This is an opinion editorial by Andrew Axelrod, a Bitcoin educator and writerwhose LinkedIn posts have orange pilled thousands.

"The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist." Charles Baudelaire

The second greatest trick was convincing the world he is good. Ken Ammi

Throughout history, people have always been blinded by the cathedral of their times. Ideas of chivalry, caste systems and royal bloodlines were all incredibly powerful constructs that towered above any possible scrutiny, let alone rebuke.

Today is no different.

Just as fish cannot perceive the water they swim in, it is also difficult for people to recognize the cathedrals for what they truly are. Grandiose narratives, fanciful myths, and seductive lies make for invisible chains.

They are the walls of Platos Cave. They are the scrolling green code of the Matrix.

And no prisoner can break free from shackles that remain hidden.

Such illusions are shattered by bitcoin like waves breaking against solid rock. This is because bitcoin unveils the three most powerful and enduring illusions of our time those of the competent central planner, the common good, and fiat money.

Let us now step through the looking glass and dissect these magic tricks one by one, starting with the competence of central planners.

Ah yes, central planners. They aspire to positions of power in the guise of charismatic figureheads, lofty intellectuals, the spiritually enlightened or impressive polymaths whos vast knowledge spans the fields of economics, finance, healthcare, engineering, infrastructure, energy policy and oooohhhh so many more.

Even better, they are packaged and sold as benevolent leaders that strive for a better tomorrow, acting only out of altruism and for love of the common good. Truth and justice are their names.

Intellect, wisdom and hearts of gold? Sign me up!

Of the three, this is perhaps the easiest illusion to dispel.

At its best, politics is often described as the act of jumping in front of a moving parade while claiming credit. And at its worst, central planners get drunk on the myth of their own competence which inevitably turns the parade into a chain gang shuffle.

This is because central planning at its heart must rely on coercion. Voluntary actions occur organically, bottom up, and on the individual level. By definition, they do not need to be centrally orchestrated.

Next, putting aside the laughable notion that an individual mortal could possess any meaningful level of mastery across so many complex domaines and ignoring the fact that these are flesh and blood humans, naturally prone to self-interest and subject to all the usual dark appetites, it is equally insane to think that an abstraction such as the common good could ever be agreed on let alone achieved.

But that, of course, is the entire point.

The common good has always been in the eye of the beholder and is therefore highly susceptible to every possible perversion. It is ideally malleable custom tailored camouflage for the central planner.

In the name of the common good, central planners then take upon themselves the right to decide on the conflicts of nations, on conscription in war, on the hollowing out of industry, on the allocation of rations, on the burden of tax (either directly at gunpoint or discretely through inflation) and, most importantly, on who gets to be first in line at the money printers trough.

Bitcoin of course flips this on its head. More on that later.

But how does such a ludicrous belief in central planning perpetuate itself the deranged idea that a miniscule group of people, or oftentimes even a sole individual, should with the flick of a pen decide the wellbeing and economic fate of millions?

It all comes back to the delusion of the common good.

It is precisely this belief in the common good taken to its extreme, a belief in paradise on earth, that justifies the greatest abuses.

This is the corrosive narrative which central planners always draw on for legitimacy and which they use to feed their lust for control. Because ideas of eutopia justify any means to accomplish their end, central planners can use them to maximum effect. Not only do they make dubious claims of a eutopia, but also insist on possessing knowledge of the righteous path that leads to it.

Why go through the trouble of building such a cathedral?

Contrary to the common cynics belief, the vast majority of people want to be perceived as doing good and arent prone to extremism a benefit of normal distributions.

Therefore, evil has to cloak itself in the mantle of virtue or else be rejected.

After all, the road to perdition is famously paved with good intentions.

And what could be more well intentioned than the pursuit of heaven on earth.

This is what lifted the Communists into power, perhaps the most outspoken central planners of them all. It is also what gives the jihadis credibility in the eyes of the faithful and what fueled the rise of Nazi Germany.

The common good is the perfect narrative for central planners to seize the reins of power and gives their followers the iron conviction to follow through on even the most heinous of acts.

And who would dare speak out against them? Who would be so cruel as to deny paradise.

Because when it comes to bringing about heaven on earth no price is too steep, no sacrifice sufficient and no body count too high.

What do another million dead matter if paradise awaits just around the corner. It is never enough, the bloodlust cannot be slaked.

The nameless mass graves of 80 million killed at the hands of Mao, the 40 million under Stalin, the 20 million under Hitler, the 3.5 million under the Kims and the 3 million under Pol Pot they all attest to this slaughtered in the name of this most depraved of fantasies.

The sad irony is that although paradise is an illusion, hell on earth is very real.

One need look no further than North Korea, where people are publicly executed for the crime of making unauthorized phone calls.

In fact, eutopia and dystopia aren't opposites they're synonyms.

And the surest way to arrive at this terrible destination is to concentrate ultimate power in the hands of a few, in the hands of central planners.

The carrot of eutopia combined with the stick of an emergency whether it be a classless and plentiful society threatened by the greedy bourgeoisie, or the promise of a thousand year Aryan rule to crush the corrupting globalists or the establishment of a glorious caliphate as a stronghold against the aggressing infidels these narratives are all designed to rally a core group of true believers and convince the wider public to enshrine in central planners extraordinary powers.

But how then do the actual mechanics of coercion work at scale and how is the average person ensnared beyond just turning a blind eye?

How does the narrative actually transmit into reality?

Through fiat money.

In the words of Henry Kissinger: Who controls money, controls the world.

This is the greatest trick ever played.

If the competent central planner and the common good can be called illusions, fiat money makes these look like cheap parlor tricks by comparison.

Most civilized societies have concluded that central planning of the economy is generally a bad idea. A committee of central planners overriding the free market by setting the prices of commodities, goods and services has always lead to great misery and starvation.

But when it comes to money, suddenly the rules seem to magically change.

At the center of every modern economy sits a central bank whos explicit mandate is to control the supply of money through its balance sheet and set its price through interest rate fixing.

How can this contradiction be rationalized?

Jordan Peterson famously remarked that only half the lesson of World War II had been learnt.

By this he meant that wed grappled with the snakepit of national socialism but not the communist den of vipers a tragic consequence of the Allies expedient alignment with the Soviets against the Third Reich.

One key consequence of this was that central planners were allowed to nest in the corridors of power and permitted to desecrate once hallowed institutions.

For example, it is now perfectly acceptable for academics to self-identify as Marxists, which nearly 20% of professors in the social sciences do.

But even still, the notion that at least half the lesson was learnt is hopelessly optimistic.

The lessons of the past have been reduced to a wild goose chase for the modern day equivalent of an angry-sounding German man in leather boots and a silly-looking mustache. Its a stultifying distraction from the underlying culprit of fiat money which allowed such madmen to rule in the first place. While society is preoccupied with a frenzied scavenger hunt for goose-stepping fascists, literal central banks have been put in charge of the money. As we will see, this is a clear pattern.

The money printer allows central planners to override free market choices.

What instrument of control could possibly be more perfect.

Endless wars can now be financed with just the push of a button, destructive policies can be pursued no matter the cost and when challenged, central planners can bribe their opposition into compliance with promises of a universal basic income, of free education and health care, and of subsidized housing for the needy.

And all of this they can deliver, if only given the power of the printer.

Fiat money lets central planners hide the true cost of their destructive decisions by papering over them. And when society inevitably collides with the walls of reality, this provides central planners with the perfect emergency to centralize even more.

In their greatest time of need, people blinded by panic will turn to the arsonists and beg them to extinguish the fire.

As the black hole of money printing distorts price signals, misallocates assets, and debases societys savings, people will actually blame late stage capitalism for the deterioration.

Not recognizing the caustic effects of fiat money and centralized power, people will instead cry out for more of the same poison that ails them. When decades of loose monetary policy and insatiable money printing drove America into the Great Depression of the 1930s, the remedy was more centralization.

What followed was the outlawing of gold with Executive Order 6102, the last bulwark against fiat, and thereafter an unprecedented nationalization of private industry that fed the war machine.

In fact, FDR was able to centralize so much power that he became de facto president for life and died while serving his fourth term in office the only president to ever do so. After his death, a 22nd amendment was hastily added to the constitution, setting a two-term limit on the presidency.

The massive military industrial complex that was erected during this time and has since grown by orders of magnitude, gorging itself on money printing, is something Americans are still contending with unable to extricate themselves from multiplying conflicts.

When Weimar Germany collapsed under the hyperinflationary fires of the papiermark, the answer was again to centralize. Only this time, the Fhrer used fiat to turn Germany into a giant weapons manufacturer and burnt Europe to the ground.

And when Lenins Soviet Union was ravaged by three successive hyperinflations due to Communist profligacy, Stalin seized the mantle of power, then turned around and brutally butchered the Russian people. In fact, Soviet Russia burnt through a total of seven versions of the fiat ruble and endured seven painful resets.

The central planners fiat trick became so routine that Soviet workers would famously joke: We pretend to work and they pretend to pay. But of course, every fiat money must find a point of exhaustion, when the money printers ink runs dry. It is for this reason, that the seemingly opposite Eastern communist and Western capitalist systems were at least similar in this way:

Both ultimately believed in top-down control through fiat money.

Only the communists, spurred on by a more rabid fanaticism, made the fatal mistake of centralizing every nut and bolt of their economy, involving the government in decisions ranging from the harvesting of crops to the manufacturing of shoes and the production of cars. This ended in incomprehensible human suffering.

Central planners in the West took a more tactful approach by first allowing their economies to self organize and fatten up before milking them dry via centralized money.

And so, fiat is the greatest trick ever played. It is also the ultimate heist, allowing central planners to siphon off a populations entire productivity and exhaust its every resource through the counterfeiting of money. Fiat money is watermelon socialism capitalist green on the outside and communist red at its core.

As justification, central planners must contort themselves into impressive mental pretzels and invert the truth. Some of these brazen lies famously include:

Thats right.

War is peace. Slavery is freedom. Ignorance is strength.

But what if money could not be printed at will? If money bore an actual cost, then central planners maleficence would become almost instantly and laughably obvious. The peoples pocket could no longer be picked with inflation and the central planners incompetence would incur an immediate and tangible cost. Want to wage wars? Youll need to pay for them. Want to fund wasteful government programs? Youll need to justify them. Want to bankrupt your citizens and leave them destitute? Youll need to face them.

Central planners could no longer destroy the world on credit and would be required to close out their tab. The cost of unproductive and wrongheaded action would come to bear immediately and allow society to course correct. This is what bitcoin does by separating money and state. It takes the central planners favorite tool of coercion and snaps it in half like a brittle twig. Once money can no longer be printed, what good are moral posturing and illusions of grandeur.

Bitcoin strips the lie of the common good down to the hollow and empty shell that it really is and exposes any shred of unearned competence the central planners have left.

Their trick revealed, central planners will finally be forced to take a bow they just shouldnt expect any applause.

This is a guest post by Andrew Axelrod. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

Read this article:
The Greatest Trick Ever Played, And How Bitcoin Shatters The Illusion - Bitcoin Magazine

Okay, Ravencoin. Whats this one all about then? Its pumping, so lets peck into it. Meanwhile Bitcoins been on a bit of a surge, too, while Ethereum is currently lazing on a deck chair hoping for a decent Merge tan.

Deep into that crypto winter darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no shadowy super coder ever dared to dream before. Quoth the Ravencoin, Nevermore.

Edgar Allen Poe didnt quite write that.

That said we can 99.93% say for sure that the legendary 19th century American fountain pen and opioid user wouldve been a crypto fan. Probably. Apparently, he had a keen interest in cryptography and, in fact, had something of an influence on the modern science.

Would love to get into that a bit morebut weve got magic internet money to natter about.

Now, what the squawk is Ravencoin (RVN) then and why is it flapping and ca-cawwing its way up the daily cryptocurrency top 100 chart? Would it surprise you to learn that, in a roundabout sort of way, its Merge related? Nope? Didnt think so.

Ravencoin is not, however, a Proof-of-Stake coin, and its not new. Launched in 2018, the protocol is an Ethereum mining alternative that uses a Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm blockchain that mimics Bitcoins 21 million-coin supply.Its got its own, sophisticated tokenised ecosystem that uses RVN for various DeFi and NFT applications.

According to CoinGecko data, Ravencoin has surged about 30% over the past day and more than 95% over the week.

Why? Well, all things Ethereum (well, aside from ETH itself today) seem to be taking turns at grabbing the spotlight in the lead up to the leading smart contract blockchains Merge to Proof-of-Stake.

Despite the ESG, carbon-reducing positivity that the Merge move is partly building its momentum on, there are still a fair amount of mining, PoW fans out there, making their case and seeking mining alternatives as the main Ethereum chain swaps lanes. Thats partly it, but perhaps the main reason is this

The RVN pump in price has basically coincided with the news major global crypto exchange FTX announced the listing of Ravencoin perpetual futures on September 12.

Onto other crypto-related pumpery and dumpery

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.1 trillion and down about 0.3% since yesterday, heres the current state of play among top 10 tokens according to CoinGecko.

As youd expect, the chart tells the story here. Basically Bitcoin, Ethereum rival Solana and XRP are the only things in the green over the past 24 hours.

Lets check in on Solana (SOL) for a sec It seems determined to dodge the Merge shadow. Is there a reason for the exuberance? Other than some ongoing positivity based around the Helium projects potential migration, nothing major that were seeing

Although theres this, too Solana is Ethereums greatest rival for NFT-based activity and that appears to be spiking on Solana market place Magic Eden again, according to crypto-data gurus Nansen

As for Bitcoin, its kicked with some confidence into what most think is going to be a vortex of volatility this week. BTC is now trading back above US$22k at the time of writing, after closing its latest weekly candle at US$21,800. Thats the OG cryptos highest weekly close for about a month.

In the very short term, the US dollar tapering off and seemingly hitting some chart-based resistance seems to be helping Bitcoin, other cryptos and stonks so far this week.

Dont forget, though (well, you can if you want), that the fresh US Consumer Price Index inflation-related data for the month of August is set to be released. And, for those who are a tad over-exposed to risk assets, lately these figures have been a recipe for nervy toilet sessions and/or Hey EVERYONE, this rounds on me!

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$8.4 billion to about US$446 million in the rest of the top 100, lets find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

DAILY PUMPERS

Ravencoin (RVN), (market cap: US$783 million) +32%

Hedera (HBAR), (mc: US$1.6 billion) +10%

The Graph (GRT), (mc: US$932 million) +9%

Helium (HNT), (mc: US$682 million) +6%

NEAR Protocol (NEAR), (mc: US$3.9 billion) +5%

DAILY SLUMPERS

Terra(LUNA), (market cap: US$661 million) -28%

Terra Luna Classic (LUNC), (mc: US$2.13 billion) -21%

Celsius Network (CEL), (mc: US$608 million) -9%

Rocket Pool (RPL), (mc: US$588 million) -7%

Amp (AMP), (mc: US$472 million) -6%

Well, probably shoulda known this would happen. As soon as we open our traps about a Terra LUNA revival, its coins go and dump harder than that Brent Naden spear tackle a couple of months back. If you follow such things, that is.

This, however, doesnt change the fact that both LUNA (or LUNA2 as its also now known) and LUNC have made stupendous gains just recently.

That said, as per yesterdays column, weve been very much cautioning with buyer beware when it comes to CeFi tokens struggling for revival, especially considering Terra LUNAs catastrophic and crypto-contagion-inducing collapse in May.

Touch them with an extendable barge pole? Not financially advising on that, or anything for that matter, as theres, unsurprisingly, no qualification for that hanging in my pool room.

A selection of randomness and pertinence that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse

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Read the rest here:
Mooners and Shakers: Ravencoin soars and Bitcoin pumps, but Ethereum flattens out ahead of Merge - Stockhead

Glassnode has talked about the four phases of Bitcoin accumulation and distribution during the past year in their latest report.

As per this weeks edition of the weekly Glassnode report, the market has observed four distinct phases in the last twelve months.

The relevant indicator here is the accumulation trend score, which tells us about whether market participants are accumulating or not right now.

Not only does the metric check how much investors are buying/selling, but it also takes into account the size of holdings of these participants. As such, the score provides a higher weightage to larger holders accumulating/distributing.

When the value of this metric is closer to 1, it means that big participants or a large part of the network has been accumulating during the past month.

On the other hand, the indicators value being near zero implies large holders have either not been accumulating recently, or outright distributing their coins.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the Bitcoin accumulation trend score during the last year:

As you can see in the above graph, the market seems to have gone through four phases of the Bitcoin accumulation trend score over this period.

Following the all-time high back in November, investors aggressively accumulated the dip as the value of the indicator was almost exactly 1. This marked the first of these phases.

Next, as the price slowly came down, these recent accumulators went into significant loss. This lead to the holders shifting to a trend of distribution.

In the third phase, even though the price plunged down even harder as the LUNA collapse took place, investors once again started accumulating as if attempting to catch the bottom.

After this months of accumulation, the market finally saw a rally above $24k. However, instead of continuing to buy more, holders quickly latched onto this opportunity of exit liquidity and engaged in profit-taking.

As a result of this distribution, this new fourth phase has observed Bitcoin accumulation trend score values close to zero.

At the time of writing, Bitcoins price floats around $19.8k, down 2% in the past week. Over the last month, the crypto has lost 15% in value.

The below chart shows the trend in the price of the coin over the past five days.

Read the rest here:
Glassnode Discusses 4 Phases Of Bitcoin Accumulation & Distribution During Past Year | Bitcoinist.com - Bitcoinist

This is an opinion editorial by Pierre Corbin, the producer and director of The Great Reset And The Rise of Bitcoin documentary.

In his book, William N. Goetzmann describes that there have been periods in history during which people had greater financial education than the general public has today.1 One such period was during the great times of Ancient Greece, particularly in Athens.

Athens in 400 BCE was very special, and remains special to our history, because this is where democracy was invented. Their democracy was different from our modern democracy, though. In particular, when it comes to the involvement their citizens had in the day to day activities of the government. Athens had created a complex system of bankers and insurers to simplify the trade of grain and increase the security of investors portfolios. Many ships sunk in the Aegan sea during these times, and these financial instruments allowed them to protect ones investment and share the risk of their business with the industry, through insurance.

Of course, there were often disputes around these topics that needed to be settled in court. The court system in Athens was built to accommodate this particular type of issue, and was used for every other topic, too. Here are a few rules on how their court system worked that Goetzmann shares in his book1 :

Athens, at its peak around the 4th century BC, had 30,000 adult male citizens entitled to vote in the assembly (there were an additional 70,000 citizens that were women, children and other men that were not allowed to vote. There were also 150,000 aliens and slaves living within the city walls who were not counted as citizens and did not take part in the decisions of the city), so 500 people involved in each trial represented 1.6% of the population.

Imagine this in todays world: 5.3 million Americans would have to be part of each jury. Or 22 million Chinese citizens would be involved. Sounds impossible, although we do have one technology that didnt exist in Athens that could simplify the matter: the internet. Maybe this kind of jury could be re-adapted today? The outcome of trials wouldnt be the source of such debate because 1.6% of randomly selected individuals can be considered a big enough sample to represent society as a whole for a given trial. Beyond leading to a fair trial system, it also leads to more transparency and lowers the powers of influence that sometimes exist for the important trials.

In his lifetime, the average Athenian attended multiple trials, including the complex ones, and faced topics such as finance, risk, long term investment, compounding, etc. Today, we still have records of such trials. One example is the story of Demosthenes, an Athenian that had his heritage stolen by his uncles because he was too young when his father died. As an adult, he took his uncles to trial. Here is an extract of his depiction of the situation:

My father, men of the jury, left two factories, both doing a large business. One was a sword-manufactory, employing thirty-two or thirty-three slaves, most of them worth five or six minae each and none worth less than three minae. From these my father received a clear income of thirty minae each year. The other was a sofa-manufactory, employing twenty slaves, given to my father as security for a debt of forty minae. These brought him in a clear income of twelve minae. In money he left as much as a talent loaned at the rate of a drachma a month, the interest of which amounted to more than seven minae a year... Now, if you add to this last sum the interest for ten years, reckoned at a drachma only you will find that the whole, principal and interest, amounts to eight talents and four thousand drachmae".1

How many average citizens of our modern world would be able to follow such an argument? It mentions two businesses, loans, interest rates and their compounding effects. Today, most people dont understand what compound interest is, and it is one of the most simple long-term thinking concepts in finance.

Our financial system has been layered with many levels of complexity and is presented as a complex topic, including when it comes to personal finance. I believe this has been done through time by the people working in the industry for two reasons:

Today, people are starting to understand the impact inflation can have on their lives. They dont necessarily understand where it comes from, but they understand that they need to do something about their personal finances or their savings will slowly be crushed by inflation. This inflationary way of thinking has always been there. This is part of the reason why people invest in real estate and has pushed the prices so high. Today, it is pushing people towards even riskier investments. This is part of the reason why the cryptocurrency world has seen such a boom and seems so attractive to many high reward, but also high risk.

People entering the cryptocurrency space will slowly start making the distinction between bitcoin and altcoins at some point (often because of a shitcoin losing 99% of its value or a hack making them lose their funds). We will write a follow-up article about this topic in particular: Bitcoin is not crypto.

Because of the way Bitcoin is built, people gain their financial independence. You are the sole owner of your assets and no-one can take control of your assets unless you give access to them. This is extremely empowering, but can also be a scary endeavor: it has the potential of opening users up to more risk. This means that people need to take responsibility for their financial decisions. Every decision is their own, and in order to avoid mistakes, people need to educate themselves.

This education starts with understanding bitcoin wallets, but quickly moves on to more complex topics:

And many more that one by one open up the mind to the way our financial system works. There are many great thinkers and contributors in the space that help understand these points.

People are now forced to take control of their own funds and take responsibility for their personal finance. The veil that has always laid on the world of finance is slowly being lifted, and what used to be seen as very complex topics are becoming day-to-day topics for many. This is due to the fact that the trust that we once had in centralized financial institutions is now gone because of decades of abusing customers, bailouts and more.

The Athenian system was not able to scale with the growing number of people in cities and in countries. But given our current technologies, is a similar system so hard to imagine today? Maybe bitcoin can be the asset that leads the way in this direction, thanks to its cryptographic properties, but also thanks to the added benefit of its passive properties, including the fact users need to educate themselves, which can only benefit them and our society.

This is a guest post by Pierre Corbin. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.

The rest is here:
How Bitcoin Educates The World About Finance - Bitcoin Magazine