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Hackaday: Analyzing Starlink Satellite Downlink Communications With Software Defined Radio
by jim bell 27 Nov '21

27 Nov '21

Hackaday: Analyzing Starlink Satellite Downlink Communications With Software Defined Radio. https://hackaday.com/2021/11/26/analyzing-starlink-satellite-downlink-commu… Often, mere curiosity is sufficient to do something. This is also the case with people trying to analyze the communication setup and protocol which SpaceX is using with their Ku-band based Starlink satellites. One of these fine folk is [Christian Hahn], who has recently posted some early findings to r/StarlinkEngineering over at Reddit. Some of the captured data seems to include the satellite ID system that ground-based user stations would presumably use to keep track of overhead Starlink satellites. For the capturing itself, [Christian] is using a second-hand dish for capture and a DIY SDR using KC705 FPGA-based hardware – which may have begun its life as crypto mining hardware – along with the usual assortment of filters and other common components with this kind of capture. Even at this early time, some features of the Starlink protocol seem quite obvious, such as the division into channels and the use of guard periods. Nothing too earth-shattering, but as a fun SDR hobby it definitely checks all the boxes. [Christian] has also announced that at some point he’ll set up a website and publish the findings and code that should make Starlink signal analysis easy for anyone with a readily available SDR receiver.

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Yahoo News: U.S. stonewalls probe into security firm that allegedly spied on Assange for CIA, says Spanish judge
by jim bell 27 Nov '21

27 Nov '21

Yahoo News: U.S. stonewalls probe into security firm that allegedly spied on Assange for CIA, says Spanish judge. https://news.yahoo.com/us-stonewalls-probe-into-security-firm-that-allegedl…

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Ammon Bundy Runs For Governor
by grarpamp 27 Nov '21

27 Nov '21

https://www.votebundy.com/ https://www.votebundy.com/Keep-Idaho-IDAHO-Plan.pdf https://www.votebundy.com/donate/crypto/ https://www.ammonbundy.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Idaho_gubernatorial_election Interviews on all alternative media channels... Read through the entire Keep Idaho IDAHO Plan: As you read through the Keep Idaho IDAHO plan, I hope you will contemplate your life. How it may improve. How you may be more content, more prosperous and have more free time. How you may be able to bless other people's lives with your extra prosperity and personal time. Think about what brings you happiness and prosperity now. Your family? Your employment? Your endeavors? Maybe just simply knowing you are secure and have a future with opportunities? Any plan proposed by those in government should be scrutinized and balanced with the everyday lives of those who it would affect. This plan has been developed over a seven-year period and is designed to foster prosperity, peace, security, freedom and ultimately happiness to the People of Idaho. Built upon lasting principles, the Keep Idaho IDAHO plan will assist in bringing about a culture of liberty and property in Idaho that will rival early America. These principles include the understanding that God created man and woman and gave them certain unalienable rights. These rights include life, liberty and conscience to choose and to pursue happiness. That God created the earth and everything in it FOR mankind, and that men and women are to USE and replenish the natural resources, including land, plants and animals. That men and women created government as a tool to secure the rights God has given them. That there is no other moral purpose for government other than to equally defend the endowed rights that belong to every man and woman. So, you can be confident that what I am proposing in the Keep Idaho IDAHO plan is correct and lawful, I offer you this evidence. Article 1, Section 1, of the Idaho State Constitution, "All men are by nature free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing and protecting property; pursuing happiness and securing safety. Article 2, All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their equal protection and benefit, and they have the right to alter, reform or abolish the same whenever they may deem it necessary." The Declaration of Independence, which we celebrate every fourth of July, reads in part, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…" The Keep Idaho IDAHO plan is simple and responsible. It frees the people of Idaho to more openly trade with each other without fear from improper use of force. It empowers police officers to follow their conscience, parents to fulfill their divine roll and school teachers to more fully help prepare children for a life of prosperity. The Keep Idaho IDAHO plan will open up entire new and prosperous industries in energy, healthcare and agriculture. This plan will solve Idaho's affordable housing crisis while maintaining the rural culture that makes Idaho IDAHO. Overall, the Keep Idaho IDAHO plan will improve life, bring prosperity, foster personal time and secure the opportunity for happiness to every person living within the beautiful State of Idaho. Sincerely, Ammon Bundy SECTION I - Eliminating Immoral Taxes 1. Eliminating Property Tax 2. Eliminating Personal Income Tax 3. Eliminating Personal Property Tax 4. Taxes Only Collected Through Consumption SECTION II - Economic Growth Plan 1. Taking Back Idaho’s Land 2. Solving the Affordable Housing Crisis 3. Health Freedom and Body Autonomy 4. Making Idaho a Financial Freedom State 5. Recognition and Acceptance of Prominent Cryptocurrencies by the State SECTION III - Exalting Justice 1. Restoration and Restitution Laws [link] 2. Empowering Communities to End Drug Abuse 3. Empowering Police to Act According to their Conscience 4. Eliminating Civil Asset Forfeiture 5. Ending Cronyism and Corruption SECTION IV - Social Prosperity 1. Executive Order to End Abortion 2. Education Freedom 3. Gun Rights and Defense of the 2nd Amendment 4. Idaho State Healthcare Exchange (Obamacare) 5. Parental Rights 6. Ending Welfare SECTION V - Maximizing Government Efficiency 1. Elimination of State Licensure 2. Changing the culture of government 3. Using Blockchain Technology for State Interactions

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Ginger, lemon juice, garlic and aspirin to combat COVID?
by professor rat 27 Nov '21

27 Nov '21

Is Jim Bell in Africa at the moment? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-27/omicron-covid-variant-hits-south-afr… Jesus Fucking Christie - its like those Batshit-Crazy AIDs deniers are loose again.

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RF Hacks: "Anonymous" Broadcast 1987
by grarpamp 27 Nov '21

27 Nov '21

There were many Anonymous before Anonymous, and there will be more, expect them... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWdgAMYjYSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj1mUk04_ho https://soundcloud.com/bpoag/max-headroom-incident-112287audio-enhancement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDqjl6FvyUY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Television_broadcast_interruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_signal_hijacking https://www.vice.com/en/article/pgay3n/headroom-hacker Captain Midnight hack in 1986 Playboy TV hack in 1987 https://www.learnastronomyhq.com/articles/how-would-our-sun-look-from-alpha… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUwt-JFSQx4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgbci2Zf7ms

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Cryptocurrency: Biden Pick for OCC Omarova to Nationalize All Bank Accounts and Investments per MarxSocComSov
by grarpamp 27 Nov '21

27 Nov '21

Joe Biden Corrupt Traitor literally picked Soviet born sworn and raised Marxist Agent Saule Omarova to head US Office Comptroller Currency publicly stating will Nationalize All Bank Accounts... There's that "democratize" word again, hardly means any good people think it means. Multiple channels have been reporting... “No More Private Bank Deposits” – Biden’s Radical Currency Nominee Wants All Bank Accounts To Be Controlled By The Fed https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/11/no-private-bank-deposits-biden-cur… https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/toomey-calls-on-omarova-to… https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-banking-nominee-scrubs-ka… https://twitter.com/TrumpJew2/status/1459213417764556812 https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/11/12/bidens-communist-trea… https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bidens-pick-comptroller-currency-pro-commu… https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/10/bidens-pick-comptroller-currency-b… https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/10/bidens-pick-comptroller-currency-s… https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3715735 Biden’s radical nominees continue to show their true colors. Biden’s Marxist currency nominee Saule Omarova said that all private bank accounts should be taken over and controlled by the Federal Reserve. Saule Omaraova is the most radical and extreme nominee ever pushed forward by a US president. Proposal by Biden’s Treasury nominee Saule Omarova: "There will be no more private bank deposit accounts and all of the deposit accounts will be held directly at the fed" pic.twitter.com/ojQviX74Bz — Jewish Deplorable (@TrumpJew2) November 12, 2021 TRENDING: MUST WATCH: Texas HHS DENIES Monoclonal Antibody Treatments For Whites - "If I Were Black or Hispanic Then I Would Qualify?" - Nurse: "Yep, That's Right" - (Video) Townhall reported: In September President Joe Biden nominated Saule Omarova to become comptroller of the currency at the Department of Treasury. If confirmed, Omarova would be in charge of overseeing banking in the United States. Omarova believes private bank accounts should be taken over and controlled by the Federal Reserve. “Imagine what it would be like instead of just a public option for deposit banking, this would be actually the full transition. In other words, there would be no more private bank deposit accounts and all of the deposit accounts will be held directly at the fed,” Omarova said during recent remarks. “How is it politically feasible for the central bank to take money away from people’s accounts.” Saule Omarova has come under fire for her prior comments praising the Soviet economy. Fox News reported: President Biden’s pick for Comptroller of the Currency has provoked sharp criticism for past and recent comments that praised the Soviet economy. Biden on Sept. 23 nominated Saul Omarova, a law school professor at Cornell University, for the office responsible with the regulation and supervision of all national banks. Omarova’s nomination drew immediate pushback from powerful voices who criticized her background and past comments that indicated a favor for the policies of the USSR. Omarova was born in the Soviet Union in what is now called Kazakhstan and graduated from Moscow State University in 1989. She has pointed to the USSR’s practices as recently as 2019, when she tweeted about the gender pay gap, citing the USSR as a better model. Omarova was born in the Soviet Union in what is now called Kazakhstan and graduated from Moscow State University in 1989. She has pointed to the USSR’s practices as recently as 2019, when she tweeted about the gender pay gap, citing the USSR as a better model. “Until I came to the US, I couldn’t imagine that things like gender pay gap still existed in today’s world,” Omarova wrote. “Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best.’” She also refuses to hand over her thesis on Marxism she wrote. Saule Omarova, President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), is refusing to hand over to the Senate Banking Committee her university thesis on Marxism written during her time in the Soviet Union. Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, ranking member of the committee, had sent a letter to Omarova on Oct. 6 asking the Cornell Law School professor to hand over her Moscow State University thesis, titled “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital,” by Oct. 13, citing the committee’s need to “fully assess the fitness of individuals to serve in Senate-confirmed executive and independent agency positions.” Omarova, who grew up in the Soviet Union, had scrubbed mention of the thesis from her resume, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Biden's Communist Treasury Nominee Wants All Bank Accounts to be Controlled by the Fed Katie Pavlich Katie Pavlich | @KatiePavlich | Posted: Nov 12, 2021 4:00 PM Biden's Communist Treasury Nominee Wants All Bank Accounts to be Controlled by the Fed In September President Joe Biden nominated Saule Omarova to become comptroller of the currency at the Department of Treasury. If confirmed, Omarova would be in charge of overseeing banking in the United States. Omarova believes private bank accounts should be taken over and controlled by the Federal Reserve. "Imagine what it would be like instead of just a public option for deposit banking, this would be actually the full transition. In other words, there would be no more private bank deposit accounts and all of the deposit accounts will be held directly at the fed," Omarova said during recent remarks. "How is it politically feasible for the central bank to take money away from people's accounts." Proposal by Biden’s Treasury nominee Saule Omarova: "There will be no more private bank deposit accounts and all of the deposit accounts will be held directly at the fed" pic.twitter.com/ojQviX74Bz — Jewish Deplorable (@TrumpJew2) November 12, 2021 Omarova has also stated that in order for the country and the world to tackle climate change, governments must bankrupt the oil industry through regulation. Biden nominee Saule Omarova saying the quiet part out loud. On the oil, coal and gas industries: "We want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change." pic.twitter.com/luMR2HEMK9 — BidenNoms, A Project of AAF (@bidennoms) November 9, 2021 Omarova is a communist who grew up in the USSR. While in college at Moscow State University on a Lenin academic excellence scholarship, she titled her thesis, "Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital." Recommended The Lynching of Kyle Rittenhouse Derek Hunter If confirmed, Omarova would be in charge of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The OCC "charters, regulates, and supervises all national banks, federal savings associations, and federal branches and agencies of foreign banks." Biden's pick for Comptroller of the Currency blasted over past pro-communism remarks Omarova has praised the USSR in the past By Peter Aitken | Fox News Fox News Flash top headlines for October 3 Video Fox News Flash top headlines for October 3 Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. President Biden’s pick for Comptroller of the Currency has provoked sharp criticism for past and recent comments that praised the Soviet economy. Biden on Sept. 23 nominated Saul Omarova, a law school professor at Cornell University, for the office responsible with the regulation and supervision of all national banks. Omarova’s nomination drew immediate pushback from powerful voices who criticized her background and past comments that indicated a favor for the policies of the USSR. Omarova was born in the Soviet Union in what is now called Kazakhstan and graduated from Moscow State University in 1989. She has pointed to the USSR’s practices as recently as 2019, when she tweeted about the gender pay gap, citing the USSR as a better model. (Twitter) "Until I came to the US, I couldn’t imagine that things like gender pay gap still existed in today’s world," Omarova wrote. "Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best.’" Some officials were quick to release criticism and urge Biden to reconsider the nomination. SEN. SANDERS SAYS HIS INITIAL $6T SPENDING PACKAGE ‘TOO LITTLE,’ ‘AMERICANS’ SUPPORT ON ‘OUR SIDE’ "I have serious reservations about her nomination," U.S. Senate Banking Committee ranking member Pat Toomey, R-Pa., wrote. "Ms. Omarova has called for ‘radically reshaping the basic architecture and dynamics of modern finance’ including nationalizing retail banking and having the Federal Reserve allocate credit." "She has also advocated for ‘effectively ending banking as we know it,’" Toomey added. ARIZONA SENATOR KRYSTEN SINEMA FACES PROTESTERS IN PHOENIX: ‘CLOWN OF ARIZONA’ The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also wrote a letter in opposition to Omarova’s nomination, pointing to comments from 2020 that laid out her intention to reshape "the basic architecture and dynamics of modern finance." "The Chamber generally believes that presidents deserve some degree of deference towards their nominees," wrote Neil Bradley, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "That deference assumes nominees are inclined to the faithful execution of the law, not the pursuit of radical policy agendas inconsistent with the obligations of the position of trust they are being nominated to hold." DEMOCRAT TAMMY DUCKWORTH HASN'T PAID PROPERTY TAX ON HER ILLINOIS HOME SINCE 2016, REPORT SAYS "We believe someone who holds the expressed desire to ‘effectively ‘end banking’ as we know it’ should not serve as the primary regulator of this industry," Bradley stressed. Omarova’s comment that the government should "effectively ‘end banking’ as we know it" comes from a recently authored paper called "The People’s Ledger," to which Republicans and industry experts have pointed as prime evidence to disqualify Omarova. CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP "As comptroller, Ms. Omarova would supervise some 1,200 financial institutions," The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote in an op-ed. "While she couldn’t enact her People’s Agenda without legislation, she would have sweeping powers to punish banks that don’t follow her diktats. "Ms. Omarova is the wrong nominee for the wrong industry in the wrong country in the wrong century." The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy Cornell Legal Studies Research Paper No. 20-45 74 Vanderbilt Law Review 1231 (2021) 71 Pages Posted: 21 Oct 2020 Last revised: 15 Oct 2021 Saule T. Omarova Cornell University - Law School Date Written: October 20, 2020 Abstract The COVID-19 crisis underscored the urgency of digitizing sovereign money and ensuring universal access to banking services. It pushed two related ideas—the issuance of central bank digital currency and the provision of retail deposit accounts by central banks—to the forefront of the public policy debate. To date, however, the debate has not produced a coherent vision of how democratizing access to central bank money would—and should—transform and democratize the entire financial system. This lack of a systemic perspective obscures the enormity of the challenge and dilutes our ability to tackle it. This Article takes up that challenge. It offers a blueprint for a comprehensive restructuring of the central bank balance sheet as the basis for redesigning the core architecture of modern finance. Focusing on the U.S. Federal Reserve System (the Fed), the Article outlines a series of structural reforms that would radically redefine the role of a central bank as the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a democratic economy—the People’s Ledger. On the liability side of the ledger, the Article envisions the complete migration of demand deposit accounts to the Fed’s balance sheet and explores the full range of new, more direct and flexible, monetary policy tools enabled by this shift. On the asset side, it advocates a comprehensive qualitative restructuring of the Fed’s investment portfolio, which would maximize its capacity to channel credit to productive uses in the nation’s economy. This compositional overhaul of the Fed’s balance sheet would fundamentally alter the operations and systemic footprints of private banks, funds, derivatives dealers, and other financial institutions and markets. Analyzing these structural implications, the Article shows how the proposed reforms would make the financial system less complex, more stable, and more efficient in serving the long-term needs of the American people. Keywords: central banking, Federal Reserve, CBDC, digital dollar, digital currency, FedAccounts, central bank balance sheet, financial system, systemic risk, shadow banking, structural reform, Glass-Steagall, fintech, financial stability, monetary policy, National Investment Authority, infrastructure finance, Suggested Citation: Omarova, Saule T., The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy (October 20, 2020). Cornell Legal Studies Research Paper No. 20-45, 74 Vanderbilt Law Review 1231 (2021), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3715735 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3715735 Biden’s Pick for Comptroller of the Currency, Born and Raised in Communist USSR, Won’t Hand Over Her Thesis on Marxism Written When She Was in the USSR By Joe Hoft Published October 20, 2021 at 11:47am Comment Biden’s pick for Comptroller of the Currency was born and raised in communist USSR. Now she won’t hand over her university thesis on Marxism. We reported previously that Biden’s pick for Comptroller of the Currency was raised in communist USSR. Biden’s Pick for Comptroller of the Currency, Saule Omarova, Born In the USSR Is Known for Her Pro-Communist Remarks Ms. Omarova is the last pick you would make for Comptroller of the Currency if you were attempting to build a better and freer America. Now she won’t hand over the thesis she wrote from when she was in school in the USSR. TRENDING: MUST WATCH: Texas HHS DENIES Monoclonal Antibody Treatments For Whites - "If I Were Black or Hispanic Then I Would Qualify?" - Nurse: "Yep, That's Right" - (Video) Saule Omarova, President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), is refusing to hand over to the Senate Banking Committee her university thesis on Marxism written during her time in the Soviet Union. Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, ranking member of the committee, had sent a letter to Omarova on Oct. 6 asking the Cornell Law School professor to hand over her Moscow State University thesis, titled “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital,” by Oct. 13, citing the committee’s need to “fully assess the fitness of individuals to serve in Senate-confirmed executive and independent agency positions.” Omarova, who grew up in the Soviet Union, had scrubbed mention of the thesis from her resume, the Washington Free Beacon reported. She also praised the now-defunct socialist government for its lack of “gender pay gap” in 2019. This crackpot communist should not be working anywhere in our government. She’s an insane pick for the Comptroller of the Currency. Biden Banking Nominee Scrubs Karl Marx Paper From Résumé Saule Omarova attended Moscow State University on a Lenin scholarship Saule Omarova in 2018 / Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Chuck Ross • October 6, 2021 11:55 am President Joe Biden’s pick for the nation’s top banking regulator, who received a scholarship named for Vladimir Lenin, scrubbed her résumé of a reference to a thesis she wrote on Karl Marx while a student at Moscow State University. Saule Omarova, who Biden tapped to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, listed a paper titled "Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital" on her résumé as recently as 2017. But the paper was not disclosed on the version of the résumé reported last month by the Washington Free Beacon. Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.), the ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, pressed Omarova about the discrepancy in a letter on Tuesday asking her to hand over a copy of her report. Omarova, a professor at Cornell Law School, has already proved a controversial nominee. She has said she wants to "end banking as we know it" by providing bank services through the Federal Reserve rather than private banks. She has also proposed the creation of a federal agency called the National Investment Authority, which would coordinate long-term national economic strategy and infrastructure development for the United States. Omarova, who left the Soviet Union after graduating from Moscow State in 1989, has praised the Soviet Union for eliminating the gender pay gap. Toomey asked Omarova to provide a copy of the original thesis to the Senate banking committee by Oct. 13. He said in a statement that neither Omarova nor the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency agreed to hand over the thesis. He noted that presidential nominees are required to submit all copies of their published writings. Omarova did not respond to questions about the thesis or the revision to her résumé. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency also did not respond to requests for comment. Omarova has received support from progressive lawmakers and special interest groups who support more regulation of the banking system. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) called her nomination "tremendous news." The Sierra Club said that Omarova would erect "guardrails against Wall Street's risky fossil fuel investments" to fight "climate chaos."

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Cryptocurrency: Perry "The Censor" Metzger Appoints "Libertarian" Self To Define Word "Crypto"
by grarpamp 27 Nov '21

27 Nov '21

Matt Blaze sells out crypto.com, approves Tor Project Inc's Censorship Regime via his position on their Corporate Board. Cockroaches scatter, Closeted Fiat holdouts and apologists exposed, GovBankCorp panties all in a jam, Censors abound. Crypto is working ;) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/nov/18/crypto-cryptocurrency-cr… https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/05/crypto-com-mco/ Cryptographers are not happy with how you’re using the word ‘crypto’ The renamed Crypto.com Arena is a win for cryptocurrency fans but strikes a blow against the word’s original meaning Construction workers put the finishing touches on the Staples Center sign outside the arena in downtown Los Angeles on 16 September 1999. Construction workers put the finishing touches on the Staples Center sign outside the arena in downtown Los Angeles on 16 September 1999. Photograph: Xerro Ryan Covarrubias/AP Matthew Cantor @CantorMatthew Thu 18 Nov 2021 16.14 GMT Last modified on Fri 19 Nov 2021 20.13 GMT The stadium that is home to the Los Angeles Lakers is getting a new name: the Crypto.com Arena. The name reflects the arena’s new sponsorship agreement with a Singapore-based cryptocurrency trading platform. That may be good news for cryptocurrency fanatics – but perhaps not so much for another faction within the digital landscape: cryptographers. Look up the word “crypto” in Webster’s dictionary, and you’ll see it refers to cryptography, which in turn is defined as “the computerized encoding and decoding of information”. Search “crypto” on Google, however, and you’ll see a host of top results pointing to cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum. This lexical shift has weighed heavily on cryptographers, who, over the past few years, have repeated the rallying cry “Crypto means cryptography” on social media. T-shirts and hoodies trumpet the phrase and variations on it; there’s a website dedicated solely to clarifying the issue. “‘Crypto’ for decades has been used as shorthand and as a prefix for things related to cryptography,” said Amie Stepanovich, executive director of Silicon Flatirons Center at the University of Colorado Law School and creator of the pro-cryptography T-shirts, which have become a hit at conferences. “In fact, in the term cryptocurrency, the prefix crypto refers back to cryptography.” Why yes, I do have a picture of myself in one of my favorite tees! pic.twitter.com/EaK17c8zOC — Lea Kissner (@LeaKissner) November 17, 2021 It’s often a losing battle, and that appears to have played out in the case of crypto.com itself. Beginning in 1993, as the Verge reported, the crypto.com domain was owned by Matt Blaze, a cryptography expert who repeatedly rejected would-be buyers – even as the rise of cryptocurrency meant he could have made millions of dollars. “I think calling cryptocurrencies ‘crypto’ is a poor choice, with bad consequences for both cryptography and cryptocurrencies,” he tweeted in 2018. Ultimately, however, the domain was sold, and now if you go to Crypto.com you’ll see a giant video of Matt Damon indicating that investing in cryptocurrencies is roughly as courageous as scaling an icy cliff or blasting into space. Yet there remains an internecine feud among the tech savvy about the word. As Parker Higgins of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, who has spent years involved in cryptography activism, pointed out, the cryptography crowd is by nature deeply invested in precision – after all, designing and cracking codes is an endeavor in which, if you get things “a little wrong, it can blow the whole thing up”. There are global debates over both cryptography – for instance, questions over whether chat services should offer “backdoors” that skirt encryption – and the regulation of cryptocurrency. “There is a need to distinguish between those two areas to avoid absolutely foreseeable confusion,” Stepanovich said, a particular issue when it comes to “legislators and regulators who are not always subject matter experts in these areas, even if they are charged with overseeing them”. Higgins agreed. “Crypto as shorthand for cryptography really was in widespread use. You could talk about crypto even on Capitol Hill and people would know what you were talking about – that really did hold a lot of, forgive this, but currency.” And at a time when many still aren’t sure what cryptocurrency is, the confusion over the terms just makes things muddier. “Strong cryptography is a cornerstone of the way that people talk about privacy and security, and it has been under attack for decades” by governments, law enforcement, and “all sorts of bad actors”, Higgins said. For its defenders, confusion over terminology creates yet another challenge. PSA: Crypto means Cryptography. #usesec18 cc @mattblaze @astepanovich pic.twitter.com/E5WTIanwCE — Kurt Opsahl (@kurtopsahl) August 15, 2018 Stepanovich acknowledged the challenge of opposing the trend, but said the weight of history is on her side. “The study of crypto has been around for ever,” she said. “The most famous code is known as the Caesar cipher, referring to Julius Caesar. This is not new.” Cryptocurrency, on the other hand, is a relatively recent development, and she is not ready to concede to “a concept that may or may not survive government regulation”. She remains invested in the linguistic debate because it’s so closely linked to policy. “Allowing people to develop and use encryption is hugely important in protecting human rights, privacy and protecting the basis on which cryptocurrency has been built,” Stepanovich said. “We all have hills we are willing to die on – this might be mine.”

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Right-wing politics has been embroiled in a cryptocurrency story - again
by professor rat 26 Nov '21

26 Nov '21

Conservatives around America may be getting excited about the LGB and FJB coins, but they aren’t exactly taking the crypto world by storm. The LGB coin is currently worth $0.00000095, with an unknown market cap. The FJB coin doesn’t even feature on CoinGecko. Yet, this is not the first time right-wing politics has been embroiled in a cryptocurrency story. Earlier this year, an investigation revealed that Andrew Anglin—founder of the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer—received approximately $5 million worth of Bitcoin since January 2017. https://decrypt.co/86923/conservative-pundits-us-pump-right-wing-cryptocurr… Link not endorsement, etc

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Cryptocurrency: Economic Morons Declare Debasement Is Moral
by grarpamp 26 Nov '21

26 Nov '21

https://mises.org/wire/joe-weisenthal-thinks-debasing-dollar-moral-thing-do Joe Weisenthal Thinks Debasing The Dollar Is The Moral Thing To Do https://www.bobmurphyshow.com/episodes/ep-26-capital-and-interest-in-the-au… https://www.bobmurphyshow.com/episodes/ep-28-capital-and-interest-in-the-au… https://www.bobmurphyshow.com/episodes/ep-31-capital-and-interest-in-the-au… https://twitter.com/TheStalwart/status/1460636183860588547 https://twitter.com/BobMurphyEcon/status/1460725467992973316 https://mises.org/library/human-action-0/html/pp/804 Joe Weisenthal is an editor and host at Bloomberg who has recently been using his large Twitter platform to cast stones at the inflation hawks. In one recent thread, Weisenthal mocked the people worried about the falling purchasing power of the US dollar, and claimed in fact that it would be immoral for currency to maintain its value over time. As we’ll see, although Weisenthal’s thought experiment of a time traveler is a bit whimsical, it provides a good opportunity for us to explore the underlying economics. The whole episode underscores, once again, why the Austrian school provides the public with a beacon of light amid the confusion of our financial punditry. Weisenthal’s Time Traveler Below is the original tweet, which is largely self-explanatory, though interested readers can see me grappling with Weisenthal by clicking here. In context, Weisenthal (and Adam Singer) are poking fun at the Ron Paul–types who are upset at the steady decline in the dollar’s purchasing power since the Fed was formed in late 1913. Weisenthal thinks it is absurd to expect that actual currency would maintain its market value over the course of a century. Why, what would such a “hoarder” have done to benefit society all that while? Shrinking the Time Scale To cut to the chase, Weisenthal is completely mistaken: there was nothing immoral about the classical gold standard and its maintenance of the dollar’s purchasing power over long stretches. But it will be easier to pinpoint the flaw in Weisenthal’s thinking if we first consider a simple story. Suppose Joey is a teenager who cuts lawns for extra income and he typically makes $25 a weekend. Joey wants to buy a $300 Xbox, so he saves his weekly lawn-mowing money under his mattress. After three months, Joey takes the saved $300 in cash to the mall and buys the coveted electronics. Does Joe Weisenthal have a problem with this scenario? Did the market economy function immorally by allowing Joey to transfer his purchasing power from the start of the summer to the end of the summer? Was Joey supposed to have done something in addition to cutting lawns to earn the ability to defer his potential consumption through time? I trust Weisenthal would not object to Joey saving up his currency over the summer. But then, what is the principled difference between Joey’s three-month deferral and Weisenthal’s time traveler who executed a hundred-year consumption deferral? Present Goods Trade at a Premium for Future Goods In fact, not only should a time traveler not be penalized for deferring consumption a century, he should be actively rewarded. This is because present goods are more valuable than future goods. (Note that we are here getting into some very technical issues. The interested reader can check out my three-part podcast series—one, two, and three—to hear the intricate details of interest theory in the Austrian tradition.) So to go back to the original tweets, if a guy in 1921 has two quarters in his pocket, and that would be enough for him to buy a delicious hamburger, then for his willingness to effectively trade away his 1921 hamburger for a burger to be delivered in 2021, the guy should at least get to trade at par. And in fact, he would (normally) be able to obtain a promise for more than one burger in the future, since the former are more valued. (This is no more mysterious than one present burger trading for more than one present hot dog.) It’s easy to understand why, subjectively, people would need to be promised a greater number of goods in the future to give up potentially consuming their goods today. But how, mechanically, can the borrowers deliver on these promises? How is it possible, technologically speaking, to transform 100 units of present goods into (say) 150 units of future goods? The answer is that the longer we are willing to wait, generally speaking, the greater physical output we can obtain for a given amount of today’s inputs. Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk famously referred to the superior physical productivity of wisely chosen, more roundabout processes. For example, if a man is in the woods and wants to get water from a stream into his nearby cabin, he has different techniques he could use. A very fast and direct method is to cup his hands and run back and forth from the stream to his cabin. This delivers some water to his cabin very quickly, but the yield—measured in gallons of water per hour of his labor—is also very low. An intermediate method would be to hollow out two coconuts to make little buckets, and then go back and forth armed with the newly created capital goods. This would take longer to get the initial water to his cabin, but once the process is underway, it would deliver far more gallons per hour of invested labor—even including the time spent constructing the buckets. Finally, the man might take several months digging a small path from the stream to his cabin, so that the water flowed directly to him. Once completed, his renovations would be extremely productive if we measure in terms of water volume per hour of his labor time. And so we see society would be willing and able to reward Weisenthal’s hypothetical time traveler for earning $100 in 1921 and then postponing his consumption for a century. The real resources that would have gone into satisfying him in 1921 would be freed up to be invested in longer processes, which had a higher physical yield. To put it simply, it makes perfect sense that a 1921 hamburger would trade on the forward market for several 2021 hamburgers. Bonds versus Cash We can really see the weakness in Weisenthal’s analysis if we suppose the time traveler took his original cash and deposited it into a savings account at the bank. Would it be immoral for a bank account to have $100 in 1921, and to grow to more than that amount by 2021? Or for another example, what if the time traveler from 1921 initially bought a very long-term bond that would come due in 2021? The time traveler jams the bond into his pocket, activates the time machine, and shows up at Weisenthal’s doorstep. He asks Joe to help him cash his matured bond (and working at Bloomberg, Weisenthal is just the guy). The time traveler is pleased to discover that the nominal interest he earned on the hundred-year bond is just enough to have maintained his purchasing power, since goods are much more expensive than the traveler is used to seeing. Has the market economy behaved immorally by allowing such a transaction to occur? In principle, the same type of intertemporal trade occurs if people invest their savings not in bank account balances or bonds, but instead in the accumulation of actual cash. Even here, the initial drop in consumption frees up real resources that can be channeled into the production of a greater amount of future goods. As Ludwig von Mises explains in Human Action: If an individual employs a sum of money not for consumption but for the purchase of factors of production, saving is directly turned into capital accumulation. If the individual saver employs his additional savings for increasing his cash holding because this is in his eyes the most advantageous mode of using them, he brings about a tendency toward a fall in commodity prices and a rise in the monetary unit's purchasing power. If we assume that the supply of money in the market system does not change, this conduct on the part of the saver will not directly influence the accumulation of capital and its employment for an expansion of production. The effect of our saver's saving, i.e., the surplus of goods produced over goods consumed, does not disappear on account of his hoarding. The prices of capital goods do not rise to the height they would have attained in the absence of such hoarding. But the fact that more capital goods are available is not affected by the striving of a number of people to increase their cash holdings. If nobody employs the goods—the nonconsumption of which brought about the additional saving—for an expansion of his consumptive spending, they remain as an increment in the amount of capital goods available, whatever their prices may be. Those two processes—increased cash holding of some people and increased capital accumulation—take place side by side. It is a fascinating topic to ponder the ideal money (if such a concept makes sense) and whether its purchasing power would fall, rise, or remain steady over long periods. What we can say for certain is that rapid and unpredictable changes are undesirable, because a wildly fluctuating money defeats the effectiveness of monetary calculation, which is one of the underpinnings of civilization itself. To wit, double-entry bookkeeping only works when the money units of revenues and costs are comparable. Conclusion Contrary to Joe Weisenthal’s musings, there is nothing immoral if a money retains its purchasing power over long stretches. In general, when people channel their savings into conventional vehicles (such as bank accounts or bonds), this frees up real resources that can be used to yield a greater physical amount of output down the road. In principle, holding currency could be merely a different financial asset for achieving the same purpose.

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MAGA-world is lousy with Russian agents.
by professor rat 26 Nov '21

26 Nov '21

description of the significance of Rinat Akhmetov https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1464282355980541953

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