Topic: Economic Totalitarianism - page 34. (Read 345738 times)

I seriously disagree, look at the growth of wealth inequality since 2009, "the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer".

If they "join bitcoin" I have no doubt they will pump/dump/manipulate the price to a point that they can accumulate enough bitcoin that they have total control over it.  Then it would be like any other centralized/elite controlled currency.

If the elite join bitcoin, then its a lot better. They need to hide their wealth too after Switzerland pulled off their bank secrecy with the Cayman Islands and other places.

If they join bitcoin, then it will be better for all of us.

Thats not how governments work, for the moment at least.

Governments could already just do a covert operation on any bank or financial institute and steal their money if they want. Or publiccly seize all their assets or nationalize it.

They can already do that, on far bigger sums than bitcoin, so it doesnt even make sense. But they are not doing it, because it doesnt make sense, they just use the classical regulation and taxation tools.


I dont think bitcoin will get on their radar while it's below 100 billion $, after it hits that threshhold, we could see some sort of taxation and regulation being pushed.

I think I did correct my myopia in the subsequent reply to him. And I think the points reached sort of a stalemate. I don't dismiss his point, but if that white paper above is our concern, then none of the software we use is trustworthy. Okay I understand the point that doing something once and we all have to rely on that, is different than we all each download our software and run diverse hardware. But is it? Seems we all are running the hardware made by Intel and all the download links run through routers controlled by TPTB.

So all-in-all, I accepted his point. I think anonymity is a clusterfuck. Given the way Zerocash's forum treated me (they removed all my posts after they realized I was explaining serious flaws and challenges), I don't expect any success from them either.

I'd like to move on away from anonymity. Maybe one day in the future we could make some mixers based on Zerocash (long after their effort has faded into the dust) and maybe use it for some few esoteric uses for anonymity. But reliable anonymity on a widescale is unfortunately a delusion that even I had to finally come to grips with. Sad to say.

As for unreliable anonymity, I can do that now with Bitcoin. I just go use an unregistered wireless network connection. Eventually that will be impossible, but for now it is available in some jurisdictions.

If someone could identify a use for ring mixing that applied to businesses who don't mind if the NSA is tracking their privacy, then perhaps I could be convinced there is a market. But as I wrote before, the NSA has employees and those employees can't be trusted to not sell your privacy to your competitors. Corruption is the rule, not the exception. A mouse will always eat the cheese.

I start to comprehend now how it might be true when Martin Armstrong says we might descend into a Dark Age.

The only way I can think to fight back now is go for popularity and control in the hands of the people. Win the political war.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-35366994

...

Lurching into some new terrain here, I pass along the news that I am about halfway through G. Edward Griffin's The Creature from Jekyll Island.  It took me long enough to get around to reading this book.  It is a strongly worded and apparently well-documented book showing the Socialist (hence ultimately TOTALITARIAN) players before the founding of the Federal Reserve, during and afterwards to this day.

It is a tad conspiratorial, but I believe that much of Griffin's contentions could be verified, as I have seen many of them before.  The Fabians (Socialists in the UK) did get money from Cecil Rhodes (and what famous (later on) American got a Rhodes Scholarship in the 1960s?  -  I'll leave that one as an exercise for the reader, LOL).

Many of the "usual suspects" are discussed, but there are more references in the book than anything I have read at Zero Hedge, for example.

If Griffin is even halfway correct, than Economic Totalitarianism has been, is, and will be with us (for a long long time).  I will read the rest of the book before I review, perhaps at my blog, perhaps here.

Anonymity is looking to me to be more and more unrealistic as something that everyone does:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.13610150

I still hold out hope for mixers that are optional (and based on Zerocash).

But for that to be useful we need to make decentralized, permissionless crypto currency popular. Otherwise the mixers will be useless anyway.

They really admire us and want to emulate. Except I doubt they will so clever as to tell the bitch to talk to the bitch. Lol. That made my day. 

The Philippines is catching up to us with this crap, it started here as a voluntary thing, is now mandatory ofcourse.

I did manage to get away without chipping my dog as I refused to identify myself as the owner, and told the council worker to sort out any issues they have to talk with the dog, she declined to talk with the dog. 

I am suggesting the State (or those corrupt who control it) can charge the cost of mining to the collective (think the Three Gorges Dam that wrecked environmental devastation downstream, upstream and derivative effects all over China). I have made this point numerous times. And apparently (after everyone said I was crazy), it came true in China and if true was a factor that enabled China to capture an estimated 67% of the mining and 51% attack Bitcoin. Documentation of these statements is in my vaporcoin thread.

If the profit from shorting is greater than the reward, then it doesn't cost you anything. The free mining cost just makes it more likely you can sustain it long enough to reap your reward. How do we know the Chinese won't milk the investors while the block reward is high (mining at near $0 cost charging it the cost to the collective) and then also profit by shorting it all the way down from $1000.

We are bunch of naive geeks who are being reamed (mined) by savvy traders and strategists. These are no different conceptually than Rothschild's and Rockefeller's methods of yore. The players and technological field change, the game remains the same. (Yeah I am crazy conspiracy theorist whose analysis is always wrong)

Edit: haven't you been slightly suspicious of why the MSM publicized Bitcoin so much. That doesn't happen without the approval the global elite.

http://pcci.org.ph/images/stories/microchip/Application%20to%20Purchase%20Microchip
http://www.pcci.org.ph/images/stories/Circular_No_2013-006.pdf
http://www.pcci.org.ph/images/stories/Circular_Deferment_of_Microchipping.pdf

Yes a close source blockchain, with bank nodes, and no mining. Like what blockchain is that.

IMF open to using "a" blockchain for SDR 'world money'

http://lonestarwhitehouse.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/dr-warren-coats-former-imf-explains-his.html

He wont tell anybody about that lol, that is why he choose BTC, he could end up in a gulag lol.

Note I do think there is a design that is a solution. And I agree value would increase much faster in this new design, because not only confidence, but the miners wouldn't be always dumping coins on the market (which what keeps BTC price low and siphons money away from speculators into the pockets of mining farms which have costs < $50 per BTC).

Given Bitcoin has been 51% attacked by Chinese miners now (refusing to allow an increase in the block size), Bitcoin appears to be on its death bed (but may take a while for confidence to collapse due to the  ignorance of Bitards). I wouldn't hold it long-term.



The Chinese are siphoning off our speculator money with their $50 per BTC mining costs:

My view (pure speculation with no evidence) is that Bitcoin's value is constrained by the relatively weak state of its mining infrastructure (and increasing hash rate does little to improve the situation because the main problem is concentration). If somehow we could magically and persistently disperse the mining, the value would increase significantly overnight, even with the current level of adoption (although the increased value would bring more adoption).

But as you say it is being used today for some things and is not completely worthless by any means despite being imperfect. Just quite small when measured by finance standards.

^^^

All of which is a weakness of Bitcoin, at least in the eyes of some (informed?) beginners.  Until I see BTC issues (including risks related to concentration of mining) relatively resolved in the eyes of experts, I cannot hold more than a fairly small amount in BTC (as an "investment", yes I know that investing (HODLing) BTC is perhaps not that smart).

But, there are valid reasons for many of us to HODL BTC.  Its use of moving large amounts of wealth in a quiet way to other places (even to other countries) has potentially great value.

I wait for a story of some rich Chinese person leaving their country with $1,000,000 or more in BTC...  

The difference between 25% and 50% is not really that significant anyway. With 25% you can easily acquire more hash rate to get to 50% or conspire with some other 25% to get to 50%.

Satoshi's method only achieves its strong security model with more highly fragmented mining (perhaps with the largest extant mining concentration at 5% or less, to choose a somewhat arbitrarily number), something that hasn't been achieved to date but not everyone rules out that the system could evolve in that manner in the future. (TPTB thinks it is impossible; I and others do not, necessarily.)

With numbers like >15% where investments in capacity comparable in magnitude to the amount already invested or small coalitions can easily attack the system, you can really only rely on Satoshi's secondary model, which is sort of proof-of-stakeish and not really very compelling.

You mentioned Satoshi's security model in that post. Did you mean that model which is vulnerable to 25% of hashing power with 33% in the best conditions?

That was a rash statement on my part. Here is a more level-headed statement:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.13542612

Btw, I didn't kill Iota. The fundamentals may (or maybe not and probably not in the short-term). That is not my fault nor decision. I stood ready to adopt their coin and stop my development work if it was sound to my expectations.