tag > Crypto
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Green Money in the Fake Garden of Eden
Notorious Nazi war-machine funder and nexus of the central banking universe, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), is getting into the digital token business with the launch of Project Genesis, auguring the imminent deployment of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC). In a press release issued this Tuesday, the global lending institution described the project as an “investigation” into the creation of a “prototype digital infrastructure that enables green investments” using blockchain technology to help the world to meet its “environmental and sustainability goals”.
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Malaysia Destroys 1,000 Bitcoin Mining Rigs With A Steamroller
More than a thousand cryptocurrency mining rigs were flattened in Sarawak, Malaysia, by a street compactor machine. "The electricity theft for mining bitcoin activities has caused frequent power outages and in 2021, three houses were razed due to illegal electricity supply."
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Cryptocurrency is an abject disaster - by Drew DeVault (2021)
"Cryptocurrency is one of the worst inventions of the 21st century. I am ashamed to share an industry with this exploitative grift. It has failed to be a useful currency, invented a new class of internet abuse, further enriched the rich, wasted staggering amounts of electricity, hastened climate change, ruined hundreds of otherwise promising projects, provided a climate for hundreds of scams to flourish, created shortages and price hikes for consumer hardware, and injected perverse incentives into technology everywhere. Fuck cryptocurrency."
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China to shut down over 90% of its Bitcoin mining capacity after local bans (globaltimes)
Many Bitcoin mines in Southwest China's Sichuan Province - one of China's largest cryptocurrency mining bases - were closed as of Sunday, according to after local authorities ordered a halt to mining in the region on Friday amid an intensified nationwide crackdown against cryptocurrency mining. The ban also means that more than 90 percent of China's Bitcoin mining capacity is estimated to be shut down.
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Comedy of the day: European Central Bank Can Better Protect Digital Payment Privacy, Exec Board Member Says (coindesk.com)
In an interview with the Financial Times on June 14 and published Sunday, Fabio Panetta said his institution had no commercial interest in storing, managing or monetizing user data. The issue over privacy in the digital euro is a focal point for Europeans as are concerns of security, according to a recent survey by the ECB. "If the central bank gets involved in digital payments, privacy is going to be better protected," said Panetta. "We're not like private companies." The banker also said people felt safer when their information was handled by a public institution, adding the bank would do a better job. "There are many ways in which we can protect confidential data while allowing the checks foreseen by law to avoid illicit transactions, such as those linked to money laundering, the financing of terrorism or tax evasion," said Panetta.
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"El Salvador Seeks World Bank Help For Bitcoin Implementation" (reuters)
#Comment: If you ever had any questions who exactly is "Satoshi Nakamoto" and who drives/controls bitcoin & other cryptos - this headline leaves little doubt: The same greedy, lying, unimaginative, destructive old-boys networks - just in a fancy new dress. Boring.
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"Coinbase appoints former White House staffer as chief policy officer"
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss..."
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Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely
"Disregarding all of bitcoin's shortcomings, a financial instrument that brings out the worst in people—greed—won't change the world for the better."
"I'd even go so far as comparing bitcoin to cancer, metastasising and consuming energy, generating detrimental practices and toxic personalities."
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Satoshi Nakamoto is now worth $64BN (Inventor of Bitcoin, likely just NSA/5Eyes, owner of 980,000 BTC). Meanwhile, Bitcoin will soon consume more energy than France.
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Non-fungible tokens (NFT) are Bullshit
This twitter thread by Jeff Jarvis nicely summarizes one line of criticism of the non-fungible token idea:
"Finally starting to understand NFTs--and what is wrong with them. The NFT doubles down on the worst of copyright, the property metaphor, & tries to impose old ideas of scarcity & exclusion on the digital realm, where both are obsolete.
Copyright, born w/1710's Statute of Anne, was supposed to support creators & learning. In truth, it made creation a tradable asset so creators could sell & publishers could own it. NFTs want to do that with digital: turn the ephemerality of digital into a market in permanence. BTW, news was not included in US or English copyright because it was ephemeral. Since then, from the AP's "hot news" doctrine to Murdoch's Oz law, news proprietors have tried to declare news as property. Doesn't work because news is knowledge.
NFTs & DAOs, like copyright, see creation as a product (which can be owned & kept from others & thus sold). Instead, look at creativity as an act, which may leave artifacts (stories, pictures) but can inspire more creation & collaboration, sharing & criticism -- if it's open.
If we shift from creativity as property (who owns it?) to activity (who joins in it?) then we see many acts to encourage: inspiring, creating, collaborating, performing, remixing, sharing/promoting.
In thinking how to replace copyright (and we should), let us start our thinking with benefit to the culture rather than with trying to recreate the worst of copyright. What the net enables is collaborative creativity. How do we support *that*?"
And Cryptocurrencies and NFTs are an absolute ecological disaster:
- Here is the article you can send to people when they say “but the environmental issues with cryptoart will be solved soon, right?”
- The Unreasonable Ecological Cost of CryptoArt
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The Dangers of Abstraction: Quantifying Nature in the Name of Order leads to Chaos.
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Central banks of China and United Arab Emirates join digital currency project for cross-border payments (Bank for International Settlements)
The Digital Currency Institute of the People's Bank of China and the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates join the Multiple CBDC (m-CBDC) Bridge, a cross-border payments project.
The m-CBDC Bridge is a co-creation initiative run in partnership with the BIS Innovation Hub, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Bank of Thailand.
The project aims to develop a proof-of-concept prototype to facilitate real-time cross-border foreign exchange payments on distributed ledger technology.
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India proposes law to ban cryptocurrencies, create official digital currency (Reuters)
India plans to introduce a law to ban private cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and put in place a framework for an official digital currency to be issued by the central bank, according to a legislative agenda listed by the government.
The law will “create a facilitative framework for creation of the official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI),” said the agenda, published on the lower house website on Friday. The legislation, listed for debate in the current parliamentary session, seeks “to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies in India, however, it allows for certain exceptions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses,” the agenda said.
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Solari Report 2020 Annual Wrap Up: News Trends & Stories, Part I with Dr. Joseph P. Farrell
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Interview with Catherine Austin Fitts, on economic warfare and the new world order.
Predictably Youtube toke the video off with in day. Here is an alternative link - and one more
"Build Back Better" Compilation - "The Great Reset" Montage
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How China’s digital currency will thwart US dollar trap and help the world (SCMP)
"The digital renminbi is a sovereign currency fully backed by the state, does not require a bank account and has full oversight by Chinese banking authorities. Developing countries will embrace the convenience of China’s digital payment systems, which have great poverty-relief potential for the world’s unbanked poor."
#Comment: In summary, highly centralized, total surveillance technocratic money coming east and west - aiming to quantize reality even more.
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Second Swiss firm allegedly sold encrypted spying devices
According to SRF sources, the Swiss company Omnisec AG had ties to US intelligence services. This follows revelations in February by SRF, German television ZDF and The Washington Post that Zug-based firm Crypto AG was at the heart of a huge international spying operation led by the CIA, and to a lesser extent by the German BND spy agency. Omnisec was one of the largest competitors of Crypto AG.
