Episode 328 – The Bitcoin Psyop

by | Jan 20, 2018 | Podcasts | 38 comments

Yes, the blockchain is truly revolutionary. Yes, bitcoin is Tulipmania 2.0. Yes, cryptocurrency is a nail in the coffin of the bankster parasites. Yes, digital currency is a tool of the totalitarian tyrants. No, these statements are not contradictory. But don’t worry if you think they are. You’re just a victim of “The Bitcoin Psyop.”

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TRANSCRIPT

Yes, the blockchain is truly revolutionary.

Yes, bitcoin is Tulipmania 2.0.

Yes, cryptocurrency is a nail in the coffin of the bankster parasites.

Yes, digital currency is a tool of the totalitarian tyrants.

No, these statements are not contradictory. But don’t worry if you think they are. You’re just a victim of “The Bitcoin Psyop.”

This is The Corbett Report.

So what’s the bitcoin psyop? Well, look at a headline like this:

“Former Chairman of Federal Reserve to Speak at Blockchain Conference”

If you immediately think “Aha! I knew it! The Fed is behind this bitcoin nonsense, after all!” then you might want to stop and contemplate this headline from two years ago:

Ben Bernanke: Bitcoin Has ‘Serious Problems’

Do you think there’s some kind of contradiction here? Or do you think that Bernanke has “flip-flopped” on the issue? Or do you suspect that Bernanke was always secretly behind bitcoin but couldn’t admit it until now?

If so, then you have fallen for an embarrassingly simple trick. That trick is to use the words “bitcoin” and “blockchain” and “cryptocurrency” and “digital currency” interchangeably, as if they are all the same thing. They are not.

Confused? Well, fear not! Our good friends at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) have written a handy-dandy article that explains everything to you in simple, everyday language. They’ve even illustrated that article with easy-to-understand infographics!

Just kidding. Their unwieldy article on “Central Bank Cryptocurrencies” is a predictably hot mess of monetary jargon and Venn diagrams that somehow make things look even more complicated than they sound.

Now, to be fair, their proposed new “taxonomy of money” has real explanatory power, and the diagrams that result are genuinely insightful, but it hardly makes for light bedtime reading. So, let’s see if we can make it a little easier, shall we?

A blockchain is a cryptographically secured ledger that can be permissionless and decentralized.

The geeks in the crowd will appreciate the fact that the blockchain is a stupendously elegant solution to some incredibly complicated problems in the obscure recesses of arcane subjects like distributed computing and payment processing. But for the non-geeks, perhaps this will suffice: Some of the oldest documents ever discovered have been ledgers of one sort or another. Medical records, legal and business contracts, accounting ledgers; as long as there has been civilization, there has been the need for secure and accurate record-keeping of transactions and events. And since the birth of civilization there has only been one way to keep those records: a system where a recognized central administrator stores, secures and updates that ledger.

Until now, that is. With the advent of the blockchain, an accurate ledger can now be maintained without a single, central point where that information is stored, maintained or updated. Registrars? Notaries? You might as well be talking about farriers and chimney sweeps.

So how does it work? And what does it do?

Mike Maloney, the filmmaker behind the popular “Hidden Secrets of Money” documentary series, describes it this way:

The system that bitcoin runs on is called “blockchain.” Think of it as a modern version of an old-fashioned bookkeeping ledger, but instead of a handwritten list of entries and calculations, a blockchain is a digital list of entries and calculations. A “block” is simply a bundle of transactions. Think of a block as a whole page of transaction in the old-fashioned ledger. A blockchain is just a chain of blocks. It’s the same as a whole series of pages in the old-fashioned ledger.

Easy, huh? Here’s how it works: The Bitcoin blockchain actually exists in every one of the millions of computers on the network as exact copies of each other. However, for this example, so that we can zoom in and you can really see just how a blockchain works, I’m going to show it as one giant blockchain in the middle of a small network of computers.

Let’s follow a pizza transaction with bitcoin. When the transaction occurs it first appears on the network in a pool of unconfirmed transactions along with thousands of others from all around the world. Millions of different computers from the network then gather some of these transactions and place them in their own blocks. The computers are all creating blocks constantly in the hope that theirs will be the next one added to the official chain.

A new block is added to the chain every ten minutes or so, when one of the computers wins the right to have its block recognized as the next in the chain and is rewarded with a prize of newly created bitcoins. The way a computer wins the prize is by trying to guess the answer to an extremely difficult math problem. In fact, the problem is so difficult that even with millions of computers making guesses billions or even trillions of times per second it still takes roughly 10 minutes to find the answer. Once one of the computers guesses the correct answer and wins, all of the millions of computers on the network that did not win are instructed to throw away all the work they have done, update their ledgers with the block from the winning computer, and start again with a new math problem.

In doing so, the computers use an immense amount of power and cost a literal fortune to run. So why do they do it? Because it can be very profitable. This is where the term “mining for bitcoins” comes from. Instead of striking gold by mining for precious metals in the wilderness, these computers are hoping to strike bitcoin by mining precious numbers on the blockchain.

SOURCE: From Bitcoin To Hashgraph: The Crypto Revolution – Hidden Secrets Of Money Ep 8

But talking about the blockchain is like talking about the printing press. Yes, it’s revolutionary. Yes, it will change the course of history. But what, specifically, does it print? Well, whatever you want it to, of course. A papal bull or the Ninety-five Theses, the 9/11 Commission Report or The Road to 9/11, a GMO cookbook or The Anarchist Cookbook, colorful pieces of toilet paper or Federal Reserve notes (but I repeat myself).

So what does the blockchain record? Well, whatever you want it to, of course. It can be used as a tool for creating smart contracts or registering land ownership or creating decentralized cryptocurrencies.

This is where bitcoin comes in.

So what’s bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency whose transactions are recorded in a public blockchain ledger.

There are three things to note about this description of bitcoin.

Firstly, bitcoin is just one application of the blockchain ledger technology. They are not the same thing. Bitcoin is not blockchain. Blockchain is not bitcoin. Bitcoin uses the blockchain innovation to run an electronic payment system.

It’s important to stress this point. Confusing these terms is a purposeful tactic that a lot of 21st century snake oil salesmen are using to sucker a public that sees the bitcoin bubble and believes this is the next great investment opportunity. This “baffle them with BS” technique has been ridiculously effective in some cases. In one infamous example, “The Long Island Iced Tea Corporation” recently rebranded as “The Long Blockchain Corporation.” They still make iced tea, they just added blockchain to their name, and the market responded: The company’s stocks doubled overnight.

This is the exact phenomenon we saw emerge during the dotcom bubble when any company that added “.com” to their name saw their stock price rise. And it is a sure sign that people are being baffled by techno-speak that they don’t understand in the slightest.

Andreas Antanopoulos provides some straightforward advice for separating blockchain from BS:

So let’s get started. What exactly is going on here is this: the greatest technological innovation and explosion of innovation since the mobile internet, or maybe even the internet itself. Or is this the greatest load of hype ever arranged around the technology in the history of technology? Both. And in fact that’s a characteristic of advanced technologies.

I often say that where bitcoin and the other open block chains are today is approximately where the internet was in 1992. In terms of technology, in terms of infrastructure deployment, in terms of adoption patterns, this technology is approximately where the internet was in 1992. But the hype around blockchain is exactly where the hype around the internet was in 1998. You know what comes next.

There will be a shakeout. When the waters recede you can tell who on the beach wasn’t wearing a swimsuit. They stand there naked. It’s an empty promise this will happen in the blockchain space. There is a lot a lot of bullshit being peddled to VCs, to investors, to initial coin offering buyers, to uneducated investors. There’s a lot of Ponzi schemes, there’s a lot of pyramid schemes, there’s a lot of empty promises, there’s also a lot of business as usual disguised as innovation. Disguised as disruptive technology.

[…]

Now out of that came this fantastic saying: “blockchain is the technology behind bitcoin,” which is incorrect. Blockchain is one of the four foundational technologies behind bitcoin and it can’t stand alone, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying to sell it. Blockchain is bitcoin with a haircut and a suit that you parade in front of your board. It’s the ability to deliver a sanitized, clean, comfortable version of bitcoin to people who are too terrified of actually disruptive technology.

And so you get into this very strange world where the words no longer mean anything. Can you define “blockchain” for me? I think a few people in this room could probably define blockchain but the real challenge would be can you define blockchain in such a way that I can do search and replace with the word “database” and still make that sentence work? Because that’s the challenge. If what you’re doing is a database with signatures, it’s not interesting, it’s boring.

What is the essence of bitcoin? It’s not blockchain. The essence of bitcoin is the ability to operate in a decentralized way without having to trust anyone. The essence of Bitcoin is to be able to use software to authoritatively, independently, without appeal to authority, verify everything yourself. You don’t trust the other nodes you’re talking to; you assume they’re lying. You don’t trust the miners. You don’t trust the people creating the transactions. You don’t trust anything other than the outcome of your own verification and , through that you end up trusting in something more important: the network effect.

Bitcoin introduced the concept of decentralized security through computation and this has not yet sunk in. What bitcoin does is it allows you to replace a security model that is based around concentric circle most of access and control with an institution in the center with a security model that is inside out, open and accessible to everyone. A security model that is based on market forces and game theory. It is the first market-based security model where a series of incentives and punishments ensure that the ultimate result is you can trust the platform itself as a neutral arbiter, that is not controlled by anyone. Without third parties. Without intermediaries. Bitcoin revolutionizes trust.

SOURCE: Blockchain vs. Bullshit: Thoughts on the Future of Money

The second thing to note in our definition of bitcoin is that it is a cryptocurrency. That means it uses cryptographic functions to secure and verify transactions on the network and to control the issuance of new units. Bitcoin conforms to a certain protocol, and that protocol defines the rules by which the bitcoin network operates. You can tweak those rules and create similar-but-separate payment systems, each with its own qualities. These bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies are called altcoins.

Thirdly, bitcoin uses a specific kind of blockchain ledger called a “public” or “permissionless” blockchain. This means anyone can join the network and contribute to the maintenance of the ledger (“mining,” in the bitcoin parlance). There is another kind of blockchain, called a “private” or “permissioned” blockchain, that requires nodes to be invited to join the network or otherwise given permission to participate in maintaining the ledger.

And as a further level of analysis, it should be noted that all cryptocurrencies are digital currencies, but not all digital currencies are cryptocurrencies. Oh, and then there’s virtual currencies, which are, technically speaking, another thing altogether.

OK, this is starting to get confusing, isn’t it? This is about the point where we’d need to bust out the Venn diagrams and start coloring the overlapping parts, right? Well, if you’ve followed all of this, good for you. If not, don’t sweat it. The point for today is simply to recognize that there are a lot of separate-but-related concepts here, and to talk about them as if they are all just one big monolithic thing is not just unhelpful but purposefully misleading.

So, with all of this in mind, let’s look at those Bernanke headlines again:

“Former Chairman of Federal Reserve to Speak at Blockchain Conference”

and

Ben Bernanke: Bitcoin Has ‘Serious Problems’

Are you at least beginning to get a handle on how those headlines are not contradictory? How it could be that a central banker could be interested in blockchain technology but dislike the bitcoin application of that technology?

If not, think of it this way: The same DVD player that can play Century of Enslavement can also play The Federal Reserve and You. The same printing press that can print Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy can also be used to print The Warren Commission Report. The same web browser that can take you to corbettreport.com can also take you to NYTimes.com (and no, I’m not recommending that you go there!).

So, yes, the blockchain could be used to create digital currencies that represent the very vision of a totalitarian tyrant’s wildest wet dream. Central banks could use private blockchains to administer national digital currencies that permanently record and track every transaction in the economy. That currency could be distributed through government-issued digital wallets that act as an individual ID and allow the government to track everything you ever purchase back to you personally. It could be used to create the perfect system of panoptic oversight, and the totalitarians could, as sole proprietors of the private blockchain, target anyone they saw as a threat for removal from the economy by simply revoking their wallet.

And, yes, the blockchain could be used to create a digital currency that represent the banksters’ worst nightmare. Free individuals could use a public blockchain to create a cryptocurrency not issued by or subject to any central authority. Or they could use it to raise untaxable cryptofunds for agoristic start-up ventures through unregistered ICOs. Or it could be used to transfer value or property instantaneously across the imaginary lines on the map that define the supposed boundaries of the would-be tyrants’ geographical monopolies without the permission of said tyrants.

Are you starting to get the picture?

A gun can be used by a jackbooted minion of the police state to murder you and your family, or it can be used by you to defend yourself and your family. It is a tool, just like the blockchain, and can be used for good or for ill.

So what I’d like to equip you with is a set of criteria to understand when you are being presented with something, perhaps to invest or to be employed or to engage in some way, and it calls itself a “blockchain” or a “distributed ledger” or one of these other names that are coming out. How can you tell blockchain from bullshit? They both start with a “B.” What’s the difference? If you can replace the word “blockchain” with “database” and the brochure reads the samel it’s business as usual. It’s not decentralized, it’s not borderless, neutral, censorship-resistant, open. It re-establishes trust in intermediaries. It’s just a database and that is not disruptive.

The idea “we’re going to take this technology and use it to improve the operating margins of centralized institutions of trust so that they can continue business as usual,” I’d say it’s abhorrent but that’s a strong word. It’s just boring. Really, really boring. No one got into this in order to make a few billions for a financial services clearing house, and if you did, I’m really sorry; that’s boring. What’s really exciting is the possibility of fundamentally changing the way we allocate trust on this planet. Opening up the ability to collaborate, transact, engage on a global level with everyone. Simply by means of downloading an application you can become part of a giant platform of trust that doesn’t care who you are or where you came from. That doesn’t require permission to participate or innovate. Where a 12 year old JavaScript programmer has the same influence and power as JPMorgan Chase. More, in fact, because they’re doing open source and feeding into a community of collaboration that is creating a tsunami of innovation. Taking this technology and using it to strengthen the same centralized institutions so that they can improve their bottom line is boring. That is not what blockchain is, that’s just a database, and it doesn’t change anything.

In fact, there are some rather disturbing possibilities in this model. Let’s think about it for a second. The most commonly expressed application for these new distributed ledger technologies is to replace the function of a centralized clearing house with a consortium of n participants where n is 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 known, permissioned, controlled participants, who will assemble transactions and assign them, rather than compete through market forces in a security model like bitcoin. We discard currency as the underlying mechanism for building market based security. We discard proof of work as wasteful because all it allows you to do is decentralize a secure, neutral, censorship-resistant blockchain. And we trust five named parties to sign transactions. At that point, they don’t need to assemble these transactions in blocks, they can just sign the individual transactions. They don’t need to chain them together, because absent proof of work and a system of currency incentives. rewriting that is easy; there’s no immutability. So it’s not a blockchain anymore because there’s no blocks and there’s no chain.

Now that’s at a technical level, but let’s look at the more important level. What do you achieve by replacing a clearinghouse with a consortium of players? You know, there’s something unique a clearinghouse does. If you understand the role of a clearinghouse. one of its most important functions is that it is not a participant in the market. It has no skin in the game. The New York Stock Exchange is not an active trader. That’s not an accident. That’s called separation of concerns. The clearinghouse is an independent party with oversight that is not a market participant. If you take that party out and replace it with five banks, all of which have skin in the game, how do you run a consensus algorithm when the incentives to cheat, front run, manipulate the market and break the consensus rules (even adversarially against the other four parties) are so high there’s no incentive to keep the consensus rules. All you’re doing is you’re saying “trust us, we’re in a consortium.”

Trust us? These five banks? Where were you in 2008 where were you when Libor was fixed? Where were you when the gold markets were fixed? Where were you when front running and high-frequency trading was creating these monsters of crony capitalism? Trust us? Hell no!

Removing the clearinghouse and replacing it with…What’s the word? It’s not consortium…”Cartel!” That’s the word!…with a cartel of the same market makers who have manipulated and compromised every market in history, and doing that in a way that closes this from transparency, that’s not a recipe for efficiency, immutability security, transparency. That’s not a blockchain. That’s a bullshit. It’s a very profitable bullshit. It requires you to have confidence in the game. A “con game,” as it’s known.

Be careful what you evaluate when you see these technologies. Taking something whose fundamental purpose is to remove trusted intermediaries and create an open, borderless, neutral system and turning it into a tool for a bunch of untrustworthy trusted parties to manipulate markets is going to be a disaster. And they’re going to do it.

SOURCE: Blockchain vs. Bullshit: Thoughts on the Future of Money

Now let’s look once again at the statements that opened this podcast episode.

Is the blockchain revolutionary? Well, since no decentralized, peer-to-peer ledger has ever existed before, yes, it is that rarest of rare things: something new under the sun.

Is bitcoin Tulipmania 2.0? Yes, in the exact same sense that the dotcom bubble of the ’90s was Tulipmania 2.0. Just as Pets.com and other ventures that earned (and lost) hundreds of millions of dollars in the blink of an eye were the result of a speculative frenzy, so too are the sudden run-ups and run-downs in bitcoin’s price the result of a speculative frenzy. But the bursting of the dotcom bubble wasn’t the end of the worldwide web anymore than a future bursting of the bitcoin speculation bubble will be the end of cryptocurrency (or even bitcoin).

Is cryptocurrency a nail in the coffin of the banksters? Yes. Cryptocurrencies can now be (and already are being) used by millions around the world for instantaneous and virtually free international remittances, all without the aid of a bank account. Start ups have raised billions of dollars in capital through ICOs without a VC predator or investment bank underwriter in sight. More broadly, a whole host of banksters and their associated cronies in the third-party middleman parasitic class are already openly contemplating the fact that they have already been made obsolete by the blockchain technology which underlies the cryptocurrency boom. So is the blockchain the one and only silver bullet that will end banking all by itself? Don’t be ridiculous. But it’s one more arrow for the quiver.

Is digital currency a tool of the totalitarian tyrants? Well, we’ve already seen how the BIS is musing about central bank-issued cryptocurrencies, and we’ve contemplated how that nightmare scenario of control and surveillance might unfold. It hardly takes a Nostradamus to envision how the forces of centralization are going to push as hard as they can to put the cryptocurrency genie safely back in the bottle of central-bank issued fiat.

Are any of these statements contradictory? Nope. But the bitcoin psyop might have made you think they were. And now you know better.

So, here’s a test of your newfound, nuanced understanding of the intricacies of digital currencies. Can you explain how this headline:

China’s Central Bank Has Begun Cautiously Testing a Digital Currency

And this headline:

China Is Shutting Down All of Beijing’s Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Exchanges

Are perfectly compatible?

If so, then give yourself a pat on the back. You’ve just seen through the bitcoin psyop.

A version of this podcast first appeared in The Corbett Report Subscriber newsletter in September 2017. To keep up to date with the newsletter, and to support The Corbett Report, please subscribe today.

38 Comments

  1. I wanted to point out one of the less intuitive aspects about mining. While it currently takes a shitload of power to add them new blocks to the chain, it only takes as much because there are so many miners competing. The point was to give the network about 10 minutes for the changes to spread so a miner will get a task solvable in 10 minutes. A zillion miners will get a zillion times more complex task.

    • Interesting. Thanks for bringing that up.

  2. Nice presentation, James and Brock. A topic that could follow along in the same kind of template as the recent video reports you have been putting together could be about the ruthlessness (psychopathy) of big corporations that simply follow their profits, even at the expense of human suffering. Some examples that come to mind are Bayer selling HIV infected blood products to hemophiliacs, IG Farben building Auschwitz, defense contractors selling WMDs to dictators, etc. I think a video report outlining this continual pattern will hold true and can be a useful tool to wake people up and make them aware of this type of psychopathy.

  3. James,
    I like your video however I am disappointed in some of your conclusions. In the end you said the Bitcoin was “Tulipmania”, however if used as an alternate currency worldwide 20K would seem very cheap. If all the people that was worth 30 million dollars or more each wanted 1 Bitcoin they could not. I believe you should have listened to Andreas Antonopoulos closer you would have understood that Bitcoin is what could disrupt the big bankers and not necessarily the blockchain. In fact they are trying to embrace the blockchain and discard Bitcoin because they becoming aware of the potential of Bitcoin. I propose that most if not all the “alt-coins” are now the “Tulipmania” you discussed.

    • By the way, this particular video is an excellent way to introduce “The Corbett Report” to just about anyone.
      There is nothing “conspiratorial” about it.

      Excellent for normies. A graceful approach towards them taking their first steps.

    • It doesn’t matter that I’m at least 4 months late, or not the first commentator here: I have to SECOND that emotion that this is funny as ****:

      “colorful pieces of toilet paper or Federal Reserve notes (but I repeat myself).”

      Bravo, (again) James, and THANKS for brightening my (dare I say: OUR) Day.

      Thank you.

  4. PeaceFroggs,
    Blockchain could be used by centralized authoritarians or it could be part of a decentralized structure.

    • I am keeping my Bitcoin. And my Ethereum. Now, they are seen as a speculation, but eventually I feel that will calm down, especially if more places accept these tokens for payment.
      My guess is that eventually when a bitcoin dollar value approaches $100,000 it will calm down as a speculative action.
      I am not worried if these go down in dollar value… their true value is to be able to trade them with others. That ability will stay around for awhile.

      But I will reinvest in silver within a few months.
      I am watching some economic indicators hopefully to time a good buy-in.

      • Any suggestions how to get started with Cryptocurrency? I.e. reliable sites to buy? So much in web searches buried these days so can’t really find good info where to start. Help please. I’m feeling a sense of urgency these days

        • Hi Brenda!
          You timed it well.
          I just happened to catch your comment…and…

          …There was a Bitcoin discussion with that question on a recent episode of Corbett Report.
          Here is a link to that SUB-THREAD…
          https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1592-brainstorming-solutions-live-on-air/#comment-97325

          Like Corbett advises, in the beginning go slow with any amounts of money you put into crypto.

          Just my personal opinion for easy starters if you are in the U.S…
          Go to Coinbase.com and buy a little crypto with a credit card or whatever you want to use.
          Then forget about it for awhile. Revisit your account occasionally.

          If you want to test sending some crypto to someone, you could try Corbett or Agorist.Market or Overstock.com or some other place or person.
          With James Corbett, email him for the address of where to send the crypto to.

  5. If anyone is interested in the economy or wanting a heads-up prediction of coming market forces, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND watching some of Mike Maloney‘s videos.
    He approaches things from a layman perspective with simple language and well defines Wall Street trends.
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCThv5tYUVaG4ZPA3p6EXZbQ

    • Is it just me or does Mike Maloney sound just like Troy McClure from the Simpsons?

  6. Thanks for sharing that paper, MBP. The true value of money comes when it is easily and painlessly able to change hands. With the present instability of cryptos, in general, it is perfectly understandable that people would be hesitant to spend what they have if it meant that waiting a day would give him a better deal. It seems to me like most people see cryptocurrencies – BitCoin and Ethereum in particular – more as investment opportunities or as hedges, which essentially undermines their intended purpose.

    • “…I have a very likeable and highly aware student (who works in IT) whose ambition is to seriously invest in bank-approved Ripple (and even perhaps arms and other “sure values”) as soon as he can. His personal need to make money exceeds his faith in improving the world through investing in “anti-establishment” crypto-currencies. He’s a compelling subject of sociological study…”

      I think this is a testament as to how total the indoctrination equating bank-issued fiat with something of value is.

      “…In today’s disillusioned, impoverished world many people have abandoned their faith in any trumpeted solution along with faith in themselves and human beings in general and are more tempted by overnight gains…”

      I see this trend in people too. I believe that a lifetime of never producing anything for one’s self creates a sort of perpetual adolescence. Urban living today is so disconnected from nature that all people see are products to consume; neither the processes that brought such products into being, nor the consequences thereafter need any consideration. Everything anyone could ever want is just a few clicks of the mouse, or a quick trip to the store away.

      What kind of person does a lifetime of such dependency create? Not one who is very much aware, in my opinion.

  7. manbearpig, can you provide some link?

    What you have quoted doesn’t make a lot of sense.

    Half a million qbits???
    Around hundred is enough to crack elliptic curve encryption used by bitcoin.

    Critical 10 min????
    Your money is protected by cryptography. If your cypher is broken someone can steal your money. Hundred cases like this with MSM “support” and crypto-currency is gone.

    Changing cryptography might not be so easy because ledger will loose consistency.

    There is a lot of misunderstanding regarding quantum computers.
    On link below there is a thread with lots of helpful links.

    https://www.corbettreport.com/2017-the-year-of-technocracy-confirmed/#comment-46980

    • Yes, I’ve been lazy. But this laziness is useful, it prevents me from losing time on nonsense and there is tons of nonsense around these days.

      In previous comment I said 100qbits are considered enough to crack today’s public-key encryption (ECDSA,RSA,…), that is also called asymmetric encryption (public & private key).
      Actually, roughly 50+ is considered enough.

      SHA-256 and RIPEMD160 are both hashing encryption and it is believed they are resistant to quantum attacks.

      But the main protection and usefulness (transactions) is provided by ECDSA.
      Hashing encryption cannot be used for authentication efficiently, because it’s symmetric encryption and it’s necessary that both sides have the same secret key.
      How to provide key exchange?

      Excerpt from:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_authentication_code

      “MACs do not provide the property of non-repudiation offered by signatures specifically in the case of a network-wide shared secret key: any user who can verify a MAC is also capable of generating MACs for other messages. In contrast, a digital signature is generated using the private key of a key pair, which is public-key cryptography.”

      To make myself clear. I would really like to see a working alternative to fake money. Bitcoin until recently looked like one, but not anymore for me.
      In case of Bitcoin, I would like to see a proposition that includes resistant cryptography and how to manage a transition from old to new system.
      We should not forget that it might be possible that solution is not feasible(for Bitcoin).

      • Ok, this is some other topic.

        Governments have their business, we have ours.

  8. Still watching, but just had to note that “colorful pieces of toilet paper” bit was truly priceless…

    • EXCELLENT FIND!

      ” The Corbett Report put out a great piece and must see for our readers, called the “Bitcoin Psyop” it is really informative and can be found here (LINK) “

  9. January 23, 2018 – Mike Maloney
    This Amazing Chart Shows Bitcoin Investors Diversifying Into Gold & Silver
    i.e. using Bitcoin to purchase gold/silver
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18WLvcY9d4o

    It is also interesting to see how the value of the Dollar compared to other currencies has dropped throughout last year and continuing down. Of course, this may help U.S. exports and some other economic indicators.
    https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/currency

  10. January 25, 2018
    Stock app Robinhood is adding no-fee bitcoin trading (with 5 minute video)
    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock-app-robinhood-adding-no-fee-bitcoin-trading-155905506.html
    EXCERPTS
    The stock-trading smartphone app Robinhood, which has amassed 3 million users and recently raised $110 million at a $1.3 billion “unicorn” valuation, is jumping into cryptocurrencies.

    Robinhood Crypto will launch in February with no-fee buying and selling of bitcoin and ether (token of the blockchain network Ethereum), but in only 5 states: California, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, and New Hampshire. (The company says it determined those states “based on a mix of strategic and regulatory considerations.”)

    The move represents new competition for Coinbase, which is the No. 1 mainstream brokerage for buying bitcoin and has more than 13 million users, but has been criticized for its occasional exorbitant fees, which vary based on network activity at the time you want to buy or sell.

    Robinhood charges users no commission fee. It makes its revenue from premium services like Robinhood Gold, which offers margin trading and extended-hours trading for $10 per month, and from interest on outstanding cash sitting in user accounts….

  11. open the prison gates, and they’ll just rush on in to feast on the fantasy food within the brightly-painted cells in which the nice new gadgets are up and ready to go!

    Masses of slaves. Loving their servitude, as the bad man predicted.

  12. I’d wager other means of control are of a greater concern than hacking.

    Public ledger isn’t impervious to hacking, it’s just statistically very difficult to do.

  13. If getting the right answer for ” an extremely difficult math problem” (as mentioned in the video above) is the key to having the right to have the next block on the chain, who or what is the overlord that deems the answer correct or not? Shouldn’t we be thinking about this closely. Is that not the source of control for what is otherwise painted as a system free of control? By the way, how do we know what work the mining computers are actually up to anyway?
    Anyone verifying all is as assumed?

  14. Ok, so I watched this the first time around and never got on board with it, but understood the concept.

    I want to set up a few more monthly subscriptions (for favored online media outlets). The two I set up already are off my savings bank account as a direct debit. However, I kind of anticipate that if certain sites and material ever get ‘black listed’ it might not be possible to continue with the subscription via a bank account. What do you think?

    What is the state of block chain and cryptocurrencies currently? Has anyone got a good ‘start here, 2020’ guide? I remember James encouraging everyone to get a crypto wallet at one point (wish I did), but not sure if that was on this video or elsewhere.

    • Just buy a little bitcoin to get started.
      You can always buy more.
      It seems that the price of bitcoin went up these past couple days.

      It is much easier to buy bitcoin now than it was 5 years ago.
      I bought some then, ONLY because that was the only currency an online newspaper ad service (“Backpage”) would accept. The banks and credit card companies had blacklisted them. I wanted to run some 9/11 Truth ads. It took me all night and lots of hassle.

      My more recent purchases of bitcoin have been through Coinbase.
      It is simple. They do report data to the IRS, as do most U.S. places.

      Some folks buy bitcoin as a speculative device.
      I buy it because it can be an alternative currency. Of course, I am happy when the “value” relative to the dollar increases.

      Corbett does accept bitcoin. You have to email him for specifics.
      However, right now, I am betting his inbox is slammed with hundreds of pending emails.

      • Thank you for the response. I’m UK based. Do you know anything about the differences between UK and USA regarding reporting? Why is there more than one place to buy Bitcoin?

  15. Taking speculation of higher Bitcoin prices off to the side for a moment…

    I feel that when any form of non-centralized currency becomes popular in practice, that those who wish to control us will try to suppress it.
    They can do this in any number of ways, such as obfuscating the fact that something is a decentralized currency curving it to be more of a speculative commodity.

    In fact, I will hypothesize:
    When a very large segment of the population uses a decentralized currency or method of exchange, that segment of the population will experience tremendous liberty.

  16. Only Corbett episode I have ever disliked thanks to the deeply offensive, sneering Bitcoin salesman. Selling electronic unicorns and brotherly love

    China today, Europe tomorrow.

    “China’s central bank has announced that all transactions of crypto-currencies are illegal, effectively banning digital tokens such as Bitcoin. But Friday’s announcement is the clearest indication yet that China wants to shut down crypto-currency trading in all its forms.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58678907

  17. Western governments double down efforts to curtail end-to-end encryption

    Encryption of any type can be viewed as a branch of applied mathematics but arguments that “anyone can implement encryption in a few lines of code” miss the point that what governments are seeking is to “make encryption tools inaccessible to the broader public

    https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/western-governments-double-down-efforts-to-curtail-end-to-end-encryption

    There’s nothing power hates more than secrecy.

    “This thesis examines representations of spying and surveillance in Shakespearean drama in conjunction with historical practices of espionage in later sixteenth-century England.

    https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/11591

  18. People have a look into incognito.org I think this is the final nail in the coffin for the banking system. It gives you the ability to even use Bitcoin privately.

    • Ok I should have used the system a bit more before promoting it. DON”T use incognito.org use atomic swaps instead. Funds are held for long periods of time before release. Use https://kycnot.me/ to find ways to get monero the only private usable crypto.

      Sorry one more thing… DOWN with the BITCOIN psyop.

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