With current developments over the Libra consortium, Donald Trump and Steve Mnuchin’s statements, I thought I would remind readers that I predicted that one day soon tech giants would become an interim government. Very quietly, many of these tech companies have already procured banking licenses. Next, they are getting ready to take on the establishment banking industry. This industry has been lagging technologically for decades and is overripe for disruption.
After Facebook’s summer solstice announcement of the Libra consortium, there’s a panicked response in the form of a new bill in congress. Examination of this bill brings up a rather startling question over this statement:
Facebook just paid a $5 billion fine and its stock went up. Does anybody find it strange that the fine top’s out at only 1 million USD / day? Many people don’t comprehend big numbers very well, but at one million USD per day, it will take 13.7 years for that fine to equal what Facebook just paid which is a small fraction of its net worth. This bill is worded in such a way as to admonish from a position of authority, but the action taken is functionally an offer for a license to take over the financial industry. One million per day is very cheap indeed. In this talk recently, Andreas Antonopoulos said, that “when the cost for committing the crime is less than the profits from committing the crime, that is legal immunity. That is a very loud signal that says, do it again, only this time, leverage more.”. The only other possible explanation for this gaffe in drafting the bill is that it’s for discussion purposes and the actual amount of the fine is not really defined yet.
I recently wrote about the importance of measuring political power by measuring wealth. If we are to take this as a guide as to who really is in charge, we should surmise that this fight is not really the US government going after big tech. It’s the establishment banking system using the US government to preserve its power base (the Federal Reserve). The Libra consortium’s net worth should be an estimated 20+ Trillion USD once they receive their 100th member. The banking industry has even more, but many in that industry seem to be breaking rank with the old system. Where does the US government stand financially? A 4 trillion annual budget and it is a net negative in terms of net worth. It’s well understood that debtors cannot be masters, so our representatives will do the bidding of whoever has the most money.
Their white paper says that Calibra will be based in Switzerland under a different regulatory framework which is essentially a shot over the bow to US regulators warning that they have the power to move to jurisdictions they do not control. This leaked document by 
I suspect that the Libra consortium will make it clear to regulators what a tough position that bitcoin and the truly decentralized crypto’s have put them in and explain to them that they are their best chance of keeping the old system relevant using KYC and AML (at least this will be the public dialog, but in reality this looks like it has been pre-planned from the top). In this case, it won’t be FB violating your privacy, it will be some corporate wing of the Libra entity instead. Problem solved. What it won’t be is censorship resistant, open, borderless, neutral, etc… because it can’t be and be in regulatory compliance at the same time.
(credit - Andreas Antonopoulos)
When Libra said that it would back its currency, it said that it would use a “basket of national fiat” to stabilize value. The problem with this idea is that the currency wars that governments have been engaged in for profit will eventually make this basket unstable. Superior S/F (stock to flow ratio) currencies will outperform national fiat and cause Gresham’s law to manifest. By 2024, bitcoins S/F will exceed Gold’s which will cause it to become the greatest store of value in the world. The rise of hard money is also a harbinger of economic misery.
Authority has not learned this lesson because it can’t. The assertion of control is in its very nature and if a day comes where they actually figure out that they are themselves the real cause of terrorism, they will have to fix the problem by no longer existing. Of course they cannot do that, so they will continue to build systems that centralize data into giant honeypots that can be hacked, with an unending data shuffle from 2FA to 3FA, etc. Biometrics will make the situation much worse because when that system gets compromised, it will damage the entire technology. But will the architects care? They will be beyond the point of no return, saying that sacrificing a few unlucky individuals is better than the collapse of an entire civilization.
(credit - Andreas Antonopoulos)
While the previous sections on this page, I’m relatively certain about, the following sections are more of a speculation…
This is more like a hope to expand a trend that could lead to this result. While the escalation of accusation is definitely on the rise right now, we are still left with winner psychopaths who self justify their coercion and violence over their victim masses. Most humans (myself excluded) feel a need to trust someone in authority. I personally see every single person who aspires to leadership role as a bombastic and ignorant fool. No human has the slightest clue about how to take responsibility in this way. The best you can do is get out of the way and let people lead their own lives.
In practically all political systems, when something goes wrong, the finger first points to a “wrong doer” and then to the authority in charge. It’s as if everything that must exist, now has to have an agency license. If an asteroid is about to collide with the earth, then some aliens of course must be blamed. And if they can’t be found, then a scape goat will be found instead.
In the future, smart contract platforms such as Ethereum can enable machines to own themselves and even collect profits for themselves, take care of maintenance, maintain their own accounts, etc. What happens when a self owned taxi, crashes and kills all the occupants? Does the accusation model get played against the profits of the DAO? Or will the truth finally be understood that there are really no guarantees in life?
This scenario could easily happen when human owners of robots running smart contracts die and the machines go on operating as if nothing has happened, still involved in their autonomous routines. This brings up the issue of representation, does a machine need a human to represent it? How about the idea that people need politicians to represent them? Will DAO’s eventually demonstrate the obsolescence of representation?
Here are a few more educated guesses on what may happen...
Are you ready for these changes?
