Participating in crypto is situating yourself at the forefront of a new political, economic, and social paradigm shift. The start of 2018 has been nutty, and gratefully, I am revitalized from completing my taxes, enjoying a relaxed vacation in Thailand, and most importantly, taking a break from checking prices of digital assets.
When zooming out in the glorious scheme of things, it has been fairly impressive so far in our total timeline of technological breakthroughs from electricity to automobiles to airplanes to computers to our grand Internet. Generalizing the lay of the land, these advances have enabled us to communicate with each other more effectively and efficiently, through physical means as well as digital. Money is a type of communication method to obtain goods and services throughout life, and prior to 2009, trust in third party institutions was a necessity to monetarily coordinate enormous amounts of people for the exchange of value, mostly because no one trusts each other on a societal-scale.
Trust in these third parties naturally centralizes power.
If you and I can both agree that greed is a destructive harm, then quite simply, we are separating power from money by removing the control of money, resulting in the creation of a fairer system of accounting.
My generation, Millennials, and the ones closely adjacent are more aware per usual of what is really going on behind the political background. I am a firm believer that you cannot change politics with politics, but you can certainly influence politics with money. I do not know about you, but the story of corruption running rampant is getting rather boring.
You do not battle politics with politics, in order to thoroughly change the political system, you must first, change the money.
//WORLD STATE OF AFFAIRS & THE EXTENT OF FIAT PRINTING
For anyone whom has been paying the least bit attention, digital assets are clearly on the radar of nation-states. An applaud must be made to the United States government for their laissez-faire approach to our new industry, at least so far they portray.
Fact of the matter is, our infant industry is only a minor pawn piece at best, to the ultimate human chess game of geopolitics. If you have ever been in sales, a decision-making position for a corporation or a government position per se: more money, more power, and thus more influence is always good (one of the few superlatives in life).
Economically speaking now, the more there is of a certain good, product, commodity, or thing of value, the less valuable it becomes. With the United States Dollar in the spotlight, it has been losing purchasing power by way of Keynesian theory for the past century; since the mid-1980s, the U.S. dollar has lost approximately 45% of it’s ‘value’. USD is a world class champion in the history of reserve currencies without a doubt and as the hegemony global reserve comes the right for others to be the most critical of such status.
Quite simply, the more of something there is, the less valuable it becomes.
When that particular ‘something’ is additionally created, spawned, or printed: the closer you are to the birth place, the less affected you are to inflation and the more potential you may gain compared to the outer ends of the circle. Inflation does not happen instantaneously, it happens as it is passed on through society.
As fiat is printed, the closer you are to the middle, the more valuable and beneficial the fiat is
I, as well as many others, claim that quantitative easing and fractional reserve banking is a direct cause of our inflated real estate and stock market all-time-highs as we see today.
What should have happened in 2008 was we should have let the banks go underwater; we should have let them go bankrupted. Unfortunately, our faithful politicians decided to bailout the same bastards that caused the downturn via mortgage backed securities and collateralized debt obligations in the first place! By doing so, we are digging a deeper hole for ourselves because of Keynesian theory that is our current fiat system of money i.e. quantitative easing and fractional reserve banking. The monetary journey we are on, doesn’t really make sense.
Politically, the World War III scare in Syria between the United States and Russia was a mere theatre. Attention then shifted to Korea uniting between North and South for amazing reasons. We are moving towards a bipolar international system with powerhouse China deciding to allow President Xi Jinping to serve a life term as premier authority for the great country (and a fantastic job he has done so far, no sarcasm intended). With the increase of money printing, it is of course flowing to capture possession of the biggest global markets available (stocks and real estate) while inflating such prices. Those closest to the central banks are those that benefit the most as inflation slowly oozes out of the circle, the people are last to bare.
Just about every decade or so, a historical invasion happens or a global recession occurs. The only difference this time is, we now have Bitcoin, and things are starting to get very, very interesting.
//CRYPTO STATE OF AFFAIRS & THE SECURITY ISSUE
Wow, weren’t taxes a nightmare for you? Clearly, at least in my opinion, there needs to be different tax laws in regard to going in and out of various digital assets in which no classifications currently exists; we are trying to fit a circle into a square.
Vitalik Buterin is the genius whom created Ethereum, a flexible smart contract platform that has since took the digital asset community by storm. Yet again, a controversial and more so dangerous discussion is at hand via an Ethereum Improvement Proposal AKA EIP-999. In 2017 a vulnerability in the Parity wallet of Ethereum caused massive amounts of BTCs* to be locked-up — cannot be used or touched. The desperate losers of this incident are stuck between a rock and a hard place, that is, assuming they care about the immutability of Ethereum and another hard fork. EIP-999 is just that, a hard fork providing relief of the incident and the release of untouchable funds per the blockchain.
Let’s take a step back.
A sole blockchain operates and adheres to a set of rules set forth by its participants. These rules, in whichever way these participants decide, rule the blockchain plain and simple.
If we agree that the above is a fact then a vote with which a majority of the community decides to hard fork and in turn, release the funds, is then an OK path per our idea of consensus-rules. In these catastrophic episodes, it is crucial to decentralize the power of all participants.
Security in this section’s title was purposely meant to be a pun. In my opinion, the examination by old traditional institutions and heads of power on whether or not Ethereum’s initial offering was illegal and therefore warranted for consequences do not matter. In other words, whether or not Ethereum is classified as a security does not matter in the ultimate path of Ethereum. Down the line, I believe the two divergent paths of yay or nay will converge eventually.
//BITCOIN
I remember back in the 2000s there was a heated debate on whether or not ‘lol’ should be considered a common acronymic phrase and thus added to the Oxford Dictionary. Various commonly used internet methods of expression have been added to one of the most renowned English ledgers over the past two decades. Much like language, money is something people agree on that can be used to communicate with others, expressing the value of different goods and services.
The Bitcoin network has been available 99.98% of the time for the past nine years and for all, whom voluntarily choose to participate in Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention. The anonymous release of the computer protocol solved the famous computer science double-spending problem, sparking a grassroots, digital and organic movement never before seen. Betting on Bitcoin is betting against the political, economic, and social status quo extending to the United State’s military industrial complex, central bank fiat system of money, forever-widening gap of wealth inequality , and unequal justice & treatment of different members in society. The story of Bitcoin is about a passionate movement to completely overhaul the political and economic hierarchy of society, disguised as a get-rich-quick scheme.
With elegance and leadership, Satoshi Nakamoto steps away from the project approximately a year and half in, so that there is no head figure or leader to influence the path of Bitcoin. A vast majority of other alternative coins cannot claim the same.
Bitcoin’s consensus-rule governance system has been phenomenal so far as witnessed by 2017’s events of the BIP-148 UASF and the failed S2X hard fork. The former involved the hard fork of major players in the mining industry while the latter included a handful of affluent crypto businesses and CEOs agreeing to a plan-of-action behind closed doors. Among others, both cases have demonstrated Bitcoin’s resilience and digital artifact of no one nor one group of individuals in complete control of the network and its development. 2017’s events are hard to comprehend and even harder to write about.
In the next few articles, I will attempt to explain my conducive thoughts on how Bitcoin will change the world.
Somewhere on Earth
There is a rationale on why the well-reasoned, but economically-weak Occupy Wall Street movement was an utter failure. It had no value.
Bitcoin will prove to be one of the most historical achievements in the decentralization of money and power throughout our total timeline. I feel absolutely grateful to be living in our era as we grow with technology, discovering a more effective and efficient way of conducting affairs while doing so in a trustless manner. The best part about being in crypto is, we have a front row seat to the show unraveling right before us.
— — — — — — — — — — — Thank you for reading
1.1— Introduction to Bitcoin: Money & Our Debt-Based Society_1.2— A New Asset Class: Blockchain Technology & Cryptocurrency__1.3 — Down the Rabbit Hole: Ethereum, Immutability, Consensus-Rule, & Forks_1.4 — Geopolitics & Cryptoeconomics: 2018 and Beyond1.5 — Bitcoin’s Substantive & Technical Road to $100K
2.2 — BIP-148 UASF First Year Anniversary: A New System of Governance
Disclaimer: This is an educational piece and is not meant to serve as investment advice. I am not a financial adviser. You will probably lose money in this market if you do not know what you are doing. Investing in bitcoins and cryptocurrencies is extremely speculative and financially risky. I am not a financial adviser. This is not investment advice.
*I am valuing / pricing the locked-up funds in BTC
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