Aberhound

Watch Celsius Network as they have promised this feature in 2021. I have been using Celsius to fund the kids university with good result. You can open multiple amounts and the trust came from a will so should be valid tax wise. You can easily borrow at low rates so you can better time the tax events or use leverage. Interest rates are far better than outside crypto thanks to the much faster velocity of money allowing the team to earn high returns to pay the high rates. They are profitable and use no leverage so I consider it safer than any institution using leverage as we approach the Minsky moment.

Did any other board members get into CEL tokens this year? In March I realized that the impact of Covid would cause a financial debt crisis then a Monetary system crisis as massive debts would be added and GDP would contract in an already over indebted economy. As Hayek says governments will have a choice of a severe downturn or collapsing the monetary system. So I asked myself, as people increasingly lose confidence where in a fiat system would they feel safe holding their wealth? Eventually confidence in central banks and governments will collapse triggering the crises. Anyone using leverage will suffer. I discovered Celsius Network run by Alex Mashinsky. He has created a company designed to replace banks. They pay 80% of revenues to depositors. Assets have grown over 7 fold this year to from $450M to $3.3B. As the assets have grown they become increasingly profitable as the same number of people can earn more in the business of secured lending of assets. They are the ones lending BTC to many institutions for arbitrage etc.. Celsius uses no leverage so will be a major beneficiary of the collapse in confidence. Most of the value accrues to CEL token holders although shareholders benefit indirectly by holding almost half of the CEL tokens. Anyone invested has made 10 to 40 fold returns this year. Next year likely will be significantly better as you have the 4 year BTC cycle summer period overlaid on a company growing rapidly and starting to rise up the early adopter phase. It will be interesting to see the two cycles overlay in BTC winter. Which will predominate? Celsius Network constantly buys CEL tokens to pay the weekly interest due to depositors. They buy most dips which has prevented whale attack price manipulation. Celsius is in the early adopter phase of the S curve of technological adoption with 93,694 active wallets. Celsius publishes most pertinent data, much of it real time and has been increasing transparency. Their business model is simple and has been fully explained and only slightly varied. Alex explains it as "doing well by doing well for others" which is very close to Adam Smith's "invisible hand". Capitalism would have much broader support if more CEOs emulate Alex Mashinsky. Alex teaches prudent saving in his weekly AMAs. Anyone following his advice will no longer be poor no matter whether they can save $10 or $10,000. 93% of Celsians HODL their CEL due to strong incentives. If you earn in CEL and include compound gains your returns are 30 to 60% APR on crypto deposits during BTC spring and summer. In BTC winter probably switch to stablecoins including stablecoin gold where you can earn 4 to 5% interest on gold deposits. The have paid $161 million in interest on crypto deposits and no one is close. They are already big enough that they already have the first mover advantage locked in where they get the best deals with the least risk. By the end of next year they likely will be the biggest BTC miners in the US. For most people holding assets with Celsius is likely much safer for themselves and their heirs than holding the assets themselves in hardware wallets. For those who believe that "no key means no crypto" ask yourself if the returns are sufficient to offset the risk of someone else holding your key and what will happen if you die? At least with Celsius your executor can retrieve your deposits with a copy of the will, a death certificate and depending on jurisdiction probate, much like bank deposits. The Celsius approach is what will bring millions into cryptocurrencies which is one of Alex's goals. He is one of the best CEOs who I predict will be the fastest to create a trillion dollar increase in value for investors and depositors.

I did not see this option on the owners manual and I remember we used to be able to order the street form of certificates. This would be a great service for Berkshire to offer to better protect us all from derivative and other risks arising from leverage used by brokerages. I want to own shares directly on the company's share register without any middle man. I do not want to own any shares held at brokerages while we await the monetary crisis combined with a financial crisis as central banks transition to central bank digital currencies. Has anyone done this or do many have the same thoughts?

I suggest he comes forward with a convertible preferred share deal for Boeing as he wears the flag. Meanwhile he tells the government that the financing is conditional on letting Boeing use its Ion engines. It is a good time to crush your competitors.

Ionized water as coronavirus is a water borne disease and I like to keep my cell voltage high by staying hydrated and energized. Pretty good for cancer prevention I suspect as well. If I get infected I have my anti-virals ready namely chaga tea and rosemary tincture. Rosemary has a compound which is #3 on the list of 32,000 most effective anti-virals. Perhaps you should all be making rosemary and chaga tinctures with your beverates of choice which will be the modern version of nordic snaps. For instance you might add liquorice root, a great coronavirus antiviral, to make it tastier. Perhaps use this swedish recipe with some additions then come up with a recipe which is both effective and tasty: "In neighboring Sweden, snaps can be made from either aquavit or vodka and infused with a variety of herbs, spices and botanicals—fennel, cardamom, anise, caraway and coriander being the most common—or even fruits and berries."

Oh great. Now Jon Rappaport looks at the tests for the so-called coronavirus and finds them problematic. "Reading through CDC literature, I believe the two most prevalent US testing methods are: antibody, and PCR. Antibody tests are notorious for cross-reactions. This means factors in no way relevant to a given virus can make the test read positive. In that case, the patient would be falsely told he "has the coronavirus." But it gets worse. Traditionally, antibody tests reading positive were taken as a good sign for the patient: his immune system had contacted a germ and defeated it. Then, starting in 1984, the science was turned upside down: a positive test was, astoundingly, taken to mean the patient was ill or would soon become ill. The PCR test (which requires excellent technicians who will not make any number of possible mistakes) takes a tissue sample from a patient which might contain a tiny virus particle(s) much too small to be observed---and blows it up many times, so it can be seen. However, the test says nothing reliable about HOW MUCH virus is in the patient's body. Why is that important? Because millions and millions of replicating virus in the body are necessary to even begin talking about actual illness. A positive PCR test, nevertheless, will be taken to mean the patient "has the epidemic disease." ---An even deeper issue: where is the PRIOR PROOF that the PCR is testing for a virus that actually causes disease?"

I suggest everyone listen carefully to the arguments of the founder of Celsius Network. He has lots of interviews and every one I listened to was interesting. He is the guy that launched VOIP and now he wants to do the same for banking. One point that struck me as being a critical insight was his statement that if you want crypto to rise in value, you have to move your money from JP Morgan to our bank. As he explains, at JP Morgan they are making money on your money so you get the risk and they get the profits. Everyone is doing this so the 0.01% get most of the wealth with all its implications for society. But if the masses go with Celsius Network and unbank themselves, then 80% of the profit earned from them holding your money at your risk goes back to the average guy who deposits his nickels. Consequently his nickels will turn into dollars as crypto by restricted supply has to rise in value to match adoption and the wealth of society becomes far more equal. Civil war or socialist revolution or worse are avoided. He is right of course. If you doubt that the money system is the cause of all wars and all ills in society read the short 46 page booklet by Ezra Pound, one of the best writers in the English language, about Roosevelt and the cause of WW2. The cause he ways is what he calls our Usurocracy. You can find it for free download on archive.org. I downloaded it and sent it to my kindle. This founder is a genius. To me it seems that the founder created Celsius Network for this purpose. He seems motivated, selfless and sincere. If this rings true for others then soon it will be a movement. As soon as people get this simple argument there are going to be a lot of people acting like all those Tesla owners that want everyone else to buy Teslas to save the world. Celsius Network may prove to be the "killer app" like "Word" and "Excel" were the killer apps which made the personal computer what it is today.

Also positive today while GLD and 10-year treasury are down. Could it simply be that Bitcoin is simply in an uptrend and not have anything to do with Coronavirus or Iranian tensions? On this note, Bitcoin obviously didn't behave much like the other safe Haven's through 2018 either. I think it's a mistake to think of it as akin to holding gold or treasuries. With those you expect NEGATIVE correlation with equities in a downturn. Rather, I'd expect Bitcoin's correlation with equities AND safe haven assets to be fairly close to zero in both healthy and unhealthy economic environments. BTC and the rest are up for 3 reasons. First it is a safe haven asset now like Treasuries going up during uncertainty. Just look at the track record. Second, it is now possible that coronavirus will end globalization and migration will end even internal migration. Who will use bills if the virus survives on surfaces for 9 days. Who will go into public? Yes the sun will save us this year as it cuts virus survival dramatically. But will we have summer flu considering the outbreaks in tropical places? (Although many Chinese people avoid the sun). EU is already incredibly weak and now this? Sovereign default, bank failures and bail-ins cannot be ruled out. It does not matter if the coronavirus is a real scare. Jon Rappaport makes an interesting argument that it is another false narrative. Who knows? All I see is a madness of crowds. Animal spirits could drive crypto incredibly in this environment. Third, crypto is being accelerated by leverage and the opportunity to earn up to 10% interest yet borrow as low as 3.5%. Consider Tezos, ETH and now Litecoin. On Litecoin you can earn 10% interest. See Cred and Litecoin foundation. You can borrow with crypto security at less than 5% now. See Celsius Network. On Celsius 80% of interest paid back to lenders. Super efficient compared to banks where they pay 1% and charge you 25%. Banks cannot compete with their legacy overhead and debt loads. EU sovereign debt is double doomed now for this reason along with China's economy and migration now being frozen due to the coronavirus. Think how much EU depends on tourism. And what use is the belt and road initiative if you can hardly use it? Bail-ins will impoverish anyone who fails to get into crypto. US will boom due to capital concentration and sanity. This capital concentration in US and Canada is a glorious opportunity to borrow on real estate at low rates then invest in crypto. US and Canadian banks will do fine. So you can borrow Canadian dollars at 3% and buy Tezos, then stake and earn 6% with almost no risk as all you do is stake, for instance, on the Kraken exchange. What happens when Tezos is used to tokenize real estate and you get the liquidity of selling tokens? Mortgage risk and borrowing risk drop significantly as you could sell portions of your property in tokens. If this occurs Tezos tokens will escalate in value with demand as supply is limited and real estate becomes a liquid easily trade-able asset. Come on. Have you ever seen such an asymmetric opportunity? The implication is obvious why would you hold fiat? Dump fiat buy certain crypto, lend at up to 10% buy more. Repeat. Obviously Litecoin price will escalate as more abandon fiat and join in. With BTC you can earn almost 9% on Celsius and then use the interest tokens to pay for a loan which costs 3.5% interest (they keep the risk low by requiring security of double or four times the crypto as security with more security giving a lower rate). Say you buy Litecoin then earn 10%. Litecoin of course will go up dramatically. Finally watch ETH and DEFI. $1B loaned already. To borrow you post ETH as security. So the supply of trade-able ETH is now dropping every day and at an accelerating rate and they plan to reduce the inflation rate to zero. Consider how a whale attack will trigger the automatic sales under the smart contracts which will cause further ETH sales. So ETH price will be on an upward channel with lots of buying opportunities. This bubble is going to be way bigger than the 2017 bubble due to leverage and because it will be double propelled because of the weakening fiat. Fiat will weaken if the collapsing supply chains due to coronavirus caused cost-push inflation. What do you expect central banks to do when they are faced with banks whose interest rate derivatives too often are betting on continued low interest rates? How long before banks have to admit "mark to model" was always a phoney premise? CBs only have one tool. They will print to buy sovereign debt until Hayek's instability hypothesis comes true. Why else are all CBs now working feverishly on crypto? Perhaps when the banks collapse and the governments default they will issue sovereign crypto to restore stability. They have to allow the existing crypto system in the meantime because otherwise the collapse would be too harsh. The discrimination favouring CB crypto to take over the existing crypto infrastructure will take time so in the meantime we have an exceptional opportunity because of this black swan. Just don't forget to move your crypto profits into tangible assets before the "Empire Fights Back".

Get some good olive oil and an ozone generator. Bubble the ozone into the olive oil. This seems to prevent the harshness on the lungs some people complain about. The ozone will remove the smell from the air. In Vancouver as you walked about in the past you could often smell ozone coming from garages, but almost never the cannabis grow ops. Houses are expensive in my neighbourhood. After a few weeks the olive oil looks white coloured and translucent. Put it in a jar in the fridge. It will heal almost anything on the skin thanks to the high oxygen. Anyone living in Australia can do the same and remove the smoke from the air. If you smell smoke you need more ozone. If you smell ozone or freshness you have enough. Everyone in the parts of the country with forests which might burn like the whole west coast should do the same. Further, in cities oxygen levels are too low causing illness and cancer over time.

Three developments: 1. Congress is told that Libra is critical to US dominance of the blockchain space which is a breakthrough technology - crypto does not budge 2. Xi gives speech saying blockchain is a breakthrough technology and China must dominate - Bitcoin rises 41% and shows who has more influence 3. yesterday ZeroHedge article points out the risks to bank deposits due to bail in and says there are $17T bank deposits in the US. Presumably similar in EU. What if 10% moves into crypto? If banks are no longer safe there will be sudden mass adoption in crypto. The result will be BTC $100K. I find psychologically dollar cost averaging is the best way to deal with the volatility. I am comfortable with volatility if the trend is up long term with higher lows. Obviously you can buy more on lows but I find it is difficult to do. Those that put 10% into crypto early will gain the most. The derivatives mean that many banks are already swimming naked. The models obviously will be shown useless when counterparties fail and sudden massive recapitalization will be required. The longer they are bailed out by QE the worse the pain will be because QE does not fix anything it only keeps zombies alive and erodes the economic structure by preventing capital from being allocated to better uses. It is the banks preventing the US from dominating the new system and the blockchain is a technological revolution waiting to be exploited. And yes it means the end of the current banking model. The countries that get this first will suffer least. Suck it up and deal with the pain then move to the new system. Felix Somary's book from 1951 predicted this derivative problem and said that the desire of the bankers to make return without risk would destroy capitalism. If capitalism ends remember that it was the bankers greed that did it. I think Crypto is Satoshi Nakamoto's aka Alan Greenspan's attempt to save capitalism by preventing the collapse of trust caused the banks as Somary predicted by creating a system based on an NSA paper that creates trust by its inherent design. That is why it is a breakthrough. There are not many other people with the brains, wisdom and who are known to read everything and the position to implement this saviour. If not Greenspan there could also be a Jack Ryan type character in US military intelligence. Accordingly, buying crypto is how we all can contribute to saving capitalism. The other choice starts with a ruthless dictatorship and ends in atrocities like cannibalism. We all know it but do not like to think about it. As Thatcher says the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. Likewise all tyrannies in history have collapsed badly.

In BC I don't get back one nickel. What the governments do here is call the money rebates then take away money they already gave out. Then the government changed from Liberals to NDP and the NDP changed the rebates to target their supporters. What is really happening is that they take $100 dollars, take back half for their fat pensions and allowances which no one else gets, then gives out the other half mostly to their supporters. If they pay out more they just give the illusion by cutting rebates somewhere else. The previous government used the alleged problem to to take $50B from BC hydro. Think of it, a company with lots of dams giving cheap power which dams are fully depreciated. How do they lose money? Simple sign secret contracts to buy power at 15 to 25 cents and sell it for about 8. The law in BC is that only fools make contracts with princes which means governments cannot bind future governments. Why didn't the new government cancel these stupid contracts? Because they want in on the game themselves.This results in building a new dam for $10B when they could generate the same power for less than $1B by installing more and better turbines on existing dams. One bridge that was going to cost $10B was cancelled and now they will likely build a tunnell. All they are doing is changing who gets paid off.

So far climate change has been within natural variability. I prefer to call it natural variability because that more accurately describes what we have been experiencing. Since the sun is driven by changes in aether flux density and this drives everything else we are not in a position to accurately predict. All we can say is that based on the current aether flux density the sun is moving into a cooling period. This is based on the recent model which has been back tested to a 97% accuracy. I am doubtful of the accuracy of that prediction based on back testing as the current aether flux density seems to have changed significantly. Considering that the solar spectrum has shifted to more UV we can infer that something caused the change. I argue that the change is caused by a change in the aether flux density as the heliosphere moved into a new region of the galaxy with less dust. A changed solar spectrum could be that the atmosphere thinned meaning less filtering of UV to lower frequencies but if you check pressure at sea level there is little change. The increased water vapour should reduce not increase UV and certainly the increased volcanism we experienced in the northern pacific this summer creating orange skies in BC at sunset is a natural UV filter so there were no forest fires this year unlike the previous two. The shifted UV spectrum has predictable effects. In the ocean we can predict a cooling effect driven by UV light dumping more energy at the surface. This increases ocean evaporation which is cooling and decreases infrared radiation warming the depths. This will tend to cause the oceans to cool decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But at the same time we will experience more apparent heat in summer as the increased UV warms our skins more like all surfaces are now warmed more, especially metals. This increases the heat island effect in cities. But deep baking of the rocks, for instance of the Canadian shield, is reduced as there is less infrared so Ontario now gets warmer days but cooler nights which most Ontario residences have prayed for in past sweltering summers. The increased UV considerably increases the risk of forest fires. We have also experienced considerable solar dimming due to the geoengineering efforts dumping coal fly ash into the atmosphere. The seems to have abated in Vancouver and we have enjoyed the return of more normal looking weather to the most part. The spraying certainly changed the refraction index of light which was easily seen in the more frequent sun dogs. This cooled the surface and dessicated the air while increasing the severity of storms by ionizing the air. The aluminum in the coal fly ash is a fire accelerant and in our acid forest soils weakens or kills trees by decreasing uptake of phosphates both of which made the forest fires much worse than they needed to be. I wish they would spray fulvic acid instead and thereby detoxify the land and build the soil while also dramatically increasing the drought tolerance of trees. What we need is more climate resilience which calls for better soils not worse so there are less droughts and floods as the better soils absorb far more water. Most of the human caused carbon dioxide release has be caused by degradation of the soil caused by NPK fertilizer. NPK fertilizer gives a false illusion of fertility by breaking down soil rapidly which degrades it. The fertilizer also kills worms which build soil and glyphosate and other poisons kill soil building bacteria. The soil is largely comprised of carbon dioxide from the air which is then released as the soil degrades. There is more carbon dioxide in the soil than there is in all the plants and trees and all the air. The NPK fertilizer also destroys much of the nutritive benefit of the food grown so here we have the cheapest way of solving the so called carbon dioxide problem. Simply stop using NPK and use worms and compost instead. Perhaps we will have less food but more nutrition. We might even get the benefit of increased intelligence instead of idiocracy. We need more animals on the grassland, not less but managed better so that the the grass gets more heavily manured but given more rest to grow deeper roots. Alan Savory explains this well. More carbon dioxide has been beneficial to plants and to human health and is likely the cause of most of the increase in human longevity. If carbon dioxide drops below 200 ppm photosynthesis stops so that is the risk we must avoid most. The earth has natural cycles which keeps the temperature from running away into catastrophe. Perhaps all stars and planets are conscious like Gurdjieff and other mystics say as there seems to be a control mechanism keeping things stable. This is evidenced by the beauty we see in the galaxy instead of the entropy predicted by the godless scientists. Scientists only have access to a tiny part of the spectrum and can only predict based on what they measure. They would do better to observe and copy nature. More humility and a better understanding of the mysteries of nature would be a better approach than the wasteful second rate methods used to date. And we would all benefit by trying to be more like Tesla who seemed to get outside help from elsewhere. Tesla himself had no idea where his inventiveness came from but certainly he was more spiritual than most of us. Give us all good food and good water for 50 years, get spiritual then ask for help and I bet we have any problem licked in ways we have not yet anticipated.

And maybe the hellholes reported in LA, San Francisco and Seattle in this article will divert some demand back to Vancouver: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-17/san-francisco-los-angeles-seattle-3-formerly-beautiful-west-coast-cities-have

With US facing challenges from Russia and China (plus mysterious others?) and with the new secret funding system discussed on Solari report I suggest the top recipients of US government contracts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_100_Contractors_of_the_U.S._federal_government I wonder if Lockheed Martin #1 and Boeing #2 will finally be allowed to deploy their Ion engines used on the B2. Why not? It is hardly a secret anymore and it would be embarrassing if the Chinese or Russian deploy it first and take market share from Boeing and Airbus. I wonder if the Max 8 was designed for a better engine and Boeing was forced to use an obsolete turbofan creating a pig that flies. The period of lack of real competition is ending so hopefully we will find out what goodies the US military industrial complex has been hiding in the closet for the last 80 years after the $28 Trillion+ unaccounted for spending well described and documented on Solari.com.

Interestingly Armstrong's model shows rises in the Vancouver market in 2020 and 2022 similar to the fall in 2018 and gives the green light for purchases in those years. I wonder what the model is picking up? Capital flight from the financial crises elsewhere? Much colder winters in eastern Canada with continuing improvement in our winters? It has rarely been as sunny and pleasant as last winter (I'm Vancouver born) and my garden and grass is loving it. As I see the chart isn't it a prediction of the influx of wealth being generated in Asia because of the Silk Road offset by stupid policies light the 20% foreign buyers tax etc.? Vancouver is an Asian friendly city with the attraction of clean air and water and abundant nature so will continue to be a magnet so long as the governments do not get too greedy or too stupid.

SD sorry for my ignorance but what’s the capacity that’s coming back? Enbridge Line 3 replacement comes on-line at the end of 2019 (760,000 bpd), and the first of Alta's rail-car fleet starts arriving (120,000 bpd by mid-2020). The existing aged Line 3 does roughly 380,000 bpd. With 600,000 bpd of net new capacity becoming available, the current shut-in will end, differentials should further decline, and o/g properties currently listed for sale should start to move again. Then add to it that at current valuations it's far smarter for new money to simply buy P2P reserves at cents on the dollar, versus drill for them. Yet the oil-patch isn't talking about it? Our own view is that it's being 'squashed' until Alta's 2019 election gets going ;) https://ca.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idCAKBN1O203A-OCADN https://www.enbridge.com/projects-and-infrastructure/projects/line-3-replacement-program-us https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/11/19/line-3-oil-pipeline-moves-closer-to-construction-in-northern-minnesota SD Sharper, is there any prospect of a tax or Federal ban or allocation regulations ie a forced auction of "air barrels", to force majors with an interest in low oil prices to increase the profitability of their refineries? Any info on the scale of that problem and whether the new capacity might result in more air not more oil shipped? Is there any hope of the Feds being nice enough to Russia to coax the Russians to license to Canadians their better catalysts for lightening heavy oil to make it easier to ship and refine in cold climates? As I doubt the Russians are the only ones with these catalysts any chance of these being developed here and brought to market or is the technology just being shelved? My ex-NASA friend living in Alaska tells me of massive recent oil finds in the North Slope. Any chance the Feds will leverage the US need for an oil pipeline to Alaska in exchange for pre-building now the links for these future lines from Alberta and Saskatchewan to the Gulf? Will the ding-dong feds help save the killer whales by shipping the Transmountain pipeline to Anacortes so the 145,000 bpd Shell refinery start using oil sands oil again instead of shipping it in from Alaska and also start shipping out the oil from Anacortes instead of Vancouver so less killer whales are impacted and so the bigger oil tankers can be used to better reduce the tanker miles which are impacting the killer whale populations? There has been no live births for the Southern resident killer whales for some years so extinction is imminent.Will the Feds lift the gag order on the Health Canada employees imposed by the Harper government in 2011 when the milk became sufficiently radioactive to start killing children? (I learned this as I happened to be defending a client selling humic and fulvic products both which help against radiation the former by protecting cells and the latter by helping the body transmute and eliminate the radio-nucleides and the two Health Canada employees sent to seize the products told my client that their job was testing the milk and the alarm went off in spring 2011 and repeatedly thereafter and they were gagged. Now if we could somehow figure out how to get these products into the killer whales, for instance by putting all the leaves gathered in Vancouver on land beside the Fraser river so they decay and release fulvic and humic into the river like used to happen when there were more trees right up to the waterline everywhere. Notice how the BC hospital statistics for newborn deaths became hard to get after 2011. http://www.fossilfuelconnections.org/anacortes-oil/ My best ideas for 2019 is Lisbon real estate (focusing on buildings with fiber optic connections and lots of power) to take advantage of their being future Silk Road ports and the increased demand for data. Portugal will also get Irish corporate tax rates when Ireland joins the UK in Brexit. I also think Central banks will cease to be independent very soon as the Leviathan State take them over to allow continued growth. Those Space forces are expensive much like the oil battleship construction expense pre-WW1. I think US will be rolling out their electro-gravitic technology so the transition will be expensive. Remember those $2B each B2 bombers? Lockheed Martin is how I am playing that bet. Any related suggestions are welcome. I am thinking Boeing but I am not sure if Boeing will finally be allowed to use their ion engines on their commercial jets. Paul Laviolette's book as available for loan on archive.org if anyone is sceptical about the technology.

The letter was short but I wonder if he has a lesson from the lack of discussion of the prospects of many businesses. He focuses instead on the big picture prices silly, bond rates were ridiculously low with ridiculously easy deabt availability last year, he is loading up on cash and now they introduce mark to market valuation of unrealized gains? Notice he points the huge historical drops in BRK prices. In Wayne Jett's excellent book Fruits of Graft he points out that this mark to market rule is stupid as in enhances instability in downturns and it was brought in by the mercantalists along with other similarly stupid policies during the Great Depression, removed only in 1938 and in 2007 just before the 2008 crisis. What does Buffett expect? He can't say everything he thinks hence the short letter to emphasize these points? Policies in the EU and during Obama's term have been as stupid as the policies leading up to the Great Depression. Wayne Jett points out that mercantalists from time to time choose policies to enhance booms then worsen the collapses so they can buy cheap and impoverish the middle classes to better maintain their power. We should all prepare for the same like Berkshire.

Aberhound, Pardon my ignorance here, what are you referring to here? The book by Mr. Dean Henderson? Other? There is no single book as I read many. The best single book on the methods of the mercantalists is The Fruits of Graft by Wayne Jett. For example, Jett explains that to cause the great depression the mercantalists: 1. Pass Smoot Haley tariffs to cripple world trade and served as a signal to the mercantalists to short the stock market. 2. Wall street fraud allowed to prevail so as the stock market crashed the mercantalists could naked short stocks. 3. Mercantalists like Bernard Baruch publish books where they lie about their activities. Baruch for instance says he liquidates his stocks in August 1929 after getting a bad feeling while hunting grouse in Scotland. His book never mentions shorting the market which he likely was heavily involved. Kennedy for instance describes his thoughts as being exuberant during the crash indicating he was shorting heavily. 4. Monetary policy was excessively tight during the crash as confirmed by Friedmans Monetary History and Bernanke's writings. Notice that neither mention the harmful policies enacted by Hoover and Roosevelt which are detailed by Jett. 5. In 1931 UK defaults on its debts and ends the gold standard. European competitive devaluations while world trade collapses due to Smoot Haley tariffs. Sovereign defaults set off a debt deflation vicious circle of contraction. 6. 1932 Hoover allows dramatic increases in taxes to try to balance budget as unemployment heads to 25% and prices drop by 1/3rd and the tax rate is made retroactive to the start of 1932 and there are no payroll deductions so all taxes come due at once in early 1933 caused a drain on bank deposits and then massive bank defaults. 7. Roosevelt comes to power announces a bank holiday and shuts down banks and confiscates gold at $20.67 and ends gold contracts. Taxes raised ever year he is in power except 1939. Roosevelt uses revenues to buy gold and increases reserves from 6000 to 32000 tons using tax revenues draining cash from the private economy and then he sterilizes all gold purchases, both domestic and foreign to prevent a monetary stimulus to the economy where everyone is starved of capital except for the mercantalists who were warned! 8. Baruch for instances in 1933 buys 25% of world silver and then the silver price doubles when Roosevelt cause the US to buy silver as well as gold. Mercantalists feast on cheap assets for instance JP Getty buys his oil business for pennies on the dollar. I was trained in economics at Queen's University in Kingston which has an excellent economics faculty. We studied the causes of the great depression. None of this was explained demonstrating that the mercantalists control what is taught in universities in the 1980s and probably today. It is not hard to discover similar mercantalist policies today. The methods are always the same with the same intent to harm the middle class to better monopolize power and wealth. For instance in the Great Depression the mark to market rule was in effect until it was ended in 1938 as being too harmful. The same rule was then enacted in 2008 to allow GS and JPM to bankrupt their competitors. Now in Europe they introduce a rule forcing banks to hand over the assets held as security for loans which will go to a government body which is required to immediately liquidate the assets. Meanwhile bail in rules mean bank deposit holders get worthless bank shares instead of deposits and then how do they pay their debts? Meanwhile crypto means 90% of the banks are no longer required. Then at this time the EU raises taxes while US drops the tax rates? Meanwhile the mercantalists support ISIS to radicalize the poor arab masses then move the worst of them to EU to spread crime? Meanwhile the EU passes restrictive carbon controls for a climate problem caused by the sun for no purpose except to cripple the economy while the US avoids the burden of the same? At this time the US decides to leave the Middle East allowing Saudi Arabia to descend into chaos while the US allows the biggest oil field in the world at Gull Island to come online for the first time since the 1970s at the same time they perfect fracking technologies in the mainland? So oil prices spike causing harm in Europe and cause a boom in North America. The US stock market then the USD both rise sharply and interest rates rise, at oil prices rise causing sovereign debt defaults in many over indebted poor countries? It is no a coincidence that all this occurs while the fascists running the EU are trying to federalize, end socialism and weaken national governments. So asset prices will get very cheap in the EU and expensive in the US and then after the mercantalists gorge on cheap assets, socialism is ended in the EU, the Silk Road creating Eurasian trade and prosperity is finished, trade explodes and asset prices take off in the EU. The trick to seeing mercantalist policies is to ignore the spin and look at the effects and understand that most of their policies are designed to harm. There is no such thing as "unintended consequences" as the harmful effects are usually the intention of the policies. Carbon taxes for instance are intended to create artificial scarcity, food shortages, and violence so that we are like rats righting each other over scarce resources instead of cooperating. The mercantalist brought in Trump to cause the boom in the US. Notice Trump is portrayed as being against the globalists. The reality is that Trump is advancing the mercantalist agenda the same as every other president. So carbon taxes and Trump are simply the two extremes of available policies and the mercantalists use the extremes at both ends of the political spectrum to control the middle. Trump and Putin are good examples to understand the mercantalists. Many mercantlists, like Putin and Trump, do not drink and they deeply understand human psychology and motivations. They constantly create a lot of drama to distract us. Their intentions remain hidden. They want us to stop the stupid, to end the drug use, stop watching the boob tube and to read books but they are realists with low expectations of human nature. So they continue with the same methods of control which have worked for thousands of years. HG Wells' book Anticipations demonstrates what they think about the rest of us and their intentions towards us.

Some tokens are interesting as they will affect the underlying industry and stock prices. One such token is DENT. I expect the token to lock in the duopolies in both US and Mexico then elsewhere. If you ever doubted the elite support the crypto economy read about this token. Notice it launches in US and Mexico now with Verizon & ATT and America Movil and Telefonica. Go long the duopoly and short the competitors. The token has obvious network effects as no one will want a weak token. Mobile data is going to become very cheap and instead the duopoly will charge monthly flat fees to access the network. This make the duopoly network more valuable so wipes out the competitors. So in Canada the contract will go to Bell and Rogers. So getting the app is a no brainer. The trick though will be to consider that the duopolies have high prices so I doubt you will be able to buy the tokens and use them to save money. Instead you have to understand that airtime is a wasting asset. What will happen is the poor will sell their airtime so data prices will drop. So the play will be to get in at the start when for the first time the poor masses can sell their data. They will and prices will plummet as the poor masses care about a few pennies and the rich don't care. Therefore there is massive excess selling pressure. Remember Carlos Slim is on the other side of this coin. He is getting the poor masses to drop the data prices at their expense to attract users to his networks so he can charge high access fee. This increases the value of America Movil. Data in Mexico will be sold more cheaply because of poverty so that will be the source of the supply of airtime. Think Rockfeller taking over the oil industry by dropping prices. Data will be available at prices which will bankrupt competing mobile operators. Brilliant.

This is really the bull case. If the economy for criminals, terrorists, tax evaders, and money launderers is large enough (and it is), some of these tokens might actually have value as currencies. But which token will become the fiat currency of the underworld? There is a pretty good chance it hasn't even been invented yet. Are we still at the Napster stage of digital currencies? This is why I don't think there will be a Fedcoin. If there is a Fedcoin then politics means that eventually the government drug dealer and terrorism ops will come out just like we are now finding out about ISIS. I think instead there will be private cryptos, some of them set up by intelligence agencies or their friends. It is part of the trend of changing from the public wave to the private wave. When computers record everything it is no longer possible to have big government with big secrets. It will be much safer to have small government and big secrets hidden among millions of private companies.

How much has your life changed after a 12000% year? I stopped counting my crypto gains as Buffett says it is better not to watch the ticker and to avoid the noise. I missed XRP so probably less. I continue to add on big dips like just after Christmas and just before Thanksgiving. My life changed little as I became even more of a value investor. I still drive around my $2000 car. I stopped drinking booze and coffee this year when I realized they were both interfering with my thinking and so I could buy more crypto. That has created a far better change in my life than some additional wealth and one unexpected side effect of stopping all drinking and coffee is that my mild but worsening heart disease went away soon afterwards. Does anybody know why? (My impression was that the few drinks a week of wine or beer that I drank had the biggest effect). People spending money on coffee and booze should reconsider as the real cost of a $5 coffee is something like $5000 $5X10X10x10 by 2020 and probably many health effects as well so many who are poor, struggling or sickly in 2020 will often have only themselves to blame. The fear of loss being the #1 excuse not to buy is accordingly irrational. (And the #2 excuse don't know how ended when the public listings became available). This fall I have started to run into customers who are willing to pay in crypto which I always request for international customers. Many businessmen now realize the benefit of using crypto to pay cross border payments. It is nice to be paid in crypto and have it double and redouble soon thereafter as I am more motivated to do the work. I hold BTC, LTC, BCH, FUEL and ETH. I calculate the average daily compounding rate and generally buy that (which generally tells you which token enjoys the fastest rate of adoption). I also try to keep diversified between cryptos by buying tokens that are expected to go up when the competing token goes down like BTC and BCH and I stop buying when I get above my planned weighting due to massive gains. Of my coins currently FUEL and LTC having the fastest daily average compounding followed by BCH, ETH and BTC. I look for gains of at least 1% per day. I have been loading up on LTC on this big dip partly because I expect it to enjoy the soonest and greatest increase in the rate of adoption and partly because I doubled my planned weighting. XRP easily exceeded this average daily compounding but my bias against a banker's coin makes me irrational.

If you want to use Coinbase or a similar company than you will need to give all the same info as opening a bank or brokerage account. If you want to do it without that download a bitcoin wallet to your phone (Bread or Jaxx are good), then find a bitcoin ATM (https://coinatmradar.com/), you simply put cash in the machine and scan your QR receive code from your phone and no one knows you own that bitcoin but you. Exchanges like Kraken are having major difficulties with massive demand. The exchange system has many delays and a new system is in process and the company reports problems by their Japanese bank in processing the volume of bank wires used for funding. I expect another run like we experienced after Thanksgiving. Even so adoption is tiny. Look how few board members are invested. Why as it is obvious the price has to rise with adoption so it is not a bubble until adoption starts to slow. Many new listings and funds are making crypto investment easily available to the wider investing public. This year I expect investors to start to sell off other assets or to take on debt to buy crypto. Watch for a crypto sell off when taxes are due this spring as this will be a good chance to enter. Most crypto investors can't resist the urge to switch coins and those that don't pay will have their coins seized and sold by the tax authorities. Anybody that thinks the coins are not tracked are fools. I personally saw the CRA seize $80,000 in BTC and sell it for $600 each only a couple years ago. If they let the taxpayer hold their coins today $80000 in tokens would now be worth $2M. Guess who the tax authorities will audit first?

Wow. I didn't even come close to going all-in like that. I'd have to go and figure it out, buy I've probably invested about $10K total in my entire basket of cryptocurrencies in the last 2 years, maybe a little less. That small amount is in the 6-figures now. Had I done what you did, I'd be retiring now. If you guys don't mind- - What are both of your thoughts on cryptos going forward? Which specific cryptos are you most bullish on? - How are you storing your crypto assets? I have been holding btc, eth, and lc but I keep them in coinbase which I understand isn't without substantial risk. Moving outside of coinbase seems somewhat complicated and messy I store my cryptos on Nano Ledger S and I am considering switiching to Xapo now that the amounts are getting bigger. I am also learning new password tricks. Basically you come up with at least 4 random words and that is your string. My computer guy explains that it takes advantage of human strength while to a computer it has high difficulty if the words are random. I had to stop using password database on my phone as MacAfee explains that phones might have hacks which record your screens. I do nothing on my phone and only interface the trading on a wired LAN never wireless. The specific crypto I am bullish on is EtherParty whose crowdsale is in days. They make smart contracts easy and the system is working and I met the CEO Kevin who is very smart, connected and capable and seems well able to lead a team of top programmers, many of who are multi-millionaires now. I consider it a form of cat herding so I admire such talent. The system is up an running and I saw demonstration of a working sport bet system and ICOs which took 2 minutes to put up on the Ethereum blockchain. One law firm is using their enterprise version to put all their legal precedents into smart contracts so they will earn subscriptions. I see strong network effects as I don't know others who draft contracts for clients then turn around and pay royalties to the client who paid when the same or similar contracts are sold to others. EP will therefore quickly amass the best selection of smart contracts and every smart contract will require the EP tokens as fuel. Prices are in USD so like BTC the coins are transactional and useful and to those users they don't care about the price. Like BTC there is limited supply but 50x greater at 1B but this supply will be used up as fuel and speculators like me will hoard so supply will diminish. Remember all the participants in EP watched their ETH increase 30-100 fold and many regret selling too early so I expect EP itself and its insiders to hoard. Their incentive is to make the EP to be super useful with a decreasing cost of use in USD through volume to create the strongest network effect possible. Then you borrow against the EP tokens instead of spending them. Companies that use smart contracts will have an incentive to buy EP early so their cost in terms of what they paid will be lower while the more they buy, driving up price the more their competitors will have to pay. Early adopters will lock in a massive competitive advantage with the more they buy and hoard, the greater the advantage. I like to hold assets with rising demand and shrinking supply and I see massive use. One market for instance is for gamers so they can do smart contracts to trade virtual assets etc.. Between BTC and ETH I prefer ETH until the hard fork when proof of stake is introduced. That will make holding ETH pay a return when you stake the tokens which many speculators will do. EP will also contribute to ETH demand initially. Long term I prefer BTC as the more decentralized the safer from having the supply increased and with the BCH bitcoin cash token you have two similar competing coins which will drive innovation faster by competition. I think that is likely why Jiwan supported its creation to improve the competitiveness of BTC and BCH as against ETH and others. EP will soon work with BTC as well through a deal with RSK. Legal contracts on BTC via RSK look to my programmer to be more secure as compared to ETH so long term I believe the legal community will prefer the more secure smart contracts once that is understood. ... Etherparty FUEL token starting to run up in value nicely. Beta testing of the smart contracts ongoing and the easy smart contract interface is expected Q1 2018. The FUEL token is required to use the smart contracts and some ETH is required to make the FUEL token work as the system currently runs on the ETH blockchain. I expect smart contracts to put globalization into hyperdrive. For example, right now lending is mostly local so you can go to Court and sue. Smart contracts are self executing so require little or no trust and recourse to Courts is not required. How many people in poor countries are desperate to not spend their crypto, mostly BTC, to buy food etc.? What interest rate would they be willing to pay to get that loan? People expecting to enjoy a greater return than the interest rate they pay are willing to pay almost any rate of interest provided the return is higher and lenders can time their loans during 30%+ dips which in the crypto world seem to happen at least quarterly. It is obvious that people will use smart contracts to lend where the interest rates are higher. This has been a 5 bagger since December (4 cents to 20 cents) and will likely be another 5 bagger in Q1 2018 as the company has promised to sell the tokens for no less than $1 or the market price whichever is higher. This encourages hoarding and creates demand from users when the exchange price is less than $1. Most Whales are hoarding as users don't care about transaction price of FUEL so why make it available cheap? Users are indifferent to price as the smart contracts are sold for US dollars price so you pay whatever FUEL price is required. Buy on Binance which is a crypto exchange. Own some Binance tokens for lower trading fees. Whoever figures out how to automate such lending in small amounts will make a fortune. I expect generalist tools like EP which are inherently far more flexible will perform better over time than specialist lending tokens like Populous (receivable financing) or SALT (lending secured by crypto in US). On launch I expect the four biggest volume smart contracts contracts will be sport betting where a US engine was already functional in September, the ICO engine and the escrow contracts below and an video game smart contract system for trading virtual magical items etc. which was in development in September. Suppose EP charges $1 per contract (my guess for the price for bets or video game contracts) to $20,000 (the ICO engine expected price) for such smart contracts? What will the demand be for FUEL tokens? Bookies, banks and lawyers are soon going to be disrupted and they should be buying FUEL to hedge losses. I bought EP to hedge my legal business so my risk v. reward was better than most. Companies that realize the potential of smart contracts can lock in a permanent competitive advantage by buying the tokens now and the more they hoard the greater their competitive advantage over their competitors as hoarding drives up the price and most whale users will have a similar incentive to hoard. It is anyone's guess how much the law firm spending $1M to make their precedent database available on this engine has bought so far for this reason. Their demand alone could have caused this price spike. Volumes are taking off which means other crypto investors are exchanging their crypto for FUEL tokens, mostly on Binance or people like this law firm and my firm are hedging. Just wait until cash demand for FUEL tokens from users starts to create new demand and the company hoards the tokens when users pay for the smart contracts (remember the company promises not to sell tokens for less than $1 and the company raised $50M in crypto in September which is now worth about $150M so they have little need or incentive to sell tokens other than those which are bought by smart contract users on launch and the tokens sold to fund the current expenses (about 20 employees + downtown Vancouver office)). Many users such as law firms will have a strong incentive to promote this system upon launch so investors get the benefit of far more than the work of these 20 employees. This video shows how to create a crowdfund ICO in 2 minutes using EP: This video shows how to create an escrow contract to pay someone to paint your house: Etherparty Charts https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/etherparty

Buffett regretted spending a nickel or a quarter when he was young because he realized it was the same as spending thousands of dollars. He knew the effect of exponential math. Now we have Bitcoin we all face Buffett's dilemma. That is a good thing. Now if you are an environmentalist you should be praying for the day that fiat is gone as once there is only appreciating cryptocurrencies the propensity to spend will be reversed. Fiat encourages wasteful spending. That is the design. It is designed to cause inflation. It is designed to constantly create new money for those close to the spigot so they can better fund wars etc.. Once you are able to end the power to create money and issue debt then governments lose that power. This caused me to invest in cryptocurrencies because I realized that globalists like the Rothschilds etc. have been trying for decades to create a world government and now the major obstacle is national governments. I have always thought that the Rothschilds work for somebody else the same way that JP Morgan turned out to be a front for the Rothschilds. Accordingly I suspect the globalists created Bitcoin and the like to destroy the last remaining power of national governments to create money which is the power to sell debt. Taxation power and power to create money were already limited, the former by pushing it to the limit and the latter by agreement when the power was handed to the banks in most places in the early seventies when Bretton Woods collapsed. So we can predict that now all the banks which enable the Italian government and the like to continue to sell debt will now go bankrupt and soon the ECB will reach its limit to create money and to buy debt so the ESM will make a cash call to the national governments to recapitalize the ECB. The Trump tax cut is likely designed to increase the pressure on EU national governments to hasten this collapse so I suspect it is US or UK based globalists who created Bitcoin. Now after the world government exists the plan is likely to switch from a consumption society to a conserving society which means we will only have appreciating cryptocurrencies. It will be similar to the gold standard. People will hate it because economic growth becomes stagnant unless there is technological change or an increase in freedom. If we get cartels and restricted access to technological change it will be stifling. If we get freedom and free spread of knowledge and rapid technological change it will be wonderful. I am watching Randall Mills technology closely as cheap power has always been the key to prosperity.

My anti-fragile portfolio is concentrated in assets experiencing 0.5 to 1 per cent exponential growth in value per day (Bitcoin etc.) plus cash then buy the exponential growth assets on the dips which seem to occur quarterly. I also hold old silver mines with hot springs and timber for the same reason Hindenburg's family invested mostly in timber pre WW1 namely the end of empires are dangerous periods. And minimal debt. More debt would be riskier. It seems to be working pretty good so far. Anti-fragile is a great book.