33 Comments

An endless loop of corruption, so many crooks you need a program the size of the Gutenberg Bible, ironically.

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It's overwhelming, but there are a lot more of us than there are of them. Or so I keep telling myself...

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It’s TUESDAY🎉 I’m going to need to read this twice to digest it. Great job!👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

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Thank you! Only X days until the Midterms. : )

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OMG. I wish I’d gotten rich sitting in a library. Maybe something will occur to me before my 90th birthday. But I feel rich in many ways. Just don’t have $000,000,000 in stink coin. Billserle.com

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The stink coin did him no good. Ten years in the hoosegow is a long time.

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I would love to be the fly on the wall when T💩p asks someone to pardon Hannibal Lecter.

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Are we sure he hasn't? ; )

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He’s either an evil genius or an evil dunce. That’s the most paradoxical aspect of it all.

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The corruption, I get but I have tried, with no luck, to understand cryptocurrency and bitcoin. Maybe some day.

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I’m with you on that score. Crypto is a baffling item in our current corrupt milieu. I spoke with a financial advisor the other day who said it isn’t a “currency”, it’s basically a Ponzi scheme. But I still don’t really understand how it works.

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See above, Peggy...

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I think of it in terms of the U.S. dollar. When the dollar was backed by gold, it had that value. (Of course, gold, itself, is valuable only because people want it, but that's another issue.) Now, no longer backed by gold, the dollar, itself, has no more value than, say, toilet paper. It's just a paper symbol for an agreed upon value. Crypto is the same except it's a string of digits, not pieces of paper. Monopoly money is the same type of symbol, except its value is only what a few players say it is. In primitive societies, beans or shells were the same as crypto and dollars. All the gibberish about block chain, mining, and how crypto works is just a lot of detail. The important thing there is to store each crypto "coin" (digital code) safely, either with a digital storage house, like Coinbase or Kraken, or on a piece of hardware that you own, yourself, like a backup harddrive. You can't take your code (crypto) to a bank to store. There's no crypto banker. There are just a bunch of nameless owners of power-hungry computers that serve as "miners" and record transactions. Greg's article today paints some great pictures of why evil-doers are so excited about crypto.

At least that's how I think of it. Hoping to hear where my logic has gone astray, as I have been thinking of trading a few "papers" for digital "coins." What holds me back is the idea that I'd be contributing to exactly this type of corruption -- and the reality that crypto could implode, although maybe not while we're presided over by folks who may be making so much use of it.

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Thanks, Maureen. You've brought me closer to understanding it.

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Bitcoin is cryptocurrency. Break down the word “crypto” meaning, “hidden”, which is the hook for so many dealing in it. It is hidden, UNREGULATED bits and bytes in a computer program basically. “Mining”, or creating it, uses a massive amount of power and as Greg’s article has pointed out, can be robbed and misused by those who can navigate the dark places throughout the web. It is as someone else pointed out, it’s a sophisticated Ponzi scheme. Steer clear!

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Thanks, SPW. So, since this is all virtual, when people buy using crypto, how do they transfer it to the seller? Thanks for answering if you can.

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The tech, namely blockchain, behind crypto has value in so far if it is used properly can almost 100% guarantee the security (provenance) of a blockchain transaction. Wikipedia has a good explanation of blockchain. As for cryptocurrency, and the general public, I personally don’t see the use case for legitimate commerce.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain

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There are a finite amount of Bitcoin that can ever be mined, which in theory prevents hyperinflation.

Mining the coins is essentially solving a very complex and ever-changing math problem.

It requires incredible computing speeds to mine the coins.

Thus Bitcoin is pegged to the cost of energy.

Thus Bitcoin depends on local currencies.

And thus it both hastens global warming and sucks up energy best spent doing more beneficial things.

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Wow. Go have yourself some fun!

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Enjoy Berlin, Greg, and you know, COME BACK!

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The good news just keeps coming! I wonder what tomorrow will bring, and just what country I am living in?

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It’s crossed my mind that where there’s money laundering there’s drug money, dealers and users. Why are they so angry about this guy getting busted? Was he their connection? Is blackmail and a cover up part of the story? Were they in on the original scheme?

Excuse my paranoia , but it comes from the questions I have about how so many people in government and business have inexplicably rolled over for djt, and how blatantly addled so many of them are.

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Excellent words!

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Eye-popping! Added a ink to my recent LinkedIn article.

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As always, your research amazes me. Your clock must have more numbers on it than most. Really important info here. Thanks. Just wishing some honest power folks (if any remain) would do more with it.

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Damn!

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Yes. Inconceivable. Everything is a transaction.

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Now Ross works for Trump

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OMG! And the downward spiral spins faster and faster!

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