Getting Into Crypto Currencies
I’m embarrassed to say that it took me this long to finally get into the Crypto Game – but I’m here now, and working on mining some Monero, on Matt Forney‘s advice.
And you’re helping me.
I have just finished installing the Coinhive plugin which borrows some of your CPU’s spare processing power any time you’re visiting this site. It should be unnoticeable – just a bit of activity in the background – I have it throttled to the default setting of 70%. In addition, I’ll be testing it out myself (why not mine my own coins, right?) so if there are any issues, hopefully I’ll notice them first.
If it causes any trouble, there’s a widget on the left-hand sidebar where you can disable it – alternatively, you can disable javascript for www.coin-hive.com (and if you have NoScript as a plugin for your browser, you’ll need to enable it for the miner to work).
I’m also taking payment and donations in cryptocurrency – I currently have a Litecoin and Monero wallet – and will be updating the “Donations” page to reflect that.
For now, I just wanted to inform everybody of what’s going on, and thank you again for visiting my site.
Cheers!
Davis M.J. Aurini
You should talk to a priest about this. Someone who understands Church teaching as regards financial transactions. There’s a…pretty strong argument out there that dealing in cryptocurrency is probably sinful. (Accepting payment by itself probably isn’t, but doing what you’re doing…eh. Talk to a priest you trust. If he says it’s ok…hey maybe those saying it’s sinful are wrong.)
I don’t see how mining crypto using math is any different than mining gold using one’s muscles.
Can a person exchange crypto currency for regular fiat currency, aka dollars?
Ann Barnhardt has some interesting comments on Bitcoin in recent podcasts.
I’ve missed those, I’ll have to check them out.
What I like about cryptos is that they’re designed to deny usury – there’s no central manipulation possible since nobody controls them. They’re even harder to control than a commodity market (see deBeers and diamonds). The fact that they’re mainly used for immoral purposes is a sign of their value; a good currency, like a good knife, does not make value judgments. Money is money is money, no matter who’s spending it, or what they’re spending it on. Anything else is slavery, forcing others to be good by restricting their choices.
my only complaint is that these new coins and forks seem to be another form of money printing . rather than just bitcoin there are 1000+ of these coins and there are 20+ bitcoin forks
As a Traditional Catholic I can’t see any problem with the cryptocurrencies, they are not usurious and they aren’t directly tied to any immoral organization.
In fact I could argue that using FRN are immoral since they are inflationary and tied to an immoral organization and usurious system. Arguing for the inherent morality of precious metals is silly as they have no intrisic value other than they are rare and limited.
A good question to ask is what was the Church’s stance on inflationary measures during the Crisis of the Third Century since the early Church weathered that time when the Roman coinage was debased to the point where the army was the only organization being paid in gold (‘soldier’ comes from ‘solidus’ meaning a solid gold coin) and the average person in the Empire had to rely on barter for everyday commerce.
Did the Church have a stance at that time?
Indeed Cabeza, my impression is that the whole reason Bitcoins are valued (beyond the illegal drug trade – which isn’t large enough to sustain the current market price) is because they are inherently non-usurious. There’s only so many that can be mind (23 million I believe), and there’s no central organization which can manipulate them. If somebody were to run a BitCoin bank, and make fractional reserve loans, *jubilees would be built into the system.*
Modern usury comes from the fact that fractional reserve creates more debt than dollars – 110 dollars of debt for 100 worth of currency circulating. Instead of forgiving the 10 dollars of extra debt, it is remortgaged and devalued by the printing of more currency – currency which starts out in the hands of the usurers, who spend it at the old price before the market can react to the devaluation, thus gaining a stranglehold on the economy.
Bitcoin undermines this, which is why the early adopters love it.
Grey Enlightenment is right to point out, however, that although there are only 23 million bitcoins, there are unlimited crypto currencies, which makes the entire thing innately faddish and unstable. This problem may resolve itself in time, or it may crash the whole system.
You do have an initial speculator boom kicking it right now. Dogecoin was valued at $1 billion recently but has an actual market value of a penny. But hey who can say ‘no’ to the Doge?
But even Dogecoin is stable whereas Titcoin is going under. So the Crypto market is demonstrating some inherent value based upon the number of users.
Will there be a fight over whether the cryptos have a place in the market? No doubt, both Stipe and Steam have stopped accepting Bitcoin. Yet both Russia and China are investigating setting up their own state-backed cryptocurrencies.
Or maybe it is just a case of “those darn Millennials and their i-whatits!”