#well this devolved into a jp post
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
Text
& i STILL won't design mk or dmk!!!!!!!
i think i genuinely hate making knight outfits with a passion, i just don't wanna do it (i'll eventually do it 💀)
i just wanna draw mk in a cure berry outfit & call it a day.
HOLY SHIT I SHOULD BE DOING THAT
#そのことはblueskyのアカウントに投稿します#キュアベリーメタナイトまじで今まで作った中で一番ウケる#メタナイトが「あたし、完璧!」って言うのを想像するだけでめちゃくちゃ面白い#ああ~それにベリーソードも持たせたい#前から描きたかったんだよね、彼があの剣を構えてる姿#well this devolved into a jp post#see u guys on bluesky w a cure berry mk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#probably...
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Is anyone else tired over recent events? Not in a sleepy way, but in that bone-deep depression way?
Bit of a long post about the general Gacha game-sphere. Needed to get this off of my chest, might as well scream into the void.
I ask this as someone who flirts between these gacha games out of boredom mostly. They're free, they're phone, they got Story, and I'm not spending a cent on them personally, so that's why I play them.
But every fucking day it seems we got another controversy. Bad VA this, fired an artist that, White_Pharaoh.png being handed out like fucking candy on Halloween lately.
And then we discuss on how Its Bad, and we all know Its Bad, people discuss on what to do, Boycott, torch the franchise and run, stay and try to fix it, ignore it because it's been your Comfort Media for the past 3 years, all that stuff. And it's hard. And a lot of those choices always feel half-assed.
I've been around a bit, I've seen it. I was around when Fate Grand Order had LB7, Wandjina, and all the other shit on 2023 JP hit, and there was talk, some talked but stayed, others left but chose to still engage with Type-Moon works, some might've left completely but I never heard of them.
I was around when Project Moon fired Vellmori, and there was betrayal, some deciding to leave, others staying because Project Moon wormed into their hearts and they decided to stay even knowing what was happening. Knowing what it was now built on and where the lines were drawn.
And I'm here now in the midst of the Hoyoverse shittery round 2, I don't think I need to speak at length on that. We've all seen it.
And all the time every potential choice to take feels half-assed?
Do you leave, abandoning the franchise as if leaving without fighting to improve something makes you good, preserving your own morality at the cost of never making anything better? The lack of evil substituting for substantial good?
Do you boycott? If so is it purely not spending money or not even logging in? Does it even make a difference? After all, when do these oversea companies really listen to anyone outside their country of origin? Is it enough to stop on that one specific game and still buy other works, or do you condemn the whole?
Do you continue on as normal, to indulge in the media? To continue what brings you joy and comfort? Is criticizing and acknowledging the faults enough or just lipservice?
Are we arrogant to impose our values on others, hating foreign companies not conforming to our beliefs? Or is this completely reasonable, every scathing speech and point completely justified and never bordering on some level of sinophobia?
And just... it's hard. Hard enough trying to be a Good Person normally but here? In this space? Part of it feels natural and some action is necessary for the Good of Everything, the other part feels like a big fuss over something ultimately small and meaningless.
And it hurts. You give out pieces of yourself to these stories, let it become a part of you, then become forced to tear it out of your heart just to be Good. And when I say that I don't mean in that internet point "I'm a good person way" but the way of being Good with yourself, proving only to yourself.
And it doesn't help that plenty of us have devolved into humanity's good old passtime of tribalism, mockery, and a lack of empathy for The Other. Everyone's been taking the piss out of the other gacha players for the stuff their games pull as if their own games haven't done the same. Some of it might be in good nature, over exaggerated and self-deprecating, a joke or criticism, but its honestly become indistinguishable from genuine malice and contempt.
And...
I'm tired.
Tired of seeing this. Tired of dealing with it. Tired of wondering what to do, what's the best choice, what choice even is there.
Part of me is honestly tempted to just not care. To accept that I'm a bad person by playing these games and going through with it anyways because I'm so tired and cynical that hedonistic indulgence just becomes more worth it than trying to be good. At most accept a Gacha-game that's a 'Lesser Evil' compared to another, if that even counts.
Because it hurts. Because you let these stories change you, touch you, let them into your heart, and then have to tear it out with your own two hands and pretend it doesn't hurt. And you can't feel like you can mourn what you lost, because someone will come in and start raving about how it's dumb you even cared to begin with.
I've seen arguments for every option, from people I don't respect and people I do, strangers and prominent community figures. I've warred with the argument of "Morally Pure Media doesn't exist, don't beat yourself up over it" and wonder just how absolute that statement should be.
And I don't know.
And all I want is to go to sleep, and wake up and have it magically be better.
#gacha#fgo#genshin impact#honkai star rail#hoyoverse#limbus company#arknights#controversy#those who seek to be good become the worst of the worst#im tired over all of this#This is indeed a hell ive walked into#none of this is against any game this is all very general#im in grief if you couldnt tell
52 notes
·
View notes
Note
i tried to take your vil analysis post seriously when i saw it in the tags because i enjoy his character as well, but the way you described the other overblots made me wonder if i went crazy. why was it necessary for you to misinterpret the other dorm head's + jamil's trauma to justify your favorite's? ALL of your summaries were incorrect. most significantly painting jamil as hypnotizing kalim for the dorms good. you can not convince me jamil living involuntarily as a servant for his entire life is a better fate than being typecasted in school plays. and then the way it devolves more in the end into a rook hate post? i don't like the guy either, but the only thing he did at the end of the chapter was judge his team (that was just put through the gutter) from an objective standpoint. furthermore, you can say that rook is a gaslighter for calling vil overweight and whatnot, but that is at best just plain rude. rook doesn't have nearly as much power over vil as you think he does. i'm sorry, i'm not saying that your entire point of vil being misrepresented should be overlooked, but you have to get your facts straight before you make large claims.
Wow, you just missed the entire point of the post.
And you missed what Vil's trauma really is too.
And you're calling an abuse survivor's testimony an overreaction.
I'll wager a wild guess and say you're an EN only player because the things you claim are incorrect are very explicit in the JP version of the game. The reasons I gave are reasons the overblotees used THEMSELVES to justify their behavior. Vil doesn't do this, he doesn't justify, he accepts he was wrong and that's what breaks him. Jamil used the "It's for the dorm's good" defense before he was ever ready to admit it was personal. Yes, it was. Nobody's saying Jamil didn't have a reason, and I am not claiming Vil's trauma is worse than Jamil's. In the first place, comparing trauma is stupid and damaging to both sides. Vil's trauma isn't being typecasted in school plays and if you think it is, you have either not read his story or you skimmed it as briefly as you have skimmed my analysis of it.
But sure, let's compare here. Both Jamil and Vil were systematically dehumanized since a very young age, just for different reasons. Jamil because of classism and Vil because of the way he looked. Both things they can hardly do anything about. This led to them both having deep-rooted insecurities about themselves while outwardly presenting as confident. Vil got physically abused because of this while Jamil was forced to taste-test for poison which landed him in a coma at one point. Is Jamil's situation more difficult to get out of? On paper, yes. However if you actually play the game, you will see that Kalim is taking active steps to improve Jamil's situation as much as he can already, and will probably take more in the future. In Jamil's case, having one person in his corner is enough because once Kalim takes over the family, he will have the ultimate sway over everyone's freedom. Vil's situation is a lot more complicated because it doesn't lie in the hands of a single person but rather a whole industry which is honestly unlikely to change.
As for your issues with me providing proof Rook is a gaslighter, it's not about calling Vil fat, which you would've known if you'd actually read the post. It's about purposely making Vil doubt his own senses (I look at you more than you do so I know you better), making him "choose" (Would you rather trust me or everyone else?), and saying that Vil will be isolated and forgotten if he doesn't do as Rook tells him (By the time they notice, it will already be too late). Same for Book 5's ending. If Rook was being "objective," he wouldn't have voted for a nursery rhyme remix where the dancers bumped into each other constantly because they couldn't have even been bothered to learn the choreography properly. He should've just said that he picked Neige because he likes him better. Not blame his very subjective choice on Vil's trauma response. Rook's gaslighting becomes clear once again in Vil's dorm uniform story where he lies to Vil and pushes him into not telling the Pomefiore students what he's doing for them because "Nobody but me would appreciate you anyway."
And, again, you are telling a real abuse victim that they are overreacting when pointing out the most blatant textbook definition example of the type of abuse they went through (among others, mind you) in recent media.
But what do I know, twstEN deletes most of this anyway so maybe that's why you're confused. At least, I want to assume that's what it is and that this ask isn't malicious. If you do play twstEN, I have a wonderful post compiling many of the differences between versions because BOY are there a lot and none of them good.
Next time, you can come off anon. I don't bite, nor will I harass you. I'm a working adult (you know, the ORIGINAL target group for the game) with better things to do with my time than to bother someone who can't even read what they're criticizing me for.
3 notes
·
View notes
Audio
this whole bit made me lose my mind. context was they were reading through one-word answers to the question “how would you describe the first 200 episodes of hey riddle riddle?”
Erin: Chaos. And that’s the word.
JPC: Yup. Okay, there it is.
Erin: It was always chaos or chaotic.
(While Erin is reading long lists of these words, her voice speeds up and an upbeat piano plays in the background)
Erin: Chaos, unhinged, chaos, chaos, batshit insane, chaos, fever dream, frenetic, unhinged, laugh, chaos, delightful, nonsense, riddle, Coco, chaotic, pun-tastic, hysterical, riddle, sweater, wild, rollercoaster, chaos, chaotic, hilarious, unhinged, Blown Man Group, insane but in a good way, bullying, which is one of my favourites...
JPC: [laugh]
Erin: Chaos, hallucinogenic, unhinged, puzzies, you good?, riddle-iculous? Yeah that’s a J -
JPC: Yep okay. That’s a pun.
Adal: Nice.
Erin: Chaos, delightful, riddle-rific, purgatorial, another very literal one I love that -
Adal: [barely holding it together] Purgatorial!
Erin: Jupiter, chaos, hilarious, endorphins, delightful, chaos...
JPC: Mhm.
Erin: Riddle-heavy, batshit, damp, I love damp. Chaos, puzz-tacular!
Janet: [gasp]
Erin: Kooky, free, chaos, fever dream, chaos, chaos, chaos, chaos, distractions, camaraderie, chaotic good, biblical -
JPC: [pfft]
Erin: Chaotic, chaos, deranged, hilarious, nonsense, Jupiter, unhinged, Jupiter, chaos, life-changing, ungovernable.
[everyone laughing]
Erin: Puzzle, unhinged, chaotic, authentic, unhinged, chaotic, Little Monkeybones, kooky, joyous, “improv.” Rude. It’s in air quotes. Chaos, unhinged, bananas, escalating, riddiotic, silly, Little Monkeybones, kooky - we’re halfway there. Chaotic, bonkers, frog -
JPC: Frog?
Janet: Only one sweater. Only one sweater so far, I’m surprised.
JPC: Wow!
Erin: Chaos in a good way, thank you number 96! This is another great one, the strained “hygh!” noise Adal makes when someone makes a joke...
Janet: That’s one of my favourite sounds!
Erin: Totally. Outrageous, exhilarating, thirsty, chaotic, chaotic, chaotic, chaotic, podcast.
JPC: Thank you!
Erin: Varied, it started as a genuine riddle podcast but devolved into chaos -
Adal: Now we’re here...
Erin: Wonderful, manic, indescribable, hectic, hilarious, unhinged, chaotic, riddles?, chaos, haunting - another one that I love. Sweater. Second sweater. Clusterfuck, chaos, perverted, blasphemous, dead stop, frightful, chaos, haunting, unhinged, insane, hilarious, hysterical...
Adal: These are all words that describe a snake as well. Unhinged jaw...
Erin: [laughter] Oh, sorry, I’m describing a snake.
Janet: That - that snake was haunting.
Erin: Perfect, quirky, two hundred, TWINS?, chaos, ummm, Uncle Santa - fuck you JPC, chaos, Kevin Susie, essential, chaotic, chaotic, chaotic, it’s pretty good -
JPC: [laughter]
Erin: I like it. You can’t limit me to one word, fuck you. That’s another JPC listener.
JPC: And I wasn’t on Instagram!
Erin: Chaos, Dunkin’, better be... scripted! What? Iconic, lengthy, chaos, frenetic, fun, feral. Another good descriptor.
JPC: Oh yeah, I like feral.
Erin: Chaotic, spastic, delirium, bingo bango ha-ta-ta, chaos, joy, podcast, chaos in the best way, thank you, giggle, slap-happy, 69 420, JPC again was not on Instagram -
JPC: Very nice.
Erin: Jupiter, chaotic, chaos, delirium, post-potatoes, unpredictable, plague, chaotic, buckwild, chaotic, insanity, madness, insanity, stellar, BAD. That’s 192, said it was bad.
[laughter]
Erin: JP Riddles, chaos, exhausting, bedlam, derailed, insanity, chaos, magic, and chaos. And the one that I will remember forever is bad.
[everyone laughs]
24 notes
·
View notes
Text
Who tao?
well hu tao is out.
Oh well, back to grinding^^
I’m skipping her. That’s the entire post. I care a lot more about the (possible) Venti rerun but it’s mostly because I want the new inazuma characters. I feel like they are going to pull a 1.1 where they had childe and zhongli back to back. Just with the jp characters and I fucking want the new characters more than Hu Tao. I am being blind to her content because as soon as I see anything I’m going to want to roll for her.
You cannot tempt me demon
But gl to everyone that’s rolling for her 🎉🎉 [i fucking love the fact that hu tao supremacy is a tag now lol]
(fucking watch me do a 180 kickflip and become a hutao simp. You’re going to see me devolve)
#genshin#genshin impact#genshin hu tao#hu tao#genshin impact hu tao#hu tao supremacy#hu tao genshin impact#genshin inazuma#genshin impact inazuma#genshin ayaka#genshin impact ayaka#ayaka#genshin kazuha#genshin impact kazuha#kazuha
35 notes
·
View notes
Text
ultimate bottom!John master post ;)
Every fic listed is mclennon, includes sexual content and is on ao3. Do feel free to add onto the list if I’ve missed anything!
Be My Baby - crybabycry
“Tell me, Johnny,” Paul murmured, teasing his almost-auburn hair between his fingers, “were you a good boy today?”
John’s breath quickened, blush spreading as he readjusted himself on Paul’s lap. “No, Paul, I was not a good boy today.”
These Nights - Unchained_Daisychain
Music journalist John Lennon is tasked with writing an article on newfound pop artist Paul McCartney. A night of fame, music, and passion soon surround John before he knows it. By the end of it all, he’s not so sure he can manage to give up this star and these nights.
Father’s Day - ImagineBeatles
John and Paul have a different way of celebrating Father’s day.
Understanding - ImagineBeatles
John wants to know what it’s like to be fucked roughly after he had seen how much Paul had enjoyed it, when he had done it to him. Paul is more than happy to do it.
The First Scene - DemonDean10
John is an omega and has kept this secret from all his friends for years. Until one day while on their first visit to the U.S. he discovers he forgot his heat suppressants. There is an Alpha that could come to his rescue, but what will happen after the two wake up and realize what they've done.
Higher Education - smothermeinrelish
Starting anew in Edinburgh Scotland, John is hired as a conservationist at the University where he will be working along side English Literature Professor Dr. Paul McCartney. John is instantly attracted to his new supervisor and mentor, but the feelings aren't mutual? Are they? Set in modern AU, the teacher/ student relationship could be more than just a temporary fling.
You Teaser, You Pleaser - Unchained_Daisychain
John and Paul finally find time to put their new handcuffs to use.
John shrugged, but the smirk on his lips belied his nonchalance. He glanced at the handcuffs Paul held between their bodies. “Seize the moment, Macca,” he said, low, tracing a single finger along the ridges of one open cuff. “Or any accessible poles throughout the day. They always leave that part out.”
Tease Me - nipsynips
His bandmates had always called him the ‘kinky’ one, but they had always assumed it was him doing the tying and the holding down and the commanding. True enough, that was often the case, especially with birds, but it wasn’t his preference. In fact, contrary to what most people thought, John relished the chance to relinquish control every once in a while.
Patience is a Virtue - Peachy_Beatles
John is trying his best to song write despite his overactive imagination. Luckily, Paul is willing to reward him for his efforts.
Summer Rose - chanderson
John and Paul rekindle their relationship late summer 1980. John's feeling lost, and Paul's missing him in more ways than one.
Cutting Strings - Peachy_Beatles
Early 1969: With John’s increasing emotional unavailability, Paul is left clinging on to whatever he can get from him- no matter how unfulfilling.
I Blame Tumblr - DemonDean10
I would just like to apologize to the world and myself for doing this. Based off this Tumblr post by @johnsdoublechin: @ the ppl who say John isnt a bottom at my last post well I got MY SOURCES. George, Ringo, Paul, Brian, Cynthia, and Yoko have all topped him thanks for listening And so...this was born. Basically John bottoms for everyone. Everyone tops him. I did this instead of my actual fics.
Ten Minutes - ImagineBeatles, ChutJeDors
Paul had thought that his friends only wanted the best for him, with giving him a gift card to a brothel and all. Now, having ended up in a room with a stunningly handsome male whore, he needs to reconsider those ideas about his friends, and his beliefs in life altogether. It’s just for ten minutes, though… Definitely a once in a lifetime thing, and all that. Totally! Right? Right??
What Feels Right/ This Loving Game - ImagineBeatles
Paul and Julia have been going out for a while and now they’ve decided to move in together. What Paul hadn’t expected when he’d agreed was that he’d fall in love with her troublesome teenage son, John
like a river flows, surely to the sea - toppermostofthepoppermost
John is smiling around his cigarette, head thrown back, eyes fixed on the cloudy sky, and it takes Paul all of his poor will to mutter, “You shouldn’t flirt with your teachers, you know?” “In my defense, Mr. McCartney,” John quips, shifting his gaze to Paul, “you make it very hard not to.” Or: Modern-day AU where Paul spends his days teaching everything Shakespeare, getting angry at modern electronic devices, raising a five-year-old girl who's 50% puppy eyes and 50% sassy comebacks and trying not to fall in love with John Lennon, his university student.
The Consequences of Getting What You Want - deux_lunes
Why John Lennon really beat Bob Wooler up at Paul’s birthday party.
Queer - deux_lunes
Paul gives John what he desires
Discipline - deux_lunes
John has been an utter brat and Paul decides that he is in desperate need of discipline.
Skype sex. - mickeymouse (Sgtmacca0)
day 8. john skypes paul in the middle of the night.
In the Back Seat of My Car - ImagineBeatles
Modern AU. After having met at Stuart's birthday party, John and Paul get down and dirty in the back of John's car.
It won’t be long - orphan_account
After some interesting scents were being left around everywhere the Beatles went, even without any women around, it became obvious that someone in the band is an omega and never told anyone. But no one seems to care, or even notice, but Paul. The only other alpha in the band, with John of course. And he sniffs out (literally and figuratively) who it is alone in the hotel.
James - JP (jpgr1963)
Paul helps John cope with stress while on tour in 1964.
Magical Mystery Tour Love - DemonDean10
Paul gets drunk one night during MMT filming and confesses his love for John. John had been in love for yrs and is elated. but when Paul wakes up he remembers very little of the night before, will he tell John or try to make the relationship work, even with all the moral conflicts it brings up?
Day 30: Who’s Your Daddy, Johnny Boy? - ImagineBeatles
John's been a naughty boy who needs his Daddy to punish him and make him learn his lesson. Or at least, that's what Paul thinks. Not that John isn't more than happy to indulge his lover.
Day 22: Over The Desk - ImagineBeatles
1968. John keeps bothering Paul while he's busy doing management stuff, which is highly irritating for the younger Beatle, especially seeing as John makes it abundantly clear he isn't going to leave until he gets what he came for. In the end, John gets a little more than he bargained for.
Day 18: Lazy Morning Sex - ImagineBeatles
John and Paul spend the morning in bed together.
Day 6: Clothed Getting-Off - ImagineBeatles
John had seen Paul watching him, eyes hot and determined, so he was not at all surprised when he was dragged into an alleyway and pushed up against a brick wall to have his lips positively snogged off.
I Want You - sockittoem
“In which John gets really horny after doing coke, and needs Paul to fuck it out of him.”
The Night Before - andthemoondogs
[ Anon McLennon prompt: "The Night Before" ] John and Paul have a night of drunken sex, after which, John panics and gives Paul the cold shoulder until Paul finally confronts him about it.
Day 7: Naked/Dressed - ImagineBeatles
1964. On the set of A Hard Day's Night, John and Paul cannot get one particular scene right in which Paul has to drag John away from a couple of girl as they try to find Paul's grandfather on the train, so they sneak off to practise the scene together. Soon, however, the boys have other things on their minds than rehearsing a scene.
Kiss Me - orphan_account
Mimi is gone for a trip, and when John and Paul meet at John's house for practice, things don't go quite as planned.
masturbation. - mickeymouse(Sgt macca0)
day 4. paul masturbates at the thought of john.
bottoms up. - ffomixam
“Can we get some mclennon with a possessive, dominant paul and compliant john? (technically doesn’t have to be smut)”
breathe desperation. - ffomixam
McLennon smut, something along the lines of a first time, unexpected, adrenaline fueled, thoughtless, desperate handsy-ness and making out backstage after a show with John as the more submissive and needy one?
love me harder. - ffomixam
Could you write a fic about Paul fucking John in public while in Hamburg, being really rough and dominant and teasing John that someone’s going to hear them and see John taking it up the arse, and John just devolves into a cummy fucked-out mess.
Of Hot Chocolate and Rainy Nights - paulmcfartney
yall already know what's goin on ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I feel like I’m the worst, so I act like im the best - KiwiPillow
John, a young ravishing man, who is absolutely uninterested in anything but himself really, gets pursued by his roommate to try a dating website! What could go wrong? Well, maybe your "match" could turn out to be a bastard stalker mobster boss with a serious daddy kink, who wants to work on your attitude. Shocked and upset. In the mob bosses defence, John is annoying as hell in this.
182 notes
·
View notes
Text
Epic Movie (Re)Watch #196 - The Walk (2015)

Spoilers Below
Have I seen it before: Yes
Did I like it then: Yes.
Do I remember it: Yes.
Did I see it in theaters: Yes.
Was it a movie I saw since August 22nd, 2009: Yes, #382.
Format: Blu-ray
A note from the original poster:
September 11th, 2001 was a tragic event in not only American history but human history and its events still effect many. I decided to watch The Walk on September 11th because it takes something which primarily has sad memories around it (the World Trade Center) and focuses on a joyful memory instead. Philippe Petit accomplished a feat of pure joy and heart, changing what the towers were to people before they even opened. On a day like 9/11 I know I need to remember that there is good AND there is bad. The Walk is the film equivalent of a happy memory of a late loved one which is why I watch it on this day. I understand that there are those of you who just need to mourn on today and I respect that. The reason I am posting this recap today instead of tomorrow is because in case there is anyone out there like me - someone who needs a happy memory of something that ended in tragedy - they can read it today. I hope that makes sense. And to all those who are struggling with today and what it means to them, know that my thoughts are with you and that I hope you are getting through today as best as you can.
1) One of the very first things Philippe says becomes representative of the entire story.
Philippe: “I do not say this word, death…Instead I say the opposite word: life.”
This is a film about the World Trade Center, even if it’s not about 9/11. But as I mentioned in my note above it is joyful. It is not death it is life, something which permeates every scene and every decision Philippe makes. From the scene where he & Annie are playfully shaking the wire to simulate rough weather conditions, to him jumping around naked on the rooftop, all of it shows such intense LIFE and I think that is just wonderful.
2) The framing device of Philippe on top of the Statue of Liberty telling his story with New York in the background distracted me a little upon first viewing. But you quickly get used to it and I think the framing device works. Primarily because it allows the film to use Philippe’s voice at its strongest.
3) I’ve never fully understood the movie’s decision to start in black and white. The reds and blues are in color which is maybe because these are the colors which are strongest on the French and American flags? But then the color returns in Philippe’s visit to the dentist’s office and a part of me understands why (it’s here where he first learns about the Twin Towers). But also I feel that would’ve been more effective if they’d waited to bring color back into the film when Philippe actually SAW the towers as opposed to entering the dentist’s office. I just don’t fully understand it.
4) Joseph Gordon Levitt as Philippe Petit.
The majority of this film is carried on the character of Philippe and therefore the performance of whoever plays him. He narrates EVERYTHING. His voice is the voice of the film. The action is entirely motivated by his dreams, his actions. He IS the story really, meaning you had to have a strong actor play him. And Gordon-Levitt does absolutely amazingly in the part. Any sense of ego or self washes away because you don’t feel like you’re watching an actor give a performance. You feel like you’re watching Philippe. The actor is able to be incredibly optimistic, positive, occasionally stubborn/arrogant, funny, vulnerable, heartfelt, confident, and genuine in every one of these aspects. He balances the traits of Philippe perfectly which is important in a film about wire walking (see what I did there?). Balance is key. Overplay Philippe’s optimism, he’s naive. Overplay his arrogance, he’s a jerk. Overplay his humor, he’s a clown. But Gordon-Levitt doesn’t overplay any of it but balances it out absolutely perfectly.
5) According to IMDb:
Philippe Petit himself personally trained Joseph Gordon-Levitt how to walk on a tightrope. When the training started, Petit predicted that Gordon-Levitt would need no more than 8 days of training to be able to walk on a wire alone, which came true.
6) Charlotte Le Bon as Annie.

The fact that Annie is able to respect Philippe’s circle (something very important to him as performer) and his craft while also being incredibly mad at him shows an immediate understanding between the two. Le Bon is wonderfully genuine in the part, breathing similar life into Annie that Joseph Gordon Levitt breathes into Philippe. She’s wonderful, genuine, heartfelt, and feels real when the character could’ve easily devolved into a Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. And her connection/chemistry with Gordon-Levitt is very honest. You are immediately invested in their relationship.
7) This is very telling of the way Philippe sees his art.
Philippe [about when he walks between the towers]: “My performance will not just be a show. It will be a coup.”
This could easily have come off as pretentious, like Philippe is just talking a big game. But through the writing and definitely through Gordon-Levitt’s performance the audience understands that this is honestly how Philippe sees it. He’s not just saying it to brag, to be a grand artist, he just knows that’s what he’s doing and that’s a lot of fun to watch.
8) Ben Kingsley as Papa Rudy.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ben Kingsley give a bad performance in a movie. Have I seen him in bad movies? For sure, the guy’s prolific. But I’ve never seen him bad IN a movie. He always fully embraces the part that makes it feel alive and Papa Rudy is no different. But the best part about Papa Rudy is the relationship that he and Philippe have. They bicker A LOT but you come to understand that this bickering comes form a place of concern and (dare I say it?) love for each other. It becomes a wonderful father/son relationship which is one of the most important in Philippe’s life and Kingsley’s portrayal helps the audience understand why.
9) Philippe’s anger at his first failure (falling into the lake, “which is more like a swamp.”) is a wonderful flaw that I really appreciate. Philippe is a very proud person and sometimes he lets this pride get in the way of his relationships with others. But more so it motivates him and he’s able to put that pride aside when it really matters.
10) The Notre Dame wire walk.
youtube
This brief but important scene is honestly a wonderful early appetizer of the hope and satisfaction which marks this film and Philippe’s character when he goes out on the wire during the film’s climax. It doesn’t reach that same level of amazing, but few things do. More on that later.
11) I keep bringing this up, but I love that Philippe is portrayed honestly. His flaws, his pride, even his occasional wavering from the task he has set himself upon. The panic upon actually seeing how freaking tall the Twin Towers are is a very honest reaction of someone who wants to do a high wire act up on those towers.
12) The respect that this film pays to the World Trade Center is very strong. We see them as Philippe sees them: beautiful and representative of the opportunity to do something great. They are not some dark shadow that casts over the rest of the film. They’re not sad. They’re amazing and they’re real. The filmmakers put such work into reconstructing the towers for the film that you don’t even think of it as a film set. It’s their way of remembering it and I think that’s just beautiful.
13) Be honest, we all have this friend. Heck, some of us ARE this friend.
Philippe [after Jean-Louis says he’s mad]: “Yes! You love me because I am mad!”
14) Honesty is the best policy, kids.
Philippe [after a TSA agent asks him what he needs all the wiring fire]: “I am going to hang a high wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center and walk on it.”
TSA Agent [after a beat]: “Ha! Good luck!”
15) Philippe’s spy work is a wonderfully lively montage which covers what might otherwise be a very boring part of the film. He’s basically collecting data but it’s so fun we forget that’s what he’s doing.
16) Steve Valentine as Barry.
I have been a fan of Steve Valentine’s ever since I was a kid and he was in “I’m in the Band” on Disney XD. He is a wonderful character actor who is honestly pretty criminally underused in Hollywood. If you just watched this you’d have no idea he is naturally English, that his American accent isn’t real. Valentine’s part might be small compared to some of the other cast members but he uses it well and is INCREDIBLY memorable. I freaking love this guy.
17) And this is the moment you fell in love with JP, Philippe’s newest accomplice.
JP [after Philippe tries to have a private conversation with the others in French and JP responds to it in French]: “Oh you guys thought you were the only ones who spoke French in New York City.”
18) Look, I really like Ben Schwartz. And he’s very good in this film. His character just doesn’t do much. He’s more of a bump in the road (and later pain in the ass) than a developed character. He’s good in the part though, I just always want more of Ben Schwartz.
19) The pre-coup jitters EVERYONE is having is very realistic, especially Philippe’s considering the fact he’s going to be the one on the freaking high wire 110 stories high. The way he refers to the crate with the wiring as a, “coffin,” is very telling. This entire night before is when Philippe is at his shakiest. Not at his most vulnerable though. That’s when he’s on the wire.
20) I’m always surprised by how quickly this movie gets to the day of the coup. Less than half way through and they’re already sneaking around the World Trade Center. I think that’s really smart and honestly organic. It doesn’t stretch the first act longer than it has to.
21) Philippe and Jeff waiting it out.
This is a nice and organic moment to slow down the pacing of the scene, the pair waiting for a guard to leave. I’ve mentioned this before, but Tension doesn’t come from speeding up the scene as much as it does slowing it down. Jeff’s particular fear of heights is very strong here, providing a moment of character analysis for Philippe even as that fear momentarily infects him. It’s just a very nice small moment.
22) So usually when I’m posting about a film I’ll recite the line, “A coincidence that gets the character into trouble is plot.” There are a lot of coincidences and little mistakes which up the conflict and tension of the movie, except here’s the thing: The Walk is based on a real life event with a very popular documentary about it. So the stuff with the nail in Philippe’s foot, the arrow missing its mark, etcetera, that all happened. That’s not an invention. It calls to mind an observation made by Mark Twain: “Truth is stranger than fiction.”
23) A part of me wishes I had seen this film in 3D, because knowing Robert Zemeckis he probably played with the idea of depth beautifully while they’re up on the World Trade Center. But 3D costs money and I was in college at the time (I still am as I write this too, I just decided to say it in past tense).
24) The Mysterious Visitor.

It’s 2017, do we have any idea who this guy was!? Some guy randomly shows up on the tower of the World Trade Center the same day Philippe is going to do his wire walk, says nothing, and leaves. I have two theories about this:
He was a jumper who stopped when he saw other people were up there.
He’s a time traveller from the distant future who wanted to witness Philippe set up his high wire, writing himself into history.
25) I haven’t talked about it yet, but Alan Silvestri’s score for this film is absolutely beautiful. It perfectly stirs the emotion of peace and hope in the film’s audience that Philippe has when he’s on that highwire. I think the main theme for this film is one of the most underrated in movie history because it gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it. Here, have a listen.
26) The Walk.
A climax in a film is typically the moment of greatest tension, but for The Walk it is the moment of greatest euphoria. The moment of greatest joy. No film brings about such a total peace within me as this one does when Philippe takes his first steps onto the high wire accompanied by Alan Silvestri’s amazing score. The extended sequence of MULTIPLE wire walks works beautifully. Yes there are hiccups, there is conflict (a bird, the cops), but more than anything else the sequence conveys to the audience a feeling of one-hundred percent satisfaction and beautiful peace as Philippe is out on his high wire. I’ve seen this film multiple times but this scene always ALWAYS gives me goosebumps and gets me teary eyed. It is beautiful and inspiring and hopeful and just plain moving. I love it with all my heart in a way where I don’t love many films this way. I get such a fountain of euphoria bubbling up inside me and I just ride that wave until the closing credits. It’s amazing.
Philippe [after getting off his wire, to the cops]: “My name is Philippe Petit, I am a wire walker!”
27) There is a line earlier in the film from New Yorkers about how they hate the towers, how they look like giant filing cabinets. And to show you how effective a simple act of pure joy can do, I refer you to this line.
Barry: “They’re different because you walked up there. You know, every New Yorker I talk to now says they love these towers.”
28) There could not be a more perfect closing line to this film.
Philippe [about a visitor’s pass to the World Trade Center]: “And you know this pass I was given? Well, these passes they have a date on them, a date when they expire. But on my pass Mr. Tozzoli he crossed out the date and he wrote on it (small beat), “Forever.”
I have seen 507 different movies in theaters since August 22nd, 2009. I have only ever cried in the following movies (including moves before that day): Bridge to Terabithia, Room, The Imitation Game, and The Walk. I get teary in movies, sure, but the tears usually stay in my eyes. Not in The Walk though. This last line gets me every single time, even today when I watch it. And it goes back to what I wrote at the start of this recap: this movie is a joyful memory that is tied to a tragic event. It is impossible to ever talk about the World Trade Center without remembering all that was lost and all the pain of September 11th, 2001. But this film is able to respect that and still relate a tale of such sheer joy. This movie taught me that the most powerful emotion in the world is a joyful sadness. And I will always be grateful that it did.
The TL;DR version of this is basically note #28, but I’ll repeat why I love this movie anyways. The Walk is beautifully. Wonderfully acted with this incredible story about joy about something (the World Trade Center) that has become such a tragic thing in human history. It makes me cry every single time and it is absolutely one of my favorite movies ever. For those of you struggling with today who took the time to read this whole thing, I truly hope it helps. And for those of you struggling who just scrolled to the end: I hope today was as good as it can be and that tomorrow is better.
#The Walk#Philippe Petit#World Trade Center#Joseph Gordon Levitt#Robert Zemeckis#Epic Movie (Re)Watch#September 11#Steve Valentine#Charlotte Le Bon#James Badge Dale#Ben Schwartz#Ben Kingsley#Movie#Film#GIF
27 notes
·
View notes
Text
Anyways the SKZ × Arknights AU concept goes a bit like this:
It follows the Arknights canon up until chapter 3 (so yeah, spoilers up until that point may be unavoidable), after that everything just becomes a huge mess of canon/non-canon stuff since I haven't found it in me to continue the story after the mess that was 4-4. Most of the world info I picked up from the Wiki, which isn't that complete either, so yeah. Huge canon divergence most likely will happen.
SKZ are all Infected whoops. 3RACHA were originally a gang of sorts but they ended up travelling the world and picking up the rest, changing their name to Stray Kids. Now they mostly do escort and courier requests.
Their main method of transport is a bus they literally overhauled and customized to hold all of their equipment and supplies, and then some. What do they call it? District 9. Is this a shameless MV reference? Yes, yes it is.
SKZ wants to distance themselves from Reunion as much as possible. They know that Reunion sucks a LOT but until they can fight them off, they'd rather play it safe. Which means yes, they're not allied with Rhodes Island. Yet (?).
OT9 is in play because I do want to create a relatively balanced team from the boys. For some reason I imagine 3Racha as melee units, DanceRacha as ranged DPS units, and VocalRacha as support units...
As for the boys' appearances in the AU:
Chan's the leader and he's a Lupo - the race with wolf features like Lappland. I imagine him to be an insanely good Guard focused on DPS, maybe something like Chen?
Woojin is the co-leader and an Ursus - the race with bear features like Zima. I imagine him as a Healing Defender, largely inspired by Saria.
Minho is a Feline - the race with cat features like Skyfire. Coincidentally, I also imagine him as an AoE Caster, with a skillset similar to Skyfire's as well.
Changbin is a Sarkaz - the race with demon-like features like Vigna. Fun fact: Changbin and Hyunjin are the two boys I had the most difficulty in determining races for. As for class, I imagine him to be a supercharged Vigna - a DP-on-Kill Vanguard.
Hyunjin is a Liberi - the race with bird features like Silence. For some reason I see him as a Single-Target Caster?
Jisung is a Zalak - the race with rodent features. For Jisung specifically, squirrel features. This is in large part because of Shaw, the tiny rapping squirrel that pushes enemies to their deaths and savior of my runs in the latter half of Chapter 2. Except I imagine Jisung as a DP-Recovery Vanguard more than a Push Specialist.
Felix is a Sankta - the race with angel-like features like Exusiai. For some reason, Exusiai reminds me of Felix, which is why I base his skills a lot after hers...
Seungmin is a Perro - the race with dog features like Greyy. I imagine him as a Slow Supporter, sorta like Istina I guess?
Jeongin is a Vulpo - the race with fox features like Perfumer. Also like Perfumer, I imagine him as an AoE Medic (because hey, you do need a healer for most late maps and Perfumer is insanely good for a 4*).
And since I am a multistan mess this might devolve into a multifandom crossover. I'll only be writing groups I'm familiar with (so X1, SVT, J01, and some of the Produce X/JP boys are all fair game). I have a plan in mind though (that is highly inspired by the Incident That Shall Not Be Named related to X1 back in January 6 2020) but yeah, still a plan, not yet set in stone except for the things related to SKZ.
But yeah, that's all I can think of right now! I'm also learning how to use Tumblr so I imagine the posting order and everything else is going to be A Mess. Feel free to leave any thoughts!
#arknights#stray kids#skz#this is a mess#like honestly#i dont know what im doing#is this a good idea?#crossover fic#how do i tag
0 notes
Text
Who is Matt Whitaker, Trump’s new acting attorney general?
President Donald Trump forced former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign on Wednesday, replacing him with Matt Whitaker.
The startling move came just one day after the 2018 midterm elections. Whitaker will be acting Attorney General until Trump selects a permanent replacement.
We are pleased to announce that Matthew G. Whitaker, Chief of Staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the Department of Justice, will become our new Acting Attorney General of the United States. He will serve our Country well….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2018
Sessions had famously recused himself of overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, a duty that then fell upon deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein.
After his appointment, however, it is Whitaker who will assume temporary oversight.
Who is Matt Whitaker?
Whitaker is a former attorney from Iowa, a Trump loyalist that the New York Times described as the White House’s “eyes and ears” in the Justice Department. He made a failed attempt to run for Senate in 2014.
He then served as executive director of conservative watchdog the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT). During that time he launched several attacks on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the president’s 2016 election Democratic rival, aligning himself with Trump’s position.
In a 2017 article for The Hill, he urged an investigation into Clinton’s ties to Ukraine and, in a press release for FACT, which stopped just short of calls to “lock her up,” Whitaker wrote of the “strong case to bring against” Clinton over her the use of private email servers.
“The most disturbing aspect of Hillary Clinton’s continued blame game is that she still doesn’t think there was anything wrong with recklessly handling highly sensitive and classified information,” he wrote.
Campaign in works for (too) long?– spring 2014, Clinton talking to JP about campaign chairmanhttp://t.co/Jc8gHATqeY pic.twitter.com/CEqVUeQmYZ
— Matt Whitaker
(@MattWhitaker46) April 12, 2015
Whitaker has also publicly slammed the Mueller’s investigation, even repeating the president’s famous “witch hunt” criticism. Now, Trump has trusted him with oversight of it.
In the month before the administration announced he would be joining the Justice Department, in September 2017, Whitaker penned a CNN op-ed blasting the scope of the Mueller investigation and Rosenstein’s oversight.
“It does not take a lawyer or even a former federal prosecutor like myself to conclude that investigating Donald Trump’s finances or his family’s finances falls completely outside of the realm of his 2016 campaign and allegations that the campaign coordinated with the Russian government or anyone else,” it reads. “That goes beyond the scope of the appointment of the special counsel.”
On Twitter, Whitaker has regularly pushed critical coverage of Mueller’s probe.
Worth a read. "Note to Trump's lawyer: Do not cooperate with Mueller lynch mob" https://t.co/a1YY9H94Ma via @phillydotcom
— Matt Whitaker
(@MattWhitaker46) August 7, 2017
Article is correct, it will be very difficult to ever see evidence discovered by #Mueller grand jury investigation https://t.co/aNKBmi5xI2
— Matt Whitaker
(@MattWhitaker46) August 17, 2017
Trump’s fondness for Whitaker became explicitly clear in September of this year, when it was revealed he was on Trump’s shortlist for White House Counsel. His name was also one of several thrown around that month as a possible replacement deputy attorney general, amid rumors that Rosenstein was going to be fired.
READ MORE:
CNN reporter’s microphone spat devolves into partisan fight online
Trump’s ‘hot White House’ claim gets roasted on Twitter
‘Games of Thrones’ stars respond to Trump’s ‘sanctions are coming’ meme
Then, last month, the Washington Post reported that Trump had chatted with Whitaker about replacing Sessions.
It’s not hard to track Whitaker’s rise to acting attorney general, but it’s interesting to note how his career promotions came his way the louder he publicly echoed the president’s own ideas.
from Ricky Schneiderus Curation https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/matt-whitaker-acting-attorney-general/
0 notes
Text
Paul Krugman Is Finally Right About Something: Government Violence
The way economist Paul Krugman sees it, “fiat currencies have underlying value because men with guns say they do.”
Chk-chk, boom!
No, we aren’t paraphrasing. Yes, that’s a DIRECT quote. Krugman actually spoke the truth for once.
It’s quite rare for someone to be so ridiculously bad at predictions and still be widely considered an “expert” but somehow, the disheveled New York Times columnist who was wrong about the Internet, wrong about the 2008 financial crisis, and wrong about Trump, is finally right about something.
Government violence is the only thing propping up the crusty Krugmans of the world.
The Keynesian con man, who incorrectly predicted on Election Day that Trump’s victory would immediately send the markets plunging, has a history of yelling at bitcoin. Not one to break his embarrassing streak of failure, the shyster continues to be wrong about cryptocurrency in general.
At this point, we can almost bet that if Krugman says something, the opposite is most likely true.
Like any other currency, bitcoin and other cryptos retain value because proponents put stock in what it has to offer. However, unlike fiat currency, bitcoin is a free market invention built upon the libertarian principle of decentralization—it can’t be propped up artificially by banks or governments.
As such, bitcoin does not suffer from the shortcomings of fiat currency, which can be very easily destabilized when the government decides to print more money, as is the case in Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and now Turkey. Indeed, bitcoin has become the preferred alternative for those living under these crumbling, centrally-planned economies.
In a recent article for The Gray Lady, the greasy Nobel Prize-winner expressed his views as a “crypto skeptic.” Much like earlier failed predictions of how the internet and Amazon would never take off, Krugman hilariously weighs in on subjects he demonstrates little understanding of.
He says his biggest issue with crypto stems from “transaction costs and the absence of tethering.” While it’s true to an extent that Bitcoin Core faces scaling challenges in terms of transaction fees, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, Monero and others are already poised to solve these issues.
The friction of doing business, as Krugman claims, is too high for crypto to be considered a viable alternative to government-backed currencies. Citing the history of fiat money, which began with the trade of precious metals, later devolving into the use of central bank notes, and finally to digital credit and debit transactions, the establishment mouthpiece illustrates his inability to see the bigger picture.
Whereas Krugman views bitcoin as a force immutable to change, proponents of blockchain technology know full well that the underlying networks supporting them will only continue to improve.
Krugman actually destroys his own arguments when he casually admits that governments “have occasionally abused the privilege of creating fiat money.”
He’s still either lying or confused, though. Governments don’t create money—central banks, empowered by government, do.
Yet, they “occasionally” abuse their privilege? More like since the beginning of central banking and every day since.
He claims that because banks are protecting their own reputations, people who use fiat don’t have to worry about seeing their purchasing power vanish the moment someone in charge decides to print more money.
Tell that to everyone living under the rule of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, where citizens saw the value of their hard-earned savings disappear overnight. Or, in every other country, including the US, where the purchasing power of the money has been slowly destroyed. Sad!
For example, compare what a silver dollar can still buy you today with what you get for one Federal Reserve Note. Over time, REAL money gets you at least five to ten times more food, five to ten times more gas, five to ten times more savings.
Much like feudalism, people who depend on centralized banking systems remain at the mercy of “benevolent dick-tators” who are expected to care about the masses. Corruption inevitably leads to economic recessions, or worse.
When hyperinflation arrives in the US and the dollar finally collapses under the weight of trillions in government debt, the effects will be unlike any depression in history.
In fact, this month, JP Morgan’s top “quant” analyst warned that the next crisis will include flash crashes and social unrest not seen in 50 years.
In contrast, cryptocurrencies exist as a safeguard against the widespread destruction of wealth and retain their value so long as people use it. While relatively unpredictable compared to the (so-far) stable decline of Federal Reserve Notes, cryptos are presently in a nascent stage where early adopters and those of us in-the-know (SUBSCRIBE) fully expect to profit from the fluctuating values.
As history itself shows, the value of these digital tokens will eventually stabilize following more widespread use from corporate and individual backers—a fact evident in bitcoin’s adoption by Microsoft, PayPal, Shopify and others.
The main problem holding back more companies from embracing the future standard of money is tax collectors (extortionists) and regulators (thugs) who remain keen to maintain the failing legacy system. The Powers That Shouldn’t Be desperately want to keep ultimate control in the hands of their fraudulent central bankers—the fat cats Krugman serves, who depend on shills like him to promote their worldwide enslavement.
Now the secret is out—they even admit it themselves! For decades, human parasites with guns have protected the US dollar’s value.
In the age of information, cryptography, and cyberwar, we’ll see how long their brutal plan holds up.
Stick with us at The Dollar Vigilante for the best financial news and investment ideas. TDV members were encouraged to buy Bitcoin back when it was $3 in 2011. Subscribe HERE for the inside scoop.
YouTube
553 Videos | 124,495 Subscribers
Upcoming Events
Precious Metals Investment Symposium
Start date: October 3, 2018
End date: October 4, 2018
More info
Australia's largest precious metals event Symposium is presenting the 8th Annual Precious Metals Investment Symposium. This 2-day investment and educational event is being held at the Pan Pacific Perth Hotel, on the 3rd-4th of October 2018.
The conference and exhibition brings together every aspect of the precious metals investment industry from mining explorers and producers, to bullion companies and other investment vehicles.
Keynote speakers from across the globe will present their views on the future for the sector and ASX listed mining companies will provide updates on investment opportunities.
About the Author
Anarcho-Capitalist. Libertarian. Freedom fighter against mankind’s two biggest enemies, the State and the Central Banks. Jeff Berwick is the founder of The Dollar Vigilante and host of the popular video podcast, Anarchast. Jeff is a prominent speaker at many of the world’s freedom, investment and cryptocurrency conferences including his own, Anarchapulco, as well as regularly in the media including CNBC, Bloomberg and Fox Business. Jeff also posts exclusive content daily to the new blockchain based social media network, Steemit.
from The Dollar Vigilante https://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2018/09/18/paul-krugman-is-finally-right-about-something-government-violence.html via The Dollar Vigilante
0 notes
Text
Gold and Silver Hated Now, Cryptocurrencies Loved. The Debate Rages Onward, and Here’s a Solution!
by JS Kim, Founder of SmartKnowledgeU and skwealthacademy, this article was first posted at smartknowledgeu.com/blog on 1 June 2017.
As most of you know, the rise of the cryptocurrency has dominated financial headlines as of late, compelling many to comment on bulletin boards and message boards that they will never buy physical gold or physical silver ever again, and that from now on, it’s cryptocurrencies or bust! Given Bitcoin and Ether’s recent parabolic rise, strictly from a price standpoint, physical gold makes more sense as a a purchase at this current time than Bitcoin or Ether, though certainly given performance and the benefit of hindsight, buying Bitcoin and Ether at the start of the year made more sense than buying gold. But again this statement is only valid given the two entirely different purposes of buying gold and cryptocurrencies. And technically speaking, Ether, or Ethereum is not a cryptocurrency, but rather a token that user receive users for using their computing power to validate transactions and for helping pay for the development of the Ethereum network. As I will explain later in this article, even despite the massive parabolic rise in the price of BTC, if one were seeking to fulfill the very specific purpose that purchasing physical gold achieves in a wealth preservation plan, then purchasing gold over cryptocurrencies at the start of the year still would have made sense for a lot of people.
Those that have truly followed me this year, and not just read the occasional article I write about precious metals that is posted on ZeroHedge every several months, know that I have warned of big dips in spot gold and spot silver prices and advocated shorting paper gold and paper silver several times already this year, right before significant price dips materialized, as a means to protect oneself against banker price manipulations of spot PM prices. However, the current time is not one of them, as I believe the prices for both physical gold ($ 1258) and physical silver ($ 17.28) are solid long-term buys right now. However, this doesn’t mean there won’t be interim volatility in price, as in today’s Central Banker asset price-distorted world, volatility has become the norm, not the exception. For those that want to follow my opinion about PMs, you can do so on my Snapchat skwealthacademy channel, where I post snaps nearly every day, and very often discuss the state of PMs and to a lesser extent, cryptocurrencies.
Although many in the gold community do not like cryptocurrencies because they conveniently fit into the global banking cartel end goal of pushing society into wide acceptance of a 100% digital currencies, at this point, no one knows whether Bitcoin is part of the global banking cartel’s plan to take the world into 100% digital currency, including yours truly. Way back in 2012, I wrote that the banking cartel’s end game was clearly to gain control over every citizen’s financial life by eradicating the world of all paper currency and pushing wide acceptance of a 100% digital currency . It is of my opinion, that there is a possibility that bankers are behind either the development and/or marketing of Bitcoin, as acceptance of Bitcoin will help drive acceptance of the bankers’ end game of 100% eradication of paper money and 100% acceptance of digital currency across the world. I believe that my opinion is firmly in the minority, and many cryptocurrency supporters contend that there is zero possibility that Bitcoin was part of a banking project (by the way, if you keep reading, you will see that I discovered a new cryptocurrency I am backing for the long-term). However, in this debate, the only definitive conclusion that can be drawn is the following: without knowing the identity of the group of people known as Satoshi Nakamoto, no one can end this debate, so both sides of the debate at this point are based not on evidence, but pure speculation. The key to knowing which opinion is correct is unveiling the identity of Satoshi Nakaomoto beyond a shadow of a doubt, and is this is still an unknown today. Thus, one side cannot say “my lack of evidence supports my opinion more so than your lack of evidence”, which unfortunately, has evolved (or more appropriately “devolved”) into an argument that many people today utilize, and strongly believe, is perfectly valid, when in reality, such an argument is based entirely on emotion, irrationality and a lack of critical thought.
When one of my friends noticed that I was working on a piece about the cryptocurrency versus gold debate, he asked me, “Are you sure you want to publish that article and take on the crytpocurrency advocates, as they will heap scorn on you for doubting the anti-banking cartel nature of cryptocurrencies? That’s like trying to convince a hardcore vegan that eating meat is not evil. That takes a lot of courage.” To that, I replied, “First of all, I’m not belittling cryptocurrency advocates, because if you read the article after I publish it, you will see that I recently became aware of a brand-new crytprocurrency that I support. Secondly, it doesn’t take courage to express logical views, as that is all I am doing. Thirdly, I am not stating that Bitcoin advocates that believe BTC is independent of the global banking cartel are wrong. I am merely expressing reservations because no one has any evidence that is conclusive on either side of the debate. The flip side of that statement is that they may be right as well. To me it seems harmless to point out an indisputable fact, which is that hard conclusions should never be drawn from a lack of evidence, but this is routinely done.” I continued, “I know that people hate to deal with uncertainties, and will do anything to rid themselves of that uncertainty, which leads to many wrong conclusions. This is a fact propelled by many psychology studies, so when I point this out, I am again, just pointing out a fact. Just look at how financial markets deal with uncertainty. They don’t like it all. But that does not mean, because uncertainty exists, that one should make conclusions out of thin air to explain that uncertainty to get rid of it. To me, that is totally irrational. Yet the mainstream financial media does this on a daily basis with their headlines, To make my point, just go to YouTube and search for a topic called “demon magicians”, in which people claim that amazing magicians have sold their souls to the devil for powers to manipulate solid objects instantly into different states of matter, simply because they don’t know the tricks executed by these magicians to pull off their amazing illusions. I mean, there is a whole segment of people on YouTube that actually believe magicians are given powers by the devil, simply because of their desire to provide a certain explanation to a topic about which they are uncertain and can find zero evidence to explain the uncertainty. As mad as this sounds, this kind of irrationality persists in the financial world to, in mainstream financial media, to explain uncertain things whereby correlation for financial events are wrongly announced to the world as causation on a daily basis.”
It may be true that the global banking cartel’s iteration of their 100% digital currency will differ substantially from the cryptocurrencies of today, and that they were never involved in the development of BTC and other early-stage cryptocurrencies on the horizon, as even JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon publicly derided cryptocurrencies as fads that will not survive. In this article, Dimon stated, “No government will ever support a virtual currency that goes around borders and doesn’t have the same controls [as fiat currency]. It’s not going to happen”, convincing many that this was proof that the global banking cartel had no hand in the development of early crytpocurrencies like BTC, and that a definitive fork exists between early stage cryptocurrencies, outside-the-control of the global banking cartel, and other later-stage, ongoing developments of cryptocurrencies, under the auspices of the global banking cartel. However, one must be aware that bankers rarely ever tell the truth, and the same people that often deride 99% of Jamie Dimon’s statements will point to this particular Dimon statement as “proof” that early cryptocurrencies are independent of the global banking cartel.
For sure, there is a massive difference between “speculation” and “proof” and any statement uttered by Jamie Dimon lands squarely on the side of speculation and not fact, because as we well know, Alan Blinder, former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Princeton University economist, infamously stated on a 1994 PBS television program, “The last duty of a Central Banker is to tell the public the truth.” For example, eight-months prior to Dimon’s issuance of that statement, Dimon already was building close connections to blockchain technology when JP Morgan executive Blythe Masters left his firm to head up Digital Assets Holdings, LLC, a blockchain development company that is currently working on blockchain technology for use in the Australian stock exchange. Furthermore, earlier this year, Dimon revealed that JP Morgan had built an Ethereum Alliance with other global banks and corporations to wield more influence over blockchain implementation and acceptance, an alliance that obviously was years in the planning. Understanding that JP Morgan was privately deeply involved in blockchain development at the same time their CEO was publicly deriding cryptocurrencies like BTC obviously exposes the disingenuous nature of Dimon’s comments, and furthermore, still does not discredit the possibility that a member of the global banking cartel had a hand in the development of BTC.
Dimon’s statement, once we know the dishonesty of it, could lead to an infinite number of interpretations. It could mean that BTC is a virtual currency outside the global banking system and that’s why Dimon derided it, because JP Morgan will only support a virtual currency that he controls. It could be controlled opposition, whereby JP Morgan bankers have secretly had a hand in the development and acceptance of BTC despite their publicly stated opposition, a ploy meant to throw people off the trail of their plan to financially subjugate humanity further as they push through acceptance of 100% digital currencies. Recall that when the Morgans, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Warburgs, etc. tried to establish another Central Bank in the United States after the charter of the First Bank (1791-1811) and Second Bank (1861-1836) of the United States was revoked, they initially failed, because 100 years ago, Americans were properly educated to understand that the establishment of a Central Bank was meant to enslave them. So what did the banking cartel do in response? By the Congressional record documented of US Congressman and Chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee Louis McFadden’s speeches, delivered on the floor of Congress in the 1930s, we know that, at first, bankers tried to fool Congress into voting for a bill to establish a Central Bank by lying to Congress about overwhelming public support that existed for a Central Bank, that was in fact, generally mild and tepid at best. McFadden stated, “It has been said that the draughts man who was employed to write the text of the Aldrich bill because that had been drawn up by lawyers, by acceptance bankers of European origin in New York. It was a copy, in general a translation of the statues of the Reichsbank and other European central banks. One-half million dollars was spent on the part of the propaganda organized by these bankers for the purpose of misleading public opinion and giving Congress the impression that there was an overwhelming popular demand for it and the kind of currency that goes with it.”
Paul M. Warburg, who represented the Rothschild bankers, and whom many claim as the key figure in bringing the US Federal Reserve into existence, shed additional light into the banking cartel’s propaganda campaign in his deliverance of a speech to the New York YMCA on 23 March, 1910, in which he insisted that a national reserve bank would not be “controlled by Wall Street or any monopolistic interest”, explaining that the words “Central Bank” should be avoided, as he was not proposing a monopolistic Central Bank, but rather a decentralized national bank with 4 regional reserve banks, even though this was a complete lie and power was centralized in the New York Federal Reserve branch, after the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913, as it still is today. Bankers presented the exact same, monopolistic centralized bank a second time to US Congress, this time posing as a decentralized “federal” bank on the side of the people as opposed to a Central Bank that would work against the people’s best interests, and with this fake narrative, US Congress voted it into existence. This was the use of controlled opposition at its best, publicly pretending to be on the side of the people while privately working against the people’s best interests. Since bankers have a history of such deviant acts of convincing the public to support financial instruments that they would then later us to control humanity, to dismiss the possibility that they could be using cryptocurrencies in the same manner would be reckless. Thirdly, there is a possibility that global banks other than JP Morgan had a hand in developing BTC, thus compelling Dimon to denigrate BTC in favor of the digital currency that JP Morgan will eventually back. Again, all the above are possibilities, the validity of all unknown, none provable, no one possibility stronger than any other, and none ably dismissed.
No matter which of the above possibilities are true, the rise of cryptocurrencies are rapidly spreading acceptance of the global banking cartel’s push to create a world without any paper money and with only 100% digital money. There is, by no means, a clean a divide between the PM and cryptocurrency communities as agitators try to delineate, as there are also many in the PM community that hold both PMs and cryptocurrencies. Up to this point in this article, I have merely relayed my opinion and relayed the possibilities behind the origins of BTC, but I will explain later in this article, why my belief and the numerous possibilities I presented above may very well be irrelevant in the debate about the future of cryptocurrencies. In today’s world, we allow others to manipulate us like a herd of cattle into taking divisive, opposition sides, both sides often based on zero evidence, as we live in a world where the financiers of every nation have made it unacceptable for us not to take a side and to simply admit facts, that some things remain unknown. Today, a lot of anger is fomented seemingly on every topic, whether religion, politics or finance, often successfully conjured up even amidst a complete absence of evidence and facts. In any event, I thought it would be an illuminating exercise to sift through the comment section of a recent ZeroHedge bitcoin article, simply because it may be a useful discourse to provide a little bit of clarity to some misunderstandings and anger (that should not exist) about the ongoing raging PM versus Bitcoin debate. I am going to paraphrase the most popular comments below.
FIVE FALSE DIVISIONS BETWEEN GOLD AND CRYPTOCURRENCY COMMUNITIES
(1) One Has to Choose Between Gold and Cryptopcurrencies
This opinion is definitely not true, as I know plenty of people that own both cryptocurrencies and gold and this divide should not exist. As long as one recognizes that the purchase of gold and the purchase of cryptocurrencies serve very different purposes, one can buy both to fill these two very different goals. Despite the belief of many that prices of cryptocurrencies are out of the control of the bankers, but the price of gold is not, and this is a critical factor that separates cryptocurrencies from gold, this belief is only partially true. Paper gold trading is in control of the bankers. Physical gold trading is not. This is why, in parts of the world plagued by financial instability, premiums for physical gold will soar enormously higher than the artificially banker-set paper/digital price of gold. For example, the price of BTC, due to a recent feeding frenzy in Korea recently soared above USD$ 3,000. However, even though speculators foolish enough to chase BTC and pay $ 3,000 per BTC in South Korea existed, I snapchatted screenshots of BTC dealers in South Korea during this buying frenzy on my Snapchat channel that illustrated decent supply of BTCs in South Korea at just a slight premium over Western market prices, so the $ 3,000 BTC purchases that hit the market in South Korea were executed by people that did not shop around on various exchanges for a much better price that was clearly available.
An analogous situation was recently observed in the physical gold market as well. When PM Narendra Modi initially banned the 500 and 1000 rupee note in India, the price of physical gold soared well over $ 2,000 an ounce in India, with some unconfirmed reports of gold hitting prices of more than $ 3,000 an ounce in Indian black markets. Did people that payed $ 2,500 or $ 3,000 an ounce for physical gold have to spend this amount? Certainly not, and these prices only hit because people panic bought during a buying frenzy instigated by rupee uncertainty and the Indian Prime Minister’s attempt to demonetize gold. At the time of the physical gold buying frenzy, the spot price of gold was roughly $ 1,220. However, this incident illustrated that during a fiat currency crisis, bankers can continue to control and suppress paper/digital gold prices, but they have no control over suppressing soaring physical gold prices caused by high physical demand and tight supply during a financial crisis. In any event, if one wants to purchase both, one should understand, from the hugely different levels of volatility in gold prices versus cryptocurrency prices, that gold should be purchased to preserve purchasing power over time, while cryptocurrencies should be purchased for highly speculative returns Again, two different currencies serve two entirely different purposes.
(2) I Made a Ton of Money on Cryptocurrencies, But Have Lost a Ton on Gold, So I’m Never Buying Gold Again!
This statement is all about timing, as if anyone buys at a short-term buying frenzy during a long bull market, then one has a much greater chance of sitting on losses a few years later. However, timing on buying gold was not particularly difficult during this current bull run of 17 years now and here are indisputable facts to back up this statement. If one purchased gold at the start of 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2016, one would have ended the year in the black every single one of those years. Furthermore, during the past 17 years, including this one, if one purchased gold at the very beginning of the year in 14 of the past 17 years, one would still be profitable at today’s price, and extremely profitable if one had purchased physical gold in the early portion of this timeline. The reasons that made gold a strong purchase during 2001 are the exact same reasons that make gold a strong purchase today, so for someone that understood the real reasons to buy gold versus chasing a speculative rise, one was much more likely to have bought and hold physical gold during the early years of this cycle and added more on every severe dip, thus still maintaining a nice average buy-in price over this time frame.
Even though gold is volatile, it hasn’t been difficult, despite contrary belief, to manage the volatility when buying physical gold for the past 17 years, and the timing of when to buy physical gold has not been particularly difficult to ensure a profit over this time period as well, as only buying at the start of 3 of the past 17 years would have resulted in losses by the end of the year, and only buying at the start of 3 of the past 17 years are still yielding losses at the present time. And unless you purchased gold during the worst 28-months out of a nearly 200-month timeline, most likely you are heavily in the black right now or about to be back in the black again. Likewise, if anyone chased Bitcoin in South Korea and bought it at an absolute short-term peak at USD$ 3,000, as some have, then there is no one to blame but themselves when they were sitting on an almost immediate 36% loss just a couple of days later. While certainly, in hindsight, it may have been easier to buy Bitcoin at nearly any point on its bullish timeline, versus gold, and still be profitable today, no one should expect parabolic price rises to be the norm for Bitcoin, and prices will likely remain very volatile until they stabilize in the future.
(3) I Don’t Want to Carry Gold Around. There’s No Digital Gold, and Digital Currencies Are a Ton More Convenient to Use than Gold.
Most forms of paper gold, including gold futures contracts, ARE digital gold, so digital gold definitely exists right now, but the only problem is that no one wants the current form of digital gold (except for the most recently introduced form of 100% physical backed digital gold recently introduced last week that I discuss at the end of this article). When bankers trade gold futures contracts using HFT algorithms, their entered trades are being executed through high-speed fiber optic cable that minimize latency times to less than one millisecond. Certainly, real physical gold is never trading hands during these times, and in fact, outside of Shanghai and Hong Kong markets, gold derivative produces almost never settle in real physical gold. So bankers that trade the paper gold futures markets in London and New York are constantly trading 100% digital gold. It they were not, there would be no infrastructure that would allow them to dump $ 1 billion, $ 2 billion, or more, of notional gold in the form of gold futures contracts in a matter of minutes to suppress price. They are dumping, in essence, digital gold backed by air. As I stated above, there are some instances when gold futures contracts are asked to settle in physical, but outside of Shanghai and Hong Kong, the percentages of gold futures contracts that settle in physical are miniscule compared to the percentages that settle in fiat. However, no one that truly understands the reasons for buying physical gold would ever buy digital gold that wasn’t backed 100% by physical gold, as is the case in New York and London gold futures markets. Thus unlike with digital currencies, the reverse alchemy, physical into computer digits, demonetization-of-gold scheme executed by bankers in London and New York is a massive problem, and not a benefit. However, there is a way to fix this, as I will explain in the solution below. Lastly, if you purchase physical gold today, there is no need to carry it around as you can easily store it in vaults that have been vetted and are outside of the global banking system.
(4) No One Hates Bitcoins More than Goldbugs!
In the short-term, cryptocurrencies may or may not have peaked. No one knows for certain, so any guess to its peak price is pure speculation. Bitcoin may have peaked for the short-term at $ 3,000 in Asia in South Korea recently. My guess is that in the west, BTC prices have not yet peaked. Despite the opinion of some (notice I said some, not all, as “some” is a fact, and “all” is not) cryptocurrency owners that believe gold owners are jealous of their profits and hate cryptocurrency owners solely due to the profits reaped, this voiced antagonism should not only not exist, but it doesn’t even make sense, if indeed, the claim that Bitcoin is out of the control of the banking cartel is true. If cryptocurrencies like BTC are actually helping to free humanity from the control of bankers, and will stop the massive transference of wealth from the 99.9% to the 0.1% that has been happening over the past several decades, then people that own physical gold, and people that own cryptocurrencies, are clearly on the same side of this battle. Thus, even though I have voiced skepticism about the origins of Bitcoin being completely independent of the global banking cartel, if I am proven to be wrong in the future, and the continued existence of Bitcoin 10 years from now will prove me wrong, then I will gladly become the biggest advocate for BTC on planet Earth as any currency that is outside of the global banking cartel’s control should be unilaterally supported by anyone that values freedom. However, because I have some questions at this point that I think are tangible and valid, such a cautious approach shouldn’t make me the enemy of Bitcoin owners and it definitely doesn’t mean that I am not happy for those that made a ton of money on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to date.
In fact, to the contrary, I am extremely happy for people that have made a lot of money on cryptocurrencies up to this point if they are on the side of humanity that wants to establish a sound monetary system and eradicate our current unsound debt-based monetary system. If this faction of cryptocurrency owners is authentic as I believe them to be, then this only means that gold owners have a strong coalition of people, now with significantly more resources to fight the global banking system and to fight to establish a new monetary system. The doubt or belief of BTC as being independent of the global banking system is entirely irrelevant to this point. Any gold owner that hates cryptocurrency owners solely for the large profits that they have potentially made at this point or any cryptocurrency owner that hated on gold owners when gold soared from $ 250 to near $ 2,000 an ounce is simply wasting a whole lot of energy on hate, and the expression of such hate is more a reflection on the hater’s insecurity issues, as such expressed hatred and jealousy impedes the monetary freedom movement. If we truly want to achieve the same goal, and I think most cryptocurrency and gold owners do (again, most, but not all), then anyone that engages in deliberate divisiveness is executing the bankers’ divide and conquer strategy for them, and should be completely expelled from the monetary freedom coalition, as they are part of the problem and not part of the solution. And as far as a solution that can tie the existing differences of gold and cryptocurrency owners together and solve the concerns I have with cryptocurrencies at the current time, I propose one below, so please keep reading. In any event, owners of gold and cryptocurrencies should be on the same side, and if we allow the financiers of nations to manipulate us into divisiveness, we are merely falling victim to a learned helplessness role of willing captor to our captives.
(5) Gold Will Never Appreciate at the Rate Cryptocurrencies Appreciate, So No Thank You to Any Physical Gold Ownership
Regarding the statement that gold will never match the appreciation rate of some cryptocurrencies, an owner of Monero commented that he has made 120,000% gains thus far, meaning that he must have bought Monero at inception at $ 0.034762697752, which translates into a 120,000% gain at its current price of $ 41.75. Kudos to this person! And he is correct in that gold will likely never appreciate 120,000% because this means that from its initial starting price of this current bull market of about $ 250, gold would have to rise to $ 30,250 per troy ounce to equal this person’s 120,000% gain on Monero. In the absence of a hyperinflationary environment, I don’t see gold going to this price. But who knows, I could be wrong, and maybe gold will appreciate this much in price. Again, this is an unknown, and as many of you that have followed me for years already well know, I’ve always stated to absolutely disregard all “Gold to $ 10,000” predictions that pop up every year, as devoting any brainpower to analyzing unknowable timing predictions such as these is not only a complete waste of energy, but also a complete waste of time. However, exploration of this concept allows me to reinforce an earlier, very important point between the massively different purposes between buying gold and buying cryptocurrencies. People that own gold and are hardcore gold believers buy gold because of its ability to preserve purchasing power over not just 10 years or 20 years, but also over hundreds of years, over their lifespan and over the lifespan of their children. Cryptocurrencies are way too young and in some sense, still in an embryonic stage, so there is no way that cryptocurrencies are, at the current time, able to make the same claim of purchasing power preservation.
In my opinion, of all the qualities sound money should have, the preservation of purchasing power over lengthy periods of time is the most critical quality to possess, and since cryptocurrencies are too young to prove up this quality, they cannot, in my opinion, be considered sound money at this point in their business cycle, as they are obviously in the rapid growth segment of the cycle. In fact, for those that stay away from gold because its price is too volatile, Bitcoin’s price has been far more volatile than gold’s price since Bitcoin came into existence. In fact, gold’s quintupling of price over 17 years is generally considered peanuts to cryptocurrency investors. Consequently, people that buy gold buy it to preserve their wealth over time, and not to make rapid spectacular gains. This is a completely different reason than the reason why people buy cryptocurrencies. There may come a time many years from now, when cryptocurrencies prove themselves to be a store of purchasing power over time, and if that time comes, I will move cryptocurrencies out of the speculative growth category, but not before then. So, while massive gains are much more likely in cryptocurrencies than gold, the opposite is true as well. Massive losses in cryptocurrencies, until they move out of their growth stage and find more price stability, are much more likely to occur than in gold, as well.
THREE CONCLUSIONS
(1) At the Current Time, NEITHER Cryptocurrencies or Gold are Fully Outside the Manipulative Powers of the Global Banking Cartel
Although many cryptocurrency owners claim that cryptocurrencies are “free money” while fiat currencies are the money of “slaves”, the very fact that cryptocurrencies are denominated in fiat currency prices means that they are still not independent of the global banking cartel. Bankers have ensured that all cryptocurrencies are denominated in THEIR form of debt-money for the very same reason that bankers have ensured that gold is as well. As long as the price of an asset is denominated in a form of debt-money, the asset can never truly serve the purpose of being the money of a free man or free woman, because this link necessitates the conversion into debt-based slave-money for use, and keeps humanity dependent upon debt-based slave money. Even if we don’t convert cryptocurrencies into fiat currencies and pay for merchandise directly in BTCs, as long as the price of BTCs remains denominated in a form of debt-based slave money, it cannot escape the intimate link to the global banking cartel’s monetary system.
As an example of why tying the price of an asset to fiat currencies grants bankers the ultimate control over that asset, let me use the stock market in Zimbabwe in 2006 and 2007 to illustrate my point. The Zimbabwe Industrial Index, for a rolling period of time slightly more than a year, in 2006-2007, gained 7,990%, a prolific increase that caused many to proclaim the Zimbabwe stock markets as the “best performing” stock market of that time period, though it was clearly the worst performing stock market for the following reasons. The 7,990% gain was denominated in hyperinflating Zimbabwe dollars, which rendered a 8,000% or even an 80,000% gain worthless during this time period, as monthly inflation peaked in Zimbabwe at 79,600,000,000% a year later. In other words the Zimbabwe dollar was losing valuation and purchasing power at a much faster clip than the stock gains were accumulating, so all of the stock gains were quickly rendered worthless as the gains could not be spent before they were devalued. However, if the 7,990% gains were instead denominated in gold weight, then no amount of Zimbabwe dollar devaluation could have prevented this increase from producing a massive gain in real wealth. Of course, US dollars are not hyperinflating at the current time, so why make such a comparison? I’m not making so much as a comparison as I am making a point. If the currency in which an asset is priced fails, then the asset will fail too, thereby unfortunately still granting bankers ultimate control over the fate of the asset. In response, some will argue that if dollars or Euros fail, and cryptocurrencies subsequently fail, then won’t gold ultimately fail as well? On the surface, this seems like a logical argument, but I will reveal below, why in such a situation, gold will be king of the monetary pile.
(2) Price is NOT the Same as Value
Today, many business school graduates still confuse the concepts of value and price in the world of finance. I have uploaded many vlogs on my YouTube channel that explain why the value of gold and silver is its weight and not its price. Does it make sense to claim the value of real money like physical gold is its price, a unit of measurement that is denominated in unsound immoral, fiat currencies like Euros or dollars? Of course not! The real value of gold, as its weight, is always constant. In other words, the value of gold is constant everywhere in the world, as 10g of gold in Libya equals 10g of gold in Canada equals 10g of gold in Brazil equals 10g of gold in Uruguay equals 10g of gold in Romania. The price of gold changes all the time, but the value of gold does not change simply because bankers price gold in their deteriorating and devaluing fiat currencies. Price is an immensely different concept than value when it comes to the world of PMs, though bankers like to fool us and interchangeably use these two terms in the financial media to confuse us into believing they are the same. Now some will counter by stating that they can cash out their Bitcoins and buy gold with it anytime they like, but if so, then are these people valuing cryptocurrencies in terms of how much gold it can buy? For the very same reasons it makes no sense to value gold in an illegitimate, debt-based currency, it also makes no sense to value cryptocurrencies in illegitimate, debt-based currencies. So what is the value of Bitcoin and other cryptos? If we try to apply the above analogy to cryptocurrencies and reject the fact that the value of cryptocurrencies is its unit of measurement, since this unit of measurement is not tangible, it doesn’t translate as well as it does for gold. For example, if we say the value of Bitcoins should be measured by its amount of Satoshis, and not its dollar, won, or Euro price, what does this really mean?
Of course, some claim that the value of cryptocurrencies is its store of wealth. However, as I explained above, perhaps after 50 more years, this claim can be made, but this claim cannot seriously be considered at the current time given the infancy of cryptocurrencies. Therefore, I would state, that at the current time, the only way to measure a cryptocurrencies value is by its price, as we can’t measure it by their digital bytes, and in the case of hyperinflation, the value of cryptocurrencies will be severely debased, no matter the gain in underlying fiat currencies (see the Zimbabwe Industrial Index explanation above). However, since the value of gold is its weight, the weight of 10 ounces of gold will still remain 10 ounces of gold even if the price collapses through hyperinflation. Hyperinflation and currency collapse will always give rise to a new currency, so owners of gold, in such an event, would just hold gold until a new currency was born, and the price of their ounces would be re-established. I argue that the case for the valuation of cryptocurrencies during and after a hyperinflationary event would not be so clear. Of course, we are speaking of a worst-case scenario here, but a case study of fiat currencies have demonstrated that they always revert to their intrinsic value of zero over time, so who’s to say that event won’t happen in our lifetime?
(3) All Comparisons of the Price of 1 BTC to 1 Troy Ounce of Gold are Completely Baseless and Without Merit
I never understood why financial journalists ran numerous articles that always compared the price of 1 BTC to 1 troy ounce of gold, yielding headlines like “Bitcoin now exceeds gold in price” when the price of 1 BTC overtook the price of 1 troy ounce of gold. One troy ounce, or 31.1035 grams, the unit of measurement of gold, is a unit of weight. Unless one Bitcoin, the unit of measurement for BTC, is also a unit of weight, then comparing the price of one unit of weight of gold to the price of one unit of Bitcoin is an impossible comparison that makes zero sense, no matter how much the mainstream financial media wants to sell us this comparison as a valid one. Making such a comparison is totally random, and is literally as absurd as comparing the price of 1 barrel of oil to the price of a 1/2 carat ruby and saying that rubies are a much better investment that oil because 1/2 carat of rubies exceeds the price of one barrel of oil. It’s absurd as comparing the price of a 212kg Japanese bluefin tuna that sold for more than $ 3,100 per kg in Tokyo at the start of this year and stating that the tuna was more valuable than an untitled Basquiat painting whose last auctioned price was $ 19,000 at the start of this year, simply because the Basquiat painting was worth less than $ 3,000 per kg (by the way, that painting just sold last month for $ 110M). You can’t compare the price of one Bitcoin to ounce of gold as people always do anymore than you can compare the Basquiat painting to a bluefin tuna because fine art is not measured by its weight. Even if there was a way to weigh 100M Satoshis, the unit of measurement for one Bitcoin, because the unit of measurement for BTC is not a weight, this still would not be a valid comparison. Therefore, comparing 500M Satoshis to 1,000 ounces of gold, 1B Satoshis to 1M troy ounces of gold, 100,000 Satoshis to 50,000 pineapples, or 1M Satoshis to 50,000 cubic metres of air has as much validity as comparing the price of 100M Satoshis, or 1 BTC, to 1 troy ounce of gold.
ONE SOLUTION
Tie Cryptocurrencies to a Finite Amount of Gold Backing, and We Have the Best of Both Worlds
Bankers have pursued control of the blockchain as their identified most valuable part of the cryptocurrency market. This is precisely why JP Morgan executive Blythe Masters left JP Morgan to work for Digital Asset Holdings, a distributed ledger, or blockchain, development firm. In fact, control of the blockhain, the distributed ledger technology invented by Satoshi Nakaomoto, makes all my speculation about BTC perhaps not being completely independent from the global banking system completely irrelevant. JP Morgan, Citibank and Goldman Sachs, and every large global bank all realize this as well as all have heavily invested in blockchain development companies. It’s like the war that developed between HD DVD optical disks and blurays when higher resolution movies entered the market. Both formats delivered crystal clear clarity using similar technology but in the end, blurays survived and HD DVD optical disks went the way of the dinosaur. Control of the blockchain technology will have the same relevance to survival or extinction in the cryptocurrency market. I believe that whoever controls the blockchain technology that is universally implemented worldwide will control which cryptocurrencies survive and which ones die. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, and Blythe Masters, have already made it clear that they 100% believe that control of the blockchain technology that is implemented worldwide by the global banking cartel is the key to controlling the fate of all cryptocurrencies.
If the global banking cartel does not control BTC, then I have no doubt they will try to crush BTC as they only will allow their digital currencies to survive. If they however also control BTC, then BTC will not only survive, but it will flourish. All it would take for the global banking cartel to eradicate any cryptocurrency they don’t like is to make that cryptocurrency illegal. This may not be able to prevent declared “illegal” cryptocurrencies from trading, just as bankers’ declaration that physical gold and physical silver are “illegal” currencies have not halted gold and silver trading, but certainly such declarations will kill the utility of that currency. Though people may wonder why I say bankers have declared gold and silver illegal currencies while national mints in many nations continue to print and circulate gold and silver coins, have you ever tried to spend a gold or silver coin at its relevant price in a store? Since physical gold and silver are not as widely accepted worldwide as are fiat currencies, for all intents and purposes, bankers have rendered them illegal currencies.
Once the global banking cartel gains control and is able to implement their preferred blockchain, then they can set the rules for all digital currencies, and it’s game over, but for one joker card. I know the inherent decentralization nature of blockchains ensures that no one can really gain direct control of them. However, leave it up to lawyers to invent and impose regulations that apply to blockchains, and regulations will be invented in the futre that effectively will give bankers control over blockchains through indirect control (regulations). Furthermore, last year, problems with the DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) for venture capital funding revealed how problems can arise with decentralized systems even when blockchains are secure. Shortly after the launch of the DAO in April 2016, someone was able to exploit a vulnerability in the DAO’s code and steal $ 50 million of cryptocurrency, a full third of the $ 150M raised through crowdfunding, though apparently he, or she, was only able to eventually withdraw a miniscule amount of the stolen cryptocurrency. But certainly, the incident with the DAO raises issue about other aspects of the distribution chain outside of the blockchain that may remain exploitable.
That said, what is the joker card? To me, the joker card is the marriage of sound money with intrinsic value, like gold, to blockchain technology to form a completely new and different class of cryptocurrency. I want to end this discussion by asking all of you to consider this solution. I’ve heard many owners of both cryptocurrencies and gold admit that cryptocurrencies are a speculation at this point, and that in order to preserve their gains and turn cryptocurrencies into a store of wealth, they will sell cryptocurrencies for fiat currencies during their parabolic rises and consequently use fiat currencies to buy physical gold and hold it when price pullbacks and uncertainty plague cryptocurrencies. Then, when they believe these cryptocurrency pullbacks are ending, they will convert their physical gold back into fiat currencies and use fiat currencies to repurchase cryptocurrencies in hopes of capitalizing on another parabolic rise. And if the cryptocurrencies rise rapidly again, they repeat this process. In the end, however, this process always requires reverting back to holding debt-based fiat currencies at some point, even if for just brief periods of time, which ultimately makes holders of PMs and cryptocurrencies still beholden to the power of global bankers. However, as I stated above, what if there were a cryptocurrency backed by a finite weight of gold instead of a finite amount of digital bytes or satoshis, and the value of this cryptocurrency was not denominated by a fiat currency price whose purchasing power is perpetually destroyed by bankers, but by a weight of gold? Then there would be no need to constantly exchange cryptocurrencies into gold and vice versa!
If such a gold-backed cryptocurrency became popular and was widely accepted, then this would obviate the need to ever convert the cryptocurrency into any debt-based fiat currency, solving two problems at once. The only reason to convert gold or cryptocurrencies into debt-based fiat currencies is to buy goods and services that don’t accept cryptocurrencies for payment, or due to worry of the volatility quickly debasing the price of the cryptocurrency after a volatile rise (i.e, its purchasing power). Combining the two solves all problems simultaneously. Such a physical gold-backed cryptocurrency that relies on blockchain technology could also be used to eradicate the current artificial banking valuation of gold to a fiat currency price and help to re-establish the true value of gold back to weight only, as spending of the cryptocurrency would result in units of gold weight being deducted from an account and purchase of the cryptocurrency would result in units of gold weight being added to the account. And though this cryptocurrency would have to be developed on a blockchain outside the control of the global banking cartel and its existence may have to survive on some type of black market, as the global banking cartel would almost definitively try to regulate the blockchain technology used by a gold-backed cryptocurrency to invalidate the use of this cryptocurrency anywhere in the eventual global digital currency system they construct, they could never invalidate this cryptocurrency’s value as its value would be in units of gold weight, while their cryptocurrency’s value would still be a fiat currency price.
So here are the questions I pose, which I would love to hear responses to these questions posed below. Regardless of any opinion I expressed above that you may believe to be wrong, please strip away all emotional responses to this article to focus on this proposed solution, as even if you believe some of my opinions above to be wrong, one belief that should unite all gold and cryptocurrency owners is that we are all seeking a monetary solution outside the control of the global banking system that enhances, instead of destroys it, and this may be it.
In other words, could a cryptocurrency backed by a finite weight of gold truly be the first currency completely independent and outside the control of the global banking cartel?
What if all goods and services purchased by this gold-backed cryptocurrency allowed for gentle inflation up and down over the years, but at a fraction of the massive real inflation experienced by prices denominated in fiat currencies? Could worldwide adoption of such a currency be accomplished simply because people would want to own this gold-backed cryptocurrency knowing that they would receive the best possible price for all goods and services year after year after year by using this currency, as it would strip away the destructive effects of Central Banker-created inflation? And could we foster wide acceptance worldwide of cryptocurrency developed with a unit of weight, the true value of gold as its unit of measurement, and convince people to stop accepting the artificial debt-based fiat currency price bankers assign to gold as its value? This question may be the most important of all, because bankers will continue to assign a debt-based fiat currency price or 100% digital currency price to gold as its “value” en perpetuity, until they die, so this may be the biggest obstacle to overcome – to convince people to stop basing the value of gold on a perception of fake value created by bankers called price.
For example, what if the price of filet mignon rose one year from USD$ 23 a pound to USD$ 30 a pound, but in the gold backed cryptocurrency called GCC (Gold CryptoCurrency), filet mignon only rose from 20 GCC (gold cryptocurrency) to 20.1 GCC, where one GCC is a unit of gold weight? Would not everyone want to pay for everything in GCC instead of USD? AT first, many retailers might shun acceptance of the gold backed cryptocurrency if they compare banker established gold prices and calculate that they could receive a higher price by accepting fiat currencies. However, if the marketplace that accepted GCCs was large enough, shunning would eventually turn into hoarding for the following reason. By accepting GCCs for their merchandise, they would then be able to buy other goods and services at more stable and lower prices, and therefore be able to manage their savings over the long-term in a much better capacity as the greatest price stability of all goods and services worldwide, year after year after year, would be witnessed in those markets that priced their goods and services in GCCs. On the contrary, if merchants accepted more fiat currencies for their goods and services, they then would be required to spend higher amounts of fiat currencies in the marketplace as well, not knowing if their food costs were going to be double or triple the costs of the prior year. History tells us that people prefer certainty over uncertainty, especially in financial markets. Thus, if a stable gold-backed cryptocurrency really allowed people to budget and plan more efficiently, as is not allowed by the current state of highly devaluing fiat currencies, would not people widely adopt a gold-backed cryptocurrency that served this purpose?
I haven’t really spent an enormous amount of time fleshing out the detailed complexities of the above topic, and consider the above as more the written manifestation of a brainstorming session, so forgive me if parts are not so well thought-out at this current time. Of course a gold-backed crytpocurrency will never provide wild, speculative gains of 100,000% to the owner, as this would defeat the very mission of this cryptocurrency, which would be to provide owners with strong price stability in their purchase of goods and services over decades of tie. However, I strongly believe that those that think pure digital currencies are in competition with the global banking cartel’s monetary system and is a global banker “killer” are completely missing the point, as fiat currencies in use today are already very close to pure digital currencies. Just remember, in the world of banking, nothing, and I do mean, nothing is ever as it first sees to be. Still, I would love to hear what advocates of gold, advocates of cryptocurrencies, and advocates of both think about a gold-backed, blockchain-enabled crytpocurrency a as a potential solution that could free humanity from the ball and chain of the wealth destructive powers of our current global debt-based monetary system. And if you’d like to hear more musings about this topic, please follow me on my Snapchat channel, SKWealthAcademy.
ONEGRAMCOIN
Amazingly, as I’ve been writing this article for about a week now, during my writing of this article, the UAE announced the launch of my exact proposal above just a few days ago, the OGC (OneGramCoin), a physical gold0-backed cryptocurrency. Here are just a few facts about the one gram gold-backed cryptocurrency via their website:
Is the OneGram blockchain public? The blockchain is public and all codebase is open source.
What is the block size? What is the approximate transaction confirmation time? The max block size is 1MB, however, the average block time is only 1 minute, so there is effectively 10x more capacity than Bitcoin.
If the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) distributes 100% of the total issuance, then will there be mining? 100% of total coin supply is pre-mined and is distributed during the ICO. There is a block reward following the genesis block. OGC holders that indicate they wish to stake their OGC will be rewarded with the fees produced from the transactions in the present block.
How will new versions find consensus for adoption? How will the blockchain address soft and hard forking? We will employ automatic checkpointing with the seed nodes to guarantee consensus.
Can I trade OGC (OneGramCoin)? Yes. Following the ICO and the issuance of OGC, cryptocurrency exchanges may choose to list OGC for trade.
How are you addressing privacy? We are exploring confidential transaction and various other privacy technologies at the moment. Once the technology matures, we will adopt the one that best addresses privacy without sacrificing security and other critical concerns.
As full disclosure, I have zero business affiliations with any physical gold/silver dealers and with OneGramCoin, and you can read more about it by clicking the link in this sentence. I may contact them in the future, however, to correct some small errors I found in their white paper upon reading it. You may also participate in its ICO right now by signing up here. One interesting point I thought made in the OGC whitepaper is the following: “Most Muslims today have no idea that the money they use is arguably not Sharia-compliant. Most of the world uses fiat currency, which is money backed only by legal tender laws. Historically, money was either created from or backed by precious metals.” I’ve known that fiat currency was an is non Sharia-compliant for decades, and there is an Islamic bank in my neighborhood which I frequently pass by that I know breaks Sharia law every day. I’ve often thought about walking into this bank, and asking the loan officers if they know they are violating Sharia law, as charging interest on loans is against Sharia law as well. In addition, most Christians don’t understand that working in a bank is against Christian law as well, as the Bible states, in the book of Deuteronomy, “You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but you may not charge your brother interest, that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.” But walk into any bank and ask for a Christian bank officer and try to get an interest-free mortgage or business loan, and see what happens!
In any event, let me know if you think, as I do, that the marriage of physical gold to cryptocurrencies that utilize the blockchain, is the solution to the creation of truly free money that all of us desire.
source http://capitalisthq.com/gold-and-silver-hated-now-cryptocurrencies-loved-the-debate-rages-onward-and-heres-a-solution/ from CapitalistHQ http://capitalisthq.blogspot.com/2017/06/gold-and-silver-hated-now.html
0 notes
Text
Gold and Silver Hated Now, Cryptocurrencies Loved. The Debate Rages Onward, and Here’s a Solution!
by JS Kim, Founder of SmartKnowledgeU and skwealthacademy, this article was first posted at smartknowledgeu.com/blog on 1 June 2017.
As most of you know, the rise of the cryptocurrency has dominated financial headlines as of late, compelling many to comment on bulletin boards and message boards that they will never buy physical gold or physical silver ever again, and that from now on, it’s cryptocurrencies or bust! Given Bitcoin and Ether’s recent parabolic rise, strictly from a price standpoint, physical gold makes more sense as a a purchase at this current time than Bitcoin or Ether, though certainly given performance and the benefit of hindsight, buying Bitcoin and Ether at the start of the year made more sense than buying gold. But again this statement is only valid given the two entirely different purposes of buying gold and cryptocurrencies. And technically speaking, Ether, or Ethereum is not a cryptocurrency, but rather a token that user receive users for using their computing power to validate transactions and for helping pay for the development of the Ethereum network. As I will explain later in this article, even despite the massive parabolic rise in the price of BTC, if one were seeking to fulfill the very specific purpose that purchasing physical gold achieves in a wealth preservation plan, then purchasing gold over cryptocurrencies at the start of the year still would have made sense for a lot of people.
Those that have truly followed me this year, and not just read the occasional article I write about precious metals that is posted on ZeroHedge every several months, know that I have warned of big dips in spot gold and spot silver prices and advocated shorting paper gold and paper silver several times already this year, right before significant price dips materialized, as a means to protect oneself against banker price manipulations of spot PM prices. However, the current time is not one of them, as I believe the prices for both physical gold ($ 1258) and physical silver ($ 17.28) are solid long-term buys right now. However, this doesn’t mean there won’t be interim volatility in price, as in today’s Central Banker asset price-distorted world, volatility has become the norm, not the exception. For those that want to follow my opinion about PMs, you can do so on my Snapchat skwealthacademy channel, where I post snaps nearly every day, and very often discuss the state of PMs and to a lesser extent, cryptocurrencies.
Although many in the gold community do not like cryptocurrencies because they conveniently fit into the global banking cartel end goal of pushing society into wide acceptance of a 100% digital currencies, at this point, no one knows whether Bitcoin is part of the global banking cartel’s plan to take the world into 100% digital currency, including yours truly. Way back in 2012, I wrote that the banking cartel’s end game was clearly to gain control over every citizen’s financial life by eradicating the world of all paper currency and pushing wide acceptance of a 100% digital currency . It is of my opinion, that there is a possibility that bankers are behind either the development and/or marketing of Bitcoin, as acceptance of Bitcoin will help drive acceptance of the bankers’ end game of 100% eradication of paper money and 100% acceptance of digital currency across the world. I believe that my opinion is firmly in the minority, and many cryptocurrency supporters contend that there is zero possibility that Bitcoin was part of a banking project (by the way, if you keep reading, you will see that I discovered a new cryptocurrency I am backing for the long-term). However, in this debate, the only definitive conclusion that can be drawn is the following: without knowing the identity of the group of people known as Satoshi Nakamoto, no one can end this debate, so both sides of the debate at this point are based not on evidence, but pure speculation. The key to knowing which opinion is correct is unveiling the identity of Satoshi Nakaomoto beyond a shadow of a doubt, and is this is still an unknown today. Thus, one side cannot say “my lack of evidence supports my opinion more so than your lack of evidence”, which unfortunately, has evolved (or more appropriately “devolved”) into an argument that many people today utilize, and strongly believe, is perfectly valid, when in reality, such an argument is based entirely on emotion, irrationality and a lack of critical thought.
When one of my friends noticed that I was working on a piece about the cryptocurrency versus gold debate, he asked me, “Are you sure you want to publish that article and take on the crytpocurrency advocates, as they will heap scorn on you for doubting the anti-banking cartel nature of cryptocurrencies? That’s like trying to convince a hardcore vegan that eating meat is not evil. That takes a lot of courage.” To that, I replied, “First of all, I’m not belittling cryptocurrency advocates, because if you read the article after I publish it, you will see that I recently became aware of a brand-new crytprocurrency that I support. Secondly, it doesn’t take courage to express logical views, as that is all I am doing. Thirdly, I am not stating that Bitcoin advocates that believe BTC is independent of the global banking cartel are wrong. I am merely expressing reservations because no one has any evidence that is conclusive on either side of the debate. The flip side of that statement is that they may be right as well. To me it seems harmless to point out an indisputable fact, which is that hard conclusions should never be drawn from a lack of evidence, but this is routinely done.” I continued, “I know that people hate to deal with uncertainties, and will do anything to rid themselves of that uncertainty, which leads to many wrong conclusions. This is a fact propelled by many psychology studies, so when I point this out, I am again, just pointing out a fact. Just look at how financial markets deal with uncertainty. They don’t like it all. But that does not mean, because uncertainty exists, that one should make conclusions out of thin air to explain that uncertainty to get rid of it. To me, that is totally irrational. Yet the mainstream financial media does this on a daily basis with their headlines, To make my point, just go to YouTube and search for a topic called “demon magicians”, in which people claim that amazing magicians have sold their souls to the devil for powers to manipulate solid objects instantly into different states of matter, simply because they don’t know the tricks executed by these magicians to pull off their amazing illusions. I mean, there is a whole segment of people on YouTube that actually believe magicians are given powers by the devil, simply because of their desire to provide a certain explanation to a topic about which they are uncertain and can find zero evidence to explain the uncertainty. As mad as this sounds, this kind of irrationality persists in the financial world to, in mainstream financial media, to explain uncertain things whereby correlation for financial events are wrongly announced to the world as causation on a daily basis.”
It may be true that the global banking cartel’s iteration of their 100% digital currency will differ substantially from the cryptocurrencies of today, and that they were never involved in the development of BTC and other early-stage cryptocurrencies on the horizon, as even JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon publicly derided cryptocurrencies as fads that will not survive. In this article, Dimon stated, “No government will ever support a virtual currency that goes around borders and doesn’t have the same controls [as fiat currency]. It’s not going to happen”, convincing many that this was proof that the global banking cartel had no hand in the development of early crytpocurrencies like BTC, and that a definitive fork exists between early stage cryptocurrencies, outside-the-control of the global banking cartel, and other later-stage, ongoing developments of cryptocurrencies, under the auspices of the global banking cartel. However, one must be aware that bankers rarely ever tell the truth, and the same people that often deride 99% of Jamie Dimon’s statements will point to this particular Dimon statement as “proof” that early cryptocurrencies are independent of the global banking cartel.
For sure, there is a massive difference between “speculation” and “proof” and any statement uttered by Jamie Dimon lands squarely on the side of speculation and not fact, because as we well know, Alan Blinder, former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Princeton University economist, infamously stated on a 1994 PBS television program, “The last duty of a Central Banker is to tell the public the truth.” For example, eight-months prior to Dimon’s issuance of that statement, Dimon already was building close connections to blockchain technology when JP Morgan executive Blythe Masters left his firm to head up Digital Assets Holdings, LLC, a blockchain development company that is currently working on blockchain technology for use in the Australian stock exchange. Furthermore, earlier this year, Dimon revealed that JP Morgan had built an Ethereum Alliance with other global banks and corporations to wield more influence over blockchain implementation and acceptance, an alliance that obviously was years in the planning. Understanding that JP Morgan was privately deeply involved in blockchain development at the same time their CEO was publicly deriding cryptocurrencies like BTC obviously exposes the disingenuous nature of Dimon’s comments, and furthermore, still does not discredit the possibility that a member of the global banking cartel had a hand in the development of BTC.
Dimon’s statement, once we know the dishonesty of it, could lead to an infinite number of interpretations. It could mean that BTC is a virtual currency outside the global banking system and that’s why Dimon derided it, because JP Morgan will only support a virtual currency that he controls. It could be controlled opposition, whereby JP Morgan bankers have secretly had a hand in the development and acceptance of BTC despite their publicly stated opposition, a ploy meant to throw people off the trail of their plan to financially subjugate humanity further as they push through acceptance of 100% digital currencies. Recall that when the Morgans, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Warburgs, etc. tried to establish another Central Bank in the United States after the charter of the First Bank (1791-1811) and Second Bank (1861-1836) of the United States was revoked, they initially failed, because 100 years ago, Americans were properly educated to understand that the establishment of a Central Bank was meant to enslave them. So what did the banking cartel do in response? By the Congressional record documented of US Congressman and Chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee Louis McFadden’s speeches, delivered on the floor of Congress in the 1930s, we know that, at first, bankers tried to fool Congress into voting for a bill to establish a Central Bank by lying to Congress about overwhelming public support that existed for a Central Bank, that was in fact, generally mild and tepid at best. McFadden stated, “It has been said that the draughts man who was employed to write the text of the Aldrich bill because that had been drawn up by lawyers, by acceptance bankers of European origin in New York. It was a copy, in general a translation of the statues of the Reichsbank and other European central banks. One-half million dollars was spent on the part of the propaganda organized by these bankers for the purpose of misleading public opinion and giving Congress the impression that there was an overwhelming popular demand for it and the kind of currency that goes with it.”
Paul M. Warburg, who represented the Rothschild bankers, and whom many claim as the key figure in bringing the US Federal Reserve into existence, shed additional light into the banking cartel’s propaganda campaign in his deliverance of a speech to the New York YMCA on 23 March, 1910, in which he insisted that a national reserve bank would not be “controlled by Wall Street or any monopolistic interest”, explaining that the words “Central Bank” should be avoided, as he was not proposing a monopolistic Central Bank, but rather a decentralized national bank with 4 regional reserve banks, even though this was a complete lie and power was centralized in the New York Federal Reserve branch, after the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913, as it still is today. Bankers presented the exact same, monopolistic centralized bank a second time to US Congress, this time posing as a decentralized “federal” bank on the side of the people as opposed to a Central Bank that would work against the people’s best interests, and with this fake narrative, US Congress voted it into existence. This was the use of controlled opposition at its best, publicly pretending to be on the side of the people while privately working against the people’s best interests. Since bankers have a history of such deviant acts of convincing the public to support financial instruments that they would then later us to control humanity, to dismiss the possibility that they could be using cryptocurrencies in the same manner would be reckless. Thirdly, there is a possibility that global banks other than JP Morgan had a hand in developing BTC, thus compelling Dimon to denigrate BTC in favor of the digital currency that JP Morgan will eventually back. Again, all the above are possibilities, the validity of all unknown, none provable, no one possibility stronger than any other, and none ably dismissed.
No matter which of the above possibilities are true, the rise of cryptocurrencies are rapidly spreading acceptance of the global banking cartel’s push to create a world without any paper money and with only 100% digital money. There is, by no means, a clean a divide between the PM and cryptocurrency communities as agitators try to delineate, as there are also many in the PM community that hold both PMs and cryptocurrencies. Up to this point in this article, I have merely relayed my opinion and relayed the possibilities behind the origins of BTC, but I will explain later in this article, why my belief and the numerous possibilities I presented above may very well be irrelevant in the debate about the future of cryptocurrencies. In today’s world, we allow others to manipulate us like a herd of cattle into taking divisive, opposition sides, both sides often based on zero evidence, as we live in a world where the financiers of every nation have made it unacceptable for us not to take a side and to simply admit facts, that some things remain unknown. Today, a lot of anger is fomented seemingly on every topic, whether religion, politics or finance, often successfully conjured up even amidst a complete absence of evidence and facts. In any event, I thought it would be an illuminating exercise to sift through the comment section of a recent ZeroHedge bitcoin article, simply because it may be a useful discourse to provide a little bit of clarity to some misunderstandings and anger (that should not exist) about the ongoing raging PM versus Bitcoin debate. I am going to paraphrase the most popular comments below.
FIVE FALSE DIVISIONS BETWEEN GOLD AND CRYPTOCURRENCY COMMUNITIES
(1) One Has to Choose Between Gold and Cryptopcurrencies
This opinion is definitely not true, as I know plenty of people that own both cryptocurrencies and gold and this divide should not exist. As long as one recognizes that the purchase of gold and the purchase of cryptocurrencies serve very different purposes, one can buy both to fill these two very different goals. Despite the belief of many that prices of cryptocurrencies are out of the control of the bankers, but the price of gold is not, and this is a critical factor that separates cryptocurrencies from gold, this belief is only partially true. Paper gold trading is in control of the bankers. Physical gold trading is not. This is why, in parts of the world plagued by financial instability, premiums for physical gold will soar enormously higher than the artificially banker-set paper/digital price of gold. For example, the price of BTC, due to a recent feeding frenzy in Korea recently soared above USD$ 3,000. However, even though speculators foolish enough to chase BTC and pay $ 3,000 per BTC in South Korea existed, I snapchatted screenshots of BTC dealers in South Korea during this buying frenzy on my Snapchat channel that illustrated decent supply of BTCs in South Korea at just a slight premium over Western market prices, so the $ 3,000 BTC purchases that hit the market in South Korea were executed by people that did not shop around on various exchanges for a much better price that was clearly available.
An analogous situation was recently observed in the physical gold market as well. When PM Narendra Modi initially banned the 500 and 1000 rupee note in India, the price of physical gold soared well over $ 2,000 an ounce in India, with some unconfirmed reports of gold hitting prices of more than $ 3,000 an ounce in Indian black markets. Did people that payed $ 2,500 or $ 3,000 an ounce for physical gold have to spend this amount? Certainly not, and these prices only hit because people panic bought during a buying frenzy instigated by rupee uncertainty and the Indian Prime Minister’s attempt to demonetize gold. At the time of the physical gold buying frenzy, the spot price of gold was roughly $ 1,220. However, this incident illustrated that during a fiat currency crisis, bankers can continue to control and suppress paper/digital gold prices, but they have no control over suppressing soaring physical gold prices caused by high physical demand and tight supply during a financial crisis. In any event, if one wants to purchase both, one should understand, from the hugely different levels of volatility in gold prices versus cryptocurrency prices, that gold should be purchased to preserve purchasing power over time, while cryptocurrencies should be purchased for highly speculative returns Again, two different currencies serve two entirely different purposes.
(2) I Made a Ton of Money on Cryptocurrencies, But Have Lost a Ton on Gold, So I’m Never Buying Gold Again!
This statement is all about timing, as if anyone buys at a short-term buying frenzy during a long bull market, then one has a much greater chance of sitting on losses a few years later. However, timing on buying gold was not particularly difficult during this current bull run of 17 years now and here are indisputable facts to back up this statement. If one purchased gold at the start of 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2016, one would have ended the year in the black every single one of those years. Furthermore, during the past 17 years, including this one, if one purchased gold at the very beginning of the year in 14 of the past 17 years, one would still be profitable at today’s price, and extremely profitable if one had purchased physical gold in the early portion of this timeline. The reasons that made gold a strong purchase during 2001 are the exact same reasons that make gold a strong purchase today, so for someone that understood the real reasons to buy gold versus chasing a speculative rise, one was much more likely to have bought and hold physical gold during the early years of this cycle and added more on every severe dip, thus still maintaining a nice average buy-in price over this time frame.
Even though gold is volatile, it hasn’t been difficult, despite contrary belief, to manage the volatility when buying physical gold for the past 17 years, and the timing of when to buy physical gold has not been particularly difficult to ensure a profit over this time period as well, as only buying at the start of 3 of the past 17 years would have resulted in losses by the end of the year, and only buying at the start of 3 of the past 17 years are still yielding losses at the present time. And unless you purchased gold during the worst 28-months out of a nearly 200-month timeline, most likely you are heavily in the black right now or about to be back in the black again. Likewise, if anyone chased Bitcoin in South Korea and bought it at an absolute short-term peak at USD$ 3,000, as some have, then there is no one to blame but themselves when they were sitting on an almost immediate 36% loss just a couple of days later. While certainly, in hindsight, it may have been easier to buy Bitcoin at nearly any point on its bullish timeline, versus gold, and still be profitable today, no one should expect parabolic price rises to be the norm for Bitcoin, and prices will likely remain very volatile until they stabilize in the future.
(3) I Don’t Want to Carry Gold Around. There’s No Digital Gold, and Digital Currencies Are a Ton More Convenient to Use than Gold.
Most forms of paper gold, including gold futures contracts, ARE digital gold, so digital gold definitely exists right now, but the only problem is that no one wants the current form of digital gold (except for the most recently introduced form of 100% physical backed digital gold recently introduced last week that I discuss at the end of this article). When bankers trade gold futures contracts using HFT algorithms, their entered trades are being executed through high-speed fiber optic cable that minimize latency times to less than one millisecond. Certainly, real physical gold is never trading hands during these times, and in fact, outside of Shanghai and Hong Kong markets, gold derivative produces almost never settle in real physical gold. So bankers that trade the paper gold futures markets in London and New York are constantly trading 100% digital gold. It they were not, there would be no infrastructure that would allow them to dump $ 1 billion, $ 2 billion, or more, of notional gold in the form of gold futures contracts in a matter of minutes to suppress price. They are dumping, in essence, digital gold backed by air. As I stated above, there are some instances when gold futures contracts are asked to settle in physical, but outside of Shanghai and Hong Kong, the percentages of gold futures contracts that settle in physical are miniscule compared to the percentages that settle in fiat. However, no one that truly understands the reasons for buying physical gold would ever buy digital gold that wasn’t backed 100% by physical gold, as is the case in New York and London gold futures markets. Thus unlike with digital currencies, the reverse alchemy, physical into computer digits, demonetization-of-gold scheme executed by bankers in London and New York is a massive problem, and not a benefit. However, there is a way to fix this, as I will explain in the solution below. Lastly, if you purchase physical gold today, there is no need to carry it around as you can easily store it in vaults that have been vetted and are outside of the global banking system.
(4) No One Hates Bitcoins More than Goldbugs!
In the short-term, cryptocurrencies may or may not have peaked. No one knows for certain, so any guess to its peak price is pure speculation. Bitcoin may have peaked for the short-term at $ 3,000 in Asia in South Korea recently. My guess is that in the west, BTC prices have not yet peaked. Despite the opinion of some (notice I said some, not all, as “some” is a fact, and “all” is not) cryptocurrency owners that believe gold owners are jealous of their profits and hate cryptocurrency owners solely due to the profits reaped, this voiced antagonism should not only not exist, but it doesn’t even make sense, if indeed, the claim that Bitcoin is out of the control of the banking cartel is true. If cryptocurrencies like BTC are actually helping to free humanity from the control of bankers, and will stop the massive transference of wealth from the 99.9% to the 0.1% that has been happening over the past several decades, then people that own physical gold, and people that own cryptocurrencies, are clearly on the same side of this battle. Thus, even though I have voiced skepticism about the origins of Bitcoin being completely independent of the global banking cartel, if I am proven to be wrong in the future, and the continued existence of Bitcoin 10 years from now will prove me wrong, then I will gladly become the biggest advocate for BTC on planet Earth as any currency that is outside of the global banking cartel’s control should be unilaterally supported by anyone that values freedom. However, because I have some questions at this point that I think are tangible and valid, such a cautious approach shouldn’t make me the enemy of Bitcoin owners and it definitely doesn’t mean that I am not happy for those that made a ton of money on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to date.
In fact, to the contrary, I am extremely happy for people that have made a lot of money on cryptocurrencies up to this point if they are on the side of humanity that wants to establish a sound monetary system and eradicate our current unsound debt-based monetary system. If this faction of cryptocurrency owners is authentic as I believe them to be, then this only means that gold owners have a strong coalition of people, now with significantly more resources to fight the global banking system and to fight to establish a new monetary system. The doubt or belief of BTC as being independent of the global banking system is entirely irrelevant to this point. Any gold owner that hates cryptocurrency owners solely for the large profits that they have potentially made at this point or any cryptocurrency owner that hated on gold owners when gold soared from $ 250 to near $ 2,000 an ounce is simply wasting a whole lot of energy on hate, and the expression of such hate is more a reflection on the hater’s insecurity issues, as such expressed hatred and jealousy impedes the monetary freedom movement. If we truly want to achieve the same goal, and I think most cryptocurrency and gold owners do (again, most, but not all), then anyone that engages in deliberate divisiveness is executing the bankers’ divide and conquer strategy for them, and should be completely expelled from the monetary freedom coalition, as they are part of the problem and not part of the solution. And as far as a solution that can tie the existing differences of gold and cryptocurrency owners together and solve the concerns I have with cryptocurrencies at the current time, I propose one below, so please keep reading. In any event, owners of gold and cryptocurrencies should be on the same side, and if we allow the financiers of nations to manipulate us into divisiveness, we are merely falling victim to a learned helplessness role of willing captor to our captives.
(5) Gold Will Never Appreciate at the Rate Cryptocurrencies Appreciate, So No Thank You to Any Physical Gold Ownership
Regarding the statement that gold will never match the appreciation rate of some cryptocurrencies, an owner of Monero commented that he has made 120,000% gains thus far, meaning that he must have bought Monero at inception at $ 0.034762697752, which translates into a 120,000% gain at its current price of $ 41.75. Kudos to this person! And he is correct in that gold will likely never appreciate 120,000% because this means that from its initial starting price of this current bull market of about $ 250, gold would have to rise to $ 30,250 per troy ounce to equal this person’s 120,000% gain on Monero. In the absence of a hyperinflationary environment, I don’t see gold going to this price. But who knows, I could be wrong, and maybe gold will appreciate this much in price. Again, this is an unknown, and as many of you that have followed me for years already well know, I’ve always stated to absolutely disregard all “Gold to $ 10,000” predictions that pop up every year, as devoting any brainpower to analyzing unknowable timing predictions such as these is not only a complete waste of energy, but also a complete waste of time. However, exploration of this concept allows me to reinforce an earlier, very important point between the massively different purposes between buying gold and buying cryptocurrencies. People that own gold and are hardcore gold believers buy gold because of its ability to preserve purchasing power over not just 10 years or 20 years, but also over hundreds of years, over their lifespan and over the lifespan of their children. Cryptocurrencies are way too young and in some sense, still in an embryonic stage, so there is no way that cryptocurrencies are, at the current time, able to make the same claim of purchasing power preservation.
In my opinion, of all the qualities sound money should have, the preservation of purchasing power over lengthy periods of time is the most critical quality to possess, and since cryptocurrencies are too young to prove up this quality, they cannot, in my opinion, be considered sound money at this point in their business cycle, as they are obviously in the rapid growth segment of the cycle. In fact, for those that stay away from gold because its price is too volatile, Bitcoin’s price has been far more volatile than gold’s price since Bitcoin came into existence. In fact, gold’s quintupling of price over 17 years is generally considered peanuts to cryptocurrency investors. Consequently, people that buy gold buy it to preserve their wealth over time, and not to make rapid spectacular gains. This is a completely different reason than the reason why people buy cryptocurrencies. There may come a time many years from now, when cryptocurrencies prove themselves to be a store of purchasing power over time, and if that time comes, I will move cryptocurrencies out of the speculative growth category, but not before then. So, while massive gains are much more likely in cryptocurrencies than gold, the opposite is true as well. Massive losses in cryptocurrencies, until they move out of their growth stage and find more price stability, are much more likely to occur than in gold, as well.
THREE CONCLUSIONS
(1) At the Current Time, NEITHER Cryptocurrencies or Gold are Fully Outside the Manipulative Powers of the Global Banking Cartel
Although many cryptocurrency owners claim that cryptocurrencies are “free money” while fiat currencies are the money of “slaves”, the very fact that cryptocurrencies are denominated in fiat currency prices means that they are still not independent of the global banking cartel. Bankers have ensured that all cryptocurrencies are denominated in THEIR form of debt-money for the very same reason that bankers have ensured that gold is as well. As long as the price of an asset is denominated in a form of debt-money, the asset can never truly serve the purpose of being the money of a free man or free woman, because this link necessitates the conversion into debt-based slave-money for use, and keeps humanity dependent upon debt-based slave money. Even if we don’t convert cryptocurrencies into fiat currencies and pay for merchandise directly in BTCs, as long as the price of BTCs remains denominated in a form of debt-based slave money, it cannot escape the intimate link to the global banking cartel’s monetary system.
As an example of why tying the price of an asset to fiat currencies grants bankers the ultimate control over that asset, let me use the stock market in Zimbabwe in 2006 and 2007 to illustrate my point. The Zimbabwe Industrial Index, for a rolling period of time slightly more than a year, in 2006-2007, gained 7,990%, a prolific increase that caused many to proclaim the Zimbabwe stock markets as the “best performing” stock market of that time period, though it was clearly the worst performing stock market for the following reasons. The 7,990% gain was denominated in hyperinflating Zimbabwe dollars, which rendered a 8,000% or even an 80,000% gain worthless during this time period, as monthly inflation peaked in Zimbabwe at 79,600,000,000% a year later. In other words the Zimbabwe dollar was losing valuation and purchasing power at a much faster clip than the stock gains were accumulating, so all of the stock gains were quickly rendered worthless as the gains could not be spent before they were devalued. However, if the 7,990% gains were instead denominated in gold weight, then no amount of Zimbabwe dollar devaluation could have prevented this increase from producing a massive gain in real wealth. Of course, US dollars are not hyperinflating at the current time, so why make such a comparison? I’m not making so much as a comparison as I am making a point. If the currency in which an asset is priced fails, then the asset will fail too, thereby unfortunately still granting bankers ultimate control over the fate of the asset. In response, some will argue that if dollars or Euros fail, and cryptocurrencies subsequently fail, then won’t gold ultimately fail as well? On the surface, this seems like a logical argument, but I will reveal below, why in such a situation, gold will be king of the monetary pile.
(2) Price is NOT the Same as Value
Today, many business school graduates still confuse the concepts of value and price in the world of finance. I have uploaded many vlogs on my YouTube channel that explain why the value of gold and silver is its weight and not its price. Does it make sense to claim the value of real money like physical gold is its price, a unit of measurement that is denominated in unsound immoral, fiat currencies like Euros or dollars? Of course not! The real value of gold, as its weight, is always constant. In other words, the value of gold is constant everywhere in the world, as 10g of gold in Libya equals 10g of gold in Canada equals 10g of gold in Brazil equals 10g of gold in Uruguay equals 10g of gold in Romania. The price of gold changes all the time, but the value of gold does not change simply because bankers price gold in their deteriorating and devaluing fiat currencies. Price is an immensely different concept than value when it comes to the world of PMs, though bankers like to fool us and interchangeably use these two terms in the financial media to confuse us into believing they are the same. Now some will counter by stating that they can cash out their Bitcoins and buy gold with it anytime they like, but if so, then are these people valuing cryptocurrencies in terms of how much gold it can buy? For the very same reasons it makes no sense to value gold in an illegitimate, debt-based currency, it also makes no sense to value cryptocurrencies in illegitimate, debt-based currencies. So what is the value of Bitcoin and other cryptos? If we try to apply the above analogy to cryptocurrencies and reject the fact that the value of cryptocurrencies is its unit of measurement, since this unit of measurement is not tangible, it doesn’t translate as well as it does for gold. For example, if we say the value of Bitcoins should be measured by its amount of Satoshis, and not its dollar, won, or Euro price, what does this really mean?
Of course, some claim that the value of cryptocurrencies is its store of wealth. However, as I explained above, perhaps after 50 more years, this claim can be made, but this claim cannot seriously be considered at the current time given the infancy of cryptocurrencies. Therefore, I would state, that at the current time, the only way to measure a cryptocurrencies value is by its price, as we can’t measure it by their digital bytes, and in the case of hyperinflation, the value of cryptocurrencies will be severely debased, no matter the gain in underlying fiat currencies (see the Zimbabwe Industrial Index explanation above). However, since the value of gold is its weight, the weight of 10 ounces of gold will still remain 10 ounces of gold even if the price collapses through hyperinflation. Hyperinflation and currency collapse will always give rise to a new currency, so owners of gold, in such an event, would just hold gold until a new currency was born, and the price of their ounces would be re-established. I argue that the case for the valuation of cryptocurrencies during and after a hyperinflationary event would not be so clear. Of course, we are speaking of a worst-case scenario here, but a case study of fiat currencies have demonstrated that they always revert to their intrinsic value of zero over time, so who’s to say that event won’t happen in our lifetime?
(3) All Comparisons of the Price of 1 BTC to 1 Troy Ounce of Gold are Completely Baseless and Without Merit
I never understood why financial journalists ran numerous articles that always compared the price of 1 BTC to 1 troy ounce of gold, yielding headlines like “Bitcoin now exceeds gold in price” when the price of 1 BTC overtook the price of 1 troy ounce of gold. One troy ounce, or 31.1035 grams, the unit of measurement of gold, is a unit of weight. Unless one Bitcoin, the unit of measurement for BTC, is also a unit of weight, then comparing the price of one unit of weight of gold to the price of one unit of Bitcoin is an impossible comparison that makes zero sense, no matter how much the mainstream financial media wants to sell us this comparison as a valid one. Making such a comparison is totally random, and is literally as absurd as comparing the price of 1 barrel of oil to the price of a 1/2 carat ruby and saying that rubies are a much better investment that oil because 1/2 carat of rubies exceeds the price of one barrel of oil. It’s absurd as comparing the price of a 212kg Japanese bluefin tuna that sold for more than $ 3,100 per kg in Tokyo at the start of this year and stating that the tuna was more valuable than an untitled Basquiat painting whose last auctioned price was $ 19,000 at the start of this year, simply because the Basquiat painting was worth less than $ 3,000 per kg (by the way, that painting just sold last month for $ 110M). You can’t compare the price of one Bitcoin to ounce of gold as people always do anymore than you can compare the Basquiat painting to a bluefin tuna because fine art is not measured by its weight. Even if there was a way to weigh 100M Satoshis, the unit of measurement for one Bitcoin, because the unit of measurement for BTC is not a weight, this still would not be a valid comparison. Therefore, comparing 500M Satoshis to 1,000 ounces of gold, 1B Satoshis to 1M troy ounces of gold, 100,000 Satoshis to 50,000 pineapples, or 1M Satoshis to 50,000 cubic metres of air has as much validity as comparing the price of 100M Satoshis, or 1 BTC, to 1 troy ounce of gold.
ONE SOLUTION
Tie Cryptocurrencies to a Finite Amount of Gold Backing, and We Have the Best of Both Worlds
Bankers have pursued control of the blockchain as their identified most valuable part of the cryptocurrency market. This is precisely why JP Morgan executive Blythe Masters left JP Morgan to work for Digital Asset Holdings, a distributed ledger, or blockchain, development firm. In fact, control of the blockhain, the distributed ledger technology invented by Satoshi Nakaomoto, makes all my speculation about BTC perhaps not being completely independent from the global banking system completely irrelevant. JP Morgan, Citibank and Goldman Sachs, and every large global bank all realize this as well as all have heavily invested in blockchain development companies. It’s like the war that developed between HD DVD optical disks and blurays when higher resolution movies entered the market. Both formats delivered crystal clear clarity using similar technology but in the end, blurays survived and HD DVD optical disks went the way of the dinosaur. Control of the blockchain technology will have the same relevance to survival or extinction in the cryptocurrency market. I believe that whoever controls the blockchain technology that is universally implemented worldwide will control which cryptocurrencies survive and which ones die. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, and Blythe Masters, have already made it clear that they 100% believe that control of the blockchain technology that is implemented worldwide by the global banking cartel is the key to controlling the fate of all cryptocurrencies.
If the global banking cartel does not control BTC, then I have no doubt they will try to crush BTC as they only will allow their digital currencies to survive. If they however also control BTC, then BTC will not only survive, but it will flourish. All it would take for the global banking cartel to eradicate any cryptocurrency they don’t like is to make that cryptocurrency illegal. This may not be able to prevent declared “illegal” cryptocurrencies from trading, just as bankers’ declaration that physical gold and physical silver are “illegal” currencies have not halted gold and silver trading, but certainly such declarations will kill the utility of that currency. Though people may wonder why I say bankers have declared gold and silver illegal currencies while national mints in many nations continue to print and circulate gold and silver coins, have you ever tried to spend a gold or silver coin at its relevant price in a store? Since physical gold and silver are not as widely accepted worldwide as are fiat currencies, for all intents and purposes, bankers have rendered them illegal currencies.
Once the global banking cartel gains control and is able to implement their preferred blockchain, then they can set the rules for all digital currencies, and it’s game over, but for one joker card. I know the inherent decentralization nature of blockchains ensures that no one can really gain direct control of them. However, leave it up to lawyers to invent and impose regulations that apply to blockchains, and regulations will be invented in the futre that effectively will give bankers control over blockchains through indirect control (regulations). Furthermore, last year, problems with the DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) for venture capital funding revealed how problems can arise with decentralized systems even when blockchains are secure. Shortly after the launch of the DAO in April 2016, someone was able to exploit a vulnerability in the DAO’s code and steal $ 50 million of cryptocurrency, a full third of the $ 150M raised through crowdfunding, though apparently he, or she, was only able to eventually withdraw a miniscule amount of the stolen cryptocurrency. But certainly, the incident with the DAO raises issue about other aspects of the distribution chain outside of the blockchain that may remain exploitable.
That said, what is the joker card? To me, the joker card is the marriage of sound money with intrinsic value, like gold, to blockchain technology to form a completely new and different class of cryptocurrency. I want to end this discussion by asking all of you to consider this solution. I’ve heard many owners of both cryptocurrencies and gold admit that cryptocurrencies are a speculation at this point, and that in order to preserve their gains and turn cryptocurrencies into a store of wealth, they will sell cryptocurrencies for fiat currencies during their parabolic rises and consequently use fiat currencies to buy physical gold and hold it when price pullbacks and uncertainty plague cryptocurrencies. Then, when they believe these cryptocurrency pullbacks are ending, they will convert their physical gold back into fiat currencies and use fiat currencies to repurchase cryptocurrencies in hopes of capitalizing on another parabolic rise. And if the cryptocurrencies rise rapidly again, they repeat this process. In the end, however, this process always requires reverting back to holding debt-based fiat currencies at some point, even if for just brief periods of time, which ultimately makes holders of PMs and cryptocurrencies still beholden to the power of global bankers. However, as I stated above, what if there were a cryptocurrency backed by a finite weight of gold instead of a finite amount of digital bytes or satoshis, and the value of this cryptocurrency was not denominated by a fiat currency price whose purchasing power is perpetually destroyed by bankers, but by a weight of gold? Then there would be no need to constantly exchange cryptocurrencies into gold and vice versa!
If such a gold-backed cryptocurrency became popular and was widely accepted, then this would obviate the need to ever convert the cryptocurrency into any debt-based fiat currency, solving two problems at once. The only reason to convert gold or cryptocurrencies into debt-based fiat currencies is to buy goods and services that don’t accept cryptocurrencies for payment, or due to worry of the volatility quickly debasing the price of the cryptocurrency after a volatile rise (i.e, its purchasing power). Combining the two solves all problems simultaneously. Such a physical gold-backed cryptocurrency that relies on blockchain technology could also be used to eradicate the current artificial banking valuation of gold to a fiat currency price and help to re-establish the true value of gold back to weight only, as spending of the cryptocurrency would result in units of gold weight being deducted from an account and purchase of the cryptocurrency would result in units of gold weight being added to the account. And though this cryptocurrency would have to be developed on a blockchain outside the control of the global banking cartel and its existence may have to survive on some type of black market, as the global banking cartel would almost definitively try to regulate the blockchain technology used by a gold-backed cryptocurrency to invalidate the use of this cryptocurrency anywhere in the eventual global digital currency system they construct, they could never invalidate this cryptocurrency’s value as its value would be in units of gold weight, while their cryptocurrency’s value would still be a fiat currency price.
So here are the questions I pose, which I would love to hear responses to these questions posed below. Regardless of any opinion I expressed above that you may believe to be wrong, please strip away all emotional responses to this article to focus on this proposed solution, as even if you believe some of my opinions above to be wrong, one belief that should unite all gold and cryptocurrency owners is that we are all seeking a monetary solution outside the control of the global banking system that enhances, instead of destroys it, and this may be it.
In other words, could a cryptocurrency backed by a finite weight of gold truly be the first currency completely independent and outside the control of the global banking cartel?
What if all goods and services purchased by this gold-backed cryptocurrency allowed for gentle inflation up and down over the years, but at a fraction of the massive real inflation experienced by prices denominated in fiat currencies? Could worldwide adoption of such a currency be accomplished simply because people would want to own this gold-backed cryptocurrency knowing that they would receive the best possible price for all goods and services year after year after year by using this currency, as it would strip away the destructive effects of Central Banker-created inflation? And could we foster wide acceptance worldwide of cryptocurrency developed with a unit of weight, the true value of gold as its unit of measurement, and convince people to stop accepting the artificial debt-based fiat currency price bankers assign to gold as its value? This question may be the most important of all, because bankers will continue to assign a debt-based fiat currency price or 100% digital currency price to gold as its “value” en perpetuity, until they die, so this may be the biggest obstacle to overcome – to convince people to stop basing the value of gold on a perception of fake value created by bankers called price.
For example, what if the price of filet mignon rose one year from USD$ 23 a pound to USD$ 30 a pound, but in the gold backed cryptocurrency called GCC (Gold CryptoCurrency), filet mignon only rose from 20 GCC (gold cryptocurrency) to 20.1 GCC, where one GCC is a unit of gold weight? Would not everyone want to pay for everything in GCC instead of USD? AT first, many retailers might shun acceptance of the gold backed cryptocurrency if they compare banker established gold prices and calculate that they could receive a higher price by accepting fiat currencies. However, if the marketplace that accepted GCCs was large enough, shunning would eventually turn into hoarding for the following reason. By accepting GCCs for their merchandise, they would then be able to buy other goods and services at more stable and lower prices, and therefore be able to manage their savings over the long-term in a much better capacity as the greatest price stability of all goods and services worldwide, year after year after year, would be witnessed in those markets that priced their goods and services in GCCs. On the contrary, if merchants accepted more fiat currencies for their goods and services, they then would be required to spend higher amounts of fiat currencies in the marketplace as well, not knowing if their food costs were going to be double or triple the costs of the prior year. History tells us that people prefer certainty over uncertainty, especially in financial markets. Thus, if a stable gold-backed cryptocurrency really allowed people to budget and plan more efficiently, as is not allowed by the current state of highly devaluing fiat currencies, would not people widely adopt a gold-backed cryptocurrency that served this purpose?
I haven’t really spent an enormous amount of time fleshing out the detailed complexities of the above topic, and consider the above as more the written manifestation of a brainstorming session, so forgive me if parts are not so well thought-out at this current time. Of course a gold-backed crytpocurrency will never provide wild, speculative gains of 100,000% to the owner, as this would defeat the very mission of this cryptocurrency, which would be to provide owners with strong price stability in their purchase of goods and services over decades of tie. However, I strongly believe that those that think pure digital currencies are in competition with the global banking cartel’s monetary system and is a global banker “killer” are completely missing the point, as fiat currencies in use today are already very close to pure digital currencies. Just remember, in the world of banking, nothing, and I do mean, nothing is ever as it first sees to be. Still, I would love to hear what advocates of gold, advocates of cryptocurrencies, and advocates of both think about a gold-backed, blockchain-enabled crytpocurrency a as a potential solution that could free humanity from the ball and chain of the wealth destructive powers of our current global debt-based monetary system. And if you’d like to hear more musings about this topic, please follow me on my Snapchat channel, SKWealthAcademy.
ONEGRAMCOIN
Amazingly, as I’ve been writing this article for about a week now, during my writing of this article, the UAE announced the launch of my exact proposal above just a few days ago, the OGC (OneGramCoin), a physical gold0-backed cryptocurrency. Here are just a few facts about the one gram gold-backed cryptocurrency via their website:
Is the OneGram blockchain public? The blockchain is public and all codebase is open source.
What is the block size? What is the approximate transaction confirmation time? The max block size is 1MB, however, the average block time is only 1 minute, so there is effectively 10x more capacity than Bitcoin.
If the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) distributes 100% of the total issuance, then will there be mining? 100% of total coin supply is pre-mined and is distributed during the ICO. There is a block reward following the genesis block. OGC holders that indicate they wish to stake their OGC will be rewarded with the fees produced from the transactions in the present block.
How will new versions find consensus for adoption? How will the blockchain address soft and hard forking? We will employ automatic checkpointing with the seed nodes to guarantee consensus.
Can I trade OGC (OneGramCoin)? Yes. Following the ICO and the issuance of OGC, cryptocurrency exchanges may choose to list OGC for trade.
How are you addressing privacy? We are exploring confidential transaction and various other privacy technologies at the moment. Once the technology matures, we will adopt the one that best addresses privacy without sacrificing security and other critical concerns.
As full disclosure, I have zero business affiliations with any physical gold/silver dealers and with OneGramCoin, and you can read more about it by clicking the link in this sentence. I may contact them in the future, however, to correct some small errors I found in their white paper upon reading it. You may also participate in its ICO right now by signing up here. One interesting point I thought made in the OGC whitepaper is the following: “Most Muslims today have no idea that the money they use is arguably not Sharia-compliant. Most of the world uses fiat currency, which is money backed only by legal tender laws. Historically, money was either created from or backed by precious metals.” I’ve known that fiat currency was an is non Sharia-compliant for decades, and there is an Islamic bank in my neighborhood which I frequently pass by that I know breaks Sharia law every day. I’ve often thought about walking into this bank, and asking the loan officers if they know they are violating Sharia law, as charging interest on loans is against Sharia law as well. In addition, most Christians don’t understand that working in a bank is against Christian law as well, as the Bible states, in the book of Deuteronomy, “You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but you may not charge your brother interest, that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.” But walk into any bank and ask for a Christian bank officer and try to get an interest-free mortgage or business loan, and see what happens!
In any event, let me know if you think, as I do, that the marriage of physical gold to cryptocurrencies that utilize the blockchain, is the solution to the creation of truly free money that all of us desire.
from CapitalistHQ.com http://capitalisthq.com/gold-and-silver-hated-now-cryptocurrencies-loved-the-debate-rages-onward-and-heres-a-solution/
0 notes
Link
http://ift.tt/2qT796O
by JS Kim, Founder of SmartKnowledgeU and skwealthacademy, this article was first posted at http://ift.tt/2qLHfTM on 1 June 2017.
As most of you know, the rise of the cryptocurrency has dominated financial headlines as of late, compelling many to comment on bulletin boards and message boards that they will never buy physical gold or physical silver ever again, and that from now on, it’s cryptocurrencies or bust! Given Bitcoin and Ether’s recent parabolic rise, strictly from a price standpoint, physical gold makes more sense as a a purchase at this current time than Bitcoin or Ether, though certainly given performance and the benefit of hindsight, buying Bitcoin and Ether at the start of the year made more sense than buying gold. But again this statement is only valid given the two entirely different purposes of buying gold and cryptocurrencies. And technically speaking, Ether, or Ethereum is not a cryptocurrency, but rather a token that user receive users for using their computing power to validate transactions and for helping pay for the development of the Ethereum network. As I will explain later in this article, even despite the massive parabolic rise in the price of BTC, if one were seeking to fulfill the very specific purpose that purchasing physical gold achieves in a wealth preservation plan, then purchasing gold over cryptocurrencies at the start of the year still would have made sense for a lot of people.
Those that have truly followed me this year, and not just read the occasional article I write about precious metals that is posted on ZeroHedge every several months, know that I have warned of big dips in spot gold and spot silver prices and advocated shorting paper gold and paper silver several times already this year, right before significant price dips materialized, as a means to protect oneself against banker price manipulations of spot PM prices. However, the current time is not one of them, as I believe the prices for both physical gold ($1258) and physical silver ($17.28) are solid long-term buys right now. However, this doesn't mean there won't be interim volatility in price, as in today's Central Banker asset price-distorted world, volatility has become the norm, not the exception. For those that want to follow my opinion about PMs, you can do so on my Snapchat skwealthacademy channel, where I post snaps nearly every day, and very often discuss the state of PMs and to a lesser extent, cryptocurrencies.
Although many in the gold community do not like cryptocurrencies because they conveniently fit into the global banking cartel end goal of pushing society into wide acceptance of a 100% digital currencies, at this point, no one knows whether Bitcoin is part of the global banking cartel's plan to take the world into 100% digital currency, including yours truly. Way back in 2012, I wrote that the banking cartel's end game was clearly to gain control over every citizen's financial life by eradicating the world of all paper currency and pushing wide acceptance of a 100% digital currency . It is of my opinion, that there is a possibility that bankers are behind either the development and/or marketing of Bitcoin, as acceptance of Bitcoin will help drive acceptance of the bankers' end game of 100% eradication of paper money and 100% acceptance of digital currency across the world. I believe that my opinion is firmly in the minority, and many cryptocurrency supporters contend that there is zero possibility that Bitcoin was part of a banking project (by the way, if you keep reading, you will see that I discovered a new cryptocurrency I am backing for the long-term). However, in this debate, the only definitive conclusion that can be drawn is the following: without knowing the identity of the group of people known as Satoshi Nakamoto, no one can end this debate, so both sides of the debate at this point are based not on evidence, but pure speculation. The key to knowing which opinion is correct is unveiling the identity of Satoshi Nakaomoto beyond a shadow of a doubt, and is this is still an unknown today. Thus, one side cannot say "my lack of evidence supports my opinion more so than your lack of evidence", which unfortunately, has evolved (or more appropriately "devolved") into an argument that many people today utilize, and strongly believe, is perfectly valid, when in reality, such an argument is based entirely on emotion, irrationality and a lack of critical thought.
When one of my friends noticed that I was working on a piece about the cryptocurrency versus gold debate, he asked me, "Are you sure you want to publish that article and take on the crytpocurrency advocates, as they will heap scorn on you for doubting the anti-banking cartel nature of cryptocurrencies? That's like trying to convince a hardcore vegan that eating meat is not evil. That takes a lot of courage." To that, I replied, "First of all, I'm not belittling cryptocurrency advocates, because if you read the article after I publish it, you will see that I recently became aware of a brand-new crytprocurrency that I support. Secondly, it doesn't take courage to express logical views, as that is all I am doing. Thirdly, I am not stating that Bitcoin advocates that believe BTC is independent of the global banking cartel are wrong. I am merely expressing reservations because no one has any evidence that is conclusive on either side of the debate. The flip side of that statement is that they may be right as well. To me it seems harmless to point out an indisputable fact, which is that hard conclusions should never be drawn from a lack of evidence, but this is routinely done." I continued, "I know that people hate to deal with uncertainties, and will do anything to rid themselves of that uncertainty, which leads to many wrong conclusions. This is a fact propelled by many psychology studies, so when I point this out, I am again, just pointing out a fact. Just look at how financial markets deal with uncertainty. They don't like it all. But that does not mean, because uncertainty exists, that one should make conclusions out of thin air to explain that uncertainty to get rid of it. To me, that is totally irrational. Yet the mainstream financial media does this on a daily basis with their headlines, To make my point, just go to YouTube and search for a topic called "demon magicians", in which people claim that amazing magicians have sold their souls to the devil for powers to manipulate solid objects instantly into different states of matter, simply because they don't know the tricks executed by these magicians to pull off their amazing illusions. I mean, there is a whole segment of people on YouTube that actually believe magicians are given powers by the devil, simply because of their desire to provide a certain explanation to a topic about which they are uncertain and can find zero evidence to explain the uncertainty. As mad as this sounds, this kind of irrationality persists in the financial world to, in mainstream financial media, to explain uncertain things whereby correlation for financial events are wrongly announced to the world as causation on a daily basis."
It may be true that the global banking cartel's iteration of their 100% digital currency will differ substantially from the cryptocurrencies of today, and that they were never involved in the development of BTC and other early-stage cryptocurrencies on the horizon, as even JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon publicly derided cryptocurrencies as fads that will not survive. In this article, Dimon stated, "No government will ever support a virtual currency that goes around borders and doesn't have the same controls [as fiat currency]. It's not going to happen", convincing many that this was proof that the global banking cartel had no hand in the development of early crytpocurrencies like BTC, and that a definitive fork exists between early stage cryptocurrencies, outside-the-control of the global banking cartel, and other later-stage, ongoing developments of cryptocurrencies, under the auspices of the global banking cartel. However, one must be aware that bankers rarely ever tell the truth, and the same people that often deride 99% of Jamie Dimon's statements will point to this particular Dimon statement as "proof" that early cryptocurrencies are independent of the global banking cartel.
For sure, there is a massive difference between "speculation" and "proof" and any statement uttered by Jamie Dimon lands squarely on the side of speculation and not fact, because as we well know, Alan Blinder, former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Princeton University economist, infamously stated on a 1994 PBS television program, "The last duty of a Central Banker is to tell the public the truth." For example, eight-months prior to Dimon's issuance of that statement, Dimon already was building close connections to blockchain technology when JP Morgan executive Blythe Masters left his firm to head up Digital Assets Holdings, LLC, a blockchain development company that is currently working on blockchain technology for use in the Australian stock exchange. Furthermore, earlier this year, Dimon revealed that JP Morgan had built an Ethereum Alliance with other global banks and corporations to wield more influence over blockchain implementation and acceptance, an alliance that obviously was years in the planning. Understanding that JP Morgan was privately deeply involved in blockchain development at the same time their CEO was publicly deriding cryptocurrencies like BTC obviously exposes the disingenuous nature of Dimon's comments, and furthermore, still does not discredit the possibility that a member of the global banking cartel had a hand in the development of BTC.
Dimon's statement, once we know the dishonesty of it, could lead to an infinite number of interpretations. It could mean that BTC is a virtual currency outside the global banking system and that's why Dimon derided it, because JP Morgan will only support a virtual currency that he controls. It could be controlled opposition, whereby JP Morgan bankers have secretly had a hand in the development and acceptance of BTC despite their publicly stated opposition, a ploy meant to throw people off the trail of their plan to financially subjugate humanity further as they push through acceptance of 100% digital currencies. Recall that when the Morgans, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Warburgs, etc. tried to establish another Central Bank in the United States after the charter of the First Bank (1791-1811) and Second Bank (1861-1836) of the United States was revoked, they initially failed, because 100 years ago, Americans were properly educated to understand that the establishment of a Central Bank was meant to enslave them. So what did the banking cartel do in response? By the Congressional record documented of US Congressman and Chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee Louis McFadden's speeches, delivered on the floor of Congress in the 1930s, we know that, at first, bankers tried to fool Congress into voting for a bill to establish a Central Bank by lying to Congress about overwhelming public support that existed for a Central Bank, that was in fact, generally mild and tepid at best. McFadden stated, "It has been said that the draughts man who was employed to write the text of the Aldrich bill because that had been drawn up by lawyers, by acceptance bankers of European origin in New York. It was a copy, in general a translation of the statues of the Reichsbank and other European central banks. One-half million dollars was spent on the part of the propaganda organized by these bankers for the purpose of misleading public opinion and giving Congress the impression that there was an overwhelming popular demand for it and the kind of currency that goes with it."
Paul M. Warburg, who represented the Rothschild bankers, and whom many claim as the key figure in bringing the US Federal Reserve into existence, shed additional light into the banking cartel's propaganda campaign in his deliverance of a speech to the New York YMCA on 23 March, 1910, in which he insisted that a national reserve bank would not be "controlled by Wall Street or any monopolistic interest", explaining that the words "Central Bank" should be avoided, as he was not proposing a monopolistic Central Bank, but rather a decentralized national bank with 4 regional reserve banks, even though this was a complete lie and power was centralized in the New York Federal Reserve branch, after the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913, as it still is today. Bankers presented the exact same, monopolistic centralized bank a second time to US Congress, this time posing as a decentralized "federal" bank on the side of the people as opposed to a Central Bank that would work against the people's best interests, and with this fake narrative, US Congress voted it into existence. This was the use of controlled opposition at its best, publicly pretending to be on the side of the people while privately working against the people's best interests. Since bankers have a history of such deviant acts of convincing the public to support financial instruments that they would then later us to control humanity, to dismiss the possibility that they could be using cryptocurrencies in the same manner would be reckless. Thirdly, there is a possibility that global banks other than JP Morgan had a hand in developing BTC, thus compelling Dimon to denigrate BTC in favor of the digital currency that JP Morgan will eventually back. Again, all the above are possibilities, the validity of all unknown, none provable, no one possibility stronger than any other, and none ably dismissed.
No matter which of the above possibilities are true, the rise of cryptocurrencies are rapidly spreading acceptance of the global banking cartel's push to create a world without any paper money and with only 100% digital money. There is, by no means, a clean a divide between the PM and cryptocurrency communities as agitators try to delineate, as there are also many in the PM community that hold both PMs and cryptocurrencies. Up to this point in this article, I have merely relayed my opinion and relayed the possibilities behind the origins of BTC, but I will explain later in this article, why my belief and the numerous possibilities I presented above may very well be irrelevant in the debate about the future of cryptocurrencies. In today's world, we allow others to manipulate us like a herd of cattle into taking divisive, opposition sides, both sides often based on zero evidence, as we live in a world where the financiers of every nation have made it unacceptable for us not to take a side and to simply admit facts, that some things remain unknown. Today, a lot of anger is fomented seemingly on every topic, whether religion, politics or finance, often successfully conjured up even amidst a complete absence of evidence and facts. In any event, I thought it would be an illuminating exercise to sift through the comment section of a recent ZeroHedge bitcoin article, simply because it may be a useful discourse to provide a little bit of clarity to some misunderstandings and anger (that should not exist) about the ongoing raging PM versus Bitcoin debate. I am going to paraphrase the most popular comments below.
FIVE FALSE DIVISIONS BETWEEN GOLD AND CRYPTOCURRENCY COMMUNITIES
(1) One Has to Choose Between Gold and Cryptopcurrencies
This opinion is definitely not true, as I know plenty of people that own both cryptocurrencies and gold and this divide should not exist. As long as one recognizes that the purchase of gold and the purchase of cryptocurrencies serve very different purposes, one can buy both to fill these two very different goals. Despite the belief of many that prices of cryptocurrencies are out of the control of the bankers, but the price of gold is not, and this is a critical factor that separates cryptocurrencies from gold, this belief is only partially true. Paper gold trading is in control of the bankers. Physical gold trading is not. This is why, in parts of the world plagued by financial instability, premiums for physical gold will soar enormously higher than the artificially banker-set paper/digital price of gold. For example, the price of BTC, due to a recent feeding frenzy in Korea recently soared above USD$3,000. However, even though speculators foolish enough to chase BTC and pay $3,000 per BTC in South Korea existed, I snapchatted screenshots of BTC dealers in South Korea during this buying frenzy on my Snapchat channel that illustrated decent supply of BTCs in South Korea at just a slight premium over Western market prices, so the $3,000 BTC purchases that hit the market in South Korea were executed by people that did not shop around on various exchanges for a much better price that was clearly available.
An analogous situation was recently observed in the physical gold market as well. When PM Narendra Modi initially banned the 500 and 1000 rupee note in India, the price of physical gold soared well over $2,000 an ounce in India, with some unconfirmed reports of gold hitting prices of more than $3,000 an ounce in Indian black markets. Did people that payed $2,500 or $3,000 an ounce for physical gold have to spend this amount? Certainly not, and these prices only hit because people panic bought during a buying frenzy instigated by rupee uncertainty and the Indian Prime Minister's attempt to demonetize gold. At the time of the physical gold buying frenzy, the spot price of gold was roughly $1,220. However, this incident illustrated that during a fiat currency crisis, bankers can continue to control and suppress paper/digital gold prices, but they have no control over suppressing soaring physical gold prices caused by high physical demand and tight supply during a financial crisis. In any event, if one wants to purchase both, one should understand, from the hugely different levels of volatility in gold prices versus cryptocurrency prices, that gold should be purchased to preserve purchasing power over time, while cryptocurrencies should be purchased for highly speculative returns Again, two different currencies serve two entirely different purposes.
(2) I Made a Ton of Money on Cryptocurrencies, But Have Lost a Ton on Gold, So I'm Never Buying Gold Again!
This statement is all about timing, as if anyone buys at a short-term buying frenzy during a long bull market, then one has a much greater chance of sitting on losses a few years later. However, timing on buying gold was not particularly difficult during this current bull run of 17 years now and here are indisputable facts to back up this statement. If one purchased gold at the start of 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2016, one would have ended the year in the black every single one of those years. Furthermore, during the past 17 years, including this one, if one purchased gold at the very beginning of the year in 14 of the past 17 years, one would still be profitable at today’s price, and extremely profitable if one had purchased physical gold in the early portion of this timeline. The reasons that made gold a strong purchase during 2001 are the exact same reasons that make gold a strong purchase today, so for someone that understood the real reasons to buy gold versus chasing a speculative rise, one was much more likely to have bought and hold physical gold during the early years of this cycle and added more on every severe dip, thus still maintaining a nice average buy-in price over this time frame.
Even though gold is volatile, it hasn’t been difficult, despite contrary belief, to manage the volatility when buying physical gold for the past 17 years, and the timing of when to buy physical gold has not been particularly difficult to ensure a profit over this time period as well, as only buying at the start of 3 of the past 17 years would have resulted in losses by the end of the year, and only buying at the start of 3 of the past 17 years are still yielding losses at the present time. And unless you purchased gold during the worst 28-months out of a nearly 200-month timeline, most likely you are heavily in the black right now or about to be back in the black again. Likewise, if anyone chased Bitcoin in South Korea and bought it at an absolute short-term peak at USD$3,000, as some have, then there is no one to blame but themselves when they were sitting on an almost immediate 36% loss just a couple of days later. While certainly, in hindsight, it may have been easier to buy Bitcoin at nearly any point on its bullish timeline, versus gold, and still be profitable today, no one should expect parabolic price rises to be the norm for Bitcoin, and prices will likely remain very volatile until they stabilize in the future.
(3) I Don't Want to Carry Gold Around. There's No Digital Gold, and Digital Currencies Are a Ton More Convenient to Use than Gold.
Most forms of paper gold, including gold futures contracts, ARE digital gold, so digital gold definitely exists right now, but the only problem is that no one wants the current form of digital gold (except for the most recently introduced form of 100% physical backed digital gold recently introduced last week that I discuss at the end of this article). When bankers trade gold futures contracts using HFT algorithms, their entered trades are being executed through high-speed fiber optic cable that minimize latency times to less than one millisecond. Certainly, real physical gold is never trading hands during these times, and in fact, outside of Shanghai and Hong Kong markets, gold derivative produces almost never settle in real physical gold. So bankers that trade the paper gold futures markets in London and New York are constantly trading 100% digital gold. It they were not, there would be no infrastructure that would allow them to dump $1 billion, $2 billion, or more, of notional gold in the form of gold futures contracts in a matter of minutes to suppress price. They are dumping, in essence, digital gold backed by air. As I stated above, there are some instances when gold futures contracts are asked to settle in physical, but outside of Shanghai and Hong Kong, the percentages of gold futures contracts that settle in physical are miniscule compared to the percentages that settle in fiat. However, no one that truly understands the reasons for buying physical gold would ever buy digital gold that wasn't backed 100% by physical gold, as is the case in New York and London gold futures markets. Thus unlike with digital currencies, the reverse alchemy, physical into computer digits, demonetization-of-gold scheme executed by bankers in London and New York is a massive problem, and not a benefit. However, there is a way to fix this, as I will explain in the solution below. Lastly, if you purchase physical gold today, there is no need to carry it around as you can easily store it in vaults that have been vetted and are outside of the global banking system.
(4) No One Hates Bitcoins More than Goldbugs!
In the short-term, cryptocurrencies may or may not have peaked. No one knows for certain, so any guess to its peak price is pure speculation. Bitcoin may have peaked for the short-term at $3,000 in Asia in South Korea recently. My guess is that in the west, BTC prices have not yet peaked. Despite the opinion of some (notice I said some, not all, as "some" is a fact, and "all" is not) cryptocurrency owners that believe gold owners are jealous of their profits and hate cryptocurrency owners solely due to the profits reaped, this voiced antagonism should not only not exist, but it doesn't even make sense, if indeed, the claim that Bitcoin is out of the control of the banking cartel is true. If cryptocurrencies like BTC are actually helping to free humanity from the control of bankers, and will stop the massive transference of wealth from the 99.9% to the 0.1% that has been happening over the past several decades, then people that own physical gold, and people that own cryptocurrencies, are clearly on the same side of this battle. Thus, even though I have voiced skepticism about the origins of Bitcoin being completely independent of the global banking cartel, if I am proven to be wrong in the future, and the continued existence of Bitcoin 10 years from now will prove me wrong, then I will gladly become the biggest advocate for BTC on planet Earth as any currency that is outside of the global banking cartel's control should be unilaterally supported by anyone that values freedom. However, because I have some questions at this point that I think are tangible and valid, such a cautious approach shouldn't make me the enemy of Bitcoin owners and it definitely doesn't mean that I am not happy for those that made a ton of money on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to date.
In fact, to the contrary, I am extremely happy for people that have made a lot of money on cryptocurrencies up to this point if they are on the side of humanity that wants to establish a sound monetary system and eradicate our current unsound debt-based monetary system. If this faction of cryptocurrency owners is authentic as I believe them to be, then this only means that gold owners have a strong coalition of people, now with significantly more resources to fight the global banking system and to fight to establish a new monetary system. The doubt or belief of BTC as being independent of the global banking system is entirely irrelevant to this point. Any gold owner that hates cryptocurrency owners solely for the large profits that they have potentially made at this point or any cryptocurrency owner that hated on gold owners when gold soared from $250 to near $2,000 an ounce is simply wasting a whole lot of energy on hate, and the expression of such hate is more a reflection on the hater's insecurity issues, as such expressed hatred and jealousy impedes the monetary freedom movement. If we truly want to achieve the same goal, and I think most cryptocurrency and gold owners do (again, most, but not all), then anyone that engages in deliberate divisiveness is executing the bankers' divide and conquer strategy for them, and should be completely expelled from the monetary freedom coalition, as they are part of the problem and not part of the solution. And as far as a solution that can tie the existing differences of gold and cryptocurrency owners together and solve the concerns I have with cryptocurrencies at the current time, I propose one below, so please keep reading. In any event, owners of gold and cryptocurrencies should be on the same side, and if we allow the financiers of nations to manipulate us into divisiveness, we are merely falling victim to a learned helplessness role of willing captor to our captives.
(5) Gold Will Never Appreciate at the Rate Cryptocurrencies Appreciate, So No Thank You to Any Physical Gold Ownership
Regarding the statement that gold will never match the appreciation rate of some cryptocurrencies, an owner of Monero commented that he has made 120,000% gains thus far, meaning that he must have bought Monero at inception at $0.034762697752, which translates into a 120,000% gain at its current price of $41.75. Kudos to this person! And he is correct in that gold will likely never appreciate 120,000% because this means that from its initial starting price of this current bull market of about $250, gold would have to rise to $30,250 per troy ounce to equal this person's 120,000% gain on Monero. In the absence of a hyperinflationary environment, I don't see gold going to this price. But who knows, I could be wrong, and maybe gold will appreciate this much in price. Again, this is an unknown, and as many of you that have followed me for years already well know, I've always stated to absolutely disregard all "Gold to $10,000" predictions that pop up every year, as devoting any brainpower to analyzing unknowable timing predictions such as these is not only a complete waste of energy, but also a complete waste of time. However, exploration of this concept allows me to reinforce an earlier, very important point between the massively different purposes between buying gold and buying cryptocurrencies. People that own gold and are hardcore gold believers buy gold because of its ability to preserve purchasing power over not just 10 years or 20 years, but also over hundreds of years, over their lifespan and over the lifespan of their children. Cryptocurrencies are way too young and in some sense, still in an embryonic stage, so there is no way that cryptocurrencies are, at the current time, able to make the same claim of purchasing power preservation.
In my opinion, of all the qualities sound money should have, the preservation of purchasing power over lengthy periods of time is the most critical quality to possess, and since cryptocurrencies are too young to prove up this quality, they cannot, in my opinion, be considered sound money at this point in their business cycle, as they are obviously in the rapid growth segment of the cycle. In fact, for those that stay away from gold because its price is too volatile, Bitcoin’s price has been far more volatile than gold’s price since Bitcoin came into existence. In fact, gold's quintupling of price over 17 years is generally considered peanuts to cryptocurrency investors. Consequently, people that buy gold buy it to preserve their wealth over time, and not to make rapid spectacular gains. This is a completely different reason than the reason why people buy cryptocurrencies. There may come a time many years from now, when cryptocurrencies prove themselves to be a store of purchasing power over time, and if that time comes, I will move cryptocurrencies out of the speculative growth category, but not before then. So, while massive gains are much more likely in cryptocurrencies than gold, the opposite is true as well. Massive losses in cryptocurrencies, until they move out of their growth stage and find more price stability, are much more likely to occur than in gold, as well.
THREE CONCLUSIONS
(1) At the Current Time, NEITHER Cryptocurrencies or Gold are Fully Outside the Manipulative Powers of the Global Banking Cartel
Although many cryptocurrency owners claim that cryptocurrencies are "free money" while fiat currencies are the money of "slaves", the very fact that cryptocurrencies are denominated in fiat currency prices means that they are still not independent of the global banking cartel. Bankers have ensured that all cryptocurrencies are denominated in THEIR form of debt-money for the very same reason that bankers have ensured that gold is as well. As long as the price of an asset is denominated in a form of debt-money, the asset can never truly serve the purpose of being the money of a free man or free woman, because this link necessitates the conversion into debt-based slave-money for use, and keeps humanity dependent upon debt-based slave money. Even if we don't convert cryptocurrencies into fiat currencies and pay for merchandise directly in BTCs, as long as the price of BTCs remains denominated in a form of debt-based slave money, it cannot escape the intimate link to the global banking cartel's monetary system.
As an example of why tying the price of an asset to fiat currencies grants bankers the ultimate control over that asset, let me use the stock market in Zimbabwe in 2006 and 2007 to illustrate my point. The Zimbabwe Industrial Index, for a rolling period of time slightly more than a year, in 2006-2007, gained 7,990%, a prolific increase that caused many to proclaim the Zimbabwe stock markets as the "best performing" stock market of that time period, though it was clearly the worst performing stock market for the following reasons. The 7,990% gain was denominated in hyperinflating Zimbabwe dollars, which rendered a 8,000% or even an 80,000% gain worthless during this time period, as monthly inflation peaked in Zimbabwe at 79,600,000,000% a year later. In other words the Zimbabwe dollar was losing valuation and purchasing power at a much faster clip than the stock gains were accumulating, so all of the stock gains were quickly rendered worthless as the gains could not be spent before they were devalued. However, if the 7,990% gains were instead denominated in gold weight, then no amount of Zimbabwe dollar devaluation could have prevented this increase from producing a massive gain in real wealth. Of course, US dollars are not hyperinflating at the current time, so why make such a comparison? I’m not making so much as a comparison as I am making a point. If the currency in which an asset is priced fails, then the asset will fail too, thereby unfortunately still granting bankers ultimate control over the fate of the asset. In response, some will argue that if dollars or Euros fail, and cryptocurrencies subsequently fail, then won't gold ultimately fail as well? On the surface, this seems like a logical argument, but I will reveal below, why in such a situation, gold will be king of the monetary pile.
(2) Price is NOT the Same as Value
Today, many business school graduates still confuse the concepts of value and price in the world of finance. I have uploaded many vlogs on my YouTube channel that explain why the value of gold and silver is its weight and not its price. Does it make sense to claim the value of real money like physical gold is its price, a unit of measurement that is denominated in unsound immoral, fiat currencies like Euros or dollars? Of course not! The real value of gold, as its weight, is always constant. In other words, the value of gold is constant everywhere in the world, as 10g of gold in Libya equals 10g of gold in Canada equals 10g of gold in Brazil equals 10g of gold in Uruguay equals 10g of gold in Romania. The price of gold changes all the time, but the value of gold does not change simply because bankers price gold in their deteriorating and devaluing fiat currencies. Price is an immensely different concept than value when it comes to the world of PMs, though bankers like to fool us and interchangeably use these two terms in the financial media to confuse us into believing they are the same. Now some will counter by stating that they can cash out their Bitcoins and buy gold with it anytime they like, but if so, then are these people valuing cryptocurrencies in terms of how much gold it can buy? For the very same reasons it makes no sense to value gold in an illegitimate, debt-based currency, it also makes no sense to value cryptocurrencies in illegitimate, debt-based currencies. So what is the value of Bitcoin and other cryptos? If we try to apply the above analogy to cryptocurrencies and reject the fact that the value of cryptocurrencies is its unit of measurement, since this unit of measurement is not tangible, it doesn't translate as well as it does for gold. For example, if we say the value of Bitcoins should be measured by its amount of Satoshis, and not its dollar, won, or Euro price, what does this really mean?
Of course, some claim that the value of cryptocurrencies is its store of wealth. However, as I explained above, perhaps after 50 more years, this claim can be made, but this claim cannot seriously be considered at the current time given the infancy of cryptocurrencies. Therefore, I would state, that at the current time, the only way to measure a cryptocurrencies value is by its price, as we can't measure it by their digital bytes, and in the case of hyperinflation, the value of cryptocurrencies will be severely debased, no matter the gain in underlying fiat currencies (see the Zimbabwe Industrial Index explanation above). However, since the value of gold is its weight, the weight of 10 ounces of gold will still remain 10 ounces of gold even if the price collapses through hyperinflation. Hyperinflation and currency collapse will always give rise to a new currency, so owners of gold, in such an event, would just hold gold until a new currency was born, and the price of their ounces would be re-established. I argue that the case for the valuation of cryptocurrencies during and after a hyperinflationary event would not be so clear. Of course, we are speaking of a worst-case scenario here, but a case study of fiat currencies have demonstrated that they always revert to their intrinsic value of zero over time, so who's to say that event won't happen in our lifetime?
(3) All Comparisons of the Price of 1 BTC to 1 Troy Ounce of Gold are Completely Baseless and Without Merit
I never understood why financial journalists ran numerous articles that always compared the price of 1 BTC to 1 troy ounce of gold, yielding headlines like “Bitcoin now exceeds gold in price” when the price of 1 BTC overtook the price of 1 troy ounce of gold. One troy ounce, or 31.1035 grams, the unit of measurement of gold, is a unit of weight. Unless one Bitcoin, the unit of measurement for BTC, is also a unit of weight, then comparing the price of one unit of weight of gold to the price of one unit of Bitcoin is an impossible comparison that makes zero sense, no matter how much the mainstream financial media wants to sell us this comparison as a valid one. Making such a comparison is totally random, and is literally as absurd as comparing the price of 1 barrel of oil to the price of a 1/2 carat ruby and saying that rubies are a much better investment that oil because 1/2 carat of rubies exceeds the price of one barrel of oil. It's absurd as comparing the price of a 212kg Japanese bluefin tuna that sold for more than $3,100 per kg in Tokyo at the start of this year and stating that the tuna was more valuable than an untitled Basquiat painting whose last auctioned price was $19,000 at the start of this year, simply because the Basquiat painting was worth less than $3,000 per kg (by the way, that painting just sold last month for $110M). You can’t compare the price of one Bitcoin to ounce of gold as people always do anymore than you can compare the Basquiat painting to a bluefin tuna because fine art is not measured by its weight. Even if there was a way to weigh 100M Satoshis, the unit of measurement for one Bitcoin, because the unit of measurement for BTC is not a weight, this still would not be a valid comparison. Therefore, comparing 500M Satoshis to 1,000 ounces of gold, 1B Satoshis to 1M troy ounces of gold, 100,000 Satoshis to 50,000 pineapples, or 1M Satoshis to 50,000 cubic metres of air has as much validity as comparing the price of 100M Satoshis, or 1 BTC, to 1 troy ounce of gold.
ONE SOLUTION
Tie Cryptocurrencies to a Finite Amount of Gold Backing, and We Have the Best of Both Worlds
Bankers have pursued control of the blockchain as their identified most valuable part of the cryptocurrency market. This is precisely why JP Morgan executive Blythe Masters left JP Morgan to work for Digital Asset Holdings, a distributed ledger, or blockchain, development firm. In fact, control of the blockhain, the distributed ledger technology invented by Satoshi Nakaomoto, makes all my speculation about BTC perhaps not being completely independent from the global banking system completely irrelevant. JP Morgan, Citibank and Goldman Sachs, and every large global bank all realize this as well as all have heavily invested in blockchain development companies. It's like the war that developed between HD DVD optical disks and blurays when higher resolution movies entered the market. Both formats delivered crystal clear clarity using similar technology but in the end, blurays survived and HD DVD optical disks went the way of the dinosaur. Control of the blockchain technology will have the same relevance to survival or extinction in the cryptocurrency market. I believe that whoever controls the blockchain technology that is universally implemented worldwide will control which cryptocurrencies survive and which ones die. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, and Blythe Masters, have already made it clear that they 100% believe that control of the blockchain technology that is implemented worldwide by the global banking cartel is the key to controlling the fate of all cryptocurrencies.
If the global banking cartel does not control BTC, then I have no doubt they will try to crush BTC as they only will allow their digital currencies to survive. If they however also control BTC, then BTC will not only survive, but it will flourish. All it would take for the global banking cartel to eradicate any cryptocurrency they don't like is to make that cryptocurrency illegal. This may not be able to prevent declared "illegal" cryptocurrencies from trading, just as bankers' declaration that physical gold and physical silver are "illegal" currencies have not halted gold and silver trading, but certainly such declarations will kill the utility of that currency. Though people may wonder why I say bankers have declared gold and silver illegal currencies while national mints in many nations continue to print and circulate gold and silver coins, have you ever tried to spend a gold or silver coin at its relevant price in a store? Since physical gold and silver are not as widely accepted worldwide as are fiat currencies, for all intents and purposes, bankers have rendered them illegal currencies.
Once the global banking cartel gains control and is able to implement their preferred blockchain, then they can set the rules for all digital currencies, and it's game over, but for one joker card. I know the inherent decentralization nature of blockchains ensures that no one can really gain direct control of them. However, leave it up to lawyers to invent and impose regulations that apply to blockchains, and regulations will be invented in the futre that effectively will give bankers control over blockchains through indirect control (regulations). Furthermore, last year, problems with the DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) for venture capital funding revealed how problems can arise with decentralized systems even when blockchains are secure. Shortly after the launch of the DAO in April 2016, someone was able to exploit a vulnerability in the DAO's code and steal $50 million of cryptocurrency, a full third of the $150M raised through crowdfunding, though apparently he, or she, was only able to eventually withdraw a miniscule amount of the stolen cryptocurrency. But certainly, the incident with the DAO raises issue about other aspects of the distribution chain outside of the blockchain that may remain exploitable.
That said, what is the joker card? To me, the joker card is the marriage of sound money with intrinsic value, like gold, to blockchain technology to form a completely new and different class of cryptocurrency. I want to end this discussion by asking all of you to consider this solution. I’ve heard many owners of both cryptocurrencies and gold admit that cryptocurrencies are a speculation at this point, and that in order to preserve their gains and turn cryptocurrencies into a store of wealth, they will sell cryptocurrencies for fiat currencies during their parabolic rises and consequently use fiat currencies to buy physical gold and hold it when price pullbacks and uncertainty plague cryptocurrencies. Then, when they believe these cryptocurrency pullbacks are ending, they will convert their physical gold back into fiat currencies and use fiat currencies to repurchase cryptocurrencies in hopes of capitalizing on another parabolic rise. And if the cryptocurrencies rise rapidly again, they repeat this process. In the end, however, this process always requires reverting back to holding debt-based fiat currencies at some point, even if for just brief periods of time, which ultimately makes holders of PMs and cryptocurrencies still beholden to the power of global bankers. However, as I stated above, what if there were a cryptocurrency backed by a finite weight of gold instead of a finite amount of digital bytes or satoshis, and the value of this cryptocurrency was not denominated by a fiat currency price whose purchasing power is perpetually destroyed by bankers, but by a weight of gold? Then there would be no need to constantly exchange cryptocurrencies into gold and vice versa!
If such a gold-backed cryptocurrency became popular and was widely accepted, then this would obviate the need to ever convert the cryptocurrency into any debt-based fiat currency, solving two problems at once. The only reason to convert gold or cryptocurrencies into debt-based fiat currencies is to buy goods and services that don't accept cryptocurrencies for payment, or due to worry of the volatility quickly debasing the price of the cryptocurrency after a volatile rise (i.e, its purchasing power). Combining the two solves all problems simultaneously. Such a physical gold-backed cryptocurrency that relies on blockchain technology could also be used to eradicate the current artificial banking valuation of gold to a fiat currency price and help to re-establish the true value of gold back to weight only, as spending of the cryptocurrency would result in units of gold weight being deducted from an account and purchase of the cryptocurrency would result in units of gold weight being added to the account. And though this cryptocurrency would have to be developed on a blockchain outside the control of the global banking cartel and its existence may have to survive on some type of black market, as the global banking cartel would almost definitively try to regulate the blockchain technology used by a gold-backed cryptocurrency to invalidate the use of this cryptocurrency anywhere in the eventual global digital currency system they construct, they could never invalidate this cryptocurrency's value as its value would be in units of gold weight, while their cryptocurrency's value would still be a fiat currency price.
So here are the questions I pose, which I would love to hear responses to these questions posed below. Regardless of any opinion I expressed above that you may believe to be wrong, please strip away all emotional responses to this article to focus on this proposed solution, as even if you believe some of my opinions above to be wrong, one belief that should unite all gold and cryptocurrency owners is that we are all seeking a monetary solution outside the control of the global banking system that enhances, instead of destroys it, and this may be it.
In other words, could a cryptocurrency backed by a finite weight of gold truly be the first currency completely independent and outside the control of the global banking cartel?
What if all goods and services purchased by this gold-backed cryptocurrency allowed for gentle inflation up and down over the years, but at a fraction of the massive real inflation experienced by prices denominated in fiat currencies? Could worldwide adoption of such a currency be accomplished simply because people would want to own this gold-backed cryptocurrency knowing that they would receive the best possible price for all goods and services year after year after year by using this currency, as it would strip away the destructive effects of Central Banker-created inflation? And could we foster wide acceptance worldwide of cryptocurrency developed with a unit of weight, the true value of gold as its unit of measurement, and convince people to stop accepting the artificial debt-based fiat currency price bankers assign to gold as its value? This question may be the most important of all, because bankers will continue to assign a debt-based fiat currency price or 100% digital currency price to gold as its "value" en perpetuity, until they die, so this may be the biggest obstacle to overcome - to convince people to stop basing the value of gold on a perception of fake value created by bankers called price.
For example, what if the price of filet mignon rose one year from USD$23 a pound to USD$30 a pound, but in the gold backed cryptocurrency called GCC (Gold CryptoCurrency), filet mignon only rose from 20 GCC (gold cryptocurrency) to 20.1 GCC, where one GCC is a unit of gold weight? Would not everyone want to pay for everything in GCC instead of USD? AT first, many retailers might shun acceptance of the gold backed cryptocurrency if they compare banker established gold prices and calculate that they could receive a higher price by accepting fiat currencies. However, if the marketplace that accepted GCCs was large enough, shunning would eventually turn into hoarding for the following reason. By accepting GCCs for their merchandise, they would then be able to buy other goods and services at more stable and lower prices, and therefore be able to manage their savings over the long-term in a much better capacity as the greatest price stability of all goods and services worldwide, year after year after year, would be witnessed in those markets that priced their goods and services in GCCs. On the contrary, if merchants accepted more fiat currencies for their goods and services, they then would be required to spend higher amounts of fiat currencies in the marketplace as well, not knowing if their food costs were going to be double or triple the costs of the prior year. History tells us that people prefer certainty over uncertainty, especially in financial markets. Thus, if a stable gold-backed cryptocurrency really allowed people to budget and plan more efficiently, as is not allowed by the current state of highly devaluing fiat currencies, would not people widely adopt a gold-backed cryptocurrency that served this purpose?
I haven’t really spent an enormous amount of time fleshing out the detailed complexities of the above topic, and consider the above as more the written manifestation of a brainstorming session, so forgive me if parts are not so well thought-out at this current time. Of course a gold-backed crytpocurrency will never provide wild, speculative gains of 100,000% to the owner, as this would defeat the very mission of this cryptocurrency, which would be to provide owners with strong price stability in their purchase of goods and services over decades of tie. However, I strongly believe that those that think pure digital currencies are in competition with the global banking cartel's monetary system and is a global banker "killer" are completely missing the point, as fiat currencies in use today are already very close to pure digital currencies. Just remember, in the world of banking, nothing, and I do mean, nothing is ever as it first sees to be. Still, I would love to hear what advocates of gold, advocates of cryptocurrencies, and advocates of both think about a gold-backed, blockchain-enabled crytpocurrency a as a potential solution that could free humanity from the ball and chain of the wealth destructive powers of our current global debt-based monetary system. And if you'd like to hear more musings about this topic, please follow me on my Snapchat channel, SKWealthAcademy.
ONEGRAMCOIN
Amazingly, as I've been writing this article for about a week now, during my writing of this article, the UAE announced the launch of my exact proposal above just a few days ago, the OGC (OneGramCoin), a physical gold0-backed cryptocurrency. Here are just a few facts about the one gram gold-backed cryptocurrency via their website:
Is the OneGram blockchain public? The blockchain is public and all codebase is open source.
What is the block size? What is the approximate transaction confirmation time? The max block size is 1MB, however, the average block time is only 1 minute, so there is effectively 10x more capacity than Bitcoin.
If the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) distributes 100% of the total issuance, then will there be mining? 100% of total coin supply is pre-mined and is distributed during the ICO. There is a block reward following the genesis block. OGC holders that indicate they wish to stake their OGC will be rewarded with the fees produced from the transactions in the present block.
How will new versions find consensus for adoption? How will the blockchain address soft and hard forking? We will employ automatic checkpointing with the seed nodes to guarantee consensus.
Can I trade OGC (OneGramCoin)? Yes. Following the ICO and the issuance of OGC, cryptocurrency exchanges may choose to list OGC for trade.
How are you addressing privacy? We are exploring confidential transaction and various other privacy technologies at the moment. Once the technology matures, we will adopt the one that best addresses privacy without sacrificing security and other critical concerns.
As full disclosure, I have zero business affiliations with any physical gold/silver dealers and with OneGramCoin, and you can read more about it by clicking the link in this sentence. I may contact them in the future, however, to correct some small errors I found in their white paper upon reading it. You may also participate in its ICO right now by signing up here. One interesting point I thought made in the OGC whitepaper is the following: "Most Muslims today have no idea that the money they use is arguably not Sharia-compliant. Most of the world uses fiat currency, which is money backed only by legal tender laws. Historically, money was either created from or backed by precious metals." I've known that fiat currency was an is non Sharia-compliant for decades, and there is an Islamic bank in my neighborhood which I frequently pass by that I know breaks Sharia law every day. I've often thought about walking into this bank, and asking the loan officers if they know they are violating Sharia law, as charging interest on loans is against Sharia law as well. In addition, most Christians don't understand that working in a bank is against Christian law as well, as the Bible states, in the book of Deuteronomy, "You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but you may not charge your brother interest, that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land that you are entering to take possession of it." But walk into any bank and ask for a Christian bank officer and try to get an interest-free mortgage or business loan, and see what happens!
In any event, let me know if you think, as I do, that the marriage of physical gold to cryptocurrencies that utilize the blockchain, is the solution to the creation of truly free money that all of us desire.
June 04, 2017 at 09:20AM http://ift.tt/2srgzIN from smartknowledgeu http://ift.tt/2srgzIN
0 notes
Text
The Media’s Cringeworthy Coverage of Bitcoin’s Latest Price Surge
Mainstream news coverage of cryptocurrency is often disingenuous or factually incorrect – that’s certainly no surprise given the nascent technology is widely misunderstood.
But if one would have thought that recent milestones – bitcoin’s 10th anniversary, the arrival of crypto projects from the likes of JP Morgan and Facebook – would have encouraged the media to get smarter, this week’s news shows attitudes at major publishers haven’t changed much.
This is especially true during times of heavy market activity like that of bitcoin’s April 2 breakout, which saw its price rise 17 percent over a 30-minute period.
As CoinDesk readers know, the move was foreshadowed by changes in market data and sentiment. With volatility hitting multi-year lows, multiple technical indicators flashings signs of a bottom and fundamental catalysts (the upcoming halving) combining, there were plenty of developments that signaled a change might be on its way.
Still, far from examining developments (or asking serious questions), much of the mainstream media’s coverage devolved into outright theory and speculation.
Here’s the worst of what was a genuinely bad bunch.
Gizmodo
While articles like these from Gizmodo are useful in gauging retail sentiment – ie, determining where the average Joe sits in terms of understanding and valuing cryptocurrency – they, unfortunately aren’t useful for anyone who wants to be informed.
Writers like Matt Novak have a point – novice retail investors were given a bitter taste in 2018, when the market for cryptocurrencies took a turn for the worse. Still, that’s no excuse for not educating yourself or your readers, who, without such learning, may repeat mistakes.
The article reads:
“To be clear, bitcoin is absolutely worthless by any real measure. It’s fake money that’s about as practical to use in the real world as Monopoly bills. Bitcoin is backed by nothing and requires tremendous amounts of energy to mine using computers.”
Without spending too much time on this statement, there are a few incorrect passages, that in particular, don’t ring true. For one, bitcoin definitely can act as a medium of exchange. It can be, and today is used to facilitate the commerce and trade of goods between parties, a core fundamental function of modern money.
Next, it’s backed by the computer operators that mine the network itself, all of whom invest real dollars, manpower and equipment in ensuring the network is functional.
Finally, while the cost of mining bitcoin remains high thanks to its large energy consumption, this does not mean it cannot run off renewable energy and take advantage of natural events that reduce the cost and lessen the impact to the environment.
It seems mainstream media tends to forget that the cost of mining bitcoin’s physical competitor, gold, is perhaps even more guilty of harming the earth’s environment as its miners regularly tear apart massive landscapes and leave behind loads of toxic waste.
To state that this will forever be bitcoin’s final form borders on ignorance as well, as we have seen time and time again that the evolution of technologies usually comes from a solution to fix a specific problem.
Reuters
One of the least offensive of the bunch, a Reuter’s report that cited a solo “mystery” buy order as the main cause for a huge price spike still offered a confused take by focusing in on a sole market irregularity.
In particular, it highlights a claim made by the chief executive of cryptocurrency firm BCB Group, Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie, who argued the case that the move was the responsibility of a single buyer.
The article reads:
“Today’s gain (April 2) was probably triggered by an order worth about $100 million spread across U.S.-based exchanges Coinbase and Kraken and Luxembourg’s Bitstamp. There has been a single order that has been algorithmically-managed across these three venues, of around 20,000 BTC.”
This is hard to corroborate with independent analysis as the article did not provide evidence of the orders, merely statements that negate other factors.
As the price climbed higher, this resulted in a snowball effect of buying as shorts were closed and limit buy orders were triggered, causing its price to rise faster and higher.
Using an hourly view of bitcoin’s price we can see just how much volume was recorded during a single trading period by looking at the volume bars and order books and then noting their readings. At 4:00 UTC on April 2, Coinbase recorded a total of 6,889 units in a single hour and Bitstamp handled close to 3,798 units while Kraken had the least at 4,121 bitcoin units traded in the same hour.
This created a total of 14,808 units traded in the hour of the surge, yet Reuters and CNBC claimed 7,000 units were purchased on each of the three different exchanges in tandem by a single entity at the time of the suge.
Needless to say the numbers don’t quite add up.
Also of note, data shows that growing buy volume began to increase substantially across most major exchanges, not just the three highlighted in the article.
CNBC
Then there is the “Fast Money,” notorious amongst the crypto trading community for getting things so wrong they act as a counter-indicator.
Indeed, a mere 38 seconds into this CNBC Fast Money video an analyst makes a comment regarding bitcoin’s movement above the 200-daily moving average occurring for the first time since May when in fact it was March 2018, leaving room for speculation about what else they could be misleading.
Throughout 2018, CNBC and its subsequent panel show Fast Money made some outrageous comments regarding the direction of bitcoin’s price and advice to investors.
Comments such as “don’t fear the dip, bitcoin will more than double in 2018” and “what will hit 25k first, bitcoin or the DOW,” it’s no wonder they have claimed such a bad reputation for calling a correct directional bias and sticking to it.
What’s more, another CNBC analyst Andrew Sorkin suggested on SquakBox the rally was a product of a harmless April fools joke published by a news outlet the day prior, that facetiously stated:
“In a shockingly sudden April fools 1st decision, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has made the decision to approve not one, but two applications for Bitcoin-based exchange traded funds (ETFs.)”
The word “overstated” comes to mind when you look at the numbers – that would imply the market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies could increase nearly $40 billion on that back of a harmless prank, and that an entire body of global traders would price in such an event.
The market for crypto may be small… but that small? We doubt it.
Disclosure: The author holds no cryptocurrency at time of writing.
Newspapers image via Shutterstock
This news post is collected from CoinDesk
Recommended Read
Editor choice
BinBot Pro – Safest & Highly Recommended Binary Options Auto Trading Robot
Do you live in a country like USA or Canada where using automated trading systems is a problem? If you do then now we ...
9.5
Demo & Pro Version Try It Now
Read full review
The post The Media’s Cringeworthy Coverage of Bitcoin’s Latest Price Surge appeared first on Click 2 Watch.
More Details Here → https://click2.watch/the-medias-cringeworthy-coverage-of-bitcoins-latest-price-surge-3
0 notes
Text
The Media’s Cringeworthy Coverage of Bitcoin’s Latest Price Surge
Mainstream news coverage of cryptocurrency is often disingenuous or factually incorrect – that’s certainly no surprise given the nascent technology is widely misunderstood.
But if one would have thought that recent milestones – bitcoin’s 10th anniversary, the arrival of crypto projects from the likes of JP Morgan and Facebook – would have encouraged the media to get smarter, this week’s news shows attitudes at major publishers haven’t changed much.
This is especially true during times of heavy market activity like that of bitcoin’s April 2 breakout, which saw its price rise 17 percent over a 30-minute period.
As CoinDesk readers know, the move was foreshadowed by changes in market data and sentiment. With volatility hitting multi-year lows, multiple technical indicators flashings signs of a bottom and fundamental catalysts (the upcoming halving) combining, there were plenty of developments that signaled a change might be on its way.
Still, far from examining developments (or asking serious questions), much of the mainstream media’s coverage devolved into outright theory and speculation.
Here’s the worst of what was a genuinely bad bunch.
Gizmodo
While articles like these from Gizmodo are useful in gauging retail sentiment – ie, determining where the average Joe sits in terms of understanding and valuing cryptocurrency – they, unfortunately aren’t useful for anyone who wants to be informed.
Writers like Matt Novak have a point – novice retail investors were given a bitter taste in 2018, when the market for cryptocurrencies took a turn for the worse. Still, that’s no excuse for not educating yourself or your readers, who, without such learning, may repeat mistakes.
The article reads:
“To be clear, bitcoin is absolutely worthless by any real measure. It’s fake money that’s about as practical to use in the real world as Monopoly bills. Bitcoin is backed by nothing and requires tremendous amounts of energy to mine using computers.”
Without spending too much time on this statement, there are a few incorrect passages, that in particular, don’t ring true. For one, bitcoin definitely can act as a medium of exchange. It can be, and today is used to facilitate the commerce and trade of goods between parties, a core fundamental function of modern money.
Next, it’s backed by the computer operators that mine the network itself, all of whom invest real dollars, manpower and equipment in ensuring the network is functional.
Finally, while the cost of mining bitcoin remains high thanks to its large energy consumption, this does not mean it cannot run off renewable energy and take advantage of natural events that reduce the cost and lessen the impact to the environment.
It seems mainstream media tends to forget that the cost of mining bitcoin’s physical competitor, gold, is perhaps even more guilty of harming the earth’s environment as its miners regularly tear apart massive landscapes and leave behind loads of toxic waste.
To state that this will forever be bitcoin’s final form borders on ignorance as well, as we have seen time and time again that the evolution of technologies usually comes from a solution to fix a specific problem.
Reuters
One of the least offensive of the bunch, a Reuter’s report that cited a solo “mystery” buy order as the main cause for a huge price spike still offered a confused take by focusing in on a sole market irregularity.
In particular, it highlights a claim made by the chief executive of cryptocurrency firm BCB Group, Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie, who argued the case that the move was the responsibility of a single buyer.
The article reads:
“Today’s gain (April 2) was probably triggered by an order worth about $100 million spread across U.S.-based exchanges Coinbase and Kraken and Luxembourg’s Bitstamp. There has been a single order that has been algorithmically-managed across these three venues, of around 20,000 BTC.”
This is hard to corroborate with independent analysis as the article did not provide evidence of the orders, merely statements that negate other factors.
As the price climbed higher, this resulted in a snowball effect of buying as shorts were closed and limit buy orders were triggered, causing its price to rise faster and higher.
Using an hourly view of bitcoin’s price we can see just how much volume was recorded during a single trading period by looking at the volume bars and order books and then noting their readings. At 4:00 UTC on April 2, Coinbase recorded a total of 6,889 units in a single hour and Bitstamp handled close to 3,798 units while Kraken had the least at 4,121 bitcoin units traded in the same hour.
This created a total of 14,808 units traded in the hour of the surge, yet Reuters and CNBC claimed 7,000 units were purchased on each of the three different exchanges in tandem by a single entity at the time of the suge.
Needless to say the numbers don’t quite add up.
Also of note, data shows that growing buy volume began to increase substantially across most major exchanges, not just the three highlighted in the article.
CNBC
Then there is the “Fast Money,” notorious amongst the crypto trading community for getting things so wrong they act as a counter-indicator.
Indeed, a mere 38 seconds into this CNBC Fast Money video an analyst makes a comment regarding bitcoin’s movement above the 200-daily moving average occurring for the first time since May when in fact it was March 2018, leaving room for speculation about what else they could be misleading.
Throughout 2018, CNBC and its subsequent panel show Fast Money made some outrageous comments regarding the direction of bitcoin’s price and advice to investors.
Comments such as “don’t fear the dip, bitcoin will more than double in 2018” and “what will hit 25k first, bitcoin or the DOW,” it’s no wonder they have claimed such a bad reputation for calling a correct directional bias and sticking to it.
What’s more, another CNBC analyst Andrew Sorkin suggested on SquakBox the rally was a product of a harmless April fools joke published by a news outlet the day prior, that facetiously stated:
“In a shockingly sudden April fools 1st decision, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has made the decision to approve not one, but two applications for Bitcoin-based exchange traded funds (ETFs.)”
The word “overstated” comes to mind when you look at the numbers – that would imply the market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies could increase nearly $40 billion on that back of a harmless prank, and that an entire body of global traders would price in such an event.
The market for crypto may be small… but that small? We doubt it.
Disclosure: The author holds no cryptocurrency at time of writing.
Newspapers image via Shutterstock
This news post is collected from CoinDesk
Recommended Read
Editor choice
BinBot Pro – Safest & Highly Recommended Binary Options Auto Trading Robot
Do you live in a country like USA or Canada where using automated trading systems is a problem? If you do then now we ...
9.5
Demo & Pro Version Try It Now
Read full review
The post The Media’s Cringeworthy Coverage of Bitcoin’s Latest Price Surge appeared first on Click 2 Watch.
More Details Here → https://click2.watch/the-medias-cringeworthy-coverage-of-bitcoins-latest-price-surge-2
0 notes
Text
The Media’s Cringeworthy Coverage of Bitcoin’s Latest Price Surge
Mainstream news coverage of cryptocurrency is often disingenuous or factually incorrect – that’s certainly no surprise given the nascent technology is widely misunderstood.
But if one would have thought that recent milestones – bitcoin’s 10th anniversary, the arrival of crypto projects from the likes of JP Morgan and Facebook – would have encouraged the media to get smarter, this week’s news shows attitudes at major publishers haven’t changed much.
This is especially true during times of heavy market activity like that of bitcoin’s April 2 breakout, which saw its price rise 17 percent over a 30-minute period.
As CoinDesk readers know, the move was foreshadowed by changes in market data and sentiment. With volatility hitting multi-year lows, multiple technical indicators flashings signs of a bottom and fundamental catalysts (the upcoming halving) combining, there were plenty of developments that signaled a change might be on its way.
Still, far from examining developments (or asking serious questions), much of the mainstream media’s coverage devolved into outright theory and speculation.
Here’s the worst of what was a genuinely bad bunch.
Gizmodo
While articles like these from Gizmodo are useful in gauging retail sentiment – ie, determining where the average Joe sits in terms of understanding and valuing cryptocurrency – they, unfortunately aren’t useful for anyone who wants to be informed.
Writers like Matt Novak have a point – novice retail investors were given a bitter taste in 2018, when the market for cryptocurrencies took a turn for the worse. Still, that’s no excuse for not educating yourself or your readers, who, without such learning, may repeat mistakes.
The article reads:
“To be clear, bitcoin is absolutely worthless by any real measure. It’s fake money that’s about as practical to use in the real world as Monopoly bills. Bitcoin is backed by nothing and requires tremendous amounts of energy to mine using computers.”
Without spending too much time on this statement, there are a few incorrect passages, that in particular, don’t ring true. For one, bitcoin definitely can act as a medium of exchange. It can be, and today is used to facilitate the commerce and trade of goods between parties, a core fundamental function of modern money.
Next, it’s backed by the computer operators that mine the network itself, all of whom invest real dollars, manpower and equipment in ensuring the network is functional.
Finally, while the cost of mining bitcoin remains high thanks to its large energy consumption, this does not mean it cannot run off renewable energy and take advantage of natural events that reduce the cost and lessen the impact to the environment.
It seems mainstream media tends to forget that the cost of mining bitcoin’s physical competitor, gold, is perhaps even more guilty of harming the earth’s environment as its miners regularly tear apart massive landscapes and leave behind loads of toxic waste.
To state that this will forever be bitcoin’s final form borders on ignorance as well, as we have seen time and time again that the evolution of technologies usually comes from a solution to fix a specific problem.
Reuters
One of the least offensive of the bunch, a Reuter’s report that cited a solo “mystery” buy order as the main cause for a huge price spike still offered a confused take by focusing in on a sole market irregularity.
In particular, it highlights a claim made by the chief executive of cryptocurrency firm BCB Group, Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie, who argued the case that the move was the responsibility of a single buyer.
The article reads:
“Today’s gain (April 2) was probably triggered by an order worth about $100 million spread across U.S.-based exchanges Coinbase and Kraken and Luxembourg’s Bitstamp. There has been a single order that has been algorithmically-managed across these three venues, of around 20,000 BTC.”
This is hard to corroborate with independent analysis as the article did not provide evidence of the orders, merely statements that negate other factors.
As the price climbed higher, this resulted in a snowball effect of buying as shorts were closed and limit buy orders were triggered, causing its price to rise faster and higher.
Using an hourly view of bitcoin’s price we can see just how much volume was recorded during a single trading period by looking at the volume bars and order books and then noting their readings. At 4:00 UTC on April 2, Coinbase recorded a total of 6,889 units in a single hour and Bitstamp handled close to 3,798 units while Kraken had the least at 4,121 bitcoin units traded in the same hour.
This created a total of 14,808 units traded in the hour of the surge, yet Reuters and CNBC claimed 7,000 units were purchased on each of the three different exchanges in tandem by a single entity at the time of the suge.
Needless to say the numbers don’t quite add up.
Also of note, data shows that growing buy volume began to increase substantially across most major exchanges, not just the three highlighted in the article.
CNBC
Then there is the “Fast Money,” notorious amongst the crypto trading community for getting things so wrong they act as a counter-indicator.
Indeed, a mere 38 seconds into this CNBC Fast Money video an analyst makes a comment regarding bitcoin’s movement above the 200-daily moving average occurring for the first time since May when in fact it was March 2018, leaving room for speculation about what else they could be misleading.
Throughout 2018, CNBC and its subsequent panel show Fast Money made some outrageous comments regarding the direction of bitcoin’s price and advice to investors.
Comments such as “don’t fear the dip, bitcoin will more than double in 2018” and “what will hit 25k first, bitcoin or the DOW,” it’s no wonder they have claimed such a bad reputation for calling a correct directional bias and sticking to it.
What’s more, another CNBC analyst Andrew Sorkin suggested on SquakBox the rally was a product of a harmless April fools joke published by a news outlet the day prior, that facetiously stated:
“In a shockingly sudden April fools 1st decision, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has made the decision to approve not one, but two applications for Bitcoin-based exchange traded funds (ETFs.)”
The word “overstated” comes to mind when you look at the numbers – that would imply the market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies could increase nearly $40 billion on that back of a harmless prank, and that an entire body of global traders would price in such an event.
The market for crypto may be small… but that small? We doubt it.
Disclosure: The author holds no cryptocurrency at time of writing.
Newspapers image via Shutterstock
This news post is collected from CoinDesk
Recommended Read
Editor choice
BinBot Pro – Safest & Highly Recommended Binary Options Auto Trading Robot
Do you live in a country like USA or Canada where using automated trading systems is a problem? If you do then now we ...
9.5
Demo & Pro Version Try It Now
Read full review
The post The Media’s Cringeworthy Coverage of Bitcoin’s Latest Price Surge appeared first on Click 2 Watch.
More Details Here → https://click2.watch/the-medias-cringeworthy-coverage-of-bitcoins-latest-price-surge
0 notes