Did You Know You're Part of a Financial War?
As a participant in the cryptocurrency revolution, you are a financial warrior. You may not realize it. You may even end up as a casualty, bruised and beaten, licking your wounds as you exit stage left (metaphorically speaking, that is). But please, make no mistake, you are right in the middle of the fight. Cryptocurrency projects like STEEM and BitShares are weapons of financial warfare and by simply reading, sharing, and voting on posts like this, you are using them.
Some of us are veterans already. We've spent days on bitcointalk in 2013 discussing what the future war would look like and how it would be fought. We've mentally prepared for what we're seeing now.
I've read books like Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis and The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System, both written by James Rickards who says "Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can also be money" while also calling it the second biggest bubble in history and a utility token for criminals. He's been talking about the manipulations like painting the tape for a while.
I think, in part, he's right. I also think he is deeply wrong.
The latest piece along these lines I've read comes from Super Crypto on Medium, first published on February 1st and updated ever since:
4th Dimension: Bitcoin-Manipulation-Cartel — Price-Suppression is their Goal
Why do they do this?
It’s all about Dollar Hegemony and money control. Bankers and governments have recognized that Bitcoin and Crypto in general is a threat to their existence. What do powers do when they see anything as a threat or enemy? You got it, they try to destroy the enemy (by all means).
I think Super Crypto makes a lot of great points in their post about the very real reality of market cartel action that extends beyond "normal" market manipulation. I think we need to act like adults and face this reality.
I also think the $1,000 bitcoin price call at the end of the article is a bit ridiculous (see Edit below). FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) is something we all have to be careful of as those who are not controlled by fear (because they literally print money out of nothing) are able to control those who respond to fear in predictable ways. Those who are uncertain and doubtful are lacking in information and experiential knowledge.
That said, they are also not wrong about the war we are in and the cartel-like market action we are seeing.
Do you have an hour and 45 minutes to invest in understanding how the global financial system works? Do yourself a favor and watch this lecture from G. Edward Griffin:
Until people understand what's going on and take up the power for themselves, we will always be enslaved by those who control our perceptions of value.
Nation state governments, multi-national corporations, and cartel central banks will work hard to fight these new weapons of financial war, even as they work to build their own.
10 months ago I posted The Big Question: Should You Sell or Hold During a Market Correction. In my opinion, the advice there still applies today, even with cartel actors in the markets.
But... They Just Keep Slapping Down the Price!
That's true.
What are we going to do about it? As Super Crypto mentioned, we buy the deep dips. Not only that, we start to use some of their tools against them by shorting the USD using BitShares and bitUSD. I've blogged about this many times before:
- Playing in the Margins: bitUSD and BitShares on Open Ledger
- A Simple Example of Shorting the U.S. Dollar With BitShares
- 9 Day bitUSD Loan Result: 19,821 BitShares and 199 ZAPPL for Free
- Are you Shorting Fiat Currency yet?
(If you don't have a BitShares account yet, use my referral link.)
During the rallies, we can decrease the purchasing power of their fiat money by betting against it.
We can also continue increasing our holdings by promoting STEEM and the tools it powers like Steemit and DTube. Remember, STEEM is more valuable that Steemit, but the tools we build on STEEM are also really important for this war because the main tools are propaganda via controlled media outlets. They work to control what you and I consider "viral" and use it to spread their messages of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Instead of just sharing their thoughts, we can add our own (which is why I'm writing this post). Imagine if every SCUD missile launch (FUD piece) had 10 Patriot SAMs to take them down (rebuttal pieces written on Steemit and videos published on DTube)? This struggle is very real and the analogy to war is unfortunately too close for comfort. Many people have died over who gets to control the value of money.
This is why videos like this on the nature of financial value itself are so important:
Until we understand what money and value is, we will always be controlled by those who do.
Get educated. Get more involved. Steemit is the killer app for cryptocurrency mass-adoption, and if you're reading this, you're already a part of it. Spread the word. Help your friends and family get educated. Share my videos from http://understandingblockchainfreedom.com/ or any others you find useful.
We are in a battle for freedom.
For the first time, we have the tools to win.
All we have to conquer is our fear.
(Source)
To understand the present and the future, we have to experience the past. This series I'm doing on bitcoin tweets from 2013 can help. Check it out.
Edit: I just noticed this Tweet from the author of the cartel post I referenced:
The post has been edited and references my Tweet:
This demonstrates the point of my post rather well. We have the power to control the narratives around us. When we see something that looks suspiciously like FUD, call it out respectfully. Together, our voices matter. STEEM on.
Thanks for this interesting post.
And if we talking war.... What do you think about flag-war? What if banksters buy a STEEM-whale to flag-out any popular texts like this? They have more than enough (free, fake) money to buy as much steem as they whant to do this. And then we will have a censorship!
I believe we must get reed of the ability to flag. Yes you may say "it's a weapon to protect us", but who will protect us when the weapon will be used by aggressively? If you cannot attack anyone, it will be peace (no choice). If you can - will be war (always!). There is a proverb in Russia: "Worst peace is better than a best war".
It will not be true censorship. People can build their own front-end to the STEEM blockchain and view the content that is there, regardless of flags. Also, SMTs will allow for Oracles who will determine who can and can not participate in the rewards pool for that token.
If they buy up a lot of STEEM, the value of all existing Steem Power holders accounts goes up. Bring it on. :)
I agree, worst peace is better than best war, but I also disagree that all downvotes are part of a "flag war". From a technical perspective, a downvote is the same thing is giving a slight upvote to every other post on the platform. Abuse happens often and flags/downvotes are needed to increase the real value created by real authors.
The SCUD missile analogy was spot on.
Just look at what happened to Saddam and Gaddafi, who wanted to have their own gold-backed currency. Anyone who has dared to try to get away from the USD has been put down, without exception. We'll see if the Chinese succeed with their Petro-Yuan experiment.
Yep. It's not a coincidence other financial war tools which cause trade wars are now being deployed as part of this global financial situation.
Awesome post. I expected nothing less though when I saw you were the author.
A couple of things crossed my mind as I was reading this.
Your idea in the screenshot that prices will skyrocket when more people are using cryptos directly to make purchases rather than converting to fiat.
This is true. Yet, we need more opportunity to be able to do that. With bitcoin a barrier that has made this unattractive has been the fees required to even use it. They have been working on this, so hopefully is not an issue. With steem and others this is a non-issue.
I immediately thought of the rumblings that there is a chance that Amazon may soon start accepting payment in crypto. If that occurs then what you suggest is something that could occur for most products, unless people don't want to support Amazon. They could buy most purchases there if that happens and crypto should skyrocket.
Now all of that requires that Amazon or many other places start accepting crypto.
DTube is also something people to realize. It is a great application, but it is not viable for long term storage of videos as many people are now realizing as their videos from awhile back are no longer playable. This is okay, D.Tube is still great. People simply need to get into the habit of not putting their eggs all in one basket. When embedding a video into a post, why not do multiple copies of that video each hosted at other video services. There are many to choose from an it is unclear which will dominate in the long run. Gab.ai supports video now, bitchute works, vimeo is corporate but hasn't begun censoring yet, and there are products with big backers like real.video in the works. It is unclear which will dominate. We should use D.Tube, but if you are concerned about long term storage you should store it in additional video platforms as well. Though even those have potential flaws that haven't been worked through YET. So until things stabilize and something clearly exists with most problems resolved use multiple sites for you videos and you'll do much better.
Anyway, great post Luke. Keep up the good work.
EDIT: We are all part of an information war as well.
Thanks so much, @dwinblood. I spent a lot time with my business trying to get merchants to accept and use bitcoin. It was a struggle. Amazon could open up the option and have nothing happen. Overstock has had the option for a long time and even now, if I want to buy something on Amazon with bitcoin, that can be done today with services like purse.io and gyft.com.
The key is the consumer. We as individuals have to demand the merchants we interact with accept cryptocurrency. We as employees need to demand we get paid in cryptocurrency. We as vendors need to demand our contracts be done in cryptocurrency. When the circle is closed to the point where we value things in terms of cryptocurrency (not their USD equivalent), that's when things will really change. From the perspective, the price of BTC going up or down relative to USD won't matter.
Economics and finance are proxies for human psychology which is all about information, so you're exactly right.
We do need to think in terms of cryptocurrency rather than their fiat equivalents. We do need to move this forward by sheer force of will.
While word of mouth educating and enlisting is something we can all do, I'm wondering if there's any kind of coordinated effort in the works, for STEEM in particular, or for cryptocurrencies in general, to do outreach? One voice or message we can unite behind, if we so choose?
I've read of some possible marketing campaign in the works, but I haven't seen an official update regarding such a thing, or even an unofficial one.
Many see that as premature at this point. STEEM is not yet ready to handle millions and millions of new users and their content. As far as I know, Steemit, inc is working on core level scaling improvements such as appbase and hf20 which should hopefully get us closer to a point where the flood gates could be opened to handle real serious growth.
Totally understand the premature part. I was thinking in terms of after that, but yeah, no need to start a full on marketing campaign before you have the means to bring on the masses.
And just today I read this: "As cryptocurrencies increasingly capture the imagination of people, corporations, and states – a process which is already occurring on a truly global scale – the perception that the US has unbreakable financial power will wane. This could help open the floodgates towards the adoption of a cryptocurrency as the global reserve currency." (Smith & Dumieński at CryptoNews) It's from a piece titled 'Rise of Cryptocurrencies Could Curb American Power' -- I think the tipping point for crypto finally happened in November of 2017 and I have a lot of confidence in what will happen moving forward.
It could be the tipping point as well as the moment it got on the radar clear enough for the power players to treat it seriously enough to go after.
Yes, but LedgerX had already gotten into crypto futures last summer, well before CBOE, and LedgerX is made up entirely of former GoldmanSachs employees and members of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. November seemed like the tipping point for me because that's when my mother entered the crypto world; she's a good indicator of the non-early-adopting mainstream. lol
Hahah! I can't argue with the mom evidence. That's powerful stuff!
Interesting about LedgerX. I had forgotten about them.
There may be a slight shift away from the US dollar as crypto-currencies shift, but the overall power of the United States is not likely to change. Even if everyone adopts crypto -tomorrow, the USA will still have enormous power military and economic influence in the world. This power is from exporting things people want. Iron, Salt, Food, Gold, Tea, and Oil have all been commodities of international power. While I can site 20 trillion reasons why I think the US government has been irresponsible, most foreign governments have been more irresponsible.
Hi @lukestone
The information you give is what I have been waiting to see. Thanks for taking the time to write such comprehensive breakdown of the situation!
We, rooting for Bitcoin and the like, should start calling it what it is. It is the War of the Currencies! People should wake up to what money really is and your post highlights most of the important points! I will definitely be taking the time to watch the videos you mention!
Start a hashtag and get the movement rolling #warofthecurrencies
A world without rules or controls, borders or boundaries. A world without them
I am not selling anything. They keep slapping the price down and it isn't looking good for months now but this is temporary I know. In a year or so, it will hardly matter. The only regret would be not buying in dips.
If would be a wise thing to do invest two hours in trying to understand the global finacial mechanism. Thanks for the video.
I'd better be a part of a revolution and go through some toil than being a spectator and seeing it explode. Blockchain is the future. It is too strong to be subdued by authorities. It gives freedom and prosperity; two key features of a peaceful world.
I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules or controls, borders or boundaries.
YES.
Just calling it decentralized means it’s something most of goverments don’t agree with. I really don't think it's an exaggeration that blockchain technology will at the end change the world. It is a fundamentally new way for creating decentralized systems. To me, it is a game changer. The currency speculation stuff is a sideshow. However, if there wasn't this bitcoin bubble, nobody would know about blockchain, and the topic would be completely boring to 95% of people. But the technology itself, including social platforms such as Steemit, is going to change how almost every single digital service is structured. It's complicated, and technical, and kind of hard to explanain in one sentence. Everyone knows that government and financial institutions are completely against it, they are frightened by blockchain technology. At the and people will win this war and they will have to adapt.
I don’t know about governments, in the end they could be the biggest users of the blockchain and it would safe them so much money! They just don’t see the added value yet!
The Iron Law of Bureaucracy shows that the administrators of government agencies are dependent on the opposite of government savings. Their power grows the larger the budget they administer grows, and any savings their agency manages decreases their personal power.
Government is run by people, and those people prefer to grow their power rather than decrease it.
Edit: WE need to use blockchain to first rein in government, and then replace it altogether. WE benefit from savings in the services we fund.
Blockchains and the valuable tokens that secure them go hand in hand. IMO, you can't have one without the other. I agree, it will change everything. As I said in 2013, Bitcoin will be more disruptive than the Internet.
Only six days into 2018 and banks, investment firms, even state regulators have declared war on cryptocurrency. Their campaign is simple, regulate, enslave, and destroy the freedom that some cryptocurrency promise
News from the front lines are as follows Visa has ended its business with WaveCrest putting an end to crypto debit cards from Bitwala, Cryptopay, Wire, and TenX. This move was designed to cast fear, to show dominance. They want all, to know that you are still enslaved and they are just one of your financial masters you must adhere to. Merrill Lynch has banned all their clients and advisors from cryptocurrency investments. They must think their clients are like children and daddy knows whats best for them. Then again 2008 happened and daddy didn’t know shit.
I see FUD has reached a lot of people these days, and it is encouraging to see people like you helping others fight with it. I don't know for sure which side will win the war, but I will bet some money on crypto, while trying to support as much as I can this side. In the end, even of I lose my money, but crypto wins the war, this will still lead to a great progress of our society. Let's see how things turn out :)
That's why it's worth fighting for!