EES: Fighting inflation with FX, a real traders market

(GLOBALINTELHUB.COM) Dover, DE — 7/18/2017 — Hidden in plain site, as the Trump administration finally released something of substance regarding the so called promised “Trade Negotiation” we see FX take center stage in the global drama unfolding.  As noted on a Zero Hedge article:

The much anticipated document (press release and link to full document) released by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the Trump administration aimed to reduce the U.S. trade deficit by improving access for U.S. goods exported to Canada and Mexico and contained the list of negotiating objectives for talks that are expected to begin in one month. Topping Trump’s list is a “simple” objective: “improve the U.S. trade balance and reduce the trade deficit with Nafta countries.” Among other things the document makes the unexpected assertion that no country should manipulate currency exchange to gain an unfair competitive advantage,which according to Citi’s economists was the only notable surprise in the entire document: That line of focus centers on FX: “Through an appropriate mechanism, ensure that the Nafta countries avoid manipulating exchange rates in order to prevent effective balance of payments adjustment or to gain an unfair competitive advantage.”  ..While Canada and Mexico are not formally considered currency manipulators by the US Treasury, the reference in the list of objectives will likely set a template for future trade deals such as the pending negotiation to modify a 5 year old free trade deal with South Korea, a country in far greater risk of being branded a currency manipulator as it sits on the Treasury’s monitoring list for possible signs of currency manipulation.

As we have explained in previous articles and in our book Splitting Pennies – Trade is FX.  Tariffs can discourage trade, but so can a high price – effectively they are the same thing.  Conversely, a cheap price encourages trade.  This is why Japan has logically and rationally destroyed the value of its own currency in order to boost trade, in their case – exports – because Japan is not only a net exporter, they are a near 100% OEM manufacturer.

But it’s not clear that whoever wrote this document understands FX – every currency is currently a ‘manipulator’ – including Japan, and the US Federal Reserve Bank.  In fact, the global FX market has become a race to the bottom, with each currency competing with each other who can go down more, faster.  It’s a race into oblivion.  Contrary to what you may read in the current doom journalism popular online, the global financial collapse is happening right before our eyes – over a long time horizon.  The big mistake that many economists, analysts, and investors have made in the ‘doom and gloom’ crowd is that they all expected a ‘date’ or a ‘time’ when everything would ‘collapse’ – they didn’t think that it can happen over a period of 50 years.  We are in the demise, it’s happening right before our eyes.

Today someone asked me if Bitcoin can really be 500,000 – and why not?  My answer was that, it isn’t that Bitcoin is going UP it’s that the value of the US Dollar is going DOWN.  So if Bitcoin is 500,000 – that property in the hamptons that’s listed for $150 Million, it will be listed for $15 Billion, or why not $1 Trillion.  There is no limit to the amount of money the Federal Reserve can create – but there is a limited amount of Bitcoin.  Those who have lived in exSSR countries or Russia for example, understand how quickly money can be worthless.  Quantitative Easing is itself a global ‘reset’ if you understand how it works, and it happens over a long timeframe.

So where is one to invest, to protect from the deteriorating value of FX?  Bitcoin is by itself not a solution and by no means even something that should be part of any portfolio, it’s a test of the new world order’s global currency payments and monetary control system, whatever you want to call it – and it’s very volatile – just as it goes up 100% it can go down 90%.  The answer is that even with Bitcoin – the point is to TRADE it not INVEST in it.  Let’s dissect FX to understand this.  Take a look at this Daily EUR/USD chart going back 3 years:

The EUR/USD goes up, it goes down.  There’s an election in France, an election in the US.  It’s practically one currency.  But the ECB has a similar QE program that’s destroying the value of the Euro as well.  So the way to protect yourself here is to ‘trade’ this.  For example, take a look at a snapshot from 2016 of Magic FX Strategy, that has returned on average 1.5% per month for the last 4 years:

This is not a solicitation of this particular strategy, simply it provides a good example of how to ‘trade’ FX for a consistent profit, to combat inflation.  Investing in CDs and other interest rate products are not going to give you the 15%+ per year needed to stay ahead of the Fed.  This is the game of hot potato that Elite bankers have designed that’s built into the modern electronic financial system.  The stock market is great unless there’s a down year, but still just barely keeps you ahead of the game (if you stick to the traditional blue chips, industrials, utilities, etc) and certainly is not going to give you the 15% – 30% per year returns needed to really grow your portfolio.  30% + is the magic number Elite portfolios target (ironically, it’s about a 2x allocation to Magic FX strategy, in line with the natural fluctuations of the FX market, using reasonable, modest leverage).

If you’re not making 15% + per year inflation is eating you away.  So where can you invest and get 15% with reasonable risk?  The answer is practically no where in the markets, maybe in the private equity world, complex real estate, and other special situations but clearly there is no vanilla answer like “Buy Gold” or “Buy Bitcoin” as there may have been post 9/11.  This will be more and more true as QE matures, because QE is distorting asset prices in complex ways.  This is the ‘trap’ which has been set.  Not only does it cull the herd, as the Elite like to do every 20 years or so, it forces investors into a situation where they have to take more risk – if they don’t, their assets will ultimately be eaten away by inflation.  They have to play the game because if they sit on the sidelines they will lose out.  Of course it’s not fair – but that is the nature of the global capitalist financial system, at the moment, and it’s not going to change in our lifetime, so one can understand it and master it, or be the victim of it, SIMPLE!

And in the case of FX it’s not so complex to understand.  Let’s look quickly at the last currency of investment, the Swiss Franc.

Here’s a historical chart of CHF/USD (usually it’s quoted USD/CHF which is the inverse – opposite)

Investors in Swiss Francs over this period – which includes Americans just sending their money to Switzerland, enjoyed a 400%+ return over the 40 year period, non-compounded, without considering interest (just FX).  The small blip in the 80s when this investment declined was due to the US Dollars aggressive double digit interest rates, but that ended in 1986 when Swissie just took off and never looked back.  That was until the post 2008 world, where Switzerland became the target of a number of investigations by hungry US agencies looking for someone to blame and money to pay for damage done by the credit crisis, including the IRS, FBI, and DOJ in general, but there were a number of other US interests interested in financially ‘toppling’ the Gnomes of Zurich – namely, by closing the only way out of QE.  The Swiss Franc (CHF) was really the only currency that had any value, it was 40% backed by Gold, and upheld by a 1,000 + year banking tradition, a stable economy, and banking privacy laws.

In order to solidify the US Dollar as the primary world’s reserve currency, that had to be smashed.  So they did it in a number of ways, including but not limited to activating assets there such as corrupt central bankers (which really was a non-issue) and squeezing the Gnomes back into submission.  So the conclusion to this drama is now the CHF previously being the only real currency to invest in for the long term and forget about it, is now a central bank manipulated currency that is subject to SNB interventions, caps, trading ranges, and other direct central bank manipulation (like all other currencies).

So the reason for that story is simply that there is no where to just ‘invest’ your money and forget about it anymore (there was, such as the example of the Swiss Franc).  The good news though, FX is a traders market.  If investors are not too greedy, there’s a number of strategies in FX that can return the 15% + needed to beat inflation and possibly even grow.  Magic FX is certainly not the only strategy in the world with such low-volatility and consistent returns.  But due to the recent Dodd-Frank regulations such strategies are only available to ECP investors, which is a step above being accredited – basically you need to be liquid for $10 Million.  Oh, and to make fighting inflation really fun for the retail US investor, you aren’t allowed to hedge (no buying and selling of the same currency) and you must exit your positions in the same order in which you entered them (FIFO) and you have reduced leverage.  Basically, the Fed is creating pressure forcing the hand of investors to trade to stay ahead of the game, and the regulators are making it difficult (and in fact, more risky) to trade.  With US rules it’s a miracle any US retail investor can be profitable.  The rules have really turned FX into the casino that people are afraid of, because they are literally telling you when to exit your trades (FIFO).

In conclusion – FX is a real traders market.  It’s better than stocks, bonds, options, futures, etc.  Now with the influx of Cryptocurrencies FX is about to get even more interesting.  By trading FX successfully, or finding a manager who can do it for you – it’s the only way to fight inflation, to at least maintain the value of your hard earned dollars.  As we mentioned earlier in the article, there are of course other methods such as private equity and niche businesses (such as lawyers selling rights to settlements) that can generate the 30% + needed to grow a portfolio – but it’s not available publicly, in the markets.  But FX is there – it’s there for the taking – and it’s not going away anytime soon.

Open a Forex Account or Learn Forex with Fortress Capital Trading Academy.

Article written by Elite E Services for Global Intel Hub.

The $3.8bn cryptocurrency bubble is a huge deal. But it could break the blockchain

David Siegel had a problem. For years, the American entrepreneur had been working on an idea: an open-source platform, called Pillar, which would allow people to remain in control of their personal information by piggybacking on the blockchain — a digital decentralised ledger underpinning cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

But when Siegel pitched his company Twenty Thirty to venture capital firms, he was met with blank looks. Investors weren’t interested in Pillar, and Siegel couldn’t get funding to build it.

After months of rejections, Siegel decided do something different: instead of phoning just another investor, he resolved to get help from future users.

On 15 July, he is going to sell 560 million “tokens” — digital units of payment that will be necessary to use Pillar, once it’s ready — in exchange for ether, an up-and-coming cryptocurrency exchanged on public blockchain Ethereum. His target is the equivalent of $50 million; if that sounds like a lot, be aware that Pillar’s “token pre-sale”, some days ago, raised $4 million worth of Ethereum’s currency, ether — in 34 minutes.

“I couldn’t raise any money for Twenty Thirty from investors, because they didn't get what we were doing; now we have ordinary people hammering our email about Pillar,” Siegel says. “These people really want to fund this open source project.”

Siegel’s fund-raising model is called Initial Coin Offering, or ICO — and you might have heard of it, as it is the latest big thing in the frenzied world of cryptocurrencies.

An ICO’s functioning is simple: a team with an idea, but short of funds, use blockchain technology to issue a certain amount of digital tokens (aka “coins”) sold in an auction to people paying in ether, Bitcoin or, seldom, regular money like dollars or pounds.

Apart from rare cases, tokens’ only ostensible function is allowing their holders to use the platform that issued them: they could be used, for instance, to buy storage space on a Dropbox-style service, or converted into special objects on a gaming platform. They are the equivalent of coupons for a supermarket under construction.

But tokens often grow into mini-currencies in their own right: they are traded for cryptocurrency or fiat on blockchain marketplaces, and the more successful their related project grows, the more valuable its tokens become. This dynamic is inevitably attracting a great deal of speculation.

The mechanism has been around for a while — the first instance was MasterCoin in 2013, followed in 2014 by Ethereum’s first ether sale, and more recently by the ill-fated autonomous VC firm The DAO — but it really surged over the first half of 2017. Tens of projects have amassed millions of dollar within days, hours, or seconds, with superstars such as blockchain architecture firms EOS and Tezos soaring over $150 million and $200 million. In June, bitcoin news website Coindesk announced that funds raised through ICOs had overcome VC money as the first source of investment in the blockchain sector in 2017. “Tokens” might sound like Monopoly money, but their impact on the real world is growing by the day.

The question is: why? Ask people in the field and they tend to reflect two main narratives, one optimistic, the other decidedly sceptical.

The positive one is that ICOs are a new, smart way to finance projects that struggle to get VC’s backing.

Etienne Brunet, an investment executive at FinTech VC firm Illuminate Financial, points to investors’ recent interest in private blockchains (members-only ledgers banks and financial institutions are experimenting with) as the root cause for ICOs. “In 2016 it was very hard to raise funding unless you were doing private blockchains,” he says. “So, all the people trying to build open source projects for the public blockchain had to find a new way to get funds.”

That view is shared by Jamie Burke, the founder and CEO of blockchain-focussed VC firm Outlier Ventures, who calls ICOs “the blockchain ecosystem’s killer app.”

The way Burke sees it, ICOs are finally lowering the barriers to entry for technology investment, as whoever has some cryptocurrency can join the party; more than that, coins’ speculative potential is allowing open-source projects to raise more funds than ever before.

“The point is that now, for the first time ever, open-source initiatives can be profitable for investors,” he says. “Previously, they were relying upon donations and they were inherently unprofitable — people would just do them for an ethical goal. Now there is a financial incentive for people to participate.”

There is a stick-it-to-the-man undertone behind this take on ICO: the idea that smart, independent teams are raking in millions from the anarchic crypto-crowd to take on blindsided VCs and bank-loving private blockchainers. And increasingly, ICOs are being used by companies outside of the blockchain field, such as messaging service Kik, which portrayed its upcoming ICO as a last-ditch attempt to compete with juggernauts such as Facebook.

Burke has no doubts where this leaves traditional investors. “The VC model is dead,” he says. “Over time people like us will stop being the main source of capital. VCs will become more like auditors. I’ve got people in ICOs saying, 'We don't need your money, what we want is your validation.’”

Still, Burke admits that, while this is the direction he sees ICOs evolving over the next few months and years, the current state of affairs is far from optimal.

Confused about blockchain? You should be
 

“Most of the projects which have launched ICOs are poorly designed and won't scale,” he says. “But I look past that: I still think we have the ability to kick-start this new economy.”

 

That brings us to the second narrative, which portrays the ICO frenzy as a massive speculation game, or worse.

ICOs might have lowered barriers to entry, but most token sales are dominated by a handful of large investors —“whales” in crypto parlance — snarfing up almost all the cake. In the $35 million ICO for Brave, a browser created by Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich, only 130 people bought coins — and half of them were purchased by just five buyers.

Although most projects specify — risibly— that tokens are “not for speculation”, token speculation is at the core of ICO’s success at raising so much money so quickly. Big crypto owners are throwing money at token sales hoping that coin value will increase in the short run, diversifying their crypto portfolio in the process.

“The point is: if you have $200 million worth of bitcoin or ether, what should you do?” Illuminate’s Brunet says.
The side effect is that millions are going to entities which, apart from tokens and a project outline — crypto parlance: “white paper” — have very little to offer. Take for example “Useless Ethereum Token”, a parody initiative which still managed to raise $40,000 in funding. Or, for a grimmer story, look at OneCoin: a Ponzi scheme which had amassed over $350 million before being busted by the Indian police.

Some of the more obvious security problems are being addressed by the crypto community at large: it has been recommended that funds from ICO be locked in an escrow mechanism — giving access only to limited sums after milestones have been reached — in order to prevent crypto heists. And Ethereum’s wunderkind guru Vitalik Buterin has turned to game theory to suggest some tips for designing fairer ICO auctions, such as as splitting them up in smaller, spaced out sales over time.

The elephant in the room, has to do with financial regulation: with tokens being auctioned, traded, and speculated on as if they were securities, should we regard them and regulate them as securities? (The fact that ICO is even phonetically reminiscent of IPO, or initial public offering, is hardly a coincidence.)In most countries, the answer would be no: if something is not formally a security, it won’t be treated as such. But that is different in the US, whose security regulation extends to “investment contracts” — defined in a landmark case (centered on an orange orchard in Florida) as investments made with an “expectation of profits.”

Whether that applies to tokens— bizarre entities that have a sort of intrinsic value (as theoretical payment units) but are also being flipped around like stocks, is anybody’s guess. Right now, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has been silent on the matter, explains Peter Van Valkenburgh, a researcher at blockchain-focussed think tank Coin Center.

“SEC’s default position is ‘we're proceeding cautiously because, while we are worried about investor protection, we're not certain this is within our purview, and we don't want to stifle innovation’,” he says. “There's no indication that anything is gonna happen in the very short term.”

If SEC did decide to do act any ICO project which has sold coins to US citizens would have to comply with much more stringent regulation. That is probably why many current ICOs are labelled as “not for US investors”. (Ontario’s authorities recently warned that blockchain firms might be breaching the Canadian region’s financial laws.)

For the time being, ICO’s real challenge is whether it can thrive without being a pain in the side for the blockchain ecosystem itself. ICOs are likely behind the recent spike in the value of ether — with investors buying the cryptocurrency in order to take part in token sales; ICOs might also be behind ether’s sudden 30 percent drop in value, as many ether-loaded projects are converting their ICO-generated ether into fiat currency to pay their staff.

And the Ethereum network itself — which less than one year ago went through a traumatic restructuring following the collapse of The DAO — is being put under strain by the ICO onslaught, as relentless, massive volume of transactions generated by token sales commandeer the ledger’s computing power.

But that is not necessarily a bad thing, Van Valkenburgh says. “It could be a way to battle-harden the network: there have been issues with transaction delays and scaling because of the popularity of ICOs put strain on the network,” he says. “But if the blockchain has to grow, ICOs are a good way to test the infrastructure.”

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/what-is-initial-coin-offering-ico-token-sale

EXPOSED: The real creator of Bitcoin is likely the NSA as One World Currency

(GLOBALINTELHUB.COM) 6/12/17 — Bitcoin has surged to all time highs, urging us to compose this article on a hot trending topic that we’ve wanted to compose for a long time.  Our parent company, Elite E Services, is primarily a FX algorithm development company – so we get asked about Bitcoin quite a bit.  Life is a deteriorating asset so let’s get right down to it.  Who created Bitcoin, and why?  Before we get started just a quick note to all those that haven’t read Splitting Pennies – which is a great primer for those interested in Bitcoin and where it will go next.

The creator of Bitcoin is officially a name, “Satoshi Nakamoto” – very few people believe that it was a single male from Japan.  For more detailed analysis about who is Satoshi Nakamoto see this article and the official Wikipedia entry.  In the early days of Bitcoin development this name is associated with original key-creation and communications on message boards, and then the project was officially handed over to others at which point this Satoshi character never appeared again (Although from time to time someone will come forward saying they are the real Satoshi Nakamoto, and then have their posts deleted).

Bitcoin could very well be the ‘one world currency’ that conspiracy theorists have been talking about for some time.  It’s a kill five birds with one stone solution – not only is Bitcoin an ideal one world currency, it allows law enforcement a perfect record of all transactions on the network.  It states very clearly on bitcoin.org (the official site) in big letters “Bitcoin is not anonymous” :

Some effort is required to protect your privacy with Bitcoin. All Bitcoin transactions are stored publicly and permanently on the network, which means anyone can see the balance and transactions of any Bitcoin address. However, the identity of the user behind an address remains unknown until information is revealed during a purchase or in other circumstances. This is one reason why Bitcoin addresses should only be used once. Always remember that it is your responsibility to adopt good practices in order to protect your privacy. Read more about protecting your privacy.

Another advantage of Bitcoin is the problem of Quantitative Easing – the Fed (and thus, nearly all central banks in the world) have painted themselves in a corner, metaphorically speaking.  QE ‘solved’ the credit crisis, but QE itself does not have a solution.  Currently all currencies are in a race to zero – competing with who can print more money faster.  Central Bankers who are in systemic analysis, their economic advisors, know this.  They know that the Fiat money system is doomed, all what you can read online is true (just sensationalized) – it’s a debt based system based on nothing.  That system was created, originally in the early 1900’s and refined during Breton Woods followed by the Nixon shock (This is all explained well in Splitting Pennies).  In the early 1900’s – there was no internet!  It is a very archaic system that needs to be replaced, by something modern, electronic, based on encryption.  Bitcoin!  It’s a currency based on ‘bits’ – but most importantly, Bitcoin is not the ‘one world currency’ per se, but laying the framework for larger cryptocurrency projects.  In the case of central banks, who control the global monetary system, that would manifest in ‘Settlement Coin’ :

Two resources available almost exclusively to central banks could soon be opened up to additional users as a result of a new digital currency project designed by a little-known startup and Swiss bank UBS.  One of those resources is the real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system used by central banks (it’s typically reserved for high-value transactions that need to be settled instantly), and the other is central bank-issued cash.  Using the Utility Settlement Coin (USC) unveiled today, the five-member consortium that has sprung up around the project aims to help central banks open-up access to these tools to more customers. If successful, USC has the potential to create entirely new business models built on instant settling and easy cash transfers.  In interview, Robert Sams, founder of London-based Clearmatics, said his firm initially worked with UBS to build the network, and that BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank, ICAP and Santander are only just the first of many future members.

In case you didn’t read Splitting Pennies or don’t already know, the NSA/CIA often works for big corporate clients, just as it has become a cliche that the Iraq war was about big oil, the lesser known hand in global politics is the banking sector.  In other words, Bitcoin may have very well been ‘suggested’ or ‘sponsored’ by a banker, group of banks, or financial services firm.  But the NSA (as we surmise) was the company that got the job done.  And probably, if it was in fact ‘suggested’ or ‘sponsored’ by a private bank, they would have been waiting in the wings to develop their own Bitcoin related systems or as in the above “Settlement Coin.”  So the NSA made Bitcoin – so what?

It isn’t really important who or why created Bitcoin as the how – and the how is open source, so experts have dug through the code bit by bit (pun intended).  If the who or why isn’t important – why did we write an article about it?

The FX markets currently represent the exchange between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ currencies.  In the future, why not too they will include ‘cryptocurrencies’ – we’re already seeing the BTC/EUR pair popup on obscure brokers.  When BTC/USD and BTC/EUR are available at major FX banks and brokers, we can say – from a global FX perspective, that Bitcoin has ‘arrived.’  Many of us remember the days when the synthetic “Euro” currency was a new artificial creation that was being adopted, although the Euro project is thousands of degrees larger than the Bitcoin project.  But unlike the Euro, Bitcoin is being adopted at a near exponential rate by demand (Many merchants resisted the switch to Euros claiming it was eating into their profit margins and they were right!).

And to answer the question as to why Elite E Services is not actively involved in Bitcoin  the answer is that previously, you can’t trade Bitcoin.  Now we’re starting to see obscure brokers offering BTC/EUR but the liquidity is sparse and spreads are wacky – that will all change.  When we can trade BTC/USD just like EUR/USD you can bet that EES and a host of other algorithmic FX traders will be all over it!  It will be an interesting trade for sure, especially with all the volatility, the cross ‘pairs’ – and new cryptocurrencies.  For the record, for brokers- there’s not much difference adding a new symbol (currency pair) in MT4 they just need liquidity, which has been difficult to find.

So there’s really nothing revolutionary about Bitcoin, it’s just a logical use of technology in finance considering a plethora of problems faced by any central bank who creates currency.  And there are some interesting caveats to Bitcoin as compared to major currencies; Bitcoin is a closed system (there are finite Bitcoin) – this alone could make such currencies ‘anti-inflationary’ and at the least, hold their value (the value of the USD continues to deteriorate slowly over time as new M3 introduced into the system.)  But we need to pay

Another thing that Bitcoin has done is set the stage for a cryptocurrency race; even Google is investing in Bitcoin alternatives:

Google Ventures and China-based IDG Capital Partners are the second group of tech investors in two months to place a bet on OpenCoin, the company behind the currently-in-beta Ripple open-source payments protocol.  OpenCoin announced today that it had closed an additional round of funding — the amount wasn’t specified — with Google Ventures and IDG Capital Partners. (Hat tip to GigaOM for the news.)  Last month, OpenCoin wrapped up an earlier angel round of funding from another high-profile group of technology VCs: Andreessen Horowitz, FF Angel IV, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Vast Ventures and the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund.

Here’s some interesting theories about who or whom is Satoshi:

A corporate conglomerate   

Some researchers proposed that the name ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ was derived from a combination of tech companies consisting of Samsung, Toshiba, Nakayama, and Motorola. The notion that the name was a pseudonym is clearly true and it is doubtful they reside in Japan given the numerous forum posts with a distinctly English dialect.

Craig Steven Wright

This Australian entrepreneur claims to be the Bitcoin creator and provided proof.  But soon after, his offices were raided by the tax authorities on ‘an unrelated matter’

Soon after these stories were published, authorities in Australia raided the home of Mr Wright. The Australian Taxation Office said the raid was linked to a long-running investigation into tax payments rather than Bitcoin.
Questioned about this raid, Mr Wright said he was cooperating fully with the ATO.
“We have lawyers negotiating with them over how much I have to pay,” he said.

Other potential creators

Nick Szabo, and many others, have been suggested as potential Satoshi – but all have denied it:

The New Yorker published a piece pointing at two possible Satoshis, one of whom seemed particularly plausible: a cryptography graduate student from Trinity College, Dublin, who had gone on to work in currency-trading software for a bank and published a paper on peer-to-peer technology. The other was a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, Vili Lehdonvirta. Both made denials.
Fast Company highlighted an encryption patent application filed by three researchers – Charles Bry, Neal King and Vladimir Oks­man – and a circumstantial link involving textual analysis of it and the Satoshi paper which found the phrase “…computationally impractical to reverse” in both. Again, it was flatly denied.

THE WINNER: It was the NSA

The NSA has the capability, the motive, and the operational capacity – they have teams of cryptographers, the biggest fastest supercomputers in the world, and they see the need.  Whether instructed by their friends at the Fed, in cooperation with their owners (i.e. Illuminati banking families), or as part of a DARPA project – is not clear and will never be known (unless a whistleblower comes forward).  In fact, the NSA employs some of the best mathematicians and cryptographers in the world.  Few know about their work because it’s a secret, and this isn’t the kind of job you leave to start your own cryptography company.

But the real smoking Gun, aside from the huge amount of circumstantial evidence and lack of a credible alternative, is the 1996 paper authored by NSA “HOW TO MAKE A MINT: THE CRYPTOGRAPHY OF ANONYMOUS ELECTRONIC CASH” available here.

This author agrees:

The NSA was one of the first organizations to describe a Bitcoin-like system. About twelve years before Satoshi Nakamoto published his legendary white paper to the Metzdowd.com cryptography mailing list, a group of NSA information security researchers published a paper entitled How to Make a Mint: the Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash in two prominent places, the first being an MIT mailing list and the second being much more prominent, The American Law Review (Vol. 46, Issue 4 ).

The paper outlines a system very much like Bitcoin in which secure financial transactions are possible through the use of a decentralized network the researchers refer informally to as a Bank. They list four things as indispensable in their proposed network: privacy, user identification (protection against impersonation), message integrity (protection against tampering/substitution of transaction information – that is, protection against double-spending), and nonrepudiation (protection against later denial of a transaction – a blockchain!).

“We will assume throughout the remainder of this paper that some authentication infrastructure is in place, providing the four security features.” (Section 1.2)

It is evident that SHA-256, the algorithm Satoshi used to secure Bitcoin, was not available because it came about in 2001. However, SHA-1 would have been available to them, having been published in 1993.

Why would the NSA want to do this?  One simple reason: Control.  

As we explain in Splitting Pennies – the primary means the US dominates the world is through economic policy, although backed by bombs.  And the critical support of the US Dollar is primarily, the military.  The connection between the military and the US Dollar system is intertwined inextricably.  There are thousands of great examples only one of them being how Iraq switched to the Euro right before the Army’s invasion. 

In October 2000 Iraq insisted on dumping the US dollar – ‘the currency of the enemy’ – for the more multilateral euro.  The changeover was announced on almost exactly the same day that the euro reached its lowest ebb, buying just $0.82, and the G7 Finance Ministers were forced to bail out the currency. On Friday the euro had reached $1.08, up 30 per cent from that time.

Almost all of Iraq’s oil exports under the United Nations oil-for-food programme have been paid in euros since 2001. Around 26 billion euros (£17.4bn) has been paid for 3.3 billion barrels of oil into an escrow account in New York.  The Iraqi account, held at BNP Paribas, has also been earning a higher rate of interest in euros than it would have in dollars.

The point here is there are a lot of different types of control.  The NSA monitors and collects literally all electronic communications; internet, phone calls, everything.  They listen in even to encrypted voice calls with high powered microphones, devices like cellphones equipped with recording devices (See original “Clipper” chip).  It’s very difficult to communicate on planet Earth in private, without the NSA listening.  So it is only logical that they would also want complete control of the financial system, including records of all electronic transactions, which Bitcoin provides.

Could there be an ‘additional’ security layer baked into the Blockchain that is undetectable, that allows the NSA to see more information about transactions, such as network location data?  It wouldn’t be so far fetched, considering their past work, such as Xerox copy machines that kept a record of all copies made (this is going back to the 70’s, now it’s common).  Of course security experts will point to the fact that this layer remains invisible, but if this does exist – of course it would be hidden.

More to the point about the success of Bitcoin – its design is very solid, robust, manageable – this is not the work of a student.  Of course logically, the NSA employs individuals, and ultimately it is the work of mathematicians, programmers, and cryptographers – but if we deduce the most likely group capable, willing, and motivated to embark on such a project, the NSA is the most likely suspect.  Universities, on the other hand, didn’t product white papers like this from 1996.

Another question is that if it was the NSA, why didn’t they go through more trouble concealing their identity?  I mean, the internet is rife with theories that it was in fact the NSA/CIA and “Satoshi Nakamoto” means in Japanese “Central Intelligence” – well there are a few answers for this, but to be congruent with our argument, it fits their profile.

Where could this ‘hidden layer’ be?  Many think it could be in the public SHA-256, developed by NSA (which ironically, was the encryption algorithm of choice for Bitcoin – they could have chosen hundreds of others, which arguably are more secure):

Claims that the NSA created Bitcoin have actually been flung around for years. People have questioned why it uses the SHA-256 hash function, which was designed by the NSA and published by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). The fact that the NSA is tied to SHA-256 leads some to assume it’s created a backdoor to the hash function that no one has ever identified, which allows it to spy on Bitcoin users.

“If you assume that the NSA did something to SHA-256, which no outside researcher has detected, what you get is the ability, with credible and detectable action, they would be able to forge transactions. The really scary thing is somebody finds a way to find collisions in SHA-256 really fast without brute-forcing it or using lots of hardware and then they take control of the network,” cryptography researcher Matthew D. Green of Johns Hopkins University said in a previous interview.

Then there’s the question of “Satoshi Nakamoto” – if it was in fact the NSA, why not just claim ownership of it?  Why all the cloak and dagger?  And most importantly, if Satoshi Nakamoto is a real person, and not a group that wants to remain secret – WHY NOT come forward and claim your nearly $3 Billion worth of Bitcoin (based on current prices).

Did the NSA create Satoshi Nakamoto? 

The CIA Project, a group dedicated to unearthing all of the government’s secret projects and making them public, hasreleased a video claiming Bitcoin is actually the brainchild of the US National Security Agency.

The video entitled CIA Project Bitcoin: Is Bitcoin a CIA or NSA project? claims that there is a lot of compelling evidences that proves that the NSA is behind Bitcoin. One of the main pieces of evidence has to do with the name of the mysterious man, woman or group behind the creation of Bitcoin, “Satoshi Nakamoto”.

According to the CIA Project, Satoshi Nakamoto means “Central Intelligence” in Japanese. Doing a quick web search, you’ll find out that Satoshi is usually a name given for baby boys which means “clear thinking, quick witted, wise,” while Nakamoto is a Japanese surname which means ‘central origin’ or ‘(one who lives) in the middle’ as people with this surname are found mostly in the Ryukyu islands which is strongly associated with the Ryūkyū Kingdom, a highly centralized kingdom that originated from the Okinawa Islands. So combining Nakamoto and Satoshi can be loosely interpreted as “Central Intelligence”.

Is it so really hard to believe?  This is from an organization that until the Snowden leaks, secretly recorded nearly all internet traffic on the network level by splicing fiber optic cables.  They even have a deep-sea splicing mission that will cut undersea cables and install intercept devices.  Making Bitcoin wouldn’t even be a big priority at NSA.

More from the Telegraph:

Certainly, anonymity is one of the biggest myths about Bitcoin. In fact, there has never been a more easily traceable method of payment. Every single transaction is recorded and retained permanently in the public “blockchain”.  The idea that the NSA would create an anarchic, peer-to-peer crypto-currency in the hope that it would be adopted for nefarious industries and become easy to track would have been a lot more difficult to believe before the recent leaks by Edward Snowden and the revelation that billions of phone calls had been intercepted by the US security services. We are now in a world where we now know that the NSA was tracking the pornography habits of Islamic “radicalisers” in order to discredit them and making deals with some of the world’s largest internet firms to insert backdoors into their systems.

And we’re not the only ones who believe this, in Russia they ‘know’ this to be true without sifting through all the evidence.

A Russian lawmaker claims that Bitcoin is a CIA conspiracy [to finance terrorism]:

Nonetheless, Svintsov’s remarks count as some of the more extreme to emanate from the discussion. Svintsov told Russian broadcast news agency REGNUM:“All these cryptocurrencies [were] created by US intelligence agencies just to finance terrorism and revolutions.”Svintsov reportedly went on to explain how cryptocurrencies have started to become a payment method for consumer spending, and cited reports that terrorist organisations are seeking to use the technology for illicit means.

Let’s elaborate on what is ‘control’ as far as the NSA is concerned.  Bitcoin is like the prime mover.  All future cryptocurrencies, no matter how snazzy or functional – will never have the same original keys as Bitcoin.  It created a self-sustained, self-feeding bubble – and all that followed.  It enabled law enforcement to collect a host of criminals on a network called “Silk Road” and who knows what other operations that happened behind the scenes.  Because of pesky ‘domestic’ laws, the NSA doesn’t control the internet in foreign countries.  But by providing a ‘cool’ currency as a tool, they can collect information from around the globe and like Facebook, users provide this information voluntarily.  It’s the same strategy they use like putting the listening device in the chips at the manufacturing level, which saves them the trouble of wiretapping, electronic eavesdropping, and other risky methods that can fail or be blocked.  It’s impossible to stop a cellphone from listening to you, for example (well not 100%, but you have to physically rewire the device).  Bitcoin is the same strategy on a financial level – by using Bitcoin you’re giving up your private transactional information.  By itself, it would not identify you per se (as the blockchain is ‘anonymous’ but the transactions are there in the public register, so combined with other information, which the NSA has a LOT OF – they can triangulate their information more precisely.

That’s one problem solved with Bitcoin – another being the economic problem of QE (although with a Bitcoin market cap of $44 Billion, that’s just another day at the Fed buying MBS) – and finally, it squashes the idea of sovereignty although in a very, very, very subtle way.  You see, a country IS a currency.  Until now, currency has always been tied to national sovereignty (although the Fed is private, USA only has one currency, the US Dollar, which is exclusively American).  Bitcoin is a super-national currency, or really – the world’s first one world currency.

Of course, this is all great praise for the DOD which seems to have a 50 year plan – but after tens of trillions spent we’d hope that they’d be able to do something better than catching terrorists (which mostly are artificial terrorists).

In the meantime, if you want to get a head start on the game before BTC/USD starts being offered by major brokers, checkout FC Trading Academy or get the book Splitting Pennies.

EXPOSED: The Secret TRUTH about the FBI is not so different than their suspects

(GLOBALINTELHUB.COM) – 6/9/2017 For those who are not drooling on their lazy-boy high on Prozac and Lays (both strong brands) know that the world is not as seen on TV.  But even in TV, on shows such as "White Collar" - the strange relationship between the 'police' and the 'bandits' can be seen and understood.  The differences in many cases between a career Special Agent and cat burglar can be thin circumstantial nuances; and they often 'flip' sides, most notably in the case we all know about Frank Abagnale, now a successful security and fraud consultant, working with the FBI to detect serious financial fraud.  Let's take a step back for a moment; the "FBI" hires mostly accountants, and they pursue a number of crimes but most notably financial fraud.  They serve as the police for the CFTC, the SEC, for extreme enforcement actions, as well as investigating a number of issues - from their website:

Our Priorities
Protect the United States from terrorist attack
Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage
Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes
Combat public corruption at all levels
Protect civil rights
Combat transnational/national criminal organizations and enterprises
Combat major white-collar crime
Combat significant violent crime
Our People & Leadership
The FBI employs 35,000 people, including special agents and support professionals such as intelligence analysts, language specialists, scientists, and information technology specialists. Learn how you can join us at FBIJobs.gov. For details on our executives and organizational structure, see our Leadership & Structure webpage.

What should stick out to readers in an environment where a potentially politicized and corrupt FBI (at least, the leadership) is the "Combat public corruption at all levels" - and going back to the age old regulatory paradox, 'who watches the watchers' let's take a look at the old dog who made the FBI what it is today; J. Edgar Hoover.

In case you have not, and are interested in this topic, take a weekend and read this must read book about the FBI: J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets - why bother reading about a figure who is long gone and has no surviving heirs?  Because in order to understand where we are today, with the situation with the FBI and Trump, we need to understand where we came from.  Certainly the FBI has transformed since 1972; however the power, scope, size, methods, political leanings, and other elements of the FBI still remain as established by Hoover.

Let's dismantle some of the false images many have about the FBI.  The FBI doesn't 'solve crimes' as on popular TV shows like "CSI" - although they do have excellent forensics labs, this rarely (but sometimes) leads to a conviction.  Primarily, the FBI relies on informants, "Confidential Informants" (CIs), tips, and 'turning' - a technique popularized by Hoover and used to this day.  Global Intel Hub interviewed several anonymous sources to confirm this information.  Here's how it works.  The FBI will arrest a petty low level criminal and get him to 'turn' on his boss; they will threaten him with life in prison, maybe poke his eyes a little or something, and get him to become a witness in court.  Also they will want a full blueprint of the organization - and in exchange they will get into the Witness Protection Program - yes this program really exists and there are literally thousands of people in this program:

As of 2013, 8,500 witnesses and 9,900 family members have been protected by the U.S. Marshals Service since 1971.

But before entering WITSEC, which is an endgame, the FBI can use informants for years.  CIs can be bank employees (i.e. Wall St.), mafia agents, corporate executives .. basically anyone.  Take a look at the case of CI gone bad:

For 30 years, DeVecchio was one of the FBI 's most important mob busters.
DeVecchio was Scarpa's handler, and Scarpa was more than an ordinary stool pigeon -- he had also allegedly served as muscle for the FBI when the bureau needed some extra legal assistance in making difficult cases. As a result, he was allegedly accorded special, sometimes questionable, favors, including tips on coming indictments that allowed Scarpa's associates to skip town in advance. But, in aiding his informant to commit murder, prosecutors now allege that DeVecchio went too far in protecting his valuable mob asset. Law enforcement sources say DeVecchio may have also enriched himself in the process.

Yes, you read correctly - for 30 years, "DeVecchio" was a CI that gave the FBI information about mob activities.  A useful asset, but the underlying conclusion is simple - the FBI doesn't 'solve' crimes.   With the recent testimony of James Comey, a lawyer by trade, all of this needs to be taken into consideration.  How has the FBI and its internal politics & policies affected significant events in American history; JFK, 911, the credit crisis, and others?

Another strategy which now is no secret used by Hoover, was obtaining secret information by trickery or surveillance, and then using it to blackmail the target to get them to do what they want.  Hoover supposedly kept dossiers on over 10,000 americans; however long the list is - the method was simple.  Get the dirt on the target then use it to manipulate them.  If you think this is fanciful; again - read this book  J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets.

The point is that, there's no way to know for sure what's going on inside the FBI today.  The reason we need to look at Hoover's FBI is because now that he's long gone, and there's even been a DiCaprio film about him, we can see a bigger picture of what was really going on in the FBI at that time.

So it should be no surprise, that an FBI director, would be meddling in domestic politics - whether it be in elections or by dealing with sitting Presidents.  Everyone was scared of Hoover, even US Presidents both before and after they were elected.  Now, clearly this was a unique individual who built the FBI in his own image during a unique period in history - there will never be another Hoover.  But all this history about the FBI should be noted, following to today's FBI that literally is 'creating' terrorists right here in the USA:

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. has significantly increased its use of stings in terrorism cases, employing agents and informants to pose as jihadists, bomb makers, gun dealers or online “friends” in hundreds of investigations into Americans suspected of supporting the Islamic State, records and interviews show.
Undercover operations, once seen as a last resort, are now used in about two of every three prosecutions involving people suspected of supporting the Islamic State, a sharp rise in the span of just two years, according to a New York Times analysis. Charges have been brought against nearly 90 Americans believed to be linked to the group.
The increase in the number of these secret operations, which put operatives in the middle of purported plots, has come with little public or congressional scrutiny, and the stings rely on F.B.I. guidelines that predate the rise of the Islamic State.
While F.B.I. officials say they are careful to avoid illegally entrapping suspects, their undercover operatives are far from bystanders. In recent investigations from Florida to California, agents have helped people suspected of being extremists acquire weapons, scope out bombing targets and find the best routes to Syria to join the Islamic State, records show.

Here's how it works.  The FBI 'suspects' someone may be an extremist (they are Muslim, or at least look like).  They pose as another Muslim and start to engage in a conversation about making a 'plot' such as a 'bomb' - but at the last moment, arrest the entrapped individual.  This accomplishes a few things, one - they can make a long list of cases 'solved' that would have otherwise become terrorist attacks (they are working hard for their 8 Billion budget).  Two, it scares the population that the threat of terrorism is 'real' (when in reality, you are more likely to be struck by lightning than to be attacked by a terrorist).  This is reinforced by the media 'terrorism terrorism terrorism'.

The paradoxical question here is - left to their own would these potential 'terrorists' have committed any acts of terror, or not?  Of course, foiling a crime before it happens is always ideal.  But at what point does entrapment become 'encouragement' - we're not talking about drug dealing here, terrorism is a serious thing (people can be killed).

But defense lawyers, Muslim leaders and civil liberties advocates say that F.B.I. operatives coax suspects into saying and doing things that they might not otherwise do — the essence of entrapment.“They’re manufacturing terrorism cases,” said Michael German, a former undercover agent with the F.B.I. who researches national security law at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. In many of the recent prosecutions, he said, “these people are five steps away from being a danger to the United States.”

The American Mafia, once seen as one of the most popularized 'threats' has been on the wane, as most of them have moved from petty crimes to legitimate businesses (or semi-legit) .. An organization like the FBI needs terrorists and other artificial 'threats' to justify 35,000 + employees, just as the military and other parts of the DOD need "Russia" to act as a looming potential threat to justify trillions in military spending.  (Anyone with mild room temperature IQ knows Russia, China, Iran, North Korea all working together pose no real threat to USA militarily, economically, or culturally).

Bear this in mind next time the news media tries to distract viewers from real news - Comey is not news.  It's irrelevant.  Trump's reaction, irrelevant.  Remember, the entire "Russia Investigation" never existed, it was all a liberal conspiracy created or to use their term 'fake news' in order to destroy Trump and use it in Illuminati style 'killing two birds with one stone' as a prelude to war and specifically to build a pipeline through Syria as the next "Iraq" to plunder, with project Ukraine a failure the virus needs to expand into untapped resources to colonize, and Trump simply stood in the way of that policy.  The FBI being a critical component of the giant global octopus with hands everywhere, needed to jump in with their own tune to play in the melody.

For a detailed breakdown of how the global system works in reality (not 'as seen on TV') checkout Splitting Pennies - Understanding Forex

Order stuff online - save money, save time - enjoy your life!  @ www.pleaseorderit.com

Another shoe drops in the FX fraud manipulation conspiracy

FX is quite literally, a rigged game.  Not like the stock market, well not exactly.  FX has been, a game of 'how many numbers am I holding behind my back?' and the guess is always wrong!  As we explain in Splitting Pennies Understanding Forex - FX is rigged.  But that doesn't mean there isn't opportunity!  One just needs to understand it.

From Law 360:

French bank BNP Paribas was fined $350 million by the New York State Department of
Financial Services for lax oversight in its foreign-exchange business that
allowed “nearly unfettered misconduct” by more than a dozen employees involved
in exchange rate manipulation, officials announced Wednesday.



From 2007 through 2013, a trader on the bank’s New York desk, identified in the
consent order as Jason Katz, ran a number of schemes with more than a dozen
BNPP traders and salespeople on key foreign exchange trading desks to
manipulate prices and spreads in several currencies, including the South
African rand, Hungarian forint and Turkish lira, officials said.



He called his group of traders a "cartel" and they communicated in a
chat room called "ZAR Domination," a reference to the rand’s trading
symbol, according to the consent order. The group would push up the price of
the illiquid rand during New York business hours when the South African market
was closed, moving the currency in whichever way they chose, and thus
depressing competition, officials said.



Katz also enlisted colleagues at other banks to widen spreads for orders in
rands, increasing bank profits and limiting competition at the customer’
expense, the order says. Some of the traders engaged in illegal coordination
and shared confidential customer information, officials said. As part of a
cooperation agreement with prosecutors, Katz pled guilty in Manhattan federal court in
January to one count of conspiracy to restrain trade in violation of the
Sherman Act.



“Participants in the foreign exchange market rely on a transparent and fair
market to ensure competitive prices for their trades for all participants,”
Financial Services Superintendent Maria T. Vullo said in a statement. “Here the
bank paid little or no attention to the supervision of its foreign exchange
trading business, allowing BNPP traders and others to violate New York state
law over the course of many years and repeatedly abused the trust of their
customers."



BNP Paribas, which employs nearly 190,000 people and has total assets of more
than €2.1 trillion (approximately $2.36 trillion), said in a statement that the
$350 million fine will be covered by existing provisions. It said it had
implemented a group-wide remediation initiative and cooperated fully in the
investigation.



“The conduct which led to this settlement occurred during the period from 2007
to 2013. Since this time, BNP Paribas has proactively implemented extensive
measures to strengthen its systems of control and compliance,” the bank said in
its statement. “The group has increased resources and staff dedicated to these
functions, conducted extensive staff training and launched a new code of
conduct which applies to all staff.”



Three BNPP employees were fired, seven more resigned and several others were
disciplined for misconduct or supervisory shortcomings in relation to the
probe, the order says.



Katz’s attorney, Michael Tremonte of Sher Tremonte LLP, did not respond Wednesday to a call seeking
comment.

But really, what's another $350 Million in the grand scheme of things for BNP?  Just another day's profits in the FX market.

This probe isn't new; regulators have been looking into FX rigging for years.  And practically, the fine won't make any customers whole - it will just shore up the coffers for the NY State department of financial services.  With inflation out of control, they need the money.  

For a detailed breakdown of this virtual monopoly 'they' have on the global financial system, checkout Splitting Pennies Understanding Forex.