Spekulatius

It's a bit like this century version of the James Bond "Goldfinger" plot, if you replace gold with bitcoin.

I found this link interesting. How to kill Bitcoin: https://joekelly100.medium.com/how-to-kill-bitcoin-part-1-is-bitcoin-unstoppable-code-7a1b366f65ee Some of things proposed seem a bit far fetched as they requires world wide coordination, but the idea to that a nation state could slow the mining to a crawl and then launch a 51%+ attack seems interesting.

My biggest insight from all this is that QE <> money printing. QE at best creates an "unnatural" interest rate curve but it does not put money in anyone's pocket. Fiscal policy does print money and puts it directly into people's pocket (the stimulus checks are literally helicopter money), but seem to be easing up on QE at the same time. As far as monetary policy is concerned, we are living though a regime change.

It is the multiplier effect including asset value inflation at work. Many things are not bought from cash flow, they are bought via gains from asset inflation. If this reverses, the wealth effect and the Lambo’s (a classical douchebag / nouveau rich indicator ) will get scarcer too. 15 years ago was 2006 and we know what happened next. I don’t think we are close to some meltdown, but those are hard to predict and only obvious in hindsight.

Lower the rates by 50% or whatever the clearing rate is and see what happens. They need to reboot this starting from a lower basis.

This is what a diversified portfolio of crypto looks like right now: 1) why are all crypto currencies so correlated? One would think that bad news for one crypto currency means it should create a tailwind for those that are “ sound “ but that’s not what is happening. 2) So Dogecoin, a crypto invented as a joke and with inflation build in is #4 by market cap and worth $38B. I guess Elon Musk is the answer?

That’s was not my intent. My question was does this matter for investing? With the financial pluming, it is probably just with home pluming, as long as everything works, it‘s all good, but when things are clogging up, it can get really messy very quickly. So far, I haven’t heard anybody expecting such a thing, except Raoul Pal who sees shadows of doom behind every corner and makes a living selling those stories.

LOL: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5Z6siy-TQDUJ:https://defi100.org/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

Passed.

It is interesting, but it would be way more interesting if something gets distressed for a while and opportunities in debt securities came up, or even distressed equities. Currently, we are getting the velvet glove treatment from the Fed and just about everyone can raise debt without a problem. Risk premiums across the spectrum seem to be almost at record lows.

BBB rated debt is not really going to move much, even if risk free interest rates go up 1/2 %. The last interesting opportunity in debt was in March 2020 (for a few days only) and with the energy meltdown in late 2015 , when solid MLP and even industrials showed increased risk premiums. Currently, the opportunities in debt are pitiful, even with non-investment grade.

This is all interesting, but why should the average investor care about this? It might cause a small compression in bank NIM, but that’s about it. I don’t see any relevancy for myself and probably the vast majority of investors, much less the average Joe or Joanne.

In my opinion, if crypto becomes large, it will be regulated by governments, it‘s that simple. As long as crypto stayed small in terms of total transaction value or total market cap relative to the government sponsernd currency, it can stay under the radar. Now, that the cumulative market cap has cracked 1T in USD value however, it has become a factor and attracts attention because they basically become a competing currencies. No government in the world gives up control over their currency without a fight. The reasons are many - if crypto becomes more valuable and Acts/Substituts currency, it is like printing native currency and causing inflation without the government benefiting from it. The government also will lose control over payment flows with the obvious effect of benefiting the underground economy and tax evasion and organized crime. For those reasons, government have an incentive to keep crypto small. Governments cannot really eliminate crypto, but they can probably limit the total size (in terms of market cap) by discouraging institutions from using and owning them by various means. Institutional assets are where the real money is and if you prevent adoption by various means, the size of crypto should remain small compared to the flow of government government sponsernd currency and the total market value of printed USD. Of course I don’t really now what will happen, but I do think any government will absolutely prevent a competing currency from becoming a large factor, if they can. Crypto is just that, a competing currency, printed by private parties often located outside the country borders.

Weekends in crypto are always like Wild West, I am guessing this is because institutional players are not participating and all you have got is a bunch of gunslingers that are buying and selling on their mobile phones while gulping white claws or harder stuff. BTC down ~11% as I write this while drinking Cabernet like a boomer. If you are trader, this is probably more a feature than a bug.

Reduced BABA on Thursday at a loss (few %). The main reasoning was that I did not like the last earnings report, not matter how you slice it. The reduction in core market profitability is the most bothersome to me. I expected a blowout quarter due to economic recovery and similar to what we saw with GOOG, FB and AMZN and this was nothing like this. I know, I know, paper hands. @LearningMachine also asked some good questions regarding GMV and there aren’t really good answers. One can question how much it matters, but it‘s just another incremental negative. BABA’s accounting always was murky (which deterred me in the first place ) and I would never make this a huge position, not matter what. Now it‘s a smallish starter position which I intend to keep.

FYI:

For me, the main benefit of this forum is not to present a full fledged research report, it is crowdsource research. I post what (little) I know and hope that other posters add to it and fill in some blanks or prove me wrong. I found this to be a hugely beneficial. I welcome full fledged research, but don't expect it here and think this is generally found behind some sort of paywall that supresses the crowdsourcing aspect that I think is more valuable. That said, there is nothing wrong with a tip jar, some authors that publish research have those and I occasionally tipped.

I think the variance is sharecount is somewhat normal with the potential for earnout shares, warrant's and sometimes redemptions, but in this case, the range is large. Kyle somewhat explains why in his AMA.

Yes, i am going through the same process right now and told my insurance broker to shop us around. FWIW, we have homeowners, 2 cars and umbrella all with the same company and I would jump ship with all of them. @rkbabang gave me a good triangulation point (he lives almost in the same area) that tells me I can do better. Also, related, I tried $LMND a few days ago, because it is supposed to be so easy. Went through a bunch of questions with them, which took a while, but in the end their AI decided our house is no bid, because the fire department is not up to their standards. I did get a quote from Liberty Mutual after going through their online questionnaire, that was cheaper, but those are nonbinding estimates (teaser) and the real quote is almost always more expensive when you follow through with it. I will now wait what my broker comes up with. If they cant come up with something better, I try another broker. Now, I have totally derailed @DooDiligence thread.

10k is the reporting threshold for any cash transaction in the US, it makes sense to extend this to crypto.

KNBE - recent IPO that I learned about in the MF Industryfocus podcast. Cybersecurity play that focuses on Training. Seemed like a timely pick after thr Colonial pipeline disaster that sure must have raised the visibility about fishing attack risks. The stock tanked after earnings and I am not quite sure why. Earnings and CC seemed fine to me.

This is an open forum and should stay that way Imo. If you want to get paid for your research just start your own substack and see how it goes. I have quite a bit value from this forum, both in terms of new ideas as well as feedback on my own ideas.

Thanks. I am with an insurance broker who gave me a good enough quote a few years ago, but then rates started to creep up. I suspect then they just auto renew and don’t really look at the price until you ask them too (which I just did).

@DooDiligence what percentage of your home or structure value is your current premium? I am surprised it is possible for them to cancel the insurance before the contract is up. Generally, I would recommend to go with a good insurance broker and get a couple of options. FWIW, when i lived in CA, my homeowners insurance for my crappy ~350k value house was only $500 (no earthquake insurance and this way before the wildfires). Currently, I pay ~1.7k for my house that is worth a bit north of ~600k (in MA). Feels a bit high and I want to investigate options upon renewal. Again I never had claim in 20 years of owning homes. We certainly have a hard market, insurance rates have been creeping up.

What a time to be alive - AMA session with Kyle Cerminara regarding the FGNA- OppFi SPAC. So far, he has dodged my question ( or wabuffos ) why they switched to fair value accounting on their receivables.