Pacific Island Times September 2017 Vol 2 Issue No. 12 | Page 6

FROM THE
COMMENT BOX
INSIGHTS
From Bitcoin to Potcoin and Rodman
I
I agree. Mother nature is the
only unstoppable force.
--Ester Guerrero
s this a way to live? Up at the
crack of dawn, ingesting blood
pressure meds to prepare for
the (admittedly self-inflicted) stress
of the of the latest download of
news from the strange and uncer-
tain Washington, D.C. of Donald J.
Trump.
Praying for everyone’ s
safety. No telling what these
two crazies will do, though i
have faith in our military. I’d
still hightail it outta there, lol, i
can’t handle that much stress.
Stay strong and God keep you
all safe.
--Kels Dess Jim RS
So it was a welcome distraction to
take on a reporting assignment in-
volving the crypto-currency Bitcoin
of which my knowledge and qualifi-
cations for analysis of this alterna-
tive to the existing banking system
were absolutely zero.
Of course, curiosity helps. For ex-
ample, looking at the balance sheet
of a conventional savings account
in 2017 and the micro-interest
delivered by the stingy financial
institutions should leave any saver
wondering why he or she bothered
to take the money out from under-
neath the mattress only to turn it
over to the bankers.
So one result of that
assignment was owner-
ship of a small stake in
Bitcoin.
There are a lot of
arguments for these
super computer-gen-
erated currencies, but I
did not quite appreciate
that entertainment was
one of them. First, the
contents of my little
Bitcoin wallet edged up,
then briefly dropped,
only to zoom upward,
dwarfing anything my
bank would have paid
for use of the principal amount. I
guess if anything, it’s a testimonial
to volatility and often brightens a
morning.
And if that isn’t enough excite-
ment, Bitcoin just split in two,
spawning Bitcoin Cash. I’ll leave it to
you to figure out how that works.
And then came… PotCoin, es-
sentially Bitcoin for stoners and
6
Calvo: the threats
of typhoons are more
imminent than North
Korea attack
the operators who with
increasing legitimacy
provide their supplies.
The problems these folks
have with the normal
banking system are truly
extreme, given that de-
spite state-by-state mar-
ijuana legalization, weed
remains illegal on the federal level
and if Attorney General
Jefferson Beauregard
Sessions has his way,
enforcement will return
to 1958 levels. Makes
me think of a Chicago
cousin who showed up
with a trun