Tag Archives: digital money

Trojan Horse Blockchain

trojan horseBitcoin is the trojan horse of the fiat monetary system and will ultimately end the state’s control of money. However this process will also compromise bitcoin’s core principals and cause for the corruption of bitcoin’s pseudonymous traits. Over the next decade as the cryptoeconomy expands its reach to become truly global, the financial system will quake as its foundation shifts from state fiat money, to decentralized digital currencies. While we should celebrate the rise of digital currencies, the full collapse of governments and global financial system is unlikely.

What we will see instead will be the horrifying metamorphosis of bitcoin into a panoptic nightmare. Bitcoin will be used by governments, bankers, and regulators to track our every purchase, and monitor all financial activity. Tainting tools will become so powerful that pretty much any bitcoin transaction will be possible to de-anonymize.

The crisis of fiat money will change not only finance and banking for the better, but the nature of governance as we know it. Bitcoin is going to be a trojan horse to the fiat banking system, and will destroy all government monopolies on this issuance of money. While bitcoin will be able to act as a check on the economic power of governments, in doing so it is also going to expose bitcoin to rigorous state regulations, and ultimately the full capturing of bitcoin as a whole system. Bitcoin may end the state’s control of money, but it may also open the path to the state’s ability to watch all financial transactions.

Inverting Bitcoin

Blythe Masters

Blythe Masters

This video at the Bank of England with Blythe Masters she speaks about what she believes to be in store for the future of bitcoin. She openly admit that the state supports her project, and that, “There will be no currency that gets around government controls.” Later the host of the program states, “There is no innovation that governments cannot seize for their own advantage…” This is followed by a discussion of the panopticon effect that bitcoin can have through tainting bitcoins and tracking their movements. All of this seems to be eluding to the capturing of bitcoin–banks and governments are working together to ‘inverting’ the blockchain to monitor all transactions.

Capturing Bitcoin

To capture bitcoin, all that governments need to do is auction off the bitcoin payment system to be regulated under the threat of force. This is already happening and companies like Coinalytics and Elliptic and providing the tools to taint and track bitcoins coming from anywhere. Effectively, this make every bitcoin highly traceable, which in turn can allow the banking system to merge with bitcoin to create a financial panopticon.

bitcoin-taintingThis new global monetary system where bitcoin will act as the rails of the financial system is magnitudes more efficient than all current fiat systems. This will create a lower general transaction cost when compared to any fiat money today, and will be the foothold that digital currencies will take to win out economically over fiat money in the long run. This is the inversion of bitcoin and will be how bitcoin will finally ‘die’ because of state compromise.

However, this is only the death of bitcoin’s body, not its soul.

Death by state and bank compromise will create the conditions for bitcoin’s core mission to be achieved through it becoming a trojan horse within their own system. This will cause for the destruction of fiat money, and will reassert the power of the purse back into the hands of the people.

There is no way that banks and financial service companies will be able to use ‘the blockchain’ (i.e. bitcoin) without also causing two other actions to happen simultaneously:

  1. The legitimization of bitcoin and other digital currencies as a global money.
  2. Exposing the legacy financial system to speculative attacks from the cryptocurrency economy, ultimately leading to a devaluation of fiat money against bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as fiat money is displaced.

Capturing the State

If bitcoin becomes a global reserve currency, as the central bank of Barbados believes it could be, then bitcoin is forging a path towards capturing the state through the very means by which it has captured all of us: through economic means.

resistBitcoin has some flaws in regards to its privacy that should scare off neer-do-wellers and privacy advocates alike. However, these same aspects are what makes bitcoin very, very appealing to the financial world, and is the reason they will start using bitcoin as their base currency under the mantra of ‘blockchain’. The transparent nature of the blockchain offers the possibility of a totally regulated and systematized world of digital currencies that is a statist wet-dream. However, through implementing such a system, states will also lose control of their choke hold on the economy, and will eventually find it slipping through their grip entirely. The fundamental truth is that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are better money than ANY form of money that we have ever seen! This is by virtue of that cryptocurrencies are not state-controlled, and cannot be state-controlled. It is plain and simple economics at the end of the day which is going to cause for bitcoin and other digital currencies to win out over fiat money.

Bitcoin has created a whole new generation of crypto-activist who see the power of digital currencies and cryptography in a way that will allow for a new fundamental form of power to exercise itself. The trojan horse is not bitcoin itself, but to see the possibility of real economic independence outside and beyond the control of the state which bitcoin enables. There is no longer any separation between politics and economics, and that is the very space in which we will make the new digital economy, and ensure our liberties through strong crypto.

Through refusing to use their corrupt money that they use for war, oppression, violence, and to keep the general population impoverished; we can force governments everywhere to respect our freedoms which our ancestors fought and died for. The state was never suppose to have economic sovereignty over us, and it is now time for us to reclaim that sacred right, and ensure it can never be taken away again. Strike against state capitalism, and reclaim your financial freedom which was never suppose to be taken in the first place!

Bitcoin is a Commodity Money

We have discussed several different ways in which bitcoin creates an intrinsic value for itself. We also have discussed the absolute value that cryptography offers, and how States conjure up fiat money through legal violence via valor impositus, rather than creating money with real bonitas intrinseca value of metals that are coined. Now that we have an understanding of the above concepts, we can discuss how bitcoin is a commodity money, made from rare unique bits of data that create the whole cohesive framework that makes up bitcoin.

Satoshium

For this post I am going to pretend that bitcoins are real coins that are minted from a new metal called Satoshium. This metal is ugly, has few uses, and cannot be physically touched, as it is invisible–overall it is pretty useless. However this new metal is very, very divisible, malleable and it can be transported over any digital communication channel. All Satoshium that will ever comes into existence is created through the coinbase reward that ‘mints’ bitcoin units, which happens during the process of ‘bitcoin mining’.

The reason for the fictionalizing this alloy Satoshium is several fold:

1) To elaborate on the very important distinction between the legal creation of currency out of nothing, and how that is different from the minting of coins which must gain their value from the material the coins are made from. This is the distinction of legal tender under the force of law (valor impositus) and the nominal value states creates out of thin air (the expansion of the money supply), verses natural (bonitas intrinseca) money, which derives its value from no enforcement, or organization of men; but from the intrinsic use-value the object possess in-itself. This is seen most frequently with precious metals, but also with objects of use value like cigarettes.

2) Bitcoins can be used for much more than just money. When bitcoin units are creatively destroyed (proof-of-burn, colored coins, etc) it is similar to the melting down coins to use the metal for something more useful. Contracts, identity, transparent taxation, autonomous agents, etc. can all be created from Satoshium, or the outright destruction of bitcoin units.

3) Bitcoin is really a several dynamic systems working together (payment, identity, proof-of-existence, ownership, PGP system, etc) each with their own purpose. This is in addition to the fact that ‘bitcoins’–what one could think of as the cassacious coin, and I refer to as ‘bitcoin units’–is separate from owning a bitcoin address with no money in it.

Today we shall cover only the first item, and discuss how the bits of data that create the individual bitcoins have their own unique values that are not found within in the laws of men, but the laws of math.

Satoshium Mining

bitcoin monetary base

bitcoin monetary base

Let us think of Satoshium similar to gold or silver, with a few notable exceptions. Satoshium is rarer than gold; with only 2,100 trillion units (0.00000001 BTC–the smallest bitcoin unit, ‘a satoshi’) of Satoshium that can ever exist. Today there are about 1,350 trillion units of Satoshium that have been discovered through the ‘Satoshium mining’ process. More and more people are mining everyday with better, and better mining equipment–which is making it harder for current miners to find the mining reward. We will comeback to how bitcoins are ‘minted’ from satoshium using the coinbase reward process later in this post.

Another unique trait about satoshium is that it has a very, very steady inflation rate. For every 10 minutes of satoshium mining that is done on the bitcoin network (combining all of the mining power that everyone is using to find satoshium–be it 9 computers, or 9 billion) there are 5 billion units of satoshium discovered. After the first 4 years of mining, this amount was reduced by 1/2, to 2.5 billion units for the same 10 minute block of total work by the network. This amount will continue to divide in half every 4 years until there are no more units to be divided, which will be somewhere around 2138. Today there is much less satoshium available for mining than there was even just a few years ago–this is similar to the real deflation that metals, like gold, silver, and platinum experience over time, as they also have a finite supply.

Satoshium mining has become very difficult because so much mining energy is competing for these limited number of bitcoin units; the little guy can no longer mine satoshium on their own–it is simply too hard. This would be like trying to mine for gold with only a pick and shovel, while the guy next to you has a gold mining operation–you are not going to win. To resolve this, people discovered that if they ‘pool’ their work, everyone can share in the reward of satoshium mining based upon how much work they are doing for the bitcoin network.

The Minting of Bit-coins

Satoshium is really the coinbase reward, which is the raw material that bitcoins are minted from (fun fact, the only way you can truly destroy a bitcoin is through not claiming the full coinbase reward). In the same manner that gold is just a hunk of metal before it is minted into a coin; so is satoshium is to bitcoin. When someone is rewarded for satoshium mining, those satoshium units are grouped into chunks of 100 million units and ‘minted’ single bitcoin. This is the coinbase reward process. This ‘mints’ satoshium units into bitcoins based upon what the block reward is at that time, and pays that reward of new coins out to a new bitcoin address. This is the ‘minting’ process and how the bitcoin network creates new bitcoins.

Though each bitcoin is created equally, the data that comprises of each individual bitcoin is unique and different. Each bitcoin addresses has unique identifying properties, that differentiate each individual bitcoin to their owners, but to no one else. This is similar to the serial number that is unique to each dollar bill. This means that the history of that particular bitcoin (or subdivisions of that bitcoin) can be tracked, and can only be spent when the 53-digit unique hexadecimal private key authorizes its movement. If properly secured, it is impossible to ‘hack’ a bitcoin address and take the money from that address; as only the private key will be able to move it. This is why there are several bitcoin addresses that have tens of millions of dollars in them, and not a single one has been hacked.

The mining process is also what ensures that there are no ‘double-spend’ attacks. In lay-terms, a double-spend attack is similar to check-kiting, where one spending the balance in checking account twice before the bank can check to make sure the funds are there. We won’t go into details about this right now, but just be aware that the mining process also acts as the gatekeepers to the transference of funds, and offers mathematical assurance that no coins can be stolen, or double-spent.

The Money Supply of Bitcoin

The reason for us fictionalizing the metal Satoshium is to make clear the distinction between fiat currency that are made from nothing, and commodity money which must derive their value from an object’s intrinsic worth–the value is found in the money itself, not vice-versa. A fiat currency is a scrips certificate of exchange issued from a central bank. The scrip itself (such as a $20 bill) is just worthless paper–there is no bonitas intrinseca about it. An infinite number of these scrips can be created, as their values are created and set by the dollar accounting system controlled by the Third Bank of the United States (also known as The Fed–a misleading term that I hate). Each one of these scrips can be redeemed for goods and services for the nominal value printed on it, because it is legal tender–one must accept fiat money in exchange for goods or services. If not, you will face the wrath of the law.

Historically, once could exchange the nominal value of these worthless papers for a precise measure of commodity money, such as gold or silver. However, fiat currency no longer has any sort of value backing them–since 1973 they have been free-floating. Governments are now free to print as much money as the like, which they are happily doing. This is because there has been a low level currency war going on since 2008, and it is starting to intensify. This means that while there still is a finite, natural supply of all physical objects; there now is twice as much money (in the case of the US) that can purchase those same objects.

This is how governments expand the money supply to create inflation. This bleeds the value of the hard-earned savings of common people, in order to further enrich the current ruling class. All people in all nations are now facing these political calamities that will make us all economic casualties.

Velocity of Money

Velocity of USD

When more units of a currency are injected into circulation, this causes for a total number of units within the system to increase. If the velocity of money were normal today, this would mean that the prices of everything would double over night–but it has not. This is because the velocity of money is at historic lows, at less than 1/2 of what it normally is. This is not a mistake, but a response to the QE of the FED.

Let us compare this to how bitcoins are ‘minted’. Bitcoins derive their value from the bonitas intrinseca, the real economic work that has been preformed in the Satoshium mining process, and the use-value that Satoshium has. Each and ever single bitcoin in existence must have came from a coinbase reward–there is no other way to create bitcoins. In order to create the coinbase reward, real computational work that takes real energy–no different from the energy used to dig gold from the ground–must be preformed.

With Satoshium mining, this ‘work’ is done in the form of solving very, very, very complex mathematic problems that secure the network from ever being corrupted. This gives each bitcoin unit equal, market-based value due to the fact that it cost real-time energy to produce bitcoin today. There is no way to modify the number of bitcoin units that can be created (unlike fiat money), as bitcoins can only come from the coinbase reward, and that is hardcoded into bitcoin. This ensures all bitcoiners that no one can ever just change the supply of bitcoin in the way the US can, or any other central bank can for their currency (I’m looking at you Japan and EU).

Bitcoin as a Currency

Money can be held here and proven that it exist

This is a public bitcoin address. If you have the private key for this address you can control the money there.

For us to understand bitcoin as a currency, let us think of bitcoin paper wallet for the moment. This is a piece of paper that has the private key of a bitcoin address printed on it. When one inputs the private key of that address into a bitcoin client, they can access, and transfer the bitcoin found in that addresses. This is a currency bill in the most fundamental sense of the word; as it is not that piece of paper that has any value, but what it represents. What has value is the private key, as that can access the bitcoin–not the paper itself. The paper has only exchange value, not use-value. This is how banking classically existed for centuries with banking bills representing some value of gold until the 1973, when the dollar dropped its peg to gold.

Although bitcoin is called a digital currency, that is a bit of a misnomer. Bitcoin is not a currency but a commodity-money. Bitcoins must come from the coinbase reward process, and that process can only be done through the electrical labor of mining. Thus, like physical coins, a bitcoin can only be created when the correct ‘bits’ are ‘minted’ into bitcoins. Bitcoins cannot just be created willy-nilly–real computational work must be done, and real energy expended to mint bitcoins.

This is why we have differentiated the creation of bitcoin units from that of Satoshium mining. If we are to mint coins, physical or otherwise, we must have something to mint, we cannot make coins from nothing! And this is the very place that commodity monies are different from fiat money–fiat money does not represent anything other than the law, whereas bitcoins ARE something–very special data sets verified by the bitcoin network.

Bitcoin is a Commodity Money

gold-silver-bitcoinBitcoin is a commodity money because the cryptography that bitcoin is built on top of. This has created the contract that limits the supply of bitcoin units and protects the bitcoin payment network. It is cryptography that creates the immutable and fungibility of bitcoin units and the imperium of the bitcoin network. This immutability creates a use-value for bitcoin, which also creates its exchange value. Furthermore, the ‘satoshium’ units of bitcoin can be broken down and used for all sort of other various contractual functions. By understanding bitcoin as a commodity money, we can see the true value that bitcoin has is outside of the legal constructs of the state.

The internet now has money that is loyal to no political body, or statist organizations; but to digital ideals alone. This is not just the economic base of a new epoch, but a political one as well. Bitcoin is the economic praxis that will allow for humans to create a new class consciousness. We can use the internet to help us create a new society, and we can use bitcoin as the economic mode to create that new world.

Bitcoin is not about money, and has nothing to do with money. Bitcoin is about political power, sovereignty, and the freedom of economic exchange. This is in direct and antagonistic relations to any and all states. Bitcoin seeks to destroy the old institutions of political power, and replace them with new digitized, decentralized ones.

Once people start to see and reject the corrupt and worthless scrips of the states, there is going to be a great unraveling unlike anything we have seen before. The crisis will collapse the value of all fiat money to becoming nearly worthless, and the value of cryptocurrencies will explode. There will be chaos, and there will be anarchy–but these are the conditions of creative destruction that we must have in order to rebuild something better in place of this corrupt and wicked system called state capitalism. 

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Next: Bitcoin and The History of Money

Financial Insurrection

How can one be compelled to accept slavery? I simply refuse to do the master’s bidding. He may torture me, break my bones to atoms and even kill me. He will then have my dead body, not my obedience. Ultimately, therefore, it is I who am the victor and not he, for he has failed in getting me to do what he wanted done.

-Mahatma Gandhi

The most powerful weapon that we have is refusal. Our obedience within this system of State-sponsored capitalism, where we are made debt slaves for wanting a better education, getting sick, or having a home, is far from a fair system–it is criminal in everything but name. If we are to stop this kind of abuse we first must refuse to participate in this kind of abuse.

For the first time in human history, we have the option of rejecting and refusing this economic system, and replacing it with something better–with digital currencies. By using digital currencies over dollars, we can refuse debt that is usurious, and challenge the state’s monopoly on the issuance of money. This places within our hands the ability to directly challenge the legitimacy of the State, as money is law; and if we can make their money be questioned, we can destroy this monster.

Refusal

The first step is refusal. Bitcoin offers us a way to refuse the debt bondage that this system has bequeathed to us, and allows us an avenue toward negotiation, if we choose to negotiate. By simply refusing to pay our debts, while keeping our savings and the money we earn in bitcoin, we can fight back.

Defaults are painful, and as we saw in the 2008 crisis, it can call the whole system into question. If enough people started defaulting on the $1.2 trillion dollars of student debt that is owed to the Federal government, we can force them into negotiating a jubilee. Through defaulting you can use direct action to make it clear that this debt is usurious and will not be paid. There is more power in showing your willingness to not pay them to make a point, than there is to paying them and begging for the terms to change–they will not.

Rejection

The second step is rejection. Bitcoin is a direct challenge to the financial system and the legitimacy of the State itself. We can unilaterally reject participating in their economy by rejecting their money and the taxes that accompanies that money. By rejecting the fiat money we can take direct action to the economic system itself.  We can refuse to have the humble amount we contribute to this economy to be taxes, and to prop up this government. There is no longer a need for my money to go towards war, or any institution the State uses to oppress people. I do not approve of it, and I will not let them use my hard earned money for such evil purposes. To surmise why we should do this, I offer a quote from Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience:

If a thousand citizens were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

The peace revolution that Thoreau speaks of can now be ours. Through refusing to use fiat money and using digital currencies instead, we can make a stand, while also protecting ourselves from the inevitable economic collapse that is coming.

Rejection of this system is something that is inevitably going to happen. The State cannot win–their money is designed too poorly, they run their economy too inefficiently, and they have only managed up to this point because of their monopoly on the mode of exchange and legal violence. Through challenging government monopolies on money, we will make the inefficiencies of the current system of global finance clear. We will destroy the capitalist of the world of flesh and steel with a newer form of capitalism that is more efficient, more secure, and simply put, better. When the world comes to realize this, there will be a great reckoning that will culminate with insurrection.

Insurrection

The final step is insurrection. Digital currencies are a revolution in the area of economics, and they will be an inseparability part of global economy one day. Bitcoin offers a world with no gate keepers, no permission seekers, and no restrictions on the world we choose to build. Digital currencies operation on the maxim of the protocol: what the protocol commands is supreme, and the federation of the protocol is what allows for it to work. There is no way to cheat this system because it is out of the hands of individual men and facilitated by the program itself–there are no middle men needed. Through cutting out both the State, and the banks from all economic transactions, the cost of maintaining the State and the financial system does not need to be carried by us. Our financial system does not need us to pay fees to criminal banisters, or taxes to a tyrannical governments to use our own money–just an internet connection.

It is impossible for fiat money to compete with bitcoin over an extended time span. Fiat money cannot hold its value over a long time period, which is why the purchasing power of a dollar today has lost 95% of its value since 1913. The supply of dollars is inflating constantly, and particularly with the rounds of quantitative easing that we are seeing throughout the world today. Because the supply of fiat currencies are increasing today, and because there is nothing of commodity value backing fiat currencies, there is no way it can compete with Bitcoin.  As it becomes more and more apparent that the dollar is losing its value while the value of Bitcoin is rising rapidly, people are going to start questioning the legitimacy of the dollar itself. It is at this point, when the dollar’s value starts to be questioned that the legitimacy of the government itself can be questioned. This is where we revolt, this is where we gain our freedom and destroy the monster that has sought to keep us under absolute despotism in the name of safety and security.

Revolution

Since the failed uprisings of 2011, it has been clear that State-sponsored capitalism is failing. There has not been a time in recent history where people have worked harder, received less, and have so little opportunity. This is not from the failure of the State to protect its citizens, but the inherent structure of what States will do when they enter into alliance with oligarch enterprises. We all see the criminality of this for what it is. We know that they are thieves, criminals, liars, but up to this point they have been too powerful, and there has been too few alternatives–one simply had to participate despite ones unwillingness to do so.

But now there is an alternative. A mode of exchange that is economically superior which has the features of privacy imbued into the money itself, and is organized in a horizontal, decentralized platform. A money with a known fixed supply that cannot be changed, that is controlled by no state, and no individual actors–just the Network itself.  A totally transparent money which allows for you to see all the transactions in the network, while still protecting the identities of individual users. And it’s practically instantaneous to use, and no permission required from a bank or from a government–your money belongs to you.

What is to be done still remains to be seen. What is known for now is that there is a powerful new economic tool that fundamentally changes the way that we view money and the mode of exchange. This challenges the fundamental features of the State today, and the money that they print. I for one am convinced this is how the revolution will start, because people will always seek to become more free, and now there is no one to stop you from breaking free from the chains of financial tyranny any longer.

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Next: Capital Exit, Capital Strike