Category: #BIS

What is Bretton Woods ?!?

Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, where the 1944 postwar U.N. Monetary and Financial Conference established an international commercial and financial system.

The Bretton Woods Conference, formally known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, was the gathering of 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations at the Mount Washington Hotel, situated in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States (July 1–22, 1944) to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the conclusion of World War II.

Bretton Woods Conference
July 1 to 22, 1944

The conference was attended by experts noncommittally representing 44 states or governments, including the Soviet Union.

It drew up a project for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) to make long-term capital available to states urgently needing such foreign aid, and a project for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to finance short-term imbalances in international payments in order to stabilize exchange rates.

Although the conference recognized that exchange control and discriminatory tariffs would probably be necessary for some time after the war, it prescribed that such measures should be ended as soon as possible.

After governmental ratifications the IBRD was constituted late in 1945 and the IMF in 1946, to become operative, respectively, in the two following years.

This led to what was called the Bretton Woods system for international commercial and financial relations.

The Bretton Woods System

The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the United States, Canada, Western European countries, Australia, and Japan after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement.

The Bretton Woods system was the first example of a fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern monetary relations among independent states.

The Bretton Woods system required countries to guarantee convertibility of their currencies into U.S. dollar, with the dollar convertible to gold bullion for foreign governments and central banks at US$35 per troy ounce of fine gold (or 0.88867 gram fine gold per dollar).

It also envisioned greater cooperation among countries in order to prevent future competitive devaluations, and thus established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to monitor exchange rates and lend reserve currencies to nations with balance of payments deficits.

The Price of Gold, as denominated in dollars, was steady until the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the mid-1970s.

The delegates deliberated from 1 to 22 July 1944, and signed the Bretton Woods agreement on its final day. Setting up a system of rules, institutions, and procedures to regulate the international monetary system, these accords established the IMF and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which today is part of the World Bank Group.

The United States, which controlled two-thirds of the world’s gold, insisted that the Bretton Woods system rest on both gold and the US dollar.

Soviet representatives attended the conference but later declined to ratify the final agreements, charging that the institutions they had created were “branches of Wall Street”.

These organizations became operational in 1945 after a sufficient number of countries had ratified the agreement. According to Barry Eichengreen, the Bretton Woods system operated successfully due to three factors: “low international capital mobility, tight financial regulation, and the dominant economic and financial position of the United States and the dollar.”

On 15 August 1971, the United States terminated convertibility of the US dollar to gold, effectively bringing the Bretton Woods system to an end and rendering the dollar a Fiat currency.

Shortly thereafter, many fixed currencies (such as the pound sterling) also became free-floating, and the subsequent era has been characterized by floating exchange rates.

The end of Bretton Woods was formally ratified by the Jamaica Accords in 1976.

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/
https://www.investopedia.com/
https://www.wikipedia.com/
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Executive Order 6102

History Lessons,
never to be forgotten!¡

Executive Order 6102 is an executive order signed on April 5, 1933, by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt “forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States.”

The executive order was made under the authority of the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, as amended by the Emergency Banking Act in March 1933.

Summary

  • Forbade ownership of quantities of gold coin, bullion, and gold certificates worth in excess of $100 (about 5 troy ounces), with exemptions for specific uses and collections;
  • Required all persons to deliver excess quantities of the above on or before May 1, 1933 in exchange for $20.67 per troy ounce;
  • Enabled Federal funding of Exchange Stabilization Fund using profit realized from international transactions against new Federal reserves.

The limitation on gold ownership in the United States was repealed after President Gerald Ford signed a bill legalizing private ownership of gold coins, bars, and certificates by an Act of Congress, codified in Pub.L.93–373,which went into effect December 31, 1974.

The stated reason for the order was that hard times had caused “hoarding” of gold, stalling economic growth and worsening the depression as the US was then using the gold standard for its currency

On April 6, 1933, The New York Times wrote, under the headline Hoarding of Gold, “The Executive Order issued by the President yesterday amplifies and particularizes his earlier warnings against hoarding.

On March 6, taking advantage of a wartime statute that had not been repealed, he issued Presidential Proclamation 2039 that forbade the hoarding ‘of gold or silver coin or bullion or currency’, under penalty of $10,000 and/or up to five to ten years imprisonment.”

The main rationale behind the order was actually to remove the constraint on the Federal Reserve preventing it from increasing the money supply during the depression.

The Federal Reserve Act (1913) required 40% gold backing of Federal Reserve Notes that were issued. By the late 1920s, the Federal Reserve had almost reached the limit of allowable credit, in the form of Federal Reserve demand notes, which could be backed by the gold in its possession.

Source:
https://wikipedia.com/

Welcome…

To the rabbit hole…

Why this crazyness with rabbits ?!? And their holes, you would ask ?!? Why is the rabbit hole so deep ?¿

And what does the rabbit hole has to do with that BitCorn thing  I keep hearing about all over the place ?¿

I like to start from the begining, as I think so I am 😋😂

Rabbit Hole is a play written by David Lindsay-Abaire. It was the recipient of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play premiered on Broadway in 2006, and it has also been produced by regional theatres in cities such as Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The play had its Spanish language premiere in San Juan, Puerto Rico in Autumn of 2010.

The play deals with the ways family members survive a major loss, and includes comedy as well as tragedy. Cynthia Nixon won the 2006 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for her performance as Becca in the New York production, and the play was nominated for several other Tony awards.

Rabbit Hole

A situation, journey, or process that is particularly strange, problematic, difficult, complex, or chaotic, especially one that becomes increasingly so as it develops or unfolds.

An allusion to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll, it is used especially in the phrase “(go) down the rabbit hole.”

Overhauling the current tax legislation is a rabbit hole I don’t think this administration should go down at this point.I’ve stayed away from drugs and alcohol since coming to college. I have an addictive personality, so I decided to just avoid that rabbit hole altogether.

What does rabbit hole mean?

Used especially in the phrase going down the rabbit hole or falling down the rabbit hole, a rabbit hole is a metaphor for something that transports someone into a wonderfully (or troublingly) surreal state or situation.

On the internet, a rabbit hole frequently refers to an extremely engrossing and time-consuming topic.

Where does rabbit hole come from?

Alice falling down a hole with a jar in hand
Alice’s Adventures in WonderLand

Literally, a rabbit hole is what the animal digs for its home. The earliest written record of the phrase dates back to the 17th century. But the figurative rabbit hole begins with Lewis Carroll’s 1865 classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

In its opening chapter, “Down the Rabbit-Hole,” Alice follows the White Rabbit into his burrow, which transports her to the strange, surreal, and nonsensical world of Wonderland.

Since then, Carroll’s rabbit hole has proved a popular and useful reference. The Oxford English Dictionary finds the first allusive rabbit hole in a 1938 edition of The Yale Law Journal: “It is the Rabbit-Hole down which we fell into the Law, and to him who has gone down it, no queer performance is strange.”

Over much of the 20th century, rabbit hole has been used to characterize bizarre and irrational experiences. It’s especially used to reference magical, challenging, and even dangerous places or positions, similar to Carroll’s topsy-turvy Wonderland.

Rabbit hole has many metaphorical applications—from frustrating red tape to the mind-bending complexity of science to hallucinations during altered states—all united by a common sense of passing into some labyrinthine, logic-defying realm that, once entered, is hard to get out of.

One can fall down the rabbit hole of government bureaucracy, healthcare, obtaining a green card, tax law, the political economy of modern Japan, puberty, college admissions, or quantum mechanics.

If you’re Neo in the hit film The Matrix, you can take the red pill—a pill that shows you the truth, as opposed to the blue pill, which keeps you in ignorance—and “see how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

In a related note, some people literally take pills and go down the rabbit hole of a psychedelic drug trip.

But as Kathryn Schulz observed for The New Yorker in 2015, rabbit hole has further evolved in the information age: “These days…when we say that we fell down the rabbit hole, we seldom mean that we wound up somewhere psychedelically strange. We mean that we got interested in something to the point of distraction—usually by accident, and usually to a degree that the subject in question might not seem to merit.”

Thanks to the abundance, variety, and instant access of content online, many fall down internet rabbit holes which are often spectacularly, and addictively, niche: scary stories, obscure conspiracy theories, or famous last meals, for instance.

Other rabbit holes tend to be opened up by specific services or social media, which serve users item after item, link after link: Wikipedia, Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, and so forth.

These rabbit holes have become so common that people sometimes swap out rabbit for the name of the particular site, e.g. “I’ve fallen down an Instragram hole” or “I’m falling down a wikihole.”

Who uses rabbit hole?

From formal documents to internet status updates, rabbit hole is a very popular and widespread expression. Unlike earlier iterations of the metaphor, internet rabbit holes convey less a sense of weirdness, disorientation, or difficulty than they do of an intensely captivating diversion.

Rabbit hole is also showing increasing use as a modifier, e.g. a rabbit-hole question or phenomenon.

Now… that we have a basic and broader understanding about this Hole and it’s rabbit that digged it 😋😂

Let me show you a journey that I took to get to know, understand, admire, be amazed and support the BitCorn everybody is so crazy about …

Bitcoin Glossary

Block

Blocks are found in the Bitcoin blockchain. Blocks connect all transactions together. Transactions are combined into single blocks and are verified every ten minutes through mining. Each subsequent block strengthens the verification of the previous blocks, making it impossible to double spend bitcoin transactions (see double spend below).

BIP

Bitcoin Improvement Proposal or BIP, is a technical design document providing information to the bitcoin community, or describing a new feature for bitcoin or its processes or environment which affect the Bitcoin protocol. New features, suggestions, and design changes to the protocol should be submitted as a BIP. The BIP author is responsible for building consensus within the community and documenting dissenting opinions.

Blockchain

The Bitcoin blockchain is a public record of all Bitcoin transactions. You might also hear the term used as a “public ledger.” The blockchain shows every single record of bitcoin transactions in order, dating back to the very first one. The entire blockchain can be downloaded and openly reviewed by anyone, or you can use a block explorer to review the blockchain online.

Block Height

The block height is just the number of blocks connected together in the block chain. Height 0 for example refers to the very first block, called the “genesis block.”

Block Reward

When a block is successfully mined on the bitcoin network, there is a block reward that helps incentivize miners to secure the network. The block reward is part of a “coinbase” transaction which may also include transaction fees. The block rewards halves roughly every four years; see also “halving.”

Change

Let’s say you are spending $1.90 in your local supermarket, and you give the cashier $2.00. You will get back .10 cents in change. The same logic applies to bitcoin transactions. Bitcoin transactions are made up of inputs and outputs. When you send bitcoins, you can only send them in a whole “output.” The change is then sent back to the sender.

Cold Storage

The term cold storage is a general term for different ways of securing your bitcoins offline (disconnected from the internet). This would be the opposite of a hot wallet or hosted wallet, which is connected to the web for day-to-day transactions. The purpose of using cold storage is to minimize the chances of your bitcoins being stolen from a malicious hacker and is commonly used for larger sums of bitcoins.

Confirmation

A confirmation means that the bitcoin transaction has been verified by the network, through the process known as mining. Once a transaction is confirmed, it cannot be reversed or double spent. Transactions are included in blocks.

Cryptography

Cryptography is used in multiple places to provide security for the Bitcoin network. Cryptography, which is essentially mathematical and computer science algorithms used to encrypt and decrypt information, is used in bitcoin addresses, hash functions, and the blockchain.

Decentralized

Having a decentralized bitcoin network is a critical aspect. The network is “decentralized,” meaning that it’s void of a centralized company or entity that governs the network. Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer protocol, where all users within the network work and communicate directly with each other, instead of having their funds handled by a middleman, such as a bank or credit card company.

Difficulty

Difficulty is directly related to Bitcoin mining (see mining below), and how hard it is to verify blocks in the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin adjusts the mining difficulty of verifying blocks every 2016 blocks. Difficulty is automatically adjusted to keep block verification times at ten minutes.

Double Spend

If someone tries to send a bitcoin transaction to two different recipients at the same time, this is double spending. Once a bitcoin transaction is confirmed, it makes it nearly impossible to double spend it. The more confirmations that a transaction has, the harder it is to double spend the bitcoins.

Full Node

A full node is when you download the entire blockchain using a bitcoin client, and you relay, validate, and secure the data within the blockchain. The data is bitcoin transactions and blocks, which is validated across the entire network of users.

Halving

Bitcoins have a finite supply, which makes them scarce. The total amount that will ever be issued is 21 million. The number of bitcoins generated per block is decreased 50% every four years. This is called “halving.” The final halving will take place in the year 2140.

Hash Rate

The hash rate is how the Bitcoin mining network processing power is measured. In order for miners to confirm transactions and secure the blockchain, the hardware they use must perform intensive computational operations which is output in hashes per second.

Hash (txid)

A transaction hash (sometimes referred to as a transaction ID or txid) is a unique identifier that can be used on any block explorer to look up all of the public details of a particular transaction. Every on-chain transaction has a unique hash made up of a long string of alphanumeric characters.

Mining

Bitcoin mining is the process of using computer hardware to do mathematical calculations for the Bitcoin network in order to confirm transactions. Miners collect transaction fees for the transactions they confirm and are awarded bitcoins for each block they verify.

Pool

As part of bitcoin mining, mining “pools” are a network of miners that work together to mine a block, then split the block reward among the pool miners. Mining pools are a good way for miners to combine their resources to increase the probability of mining a block, and also contribute to the overall health and decentralization of the bitcoin network.

Private Key

A private key is a string of data that shows you have access to bitcoins in a specific wallet. Think of a private key like a password; private keys must never be revealed to anyone but you, as they allow you to spend the bitcoins from your bitcoin wallet through a cryptographic signature.

Proof of Work

Proof of work refers to the hash of a block header (blocks of bitcoin transactions). A block is considered valid only if its hash is lower than the current target. Each block refers to a previous block adding to previous proofs of work, which forms a chain of blocks, known as a blockchain. Once a chain is formed, it confirms all previous Bitcoin transactions and secures the network.

Public Address

A public bitcoin address is cryptographic hash of a public key. A public address typically starts with the number “1.” Think of a public address like an email address. It can be published anywhere and bitcoins can be sent to it, just like an email can be sent to an email address.

RBF

RBF stands for Replace By Fee, and refers to a method that allows a sender to replace a “stuck” or unconfirmed transaction with a new one that uses a higher fee. This is done to make sure a transaction confirms as quickly as possible. The “replacement” transaction uses the same inputs as the original one. This is not considered a double spend, as the receiving address(es) typically remain the same.

Satoshi Nakamoto

Bitcoin’s existence began with an academic paper written in 2008 by a developer under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi is the name used as the original inventor of Bitcoin.

Transaction

A transaction is when data is sent to and from one bitcoin address to another. Just like financial transactions where you send money from one person to another, in bitcoin you do the same thing by sending data (bitcoins) to each other. Bitcoins have value because it’s based on the properties of mathematics, rather than relying on physical properties (like gold and silver) or trust in central authorities, like fiat currencies. 

Wallet

Just like with paper dollars you hold in your physical wallet, a bitcoin wallet is a digital wallet where you can store, send, and receive bitcoins securely. There are many varieties of wallets available, whether you’re looking for a web or mobile solution. Ideally, a bitcoin wallet will give you access to your public and private keys. This means that only you have rightful access to spend these bitcoins, whenever you choose to.

Sources:

https://dictionary.com/

https://wikipedia.com/

https://blockchain.com/

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Beware of CBDC’s People !!!

CBDC Research & Pilots around the world
StableCoins vs. CBDC’s

The Potential Orwellian Horror of Central Bank Digital Currencies

As citizens around the world are confronted with the severe curtailment of political, economic and cultural freedoms associated with COVID-19 risk mitigation strategies (e.g., lockdowns, mandatory vaccinations and/or vaccine passports), new risks to economic freedom and prosperity are quickly emerging which citizens must be aware of and remain vigilant about.

One of these risks which is developing with rapid pace are Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). According to a Bank of International Settlements (BIS) 2021 survey:

  • 86% of central banks are actively researching the potential for CBDCs;
  • 60% were experimenting with CBDC associated technology; and
  • 14% were deploying CBDC pilot projects.

The development of CBDCs potentially represents one of the largest changes to modern banking and finance (as well as the global financial system) in decades, even though, as noted by the BIS, the concept was proposed by American economist, James Tobin, in 1987.

Current Structure of Currency

As noted by the International Monetary Fund in 2021, economies around the world currently operate under a “dual monetary system” comprising of:

  • Publicly-issued currency by central banks in the form of physical cash (coins or banknotes) and central bank reserves which constitute legal tender (i.e., form of currency or money which are legally recognised as a means of payment to settle financial obligations such as debts, taxes, contracts, legal fines or damages); and
  • Privately-issued currency by private commercial banks, telecom companies and specialised private payment providers – that is, digital forms of legal tender that are issued and held by non-government financial institutions (e.g., bank deposits or balances held in payment systems such as Paypal or Alipay).

An important distinction of this dual system is that physical cash and central bank reserves are the liabilities of central banks, whereas privately-issued currency is the liabilities of private sector payment providers.

Definition of CBDCs

CBDCs are digital or virtual forms of physical cash represented through an electronic record or digital token that is issued and regulated by a country’s central monetary authority (i.e., its central bank) via a centralised ledger.

CBDCs are centralised, which stand in stark contrast to privately-issued cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin) which are decentralised and unregulated.

CBDCs are not uniform and central banks have an immense range of legal, technical, operational and administrative design options to achieve their stated public policy objectives. Importantly, the policy intent of CBDCs will be neither uniform across jurisdictions nor static in time. Instead, they will tend to be a function of a country’s economic, political and social context.

Thus, in assessing whether a proposed CBDC will, in net terms, improve or impair the function of a monetary system and broader economy, each CBDC will require individualised scrutiny and assessment.

NatWest, one of Britain’s largest lenders, is set to appear in court in London to respond to charges that it failed to properly scrutinise a gold-dealing client that deposited £365m ($502m) with the bank—£264m of it in cash.

Last year global banks were hit with $10.4bn in fines for money-laundering violations, an increase of more than 80% on 2019, according to Fenergo, a compliance-software firm. In January Capital One, an American bank, was fined $390m for failing to report thousands of fishy transactions. Danske Bank is still dealing with the fallout of a scandal that erupted in 2018. Over $200bn of potentially dirty money was washed through the Danish lender’s Estonian branch while executives missed or ignored a sea of red flags.

Digital privacy – including financial privacy – is readily available via encrypted communication, and peer-to-peer value transfer solutions. However, the latter quality can scarcely be expected to be implemented in CBDCs by governments eager to control their population.

The continued efforts of central banks to position CBDCs as advancement from analog systems via labels such as ‘Digital Dollar’, requires us to point out the obvious: fiat currencies have been predominantly digitally native for decades, and are stored and moved as bytes. A meaningful departure from the current state of banking technology would necessarily have to include the creation of digital bearer instruments which would not depend on the use of middlemen.

However, this would effectively void the need for demand deposit accounts (“checking accounts”) entirely, as the technical limits of bytes are based in physics. In simple terms: any user would be able to move bytes labelled as fiat currency entry from a yield-bearing state to the recipients yield-bearing account.

With that the ability of financial service providers to extract fees from the movement of bytes would vanish, after all users tend to not put stamps on their emails. This, somewhat obvious conclusion, even made it into several CBDC research papers, and promptly caused the commissioning central banks to halt any development of a CBDC, realizing that fees for payments today comprise on average 30% of commercial bank revenues, these institutions would largely seize to exist.

DO NOT LISTEN for anyone’s opinion on this matter !!!

Opinions are a dime a bucket anyway !!!

Not even mine !!!

DO ALWAYS YOUR OWN DILIGENCE AND RESEARCH !!!

And when the time will come… You shall know the best choice to make for you and future generations to come !!!

It’s actually more about them than us !!!

But we will pave the way for them…

Let’s not make it and Dystopical Orwellian one people !!!

IMHO (In My Honest Opinion) CBDC’s are nothing more than “1984” v 2.0 !!!

But who am I ?¿ but just a leaf in the wind…

Here below are some links that could be a great place to start making your own Research and due diligence !!!

Sharing is caring they say, so here you are people :

https://hackernoon.com/cbdcs-the-folly-of-digital-fiat

https://cointelegraph.com/news/central-bank-digital-currencies-are-dead-in-the-water

https://www.adamseconomics.com/post/the-potential-orwellian-horror-of-central-bank-digital-currencies

https://news.bitcoin.com/why-the-rise-of-the-cbdc-is-bad-for-your-privacy/

https://restoreprivacy.com/cbdc-central-bank-digital-currency-privacy-implications/

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/england-cbdc-propel-bitcoin

https://hackernoon.com/the-problem-that-is-government-money-bn443tts

https://blog.aryze.io/cbdcs-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

https://www.bis.org/publ/work880.htm

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/04/12/the-war-against-money-laundering-is-being-lost

To be always Updated !!!

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