APRIL FOOLS! NEW VISTAS IN REHYPOTHECATION, AND OTHER CRYPTO-CURRENCY ...
Our friend Catherine Austin Fitts at Solari.com has found an interesting article from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2019, and I just couldn't resist blogging about it today, April Fools' Day, because if you were one of those who believed the initial hype about the security and "unhackability" of blockchains - the technology behind so-called crypto-currencies - and how they were going to sweep aside all that central banking fraud, think again. This is my way of saying "we told you so," because as we shall discover, not only are blockchains "hackable" but it is the very security of blockchain technology that attracts thieves:
Once hailed as unhackable, blockchains are now getting hacked
So let's dive in:
Early last month, the security team at Coinbase noticed something strange going on in Ethereum Classic, one of the cryptocurrencies people can buy and sell using Coinbase’s popular exchange platform. Its blockchain, the history of all its transactions, was under attack.
An attacker had somehow gained control of more than half of the network’s computing power and was using it to rewrite the transaction history. That made it possible to spend the same cryptocurrency more than once—known as “double spends.” The attacker was spotted pulling this off to the tune of $1.1 million. Coinbase claims that no currency was actually stolen from any of its accounts. But a second popular exchange, Gate.io, has admitted it wasn’t so lucky, losing around $200,000 to the attacker (who, strangely, returned half of it days later).
...
In total, hackers have stolen nearly $2 billion worth of cryptocurrency since the beginning of 2017, mostly from exchanges, and that’s just what has been revealed publicly. These are not just opportunistic lone attackers, either. Sophisticated cybercrime organizations are now doing it too: analytics firm Chainalysis recently said that just two groups, both of which are apparently still active, may have stolen a combined $1 billion from exchanges.
We shouldn’t be surprised. Blockchains are particularly attractive to thieves because fraudulent transactions can’t be reversed as they often can be in the traditional financial system. Besides that, we’ve long known that just as blockchains have unique security features, they have unique vulnerabilities. Marketing slogans and headlines that called the technology “unhackable” were dead wrong. (Boldface emphasis added)
Stop and consider what has thus far been said - and we're only just beginning: (1) one can gain control of a crypto-currency network, and once one does, one can rewrite the transaction history. Let that sink in for a moment, because both Catherine Fitts and I have been constantly warning that a central bank digital currency will be nothing but a corporate coupon whose value is determined by your social credit score. But now add to this the ability to rewrite a transaction history, and whole transactions could be rewritten after the fact. Say your local central bankster wants to punish you, not only by taking value away from your crypto and making you pay more for your upcoming transactions (because you've been a bad little boy or girl), but wants to reach in and modify previous transactions by insisting that completed transactions are still owed money, or cancelling the transaction altogether: "Woops, we're sorry you thought you paid off your mortgage with Sh*tcoin, but our records show no payments on your mortage for a year and we're here to repossess your house."
Nor would the fraud and malfeasance be limited to that sort of thing. I've long been arguing that an entirely hidden system of finance was created after World War Two, not just a "black budget", but an entire black system, reliant upon recovered gold and other bullions, kept off the books, and used as a secret reserve within certain participating banks, which banks promptly began to rehypothecate that secret reserve via a whole system of various frauds: bearer bonds, certificates of deposit, and so on. Now add the ability to rehypothecate reserves based upon an ability to "rewrite transaction history" and you get the idea.
Then you have (2) the growth of "sophisticated cybercrime organizations." In the atmosphere outlined above, there is little to distinguish the activity of a central bank-digital currency system, and that of the so-called "criminals," save perhaps the ability of central banks to command more computing power to hack a crypto-currency network in order to "rewrite the transaction history." Would they do it? Well, they've been manipulating various markets - LIBOR, gold, you name it - for some time, so the answer is: "Of course they would," particularly if it made them richer. In fact, with that ability, who's to say that they themselves weren't involved in some - perhaps the majority - of the theft that has so far occurred?
So how is "rewriting the transaction history" actually done? By creating, essentially, an alternative timeline or "fork":
Susceptibility to 51% attacks is inherent to most cryptocurrencies. That’s because most are based on blockchains that use proof of work as their protocol for verifying transactions. In this process, also known as mining, nodes spend vast amounts of computing power to prove themselves trustworthy enough to add information about new transactions to the database. A miner who somehow gains control of a majority of the network's mining power can defraud other users by sending them payments and then creating an alternative version of the blockchain in which the payments never happened.This new version is called a fork. The attacker, who controls most of the mining power, can make the fork the authoritative version of the chain and proceed to spend the same cryptocurrency again.
For popular blockchains, attempting this sort of heist is likely to be extremely expensive. According to the website Crypto51, renting enough mining power to attack Bitcoin would currently cost more than $260,000 per hour. But it gets much cheaper quickly as you move down the list of the more than 1,500 cryptocurrencies out there. Slumping coin prices make it even less expensive, since they cause miners to turn off their machines, leaving networks with less protection.(Underlined & boldface emphasis added)
Note that the bigger the currency, the bigger the player must be to take over the network, but the principal remains the same: the whole system is dependent on electrical and computing power.
The bottom line is, that the only way to retrieve crypto-currency from a history of fake transactions is to create a new timeline and, as the article states, "have everyone on the network agree to use that one instead." But this too presents a cornucopia of opportunities for rehypothecations and frauds of a wholly new order, namely, the obfuscation of transactions by hacking multiple "forks" or timelines all at once or at nearly the same time, a kind of "counterfeiting" that could easily break trust in the system rather quickly. Indeed, I would argue that these deficiencies should give anyone advocating crypto-currencies pause, for the system is already in that state.
The system of crypto-currencies and its advocates - especially the central banksters - are advocating a system whose flaws and faults already doom it to failure.
See you on the flip side...
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https://off-guardian.org/2022/04/02/debate-russia-and-the-great-reset-resistance-or-complicity/
>Once hailed as unhackable, blockchains are now getting hacked<
I trade in and out BTC and ETH.
Some weeks back, Angelo Robles (youtube channel) had an interview with a Chinese girl with expertise WAY into crypto, the technicalities, the directions the movers are trying to take it. What stuck with me was her mentioning various intents that were going to move in on banking, trade contracts operations, things like that.
The thought I had was that now they aren't just screwing with the domains of national currencies and central banks, but of the domains of the money-power centers that give the CIA-deep state directions.
Any time you use an exchange you surrender the control of your wallet. The ONLY secure way is a true “peer to peer” network. The 51% attack works in a proof of work (POW) setup but not in a proof of availability (POA). The latter rewards people for being online, sync’d up and ready to mint/mine not the actual minting/mining.
I’m working with the Qortal Project (qortal.org) as I think it has potential to be used as local currency. Low power/cpu requirements so it scales, true peer to peer and smart contracts plus it is more than a coin. It is more of a protocol and they already run chats, and web sites over it. Still very young and a ways to go but shows promise.
According to the schedule, vidchats in April are on Saturdays instead of Fridays.
Saturday Night Death Star Disco, with John Travolta, dancing through feminist inferno:
https://youtu.be/ynrfz14y8zY
This is OrigensChild’s territory.[memory suspect on spelling and gender;]
Yes, this was one of OrigensChild’s special interest’s. He and I discovered we lived close to one another, so we began to meet every so often for discussions. He and I were in agreement to the huge pitfalls in ‘cryptos’.
Now I have some SAD news to tell you. A few weeks after one of our visits, a little more than a year ago, he suddenly became ill. He had to enter a local hospital for treatment, and ended up dying of kidney failure. His wife called to tell me the news, but I did not for more specifics.
Thank you.
I truly missed his presence.
He wrote of his “illness”, and it that was slowing him down.
I hoped it wasn’t as bad as he portrayed it to be.
On the internet; one never knows.
Although he passed, I still see his presence; like in today’s blog.
Thanks again, for sharing that.
Thanks for telling us.
Passing on is a voyage, crossing an ocean. And, at that point, one falls, dies, rises and lives, all at once.
Intuitively, from earliest recollection, I have always celebrated death, as a great achievement.
A wake is peculiar custom, when indigenous lifeforms attempt, to get dead drunk, to join the departed.
And then there is Finnegan, carried out on his shield:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/vovhe8vqc7ysno9/funeral-party.mp3
Thank you for letting us know.
OC is sorely missed.
Curious what OC and Goshawks are talking about now.
Bitcoined, Federal Reserved,,,, etc.
Cryptocurrency is just an upgraded version of fiat money, and 51% is the magic number, that can suck the system dry.
Global currency is a casino chip, and the bank always wins, because the system is rigged, and the game is fixed.
In a global casino, life is no longer a gamble, that favors man free and brave. No one can win against a marked deck.
NWO is mafia paradise in hell.
Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 2, episode 12, “The Royale”, explains how space explorers manage to escape the NWO casino, by disrupting a replaying loop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Royale
“Federal Reserved” as in the type of bonds that were exchanged for gold in the late 1940s, when China was being taken over by Communist forces.
A counterfeiter and embezzler wet dream to quote from The Maltanize Falcon the thing dreams are made of or as George Carlin would say that why it’s called a dream.
NSA Surveillance Network
The NSA has built an electronic surveillance network that monitors the entire electromagnetic spectrum. This technology allows the NSA to record, monitor and influence computers, telephones, radio and video equipment, printers, etc., and even people’s electrical fields. The electromagnetic emissions from computers contain digital information. Specialists at the NSA can decode these emissions and therefore gain access to computer information without having to know the password or perform traditional hacking. They can also use the reverse method to influence the emission from the outside and change the data or programs stored in the computer.
Billy:
…As you have known for a long time, there have been more and more unwanted things going on in my computer since some time ago, which emanate from large cult organizations and intelligence services, as you have explained. Zafenatpaneach has also said something about this, namely that the worldwide espionage network ‘Echelon’ has its dirty fingers in it, which is a worldwide espionage network of the intelligence services of the USA, as well as Australia, Great Britain, Canada and New Zealand.
Ptaah:
32. That is correct, and through the system of this spy network, fax connections, countless Internet data and telephone conversations are registered, tapped and evaluated by authorities, state offices and authorities as well as by corporations, companies, the military and all kinds of business sectors.
Well , aren’t central banksters advocating it precisely because it’s flawed? After all they don’t like to play rigged game if it wasn’t them who rigged it. Also , comes to my mind story from 2020 or 2021 about that young crypto currency specialist in NYC ( was living in Lower Manhattan) who committed suicide shortly after he finished some big job for some rather wealthy client.. Anyway , crypto for me was always a Ponzi scheme on steroids, another mirror of a shadow , something to get people occupied and excited about.
Cryptocurrency exchanges will report to the SEC the digital tokens they hold for customers on their balance sheets as liabilities
“investors who own cryptocurrency through trading platforms like Coinbase Global Inc. are effectively making unsecured loans to those companies.”
“U.S. listed companies that hold cryptocurrencies on behalf of users and customers should account for those assets as a liability on their balance sheet and disclose the related risks to investors, the securities regulator said on Thursday.”
the regulations will help the banks and wall street get a handle on the scale and magnitude of the transactions. then there will be more regulations and reporting.
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-sec-says-crypto-safekeeping-arrangements-should-be-treated-liability-2022-03-31/
“What is past is prologue.” – Shakespeare
Fraud is built into the binary digitized cake;
just as it is in the current knowledge infrastructure[exists in all societies].
Embedded in these new technologies and platforms are tools that their makers and builders assume about human needs; caught in a long list of binaries.
Technology is dehumanizing.
Analogue checks on technology, bring liberation.
Checking my watch…
Running late…
White Rabbit.
Back in the saddle.
WOW!
“They’ve” been rewriting analogue history a long time.
Used to be a Soviet joke:
Texan[USA]: Our weather changes by the minute.
Russian[USSR]Our history changes by the minute.
Texan today[in the USSA]:
Our analogue, digital, and blockchain history changes by the nanosecond.
Russian today[post nation state]:
Our history depends upon whose narrative you believe.
I was joking w/a bus rider today about the stealing of digital money:
Was it the government[making money out of thin air]?; organized crime[stealing money w/an intelligence agency roof?; or, some individual w/the technical savvy to steal it out of thin air[wi-fi]?
The 51% is the magic number in all kinds of analogue and digital fraud.
For example, say China bought 51% ownership in Greece’s historic Port of Piraeus in exchange for 100 million a year for 35 years. Subsequently, Athens voted in line w/Beijing’s interests at the United Nations and other global inst1tutions. Remember, the Chinese found out that by financing infrastructure of the countries, you conquer them.
I remember watching Max Keiser saying to control bitcoin,
“they” would have to own 51% of the market share/electrical computing power[implying, impossible].
Impossible, unless you were Takashi Yamamoto[aka, NSA].
And the other cryptos are even more easily compromised.
[others know the NSA game plan as well].
Just when mainstream says its true.
Just as the central banks say its safe.
Their speaking “their” language.
It’s true[ly] safe for “just us”, and nobody else.
The New World Order/Great Re-Set/21st Century Justice/Just Us.
“I don’t necessarily agree w/everything I say.” – Marshall McLuhan[Media]
“Nothing in politics happens by accident.” FDR[information infrastructure].
Thank you Dr. JPF. Excellent post, I have been distributing the link to this article as soon as I read it.
The best way to MEASURE DECENTRALIZATION is to ask yourself whether or not the “organization” can be subpoenaed (meaningfully) by the GREAT WHORE OF BABYLON.
How many developers will they have to kill or arrest to SHUTDOWN the service?
How many operators will they have to incriminate or assassinate before the system is INOPERATIVE.
How to measure decentralization.
DARBY O’GILL
With fork in road, and knife in back,
code monkey, in cyber attack,
kept hacking his way
night and day,
to put leprechaun gold in sack.
Whiskey Galore! 1949:
https://youtu.be/THriYNnq7iQ