An Open Letter to Crypto-Wealthy Libertarians, Voluntarists, and Anarchists

Manchester, NH Bitcoin Meetup

Manchester, NH Bitcoin Meetup – The world’s longest-running.

With $1 trillion market cap for all cryptocurrency on the horizon, it’s pretty clear a bunch of voluntarist/anarchists/libertarians have access to unprecedented wealth – if not now, very soon.

If achieving liberty in your lifetime is important to you and you have now found yourself with, or will very soon (if the prices keep rising) have access to more wealth than you have ever had access to, or could have imagined having, now is the time that you should seriously consider a couple of options:

Start planning your move to New Hampshire, ASAP, to join the largest concentration of liberty-minded people on earth. Many of whom are very active and having success in changing the status quo both inside and outside the system. The state is still a state, but for what it’s worth, NH’s state this year exempted crypto-only business from money transmitter statutes. Crypto-libertarians were the ones moving this legislation forward. (New Hampshire has a bunch of principled libertarians in its state house, unlike other states.)

More liberty-minded people like you have moved to New Hampshire than anywhere else in the world.

More liberty-minded people like you have moved to New Hampshire than anywhere else in the world.

Lots of things were already made possible just by bringing libertarians together to the same geographic area in real life, (as has been happening here for well over a decade) but now thanks to crypto, the game is set to change big time in the next five years. Besides the obvious ability to better fund political campaigns and other inside-the-system action, once the total crypto market cap goes up another 10x or 100x, outright buying existing mainstream media (TV, radio, print) should be possible, in addition to funding an army of attorneys to help crush the state in their own courts. I’m sure you can think of some cool possibilities that concentrating crypto-wealthy libertarian activists together can achieve!

Thousands have already moved and are thousands more are planning to move. Here are 101 reasons why you should: (more…)

NHCLU Files Motion Challenging Border Patrol Checkpoints!

Border Patrol in Derby Line, VT

Border Patrol Agents Hassle Us Over Recording Video of their Checkpoint

Good news! The privacy-invading internal border patrol checkpoints that appeared in New Hampshire’s North Country this summer have been challenged in court by the NH Civil Liberties Union!

From their press release:

As stated in the ACLU-NH’s motion, during these border patrol checkpoints, the Woodstock Police Department (“WPD”) and the New Hampshire State Police separately worked in concert with United States Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) to circumvent the independent protections provided by the New Hampshire Constitution against dog-sniff searches in the absence of a warrant or reasonable suspicion. Specifically, federal CBP agents used dog-sniff searches in situations where New Hampshire law enforcement would have been barred from conducting similar searches. Resulting evidence from these federal searches was then turned over to state law enforcement for drug prosecutions. (more…)

Full Video of First-Ever Free State Blockchain Conference

Darryl W Perry addresses the crowd during the conference.

Darryl W Perry addresses the crowd during the conference.

This year’s first-ever Free State Blockchain Digital Assets Conference in Portsmouth, NH was a smashing success. If you missed it, check out Derrick J’s recap of the event here.

Video of the conference has now been posted, and while the quality could be better, it’s better to have it than not. Of special note is the presentation from Keene-area cryptocurrency business-owner Chris Rietmann (2:02:50) and Free Keene‘s Darryl W Perry on a panel discussion about the future of blockchain (4:47:00).

Looking forward to next year’s conference!

Concord Monitor Runs Another Story on Bitcoin

Area 23's Bitcoin Vending Machine

Area 23’s Bitcoin Vending Machine

Back in 2015, the Concord Monitor ran a front page feature on Keene’s Bitcoin Vending Machine (BVM). David Brooks, who writes their “Granite Geek” column has been following the world’s first cryptocurrency for a while, and also wrote a piece when Concord got its own BVM located at Area 23, a libertarian-owned bar.

Now, Area 23 and the Concord BVM are back in the Monitor, with a piece published Friday in the Granite Geek column about why very few people are actually spending bitcoin these days.

Brooks’ gets it right when pointing out that people are reticent to spend a thing with a tendency to go up in value. However, he brings up a supposed environmental objection to the power consumed by the world’s bitcoin miners, claiming mining consumes significant power. I’d ask, what about all the banking infrastructure? How much power do their countless buildings with their lights and computers consume globally? I’d be willing to bet it’s FAR more than bitcoin – to the point of being incalculable. Cryptocurrency decentralizes money and threatens that old structure.

If it gets too expensive to run miners, people will stop. Meanwhile, there’s no need to fear power will run out. Necessity is the mother of invention and energy is neither created or destroyed. The market will keep finding ways to make energy cleaner, cheaper, and more efficient. Cryptocurrencies’ rise may further such development.

Thanks to David Brooks for his story. People are talking about bitcoin!

All Cryptocurrencies Set Record $420 Billion Market Cap as NH Retailers Launch DASH Acceptance

Cryptocurrency's Total Global Value Over $420 Billion!

All Cryptocurrency’s Total Global Value Over $420 Billion!

What a ride! The total market cap of Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies combined passed $420 billion for the first time yesterday! For some perspective, keep in mind that the global market cap passed $100 billion for the first time in early June. It hit $200 billion five months later in early November, then about three weeks later hit $300 billion. It only took ten more days for the total market cap to pass $400 billion.

With some exceptions, overall, the rest of the cryptocurrency prices trend upward when Bitcoin Core (BTC) is going up. Bitcoin Core has been on a meteoric rise, with nearly a 2000% increase in its US dollar value in the last twelve months! Yesterday, BTC eclipsed over $16,000 according to BitcoinAverage.com. Two days prior to that, it was at $12,000.

When will these steady gains come to an end? Hard to say. Many fear a huge crash is coming, but then again cryptocurrency is uncharted territory. Just because there was a big crash in bitcoin in 2013 doesn’t mean anything for what’s happening now. The market was so small then by comparison to today. If you look at the market cap chart above, you can see that “big” crash at the end of 2013 – but it barely registers as a little speed bump, peaking then at around $13 billion, when compared to the monstrous $420 billion of value in all cryptos today.

Corner News' owner Roberta Mastrogiovanni poses with her store's brand new Bitcoin Vending Machine!

Corner News’ owner Roberta Mastrogiovanni poses with her store’s brand new Bitcoin Vending Machine!

Obviously, rule number one of investing is don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose. If you’ve got money in cryptocurrency and you’re spooked and want to cash out, go ahead, just don’t cash it all out.  Also, consider diversifying into other cryptocurrency besides BTC. That said, rule number one of bitcoin has always been to hold on for the ride. Don’t let the downs get to you. They will come at some point; the only question is how deep the price drop will be and for how long. It’s important to keep perspective – we’re still in the early days of this. Even though bitcoin is coming up on its ninth year of existence, it’s still young compared to all other forms of money that have been with us for centuries. This is new territory and anything can happen.

We’re all subject to our emotions and beliefs. I got spooked and sold some of the Shire Free Church‘s bitcoin for cash prior to the much-feared “Segwit2x” fork of Bitcoin that was supposed to happen in November, but never materialized. That bitcoin would now be worth three times as much USD had we held it. (more…)

VIDEO: Vermin Supreme’s Pony Protest Outside Hillary’s Book Signing in Concord

After filing a federal lawsuit against the city of Concord, NH for trying to oppress his free speech rights, the city agreed to a settlement and Vermin Supreme’s pony protest was a success!

He and supporters gathered outside a bookstore in downtown Concord, NH with signs and a real, live pony to protest the evil Hillary Clinton who was inside doing a book signing.

Here’s what happened.

Free State Blockchain Digital Assets Conference a Huge Success

Originally posted at FreeStateBitcoin.com:

This weekend, the Free State Bitcoin Shoppe went mobile for the first time. We attended a bitcoin conference happening in our hometown of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The occasion is the arrival of bitcoin powerhouse Bruce Fenton, his businesses, and his family, to move to NH as part of the ongoing freedom migration that’s been happening for almost 2 decades. The conference attracted some of the most exciting and important minds from across the country to talk about the latest in digital assets.

The Free State Bitcoin Shoppe had an enormous presence, being one of the event’s sponsors. A booth loaded with crypto-themed shirts and accessories, plus pocked-sized secure bitcoin vaults, and a towering bitcoin vending machine kept busy all day as items were flying off the shelves. We sold out of many items, and were delighted to see our last digital vault go to a customer who asked to pay in encrypted Zcash. We still haven’t heard of any other retail store in the world doing that. (more…)