You can begin researching the alternatives already being put into place. Get yourself a Coinbase or Uphold account/wallet and start accumulating what you can. I tell my friends that instead of buying that Starbucks coffee they can start stocking up, as the prices are very cheap right now, especially the ISO 20022 tokens (as of today: XRP ~$1.07, XLM ~$0.17, HBAR ~$0.068, ALGO ~$0.079, ADA ~$0.16, XDC ~$0.027, IOTA ~$0.032). This is not financial advice and I am not a financial advisor, but I understand world history and I see the trend of the evolving changes coming. But you definitely need to do your own research! The market is volatile as they are trying to create retail fatigue with all their manipulative arbitrage strategies, but that will end soon enough and the skies will clear enough for retail to finally see, as they did in the protocol wars of TCP/IP before the internet became so viable. Also, a lot of traditional institutions have begun selling crypto products on XRP, including spot ETFs from Franklin Templeton (XRPZ), Grayscale (GXRP), Bitwise, Canary Capital, 21Shares, and REX-Osprey, and that might be a viable way to get exposure in a traditional sense.
As much as I want to get a Coinbase wallet (and have for years even my grown sons do dabble in the Crypto market) and accumulate some Crypto assets, the deep-seated Luddite in me has an aversion to it on the basis that it is all vaporware and can disappear in so many ways, including the takedown of the the Intertubes and potentially, fraudulent taking by theft of my accumulated assets in that wallet
Paper currency already requires exactly the same faith you're describing. When the government says a piece of cotton and linen is worth a hundred dollars we all just go along with it because the system says so. The value isn't in the paper. It never was. Zimbabwe is the clearest recent example of what happens when that faith collapses. People woke up holding wheelbarrows of currency worth less than what it cost to print it. The bills didn't disappear. The authority behind them did.
Bearer bonds tell an even more instructive story. These were physical instruments you could hold in your hand, entitling whoever held them to collect on them, no questions asked. Governments and central banks used them for decades in high level settlements. Then one day the powers that be simply stopped recognizing them. Poof. Gone. Not because the instrument changed but because the people controlling the system decided it was convenient to pull the plug. I wrote about this through the Dragon Family case and it's worth reading if you want to see just how deep that rabbit hole goes: https://sleuthfox.substack.com/p/bitcoins-revolution-defying-the-2
The internet takedown concern is real. But the system being built around traditional banking has its own version of that same risk. Instead of a hacker taking your wallet it's a bureaucrat flipping a compliance switch. At least with certain crypto assets the question of who controls that switch has a very different answer.
Most crypto is speculation and a lot of it is junk. But the ISO 20022 compatible assets are infrastructure not speculation. And here's what makes the security concern manageable. You don't have to keep everything in one place. Spreading across different platforms like Uphold, Coinbase, or Kraken makes sense. But the real security move is a cold wallet like a Ledger, a physical device that lives in your drawer completely offline and out of reach of any exchange going down or getting hacked. That's the equivalent of keeping something of value outside the banking system entirely. Which is kind of the whole point.
$70 million just got hacked from COLDcard users due to a glitch on the seed’s protecting these COLDcard users wallets…a bunch of gobbledegook on what went wrong and how you can “now” protect your COLDcard wallet…NO thanks
The part of that hack nobody is talking about though. Every wallet where the owner rolled their own dice during setup and added their own human randomness to the seed walked away clean. The machine failed. The human didn't. Same week Claude got jailbroken and was used to go after three businesses. When the most advanced AI on the planet can be flipped into a weapon against you, the answer was never more technology. It's your own mind, your own judgment, the people you actually trust. No patch fixes that gap and no algorithm has ever replaced what a switched on human being can do.
They already know everything they need to know about every one of us unless you're somehow really and truly "off the grid." So the only steps that remain are consolidation, a clearinghouse/warehouse for your information, which requires massive data center capacity and which is Palantir's specific area of expertise, and implementation.
You're right and it goes so much deeper than most people understand. Palantir is the piece that doesn't get nearly enough attention in this conversation. Thiel built the infrastructure layer that makes ALL the other pieces operational at scale. The sea of surveillance is not a future scenario. It's the water we're already swimming in. For anyone who wants a detailed real time look at just how far the surveillance architecture already extends, MonkeyWerx does exceptional tracking work and his free videos are worth every minute of your time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr7oQuC-iD8
Here's a brilliant set of articles that very nicely supplements your work. Farida explains, as you do, how these fences around fear, greed and sex have always driven the powers that be to control and manipulate the masses. I think these are a great bookend to your work.
Further, I recommend Dr. Heather Lynn fir a deeper historical perspective, exploring these systems of control and manipulation tracing back throughout history from the Sumerians to the present day. She analyzes these from an esoteric perspective. Again, a lovely bookend to your work.
My algorithm continues to drive me to authors who are all exploring these control systems from completely different angles but who keep arriving at the exact same conclusions.
Sarah Kendzior deeply examines the criminal oligarch mafia currently running the world. She argues that it's our empathy and humanity keeping us aware and awake outside of these systems but doing our best to preserve our best qualities inside of them and in spite of them.
All three are going on the list. The fact that researchers coming from completely different disciplines keep arriving at the same conclusions is itself the most compelling argument that what we're all pointing at is real. That convergence is not a coincidence. Thank you for the recommendations.
One more Substack author I must mention is The Golden Order, who examines our social programming/conditioning. Their current series traces America's history of controlling its citizens going back to the colonies. This is also required reading and they have also arrived at the same conclusions.
That's exactly their design. Exhaust people with complexity, contradiction, and information overload until the path of least resistance feels like the only path left. Learned helplessness is not a side effect of this system. It's a feature. Here's the thing though. Every major monetary transition in history has rewarded the people who saw it clearly before everyone else did. Knowledge at the right moment is the only edge ordinary people (like you and I and most readers here) have ever had over concentrated power. Read to the end of the essay. There's a window in there that hasn't closed yet and understanding what's inside it right now, before it becomes mandatory, is exactly the kind of preparation that changes outcomes.
So what exactly can be done to escape the cage?
You can begin researching the alternatives already being put into place. Get yourself a Coinbase or Uphold account/wallet and start accumulating what you can. I tell my friends that instead of buying that Starbucks coffee they can start stocking up, as the prices are very cheap right now, especially the ISO 20022 tokens (as of today: XRP ~$1.07, XLM ~$0.17, HBAR ~$0.068, ALGO ~$0.079, ADA ~$0.16, XDC ~$0.027, IOTA ~$0.032). This is not financial advice and I am not a financial advisor, but I understand world history and I see the trend of the evolving changes coming. But you definitely need to do your own research! The market is volatile as they are trying to create retail fatigue with all their manipulative arbitrage strategies, but that will end soon enough and the skies will clear enough for retail to finally see, as they did in the protocol wars of TCP/IP before the internet became so viable. Also, a lot of traditional institutions have begun selling crypto products on XRP, including spot ETFs from Franklin Templeton (XRPZ), Grayscale (GXRP), Bitwise, Canary Capital, 21Shares, and REX-Osprey, and that might be a viable way to get exposure in a traditional sense.
As much as I want to get a Coinbase wallet (and have for years even my grown sons do dabble in the Crypto market) and accumulate some Crypto assets, the deep-seated Luddite in me has an aversion to it on the basis that it is all vaporware and can disappear in so many ways, including the takedown of the the Intertubes and potentially, fraudulent taking by theft of my accumulated assets in that wallet
Paper currency already requires exactly the same faith you're describing. When the government says a piece of cotton and linen is worth a hundred dollars we all just go along with it because the system says so. The value isn't in the paper. It never was. Zimbabwe is the clearest recent example of what happens when that faith collapses. People woke up holding wheelbarrows of currency worth less than what it cost to print it. The bills didn't disappear. The authority behind them did.
Bearer bonds tell an even more instructive story. These were physical instruments you could hold in your hand, entitling whoever held them to collect on them, no questions asked. Governments and central banks used them for decades in high level settlements. Then one day the powers that be simply stopped recognizing them. Poof. Gone. Not because the instrument changed but because the people controlling the system decided it was convenient to pull the plug. I wrote about this through the Dragon Family case and it's worth reading if you want to see just how deep that rabbit hole goes: https://sleuthfox.substack.com/p/bitcoins-revolution-defying-the-2
The internet takedown concern is real. But the system being built around traditional banking has its own version of that same risk. Instead of a hacker taking your wallet it's a bureaucrat flipping a compliance switch. At least with certain crypto assets the question of who controls that switch has a very different answer.
Most crypto is speculation and a lot of it is junk. But the ISO 20022 compatible assets are infrastructure not speculation. And here's what makes the security concern manageable. You don't have to keep everything in one place. Spreading across different platforms like Uphold, Coinbase, or Kraken makes sense. But the real security move is a cold wallet like a Ledger, a physical device that lives in your drawer completely offline and out of reach of any exchange going down or getting hacked. That's the equivalent of keeping something of value outside the banking system entirely. Which is kind of the whole point.
$70 million just got hacked from COLDcard users due to a glitch on the seed’s protecting these COLDcard users wallets…a bunch of gobbledegook on what went wrong and how you can “now” protect your COLDcard wallet…NO thanks
The part of that hack nobody is talking about though. Every wallet where the owner rolled their own dice during setup and added their own human randomness to the seed walked away clean. The machine failed. The human didn't. Same week Claude got jailbroken and was used to go after three businesses. When the most advanced AI on the planet can be flipped into a weapon against you, the answer was never more technology. It's your own mind, your own judgment, the people you actually trust. No patch fixes that gap and no algorithm has ever replaced what a switched on human being can do.
Bonus points, Eric and you are right about the rolling of the dice trick that protected those wallets but…..
The inevitable but
And I do not have an argument or solution here but am willing to listen…
They already know everything they need to know about every one of us unless you're somehow really and truly "off the grid." So the only steps that remain are consolidation, a clearinghouse/warehouse for your information, which requires massive data center capacity and which is Palantir's specific area of expertise, and implementation.
https://dissentinbloom.substack.com/p/the-terrifying-truth-about-experian
You're right and it goes so much deeper than most people understand. Palantir is the piece that doesn't get nearly enough attention in this conversation. Thiel built the infrastructure layer that makes ALL the other pieces operational at scale. The sea of surveillance is not a future scenario. It's the water we're already swimming in. For anyone who wants a detailed real time look at just how far the surveillance architecture already extends, MonkeyWerx does exceptional tracking work and his free videos are worth every minute of your time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr7oQuC-iD8
Here's a brilliant set of articles that very nicely supplements your work. Farida explains, as you do, how these fences around fear, greed and sex have always driven the powers that be to control and manipulate the masses. I think these are a great bookend to your work.
Further, I recommend Dr. Heather Lynn fir a deeper historical perspective, exploring these systems of control and manipulation tracing back throughout history from the Sumerians to the present day. She analyzes these from an esoteric perspective. Again, a lovely bookend to your work.
My algorithm continues to drive me to authors who are all exploring these control systems from completely different angles but who keep arriving at the exact same conclusions.
Sarah Kendzior deeply examines the criminal oligarch mafia currently running the world. She argues that it's our empathy and humanity keeping us aware and awake outside of these systems but doing our best to preserve our best qualities inside of them and in spite of them.
All three are going on the list. The fact that researchers coming from completely different disciplines keep arriving at the same conclusions is itself the most compelling argument that what we're all pointing at is real. That convergence is not a coincidence. Thank you for the recommendations.
One more Substack author I must mention is The Golden Order, who examines our social programming/conditioning. Their current series traces America's history of controlling its citizens going back to the colonies. This is also required reading and they have also arrived at the same conclusions.
Want us Burned Out.
That's exactly their design. Exhaust people with complexity, contradiction, and information overload until the path of least resistance feels like the only path left. Learned helplessness is not a side effect of this system. It's a feature. Here's the thing though. Every major monetary transition in history has rewarded the people who saw it clearly before everyone else did. Knowledge at the right moment is the only edge ordinary people (like you and I and most readers here) have ever had over concentrated power. Read to the end of the essay. There's a window in there that hasn't closed yet and understanding what's inside it right now, before it becomes mandatory, is exactly the kind of preparation that changes outcomes.