US Government Will Auction Bitcoins; NYC Fireman Robbed Of His Bitcoins

Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

[From article]

Bitcoin, the technology that’s meant to revolutionize the way we think of money, is simultaneously revolutionizing the way we get mugged.

A New York City firefighter named Dwayne Richards was recently held up, stabbed and robbed by thieves who were after his bitcoin, the Observer has learned. From what we’ve discovered, Mr. Richards, who is a firefighter in lower Manhattan, was mugged and left bleeding after meeting the robbers under the pretense of exchanging bitcoin for cash in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He’s alive, well, and refusing comment.

Dwayne Richards, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
(Photo: Getty)

But robbing someone of his bitcoin in person can be an astonishingly effective way to make off with vast sums of capital quickly and untraceably. And Mr. Richards is far from the first to fall victim to bitcoin-related brutality.Typically, when we hear of bitcoin-related crimes, it’s a white-collar affair—millions of dollars going missing from an overseas exchange, or a plucky enthusiast finding himself in an international money-laundering scheme.

http://observer.com/2015/02/bitcoin-crime-wave-breaks-out-in-nyc/

Bitcoin Crime Wave Breaks Out in NYC
NYC firefighter kidnapped, robbed and stabbed by crypto thieves
By Jack Smith IV

02/20/15 9:54am
* * *


Bitcoin is growing in popularity as a way of quickly and safely moving money. But that also makes the job of a thief much more lucrative and efficient. 

(Photo: Getty)
[From article]
The U.S. government on Wednesday said it plans to auction 50,000 bitcoins on March 5, following the recent criminal conviction of Ross Ulbricht for being the mastermind behind the online black market known as Silk Road.
The auction being conducted by the U.S. Marshals Service is the third for bitcoins seized in connection with Silk Road, which prosecutors said let customers buy and sell drugs and other illegal goods beneath the radar of law enforcement.
A federal jury in Manhattan on Feb. 4 found Ulbricht guilty of narcotics and other charges for helping to enable about $200 million of anonymous online drug sales using bitcoins.
Prosecutors said Ulbricht, 30, had run Silk Road under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts” before the website was shut down in October 2013.

http://nypost.com/2015/02/18/us-will-auction-nearly-12m-in-bitcoins-from-silk-road/

US will auction nearly $12M in bitcoins seized from Silk Road
By Reuters
New York Post
February 18, 2015 | 4:20pm

Global Currency Crisis Near

Janet Henry from HSBC said Sweden's measures are clearly a “beggar-thy neighbour” manoeuvre to weaken the krone.

Photo: CORBIS
[From article]
Sweden has cut interest rates below zero and launched quantitative easing to fight deflation, becoming the latest Scandinavian state to join Europe’s escalating currency wars.
The Riksbank caught markets by surprise, reducing the benchmark lending rate to minus 0.10pc and unveiled its first asset purchases, vowing to take further action at any time to stop the country falling into a deflationary trap. The bank presented the move as precautionary step due to rising risks of a “poorer outcome abroad” and the crisis in Greece.
Janet Henry from HSBC said the measures are clearly a “beggar-thy neighbour” manoeuvre to weaken the krone, the latest such action in a global currency war that does little to tackle the deeper problem of deficient world demand.
The move comes as neighbouring Denmark takes ever more drastic steps to stop a flood of money overwhelming its exchange rate peg to the euro and tightening the deflationary noose.
[. . .]
The Chinese yuan is linked to the US dollar through a “dirty float”. Yet the dollar is rising relentlessly against other Asian currencies as the prospect of monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve lures a flood of capital into the US, a replay of the strains that led to the East Asia crisis in 1998.
[. . .]
Manoj Pradhan, Morgan Stanley’s global economist, said the world is revisiting the “ghosts of the 1930s” as one country after another tries to steal a march on others by getting in devaluation first. “The lesson from the 1930s is that those who do so early benefit at the expense of those who wait too long,” he said.
Mr Pradhan said it is becoming harder to extract advantage from this ploy now that “everyone is doing it”. China faces strong pressure to defend itself while it still can. “The longer they wait, the harder it will be for China’s policy-makers,” he said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11408950/Sweden-cuts-rates-below-zero-as-global-currency-wars-spread.html

Sweden cuts rates below zero as global currency wars spread
Morgan Stanley warns that the world is revisiting the “ghosts of the 1930s” as one country after another tries to steal a march on others by devaluing first
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
4:58PM GMT 12 Feb 2015

Friedman Predicts the Destruction of the Dollar
(Human Events.com)


The late, great Milton Friedman in his classic book prophetically revealed how Obama's reckless monetary policies will cause hyperinflation and destroy our nation

Everything Barack Obama, the Federal Reserve, and Congress are doing was predicted in startling detail almost two decades ago by a famous Nobel Prize-winning economist.

His name was Milton Friedman.

Though he passed away in 2006, in his prophetic book, Friedman showed how, facing massive deficits, the U.S. government would dramatically increase the money supply; why foreign countries would stop buying our debt; how the Fed would start buying our Treasury bills; and why this would call cause massive inflation.

He even predicted that our officials would claim inflation was no problem at all.

Amazingly all of this is coming to pass!

Make no mistake about it — the Obama administration is embracing massive inflationary deficit spending.

In just a few months, Barrack Obama has more than doubled the U.S. money supply...committed the government to nearly $24 trillion in new spending . . . and warned the American people to expect trillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future.

While the media has been falling over itself to praise Obama's "bold initiatives," the question no one has been asking is, "Where is all of this money coming from?"

Decades ago, Milton Friedman answered these questions clearly and precisely in his insightful — and very topical book, Money Mischief: Episodes in Monetary History.

In Money Mischief, Friedman even warned that the coming inflation could "destroy" our country.

Here's what he wrote: "Inflation is a disease, a dangerous and sometimes fatal disease that, if not checked in time, can destroy a society." (Money Mischief, Page 191)

You see the end result of that process in countries like Zimbabwe today, where prices double every day, and it now takes a $10 billion Zimbabwe note to buy a single loaf of bread - assuming you can find one.

Could America suffer the same fate? Friedman wrote ominously, "The Fate of a Country Is Inseparable From the Fate of Its Currency."

Even Warren Buffett recently admitted on CNBC that the only way for the U.S. to solve it's woes was to inflate the currency.

There is little doubt that Obama's massive deficit spending will doom the dollar and our economy.

You need to find out what is really happening to our economy and your wealth and get a copy of Milton Friedman's pathbreaking book, Money Mischief.

Its insights are so relevant and shocking — it reads like it was just published for our times!

Friedman also tells how the U.S. and the West could still avoid hyperinflation, even with unbacked paper currency.