Tag: global financial crisis

Episode 84 – Bitcoin Price Factors

by Kurt Robinson on January 26, 2016 in Podcast • 0 Comments

The Episode:

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The Story:

In December 2015, Martin Rojko of CoinTelegraph.com asked several Bitcoin experts what they expected the price of a bitcoin to be by the end of 2016. The guru, public speaker and “rockstar” of Bitcoin, Andreas Antonopoulos, searched his soul and summoned the wisdom from the depths of his being, and answered: “I don’t do price speculation. It’s astrology for markets and I think it is irresponsible for media companies to do this.”

The fact is, nobody in the world knows what the price of bitcoin is going to be in a month, much less a year. However, taking a snapshot at this stage of the bitcoin evolution, there are four factors which will probably play a huge part in determining the price over the coming years.

The amount of venture capital and angel investment pouring into Bitcoin companies.

In 2013, digital currency related startups has attracted investment of $25 million in VC funding. In 2014, “In total, bitcoin startup investments now total over $400M in aggregate funding” (Source: CBInsights), and in 2015 VC investments ‘topped $1 billion’ (Source: Bloomberg). However this remains to be fully realised in the bitcoin unit price. Big names such as Nasdaq, American Express and Visa are also investing in Bitcoin startups.

Bitcoin has possibilities for endless programmable applications, which will go on to disrupt various industries. However, it is clear that the first target and the primary industry of focus is finance and banking. For 2016, Venture capitalist Tim Draper anticipates many Bitcoin consumer applications, the US government to recognise Bitcoin as a currency and perhaps the first Bitcoin unicorn – that is, the first billion dollar Bitcoin start-up. With all this money and focused effort going into the development of Bitcoin applications as it’s used for international remittances platforms, micropayment, crowdfunding of public works projects, smart contracts and peer-to-peer lending, it can only be bullish for the price, as Bitcoin is used more widely.

2. A decrease in the production of Bitcoin in July 2016.

At time of writing, 25 BTC are produced every ten minutes by diligent miners. In July 2016, the block reward will halve. A stable demand with a reduced supply tends to lead to an increased price. It’s possible that holders of BTC will start buying more in the preceding months, in anticipation of the reduction.

3. Possible failures of the incumbent banking system.

Many people, especially in the Austrian economics camp, are becoming increasingly concerned about a failure of the banking system. Financial gurus such as Mike Maloney have forecast the possibilities of deflation, big inflation, or even hyperinflation of the US dollar, which could have profound effects on the world economy. For many, holding bitcoins is seen as risky. But is it as risky as holding a fiat currency, which has very limited scarcity, and may be printed to oblivion by the perverse symbiotic relationship between a central bank and a national treasury? In times of crisis, or in anticipation of times of crisis, when governments around the world are clamping down capital controls to say who can move what money where, it wouldn’t be surprising if people decided to move it into the most portable money that has ever existed: bitcoins.

The understanding of Bitcoin in public consciousness

Since Bitcoin first leapt into the media, it has been trashed, slandered, accused of being a tool of terrorists and violent drug cartels, and declared unstable and even dead many, many times. However, the sentiment in the media is slowly changing, with many starting to see that cryptocurrency is not going away in a hurry, and there may be real news beyond a sensational headline.

We can see in the statistics on Blockchain.Info that the rate of adoption appears to be steady, or increasing, in the rate of daily transactions and in the total number of addresses.

Perhaps soon, people will start to realise that it’s possible, not just to use Bitcoin to evade capital controls, but also to use it to evade taxes, and government control in general, turning many markets into black markets, and using blockchain technology to distribute state secrets anonymously, realising the dream of the Crypto-Anarchist’s Manifesto. By that stage, perhaps the price will be irrelevant, because the value will be obvious.

The Eps:

Episode 75 – Andreas Antonopoulos: The Disruptarian

Episode 77 – Jeff Berwick: The Dollar Vigilante

Episode 80 – Diego Gutiérrez: SystemaD

The Links:

Bitcoin has died for the 89th time

Experts expect bitcoin price to reach a big number in 2016

China’s stockmarket crash affects all of us

Bitcoin as an asset could help balance portfolios

Bitcoin’s upcoming killer app: Open Bazaar

How to position for the rally in Bitcoin

Bitcoin is built to incite peaceful anarchy

Record highs predicted as new supply halves

Episode 77 – Jeff Berwick: The Dollar Vigilante

by Kurt Robinson on December 18, 2015 in Podcast • 0 Comments

The Episode:

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The Story:

I asked Jeff Berwick if he thought the global financial system was going to get worse by the end of 2015. His response: “I actually expect it to get worse. If it doesn’t, 2016 is going to be a bloodbath.”

Jeff Berwick has been an entrepreneur for many years, with one of his first businesses, stockhouse.com, eventually selling for millions of dollars. Now he lives in sunny Acapulco with his family, enjoying the Mexican lifestyle and running several businesses, including the alternative financial media outlet The Dollar Vigilante. In 2010, Berwick predicted that the US dollar would collapse within 5-10 years, and we’re now entering that period.

Berwick gained some more notoriety in August 2015, when he started releasing a series of videos predicting a global financial crisis similar to that of 2007, based around the infamous “seven year cycle” – well-known on Wall Street – in conjunction with the Hebrew calendar. His claim was that the seven year cycle of crashes normally falls into alignment with this ancient calendar. In the following months, there were stockmarket crashes in the US, China, and Australia, though they haven’t yet fallen with the force that many were expecting. Is it possible that the attention from Jeff’s videos and Jonathan Cahn’s book “The Harbinger”
caused the global elite to alter their plans?

I ask Jeff about that in this interview, as well as questions about how Bitcoin might improve the economy for impoverished communities in Latin America, how people from all over the world appreciate the freedom in Mexico, about a potential collapse in 2016, and about his experiences with shamanic medicine such as ayahuasca and iboga. Join us in another bank-running, dollar-collapsing, soul-rattling journey in this episode of … The Paradise Paradox!

The Eps:

Episode 70 – Glencore Risk: Credit Crunch Crisis Crash

Episode 62 – Global Crisis: A False Economy

The Links:

The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery that Holds the Secret of America’s Future

Jeff Berwick’s speech at LaBITconf

LaBITconf stream day 1

LaBITconf stream day 2

Graham Hancock – The War on Consciousness

Global Ibogaine Conference

Currency Collapse Normalcy Bias

by Kurt Robinson on November 24, 2015 in Politics • 0 Comments

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If you’re not looking for alternatives to government, modern democracy and economies dominated by centralised control of currency, then you’re just not aware how bad things are. To go about your daily life, you might not have to confront these issues. Though you complain to the cashier about prices rising and blame the person or company that’s right in front of you, though you never stop to think about the deeper causes. You complain to your insurance agent that his prices have risen 10%, while the CPI is at 2.6%, but you never question why such a thing as a CPI exists in the first place.

It’s something like living in what you think is a happy marriage – a “satisfied” marriage . You’re more or less nice to your partner and your partner is more or less nice to you. You live together; you’re both financially comfortable; perhaps you even share intimacy from time to time. Yet, one day you wake up and can’t ignore the signs that your partner is cheating on you, or has no passion, or is completely indifferent to your presence. You drive to work and yell at the guy who cuts you off, and that sudden outburst gives you the chance to bury your overwhelming suspicions. You distract yourself with your work, forget about your paranoid, careful, and accurate analysis, and push yourself in denial for another few months. That is something like how a first-world central bank-dominated economy is. You can ignore it, and deny it, until one ominous day, in which you cannot.

Many people in the world don’t have that privilege – the privilege of ignorance of how badly they are being fucked. They have that personal knowledge because they have lived through several economic crises, currency collapses and devaluations. They’ve had to walk in the rain to trade Deutschmarks for pounds with shady characters in a dark alley. They’ve had to walk into a supermarket with the dread that a ruble is no longer worth five “standard units”, and they may not have the money to cover their groceries.

Normalcy bias affects everyone who has some semblance of normalcy in their life, and the more normalcy they have, and the longer it is sustained, the greater the bias.

The question is, what is going to happen in those countries where people have never really gone through an economic collapse or a currency crash, when it finally happens? What happens if the US dollar collapses, reducing central banks’ reserves to worthlessness? How far do the dominoes fall? Are people going to panic? Will there be a state of anomie, with people looting and killing for food and water? Will people be reduced to shock when they realise things that were once commonplace are, at least for today, impossible? What happens if there’s nothing in the supermarket? What happens if there is something in the supermarket, but the hundreds of dollars in your bank account are not worth anything by the time you get there?

Episode 62 – Global Crisis: A False Economy

by Kurt Robinson on October 5, 2015 in Podcast • 0 Comments

The Episode:

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The Story:

Many people poking around the Internet have been acutely aware that something big might happen around September 13th or September 23rd 2015, having watched Jeff Berwick’s Shemitah videos or read “The Harbinger”, or having calculated the days between financial collapses in the Wall Street “Seven Year Cycle”. Then the dates passed, and, depending where you were, it might have seemed like absolutely nothing happened. Another December 2012, another non-event, no end of the world and no financial collapse. However, when we look at the news a little more closely, we can see that something did happen, and the events may have put the world economy onto the edge of a precipice.

Sharemarket corrections occurred in the USA, the UK, Australia, and China, among others. Australia’s stockmarket has been plummeting down since April, and on September 29 the ASX 200 took a 3% hit, sending its price down below 5000 for the first time since July 2013. The market recovered, but still seem reminiscent of sudden recoveries that happened right before the Global Financial Crisis really set in.

A few months ago, the Greek government instated capital controls, preventing the flow of money, restricting withdrawals to 66 euros per day. A few days ago, the Chinese government took a similar measure, restricting transactions to 50,000 yuan ($7,800) from October 1st till the end of the year, and 100,000 yuan ($15,600) for the whole of 2016. Capital controls are commonly a desperate measure, an indication that a currency is failing – that too much damage has already been done. If Greece finds itself in such a position, and China finds itself in a similar position, shall we see the same fate for the rest of the PIIGS, and the rest of the BRICS?

It’s a great show, and if you’ve been smart, hopefully you don’t have front row seats, because people in the first three rows will get wet. Could we be heading for the next global financial crisis? We explore this economic rollercoaster on the next episode of … The Paradise Paradox!

[Edit: Kurt said in this episode that it’s not possible to buy physical silver in Russia, but it turns out that is inaccurate. Many Russian banks will sell silver certificates, or allocated holdings, but at certain branches you can also buy physical silver, and there are coin shops and online outlets as well.]

The Links:

The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery that Holds the Secret of America’s Future

Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis

The Synchronicity Key: The Hidden Intelligence Guiding the Universe and You

Jeff Berwick – Shemitah Exposed

Jeff Berwick – Shemitah Exposed II

Corruption Perception Index on Wikipedia

Indonesia bans foreign currencies

China Imposes Capital Controls, Selling Billions of Dollars

Bartering Platform Offers Way To Sidestep Capital Controls in Greece

Why Did The Aus Sharemarket Lose So Much Money on Vice

Meet the Venezuelan Rebel with the Unofficial Exchange Rate

Dolar Today – Venezuelan exchange rates

Cover image used and modified under Creative Commons.

Episode 46 – The Dox News Box July 2015

by Kurt Robinson on July 12, 2015 in Podcast • 0 Comments

The Episode:

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The Story:

On the fifth of July, the people of Greece voted in a referendum on whether to accept new austerity measures, or to reject them. When the people voted no, there was footage of people celebrating in the streets, and it was hailed as a democratic success. Have the Greek people really succeeded in anything by this referendum? Or did they just get the democratic choice of the colour of rope which will be used to hang them?

Vaccines are an increasingly controversial subject. Some people are afraid to take them, and some are afraid not to. People can get passionate or even angry about it if you do nothing more than ask their opinion. Some pro-vaxxers claim that any potential risks are miniscule. Some anti-vaxxers claim the risks are known and potentially fatal. And some say it’s a matter of questions needing to be asked. With the complex legal issues sometimes barring legal action against vaccine manufacturers, and the media spin against any public figure who asks questions, is it even possible to know the truth?

Ever since the year 2000, people have been asking the eloquent question “So where are the fooking flying cars, mate?” There are many companies working on this problem, and with the availability of technology, materials and engineering information these days, it’s very possible that one of these companies might crack it very soon. What are the technologies that these companies are looking at, and how viable are they?

We ask these questions and more in this media circus of an episode of … The Paradise Paradox!

The Links:

Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi

Goodfellas

Tspiras asks for 30% debt haircut and 20 year grace period

Andreas M. Antonopoulos educates Senate of Canada about Bitcoin (Oct 8, 2014)

Red flag traffic laws in England and USA

Google self-driving cars “Free Ride”

Government OK’d support for flying car development

Drone that carries people

The Volocopter

People still insist this flying car will arrive by 2017 despite crash

Lexus says it has a real hoverboard

“You did it Jim Carrey” – vaccine article on Jezebel

“First they came for the anti-vaxxers” on LewRockwell.com

“16 years ago a doctor published a study and it made us all sicker” on Upworthy

Parents can’t sue vaccine manufacturers

Vaccine injury compensation programs

Episode 15 – Economic Collapse

by Kurt Robinson on February 23, 2015 in Podcast • 0 Comments

In this episode, we pool our economic thoughtpower together and attempt to make an estimate of what will happen in the world economy in the coming years. We reflect on some of the causes of the severe currency adjustment over 2014. We look at the actions of certain central banks – some increasing their money supplies, some staying stable for the moment, and some trying to increase their holdings of physical gold significantly. Is an another economic collapse around the corner?

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