Can bitcoin change society?

Bitcoin was launched in 2009 as an experimental digital encrypted currency with very unique properties that sets it apart from all other currencies in use today. Bitcoin is open-source, decentralized, impossible to counterfeit and rare, as the algorithm will only generate around 21 million bitcoins. The short video below succinctly explains some of its properties and advantages.



If you research bitcoin enough at some point you'll wonder how you can start mining this new crypto-currency yourself. It was in this search that I stumbled upon, Geir Harald Hansen, the creator of bitminter.com - a bitcoin mining pool made easy for beginners. Geir kindly and honestly answered a few of my questions regarding bitcoin. His thoughts on the potential success of bitcoin and comparison to current currencies, I thought were worth sharing below.

Can Bitcoin change society?

Take a look at the world economy. One financial crisis after another. Venezuela recently devalued their currency. The US is printing money faster and faster. Or rather they are creating crazy amounts of US dollars by typing a number into a computer. Fractional reserve banking. Banks too big to fail. The US and several other countries are effectively bankrupt as they will never be able to pay their foreign debt. Welcome to the circus. The entire world economy is just a giant ponzi scheme. Whether you are a scammer depends not on what you do, but on whether or not you work for a government. I can't decide whether it is funny or sad. Maybe it's both.

Part of bringing sanity to the economy is to use things that are actually in limited supply for currencies and stores of value. Environmentalists may not agree, but there are plenty of trees to make paper money from. Typing a number into a computer is not limited supply either. Gold, silver and bitcoin on the other hand are in limited supply. Perhaps something better than bitcoin will appear. But I'm pretty sure fiat money is not the future. I think society may soon be ready for a change. But most people still just do what the masses do. Anything that is not mainstream is "not real".

Many think Bitcoin is monopoly money. Actually it is US dollars, Euros, etc. that are printed en masse like monopoly money. Bitcoin is nothing like monopoly money. But this thinking is based on emotion, not logic. Fiat money is "real money" because this is how we've been doing things for hundreds of years. Anything that is different from the established way is wrong, silly, or not real. This way of thinking greatly slows down bitcoin adoption. But at the same time an increasing number of people are getting fed up with the current system, and "banker" has become a swear word. As the global ponzi scheme nears collapse and more people are adversely affected by it they will be less inclined to cling to it just because it's tradition.

Whether buying ASIC-based Bitcoin mining equipment will be profitable is anyone's guess. Anything related to Bitcoin is a gamble. Don't invest more than you can afford to lose. But do get involved with Bitcoin in some way or other. Years from now when people laugh about fiat currencies and how primitive the world used to be, you can say you took part in changing it. This could be an important moment in history.

Bitcoins can be exchanged with all currencies. At the date of this post 1BTC =  £17.64 = $27.30 = €20.34, could this be the digital gold rush?

If you want to find out more and/or get involved, check bitcoin.org

In memory of Aaron Swartz

Time Banking

What will you do?

Meditate

On my 200th post, here's a self-reminder.

Painting by Goro Fujita

Alt-j - Taro

The elite

There is a corporate elite, a banking elite, a political elite, an academic elite... yet none of these elites have done anything to address the underlying key problem of the global economy. The money profit capitalist market economy has been good to elites for the past 40 years, but has systematically gutted the underlying economy so that most people now have no buying ability, and GDP cannot grow. Central banks create State money... banks create bank money... now it is time there is an institution to create jobs money so that available people can go to work doing things that we really need... food for the hungry, homes for the homeless, medical care for the sick, education for children, infrastructure, environmental remediation, and so on. A value seeking market economy would deliver a very different global society than one where the only metric is money profit and growth of wasteful excessive consumption.

By Peter Burgess, comment from Aljazeera.com

LucidTree.com - Awareness resource

The internet can be a place for entertainment, communication and commerce, but the most important role of the web, I think, is education. Never in history has so much valuable information been available to the masses but it's not always obvious where to find it.

For a long time I intended to build a website that aggregated some of this valuable information and presented it in a clear format. This has finally materialized in the shape of a free online movie library called LucidTree.com. It is currently only a seedling but the aim is to grow it into a hub of relevant information for those of us seeking a better understanding of ourselves, this planet and beyond.

Check out LucidTree.com and share it with friends and family. Contribute by sending suggestions/feedback using the contact form on the website.


Real revolution starts with learning...

Must watch: Four Horsemen

"23 leading thinkers – frustrated at the failure of their respective disciplines – break their silence to explain how the world really works." ~ www.fourhorsemenfilm.com



Watch the full movie here:

The bank for financial activists

If you're pissed of at the current corrupt and opaque banking system, why not vote with your wallet and  move your spare money to an ethical bank? Triodos is one of them (the only one I'm aware of) which is completely transparent and invests only in ethical businesses.

Become a financial activist and sleep better at night with the assurance that you're not indirectly supporting corrupt regimes, polluting technologies, greedy banks and corporations or even war.

The stars all gleam with possibilities

Little girl teaches economics to 600 people

Someone hasn't been doing their homework and it's not this little girl. Although she talks specifically about the Canadian banking system, this is a pretty accurate description of how every banking system in the world is set-up. So here's our homework for today, to listen and learn.



To further research, check out The Money Masters or the Money as Debt three part documentary series. (It appears that these were produced with fairly modest budgets, but the information contained in them is, in my view, crucial and very enlightening to the inner workings of the banking system.) You should be able to find these in a video sharing site near you.

The Cloud forecast

A cloud

The latest buzz word in today's tech world is "the cloud". The hype surrounding this (yet another) vaguely named technology is never ending. If we can learn anything from the past, the cloud alongside names such as Google and Macintosh (sure these sound familiar now but remember when you first heard them?) is bound to become a winner.

This kind of weather phenomenon is becoming more ubiquitous in our lives, without us even realising it. But what is it? What exactly does it do?! Well, in short, the cloud is made up of a (large) bunch of interconnected web servers scattered all over the world, making up one huge machine with humongous processing power and unthinkable data storage capacity.

Businesses are all eager to jump onto the cloud. This makes sense, specially for small businesses, as never before has such a large and easily scalable computer resource been available at such (relatively) low price. But what are the advantages for the individual folk like you and me? What's the fuss all about, what do we get from the cloud?

The cloud aims to store all our data, so that we can access it from any internet enabled device from anywhere in the world. For example, why carry your music with you when you can pay a monthly subscription to access millions of tracks from from your computer at home and your phone on the go?

The cloud wants to provide you with all the applications you require. Be it an office suite or any other software, instead of buying or downloading it for free and installing it on your computer, you'll be paying the cloud for a monthly/yearly subscription to use it. I already hear you saying - "Great! This is so convenient. Where do I sign up?"

Not so fast, lets look at the bigger picture. With every service this technology provides we see a transfer of ownership from the user to the hazy mist of the cloud. Be it pictures, videos or documents who knows what prying eyes will scan our private digital creations? Privacy is starting to become a thing of the past. Someone, somewhere will have the power to run detailed diagnostics, statistics and trends on our habits, locations, likes/dislikes, connections, opinions, etc. - not only on an individual level but also on whole populations. Even if you think you have nothing to hide, based on history, would you not agree that the larger a power is, the bigger the risk of corruption and abuse of such power?

For long it has been said that information is power. I wonder what kind of power cloud we are creating by allowing such an unprecedented centralization of information in the hands of a few large corporations. Hopefully not a black cloud that comes back thundering down on us.

Another kind of cloud

Deep thought of the day

Courtesy of TED.com

 

Introverts, you are OK.

An introvert being erm... introverted!

After the TED talk I posted a few days ago, this is the second article I find this week about introverts. This time The Guardian discovers that being quiet, shy and a "what if" thinker is not all bad.

We live with a value system that I call the Extrovert Ideal – the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha and comfortable in the spotlight.

Don't say!

Introversion – along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness – is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.

QUICK! Pass one of those extroversion pills before it's too late!

Velocity of speech counts as well as volume: we rank fast talkers as more competent and likable than slow ones.

"And then he was like 'Uh...' and I was like 'Duh!'"

Without introverts, the world would be devoid of Newton's theory of gravity, Einstein's theory of relativity, WB Yeats's The Second Coming, Chopin's nocturnes, Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Peter Pan, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Cat in the Hat, Charlie Brown, the films of Steven Spielberg, Google (co-founded by introvert Larry Page) and Harry Potter.

"Wassup with this list?! Steven makes cool movies, yeah? But the others didn't go to gigs not even nearly often enough. Specially that Chopin dude!"

"The glory of the disposition that stops to consider stimuli rather than rushing to engage with them is its long association with intellectual and artistic achievement. Neither E=mc² nor Paradise Lost was dashed off by a party animal."

"Booooriiing!!!"

A few things introverts are not: the word introvert is not a synonym for hermit or misanthrope. Introverts can be these things, but most are perfectly friendly.

Oh really?! Disturb my blog-ing time and you'll see.


In conclusion, we can all breathe a breath of relief - it's ok to be introverted as introverts are not sick people after all. Phew! I'll cancel my operation then.

Read the full article: Why the world needs introverts

Are you an introvert, extrovert or do you swing both ways? Do the Quiz: are you an introvert?

Susan Cain: The power of introverts

So this one is about introverts and suitcases. Yeah I know, go figure. Apparently we should open them up and share their contents - the suitcases, that is. Ah, after years of persecution, I wonder how many of us managed to keep the key.

 

Carl Honore praises slowness

Ah, apparently slow sex is better! Who knew!

Chris Hedges: "I don't believe in atheists"

Interesting argument put forward in this speech. Journalist and author, Chris Hedges, points out the dogmatic similarities between religious extremism and new atheism. The externalization of "evil" beyond the self; simplistic, binary, us versus them, white and black, point of view of the world; and a sense of superiority, are some of the characteristics of both these philosophies, which pave the way to dangerous extremism that knows no empathy.

Hedges comes across as very lucid and well researched intellectual with always extremely powerful arguments backed by facts. I guess we're all extreme in one way or another ; )

"I certainly understand that there is nothing intrinsically moral about being a believer or a nonbeliever, that many people of great moral probity and courage define themselves outside of religious structures, do not engage in religious ritual or use religious language, in the same way that many people who advocate intolerance, bigotry and even violence cloak themselves in the garb of religion and oftentimes have prominent positions within religious institutions."

~ Chris Hedges interview to Salon.com

PS: Chris has also written a book entitled I don't believe in atheists.

We are all leaders

This was sent to me recently by a good friend. I thought it was important to share, if you can spare 6 minutes.

Dilige et quod vis fac.

I thought I would share something profound that I (re) discovered last night. I was reading about the law of attraction and came across this book which claims that only 1 in 1000 people are able to manifest their wishes using the law of Attraction, and those who do it doesn't appear to be the law that manifests them. The book claims that the law of attraction as it's being taught is incomplete. There's one crucial ingredient missing for successful manifestation of all our desires. And not surprisingly that thing is Love. Not the feeling or emotion of Love but love as a state of being. When I read this I had a aha moment and several pieces of my truth seeking puzzle came together in my head. Everything makes sense The Law of Attraction, Deepak, Echart and all of the spiritual books that I have read say the same thing. When you love unconditionally you're able to manifest what you want because you no longer have egotistical desires. What you want becomes what the Universe needs and that is always what's the best for the Universe as a whole. And so the Universe's force creates the circumstances to manifest its needs. Although this seems quite obvious now that I write it, last night I felt like the meaning of life was for the first time being revealed to me. And now every time that I think about it, I marvel in amazement at how simple it all is and how it could not be any other way. The quote "Love and do what you will" never made so much sense as it does now. This is I think the most beautiful and meaningful quotation that I have ever read. So I thought that I would share this with you...

 ~ AL 01/04/2009