Big Tech has been busy the last 3 to 4 years, and as the habit of development is, by the time they were quietly speaking out loud in the fall of 2020, had been deep in the R&D space for years prior! In fact, what I’m going to share today had it’s infancy in the world of blockchain birthed by the mysterious founder of Bitcoin himself. Friends in the fintech space watched with fascination as I tested to see if I could earn rather than buy into the bitcoin space, and after 1.5yrs of the effort, I had not only amassed a tiny hoard, but had spent it twice in offline settings using connected cards that I’d find out later each time, had not been designed to work in Canada. But the proof was there. A person, using methods that anyone but a technician would find dangerous (25+yr A+ PC Repair tech in this corner, only troubleshooting human health now rather than computers) to their computers and themselves, could earn rather than buy bitcoin. But the blockchain did not prove as impervious to threats as the founder extolled.
My experiment took place roughly 10 years after the founding of bitcoin, and by the time I got busy, there had been several major coin heists, the largest amounting to well over $2million USD. People were buying homes, paying shares in, and paying employees with bitcoin. Etherium quickly rose on the scene as that 10yr mark approached, and took the blockchain world by storm with it’s ability to create and enforce “smart contracts”, a kind of workflow management that would handle various scenarios according to various criteria set down by the person writing the contract. This could be a seller, a buyer, an employer, an exchange, etc. It would be the prototype of the programmable currency. It’s chosen imagery however, bothered me and I couldn’t put a solid finger on why. I can tell you that it reminds me of the black stone of Mecca, that Etherium was the brainchild of an Israeli and another person of Middle Eastern decent not of Jewish or Israeli origin. But I was wary of Etherium, and it’s “smart contracts”. I warned family who were dabbling in cryptomining, to avoid this particular coin.
Returning to 2020 now, Bitcoin’s value shot through the roof, and realizing the world stage was picking up speed dangerously fast toward global one world control, I cashed out when BTC was at it’s $40,000 mark per coin. I hadn’t earned a full coin as of yet, but what I had earned helped pay down several small debts. In the meantime, I had joined an alternative social platform called WebTalk, whose founders were wanting to build a verified method of building trust between users and home contractors and service providers in their communities. I don’t know how far they got because when I switched to the Brave browser, I eventually could no longer log in as they insisted on using Google’s Adsense, and that involves cookies, and Brave lets me block cookies, so they considered that blocking their ads and blocked me in return. At the time, the idea of verified businesses you could link up with to do business hadn’t yet hit Web3 stage, but the thought pattern was there to condition users toward it. I did not yet know about Web3 myself, as it wasn’t being publicly bandied about in any newsworthy way. People were still talking about Web 2.0 and how well or poorly various companies were doing with it. Although I was previously involved in bitcoin, I wasn’t a regular reader of Coindesk’s blog, so I hadn’t seen their series on 2030. . .
This series just came to my attention this morning via a friend who found one of their articles as it pertains to Web3, specifically a universal single sign-on that no longer uses usernames and passwords. After everything we have now seen coming out of WEF, WHO, the UN and our own governments in the past 3 years, reading this article was an unwanted trip down memory lane leading to a dark altar where several paths meet in an unholy marriage of Big Tech-meets-NWO technocratic control! Here are some snippets:
“In today’s internet, most of us have made the Faustian bargain of trading agency for convenience. We trust Facebook with our log-in credentials to countless other sites, the photos of our family, the contents of our private messages, and troves of personal details that can be repackaged, exploited, and weaponized”
“Self-sovereign identity (or SSI) would be that alternative. It would combine the convenience of Facebook with the principles of decentralization.”
““You’d use your ID to log in to anything that you need to access – in a utopian world – from banking to websites. It doesn’t matter. It’s one ID,” says Alanna Gombert, CEO of the Digital Asset Trade Association, and co-head of the ConsenSys Identity team working on uPort, another digital identity project.”
“At first blush, the idea of “peer-to-peer payments” looks like the bailiwick of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, not SSI. Yet the two could be linked. “The emergence of SSI and trust-over IP will significantly change how value exchange will happen,” suggests Reed. The logic: Digital wallets are being developed for SSI, and those will be cryptocurrency-enabled. Widespread adoption could (at last) follow.
In the same ways that credit cards revolutionized commerce, says Reed, these peer-to-peer payments will enable “value exchange for more services.” Suddenly it’s easier to support local artists. It’s easier to find and pay a trusted babysitter, a plumber, a driver to pick up your kids from soccer practice. “
Remember what I said WebTalk was endeavouring to do??? Now, here in 2023, which social media app has recently been renamed, “X”??!!
“Reed explains that with SSI-enabled payments, it’s not just about trusting the payment process (ensuring that X gets paid Y dollars), but it’s also about trusting the plumber or the babysitter. You’re not just confident that X will get the money; you’re confident that X is the responsible babysitter who has accumulated a solid reputation from your neighbors. “If you lower the friction and you increase the trust — not just the trust in the financial exchange, but in the individuals involved – you’re going to enable more efficient, and more decentralized forms of business.””
“Targeted ads, while creepy, have merit. Once again we make that agonizing tradeoff between privacy and convenience. The SSI internet of 2030, potentially, could give us both … with dramatically greater personalization.”
““I should be able to use one smart secure messaging platform for everybody,” says Reed.”
This reminds me of aggregate chat programs so I didn’t have to have a user for every chat app out there! Hmmm. . .
“This won’t happen without a widespread agreement on “open standards,” says Kaliya Young, aka Kaliya-Identity Woman (her Twitter handle), who has been working on SSI for over 15 years.”
Remember what I said earlier about work going on years prior before Web3 began to be actively talked about on the surface???
“Reed imagines new apps that offer more “localized discussions and information sharing.””
Remember, he can say this because he’s been working on stuff related to it. When developers and creators use the term “imagine”, its often because they can’t tell you up front what they are working on, they can only hint at it, so they make it sound like a dream statement rather than the reality they are already toying with behind the scenes.
“SSI could enable online voting – since your identity is now verified, online voting suddenly works – and this, in turn, would enable virtual organizations to wield hard power. “The internet will not just be a place where you ideate and talk about things, but it will be a place where you build and you shape reality.””
“Thanks to this ocean of high-quality data that would now be available, what Atanda describes as your “self-sovereign AI” can act, in effect, as an executive assistant to a multimillionaire, providing your life the same kind of flow.”
“Atanda acknowledges that the full manifestation of the AI probably won’t be a reality, but adds that the declared mission of his Internet.Foundation is “to get a billion people self-sovereign by 2030.””
An article on Medium.com takes the concept of social identity and merges it with blockchain technology:
“The Frequency blockchain provides a universal Social Identity that is designed to contain the user’s relationships, reach, and interests and is controlled by the user rather than an individual app or platform. With its breakthrough pricing model, Frequency is designed to support the scaling required for the Social Web to achieve mass adoption. By making it possible for each user to own their Social Identity, and offering an economic model that enables adoption by apps with large user bases, Frequency introduces both a system that sharply contrasts with the mega-platforms’ established norm and a path that supports getting this functionality into users’ hands.”
“The Social Identity includes a “universal handle” or username for each user. This universal handle is a name chosen by the user which is connected to the Social Identity itself, and may be accessed by any application on the Social Web. This Social Identity will enable a user to leverage a single following and network of personal connections across any or all apps that join the Social Web.”
“Frequency is expected to be a part of a growing ecosystem of infrastructure based on open protocols and standards that support the apps that join the Social Web. Frequency’s combination of its Social Web Handle and the adoption of open standards (including W3C and the Web3 foundation) and protocols (including DSNP) means that Frequency is designed to connect easily with other projects, tools and services in the Social Web.
One such area is the growing digital identity solution marketplace that provides validation and credentials to users for their online presence. Frequency’s Social Identity is designed specifically to cover the needs of social networks, and does not include the advanced functionality offered in the rapidly evolving broader digital identity solution space. Digital identity projects that seek to connect to users in the Social Web may integrate with Frequency which in turn will bring more value to users in the Social Web.”
“The Frequency blockchain aims to create a fundamental layer to Web3, based on a social identity that users can control.
By Eliza Gkritsi
Updated Apr 26, 2023 at 12:06 p.m. PDTSocial networking app MeWe is adopting the Frequency blockchain, built on Polkadot, to bring self-sovereign blockchain-based identities to its 20 million users, the MeWe team announced at Consensus 2023 here on Wednesday.”
“Frequency is a parachain of the Polkadot blockchain, meaning it sets its own rules and follows its own logic but is compatible with the main Polkadot chain as well as other parachains. Parachains pay a comprehensive lease to Polkadot, often with funds gathered from their communities, instead of a fee for each block. This boosts the system’s scalability and stability, according to Frequency. “
“The Frequency blockchain evolved out of work of the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP), another technology that enables applications to deliver Web3 features to their users. DSNP was supported by Project Liberty, a non-profit funded by real estate billionaire Frank McCourt to disrupt social media.
In September 2022, McCourt Global, the billionaire’s investment firm also led a $27 million investment round into MeWe. Amplica Labs, the key Frequency contributor and DSNP creator, is part of McCourt Global.”
So what exactly, is Polkadot, besides a blockchain?
“Polkadot is a unique blockchain protocol that functions to connect individual blockchain networks into one blockchain network efficiently.”
“The rise in the adoption of DeFi (Decentralized Finance) has also catapulted the demand for a more efficient and interoperable blockchain like what Polkadot offers. Many Polkadot projects are built using Substrate, the blockchain development framework for parity.io, enabling developers to build high-value applications on Polkadot. The Polkadot ecosystem comprises over three hundred blockchain and cryptocurrency projects. These range from wallets to decentralized exchanges, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Smart contracts, Internet-of-Things (IoT), and Automated Market Makers.”
Who is Parity? Who are it’s investors? Some regions of the world are getting names for themselves we aren’t too appreciative of. For example, Davos Switzerland has become synonymous with the WEF. Parity is a UK company, but look down the list of it’s 6 investors.
Remember my concerns about Etherium??? Where is that foundation located???
“With the Chinese government-backed blockchain institution, the Blockchain Service Network (BSN) introduces Polkadot and many other projects.”
Hold up, BSN is backed by China, and introduces Polkadot?
Is MeWe building their Web3 version on the backs of a CCP controlled product??? We just read earlier that Frequency is a parachain built on Polkadot, and that MeWe will be Frequency’s largest customer!
Things that make you go hmmm!!! But. . . carrying on here:
“Networks and applications on Polkadot can share information and functionality like apps on a smartphone, without needing to rely on centralized service providers with questionable data practices. Unlike previous networks that operated largely as standalone environments, Polkadot offers interoperability and cross-chain communication.”
“Polkadot enables forkless upgrades, allowing blockchains to evolve and adapt easily as better technology becomes available.
When taken together, these core features open a world of possibility for new services that put people back in control of their own digital lives. Several teams are already building impactful solutions for Polkadot for a range of applications, including finance, gaming, digital identity, IoT, supply chain management, social networking and cloud technologies. Web3 Foundation, the organization responsible for stewarding the development of Polkadot, supports many of these teams with grants, funding projects at all levels of the web3 technology stack, from low-level infrastructure to ecosystem components such as wallets, parachains, bridges and tooling.”
https://polkadot.network/blog/what-is-polkadot-a-brief-introduction
““In the Web3 Foundation’s view, current offers and sales of DOT, the native token of the Polkadot blockchain, are not securities transactions. DOT is used for the purposes for which it was designed – among other things, to bid for and secure parachains and facilitate on-chain governance. Control of the Polkadot network has long been in the hands of DOT holders. Today, DOT is not a security. It is software,” added Mr. Schoenönberger.”
In May 2023, this press release came out:
“LOS ANGELES, May 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Today, MeWe opens beta access for new users to claim a universal handle that will be used across an entire ecosystem of apps, groundbreaking functionality that is made possible by MeWe’s adoption of the Frequency blockchain. This beta is the first step in MeWe becoming the largest decentralized social platform in the world. MeWe plans to begin migration of its existing 20 million users in the coming weeks.
New MeWe users are able to claim their universal handle and create their Social Identity that gives them control over their data and how it is used. Users will be able to choose which apps they share their data with. Through their universal handle, users can access any app that joins the Social Web while keeping all of their personal connections. Users will not need passwords or additional handles.”
If you truly value your freedom, if you don’t want to be caught up in the CBDC of the near future, it’s accompanying digital ID that could very well be this universal Self-Secure Identity that couples with your medical records and CCP-inspired (perhaps controlled???) social credit system, then you DO NOT want a universal handle! I repeat! You DO NOT want a universal handle!
The dots here, pardon the pun, do not connect in nice places. They are trying to tell you that you will have full control over your data while simultaneously explaining how your data will not only be wide open for AI to use, but for governments and other “hard power” entities online can use too! (see one of the coindesk articles that discusses this scenario) The fact future-looking techs can build scenarios such as the October 2020 Coindesk article, showcase just what the string pullers are planning to do and hoping they can warn you of what’s coming while making it look appealing for other purposes. Once again, you will “hold your nose” as one article put it, and “click the button” to obtain all the conveniences you want, while handing over your sovereignty to others. Only now it is “decentralized”.
Jami, a voice/text chat client you can install on your computer or phone, uses blockchain technology as well, and due to decentralization, there is no central server you can retrieve your username and account from if you lose your account backup. If you are the type to regularly forget to backup your data, and the type to change phones every time a new one comes on the market, you could lose your account and never get it back. This is just one of the dangers of the coming system. On the one hand, for diligent people, the idea that a central server doesn’t have your credentials is appealing. But imagine this on a larger, wider, global scale. Failure to backup your account could wipe you off the digital map and no one but those you are in contact with offline would know you exist.
Now, throw in the CCP, entities in Switzerland such as the WEF, and other string pullers, and they could very easily tell you that your data is safe, your account is safe, there are blockchain hot and cold storage facilities to help maintain your account if ever need to call on it, and could give you instructions for doing so. Those who are in the cryptocoin space are familiar with hot and cold storage for their wallets so they don’t lose their coin and can store it safely. A whole industry has sprung up offering hardware to manage this and protect it from prying eyes. It is said that the safest cold wallet out there is a printed piece of paper. Sure the transaction codes showing your wealth are readable to the human eye, but nothing can be done with them till they are re-entered into a hot wallet’s system. We won’t mention that paper can be easily destroyed and rendered unreadable and therefore unenteable!
Webtalk, Musk’s X app, MeWe, a universal handle that offers instant verification that you are who you say you are, instant trust that doesn’t need any further verification (trust-less as blockchain says). . . Remember, get people voluntarily getting into these spaces, then lock them in with ostensibly no way out!
The way out is simply not to get in, in the first place. For those who get in and then want out, it involves wiping yourself off the Internet in such a way that string pullers feel you have sealed your doom. No government payments, payments that OpenAI founder refers to as Universal Basic Income tied to their World Coin (WLD), no networks to do business or keep up with family and friends, no contact, and no way to pay your bills or get medical help.
Here’s more on what OpenAI’s founder wants to be doing.
“We’re rapidly approaching a scenario where our real life identities are intricately tied to our online personas, and “Altman’s Orb” — the dystopian new world currency project — stands as a striking example of this biometric integration.”
“ChatGPT creator Sam Altman is ready to bring his new creation to the world: a future version of currency that involves scanning your eyeballs through an “orb.”
The OpenAI boss announced the global rollout on Monday of Worldcoin – a cryptocurrency project founded in 2019. Its aim is to create “a new identity and financial network owned by everyone.””
“Altman and fellow cofounder Alex Blania said that if their project was successful, it could “drastically increase economic opportunity,” while offering a means of “distinguishing humans from AI online while preserving privacy.”
They aim to achieve this by giving users a digital identity known as a World ID, as well as digital currency that is given “simply for being human.””
“To do this, prospective users are asked to download the World App, described as a “wallet. They are then instructed to visit an “orb,” which scans a person’s eyes to biometrically verify them and share a World ID.
“This lets you prove you are a real and unique person online while remaining completely private,” according to the Worldcoin blogpost. To begin, 1,500 orbs will be installed throughout the summer and fall across more than 35 cities, Worldcoin said.
—Worldcoin (@worldcoin) July 20, 2023″
All is not as it seems around Worldcoin however. MIT technology review observes:
“At the front of the line, representatives of Worldcoin Indonesia were collecting emails and phone numbers, or aiming a futuristic metal orb at villagers’ faces to scan their irises and other biometric data. Village officials were also on site, passing out numbered tickets to the waiting residents to help keep order. “
“Worldcoin representatives were showing up for a day or two and collecting biometric data. In return they were known to offer everything from free cash (often local currency as well as Worldcoin tokens) to Airpods to promises of future wealth. In some cases they also made payments to local government officials. What they were not providing was much information on their real intentions.
This left many, including Ruswandi, perplexed: What was Worldcoin doing with all these iris scans?”
“Our investigation revealed wide gaps between Worldcoin’s public messaging, which focused on protecting privacy, and what users experienced. We found that the company’s representatives used deceptive marketing practices, collected more personal data than it acknowledged, and failed to obtain meaningful informed consent. These practices may violate the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR)—a likelihood that the company’s own data consent policy acknowledged and asked users to accept—as well as local laws.”
If a company asks you to forego obeying local laws for the sake of digital benefit, and if that company already has a history of data collection, RUN!!!
“Two months before Worldcoin appeared in Ruswandi’s village, the San Francisco–based company called Tools for Humanity emerged from stealth mode. Worldcoin was its product.
The company’s website described Worldcoin as an Ethereum-based “new, collectively owned global currency that will be distributed fairly to as many people as possible.” Everyone in the world would get a free share, the company suggested—if they agreed to an iris scan with a specially designed device that resembles a decapitated robot head, which the company refers to as the “chrome orb.”
The orb was necessary, the website continued, because of Worldcoin’s commitment to fairness: each person should get his or her allotted share of the digital currency—and no more. To ensure there was no double-dipping, the chrome orb would scan participants’ irises and several other biometric data points and then, using a proprietary algorithm that the company was still developing, cryptographically confirm that they were human and unique in Worldcoin’s database.
“I’ve been very interested in things like universal basic income and what’s going to happen to global wealth redistribution,” Sam Altman, Worldcoin’s cofounder and the former President of Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator, told Bloomberg, which first reported on the company last summer.”
There’s etherium again! When I went looking for any public domain images of etherium, I didn’t find any, but the collage offered by shutterstock seriously says it all in one visual commentary, including the eyeball and financial reporting charts.
“. . . if it succeeds, this protocol could become the universal authentication method for a whole new generation of the internet.”
“Central to Worldcoin’s distribution was the high-tech orb itself, armed with advanced cameras and sensors that not only scanned irises but took high-resolution images of “users’ body, face, and eyes, including users’ irises,” according to the company’s descriptions in a blog post. Additionally, its data consent form notes that the company also conduct “contactless doppler radar detection of your heartbeat, breathing, and other vital signs.” In response to our questions, Worldcoin said it never implemented vital sign detection techniques, and that it will remove this language from its data consent form.”
Paypal has taught us that when a company claims to remove problematic language, just wait. It may not actually be removed! To prove my concern:
““During our field-testing phase, we are collecting and securely storing more data than we will upon its completion,” the blog post states. “We will delete all the biometric data we have collected during field testing once our algorithms are fully-trained.””
“the transition from a web-based wallet to an app-based wallet has caused a number of users to appear to lose either their entire accounts or all of their coins. For others, the app has proved buggy, draining battery life or leading them into in a spiral of loading and reloading.
Rodriguez, the Chilean security guard, has been trying to resolve his wallet issues since shortly after he was scanned. After signing up in February, and being asked to input his email, phone number, and use a QR code, the app was creating such performance issues for his phone that he deleted it entirely. When he tried to re-download the app, he found that his username no longer existed.
To fix it, he was told by a local orb operator, he would have to find the orb and re-scan his biometric data. But if Worldcoin works as the company claims, re-scanning his iris would simply result in the orb linking his iris with his old iris hash. In other words—and as Worldcoin has subsequently confirmed— there’s no way to recover an account once it’s lost.”
The article is longer than the above quotes, but you can see how my shared concerns are presented. This is a company owned by the founder of OpenAI, who believes that universal basic income will be digital and tied to a digital ID.
The Revolver news article echos my concerns:
“The increasing integration of one’s real life identity with online identity creates a whole new worlds of possibility for abuse on the part of the usual suspects. The integration of currency and payments into this mix is still more dangerous. Say something the government doesn’t like? Get ready to have your digital wallet fined — or seized entirely. Indeed, this is the very infrastructure that serves as the precondition for the much maligned Chinese “social credit score system.””
“Worldcoin has developed a system that it pitches as “the world’s largest identity and financial public network.”
Essentially, the company has created a database that links digital cash, or Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), with a digital identity system.”
“According to Worldcoin’s executives, World ID, or “something like” it, will soon be mandatory for anyone who wishes to partake in the day-to-day functions of society.”
“Three years ago, in July 2020, the website Emerging Europe reported on the trend toward iris scans as the payment system of the future. Now the future is here and Worldcoin is not the only outfit playing in this space. A Polish firm called PayEye is also involved, among others.”
““Something like World ID will eventually exist, meaning that you will need to verify [you are human] on the internet, whether you like it or not,” Worldcoin CEO Alex Blania said.”
“According to Blania, digital ID will be so prevalent that it will become inevitable.
There will be no escaping the requirement to verify your identity if you want to take part in society, access your own money, buy food, etc…
Blania argues that the “progress” in linking digital cash to a biometric ID is due to the recent emergence of “AI” technology.
And he isn’t predicting that global ID and digital cash are the technology of the distant future, he asserts that it will be here within a couple of years.”
Is following MeWe into the abyss really worth it for you??? It is NOT worth it for me, and I’ve been trying since fall of 2020, to get people to seriously consider how they’d do life away from “the system”, with not a lot of uptake or interest! GAB’s founder seems to be the only one actively working toward this end, as faulty as some of the site’s behaviour is and the fact his payment system is not available to me as a Canadian. We need people like him to rise in nations across the globe! We cannot afford to take part in the building of The Beast System!
