Money & Markets Report: May 19, 2022

130 Comments

  1. Catherine,

    I just want to say that as a technologist who has spent nearly 2 decades inside the field, you are absolutely correct to completely mistrust digital systems. These systems are almost completely compromised, and in ways that would baffle the mind. I could probably spend hours unpacking the various vulnerabilities and attack vectors. Any technologist who says “you just don’t know how it works” is just revealing that they themselves “don’t know how it works.” The simple fact is that when it comes to cybersecurity, “when there is a will, there is a way.” It’s not dissimilar from having a lock on your door. A lock on your door only serves to keep an honest man honest, it is not a real barrier to a hardened criminal.

    1. I recall hearing RSA sold keys to Gov before the Snowden revaluation. Most of those stores are no longer available or harder to find. pcmag.com/news/report-nsa-paid-rsa-10m-to-create-back-door-in-encryption-software. In former life I was once hired to demonstrate MITM attack on secure private hardened systems for demonstration purposes only. As it turns out it was much easer than I thought.

    2. Indeed. Cybersecurity is as good (if ever) as who has the KEY (or code). I have worked on technologies all my life, in R&D for exploration. Taking a class now “for fun” at Berkely University in Future Technologies. Impressive with the force of professors discussions. Yes, the system is extremely complex! We need a team of experts to navigate it.

    3. Not a bad idea to make an outline of your unpacking. I would love to do Solari Report series that does this. Needs lots of help

      1. Digital security is rooted in physical security, which is slow to improve:
        2021 Utah talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH0GXWQDk0Q
        videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/lockpickinglawyer/playlists
        product intelligence: https://keypicking.com

        2015 German conference talk on “trustworthy” systems, still relevant:
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcwngbUrZNg

        2020 online talk on supply chain risks, their device shipped in 2022:
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrKBKZ0RJAo
        https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor
        Focus on subset: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4RHeGUDThM

      2. Yes. You need a series to talk about the details of the technology. I am compiling a lot of information from several classes that I have strategically take and others. It is best to know the enemy well and to understand how they think.

  3. I’ve been involved with crypto since 2011. The Mr. Global takedown of Luna & the hit the markets took would make George Soros’ panties wet. Someone or some group profited with at least $1B from the attack. This is not to say that Luna was a solid project. It was like a financial perpetual motion machine that never should have even approached the top coin tier. Go to these links if you want to drill down into the details:
    https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wagmi/id1350247761
    https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-token-metrics-podcast/id1200261154

    1. I know someone close to the matter, and its more like +$4bn. They pumped it and the same time shorted it AND shorted bitcoin. The moves were planned well in advance, made with clock-like precision, and timed to happen just (days?) before the equity markets started their tumble. I thin3-letter agency in bed with hedge fund fingerprints all over it.

      But the takedown of crypto seemed hasty to me–very hasty if the goal was to transition people to a CBDC.

      I expected them to continue to pump and give people the illusion that crypto was the relative “safe haven”, get them to sell their tanking stock portfolios and put it into crypto. THEN-lock the doors behind them– Add the regulation and force a conversion into FedCoin.

      Its very odd because crypto seemed very near a tipping point in the culture — and the Luna crash torpedoed that.

      1. I doubt the pump is over. Too soon and too many problems with inflation. And always the need for secret money for secret armies.

  4. Catherine, I believe that what you said in your ‘ask Catherine’ section is very important. If someone wants to control you, manipulate your actions, that is never good – and why? what is the purpose?
    Here is an incredible video about Transhumanism – https://youtu.be/Rpv5qd32dBE
    There is not place to run but to confront the reality of life within this technology infrastructure. This is called the Metaverse world, basically a made-up synthetic world which they are trying to push. Please, talk about that with John in your next video. I think we are being feed with information from many perspectives so that we get confused: bitcoins, fintech, metaverse, nfts, vr/ar, AR, etc all with the agenda to merge at some point towards implementing the grid control.

    1. Thanks, Barabara, for bringing this to our attention. Watching now.

  6. Catherine, about crypto tech & blockchain, if you look at the earliest movements of decentralization work pre-2008, it actually goes back a decade before that, with concepts of big money $$$ and big Gold. It was driven largely by engineers cryptographers not from Silicon Valley, not from crypto value in Switzerland or Berlin, but by other Eastern European engineers, by engineers in Argentina and Venezuela. And if you look at what they have in common with these three places is either “authoritarianism, collapsing economy or hyperinflation”, all tying back to the same idea that people don’t have control over their futures, even if they are educated and and they know technology, and at the end of the day — they don’t have control over the currency under a so called “decentralized” system.

    1. I think you are supporting crypto for those stuck on authoritarian capital controls? More should read the Satoshi paper. One thing, (please correct me if I am wrong), I have not heard Cathrine discus on Crypto are Cryptos that are anonymous such as Monero and others. The basic idea is ability to send a digital unit of value from one human to another with no middle man and make it untraceable. I view the crypto space more as a double edged sword good and bad. Sure the state can weaponize it but some of the Tech can also be used to fight back. Same way we have the internet to share ideas/information but its being more and more censored but there are alternative ways we can get around that as well. My comments are not trying to stir things up. Just another perspective.

      1. Pointers to the insights of Nicholas Weaver a computer scientist at Berkeley as to why crypto currencies are a scam that will collapse:
        https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/05/why-this-computer-scientist-says-all-cryptocurrency-should-die-in-a-fire/

        Two main points I take from this (there are more to be found in the interview linked above):

        – No intrinsic value generation in crypto only the promise/expectation that someone will transfer me more funds in exchange for the electronic token(s) I hold

        – An electronic token looks for example like this “0002344qwe79923444380asn”. I made this just up in a second. Bitcoin tokens are protected from forgery by generation through an algorithm that requires considerable amounts of computational power and time (to put it simply – actually the computer juice goes into validating transactions, but looking into this gets technically complex too fast for a short explanation). The reward for investing that electricity and hardware equipment are bitcoin tokens. The electricity and hardware cost real money. That means the technical side of bitcoins can be expected to grind to an abrupt halt as soon as those generated tokens are not profitable anymore; as soon as too few people have incentive to invest resources into the system it stops working, like a car that has run out of gasoline. And “profitable” in relation to crypto currency means: I or someone on my behalf has to find someone who is willing to pay more than I did for the tokens that I hold.

        Quote from Jorge Stolfi, another computer scientist:
        “Investing in crypto is just like what investing in Madoff’s fund in the 1990s would have been — if he had openly admitted, since the beginning, that there was no portfolio, no stock or options trading, not even a small cash reserve.”
        https://twitter.com/JorgeStolfi/status/1504116310841741313?s=20&t=Me5K94fs6Q8mhTVAgSsWJQ

        1. Another important point:
          One of the main real world applications of crypto currencies seems to be in crime (ransom, proceeds from drug sales, illegal pornography – some call it “pedo money”).

          This twitter thread I find interesting:
          https://twitter.com/JorgeStolfi/status/1522011168604409856

          Initiated by Jorge Stolfi saying:
          “Every computer scientist should be able to see that cryptocurrencies are totally disfunctional payment systems, and that “blockchain technology” (including “smart constracts”) is a technological fraud. Would they please say that out loud?”

      2. Richard, I am not supporting anything. I was sharing some background about how crypto came about via the advance/access in technology applications and the lower costs of hardware over time around the world. Many people do not understand the details, and what is really happening behind the scenes. Others pretend.
        All technology solutions could be utilized for good and bad purposes, so it is about who controls it and who talks the loudest (is it somebody you trust?) generating public interest, and as a result more money and capital for them.
        All crypto coins, including Monero, are difficult to regulated, and probably not a favorite of Central Banks — “unless they are the ones generating them”. Ironic? Not really. At the end, the people with some money to invest do it with the purpose to get something in return, whether is time, money or knowledge.

        1. Understood! Thank you for the response/clarification. I agree! I wish more made the time to try to better understand this stuff!

      3. Richard: I have on my list to look at Monero – numerous people I know have confidence in it.

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