There is a reason for their support. They are massive supporters of crypto-currency. They have been funding candidates in other elections on the basis of their support for it. New VP nominee, J D Vance is a massive fan of crypto too. They are booming in supposed value because of his nomination.
So what is this about? Very clearly it is about breaking three things.
The first is the sovereignty of the state, which is dependent on its power to create legal tender.
Second is the power to tax, which is dependent on the ability to trace the use of that legal tender.
Third, it is to break the power of the state to regulate the economy by creating parallel currencies that it cannot control and so impose its will.
Blimey! Spud 5, the master of disguise, reveals he was a Brexiteer all the time…
Funny, all the things he claims are bad I see as benefits.
There’s something a little tragic about a man with such a hankering after the zil-lane who will never be chauffeured in a zil.
The state doesn’t have a will.
The state doesn’t have a will.
Not literally perhaps, but it does seem to leanl towards endless expansion. It’s the real ‘grey goo’ threat.
I like crypto in theory, but in practice I have two problems with it. 1 – it seems to be utterly dominated by fraudsters. 2 – how am I meant to use it if the value shoots up and down all the time?
Spud is an optimist. The currency of the future is gonna be loose cigarettes or half ounce bags of weed.
The existence of alternative currencies – $ , crypto, whatever – is the only thing that stops the fuckers from debauching ours.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s TDS has peaked in the Torygraph today.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/07/19/president-trump-trades-europe-ukraine-taiwan-china/
Trump is Franco & Armageddon awaits us. Expect rains of frogs.
Has this geezer ever been right about anything? Is this another Spud gig but using a spelling & grammar corrector? Has anyone ever the two in the same room?
I think the cryotocurrencies are pointless, as they are liable to rugpulls, hacking, sudden regulation, theft, and liable to bear markets, and worst of all total coalpses in confidence fin the coins om something that has no intrinstlic value.
I like NFTs more..
I like crypto in theory, but in practice I have two problems with it. 1 – it seems to be utterly dominated by fraudsters. 2 – how am I meant to use it if the value shoots up and down all the time?
I like it in theory. But it’s not a currency. It is not a token of value confidently, widely & readily exchangeable for goods/services in commerce. A currency’s value is determined by the quantity of goods/services it can be exchanged for. The Bitcoin price is an exchange rate with currencies whose values can be determined by the quantity of goods/services they can be exchanged for. It has no intrinsic value whatsoever. It’s pure speculation. It will not have any independent value until the vast majority of Bitcoin ( and that means 99.9%+ In line with other currencies) are circulating in commerce. That may happen eventually. Be wonderful if it did. But it hasn’t happened yet. And it will never happen whilst it’s treated as an “investment”.
I like the idea of transacting in Bitcoin. For all the reasons Spud doesn’t. But you always have the problem that any position you take will be hanging over a precipice that stretches down to zero. Theoretically, I imagine you could insure yourself by taking option positions in the other direction. But that’s really only going to work for fairly minor fluctuations. If the skids go under it…
Steve
That’s why they’re looking to ban smoking I guess
The original goals of crypto were what the potato finds fault in. Freedom from fat little jump up cunts like him.
I suppose he thinks he’s being very clever with his Hayek title – but Hayeks core insight was that failed accountants can never know enough to manage the economy.
The potato sees himself as the chief slave master so no wonder he’s anti this stuff
@BiS
“Trump is Franco & Armageddon awaits us. Expect rains of frogs.”
My Ancestors were kicked out of France for being protestant. If Trump wins I expect a rain of Frogs here. Kicked out of France for not bowing to St Karl of Marx.
Murphy wouldn’t know anything about crypto as such; it’s not like it’s stopped him from commenting on other things he knows nothing about after all.
He’s commenting on it now because there’s a media push to associate Trump and Vance with crypto. The two things people associate crypto with are “number go up” and “scam”. Neither is a good thing to be associated with if you’re a politician.
So it’s another smear job and Murphy’s part of the chorus.
Of course he’s such a narcissist that he probably think the idea’s unique to him.
VP – good luck to them.
My baccy isn’t legal either.
BiS – AEP says: The steep price of a Republican victory will fall particularly heavily upon Ukraine and Taiwan
“Conservatives” have nothing left to offer except foreign wars and mass immigration, are surprised people don’t want foreign wars or mass immigration.
More AEP: Anybody who listened to the ice-cold comments of Senator JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference this year knows that Mr Trump has picked a running mate who wishes to ratify Vladimir Putin’s conquests.
American taxpayers have spent well north of $100Bn on the proxy war to date. That money has helped Ukraine lose 200,000- 300,000 men and all of the territory they recaptured in last year’s disastrous offensive.
Things are going so well, NATO is screaming about how the Rooskies are going to conquer Europe next.
The stated aim may be to free America’s stretched military resources for the larger showdown with China, but it looks more like cover for ideological preference and Lindbergh isolationism. Mr Trump himself has just invited China’s Xi Jinping to take Taiwan if he wants, an invitation that will no doubt be accepted.
In his interview with Bloomberg, Mr Trump said he was “very cool to the idea of the US sort of standing up for and protecting Taiwan”, adding that the island “took all of our chip business. Why are we doing this?”.
Not wanting war with China – the world’s only manufacturing superpower and a country that can build 230 warships for every one the US can build – over the fate of a Chinese province the West has no capability to defend is “Lindberghian isolationism”.
“Conservatives”: why do they want us poor and dead and paying £35 for baccy?
Not literally perhaps, but it does seem to leanl towards endless expansion.
A democratic state is an organisation consisting of a group of people with acknowledged power and authority, by virtue of election and appointment, over a given area, and that group tends to expand its remit. The state is a person only in the sense of the legal fiction of corporate personhood. It has no will, only decision procedures. Its intentions are those of the people in charge. Spud’s state-worship leads him to imagine that the state is an entity over and above its constituent parts.
One great thing about crypto currency is that there is no regulator who is going to catch you in the act of market manipulation. The second great thing is that market manipulation is so easy. You don’t even need a complicit counterparty as thanks to the anonymity you can be both the buyer and the seller. Just wait till the market is quiet so you will be the counterpart of your own big trades and you can push the price up at will.
Sorry, andyf, but that could only have been written by someone who has never traded in a market. Or if you know how to manipulate one by trading, please tell us. Then we can all make a fortune.
Come on ‘bloke in Spain’, don’t be unfair on Andyf, Richard Murphy knows everything about everything, despite not having any actual knowledge or experience on the majority of it, so maybe Andyf is similar?
@BiS You are correct that in my 20 years working for trading firms (big ones) I wasn’t a trader. Instead I was on the risk and control side, and did occasionally but rarely investigate traders. As you know wash trading is market abuse and banned in tightly regulated markets as it be can be used to move prices. In a non work related context I have seen evidence of it being done with bitcoin and suspected exchange involvement. Fortunately it wasn’t my problem. What they were doing was making big purchases in a low volume window and presumably fulfilling them themselves. This pushed the price up which then reverts to “normal” over a period of time. If you can cause prices to predictably sawtooth you can make money, but if you do that in a properly regulated market you get caught.
Murphy does write nonsense, doesn’t he!
“The first is the sovereignty of the state, which is dependent on its power to create legal tender”
Nope. He’s got that completely the wrong way round. Having a monopoly on currency creation is an expression of sovereignty, not a condition for it.
It’s perfectly possible to have sovereignty without your own currency, and indeed there are states that don’t have their own currency (Montenegro and El Salvador come to mind, and there are other smaller ones; and that’s before you get into arguments about whether Eurozone members etc. have their own currency).
“Second is the power to tax, which is dependent on the ability to trace the use of that legal tender.”
Nonsense on a stick. How are national-currency cash transactions any easier to trace than crypto-currency? The practical ability to tax depends on being able to identify whatever you’re taxing (income, profits, transactions).
What makes things easier to tax is having the payment go through an account that the State can access. But whether that’s denominated in the State’s legal tender or something else is irrelevant.
“Third, it is to break the power of the state to regulate the economy by creating parallel currencies that it cannot control and so impose its will.”
Most regulation is of physical things (products, trading, manufacturing) or services, not currency. What regulations depend on State control of the currency?
“That money has helped Ukraine lose 200,000- 300,000 men and all of the territory they recaptured in last year’s disastrous offensive.”
That’s rather disingenuous, isn’t it: ignoring the fact that the Russian army (and economy) has largely been hollowed-out in the process. That’s what the money is buying. Can’t just count the costs, you know.
I was a stock market floor trader & can’t see how you can do it. Someone always has to be the other side of every trade. For you to be buying they have to be selling. Both sides are making they’re own individual decisions. OK, lets say you raise the bid to buy stock. So what volume was their offer in? At what point do they change their mind about the desirability of offering the stock at that price? Why would they sell on a rising market? You’re changing the incentives. How much do you now have to bid to shake loose more stock? Exactly the same happens when you try & unwind your position. You’ve stopped buying so the support goes out of the market. It’ll tend to revert back to where it was. When you try to clear your position, who’s supposed to be bidding for it? If you’re not careful you’ll end up having to offer the stock for less than you paid for it to clear your book.
You can make money trading in a market by anticipating other people’s decisions. That’s what someone’s going to do to you.
You say big purchases in a small volume market. Worse place to do it. It’s an unmistakeable signal that virtually shouting. The question the counterparties are going to be asking is of what? Now you’re going to dump big lines of stock back into that small volume market. Ah! That’s what.
I don’t say I haven’t seen people try & do this sort of thing. And I’ve seen them come very unstuck. They think they’re the only rational entity there & the market is dumb. The market isn’t dumb. It’s made up of other rational individuals who may be cleverer than them.
That’s rather disingenuous, isn’t it: ignoring the fact that the Russian army (and economy) has largely been hollowed-out in the process. That’s what the money is buying. Can’t just count the costs, you know.
Steve won’t listen to you. He’ll be fantasizing about fellating Putin or such like.
If you watch closely you will see that Russia now has basically no armed forces. Their tank divisions are a shell of what they were (in many cases, literally). Their air force is still largely intact, but all the data gathered by NATO now means that if it takes to the air against them it will last days, if not hours. They have no reserves of missiles or shells.
Russia survives by throwing astonishing amounts of manpower into the grinder and yet still can’t beat a country supposedly riven by discord and corruption.
It will be decades, if ever, before Russia is a conventional military threat. And they did it to themselves without a single NATO soldier dying. Sure, it has been expensive, but we piss away much larger sums on Net Zero without even a bother.
– American taxpayers have spent well north of $100Bn on the proxy war to date. That money has helped Ukraine lose 200,000- 300,000 men and all of the territory they recaptured in last year’s disastrous offensive.
Those loss figures are ridiculous, and Ukraine retains most of the little territory it liberated in the failed Zaporizhzhia counter offensive. I suggest you cut back on your cannabis consumption.
– If you watch closely you will see that Russia now has basically no armed forces.
Also recommend to monitor substance abuse levels.
Nothing outside of the state, nothing against the state.
But *I’m* the fascist?
I wonder ifJill is happy to ride off into the sunset with the commission on the $100,000,000,000?
Grist said:
“I wonder ifJill is happy to ride off into the sunset with the commission on the $100,000,000,000?”
Does Hunter share?
@BiS
The first big difference with a crypto market from those where you worked is that the price is solely backed by sentiment with no underlying fundamentals to show that an instrument is overvalued. The price can be pushed up and up.
Two parties with big positions can trade against each other to push up the price more and more. They can more that recover their costs as the price they pushed up decays. It doesn’t even need two parties because unlike your markets they are anonymous so can fairly invisibly trade against themselves making coordination very easy. Their big win however is to keep pushing up the price so the hidden positions they hold is worth more and more.
The activity I have watched was like a defibrillator running to thump up the market whenever it dropped. As you say it screamed out what was happening but that’s where the third big difference from your market kicks in: they are not going to be prosecuted. If you had done something like that you would have been talking first to your Compliance officer and then to Employee Relations.
Chester – ignoring the fact that the Russian army (and economy) has largely been hollowed-out in the process. That’s what the money is buying. Can’t just count the costs, you know.
Yes, the Russian army has run out of men and missiles four times and is now fighting with stolen toilet seats.
Well done, you win absolutely nothing and Eastern Europe is going to be Somali Territory soon.
Great work, genius.
PJF – I suggest you cut back on your cannabis consumption.
You voted Tory, so nobody’s going to listen to your recommendations ever again., lol.
– You voted Tory . . .
Did I vote Tory 200,000 – 300,000 times?
Knowingly speading lies isn’t very christian of you, Steve. But then, neither are you really.
PJF – For some reason, you shat it, spent a lot of time on here bitching about people planning to vote Reform, then started lying about it after Rishi did a conga line to have a good laugh at putting one over easily frightened pensioners such as yourself:
https://order-order.com/2024/07/05/sunak-posts-jubilant-scenes-after-obliterating-tory-party/
You may be embarrassed by your behaviour, but that’s no reason to tell us porkies and accuse other people of being liars because they can remember what you said last month.
Knowingly speading lies isn’t very christian of you, Steve. But then, neither are you really.
That’s not one of my buttons, so you’re pressing in vain.
PJF
The CIA money must be running short. The figures are spot on. The war is an unmitigated disaster and a ceasefire is needed tomorrow, not least so we can focus on the real enemy which is the block of Hamas MPs of all parties and their rioting supporters.
@andyf
There is absolutely no difference between trading in a market in crypto or any other form of traded items. In both places the prices are opinions. Nothing more. If there is a difference, it’s in the opinions in non-crypto are limited by the underlying value of the things traded, so the opinions are about something tangible. Since crypto has no underlying value, the opinions are about the opinions of the opinions of other traders in the market. The whole thing’s recursive.
There are two sorts of trading markets. Commodities, where there’s an input on the production & output on the consumption side & the trading is in the flow. All of the flow. Prices are anchored by supply & demand. And securities where the quantity of what’s being traded is effectively static. And trading will be in the tiny part of the issuance that’s up for being traded. The rest is being held for the underlying yield which again anchors the market
Crypto is neither. The total of the issuance is up for trading & there is no anchor.
I think like many “back room boys” you don’t really understand price in a market. The only real price in any market is historic & is the strike price of the latest transaction which satisfied both buyer & seller. So one thing we can be sure of is that that price no longer exists. Bids & offers are by definition trades that haven’t happened because the prices didn’t satisfy buyers/sellers. Note the past tense. They do not imply that you can buy/sell at those prices now. That decision is the counterparties’.
Yes I’m quite willing to believe individual traders can move crypto prices. The historic price curve shows that the trading volumes against issuance are small. And you see the same sort of sawtooth profiles at fine timescale in the currency markets I play around in. But don’t tell me that’s people trying to manipulate those markets. You’d need central bank volumes of capital to do that. It’s simply buyers finding sellers & decision lag. All it shows is cryptoholders are remarkably difficult to shake loose of their holdings in a market where there’s a constant demand for crypto.
But I’m not willing to believe you can move the crypto market reliably in the direction you wish. Let’s say you want to buy crypto at the current quoted offer. Is that offer actually there or do you have to raise the bid to unstick some stock? Importantly, is anyone else going to follow you? You need them to or the bid/offer prices will return to where they were before you traded. Nothing in the market has changed except your trade. Of course the amount of stock available at that offer may be effectively inexhaustible. Or at the next round number above 😉 . So your ploy hasn’t worked & you haven’t moved the market. Now to unwind the position in the other direction, is the bid price actually there? That requires someone to buy your stock at your offer. Do they exist? To sum up, you’re trying to move a market with the entire market pushing back in the other direction. Markets are self policing in that way. Or you might set off a cascade could go in either direction as other traders become interested. Why I wouldn’t go anywhere near crypto. It’s perpetually hanging over that precipice stretches all the way down to zero.
I do the opposite. I try to anticipate what the herd will do. Capture a point or two here & there. Done entirely on reading the charts & I only try to do it in placid markets so I’m only trying to anticipate a limited range of decision makers. Anything dramatic starts happening, I’ll close my positions & sit on my hands. Produces the value of a mid range Merc most years. Never actually made a year on year loss. That’s trading.
– For some reason, you shat it, spent a lot of time on here bitching about people planning to vote Reform . . .
Well done, now you’ve publicly admitted that you’ve been lying about my having “voted Tory”.
Now we can move on to your lying accusations about my supposed lying. To be clear, I’ve only ever challenged your assertion that I voted Tory. I’ve never denied my issuing warnings about an anger vote for Reform to punish the Tories. I’m not embarrassed at all; I stand by those warnings. The disastrous result is almost exactly as I predicted, and we are only now beginning to suffer the immense, probably terminal, consequences.
If Sunak had a plan to wipe out the Tories, then calling a quick election during silly season, knowing that the Germanic tribes cannot hold discipline and will always charge forward screaming stupidly, was a genius move. Double genius is having used you as a pawn in his scheme, he has you still sat there crowing about it.
Oh, by the way, you’re also off about my age. As usual, there is reality and then there is the stupid wrong shit that Steve infers from his lack of perception about reality.
“If Sunak had a plan to wipe out the Tories, then calling a quick election during silly season, knowing that the Germanic tribes cannot hold discipline and will always charge forward screaming stupidly, was a genius move.”
LOL. Its as if the Tories haven’t been lying to us about being a right wing party for the last 30 years. Former Tory voters who have left them to vote for Reform (I’m one) have held our noses and voted for the Tories again and again because of the ‘oh look what Labour will do!’ line. And finally we’ve had enough. What exactly is this discipline we needed? Just vote Tory one more time and this time they’ll be a right wing party, pinky swear with a cherry on top? Pull the other one, its got Big Ben on.
Sometime something is so rotten the only solution is to destroy it and start again. And sometimes its necessary to pull the whole thing down and bury yourself and your enemies in the hope that those to come can make a better job of it than we did. And don’t say ‘But you’ve just handed power to Labour who will now do all manner of terrible things!’ Yes thats the idea, give them enough rope to hang themselves. They are so stupid they’ll do all the idiotic things the Left always do, and it’ll all just make things 10 time worse, and they’ll be even more hated than the Tories were eventually.
And don’t say ‘But Labour will destroy the nation!’ because its already destroyed, and the Tories were a significant reason for us getting us to where we are today. They are not the answer, they are (one of) the culprits. The nation is pretty much done for regardless, but if there’s small chance of getting out of the hole, it lies with someone other than the Tories (or Labour and the rest of the UniParty). So Reform it is.
PJF – Well done, now you’ve publicly admitted that you’ve been lying about my having “voted Tory”.
[…]
If Sunak had a plan to wipe out the Tories, then calling a quick election during silly season, knowing that the Germanic tribes cannot hold discipline and will always charge forward screaming stupidly, was a genius move. Double genius is having used you as a pawn in his scheme, he has you still sat there crowing about it.
So your story now is, you didn’t vote Tory, even though you believe that people not voting Tory was a “disaster”.
You’re full of shite, mate.
Jim – The nation is pretty much done for regardless, but if there’s small chance of getting out of the hole, it lies with someone other than the Tories (or Labour and the rest of the UniParty). So Reform it is.
Yarp. We have 644 enemies in the House of Commons.
But now, thanks to Reform, we also have 6 friends. For those who couldn’t even be arsed to vote for their own national survival, time to go and play on the M25 and leave politics to the men.
Jim – huzzah!
“As usual, there is reality and then there is the stupid wrong shit that Steve infers from his lack of perception about reality.”
Couldn’t have put it better.
But now, thanks to Reform, we also have 6 friends.
Yeah, but let’s hope this time they don’t play it by the rules like UKIP after getting the Leave result. Politics isn’t for nice people. Let’s see them cheat & lie & steal & blackmall & threaten & anything it takes to first bury the Tories & then do the same to Labour. Because that’s what they’ll be trying to do to Reform. Don’t bring a fluffy teddy to a knife fight.
I think Vance has a pro cryptocurrency line. Cryptocurrency seems a big voting issue.
I support the Democrats. But I want Biden to let another Democrat to stand.
Perhaps a Harris – Newsom ticket would win?
Who would replace Biden as Democratic candidate?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c80ekdwk9zro
Toledo Zaragoza said:
“I support the Democrats. But I want Biden to let another Democrat to stand.
Perhaps a Harris – Newsom ticket would win?”
Come on chaps, the parody account was amusing, but it’s now got too ridiculous to believe. Which of you is doing it?
RichardT – Do you understand some people have different views to your view? Are you in a prison cell, where everyone has to agree with you?