|
|
CATO INSTITUTE ANALYST WARNS AGAINST FED CBDC PUSH
Nick Anthony of the libertarian Cato Institute has strongly criticized a White House summary factsheet drawn from just released agency reports on digital assets.
Anthony, a policy analyst with the Cato’s Center for Monetary and Fiscal Alternatives, made his comments in an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
He focused on the propaganda in the factsheet concerning the supposed faults of cryptos and the need for a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
“Really the greatest benefit that a CBDC can offer is not for you or me on the street, but rather for the government’s efforts to surveil financial activity. It gives them a new level of control over surveilling individual accounts… like being able to control it.”
Going further, Anthony argued that a CBDC would provide little else except surveillance and control abilities for government authorities:
“It’s almost fundamentally the same [to our current economic system] and yet, you have folks in the government that want to reinvent the entire money system, effectively experimenting with the money in all of our pockets and all of our accounts, to recreate something that largely isn’t too much different than what already exists,” said Anthony. “Albeit, with the one exception of the capabilities the government itself will have over it.”
The Trends Journal has been detailing exactly how a U.S. CBDC would differ from cryptocurrencies, and why it would almost certainly be abused by an out-of-control government already trampling Constitutionally guaranteed rights of Americans. See articles including:
- “FEDNOW WITH CYPHERIUM BLOCKCHAIN NOW IN BETA” (13 Sep 2022)
- “THE SAD JOURNEY TO AMERICAN SUNSET WILL COME WITH A SURVEILLANCE COIN” (16 Aug 2022)
- “ACLU CALLS FOR A RETAIL DIGITAL CASH THAT FUNCTIONS LIKE PHYSICAL CASH” (7 Jun 2022)
- “A PERVERSION OF CRYPTOCURRENCY” (21 Oct 2021)
- “CHINA SEES CRYPTOS AS EXISTENTIAL THREAT” (28 Sep 2021)
- “THE GEOPOLITICS OF BITCOIN” (27 Jul 2021)
DID ETHEREUM JUST BECOME A CENTRALIZED TOOL OF GLOBALISTS?
The Ethereum Merge so far hasn’t resulted in momentum for the crypto sector.
To be fair, when the rest of the economy is continuing to tank on more bad news regarding inflation, interest rate hikes, coming winter in Europe and more, the Merge was hardly going to save the day.
But now that Ethereum is a Proof Of Stake (PoW) network, consuming some 90 percent less energy than previously, what has it set up for the future?
Some have said Ethereum will now avoid the possible fate of Bitcoin, a Proof of Work (PoW) consensus network, in being targeted by the Biden administration for energy consumption.
Does anyone really believe that if the feds go after bitcoin, they won’t come sooner or later for other cryptos?
Going deeper down the rabbit hole, when it comes to Ethereum, perhaps now they don’t need to. The PoS change has made Etherum much more centralized.
And that means much more controllable.
How many addresses currently retain the lion’s share of staked ETH following the merge?
Bitwise crypto analyst Ryan Rasmussen observed:
“Since the successful completion of the Merge, the majority of the blocks—somewhere around 40% or more—have been built by two addresses belonging to Lido and Coinbase. It isn’t ideal to see more than 40% of blocks being settled by two providers, particularly one that is a centralized service provider (Coinbase).”
Rasmussen’s assessment was reported by Cointelegraph soon after the Merge took place.
ETH Merge to Crypto Pawn
The change in the Etherum network now makes it a ready tool of entrenched financial powers, says Jordan Schachtel. Schachtel is a Washington DC based investigative journalist associated with the American Institute for Economic Research.
He argues in a recent substack piece that the manipulation of Ethereum by elites has been a long time in the making, and that the Merge is the result:
“The Ethereum Foundation (whose Executive Director serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Blockchain Council) and other “crypto” institutions, knowing full well that they could not create a better free market money than Bitcoin, have been battling behind the scenes for years to become the first movers to regulatory capture, a “prize” that comes to its small network of controlling interests via a massive infusion of global capital.”
Now that just a few centralized crypto exchanges control so much of staked ETH, Schachtel says the network can easily be bent to the political and financial will of authorities:
“Should a powerful government want to invalidate the ETH tokens held by Jon Doe, a labeled opponent of the regime, they can simply pressure Coinbase and the gang to blacklist his transactions.”
Schachtel’s view and reasoning is certainly food for thought. His article can be read here.
For related articles, see:
- “WEF TARGETS CRYPTOS” (11 May 2021)
- “WEF LAUNCHES NEW ASSAULT AGAINST AMERICAN BILL OF RIGHTS” (13 Jul 2021)
- “O CANADA: GOVERNMENTS UNLEASH NEW REIGN OF ‘TERROR’” (22 Feb 2022)
- “THE NEW NEUTRAL” (29 Mar 2022)
RIPPLE FILES MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT IN SEC CASE
The lack of an investment contract pursuant to a securities issuance means that XRP was never a security, and never taken as one by those who bought tokens.
That’s the gist of a motion by Ripple Labs asking for a summary judgment dismissal of the SEC lawsuit that has been in the courts since 2020.
Stuart Alderoty, General Counsel for Ripple, commented about the latest filing on Twitter, noting:
“My hot take—after two years of litigation, the SEC is unable to identify any contract for investment (that’s what the statute requires); and cannot satisfy a single prong of the Supreme Court’s Howey test. Everything else is just noise.”
And:
“Congress only gave the SEC jurisdiction over securities. Let’s get back to what the law says.”
Most XRP holders have seen their interests and investment damaged substantially not by Ripple, but by the SEC suit, many contend.
XRP, perhaps partly based on the new legal move, was among leaders bucking the general malaise in cryptocurrencies following the Etherium merge, going into a new week.