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BitCoin has been referenced a number of times within numerous threads; there seems to be an effort to push this concept further into the mainstream of late.
coffin_dodger posted a youtube clip in the "End of Wall Street Boom" of Karen Hudes, former World Bank lawyer, discussing [among other topics] discarding the Fed/current fiat money system and suggested the use of BitCoin [and metals, etc].
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
Former World Bank Senior Counsel Karen Hudes says, “It’s pretty clear where we’re headed, and that is something called permanent gold backwardation. That’s a fancy word for people losing confidence in paper currency. That means the value of currency in the future is less than today.” How bad is “permanent gold backwardation”? Hudes, who spent 20 years at the World Bank, says, “This is not just a bad event. This is like the meltdown of all meltdowns. What it means is you cannot finance international trade.” Hudes goes on to say, “Just think about what that would mean in terms of the jobless rate. It’s going to make any depression we ever had (the 30’s, 2008) pale in comparison.” Hudes says even though the credit ratings agencies rate U.S. debt high, they know just the opposite is true. Hudes contends, “This is actually an underhanded move because they know the U.S. dollar is going to lose its status as an international currency.” What would that look like to the man on the street? Hudes predicts, “Prices would change on a daily basis. They would double. The number of families that would be employed would be in the minority . . . there would be lawlessness.” Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with former World Bank lawyer Karen Hudes.
COMMENTS
BigInMemphis 1 hour ago
The only advantage of a currency of this sort would be to by-pass the parasites of Wallstreet and to be able to move money around without the IRS seizing your account.
• Ed 3 hours ago
Mainstream politicians and big corporations have too much at stake to let Bitcoin succeed. In theory, it provides a level of free markets that the world has never seen. In reality, it is a threat to the Fed, and a conduit for criminal enterprises. Both doom this innovative idea.
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• Nick Reil in reply to Ed 3 hours ago
Probably the biggest threat. I think it's rare that a technology comes along, though, that literally makes moving money more efficient, and new things possible, and that it get "beaten down". I thought we were out of the Dark Ages (though now it's the "State" that would be controlling knowledge/technology, and not the "Church").
Concerning "criminal enterprises", I don't think bitcoins are really as anonymous as people think. In fact, they're "pseudo-anonymous", as there's a public ledger of all transactions ever. You control this with policies like "know your customer", as with a traditional bank. Of course, people can always freely exchange bitcoins peer-to-peer (in person, say), but this is no different than cash in hand.
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• Nick Reil 3 hours ago
Bitcoin is an internet-based protocol, similar to TCP/IP. It's a "techno tour de force", to quote Bill Gates. TCP/IP has and never will be replaced, but rather it's been built on top of over the years (http, etc.). Similarly, technology can be built on top of bitcoin.
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• Dale H. (Day) Brown, A post-polio medical marijuana posterboy 3 hours agoCollapse
Install the Bitcoin mainframe and server on a solar powered dirigible that can maintain a position over the high seas where the USA has no jurisdiction. The altitude offers wireless communications unaffected by surface weather.
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• Matt Gonglach 4 hours ago
Hi guys, it's incorrect that Ripple 'runs on Bitcoin' - they're both cryptocurrencies but are very different.
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• • Jonathan 4 hours ago
I will admit, I know very little about bitcoins, but if 99% of what normal consumers buy/spend their money on can't be had with bitcoins, how on earth will bitcoin ever become mainstream?
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• • Nick Reil in reply to Jonathan 3 hours agoCollapse
[20 years ago]: "I will admit, I know very little about the internet, but if 99% of what normal consumers buy/spend their money on can't be had on the internet, how on earth will the internet ever become mainstream?"
• Jonathan in reply to Nick Reil 3 hours ago
That's not even close to the argument. The internet wasn't a substitute for anything. It was something brand new.
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• Nick Reil in reply to Jonathan 3 hours ago
If the Bitcoin protocol is not something "brand new", please educate everyone on another decentralized, "programmable money" that's existed prior. We'll all wait here...
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• Nick Reil in reply to Jonathan 3 hours agoCollapse
It's a perfect comparison. I'd recommend reading Satoshi's original paper if you want to better understand the underlying technology. Bitcoin is an internet-based protocol, and it is a new technological paradigm. It's also a solution to the "Two Generals Problem" in the computer science realm.
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• Disqus in reply to Jonathan 4 hours ago
Think about it as physical gold. You can use it to do business with anyone and it's not controlled by any central authority. The advantage of it over gold is that you don't have to carry a heavy metal in your pocket.
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• Jonathan in reply to Disqus 4 hours ago
That is incorrect. I can't buy groceries with it, can't pay my utilities, the gas pump won't take it, my landlord won't accept it, and I can't use it on the train for my ticket. I suppose there are some businesses who could possibly value it as a medium of exchange, but eventually there will be commodities they can't buy with bitcoins. You will then have to find away to convert them to actual currency, and that will most definitely involve a spread, and then the whole concept is defeated.
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• Jonathan in reply to Jonathan 3 hours agoCollapse
Yes that is the caveat. More people have to start accepting it for it to catch on, but I think there are a lot of hurdles. My main contention was with the comparison to gold, because you can't really purchase things with gold.
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• Disqus in reply to Jonathan 4 hours ago
It depends on how popular it gets. If people can trade between themselves with a different medium, and this medium becomes widely accepted because of its freedom from any central controllers, some day you might buy groceries, etc... with it.
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• • Disqus 4 hours ago
Sooner or later debtors will start leveraging bitcoins the same way banks did with gold in the last centuries. Bitcoin "certificates" will start being traded and that will be the end of its independence from banks. Fractional lending of bitcoins will destroy it because most societies are used to the never ending expansion of the currency base.
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• • elixer8062 7 hours agoCollapse
What happens when the next digital currency comes around? What's to stop others from joining the party? Will people start shunning bitcoins to the point that they're almost worthless?
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• manpro broker 9 hours ago
As long as the Fed can create money/dollars out of thin air and as long as someone /markets accept them then what is the problem ? I believe it was Chairman Bernanke that said that he was not printing money , it was only electronic transaction/credit to an account. What is the difference here ? I guess it is like anything else, it works until it doesn't ! Look out below when it doesn't !
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• Rob Monroe in reply to manpro broker 6 hours ago
The difference here is that US law forces everyone (banks, business, and even you and I) to accept $USD as payment. You can always barter for things, but you can't refuse $USD and force that purchaser to pay you in another currency. If your employer offers $USD, you MUST accept it. That isn't true for bitcoin.
What gives US dollars value, the ones printed out of thin air, is the fact that US law forces you to accept and to use them. US law doesn't do that for bitcoin, so the bitcoins made out of thin air are just that, nothingness.
Until there is a change in US law, bitcoin is a speculative bet, like beanie babies or hockey cards, and not an investment in a currency, and definitely not a store of value.
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• clooneysfolly in reply to Rob Monroe 5 hours ago
Truly bitcoin is like gold--relying solely on peoples' acceptance of it, not some legal mandate.
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• Rob Monroe in reply to clooneysfolly 1 hour ago
Steward Pid -
Gold of $100 USD if you're going backward in time. You'd take neither (or you should take neither). You'd take canned goods, a shotgun, some bottled water, some soap. Frankly, if you wanted to bring real stored value with you, you'd bring some antibiotics, some anti-malaria drugs, and some baby formula. Those three things would be worth an infinite amount of gold in the past. Being able to save people's lives, that is true stored value. You'd be able to have anything you wanted ... or you could bring some gold, and be the somewhat less poverty stricten malaria victim ...
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• Stewart Pid in reply to clooneysfolly 4 hours ago
Dumb analogy ... earlier this week I saw a good example of the true value of gold.
Think of a time machine that someone invents and you can go back 500 years in the past ... should you take a couple of hundred bucks cash or the equivalent gold? Bitcoins are the same except they aren't legal tender.
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• Buzz Leapyear2 20 hours agoCollapse
"Bitcoin’s future is largely in the hands of regulators"
Bullchit. Bitcoins are in the hands of the people and that is what is driving the "regulators" apechit.
It's world wide and nobody gives a fcck what the USA has to say about it.
The World Wide Web is global and despite the NSA it is not "regulated" by one group of tightazzes in DC.
• johnmichael2 21 hours ago
Let's see how long it takes this bubble to pop.
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• Dorlan H. Francis 21 hours ago
This is a NONSENSE FAD. Currency MUST be created by governmental authorities. Why aren't economists speaking out against this idiotic idea. Is it because they do not know the danger of this fad?
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• Disqus in reply to Dorlan H. Francis 4 hours agoCollapse
Government stopped issuing currency in 1913. You need to do some studying.
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• C. H. in reply to Disqus 3 hours ago
The Fed Issues currency. Who appoints the Feds president? Seems like goverment to me...
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• • Disqus in reply to C. H. 2 hours ago
Again... "Appoints" doesn't mean "chooses". FED is independent from government. If government issued its own currency, it would not have to borrow it from the FED at interest and charge you taxes to pay for it.
• • Dominik Z in reply to Dorlan H. Francis 8 hours agoCollapse
Actually one of Hayek's last books is about private currencies... he won a Nobel prize in economics...
• Guest 21 hours ago
Just like anything else, if the politicians don't get their cut, they'll eventually shut it down.
• p-reid 21 hours ago
If the Winklevoss boys are in it, I don't want to be!
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• gsoros510 in reply to p-reid 18 hours ago
For all those people saying this is a fad, have you actually used it?
You will see how much better it is than any existing payment system when you actually use it.
Transferring money between two people in an untraceable anonymous way is has many use cases.
I cannot see this thing disappearing anytime soon
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• C. H. in reply to gsoros510 3 hours ago
Bitcoin is very much NOT untracable and anonymous. They keep record of EVERY transaction. If not the goverment would have shut it down long ago. (Moneylaundering charges anyone?)
Also I doubt anonymous transactions were ever the idea behind bitcoin. Who needs anonymity except when breaking the law? The idea behind bitcoin was to go around the banking system that is miliking everyone for nothing (why does a wire cost so much, especially to a foreign county? I bet you not a single employe of a bank actually spends even 10 seconds of work on your wire, its all electronically automated. Doesnt stop them from charging what you would pay someone for working a couple of hours.) and to circumvent the system where money can be created out of thin air, like is the case with fiat currencies.
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• Stewart Pid in reply to gsoros510 4 hours agoCollapse
Can you get me some good dope ... I'll pay in bitcoins.