The Truth about Bitcoin and the old Cypherpunk movement on peer-to-peer digital currency..

The Cypherpunk movement does not have an exact date of birth. Its origins can be traced back to the mid-1970s with the US government’s publication of the Data Encryption Standard (DES) and Martin Hellman and Whitfield Diffie's pioneering study on public-key encryption.

Before this, cryptography as a technological field was extremely niche. It was only used by the military and intelligence agencies, and a huge amount of work in the field was classified.

In 1992, three friends Eric Hughes, Timothy May, and John Gilmore, convened for a meeting that would eventually give rise to the cypherpunk movement. The idea would be to try and create a digital version of cash, which like email, can be sent and received between people worldwide, without the need of any intermediaries.

I have been in cypherpunk movement for a while. Many Cypherpunks as we know, have evolved over time, some stuck to mathematical principles (e.g. key cryptographers like Hal Finney, John McAfee, and others like, Roger Ver) whereas, other well respected OGs were driven by human psychology (Max Keiser, etc.).

I want to, for the first time help viewers understand the true Cypherpunk movement and the human psychology at play, with Cryptocurrencies. I will let the data speak for itself, and you could be the judge. Nothing is made up and I will only give a projection of where we are heading, into the future.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin was presented to the world by Satoshi Nakamoto in the year 2009. It was initially only (gaming like) token. Its real-world value ($0.008) was only derived on exchanges in early 2010. Until the year 2012, it remained a true cypher-punk movement, where it was a peer-to-peer electronic cash, 0 fees, and people used it in droves. People were excited to see a new digital era emerging, it was gifted around for people to use, many were involved in Bitcoin mining, minting tokens, and it was the true belief that it was border less, censorship resistant cash, and it can never be traced. People knew this was the solution to the tyrannical government and financial breakdown of 2008. It was a true digital cash, no doubt - it was.

2009 - 2011

It was designed with the following goals in mind (in Cyperpunk movement):

• Peer-to-peer "currency" with "quick confirmations"
• Zero fees ($0.001)
• Uncensorable, borderless
• It was never Gold v.2.0 (it was cash for the people)
• Primary currency in dark web (for buying drugs, meds, guns, you name it). It was bad boys cash and for common man's good use). Bad guys trusting it, means it is good cash, really fcking good! because they will use what is uncensorable, with lowest risk and it was Bitcoin.
• People who used it, were against government control, tyrannical control. This was the main driver. Period.
• Fungible means, My Bitcoin = Your Bitcoin (no one questioned it, back then, until..)

2011-2014

By the year 2014, Bitcoin had already seen a run-up of 1,000x gains (graph shows this later), and a lot events happened between 2012 - 2014. Silk Road was busted, Mt. Gox got hacked, Blockchain analytics firms started showing up. The Bitcoin dominance was at 100%, while other altcoins (such as Ripple & Litecoin) existed.

2014-2022

As the scarcity of bitcoin kept dropping with 4-year-halvenings, the numbers kept going up, bitcoin became more mainstream, the theme around it started getting changed to HODL HODL, instead of being promoted as a peer-to-peer digital cash. The fees started going up (from $0.001 once to $150 per transaction, a few years later) as more people started using it. Soon after, we would end up with Block size debate, intending to help accommodate more user transactions. But, once that proposal was rejected the new "Bitcoin Cash" chain was born. BlockSteam, a profit driven company (wanting to drive adoption of Bitcoin's Layer 2 (a layer on top of main bitcoin blockchain - today's lightning network), was being born.

So, we understand - P2P Digital Cash (2011) -> HODL (2022)

Nothing wrong with HODLing, it is after all human psychology, and most of us HODL. After all, we never know how something as new as a digital currency will play out in future, right? But something went wrong with the "Core principles on which bitcoin was built". A currency needs to adapt with growing technology or it risks to perish over time. Today, there are 10,000+ currencies, with Bitcoin dropping its market dominance to 38%.

Today's version of it is very different:

• Store of Value, with 10- 60 minutes "slow confirmations"
• Fees > $3- $25 per transaction
• Lightening network Layer 2 is great (0 fees, but has its own drawbacks of merchant adoption & privacy concerns)
• Gold v.2.0
• Institutions & governments are adopting it. Common man, looks for alt-coins.
• non-Fungible means, My Bitcoin != Your Bitcoin (blockchain analytics firms & exchanges, track you)
• Less and less used as digital cash.
• Dark web adoption of Bitcoin between 2011 - 2022 has dropped from 98% to < 10% today. What does this mean? They don't trust Bitcoin anymore, because they fear getting caught (whether they use it for legitimate or illegitimate purposes, is not the question). Common man can get their exchanges frozen, if it ever came from dark web (yes, even when you are not involved).
• "Clean" bitcoin (directly mined) have a 10-15% premium over any other Bitcoins (called, "Dirty")

Critical Analysis

If you have followed me word to word, thus far. Then, I have some data to present. I had recently downloaded the blockchain data from Bitcoin, Ethereum (not interesting enough) and Monero, to understand the Cypherpunk movement and human psychology at play. Without further ado, feel free to analyze the data yourself, I will leave the reference (BTC, XMR data).

​

Year-on-Year (YoY) Bitcoin Vs. Monero transactions (Red - marks reasonable projections based on averaged out past trends, with accuracy)

As we see below, there was a drive of Bitcoin being used as Digital peer-to-peer cash between 2009 - 2011, after which it started slowly but surely, go towards the HODL transformation.

Bitcoin transactions over time

Monero

Monero was born in the year 2014, with a coded-from-scratch ideology, that adopted CryptoNote protocol. Just like Satoshi Nakamoto, nothing is known about the original author of CryptoNote, "Nicolas van Saberhagen.". Some speculators say, it was Satoshi himself in disguise, as Satoshi himself envisaged in 2010, the concepts Monero is built on.

CryptoNote is an application layer protocol designed for use with cryptocurrencies that aims to solve specific challenges identified in Bitcoin, mainly:

• Traceability of transactions
• The proof of-work (PoW) algorithm
• Irregular emission

​

Monero transactions over time

Monero, was a movement born out of advanced Cypherpunk, true peer-to-peer digital cash that is:

• True Swiss bank account in your wallet (Privacy built-in, by default)
• Uncensorable (just like Bitcoin in 2011), but really uncensorable
• Untraceable - 3rd party cannot trace it (cannot trace sender, receiver, and amount sent/received)
• Adopted by majority (90%) of dark web & to replace Bitcoin completely within a couple of years.
• Already addresses by design, what happens when all coins are mined (Look up - Tail Emission)
• 4th most active Github development team (after Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana), mostly anonymous.
• Driven by hard-core principled privacy advocates. "My business is none of Your business."
• Introduced (peer-to-peer) Atomic Swaps in 2021, CakeWallet, localMonero and decentralized exchanges like Haveno have been introduced.

​

Monero, has seen a tripling in transactions, in any consecutive 2-year period, horizon. As its development fast pace in 2022, its transaction count and trust only seem to trend upwards. This is in spite of the fact, that Monero as a currency, has been forbidden to be purchased directly from fiat (only a matter of time, this is lifted) as Atomic Swaps have swung into existence.

Summary

No one will debate that Bitcoin is now a real store-of-value, and cannot easily go back to peer-to-peer cash (in spite of introduction of Lightneing network). It is now adopted by institutions,soon the governments and censorship is coming to us, people. If it can be intercepted then it cannot be transacted with.

Monero, on the other hand will increase its use-case as peer-to-peer cash whether we like it or not. Irrespective of it being a store-of-value or not, in future. It addresses in its code-base, true advanced Cryptography (literally, way more advanced than that of Bitcoin). If you want to make some money, you can break apart Monero and earn $625,000 bounty from the IRS.

This is just to show everyone the mirror, on what the next few years will bring.

Bitcoin - Store of value

Monero - Peer-to-peer digital cash

Fundamentals of the Blockchain #2 [Article Series]

Article 2: Decentralization

If you missed it, the first article looked at the history of blockchain technology, the double-spend issue, computational backing and the lead up to the creation of Bitcoin.

Today we're going to discuss decentralization and, briefly, public-key cryptography. Public-key cryptography is a system that uses pairs of keys, with a pair consisting of a public key (which may be known to others) and a private key (which may not be known by anyone except the owner). The generation of such key pairs depends on cryptographic algorithms which are based on mathematical problems termed one-way functions. Effective security requires keeping the private key private; the public key can be openly distributed without compromising security.

Why Decentralization Is Important:

So, imagine a coin that allowed us to use public-key cryptography but the blockchain was validated by a centralized validator, to overcome the double-spend issue. Here we have a very basic, but functioning, cryptocurrency. One of the issues in this scenario is that we have a weak point. Specifically, the centralized validator. In this situation, let’s say our centralized validator generates all the coins. They could punish users by not adding transactions to the blockchain, or they could hold the entire system ransom by refusing to update it. Even if they weren’t malicious, they are still a central point of failure. What if they just forgot to publish one day, or what if they decided that it was time to retire? This leaves us with one centralized place where the system could fail. The question is, could we take the strength of our coin (the ability to avoid double-spend attacks) but without bringing in a centralized party? The answer, of course, is yes. It shouldn't be too much of a surprise if you know that Bitcoin and related blockchain technology is decentralized.

What trade-offs are made to achieve decentralization?

There's never a free lunch. By trying to decentralize, we're actually going to bring in some additional problems. Just quickly, let's think about why we want things to be decentralized versus centralized… In any system, there's always going to be a tension between centralization and decentralization, because there are benefits and weaknesses to either direction that you go. This isn't just in cryptocurrency though, or even just technology. In general, we see this in a lot of different locations. For example, the Apple ecosystem is very centralized, but it means that their new (or perhaps controversial) software can be sold in their ‘walled garden’. The Android ecosystem is much more decentralized and many more different possible projects can go on it, but this also means that the quality may not be quite as high. Everything in software is a trade-off and most systems are a hybrid.

Even in blockchain, what we're going to see is that the system isn't as decentralized or distributed as it could be. There are some trade-offs to having some level of centralization in most blocked blockchains, but Bitcoin was designed to be as decentralized as possible while still providing a cryptocurrency that worked and protected against things such as double-spend attacks. If we look back to the original Bitcoin white paper, we see that it was designed to be a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash, without going through a financial institution. In fact, Satoshi Nakamoto noted that our original solutions, digital signatures, provide part of the solution, but the benefits of a cryptocurrency are lost if we are still required to trust a third party. So, Satoshi thought about what we need to do in order to decentralize.

This creates a number of questions…If we don't have a single person or entity in charge of the ledger, who maintains the ledger? Who has the authority to say whether or not a transaction is valid? Where do new Bitcoins come from? Who determines how the rules of the system change? And how do we determine what the value of a particular Bitcoin is?

So as I mentioned, Bitcoin is meant to be decentralized, but there are different levels of centralization. The network itself is very decentralized - if you would like to spin up your own fully validating node, it is relatively simple - anybody can do it and join the network. Mining, it turns out, is actually somewhat centralized. We'll discuss more about what miners are doing in a later article, but they're the ones who generate new blocks in the Bitcoin network. It's open to anyone, you can even use your computer to start mining, but it is extremely difficult to do profitably and there are extremely large economies of scale. What we see is that there are only a few very large miners in the world, that provide a majority of what's called the ‘hash power’, or attempts to generate a new block in Bitcoin. Updating the protocol or writing new software is generally pretty centralized in practice. The vast majority of nodes use a particular implementation of Bitcoin known as Bitcoin Core. Anyone can write their own node software and there are some alternatives, for example, Bitcoin J which is written in Java. The vast majority though, by which I mean probably over 98 or 99 per cent, use Bitcoin Core.

So, we have a very decentralized number of nodes. How can this anonymous group of nodes come to a consensus? We need what's called a distributed consensus protocol. We have n nodes, where n can be any number and actually, this number can fluctuate as some nodes go offline or some people decide they don't want to run a node. Some of these nodes may be faulty, they may be providing invalid data, or spamming the network. Some may even be malicious, that is, they're intentionally trying to harm the Bitcoin network. So a distributed consensus protocol, that would allow us to come to a consensus between all of these honest nodes, has to have a few different properties. It must end with all the honest nodes in agreement about what is the particular ledger that we agree upon. So here is how Bitcoin gets around that - where a Bitcoin network is a peer-to-peer system, think of it as a mesh of nodes in a network.

What we want to do is determine which transactions we are going to put into the blockchain. Since there's going to be different nodes that are going to have different ideas of what transactions are out there, we're going to need to come up with some consensus mechanism to determine which transaction should be put in the blockchain. In a simplified example, it might be every 10 minutes we're going to use some voting mechanism to determine which transactions are put in the blockchain. Every node is going to vote on which one is valid and which one is not. But, there's a problem with this simplified example of just voting on if more than 50 of our nodes have a transaction and consider it valid. First, there's no real notion of universal time. Who decides when it's been 10 minutes? Different computers may be slightly off in terms of time and so there's no way to have a universal network-wide decision on what exact time it is.

Also, the specific consensus mechanism we use to vote on this is imperfect. You may have a fault in the network, or you may have a system that's not responding. You may not know exactly how many nodes exist at a given time, so we could keep track of that, but that just brings us back to having some sort of centralized entity in charge of all of that. Malicious users could spam the network, i.e. they could send invalid transactions simply to chew up CPU. There are a lot of problems with our simplified consensus protocol of just voting to see which transactions go into the blockchain. It turns out that this issue of having to have a large number of nodes that have a limited amount of ways to communicate, some of which may be faulty, or even malicious, is a problem that the computer science world has referred to as the Byzantine Generals Problem. This goes back to the canonical explanation of the problem, which is that you have a variety of generals who wish to attack a city and those generals must all decide what time to attack. But, when they're sending their messages, other generals who may be traitors could modify the messages. So, how can we come to a conclusion of when we should attack the city, if some percentage of our generals may be traitors? Similarly, coming to a consensus in Bitcoin, or any other decentralized ledger technology, we need to have a way to determine what is the consensus amongst all the honest validators. The problem with doing this is what's called Segal's law.

A man with a watch knows what time it is, but a man with two watches is never sure.

What we mean by the above is that all of these different nodes are going to have to come up with conclusions on their own. There's no centralized mechanism of time control, there's no way to say that x event happened before y event, and once you've removed that ability to have ‘do x and then y’ it turns out that a lot of algorithms used for determining the correctness of an event are not really feasible.

One of the particular ways that our consensus can fail is through something called a Sybil attack. Remember we thought about having votes: our nodes would vote on which transactions to include. Say we have 16 nodes in our example. If nine nodes say that a transaction is valid we would add it to the ledger, but what if somebody creates 25 malicious nodes and adds them to the network. They are pretending to be multiple entities (that's why it's called a Sybil attack - it's based on an old book and movie about a woman who had multiple personalities, one of whom was named Sybil). In this Sybil attack, that malicious individual creates more nodes than there are honest nodes in the network, so they can always vote against adding any particular transaction, or adding a particular transaction as valid because they have more nodes. If we just vote based on the number of nodes, and nodes are relatively easy to set up, we are at risk of this Sybil attack.

So let's come up then with a simplified version of what Bitcoin uses as its consensus algorithm. Let’s say our new transaction is broadcast to all nodes. Each node is going to collect new transactions into a block and, in each round, some random node gets to broadcast its block. So, of the n nodes, a random node is going to broadcast its block so we are assuming here that we can avoid these Sybil attacks, but even if Sybil does have a large number, if the malicious individual has a large number of these nodes, the worst that can happen is that they would just generate a transaction that's invalid, or that doesn't contain any transactions. Everyone else would know about these transactions and as soon as a valid node is selected at random to be the next block producer, then they can do that and include any transactions that Sybil missed. The other nodes will accept the block if and only if all the transactions in it are valid. Remember, Sybil cannot generate new transactions. You would need to know the secret key of the owner of the coins to send a transaction.

Nodes will express their acceptance of this block by including its hash in the next block. So basically, generating a hash pointer from their newly generated block to the previous block that was generated by the previously selected node. As a side note, one of the other problems with a decentralized technology is that every node is going to need a copy of the blockchain, which can be tens or hundreds of gigabytes. You can imagine that it's going to use up a lot more storage than if something were centralized, even if you included a few backups.

The Bitcoin full blockchain, for instance, is stored on at least 10,000 actively running nodes. If a node was picked at random, from all the known nodes that are out there, it packages all valid transactions into a block and adds it to the blockchain. It then broadcasts the new block, thus the new blockchain and other nodes add this new block. We can see that this is going to cause a few different problems. One issue is that the individual node that was selected now has a lot of power. For instance, imagine a node was selected but doesn't like a certain transaction, for one reason or another. So it packages all the valid transactions into a block, adds the valid block to the blockchain, which does not have this transaction, and broadcasts the new block. In this case, the new blockchain goes out to other nodes which will add it and now that transaction is not going to be confirmed. Perhaps some other nodes have a copy of the transaction, but if enough different nodes are trying to blacklist it then it may be a while before the transaction actually goes through. This also allows for double spends.

Let's say Alice purchases software from Bob for one Bitcoin. She generates a transaction to send to Bob and an honest node includes that block in the blockchain. Bob sees this block has been confirmed and Alice downloads the software, so now Alice has gotten something for her Bitcoin. Then Alice's node is randomly selected as the producer for the next block, so instead of building on block n, the one in which she sent this Bitcoin to Bob, she instead builds on block n minus one. She ignores the previous block and makes her own block where the Bitcoin goes to some other address that she controls. Alice basically sends it to herself. The original transaction to Bob is now useless because the Bitcoin in that block cannot be used by him in later blocks.

Protecting Against Double-Spend Attacks

We can protect against double-spend by waiting for a number of blocks to be produced. If we're only waiting for one confirmation, that is one particular node that may or may not be honest, then the possibility of one randomly selected node being dishonest is relatively high. But, if we wait for a number of blocks then we would need to be more sure that not all of those blocks are dishonest. The general rule in Bitcoin is to wait for six blocks and blocks are generated on average in Bitcoin about once every 10 minutes and, as we'll see, generating a block in Bitcoin is extremely difficult. The more blocks they could put on top of that the more work and the more difficult it's going to be to do one of these double-spend attacks.

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Bitcoin is great for what it is; A store of value. Other cryptos are better at what Bitcoin inspired; Blockchain technology solving real-world problems.

Bitcoin is great for what it is; A store of value.

Other cryptos are better at what Bitcoin inspired; Blockchain technology solving real-world problems. In the NFT community, you see the best, growing projects forming partnerships with each other. On the crypto side, though, you see more lines drawn that lead to toxic battles about who's the best.

​

I can't imagine being a Maxi for anything. Sure, Bitcoin is like the steak of the crypto world. I love steak, but I also love pasta( #ETH and #BNB ). Do you know what I love just as much of any of them? Dessert(NFTs).

​

It's cool to love your favorite project, but one project being awesome doesn't make another less awesome. If they both serve a need, they can both grow. Very likely together. A rising tide raises all ships. We see it exponentially in the blockchain world.

​

Bitcoin was created to be a decentralized peer to peer cash transfer system. Since it was the first in the space, it evolved into digital gold. It's the best store of value in the #Metaverse. However Bitcoin was the first blockchain, so it's primitive compared to current tech.

​

Bitcoin is clunky, slow, and pricey to move. It's similar to taking a gold bar to buy a u/Subway sandwich. Sure you could make a fair exchange of value, but cash serves that purpose more effectively. It's easier to measure and transport.

​

Coins like Ethereum, BNB, ALGO, SOLANA, and AVAX took this blockchain technology and adds a layer called smart contracts. Basically, coding that says "if event A happens, then event B must happen."

These coins all allow developers to use those smart contracts that solve real-world needs. or sometimes meme coins... ok, usually meme coins, but there are some major projects making waves.

​

We are seeing everything from air quality checks in #Miama being operting on the Algorand chain. I'm sure Mayor Francis Suarez has played a big part in that. We are also seeing people in underveloped countries making good lvings using NFTs in Play to earn games. P2E is huge right now on BNB and SOL.

​

One day major corporations will use the blockchains/smart contracts they operate on as advertisements. There will be ads that say "Your mortgage loan powered by Ethereum." or "Earn a living with us playing on Solana" maybe even "Our school lets you track you kids from home to school to home using AVAX".

​

Bitcoin will still have it's place though. We will see a time where countries have a monetary system backed by the Bitcoin standard. Countries like u/el Salvador are already leading the way to this with the help of Nayib Bukele.

​

Mass adoption makes this all possible. Each successful project is another stroke on the canvas to paint the picture of why blockchain integration with our lives makes sense. Let's all support every solid project. One project becoming successful only helps the other good projects

If you are looking for a rising project with some great partnerships, check out:

MagicEden.io/marketplace/SoLads

Bitcoin is great for what it is; A store of value. Other cryptos are better at what Bitcoin inspired; Blockchain technology solving real-world problems.

Bitcoin is great for what it is; A store of value.

Other cryptos are better at what Bitcoin inspired; Blockchain technology solving real-world problems. In the NFT community, you see the best, growing projects forming partnerships with each other. On the crypto side, though, you see more lines drawn that lead to toxic battles about who's the best.

​

I can't imagine being a Maxi for anything. Sure, Bitcoin is like the steak of the crypto world. I love steak, but I also love pasta( #ETH and #BNB ). Do you know what I love just as much of any of them? Dessert(NFTs).

​

It's cool to love your favorite project, but one project being awesome doesn't make another less awesome. If they both serve a need, they can both grow. Very likely together. A rising tide raises all ships. We see it exponentially in the blockchain world.

​

Bitcoin was created to be a decentralized peer to peer cash transfer system. Since it was the first in the space, it evolved into digital gold. It's the best store of value in the #Metaverse. However Bitcoin was the first blockchain, so it's primitive compared to current tech.

​

Bitcoin is clunky, slow, and pricey to move. It's similar to taking a gold bar to buy a u/Subway sandwich. Sure you could make a fair exchange of value, but cash serves that purpose more effectively. It's easier to measure and transport.

​

Coins like Ethereum, BNB, ALGO, SOLANA, and AVAX took this blockchain technology and adds a layer called smart contracts. Basically, coding that says "if event A happens, then event B must happen."

These coins all allow developers to use those smart contracts that solve real-world needs. or sometimes meme coins... ok, usually meme coins, but there are some major projects making waves.

​

We are seeing everything from air quality checks in #Miama being operting on the Algorand chain. I'm sure Mayor Francis Suarez has played a big part in that. We are also seeing people in underveloped countries making good lvings using NFTs in Play to earn games. P2E is huge right now on BNB and SOL.

​

One day major corporations will use the blockchains/smart contracts they operate on as advertisements. There will be ads that say "Your mortgage loan powered by Ethereum." or "Earn a living with us playing on Solana" maybe even "Our school lets you track you kids from home to school to home using AVAX".

​

Bitcoin will still have it's place though. We will see a time where countries have a monetary system backed by the Bitcoin standard. Countries like u/el Salvador are already leading the way to this with the help of Nayib Bukele.

​

Mass adoption makes this all possible. Each successful project is another stroke on the canvas to paint the picture of why blockchain integration with our lives makes sense. Let's all support every solid project. One project becoming successful only helps the other good projects

If you are looking for a rising project with some great partnerships, check out:

MagicEden.io/marketplace/SoLads

Last Week in Collapse: January 1-7, 2022

Happy New Year. You survived to the end of another grim week.

This is Last Week in Collapse, a long post I’m trying to make at the end of every week, summarizing some of the most interesting, tragic, resonant, surprising, ironic, or otherwise notable events in collapse. It’s like a curated weekly doomscroll.

Last week’s entry here went completely under the radar here because the mods didn’t approve it for the first 48 hours or so. Please check it out. December 25-31, 2021. Anyway, moving on:

You will never escape COVID-19. That’s the message that society seems to be saying these days. Omicron is setting records, day after day when it comes to new cases. On January 3rd, 2022 alone, more than 1,000,000 new positives were recorded in the USA! Until two weeks ago, we had never before reached ⅓ of that in a single day. The head of the CDC in the U.S. announced that we are not yet at the peak.

But we can only judge the situation based on the data we have; I read that the Covid death toll in India could be 6,000,000+ people. India’s “official” number is currently 483,000 deaths. So gaslit. Well, at least the WHO admitted Omicron isn’t “mild” this week. I think the damage has already been done. Australia’s health system, like so many other countries, is at the edge of collapse. And in Africa, where supposedly fewer than 10% of people have the vaccine, the Africa CDC said lockdowns don’t work anymore.

Most of the new deaths in the West are unvaccinated, and deaths are down from their all-time high. Yet COVID-19 is raging across America’s dysfunctional schools, and Chicago teachers are refusing to teach in-person because of pandemic safety concerns. Countries that had their worst Covid case totals on record for this week include France, the United States, Australia, Iceland, Canada, the United Kingdom, Vietnam, Italy, Cyprus, Ethiopia, and the Netherlands, among others. China locked down another city this week too.

Even in Antarctica, people test positive for Covid. Maybe Covid will join all those other ancient diseases, frozen in the ice somewhere. Probably not, since it’s all melting.

I spent my January 6th following a different country’s political violence: Kazakhstan, known only to people as that country from Borat, is erupting in general anti-corruption protests. Their President said, “whoever does not surrender will be destroyed. I have given the order to law enforcement agencies and the army to shoot to kill, without warning,” and compliance seems to have been re-established by force. But I don’t know what to believe. This is a good case study for how a government might react to anyone who threatens the system.

Speaking of political violence, on Tuesday, Haiti’s PM survived an assassination attempt . This comes about 6 months after their President was assassinated by insurgent gangs in the collapsing country.

Let the greenwashing begin! The European Commission — that’s the executive arm of the EU — announced plans to label natural gas and nuclear power as “green.” What’s next, calling schnitzel vegan? At least Germany is cutting its nuclear power down and shutting some old plants.

Our ocean continues to die in the background. Nobody is doing anything about it. Chinese fishing fleets ravage the shrinking world fish stock. They are basically doing this to the ocean floor. Beware: that video, and its comments, are hella depressing.

You might’ve had your worst year in 2021, but Coal had its best year ever. Coal production and prices went to all-time highs in 2021 and are expected to break more records in 2022. Tell me again how committed we are to a zero-carbon future?

In Turkey, inflation is destroying the Turkish lira. “The lira shed 44% of its value against the dollar last year,” according to the article. The Lebanese Pound lost 90% of its value over the last 2 years; will the Turkish lira be joining it later this year? And what will happen when several nearby nations all experience currency collapse at the same time?

In Ethiopia, foreign observers fear the warring landlocked country may set its sights on Somaliland in an attempt to acquire a path to the sea, even as the Tigray conflict unravels regional stability further. Climate change aggravates famine, which builds economic tension, which provokes political unrest, which drives war, which drives disease, and the doom spiral becomes inevitable.

On January 1st, according to the BBC, Kim Jong-un has said the faltering economy will be the national priority this year as the country faces a "great life-and-death struggle". Interesting how the article phrases the economy as the top issue in North Korea, since nobody in the hermit kingdom has much of anything and its economy was always quite poor. Compared to the raging coronavirus pandemic or the growing famine, the economy ought to rank rather low. But I digress.

India’s unemployment rate is higher than ever in the last 30 years. American job reports claim that only 199k jobs were added in December. Meanwhile 207k new jobless claims were filed last week in the U.S. Pretty consistently, the number of jobs we gain in a month is about the same as the number of jobs we lose in a week. And yet the unemployment rate is still artificially set at only 3.9% which is code for full employment. I myself have been at my new job for about 2 agonizing months, and I desperately want to quit. I am burnt out, like this columnist.

If you need a small dose of hopium to sweeten the week, Greenland is banning oil, gas, and uranium exploration. And if you want a good laugh, try this article about an Indian fella who got the vaccine at least 8 times—he claims 11. If it’s any consolation, the Nasdaq had its worst week in 11 months. Bitcoin is down about 10% this week, too.

Selected comments/posts from the subreddit this week suggest:

-A mystery illness is afflicting people in Canada. Some suggest a prion disease. I’m not a doctor. I wonder how many more new illnesses we’ll discover/create in our lifetimes, with microplastics, cognitive warfare, pollution, radioactivity, engineered illnesses, new pandemics, etc. Some of us may even one day succumb to one of these future diseases.

-More people were killed in the Kazakhstan protests than officially reported now; people make great comments on this r/collapse video from Kazakhstan. It’s gonna be hard to put that brief revolt behind them as a country.

-The 1% are going to leave you behind and glide away on their super yachts. This post takes aim at the ostentatious billionaires (and the growing business that supports them) and their yachting hobbies. Has anyone here ever worked on a super yacht?

-Political violence is also [rising in France](​​https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/ruz68t/weekly_observations_what_signs_of_collapse_do_you/hrh7vhb/) in opposition to vaccine restrictions, according to this insightful comment. I don’t know why but I find France to be a very interesting place to observe.

-People on r/nursing sound the alarm on the healthcare system collapsing and collapseniks weigh in. Another subreddit with a front row seat to collapse has been r/teachers, which has become so doomy that I’m starting to think foreign agents are trying to co-opt the messaging there for a massive long-term demoralization campaign.

Did you appreciate this Collapse Report? Do you have any feedback, questions, comments, hate mail, recipes, etc.? I want to do these kinds of summary posts once a week. What did I miss this week?

Previous Week: December 25-31, 2021.

Logo Design World Weekly Challenge

Welcome to the Logo Design World Weekend Challenge!

This challenge is devoted to the new weekly logo, icon contest known as the “Weekend Challenge”.

There are two main goals for these contests: Fun and Glory.

Fun: You get only 4 days to create a cool logo or icon based on the theme for the week.

Glory: After 2 days of voting, a winner is declared. The winner picks the theme for next week and gets to wear the “Winner” flair for that week. And his work will be shared under the Weekly Winner Special on our Facebook page.

Challenge Rules

Challenges can only be created by the mod(s).

There are two posts created each week: one announcing the start of the entries and one for voting.

The entry announcing post starts each Thursday at 2300 GMT, with an announcement of the new theme, and any other relevant information. All the entries (described in detail below) are to be posted, until 2300 GMT on Moday.

The voting post starts each Monday at 2300 GMT, with a list of all entries and a poll to decide the winner. Voting closes at 2300 GMT on Wednesday, with the winner announced shortly thereafter.

Comments are welcome in both posts.

Submissions

An entry image with the description explaining how the entry relates to the theme is posted before closing time.

Winning

Each week, a voting poll is created. In it will be a list of all entries posted before the entry closing time. A poll will be attached, listing all of the elligible entries. Voting is open to our community members.

At the end of two days of voting, the entry with the highest number of votes wins. the event of a tie between entries, the earliest submitted entry will win - the submission time is taken as the last edited time of the submission message, or the message creation time if it hasn’t been edited.

Once a winner has been decided, a congratulatory message will be posted in the voting thread. They will be contacted via private message, with a request for the theme for the next week’s contest. If the winner doesn’t supply a theme before Thursday at 2230 GMT, the organiser will select the theme. Having selected the theme, the winner will not be elligible to enter that week. They may however still submit an image, but it won’t be included in voting.

Our first theme options are; Metaverse, Bitcoin, Soccer. Please Choose 1 from these options or present your idea for voting.

VR EDUCATIVE AIRDROPS

Hello. We are launching a new Airdrop event on Twitter.

100,000 VEDUs will be given to users who perform the following tasks and use the $VEDU #VEDU hashtags the most between 08.01.2022 - 14.01.2022.
Vr Educative Airdrop participation conditions;
1. Follow Vr Educative's Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/vreducative
2. Follow Vr Educative's Official Telegram account: https://t.me/vreducative

1. Follow Vr Educative's Official Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vreducative/

2. Like and retweet the pinned Vr Educative Airdrop Tweet on Twitter: Tag at least 3 friends while using the hashtags $VEDU #VEDU

3. Under the Vr Educative Airdrop Tweet pinned on Twitter, write your BSC wallet addresses for your Metamask and Trushwallet wallets.

#vedu $vedu #airdrop #airdrops #binance #bitcoin #bsc #metaverse #web3