December 16th from NYC: Another good episode with great topics, here is the TLDR:
1. Coinbase Lawsuit – The guy suing the IRS is not that interesting but the class action lawsuit against Coinbase for assisting Big Vern of Cryptsy to get out millions before running away to China is fascinating. What is even more interesting is that the recent changes at Coinbase are making it more and more like Cryptsy with all those altcoins.
2. Open Bazaar Funded – I do not have all that much of an opinion on Open Bazaar. I do not consider them a scam since they did not tokenize (yet) but i’m also not sure why someone would use them when there are more convenient options everywhere.
3. War on Cash – more countries are planning on eliminating large denomination notes. This time the focus is on Australia. I have discussed this concept many times and have an article on it from the old CoinTelegraph days called When Banks Become Law Enforcers. The reason to eliminate cash is 3 fold:
A. It allows the government to set any monetary policy they like without any consequences other than long term economic imbalance (aka Negative Interest Rates)
B. It eliminates the possibility of a Bank Run and those long cues in front of ATM machines and banks as there is no physical cash to withdraw.
C. It enforces taxation as the Government already sees every citizen as a tax dodger. They think that it is the cash users that have prevent governments from creating a utopia.
The elimination of cash is the greatest thing that can ever happen to bitcoin.
4. Venezuela Pt. II – For the second week in a row we talk about the specific economic issue in Venezuela where they have taken a page from Inida’s play book and eliminated their largest bill (100 Bolivar Note). The Gov’t claims that they are replacing it with a 20,000 note but no one has yet seen one.