notEnuf

The subscription model for pharma has always been the golden goose. Why heal when you can treat? All insurance and tech do it too.

Drum

Own about 1000 acres of land in FL. It was inherited. The unsolicited offers we are getting on that property are mind blowing.

As much as I hate the idiocy surrounding the scare cycle of variants; I see this train rolling for a long time (they've seen it works and sheeple don't fight it) so I expect the value of our land to skyrocket. It's good to be a land owner in FL!!

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DeltaboundRedux

Anyone want to comment on crypto?

Seems ridiculous to me (see attached photo). Can't believe US Gov will risk it's reserve currency status and seigniorage privileges for internet nerds making up [almost] unsolvable equations that "create wealth" by slaving a bunch of energy intensive computers to the internet.

(love the portability options though)

Looks like the 2007-08 housing bubble and the Dutch tulip craze all rolled into one. Still.... we're going to see the end of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency in our lifetimes.

(extra points for anyone wanting to talk about DAO's)

DenVa

Get past doge and shibu. Think about the underlying technology of the good ones.

Ask yourself why you are still carrying around a drivers license, passport, pilots license, and medical.

what if you could access those things on the internet and see everyone that tried to gain access? What if the information was instantly verifiable as authentic?

how about large financial transactions taking seconds instead of days?

That cartoon is relevant to the traditional banking system. You could beat a bank password out of someone. We already live with a mostly digital banking system.

I do agree we will lose our top reserve currency status.

gloopy

While it clearly terrifies them with losing control over the serfs, the blood stained fiat wealth stealing petrodollar (and others) is doomed regardless.

Not sure what point that cartoon was supposed to make though. You'll give up a password if beaten or tortured? Ok. I guess. There are also ways around that (multi sig wallets etc) but the real takeaway is anyone willing to assault or torture you for it proves they have no moral authority over it in the first place. That cartoon does more to validate its use case than the opposite.

ERflyer

Interestingly, crypto has been completely banned in China. They want to, and will, keep more control of their currency. They will not allow uncontrolled cash flowing around the country or out of it. By maintaining control they have a chance to be the next reserve currency. They also are attempting to reduce financial criminality and corruption. (Which was off the charts.)

The current cryptocurrencies are a giant Ponzi scheme. Crypto and blockchain do have a place within reserve currencies. As nations, like China, and eventually the US and others, set up their own crypto/blockchain around their own fiat currency what will happen to the current crypto’s? What will happen when they’re more regulated? They will trade like stocks but without any underlying hard assets.

DeltaboundRedux

Oh, I'd love a currency that isn't subject to the depredations of national governments and large fish players, but I don't know enough about banking or fiat monetary policy in general. When it comes to crypto, the old saying about "what one man can do, another man can do" comes to mind; if it can be encrypted, it can be undermined by unencrypting. "Impossible to crack" has been around for 100 years, yet...these systems still get hacked.

Excellent article here in The Asia Times from David P. Goldman who's much smarter than your average journo-hack (worked for banks aplenty, speaks fluent Chinese, etc.). He's pretty certain that quantum computing will make crypto's nonviable.

https://asiatimes.com/2021/12/quantu...itcoin-expert/

Best hypothetical:

“But if I have a quantum computer,” Ding continued, “what I would do first is to get all the coins, because there’s no liability there. I wouldn’t attack banks—then there’s a big lawsuit, or you go to jail. But with a quantum computer, I just take the Bitcoin. It’s legal in my opinion. I didn’t do anything; I just see your public key and use your private key and assign the money to my own account.”

That’s the downside of anonymity. Your name and government ID number aren’t linked to a Bitcoin account (as they are to an ordinary bank account). Your proof of ownership is simply the fact that you have the private key (your password). If someone else hacks that, YOU HAVE NO LEGAL RECOURSE . [emphasis added]

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Without the "full faith and credit" of a national government to back and enforce a currency (ultimately by national power), it could literally become worthless overnight.

That said: There's plenty of money to be made in the short term on Wild West crypto, and it's hard to imagine that national governments won't eventually move towards this in some form or fashion. There was plenty of money to be made in the run up to the 2008 housing bubble burst as well (and after, with massively depreciated assets sold for pennies on the dollar), but you had to time it right.

IDK. Something about crypto has the same vibe as 2008: by the time you're reading about the fabulous "can't lose" opportunity in the newspapers, the most of the value has already been squeeze out of it by the large players. But Twitter guy J. Dorsey just resigned to play with crypto full time, so who knows?

watch

Bitcoin is the first and only thing in the universe that has the property of absolute scarcity.

if quantum computing breaks crypto, it will also break anything else secured online.

CBDCs “backed by hard assets” would be great. Sovereign currencies have been fiat only for the last fifty years, so they are backed by nothing.

Bitcoin is scarce, instant final settlement, at the speed of light, and cannot be regulated or confiscated.

Scoop

Absolute scarcity????


Mask threads on APC that don’t turn political?


Scoop

DenVa

For me the article doesn’t make sense. If someone hacked all the Bitcoin wallets, then it would immediately become worthless because no one would trade you anything for it. You could immediately steal it back. So, what did you accomplish? Disrupting something that was already disruptive? Plus, if I’m a hacker most of my money is in crypto, so I wouldn’t be doing myself any favors.

And, the assertion that it’s not stealing isn’t right either. The US government seems to deem it has worth at tax time, so it must be something. It’s like saying, “ I’m just going to steal that old truck in that garage with the door open. It’s not worth anything, so I won’t get in trouble.” Of course, with crypto it’s just that much harder to find out who is on the stealing end. And, sure, most authorities probably won’t care if a person’s crypto gets hacked like say a Wells Fargo password.

Then, the reasoning that he wouldn’t steal from banks bc of the threat of getting caught. Except, he’s using a quantum computer. Wouldn’t that gets past all detection and tracking?

Heck, if I was a hacker I would take down the banking system and let the people with crypto reign free bc I would already own a bunch. And the value would sky rocket.

Now, central governments can’t ban Bitcoin. It’s everywhere and decentralized. There is even a Bitcoin node in space. What they can do is ban behavior. But, IMO, that just drives it more toward black market status. If someone has a significant amount, then they just fly somewhere they can use it and trade it for dollars or whatever currency. I suppose they could all come together and ban the behavior, but places like El Salvador have moved to openly accept it. And the SEC is starting to allow some forms of trading. So, that is the opposite direction.

Imo, it’s inevitable that most countries will move to a digital currency. Governments want to track behavior. And, it is expensive to print money. With digital, they can see how much you have and take what they want at tax time. I doubt it has much effect on other cryptos. Fiat will always be devalued.

Finally, you have to understand why cryptos have value. It’s not that I think I’m going to be able to spend it like I can cash. It because of the technology behind it. And, you have to pay to play, if you want to use it. Quantum could kill that, however, it could also have the opposite effect in making crypto stronger.