The Bitcoin Revolution Read online

and bitcoins will certainly reduce the demand for printing dollars as debt.

  But the main reason the establishment will embrace Bitcoin is because of its unique transparency. Every transaction occurs in full view. So if you know someone’s wallet address (and these are usually advertised), you can look up their current balance. This is the opposite of the banking system, especially the Swiss version. And some say Bitcoin will be used for money laundering? Doesn’t this ignore the reality that any exchange you work with is responsible to whatever legal authorities they reside in? And if audited, they would be forced to reveal your identity? So how hard would it be to track you down if you were moving millions illegally? And if you are doing that through Bitcoin, your coins are all subject to confiscation.

  Of course, an alternative currency has been released, one that keeps users anonymous and that’s likely where all the money laundering will take place. The developers of that software wanted Bitcoin to accept their alterations, but after two years of waiting, they finally realized the board of directors of Bitcoin, as well as the software engineers who tweak the system, didn’t want Bitcoin to go dark.

  I had a major life-changing moment when I attended my first National Rainbow Family Gathering several decades ago and stumbled into a world run by tribal consensus. You see, there’s no central authority at Rainbow, only a main circle, where council is held and issues aired out. But no change takes place unless everyone at council agrees on it. I ended up spending a week hiking and working and eating vegetarian food and dropped all sugar and alcohol, and when I returned to real life, I was amazed at my inner and outer transformations. After a week in Rainbow, just sitting on a modern toilet seemed an alien experience, much less dealing with the frantic and negative vibrations. See, Rainbow is all about positivity and meditation and feeling the earth energies, and when you return to the real world, everything seems frantic, aggressive and synthetic.

  Imagine my surprise when I stumbled into Bitcoin and discovered no one owns it. It was created as a gift for the world, and resides entirely in the hands of the users, and all activity is on the server for all to see. When someone buys a huge chunk of bitcoin, you won’t know their name, but you’ll see their wallet addresses as they move those bitcoin quickly into multiple locations. Every single transaction ever conducted in Bitcoin history resides on the hard drive of every miner working the system. And there are over 100,000 of these miners around the world now.

  Yes, there’s a volunteer team of software developers that keep tweaking the system to make it better, and they have a huge number of improvements they plan to announce soon, as Bitcoin is still in beta, but none of these will take place unless the 100,000 miners reach something close to a consensus.

  Many talk about globalization and the need to break this machine that is eating the earth by mining everyone for profit, but how many activist organizations have come out promoting Bitcoin? I don’t know of any. And how many activist organizations are really counterintelligence ops? Running two sides of a dialectic is standard procedure for counterintelligence.

  I’m suspicious of the lack of truthful information on Bitcoin, and wonder why no large-scale groups have jumped to Bitcoin’s support. Because the reality is that investing in bitcoin is the best way to strike a Jedi blow against the machine.

  Life is changing much faster than the social scientists and politicians can figure out how to steer the system. There was a huge gulf between the Baby Boomers and their parents, who came of age during the Great Depression, and an even bigger one now between the Boomers and the Echo Boomers who are rapidly taking over the world by having better technology skills.

  I’d like to remind people that personal computers were the invention of the hippies in San Francisco, and that a Grateful Dead message board was one of the first mega networks to bloom.

  Our money system sucks, and the credit card system sucks even worse. If you are paying credit card interest, you know what I’m talking about. I’m looking forward to dumping the cards and moving my liquid assets entirely into bitcoin, just as soon as Amazon jumps in. And if Amazon doesn’t jump in, I’ll find a new primary source for acquisitions, one that does accept bitcoin.

  I suggest three sorts of wallets: 1) Sloppy wallets, which are placed around your system to attract hackers as a first point of entry. These are just alarm bells that get emptied when someone is attacking your computer. 2) Everyday wallets, which are used to buy things and can be reloaded when empty. 3) Deep cold storage, which are your retirement funds.

  The best Bitcoin lecturer I’ve found is James DeAngelo who has a site on YouTube, World Bitcoin Network. He explains a lot of the technical information without confusing the average person, and has an excellent primer on setting up your wallets securely.

  When Bitcoin first appeared five years ago, it was treated as a joke. After all, the previous attempt to set up a new digital currency resulted in the founder being charged with a multitude of Federal violations. He currently wears an ankle bracelet down in Florida. This may be why Satoshi decided to stay behind the curtain, although Satoshi surely owns more bitcoins than anyone else.

  Over five years Bitcoin was subjected to more intense efforts to break the system than any other program in history. I just made that up, but will someone please run the numbers? Because I think the numbers in Bitcoin are already off the charts. The system has over 100,000 miners that crisscross the globe, all working 24/7 to protect the system? Many of these miners are the newly minted Bitcoin millionaires. They also have a huge edge on anyone trying to jump into the game right now.

  And that explains the Meritocracy. If you fell for the mainstream media disinfo, then buying a bitcoin was the last thing on your mind, much less investing in a mining rig. But if you knew cryptography or knew someone at the forefront of software engineering, you might have figured out it was the best minds of Silicon Valley that embraced Bitcoin. The beta version has been running very well, so major investors began putting money in the system, driving the price from $100 to $1000.

  By the way, the price doesn’t matter. It varies all the time and all activity is visible to everyone on the system. You can download the software yourself and join the network, although I suggest you just run the light version as the entire history now takes three days to download before you can link in. It’s only common sense that as more people become aware of the advantages of Bitcoin, more money will flow into the system, not just from merchants saving a fortune on credit card fees, but also from people who need to move money quickly across international borders.

  Citigroup executive Steven Englander is taking issue with the fact that 47 people own 30% of Bitcoin. Obviously, the largest shareholder is the mysterious founder himself, who is likely English based on his writings or at least schooled there, despite the Japanese mirror. Recently an anonymous source in China bought over $20 million in coins, something that helped drive the price up considerably. Several billionaires have obviously invested heavily in the system, but only the world’s brightest.

  Englander says the distribution of wealth in the Bitcoin Universe reminds him of North Korea. This is absurd. Bitcoin is open source and peer-to-peer and in no way resembles North Korea. I guess you could stand in the aisle and try to block the way for Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix or any of the other giants that have been birthed in our time. Bitcoin is just another giant, the only difference is the mainstream media hasn’t figured this out yet.

  Bitcoin is not here to replace the banks, but to augment them. It is the easiest way to move money around, and it reduces the cost of buying and selling online considerably, mostly for the merchants who have to pay the absurd credit card processing fees. And of course charge-backs are a whole other issue, something that doesn’t exist in the Bitcoin universe.

  I have always marveled at the boldface attempt to wolf dip a sheep, and that is exactly what Englander is trying to do. Yes, we have no idea who is behind Bitcoin. And the inventor has the right to dump all his shares ins
tantly. In which case the price might dive down to a penny per bitcoin. But five minutes later, bitcoin would start its slow rise and gradually rebuild itself.

  Bitcoin no longer belongs to the inventor or the major owners. Access to this network is shared equally among all the miners and the network is in control of itself and growing stronger every day. Snooze and you lose.

  The ones who didn’t snooze? A few of them will become the world’s first trillionaires, a club that certainly threatens to shake up the power structure of the financial system, don’t you think? Because these trillions won’t be in the banking system, but largely kept in Bitcoin.

  Some analysts are already predicting 11 trillionaries will soon be minted within 20 years, at which time billionaires will be commonplace. Millionaires? There will be over a billion world-wide.

  Oh, and here’s the way the math breaks down on the possibility many of these will be fortunes made through Bitcoin:

  12,000,000 bitcoins are in circulation @ ~1000$/BTC

  Current market capitalization $12 billion in USD

  If market cap increases to $130 billion USD

  we will see $10,000/BTC

  If market cap increases to $1.3 Trillion USD

  we