February 2022 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

GATES predicts a new pandemic
by professor rat 20 Feb '22

20 Feb '22

If Bill Gates is right about another pandemic coming we must move fast right now to eliminate all the Bill Gates type - liquidate billionaires as a class - the danger of one going " Bond Villain " level rogue is too high. Cryptoanarchist revolutionaries have already made a start on this - starting in the late 90’s. https://stiffs.com/celebrity/billgates

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Leaks: Five US Navy Charged For Publishing F-35 Crash
by grarpamp 20 Feb '22

20 Feb '22

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/02/18/five-sailors-charged-f35c-cr… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsXdYdeJTx8 F-35 Crash PLAT Pilots Landing Aid Television Numerous F-35's around the world embarrassingly crashing, failing to function, cost overrun, downtime, etc. US Navy more worried about its video box.

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Avenues for D
by Undiscussed Horrific Abuse, One Victim of Many 20 Feb '22

20 Feb '22

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[crazy][crazy] finding a few cert prints of electrum nodes for different currencies
by Undiscussed Horrific Abuse, One Victim of Many 20 Feb '22

20 Feb '22

thread for task

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Meet Twist: MIT’s Quantum Programming Language - IEEE Spectrum
by jim bell 20 Feb '22

20 Feb '22

https://spectrum.ieee.org/quantum-programming-language-twist A team of researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have created Twist, a new programming language for quantum computing. Twist is designed to make it easier for developers to identify which pieces of data are entangled, thereby allowing them to create quantum programs that have fewer errors and are easier to debug. Twist’s foundations lie in identifying entanglement, a phenomenon wherein the states of two pieces of data inside a quantum computer are linked to each other. “Whenever you perform an action on one piece of an entangled piece of data, it may affect the other one. You can implement powerful quantum algorithms with it, but it also makes it unintuitive to reason about the programs you write and easy to introduce subtle bugs,” says Charles Yuan, a Ph.D. student in computer science at MIT CSAIL and lead author on the paper about Twist, published in the journal Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages. “What Twist does is it provides features that allow a developer to say which pieces of data are entangled and which ones aren’t,” Yuan says. “By including information about entanglement inside a program, you can check that a quantum algorithm is implemented correctly.” One of the language’s features is a type system that enables developers to specify which expressions and pieces of data within their programs are pure. A pure piece of data, according to Yuan, is free from entanglement, and thereby free from possible bugs and unintuitive effects caused by entanglement. Twist also has purity assertion operators to affirm that an expression lacks entanglement with any other piece of data, as well as static analyses and run-time checks to verify these assertions.

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Linkedin Full.Torrent
by zeynepaydogan 20 Feb '22

20 Feb '22

Empty Message

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Here come our reinforcements
by professor rat 20 Feb '22

20 Feb '22

Not only will strong AI help us identify all the Batshit-crazy, Nazbols, but it will help us take out this trash. https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/qanon-machine-learning-205618665.html

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Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin's Massive Fungibility Problem, Monero Doesn't Scale
by grarpamp 20 Feb '22

20 Feb '22

Crypto world must develop deploy and adopt lightweight privacy enabled coins whose disk space is bounded by number of addresses instead of unbounded-store-all-tx-forever. https://github.com/sethforprivacy/sethforprivacy.com/blob/master/content/po… Introduction Bitcoin is often touted as a fungible and private asset and digital cash alternative, when in fact it is technically non-fungible. Each bitcoin in circulation has a distinct history attached to it ensuring that 1 BTC != 1 BTC. While coin histories can be somewhat obfuscated with tools like CoinJoin, the fungibility of Bitcoin remains distinctly lacking. Many Bitcoiners purport that fungibility can be gained through more users mixing, or by peer-pressuring and boycotting exchanges and services that flag or trace Bitcoin transactions. In theory this is possible (suppose in another universe, everyone mixes), but why leave it up to chance? The Monero community sees fungibility as a basic safety feature. Good tools should include safety features by default, strong enough to withstand both governmental and social attacks. This is far preferable to relying on the good will of governments and regulators, or the peer-pressure of us as users to ensure fungibility of digital cash. Do you really want your coins to be fungible only if your grandma correctly follows a 50 page mixing guide? Monero relies on privacy by default, for all users and all transactions, to ensure that 1 XMR = 1 XMR, no matter what. Monero is fungible today, not just in a pipe dream. The Fungibility Graveyard This concern isn't only a fun thought exercise, unfortunately, as users of Bitcoin privacy tools are being harassed today. Below is a list of sources confirming cases of flagging, denied withdrawals, denied deposits, and censorship by services because of a distinct lack of fungibility within Bitcoin. The list is broken down by the tool or reason for the flagging or censorship. Current confirmed cases: 27 Wasabi A user's Binance SGD account is frozen upon attempted withdrawal to Wasabi Wallet for mixing: Twitter Source {{< tweet user="bittlecat" id="1207621591820951552" >}} A user's Paxful account is frozen upon attempted withdrawal to Wasabi Wallet for mixing: Reddit Source A user's Bitfinex account is frozen upon attempted withdrawal to Wasabi Wallet for mixing: Reddit Source A user's Bitstamp account is flagged months/years after withdrawal to Wasabi Wallet for mixing: Twitter Source (deleted after this blog was published) {{< collapse summary="Source Image" >}} {{< figure src="/fungibility-graveyard/bitstamp_wasabi.png" align="center" style="border-radius: 8px;" >}} {{< /collapse >}} A user's BitVavo account is closed upon attempted withdrawal to Wasabi Wallet for mixing: Reddit Source A user's Paxos account is frozen upon attempted withdrawal to Samourai Wallet for mixing: Twitter Source {{< tweet user="RonaldMcHodled" id="1222172084610027523" >}} Samourai A users's Bottlepay deposit is rejected/returned upon depositing mixed funds: Twitter Source (deleted after this blog was published) {{< collapse summary="Source Image" >}} {{< figure src="/fungibility-graveyard/bottlepay_samourai.png" align="center" style="border-radius: 8px;" >}} {{< /collapse >}} JoinMarket A user's BitMEX account is flagged months after withdrawal to JoinMarket for mixing: Twitter Source {{< tweet user="kristapsk" id="1374336620158140419" >}} All CoinJoins Multiple user's deposits are flagged by BlockFi upon depositing from a CoinJoin tool like Wasabi: Twitter Source {{< tweet user="ODELL" id="1234514628115341313" >}} Response from BlockFi A user's loan is closed while under water (causing a loss of 50%) due to the previous owner of the coins using a mixing service or tool: Twitter Source {{< tweet user="Bitfinexed" id="1489833237765660673" >}} Reddit Source A user's account is flagged upon mixing coins after withdrawal from Voyager: Twitter Source {{< tweet user="sundaywar" id="1366854774864322560" >}} Paxos official statement on handling of Bitcoin with a history of CoinJoin: Twitter Source {{< tweet user="jehrenhofer" id="1235963248522006528" >}} A user's account is frozen due to 6mo-old post-CoinJoin transactions by Bitwala: Twitter Source {{< tweet user="riccardomasutti" id="1375507165151076353" >}} Tainted Bitcoin A user receives tainted Bitcoin that cause two exchange accounts to be locked upon deposits: Bisq Source A user is attacked by the media upon receiving a donation from a "far-right" donor: Twitter Source {{< tweet user="sethforprivacy" id="1370721319680155651" >}} Multiple user's exchange accounts are closed after making a donation to a dark-net researcher: Twitter Source {{< tweet user="DarkDotFail" id="1359243753664303104" >}} A user's account is closed by LocalBitcoins after sending funds directly to a DNM: Reddit Source A user is worried about accepting donations from unknown sources because of a lack of fungibility: Reddit Source 28 cryptocurrency addresses (including Bitcoin) are sanctioned due to alleged use to fund Russian operations: Government Source Compliant Mining and "Virgin" Bitcoin Marathon Digital Holdings Inc. launches a mining pool "that is fully compliant with U.S. regulations, including anti-money laundering (AML) and the Office of Foreign Asset Control’s (OFAC’s) standards": "We believe that such regulatory compliant mining will allow us to produce ‘clean’ Bitcoin." "On May 1, 2021, Marathon will begin directing 100% of its hashrate to the new mining pool." "By 2022, Marathon expects to have deployed 103,120 miners to direct 10.37 exahashes per second, or EH/s, to the mining pool — equal to roughly 6.4% of the Bitcoin network’s current combined hash rate." "[Will] be the seventh largest bitcoin mining pool in the world." News Source News Source First compliant block mined List of compliant blocks mined by MARA Pool w/ block template comparisons Twitter thread with details on the first 10 compliant blocks {{< tweet user="sethforprivacy" id="1393206480195788805" >}} Blockseer launches compliant Bitcoin mining pool that only mines approved and filtered transactions: "Blocks posted to the Bitcoin blockchain by Blockseer’s pool will only contain filtered transactions using Blockseer and Walletscore’s labeling data, along with verified sources such as the United States OFAC blacklist for crypto." News Source Bitcoin mined in China or via fossil fuels are not acceptable to institutional investors: "If you don’t want to own China coin—also being called ‘blood coin’, which sounds like blood diamonds—you’re going to prove where your coin is born." News Source News Source Freshly mined bitcoin fetches a 20% (or "very large") premium from large buyers, as this is the only bitcoin available without taint or history: News Source Confirmation Source Only "virgin" Bitcoin mined by state-sanctioned miners can be used in Iran: News Source Twitter Source {{< tweet user="Fatalmeh" id="1390338789462224908" >}} General Fungibility Issues A user's account is flagged after withdrawing from BlockFi to a peer-to-peer exchange: Reddit Source Luke Dashjr, Bitcoin core developer, blocks gambling sites as "spam" in a Bitcoin implementation: News Source Additional Reading on Fungibility "How could regulators successfully introduce Bitcoin censorship and other dystopias" "Bitcoin censorship will most likely come, pt 2" "Compliant Miners" Bitcoin’s Attack Vectors: Fungibility What is fungibility and why does it matter? Fungibility - Moneropedia Something Missing? If you've noticed an instance of fungibility causing issues in the real world with Bitcoin, please feel free to reach out via [Signal, Matrix, Threema, or email]({{< ref "/content/about.md#how-to-contact-me" >}}) or open a pull request with the addition against https://github.com/sethforprivacy/sethforprivacy.com-content. Credits Several of the sources linked above were pulled from an excellent resource by @6102bitcoin on cases of CoinJoin flagging: https://6102bitcoin.com/coinjoin-flagging/. Many of the linked sources were provided by Monero community members on Reddit and Twitter on threads like the below: https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/mbn12q/i_created_a_new_blog_post_w… https://twitter.com/sethforprivacy/status/1374445921484689408?s=21 Thanks to the many Monero community members who contributed sources privately or contributed wording and feedback on this page itself. Source Image Archive Below are archived images of the original sources in case of the source itself being deleted or taken down. Where the source has already been taken down, see the "Source Image" drop-down under the relevant item above.

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Cryptocurrency: Modern Monetary Theory MMT the Demise Of All Governments and Nations
by grarpamp 19 Feb '22

19 Feb '22

Debasement, Debt, and GovPolBank Fuckery... History's long since repeatedly proven path to Downfall of Nations... Modern Monetary Theory, And The "Economists" Advocating For It, Will Destroy The United States https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/modern-monetary-theory-and-the-economi… https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-brooklyn-gang-members-sto… An economist used to mean someone who applied and analyzed the incontrovertible and irrefutable natural laws of economics as they functioned and played out in a free market. Now, an economist is someone tasked with attempting to engineer enough academic sounding bullshit to convince a growingly skeptical populace that these very same irrefutable natural laws of economics are somehow no longer relevant - that the laws themselves somehow caught a glimpse of the brilliance of academia and, after thousands of years of dictating how free markets work globally, had no choice but to lay down their arms at the majestic aura of Paul Krugman. Photo: The New Yorker This smoke screen is a necessity, of course, for central planners and vote-hungry politicians to feign as though they have “control” over the global economy and can safely promise “free stuff” - college tuition, social benefits, general wealth and prosperity - without ever having to generate the pesky productivity in order to pay for it. While this is obviously farcical, the truly frightening thing about modern monetary theorists is that, despite being bludgeoned in the face with the negative consequences of their flawed thinking in the form of blistering inflation, it seems like they still won’t admit defeat. This would be one thing if the year was 2019 and we were still riding out a period of “mysterious” inflation that we apparently, thanks to our magical CPI, couldn’t punch above 2% even when we wanted to. But that’s not the case: we’ve doled out the largest tranche of quantitative easing in modern monetary history over the last two years, the gap between our country‘s revenue and spending ambitions has never been wider and we’re currently in the midst of an inflationary (and civility) crisis so bad in this country that they’re putting fucking alarm nets on the $20 slabs of meat at Wal-Mart. Source: Twitter And you thought I was being facetious when I wrote, last year, that the U.S. was turning into a third world country. Are you paying attention yet? Today’s blog post has been published without a paywall because I believe the content to be far too important. However, if you have the means and would like to support my work by subscribing, I’d be happy to offer you 22% off to become a subscriber in 2022: Get 22% off forever Days ago, I happened to notice that the New York Times published a profile of Stephanie Kelton, one of the more well-known advocates for modern monetary theory (MMT). Kelton is a professor at Stony Brook University and a Senior Fellow at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research (whatever that means). Her “Greatest Hits” of economic nonsense includes this 2019 interview with The Globe Post where she claimed that the U.S. “can never run out of money and can never be forced to default on [its] debt”. Riveting. Stephanie Kelton (livestream) (6/15) – Town Hall Seattle Photo: Town Hall Seattle In that interview, Kelton also argued points that critics of MMT often use as fodder for hyperbole, like asking why we even pay taxes when the government can just print as much money as it wants: “So what that means is that a country like the U.S. doesn’t need to tax or borrow in order to get the currency in order to spend. So it’s never about whether you can afford a program in financial terms. You always can. It’s about whether spending to fund your program will cause an inflation problem.” And, since 2019, Kelton hasn’t stopped with her Time Life-style greatest hits compilation. Now, at what is arguably one of the most crucial junctures in American history to critically examine Kelton’s dangerously ignorant economic assertions, the New York Times wrote that Kelton: “…posits that if a government controls its own currency and needs money — to make sure its citizens have food and places to live when, say, a global pandemic pushes many out of work — it can just print it, as long as its economy has the ability to churn out the needed goods and services.” Nevermind the fact that the idea of “just printing it” is a fallacy in and of itself, perhaps Kelton hasn’t seen the country’s worsening trade deficits over the last decade. In other words, our economy doesn’t have the ability to “churn out” anything, especially needed goods and services. United States Balance Of Trade But these deficits weren’t alarming to Kelton in June 2020, after they had almost nearly doubled from the year prior. Kelton instead took a victory lap in 2020, publishing a book that “shot onto best seller lists” called “The Deficit Myth”. The Times wrote that, at the time of publishing “…inflation had been weak for decades and had dropped below 1 percent as consumers retrenched in the pandemic.” Ah, the sweet smell of success, right Ms. Kelton? By 2021, when Kelton took a second victory lap on a Bloomberg podcast episode called “How M.M.T. Won the Fiscal Policy Debate,” inflation was already back to 2%. And just months later, inflation now sits at an out of control 7.5% while our national debt has eclipsed $30 trillion - about triple what it was less than 15 years ago. The Times named their profile of Kelton: “Is This What Winning Looks Like?” United States Inflation Rate Not unlike Cathie Wood when her ARK Innovation Fund (ARKK) started plunging 6 months ago, Kelton and her ilk seem sufficiently motivated to try and control the narrative with inflation running out of hand. For example, only now do we get the admission from Kelton in the Times writeup that MMT “wasn’t assessed carefully for its inflationary effects as it was being drawn up, because it was crisis policy.” In the words of Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer: “Once again, things that could have been brought to my attention yesterday!” The Wedding Singer: Things that could have been brought to my attention YESTERDAY! Based on her recent profile, Kelton is holding onto her assumptions and beliefs, lock, stock and barrel, despite the fact that the Fed appears to be in a catch 22 of catastrophic proportions. Hilariously, Kelton even pushed back on the Times using the same anecdote that former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes used when responding to the Wall Street Journal’s criticisms, while talking to Jim Cramer in 2015. Modern monetary theorist Stephanie Kelton, 2022: When she gave presentations on her ideas, Ms. Kelton would occasionally display a quote often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you. Then you win.” Elizabeth Holmes to Jim Cramer, 2015: "This is what happens when you work to change things," Holmes said. "First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, then you change the world." Photo: Stony Brook University Even worse, Kelton appears to be clinging to her logical fallacy of an ideology with a resolve that only a self-assured academic could have. The Times wrote that during their interview with Kelton “she never broke her cool when questioned about the inflationary moment and what it says about her theory”, but rather “laid out her response methodically”, placing blame on supply chain constraints and “decades of corporate consolidation”. About a month before the profile was published, Kelton also wrote a Substack post called: “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Inflation?” It’s a post that, in a blindingly arrogant way, failed to offer up an apology for how brutal and out of control inflation has gotten in the country, especially for the middle and lower class. Instead, it offered even more reassurance that modern monetary theory is doing its job: There was, however, a big move up in inflation following the passage of the March 2021 fiscal package. And this has led some people to ask whether the emergence of high inflation means that the MMT experiment has failed. The answer is an unequivocal no. Today’s blog post has been published without a paywall because I believe the content to be far too important. However, if you have the means and would like to support my work by subscribing, I’d be happy to offer you 22% off to become a subscriber in 2022: Get 22% off forever Far be it for me to praise current Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Most of my readers and followers know I have been a strident critic of his for years, but even he understands the obvious fallacy of MMT. The Times article pointed out that Powell even spoke out against MMT in 2019, stating: “I have heard pretty extreme claims attributed to that framework and I don’t know whether that’s fair or not. The idea that deficits don’t matter for countries that can borrow in their own currency is just wrong.” And in my opinion, a large problem with people that want to embrace modern monetary theory is that they have no humility. The idea that we’re going to be able to print as much money as we would like without suffering any consequences, because we have somehow found a loophole in the basic laws of a free market economic system that we’re gonna be able to exploit in perpetuity, is an arrogant way of thinking. Realizing that the natural and very basic, elementary laws of economics will eventually have their say in a market, even if only 1% of our micromanaged (interest rates, price controls, regulations) market remains free, is a humble way to look at things. But modern monetary theorists don’t know anything about being humble. Commensurate with their monetary ideology, for them it’s about gaming the system and pulling together whatever half-assed monetary “tools” we can, combined with a word salad of financial jargon, to, very simply, worry only about the making the present as comfortable as possible - no matter what the cost to the future. A couple weeks ago I wrote an article talking about how every move the Fed makes is going to be scrutinized because of the inescapable quagmire that our central bankers have gotten themselves into. They must decide right now: crash the markets or stop inflation. But, after the Fed, second on the pecking order of people whose actions we should be carefully watching should be people like Stephanie Kelton, advocating for theories that are far to the left of what our current Fed Chair believes. Her ideas - and the notion of only focusing on comfort in the present - will prove to be dangerously costly. Yet, they’re seductive in a way: we won’t realize we’ve overstepped our boundaries in applying them until the destruction is already in the rearview mirror. Car Accidents Caused By Blind Spots Can Be Prevented | Law Office of John W. Redmann, L.L.C. It also probably wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on “deep thinkers” like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose economic aspirations appear to be include printing and spending as many trillions of dollars as an Excel cell will physically allow us to manufacture. While that’s a bit of hyperbole, the importance of keeping an eye on this developing niche in economics can’t be understated. Years ago, when I was still introducing myself to economics in the early 2000s - and back when I was a bone fide Democrat - I would have never fathomed that an idea as idiotic as a trillion dollar coin or the Green New Deal would come close to becoming reality. I’ve been horrified over the last couple of years on how these ideas have even been put up for discussion, let alone written into law. When I was younger, I used to think only the smartest people in the world were members of Congress. Now that I know the truth - that Congress is replete with lobotomized automatons pushing legislation with the sole motivation of trying to appease lobbyists and constituents with “free shit” - I’m far more worried. In the words of the late, great former Senator Mike Gravel: “It’s like going into the Senate. You know, the first time you get there, you’re all excited: ‘My god, how did I ever get here?’. Then about six months later you say: ‘How the hell did the rest of them get here?’ Some of these people frighten me.” On a serious note, in the balance hangs the world reserve currency: the U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar is literally all we have to cling to in our country. We don’t have production, we don’t have trade surpluses, and we sure aren’t a creditor nation. The dollar is the only thing that has allowed us to run our backwards monetary policy in this country and get away with it. While I’m not sure that the dollar is going to last as reserve currency for much longer anyways, implementing and clinging to modern monetary theory - while countries like Russia and China are stockpiling gold - is a surefire way to accelerate our country’s economic demise and put us in potentially our most precarious position in recent history. The best part is: you don’t even need to be an economist - you don’t even need to know where the hole is in modern monetary theory to know that it doesn’t work. It can be simply boiled down to: something about it just doesn’t feel right. Or, in other words, it doesn’t pass the smell test. When people investigating financial malfeasance look for the hallmark clues of Ponzi schemes and other types of fraud, one of the red flags they always hone in on are promises that sound “too good to be true”. In the case of Stephanie Kelton, not unlike many postmodernists, we have a woman who has amplified and magnified otherwise simple, steadfast economic rules into a confusing and complex web of jargon that fails to render the rules ineffective, but instead delays their consequences into the future and creates so much confusion that the layperson is tricked into assuming that she knows what she’s talking about. Kelton thinks she has found some type of hidden esoteric code - the Game Genie for the economy - that’s going to allow us to cheat and re-write very clear, time-tested economic laws that have been in place for thousands of years. Anyone seeing any red flags yet?

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Cryptocurrency: Rush to Regulate Foolish re Innovation Privacy and General Hampering
by grarpamp 19 Feb '22

19 Feb '22

protip: "laws" are not necessary to begin "accepting" crypto as legal tender, just start accepting it for goods and services. Bitcoin's Political Breakthrough Raises Questions About Its Regulatory Future https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/questions-about-bitcoin-legal-tender-in… https://trackbill.com/bill/arizona-senate-bill-1341-legal-tender-specie-bit… https://delbene.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3035 https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/bill-introduced-to-make-bitcoin-a-legal… https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-10/ https://twitter.com/2140data https://twitter.com/Dennis_Porter_ Is it actually possible for individual U.S. states to establish bitcoin as legal tender currency? Arizona State Senator Wndry Rogers seems to think so, based on the submission (SB 1341) she crafted and introduced late last month, aiming to establish bitcoin as legal tender in the State of Arizona. Meanwhile Texas Governor Candidate Don Huffines has promised to recognize bitcoin as legal tender if elected. But while there is growing interest in state leaders adoption bitcoin in this way, there might be some obstacles. Namely, the first clause in article one in section 10 of the U.S. Constitution: “No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.” As of right now, it seems that individual states do not have the capability, nor the power, to establish a newly acceptable form of legal tender within the Union of the U.S. So, that’s a bit of a buzzkill. But it’s clear that we are making significant progress in the mainstream acceptance of Bitcoin, sparking interest by American politicians and legislators and spreading like wildfire. “The key piece here is not whether it will pass or what impact it will have in Arizona,” explained Dennis Porter, a podcaster focused on the intersection of Bitcoin and politics. “The true impact of this bill is the fire that it has ignited. Other states and legislators are now looking at this as a potential option for their state as a way to protect themselves from a runaway federal government.” Game Theory Playing Out It also means that Bitcoiners as individuals need to become careful, and much more critical of what our politicians claim and promise. The game theory that we have been discussing within our circles for years is playing out, almost precisely as was expected: politicians and other public figures are realizing the power behind garnering support from the Bitcoin community. Not just because of the excitement around price action, but also due to the sheer numbers of the voter base within the borders of the United States. This voter base reaches across all party lines, anyone is capable of garnering support, from all angles. “States need to begin adopting Bitcoin today so they can begin the process of protecting themselves from the federal government unplugging them from the overly-powerful national financial system,” Porter said. “It’s a win-win plan for any state to adopt Bitcoin. It gives them more autonomy over their future.” Changing Perception In D.C. Another recent development at the intersection of Bitcoin and politics can be found in a bill introduced to the U.S. Congress by Representatives Suzan DelBene of Washington and David Schweikert of Arizona on February 3, 2022. This particular bill is aimed at introducing a “workable structure for taxing purchases made with virtual currency,” such as bitcoin. One of the greatest hindrances to bitcoin adoption by the general public is its infeasibility as a currency for routine purchases, as it is more closely treated as a stock or other long-term investment from a tax perspective in the U.S. DelBene and Schweikert aimed to alleviate this bottleneck by providing an exemption from taxes in the use of bitcoin as a currency where capital gains amounted to less than $200. “It’s a great way to normalize the whole ‘track your buys under $600 thing,’” said Ant, the pseudonymous author of Bitcoin blockchain data dashboard Timechain Stats. “Accounting is a nightmare, and hardly anyone knows their cost basis.” However, as national politicians attempt to normalize and increasingly regulate the use of bitcoin, even if that regulation is meant to increase adoption, they will inevitably challenge the project’s status as something parallel to and outside of the national system. “Most important: Bills like this will end up doxxing a lot of bitcoiners, both directly and indirectly,” Ant warned. While a bill like DelBene and Schweikert’s may be viewed as a boon to some individuals who take portions of their salary in bitcoin, it also provides a stepping stone for potential abuse of financial surveillance powers, not just immediately, but into the future as well. Which is a very important worry amongst many in the Bitcoin space. Bitcoiners should be cautious around how quickly we are seeing these social and powerful figures flock to this revolutionary asset. It would behoove all of us to take pause, catch our breath and reflect before two potential scenarios play out: One, we rush to regulate an asset that is wildly misunderstood and provide roadblocks to those we aim to protect. And two, we rush to support and uplift politicians who hoist the Bitcoin standard in the desire to reach regulation of the asset before the regulatory windfalls are well gauged or we have established understanding, so as to avoid inviting weakness within the system itself. Our world moves fast, but we don’t have to break things. When it comes to state adoption, being a slow mover can be a blessing, not a curse.

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