Alaskan 'Judge' Wants Pope Francis to Endorse the Blockchain

An Alaskan conservative commentator and self-styled judge has called for the world to embrace blockchain technology.

AccessTimeIconFeb 5, 2016 at 11:01 p.m. UTC
Updated Sep 11, 2021 at 12:07 p.m. UTC
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An Alaskan conservative commentator and self-styled judge has called for the world to embrace blockchain technology.

Anna von Reitz, who frequently writes about social justice and the US, argues that the problems in the country are the result of a century of rule "by the criminals who have hijacked our government, wealth, and heritage".

In her essays, von Reitz singles out the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund and other organizations as emblematic of these issues. Late last year she went as far as calling for the arrest of President Barack Obama and the US Congress, gaining Internet infamy in the process.

However, in a 22nd January letter addressed to Pope Francis, von Reitz wrote that a distributed financial network could help solve those problems. While she she doesn’t name bitcoin directly, she arguably alludes to the digital currency by way of "a common worldwide currency".

Von Reitz explained:

"Instead of taking one or two or three commodities and using them as standards of value – which always leads to scarcity and hoarding and manipulation of those commodities – why not flip this paradigm on its head, and use all the value of all labor and all natural resources to back a common worldwide currency delivered by blockchain technology, available to everyone, everywhere?"

A decentralized currency, she argued, would make it easier to deliver this kind of service because it removes the influence of greedy third parties.

"Whatever service delivery problems there have been or which still are, can be overcome now via a truthful and honest worldwide currency and credit system using blockchain technology," she wrote, adding:

"Please admit the Truth and end this blasphemy, this false claim of scarcity, once and for all. Admit that there are only two things of value on the Earth so far as trade among men is concerned----labor and natural resources."

Later in the piece, von Reitz walks through how this theoretical system might operate, with allocations of resources based on national population. Yet each member of those societies would be connected via blockchain and receive their income through it.

She wrote:

”There is no reason that every man, woman, and child on this planet could not be given a basic living stipend and an investment account. This could be delivered using two separate pre-paid credit accounts with transactions via blockchain.

She expanded on the idea in another letter, on the subject of China.

"We can trade credit digits on ledgers and use blockchain transactions to track them – and allow each of us value based on our overall ability to work and contribute, plus our share of the world's natural resources,” she wrote.

"No more fraudulent debt currencies. No more stealing from the future. No more phony controls and commodity manipulations."

Reitz did not respond to inquiries regarding the letters, including whether they had actually been sent to Vatican City in Rome, the global seat of the Roman Catholic Church.

Von Reitz concludes her 22nd January letter with a call to action for Pope Francis and the Roman Catholic Church to reject the existing financial system and "join with the people in putting an end to corporate greed and lack of accountability".

"The corporations have caused these problems. The corporations – not the people – need to pay for correcting them and cleaning them up," she wrote.

Image credit: neneo / Shutterstock.com

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