Crypto Is Part of Free Speech, and Free Speech Is Everything

Graham Smith 
Activist Post 

 On July 23, U.S. Attorney General William Barr gave a speech demanding big players in the tech industry work with government agencies in providing backdoor entry points for encrypted devices and software. Per his reasoning, certain devices and messaging services pose a safety threat by providing a secure, third-party-inaccessible area where crime can rapidly proliferate. He didn’t note that this “warrant-proof encryption” also protects journalists, researchers, and individuals in areas of political unrest living under corrupt governments. Secure encryption also protects and verifies the financial assets and transactions of cryptocurrency holders everywhere. If strings of code — ideas, in essence — are now being made illegal, it would appear that a brand new battle for humanity’s free expression is just beginning. 

Crypto Is Free Speech

Article 19 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Of course, governments worldwide, and the UN itself, do not abide by this proclamation, but that last point is still of critical importance. The reception, transmission, and search for information via any media “regardless of frontiers” is part of free speech. Crypto is a technology. An idea. And it’s not limited by geographical constraints or “frontiers.” It’s a means by which to impart, receive, and seek information. After all, a bitcoin transaction or encrypted message is, in essence, an expression of information. 

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'Bitcoin is fool's gold': Peter Schiff weighs in on calls to replace gold with cryptocurrencies

RT 

The value of digital currencies cannot be on par with gold, veteran stock broker and CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, Peter Schiff, told RT's Keiser Report as they discussed the recent #DropGold campaign.

Last week, a New York-based crypto-asset investment firm Grayscale Investments (Grayscale), ran a TV commercial, showing people pulling shopping cart full of gold bars, trying to convince investors that bitcoin is "displacing gold" as we live in a "new financial era."

The "ridiculous" advertisement is just a farce, according to Schiff, who stressed that cryptocurrencies, and bitcoin in particular, have nothing in common with the precious metal and have "no intrinsic value" other than people willing to buy it. 

"Bitcoin tries to pretend to be gold, but I think it's fool gold," the broker said in an interview with Max Keiser. He explained that the most-valuable digital currency may have some of the monetary properties of gold, but none of the commodity properties.

"There is no value to store in bitcoin ... When you're storing bitcoin you're storing nothing," Schiff said. 

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El Petro: Venezuela launches first cryptocurrency backed by oil, gas, diamonds & gold

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge

Venezuela has officially launched what its President Nicolas Maduro claims is a first state-backed oil-backed cryptocurrency, El Petro, which analysts and experts see as nothing but a scam and another effort to skirt sanctions and mask the inability to overhaul the ailing domestic economy.

Over the past months, Maduro has been touting a new plan for economic recovery, which includes a new policy on gasoline pricing that would raise Venezuela's ultra-cheap gas pricesfor the first time in two decades. The plan to ease the severe economic crisis also featured a devaluation of the currency and pegging the new bolivars to the Petro.

Maduro claims that the Petro is strengthening his recently announced economic overhaul plan and will "revolutionize" the global crypto economy with a new form of trade, finance, and monetary exchange.

The official public sale of the Petro - which Venezuela say is backed by oil, natural gas, diamonds, and gold-will begin on November 5, Maduro has said.

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Greek Court Rules To Extradite Alexander Vinnik, Accused Of Laundering $4 Billion In Bitcoin

Zero Hedge

A Greek court has ruled to extradite the alleged former operator of crypto exchange BTC-e, Alexander Vinnik, to France, local news outlet CNN Greece reported Friday, July 13.

The 39-year old Russian national Vinnik, also known colloquially as “Mr. Bitcoin,” was indicted by U.S. authorities on charges of fraud and money laundering last year, reportedly involving up to $4 billion in Bitcoin (BTC).

Vinnik’s Greek lawyer Ilias Spyrliadis confirmed to Russian news agency TASS that “the court has granted France’s request for Vinnik’s extradition.” Spyrliadis also revealed that he is planning to appeal against the court’s decision in the Greek Supreme Court.

According to CNN Greece, Vinnik himself challenged the decision of the Greek court on extradition to France, denying the allegations of French authorities, who issued a warrant, in which the alleged BTC-e owner was accused of “defraud[ing] over 100 people in six French cities between 2016 and 2018.”

Vinnik responded that he was "transferring e-money through a platform," considering it as "legitimate personal transactions.”

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Millions in Cryptocurrencies Seized in Biggest LSD Bust in European History

Gizmodo

 

With the price boom of 2017 and the constant chatter about the blockchain revolution, it feels like people have forgotten the one thing bitcoin is proven to be good for: buying drugs. On Thursday, law enforcement gave everyone a reminder of cryptocurrencies roots when it took down an LSD ring and seized millions of dollars worth of digital cash.

A statement by Europol claims that it recently worked alongside the Spanish Guardia Civil and the Austrian Federal Police to dismantle a criminal group that has been trafficking in the sale of synthetic drugs on the dark web since 2012. The operation had quite a haul—shuttering two drug labs, nabbing eight individuals, and impounding what Europol claims is a record-setting 800,000 doses of LSD.

The full statement is a bit confusing when it comes to the cryptocurrency seizure. It lists bitcoin, IOTA, and lumen tokens that were impounded, pegging their combined value at €5,675,000 ($6,623,366). But elsewhere in the report, it lists the total value of the digital currencies as €4.5 million ($5.25 million). At first, it seemed that the confusion might have come from the ever-volatile crypto exchange rates, but its impossible to say because only the number of bitcoins seized (510) is listed. 

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The Hustlers Fueling Cryptocurrency’s Marketing Machine

Erin Griffith
wired.com

It took only a few months for Sally, an executive assistant living in British Columbia, to become Crypto Sally, a Lambo-touting altcoin influencer who makes a living on YouTube videos. She got interested in cryptocurrencies last summer as the buzz around initial coin offerings, or ICOs, surged. She bought some ether—at the top of the market, she admits—and spent her free time researching how to trade lesser-known cryptocurrencies called altcoins, eventually making enough money to quit her job.

For someone with no tech or finance background, it was a lot to figure out on her own, so Sally (who asked that her last name not be disclosed) created a 34-page beginner’s guide to crypto investing and shared it online. “My goal was just to get some basic info out to people that I wish I would have had when I started,” she says. In January, she created a Twitter account to promote her guide, and in March she posted her first YouTube interview with the CEO of a blockchain company. Her following quickly grew to nearly 18,000 subscribers on YouTube and 14,000 followers on Twitter.

That’s small potatoes compared to, say, beauty or gaming influencers boasting tens of millions of followers. But in the burgeoning world of crypto, it’s enough to make her a star. “I’m like a nobody in traditional marketing terms, but because this space is so new and it’s so crazy right now, there aren’t a lot of crypto influencers yet, and especially female ones,” she says. As her influence grew, requests flooded in—often 10 a week—from up-and-coming coin companies offering to pay her to promote their ICOs or post a “review” of their coins.

When we speak, Sally is fighting off a cold she picked up at Consensys, the 8,500-person conference in New York City, her first crypto event. She also attended an awards banquet that honored crypto influencers as “most impersonated,” “best coin analysis” and “best crypto musician.” It feels weird to be considered a crypto influencer, she says, “because it’s just something I started doing for fun.” She believes cryptocurrencies have staying power, but she isn’t as sure about the market for influencers like herself. “I don’t plan on this being a lifetime career. It could end a month from now, I don’t really know,” she says. For now, she has signed a contract with an agency to produce one to three videos per week featuring the firm’s clients.

Opportunities for new influencers like Crypto Sally are growing as the easy money for crypto projects evaporates. The ICO market—where hyped-up projects raise millions of dollars overnight through fund-raising campaigns—is now crowded with thousands of similar-sounding projects competing for attention and investment. Scams and pump-and-dump schemes have turned off many potential investors. A Wall Street Journal investigation found that nearly 20 percent of 1,450 projects were obvious frauds. Increased scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission has cast a gloom over US-based “utility token” projects that don’t register their tokens as securities. Meanwhile, a sustained drop in the prices of major cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether has left crypto investors with less capital to risk on new tokens. Making matters worse, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Bing have banned crypto-related ads. Projects have to get more creative about spreading the word.

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Bitcoin miners are using as much energy as Ireland - study

RT

The process of mining new bitcoin is now so intensive that computers carrying out the process are using nearly as much electricity as the entire country of Ireland. 

A new study by economist Alex de Vries estimates that bitcoin mining consumes at least 2.55 gigawatts of electricity and, by the end of the year, that will have risen to 7.67 gigawatts – as much as Austria consumes in the same period.

Mining the cryptocurrency involves computers solving complex mathematical problems. As the amount of bitcoin left to mine grows smaller and smaller, the problems become increasingly complex, meaning they require an even greater amount of computing power.

"Half a Million Play-stations"

Due to the secretive nature of mining, the research is based on speculative figures. The cryptocurrency’s network is estimated to have around 10,000 connected nodes, but a single node in the network can represent either one or many machines.

“A hashrate of 14 terahashes per second can either come from a single Antminer S9 running on just 1,372 watts, or more than half a million PlayStation 3 devices running on 40 megawatts,” the research says.

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A Central Banking Insider Just Revealed the Blueprint For When the Next Crisis Hits

Zero Hedge

If you’re looking for insights into what Central Banks have planned when The Everything Bubble bursts, on Monday one of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) top bankers provided a blueprint.

Benoît Cœuré, has been a member of the Executive Board of the ECB since 2011. As such is one of SIX individuals who have dictated ECB policy during that time.
This means he’s been involved in:

• The second and third Greek bailouts.
• The Spain bailout.
• The Portugal bailout.
• The second and third Romania bailouts.
• The Cyprus bail-ins.

Cœuré has operated at the highest level of monetary/ financial policy during a period in which numerous financial/banking systems were experiencing systemic risk.
Put simply, there are fewer than 100 people on the planet who are as familiar with how Central Banks perceive the risks in today’s financial system as well as the policies said Central Banks will unleash when the next crisis hits.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at what he had to say regarding both in the speech he gave titled The Future of Central Bank Money at the International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies in Geneva yesterday.

In my remarks this evening I would like to share some more general thoughts on the role of the central bank’s balance sheet in the economy. My focus will be on central bank liabilities – that is, money created by central banks to be used as a means of payment and store of value…
What distinguishes the discussion today from previous discussions, however, are three new facts: 
The first is that we are seeing a dramatic decline in the demand for cash in some countries, in particular Sweden and Norway.
The second is that central banks today could make use of new technologies that would enable the introduction of what is widely referred to as a “token-based” currency – one based on a distributed ledger technology (DLT) or comparable cryptographic technology.
And the third “new” fact, at least from a long-term perspective, relates to the role of central banks in setting monetary policy, and more recently to the emergence of negative rates as a policy instrument and the consequences for the transmission of monetary policy.
Source: ECB

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Russian bank helps Venezuela defy US sanctions on cryptocurrency

RT 

The world’s first state-backed digital currency ‘el petro’ launched by Venezuela this year to circumvent US sanctions is reportedly getting help from a Russian bank.

According to Associated Press, Russia’s Evrofinance Mosnarbank has become the first international financial institution so far willing to back the petro after US authorities warned potential investors over related risks.

Investors who registered with Venezuela's government and downloaded the petro's wallet software were invited to buy the cryptocurrency by wiring a minimum of €1,000 to a Venezuelan government account at Evrofinance. The wallet software is available in Spanish, English and Russian.

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Venezuela Offers India 30% Discount On Oil...If It Pays In Cryptocurrency

Oil Price 

Venezuela has offered India a 30-percent discount on crude oil purchases, but only if India agrees to pay in El Petro, the cryptocurrency that Venezuela is touting as the first national digital currency backed by crude oil reserves, the Indian outlet Business Standard reports.
Venezuelan blockchain department experts visited India in March and struck an agreement with Delhi-based Bitcoin trading firm Coinsecure to sell the Venezuelan cryptocurrency Petro in India, Business Standard reported, quoting multiple sources.

Maduro’s propaganda machine is touting the digital coin as a ‘ground-breaking’ first-ever national crypto currency, El Petro—backed by 5 billion barrels of oil reserves in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt. But most observers see this crypto issuance as a desperate attempt to skirt U.S. financial sanctions.

In March 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump banned U.S. purchases, transactions, and dealings of any digital coin or token issued for or by the government of Venezuela.

Now Venezuela wants to add the Petro as a cryptocurrency on Coinsecure to trade Petro against Bitcoin and the Indian rupee, according to Coinsecure CEO Mohit Kalra quoted by Business Standard.

“They are going to different countries and making offers. The offer that they have given to the Indian government is: you buy Petro and we will give you a 30 per cent discount on oil purchases,” Kalra told Business Standard.

Earlier this month, Coinsecure said that US$3.5 million worth of Bitcoins had been stolen from the exchange and blamed for this its Chief Security Officer (CSO) Amitabh Saxena. Investigation is still under way, Coinsecure said on Sunday.

Meanwhile, India’s crude imports from Venezuela—whose oil industry is collapsing rapidly—dropped to around 300,000 bpd between November 2017 and February 2018, down by 20 percent on the year, to the lowest level since 2012, Reuters reported in March, citing data from shipping and industry sources.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Europe Says It Wants to Confiscate Money, Precious Metals, Crypto Currency and Prepaid Cards to Fight Terrorism

Anon HQ

 

The proposal wants to monitor and tighten the control over electronic crypto and electronic currencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, along with debit and credit cards in the EU, and is applicable to all those who travel. 

 

The European Commission wants to tighten its control over paper money, metals such as gold and silver, and other precious elements that are transferred into the European Union. Their reasoning is to monitor the funding, as it will lessen the funding for belligerent attacks in the European Union.

The Commissions’ decision was based on the Marketplace attack that took place last Christmas in Germany, where people were killed as a truck full of explosives drove into the crowded place.

The new proposal will give power to customs officials in the European Union nations, allowing them to check cash amounts at random, and check credit and debit statements that are sent using postal services. Customs in these states will also have the right to take away cash, precious metals or anything of value that is being carried by people who fit the profile when entering the European Union.

As we all know, if anyone is carrying more than 10,000 Euros in cash while travelling must be declared at customs when entering the European Union; the new rules will permit customs officers to confiscate the money – even if it is fewer than 10,000 Euros – if they suspect someone of having a criminal past or if the money is for criminal activity.

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A New Digital Cash System Was Just Unveiled At A Secret Meeting For Bankers In New York

Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse Blog

Last month, a “secret meeting” that involved more than 100 executives from some of the biggest financial institutions in the United States was held in New York City.  During this “secret meeting“, a company known as “Chain” unveiled a technology that transforms U.S. dollars into “pure digital assets”.  Reportedly, there were representatives from Nasdaq, Citigroup, Visa, Fidelity, Fiserv and Pfizer in the room, and Chain also claims to be partnering with Capital One, State Street, and First Data.  This “revolutionary” technology is intended to completely change the way that we use money, and it would represent a major step toward a cashless society.  But if this new digital cash system is going to be so good for society, why was it unveiled during a secret meeting for Wall Street bankers?  Is there something more going on here than we are being told?

None of us probably would have ever heard about this secret meeting if it was not for a report in Bloomberg.  The following comes from their article entitled “Inside the Secret Meeting Where Wall Street Tested Digital Cash“…

On a recent Monday in April, more than 100 executives from some of the world’s largest financial institutions gathered for a private meeting at the Times Square office of Nasdaq Inc. They weren’t there to just talk about blockchain, the new technology some predict will transform finance, but to build and experiment with the software.
By the end of the day, they had seen something revolutionary: U.S. dollars transformed into pure digital assets, able to be used to execute and settle a trade instantly. That’s the promise of a blockchain, where the cumbersome and error-prone system that takes days to move money across town or around the world is replaced with almost instant certainty.

So it is not just Michael Snyder from The Economic Collapse Blog that is referring to this gathering as a “secret meeting”.  This is actually how it was described by Bloomberg.  And I think that there is a very good reason why this meeting was held in secret, because many in the general public would definitely be alarmed by this giant step toward a cashless society. 

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