Cypto currencies are killing the world and saving it at the same time
It’s the battle of the cryptos. Bitcoin is set to destroy the global climate due to exponential electricity consumption. Mining for bitcoins consumes the same electricity as 159 countries (probably more now), and by 2020, the world. I suspect we’ll be saved by reality — transactions now take hours and cost $20, $40, $50 (depends on the day) — making bitcoin not useful for buying a beer. But Michael Kile has found a competing cypto which will save the world — bound to relieve climate believers of their normal cash while offering them gold-hopey-hyper-cubits which may evaporate at a moments notice. Don’t mock it, in people with the right brain, these may briefly increase oxytocin and reduce cortisol.
So say hello to the saviour ClimateCoin. It wants to be an “exponential environmental organisation…” (because linear ones are achieving so much, and the square of zero could do so much more right?) They are not even pretending to produce anything real. Their mission is to “create a symbol for the common man to be able to participate in the struggle against climate change…” No uncommon people need apply. No weather need be changed.
This record breaking video below has more hot-net-keywords than you have ever seen in one 6 minute 19 second youtube video since the dawn of civilization.
Buy now, hurry, invest, send them your money. Or not.
There’s another interview here with CryptoCurrently which may win the prize for the longest uninterrupted hype without describing any real object or outcome. Or maybe they did, and I just missed it. You too can “merge blockchain and climate change“, though when I do I get a blockchange, or a chain of climates and I’m not sure what to do with them.
Futures in bitcoins make a short selling crash possible (maybe quite appealling to some)
Ten days ago I asked maths brain (and other half) Dr David Evans what he thought of BitCoin. He said:
A futures exchange in New York will start to trade Bitcoin starting Monday [on Dec 19]. For the first time, people will be able to bet on Bitcoin, both up and down (long and short), using US dollars. That is, you can bet on the price of Bitcoin to go up, or to go down, without ever having to own any.
This is important because the introduction of futures markets has previously coincided with the end of upward movement in several commodities, such as uranium in 2007.
Now suppose you were part of a bunch of profit-seeking money men looking to make a serious killing. Perhaps you are at an influential global player like Goldman-Sachs. Along comes Bitcoin, a few years ago. Would the following scheme appeal?
- Buy bitcoin and plant favorable stories in the media to move the price up.
- As the price moves up, momentum sucks in hordes of investors.
- Open an exchange for futures contracts on Bitcoin.
- Take out a large short position on Bitcoin, by buying short contracts at the futures exchange (the kind that increase in value when the price of Bitcoin goes down). Should be easy to find people to take the other side of the contracts, because nearly all of the public are going long, expecting the price to go up.
- When set, sell all your bitcoins and buy more short contracts aggressively and quickly, in order to smash the price down on the futures exchange. Simultaneously, use your influence with governments around the world to “protect their currencies” by issuing regulations that make it difficult or illegal to use Bitcoin.
- The public, seeing the price of Bitcoin now going down and staying down, urgently want to sell. The price is routed.
- Cash in your futures contacts. The short positions you held will have gone up enormously (a hundred fold? a thousand?) in value as the Bitcoin price collapsed.
- Contemplate how the whole price movement, first up then down, simply transferred cash in government currencies from some people to others, while nothing useful was made or created.
Since he said that the price has gone from up to $19k, down to $15k. Not that that is unusual in cryptoworld. Bitcoin has crashed over 30% in every quarter since it began. So this fall is not out of the ordinary.
Michael Kile wished everyone a Merry Crypto Climatecoin Christmas and warned of crypto-crazy times:
The UK Financial Conduct Authority, incidentally, has warned that an initial coin offering (ICO) is high risk and offers little, if any, investor protection. For details of what can go wrong, visit cryptocurrency.
So, should you be concerned that your funds could be caught in a carbon portal, become bogged in a blockchain, or otherwise impeded or delayed, have a chat with your financial advisor, climate consultant and any person or deity you know who can look into the seeds of time and tell you which cryptocurrency will grow and which will not, including Lord Bull and Bear.