"they worshiped the dragon because he gave his authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying 'Who is like the Beast, and able to wage war against it?'"
If ‘The Beast’ is CCP-style social credit, then the answer is Bitcoin
Something I’ve been thinking about more often lately is the almost otherworldly timing of the appearance of Bitcoin on the world stage.
Right at the crescendo of the Global Financial Crisis, as world leaders and central banks were showing that they would never willingly allow consequences to unfold, even worse, they would reward moral hazard and bail out the banks, a mysterious white paper dropped on a cypherpunks mailing list:
Subject: Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper Satoshi Nakamoto satoshi at vistomail.com Fri Oct 31 14:10:00 EDT 2008 I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party. The paper is available at: http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf The main properties: Double-spending is prevented with a peer-to-peer network. No mint or other trusted parties. Participants can be anonymous. New coins are made from Hashcash style proof-of-work. The proof-of-work for new coin generation also powers the network to prevent double-spending. Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without the burdens of going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as honest nodes control the most CPU power on the network, they can generate the longest chain and outpace any attackers. The network itself requires minimal structure. Messages are broadcasted on a best effort basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone. Full paper at: http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf Satoshi Nakamoto
…and the world changed.
When an idea whose time has come arrives, nothing can stop it. It may take generations to play out and the transition may be tumultuous, but no human agency can resist it. Fire, self-awareness, language, human rights, increasingly higher levels of mental abstraction, energy density and systems of organization. Something is impelling this relentless progression, and since everything born of human activity had to start as an idea, that something has to be thought.
Yet, we live in a world of radical material reductionism. Conventional canon holds that thought is simply a by-product of brain activity. At its most reductive level, thought, and consciousness itself are just accidents of innumerable material processes randomly iterating over billions of years until one day, some apes suddenly became aware of themselves. “The rest is history”, goes the logic.
Contrary to this, we have multiple streams of philosophy, mythology, certain currents of depth psychology and over the last hundred years even science, namely quantum mechanics, that takes a completely different position. The material world is a consequence of non-material reality, not the precursor to it, and that non-material reality is self-aware and conscious:
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we talk about as existing, postulates consciousness.”
— Max Planck, emphasis added.
Whether consciousness or matter has primacy is the modern day analog of the battle between the Ptolemaic and the heliocentric cosmologies.
I think in the fullness of time, after enough people have been burned at the stake for saying it, we’ll accept that everything occurring in the material world has its origin in a non-material realm. One whose dynamics shape the events of this one. It has a directionality to it. Also, to one degree or another, there may be some oppositional forces aligned against it.
On my latest appearance on Steve Bannon’s Warroom I made the point that “Bitcoin is resistance to financial repression”. Bannon had declared previously that “the government is forcing you into crypto and gold”, and before my segment, Congressman Gaetz, speaking on the new IRS regulations to surveil the populace, said that the government was “weaponizing” its bureaucratic apparatus against its own citizenry.
Where I might politely differ from Bannon and Congressman Gaetz is in the idea that this war against the middle class, against the people, isn’t peculiar to the Biden administration. This has been going on for generations, across both parties. It’s the architecture of the modern welfare state. However contrary to what many think, the welfare state isn’t all powerful, it’s fighting for its own survival.
One of the core battlegrounds in this struggle, perhaps the most important one, is around the nature and mechanics of money. The reason why is because the advent of honest money enabled the exchange of value. It meant people could come together and peacefully trade in a way that resulted in mutual benefit. It was a kind of alchemy. Without honest money we are left with force and coercion. Either subtly or overtly.
The book that probably went the furthest in initially “red-pilling” me about the nature of money, how sound money fostered peace and prosperity, while fiat money (“false” money) enabled division, corruption and war, was Ferdinand Lips’ “Gold Wars”. Lips posited that “The Gold War is nothing else than a Third World War. The demise of the classic gold standard would pit the central bankers and political class against the people, ushering in a “monetary dark age”.
What may be unique to the Biden administration, and incumbent politicians across liberal democracies is the quickening. How in the wake of this (likely lab originated) pandemic it all seems to be headed for a blow off top in tyranny, the world over.
Gold has had near mystical connotations for millennia.
Lips, citing the legendary Harry Shultz unpacks the societal detriment that is caused by unsound money:
Money sets a standard that spreads into every area of human activity. No paper money backing, no morality….Layer by layer we are corrupted when money loses certainty… Big Brother was made possible through the absence of automatic controls and loss of individual freedom via non-convertible currency. So, pass the word. Fight for gold. Not for profits, though they are helpful and help us fight for individual freedom, but for a future that returns to sanity in various standards. If we have a gold standard we get golden human standard! The two are intertwined. They are the ultimate cause and effect. Gold blesses.
One wonders what the late Ferdinand Lips would have thought of the situation today. Shultz wrote the last edition of his newsletter in 2011, warning us then that:
“Roughly speaking, the mess we are in is the worst since 17th century financial collapse. Comparisons with the 1930’s are ludicrous. We’ve gone far beyond that. And, alas, the courage & political will to recognize the mess & act wisely to reverse gears, is absent in U.S. leadership, where the problems were hatched & where the rot is by far the deepest.”
But despite the recorded experience over the entire course of monetary history, how fiat currencies always go to zero, every time, no exceptions, the established elites will not return to a sound money standard of their own free will. Doing so would relinquish their own hold on power, and politics today attracts (almost exclusively) disordered, sociopathic personalties.
Enter, digital currencies
In the early 00’s, there was an abortive attempt to fuse sound money with emerging digital payments in systems like e-gold, Pecunix, and Goldmoney (which is still going today). They were centralized and corporate entities, which meant they had definable attack surfaces that prevented them from posing any serious threat to the status quo. [ Note: It was pointed out in the comments thread for this piece on Zerohedge that I should have mentioned that there are cryptocurrencies backed by gold like Kinesis, Cache.gold and Paxos]
Recently Peter Thiel mused that the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, be it a person or a group, probably cut their teeth in that first attempt at a new era sound money in these digital gold currencies.
Today, people just look at “digital money”, whether it’s crypto-currencies like Bitcoin, digital stablecoins like Facebook’s Diem, or the impending Fedcoin and they put it all into the same bucket. This is mistake.
Digital money is just a medium. Just as the internet is a medium. And where the internet can be used to promote repressive, anti-human ideologies like collectivism, woke-ism and transhumanism, and can be the facilitator for surveillance capitalism, it is also an enabler and empowering mechanism for the underdogs.
For alternative press, independent journalism and open discourse, the internet is the great equalizer. It provides the tools for small, medium and home businesses to compete against the 800lb gorillas in their space (the topic of yet another one of my still-in-progress books that got pushed to the back burner). The advent of the internet was a Promethean event. Cooked up in the bowels of the military-industrial complex it was loosed into the world, perhaps with the intent of further enslaving the masses, but it was designed almost too well.
The internet opened the door to emancipation of information.
So too are digital currencies the new medium for value exchange in an emerging networked world. I never tire of citing the late Stephen Zarlenga and his exhaustive study of history showing how control over the monetary system amounts to control over society.
In a networked world, the battle for monetary morality will be played out in cyberspace. Gold will always be an immutable, ageless anchor for value, but on this battlefield, sound money needed ally. This is guerrilla warfare and something truly asymmetric was required.
What the world needed, was Bitcoin. Digital gold.
Where Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are the emerging digital cash platforms of indebtedness and servitude, Bitcoin and (real) cryptos are the liberators. They are not the same, they are antipodes, playing out a timeless struggle in a new terrain. (How can you tell the difference between an oppressive and a liberating digital currency? If you hold your own private keys, it’s an emancipatory crypto, if you can’t self-custody, opt-out, or fork-off, it’s EvilCoin).
This battle is ultimately, a spiritual one
Over the years, as much as I tried to ignore it, I finally had to acknowledge my belief that the ultimate impetus to create emancipatory monetary technologies originate from another plane. By that I don’t mean ethnocentrically modelled deities plotting earthly intrigue from Mount Olympus. I mean more along the lines of impulses and dynamics that we can barely understand from our limited vantage point, ultimately originate from a non-material realm from where they project a kind of morphogenic field into the material world, where these tensions play out.
There are various models for this, David Bohm’s Implicate / Explicate Orders, Karl Pribam’s Holoflux Theory – these models are synthesized coherently in the work of Dr. Shelli Renee Joye..
Why believe any of this New Age woo-woo when the material reductionists would tell me that my belief is simply a side effect of an electro-chemical storm in my brain? Mere “qualia”?
After my Bannon appearance I ended up speaking with Joe Allen, who covers transhumanism for the Warroom. He also writes the Singularity Weekly Substack. We talked for over an hour and we discussed atheism vs radical material reductionism. We discussed the difference between the scientific method and Scientism. We talked about Rudolf Steiner, who posited a coming Age of Ahriman, a period in which humanity would become enamoured with materialism and forget its own soul, an era wherein Ahriman himself would incarnate physically in the West. Steiner, who died in 1925, put it as occurring sometime in the late 20th century, someplace in the US or Canada (if I had to bet, my money would be on Zuckerberg).
For anybody who’s ever attempted to read Steiner, it’s mostly impenetrable. My personal theory is that Steiner spent abnormally large swaths of his life in a hypnogogic state. Perhaps without fully realizing it himself. Nonetheless, he pretty much invented bio-organic farming and Waldorf Schools, among other things.
I ended up telling Joe a true story, one that happened to me nearly 30 years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. When the material reductionists tell you that everything you think, feel and decide are simply the outcomes of a billiard ball universe: atoms and molecules colliding while neurons and synapses are firing in your brain, they have to admit when pressed; they can’t actually tell you what consciousness really is. Nor how life emerged from inert matter, or how a brain somehow secretes sentience.
And they cannot explain how something like this happens:
The time: 1992-ish, I’m a bohemian, long haired dude going to college in London, Ontario, playing in a metal band, studying computer programming at Fanshawe College, living in a rooming house / hovel: a mattress on a pair of skids on the floor of a small room in a basement (because the basement flooded every time it rained).
I had just finished an essay for school, about smart card technology and I closed the assignment with some speculation that eventually smart cards could morph into bar codes and implants. I went on to describe how some religious types (I wasn’t one) thought this would play out along biblical lines, as per the Book of Revelations. On a lark, I close out the essay with Revelations 13:17:
"And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name on his hand or his forehead"
At this point, one of my roommates in the hovel, he was a drug dealer who scared the hell out of me, and some of his even scarier friends show up and they were cooking something up that I didn’t want to be a witness to. So I got the hell out of there.
Very agitated and restless at this point I’m trying to figure out where to go, I decide on the University of Western Ontario’s D. B. Weldon Library, a short bus ride up road. “Nobody will know me there, and I can just disappear in there with a book” I think to myself.
On my way I hit the ATM to get my last $5 out of my bank account. I remember thinking about my essay and giving my bank card some extra scrutiny as I pondered those last paragraphs. Number of the Beast, implants, all that stuff.
I’m still nervous and pumped full of anxiety (my living situation wasn’t the greatest in those days). But I remember what happened distinctly:
Once the bus let out on campus, I felt almost trance-like. “In the zone”. I walked into the library cognizant that I had not brought anything with me to read, but the plan was to simply walk in there and pick a ‘random’ book off the shelves, then flop into a chair and read it for the next few hours.
I jump into the elevator. Get off on the 3rd or 4th floor (D. B. Weldon is 5 stories high), and then, again, trancelike – turn walk, turn, walk, turn walk – stop. Reach out to one side and pluck a book off the shelf then flip it open….
"And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name on his hand or his forehead."
The book was Swedenborg’s “Revelations Explained”.
Suffice it to say, if it were in a movie this would be the scene where the violins are doing those short, sharp Psycho-style stabbing notes in the background. I’d experienced synchronicities before, but this one was off the charts.
Until now, I haven’t told too many people about that event. My wife thinks that it wasn’t a synchronicity as much as a demonstration of the power of mind, that on a subconscious level I had memorized the titles and order of everything in the library on previous visits and that somehow I had managed to retrieve that needle from the haystack because of the mental priming of the morning’s events (I guess my wife is somewhat of a “Scully” to my “Mulder”). But that doesn’t explain picking out a book I had never read by an author I had never heard of and flipping it open to the exact page that happened to also quote Revelations 13:17.
When the Internet hit and there were these head fakes toward micropayments and digital cash I would think about this event. Then crypto-currencies came along I started thinking about it more often. My intuition was telling me that Bitcoin wasn’t a “Number of the Beast” style technology as foretold in prophecy. If anything, Bitcoin, being a liberating and empowering technology would be the opposite of that. An antidote.
Once the pandemic hit, and vax passports went from conspiracy theory to reality in about 18 months I became quite alarmed about the means, motive and opportunity to fuse the impending CBDCs with health passports and China-style social credit systems. Suddenly implants and chips didn’t seem so far-fetched anymore.
When I told Joe Allen this story, he said it reminded him of the wildly memetic Microsoft 2020-06/06/06 patent. It purportedly described a system for human implants that would turn people into crypto-currency miners and reward them with tokens for completing assigned tasks. Best Matrix flick ever.
When I first heard about this one, it was on Facebook and I nearly ripped into the original poster because it was so obviously an unhinged conspiracy theory that could easily be debunked by simply looking up the damn patent number in the bloody database. I mean people …get a grip.
The only problem is that the 2020/060606 patent turns out to be real, it is listed in the WIPO database (not USPTO), and it describes (get this), “A Crypto-Currency System Using Body Activity Data”.
Human body activity associated with a task provided to a user may be used in a mining process of a cryptocurrency system. A server may provide a task to a device of a user which is communicatively coupled to the server. A sensor communicatively coupled to or comprised in the device of the user may sense body activity of the user. Body activity data may be generated based on the sensed body activity of the user. The cryptocurrency system communicatively coupled to the device of the user may verify if the body activity data satisfies one or more conditions set by the cryptocurrency system, and award cryptocurrency to the user whose body activity data is verified.
Jesus Christ. Make it stop.
The WIPO assigned patent filing numbers, as far as I can tell, are simply assigned serially by year. 2019/060606 is Hydrated Caruon Material Powder and Use of it for Preparation of an Electrode for an Electrical Storage Device. 2021/060606 is Nuclear Fuel Uranium Dioxide Pellets Having Improved Fission Gas Capturing Capability.
What were the odds that Microsoft, a global quasi-monopoly, co-founded by Epstein bro and elite-level globalist Bill Gates, would file a patent on a human implantable task/reward system and wind up with this number in it?
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man;
and his number is Six hundred and sixty-six.”
I’m not saying that we are dealing with actual, literal Biblical prophecy playing out in our time. Because frankly, there are people who think that at every point throughout history.
The timing of the arrival of Bitcoin, the Promethean dynamic behind both it and the Internet, the “signs and wonders” of the quickening, and the rhyming of ultra-long historical cycles, not to mention the unsustainability of the current status quo; this is all building toward some kind of self-organizing criticality. A global Minsky Moment. What I do think is that whatever is driving it all is not originating from a linear, material universe that just so happened to belch out consciousness along the way.
It could be as explainable as our own collective subconsciousness willing or fearing certain dynamics into material reality. It could be larger, extra-dimensional forces that super-sensibly atuned people like Steiner or Swedenborg glimpsed over a century ago and could barely unpack what they experienced into linear terms.
Whatever is happening, it has been unfolding for a long, long time…
It was not precisely a memory. You have already had proof that time is more complex than your science ever imagined. For that memory was not of the past, but of the future -of those years when your race knew that everything was finished. We did what we could, but it was not an easy end. And because we were there, we became identified with your race’s death.
Yes, even while it was still ten thousand years in the future!
It was as if a distorted echo had reverberated round the closed circle of time, from the future to the past. Call it not a memory, but a premonition.
The idea was hard to grasp, and for a moment Jan wrestled with it in silence.
Yet he should have been prepared; he had already received proof enough that cause and event could reverse their normal sequence. There must be such a thing as racial memory, and that memory was somehow independent of time.
To it, the future and the past were one. That was why, thousands of years ago, men had already glimpsed a distorted image of the Overlords, through a mist of fear and terror.
“Now I understand,” said the last man.
— Arthur C Clarke, Childhood’s End
When I confront the spectre of widespread social credit systems, technocratic collectivism or transhumanist ideations of digital immortality, I get a palpable anti-human vibe from them. When I meditate on empowering technologies like cryptography, on structures of decentralization and on the ideals of self-sovereignty it feels just so much more life affirming.
Alas, the zeitgeist today is dominated with the mindset of the former, but fortunately, Prometheus has already made his rounds. If you value freedom, autonomy, universal human rights and believe we are all ‘the offspring of a deathless soul’, then Bitcoin isn’t your enemy, it’s your ally.
"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."
I cover macro tensions between the globalists and sovereign-individual extensively in The Crypto Capitalist Letter, along with a tactical focus on publicly traded crypto stocks. Get the overall investment / macro thesis free when you subscribe to the Bombthrower mailing list, or try the premium service for a month with our fully refundable trial offer.
Sanity check:
1) Any P2P protocol needs to be standardized to achieve critical mass.
2) Once standardized, it can be infiltrated, tracked and profiled (port addresses, transaction structure, etc.).
3) With adequate investment, ALL peers on a standardized p2p network can be identified.
4) With adequate sanctions against participation in the p2p network, it can be quashed.
5) Once bitcoin is deemed the enemy by the REAL ptb, it is over!
What am I missing?
> What am I missing?
Only the last five or six articles I’ve written about this.
But the short list includes: encryption, tunnelling and force multipliers.
What am I missing?
SHA265, Proof-of-Work and the basics of the Bitcoin consensus protocol.
Great article. I truly enjoy all your articles.
We actually are on the same page in so many ways. I appreciate you doing these articles. Thank you.
MInd blown.
Love the sunglasses. I too remember 1992 like it was yesterday. Excellent read. Crypto is the way.
A brilliant essay on so many different levels. Inspiring and rings intuitively true. Thank you!~
This is a great essay. As a young man I discounted science as simply a modern religion as its tools were mathematics together with extensions of the five senses. Yet no one had ever seen mathematics in the raw and I already knew from introspection that thoughts are private till manifested.
Your essay had a cause but you cannot visit the factory where your thoughts are made and assembled. When you sleep you are un-conscious, dead to the world. Yet the world and your physical being trucks on.
The source of creation is like the sun. It does not shine only on the good but shines indiscriminately supporting all, the good and the bad. Whether humanity survives or not makes no difference to that which supports all creation.
But those who seek to rule are foolish in a wicked perverted way. For the purpose of a human being is to realise their cause and to discover that their cause is the cause of all that has ever or will ever be. "I am that I am".
Thus the ultimate King is the ultimate Servant.
Hubris has a way of leading to nemesis. And you are playing your part as an agent of nemesis so thank you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu0p6CtioZk
Excellent article. Thank you! ?
I wonder how often that verse of Revelations 13:17 is used in books, so we could see how long those odds really were.
There is much about spirituality around, especially beyond the mainstream monotheism, including 'the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with will'
Some good warm up exercises in opening your mind, start at
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/139603.html
with the rest of the lessons all under
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/tag/octagon+society
perfect exploration of ones own mind to better connect with ones deathless soul, and along the way get better at getting 'in the zone'. aka Mulder fodder
I've hardly had a chance to run through this and it is already helping me with the increasing chaos that is our life.
Loved this article.
Hi Mark. I happened upon this very interesting piece at Zero Hedge. I was raised in southern Ontario (Sarnia) and spent much time in London with buddies who attended Western. This was back in the early 70s. My reply consists of several things I wrote last year. It's long but you and your readers may find it illuminating. You see, one of the possibilities concerning that passage from the Book of Revelation is that it is actually a prophecy. A true word from God Himself, foretelling what literally is to come. I for one believe that's how we're to view it, and that the time is drawing very near for its fulfillment. The context of this passage, without which it cannot be fully comprehended, is the scope and purpose and message of the whole Bible. I'm happy to discuss further should you be interested.
Sincerely,
John Ryan
Coronavirus: Catalysis and Convergence
The Bible teaches that near the end of this present age, an evil dictator will arise and rule the world for a brief and very dark season. Much of humanity will be seduced or coerced into following this man and worshipping him. Any people, including true Christians, who refuse to worship “the Beast,” who is the Antichrist, the full embodiment of evil, will suffer greatly, even unto death.
The Bible teaches that the Antichrist’s primary lever of coercion, his means of exercising control over the masses, and of forcing them to pledge their allegiance to him, is the power to dictate whether they can buy or sell. An important, equally evil, supporting character, the False Prophet, spearheads an initiative that will bring the whole world into subjection to the Antichrist: “He [the False Prophet] also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name” (Revelation 13:16-17). Through the power to exclude any person from the system of commerce, the False Prophet forces humanity to worship the Beast and his image. The choice facing every person on Earth will be: Receive the mark and worship the Antichrist or lose your income. Receive the mark and worship the Antichrist or lose your bank account and your home (through inability to pay taxes, mortgage or rent). Receive the mark and worship the Antichrist or starve to death. Receive the mark and worship the Antichrist or be executed. This will be the darkest period in human history, and it is surely coming.
In order to carry out on a global scale this scheme of unrestrained evil, several technical conditions seemingly would need to be in place:
1. The world’s media of exchange (currencies) can no longer be anonymous. This means the retirement and/or banning of cash, gold, cryptocurrencies and all media of exchange which enable anonymous, off-grid transactions. There must be a system of ID and commerce in which every buyer and seller in the world, and the details of every one of their monetary accounts and transactions, are known, supervised, tracked and, potentially, controlled, in real time.
2. This global system of electronic ID and commerce must permit the instantaneous activation, limitation or termination of any individual’s ability to participate—to buy or sell.
3. This global system of electronic ID and commerce must have the capacity to impose or alter—centrally, universally and instantaneously—criteria for full or limited participation in the system, and to detect compliance status. Examples of criteria could include one’s “social credit” score, a criminal record, or the presence on/in the body of an electronic validating code or mark.
4. This global system of electronic ID and commerce must be fully-realized and functional in nearly every essential respect prior to the imposition of “the mark of the Beast” by the False Prophet.
(All of these conditions are currently being explored, developed and put into place. Although it is a massive undertaking and there is much work yet to be done, it will be done. The current crisis is catalyzing the process, or giving it a big push.)
The False Prophet is not going to build a new, cashless, electronic identification and commerce system. Nor is he going to point guns at people to force them to take a mark. The future descent of mankind into total bondage will require, technically, merely an incremental adjustment of the then-existing electronic machinery. The False Prophet needs only to impose his new eligibility criterion upon the system, likely through the willing assistance or coercion of system managers. Every person on Earth will at this time face a barrage of deceptive propaganda and the choice, obvious if distasteful for most, of either receiving the mark and being allowed to continue with “normal life,” or refusing the mark and being shut out of the system. The development of this mark, and the means of rapidly imposing it upon all of humanity, may now be taking place along with the erection of the global electronic ID and commerce infrastructure, to be held in readiness for the appointed moment. Or, its development could happen later, separately and quickly, on demand. Either way, the mark and the means of its universal implementation will be ready when the time comes.
How does all this relate to the coronavirus? To answer this question, we need to back up a bit. For at least several decades, it has been clear that certain financial and political actors have been working toward creating a global government and a universal, electronic system of ID and commerce. There are numerous good reasons for wanting to do this. The world faces huge challenges which require international cooperation to meet. There are rogue regimes in the world which, once fully subjected to competent supranational authority, can be prevented from threatening others. There are economic inequalities and inefficiencies in the world which can be mitigated through global economic cooperation and distribution, aided by electronic implementation and oversight. There are terrorists and criminals and tax cheats in the world who can be thwarted once all people have been registered on the system, and once all monetary transactions can be monitored electronically. There are subversive and destructive actors in the cyberworld who can be silenced once they are registered and stripped of their anonymity. Etc.
And now, with the SARS CoV-2 coronavirus, there is a viral threat on the loose such as the world has not seen in 100 years. Several realizations pertinent to the drive for global government, global electronic commerce, and universal electronic ID are emerging from the pandemic:
1. Cash is a dirty germ vector. Along with several good reasons for eliminating cash, this is a great one.
2. The whole world will need to be vaccinated, against this coronavirus and against anything like it which may come along in future. Voluntary vaccination doesn’t offer sufficient protection to society. It will be necessary to identify—and, possibly, privilege differently—those who have been vaccinated or have immunity, and those who have not. People will need to be “tagged” somehow, allowing instantaneous electronic verification of vaccination/immunity status. This need converges technically with the long-recognized “needs” to eliminate cash from commerce and to implement a permanent, fail-safe, machine-readable, universal ID throughout all of humanity.
3. The global economic order is fragile and fracturing, and may yet collapse disastrously. US dollar hegemony, ever-more-diluted fiat currencies, exploding private, corporate and national debts, risky derivatives, and adversarial trading relationships are all destabilizing and dangerous. A new economic paradigm is needed. This need converges in significant ways with the “needs” listed above.
4. Crisis and desperation motivate people to accept, and even to clamour for, what they would never accept in better times. In many ways, the current pandemic is the worst crisis to befall the world in any of our lifetimes. It is catalyzing massive changes in convergence with other developments, helping bring forth that which the Lord has foretold.
So, as Jesus said, Watch. He is the faithful and true Witness, and His words are coming to pass. Yes, we are moving into the last of the last days. The complex and sophisticated electronic platform from which Antichrist will rule is steadily being erected. Do not be dismayed or hide from this stupendous reality. Watch! And pray! Maranatha!
For some interesting further reading, Google these organizations, and see what very smart, very rich people have been up to while some of you were sleeping:
The Better Than Cash Alliance
ID 2020 The Digital Identity Alliance
New Microsoft patent #060606
Microsoft registered a patent on March 26 for a Web-linked system which authenticates a specified physical activity or task completion, following which digital credits are deposited or unlocked in the user’s account.
Here is the patent abstract, copied directly from its listing at the World Intellectual Property Organization site:
"Human body activity associated with a task provided to a user may be used in a mining process of a cryptocurrency system. A server may provide a task to a device of a user which is communicatively coupled to the server. A sensor communicatively coupled to or comprised in the device of the user may sense body activity of the user. Body activity data may be generated based on the sensed body activity of the user. The cryptocurrency system communicatively coupled to the device of the user may verify if the body activity data satisfies one or more conditions set by the cryptocurrency system, and award cryptocurrency to the user whose body activity data is verified."
Here is the link to the WIPO page for this patent. Click around and satisfy yourself that it’s a legit site:
https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf…
My comments:
This patent describes a system for linking compliant (as determined by a “sensor,” possibly incorporating AI-enabled motion analysis) human bodily activity with digital monetary account access. All sorts of variations and spinoffs are possible. So imagine a world in which ubiquitous monitors (at points of purchase, in public transit, on street corners, and even people’s personal TVs and phones) are able to display an image of Great World Leader. Whenever it is demanded, which could be both randomly and at scheduled times, the “users” must express worship and devotion before the image. If the system does not detect performance of the prescribed act of worship (lifting both hands? raising one hand, heil-Hitler fashion? while uttering an obligatory expression?) the offender is marked for discipline, including possible execution.
At points of sale or payment, the user must 1) have the bodily-embedded key to the system, the “mark of the Beast,” and, possibly, 2) express worship and devotion before the image. The key is of course detected instantly. But if the prescribed act of worship is not performed, the transaction is blocked and the person marked for discipline, including possible execution.
The system described in the patent would make it possible to require the act of worship prior to being paid, or receiving monetary credits. Worship the Beast, be blessed by his benevolence.
As outrageous and improbable such a future system may seem to be, the Revelation (last book of the Bible, chapter 13) predicts that something like it will surely come to pass:
"Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.
This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666" (Rev. 13:11-18).
"These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation" (Rev. 3:14).
The patent number, in case you missed it in my post title, is W02020 060606. Creepy, huh?
I don’t think the holders of this patent have in mind a future mandatory worship-an-image system. But it may be that their invention or something like it will be incorporated into such a system when the time comes.
Big things are happening, folks. The Lord's return is drawing near!
John
Dear _______________, Your perceptions of what’s happening in the world are very interesting. If I may, I’d like to try to fill in the background context, in which these dark and bewildering developments actually make sense.
My understanding of these things comes entirely from the Bible. I began believing in the Bible when I was 22, a lost soul on the streets of Vancouver. I happened into a Salvation Army rescue mission one evening. I heard the gospel in its simplicity. I called out to the Lord Jesus to save me that night, and He did. My life changed from that moment forward, slowly but surely. A few months later, after having had my new faith and love for the Lord tested and tried in various ways, I was baptized in the Holy Spirit, as the Scripture promises (John 14). At that moment, the Lord revealed His great love for me and showed me in the depths of my being that I had done the right thing in committing my life to Jesus. He also showed me that his Word, the Bible, is actually Truth.
Although I had been raised a Catholic, I had until that time never actually read much of the Bible, and knew almost nothing about its many prophetic passages. As a hungry baby in the Lord, I now began to read the Bible, from beginning to end. I also began to hear and consider, for the first time in my life, the exposition of Scripture by people who really believed it and studied it carefully. The Bible was for me like a huge puzzle with many jumbled pieces. I couldn’t make out much of a unified picture at first. But bit by bit, my understanding grew, as more and more pieces of the puzzle fit into place. I can’t claim that I now comprehend the total picture, but I do see much of God’s plans and purposes with much greater clarity. And what an amazing picture it is!
The Bible reveals what we need to know in order to know the Lord and to live in a way that pleases Him. It reveals how the world, once so beautiful but now fallen and corrupted, came to be the way it is, and what God’s plan is for its future. It reveals how God sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to take upon Himself the punishment for the sins of mankind. It reveals how God has been pleading with the world to be reconciled to Him, and the consequences of its refusal to do so.
The Bible reveals, in amazing detail, certain things that must happen in human history. Things that were foretold in Scripture thousands of years ago have been coming to pass. One example is the destruction of Israel and the unhappy exile of the Jews among the nations. These things happened, beginning in AD 70 and continuing for 2,000 years. The Bible also foretold the eventual restoration of the Jews to the land, and the rebirth of the nation of Israel. This has happened in recent history! The Bible foretells that near the very end of this age, all the nations will gather together against Israel, at Armageddon, to destroy this special nation and its people once and for all. At that time, the prophets say, Messiah will come to earth a second time. He will come to defend Israel and to judge the nations which, willfully blinded concerning God’s promises to Israel, will be seeking to destroy her. This day is surely coming, and I believe it is not so far off.
What is playing out in human history is essentially a spiritual battle, between God and the people and angels who love Him on one hand, versus Satan and the people and angels who hate God on the other. Let there be no doubt that God’s power is infinite. He is absolute ruler over creation. In His perfect wisdom, however, He has allowed Satan to have substantial power and influence over men, but for a limited time only. Someone once said that Satan is “God’s ape,” a creature who, through his evil influence, is helping to try men’s hearts and to sift the sheep from the goats. Satan’s scope of activity and influence has always been restrained by God. For a time, however, which I believe is coming soon, God is going to unleash Satan. For seven years, God is going to allow Satan, through a completely wicked man, to rule the world.
You may have heard about the trial of Jesus in front of the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. Pilate said to the mob, “Do you want me to release Jesus to you? I see no wrong in him.” The crowd, egged on by their leaders, roared back, “NO! Give us Barabbas! Give us Barabbas!” So Barabbas the murderer was released to them, and Jesus the harmless Lamb of God was crucified. The modern world is facing a similar choice, and is making a similarly wrong decision. It is rejecting Jesus, and crying out for something else entirely. And the God-despising mob will get what it is baying for.
Here’s the crux of the matter, the connection between the events you are perceiving and what the Bible has revealed: For the most part, mankind has rejected the true God and His Messiah, Jesus Christ. God intends to judge the world for its wickedness. Part of the judgement of God is to allow the world to experience, for a few dark years, existence completely without God—without God’s mercy, without God’s influence in men’s hearts, without the natural grace and love that God has blessed all people with, and that we see evidence of in the loving relationships and kind things that people do every day. The Bible calls this period of time the Tribulation. During this time, instead of being ruled by a compassionate and loving Saviour, whom it does not want, the world will be ruled by the opposite—a wicked, selfish spirit, Satan, who will literally possess a wicked, selfish man. The Bible calls this man the Antichrist (he will not be known, of course, by this name!). Under the rule of Antichrist, this Christ-rejecting world will experience what it really means to live without the presence and grace of God. God’s message to humanity through all of this will be, in essence, “You don’t want my self-sacrificing love? You reject my gracious ways? You want a world without Me and my truth? Fine. Have it your way. You will suffer as you have never suffered before.”
The Bible foretells certain things about this future dark world: It will be a global dictatorship. Humanity will be ruled through fear, not love. Instead of enjoying the liberty of self-control and the desire to do what’s right, humanity will come under the absolute yoke of external control. Nobody will be exempt, and nobody will be able to resist. Every human in this future world will drink from the same bitter cup. Instead of joyfully worshiping their Creator, who demonstrated amazing grace and self-sacrificial love for them on the Cross, humanity will be forced to worship an evil impostor, upon pain of execution or starvation. They will also be forced to worship the work of their own hands, images made by men. Conceited humanity today think that their brilliant technology can save them. They will find out at length that human brilliance, absent God’s wisdom and love, will simply enslave them.
The Bible describes the process of the formation of this future dark world as “the mystery of iniquity.” When we wonder why some people are doing what they do, why they are planning what they plan, why they desire the type of world they desire, the ultimate answer is “the mystery of iniquity.” Why are some people actively working to bring the world into a technological straitjacket? They may not be able to tell you themselves. This process transcends conscious human motivation or ambition. It is “the mystery of iniquity” at work. Behind this mystery is the evil one, Satan, and those wicked angels—demons—who are loyal to him. Never forget, however, that behind them stands the One who rules over all. He is absolute Sovereign of the universe. Nothing is beyond His power and control. And once He has allowed wicked spirits and people to have their moment of mastery on earth, He will judge all wickedness and restore the universe to its intended, glorious and pure state.
Although I see these things coming on the earth, I am not troubled by them. They actually encourage me, because they demonstrate, as the amazing rebirth of Israel has done, the truth of the Bible, God’s word. And Jesus has promised that those who put their trust in Him are safe, whatever happens in this world. As He said, “I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”
John
What a well written and informative post, thank you for taking the time to write that. Are you still in Vancouver? I'm living there.
John I couldn't express these things better. Thanks!
Great article, and with a synchronicity like that, I think it means you were "destined" to write about that verse. The universe has ways of making these important connections happen., even over decade, as if Time meant nothing.
Personally, when I say "universe" I mean God. In terms of time, I think we're in the Fifth Trumpet period, where the mass vaccination campaign we're seeing is is symbolically described by the locusts granted authority to sting like scorpions, and torment for five months. There are lots of other things that match: https://txti.es/fifthtrumpet
I don't yet know where the "mark of the beast" fits in, but "freedom passes" look pretty darn close. I guess they just need to plug in a money system., but they could also just exclude you from the present system without, say, a QR code.
build back better — bbb
Great article. Loved the ‘serendipity’ you experienced in the library. I had a similar ‘beyond coincidence’ event, which was so odd that it felt as if the world is being generated, like some kind of mutual dream. I am convinced the physical is a manifestation or emanation of a more fundamental reality.
How do I start buying BitCoin?
Bantam Joe on his Facebook:
It's been my contention that bitcoin would one day get hijacked simply because it has a powerful brand recognition, and it did not take long for the bitcoin architecture to be reconfigured by big money. Hence, Blockstream, a company backed by big banks and financial institutes, came in and added layers to the bitcoin architecture (called Lightning Network and Taproot).
With the coming Taproot smart-contracts layer protocol being added to bitcoin, bitcoin will now have the ability to be spent only if programmable conditions are met. Examples might be for carbon credit metrics to be met or confirming you have a passport ID for any transaction. This is the danger of smart-contracts and bitcoin is about to join that pool of cryptos that add such functionalities.
https://www.facebook.com/BantamJoe/posts/10158011076656290
This reminds me of the Wizard of Oz.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_interpretations_of_The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz#Monetary_policy
There's another line of explanation for what's happening. We are in the cusp period of changing from the Piscean to Aquarian age. Each age is 2000 years.
The Aquarian age will be extreme speeding up of thought and progress. It will stress the human mind to breaking. (Yes I know, you can see this happening for yourself, but this was described many decades ago). It is not going to slow down, it will go faster and faster.
You are right, as quantum physics shows, that there is nothing actually real in the 'real' world. We perceive the motion of atoms and interpret it into 'reality'.
The point is, a non physical exchange system, bitcoin, fits perfectly into our now and our future. It is an amazing system of instant balance between the physical and non physical…a king of bridge.
What has always concerned me is that all cryptocurrency is accessed via the internet. What will keep those who wish to control us from controlling our access to our chosen cryptocurrency and forcing us to use theirs.
Encryption.
Agreed, Sandra, on the concern you raise, and Mark, on the solution you propose.
However, there is the greatest vulnerability of all – that of the power grid itself which can be disrupted or wiped out, as by a sun flare.
Because these vulnerabilities exist I can only conclude that bitcoin, or any other crypto, is not a permanent solution but are bridges to possibilities. They will serve as interim solutions (when cash 'fails') to aid the transition to a more organic platform. But just my thought, for what it's worth.
Anyway, the best, most functional currency ever known is agreement. Without it all else fails.
I think I meant to leave my earlier reply in one of the other articles here, so I'll add to it here. The clarity of thought in Satoshi's original design is breathtaking. As I read through the original emails from 2008 I feel I am watching an epoch changing event unfold. The simple elegance of the design, and the selflessness of sharing it anonymously with the world is profoundly moving.
Great read. I will leave you with a thought crypto currency will be fun to decipher and fun to deploy against tyrannical forces. But always remember to pack youre parachute and keep youre hand on the rip chord.
For we march towards the prophecy of the good book.Personally I belive that if good men do not stand opposed to evil, then the ancient writing scribed on the papyrus scrolls will happen faster and faster.
Look forward to reading more of your work.
Excellent read.
Christ is King
Great article!
Humanity is the decentralized existence network of God,
a blockchain of souls validated through the proof of Christ!
I got goosebumps reading that then I swear to God. I went to church yesterday for the 1st time in ages. The Pastor closed by reciting the last quote " we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against power and principalities. against the rulers of the darkness of this world" then he said Let me say that again so everyone hears it…unreal man..un fucking real!!!
Thanks… your articles are inspiring …