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Cryptocurrency: Money Printer Go Brrrrrr!
by grarpamp 12 Apr '21

12 Apr '21

Continuos loss of stored value intentionally imparted on them for over 100 years, yet sheeple worldwide still seem to love their shitcoins, lol... Visualizing The Plunging Purchasing Power Of The US Dollar https://www.visualcapitalist.com/purchasing-power-of-the-u-s-dollar-over-ti… https://www.visualcapitalist.com/buying-power-us-dollar-century/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-worlds-most-powerful-reserve-currencie… https://www.visualcapitalist.com/golden-bulls-the-price-of-gold/ The purchasing power of a currency is the amount of goods and services that can be bought with one unit of the currency. For example, one U.S. dollar could buy 10 bottles of beer in 1933. Today, as Visual Capitalist's Govind Bhutanda notes, it’s the cost of a small McDonald’s coffee. In other words, the purchasing power of the dollar - its value in terms of what it can buy - has decreased over time as price levels have risen. Tracking the Purchasing Power of the Dollar In 1913, the Federal Reserve Act granted Federal Reserve banks the ability to manage the money supply in order to ensure economic stability. Back then, a dollar could buy 30 Hershey’s chocolate bars. As more dollars came into circulation, average prices of goods and services increased while the purchasing power of the dollar fell. By 1929, the value of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was 73% higher than in 1913, but a dollar was now enough only for 10 rolls of toilet paper. Between 1929-1933, the purchasing power of the dollar actually increased due to deflation and a 31% contraction in money supply before eventually declining again. Fast forward to 1944 and the U.S. dollar, fixed to gold at a rate of $35/oz, became the world’s reserve currency under the Bretton Woods agreement. Meanwhile, the U.S. increased its money supply in order to finance the deficits of World War II followed by the Korean war and the Vietnam war. Hence, the buying power of the dollar reduced from 20 bottles of Coca-Cola in 1944 to a drive-in movie ticket in 1964. By the late 1960s, the number of dollars in circulation was too high to be backed by U.S. gold reserves. President Nixon ceased direct convertibility of U.S. dollars to gold in 1971. This ended both the gold standard and the limit on the amount of currency that could be printed. More Dollars in the System Money supply (M2) in the U.S. has skyrocketed over the last two decades, up from $4.6 trillion in 2000 to $19.5 trillion in 2021. The effects of the rise in money supply were amplified by the financial crisis of 2008 and more recently by the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, around 20% of all U.S. dollars in the money supply, $3.4 trillion, were created in 2020 alone. How will the purchasing power of the dollar evolve going forward? Down, just like every Fiat currency of every country in history, and present.

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Cryptocurrency: You'd Have To Shut Down The Internet To Ban Bitcoin
by grarpamp 11 Apr '21

11 Apr '21

"You’d Have To Shut Down The Internet" To Ban Bitcoin, Says SEC's Hester Peirce https://cryptoslate.com/youd-have-to-shut-down-the-internet-to-ban-bitcoin-… https://www.marketwatch.com/live-qa/april-7-how-to-invest-in-crypto/6DCAFAE… https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ray-dalio-on-bitcoin-and-probability-of-ban-… https://cryptoslate.com/5-trillion-asset-manager-fidelity-applies-for-bitco… https://cryptoslate.com/first-trust-advisors-and-skybridge-capital-apply-fo… https://cryptoslate.com/vanecks-bitcoin-etf-is-under-review-will-the-sec-ap… https://twitter.com/vol_christopher/status/1377210541282824193 https://twitter.com/vol_christopher/status/1377263917630693383 Any government efforts to ban Bitcoin would be “foolish,” said Hester Peirce (aka “Crypto Mom”), a very Bitcoin-friendly commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), during a MarketWatch virtual conference earlier this week, according to Cryptoslate reporter Liam Frost. "I think we were past that point very early on because you’d have to shut down the Internet,” Peirce said, adding, “I don’t see how you could ban it. You could certainly make the effort. It would be very hard to stop people from [trading Bitcoin]. So I think it would be a foolish thing for the government to try to do that.” Not only that, but the government would immediately wipe out $2 trillion in net wealth - the market cap of the crypto sector - an event that would have profoundly deleveraging consequences, and since much of that wealth is now backed by debt, for example all those debt-funded purchases of bitcoin by Microstrategy, such a move by the government would immediately destabilize the all important debt market. The statement came on the heels of Ray Dalio, a billionaire investor and founder of Bridgewater Associates, arguing that there’s “a good probability” that governments around the world would ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Dalio told Yahoo Finance: “Every country treasures its monopoly on controlling the supply and demand. They don’t want other monies to be operating or competing, because things can get out of control. They outlawed gold, that’s why also outlawing Bitcoin is a good probability.” However, according to Peirce, the main issue for authorities—at least when it comes to cryptocurrencies—is to find an approach to regulation that would be productive and non-restrictive at the same time. She noted: “We’ve seen other countries take, I would say, a more productive approach. We really need to turn that around. And I’m optimistic, with a new chairman coming in with a deep knowledge of these markets, that is something we could do together—build a good regulatory framework.” At the same time, Peirce also pointed out that she doesn’t know when—or if—a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) will finally be approved in the U.S. Recently, we’ve seen a new wave of major investment companies, such as Fidelity Investments, SkyBridge Capital, and VanEck, filing their applications for Bitcoin ETFs with the SEC. The regulator, however, never approved a single filing of this kind so far, which as discussed earlier, may be a good thing for not only bitcoin but the entire nascent DeFi ecosystem where hundreds of billions in very real money is now intertwined. There is another reason why the government may have no intention of (ever) banning bitcoin: as Artemis Capital's Christopher Cole wrote recently echoing what we said back in 2016 and 2017, "Bitcoin has emerged as a "shadow" monetary tool, a type of liquidity overflow to prevent even bigger asset bubbles in conventional assets such as commodities, stocks and housing. As Cole tweeted, "right now [bitcoin] helps Gov by serving as a vol buffer for the middle class so money devaluation flows into a purely speculative asset and less into home prices or other goods." Bitcoin is a "shadow" monetary tool Right now, it helps Gov by serving as a vol buffer for the middle class so money devaluation flows into a purely speculative asset and less into home prices or other goods Explains lack of regulation, which will come concurrently w/inflation pic.twitter.com/SQQQql7p4P — Christopher Cole (@vol_christopher) March 31, 2021 Said otherwise, cryptos now represent some $2 trillion in excess liquidity that would otherwise be invested in housing or stocks, making both of these respective asset bubbles that much more prone to bursting, and bringing the entire asset-bubble dependent socia-economic and financialsystem closer to collapse. However, thanks to bitcoin, there is a substantial buffer allowing Powell to keep printing indefinitely. This benign side effect of bitcoin which paradoxically allows the Fed to perpetuate its ultra-easy monetary policy for much longer, "explains lack of regulation" although once we hit hyperinflation and bitcoin goes offerless, regulation will come for one simple reason: it will be tantamount to deleveraging the system by trillions in a heartbeat (recall the market cap of all crypto assets is now above $2 trillion) and rising. Regulation of crypto is a structural risk to investors/speculators Regulation of crypto can be seen as 2nd order monetary tightening tool by Gov to tame inflation All of the above doesn't invalidate ownership of the asset but requires deep thought on risk-reward — Christopher Cole (@vol_christopher) March 31, 2021 This is a sound warning for bitcoin bulls, but it only applies when inflation gets truly out of hand, but that is unlikely to happen until lat 2022 or early 2023 assuming the Fed keeps rates at zero and barely tapers as it has been predicting it will do. That's nearly two years of upside potential for the best performing assets of the year, decade, century and millennium.

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Cryptocurrency: China Rolls Your CBDC DCEP Into Law, Baits You With Free Shitcoins
by grarpamp 11 Apr '21

11 Apr '21

China is the model that you stupid fucking slave sheeple will be forced to use since none of you will fight against tyranny. "You will own nothing, and you will be Happy!" -- Slaves. Now your CBDC's come with expiration dates forcing you to spend them. You are so FUCKED now, lol. https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-creates-its-own-digital-currency-a-first… https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3107119/china-moves-lega… https://diff.substack.com/p/decoupling-digital-currency-and-the https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/12/china-digital-currency-trial-over-1-million… https://www.coindesk.com/us-china-digital-yuan-cbdc-geopolitical-power-repo… https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-08/how-china-is-closing-in-… https://blockchain.news/news/chinas-central-bank-digital-currency-what-we-k… https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202005/28/WS5ecf0eeaa310a8b24115900b.html @GreekFire23 aka the idiocy of paper money with an expiration date https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/407489893510963200 CBDC DCEP UBI MMT Expiration Censorship Cancelling Inflation DCEP Digital Currency Electronic Payment, CBDC Central Bank Digital Currency China's Digital Yuan Comes With An Expiration Date It's been a long time coming, and now it's almost here. Last August we reported that China's Commerce Ministry had released fresh details of a pilot program for the country's central bank digital currency (CBDC) to be expanded to several metropolitan areas, including Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and Yangtze River Delta region. This was the inevitable culmination of a process which started back in 2014 when as we reported at the time, "China Readies Digital Currency, IMF Says "Extremely Beneficial". Fast forward a few months when China's preparations to rollout a digital yuan gathered pace, and we reported in October that China was poised to give legal backing to the launch of its own sovereign digital currency, "cementing its trailblazer status in virtual currencies far ahead of other countries, after already recently experimenting with large-scale trials of actual payments by consumers, which was met with mixed results." Specifically, the South China Morning Post reported that "The People’s Bank of China published a draft law on Friday that would give legal status to the Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP) system, and for the first time the digital yuan has been included and defined as part of the country’s sovereign fiat currency." The design framework for the digital yuan had been released one year ago on the heels of Facebook's ambitious but disastrous Libra token rollout after founding corporate partners split for lack of confidence in the project and on fears US federal regulators would seek to block it just as they did encrypted-messaging company Telegram's Gram cryptocurrency. "The draft law would also forbid any party from making or issuing yuan-backed digital tokens to replace the renminbi in the market," the SCMP said. This in turn brought us to the so-called "Shenzhen case study" when in October of 2020, China became the first nation to hold a trial run of its digital currency, when the government in Shenzhen carried out a lottery to give away a total of 10 million yuan (about $1.5 million) worth of the digital currency (nearly 2 million people applied and 50,000 people actually "won"). The winners were required to download a digital Renminbi app in order to receive a "red packet" worth 200 digital yuan ($30), which they can then spend at over 3,000 designated retailers in Shenzhen’s Luohu district, according to China Daily. After that, they’ll be able to buy goods from local pharmacies, supermarkets and even Walmart. The idea was to not only test the technology involved, but boost consumer spending in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In short, China is not only subsidizing the centrally-planned economy by manipulating the supply-side of the question- it now can prop up demand by handing out digital currency to anyone (or everyone). Of course, unlike traditional central bank account-based currencies such as reserves, or decentralized cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, China’s digital currency would be controlled by the country’s central bank and will be instantly made available at a moment's notice to anyone who can receive it. And since "China's adoption of digital central bank tokens is expected to be seamless as most of the nation's digital payments already pass through companies like TenCent and AliPay and are already very popular in the country", we concluded that "the successful Shenzhen test means that a broad rollout is just a matter of time." Still, one thing was missing: a stamp of approval by the gatekeeper of not only the global payments system, but the protector of the dollar reserve system, SWIFT. But as two months ago, China got that too: as we reported in February, "SWIFT, the global system for financial messaging and cross-border payments, has set up a joint venture with the Chinese central bank’s digital currency research institute and clearing centre, in a sign that China is exploring global use of its planned digital yuan." Actually, not just "exploring" but thanks to year of testing and partial rollouts, Beijing was about to become the first country in the world set to launch the digital yuan, and with both the IMF's and SWIFT's blessing, we said that it was "just a matter of months if not weeks." We were right, because just a few days ago, China's "cyber yuan" became official when the WSJ finally caught up, writing "China Creates Its Own Digital Currency, a First for Major Economy." While regular Zero Hedge readers are quite familiar with the details and chronology of China's transition to a digital currency, which incidentally is precisely the opposite of a cryptocurrency and has absolutely nothing to do with Bitcoin, a fact which Peter Thiel may want to dwell on a little more next time before making sweep and wrong statements about bitcoin, the WSJ focuses more on the geopolitical reasons of China's currency evolution - as a reminder, thousand years ago, when money meant coins, China invented paper currency, and now the Chinese government is minting cash digitally, in what the WSJ said is a "re-imagination of money that could shake a pillar of American power" - and specifically how to approach a decoupling from the global reserve currency, the US dollar so not only can Beijing avoid the "nuclear option", a weaponized US dollar, but allow countries that the US seeks to punish like Iran, a viable alternative (remember, the enemies of China's enemies - and none is bigger than the US - is China's friend). Here is the WSJ: The U.S., as the issuer of dollars that the world’s more than 21,000 banks need to do business, has long demanded insight into major cross-border currency movements. This gives Washington the ability to freeze individuals and institutions out of the global financial system by barring banks from doing transactions with them, a practice criticized as “dollar weaponization.” ... The digital yuan could give those the U.S. seeks to penalize a way to exchange money without U.S. knowledge. Exchanges wouldn’t need to use SWIFT, the messaging network that is used in money transfers between commercial banks and that can be monitored by the U.S. government. To be sure, a credible alternative to the dollar, reduces the need to hoard the currency for US trade partners which in turn would have profound implications on global saving patterns, from there, global capital flows. The consequences for the perpetual US current account deficit would be unprecedented. In addition to realigining the global balance of monetary power virtually overnight, China's the digital currency kills another bird with the same binary stone: it allows unprecedented surveillance and supervision over every single transaction. [The digital yuan is] also trackable, adding another tool to China’s heavy state surveillance. The government deploys hundreds of millions of facial-recognition cameras to monitor its population, sometimes using them to levy fines for activities such as jaywalking. A digital currency would make it possible to both mete out and collect fines as soon as an infraction was detected. A burst of cash-accumulation in China last year indicates residents’ concern about the central bank’s eye on every transaction. Song Ke, a finance professor at Renmin University in Beijing, told a recent conference that China’s measure of yuan in circulation, or cash, popped up 10% in 2020. Then there are the myriad boosts to China's ironclad capital controls: While China hasn’t published final legislation for the program, the central bank says it may initially impose limits on how much digital yuan individuals can keep on their person, as a way to control how it circulates and provide users a dose of security and privacy. To be sure, none of this is actually new as we have discussed all these nuances of the digital yuan before. What is now, is this blurb in the WSJ article: The money itself is programmable. Beijing has tested expiration dates to encourage users to spend it quickly, for times when the economy needs a jump start. And there you have it: the Keynesian wet dream to boost the velocity of mean finally comes true. For the past decade we have joked that it is only a matter of time before central banks slap on an expiration date on every monetary unit in circulation... @GreekFire23 aka the idiocy of paper money with an expiration date — zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 2, 2013 ... to offset the creeping petrification of the monetary system, where negative rates have sparked even more saving and not spending as central banks had intended... ... and where only the threat of money confiscation - which is what a monetary expiration date actually does - can spark aggressive spending, and eventually, runaway inflation. Well, that's precisely what China is now ready to do... and it's only a matter of time before other central banks follow suit. As a reminder, according to tentative estimates for the rollout of ISO 20022, which is the required universal transaction standard which will make payment in digital currencies possible, we are looking at a 2022 launch date, although China looks ready to go live as soon as this year. There is one final, geopolitical reason behind China's decision to give its digital currency an expiration date: as Byrne Hobart writes, "programmable money, tied to real-world identities, and universally tracked by a central bank, starts to look suspiciously like a substitute for the consumer of last resort. Every year that China gets richer, domestic consumption plays a bigger role (exports were 26% of China's GDP in 2010, and 18% last year). If domestic consumption can be tightly controlled, then it's a way to not just increase the volume of consumption but to control the variance of demand for the goods China produces. It's not yet enough to match the size and variability of global demand for China's exports, but every year it gets closer." In short, while the US and China are both talking seriously about decoupling, the digital yuan - which is now a reality - indicates that China's government is not only more effectively planning for it, but will be the first to fully sever all ties with the US... when the moment comes. Finally, for those who have missed our reporting on this fascinating issue, here again is Rabobank's Wim Boonstra explaining not only why China will be the first country to launch a digital currency but also looking at what happens next: China Will Be The First Country To Launch A Digital Currency: What Happens Then China may be the first major country to launch a central bank digital currency or CBDC The Chinese CBDC, named DCEP, will strengthen the position of the central bank and help to further modernize the Chinese economy The DCEP will probably also be available for China’s trade partners, to begin with Africa The DCEP may strengthen the international position of the renminbi to the detriment of the euro The arrival of the DCEP should be a strong wake-up call for Western, especially European, policymakers Introduction Most central banks are busy preparing for the potential introduction of central bank digital currency (CBDC). CBDC is a digital currency issued by the central bank. It is sometimes referred to as a digital version of a bank note, but in many cases this is not correct. There are indeed many different potential variants. So far, virtually all the central banks are keeping their options open as to whether a CBDC will ultimately appear. China, where a far-reaching trial is under way, is the major exception. If this trial is successful, one can expect the Chinese CBDC to be introduced widely in the near future. China is therefore comfortably leading the way because the country has big ambitions for its digital currency. First, it should provide a sizable boost to the Chinese economy; second, it will concurrently further increase the Chinese government’s control of Chinese society; finally, the new currency is part of an ambitious plan to strengthen the international position of the renminbi, the Chinese currency, and potentially at the expense of the euro in particular. This Chinese decisiveness should spur European policymakers into action by further strengthening the euro. China: from cash-based to almost completely cashless money in 10 years’ time Not so long ago, retail payments in China were still almost entirely made in cash. There has been a revolution in payments traffic since that time, and China is now one of the leading countries in cashless payments. Unlike in other countries, such as the Netherlands and Sweden, in China this development did not originate from the banking system, but it was induced by a few key apps from relatively young Fintech companies such as WeChat (Tencent) and Alipay (Ant Financial). These parties, that form a kind of extra layer between the banks and their customers, now have a collective market share of more than 90% in Chinese payments cashless retail payments. The Chinese cashless payments system is already able to settle approximately 100,000 transactions per second. The Chinese CBDC: DCEP Against this background, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the Chinese central bank, has taken the initiative of developing its own digital currency known as the Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP). Above all, the DCEP is a digital alternative to bank notes, although it has features that differ from cash in certain respects (see below). The DCEP does however have the same value as a renminbi. The technology that can be used by the public for payments is based on traditional payment technology and not on blockchain technology. This is the only way to achieve the necessary scale. The aim is to reach a capacity of 300,000 transactions per second. The central bank might itself use blockchain, for example for wholesale transactions or settlements in DCEP between private banks. Although the DCEP is a cashless currency that will be held in an account with a private entity, there is also the possibility of using a token-based functionality on for example a chip to effect peer-to-peer payments, even where there is no Internet. This is especially needed for successful adoption in the rural areas of China. This token-based functionality will be widely used, as a result of which the DCEP will compete with cash. A sizable trial has been running for several months in which tens of thousands of people have been participating. What does the PBoC want to achieve with the DCEP? The PBoC has several objectives with the introduction of the DCEP. Prevention of a monopoly in the payment system The PBoC wants to prevent a situation in which WeChat and AliPay take over the Chinese payment system. It is concerned that the entire payment system will soon fall into the hands of these private parties. The DCEP therefore has to restrict the involvement of these parties and increase the role of the central bank in the payment system. It is even more likely that any key private firm will be prevented to become a dominant player, as ultimately China is not a ‘normal’ market economy (which explains Beijing's current crackdown on Ant Financial far better than just a feud between Xi Jinping and Jack Ma). Promotion of financial inclusion and further reduction of the role played by cash Highly efficient cashless payments dominate in large parts of China. But in the poorer regions, especially the rural areas, people have less access to banking services such as regular credit. In these areas, cash still plays an important role. Payments in the criminal underworld, including the illegal gambling industry, are also still largely made in cash. The DCEP will offer people in these regions full access to financial services, but it can also reduce the importance of cash payments. The main aim of the DCEP is therefore to replace cash. In terms of features, it will also closely resemble cash. Better information on payment flows and prevention of illegal transactions Unlike payment transactions using a bank account, which by definition leave traces in a bank’s records, cash payments are highly anonymous. As we have said, the DCEP will closely resemble cash, with the possibility of making payments directly from one person to another. Some degree of anonymity would thus appear to be safeguarded. But on further consideration, it becomes clear that the PBoC, and therefore the Chinese government, will have full insight. To be precise, in a transaction between two people effected with DCEP, anonymity between these two people will be assured, as is the case with a cash payment. But the PBoC can always establish at a later date who were involved in the transaction. This will enable more effective tracing of illegal transactions than if these were effected in cash. But there will also be detailed insight into the payment behavior of individuals. Restricting capital flight Although China does not have free cross-border capital movements, capital flight is a common and substantial phenomenon. Capital flight can occur in various ways, and is often difficult to trace. For example, internationally trading Chinese companies can for instance manipulate invoices, as a result of which money can be transferred abroad. People can also use the Bitcoin system to hide money from the authorities and/or transfer it abroad. The Chinese government, like its counterparts in Europe and the US, is concerned that stablecoins could assume an important role as an alternative to the regular money in circulation, but also may develop into a vehicle for capital flight (read "How The Chinese Use Illegal Online Gambling And Tether To Launder Over $1 Trillion Yuan"). Stablecoins are cryptos like Bitcoin, but unlike Bitcoin they are, at least in theory, secured by financial assets. When Facebook announced in April 2020 that it intends to add national stablecoins to its Libra, a digital currency basket that it announced in 2019, central banks reacted immediately by devoting more urgent attention to CBDC.23 Such stablecoins could for example create the possibility that people could use a Libra-stablecoin to transfer money abroad. With the DCEP, the PBoC intends to slow the momentum of private stablecoins. This is also an important consideration for the Western central banks. Retention of monetary sovereignty This is connected with the previous point. If people have easy access to a private stablecoin, it could actually in a sense reduce the role of the national currency. Something similar actually happened in Zimbabwe, where confidence in the national currency completely vanished as a result of hyperinflation and people turned en masse to foreign currencies such as US dollars and South African rand. In such a situation, the national central bank loses control of monetary conditions in its own country. Importantly, however, the DCEP could also be used by China to interfere with monetary sovereignty in other countries. What about privacy? The PBoC says it will respect the privacy of people and therefore the anonymity of the transactions but at the same time it says that DCEP will help it to detect illegal transactions. What this probably comes down to in practice is that people will be able to effect payments and retain anonymity between each other, but that the central bank will on the other hand be able to view the transactions. Anonymity will therefore not be guaranteed and the central bank will have much greater insight into people’s payment behaviour than it has at the moment. The DCEP will also have the status of legal tender. This means that Chinese residents will be obliged to accept the DCEP, as confirmed by various statements from the central bank on the issue (South China Morning Post, 10 November 2020). The DCEP is thus not really coming into being as a result of strong demand from the Chinese public, but it is being imposed on the population by the government. Moreover, the way the DCEP is designed, it may develop into a perfect vehicle for a quasi-command economy: it allows all transactions to be monitored, and opens the door for a retreat to a more Soviet model of banking, viz. banking under full state control. Internationalization of the renminbi The use of the renminbi in international transactions is still relatively limited, certainly in comparison with the dollar and the euro. But China is working steadily on increasing its usage, and even hopes that one day the renminbi can succeed the dollar as the global reserve currency. China sees the DCEP as an important vehicle for strengthening the renminbi’s international position, as foreigners will also be able to use the DCEP in transactions with China. The benefit of this for China is that it can settle more of its international trade in (digital) renminbi. China has initially targeted Africa in this respect. Many African countries do not have fully convertible currencies and mutual trade is frequently settled in US dollars, which is expensive. China is aiming to achieve a situation in which African countries can use the DCEP not only in their trade with China, but will also use it for their domestic transactions. This is a good example of how China is aiming to position itself internationally and how various projects and institutions will cooperate under the direction of the government. The newest model of the Huawei smartphone indeed includes an app enabling payment in DCEP without the need for Internet (Eurasia). Huawei is currently already a leading telecoms provider in Africa, which gives China a head start. In other parts of the world, where Huawei is less dominant or even banned, it will off course be less simple for China to push the DCEP ahead. Note that while China intends to strengthen its own monetary sovereignty with the DCEP, it clearly has no qualms regarding its use to undermine the monetary sovereignty of other countries. If not only a larger proportion of the trade between China and African countries but also part of intra-African trade could soon be settled in DCEP, therefore renminbi, international use of the Chinese currency will significantly increase. Note, that if a larger share of China’s international trade will be conducted in DCEP, it will also become more difficult for Chinese im- and exporters to use trade as a way to channel funds abroad. So it will held the Chinese government to reduce capital flight, although complete elimination of this phenomenon will not be possible. Decision time: is the DCEP a wake-up call? China is leading internationally with the introduction of CBDC, and is clearly moving in a different direction than many other countries considering a similar move. The debate in Europe is still mainly about the form the digital euro, its CBDC, should take, the question of whether there is consumer demand for it, and who should pay for it. The Chinese authorities are taking a more strategic approach, and most of all from the perspective of whether a digital currency can contribute to strengthening/entrenching China’s international position. Assuming that the current Chinese trials are successful, we could very well see the DCEP appear as early as next year. This could be a significant step in the further movement of the Chinese economy towards cashless money. The payments system would be further strengthened by the DCEP, as this will prevent large private parties gaining a duopoly with the market power that this would entail. Financial inclusion would be improved in the underdeveloped areas, and everyone would have access to cashless money and the associated financial services that this would make possible. The black economy would be further reduced, and the Chinese government will have better insight (and control) of the payment behaviour of its citizens to an extent that we in the West would probably see as unacceptable. Lastly, the introduction of the DCEP can discourage capital flight and probably strengthen the renminbi’s international position. All in all, the DCEP will certainly make a positive contribution to the further development of the Chinese economy. Although the DCEP looks to be less innovative than the CBDCs under consideration by the Western central banks in certain respects, the determination shown by China is undoubtedly impressive. This Chinese resoluteness also shows that China is working very actively on strengthening the renminbi’s international position, with the central bank and companies such as Huawei working closely together to achieve this. While still a long way off, a scenario in which first parts of the African, but later maybe Asian, Latin American of even some European economies will use the renminbi for cross-border and in due course also domestic transactions is gradually becoming more plausible. One may also expect China to try to get all countries involved in its Belt and Road Initiative to use the DCEP and therefore the renminbi. Today, the renminbi is still a small currency in comparison to the euro and most of all the dollar. But this situation could change if the DCEP becomes widely accepted. In the context of a situation in which the euro’s international position has more or less stagnated over the last decades, this is at the very least somewhat disconcerting. Of course we may expect that, once the digital renminbi takes off and gains traction, other central banks will react strongly. Especially the US will be determined to hold on to the dollar’s international dominance. The US authorities will soon understand that a successful digital renminbi may in the long run turn out to be a larger threat to the position of the dollar than the euro ever was. The most important difference is that the euro is institutionally weak and European politicians have so far failed to use their currency as a geopolitical instrument. The Chinese government, in contrast, understand very well the power of money as a ‘peaceful’ instrument to increase international political clout. But after all the good news may be, that the DCEP also turns out to be the important wake-up call that prompts European policymakers to finally devote serious attention to strengthening the international role of the euro. Having the second currency after the US dollar is maybe not optimal, but is not disastrous. Being third after the Chinese renminbi is a different story. In the end, money talks. * * * Appendix: what will the DCEP look like? The exact design of the DCEP is still not clear. According to the BIS, the DCEP will be what is known as a hybrid CBDC. People will hold balances in their names at the central bank, but transactions will be approved using an intermediate layer of private parties (possibly including commercial banks). There will then be no direct interaction between the central bank and the account holders, but people will have an account in their names at the central bank. This would be similar to the ideas being mooted at other central banks such as the ECB and the Bank of England. Bloomberg, Blockchain News and the China Daily on the other hand describe the DCEP as a two-tier system, in which people will not directly hold accounts with the PBoC. According to these reports, in the Chinese system people will hold only a DCEP account with a bank or, more likely, with a payment service provider. These parties will in turn hold a balance with the PBoC as a liquidity reserve that exactly covers the amount of DCEP. They will also settle interbank payments in DCEP. This kind of system is also known as a synthetic CBDC (sCBDC), as people will not have their own CBDC accounts with the central bank. The PBoC will however receive regular statements of effected transactions. If this last model is adopted, the Chinese CBDC model would be more like a full (liquidity) reserve bank than a real CBDC. A full liquidity reserve bank is a bank that would hold a 100% cash reserve with the central bank against the CBDC payment accounts held with it. But in the Chinese model, there would be no additional institution created, the existing financial institutions would offer additional accounts that would then be 100% backed by central bank reserves. Statements from the PBoC also suggest the direction is more towards a synthetic model. Technically speaking, this would represent a less innovative move than a true CBDC.

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Hacks: ClubHouse, LinkedIn, FaceBook and more... Hacked, Scraped, and Dumped
by grarpamp 11 Apr '21

11 Apr '21

https://cybernews.com/security/clubhouse-data-leak-1-3-million-user-records… Datasets all online.

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Cryptocurrency: CBDC's WarOnCash - You ill Be Canceled
by grarpamp 11 Apr '21

11 Apr '21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUb66PZ5EgY Corbett: Catherine Fitts - CBDC's... You will be cancelled

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WEF Cyber Polygon: Corporate Game Sim, Prelude re Corona Event 201, CBDC WarOnCash Cryptocurrency
by grarpamp 11 Apr '21

11 Apr '21

"It’s interesting how simulations, trial runs, and mock attacks often seem to precede actual events." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUb66PZ5EgY Corbett: Catherine Fitts - You will be cancelled https://www.theorganicprepper.com/cyberattack-simulation/ https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/02/investigative-reports/from-event-201-t… https://2020.cyberpolygon.com/results-2020/ https://www.weforum.org/press/2019/10/live-simulation-exercise-to-prepare-p… https://www.theorganicprepper.com/clade-x-virus-kill-900-million-people/ https://www.businessinsider.com/pandemic-virus-simulation-johns-hopkins-sho… https://www.weforum.org/projects/cyber-polygon https://www.sberbank.ru/en/individualclients https://bi.zone/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income Is 2021's Fictional Cyberattack Simulation Prepping Us For A Cyber Pandemic? Authored by Robert Wheeler via The Organic Prepper blog, Many readers are aware of a simulation conducted by the World Economic Forum called Event 201 that preceded the COVID pandemic. Event 201 eerily described and seemed to predict the pandemic. (There was also a pandemic simulation called Clade X that preceded Covid.) What some readers may not know, however, is that the World Economic Forum conducted a similar simulation, Cyber Polygon 2020. This 2020 event also predicted a global catastrophe. A new cyberattack simulation, Cyber Polygon, will occur in July 2021. The WEF, Russia’s Sberbank, and its cybersecurity subsidiary BIZONE announced in February that a new cyberattack simulation would occur July 9, 2021. The event will simulate a supply-chain cyberattack similar to the SolarWinds attack that would “assess the cyber resilience” of the exercise participants. >From the Article written by Whitney Webb and Johnny Vedmore, “From Event 201 To Cyber Polygon: The WEF’s Simulation Of A Coming Cyber Pandemic” : The exercise comes several months after the WEF, the “international organization for public-private cooperation” that counts the world’s richest elite among its members, formally announced its movement for a Great Reset, which would involve the coordinated transition to a Fourth Industrial Revolution global economy in which human workers become increasingly irrelevant. This revolution, including its biggest proponent, WEF founder Klaus Schwab, has previously presented a major problem for WEF members and member organizations in terms of what will happen to the masses of people left unemployed by the increasing automation and digitalization in the workplace. New economic systems that are digitally based and either partnered with or run by central banks are a key part of the WEF’s Great Reset, and such systems would be part of the answer to controlling the masses of the recently unemployed. As others have noted, these digital monopolies, not just financial services, would allow those who control them to “turn off” a person’s money and access to services if that individual does not comply with certain laws, mandates and regulations. How do the event coordinators describe Cyber Polygon 2021? The newly updated event website, Cyber Polygon 2021, ominously warns as the world is more interconnected and global digitalization accelerates “a single vulnerable link is enough to bring down the entire system, just like the domino effect. A secure approach to digital development today will determine the future of humanity for decades to come.” >From the World Economic Forum site: What is Cyber Polygon? Cyber Polygon is a unique cybersecurity event that combines the world’s largest technical training exercise for corporate teams and an online conference featuring senior officials from international organisations and leading corporations. Cyber Polygon in 2021 This year discussions during the live-streamed conference will centre on secure development of ecosystems. With global digitalisation further accelerating and people, companies, and countries becoming ever more interconnected, security of every single element of a supply-chain is key to ensuring the sustainability of the whole system. During the technical exercise, participants will hone their practical skills in mitigating a targeted supply chain attack on a corporate ecosystem in real time. Crises seem to conveniently arise when the people in power want change. All this ties right into Universal Basic Income. The very popular UBI, introduced with even more vigor after the COVID 19 pandemic, has popularized consistent “stimulus payments” to survive the crisis. The idea of the UBI has been thrown around as a solution to poverty for some time, with bloggers like Daisy Luther comparing it to modern-day feudalism. With the building blocks of the technological control grid already in place, adding a UBI forms a relatively strong foundation. The WEF has settled on the model of “stakeholder capitalism.” In name and theory, it appears to be an inclusive type of capitalism. However, it would essentially merge the public and private sectors, which would, as Webb and Vedmore write, create “a system much more like Mussolini’s corporatist style of fascism than anything else.” To get to that point, however, the current system must collapse. Its replacement society will be successfully marketed to the general population as being better than its predecessor. “When the world’s most powerful people, such as members of the WEF,” write Webb and Vedmore, “desire to make radical changes, crises conveniently emerge—whether a war, a plague, or economic collapse—that enable a “reset” of the system, which is frequently accompanied by a massive upward transfer of wealth.” Is there a possible warming of international relations with Russia? What’s also notable about the upcoming simulation is Russia’s inclusion as a leader of such an important global event. If there is a real cyberattack that disables and disrupts a large portion of the global financial system, who will be blamed? Is the overused Russian hacker narrative coming to an end? The answer to that question might be the final nail in the coffin of anything resembling a free society. How do we prepare for a real cyberattack? Many of you would probably rather not wait for a fictional simulation to tell you how to prepare for this. Here’s what you need to know about them and how to prepare for a cyber attack. Cyber attacks are a growing risk, experts say, with some even suggesting that cyber warfare will be the battleground of the future. It’s interesting how simulations, trial runs, and mock attacks often seem to precede actual events.

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Censorship: Kiwi Farms Josh on Section 230 CDA, Cryptocurrency, MATCH Secret Credit Card Banking Blacklists
by grarpamp 11 Apr '21

11 Apr '21

https://madattheinternet.com/2021/04/07/section-230-isnt-the-problem-paymen… https://kiwifarms.net/ http://uquusqsaaad66cvub4473csdu4uu7ahxou3zqc35fpw5d4ificedzyqd.onion/ http://kiwifarms6v775u6.onion/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms https://encyclopediadramatica.wiki/index-php/Kiwi_Farms https://kiwifarms.net/threads/exploration-of-international-options.85614/ "I am seeking legal advice regarding 8 different European countries regarding the viability of foreign markets for hosting the forum. -- KiwiFarms" https://reclaimthenet.org/dick-masterson-new-project-2-mastercard/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfBorgoYQa4 MATCH Secret Credit Blacklist https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2021/nr-occ-2021-8.html https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2021/nr-occ-2021-14.html https://archive.is/A2KZ8 https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/index.html https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/ Section 230 Isn't The Problem, Payment Networks Are Authored by 'Josh' via MadAtTheInternet.com Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is one of the most important pieces of legislation in American history. Passed into law in 1996, it has overseen the entirety of the consumer Internet’s development. Its premise is simple: Internet service providers and platform operators are not responsible for civil damages that result from user-generated content that they host or manage. These protections are why the United States is the first choice for hosting any digital service. Without them, the entire world would suffer a less free Internet. I have operated a controversial website called the Kiwi Farms for 8 years and was featured in ZeroHedge in 2019 after telling New Zealand police I would not be surrendering my user’s information to them. My website thrives and doubles in size each year, primarily thanks to Section 230. I can allow my users to say almost anything they want without having to worry about being sued for what they say. Without these essential protections, I would not be able to host in the United States. Unfortunately, Section 230 has been defamed as the reason Facebook, Twitter, Google, et al behave the way they do. This is not true. These businesses censor because they have personal motivations to do so. More importantly, they have financial motivations to do so. I hope to convince a reasonable person that: Payment networks must be regulated to give fair access. Section 230 is essential and modifying it harms online speech. Big tech does not need Section 230, but you do. You should learn how to use cryptocurrencies right now. The payment networks are more powerful than big tech. Without the consent of all four major payment networks to stay in business, even mighty tech giants are vulnerable to lose billions of dollars in revenue. The various agreements enforced by the four major payment networks (MasterCard, Visa, Amex, and Discover) impose rules that any business wanting to exist in the digital economy must obey. Not all these rules are written. The big payment networks like to stay out of the public eye. They avoid attention by using blacklists which they claim only banks can add to, but which they manage and share. You also never deal with the payment network directly. An eCommerce site passes your credit card information to a “payment gateway”, which is plugged into a “payment processor”, and that payment processor handles communications with the payment networks. Each of these are usually different companies. When you get banned from processing payments, you are told so by your payment gateway or payment processor, but the decision can come from much higher up. If it were, you’d be lucky to find out. Consider a company like Patreon. They are an online crowdfunding service which handles donations from many supporters to many online content creators. Patreon has its own rules, uses Stripe as a payment gateway and payment processor, agrees to Stripe’s terms of service, and then Stripe coordinates with all major payment networks which each have their own set of agreements. That means every creator on Patreon must obey six different sets of rules. If the gateway were its own company, it would be seven. It is no wonder so many people get banned, as only the most tepid and inoffensive content creators could hope to meet so many different standards! Patreon must keep Stripe happy to stay in business, and Stripe must keep all four payment networks happy to stay in business. If any one of MasterCard, Visa, Amex, or Discover pass a rule, then it affects the entire downstream ecosystem. If Discover (5% of the market) says an industry or behavior is prohibited, then Stripe must enforce that rule on all the merchants on their service (even merchants who do not process Discover). If Discover were to cut ties with Stripe, then Stripe would lose at least 5% of their transactions over night and any merchants who do want to process Discover cards. That is a large and dramatic blow to any company operating on small margins. I do not claim it is MasterCard’s fault that Twitter banned Trump. I am sure Twitter makes many stupid decisions all on its own. The problem is that these rules—how they are enforced, the secrecy in which they are enforced, and unappealable finality of these decisions—stifle competition. Startups like Gab quickly find themselves told they are not allowed to make money. This problem has never existed before on the scale that it does now. This phenomenon transcends the type of startup. All alt-tech is trodden upon equally. Patreon competitor New Project 2 was first banned from a payment processor at the demand of Discover, then after finding a new payment processor was put on MATCH (the MasterCard blocklist), prohibiting the company from ever finding another payment processor. If Dick Masterson (the owner of NP2) made a new company to try and get around MATCH for the purpose of continuing NP2, he would very likely find his person on that blocklist directly, ending all his businesses at once. These blocklists, and the risk management factors which decide who goes on them, are “trade secrets” and you cannot even sue to figure out why you were added to them. New Project 2 was blacklisted for “Violation of Standards”, which prohibits it from even using so-called high-risk processors. Nobody knows what “Violation of Standards” means. Dick only found some details of New Project 2’s blacklisting because he called the banks and annoyed the right people for days until they reluctantly admitted who was actually at fault. Payment networks claim they do not add merchants to the blacklists, and that only partner banks can, but they will call these banks and tell them to do it on their behalf, and the banks are not in any position to refuse. PayPal has not been mentioned so far, but rest assured they are one of the most egregious and will drop you first. BitChute, a video platform competing with YouTube, was banned from PayPal. ZeroHedge itself is banned from using PayPal. To this day, because of my association with the Kiwi Farms, I cannot use the Uber app to get a taxi because Uber uses PayPal to process credit cards and I am banned from PayPal. Before we regulate the Internet, why don’t we try to regulate the payment networks? Give the market a fair chance at competing with tech giants by enforcing fair access to credit and debit card processing! The Office of the Comptroller of Currency proposed new regulation which would require banks (and the services they run, including payment networks) to stop industry blacklisting and require specific examples of risk to ban a merchant from processing cards. It was called Fair Access to Financial Services (OCC-2020-0042-0001). These “fair access” rules were finalized on January 14th, 2021. They were set to take effect on April 1st. Placing this on April Fool’s Day was a bit too prescient, because the Chairman immediately resigned after passing this rule, and the fair access rule was formally put on an indefinite pause on January 28th, 2021 – one week after Biden assumed office. This rule was politicized as a way for Republicans to force poor, innocent multinational trillion dollar banking institutions to do business with ‘evil’ industries like oil drilling and the NRA. The Chairman of the OCC made note that it should be an act of congress to regulate those industries, not unilaterally enforced by nameless risk management committees behind closed doors. It is unlikely that payment network regulation will find bipartisan support. The payment networks do a good job of picking their targets. Controversial but left-leaning organizations like Nation of Islam appear to have no issue processing cards, despite their virulent antisemitism rivaling anything found on Gab. Perhaps if Planned Parenthood suddenly needed cash upfront to perform abortions things would change. Until then, free speech will be clustered alongside weapons and Alaskan oil prospecting as an industry that is safe to punch down at. So, if bankers are above regulation for now, why not regulate social media? We have already amended Section 230 and it sucked. There are holes poked into Section 230 protections already. When Section 230 was first passed in 1996, Congress effectively legalized piracy. Platforms were immunized even from copyright infringement damages. So, if pirates could stay anonymous, there was no one to sue for distributing copies of movies. To patch the piracy loophole, in 1998, we passed the DMCA. This act created the process for the copyright takedown system that is infamous on websites like YouTube. Rights Holders can now take down copyrighted content and sue the services directly if they refuse to comply. Unfortunately, the process created is so sloppy and awful it is a continuous nightmare for a host like me (and everyone on YouTube) to deal with. For one, there is no recourse for flagrant or malicious DMCA takedowns. There is no requirement that the person sending the DMCA prove they own the copyright, to have a copyright ID, to be an attorney, or anything to that effect. I routinely receive copyright complaints that I must take seriously for content they don’t even own. OnlyFans (a Grand Cayman company) makes it clear in their Terms of Service that they do not own the content they host. Despite that, OnlyFans routinely sends me DMCA takedown notices for their 3rd party content through a man out of California who is not an attorney. This is a total farce, and there is nothing I can do. I still must reply with a counter notice, but they never take it to court and I never even hear back. I have no legal recourse against this abuse. This will be everything online if further loopholes were carved into Section 230. Imagine if defamation was handled the same way the copyright system is. Random trolls could issue takedowns for your Tweets and Facebook posts. You would have to send a legal counter notice with your real name and address to the troll to reinstate your messages. There would be no validations in place. Your speech would be at the mercy of the whims of insane people online. In this environment where platforms could be held liable for things said on their websites, only the richest of them could afford survival. I am currently dealing with two lawsuits. They are completely baseless, insane ramblings from insane people, but they will still cost a lot of money to deal with. There is no way to get fees from them because they have nothing to take. Without Section 230, I would lose a layer of protection enabling me to deal with these lawsuits for much less than it would if we had to take it to trial. It would destroy the site, especially since I cannot charge cards normally to generate consistent revenue to fund my defenses with. President Trump and people in general seem desperate just for revenge. The rabble directed towards Section 230 is out of anger. “If only this blow were delivered and 230 were repealed,” they think, “Twitter would be plunged into financial ruin overnight.” Maybe a Samson Option is what we need? Unfortunately, it is not so simple. Twitter would adapt and become more censorious to reduce its civil liabilities. All US search engines would have their results curated by anyone willing to complain about defamation—including, and perhaps especially, by public figures with something to hide. The smaller and less profitable sites hosted out of the US (Gab, Parler, 4chan, 8kun, Kiwi Farms, Encyclopedia Dramatica, thousands of small, federated services and communities) would either be destroyed outright, forced go private, or driven out of the United States. It would be a total disaster for the little guys. Jack Posobiec made a comment recently that Justice Clarence Thomas had ruled Section 230 was unconstitutional. This is not true. The opinion he cited as ‘sauce’ was not case law, but rather an opinion in the strictest sense. Thomas did not even claim Section 230 was unconstitutional. This misinformation was seen hundreds of thousands of times and further defamed the public perception of a law we rely on to even conduct these conversations about Section 230 online. So, if we can’t regulate the banks and Section 230 is actually good, what can we do? What Clarence Thomas actually suggested was that we might have to regulate the supermassive tech companies as ‘common carriers’ or utilities. Regulating only the largest social media networks could work. You can either be a monopoly, or you can be unregulated, you cannot be both. I maintain that regulating payment networks first would be ideal, but that will not happen. There is some hope that FedNow, an atrociously named US answer to SEPA, could offer some relief to this payment network bottleneck on speech. I am not optimistic for it, but it is good for more people to know it is supposedly in development. Cryptocurrencies bypass the payment network bottleneck now. The more people who know how to transact in cryptocurrency, the freer the Internet will be. Sites like buybitcoinworldwide.com (not an affiliate url) contain simple guides on how to get into the ecosystem regardless of your country. You do not have to invest any money in. Just learn how crypto works, how to get it, and how to send it. That knowledge cannot be taken away from you—and it might prove useful, sooner rather than later.

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Li-ion battery costs.
by jim bell 09 Apr '21

09 Apr '21

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-03-reveals-plunge-lithium-ion-battery.html I've been following magnesium-ion batteries for a few years.

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The Hill: Barreling towards a broadband blunder | TheHill
by jim bell 09 Apr '21

09 Apr '21

The Hill: Barreling towards a broadband blunder | TheHill. https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/547073-barreling-towards…

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Technofascism?
by Karl 09 Apr '21

09 Apr '21

Given that governments and corporations usually have technology that exceeds the community, and that artificial intelligence can complete technological and physical research, providing universal "magic", is the correct thing to do to quickly research peak technology, so as to end the conflict and level the playing field? Batsoup and angry free luddites may instead propose that we struggle to physically fight and take down the existing infrastructure. Such behavior likely has some kind of impact, but not always the expected one. In the 2010s, political influence corporations like Cambridge Analytica used machine learning with public data to enumerate properties and predict behaviors of every single citizen of a given country, providing for significantly reduce privacy. It's hard to believe this enumeration was 100% exhaustive, given the diversity of life experiences out there. Still, it is frightening, and I'm sure research has improved since. It makes one wonder what would be needed for resistance against the various forms of real, serious slavery, to succeed.

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