HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL READERS OF THE NETHAPPENINGS NEWSLETTER
BOOM! A key Trump appointee has RESIGNED her role as bank regulator on New Years Eve, giving control of the position to Democrats.
Trump-appointed chair of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) McWilliams resigns as U.S. FDIC chair after power struggle.
This will hand full control of the agency to Democrats, speeding up Biden’s banking reform agenda which in many instances must be jointly agreed by all three federal banking regulators – the FDIC, the OCC and the Federal Reserve. Acceptance of Bitcoin by Democrats is what is important. Ask your Senator what their position is before you vote for them!
Stop using words Bitoin and Crypto interchangeably because they aren’t.
And any politician who can’t seem to understand that needs to be voted out.
Buy and Hodl Bitcoin to pass on to your great great grandchildren… and Become an Ancestor!
Bitcoiners are an actual community that cares about the civil rights of people by building nodes to support the network. NO other coin has that. Bitcoin isn’t just the best asset of the year, it’s actually the best asset of human history.
Bitcoin has never been Hacked!
12/2021 Polygon Admits The Network Was Hacked, Hacker Swiped 801,601 MATIC
The Move to Digital Currency
https://cryptoabc.net/mit-and-boston-fed-releasing-digital-dollar-prototypes-as-soon-as/
The potential that the central bank could cut banks out of their middleman role in the lucrative U.S. payments system is causing angst among banks.
https://cryptonews.net/en/news/finance/496067/
AMERICA WANTS AND WILL EVENTUALLY OWN BITCOIN
Countries that don’t
adopt #Bitcoin will not exist in 100 years.
Currencies that sovereign nations hold on their balance sheets are considered reserve currencies. They change over time, nothing lasts forever. I find irony in that if #Bitcoin wins as the reserve currency, the nations themselves become obsolete. ~ Willy Woo
OBAMA / MIT / BOSTON FEDERAL RESERVE CONNECTION
https://dci.mit.edu/people
https://dci.mit.edu/cbdc-central-bank-digital-currency#researchers
REMEMBER Joi Ito MIT Media Lab Director took money from Epstein and resigned
MIT Media Lab director Joichi Ito has faced pressure to resign after revealing that he took research funding from financier and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. But today Nicholas Negroponte, who cofounded the Media Lab in 1985 and was its director for 20 years, said he had recommended that Ito take Epstein’s money. “If you wind back the clock,” he added, “I would still say, ‘Take it.’” And he repeated, more emphatically, “‘Take it.’”
His Brother John Dimitri Negroponte (/ˌnɛɡroʊˈpɒnti/; born July 21, 1939) is an American diplomat. He is currently a James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte
Huawei Ghostwrote Op-Ed for MIT Scholar
Prof still worked with Chinese tech giant even after lab cut ties. MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte offered a full-throttle defense of the company.
https://freebeacon.com/national-security/huawei-ghostwrote-op-ed-for-mit-scholar/
“Central Bank Digital Currencies and the Long-Term Advancement of Financial Stability” proposes a framework for the roll-out of government issued digital money wraps up this session, presented by Nicolas Xuan-Yi Zhang @mitidss
Boston Fed’s digital dollar research project honors 2 Hamiltons, Alexander and Margaret
“Project Hamilton” a call for boldness, ingenuity in pursuit of U.S.-backed digital currency
Boston Fed exploring the tech, benefits, and tradeoffs of a digital dollar
Project looks to keep Fed at forefront of central bank digital currency research
The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston announces collaboration with MIT to research digital currency
Project aims to understand the opportunities and limitations of possible technologies for CBDC “Jim Cunha is leading our team here in Boston, and I know they are committed to researching and testing the leading technologies available to determine if they can meet the design requirements of a U.S. based central bank digital currency.”
Jim Cunha, SVP of the Treasury and Financial Services Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston VIDEO
Josh Lipsky @joshualipsky Director @AtlanticCouncil GeoEconomics Center. Former @obamawhitehouse, @statedept, IMF advisor.
The connections:
Obama – Josh Lipsky – MIT (Gensler & Saylor) – Boston Fed
Michael Saylor Video Interview: Bitcoin Regulation, Volatility, and Market Structure and more. Brilliant and comprehensive overview.
Bitcoin is the most powerful weapon for the US to remain in control in a world that has been eaten away by China. The answer is simple. There is no center with POW. No one to arrest. No way to stop it. With proof of stake there are specific people in control of the network and, therefore, subject to the laws of the state. I should add, for the people who will say “but they can shut down mining companies.” Yes. They can. And then bitcoin will be mined on every graphics card in the world again. POW adapts.
BLOCKCHAIN
Just sit down and think about it for a minute. Why is blockchain so important? In order to make an immutable ledger. Is there any other implementation of blockchain that can’t be reorged or rolled back? No. #Bitcoin is the only one.
Len Sassaman and Satoshi: a Cypherpunk History
Len was a true Cypherpunk— equal parts brilliant, irreverent, and idealistic. He devoted his life to defending personal freedoms through cryptography, working as a developer on PGP encryption and open-source privacy technology, as well as an academic cryptographer researching P2P networks under blockchain inventor David Chaum.
Read Blockchain-enabled Trust & Transparency in supply chains
@TheBitcoinSpot @_log_scale_
This thread provides additional intel for the theory that the US Govt is purposefully leaving the door open to formally adopt bitcoin to some degree in the future.
Why on earth would the Biden White House be pushing proof-of-work at the expense of proof-of-stake, when environmentalism is a hallmark of the Administration and public perception is (albeit incorrectly) that PoW is killing the environment?!?
You can’t have a credible theory about what the government is doing without being able to answer that astonishing puzzle.
I submit there is only one explanation:
The US Govt is purposefully leaving the door open to formally adopt bitcoin to some degree in the future.
In recent days I’ve been providing my followers a theory for the events that have been happening, and why they are a consistent, coordinated effort by the US Govt to signal the acceptance of bitcoin.
Let’s take it step by step: The White House and the Senate, both controlled by Democrats no less, knowingly installed a SEC Chair, @GaryGensler, who taught bitcoin at MIT and who reveres Satoshi. That is no accident.
Shortly after his confirmation, Gensler said that he had a problem with most cryptocurrencies, calling them unregulated securities. In the same remarks, he referred to bitcoin by contrast as a “store of value.”
On Tuesday, things got super interesting when Gensler gave his first extended public remarks on the industry.
Watch, not read, his remarks and Q&A. The printed remarks don’t contain his revealing expressions and the Q&A where he was more candid.
2021 Aspen Security Forum | The View from the SEC: Cryptocurrencies…
Speaker: Gary Gensler, Chairman, Securities and Exchange Commission Moderator: Paul Vigna, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal Introduced VIDEO
Gensler spoke of Satoshi in glowing terms, repeatedly. It felt like he was smiling down on us bitcoiners. He called bitcoin a speculative store of value, again. He made it clear that most cryptocurrencies are unregulated securities that he would be taking action against.
The standard Gensler referred to was the Howey test, which states that a security is an “investment of money in a common enterprise with a reasonable expectation of profits to be derived from the efforts of others.”
Which cryptocurrencies will Gensler allow? The ones that are now organic and leaderless (Howey test), and thus not under the purview of the SEC.
He made it a point to underscore that Satoshi is absent.
Gensler acknowledged he doesn’t have the staff to go after 10,000+ cryptocurrencies, but implied that they would work with exchanges/platforms to de-list all problematic coins. He referred to lending platforms and DeFi as well as exchanges.
Gensler said that an exchange that listed 5 coins might be OK, but one that listed 25 coins would very likely have a problem.
In other words, >99.9% of coins would be disallowed because they have a leadership team and did not register with the SEC when they raised funds.
The take-home message is that the SEC likes bitcoin, and that as an organic store of value it is not subject to SEC regulation.
The next morning, the CFTC issued a tweet that was widely misinterpreted. At the time, I explained that it did not contradict Gensler, but backed him up, implying that certain digital assets (e.g., bitcoin) are “pure commodities.”
@CFTCquintenz
Just so we’re all clear here, the SEC has no authority over pure commodities or their trading venues, whether those commodities are wheat, gold, oil….or #crypto assets.
That same day (Wednesday), Democratic Senator Ron Wyden joined Republicans Cynthia Lummis and Pat Toomey with an amendment to fix the very bad wording about cryptocurrencies in the infrastructure bill.
Also on Wednesday, Democrat Elizabeth Warren began to walk back her harsh statements on cryptocurrencies, saying that investors need to have “confidence” from regulators if they are going to invest in crypto.
Only one thing can explain two agencies in the Biden Administration and two Democratic Senators making friendly signals toward bitcoin within 24 hours: Coordinated instructions from the Biden White House.
I noted this to my followers that day. Such a thing does not happen without coordination from the White House:
On Thursday, another amendment in competition to the Wyden-Lummis-Toomey amendment appeared by surprise. This one came from Democrat Mark Warner and Republican Rob Portman.
SEC Chair thread: What @GaryGensler said today continues to signal that a crackdown is coming for most cryptos, but that bitcoin will be spared as it is a “store of value” (his words again). Incredible to see an SEC Chairman speak admiringly about Satoshi Nakamoto.
Dem Senator @RonWyden joins GOP Senators in a bipartisan fix the crypto language in the infrastructure bill: 46 million Americans own #Bitcoin — making it one of the most held financial assets in the country.
Thank you @RonWyden and @SenToomey for working in a bipartisan way to represent those millions of Americans and their future.
Dem @SenWarren begins to walk back her stance: Other bitcoin friendly Dems: @AarikaRhodes (running against @BradSherman), @MatthewDiemer, @RoKhanna, @MarkWarner and I don’t think that’s an exhaustive list. We already know Republicans will be on our side, so I see acceptance by Democrats as more important.
CFTC Commissioner (note reference to “pure” commodities): Just so we’re all clear here, the SEC has no authority over pure commodities or their trading venues, whether those commodities are wheat, gold, oil….or #crypto assets.
This amendment creates a safe space for proof-of-work specifically, excluding proof-of-state.
On Thursday, another amendment in competition to the Wyden-Lummis-Toomey amendment appeared by surprise. This one came from Democrat Mark Warner and Republican Rob Portman.
Soon after, the White House surprised our community by entering the debate and shocked the community by endorsing the proof-of-work only amendment.
Shocking because of the environmental narrative of the White House and the (false) narrative about PoW.
But it did not shock me and those who have been following my line of thinking. I said the US Govt would likely increase their signaling for bitcoin to encourage investors to move out of altcoins and into bitcoin gradually, so as not to crash the altcoin market all at once.
I’m sure there’s been a bitcoin taskforce among the 3-letter agencies during the Obama/Trump/Biden years, gaming out the probabilities regarding bitcoin’s success and particularly the implications of the US Govt banning or tolerating or embracing bitcoin.
I believe this “deep state” task force made the decision to tolerate bitcoin knowing the US may need to fully embrace it at some point. And the time has now come to signal that publicly.
Why would the US Govt want to formally embrace bitcoin?
One reason is simply that if the US banned bitcoin, other countries that embraced it might replace the US in leading the world as a result. That’s not a risk the US Govt wants to take.
A more specific reason is the one outlined by @LynAldenContact
: The US Govt can solve its Triffin Dilemma by embracing bitcoin as the world reserve asset. @LukeGromen has also written about the TD.
It’s no longer in the interest of the US to hold the world’s reserve currency. But the US surely doesn’t want China or any other country to hold it.
Neutral bitcoin is the best solution for the US.
It wouldn’t have to fully replace the USD, but it would go to the moon.
P.S. I don’t endorse the gov’t choosing winners and losers. I prefer the Wyden amendment that is favorable to both PoW and PoS. My point is to explain why the Gov’t is behind BTC/PoW.
It doesn’t even matter which one passes. There’s time to fix it. This was about *signaling*.
To be clear, we want to support the Wyden-Lummis-Toomey amendment, even though, paradoxically, the other amendment is the one that wants to force proof-of-work. It also wants to force control and has other problems. And the gov’t shouldn’t be picking winners/losers.
By Pancaking Term Loans, JPMorgan Had $30 Billion Outstanding from the Fed’s Emergency Repo Loans in the Last Quarter of 2019
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 31, 2021 ~
Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, likes to perpetually brag about his bank’s “fortress balance sheet.” But in the fall of 2019, that
fortress needed to borrow huge sums of money from the Federal Reserve – for still unexplained […]
OCC Report Shows JPMorgan Chase Owns 62 Percent of all Stock Derivatives Held at 4,914 Banks in the U.S.
These Are the Plunging Charts that the New York Stock Exchange Hopes You Won’t See
The Fed Is About to Reveal Which Wall Street Banks Needed $4.5 Trillion in Repo Loans in Q4 2019
