UK

What is your estimate of "significantly higher"? ~500 K USD if ~on par with gold? It would mean we just went from possible upside 10x to 30x in say 10 years? But even more important question: how low it go down further? Is it possible for BTC to trade below 10.000 USD at some point in the future? 1.000 usd?

I think even Munger already aknowledged, that BTC is like gold. At the same time they are saying similar things about gold as of Bitcoin. Also on art etc. Since those are not productive assets, Buffett an Munger is probably right in a very long term. Even super art items have lousy long term returns vs productive things. But that does not mean one can not make some money speculating them. But as Dealraker said it is quite difficult to understant difference between 20 or 1 M USD? What is a good price for BTC?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/11/14/russias-spy-chief-talk-us-g20-leaders-meet-discuss-ukraine-war/

What obvious implications possible war ending would have in terms of economies and markets? Perhaps it would be somewhat disinflationary at least in short/mid term? Also bullish for Europe? https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-ukraine-retakes-kherson-u-s-looks-to-diplomacy-before-winter-slows-momentum-11668345883 The imminent onset of winter—coupled with fears of inflation spurred by mounting energy and food prices, the billions of dollars of weaponry already pumped into Ukraine, and the tens of thousands of casualties on both sides—has prompted talk in Washington of a potential inflection point in the war, now in its ninth month. The U.S. and its allies are pledging to continue supporting Ukraine, but top officials in Washington are beginning to wonder aloud how much more territory can be won by either side, and at what cost. Some European officials, meanwhile, are more bullish on Ukraine’s chances. “There has to be a mutual recognition that military victory, in the true sense of the word, is maybe not achievable through military means, so therefore you need to turn to other means,” Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top U.S. military officer, told the Economic Club of New York on Wednesday. “There’s also an opportunity here, a window of opportunity, for negotiation.” “It remains to be seen whether or not there’ll be a judgment made as to whether or not Ukraine is prepared to compromise with Russia,” Mr. Biden said at the White House. He added: “They’re going to both lick their wounds, decide…what they’re going to do over the winter, and decide whether or not they’re going to compromise.” Washington has signaled to Ukraine that at a minimum Kyiv needs to appear open to a negotiated solution. Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, conveyed that message to President Volodymyr Zelensky and his lieutenants in Kyiv on Nov. 4, suggesting that Kyiv would gain leverage by showing openness to negotiations, according to people familiar with the discussions. Two European diplomats briefed on the discussions said Mr. Sullivan recommended that Mr. Zelensky’s team start thinking about its realistic demands and priorities for negotiations, including a reconsideration of its stated aim for Ukraine to regain Crimea, which was annexed in 2014. Officials in some European countries, particularly in the east and north, have said that publicly pressing for talks could hurt Ukraine’s efforts and play to Russia’s aims of dividing the alliance. “We need to talk about the cost of peace,” one northern European official said. If the war ends now, “The message the Ukrainians would get is that their fight was meaningless. The message Russia would get is that this is time to refit and to rebuild economically. No one believes [Russia] will stop until they achieve their strategic objective.” Mr. Putin has said that Russia is open to peace talks and argued that if Washington ordered Mr. Zelensky to sit down for negotiations, Kyiv would do so. With the latest setbacks in the battlefield, Western officials have said the Kremlin appears to have backed away from its previous preconditions for talks, such as accepting Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory.

Thanks, nice to know. I am quite familiar with this bank and totaly agree with you. Just read another day, how they are now reflecting on how banks are "overearning" and on this oligopoly situation, which was further strenghtened after GFC debacle. I agree that in Ireland and some other countries banks are day and night vs some other EU countries.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/crypto-ftx-collapse-spread-icahn-siegel-erian-summers-novogratz-roubini-2022-11

Why do you think it is not in the interest of US or west to support Ukraine? Given ukrainian will and at this time proven ability to fight isnnt it a very good opportunity (not with you own soldiers) to push back, weaken and contain if not change Russia even more? Also, I am not sure about any obligations to Ukraine, but I thought there were some security guarantees for them after they agreed to give uo nuclear weapons? Also, if this pushback will succed (sofar it seems it could?), donnt you think it would show something to China too? I actually believe that US and west almost cannot aford not to support Ukraine and it would be a huge failure not to do this, unlees you want allow Russian regime to do as they want in Europe and China in Taiwan/south asia. I am not debating who is right or wrong, moral or not, but just from this longer term or great power strugle perspective, why would US not see this as an very good opportunity? And I agree that ending all this asap would be great, but how do can you end a war, when part of your territories are still occupied by an enemy? Maybe sollution at this stage, if you want everything to end asap, is more support (more Himars, tanks etc to Ukraine), not less? What good it will do if you stop everything for a one ore two years and provide opportunity for russian forces to regain strenght?

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffett-curse-sam-bankman-fried-ftx-collapse-2022-11

By BOI you mean Bank of Ireland or is it something else?

Thanks! Do you own or know more ideas of blockchain companies in addition to OSTK?

Viking, thank you for all you work and info on FFH!

Does any major spillover from all this (or what has to come yet) could happen in fiat world/traditional financial system? What to avoid?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-11/sam-bankman-fried-fooled-the-crypto-world-and-maybe-even-himself?srnd=premium-europe “A lot of people have compared this to Lehman. I would compare it to Enron,” former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said Friday in a Bloomberg TV interview. “The smartest guys in the room. Not just financial error but -- certainly from the reports -- whiffs of fraud.”

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3611403-general-staff-russia-did-not-ask-ukraine-for-green-corridor-to-withdraw-troops-from-kherson.html "According to the available information, the Russian side addressed neither the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, nor the leadership of the General Staff, nor the command of the army groups with a request to create so-called ‘green corridor’," Brigadier General Oleksiy Hromov, Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Department of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said at a briefing, answering Ukrinform's question about the request for a "green corridor" for the invaders. Earlier today, Serhiy Khlan, a member of the Kherson Regional Council, said that the Russians were moving their equipment to the left bank of the Dnipro River, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine were destroying it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-09/short-seller-jim-chanos-warns-the-crypto-crackdown-is-coming-now “You're going to get a judicial outcry now to regulate the system and bring these guys to justice,” Chanos, the founder of hedge fund firm Chanos & Co. said. The warning comes on the day that Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and CEO of major crypto exchange FTX.com, suggested the company could be heading for bankruptcy barring an injection of fresh capital. Chanos has criticized a slow-moving regulatory response to crypto before, noting that it’s ultimately market cycles that dictate how authorities respond. “Asset prices are both the defense attorneys and the prosecutors” when it comes to financial frauds, he said. While crypto itself is often characterized as an anti-government asset with some ‘defensive’ or ‘uncorrelated’ characteristics, Chanos noted that there’s a long history of alternative currency projects popping up during bull markets, or “when people’s sense of disbelief is suspended.” He said that people often focus on the downsides of fiat currency, rather than its strengths — which include a central bank backstop in times of crisis.

I think crypto is still substantially smaller than dotcom was, so hopefully fallout will be manageable for economies, but for sure it will cost some, just think about all this mining equipment or even advertising market. It would be very interesting to know how much of online advertising was/is crypto related.

I donnt want to get ahead also, but recently they also toned down nukes speech a lot. Much more now they are talking about "national unity" etc and about "openess to negotiation". Just look: https://tass.com/politics/1534305. It it almost impossible to believe (so I still dont), or maybe China or/and India did something, after recent dirty bomb information campaign by Shoigu:)

Russian workers have made progress repairing a key bridge to Crimea that was severely damaged in a blast that Moscow blamed on Ukraine, officials said, but the span is not expected to be fully operational before next year. The structure — the 12-mile Kerch Strait Bridge that connects Crimea to Russia — holds symbolic and strategic value for Moscow, serving as a key logistics link that has been vital for the Kremlin’s war effort in Ukraine. Marat Khusnullin, a Russian deputy prime minister in charge of the country’s infrastructure, said on Tuesday that the first of four replacement spans of the bridge had been installed. The full restoration will not be completed before next September, Mr. Khusnillin told President Vladimir V. Putin last week. The bridge was damaged by a vast explosion in October that sent two spans of the bridge tumbling into the water. Several other spans, including railway tracks, were severely damaged by a resulting fire. The incident dealt an embarrassing blow to the Kremlin, not just because the bridge had served as the primary supply route for Moscow’s forces fighting in southern Ukraine amid a Ukrainian counteroffensive, but also because the bridge holds deep symbolism for Mr. Putin as a pillar of his disputed claim to the Crimean Peninsula since the structure’s completion in 2018. Although one railway track and one roadway were still operational after the blast, the explosion reduced Moscow’s ability to move equipment and troops to Crimea and Ukraine’s south.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-08/rise-of-russia-hardliner-yevgeny-prigozhin-fuels-fear-in-putin-s-elite Now that would be quite a succesor...

https://www.barrons.com/articles/warren-buffett-bets-big-on-energy-51667929870 Buffett was asked at the Berkshire shareholder meeting last year about the Chevron investment and whether he was comfortable owning an oil stock given the role of fossil fuels in warming the planet. “If you expect perfection in your spouse or your friends or in company, you’re not going to find it,” Buffett responded. “Chevron is not an evil company in the least. And I have no compunction in the least about owning Chevron. And if we own the entire business, I would not feel uncomfortable about being in that business.” Buffett then asked Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger for his view, and Munger said: “Well, I agree. You can imagine two things. A young man marries into your family. He’s an English professor at, say, Swarthmore, or he works for Chevron. Which would you pick? I’d take the guy from Chevron.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-08/crypto-exchange-binance-to-buy-rival-ftx-com-terms-undisclosed?srnd=premium-europe&leadSource=uverify wall Billionaire Changpeng “CZ” Zhao consolidated his position atop the crypto world on Tuesday with a stunning move to take over FTX.com, the suddenly troubled firm led by his chief rival and one-time disciple, Sam Bankman-Fried. The letter of acquisition intent by Zhao’s Binance Holdings came after a bitter feud between the two men spilled into the open, with Zhao actively undermining confidence in FTX’s finances and helping spark an exodus of users from the three-year-old FTX.com exchange. A day before reaching a deal, Bankman-Fried said on Twitter that assets on FTX were “fine.” Such moves would be prohibited on Wall Street but aren’t uncommon in this rough-and-tumble corner of finance, which remains largely devoid of regulation about a decade year after its founding. Ironically, it was Bankman-Fried who was pushing for greater regulation, something that Zhao has largely opposed. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-09/ftx-binance-deal-sam-bankman-fried-s-downfall-stuns-crypto-world?srnd=premium-europe Some of FTX’s investors found out about the deal on Twitter, according to people familiar with the matter. These investors are uncertain whether they will receive any money if the agreement with Binance goes through. The list of losers in the collapse includes investors in Bankman-Fried’s exchange, valued at nearly $32 billion in a January financing. Those include blue-chip names like the SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, the Singapore wealth fund Temasek Holdings Pte., hedge fund Tiger Global Management and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Following the January fund-raising, Bankman-Fried told Bloomberg the funds would likely go toward mergers and acquisitions, with possible targets including payments businesses, NFT-centric firms and the metaverse.

And, give or take, but they are still some 30 per cent cheaper.

Also: https://www.wsj.com/articles/insurers-are-facing-a-steep-rise-in-reinsurance-rates-11667858056?mod=hp_lista_pos2 Insurers are in the middle of negotiations with reinsurers, which are trying to boost rates by 10% to 30%. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. property-catastrophe coverage renews each Jan. 1, including for many large diversified U.S. and European insurers. Allstate Chief Executive Thomas Wilson said the price increases being sought by reinsurers are due to their recent losses, worries about climate change and the dollar’s recent strengthening, which hurts some reinsurers because they sell coverage in U.S. dollars yet hold their capital in another currency. “The combination of those three things will make for a really tight reinsurance market,” Mr. Wilson said. “It seems likely to me that the price will go up next year.” Allstate won’t face the hit all at once because its reinsurance program staggers renewals over three years, he said. Rapidly rising interest rates are also hurting reinsurers. Higher rates reduce the value of the bonds they hold. If the companies face payouts, for example from a quick succession of major hurricanes, they might have to sell some of their bonds at a loss. The inflation being experienced by carriers is driving up reinsurance prices, too. With so many issues stacked up, “this is really the most challenging renewal year probably since Katrina,” said David Flandro, head of analytics of Howden Group, a London-based broker. In the January 2022 renewal period, year-over-year property-catastrophe reinsurance price increases worldwide came in at 9%, according to Howden data. Reinsurers haven’t been shy about the price increases they anticipate. Swiss Re’s Group Chief Financial Officer John Dacey said in an Oct. 28 earnings call that “prices will not show some sort of an evolutionary adjustment, but rather a fairly radical adjustment up.”