BTC is back over $10,000 again after some predictable profit taking.
Since my son first turned me on to Bitcoin a year, year and a half ago, I have spent hundreds of hours being educated by him and others. Writing just as one semi-literate dude, I concluded today that Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies have no fundamental value.
What did it? The last few conversations with my son: the disincentive that the price has to its use as a medium of exchange, the price volatility which also militates against it as a "coin;" the insufficiency of the block chain technology explanation for its fundamental value; we even talked, just last night, of it being a collectible and quickly shot that down. Today, Mark Cuban said he thinks Bitcoin is a collectible. That such an investment guy as Cuban would reach for something that a semi-literate guy and his son rejected the night before showed me that investment guys like Cuban do not understand what Bitcoin is and is not.
Anyway, my mind is open but I moved on and started thinking in whose interest it would be perpetrate such a brilliant con game. Thus the post title.
The Russian Project to destabilize America (and the West) began as early as 1988-89 when they first identified a Buffoon Clown named Donald Trump as a fool useful to the Project. Trump the Clown began toying with the idea of running for president in 1988 and every four years thereafter. Bush41 toyed with the idea of selecting Trump as his vice presidential running mate in 1992 but decided against a clown and chose Dan Quayle instead.
In 2002 at the beginning of Bush43's first term the Koch brothers Citizens for a Sound Economy started a website called "USTeaParty." The website never got off the ground, a casualty of CSE infighting, but the then heavyweight congressman Dick Armey was an enthusiastic supporter and the Tea Party idea continued to percolate inside Armey's head unopposed by other ideas.(1)
During the percolating phase Armey co-authored a proposed newspaper op-d which stated:
“[Samuel] Adams was the first American to recognize that ‘it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather, an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds,’ ”(2)
The proposed op-ed, like the USTeaParty website was stillborn and never published.
Bitcoin was introduced on January 3, 2009(3). Barack Obama was elected president in November, 2008 and inaugurated on January 20, 2009. As Obama's inaugural ball was going on Republican strategists met at a steak house and decided to obstruct anything the first Black president proposed. One month after Obama's inauguration the anti-government, anti-democratic, paranoid, racist, nationalist, obstructionist Tea Party brush fire was ignited.(4)
It was from the Tea Party and its southern fundamentalist precursors that Vladimir Putin "plagiarized" his authoritarian, anti-democratic, paranoid, racist, nationalist programme for Russia(5) which, once it proved successful in 2012 Putin replanted in its native soil. Trump sprouted.
Putin thus had seeded the fields long before an "irate tireless minority" shoosted the mutant Trump through the soil. Disinformation, fake websites, illogical argumentation and flat out lying were both native to Tea Party America and Putin's fertilizer. Trump was laughed at and not taken seriously, just as Dick Armey's 2007 op-ed piece was ignored by editors, just as the Tea Party was until February 2009. It all took America by surprise until it was too late in 2016 and it is a confusion that America is just now sorting out. Chaos and a substantial diminution in America's standing in the world has been the result, exactly Putin's intended result.
The financial markets have all been taken by surprise by Bitcoin, it is very confusing, and shares a mysterious origin, a basis in hokum, fake promotional websites, as well as a birth date with Barack Obama's inauguration and the Tea Party. Consider:
-It's nominally a "coin." Which you cannot hold. Cannot "collect." Does not exist in reality. And which you dare not spend.
-Its programme was laid out in a White Paper by "Satoshi Nakamoto." Who does not exist by that name. Nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto "really" is. Like the American sounding names given by Russia to its recent female spies, for all we know, Satoshi Nakamoto is the Japanese sounding name (because Japanese people are known to be smart) given by Russia to whom Trump referred to "explain" Russia's hacking as "a 400 pound guy sitting on his bed" (in Russia). Like its creator Bitcoin is virtually real.
-It is nominally a virtual currency. But is not used as a currency. At the beginning of this post Bitcoin was worth $10,001.56. Right now, a couple of hours later, it is worth $9708. You dare not spend a currency whose value fluctuates like that. Bitcoin is used by practically nobody. Only criminals on the dark web. Criminals, like Wikileaks' Julian Assange, so helpful to the Russian Project.
-Its appeal has been to a suspicious, libertarian, anti-government cohort that overlaps with that of the Tea Party and Trump derelicts.
-It is promoted by websites having neutral, serious sounding names but which are, my son tells me, propaganda arms of Bitcoin. Just like Putin's fake twitter accounts.
-It is grounded in nothing: no facts, no technology, no raison d'etre, just like Trump's candidacy. Except to Russia.
-It has suddenly been seen by the vigilant, opportunistic Putin as another Western "asset" to be manipulated, like the Tea Party, like Breitbart, Michael Flynn, Donald Trump, and "controlled':
Vladimir Putin’s Russia is ready to embrace cryptocurrency—if only to control it.
The real push started in July, when a Putin aide unveiled his cryptocurrency mine: an industrial-scale server farm called Russian Miner Coin. In September, the company held an initial coin offering (ICO), raising over $43 million in Bitcoin and Ethereum.(6)
It would not be correct to say that Bitcoin is doing to American financial markets what Putin/the Tea Party/Trump did to America's democracy, it has not created financial Chaos, nor do I think (since I think Bitcoin will inevitably go the way of Tulip Bulbs) it has that potential. Neither did any patriotic American about Trump's candidacy. But it's a start! Bitcoin's market capitalization is already the equal, or in excess of, the capitalization of major credit cards. It's a damned good start. And it started at the same time as did the Tea Party brush fire from which Putin's seed for the hideous orange tulip Trump sprouted.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement
2. http://www.washingtonian.com/2013/06/26/armey-in-exile/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
4. Washingtonian, ibid.
5. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/vladimir-putin-tired-171125121152173.html
6. http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-world-leaders-embracing-for-fear-of-losing-control-2017-11
Since my son first turned me on to Bitcoin a year, year and a half ago, I have spent hundreds of hours being educated by him and others. Writing just as one semi-literate dude, I concluded today that Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies have no fundamental value.
What did it? The last few conversations with my son: the disincentive that the price has to its use as a medium of exchange, the price volatility which also militates against it as a "coin;" the insufficiency of the block chain technology explanation for its fundamental value; we even talked, just last night, of it being a collectible and quickly shot that down. Today, Mark Cuban said he thinks Bitcoin is a collectible. That such an investment guy as Cuban would reach for something that a semi-literate guy and his son rejected the night before showed me that investment guys like Cuban do not understand what Bitcoin is and is not.
Anyway, my mind is open but I moved on and started thinking in whose interest it would be perpetrate such a brilliant con game. Thus the post title.
The Russian Project to destabilize America (and the West) began as early as 1988-89 when they first identified a Buffoon Clown named Donald Trump as a fool useful to the Project. Trump the Clown began toying with the idea of running for president in 1988 and every four years thereafter. Bush41 toyed with the idea of selecting Trump as his vice presidential running mate in 1992 but decided against a clown and chose Dan Quayle instead.
In 2002 at the beginning of Bush43's first term the Koch brothers Citizens for a Sound Economy started a website called "USTeaParty." The website never got off the ground, a casualty of CSE infighting, but the then heavyweight congressman Dick Armey was an enthusiastic supporter and the Tea Party idea continued to percolate inside Armey's head unopposed by other ideas.(1)
During the percolating phase Armey co-authored a proposed newspaper op-d which stated:
“[Samuel] Adams was the first American to recognize that ‘it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather, an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds,’ ”(2)
Bitcoin was introduced on January 3, 2009(3). Barack Obama was elected president in November, 2008 and inaugurated on January 20, 2009. As Obama's inaugural ball was going on Republican strategists met at a steak house and decided to obstruct anything the first Black president proposed. One month after Obama's inauguration the anti-government, anti-democratic, paranoid, racist, nationalist, obstructionist Tea Party brush fire was ignited.(4)
It was from the Tea Party and its southern fundamentalist precursors that Vladimir Putin "plagiarized" his authoritarian, anti-democratic, paranoid, racist, nationalist programme for Russia(5) which, once it proved successful in 2012 Putin replanted in its native soil. Trump sprouted.
Putin thus had seeded the fields long before an "irate tireless minority" shoosted the mutant Trump through the soil. Disinformation, fake websites, illogical argumentation and flat out lying were both native to Tea Party America and Putin's fertilizer. Trump was laughed at and not taken seriously, just as Dick Armey's 2007 op-ed piece was ignored by editors, just as the Tea Party was until February 2009. It all took America by surprise until it was too late in 2016 and it is a confusion that America is just now sorting out. Chaos and a substantial diminution in America's standing in the world has been the result, exactly Putin's intended result.
The financial markets have all been taken by surprise by Bitcoin, it is very confusing, and shares a mysterious origin, a basis in hokum, fake promotional websites, as well as a birth date with Barack Obama's inauguration and the Tea Party. Consider:
-It's nominally a "coin." Which you cannot hold. Cannot "collect." Does not exist in reality. And which you dare not spend.
-Its programme was laid out in a White Paper by "Satoshi Nakamoto." Who does not exist by that name. Nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto "really" is. Like the American sounding names given by Russia to its recent female spies, for all we know, Satoshi Nakamoto is the Japanese sounding name (because Japanese people are known to be smart) given by Russia to whom Trump referred to "explain" Russia's hacking as "a 400 pound guy sitting on his bed" (in Russia). Like its creator Bitcoin is virtually real.
-It is nominally a virtual currency. But is not used as a currency. At the beginning of this post Bitcoin was worth $10,001.56. Right now, a couple of hours later, it is worth $9708. You dare not spend a currency whose value fluctuates like that. Bitcoin is used by practically nobody. Only criminals on the dark web. Criminals, like Wikileaks' Julian Assange, so helpful to the Russian Project.
-Its appeal has been to a suspicious, libertarian, anti-government cohort that overlaps with that of the Tea Party and Trump derelicts.
-It is promoted by websites having neutral, serious sounding names but which are, my son tells me, propaganda arms of Bitcoin. Just like Putin's fake twitter accounts.
-It is grounded in nothing: no facts, no technology, no raison d'etre, just like Trump's candidacy. Except to Russia.
-It has suddenly been seen by the vigilant, opportunistic Putin as another Western "asset" to be manipulated, like the Tea Party, like Breitbart, Michael Flynn, Donald Trump, and "controlled':
Vladimir Putin’s Russia is ready to embrace cryptocurrency—if only to control it.
The real push started in July, when a Putin aide unveiled his cryptocurrency mine: an industrial-scale server farm called Russian Miner Coin. In September, the company held an initial coin offering (ICO), raising over $43 million in Bitcoin and Ethereum.(6)
It would not be correct to say that Bitcoin is doing to American financial markets what Putin/the Tea Party/Trump did to America's democracy, it has not created financial Chaos, nor do I think (since I think Bitcoin will inevitably go the way of Tulip Bulbs) it has that potential. Neither did any patriotic American about Trump's candidacy. But it's a start! Bitcoin's market capitalization is already the equal, or in excess of, the capitalization of major credit cards. It's a damned good start. And it started at the same time as did the Tea Party brush fire from which Putin's seed for the hideous orange tulip Trump sprouted.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement
2. http://www.washingtonian.com/2013/06/26/armey-in-exile/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
4. Washingtonian, ibid.
5. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/vladimir-putin-tired-171125121152173.html
6. http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-world-leaders-embracing-for-fear-of-losing-control-2017-11
