Please take a look at this video. When this talk was given by Andreas Antonopoulus in March 2017, bitcoin had never gone through a "fork". The price of 1 BTC was under $1,100 and the Market Cap, $17 billion (on its way to $20 billion that he mentions in the talk).
Five months later, on August 1, when the fork happened, the price of 1 BTC had already surpassed $2,700 with a Market Cap almost $45 billion. It flirted with $3,000 while pundits call it a "bubble", predicting it was about to burst.
Today the $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 value levels are long behind us. At this moment the BTC Market Cap is over $95 billion, with a BTC price of $6,000, and $100 billion Market Cap just ahead. When it goes up or down is immaterial. Given the trends, however, significant movement up appears to be inevitable and assured.
All this in spite of obvious misdirection efforts from all directions, both expected, such as Chase Bank chairman Jamie Dimon, and unexpected (for me at least), like Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com.
I can't explain Adams' position, given his contention that he has "believed in" bitcoin for quite some time, however, the ones who benefit from this unprecedented time in financial history, will have to know that along with great risks, misdirects and traps, great rewards await those who are brave and persevere. They will have to use their own intelligence and common sense, trusting and acting on that, rather than the dubious advice that we're being fed by self-styled experts.
Those who manipulate the public's perception via our misguided and unwarranted trust, would prefer that we go down with the current "ship of value", meaning fiat, or analog "money", the suppliers of which are the epitome of security and "safety", while its value leaks out each year with our tacit acceptance.
Before bitcoin, we had no choice but to accept what they were doing and telling us. Now we're supposed to believe their advice is for our benefit?
Digital currencies will surely replace current forms of fiat money. They will even be touted as "smart"... *but their value will continue to decline, as well as be controlled just surely as fiat money's value is manipulated today. New digital monies will also have informational "hooks" in them that banks or government authorities the ability to access or turn off your value store at their discretion. They also have the power to use said money for any reason they choose, irrespective of whether it serves us. This is standard business practice for the past 100 years and longer.
So-called "financial experts" debate whether bitcoin is "money", "currency", or an asset. I have said, and will continue to say this: it is not money.
"Money" is owned and its value manipulated by a central (corporate) authority. Bitcoin has no central owner. Its decentralized owners are everyone: you, me, and anyone who uses it. It's value is in what it does to protect the sanctity of interaction and transaction between people, whether it is business-to-business or peer-to-peer.
Bitcoin has ushered in a new financial era, and along with it a new way to interact, one to another, that removes the artificial controls that certain individuals, through their corporate activities, have put into place, to literally enslave the entire world population.
This sounds dramatic that many will deny, debate, or consider hyperbole; but it is in fact, an understatement.
Consider "money" as a value instrument and judge how well it has held and protected its value over the past 100 years of its existence.
Then realize that "money's" founding and controlling organization ~ the lineage of which connects directly to Jamie Dimon today ~ operates with, and above government... irrespective of the country, or the name of the currency. Dimon serves as its mouthpiece.
As such, Jamie Dimon targets bitcoin with obtuse comments due to its relative and unprecedented freedom biased and agenda-based regulation, which allows billions of people to become free of chronic financial lack disorder (let's call it CFLD), as well as include billions more who are presently not served (but being dis-served) by existing banking structures to the world economic ecology.
Many of their countries are in debt to banking institutions, while the populations themselves are not served at all. Bank management (regulation) is also responsible for hyperinflation in certain countries. We tend to think such things can't or won't happen here, but fail to see that one central banking authority essentially governs all major banks worldwide.
The ability to manipulate the value of "money" takes sovereignty and self-determination out of the hands of nations and ultimately, their people.
As a value instrument, "money" is no comparison to bitcoin. As such, common sense would tell us it is wise to convert the decsending, valueless instrument that is money into the ascending value instrument that is bitcoin.
By participating in an expanded world economy, people who are presently economically disenfranchised will find themselves needing fewer loans (money and debt that they are actually creating by their very need and application), and are financially empowered to solve their problems directly rather than beg a central banking or government authority for permission. This will take some getting used to, but turning one's self from a "have not" into a "have" will pay dividends in countless ways.
This is certainly unprecedented.
While we're worried about North Korea and traumatized by shooting sprees in Las Vegas as well as fires of suspicious origin in Northern California, freakish hurricanes in the Gulf and east coast, and distracted by contrived controversies in sports, the agencies and authorities are doing their best to cauterize a potentially serious link in their revenue stream before sufficient numbers of the population realize a doorway to freedom that they have been led to believe they already had, but had been robbed of.
The flow of the revenue stream is only the visible signs of how humanity is being robbed. The mind is where the real control is sought and maintained... and unseen chains are broken.
Another "fork" for bitcoin is set for late November. In light of what has happened already at every milestone, it's safe to say that we'll see more of the same. Ad hominem attacks on bitcoin and its implications can be expected not only to continue, but to intensify.
If your answer has been "no" to getting into bitcoin, for whatever reason, then consider starting now. If you haven't already done it, the first thing is to get yourself a wallet and convert some of your FVI (fiat value instruments) into BTC.
Remember, transitioning to bitcoin and the CryptoVerse is not "the end". Instead, it is The Beginning.
Steemit is a Product of this Historic Change
I am initially publishing this commentary on the Steemit platform, one of the residual outgrowths of bitcoin's success. Through the Steemit community and the Steem token that its organizers created, the platform allows me to gain direct value benefit from the content that I produce. As readers see value in the ideas shared here, they "vote" with Steem and via sharing. In this way we establish new direct matrices of relationship and empowerment.
This is the wave of the new economic future that we can create, and are creating together.