Currency

‘Bitcoin Is the Biggest Jailbreak in Human History,’ Says Philosopher Stefan Molyneux

22/02/2021 by Idelto Editor

On February 19, the Canadian podcaster and Freedomain Radio host, Stefan Molyneux, discussed his thoughts about bitcoin following the crypto asset’s tumultuous rise capturing over a trillion-dollar market valuation. Molyneux’s recent speech describes the liberating potential bitcoin could bring to the masses and how the crypto network has the ability to change humanity for the better.

‘Bitcoin Is a Currency That Serves the People at the Expense of the Parasites’

Just recently the crypto evangelist and philosopher, Stefan Molyneux, spoke about the Bitcoin blockchain in great detail. Molyneux opened his speech by answering a question about BTC and ETH having a hard time scaling. The Freedomain radio host said that it is good to critique, but that people in the crypto space wouldn’t give up so easily.

Molyneux mentioned that bitcoin’s market capitalization just crossed the trillion-dollar milestone and noted that the people who have added that value won’t throw in the towel. He insisted that many crypto proponents have given a decade of their lives toward spreading adoption, and mentioned there are solutions like bitcoin cash (BCH) and the Lightning Network.

“The Bitcoin community is composed of just about the most brilliant, and economically and ideologically motivated human beings on the planet,” Molyneux stresses in his video. “Bet against them at your freaking peril, because Bitcoin is not just an alternative currency, it’s not just a store of value, it’s not just a cool public ledger. Bitcoin is a passionate FU to the powers that be,” Molyneux adds.

The Freedomain philosopher continues: “Bitcoin, as I’ve argued publicly in speeches many years ago— Bitcoin is the potential end to war, to end hyperinflation, to end intergenerational debt— Bitcoin is a mission of mercy to the future— Bitcoin is the Jesus to the new conference of the religion of peace called crypto. Bitcoin is the people regaining control over their currency for the first time in the history of the world— Bitcoin is currency democratized, unpolitized, unpredatored.”

Molyneux added:

Bitcoin is a currency that serves the people at the expense of the parasites, rather than the currency which serves the parasites at the expense of the people at the moment. Bitcoin is rescuing your precious labor from being hoovered up endlessly by the invisible vampire mosquitoes of central banking.

Today’s Fiat Currency Is Slavery Tethered to Unborn Generations

The philosopher continues by commending the Bitcoin community and says that the people in crypto are “seriously brilliant.” Beautiful and “deranged people,” he says that are “committed to the future of peace and plenty that Bitcoin could represent.”

Molyneux further notes that the current fiat currency distributed by the world’s oligarchic bureaucracy is “slavery.”

“What we understand is currency now is slavery. The currency is summoned into existence at the expense of your children’s futures. What you think of as a dollar sign is a slow jugular sucking noose twined and twisted around the necks of your children,” Molyneux reveals.

National debt, Molyneux continues to highlight is “a real human trafficking problem.” You need to understand the Bitcoin space he adds. “The passion that these incredibly brilliant people have brought to bear on the oldest human problem— How do you store a value so that thieving predatory vampiric assholes can’t get their jugular sucking tentacles on it at all times? How do you store value so that you can actually come back to it?” Molyneux asked.

He adds:

Civilization is all about the storing of value. How do you store value? That’s civilization you understand. Bitcoin is about how you store value so that [parasites] can’t get their hands on it. They just can’t. You put your money in the bank, inflation eats it away, you store your meat by the river, the flies lay their eggs in it and you can’t eat it, you got gold coins in Rome, they put all kinds of a bimetallic [crap] into the gold and destroy its value in your hand.

‘The Likes of a Revolution That We Have Never Ever Ever Seen Before in Human History’

Molyneux says that humans are all about storing value and in the evangelist’s opinion, the storage and retention of value is everything in life. “By creating something that can store value outside the state, that is the likes of a revolution that we have never ever ever seen before in human history,” the philosopher insists.

“If shells on some island are the currency,” Molyneux details in an analogy. “Then you need three shells a day to live, and if you get four shells, someone’s gonna take the fourth shell. Then tomorrow you won’t bother to get the fourth shell. You just stick with getting three shells and nothing will ever progress, because nothing can be saved or stored up in value. Nothing ever gets built because everything you build is going to be taken away from you,” he added.

Molyneux continues: “Imagine… everything you build is going to get taken away. It’s happening [right] now, you understand. Everything you have built is already taken away by unfunded liabilities, national debt, inflation— Everything you build is already taken away. You are just holding it now to have it for a little while to give you the illusion so you can go to work tomorrow.”

Bitcoin Represents a New Financial System That Doesn’t Leverage the Unborn as Collateral

Molyneux says you can have a house. But it’s really not your house. He highlights that you have to pay the government every year to keep it.

“And the government put it in so much debt and you in so much debt, that it’s gonna be owned by some foreign bankster, at some point,” Molyneux’s speech details. “Or the entire currency is going to collapse and society goes back to savage gangs and you lose your house. You pretend you have a house, you pretend you have electricity, you pretend you have a car, you pretend you have everything but you have nothing.”

The Freedomain radio host further says:

You know this 2030 ‘you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy,’ [that’s the way it is] now. In fact you owe, you don’t own, you owe. You are only allowed to pretend you own something so that you will get up and go to work tomorrow. That’s it man.

Bitcoin has changed this course, Molyneux emphasizes. Bitcoin is the first of its kind that can actually keep parasites away from stealing value he notes. He says that the society we live in today treats babies and the unborn as “collateral.” Bitcoin can bolster a system that does away with such an immoral system.

“If you generally understood how much debt was taken out on your behalf just because you are breathing,” Molyneux notes. “If you genuinely looked at that math, you can find it pretty easy,” he added.

Molyneux’s speech continues for another 20 minutes longer, and news.Bitcoin.com readers can watch the rest of his speech here.

What do you think about Stefan Molyneux’s recent Bitcoin speech? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

IMF Says Only 23% of Central Banks Can Legally Issue Digital Currencies

17/01/2021 by Idelto Editor

Researchers at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have examined the central bank laws of 174 IMF members to answer the question of whether a digital currency is really money. They found that of all the central banks studied, only about 23%, or 40 central banks, “are legally allowed to issue digital currencies.”

IMF Explores if Digital Currency Is Money

The IMF published a blog post on Thursday exploring whether digital money is really money in the legal sense. The post is authored by Catalina Margulis, a consulting counsel in the IMF Legal Department’s Financial and Fiscal Law unit, and Arthur Rossi, a research officer in the same unit.

Expressing their own views, the authors began by observing that “close to 80 percent of the world’s central banks are either not allowed to issue a digital currency under their existing laws, or the legal framework is not clear.” They continued:

To help countries make this assessment, we reviewed the central bank laws of 174 IMF members … and found out that only about 40 are legally allowed to issue digital currencies.

Prior to the publication of this blog post, the IMF set up a poll on Twitter asking people to vote on whether they think digital currencies are really money. Out of 95,256 votes collected, 79.9% said yes.

What Qualifies as Currency

The IMF researchers noted that “To legally qualify as currency, a means of payment must be considered as such by the country’s laws and be denominated in its official monetary unit. A currency typically enjoys legal tender status, meaning debtors can pay their obligations by transferring it to creditors.” They detailed:

Therefore, legal tender status is usually only given to means of payment that can be easily received and used by the majority of the population. That is why banknotes and coins are the most common form of currency.

The authors noted that to “use digital currencies, digital infrastructure — laptops, smartphones, connectivity — must first be in place.” However, they pointed out that “governments cannot impose on their citizens to have it, so granting legal tender status to a central bank digital instrument might be challenging.”

The IMF staff also mentioned some legal issues raised by the creation of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Among the areas of concern are “tax, property, contracts, and insolvency laws; payments systems; privacy and data protection; most fundamentally, preventing money laundering and terrorism financing,” the IMF researchers described.

In conclusion, while noting that “Without the legal tender designation, achieving full currency status could be equally challenging,” the researchers emphasized:

Many means of payments widely used in advanced economies are neither legal tender nor currency.

Do you think digital currencies are money? Let us know in the comments section below.

Report: Bitcoin Untied from the Economic Cycle, ‘Largely Uncorrelated to Other Asset Classes’

19/08/2020 by Idelto Editor

On Tuesday, Coinshares Investment strategist James Butterfill published a report which shows that bitcoin is a unique asset, but is “largely uncorrelated to other asset classes” like commodities and traditional stocks.

Coinshares Investment strategist James Butterfill published a new report on August 18 that shows bitcoin (BTC) is establishing itself as an investment store of value. Butterfill’s report notes that BTC is “less correlated to the economic cycle” and the crypto asset is uncorrelated to other asset classes in the investment world.

One of the trends highlighted is how investors holding BTC for one year or longer jumped from 30% in 2012 to 60% in 2020. Butterfill writes that Coinshares researchers “believe this trend of investor participation is likely to continue.”

“Since its creation following the financial crash in 2008, Bitcoin has seen meteoric – and volatile – growth,” the Coinshares report called “Bitcoin – In a Class of its Own” states.

“Many attempts have been made at boxing in bitcoin into the pre-existing frameworks of current asset classes, but due to its unique collection of similar yet often non-overlapping attributes, it never quite fits any established mould.”

Butterfill’s report adds:

Bitcoin perception is changing over time, its image as a money-laundering vehicle has subsided, with investors now taking a much keener interest in it. News story counts of potential money laundering were much more prevalent in 2013-14 but have since subsided, while counts of Bitcoin as an investment have become more of a focus.

Butterfill details that during the early days (growth phase), BTC behaved much like a tech stock, but going forward researchers at Coinshares think “bitcoin will act more like a store of value (SoV).” However, Butterfill’s report recognizes that in contrast to SoVs like gold and other precious metals, BTC offers other beneficial functions.

The Coinshares Investment strategist pointed to the fact that the crypto asset offers programmable money functionality, the securitization of digital ownership, and traceable recordkeeping with immutability.

On Tuesday morning (Eastern Standard) the price of bitcoin (BTC) touched a high of $12,473 before plummeting to a low of $11,800 temporarily. Crypto traders are still bullish after the recent -5.3% dump and many expected the drop to happen prior to its fall.

Bitcoin has performed much differently than precious metals markets and traditional equities. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index (S&P 500) has jumped over 50% since the mid-March market rout, otherwise known as ‘Black Thursday.’ This week the S&P 500 touched its first all-time intraday high in the last six months.

Despite equities and the S&P 500’s recent performance, Coinshares does “not believe bitcoin fits any currently established asset class moulds.”

“Because of its characteristics (scarcity, liquidity, high uptime), evidence suggests investors are increasingly using it as a store of value,” Butterfill’s report concluded. “This has started a self-reinforcing process of financialisation which we believe will lead to increasing use as a store of value.”

What do you think about the assessment from Coinshares Investment strategist? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

The post Report: Bitcoin Untied from the Economic Cycle, ‘Largely Uncorrelated to Other Asset Classes’ appeared first on Bitcoin News.

XRP Still Third Largest Crypto by Market Cap After Founder Dumps 1 Billion Coins

10/02/2020 by Idelto Editor

Crypto traders and speculators have been discussing the digital currency XRP (ripple) lately because the price has been stagnant compared to other digital assets. Some venture capitalists and analysts plan to short XRP, while other speculators believe the crypto is poised for a price jump in the future. Additionally, crypto enthusiasts have been discussing Ripple cofounder Jed McCaleb selling 1 billion XRP.

Also read: Bitcoin, Tesla Stock, Tron: How Warren Buffett Got His First Bitcoin

A Closer Look at XRP

The digital currency XRP and the Ripple project have always been a controversial topic among cryptocurrency supporters. Lots of people love and advocate for XRP, while others believe the network is pure garbage. According to the project’s creators, the Ripple network is a real-time gross settlement system that has a native token called XRP. The project was launched in 2012 and XRP is one of the oldest digital currencies in comparison to networks like BTC.

Our newsdesk decided to look at data points to see how the digital asset weighs up against BTC’s market and network performance. News.Bitcoin.com analyzed data from onchain, the economics, development and the XRP project’s prominence on social media. Further, we took a look at today’s opinions from crypto influencers and analysts speculating on XRP digital currency markets and the network’s performance. Long ago, XRP was called “ripple” but most people refer to the cryptocurrency these days as simply XRP. When the digital currency was launched, developers created 100 billion units but at press time there’s less than half that number in circulation (43.6 billion).

XRP is trading for $0.27 per coin today and there’s 43,698,224,662 XRP in circulation. Tallying up each coin’s worth plus the number of XRP in circulation makes XRP the third largest blockchain by market capitalization. According to Messari.io, XRP’s trade volume this week was between $325-660 million per day, but the data site claims “real volume” during the last 24 hours is around $121 million. XRP is down 92% from its $3.84 per unit all-time high (ATH). During the last year against USD, the currency is down 11% and against BTC, XRP is down 66% over the same timeframe. As far as volume by currency is concerned, Cryptocompare indicates that tether (USDT) is the top coin swapped with XRP, capturing 46% of all trades. This is followed by BTC (17.68%), USD (8.77%), KRW (6.96%), ETH (3.60%), JPY (3.08%), and EUR (1.80%).

Crypto Analysts and Traders Wonder if XRP Prices Will Spike or Remain Stagnant

Some traders believe XRP is poised for a spike in value, while other analysts think people should avoid XRP like the plague. For instance, a recent article from Forbes discussing the cofounders of Multicoin Capital is titled: “Avoid XRP Says Multicoin; Bitcoin’s Big Rally.” Within the editorial, it notes that Multicoin Capital’s Kyle Samani and Tushar Jain have been shorting XRP. Venture capitalist and Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz discussed XRP “underperforming” in a series of tweets on February 6.

“XRP and many other cryptos, like ETH are still in the ‘proving’ phase. They aren’t going to succeed as solely a store of value as BTC has taken that lane,” Novogratz tweeted last Tuesday.

$XRP – Once in a while you gotta stop and look around…. you could miss it

Spring it! pic.twitter.com/45VcIwt7xZ

— TraderXO (@TraderX0X0) February 1, 2020

Meanwhile, a recently published report by Steve Muchoki tells a different story and says that the “XRP price can reach $0.60 in the near future as XRP’s popularity is growing.” “Ripple’s XRP price is showing all the signs of reaching $0.60 in the near future, as it is supported by different technical and fundamental aspects,” Muchoki wrote on Monday. The article mentioned a recent Twitter poll about which altcoins will last the test of time and XRP came out winning. The writer also detailed that Ripple might go public in 2020 with an initial public offering and highlighted that “the total supply is double the circulating supply.” Despite Muchoki’s opinion, many crypto market observers have noticed Ripple cofounder Jed McCaleb has allegedly sold a good portion of his XRP holdings.

McCaleb Sells a Billion XRP

A report written by blockchain analytics provider Whale Alert estimates that McCaleb has sold a lot of XRP since 2014. Whale Alert notes that McCaleb acquired roughly 9 billion XRP since Ripple’s founding days and in September 2019 Whale Alert reported on the transfer of 100 million XRP from Ripple to McCaleb’s wallet. The blockchain analytics researchers managed to find around 8 billion of McCaleb’s alleged stash of XRP.

“In total, we managed to track the sales of 1.05 billion XRP (almost exclusively through Bitstamp) between 2014 and 2019,” Whale Alert’s report highlights. “At an average sale price of 0.129 cents per XRP, the total sale amount was $135 million USD.”

As far as transactions per day are concerned, XRP has been outpacing BTC in that department. Coin Metrics shows that BTC averages around 300,000 transactions (txns) every 24 hours, but XRP is pushing 800,000 to 900,000 txns a day and has recently seen upwards of 2 million per day.

XRP has around 209,000 Reddit subscribers and 945,000 Twitter followers, giving the coin a 21% social benchmark according to Coindesk crypto data. As far as development, XRP has 482 Github watchers and 81 Github contributors which is significantly smaller than other coin contributor counts. The XRP codebase has been forked over 1,000 times but the most prominent fork is the Stellar (XLM) network. As far as merged pull requests on Github are concerned, XRP has seen over 2,400 while BTC merged pull requests stand at 12,200.

XRP Still Faces a Number of Unknowns

XRP believers think Ripple’s partnerships with financial incumbents will help XRP succeed. And XRP proponents also wholeheartedly believe XRP will dominate other cryptos like BTC in the future and help decentralize fiat settlement and remittances worldwide. At the same time, a number of crypto enthusiasts think XRP is very centralized and the number of coins held by early investors and founders is scary. Others believe XRP is also an unregistered security and the crypto could have more issues with government regulators about this concern.

Crypto advocates have been concerned because regulators like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) could retroactively penalize the project’s creators. Despite these fears, most XRP supporters still think that XRP will continue to remain one of the top digital assets as far as valuation and performance are concerned. So far XRP has remained a silent behemoth, consistently occupying a top three spot by market cap, despite concerted attempts to dislodge it.

What do you think about XRP? What do you think about the consolidation and stagnant price action in regard to XRP markets? Do you think XRP is poised for a breakout? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation, endorsement, or sponsorship of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Price articles and market updates are intended for informational purposes only and should not be considered as trading advice. Neither Bitcoin.com nor the author is responsible for any losses or gains, as the ultimate decision to conduct a trade is made by the reader. Always remember that only those in possession of the private keys are in control of the “money.” Cryptocurrency prices referenced in this article were recorded at 2:30 p.m. on February 10, 2020.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Coin Metrics, Markets.Bitcoin.com, Coinlib.io, Coindesk, Fair Use, and Pixabay.

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The post XRP Still Third Largest Crypto by Market Cap After Founder Dumps 1 Billion Coins appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Lawsuit Against Ripple May Decide the Fate of XRP but Regulators Have the Final Say

20/01/2020 by Idelto Editor

A prolonged legal battle, which may hold the key to XRP’s future, has been extended again. The class action lawsuit alleges that Ripple issued and sold the coin, one of the largest by market cap, as an unregistered security. The decision on the defendant’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit has been postponed. But even a victory for Ripple in the case might not bring an end to its troubles with XRP.

Also read: New Guidelines Subject Canadian Crypto Exchanges to Securities Laws

Judge Takes Under Submission Ripple’s Motion to Dismiss the Case

A ruling was expected from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California at a hearing on Wednesday, Jan. 15. However, Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton took the motion under submission and there’s no fixed date for her announcement. Ripple’s legal representatives asked the district judge to dismiss the case on Dec. 4, 2019.

The first lawsuits against Ripple Labs Inc., developer of the Ripple payment protocol, were filed by investors about two years ago. The current class-action suit accuses the blockchain company of misleading investors and selling them XRP in violation of U.S. federal law. The plaintiffs claim they lost money and insist they should be compensated by Ripple, its subsidiary XRPII LLC, and Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.

Ripple has maintained XRP is not a security but its latest arguments relate only indirectly to the substance of the case. The company’s defense now insists that even if the coin were a security, the plaintiffs did not file the case on time – within three years of its first offering – as Ripple sold the coin to the public between 2013 and 2015. In the filing, Ripple’s lawyers claim that the case is not relevant as the statute of repose had expired and state:

Plaintiff’s Complaint is self-defeating: his own allegations as to when XRP was first offered for sale and how he purchased XRP require dismissal of his claims.

Referring to the lead plaintiff, Bradley Sostack, the company notes that he “purchased XRP on an exchange in January 2018 from an unknown third party, at a time when Defendant Ripple’s sales accounted for less than one-tenth of one percent of all exchange-based XRP sales,” and also that the “Plaintiff filed the instant Complaint in 2019.” The case was taken to court in 2018 and the consolidated complaint was filed on Aug. 5, 2019. Sostack and his legal team maintain, however, that Ripple is nevertheless liable due to ongoing sales of the XRP coins.

Regulators to Determine If XRP Is a Security or Commodity

The outcome of the lawsuit is likely to determine the fate of the cryptocurrency to a great but not full extent. If Ripple’s motion to dismiss is eventually accepted by the court in California, the company shouldn’t have issues with other private plaintiffs in the future. And if it’s rejected, Ripple can either try to reach a settlement with the plaintiffs or continue the legal battle to prove XRP is not a security. However, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission can always argue its own case. The SEC can still file a lawsuit with the District Court for the Southern District of New York, like it did in the case with Telegram’s sale of the Gram tokens.

And that’s not the end of it as cryptocurrencies in the U.S. can also fall under the purview of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). In a recent interview with Cheddar, CFTC Chairman Heath Tarbert emphasized that his organization is creating a market for the digital assets within its jurisdiction such as BTC and ETH. But when asked if more cryptocurrencies like XRP will fall under the commission’s purview this year, Tarbert replied “It’s unclear, stay tuned.” Part of the issue, he elaborated, is that “our jurisdiction we share with the SEC. If it’s a security, it falls under their jurisdiction. If it’s a commodity, it falls under ours.”

If the district court in California rejects the motion to dismiss the lawsuit and eventually decides that Ripple has been breaking the law by selling an unregistered security, the price of the third-largest cryptocurrency will be at risk. Allowing Sostack to challenge the classification of XRP, “would not only threaten to eliminate XRP’s utility as a currency, but it would upend and threaten to destroy the established XRP market more broadly — a market involving over $500 billion in trading over the last two years,” the company’s legal team warned in the motion. However, even if Judge Hamilton dismisses the lawsuit, XRP’s fate will still ultimately depend on the decisions taken by U.S. regulators SEC and CFTC.

What do you think will be the future for Ripple and XRP? Share your thoughts and expectations in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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