Feb 132015
 

Simon BlackSimon Black on board with Bitcoin

Looks like Simon Black from Sovereign man is starting to get on board with Bitcoin.  He explains what money is and how it is being manipulated.  Money is a “token” of work performed or energy expended. A Monetary system is simply a machine that accounts for the stored value represented by the tokens and and their transactions. Gold and Silver “tokens” have been used for millennia to perform this function.  The reason these metals were used is because they are scarce, durable, divisible and portable.  They can’t be manipulated… easily anyway.  Originally, Paper Money was a “receipt” of a “token”.  It had some advantages of precious metals: more portable, and it was more divisible. By making these improvements, it facilitated greater specialization and growth of the market as a whole.

Throughout history when Banks and Governments found they could manipulate the paper money they did the temptation is just too great.  The truth is that if you trust one person or one organization with your money they will find a way to STEAL it.  Then they acquire control of government and have them write “laws” protecting their criminal enterprise.  someone with your and not one man in a million would be able to diagnose it. Paper money can EASILY be manipulated, for those who are in control of the “System”.

Lenin was right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose. John Maynard Keynes

People have to expend energy, or work to acquire money.  However Banks and Governments have the ability create these “tokens” with a key stroke on a computer. No real work is performed so when they add more “tokens” available to themselves, they cause inflation for us, as they grant themselves almost unlimited power.

Bitcoin eliminates the ability of the Banks and Governments to manipulate the money supply.  It is simply a decentralized accounting system that allows everyone to see how many “tokens” each address contains. These “tokens” have value because people are willing to trade something else of value for them, just like Gold and Silver.  Gold, Silver and Bitcoin have similar properties: they are all scarce, durable, divisible and portable.  Bitcoin is superior to paper money in that is more easily divisible, immune to counterfeiting, especially by the BORG and highly portable crossing international boundaries in milliseconds with the possibility of being intercepted. It’s simply a digital age solution to a industrial age problem.

I have been following Simon Black for a few years he speaks the truth and seems to be coming around to Bitcoin in his podcast.

This is exactly how the banking system will collapse

Here is Simon Black’s podcast where he describes what I am talking about. You can fast forward to the part about bitcoin at 44 minutes into it.

Our goal is simple: To help you achieve personal liberty and financial prosperity no matter what happens.

If you liked this post, please click the box below. You can watch a compelling video you’ll find very interesting.

Will you be prepared when everything we take for granted changes overnight?

Just think about this for a couple of minutes. What if the U.S. Dollar wasn’t the world’s reserve currency? Ponder that… what if…

Empires Rise, they peak, they decline, they collapse, this is the cycle of history.

This historical pattern has formed and is already underway in many parts of the world, including the United States.

Don’t be one of the millions of people who gets their savings, retirement, and investments wiped out.

Apr 302014
 

Steve Jobs on coming reset to Bitcoin

Sovereign Man modified by Morpheus original article
Wisdom from Steve Jobs on the coming system reset

April 30, 2014
Santiago, Chile / Mesa, Arizona

Hi all fans of Simon Black and Sovereign Man.  I got this in my email. After I read it and have to suggest that Simon doesn’t carry his thought to the logical conclusion.  BitCoin IS the future, not metals or Banks in other jurisdictions are still part of the BORG and for that reason they are not to be trusted in any way shape or form.  Bitcoins properly dealt with are safer than the gold in Fort Knox, if there is any there, that is.

“Money” is a concept of the mind, it doesn’t exist in the real world.  It is only exists as construct of the mind.  Here is the Progression:

Agrarian Age: In this era there was no: electricity, Internet, cars, trucks, planes, trains, running water, Walmart, Circle K, running water in your house, newspapers, or mail services, some people thought the world was flat.  This age is marked by Barter, and with the rise of Roman Empire the “invention” of gold and silver as “money”. Keep in mind during    However in their lust for expansion and debasement of the coin through clipping and non precious alloys being added caused hyperinflation.  This gave rise to the dark ages with control going to the Roman Catholic Church, and all the Flat Earth sillyness.

Industrial Age: Moving out of the dark ages was marked with the “invention” of Paper Money with the “invention” of the printing press, they say they were printing Bibles, “Riiight”,I say “they were printing money Guttenberg wasn’t printing Bibles’. That coverup story is for the slaves and no different than the cock and bull 9/11 coverup.” This age is marked with the enslavement of humanity to debt, debt that is created by the banks to pit human against human to create governments to “referee” all disputes.  Of course they never indict themselves for criminal behavior.

Digital Age: This age is marked with the “invention” of the “computer” and the “Internet.” These “inventions” created a totally new kind of money one that could not exist with the previous systems to build on.   That new technology created a crypto-currency known as Bitcoin. There are other alt coins like:  Litecoin, Namecoin, Mastercoin to name a few.  To attempt to go back to the past and use the technology from an age that is so long gone is a mistake. I like to ask people “How come you don’t have a phone with a really long cord instead of a cell phone?”. The simple reason is because the new technology, the cell phone, replaced the corded phone so no one uses corded phones much any more.  To have be against bitcoins is like being against cell phones when they came out.  Those who were the Luddites back in the beginning of the industrial revolution quickly disappeared or got ran over.  We can’t take Gold and Silver into space its way too heavy.

Sure its a good idea to have gold and silver in case the aliens or the machines turn off the power, however a prudent person would also want to stock up on 9mm 40 and 45 cal double ought buckshot, food , water and other supplies. When you look at the progression of the price and the market cap a person would have to be out of your mind to not get involved with bitcoin.

So read both articles and see which one comes to a better conclusion.  Simon hit me up if you like m-o-r-p-h-e-u-s<at>t-i-t-a-n-i-a-n-s<dot>org

Steve Jobs used to tell a very inspiring story about an article he read in Scientific American when he was a boy.

He said that the article measured the ‘efficiency of locomotion’ of various species– essentially how many calories different animals spend getting from Point A to Point B.
The most efficient of all? Not human beings. Not by a long shot. It was the condor. The condor expended the least amount of energy per meter or kilometer traveled. Human beings were pretty far down the list.

But as Jobs recounts, the authors had the foresight to also test the efficiency of a human being on a bicycle. And this absolutely blew all the other species away.

Jobs later said that this was incredibly influential on his thinking because he realized that human beings were fundamentally tool creators. We take our situation, however grim or rudimentary, and we make it better.

There’s undoubtedly a lot of bad news in the world these days. Some people realize it. Others refuse to believe it and stick their heads in the sand. Our century-old industrial age monetary system is unraveling before our very eyes.

This absurd arcane structure in which we award a tiny central banking elite with the dictatorial power to control the money supply in their sole discretion is now drowning the world in paper currency.

ALL financial markets are manipulated by central banks, predominantly the Federal Reserve. One human or possibly a reptile in a human woman outfit — Janet Yellen– has the power to affect the prices of nearly everything on the planet, from the wholesale price of coffee in Colombia to the cost of a luxury flat in Hong Kong.

Moreover, politicians in some of the most ‘advanced’ economies in the world (Japan, the US, France, the UK, etc.) have accumulated so much debt that they have to borrow money just to pay interest on the money they have already borrowed.  Most would call this insanity.

They are and continuing to saddling future unborn generations with a debt that is SATANIC.

They wage endless, costly wars, murdering millions. They spy on their citizens. They spray poisons in the air. They inject fluoride, a carcinogen into the water. They arrest people for the burning a plant.  They tell people what they can and cannot put in their bodies. They confiscate private property and wages at the point of a gun.

They abuse the population with legions of heavily armed government agents (thugs). They conjure so many codes, rules, regulations, laws, and executive orders that it becomes totally impossible for any individual to exist without being guilty of some innocuous, victimless crime.

And they arrogantly masquerade the entire ruse as a FREE SOCIETY.

>None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This system is on the way out. It will reset.

Like feudalism before, our system will go the way of the historical dust bin. And future historians will look back (just as we view feudalism) and say “why did they put up with that nonsense…?

This reset is nothing to fear. Human beings are incredible creatures who have a long-term track record of growth. We rise. We progress.

Or more appropriately, we ride bicycles. We create tools to overcome our challenges. We create new forms of currency.  The new currency will be in the form of a crypto-currency. The most prevalent in the world is called Bitcoin. You need to wake up and learn why Bitcoin is so much better than the current model.

Your industrial age country’s currency (paper debt money) is being rapidly debased, you could hold some savings in a different currency. Or you may hold agrarian currency (precious metals).  Or move into the future with Digital money…Bitcoin!

Freedoms are being rapidly degraded in almost every country in the world!  Make a decision to stop funding the destruction they cause. Get your bitcoins now.!

I liken all of these to wearing a seatbelt– another one of humanity’s marvelous tools.

You will be better off for holding your funds in a bitcoin wallet, where your money is safer there than all the gold in fort Knox, that is if there is any gold there at all. Or for wearing a seatbelt. But if the worst happens, it can make all the difference in the world.

Buckle up with Bitcoin.

You never know an accident is about to happen until it’s too late. But the warning signs of danger are all there: it’s raining and the road is slippery, fog has descended and visibility is severely limited. It’s an ominous evening.

Make sure you have your Bitcoin seatbelt on.

Until some other time in the Future
Morpheus, peace out. Thank you Simon Black!

Jun 072013
 
Sovereign Man

June 7, 2013 
Maule Region, Chile

For some, it’s hard to even fathom… as if the headlines were ripped from the Onion instead of Atlas Shrugged or 1984:

* NSA Is Wired Into Top Internet Companies’ Servers, Including Google and Facebook

* NSA reportedly collecting phone records of millions

* Former NSA head defends agency reportedly spying on millions of Americans

* US gov’t defends NSA surveillance, slams ‘reprehensible’ journalists

* The Supreme Court Authorizes DNA can be taken from anyone Arrested

 

Even more, just within the last few weeks we’ve seen the Justice Department confiscating news reporter phone records… the IRS caught bullying political opposition groups… and now this.

It should be as plain as day at this point. Yet some people still have a hard time understanding that they’re living under an oppressive, destructive, unaccountable government.

Most other cultures get it. If you go to Argentina, Vietnam, Italy, or China, people there have absolutely no trust or confidence in their governments.

It’s something that’s -almost- uniquely American– a lifetime of steady, bombastic propaganda that inculcates a deep belief that our system is the ‘best’.

And, even in the face of such overwhelming evidence, it’s still hard for people to break from this programming and acknowledge that their government is just as corrupt as Mexico’s… albeit slightly more sophisticated.

The politicians running the nation are sociopathic criminals, plain and simple. If you or I were to tap people’s phones or hack their Facebook accounts, or use our authority to bully opposition groups, we would be tossed in the slammer in no time… and branded by the media as moral delinquents.

Yet politicians get away with it. They even have prominent members of the press championing their criminality, like this quote from Forbes today:

“this is in fact what governments are supposed to do so I’m at something of a loss in understanding why people seem to be getting so outraged about it.”

The simple reason is because the system is a total failure.

In the ‘free world’, society is based on a principle that a tiny elite should have the power to kill. To steal. To wage war. To debase the currency. To deprive certain people of freedom. All in their sole discretion. And for the good of everyone else.

We’re just supposed to trust them to be good guys and be proficient at their jobs. And in case they happen to completely screw it up and wreck the nation, they get a pass.

It’s a completely absurd. We’re ruled by criminals, plain and simple.

This is a hard lesson for an entire society to learn, but perhaps the most important.

Unfortunately, the second lesson is even harder: that there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it.

We’ve also been led to believe that direct democracy and grassroots movements can be a force for change. Yet it rarely, if ever, happens.

Short of outright revolution, the system isn’t going to change. It has to completely crash… and hit rock bottom… before it can be rebuilt. And we’re still a loooong way off from that.

Like ancient Rome before, the Land of the Free can look forward to being governed by a long series of criminals in the foreseeable future, notwithstanding the occasional sage.

Nations rise and fall. This cycle is inevitable. And history shows that the world’s most dominant nation typically has a long, grinding decline. It’s going to take a while.

That’s why, instead of trying to change the system, it’s so important to invest time, energy, and capital in the things that set up you and your family for maximum freedom and prosperity.

You can’t stop a speeding train by standing in front of it. You just want to make sure you’re not on it as it heads towards the cliff.

Until tomorrow,
Signature
Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com
Mar 152013
 

Simon Black More on Bitcoins and Capital Controls

March 15, 2013
Santiago, Chile

Earlier in the week, I wrote to you about an Argentine car rental agency that had started accepting Bitcoins as a means to bypass local capital controls.

We received a lot of questions about the article, the most common of which was “What in the world is a BITCOIN?”

Let’s start by looking at our current monetary system.

In most countries, a small tiny banking elite exercises total control over that nation’s money supply. And we’re just supposed to trust them to be good guys.

Yet central bankers around the world have conjured trillions of dollars out of thin air, debasing the money’s value. It’s a concept any six-year old can understand. If money grew on trees, it wouldn’t be worth very much.

This is one of the key reasons why people buy gold. You can’t just conjure gold out of thin air. It takes years of exploration and investment to pull it out of the ground.

In the information age, though, we have an alternative.

Bitcoin is digital currency. It doesn’t actually exist in our physical world… only in computers.

If this sounds esoteric and far-fetched, it’s not. The vast majority of our monetary system today is already digital.

A very small percentage of all the currency circulating in the world exists in physical notes and bills. The rest of it is merely accounting entries in bank  databases. Most financial transactions are just a reshuffling of these database entries. Physical currency seldom changes hands.

Bitcoin is similar in this respect… nothing physical exists. But there are some key advantages.

For one, Bitcoin is not controlled by any government or central bank. And two, it’s private.

In the world of conventional finance, governments can see every time you use your credit card, withdraw cash at an ATM, or make a wire transfer.

Yet with Bitcoin, they don’t have this ability. And this is a key reason why Bitcoin has become so popular, especially in places like Argentina where people are getting squashed by their government.

A few days ago I wrote about an Argentine car rental agency that had begun accepting Bitcoins. My friend Sir Charles of PricedinGold.com was at their office; he snapped a photo and sent me some really great information.

The 1-day rental rate for a basic car was 380 Argentine pesos. At the government’s official rate, that works out to be $74 USD. In Bitcoins, the same car rents for 1.13 BTC… which is approximately $54 USD. This is nearly 30% cheaper!

The benefit for the rental agency is the privacy; they can avoid all the costly fees, bureaucracy, and debilitating capital controls associated with a normal transaction. Plus, they can hold Bitcoins instead of the rapidly depreciating Argentine peso.

If you think that these sorts of tactics– mind-numbing financial bureaucracy, confiscatory taxes, and capital controls– can’t happen where you live, think again.

I was just having a conversation this morning on the topic with Jim Rickards, author of the best-selling Currency Wars and one of the speakers at our upcoming Offshore Tactics Workshop.

Jim reminded me that, aside from Roosevelt confiscating gold back in the 1930s, the US government also imposed a confiscatory windfall profits tax on oil gains back in the 1970s. In addition, for most of the 20th century, capital controls were the rule around the world, not the exception.

To be fair, Bitcoin is not without its challenges. But the prospect of digital currencies presents an elegant alternative to fiat destruction.

If you want to find out more about Bitcoin, this website provides a lot of great introductory information:

Until tomorrow,
Signature
Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com

Feb 272013
 

“There is no bar to this nation’s holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant.” — US Senator Carl Levin

My dictionary defines the word “sociopath” as “a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that someone who tries to award himself the power to lock people up indefinitely, without due process, is expressing extreme antisocial attitudes. And quite possibly a lack of conscience.

Psychologists might deem such an individual a sociopath. Yet in the Land of the Free, they’re elected to the United States Congress.

This is the world of Carl Levin, a Senator from Michigan who championed the indefinite military detention clause in last year’s National Defense Authorization Act.

In Levin’s world, it’s perfectly acceptable to hold US citizens on US soil without charges or trial, based merely on the suspicion of terrorist activity in the sole discretion of the government.

This, of course, is a rather convenient position for someone who has been in government for nearly the totality of his adult life. At age 78, he’s been firmly ensconced in the US Senate since 1979 and was a politician at the local level prior.

Mr. Levin is now at it again.

In our ongoing conversations, you and I frequently discuss the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA)– a small part of a 2010 law which I typically describe as the ‘most arrogant piece of legislation ever passed.’

FATCA imposes additional reporting requirements for US citizens with foreign financial accounts, as well as heaps of obligations for foregin financial institutions.

FATCA casts an enormous net, affecting banks, brokers, and even gold depositories. And its requirements are so onerous that, as I reported last Friday, even Swiss logistics giant ViaMat has dropped US citizens from storing gold abroad.

The law itself was tiny… a mere 18 pages. But the IRS regulations which came out of it total more than 500 pages. It’s unreal. Absurd, really.

Apparently, though, 500 pages of oppressive regulations aren’t enough for Mr. Levin. And his new bill, S.268 “CUT Loopholes Act” aims to raise the bar even higher.

Section 102 of the bill, entitled “STRENGTHENING THE FOREIGN ACCOUNT TAX COMPLIANCE ACT”, proposes a number of increased reporting requirements for both banks and individuals.

There is also a provision to expand the FATCA net even further by defining “non-FATCA institutions”. Essentially, this would give the Treasury Department all the domestic legal authority they need to bully anyone in the world. (Again, anti-social behavior?)

The bill goes on for nearly 100 pages, covering everything from increased penalties (up to $10 million) to simplifying the process for the government to confiscate your assets.

Levin is really pulling out all the stops to make it as difficult as possible to do business overseas, and to hold assets in a safe, stable jurisdiction abroad. The end result will be fewer options to protect your savings, and more government control.

If passed, this bill will be one small step for Levin, one giant leap towards capital controls.


Until tomorrow,
Signature
Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com