https://bitcoinnews.com/geyser-grants-round-5/

Across the globe, billions grapple with unreliable financial systems marked by high inflation, bank failures, state seizures, and looming central bank digital currencies. For these individuals, bitcoin could serve as a protective shield, yet many remain unaware of its potential. Since 2019, starting with initiatives like Bitcoin Beach, communities have sprouted at the world’s edges, championing bitcoin and its promise. These communities offer hope, knowledge, and tools to protect against such threats.

Geyser Grants Round 5, Education in Bitcoin communities, was focused on amplifying the reach and impact of these communities, by giving away 1 bitcoin and by shining a light on projects at different levels of development. This grant has further highlighted how bitcoin is a global grassroots initiative.

Last week Geyser announced the winners in a X/Twitter thread where 55 bitcoin communities from all over the world were placed in three different tiers. Tier 1 projects received $2,500 worth of sats, Tier 2 projects received $500 worth of sats, and Tier 3 projects received $150 worth of sats. Let’s take a look at them!

Before we get into it, it’s worth mentioning that we have Blink (@blinkbtc) and anonymous Bitcoiners to thank for making this grant happen.

Africa

African Bitcoiners are a group of passionate, decentralized, and diverse members willing to bet a lifetime on educating Africans about bitcoin.

Easy Sats‘ mission is to find ways that allow anyone in Namibia to easily purchase bitcoin and be made aware of how they can accept it for their goods and services as well as securely storing it themselves.

Bitcoin Cowries carries out Bitcoin education in local communities, schools, and businesses within the 16 regions of Ghana.

Bitcoin Innovation Hub is a social entrepreneurship startup in Uganda that educate and create awareness about bitcoin and its benefits to transform financial systems.

Bitcoin Kids is a comic book designed and written by Nzonda. It’s is appealing, fun, and easy for kids, young adults, and adults to understand and get to use bitcoin in the Global South.

The Bitcoin Matatu Tours project will enable Bitcoiners living across the globe to experience bitcoin-only projects, educational trainings, onboarding sessions, and meetups in Kenya.

Building a Bitcoin education center in Agbozume, Ghana, looks to educate children in the local community.

“Bitcoin Doc: Where do we go from here?” by DocJenna is a documentary currently in production, which explores Bitcoin communities across the globe who are focused on education and/or creating circular economies.

Bitcoin Reach is orange-pilling new nocoiners in Zimbabwe by going out in the streets and giving away sats and hoodies.

Nigeria Beef Initiative is educating 400 orphans in Lagos, Nigeria, providing meals with nutritious local beef, spreading compassion, uniting community, and sharing blessings.

Bitcoin in Pidgin Podcast is providing Bitcoin-only content through podcasts/vlogs in Pidgin, a language spoken by millions in Nigeria.

The Core 21M aims to bring Bitcoin awareness to the youth of Kenya through education, entertainment, and engaging content including short courses.

The Metamorphosis Hub aims to bring Bitcoin awareness through education by meetups, bootcamps, casino games, and a newly launched podcast.

Bitcoin Education with Apata Johnson is working on building a bitcoin community around Atan and Ogun states in Nigeria.

Proof of Work Academy is working to introduce Bitcoin education, establish a Bitcoin hub, and foster a circular economy in Arusha, Tanzania.

Orange Pilling the AU aims to educate African legislators about bitcoin and Austrian economics by providing books.

Bitcoin Babies unites the power of bitcoin with the noble cause of nurturing infants through a book that educates on financial literacy and proper infant nutrition, envisioning a world where no child suffers from malnutrition.

Asia

21ideas is an educational bitcoin-only project that provides fundamental materials for a multinational Russian-speaking community.

Bitcoin Education in Hong Kong is teaching students how bitcoin is changing the world in Hong Kong’s first bitcoin school.

Right Shift is Thailand’s first and only media company focusing on bitcoin.

Indian Pleb Space is educating Indians on the value of bitcoin through Twitter spaces in Indian languages.

Yutaro21jp is making Bitcoin and Nostr resources available in Japanese.

Yusef has been supporting his community in Palestine thanks to donations from the worldwide Bitcoin community.

Europe

Free Madeira is a movement to make Madeira one of the leading bitcoin-friendly regions in the world.

Bitcoin Racing is a U.K.-based racing team with the mission to drive Bitcoin adoption further.

Bitcoin Bridge‘s goal is to raise awareness and educate small businesses in south Germany with plans to start a small hub of bitcoin adoption and create a circular economy.

Mein Erster Bitcoin — Mi Primer Bitcoin in Germany is another project from the Bitcoin Bridge team aiming to implement the Mi Primer Bitcoin diploma across Germany.

BitPolito is building the next generation of Bitcoin developers and enthusiasts, equipping them to excel in this dynamic field.

U.K. Sovereign Student Project is supporting the U.K.’s first Mi Primer Bitcoin node in London, and all the nodes that join in the future.

Street Cyber is putting up an art exhibition in Barcelona, “The Art of Revolution,” to raise awareness about bitcoin and teach the basics of this new monetary technology.

North America

Bitcoin and Black America Book Tour is spreading the message of bitcoin further in minority communities through a national book tour for the #1 bestselling book, Bitcoin and Black America.

The Bitcoin Bay Foundation is building a circular economy in the Greater Tampa Bay Area in the U.S.

The Progressive Bitcoiner is a podcast designed to give a voice to the individuals and communities who have used bitcoin to foster positive changes for personal, social, and environmental issues.

Columbus Bitcoin is educating and raising awareness about bitcoin while making Columbus the premiere hub of information in the Midwest.

From Bars to Bitcoin is leveraging the untapped talent in prisons to give people skills and employment opportunities that will strengthen the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Operation Bitcoin is connecting veterans to the Bitcoin mission through education, empowerment, and community building.

Bitcoin Cyberpunks Toronto is expanding the network of Bitcoiners in the Toronto region utilizing workshops, education, presentations, speaking circles, and engagement.

Proof of Workforce is working to orange-pill the workforce by educating labor unions, pension funds, and individual workers about bitcoin.

Online

Summer of Bitcoin is a global summer internship program to introduce university students to Bitcoin open-source development and design.

Sovereign Craft intends to be the best educational resource for sound money in Minecraft for players looking to interact with a real-game economy regardless of their age or geography.

Team Nerd Miner is a FOSS project making bitcoin mining accessible, affordable, and collaborative for everyone, regardless of your skill level or resources.

BTCSessions has been creating high-quality Bitcoin-only content, tutorials, and educational videos since 2016.

Bitcoin Academy is an open-source Bitcoin university with 4,000+ students and eight free courses.

Latin America

Mi Primer Bitcoin aims to create a free, empowered Bitcoin society in El Salvador and the rest of the world.

Libreria de Satoshi‘s mission is to empower Spanish-speakers to become Bitcoin Core contributors and entrepreneurs by providing accessible, high-quality technical education.

Paco, Run with Bitcoin, is on a mission to travel to 15 LATAM & CARICOM countries using bitcoin, this journey aims to showcase the widespread adoption of bitcoin through engaging travel content.

Praia Bitcoin Brazil are building and distributing Bitcoinize Machines, to empower bitcoin circular economies to start accepting bitcoin around the world.

Amity Age is the first bitcoin education center in Honduras. They educate locals on bitcoin and help with merchant adoption.

Bitcoin Yucatan Community is introducing BTC circular economy in their region, with an aim to show nation/media/government possibilities similar to results in El Salvador, increasing tourism by 30% after adoption.

Bitcoin Berlín SV is creating a bitcoin circular economy in the mountain town of Berlín, El Salvador.

Bitcoin Hacienda is building the first bitcoin classroom in Venezuela and gives free classes to everybody, aiming to plant the seeds of a Bitcoin community.

Bitcoin in Mexico is building the first bitcoin classroom in Venezuela, which is aiming to give free classes to everybody and plant the seeds of a bitcoin community.

“Let’s Rescue Venezuelan Books for a Free Education” is populating a library for Venezuelan students with newly digitized books.

VENTIUNO World is a Spanish publication, focused on creating and translating expert content about the philosophy, science, psychology, society, and culture of bitcoin.

This list of Geyser Grants winners showcases the variety and breadth of creators. It highlights that anyone can take part and contribute to Bitcoin. You just have to get out there and launch your idea and everything else will flow from there — even sats!

Geyser Grants is an open and community-led initiative. If you’re interested in contributing to it you can do so in the Grants page or if you want to get involved as a sponsor you can reach the Geyser team on Telegram.

The post 55 Bitcoin Communities Receive 1 BTC in Funding From Geyser Grants Round 5 appeared first on Bitcoin News.

https://bitcoinnews.com/rich-in-the-70s-is-poor-in-2023/

This article was originally published by Joe Consorti, Mahek Acharya, and Nik Bhatia on Substack.com

Benjamin Franklin famously truncated this idiom into two certainties: death and taxes. 52 years to the day after detaching money from physical reality when we left the gold standard, it’s time to add another certainty: money devaluation.

The Fed’s monetary policy tools of interest rate manipulation and large-scale asset purchases, paired with the US Treasury’s perpetual fiscal deficit, have had the impact of making assets more expensive, making the rich who own them richer and the poor exactly in the same place they were half a century ago.

To understand how immobilized lower- and middle-class America has been for 50 years, here are average incomes in the US by decade, adjusted for inflation. Incomes for the lower class have risen $11,000 over the last 50 years to $30,000, a 36% gain in wages—compared to the 40% increase in upper-class income from $120,000 to $219,000. At its current level, the average lower-class income in the United States is below the poverty line for a family of four:

Why are Americans slipping into poverty?

In the US, prices are 13.3x higher than they were 52 years ago. So despite living in an era of technological innovation, in which our lives grow evermore convenient thanks to the tools at our disposal, life is becoming infinitely more expensive.

Related reading : The “New Normal” Is Poverty, And Here’s Why

It all boils down to the US de-pegging the dollar from gold on August 15th, 1971, the day on which we just so happen to be writing this. Money is the standard unit of measurement that denominates everything around the world; if you create new money in excess of the rate that goods and services are rendered, prices go up. While the internationalization of dollar creation began a few decades prior, removing the US dollar’s peg to gold allowed for even faster creation that far and away exceeded the economic output of the country, leading to the overall price level exploding over the last 52 years.

Said differently—when you detach money from physical reality & print to your heart’s content, prices are the release valve:

Zooming out further, it is staggering how the price level didn’t materially rise from our nation’s founding in 1776 until World War I, yet after the post-war period when we stopped treating dollars as gold receipts, the price level exploded:

Prices are soaring but compensation growth is unchanged—this means that prices are rising due to the money getting debased, not because people are buying more things.

Productivity is rising but goods and services aren’t getting cheaper; that’s because the money is getting cheaper too. As productivity has risen some 246% since 1948, the growth of compensation in real terms is mostly unchanged since 1971, the year we de-pegged our money from physical reality.

You can print money but you can’t print prosperity:

Speaking of prosperity, 7-in-10 Americans today say that saving for the future, paying for college, and buying a home is more difficult for young adults today than it was for their parents:

The number of Americans who reported difficulty paying bills increased by 42% over the last two years, while more than one in three Americans who make more than $100,000 a year live paycheck to paycheck. Half of Americans say that affordability is a major problem where they live, up from 39% in early 2018.

Gasoline is understandably a price that people care deeply about—given how travel for both work and leisure consumes a large portion of peoples’ time and therefore gasoline consumes a large portion of their paychecks. Average US gas prices have risen to $3.85, up by 75 cents since January and showing no signs of falling due to ongoing global production cuts from major oil-producing nations:

Mortgage rates have also risen to a 23-year high of 7.53%, discouraging many first-time home buyers from even attempting to purchase a home:

It is not difficult to see why the majority of young adults in the US are destitute. The highest percentage of 18-29-year-olds in the US are living with their parents since the Great Depression, some 52% as of July 2020:

Higher prices are also inevitably recessionary. As the Fed tries to reign in CPI and price inflation succumbs to higher interest rates, it’s just shifting the burden for the US consumer from expensive prices to expensive interest rates. The net effect is a reduction in spending, seen here with consumer credit falling for the first time in 28 months, eventually leading to a slowdown in the economy:

So, why not just let prices come down?

If the uber-wealthy in the 1970s would be lucky to afford a medium-sized apartment in a US city in 2023, wouldn’t it be in the Fed’s best interest to allow prices to fall?

The Fed is fighting a credibility battle in 2023. It doesn’t want to go down in history as the Fed that got inflation bafflingly wrong with its “transitory” call, and Jerome Powell doesn’t want to be known as the fickle Fed Chairman who pivoted at the first sign of financial stress in 2019.

The Federal Reserve can only effectively conduct monetary policy insofar as it maintains a level of mutual trust with Americans. It loses that trust, and it quickly loses its influence too. As the Fed’s tightening has sucked money supply from the system, price disinflation follows. Its public trust was decimated in 2021 with its wildly-incorrect call that inflation was a non-issue, and now the Fed is course-correcting sharply in the opposite direction and risking, and we believe ensuring, recession as a result:

The Fed will maintain its credibility by bringing the pace of price increases down, but not letting prices go down.

We live in a credit-based world economy, where constant extension of new credit from banks to consumers fuels economic growth, largely driven by consumption spending. If that consumption spending were to fall, say, because people think prices will fall and want to wait to buy things until they are cheaper, then economic activity falls as well and we may enter a recession.

You see, in a post-1971 world, economic growth is no longer about productive investment, but rather perpetual spending at any and all costs, including the ability of US citizens to afford life’s necessities. The Fed will not allow for price deflation because it will mean a recession, and a recession means the US risks its foothold at the top of the global economic mountain.

The Fed wants you to spend so the economy keeps expanding, and they light the value of your money on fire to incentivize it. Inflation is a rate of change. It will go up and it will go down, but the price level only has one direction—up. You can see money supply falling as the Fed attempts to land the proverbial plane (inflation and the economy) without crashing it (deflation and recession) by influencing both the price (interest rate) and the quantity of money, pictured here:

You will grow increasingly unable to pay your bills, your mortgage payments, and your children’s college education, but at least the US’ position on the world economic stage will remain unchallenged.

The Fed and US Treasury aren’t incompetent, they just don’t work for you.

The post Rich in The ’70s is Poor in 2023 appeared first on Bitcoin News.

https://bitcoinnews.com/us-job-data-slides-regional-banks-are-warned/

This article was originally published by Joe Consorti & Nik Bhatia on TheBitcoinLayer.Substack.com

Well, that just happened.

The week we’ve long been forecasting is finally past, where the labor market data that has been sour for quite some time finally shows up after a several-month lag in the headline unemployment rate kicking higher.

On Tuesday, US job openings fell to 8.827 million, the lowest level since September 2021. Worse yet, last month’s data was severely overestimated. It was revised down by 417,000 jobs, the largest downward revision in job openings… ever. Data missing expectations more often than not coincides with the start of recessions. But when it’s this bad? All bets are off. Here we go:

Then on Wednesday, new data showed US job growth slowed materially in August. ADP employment gains fell from 371,000 in July to 177,000, missing expectations by 17,000—adding to Tuesday’s sour job openings data. Cracks are spreading in the labor market, rate hikes’ impact is finally hitting after 19 months:

Though the labor market as illustrated by the data above has been decelerating for several months now, the headline unemployment rate lags quite far behind, usually by about a year and a half. However, on Friday, it finally showed signs of life when it rose to 3.8% versus the expectation of staying flat at 3.5%, its highest in 38 months. Given that the labor market has already been in a secular decline and lending standards sitting at multi-year highs forecast where the unemployment rate is going, one thing is certain—this is only just the beginning:

The U6 unemployment measure that counts discouraged workers and those working part-time for economic reasons jumped to 7.1%, the highest since May 2022. More fuel to the fire that consumers are doing all that they can to make ends meet and stave off winding up destitute.

Related reading : Without Bitcoin You Could End Up Working Longer and For Less Money

Consumers are at the end of their rope. July’s personal income data rose just 0.2% while personal spending rose 0.8%—a disconcerting trend of accelerating consumer spending fueled by savings and credit instead of wage increases:

To put a spin on the classic “oh shit” scene from The Big Short:

Downward revisions have become the norm across all leading and relevant economic data, as is typical around the start of recessions. As of Friday’s data, August marks seven straight months of downward nonfarm payroll revisions, and new home sales for 13 of the past 16 months have been revised down. This downturn has been faster and harder than economists have expected, or they’re willfully ignoring economic weakness for other interests they may be serving. We’ll let you be the judge on that one:

The Fed is done hiking.

At the very least, we’re closer than ever to that sentence being a reality this cycle. Why? They are always done hiking once the unemployment rate starts or is about to start rising. Given that it’s kicked up to 3.8% from 3.5% on Friday, the pause is here. The Fed’s mission to “loosen” the labor market (Fedspeak for making people lose their jobs) is taking shape. The operative question is the length of the runway before it starts cutting rates:

There is now just a 32.6% chance that the Fed hikes once more in November, down from 38% last week, with cuts right after in early 2024:

So off of weak job openings, GDP being revised down on Wednesday, slowing job growth, and the unemployment rate rising to a 3-year high, most of the relevant economic data sucks. So why are stocks ripping?

Bad news is good news right now.

Sour data relaxes investor fears of a hawkish Fed—igniting hopes of relaxed monetary policy to support asset prices. We don’t make the rules. This relationship ebbs and flows, but now stocks are looking ahead to dovishness:

Emergency loans at the Fed’s BTFP have hit a new high of $107.52 billion, usage basically hasn’t risen for 12 weeks. Why? Regional banks are dumping consumer loans to shore up losses instead of using BTFP, packaging loans into ABS and selling them—which now yield their highest since 2008 of above 5.75% on average. This is a measure banks are taking to survive instead of the Fed:

It is not rosy for regional banks.

As we’ve long said, BTFP is merely a band-aid to the real problems lurking beneath the surface—unless the Fed intends to recoup all of banks’ losses for them and perpetuate moral hazard, the music will have to be faced soon.

And well, it seems like the powers that be are realizing this too and getting out of dodge while the getting is still good. San Francisco Fed Bank-Supervision Chief Azher Abbasi is retiring on October 1st. He was responsible for oversight of lenders including… SVB and First Republic Bank, the two landmark regional bank failures up to this point in 2023.

The Fed didn’t give a reason for his sudden departure. If there is anybody who knows just how bad things really are behind the scenes, it’s that guy. Leaving without warning during a lull period as the Fed’s tightest rate hiking regime in decades has impaired regionals to the point that they are dumping all of their assets like water from a sinking ship to survive? This does not inspire confidence about the risks facing regional banks.

Amidst the quiet pandemonium, the Fed is ramping up its oversight of small US banks. Citizens, Fifth Third, and M&T have been warned privately by the Fed to shore up capital and liquidity planning—seems strange to warn lesser-capitalized banks to raise provisions if the economy is purportedly headed for a “soft landing,” isn’t it? Regionals are still in trouble, and the Fed knows it:

Now for a quick update on the bitcoin front. Grayscale won its lawsuit against the SEC’s rejection of its application to convert GBTC into a spot bitcoin ETF. On the news, GBTC rallied from a -32% discount to a -20% discount to NAV in less than a minute, though it has given up some of those gains and slid along with bitcoin itself in the days following the win:

Fun in Binance and Tether Land as CZ called Tether a black box, and Bitfinex proceeded to launch perpetual BNB futures with a 20x leverage limit.

Let’s just say: if Binance has to shore up liquidity to meet margin calls on a totally non-existent BNB-collateralized loan now that there’s a conceivably unlimited amount of short pressure on BNB, bitcoin will experience gale force levels of selling pressure. Fun!

The post US Job Data Slides & Regional Banks Are Warned of Danger Yet Again appeared first on Bitcoin News.

https://bitcoinnews.com/total-control-why-central-bank-digital-currencies-are-a-catastrophic-idea/

This article was originally published by Niko Jilch on FixTheMoney.net

The year is 2050. Cash has largely disappeared from everyday life. Anyone caught with any form of paper money is considered suspicious. Drugs? Money laundering? Sabotage? Cash is dirty. The currency is digital now. But: Our digital payment transactions have long been fully monitored. This has given economists and central bankers completely new possibilities. As well as the police.

After the European blackout of 2035, the EU rolled out the digital euro at lightning speed. Sure, at first glance, it’s counterintuitive to respond to a blackout by introducing a digital currency. Cash was king in the blackout, after all. But when every European was offered 500 euros in “crisis bonus” fresh from the European Central Bank‘s digital money press, doubts quickly evaporated. After a few days, hundreds of millions had a digital account directly with the ECB.

There were many teething problems. But 15 years later, the digital euro is a completely normal thing that is not questioned. Bitcoin still dominates the black market today. And it is rumored that the rich and powerful have long used digital accounts on the blockchain to circumvent their own rules. But these are just rumors. The masses don’t have time for illegal currencies. They have to go to work and pay taxes. And play by the rules. Otherwise life will quickly become expensive.

Individual tax rates have long been set according to consumption patterns. This is what the “global agreement on establishing fairness and ecology in the tax system”, the GLOBFAIR, introduced. Since it was adopted in 2034, there are no more loopholes. Of course, the promise to finally counter climate change this way was not kept. But the system has remained regardless. Shopping behavior, social media, the workplace: those who behave the “right” way are rewarded. Those who don’t are punished. The only problem is that the definition of what is right – and what is wrong – is different everywhere.

China has led the way. When the digital yuan was presented to the world in 2022, people in Europe and the USA were still relaxed. But when the Chinese diaspora began to use the app with Mao’s face in the West, central bankers in Washington and Frankfurt became nervous. Digital plans for the dollar and euro were brought forward. Central bankers and politicians traveled to Beijing for inspiration. The new technical possibilities were too tempting. It was the end of anonymity. A new age of electronic surveillance dawned.

An unrealistic scenario? A polemical exaggeration? Hopefully. But unfortunately not necessarily. It is well known that China wants to introduce its digital yuan as early as 2022 – at the Winter Olympics in Beijing. The giant communist empire also makes no secret of the fact that digital money is to be part of its surveillance state. Anyone who uses cash already makes himself suspicious. And anyone who buys the wrong thing electronically or otherwise attracts attention in a way that displeases the regime will end up on the blacklist. In the Western media, this is called a “social credit score”.

Related reading : Financial Tyranny Index Highlights The Need For Bitcoin

It sounds harmless, but it’s not. China monitors its citizens at every turn. Not only payment transactions are screened and evaluated, but also behavior on social media and elsewhere on the Internet. Private chats? Not a chance. In China, you never know whether a message has been received. Anyone who uses the wrong terms is automatically deleted. The digital yuan closes one of the last loopholes. Cash – and the use of “private” apps like “We Chat Pay” and “Alipay.” The market has made China great. It has done its duty now. It can go.

The digital yuan is a tool that would have suited the secret service of the former communist east of Germany just fine. It is a surveillance currency. Your account is with the Stasi.

There is also no escape. The Internet is under control, protected by the “great firewall.” Bitcoin miners have been thrown out of the country, crypto exchanges have been closed. Tech founders like Jack Ma have had their influence severely curtailed by the regime. Xi Jingping probably wants to establish himself as ruler for life. He is tightening the reins everywhere and centralizing power in Beijing.

And it is there, of all places, that the German Bundesbank is drawing inspiration for its European plans for a digital currency. This is what happened in September 2021 at a Zoom conference among central bankers. “E-yuan and digital euro: Germany wants to learn from China,” reported the Frankfurter Allgemeine. What exactly can be learned from an undemocratic system of total surveillance, however, is not specifically spelled out in the article.

But still. Jens Weidmann, then head of the Bundesbank, lays it down: the digital euro will “not be a jack of all trades.” What does he mean by that? Weidmann cleverly reveals the dirty little secret: “A digital euro would not be as anonymous as cash.” Yes, privacy would have to be preserved. Somehow. By lip service. But if the worst came to the worst, the authorities would already have access. On suspicion. That cannot be prevented.

Weidmann is thus putting his finger directly in the wound. The ECB has already conducted a survey among Europeans and found that: By far the most important thing to people in Europe is the protection of their privacy. In Germany, Austria and southern Europe in particular, cash is still the most popular way to pay for purchases. The pandemic has weakened that, but it hasn’t changed it.

And that’s how “central bank digital currency” is being marketed. In short: CBDC, which already sounds like a secret service. The new money is to replace cash in the digital age. That is the central bankers’ first goal. The others are: Defense against foreign digital currencies (yuan, dollar); restriction of private payment service providers (Visa, Mastercard, Apple, PayPal); defense against Bitcoin and prevention of all plans for private money from the hands of powerful corporations (Facebook, Amazon).

In addition, they want to go search of suspicious payment movements: Money laundering, terror, mafia. They want to design the system in such a way that the private banking sector is also happy. They also want to try out new economic concepts. Negative interest rates on private accounts? Unconditional basic income? Money with an expiration date? Controlling consumption? There would be hardly any limits to the economists’ ideas.

But there are so many questions: Who has to agree? The EU Commission? The national parliaments? Do we even need to change the EU treaties? Referendums?

Related reading : Iranian Parliament Warns Central Bank: CBDC Unlawful And Unconstitutional, Must Be Halted

Everything depends on how the “digital euro” is designed in detail. There are hardly any answers yet. Only a rough timeline. In 2023, we should see a prototype. There will be no need for a blockchain like the one used by Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the decentralized alternative to beat – with the full power of the law and the central server architecture of the ECB. The digital Euro will most likely be modeled after a European real-time payment system that already exists: TIPS. Target Instant Payment System.

And yes, apart from all the horror scenarios and surveillance fears: the digital Euro must solve a concrete, real problem. It’s true that our money is already often digital in everyday life – but only cash is “central bank money” and only “central bank money” is also legal tender. So what would distinguish a digital euro from today’s: The signs with “cash only” would finally disappear from Vienna’s coffeehouses. Because the digital euro must be accepted.

What’s the point of all this if cash does exist? The ECB also firmly maintains that it does not want to abolish cash. It has just started the redesign of the euro banknotes. But the trend toward digital payment will be unstoppable. What is needed today are preparations for Day X, when not the state but the market and its participants decide by a majority that they no longer want to rely on paper money and coins. Then the central bank must offer an alternative for its central product. Otherwise, it would not be doing its job.

The issue of privacy can also be viewed in a differentiated way: Haven’t we long since been revealing ourselves to the U.S. tech giants on a daily basis? Don’t Visa, Mastercard, Google and Apple know everything anyway? Yes, but – at least in theory – they still form a wall against the authorities. And we do it voluntarily.

So there needs to be a digital equivalent to cash. But without privacy. Agustín Carstens, the head of the Bank for International Settlements, has already explained it, in a video that caused a furor on the Internet: Digital central bank money will “not be like cash,” Carstens said. Because the central bank will have “absolute control” over what happens to the money. Not very reassuring.

And Carstens is not just anyone. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is a powerful financial organization that hardly anyone knows about. A sort of think tank for central banks, where thoughts about the future are spun. Founded after World War I to handle the payment of Germany’s war debts, the BIS has been adept at finding new tasks and staying relevant. Now it deals less with gold and more with computers.

But even once the exact design of the degree of surveillance in the digital euro has been clarified, things are not yet in the clear. We are rattling along at top speed into a world with competition between currencies and payment systems.

So it’s understandable if the ECB wants to protect its product, the euro, from the yuan, dollar and bitcoin. But how will it ensure that the digital euro only reaches Europeans? Or do they want to engage in a global showdown anyway and also offer it to users in North or South America? The euro also thrives on its role as an international currency. Especially in unstable countries around the EU, it plays a role for the population – as cash. And with Montenegro, at least one country that is not even in the EU has introduced the euro as its national currency. Will the Montenegrins have access to the digital euro? It is unclear.

Bitcoin is the next problem. The cryptocurrency was created by its mysterious inventor Satoshi Nakamoto expressly to prevent a horror scenario like the one described at the beginning. To “carve out a piece of freedom” for the people. Bitcoin is already much closer to a true, digital cash substitute than digital central bank currencies will ever be. It has established itself as a national currency in countries like El Salvador and at least as an investment asset in the wealthy West.

Millions are using Bitcoin. Billions flow into it. And it’s built to withstand attacks and bans. Governments will not be able to stop Bitcoin – rather, the digitization of currencies will fuel its development. Only China has a chance to help itself with sheer force and electronic walls. But the democracies of the West are not in a position to do that.

And the banks? They are by no means happy. If everyone can get an account at the ECB, why do they need one at Raiffeisen or Santander? What role do commercial banks play in this new world? What about negative interest rates? If every European maintains his or her own account with the ECB, digital bank runs could occur within minutes, with people pulling their money out of a bank in a panic – because they heard news or rumors about the bank’s stability.

To prevent this, the ECB is considering a cap of 3000 euros per account for the digital euro. Any holdings of digital euros above that would automatically be transferred to the current account. But again, an answer is followed by three questions: Will this cap be adjusted for inflation? Will corporate customers get higher limits? And what about in the event of a crisis, when a bank really falters and customers quite rightly want to flee under the protective umbrella of the central bank?

A well-designed digital euro could give Europe a competitive edge in the global market. After all, the ECB is considered the most “independent” of central banks – since it is not answerable to just one state. Will that be enough to create trust among users? Or will they not care in the end, because digital money is needed in a digital world?

Washington does not yet have any answers to this question either. Unlike China and Europe, however, the issuers of the world currency apparently see little urgency. Jerome Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve, said that they are still examining the issue. Of course, the U.S. is also a leading nation in the digital world, and there will certainly be something like the digital dollar. But it is not yet clear whether this will have to come from the central bank at all. The U.S. has the deepest capital markets and, unlike China, is not afraid of capital flight. And they are observing an interesting process around Bitcoin.

In the crypto world, there are de facto two reserve currencies: Bitcoin, the oldest and largest cryptocurrency. And the dollar – in the form of so-called “stablecoins”. These are digital currencies that are pegged to the “real” dollar. These are issued by private companies – and they are enjoying tremendous popularity. Suddenly, billions of people in countries with poor, inflation-ridden currencies have access to dollars at lightning speed. Users don’t care much that they are derivatives. Thus, the new world of blockchain is helping to establish the dollar as a reserve currency among a whole new generation of private users. What if such dollar coins are issued by banks to make them available to companies as well? Will the digital dollar end up coming not from the central bank at all but from the private sector?

At the start of 2022, there are still many more unanswered questions than there are answers when it comes to digital currencies. We only know four things: digitization cannot be stopped. This also affects our currencies. China is much further ahead than the West when it comes to digital money. But Beijing must not serve as a role model – but as a cautionary example.

This article was translated from German – and slightly adapted/edited. It was originally published in January 2022 in the Austrian magazine “Pragmaticus”. You can read the German version here.

The post Total Control: Why Central Bank Digital Currencies are a Catastrophic Idea appeared first on Bitcoin News.

https://bitcoinnews.com/beaver-bitcoin-review-bitcoin-for-canadian-hodlers/

One thing standing in the way of the general masses taking the orange pill is how intimidating it can be to buy bitcoin for the first time. Stacking sats is easy once you get going, but for newcomers it can be a confusing process.

In Canada, at least, that problem is a thing of the past.

Beaver Bitcoin is a bitcoin-only exchange that simplifies the process of dollar-cost averaging bitcoin, eliminating the swarms of altcoins that clog up the screens of other exchanges.

Designed to be as user-friendly as possible and focused entirely on bitcoin, Beaver Bitcoin is surely one of the top tools for onboarding the next generation of Canadian Bitcoiners.

With a minimalist KYC that goes no further than the regulatory requirements and a commitment to being non-custodial, Bitcoiners in Canada who have already taken the orange pill might have found their new favorite exchange.

Beaver Bitcoin’s Ethos

Beaver Bitcoin was founded by Aubrey Jesseau, who began his bitcoin journey in 2016 after an abortive attempt in 2014 when he had difficulty buying the digital asset with his Canadian credit card.

After initially finding interest in Ethereum and other altcoins, he realized that bitcoin was the only option after becoming orange-pilled by prominent Bitcoin educators, such as Parker Lewis and Robert Breedlove.

When his family and friends he had orange-pilled kept coming to him asking about the altcoins they were seeing on the exchanges they were using, Jesseau realized something had to change in how we buy bitcoin.

He founded Beaver Bitcoin, a bitcoin-only exchange with a simple user interface that disposes of the crypto-alternative scam-coins that plague many exchanges.

Unlike those other exchanges, Beaver doesn’t hold any of your bitcoin — it’s completely non-custodial.

Beaver’s mission is to help people turn Canadian dollars into bitcoin in a wallet they have full control of. The bitcoin-only position and focus on dollar-cost averaging removes the temptation users might have to trade or time the market.

This dedication to the bitcoin ethos of “bitcoin, not crypto” and self-custody will appeal to bitcoin veterans while ensuring newcomers are familiarized with the core tenets straight off the bat.

Bitcoin Only, KYC, and Non-Custodial Exchange

There are three core components to Beaver Bitcoin’s commitment to Bitcoin’s values.

Beaver Bitcoin doesn’t include altcoins. These only serve to confuse people who don’t understand the difference between bitcoin and these other “assets,” as well as clutter up the user interface, creating a daunting sight for beginners.

Beaver also keeps KYC to a minimum. While some is necessary to keep Canada’s regulators happy, Beaver limits it to only what they need, and no more: a photo ID and some selfies (front and profiles).

Beaver is also non-custodial, fully in-keeping with the “not your keys, not your bitcoin” mantra. Bitcoin is too precious to keep it exposed to third-party risk, and as we all know, almost everyone is a scammer that just wants your bitcoin.

Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA)

Beaver Bitcoin does allow you to buy bitcoin instantly, just like other exchanges, but its key value proposition is how it simplifies the process of DCA.

DCA is when you spend a regular amount of fiat in regular intervals, in this case to buy bitcoin.

Unlike trying to game the market by buying the dips and selling the peaks (an infamously risky and stressful process), DCA is a low-risk and low-stress.

DCA is fantastic for anyone looking to use bitcoin as a long-term store of value and savings vehicle. In fact, if you had started DCAing bitcoin at any point in the past, even at the peak, you would currently be in profit.

Most exchanges that facilitate DCA force you to pay into a balance, which they then draw from.

Beaver simplifies this process by connecting your bank account as well as a self-custody bitcoin wallet.

You set up an amount you want to spend each week, with a minimum of $100, and it will automatically draw directly from your account, depositing the bitcoin in your bitcoin wallet.

How To Use Beaver Bitcoin

To use Beaver Bitcoin, you must be a Canadian resident and at least 18 years old.

Sign-up is simple; you just use an e-mail address and create a password.

This is where the KYC comes in. You only need to provide a photo ID. and some selfies to prove you’re a real person, and once you’re verified: voilà!

At this point, you simply provide the details to your bank account so Beaver can withdraw the funds it needs to DCA each week, and then a bitcoin wallet address for it to deposit into.

From this point onwards, it’s stacking sats.

You can set up a recurring buy with a range of options for how much you want to spend or set a custom amount.

Beaver will withdraw the funds, hold them for five days (this is a settlement process with the bank and is outside of Beaver’s control), and then buy the bitcoin and deposit it in your bitcoin wallet.

You can pause or cancel your DCA orders at any time. Ultimately, you’re in control.

You can also buy bitcoin on the spot, separate from your DCA, just like on any other exchange.

Beaver also handles all the fees for you, which would normally include miner and withdrawal fees. You simply pay a 1.5% flat rate, so there are no hidden surprises.

As bitcoin adoption grows, more and more people are going to want to jump on board for fear of missing out. With exchanges like Beaver Bitcoin, the process has never been easier.

The post Beaver Bitcoin Review: Bringing Bitcoin To The Next Generation of Canadian HODLers appeared first on Bitcoin News.

https://bitcoinnews.com/smart-vaults-launch-testnet-beta-100k-sats-testers/

Smart Vaults is a bitcoin multi-custody protocol for spending policies and proposal execution. It uses Nostr relays and clients for discovering signers, saving policies, and PSBTs, and orchestrating signatures with workflow.

• “We’ve released the BETA version of Smart Vaults for testnet. We are looking for a handful of people to test the vault creation and spending process. Earn 100k sats.”
• Requirements:

  – iPhone/iOS and access to web via laptop/desktop.
  – takes about 30 minutes.
  – collaborate with us via our telegram channel.

• “Here are the instructions for the test: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15UQ-1epeMK1YxoCGnZLTh6EkeY387YGpf237TxT5VRA/edit.”
• “We are building a wallet that empowers users to determine who, how, and when to spend their Bitcoin – improving its safety, recoverability, and unlocking new use cases like social recovery with trusted connections, inheritance, time-locked hodl, decaying multi-sig etc. It uses Nostr relays to orchestrate signature requests (PSBTs) on spending policies,” the team said when announcing waitlist.
• “Check it out and sign up for the waiting list: https://www.smartvaults.io/“

Website
Announcement

GitHub Repo

The post Smart Vaults Launches Testnet Beta, Offers 100k Sats for Testers appeared first on Bitcoin News.

https://bitcoinnews.com/european-bitcoiners-challenge-fatfs-travel-rule/

A lawyer based in the Netherlands says that the travel rule can be stopped with help of the constitution. He released a call to action and urges to act quickly as time is running out to meet the deadline.

“I think the international bitcoin community should realize that is has the opportunity to challenge the travel rule of the FATF here in Europe before the European General Court under rules of annulment. But you must be quick.”

Simon Lelieveldt, regulatory and compliance consultant in the area of payments and banking, shared the following thread and call to action:

• “Thread on constitutionality of the Travel Rule in crypto. On june 9, 2023, the EU took the FATF rule 7b some steps further into the TFR regulation. It is little known however, that until 22 of August, it is possible to challenge it on constitutional grounds.”
• “First we take the travel rule as now adopted. You can find it here. Look at the scope and the difference between fiat and bitcoin. For fiat – 1000 EUR exemption applies. Bitcoin – no exemption.”

• “The FATF (more on that later) in its guidance allows for more leniency than the EU regulator/politicians have provided. In particular they seem to strike out the 1000 EUR threshold. See their guidance here.”
• “The main idea in the travel rule is to throw in information about sender/receiver of payments or crypto transfers in the value chain. It’s not a good idea. In fact the cryptocommunity in 2019 advised the FATF to just require that information be made available. More proportional.”

“FATF is not a formal international organisation by the way. It is still a project group since 1989. Deliberatey so, so it hasn’t got the need for formally subscribe to principles like UN treaties as the UN resolution privacy in a digital age.”

• “Now look at the difference between rules for fiat and crypto, in terms of adding information and applicable regimes. Crypto transfers (widely defined) need to throw in a huge chunk of info more, using only the international regime. That’s deliberate, but not founded by data or evidence on necessity.”
• “And now look at the concerns of the European Data Protection Board, voiced in April 2023, outlining that regulatory alliance of Commission, Member States en EU Parliament may be going too far in infringement of fundamental rights and privacy. This is about data sharing and retention.”
• “The EU Court of Justice is not too happy about too extensive broadcasting and availability of customer data. It has verdicts in all kinds of areas, telecom, passenger data, ubo register which all limit the use of personal data to what is strictly needed.”
• “So what we can see is that we have the FATF ‘recommending’ to spread out data all over the world (a bad idea to begin with) and the EU rulemakers topping it up to a degree, eliminating proportionality and finalizing the rule without understanding it is related to other rules.”

“There are fundamental arguments against the whole EU travel rule as well as the part where it is disproportional in its workings.”

“There is only until August 23 (2 months and 14 days) to file a legal action to request a ruling that forbids the travel rule completely (as being superfluous with availability of data being most important) or with respect to thresholds and such.”

“I am now underway in the work of setting up a coordinated action to challenge the TFR in EU. The Dutch environment is particularly suited for this because we have a court case of premature application of this rule being denied.”

The post Can European Bitcoiners Stop FATF’s Travel Rule on Constitutional Grounds? appeared first on Bitcoin News.

https://bitcoinnews.com/bitcoin-racing-challenge-wins-300k-sats/

At a recent BitcoinRacing event in London, a 15 year old took home the main price of over 300,000 Satoshis (0.00321 BTC). With a lap time of just 51:368 he beat BitcoinRacing’s pro-driver Chris Mackenzie.

The Bitcoin Racing Challenge, hosted at Sam Brooks Brewery, Britains oldest independent brewery, created a fusion of Bitcoin, sim racing, and socializing.

The event, organized by a collaboration between BitcoinRacing and BitcoinNews, gathered about 50 attendees on Thursday afternoon to share the joys of motorsports and hard money. 

The vibrant gathering also led to the emergence of two brand new Bitcoiners! Participants Taylan (17) and Thenuk Mangala (16) joined the challenge, enticed by the excitement of sim racing, but left the event with a newfound enthusiasm for Bitcoin.

The challenge’s premise was simple – beat Bitcoin Racing’s star driver, Chris Mackenzie’s lap time on the sim, and win big! The event showcased generous prizes provided by esteemed sponsors, including Blink Wallet, Cyberian Mine, BitBox, Bitcoin Trading Cards, and The Bitcoin Hodlers UK, making it the perfect setting to introduce newcomers to the world of Bitcoin.

Thenuk emerged victorious by the narrowest of margins, beating Chris Mackenzie’s lap time by a mere hundredth of a second! His impressive feat earned him the grand prize of 321,000 sats courtesy of Blink Wallet.

Taylan secured a close second place and chose the prize offered by Cyberian Mine, receiving 150 euros worth of hosted mining for a remarkable two years! The best part, both of these teens had never held bitcoin before. They came for the sim racing but are staying for the revolution!

Other notable prizes included a Bitcoin Racing trading card signed by all of the team’s drivers, a Bitcoin-only hardware wallet supplied by BitBox, and an exhilarating passenger ride with Chris Mackenzie at Donington Park Circuit.

The Bitcoin Racing Challenge roared to success, achieving its mission of sparking interest in Bitcoin. Through the creation of enjoyable events that appeal to pre-coiners and encourage Bitcoiners to invite their no-coiner friends, plebs in the UK can seamlessly introduce their peers to the excitement of the event, conveniently placing them in a room full of Bitcoiners eager to work on orange pilling! The dynamic blend of high-octane sim racing and the magnetic allure of Bitcoin proved to be an irresistible combination, cultivating new believers in the Bitcoin space, and drawing an enthusiastic crowd of 50 guests.

Bitcoin Racing extends its heartfelt gratitude to the partners and all participants for contributing to this exhilarating event. Such initiatives pave the way for broader Bitcoin adoption and empower the next generation of Bitcoiners.

With a broad spectrum of partners, the Bitcoin Racing Challenge also showed the growth of the ecosystem. With the Bitcoin Collective, a renown organisation joined the mission. The London bitcoin meetup also supported the cause. Local businesses such as bridge2bitcoin received great interest in their payment devices. AutoCarCoin, a payment processor for car dealerships came with its own camera team.

BitcoinRacing and Bitcoin News are looking forward to the next episode of the Bitcoin Racing Challenge. The event format attracted attendees from all regions, some even took a 5h ride and pushed their flight to Croatia so they could come. The feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive, keeping the organizers motivated to iterate. Since this was the first event, the Charles and his team are ready to shift in the next gear and plan an even better Bitcoin Racing Challenge.

For more information about future events and Bitcoin Racing, visit https://bitcoinracing.co

The post 15 year old Sim Racer wins over 300,000 Satoshis appeared first on Bitcoin News.

https://bitcoinnews.com/remarkable-bitcoin-evolution-of-blackrock/

This article was originally published by Niko Jilch on FixTheMoney.net

This was a real conversation with Blackrock’s Larry Fink that took place on June 13th, 2018 in Vienna. I was still with my old newspaper “Die Presse” back then and had a chance to sit down with the legendary Larry Fink to talk about bitcoin, among many other things.

Suffice to say, he didn’t like it back then.

Niko: “You said millennials are great. You know what millennials love? Bitcoin!”

Larry Fink: “No they don’t.”

Niko: “Yes they do.”

Larry: “No they don’t, but they’re fascinated by it.”

Niko: “So what do you think about bitcoin?”

Larry: “It’s a fraud. But I’m a big believer in blockchain. For food safety, blockchain is going to be enormous.”

Niko: “So you’re not going to get into bitcoin?”

Larry: “It’s going to fail, it’s illegal. bitcoin is just an example of doing something outside the system. But when the government says that you need to follow the same rules in bitcoin like everywhere else, it’s going to fail, it’s going to zero. The reason it has so much value today is that you’re using it to do something illegal.”

Five years later…

I never thought it would come in handy to keep all my recordings from 5 years ago as a reporter, but I did and today I’m sitting here listening to Larry trash talk bitcoin, one day after his company Blackrock filed for a spot bitcoin ETF.

A year after I talked to him, I also got a chance to speak to Barbara Novick who was one of the co-founders of Blackrock. Back then she said Blackrock would never ever get into bitcoin.

But the world’s biggest asset manager had a change of heart.

The “iShares Bitcoin Trust” is a thing now — and few people think that Blackrock would file for such a high profile ETF if they fear rejection. But the last word is of course with the SEC. The same SEC that is taking aim at “crypto,” Binance, and Coinbase as we speak. Interesting, no?

Obviously, anyone can change their mind. Especially on a new and huge topic like bitcoin. I know I did. I’m only writing about this to show the evolution of Larry Fink on bitcoin.

Two years after our interview in Vienna, Larry had already changed his mind. That was in 2020, the pandemic was raging and we all started having Zoom calls all day every day. Watch this… (sorry for the weird thumbnail)

Another two years later, Larry did a full pivot. He was even voted Coindesk’s “most influential crypto person of 2022”.

Now we have arrived.

Much will be said and written about Blackrock’s ETF. Is it good for bitcoin, if people get easy access to bitcoin, the investment – but don’t get into self storage? Many bitcoiners also think Blackrock is evil for a variety of reasons.

Related reading : Why Bitcoiners Are Unfazed by the New Spot ETF Drama
Related reading : BlackRock, Valkyrie And Others Petition SEC For Bitcoin ETF Approval

I think they are in the business of making money, first and foremost. An ETF was always inevitable. Just like with gold. The GLD ETF did bring a big influx of new investors.

Bitcoin being new and Larry Fink changing his opinion like this is a massive, massive signpost in my opinion. It signals to the “world of money” that bitcoin in fact is a “thing”, that’s it’s “ok” to get in. In a way, it rubberstamps bitcoin for the yuppie elite, who don’t get bitcoin.

Until today.

The post The Remarkable Bitcoin Evolution of Blackrock’s Larry Fink appeared first on Bitcoin News.

https://bitcoinnews.com/nodeless-review-bitcoin-payments-without-stress/

Against common belief, bitcoin’s function is not just a store of value but also a medium of exchange. As bitcoin adoption continues to increase, more people are looking for places where they can spend their bitcoin. Merchants looking to meet this demand need a payment solution that’s easy to use, protects their customer’s privacy and doesn’t require advanced knowledge of bitcoin to get started. 

In this article we will review Nodeless. A new bitcoin-only payment processing service promising to become the unified bitcoin platform for online stores, entrepreneurs and professionals.

What Is Nodeless?

Nodeless is a platform that allows merchants to accept bitcoin and lightning payments without needing  the technical knowledge to run their own lightning nodes.

It allows bitcoin payments to be integrated into websites, enabling merchants to seamlessly merge bitcoin with their existing platforms like WooCommerce and Prestashop.

Nodeless is a non-custodial service that mimics the functionality of a Lightning node by quickly routing incoming transactions to the withdrawal wallet, and all bitcoin wallets are supported.

Nodeless also offers a variety of personal solutions as well: the Nodeless address is a three-in-one, acting as a Lightning address, a NIP-05 Identifier, and a paywalled email address. They offer static donation pages and content paywall modules as well.

Every feature they offer is also available in the API.

Nodeless takes a flat fee of 100 sats, plus 1% of every transaction, and in return handles the Lightning routing fees, on-chain fees, and hosting fees that would otherwise be the responsibility of the customer.

How Does It Benefit Merchants?

Nodeless is designed to integrate smoothly with existing platforms, such as online stores or fundraiser pages.

Nodeless can facilitate bitcoin payments quicker and with lower fees than using the base-chain because it uses the Lightning Network. If fees spike to over 600 sat/vB, layer one payments can get pretty expensive, making the use of Lightning highly likely.

Since it doesn’t require KYC, merchants are also free from the burden of having to collect customer information, which would not only be a drain on resources but would also put them at potential risk of a data breach.

Nodeless combines the scalability and low cost of the Lightning Network with the security and trustlessness of the Bitcoin network.

Ease of use is a priority, and that may be the primary benefit of Nodeless.

Related reading : KYC Is The Illicit Activity
Related reading : Streaming Satoshis Could Revolutionize Payments

How Easy Is It To Use?

Nodeless was born from a desire to bring bitcoin to those of us who don’t have the time or interest to learn the technical side of running a node ourselves.

True to that ethos, Nodeless makes a point of being user-friendly.

It’s easy to install and configure, and for even the least tech-savvy among us, it’s impossible to go wrong because Nodeless provides full support, including documentation and tutorials.

Stress-free implementation is key to the user experience, and no stone is left unturned in this regard.

For bitcoin adoption to really kick into gear, it has to be accessible to those who don’t have the expertise to be as fully involved as noderunners and shadowy supercoders. 

Casual plebs and small business owners may contribute just as much with placing a “bitcoin preferred” sign on their online store or cash register.

Nodeless ensures that everyone can get on board, and it does so by making the entire process as smooth and effortless as possible.

How Important Are Privacy And Non-Custody?

Privacy and self-custody are massive components of the bitcoin ethos, and this is firmly upheld within Nodeless.

The platform does technically take custody of funds whilst they’re in transit between the payer and payee. However, because they are almost immediately passed on, Nodeless is considered non-custodial.

In fact, it’s impossible to use Nodeless as a wallet.

A withdrawal address must be given in order to even use the service so that it can pass on the payment as quickly as possible.

Nodeless has no desire to hold onto your funds.

Because of this fact, no KYC information is required, allowing you to use the service without providing any personal information.

In fact, it doesn’t even verify the email address you provide, meaning you could feasibly give a fake address and still use the platform.

Who is behind Nodeless?

The company is built by a man who goes by the name ‘UTXO’. He values his customers privacy just as much as his own hence is real name is not made public in this article. However, you can get an idea of the vision and values of Nodeless by watching some of the publicly available interviews with ‘UTXO’. Being a Bitcoin expert with deep technical knowledge he not only knows what he is talking about but also finds inspiring ways of explaining complex issues.

Conclusion

Overall, Nodeless is a fantastic, stress-free option for anyone looking to integrate bitcoin payments into their online stores or any other activity that could involve receiving transactions.

Without the need to spend hours researching how to run your own node, nor the need for the resources necessary to do so, Nodeless offers a smooth path forward for bitcoin adoption.

The service acts as a bridge between the non-custodial benefits of the bitcoin and the Lightning Network and the accessibility of third-party solutions.

There are few services out there that do such a great job of bringing bitcoin to the masses whilst maintaining the bitcoin ethos to such a strong standard, but Nodeless makes it look easy.

The post Nodeless Review: Accept Bitcoin Payments Without The Stress Of Nodes appeared first on Bitcoin News.

https://bitcoinnews.com/bitcoin-will-make-housing-affordable-again/

This article was originally published by Leon Wankum on bitcoinmagazine.com.
It is republished here with permission from the author.

As fiat loses its purchasing power over time, real estate becomes a preferred store of value and housing prices skyrocket. Bitcoin fixes this.

On August 15, 1971, U.S. President Richard Nixon announced that the United States would end the convertibility of the U.S. dollar into gold. Since then, central banks around the world have started operating a fiat-based monetary system with floating exchange rates and no currency standards at all. The money supply has been rising steadily ever since. This forced market participants to look for ways to invest their money to protect against this inflation and one of the most popular investment assets has been real estate.

In the past, people owned houses for their utility value, which is characterized by the fact that you can live in them or use them for production. Nowadays, however, real estate serves the world as the primary asset to store value. Around 67% of global wealth ($330T) is stored in real estate. This has pushed up real estate prices enormously and, with that, the cost of housing and the cost of living.

Home Value Change vs. Income Change

The chart below shows the increase in wages in the U.S. from 1965 to 2021 compared to the increase in housing prices. It shows that real estate prices have risen excessively.

As a result, it is no longer possible for most people to afford their own home. In addition, regulation and inflation have made construction significantly more expensive, for example, due to the increased building requirements because of so-called “ESG” guidelines and the increase in raw material prices. Property owners pass on this price increase to tenants in the form of increased rents.

Related reading : Could The End Of Cheap Money Spark A House Price Crash In The UK?

From Utility to Speculation

Real estate has become a speculative investment object because it is used as a store of value, a former function of money that is no longer possible due to decades of monetary inflation that has decimated peoples’ purchasing power.

The exorbitant increase in housing costs is one of the biggest problems of the fiat-based financial system because it has created a multitude of secondary problems. When the number-one store of value in the world becomes increasingly expensive, and thus inaccessible, people can no longer save and plan for the future. When house prices and rents become increasingly expensive while money loses purchasing power, people can no longer afford adequate housing, leading to a deterioration in living standards.

In addition, aside from being used to store value, real estate is the most commonly used form of collateral in the traditional banking system. It is frequently used by a borrower to secure the repayment of a loan to a lender. Banks lend to people and institutions that own real estate. This has created an exclusive financial system as real estate has become unaffordable. In an inflationary environment where money loses value over time, it is a problem if most people cannot borrow since saving is not an efficient way to accumulate capital. Debt becomes necessary to be productive.

These developments, which can be observed worldwide, are among the main drivers of wealth inequality.

From Speculation to Utility

If we ever hope to solve the growing gap in wealth inequality, real estate should be reduced to its utility value as a dwelling or place of production rather than used as a store of value by proxy. Since bitcoin is a nearly perfect store of value, it offers a straightforward solution to the housing crisis.

The properties associated with bitcoin make it an ideal store of value. The supply is finite. It is easily portable, divisible, durable, fungible, censorship-resistant, and noncustodial. Real estate cannot compete with bitcoin as a store of value. Bitcoin is rarer, more liquid, easier to move, harder to confiscate, and cheaper to maintain. You don’t have to worry about daily maintenance, rent or repairs. It is easily accessible and cheap to store.

You can buy any amount, large or small. You can self-custody bitcoin. All you need to store it safely is a basic computer without internet access and a BIP39 key generator — or a $50 hardware wallet.

People can buy bitcoin to store value instead of doing so through a home or rental property. As a result, real estate prices will fall and allow people to afford buying a home for its utility value.

Related reading : Will house prices crash in 2026? This surprisingly reliable cycle theory suggests so

Bitcoin Presents a Solution

As explained in a recent episode of “The Hard Money Show,” real estate has become a store of value in a world where fiat currencies are losing power, with many negative implications for society. But bitcoin presents a solution.

As bitcoin adoption increases, the money that would otherwise be invested in real estate — and some that is already invested in real estate — will flow into bitcoin. As pointed out above, this will make housing affordable.

By functioning as an actual store of value, bitcoin will absorb the monetary premium that real estate has accumulated over the past decades due to the broken monetary system. Under a bitcoin standard, housing will eventually collapse to its utility value. The easy access to bitcoin will create a financial system that is far more accessible than it is today.

Unfortunately, this will not solve the problem of rising rents in the short term, since this is a structural problem of the fiat system. Due to the ever-increasing supply of money, over time it loses purchasing power and prices rise. However, as our financial system adjusts to a bitcoin standard, deflation will cause prices to fall.

It should also lead to a more decentralized and less regulatory form of governance, as governments increasingly become service providers.

The post Bitcoin Will Make Housing Affordable Again appeared first on Bitcoin News.

https://bitcoinnews.com/london-bitcoin-meetup-virtual-racing-challenge/

A London bitcoin meetup goes racing. British family race team “BitcoinRacing” is gearing up for the world’s first event that aims to shed light on the perils of inflation and financial surveillance. The Bitcoin Racing Challenge is a virtual sim racing competition, taking place on Thursday, July 27, at the renowned Sam Brooks Brewery in London.

Unleash Your Racing Skills at the Brands Hatch Circuit

Sim racers of all levels are invited to participate in an exhilarating competition on the iconic Brands Hatch Circuit. This event provides a realistic training environment that rivals real-world driving experiences. With cutting-edge racing simulators and laser-scanned tracks, participants can master the circuit’s intricacies and improve their lap time with professional tuition.

Join Us for an Unforgettable Evening at the London Bitcoin Meetup

Attendees will experience thrilling races and enjoy an open beer tab from London’s oldest independent brewery, Sam Brooks Brewery. This event, a highlight in Europe’s financial capital, offers participants the opportunity to compete for enticing prizes.

Prizes: By getting a sim-inclusive ticket, you’ll have the opportunity to try and beat Chris Mackenzie’s lap time set at the start of the session. If you do, you’ll be in with a shout to win one of some great prizes!*

Prize 1: $121 worth of sats courtesy of Blink wallet. Make sure you have the app downloaded before the event so you are ready to receive your Sats if you win … Download the app here

Prize 2: 150 Euros’ worth of mining hosting from CyberianMine, the easiest way to mine Bitcoin. Set up your account here

Prize 3: A bitcoin only hardware wallet worth 139 Euros courtesy of BitBox

Prize 4: Win a passenger ride in a Bitcoin Racing City Car at Donnington Park Circuit, taking place on the 6th of September

Prize 5: A signed bitcoin racing trading card courtesy of Bitcoin Trading Cards

BitcoinRacing: Promoting Bitcoin Solutions

Organized by BitcoinRacing, a dedicated team of sim racers, this event highlights bitcoin as a solution to combat inflation and financial surveillance. Charles MacKenzie, deputy of BitcoinRacing, emphasizes the educational value of this event:

“We believe that Bitcoin is the best way to protect wealth from inflation and government overreach. This event provides a unique platform to learn more about Bitcoin while enjoying an exciting racing experience,” said MacKenzie.

Industry Experts Support the Cause

The event has garnered support from industry experts concerned about the threat of financial surveillance and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

Notable supporters and attendees include Shah Ramezani, CEO of Noah App; Leon Siegmund, CEO of BitcoinNews; Max Matrenitski, CEO of Cyberian Mine; racedrivers Chris MacKenzie and Jason Dean; and international delegates from the Bitcoin community.

Raising Awareness for Financial Surveillance and CBDCs

The objective of the London Bitcoin meetup is to raise awareness about the dangers of financial surveillance and the rise of CBDCs. Leon Siegmund, co-organizer of the event, highlights the gravity of the situation:

“CBDCs pose a grave threat to society, and unfortunately, many people are oblivious to this danger. The Bank for International Settlements has officially acknowledged that CBDCs could grant central banks absolute control.”

Join the Virtual Sim Racing Challenge

Join us at this unique event by visiting the Eventbrite link for more info and purchasing tickets. Experience racetrack excitement while raising awareness for bitcoin and financial sovereignty. Don’t miss out!

 Live Speaker Sessions: It’s an informal event with beer, music and racing, but you never know who might jump on a mic and say a few words! Keep an eye (ear) out!

 Networking with Fellow Bitcoiners: Meet race drivers, Bitcoin enthusiasts, builders, investors and executives and rev your networking engine into high gear. Make connections, share your passion, and exchange ideas with like-minded individuals who love both Bitcoin and the world of high-speed racing.

 Delicious Food and Refreshments: Feeling hungry after all that racing action? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. The on-site restaurant offers mouth-watering food and thirst-quenching drinks that will keep your energy levels at top speed throughout the evening

London Bitcoin Meetup Event Details:

Date: Thursday, 27 July (5 p.m. – 10 p.m.)

Location: Sam Brooks Brewery, 1 Bellweather Lane, The Ram Quarter, London, SW18 1UR.

Please note: 16+ only after 6.30 p.m.

Ticket Information: Tickets from £10 (general access) or £21 including Sim time (Early Bird Prices)

RSVP Link

The post London Bitcoin Meetup Hosts First Virtual Racing Competition appeared first on Bitcoin News.

https://bitcoinnews.com/everyones-a-scammer/

This article was originally published by Michael Goldstein on nakamotoinstitute.org

There’s a War Going On

Bonnie and Clyde cannot simply rob First National Block Chain. They can hack servers and unencrypted wallet files or scan low-entropy brain wallets. But the costs of obtaining bitcoins hoarded on a high-entropy, password-protected paper wallet, for instance, are incredibly high. A computer cannot be expected to brute force the wallet in the universe’s lifetime, so a trespasser would have to employ expensive tactics such as kidnapping and torture on any prospective, individual target. Criminals, con artists, and swindlers cannot rely on violence to get the wealth they desire—it has become too cumbersome. These scoundrels must rely on good ol’ fashioned market forces.

And it’s working. Bitcoin is poised for exponential growth, so the opportunity costs of not being involved to the highest personal degree possible are incalculable. Yet merchants, investment peddlers, and other hoarders have been able to convince countless bitcoiners to part with their future riches, despite the obvious downsides given you have a long enough time horizon to see the coming post-fiat world. They’ll tell you spending is vital, that Bitcoin 2.0 will be even better if only you give them some of your Bitcoin 0.9, or that your bitcoins are worth only $475 a piece. They’ll tell you this with a straight face, the wringing of their hands unseen across the Internet. And once you have fallen to temptation, they’ll leave you on your own to learn there are no ‘backsies’. In the realpolitik of the block chain, everyone is a scammer. There is a war going on for your bitcoins, and willpower is your only defense.

Endless Scammers Everywhere

Bitcoin is a dangerous place. There is an endless list of hacks, scams, and thefts. Bitcoin promises a network with distributed trust. You know why? Because other bitcoiners exist.

Not every bitcoin scammer is merely an amoral businessman or investor. Many are outright fraudsters and con-artists. When you buy a rug from Overstock, at least you actually get a rug. When you send money to Ethereum, you may actually get a worthless ether token eventually. You know what you probably will never get? Your Butterfly Labs pre-order or your Goxbucks.

Read more on the subject : Ethereum Is The Mother A**hole From Which The Shitcoins Spring

Some scams are pulled off by convincing other bitcoiners to not take advantage of Bitcoin’s value proposition. That is, they convince bitcoiners that while they shouldn’t trust third parties, this guy is totally cool. I’m looking at you, Mt.Gox. Others convince them to play investment games that turn out to be Ponzi schemes. Sup, Bitcoin Savings and Trust?

Some scams are the purest synthesis of bitcoiner avarice and stupidity. Ponzi.io explicitly marketed itself as a Ponzi scheme, promising to send you back more bitcoins coming from the pockets of the next investors. Have fun. Their address, 1ponziUjuCVdB167ZmTWH48AURW1vE64q, received nearly 350 BTC.

Some scams are outright malicious. Scammers have resorted to malware and ransom. CryptoLocker infected computers by encrypting the user’s files and only gave up the private key if a ransom was paid in bitcoins within 48 hours.

Scammers have resorted to blackmail. On September 8th, a hacker gained control of Satoshi Nakamoto’s email account, using it not only to deface the Bitcoin sourceforge page, but to allegedly find out Satoshi’s true name. From a Vice article: “After inquiring what [the hacker] was trying to get out of all this, he said ‘Bitcoins, obviously… [But] don’t forget the lulz.’”

Scammers have also gone to the trouble of leaking nude photos of celebrities to get some bitcoins.

Scammers will do whatever it takes to increase their bitcoin holdings. You know this. You scammed someone to get yours. You probably did not outright defraud or hack someone like the above, but you necessarily took advantage of their short-term thinking.

Merchants are Scammers…

At long last Newegg accepts Bitcoin, along with Overstock.com, TigerDirect, Dell.com, Expedia, and other major retailers and websites. So let’s go spend all our bitcoins, right? Not so fast. Let’s wipe off the drool from looking at all the shiny toys and think this through.

Merchants have absolutely every reason to accept Bitcoin. BitPay recently removed all fees for payment processing, including currency exchange. Not only can merchants receive payments without fees, but there are of course a litany of other benefits, from no fraud or chargeback to easy international payments. They can pass on their savings to customers or increase their profit margins. They also can and should hold onto bitcoins as their accounting permits, so as to earn profits from future price increases. After all, if Bitcoin increases adoption for payments, there are only so many units to go around, so each one will become more valuable.

So merchants are in a good position. They can save money on their business, and they can try to purchase bitcoins with retail goods, just as many purchase them with dollars or euros. If I were a merchant, I would most certainly encourage people to shop at my store in Bitcoin. I might even try to convince them, despite its fallacious economic reasoning, that spending bitcoins at my store is actually good for Bitcoin—certainly more than you saving and speculating on them. After all, “it could become worthless overnight” and “Its future depends on it” (because I say so). I might even say things like:

[My] shoppers are among the first wave of Bitcoin users and we’re thrilled to accept the cryptocurrency as a form of payment. Just like you, we also believe Bitcoin can be the future of digital currency. But if you’ve been saving it and hoping it will make you rich one day, you’re better off spending it if you want it to succeed.

By me, I mean Newegg. Their recent blog post is called, “Why Saving Your Bitcoin is Not a Good Idea”. The reason? It means you aren’t spending at Newegg.

Most merchants even choose to immediately sell the bitcoins they receive. They scam you out of bitcoins they do not even want, uninterested in the future value of the network.

Merchants are scammers because they lead you to believe that your bitcoins are only worth the price of their retail good in order to allow themselves (or those to whom they sell the bitcoins, if they so choose), rather than you, to benefit from future Bitcoin price increases.

…And That’s a Good Thing

This is not to say merchant adoption is bad. In fact, from the hoarder’s perspective, merchant adoption is great. First, merchant adoption means that there is more demand for Bitcoin, that the Bitcoin network is growing, and that Bitcoin is thus more valuable than it was yesterday. Second, merchant adoption means there are more places to spend bitcoins.

This does not mean a hoarder will actually want to spend bitcoins. More importantly, he can spend bitcoins. Demand for cash exists because there is uncertainty of future needs, and the holder of cash believes he will come across currently unknown opportunities in the future that can better satisfy his needs than any current opportunities. When an opportunity exists that he believes benefits him more than what the same cash can get him in the future, he is able to seize it. As Metcalfe’s Law shows us, the value of a network increases exponentially with each additional node. With each additional merchant, there are more potential people to trade with, and thus more potential opportunities to satisfy his needs with cash.

Of course, these benefits to the hoarder does not require merchants accept Bitcoin, given the right infrastructure. Xapo debit cards, for instance, give the hoarder the ability to use bitcoins on existing credit card networks. This means hoarders can already use Bitcoin as their unit of account whether or not merchants even know what a bitcoin is. The more Bitcoin can be used as a method of payment the fewer dollars hoarders must begrudgingly speculate on, a risk they typically only wish on government agents and skeptical economists. Thus, the primary advantage of merchant adoption is that your average balance of bitcoins held can go up. You don’t need to buy dollars in anticipation of making dollar payments, instead you can replenish your bitcoin hoard after you make bitcoin payments.

Between merchant adoption and debit systems, Bitcoin becomes a more valuable good to hoard. Good news for Bitcoin!

Investments are Scams…

Bitcoin is exciting. Looking at a static wallet file and balance is not. Instead of holding and forgetting, many bitcoiners choose to “put that money to use,” and endless crypto-peddlers are ready to snatch your bitcoins up. They’ll offer you mining contracts, present their plans for a hedge fund, or entice you into investing in a Bitcoin company. Today, the most popular investment vehicle for bitcoiners are Bitcoin 2.0 schemes, ranging from Mastercoin to Ethereum.

All of these are scams.

Regardless of their ability to actually deliver their promises, they all fail a simple test: is the return on investment positive? If you are stuck in a fiat mindset, you may well make a quick buck, but given Bitcoin’s extraordinary expected growth, can one really expect to do better than one can by holding it? Long term investors should use Bitcoin as their unit of account and every single investment should be compared to the expected returns of Bitcoin.

If hyperbitcoinization occurs, Bitcoin holders will see their purchasing power increase by orders of magnitude. Bitcoiners should think twice before throwing away even a couple millibits towards a project “just to see where it goes.” A running joke in the community is how expensive the two pizzas Laszlo bought were. We joke about a million dollar pizza, and hyperbitcoinization has not even occurred yet. I praise Laszlo for his entrepreneurial use of a new technology, but I do not wish for myself or others to be a Laszlo.

Who wins here? It is not the investor, but the peddler of crypto-dreams. Ethereum recently raised $15 million in their “Ether sale” for an unfinished project, in Bitcoin, of course. There isn’t even a product yet, but investors have placed their bets. Ethereum now has over thirty thousand bitcoins, destined to be worth unspeakable volumes of wealth, while investors hold worthless hope.

Investments are scams because they lead you to believe you can get a higher return than holding bitcoin itself, despite the economics of bitcoin naturally making this an absurd claim in the medium-run. In a post-fiat world, there will be plenty of investments that have a greater return (and risk!) than holding bitcoins, but they’ll be assets that generate bitcoin cash flows.

…But They Don’t Have to Be

If a Bitcoin hoarder wants to reinvest his profits, he need not further than the Bitcoin network itself. The correct strategy for Bitcoin entrepreneurship, as Daniel has pointed out, is speculative philanthropy. While endless money has been funneled into altcoins, appcoins, vaporware, vulnerable third party services, etc., there are many problems in Bitcoin that still need to be solved through open source development, many of which are low-hanging fruit. By funding these projects, the security, accessibility, and usability of the Bitcoin network increase, thus making it an even better investment.

Get coding. Every new git commit is good news for Bitcoin.

Hoarders are Scammers…

The Bitcoin hoarder is in a constant battle with himself to lower his time preference as much as humanly possible. It’s the only way to optimize his Bitcoin holdings. My friends and I joke about starving due to the intense deflation, but I can’t say I don’t look back and wish I had skipped a couple lunches in the crappy dorm cafeteria to buy $10 bitcoins when I had the chance.

Bitcoin hoarders are excited about the price rises, but they are also excited when the price is on its way down. Coinbase just months ago was willing to give me a bitcoin for $1200, and now they are only asking for $475. Whatever price, the bitcoin hoarder thinks to himself, “Suckers.”

Bitcoin hoarders are in it for the long run. Their strategy is not to buy low, sell high, but to buy any, sell some highest. They will do anything to get their hands on more satoshis, and there is nothing that makes them happier than a schmuck giving up the goods after being convinced Bitcoin is only worth $[x < moon]. These sellers have volunteered to hold the fiat shitbag, and hoarders will not be so quick to help them get rid of the stench.

Indeed, hoarders are potentially the most dangerous scammers. While merchants and investments are outright with their desire to take your bitcoins, hoarders may not always be so explicit. A person can prove that they have the private key to bitcoins, but they cannot prove they do not. With this in mind, it is plausible that any vociferous skeptic’s bold assertion is actually a psyop attempting to affect market demand, and subsequently the price, in their favor. For instance, when Paul Krugman recently said in “The Long Cryptocon” that “it’s not at all clear whether [Bitcoin technology] has any economic value,” we cannot know with epistemological certainty that Paul Krugman is not a Bitcoin True Believer hoping to get his hands on more and cheaper bitcoins.

Hoarders are scammers because they understand the exponential (and very likely) growth potential of Bitcoin, yet are willing to convince other bitcoin holders by any means necessary that the future value to them is probably not much more than the current market price.

…And You Should Thank Them

Hoarding is what gives money value. And no, you can’t have any.

Great news for Bitcoin!

Read more on the subject : Why Does Bitcoin Have Value?

How to End it All

Indeed, Bitcoin scamming is a job that will never be finished. The market-based scams (that is, ones that don’t require fraud) will subside as Bitcoin absorbs the real money supply of all other currencies, when demand for cash begins to decelerate and eventually stabilizes. However, other scammers will always be looking for ways to screw someone out of their bitcoins.

The only way this will be solved is if trusted networks can be built. As has been said before, Bitcoin is great, but it won’t fix our monkey brains. While Bitcoin offers a money with no trusted third party, it can only do so because the ledger is self-referential. The humans actually using it must always be in a mindset of caveat emptor when using Bitcoin. Through payment protocols, webs-of-trust, smart contracts, GPG contracts, and voting pools, users can mitigate the risk of engaging in various forms of commerce.

The Only Winning Move is Not to Spend

We live in a state of total war. Everyone who holds bitcoins is trying to get more by scamming others out of theirs or convincing others it’s not worth trying to get into. Everyone who does not hold bitcoins was either scammed out of them or was scammed from getting into it. Having bitcoins takes the knowledge and will to know and desire its future, while not having or spending them is lacking one or the other. If you hold bitcoins, you must take a breath every time you wish to send any to another person. Ask yourself if that person truly deserves untold amounts of your future wealth for pouring you a beer. You may just find the will to hodl more.

Hyperbitcoinization will not be a force to trifle with. Even a marginal bitcoin holding right now will constitute a very significant majority of a bitcoiner’s portfolio. Once it happens, there is no going back. One day, your Bitcoin balance will likely never see the decimal point move to the right again. Bitcoin will brake for no one on its race down the road from serfdom to global domination (liberation?). Do not give your seat up for someone else.

“Scammer” is a heuristic, not an accusation.

The post Everyone’s a Scammer appeared first on Bitcoin News.

https://bitcoinnews.com/this-is-why-we-bitcoin/

This article was originally published by Niko Jilch on FixTheMoney.net

Surprise, surprise, we haven’t learned a single thing since 2008.

We knew back then bailing out the banks would lead to moral hazard and (eventually) inflation. We know these facts to be true today. But we just don’t care. As a society, we are troubled by other things like the war in Ukraine and, ironically, inflation.

Very few people connect the dots. This is important to remember, especially for those who have already gone down the Bitcoin route and are by now comfortable thinking about concepts like “decentralisation” and “counterparty risk”.

The masses don’t care!

At least they didn’t. Until this current banking crisis kicked off. Now more people do care.

All Your Models for Monetary Policy are Destroyed

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the US government is clamping down on “crypto” and fiat on-ramps for Bitcoin, just as these masses might need them the most. Like Christine Lagarde said: “If there is an escape, it will be used”.

And to paraphrase Michael Saylor: If there is an escape, all your precious models for monetary policy are destroyed.

Remember, these are the same people who want to ban cash in order to force negative interest rates down our throats. They have zero incentive to “think outside the box,” for they are the kings of the box. The box has been good to them and that’s why they can’t imagine anyone wanting to get out.

Now they try to lock the doors of a burning building.

History will not be kind to them.

But there is a positive story here as well. Bitcoiners around the world spent last weekend being totally relaxed and joking about silly fiat bros storing their money using totally outdated technology (banks). Counterparty risk is now a thing. As banks get bailed out again, all roads lead to Bitcoin.

The Narrative Has Gone in Bitcoins Favour

The collapse of FTX has firmly established the (correct) narrative that Bitcoin is the only truly decentralised and therefore trustless “crypto”. Us pesky Bitcoin maxis have done a good job representing this truth. As a story it’s easy to grasp. It’s also a narrative that doesn’t actually rely on price and focusses on the technology of Bitcoin.

Now, that this narrative is established in the mainstream, the banks begin to fail.

Bitcoin was literally built for this moment. When Satoshi Nakamoto included a warning about bank bailouts in the genesis block, he wasn’t just referring to the dangers of inflation – but to the dangers of centralised banking and currency systems in general.

The market seems to suss this out as well. Bitcoin seems like a pretty good bet here, no? Look how quickly the price of Bitcoin reacts to a new round of monetary debasement. It’s stunning, really.

When banks fail, people will need to turn to Bitcoin as a new technology that can safeguard their money. Where they have access 24/7 – without ever standing in a queue.

And if banks get bailed out again, the pressure is transferred to the currency. The debasement picks up again and people will need to turn to Bitcoin as a new technology that can safeguard the value of their money in the long term.

All roads lead to Bitcoin.

The post This Is Why We Bitcoin appeared first on Bitcoin News.

https://bitcoinnews.com/hotel-princess-hosts-bitcoin-conference/

German boutique hotel “Princess” hosts Bitcoin conference with Knut Svanholm and Prince Fillip of Serbia.

From April 28th to May 1st, the Bitcoin Hotel Princess in Plochingen near Stuttgart, Germany, hosted around 150 Bitcoin enthusiasts for an unforgettable weekend.

The event provides a platform for attendees to transact, socialize, and learn about the latest Bitcoin-related developments.

Upon arriving at the entrance, a large poster promoting “Bitcoin im Ländle” immediately catches the eye.

The hotel’s interior is stylishly furnished, with numerous details in the typical orange color of Bitcoin. From the lightning jukebox to the Bitcoin vending machine and even a punch set to engrave attendees’ seed words in metal, the hotel is full of exciting and unique features related to Bitcoin.

The outdoor tent is equipped with a heater made from Bitcoin miners, which runs quietly in the background during workshops, thanks to the low fan speed of the two S9 miners.

The event is characterized by a variety of discussions, presentations, and workshops, covering everything from the current state of nation-state adoption to Bitcoin entrepreneurship and the future of banking.

Speakers such as Knut Svanholm, Prince Fillip of Serbia, Tor Ekeland are among the headlines. But many Germans are into Bitcoin and have dedicated hours of research to Bitcoin.
And we all know about the German level of detail and perfectionism. If they dig into Bitcoin, you bet they go deep.

German Bitcoiners that are lesser known are people like Mathias Linkerhand who presents a talk about the Bitcoin white paper, Jens Leinert who presents on Lightning and Leo Mattes with a keynote on Memes.

By the way all attendees have the opportunity to assemble and set up an LNPoS (Lightning Point of Sale) themselves. Throughout the event, attendees purchase beer using Bitcoin through a beertab provided by Copiaro.

One of the highlights of the event is the presence of a TV team, which is producing a segment on the conference for German television.

On Saturday morning, attendees are delighted to discover that the baker named “Lutze” worked through the night to prepare Bitcoin pretzels for breakfast.

Many Bitcoiners quickly turn into food influencers and flooded Twitter with images of the delicious baked goods.

While the conference was fully sold out, the organizers opened up the last day for those who were not able to secure a ticket.

As the last day approaches, attendees are invited to join the largest “Pleb Walk” in to date, enjoying a hike in nature together.

Overall, “Bitcoin im Ländle” is a fantastic event, offering attendees a unique opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals and discuss latest developments in Bitcoin.

The post German hotel “Princess” hosts Bitcoin conference with Knut Svanholm and Prince Fillip of Serbia appeared first on Bitcoin News.

https://bitcoinnews.com/jamie-dimon-interviewed-epstein-case/

This article was originally published by Nik Bhatia on his Substack “The Bitcoin Layer.”

While market participants prepare for quarter-end rebalancing, strike their balance sheets, and write quarterly investor letters, I’ll venture in a slightly different direction as we conclude March and an eventful first quarter. The death of the U.S. dollar is in the news again, but as analysts argue whether the world is ready to dump Treasuries, banks — not the U.S. government’s poor fiscal position — remain the culprit of the dollar system’s fragility. Banks bloated themselves on derivatives, swaps, eurodollars, and repo for decades, and then after issuing nearly one quadrillion dollars’ worth of liabilities, went running to central banks and governments for a public backstop in 2007. And in 2008. And 2019. And 2020. And 2023. By the way, one quadrillion dollars is $1,000,000,000,000,000.

In the most recent episode of the never-ending backstop, some banks are closing and others are squandering. But my eyes have drifted elsewhere — JPMorgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon will be deposed under oath as part of a lawsuit filed against JPMorgan for enabling Epstein’s sex trafficking, as reported by the Financial Times.

Dimon to be Deposed

On March 8th, we learned that JPMorgan was suing Jes Staley, former JPMorgan executive who went on to become the CEO of Barclays and is a known visitor of Epstein’s island. JPMorgan is scapegoating Staley for its Epstein ties, but we will learn whether or not it started and ended with Staley. On March 20th, it started to become clear to me and others that Jamie Dimon was going to have to answer for JPMorgan’s relationship with Jefferey Epstein:

From that article from 10 days ago:

A New York federal judge on Monday ruled that the U.S. Virgin Islands and women who accuse the late investor Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse can proceed with lawsuits claiming that JPMorgan Chase knowingly benefited from participating in Epstein’s sex-trafficking scheme.

At a court hearing on Thursday before Rakoff, a lawyer for the Virgin Islands said JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon “knew in 2008 that his billionaire client was a sex trafficker,” a claim disputed by an attorney for the bank.

And finally, yesterday we got confirmation that the big boss himself would be required to answer, under oath, questions related to JPMorgan, where he is CEO, and its involvement with Epstein:

I have no predictions for the results of this case, nor do I expect to suddenly receive an admission from Jamie Dimon that he was aware of his bank’s Epstein dealings. I am, however, reminded of the criminality of banks that finance and facilitate activities of the world’s scum, and the roles of JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation shall see further light. This is a story that promises not to fade quietly into the night. JPMorgan and Jamie Dimon will face scrutiny at the very minimum, and I dare to ponder what else.

Scarcity First, Elasticity Next

To switch gears entirely for a moment, we mentioned how analysts are currently debating the death of the dollar — they are also debating if we have reentered a state of QE now that the Fed’s balance sheet expanded. While we have argued that the net effect of balance sheet expansion is increased liquidity, the systematic purchases of Treasuries and MBS in the pseudo-primary market continues to reverse itself via the Fed’s QT program. The Fed is desperate to keep this runoff going for as long as it can and is clearly willing to paper over it with other facilities in order to accomplish that.

The Fed is unlikely to raise rates much further, but it continues to be staunch in its inflation fight — perhaps not entirely oblivious, but FOMC members appear to be entirely willing to play the “let’s wait and see how bad this credit contraction can get” game heading into a Q2 with sticky-enough inflation, a dormant banking crisis, and one of the largest corporate layoff waves to never hit any official government employment data release.

Ok, so you have QT likely to remain. You have rates likely to remain elevated. Banks are tightening their belts. Geopolitical tensions are rising. Every day, a new corporation announces, confirms, or executes a layoff strategy. We continue to see 2023 as the year that cumulative tightening is realized by the economy, and we do believe that the events of Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse are in no way idiosyncratic. This is late cycle.

Central banks will eventually respond as they always do to mark the end of one cycle and beginning of the next, but as I’ve suspected since their first paltry 25 basis point hike one year ago, FOMC members are prioritizing their reputation this time around and are possibly willing to sacrifice the economy just to dispel the “Fed put” construct. I’m talking full top-of-a-mountain, religious-figure-guided animal sacrifice. Let’s see if they flinch.

The post Jamie Dimon to be Interviewed Under Oath in Epstein Sex Trafficking Case appeared first on Bitcoin News.