Friday 1 July 2011

Friday Matinee - "Money As Debt II"

I'm obviously an advocate of digital currency and it's my view that a vast amount of vitriol that Bitcoin, possibly the most successful digital currency to date, seems to garner has a lot to do with ignorance and fear: ignorance of history, combined with a refusal to even try to understand the current monetary system beyond the superficial PR crap that gets meted out by Big Finance and mainstream media, and fear of changing the status quo (regardless of how much of the short end of the stick you get shoved up your ass) due, in part, to ignorance of history.

Money as Debt II - Promises Unleashed is an animated documentary and 2010 winner of the Best Documentary Feature award at the American International Film Festival. The film sets out to explain the fraudulent nature of the current monetary system we all labour under, from how it started, to how it was made legal, and to how the idea of perpetual debt to sustain growth (to the detriment of the many and the profit of a few) is a time bomb waiting to explode unless some serious monetary reform happens pretty darned soon.


Taking a look at money and the finance system from history to current times, it also briefly advocates a digital currency going forward, Digital Coin, which is the producer's original proposal for a new "trading medium" based on recent advances in recent technology. You can skip to around 1:07:00 of the film to where he explains the idea of digital currency.

The producer, Paul Grignon, sees the concept of Digital Coin as a:
"...simple universal principle into practice using emerging technologies to create "unique digital objects" that can be used like coins.

These "Digital Coins" can be transferred instantly anywhere in the networked world.
This can be done anonymously, without accounting and without any third party involvement, analogous to handing someone a gold coin. You have it. Now they have it.
No bookkeeping is required unless desired.

These "unique digital objects" are also analogous to gold coins in that they have inherent value. They are fully redeemable for specific real goods and services."

Bitcoin seems to fit the bill. Hmm... could Paul Grignon be Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysteriously incognito founder of Bitcoin...? Whatever the case, it remains to be seen if Bitcoin, or any digital currency, will be allowed to run its natural course, whatever that might be, without interference from the powers that be.

For more information about other films from Moonfire Studio, you can click HERE to visit their website.

OK, lights down, phone off, grab your popcorn and, um, engage brain (not a usual requisite for movies, these days)... It's movie time! Oh, and look out for animated figures of Ron Paul, Ben Bernanke, and other major figures in economics and politics. :-)

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