Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Bitcoin' is associated with 20 posts.

FTR #799 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ June 22, 2014 ⋅ Post a comment

The future of health care in soci­eties sub­ject­ed to the doc­trine of “Aus­te­ria” may be seen with the appoint­ment of doc­tri­naire neo-Nazi Makis “The Ham­mer” Voridis as Health Min­is­ter of Greece. Fas­cism is surg­ing in a Europe sub­ject­ed to Ger­man-man­dat­ed aus­ter­i­ty, as evi­denced by the recent EU Par­lia­men­tary elec­tions. Much of the pro­gram high­lights fas­cism march­ing under the decep­tive ban­ner of “free­dom” and/or lib­er­tar­i­an­ism. Bit­coin con­tin­ues its march toward monop­oly, with the mys­te­ri­ous Ghash.io con­trol­ling 51% of the mar­ket. Gun-wield­ing fas­cists sup­port­ive of “lib­er­tar­i­an” (read “white-suprema­cist”) Ron Paul gunned down police in Las Vegas, while so called “sov­er­eign cit­i­zens” shot up police in Cal­i­for­nia. “Cliv­en Bundists” (sup­port­ers of Cliv­en Bundy) have declared them­selves exempt from Bureau of Land Man­age­ment reg­u­la­tions in Neva­da, as the GOP ramps up anoth­er gov­ern­ment shut­down to foil Oba­ma’s cli­mate change leg­is­la­tion. At the same time, the very high-tech giants that com­plained so loud­ly about Oba­ma’s fail­ure to pro­tect indi­vid­ual pri­va­cy are surg­ing ahead with pro­grams and tech­nol­o­gy to oblit­er­ate that very con­sid­er­a­tion.


Hashing Out Bitcoin Ownership

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ June 17, 2014 ⋅ Post a comment

In our ongo­ing cri­tique of Bit­coin, we’ve not­ed that it appears to be an “op,” exe­cut­ed by Siemens spin­off Lan­tiq, which was cap­i­tal­ized by Gold­en Gate Cap­i­tal (staffed by alum­ni of Bain Cap­i­tal, Mitt Rom­ney’s firm.) In a reprise of a pre­vi­ous and appar­ent­ly ongo­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of Bit­coin, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an “Armaged­don” in the Bit­coin world pro­duced by con­cen­tra­tion of own­er­ship looms. Once again, the GHash.io min­ing pool is at the cen­ter of the plot. Because it had gar­nered 50% of the Bit­coin mar­ket, it could “dou­ble-sell” coins and com­pro­mise the integri­ty of the entire net­work.


FTR #797 Cyber-Libertarian Fascism: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ June 12, 2014 ⋅ Post a comment

In the long FTR series on L’Af­faire Snow­den, we not­ed that all of the play­ers were out­right fas­cists and/or expo­nents of cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ic the­o­ry. That includes Pierre Omid­yar, Nazi fel­low-trav­el­er Glenn Green­wald’s finan­cial angel and backer of First Look media. Tout­ing the lais­sez-faire eco­nom­ics of the GOP and oth­er cor­po­ratist ele­ments around the world, Omid­yar has also helped to finance the rise of fas­cist ele­ments abroad, includ­ing assist­ing in the ascent of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor forces in the Ukraine, as well as Naren­dra Modi, heir to the RSS Hin­du fas­cists that spawned his BJP. Julian Assange, his polit­i­cal idol Rand Paul, Rand Paul’s sup­port­er Ralph Nad­er and Snow­den him­self all fig­ure strong­ly into this unsa­vory polit­i­cal land­scape.


Bitcoin Accepted for Political Contributions

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ May 19, 2014 ⋅ 3 comments

If you thought that cam­paign finance had become a sticky wick­et in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and McCutcheon deci­sions, you might be bit­ter­ly amused by the lat­est devel­op­ment in the lubri­ca­tion of the wheels of democ­ra­cy. The Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion has giv­en the nod to accept­ing Bit­coins as cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions. Fans of Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and McCutcheon will be thrilled to know that the top tenth of one per­cent of Bit­coin own­ers con­trol 50% of the total of the cur­ren­cy in exis­tence.


Bitcoin Horrow Show

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ April 25, 2014 ⋅ 9 comments

A horrifying–though predictable–story from the Dai­ly Mail illus­trates the moral, prac­ti­cal and philo­soph­i­cal bank­rupt­cy of lib­er­tar­i­an phi­los­o­phy. Kid­die porn freaks (with an appar­ent sadis­tic bent) have been using Bit­coin to finance online videos with the chil­dren being tor­tured with lit cig­a­rettes. The prop­a­ga­tion of activ­i­ties such as the one described in the sto­ry below under­scores the deprav­i­ty of many of those who argue for an unmon­i­tored inter­net, on which “any­thing goes.”


FTR #785 Bit[coin]burg, Part 4: Fool’s Gold, Part 2

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ April 4, 2014 ⋅ 5 comments

The fourth of our pro­grams about Bit­coin, this broad­cast fur­ther doc­u­ments the pre­dictable chaos and malfea­sance result­ing from a valu­able mon­e­tary enti­ty that is total­ly unreg­u­lat­ed and open to all of the vagueries and crim­i­nal­i­ty to which inter­net busi­ness is sub­ject. Much of the pro­gram focus­es on the col­lapse of the Mt. Gox exchange in Japan, one of the world’s largest Bit­coin mar­ket­places. Blamed ini­tial­ly on hack­ers, it may well be that the oper­a­tors of Mt. Gox were engaged in delib­er­ate malfea­sance, as were anony­mous hack­ers who called atten­tion to the sins of the com­pa­ny’s man­age­ment. The pro­gram notes that the con­cen­tra­tion of own­er­ship in the Bit­coin com­mu­ni­ty is even more pro­nounced than it is in the reg­u­lar econ­o­my.


More Collateralized “Death” Obligations

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ March 24, 2014 ⋅ 7 comments

“Par­ticipo” alerts us to an arti­cle from The New York Post updat­ing the mor­tal­i­ty rate in the finan­cial indus­try. These deaths are occur­ring as numer­ous inves­ti­ga­tions are under­way into var­i­ous kinds of malfea­sance in the glob­al finan­cial sec­tor, manip­u­la­tion of the for­eign exchange rate, in par­tic­u­lar.


FTR #772 Body Count II: (Collateralized “Death” Obligations)

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ February 9, 2014 ⋅ 8 comments

One of the sur­re­al, almost hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry finan­cial instru­ments that were at the cen­ter of the 2008 finan­cial col­lapse were CDO’s–collateralized debt oblig­a­tions. As a num­ber of legal inves­ti­ga­tions into mis­chief appar­ent­ly com­mit­ted by major finan­cial insti­tu­tions on a num­ber of fronts have gained momen­tum, there has been a rash of sui­cides linked to the busi­ness­es under inves­ti­ga­tion. In addi­tion, a Wall Street Jour­nal reporter dis­ap­peared and an Argen­tine bank repository–supposedly fireproof–burned down. Are we look­ing at col­lat­er­al­ized “death” oblig­a­tions?


FTR #770 Bit[coin]burg, Part 3: Fool’s Gold

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ February 1, 2014 ⋅ 15 comments

Pre­sent­ed as an alter­na­tive to the exist­ing mon­e­tary and fis­cal par­a­digms, bit­coin is–in fact–as bad, or worse, than what it is designed to replace. Sub­ject to a wide vari­ety of crooked machi­na­tions, bit­coin also lends itself read­i­ly to con­cen­tra­tion of ownership–get ready for the “bit­coin 1%.” The bit­coin milieu increas­ing­ly over­laps that of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook and “The Paulis­tin­ian Lib­er­tar­i­an Orga­ni­za­tion.”


The Big Bitcoin Bet: Currency of the Future or Just a Better Casino?

Posted by Pterrafractyl ⋅ December 10, 2013 ⋅ 19 comments

Bit­coin’s near­ly par­a­bol­ic rise in price this year has led to a sim­i­lar rise in expec­ta­tions. What does the future hold for bit­coin? Could bit­coin replace gold? Or might it grow even big­ger? We’ll see, but one thing is for sure: The great bit­coin min­ing race is still pick­ing up speed and you’re prob­a­bly going to lose.


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