There are so many headlines about impending doom right now. Russia versus Ukraine, which might drag US and Europe into war. The Syria conflict continues. The Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange finally implodes taking down 850,000 bitcoins with it. Charley Shrem of BitInstant under house arrest. Several governments issue warnings about bitcoin investment. The Federal Bank’s continuing to receive unrequested opinions coming, yet again, from Senator Machim; when financial baker JP Morgan ridicules it, their man Machim squawks each time he thinks he can get a headline conveniently ignoring that his allies at JP Morgan were just recently fined 15 BILLION in the last year. Including the Bernie Madoff pyramid scheme they helped with. All the while the blockchain still toils away silent and oblivious to the headlines.
The Blockchain doesn’t know when solicitous News Anchors give it tabloid treatment. Even CNBC’s News Anchor, Kudlow, has had two years to catch up but is still confused thinking businesses would be crazy to expose themselves to the price volatility of bitcoin. The blockchain can’t laugh at Kudlow’s lack of a five minute research into Bitstamp or Coinbase to learn companies can convert to cash immediately. His diatribes are never corrected by those uncomfortable junior reporters that know the king Kudlow is wearing no clothes but politely forget to tell him.
The blockchain has work to do reconciling accounts and verifying each bitcoin is accounted for. Behind guarded doors at the Federal Reserve The Federal Bank officials force more billions into the banks just to keep them afloat because they know the moment they stop the WORLD economy might fail. They keep us tied to their runaway train because they can’t figure out a way to stop it. The people that made the block chain already know this -and this was the reason they gave birth to the block chain.
The leader of Ukraine just stole billions of dollars from his countrymen. If the blockchain was in charge of it, we could see where it went. You can’t move that kind of money quickly without everybody being able to track it. But the news reporters missed that. When Ukraine put limits on its population to not withdraw funds, to stop bank runs, all of them were in danger. The Block chain would protect them from that too. Where was CNBC reporting that one? The people are now asking for bitcoin donations for blankets and food to protect them from the oncoming Russian onslaught. Do the free people of the world want to stand still wishing there was something they could do? Or will they spend 10 minutes, buy some bitcoin, scan in the QR code in the article linked and send them money to help? They will have it in 20 minutes from right now thanks to the block chain and Coinbase.com. Try to do that with a bank.
It just keeps quietly reconciling the ledger, on schedule, every 10 minutes, like clockwork. It’s still issuing 25 new bitcoins each time it’s reconciled just as it has done for a year and will continue to do for three more when it’s schedule to lower that amount. Hackers will still try to steal it. Hucksters will still try to hustle people out of it. Because it has value, bad guys will use it to trade for bad things just like they have for millennia for anything of value.
When the bitcoin price crashed temporarily in 2011, 2012, and 2013 and now in 2014 – economists, news reporters, bloggers, and many companies were pronouncing it dead. But they didn’t understand the block chain. It doesn’t die. Ten minutes after they submitted their opinion, the block chain reconciled the last block of transactions and computers around the world continued to mine another block of currency into the system. People still traded with it, and it went on to prove itself defiant of their predictions. Somebody forgot to unplug the block chain and turn the lights out. We know this because:
Bitcoin hasn’t gone into seclusion.
Bitcoin hasn’t issued any press releases.
Bitcoin hasn’t checked the polls.
Bitcoin didn’t flood the market with new money to keep its value up.
Bitcoin didn’t huddle with the G8 or G20 in emergency sessions.
It didn’t concern itself with job loss, unemployment, interest rates or popularity contests.
It didn’t read the tabloid news. It didn’t hire a lawyer, or summon a new PR team.
The longer it operates, the more people notice and believe in the power of the blockchain. Ask the people of Ukraine how they are going to get money now. The public tend to believe the point of view of news channels and know all about the 430 million dollars in bitcoin that seems to have been stolen over a few years. While it makes headlines, 180 BILLION a year is lost through credit card fraud alone. The blockchain doesn’t care that 99.7% of the reported fraud from is from credit cards in one year. Its paltry .03% makes headlines and senators call to ban it? Does the good senator have a “Bat-phone” with one button connecting to JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon?
As history has proven without exception, wars come, the famine will follow, banks will collapse, the politicians are always voted out of office, or thrown out, a country’s boundaries are redrawn; yet the blockchain will still be going – oblivious to these matters. As long as the internet exists somewhere in the world, the blockchain will continue on schedule. The idea, now turned into invention won’t die, it won’t be un-invented. You can’t kill an idea whose time has come. More and more people are just now realizing this for the first time. It is likely inevitable that deep down in some primitive part of our brains, many people instinctively just… understand what this may mean. Currencies backed by shifting politics will fall when the political winds shift, just as they always have in the history of civilization; all they need is one little push. Gold and silver transcended boundaries and politics. Perhaps the blockchain will as well. While central banks and government can confiscate gold and silver, bitcoins have a nasty way of retaining value down to infinite decimal places when needed. It might be the digital sand running through their fingers when they squeeze.
Perhaps these news reporters might learn from history and hold off on the obituaries that might come back to embarrass them. When people repeatedly hear these predictions, the boy who cried wolf may come to mind. It seems that an increasingly amount of people understand the power behind the blockchain and already know what it will be doing in 10 minutes, 10 days, 10 months, and 10 years. Some people’s perception about the value of digital currencies might change temporarily, but increasing numbers of them eventually come to the understanding that it isn’t going anywhere. Somebody forgot to tell the blockchain to take his ball and go home, the game is over or so they say.
Not to worry, the blockchain doesn’t get its feelings hurt. It doesn’t have time to, there’s work to do – sometime within the next 10 minutes.
