If the internet goes down cryptocurrency doesn’t work.
The internet may well go down sometime soon (some would argue it’s already half way down).
So why would anyone put their resources into a cryptocurrency…?
Please explain to a dumbo like me, a dumbo who also does not buy gold or silver, for the obvious reason that you can’t eat gold or silver.
Maybe I’m missing something…
You can’t eat ANY of the media of exchange, Rob; not unless you’re doing barter, when one at least of the items could be food. The “can’t eat it” canard is an old knee-jerk talking point that we’ve all been primed to regurg, as the Western financial system has tried with great wrong-headed determination to supersede the entirely sound, traditional gold-standard to guarantee currencies.
The essence of any currency at all is TRUST: buyer and seller both trust the medium to retain its function as a store of value, and thus its practical buying power. As long as that trust endures, vital trades remain possible.
The iffy thing about cryptos is that they’re all notional units of value, which only exist as traces in electronic comms. systems - which, as you so very rightly say are by no means certain to be still functioning in the near future as a unitary global system; and in the mid-term future even as disconnected regional systems (Limits To Growth, the Long Descent away from the once-only Single Giant Pulse Event in Earth’s history of industrial civ., and all that).
Precious Metals, otoh, have been fascinating hom sap for thousands of years, and still do today, everywhere in the world. It’s true that they have only a little more practical use than do electronic traces in hitech e-gadgetry. But the absolutely central point is that, all over the planet, billions of people still trust them as durable, solid, actually-handlable, reliable media of exchange, which have always held their value (aka practical day-to-day buying-power), and which rely on no counter-party’s continuing viability in order to maintain that value (unlike the entirely hallucinatory ‘value’ of the vast overhang of notional derivative paper ‘assets’ currently cluttering up the world’s financial system with their hallucinated existence).
You can’t have failed to notice that canny players on the world’s stage - the current ruling factions within the Russian and Chinese empires, most notably - are stocking up with physical gold, held within their own borders, as the world evolves towards a new era when PMs will again be key guarantors of value. (Meanwhile, the long-unaudited, alleged gold holdings of the dying Anglozionist empire are pretty certainly not in the US where they’re alleged to be, and have most likely been dissipated over time to various overseas recipients. Fort Knox may well only have half-a-dozen bullion bars still left in its actual possession, for all anyone outside the loop knows.)
The ‘creation’ of crypto ‘coins’ depends on ‘mining’ operations, which translated into realworld English means fiddling about with ever-growing, ever-more-power-thirsty banks of computers to solve ever-more complex and drawn-out mathematical puzzles; nothing more actually-valuable than that! And both crypto-currencies and the blockchain function on which they depend go smash any time the electrical grid suffers a prolonged general failure; which happy event (irony!) we should expect to show up more and more frequently as… you know: TLTG, the Long Descent, etc. begin to bite more frequently and more lethally…
Dmitry Orlov points out, for example, that the North American grid is in a sorry state of advanced decrepitude, and meanwhile, USAmerica has lost the ability, both industrially and skill-wise, to make the large transformers on which the grid depends absolutely. I doubt that Europe, including its offshore islands, is in any better condition. (Russia can still make them, though; as with rocket engines…)
This, in a nutshell, is why I’ve never touched cryptos, even though, like any ponzi scheme, it’s offered some really big killings for the early players. And it’s why all my nearest and dearest each have little stashes of popular-denomination physical gold coins that I’ve given them, in their personal possession, ‘under their own floorboards’ - so to speak… Because everybody with two functioning savvy-cells still trusts gold and silver; rightly so. And as Times get ever-more Interesting, they always come into their own again, and often prove to be critical life-savers at key moments of existential risk; like easing your way out of Kiev, for example…
Hi Rob, here are some disjointed thoughts which might help.
https://michaelnielsen.org/ddi/how-the-bitcoin-protocol-actually-works/
If the internet goes down, then so does banking, ATMs, supermarket checkouts, petrol stations, and just about everything, so it doesn´t matter that the blockchain is blocked.
The bitcoin blockchain can, however, be reconstituted once the internet resumes.
There is a good chance that the eurasion coalition will start their own internet and the blockchain could also live there.
Ultimately, however, the if the tyranical ptbs don´t want you to have anything, then you won´t have it, be it gold, silver, btc, a house, a trip to Brighton, whatever.
It’s an illusion…all the transactions it’s used for are not “real” they are not guaranteed, they are not sovereign…the notion that code can represent value is nonsense…the power it takes to mine these codes is immense and whilst the un-breakability is considerable it is not impossible (as some might have you believe), if comparable amounts of power are used to break them…obviously that itself would require huge amounts of resource destruction to achieve (some would say “investment” but this is ridiculous), all seemingly ludicrous unless one recognises the fiscal momentum of the old regime and the personal investment many have in a system that simply externalises responsibility for the economy, quote; "Our focus therefore becomes on “democratisation” not as an enforced process but as a principle the benefits of which are made manifest by entering into dialogue with all the organs of the body politic. This is consistent with the notion of “emerging economy”, quote;
““unsustainable economy” is an oxymoron” No? I thought about this…many would argue (and many on the “left” also), that “short-term” “profit-taking” exploitative economies exist…but do they? Can we truly call them “economies”? For one thing; “how long is your piece of string?” We define economies by describing relationships (they are “relative”), there is a chronological imperative concerned, one cannot (surely), argue that a 5 year “un-sustainability” is an economy whilst a 3 month one is not!
Economy, of-course, also can be “of effort”, in other words efficient…there is no “economy of effort” in an inefficient system, therefore, we can argue that any economy that is not sustainable does not exist!
If one “economises” one makes one’s actions more efficient…literally one creates an economy.
One can argue that the economy existed for a five year period…but one cannot say it was “un-sustainable” for the same period…period…
…and, therefore, sustainability is a necessary component of economy…
The system is “open ended” (#opensource), it is emergent…
Quote; "Words Based on the Eco- Root Word
Following is a list of words based on the Eco- Root Word:
1. Ecoactivist: One who actively opposes the pollution or destruction by other means, of the environment.
2. Ecobabble: Using the technical language of ecology to make the user seem to be ecologically aware.
3. Ecobiology: The study of the relationships of organisms to their natural environments.
4. Ecobiosis: The conditions pertaining to a mode of life within a specific habitat
5. Ecocatastrophe: Major damage to the environment, especially when caused by human activity
6. Ecocentric: Centering on the environment
7. Bioecological: A reference to the interrelationships between plants and animals and their abiotic enviro ments.
8. Bioecologist: Someone who favors, or specializes, bioecology; such as, an ecologist.
9. Bioecology: The science of organisms as affected by the factors of their environments.
10. Ecocidal: Designed or tending to destroy the environment.
11. Ecocide: Destruction or damage of the environment
12. Ecoclimate: The climate as an ecological factor; the climate of a habitat.
13. Ecocline: Reflecting ecological conditions in general.
14. Econometrician: A student of, or specialist in, econometrics.
15. Econometrics: The branch of economics concerned with the application of mathematical economics to economic data by the use of statistical methods.
16. Economics: The study or the social science of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services and with the theory and management of economies or economic systems which include material goods and financial resources.
17. Economist: Someone who studies, works, or is an expert in the field of economics." https://wordpandit.com/eco-root-word/ Here we can see how closely related the notions of ecology and economics really are, this seems to indicate that the Industrial Revolution (esp.), saw a perversion of the language describing transaction/exchange in order to underpin a Socially Darwinistic notion of human evolution, allow this exploitative model to gain ascendency and fulfil (esp.), capitalism’s imperial “manifest destiny”. It may, therefore, be the case that a misapprehension of the nature of economic theory has stemmed directly from the exploitation of non-renewable resources.
Go to: Declining sperm counts: Nature's answer to overpopulation? - #10 by GKH
Democracy must be “open source” (Mr.Gates), only then can it be open-ended.
People are, however, desperate to save the shibboleths of the old paradigm take crypto-currencies for instance surely a true case (Mr.Keiser), of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” (this yesterday from “Moon of Alabama”, quote; "Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism had christened crypto currencies “prosecution futures”.
Crypto currencies are not money. One can not pay ones taxes with them." Go to: MoA - The End Of Crypto Currencies), quote; "
“The skyrocketing value of Bitcoin is leading to soaring energy consumption. According to one widely cited website that tracks the subject, the Bitcoin network is consuming power at an annual rate of 32TWh—about as much as Denmark. By the site’s calculations, each Bitcoin transaction consumes 250kWh, enough to power homes for nine days.
Naturally, this is leading to concerns about sustainability. Eric Holthaus, a writer for Grist, projects that, at current growth rates, the Bitcoin network will “use as much electricity as the entire world does today” by early 2020. “This is an unsustainable trajectory,” he writes.”…
…“Bitcoin mining—the process that generates new bitcoins while maintaining the network’s shared transaction ledger—is a secretive global industry. No one knows exactly how much energy it consumes*.
However, we can make some educated guesses. For starters, we know the industry’s revenue: Bitcoin miners currently generate 75 bitcoins per hour, which, at the current price of around $12,500 per bitcoin, translates to $937,500 per hour, or more than $8 billion per year.
Moreover, the industry is highly competitive, and electricity is one of its biggest costs. So when the price of bitcoins rises, we can expect miners to spend more and more on electricity until electricity costs are roughly on par with revenues.” Go to: Bitcoin’s insane energy consumption, explained | Ars Technica for full article.
This may seem insane but the truth is desperate people do desperate things. It has surely been such desperation that has lead to a blind-eye being turned throughout the British media and wider society to the true level of the exposure of our financial system to the Credit Crunch that the LIBOR scandal attempted (and still attempts), to obfuscate."…"this is where Emergence Theory comes in. So far, however, those scientists studying emergence have not linked the disciplines together to form a “whole picture” but this is what a paradigm shift away from the exploitative model of economics requires, “biodiversity is the engine of sustainability” and its pursuit and protection are antithetical to; mono-cultural, short-term, “quick-fix” profit taking enterprises.
“Posturing is the method (or “vehicle”), by which denial transfers the shame that is its genesis.”
Quote; "Bitcoin is the exemplar of that divorce of wealth from production. Its value appears to be derived from two features: the mathematically elegant blockchain code, which is a distributed accounting system supposedly impervious to government meddling. And “mining” Bitcoin using colossal amounts of electricity to churn the blockchain code, a simple dissipation of energy. What is actually produced by these operations? A promise that a set of digits residing on countless flash drives around the world equal X-amount denominated in national currencies, which are themselves spun out of nothing by a process far less complex than the exertions that produce Bitcoin.
It may be true that Bitcoin’s distributed “ledger” is difficult for governments to crack, but governments can just abolish Bitcoin in a few keystrokes by criminalizing the trade of it and confiscating any theoretical profits from it. They have probably refrained so far because the traffic in Bitcoin is still relatively tiny compared to the trade in stocks, bonds, and their derivatives, and because they prefer to keep the Bitcoin model running as a demonstration project in preparation for their own entry into national cryptocurrencies, with all its advantages for tracking individual transactions and targeting tax liabilities.
Let’s spell out the more blatant shortcomings of Bitcoin: The blockchain may be theoretically bomb-proof, but the exchanges that Bitcoin trades on can be fiddled, hijacked, and erased from the universe, and Bitcoins with them. Remember Mt. Gox? When it went tits-up in 2014, 850,000 Bitcoins vanished (out of the 21 million that can ever be “mined” under the system as designed). Bitcoins were worth under $1000 when that happened. Also, keep in mind that Bitcoin is meaningless without reliable electric service and the Internet that runs on it. How many Bitcoins were bought-and-sold in Texas those dark days a couple of weeks ago when a blue norther rolled in and the lights went out? Of course, trading Bitcoin might be the least of your problems when the pipes freeze and all the sheetrock in your house gets prepped for a black mold experiment. But just sayin," Go to: https://kunstler.com/
Nb. Similar to particle-beam accelerators crypto-currencies are destructive their only purpose being to aid in widespread denial re: our rapidly diminishing unsustainable resources (in other words the continuance of the neo-lib/con delusion). Crypto-currencies are a desperate response and in-fact represent, quote; “the plebs scrabbling in the Roman dirt beneath the emperor’s balcony for debased currency!”* also both requiring and enabling a WiFi “economy” that itself is false.
*Go to: "Arafel": The Philosophy of "The Loss Leader" (re: Nuclear Power, Incineration and Fracking) Also see: https://twitter.com/i/events/937997845344473088 ": https://www.arafel.co.uk/2021/06/a-dangerous-conflation-socialism.html
It is no coincidence that the same misunderstandings (and “misappropriations”), apply to particle beam physics and its misapplication of standard deviation calculus.
Also see: https://www.arafel.co.uk/2018/03/the-whole-story-epidemiology.html
It’s a protection racket, the leverage is fear… (and in case you are wondering…yes I really mean that), …
Schrödinger’s gold: it exists and doesn’t exist for so long as Fort Knox stays locked.
Worth remembering that if the power fails, that keeps data mining, and t’Internet, running, data mining and t’Internet are probably not going to be the real problem. As @Sanjeev says at 2. above.
Thanks, all, for the detailed replies. Very interesting, and a lot for someone like me to take in.
I’m no expert Rob…but it seems to me that burning huge amounts of fuel to produce these d**n things is oxymoron-ic! When in doubt I always return to looking at the sustainability of the resource base…may take me longer but I get there in one piece (as it were)! #BritishRail #Schumacher #PublicOwnership