My son, if you accept my words
and store up my commands within you,
2 turning your ear to wisdom
and applying your heart to understandingâ
3 indeed, if you call out for insight
and cry aloud for understanding,
4 and if you look for it as for silver
and search for it as for hidden treasure,
5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God.
6 For the Lord gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
7 He holds success in store for the upright,
he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless,
8 for he guards the course of the just
and protects the way of his faithful ones.
9 Then you will understand what is right and just
and fairâevery good path.
10 For wisdom will enter your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
11 Discretion will protect you,
and understanding will guard you.
12 Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men,
from men whose words are perverse,
13 who have left the straight paths
to walk in dark ways,
14 who delight in doing wrong
and rejoice in the perverseness of evil,
15 whose paths are crooked
and who are devious in their ways.
16 Wisdom will save you also from the adulterous woman,
from the wayward woman with her seductive words,
17 who has left the partner of her youth
and ignored the covenant she made before God.[a]
18 Surely her house leads down to death
and her paths to the spirits of the dead.
19 None who go to her return
or attain the paths of life.
20 Thus you will walk in the ways of the good
and keep to the paths of the righteous.
21 For the upright will live in the land,
and the blameless will remain in it;
22 but the wicked will be cut off from the land,
and the unfaithful will be torn from it.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency developed in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto, the name given to the unknown creator (or creators) of this virtual currency. Transactions are recorded in a blockchain, which shows the transaction history for each unit and is used to prove ownership.
Buying a bitcoin is different than purchasing a stock or bond because bitcoin is not a corporation. Consequently, there are no corporate balance sheets or Form 10-Ks to review. And unlike investing in traditional currencies, bitcoin it is not issued by a central bank or backed by a government, therefore the monetary policy, inflation rates, and economic growth measurements that typically influence the value of currency do not apply to bitcoin. Contrarily, bitcoin prices are influenced by the following factors:
The supply of bitcoin and market demand for it
The cost of producing a bitcoin through the mining process
The rewards issued to bitcoin miners for verifying transactions to the blockchain
The number of competing cryptocurrencies
The exchanges it trades on
Regulations governing its sale
Its internal governance
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Buying a bitcoin is different than buying a stock or bond because itâs not a corporation. Consequently, there are no corporate balance sheets or Form 10-Ks to review.
Unlike investing in traditional currencies, bitcoin it is not issued by a central bank or backed by a government, therefore the monetary policy, inflation rates, and economic growth measurements that typically influence the value of currency do not apply to bitcoin.
Bitcoin pricing is influenced by factors such as: the supply of bitcoin and market demand for it, the number of competing cryptocurrencies, and the exchanges it trades on.
Supply and Demand
Countries without fixed foreign exchange rates can partially control how much of their currency circulates by adjusting the discount rate, changing reserve requirements, or engaging in open-market operations. With these options, a central bank can potentially impact a currencyâs exchange rate.
The supply of bitcoin is impacted in two different ways. First, the bitcoin protocol allows new bitcoins to be created at a fixed rate. New bitcoins are introduced into the market when miners process blocks of transactions and the rate at which new coins are introduced is designed to slow over time. Case in point: growth has slowed from 6.9% (2016), to 4.4% (2017) to 4.0% (2018).1 This can create scenarios in which the demand for bitcoins increases at a faster rate than the supply increases, which can drive up the price. The slowing of bitcoin circulation growth is due to the halving of block rewards offered to bitcoin miners and can be thought of as artificial inflation for the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Secondly, supply may also be impacted by the number of bitcoins the system allows to exist. This number is capped at 21 million, where once this number is reached, mining activities will no longer create new bitcoins. For example. the supply of bitcoin reached 18.1 million in December 2019, representing 86.2% of the supply of bitcoin that will ultimately be made available. Once 21 million bitcoins are in circulation, prices depend on whether it is considered practical (readily usable in transactions), legal, and in demand, which is determined by the popularity of other cryptocurrencies. The artificial inflation mechanism of the halving of block rewards will no longer have an impact on the price of the cryptocurrency. However, at the current rate of adjustment of block rewards, the last bitcoin is not set to be mined until the year 2140 or so.
Competition
While bitcoin may be the most well-known cryptocurrency, there are hundreds of other tokens vying for user attention. While bitcoin is still the dominant option with regard to market capitalization, altcoins including ether (ETH), XRP, bitcoin cash (BCH), litecoin (LTC) and EOS are among its closest competitors as of January 2020.2 Further, new initial coin offerings (ICOs) are constantly on the horizon, due to the relatively few barriers to entry. The crowded field is good news for investors because the widespread competition keeps prices down. Fortunately for bitcoin, its high visibility gives it an edge over its competitors.
Cost of Production
While bitcoins are virtual, they are nonetheless produced products and incur a real cost of production – with electricity consumption being the most important factor by far. Bitcoin ‘mining’ as it is called, relies on a complicated cryptographic math problem that miners all compete to solve – the first one to do so is rewarded with a block of newly minted bitcoins and any transaction fees that have been accumulated since the last block was found. What is unique about bitcoin production is that unlike other produced goods, bitcoin’s algorithm only allows for one block of bitcoins to be found, on average, once every ten minutes. That means the more producers (miners) that join in the competition for solving the math problem only have the effect of making that problem more difficult – and thus more expensive – to solve in order to preserve that ten-minute interval.
Research has shown that indeed bitcoin’s market price is closely related to its marginal cost of production.
Availability on Currency Exchanges
Just as equity investors trade stocks over indexes like the NYSE, Nasdaq, and the FTSE, cryptocurrency investors trade cryptocurrencies over Coinbase, GDAX, and other exchanges. Similar to traditional currency exchanges, these platforms let investors trade cryptocurrency/currency pairs (e.g. BTC/USD or bitcoin/U.S. dollar).
The more popular an exchange becomes, the easier it may draw in additional participants, to create a network effect. And by capitalizing on its market clout, it may set rules governing how other currencies are added. For example, the release of the Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT) framework seeks to define how ICOs could comply with securities regulations. Bitcoinâs presence on these exchanges implies a level of regulatory compliance, regardless of the legal gray area in which cryptocurrencies operate.
Regulations and Legal Matters
The rapid rise in the popularity of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has caused regulators to debate how to classify such digital assets. While the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) classifies cryptocurrencies as securities, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) considers bitcoin to be a commodity. This confusion over which regulator will set the rules for cryptocurrencies has created uncertaintyâdespite the surging market capitalizations. Furthermore, the market has witnessed the rollout of many financial products that use bitcoin as an underlying asset, such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs), futures, and other derivatives.
This can impact prices in two ways. First, it provides bitcoin access to investors who cannot afford to purchase an actual bitcoin, thus increasing demand. Second, it can reduce price volatility by allowing institutional investors who believe bitcoin futures are overvalued or undervalued, to use their substantial resources to make bets that bitcoinâs price will move in the opposite direction.
Forks and Governance Stability
Because bitcoin is not governed by a central authority, it relies on developers and miners to process transactions and keep the blockchain secure. Changes to software are consensus driven, which tends to frustrate the bitcoin community, as fundamental issues typically take a long time to resolve.
The issue of scalability has been a particular pain point. The number of transactions that can be processed depends on the size of blocks, and bitcoin software is currently only able to process approximately three transactions per second. While this wasnât a concern when there was little demand for cryptocurrencies, many worry that slow transaction speeds will push investors towards competitive cryptocurrencies.
The community is divided over the best way to increase the number of transactions. Changes to the rules governing the use of the underlying software is called âforksâ. âSoft forksâ pertain to rule changes that do not result in the creation of a new cryptocurrency, while âhard forkâ software changes result in new cryptocurrencies. Past bitcoin hard forks have included bitcoin cash and bitcoin gold.
Should You Invest in Bitcoin?
Many compare the rapid appreciation of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to the speculative bubble created by Tulip mania in the Netherlands in the 17th century. While it is broadly important for regulators to protect investors, it will likely take years before the global impact of cryptocurrencies is truly felt.Not according to Moore’s Law though. – DB*
Balance is everything! The power of cyrypto in my opinion is not to destroy the USD; but to create a competitive, open, and free market.
Iraq war veteran: “The Marines took it upon themselves to shoot at, beat, rob, rape, kill whoever they wanted to. And that’s being proposed on the news as a few bad apples, an isolated incident.” pic.twitter.com/xVqxAAqdtthttps://t.co/OpkrCbK9Ab
Even during quarantine, it never ends.Racketeering is a criminal activity in which a person or organization engages in a âracket.â A racket is when the criminal creates a problem for others for the purpose of solving that problem by some type of extortion. The person or organization who engages in the racket is called a racketeer.
HOPEWELL JUNCTION, NY â A second couple in President Donald Trump’s circle will be getting divorced. Jennifer Scavino, who is married to the president’s social media director Dan Scavino, has filed for divorce in Dutchess County.
The Scavinos have ahomein Hopewell Junction, the Poughkeepsie Journal said, and were married in 2000 and have two children.
By Michael Woyton, Patch Staff
Verified Patch Staff Badge
Mar 19, 2018 10:42 am ET
U know what this means don’t you? It means everything is a lie. Everything! I mean the fact that the President doesn’t actually tweet his own tweets, is the greatest PR stunt in the history of American television.
Julian called me a little earlier on, at 14.22 London time to be precise. From Belmarsh High Security Prison of course. This is not the first time but, as you can imagine, every time I hear his voice I feel honoured and moved that he should dial my number when he has such few and far between opportunities to place calls.
âI want a perspective on world developments out there â I have none in hereâ, he said. Which, of course, placed a considerable burden on me to articulate thoughts on capitalismâs fate during this pandemic and the repercussions of it all on politics, geopolitics etc. The knowledge that Her Majestyâs Prison authorities would discontinue our discussion at any moment made the task harder.
In a feeble attempt to paint a picture for him on as broad a canvass as possible, I shared with Julian my main thought of the last weeks:
Never before has the world of money (i.e. the money markets, that include the share markets) been so decoupled from the world of real people, real stuff â from the real economy.
We watch in awe as GDP, personal incomes, wages, company revenues, businesses small and large, collapse while the stock market is staying relatively unscathed. The other day, Hertz declared bankruptcy. When a company does this, its share price goes to zero. Not now. In fact, Hertz is about to issue $1 billion worth of new shares. Why would anyone buy shares of an officially bankrupt company? The answer is: Because central banks print mountain ranges of money and give it for almost free to financiers to buy any piece of junk floating around the stock exchange.
âComplete zombification of the corporationsâ, is how I put it to Julian. Julian commented that this proves that governments and central banks can keep corporations afloat even when they sell next to nothing at the marketplace. I agreed. But, I also pointed out a major conundrum that capitalism faces for the first time. It is this:
Central bank money printing keeps asset prices very high while the price of âstuffâ and wages fall. This disconnect can go on growing. But, when Hertz, British Airways etc. can survive in this manner, they have no reason not to fire half the workforce and to cut the wages of the other half. This creates more deflation/depression in the real economy. Which means that the Central Banks must print more and more to keep asset and share prices high. At some point, the masses out there will rebel and governments will be under pressure to divert some income to them. But this will deflate asset prices. At that point, because these assets are used by corporations as collateral for all the loans they take out to stay afloat, they will lose access to liquidity. A sequence of corporate failures will commence under circumstances of stagnation. âI donât think capitalism can easily survive, at least not without huge social and geopolitical conflicts, this conundrumâ, was my conclusion.
Julian thought about this for a moment and asked me: âHow important is consumption to capitalism? What percentage of GDP is at stake if consumption does not recover? Do the corporations need workers or customers?â I answered that it was high enough to make this conundrum real. Yes, Central Banks and robots can keep the corporations going without customers or workers. But, robots cannot buy the stuff they produce. So, this is not a stable equilibrium. The losses in peopleâs incomes will accelerate, thus generating pivotal discontent.
Julian then said something along the lines of: That will benefit Trump who knows how to feed off the anger of the multitudes toward the educated, upper middle-class elites. I agreed, saying that DiEM25 has been warning since 2016 that socialism for the oligarchy and austerity for the many, in the end, feeds the racist ultra-right. That we are experiencing again what happened in the 1920s in Italy with the rise of Mussolini.
Julian agreed entirely and said: Yes, like then, there is an alliance forming between rich people and the discontented working class. He then added that most of the prisoners and the prison officers in Belmarsh support⌠Trump. At that point the connection was cut off.
Our conversation lasted 9â47ââ. It was more substantive, and of course moving, than any conversation I have had in a while.
