Category Archives: Bitcoin Politics

Cryptocurrencies the way ahead

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Why is are these technologies emerging? (“They can’t stop it”)

Code is law – a quick overview, click here (Havard Magazine)

http://codev2.cc/download+remix/Lessig-Codev2.pdf

The immediate future

Colu’s OpenAsset
Local Exchanges
Barter / Paying your tax
Darknet

bitcoin <- the lightening network

One of bitcoin’s blockchain ideas is executing scripts, this gave birth to Ethereum, however that will be eclipsed this “Turin complete” system like Tau Chain: A ‘Decentralized App Store’ with Greater Flexibility than Ethereum, providing a defined cost of computing. (Click on the link above to read the Coin Telegraph article)

CT: How does it compare to Ethereum?

HMC: Ethereum is a Turing complete logic, per block. This means they can easily prove that they can compute any computable thing in one block, but at the cost of not being able to necessarily know how much resource it will take to do the block’s computation.

Because of this, they need to back their resources with a fixed token asset, and set a network-wide resource price on computations in order to avoid abuse of resource.  Further, in order to secure exchange, they require everyone who is validating the block to effectively re-execute everything that has ever been executed.

To contrast, Tau is a decidable complete logic, per block, with Turing completeness recovered by the iteration of multiple blocks.  This means that we cannot compute any computable thing in one block, but we can know exactly how much resource expenditure a block will require to verify. We can still compute any computable thing; it may just require structuring the execution to run over the span of multiple blocks.  Because of this, Tau resources do not need to be backed directly by a token, and resource exchange can be negotiated by the users as they see fit.

Further, because it is decidable Tau can contextualize all of its logical resolutions, the only processes that necessarily must be re-executed by all participants is the resource expenditure required to persist the root chain securely. Any other process need only be re-executed by participants interested in verifying activity that occurred within that context, and can be ignored by other users, without sacrificing any security in the long run.

 

 

What is the Middle Class?

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The middle class by classical definition on wikipedia is “about 25 percent of British society, reported high economic capital, high status of mean social contacts, and both high highbrow and high emerging cultural capital.” however you classify a person by this measure they nearly all have something in common.

Comfortable
What is comfortable, whilst we can look up a dictionary definition of comfortable as well, lets assume that one of the defining factors in modern life is not having to worry about money too much on a day to day basis.

Middle class begets more middle class with the 6% of the elite thats pretty much a solid majority which control the country. That’s leaving out who is actually in power politically, but it’s actually the group of people that who shape the way society functions.

Control
This group has always been in control in one way another through the years even when the country was under a feudal rule. Anything that disturbs this section of society’s distribution of wealth causes concern. Until something threatens this group’s existence or standard of living it doesn’t pay attention to it.

Selfish
Does this group perpetuate the selfish gene? It certainly becomes an interesting mind experiment if we apply the theory to the “group”. I personally cannot see any reason why it shouldn’t.

Inclusive
We came from a society that only allowed certain segments to vote but over time the vote became inclusive. Now in the 2015 UK General Election, can we honestly say that we would want this to be so? Just over 50 years ago since World War II, half a lifetime, we have a political force that ten years ago would have been labelled “racist, fascist, bigots“. Who are these people? Well whilst the group is inclusive to both sides of the political spectrum it contains a percentage that are part of my definition of the comfortable middle class.

Money
What is money? Well I’d would hazard a guess that most people don’t give the monetary system any more thought to that question than say where there Peacocks £2.99 t-shirt is manufactured or what the hourly rate of pay in relation to the UK minimum wage is there. What I can explain in a few sentences is after the financial crash of 2008 occurred, the “central banks” that help governments control the economy started to print money in a slightly different way to the Weimar republic of Germany between 1919-1923. Instead of printing money with paper, the central banks post-2008 generated it with computers.

Debtonomics (New economic term – Economics based on Debt, rather than Capital)
Now in pre-Hitler Germany printing money led to inflation, this led to goods costing more tomorrow than they do today. Too much money in the system, so people needed more wage money to stand still to survive what needs to be bought tomorrow.

Post-2008 computer generated money by mainly the US has caused an unprecedented boom in the stock market. This is the future value that pension companies place in companies they buy into. They want to obtain the highest return on their investment for their stakeholders. The stakeholders are the widows and pensioners who are no longer largely in the tax system paying “work force”.

So much money has been created out thin air, that companies are seeking to add value to their companies not by manufacturing new widgets that society needs nor providing services which are better than their competitors but just acquiring companies that do make things or have a better service product.

The new money printing called “Quantitative Easing”, regards of how it creates money maybe actually causing deflation, many “experts” believe this to be true. Personally with the frequent changes in measuring CPI and the dumping of the RPI in 2013 which lie to believe is hard to choose.

The long-term consequences of global QE are likely to permanently impair living standards for generations to come while creating a false illusion of reviving prosperity.

was said by Guggenheim’s Chairman of Investments and Global Chief Investment Officer, Scott Minerd. 26th March 2015. We are happy that increasingly more “serious people” come to the same conclusion which we posited first a 6 years ago wrote Zerohedge. “The cost of QE is greater than the income lost to savers and investors.”

Summary of QE
We know who QE is screwing and we know who QE is benefitting. Therefore do we need to understand the global economics – nope.

Fit for power? (UK)
We have politicians who want our vote, whose economic advisers are woefully unqualified by anybodies standpoint to navigate the post-2008 economic post-consumer society.

We have a society that may limit our path to inflationary growth because tomorrows manufactured goods will always be cheaper tomorrow and from a country point of view we will allow whole national infrastructure industries to be wiped out by economic rules created in a Keynesian pre-2008 world.

Do supermarket suppliers receive a fair market price for their products?
What will happen to the quality of the arable land in Europe under the stewardship of the European Union?

Middle Class, Working Class – do I care?
I don’t care because these labels aren’t helping anybody in any shape of form.

The monetary system is changing
Bitcoin will be patched in preparation for the lightning network – see Blockstream hires Rusty Russell

The new class system will comprise of those who:

  • Really understand money – (as the way money used to be, like gold)
  • Those that can create added value with digital money and digit assets
  • Those that use it

Dislocation
Such is the dy/dx of change with respect to the understanding of money and wealth transposing on society that any references to class, cease to have any meaning.

bitcoin, the bazaar and Generation X

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bitcoin by stealth
For the people who don’t have a bitcoin wallet or believe that Bitcoin is a technology that needs any time wasted thinking about it. Yes I’m talking directly to you, the Warren Buffet‘s of this world. Do you have an email address?

Warren Buffet as the man in street?
Warren Buffett giving a speech in 1998 to Florida University students saying he would flunk any student who gave a valuation to an internet company. Yes Warren Buffet strikes again as a seemingly intelligent person uttering complete rubbish. However he has consistently grown his folio by X% year on year without fail for 50 years. So we must respect this. But when the media start quoting people and never investigate the facts, you have to wonder who the media is serving.

There can be no doubts that there will be a long length of time before you are paying for goods and services with bitcoins in the High Street until using a wallet becomes as easy as sending a text or email and that took 10 years.

However before AOL and Compuserve seeded the market to the masses for email via walled garden, there were enough early adopters between:

  • Academia
  • Early commerical dial-up
  • AOL / Compuserve – aka Walled Garden but with Internet email gateways

I would postulate that these three based at around 1993/4 were enough to be the basis of a 5% of email users that took us up to the total user base of 1998/2000. Where SSL and payment gateways were created to handle automated credit card transactions. So lets have a look and see if it’s a 5% rule here?

1992 – 5 million users Microsoft Outlook launched
1999 – 400 million users Blackberry launched

Woe! – I was way wrong, it was actually in the region 1.25% – not 5%,  based on this source: Visual.ly

So what are those or could be those three groups’ now to get us to 1999 with bitcoin:

  • Early adopters
  • Travel agents
  • Street level

I’ve listed travel agents because when I went to Ireland in 2013 I was actually able to obtain the official exchange rate buying bitcoin in pounds on localbitcoins.com and meeting John in Starbucks in Dublin after we arrived by ferry. John was the Ireland side of another localbitcoin transaction. People often report that bitcoins are for hoarding, but plainly they aren’t when you go on holiday, because you can actually get a fair exchange. Yes bitcoin probably a privilege club right now, WASP male. However the remittance market will come, and when it does it really will help the poor and the unbanked around the world.

bitcoin and the bazaar (aka price stability)
So what on earth would cause your taxi driver, plumber, gardener, take-a-way to accept bitcoin?

The simplicity of a bitcoin wallets usage,  security and price stability are on their way each year, as I hypothesise that adoption rate of bitcoin should actually guide and signal the fiat value. The number of bitcoin users now in relation to the total practical user base within the next 5 years of bitcoin should outline it’s fiat price, by virtue of the curves the Internet has shown us.

When people assumed you have a mobile number and you can safety assume that anybody over the age of 14 in the UK has a mobile phone and email address, we can clearly see critical mass.

For email this was perhaps between 2008-2010. 80% of the UK population who were going to have an email address had got one. I am guessing wildly here.

As clearly we can assume that “bitcoin” / brand exposure in society/media is far greater and faster than the “Internet” was – like for like analysis. IE bitcoin equaled General Motors on the Internet in 2013. PWC report. The adopt curve despite it’s price stability and ease of use issues – is far faster than the Internet or email was.

Warren Buffet didn’t understand the “Internet” in 1998, nor does he understand “bticoin” in 2014. In way that’s interesting in itself, because he is of the age group that are determining bitcoin legal legislation. IE They haven’t a clue. If politicians had understood the Internet in 1998, and the capability it would have given the NSA, would they not have put more into it at the time to control it? Or more likely we’ll just have a wait and see approach by each country, with a slow trickle of decisions.

Does bitcoin need price stability in the short term for adoption to increase?
Ramblings….

I am not sure, if more exchange hubs spring up at a local community level, travel agents and cafés who provide ultra competitive exchange rates in return for footfall. They provide’ll transparency and brand visibility.

At retail level, bitcoin payers could potentially obtain discounts because they not incurring cash or credit/debit card charges to retailers. In the UK as a retailer you have to pay your bank to pay in cash! On average to accept a debit card it’s £0.09 per transaction, however I cannot find a small business rate less then 19pence myself.

The UK’s Online Retail Association – IMRG 2013:

  • 1 in 3 online sales via mobile
  • Online retail sales up 18% year-on-year in December
  • 16% growth for the online retail market in 2013
  • 2013 ‘year of the mobile’: twice as much spent on mobile devices in December 2013 compared to December 2012
  • Forecast for 2014: 17% market growth and £107 billion to be spent online

Town centre stores are shutting down at a rate of 18 a day across Britain, according to figures.  Sept 2013. Analysing 500 UK town centres, they showed 3,366 stores closed while just 3,157 opened, a net reduction of 209 shops. This was an improvement on the same period last year when the net reduction was 953, but shows the high street is still struggling.

UK High Street – ****ed.

How many cash accepting High Street businesses will there be in 10 years in the UK?

Will the older people only just grew up with computers and mobile phones yearn for the days of cash born between 1961 and 1981? Will this group be the large second generation adopter? Generation X?

Generation X
The generation who are about to have it bad, loose you job at 40, you are ****ed.  Bought an endowment mortgage at the wrong time – mid 1970’s – ****ed. Pension – ****ed. Future ****ed. And because their children cannot get work, they will NEVER be the welfare state their parents enjoyed.

I think this is has got to be the most interesting group of future bitcoin users, old enough to take on the complexities of the technology with our current smartphones and angry enough to treat it like cash.

This is the group that currently runs small businesses, pay the most UK taxes and traditionally a plumber will accept “cash” for a discount when fitting a washing machine. Remember that large companies do not pay taxes and in the UK are now employing 1/2 million people on zero hour contracts, which is the same as the US. Your’re as good as fired at any time. Next week their are no hours for you to work – so you get zero pay.

In the UK, the government has created this problem, because it allowed a duality of UK tax payer and UK corporate non tax payer. And in the High Street this is having devastating results. For the rest of the 98% of UK tax payers as corporate entities or the self-employed. Inflation caused through quantitative easing maybe a touch paper to the adoption of bitcoin as days of “cash” are numbered if we look at money technology over the next 10 years. Surely money isn’t good, or a £5 pound note, but expression of this unit of X represents

Declaration:
Mark Cross is a consultant for 37coins.com - 37Coins is your global Bitcoin wallet. It makes financial transactions as simple as sending a text.

Bitcoin: The timeline, Mark’s hypothesis

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PayPal Beacon launches

Ethereum launches, or rival build your own “Decentralized Autonomous Corporation“ come to exist on Darknet based on Ethereum‘s ideas

PayPal Wallet includes Bitcoin

National Banks provides Bitcoin Wallets

 

What was money? And the TechnoMonarchy

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In times past people traded things that they found, made or grew with other people for things that they wanted.

Bitcoin has had me thinking for a number of years now and I am sure my thoughts will keep changing.

We used to live in a world without limits to growth and mankind could argue whose God was best, but as we zoom off over 7 billion people we’ve maxed out on oil, probably never to exceed 100 million barrels per day extraction rate. It takes 9 grams of oil to produce 1 gram of food to put into your mouth in the West.

The Keynesians have had their day while it lasted, time for the thrift mungers – the Austrians.  It seems to me that both will deliver inequalities in times of boom and bust cycles of the stock exchanges.

Bitcoin seems to be creating so far, a bloodless Civil War. Should the store of wealth be based in favour on those who manipulate the markets for their own kind, the 1%. Who produce nothing and make nothing or should the store of wealth be held by the new 1%, the TechnoMonarchy?

The early adopters of Bitcoin, the stake holders now I believe are a new TechnoMonarchy, many of which understand:

  • Bitcoin’s current price is irrelevant†
  • Find Austrian Economics appealing

†Bitcoin isn’t just a value store

Gordon Kecko, produces wealth through the slavery of the IMF and sleeps well at night and certainly doesn’t care about the poverty of future generations through debt creation.

Where as Ivor Geek, thinks that military industrial complex has got out of hand and “believes” that Austrian economics maybe a fairer distribution of wealth. “Hell it can’t be any worse than the shit we’re in and I’m prepared to gamble a couple of thousand $/£/€”

What appeals to geeks most are the facts, for example:

  • Is the tax take going up or down
  • Are governments/corporations getting stronger or weaker
  • Are Western governments still helping to kill people in countries we are not supposed to be in, using techniques and weapons against the Geneva convention
  • Is Britain still a fuel stop for rendition flights
  • Is MI6 still outsourcing torture to foreign nations

The bottom line is that TechnoMonarchy I’m describing or anonymous, doesn’t need  a political party, meetings or a manifesto, they know that the wheels need re-attaching. This is a spiritually human thing and the re-basing of money is central.

Bitcoin price, currency, commodity – Monarchy

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Well the long term 18+ month stability of Bitcoin “may” depend of whether it gets classed as a commodity. Tax wise if it gets classed as a commodity I’m reliably informed by a city type in the Castle Pub, Totnes that this will cause the big boys to get involved, like Fidelity the other day. But then they immediately got leaned on by Uncle Sam.

The Swiss are taking a view in the New Year, the Germans have already classed it as private currency. The UK is undecided, but I was advised by the tax office myself – that I’m to do my tax return for CGT as currency.

So at moment it’s as clear as mud.

The more interesting issue is that the Swiss used the tally stick in rural areas as late as the 19th Century. And Britain’s BOE absorbed the last of the Monarchy’s tally stick in the UK in about 1850, at 60% discount of value.

If you believe that the government is a pawn of the military industrial complex? And we would be better off without the people who just make money up. Both at a spiritual level and a planet conservation angle – then you should be perhaps voting for Bitcoin as currency.

I personally believe that puts you firmly in the position of supporting the Monarchy. As the Monarchy issued tally sticks of supply without the backing of government, gold or silver.

Essentially the aristocracy wealth was based on land value, and it’s probably where the planet needs to be if the human species is not to destroy itself. Because ultimately even if you culture food in a jar and don’t go mad watching day time TV, you’ll have to fucking live somewhere!

Transition decline based on energy is utter BOLLOCKS.

Thorium nuclear power and nanotechnology will solve our energy problems in the next twenty years.

What is at issue is the 95 rare elements that keep the wheels on the consumer society and level debt in the Western World, coupled with future life expectancy that is truly frightening. Boiled frog syndrome springs to mind.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/ask-ray-death-can-be-erased-if-humanity-makes-the-right-moves

The politics of Bitcoin

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and the fall of the military industrial complex

Someone wrote a another piece on FaceBook slamming Cameron this morning. Or whoever ad nor-seam, I see these politician bashing pieces on a weekly basis that drive me mad, I am SICK of it. Stop wasting your breath people. Suggest something that might help instead of whingeing. Russel Brand please – get off the fence.

Like politics changes anything post Vietnam and the US coming off the gold standard to finish financing it? Austrian Economics is the ONLY way to put a brake on selfish humans destroying the planet. Greens should be buying into Bitcoin to destroy the military industrial complex and stop chasing the Keynesian failed economics of continual growth. It don’t work and never will. Bitcoin is the NEW politics, you are either with us, or just rambling on about the old world of politics, which is quite frankly to me obviously broken. Bitcoin is the biggest reversal of Capitalism and Democracy since the Enclosures in the UK. Since Capitalism is not a free market, fails to put a price on the planets 95 elements that keep capitalism rolling, and Democracy is at best in the UK manipulated by boundary changes!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure

For the planet’s sake we don’t have enough time to debate this Keynesian economics was someone’s wet dream. Austrian Economics isn’t fair either or in some ways does fail to care about the “population”, but it’s sort of better to have a planet to be standing on and air that you can breath. To the nay slayers who protest that technology will fix everything and let the population of the planet ever expand, I say rubbish. Lets look at some trends here, technology is just allowing humans to pollute the planet and space. Monsanto, the people who brought you Napalm, Planet Killers Inc, like they are a technology company whose benefits have net benefits to the pollution and sustainability of the planet?  Hell no – that’s capitalism for you, capitalism means destruction of the planet. It doesn’t put a price on raw materials it uses, ultimately the IMF does and they are fully discounted to a group of maggots called “corporate entities”.

Next up socialism/communism, disrespects the planet in similar ways just a slightly different tune. Words and chorus are different I grant you, but the results are still the same old rock and roll, it’s still a one four, five chord combination in there – just listen and you can always hear it.  IE No proper prices attached to the planet resources. Therefore failed from a whole Earth prospective.

Now for going down a third way, we’ve only got 20 years before they the technologists perfect nuclear power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

Can we imagine a world where energy is very cheap and safe? Humanity abuses the planet enough already. Oh and lets not mention the “real war” – nanotechnology. Nanotechnology and cheap safe electricity equals “planet melt down”. This is a world I will be glad not to be living in. Bitcoin does not stop this, short of a religious event nothing will, but the real democratisation of money creation gives stakeholders choice of what can happen at a local level in their own “communities”. Maybe that could help, as the “means of productions” becomes local with the advent of thorium power and nanotechnology.

If there is a third way out there – I hadn’t noticed it, have you?

Now left and right have a vested interest in preventing Thorium power coming to market for as long as possible, because on a global level “power blocks” start to loose massive influence and importance. Especially as many sovereign nations will have imploded under the debt bomb many people know exists. The UK is printing in the region of £700 billion pounds between 2012 and the next General Election to keep the wheels on the welfare, healthcare and the military industrial complex rolling. Britain will soon be in as much debt as the Wiemar Republic before it collapsed. 913% of it’s economy. February 2013  Britain’s debt was 900% of it’s economy, but of course it’s different now?

Source: ukpublicspending.co.uk / Moneyweek

Why do you need a standing army to protect oil and gas reserves that have a different value than they do today? Then why do you need a military industrial complex, which boundaries are you protecting and why?

Mark Cross @markcross
2013/11/22 AM