Yes. A scam now green lighted by the President to personally enrich himself. You would never say such a thing plainly though, that would undermine your whole shtick of reverse engineering the regime’s obviously incoherent economic and financial policies.
So, what function does crypto serve? It is a "currency"? It acts like money in certain ways. Is it better than what we now use? The short answer is no. As a currency two things distinguish it from the status quo. It is largely unregulated and it is difficult to monitor and trace. It also requires the internet to function at all and the energy costs of using it are extremely high. It's not entirely clear who bears those energy costs in the end. The fact that it is "untraceable" is supremely useful... to criminals. The fact that it is unregulated is supremely useful... to scammers.
Credit cards seemed to provide some level of convenience to buyers and sellers. But more and more small businesses are recognizing the reality of 3% transaction costs, which are truly obscene, and either charge that directly to the customer or offer a discount for Not using a credit card. It seems ridiculous that we, consumers and citizens, have let the financial sector leech profits off of basic buying and selling. Like cash, electronic transactions should be "nationalized". They should be part of the basic Federal infrastructure. We should pay the actual cost of implementing that system and No More. Actual credit is the purview of banks, not transaction fees for de facto currency.
Could blockchain be used in such a system to the benefit of honest legal business and financial transactions? And would it be worth the energy expense and the subsequent vulnerability of internet failure? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Crypto seems like an additional avenue to fleece consumers. But nobody seems to be looking at the possibility of ending legal entrenched leeching of wealth through excessive privatized transaction costs. And no one will until voters, and not Big Money interests, control our democracy.
Yes, I agree, a real-time, no-fee, national payment system for the U.S. Dollar would end this nonsense about Stablecoins. Look over at Medium for a proposal for such a system:
Oren - no mention or even guesses as to why the politicians began supporting it? money talks. crypto bros invested huge in candidates who promised to do their bidding. e.g. cryptocurrency industry spent over $40 million to defeat Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown in the 2024 election, through the Fairshake super PAC, viewing him as a critic of digital assets; part of a broader $130 million national push, helped elect Republican Bernie Moreno, a crypto-friendly candidate.
Whether it's a scam can be debated. But Don's use of crypto to enrich himself at the expense of the national interest cannot be. The pardon case of CZ alone is disgusting, given his conviction for laundering money for Hamas, ISIS, and other terrorist groups. Meanwhile, establishment elites like Oren and R senators remain silent. Nothing to see here... This is astounding to me. Imagine if Obama or W had sold American interests down the river for a few billion... Crypto corruption has proven to be Don's most lucrative career endeavor, outpacing the original leaders-inheritance and being a game show host.
Not clear if you are admiring his feats with a back-handed compliment or trying to insult him. I personally do not think of him as a master-mind .. just a salesman to who happened along to tap into a zeitgest that he does not fully understand .. he just responds and takes his direction from the crowd .. which worked well enough (Bless you Trump for me not having to strip or have my bag of sex toys - okay, just a laptop - rummaged through on my last two trips through the airport) until he stopped being exposed to that crowd .. and of course he is now getting truly old.
It's pretty doggone delicious watching maga and the "new" right defend Don's corruption:). The same people who were apoplectic when just the son of our former prez traded on his famous last name to pocket a few hundred grand selling bad art. Unseemly and wrong? Indeed. But now, as the actual sitting prez sells American interests down the river for billions dumped directly into his pocket, they lap it up. Even when he pardons Chinese crypto criminals, or accepts cash tributes from foreign interests. I gotta hand it to Don, he's a doggone good flimflam man. His flock chants his slogans (America first, drain the swamp, etc) while Don pockets the loot.
Don's character, or lack thereof, has been on display for years. But it's helpful when he exposes the same in the long-ruling establishment elites of the "new" right.
Isn't it time for a new "new" right? The current version has become stale, lost its focus, and collapsed into a cult of the dear leader.
Greed and corruption are the forces behind the political support for cryptocurrency. What is needed is a national real-time payment system for the U.S. dollar. No one would be taking stable-coins seriously if a “no fee” real-time payment system for the U.S. dollar was available. No fee means the merchants would not pay a fee or any percentage of the transaction for using the system.
Like transporting products over the national interstate highway system without paying a toll, America needs a payments highway that connects all buyers and sellers in real-time. Like cash, but cash that is deposited directly into the sellers account in real-time 7/24/365
Geez, Oren. I hate it when I have to agree with you. Look at the structure of any crypto currency, its value is completely determined in the moment by what the next buyer is willing to pay. There are no underlying fundamentals like cash flow or book value. That’s the very definition of a Ponzi Scheme or multi-level marketing, both of which are scams.
A dollar bill is a piece of paper. One that for some bizarre reason, one cannot even exchange for a bit of gold, the very reason we accepted this coupon as legal tender. Bait and Switch of the century.
You had it right the first time .. historically strong. That said, it is also the reason we must all continue to BELIEVE in it, else it goes up in a puff of smoke, as did the penny.
Well, no. First, sorry about the mixup, autocorrect did that. Second, originally, the dollar could be exchanged for a chunk of gold. Theoretically, the British Pound can still be exchanged for sterling. Good luck doing that, though.
In fact, though, my daughter got it right when in high school, she sarcastically answered the question: “What is money?” with “A figment of everyone’s imagination.” Even gold holds value only because people believe it does. Look at your original statement: why should a chunk of gold be worth more than paper? Only because people want it to, so no bait and switch.
Well, yes. Maybe I zoomed out a bit far .. as obviously civilization itself dissolves once folks stop believing in it, so technically I guess my argument is really that a gold-back dollar helps bolster that necessary belief .. and if crypto works (it's "intrinsic" value is that there is an absolute limit to the amount that can be mined .. as long as one ignores the issue that there is no limit to the number of crypto currencies that can be declared), it would undermine that necessary belief. (An unsolicited aside .. five years in the Dr. Strangelove office in the secret basement below the basement .. overlapping Bush and Obama .. and in a position I should absolutely not have been allowed to hold .. as they try to filter out folks who are EAGER to be a more savvy version of Edward Snowden - that initial set of WikiLeaks was literally my real time feed of TS/SCI correspondence from the offices of global national leaders to the President that my team was supposed to filter through for anything of interest to the CJCS once he and the sun rose .. but I DIGRESS .. anyway, five years of having full access to EVERYTHING recorded in the Pentagon on 9/11 down to every NMCC performance reports and to half the staff that was still there .. yet finding myself somehow being condescended to in any debate about what REALLY happened with my musician friends I left behind in Austin (when called back to duty) with them intellectually armed with Youtube videos by some rando French engineering professor and his chalkboard, and despite me calling their every bluff, down to personally going over to the gasoline station facing the destroyed side that reportedly had it's 'surveillance camera data' confiscated (spoiler alert .. it wasn't confiscated by the gov't, it WAS the gov't .. a Navy base gas station).. after five years of this .. I am now FULLY convinced that people are DESPERATE to believe in conspiracies of secret societies of wise or rich men pulling the strings, to include the current conspiracy that an 80 year old real estate salesman is now the leading Mastermind. Because the alternate explanation is that everything really is random and there is no narrative. And there isn't. I actually had this epiphany early on .. and as born Southern Baptist American atheist, the scariest thing I see happening isn't even being discussed .. the collapse of religion in the USA, the still extraordinarily by a longshot most powerful society on the planet, catching up in half a generation with the current DisneyLand version of past Europe on that front. You think you want that ... you do not.
But I digress. I have to get back to my battle with the IRS .. they claim I have not filed a tax return for the past three years. Which is ludicrous and insulting. I know for a fact it has been at least seven.
PS - no time to correct typos .. but I am adding this - I just realized you are in Maine, not England. So pardon any detected impatience and my stream of conscious tangent on Europe. Brits wear me out with their pedantism and misconceptions .. starting with their incomprehension of how large and "diverse" the USA actually is .. so even their most "accurate" stereotypes are wrong. Most especially their air of superiority based on the 'fact' that we are all superstitious savages and they are above all that .. nah, they just created a spiritual vacuum that WILL be filled, by no God knows what.
I’m actually in Oregon, just a few yards from the Pacific, but you’re right about Brits and their concept of distance. To also applies, to a lesser degree, to those on the East Coast.
The safest thing to be in Southern Baptist America is an atheist. They ignore you. I’m an archenemy — a progressive Christian. They broke away from the denomination (for the tenth time) because we aren’t “biblical enough.” They apparently read a different Bible, but that’s another discussion for another time.
As a currency, crypto is only good if people accept it (universally) as a medium of exchange. That’s the biggest advantage the paper dollar has, people are willing to take them in exchange for stuff. Crypto hasn’t gotten there.
Then there’s the argument for a digital currency. Heck, I already use one. The only time I use cash is to pay the barber who doesn’t take credit cards, and give tips to shuttle drivers. Everything else is electronic. Been that way since way before Bitcoin came along.
That was a very interesting story, and you were quite funny in the telling (that’s a compliment—it’s hard to detect sarcasm in text).
If you want to exchange your dollars for gold you are free to buy gold with your dollars. The value of gold is measured in dollars. The value dollars is not measured by gold. The intrinsic value of the dollar is the backing of the U.S. government. Inflation is a political issue, a failure of Congress to stop deficit spending.
Well, yes. (And yes the Federal Reserve Bank system probably did help unleash the 20th century acceleration of wealth creation and technological progress .. but that tapping of unrealized wealth .. of unlaid golden eggs, is now killing the goose. But that is beyond my ability to even explain, much less effect.)
The poll question, and the article, fail to distinguish Bitcoin and its successors from stablecoins.
The former might one day become useful and are relatively harmless. Stablecoins, by contrast, are a huge deal and a danger to most of us. I have not yet figured out all the ways in which they pick our collective pockets, but I note that the Trump dynasty has passed the GENIUS act and made buckets of money since.
Aficionados always tell me that the important thing about it is that it isn't a fiat currency subject to inflation at the whim of the government. But it seems to me that if this were really the selling point, the price of bread in bitcoin should be constant.
There is a degree of multi or duplicative regulation of the banking industry. Nonetheless, since the Great Depression, the banking industry has held up very well including the Great Recession and the collapse of SVB. The Crypto industry is hardly regulated and if it is allowed to pay interest, I think we will see a return to Andrew Jackson. If they pay interest and lend money, who will oversee credit quality?
It is a Ponzi. The technology is quite viable and will one day provide secure, private (if desired) digital financial transactions at a speed required by the massive volume it will shoulder. So its the tech, not the coin. But even the tech, today, does not scale to where it needs to.
Those of us old enough may remember a running gag in Mad Magazine about the North American Veeblefetzer Company, which published a company paper called "Veeble People." The North American Veeblefetzer Company manufactured and sold a strange-looking machine called a Veeblefetzer, but no one knew what it did. And every edition of Veeble People would include a promise from Veeble's management and Board that next year, the company would make the big reveal and announce what a Veeblefester did.
Well, now America no longer produces many machines of any description, odd-looking or not. We produce digital products like memes and crypto assets that have taken the place of the Veeblefester, and we still don't know what they do.
The future of crypto are the stable coins linked to the dollar and backed by $Billions in US Treasuries.. You get all the advantages of the blockchain in encryption, transparency and ease of transacting and settlement - but you dont get the wild swings of currencies like Bitcoin that have no intrinsic value. Stablecoins could eventually use blockchain technology to take out the credit card middlemen that charge 3% to settle many of our transactions today. Even the criminal activity that is a core use of crypto is better served by stable coins. Very badly researched piece to not mention the promise of stable coins and to focus only on the currencies created out of thin air which I agree dont make sense.
Yes. A scam now green lighted by the President to personally enrich himself. You would never say such a thing plainly though, that would undermine your whole shtick of reverse engineering the regime’s obviously incoherent economic and financial policies.
So, what function does crypto serve? It is a "currency"? It acts like money in certain ways. Is it better than what we now use? The short answer is no. As a currency two things distinguish it from the status quo. It is largely unregulated and it is difficult to monitor and trace. It also requires the internet to function at all and the energy costs of using it are extremely high. It's not entirely clear who bears those energy costs in the end. The fact that it is "untraceable" is supremely useful... to criminals. The fact that it is unregulated is supremely useful... to scammers.
Credit cards seemed to provide some level of convenience to buyers and sellers. But more and more small businesses are recognizing the reality of 3% transaction costs, which are truly obscene, and either charge that directly to the customer or offer a discount for Not using a credit card. It seems ridiculous that we, consumers and citizens, have let the financial sector leech profits off of basic buying and selling. Like cash, electronic transactions should be "nationalized". They should be part of the basic Federal infrastructure. We should pay the actual cost of implementing that system and No More. Actual credit is the purview of banks, not transaction fees for de facto currency.
Could blockchain be used in such a system to the benefit of honest legal business and financial transactions? And would it be worth the energy expense and the subsequent vulnerability of internet failure? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Crypto seems like an additional avenue to fleece consumers. But nobody seems to be looking at the possibility of ending legal entrenched leeching of wealth through excessive privatized transaction costs. And no one will until voters, and not Big Money interests, control our democracy.
Yes, I agree, a real-time, no-fee, national payment system for the U.S. Dollar would end this nonsense about Stablecoins. Look over at Medium for a proposal for such a system:
https://medium.com/@ron.bengtson/the-mafia-paradigm-49e04f01c0ca
Oren - no mention or even guesses as to why the politicians began supporting it? money talks. crypto bros invested huge in candidates who promised to do their bidding. e.g. cryptocurrency industry spent over $40 million to defeat Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown in the 2024 election, through the Fairshake super PAC, viewing him as a critic of digital assets; part of a broader $130 million national push, helped elect Republican Bernie Moreno, a crypto-friendly candidate.
Whether it's a scam can be debated. But Don's use of crypto to enrich himself at the expense of the national interest cannot be. The pardon case of CZ alone is disgusting, given his conviction for laundering money for Hamas, ISIS, and other terrorist groups. Meanwhile, establishment elites like Oren and R senators remain silent. Nothing to see here... This is astounding to me. Imagine if Obama or W had sold American interests down the river for a few billion... Crypto corruption has proven to be Don's most lucrative career endeavor, outpacing the original leaders-inheritance and being a game show host.
Don?
Yes, Don
Not clear if you are admiring his feats with a back-handed compliment or trying to insult him. I personally do not think of him as a master-mind .. just a salesman to who happened along to tap into a zeitgest that he does not fully understand .. he just responds and takes his direction from the crowd .. which worked well enough (Bless you Trump for me not having to strip or have my bag of sex toys - okay, just a laptop - rummaged through on my last two trips through the airport) until he stopped being exposed to that crowd .. and of course he is now getting truly old.
It's pretty doggone delicious watching maga and the "new" right defend Don's corruption:). The same people who were apoplectic when just the son of our former prez traded on his famous last name to pocket a few hundred grand selling bad art. Unseemly and wrong? Indeed. But now, as the actual sitting prez sells American interests down the river for billions dumped directly into his pocket, they lap it up. Even when he pardons Chinese crypto criminals, or accepts cash tributes from foreign interests. I gotta hand it to Don, he's a doggone good flimflam man. His flock chants his slogans (America first, drain the swamp, etc) while Don pockets the loot.
Don's character, or lack thereof, has been on display for years. But it's helpful when he exposes the same in the long-ruling establishment elites of the "new" right.
Isn't it time for a new "new" right? The current version has become stale, lost its focus, and collapsed into a cult of the dear leader.
Greed and corruption are the forces behind the political support for cryptocurrency. What is needed is a national real-time payment system for the U.S. dollar. No one would be taking stable-coins seriously if a “no fee” real-time payment system for the U.S. dollar was available. No fee means the merchants would not pay a fee or any percentage of the transaction for using the system.
Like transporting products over the national interstate highway system without paying a toll, America needs a payments highway that connects all buyers and sellers in real-time. Like cash, but cash that is deposited directly into the sellers account in real-time 7/24/365
For example see The MAFIA paradigm:
https://www.amazon.com/MAFIA-paradigm-America-Financially-Independent/dp/B0FSZ2QMKV
The MAFIA paradigm exposes the crypto lies and reveals the path forward for the USA 🇺🇸
I've decided to put my life savings into mathematical algorithms.
What's amazing is that so many people fall for that and think they're "investing".
Geez, Oren. I hate it when I have to agree with you. Look at the structure of any crypto currency, its value is completely determined in the moment by what the next buyer is willing to pay. There are no underlying fundamentals like cash flow or book value. That’s the very definition of a Ponzi Scheme or multi-level marketing, both of which are scams.
A dollar bill is a piece of paper. One that for some bizarre reason, one cannot even exchange for a bit of gold, the very reason we accepted this coupon as legal tender. Bait and Switch of the century.
That’s a reductionist way to look at it, and historically wrong.
You had it right the first time .. historically strong. That said, it is also the reason we must all continue to BELIEVE in it, else it goes up in a puff of smoke, as did the penny.
Well, no. First, sorry about the mixup, autocorrect did that. Second, originally, the dollar could be exchanged for a chunk of gold. Theoretically, the British Pound can still be exchanged for sterling. Good luck doing that, though.
In fact, though, my daughter got it right when in high school, she sarcastically answered the question: “What is money?” with “A figment of everyone’s imagination.” Even gold holds value only because people believe it does. Look at your original statement: why should a chunk of gold be worth more than paper? Only because people want it to, so no bait and switch.
Well, yes. Maybe I zoomed out a bit far .. as obviously civilization itself dissolves once folks stop believing in it, so technically I guess my argument is really that a gold-back dollar helps bolster that necessary belief .. and if crypto works (it's "intrinsic" value is that there is an absolute limit to the amount that can be mined .. as long as one ignores the issue that there is no limit to the number of crypto currencies that can be declared), it would undermine that necessary belief. (An unsolicited aside .. five years in the Dr. Strangelove office in the secret basement below the basement .. overlapping Bush and Obama .. and in a position I should absolutely not have been allowed to hold .. as they try to filter out folks who are EAGER to be a more savvy version of Edward Snowden - that initial set of WikiLeaks was literally my real time feed of TS/SCI correspondence from the offices of global national leaders to the President that my team was supposed to filter through for anything of interest to the CJCS once he and the sun rose .. but I DIGRESS .. anyway, five years of having full access to EVERYTHING recorded in the Pentagon on 9/11 down to every NMCC performance reports and to half the staff that was still there .. yet finding myself somehow being condescended to in any debate about what REALLY happened with my musician friends I left behind in Austin (when called back to duty) with them intellectually armed with Youtube videos by some rando French engineering professor and his chalkboard, and despite me calling their every bluff, down to personally going over to the gasoline station facing the destroyed side that reportedly had it's 'surveillance camera data' confiscated (spoiler alert .. it wasn't confiscated by the gov't, it WAS the gov't .. a Navy base gas station).. after five years of this .. I am now FULLY convinced that people are DESPERATE to believe in conspiracies of secret societies of wise or rich men pulling the strings, to include the current conspiracy that an 80 year old real estate salesman is now the leading Mastermind. Because the alternate explanation is that everything really is random and there is no narrative. And there isn't. I actually had this epiphany early on .. and as born Southern Baptist American atheist, the scariest thing I see happening isn't even being discussed .. the collapse of religion in the USA, the still extraordinarily by a longshot most powerful society on the planet, catching up in half a generation with the current DisneyLand version of past Europe on that front. You think you want that ... you do not.
But I digress. I have to get back to my battle with the IRS .. they claim I have not filed a tax return for the past three years. Which is ludicrous and insulting. I know for a fact it has been at least seven.
PS - no time to correct typos .. but I am adding this - I just realized you are in Maine, not England. So pardon any detected impatience and my stream of conscious tangent on Europe. Brits wear me out with their pedantism and misconceptions .. starting with their incomprehension of how large and "diverse" the USA actually is .. so even their most "accurate" stereotypes are wrong. Most especially their air of superiority based on the 'fact' that we are all superstitious savages and they are above all that .. nah, they just created a spiritual vacuum that WILL be filled, by no God knows what.
I’m actually in Oregon, just a few yards from the Pacific, but you’re right about Brits and their concept of distance. To also applies, to a lesser degree, to those on the East Coast.
The safest thing to be in Southern Baptist America is an atheist. They ignore you. I’m an archenemy — a progressive Christian. They broke away from the denomination (for the tenth time) because we aren’t “biblical enough.” They apparently read a different Bible, but that’s another discussion for another time.
As a currency, crypto is only good if people accept it (universally) as a medium of exchange. That’s the biggest advantage the paper dollar has, people are willing to take them in exchange for stuff. Crypto hasn’t gotten there.
Then there’s the argument for a digital currency. Heck, I already use one. The only time I use cash is to pay the barber who doesn’t take credit cards, and give tips to shuttle drivers. Everything else is electronic. Been that way since way before Bitcoin came along.
That was a very interesting story, and you were quite funny in the telling (that’s a compliment—it’s hard to detect sarcasm in text).
If you want to exchange your dollars for gold you are free to buy gold with your dollars. The value of gold is measured in dollars. The value dollars is not measured by gold. The intrinsic value of the dollar is the backing of the U.S. government. Inflation is a political issue, a failure of Congress to stop deficit spending.
Well, yes. (And yes the Federal Reserve Bank system probably did help unleash the 20th century acceleration of wealth creation and technological progress .. but that tapping of unrealized wealth .. of unlaid golden eggs, is now killing the goose. But that is beyond my ability to even explain, much less effect.)
The poll question, and the article, fail to distinguish Bitcoin and its successors from stablecoins.
The former might one day become useful and are relatively harmless. Stablecoins, by contrast, are a huge deal and a danger to most of us. I have not yet figured out all the ways in which they pick our collective pockets, but I note that the Trump dynasty has passed the GENIUS act and made buckets of money since.
Aficionados always tell me that the important thing about it is that it isn't a fiat currency subject to inflation at the whim of the government. But it seems to me that if this were really the selling point, the price of bread in bitcoin should be constant.
I have had that argument too
To convince me, it would have to be redeemable for something real.
I don’t understand?
The very fact that it enables organized crime is reason enough to outlaw it.
"Perhaps the pandering to this particular special interest is lucrative.."
Yes, especially for our president and his family.
There is a degree of multi or duplicative regulation of the banking industry. Nonetheless, since the Great Depression, the banking industry has held up very well including the Great Recession and the collapse of SVB. The Crypto industry is hardly regulated and if it is allowed to pay interest, I think we will see a return to Andrew Jackson. If they pay interest and lend money, who will oversee credit quality?
Yes
It is a Ponzi. The technology is quite viable and will one day provide secure, private (if desired) digital financial transactions at a speed required by the massive volume it will shoulder. So its the tech, not the coin. But even the tech, today, does not scale to where it needs to.
Those of us old enough may remember a running gag in Mad Magazine about the North American Veeblefetzer Company, which published a company paper called "Veeble People." The North American Veeblefetzer Company manufactured and sold a strange-looking machine called a Veeblefetzer, but no one knew what it did. And every edition of Veeble People would include a promise from Veeble's management and Board that next year, the company would make the big reveal and announce what a Veeblefester did.
Well, now America no longer produces many machines of any description, odd-looking or not. We produce digital products like memes and crypto assets that have taken the place of the Veeblefester, and we still don't know what they do.
The future of crypto are the stable coins linked to the dollar and backed by $Billions in US Treasuries.. You get all the advantages of the blockchain in encryption, transparency and ease of transacting and settlement - but you dont get the wild swings of currencies like Bitcoin that have no intrinsic value. Stablecoins could eventually use blockchain technology to take out the credit card middlemen that charge 3% to settle many of our transactions today. Even the criminal activity that is a core use of crypto is better served by stable coins. Very badly researched piece to not mention the promise of stable coins and to focus only on the currencies created out of thin air which I agree dont make sense.