I have no idea what is going on

This might be interesting, but what are the assets to be liquidated? Do they even cover anything of substance for someone to get in the trouble of filling the form?

It'd appear I'm splitting hairs, but gold is better in dealing with devaluation, rather than inflation.

Inflation is usually dealt with, internally, in a given country. What developing countries do is simple: If in 2015 you needed 1000 local currency to get you through the month, and you are getting paid 1000 local currency from your job, and in 2016 you need 1300, then they pass a law that says that wages must be raised a minimum of 30%. So now you are also getting paid 1300 and paying 1300. The inflationary effect is not so visible in things like rent, hiring a plumber to fix your home, utility bills like telcos and water (power is usually "felt" more), but it will be very visible if you try to buy a new car that is imported.

For wealth preservation purposes, what countries with high inflation can do (and often do) is equally simple: Big deposit interests and big sovereign bond interests, always denominated in local currency. Say inflation is running at 25% per year. The government's bond or a bank deposit may give you 28% so that you stop looking around for investments like gold and keep your money in local currency. So you will have theoretically "preserved" your wealth by the end of the year. That's assuming the inflation rate is accurately reported (which it rarely is for reasons having to do with growth... as growth equals gdp increase minus inflation, and thus most countries underreport inflation to pretend their inflation is ...gdp growth). Typically, in a high inflation environment, it goes like this in terms of popularity - but the order can be different depending cultural differences

a) high interest bank deposits and gov bonds
b) real estate (fiat dumped for land, buildings etc) which will create future inflation-adjusted revenue for the land-holder, by requiring rents or leases in future inflated prices.
c) foreign currency - if one can access it
d) gold
e) stock market (which is also perceived as a gamble by the masses)

Since the devaluation rate can be larger than the inflation rate, (c) and (d - gold) might offer better performance than (a). So gold can be far better than a local bank deposit or government bond.

Yet (b) / real estate will tend to be perceived as the best investment of all times in an inflationary environment. There is a continually confirmed perception (which becomes self-reinforced perception and reality) that prices can only go upwards and thus it is considered the safest bet ever. With money supply ever increasing, wages rising, cost of life rising, it makes no sense to expect that houses will be cheaper tomorrow than today. This creates a momentum in dumping fiat savings and buying land, houses, flats etc that creates an avalanche of demand and appreciation which can exceed in performance (a) and can rival (c), (d), or (e) - because it's not only the rise of the property itself, but also the ability of real estate to "pay" the owner a stable income, in the form of rent/lease.

It would be an understatement to say that most westerners who haven't lived through protracted periods of high inflation, do not typically understand the above, thinking that gold is the primary antidote to inflation when in reality it's things as mundane as ...land and buildings while gold is better suited to counter shadow currency devaluation. However, there are cultures like India, where possession of gold is directly related to social status and the rule book is entirely rewritten.

Now, regarding the barbarous relic argument, I see it differently.

This reality, at its fabric, is not solid. It's not even energy because at the quantum level the photon can either be a particle or a wave, depending the observer. So what gives this energy/matter its solid-state in the macrocosm is information. There is a process which informs the photon on what to be. So, in a way, this reality is an information-based reality. In other words => a program.

The "programmer" of this "program" has hardcoded something like

const Primary_Currency = 79; // atomic number of gold element
const Secondary_Currency = 47; //silver
const Third_Currency = 29; // copper  

All human attempts to replace these hardcoded const of the "programmer" have failed*. Currencies come and go, gold remains. Debt-backed money, which we currently have, is severely flawed as it always requires more money than the total existence of money in order to repay the debt of creating the money supply. It can only operate temporarily by rolling-over the debt and pretending it is serviceable as long as the economy is in "growth" and then, when it is not serviceable anymore, the liquidity crunch comes and wipes everything off.

Gold, as a monetary system, hasn't failed. It can't fail unless you design a system which is based on fiat and pretend that it is ...gold backed, which then opens the door for fractional practices and abuse. Otherwise gold/silver/copper are excellent forms of money. Some say gold is not granular, well, it doesn't need to. It's the high-value asset. If gold was used as a global currency, an ounce might cost 100.000 usd by replacing the tens of trillions of fiat currencies and getting revalued upwards as a result. At that point the second and third consts(silver & copper) would be the granular alternatives for everyday transactions.


* BTC is the first attempt of humans to rewrite the "program" while being ...inside the program. They are programming money when money has already been programmed. Even fiat was never intended to replace this reality programming. It was a means for the Elite to take the metals away from the people, being too valuable, and replacing them with worthless papers. The Elite was "honoring" the primary program by actually acknowledging gold's value. Their motivation was to hoard gold for themselves and taking it from the ordinary man - which was left with papers instead. What BTC does is a level of "heresy" that is groundbreaking. It is thus ensured that programmed money which is "doubting" the primary programs hardcoded consts will face enormous and multifaceted resistance. I can assure you that there is nothing ...barbaric with gold. It is programmed in its place, and in the human psyche, by the highest level of "programmers".

'Halving Bitcoin Reward Unlikely to Cause Price Surge'

I don't know about a surge but here is the fact:

1. Price is stable at around 440 +/-20$.

2. Price being stable means that the 3600 coins generated per day are met by the market demanding them (either miners wanting to hold them, or buyers buying them), otherwise the price would be sliding down.

3. 3600 coins x 440 = 1.6mn usd per day in inflation that is met by the market

4. Post halving that's 800k usd and another 800k usd will be in excess and uncovered demand.

5. So we have an excess 800k demand that will, by necessity, be unmet as production has slowed down. The only way for the market to acquire an extra 800k usd of coins per day is to take them from old holders. But they aren't selling at these prices otherwise there would be no price equilibrium at our current state of +3600 coins per day. So why would they sell when there are only +1800 coins per day? Thus, price has to rise in order for the old holder to be lured into selling. Or a crisis can be manufactured to increase selling and attain the same effect.

It has to do with the theoretical ideal currency in terms of energy. Gold may not be energy in itself, but if you think about it, gold is proof-of-spent-energy. All metals are. Some need more energy to reach their final state, others less energy. Metals are like tokens of energy. They cannot be turned into energy, but they can be traded to someone who would otherwise need to spend energy to dig them up or process them. On top of that, gold is also universally accepted and converted to local fiat. So you have an indirect connection between energy, commodities and fiat.

How typical bitcoin developers and crypto-experts look:


https://s3.amazonaws.com/ftt-uploads/princeton_bitcoin_workshop_dinner.jpeg

How "Satoshi" looks:


http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/2016/05/articles/main/20160430_blp541.jpg



Geekiness and nerdiness will typically be from somewhat visible to very visible. Whether you are Gavin Andersen or a multi-billionaire like Gates.

So his only way out, if he doesn't have the bitcoins, is to say "I'm satoshi"... lol?

There are a hundred ways where Satoshi could cryptographically "announce" himself to the world, without involving any media or "trusted" parties to vouce for him. The forum, the blockchain, the mailing list, etc. After doing so, it would instantly be news-worthy enough for the bbc, cnn, reuters and so on.

Only the title needs changing, the thread should stay so as to have somewhere to discuss this.

LOL...

Also from gavin:

This is interesting as well:


And now:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefings/21698061-craig-steven-wright-claims-be-satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin

In an article in the press kit accompanying the publication of his blog post, he takes aim at Gregory Maxwell, one of the leading bitcoin developers, who first claimed that the cryptographic keys in Mr Wright’s leaked documents were backdated. “Even experts have agendas,” he writes, “and the only means to ensure that trust is valid is to hold experts to a greater level of scrutiny.”

The whole "do this, do that" step-by-step in Wright's blog reminds me of this: https://www.scribd.com/doc/306521425/Appeal-to-Authority-a-Failure-of-Trust

...although they both fail spectacularly in terms of substance. So, with the attack on authority, now these 2 things seem connected, and then you have Gavin on top of it. wtf...

Keys can be transferred from person to person or found with non-mainstream computing methods. It's not the equivalent of moving a mountain.

The identity isn't good for me when I'm hearing bullshit like 340gb blocks. I don't care if he has crypto proof that he is Satoshi (I haven't seen such). I mean 340gb blocks? We need hours or days to just download and verify the 70gb blockchain.

With 340gb blocks, if, say, you have a scenario where 2 such blocks are found in a period of 1 minute, then you need 100gbps of bandwidth to upload it to just another 2 nodes - without even including any verification which would obviously take way more time.

Then you have the intended target of "banks". Why would banks need an inefficient (intended-to-be-decentralized blockchain that was then turned to centralized), when the client-server model is better for their needs?

Then you have stuff like "the coins are in a trust fund"... yeah because being your own bank doesn't work with bitcoin.

WTF.

I'm operating under vastly different "assumptions".

Satoshi might be anonymous to nearly every common people, but he certainly wasn't anonymous to the government and secret services because they have means at their disposal which common people don't.

This means that secret services can catch him, tell him "cooperate or else" and then take his keys and tell a pretender to play Satoshi with the original Satoshi's keys - while Satoshi is killed or jailed.

I would need either multi-threaded proofs or at least a high level of consistency in Satoshi's behavior.

Single-threaded proofs aren't very reliable for my preference, even "extraordinary proof". Case in point: I once asked a friend of mine... what would it take for you to believe someone is god? Would you believe they are a God if they commanded natural phenomena like the weather - on command? He said yes. I then showed him the sky. I told him to pick any white cloud he liked and point it to me. He told me ok, that's the one. Alright I said, wait a bit. 80-90 seconds later he was like "W T F, how are you doing this" (the cloud was dissolving). I told him "well, obviously I'm god...". Next day, and after I had explained to him the mechanism, he's like "oh it's easy, I was dissolving clouds all morning". So what was enough to declare me a "god" a day prior, the next day was "easily done by anyone". So even the benchmark of "extraordinary proof" can be bullshit, under circumstances.

Just because someone has Satoshi's keys, or coins, doesn't make them Satoshi. Not that I have seen such a thing though.

He's not even using double spaces like Satoshi did (everywhere... from the bitcoin whitepaper to his forum posts).

In most countries gold can be easily converted to local fiat and that makes it a sound alternative currency.

We cannot prescribe a universal rule for gold's attractiveness as a diversification tool because different economies have different relative results.

If you live in the US of A, you know gold was at 1800 and is now at 1300. You are losing, in terms of your local currency, if you bought the top / ATH.

If you live elsewhere, things might be different and gold may be at an ATH right now due to currency devaluation. The gold price chart in AUD, NOK, CAD, INR, RUB, ARS, BRL etc are quite different than the USD chart... Thus gold is waaaay more attractive in certain markets compared to local fiat. Holding local fiat is what doesn't make sense under these circumstances.

Pricing bitcoin has a lot to do with psychological reasons which are counterintuitive.

If BTC was, say, 21 billions (and we had issued ~16 billion), nobody would consider it "expensive" at 0.45$. You'd hear people saying that anything under 1$ or 10$ is undervalued.

Now 10$ doesn't sound a lot, yet 10k does - or sounds "too high".

However the 10$ on a 1000x supply and 10k with the current supply, would represent precisely the same marketcap.

I didn't know where the 9.2% figure came from, and was going to ask, until I read the above.

There is a fallacy in the reasoning of "9.2%" because it is applied to mainstream investments, not booming/explosive markets.

Booming/explosive markets have the characteristic where you start with a 100% monopoly of a given market and then something new comes along and starts to eat from the 100% market, gradually at 0.0000001%, 0.0001%, 0.1%, 1% etc etc. It's like being in a town where there is just one shop and then another one opens and the 100% marketshare is now starting to split. The new store, with 0% marketshare, starts experiencing "booming" growth as it rises from its 0% to 1%, to 5%, to 10%, to 20% etc.

The market, in our case, is both currencies and payment systems. We now have a decentralized and trustless alternative that enters the multi-trillion dollar market to get a slice from the centralized, trust-based / faith-based monopoly (established players owning 100% of the market).

Naturally, as the slice for bitcoin increases, the growth potential is explosive because you are starting from 0 and going upwards. Explosive/booming markets cannot be "contained" by figures like 9.2%.

The question is, what is the size of bitcoin in the larger scheme of things, where payment companies and banks have trillions in marketcap, combined global fiat (M3) is in the tens of trillions, precious metals are near 10 trillion usd, etc etc? It's nothing. It's near zero. If bitcoin gets even 0.1% of these markets, its own marketcap will be in the range of >100bn USD - a 20x increase, not a ...9% increase. Given that its a new option compared to legacy offerings, with new and different characteristics which actually cover human needs that the legacy systems cannot, this is very possible.

It sounds more "bullish" if you say BTC will go over 10.000$, but in reality it's the same thing as saying that BTC will capture 0.1% of the fiat currencies / payments market. The second sounds extremely plausible and reasonable as a target (due to its small size), the first doesn't - because people are used to its current price.

Have you considered adding btc-related bets of the type: "BTC will hit 600$ by the end of May" or "BTC will hit 10.000$ by the end of the year"?

They might be interesting

The inflation / deflation "recipe" the Elite are using is more advanced than single-dimensional classical analysis. They are inflating the debt-markets (otherwise they go bust by non-refinancing / non-rollover of debt) and deflating the small guy. Large debt markets get refunded and the small guy gets a liquidity crunch or a problematic daily costs / daily income ratio (if he doesn't own any loans).

Thus the small guy is like "what inflation? The dollar (or X currency) is becoming scarcer by the day - I'd do anything for (...fewer) dollars than yesterday because my bills are now bigger and the pressure is mounting".

Deflating the small guy leads him to the pawn shop to sell his jewelry, leads him to ebay, to sell his stuff, leads him to the real estate agent to sell his property, etc etc. Why? Because he needs to find cash - which are becoming "scarcer", not because the government isn't issuing a lot of currency, but because the banks are slowly drying up the avg person liquidity and the costs of life are rising.

It is essential for their plan to have the small guy beaten by deflation while they are inflating the debt markets by the trillions. If the small guy had "helicopter money" he would be buying precious metals, bitcoins etc. Even if 95% of the people just went on walmart and spent their helicopter money, the 5% that would choose to stack some gold, silver, bitcoins etc, would be *extremely* dangerous in destabilizing their price suppression schemes on alternative currencies.

All of the above applies for western societies mainly, where people's purchasing power is immense (by global standards) and their currencies are considered "solid" - without much inflationary effect being visible (that's an illusion btw).

Developing countries with inflation are a lesser threat to the elite because they also have the issue of capital controls, in the sense that the population of a developing country with high inflation, rarely has unlimited access to the forex market, or the gold market. If, say, a country with high inflation allowed their citizens to buy dollars or gold in an unlimited fashion, they would simply run out of foreign reserves to buy essentials like food, oil etc - which are traded with USD in the global commodity markets. No USD reserves = no commerce / no imports = problems. So, for reasons of "general wellbeing" it will be generally disallowed for citizens to (massively) dump their currency in favor of foreign currencies or gold.

The developing countries are the "useful idiots" of the whole system as the developed countries point to them to "prove" that they have no inflation. If, say, Venezuela runs at 50%, then USA can pretend to run 0% - because no-one is challenging them in terms of running an honest currency. The western nations are also inflating in sync, so that it is imperceptible what they are doing. Even countries which do not have the need to inflate their money supply, did so. Switzerland for example. They were getting all those inflows from other countries and then they "decided" to "peg" their currency to the euro in specific ratios. In other words, issuing as many new swiss francs as were needed in order to ...buy all the inflating euros, dollars etc. The hand of the Elite is quite visible in cases like this because such moves don't make any economic sense in the context of said nation (Switzerland is not China that would be hampered by rising currency rates - in fact it would boost the perception of solidness and by extension their banking sector which is their ...core business). These moves only make sense under the macroscopic view of the global economy and in-sync / co-ordinated attempt to inflate all western nations simultaneously, in order to make devaluation imperceptible.

Now, regarding the end game. There is no end game unless they decide so. What they are primarily interested in is to make a financial reset that allows them to use a similar economic system as this one, without the economic system taking the blame for the "collapse". They want to attribute the fall to outside causes. Wars, disease, terrorism, "irresponsible corporations", natural disasters - whatever they can. They do not want to make it apparent that the debt-based system was a scam and doomed from the start. They will perpetuate this for as long as it serves their purpose and for as long as they haven't found the right excuse to proceed to a reset.

I vaguely remember some 'self-funding' coins (not self-governing) back in the alt-14 boom... but the funding structure was different to the MN budgets and more "fixed" in a way, like "1% of the coins will be going to the dev fund to ensure future development". Don't ask me coin names though - but I think I've seen it.