Cryptocurrencies
Decrypting International Finance
The research into the different possible methods for sponsors to send money to recipients in the third world revealed the total mess our global payment systems are in.
- The processes are loosening up a little, but remain in the total control of people who provide a really bad and incredibly expensive service.
- The services are also obscured by monumental invented complexities, making it almost impossible to figure out in advance what your transfer will actually cost and even making it difficult to figure out after you’ve done it! Respect is due to them for that feat at least.
- Many, if not most in the third world are “unbanked” and the solution is to bank-proof them rather than “include” them in a corrupt dinosaur system.
Short Version: Coinpayments.net might do the job until we can set up our own lightning nodes. [Edit 2023: No they too have introduced KYC so fsck them – and we have our own bitcoin and lightning node now anyway so we are fully parasite-free.]
New Money
“The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth not reveal it.”
John Kenneth Galbraith
Excerpt from “The Truth About Bicoin” Which youtube scum have removed.
“I used to think the brain was the most fascinating part of the body.
Emo Phillips
Then I thought, “Look what’s telling me that.”
It’s tempting to conclude that all these complexities and costs are necessary because international finance is such a deeply involved subject that it just isn’t possible to have a simple system of transferring wealth between individuals, so we just have to put up with the current situation. Fortunately, with the advent of cryptocurrencies we can now see proof that it can all be very simple, and need not cost more than a negligible fee of a few cents to send any amount of money to anyone.
The nudity of the banking emperors is exposed and the redundancy of the soulless minions of orthodoxy who thrive in their murky shadows has become obvious. We can turn over the stone and watch all the lice and roaches run from the light.
With cryptocurrencies I can
- send someone 50 dollars for just a few cents.
- Transfer directly and they can use the money within 15 minutes.
- Avoid currency conversion for parasites to exploit.
- see exactly how much my recipient got and clearly calculate exactly what the cost was.
Further research has shown that cryptocurrencies are not yet ready for prime-time, though.
- The process of getting a wallet, exchanging euros etc to get bitcoins, and buying bitcoins is a bit messy and difficult to understand.
- Additionally, not enough people accept bitcoin yet for us to be able to bypass the conversion to local currencies.
You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.
Ronald Reagan (!!)
It’s clear, though, that if our civilization manages to survive the next decade or two without crashing irreversibly, we will have one of only two possible outcomes: a global currency controlled by the big bankers or something like bitcoin which is outside of their control. It makes sense to look into it and do anything we can to promote the second possibility.
For Direct Sponsor and clickforcharity.net the benefits are clear: almost costless transactions which are extremely easy to implement. If the bankers manage to maintain their grip on us then we’ll just have to do what we can, but our efforts obviously need to be directed towards freedom.
Are you getting excited yet?
If you aren’t, don’t worry. The following video should help. It’s about 40 minutes long, but well worth the time. If you really can’t, then just skip to 31:49 to get an idea of what cryptocurrencies could mean to the communities of the Direct Sponsor recipients. I could write some really long diatribe here, but it would be inadequate and this video sums it up really well.
The True Value Of Bitcoin – What You Really Need To Know
Blockchain
Understanding how something works is key to using it effectively, so it’s worth a little effort to get to grips with this. The best video I’ve found that explains how blockchains work is this one (he manages to do it without mentioning Alice or Bob, which is refreshing!). This is how they actually work, not what they would look like if they were made of clip-art people in a little kids book.
On his site he has a demo you can try out for yourself, as well as a “part 2” video which goes into public/private keys and signing, in the same no-nonsense and non-patronising way.
And to round it off, here’s Stefan Molyneux again, talking about the hidden dangers:
The Hidden Dangers Of Bitcoin – Stefan Molyneux
Innovation and Evolution
The whole thing is pretty good as it is, but this is just the beginning. Because the network is not under any one entity’s control, innovation is possible. No-one can hold back a development; if it promises benefits for enough people, it will be implemented. One example is Lightning Network. In the video below, Andreas Antonopoulos explains it all very clearly.
Andreas Atonopoulos on Streaming Money (Keynote Bitcoin Wednesday Conference 2016)
That’s it really, but here’s some more if you have time. And there’s a great pdf at the bottom of the page too!
Much more than just money
The development of the Nostr network is showing a lot of other possibilities that are opening up now that we have the means to do what we want without the “help” of the parasitic big tech companies.
Nostr – Bitcoin’s Layer 3
Here’s Muneeb Ali talking about how the internet is broken but we can fix it. Technologies like Blockstack can remove all the middlemen who have insinuated themselves into our internet and made it theirs.
“We want an internet that is open. We want it to be transparent. We want an internet that is fair, and for that I’m proposing two requirements: 1. there can be no middlemen and 2. users have to own their data.”
Muneeb Ali
And here he is again with a more in-depth description:
Notes
We have already ascertained that using bitcoin, even with the high fees that are often charged now, is cheaper than using the banker schemes. We tried many of these, all are more expensive to use and far more cumbersome.
Our (clickforcharity.net) pilot project in Kenya has had outstanding success in converting bitcoin we send into Kenyan Shillings and I have checked the prices. Even with all the KES to EUR conversions taken into account, Evans (our project leader) manages to get a better deal than I could get in Europe most of the time.
It goes deeper too.
Could Someone Else Accidentally Pick Your Bitcoin Seed?
Reciprocal Altruism
If all that’s not enough, I’ll leave you with a pdf called Reciprocal Altruism in the Theory of Money by Daniel Krawisz. It’s not anywhere near as boring as it sounds!