Pull Your Own Strings

My first big boy job was at TSYS back in September of 2011. I was still in school as a super senior, but also working practically full time on prepaid card systems. Back during the early prepaid card era, we saw some crazy things…unsurprising though given the amount of people who are “underbanked”, even in the 20 sq. mi radius of the office. As the world turned, I learned the plan of using KYC to create another layer of capital controls on top of prepaid cards. In the name of anti-terrorism of course. In 2013 I could no longer bring myself to care to contribute anything or even collect a paycheck from the company, so I quit.
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A scam is a scam by any other name, and unfortunately the Ethereum Central Bank fully endorses and runs on scams to keep ether huffers addicted. The company behind The DAO fiasco, Slockit, is one of core hype units for the Ethereum bubble. Their promise of their so-called “Slock” has investors drooling for no reason other than use of the word “blockchain” in the description. The DAO fiasco proves Slockit is ignorant of scammers to the point of enablement.

Usually when one doesn’t acknowledge the existence of scammers in relation to a business model, the business itself usually unfolds into a scam. The government’s solution to scammers is retroactive coercive force – putting one in prison for fraud after the fact. Bitcoin facilitates a mindset where one honors contracts because it’s the right thing to do, while acknowledging the existence of, and identifying scammers without the use of coercive force. As with children and their parents, trust must be earned. When one knows what a Web of Trust is and how it works, scammers are caught in a self-imposed filter, while building relationships with trustworthy peers over extended periods of time – business as usual. Read more…

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In my mass adoption as a Ponzi article I noted that a market requires whales in order to have liquidity at increasing prices. With shallow order depth, an exiting whale will crash the market, it’s only a matter of time. After Steemit made Qntra headlines I did some research and posted a comment indicating the sheer lack of liquidity for such a high price.

The next day, STEEM was listed on Poloniex, so I posted on Steemit-itself warning users not to irrationally trade; 24 hours later, only 3 users bothered to comment, the rest likely deafened their ears to resist acknowledging reality. Read more…

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The early sphere of Bitcoin attracted harmful venture capitalists. When you look at the early drama timeline most individuals and “companies” that raised Bitcoin capital ended up losing it – an unacceptable liability. Coinbase was the first company to take a different approach, raising fiat capital as Bitcoin venture capital is a greater liability, than raising fiat capital. I mean what’s the worst that happens if you lose fiat capital? They just print more of it.
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