General
Milan writes about financial
technology and
cryptocurrency for the Earth
Alliance, a loose-knit
global alliance working for
the benefit of humanity.
The battle over the future
of Planet Earth has in many
ways always been a financial
battle. As time passes and
technology advances, that
financial battle is
increasingly being fought
out in the cryptocurrency
arena.
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In early
December of 2017, just
before cryptocurrency
markets started to crater,
President Nicolás Maduro of
Venezuela
announced the
creation of the
Petro
cryptocurrency backed by
Venezuela’s oil and gas
reserves. This was both an
attempt to both circumvent
the financial sanctions
placed on the Maduro regime
and a desperate effort to
patch up the Venezuelan
economy, the complete
collapse of which was an
entirely predictable outcome
of Venezuela’s decades-long
experiment with
authoritarian socialism.
In this
article we trace the
development of the Petro
from Maduro, to his Russian
cryptocurrency consultants,
to the Japanese/Malaysian
blockchain technology upon
which the Petro is based,
all the way back to the
Esalen Institute of
California—the heart and
center of socialist
ideology.
Venezuela has
quickly gone from being one
of the richest countries in
South America with the
largest proven oil reserves
in the world, to having a
humanitarian
refugee crisis on
par with the war in Syria.
As in almost all cases of
mass human suffering, very
dark forces are behind it,
and indeed the oil industry
itself is obviously at the
heart and center of many
wars and global
environmental problems.
The story of
the Petro is far from over,
however, and the real battle
over the financial future of
Planet Earth is probably
still just beginning. In
this, the happenings in
Venezuela have major
geopolitical implications.
On August
5th, 2018 President Maduro
was the target of of an
apparent
assassination attempt
by drone, a bizarre false
flag-ish event that was
seemingly produced on a very
modest budget.
Then, on
September 8th, 2018 The
New York Times ran an
exposé
describing how officials
from the Trump
administration had met with
opposition forces in
Venezuela to plan a
potential coup against
Maduro. The article can be
seen as both a critique of
the Trump administration’s
tactics and as a form of
support for Maduro’s claim
that he a “good guy”
battling against imperial
American forces.
We expect the
geopolitical battle to
continue in the weeks and
months ahead, but for now
our focus is on the Petro
cryptocurrency. In fact it
remains to be seen whether
or not the Petro is
successful in any way. On
August 30th, 2018, Reuters
ran a special investigative
report entitled “In
Venezuela, new
cryptocurrency is nowhere to
be found.” The
report describes the fact
that the Petro is based on
oil reserves located
underneath a barren patch of
land that would require an
investment of at least $20
billion to retrieve, money
that the bankrupt Venezuelan
government does not have.
Thus, in many
ways the Petro is nothing
but a pipe dream. The
article quotes the exiled
former Venezuelan Oil
Minister Rafael Ramirez as
saying, “The Petro is being
set at an arbitrary value
which exists only in the
government’s imagination.”
The Petro is
based on the
NEM
blockchain. The idea for
NEM originally came from a
Bitcointalk user
named UtopianFuture, but NEM
was developed by an Osaka
company called
Tech
Bureau, led by a
character named
Takao
Asayama. The
NEM
Foundation is
domiciled in Singapore and
physically located in the
oil-rich nation of Malaysia.
Takao Asayama
is said to be closely
connected to
Takafumi Horie, a
notorious character in Japan
who is deeply connected into
the Asian underworld. Horie
is a kind of a Japanese Elon
Musk—an aggressive
technology businessman who
was criticized for his M&A
practices and actually went
to jail for market
manipulation tactics. It’s
said that when Horie went
into jail he may have been
“grey,” but when he came out
he was fully “black” and 60
pounds lighter. Horie is
the founder of a rocket
company called Interstellar
Technologies which has
unfortunately experienced
two
failed
launches.
The logo for
NEM is a combination of
counterclockwise-rotating
Japanese
mitsudomoe symbol
and a shield representing
the
Reuleaux triangle
shape used inside of the
internal combustion engine.
NEM stands for New Economy
Movement, not to be confused
with the
New
Economic Model
(NEM), an affirmative action
plan developed by the former
Malaysian prime minister and
the Malaysian Chinese
Association.
The NEM
cryptocurrency is based on a
consensus algorithm called
Proof-of-Importance,
which is an attempt to
improve upon the
rich-get-richer
characteristics of
Proof-of-Stake
algorithms. In
Proof-of-Importance,
accounts are assigned a
“reputation” or “importance”
score, such that accounts
that are deemed to be more
important to the NEM
ecosystem are awarded with
more new currency units. We
fear that over time NEM’s
consensus algorithm may need
to be renamed Proof-of-Maduro’s-Importance.
NEM was at
the center of the
Coincheck hack of
January 2018. In that
event, hackers broke into a
Japanese cryptocurrency
exchange called Coincheck
and stole over $500 million
dollars worth of NEM, making
it one of the largest thefts
in the history of the
world. The hack cast a pall
over the cryptocurrency
market in Japan and
contributed to the global
sell-off that became the
cryptocurrency bear market
of 2018. The hack also
reduced the number of
exchanges trading NEM in
Japan to only one—the Zaif
exchange owned by Tech
Bureau itself.
In March
2018, the Japanese FSA
issued a
business improvement order
to Zaif and several other
exchanges over their
security and
anti-money-laundering
practices. This put Zaif
and NEM in the awkward
position of being close to
complete shutdown in Japan.
Then on
September 20th 2018, Zaif
announced that it
had been hacked to the tune
of $60 million, but also
announced that a bailout
loan was being arranged
through a Horie-connected
Japanese investment advisory
firm called
FISCO.
As part of the deal, FISCO
would take a majority share
ownership in Zaif. Since
FISCO already operates its
own cryptocurrency exchange
in Japan and is already
partnered with Zaif, the
bailout could be seen as a
way for FISCO to subsume
Zaif and start fresh with a
clean regulatory record.
Just one day
after the Zaif hack was
announced, cryptocurrency
investors were left
scratching their heads as
the price of the Ripple
cryptocurrency
surged
by more than 60%. But as
one Twitter user keenly
noted,
“Anyone attempting to
explain this Ripple move
should also explain why
Monacoin is up roughly the
same amount.” In fact,
Monacoin, billed
as “the first Japanese
cryptocurrency,” was among
the cryptocurrencies stolen
in the Zaif hack. If the
hackers of the Zaif exchange
wanted to unload their
stolen Monacoin, it would
make a lot of sense to pump
up the price first.
But back to
the topic of the Petro, how
and why did Maduro decide to
base the Petro on the NEM
blockchain? After all,
Venezuela is a world away
from Japan. To answer that
question, we need to look at
some of Maduro’s
cryptocurrency advisors.
The first
character of interest is the
27-year-old Venezuelan
Gabriel Jimenez.
After Jimenez’s father was
charged for defrauding
investors in the collapse of
a Dominican bank, Jimenez
went to work in Washington,
D.C. as a congressional
intern for one of Maduro’s
strongest critics. In that
role he was a “spirited
anti-government crusader who
helped organize a caravan …
in which thousands of
Venezuelan exiles traveled
by bus to Washington to
pressure the Obama
administration to slap
sanctions on Maduro’s
government.” But soon
after, he returned to
Venezuela and quickly rose
to become one of the top
strategists behind the Petro.
We can only assume that he
is either a spy or a
complete sell-out. In any
case, to find the real
masterminds behind the Petro
we need to look farther
afield, to Maduro’s Russian
consultants.
In March 2018
after President Trump issued
an
Executive Order
banning Americans from
transacting in the Petro,
Time Magazine
published an exclusive
article entitled “Russia
Secretly Helped Venezuela
Launch a Cryptocurrency to
Evade U.S. Sanctions.”
Of course, as with all
mainstream media articles
about Russia, it is mostly
an attempt to demonize
Russia and link everything
back to Putin, which is a
little bit like saying that
Trump controls everything
that happens in the United
States. The author’s other
Time articles
include “To Understand
Russia, Read A Terrible
Country” and “How I
Learned to Love the German
Nanny State After Leaving
Putin’s Russia.”
In any case,
the Time article
does a good job of detailing
the Russian consultants
behind the Petro. It’s
worth noting here that the
symbol for the Petro, ₽, is
exactly the same as the
symbol for the
Russian Ruble
that was newly chosen in
2013 via a process organized
by the Central Bank of
Russia.
The main two
Russian consultants behind
the Petro are Fyodor
Bogorodsky and Denis
Druzhkov. According to the
Time article,
“Bogorodsky moved to Uruguay
around 2009 and became an
informal ambassador of
Russian culture across Latin
America.” Bogorodsky’s
personal website
details his family’s long
history in Russia from its
beginnings among “eminent
Tatars,”
to “military service in the
Crimea campaign,” to the
development of banking in
Kazan province.
Bogorodsky’s contributions
to Maduro were apparently
run out of a shell company
called
Aerotrading,
which is only really notable
for using the Illuminati
left-facing OK sign as its
logo.
Denis
Druzhkov is the co-founder
of a Russian cryptocurrency
exchange called the
Zeus
Exchange. We
note here that
Zeus
was not known to be a kind
god. The Zeus Exchange is
based on the NEM blockchain
and is partnered with the
NEM Foundation.
Druzhkov’s
Twitter account
is enlightening. He is a
follower of the Latvia-based
anti-Kremlin news agency
Meduza,
named after the
snake-headed monster
from Greek mythology. He is
also a follower of “the
Kremlin’s leading
critic-in-exile”
Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
the oligarch who looted
Russia’s oil industry after
the fall of the Soviet Union
and a close colleague of
Henry Kissinger and Jacob
Rothschild. Druzhkov also
follows
Shaltai Boltai,
an anonymous hacking group
that targets the Kremlin.
Needless to say, Time
appears to have been
completely wrong in
portraying Druzhkov and
Bogorodsky as puppets of the
Kremlin.
Druzhkov is
also a Twitter follower of
the
Esalen
Institute in Big
Sur, California. It is
worth digging into this
relationship a little bit,
because readers may not be
aware of the Esalen
Institute’s prominent
position in the global
Satanic hierarchy. But
remember that while the 60’s
produced a lot of love,
freedom, and liberation, it
also produced horrible
events such as the Manson
family’s murder of
Luciferian
movie
stars, all of
whom
hung
out around Esalen.
According to
The Magic of Esalen:
“At its essence, Esalen
culture is organized almost
like a Masonic Lodge or
Secret Society, with
concentric orders of
initiation and status.” In
fact, Esalen was influential
enough during the Cold War
to have arranged United
States visits via its
Soviet-American
exchange program
for several prominent
Russians just before the
collapse of the Soviet
Union. This included a
visit for one of Mikhail
Gorbachev’s chief economic
advisors, and also included
Boris Yeltsin’s first trip
to the United States to meet
with George H.W. Bush and
other political leaders. We
wonder if the Esalen
Institute would be as
welcoming to Vladamir Putin
today; somehow we doubt
it. Those interested in
reading more about the
history of Esalen are
encouraged to take a look at
“How
Darwin, Huxley, and the
Esalen Institute Launched
the Psychedelic Revolutions”
or the associated
map.
Following
President Trump’s executive
order banning the Petro, the
Zeus Exchange appears to
have cut ties with Druzkov,
at least nominally. But
having structured at least
two major projects around
NEM (the Zeus Exchange and
the Petro), it is a safe bet
that Druzkov and colleagues
still are heavily invested
in NEM and perhaps even
actively promoting it.
Indeed, NEM
has been making headway
among some interesting
groups. In August, at the
100th Annual Crow Fair for
the
Crow
Nation of
Montana, NEM systems were
demonstrated to tribal
leaders: “Good
Guy NEM? – Helping Native
Americans Get into Crypto! –
Great Idea!” The
Crow Nation—or the Black
Lodges, as one of its
subgroups is called—is
located in a
major
oil-producing region,
but NEM’s interest in
collaborating with the Crow
likely also extends to the
tribal casino business.
Historically,
the Crow tribe worked
together with the U.S. Army
against their enemies the
Lakota Sioux. This is
notable in the sense that
the Lakota Standing Rock
reservation was major news
in recent years due to
protests over the
Dakota
Access oil
pipeline. We have a feeling
that the Lakota would not be
as eager as the Crow to
embrace using a
cryptocurrency with deep
ties to the oil industry.
Further south
in Las Vegas, NEM recently
signed an informal agreement
with Kind Heaven, a new
multimedia theatrical
experience created by Peretz
Bernstein, a.k.a.
Perry
Farrell, the
frontman of the rock bands
Porno for Pyros and Jane’s
Addiction. Taking a page
from
The
Hangover film
series or even the Vietnam
War, the event will be
Southeast Asia-themed,
complete with betting on
virtual monkey wrestling:
Inside
Perry Farrell’s Wild Vegas
EDM Musical: Sex, Drugs and
War. It will
also run exclusively on
cryptocurrency.
Another
project building on NEM is
Eterly,
the “artificial intelligence
platform for life
extension.” The logo for
Eterly looks like the symbol
for a biohazard. We could
go on, but you get the
idea….
To summarize,
while the Venezuelan Petro
may collapse into a failed
experiment, the
cryptocurrency upon which it
is based, NEM, is slowly
seething its way into the
oil and gambling industries
and beyond. The two most
important commodities in the
world are gold and oil.
Money has
historically been backed by
gold, but that ended in 1971
when Kissinger and Nixon
detached the U.S. dollar
from gold, and attached it
instead to an oil and
military agreement involving
Saudi Arabia and Israel–the
origin of the
petrodollar. The
result has been the greatest
debt bubble in human
history, a global
environmental catastrophe,
and non-stop war in the
Middle East. Clearly, the
days of the petrodollar are
numbered, but nefarious
forces are already
experimenting with creating
new forms of petro-currency.
Gold is
created through the
super-energetic collapse and
collision of stars. Oil,
known as black gold, comes
from deep
within
the Earth. While
gold has been very useful as
the basis of money
throughout human history,
and while a return to the
gold standard would go a
long way toward preventing
bankers and politicians from
printing too much money and
giving it to themselves to
wage endless warfare, the
real problem with the
financial system is the
centralization of control
over the creation and
distribution of money. To
put it another way, even
under the gold standard, the
central banks are still in
control of the creation and
distribution of money and
generally have the power to
debase their currencies when
it suits them to do so.
What is
really needed is a new
economic system where the
power to create and
distribute money is truly
decentralized, or in other
words, put back into the
hands of the people.
Bitcoin was a major
innovation, but it replaces
control by banks with a
strange new system where all
new money is rewarded to
those with access to cheap
computers and electricity,
which happens to be a few
people in China.
To understand
the real potential for
cryptocurrency as a new
method of currency creation
and distribution, we
recommend the excellent
article “Why
Everyone Missed the Most
Mind-Blowing Feature of
Cryptocurrency.”
NEM was an attempt to create
this kind of next-generation
cryptocurrency, but it is
flawed and is completely
controlled by nefarious
forces in any case.
Rest assured,
alternatives are being
created. For now, we can
only advise the citizens of
Venezuela as well as the
rest of the world to avoid
both the Petro and NEM like
the Black Plague.
