There was no greater surprise in 2021 than Tesla announcing they bought $1.5 billion bitcoin.

Until then, Elon Musk was this other figure in other spaces, especially in space itself. Our paths had crossed, he was spammed about ‘etherium’ as he initially called it by Twitter bots, but he was not a cryptonian.

When he became one, it also eventually became difficult to balance the support of the world’s richest man for crypto, with his big megaphone and his willingness to opine without necessarily considering just how it might come across.

‘I’m new here and I’m here to fix bitcoin,’ was one of the regurgitated meme by some coders when Musk suggested that bitcoin could be changed in this way or that way.

Then Tesla stopped accepting bitcoin, just two months after it began accepting it. They were “concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions.”

Ouch, that did hurt. It crashed the price, after pumping it, and in the meantime Musk had gone from this model entrepreneur driving forward other industries – a clear ally if there ever was one. To our crypto boy. To… well, he was under pressure by alt-leftish loud environmental based criticisms for Tesla accepting bitcoin.

Gradually however he went on to actually dis bitcoin in matters unrelated to the environment to the point bitcoin maxis and Musk were publicly fighting, and crashing the price. To the point he said:

“Bitcoin is actually highly centralized, with supermajority controlled by handful of big mining (aka hashing) companies. A single coal mine in Xinjiang flooded, almost killing miners, and Bitcoin hash rate dropped 35%. Sound ‘decentralized’ to you?”

We wondered at the time what were his motives, and even speculated:

“If anyone has benefited from the way things are it of course has to be the richest man because he obviously won and thus has a clear stake in fiat printing. Unconsciously or consciously therefore, in that position, disrupting the would be disrupters would make sense.

Yet without some concrete evidence it wouldn’t be easy to jump to such conclusion, but it would be easy to paint a picture of Musk trying to destroy the institutional investors and corporate bitcoin treasuries narrative because whether he knows it or not, that is what he has attempted.”

Tesla did later sell some bitcoin, but not at the time, and some cryptonians suggested ulterior motives were highly unlikely.

Musk got bored of bitcoin anyway. He became the Dogecoin CEO or TechnoKing or whatever meme, and so the yellow currency mooned and mooned, crashed and mooned, crashed and crashed, mooned, then we had all these Dogecoin copies like Shiba Inu which also mooned on Musk tweets, with it all great fun until Anonymous had enough.

In a widely watched video, Anonymous accused Tesla of buying the bitcoin with government subsidies, among many other things.

“Don’t kill what you hate, save what you love,” Musk said at the time, with it closing the episode as Musk kind of stopped crash tweeting, went to some crypto conferences which helped change the narrative back to crypto boy, bitcoin mooned again and Musk kind of moved on to other things.

Starlink

Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, when there was that whole debate over he will or won’t, we suggested that if he does there would be protests in every city, the internet would galvanize, Musk would rush Starlinks, etc, etc.

We were right. The Berlin protest at the time was the one that took even us aback with 100,000 showing up.

Musk did rush the starlinks. Crypto boys donated and bought tractor NFTs. Great ‘fun’ in a very serious matter.

And Musk was, not necessarily a hero but our boy in regards to Ukraine. We got this cool tech, Musk is part of the team, we even winning. Then he goes off and seemingly parrots Putin with a ‘peace’ offer.

Fine, why is he talking to Putin though if he is, as it is still allegedly, but he did say when asked if he is talking to other parties involved in the war: “Quite a few. Trying to do the right thing, which is not always clear.”

Well, the right of a democratic nation to stay free and democratic is very clear, but anyway, whatever, we can be nice and put it down to his ‘etherium’ moment, or ‘I’m here to fix bitcoin,’ except he did go on to say some other things and then there were reports he was denying some starlink services to Ukraine in the occupied Ukrainian territories. Now:

“Documents obtained by CNN show that last month Musk’s SpaceX sent a letter to the Pentagon saying it can no longer continue to fund the Starlink service as it has.

The letter also requested that the Pentagon take over funding for Ukraine’s government and military use of Starlink, which SpaceX claims would cost more than $120 million for the rest of the year and could cost close to $400 million for the next 12 months.”

In reply to Jason Jay Smart, a Special Correspondent at the KyivPost, who said the stoping of this donation “comes days after Ukrainian Ambassador Melnyk Andrij told Musk to ‘fuck off,’” or rather rejected the ‘peace’ offer in that way, Musk said:

“We’re just following his recommendation.”

But, the letter to the Pentagon was sent last month, not last week when he sparked controversy.

So, this is about money, and this is his way of negotiating the money? The world’s richest man controversies war and peace over $100 million dollars when his networth is $215 billion?

And with that focus he doesn’t even care to Bitcoin Maxis v Musk, but with Ukraine?

It would be better than some sudden Putin fanboy transformation though, although maybe he thinks his way out of paying that donation is to give Putin whatever he wants. To sell out the sovereignty and democracy of millions, not to mention risk future wars all the way to Berlin as that’s where Putin wanted Nato to roll back, for some dum pennies.

The timing is also not great, just as Ukraine is winning, but it is unlikely to change much on the ground as these are of course very serious matters. Serious enough arguably to even one off tax Musk specifically through some emergency decree if he does anything that in any way endangers Ukrainian life.

Not least because Starlink currently is a monopoly, and thus the usual rules of capitalism do not apply, as only Starlink can currently provide this service.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon, the second richest man, is launching Project Kuiper. They say:

“Our first two satellites—Kuipersat-1 and Kuipersat-2—will be completed later this year, and we are now planning to deploy both satellites on the first flight of United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) new Vulcan Centaur rocket in early 2023.”

So not quite available currently. There’s also the European Eutelsat and OneWeb, which are merging, but they’re smaller.

The Ukrainian Army in addition are used to Starlink, and so this can even become a question of: to what extent the US government can order Musk in this matter, including potentially even under threat of prison?

You’d think to the full extent if it was absolutely necessary, but this may also more widely open a debate in regards to subsidies and whether they have been sufficiently diversified.

In regards to buying Twitter and taking it private, now the government might have to block such bid, because it may give Musk far too much power which he has shown to not be too careful in using.

However, he has claimed he has Aspergers, described as “a form of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Young people with Asperger’s Syndrome have a difficult time relating to others socially and their behavior and thinking patterns can be rigid and repetitive.”

Rigid and repetitive, which may explain his combative side in making the situation even worse by criticizing more clearly, instead of being a bit diplomatic.

Ukraine perhaps should bear that in mind, but one way to address that is to bring Musk down from his horse, a bit like anonymous did so that some of the idolization veneer comes off.

Ukraine however is obviously very busy. There has been an information blackout for more than a week now, and it is perhaps a bit surprising just how disciplined the soldiers appear to be in abiding by it, but we have gotten sort of livestreams of the battle fronts, although in clips.

These are just some of the footages of the frontline, bringing the war effectively live. Musk should watch some of them and understand just how serious the matter is.

Which he might not, as an autist, but if it’s just about pennies then it’s not clear why he would make it a public issue as the public can well say that maybe he should be paid through the withdrawal of some of the subsidies.

The public hopefully has also gotten a better understanding that this may also just be a bit Musk’s nature.

He seems to love the spotlight and more importantly he seems to put his own business first, with everything else done to advance it. If it means dissing bitcoin to protect Tesla, that’s what you get. Dissing Ukraine for some pennies, all green.

That it might rile up people? Well, maybe that’s a bonus or he isn’t able to quite see it until consequences, which is obviously how we all learn how to relate to others socially.

Hopefully however he can move very quickly from Ukraine to find whatever other thing to grab attention, to then just ditch it soon after, because there won’t be much patience when it comes to Ukraine and in war and peace matters, the government has even absolute power and authority.

The good news though is that the Lions of Ukraine do not seem to be affected by any of this or by playgrounds. Kherson is being evacuated. There’s some suggestions the Ukrainian Army is just 12 miles from the city. Some probably widely optimistic estimates are that the city could even be liberated within a week, while Ukraine aims to do so by Christmas.

The best of luck to them, and a thanks will be due in due course, to both the lions and god, for saving liberty in our day.

A poem, our very own. Short, but we like. It’s called the Lions of Ukraine:

Let the drums beat hard,
in fields so wide,
for the lions come
to claim their land,
with humvees and maxim guns,
British Ms and Merican hmm.

Let the drums beat hard,
in fields so wide,
for lions come,
to claim our land
as the world one shouts:
Slava Ukraini! [montage, from Boris Johnson in parliament to some smiling person carrying water in some village].

And then repeat refrain with higher and higher tone to the beat of drums:

(refrain) beat the drums so hard,
in filds awide,
lions come,
to take our land.

Doge, the beloved symbol of Dogecoin that took the heart of even the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, now leads the charge in the digital defense of Ukraine as the propaganda war intensifies amid troop movements on the ground.

“My personal salute to NAFO fellas. I’d like to thank each person behind Shiba Inu cartoon,” said Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s Minister of Defence. “NAFO expansion is non-negotiatiable!”

The advance of the Ukrainian army towards Kherson is currently non-negotiable either. They’ve taken some villages, with suggestions they’ve crossed the Inhulets River in the past 24 hours.

“Several prominent Russian military bloggers amplified claims that Ukrainian forces broke through Russian defensive lines in Ternivka (16km northeast of Snihurivka), crossed the Inhulets River, and took control of Blahodativka,” the Institute for the Study of War said.

They’re also taking up defensive positions in Myrne and Lyubomirivka, just east of Posad Pokrovske which is about 20 miles northwest of Kherson city.

Suggestions are this will be a slow grind however, no blitzkrieg, though with a lot of fireworks so far. They want to surround and destroy the Russian troops stuck in the city, while not destroying the city itself.

This shift in fortune has seemingly led to an increase in Russian propaganda, which has accused Annalena Baerbock, the German Foreign Minister, of putting Ukraine first, ahead of Germany.

Ignoring the fact Ukraine may well be the first defense between a Russian imperialist expansionist army and its march to Berlin, Germany has just announced a €65 billion package to shelter its citizens from the now seemingly falling gas prices.

Natural gas dropped below $9 on Friday, raising hopes we may have seen a double top as the demand side now seemingly forms a cartel as well to in part counter the OPEC+ cartel, which includes Russia, by deciding they too can and will fix prices through putting a cap, though on just Russian oil and gas.

In addition, China’s gas demand has fallen by 25% over last year as their economy sees its biggest slowdown since data began in the 90s when communism fell.

Even China therefore is now selling liquified gas to Europe according to Chinese media. As such, the European gas market might even be flooded, with that mythical proper gas prices crash maybe even coming at some point as current prices are far too artificially high.

In any event, Europe is rich enough to shelter the poor and the elderly, with the choice here not between the economy and Ukraine, but between war and peace where there is no choice since Russia has decided war.

Yet an estimated 70,000 Czechs took to the square in the Czech Republic, protesting agains the EU and Nato, asking for ‘neutrality.’

Neutrality for Czechia would of course mean being invaded by Germany, at some point and eventually, since that is what happened when there was no EU, and since if buffer games are to be played, they will be played in both directions.

Best such games stop in Ukraine, with the Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala stating of the protesters:

“The protest on Wenceslas Square was called by forces that are pro-Russian, are close to extreme positions and are against the interests of the Czech Republic.”

In UK, the allegedly pro-Putin RMT trade union started off the recent round of strikes by getting their train drives off work even though they earn twice UK’s median wage and even though they were offered a 7% pay rise.

They may have benefited from a political vacuum with the new British Prime Minister to be announced tomorrow, but this propaganda win in the Czech republic does raise questions about what their government is doing, especially if any of these groups have been found to have been financed by Russia, which with a war going on may well amount to outright treason.

The dogecoining fellas deal with more lighthearted matters instead, though still very serious, but they don’t focus on political attacks within Russia, as Russia clearly does in Europe especially with its political attacks on Baerbock, particularly during the election.

Such propaganda may increase further as Ukraine advances. Europe has to stay strong, or the fools will succeed in starting off another buffer game that can only end in hell.

The joke currency is apparently not a joke at all according to Peter Todd, a bitcoin developer, who has suggested that bitcoin should follow the Dogecoin approach of endless inflation with no more halvings.

In a statement to the bitcoin developers mailing list, Todd proposed the implementation in bitcoin of an infinite fixed block reward.

“A fixed block reward does not lead to an abundant supply. In fact, due to the inevitability of lost coins, a fixed reward converges to a stable monetary supply that is neither inflationary nor deflationary, with the total supply proportional to rate of tail emission and probability of coin loss,” he said.

Bitcoin currently has a four year halving cycle where the block reward drops by 50% until eventually the protocol no longer gives any bitcoin to miners.

Miners instead will have to rely on network fees, but according to Todd that doesn’t work:

“The historical reality of transaction fees is they’ve had huge swings, about 10x more volatile than total miner revenue. In the past three years they’ve ranged from $8.4 million USD/30-day-average to as little as $140k/30-day-avg, with the current amount being $370k/30-day-avg. That’s a 60x difference.

Meanwhile miner revenue has ranged from $60 million/30-day-avg to $9 million/30-day-avg, a 7x difference.

We want mining to be is a boring, predictable, business that anyone can do, with as little reward as possible to larger scale miners. That’s what you need for maximal decentralization…

Fee revenue is obviously doing a much worse job of achieving that goal than subsidy revenue.”

The proposal was criticized on two fronts. First, on practical grounds, a number of devs pointed out that you can’t quite know the rate of lost coins, therefore you can’t set an inflation rate that would replace those coins to keep a fixed limit of 21 million bitcoin.

But “tail emission will asymptotically decrease the rate of inflation to zero, at which point the increase in coin exactly matches the amount of coin lost. The rate at which coin are lost is irrelevant,” Zac Greenwood says.

Which means bitcoin would effectively become dogecoin where a fixed amount is added to the supply every year, but at some point the total supply has increased so much that the new fixed amount nears 0% of the total supply. In effect, a mass devaluation of bitcoin.

The second criticism of the proposal was by ZmnSCPxj (an anon dev?) and we’ll present it at length:

“The reason to object to perpetual issuance is the impact on censorship resistance, not on price.

* Suppose I have two blockchains, one with a constant block subsidy, and one which *had* a block subsidy but the block subsidy has become negligible or zero.
* Now consider a censoring miner.
* If the miner rejects particular transactions (i.e. “censors”) the miner loses out on the fees of those transactions.
* Presumably, the miner does this because it gains other benefits from the censorship, economically equal or better to the earnings lost.
* If the blockchain had a block subsidy, then the loss the miner incurs is small relative to the total earnings of each block.
* If the blockchain had 0 block subsidy, then the loss the miner incurs is large relative to the total earnings of each block.
* Thus, in the latter situation, the external benefit the miner gains from the censorship has to be proportionately larger than in the first situation.

Basically, the block subsidy is a market distortion: the block subsidy erodes the value of held coins to pay for the security of coins being moved.

But the block subsidy is still issued whether or not coins being moved are censored or not censored.

Thus, there is no incentive, considering *only* the block subsidy, to not censor coin movements.

Only per-transaction fees have an incentive to not censor coin movements.

Thus, we should instead prepare for a future where the block subsidy *must* be removed, possibly before the existing schedule removes it, in case a majority coalition of miner ever decides to censor particular transactions without community consensus.

Fortunately forcing the block subsidy to 0 is a softfork and thus easier to deploy.”

Bram Cohen, another dev that hardly codes for bitcoin with his github bare too, also argued that “relying completely on transaction fees for security is likely to be a disaster.”

A Social Attack on the Fixed Limit?

Todd and Cohen were some of the biggest proponents of maintaining bitcoin’s capacity at 1MB per ten minutes, worse than dialup.

They argued that this 1MB data limit on bitcoin blocks was necessary in part to increase network fees so that bitcoin miners would no longer need any block reward or subsidy, instead the network can be secured from transaction fees.

If you increase the 1MB limit, you’ll have to increase the 21 million coins limit too, they said, even though the other side argued that many transactions with low fees amounts to a few transactions with high fees, but in a more stable way.

It now appears the small blockers were projecting as they intended to increase the fixed supply, to remove the one key differentiator that bitcoin has not just with all other cryptos, but also all assets known to man.

It is that fixed limit, and the way it was implemented with Nakamoto leaving the project which increased expectations and confidence that it won’t be changed, which arguable saved bitcoin from being flipped by eth.

Eth had, and still does have, twice the inflation rate of bitcoin. It got close to taking first position therefore, but eth could not – and arguably no crypto can quite replicate – the moulding of bitcoin’s fixed limit.

That has given bitcoin staying power, and it is arguably the chief reason why the world considers it to be a fascinating asset, with this singular quality destroying the one legitimate criticism of bitcoin.

It was said early on that bitcoin has no value because you can just copy paste it and launch butcoin. You can not however replicate, at least very easily, the confidence level in the fixed supply remaining fixed, not least because you’ll always be behind bitcoin in the test of time.

On the other hand, Todd says it’s just 0.5%, what’s the problem. He’d be fine with 0.1% as well, maybe even with 0.01%. Anything that removes the word ‘the fixed limit’ for the banks consultant.

But the question then becomes why bitcoin and not dogecoin, a question that may well be existential for bitcoin holders.

Can They Succeed?

The bitcoin community has changed significantly since the blocksize debate of 2015-17. Those that would have opposed Todd and could have used the opportunity to turn the matter into a blocksize debate 2.0, have left, to BCH some and more to Eth.

Those that would have opposed it on the ground of it being a hardfork have now gotten too rich to care, and their chief Mircea Popescu passed away last summer.

There probably won’t quite be a debate therefore, not a public one anyway of the blocksize scale, because there isn’t quite anyone to debate the matter with.

Instead, big blockers will watch with glee and those that went to eth will shut up to see if bitcoiners trip and they get a flip.

Cathie Wood of Ark Invest would instinctively object you’d think. She’s not a techie, so maybe she can be bamboozled by Todd’s favorite saying: “I  want a unicorn too, but can’t have it.”

But, she is not a bitcoin maxi either as far as we are aware. She will wonder without the fixed limit, what does bitcoin offer over eth?

Michael Saylor is a bitcoin maxi of sorts, though not outspoken, and so presumably he’ll go with the flow, but is removing the fixed limit a bit too much for him?

Elon Musk will jump of joy. ‘I was right all the way,’ he’ll say. ‘Dogecoin is the best crypto, and even bitcoin is dogcoining now.’

Then, if the matter goes to the point of an actual fork, it is not clear whether some exchanges won’t use the opportunity to sink bitcoin and crown eth by giving the two different chains the opposite ticker Bitfinex would give them.

The risks considerable, Todd himself may well be open to lawsuits with the judiciary hinting devs can be held liable if they carelessly implement something that causes significant losses.

On the latter, losses are not guaranteed, but it is a simple matter of supply and demand and supply here would increase by 1% a year according to Todd’s proposal.

The community decision making now therefore would be of a very different level than in 2016, and you can be sure even Janet Yellen would comment on it.

There would be the ETNs and ETPs and even ETFs deciding what chain to follow, the big investment houses, hedge funds, rich family offices, with sophisticated systems and huge personnel to be on constant contact with miners in addition to many miners now being accountable to shareholders.

Miners v Holders 2.0

The problem however is that miners would like very much this proposal. Todd himself is somewhat close to the co-founder of F2pool, Wang Chun. A pool that still has 25% of the global hashrate throughout all these years.

A guaranteed reward from the protocol would naturally make mining more profitable, and so this proposal may well be from miners themself, with Todd acting as just the talking head.

Their argument is simple. Fees are not enough to pay them because there isn’t enough network demand, and so holders should also pay them through inflation.

The first question there is why is there not enough network demand? And the answer is because these same miners limited the network to lower than dial up speeds. That was and remains a choice under the now admitted misguided belief that people would use the network no matter what and would pay the exorbitant fees.

They did do in eth, paying as much as $400, but very briefly. Although fees in eth did stay at or above $100 for a year because the network has so much utility.

In bitcoin, capacity can be increased through the implementation of pruning, a solution ready to go but remains unproposed.

Currently miners are earning about half a million dollars worth of 23 bitcoin a day through transaction fees. Is that enough?

In a simple comparison to $10 billion moving a day, it isn’t. But, miners can’t double spend someone else’s coins.

Let’s say you send $500k, and the miner is getting just $100. Why shouldn’t he just fork the block and take the 500k?

Because he can’t. The only thing a miner can do is make a confirmed block, unconfirmed. That’s for 1 block, maybe 2 if he/she really tried, perhaps even six blocks with huge planning and coordination. But, unless it is the miner himself sending the coins to say an exchange, he won’t be able to spend those coins again. Instead, he is just reverting the transaction so the coins go back to the sender.

Half a million a day, or $15 million a month, may well be enough therefore, especially during a bear market. But there’s the wider argument regarding a 51% attack if the cost of securing a $1 trillion coin is just $150 million a year.

That has the counterargument it always had: you can just fork off the miners and send it back to CPU mining if they try to attack the network.

Because bitcoin’s security has a social layer, and that may well be the most important one. The knowledge such an attack would be futile therefore makes such an attack unattempted.

So is half a million enough? It can be, especially without competition in Proof of Work mining now that eth is upgrading to Proof of Stake.

The mining scene would be far smaller however, but miners have plenty of time to address the capacity limit to allow for network demand to increase revenue through fees.

Because the risk they run is taking holders for granted as holding demand is currently far higher than network fees, but that can change if the reason such holding demand is high changes.

That’s especially considering eth has a mechanism where miners/stakers can be paid through circa 0.22% inflation, but that is removed through network fees being burned, making the network potentially deflationary during high network demand, and so placing network utility front and center.

Without a fixed limit, an inflationary bitcoin can not compete with this smart contracts ecosystem, certainly not in its current state. And therefore it would be extremely difficult to change the limit because it is difficult to see how holders can be persuaded to devalue their own asset to the point of it being close to completely uncompetitive.

But eth would flip so, whatever Todd, Dogecoin it!

 

In a birds eye view of crypto adoption across 27 countries, Finder reveals the dominant USA still has “the sixth-lowest rate of cryptocurrency ownership among all countries in our survey, with just 10.5% of Americans owning crypto.”

The crown instead goes to Vietnam, with 28.6% owning crypto. Somewhat surprisingly, India is in second place with 23.4%, followed by Australia at 22.9%.

If we extrapolate India’s numbers, this would give us more than 200 million crypto owners.

Previous surveys have suggested 100 million Indian crypto users, which we thought might be an optimistic estimate, but in recent months the growth in Indian crypto adoption has become more noticeable. And so it may well be they do actually have 100-200 million cryptonians.

Globally “the number of Internet users who say they own crypto jumped from 11.2% in October to 15.5% in December.”

That makes the current phase of adoption that of institutional investors, just coming out of early adopters to the early majority.

It is still early adopters until 15%, which is just about where we are currently, but things start changing at that point as we move towards more mainstream, with no IQ measure in this survey, but we’d expect it to start gradually falling.

An interesting measure they do bring up however is a potential correlation between attitudes towards crypto and the corruption perception index.

The more corrupt is a country, the more the people of that country look towards cryptos very favourably.

Nigerian adults are the most likely to say cryptocurrency is a good investment (87%), followed by Venezuelans (81%), Ghanians (78%), Kenyans (77%), and Filipinos (73%). 

Meanwhile Germans are the least enthusiastic (17%) followed by Swedes (18%), Norwegians (20%), Canadians and Japanese (24% each).

Can we deduce from this that the less developed your civil service, the more likely you are to think of bitcoin as a solution?

Probably, it makes logical sense as bitcoin fundamentally is free market money which competes with national fiat money. If the latter is not managed well, or worse, collapses completely as in Venezuela, then alternatives like bitcoin have a greater role to play.

“Those living in regions where trust in the financial and regulatory systems is low are more likely to consider cryptocurrency a good investment,” says Finder’s head of consumer research, Graham Cooke, before adding:

“With low trust in the government, it’s likely people are looking for ways to build their own wealth while circumventing their government’s financial mandates on finance.

It’s here where crypto becomes an attractive investment because governments don’t regulate crypto – it’s decentralized digital money.”

But is Russia the exception that proves the rule, or does it reveal something else that might explain this correlation.

Globally, the percentage of people that view cryptos positively has increased, but in Russia it saw a drop of 13%.

That’s amid huge financial sanctions which have led to significant growth in Russia from 6.7% saying they own crypto in October, to 19.6% in December.

It is in November and December when Russia began amassing troops near Ukraine with US and Europe raising the alarm at that time while also threatening sanctions.

So we have two very contradictory data points, if we take the data at face value. Perception has turned negative while the buying has increased hugely.

One potential explanation can be that insiders, and here that would include the army boys as well as their families, bought because they knew of changed probabilities of what was coming.

At the same time the propaganda was increased against crypto, including the rehashed suggestion in January that the Russian central bank might ban it, something that to us was clear ‘granny propaganda’ as one might call it because there was no chance Putin would allow it, and they did back down.

There is no propaganda index however as far as we are aware, not least because presumably it would be quite difficult to measure it. So we can’t easily see if there’s a better explanation regarding this correlation.

The intense negative propaganda against cryptos in USA and in some of Europe by the media, and sometime by government agencies, is undeniable however.

It is obviously effective as well to some extent as the Russian case shows, so rather than corruption it may be lower trust in the government means lower chances of being fooled by propaganda where they’re buying while telling the public to keep away.

Because if you limit it to the corruption index, you’d miss a lot of the wider picture. Including that fiat is targeted towards inflation, which itself is a corruption of sorts because who does the fiat genesis block go to, or any fiat blocks?

$10 trillion was borrowed from the FED by the US government, a Fed which ‘lent’ printed out of nothing ‘fiat blocks’ and now wants them repaid with interest perhaps at 2% or more by the end of the year, when they lent them at 0%.

Who does this 2% go to? That’s a question asked since 2018 now when the Swiss had their referendum on Sovereign Money, and still remains unexplained officially.

As long as that continues, crypto adoption may well continue to grow because it has passed the tipping point in almost all of the countries surveyed.

“It’s clear that crypto is gaining global popularity and with continued enthusiasm for blockchain technology, there’s no denying that crypto is part of the future of finance,” Cooke says.

As the featured image above shows, where the darker the blue, the more positive the view towards cryptos, attitudes are improving with global positivity towards cryptocurrency as of February 2022 up 8% from the previous survey.

At a global scale, that’s a fairly big deal, with this snapshot indicating that crypto is moving in the right direction, but is still very small and only now stands on the verge of moving towards the early majority of adopters.