Pasadena, Calif.—On Monday, March 30, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will consider a case in which two entrepreneurs have spent23 years trying to travel 55 miles by boat—and they have yet to reach their destination.
Ladies & gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you Default Keynesian 101. Today’s “economists” demonize my fellow millennials’ practice of fiscal responsibility.
It’s a miracle my generation can express financial-sovereignty at the apex of student loan debt/deceitful market signals. God forbid they enjoy the fruits of their hard-earned labor & actually get to retire before their parents…and grandparents for that matter.
Yet, we get shafted via inflation, and paying off the debts of irresponsible generations before us. After all, who’s gonna pay for THEIR retirement? Social security? I won’t see a single fiat cent of that. A mortgage? What on Earth is a mortgage?!
The only loser here is the Fed, and envious, privileged, and indoctrinated generations from a cynical, jaded, wrinkled, fiat era.
The only cure for this this toxic, monetary/fiscal chaos is sound money.
Larry Harmon, CEO of the Bitcoin wallet app, Dropbit, has been arrested and is currently in Youngstown Ohio federal jail. Charged with: – Conspiracy to launder money instruments – Operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. He faces up to 30 years.
1/ Re: Dropbit…
…CEO Larry Harmon has been arrested and is currently in Youngstown Ohio federal jail.
Charged with: – Conspiracy to launder money instruments – Operating an unlicensed money transmitting business
“The point of different city transport agencies nationwide is to foster mobility. These MTAs run the local or regional transit service, and in some cases manage parking, taxis, roads, and other right-of-way issues. But many of them do a poor job. They manage transit services marred by misallocation and lack of innovation, helping explain why ridership has declined recently even as urban cores grow. But worse is that these MTAs, aiming to protect their fiefdoms, often stifle private competition that arises in response to these public failures. This double whammy perfectly describes the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA).”
“After three years of the Trump presidency, the Washington Post is breathlessly reporting that Donald Trump is a boor who insults everyone, including generals used to respect and even veneration. He’s had the impertinence to ask critical questions of his military briefers. For shame!
If bitcoin is dead, then it has no value proposition
Bitcoin’s mere existence is its greatest marketing campaign. As we’ve covered above, the characteristics it possesses naturally creates interest, appeal, profit, controversy, and grief. Any of these sums that get spread amongst the public serves as a proxy-marketing mouth piece that breathes life into bitcoin. The result? The best PR bitcoin could possibly ever ask for. Only, bitcoin never asked in the first place. Such PR is eloquently demonstrated in an article by Thomas Kuhn, CFA of Mine Digital. In his piece Why Bitcoin Is Not Failing, it’s clear to see thatbitcoin’s life is legitimized by analyzing certain value propositions it possesses.
Unforgeable Costliness
Bitcoin’s construction is based off of the Philosophy of Monetary Value. Simply put, this theory claims monetary value is a thing that exists, and is the same theory Nick Szabo used when he created Bit Gold. Such value should come with unforgeable costliness.
Gold in itself is the best real-world, tangible example of this theory. Everyone agrees gold is very high in value. This value is demonstrated through its durability, scarcity, difficulty and costliness to obtain, and nearly impossible to counterfeit.
A primary catalyst of bitcoin’s value is the Halvening, (also spelled as halving) or the moment when Bitcoin’s block subsidy gets cut in half, roughly every four years. The halving is a crucial feature of bitcoin because it maintains its fixed inflation rate.
Like gold, bitcoin is a scarce asset. It’s capped with a 21 million supply, which also contributes to its volatile nature. Yes, there will only be 21 million bitcoin created in all existence.
Thus, this increases its monetary demand and emphasizes its store of value. Plus it looks pretty. As Nick Szabo states in the Bit Gold White Paper.
“Precious metals and collectibles have an unforgeable scarcity due to the costliness of their creation. This once provided money the value of which was largely independent of any trusted third party…
“Thus, it would be very nice if there were a protocol whereby unforgeably costly bits could be created online with minimal dependence on trusted third parties, and then securely stored, transferred, and assayed with similar minimal trust. Bit gold.”
This missing protocol is what Satoshi Nakamoto’s Gold 2.0 needed, and achieved.
Proof-of-Work
The construction of the Bitcoin network itself creates and sustains its life. This is done through bitcoin’s security system, Proof-of-Work. The proof of work system was originally created by one of the original Bitcoin Core contributors, Adam Back.
In May of 1997, Back created the Denial of Service Counter-Measure solution, Hash Cash. The protocol was originally proposed as a mechanism to throttle systematic abuse of un-metered internet resources such as email, and anonymous remailers.
The first reference of proof-of-work can be analyzed in the Hash Cash White Paper published on 1st August 2002 as, “the hashcash CPU cost-function computes a token which can be used as a proof-of-work.”
In layman’s terms, Back’s big idea behind proof-of-work was to make someone pay a price for coercively sending you unsolicited internet usage like spam mail, or any form of a DoS/DDoS attack.
You don’t have to be a romantic to see that the relationship between the technological innovations of Szabo’s Bit Gold and Back’s Hash Cash is a match made in heaven. In order to create such “unforgeably costly bits” and to keep them as such, you need the process of mining that digital gold to be really expensive. Plus, it’s got to be equally expensive (if not more) to undo all that hard work from the get-go. Ergo, that’s what Proof-of-Work is for. And believe me, it’s totally worth it, because we say so.
Bitcoin’s value proposition and its source of life was perfectly articulated by Dan Held in an interview on the Honey Project. Held explains that price doesn’t necessarily follow security, so much as security follows price.
“What breaths life into bitcoin is the shared allusion that we all have; that it has value.
It’s our belief that its genetic code is really good.
It’s our belief that the traits it has as money give it a fighting chance.
And so us believing that together by storing our money that was fiat currency (like dollars and Yen and Euros) by taking that money which is a representation of our time and energy, (because we had to expend either or to earn it),
…when we store that [time and energy] in bitcoin’s ledger, we give it power. And that power essentially builds that wall.”
In his piece, Khun further griefs that:
“the will that some parties have for the technology to fail is bizarre, bordering on the crazy. It is not analysis, they write as if their opinion carries weight into the essence of the established idea, that it might affect the mechanics of Bitcoin and that they themselves could perhaps will it into destruction with their focused mind and needy, damaged reputation.”
Clearly, the opposite has been demonstrated. The fact people want bitcoin to fail proves its very existence. In a way, their efforts are their own proof of work (or failure rather). They can’t fight it without legitimizing its value.
But, you know. Bitcoin is dead.
Conclusion
Bitcoin incentivizes innovation and prosperity. By analyzing real-world use cases, it’s clear that it provides hope to those during the most hopeless of times. It allows us to think clearly, be scrappy, crafty, and live as sovereign individuals.
The improvements and needed solutions for the network signal entrepreneurial opportunity to voluntary market participants, and developers who may or may not be new to the scene. These individuals are willing to take the risk of diving into the uncertain, (yet very certain) space for financial, educational, and spiritual growth.
Bitcoin embodies the power of free-markets and the natural human incentive to retain one’s sovereignty. So long as individuals strive to be free, bitcoin will have a long, fruitful life.
So why isn’t bitcoin dead? Simple. People like it.
Bitcoin’s volatility further demonstrates why it is not dead. By analyzing its hypersensitivity in price over time, it’s evident that bitcoin is not only resilient, but appreciates in value. This characteristic repeatedly attracts more speculators during every bull run bitcoin goes through.
The ability of bitcoin to withstand these volatile gyrations in the market is what attracts newcomers. Those few who manage to stick around after the hype-cycle become financially, and emotionally invested in bitcoin by learning the ins and outs of how and why it works. If the community is fortunate enough, these “new coiners” (or folks who have yet to buy bitcoin, as the great Nik Bhatia has coined), become evangelists, and educate “‘no coiners,” or to-be-converted skeptics. For more insight, I highly recommend reading Chapter 3 ofThe Little Bitcoin Book,Bitcoin’s Price and Volatility. Therefore, the volatile nature of bitcoin not only increases its monetary value, but it’s fandom as well.
In 2019 alone, companies like Unchained Capital, River Financial, Hodl Hodl, GiveBitcoin.io, BlockFi and countless others have sprouted from this network effect. This goes without mentioning the countless new books, articles, and podcasts that have hit the scene. Plus, all of which may or may not be products of employees or let alone founders of the companies.
Players from the traditional, legacy financial world are entering the bitcoin playing field.
Fidelity has job openings hiring for bitcoin miners. The CEO of Twitter himself, Jack Dorsey, has even provided grants up to $100K to bitcoin developers and companies. Dorsey is also a huge contributor to the space as a whole by being one of the firsts to have an app on the market that lets you buy bitcoin adjacent to your fiat: The Cash App. Amazing what being the CEO of Square Crypto allows you to achieve. Not to mention, he works closely with Casa.
Casa is a company which is striving to achieve developments and functionality on the Lighting Network. For the new-coiners reading this, The Lightning Network is the layer 2 solution on top of the bitcoin blockchain (layer 1) that allows for fast, cheap, and easy everyday (smaller) purchases that won’t conflict with the competitive real estate for larger settlement payments on the blockchain.
The Lightning Network alone has had multiple improvements in 2019. Developer implementations like advancements on multisig, new proposals such as taproot, AMPs, and Easypaysy, are just a few new innovations that provide faster, user-friendly payments. Many of these innovations have been rolled out and companies like Casa, Breez, Zap, and many others have seized the opportunity to operate their business on the network’s new infrastructure and provide use cases.
As demonstrated above, this boom-bust price effect attracts new investors and companies alike. After learning of bitcoin’s unusual and unique characteristics, new entrepreneurs seek the opportunity to work within the space. Many are fortunate to reap from the benefits both during the hype cycle, (The Bull Period), and even after the hyper cycle (The Bear Period).
The Bear Periodin particular, can be seen as the “building” period. This is when the industry as a whole grinds as individual companies, entrepreneurs, and single content creators do their R&D on bitcoin, share their work to inform the fanbase and greater public, release products, etc. Over the years, crypto in general (especially with 2017’s ICO boom), bitcoin incentivizes opportunists to profit off solutions they create. Such competitive alternatives and solutions like privacy such as Monero, or on-chain atomic swaps from Decred, may even be useful to bitcoin’s functionality. So if bitcoin is dead, so is the entire crypto industry.
Products such as hardware and software like, wallets, nodes, new client updates etc. allow the community to grow the network by joining the network. New products become featured or sponsored in content from the variety of mediums like podcasts, press releases from blogs announcing new protocol updates to the Lightning Network, or BIP proposals, etc. It’s almost like a self-shilling bitcoin family revolving door. Man, I love capitalism!
Critics of the mainstream fail to recognize the unique traits of bitcoin in-depth. Speculators and journalists who publish articles of FUD, slandering its characteristics like volatility, ironically breathe life into bitcoin merely by giving it the time of day. It’s this very same self-sustaining volatility which commands bitcoin’s contagious network effect. This network effect impacts culture and governments, whose impact in turn moves the market, and comes full circle by keeping its nature volatile. Speculators, laborers, tradesmen, career politicians, entrepreneurs, and professionals of all kinds then become incentivized to flex their monetary muscles as they recognize opportunity in the industry.
If bitcoin is dead, then Nigerians aren’t living off it
Bitcoin is empowering the dominant medium of exchange to the masses in West Africa. How? Gift cards.
The digital asset exchange, Paxful, is outcompeting other Western exchanges by enabling thousands in West Africa (Nigerians in particular) to buy gift cards for remittance, which accounts for two-thirds of the exchange’s USD volume.
“Paxful is able to onboard financially disconnected citizens of developing countries on a level that non-P2P [over-the-counter] exchanges like Coinbase simply cannot…Paxful services trades in more than 70 currencies around the world and has made much of its traction in geographic regions that many bigger exchanges have not.”
Nigerians account for likely 50 percent or more of Paxful users who trade gift cards.
of the roughly $65 million in gift card trades processed through Paxful in October 2019, $32.5 million of them came from Nigerians.
How exactly does this work? Harper explains:
“an African immigrant will purchase gift cards out of the country (typically from the U.S.) for cash; they will send a picture of this gift card and proof of purchase to a friend or family member back home; the recipient makes a trade on Paxful, selling the gift card (typically at a discount) for bitcoin; they then take this bitcoin and trade it for their local currency and transfer this into their bank account.”
This right here proves that third world countries recognize bitcoin as actual money and that its value is legit. These people would do away with their native currency for bitcoin any day because they have lost faith in fiat.
The spirit of bitcoin is working through the people who need it most, and also works through the markets (companies/industries like start ups or exchanges) to provide the needed bitcoin. It’s a fly-wheel that keeps spinning via the momentum of supply and demand, and shows no sign of pumping the breaks any time soon.
If bitcoin is dead, then the President didn’t tweet about it
Governments have officially recognized bitcoin as a threat to the modern financial system. In an article from The Daily HODL, Congressmen, French Hill and Bill Foster, wrote a letter in September urging the Fed to “consider creating a national digital currency as the rise of crypto and projects like Facebook’s Libra threaten paper money.”
Belief that the US dollar risks getting left behind as digitization sweeps the globe and governments around the world move to modernize their monetary systems and reinvent how they transfer, distribute and create money.
concerns about the status of today’s US dollar, a decidedly old instrument that is one stop in a long line of early colonial currency and paper money known as Continental currency that was first issued by Congress roughly 240 years ago.
governments are facing the emergence of a massive project that can scale instantly, that can cross borders without banks and onboard a built-in userbase of billions to send money around the globe as easily as email (AKA bitcoin)
The revelations are forcing lawmakers to rethink how to tackle the threat to the US dollar. Instead of assuming that the technologies underpinning digital assets will suddenly disappear
many are devising plans to create competitive products to mitigate the risks of obsolescence or significant loss of leverage of traditional currencies.
To this last point,it’s inevitable that their efforts fall short. The whole point of bitcoin is to be decentralized and free from a trusted, single point of failure. While having the feds run a digital currency of their own, (to quote Hillary Clinton), “what difference does it make?”
Truthfully, there’s literally no difference because it’s not backed by a hard currency, which is why Satoshi Nakamoto created bitcoin in the first place.Unless they decide to back fiat by a crypto hard cap, we’d all be suckers to take them at their word of proposing such a solution.
Unfortunately, such news didn’t get as viral as a tweet from everyone’s favorite tangerine. The President of the United States of America himself, Donald J. Trump, tweeted that he was not a fan of bitcoin. Even if Trump doesn’t fully understand how bitcoin works, he understands well enough that bitcoin would threaten his monetary policy of keeping interest rates low and continuing trade wars with China.
However, what Trump did/didn’t say about bitcoin or how he said it is irrelevant. His tweet is a prime example of the Streisand effect, the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely. The point is, if bitcoin wasn’t on your radar, it is now.
No doubt the average Joe started talking or thinking about bitcoin, even if they had no idea what it was. Regardless, now grandma and the whole world knows of its existence.
US News The Supreme Court ruled against a strict Louisiana abortion law. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the liberal members in a 5-4 decision. [Link] The Colorado police officers that killed Elijah McClain were placed on paid leave after photos surfaced showing...
I might believe the latest Russia story (about bounties for American scalps in Afghanistan) when I see a headline like this: Russian Fiscal Conservatives Blast Putin for Paying for What He's Already Getting for Free
CNBC: FedEx, which paid $205 million for naming rights to the Washington Redskins' stadium, asks team to change its name How about the Washington War Lords? Kinda catchy, right?
Child rapists' close associates say what? Politico said Maxwell first grew close to the Clinton family after former president Bill Clinton left office, and eventually became friends with Chelsea Clinton, vice chair of the Clinton Foundation. According to the news...
John Stossel at Reason. John interviews Dr Carl L. Hart on the drug war and ending it. Carl Hart is the Ziff Professor of Psychology in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at Columbia University. He is also a Research Scientist at the New York State...
Joe Lauria explains the latest superseding indictment against Julian Assange, who still faces extradition to the U.S. for his supposed violations of the Espionage Act. Lauria’s take is that the new indictment is simply “window dressing,” meant to...
Mike Swanson discusses the continuing economic fallout from the coronavirus, focusing in particular on what are sometimes called “zombie companies.” These firms stay afloat largely because of easy money available at low interest rates, even though their...
Scott interviews journalist Vincent Bevins about his latest book, The Jakarta Method, in which he lays out some of the history of the U.S. government’s support for violent right-wing coups all over the world. During the Cold War, America backed brutal extremists...
Pete Quinones talks about his new project, The Monopoly on Violence, a documentary featuring interviews with many prominent figures in the libertarian and anarchist movements. The film explores the history of both statism and anarchism, explaining the nature of...
55 Minutes Some Strong Language Dave Smith returns to the show to talk about Chappelle's new 'special,' 8:46, and to discuss how the media is manipulating and even guiding the protests in the wake of the George Floyd killing. Part of the Problem Dave's Website Link to...
60 Minutes PG-13 Pete appeared on the Jen the Libertarian podcast to discuss agorism and his production company's first documentary, "The Monopoly On Violence." Jen the Libertarian Podcast The Monopoly On Violence Link to Richard Grove's Autonomy Course Donate at the...
50 Minutes Safe for Work Eric July is the frontman for the band Backwordz and a contributor at Blaze TV. Pete invited Eric to come on to discuss the Left's continuing Culture War against everyone who doesn't bow the knee to them especially in light of the protests,...
44 Minutes PG-13 Dale Brown is the founder and commander of Detroit Threat Management which he described as an educational firm first, and a protection service second. Dale has come to prominence for providing private, non-State, "policing" in the Detroit inner-city....
On FPF #505, Will Porter returns to the show to discuss efforts to rein in the police. The recent weeks of protests have produced 100s of videos of police murdering and assaulting people. The police have committed these crimes with a very small chance of facing any...
On FPF #504, I discuss Israel's plan to move forward with annexing portions of the West Bank. Israel's plan is to annex up to 30% - of the most valuable land - this summer. The annexation will cause Palestinian towns within the West Bank to be disconnected from each...
We discuss Danny’s experience on the ground at the protests in Kansas City and the broader protest movement, whether this is an insurrection, the idea of calling in the military to act as a police force or worse, and the parallels between current policing practices...
On FPF #502, Will Porter returns to the show to discuss ongoing George Floyd protests. Will and Kyle break down some of the worst examples of police brutality. Will explains that the protests are now in 100s of American cities and have even spread to Europe. The...
https://youtu.be/VJdRucRLAdU In short, the problem with police is they are (a) coercively funded, any organization who's 'customers' can't opt out will get worse service than they otherwise would; (b) a monopoly, one cannot start up a competing police agency with the...
https://youtu.be/wNew73i8VzQ ... you cannot roll back or whittle away statism — whether it be the government’s inflation, its budget, or its numerous depredations and controls on the economy — by getting a few “good guys” in there to speak Truth to Mr. President. ......
https://youtu.be/cznizQNnb-4 In very few cases have these anti-interventionists favored literal “isolation”: what they have generally favored is political nonintervention in the affairs of other countries, coupled with economic and cultural internationalism in the...
https://youtu.be/MxlIXYDKjfo Police may use such coercive methods provided that the suspect turns out to be guilty, and provided that the police are treated as themselves criminal if the suspect is not proven guilty ... in all cases, police must be treated in...
Tommy was joined by entrepreneur, activist, agorist, and podcaster John Bush to discuss how those effected by the financial crisis may utilize counter-economic strategies to ensure their family is taken care of. Live Free Now Podcast The Conscious Resistance Network...
Tommy invited Dr James Lyons-Weiler, the CEO and founder of IPAK, on the podcast to discuss Covid19 and how the CDC bungled its response. Dr Jack has been extremely critical of the CDC and FDA response to the novel Coronavirus, and he was more than happy to spend time...
Tommy invited Mike Korbel of The Invictus Mind podcast to come back on the show. They discuss how the hysteria around Covid19 has effected people, the potential for tyranny, and the future of liberty.
