The Blockchain and Us
Global awareness of bitcoin has spread like wildfire in the past decade. Still, much confusion persists over how this digital currency works, and the implications it might hold for all of us in the not so distant future. The new documentary The Blockchain and Us isn't a dry or overly technical exercise that seeks to explain every nuance of this complex monetary system. Instead, the film calls upon the expertise of financial wizards and technology geeks from around the world to expose its potential for shaping a brave new world.
Invented in 2008 by an elusive figure or entity known as Satoshi Yakamoto, bitcoin is an experimental currency which is traded through the digital stratosphere. All transactions are completed on a peer-to-peer basis, which eliminates the need for banks, brokers, or any other intermediaries. These transactions are all stored for public view on a blockchain, an endless digital spreadsheet that is secured by unbreakable military-grade encryption.
This revolutionary system turns our traditional currency into digital assets, and it could transform the way we conduct all levels of business in our daily lives. At this time, the system is too young and volatile to challenge our current monetary exchange system, but banks and other businesses are beginning to take the technology seriously nevertheless. Many feel it's just a matter of time before the bitcoin system irons out its kinks and becomes the norm, so there is a sense of urgency on their part to evolve into it or risk irrelevancy.
According to each of the film's esteemed interview subjects, the blockchain network could usher in a new era that is more inclusive, diverse and humane. Currently, over 70% of the world's population functions without any connection to the financial services industry. Blockchain opens the door for their involvement, and unleashes a massive global demographic for existing businesses. This dynamic could fundamentally change the lives of billions across the globe, and significantly narrow the margins of income inequality.
The future of bitcoin might be uncertain at the moment, but its possibilities are limitless. The Blockchain and Us is an effective primer on an exciting new phenomenon that will continue to drive debates and innovative thinking for years to come.
Directed by: Manuel Stagars
Salesman speculative empty propaganda. 31 minutes of sales pitch and a vacuum of meaning.
By the way $1/20 = 5c So your dollars are now only worth a nickel compared to when I was very young. Much less for my parents and grandparents. I suppose there is data but I would guess it to be half a penny or less for gramps. Data is only as good as those who manipulate it and what they include and exclude.
There are some who predict that the banksters will cause the system to collapse before any course change will occur. It is hard to argue with that looking at the debt of the world and dependence on fiat currency.
Now if a cryptocurrency was tied to the price of gold and/or silver. And that mine production of those metals was the only way to increase the supply of that cryptocurrency. Basically just an electronic unhackable digital gold coin backed by the metal itself, with all the ease of not having to assay the metal prior to a transaction, that could stabilize the financial world. Those blockchain miners could earn gold or shares in a gold mining company.
What I would like to know is how these transfer outfits who exchange money for bitcoin get hacked and much of their bitcoins get stolen. Is that Satoishi? Or do they hand over the keys to some friend and share the reward?
Unfortunately legislation to ensure what @Mitch mentioned is already in the works. When the big boys see something grow into a threat, they change the rules so they win. Otherwise we would still be following the US Constitution which only allows Gold as money.
Although I empathize with @Eugene, dividing a quantity into nothing has already been occurring with the money in your pocket. If you look in an old magazine you could see ads for cars for under $1000. Your money has been divided by 15 or 20. And before that by how many times? Yes you can always compare it to gold, just as you can Bitcoin. And when the price of Gold is manipulated, as some banks are being fined for doing, it makes for a fine mess.
Banksters divide the value of your money into worthlessness by both inflation and deflation. What you need and want costs more = Inflation. What you have is worth less = Deflation. Some people have managed to gain via their property inflating but not all. Many who couldn't hold on got squeezed out during the progressive(collectivist) bush-obama era.
The quickest way to freedom is to move to a place where the big boys don't care about. Where no banksters, no lawyers, and no govt which enables them to steal from you, as well as govt itself. A difficult thing unless you can find your own island.
Barring that don't elect any of those nor allow anyone to buy those you do elect. Actually fairly easy to do if you gather together to see to it and by pass the partisan parties which have provided mostly corruption and incrementally increasing socialism since before I was born. Socialism = antiFreedom. Don't confuse Capitalism with Corporatism. The first is what would occur without any govt. The second is facilitated by govt. Socialism is when govt takes over, redistributes wealth mostly to itself, until the money runs out, then points its guns at its own people until a revolution occurs. Then you may get something worse or better depending on who wins.
Why do people keep electing those who give the banksters the ability to steal more and more from you? People truly enjoy their misery and want more of same, despite what they claim; otherwise they would change course. Just voting for one bankster minion or another bankster minion, the two choices they provide, then complaining about the results doesn't accomplish anything. YOU have to see to it decent people are running from all parties together with your neighbors.
Until then, we will get newfangled and easier ways of stealing from us by the CorproBanksterGovtMedia complex.
This is not a documentary but a propaganda piece which is probably made to trick the average joe into investing his hard earned money in crypto currency. The whole movie is basically different people telling how great and revolutionary the blockchain technology without any substance to back it up - no explaining of the technology or it's shortcomings. The author and participants should be ashamed
Whales, institutional investors/large currency holders on cyrptrocurrency exchanges can manipulate the market by driving the price up and up only to scoop up a large chunk of people's $ that was just put in. Thus the old adage: buy low, sell high. At least the whales don't own and run everything like they do now.
It's interesting to hear them talk about how digital currency allows the whole world to become part of the internet so that third-world countries in particular can have access to financial opportunities. When in fact, they (the one percent and those who serve them) just want more people to have more access in order to take more of their money - not to be part of the global economy of prosperity but to be subjected to it.
With seven billion+ population if they got one dollar from everyone that would make them even more wealthy. They are like vultures ready to pick people to death by debt.
And this BS about reducing the over-population is ridiculous. They created over population with cheap foof in order to grow billionaires (a limited number mind you).
They WANT over-population in order to have the 99% fight over the crumbs. All the while they create a media-industry to glamorize, mystify, captivate people's imagination in the worship of accumulating ridiculous amounts of wealth. Hypnotizing people into believing that obtaining huge amounts of money is the meaning of life. All the while concealing from the majority of the people that they in fact live the most miserable lives ever!
Mitch & Eugene are on it. When I first listened to that "5 Ways to Describe Blockchain" video on Gootube, I thought great! but by the time the pretty lady got to the creepy ending - I thought "Oh F..." We're doomed.
I did my time w/programmers in big corps. Love them dearly. But they all have the same blinders on -he who pays for the development rules the outcome.
A system based on the amount of information you reveal about yourself to build your 'level of trust = value" to that system is beyond totalitarian. It's like monetizing the pathetic mantra "I don't care about personal privacy because I have nothing to hide." Really?
Sure, I love the idea of ridding ourselves of the killuminati bankers and their satanism and pedophilic lifestyles... but they own the Internet.
Do you really think they care what these geeks are doing? They don't. They know if there is ONE global financial platform for day to day transactions - they win the game. NWO, Agenda 21, The Phoenix Project Fusion Centers, FEMA camps, Morgellons, 5G/Mk Ultra Sat Nets-Smart Grid, etc. No need to transition us through plastic money they can defund when they want too. They'll just prevent our access to the medium of the internet - and you can probably think of a really long list of ways they could do that.
This feels more like propaganda trying to reinforce the hype around cryptocurrency rather than an actually informative documentary. It doesn't help that most of the people speaking are cryptocurrency entrepreneurs who still talk about the blockchain using taboo-style speech, "it", "this", etc. The consistent inability to communicate specifics about the technology and how it works for them is highly suspect. Sure, in theory, Bitcoin is going to make you a sandwich and kill your spiders, but HOW is it going to do that? No, literally? And with the whole Satoshi mythology behind Bitcoin, it reminds me a lot of Scientology, and how easy it is to create a belief system, add generic physical symbols to said belief system, and then get people to spend money on it.
In my opinion, the dangers of crypocurrency lie in the way that each individual unit can infinitely be divided. Tangible currencies can always lose value, but have a bottom limit to how divided it can be before each individual part is no longer proportionately valuable compared to the whole. For example, a cow is worth so much, and even its meat is worth a fair amount, but once you break it down to just ground beef or bones, the intrinsic value of those pieces no longer have the same value they held as part of the cow as a whole. So this inhibits currencies from being able to manifest non-existent value. The problem with Bitcoin and its spinoffs is that it can be almost infinitely divided so that you're owning 1/1000000th of a total Bitcoin, or unit of cryptocurrency, and that is still equivalent to entire units of other currency, as well as directly equal to its portion of the entire unit itself. Stock markets and currency exchanges have a way of doing this with existing currencies, that are based on tangible representations of value: gold, paper money, coins, etc...physical things, that can only be divided to a certain degree before losing value, and the credit system has already done damage by creating non-existent value (value that never stemmed from a tangible currency, ie, interest), but cryptocurrency creates a simple and fluid way of exploiting these problems and making them an actual threat. It could reach a point where one unit of cryptocurrency contains the value represented by the entire physical currency of the rest of the world...which right now is what is used to define the value of cryptocurrency to begin with. Long before that, the value that exists in cryptocurrency will no longer have a physical translation, and trading it will be the equivalent to trading imaginary cows, and how do we ensure the value of something that has no physical proof of its existence? At that point it becomes very easy to just say one person's money is worth more than another person's, even if they have the same amount. So, of course, you can see the allure to try to be one of those people who decides who is valuable and who isn't.
It’s not so much that the ubiquitous crytocurrency makes an individual wealthy as a early bird entrepreneur but the upkeep and lower level modalities of servicing it that will inspire wealthy hybrids of servicing it.
This documentary is absolutely worthless. No attempt was made to explain how the block chain works. The only concrete example of its use given was replacing the current methods of settling financial transactions.
If the technology is truly secure, it would seem likely that a sovereign government would eventually create its own crypto currency and establish laws banning the conversion of it to any other currency as well as banning the use of any other crypto currency in legally recognized financial transactions.
Automotive, aerospace, shipbuilding, construction, chemical, oil and gas, electrical and electronics, pulp and paper, steel ... are industries; "financial services industry" is a double oxymoron :)
It looks like the age of "Democracy" is fading away and the major countries of the world, including and especially the USA, are phasing in the new system of Plutocracy.