I think the common saying is originally derived from a bible verse. (1 Timothy 6:10)

Its not so literal. As it is a slippery slope and gateway drug to greater evil. For love of money a person might start out borrowing money from friends and family and never paying them back. Then graduate to finding ways to rob or cheat people of their hard earned assets. Eventually, they might wind up murdering people and doing terrible things to earn more income and boost their net worth.

Another slant to the discussion could be whether money is a necessary evil. Could a better system of financial exchange be developed to replace our existing one. Perhaps bitcoin is one footstep on this path. Wouldn't it be great if we could find others.

There are urban legends of casinos pumping additional oxygen into the air to make gamblers feel more awake and gamble longer. Also rumors they pump pheremones into the air to give people a positive feeling while gambling to make the experience more addictive.

If their series is truly about explaining money and finance, however. Wouldn't they cover so called sharps who rake in large profits through gambling. The market has to be exploding at the moment with all the attention and focus draftkings and fanduel is getting.

My feelings on this topic is that gambling is being treated like prohibition 2.0. Where they'll establish a narrative of people never being responsible or disciplined enough to gamble intelligently. And the argument that gambling should be eradicated by the state to "protect people from themselves" will be the eventual conclusion.

Isn't that the recipe and formula for a currency bubble.

It would be like venezuela having a strong bolivar, with its current economy. Or the zimbabwe dollar being strong during its era of hyperinflation.

The federal reserve can initiate high buying of the US dollar, to surge demand. And elevate its value. But ultimately I think most would naturally expect the currency to follow in the footsteps of the issuing nation. If the US economy is weak, the dollar will eventually follow. The extent to which the fed can mitigate market mechanics with QE and similar policies can be debated or discussed. They did manage to contain inflation longer than many expected them to. I think the strength of the dollar will be similar. It will stay stronger longer than we expect. But eventually, like inflation it will give way to market mechanics and fundamental principles.

Some celebrities, movie stars, musicians, athletes, politicians and dictators of small countries pay similar extravagantly low tax rates. (I think in exchange for pushing woke narratives.)


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The goal of generational wealth in the US has somewhat become an impossibility due to the 40% estate tax (death tax).

I think that many of these famous figures avoid the estate tax through the utilization of offshore tax shelters and loopholes.

The reason politicians and celebrities will never truly support closing these loopholes for the rich. Is they themselves use them.





Most elected officials are super rich and own 5 luxury houses.

Why would they close tax loopholes for the wealthy, on themselves?

A classic example of that could be the well publicized fall of enron. Amateur investors threw mountains of money at it. While many professionals stayed away suspecting that something about their numbers didn't add up. Eventually, accusations of accounting fraud surfaced and were investigated. Game over.

The trend of amateur investors having the liquidity to influence markets may have reversed awhile ago with the trend of amateur investors having reduced savings and disposable income. Statistics relating to the number of people who live paycheck to paycheck have risen significantly. The average amount of savings people have. And similar numbers have declined over time. Leading to that demographic being far less relevant in the investment and trading world.

Central banks like the federal reserve have come to dominate trading volume in US bond, currency and stock markets in recent years.

The united states has had the ability to freeze accounts associated with illicit criminal activities for decades. It never did anything to deter drugs, weapons smuggling or any other illegal activity.

Banks have laundered money for terrorists, drug cartels and russia for a very long time. And never received more than minor fines for their trouble.

Cash is actually the best option for crime as it leaves no paper or electronic trail which can be traced. I think anyone who watched TV knows criminals ask for their money in "unmarked bills" cash.

There are no advantages to using bitcoin for money laundering or crime. And there are definitely some drawbacks and disadvantages. As we have witnessed with the colonial pipeline ransomware attack where almost all of the bitcon ransom funds were recovered by law enforcement.

Sounds interesting.

Profit sharing with workers is an incentivization/motivation strategy. Workers might be more motivated to find a job utilizing their system, if they're paid a bonus in crypto. The more who find a job, the more successful their enterprise can be. It could end up being a win/win scenario for everyone.

Not so different from employees being rewarded with stock options and other bonuses to incentivize them being more motivated.

Doing it in crypto though. That makes their format special.





Is that what is known as a non profit organization?

There is an upside to that where they pay lower taxes. Financial engineers have ways to do all types of things with non profits, charities that one would not ordinarily expect.

Crypto ransomware is nothing new.

Rogue nations have had dealings in illegal credit cards and stolen personal information before cryptocurrency was invented. There are state sponsored criminal markets revolving around the theft and distribution of banking related data and money. The federal reserve itself has been hacked 50 times in 4 years.


The media exclusively covers ransomware and financial breaches related to crypto and ransomware. While ignoring the identical role banks, credit card companies and similar institutions play in financial breaches.

I think nations pass pro bitcoin legislation to attract wealthy investors. Who they know will create jobs and business. That will in turn boost their local economy and tax revenues.

Its a basic formula we see repeated all over the world, that has been proven to be effective.

If it is true that embracing emerging innovations and trends lead to economic growth. It will be interesting to see how much china's economy shrinks as a result of its anti bitcoin and anti crypto policies. It may seem like a power move on china's part to ban bitcoin related industry. But there could also be a spectacular backlash as china sees its economy contract as a result.

This trend is probably one of the biggest obstacles to implementing global taxation standards. Many small nations rely upon extending favorable taxes to the wealthy, for their own survival.

I think there's an unwritten requirement for states mining fiat currency in a stable and reliable format. The public must be educated and informed for good money printing standards to remain standardized. That day people forget what happened the last time excessive amounts of fiat were overprinted. Is the day the history of hyperinflation repeats itself.

We see it throughout history where people are angry and upset over economies and financial markets crashing. Eventually people forget the conditions and policies which led to the big collapse. And it happens again. In the current era most don't know or remember what caused the 2008 economic collapse. Which leaves them powerless. The state could mandate whatever it wanted and few would know whether it paralleled past policy that led to severe economic downturn.

Education and information are the critical components that are hardest to come by in the discussion of maintaining stable markets and economies.

Bitcoin is the "so easy a caveman could do it" solution to these issues. Deflation is built in. People don't have to be educated or informed. The currency is fundamentally designed to be as stable, cost effective and reliable as it could be. Its everything car insurance commercials promise to be, except it delivers on every level.

Would rather see Amanda Nunes vs Kayla Harrison.

Kayla Harrison has never fought a top ranked fighter inside the top 50. Her attitude is annoying for someone who never faced top competition.

Don't know why anyone would call Kim Kardashian out. Her body doesn't look healthy. Don't think she could ever compete athletically with some of the cosmetic procedures she has undergone. Did she have a butt implant? I think that's one of the most dangerous surgical procedures and a lot of women have unfortunately died from it being performed incorrectly.

Some african nations imposed social media taxes on africans that use american social media platforms.


Ugandans were said to have largely avoided the tax by using VPNs, proxies and anonymizers.

Nigeria likewise may not have the IT infrastructure in place to enforce a social media ban. The way that uganda was unable to enforce their social media tax.

There is a long history to governments deterring anonymous bloggers as independant sources of information. And a long history of independance movements utilizing social media as a communications and organizing platform. There are trends and a history to things like social media that are not being acknowledged in this discussion of what fair use of social media on a global scale is.

Donald Trump supported hydroxychloroquine as the most affordable, easiest to obtain and most effective treatment for COVID-19 for a very long time.

There may have been a significant shift where Trump threw hydroxychloroquine under a bus. In favor of remdesivir, regeneron, vaccines and other COVID drugs which are significantly more expensive and questionable as to whether they're as effective as hydroxychloroquine. That may be one of the best indicators of Trump abandoning policies that were in the best interest of americans. In favor of policies which are in the best favor of special interests.

I'm not a big fan of the state having the power to lawfully nationalise or ban private enterprise. I don't think its a policy people should support. Banning twitter, social media or big tech isn't a solution to any of our perceived problems.

I think everyone knows by now that intelligence and surveillance agencies have long held a controlling interest in VPNs, proxies, TOR and anything involving encryption and anonymizing on the internet. As many hacking groups have learned the hard way.

Lack of international cooperation on extradition is likely the biggest obstacle to prosecuting internet criminals. As well as the biggest enabler for how ransomware and electronic crime occurs.

Seizing the ransomware payment proves cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are largely unsuitable as a medium for money laundering and crime. Unfortunately, I doubt many will see it that way. Investors and capitalists often having mentalities revolving around worst case scenarios, some will assume a worst case where the government has broken fundamental aspects of bitcoin encryption. Which I think it is not true.

As everyone said, law enforcement most likely assumed control of the ransomware payment through criminals using a wallet service which was vulnerable.

For securing funding, the most common approaches would be venture capitalists or crowdsourcing. You could use a search engine to find VCs (venture capitalists) who will look at your proposal and decide whether or not to fund it. Kickstarter and crowdfunding platforms are another option.

Good people and good workers could be the hardest things to find.

Depending on tasks you need accomplished, it is possible amazon mturk could be a viable platform for finding workers.

https://www.mturk.com/

Followers can be acquired by having a social media presence on the typical platforms and releasing content.

Does this mean I'm supposed to hold Dr. Fauci 100% accountable for every negative aspect of COVID-19.

And that china is 100% innocent for everything that happened? Will Dr. Fauci wind up being a COVID scapegoat.

I'm interested to see australia's reaction to this. They were one of the biggest proponents of investigating COVID's origins. Which led to china being offended & retaliating with economic measures. Which australia in turn retaliated against china. There was an australia vs china trade war brewing over this. It will be interesting to see whether they can resolve this case, simply by info dumping Dr. Fauci's role in it.

I think you wanted to use a term other than de-leveraging there. Perhaps you meant to say a huge exodus from financial markets? But then we could have evidence that this already happened with many american CEO's dumping large portions of their stock holdings?

If I remember right, the 2008 economic crisis was caused by banks having many leveraged positions, they couldn't cover related to subprime mortgage debt CDOs. There were reports of subprime mortgage being only 15% of the derivatives positions banks couldn't cover. And so the state bailed them out and covered their bad positions, so banks could continue business as usual. Deleveraging could be a positive thing for the survival and stability of markets. It is high amounts of leverage that are dangerous.

There is definitely no shortage of doom and gloom as far as financial markets and the economy go.

One possibly entertaining example of this is the "bitcoin obituaries" webpage which references 416 times bitcoin has been declared "dead".

https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/

Income taxes in the USA were originally marketed as a way to "punish the rich".

In 1913, when income taxes were legislated the wealthy paid 6% income taxes, everyone else paid 1%. Needless to say, it didn't take long for "punish the rich" income taxes to flip to a point where the poor were paying higher taxes than the rich. As normally occurs with "punish the rich" campaigns.

I guess the question here is what percentage of taxes is fair to people. How high can taxes go, before they're deemed unfair and need reform. Do people get their money's worth for taxes paid to governments.

What of the historical precedent of gold, silver and copper coins in circulation. Having a dual use as medium exchange and store of value.

Bitcoin fulfills a similar role. With the advantage of not having to store, secure or transport physical assets on hand.

The earliest historical example of proof of work algorithms (upon which bitcoin runs) being utilized as a medium of exchange and store of value.

Could be rocks hewn into coin shapes with hand tools. Which were utilized as a medium of exchange and store of value.

The basic theory behind bitcoin mass adoption goes something like this.

Each bitcoin carries 8 decimal places. 1 bitcoin is 1.00000000. This format defines bitcoin's potential for future growth. As the value of bitcoin increases, transactions will move further to the right of the decimal point.

Fundamentals of supply and demand suggest demand can be measured by the total number of end users an application has. If demand is a factor of user base size. Demand could be expected to grow steadily on a path to global mass adoption. Which would in turn inflate bitcoin's price.

Effects of increased investment and speculation are not clearly defined. There is a potential for elevated volatility. And a potential for increased speculation having a balancing and stabilizing effect.

What bitcoin HODL mass adopters are most concerned with is bitcoin's price rising due to an increase in demand. Caused by growth of its user base.