Wither Bitcoin? Up, up, and away, crashing or banned?

Bitcoin was first issued in March 2010 with a value set at $ 0.003/unit.

In May 2010, 10,000 bitcoins were traded for 2 pizzas in Jacksonville, Florida.

Since then the bitcoin price has gone up and down, mostly up, but five times it has gone down drastically, sometimes crashing by as much as 80 percent.

This year it has had a meteoric rise and is now at $18,600 or about six million times its original offering price.

Bitcoin is anonymous trading between a willing buyer and a willing seller, totally safe and untraceable, an ideal vehicle for money laundering and transfer of  money to terrorists and allies alike. It is also the vehicle of choice for ransomware.

So who is keeping custody of the chain of transactions to keep the bitcoin safe and secure?

This is what one might call the ultimate revenge of the geeks. The inventors of bitcoin let the geeks mine more bitcoins as a reward for keeping complete records of all transactions in bitcoin since its conception (heavily encrypted of course). They only had to solve a hashing algorithm made more complicated for every new transaction.  In the beginning it was not very difficult, but now, since one has to find all chains of custody for every bitcoin since the start, and they are distributed worldwide it becomes more and more a drain on the internet and computing power in the servers.

It is now so bad, that even though there are only 17 million bitcoins in the world today, to keep track of them and mine some more is now consuming 1/700 of the total electricity generated in the world, or about 35 TeraWatthours. At a production cost of about 6 cents per KiloWatthour  it  would come to about 2 billion dollars to maintain 17 million or over a hundred dollars per bitcoin in electricity consumption alone.

It will only get worse from now on. While mining of new bitcoins are getting more complicated exponentially, the issuing of new bitcoins will become stagnant and will stop around 30 million, when it will consume about 60% of the world’s electrical energy.

The Greens will not like it. Bitcoins already belch  more than 17 million tons of CO2 into the air annually, set to double every two years.

On the other hand , it is transactions that are free of the tyranny of the one world banking system.

This is unsustainable. People will stop maintaining the chain of custody of all transactions and the scheme will collapse.

When?

Who knows?

 

 

 

Matthew 2, the visit of the Magi, flight to Egypt, the massacre in Ramah, return to Nazareth.

The Magi were the scientists of that day, combining astronomy, astrology, calendar keeping and natural sciences.

Matthew207

Matthew27

 

This passage is particularly interesting, with verse 15 put in the middle of a passage full of the most wonderful promises for Israel, ending with “a woman shall encompass a man.”

One of the possible sources for the  last quote:

In the Arab world, Christians are named Nazarenes, symbolized with the letter ‘Nun’ .

It was painted on Christian homes in Mosul  during the ISIS occupation, and Christians were systematically removed and some of  them killed.

Exclusive CNN images capturing the homes of Christian families forced to leave the city by ISIS

 

 

Isaiah 65, Judgment and salvation, the New Creation, the New Jerusalem

 

 

The new Jerusalem is as a dream. Many have imagined it different ways. Here is the Salvation Army singing a capella “I have heard of a City” with the melody of a Russian fold song.

Isaiah 63, the LORD’s Judgment and Salvation, God’s Mercy Remembered, a Prayer.

“He has trampled out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored”

From Revelation 14:19 And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. 20 And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.

 

The five pointed star, which way is up?

Times are a-changing. As a child born and raised in Sweden I always looked forward to advent, Lucia (13 Dec) and of course Christmas. November had been dark and dreary, we didn’t see the sun for a whole month and it was too early for snow. Then came the first Sunday in Advent and in nearly every house the Advent star was prominently displayed, sometimes in every window. At that time they all looked the same, since they were very few choices. The star always pointed upwards, as all 5-pointed stars on the Christmas tree did. This just was so, and nobody ever thought much about it. After emigrating to America I discovered that trees can be decorated many more ways, and the diversity added another dimension to Christmas, but I still longed for the simplicity of the five pointed star, so we continued to have it on the top of our tree (real Fraser Fir, nothing artificial of course).

Then about 25 years ago I saw a five pointed star with two points pointing up and one pointing down. This was in our church bulletin for Christmas Day and the Church had splurged and bought it with a pre-printed color display on the front page. Our son, who at that time was in College wondered why the goat star was in the church bulletin, so we asked our associate pastor why. At first he didn’t understand what difference it made, so we explained it to him. He got upset, and apologized profusely, but he was most upset about the fact that they had bought the folders from a reputable Christian distributor.

So what difference does it make?

The five pointed star is best described as the pentagram. It is from the start a pagan symbol, existing way before Christianity. it existed in two forms, point up and point down.

As point up it is the true pentagram and predates Christianity in at least two forms, the human and the spiritual:

 

 

 

 

The left symbol shows the human connection, the right shows the four earthly elements and with the Spirit pointing to God. While being of pagan origin it was adopted by Jewish and Greek mysticism, and since the Spirit pointed upward it also became used as a symbol for the early Christians. It can display the five virtues (left), but it is also prominently used in the wiccan cult.

Point down is even more sinister in its origin. To begin with it is the symbol for the goat god of Baphomet. Then there are a number of satanic symbols:(left). This pendant of Satan in the Name of Samael, who was a consort of Lilith, (I refuse to research it further, since it is satanic in origin. )

But it is also a Masonic symbol. The City of Washington D.C. is laid out as an inverted pentagram: The inverted pentagram points to the White House  and the Masonic compass symbol has its center point in the Capitol.

Last but not least it is the official symbol of the church of satan:

This was just a small survey of what the pentagram symbolizes.

To sum up:

Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen. 1 John 5:21