Reality Based Community

Life in the Empire

The year in cryptocurrency, an anarchist's perspective

In the heady days shortly after Bitcoin hit $19,783 in December of last year, Pieter Wuille was quoted in a New York Times article saying “the technology still needs time to evolve. This infusion of interest is bringing the wrong kind of attention. Some people believe Bitcoin can’t fail or this technology solves many more problems than it does. It can. And it does not.”

 

This even-handed approach remains relevant today, as we approach the first year anniversary of Bitcoin’s peak. A lot of people who bought BTC panicking on the way up, afraid they might be missing the Next Sure Thing, sold panicking on the way down, aghast at how much money they were losing how quickly.

While “irrational exuberance” may have propelled it up, the schadenfreude being displayed now by the latest so many August Personages is equally irrational. These pundits often note salient points of current market conditions. Start-ups once flush with capital are laying off workers or closing... ICO funding has largely dried up.  Many tokens launched with fanfare quickly flat line. They also fall back on many of the old criticisms that have been swirling around cryptocurrency since their inception. Scams abound. Technological security continues to be a challenge, notably in ICOs and cryptocurrency currency exchanges. Cryptocurrency is primarily useful for facilitating illicit activities.

 

November 15: [Claudio Borio, head of the Monetary and Economic Department of the Bank of International Settlements. Starting at 40:15, Borio said “The present system has central banks and the regulatory supervisory apparatus at its core. Now the system is by no means perfect. It can and must be improved but, for instance, cryptocurrencies with their promise of a fully decentralized trust are not the answer.”](https://www.cato.org/multimedia/events/36th-annual-monetary-confere...)

 

November 30: the Global Chief Economist for UBS Wealth Management Paul Donovan “I come to bury Bitcoin, not to praise it…These things were never going to be currencies. They’re not going to be currencies at any point in the future…Right from the start of the hike in late last year, it was fairly obvious that this was going to end badly, unfortunately, for some of the people who weren’t protected by any kind of regulation and got sucked into the process.”

 

November 28: Nobel laureate in economics Robert Merton “The only possible legal tender currency is one controlled by government…Fiat but legal tender currencies actually have intrinsic value because by law they can be used to settle all tax and other payments to the government and they MUST be accepted as payment for obligations denominated in that currency…who is responsible for the value of our currency if tomorrow morning all the Bitcoin screens go dark?

 

December 10: Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard... “The right way to think about cryptocurrency coins is as lottery tickets that pay off in a dystopian future where they are used in rogue and failed states, or perhaps in countries where citizens have already lost all semblance of privacy.” 

 

America is a rogue and failed state as William Blum (R.I.P.),  Alfred McCoy, Chris Hedges, Andrew Bacevich, Chalmers Johnson,Harold Pinter and many others have clearly documented. That its “citizens have already lost all semblance of privacy” is obvious from information provided by NSA whistleblowers like Bill Binney, Thomas Drake, Edward Snowdon  and many others. The article about Thomas Drake quoted Yale law professor Jack Balkin saying that the spate of whistleblower prosecutions indicates “we are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national surveillance state.”

 

(As a representation of the state of the nation, consider this. All of the above-linked books have extremely disheartening Amazon sales ranks I assumed the first cat book would have a better sales rank than, say, William Blum’s (R.I.P.) Killing Hope. Indeed it did. Mr. Blum’s book was ranked 30,469. Francesco Marciuliano’s I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats was ranked 89. Marciuliano’s title was bested by 50 Ways to Eat Cock: Healthy Chicken Recipes with Balls! by Adrienne Hew at 32.)

 

However, the fact is that laws against financial fraud already exist and assumption of risk is settled concept of jurisprudence. In the quotes mentioned above, a recurring theme is that cryptocurrency can “never be a currency.” If something is a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value it certainly exhibits the primary characteristics of currency. Many jurisdictions regulate cryptocurrency as a commodity. It shares aspects of both, although regulatory environments have a lot more evolution to go through.

 

Those analysts who make the distinction between currency and legal tender may have a point. Legendary investor and noted world traveler Jim Rogers is a long term bear on cryptocurrency. As he noted “the government has more guns than anybody else.” They are loath to give up control; certainly one of the most fundamental definitions of a nation-state is that they are the entities which have a monopoly on legal violence. Sovereign countries may simply outlaw cryptocurrency.

 

These proclamations from the Masters of the Universe hurled off of the commanding heights of the global economy are surely understandable given the ideological commitments that stem from institutional positions working with fiat currency, central banks and nation-states. Never having wanted to take Bitcoin seriously, they seem to think that this year’s market downturn has absolved them of any need to understand it. It has given them a remarkable confidence to displaying a rather profound ignorance of the fundamental premises of this emerging technology, asset class and market. A glorified “Excel spreadsheet” Nouriel Roubini? Really? Roubini is perhaps the best example of the backlash among the punditocracy. His [October 2018 testimony before the Senate banking committee](https://cryptovest.com/news/roubini-senate-testimony-sparks-outrage...) was ill informed. The incredible frequency of his tweets and the intensity of their vitriol can only be characterized as hysterical.

 

While one would think such intelligent people would be embarrassed to display such ignorance so publicly, does cryptocurrency deserve the dismissive contempt it has been receiving lately? Perhaps schadenfreude is the wrong word for the invective of the bloviating class. Disruption is a very trendy word, especially in contemporary fintech, and often used where it does not really apply. Cryptocurrency, however, is fundamentally disruptive of the conventional wisdom, the consensus reality itself. While legal tender, central banks, central monetary and regulatory authorities, fiat currency (which has value based on nothing more than the collective agreement that it has value), the nation-state: these concepts are relatively new. In spite of that, they are the bedrock of the conventional wisdom and the consensus reality that structures international economics and geopolitics – and therefore our lives – and the mandarins of respectability shouting the loudest against cryptocurrency are precisely those people who play such fundamental roles in creating the conventional wisdom and the consensus reality and policing its boundaries. Although this explains their consternation better than mere schadenfreude, a more thorough anarchist cultural studies of cryptocurrency in the context of modern fintech is perhaps best left for another time.

 

In April 2013, Bitcoin lost 60% of its value in a flash crash from $26... It would be reasonable to compare 2018 for Bitcoin to the great bubbles of history: the South Seas, Dutch tulip, dot com and housing bubbles, for instance. But for an asset class to go from $120 in April 2013 to $3,264 as I finish this piece on December 14, 2018 is an absolutely stunning result by any measure.

 

The Winklevoss brothers are not the only long-term bulls in a young and rapidly evolving ecosystem. So are those who distrust centralized authority: especially the cypherpunks, cryptoanarchists, anarcho-capitalists, libertarians and others who got the ball rolling just a few short years ago. The writing is on the wall for the transnational corporate kleptocracy that socializes the costs and privatizes the benefits while subjecting the citizenry to an omnipresent surveillance state and the spectacle, “the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep.” - Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

 

Another faction who are long term bulls are the technologists who see the clear potential not only of cryptocurrency but of the enabling technology as well. Will blockchain have a social impact as important as computers? The internet? Smartphones? Time will tell, but it will probably be in that league.

 

Still another contingent are those who still know there is money to be made, in an ethical and interesting way, by sovereign individuals.

 

For that reason, the diverse and heterogeneous advocates don’t see the 2018 price dive as a bloodletting but rather part of the ongoing evolution of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a social form.

Views: 276

Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

well, this went over like a lead zepplin.

Well- it really went over with me Doktor Stones... but it was so deep and complex- I had to shove it to the backburner- where it still bubbles.  Wish there were access to yer great "Why Civil War is Inevitable in the US."  Why not stick it up here?  Right now there are so many loops closing.  We have all been here before.   

SUNDAY, AUGUST 21, 2005

Why a new civil war is inevitable in Amerikkka

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.
Hosea 8:7

A new civil war, actually more of a civil war/revolution hybrid, is inevitable due to a confluence of trends culminating in a perfect storm. Cointellpro hacks and Echelon spiderbots: clearly understand this, I am neither calling for it, nor do I advocate violence (in spite of the horrific violence that undergirds the history and contemporary reality of Amerikkkan state power). Indeed, in the course of the coming turmoil, many people who don't deserve to will suffer - although of course many people who deserve to meet justice will instead grow rich in safety. And the end result is likely to be the replacement of one set of corrupt elites with another, as has happened with every revolution - sorry doctrainaire revolutionary socialists (and shallow enthusiasts of the American revolution). Nevertheless, when one studies the assembled evidence from an intellectually honest, historical materialist point of view, it seems to be coming soon, sure as the sun sets each day.

The biggest reason why is probably because the "right" (what do labels really mean - virtually nothing at this point, with both parties clamoring to execute the wishes of the same military-industrial complex Board of Directors, fused together in perpetual wargasm), as it clawed its way back to power since Watergate (in what, tactically, was truly a masterful long march through the institutions), focused their pitch to the fuck-kill-eat lizard brain part of the brain. Actually, not even the brain - in human beings, rather, it is the brain stem. This meant the use of image and sound bites appealing to emotion over critical reason, in fact suffocating critical reason, a course of action made decidely easier by the rise of a virulently anti-science/anti-reason, reactionary, jingoistic, bible-thumping evangelical fundamentalist christianity (who know nothing whatsoever of Jesus' message as the prince of peace) as the handmaiden to "right-wing" power and the wholesale collapse of public education, which has raised two generations of selfish, consumerist, know-nothing zombies.

In cultivating this obese, brain-dead horde of sheeple clamoring to trade the achingly beautiful evolutionary miracle of reason and consciousness for blind submission to authoritarian reactionaries, the scumfucking "leaders" were especially fond of "fetishizing violence as a token of moral toughness" (nice wording, posted by Lemon Merengue at Poor Man). The phrases below are merely a few of the choicest morsels in this gluttonous bloodfeast of hate.

Unfortunately, the unstoppable force of a vast pool of willfully ignorant morons slavishly devoted to authority figures who eat their substance while peddling them filthy hateful lies, who have a bottomless capacity for self-delusion and cognitive dissonance (which by all laws of physics should have already made their heads explode long ago) are about to be confronted by the immovable object of Reality: Amerikkka's full-blown, permanent economic collapse, possibly intensified by the effects of 50% of Americans finally (with soul-numbingly painful slowness) realizing that Amerikkka's military imperialism is anti-future, anti-human and anti-planet (to say nothing of financially unaffordable) and perhaps the karmic hammer of Peak Oil dropping down (although more on my agnoticism regarding Peak Oil later).

In other words, when the shit hits the fan, the knuckle-dragging dittoheads, freepers and other assorted holy rollers are going to blame anyone their vaunted "leaders" tell them to blame as long as it helps prevent them from blaming themselves, their venal RepubliCrat war pig politicians, 115 years of raw military imperialism, and the karmic baggage associated with being a nation built on genocide, land theft, and slavery of a scale never seen before in human history. When the unwelcome effects of Reality begin to intrude on their beloved Freedom - which is nothing more or less than the "freedom" to watch cable TV, drink beer, shop at Wal Mart and worship celebrities in an undisturbed solipsistic haze while the rich and powerful that they adore so much lie to, murder and steal from them - they are basically going to flip out and engage in the violence for which they have been primed for so long. 

While this may give them some of the first exercise they have experienced since high school, it won't be healthy. Running down crosses at Camp Casey is just one of the opening shots.

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

credit: the following quotes were assembled from disparate sources by the Poor Man.

We’re going to keep building the party until we’re hunting Democrats with dogs.

Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX)
Mother Jones, 8/1995

I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus - living fossils - so we will never forget what these people stood for.

Rush Limbaugh
Denver Post, 12/29/1995

Environmentalists are a socialist group of individuals that are the tool of the Democrat Party. I’m proud to say that they are my enemy. They are not Americans, never have been Americans, never will be Americans.

Rep. Don Young (R-AK)
Alaska Public Radio, 8/19/1996

Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him.

Rep. James Hansen (R-UT)
11/1/1998

Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past - I’m not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble - recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin’s penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an ‘enemy of the people.’ The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, ‘clan liability.’ In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished ‘to the ninth degree’: that is, everyone in the offender’s own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed.

John Derbyshire
National Review, 2/15/2001

The middle part of the country–the great red zone that voted for Bush–is clearly ready for war. The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead–and may well mount a fifth column.

Andrew Sullivan
London Sunday Times, 9/16/01

Why are we sending aircraft carriers halfway around the world to look for enemies, when our nation’s worst enemies–communists proclaiming an anti-American jihad–will be right there in front of the Washington Monument on Saturday?

Robert Stacy McCain
Washington Times, 9/27/01

Talk about ironic: the same people urging us not to blame the victim in rape cases are now saying that Uncle Sam wore a short skirt and asked for it.

Jonathan Alter
Newsweek, 10/1/2001

We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors.

Ann Coulter
2/26/2002

My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.

Ann Coulter
New York Observer, 8/26/2002

John Kerry has it tough. As I’ve mentioned before, he’s been trying to send a positive message on the war when many people in his own party are actively rooting for the other side.

Glenn Reynolds
4/15/2004

I have known some of the liberal world quite well and for a long time, and there are quite obviously people close to the leadership of today’s Democratic Party who do not at all hope that the battle goes well in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Christopher Hitchens
9/27/2004

Bush hatred has become a defining characteristic for many liberals—so much so that they appear to identify with it more surely and swiftly than they do their American citizenship. At times, some extremist liberals seem to be rooting against their fellow Americans and in favor of those who would kill us.

Tara Ross
2/1/2005

One can only admire Hendrickson’s candor in admitting what is usually hotly denied: that even many leading realists, along with many liberal internationalists, are rooting for an American defeat.

Norman Podhoretz
2/2005

Let me put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts to the region the words of Senator Durbin, certainly putting America’s men and women in uniform in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.

Karl Rove
6/22/2005

Everybody got it? Dissent, fine; undermining, you’re a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they’re undermining everything and they don’t care, couldn’t care less.

Bill O’Reilly
6/20/2005

While our men and women in uniform put their lives on the line each day to defend our safety and to protect our freedoms, I am sure the least they expect is the backing and the support of their leaders at home. To the contrary, what we’ve seen from Democrat leaders is a growing pattern of jumping at any chance to point the finger at our own troops, bending over backwards to promote the interests of terror-camp detainees while dragging our military’s honored reputation through the mud.

Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-OH)
6/23/2005

[It] is just inconceivable and truly incorrigible that in the midst of the war, that the Democratic leaders would be conducting guerrilla warfare on American troops. … [The Pelosi/Waxman proposal for an independent commission to investigate conditions at Guantanamo Bay is] simply another example of some Democrat leaders trusting the words of terrorists over the proven decency of U.S. troops.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC)
6/23/2005

The Democratic leadership priority is to actively engage in the politics of division and distraction that can undermine our national security in favor of a left-wing agenda.

Ron Bonjean
6/23/2005

Wouldn’t it be great if anybody who speaks out against this country, to kick them out of the country? Anybody that threatens this country, kick ‘em out. We’d get rid of Michael Moore, we’d get rid of half the Democratic Party if we would just import that law. That would be fabulous. The Supreme Court ought to look into this. Absolutely brilliant idea out there.

Rush Limbaugh
8/11/2005

The citizen has privileges which are not accorded to the alien. He is the master in the Reich. But this high honour has also its obligations. Those who show themselves without personal honour or character, or common criminals, or traitors to the fatherland, can at any time be deprived of the rights of citizenship. Therewith they become merely subjects of the State.

Adolph Hitler
Mein Kampf

Crypto currencies are built from the same Capitalist/Communist faith in endless resources. 

Something that adds so much to anthropomorphic Climate Change can't be the solution.

isn't it all inaccessible when the grid goes down?

meanwhile in Germany...https://youtu.be/KxJZmyvyDCU

someone refers to being lucky it's not grenades, like in Paris?

Skip to the end, see the train draw in.

I have invested my all in the next couple of generations, and otherwise disappeared entirely, not wishing to blight their futures.  I am absent from every social occasion, as though I were dead.

there is an awful risk in speaking words that come to mind these days in England.  Even poetry.

https://youtu.be/A3nvuzAb3Ng

but they do speak well of me, as I couldn't for myself, having unkempt thoughts waiting to blurt themselves unguarded upon the proletariat.  

Britain became a signatory of the Global Compact on Migration on or after 11th December 2018, and the horror of it all was only compounded by those terrible murders in Morocco.

https://youtu.be/s7Vk657QLyI

Post-colonial karma.

Well... Pat Condell sounds like a bloody twit to me.   

I do not know what is going on in the U.K. but this video seems rather reactionary hyperbole in defense of white and heterosexual sovereignty and the good old days of Empire.

Opinion: Right-wing populism is EU's elephant in the room

https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-right-wing-populism-is-eus-elephant-i...   

Still wondering why so many Euros are mad at the invading brownies instead of the US vulture/ disaster capitalists and their GWOT.    

RSS

© 2024   Created by waldopaper.   Powered by

Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service