Bitcoin, an alternative to PayPal?

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Stop PayPal, Use Bitcoin (facebook page)

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-PayPal-Use-Bitcoin/128290980563530? sk=wall

What is Bitcoin?



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Don't Buy Bitcoins


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Bitcoin Quick Tutorial and Overview


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[TonyGosling]

Bormann Network company Siemens behind Bitcoin?

Bitcoinburg–Who Developed this “Virtual Currency?”
POSTED BY DAVE EMORY ⋅ OCTOBER 10, 2013
http://spitfirelist.com/news/bitcoinburg-who-developed-this-virtual-cu rrency/

COMMENT: In 1985, Ronald Rea­gan incurred the wrath of many when he agreed to visit the Bit­burg ceme­tery in Ger­many, where Waf­fen SS sol­diers are interred.

In this post, we exam­ine the ori­gins of the bit­coin vir­tual cur­rency, which evolved into the online cur­rency of choice for the cus­tomers of the Silk Road net­work.

Alone among sov­er­eign nations, Ger­many has rec­og­nized bit­coin as legal ten­der, fol­low­ing on the the­ory of Friedrich von Hayek of the Autrian school of eco­nomic the­ory, dis­sem­i­nated from (among other insti­tu­tions) the Lud­wig von Mises Insti­tute.

Credit for cre­at­ing this vir­tual cur­rency is gen­er­ally given to one Satoshi Nako­moto. An arti­cle at Fast­com­pany hypoth­e­sizes that three indi­vid­u­als named Neal J. King, Charles Bry and Vladimir Oks­man are the true orig­i­na­tors of bit­coin. (Lis­ten­ers are emphat­i­cally encour­aged to read the entire linked arti­cle to flesh out their under­stand­ing of Adam Penenberg’s argument.)

Of more than pass­ing inter­est under the cir­cum­stances is the fact that all three of the hypo­thet­i­cal cre­ators of bit­coin work for a com­pany called Lan­tiq.

Lan­tiq is a German-based firm that has evolved from Siemens. Siemens spun-off Infi­neon A.G. (a semi­con­duc­tor firm). Then Infi­neon and Golden Gate Cap­i­tal cre­ated Lan­tiq.

Golden Gate Capi­tol was formed by alumni of Bain Cap­i­tal, Mitt Romney’s firm.

In addi­tion to links to the death squad-manifesting El Sal­vado­ran junta of the 1980’s, Bain has links to the milieu of the late bil­lion­aire, Howard Hughes, as well as the milieu of Bebe Rebozo’s bank­ing oper­a­tions. The lat­ter appears to have had links to the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.

If we were going to express this in bib­li­cal phrase­ol­ogy, it would go some­thing like this: “And so Siemens begat Infi­neon. And Bain Cap­i­tal begat Golden Gate Cap­i­tal. Infi­neon did lie with Golden Gate Cap­i­tal. And thus did Infi­neon beget Lantiq.”

Some of the pur­poses of the devel­op­ment of bit­coin, as well as the way in which it has been manip­u­lated, will be dis­cussed in a future post.

Among the points to be con­sid­ered here are:

Siemens func­tions as some­thing of a quar­ter­mas­ter for Ger­man intelligence-the BND, the suc­ces­sor to the Rein­hard Gehlen spy out­fit. It is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with BND, as well as with the Bor­mann network.
With Lan­tiq hav­ing evolved directly from Siemens, Lantiq’s pos­si­ble con­nec­tions with BND should be care­fully weighed.
Lantiq’s links with Golden Gate Cap­i­tal, run by alumni from Mitt Romney’s Bain Cap­i­tal, war­rants con­sid­er­a­tion that both Lan­tiq and GGC may be Under­ground Reich, Bor­mann entities.
We have noted that Infi­neon A.G. is a lead­ing pro­ducer of TPM chips, which were cited by the Ger­man press as a back­door source for NSA snoop­ing. We won­dered if that TPM back­door might actu­ally be a BND backdoor?
Neal J. King has denied Penenberg’s mus­ings. He may, of course, be doing so hon­estly. IF, how­ever, bitcoin’s devel­op­ment was in con­junc­tion with BND, denial would be pro forma intel­li­gence methodology.
We will explore the bit­coin land­scape at greater length in a future post for greater per­spec­tive and understanding.
The Bit­coin Crypto-Currency Mys­tery Reopened” by Adam L. Penen­berg; fastcompany.com; 10/11/2011.

EXCERPT: . . . I looked at the date on the patent appli­ca­tion fil­ing: 08/15/2008.

Now take a look at the domain bitcoin.org. It was reg­is­tered three days later.

Domain Name:BITCOIN.ORG

Cre­ated On:18-Aug-2008
Now that is one hell of a coin­ci­dence. What are the odds that a phrase in Nakamoto’s Bit­coin paper would be repli­cated in a patent appli­ca­tion filed the same year? Fur­ther, what are the odds the domain name for Bit­coin would have been reg­is­tered 72 hours after the patent appli­ca­tion was filed?

Based on the tim­ing, I won­dered if one of the peo­ple on the patent application–or per­haps all three–had based the Bit­coin con­cept on research that led them to this patent appli­ca­tion. The three inven­tors listed on patent #20100042841 are Neal King, Vladimir Oks­man, Charles Bry, and all three have filed numer­ous patent appli­ca­tions over the years.

Neal King (he also goes by Neal J. King from Munich, Ger­many) is listed on a num­ber of patent appli­ca­tions, notably “UPDATING AND DISTRIBUTING ENCRYPTION KEYS” (#20100042841) and “CONTENTION ACCESS TO A COMMUNICATION MEDIUM IN A COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK” (#20090196306), both of which seem Bitcoin-y to me.

Charles Bry, who also resides in Munich, has filed sev­eral appli­ca­tions, many deal­ing with nodes and networks.

Vladamir Oks­man, who lives in the U.S., has sev­eral patent appli­ca­tions, too, and they too seem related to net­works, nodes.

I found another patent appli­ca­tion that lists the three of them as inven­tors, filed June 2008–two months before the Bitcoin.org domain was registered.

KEY MANAGEMENT FOR COMMUNICATION NETWORKS

“Abstract One embod­i­ment of the present inven­tion relates to a method for key man­age­ment in a com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work. In this method, a pub­lic key authen­ti­ca­tion scheme is car­ried out between a secu­rity con­troller and a plu­ral­ity of nodes to estab­lish a plu­ral­ity of node-to-security-controller (NSC) keys. The NSC keys are respec­tively asso­ci­ated with the plu­ral­ity of nodes and are used for secure com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the secu­rity con­troller and the respec­tive nodes.“
Could that also be related to Bitcoin?

Now, another coin­ci­dence: The Bitcoin.org domain was reg­is­tered by a Finnish provider, based in Helsinki.

Charles Bry trav­eled to Fin­land in late 2007, six months before the domain was reg­is­tered. In addi­tion, Bry, who is a senior sys­tem engi­neer, lists Ger­man, Eng­lish, French, and Ital­ian as lan­guages he speaks, and went to col­lege in Paris. He works for a com­pany called Lan­tiq.

Then there’s Neal J. King, and there are more odd­i­ties. A Neal J. King has a Face­book page that is sketchy with per­sonal infor­ma­tion, yet if you search for “Neal J. King” in Facebook’s search box, his pro­file doesn’t pop up. His wall is filled with posts about the recent Wall Street protests, bank­ing, and crit­i­cism of the Patriot Act. Keep scrolling down and he “likes” blau.de, a Ger­man mobile phone sim card site. He also claims high­brow taste in lit­er­a­ture and books, and it seems he’s an avid reader, hav­ing reviewed 46 books on Amazon–many deal with astron­omy, biol­ogy, cryp­tog­ra­phy, lin­guis­tics, lit­er­a­ture, math­e­mat­ics, phi­los­o­phy and physics. I read through his reviews, and his writ­ing is excel­lent. Very clean. No typos. His sen­tences are ele­gant yet there are no extra words. The writ­ing style reminds me of Satoshi Nakamoto’s posts in the Bit­coin Forum minus British spellings, which, as I noted above, I believe is a canard.

Finally, I looked up Vladamir Oksman’s LinkedIn pro­file (there are a cou­ple of guys with this name, but he was easy to find). . . .

. . . [Cor­rec­tion, May 22, 2013: The Vladamir Oks­man described above is the wrong one. The right one is listed on LinkedIn as hav­ing worked as a tech­ni­cal mar­ket­ing direc­tor for semi­con­duc­tor com­pany Lantiq. . . . .

“Neal J. King”; LinkedIn.com.

EXCERPT: . . . I rep­re­sented Lan­tiq in Home Net­work­ing Stan­dards. . . .

. . . .

Par­tic­i­pant
IEEE P1901
2009 – 2011 (2 years)

I rep­re­sented Infineon’s inter­ests regard­ing the broad­band Power Line Com­mu­ni­ca­tion stan­dards. I was active in clar­i­fy­ing the text.

Par­tic­i­pant
IEEE P1901.2
2010 – 2010 (less than a year)

I rep­re­sented Infineon’s inter­ests in a tech­ni­cal stan­dard for nar­row­band Power Line Communications.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Infi­neon
ITU-T
1997 – 2010 (13 years)

I rep­re­sented the inter­ests of Infi­neon in the cre­ation and revi­sion of tech­ni­cal stan­dards on xDSL and PCM (V.92) modems. I was the edi­tor of the V.44 stan­dard on Data Compression.

Sys­tems Engi­neer
Infi­neon Tech­nolo­gies
Pub­lic Com­pany; 10,001+ employ­ees; IFX; Hal­bleiter indus­try
March 1997 – Decem­ber 2008 (11 years 10 months)

- Analy­sis and roadmap plan­ning for secu­rity tech­niques & pro­to­cols for Wire­less LAN sys­tems; cal­cu­la­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tions capac­ity gained by adding a low-frequency band; assess­ment of exter­nal tech­nol­ogy pro­pos­als. One issued patent on emer­gency phone calls.

- Orga­nized Infineon’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in tech­ni­cal stan­dards for broad­band modems (xDSL modems): threat assess­ment, resource assign­ments, coor­di­na­tion and edi­to­r­ial con­trol. Com­mit­tees: ITU-T Q.4/SG15, NIPP-NAI, DSL Forum; Sec­re­tary of NIPP-NAI for sev­eral years.

- Devel­op­ment of web-based infor­ma­tion sys­tems and tools to make technical-standards infor­ma­tion avail­able corporation-wide.
– Worked to achieve key agree­ments in the technical-standards process favor­able to our posi­tion in the broad­band modem mar­ket by either com­pro­mis­ing with com­peti­tors and poten­tial cus­tomers, or out-maneuvering them. . . .

“Lan­tiq”; wikipedia.com.

EXCERPT:

Lan­tiq is an inter­na­tional fab­less semi­con­duc­tor busi­ness of approx­i­mately 1,000 people.

Lantiq’s cen­tral func­tions and the exec­u­tive man­age­ment team are located at Lilien­thal­str. 15 in Neu­biberg near Munich in Germany.

Lan­tiq makes semi­con­duc­tor solu­tions for Next Gen­er­a­tion Net­works and the Dig­i­tal Home and, via its Infi­neon her­itage, has an over 20-year record of tech­nol­ogy development. . . .

“Infi­neon Com­pletes the Sale of Wire­line Busi­ness; Lan­tiq Becomes a Stand Alone Busi­ness”; lantiq.com.

EXCERPT: . . . Neu­biberg, Ger­many– Novem­ber 6, 2009 – Infi­neon Tech­nolo­gies AG (FSE: IFX / OTCQX: IFNNY) and Lan­tiq today announced the clos­ing of the sale of Infineon’s Wire­line busi­ness to Lan­tiq, an affil­i­ate of the U.S. based investor Golden Gate Capital. . . .

“Golden Gate Cap­i­tal”; wikipedia.com.

EXCERPT: . . . Golden Gate Cap­i­tal Part­ners is an Amer­i­can pri­vate equity firm based in San Fran­cisco, Cal­i­for­nia. The firm makes invest­ments pri­mar­ily in mature tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies, as well as other select indus­tries, through lever­aged buy­out trans­ac­tions as well as sig­nif­i­cant minor­ity pur­chases and growth cap­i­tal investments.

The firm was founded in 2000, by for­mer invest­ment pro­fes­sion­als from pri­vate equity firm Bain Cap­i­tal, as well as busi­ness con­sul­tants from its affil­i­ate Bain & Com­pany. . . .

“Infi­neon Tech­nolo­gies”; wikipedia.com.

EXCERPT: Infi­neon Tech­nolo­gies AG is a Ger­man semi­con­duc­tor man­u­fac­turer founded on 1 April 1999, when the semi­con­duc­tor oper­a­tions of the par­ent com­pany Siemens AG were spun off to form a sep­a­rate legal entity. As of 30 Sep­tem­ber 2010, Infi­neon has 25,149 employ­ees world­wide. In fis­cal year 2010, the com­pany achieved sales of €3.295 billion. . . .

“Bit­coin Rec­og­nized by Ger­many as ‘Pri­vate Money’” by Matt Clinch; CNBC.com; 8/19/2013.

EXCERPT: Virtual cur­rency bit­coin has been rec­og­nized by the Ger­man Finance Min­istry as a “unit of account”, mean­ing it is can be used for tax and trad­ing pur­poses in the country.

Bit­coin is not clas­si­fied as e-money or a for­eign cur­rency, the Finance Min­istry said in a state­ment, but is rather a finan­cial instru­ment under Ger­man bank­ing rules. It is more akin to “pri­vate money” that can be used in “mul­ti­lat­eral clear­ing cir­cles”, the Min­istry said.

“We should have com­pe­ti­tion in the pro­duc­tion of money. I have long been a pro­po­nent of Friedrich August von Hayek scheme to dena­tion­al­ize money. Bit­coins are a first step in this direction,“said Frank Scha­ef­fler, a mem­ber of the Ger­man parliament’s Finance Com­mit­tee, who has pushed for legal clas­si­fi­ca­tion of bitcoins. . . .

[TonyGosling]

Will Digital Currency Replace the US Dollar?
Wall Street Strategy to Make Bitcoin the Global Currency?
By Matthias Chang
Global Research, December 10, 2013
http://www.globalresearch.ca/will-digital-currency-replace-the-us-doll ar-wall-street-strategy-to-make-bitcoin-the-global-currency/5361021
Future Fast Forward
http://www.futurefastforward.com/component/content/article/8957.html

Bitcoin – The Potential Monsanto of Digital Currency?
Its ultimate objective is to control, control of the “alternative currency” when the Petro-Dollar collapses. Bitcoin is “GMO Money”!
In my last article posted on 22nd November, 2013 to the website, www.futurefastforward.com entitled ?Bitcoin – The Flipside Of Bernanke‘s Digital Money =Printed / Created‘ Out Of Thin Air?, I promised to write a more detailed account of Bitcoin after you, the readers have embarked on your own research and revert to me on your findings. Let us now compare our respective research.
From my research, I have come to the following conclusions.

The Premise for Bitcoin
Bitcoin started quietly, almost a non-event, but lately (especially in 2013) it has been aggressively promoted by Mainstream media, but more importantly by some very important and powerful financial elites.
This ought to alert anyone who is concerned about the state of the dying global fiat money system.
To me, this is the irrefutable admission by the financial powers that there has been in place a strategic plan for the replacement of the US dollar as the global reserve currency and a restructuring of the global fiat (paper) money system with a global fiat (digital) money system – Bitcoin.
It is also important to note that just as the US dollar (the lynch-pin of the fiat monetary system) is being buttressed (?backed?) by oil (energy) giving rise to the Petro-Dollars, the new global monetary system based on Bitcoin is likewise buttressed by ?energy.
In my book, “The Shadow Money-lenders and the Global Financial Tsunami” which is a compilation of all my email ?Red Alerts? which I had sent out to friends all over the world from 2006 to early 2008, I had warned of the impending collapse of the fiat money system in 2007. I had also warned of the intense currency wars that would follow. This has all come to pass.
The introduction of Bitcoin is another admission that the financial powers are also considering the replacement of the FED as well as the central banks of the developed economies (i.e. ECB, BOE, BOJ etc.) sometime in the future and substitute the control by central banks with super-super computers networking the global economy controlled by a handful of techno-corporations and behind this front, the power of the 0.01 per cent financial elites. Let me assure you that this is no conspiracy theory.
The template may or may not follow Monsanto‘s control of the global food-chain via the control of seeds, the ?currency of the food-chain?. It is sufficient to bear in mind that what is necessary is to control the technology that creates Bitcoin, the ?monetary seed? for the new financial system.
Bitcoin is the latest financial weapon of the global financial elites in the present intense currency war and will be used by the financial elites aligned with the Western Axis to compete against the gold–backed currencies of countries led by China and Russia! The Western Axis powers hope to triumph over the powers of the gold-backed currencies through the global internet matrix. But, I have my doubts.

The Strategy to Make Bitcoin the Global Currency
To replace the present fiat monetary system, the global financial elites have employed the following strategies:
? To demonise Gold and depress the true value of gold;
? To promote Bitcoin as the ultimate alternative currency by price manipulation; and
? Energy (oil, gas & computer power) to back Bitcoin.
In the first phase of this grand strategy, the Controllers of Bitcoin have decided to focus on the markets of the developed world. This is common sense as the technological infrastructure is already in place in the developed world.
In this phase, the Controllers would by-pass the global banking institutions and will focus on the existing alternative payment systems widely used in internet marketing such as PayPal, E-Bay, MoneyGram etc. This is because, Bitcoin can only survive and grow in the internet environment as it is a technology-based currency. Bitcoin cannot be used in the same way as fiat paper money is used. It is not a “cash” currency. It is digital!
This makes sense because in our daily lives, more and more transactions are being facilitated through the internet, our mobile phone, credit cards etc. Paper money is used less and less.
In the Second phase, and after assuming total or near total control of all internet markets, only Bitcoin would be accepted as ?legal tender? for payment of goods and services. No Bitcoin, no sales for goods and services! The Controllers would not need any laws to compel full compliance as in the present case with fiat paper money when laws must be enacted to compel acceptance of paper money as ?legal tender? in full discharge of all debts!
In the final phase, it is my belief that banks will be transformed from their present form and structure to be inter-alia ?Bitcoin Exchanges or Clearing House?. This is one of the items in the Controllers‘ Wish List.
This is indeed a very elegant structure and it will surely appeal to all reformers who are against central banks, the present structure of global banking institutions and paper fiat money. The call to end government / Central Bank control of money would no doubt be greeted with enthusiasm and relief given the present policies of the FED and other central banks enriching Wall Street and the 0.01 per cent of the global population.
The debasing of global currencies is being carried out with the approval and connivance of the global financial elites as a prelude to the use of Bitcoin because the present financial architecture can no longer be sustained. The debt-based fiat money system is so toxic that it is beyond repair.

A Utopia of Equality or Jumping from the Frying Pan to the Fire?
A good starting point in this discussion is to know about the origins of the internet since Bitcoin can only survive and grow in such an environment (I am merely simplifying the discussion to avoid unnecessary technical jargon).
Let me quote Wikipedia:
The history of the Internet began with the development of electronic computers in the 1950s. The public was first introduced to the concepts that would lead to the Internet when a message was sent over the ARPANet from computer science Professor Leonard Kleinrock’s laboratory at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), after the second piece of network equipment was installed at Stanford Research Institute (SRI). Packet sitched networks such as ARPANET, Mark I at NPL in the UK, CYCLADES, Merit Network, Tymnet, and Telenet, were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s using a variety of protocols. The ARPANET in particular led to the development of protocols for internetworking, in which multiple separate networks could be joined together into a network of networks.
ARPANet:
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was one of the world’s first operational packet switching networks, the first network to implement TCP/IP, and the progenitor of what was to become the global Internet. The network was initially funded by the Advanced Research Projects
Agency (ARPA, later DARPA) within the U.S. Department of Defense for use by its projects at universities and research laboratories in the US. The packet switching of the ARPANET, together with TCP/IP, would form the backbone of how the Internet works. The packet switching was based on concepts and designs by American engineer Paul Baran, British scientist Donald Davies[ and Lawrence Roberts of the Lincoln Laboratory. The TCP/IP communication protocols were developed for ARPANET by computer scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf.
Should we be really surprised by Edward Snowden‘s exposé that NSA in conjunction with other intelligence establishments have total control of all communications through the internet, smart phones etc.?
What about some of Bitcoin‘s technologies?
Are they also based on intelligence establishments‘ technologies?
You Bet!
One of the technologies is derived from the US Intelligence establishment - the objective is to ensure that communication between operatives would remain anonymous.
The program that ?hides user identities? is TOR, developed by the US Naval Research laboratory and endorsed by Senator Hillary Clinton (Schuman's former co-Senator from the state of New York) as ?an important tool for freedom of expression around the world?. Indeed, the TOR Project claims that over 80% of its funding in 2012 came directly from the U.S Government [Source: Tor Project Annual Report 2012]
Therefore, it is contended that by using this particular technology, transactions between two persons using Bitcoin would also be anonymous! This assumes that the inventor of the technology would not be able to access such transactions and discover the identity of the users. Founders of Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Skype etc. are promoting Bitcoin. And these companies have all been used by the NSA to gather your personal details.
The Controllers of Bitcoin are marketing Bitcoin as the latest development of Edison’s Dollars, the financial proposal of the great inventor Thomas Edison who during the 1920s depression opposed the Federal Reserve‘s control of the US dollar and introduced a new concept to help farmers get interest free financing for their harvest. It was a commodity-based ?currency.
According to Edison: ?
…the relative value of the earth‘s produce appears to be constant, a money unit representing basic commodities and nothing else would be equally constant, that…and further, since the relative value of the earth‘s produce is constant there is no reason why the farmer should not finance himself, as the gold miner does, simply by turning his output into money directly.? (Source: New York Times, 1922.)
Thomas Edison wanted to reduce the power of the FED. Instead of centralising power in the hands of the FED, Edison wanted to decentralise the control of money across 36 commodities and 12 warehouses that stores these commodities so as to enable interest free financing for the farmers.
Therefore, comparing Edison‘s dollars to Bitcoin is like comparing chalk and cheese!
To hoodwink the public about the history of Edison‘s dollars, the Controllers refer to three economists that supposedly laid the basis for Bitcoin and how they would get rid of the FED –1) Irving Fisher, 2) John Maynard Keynes and 3) Dr. Milton Friedman. The mouthpiece of this historical revisionism is none other than Michael Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize nominated financial journalist, as well as an adviser to some venture capital funds.
Yet, these three economists are ardent supporters of fiat money and the FED.
Therefore, the theoretical foundation for Bitcoin is in fact the fiat money system as we know it today.
What the Controllers are advocating and as I have been saying for so long, is the replacement of one kind of fiat money (paper fiat money) with another kind of fiat money (digital fiat money)!
If the Controllers are following the teachings of the abovementioned three economists, there cannot be any other conclusions.
Michael Robinson attributed Dr. Milton Friedman as saying, “We don’t need the FED. Replace the FED with a computer… that would print a specified number of paper dollars, same number month after month, week after week, year after year…”
So, here we have the great idea allegedly from Dr. Milton Friedman, replacing the FED with a computer. It begs the questions, ?Who controls the computer?? Surely, if a specified number of paper dollars are to be printed, month after month, week after week, year after year what is there to prevent the Controller of the computer to change the number of paper money to be printed and the frequency of the printing? After all, the Bitcoin system is such that no one knows who actually controls the system.
It has been said that the original amount of Bitcoins that has been ?mined? (i.e. created by the computer) is only 21,000,000 (21 million). This is to convey the impression that Bitcoin is limited and cannot be created out of thin air. The Controllers must take us for fools, as there is absolutely no difference between Bernanke creating digital money out of thin air by a click of a computer mouse and Bitcoin being created likewise by a click or several clicks of a computer mouse.
Then comes the sales pitch. If you ?invest? (buy) Bitcoins early (or has bought them in 2009) you would be very rich now, as the price of Bitcoin has skyrocketed to over US$1,000. And the price could go as high as US$100,000. This is a Ponzi scheme. The inner circle or ?founders? who created the initial amount of Bitcoins (not more than 21 million Bitcoins, valued at US$1 per coin) would have made a killing in the Bitcoin market.
There is absolutely no difference to Bernanke‘s FED launching QE 1, QE2, Twist, QE3 which benefited in the first instance the fat cats of Wall Street (who paid themselves huge bonuses amounting US$Billions) before the money starts trickling down to the masses. And when the money reaches Joe Six-Packs, the purchasing power of the paper money or the FED‘s digital money would have depreciated sharply.
The FED‘s monetary base up till 2008 was a mere US$800 billion + or – 5 per cent. It was somewhat limited (like the 21 million Bitcoins). Then the FED and Wall Street got greedy and it is now over US$ 3 trillion! Source; Money & Markets
Up to the time of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy the FED’s monetary base stood at $849.8 billion. As at October 30, 2013 it has risen to a whopping $3,607.7 billion. That’s an expansion of $2,757.8 billion — over $2.7 trillion. This $2.7 trillion expansion has all taken place within just six years and one month. And it is continuing at the pace of US$85 Billion per month. Source: US Federal Reserve Bank
It would be very naïve for anyone to think that the private corporations that controls Bitcoin, having made US$ Billions in less than a year would not aspire to make US$ Trillions by ?mining? (i.e. creating) more Bitcoins, no different from the FED‘s QE programs. Better still the Controllers do not even have to account to anyone for any additional amount of Bitcoins thus created as no one would be wiser.

Bitcoin supposedly backed by “Energy”
The Founders and Controllers of Bitcoin say that Bitcoin is ?backed by energy? in that in the future scenario, all energy consumption would have to be paid by Bitcoin. This sales pitch is no surprise to me as energy (oil and gas) keeps the global economy humming – we need energy to drive our cars, light up our buildings, keep our homes warm and cozy during winter, to cook our food etc. And since Petro-dollar is no longer in fashion it would surprise no one that the Seven Sisters (i.e. the seven largest oil companies in the world led by Exxon) would want a big slice of the pie, more so when it is ?Made in the USA?!
So Petro-Dollar is replaced by Bitcoin!
Guess who are also very eager about Bitcoin?
To name a few – Warren Buffet (the insiders‘ insider), Bill Gates (?It‘s a techno tour de force.?) and Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google (It‘s changing society?). These three and the other members of the 0.01 per cent have already cornered the Bitcoin Ponzi scheme. If you are one of the late-comers, you are one of hundreds of thousands being led to the slaughter house.
Do you for a moment think that these guys would change the FED for a computer if they are not in control?

Conclusions
Given the above scenario, it is my belief that the next global war would be fought in Cyberspace – a cyber war that would destroy economies by paralysing the financial system, specifically the payment system.
However, I am placing my bets on a Gold-Backed Monetary System for when the Bitcoin Ponzi scheme is exposed people will scramble for gold and gold-backed currencies.
Just imagine watching your computer digits VAPORISED BEFORE YOUR EYES and there is nothing you can do about it.
All your transactions are anonymous. The only evidence that you have Bitcoins is in your ?Bitcoin computer ledger? or your ?Bitcoin wallet?. It is not in a vault. The money trail is wiped out. Who do you complain to since the reason you went into Bitcoin is to maintain your anonymity, your privacy and as the promoters of Bitcoin keep touting – to escape from the taxman?
Come back to reality!
Don‘t believe the hype from Mainstream media such as:
Forbes – “The currency of a US$10 trillion global market. Mankind is better for it.”
Time Magazine – “Governments couldn’t debase it. Banks couldn’t blow it. Perfect money!”
Fox Business – “May become the world’s payment method.”
MasterCard has jumped on the bandwagon – “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
They know that the petro-dollar is dying and soon would be dead. They need a quick replacement. Uncle Sam does not have gold. Next best alternative, and the sales pitch – virtual gold!
When people such as Lisa Shield, VP of the Council for Foreign Relations are pitching for Bitcoin, you know that the elites of the N.W.O. are really desperate.
The writing is on the wall.
Petro-dollar is being replaced!
The US$ as the global reserve currency is dying!
It has been contended by some analysts that the future global currency war would be between Bitcoin versus Gold-backed currencies. I have my doubts, but make no mistakes the next war will be a war for currency supremacy.
Countries of the developing world like Malaysia with little or no gold reserves would be devastated.
There is still time to accumulate gold, but not much.
Whatever the future scenario, we better be prepared for it.

[TonyGosling]

Bitcoin Proves The Libertarian Idea Of Paradise Would Be Hell On Earth
Jim Edwards, provided by
| December 10, 2013

http://www.chron.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Bitcoin-Proves -The-Libertarian-Idea-Of-Paradise-5053528.php

Libertarians love Bitcoin.

About 44% of the online crypto-currency's users self-identify as Libertarians.

They love the fact that it's not controlled by a government or central bank — so no online Fed can "print" more of it and inflate our way out of trouble. They love that it's decentralized; it's the currency of The People, not The Man. They love that it's "mined," a bit like gold, because that makes it a bit like the gold standard, which libertarians think real currencies ought to be tied to. They love that Bitcoin isn't taxed, so you can hide your income from the government if you want to. They love the way its value reflects pure supply and demand, and not a value forced into the system by regulation or monopoly. And they love that it's fairly lawless — it's difficult to enforce rules (other than the rules of the market) when everyone in the market is anonymous.

So the Bitcoin experience gives us a glimpse of Libertarian paradise: What life would be like with as little government interference as possible, in a market free of burdensome laws and taxes.

Unfortunately, that experience looks like a total nightmare. It's characterized by radical instability, chaos, the rise of a boss-class of criminals who assassinate people they don't like, and a mass handover of wealth to a minority even smaller than the 1% that currently lauds it in the United States.

If Bitcoin was a country — Bitcoinistan? — it would be like Somalia. Consider:
Bitcoin is most useful to criminals.

Currently, for ordinary people, cash and credit work just fine. While some mainstream businesses do take Bitcoin, there is no compelling reason — yet — for ordinary people to use it. If you're a criminal, however, there are very compelling reasons to use it: you can transfer vast sums of cash completely anonymously. Cash transfers are a real problem for criminals. When you can't use bank accounts, lugging around vast sums of cash gets old pretty quickly. Bitcoin solves that. So Bitcoin is very, very empowering for criminals.
There is a Bitcoin crime wave going on right now.

Given that Bitcoin is good for criminals, it should not be surprising that those criminals are targeting other Bitcoin users for thefts. The most spectacular theft so far is the Sheep Marketplace robbery, in which one hacker appears to have emptied a massive Bitcoin marketplace of up to $220 million in Bitcoins. Note that Sheep Marketplace was basically a trading post for drug dealers. Bitcoin exchange and account thefts are very common. Here's a potted history of recent Bitcoin capers.
Bitcoin "law" is enforced by paid assassins.

The most shocking thing about the indictment of the Silk Road operator Ross Ulbricht was not the amount of money in Bitcoin he controlled (about $28 million). Rather, it was the fact that when other drug dealers ripped him off, he didn't put it down as the price of doing business. Instead, he is accused of hiring a hitman to murder six people he believed had stolen from him. Ulbricht was a Libertarian. In other words, there will be laws in the Bitcoin Libertarian paradise: And the people with the most Bitcoins will decide what that law is, when it should be applied, and how "justice" will be meted out. In Bitcoinistan, the sentence for non-violent financial crimes includes the death penalty, apparently.
There is literally a Bitcoin market for assassinations.

There have always been people engaging in murder for hire, using old-fashioned cash. But the operator of this Bitcoin website seems to believe that Bitcoin creates enough anonymity to allow assassination to take place "at scale" (to borrow the parlance of the tech startup world). He wants to destroy "all governments, everywhere."
Bitcoin as a currency is horribly unstable.



This chart (above) tells you all you need to know. One day you're rich, when Bitcoin approaches $1,200; the next day half your wealth is wiped out as it plummets to $700. Bitcoin isn't backed by any government's bonds or central bank gold. It's literally an asset without an underlying asset. So its price is determined entirely by its flows.

Bitcoinistan makes the Weimar Republic look sedate. Even if you could live with the crime, the instability makes transactions wildly unfair to the party on the downside.
Bitcoin has produced comical wealth inequality.

Libertarians don't care about inequality, of course. They see it as a reflection of individuals' natural talents, and as an incentive to work harder. But even the most hardcore free marketeer ought to blanche at the incredible level of inequality already endemic to Bitcoin. Just 47 individuals own nearly one-third of all Bitcoins. About 927 people control half the entire currency. There are just over 1 million Bitcoin holders — the vast majority of them own mere crumbs.
Bitcoin hoarding could produce a cartel that controls all Bitcoin.

A study from Cornell has claimed that if Bitcoin miners cooperate, they could end up controlling most Bitcoins and thus control the currency's price. The cartel could beggar or enrich all Bitcoin holders overnight, depending on how they trade it.

That kind of thing just doesn't happen with the dollar.
Even if you can live with the crime, the inequality and the cartel, you might not tolerate the accidental chaos.

When you have a normal bank account with cash in it, you're almost guaranteed not to lose the money. The bank can burn to the ground, be robbed or even go out of business and because of federal deposit insurance you'll always get your money back. You can't "lose" U.S. dollars if they're parked in a checking account.

Not so with Bitcoin. If you're ever unlucky or careless with your Bitcoin wallet, you're completely screwed:
This guy lost about $600 because he reset his mobile phone — permanently deleting his Bitcoin wallet.
This guy threw away an old hard drive — and now he is looking for $6.5 million in a landfill.
This guy lost about $90,000 because he hit "delete" at the wrong time.

Sure, the entire Bitcoin economy is not run by criminals. But still, there is a price to pay for the freedom and anonymity that Bitcoin provides, and the price is a lack of enforceable laws that benefit the most ruthless.

The Libertarian Bitcoin dream is an interesting idea, but you wouldn't want to live there.

[TonyGosling]

Check this out - this company, and their sister, Mood Pictures, which does Nazi themed SM -
Dr Mengele and Auschwitz I/II - accept Bitcoin! and give a 10% discount!

From:Elite Pain Newsletter (newsletter@newsletter.elitepain.com)
Sent:Thu 12/05/13 11:15 PM

Elitepain
From now, you can pay with BitCoin, too!
Place your order and choose Bitcoin payment!
http://elitepain.com/camp/1122

Best regards,
EP Pictures Staff

Winter Sale at Mood Pictures! 30% OFF!
Choose BitCoin payment and Save MORE 10%...
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[TonyGosling]

Norway Rules Bitcoin Does Not Qualify as Real Money
By ALISTAIR CHARLTON : Subscribe to Alistair's RSS feed | December 16, 2013 10:10 AM GMT

Bitcoin has failed to be recognised as real money by Norway, as governments the world over take steps to address the virtual crypto-currency's legality.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/530520/20131216/bitcoin-real-currenc y-money-norway-litecoin-mining.htm


Bitcoin: Although some physical bitcoins exist for collectors, the currency is digital, anonymous and de-centralised. (Reuters)

Hans Christian Holte, director general of taxation in Norway, said: "Bitcoins don't fall under the usual definition of money or currency," Bloomberg reports. "We've done some assessments on what's the right and sound way to handle this in the tax system."

Bitcoins will now be treated by Norway as an asset on which capital gains tax can be charged.

Created in 2009, bitcoin is a virtual, decentralised currency created by networks of computers solving complex mathematical equations. Once an equation is solved, coins are 'mined' and awarded to the users of those computers, who can then spend them online or use an exchange like Tokyo-based Mt Gox to transfer them into real-world currencies like pounds and dollars.

One bitcoin is currently worth around $885, having risen from less than $100 at the start of the year to a peak of $1,200. The currency's volatility and the lure of making a quick profit has encouraged it price to rise, along with a growing number of online retailers accepting payments made by bitcoin.

The most high-profile company to accept bitcoin as payment is Richard Branson's commercial spaceflight company Virgin Galactic.

Holte said Norwegian businesses using bitcoin will have the country's usual 25% sales tax applied to their transactions, and added he plans to work with other countries to better understand the legal aspects of bitcoin and its cheaper sibling, litecoin.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Sophocles Sophocleous, a director at Argos Capital Management in Cyprus, said: "I don't think you can even call something a currency if it can change in value by 20% to 30% in a day. At the end of the day, I think people want something backing a currency."

Students of the University of Nicosia in Cyprus' capital city can pay their tuition fees using bitcoin.

Norway helped bring fame to bitcoin earlier this year, when in October citizen Kristoffer Koch found his £15 investment in the currency - made in 2009 - to be worth more than £550,000; Koch bought an apartment with 20% of his 5,000 coin windfall. The remaining 80% would now be worth £2 million.

Unit of exchange

Earlier this year, the German government reached a similar decision regarding bitcoin's status as a currency, branding it a "unit of exchange" and similar to a regional currency. Meanwhile, the French went a step further and founded Bitcoin-Central, a real bank into which customers can deposit and transfer money in euro and bitcoin.

Last week, the European Banking Authority issued a warning about bitcoin and other such currencies, stating they should only be used by customers who "fully understand the specific characteristics."

The EBA added that customers should only invest in bitcoin with money they can afford to lose, such is the currency's volatility and the risk of having coins stolen anonymously from your computer.

To report problems or to leave feedback about this article, e-mail: a.charlton@ibtimes.co.uk
To contact the editor, e-mail: editor@ibtimes.co.uk