December 2022 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Cryptocurrency: Personal Responsibility, Defund via Selective Spend of P2P Privacy Coins
by grarpamp 14 Dec '22

14 Dec '22

Monopolies And Cartels Are "Communism For The Rich" by Charles Hugh Smith What's unfettered in America is "Communism for the Rich" and the normalization of corruption that results from the auctioning of political power to protect monopolies and cartels. The irony of constantly being accused of being a communist is rather rich. When I point out that "free market capitalism" in America is neither a real market nor real capitalism, those who equate any criticism of "capitalism" as proof of communist leanings are triggered. Noting that Marx got monopoly capitalism and alienation right triggers another group who equate any favorable mention of Marx as proof of communist leanings. There are two ironies in these accusations of being a communist. One is that I've spent 17 years tirelessly critiquing centralized wealth and power--the acme of communism--as the source of our moral, social and economic decay. The other irony is that Communism is absolutely thriving in America in broad daylight: the monopolies, quasi-monopolies and cartels that dominate the American economy and governance are Communism for the Rich. The core goals and functions of communism and monopolies/cartels are identical: snuff out unfettered markets (competition, transparent price information for all participants, etc.) and take control of all market functions, restricting supply and controlling all regulation with the sole goals of further concentrating centralized power and maximizing steady profits (i.e. maximum greed) to benefit those who own/control the concentrated wealth and power. And of course both pump out an endless spew of propaganda about the wonderfulness of the system that benefits the few at the expense of the many. This centralized power to benefit the few at the expense of the many characterizes both Communism and monopolies / cartels. There is no difference between the two other than the structures of control that eliminate competitors, regulates supply and keeps prices high enough to further enrich the already-rich. Those operating monopolies and cartels in America are in effect a private-public Politburo, a concentration of wealth that buys whatever political power is needed to increase profits and protect the monopoly from threats. What's unfettered in America is Communism for the Rich and the normalization of corruption that results from the auctioning of political power to protect monopolies and cartels. "Markets" and "capitalism" only exist on the fringes of the economy, but the myth that America is the home of "unfettered capitalism" is extremely useful cover for the actual system, which is Communism for the Rich.

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Cryptocurrency: Stops The Bleeding and Central Fraudsters of Custody Permission and Theft
by grarpamp 14 Dec '22

14 Dec '22

Bitcoin Stops The Bleeding: A Sound Money System Is The Only Cure For What Ails Our Economy https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-stops-the-fiat-bleeding https://www.econlib.org/library/Mises/HmA/msHmA.html https://alilybit.substack.com/p/what-the-fuck-is-going-on https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/global-qe-tracker/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/fed-response-to-covid19/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6CTHoTTMyo https://twitter.com/canindependent/status/1595460390045028352 As fiat currencies slowly bleed out in value, they are disincentivizing saving. Bitcoin is a cure for the economic calamities... When a doctor operates on a wounded patient, the first thing they do is make sure they can stop the bleeding. No point operating if you can’t get the bleeding under control because the patient will die. Money facilitates mutual exchange and helps market actors coordinate price discovery — it is the literal blood of the economy. As fiat currencies slowly bleed out in value, they incentivize fewer people to save. If you want to stop the bleeding in your financial life, you are going to need to find a way to store your wealth in something else. There are plenty of options, but only one that is programmed to stop all bleeding in 2140. As peoples’ money bleeds out, so too does their education, time and, I’d even argue, their mental sanity. Blood isn’t oozing out egregiously, but rather being siphoned off from tiny cuts, so most people do not even realize it’s happening. This is a hard pill to swallow. Most Western societies teach people not to question authority: raise your hand if you want to ask questions, and trust the experts. Breaking out of this mentality is difficult. Watch this clip of the White House press secretary to get an idea of how those at the top will treat people who dare question the narrative. Watch: Bidens White House Press Secretary refuses to allow a reporter to question Dr. Anthony Fauci during his last press conference as the governments top doctor on the origins of Covid-19. pic.twitter.com/06SRLUQwd9 — The Canadian Independent (@canindependent) November 23, 2022 PAIN IS THE BEST TEACHER Narrative is everything when trying to coerce the masses to accept a “Great Reset” (if you have no idea what the Great Reset is, you can read about it here). The scope of this article won’t cover what the Davos elite is attempting to impose on the rest of the world, but rather why Bitcoin stops money from bleeding out. Trying to calculate all of the variables that bring about the emergent, complex behavior of society is futile. Governments stole trillions of dollars via quantitative easing and blamed their theft on COVID-19. It should not be a surprise that what followed has been chaos in the form of protests and supply chain issues. The Federal Reserve is following up its quantitative easing with tightening monetary policy at record paces trying to get inflation under control. This demand destruction is wreaking havoc all over the economy but is necessary to weed out unprofitable businesses. For better or worse, pain is the best teacher. Hard Money recently reported that Trezor has seen a 300% increase in sales revenue after the FTX debacle. The whole point of Bitcoin is to not trust ,but verify for yourself. Many ignored this because FTX had the stamp of approval from many mainstream news outlets, politicians and celebrities. In the wake of its blow, FTX created tons of new Bitcoin maximalists who now understand why not verifying Bitcoin with your own node means that you are trusting potentially-corrupt third parties. The mainstream media is not doing itself any favors with puff pieces like the one below. Articles like this only serve to increase the pain of those who were robbed and convince more people that the mainstream narrative is corrupt: Source BUT SELF EDUCATION HELPS TOO The remedy to most of these problems is a better education. Tools like Saylor.org, Udemy and plenty of others have lowered the barrier tremendously. It just requires a desire to learn. For me, I found that desire by going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Ironically, answering one question would lead me to more questions and that number of questions grew exponentially. It made me wonder how much people are not taught intentionally during their traditional schooling. There is only so much time in the day and teachers must prioritize their curriculums accordingly. I just don’t understand why taxes, how to vote and basic financial literacy aren’t at the top of most public school curriculums. The reader can come to their own conclusions. What’s important is finding a teacher who speaks your language and a subject that brings out your natural curiosity. Learning becomes one of the most euphoric feelings in the world when those two needs are met. The standard way of learning has horrible mental models for teaching people, like memorizing things for a test. Oscar Wilde is quoted as saying, “Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.” People are so focused on learning from the experts that they forget that those who changed the world didn’t ask for permission to do so. They just did it. People want a hero to fix all of their problems but the truth is that no one is coming to save you. I’m not saying one should not find great mentors; it’s super valuable being able to listen to those who have become experts in their fields in order to learn. I’m saying one should not worship people like gods who can’t make mistakes. Just look at Sam Bankman-Friend, who many thought was a hero. Source Despite all of the educational content out there, the reality is most people will come to understand the difference between paper bitcoin and bitcoin you actually hold the keys for via an expensive lesson. When the majority of Bitcoiners self custody their coins, and stop blindly trusting their heroes, that is when we will see fireworks in regards to bitcoin’s price action. Every person is different and has various forms of risk tolerance. For those who are discouraged by recent events, remember: Rome was not built in a day. Sometimes the only way to get a lesson through someone’s head is for them to suffer the pain of said mistake. FTX AND CENTRAL PLANNERS ARE NOT SO DIFFERENT What’s interesting about watching FTX fail so rapidly is that the same thing would happen with our traditional financial system if we didn’t have central banks acting as lenders of last resort. FTX violated its own terms of service by using customer funds to make bets, but 99.9% of the world just turns a blind eye when banks do this because their terms of service legally allow fractional reserve banking. In his book “Human Action,” Ludwig von Mises writes: “The rich, the owners of the already operating plants, have no particular class interest in the maintenance of free competition. They are opposed to confiscation and expropriation of their fortunes, but their vested interests are rather in favor of measures preventing newcomers from challenging their position. Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow and whose ingenuity will make the life of coming generations more agreeable. They want the way left open to further economic improvements. They are the spokesmen of progress.” Technology getting better should lead to massive deflation from productivity gains. Regulatory moats and monopolies prevent this. Fractional reserve banking creates an inflationary environment where tons of capital is misallocated. In a free market, most commercial banks would be insolvent. FTX tried to create its own fractional reserve monopoly by lobbying Congress and creating a regulatory moat around its business which would’ve made it impossible for competitors to compete in the crypto ecosystem. The world is fortunate FTX’s system blew up before it was able to get its way with D.C. Mises was right: It is not the incumbents who will create a more agreeable future, it is entrepreneurs and ideas competing in a free market. Bitcoin has over 10,000 competitors, and that number is growing every day. Many, if not all of these tokens, are Ponzi schemes in my opinion, but the idea that D.C could do a better job deciding this than the free market could is ridiculous. I understand regulation is difficult when technology is changing things at such rapid rates. The little piece of glass in our pocket allows us to hail a ride, order food or listen to some of the greatest minds on the planet whenever we want. All of these things would seem magical to someone who lived before the creation of smartphones. There are going to be hiccups along the way as humanity tries to come to grips with these new tools. This is why I keep this Hal Finney quote as my Twitter header: Source For all of the wonders that technology can do for humanity, it can also drive a whole new level of control. Free markets lead to optimal price discovery. Too much central planning and markets start to break. Price discovery in a free market is like a hash function. It takes inputs of data and spits out an output that only goes one way. With a normal hash, the algorithm works so that it is unfeasible to reverse-calculate the data. You can verify a hash by making sure the same output is achieved based on the input, but you can’t take the output and figure out the input. In this same vein, a free market will set the price of a good, but you can’t figure out how all of the labor, work, travel and other variables created the price of the good. The function only goes one way. Market actors get upset when the coercion variable is notched up and price increases happen. The blame is typically pushed on to the producers rather than the central planners who are causing such issues. Sound familiar? Like say the U.S. government, which is calling out greedy fossil fuel companies for raising the price of gas while at the same time advocating for the end of fossil fuel use. If price controls are imposed, price discovery completely breaks down, resulting in shortages. Until the creation of money is no longer heavily intermingled with politics these issues will continue to play out. BITCOIN IS MORE IMPORTANT NOW THAN EVER As central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and digital identities are rolled out, it has never been more important to point out why Bitcoin is the remedy. Bitcoin allows the individual to go down a hero’s journey where they can keep the value of their labor in their head. CBDCs and digital IDs offer governments tools to enact monetary policy at the individual level, be at the center of every transaction and turn off people’s money as they see fit. Bitcoin offers a better system, one that no one can cheat if they want to be in consensus with the rest of the network. Preston Pysh said it best: “Bitcoin is like the infinity stone.” It takes a great deal of faith to hold on to an asset that has had multiple 70% to 90% drawdowns before recovering to new all-time highs. Not many can hang on to their bitcoin but those who do over long periods of time are greatly rewarded. The network effects of Bitcoin are insane. There is a Bitcoin website paying people 21,000 satoshis to post a sticker that it ships to you around their cities. Think about that. You can earn sats and increase the value of those sats by helping raise awareness. Bitcoin is full of these win-win scenarios. The tech is exciting, but the passion I see from Bitcoiners in real life is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Bitcoin as a technology, a new form of money and an idea are bringing hope to humans around the world who have been disadvantaged because governments have a monopoly on violence. Bitcoin empowers the individual to fight back like never before. There will be growing pains along the way and more turmoil in the short term for those obsessed with measuring things in fiat. The way to fix that is to orient yourself around the new system. The possibilities that will come out of this Bitcoin renaissance are endless. Grappling with what this new form of money means is difficult because the world is full of so many paradoxes. When you learn, you become smarter by ending up with more questions. Monopolies have brought about some of the most prosperous and technologically advanced times in human civilizations while also making George Orwell’s “1984” look like a very plausible path for the future. The internet is connecting people like never before and at the same time, loneliness is increasing. Number go up technology is associated with greed and is what initially attracts people to Bitcoin, yet many stay because they realize Bitcoin is the true effective altruism movement. These paradoxes are a bit mind bending but I do think there is value to be had from chewing on these ideas. It can be easy to get bogged down with all of the bleeding going on in the fiat world. Bitcoin is the Band-Aid to fix it. It gives me a lot of confidence knowing my money is secured by open-source software and math rather than 12 individuals who decide when it is okay to steal and when it’s time to practice fiscal austerity. I’m glad the Fed has finally decided to do the right thing for the economy but it has manipulated the cost of capital for so long that it now risks destroying the entire system if it keeps tightening. The problem is that the Fed’s only other option is to lower rates again, which causes more bleeding via inflation. Bitcoin offers humanity a way out of this paradox where central planners try to fix the bleeding by siphoning more blood out of the patient. Every time central planners manipulate the cost of capital it becomes more clear that market participants are playing a rigged game. Bitcoin is the fairest game humanity has ever created and the best chance we have of separating money and state.

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Proudhon proved right about unions?
by professor rat 14 Dec '22

14 Dec '22

" . . . to exhibit the genesis of the problems of production and distribution is to prepare the way for their solution.” (Système I: 89, 92) Proudhon’s discussion of the associations which would replace wage-labour (and so end labour as a commodity). In these members “straightway enjoy the rights and prerogatives of associates and even managers”, “have a deliberative voice in the council” and so are “a solution based upon equality – in other words, the organisation of labour, which involves the negation of political economy and the end of property.” Hence “the socialisation of capital and property” for “it is necessary that […] all appropriated wealth again become collective wealth, that the capital taken from society returns to society” for “there is supremacy and dependence” between the worker and the capitalist and “capital introduces into society an inevitable feudalism”. (Système II: 204; I: 272–8, 217, 88; II: 168) Unlike the utopian socialists, he rejected the idea of organising labour and instead argued that labour would organise itself. Proudhon proved right about unions? https://anarchistnews.org/content/unions-and-state Reposts not blue-collar police-unions as roadblocks

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Sam Bankman-Fried Quietly Bought an SEC-Registered Stock Trading Operation; There Are Big Questions as to What’s Happening with Customer Accounts
by Gunnar Larson 14 Dec '22

14 Dec '22

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/12/sam-bankman-fried-quietly-bought-an-… Yesterday, just hours before Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested <https://twitter.com/SDNYnews/status/1602451395910803457?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoo…> in the Bahamas at the request of Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, *Wall Street On Parade* learned that Bankman-Fried had been allowed to purchase an SEC-registered retail brokerage firm in August of last year. The brokerage firm at that time was called RJL Capital Group and was based in Staten Island, New York. Bankman-Fried changed the firm’s name to FTX Capital Markets LLC and moved its headquarters to Broad Street in the financial district in lower Manhattan. According to Wall Street’s self-regulator, FINRA, FTX Capital Markets was licensed to conduct retail stock trading in 32 states <https://brokercheck.finra.org/firm/summary/158816>. FINRA further notes that the firm’s SEC registration is “pending withdrawal” as of December 5 and all 32 state licenses are listed as “Termination Requested.” It is not clear if the firm has requested the withdrawal of its licenses and registration or if a regulator has initiated the action. (The SEC filed a broad range of charges this morning against Sam Bankman-Fried <https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2022/comp-pr2022-219.pdf> but it makes no mention of his ownership of a retail brokerage firm. The U.S. Attorney’s office is expected to unseal its indictment against Bankman-Fried later this morning.) *Wall Street On Parade* reached out to FINRA to learn if the brokerage accounts are moving to another firm and how many customer accounts were held at FTX Capital Markets. We have not yet heard back. We also contacted the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), the organization that in case of a brokerage firm failure protects securities in the account up to $500,000, including up to $250,000 protection for cash that is held in the account for the purpose of trading securities. SIPC lists FTX Capital Markets as a “Member Firm.” SIPC advised via email that they were looking into the matter and would get back to us. FTX Capital Markets is *not* listed as one of the more than 100 FTX group entities that filed for bankruptcy on November 11. The byzantine terms of its customer agreement <https://assets.website-files.com/625f3cf193eb0bdbf6469cba/62a64865d7b50c462…>, which spells out that neither cash nor securities will be held in the broker-dealer customer account but farmed out to other entities, raises further questions. In June of this year, the parent of FTX US, West Realm Shires, Inc., announced it had purchased Embed Financial Technologies <https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ftx-us-acquires-clearing-firm-embe…> along with its subsidiary, Embed Clearing LLC. FTX Capital Markets indicates in its regulatory filings that it is Embed Clearing LLC that will provide its brokerage customers with “custody, execution and clearing services” for stock trades. Fortunately, SIPC also shows Embed Clearing as a member firm. But when it comes to cash held for brokerage customers of FTX Capital Markets, things get a lot more troubling. The firm’s customer agreement contains this language: “The MSB [Money Services Business] maintains Customer MSB Accounts at a bank which is a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Customer holdings in their Customer MSB Accounts are insured up to $250,000 per depositor against the failure of the FDIC member bank. FDIC insurance does not protect against the failure of the MSB or malfeasance by any MSB employee. MSB and the bank at which Customer Accounts are held are not members of FINRA or SIPC and therefore your funds held in the Customer MSB Account are not SIPC protected.” Sam Bankman-Fried does not exactly have a good track record with handling customers’ cash. The SEC complaint against him that was released this morning contains this insightful paragraph: “Bankman-Fried thus gave Alameda [his hedge fund] carte blanche to use FTX customer assets for its own trading operations and for whatever other purposes Bankman-Fried saw fit. In essence, Bankman-Fried placed billions of dollars of FTX customer funds into Alameda. He then used Alameda as his personal piggy bank to buy luxury condominiums, support political campaigns, and make private investments, among other uses. None of this was disclosed to FTX equity investors or to the platform’s trading customers.” One of the questions we posed to federal regulators related to a press release from the brokerage firm on May 19 <https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ftx-us-launches-ftx-stocks-offerin…> of this year. The press release indicated that FTX Capital Markets (now dubbed “FTX Stocks”) was going further down the rabbit hole of mixing crypto with stock trading. It stated: “The release of FTX Stocks marks the first time in industry history that retail brokerage accounts can be funded with fiat-backed stablecoins such as USDC via a partnership with the FTX US crypto exchange, in addition to the standard USD [U.S. dollar] deposit methods of wire transfers, ACH transfers, and credit card deposits.” It came as news to us – and apparently regulators as well – that an SEC registered broker-dealer was allowed to accept crypto as deposits to trade stocks. (Laws and rules are apparently so yesterday to Sam Bankman-Fried.) It’s also notable that Bankman-Fried picked a brokerage firm with a jaded history for acquisition. According to FINRA records, in 2016 RJL Capital Group was fined $75,000 and censured by FINRA. The regulator wrote: “The findings stated that the firm failed to identify and investigate red flags associated with a customer’s trading in penny stocks. Consequently, the firm did not report the customer’s liquidations as potentially suspicious. The findings also stated that the firm failed to specifically tailor its supervisory systems to address customer trading in secondary public offerings (SPOs), and failed to identify and investigate potential Rule 105 violations by its customers. The firm’s AML [Anti Money Laundering] system also failed to consider its customers’ trading in connection with SPOs [Secondary Public Offerings] and the associated risks of potential violations of Rule 105, and therefore failed to detect and report those suspicious activities. The firm also failed to implement AML procedures that could be reasonably expected to detect and report potential violations of Section 5 and Rule 105. (FINRA Case #2013035864201)”

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WHAT do you call $1.7 Billion Crypto Money Laundering?
by professor rat 14 Dec '22

14 Dec '22

A good start. Despite the ban, Chinese citizens still use virtual assets. As of October, China remains the largest cryptocurrency market in East Asia. This indicates that the government’s ban on cryptocurrency is ineffective. https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/chinese-authority-arrest… Reposts not endless anti-anarchist garbage from the three stooges

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Pro-Nazi, pro-Trump dumbfuck Karl Semich is autistic
by professor rat 14 Dec '22

14 Dec '22

Semich is is an American rapper, songwriter, record producer and fashion designer. Born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago. Oh wait . . . no sorry . . . that's Kanye West, not Karl Semich. I got them confused thanks to Karls known affinities with Nazi-lover, Juan Garofalo and Grarpamps. We Got This Covered Kanye West Denies Being Bipolar but 'May Be Autistic Like Rainman”

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Juan says that universities would be a good next step to expand the user base of Filecoin
by professor rat 14 Dec '22

14 Dec '22

Juan is also the creator of Filecoin, a storage network incentivized by crypto. Both of Juan’s ventures are hugely ambitious as they are in direct competition with the basic rails of the internet, with protocols such as HTTP and data giants like AWS. https://thedefiant.io/filecoins-juan-benet-on-upgrading-the-heart-of-the-in… Reposts Juan can trust-minimize

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Benjamin Fucker said all natural-rights-anarchists were tucked
by professor rat 13 Dec '22

13 Dec '22

Natural rights anarchists are a bunch of creeping Jesus liars trying to smuggle religion in up their arses. Just look at that neo-Catholic dipship moron, Juan Garofalo. As for any Leveller types still around today I assume they have had a few hundred years to memorize the NAP. " Thou shall not harm any anarchist, or allow harm to come to any anarchist, even unto your own death "

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Optimism of the intellectual
by professor rat 13 Dec '22

13 Dec '22

Optimism of the intellect - pessimism of the dill https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/techno-optimism-for-2023 Simple cure for Jewnazi terrorism found - GET OFF the INTERNET!

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Benjamin Tucker said that “Natural Law” was a “religious” concept
by professor rat 13 Dec '22

13 Dec '22

And in related news Mussolini was Catholic. Franco was Catholic. Dolfuss was Catholic. Himmler, head of the SS, was a Catholic. The SS was set up on the Jesuit model. Goebbels was Catholic. Hoss, the camp commandant of Auschwitz, was a Catholic. Frank,‘ the butcher of Poland ’, was Catholic. Ante Pavelic was a Catholic. Pinochet was Catholic. And Juan Garofalo is a ' natural rights ' nutcase.

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