The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rates

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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby Belligerent Savant » Fri Dec 08, 2017 9:39 pm

.

Interesting exchange excerpted from the comments section of a ZeroHedge article, touching on thoughts discussed earlier in this thread:


taketheredpill Dec 8, 2017 11:00 AM

...if BTC (or any crypto) gets large enough to be a threat to fiat then Government will shit all over it, and despite naysayers saying there's nothing they can do, there are lots of ways the Government can disrupt and discourage the average person from participating.


alt-center Dec 8, 2017 11:40 AM

Why would it be a threat to any government?

1. It's a perfect vehicle for the Central Bank everlasting need to expand the volume of currencies.

2. Suppose BTC goes to 1 million $ and 20 million units mined and you take a 25% retro-active taxrate on profits (what government wouldn't want a piece of that?).

3. It's a perfect beta test for a virtual global currency to replace paper currencies with no option left for black markets.


Bring the Gold Dec 8, 2017 12:07 PM

Bingo and the banks are the ones who quite likely made it via their boys at NSA or wherever. The Bancor/Phoenix/SDR blockchain is on deck. Just waiting the right crisis then the sovereign debt crisis kicks in and Jim Rickards' "kick it up stairs" solution will come into effect. That solution will be a one time offer to trade in Bitcoin (maybe a few others like Ripple and Ehtereum) and sovereign currencies for SDR blockchain then they will be outlawed. Bam the bankers multi-century century dream will be realized. It hardly matters if Bitcoin was organically created or if it was a central bank honeypot all along to suck in the technorati culture creators. The results will be the same.




I was not previously familiar with this "Bancor/Phoenix/SDR blockchain" reference and decided to perform a bit of intel gathering; below is a primer on the topic, which I share here as a platform for collective due diligence analysis:


A One World Cryptocurrency To Control the Blockchain By 2018 (Part 1 of 2)

There is one inescapable truth.

If the blockchain really threatened the power and control of centralization, it would have been snuffed in its infancy.

Instead, central banking and governments have been funding it.

Article originally posted on Squawker: Become the Counterculture

This article is part 1 in a 2 part series.

“A day of reckoning is approaching for rogue forms of money like digital blockchain currencies, when they run head into the global banking cartel. While the Bitcoins of the world are proving a point, global Technocrats have no intention of releasing their current hold on economic and monetary transformation.” ⁃ TN Editor

The Economist, a magazine with easy to trace central banking ownership, ran a story in 1988 detailing a cryptocurrency they called The Phoenix that would become a world currency in 2018.
Although rumors abound over the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto and therefore their true motives behind creating the blockchain, one of the pseudonym’s meanings is “born from the ashes”.

Image

The Bitcoin whitepaper -- https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf -- was introduced weeks after Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy in 2008 as a solution to the corruption of centralization — and a push towards a cashless society.

The Financial Times pointed out that central banks would be the real winners from a cashless society:

“Central bankers, after all, have had an explicit interest in introducing e-money from the moment the global financial crisis began…”

The country of Sweden has already taken the first step and is completely cashless.

China is primarily a cashless society with most of the citizens using a type of debit card, computer or their phone for most all of their transactions.

The International Monetary Fund combines 189 countries (each their own federal reserve) to help foster global monetary cooperation.

The reason for their existence is to gather statistics and to conduct analysis and mass surveillance of its members’ economies.

… the banking spy agency. This is who technically houses the IRS.

An IMF paper released this past June outlines how they will adopt a supporting role to blockchain by creating a ‘central bank-backed digital currency’ (CBDC) and assisting in designing the future regulatory environment of all digital assets. The paper specifies that designing a CBDC would allow the central bank to retain control of monetary policy effectiveness.

SDR would make the perfect trading platform:
The SDR is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement its member countries’ official reserves. As of September 2017, 204.2 billion SDRs (equivalent to about $291 billion) had been created and allocated to members. SDRs can be exchanged for freely usable currencies. The value of the SDR is based on a basket of five major currencies — the US dollar, the euro, the Chinese renminbi (RMB), the Japanese yen, and the British pound sterling. (source at link)

Responsive liquidity and adjustment between deficit and surplus are some of the reasons behind the failure of SDR’s mass adoption, however blockchain technology can easily overcome those obstacles.

Mohamed El-Erian, former CEO of PIMCO, recently praised the concept of using the IMF SDR as a world currency mechanism and as a means to combat “the rise of populism.”

Two years ago China launched and fully funded the AIIB, Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank. This bank is designed to work along side other global banks like the IMF, World Bank and BIS.

The largest economies in the world joined the AIIB, totaling 57 nations. Only one major economy did not — the United States.

The U.S. has dug a hole of debt that is inescapable. China has carried the bulk of this debt, and knows it will not be repaid.

Since the launch of AIIB, China has been working in conjunction with the IMF to develop and launch a new SDR global bond that can be converted into currency.

The stage is set for a new world currency to replace the dollar.

It will be a cryptocurrency.




Part 2:
https://squawker.org/technology/wall-st ... ng-played/
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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby Belligerent Savant » Thu Sep 20, 2018 9:38 am

.

It appears this thread can use an update.


First, a cross-post:

JackRiddler » Wed Sep 19, 2018 9:46 pm wrote:Seeing as we had some bitcoin stuff here earlier -is there another thread for it? Anyway:

Yes, the reindustrialization has arrived!

Abandoned golden-age industrial towns of upstate New York experiencing revival thanks to bitcoin mining operations. Seriously, they move to the cheap electricity and set up server farms, pay fees to the towns. Must be employing... uh, somebody?

Is this nuts, or is it nuts? Is it a perfect metaphor for shit, or what?


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/nyre ... icity.html

http://www.nytimes.com

Bitcoin Miners Flock to New York’s Remote Corners, but Get Chilly Reception

MASSENA, N.Y. — The hulking aluminum plant in this northern border town is starting to spew heat and noise again, four years after Alcoa shut it down. But now the hot hum comes from thousands of Chinese computer servers whirring away 24 hours a day for a very modern purpose: producing Bitcoins and other digital currencies.

The crackerbox-size machines stacked inside rusty cargo containers are powered by the same cheap source of electricity once used to extract aluminum from ore. They represent the first stage of an obscure company’s plan to convert the 60-year-old smelting works into the world’s biggest cryptocurrency mine.

“The size is overwhelming,” said Prieur Leary, as he led a tour of the 1,300-acre site formerly known as Alcoa East. “Maybe we’re a little bit crazy.”

Image
Prieur Leary, chief technology officer of Coinmint.CreditGabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times
Mr. Leary is the chief technology officer of Coinmint, which has led an influx of entrepreneurs to this economically depressed region, all seeking to capitalize on the soaring value of digital currencies, like Bitcoin. Their arrival has been met with wariness — just what are they doing? — coupled with fears of their outsize thirst for electricity.

A backlash has spurred changes in state regulations and local building codes and some officials worry about becoming the East Coast counterpart to Wenatchee, Wash., which has been inundated by cryptocurrency speculators.

But neither local resistance nor a steep decline in the value of Bitcoin has blunted the demand for practically any space with a reliable power supply. Utility officials in this remote corner of New York — known as the North Country — continue to receive weekly inquiries from people aspiring to set up cryptocurrency mines.

[What Is Bitcoin, and How Does It Work?]

The region is an unlikely front in the global race to produce Bitcoin. Massena used to be a hub for making things — tangible things, like V-8 engines and parts for the Apollo 11 spacecraft. The factories that churned out those products are, for the most part, gone. Thousands of union jobs that paid well and offered full benefits have vanished, leaving the area with one of the state’s highest unemployment rates.

Image

A dam on the St. Lawrence River between Canada and the United States provides hydroelectric power.CreditGabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times
But the iconic American corporations that abandoned plants in Massena left behind the precious resource that drew them here in the first place: abundant, cheap electricity flowing from a dam in the St. Lawrence River.

Some locals had never heard of cryptocurrency before their utility bills increased last winter and they learned that start up ventures rushing to cash in on the Bitcoin boom were responsible. If they knew anything about this new type of intangible money, it was that Bitcoin’s value had shot up last year to nearly $20,000 from $1,000. (It has since fallen back to about $6,300.)

Bitcoin is nearly a decade old, but that dizzying run-up and fall has put the North Country on the crypto-mining map. Before the speculators arrived in Massena, they discovered Plattsburgh, a small city about 80 miles to the east that was also awash in cheap hydropower from the St. Lawrence.

Mr. Leary showed up there two years ago, before Bitcoin had fully registered in the popular consciousness, and set up shop in an industrial park. Coinmint filled a small space with servers built for the singular task of creating cryptocurrency, running them nonstop. Each server, or miner, draws as much as 1.5 kilowatts, or about twice as much as a typical refrigerator.

Image

A Coinmint facility in Plattsburgh.CreditGabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times
As the Bitcoin market grew, Mr. Leary expanded into much bigger space in a nearby shopping center that had been a distribution center for comic books. Soon, Coinmint installed four transformers that could draw more than 13 megawatts, or enough power to run about 10,000 homes. It was more than one-tenth of the local utility’s total allocation of low-cost hydropower.

This heavy usage was not a problem on most days, said Colin Read, the mayor of Plattsburgh. But during an extreme cold spell last winter, the people of Plattsburgh got a costly glimpse at the impact their new neighbors could have.

With electricity so cheap that most residents use it to heat their homes, the city’s consumption exceeded its allocation on several days, Mr. Read explained. As a result, the Municipal Lighting Department had to purchase additional power at much higher prices — a cost it spread across its customers.

“We had a huge rash of complaints” about the jump in utility bills, Mr. Read said.

Image

Plattsburgh, N.Y., is the first American municipality to place a moratorium on new cryptocurrency mining operations while the city decides how to cope with the new burdens on its power grid.CreditGabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times
Among those complaining was Thomas Recny, the chief financial officer of one of city’s biggest employers, Mold-Rite Plastics. Mr. Recny said his company’s electric bills were about $60,000 higher than normal for January and February, an unforeseen increase of about 30 percent.

Mr. Recny asked why an enterprise that required only a few people to run it should be able to drive up the operating costs of a company that employed about 500.

“The only reason they’re here is this unusually inexpensive rate for power,” Mr. Recny said. “But with two guys, they can consume more electricity than a hospital.”

Mr. Recny also said he was “still somewhat puzzled” about the need for digital currency, which he knew could be used for essentially anonymous online transactions. He questioned whether it was appropriate “to have the electricity used for that purpose,” which he said might involve some illicit activities.

Image

Colin Read, the mayor of Plattsburgh.CreditGabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times
Sitting in his office in City Hall near the shore of Lake Champlain, Mr. Read had a more positive view of cryptocurrency. He said he told his economics students at SUNY Plattsburgh that it would exist in some form, whatever the fate of Bitcoin itself, for many years. “No doubt about that,” he said.

The mining operations that ultimately survive will be those that get the most electricity at the lowest prices, he said. Whether they deserve it is a separate question that Plattsburgh, Massena and other towns in the region have been grappling with. Their municipal utilities have persuaded state regulators to allow them to charge higher rates for electricity to cryptocurrency miners.

In March, Plattsburgh became the first American municipality to impose a moratorium on new cryptocurrency mining while the city decides how to cope with the new burdens on its power grid.

Image

Leon Christman manages Coinmint’s operations in Plattsburgh.CreditGabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times
In the meantime, Mr. Read said, city officials are adapting building codes to account for the fire hazards posed by the servers, each of which can generate as much heat as a small space heater. The concerns are part of a broader battle over the enormous carbon footprint of Bitcoin mining, which on a global scale uses as much energy as a medium-sized country.

Mr. Read estimated that Coinmint had made a profit of more than $50 million in Plattsburgh. Leon Christman, who manages the company’s operations there, said the larger installation in Plattsburgh — the one with the leftover image of Spiderman painted on the back wall — earned $600,000 on its best day last year.

Plattsburgh’s temporary ban sent Mr. Leary to Massena, in St. Lawrence County, looking for an expansion site. Massena’s municipal utility, owned by its ratepayers, was already trying to hold Bitcoin speculators at bay as it figured out how to accommodate their demands, said Andrew J. McMahon, superintendent of the Massena Electric Department.

“Back last fall when Bitcoin was at $15,000 to $20,000, we were getting eight to 10 calls a week and they were wanting to set up within two or three weeks,” Mr. McMahon recounted. “These guys were wanting to plug in 10, 20, 30 megawatts. They were asking: How much do you have?”

Image

Ryan Brienza, 19, postponed college to try his hand at the cryptocurrency business. His company, Zafra, is developing a big box that could serve as a self-contained unit for miners, complete with electrical hookups, cooling and ventilation.CreditGabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times
The answer was nowhere near that much. Massena’s system has never distributed more than 50 megawatts at a time, and the biggest users draw just a few megawatts. In its industrial heyday, Massena was home to two aluminum plants and a General Motors factory. But they were far too big to connect to the municipal system. They tapped directly into the state’s power grid and purchased the lowest-priced wholesale power.

Mr. Leary wanted to follow that recipe. Earlier this year, the New York Power Authority agreed to provide 15 megawatts of subsidized power to Coinmint. But the authority grew skeptical of the company’s promises for job creation and local investment, scuttling that agreement and leaving Coinmint to obtain its power on the wholesale market, Mr. Leary said.

Standing outside the old Alcoa plant, Mr. Leary pointed out new bundles of black cables leading from an electric substation to smaller transformers inside. Those cables could deliver more than 40 megawatts now, he said, with the potential to increase the capacity tenfold.

“We’re just getting started,” Mr. Leary said.

Image

Cheap electricity is abundant in the area.CreditGabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times
Coinmint told state officials it would eventually employ 150 people in Massena, but only a few clusters of workers were visible on a recent midday tour of the plant.

Still, some residents welcomed the cryptocurrency miners — even if they weren’t too sure exactly what it is they do.

Over lunch at Spanky’s, a diner on Massena’s Main Street, Brad and Nancy Fletcher said they had no idea that Coinmint was already operating at Alcoa East. Mr. Fletcher, a retired state trooper, helps his wife manage her family’s RV park in neighboring Franklin County, which Mrs. Fletcher said was “even more depressed than St. Lawrence County.”

Besides the remaining aluminum works, the biggest employers in the area are prisons and a casino on the St. Regis Mohawk tribal land, the Fletchers said. If Coinmint fulfilled its promise, “that’s 150 more people that are going to be working,” Mrs. Fletcher said. “The area needs jobs. Anything that’s going to bring some would be good.”

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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby Belligerent Savant » Thu Sep 20, 2018 9:47 am

.


...and a couple interesting bread crumbs:

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-unde ... vulnerable


A.G. Underwood Issues Virtual Markets Integrity Report, Finding Many Platforms Vulnerable To Abusive Trading, Conflicts Of Interest, And Other Consumer Risks

Report and Interactive Website Outline What Cryptocurrency Platforms are Doing – and Not Doing – to Protect Retail Customers from Theft, Fraud, and Abuse

NEW YORK – Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood today announced the results of the Virtual Markets Integrity Initiative, a fact-finding inquiry into the policies and practices of platforms used by consumers to trade virtual or “crypto” currencies like bitcoin and ether.

The Virtual Markets Integrity Report released today, along with a user-friendly interactive website at virtualmarkets.ag.ny.gov, presents information collected by the Attorney General’s office from 10 virtual asset trading platforms based in the United States and abroad, as well as the conclusions reached by the Attorney General’s office about the state of the virtual trading markets as a whole. The Attorney General's office has also referred three platforms – Binance, Gate.io, and Kraken – to the New York State Department of Financial Services for possibly operating unlawfully in New York.

“New Yorkers deserve basic transparency and accountability when they invest – whether on the New York Stock Exchange or on a cryptocurrency platform. Yet, as our report details, many virtual currency platforms lack the necessary policies and procedures to ensure the fairness, integrity, and security of their exchanges,” said Attorney General Underwood. “With this report, we hope to give New Yorkers the tools they need to make educated decisions on whether to entrust their money to a cryptocurrency platform and to help protect themselves against theft, fraud, and abuse.”

Background

In April 2018, the Attorney General’s office sent letters to thirteen major virtual currency trading platforms requesting key information on their operations, internal controls, and safeguards to protect customer assets. The Virtual Markets Integrity Initiative sought to increase the transparency and accountability of platforms that retail investors rely on to trade virtual currency, and to inform enforcement agencies, investors, and consumers.

The Attorney General’s office asked the platforms to disclose information on six major topics, including (1) Ownership and Control, (2) Basic Operation and Fees, (3) Trading Policies and Procedures, (4) Outages and Other Suspensions of Trading, (5) Internal Controls, and (6) Privacy and Money Laundering. In particular, the Attorney General’s office asked the platforms to describe their approach to combating suspicious trading and market manipulation; their policies on the operation of bots; their limitations on the use of and access to non-public trading information; and safeguards to protect customer funds from theft, fraud, and other risks.

Today’s report informs the public about the Initiative’s key findings, and educates consumers about the risks and protections available at the major virtual currency trading platforms.

Key Findings

The report details how virtual asset trading platforms vary significantly in the comprehensiveness of their response to the risks facing the virtual markets and fulfilling their responsibilities to customers. The Initiative also revealed three broad areas of concern for the virtual markets as a whole




"A.G. Underwood Issues Virtual Markets Integrity Report, Finding Many Platforms Vulnerable To Abusive Trading, Conflicts Of Interest, And Other Consumer Risks"

-- so essentially it's subject to the same manipulations/unchecked instances of fraud, largely perpetrated by insiders, as routinely carried out in the FIAT markets, eh?


And, perhaps a prelude to another 'bull run' in the next 6-12 months (other 'investment firms' will be following this trend):

https://www.ccn.com/fidelity-investment ... r-end/amp/


Fidelity Investments CEO Abigail Johnson has revealed that the company is working on a number of cryptocurrency and blockchain-related products and offerings, with their release tentatively fixed for sometime before the end of the year.

Speaking on Friday at the Boston Fintech Week conference, Johnson declined to go into any specifics regarding what exactly Fidelity is working on in the crypto space, but investors and other market participants are likely to pay close attention to subsequent Fidelity announcements as it continues to build a reputation as one of the most crypto-positive large financial service firms in the world.

The announcement will come as welcome news to crypto markets, which continue to anticipate the entry of large institutional investment that by and large has not yet taken place. In a market with a total capitalisation still below $300 billion despite a surfeit of publicity and investment sentiment, Fidelity has consistently been one of the few large firms that has repeatedly and openly signaled its interest.
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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby Belligerent Savant » Fri Sep 21, 2018 1:02 pm

.

The overtly 'bank-friendly' digital currency.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambr ... e2fc4e6ce5


Ripple (XRP), a cryptocurrency developed by Ripple Labs, has surged by almost 50% in the last 24 hours as investors pile into the digital token after a Ripple Labs executive teased an exciting new feature.

Sagar Sarbhai, head of regulatory relations for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, earlier this week told CNBC that Ripple Labs is close to launching a new product that could help banks speed up transactions using XRP.

“I am very confident that in the next one month or so you will see some good news coming in where we launch the product live in production,” Sarbhai said.

xRapid is designed to work as a bridge between different currencies around the world, allowing payment providers and banks to process faster cross-border transactions. Earlier this year Ripple Lab’s chief executive Brad Garlinghouse boasted there would be “dozens” of banks using xRapid by the end of 2019.

Following CNBC’s interview with Sarbhai a Ripple spokeswoman said there isn’t currently an official commercial release timeline for xRapid.

XRP is down some 80% from its peak as most major cryptocurrencies readjust after last year’s huge bull run. The ripple price surged to more than $3 last year, up from just $0.006 it began the year at. It’s now trading at a little over $0.40, giving it a market capitalization of $21 billion, making it the third most valuable digital asset.

Ripple, which was created back in 2012 (making it one of the oldest cryptocurrencies), sets itself apart from many other major digital tokens by working directly with the established financial services sector.

Ripple’s xCurrent helps banks to settle international transactions by using blockchain to confirm transactions in real-time at each stage of a cross-border payment.


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Re: The War On Cash/Financial Privacy-Negative Interest Rate

Postby Belligerent Savant » Fri Jun 14, 2019 11:16 pm

.

[Edit: my earlier posting from 2017 at the top of this page, sourcing comments from Zero Hedge, is no longer nearly as 'interesting' as I may have found it to be at the time. Back then, cryptocurrency was still viewed as an authentic alternative to central banks/FIAT -- and in certain instances, that may still be the case -- rather than another method of currency 'management' by larger interests, as the below news items demonstrate.]



https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks- ... 1560463312


Facebook’s New Cryptocurrency, Libra, Gets Big Backers

Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Uber are among firms that will invest around $10 million each in consortium that will govern digital coin

Facebook Inc. has signed up more than a dozen companies including Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., PayPal Holdings Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. UBER to back a new cryptocurrency it plans to unveil next week and launch next year.

The financial and e-commerce companies, venture capitalists and telecommunications firms will invest around $10 million each in a consortium that will govern the digital coin, called Libra, according to people familiar with the matter. The money would be used to fund the creation of the coin, which will be pegged to a basket of government-issued currencies to avoid the wild swings that have dogged other cryptocurrencies, they said.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Facebook was recruiting backers to help start the crypto-based payments system and was seeking to raise as much as around $1 billion for the effort.

In the works for more than a year, the secretive project revolves around a digital coin that its users could send to each other and use to make purchases both on Facebook and across the internet.

Talks with some of the partners are ongoing, and the group’s eventual membership may change, the people added.

It has been a decade since bitcoin was born, yet consumers hardly use it—or the hundreds of other cryptocurrencies—to pay for things. Facebook is betting it can change that with a crypto-based payments system built around its giant social network and its billions of users.

It isn’t known, even to some members of the consortium, how the coin will work or what their roles will be, people familiar with the project said. Regulatory hurdles in the U.S. and elsewhere are high. Some members have expressed concerns that the token could be used to launder money and finance terrorist organizations, some of the people said, a persistent problem with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Facebook won’t directly control the coin, nor will the individual members of the consortium—known as the Libra Association. Some of the members could serve as “nodes” along the system that verify transactions and maintain records of them, creating a brand-new payments network, according to people familiar with the setup.



https://www.msn.com/en-gb/finance/other ... ar-AACMvu1
The tech giant [Facebook] has long been rumoured to be developing its own virtual currency, with Bloomberg reporting in December that Facebook was planning to allow users to transfer money over WhatsApp.

It appears the rumours may be true as sources told TechCrunch that the digital coin will be unveiled in a matter of days and serve as a safe way to transfer money over Facebook’s chat apps.

With Libra’s announcement seemingly on the horizon, here’s what we know about the virtual currency:
When does it come out?

A source familiar with the project told TechCrunch that the Libra coin will be announced on 18 June, along with a white paper explaining how the cryptocurrency works.

Another insider claims that the virtual coin won’t be available to the public until 2020, when a more “formal” launch will take place, the tech site says.
How is it different to bitcoin?

While Libra and bitcoin both fall under the cryptocurrency umbrella, they serve different purposes in the wider market.

Libra, which is also referred to as GlobalCoin, will be “pegged to a basket of currencies”, such as the dollar and the euro, to prevent prices from escalating to the heady heights of bitcoin and Ethereum, The Independent reports.

Initially, the virtual currency will be available only through Facebook’s chat apps, including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and the chat section of Instagram, the online news site says.

However, The Verge says that Facebook plans to install physical cashpoints for people to manage their Libra coins while out and about. It’s also rumoured that Facebook will offer “benefits” to shopping outlets that accept the company’s cryptocurrency as payment.

By launching a bespoke and highly secure virtual currency, Facebook is essentially creating its own shopping ecosystem where users can buy and sell products on its platforms without needing to go through web payment systems such as PayPal.



Interesting timing, as the price of Bitcoin [and other cryptocurrencies in the top 5, such as Litecoin, Ethereum and Ripple] is beginning to cycle back up again, nearing $9K..

From May 15, Yahoo Finance:
[Bitcoin] has risen by over 100% against the dollar since the start of the year and over 50% since the start of the month. As of Tuesday, bitcoin was trading at a 10-month high above $8,000.


https://www.worldcoinindex.com/


Cross-post from the MMT thread:


stickdog99 » Wed Apr 17, 2019 1:19 pm wrote:...

Both cryptocurrency and MMT are a response to what both communities believe are an inherent fault with the world's economic system since Nixon took the US dollar out of the gold standard. Aside from theoretical frameworks and distribution of powers, there is essentially nothing that prevents a government with a floating currency to print or create "value" out of nothing.

Economics has always been an art of constraints: telling a prince or king that they couldn't simply create money in the first place because that money would erode in value in time. What MMT accomplishes is a theoretical framework for why many modern-day constraints on government spending (deficit/debt theory) simply don't matter.

MMT focuses on centralizing economic power for nation-states. Cryptocurrency focuses on distributing economic power and allowing people to resolve conflicts without needing the power of that same state.

Bitcoin is built on the idea of a limit in the number of Bitcoins that can be mined (21 million) along with other imposed constraints. The number limit on Bitcoin was an exogenous constraint, and not one that was technologically imposed but a political choice. The genesis block of bitcoin illustrates this thinking most sharply. The coinbase parameter for it reads "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks". The response to the global financial crisis was very much on Satoshi's mind when he first crafted bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a technological revolution but an actual political retrospective: a harkening back to the norms of the gold standard where a government relied on the amount of gold mined in a certain area to limit its spending powers. Bitcoin allows for the theoretical creation of infinite value, but restrains itself due to its exogenous limit and through a cultural ethic of non-political intervention in governing protocols to create an internal check on inflation and value erosion.

...
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