Hello, everybody This is my first post here. I've been lurking around, waiting for an opportune moment to begin my contribution, and this opening does seem promising.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/29/technology/blockchain-iso-russian-spies.html
Title: Blockchain Will Be Theirs, Russian Spy Boasted at Conference
Author: Nathaniel Popper
Posted: April 29, 2018
tl,dr: The Russians sent one of their FSB [KGB] Agents to an International conference meant for setting international standards for blockchain. 'The Internet belonged to the Americans, the Blockchain will belong to us, he retorted. Basically, the Blockchain will turn into the next arena for geo-political battles. Essentially, "countries that devote more resources to the process could successfully push their preferred cryptographic algorithms to be the standards, potentially creating so-called back doors that could be used in the future to spy on blockchain activity."
Apart from being a total novice on this forum, I'm also an amateur when it comes to matters regarding Bitcoin and the Blockchain, so I'm eagerly awaiting your opinion on this news item that seems particularly relevant to both these topics.
Ironic that Bitcoin is dropping right now, hopefully lots of oligarchs decided to put their money into it before it started to plummet more recently. The blockchain has obvious flaws such as the 51% attack, which can give ownership over, but if that sort of abuse was ever detected then it would lose great value and be avoided even further. It is yet more delusional economic thinking coming from people who achieved very little. We already see countries like America and the EU debating whether to ban it entirely due to the huge amount of energy use, which is going to become ever more important as Russia is using energy as a weapon (which is going to effect them in equal measure).