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Gary Edwards

Why Bitcoin Matters | Marc Andreessen - 0 views

blog.pmarca.com/...why-bitcoin-matters

Bitcoin Marc-Andreessen pmarca

shared by Gary Edwards on 22 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • First, Bitcoin at its most fundamental level is a breakthrough in computer science – one that builds on 20 years of research into cryptographic currency, and 40 years of research in cryptography, by thousands of researchers around the world. Bitcoin is the first practical solution to a longstanding problem in computer science called the Byzantine Generals Problem. To quote from the original paper defining the B.G.P.: “[Imagine] a group of generals of the Byzantine army camped with their troops around an enemy city. Communicating only by messenger, the generals must agree upon a common battle plan. However, one or more of them may be traitors who will try to confuse the others. The problem is to find an algorithm to ensure that the loyal generals will reach agreement.” More generally, the B.G.P. poses the question of how to establish trust between otherwise unrelated parties over an untrusted network like the Internet.
  • The practical consequence of solving this problem is that Bitcoin gives us, for the first time, a way for one Internet user to transfer a unique piece of digital property to another Internet user, such that the transfer is guaranteed to be safe and secure, everyone knows that the transfer has taken place, and nobody can challenge the legitimacy of the transfer. The consequences of this breakthrough are hard to overstate. What kinds of digital property might be transferred in this way? Think about digital signatures, digital contracts, digital keys (to physical locks, or to online lockers), digital ownership of physical assets such as cars and houses, digital stocks and bonds … and digital money. All these are exchanged through a distributed network of trust that does not require or rely upon a central intermediary like a bank or broker. And all in a way where only the owner of an asset can send it, only the intended recipient can receive it, the asset can only exist in one place at a time, and everyone can validate transactions and ownership of all assets anytime they want.
  • How does this work?
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  • Bitcoin is an Internet-wide distributed ledger. You buy into the ledger by purchasing one of a fixed number of slots, either with cash or by selling a product and service for Bitcoin. You sell out of the ledger by trading your Bitcoin to someone else who wants to buy into the ledger. Anyone in the world can buy into or sell out of the ledger any time they want – with no approval needed, and with no or very low fees. The Bitcoin “coins” themselves are simply slots in the ledger, analogous in some ways to seats on a stock exchange, except much more broadly applicable to real world transactions. The Bitcoin ledger is a new kind of payment system. Anyone in the world can pay anyone else in the world any amount of value of Bitcoin by simply transferring ownership of the corresponding slot in the ledger. Put value in, transfer it, the recipient gets value out, no authorization required, and in many cases, no fees. That last part is enormously important. Bitcoin is the first Internetwide payment system where transactions either happen with no fees or very low fees (down to fractions of pennies). Existing payment systems charge fees of about 2 to 3 percent – and that’s in the developed world. In lots of other places, there either are no modern payment systems or the rates are significantly higher. We’ll come back to that.
  • Bitcoin is a digital bearer instrument. It is a way to exchange money or assets between parties with no pre-existing trust: A string of numbers is sent over email or text message in the simplest case. The sender doesn’t need to know or trust the receiver or vice versa. Related, there are no chargebacks – this is the part that is literally like cash – if you have the money or the asset, you can pay with it; if you don’t, you can’t. This is brand new. This has never existed in digital form before. Bitcoin is a digital currency, whose value is based directly on two things: use of the payment system today – volume and velocity of payments running through the ledger – and speculation on future use of the payment system. This is one part that is confusing people. It’s not as much that the Bitcoin currency has some arbitrary value and then people are trading with it; it’s more that people can trade with Bitcoin (anywhere, everywhere, with no fraud and no or very low fees) and as a result it has value.
  • Why would any merchant – online or in the real world – want to accept Bitcoin as payment, given the currently small number of consumers who want to pay with it? My partner Chris Dixon recently gave this example: “Let’s say you sell electronics online. Profit margins in those businesses are usually under 5 percent, which means conventional 2.5 percent payment fees consume half the margin. That’s money that could be reinvested in the business, passed back to consumers or taxed by the government. Of all of those choices, handing 2.5 percent to banks to move bits around the Internet is the worst possible choice. Another challenge merchants have with payments is accepting international payments. If you are wondering why your favorite product or service isn’t available in your country, the answer is often payments.” In addition, merchants are highly attracted to Bitcoin because it eliminates the risk of credit card fraud. This is the form of fraud that motivates so many criminals to put so much work into stealing personal customer information and credit card numbers. Since Bitcoin is a digital bearer instrument, the receiver of a payment does not get any information from the sender that can be used to steal money from the sender in the future, either by that merchant or by a criminal who steals that information from the merchant.
  • What’s the future of Bitcoin?
  • Bitcoin is a classic network effect, a positive feedback loop. The more people who use Bitcoin, the more valuable Bitcoin is for everyone who uses it, and the higher the incentive for the next user to start using the technology. Bitcoin shares this network effect property with the telephone system, the web, and popular Internet services like eBay and Facebook. In fact, Bitcoin is a four-sided network effect. There are four constituencies that participate in expanding the value of Bitcoin as a consequence of their own self-interested participation. Those constituencies are (1) consumers who pay with Bitcoin, (2) merchants who accept Bitcoin, (3) “miners” who run the computers that process and validate all the transactions and enable the distributed trust network to exist, and (4) developers and entrepreneurs who are building new products and services with and on top of Bitcoin. All four sides of the network effect are playing a valuable part in expanding the value of the overall system, but the fourth is particularly important.
  • Gary Edwards on 22 Jan 14
     
    WOW! This is the must read article of the year. Great explanation of Bitcoin; what it is, how it works, and why it is so significant. Excellent analysis!
Gary Edwards

What Is Bitcoin - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/what-is-bitcoin-2011-5

GOLD digital-money

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 May 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 17 May 11
     
    That GOLD! app for iOS and Android is looking pretty good :)  C'mon Tino.  Now is the time.  Link to Priced-in-gold (http://pricedingold.com) excerpt: You may be dreaming of a gold backed dollar, or just everyone carrying around clinking gold coins in their pockets, but a rising community has a different idea. It's called Bitcoin, and it's a peer-to-peer currency that can be used to exchange goods and services online, digital and otherwise, without fees. In order to get Bitcoins, you need to exchange other currencies for Bitcoins (like dollars, euros, or pounds) at places like Mt.Gox. You can also sell goods and services online for Bitcoins. Some examples of Bitcoin stores include online gaming credits, pet wear, and coffee (more examples here). OR, you can create a new 'block,' which is a series of transactions, and you will receive 50 bitcoins. This is very rare, however, and the value of creating a new block will decrease over time. The idea behind Bitcoin is that it is a peer-to-peer exchange system, with an established and predictable rate of currency production. The creation of bitcoins is restricted by an algorithm, so the currency's worth cannot be modified by any actor (banks, central banks, treasuries). Individuals are involved in "mining" for Bitcoins, but it is extremely costly and requires significant computing power. Bitcoins could theoretically act as a store of value in the event of further inflation and devaluation of the U.S. dollar or other currencies.
Gary Edwards

Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...14-forecast-burning-down-house

Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14
     
    Incredible must read analysis. Take away: the world is going to go "medevil". It's the only way out of this mess. Since the zero hedge layout is so bad, i'm going to post as much of the article as Diigo will allow: Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/06/2014 19:36 -0500 Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com , Many of us in the Long Emergency crowd and like-minded brother-and-sisterhoods remain perplexed by the amazing stasis in our national life, despite the gathering tsunami of forces arrayed to rock our economy, our culture, and our politics. Nothing has yielded to these forces already in motion, so far. Nothing changes, nothing gives, yet. It's like being buried alive in Jell-O. It's embarrassing to appear so out-of-tune with the consensus, but we persevere like good soldiers in a just war. Paper and digital markets levitate, central banks pull out all the stops of their magical reality-tweaking machine to manipulate everything, accounting fraud pervades public and private enterprise, everything is mis-priced, all official statistics are lies of one kind or another, the regulating authorities sit on their hands, lost in raptures of online pornography (or dreams of future employment at Goldman Sachs), the news media sprinkles wishful-thinking propaganda about a mythical "recovery" and the "shale gas miracle" on a credulous public desperate to believe, the routine swindles of medicine get more cruel and blatant each month, a tiny cohort of financial vampire squids suck in all the nominal wealth of society, and everybody else is left whirling down the drain of posterity in a vortex of diminishing returns and scuttled expectations. Life in the USA is like living in a broken-down, cob-jobbed, vermin-infested house that needs to be gutted, disinfected, and rebuilt - with the hope that it might come out of the restoration process retaining the better qualities of our heritage.
Paul Merrell

Bitcoin Failure Blamed on Currency Control in the Hands of a Few - nsnbc international ... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...-control-in-the-hands-of-a-few

banksters bitcoin-failure

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Mike Hearn rocked the Bitcoin world when he declared that the digital currency experiment had failed. Hearn, a software developer for Bitcoin, explained several reasons why this cryptocurrency had not been successful. He not only sold off his coins, but he felt compelled to warn the entire digital currency community that the system had reached its limit.
Paul Merrell

US Presses Turkey to Stop Using Gold in Trade With Iran -- News from Antiwar.com - 0 views

news.antiwar.com/...-using-gold-in-trade-with-iran

war & peace settlement currency gold standard Turkey Iran

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • US sanctions against Iran are turning into a major humanitarian problem. causing major hardship for average Iranians and medicine shortages in hospitals. Each week the US imposes more sanctions on commerce, forcing Iranians to find new ways to keep vital goods flowing.
  • So late last week, hopeful to keep getting paid for natural gas exports to major trading partner Turkey and facing banking sanctions that make any trade in any government currency all but impossible, Iran started trading in gold with Turkey. Since gold is a physical currency and not a paper money, the US can’t really do anything about it. At least that’s what Iran and Turkey think. The US State Department is pretty sure they can, however, and is threatening Turkey over possible “sanctionable transactions.”
  • Energy Minister Taner Yildiz, fresh off his unsuccessful attempted visit to Iraqi Kurdistan, shrugged off the threat insisting that the US can’t sanction trades of gold for natural gas and that Turkey is just going to keep doing it no matter how much the US complains. The trade is several billion dollars, making gold an ideal means of exchange. Average Iranians dealing in smaller transactions don’t have this luxury, but they’re not giving up either, moving toward virtual currency Bitcoin. Since transaction in Bitcoin aren’t even hypothetically trackable, this makes them entirely unsanctionable. This is only an option for smaller deals, however, as the sum of all Bitcoins is far short of what would be needed for major international commerce.
Paul Merrell

Digital currencies could 'challenge sovereignty' - RTÉ News - 0 views

www.rte.ie/...628314-bitcoin

banksters bitcoin digital-currencies Ireland

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • A senior Central Bank official has warned that virtual and digital currencies have the potential to challenge the sovereignty of states. Gareth Murphy was this afternoon addressing Bitfin 2014, a conference on digital money in Dublin. Mr Murphy said rivals to national legal tender pose challenges to central banks' ability to influence the price of credit for the whole economy. He also warned that there would be a substantial threat to the country's finances if more and more transactions for goods and services disappear from the tax net through the use of digital currencies. Mr Murphy cautioned that a loss of consumer confidence in currencies can cause uncertainty, which in turn can lead to a drop in economic activity. The Central Bank has consistently said that it does not recognise and therefore does not regulate digital currencies such as Bitcoin in this country.
  • Mr Murphy, who is Director of Markets Supervision at the Central Bank, said it was well-documented that virtual currencies could provide an alternative channel for people to purchase goods and services using the proceeds for crime. In such scenarios, he added, the application of current anti-money laundering regulations will be tested. Mr Murphy warned that any failure of the payments and settlement infrastructure or "financial plumbing" in Ireland, would have a severe impact on consumer confidence and economic activity in the country. He also cautioned that virtual currencies pose a new challenge to central banks' control over the important functions of monetary and exchange rate policy. Their more widespread use would also make it more difficult for statistical agencies to gather data on economic activity, which are used by governments to steer the economy.
Gary Edwards

Reinventing Banking: From Russia to Iceland to Ecuador - 1 views

www.counterpunch.org/...m-russia-to-iceland-to-ecuador

Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Global developments in finance and geopolitics are prompting a rethinking of the structure of banking and of the nature of money itself. Among other interesting news items: * In Russia, vulnerability to Western sanctions has led to proposals for a banking system that is not only independent of the West but is based on different design principles. * In Iceland, the booms and busts culminating in the banking crisis of 2008-09 have prompted lawmakers to consider a plan to remove the power to create money from private banks. * In Ireland, Iceland and the UK, a recession-induced shortage of local credit has prompted proposals for a system of public interest banks on the model of the Sparkassen of Germany. * In Ecuador, the central bank is responding to a shortage of US dollars (the official Ecuadorian currency) by issuing digital dollars through accounts to which everyone has access, effectively making it a bank of the people.
  • A major concern with stripping private banks of the power to create money as deposits when they make loans is that it will seriously reduce the availability of credit in an already sluggish economy. One solution is to make the banks, or some of them, public institutions. They would still be creating money when they made loans, but it would be as agents of the government; and the profits would be available for public use, on the model of the US Bank of North Dakota and the German Sparkassen (public savings banks). In Ireland, three political parties – Sinn Fein, the Green Party and Renua Ireland (a new party) — are now supporting initiatives for a network of local publicly-owned banks on the Sparkassen model. In the UK, the New Economy Foundation (NEF) is proposing that the failed Royal Bank of Scotland be transformed into a network of public interest banks on that model. And in Iceland, public banking is part of the platform of a new political party called the Dawn Party.
  • Particularly interesting is a proposal to provide targeted lending for businesses and industries by providing them with low-interest loans at 1-4 percent, financed through the central bank with quantitative easing (digital money creation). The proposal is to issue 20 trillion rubles for this purpose over a five year period. Using quantitative easing for economic development mirrors the proposal of UK Labour Leader Jeremy Corbin for “quantitative easing for people.”
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  • William Engdahl concludes that Russia is in “a fascinating process of rethinking every aspect of her national economic survival because of the reality of the western attacks,” one that “could produce a very healthy transformation away from the deadly defects” of the current banking model.
  • Iceland’s Radical Money Plan Iceland, too, is looking at a radical transformation of its money system, after suffering the crushing boom/bust cycle of the private banking model that bankrupted its largest banks in 2008. According to a March 2015 article in the UK Telegraph: Iceland’s government is considering a revolutionary monetary proposal – removing the power of commercial banks to create money and handing it to the central bank. The proposal, which would be a turnaround in the history of modern finance, was part of a report written by a lawmaker from the ruling centrist Progress Party, Frosti Sigurjonsson, entitled “A better monetary system for Iceland”.
  • Under this “Sovereign Money” proposal, the country’s central bank would become the only creator of money. Banks would continue to manage accounts and payments and would serve as intermediaries between savers and lenders. The proposal is a variant of the Chicago Plan promoted by Kumhof and Benes of the IMF and the Positive Money group in the UK.
  • Ever since 2000, when Ecuador agreed to use the US dollar as its official legal tender, it has had to ship boatloads of paper dollars into the country just to conduct trade. In order to “seek efficiency in payment systems [and] to promote and contribute to the economic stability of the country,” the government of President Rafael Correa has therefore established the world’s first national digitally-issued currency.
  • Unlike Bitcoin and similar private crypto-currencies (which have been outlawed in the country), Ecuador’s dinero electronico is operated and backed by the government. The Ecuadorian digital currency is less like Bitcoin than like M-Pesa, a private mobile phone-based money transfer service started by Vodafone, which has generated a “mobile money” revolution in Kenya.
  • According to a National Assembly statement: Electronic money will stimulate the economy; it will be possible to attract more Ecuadorian citizens, especially those who do not have checking or savings accounts and credit cards alone. The electronic currency will be backed by the assets of the Central Bank of Ecuador.
  • That means there is no fear of the bank going bankrupt or of bank runs or bail-ins. Nor can the digital currency be devalued by speculative short selling. The government has declared that these are digital US dollars trading at 1 to 1 – take it or leave it – and the people are taking it. According to an October 2015 article titled “
  • Banking Moves into the 21st Century The catastrophic failures of the Western banking system mandate a new vision. These transformations, current and proposed, are constructive steps toward streamlining the banking system, eliminating the risks that have devastated individuals and governments, democratizing money, and promoting sustainable and prosperous economies.
  • Gary Edwards on 16 Dec 15
     
    Excellent article on banking, lending, and currency reform initiatives.  Thanks to Marbux!
Paul Merrell

Hayek: Cryptocurrency backed by gold - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/currency-backed-by-gold-2015-5

cryptocurrencies gold Hayek

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 May 15 - No Cached
  • There's a new cryptocurrency coming to the market.  What makes it unique to existing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin? It's backed by gold. Anthem Vault, the metals and technology company, will launch the coin on May 25.  The coin will "be valued at 1 gram of gold at the day's market price, [and] will serve as a more secure store of value than Bitcoin," according to the press release. It will be called the Hayek, "after the Nobel-winning Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek."  Anthem Blanchard, the CEO of Anthem Vault, told Business Insider that "gold is arguably the most trusted store of value of all time," which is why he chose it to back his new cryptocurrency.
Paul Merrell

IMF Head Foresees End Of Banking, Triumph Of Cryptocurrency - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...232700

banksters cryptocurrency Bitcoin IMF Legarde

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • In a remarkably frank talk at a Bank of England conference, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund has speculated that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency have as much of a future as the Internet itself. It could displace central banks, conventional banking, and challenge the monopoly of national monies. Christine Lagarde–a Paris native who has held her position at the IMF since 2011–says the only substantial problems with existing cryptocurrency are fixable over time. In the long run, the technology itself can replace national monies, conventional financial intermediation, and even “puts a question mark on the fractional banking model we know today.”
Gary Edwards

The Money Wars - Casey Research - 0 views

www.caseyresearch.com/...money-wars

money GOLD BitCoin

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Apr 13
     
    Breezy but very enlightening libertarian discussion about money, how it came to be and where it's going.  Excellent writing and research from the Casey Group - as usual. excerpt: The study of money is an ancient affair. Aristotle discusses it extensively, and the Books of Wisdom are filled with proverbial counsel on the matter. People spend time and effort accumulating money in hopes of establishing conditions for a better future. Because humans can paradoxically harbor laziness and ambition in their heart at the same time, they have reached two irrefutable and rather obvious conclusions about money: they would rather have more than less, and they would rather have it sooner than later. Because of these observations, humans go about three tasks: obtaining money, protecting money, and growing money. Before seeking to achieve those three objectives, it is important to define money. It is impossible to consistently do all three tasks if one does not understand the nature of money. An academic definition that sounds reasonable is that money is an agreed-upon medium of exchange that overcomes the limitations of barter and coincidence of wants. For money to be useful, it must be widely recognized and accepted by various market participants. Wide acceptance is among the most considered and sought characteristics of money, a trait known as liquidity. Until recently, money was either established by market discovery or by decree. The Laws of the Network have introduced a third mechanism, money established by network consensus. Honest Weights and Measures Gold has served as money since the beginning of recorded human history. Desired for its beauty and scarcity, gold is easy to divide and difficult to counterfeit. While many other commodities including tobacco, salt, pepper, and even sea shells have been used for settling accounts, natural discovery and social interaction have repeatedly established gold as a medium of choice, leading to the phrases "good as gold" and "the
Paul Merrell

CNN apologizes for commentator who called WikiLeaks founder a 'pedophile' | McClatchy DC - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...article124566504.html

WIkileaks Assange libel Dark-State harrassment

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • In fact, the pedophile allegation has little to do with Assange’s plight that has kept him in the embassy in London, which involves incidents in Stockholm in the summer of 2010.
  • Rather, it is a bizarre tale involving a Houston-based dating website and its global and well-funded efforts to discredit Assange around the globe. The byzantine saga involves disconnected telephones and mystery websites. The website, toddandclare.com, launched and ramped up its efforts against Assange during the U.S. presidential campaign, as WikiLeaks released hacked emails related to the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.Whoever is behind the dating site has marshaled significant resources to target Assange, enough to gain entry into a United Nations body, operate in countries in Europe, North America and the Caribbean, conduct surveillance on Assange’s lawyer in London, obtain the fax number of Canada’s prime minister and seek to prod a police inquiry in the Bahamas.The dating site’s campaign sought to thwart WikiLeaks’ efforts and discredit Assange, who played a role in a presidential campaign season that deeply divided the U.S. electorate and illuminated Russia as a major cyber adversary of the U.S. government.One part of toddandclare’s two-pronged campaign put a megaphone to unproven charges that Assange made contact with a young Canadian girl in the Bahamas through the internet with the intention of molesting her. The second part sought to entangle him in a plan to receive $1 million from the Russian government.
  • WikiLeaks claims the dating site is “a highly suspicious and likely fabricated” company. In turn, the company has lashed out at Assange and “his despicable activities against American national security,” and warned journalists to “check with your libel lawyers first before printing anything that could impact or endanger innocent people’s lives.”For nearly two months after the October allegations, toddandclare.com went off line. But it recently reappeared, repeating charges about the 8-year-old Canadian girl. The website did not immediately respond Thursday to a new query from McClatchy, and no respondent in the past has given a name or allowed telephone contact.The online company paints itself as all-American. Online material says its founders, Todd and Clare Hammond, “are an average American couple from Michigan, who met in the eighth grade.” In 2011, the company says, the Christian couple started an email dating service, and “have married 3,000 couples to date.” Their online network began in 2015, and a statement it filed to a U.N. body says it has “100,000+ female singles” in six countries. The company’s operating address is a warehouse loading dock in Houston. Its mail goes to a Houston drop box. Its phone numbers no longer work. WikiLeaks says Texas officials tell it the entity is not registered there either under toddandclare.com or a parent company, T&C Network Solutions.A person who answered emails to the website in November declined to identify him or herself.
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  • The people behind toddandclare.com persuaded a U.N. body known as the Global Compact to give it status as a participant in May, and it submitted an eight-page report to the U.N. group Oct. 4 carefully laying out its allegations against Assange. The firm was delisted by the U.N. body eight days later amid controversy over its claims. The report was later taken off the internet. An Australian lawyer, Melinda Taylor, said the report’s precise language raised additional suspicions at WikiLeaks, where she assists Assange in human rights litigation.“This is not a report that’s been drafted by a dating agency. It’s highly legalistic and very structured. It’s the language of someone who has drafted complex legal submissions,” she said.Under Todd Hammond’s name, the report alleged that Assange’s Swedish lawyer had reached out in June to offer Assange’s services on a campaign against rape in exchange for an undisclosed amount of bitcoin. It said the two sides held two videoconferences.Then came the bombshell: It said the company had ended ties with Assange following “pedophile crimes” he had committed in the Bahamas in late September. It charged that the victim was the 8-year-old daughter of a Canadian couple on a monthlong yachting vacation. The father went to police in Nassau on Sept. 28, the report claimed, charging that his family held video and chat logs showing Assange “internet grooming” the child and “propositioning the 8-year-old juvenile ‘to perform oral and anal sex acts.’ ”It said Assange made a connection to the child’s 22-year-old sister, who was a client of the online dating site, from his refuge in London, eventually gaining access to the young girl.
  • An assistant commissioner for the Royal Bahamas Police Force, Stephen Dean, said “there is no investigation” into any such incident and that the police have received no evidence that such an incident occurred.“We got a phone call of someone giving us some information. But we never had a face-to-face. It could have been a hoax,” Dean said. “We don’t know.”If someone were in possession of video or chat logs about a pedophile crime, he or she did not provide them to Bahamian police, Dean said, which he said would be odd: “If you have something so significant, I think you’d want to leave a report.”Assange’s Swedish lawyer, Per Samuelson, wrote to the U.N. body on Oct. 10 alleging that Hammond’s report against Assange was “entirely false” in all its facets and that he had had no contact with the dating site or Hammond.Even as authorities in the Bahamas dismissed the report, the dating site sent a fax Oct. 17 to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying the Canadian family had fled the Bahamas due to “anti-white, racist abuse by Bahamian police.”“Julian Assange ... has started a smear campaign to claim our dating company is behind an elaborate scam. It is fully to be expected. Pedophiles are devious and cunning,” the fax said.The company said it would “continue to protect the family’s identity, until either the (Royal Bahamas Police Force) conduct a proper investigation, or hell freezes over. Whichever comes first.”
  • The fax was signed, “The Todd and Clare Team,” and left no way to contact the firm.While the founders of toddandclare.com say they’ve been in the matchmaking business since 2011, their internet presence dates only to September 2015 and really got going only early last year. Those who have done work for the company say they were kept at arm’s length.By summer, in the run-up to what many expected to be an “October surprise” from WikiLeaks to make an impact on the U.S. election, toddandclare.com began moving against Assange in multiple countries simultaneously. The DNC and a cyber-threat intelligence firm it had hired, CrowdStrike, were already fingering Russia as behind the hacks that would provide the fodder for WikiLeaks. They’d said in June that Russian hackers had access to DNC servers for about a year.A company representative, identifying herself as Hannah Hammond, emailed Assange’s Swedish and British legal agents offering $1 million for him to appear in a five-minute tongue-in-cheek television advertisement. In a subsequent exchange Sept. 19, the representative wrote that “the source of the $1,000,000 is the Russian government.”In a curious twist, she offered what she said were three facts about Assange’s London attorney that are “unknown to the public,” including details inside her home and an event in her son’s life, suggesting a capability to conduct surveillance.Taylor, the Assange lawyer, said the details appeared “to create the impression that the members of his team were under close surveillance and/or to bolster the bona fides of the claim that the offer was linked to a State. Its inclusion does appear quite menacing.”
  • A lawyer identifying himself only as “James” responded the next day, slamming the offer as an “elaborate scam designed to entrap” Assange and embarrass him for ties to Russia.The dating site representative sought to pull the veil off “James.”“Julian: We know it’s you writing. The offer expires at midnight, October 31st 2016,” she wrote back on Sept. 21, according to copies of the emails posted by WikiLeaks on its website.By early October, toddandclare.com went on the offensive. It filed a civil complaint in a British court against Assange, seeking 295 pounds sterling – about $359 – in damages because it said it could no longer use his services due to the “child sex offenses in Nassau.”The suit, said Taylor, Assange’s lawyer, “seems to be designed to evade defamation law in the U.K. They’ve put highly noxious information knowing that it would be made public.”The global tussle between the online dating company and WikiLeaks went public in mid-October when the anti-secrecy group voiced public doubt on whether toddandclare.com actually existed, or served only as a vehicle to attack Assange.
  • The announcement opened the gates for a disparate crew of internet sleuths – some motivated by hatred of Clinton and others impelled by support for WikiLeaks – to probe into the history of toddandclare.com, suspicious that the dating site might be an undercover operation with links to the Clinton campaign.Posting their findings on the discussion websites like Reddit.com, they unearthed some curious coincidences. A perusal into the archives of the internet revealed that the Hammonds had once occupied a San Francisco building later rented to a company, Premise Data, whose co-founder has ties to Clinton and her top supporters.Moreover, a telephone number once registered to a Todd Hammond later was registered to a former Premise employee, Aaron Dunn, although with a different area code.Premise co-founder David Soloff said such findings could only be coincidences.“I want to reiterate that Premise has no connection with this case. And beyond confirming that Aaron Dunn worked at Premise until 2014, I don’t know the answer to any of your questions,” Soloff wrote in an email.
Paul Merrell

Venezuela Bucks Petrodollar, Announces Cryptocurrency Backed by Oil - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...235131

war & peace economic-warfare Venezuela cryptocurrency reserve currrencies

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Dec 17 - No Cached
  • Months after Russia became the first country to announce the creation of a state-backed Cryptorouble, Venezuela has followed suit, announcing the creation of El Petro, a state-sanctioned cryptocurrency to be backed by Venezuela’s extensive reserves of crude oil. Venezuela has already broken free of Dollar dependence months ago when Caracas announced it would be trading its oil using China’s Petroyuan. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro also stated that he would like to begin trade with Russia in the Rouble. With Venezuela heavily sanctioned by the United States, El Petro looks to be another tool which Venezuela can use to continue and conduct international commerce without relying on Dollar based financial institution.
  • Crucially, while existing Cryptocurrencies tend to create their initial value through an arithmetic process called “mining”, leaving them heavily subject to market fluctuation, El Petro will be backed by a known commodity, oil, thus giving it a clear advantage for risk-averse investors. While the world’s most popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin, has seen its value skyrocket against the Dollar, some remain unconvinced of its long-term prospects for stability. A currency, backed by oil would, by contrast, ostensibly fluctuate in accordance with the well established global price of Brent Crude.
  • An official oil-backed cryptocurrency could work in tandem with Russia’s soon to be launched Cryptorouble, a digital currency which will ostensibly be backed by the vast resources of the Russian state. With western governments ambivalent about how to treat existing cryptocurrencies, Russia and Venezuela have taken the lead to both normalize cryptos while backing them by well-known assets.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Dec 17
     
    The petrodollar takes another hit.
Paul Merrell

CryptoRouble: Russia Announces First State-Backed Cryptocurrency - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...233323

war & peace economic-warfare cryptocurrencies Russia

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin has made history today, when he endorsed the creation of a soon to be unveiled CryptoRouble, the world’s first cryptocurrency endorsed by a state. Russian monetary experts and political leaders have recently begun engaging in a debate which pitted monetary conservatives against monetary radicals. Most Russian officials agreed that allowing the use of western designed (though not western state endorsed) cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, was not compatible with Russian financial security concerns. China, for example, reached a similar conclusion about existing cryptocurrencies. In Russia, the debate then quickly evolved into to a question over what role if any, a government and central bank should have in respect of cryptocurrencies. Conservatives argued that the entire process of blockchain cryptocurrency technology should not be accepted as a legal alternative to traditional state issued notes, while radicals argued for the creation and regulation of a uniquely Russian cryptocurremcy. The radials have clearly won and appear to have been embraced by President Putin.
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