Friday, January 24, 2014

Power Elite in Davos Slam Bitcoin: Shiller, Lew, Dimon

International Business Times reports:
Speaking on a panel on the topic of digital trends in financial markets, Robert J. Shiller, Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University[...]said that as a currency, bitcoin is a return to the dark ages, and a classic bubble.

“It is a bubble,” Shiller said, according to the Business Insider. “There is no question about it. It’s just an amazing example of a bubble.”

Shiller added that the computer science behind the virtual currency is an “inspiration,” it is not an economic advance.
“It’s not such a great idea,” he said he tells his students, but he’s blown away by how much fascination the virtual currency has engendered. 
Most concerning to Bitcoin holders is what Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said about the electronic transfer system. From IBT, again:
“From the government’s point of view, we have to make sure it does not become an avenue to funding illegal activities or to funding activities that have malign purposes like terrorist activities,” Lew told CNBC at Davos. “It is an anonymous form of transaction and it offers places for people to hide.
This means that more government regulations of Bitcoin are on the way and, as I noted earlier, Jamie Dimon thinks the regulation will suffocate,Bitcoin. From IBT:
Dimon said that bitcoin would be subjected to the same regulatory standards as other payment systems, and “that will probably be the end of them.”[...]Dimon also echoed Shiller’s sentiment, and said that bitcoin is “a terrible store of value” that “can be replicated over and over,” as well as “used for illicit purposes.”
Folks, as much as you may want Bitcoin to result in the end of the Federal Reserve,  it is not going to happen, if the power elite have anything to say about it. And, they will have a lot to say about it, because they have $100 billion in annual credit card fees at stake. They will damn hard try to muscle Bitcoin. It is hard to see how they will fail at this, in the sense that Bitcoin becomes anything more than a minor or underground transfer system, at best.

17 comments:

  1. What sort of thing would Shiller call "an economic advance?" The fact that I can send value to someone in China by typing a few instructions into my cellphone without the participation of any bank, financial institution, bureau, agency, government, courier, and without risk of loss, transaction fee, disclosure of what the payment was for, and requirement to reveal my identity to the parson I am paying. i can prove payment by examining the block chain (presumably the person to be paid supplied their bitcoin address to me so the blockchain will show that that address received a payment of x amount on x date).

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  2. “From the government’s point of view, we have to make sure it does not become an avenue to funding illegal activities or to funding activities that have malign purposes like terrorist activities,” Lew told CNBC at Davos. “It is an anonymous form of transaction and it offers places for people to hide."

    ...Funding illegal activities and activities that have malign purposes like terrorist activities is our job, seeee. And we don't allow no one muscling in on our territory, seeee. So youse just forgetaboudit. Udderwise Eric "Fast and Furious" Holder 'sgonna pay you a little visit. We got some friends in Mexico. Capisce?

    [Scumbags to the end...)

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  3. Wenzel, as much as you may want Bitcoin to fail, to vindicate your irrational preconceptions, it is not going to happen.
    In the worst case scenario Bitcoin, or some other cryptocurrency will be a massive underground payment system.
    Weed is illegal, Torrents are illegal, Downloading Music is illegal, Alcohol is illegal (for minors) etc.
    The government is not particularly good at shutting down things that people actually want and there is a huge demand for instant, zero fee payments and tax evasion.

    I also wonder what you would say about your defeatist "don't fight, you can't win anyway" attitude if someone else had uttered it about some other topic.

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    1. Wenzel does NOT want Bitcoin to fail- your assertion that his objective is to "destroy" Bitcoin is childish bullshit.

      He is merely being realistic in observing that TPTB will destroy or co-opt Bitcoin if it becomes a serious threat.

      You know, the way they have created a worldwide spy network using the Internet?!?!

      15 years ago the Internet was a wild-west, but now it is under the control of the government.

      Delete
    2. Or is it that the internet is in control of the government. Prosecutors in the New Jersey scandal are seizing a list of about a dozen different kinds of small electronic gadgets from the suspects, who were once behind the system of justice, but are now in front of it.

      Delete
    3. Lets not pretend that with the internet and its capabilities, that the government doesn't already have all the technology it needs to create a hellish totalitarian nightmare. The internet is an axe that can swing either way. My personal belief is that it is the last battlefield in defense of liberty.

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  4. HSBC imposes restrictions on large cash withdrawals

    Some HSBC customers have been prevented from withdrawing large amounts of cash because they could not provide evidence of why they wanted it, the BBC has learnt.

    Listeners have told Radio 4's Money Box they were stopped from withdrawing amounts ranging from £5,000 to £10,000.

    HSBC admitted it has not informed customers of the change in policy, which was implemented in November.

    The bank says it has now changed its guidance to staff.
    New rules

    Stephen Cotton, from Worcestershire, went to his local HSBC branch this month to withdraw £7,000 from his instant access savings account to pay back a loan from his mother.

    A year before, he had withdrawn a larger sum in cash from HSBC without a problem.

    But this time it was different, as he told Money Box: "When we presented them with the withdrawal slip, they declined to give us the money because we could not provide them with a satisfactory explanation for what the money was for. They wanted a letter from the person involved."

    Mr Cotton says the staff refused to tell him how much he could have: "So I wrote out a few slips. I said, 'Can I have £5,000?' They said no. I said, 'Can I have £4,000?' They said no. And then I wrote one out for £3,000 and they said, 'OK, we'll give you that.'
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25861717

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  5. You make me sick Wenzel. I'm ashamed I once liked you.

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    1. Stop being a childish twat. Wenzel doesn't hate Bitcoin, he merely points out the failures and co-opt pressure points and how it WILL be destroyed if it becomes a threat to TPTB.

      Delete
    2. Hey Rick, AKA coward, they've been hating this thing for 3 years. They CAN'T destroy it. If they could they would have by now. Come back over from the dark side. Face your fear and take a chance to make the world a better place. Instead of cowering in your home muttering, "they will always win, they will always win."

      Delete
    3. Anonymous has the temerity to call me a coward? Ha!

      Your naive belief that they can't and won't shut Bitcoin down if it begins to threaten them shows your intellectual shortcomings.

      Delete
    4. Explain how they can stop an open source software...essentially an idea..please do tell lol. They can slow it down but thats it and it will only hurt them if they push it underground. Basically, its government vs millions of highly motivated computer geeks young and old, which the younger ones are unemplyed with nothing better to do, and its software for money..yeah ill take my chances with the computer geeks lol

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  6. Halawa is an Arab thing started in the eighth century and still used today in the Arab world. It is Bit-coin writ primitive, and it has survived more than a thousand years. Look it up on Wikipedia.

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    1. Halawa appears to be some sort of Lebanese sweet.

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    2. @anon@marion

      The word is Hawala not halawa...

      Delete
  7. Based on Jack Lew's comment, we might expect to experience and hopefully all survive a horrendous "terrorist" attack (or series of attacks), which will be covered as by MS media as financed and enabled by Bitcoin or the like. Partly this will be an excuse to outlaw all forms of free electronic coins, and partly as propaganda for the masses, to engender distrust of anyone who speculates or trades in such coin. About such time, the governments of the world will introduce banker-controlled electronic coin, and start phasing out all forms of tangible cash, for "public safety" and to frustrate "tax cheats."

    It's past time to prepare for such a scenario; not saying that it's inevitable but neither is it unlikely. Silver is better than paper, love is better than gold. Teaching peace and building autonomous communities, locally and globally, across religious, ideological and political divides may be the best form of preparation.

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  8. LOL! So if I understand correctly, you're giving weight to the views of the following:
    1. A Keynesian economist who shows a tenuous grasp of economics.
    2. A bankster whose while criminal enterprise is built on government backed fiat money.
    3. A Government official who knows that their whole ponzi scheme of debt will blow up the minute people flee the dollar.
    And you think that this group will be able to stem the tide against an idea whose time has come???
    Well Robert let's see how things play out once the dollar blows up. Obviously you lack the understanding of what people will do when the "official money" is considered as valuable as toilet paper. Maybe you should spend a bit of time reading about Weimar Germany in 1914 or more recently Zimbabwe, Argentina or one of the Baltic states. You might learn something.

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