New Government is Needed

Someone sent me this piece, which makes a similar argument that I made earlier today:

we have a political problem. Solutions such as blockchain can form the basis of a new monetary system, but getting their is a political problem. Relying on the technology is destined for failure because the politics are not solvable by technology.

What Canada Means for Crypto: What Canada Means for Crypto

Imagine you donated C$50 to the Freedom Convoy before it arrived in Ottawa, an action Trudeau has retroactively decided disqualifies you from participating in modern society. (This is not a hypothetical, at least if this Canadian Member of Parliament’s tweet is to be believed). Your bank accounts have been frozen, credit cards canceled, and access to your brokerage account denied. Further, imagine you have accumulated some Bitcoin in a cold storage wallet (i.e., on a flash drive in your possession), carefully ensuring that it is outside Trudeau’s reach. How are you going to pay your mortgage, car payment, tuition expenses, or buy groceries with it? The answer is you can’t. Does that wallet represent a store of value that might be reactivated in the future should the government change its stance towards you, or is itself changed altogether? Absolutely. Does it represent a practical medium of exchange, one that is useful during this personal crisis? Absolutely not.

Unfortunately, we must also admit the same analysis holds true for gold, a conclusion that runs opposite to our previous thinking on the topic. However effective gold might be as a store of value, if the only available functions during a time of personal crisis are to facilitate bartering or fleeing, it isn’t money. Gold bugs and crypto advocates alike should be aghast at what Trudeau has done and at what those in the US Treasury undoubtedly have in store for Americans.

And therein lies the critical conundrum: alternative forms of money require a benign government to allow for their proliferation, but a benign government negates the need for alternative forms of money. This is a political problem, and no amount of Bitcoin or Gold Eagles will help when the political eye turns against you. Money is what the government says it is, and we just got a glimpse that our views – political, cultural…personal – form a relevant condition to being allowed to spend it.

Surplus Population Will Voluntarily Enter Metaverse

Back in the mid-2000s I thought Chinese kids paying money to put clothes on their avatars was absurd. Look at where things are going. People willingly exist almost solely online, their status is online. They need ways of showing status online.

When it comes to something like Bitcoin, many like to laugh at the older people who think the whole entire project, not simply altcoins or the speculative bubble, is a scam, that this will all fade away like pet rocks or be replaced by central bank digital currencies. Perhaps the bigger mistake is in thinking that something like Bitcoin will exist in the real world. It's entirely possible we have two parallel societies that exist side-by-side. Many people will opt to live in the matrix. Don't think of it as a prediction, but as a thought experiment if you can't fathom why people would pay $1 for digital land, let alone millions.

BI: Metaverse property sales are accelerating as investors stake out virtual land in the potentially $1 trillion market. Here are 3 recent examples that have sold for eye-popping amounts

Blockchain Will Enable Tyranny

Blockchain will make global authoritarian government possible. It will integrate payments and vaccine passports (that drop the vaccine part).

The Destruction of Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

WashEx: Amazon to ban Visa credit cards in United Kingdom

Amazon announced Wednesday it will no longer accept Visa credit cards issued in the United Kingdom starting January, citing high transaction fees charged by the company .

The news comes after the U.K.'s departure from the European Union, which got rid of mandated caps on credit card transaction fees. Amazon said consumers are still allowed to use Visa debit cards, Eurocards, Mastercards , and American Express cards.

...“The cost of accepting card payments continues to be an obstacle for businesses striving to provide the best prices for customers. These costs should be going down over time with technological advancements, but instead they continue to stay high or even rise," an Amazon spokesperson told MarketWatch . "As a result of Visa's continued high cost of payments, we regret that Amazon.co.uk will no longer accept UK-issued Visa credit cards as of 19 January, 2022."

Blockchain replaces network fees that are percentages of transactions with fees the run into the ones of pennies. Amazon is being aggressive now because it can. This is the start of a major trend.

Chartwise, Visa is approaching the bottom of its channel. Mastercard has further to go. If support is lost, it may be time to aggressively short. After the credit card companies, the big target for blockchain will be Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, Google and their cloud services.

I'm not really sure why they qualify, but Mastercard and Visa are top-10 components of the S&P 500 Technology sector. They combine for 5.8 percent of assets. The story here is the narrowing of the bull market. Short opportunitues grow, even as the headline indexes make new highs.

Destroy Online Privacy

Bokhari: Microsoft and Friends Want to Destroy Online Privacy

According to Microsoft’s press release, it has partnered with several other organizations to form the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA).

Put simply, the purpose of this organization is to devise a system whereby all content on the internet can be traced back to its author.

The press release states that it will develop these specifications for “common asset types and formats,” meaning videos, documents, audio, and images.

Whether it’s a meme, an audio remix, or a written article, the goal is to ensure that when content reaches the internet, it will come attached with a set of signals allowing its provenance — meaning authorship — can be detected.

I understand why the immediate reaction to this is fear. The government, media outlets and online mobs combine into a terror organization that hunts for regime enemies. One can easily see how USG would use this power to arrest and imprison, or at least terrify and destroy the economic life, of anyone who posts the Truth. However, once a system like this exists, it works both ways. Analysts could trace back nonsense such as systemic racism to its source. We know who publicly advocates for lies, but we don't really see who is behind it. Destruction of anonymitiy reveals everyone. It would be far easier to trace the connections between media and government. They produce a steady stream of lies, for example the FISA warrants were obtained using mainstream media article that were based off the FBI's own fake dossier. It would be immediately obvious the FBI was committing a high crime in sourcing a warrant frmo a story that was planted in teh media by the FBI.

Lies are the enemy of Truth. It's true that the source of Truth doesn't matter. I understand the fear given the current authoritarian zeitgeist, but the reality is if the ruling class was competent, they would immediately arrest anyone devising this system. It will turn into yet another "all-time backfire."

More to the point, all technology has dual use for good and evil. The blockchain itself has already achieved Microsoft's goal. The hot new item online is NFTs, non-fungible tokens that are sometimes attached to physical goods. It shows the chain of ownership going back to the creator. Microsoft wants to build a system that already exists! In future, there will be decentralized and public blockchains you can trust such as Bitcoin and fake-chains run by governments and corporations that try to hide the truth. Choose wisely.

Totalitarianism is Coming Back, Greens Want to Measure How Much Sin is in Each Product

Totalitarianism is coming back via blockchain technology because it gives central planners a new lease on life. A major drawback of central planning (and socialism) is the lack of economic information. If everything is on-chain, however, there's far more information for central planners. In their minds, the information problem may be solved. With body sensors on the way, it's possible for the state to monitor the location of all citizens. If the state says to exercise for 30 minutes per day and you do not, it could punish you. If it has total location data, it could regulate daily interactions. A state like Iran could punish anyone who doesn't go to mosque. A feminist or chivalrous society could fine men who do, or do not, hold the door for a woman. It could get into micromanagement of individual behavior and tax or fine people for violating the state's mandate. These are extreme examples, but many companies are already working on implementing green religion into the economy by tracking the carbon emissions of commodities. This video is cued to the relevant discussion: Technology can be used for good or ill. It can help Man create or enslave, depending on the laws, religion and customs under which they are governed.

PBoC Digital Currency on the Way, Prototype Blockchain Completed

China is ready to roll out digital cash. It will be a two-tier system to protect the state banks, with digital cash issued through the banking system instead of directly by the PBoC. There's some question about the final technology, with the PBoC saying it remains technology neutral.

A public blockchain will give the PBoC (and the CCP)direct control over all economic activity in China and paving a way for full micro-implementation of the social credit reward/punishment system. It opens up new avenues for capital controls, direct stimulus for favored industries, negative interest rates and currency devaluation or direct inflation (mass money printing) into individual accounts.

CNStock: 穆长春：人民银行数字货币呼之欲出
Sogou: Mu Changchun: People's Bank of China digital cash Is Coming Soon

On August 10, Mu Changchun, a special member of CF40 and deputy director of the People's Bank of China's payment and settlement department of the Shanghai Stock Exchange China Securities Network News (reporter Zhang Jones), said at the 3rd "China Finance Forty-Person Yichun Forum" that the research on digital cash DC/EP of the People's Bank of China has been carried out for five years since 2014. "The People's Bank of China, digital cash, can now be said to be ready."

Mu Changchun said that the digital cash Research Group of the People's Bank of China has made a prototype and adopted a block chain architecture. Later, it was found that there was a problem, because the legal digital cash was replaced by M0. If we want to reach the retail level, high concurrency is an unavoidable problem. He said that in a large country like China issuing digital cash, adopting a pure block chain architecture cannot achieve the high concurrency required by retail. Therefore, it is finally decided that the People's Bank of China should maintain technological neutrality and not preset a technological route. In other words, it does not necessarily depend on a certain technological route.

I'm not sure what the technical argument is there. PBoC being technology neutral makes sense, but blockchain technology can scale.

In addition, according to his introduction, DC/EP adopts a two-tier operation system. The single-tier operation system is that the People's Bank of China issues digital cash directly to the public. The People's Bank of China first exchanged digital cash for banks or other operating institutions, and then these institutions exchanged for the public. This is a two-tier operating system.

There are several considerations for adopting a two-tier operation framework: First of all, China is a complex economy with a vast territory and a large population. The economic development, resource endowment, population education level and acceptance level for intelligent terminals are all different. If a single-tier operation framework is adopted, it means that the People's Bank of China has to face all the public alone. In this case, there will be great challenges. From the perspective of improving the availability and enhancing the public's willingness to use, a two-tier operational framework should be adopted to deal with such difficulties.

Second, the People's Bank of China has decided to adopt a two-tier structure in order to give full play to the resources, talents and technological advantages of commercial organizations, promote innovation and compete for the best.

Third, the two-tier operation system helps to resolve risks and avoid excessive concentration of risks.

Fourth, if a single-tier operating framework is used, it will lead to financial disintermediation.

Mu Changchun said that under the framework of single-tier deposit, the People's Bank of China will directly face the public to deposit money in digital cash. Compared with commercial banks' deposit money, digital cash's competitiveness is better than that of commercial banks' deposit money under the condition of credit endorsement of the People's Bank of China, which will have an crowding-out effect on commercial bank deposits, affect the lending capacity of commercial banks and increase the dependence of commercial banks on the interbank market. In this case, the price of capital will be raised, the cost of social financing will be increased, and the real economy will be damaged.

"To sum up, the People's Bank of China is the top tier and commercial banks are the second tier. This dual delivery system is suitable for our national conditions. It can not only use existing resources to mobilize the enthusiasm of commercial banks, but also smoothly enhance the acceptance of digital cash. "

Mu Changchun pointed out that the two-tier operation system will not change the relationship between the creditor's rights and debts of currency in circulation. In order to ensure that the digital cash of the People's Bank of China will not exceed the limit, commercial organizations will pay 100% of the reserve fund to the People's Bank of China. digital cash of the People's Bank of China is still a liability of the Central Bank, guaranteed by the credit of the Central Bank, and has unlimited legal repayment.

In addition, the two-tier operation system will not change the existing money delivery system and dual account structure, and will not compete with the deposit money of commercial banks. Since it will not affect the existing monetary policy transmission mechanism or strengthen the pro-cyclical effect under pressure, it will not have negative impact on the real economy.

Mu Changchun said that since digital cash of the People's Bank of China is a replacement for M0, no interest will be paid for cash, which will not lead to financial disintermediation and will not have a big impact on the existing real economy. In addition, all existing regulations on cash management, anti-money laundering, anti-terrorism financing, etc. should be observed, and large and suspicious transactions in digital cash of the People's Bank of China should be reported to the People's Bank of China.

Mu Changchun also pointed out that the digital cash of the People's Bank of China must have high scalability and concurrent performance, which is suitable for small retail high-frequency business scenarios. In order to guide the People's Bank of China's digital cash to be used in small retail scenarios, not to produce crowding-out effect on deposits, and to avoid arbitrage and pro-cyclical effect under pressure environment, transaction limits and balance limits can be set according to different levels of wallets. In addition, some exchange costs and friction can be increased to avoid pro-cyclical situations under pressure.

A currency crisis would be a great time to roll out the digital alternative.

Universal Basic Income is the Bribe For You To Accept Totalitarian Control

This entire talk by Richard Werner is great, but the part transcribed below is a warning everyone should see. He explains the next and final phase of authoritarian control in under a minute.

The greatest concentration of central banking power is really the bit their aiming at, that's the central banks' goal. And, of course, digital accounts of dissenters and regime critics could be switched off, it would be very difficult to even purchase necessities. This is an Orwellian dystopia of total control, the end of any freedoms, that's really what central banks are aiming at.

Some central banks like the Bank of England have already prepared their microchip implant RFID chip to be implanted under your skin. And why the sudden discussion about Universal Basic Income from all the "grassroots" and inverted commas movements and billionaires. Universal Basic Income is the bribe for you to accept the microchip.

China is building a centralized digital currency with the ledger completely under government controls. They will implement it. It may be coming to the West as well. There will be more carrots and propaganda to make you think it's a good idea.

The future for the West is wholesale regime change, radical decentralization with political secession and a flourishing of smaller states or turning into China. The only difference between China and the West on current trajectory is China completed its revolution and has been pragmatic about keeping power since Deng in 1978. The West is still experiencing the unfinished revolution of 1789. China will peacefully transition into total authoritarian control, whereas the West will experience extreme turmoil because the outcome is as yet undecided.

Meanwhile In China: The Blockchain City

GCR: Chinese carmaker Wanxiang plans $30bn blockchain smart city

Wanxiang hopes to cut the upfront cost of its cars by leasing their batteries to the purchaser, rather than selling them outright. Blockchains could be used to track the batteries through their lifecycle and to let Wanxiang know when to recall them, and at the same time use them as an asset to raise capital against.

What is not yet clear is how blockchain can be used in the built environment.

Feng Xiao, the vice chairman of Wanxiang and one of the three co-founders of WBL, told delegates to the Shanghai conference: “We want to use blockchain to manage Internet of Things (IoT) devices and help them to interact with each other. Smart appliances can be managed with blockchain.”