Central Bank Digital Currency ??

[Inor]

Wondering how the latest FTX crypto fiasco has affected yall's thoughts on it's security? couldn't the creator of bitcoin do something similar and crater the price?

The FTX mess is more of a curiosity to me than anything else. It has zero effect on what I am doing since I am using Bitcoin and Monero as a purchasing medium and to maintain privacy. As I explained in post #9 on this thread, keeping your crypto in an exchange is a roll of the dice. I have always kept mine in a local wallet, so I have no risk associated with any exchange playing games. The only thing I use an exchange for is my initial purchase of BTC. As soon as the purchase order fills, I immediately move the BTC from my exchange account to my local offline wallet. There is a very small window of time, between when I move my fiat currency onto the exchange to make the purchase and when I move my newly purchased crypto onto my local wallet where I could be at some risk. But that is a very small window, between about 10 and 30 minutes, and it is a risk I am willing to take since the amounts we are talking about are pretty small - usually less than $1000 USD.

As far as Satoshi Nakamoto (the creator of Bitcoin) building in a backdoor either to steal or otherwise cause havoc, it would have been possible when BTC was first created. But once BTC went live (2007), the entire source code base was also made public. In my particular case, I did spend a fair bit of time studying the source code before I decided to experiment with buying it to satisfy myself that no such backdoor exists. I am sure millions of others have as well.

I fully expected FTX to fall apart at some time, not because of fraud, but because they had a stupid business model. They were supposedly paying "depositors/account holders" 8% on their crypto deposits when they could have just issued corporate bonds or even borrowed USD from a commercial bank for 3% and bought the crypto outright. What the hell kind of business model plans to lose 5% on every transaction and make up the difference on volume?!? The fraud was bad, but in reality, all it did was speed up a massive wipe out that was already baked into the cake. The FTX founder was a media darling so they could have maybe stretched it out for a few more years without the fraud, but in the end they were going die spectacularly with or without the fraud. Keep an eye on Coinbase and Crypto.com. I expect they will meet a similar fate in the not too distant future.

But in terms of keeping a crypto wallet offline and maintaining privacy in your transactions, I am still a fan. My only wish is that the Ethereum transaction fees would come back to earth a little bit. The exchange rates on it have held up much better than most of the others so it would be my hands down favorite if it weren't so damn expensive to use it for purchasing things.

[MountainGirl]

The FTX mess is more of a curiosity to me than anything else. It has zero effect on what I am doing since I am using Bitcoin and Monero as a purchasing medium and to maintain privacy. As I explained in post #9 on this thread, keeping your crypto in an exchange is a roll of the dice. I have always kept mine in a local wallet, so I have no risk associated with any exchange playing games. The only thing I use an exchange for is my initial purchase of BTC. As soon as the purchase order fills, I immediately move the BTC from my exchange account to my local offline wallet. There is a very small window of time, between when I move my fiat currency onto the exchange to make the purchase and when I move my newly purchased crypto onto my local wallet where I could be at some risk. But that is a very small window, between about 10 and 30 minutes, and it is a risk I am willing to take since the amounts we are talking about are pretty small - usually less than $1000 USD.

As far as Satoshi Nakamoto (the creator of Bitcoin) building in a backdoor either to steal or otherwise cause havoc, it would have been possible when BTC was first created. But once BTC went live (2007), the entire source code base was also made public. In my particular case, I did spend a fair bit of time studying the source code before I decided to experiment with buying it to satisfy myself that no such backdoor exists. I am sure millions of others have as well.

I fully expected FTX to fall apart at some time, not because of fraud, but because they had a stupid business model. They were supposedly paying "depositors/account holders" 8% on their crypto deposits when they could have just issued corporate bonds or even borrowed USD from a commercial bank for 3% and bought the crypto outright. What the hell kind of business model plans to lose 5% on every transaction and make up the difference on volume?!? The fraud was bad, but in reality, all it did was speed up a massive wipe out that was already baked into the cake. The FTX founder was a media darling so they could have maybe stretched it out for a few more years without the fraud, but in the end they were going die spectacularly with or without the fraud. Keep an eye on Coinbase and Crypto.com. I expect they will meet a similar fate in the not too distant future.

But in terms of keeping a crypto wallet offline and maintaining privacy in your transactions, I am still a fan. My only wish is that the Ethereum transaction fees would come back to earth a little bit. The exchange rates on it have held up much better than most of the others so it would be my hands down favorite if it weren't so damn expensive to use it for purchasing things.

With FTX, and eventually Coinbase and Crypto.com, it seems the overall public confidence in the whole crypto idea would be diminished - causing less vendors to be willing to accept it, etc. Especially when 'the masses' don't understand it as well as you and others do.

On an unrelated but similar note - PO stopped at our fav booze house yesterday to stock up - and their 'card reader' wasn't working. He had no cash on him so came home without my blackberry moonshine. Grrrrr.

I doubt he and I will still be alive when Cash is finally 'retired' - but I truly feel for y'all and your young'uns when the whole system is digitized, monitored and controlled; and it will be.

[MountainGirl]

The Feds rolled out the CBDC's FedCoin Beta test on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving... while no one was looking.

The only place you can find/read about it is thru Glenn Beck. I wonder why that is.

https://21stcenturywire.com/2022/11/...-for-fed-coin/

[Inor]

The Feds rolled out the CBDC's FedCoin Beta test on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving... while no one was looking.

The only place you can find/read about it is thru Glenn Beck. I wonder why that is.

https://21stcenturywire.com/2022/11/...-for-fed-coin/

There has been quite a bit of news about the project on several investment web sites including ZeroHedge. It sounds like the current state of the project is a settlement system for banks running in parallel with the current systems. They are not using it (yet) for doing the actual settlements; those are still being done via the old system. This is just a parallel system with no money changing hands. They have not yet given an exact "go live" date but they are targeting somewhere between April and July 2023. Initially it will just be used for settlements between banks and the Fed. Depending on who is reporting, they will start rolling it out to John Q. Public anywhere between a couple months and a couple years after the banks actually go live.

More disconcerting is the renewed interest in congress to begin heavy-handed regulation of the real crypto markets (Bitcoin, ETH and others). Some of that was to be expected due to the fraud at FTX. But in the hearings over the last 2 days, both in the House and the Senate have the usual numbnuts coming out of the woodwork with their usual level of stupidity. I'm thinking the IRS hiring 75,000 new auditors might be about putting together a team of people to associate wallet IDs with taxpayer IDs.

If you think you might ever want to use crypto in the future, it would be wise to set up 20-30 offline/cold storage wallets now when you can still set them up for free without having to give a name and/or SSN. That may not be an option in the not-too-distant future. If you do decide to use them in the future, keep one wallet designated as the ID associated with your name. The others can be kept for more private use.

[BucketBack]

Is America at its worst economic point since the Great Depression?

Biden and the Democrats have been boasting about the economic wonders he and his administration have performed with their modernizing, equitable, diverse, green energy economic policies. However, E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, says that the devil is in the details—and the details behind the latest GDP report show that ordinary Americans are in the worst economic condition they’ve been since the Great Depression.

RNC Research (a very good Twitter feed, despite the RNC’s dismal performance in other areas) assembled a few clips showing Biden’s economic boasts:

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...epression.html

[BucketBack]

The next article shows why the digital currency is needed. In the last 2 years the US has printed 80% of the greenbacks in existence

When you print more money it means there are more dollars chasing the same amount of goods and services, which causes prices to rise. In just the past three fiscal years, federal spending has swollen to nearly $7 trillion a year, up from about $4.4 trillion in fiscal year 2019. Spending was $6.6 trillion in 2020, and $6.8 trillion in 2021.

If we want to put this into perspective, we can take a look at the monetary supply at the beginning of 2020, which showed just $4.0192 trillion in circulation. By January 2021, that number had jumped up to $6.7 trillion — but this was only the beginning.

By November of last year, that number climbed to $20.354 trillion dollars in circulation — meaning that since January 2020, the United States has printed nearly 80% of all US dollars in existence.

https://thewashingtonstandard.com/80...ast-two-years/

[MountainGirl]

Sorry for being dense - but do those numbers represent actual hold in your hand green pieces of paper?
Just the physical effort, not to mention materials, to create that quantity, in that timeframe - seems not possible.

[BucketBack]

The M.O.B. probably has stashed a bit of cash.

That doesn't seem to be counted though.

Maybe only $$$ in the bank will be converted to digital currency, along with the SS check.

IE - The money they printed.

I did buy some Dollar Store Tinfoil along with a 15 pak of Bud 2Day

[TJC44]

Sorry for being dense - but do those numbers represent actual hold in your hand green pieces of paper?
Just the physical effort, not to mention materials, to create that quantity, in that timeframe - seems not possible.

My guess would be no.
The Federal Reserve "Creates" dollars, Transfers them by electronic bank transfer (EBT) to the .GOV general fund, They get disbursed to the various agencies as their budget allows, they pay their civilian contractors by EBT, and their employees by Direct Deposit, and so on down the line. Hell, you don't even need real money to buy a cup of coffee anymore.

[MountainGirl]

My guess would be no.
The Federal Reserve "Creates" dollars, Transfers them by electronic bank transfer (EBT) to the .GOV general fund, They get disbursed to the various agencies as their budget allows, they pay their civilian contractors by EBT, and their employees by Direct Deposit, and so on down the line. Hell, you don't even need real money to buy a cup of coffee anymore.

Thanks much - and I kind of figured it had to be that way... the whole thing is so convoluted.
This was helpful for me: https://www.stlouisfed.org/in-plain-...-reserve-banks

Money outta thin air.
No more cash
Maybe crypto, maybe not

Fk. I'm gonna start trading in chickens, LOL
Or eggs. They're worth more.

Thanks, Tracey. Hope you're enjoyin your new digs!