Bitcoin soaring, Fedcoin coming?

Bitcoin

The ‘virtual currency’ known as Bitcoin is still around and has been thriving:

Bitcoin Is Soaring

December 22, 2016

Just yesterday we noted the resurgence in Bitcoin as China turmoil accelerates, but overnight (as Yuan weakened further), demand for the cryptocurrency has soared once again, sending the price (in USD) to $875 – the highest since Dec 2013. Bitcoin is up over 10% this week alone.

Bitcoin is soaring…As a reminder, back in 2013, the government classified bitcoin as a commodity and not currency, placing it outside the purview of the foreign-exchange regulator, the people said. That does not mean, however, that China is powerless at limiting bitcoin’s upside.

Several Chinese government bodies including the People’s Bank of China and the financial regulators said in a joint notice that year that bitcoin functioned like a digital commodity without the legal status of a currency. The central bank said in January it is studying the prospects of issuing its own digital currency and aims to roll out a product as soon as possible. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-22/bitcoin-soaring

Bitcoin, like the US dollar, is basically backed by nothing. At some point in time, both Bitcoin and the dollar of the USA will be worthless.

As far as what Bitcoin is, here are comments from what Bitcoin’s website says about it:

Bitcoin is an innovative payment network and a new kind of money.

Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks; managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is open-source; its design is public, nobody owns or controls Bitcoin and everyone can take part. Through many of its unique properties, Bitcoin allows exciting uses that could not be covered by any previous payment system.

FWIW, I have never had or traded in Bitcoins or other alternatives like that.

There are some who believe that Bitcoin will become fully regulated/taken over to the point that it will be associated with the ‘mark of the beast.’ Here is one such comment:

If I’m allowed to get Biblical…”Rich man or poor man, free or bond, will not be allowed to buy or sell unless he accepts the mark of the beast.”

Bitcoin is a very smooth end run to achieve that objective.

Here is another related item:

MARK OF THE BEAST WATCH! Canada to get world’s first Bitcoin ATM…

The ATMs will use palm scans to identify users and enforce the limit, which is also designed to prevent problems with anti-money-laundering laws. http://ppsimmons.blogspot.com/2013/10/mark-of-beast-watch-canada-to-get.html

The “mark of the beast” scripture is from the Book of Revelation which makes the following statements concerning the financial controls of the coming Beast power:

16 He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, 17 and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

18 Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666. (Revelation 13:16-18)

The Bible is clear that the time is coming when the Beast power will have implemented some type of strong financial control. Thus, it is not likely that the hope of being able to buy and sell privately with something like Bitcoin will last. The Beast power will not allow it, and it is likely that the USA government will take more steps to try to either stop it or at least secretly spy on it. But I do not believe that Bitcoin is the ‘Mark of the Beast.’

Anyway, the article at the beginning of this post says that the Chinese are looking at their own version of Bitcoin.

Well, it has been suggested that so should the USA:

In Fall 2014, J.P. Konig wrote a post called “Fedcoin”where he described how the Federal Reserver could create its own digital currency, one in which each of its banks could be a node in its public ledger and its digital dollars would trade at a one-to-one exchange rate with the physical dollar (meaning that one Fedcoin would always be worth one dollar).

A vice-president at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, David Andolfatto, followed up on Konig’s post on his own blog (which has no relationship to the Federal Reserve). With a federal digital currency, he wrote that businesses and consumers “will have all the benefits of bitcoin—low cost, person-to-person transactions to anyone in the world with the appropriate wallet software and access to the internet.” …

While his posts were not official comments from the Fed, they have drawn great interest in the larger cryptocurrency community. 06/07/16 http://observer.com/2016/06/fedcoin/

Notice also the following I saw this week from Doug Casey:

“Project: FEDcoin”

We entered – compare it to a gigantic financial hurricane and what we experienced in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010… was the early, leading edge of this gigantic financial hurricane. Now, for the last six years, we’ve been in the eye of the storm. I believe at this point we are entering the trailing edge of the hurricane and this is going to be much different, much worse, and much longer lasting than the turbulence we experienced back in ’08 and ’09.

The eye of the storm was caused by governments around the world. Not just the US government, but the Europeans, the Chinese, the Japanese; all of them; and minor governments as well, creating trillions and trillions of currency units that they cast upon this financial hurricane like oil on water.

It made things seem better than they were. It made people feel that they were richer than they were for this last six years in the eye of the storm, but it’s going to be, I think, the biggest upset in economic history. Much bigger and much worse than what we experienced in the last Great Depression from 1929 to 1945…

The dollar has lost about 96-97% of its value since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913.

That trend is not only going to continue, but at this point, it’s going to accelerate rapidly. One of the things that’s helped a lot recently is the fact that it’s the world’s reserve currency.

There are about $10 trillion USD outside of the US. This is a big problem because the major export of the United States for the last 30 years has been dollars. The nice Japanese send us Sonys and Toyotas and the nice Germans send us Mercedes and we basically just print up dollars and send it to them. That’s how $10 trillion got outside the US.

It used to be that – just after World War II, all the skyscrapers in the world, 80% of aircraft production in the world, 80% of the automobile production in the world, 75% of the steel production the world, 75% of the stock market value in the world; it was all in America. America was the end all, the be-all. It was the king of the hill. Now, none of these things are true anymore…

Unfortunately the dollar rests on nothing more than confidence because it’s an “I owe you nothing”; I’m a part of a bankrupt government and the US government, make no mistake, is bankrupt. Its liabilities far, far exceed its assets.

So when the confidence blows away, the first people to dump the dollar are going to be foreigners. https://www.caseyresearch.com/cm/project-fedcoin

Let me state that the Bible tells that at the appointed time of the end (Habakkuk 2:3), foreigner creditors will respond against a highly-indebted nation (Habakkuk 2:6-8).

Here is more from Doug Casey from the Fedcoin article, and even he alludes to something in Revelation 13:16-18:

My thought is this; that understanding that the dollar is unstable as it is, at this point the Fed might try to create an alternative. And an alternative that’s more under their control than the dollar and actually out of the traditional banking system. What would happen if the Federal Reserve created a look-alike dollar? Let’s call it the Fedcoin. Perhaps based on the same technology that Bitcoin is based on. This is the blockchain technology where every transaction can be tracked from the creation of the Bitcoin itself.

I suspect the next stage on the part of the governments since they’ve tried quantitative easing; can’t do that too much more after creating trillions and trillions of these paper dollars which are going to come out of the financial system and into the retail system exploding prices. …

My guess is they’re going to come up with a – with a completely digital currency called the Fedcoin which will actually act as a parallel, alternative to the dollar. It will have a lot of advantages from the government’s point of view and as much of people seem to like Bitcoin, the public may accept it to start with. …Well, this is a conjecture on my part. It’s not going to be physical, to start with. It’s not gonna be paper in any way.

It’s going to be something that you’re going to have on your smartphone, or let’s take this to the next level, as outrageous and scary as it may sound, maybe it’s just gonna be a chip that you put in your hand where your bank account, your medical records, all these things, be very salable. …

But they don’t want people to have cash.

Why? Because they say a cash economy facilitates tax evasion. It facilitates underground transactions. It facilitates drug transactions. It facilitates terrorism where $100 bills are passed around in suitcases and so forth. So they would like to kill all currency.

Now what are you going to do?

You can’t leave money in the bank because you’re getting zero or negative interest rates. The bank itself where you are leaving your money is unstable, illiquid; probably even insolvent. You can’t have cash because the most that they’re going to have in the future are 10s and 20s. So what are you going to do?

I mean, you’re really trapped at this point. …

Well, it’s an extremely bad idea because it discourages people from saving, and saving is what builds capital. So it’s very destructive for the economy, actually for civilization itself over the long run.

But the idea is that they’re trying to encourage people to consume more. It’s actually bizarre… They’re trying to encourage people to save less and consume more, even though the way you become wealthy, whether you’re an individual or company or country, is by producing more and consuming less.

So it’s a – it’s a different – it’s a desperate effort to keep the current order of things from collapsing. But the more of this type of thing they do, the more certain the collapse becomes and the more devastating it’ll be when it does unfold, and I think we’re right on the edge of it now. …

Well, right now those dollars are a liability of the bank… The Fedcoin is different because it’s not a liability of a commercial bank; it’s a direct liability of the Federal Reserve… number one.

Number two; it’s going to use blockchain technology which makes it totally trackable unlike dollars today. So those are two huge differences. It’s going to be sold as a safety thing because blockchain is much harder to hack than conventional digital technology. …

To start with, I suspect it’s going to be a parallel currency. Perhaps usable just within the U.S. which, in effect, would be a form of foreign exchange controls even more effective than the inability of Americans to open up foreign bank and brokerage accounts today. But in the event of a serious problem with the dollar, for a lot of reasons, or the banking system, for a lot of reasons, it provides a parallel currency; an alternative directly dealing with the issuer itself. I think it’s a near certainty that they’re going to do something like this and soon. …

Since it’s already been legitimized, the idea of Bitcoin and blockchain technology, I think the next step is that you’re going to find the Federal Reserve itself offering Fedcoin, which is very convenient for them because with that, they can designate exactly how those Fedcoins can be spent.

They know exactly who gets them, what they’re used for, and so forth. If there is ever a serious problem with the dollar, for instance with the trillions of dollars outside the US flooding back into the US, it can act as an alternative currency which, at least for a while, will have some semblance of confidence. …

They’ve used all the monetary tools that they know exist. This is the only thing that I can think of to further shore things up.

They’ve been talking about it. Nobody’s been listening. It’s an outrageous idea, but it’s going to happen. It gives the government more control and that’s what the government needs and wants and thinks is a good thing quite frankly. …

In Canada, they have something called Project Jasper, which is their own version of this. The Chinese have announced that they’re planning on a blockchain type currency, the same thing… They have said that they wanna see this happen “as soon as possible.” The British have made the announcement along these lines.

This is seen as a worldwide solution; part of the globalist solution to problems.

You don’t see this widely reported in the media, but it’s happening all around us at this point. So it’s gonna happen here. Look, in June 2016, this year, Janet Yellen and dozens of other central bankers met with the top experts in the blockchain area, including the people that are in back of Bitcoin at this point. It’s happening now. https://www.caseyresearch.com/cm/project-fedcoin

While I do not believe that the US dollar is about to collapse now or that most Americans currently want a chip in their hands, the idea that the USA may have ‘Fedcoin’ or some other alternative currency is not out-of-the-question.

The USA will continue to play games with its debt and something like Fedcoin or some other odd ‘solution’ (see, for example, USA to run out of money next month? Platinum coins seriously considered as an option?) that will not work forever may well be tried.

Though not now, the time is coming that the USA dollar will be totally worthless (except perhaps to collectors or as a fuel source). And yes, the Bible tells that for a time gold will be worthless, but that does not happen until years after the demise of the US dollar. But placing too much confidence in gold, currencies, or alternatives like Bitcoin will not truly save anyone (cf. 1 Peter 1:7). Yet, true repentance and turning to the Jesus of the Bible can.

The increased debt of the USA, as well as its increasing financial and other surveillance, seem to be factors in the popularity of alternatives like Bitcoin–but financial privacy is not something that the coming Beast power will support (cf. Revelation 13:16-18).

Although the USA is not likely to repent to prevent this nationally, nor can Bitcoin or ‘Fedcoin’ prevent it, if you are being called, personally you can repent as well as physically take steps before the dollar-based economic systems collapses.

Some items of possibly related interest may include:

Jesus: The Son of God and Saviour Who was Jesus? Why did He come to earth? What message did He bring? Is there evidence outside the Bible that He existed? Here is a YouTube sermon titled Jesus: Son of God and Saviour.
Christian Repentance Do you know what repentance is? Is it really necessary for salvation? A related sermon is also available titled: Real Christian Repentance.
When You Sin: Do You Really Repent? This is an article by Charles F. Hunting. A related sermon is Confess to God and truly repent.
Are You Being Called by God? Norman Shoaf wrote various points to consider.
Is God Calling You? Alfred E Carrozzo wrote this.
What Did Christ Mean – Many Are Called, But Few Are Chosen? This article was by Raymond McNair.
The Mark of Antichrist What is the mark of Antichrist? What have various ones claimed? Here is a link to a related sermon What is the ‘Mark of Antichrist’?
Mark of the Beast What is the mark of the Beast? Who is the Beast? What have various ones claimed the mark is? What is the ‘Mark of the Beast’?
Europa, the Beast, and Revelation Where did Europe get its name? What might Europe have to do with the Book of Revelation? What about “the Beast”? Is an emerging European power “the daughter of Babylon”? What is ahead for Europe? Here is a link to a video titled: Can You Prove that the Beast to Come is European?
There is a Place of Safety for the Philadelphians. Why it May Be Petra This article discusses a biblical ‘place of safety’ and includes quotes from the Bible and Herbert W. Armstrong on this subject–thus, there is a biblically supported alternative to the rapture theory. There is also a video on the subject: Might Petra be the Place of Safety? Here is something related in the Spanish language: Hay un lugar de seguridad para los Filadelfinos. ¿Puede ser Petra?
Twelve ‘grey swan’ events to watch for in 2017? The Japanese financial firm Nomura put out a list of ‘ten grey swans’ events to look out for in 2017. Indirectly based upon ‘black swan’ theory, these are events that Nomura believes could greatly impact financial markets in 2017–some of which are related to the election of Donald Trump. Dr. Thiel expounds on each of these ten and adds two additional ones. What is a ‘grey swan’ and how may events in 2017 impact the future? What were two events in 2016 that look to have significant impact in 2017? Dr. Thiel brings out biblical prophecies that Nomura did not refer to so that you can better understand what will happen, as well as when certain events will not happen. This is a video.
Physical Preparation Scriptures for Christians. We all know the Bible prophecies famines. Should we do something? Here is a version in the Spanish language Escrituras sobre Preparación física para los Cristianos.
The Plain Truth About Gold in Prophecy. How Should a Christian View Gold? What do economists and the Bible teach about gold? Gold and silver may drop in value. Inflation/deflation? What do Christians need to know about gold?
America’s Day of Reckoning 2017 Dollar Collapse? Economist James Dale Davidson says that a financial bloodbath will hit the USA and there is nothing that Washington can do to stop it. He claims that at least 57 nations have gotten together to dethrone the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. He claims this can happen any day or in a few months. He mentions China, Russia, the AIIB, and gold. He claims his track record in predicting massive shifts in the past should assure people that he is right about this. He claims that there will be massive unemployment, near elimination of social security benefits, and more. Is James Dale Davidson possibly right on any of this? Dr. Thiel goes over many of his claims and explains what the Bible shows related to the coming collapse of the US dollar. This is a video.
Collapse of the Euro and Dollar? War in 2020? Larry Edelson of Money and Markets described aspects of current economic difficulties and explained why he felt matters would get a lot worse. He said war, like World War III, could break out as early as 2020. What did he call the ‘granddaddy of all cycles”? Will matters go as he said? What does the Bible teach? Dr. Thiel provides biblical insights that secular sources often miss. This is a video.
When Will the Great Tribulation Begin? 2017, 2018, or 2019? Can the Great Tribulation begin today? What happens before the Great Tribulation in the “beginning of sorrows”? What happens in the Great Tribulation and the Day of the Lord? Is this the time of the Gentiles? When is the earliest that the Great Tribulation can begin? What is the Day of the Lord? Who are the 144,000? Here is a version of the article in the Spanish language: ¿Puede comenzar la Gran Tribulación en 2016 o 2017? ¿Es el Tiempo de los Gentiles? You can also see the English language sermon videos: The Great Tribulation from the Mount of Olives and Can the Great Tribulation begin before 2020? A shorter video is: Will the Great Tribulation Start in 2017?