be pure euphoria.

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Awaiting Liberation: A Report from the Front and a Warning, by Batiushka

Posted on November 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

Living in Ukraine is no picnic now and the Russians intend to make it far worse this winter. From Batiushka at thesaker.is:

If you are expecting dramatic news and pictures from the Donbass, where Allied troops are slowly but inexorably advancing, destroying thousands of Nazis of all Western nationalities and dozens of their military vehicles and piles of their equipment every week, as they liberate towns and villages (all unreported by the Western media), sorry. This is a story from the home front. It is a human story. I hope it brings it all home to you.

It is about a small town south of Kiev. Two years ago, Ukrainian (though they are Russians, as far as they are concerned) members of my family, a couple with two grown-up children, bought a brand-new house there. I have been there and stayed there. Last year. I know it well and the road from there to central Kiev. I could take you there now.

First of all, it is snowing. Photos sent to me show it. The long Indian summer is well and truly over. And the Russians have decided to use the same tactics as the Americans used in Serbia: launch missiles at the energy infrastructure. Thank you, USA, for your example of how to wage war.

The Ukrainian currency, the hryvnia, has dropped by 30% against the dollar, pound and euro. Everything that is imported has increased in price by at least that much. Many things by 100%. Though that is similar to the situation in Western Europe, where I now live. On top of that what you used to get from Russia is now unobtainable because of ‘sanctions’.

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Bitcoin Is Far More Than An Investment, by Paul Rosenberg

Posted on November 21, 2022 | 1 comment

Bitcoin embodies the promise of encryption, a way to free yourself from government. From Paul Rosenberg at freemansperspective.com:

Over the past few years, huge numbers of people have come to see Bitcoin as an investment… as a stock. That’s because a significant percentage of the populace – certainly a good percentage of the investing class – knows someone, at least a friend of a friend, who has done very well with Bitcoin. That’s the kind of thing that people notice, and not unreasonably so.

The truth, however, is that Bitcoin is more and better than an investment… much more and much better.

We’ll get to some detail on this later, but before I start on the story of Bitcoin, I should at least say that rather than being an investment (even though its exchange price does rise dramatically), Bitcoin is actually a new societal model. It is fundamentally different from the old model, being both more efficient and morally superior.

It Came From Outside

Now, let’s spend a few minutes on where this thing came from. And the short version is that it came from outside.

Bitcoin, you see, is not an adaptation based on existing currencies, nor can it be understood that way. Bitcoin is from the realm of radicals.

In particular, Bitcoin came to us from the cypherpunks, a group of cryptography advocates. They began to flourish in the early 1990s, as they realized they could “wall-off” areas of cyberspace from the intrusions of governments. Here, to give you some flavor, are a few quotes from these people:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us.

We don’t much care if you don’t approve of the software we write. We know that software can’t be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can’t be shut down.

A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto anarchy.

Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!

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Posted in Business, Capitalism, Civil Liberties, Currencies, Governments

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The Bitcoin Revolution & How Fiat Money Ruins Civilization, by Jimmy Song

Posted on November 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

Any currency whose quantity and value can be adjusted at the whim of a government is inherently immoral and will eventually be tossed into the garbage bin of history. From Jimmy Song at bitcoinmagazine.com:

Fiat money leads to a degradation of incentives, creating a society motivated only by the consumption of resources and zero value production.

This is an opinion editorial by Jimmy Song, a Bitcoin developer, educator and entrepreneur and programmer with over 20 years of experience.

We want nice things. We want to live in a nice house, eat good food and have fulfilling relationships. We want to travel to exotic places, listen to great music and experience fun. We want to build something that lasts, achieve something great and leave a better world for tomorrow.

These are all part of being human, of participating in society and of progressing humanity. Unfortunately, all these things and more get ruined by fiat money. We want nice things, but we can’t have them, and the reason is because of fiat money.

Governments want the power to decree prosperity, fulfillment and progress into existence. They’re like the alchemists of yesteryear, who wanted to turn lead into gold through some formula. Actually — they’re worse. They’re like a five-year-old that thinks by wishing hard enough, that she can fly.

Being the delusional power-drunk politicians that they are, the elites think that by decreeing something to be so, it magically happens. That’s indeed where the word “fiat” comes from. The word literally means “Let there be,” — in Latin and in English, it’s become an adjective to describe creation by decree. This can be most easily seen in Genesis 1:3 in Latin. The phrase there is “fiat lux” which means “let there be light.”

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Posted in Business, Currencies, Debt, Governments, History, Money, Technology

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