conspiracy theory – the paradise paradox

The Story: Have government agents infiltrated Bitcoin?

If you created a system that could potentially displace a lot of existing organisations – large, powerful organisations – rendering them obsolete and removing their sources of funding, you could reasonably expect that some people from those groups wouldn’t be too happy about it. They will most likely decide to take action – perhaps even criminal action – in order to protect their interests. That’s why when Bitcoin was created, it made sense that its inventor (or inventors) decided to remain anonymous.

The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto remains unknown, and as far as we know, no longer has anything to do with the project. So they are most likely safe from reprisal. Yet, what about the people who are involved in the project today? If powerful people wanted to slow down or even destroy Bitcoin, how would they do it? The decentralised, anti-fragile nature of the system makes it too strong for an attack using software. But the developers’ identities are public, and the discussion boards are public. Anyone with sufficient resources could begin to corrupt these groups using money, violence, threats of violence, and sowing seeds of confusions in public forums – perhaps even creating entire companies to subtly undermine the integrity of the project.

In this episode, Kurt looks at a couple of historical examples of how “law enforcement” organisations are willing to get their hands dirty for questionable purposes, and speculates how similar strategies could be used to unhinge the Bitcoin community – or other digital currency communities. He discusses how Hoover used the FBI to act out his prejudices against black Americans, how London Metropolitan policemen were involved in sexual relationships as part of their undercover operations, and the types of unusual comments that float around among prominent Bitcoiners, that raise the question of whether Bitcoin has been compromised.

Join me on a journey of infiltration, deception and mystery in the next episode of … The Paradise Paradox!

The Eps:

Dash digital cash vs Bitcoin: Which will achieve mass adoption first? – Episode 154

Bitcoin vs Dash: Ridiculous comments about Dash – Episode 157

The Links:

Anarchast – Opening Yourself Up to The World, Living Freely and Enjoying the Ride with Kurt Robinson

Just being black was enough – The Nation

Tape shows Nixon feared Hoover – NY Times

Undercover agents fathered children – The Antimedia

Undercover police had children with activists – The Guardian

Luke JR’s $5 comment on Reddit

Lesser known reasons to keep blocks small in the words of Bitcoin Core developers

In-Q-Tel on Wikipedia

In-Q-Tel’s website

The Cash:

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The Episode:

To download the audio, right click and press “save as”.

Remember to subscribe on iTunes or subscribe on Pocket Casts.

If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.

The Episode:

To download the audio, right click and press “save as”.

Remember to subscribe on iTunes or subscribe on Pocket Casts.

If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.

The Cash:

The Story:

There is an increasing number of people on the Internet discussing the hypothesis that people have been deceived about the shape of the earth. The rate that people have been googling the term “flat earth” has been steadily increasing since January 2015, and took a huge jump in January 2016. It’s unusual to think that people can become so obsessed about something which, at least on the surface, has such little influence on their lives. This seems to demonstrate a couple of things: 1. in the information age, people are curious, and 2. people do not like being deceived, or having the feeling that they might be deceived.

A common question when this subject is raised is, why would someone even want to do such a thing? Why would someone want to deceive the world in such a way that seems so pointless and so abstract, so far away from the everyday lives of regular people? There are actually several reasons. The first is bureaucracy – if a national space administration of a large government were to lie, saying that they’d explored outer space, and in doing so, confirmed that the earth were a certain shape, they would have to continue to uphold that lie almost no matter what, in an attempt to continue their funding and justify their own positions. A second explanation is that powerful people want to control the symbols and the lenses with which we view the world, because, through that method, they can continue to manipulate our perspective of the world. Another explanation is that powerful, perhaps psychopathic people, have ends which are unfathomable to normal, empathetic people, because their concept of what the world should look like is so far removed from our own conception.

In this episode, I encourage you to join me in donning a tin-foil hat and imagining a world that has been manipulated into believing a lie about the shape of their earth. What might the world look like? Why would they do it? How would they do it? And why is it important that you keep wondering? Join me in a Coriolis-effecting, globe-spinning, firmament-penetrating episode of … The Paradise Paradox!