In pursuit of money and currency: A view on new order Bitcoin

Bitcoin came from nowhere and is now here to stay 

By Dr. R.R. de Silva

The pursuit of US legislators against the cryptocurrency space, providers, traders and users, is driven by the requirement to protect an ancient Jewish monetary system and world order consisting of governments, private central banks, commercial banks, development banks, IMF, WB, physical currency i.e. the US Dollar, interest rates and the money markets.

An intricate system, which forms the cornerstone of the prevailing global civilisation, forms the foundations of layers upon layers of secondary, tertiary systems including stock markets, global trading, the financial education system, the study of economics, business, finance, investment markets, etc., and business lifestyle. The monetary system has become a way of life upon which money forms cause to action and controls the world. 

History has been littered with assassinations driven by money and disruption of the prevailing world order. Whether SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 is part of this is yet to emerge. Whether MERS and or SARS were failed predecessors is just as difficult to ascertain. But one thing has definitely changed, a new contender and challenger has emerged out of the dust of the 2009/10 so-called Global Financial Crisis (GFC) affecting predominately the developed world. 

Designed by Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever this may be, in 2008 and launched in 2009, this contender is called Bitcoin (BTC), a revolutionary form of digital currency or digital gold using the blockchain as its underlying technology. Decentralised, democratic, limited to a maximum of 21 million Bitcoins, this digital coin signifies freedom and uncontrollability except when the lights go off. Bitcoin has conquered the hearts of the free world, an ideology extending beyond governments, taxation, surveillance capitalism and authoritarian totalitarianism. A world free of Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML), wire fraud and limitless quantitative easing.

Initially vilified by many including the Jewish merchant banks e.g. Jamie Dimon CEO and Chairman of JP Morgan, the free world has endorsed and ensured cryptocurrency’s survival, sometimes at great risk and cost. Built out of ideology, identifying these creational individuals proved too difficult for the establishment. Its decentralised nature making it impossible to track and trace singular ownership highlighting the power of the deontological collective vs. the divide and rule policies of imperial colonial establishment. 

I suppose if you can’t beat them then join them. With governments looking to create their own digital currencies, its success stands in stark contrast to cryptocurrency. Government styled digital currency’s singular purpose is to track and trace monetary assets, to control through surveillance and taxation policy the wealth of the population, and to identify potential alternative thinkers, and keep them under control using amongst their arsenal of multiple tools monetary control and fiscal control. Taxes such as Inheritance Tax, Capital Gains Tax, and Personal Taxation are all created to keep you and your progeny controllable, helpless and unheard.

To date central banks collude with government, corporates and banks via direct influence and or indirectly via lobbyists to facilitate policy to maintain the socio-economic divide between elite establishment and the proletariat.

Now unstoppable

Bitcoin, now unstoppable, having survived over 10 years with significant price volatility and currently trading above $ 18,000 per bitcoin, who now can deny its existence or value. Previously demonised as an instrument of dark trades, drugs, wire fraud and money laundering, only few asked the question as how money laundering and the drug trade survived before bitcoin. These trades still survive denominated in USD with a market capitalisation of in the trillions compared to an approximate $ 350 billion market capitalisation of BTC. 

As a decentralised monetary system democratises money removing requirement for central banks governments IMF WB Interest rates Non requirement for FX markets, transfer protocols e.g. SWIFT CHAPS BACS a far fairer system of monetary value has emerged with no biased policy uninfluenced by western and semitic control. A true one set of rules for all. A system you can believe in. An infinite game instead of the finite game.

As more and more join an inevitability, it is clear Bitcoin has a future and with it choice and people’s freedom. Where many had sacrificed their lives for freedom, sacrifice is being traded for entitlement and with entitlement has grown complacency, arrogance and an almost narcissistic demand for rights? 

In the midst of all this, we find fellow Sri Lankans such as Kosala Hemachandra who developed the MyEtherWallet. Maybe it is now time, for us, for Sri Lankans and Sri Lanka to believe in ourselves and charge through the open doors to a greater world. Out there lies 7.5 billion people, just waiting for our contribution and solutions. It is time for policy and Sri Lanka to empower us to develop ourselves beyond the boundaries of our coastline.

 It is time to develop new skills, embrace risk, bridge the divides, indulge in falling just to pick ourselves up and all the while maintaining our own evolving Sri Lankan identity. Most important of all, it is time to appreciate what we have, who we are and who we represent, our country, our friends and family and to treat each other as a brother in need. 

Many dinosaurs of the traditional investment game shared their sermons on Bitcoin for a host of reasons. Take for example Warren Buffet, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, deemed a legendary investor and known as the Oracle of Omaha. Buffet, a highly successful billionaire investor talks about innovation from the perspective of a traditionalist. He has made several negative statements on Bitcoin including on 7 May 2018 Buffet speaks to CNBC stating, “Bitcoin is an asset that creates nothing.” 

The following year on 25 February 2019 he states, “Bitcoin has no unique value.” On 24 February 2020 Buffett speaks to CNBC and describes Bitcoin as worthless. “Cryptocurrencies basically have no value…they don’t produce anything.” “You can’t do anything with it except sell it to somebody else,” he added. “But then that person’s got the problem.” “I don’t own any cryptocurrency,” he said. “I never will.”

As Charles Darwin writes in his paper dating 1858 and in his book ‘On the Origin of Species of 1859’, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change”. This is the true essence of Darwin’s manuscripts as opposed to the more commonly touted “survival of the fittest.”

We are now seeing a shift in Bitcoin buyer demographics from techies to institutionals, corporates and the monetary elite entering the cryptocurrency space. From novelty fraudulent scams to institutional adoption. Even the older generations, forcibly recruited into digitalisation by global social isolation and human rights violating lockdowns, have been purchasing Bitcoin. This may have contributed to demystification of cryptocurrencies but also low or negative interest rates and a stock market at all-time highs despite an economic disconnect and a possible pending credit market collapse.

Grayscale Investments announced recently assets under management in excess of $ 10 billion with over 500,000 BTC in its Trust Funds with the majority held in its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC).

On 20 November 2020 Blackrock’s (world’s largest asset management firm with $ 8 trillion) Rick Rieder spoke to CNN and CNBC stating Bitcoin could replace Gold as a go-to safe haven investment. “Do I think it’s a durable mechanism that could take the place of gold to a large extent? Yeah, I do, because it’s so much more functional than passing a bar of gold around,” Rieder said. It has taken 11 years for the biggest names in traditional investment to endorse Bitcoin. Microstrategy Inc. (MSTR), a company providing tech solutions and listed on the NASDAQ, used a significant portion of its balance sheet to buy BTC. MSTR announced in June 2020 it had purchased 38,250 BTC worth $ 425 million at an average $ 11,111 per coin. On 20 November 2020 BTC hit $ 18,666 equating to a total value of $ 714 million and reflecting a paper profit of $ 289 million. As a result Microstrategy’s share price rocketed to $ 271 per share as of 27/11/20 raising its market capitalisation over and above the uplift in value of the $ 289 million BTC profit. Other corporates have also purchased Bitcoin, including Square, Hut & Ming Corp, Galaxy Digital Holdings, etc.

Ricardo Pliego Mexico’s second wealthiest person with an estimated fortune of $ 11.9 billion has placed 10% of his liquid cash into Bitcoin to protect his wealth from hyperinflationary devaluation. He is part of an ever-increasing band of millionaires and billionaires diversifying their risk into Bitcoin.

Endorsements are flooding in with recently PayPal (PYPL) allowing you to buy Bitcoin through them alongside several new wealth management mobile applications. Influential hedge fund managers like Stanley Druckenmiller and Paul Tudor Jones have been touting Bitcoin as an investment.

Governments have even issued their own cryptocurrencies including China, Ecuador and Singapore with Estonia, Japan, Sweden and Russia considering launching new national digital currencies. It would be interesting to see if politicians buy or have bought Bitcoin lured by market beating returns laced with hypocritical greed. Maybe governments should now consider pegging their hyperinflationary currencies due to decadal quantitative easing programs against Bitcoin, the new digital gold or at least re-consider that real yellow thing called gold.

With China running over 50% of global Bitcoin mining operations it would not surprise me, if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) already owned significant amounts of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Certainly running their own national digital currency would suit their authoritarian totalitarian mindset with Western nations looking to exert themselves similarly. 

Dilute government clutches

Governments and corporates will work together to develop policy to control cryptocurrency to their best advantage. Their success will be questionable as an evolving conflict between policymakers looking to institutionalise and centralise all power and control over cryptocurrency and the free world looking to dilute government clutches and maintain untouchable decentralisation.

Maybe the rise of Bitcoin is a direct reflection of humanity’s response to persistent governmental oppression and surveillance capitalism. Antiquated uneducated narcissistic politicians fighting to preserve the existing world order exhibit regulatory anxiety over decentralised finance and peer-to-peer transactions. These areas lack the intermediaries that regulators require to horde financial data and keep control of their populatory subordinates. 

But any attempt to restrict peer to peer transactions and invade the inner sanctum of all humanity based on natural human interaction will flounder in revolt, violence and accelerated demise of a World Order that has wiped out societies, cultures and the biodiversity of the natural world.

To combat the emergence of alternative non-conformist thought, policymakers have engineered new terminology e.g. Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Know Your Client (KYC), Wire fraud and the Modern Slavery Act. This new language has proliferated under Global Finance through interwoven international institutions e.g. International Monetary Fund (IMF), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the World Bank to name a few. All this has been implemented to control, detect and disrupt illicit financial activity. Illicit as defined by those who wish to maintain control over the world. 

But today a new order has emerged, a new school of thought, decentralised, community run and led, a collective, the very thing the establishment hates and has sought to divide through ultra-invasive multi-channel methodologies and narratives of individualism, consumerism, materialism, feminism, gender pay gap, communism and socialism vilification and recently SARS-CoV-2 Kill Fear resulting in the stripping of all rights enshrined in religious faith and constitution. 

Furthermore the US’s AML watchdog, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has recently reduced its reporting standards for international transactions from $ 3,000 to $ 250 while expanding a list of enforcement against cryptocurrency firms.

The consequences of mainstream adoption may drive low liquidity price acceleration, where bitcoin whales (person(s) or organisations holding in excess of 1000 Bitcoins) control and manipulate a currently investment style trading market. It seems however that legislators are more concerned with controlling the small individual looking to regulate offline non-custodial wallets (safest option to hold crypto) and peer to peer transactions where overzealous government control freaks search for opportunities to exert their power in an ever failing cycle to protect their own positions and their subscribed world order. They are looking to block all peer to peer transactions. Is this individualised social isolation policy with SARS-CoV-2 a tiny part of a grander picture in a four dimensional multi-channel strategy of depopulation?

On lighter tones, Laszio Hanyecz agreed to pay 10,000 BTC for two Papa John’s Pizzas on 22 May 2010! That would be in the region of $ 186.66 million for two pizzas! (20-11-20 USD/BTC $ 18,666). Surprisingly enough Bitcoin has been and can be used as currency where people can and have been able to buy real expensive pizza, cars and even flats. It is up to us to decide our futures and we always have a choice. Seeing opportunity and seeing choices is a reflection of our ability to adapt in adversity. 

An investment or a currency?

In this context, a commonly-posed question by mainly regulators relates to the definition of Bitcoin as an investment or a currency. Realistically legislators will define this in terms of fiscal policy independent of Bitcoin’s uses as both currency and an investment instrument and outside of the rules and regulations applicable to FX Trading.

Bitcoin appears to be here to stay. It all boils down to belief, no blind faith required unlike the Greenback’s ‘In God we Trust’ as an unlimited supply of paper flows off the printing press like fake news. No one saw this coming, not even George Orwell’s 1984. Is this our way out?

With global depression at the doorstep, accelerated by globally synchronised lockdowns Bitcoin will protect you against State expropriation of wealth. In Sri Lanka the enactment of the Land Reform Law No. I of 1972, designed to reduce inequality expropriated many. Its purpose to reduce inequality has achieved nothing of its intention and instead has empowered State control and political corruption. Expropriation continues today, this type of behaviour and thought has brought about consistently opportunistic self-serving governments forming the fuel for new change and a new start.

For if you do not believe in Bitcoin, you may want to hedge your bets as the future unfolds. As Ray Dallio says today’s ‘cash is trash’ and we say the dollar is a phoney democracy. 

As more and more join the party, belief in a self-fulfilling prophecy grows. Bitcoin came from nowhere and is now here to stay. Consideration is survival essential. In this game of adoption: “Who will be the laggard?” and “Who will ride the crypto wave and wash everyone away?” In this case early adoption has paid dividends and converted many already into crypto millionaires and billionaires e.g. Niklas Nikolajsen of Bitcoin Suisse. 

One thing is certain, Bitcoin is going to be around for a while yet and for as long as people believe in life free of government oppression. 

(The writer warns that cryptocurrency is and has been highly volatile and you should only buy cryptocurrency after studying its workings and market behaviour. Buying is currently considered high risk in investment terms. You should only invest if you are willing to lose without significantly affecting your personal finances. As with all investments, we should beware of crypto-scams. Buyer Beware.)

(Dr. Rohitha de Silva is a doctor of medicine, investor, entrepreneur, and derivatives trader with interests in agriculture, apparels, cryptocurrency, digital marketing, education, healthcare, property, retail, R&D and technology. He is a visionary conceptualist innovator with an eccentric mindset, academically driven visionary, nonconformist, highly aware alternate thinker, developer of idea, motivator and captivator magnetising macro visionary concepts. He believes in Sri Lanka’s potential and his ability to convert prejudices and pain into passion and power.)