The above is true ^.

At the time, bitcoin's net worth was much more centralized in china and relied more on china as a proportion of its market cap. Now with bitcoin being more decentralized throughout countries other than china, and relying less on china for value, the same announcement is having less of an effect.

There could be something said of the centralization vs decentralization debate, there.

The rumor of Fort Knox being robbed & replaced may have been intended to reduce the overall value of gold, in order to create a lower buy in point.

The references you see above from 2011 about tungsten refer to an isolated case in the mainstream news where a gold bar purchased from a reputable buyer had its core drilled out and replaced with tungsten rods. Tungsten rods weigh close to the same as gold making them difficult to detect but of course are far less valuable.

That story about tungsten too, may have been intended to reduce the overall value of gold, to create a buy in point. It was an isolated case from what I remember.

Next big event is UFC Fight Night Ovince St Preux vs Yushin Okami on september 23rd, 2017.



Bellator 183 Benson Henderson vs Patricky Freire is also on september 23rd.



The UFC event is in japan. Both events might be on during different times due to time zone differences, even though they're listed as being on the same day.

Long term oil might accurately be described as chemical processes which generate gasoline and other hydrocarbon based fuels from waste oil products.

Some might think there's no such thing as "long term oil" as eventually crude oil will reach a where it requires more energy to harvest it from deep wells than the amount of energy the oil itself contains. And the entire process becomes unfeasible. But there are new methods to generate ol byproducts from waste oil. So peak oil may not doom civilization after all!

After Canelo vs GGG, Manny Pacquiao went on twitter and said:

Manny Pacquiao: "Did they bring these judges over from australia?"   

I haven't seen Canelo vs GGG yet. With everyone saying GGG won and was robbed by the judges, I thought that was a hysterical comment from Pacman.

Definitely looking forward to this rematch. So far behind on my tape watching, I still haven't seen the first one. Need to step up my game.

China has gone so far as to build entire fake cities in an effort to artificially boost its GDP. Banning bitcoin exchanges will likely result in a hit to china's overall GDP as closing exchanges could have a negative effect on china's job market and investment sector.

Over the long term, china unnecessarily restricting the innovation and progress which crypto represents is only likely to weaken their economy over the long term, while other nations like japan, australia and russia are in a better position to benefit from crypto's growth.

Rolling out a crypto currency would kill banks wire transfer business.

Wire transfers are slower and much more expensive than crypto transfers. The only thing stopping banks wire transfer customers from jumping ship and switching to crypto is the general public being unaware of crypto's superiority in those areas.

Banks which prefer centralization and schemes of centralized control (hence the term "central banks") aren't likely to have the correct mentality or mindset to run a decentralized crypto well.

Its probably a bad idea for banks to roll out crypto. Of course, bankers typically focusing on short term gains, to the neglect of long term thinking it makes sense they would find appeal in the concept of the short term gain in crypto, to the long term malus of killing their own wire transfer business in the process.

If people are interested in this type of thing, they might lookup George Bush's connection to haliburton and its profits from the iraq war. Exxon's record profits from war in the middle east and how exxon uses lobbyist funding to influence politicians towards pro war stances. The clinton foundation's profits from US taxpayers and the disaster in haiti. If I remember right, the united states federal reserve may have profited as much as $40 billion from the TARP (troubled asset relief program) AKA bank bailout bill. There were also banks or investment firms who profited from the economic collapse of 2008. September 11th was a few days ago. There's a conspiracy theory that says many inside traders who knew the 9/11/2001 attacks would take place shorted airline stocks to profit from the attacks. Although I can't comment on whether that's true or not. I honestly don't know how accurate it is.

People profiting from a decline in bitcoin's price could be a more common thing that many realize. Insider trading and using the news media to influence prices has been ongoing for awhile now.

It might be fair to say demand drives the world economy. If bitcoin fares well, its due to it supplying people with a needed service or commodity. Being a provider of goods or services may not translate directly to controlling an economy. Control implies a dominant portion of market share but doesn't affect demand, which drives markets.

Microsoft windows might have owned a majority share 80% to 90% of the personal computer OS market at one time. If Linux or Mac were able to create a product which better satsified global demand, microsoft may have been dethroned.

Gold would be more competitive if it could legally be used to buy & sell rather than primarily being a store of long term value.

Anything that adds greater functionality to gold could be a benefit, not only to gold but to society and civilization.

Gold supply, like bitcoin supply, is regulated to a degree by mining. This makes gold in a limited sense, resistant, to manipulation which could destroy value and innovation over the long term as well as limited bar to entry for markets in propping up monopolies and exploitive business standards.

"Governed by code alone, making the contract digital sancrosanct."

That is a decent way of putting it.

Context is where economics discussions become complicated. Many have a tendency to define terms like centralization, regulation, capitalism/socialism and crypto in absolute context. To say that capitalism is always better than socialism is an oversimplification. There are strengths and weaknesses, advantages and disadvantages in everything.

Its better to see them in chronological order.

The sequel resolves storyline arcs established in the 1st film.

Seeing Guardians 2 before Guardians 1 is like seeing The Empire Strikes Back(V) before A New Hope(IV).

A person might not get the full effect of plot twists.

Here's another facet to the blockchain debate.

Many believe centralized or monolithic software algorithms are preferable to distributed algorithms. One of the issues with this is many aren't aware of distributed software engineering they encounter in their daily lives. Blockchain is the only example of distributed software many are aware of.

Don't forget there is software like bittorrent which is built using a distributed networking algorithm with many peer nodes, not completely dissimilar from a blockchain. Some might argue that a direct peer to peer file sharing system is superior to bittorrent. But possibly we might see there are advantages to distributed software like torrentz.

That's a very good question.

The 20/80 rule of thumb could apply here. Historically, economists have cited a loose generalization which claims 20% of the population typically own 80% of the wealth. If this observation is true, it could imply that 80% of crypto is owned by 20% of crypto users.

The 20% of the population demographic cited in the 20/80 rule are today known as "one percenters" or "elites".

Of course this is all speculation. It is possible that the demographic breakdown of crypto is nearer to 50/50 than it is 20/80. Without some type of census or metrics breakdown its difficult to say for certain.

I still think that a high proportion of finance, investment and business is devoted towards expedient short term gains which sacrifice long term value. Maybe you can see it with large corporations and boards of directors. They have a tendency to focus on having higher profit margins every quarter. Perhaps to the exclusion of building long term value or growth.

An oversaturation of focusing on short term gains to the expense of long term value could create a vacuum where investments/finance/businesses which focus on building long term value, like bitcoin, can thrive. It might be fair to say some of bitcoin's success is due to it being a great creator of long term value during a time when there is a dire need for it in the world.

For the average person wanting to create long term wealth there can be many barriers, obstacles and hurdles for them to overcome. Bitcoin could simplify this process drastically making long term value available to all.

The value of ethereum and all crypto is derived from the current market value of btc. To accurately predict ethereum's future, we must have a solid conception of where btc is headed. There are generally two ways that I know of to interpret btc's recent price movements.

#1 BTC's price was declining possibly due to an attempt to push its price down with the end game intent of buying cheap btc to profit when the price swings upwards again.

#2 BTC's price decline was possibly due to some type of coordinated attack on btc.

These are the two main options I know of. Depending on which is true, that could help someone have a clearer picture of where the market is headed and what decisions might be best.  

Thanks for making this thread. Some notes off the top of my head.

-Both Gilbert Burns and Sergio Moraes are multiple time world champions in brazilian jiu jitsu. Moraes could be a good test for Kamaru Usman.

-Anthony Hamilton is the betting favorite but was KO'ed in his last fight by Marcel Fortuna who took the fight at late notice and weighed about 40 pounds less than Hamilton.

-Zu Anyanwu was on Dana White's contender series about 2 months ago. If his name looks familiar that's likely where you saw him.

There isn't much drama or big news stories with this event. There isn't much that stands out about it.

Hey if anyone decides to create an abstraction for prediction & analysis work in crypto.

Try using something like thermoeconomics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoeconomics

There's a possibility of developing more scientific and accurate methods of financial analysis/prediction in comparison to what is traditionally used today.

Much of economic/financial analysis is extremely generalized and non specific. That might be improved upon.

There are a lot of people with economic and financial backgrounds coming out in the media claiming "bitcoin is a bubble, bitcoin is priced twice what it should be, the real price of bitcoin should be $2,700, bitcoin is a ponzi scheme" and making similar remarks. James Dimon is far from being the only one.

The timing of these announcements which correlate to china's recent announcement and the overreaction with a sell off is very interesting.

As far as I know, precious metals can't be eliminated without devaluing gold and reducing the effectiveness of gold holdings traditionally used to back issued fiat.

Is there a pattern here.

#1 China claims they plan to crack down on exchanges.
#2 Economic frauds come out at the same time claiming bitcoin is an overpriced bubble, ponzo scheme.
#3 At the same time, it appears bankers and other whales begin to dump bitcoin to drive the price down.

All of these events happen close enough together that we might ask the question: was this coordinated. Did someone plan for these events to happen within the same timeframe with the intent of reducing bitcoin's price?

Also with bitcoin cash not doing well. Might we theorize bitcoin cash was bankers plan A to control bitcoin.

Plan B was this coordinated attack to drive the price down?

Also there is news that china is doing nothing to crack down on exchanges from zerohedge:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-11/chinese-bitcoin-trading-soars-local-exchanges-deny-crackdown-reports