Did you know there is a crypto currency called . . . Fartcoin? And that it is “worth” $1.5 billion? Yes, really. You can read a detailed article about it by David Stockman – Reagan’s director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) – here.
In German, there is something kind of similar. It is called the Geldscheisser. If you understand German, you will know what that means. Money that just kind of appears and – somehow – has value. 
But at least the Geldscheisser’s coins are real. They drop out of you know where and into your hand. Fartcoins are vaporware – so to speak. Aren’t Bitcoins and other iterations of “crypto” currency the same?
They are created out of nothing – presto! – and via acceptance of their “value” they come to have it. But how can there be value behind nothing? Put another way: Isn’t the value entirely perceptual? Dependent upon lots of people agreeing there is – somehow – value – in medium of exchange that has no value except insofar as people agree that it does?
Weird, isn’t it?
In principle, people might agree that a Caligula has value – and I suppose then it would. Do you know the story? It goes roughly as follows: The Emperor Caligula decreed that his Caligulas were valuable. And so they were. Instead of flushing them as we do, they were treated as if they were precious. Of course, the people didn’t have much choice. It was not healthy to gainsay the value of a Caligula when Caligula was emperor.
Federal Reserve Notes – the pieces of paper we’re forced to accept as currency – are also Caligulas when you think about it in that their value is also dependent on people accepting that they’re valuable, even though they’re just piece of paper and the only real value they have is to wipe the aftermath of a Caligula.
How much value has a $1 million Reichsmark note from Weimar Germany? How about a Confederate dollar?
How about a Federal Reserve Note . . . in 50 years from now? Or perhaps a few months from now?
It is very unsettling to realize that the currency we use is – essentially – worthless. That whatever shaky value it possesses is entirely ephemeral because it is entirely dependent upon shifting perceptions of value and none of that is under our control.
Everything we have saved up in the bank (or under the mattress) and every penny of “value” we think we have in 401ks and so on could be of little-to-no-value just like that.
Federal Reserve Notes do have one thing in their favor, though. The “full faith and credit” of the federal government. That’s kind of funny, of course. But it is something. So long as people continue to have faith in the credit of the federal government.
What is the faith backing up Fartcoin? Or any other iteration of “crypto”? It seems far more ephemeral and is absolutely much more volatile.
I “hold” a small amount of Bitcoin. In italics because it’s strange to speak of holding anything you cannot get a hold of – with your hands. Its value fluctuates wildly, daily. One day – yesterday, for instance – my “assets” (this is the term used) are worth (ahem) $521. The very next day, they are worth $470. Say what you will about Federal Reserve Notes but while they lose value steadily, they generally do not lose that much value suddenly. It is the difference between a tire that’s leaking air and a blowout.
It is this sudden – and largely unpredictable – volatility that enables some people to make a fortune via Fartcoin and other iterations of crypto currency. It is, in other words, a form of gambling. You buy some “coin” chiefly in the hope that its value will spike and that you will be able to sell (and reap the difference) before its value plummets. Then you buy it again – when its value has plummeted – in the hope that you’ll be able to cash in again, when its value spikes again.
Other forms of currency can be gambled with in the same way, it’s true. But their physicality – their reality – does seem to serve as a check on the spikes (and the dips). If I have $500 in my checking account at the bank today, I can confidently write a check to pay a bill in that amount. But with crypto, that check might just bounce.
Of course, it could bounce up, too- and that appears to be the attraction or at least one of them.
Not to me, though. And maybe you feel the same. I’d rather just have sound money in my pocket. Maybe one day we will, again.
. . .
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Stick to your guns, Eric, despite what many commenters are spewing.
Another very important fact to know about so-called crypto “currencies” is the whales.
In crypto lingo, a “whale” is a person (or company or government) owning a very large percent of a particular crypto “currency.”
Whales control the “value.” Whales know when the price, the “value,” will go up or down by THEIR OWN buying or selling.
Now, who has the money to become whales? Our Rulers do. None of us do.
———————–
As an aside, I can’t help add one more bit of knowledge to counter some nonsense in the comment section. Somebody here names “Satoshi Nakamoto” (supposed inventor of bitcoin/blockchain) as if that’s a real and accountable person.
NOBODY has stepped forward to admit being “Satoshi Nakamoto.” So, who invented and glorified a supposed digital “currency” that is claimed to be “private” but isn’t, is claimed to be “safe” but isn’t (power outage, anyone), and the “value” of which is controlled by whales (our Rulers)?
– for anybody not afraid to learn, click on my name to visit my website. i am NOT an anonymouse.
Why of why is there a crypto coin mania (like Tulip mania)?
a real estate bubble?
a stock market bubble?
a classic car bubble?
art and collectible and non-fungible token bubble?
rent and food price inflation?
why did interest rates go to zero?
There is one main reason why and here is the chart, the Fed pumped the money supply from 4 Trillion to 20 TRILLION overnight:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL
Starting in 2009, the rate of increase of the basic money supply curve doubled, from 2T to 4T (see chart), then they panicked and it went vertical to 20T
Wild speculation is caused by extremely loose money, which feeds on itself, millionaires are made overnight, a giddy feeling and lack of self restraint takes over the public’s imaginations of get rich quick, only fools works, etc. BTW Tesla was positioned to sell it’s overpriced devices at the peak of the mania, which is now fading fast.
Make no mistake the dream is about to become the nightmare when the world’s biggest bubble comes undone. Elliott Wave researcher and author Robert Prechter has proved in chart after chart that all manias end up LOWER than when they started. For instance, the DJIA went up in the Roaring Twenties to 1929, then crashed lower than the starting point in 1922 in 1932. Same for the South Sea Bubble, where Isaac Newton lost everything. (Newton was the smartest man on the planet at that time, invented Calculus, etc)
My favorite part of this mania are the Wojak cartoons of the McWage slaves losing everything in cryptos.
Isaac Newton LOST EVERYTHING in the South Sea Bubble. This is a big topic is the study Socionomics about the psychology of manias, which suck in everyone at an emotional level – causing their financial ruin – and something you should consider when we are living in the era of the biggest stock market bubble of all time.
Newton was one of the smartest people ever, lost everything, because his rational mind was superseded by his emotions and greed to get rich quick. Make no mistake, out of a population of billions of people, some people do win the lottery, but that is no reason to buy LOOTery tickets, a way for the state to fleece the public. If the chances of winning the lottery are 0.00000000001%, rounded off that number is zero, which means when you buy a lottery ticket your chances of winning are zero. Likewise, speculation in cyptos are equally grim.
HOW BIG IS THE CURRENT BUBBLE YOU ASK?
https://i.imgur.com/WuB7dbH.png
When does the this bubble burst? Now. Right now. The Dow has topped. it has just started it’s epic Biblical level decline. It will be the biggest crash in the history of the world, yet some of my best friends are fully invested in SPX triple leverage. I make an impassioned plea for them to GTFO of the market but they think I am crazy. LOLROFL Oh boy, this is going to be good watching 2025 unwind.
FART COIN is a temporal marker, the very tippy top of the chart will be labeled with FART COIN annotation. Get it? We are peak mania, in normal times no rational person would every trade their hard earned money for a god damned fart coin.
Here is the current macrotrends chart, which was the background chart above:
https://i.imgur.com/ZHgxy9P.png
See in you can locate the 1929, 1987 crashes. The crash that is coming will dwarf both of those, and probably wipe out most cryptos also.
Two books worth reading IMO are Von Mises’ Theory of Money and Credit and When Money Dies: The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany by Adam Fergusson.
Money essentially is a commodity that the market decides on as a medium of exchange. As such, crypto currencies have market support as a means of exchange. I’m not sure why this is such a contentious issue. Yes CBDCs present a potential evil but that’s not what crypto currencies are. One thing about crypto is that participation is voluntary. Eric, as you know, I am a big fan of precious metals but they have no inherent value other than being used historically across the world in all cultures as money. Bitcoin has real flaws, IMO, but other crypto currencies address those issues. And, of course, blockchain technology depends on an operational internet. But let’s face facts, if the internet fails or is limited by government action, we will have much more severe existential issues to face.
Crypto currencies and blockchain technology are not some sort of Jewish plot, that kind of rhetoric leads to rise of tyrants…..not that the current state of Israel does not present a Nazi like conundrum.
I think you all realize that if you consider crypto currencies to be vapor, how can you not consider the FRNs that you use for money to be vapor as well? The effects of Modern Monetary Theory are rearing their ugly heads throughout western cultures…..
I used to post on an MMT-friendly website. To defend money-printing socialist regimes such as Maduro’s Venezuela and the Kirchners’ Argentina, the leftist proprietor regularly argued that inflation really isn’t all that bad.
Pointing out that millions voted with their feet to flee the inflationary hell of Maduro’s socialist Workers Paradise cut no ice. It was US sanctions impoverishing Venezuela, the proprietor claimed, not Maduro’s reckless printing of Bolivars, which stopped for awhile when a European supplier wouldn’t sell the central bank any more special rag paper.
MMT’s leftist elitists want the unchecked sole authority to print fiat currency to fund their pharaonic socialist programs. That society gets destabilized with crime and riots, and the poor suffer the most, is of zero consequence to MMT’s misanthropic, authoritarian ideologues.
Same story in the U.S.S.A……the cognitive dissonance required to support the ecological disaster of unlimited war around the world which burns real resources while supporting the real wealth transfer from middle class and poor citizens is staggering. I’ve come to the conclusion that people I once considered intelligent have entered into the realm of stupid, programmed sheep.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that people I once considered intelligent have entered into the realm of stupid, programmed sheep.”
Welcome! 🙂
Jim H wrote: It was US sanctions impoverishing Venezuela, the proprietor claimed, not Maduro’s reckless printing of Bolivars…
Yet another reason why the solution to “rouge states’ misbehavior” isn’t sanctions, but commerce and information exchange. We stop allowing US firms to do business in Venezuela because of their socialist dictator. OK fine, now that’s the excuse for the left to use to explain away the shithole conditions.
All crypto is a big Jew scam.
Who programmed the blockchains?
Who holds the source codes?
Why is this information SECRET?
Maybe because it’s MOSSAD that wrote the code.
The source code for Bitcoin is freely available….
That is true, actually, but there are some real problems with financial platforms created by people operating under pseudonyms.
And then there’s perhaps the worst problem with digital currency (ALL digital currency) – the fact that they are ALL 100% dependent on layer after layer of supremely hackable infrastructure.
So let’s pretend for a second that “bitcoin” is 100% safe and secure and coded by Christian monks writing code in a monastery. What else comes into play? Cell phones. How many cell phones have compromised operating systems, malware apps they’re unaware of, backdoors into the software AND hardware.
Home computers. How many people have malware on their PC’s that they might also do bitcoin transactions on? Compromised operating systems? The ARC processor built into all Intel CPU’s and reporting all your activity back to “Israel”.
What about the routers the data travels over? How many of them are compromised or might be in the future?
What about the servers for the telecom companies?
The overall point about bitcoin, in fact ALL digital currency, is that it’s NOT SAFE NOR SECURE.
This is the whole point, that there is 1 path back to freedom. And it’s NOT crypto-currency. I can promise you this. This is the fastest path to ruin. The path to freedom comes from an elimination of the federal reserve bank (and likewise the IRS), and the return to METAL-BACKED MONEY. Only money that is based on a COMMODITY can RETAIN ITS VALUE. When money is based on a commodity, there is a natural incentive to maintain the value of the money because it maintains the value of your COMMODITY.
When money is based on DEBT (as our current FIAT dollars are), there is a natural incentive to DEVALUE the money so the suckers come running for more loans. More loans = more money for the lender. This is pretty basic.
I suggest running far and fast from crypto. It will be the death of us.
Nothing secret about Nakamoto’s paper. It’s posted here:
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
Hundreds of imitators indicate that Nakamoto’s peer-to-peer network, using a transparent blockchain rather than a trusted third party to combat fraud, is an important innovation.
The problem is Nakamoto isn’t his actual name. So who is he REALLY?
So I assume in your metal-back currency you’ll expect everyone to x-ray their coins and bars for tungsten cores and assay them for purity? Because inflation, counterfeiting and deception are unique to 21st century blockchain? Debasement and clipping of gold and silver coins were significant in the Roman fall. The problem is government money, not the mechanism.
Have you looked at some of the privacy oriented coins like Monero XMR? At Porcfest, a big contingent of the crypto advocates were Monero advocates. Interestingly, none of them was interested in trading Monero for FRNs…..nice people though and willing to discuss technical details with an old fart like me….
There is reason to believe Bitcoin was launched by the military-intelligence complex but who or why isn’t obvious and that they still control it is debatable. There’s fundamental flaws in the model and application, although these will allow future blockchains to benefit. If Bitcoin itself is suspect the concept seeded wholly new thinking. They (whoever it is) may have jumped the shark by releasing something into the wild before they completely understood it. It may have created a problem and solution that fusion centers won’t be able to solve no matter how many brute force or even quantum tricks they have at hand. Trust is the economic elephant. How to earn it, how to prove it, how to transfer it is going to drive everything.
I remember when I first saw bottled water. My grandparents lived in Florida. The tap water smelled like sulfur and tasted terrible. The reason (I was told) was because the water table was below sea level and so I guess it was hard to get those impurities out. It was safe to drink, but who would? Anyway she had 1 gallon jugs of water in the fridge that she used for drinks and probably cooking. She wasn’t the only one, as the Publix had a section of shelf space that was nothing but bottled water. I thought it odd, having come from Pennsylvania where the tap water was excellent, mostly because of all the mountain springs that are basically just filtered rainfall.
Then in the late 1980s or maybe 1990s we started to see water in 16 oz plastic soda bottles. It was cheaper than soda, but extremely expensive compared to tap water. We all laughed “who would buy such a thing” when there were water fountains everywhere, often with small refrigeration units, serving delicious chilled water for free. Sure, there might be wad of chewing gum jammed into the spigot by some jerk, but if you were careful you could still get a drink without getting your face wet. Funny how we used to be more worried about that while ignoring the potential of germs from the gum. Over time, more people bought bottled water, or at least bottled water took up more shelf space. At the same time, water fountains fell into disrepair. Servicing costs and regulatory requirements for refrigeration units made them too expensive to maintain in most commercial public buildings. Some still remain, which are actually very elaborate and have features such as spigots for refilling bottles, but most of them are in government owned buildings where cost control isn’t a factor.
Aside: As more companies got into the bottled water racket, suddenly “hydration” became a major health issue. Crypto backers are doing the same thing, talking up every currency issue as an existential threat.
Crypto currencies are a lot like bottled water. They’re not great, cost more, and are a hassle, but they might prove better than the stuff handed out by the establishment. If they get enough traction, eventually people will allow government backed currency to fall into disrepair. This was happening in China. When Hong Kong fell a lot of people bought BTC to get their money out the country. It isn’t happening so much in Central America because the dollar is still better than the local stuff (just like Florida tap water). As the dollar becomes less desirable, either through negligence or malice, the last best option will probably be crypto currency.
What hasn’t taken off, and I don’t understand why, is the idea of a public ledger backing up hard assets. A gold exchange where the record of ownership is logged in a blockchain style ledger seems like it would make a whole bunch of sense. Of course you still have to trust that the gold really is sitting in a vault somewhere, so the blockchain doesn’t really resolve the fundamental trust issue with a third party.
Smart investors are using Bitcoin to buy tulip bulbs…
What gives anything value? I’m a goldbug but why does it have any value. There’s the classic definition for money being relatively scarce, fungible, durable, divisible, minimal intrinsic value. Gold meets all the criteria and has for many centuries of human development.
But don’t also crypto currencies do have many of the traits of money? Just because we cannot touch it doesn’t mean it does not exist. Many things we cannot see or touch but we’re fairly sure they exist. Atoms, gaseous elements, sound and radio waves. You can no more eat gold than you can Bitcoin, both have to be part of a transaction to get what you need.
It’s not the job of Bitcoin or U.S. dollars or gold to prove it’s worth. We value things because we do. Fiat currency only has value because it’s dictated to have that utility. The real value of dollars is what it can buy. Since dollars are forced usage by convenience to the government but their real world value is that they can buy Trans Ams and gasoline. It always comes down the actual things, raw materials, finished products, services.
‘What is the faith backing up Fartcoin? Or any other iteration of “crypto”?’ — eric
The faith is based on transparency: the crypto blockchain is shared with all users. As Satoshi Nakamoto pointed out in his landmark 2009 paper, more than half of all crypto users would have to conspire to ‘double spend’ Bitcoin — the analogue to the Federal Reserve’s ‘keystroke currency’ fraud, which is quite real.
As for value being perceptual, this charge is often leveled against gold as well. Ordinary valuation metrics just don’t apply to a ‘pet rock.’ But we do know that because gold mining is difficult, dangerous and costly, the worldwide aboveground supply of gold increases only 1 percent per year. No fraudster has the means to change this.
Thus, the perceptual value humans assign to gold — which has been remarkably stable in purchasing power for millennia — can be confidently expected to endure. Bitcoin’s history is too short to say, but eventually its purchasing power in terms of goods and services should stabilize and endure too.
Whereas the ‘full faith and credit of the US clowngov’ has destroyed nearly half (over half, properly calculated) of the dollar’s purchasing power just in this quarter century.
Having made exorbitant social promises that it cannot possibly redeem, and with its back to the wall just to roll over its crushing debt, the US clowngov is headed for an inflationary tragedy which will send US living standards plummeting. You’ll know when our imperial legions come home from Syria and Iraq and little Shitrahell — because their paychecks bounced — that it’s ovahhhhhh.
I don’t want to hear your cheap promises
I know the truth and you’re lying
It’s all over, all over
Over but the cryin’
— Georgia Satellites, All Over But the Cryin’
Bitcoin’s value isn’t really that hard to understand when we consider how much faith we put in our computers, the internet, that phones and electrical grids work. Bitcoin’s value derives from the faith we put in technology and people who develop it. It will have value as long as people believe in the systems around us. I’m not opposed to arguments that this faith has waned with each hacking attack, grid blackout, slumping iPhone sales and bricked Tesla. But I don’t see any hint that people are willing to full stop the mindless screen scrolling and putting their money in electronic accounts on far away cloud computers.
In 1913 there was penny candy (which now costs over an “dollar” and a dollar was about 1/20th of an ounce of gold (which now costs $2700). The FRN has actually lost over 99% of its value.
Henry ford made cars for Americans, and paid a high enough wage that his workers could buy a $250 new model T. Which scandalized the Rockefellers and such. Nothing has changed except all that wealth which the commoners were able to accumulate has now been reclaimed by the (self) important people.
Hi Ernie.
American car companies are shipping most of the jobs off to Mexico. I wonder how many Mexicans can afford to buy a new F150 or Tahoe? For that matter how many people here can afford to buy one at the prices they charge.
I’m guessing Henry is rolling in his grave at this point. It’s almost like de-industrialization was the goal.
No need to wonder, just go to https://ford.mx and build one for yourself.
Base price for a 2024 F-150 in Mexican pesos: $976,900
ChatGPT claims the average annual salary for a Mexican is $220,908 pesos.
Hi RK. I guess they can afford to buy one. Wage does seem high though at about $128,000 a year.
In US dollars.
“Put another way: Isn’t the value entirely perceptual? “
Yes, of course. Isn’t this the essence of what Ludwig Von Mises said?
For many, the “value” of an ice cream cone is higher in July vs. December? I.e. time preference of money.
Same for gold, same for Federal Reserve notes, bitcoin, or for Caligula’s. It’s all only worth what someone thinks it’s worth and is willing to exchange goods or services for it at a particular point in time.
Maybe we’ll get sound money again someday but I don’t think it will happen as long as the empire exists. Too many are 100% dependent on the status quo to allow a move away from Federal Reserve Notes.
Opening people’s thinking to what is money to me is the real value of Bitcoin. They’ve done such a good job of talking down gold for decades that people have forgotten that it’s not the thing per se but lack of competition leading to mismanagement and greed that ruins money and currency. The reason the dollar value can be driven to zero is legal tender laws that protect it, not that a paper money is absolutely good or bad.
At one time that faith of the U.S. people really did convey value. Probably up to Vietnam we could lay a claim to such a pedestal. Sure, behind the scenes the evil existed, but America as an example and the people who made her earned that trust. And it was We The People who threw away that faith allowing the evil and destruction without a whimper. We can externalize and blame bankers and politicians but it’s just as much the fault of wanting our Social Security and Medicare. Our government handouts and contracts.
[ it’s just as much the fault of wanting our Social Security and Medicare. Our government handouts and contracts.]
I wonder??? ……. If SS and Medicare are handouts after they have stolen 15%-20% of your lifetime earnings by the promise of a few survival dollars per month when your disabled by age wouldn’t your ‘tax refunds’ qualify as handouts? And the difference is?
Making it even worse…… The following is due to my anger for the situation in LA and around the planet caused by incompetence.
We watch ‘elected’ government officials ignore their duties as they have in LA and Maui then ‘we’ allow them to finish their term isn’t this a handout to the parasites which have paid nothing in the form of real income?
Is it a handout when government tells the california officials expenses are backed fully by the federal government printing press when on the other side of the nation they get a $700 loan,,, Have a nice day? Have we multiple tiers of citizens?
When the federal government hands out your stolen monies to friends like Genocide Bibi or Nazi Zelenski isn’t that a handout to folks that haven’t paid a plug nickel and are tyrants in their own nations constantly buying up million dollar mansions while our cities literally burn?
I am real careful when I use the term ‘handout’ especially when some recipients have been made to pay dearly for it their entire lives while tyrants and border hoppers merely demand it…… and get it!
rant over
Absolutely Ken,
FICA taxes for SS and Medicare were taken from my paycheck for my entire working life. When I hear people refer to them as “entitlements” I point out that yes, they are entitlements and I am entitled to them because money was stolen from me for many decades to (supposedly) fund that. And don’t anyone bother pointing out that FICA taxes just go into the general fund of Uncle’s maw, there is no separate trust fund, yada yada yada. I get all that, the point is money was taken from me personally but given out to parasites like Israhell and Keeeeev, not to mention migrants and assorted welfare leeches who are nothing but freeloaders.
That article got me to thinking how Martin Armstrong says the value of the Dollar is determined by the confidence people have in the government.
I know a few people irl who have lotsa confidence in the government,… & in the priest class in white robes & stethoscopes, etc. They all seem to share certain qualities I simply do not understand.
Went to USAWatchdog.com to see if Martin Armstrong had any other insights into the value of the Dollar & other things.
The titles of the recent interviews, whew:
‘Vast Devaluation of Dollar Coming in 2025 – Craig Hemke’
‘Embalmers Keep Finding Fibrous CV19 Vax Clots – Tom Haviland’
‘CV19 Bioweapon Shots are Democide on a Global Scale – Dr. Betsy Eads’
‘Trump Admin: Fight Between Freedom & Deep State Control – Catherine Austin Fitts’
‘Sugar Juice & Fraud Propped Up Failing Biden Economy – Ed Dowd’
‘Depression, Debt, Default & Destruction in 2025 -Martin Armstrong’
I cannot imagine anyone who has high confidence in the Dollar, the gobermint, or Western medicine & the educational system even watching interviews about those subjects. Is willful blindness a requirement to play all confidence games?
I’m having flashbacks of Ron Paul asking Ben Bernake if gold is money.
Channeling Dr. Paul, is fartcoin, bitcoin, or any other blockchain money?
Fake money begets the entire fake society & economy we now find ourselves in.
‘The consequences of inflation are malinvestment, waste, a wanton redistribution of wealth and income, the growth of speculation and gambling, immorality and corruption, disillusionment, social resentment, discontent, upheaval and riots, bankruptcy, increased government controls, and eventual collapse.’
— Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Freaking Lesson
With a name like Fartcoin it’s getting obvious that our putative masters are laughing at us. Got gold or silver?