Tag: Bitcoin

Of Bunkers & Bitcoin…& CERN Switzerland And…

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell
February 6, 2017

Believe it or not, today’s blog may be related to the two previous days’ blogs. But what possible relationship could Bitcoin and for that matter, crypto-currencies in general have to CERN or to Argentina and the recent visits of Mr. Tillerson and Mr. Bezos there, to check out the “nature”.

Well, when Mr. M.A. sent the following article to me, he did so with some very suggestive high octane speculation of his own. He suggested that, perhaps, there might be a connection between CERN and crypto-currency mining. Why? Well, because there is a bunker in Switzerland which was built by the Swiss military as a command headquarters during the Cold War, and which now functions as a private corporate facility, surrounded by intense security, to guard crypto-currency encryption keys, the very things that drive blockchain:

Switzerland’s bitcoin bunker

The article itself points out the reason for all the security:

It’s odd to think of a virtual currency needing physical storage, but just like your most precious photos, cryptocurrencies need some kind of material container. A bitcoin vault doesn’t store actual bitcoin units. Technically, what’s being stored are private, cryptographic keys. These keys form a pair with public-facing keys and provide access to the balance of coins stored on the bitcoin network. Gaining unauthorized access to someone’s private key is akin to stealing their gold bar. The security protocol in the bunker is designed to ward off attacks from “well-funded terrorist groups or hackers.”

Stories of hackers finding their way through even the best-secured bitcoin accounts are legion, and—given that bitcoin was designed to make banks obsolete—it’s ironic that bank-like methods have to be used to keep cryptocurrencies safe.

If someone gets hold of your private key, there’s no way to claw the funds back or demand a refund. That’s why firms that store bitcoin like this one, called Xapo, are a juicy target—and why the bunker requires paranoiac levels of security.

But why would Mr. M.A. suggest a potential link to CERN? While his email was rather sketchy in details, I had to admit, as I allowed my own penchant for high octane speculation to run amok, he may have a point, for three basic reasons: (1) mining crypt-currencies requires a lot of electricity, something which CERN has in abundance; (2) mining crypto-currencies also requires a lot of computing power, something which CERN also has in an abundance rivaled probably only by the vast computing power of intelligence and signals-intercept agencies; and the real kicker is (3) CERN may be engaged in secret data analysis and correlation experiments, as I have speculated on numerous occasions. But it is also a sovereign entity, and could equally use that power as a means of very covert funding. Enter crypto-currencies, for as I’ve also pointed out on this site, stories have recently emerged that some very nefarious groups are using crypt-currencies to fund their operations and activities. So Mr. M.A.’s speculation may not be all that much of a stretch. (Hmmm… Switzerland, Templars, lots of money, Templar space satellites…. hmmm….)

But then, squatting in the middle of this article, something else caught my attention, and my jaw hit the floor. Recall that yesterday I blogged about the appearance of Mr. Jeff Bezos in Patagonia, tweeting about glaciers and saving the planet and space. Mr. Bezos, as most people know, is a billionaire, the founder of Amazon, owner of the Washington Post, and Amazon and the CIA are in turn related (and not just indirectly through the Post). Amazon is a huge database, if one wants to look at it a certain way, sitting on top of mountains of raw data of inestimable value to intelligence.

Mr. Bezos’ presence in Argentina is coincident with U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson’s, and again, Mr. Tillerson’s Argentinian junket began, not in Buenos Aires with a meeting with President Macri, but in San Carlos di Bariloche where, ostensibly, he was to give a speech to a nature preserve and meet with a Fullbright scholar.

Uh huh. Sure. Glaciers, Fullbright scholars, and nature preserves.

So what was squatting in the middle of the article?

Sit down, and have a couple of fingers of Jack Daniels, because this one is a stunner, and full of implications:

Xapo’s founder is the Argentinian entrepreneur Wences Casares, the “patient zero” of bitcoin among Silicon Valley’s elite. It was Casares who gave tech luminaries like Bill Gates and Reid Hoffman their first bitcoins. Carlos Rienzi, Xapo’s head of security, chose the vault, and he designed the private suite and its security protocols.(Emphasis added)

That’s right: the owner of this bunker, and one of the “founders” of Bitcoin, according to this article, and therefore, someone who sits on top of the Bitcoin op, is an Argentine “entrepreneur”.

Now let’s search for Senor Cesares. Wikipedia says this about him:

He is the founder and CEO of Xapo, a bitcoin wallet startup based in Palo Alto, California.[2] Xapo is said to be the largest custodian of bitcoin in the world.[3]Xapo has raised $40 million from leading Silicon Valley venture capital firms.[4]

Casares sits on the board of PayPal and, as part of his non-profit activities, he serves on the board of Endeavor,[5] a non-profit organization that promotes high-impact entrepreneurship in emerging markets and that was instrumental in his early success. He also served on the board of Kiva,[6] a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty worldwide.

Originally from Patagonia, Argentina, Casares launched that country’s first Internet Service Provider, Internet Argentina S.A. in 1994, a company he would go on to sell in order to found the Argentine online brokerage Patagon in 1997. Patagon established itself as Latin America’s first comprehensive Internet financial services portal and expanded its online banking services to the United States, Spain, and Germany. Patagon was acquired by the Spanish bank, Banco Santander for $750 million which became Santader Online worldwide.

Oh… gee… look! He’s from Patagonia in Argentina!

And oh… gee…look: he has online banking services connected to Spain, the USA, and Germany!

And… wow… look again! It’s all being coordinated from a bunker!

Now the question is, who else, and what else, is he connected with?

And gee, this all sort of makes me wonder, with blockchain encryption, if crypto-currencies aren’t  a perfect way to launder all sorts of missing money, and while doing so, manipulating their prices as well, kill two birds with one stone, so to speak…

See you on the flip side…

Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com

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You won’t believe this stupid new law against Cash and Bitcoin

TruthFact
Source: SovereignMan.com
Simon Black
June 14, 2017

This one is almost too ridiculous to believe.

Recently a new bill was introduced on the floor of the US Senate entitled, pleasantly,

“Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Counterfeiting Act of 2017.”

You can probably already guess its contents.

Cash is evil.

Bitcoin is evil.

Now they’ve gone so far to include prepaid mobile phones, retail gift vouchers, or even electronic coupons. Evil, evil, and evil.

These people are certifiably insane.

Among the bill’s sweeping provisions, the government aims to greatly extend its authority to seize your assets through “Civil Asset Forfeiture”.

Civil Asset Forfeiture rules allow the government to take whatever they want from you, without a trial or any due process.

This new bill adds a laundry list of offenses for which they can legally seize your assets… all of which pertain to money laundering and other financial crimes.

Here’s the thing, though: they’ve also vastly expanded on the definition of such ‘financial crimes’, including failure to fill out a form if you happen to be transporting more than $10,000 worth of ‘monetary instruments’.

Have too much cash? You’d better tell the government.

If not, they’re authorizing themselves in this bill to seize not just the money you didn’t report, but ALL of your assets and bank accounts.

They even go so far as to specifically name “safety deposit boxes” among the various assets that they can seize if you don’t fill out the form.

(Yet another reason to consider storing cash, gold, and silver in an overseas safety deposit box.)

This is unbelievable on so many levels.

It’s crazy to begin with that these people are so consumed by the fact that someone has $10,000 in cash.

But it’s even crazier that they’re threatening to take EVERYTHING that you own merely for not filling out a piece of paper, without any due process whatsoever.

Oh, and on top of civil asset forfeiture penalties, there are also criminal penalties.

Right now according to current law they can imprison you for up to FIVE YEARS for not filling out the form. Five years.

But apparently that doesn’t go far enough to protect us against evil men in caves.

So this bill aims to double the criminal penalty to TEN years in prison.

And if that weren’t enough, this bill also gives them with new authority to engage in surveillance and wiretapping (including phone, email, etc.) if they have even a hint of suspicion that you might be transporting excess ‘monetary instruments’.

Usually wiretapping authority is reserved for major crimes like kidnapping, human trafficking, felony fraud, etc.

Now we can add cash to that list.

It’s not just government spy agencies to worry about, either.

Banks in the US are already unpaid government spies, required by law to fill out suspicious activity reports on their customers.

Then Congress started expanding those requirements to include other businesses and industries that might come into contact with cash.

Stock brokers. Casinos. Currency exchanges. Precious metals dealers. Pawnbrokers. The Post Office.

According to the law (section 5312 of US Code Title 31), those industries are also required to spy on their customers for the government.

But under this new bill, they want to forcibly recruit even more unpaid spies, including any business which issues or redeems ANYTHING that’s prepaid.

Prepaid credit cards. Prepaid phones. Prepaid retail gift cards. Prepaid coupons.

So, Amazon.com, which issues and redeems prepaid gift cards, will be required under this bill to file reports to the government.

For that matter, TGI Fridays and Chuckee Cheese will also become unpaid government spies since they both issue and redeem prepaid vouchers.

Truly these Senators have figured out how to strike at the heart of ISIS.

Further, their bill wants to pull any business which “issues” cryptocurrency under the anti-money laundering regulatory umbrella.

Here’s where these people demonstrate that they have no idea what they’re talking about.

No one “issues” Bitcoin. There’s no Bitcoin central bank. There’s no Chairman of Bitcoin who decides on a whim to increase the supply.

Bitcoin is created automatically amounts that are pre-determined by its code. It’s software.

So the Senate is essentially trying to force the Bitcoin core software to comply with money laundering regulations.

How pathetically clueless.

The bill also…

Continue Reading At: SovereignMan.com

Crypto-currency, Financial Clearing, & Rogue Hacking Groups


Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
June 7, 2017

Color me crazy, but I’ve never been on the cashless society bandwagon for a variety of reasons, not the least being that anything Mr. Globaloney is for, is probably ab initio et in principio a bad idea. Crypto-currencies, in this light, always struck me as being “too good to be true” and their principal selling point – security and privacy – a little too convenient. They struck me then, and strike me now, as being taylor-made to press Mr. Globaloney’s desire to move everyone to cashlessness.

Which brings me to my second reason for skepticism: the integrity of cyber systems in general. Why anyone would trust such a system is beyond me, especially when, if one wants to turn the clock back a bit to the 1980s, there were already stories circulating about computers being sold with “clipper chips” that allowed your local not-so-friendly three-letter-agencies access to every electronic communication. Then, of course, came the Inslaw-PROMIS scandals of the late 1980s, and we were off and running.

Now, in that context, consider the following article by Rich Haridy – a very intriguing article from several points of view – that was shared by Mr. J.K.:

Shadow Brokers hacking group reveals bizarre data dump subscription plan

Several things caught my eye in this article, and we’d be here for days if I were to blog about all of them, but I want to draw attention to the first thing that really leaped off the page:

The Shadow Brokers first appeared in August 2016, announcing an auction to sell off a set of security exploits the group purportedly stole from the NSA. After the auction failed to reach the absurd asking price of one million bitcoins, the group publicly released four sets of exploits over the following months. One of those exploits contained the now infamous EternalBlue vulnerability that underpinned the recent WannaCry attack.

Since the WannaCry outbreak, the Shadow Brokers have been threatening to release more NSA hacking tools, and in early May the group published a blog post in broken English ominously announcing a bizarre subscription model offering members a monthly haul of data.

The group described it as a, “new monthly subscription model. Is being like wine of month club. Each month peoples can be paying membership fee, then getting members only data dump each month. What members doing with data after is up to members.”

In a follow-up post published more recently, the group explained the process in greater detail. Subscribers can pay 100 Zcash coins (equivalent to over US$20,000) to access the data dump, which will be revealed in the first two weeks of July.

Zcash is a relatively new cryptocurrency launched in October 2016. Purportedly more secure than Bitcoin, the Shadow Brokers’ use of Zcash seems to be less about using a safer cryptocurrency and more about revealing to the public the US government’s connection to its development.

The Shadow Brokers’ blog post explicitly points out that the development of Zcash is allegedly linked to the Department of Defense, DARPA and Israel. It also claims the new cryptocurrency, which was recently accepted as a legitimate currency on iOS and Android platforms, could be a trojan horse with a cryptographic flaw monitored by the NSA or used by the government to send money to deep cover assets outside of banking systems. (Italicized emphasis added)

Now, before we get to my high octane speculation de jour, note the following things:

(1) The hacking group “Anonymous” seems to have dropped off the radar, to be replaced now with “The Shadow Brokers” which raises the interesting questions: (a) has the former group simply rebranded itself and reemerged under a new name? Or did the former simply cease operations? Or are they two discrete groups? One may never know, but as we’ll see in a moment, the question of who and what this new group – the Shadow Brokers – is, is an important component of any speculation regarding what it going on.

(2) The new group is exposing the alleged links of the new cyber-currency to the US Department of Defense, DARPA, and Israel; and,

(3) that said cyber-currency has a “back door” built in, which, of course, raises the entire philosophical objection I have to the whole idea: what is to prevent any cyber-currency, state-sponsored or otherwise, from having a similar “flaw”? Answer: nothing.

Given that flaw, however, note that The Shadow Brokers have tapped into it, which raises the question of just who they are. Here Mr. Haridy explores the options at opposite ends of the spectrum:

This odd series of actions, which seem to be constantly iterating information with a strong anti-government bent, has caused many to question who The Shadows Brokers actually are, and whether their motives are simply mercenary.

Much speculation has floated around the possibility that the group could be a foreign nation state working to embarrass or disrupt the US government’s cyber-spying efforts. A former NSA employee tells Ars Technica that they, “are foreign intelligence, and the continued requests for money are all geared towards plausible deniability that they are intel.”

Edward Snowden tweeted suspicions that the group were Russian hackers back in August 2016, when the original auction was revealed. Over a series of 15 tweets he laid out a compelling case for the original NSA hacks coming from a foreign intelligence, in particular, Russia.

Security specialist Bruce Schneier also published a more recent, and exhaustive, investigation into the source of the mysterious hacking group. He concludes, quite reasonably, that while they are seemingly not just random hackers or cybercriminals, it also looks unlikely they are a cyber-intelligence sector of a nation state due to their erratic and anarchic activities.

All of this brings me to my high octane speculation of the day. Assuming the first hypothesis, that the group is a state-sponsored group, then the effect of their action seems to be to expose the extent of NSA electronic eavesdropping, and the lack of integrity of cyber systems. If, on the other hand, it is a private group, the effect would be the same. But it is the effect itself that seems to be being ignored by analysts hypothesizing on who they are and what they’re up to, for regardless of whether or not they are state-sponsored (and that means, even a group or faction within the American military-intelligence complex), or not, the group is (1) Calling into question the integrity of cyber systems in general and (2) crypto-cyber currencies in particular. And hence it strikes me as being entirely possible that the real ultimate and deepest motivation of these types of attacks is to call into question the whole agenda of cashless society, all firmly under the control of Mr. Globaloney. In support of this high octane speculation, recall that even Darth Soros was recently hacked, and some of his financial dealings exposed to scrutiny.

If my hypothesis is true, expect more such hacks, and more such exposure of the global super-elite.

See you on the flip side…

Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
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About Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and “strange stuff”. His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into “alternative history and science”.

New Tech To Track Every Homeless Person In NYC – #NewWorldNextWeek

Source: CorbettReport.com | MediaMonarchy.com
March 12, 2017

Welcome to New World Next Week — the video series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in open source intelligence news. In this week’s episode:

Story #1: Xi Jinping’s New Silk Road Summit Will Step Up China’s Endorsement Of Globalization
http://bit.ly/2qu0rZ1

NWNW Flashback: UN, China Agree on Silk Road Initiative Cooperation (Sep. 29, 2016)
http://bit.ly/2q5vw3R

Globalization 2.0: China Ushering in Newer, Shinier New World Order!
http://bit.ly/2q4LrQw

Story #2: Florida, The First State To Arrest Anyone For Selling Bitcoin, Is Passing Laws To Imprison Them
http://bit.ly/2pmiX5I

Florida House Bill 1379: Defining Cryptocurrencies
http://bit.ly/2pBj7SN

Bitcoin Value Rises Over $1B As Japan, Russia Move To Legitimize Cryptocurrency
http://cnb.cx/2nDES7o

Study Highlights Growing Significance Of Cryptocurrencies
http://bit.ly/2qVRNT7

Story #3: NYC’s New Tech To Track Every Homeless Person In The City
http://bit.ly/2r2lgHk

Update: Second German Soldier Arrested In False Flag Refugee Plot
http://bit.ly/2q5gZp6

Appropriate For April Fool’s Day: Central Banks…

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell
April 1, 2016

I should put this one in the “you tell me” category, because I don’t intend on commenting much today about this article, other than to say I am not, let me repeat that, not in favor of any cashless society, nor of central banks having any role in same. Physical media of exchange must always remain if there is to be genuine individual freedom, creativity, and movement.

But that said, I’d like to know everyone else’s thoughts here for a change:

https://www.dollarvigilante.com/blog/2016/03/16/central-banks-move-into-crypto-currencies-as-part-of-cashless-society-hustle.html/embed?wmode=transparent#?secret=98lShVM9rg

Continue Reading At: GizaDeathStar.com