Daily Archives: December 7, 2021

New Delhi: The cryptocurrency market was back in the green on Tuesday as investors picked quality tokens at lower prices. Bitcoin hit the $50,000 mark as concerns over the Omicron variant eased across the globe and investors lapped up riskier assets.

Barring the dollar pegged USD Coin, all other nine out of the top 10 digital tokens were trading higher at 9.30 IST. Binance Coin led the gainers with a 8 per cent rally, followed by Ethereum and Cardano which gained 5 per cent each.

The global crypto market cap jumped about 5 per cent to $2.37 trillion compared to the last day. Meanwhile, the total crypto market volume advanced 14 per cent to $137.77 billion.

India could see apps like Robinhood emerge in the next few years if cryptocurrencies are classified as an asset class. Nasdaq-listed Robinhood is a mobile app that allows users to conduct commission-free trades of stocks, exchange-traded funds and cryptocurrencies. While there are similar discount brokers in India, none of them currently allows trading in crypto.

Expert's TakeSince kicking off the week on a weak start, Bitcoins price recovered slightly, pulling up other top cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Binance Coin, said CoinDCX Research Team.

"Especially with the global spread of Omicron, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects that the evolving pandemic will further dent global economic growth and recovery," it added. "With the bleak outlook of the pandemic and the economy, gold prices are gaining as investors hedge in the traditional safe-haven metal."

Global UpdateA Bitcoin mining operation is opening northeast of Niagara Falls this month on the site of the last working coal plant in the state of New York.

Across the state, a former aluminum plant in Massena, already one of the biggest cryptocurrency sites in the United States, is expanding.

Tech View by Giottus Cryptocurrency ExchangeArguably the most popular Layer-2 blockchain in the crypto market, Polygon (MATIC) has been on quite a run lately. It is already supporting other major crypto projects such as Aave (thanks to its inexpensive fees and rapid settlement times) and has surged in value post its implementation of Miden, a zero knowledge (ZK) rollup solution that helps scale the Polygon Network.

Despite the crypto market crash over the weekend, it continues to trade above $2.2, indicating further strength and signs of more upside.

Should a correction arrive, its previously well-tested support levels of $1.97 and $1.88, both based off the fibonacci pulls of its recent drop, should come to the rescue once again. Over the mid-term, MATIC looks exceedingly bullish and has the potential to set new highs soon.

Major LevelsSupport: $1.97, $1.88, $1.73Resistance: $2.31, $2.4

Time is in UTC and the daily time frame is 12:00 AM - 12:00 PM UTC

(Views and recommendations given in this section are the analysts' own and do not represent those of ETMarkets.com. Please consult your financial adviser before taking any position in the asset/s mentioned.)

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Top cryptocurrency prices today: Bitcoin hits $50,000; Ethereum, Binance coin jump up to 8% - Economic Times

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How to Give the Gift of Bitcoin this Christmas - FOX10 News

Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini will soon offer frictionless bitcoin trading in Colombia for customers of the countrys biggest bank, Bancolombia, the company said in a statement Monday. However, it is unclear whether users will be able to withdraw fundsa vital feature for achieving the financial sovereignty that Bitcoin enables.

The partnership is part of a government-sponsored pilot program. It will launch on December 14, giving an initial cohort of Bancolombia customers a seamless on and off-ramp to trade BTC through the exchange.

The partnership also serves as an important step toward the strategic expansion of Geminis presence in Latin America, Cynthia del Pozo Garca, Geminis principal of strategy and corporate development, said in the statement. We look forward to working closely with the Colombian crypto ecosystem and to supporting crypto products that empower Colombians to take control of their financial lives.

The Colombia government launched a one-year pilot program through the countrys financial regulator, Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia (SFC), to bring bitcoin and cryptocurrency services to citizens in a more straightforward fashion.

Crypto is borderless by nature, and we are committed to expanding crypto access to individuals across the globe, del Pozo Garca added.

Bancolombia is part of the Bancolombia Group, a holding company that also owns Banistmo, the largest bank in Panama and Central America; BAM, from Guatemala; and Banco Agricola, which serves customers in El Salvador. The group had 17.8 million customers as of December 31, 2020, according to its numbers report.

In January, the SFC announced it had chosen nine cryptocurrency exchanges out of 14 applicants to participate in the pilot. In addition to Gemini, the list included Binance and Mexican firm Bitso. Binance is set to partner with the third-largest bank in Colombia, Davivienda, and digital payments app Powwi, while Bitso will collaborate with Banco de Bogot.

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Colombias Biggest Bank To Offer Bitcoin Trading - Bitcoin Magazine

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I cant help but take pride in the Bitcoin communitys relentless optimism.

In many other industries, whether it be through the direct decline of the industry, or a sense of general nihilism that so often accompanies our fiat-based world, optimism is not nearly as present. But Bitcoiners wake up each day ready to work on solutions to the worlds toughest challenges, not in a vain attempt to save our planet but in true belief that we are creating the worlds next Golden Age, the best times humanity has ever known.

My discussion with Q Ghaemi was a fantastic display of this optimism, as we touched on the potential for Bitcoin to change the world. We also discussed his introduction to Bitcoin, and the life lessons he has learned from Bitcoin.

How were you first introduced to Bitcoin?

I really started diving down the rabbit hole at the end of 2017, top of 2018. Christian Keroleshelped orange pill me and since then I keep reading as much as I can about Bitcoin and the technology being developed in the space.

What's the primary "life lesson" that you have learned from your time in bitcoin?

If you think you know everything, you know nothing. If you think you know nothing, you know something.

Do you believe that bitcoin is truly capable of changing the world for the better in a lasting manner, and why or why not?

Yes, but only if the Layer 2 (Lightning) and subsequent layers continue to develop and grow their capabilities. Complacency will be the downfall of Bitcoin like anything else.

What are you most looking forward to in the Bitcoin space?

Technological advances that will change the way we interact with everyday things. It was not until the smartphone came to be that we really began to appreciate the development of web and mobile applications (apps) I believe we are only at the beginning of what Bitcoin technology is being developed.

Price prediction for the end of 2021, and the end of 2030?

$100,000 bitcoin by New Year's. By the end of the decade, a minimum of $5,000,000 per coin.

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Why I Believe The Best Of Bitcoin Is Yet To Come - Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin SV (CRYPTO: BSV) a hard fork of Bitcoin Cash (CRYPTO: BCH), which is in itself a hard fork of Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) was among the top 24-hour gainers early Tuesday morning.

Whats Moving? The coin associated with Craig Wright soared 23.69% to $147.58 over 24 hours. For the week, it is down 0.55%.

BSV gained 18.17% against BTC, while it rose 17.17% against Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), the second-largest coin by market capitalization.

On a year-to-date basis, BSV has fallen 9.52%. Over 90 days, it has fallen8.28%, while over a 30-day period the fall amounts to 11.87%.

At press time, BSV was down 70% from its all-time high of $491.64.

See Also: How To Buy Bitcoin SV (BSV)

Why Is It Moving? BSV got a boost on Monday after a jury in the Kleiman vs. Wright case reached a verdict.

Wright, who claims to have invented Bitcoin, was pitted against the estate of his late business partner David Kleiman and W&K Info Defense Research, LLC represented by Ira Kleiman. The latter is the estranged brother of David Kleiman.

The defense prevailed on all counts except conversion; $100 million were awarded to W&K.

BSV rose in tandem with other major coins at press time as the global market cap rose 5.33% to $2.38 trillion.

BSV was not among the most mentioned coins on Twitter at press time, as per Cointrendz data.

BTC and ETH topped the list of most mentioned on Twitter. They attracted 10,043 and 7,266 tweets respectively.

Bitcoin SV attracted high interest from retail investors and was among the top trending names on Stocktwits.

Read Next: Craig Wright-Founded Bitcoin Spinoff Suffers 51% Attack: What You Should Know

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Why Is Bitcoin SV Shooting Up Today? - Benzinga - Benzinga

What is the difference between Bitcoin, gold and silver when it comes to inflation protection?

Gold and silver have obviously been around the longest. In fact, since the earth began, these metals existed. Humankind have used these two metals since we first needed to exchange goods and services, and stories of gold and silver as a medium of exchange date as far back as recorded history.

Bitcoin, and the many cyber coins like it, are a little more than a decade old. The length of time in existence is not even remotely comparable. Despite this fact, many have put tremendous faith and funds into this new phenomenon called cyber coin.

One of the difference between the two metals and cyber coin is that the metals exist in the physical and the digital world, while cyber coin exists only in digital form. I dwell on this oddity from time to time, and ponder that if the power went out all over the world, does cyber coin actually exist?

I know the money spent to buy it would still be there, but would the cybers? An interesting concept, yet probably a moot point, as the odds of a global power outage that never comes back is next to nil.

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That said, the thought does provoke a deeper analysis of what digital currency is versus the physical ones like metal coins or paper dollars. After all, we can hold the one type in our hand while only being able to view the other on an electronic screen.

Although the digital currency and physical ones have their similarities, there are other differences as well.

For one, the price swings in the digital cyber coin arena are wildly volatile, and although gold and silver do have their fluctuations, they are not nearly as drastic as cyber coin to say the least.

Bitcoin has gone from a few pennies a coin to over $65,000 in under 12 years. Not what I call exactly stable. And since we are talking about inflation protection, a price stable medium is preferred. This makes gold and silver the obvious candidate when considering stability. Many might argue if bitcoin goes up, its a better hedge than metals. But the price of cyber coin goes down drastically as well. Maybe cyber is a better speculation but not better protection based on its price volatility.

Ease of transfer is easier with cyber coin as long as one is connected to a power source and has some sort of computer. Gold and silver stocks are also immediately movable when the markets are open, but not so the physical coins. Coins can also be harder and take more time to sell and the spread between the buy and sell price can be significant.

Taxes are due on both transactions and how much is dependent on a variety of conditions. The jury is arguably still out on what the tax liability will be on cyber transactions.

Gold and silver, having been around so long, are easier to transact in electronic form from any stockbroker firm. Cyber coin exchanges are difficult to use in my experience, and there are few Wall Street versions of bitcoin funds that are available as of yet.

The stunning price increases in cyber coin has indeed attracted a lot of attention. So much so, when comparing price action of Bitcoin to any other asset in recent history, the mania and price increases surrounding bitcoin is the most volatile ever witnessed. Nothing compares, even in the slightest, to the astounding price swings witnessed in Bitcoin and its cyber relatives. There is little doubt this is a mania of historic proportions. Manias can crash horribly.

There has been talk that buyers of cyber coin have taken a little bit of the luster from gold and silver, which is to say some investors are buying cyber coin instead of the metals. That said, it is likely that at least some funds that would have been destined for gold and silver have made it over to cyber coin. But with the difficulty in the coin exchanges, wild price swings, and not having nearly the history that gold and silver have, it remains to be seen whether cyber will replace the metals as an inflation hedge.

In this analysts opinion, the reasons given above tell me gold and silver are still the safer and more dependable inflation hedge. That may change at some point, but for now, its the metal of kings for my inflation protection asset.

Marc Cuniberti holds a B.A in Economics with honors from San Diego State University and is the host of Money Matters carried on 66 stations nationwide. California Insurance LIc# 0L34249. Call him at 530-559-1214 or visit http://www.moneymanagementradio.com

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Marc Cuniberti: Bitcoin, gold and silver - The Union

The Bitcoin Water Trust, an exponential growth fund by nonprofit charity: water for providing clean water to people in developing countries, has reached its goal of raising 100 BTC, reported Forbes. The fund received its one-hundredth bitcoin after the Winklevoss brothers, founders of the Gemini bitcoin exchange, personally matched the first 50 BTC donated to the trust.

Charity: water began accepting Bitcoin in 2014, using the proceeds to fund the construction of new water projects around the world, said the founder and CEO of charity: water, Scott Harrison, per the report. We came up with the Bitcoin Water Trust after we converted a total of 569 Bitcoin donated to us at spot prices along the way.

The initiative was announced at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami and sought to attract bitcoin donations with a unique treasury management strategy, HODL MODL. The nonprofit committed to holding all bitcoin received by the fund until January 2025, when the proceeds will start being used to fund charity: waters efforts to bring clean water to where it is needed most.

If we liquidated the trust today, we could bring clean and safe drinking water to more than 130,000 people. But we believe this fund will have an even greater impact over time, said Harrison.

Charity: water received its first bitcoin donation back in 2014 from professional skater Tony Hawk. The athlete donated 5 BTC, which the nonprofit instantly converted to cash when one BTC sold for just $314. After seeing missed opportunities for holding onto their received bitcoin, charity: water devised the Bitcoin Water Trust.

In the past, weve converted BTC to fiat currency to fund the construction of new water projects, however we believe in 2025 and beyond, well have more options to use the BTC from the fund to directly fund work across many of the 21 countries where charity: water is active, Harrison added. Were in the process of putting together an advisory board to work on the strategy, with the goal of helping as many people get clean water as possible through the fund.

Charity: water hopes to use BTC directly starting in 2025, instead of having to convert to cash. Harrison also urged his fellow nonprofit leaders to consider adopting bitcoin, which he believes can be used as a force for good in the world, helping to lift people out of extreme poverty and provide them with the basic needs to flourish, according to the report.

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The Bitcoin Water Trust Reaches 100 Bitcoin - Bitcoin Magazine

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) addresses a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, October 6, 2021.

Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

AUSTIN, TEXAS The Texas power grid is struggling with fluctuating energy prices and sporadic service, but the state's growing bitcoin mining community believes it can help fix it.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz agrees. "A lot of the discussion around bitcoin views bitcoin as a consumer of energy," said Cruz at an event in October. "The perspective I'm suggesting is very much the reverse, which is as a way to strengthen our energy infrastructure."

The grid is called ERCOT short for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which is the organization tasked with operating it and it's fussy and temperamental.

ERCOT powers about 90% of the state, but to run smoothly, it requires a perfect balance between supply and demand. Having too much power and not enough buyers is just as bad as everyone wanting to fire up their AC units on the same day in July.

Maintaining that balance has proven to be a real challenge this year, and Texans are feeling it.

The price of power per hour is all over the place, routinely going negative. Rolling blackouts at moments of peak power consumption no longer come as a surprise. A lot of people lost faith in the grid altogether after a winter storm earlier this year resulted in a multi-system meltdown that "was within minutes of a much more serious and potentially complete blackout."

Crypto enthusiasts believe the fix to this problem is actually to add another electricity consumer into the mix a buyer who will take as much power as they're given, whatever the time of day, and are just as willing to power down with a few seconds' notice. These flexible buyers are bitcoin miners.

Mining for cryptocurrencies is the computationally intensive process by which new tokens are created and transactions of existing digital coins are verified.

At the Texas Blockchain Summit in October, Cruz pointed to the ability of bitcoin miners to turn their rigs on or off within seconds a feature that is hugely beneficial during times when energy needs to be shifted back to the grid to meet demand.

"If you have a moment where you have a power shortage or a power crisis, whether it's a freeze or some other natural disaster where power generation capacity goes down, that creates the capacity to instantaneously shift that energy to put it back on the grid," Cruz said of the ability of bitcoin miners to shut down their operations within seconds.

But not all are convinced that bitcoin miners are the solution.

"Miners are a strain on the grid, not a help," said Ben Hertz-Shargel of Wood Mackenzie, a provider of commercial intelligence for the world's natural resources sector. Hertz-Shargel is concerned that bitcoin mining would only raise peak demand, ultimately adding stress to the system.

ERCOT has a heartbeat. That may sound like a romantic metaphor, but it actually gives off a hum like when a guitar isn't properly plugged into an amp.

It's the sound of 60 hertz, a frequency common to all grids in North America. A steady tone means there's as much electricity going onto the grid as there is coming off it. If the power supply surpasses customer demand, the beat speeds up. If customers use more power than what's available on the grid, the heartbeat slows down.

The grid can manage small gyrations to its heartbeat, according to Shaun Connell, the EVP of power at Lancium, a Houston-based energy tech company that specializes in bitcoin mining. But Connell tells CNBC that when ERCOT's grid pulse falls to 59.4 Hertz or below for more than nine minutes, machines start to protect themselves by automatically shutting off and disconnecting from the grid. In some cases, that might mean power plants going dark.

If the heartbeat falls even farther than that, it could trigger a "heart attack" scenario. Think grid-wide blackout and a hard restart of the whole system.

These fluctuations also correspond to the grid's volatile price swings. Connell tells CNBC that in 2020, the price of energy in West Texas was negative between 10% and 20% of the time. The price dips below zero when supply outpaces demand.

So far this year, the price of power per hour has been negatively priced 9% of the time, while 5% of all hours this year have peaked above $100.

Extreme tails like the ones shown in the chart below aren't a good thing.

Keeping a steady heartbeat is tough for ERCOT for a couple of reasons.

For one, the Texas grid functions as its own isolated and deregulated electrical island. Unlike the rest of the continental U.S., which belongs to either the Eastern or Western interconnection (the names of the two American power grids linking states), 90% of Texas runs on ERCOT. This means ERCOT cannot quickly turn to neighbors for help when large generators trip offline or renewables do not deliver as expected. This can prove especially problematic when there's a natural disaster, like the winter storm in early 2021.

ERCOT's market-driven approach to energy planning shows up in another feature and occasional shortcoming of the grid: Its "just-in-time" delivery model. At the best of times, this saves everybody money. No one needs to hoard backup fuel when Texas' elaborate underground maze of wells and pipes can deliver it on demand. But February laid bare the worst-case scenario, when the state's natural gas production (burning natural gas is a major source of electricity for the state) fell by almost half during the cold snap.

Third, Texas is flush with renewables and rapidly onboarding these inherently unstable sources of power to its grid. While this is helping to decarbonize ERCOT by replacing less environmentally friendly power sources like coal and natural gas with wind and solar, renewable energy is unpredictable. At any given hour, it could be breezy and sunny, or it could be cloudy with no wind, meaning the grid has to brace for all renewable energy to go offline at any point and have a backup power source on deck.

Finally, the state's biggest population centers are often far from where power is generated. For example, low-cost renewable energy sites stretch across West Texas, hours from major hubs like Dallas and Austin.

Or take the rural town of Rockdale. It was once home to the largest aluminum plant in the world, run by Alcoa. But starting in 2008, it began to shut down its operations. That energy capacity was going to waste, as it would've been prohibitively expensive to build the transmission capacity necessary to carry it to major population centers. The arrival of crypto miners helped to resolve that imbalance by consuming the surplus energy.

To ensure grid reliability at all times, demand must be even with supply. ERCOT operators can tinker with the supply side, spinning natural gas turbines up or down on short notice to make up for the volatility of renewables, but typically, grid operators aim to reduce customer demand to maintain balance.

Through established "demand response" programs, ERCOT will actually pay major industrial users to cut power. If that curtailment does not prove sufficient, the grid can also request that residential buyers conserve their power use voluntarily. And when all else fails, ERCOT can run rolling blackouts, shutting down different parts of the state in quick succession but with no one patch suffering an outage for an extended period of time.

The problem with that first and best option is that many of these arrangements between ERCOT and energy buyers require response times of ten to thirty minutes. But because ERCOT is going it alone, the grid requires a much faster reaction, sometimes in the range of sub-seconds, according to Lancium's Connell.

This is where bitcoin mining comes into play. Miners function as "interruptible load," meaning they are able to turn off all of their machines with a few seconds' notice when the grid is in a pinch and needs the extra power. Bitcoin has no uptime requirement, nor is the gear worn down by regularly powering off and on.

It also makes good economic sense for the miners. Miners commit to buying a certain amount of power,and either use it for mining if the grid doesn't need it, or sell it back at a profit if the grid demands it.

Transmission towers are shown on June 15, 2021 in Houston, Texas. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which controls approximately 90% of the power in Texas, has requested Texas residents to conserve power through Friday as temperatures surge in the state.

Brandon Bell | Getty Images

"Imagine how much you would have to pay Amazon to say, 'Hey, there's too much demand for power. Please power down your data center,'" said bitcoin mining engineer Brandon Arvanaghi, who now runs Meow, a company that enables corporate treasury participation in crypto markets.

"But it can do that with bitcoin very easily, because all you have to do is pay the miners slightly more than what they would have made mining for bitcoin that hour," continued Arvanaghi.

Even bitcoin miners that haven't cut a deal with ERCOT sometimes voluntarily power down at times of peak consumption when prices shoot higher.

Lancium is building bitcoin mines where wind and solar are abundant and the transmission system is constrained, meaning that power wants to flow down the line, but the lines are full.

As Lancium Chief Executive Officer Michael McNamara describes it, these sites act like a large power station but in reverse. The mines will absorb abundant renewable energy at times when supply outpaces demand, thereby monetizing these assets when there are no other buyers. And on the flip side, the mines will incrementally ramp down their energy intake, as demand on the grid rises.

In a sense, you can almost think of bitcoin miners as temporary buyers keeping these energy assets operational until the grid is able to fully absorb them.

"In times of scarcity, our data centers will go down, and those lines can carry the renewable energy to Houston, Dallas and Austin where they need the energy," said McNamara.

McNamara tells CNBC the net effect of this is retiring coal and gas faster, while rapidly adding wind and solar at the same time, essentially making bitcoin mining a fundamentally decarbonizing technology.

Bitcoin can also be used to unlock the state's sequestered deposits of natural gas.

For years, oil and gas companies have struggled with the problem of what to do when they accidentally hit a natural gas formation while drilling for oil. Whereas oil can easily be trucked out to a remote destination, gas delivery requires a pipeline.

If a drilling site is right next door to a pipeline, they chuck the gas in and take whatever cash the buyer on the other end is willing to pay that day. But if it's 20 miles from a pipeline, things start to get more complicated.

More often than not, the gas well won't be big enough to warrant the time and expense of building an entirely new pipeline. If a driller can't immediately find a way to sell the stash of natural gas, most look to dispose of it on site.

One method is to vent it, which releases methane directly into the air a poor choice for the environment, as its greenhouse effects are shown to be much stronger than carbon dioxide. A more environmentally friendly option is to flare it, which means actually lighting the gas on fire.

But flares are only 75% to 90% efficient, according to Adam Ortolf, who heads up business development in the U.S. for Upstream Data, a company that manufactures and supplies portable mining solutions for oil and gas facilities. "Even with a flare, some of the methane is being vented without being combusted," he said.

This is when on-site bitcoin mining can prove to be especially impactful.

Ortolf says that when the methane is run into an engine or generator, 100% of the methane is combusted and none of it leaks or vents into the air.

"But nobody will run it through a generator unless they can make money, because generators cost money to acquire and maintain," he said. "So unless it's economically sustainable, producers won't internally combust the gas."

Bitcoin makes it economically sustainable.

"50% of the natural gas in this country that is flared, is being flared in the Permian right now in West Texas. I think that is an enormous opportunity for bitcoin, because that's right now energy that is just being wasted," said Cruz in October.

Hertz-Shargel from Wood Mackenzie predicts that bitcoin could more than double demand growth in ERCOT's territory, but unlike Cruz, he doesn't think that additional demand is a good thing.

"The analogy I like to use is that if you start smoking two packs a day and then cut back to one pack on holidays, that doesn't make smoking good for your health," he says.

"The net impact is a very large addition of load onto the grid," agrees AdrianShelley, who runs the Texas branch of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy and lobbying group. Shelley suspects that not all of that consumption is concentrated during times where there is a surplus of energy.

"I don't know that it would be the case that they would only use energy that there otherwise wasn't demand for," Shelley told CNBC.

Hertz-Shargel argues that ERCOT should be focused on grid improvements to make it easier to get power from solar and wind farms to big consumption centers, and that bitcoin miners aren't the right way to deal with demand fluctuations. Instead, he argues, "the intermittency of renewables should be met with demand response from societally-beneficial loads, like industrial facilities, commercial buildings, and residential air conditioners or energy storage."

But ERCOTinterim CEO Brad Jones thinks bitcoin miners can be helpful.

Jones has been touring the state and hosting public events to answer questions from Texans about the electric grid. Besides winter weather, the impact of cryptocurrency mining on the grid is a common question.

"I'm pro bitcoin...but I'm too risk averse to be an investor in bitcoin," Jones told a crowd of residents in Frisco, Texas on Wednesday night. The ERCOT chief went on to explain the mutually beneficial relationship between the grid and bitcoin miners.

"A lot of these solar and wind can produce power down to a negative power range, negative $23 per megawatt hour," Jones said. "These bitcoins see that as a great opportunity. They can get paid to use power. And that's why they're coming to the state. But that's not necessarily bad."

Jones makes the point that negative power isn't healthy for the market. Bitcoin miners "soak up" some of that negative power, and when the cost of electricity gets slightly higher than what they're willing to pay for it (around $100, according to Jones), they shut off.

"So I think it's really a valuable potential resource for us."

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Bitcoin miners say they're helping to fix the broken Texas electric grid and Ted Cruz agrees - CNBC

OMAHA, NEBRASKA - MAY 5: (FILE PHOTO) Warren Buffett (L) and Berkshire-Hathaway partner Charlie ... [+] Munger address members of the press May 5, 2002 in Omaha, Nebraska. The Schwarzenegger for Governor campaign announced that Buffett will serve as Arnold Schwarzenegger's economic advisor in his California gubernatorial bid. Buffett is chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, an insurance and investment holding company. (Photo by Eric Francis/Getty Images)

Bitcoin naysayers usually have the same threads of critique: sometimes environmental, sometimes distributional. There is consideration of the morality of bitcoin as well as the soundness of investment. Seldom is there the ability to make a direct comparison between their support of what fills their wallets otherwise and their position, however except for in the case of Charlie Munger and investors like him.

The 97-year old Berkshire Hathaway partner has long been a skeptic of cryptocurrencies. Claiming that Chinas crackdown on bitcoin mining and transaction exchanges was good because it reined in the excesses of capitalism, he extolled his admiration for a exchanges ban and then a mining ban that was a half-hearted attempt to shut down a global, open-source network. He has been on record as saying that he hates the Bitcoin success, a currency thats useful for kidnappers and extortionists and so forth.

This dovetails with his remarks on the Chinese system performing better for the Chinese in using tougher methods than we could use under our Constitution assumably an euphemism for the state-sponsored massacre of working-class protesters around Tiananmen Square, the mass surveillance and detainment of ethnic minorities (including, but not limited, to Tibetans and Uyghurs), and the complete consolidation of Chinese Communist Party privilege and power in protecting against both sexual harassment claims and familial corruption from non-Party elite not to mention the kidnapping of nationals from around the world for the extortion of Party goals.

These are not just words. This comes with significant levels of investment in Chinese companies and always pushing Berkshire to do more in China according to his long-time partner Warren Buffett.

Yet, Munger mistakes the current Chinese system as beneficial for all Chinese peoples rather than just investors like him, and speaks with two voices here.

On the one hand, he prefers democracy and the American system at least for the American people. Yet on the other, he extolls and prefers that the United States conducts itself in the same anti-democratic fashion as is typical of the Chinese Communist Party: congratulating the muzzling of Alibabas Jack Ma at least in the financial sector.

One would not be amiss to wonder how true his words about supporting democracy ring and his strand of thought in ringfencing the way the Chinese state deals with financial matters while setting aside the consolidated source of that power.

Given that bitcoin is a system of participatory democracy (with an interplay between code contributors, miners, and other stakeholders) with a strong binding set of covenants based on principle (ex: the hard constraint of 21 million bitcoin), it may be clearer why Munger might think of it as rat poison now.

On this front, both the Chinese Communist Party and Munger are aligned. What could be more threatening to a system that wants complete control over the past, present and future than a truly internationalized hedge against financial surveillance standards, anti-censorship of funds, and the truth-sayers it can empower? The answer: a system like bitcoin that prides itself on first principles for eliminating arbitrary and powerful intermediaries that may no longer be needed.

What does transparency for the powerful, privacy for the weak mean for a ruling elite that uses anti-corruption campaigns to settle scores, where the slightest tendril of truth uncovers murders, elite children fraternizing with drunk prostitutes, and immense family stakes in state-owned companies? And what does that mean for those who have blinded themselves to these facts, and who hold their money and financial trust in the hands of that same consolidated elite, a ruling caste that maintains its power through factors like family history rather than explicit, fair consent across a broad public democracy, in other words?

Mungers money talks louder than his words, in any case, on the conditions of the excesses of capitalism that he decries. Its bubbling asset prices that make it hard for value investors like him that matter: left unsaid (but certainly invested) are the conditions of the excesses of state-driven capitalism that keep his investments in China safe and which are typical of the heavy-handed approach the Chinese state uses for economics: the detainment of labor and feminist activists including a wave of young women concerned about #MeToo in China (), income inequality that has exceeded astronomically high levels in the United States thanks to the Partys rigid enforcement of location-based economic castes, social anomie and the decay of the social fabric in China and complete oversight from the Party, which means, among other things, imprisoning dissenting voices and ethnicities.

Leaving that aside however (and it is quite something to leave any of it aside), Munger uses the curious and utilitarian example of Chinas one-child rule as an example of state control that has led to great success. Yet, right as China is now looking to enter another phase of economic development, it is also getting older than any country in modern history largely due to 36 years of the one-child policy. With the fertility rate below replacement rate and so far a lukewarm approach to the culture and policy required for global immigration (which has helped slow the United States from demographic decline), we may be seeing the consequences of this freedom-stifling policy in real time not only as morally questionable, but as bad policy.

What Munger and investors like him seem to fail to understand is that bitcoin is not only about approaching freedom and financial access from a first principles standpoint, using human discretion over technology governed by consent from humans across the system it is also a practical refutation of the idea that mass-scale control with long-tail consequences over unpredictable data is sound.

Chinas techno-nationalist rise is premised on a state-biased flavour of technology using large and exhaustive data sets stored safely in domestic borders, some a result of extensive state and firm surveillance, and a careful count of computational resources under centralized control to leapfrog countries in the West it considers too comfortable to do anything much about this state of affairs.

Bitcoin, an open-source technology where anybody can participate, and an internationalized one at that, is a direct affront to the level of financial surveillance and individual-level controls the digital yuan (in the form of individual-level interest rates, for example) might offer and is also a philosophical hedge against exactly this model, promoting with it encryption, individual consent, and a system that doesnt favor any Party elite in economics or otherwise.

Bitcoin, in its blending of many voices and perspectives across a broad spectrum, is more akin to the bottoms-up of Bach, a set of solitudes brought together into harmonious concert by game theory, rather than the trumpting, blaring and triumphal tone typical of Beethoven. In its subtle nature, it allows for Wall Street to invest in decentralization as Wall Street has invested in Chinese Marxism.

By eroding the level of control states can have to execute this level of control over the financial health of their peoples, bitcoin is a technological and philosophical refutation of the model of governance and shaky, repression-biased, and anti-democratic methodology the Chinese Communist Party favors and which Munger seems more comfortable with than the democratizing technology of bitcoin.

Rat poison indeed.

See the rest here:
Charlie Munger: More Comfortable With The Chinese Communist Party Than Bitcoin? - Forbes

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In this episode of Bitcoin Magazines Fed Watch'' podcast, Christian Keroles and I sat down with Tom Luongo of Gold Goats N Guns to talk about Europe and central bank politics. We went into the weeds, talked about whats happening behind closed doors as it were, in a discussion that you wont find on any other show. Luongos theories revolve around his idea of the primarily European/Western elites which he sums up as Davos man. It was a wide-ranging discussion which I outline below.

You can find all of Luongos content on his website. I recommend going back to episodes 75 through 77 to get a summary of Davos man and his geopolitical framework. Luongo is a long-time bitcoin advocate, so of course, we discussed what bitcoin means geopolitically in this time of great change.

I read a post from Luongo that was syndicated to Zero Hedge several months ago. In that post he was calling the European elites Davos man. I was struck by this framing, because it perfectly summed up the elites of the declining world order in my general geopolitical framework. Luongo described them as, all the people who think they run the world.

Their calling cards are globalization, international institutions (like NATO, the EU and the UN), climate change, and a global tax regime. He summed it up as communists, and Id add to that that they are global communists.

The goal of Davos is to reverse WWII, where European economies were destroyed and capital fled to the U.S. This time, they want to cause global chaos outside of Europe, and make the EU the center for capital flight in the coming decades.

Luongo framed the current struggle as a battle between Davos man and Wall Street. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is not Janet Yellen; he is loyal to U.S. money interests in a way that contradicts Davos full court press against the world.

Luongo filled in our blanks on why Powell is different. For the last year, Keroles and I, on Fed Watch have been saying that Powell is a straight shooter. We sensed he was different than the typical central bank elite. Now I see that this central banking elite is part of the Davos world order.

Powell has stiff-armed central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and provided monetary facilities that have maintained U.S. dollar dominance in the global financial system. Luongo went into why his renomination is so important, because it is like drawing a red line the U.S. will not play Davos game anymore. Cinderella favorite Lael Brainard was passed up for chairman of the Fed because her appointment by the U.S. Senate was questionable, and because of her deep connections to the Chinese Communist Party through her husband have surfaced.

In the second half of the show, our conversation went into the weeds on specific hotspots around the world. We were in agreement that Europe is in a lot of trouble. But where I am concerned about Russias natural geopolitical drive for strategic depth and its waning demographic time bomb, Luongo was not as worried because Russia does not want to be dragged into a war.

To give you an idea of the ground we covered quickly at the end of the podcast, we brought in Afghanistan and why that was such a pivotal event, MacKinder and Brzezinskis heartland theory, and the U.S.s return to non-interventionism.

See the original post here:
Bitcoin And The Fall Of Davos Man - Bitcoin Magazine