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California Teacher Placed On Leave For Daring To Question School Walkout

Authored by Jay Syrmopoulos via TruthInMedia.com,

California high school history teacher Julianne Benzel is on paid suspension after engaging her students in a discussion where she shared her perspective on the politics of organized protests in anticipation of the National School Walkout, which took place on the morning of March 14.

“We had a dialogue in class about it in Thursday and Friday. And today I received the call. So I am aghast,” Benzel told CBS Sacramento.

Benzel said that she questioned her students as to the appropriateness of schools sanctioning a protest against gun violence and whether the school administration was willing to allow protests for other causes, but she noted that she never discouraged her pupils from taking part in the walkout.

“If you’re going to allow students to walk up and get out of class without penalty then you have to allow any group of students that wants to protest,” Benzel said.

“And so I just kind of used the example which I know it’s really controversial, but I know it was the best example I thought of at the time,” Benzel told CBS Sacramento.

“[If] a group of students nationwide, or even locally, decided ‘I want to walk out of school for 17 minutes’ and go in the quad area and protest abortion, would that be allowed by our administration?”

According to Benzel, her students understood the purpose of her discussion, but on Wednesday, she received notification that she was being placed on leave. While students were walking out of class, Benzel was informed she was being placed on paid administrative leave.

“I didn’t get any backlash from my students. All my students totally understood that there could not be a double standard,” she said.

School officials didn’t elaborate on the specific nature of the issue, but released a statement reading in part:

A Rocklin High School teacher has been placed on paid administrative leave due to several complaints from parents and students involving the teacher’s communications regarding today’s student-led civic engagement activities.

Benzel said that she hopes the national student walkout will facilitate broader discussion not focused entirely on second amendment gun rights, but also on free speech.

Student Nick Wade, who didn’t walk out, told CBS13 that he believes the politics behind the protest played a large role – and that protests related to a more “conservative” cause would likely be denied by school officials.

“I feel like if we were to go to school and say something like I want to walk out maybe for abortion rights, then you know they probably wouldn’t let us because that’s more of a conservative push. But someone wants to say let’s walk out for gun control then the school’s going to go with it because it’s more of a popular view,” said Wade.

Benzel told the news station that she acquired legal counsel and plans to meet with the school administration on Thursday.

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Kelly: No More Personnel Changes At The White House; Trump May Be Leaker

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told White House staff in a Friday meeting that there would be no more dismissals at this time, according to The Hill.

The news follows a wild week of firings and speculation over who’s neck is on the block – following the abrupt ouster of Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson and his assistant. 

“The chief of staff actually spoke to a number of staff this morning, reassuring them that there were no immediate personnel changes at this time and that people shouldn’t be concerned, that we should do exactly what we do everyday, and that’s come to work and do the best job we can,” said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.

“That’s exactly what we’re doing and exactly what we’re focused on.”

The Friday announcement comes on the heels of a report by the Washington Post late Thursday that Trump was firing national security adviser H.R. McMaster – and would reportedly be looking for a “soft landing spot” for the three-star general in a position where he could earn his fourth star. 

Sanders tamped down that rumor at the Friday briefing, telling reporters “he president said that it was not accurate and he had no intention of changing and that they have a great working relationship and he looked forward to continuing to work with him.” 

“Our focus is not on a lot of the news stories you would like us to be focused on,” Sanders told reporters. “We’re actually focused on what the American people want us to do. That’s to come here, to do our jobs. General McMaster is a dedicated public servant and he is here not focused on the news stories that many of you are writing but on some really big issues, things like North Korea, Russia, Iran. That’s what he’s doing. And that’s what we’ll continue to be focused on every single day we show up for work.”

Looks like that was fake news from WaPo

Is Trump a leaker?

Axios’ Jonathan Swan reports that John Kelly told reporters in an off-the-record briefing that President Trump is “likely speculating about staff moves to people outside the White House and that reporters are then talking to those people. And that’s how a good deal of news is likely being made about all the possible replacements.” 

What we’re hearing:

Kelly acknowledged to the reporters it’s likely that Trump is talking to people outside the White House and that reporters are then talking to those people. Kelly cast Trump’s own conversations as a significant contributing factor to stories about the staff changes. (Kelly was making the point that he’s not around for a lot of Trump’s conversations so can’t be sure what he’s telling people over the phone.)

Kelly disputed the reports about H.R. McMaster imminently leaving the White House. He said there are no active plans to replace him, and added that it would be great if the Army gave McMaster a 4th star.

Kelly also defended HUD Sec. Ben Carson, who is under pressure for spending $31,000 on a furniture set. Kelly said $31,000 sounds like a lot of money, but to put it in context he asked a reporter how much they think the chair they’re sitting on costs. Kelly said it’s probably worth hundreds of dollars but it will last a long time. He rationalized Carson’s $31,000 outlay by saying the table could last for 80 or 100 years. Kelly was pressed on whether the President was going to fire Carson. He made a military analogy. He said whenever he makes a decision, he makes sure that it’s legally permissible and from that line he takes five paces back — to allow for optics, ethical and other considerations. Kelly said he wants all decision-making across government to be like that and the impression reporters were left with was that Carson is not going to be fired. 

Kelly said he has been telling Trump that Jeff Sessions is doing a good job. Kelly went above and beyond to defend Sessions, and told the president that the press only reports about 3% of what he does. 

He said Deputy A.G. Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Chris Wray are also doing good jobs. 

Kelly also said that Larry Kudlow’s past cocaine habit won’t be a problem for his security clearance, as it is public knowledge. Kelly joked that the 1990s were “a crazy time.” –Axios

It would seem counterintuitive for Trump to purposefully project an image of chaos within the White House. Then again, maybe it’s all part of the show. 

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Fordham Protesters Accuse Conservatives Of “White Supremacy” (For Buying Coffee)

Authored by Sandor Farkas via Campus Reform,

Fordham University students protested against “white supremacy” Monday, specifically citing an incident in which conservative students tried to buy coffee while wearing MAGA gear.

Fordham Students United (FSU), “an intersectional coalition of student leaders, activists, faculty & alumni,” staged the March 12 protest in an effort to “bring social justice on campus,” writing on the Facebook page for the demonstration that “white supremacy” is present on campus but the administration has “failed to publicly denounce it.”

The Fordham Ram reports that the protest, clocking in at an hour and a half, consisted of students shouting chants of “hate speech is not free speech” and marching with signs stating that “Racism is a Social Sin” and “White Supremacy Kills.”

“Fordham’s policies and protection of white supremacy is putting people at risk,” one student shouted into a megaphone, with another claiming that the goal of the protest was to inspire a response from the administration. 

“We just want to call on the school to directly address that there is a problem of white supremacy on campus, to denounce it, and to hold the people who are propagating this message accountable,” student Reyna Wang told the Ram, while another claimed that she is “literally scared” by the situation.

As evidence of the white supremacy on campus, the protesters referenced a recent incident in which the president of a student group that runs an on-campus coffee house was disciplined for demanding that members of the school’s College Republicans chapter leave because their pro-Trump apparel violated the shop’s “Safer Space Policy.”

Fordham, notably, sanctioned both the president of the coffee house as well as the student who recorded the encounter, but the FSU protesters were still disappointed in the outcome, saying the College Republicans demonstrated “threatening behavior” by showing up at the coffee shop in MAGA gear and expecting to be served like normal customers.

The group also argues in its Facebook page that the College Republicans “set her (the president) up to be a target of harassment by national right-wing news and its followers.”

Additionally, the Facebook page points to a a student’s social media post featuring the “flag of Kekistan,” an alt-right symbol, as further evidence of the need to protest white supremacy. 

FSU contends that the alt-right flag, patterned on the Nazi German war ensign, is “a symbol of white nationalism,” but ignored the student paper’s discovery that nine of the 10 students pictured were unaware of what the flag was and what it stood for.

“Fordham’s response, or lack thereof, to these events shows that the only free speech Fordham is willing to protect is the violent and racist rhetoric  that actively targets and threatens students of color, LGBTQ+ folks, immigrants, Muslims, Jews, and other minority groups,” the Facebook page for the protest concludes. 

In response to the protests, Director of Communications Bob Howe told the Ram that as much as “the administration would like to protect the university community from hate speech, we are not insulated from the culture around us, a culture that is increasingly divisive and in some cases openly hateful.” 

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Widely Reported Haspel CIA Torture Claim Was Fake News; Retracted By ProPublica

Virtually the entire media complex megaphoned a 2017 report by Soros-backed news outlet ProPublica, and to a lesser extent a similar report in the New York Times, claiming that Trump’s new pick to lead the CIA, Gina Haspel, oversaw a “clandestine base” in Thailand where she participated in, and mocked the torture of suspected al-Qaida leader Abu Zubaydah. 

The claims were retracted by ProPublica in an embarrassing correction. 

On Feb. 22, 2017, ProPublica published a story that inaccurately described Gina Haspel’s role in the treatment of Abu Zubaydah, a suspected al-Qaida leader who was imprisoned by the CIA at a secret “black site” in Thailand in 2002.

The story said that Haspel, a career CIA officer who President Trump has nominated to be the next director of central intelligence, oversaw the clandestine base where Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding and other coercive interrogation methods that are widely seen as torture. The story also said she mocked the prisoner’s suffering in a private conversation. Neither of these assertions is correct and we retract them. It is now clear that Haspel did not take charge of the base until after the interrogation of Zubaydah ended.

Of note, the ProPublica article was published right after the Trump administration promoted Haspel to the CIA’s #2 job in early February, 2017 in what appears to be nothing more than a political hit piece.

ProPublica’s conclusion was drawn from “declassified agency cables” and CIA-reviewed books which referred to Haspel “chief of base.” The name of the official was redacted, as well as an online post from former CIA counterterrorism officer, John Kiriakous, who wrote “It was Haspel who oversaw the staff” at the Thai prison. 

That’s it. Redacted cables and a book which did not state the name of the base chief, and an online post by a CIA counterterrorism officer saying it was Haspel is all it took to smear a woman placed in a top position within the CIA – weeks after the Trump administration gave the 30-year veteran the promotion. 

The first clue that something was off in the report was the CIA’s statement to ProPublica for the original 2017 report in which an agency spokesperson said “Nearly every piece of the reporting that you are seeking comment on is incorrect in whole or in part.”

While Haspel – according to former colleagues, did run the Thai base – the New York Times published a recent piece placing her arrival in late 2002, after the waterboarding of Zubaydah. 

And while the MSM glazed over the fact that Trump appointed the CIA’s first female director this week, the media ran with the torture narrative – hard. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) even demanded that the CIA declassify documents detailing Haspel’s ties to the torture program.

Abu Zubaydah’s lawyer, Joseph Margulies, penned an angry op-ed in TIME. “In short, all we know for sure is that Haspel was in charge of a site where torture took place,” Marguiles wrote. “And make no mistake: it was torture.”

ProPublica‘s retraction continues: 

James Mitchell, the psychologist and CIA contractor who helped to direct the waterboarding of both suspects, said in a broadcast interview on March 14 that Haspel was not the “chief of base” whom he described in his book as making fun of Zubaydah’s suffering.

“That chief of base was not Gina,” Mitchell told Fox Business News. “She’s not the COB I was talking about.”

Mitchell’s book, “Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying to Destroy America,” referred to the chief of base in Thailand as both “he” and “she.”

We erroneously assumed that this was an effort by Mitchell or the agency to conceal the gender of the single official involved; it is now clear that Mitchell was referring to two different people.

So in an effort to smear a Trump appointee that the MSM would be fawning over if Obama had appointed the first woman to lead the CIA, the entire mainstream media complex and Dianne Feinstein relied on a report from a Soros-backed news outlet and the New York Times, which both published hit pieces right after the Trump administration promoted her the first time, and were both wrong. 

That said, the correction doesn’t completely excuse Haspel from her involvement in the program, as she still reportedly ran the base at which “enhanced interrogations” occurred, and advised her boss to shred 92 tapes of Zubaydah’s waterboarding, which he did. It also doesn’t take away from arguments against enhanced interrogations in general. 

The CIA’s office of public affairs, meanwhile, praised Haspel’s service. 

Dean Boyd, director of the CIA’s office of public affairs, praised Haspel’s 30 years of public service and said Thursday in a statement that her qualifications and capabilities would be evident in the hearing process.

“It is important to note that she has spent nearly her entire CIA career undercover,” Boyd said. “Much of what is in the public domain about her is inaccurate. We are pleased that ProPublica is willing to acknowledge its mistakes and correct the record regarding its claims about Ms. Haspel.”

 

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The Return Of Haim Bodek – HFT’s First Whistleblower

Via Themis Trading blog,

Do you remember Haim Bodek?  

We first wrote about Haim back in October 2012 in a post titled “Who is Haim Bodek?”.  Haim was the first whistleblower to expose how a major stock exchange (Direct Edge) created an order type (Hide Not Slide) that provided HFT firms with unfair advantages that propelled them to the exchanges’ best prices at investors’ expense.

Back in 2012, the financial media was all over this story and market structure savvy journalists like Scott Patterson were able to shine a light on these shady exchange practices.  Scott’s article “How “Hide Not Slide” Orders Work”  was a virtual blueprint in how unsuspecting investors were getting ripped off by HFT traders who were armed with Direct Edge’s special order type.

Direct Edge was subsequently fined $14 million by the SEC for failing to properly describe order types.

Haim has been relatively quiet for the past few years (at least publicly) but he has just resurfaced as the whistleblower in the latest SEC case against the NYSE.  

Last week, we wrote about the details of this case and how the NYSE was fined $14 million by the SEC for five serious violations.  Haim Bodek was the whistleblower for the most serious – in our view – of these five violations in which the NYSE failed to state that pegging interest orders created the possibility of detection of prices of non-displayed depth liquidity.

We were outraged by the facts of this case and were sure that the financial media would cover the case similar to how they did back in 2012 with the Hide Not Slide scandal.  But you know what we heard from the press? Crickets. Hardly a word was written. The WSJ covered the story in a very small article buried deep in the B section of the print edition which highlighted the case as “trading malfunctions”.

We felt that the contribution of Haim Bodek and his team has been overlooked so we reached out to Haim to get some more details about how he once again caught a major stock exchange with their hand in the cookie jar.

Haim told us that he thought everything in this case was the investigated very methodically and thoroughly by the SEC and that this case should encourage more whistleblowers to have confidence in the regulators’ readiness to pursue solid cases against key players in securities markets.  Haim first learned of the NYSE pegging interest problem when a trader who had encountered it firsthand approached Haim for his assistance with solving this bug-like puzzle.  In 2013, the trader (who remains anonymous) confronted the NYSE with a complaint that his non-displayed orders might be shadowed by other orders which would peg to the non-displayed order.  The trader suspected this was occurring because he was placing non-marketable orders in illiquid securities and monitoring subsequent trading activity.  Despite repeated interactions of the trader with NYSE, the exchange shockingly declined to fix the problem and concluded, as noted in the SEC order, that “the system had operated according to specifications.”

Culminating in a whistleblower complaint submitted to the SEC, Haim worked with the trader and formed a research team that included his long-standing counsel Shayne Stevenson of Hagens Berman LLP and Stanislav Dolgopolov who is the chief regulatory officer of Decimus Capital Markets. This team quickly put together the details of the case and realized that NYSE had created an order type that would allow pegging interest (PI) orders to peg to non-displayed interest. Haim’s team established that the shadowing was accomplished by the entry of thousands of pegged orders which went through floor broker pipes and used the pegging interest (PI) order type. These orders were placed by customers of the floor brokers and were non-bona fide orders that acted as a type of radar to identify non-displayed orders.

In November 2014, NYSE filed a rule proposal, which was later withdrawn, to explain that the “next available best-priced interest” to which PIs could peg included non-displayed orders.  However, in March 2015, NYSE realized – with some pressure being exerted by the SEC – that they had a problem and decided to stop the information leakage by changing the order type to peg to only displayed interest through another (quickly approved) rule proposal.

Haim Bodek’s team was responsible for alerting the SEC to what was going on at the NYSE. He initially didn’t think that the complaint would result in a significant fine because it was so deep in the weeds of market structure and likely to disappear through technical housecleaning.  But Haim was elated to see the SEC dig into the case and (as he assumes) reject whatever efforts were assuredly made by NYSE to try convincing the regulators it had done nothing wrong.

However, Haim was disappointed that the financial press did not take time to cover this story and bring to light what a major exchange was doing to investors.  He wonders what has happened to the reporters like Scott Patterson.  This is Haim’s fourth whistleblower case contributing to a significant monetary penalty imposed by the SEC.

In fact, Haim has played a role in both of the record-tying SEC fines against securities exchanges, and he wants the world to know that, if you put together the right team, you can help correct bad behavior by working with the regulators even if that behavior is being perpetrated by a major exchange. While whistleblowers do get a share of SEC fines, the work they do is not easy.  

There are thousands of whistleblower complaints filed with the SEC every year, and very few ever get to collect a reward.  Haim Bodek and his team performed a public service, and we as investors should all be thankful to them.

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Russian Nuclear Sub “Quietly” Traveled To US Coastline Undetected

As Russia weighs retaliating against the UK over its decision to expel a cadre of Russian diplomats after determining that senior Russian leaders (perhaps Putin himself) were responsible for a nerve-gas attack on a former Russian spy, RT revealed that a nuclear-powered submarine recently completed a clandestine exercise that brought it all the way to the US coast.

Nuclear

The stunning revelation was made during a Russian TV program called Zvedzda (Star), the official TV channel of the Russian Defense Ministry.

“This mission has been accomplished, the submarines showed up in the set location in the ocean and returned to base,” the commander of the submarine squadron, Sergey Starshinov, told Zvezda.

The date and location of the covert mission have not been disclosed, but Russia said the submarine “reached the very coastline of the US.”

The disclosure follows Russian President Vladimir Putin’s revelation during his annual speech to Russian lawmakers that Russia had developed a coterie of new advanced weapons – including a nuclear-tipped missile capable of evading NATO anti-ballistic missile defenses in the Europe.

The sub was a Shchuka-B dirigible, commissioned for the Soviet Navy in 1986. The nuclear-powered sub is capable of launching Kalibr or Granat cruise missiles and staying submerged for up to 100 days, according to open sources.

Back in January, we reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the State Armament Program for 2018 to 2025 – which comes with a budget of 19 trillion rubles ($330 billion).

The research and development stage of the project is scheduled to be completed next year. The goal is to have a cost-effective multi-purpose nuclear submarine, with a construction time of four to four and a half years to produce 15-20 submarines totally. There are few details about the class in open sources, but whatever is already known suggests that Husky subs will be a technological breakthrough.

Information about Russia’s submarine fleet is scarce – aside from what the Defense Ministry has willfully decided to disclose: It is understood that several submarines of this class are being operated by the Russian Navy or undergoing modernization. One Shchuka-B submarine was leased to India, where it entered service under the name INS ‘Chakra’.

The Pentagon has already started to raise concerns about Russia’s nuclear submarine arsenal.

“The submarines that we’re seeing are much more stealthy,” Admiral Mark Ferguson, commander of US Naval Forces in Europe at the time, told CNN. The Russians “have more advanced weapons systems, missile systems that can attack land at long ranges,” and their operational capabilities were getting better “as they range farther from home waters.”

The news about the stealth drill was released, notably, just days before Russia’s March 18 election, where Russian President Vladimir Putin is running for his fourth term in the office.

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Bitcoin: Bubble Or Hyperdeflation?

Bitcoin flew too close to the sun. Now the eyes of the world are upon the crypto market, with all the consequences that follow…

“30th anniversary of Black Monday, when markets dropped 23% in a day. In crypto we just call that Monday.”
– Alexander Tapscott

But, as Incrementum’s Demelza Hays and Mark J. Valek show in their latest magnificent Crypto Research report, it all happened as it always has.

Bitcoin reached an all-time high and then predictably it fell again. All common stages of the classic bubble were accounted for: euphoria, infatuation, denial, fear, desperation.

When Bitcoin fell under $7000 and the market capitalization of the whole sector halved, the funeral preparations by nay-sayers were already underway. The fact that cryptocurrencies have already survived five such bubbles, as the brilliant analysis by Michael B. Casey shows, is dutifully ignored by said grave diggers…

In general, we are talking about old-school economists who said it from the start: Bitcoin is a scam.

We strongly disagree: This initial scam phase is part of the Wild West stage of any new unregulated market, and Bitcoin and the blockchain have simply a maturing process ahead of them to weed out the bad seeds. In this respect, the crash of the past months is to a certain extent desirable because it is cleansing the market of criminal, half-baked ideas. That is how free market economy works. But it might be a tall order to expect mainstream economists to recall this after more than a decade of bail-outs and quantitative easing.

All of which leaves the question of what happens next. The question appears to be, as Hays and Valek ask (and answer below), is Bitcoin a bursting bubble or the only exit path on the world’s first hyperdeflation…

Since December, Bitcoin’s price dropped 69 % from a high of $19,224 to a low of $5,920 in early February. The last time Bitcoin’s price plummeted this much was after the 2013 rally when it reached $1,000 per coin for the first time. During a 411-day correction, Bitcoin’s price dropped 87 % from $1,163 on November 30, 2013 to $152 on January 14, 2015. On February 2 of this year, Nouriel Roubini claimed Bitcoin is “the largest bubble in the history of mankind”. Uber-Keynesian Paul Krugman could hardly contain his joy over the Bitcoin crash – he even created a new word for it: “cryptofreude” alluding to the German word “Schadenfreude” (i.e. to revel in someone else’s pain).

Has anything changed fundamentally since then? Has the bubble really popped? If Bitcoin is no bubble, what is it?

Under fiat monetary systems, average Joes and Janes can no longer store their money under the mattress for safekeeping. If they do, price inflation will eat away the purchasing power of their savings by 2 % to 7 % per year based on official and unofficial calculations, respectively. Permanent money debasement discourages saving and encourages consumption spending on cars, clothing, and vacations. People who are determined to save money are forced to take on additional risk to preserve the purchasing power of their savings over time. Instead of saving their money in bank accounts, savers are forced to look for other long term stores of values like stocks, bonds, and real estate.

Figure 1. Fiat Currencies in Terms of Gold (Logarithmic Scale)

 

The main problem is that printing money is only a short-term strategy. If the purchasing power of a currency depreciates too quickly, demand for that currency decreases. In hyperinflations, demand for holding currency tends toward zero.

The Bitcoin revolution is about having a way to store and transmit value that does not depend on inflationary central bank monetary policy, capital controls, or property rights. The reason people pump their paychecks into real estate, bonds, and stocks is not because these assets make a better medium of exchange. These assets make a better store of value than fiat currency, and Bitcoin has the technological features to become an even better store of value than these assets. Similar to Gold, Bitcoin allows people to save without having their savings diluted slowly by ever increasing money supply (or quickly in the case of hyperinflation).

However, Bitcoin does not only enable secure saving, this technology also allows people to directly send their savings to other people without converting into fiat or any other asset. The Bitcoin network does not depend on intermediaries. Stocks, bonds, real estate, and fine art, all depend on government stability and efficient courts that uphold legal contracts. Even owning gold was outlawed in the U.S. from 1933–1974. Today, it is only legally possible to move $10K worth of gold out of the U.S. at once.

Given Bitcoin’s qualitative features, there are three possible outcomes for Bitcoin…

1.) Bitcoin Becomes A Store of Value

It is true that low interest policy and demand for a secure way to save are fueling part of Bitcoin’s rise in price. If central banks stop debasing the purchasing power of fiat currencies and people can return to the good old days of saving cash in their bank accounts, a large portion of Bitcoin’s appeal will vanish.

In contrast, Bitcoin’s price will go much higher if fiat currencies continue to be a poor vehicle for saving.

The number one reason Bitcoin may not be a bubble stems from Bitcoin’s technological qualities that make it a superior way of saving value. The upward price trend and speculation around Bitcoin stems from Bitcoin’s potential to be a global and permissionless system of managing wealth that cannot be confiscated. Like with Gold, one also gets a different perspective denominating the USD in Bitcoin. We would not expect the steep decline of the USD to continue, however the deflationary nature of Bitcoin would imply that it has more value relative to an ever inflating USD (or any other fiat money).

Figure 2. USD in Terms of Bitcoin (Logarithmic Scale)

 

If Bitcoin is adapted as store of value in the long term, people will be able to directly spend Bitcoin without converting into fiat currencies such as the Swiss franc or euro. The current period of volatility may be referred to as Bitcoin’s “hyperdeflation” phase, and this is the first time in history we are experiencing this type of economic phenomena.

Investors are speculating whether or not Bitcoin will become digital gold, and rightly so. Due to the inflationary design of fiat money, Bitcoin exhibits interesting properties relative to fiat money as store of value. If Bitcoin achieves this goal, the future appreciation relative to inflationary fiat money will happen more gradually and volatility could fall drastically. However, the current part of the appreciation economically would be similar to that of a “one off-seignorage” within a fiat money system.

2.) Bitcoin Becomes A Store of Value and a Medium of Exchange

Given the technological problems, the majority of Bitcoin users do not use it as a medium of exchange. Our current payment system is easier to use. We already have credit cards, banks, and PayPal to facilitate our payments to merchants around the world. On the other hand, technologies such as the Lightning Network and SegWit may eventually make Bitcoin a good medium of exchange as well. If Bitcoin can scale to become a global medium of exchange, its purchasing power will increase because it will be able to serve three distinct functions: storing value, transmitting value, and ultimately being a unit of account.

3.) Bitcoin Becomes Neither and Collapses

Bitcoin’s success so far has been nothing short of a miracle.

Since Bitcoin’s inception in 2009, Bitcoin has been declared “dead” hundreds of times in the media. The Bitcoin network has several threats including hacking the SHA-256 encryption algorithm, being outlawed by governments, a 51 % attack, and solar flares bringing down the Internet. If Bitcoin fails to become a global store of value or medium of exchange, the value and subsequently the price of Bitcoin will fall.

*  *  *

Demelza Hays is Research Analyst at Incrementum AG in Liechtenstein which publishes a quarterly crypto research report.

Mark Valek is Fund Manager of one of the first regulated Alternative Investment Funds with direct exposure to crypto currencies in Liechtenstein for professional investors.

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The Evolution Of The Mobile Phone Explained

The evolution of the mobile phone is an odd one.

We began with book-size handsets, minimized them to finger-sized, and then rejected that ‘less-is-more’ mentality for ever-larger screens…

So why did we suddenly shift from shrinkage to ‘size matters’?

The answer is simple…

h/t The Burning Platform

 

 

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Kremlin Furious After Boris Johnson Accuses Putin Of Murder

Earlier today we reported that the world got that much closer to a second Cold War after Russia said it would expel UK diplomats in retaliation to Theresa May’s decision to kick out 23 Russians, while expanding its “blacklist” of US citizens in response to yesterday’s Treasury sanctions. That’s when things turned south fast because roughly at that time, the U.K.’s top diploma, Boris Johnson, directly accused Vladimir Putin, saying it was “overwhelmingly likely” that he personally ordered the nerve-agent attack on British soil.

In a dramatic escalation of a diplomatic crisis between the two countries, the Foreign Secretary said the U.K.’s problem was not with the Russian people but with the Russian leader.

“Our quarrel is with Putin’s Kremlin and with his decision – and we think it overwhelmingly likely that it was his decision – to direct the use of a nerve agent on the streets of the U.K., on the streets of Europe, for the first time since World War II,” Johnson said in London.

Predictably, the Kremlin was furious, said that blaming Putin personally for Skripal’s poisoning is “shocking and unforgivable.”

Speaking to Interfax, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that “We have said on different levels and occasions that Russia has nothing to do with this story” and added that “any references to our president is nothing but shocking and unforgivable diplomatic misconduct.”

Johnson’s statement was a “diplomatic blunder” on the part of the UK foreign secretary, Peskov said, adding that the Kremlin remains “puzzled” by the conduct of the British authorities during the Skripal crisis.

The diplomatic tension increased further Friday afternoon when London’s Metropolitan Police said it is treating as murder the death of Nikolai Glushkov, a close associate of Putin opponent Boris Berezovsky — a one-time billionaire who was himself found hanging dead in 2013 in his house outside London.

The Kremlin’s press secretary also expressed belief that “sooner or later the British side would have to present some kind of comprehensive evidence of Russia’s involvement, at least, to their partners France, the US, Germany, who declared solidarity with London in this situation.” Moscow earlier asked the UK to provide materials in the Skripal case, but received a negative answer.

Johnson’s claims of Putin’s personal involvement weren’t the only example of over-the-top rhetoric by UK officials during the Skripal crisis. UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said on Thursday that Russia “should go away and shut up” when asked about Moscow’s possible response to British sanctions.

In response, Russia’s Defence Ministry said Williamson was an “intellectual impotent” and Lavrov said he probably lacked education. “Well he’s a nice man, I’m told, maybe he wants to claim a place in history by making some bold statements,” Lavrov said. “Theresa May’s main argument about Russia’s guilt is ‘Highly probable’, while for him it’s ‘Russia should go and shut up’. Maybe he lacks education, I don’t know.”

* * *

The diplomatic tension increased further on Friday afternoon when London’s Metropolitan Police said it is treating as murder the death of Nikolai Glushkov, the close associate of Putin opponent Boris Berezovsky – a one-time billionaire who was himself found hanging dead in 2013 in his house outside London, according to Bloomberg.

Glushkov, 68, was found dead at his home in the southwest of the U.K. capital on March 12. An autopsy showed he died from “compression to the neck,” the police said in a statement, adding that there was no evidence he had been poisoned or to link his death to the attack on the Skripals.

“The Met Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, which has led the investigation from the outset, is now treating Mr. Glushkov’s death as murder,” the statement said. “As a precaution, the command is retaining primacy for the investigation because of the associations Mr. Glushkov is believed to have had.”

Meanwhile, the Russian Investigative Committee said it was also opening a criminal case into Glushkov’s death, also describing it as “murder.” In a statement, it also said it would investigate the attack on Yulia Skripal.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Britain of breaching international law in its investigation of the attack on the Skripals in the city of Salisbury. May said the agent used has been identified by British scientists as Novichok, which was developed in the Soviet Union.

Britain says it has invited Russia to cooperate in the investigation and that this invitation hasn’t been taken up.

In a glimmer of hope that there may still be a diplomatic resolution, late on Friday May’s office said the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said it had agreed to travel to Britain to collect a sample of the nerve agent and to support the U.K.’s investigation into the poisoning of the Russian double agent.

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Facebook Forced To Apologize After “Video Of…” Autocomplete Search Result Stuns Users

Facebook has been forced to apologize after it spent hours suggesting bizarre, disturbing, and upsetting searches to users on Thursday night.

Typing “video of” into the Facebook search bar yielded disturbing results…

Multiple users posted examples on Twitter, with the site proposing searches including “video of girl sucking dick under water”, “videos of sexuals” and “video of little girl giving oral”.

Others reported similar results in other languages.

In a statement, Facebook apologized and said it was investigating the issue:

“As soon as we became aware of these offensive predictions we removed them. Facebook search predictions are representative of what people may be searching for on Facebook and are not necessarily reflective of actual content on the platform.

We do not allow sexually explicit imagery, and we are committed to keeping such content off of our site.”

The Guardian reports that search engine autocompletions are a regular source of concern for Silicon Valley. Google has repeatedly faced criticism over the questions it proposes for users, with suggested searches over time including “are jews evil”, “are women evil” and “are muslims bad”.

As a reminder, less than two weeks ago, Facebook was busted asking users if they think it’s alright for adults to solicit “sexual pictures” from minors on its platform.

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