life is about proteins. DNA is a protein that is very specifically encoded and that uses other proteins for its own survival... Like "blockchains" there are specific UCEs in DNA Proteins. These are UltraConserved Elements that do not change in evolution. The same UCEs can be found in rats, humans and mice. It's only recently that these have been studied in detail, rather than looking at the "cladding" -- the changing bits of DNA that lead to evolution, devolution, deformation and diseases. 

The UCEs are there to provide consistency to bind to other proteins to regulate gene activity. The loss (or variations) of UCEs would lead to the disintegration of the whole system. 

And we need to consume proteins to survive. 

read:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6341/892

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6341/904

 

see also:

Imagine a world created by the quest for beauty, filled with colorful dancing and governed by the principle of autonomous sexual freedom. To access this world, according to Richard Prum, you need only take a stroll outside and watch the avian rites of spring. Departing from the economic metaphors of evolutionary theory in which female choice represented a mechanism devoid of desire, in The Evolution of Beauty, Prum argues that mate choice, and the beauty it has created, are important—even central—mechanisms of evolutionary change at almost every stage of bird evolution.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6341/915

 

The main article at top uses various sources including Wikipedia and business journals. They are not linked to help the continuity of the narrative though it is easy to find the original sources. Most likely, the USA will try hard to prevent Russia from becoming the "blockchain" headquarters in the world. Cyber war at ten paces....

 

The Petya ransomware that spread across the globe Tuesday was made possible thanks to EternalBlue – a hacking tool used by the NSA to exploit a Windows vulnerability it left open for five years, Edward Snowden and security experts have said.

If you're a journalist writing about this, remember this worm spreads based on a vulnerability NSA kept unfixed for years. #EternalBluehttps://t.co/9Eb4agkRsp

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) June 27, 2017

Symantec confirms global #Petya ransomware attack hitting computers today (hospitals, supermarkets, banks) uses NSA's #ETERNALBLUE exploit. pic.twitter.com/wDuHoRcFCr

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) June 27, 2017

Symantec analysts have confirmed #Petya#ransomware, like #WannaCry, is using #EternalBlueexploit to spread

— Security Response (@threatintel) June 27, 2017

According to cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab, the latest ransomware attacks are a variation on the original Petya, which has been around since last year. “This appears to be a complex attack which involves several attack vectors,” Kaspersky Lab said Tuesday. “We can confirm that a modified EternalBlue exploit is used for propagation at least within the corporate network.”

Listen, people can disagree on surveillance. But when @NSAGov's focus on offense over defense shuts down US hospitals, it's time to act. https://t.co/4LL0CHFKOO

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) June 27, 2017

How many times does @NSAGov's development of digital weapons have to result in harm to civil infrastructure before there is accountability? https://t.co/VOu28Ce9ee

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) June 27, 2017

“How many times does @NSAGov's development of digital weapons have to result in harm to civil infrastructure before there is accountability?” Snowden tweeted. “Listen, people can disagree on surveillance. But when NSAGov’s focus on offense over defense shuts down US hospitals, it’s time to act.”

The NSA’s hacking team, Equation Group (or Tailored Access Operations), lost control of its trove of hacking exploits and, last August, a group calling themselves the Shadow Brokers announced it had access to those tools.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/viral/394318-petya-ransomware-nsa-exploit-snowden/

 

Even the bugs need the Internet to be healthy... otherwise they could not reach their "targets"... Please note that asking for ransom is futile as the computer systems are unable to pay anything anywhere since "they are frozen"... So the whole purpose is to disrupt, not to make money.

Note: by bypassing governments and banks, blockchains and cryptocurrencies are far more democratic than say the "dollar". As I understand it, cryptocurrencies and the underpinning blockchains make sure everyone is 'equal" in the system. No-one can rob anyone else, because of the protocols of reciprocal trust necessary to engage in transactions.

 

Blockchain technology is "challenging the status quo" and has the potential to transform the financial system by getting rid of many financial services providers who act as intermediaries, William Mougayar, author of The Business Blockchain, told Radio Sputnik.

Financial services companies are exploring the possibility of carrying out faster transactions in cryptocurrencies, and a consortium of seven large European banks has turned to US tech company IBM to create a new trade finance platform based on blockchain technology.

 

Blockchain is the technology behind Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, an open-source network that serves as a digital ledger to facilitate secure online transactions, removing the need for an intermediary.

The banks' new platform is designed to simplify and facilitate domestic and cross-border trade for small and medium sized enterprises in Europe, while helping to increase overall trade transaction transparency, IBM stated on Monday.

William Mougayar, author of The Business Blockchain, founder of the Token Summit and an early stage investor in blockchain startups, told Radio Sputnik that in its current form, blockchain technology can benefit banks and their clients. However, in the longer term, blockchain has the potential to disrupt the financial market.

"For sure, blockchain is the next generation of the internet, or the next generation of the web, from a technology perspective. However, in terms of how it will transform financial institutions, I think it will do that to a degree that doesn't go beyond their existing business model."

 

"The financial institutions are not going to disrupt themselves, they're not going to recreate new models beneath them. They're going to use the blockchain to support their existing businesses and to support their existing visions and strategies, which means they will look for the blockchain to help them in cost savings and to improve processes, but they will not let the blockchain disrupt them directly."

Eventually, blockchain is likely to disrupt the current form of financial services, because it has the potential to remove the need for intermediaries altogether. 

"The blockchain disruption in financial services is going to come from outside of these companies, it's going to come from new players and new start-ups that we have yet to see and that have yet to become big."

In the short term, the growth in blockchain technology will create more jobs, but in the long term it has the potential to remove some jobs traditionally done by banks and their staff.

"First, there will more jobs created to implement blockchain technology, because we're still in the early days. So today, there are maybe 35-40,000 developers worldwide that know how to program a blockchain application or that know the blockchain technologies. So, that's not a big number but that number is going to grow. We're not going to see the blockchain removing jobs yet until these projects are fully implemented, so that will be a secondary effect that will come much later in the evolution of the blockchain, at one to three years down the line and perhaps even longer."

 

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/science/201706291055080795-blockchain-cryptocyrr...

The one thing that blockchain technology does is reduce the possibility of gambling with currencies. I could be wrong on this one but this is the way I see this fascinating system. This could be a hindrance to the rich and a boon for the honest poor. A democratic plus? Who knows...

 

read from top...

See also:

https://sputniknews.com/world/201706291055081948-us-kaspersky-ban/

Shoppers with Internet access and a bargain-hunting impulse can find a universe of products at their fingertips. In this thought-provoking exposé, Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice Stucke invite us to take a harder look at today’s app-assisted paradise of digital shopping. While consumers reap many benefits from online purchasing, the sophisticated algorithms and data-crunching that make browsing so convenient are also changing the nature of market competition, and not always for the better. 

Computers colluding is one danger. Although longstanding laws prevent companies from fixing prices, data-driven algorithms can now quickly monitor competitors’ prices and adjust their own prices accordingly. So what is seemingly beneficial increased price transparency ironically can end up harming consumers. A second danger is behavioral discrimination. Here, companies track and profile consumers to get them to buy goods at the highest price they are willing to pay. The rise of super-platforms and their “frenemy” relationship with independent app developers raises a third danger. By controlling key platforms (such as the operating system of smart phones), data-driven monopolies dictate the flow of personal data and determine who gets to exploit potential buyers. 

Virtual Competition raises timely questions. To what extent does the “invisible hand” still hold sway? In markets continually manipulated by bots and algorithms, is competitive pricing an illusion? Can our current laws protect consumers? The changing market reality is already shifting power into the hands of the few. Ezrachi and Stucke explore the resulting risks to competition, our democratic ideals, and our economic and overall well-being. 

read more:

http://www.booktopia.com.au/virtual-competition-ariel-ezrachi/prod9780674545472.html?

 

The European Union has handed Google a record-breaking €2.42bn (£2.14bn) fine for abusing its dominance of the search engine market in building its online shopping service, in a dramatic decision that has far-reaching implications for the company.

By artificially and illegally promoting its own price comparison service in searches, Google denied both its consumers real choice and rival firms the ability to compete on a level playing field, European regulators said.

The Silicon Valley giant has 90 days to stop its illegal activities and explain how it will reform its ways or face fines of up to €10.6m a day, which equates to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover of its parent company Alphabet.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/27/google-braces-for-record-breaking-1bn-fine-from-eu

In Australia, Google is known to have paid very little tax on its billion dollar operation...

read from top...

 

Have you wondered why the USA is reluctant to let the central hub of the internet away from the USA.

 

 

The internet may never be the same after Sept. 30.

Big changes are coming that threaten its security, stability and openness. The United States has always controlled how the internet functions but, under a plan backed by President Barack Obama, next month it will abdicate control to a multi-stakeholder international governing body.

It’s a big deal, but it’s complicated.

Let me explain: To reach a website or person on the internet, you must give your computer a destination — usually entered as a name or number. That destination has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. Humans prefer to find web and email addresses by name, such as google.com. But computers know each other by numbers, or Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.

 

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) acts as the phone book of the internet by assigning and matching domain names with IP addresses. ICANN makes all sorts of policies that affect how the internet works and how related problems get resolved. Without their coordination we wouldn’t have one global internet.

Although the Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization typically does what it wants, ICANN ultimately answers to the U.S. government. That’s because the government essentially invented the internet and thus got to decide who manages it. U.S. officials have always kept an eye on ICANN and let it know when its policies were astray. 

But soon America will relinquish exclusive control and begin sharing ICANN oversight with foreign governments, tech companies and advocacy organizations.

Why give away control of ICANN — and, with it, significant parts of the internet? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, argue critics of the handover.

 

Indeed, “The global community has shown little ability to reach consensus positions on internet issues,” warns Richard Chapo, a San Diego-based lawyer specializing in internet law. Moreover, many do not share America’s laissez faire regulatory approach that has allowed the internet to flourish. 

Unfortunately, America doesn’t have much choice.

Our government has promised since 1998 to share internet oversight with the world, but progress keeps getting delayed. There’s a risk that if the U.S. doesn’t follow through, the United Nations may seize control and enact extreme changes to the internet. Or other countries and continents could form their own insulated internets, like North Korea already does, rather than participate in the global, interconnected internet we have today. That would be a major loss for everyone, including Americans.

America may have pioneered the internet, but it’s no longer the center of the virtual universe. Countries such as China and India have many more internet users, and they want a say in how the internet functions. If the net is truly the world’s communication tool, then no one owns it, and everyone should have a role in its governance.

read more:

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/sd-utbg-internet-...

 

 

The new threat to the internet is 'DIRECT COMMUNICATIONS". For example, a high-speed hub of communications between China and Russia does not have to go via the Internet. They can create their own lines of exchange in sub-nets and parallel-nets. They can have their own cabling and satellite-com. Forget the "multi-stack" governing body that is still designed to "control" communications. Here a series of new independent net-protocols can become COMPETITION TO The Internet, at international exchange and peers communications. And this is already in existence but not used by ordinary people. Banks, governments, industries have separate network cablings...

US General Services Administration (GSA) has reportedly deleted Russia’s cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab from two lists of government contractors, citing a need to “ensure integrity and security.” Kaspersky says his company is the victim of a political game.

The two lists in question reportedly are that of outside vendors providing US governmental agencies with information technology services and digital photographic equipment, Reuters cited the GSA’s spokesperson as saying. 

The company was banished “after review and careful consideration,” the spokesperson noted. While she did not throw any accusations at the company, she stressed that the GSA is focused on preserving “the integrity and security of US government system networks.”

The move comes less than a day after Bloomberg magazine published an article, accusing the Moscow-based world leader in cybersecurity of close ties to Russia’s security service, the FSB. The report, titled “Kaspersky Lab has been working with Russian Intelligence” alleged that the magazine had got hold of internal communication that explicitly show that Kaspersky Lab“has maintained a much closer working relationship” with FSB“than it has publicly admitted.”

Among the allegations put forward in the investigative piece by Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley is the claim that the firm allegedly participated in developing security tools “at the spy’s agency behest” and was involved in projects with the FSB that the firm’s CEO, Eugene Kaspersky, deems to be “embarrassing” to shed light onto.

READ MORE: CIA can hack & track Windows devices via their wifi connections

Kaspersky, who previously denied all the claims of collusion with the Kremlin, denounced the report as an example of “banya journalism” and demanded the authors provide the internal emails on which the magazine claims to have based the story.

“Numerous allegations, misinterpretations & fakes. This story is BS brewed on political agenda,” Kaspersky stated on Twitter, adding that the claim that his firm had confirmed the authenticity of the emails was incorrect.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/396065-kaspersky-gsa-vendor-list-removed/

 

A team of Russian and American scientists at Harvard University has created and tested the world's first 51 qubit quantum computer. Mikhail Lukin, the co-founder of the Russian Quantum Center, says the new system's capabilities make it easily the most complex computing machine of its kind.

Speaking at the IV International Conference on Quantum Technologies in Moscow, held under the auspices of the Russian Quantum Center, Lukin said that the new machine has allowed his group to become leader of the pack in the ongoing race to create a full-fledged, fully functional quantum computer capable of replacing traditional silicon chip-based systems.

Unlike conventional computer chips, which render data in one of two states (1 or 0) quantum computers allow for data to exist in both states simultaneously, giving them the ability to hold exponentially more information. Quantum computers operate on quantum bits or 'qubits' – the unit of quantum information analogous to the classical bit. The computing power of a quantum computer grows exponentially as the number of qubits that can be manipulated is increased. Therefore, a quantum computer with 50 manipulatable qubits is theoretically more powerful than the Sunway TaihuLight, the fastest supercomputer in existence today.

Today, there are two main approaches to the creation of quantum computing systems – classical and adiabatic. Proponents of the former seek to create a 'universal quantum computer', its qubits subject to the rules governing the operation of conventional digital devices.

Proponents of adiabatic quantum computing take a different approach, their principle of operation being closer to the analogue computers of the beginning of the 20th century than to the digital devices of the present.

Over the past year, several teams of researchers from the US, Australia and Europe have announced that they were close to creating an adiabatic machine. The believed leaders were Google's John Martinis, whose team is working on a hybrid version of a universal quantum computer combining the elements of both the analog and digital approach to calculations.

However, Lukin and his team have gone further than Martinis' group, which is creating a 22 qubit machine using superconducting circuits.

Lukin's team has instead used an exotic 'cold atom' technology. Discovered by Russian and American scientists, the approach consists of keeping a set of atoms inside special laser 'cells', and cooling them at extremely low temperatures. These atoms can then be used as qubits, their stability of operation preserved under a wide set of circumstances. This approach has allowed physicists to create a 51 qubit computer — the most powerful quantum computer in the world.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/science/201707141055558774-russian-us-lukin-quantum-computer/

 

Read from top...

Read also:

https://www.rt.com/business/396337-ether-stretch-cryptocurrency-market/

 

 

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Russian software developer Kaspersky Lab announced the worldwide launch of a free antivirus Kaspersky Free, company's head Eugene Kaspersky said Tuesday.

 

"I’ve some fantastic, earth-shattering-saving news: we’re announcing the global launch of Kaspersky Free, which, as you may have guessed by the title, is completely free-of-charge! Oh my giveaway!" Kaspersky said.

The free antivirus is competing with its commercial versions that have more features, the company said, adding that the work on the antivirus took a year-and-a-half.

"Last year the product successfully piloted in the Russia-Ukraine-Belarus region, in China, and also in the Nordic countries," the company said.

The company's free antivirus will initially be available to the US, Canada, and many of the Asia Pacific countries; in September — to India, Hong Kong, Middle East, Africa, Turkey and Latin America; in October: to Europe, Japan and South Korea; in November — to Vietnam and Thailand. The launch of the software coincides with company's 20th anniversary.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/science/201707261055881019-kaspersky-launches-fr...

 

Aleksandr Vinnik, 38, was arrested on Thursday in the Greek resort area of Halkidiki and is facing extradition to the US, where he is wanted on charges of money laundering and running “one of the most important websites of electronic crime in the world,” authorities said upon his arrest.

Vinnik is said to have funneled at least $4 billion in bitcoins through various trading platforms such as Mt. Gox and BTC-e, which he is believed to be linked to, for the purpose of money laundering.

Nilsson, a co-founder of bitcoin security firm WizSec, was not part of the official probe launched by US authorities into the multi-million bitcoin theft, but has been actively assisting investigators, having submitted troves of data as part of his voluntary contribution.

Speaking to RT, Nilsson offered some insight on how the bitcoin laundering suspect was traced.
While Vinnik’s first suspected illicit operations with cryptocurrency may date back to 2011, years passed before it was possible to gather compelling evidence to press charges. This is despite the suspect making more than a few blunders along the way that eventually led to his capture.

READ MORE: ‘Sophisticated’ Ethereum hack steals $8mn worth of cryptocurrency

According to Nilsson, one of Vinnik’s fatal mistakes was the way he disposed of stolen bitcoins.

“The weakness was that after he received his bitcoins and laundered them, he had to move them out to exchanges for selling them, not only to BTC-e but to other exchanges, like Mt. Gox itself, and that left much more in terms of records that could leave a trail back to him,” Nilsson told RT.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/397784-bitcoin-money-laundering-interview/

 

 

In fault-tolerant computer systems, and in particular distributed computing systems, Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) is the characteristic of a system that tolerates the class of failures known as the Byzantine Generals' Problem,[1] which is a generalized version of the Two Generals' Problem – for which there is an unsolvability proof. The phrases interactive consistency or source congruency have been used to refer to Byzantine fault tolerance, particularly among the members of some early implementation teams.[2] It is also referred to as error avalanche, Byzantine agreement problem, Byzantine generals problem and Byzantine failure.

Byzantine failures are considered the most general and most difficult class of failures among the failure modes. The so-called fail-stop failure mode occupies the simplest end of the spectrum. Whereas fail-stop failure model simply means that the only way to fail is a node crash, detected by other nodes, Byzantine failures imply no restrictions, which means that the failed node can generate arbitrary data, pretending to be a correct one, which makes fault tolerance difficult.

read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault_tolerance

 

What does this all mean for the layperson? Technology as good as it looks will always be imperfect. There are times when the data is somewhat corrupted and will corrupt some other data. At most times this is innocuous or accidental due to faults at various steps of the transmission. Some data can "self-correct" by being primed to recover the value of the original meaning of the data. But this is somewhat very complicated. We sit there at our computer typing away thinking that all is goodo. It is reasonably safe to believe that if you use cabled keyboard and mouse, and that you are not connected to the internet, your computer might be safe from hacking. Using a bluetooth and wifi connection has more or less zero (0) protection against hacking. Zero. Most wifi transmitters are "locked" with a password, but a "professional" hacker can get in in less than a nanosecond. The transmission can become infected with malwares of any kind at any time. 

The Byzantine problem mentioned at top can also be at the source of entry. In order to be operational, a computer and its programming has to allow faults, that are self-correctable, through — otherwise no computer would be operational. Perfection would freeze the data, as data is never fully correct. One bit gone wrong would stop an entire system of million billion items of data. This has been the bane of programmers especially those of PC. Macs are less problematic at this level for several reason, the best of which could reside in that most of the incoming data from the net has to be translated by Javascript which adds an extra filter of "surveillance" on the value of the data. As well Apple provides regular free updates that solve issues. It's not foolproof nonetheless. Strangely, I believe that older computers become more resistant to malware than newer ones because of the "inability" of these computers to read newfangled programs, while still being able to translate the general gist. 

In the end, most of the security for institution and firms connected to the net is provided by changing the encryption keys to their operations every 30 seconds. Hackers keep a lot of former hackers employed in cyber security...

 

 

What if a cold drink cost more on a hot day?

Customers in the UK will soon find out. Recent reports suggest that three of the country’s largest supermarket chains are rolling out surge-pricing in select stores. This means that prices will rise and fall over the course of the day in response to demand. Buying lunch at lunchtime will be like ordering an Uber at rush hour.

This may sound pretty drastic, but far more radical changes are on the horizon. About a week before that report, Amazon announced its $13.7bn purchase of Whole Foods. A company that has spent its whole life killing physical retailers now owns more than 460 stores in three countries.

The acquisition – Amazon’s largest ever – struck some observers as strange. ButAmazon tends to run about a decade ahead of its rivals. It owes its success to big, counterintuitive moves. This is a company that saw the power of online retail in 1994, and of cloud computing in 2006. Its purchase of Whole Foods represents a similarly far-sighted incursion into a lucrative new frontier.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/23/silicon-valley-big-data-ex...

 

Knowing consuming patterns as well as encouraging taste towards particular products with advertising demands more and more data to optimise sales. A one cent extra on manufacturing costs can often lead to an extra dollar paid by consumers at retail outlet. At this level there are several psychological factors at play depending on customer base. Some consumers will think that $2.99 is "cheap" as if the retail store is prepared to make less profit, while some will think that $3.62 is also good value. There the underlying thinking is that the retail store has done its best to keep a low price. Some consumers will accept the reality of $3,00, but they need to be educated to this round figure which does say nothing of the pricing structure.  Data mining does help in streamlining, adjusting the pricing structures — according to location, season, consumer patterns  and quality of products. A one cent difference in production cost can lead to a 30 per cent variation in profits, and might change a retail pricing from $2.99 to $3.99 with various psychological trick, including advertising spruiking and style of pricing ticketing...

 

 

The currency isn’t going to work. You can’t have a business where people can invent a currency out of thin air and think that people who are buying it are really smart,”Dimon said at a bank investor conference in New York.

The head of America’s largest bank threatened to dismiss traders if they trade the cryptocurrency.

“I would fire them in a second, for two reasons: It is against our rules, and they are stupid, and both are dangerous,”Dimon said, as quoted by Reuters.

Dimon also compared the recent bitcoin rush with the 17th сentury tulip mania, which boosted contract prices for bulbs of newly introduced tulips to extremely high levels.

The prices drastically collapsed at the beginning of 1637, making the tulip mania one of the first recorded speculative bubbles.

According to Dimon, bitcoin could be useful “if you were in Venezuela or Ecuador or North Korea.. or if you were a drug dealer or a murderer.”

READ MORE: Bitcoin price surpasses $5,000 for first time

Meanwhile, the controversial cryptocurrency has tumbled to a three-week low and is currently trading at around $3,970. Bitcoin lost a massive $1,000 in value since the beginning of September when its price was close to breaking a new record of $5,000.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/business/403173-bitcoin-fraud-collapse-jp-dimon/

 

"In god we trust, all other pay cash..." ... with shells or clams or...

God, the dollar and bitcoins are all invented values to underwrite the trust we have between each others. It's only a question of exchange numbers, even if "governments" can certify the value of their "fiat" currency, especially the dollar. The US debt to the rest of the world is officially $20 trillion. In reality it is far more than this. The problem here with Dimon is that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies compete on his little patch against his own "traditional" system of trading values.

Whether Bitcoins survive or not, is open for conjecture, but they offer an alternative that even some banks and some countries are thinking of using to bypass the US dollar. Should this happen it would not take long for the US dollar value plummet, leading to a sudden doubling of the US debt. People like the CEO of JPMorgan Chase Jamie Dimon do not want this to happen because of their own supply and demand market investments in the "dollar".   

 

Read from top...

 

The CEO of JPMorgan Chase Jamie Dimon has called bitcoin a fraud that will blow up. Max Keiser of RT’s Keiser Report has explained why the real bubble may be in banking, and not in the cryptocurrency

JP Morgan, along with the entire finance sector, has been subsidized by the Federal Reserve's corrupt practice of 'financial repression' that moves hundreds of billions from savers and pensioners, and workers, into JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon's pocket. Jamie's compensation is tied directly to manipulating JP Morgan's stock and option prices, thanks to the Fed's conflicted, corrupt, cozy malfeasance,” he told RT.

Financial repression is a term describing measures used by governments to channel funds to themselves as a form of debt reduction. These actions include the deliberate attempt to hold down interest rates to below inflation. In this system, benefits are transferred from lenders to borrowers. JPMorgan Chase stock has surged about 260 percent since June 2012.

According to Keiser, it is wrong to say bitcoin is a bubble or a fraud.

“The US dollar, bond markets, and many property markets are in bubbles. Bitcoin and gold are the only financial assets not in bubbles. To say bitcoin is fraudulent would be like saying gold is fraudulent. Some might say this, but no rational person would agree,” he said.

“As the bubbles in fiat money, bonds and stocks pop, capital will flow into bitcoin, gold, and silver. At some point, when his customers start leaving JPMorgan and move to more bitcoin-focused options, Jamie will be forced to capitulate, or get replaced,” Keiser added.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/business/403290-bitcoin-bubble-jpmorgan-dimon-keiser/

 

The more players in bitcoins the more stable the cryptocurrency... As well, Gus quoting Gus at top:

The company’s representative in Russia Martynov added that “in five years Russia could become a global center for blockchain expertise. The country plans to attract and teach programmers blockchain technology and then offer the world expertise.”

 

Having the Ruskies (or any one else independently of the dollar) take over the financing of the planet via cryptocurrencies could piss off the yanks including CEO of JPMorgan Chase Jamie Dimon... 

 

Cryptocurrencies have captured the attention of investors and world governments alike, especially given Bitcoin’s meteoric rise over the past 12 months. Cybersecurity expert John McAfee believes they may encompass the sum of all fears for governments the world over.

The blockchain technology that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are built on helps to solve the problems that plague traditional banking, by cutting out the middleman, thus reducing fees for consumers, while also decentralizing and securing transactions.

With no centralized exchange to control or influence, national authorities around the world will find it increasingly difficult to determine a given citizen's income and thus their income tax owed, undermining a critical source of government revenue, according to technology pioneer and head of MGT Capital Investments John McAfee.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/business/406175-governments-fear-bitcoin-tax-revenue/

 

 

 

Kaspersky Lab IT company has come under increased pressure in the US amid accusations concerning its alleged work for Russian intelligence, a claim denied as false.

WikiLeaks has revealed that CIA had written a code to "impersonate" Russia-based Kaspersky Lab, which had been used at least three times.

According to the whisteblowing organization's press release dedicated to Vault-8 documents, "WikiLeaks publishes the source code and development logs to Hive, a major component of the CIA infrastructure to control its malware."

New WikiLeaks publication reveals CIA wrote code to impersonate Kaspersky Labs anti-virus company https://t.co/EvE8GdyAmM pic.twitter.com/geigDgIDsk

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) 9 ноября 2017 г.

 

WikiLeaks has explained that "Hive" source code ensured the covert delivery of gathered intelligence to the CIA, which allows the US intelligence to impersonate other entities in order to mask its presence.

"The three examples included in the source code build a fake certificate for the anti-virus company Kaspersky Laboratory, Moscow pretending to be signed by Thawte Premium Server CA, Cape Town. In this way, if the target organization looks at the network traffic coming out of its network, it is likely to misattribute the CIA exfiltration of data to uninvolved entities whose identities have been impersonated," WikiLeaks said, adding that the use of Hive makes virus attribution to the CIA difficult,

According to the "Hive" release by WikiLeaks as part of Vault-7, the virus control system "provides a covert communications platform for a whole range of CIA malware to send exfiltrated information to CIA servers and to receive new instructions from operators at the CIA."

READ MORE: New Wikileaks 'Vault-7' Batch Reveals Top Secret CIA Virus Control System HIVE

On March 7, WikiLeaks released the first part of what it called an unprecedentedly large archive of CIA-related classified documents, comprising various viruses, malware, software vulnerability hacks and relevant documentation, which was initially uncovered by US government hackers. As WikiLeaks has gained access to some of the data from the trove, the White House has condemned the leaks, stressing that those responsible for leaking classified information should be held accountable in accordance with the law.

 

Pressure on Kaspersky in US

WikiLeaks' release came amid increased pressure on the Russian IT company in the US, with US Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke ordering all the country's federal departments and agencies to stop using Kaspersky Lab products within the next 90 days, saying the company's products allegedly represented a threat to security.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/science/201711091058962509-wikileaks-cia-code-ka...

Gus believes that Kaspersky has confirmed that the CIA impersonated its firm in order to discredit Kaspersky...

 

See also: https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/cms/index.html

 

 

A team of Chinese researchers has successfully conducted a data transmission via a quantum channel over a distance of almost 3 kilometers, a new record.

Chinese scientists announced that they have made a major breakthrough in quantum communications, claiming to successfully transmit data via a quantum channel over a distance of 2.7 kilometers, according to a report by Defense One.

 

If the claim is verified, it will mark a significant milestone in quantum communication methods — sending messages that cannot be intercepted or spied on.

Quantum-encrypted data cannot be eavesdropped because a third party tampering with the communication channel causes a quantum message to change, and both the recipient and the sender will know that someone is attempting an intercept. Due to the nature of quantum physics, any observation using our large-scale instruments influences — and so alters — the object of observation, an effect known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

 

 

Much like the 20th century space race, the US and China are rapidly developing quantum messaging technology, and China appears to be in the lead, for now. In June, Chinese scientists demonstrated their first secure quantum communication by means of a small-scale tabletop experiment. This time, they have pushed the boundaries by successfully sending and receiving sending quantum-based messages over much longer long distances.

The Chinese research team claims that their system can be scaled to send messages "tens of kilometers." The US does not have those capabilities presently, according to Defense One.

If quantum communication becomes the new norm it will alleviate the need for any form of encryption. While today's best encryption is nearly unbreakable, it is not 100-percent secure. Thus, developing quantum systems becomes a matter of national security.

read more:
https://sputniknews.com/science/201711111059002731-quantum-communication-china/


In the 1950s. most spy networks used analogue transmission successfully.. The trick was that the transmission was a one-off, on a one-off agreed frequency (never the same) in the "industrial (short) bands" at an agreed time (variable according to the code book) and the recording was compressed at more than 100 times the speed of the original. 3 seconds of transmissions transferred 300 seconds (five minutes) of recording which was ample daily communications. It was impossible for anyone else to pick up the short burst of noise of the transmission amongst the other noises of the "industrial short waves".
What encryption did was to hide the content of the communication but not the communication itself, opening the communication to be captured and decrypted. A bit dumb really.

 

The record-breaking cryptocurrency bitcoin has broken through yet another milestone, topping $10,800 on Wednesday.

The cryptocurrency's value skyrocketed unprecedentedly over 2017, rising from below $1,000 on January 1. According to blockchain and cryptocurrency website Coindesk, as of 2:30 am GMT Wednesday, Bitcoin was trading at around $10,030.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/business/411250-bitcoin-10000-record-price/

 

Read from top...

The Russian government will build an “independent internet” for use by itself, Brazil, India, China, and South Africa — the so-called BRICS nations — “in the event of global internet malfunctions,” the Russian news site RT reported on Tuesday. More precisely, Moscow intends to create an alternative to the global Domain Name System, or DNS, the directory that helps the browser on your computer or smartphone connect to the website server or other computer that you’re trying to reach. The Russians cited national security concerns, but the real reason may have more to do with Moscow’s own plans for offensive cyber operations.

According to RT, the Russian Security Council discussed the idea during its October meeting, saying that “the increased capabilities of western nations to conduct offensive operations in the informational space as well as the increased readiness to exercise these capabilities pose a serious threat to Russia’s security.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has set a date of August 1, 2018, to complete the alternative DNS.

Why are they doing it? Russia, along with China, has long pushed for national governments to assert more control over theDNS and net governance in general, via the UN International Telecommunication Union, or ITTU. Then, as now, the Russian and Chinese arguments were rooted in national security. But wereDNS to be turned over to the ITTU, dictatorships would be able to much better monitor dissidents, stifle dissent, and control the information environment in their countries. For example, Western tech companies could be forced to keep data and servers physically within those countries, and thus become entangled in vast citizen-monitoring programs.

In 2014, the U.S. cleverly announced it would give control of theDNS database to a non-governmental international body of stakeholders, a process to be run by the California-based Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.

“Now, when China stands up and says, ‘We want a seat at the table of internet governance,’ the U.S. can say, ‘No. The internet should be stateless.’ They’re in a much stronger position to make that argument today than they were before,” Matthew Prince, co-founder of the company Cloudflare, told Defense One at the time.

In a statement Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov framed Russia’s desire for an alternative DNS as essential to “protecting it from possible external influence.”

“We all know who the chief administrator of the global internet is. And due to its volatility, we have to think about how to ensure our national security,” Peskov said.

read more:

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/11/russia-will-build-its-own-i...

 

 

 

Bitcoin has crossed over the $US11,000 mark — briefly — as it continues its whirlwind end to the year.

It's more than welcome news to investors, who are embracing the increasing value of the digital currency, but market analysts are a bit more sceptical.

Here's why some are predicting a bitcoin crash and what would happen if it does.

ICYMI, Bitcoin is going crazy right now

Bitcoin is a type of digital cryptocurrency that first emerged in 2009.

What is Bitcoin?

• A digital cryptocurrency
• It operates on a decentralised peer-to-peer network, with no central authority or government backing
• They can be bought with fiat currencies like Australian dollars from online exchanges or created through mining

 

The reason why everyone keeps talking about it is because it's increased tenfold in its value since the beginning of the year, and is currently worth more than $US10,000 after its value more than doubled since the beginning of October.

"The bitcoin phenomenon is almost unprecedented," John Noonan, senior forex analyst at Thomson Noonan, said.

"I've never seen anything like it, certainly in my 44 years.

In fact, the cryptocurrency's current market capitalisation — its price multiplied by the number of coins that have been released into the system — is roughly $US214 billion, according to industry website Coinmarketcap.

To put that in perspective, that is equivalent to the combined market cap of the Commonwealth Bank (at $140 billion) and National Australia Bank (at $80 billion).

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-01/heres-what-would-happen-if-the-bit...

 

Crash? It might loose some value, but Bitcoin will not "crash". Famous words by Gus Leoniksy here. Anything is vulnerable though. Even your local newsagent is selling Bitcoins with a special electronic apparatus designed for this purpose, along with selling other cryptocurrencies. So the more people join in on the "mad circus", the less it is likely to crash... But the main reason why Uncle Gus thinks it's no going to crash in the near future is the way that Bitcoin is constructed, with blockchains that prevent "flow-back", a bit like your arteries have a one way dedicated flow with flow-back inhibitors. The bitcoin value is a solid encrypted trust between two parties that have secured a transaction without banking nor government manipulation. In regard to the US$120 trillions on the general market economy plus the Euros, the Pounds, the Roubles and the Yuens, Bitcoins are still microscopic, but like all microbe they can change the landscape... Read from top.

 

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency in the world, continues to post new highs; it was trading at over $15,000 on Thursday, according to market statistics.

The figures from the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange trading platform show that at 05:51 GMT one Bitcoin could be bought at a price amounting to $13,980. However, earlier the price for a bitcoin had peaked at $14,144. On Wednesday evening, bitcoin renewed its historic previous record value, trading at over $13,000.

$BTC BITCOIN smashes $15000 https://t.co/Cgk0NYjHN9

— Abrcap (@abrcap) 7 декабря 2017 г.​

Congrats to all. In about a decades time Bitcoin has managed to reach ATH of $15000 today. The last two days have been phenomenal. up from $12000 to $15000 in just over a day. #bitcoin #btc #cryptocurrency

— Sanjeev Raghu (@Sanjeevblogs) 7 декабря 2017 г.

​READ MORE:Cryptocurrencies May Become Global, but are Unlikely to Replace the US Dollar

On January 1, 2017, the value of one one Bitcoin was $997. By November 29, one Bitcoin was worth $9,001. Since the beginning of the last week, Bitcoin has posted active growth, beating several historical records within a few days.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/world/201712071059780614-bitcoin-new-record/

Now the dollar is only worth 1/15,000 of a Bitcoin... despite some people having managed to steal some BT... (probably an inside job?). Read from top.

 

TD Ameritrade and CME are jumping into the burgeoning bitcoin futures market. The move comes on the heels of a slow, yet respectable start in the same market by the largest US options exchange company, the Cboe.

TD Ameritrade, which features the largest futures operation of any online brokerage, will allow bitcoin futures to be traded on its platform starting Monday. Another large futures trading operation, CME, will launch bitcoin futures on its own platform on Sunday, CNBC reported.

Customers who choose to come into the market will have access to contracts offered by the Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe) Global Markets Inc., but to trade, they must have a minimum balance in their account of $25,000, and also post margin – or collateral – equal to one-and-a-half times higher than Cboe already requires, a statement by TD Ameritrade said Friday, according to Bloomberg.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/413376-td-ameritrade-cme-bitcoin-futures/

 

Despite many pundit predicting the collapse of the Bitcoin market — and a few hiccups — the Bitcoin seems to be here to stay. Read from top...

 

Two Bureau of Meteorology employees are being investigated by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) for allegedly running an elaborate operation involving the use of the bureau's powerful computers to "mine" cryptocurrencies, ABC News has learned.

Federal police officers executed a search warrant at the bureau's Collins Street headquarters in Melbourne on Wednesday last week (February 28). The officers spoke to two IT employees, according to people with knowledge of the raid.

The rest of the bureau's IT team was ushered into a conference room and told to wait while the employees were questioned, the people said.

At least one of the employees who was questioned by the AFP has since gone on leave. No charges have been laid but the investigation is continuing.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-08/bureau-of-meteorology-staff-implic...

 

Despite having gone through the ringers, and being forecast to be worth zero bizos, a Bitcoin today (8/3/18) is worth AU$12,356.66...

 

Read from top...

Two interesting items about the use and abuse of big data appeared on the same day, May 16. And while on the surface they were completely disconnected, underneath, well, they seem anything but. 

First, the use: an article in CFO magazine described big data in almost physical terms. In the words of Henna A. Karna, chief data officer for the XL Group, data is a “feedstock.” As she put it, “Data, in the right hands, is often as valuable as land, buildings, and equipment.” Most evocatively, she referred to using data as “mining the gold.” 

Second, the abuse: in testimony on Capitol Hill, Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, described how data could be weaponized. As Wylie told lawmakers, “In the wrong hands, it becomes a weapon.” He zeroed in on Facebook and Twitter, declaring that they “are not just social networking sites. They’re opportunities for information warfare.” 

At first blush, there’s no obvious linkage between a data maven extolling the “golden” potential of big data in the right hands, and a data critic warning against its “warfare” potential in the wrong hands.

Yet we see that both points can be true. That is, data can be a weapon while also being gold. We’ve known for the last few decades about the wealth gained by cyber-tycoons, and we’ve learned over the last couple of years about the danger from cyber-warriors—hacking, for example, U.S. politics at the highest level. 

Thus we see the two key words: “warfare” and “gold.” And if we think of them together, it’s hard not to think of, yes, the Spanish conquistadors of ages past. When it comes to war-for-gold, nobody did it better.

 

Read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/meet-the-new-conquistado...

 

 

Read from top

After switching on the 340-ton Summit, the US has clawed back its title to producing the world’s fastest supercomputer, an honorific held by China for the past five years.

Although the brag has come to be acknowledged as merely symbolic, the location of the world's fastest supercomputer has long been a topic of national pride among a certain kind of politically-motivated tech nerd, as well as a jumping-off point for dark predictions of machine hegemony through the use or abuse of artificial intelligence and surveillance-based data gathering.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/science/201806101065275309-US-turns-on-Worlds-Fa...

 

Read from top.

In late May, the New York Times reported that Google's involvement with the US Department of Defence's Maven Program, which aims to use artificial intelligence to assess video, had set off "an existential crisis" internally.

Employees resigned, morally opposed to the work that some feared could be used to facilitate drone strikes. About 4,000 workers signed a petition demanding "a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology".

By June, Google CEO Sundar Pichai had unveiled a set of seven principles to guide the company's artificial intelligence work, and promised not to pursue "weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people".

Google will not renew its Maven contract with the Pentagon.

Internet started with the military

The internet precursor, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) sent its first message in 1969.

The network's early iterations were reserved mostly for academia and the armed forces up until the late 1980s.

Decades later, the internet co-designer appears to be more comfortable with the company's recent work than some of his protesting colleagues.

"The purposes of the Maven project, as I understood it anyway, had a lot to do with situational awareness so that you could understand what's in the field of view — are there vehicles in the field of view? ... This is just to understand what's going on," Dr Cerf told the ABC.

 

"Some people, I think, extrapolated from that kind of capability to all kinds of other things that they thought we shouldn't be involved with."

 

Nevertheless, the debate over Google's new principles was an important albeit sometimes painful discussion to have, he told an audience at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

"I think it's early days yet, but the intent is to establish oversight committees that will evaluate projects before we start them in order to assess the degree to which they might be harmful," he explained later.

Despite the fears of "killer robots" and weaponised algorithms, Dr Cerf suggested artificial intelligence is sometimes best called "artificial idiocy".

"I can say that I've always been a little sceptical," he said.

For now, he is concerned these systems are still often "brittle". They are deep and narrow in their capabilities, and no match for human ability.

Once you or I know what a table is, for example, you begin to know that any flat location perpendicular to the Earth's gravitational surface could be used as a table.

"A lap, your chair, a real table, this stage," he said. "In just a few examples, we've generalised the notion of table. Human beings do this really well. Computers don't know how to do this well."

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-06-28/vint-cerf-father-of-intern...

--------------------

Just to let Dr Cerf know, AI does not need "tables" nor "chairs" as we know them. Artificial Intelligence can have far more benefits to humanity, especially in giving us more leisure to increase our relative laziness... see: The mother of invention...

Big tech companies like Google have the power to “shift upwards of 12 million votes with no one knowing they’re doing so,” a research psychologist told Radio Sputnik Thursday, underscoring the influence profit-making firms can have on public elections.

That, he said, is too much power for "just a couple of executives" and is why tech giant monopolies need to be thought of as public utilities and not private entities.

"Research I have been directing in recent years suggests that Google, Inc., has amassed far more power to control elections — indeed, to control a wide variety of opinions and beliefs — than any company in history has ever had," research psychologist Robert Epstein says.

In 2015, Dr. Robert Epstein, senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, wrote a groundbreaking paper about the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME), published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

"Google's search algorithm can easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or more — up to 80 percent in some demographic groups — with virtually no one knowing they are being manipulated," Epstein wrote in Politico at the time.

That kind of a margin could tilt an election, he noted. Indeed, Epstein's research shows that Google manipulated search results to display pro-Hillary Clinton results higher on the page than others.

With Google reaching a billion users last year, according to The Verge, and the company collecting over $100 billion a year in revenue, the tech giant has acquired an unheard-of power over how we think and how we access information.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201809211068216213-Researcher-Takes-on-...

 

That would piss off Mr Murdoch...

if you were a bank, would you not be temped to sabotage "OTHER" currencies than the one you control?

 

This has been the "bête noire" of the USA and their BANKERS.

The war in Iraq and the war against Gaddafi were not even for oil (as claimed by Greenspan), but for maintaining control over cash on the planet. Iraq and Libya were about to sell oil in OTHER currencies than US dollars. Gaddafi "had the temerity", the cad, of trying to create a PAN-AFRICAN banking system, free of the US hegemony. 

So presently, Russia is selling weapons to India for ROUBLES. Iran was about to sell oil in any currency they wished, as they remove the transponders of their ship location, to bypass sanctions. Russia and China are not trading with each other in US dollars.

The creation of Cryptocurrencies has really been annoying to the centralised banking system of BANKS — the (amazingly PRIVATE) Federal Reserve Bank of the USA. So, would such Reserve Bank and their dominion minions find ways to undermine Cryptocurrencies. Industrial sabotage?... This is not new. The USA tried to sabotage the Euro, by lending money illegally to Greece, etc. The USA has been trying to undermine Europe by wagging wars on countries from which "refugees" would flock to Europe and create uncertainty. 

But as ordinary people have no clue about Cryptocurrencies, people have no clues about the (real) value of the fiat cash they hold in their hands in the form and shape of US dollars. 

 

This IMPORTANT documentary by The Corbett Report explains the whole SCAM:

 

https://www.corbettreport.com/federalreserve/

 

Read from top.

On 26 February 2018 the Parliament of the Republic of the Marshall Islands passed the Declaration and Issuance of the Sovereign Currency Act 2018, adopting in principle a crypto currency. An Israeli company called Neema would be tasked with creating this crypto currency for the Marshall Islands. This currency would be called Sovereign.

The Republic of the Marshall Islands does not have an army and its defence is guaranteed by the United States. It does not have its own currency and instead uses the dollar.

The view of the International Monetary Fund is that in the fight against capital laundering and the financing of terrorism, the Sovereign Plan offers no safeguards. For these reasons, the convertibility of the crypto currency into dollars could be blocked.

Panicked and with their hair on end, the Parliament of the Marshall Islands should make a declaration on the implementation of the Sovereign Plan on Monday 12 November 2018, and eventually, should adopt a motion of censure against the government of President Hilda Heine.

As we write, the only country in the world which has a crypto-currency is Venezuela. This currency is called the Petro. It contrast to other currencies, its value is not tied to market movements/artificial gyrations but to the natural reserves of the country. This system has enabled Venezuela to put an end to its currency being stripped of all value as it plummets down an abyss, constructed by foreign powers.

From the beginning of 2018, several countries have been studying the potential for establishing their own crypto currencies. These countries are the United Kingdom, Canada, Singapore, Turkey and Iran.

Translation 
Anoosha Boralessa

 

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article203859.html

 

Read from top.

Facebook will launch Libra in 2020, its own cryptocurrency. Centralized, it will be managed by a group of multinationals. The authorities are worried about the birth of a sovereign currency, which directly competes with that of the states.

Is the global financial system at the dawn of a real earthquake? The question is worth asking since the 18 June announcement by Facebook of the launch of its cryptocurrency, the Libra, which will be put into circulation in 2020.

Based on the block-chain system — the "public", tamper-proof registry on which transactions are written — the Libra is supposed to allow buying of goods or send money as easily as a message, instantaneous. The idea is to make payments online directly from one person to another without going through a financial institution and overcoming the barrier of different currencies.

According to Facebook, this currency primarily targets the 1.7 billion people who are excluded from the banking system, by not having bank accounts — especially in emerging countries. But the ambition of the giant of social networks is obviously much larger: the multinational intend to make the Libra an essential currency in virtual exchanges. As proof, it will not be limited to the 2.4 billion Facebook users, but will be accessible to anyone who opens a digital wallet (Calibra) where to store his/her chips.

If in some aspects the Libra is inspired by traditional cryptocurrencies, the resemblance is only in trompe-l'oeil. Where Bitcoin or Ethereum owe their success to decentralisation, each unit being created by the users themselves, the Libra works in a completely centralized way.

The Libra Association, a non-profit association, will act as the central bank. Twenty-eight entities have been designated to play this strategically important role. Among them, we find heavy online payment, such as Mastercard, PayPal and Visa. With these, eBay, Spotify, Uber, Vodafone Group, the investment firm Andreessen Horowitz and Iliad, the French telecommunications group founded by billionaire Xavier Niel. In the future, companies wishing to enter this very closed club — which may dream of one day having a power equivalent to that of the Fed or the ECB — would have to have a valuation of more than one billion dollars.

Another major difference: the Libra will be backed by a basket of traditional currencies but also government bonds, a way according to Facebook to bring stability that is lacking in traditional cryptocurrencies.

Threat to traditional currencies?

If it has the apparatus of a cryptocurrency, the Libra is finally much more like a classic currency. To the point of competing eventually with the dollar or the euro? The fear is in any case perennial in the minds of regulators. The governor of the Central Bank of England Mark Carney has ensured very carefully monitor the situation, saying that the project Libra, if it were to be successful, "will become instantly systemic and will be subject to the best regulation standards ".

 

Read more:

https://translate.google.com.au/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=

 

 

Read from top. This is why most of the western english media have been "paid" (bought out) to poopoo the Libra as not to upset the traditional values of the "dollar" or the Pound. Translation was done by Jules Letambour...

 

Ruja Ignatova called herself the Cryptoqueen. She told people she had invented a cryptocurrency to rival Bitcoin, and persuaded them to invest billions. Then, two years ago, she disappeared. Jamie Bartlett spent months investigating how she did it for the Missing Cryptoqueen podcast, and trying to figure out where she's hiding. 

In early June 2016 a 36-year-old businesswoman called Dr Ruja Ignatova walked on stage at Wembley Arena in front of thousands of adoring fans. She was dressed, as usual, in an expensive ballgown, wearing long diamond earrings and bright red lipstick. 

She told the cheering crowd that OneCoin was on course to become the world's biggest cryptocurrency "for everyone to make payments everywhere".

OneCoin, Dr Ruja told the Wembley audience, was the "Bitcoin Killer". "In two years, nobody will speak about Bitcoin any more!" she shouted.

All over the world, people were already investing their savings into OneCoin, hoping to be part of this new revolution. Documents leaked to the BBC show that British people spent almost €30m on OneCoin in the first six months of 2016, €2m of it in a single week - and the rate of investment could have increased after the Wembley extravaganza. Between August 2014 and March 2017 more than €4bn was invested in dozens of countries. From Pakistan to Brazil, from Hong Kong to Norway, from Canada to Yemen… even Palestine.

-------

But there was something very important these investors didn't know.

To explain this, I need first to explain briefly how a cryptocurrency actually works. This is notoriously difficult - go online and you'll find hundreds of different descriptions, some of them utterly baffling to the non-specialist. But this is the first principle to grasp: money is only valuable because other people think it's valuable. Whether it's Bank of England notes and coins, shells, precious stones or matchsticks - all of which have historically been used as money - it only works when everyone trusts it. 

For a long time, people have tried to create a form of digital money independent of state-backed currencies. But they have always failed because no-one could trust them. They would always need someone in charge who could manipulate the supply, and forgery was too easy.

The reason so many people are excited by Bitcoin is that it solves that problem. It depends upon a special type of database called a blockchain, which is like a huge book - one that Bitcoin owners have independent but identical copies of. Every time a Bitcoin is sent from me to someone else, a record of that transaction goes into everyone's book. Nobody - not banks, not governments, or the person who invents it - is in charge or can change. There is some very clever maths behind all this, but this means that Bitcoins can't be faked, they can't be hacked and can't be double-spent.

(I tested this explanation on my mother, the family technophobe, and she told me I'd failed to make it clear enough and should start again. So don't worry too much if you don't follow it either.) The key point is that these special blockchain databases are what make cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin work. For its fans this is a revolutionary new form of currency, with the potential to sideline the banks and national currencies, and provide banking for anyone with a mobile phone. And if you get in early, there's the chance to make a fortune.

 

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50435014

 

 

Read from top.

 

 

 

..

The online tool has ranked Bitcoin’s electricity consumption above Argentina (121 TWh), the Netherlands (108.8 TWh) and the United Arab Emirates (113.20 TWh) - and it is gradually creeping up on Norway (122.20 TWh).

The energy it uses could power all kettles used in the UK for 27 years, it said.

However, it also suggests the amount of electricity consumed every year by always-on but inactive home devices in the US alone could power the entire Bitcoin network for a year.

Mining Bitcoin

In order to "mine" Bitcoin, computers - often specialised ones - are connected to the cryptocurrency network.

They have the job of verifying transactions made by people who send or receive Bitcoin.

 

Read more: 

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952

 

 

 

Read from top.

 

 

See also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/18842

 

 

 

 

Now, one has to ask, what is the energy consumption of Google, Faecesbook and the internet? Or the Dollar for example?

 

Fascinating that in the days of comparing things to swimming pools and the weight of the Eiffel Tower, we have not seen the consumption of football fields under lights at night time...

 

Oh pleazzze!

 

From Alan kohler

 

Last Saturday was “Bitcoin Pizza Day” – the 11th anniversary of the day someone bought two pizzas with 10,000 Bitcoins. It was the first ever transaction using a cryptocurrency.

That day, May 22, 2010, was 19 months after Satoshi Nakamoto published the white paper that started it all, entitled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.

And by the way, the pizzas were family-sized and cost $US15 each, so the transaction valued each Bitcoin at 0.3 cents.

 

Ever since then, on quiet news days a journo will often work out what those pizzas cost at the current value of Bitcoin and write a funny little story about it. For the record, as of the time of writing, it was $US187.5 million per pizza.

Crazy, right? And that feeds the narrative that it’s a bubble about to burst, and Bitcoin’s price has already fallen 50 per cent in a month, so maybe this is the crash everybody’s been waiting for, except that Bitcoin has crashed twice before, and bubbles are usually like aircraft – they only crash once.

And the Bitcoin price held up pretty well on Wednesday after South Korea clamped down on the country’s 200 crypto exchanges, so that many are facing an “existential crisis” according to the Financial Times.

The thing that’s missed in all the bubble talk about Bitcoin is that there is no “normal” or intrinsic value against which to compare the price, as there usually is when a market goes crazy.

One Bitcoin might be worth 0.3 cents or $US1 million, as a lot of its true believers think. There’s simply no way of knowing.

 

The crypto traders are engaged in a kind of mass collusion with the exchanges that make money by facilitating the trades, and none of them has any interest in seeing it all disappear.

It’s a subculture that has a vested interest in sustaining itself and attracting new members, so they buy the dips in price and send it back up.

It’s not so much a religion or a cult as a mutiny that became a revolution, one that will likely become a vast transformation.

 

There is far more to cryptocurrencies than playing pass the parcel with a speculative asset, hoping you can sell it to a greater fool for more than you paid, and that was clear from the beginning, in October 2008.

Here’s what Satoshi Nakamoto wrote: “What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.”

In other words, he was creating a new payments system that didn’t rely on governments, central banks or commercial banks.

The genius of blockchain – for that’s the engine under Bitcoin’s bonnet – is that it gets around the need for a third party like a bank by having a transparent, unalterable record of all transactions. Proof creates the trust that is usually supplied by third party verification.

The nine pages of the white paper describe nothing more than a payment system, not a new form of money or a “store of value”.

But a tradable token had to be invented to make Nakamoto’s system work and his big mistake, in my view, was that he called it a coin.

Words and labels matter, and that one gave the impression that Bitcoin is a new kind of money or a collectible, rather than the idealistic, anti-capitalist, anarchic payments mechanism that it is.

You might say that’s just semantics and that a payments system is money, but it’s not. The system is not the money, just as my Visa card is not money, just a way of transferring it.

But it didn’t take long for the idea of using Bitcoins to speculate with began to catch on.

As discussed, in May 2010 the value of one Bitcoin was 0.3 cents. A year later it was worth a dollar – a 300-fold increase in 12 months.

Over the same period, the US dollar fell 15 per cent, the American sharemarket rose 15 per cent and the price of gold, which was in the midst of a huge rally at the time, rose 28 per cent. A little 33,000-percenter named Bitcoin got noticed.

So Bitcoin became a speculative collectible and the revolutionary genius named Satoshi Nakamoto was, and is, nowhere to be seen.

Maybe he snaffled a million or two of them and retired to a private island.

Three bubbles and crashes later (2013-14, 2017-18 and 2020-21) and Bitcoin is still with us and is now worth 36,000 times what it was a year after Pizza Day.

Even Amazon shares are only 17 times what they were then.

And the original idea has been lost in the gobsmacking wealth creation and pure frenzied greed of it all.

Nakamoto’s creation is still a fast, low-fee payment system, and businesses are starting to use it for that, and blockchain is starting to be used for storing all sorts of data.

Bitcoin is also a terrible consumer of energy, as Elon Musk has pointed out, prompting the most recent crash, and that might end up bringing about Bitcoin’s death.

But there are 4500 or so other cryptocurrencies, and a few of them, apart from Bitcoin, are also a way to participate in the future.

Now we even have things called non-fungible tokens (NFTs) conferring ownership of virtual digital “assets”, including art you can’t touch and the things you buy in computer games.

Calling them currencies is misleading: None of them is money and never will be, but they are not nothing.

Will crypto prices crash again?

Yes, of course, and it’s also true that the crashes are becoming dangerous because of the amount of money involved now and the debt that a lot of traders are using: The crash under way now, or perhaps the next one, could bring down other markets as well.

But it’s also a bit like it must have been when Copernicus and Galileo were telling everyone about the cosmos, and Darwin explained evolution.

We’re being confronted with entirely new ways of thinking about finance and money that are very hard to get our heads around.

 

What’s more, it comes at a time when the old ways of finance are visibly fraying.

Global central banks have printed about $US30 trillion of fresh money to prop up governments that are no longer able to tax their citizens sufficiently to fund their spending.

And it’s not just the pandemic – this has been going on since the GFC.

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/finance-news/2021/05/27/bitcoin-bubble-future-alan-kohler/

 

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In March, Peter Thiel, the German-American billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist, argued that bitcoin is little more than a “Chinese financial weapon against the U.S.” According to the 53-year-old, “it threatens fiat money, but it especially threatens the U.S. dollar.” Is Thiel, a highly astute commentator, right? Has bitcoin been weaponized by Beijing?

Beijing and Bitcoin

China is responsible for a staggering 75 percent of the world’s bitcoin mining. In April, when a power outage occurred in the Xinjiang region, bitcoin processing was severely impacted. For all the talk of a decentralized currency, the creation of bitcoin is largely controlled by Beijing. This, of course, is strategic. After all, considering the cryptocurrency was designed with the dethroning of the U.S. dollar very much in mind, why wouldn’t the country engage in aggressive acts of mining?

 

In mainland China, the use of cryptocurrencies for financial transactions is strictly forbidden. The reason for this ban is not surprising. Digital, decentralized currencies invite the outflow of capital; this idea goes against everything the government believes in. Remember, this is a country that places prime importance on a unified narrative; the Chinese government’s refusal to acknowledge crypto, including bitcoin, as legal tender is totally understandable. One currency, and one currency only, for the people.

Although Beijing recently introduced a new set of cryptocurrency restrictions, Chinese citizens, as well as expats living in the country, are still permitted to hold the likes of ethereum and bitcoin. Ed Browne at Newsweek is worried, however. He writes that although people are still allowed “to hold cryptocurrencies, they cannot do much else with them.”

 

Yes, like everyone else in the world. Have you tried to make a purchase with bitcoin, for example? No, of course not. In its current form, bitcoin is, at best, a speculative asset, highly volatile and largely detached from the financial realities of today. Furthermore, as a so-called hedge against inflation, bitcoin has experienced quite a trimming in recent times. In the space of three weeks, between the first week and final week of May, it dropped all the way from $60,000 to just $35,000 in value.

So, what is Beijing’s goal here? Why bother with bitcoin at all?

 Digging Beneath the Surface

Right now, the communist country is busy rolling out its own digital currency, the e-RMB, centralized in nature and very likely to challenge the U.S. dollar’s dominance. Centralized bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, like China’s digital yuan, allow governments to track every transaction. In a land where privacy is nonexistent, the move to a CBDC is a no-brainer.

Furthermore, as Edward Snowden has discussed, CBDCs give governments the power to issue money with an expiration date. The idea here involves keeping as much money in circulation as possible, and less in savings, thus decreasing the likelihood of economic collapse—at least in theory. As Snowden put it, “for economic stimulus, we [the government] can give you a payment, but if you don’t use it, you lose it. Simply the idea that anyone anywhere can revoke your money is terrifying.” The terror stems from even greater levels of government control over the people. If we are being honest here, what government doesn’t want greater control over its people?

At the same time, although China appears to be cracking down on bitcoin, appearances can be deceptive. It is important to remember that Beijing issued a similar ban in 2013, then again four years later. We have been here before, folks. The supposed crackdown is more for show, a harshly worded public service announcement disguised as actual policy. In an article addressing the recent ban, Reuters found “it was still possible for Chinese individuals to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and trade them on overseas crypto exchanges such as Binance.” Mining, like trading, is still occurring. Bobby Lee, CEO of cryptocurrency wallet Ballet, believes that the current pressure from China will ease off—just like it did in 2017, and also in 2013.

But, even if mining in China becomes less frequent, this doesn’t mean that the country will give up on the process. No, when it comes to mining, China is invested, not just domestically but also abroad. There is talk of some Chinese mining operations relocating to Europe and the U.S. Do you really think the government won’t be involved, especially if these companies start to turn sizable profits?

For what the future of mining might entail, it helps to look at what’s going on in Iran right now.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-beijing-is-buying-with-bitcoin/

 

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In January 2021, the US Department of Justice was closing in on its biggest financial bust ever: the seizure of more than $US3.6 billion ($4.9 billion) in cryptocurrency.

Almost 120,000 bitcoins had been illegally taken from users' accounts in 2016, from one of the world's largest virtual currency exchanges, Bitfinex.

In hunting down the stolen bounty over several years, investigators followed a trail of clues that eventually led them to an unconventional would-be New York power couple. 

Social influencer, writer, entrepreneur and amateur rapper Heather Morgan and her husband Ilya Lichtenstein, a Russian-American tech entrepreneur, now face up to 25 years in jail if found guilty of conspiring to launder stolen Bitcoin worth billions of dollars.

The alleged secret lives of the outwardly goofy duo — involving burner phones and multiple identities — have perplexed onlookers, rocked the cryptocurrency world and inevitably already inspired talk of a Netflix doco. 

While the the trial date has not yet been set, it looks set to deliver on drama, with prosecutors alleging Lichtenstein and Morgan's activities "appear pulled from the pages of a spy novel".

Razzlekhan the rapper, 'crocodile of Wall Street'

Before the January 5 raid on the couple's Wall Street apartment, Lichtenstein and Morgan had cultivated an online life preaching the windfalls of tech entrepreneurship and hustle culture.

Morgan appears to have split her time between writing business columns for the likes of Forbes and Inc., dishing out sales and marketing advice, and spitting bars as her rap alterego Razzlekhan — "like Genghis Khan, but with more pizzazz". 

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-19/bitcoin-hack-who-are-ilya-lichtenstein-heather-morgan/100840506

 

 

GusNote: a lot is made out of Ilya Lichtenstein's "Russian" roots, but little is made of his Jewish ancestry... SEE: war on the straussians….

 

GusNote: Stealing cryptocurrencies on such a scale would need an "insider" at the "crypt" if you know what I mean... If you don't, it does not matter because you are too poor to afford Bitcoins....

 

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