What's shocking and ridiculous is that upwards of $100 billion in electricity is squandered globally annually on stand-by devices and other painfully obvious sources of waste.

But this attracts essentially zero concern or commentary.

Do you notice any asymmetry in the scrutiny being applied to the status quo and to bitcoin et al.? The status quo-- wasteful beyond measure--is just fine: nobody questions the staggering waste built into the status quo, from hundreds of millions of devices consuming electricity but doing no work to hundreds of millions of vehicles idling in traffic for hours each and every day across the globe--nope, the really big issue is bitcoin / blockchain consumption.

Does anyone question how much electricity the vast server farms of Google and Facebook consume in order to serve up adverts and store photos of puppies and kittens? And how about the energy consumed by the NSA and the dozens of National Security agencies that have proliferated over the past 16 years? How much coal gets burned to serve adverts, archive photos of puppies and kittens, and store billions of emails, phone calls to Aunt Sadie, etc. for future analysis? (Dear old Sadie could be a jihadist--ya never know...)

One doesn’t have to look very far to find mechanisms that fit the definition exactly: Social security programs are all classic ponzis.

The demographic reality today is that with the entry of the “Baby Boom” generation into retirement, given that the subsequent generations are so much smaller in size, additionally penalized by falling real wages, rising or multiple taxation, decaying purchasing power on their money and returns on any savings they can eek out suppressed into negative nominal yields.

this Ponzi is in its terminal phase.

“Backed by nothing”

This is the goto criticism for people who simply don’t understand that crypto-currencies are based upon mathematics, zero-trust, open-source and consensus. They think that bitcoins can simply be created “at will” and are backed by nothing.

They also say that as if the world’s reserve currency, the US dollar, isn’t, literally, “backed by nothing” and hasn’t been since 1972; and as if it can’t be created at will, which it most certainly has, with a vengeance.

Indeed as Galbraith continued in our earlier passage:

    “This was true in one of the earliest seeming marvels: when banks discovered that they could print bank notes and issue them to borrowers in excess of the hard-money deposits in the banks’ strong rooms”.

All fiat currencies today really are backed by nothing and can be created at will (that’s what the word “fiat” actually means), and perhaps unbeknownst to many we are right now in a protracted, global currency war. Every nation is “racing to the bottom”, trying to devalue their currency against their trading partners so they can:

-    give their exporters a competitive advantage

-    pull stronger currencies in to make money on the exchange, and

-    service their ever expanding debts back with devalued, cheaper currency

This is why everybody’s purchasing power is going down despite tenured academics and central bankers incessantly complaining about “low inflation” and political spokesmodels always talking up a “strong currency”.

In Bitcoin or other true crypto-currencies, early holders are not receiving bitcoin from later entrants.

In fact, quite the opposite is happening.

Later entrants must entice earlier ones to part with their bitcoin. Since Bitcoin cannot be created at will, it must be mined at a rate that drops over time (this year approximately 640K new bitcoin will be mined, about 3.8% of the total supply).

Demand for bitcoin is simply outstripping supply of new coins being mined (for reasons we will discuss in Part II).

If said price action rises dramatically (like for example, Bitcoin suddenly became the highest performing asset class in the world) then a feedback loop would occur.

Ever higher prices would be required to induce earlier holders to sell.

Tulipmania

What is described above is the same dynamic that occurs in any “bull market”, as buying begets more buying, and “fear of missing out” kicks in. It is said one of the most accurate gauges of “happiness” correlates closely to how much wealth one has when compared to one’s brother-in-law. Alex J Pollock describes it in “Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity”, as “The disturbing experience of watching one’s friends get rich”.




Finally I found Anne Goldgar’s Tulipmania: Money, Honor and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age, which is the most in-depth investigation to the rise and subsequent fall of Tulipmania extant today. In it we learn about the circular references that went on to inform our present time about Tulipmania:

    “If we trace these stories back through the centuries, we find how weak their foundations actually are. In fact, they are based on one or two contemporary pieces of propaganda and a prodigious amount of plagiarism. From there we have our modern story of tulipmania.”

There are currently $1.1 trillion in $100 bills in global circulation, and $650 billion in high denomination euro notes. Total value: $1.7 trillion, not counting counterfeit notes that likely add 20-30% (in the case of $100 bills at least).

By comparison, bitcoin’s current total value is $167 billion, and total crypto currency outstanding is $307 billion.

The question is: what is the appropriate share for crypto currencies like bitcoin in a market defined as “fiat+crypto currencies”? At current levels, bitcoin’s share is 8%, and all cryptos combined have a 15% share.

Where could this ratio go? Here is a table to consider, assuming bitcoin remains 50% of the total crypto currency market (a fairly sticky ratio lately):

-    Bitcoin at $20,000: 14% market share of crypto+fiat paper currency market
-    Bitcoin at $50,000: 25% market share
-    Bitcoin at $100,000: 33% market share

VOUS EMPECHER A TOUT PRIX DE DEPENSER VOTRE ARGENT: UN CAS PRATIQUE DE NOTRE LECTEUR FRANCK LIMITE A 1.000 EUROS !

du 27 novembre au 1 décembre 2017 : "J’ai suivi votre dernière vidéo à TVL avec un grand intérêt. Oui nous ne sommes pas libre de notre argent, lisez ma petite histoire qui m’est arrivé ces derniers mois.

Faisant des travaux pour faire une toiture sur mon garage j’ai voulu payer la facture des matériaux d’un montant de 3.200€ environ. Eh bien, il m'a été impossible de payer ce fournisseur avec ma carte Mastercard plafonnée à... 2000€ par mois (en France).

Donc mon fournisseur me propose de faire un virement bancaire. Mais impossible également car plafonné, lui, a 1000€ par semaine.

Donc je me suis rendu à ma chère banque du Crédit Agricole pour déplafonner ma carte bancaire et le guichetier m’a répondu: «Oui monsieur pas de problème mais ce service et payant de 7€ au-dessus de 3000 € ».

Je lui ai répondu avec énervement que je ne suis pas du tout d’accord pour payer 7 € de taxe pour que je puisse dépenser mon propre argent.

Je demande à voir ma conseillère qui me reçoit immédiatement et me propose de déplafonner mes virements à 3.500€ par semaine sans aucun frais mais ceci avec une limite de 3 mois! Passé ce délasi mon plafonnement passera à 500 par semaine.

Dans l’obligation de payer mon fournisseur j’ai accepté sa proposition que je trouve malgré tout scandaleuse.

Autre scandale, j’ai voulu payer sur internet un billet d’avion et une location d’appartement pour nos prochaines vacances et là encore une fois impossible de payer l’intégralité de notre voyage avec cette fameuse carte de m.. de le plafond et encore dépassé, surtout qu’avec 2000 € c’est vite atteint de nos jours. Heureusement que mon fils était là il a fait fonctionner sa carte bleue pour moi. Il y en a ras-le-bol de ses voleurs de banquiers".

Vous voyez ? Mais le Crédit Agricole est une banque qui "va bien" lol.... Elle veut juste vous empêcher de retirer vos fonds. Revue de Presse par Pierre Jovanovic © 2008-2017

Just stay the hell away from them. Seriously, after stealing a third of everything people had deposited with them, what more is it gonna take before people get a clue?

Meanwhile, in India, BTC is trading at $12,378 on Unocoin (INR 799,120)

Et toi Oscar, un vrai mec avec des poils et tout ça ?

juste avant que BTC stabilise ... vous voyez où cette stabilisation ?

un truc qui valait quelques cents il ya 7 Ans qui peux valoir un million de dollar prochainement

Yeah... I hate to also be that guy, but it does feel almost exactly the same:

Nov 2013: Bitcoin dips from 800 to 600, then takes off. (First selloff)  Check
Nov 2017: Bitcoin dips from 8000 to 6000, then takes off. (First selloff) Check

Nov 2013: Bitcoin breaks 1000. Euphoria ensues.  Check
Nov 2017: Bitcoin breaks 10000. Euphoria ensues.  Check

Nov 2013: Bitcoin starts jumping 8-10% per day. Check
Nov 2017: Bitcoin starts jumping 8-10% per day. Check

Dec 2013: Bitcoin hits 1150, then majorly crashes. Major FUD bad news that no one anticipated comes out of left field.  Check
Dec 2017: Huh??

Well if history repeats, it's not like anyone didn't know...   Undecided
Crossing my fingers that this time it really is different.

Starting to feel the same way as I felt back on the MtGox Peak in 2013. The world is mine... Too euphoric. Also seeing too euphoric comments everywhere... Hope this one will not end up like back then...

There are approximately 150+ significant Bitcoin exchanges worldwide. Kraken, according to the CEO, was adding about 6,000 new funded accounts per day in July 2017.

Supposedly, Coinbase is currently adding about 75,000 new accounts per day. Based on some trade secret analytics I have access to; I would estimate Coinbase is adding approximately 17,500 new accounts per day that purchase at least US$100 of Bitcoin.

Where can I see Korean and Japanese charts easily?