iBankCoin
Home / 2019 / June

Monthly Archives: June 2019

The Bitcoin Experience

Bitcoin is a simple concept, peer to peer electronic cash, but deceptively difficult to describe.

In 2010 Satoshi himself (AKA Craig Wright) said:

“Sorry to be a wet blanket. Writing a description for this thing for general audiences is bloody hard. There’s nothing to relate it to.”

I have found the easiest way to explain Bitcoin is for someone to experience it. Going into a long explanation is less effective than having a person use Bitcoin. Explaining Bitcoin is a bit like describing how to balance on a bicycle. It pales in comparison to having a person actually ride a bike.

Bitcoin has come a long way since it’s release in 2009 but it’s still a mystery to most people. One of the recent and more significant developments to reduce this mystery has been the creation of user friendly wallets. The BSV wallet leaders are Handcash, RelayX, SimplyCash and Paymail (Paymail is part of moneybutton.com).

These wallets allow one person to send BSV to another person anywhere, instantly, with near zero fees by just knowing the other person’s wallet handle. You get to choose your handle when you create a new wallet.

For purposes of illustration consider the two versions of what I can share to get paid in BSV.

Handcash handle: coinspeak
or
BSV address: 1KPxVWD9tKuTBnk7qzCFZTRJbyJqUhjUTV

Which one do you think is easier to remember, put on a business card, or share with someone over the phone?

This is a big step forward in usability.

Once you use Bitcoin with a user friendly wallet the potential of Bitcoin becomes undeniable.

Since it’s easier for you to experience the power of Bitcoin than it is for me to explain it via more blogs, I am going to give away $5 in BSV to the first 20 people who post their Handcash handle (Android only) or SimplyCash handle (Android and IOS) in the comments below.  Download either app and post your handle (and whether it’s Handcash or SimplyCash) and I will send you BSV. Have a friend download a wallet and send them a $1. Spread the virus.

Then you will experience the power of:

DO NOT FORGET TO BACKUP YOUR WALLET or you can lose your money.

I request that only new BSV users post their handles below. If you already have BSV feel free to ping any handles below with additional BSV.

You are on your way to experiencing Bitcoin. Warning: there’s no going back.

EDIT: This is not a feasible exercise on BTC. The current transaction fees on BTC are ~$3.50. To send $5 in BTC would cost $8.50. On BSV fees are less than a penny.

Comments »

Giant Meteor Headed for Crypto

Tomorrow the FATF releases new rules for exchanges around KYC and AML.

This could be a heavy burden on Crypto. From this article:

Bloomberg reports that the FATF rules are expected to require firms ranging from major spot exchanges such as Coinbase to asset managers like Fidelity Investments to gather data on all clients initiating transactions worth over $1,000 or 1,000 euros.

Big Brother wants to know everything. If they can’t just get the data directly off Google and FB’s servers then they will enact new laws. Even when your money is yours it’s only by the grace of the US Federal Government. ‘Murica!

Sarcasm aside, this will send many exchanges and coins running for cover. However, keeping to the theme of Honest Money BSV actually complies with these rules (as far as we know). BSV is publicly verifiable but also private, but not anonymous. I can’t look at your balance but you could disclose it to me and I can confirm it.

Imagine governments run on honest hard money. I don’t think the US fears Bitcoin as a new digital currency as much as they fear this may mean that their books and budgets would be transparent and easily audited. No more overruns, lost trillions or bribes. Honest money is honest government.

This post first appeared on Coinspeak.io

Comments »

Crypto Rico

I am visiting Puerto Rico this month. My primary reason for visiting is to scout the island as my potential new home and tax shelter.

Puerto Rico is the only place in the entire world that a US citizen can live and be free from capital gains tax. Puerto Rico is a US territory so Puerto Ricans are US citizens. However, they can’t vote in national elections. No taxation without representation so….if you are a PR citizen you pay no cap gains. Nomad Capitalist has a long and slightly negative assessment of the pros/cons of moving to PR for this tax shelter.

They call Puerto Rico the Island of Enchantment. It’s beautiful here. Old San Juan is like living in Old Europe. The streets look like this:

 

The women look like this (PR has the third highest number of Miss Universe winners, incredible for small island):

It’s not all positive though. Some Puerto Ricans are upset that the US government has been dictating life on PR for decades not to mention the poor FEMA response after Hurricane Maria.

Due to the unique tax laws for Puerto Rican residents many US citizens have fled to PR. There is a very large crypto community here. A few years ago there was some publicity about Brock Pierce, EOS investor, creating a new Crypto based incubator / society. That seems to have died down but I can tell you in a few weeks here I have met more Crypto people in a small area than my travels through many large cities in different countries.

Boom bust shill Harry Dent and precious metals shill Peter Schiff live in Puerto Rico. In fact, I had the opportunity to speak one one for 20 minutes with Harry Dent at a recent crypto meetup here in San Juan. That kind of chance meeting seems unique to Puerto Rico.

I am looking at potential housing today.

This post first appeared on Coinspeak.io

Comments »

Libra Coin Update

FB released their whitepaper on Libra coin today. The opinions on it are flying around the web.

My brief takeaways:

Libra won’t go live until sometime in 2020. So it’s all a temperature check and FUD as FB algos crunch how to adjust their propaganda. Part of the paper says that as the tech matures that Libra coin will be further decentralized. Do you believe they will build this and then turn over any part of control? Never. This is a classic shell game.

FB users will not care what Libra is or bother to understand “blockchain”. They can barely manage their own messages. To the average FB user they will see they can now pay for their pizza inside FB. That will be useful. Now, imagine trying to secure the average FB users funds in an online wallet. There is going to need to be a serious breakthrough in usability and trust for Libra to be safe for anything other than pizza money.

Speaking of trust, what level of funds would you put into custodial ownership under FB? Pizza money? Car payments? Rent? Savings? I don’t see how FB breaks through from petty cash to replacing significant payment systems. The same can be said of Bitcoin. However, with Bitcoin you retain privacy and have no 3rd party risk.

FB will have 2B users to start. If all the early adopters deposit $20 USD Libra will probably be a top market cap coin. But that is relatively meaningless and could fade quickly. FB coin faces a different regulatory challenge than Bitcoin but I think in the end Bitcoin may have an easier time overcoming hurdles due to it being truly decentralized.

In the end I’m left with the boys from Silicon Valley do not understand Bitcoin. Bitcoin is an economic system expertly blended and balanced to provide a new global ledger. This ledger is immutable and can provide honest money for the world. I have been emphasizing “honest money” the past few posts. FB has zero chance of ever being a custodian of honest money

There is only one Bitcoin. The rest are just glorified databases and spreadsheets.

This post first appeared on Coinspeak.io

Comments »

The Creature from Silicon Valley

G. Edward Griffin wrote a book called “The Creature from Jekyll Island” in the 1960’s. Summary below:

Where does money come from? Where does it go? Who makes it? The money magician’s secrets are unveiled. Here is a close look at their mirrors and smoke machines, the pulleys, cogs, and wheels that create the grand illusion called money….. This book is about the most blatant scam of history. It’s all here: the cause of wars, boom-bust cycles, inflation, depression, prosperity. Your world view will definitely change. Putting it quite simply, this may be the most important book on world affairs you will ever read.

The book goes into how a group of powerful bankers came together in a secret meeting to create The Federal Reserve. To this day The Federal Reserve has not been audited and does not answer directly to any branch of the US Government. The Federal Reserve sets monetary policy and controls money supply. Very powerful stuff.

This week more information was disclosed about Facebook’s cryptocurrency and who has collaborated on the project. From the article here is our first look at what companies have been involved:

Each company paid $10M to be on the FB/Libra network to be involved in governance of the currency. Sound familiar?

Notice the theme in those companies? With the exception of Visa/MC most of those companies are Silicon Valley companies. They broker in info, specifically, your info.

Now the group are coming public about the meetings they’ve had and their intention to launch a new currency. A currency these companies will control 100%. Using their coin will submit you to their rules and regulations, possibly including censorship and confiscation. Those at the top can issue the currency per their own desires. The USD has lost 97% of it’s value as a result of Federal Reserve polices where Fed independently sets rules to benefit the unnamed Fed owners. Do you think this time is different?

But let’s not get too far into the weeds. Let’s evaluate this FB project vs Bitcoin at a high level.

LibraCoins is composed of a group of companies that paid for entry. They will control the currency as a group. You can safely assume that means they will act in their own self interest. Entry onto the network is a  minimum $10M entry fee, approval from FB and/or partners. Likely certain parts of the world would be blocked from participating to further the founder’s interests and aligned nation states.

If you think FB has a lot of data about you now, wait till they also know where you spend your money.

Bitcoin is a system of honest money. Bitcoin is hyper competitive. Contrary to LibraCoin, the actors in Bitcoin are competing with each other to process transactions. This brilliant design makes Bitcoin stronger through decentralization. Libra will work towards increasing network power for the benefit of those at the top. Bitcoin is a Red Queen Game guaranteeing evolution such that no one company will reside in the top spot for long, but the protocol is made stronger for them having competed.

Information is money. The companies that comprise LibraCoin are information brokers. Users of LibraCoin are making 3rd party brokers of their info stronger. With Bitcoin, you own your identity and info. You can protect it and/or share it in granular fashion. Bitcoin’s privacy model turns the business model of Silicon Valley upside down.

FB/Libra coin is not new. It’s The Creature from Silicon Valley. A group of Silicon Valley elites are creating a currency that derives it’s value from their already stored bank of your information. This info is increasingly of interest to governments. Example: China’s Social Credit System. Using LibraCoin will usher the world further towards a world where your data is not your own and your behaviors are measured in relation to the desirability of that behavior with corporate and government doctrines.

LibraCoin users will be a cog in FB’s machine. Not only is this Edward Griffin’s “Creature from Jekyll Island” it’s also George Orwell’s “1984”

LibraCoin is the screen. BSV is the hammer.

The exchange of value via money is as old as humans. We are entering a new era for humans. Programmable money. Who holds the strings in this game will set the direction for humanity in the near future. Will it be an objectively honest system of money based on math or a currency issued by the Silicon Valley elite in cooperation with Western Nation states?

The real game Bitcoin has been waiting for has started.

This post first appeared on Coinspeak.io

Comments »

Rumors and Lies

The latest rumor is that FB is going to use BSV in some capacity with their new cryptocurrency.

This is possible, but not likely. I believe it was fueled by Zuck’s sister Randi commenting on Craig Wright in 2018 and then reignited by former nChain CEO Jimmy Nguyen tweeting @ Randi this week.

I’m covering this because it’s not IMPOSSIBLE but it also raises several questions:

-What coin could handle that volume?
-Can a giant like FB reshape crypto?
-When does the rumor mill end?

The only public blockchain approaching capacity to handle FB levels of volume is BSV. For that reason I think people are running with the rumor. It simply doesn’t make sense on any other coin.

If FB launches a coin, based on BSV or not, they will immediately have over 1B potential users. I don’t think this guarantees success. It requires trust in FB. By design, you don’t have to trust Bitcoin. Advantage: Bitcoin.

BSV promises microtransactions for exchanging information. Bitcoin is honest money (known inflation schedule and coins created as rewards for Proof of Work).

Honest money can mean honest info. It won’t stop rumors and lies, but your clicks won’t be tracked across the Internet and your data sold to advertising bidders. Via microtransactions you take back your data and your privacy. This changes the incentives model. The Internet and information landscape won’t be the same.

Bitcoin being honest money is one of the reasons I think BSV will be the winner. It has laid out plans for this and more, much more. I will cover Paymail, the new identity system in BSV, this week.

In the meantime, I leave you with this quote.

Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.
-Abraham Lincoln

This post originally appeared on Coinspeak.io

Comments »

$FB to launch GlobalCoin

Facebook is launching it’s own Cryptocurrency named GlobalCoin in a month and YOU can run your own node on their network for the low fee of $10,000,000. Facebook plans for this coin to be a “stable coin” pegged to USD.

Let’s break this down a bit. At $10M per node who is going to run this software? From Bitcoinist:

Currently, there’s no further information about any of the requirements needed to become a validator node or how these third-parties will be rewarded.

Use of the word validator indicates these are dumb nodes. The nodes aren’t doing any work in the network and the network isn’t competitive. This immediately throws red flags about this as a currency. Bitcoin works because Satoshi solved the problem of issuing honest money. Declaring a centralized corporate coin a cryptocurrency takes liberty with the definition of a crypto and will, sadly, fool 99% of the population.  GlobalCoin will be centralized. Your transactions may not be immutable or censor free.

If it’s $10,000,000 to run a node and the nodes are only validating then I assume that the incentive to run a node is in transaction fees. I don’t think there are altruistic billionaires looking to run $10M FB nodes as a hobby. So far, we may be looking at a network that is mutable, censorable, centralized and under control of Mark Zuckerberg who will be charging you for the privelege of moving his personally issued magic internet money. What could go wrong?

GlobalCoin will be a “stable coin”. Let’s see how stable coins have worked out. Romans began shaving and clipping coins when they wanted to make up for shortfalls in their central planning by restocking their vaults with their citizens wealth. The US mint used to issue coins that contained silver. As years have worn on the precious metal content of our coins have been watered down, yet we still pretend US coins are stable coins. At one point US dollars were redeemable for precious metals to guarantee their value. That link was broken by Nixon in the 70’s.

Now, US dollars are pure fiat. There is no value behind them other than the fact the US Government has said it is so. No one has called our bluff because if the US falls so does most of the world. We will see if that game ends in our lifetimes.

But I digress. More recently Tether and USDC, primarily issued and used by Bitfinex and Coinbase respectively, have entered the crypto space as stable coins. Their entire premise is that you can redeem one unit of Tether or USDC for one USD.

Bitfinex and Coinbase issue Tether and USDC and have stated it’s backed by USD. Do you believe them? Guess what, Tether has never been audited. You know who else has never been audited? The Federal Reserve.

Tether and USDC supposedly exist to facilitate trading. In reality, stable coins exist for these companies to print money and pass the risk to their clients. The solvency of Tether has been hanging over Crypto for several years. It’s crypto’s dirty secret. Tether is a black swan waiting to emerge at any moment.

So Facebook plans to release a stablecoin, charge $10M for nodes to validate transactions and has no guarantee of your money being safe from censorship. Globalcoin will meet the fate of all stable coins. Eventually, the system grows, chaos enters and causes unforeseen circumstances and the stablecoin link is broken. You’re left with a fiat with possibly nothing backing it.

Bitcoin is a ledger. Your coins exist as entries on a ledger. Inflation is already known and in a sublime harmony of mathematical precision with a genius design of incentives. Bitcoin is immutable, uncensorable, honest, programmable money.

Anyone who buys GlobalCoin deserves their fate.

This could all be avoided if these genius level corporate CEOs understood the power of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is honest money. Bitcoin is a system that punishes cheaters. Bitcoin exposes corruption. If FB built Bitcoin into their applications they would be doing much more good than staking their own claim to the cryptoverse. Globalcoin will cause FUD and end terribly for them and possibly many others.

Bitcoin is an IQ test. Zuckerberg failed.

This post first appeared on Coinspeak.io

Comments »

Time to Pay Attention

There are moments in life where things seem effortless. During this time your performance is extraordinary. You look back and have no words for it. You were “in the flow”.

These are peak moments. Most humans spend their life chasing peak moments.

I am inviting you to be “in the flow” with regards to Crypto. A peak moment is coming. A moment where you will make outrageous returns with minimal effort. You will have no words for what will happen.

For several years there has been infighting within the Crypto community. This has resulted in Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Who’s right? Who’s a fraud? It’s been a mess. But it was necessary.

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. – Mark Twain

The truth is now becoming clear for more people. The lies are being exposed. The momentum from those who discovered truth early and went to work creating this future are now showing results.

Craig Wright is rumored to be on Bloomberg today. This will be his first appearance on a major network in years.

Satoshi had scaling, economics, and the math right all along. Craig is Satoshi and his story is coming out. BSV is Bitcoin and will consume the entire Crypto market. This puts BSV well into 5 digit price territory and possibly 6 figures years from now. I am saying that knowing that BSV is ~$220 today.

Buckminster Fuller has a quote about trim tabs. A trim tab is attached to the rudder of huge ships. To move these huge ships they move the trim tab. This trim tab moves the rudder and the rudder moves the ship.

BSV is the trim tab for you portfolio. You want to move the immovable object? You need to use a trim tab. A small thing that makes a huge difference.

Come get in the flow. All it takes is an action as easy as buying BSV today.

Comments »