We are not facing a recession my friend, we are moving towards a full scale war to trigger a "smoke screen" for a total global economic collapse.  

See

Lawmakers and Federal Reserve officials are so concerned about Facebook’s plans to launch a new digital currency that they’re contemplating a novel response — having the central bank create a competitor.

Momentum is building for an idea that was once considered outlandish — a U.S. government-run virtual currency that would replace physical cash, a dramatic move that could discourage major companies like Facebook from creating their own digital coins.

Facebook’s proposed currency, Libra, has forced the Fed to consider the issue because of a fear that private companies could establish their own currencies and take control over the global payments system. Some Fed officials share the concern about a new balkanized currency system outside government control that Facebook has threatened to unleash.

“Libra bust this way out into the open,” said Karen Petrou, a managing partner at Federal Financial Analytics who advises executives on coming policy shifts.

But it’s not just Facebook. The matter is also taking on urgency as other countries consider creating their own digital currencies — another potential challenge to the primacy of the U.S. dollar. The head of the Bank of England has floated the idea that central banks could create a network of digital currencies to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

The discussions are informal at this point. Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have written to the central bank asking officials to consider how they might approach a digital currency, and some Fed officials have begun to acknowledge the government might someday play a role.

“It is inevitable,” Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Patrick Harker said at a recent conference, according to Reuters. “I think it is better for us to start getting our hands around it.”

Those discussions will land on the Fed’s doorstep this week as the world’s top financial policymakers gather in Washington for meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Even if Libra fails because of Facebook’s political baggage — the blowback from lawmakers and regulators has been so fierce that the association tasked with running the cryptocurrency has lost a quarter of its initial members — central bankers worry that another major company could enter the space. If the Fed doesn’t establish a digital currency, who will?

The flurry of recent moves by Facebook and the Fed’s international counterparts has also caught the attention of Congress.

“None of us know precisely how the digital world will evolve,” said Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.), who has asked Fed Chair Jerome Powell to report back on what the Fed can do. “But it’s important they undertake this kind of preparation work and analysis.”

The growing pressure on the Fed is evidence of how rapid developments in technology are beginning to shake the foundations of the financial system, raising questions about whether policymakers are prepared. Some lawmakers want the Fed to take a more active role in fintech developments.

“A consumer payments system is a natural monopoly, the same way Microsoft Word is a natural monopoly,” said Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.), who joined with Hill to ask the Fed to outline its options for creating a digital currency. “No one wants to use some incompatible word processor. … The question arises — shouldn’t it be the U.S. taxpayer and the U.S. government that does it rather than any private firm?”

The details of a possible Fed-developed digital currency are still vague. But advocates and experts say such an instrument could give consumers a new way to make payments without having to rely on banks and without incurring fees when they transfer money. The digital currency would likely take some inspiration from the technology that underpins other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

But over the last couple of years, the Fed’s leaders have been anything but enthusiastic. Members of its Washington-based board of governors have dismissed the idea that the central bank should create its own digital currency.

But that was before Facebook revealed its plans to become a huge player in the financial system. The social media giant’s June announcement that it planned to spearhead a new digital currency jolted the Fed and other regulators around the world.

An array of powerful figures — Powell, President Donald Trump and House Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) — quickly voiced concern about Facebook’s vision for disrupting payments networks.

Officials took the threat so seriously because of Facebook’s massive built-in user base. Trump immediately highlighted and dismissed concerns about it posing an existential threat to the dollar. “It is by far the most dominant currency anywhere in the World,” he said of the greenback, “and it will always stay that way.”

Another radical proposal dropped in August, when Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, who leads monetary policy for the U.K., suggested that central banks join forces to create a network of digital currencies that would make up a “synthetic hegemonic currency” — similar in some ways to Libra, which is expected to be backed with a variety of existing currencies.

Carney framed it as a potential replacement for the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency — not to mention a way to address risks from a possible transition to China’s renminbi as the next dominant currency.

Carney is one of many officials around the world who have been suggesting that governments create their own competitors to Libra.

Christine Lagarde, before leaving her post as managing director of the IMF to lead the European Central Bank, made a case for governments issuing their own digital currency, which she said was “not science fiction.”

The Bank for International Settlements, which represents the world’s central banks, said early this year that most were conducting research into central bank digital currencies and many were progressing from conceptual work into experimentation and proofs-of-concept.

The IMF/World Bank meetings this week are likely to highlight the debate.

It was a topic of discussion when Facebook’s lead executive on Libra, David Marcus, appeared with Carney on a panel Wednesday that focused on “Big Tech and the Future of Finance." Marcus said access to a government-run system that addressed Facebook's goals would have made his life simpler.

"The real reason we're trying to build this is it doesn't exist," he said.

Fed Governor Lael Brainard, who dismissed central bank digital currencies earlier this year, dedicated a portion of a speech to the prospect that central banks will develop their own currencies.

Brainard said there were "compelling advantages to the current system" in the U.S., and she urged caution, warning of the challenges arising from the Fed managing hundreds of millions of potential accounts. But she acknowledged that other jurisdictions were moving ahead.

"At the Federal Reserve, we will continue to analyze the potential benefits and costs of central bank digital currencies and look forward to learning from other central banks," she said on Wednesday.

Petrou, who advises on regulatory issues through her firm, is warning banks that they need to view the discussions with a greater sense of urgency. Banks are key operators in the financial plumbing of today’s U.S. payments system.

“Many of your banks may think they’re increasingly run by regulators,” Petrou told a group of lawyers for large banks earlier this month. “Soon, though, regulators may also run banking.”

Sheila Bair, who led the FDIC during the 2008 financial crisis, is among those urging the Fed to act. She argued that a new Fed-developed digital currency could be used by the public to transfer money without the need for banks and fees. If based on distributed technology — allowing for a decentralized database of transactions across a network — Bair said it could be more secure, efficient and less costly.

“We’ve got inefficient payments,” Bair said in an interview. “It’s expensive. The retailers hate it. Bank customers hate it. … With a cryptocurrency sitting on a distributed ledger, you could just go directly from point A to point B. You don’t need an intermediary. That’s how it’s supposed to work in theory. That’s basically what Facebook is trying to launch.”

In recent Senate testimony, she said the stakes are high for the Fed.

“If the Fed does not stay ahead of this rapidly maturing technology, I fear private sector efforts to eclipse fiat monetary systems will get ahead of them, with potential disruptions to our banking system and in a worst case scenario, loss of control of our own currency,” she said.

Linda Jeng, who left the Federal Reserve earlier this year and is now a visiting scholar at Georgetown Law, said the Fed has been carefully studying distributed ledger technology and how it could improve the payments system.

“They’re not only looking at it from an intellectual, research perspective but also at its potential future applications in central banking and payments,” she said.

“They really recognize that even if Libra blows up, another money construct will follow,” Petrou said. “Any of the tech platform companies has terrific market power. They cannot stop it. They have to beat it.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/15/facebook-federal-reserve-digital-currency-047477

I was hoping to see something in that article talking about them using solely sustainable energy. I see that they're using wind and solar power, would have been nice to see a commitment to them using a % percentage minimum of renewables. I think it's a pretty big problem how much fossil fuels a lot of these large mining operations use up, if we want to stop Bitcoin from having insane negative externalizes we really need to get on top of that (and to be fair, even in China where regulation is quite poor, a good proportion of energy used by mining ops there is renewable).

When it comes to producing Bitcoin, China is the pre-eminent power in the world. The People's Republic boasts the largest mining companies, and dominates the manufacture of chips and other equipment used to mine Bitcoin. A U.S. startup wants to change all that with a bold plan to make Texas the global hub of Bitcoin mining.

On Tuesday, San Francisco-based Layer1 announced it has raised $50 million from billionaire Peter Thiel and others to move forward with its plan, which includes running its own power sub-station and purchasing solar and wind energy produced on the plains of West Texas.

According to co-founder Alex Liegl, Layer1's facility will consist of dozens of acres that lie 150 miles west of Midland, Texas—"literally in the middle of nowhere"—and will rely on a proprietary new technology for cooling the chips used to mine Bitcoin.

Bitcoin mining, which consumes large amounts of electricity, typically takes place in colder areas where it is easier to prevent equipment from overheating. Layer1, however, believes its cooling technology will make Texas a viable location despite the heat. The state also offers additional benefits in the form of light regulation and cheap power.

One Bitcoin is currently worth around $8,300—well off its all time high of nearly $20,000 in late 2017 but still much higher than 2016 when it traded as low as $300. Under Bitcoin's mining system, miners compete to win an award distributed every ten minutes or so. Currently, the reward is 12.5 Bitcoins—a figure that will halve to 6.25 next May.

Liegl says Layer1 aspires to be the biggest Bitcoin miner in the world by controlling all aspects of the process—from chip manufacturing to electricity production to cooling. In the longer term, the company plans to use its mining facilities as a base layer for a larger cryptocurrency enterprise that will include financial services.

Layer1 launched in late 2018, with Liegl then describing it as an "activist fund for cryptocurrencies" that would invest in protocols, including a privacy focused project called Grin. At the time, the startup did not disclose mining aspirations, and raised a modest $2.1 million from Thiel, Digital Currency Group and the late investor Jeffrey Tarrant.

"From an ideological perspective, for Bitcoin to grow into its multi-trillion potential, it needs a U.S. company to lead," says Liegl. "This ideology resonates with Peter [Thiel] and our other investors."

Despite Layer1's large ambitions, its backers—which also include Shasta Ventures and undisclosed wealthy cryptocurrency owners—are keeping a decidedly low-profile for the new investment, which gives Layer1 a valuation of $200 million. Thiel and other investors declined to be interviewed for this story.

Crypto mining in recent years has been a ferociously competitive business, but Layer 1 believes changes in the industry have provided an opening to wrest market power from China.

A new Bitcoin mining strategy

In the early years of Bitcoin, from 2009 to roughly 2013, it was viable to mine the cryptocurrency by using a home laptop, like Liegl did when he got his start mining Bitcoin in his Stanford University dorm room. The mining process involves solving random math problems that determine who will build the next block on Bitcoin's blockchain—a tamper-proof ledger of transactions. The first to solve the math problem also receives a reward in the form of Bitcoins.

As the cryptocurrency caught on and prices soared, however, companies began designing special computers optimized to mine Bitcoin. This in turn led miners to join crypto mining pools—combining their computing power in order to share the proceeds whenever a member receives a Bitcoin reward.

China has dominated the Bitcoin mining industry—estimates say it accounts for around 60% of production—in large part because its government has provided miners with cheap access to electricity. The leading company has been Beijing-based Bitmain, which runs two massive mining pools and is also the leading seller of the specialized chips now needed to mine Bitcoin.

But Bitmain has stumbled in recent months. While the company's 33-year-old CEO boasted in mid-2018 of grand plans to use artificial intelligence to further dominate the mining world, Bitmain has since suffered large losses and had to lay off half of its staff of 3,000.

Bitmain's troubles weren't the only factor revealing an opening in Bitcoin mining for Layer1. Liegl says the dynamic of mining has shifted. He thinks buying the latest custom chips previously gave miners an edge, but now the tech has become commoditized.

"From 2012-2019, it was mining 1.0 and a function of (capital expenditure) and who can get the newest chip first," Liegl says. "Now, we're in 2.0, where (operating expenses) matter most."

Under this thesis, Layer1 believes its plans to develop "full-stack" operations in West Texas will let it capture market share—in part because it won't be vulnerable to third party suppliers raising prices when the price of Bitcoin goes up.

An industry in flux

In moving into West Texas, Layer1 may have to tread cautiously given that the region has been burned by the cryptocurrency industry in the past. In July, Wired magazine ran a feature article describing how Bitmain promised the town of Rockland, Texas hundreds of good jobs operating mining pools, but then abruptly pulled out, despite a concerted good-will campaign by local officials.

Liegl, who says his colleagues at Layer1 include veterans of Apple, Google, and Goldman Sachs, plans to proceed much differently. He says the company will be respectful of government officials, and local sensibilities.

If Layer1 can successfully become a major force in the mining world, the company's presence could shake up the geo-politics of Bitcoin. In recent years, there have been fears that China's dominance could lead miners in that country to collude in order to manipulate records on the blockchain that records all Bitcoin transactions. If American companies can make major inroads into mining, Liegl says, Bitcoin will become more decentralized—a key tenet for the cryptocurrency's supporters.

Layer1 isn't the only North American company to plan a big move into crypto mining. Canada-based Blockstream, a consultancy with ties to many Bitcoin insiders, revealed it is building massive data centers for Bitcoin mining in the province of Quebec and in Adel, Georgia.

"There's definitely an opportunity to take away market share from some of the other firms," says Samson Mow, Blockstream's chief strategy officer. "(Specialized chips) have started to reach their limits in terms of efficiency, so the playing field will continue to level off."


https://fortune.com/2019/10/15/what-is-bitcoin-mining-layer1-peter-thiel-crypto-investment/

Facebook's Libra was really aimed at the remittence market (which is why they proposed a stablecoin).

Newsflash: Tether Destroys 500 Million Dollars Of USDT

October 24, 2018

Tether Limited, the issuer of the USD-pegged USDT cryptocurrency, has destroyed 500 million units of the embattled stablecoin.

Blockchain data reveals that earlier today, the firm transferred 500 million USDT from the token’s treasury address to this address, which the firm’s website indicates is the official USDT issuing address. Immediately following that transaction’s confirmation, the issuing address revoked the tokens, not only removing them from circulation (as tokens within the treasury are not counted as circulating) but also — once the transaction is confirmed — destroying them completely.

As CCN reported, USDT’s market cap has plunged in October, primarily because token holders have redeemed nearly 800 million USDT since the beginning of the month. Following these redemptions, nearly 1 billion tokens were sitting in the treasury where they remained on-chain but out of circulation. At the time of writing, the treasury continued to hold approximately 467 million USDT.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/newsflash-tether-destroys-500-million-171435354.html

The Dutch are unhappy at the way the euro is being managed by the European Central Bank.

It's not just "tinfoil blogs" who (for the past 11 years) have been warning that a monetary reset is inevitable and the only viable fallback option once trust and faith in fiat is lost, is a gold standard (something which even Mark Carney hinted at recently): central banks are joining the doom parade now too.

An article published by the De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), or Dutch Central Bank, has shocked many with its claim that "if the system collapses, the gold stock can serve as a basis to build it up again. Gold bolsters confidence in the stability of the central bank's balance sheet and creates a sense of security."

While gloomy predictions of a monetary reset are hardly new, they have traditionally been relegated to the fringe of mainstream financial thought - after all, as Mario Draghi stated on several occasions in recent years, the mere contemplation of a "doomsday scenario" is enough to create the self-fulfilling prophecy which materializes it. As such, it is stunning to see a mainstream financial institution open up about the superior value of limited supply, non-fiat, sound money assets. It is also hypocritical given the diametrically opposed Keynesian practices regularly engaged in by central banks and official institutions worldwide: after all, just a few months back, the IMF published a paper bashing Germany's adoption of the gold standard in the 1870s as the catalyst for instability in the global monetary system.

Fast forward to today, when the Dutch Central Bank is admitting not only did gold not destabilize the monetary system, but it will be its only savior when everything crashes.

The article, titled "DNB's Gold Stock" states:

"A bar of gold retains its value, even in times of crisis. This makes it the opposite of "shares, bonds and other securities" all of which have inherent risk and prices can go down.

According to the IMF's latest data, the DNB holds 615 tons (15,000 bars) of gold mainly in Amsterdam, with other stores in the U.K. and North America; the value of this gold reserve is over €6 billion ($6.62 billion). Calling gold the “trust anchor,” the article details briefly why the hard asset is so important to wealth building and the global economy, claiming: "Gold is... the trust anchor for the financial system. If the whole system collapses, the gold stock provides a collateral to start over. Gold gives confidence in the power of the central bank's balance sheet."

Why this sudden admission of what goldbugs have been saying for years? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that on October 7, the bank announced it would soon be moving a large part of its gold reserves to "the new DNB Cash Center at military premises in Zeist."

Almost as if the Netherlands is preparing for the grand reset, and is moving its most valuable asset to a "military" installation just for that purpose.

As bitcoin.com tongue-in-cheek points out, "DNB is no stranger to playing along with the Keynesian, inflationary games of the global monetary system. A system which, according to some, is now more a Ponzi scheme based on force and blind faith than sound economic principle. That notwithstanding, the centralized financial powers of the world know the real score, and that’s why hard assets like gold are hoarded and locked down while everyday, individual residents of these geopolitical jurisdictions are encouraged to spend and spend, going further into debt to prop up ultimately unsound national economies."

It is hardly a coincidence that in its preparation for monetary doomsday, the Dutsch Central Bank is also set to begin cracking down on crypto exchanges and wallets, stating that "firms offering services for the exchange between cryptos and regular money, and crypto wallet providers must register with De Nederlandsche Bank."

While the push for greater KYC/AML transparency is a growing global trend, and is hardly surprising in a world in which trillions in assets reside in "tax-evading" offshore jurisdiction, the remarkable aspect of this latest crackdown against crypto - which many see as a modern, more efficient form of "gold" - is the fact that invasive regulations and restrictions by central banks can be seen as yet another means of stockpiling precious assets. This time, not gold bars, but bitcoin and crypto.

As for the timing of the "great monetary reset", which other central banks have already quietly hinted at themselves amid massive repatriation of physical gold from the New York Fed to various European central banks such as Germany and Austria, we are confident that the trust-keepers of the current establishment - such as other central banks and the IMF - will be kind enough to provide ample advance notice to the citizens of the "developed" world to exchange their fiat into hard assets. Or, then again, perhaps not.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/central-bank-issues-stunning-warning-if-entire-system-collapses-gold-will-be-needed-start

When Christina Lomazzo was a teenager, she used to hop back and forth across the U.S. Canada border for fun. A native of Ontario, with a father born in Italy, Lomazzo grew up speaking French, English, and Italian, and when things were slow in her hometown she and her friends would pile into a black SUV, cross the Detroit River to the United States and watch all-star Rasheed Wallace and the Detroit Pistons. Instead of buying each other presents when she was a kid, Lomazzo’s family took trips around the world.

Now the 28-year-old former project coordinator for the Bank of Canada and cofounder of Deloitte’s government blockchain practice is leveraging her international background at the United Nations, where in September 2018 she was hired as the United Nations Children’s Fund’s first head of blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin that makes transactions across borders as easy as if borders didn’t exist at all.  After 14 months’ work at the imposing United Nations Plaza in New York, Lomazzo and her international team today announced the Unicef Crypto Fund, a prototype that lets the agency accept bitcoin and ether donations and invest them directly into blockchain startups

In addition to investing cryptocurrency into early-stage, open-source companies working with children, the fund represents the first time any UN agency, much less one that generated $6.7 billion revenue last year, will be able to accept bitcoin and ethereum donations. The prototype, launched today with a donation of 1 bitcoin and 10,000 ether from the Switzerland-based Ethereum Foundation, has signed agreements with Unicef USA, Unicef France, Unicef Australia, and Unicef New Zealand to start accepting cryptocurrency donations immediately.

As the United Nations, which received $15 billion in donations last year, kicks off a new phase of development in which it sees itself as not only dispenser of aid but as a financial innovator, the ability to accept cryptocurrency donations and track exactly how they were spent could pave the way for a new, more transparent agency, leading to more donations.

“We don’t see the Crypto Fund so much as being crypto,” says Lomazzo, speaking from Unicef’s Office of Innovation in New York City. “What we really see it as is being ready for a digital future. We’re going to need to be ready to deal with digital assets whether that be bitcoin or ether or some other government-backed digital currency. It could be any of those, but this is really helping us build up the muscles to understand how to live or how to on-board digital assets.”

Lomazzo was born in April 1991 in Windsor, Ontario, just a short drive from where she grew up in the town of Amherstburg, and an even shorter drive to the Pistons’ former home stadium. The child of a computer engineer father and a worker advocate mother, Lomazzo was raised by her Italian grandmother, who never learned English.

With a sense of global culture deep in her DNA, Lomazzo enrolled at the University of Ottowa in 2009 where she studied in Italy and Australia before earning a bachelor’s degree in international business. Shortly after graduating, she was exposed to bitcoin while working as a project coordinator at Canada’s central bank. By 2016, when she earned two master’s degrees from Canada’s Global Alliance in Management Education and Western University, in international management and international business respectively, she had caught the bitcoin bug, going on to write one of the first master’s theses on cryptocurrency, “How Banks Respond to Disruptive Innovation: Blockchain as a Case Study,” on how ten giant banks were exploring blockchain.

Before Lomazzo even graduated, in December 2015, at around the same time Unicef was starting to explore blockchain, she was hired by Deloitte, where she worked in an office across the street from the Parliament building in Ottawa, Canada’s capital. At the time, the office’s blockchain work was still a part of the emerging tech division, but she and innovation lead Kevin Armstrong spun off the blockchain project, which specialized in helping local, provincial and state agencies around the world use the technology.

In February 2016, at around the time her future colleagues at the United Nations finished their first blockchain prototype, Lomazzo entered a “super-seedy,” now-closed, bar in Toronto called the Clocktower Brew Pub and began documenting how bitcoin was evolving. She photographed a bitcoin ATM that was “behind a black curtain, so you felt like you were doing something wrong,” she says, and took what ended up being the first of four photos of the ATM. It shows a price of $551 CAD; the price today is $10,920.

“The cool part is that bitcoin ATM has moved since then, and so I track it,” she says. “That exact one has moved to a convenience store closer to where I lived. And I walked in. And it was, like, ‘Where’s your Bitcoin ATM?’ It was in the middle, super-bright, super-visible. There was a line behind me.”

As bitcoin struggled to change its reputation from a currency for criminals to something businesses might use, Lomazzo stumbled across the job post for the lead blockchain position at Unicef “two hours before it closed.” Following the prodding of her younger sister, Lomazzo applied, and a month and a half later she had crossed another border, this time to New York City.

The birth of the Crypto Fund actually preceded Lomazzo, going all the back to 2007 when Unicef launched its Office of Innovation, led by Chris Fabian, 39. The office, which prototypes a wide range of experimental technology, quickly established a reputation for identifying projects that could be integrated into the larger organization. One of the office’s first projects, on data science, evolved into Unicef’s current information technology and data division.

In the winter of 2010, long before most people had even heard about bitcoin, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 65/146, titled “Innovative mechanisms for financing of development.” Dubbed “innovative finance” for short, the resolution requested that agencies identify new, steady sources of financing to supplement existing donations.

In spite of some less than successful work at the Office of Innovation involving virtual reality, Fabian and London School of Economics grad Sunita Grote, 37, took a cue from the resolution and launched the Unicef Venture Fund in February 2016 as a way to fund startups working with open source technology in developing nations. By November of that year the fund, managed by Grote, announced its first cohort of investments, including Unicef’s first blockchain investment, South Africa-based 9Needs, using blockchain to help schoolchildren prove their identity.

In August 2017, the same time Lomazzo was promoted to senior consultant at Deloitte, the Office of Innovation had its first internal discussion about the Crypto Fund with Unicef’s Department of Finance and Asset Management. Over the course of the next year, the team formulated an official product description and created an accounting structure for holding cryptocurrencies in cooperation with the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). Nevertheless, they were still without a dedicated leader, with Fabian and Grote helping run a number of other efforts.

The following September, as the first round of feedback from senior leadership on the Crypto Fund was being processed, Lomazzo was finally brought on board full-time to not only build out the blockchain team and manage the entirety of Unicef’s blockchain work but help bring the Crypto Fund over the finish line. “Blockchain is a complicated, theoretical thing,” says Fabian. “And cryptocurrency’s a complicated application of it. Christina has the ability to make that really understandable because she’s done it with bankers and governments before”

In parallel with Unicef’s blockchain work, UN secretary-general António Guterres published a lengthy strategic plan for how the United Nations could increasingly use a wide range of technologies to take a new kind of leadership role in solving the world’s problems. He formed a high-level panel co-chaired by Melinda Gates and Jack Ma to explore how cooperative efforts could reduce redundancies and expand the United Nation’s impact. After almost a year of work, in June 2019, the panel issued its “declaration of digital interdependence,” with five recommendations for building an infrastructure capable of solving global problems across borders, giving fuel and further guidance to Unicef’s Crypto Fund and its other blockchain projects.

Perhaps most importantly, the 47-page report called for the creation of an inclusive digital economy and society. The World Bank estimates that as of 2018, 1.7 billion people were excluded from the global banking economy. Using terms very familiar to blockchain developers, the report called for the creation of affordable access to “digital networks” and financial services for every adult on earth by 2030, recommending the formation of a broad, multi-stakeholder alliance involving the UN to create a platform for sharing digital public goods and data, all things touted by blockchain advocates as potential benefits of using a shared, distributed ledger.

Three months later, the Crypto Fund prototype was ready. According to the final fund description presented to Unicef execs before today’s launch, the fund is currently limited to no more than 1,000 bitcoin, or about $8.1 million, and 10,000 ether, or about $1.7 million. Overall, the Innovation Fund manages $17.9 million, not counting today’s crypto donation, and has received a commitment of an additional 8,000 ether, worth about $1.4 million at today’s price, from a single donor. Importantly, the fund will not convert the cryptocurrency into U.S. dollars or any other fiat currency. Three existing portfolio companies have been selected to receive the initial cryptocurrency dispersals. Argentina-based Atix Labs received 1 bitcoin, Mexico-based Prescrypto received 50 ether, and Tunisia-based Utopixar received 50 ether. In total, the Innovation Fund has backed six blockchain companies in a portfolio of 72 companies from 42 nations.

“The Unicef Crypto Fund provides an amazing opportunity for us to work collaboratively with Unicef teams around the world,” says Aya Miyaguchi, executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, which will be providing technical support to Unicef and its blockchain portfolio as part of the investment. “Unicef has a network of 190 offices across the world that brings to the Ethereum ecosystem the ability to work with leading minds in regions that could benefit the most from Ethereum technology.”

While Lomazzo and the rest of her team hope the Crypto Fund will help them tap into the $170 billion combined market capitalization represented by bitcoin and ethereum, there’s a second, potentially bigger reason for the nonprofit to accept and invest in crypto. At the time of launch only general donations can be accepted, but in the future, the Crypto Fund is especially well suited for directed donations, in which a donor can specify that his or her funds be used only, for example, to purchase pencils for schoolgirls in a particular region and would have 100% certainty that’s exactly what happened. Because ethereum and bitcoin transact on shared, public ledgers, the flow of funds can be easily tracked from donation to purchase. A 2018 report in the Journal of Accounting, Auditing & Finance showed that charities displaying a seal of transparency from the nonprofit GuideStar experienced a 53% increase in donations over the following year.

“We're working on a way to actually have a visual that's reading from each chain that shows money going in and flowing,” says Lomazzo. “So, you no longer have to trust in the organization that the money has gone there. You can actually go ahead and verify yourself.”

Since Unicef isn’t currently able to pay salaries, energy bills or rent in crypto, the fund received a special waiver from the director of finance at Unicef’s private fundraising and partnerships division saying that it would forgo a fee it normally charges to recover its own costs. “We’re going into an era where our top leadership recognizes that Unicef needs to be a financing and financial institution,” says Fabian. “And what that means is we need to be able to take our multibillion budget a year and deploy it in much more sophisticated ways.”

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (it has since dropped the “International” and “Emergency”) was founded in 1946 to bring food, shelter and other support to children and young people in the aftermath of World War II, a part of the United Nations General Assembly, consisting of 193 member states working together to solve a wide range of international problems. Wealthier member states, such as France, Germany, Japan, and the United States, form national committees to raise funds and provide support in their own nations and around the world.

It is in these national committees where one of the most interesting aspects of the Crypto Fund comes into play. The United Nations is on what’s called international territory, meaning government laws and regulations don’t apply in United Nations Plaza on the east side of Midtown Manhattan in quite the same way they do elsewhere. As a result of the UN’s extraterritoriality, as it’s called, each of the 190 national agencies that could potentially benefit from the crypto muscles built by the Unicef Office of Innovation needs to sort through its own regulatory requirements. So while the fund is notable in what it says about Unicef’s back-office capabilities, each country has to see to its own regulatory compliance before joining.

Of the four countries already signed up for the Crytpo Fund, Unicef France is the most mature. In January 2018, Unicef France executive director Sebastien Lyon started exploring ethereum as a new way to accept donations and says he has lined up a “significant amount” of individual donors who are only interested in giving if the national committee doesn’t convert the donations to fiat. One of the biggest reasons France has taken the lead in accepting crypto donations, according to Lyon, is that the existing regulations in France clearly show how to categorize cryptocurrency for accounting purposes. Nevertheless, accepting crypto still required “extensive discussion with the regulators, and also with our auditors,” he added, something he’d like to help others avoid.

So in the build-up to today’s announcement Lyon says he spoke to several other national committees, including those in Germany, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, that were looking to learn from his experience. “I'm in touch with many of my colleagues in different countries in the world,” says Lyon. “They're all very interested.”

Lomazzo’s work with blockchain extends far beyond the Crypto Fund. She heads a small but growing team of five people in the Office of Innovation. Lomazzo reports to Fabian, the office’s cofounder and head of the Innovation Fund, and Grote, who is fund manager on a number of blockchain initiatives.

On the operational outward-facing side, Unicef is exploring how blockchain can be used to track internet connectivity in schools as part of its Project Connect. The Atrium is a platform being build by Unicef to encourage UN agencies to share what they’ve learned about blockchain and to collaborate on projects. The Boost Token is being explored as a way to reward mentors for contributing open-source code and students for studying it. On the internal, back-office side is a prototype now under construction using the ethereum smart contract language Solidity to automate certain back-office procedures.

As far as future adoption is concerned, in addition to Fabian’s work with Lomazzo and others in Unicef, he is co-chair of the U.N. Innovation Network, a group of 1,200 people from all United Nations agencies. Following an Innovation Network report last year on all the blockchain work being done across the United Nations, the network is now in the process of assembling its first working group specifically on cryptocurrency, he says. “That means we can get people who are my counterparts from other agencies to take what we have done today, pick it up, put it into their agency, and apply it immediately,” says Fabian. “If one agency gets its legal people to sign off on something, it can basically be used by any other agency. It's almost a cut and paste.”

“This obviously starts with the Crypto Fund,” Lomazzo added. “But the hope is that this can be expanded, and so that donations have more visibility into where they're coming from, and where they're going to.”


https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2019/10/08/6-billion-united-nations-agency-launches-bitcoin-ethereum-crypto-fund/

The Punjab Maharashtra Co-operative Bank (PMC), in India, has been caught cooking the books and misreporting non-preforming loans (NPL) of Mumbai-based real estate developer Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd (HDIL). As Reuters reports,  PMC hid the bad loans with 21,000 fictitious accounts, which has spooked depositors, investors and government officials.

Reuters learned about the massive fraud through a complaint filed with the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Mumbai Police earlier this week, alleges that PMC concealed $616 million in NPLs.

BloombergQuint said PMC's loan book had a 73% exposure to HDIL's failed real estate dealings.


The complaint says PMC's Chairman Waryam Singh and its Managing Director Joy Thomas were at the center point of the fraud. It also names HDIL's former senior executives Sarang Wadhwan and Rakesh Wadhwa, who were the recipients of the real estate loans.

As recession fears intensify in India, the PMC banking crisis has ignited the debate among government officials that the banking sector could be headed for turmoil.  

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) took over PMC last week and has prevented the bank from new loan creation, while nearly 900,000 depositors have been informed that capital controls are being placed on their accounts for six months.

Dozens of videos have been uploaded to social media this week, detailing how depositors are being locked out of their accounts, some fear the worst, as the bank has likely failed.

One depositor said he lost all of his money in the PMC banking crisis.

Thousands of people have marched in the streets this week, demanding PMC return their savings.

Another heartbreaking moment when a woman discovers her family's savings were completely wiped out in the banking crisis.

Hundreds crowd inside one PMC bank branch, attempting to withdraw their savings, as they learn the bank failed.

CNBC TV18 reported depositors are feeling "anger and pain" as they learn capital controls have limited them to only withdrawing $100.

With a financial crisis developing, the Reserve Bank of India is scrambling to reassure the public that the banking sector isn't imploding.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/bank-crisis-hits-india-bank-stops-functioning-people-crying-outside-bank-branches

SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE, MEXICO — Not long after Kathy and Jim Machir retired nine years ago, they left San Diego for a new home along the cobblestoned streets of this vibrant mountain town four hours northwest of Mexico City.

"We had been on vacation to San Miguel once and loved it," Jim Machir, now 72, said.

San Miguel de Allende is famous for its colonial architecture, bustling art scene, mild climate and low cost of living.

It has long been a magnet for American retirees, and more than 1,000 U.S. expats now call it home.

The Machirs sold their house in the U.S. and used the proceeds to begin building a new house in San Miguel de Allende.

But their retirement dream turned into a nightmare in December 2018 when they suddenly found themselves unable to pay their contractors.

Their story may send a chill down the spines of the more than 1 million other U.S. citizens, many of them retirees, who live in Mexico. The life savings they had entrusted to their local banker of more than six years had all but disappeared.

"I was speechless," said Kathy Machir, 67, recalling the moment she found out she had roughly 40 cents left in her account. "It just gives you a sense of ultimate betrayal, loss, horror…"

But the Machirs weren't the only ones.

NBC News spoke to nine American families who say Marcela Zavala Taylor, a former banker with Grupo Financiero Monex, had gained their trust only to disappear after they discovered money had gone missing from their personal accounts. These families, whose estimated losses total more than $7 million dollars, all say they were blindsided by what had happened.

NBC News has chosen not to disclose how much money each individual said they lost over concerns they expressed about their safety.

Jim Karger, 67, and his wife Kelly, 59, moved from Dallas, Texas to San Miguel to retire nearly 18 years ago. The Kargers said they began to rely on Zavala after the brick-and-mortar Monex branch in San Miguel had closed. She continued to represent Monex and handle the accounts of several clients in the area so they wouldn't have to travel.

"She was a very warm person," said Jim Karger, who, like the Machirs, alleges Taylor took advantage of his trust.

The Kargers and various other individuals say that Taylor's family is well-known in the area. Her father, Manuel Zavala, was once the town's mayor and her mother was an American. This, they say, contributed to their trust in Taylor. Taylor's parents are not accused of any wrongdoing.

"She wanted to know about your family. I knew about her family. We didn't consider Marcela Zavala our banker, we also considered her our friend," Karger said.

For a while, the Kargers said they had no trouble accessing their money as periodic statements would come in and money would be available through a runner.

And even last June, when the Kargers stopped receiving bank statements, they said Taylor told them that it was because Monex had been upgrading its computer system. At the time, they believed her. But by December, they finally realized something was wrong.

"She became harder to find, which was never the case," Jim Karger said. "Getting money was more difficult."

Karger's worst fears were confirmed when he visited the Monex branch in the nearby city of Querétaro.

"He said to me, 'It's all gone. All the money is gone,'" Kelly Karger said, recalling the phone conversation she had with her husband as she was out having lunch with a friend. "I just remember bending [over], just stopping in the street thinking, 'I'm going to be sick.'"

Devastated, Karger said she was eventually able to go through years of bank statements and determine that money was slowly siphoned out of their accounts.

However, it wasn't just regular clients who had allegedly lost money at the hands of Taylor, but family too.

Lani Van Petten, Marcela's U.S.-born aunt, said she was comfortable having a family member look after the money she had saved to buy a house and pay for her granddaughter's education.

"It worked smoothly because I never asked questions," Van Petten said. "I never got a statement. I thought, 'Oh well, you know, Marcela's on top of it, no problem.'"

That is, until December came around, and Van Petten needed to pay for her granddaughter's schooling.

"I had been telling her since mid-December, 'I've got to pay for Maria Jose's school, so, you know, send the money,'" she recalls telling Taylor.

But Marcela never answered, she said.

Van Petten then called Monex.

"They told me she no longer worked there," she said. "And they told me I had 1000 pesos in my account [about $50] and that it was all gone. I started to cry. That was the obvious thing to do."

In a statement to NBC News, Monex said 45 of the 50 complaints received from clients have been resolved and that the remaining five are still in negotiations.

"Monex reiterates that it is an institution that acts with strict adherence to national and international rules that all its businesses and operations fulfill according to law and are regulated and supervised by the corresponding authorities," Monex wrote in a translated statement.

Several of the people NBC News spoke to say getting their money back from Monex has been an uphill battle, especially when it comes to getting refunded for 100 percent of the amount they say was initially in their accounts. They also told NBC News they were upset with the way Monex responded to their concerns and believe the bank was involved in the alleged fraud. But many of them, including the Machirs and Van Petten, have since settled and said they were asked by Monex to pursue legal action against Taylor. They have signed confidentiality agreements that keep them from disclosing how much of their losses they were able to recover.

Monex also said it has initiated criminal legal action against the former banker and has strengthened its internal controls. However, Monex declined to say where or when it had filed any lawsuit against Taylor.

NBC News checked with Mexican legal authorities who said they have no record of any complaints related to the alleged fraud.

Taylor did not respond to several requests for comment.

Van Petten said that if she saw her niece, "I'd probably hold her hand and say, 'Marcela is this possible? Could you really have done all this?'" But Van Petten claims she has not been able to speak to Taylor or any of her family members.

The alleged victims say they don't want the hundreds of thousands of other Americans living in Mexico to go through the same thing they did and advise expats against placing all of their money in one spot.

"I think it comes down to doing your homework before you make any decision, and especially if you're going to do it in a foreign country," Kelly Karger said.

Kathy Machir agrees, adding, "Be alert. Be aware. Don't put all your eggs in one basket."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/american-retirees-mexico-say-their-life-savings-vanished-mexican-bank-n1059666

This topic invokes something known as imperialism.

The hierarchy of nations is defined within social order resembling a caste system. Wealthy and powerful nations retain their status through adopting measures to ensure poor(er) nations are unable to elevate their own standards and become competitive. This is reflected by leaders of underdeveloped countries receiving financing and support from foreign powers in exchange for guarantees to keep the population repressed.

As mentioned, the end goal of imperialism is to limit competition between wealthy and poor nations, to guarantee the wealthy retain their status as king of the mountain. It enforces the status quo of the wealthy remaining rich, and those living in poverty remaining poor. This is one reason why many brutal and repressive dictators are found to receive billions in support from foreign sources. It is cheaper for wealthier nations to fund a dictator who is guaranteed to regress educational and economic standards so their country can never compete on a global scale. Cheaper than it would be to compete directly with said nation if they made a legitimate effort to strengthen their economy and elevate standard of living.

The second issue relates to design flaws in how governments are structured. Governments are structured as the largest and most powerful monopolies in the world. Any negative criticism that can be said about US big tech or amazon being a monopoly would apply far more to governments as they lack competition and are not incentivized to produce intelligent nor efficient solutions to problems.

Being a monopoly implies if state issued fiat currency hyperinflates, there are no alternative options. If governments implement poor economic policy or poor regulatory standards, there are no alternative options. The centralized design of state authority is flawed from inception due to it being monopolistic in origin and implementation.

One way to improve conditions relating to inflation would be for governments to issue more than one fiat currency to create a competitive environment. That way if one state issued fiat is poorly managed and devalues, there are other superior options for consumers to fall back on. Governments and leaders need a competitive environment to produce their highest quality work and demonstrate why they deserve to make decisions that affect the lives of millions.

Breaking up state monopolies and forcing them to compete on some level has potential to produce a superior state format in contrast with the way things are now.

That is the logical sense, if anyone can break these encryption then nothing is secure

But regardless of the above, all in all, I am pretty sure this had nothing to do with the price dip, mainly cause there is no connection between the events.

So even if they are stating it will solve bitcoins algorithm it can be said for anything security based too.

I'm 100% in agreement with you and your conclusion on the matter.
However M2 is not the actual money printing schematic, it is mostly money created through debt.
As I said, they take it on credit from each other and you must know that FED has no other way to introduce money (M1-cash) in to economy than making a public debt. Printing itself is like 0.8%[?] of all the assets. Printing is not a problem, fractional reserve is.