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Cryptocurrency: The Trojan Horse For Freedom
by grarpamp 02 Nov '21

02 Nov '21

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-is-a-trojan-horse-for-freedom Bitcoin Is A Trojan Horse For Freedom In Book II of Virgil’s epic poem “The Aeneid,” one of the most iconic plotlines of classical mythology unfolds with trickery and subterfuge. The Greek forces, having failed to capture the City of Troy after a decade-long siege, attempt an ultimate attack on their enemy not by strength, but by guile, through a clever plan hatched by Ulysses. In the fields outside of Troy’s impregnable walls, the Greek army departs, but leaves behind a massive wooden horse. A lone remaining soldier leads the Trojans to believe that the horse is a tribute to Minerva, the goddess of war and strategy, and is an apology for the blood that the Greeks spilled. The Trojans think their rival has sailed off in surrender, and — despite warnings from Cassandra and Laocoön, who gives us the famous saying “beware of Greeks bearing gifts” — they bring the horse into the city as a trophy of victory. Blinded by zeal, they think it will make them invincible. Little do they know, the horse is packed with armed soldiers, who, under cover of night, slip out and open the gates for their comrades waiting outside, who had hidden their fleet behind an island in the nearby sea. The Greeks sack the city, and Troy falls, defeated from the inside by its new treasure. Thousands of years later, the “Trojan Horse” has been popularized in computer science as a malicious program disguised as a helpful update. But it is also an effective metaphor for how Bitcoin stealthily co-opts actors who do not care about or do not like freedom to promote it anyway. The meme begins with wealthy individuals, corporations, and, soon, governments, which see bitcoin as glittering digital gold. Out of self-preservation and greed, they are incentivized to buy, mine or one day tax this new prize to accumulate the soundest money and gain an advantage over their rivals. Bitcoin does after all, on its exterior, look very appealing: it is the best-performing financial asset in the world over the past 12 years. Bitcoin’s trillion-dollar success is attracting interest from the rich and powerful everywhere from Wall Street to Beijing to Silicon Valley. In the last year, Bitcoin FOMO has seeped into the minds of professional investors, corporate treasury managers and even sovereign wealth funds who do not want to get left behind. As a recent Bloomberg headline announced, “Bitcoin is displacing gold as an inflation hedge.” The article shows how value is demonstrably flowing out of gold and into bitcoin. Companies like Tesla and Square star among a growing group of dozens adding the new currency to their balance sheets. NYDIG is introducing the multi-trillion dollar insurance industry to bitcoin as a hedge against declining yields. As MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor says, Bitcoin is the hardest money and acts, over time, like a one-way street. Just as no Argentine wants to “cash out” their U.S. dollars back into pesos, ultimately, few will want to “cash out” their bitcoin back into dollars. It is early days now, but it is hard to overstate the eventual impact that Bitcoin will have not just on the $10 trillion gold market but the $20 trillion art and collectible market, the $100 trillion stock market, the $225 trillion real estate market and the $250 trillion bond market over the coming decades. But Bitcoin is not just “number go up” technology. Hidden behind the eye-popping gains is a powerful “freedom go up” technology that its new adopters are, knowingly or not, pushing forward. NGU and FGU are inextricable. Bitcoin’s decentralized digital cash did not emerge from Y Combinator, but rather was the holy grail of the cypherpunks, a group of civil liberties advocates concerned about how personal freedoms could survive the great electronic transformation of society. Their goals were to separate money from governments and corporations, check the growth of the global surveillance state, and preserve human rights in an increasingly digital age. Satoshi Nakamoto’s greatest trick was to animate these aspirations into something that looks like and functions as digital gold. So, while, yes, Bitcoin gives anyone — regardless of their nationality, status, wealth, gender, race or beliefs — access to the best savings technology on the planet, it also gives them unstoppable, programmable money that cannot be debased or censored and that fights surveillance and confiscation. Dissidents, democracy protestors, opposition leaders and independent journalists worldwide are beginning to realize this, from Minsk to Lagos to Los Angeles to Buenos Aires. World leaders speak pretty words about human rights, but when they get down to brass tacks, the platitudes are swept aside. As a reminder of this cold reality, refer to the dictators on the U.N. “Human Rights” Council or the Financial Action Task Force (FATF); the list of household corporate names sponsoring the 2022 genocide Olympics; or the roster of Wall Street icons who attended Saudi Arabia’s “Davos in the Desert.” As human rights activists know well, it can be hard to effectively promote freedom in a society that willingly sells morals out for profit. Bitcoin sneaks in and rewires the system from the inside, aligning profit seeking with permissionless financial liberation. But who conjured this horse and dragged it to the city gates? This time, it was not a plotting army camped outside Wall Street. Satoshi’s creation spreads not by force, but by voluntary choice. The financial establishment is simply beginning to like the way it looks. It promises great riches, and that is no mirage: it will continue to deliver. But most of the elites do not realize what they are bringing into the inner sanctum. In a world of increasingly-centralized control and social engineering, Bitcoin provides a check by empowering the individual at the expense of the authority. Yes, billionaires and dictators can buy a lot of bitcoin, but they cannot control the system as they can with fiat money. Unlike with the dollar, euro or yuan model, they cannot tweak issuance, censor transactions, make special rules or bailouts for the aristocracy, or perform mass remote confiscation or debasement. Of course, governments and corporations will try to hijack Bitcoin for their own ends. Some already have. “The Blocksize War” is a book that chronicles the attempts of Chinese billionaires and Silicon Valley titans to forcibly transform Bitcoin from a freedom tool into a retail payments mechanism. These attempts failed because the network lacks a single point of control. And Bitcoin is more clever than any Trojan Horse that Virgil or Homer could have imagined. In this plotline, each individual can custody their bitcoin by moving it to an address they control with a set of digital keys. Unlike in 1933, when the U.S. government was able to seize the gold of citizens with Executive Order 6102 by attacking points of custody, that does not work if hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans are holding their keys. The adoption process is creating millions of new fortresses in cyberspace, all more secure than Troy. The ancient Greeks and Romans would appreciate the irony of megacorps and governments willingly and even enthusiastically letting the one thing that can erode their growing power into their city gates. Number Go Up is one hell of a drug. In some ways, Bitcoin has succeeded so far by hiding behind its strangeness. Just as the Trojans were baffled by the monstrous horse standing outside their city gates, the establishment has balked at Bitcoin. It has gone from $0 to $60,000 with most people on earth not batting an eye. Less than 2 percent of humans have adopted it, but more than that, it seems, have mocked it. Even today, in April 2021, virtually all top economists, political scientists, diplomats and central bankers still dismiss Bitcoin as something that will not work or is not worth their time. This dismissal has allowed Bitcoin to grow largely unfettered. And now the horse has been rolled inside the city. What the Davos establishment thought was just NGU tech was also FGU tech. This alignment of incentives is sorely needed in a world that depends too often on altruism and empathy. Take the global struggle for human rights. The international business community mostly overlooks the Chinese Communist Party’s Uyghur gulags, subjugation of Hong Kong, staggering surveillance state and colonization of Tibet. In this scenario, self-interest and freedom are in conflict: to save profits, companies, celebrities, athletes and heads of state sacrifice morals and either cave to Beijing’s demands or keep silent about its brutality. Even philanthropists are failing on freedom. The “Effective Altruism” movement, for example, completely ignores civil liberties. With Bitcoin, self-interest and freedom are aligned. Even if one has zero altruism, as one buys or mines bitcoin, they drive up the network’s security model and make a more robust freedom tool for everyone else. Refreshingly, Bitcoin does not care about one’s intentions. It enables greater liberty and empowerment not by some ambitious humanitarianism but by each participant’s honest self-preservation. And this dynamic continues to expand. For instance, bitcoin exchanges today are not adopting the Lightning Network for privacy reasons — they are adopting it to reduce fees — but they are spreading the freedom tech anyway as they popularize a way to transact off-chain on an onion-routed second layer. On the horizon, a Bitcoin upgrade called Cross Input Signature Aggregation (or SigAgg for short) could incentivize exchanges to engage in collaborative spends which would fluster the surveillance state. Again, corporations will not push this privacy improvement for moral reasons but to improve their bottom line. This is Bitcoin’s game theory: transforming greed into freedom. Tesla stacking bitcoin does not just help Tesla. It increases Bitcoin’s global network effect, driving up the interest and price, attracting more developers and improving UX, increasing the number of miners and strengthening network security, and multiplying new HODLers in a giant positive feedback loop. To recap: Bitcoin will continue to gain worldwide adoption because of its effectiveness as digital gold, but hidden within the prized Trojan Horse is a remarkable freedom technology. At this point, the reader may think Bitcoin proponents must be saying, “Quiet in the back! Keep the noise down. We just need to last a few more hours until midnight, and then we can pop ourselves out of this horse and let the rest of our army into Troy.” But it is already too late. There is nothing the Trojans can do. Authoritarian regimes will inevitably want to stack sats. Some already have found Bitcoin a helpful tool to escape sanctions, including Venezuela, Iran and North Korea. But over time, the officials tasked with storing and spending the bitcoin will learn what it is — money the government cannot control — and they will share that knowledge with others, trickling it down through society. Just like “Trojan Horse” computer viruses, Bitcoin will infect authoritarian regimes, appearing helpful at first but proving debilitating over time. Some miss this and misinterpret the Trojan Horse allegory. A small but influential chorus of American critics say Bitcoin is an enemy of a free society like the United States, and that it is unpatriotic and even treasonous. In reality, Bitcoin will be a lot more difficult for authoritarian, closed societies like China to deal with than open ones like America. We already have property rights, checks and balances and free speech — all values that Bitcoin reinforces. But these three things are diametrically opposed to what the Chinese Communist Party is trying to achieve. Bitcoin will, over time, erode the control that tyrannies like the CCP have over their citizens. And given that Bitcoin checks arbitrary power and the surveillance state, it may help steer open societies in a better direction, too. Today, tens of millions of people already own bitcoin. They are happy about the value it gives and the value it will continue to provide. They own a piece of digital real estate on a board that cannot be expanded. But most do not read the fine print. They did not see the newspaper headline buried in the Genesis Block, or notice details like Satoshi Nakamoto’s chosen birth date, or study the history of the cypherpunks. At its core, Bitcoin was built to break us free from the existing system. It is the red pill. And all adopters are going to play a part in the revolution, whether they want to or not. Many authoritarians may already realize what is concealed in Bitcoin’s Trojan Horse. There are plenty of Lacoöns and Cassandras saying, “We need to stop this thing!” But, just like in the kingdoms of lore, these words will fall on deaf ears. The prize glitters too brightly.

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Cryptocurrency: Check Your Financial Privilege
by grarpamp 02 Nov '21

02 Nov '21

Check Your Financial Privilege https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/check-your-financial-privilege In the eyes of most Western elites, investors, journalists and academics, Bitcoin rates anywhere from an annoyance to a disaster. Just a few days ago, American billionaire Charlie Munger described Bitcoin as “disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization.” Warren Buffett, once the world’s richest person, sat next to Munger in obvious agreement. He has said Bitcoin is “a delusion” and “rat poison squared,” and has warned that he is sorry about its rise “because people get their hopes up that something like that is gonna change their lives.” Bill Gates, who also used to be the world’s richest person, has said Bitcoin is a “greater fool theory” investment, and that he would short it, if he could. HBO host Bill Maher skewered Bitcoin in an extended segment on his show, saying that the new currency’s promoters are “money-hungry opportunists.” A few weeks earlier, The New York Times ran a story that said Bitcoin will “ruin the planet.” Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf has long pegged it as “ideal for criminals, terrorists, and money launderers.” Prominent Ivy League economist Jeffrey Sachs has said that Bitcoin offers “nothing of social value,” while former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief and European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has called it a tool for “totally reprehensible money laundering activity.” Over the past decade, these financial experts, reporters and policymakers have continuously pounded the narrative that Bitcoin is risky, dangerous, bad for humans and bad for the planet. They are wrong, and they are blinded mainly by their financial privilege. How Financial Privilege Blinds Dollar Users To Bitcoin’s Importance The critics cited above are all wealthy citizens of advanced economies, where they benefit from liberal democracy, property rights, free speech, a functioning legal system and relatively stable reserve currencies like the dollar or pound. In reality, only 13% of our planet’s population is born into the dollar, euro, Japanese yen, British pound, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar or Swiss Franc. The other 87% are born into autocracy or considerably less trustworthy currencies. 4.3 billion people live under authoritarianism, and 1.2 billion people live under double- or triple-digit inflation. Critics in the dollar bubble miss the bigger global picture: that anyone with access to the internet can now participate in Bitcoin, a new money system with equal rules for all participants, running on a network that does not censor or discriminate, used by individuals who do not need to show a passport or an ID and held by citizens in a way that is hard to confiscate and impossible to debase. While Western headlines focus on Coinbase going public, Tesla buying billions of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin and tech bros getting fabulously rich, there is a quiet revolution happening worldwide. Until now, governments and corporations have controlled the rules of money. That is changing. To learn more, the author spoke to Bitcoin users in Sudan, Nigeria and Ethiopia, three countries with a combined population of 366 million, well in excess of the number of individuals living in the United States. The three speak for millions whose lived experience is much closer to that of the average person on this planet. Gates, Munger and Buffett may not have recently dealt with conflict and violence, black markets, relentless inflation, political repression, and rampant corruption in their daily routine, but most do. And yet, these Bitcoiners are more hopeful for the future than the doomers listed above. For them, Bitcoin is a protest, a lifeline and a way out. Here are their stories. Bitcoin In Nigeria Ire Aderinokun is a Nigerian entrepreneur. She is a front-end developer and user interface designer from Lagos and is the cofounder, COO and vice president of engineering at Buycoins, a cryptocurrency exchange that went through Y Combinator in 2018 and is now one of the most popular places to buy bitcoin in West Africa. She is a prolific writer, speaker, organizer and activist and one of the founding members of the Feminist Coalition, a group that champions equality for women in Nigerian society. Aderinokun talked about Nigeria as a melting pot, like the U.S. of Africa. Three big ethnic groups dominate the country, but the population is split into hundreds of different tribes. This is a strength, but also a challenge, as it is hard to bring so many different people together. The country is governed through a predominantly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south, and the national leadership rotates between these constituencies. Nigeria has the largest economy in Africa, and the largest population with more than 200 million citizens, but much of the wealth is tied to the export of oil. Like in many rentier states, there is massive corruption and inequality: while the fabulously rich jetset around the world, six Nigerians are impoverished every minute. People who have wealth and power, Aderinokun said, do not let it trickle down. This has resulted in a situation where in major urban areas such as Abuja and Lagos, there are countless lawyers, for instance, working in restaurants, toiling away in careers that are professionally beneath them, because there are not enough opportunities. Millions head to the big cities for jobs, only to come up empty handed. As a result, Aderinokun said the country struggles with unemployment, especially among the youth. 62% of the population is under 25 years old. Out of this crisis, however, are upsides. She credits Nigerians with being incredibly entrepreneurial. People do what they need to do to get by, and having a side hustle, she said, is natural. Part of this need to hustle relates to the country’s economic situation, where the official inflation rate now stands around 15%, with food inflation even higher. In her personal experience, Aderinokun has seen the naira decline from 100 per dollar to 500 per dollar. People, she said, are quite aware that the elites are stealing from the citizens through debasement. It is expected. So much so that when one’s family or friend gets a government job, she said, there is an assumption that they will provide for you and a circle of others. The money trickles down through nepotism and the people at the top get fat. This is an example of the Cantillon effect in action, where those closest to the point of money creation benefit at the expense of the rest. Growing up, she saw people try to keep their money in dollars, or send it abroad or buy real estate. This was how Nigerians could protect the fruits of their time and energy, but only a handful had these options. Now, Bitcoin is changing the game, allowing more people to save like never before. Anyone with internet access now has an escape from their unreliable and exploitative national monetary system. Aderinokun got her start in Bitcoin with a Coinbase account in 2016. She and her friends initially thought: could we use this new technology to send money abroad? As it turned out, Bitcoin was easier and faster for sending money from Nigeria to the U.S. than traditional means. So she decided to launch BuyCoins. Paystack — the Nigerian tech giant — was just a few years old then and she is grateful that it existed at the time, as it allowed BuyCoins to reach customers and create an experience that otherwise would have been impossible. At first, the payment component of Bitcoin was what really attracted Aderinokun, the idea that it could be easy instead of hard to send money from one place to another, skipping over national borders. This, she thought, is something Bitcoin can fix. Beyond the exchange itself, BuyCoins also released an app called SendCash. At first, it helped people outside of Nigeria send money home. Perhaps a family member moved to the U.S., and they want to send dollars back. The recipient would normally need a domiciliary account in dollars, but Aderinokun said those are difficult to open. Even then, going from dollars to naira can be hard. They thought: could Bitcoin help streamline the process? With SendCash, users in the U.S. send bitcoin to the app, and it deposits as naira a few minutes later in any Nigerian bank account. Today, the app also sends naira to the U.S. or Ghana, all using bitcoin as a payment rail. Aderinokun said that around 45% of the Nigerian population has internet access. So is her mission worth it, if a majority of Nigerians still cannot even access Bitcoin? She said this is a dilemma she often ponders. There are countless IDPs (internally-displaced persons) across Nigeria who cannot accept cryptocurrency because they do not have a smartphone. In the end, she said, the work and mission is worth it, because even though there are many who do not have a feature phone or smartphone, there are millions who do, and those individuals are sharing access to smart apps with those who do not have them. As for the Gates and Buffets of the world: Aderinokun said some of Bitcoin’s critics may have valid points to debate, around, for example, the environmental impact — but she takes issue with Western elites saying there is no upside, or that it is a ponzi scheme, or that it is just for fun. They do not understand, she said, how important Bitcoin is for those who cannot get dollars. For billions, they are trapped in a flawed currency that does not fulfill the purpose of what currency is supposed to do. For many in Nigeria and beyond, Bitcoin is providing another option and solving real problems. Is it just helping the rich? Aderinokun laughed and said: this is not the case at all. It is providing employment, it is helping people convert their naira to other currencies, it is enabling commerce where it was not previously possible. With the Feminist Coalition, it helped people overcome financial repression and the freezing of activist bank accounts. This is not, she said, just a case of people sitting around watching the price. Moving forward, Aderinokun thinks more education is essential. Nigerians are still very misinformed about Bitcoin. The main reason they know about it, she said, is because the price keeps going up, and many do not see past that. Scams are a huge obstacle. Finally though, she said, people are beginning to understand. They know bitcoin is volatile, but they see that it goes up and to the right over time, instead of down and to the right like the naira. She also wants to focus on building bridges and ramps between the naira and cryptocurrencies. BuyCoins works with a naira stablecoin, the NGNT, which she said can also be helpful to people without traditional bank accounts. And building on- and off-ramps matters, because the Nigerian government has BuyCoins and other exchanges in its crosshairs. Recently, the regime pronounced Bitcoin as not legal tender and said banks should not hold or treat it as such. They later clarified that individuals could still trade, but have pressured regulated financial institutions to stay away. BuyCoins has been struggling to hold naira because banks do not want to work with it. But now, Aderinokun said, it has shifted to a peer-to-peer solution. When users need to go in and out of naira, depositors and withdrawals are matched in a marketplace. Aderinokun does not actually think it is possible to effectively ban Bitcoin. The most the government can do, perhaps, is what it has already done — forcing institutions to stay away. But it cannot stop individuals from using hardware wallets or conducting peer-to-peer activity in a place like Nigeria. No one, she said, can stop me. It is like saying it could ban Facebook, she said. It could shut down the internet, but that would have disastrous consequences for the whole nation. What the government should be doing instead, she said, is trying to understand Bitcoin, and working with exchanges to allow Nigerians to connect to the world around them. Aderinokun does not think the government should have an adversarial attitude. In fact, she believes Bitcoin can help it. Maybe it would even be a good thing if the Nigerian government figured out Bitcoin before other nations. But, she said, for the moment it is not even close to understanding how Bitcoin works. When asked if it is using blockchain surveillance or spying on individual transactions, she laughed. It does not have the abilities or know-how yet, she said. As for the future, Aderinokun is hopeful, because she has seen Bitcoin’s potential. She watched it shine in the context of human rights and activism. Last October, in the middle of nationwide protests against SARS, a notorious special police unit that was terrorizing citizens across the country, the Feminist Coalition began accepting donations via Flutterwave, a fintech product. This started off well enough, but then the regime started cracking down. Its bank accounts were shuttered. Bitcoin was the only option left. There was no other way to receive, store and spend money. For Aderinokun and her cofounders, this was an eye-opening moment. They ended up setting up a BTCPay server to process gifts from around the world in a way that avoided address reuse and protected donor privacy. Celebrities including Jack Dorsey shared the link, and they raised more than 7 BTC. It was a great learning experience, she said, as many young people learned about Bitcoin in this moment as a tool for activism. The experience renewed and strengthened her belief in products she is building at BuyCoins. People saw that Bitcoin was cool, and that the government could not stop it. Because of this, Aderinokun thinks that one day, Bitcoin will be talked about in the same way, with the same importance, as radio, the TV and the internet. Asked if she is worried about a world where the government can no longer control the money, she said no, she is hopeful. Just printing more money, she said, has its downsides. Taking that option away is not necessarily a bad thing. Bitcoin In Sudan Mo, also known as Sudan HODL, is a Sudanese doctor. He currently lives abroad in Europe, practicing medicine to support his family back home. Mo sees his country with brutally clear eyes. He described the capital of Khartoum as a crowded, diverse megacity, filled with pockets of extravagant wealth, surrounded by an enormous belt of poverty. It is a city of contradictions, he said, where palatial residences sit next to utter destitution. Mo has worked in Darfur, where he described the lack of development as simply stunning. There is no educational or health infrastructure. During his time there, he was one of three or four doctors treating hundreds of thousands of people. There was a total lack of primary care and there were no pediatric hospitals. He was treating women who suffered from fistula. The national ruling class, he said, did not invest in these places. Warlords ultimately filled the power vacuum, with the youth choosing violence instead of school as a way to get ahead. Mo told a tortured history of his country. Sudan, he said, has been living through a vicious cycle of military coups and authoritarian rule ever since gaining its independence from the British Empire and losing its fragile first democracy. Islam, Mo said, did not come to Sudan by violence but through traders and Sufis. He said his Muslim ancestors historically had a peaceful interpretation of their religion. But in the 1980s, the rise of Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth led to the export of the extremist and militant ideology of Wahhabism to many places around the world, including Sudan. Wahhabism was foreign to Sudan’s culture but was forced into the country’s political structure. By 1983, military governments had allied themselves with the Muslim Brotherhood and imposed Sharia law, alienating the predominantly Christian and animist south. A democratic revolution in 1985 was short-lived, as Islamists led by Omar al-Bashir staged another coup in 1989, paving the way for three decades of his rule. Society was militarized and the intelligentsia were purged. Now if one spoke out against the regime, Mo said, they were not just speaking out against them: they were speaking against Islam. They were against God himself. This gave Bashir an excuse for his brutality and new jihads against ethnic minorities. Since colonial times, minorities in South Sudan and Darfur had resisted authority from strongmen in far-away Khartoum. The seeds of this tension were planted in the 1950s when these populations fell under postcolonial Arab rule. Over time, these minority groups rebelled, only to be violently subjugated. The bloodshed peaked in Darfur in the early 2000s, when Bashir committed genocide, using the Janjaweed militias to murder hundreds of thousands and displace millions of people. This triggered the U.S. and EU to increase sanctions against Sudan, cutting it off more deeply from the outside world. Mo thinks it is important to share Sudan’s economic history, often overshadowed by the political story. In addition to the extreme inequality on display in Khartoum, there is a bigger picture of low-income workers trying to catch up to high inflation, while those closer to the regime managed to do well. Infrastructure decayed and the average person suffered while Bashir and his cronies loaded up on weapons, real estate and foreign assets. Modern Sudan is another vivid and tragic example of the Cantillon effect. It was not always like this. Mo said that under the gold standard, three Sudanese pounds once bought a dollar. There was a middle class, and Khartoum was known as the London of North Africa. But in 1960, the Sudanese central bank took over and devalued the currency, the first instance of what would happen many times over the coming decades. When Bashir seized power in 1989, he installed a regime of economic terrorism. To instill fear in the population, he chose to make an example of a young man named Majdi Mahjoub, who was a single child living at home, looking after his elderly parents. A Christian minority in a community of traders, Majdi had possession of a few thousand U.S. dollars in his home, the result of many years of family commerce. Bashir created a new special “economic” division, a sort of secret police, that would go home to home, searching for foreign currency or gold. When the jack-booted thugs came to Majdi’s house, they found his savings and arrested him. After a show trial, he was hanged, sending a message to the population: if anyone tries to use anything but the Sudanese currency through our banking system — if anyone tries to own their own money — they will get the death sentence. Even today, according to Mo, many Sudanese are fearful of using dollars or storing money at home. At the same time, Bashir launched a tribute system to finance his activities. On top of what was taken through traditional taxation and seigniorage, citizens had to pay a portion of their income to help the martyrs of their dictator’s wars. The secret monetary police would spy on individuals, freeze bank accounts, confiscate assets and impose made-up fees on merchants. No reasonable suspicion was required. Mo calls it a system of national extortion. As far as the currency itself, Mo recalled several times in his life when the system was overhauled. In the late 1980s, his family was living abroad in Saudi Arabia, and when they visited home, a quarter of a Sudanese pound could buy a sandwich or a tasty snack on the street. But after 1992, when Bashir changed the haram and colonial pound for the Islamic dinar, those quarter pounds became worthless. The mid-1990s saw massive inflation, with the “official rate” of the dinar going from around 400 per dollar to more than 2,000. Many years later, in 2007, Bashir decided to ditch the Islamic facade and switch back to the pound. Citizens had a small window to redeem dinars for the new currency, after which they were no longer legal tender, forcing citizens to surrender their savings or watch it disappear. Today, after a series of devaluations and constant inflation, a Sudanese pound will officially obtain around .0025 dollars. According to Mo, inflation is 340%. While the average citizen watched as their wages stagnated and living costs rose, Bashir and his cronies accumulated billions and saved them in foreign currencies, locked away in Swiss bank accounts. Today the new Sudanese government is struggling to regain all that was looted and lost in the past 30 years. In the spring of 2019, in a stunning example of people power, the Sudanese population finally pushed out Bashir. Since then, a fragile reform government has been in place, where military leaders of the old regime share power with a technocratic civilian government. People were initially optimistic about the change, Mo said, but the reality is not meeting their expectations. He says the IMF has a deal to help give $5 per month to Sudanese families, and in a country where some only make a dollar a day, this seemed significant. The problem is, the families are paid not in dollars but in pounds, so the value disappears after a few months. The sanctions levied on the Bashir regime are now gone, but most fintech products and payment apps are still not available for Sudanese, as corporations shy away due to “risk management.” It is clear that in some places, a political revolution is not enough. Toppling a tyrant like Bashir is a historical and incredible achievement. But people are still suffering. So some, like Mo, are turning to Bitcoin. In 2015, Mo first heard about this mysterious internet money, as he put it, on YouTube. He spent countless hours watching Andreas Antonopolous videos and read through “The Internet Of Money,” which helped him understand the “why” behind the new currency. He started to use it while working abroad, exchanging euros for bitcoin over PayPal on LocalBitcoins. He kept things small and mainly to himself. But in 2017, he started talking to family and friends. He told them: this is going to be a part of our future. Many of them are now saving in bitcoin. As of today, Mo estimates that 13 million of Sudan’s 43 million people have internet access, and he thinks that in a few years, that number will top 20 million. There are more and more people coming online, and there are now smartphones even in remote regions like Darfur and the Nuba Mountains. People are plugging in everywhere. He said that the Sudanese who do already have smartphones have an extended responsibility to help others with their privilege. In his case, he has a large extended family that he supports. He is their Uncle Jim. Where there were once financial walls cutting off Sudan from the world, Bitcoin has made bridges. It is now easy for Mo in Europe to send money back to his friends and family. What once took days now takes minutes. And he does not have to trust any third parties or require his family to deal with thieves in government. Mo is beginning to see just how massive the Lightning Network will be for Sudan because most users will be in the micropayment space, sending transactions of $5 or $10, and will not be able to afford the increasingly high on-chain fees. If international exchanges can choose to service Sudan, and enable Lightning withdrawals and deposits, he said that would be an enormous step forward for financial empowerment. As for the likes of Bill Gates and Buffet, Mo said they might understand the technology behind Bitcoin, but they will never be happy about it because it is coming to seize a place on the global stage that they used to have just for themselves. In direct contradiction to billionaire claims that Bitcoin is worthless and has no social value, Mo knows many Sudanese who rely on it as a lifeline. Maybe, Mo said, the critics just cannot see past their financial privilege. For Mo personally, Bitcoin has been transformative. He has started a podcast in Arabic for Sudanese youth to talk about Bitcoin, money, freedom and the future of their country. Fifteen years ago he could not have imagined being this optimistic. One of the darkest moments in his life was in 2013 after a peaceful political uprising was completely crushed. Mo left all social media. He could not bear to look at the bloody images and videos streaming from the violence. But now, with twin political and economic transformations, he sees the light at the end of the tunnel. When people say Bitcoin is hope, he says that he agrees. Bitcoin In Ethiopia Kal Kassa is an Ethiopian businessman. In a country of close to 120 million people, more than 70% of the population has no access to a bank account. This is a place, he said, where there are still communities that use salt for money. In the remote northeast Afar region, dotted with volcanoes, rifts and deserts, the indigenous people mine salt, as they have for generations, and trek for days to barter it in markets for the goods they need. It is their store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account. The word amole, Amharic for salt, is even used today in Ethiopia as the name of a mobile banking app. According to Kal, 70% of Ethiopians still live in rural areas. Outside of the capital of Addis Ababa, home to 5 million, very few have bank accounts or smartphones. In total, no more than 25 million Ethiopians are connected. To make matters worse, Ethiopia does not have open capital markets. Individuals cannot freely exchange their national currency — the birr — with dollars, and vice versa. Sadly, Kassa said, the country is still under the influence of militant marxism and economic centralization. Today, there is a bank rate that the National Bank of Ethiopia enforces at 40 birr per dollar, and then a black market rate of 55 birr per dollar. Inflation is officially reported at around 20%. Kassa is not sure what the exact rate is, but said that Ethiopians traditionally buy a chicken or sheep or lamb for Easter, and these prices go up steadily every year. When he arrived in Ethiopia in 2013 to start a consulting job, one lamb went for around 1,500 birr. Today, it can go for 5,000 or even 7,000 birr. Government wages do grow, Kassa said, but not on par with inflation. He estimated salaries in urban areas have perhaps doubled over the past decade, but goods have gone up by three-to-five times. Since inflation is so high and such a constant phenomenon, the upper classes use the dollar as their unit of account. But outside of the cities, people still account with, and their living standards fall with, the birr. In rural areas, people use cattle or sheep to store value. If they can, they obtain gold, which is rare and still considered very precious. Dollars are officially illegal. The government is afraid that people will dump the birr for dollars, pushing the price of the birr toward zero. But the government operates a double standard, wanting to retain as many dollars as it can for its own purposes. If, for example, one runs a tourist service, they are allowed to take payments into a dollar account, which they can use to pay for imported goods for up to around two months. But if they do not use those dollars within that window, the government simply swaps the dollars out for birr at the official rate. Which, of course, means they get the fake price of 40 birr for one dollar, and not the real market rate of 55. Kassa’s brother was arrested and imprisoned once simply because he had $20 in his pocket. In Ethiopia, people are jailed for the crime of using better currency. Starting in 2018, Ethiopia underwent a series of reforms under a young new leader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to end hostilities with neighboring Eritrea. The shifts appeared to open up political space and move the country toward liberalism after more than 25 years of a police state. Three years later, however, repression, ethnic tensions and armed conflict have caused a democratic backslide. This uncertainty has caused major capital flight. On top of that, Ethiopia imports more than it exports: oil, medical goods and cars, for example, are all brought in from other countries. In this weak environment, Ethiopians are forced to buy government bonds, which, as Kassa dryly noted, have negative real interest rates. They are, as he put it, donations for the state. Kassa was born in Ethiopia, but left as a young child, growing up in California. He moved back at the end of 2013, as a senior associate for Grant Thornton, working on privatization on the buy and sell sides. He lived there until last summer when the government shut off the internet. Kassa’s phone could still send SMS messages and make calls, but there was no data. The regime justified this as a defense against rebellions, but especially during the pandemic lockdown, this got old very quickly. So, last summer, wearing just a backpack, he got on a plane and headed back to the U.S. Kassa first heard about Bitcoin in 2013, when his roommate was mining it at Chapman University. But the idea did not click for him. He spent years thinking bitcoin was just some kind of alternative and speculative investment. He said his penny drop moment actually came when he was at the airport in Addis last summer. As he was boarding the plane, he stood and wondered: If I had my wealth stored in gold or cattle, how could I take it across a border? Today, Kassa has created Telegram groups where he pays freelancers, graphic designers and translators based in Ethiopia with bitcoin. In America, he said, most people treat bitcoin as an investment or as a savings account. But he is using it as a medium of exchange and payment too. It is easier and cheaper, and now a part of his life. Kassa is focused on the Lightning Network, and uses it to pay his contacts in Ethiopia. He helps them set up the open-source, free Blue Wallet, and pays them directly with Lightning. He is amazed at how easy it is, and how it transmits hard value instantly halfway across the world. On the other end, his contacts use Blue Wallet as their savings accounts, and they exchange locally into birr when they need to in peer-to-peer markets. This is, he said, hugely preferable to Western Union and birr-denominated accounts, where, for example, on a recent payment, Kassa had to pay $13 to send $100. When Kassa pays his colleagues, he pays them the full amount, rather than paying through the government exchange rate where authorities steal a portion. His contacts are their own banks, and no one can debase or remotely confiscate their funds. This, Kassa said, is a revolution. Kassa does have concerns and fears about Bitcoin. For example, the Ethiopian government is hyper-concerned about satellite internet. If citizens are caught with satellite equipment, for example, they can go to prison. In this context, he is worried about the safety of people running their own Bitcoin nodes. He also thinks that many people may end up using custodial services, since as of right now, many cannot even tell the difference between bitcoin and other coins, and are far away from understanding the difference between custodial and non-custodial services. He is also cautious about all the new cheap smartphones flooding in from ZTE and Huawei, all from China. He is worried about people using these phones for Bitcoin hot wallets, as he does not think they are safe. In addition, because the phone networks are not reliable, people still carry cash in cities, even if they have smartphones, as sometimes the service goes out. Kassa said the biggest obstacle to Bitcoin adoption in Ethiopia might be the false promise of alternative cryptocurrencies. In particular, he has identified Cardano as a threat. In a recent video, the currency’s creator spoke about working with the Ethiopian regime to incorporate 5 million students onto the Cardano blockchain, and boasts that then they could be tracked with metadata throughout their life and career. “Our vision and goals,” he said, “are directly in line with the goals of the Ethiopian government.” In contrast, Kassa is glad that Bitcoin’s goals are not in line with the aims of the thieves and bureaucrats who run his country. He worried that many may fall prey to schemes like Cardano. As for Gates and Buffet: Kassa actually did get a chance to go to the Berkshire Hathaway event in Lincoln, Nebraska a few years ago. It was very powerful, he said, to see 40,000 people coming together as part of a community. But, the event was very inward-looking, which explains how Buffet and friends cannot see just how corrupt the world is around them. They do not see the water that they swim in, and are seemingly blind to the trillions of dollars of money laundered each year through the banking system. For them to ignore the harms that the dollar system has caused on the developing world, Kassa said, and instead focus on the flaws of Bitcoin, is naive and self-serving. He is glad that these investors are dinosaurs. They are not the future. In contrast, 75% of the population of Ethiopia is under the age of 27. Once they start using Bitcoin, Kassa thinks they will spread the technology quickly to friends and family. Adoption will not take decades, but years. When he moved back to Ethiopia in 2013, there were about 5 million people online. Now, there are about 25 million. In the next five years, he expects a majority of the population will be connected, and for Bitcoin to follow. As far as priorities, Kassa thinks spreading education is most important. He is currently working on translating “The Little Bitcoin Book” into Amharic. As far as he knows, there is no other Bitcoin content translated as of yet into Ethiopia's three major languages. When asked if he is worried about the government cracking down on Bitcoin, he said that it will be hard to get in the middle of a hard-working Ethiopian and a better life. The population is young, agile, creative and adapting. It will not be stopped. People, he said, are sick of poverty and earning money only to see it depreciate. Today, Ethiopians are at war with each other. “We are fighting ourselves,” Kassa said. “If we are willing to kill each other to solve our problems, we will definitely be willing to try Bitcoin as an alternative.” And that, he thinks, will be a peaceful revolution. *** After reading the stories of Aderinokun, Mo and Kassa, and witnessing how Bitcoin is so valuable to people outside of the dollar bubble, compare this with what Munger, Buffet, Lagarde, Sachs and others say about Bitcoin: that it is something with no social value. That it will just get people’s hopes up, only to let them down. “Disgusting” “Rat poison” “I would short it” “Totally reprehensible” For most people, it is the government that lets people down. It is the government that is reprehensible. Liberation technologies should be invested in, not shorted. And for those comfortable in the dollar bubble? It’s time to check your financial privilege.

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Cryptocurrency: Unbannable, Thus Only Winning Move Is To Play The Game
by grarpamp 02 Nov '21

02 Nov '21

Bitcoin Cannot be Banned https://unchained.com/blog/bitcoin-cannot-be-banned/ https://anchor.fm/thecryptoconomy/episodes/CryptoQuikRead_356---Bitcoin-Can… https://cdn.mises.org/Road%20to%20serfdom.pdf https://www.unchained.com/blog/bitcoin-is-not-backed-by-nothing/ https://www.unchained.com/blog/bitcoin-is-not-too-volatile/ https://www.unchained.com/blog/bitcoin-is-not-too-slow/ https://www.unchained.com/blog/bitcoin-does-not-waste-energy/ https://unchained.com/blog/bitcoin-is-not-for-criminals/ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1149472282584072192 https://twitter.com/SquawkCNBC/status/1154004308947591168 https://bitnodes.earn.com/ The idea that somehow bitcoin can be banned by governments is the final stage of grief, right before acceptance. The consequence of the statement is an admission that bitcoin “works.” In fact, it posits that bitcoin works so well that it will threaten the incumbent government-run monopolies on money in which case governments will regulate it out of existence to eliminate the threat. Think about the claim that governments will ban bitcoin as conditional logic. Is bitcoin functional as money? If not, governments have nothing to ban. If yes, then governments will attempt to ban bitcoin. So the anchor point for this line of criticism assumes that bitcoin is functional as money. And then, the question becomes whether or not government intervention could successfully cause an otherwise functioning bitcoin to fail. As a starting point, anyone trying to understand how, why, or if bitcoin works should assess the question entirely independent from the implications of government regulation or intervention. While bitcoin will undoubtedly have to co-exist alongside various regulatory regimes, imagine governments did not exist. On a standalone basis, would bitcoin be functional as money, if left to the free market? This will inevitably lead to a number of rabbit hole questions. What is money? What are the properties that make a particular medium a better or worse form of money? Does bitcoin share those properties? Is bitcoin a better form of money based on its properties? If the ultimate conclusion becomes that bitcoin is not functional as money, the implications of government intervention are irrelevant. However, if bitcoin is functional as money, the question then becomes relevant to the debate, and anyone considering the question would need that prior context as a baseline to evaluate whether or not it would be possible. By design, bitcoin exists beyond governments. But bitcoin is not just beyond the control of governments, it functions without the coordination of any central third parties. It is global and decentralized. Anyone can access bitcoin on a permissionless basis and the more widespread it becomes, the more difficult it becomes to censor the network. The architecture of bitcoin is practically purpose-built to resist and immunize any attempts by governments to ban it. This is not to say that governments all over the world will not attempt to regulate, tax or even ban its use. There will certainly be a fight to resist bitcoin adoption. The Fed and the Treasury (and their global counterparts) are not just going to lay down as bitcoin increasingly threatens the monopolies of government money. However, before debunking the idea that governments could outright ban bitcoin, first understand the very consequence of the statement and the messenger. The Progression of Denial & Stages of Grief The skeptic’s narrative consistently shifts over time. Stage one of grief: bitcoin could never work – it is backed by nothing. It is nothing more than a present-day tulip mania. With each hype cycle, the value of bitcoin rises dramatically and is then followed by a correction. Often extolled as a crash by skeptics, bitcoin fails to die and in each instance, it finds support at levels higher than prior adoption waves. The tulip narrative becomes tired and the skeptics move on to more nuanced issues, re-anchoring the debate. Stage two of grief follows: bitcoin is flawed as a currency. It is too volatile to be money, or it is too slow to be a payments system, or it cannot scale to satisfy all the payments in the world, or it wastes energy. The list goes on. This second step is a progression of denial and it is a significant departure from the idea that bitcoin is nothing more than nothingness. Despite the supposed flaws, the value of the bitcoin network continues to rise over time. Each time it does not die, it gains strength. While the skeptics are busy pointing out flaws, bitcoin never sleeps. An increase in value is driven by a very simple market dynamic: more buyers than sellers. That is all and it is a function of increasing adoption. More and more people figure out why there is fundamental demand for bitcoin and why/how it works. This is what creates long-term demand for bitcoin. As more people increasingly demand it as a store of wealth, there is no supply response. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin. No matter how many people demand bitcoin, the supply side is completely fixed and inelastic. As the skeptics continue to shout the same tired lines, the crowd continues to parse the noise and demand bitcoin due to the strengths of its monetary properties. And no constituency is more well-versed in the arguments against bitcoin than adopters of bitcoin themselves. Bitcoin FUD (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt) Dice v1 and v2, courtesy of Nic Carter. Desperation begins to kick in, and the debate re-anchors once again. The narrative predictably shifts. It is no longer that bitcoin is not backed by anything, nor that it is flawed as a currency; instead, the debate centers on regulation and government authorities. In the final stage of grief, it is actually that bitcoin works too well, and as a consequence, the government will never let it happen and ban it. Really? So human ingenuity somehow re-invents money in a technologically superior medium, the consequences of which are mind-bending, and the government is somehow going to ban that? Recognize that in claiming as much, the skeptics are admitting defeat. It is the dying whimper in a series of failed arguments. The skeptics simultaneously accept that there is fundamental demand for bitcoin and then pivot to the unfounded belief that governments can ban it. Play this one out. When exactly would developed world governments actually step in and attempt to ban bitcoin? Today, the Fed and the Treasury do not view bitcoin as a serious threat to dollar supremacy. In their collective mind, bitcoin is a cute little toy and is not functional as a currency. Presently, the bitcoin network represents a total purchasing power of less than $200 billion. Gold on the other hand has a purchasing power of approximately $8 trillion (40x the size of bitcoin) and broad money supply of dollars (M2) is approximately $15 trillion (75x the size of bitcoin). When does the Fed or Treasury start seriously considering bitcoin a credible threat? Is it when bitcoin collectively represents $1 trillion of purchasing power? $2 trillion or $3 trillion? Pick your level, but the implication is that bitcoin will be far more valuable, and held by far more people globally, before government powers that be view it as a credible competitor or threat. President Trump & Treasury Secretary Mnuchin on Bitcoin (2019) So the skeptic logic follows: bitcoin does not work, but if it does work, the government will ban it. But, governments in the free world will not attempt to ban bitcoin until it becomes more apparent that it is a threat. At which time, bitcoin will be more valuable and undoubtedly harder to ban, as it will be held by far more people in far more places. So, ignore fundamentals and the asymmetry inherent in a global monetization event because in the event you turn out to be right, the government will step in to regulate bitcoin out of existence. Which side of the fence would a rational economic actor rather be on? Owning a monetary asset that has increased in value so dramatically that it threatens the global reserve currency, or the opposite – not owning that asset? Assuming an individual possesses the knowledge to understand why it is a fundamental possibility (and increasingly a probability), which is the more defensible and logical position? The asymmetry alone dictates the former and any fundamental understanding of the demand for bitcoin only reinforces the same position. But Bitcoin Cannot Be Banned. Think about what bitcoin actually represents and then what a ban of bitcoin would represent. Bitcoin represents the conversion of subjective value, created and exchanged in the real world, for digital keys. Said more plainly, it is the conversion of an individual’s time into money. When someone demands bitcoin, they are at the same time forgoing demand for some other good, whether it be a dollar, a house, a car, or food, etc. Bitcoin represents monetary savings that comes with the opportunity cost of other goods and services. Banning bitcoin would be an affront to the most basic freedoms it is designed to both provide and preserve. Imagine the response by all those that have adopted bitcoin: “Well that was fun, the tool that the experts said would never work, now works too well, and the same experts and authorities say we can’t use it. Everyone go home. Show’s over folks.” To believe that all the people in the world that have adopted bitcoin for the financial freedom and sovereignty it provides would suddenly lay down and accept the ultimate infringement of that freedom is not rational. “Money is one of the greatest instruments of freedom ever invented by man. It is money which in existing society opens an astounding range of choice to the poor man – a range greater than that which not many generations ago was open to the wealthy..” – F.A. Hayek Governments could not successfully ban the consumption of alcohol, the use of drugs, the purchase of firearms, or the ownership of gold. A government can marginally restrict access, or even make possession illegal, but it cannot make something of value demanded by a broad and disparate group of people magically go away. When the U.S. made the private ownership of gold illegal in 1933, gold did not lose its value or disappear as a monetary medium. It actually increased in value relative to the dollar, and just thirty years later, the ban was lifted. Not only does bitcoin provide a greater value proposition relative to any other good that any government has ever attempted to ban (including gold); but by its nature, it is also far harder to ban. Bitcoin is global and decentralized. It is without borders and it is secured by nodes and cryptographic keys. The act of banning bitcoin would require preventing open source software code from being run and preventing digital signatures (created by cryptographic keys) from being broadcast on the internet. And it would have to be coordinated across numerous jurisdictions, except there is no way to know where the keys actually reside or to prevent more nodes from popping up in different jurisdictions. Setting aside the constitutional issues, it would be technically infeasible to enforce a ban of bitcoin in any meaningful way. Bitcoin Node Concentration by Country (earn.com) Even if all countries in the G-20 coordinated to ban bitcoin in unison, it would not kill bitcoin. Instead, it would be the fait accompli for the fiat system. It would reinforce to the masses that bitcoin is a formidable currency, and it would set off a global and hopeless game of whack-a-mole. There is no central point of failure in bitcoin; bitcoin miners, nodes and keys are distributed throughout the world. Every aspect of bitcoin is decentralized, which is why running nodes and controlling keys is core to bitcoin. The more keys and the more nodes that exist, the more decentralized bitcoin becomes, and the more immune bitcoin is to attack. The more jurisdictions in which mining exists, the less risk any single jurisdiction represents to bitcoin’s security function. A coordinated state level attack would only serve to build the strength of bitcoin’s immune system. It would ultimately accelerate the shift away from the legacy financial system (and legacy currencies), and it would accelerate innovation within the bitcoin economic system. With each passing threat, bitcoin innovates to immunize the threat. A coordinated state level attack would be no different. Permissionless innovation on a globally decentralized basis is the reason bitcoin gains strength from every attack. It is the attack vector itself which causes bitcoin to innovate. It is Adam Smith’s invisible hand on steroids. Individual actors may believe themselves to be motivated by a greater cause, but in reality, the utility embedded in bitcoin creates a sufficiently powerful incentive structure to ensure its survival. The self-interests of millions, if not billions, of uncoordinated individuals aligned by their individual and collective need for money incentivizes permissionless innovation on top of bitcoin. Today, it may seem like a cool new technology or a nice-to-have portfolio investment, but even if most people do not yet recognize it, bitcoin is a necessity. It is a necessity because money is a necessity, and legacy currencies are fundamentally broken. Two months ago, the repo markets in the U.S. broke, and the Fed quickly responded by increasing the supply of dollars by $250 billion, with more to come. It is precisely why bitcoin is a necessity, not a luxury. When an innovation happens to be a basic necessity to the functioning of an economy, there is no government force that could ever hope to stop its proliferation. Money is a very basic necessity, and bitcoin represents a step-function change innovation in the global competition for money. And more practically, any attempt to ban bitcoin or heavily regulate its use by any jurisdiction would directly benefit a competing jurisdiction. The incentive to defect from any coordinated effort to ban bitcoin would be far too high to sustain such an agreement across jurisdictions. If the United States made the possession of bitcoin illegal tomorrow, would it slow down proliferation, development and adoption of bitcoin and would it cause the value of the network to decline intermittently? Probably. Would it kill bitcoin? No. Bitcoin represents the most mobile capital in the world. Countries and jurisdictions that create regulatory certainty and place the least amount of restrictions on the use of bitcoin will benefit significantly from capital inflows. Banning Bitcoin Prisoner’s Dilemma In practice, the prisoner’s dilemma is not one-to-one. It is multi-dimensional involving numerous jurisdictions, all with competing interests, making any attempts to successfully ban bitcoin that much more impractical. Human capital, physical capital and monetary capital will flow to the countries and jurisdictions with the least restrictive regulations on bitcoin. It may not happen overnight, but attempting to ban bitcoin is the equivalent of a country cutting off its nose to spite its face. It doesn’t mean that countries will not try. India has already tried to ban bitcoin. China has attempted to heavily restrict its use. Others will follow. But each time a country takes an action to restrict the use of bitcoin, it actually has the unintended effect of promoting bitcoin adoption. Attempts to ban bitcoin are an extremely effective marketing tool for bitcoin. Bitcoin exists as a non-sovereign, censorship-resistant form of money. It is designed to exist beyond the state. Attempts to ban bitcoin merely serve to reinforce bitcoin’s reason for existence and ultimately, its value proposition. The only winning move is to play Banning bitcoin is a fool’s errand. Some will try; all will fail. And the very attempts to ban bitcoin will accelerate its adoption and proliferation. It will be the hundred mile-per-hour wind that fuels the wildfire. It will also make bitcoin stronger and more reliable, further immunizing it from attack and reinforcing its antifragile nature. And in any case, believing governments will ban bitcoin, if it becomes a credible threat to global reserve currencies, is an irrational reason to discount it as a savings technology. It both cedes that bitcoin is viable as money, while at the same time ignoring the principal reasons as to why: decentralization and censorship-resistance. Imagine understanding the greatest present secret in the world and not capitalizing on the asymmetry and utility that bitcoin provides in fear of government. More likely, either someone understands why bitcoin works and that it will not fail at the hands of a government, or a knowledge gap exists as to how bitcoin is able to function in the first place. Begin by understanding the fundamentals, and then apply that as a baseline to assess any potential risk posed by future government intervention or regulation. And never discount the value of asymmetry; the only winning move is to play.

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U.S. lawyers tell UK court Assange can safely be extradited
by jim bell 02 Nov '21

02 Nov '21

https://news.yahoo.com/assange-case-back-court-u-094406974.html LONDON (Reuters) -Lawyers for the United States launched a fresh attempt on Wednesday to have Julian Assange extradited from Britain, arguing that concerns abo... Jim Bell's comment: Notice that these articles don't address the Limitations period (Statute of limitations) issue. Assange remained in the nation where it was alleged he committed the crime(s). Recall I raised this matter a couple of years ago, and others. Also, that extradition is improper unless the act can be considered crime nal by the standards of both UK and USA. And if that were true, why not prosecute him in UK? Even now, I don't know if Assange's attorneys are raising these issues, let alone properly.

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Cryptocurrency: Woz Sez Bitcoin Is Mathematical Purity
by grarpamp 02 Nov '21

02 Nov '21

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/bitcoin-is-mathematical-purity-says-ap… https://sg.news.yahoo.com/steve-wozniak-accepting-crypto-pitches-151515462.… ... but can't grok privacy. The programmer behind the first Apple computer drew parallels between the "artificial" U.S. dollar and the "mathematically pure" Bitcoin. Bitcoin is mathematical purity and impossible to be copied, said Apple co-founder and 'Unicorn Hunters' Circle of Money Investor, Steve Wozniak, in an interview with Yahoo Finance on October 29. "Look at the U.S. dollar, the government can just create new dollars and borrow; it's like you never have it fixed, like Bitcoin," Wozniak told Brian Sozzi and Julie Hyman. "Bitcoin is mathematics, mathematical purity. There can never be another Bitcoin created." The entrepreneur drew parallels between the U.S. monetary system and the electronic peer-to-peer monetary network. Whereas the U.S. dollar seems "artificial" to Wozniak, he enjoys the "science, math, logic, and computer programming" embedded in Bitcoin. "If there's inflation, your house goes up 10x in 40 years and you think you're a smart investor; no, you have an old house," Wozniak articulated. "You used to have a new house, but the government says 90% of its value is earnings and we're going to tax it. The government makes all of its taxes off inflation." The programmer behind the first Apple computer also highlighted how Bitcoin is not controlled by one single entity and thus can retain a level of predictability that is hard to attain with the U.S. dollar, as regulators can create new paper bills on a whim. "Bitcoin doesn't even have a creator that we know of, it isn't run by some company, it's just mathematically pure, and I believe nature over humans always," he added. However, Wozniak also showcased some misunderstandings about Bitcoin and the human right to privacy. The co-founder of Apple said Bitcoin and some cryptocurrencies have "a little bit of anonymity," which he doesn't see as a good thing. "You should be able to stand up and say I did this transaction," he said, questioning the need for privacy. In this regard, Wozniak's remarks are short-sighted and showcase a deep level of privilege. As a financially-privileged white male in the U.S. who can enjoy a high degree of freedom, he fails to acknowledge the 4.3 billion people living under authoritarian regimes worldwide - for whom "standing up" could bring dire consequences. Wozniak also doesn't realize the incentives lined up by Bitcoin to incentivize everyone to adopt it and the fact that Bitcoin cannot effectively be banned.

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John Young's new pin-up-boy
by professor rat 02 Nov '21

02 Nov '21

Fucker Karls-son. Jesus Fucking Christ. He's the new Alex Jones. https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/tucker-carlson-just-got-spanked/42346/ Ruprecht Moloch is now more Catholic than the Pope.

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Social-Media cancel Wikileaks
by professor rat 02 Nov '21

02 Nov '21

Facebook and Twitter have launched programs to crack down on climate change misinformation https://www.google.com/search?q=Climategate+assange&client=opera&hs=Cvp&sou…

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Swansong of the antivax morons
by professor rat 02 Nov '21

02 Nov '21

I pray you die soon and free-up much-needed resources https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/actress-kristy-swanson…

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Assassination Politics - or APster, for short
by professor rat 02 Nov '21

02 Nov '21

The original killer-app and still the best, APster has long been a staple of this list. Even before the mighty CJ and his DEAD-LUCKY assault on the high-and-mighty. Even back when most c-punks paid lip-service to Mongo's 'abhorrent-markets ' line. So here is my prescription for those who can't bear to have their victimhood trifled with. I forbid you to ever again read about murder bounties here. I also recommend you take a goodly dose of Prozac and return to your sedentary somnambulation in front of the Boob Tube. And remember to keep your mouth shut and your head bowed when the truck pulls up out front to carry your sorry carcass off to the government glue factory

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Fuck Vitalik Buterin and the Jackass he rode in on
by professor rat 02 Nov '21

02 Nov '21

Quadrophrenic Zombie outbreak in the Mid-West https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/10/31/cities.html Those who talk up crypto-cities without reference to Proudhon, the Paris Commune, cities liberated by Makhnovista and run by Spain-based anarchists and Murray Bookchin’s post-scarcity municipalism talk with a corpse in their mouth. Why does Buttface Buterin hate our anarchist freedoms?

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