I realize this is nothing new, but I feel it is relevant to the discussion, I have noticed a sharp rise in degenerate behaviour over the past 3 months which is adding fuel to big bang
There is no voice calling for liberty in Greece. Give us more, is the call, both from the political class and the people. (or else...you go down too). Erdogan, clap, clap, clap. Great observation: MOAR, MOAR, MOAR! And make the other guy pay. No cries for liberty. " The dog that didn't bark" |
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... "George Washington", a blogger often featured at Zero Hedge, just blasted the euro as well: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-17/little-known-history-euro-crisis-was-baked-start* * * As an occasional tourist to Europe, I always liked it (toting around just one currency when visiting more than one of Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, etc.). I imagine that in-Europe transactions costs are lower too. "It seemed like a good idea at the time" (to me anyway) Yes, the euro would be a straitjacket, forcing relative conformity on economic policies of its members. And, yes, LiteCoinGuy, some countries that are not competitive would have trouble. Nonetheless, I will want to read the article you posted just now, but damn!, that makes two more things I have to read tonight (China & its gold, and now another piece on the euro). I did not foresee these consequences (Greece, Cyprus), nor do even recall reading any real warnings about the euro in 2000 or so, everything I read was pretty upbeat (or maybe I was not paying enough attention).alot of people warned that this would happen. that one currency can fit for so many different countries. look in the history books, that did never work.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Monetary_Union Thanks, L.C.G.! Interesting link. We here in America, of course, heard very little about the risks of a common currency. "Hey, if the idea works OK for California and Mississippi, then it's good enough for Europe..."  Also, Americans are not very famous for studying history. But, you have to admit that the Latin Monetary Union produced some pretty gold coins... EDIT: And I wonder how much good Bitcoin would do for ALL countries...? Same currency for the world? |
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... "George Washington", a blogger often featured at Zero Hedge, just blasted the euro as well: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-17/little-known-history-euro-crisis-was-baked-start* * * As an occasional tourist to Europe, I always liked it (toting around just one currency when visiting more than one of Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, etc.). I imagine that in-Europe transactions costs are lower too. "It seemed like a good idea at the time" (to me anyway) Yes, the euro would be a straitjacket, forcing relative conformity on economic policies of its members. And, yes, LiteCoinGuy, some countries that are not competitive would have trouble. Nonetheless, I will want to read the article you posted just now, but damn!, that makes two more things I have to read tonight (China & its gold, and now another piece on the euro). I did not foresee these consequences (Greece, Cyprus), nor do even recall reading any real warnings about the euro in 2000 or so, everything I read was pretty upbeat (or maybe I was not paying enough attention). |
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They'll need lots and lots of bearings in Peru for a long time. And since we (our Peruvian bearing import company) have very little debt, we stay out of the clutches of the banksters for a while longer.
And if we do our "Plan B" (move there), they won't be replacing my body parts for a long, long time (Peruvian doctors?).
EDIT: When my time comes to die a natural death, I hope to welcome just that.
EDIT 2: Yeah, trollercoaster, all of this bad behavior has been building at a seemingly accelerating pace. And has everywhere I have ever been recently. Ugh.
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hedgy73
Yeah, I hear you. It's hard enough for many of us (self-taught non-programmers) just keeping up with the general complexity of Bitcoin. When you throw in the scams and spams, it just pollutes the Bitcoin Ecosystem.
At least for now I know that I can buy GOLD with my BTC (Veldt Gold here at bitcointalk and Provident Metals have both worked fine for me).
I am still in the camp that believes raising the minimum transaction (to, say, BTC0.001 ($0.28)) and/or minimum miner's fee of, say, BTC0.0003 ($0.08 -- the amount I pay, happily, to get my transaction to go through quickly).
OK, the micropayments feature of BTC would be lost.
But, those who want to send real amounts of money would have security, with much less BS...
Bitcoin is too valuable a technology to let the scammer/spammer ruin it for those who want to do real business.
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To mangle Churchill:
"Capitalism is the worst system, except for all the others."
Quoting Margaret Thatcher:
"The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
I would have thought that Serres would have been smart enough to recognize that all collectivist systems lead to ruin.
Collectivism is the opposite of freedom. Collectivism leads to, well, Economic Devastation.
Down with Collectivist Totalitarians, all of them: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim, Pol Pot, Lenin, Mussolini, Castro. All for the guys at the top, nothing for anyone else. Don't (didn't) like it? Gulags or Death.
Like it or not, our country (the USA) is headed that way.
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Re foreign gold held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at least some of even Germany's gold is held there for convenience in German Central Bank operations, as stated by the German Central Bank itself (look it up).
The Netherlands formally asked for much of theirs back, they got it OK by secret shipment (that news is also online).
Nonetheless, were I a central banker of any country holding significant amount of gold at the FRBNY, I would publicly ask for at least some of it back as we..
DO keep in mind that the FRBNY holds very little of US national gold, the bulk of our gold is held at Ft. Knox.
* * *
I really like the idea of Texas holding its own gold there as well as offering custody of gold for whomever wants it.
* * *
Texas Trivia (disclosure, I used to live there):
1) By treaty (nation to nation), Texas is allowed, if it should so choose, to secede from the USA.
2) Also by treaty, Texas is allowed to break itself up into FIVE states. Hmm. The Austin area (however you would draw the boundaries) would get their two D-Team senators, but the other eight would be R-Team. Hmm.
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Thank you for the education guys.
Since I am not a programmer nor have any friends or family who are into BTC, I have to observe and read (bitcointalk) the best I can.
And ask questions/make observations about things I do not understand (or dimly so).
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State level is where the interesting stuff is likely to happen when it comes to financial reforms. If you're outside the US it's easy to be oblivious to the divide between state and federal. It's bleedin' enormous. Crypto would be an efficient way for state legislators to stick it to Washington.
gentlemand THAT is a great observation. At some point dissatisfaction will arise enough in the USA that some states may go for it. And Texas is just the kind of place to get the ball rolling. "Texas, it's whole 'nother country." |
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"What cannot be repaid, will not be repaid."
- traditional
Despite the five year drama on Greece and their attempts to stay in the EU and with the euro, it is clear that Greece will NOT repay their external debts. Despite this latest "deal", the math cannot be ignored: Greece cannot pay their debts, so they will not. Some kind of default is inevitable.
In general there are three ways extreme debtors use to extinguish debts (other than paying up):
1) Inflate them away. This (as well as number three below) is what most governments around the world are doing. Printing the money. An increased inflation rate lowers the real value of the debt, borrow money, and repay in devalued money in the future. This is easy to do.
2) Default (don't pay). This happens from time-to-time. Argentina has defaulted twice in recent years. Greece has defaulted many times in its +/- 100 year modern history as a nation. A large scale default tends to be deflationary, there are perils to a population and government in a country that defaults.
3) Increase the debts! Debtor countries, including the USA, can often get away with this as long as lenders perceive that they will get their money back (at least recently-loaned money). This is the easiest of them all in the short-term But, increasing debts almost always leads to ever increasing problems trying to pay (or later restructure). Because at some point, no one will loan them any more money...
* * *
Of course, any country just getting into trouble would find that total long-term harm is less by biting the bullet and paying their debts quickly. The problem is that politicians, and their electorates, only want EASY solutions. Paying debt is never the "easiest" solution.
Greece is in an advanced state of huge debts (their debt: GDP ratio is around 177%). They cannot pay them off, at least in uninflated terms.
Greece will default. The mathematics is irrefutable. The only question is how and when. Which of the above options they will use.
Beware. Prepare. European debts (US debt too) are a big problem, with big consequences, that will likely spread here.
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I was paid today as usual.
The payment before that was not confirmed for some 40 hours, perhaps due to the spam attacks.
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I do not have any experience w/ electrum or mycelium so cannot offer anything useful there. But, I use blockchain.info's wallet for small transactions and everyday situations. I keep relatively small amounts there as I too have had a "security issue" using it. It's easy to use and has the nice SharedCoin service.
For larger amounts of BTC, I keep them on a Ledger Nano and a Trezor. I like them both.
LiteCoinGuy has a great thread on hardware wallets. Lots of useful information!
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TPTB
Where did you get that picture of my family? Calling them nutcases, you have the nerve...
My family is much better prepared than I am, as you can see. Alas, in my case, my guns (ammo too) were lost in a boating accident, why a year ago IIRC. Rather than get the police all riled up about guns out there at the bottom of the sea, I thought I would just let them corrode away. Most unfortunate.
Oh, I lost all my precious metals on the same boat-ride. And everyone told me that it was so much better to take all that stuff with me rather than leave it all behind in some dark place at home. How naive. Now I have to start over.
EDIT: My Bitcoins too. After all, carrying all that weight of firearms and PMs, it just seemed natural to take along my hardware wallets too. Live and learn.
EDIT 2: There is a guy I know in another state who can help me re that unregistered business.......
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my last payment still unconfirmed more than 3 days and anyone here have same issue just like me?
It appears they are including too small of a fee by a factor of 10 for many payments. A review of 81b605c6d5718078cf540444aac875b0aa7f423d840131eaec7520d11d2138f3 shows that a fee of .00001 was included when it would probably have been more appropriate to include a .0001 fee based on it's size of >1 kb and age of the input. A review of several other transactions that were signed by 1BitmixerEiyyp3eTLaCpgBbhYERs48qza reveal the same issue, although the transactions that were confirmed and signed by the above address included a similarly sized transaction fee. I am not sure why they were confirmed. They were confirmed because transaction confirmation is a stochastic process not entirely determined by hard rules. As you (should) know, transactions with no fee are also confirmed from time to time. Blocks with 0 transactions are created. These things happen. There are probabilities at play here. Thank you tspacepilot, I did not know that, that explains some phenomena I have seen. |
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Let me tell you all why I like reading Armstrong. It is NOT for his predictions to be 100% right (as "our TPTB" notes above, predicting the future is hard). It is NOT that he may/may not be working for the "real TPTB".
It is that he is full of ideas. IDEAS! I read items at his blog that I real nowhere else. And who else is running a supercomputer to model all the different markets and indicators? Such an obvious idea that I'm surprised that no one has done that before...
And while his blog is confusing (and even self-promotional), I suspect that his big-money customers get a lot of IDEAS (and probably specific investment recommendations) that they can think about. And plan for.
Read and taken in this light, I think that "our TPTB" as well as Armstrong are worth careful study. Both are right, IMO, a scary & bad time awaits.
Prepare.
Edit above in bold
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I did not really like MultiBit as my wallet, I stopped using it a year or so ago. It took too long to update when I did use it (esp. when used infrequently)..., it sometimes took TWO HOURS to update. Ugh.
For small amounts, I am OK with blockchain.info's wallet. I never keep (for long) more than, say, BTC0.5 there. blockchain.info does offer their SharedCoin mixing service, which for me is a nice plus.
I really like the hardware wallets as LiteCoinGuy above says, his thread is excellent for learning other people's experiences.
I am happy with both the Trezor and the Ledger Nano hardware wallets.
(Edited for clarity and to remove errors)
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Thank you, AgentofCoin. I am very interested to hear who is responsible for the attacks on the BTC Ecosystem.
While China's .gov may or may not (probably not?) have anything to do with it, it would be useful to know. For all we know, it might be a secret part of our .gov doing this (or the banks, but I repeat myself).
Even if part of the recent problems were due to greedy Chinese miners scalping-off a nanosecond or two (not properly checking blocks and/or confirming transactions), that is useful to know as well.
Bad behavior should be discouraged. Shine the light on the perps.
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... I am not convinced, for several reasons, that the "BRICS Bank" is much of a long-term threat to the Western financial system. The BRICS Bank is really two institutions: the NDB and the CRA (both roughly equivalent to the World Bank and the IMF). From the Fortaleza Declaration: 12. The Bank shall have an initial authorized capital of US$ 100 billion. The initial subscribed capital shall be of US$ 50 billion, equally shared among founding members. The first chair of the Board of Governors shall be from Russia. The first chair of the Board of Directors shall be from Brazil. The first President of the Bank shall be from India. The headquarters of the Bank shall be located in Shanghai. The New Development Bank Africa Regional Center shall be established in South Africa concurrently with the headquarters. We direct our Finance Ministers to work out the modalities for its operationalization.
13. We are pleased to announce the signing of the Treaty for the establishment of the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) with an initial size of US$ 100 billion. This arrangement will have a positive precautionary effect, help countries forestall short-term liquidity pressures, promote further BRICS cooperation, strengthen the global financial safety net and complement existing international arrangements. We appreciate the work undertaken by our Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors. The Agreement is a framework for the provision of liquidity through currency swaps in response to actual or potential short-term balance of payments pressures. The current commitments to funding are one hurdle they have to overcome ( note that all FIVE signatories use US Dollars as their numeraire, ha ha ha! Straight out of the Agreement...): i. China - USD 41 billion ii. Brazil - USD 18 billion iii. Russia - USD 18 billion iv. India - USD 18 billion v. South Africa - USD 5 billion (Total: $100 billion) When will that (funding) happen? Under what circumstances will the Five Amigos agree to fund OTHER countries' projects? LOL! * * * The original Bretton Woods documents (setting up the World Bank and IMF in 1948) mentioned the role of gold in their reserves. China, Russia and India all have lots of gold. NOWHERE is gold mentioned in the BRICS Bank docs.* * * A view on the BRICS Bank: "It is my opinion that the "BRICS Bank" has been born out of frustration and resentment of the more developed world and the way the industrialized countries instruct the borrowers in what they are allowed to do and what not to do.
Also, note that the original term (acronym) for BRIC's (South Africa was recently added to have an African member) was a marketing slogan created by a Goldman Sachs analyst (Jim O'Neill). Other than resentment of the USA, Europe and Japan, there is relatively little that unites the current five members of the BRICS other than that they are "surplus countries" (exporting more than they import, and so are owners of a lot of US dollars). That the five BRICS have joined together must make Goldman Sachs crack a smile..."* * * Some more details of the BRICS Bank (copyright Goldman Sachs): "The prospects for the NDB and the CRA are uncertain, IMO. There are numerous examples of other international development "banks" that have not gained traction (eg, the Chiang Mai Initiative (early 2000s, in reaction to perceived inaction in resulting from the Asian Financial Crisis, and the BancoSur (2009) whose foundation was sparked by Hugo Chavez...). What?! You have not heard of those two international "banks", the Chiang Mai Initiative and the BancoSur? They failed... The BancoSur failed due to "internal contradictions", whoops, sorry Hugo Chavez...
The five BRICS members have relatively little in common other than they do not like the USA and Europe telling them what to do. To me, the NDB and the CRA almost seem like political documents, despite their similar appearances to the World Bank and the IMF.
They have internal rivalries that are papered over (India and China have not straightened out their borders (although progress maybe has been made), China vs. Russia in the longer term have rivalry issues over Asia and resources, Brazil has stronger trade ties to the USA than to China). Recall that China's economy dominates all of the others, that gives China a much greater influence over the NDB and the CRA than even the USA has over the World Bank and the IMF..."* * * Link to above quotations: http://robertmixblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-brics-bank-first-look.html |
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TPTB and friends
15 years ago I was able to use all kinds of fun and interesting software that was either FREE or cheap. And easy-to-use (important to those of us who are not tekkies).
One program was Zimmerman's PGP. It was free and easy to use. But, none of my friends (none of my friends are programmers or otherwise tech-savvy) so I was never able to USE PGP.
I took a quick look around via Google to see if there was free & easy-to-use encryption software for email, but was not able to find any obvious candidates.
You guys have any suggestions re email encryption software? Especially easy-to-use...
* * *
I also miss the cheap (or free) AND easy-to-use data analysis programs (SPSS: now $2000 or so, and an "OLAP" program to analyze database data that cost me just $100, now it would cost MUCH MORE).
Also, I bought Microsoft's SQL Server 2000 (w/ another OLAP program included in it) for just $100 or so back then. SQL Server 2000 will not work on modern Windows versions...
Frustrating that the software in 2000 was better, cheaper and more available than in 2015!
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