The World of Crypto

It’s hard not to be judgmental about addicts. 30 years ago I would not have trusted myself. Nothing worse than lying to yourself coupled with a few near death experiences. Just one last time… never ever will go back. I am reminded of that song by the Youngbloods, “Darkness, Darkness”

Living in the Bay area, in the 90’s, it was easy to make the trip to the gambling meccas of Tahoe/Reno. We can both agree I am sure that Reno has some of the best pawn shops in the world.

mu
 
Exciting times, that's for sure :)
*Edit- I predict some sort of balance between the market and governments on this, although I'd prefer the market sort itself out, free market, and keep governments n corporations from their monopolies and controls as unnecessary middleman. Time will tell
 
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"I think the Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government. The only thing that's missing is a reliable form of e-cash" - Friedman

Just stumbled upon this, thought it appropriate. As far as famous folks who approve or disapprove of cryptocurrency goes, you'll likely find just as many on each side of the topic for a wide variety of reasons. I certainly like the idea of less government involvement. Right now though, governments are scrambling to figure out how to keep control and profit off it.

*Edit, the major point of the creation of Bitcoin was less involvement btw, and the blockchain ledger to keep us honest and not be able to print more out of thin air
 
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musashi said:
It’s hard not to be judgmental about addicts. 30 years ago I would not have trusted myself. Nothing worse than lying to yourself coupled with a few near death experiences. Just one last time… never ever will go back. I am reminded of that song by the Youngbloods, “Darkness, Darkness”

Living in the Bay area, in the 90’s, it was easy to make the trip to the gambling meccas of Tahoe/Reno. We can both agree I am sure that Reno has some of the best pawn shops in the world.

mu
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Ah yes, Reno. I do not like that town. My evil step mother lives there. She fleeced my brothers and I of all our inheritance when my dad died. She is a gambling junkie and re-married a pool shark. No doubt my dad's inheritance has all gone into the slots in Reno by now. I moved back to the SF Bay area in the 90's and I spent a lot of time in Tahoe. I rented a house there with a bunch of ski junkie engineers in winter. I played the nickle slots in South and North Shore then. Small scale for drink comps. Reno was another venture. I learned how to get free booze at Circus Circus there. If you sit at one of the multi colored vodka slushy & Margarita bars, you can put quarters into the video poker machines and then press the coin return and the bar tender thinks that you are playing the constantly dinging machine. So the booze flows. One way to get really hammered for free. I generally stayed away from the tables there and learned that the odds can be beat at some Video Poker machines.

Vegas was something else. Hard core, especially in the old days of single deck 21, low ceiling smoke filled casinos and men's rooms filled with 100s of cologne bottles. When I was a student at SDSU in the 80s we would catch the super cheap Southwest Air "shake n' bake" flight from SAN to LAS and 4 of us would rent a room in a fleabag hotel. I played best odds games, like craps, 21 and video poker. I learned early on to stay away from the big casinos on the strip. They fleece you in a hurry. And if you are up a certain amount, a hot babe will come around and offer comps to keep you playing. Free rooms, food, drinks, tickets to shows. I played downtown when it was really sleazy. Single deck 21 there, $5 prime rib dinners, and dealers that told dirty jokes. I also played in slot and poker tournaments that are not against the house, so the odds are way better playing against other people. I get bored gambling though and its an analytical thing for me. I do not have the gambling genes. Others certainly do. On many trips to Vegas friends were often times tapped out and wanted loans. I refused. So they would go to UNLV or a hotel where they had friends and get money. Then they headed to Bally's or Caesar's and lost it all. Later some of those same college buddies got into big trouble with venture capital and IPOs circa Y2K. One was busted for corporate fraud and his wife fleeced him in a divorce. Another offered me a COO position at his start-up in San Diego but I turned it down. I had golden handcuffs at Sun Microsystems in Mountain View then. As it turned out, he was busted by the feds for transferring restricted technology to Korea and his IPOs folded up and became dust. He fled the country.

As for pawn shops... my brother had a Jewish friend that had a chain of pawn shops in San Diego. That guy was a poker junkie, and he would call me to play all over town. I made a LOT of money off those games. To the point that he stopped calling me. After playing poker with emotional rocks at the tables in Vegas, he and the gang of ex swabbies were easy prey. As for addict songs, "That Smell", by Lynyrd Skynyrd comes to mind.
 
@Big Sur , I really like the way you write your thoughts, great visuals

Thanks for the Coinbase idea, I hadn't considered that, I have some cash doing nothing in my RRSP account. "the time to buy is when there's blood in the streets." Said one of those Rothschilds
 
Deach69 said: ""the time to buy is when there's blood in the streets." Said one of those Rothschilds"

Nathan Rothschild. He was quite correct!

L0ngball
 
Um, maybe you don't understand the expression :unsure:

It's a silly debate really, we won't know for a few years whether or not cryptocurrencies will prevail. All I know is folks keep panic selling when the market goes sharply to the downside , but become euphoric and buy at the top when the exact opposite opportunity happens, time after time again. Those who are complaining these days are the sheep who purchased near the top ($70 000) as opposed to those experienced in this market who purchased at around $4000 back in 2018, I won't even mention those who were in the market beyond that, the profits are insane if they held on. But from $4000 to today's $20 000ish is amazing profit. And it's all the same principles as the stock market, just much faster, too fast for traditional investors.

I believe the DowJones is nearing the end of a very large cycle where it is about to crash hard, initiating a depression. The crypto market along with many other markets will crash along with it because they are all connected. If you think falling to 20 000 is scary, it'll likely get even worse and scarier, the most seasoned and successful crypto investors will be second guessing their strategies ("blood in the streets, even their own"). Eventually then ALL markets will start rising again as they always have. That's my prediction. On top of that, it's possible that's when the world will start looking at some sort of cryptocurrency (not necessarily Bitcoin) which cannot be manipulated with endless QEs, as a world currency (the mark of the beast?).

I could easily be wrong, but fortunately gambling is not one of my vices (I cannot fathom wanting to visit Vegas and such places) and I'm not playing with money I am attached to, especially at 20 000. Makes it easy to invest in crypto without FOMOing and/or panic selling. I strongly suggest most don't invest in cryptocurrencies, whether they have fundamentals , utility or created on a whim like Dogecoin, Elon Musk's favorite
 
Deach69 said:
Um, maybe you don't understand the expression :unsure:
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If you are referring to me, I understand all the expressions posted here. Only too well. Bitcoin & Co. have had a double top, so from a market technical analysis perspective they are toast. A double top signals a medium or long-term trend change in an asset class. I have been through many financial booms and crashes in my lifetime and gained and lost several fortunes. Gains and losses are relative. And highly variable. And you have to survive the downturns over the long haul, which is not that easy. Even if you diversify. Or have any money to invest anywhere. Most people do not. Most people are into debt up to their eyeballs. Most people borrow money to invest on the margin. Which creates these artificial highs and lows and market instability.
 
Big Sur said:
If you are referring to me, I understand all the expressions posted here. Only too well. Bitcoin & Co. have had a double top, so from a market technical analysis perspective they are toast. A double top signals a medium or long-term trend change in an asset class. I have been through many financial booms and crashes in my lifetime and gained and lost several fortunes. Gains and losses are relative. And highly variable. And you have to survive the downturns over the long haul, which is not that easy. Even if you diversify. Or have any money to invest anywhere. Most people do not. Most people are into debt up to their eyeballs. Most people borrow money to invest on the margin. Which creates these artificial highs and lows and market instability.
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Good. The fact that you perceive Tesla's sale of 3/4 of it's Bitcoin holdings as a sign the industry will collapse, is a good example of "blood in the streets". Personally, I see it more along the lines of Tesla wanting to sit on fiat as opposed to volatile Bitcoin. It's hard to say what Musk is really up to, but he did say he hadn't sold any personal Dogecoin. The market barely flinched at the announcement that they sold btw, but it's still good FUD.

Well put btw, you certainly have a way with words. And thanks for sharing, it's important to hear. I'm a part of a few trading forums, there's a ton of heartbreaking stories out there. I was talking to someone just yesterday about how my bank keeps upping my lending limits, it's diabolical, but not tempting in my case.

So, what's the solution? Gambling and loans are out there in many different forms. Do we just leave it up to the politicians to tell us what we should and should not be doing? I quit smoking cigarettes, after many years I figured out I couldn't just have one and leave it at that. I quit drinking alcohol around the same time, should I have asked my wife to stop as well? Should I petition to prohibit such things because I assume nobody else can control them? Are cigs and liquor more acceptable because the bad effects are long term as opposed to things like heroin and meth? Is crypto worse than the stock market because you can get wiped out in no time as opposed to over time?

I know what you're saying Big Sur, it's a mad world for sure. There are no easy answers, as far as I'm concerned. Love is the Law...
 
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Deach69 said:
So, what's the solution?
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Well, I could offer an opinion here. But as my (lawyer) father used to say, "Free advice is worth exactly what you pay for it."

Everyone's situation is different and we all have access to different investment opportunities or are limited from making investments. When I was working in restaurants on the Monterey Peninsula buying a house was simply impossible. Investing in the stock market was too expensive with high broker fees. Remember those high commission days? Long gone now. I did not have the means or the income for buying real estate or stocks. Later when I was an engineer and made lots of money on stock options and income, I ~barely!~ made enough to buy a house in the silicon valley. Everyone told me I bought too late! Well, I sold that house for twice what I paid for it, and the cap gains were mostly tax free. Hard to find tax free gains anywhere else, so I stay invested in real estate. I also made big money in my 401-k and stock options available only to employees of several start-ups with company matching. And I made fat bonuses in the high tech bubble years in the silicon valley. I put myself through college to get to that level though, and I was in debt up to my eyeballs when I graduated from college and again later after I bought my first house. Timing was fortuitous in my case, as the RayGun years and the tech bubble offered good jobs in engineering in California at that time and real estate went up 3 fold during that time. Also real estate was cheap enough to buy there then. I do not know who can afford my old house in the silicon valley now valued at $1.6 million? That is about the average price of a house there now. I only bought my house as rent for my apartment kept going up and up and up. It started at $800 a month and it went up to $1400 a month when I bought my house. That same apartment now rents for a WHOPPING $2700 a month! My mortgage payment with property taxes and insurance on my house was $1900 a month, and tax deductible interest. After taxes it was $1300 a month. But even then the cost of living there was so high that even making 6 figures, I was barely treading water.

But investing, you have to know where to invest and when to invest. You have to be right twice to cash in; when you buy and when you sell. Markets vary. When I bought this property in Oregon no one wanted real estate. That was in 2010. Dead market. Now? real estate here is on fire and I can sell this place for 5x what I paid for it. I bought it for way less than market value at that time in foreclosure. But still... I had to be here and have the cash to buy it. And beat out all the other real estate sharks.

Globally? I do not think there is a solution. Economies are based on endless growth. We simply cannot grow forever. Can you out smart the rest of the world in investments? Hard to say. Depends on where you are and what resources you have. I am retired now and I collect SS. I do not have any great need to buy lots of stuff, so I am set. Even if the markets all tank, my house is paid for. I belive that the dollar will continue to dominate the globe. China and Russia have serious demographic issues. Japan has serious debt issues, as do Greece and Italy. High energy prices will kill any economy, regardless. Even here in the states where we have lots of coal and NG and oil, they are putting the damper on them. Self sacrifice? Self destruct now or face environmental destruction later? Seems like a stupid claim made by Deese in his "Liberal World Order" speeches. With fools in charge who knows what will happen.
 
musashi said:

ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com www.zerohedge.com

mu
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The beginning of that article states that Bitcoin is non-traceable which is untrue , it is well known to be an open book for all to see, so I'm dubious about whatever else may be said in there. But countries ARE scrambling to create their own CBDCs as they watch their citizens gravitate towards already established cryptocurrencies. I just read the other day how it has been estimated that over 2 million Nigerians are now using Bitcoin. Its extremely popular in Africa, your article mentions a few islands in the caribbean which makes a lot of sense considering the amount of money around there, crypto is a threat to banking. Just looked up Bermuda though, at first glance it seems they are embracing it, smart. Dubai is really big on it as well, since I'm throwing names around

CBDCs are a way for banks to keep control over our money and us. Bitcoin was developed so that we wouldn't need those third parties with a limited amount, no QEs no manipulation. Last I heard (believe nothing you hear and half of what you see), the development of CBDC's was way behind what has already been created. The race is on, some countries have already adopted Bitcoin as legal tender and its in the works for many more. Knowing how Russia and China have been supposedly hoarding Gold is kinda scary because they will probably be backing their CBDCs with gold whereas the US version backed by debt. I'm hoping it all comes down to whatever the people of the planet choose, which is what central banks are worried about.

*edit* FYI, I dont use words like dubious in real life, just sayin :cool:
 
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