Parsad

All of the assets you mention can be confiscated by law enforcement. Recently, BC is enacting new laws so as to be able to confiscate assets from people and organizations that can't prove where the wealth came from...believe it or not, the new Premier is extremely left wing, but is enacting some pretty centrist or right wing policies! Yet, it is extremely difficult still to confiscate crypto currency from criminal players. Yes, they can trace some assets that they were having a hard time tracing in the past, but it certainly is harder to get your hands on those crypto assets compared to diamonds, gold, real estate, stocks, watches, etc. Cheers!

It's also the investment vehicle or key holding for many long-term employees, shareholder friends of the Watsa's, extended family of the Watsa's, the current President Peter Clarke, long-time shareholder and fund manager Francis Chou, and yours truly! I know all of the Watsa family and I could not hope for better partners. It's why this site is called Corner of Berkshire & Fairfax and not Corner of Berkshire & Markel or Corner of Berkshire & Brookfield! They may not always do exactly what you might want them to do, but they do try damn hard and listen to their shareholders. Cheers!

TwoCities, while law enforcement is making some progress in tackling illegal crypto transactions, there are still multiple ways that transactions can remain private: https://oneart.digital/en/blog/blockchain-privacy-is-it-all-so-anonymous Also, you do realize that criminal organizations can create their own underground networks using blockchain, that law enforcement probably neither knows about, nor would be able to crack and link transactions to specific individuals or organizations. The lack of regulation on a global basis still makes crypto a refuge for those that want to partake in illegal activities that are non-traceable. Cheers!

Also, if investors are still risk averse when it comes to equities, the credit markets are offering up some good opportunities. Even Howard Marks is finding good investments in the credit markets right now: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaire-investor-howard-marks-touts-142841516.html Cheers!

This is insane! To analyze and hypothesize about all of this is exhausting and has no bearing on when to invest and when not to invest. You buy things when they are cheap...some things got awful cheap in March 2020, and then again in March 2022 and September 2022. And then you sell when those investments begin to approach intrinsic value. Otherwise, you sit on cash or instruments that will generate some income while taking a benign approach to market volatility. You don't try and analyze what the FED and everyone else is going to do, because that's a fool's game. And often, the trigger that causes the large scale correction isn't what you expected, or at the very least fully expected. When I bought Fairfax, no one wanted to touch it. Even Greg was calling it fool's gold! Now, when it is sitting near all-time highs, everyone thinks that FFH's earnings are going to go through the roof and want to buy it. Same thing with out of favor tech stocks. No one wanted to touch them this year...yet a year or two years down the road, investors will be clamoring for them again. This is the life of the value investor. Buy when no one wants it and then sell it when everyone is screaming for it again. Everything else is just noise! Cheers!

I've met Frank Abagnale at a conference he was speaking at. Shortly after the movie "Catch Me If You Can" came out about his life. Cheers!

Anything so that they aren't sitting in prison doing nothing. I don't want to see prisoners working in a quarry like the old days, but the lesser offenders (drug possession, white collar, DUI, etc) should be doing some work, as well as any rehabilitation programs recommended. Cheers!

There was a child serial killer here in Vancouver when I was like 9 years old named Clifford Olson...you would definitely have heard of him drzola. Killed 11 children, and would only say where the bodies were when he was paid a cash award. He was the worst fiend imaginable. I would not only have no qualms seeing him receive the death penalty, I would have gladly pushed the injection button. Instead he lived out his life in prison taunting the victim's parents and the police. Cheers!

Crypto market is only a fraction of the equity, bond, commodity and real estate markets. Are large institutional crypto holders keeping the crypto market afloat? It would be relatively easy based on daily trading volumes for a handful of whales to keep some crypto prices up. I suspect some of BTC's so-called stability in a time of crypto crisis may be due to large players buying up BTC on volatile days. These players would have to write down much of their crypto investments if prices fell, thus they keep supporting some coins in a bid to thwart any write-downs. There must be some huge players out there that we don't know of...far bigger than can be identified, since identification of crypto owners is near impossible! I'm talking certain sovereign funds, state-owned financial institutions, large hedge funds, black market players, etc. Cheers!

Happy American Thanksgiving! Cheers!

Actually was there ever any doubt? Maybe Binance too! Cheers!

He probably shouldn't have. But I can certainly see why some would rather see Holmes pay back some of what is owed to victims and taxpayers. You might be surprised, but personally, I'm for the death penalty in 1st degree premeditated murder cases, serial killer cases, serial rapist cases, etc where the guilt has been proven without a doubt. For white collar criminals...throw the book at them...but make them also work somehow and provide restitution to victims and taxpayers. Make her do lab work or something in prison if she isn't going to work outside of prison. Guys like Sam Antar when he was in prison or Bernie Madoff when he was alive...make them work on tax returns or something for the poor 16 hours a day in prison. I don't care what...but make them work and do something instead of just living off the taxpayer. Cheers!

Restorative justice. She isn't any sort of threat, and if she is truly remorseful after her time in prison, she may be more valuable to society working outside/paying taxes than sitting in a prison cell getting fed three times a day doing nothing at taxpayer's expense. It would also allow her to pay victims through any civil litigation. She doesn't have to pay anything if she rots in jail. This message board is full of investors who constantly scrutinize everything based on rational action, yet this is so hard to rationalize. Cheers!

Cathie Woods was also probably the best performing fund manager during this period. Doesn't mean she didn't make a mess of ARKK. Forest for the trees! Cheers!

Well I'm pretty sure Saudi Arabia will find ways to increase output now and the price of oil should drop further: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/17/politics/saudi-crown-prince-immunity-state-department-jamal-khashoggi Cheers!

What Sam Bankman-Fried has in store for his future: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elizabeth-holmes-sentencing-theranos-222120101.html Can't see him getting much less! Cheers!

No, this is the best thing that could have ever happened to crypto or blockchain! This is exactly what the industry needed. You will now have companies that have to register, provide financial statements, have a proper board, bylaws, corporate governance, filings, audits by a real auditor, disclosures, etc. Yes, it will slow it down in the short-term, but will create innovation and bring in legitimate builders/investors to bring blockchain technology to fruition. Cheers!

It's essentially what Wall Street would be like without any regulation. Almost Lord of the Flies type behavior. Are we all really surprised that an unregulated securities industry would have the founder and employees of a company using investor capital to buy homes in the Bahamas and monitored by the first auditor from the Metaverse! For years people have known that cryptocurrencies were used for the underground economy, criminal activity, money laundering and to get money offshore from China and elsewhere. Yet, everyone was tickled pink by the prospects of easy money under the guise of replacing fiat currency and new technology. I posted on here that all of the pharmacists at my local pharmacy had invested in cryptocurrency. Every Tom, Dick and Harry was starting to buy this stuff. You knew it wouldn't end well! My question is where the fuck were the regulators?! This wasn't MBS...this was clear as day! What was the SEC doing...or the provincial securities regulators in Canada...or just about any securities regulator around the world? Hopefully some of them invested too and lost a shitload! Cheers!

Who is Mia Khalifa? Cheers!

Yeah, it all got fucked up when he spent the last 10% of his life as a Rep... They both suck in my opinion! Cheers!

They haven't stopped the contagion. We know that other brokerages are restricting withdrawals. We don't know how many more will topple. We also don't know which large funds have exposure to other crypto investments that are now going to have to be written down. The one good thing is that this didn't get as big as it could have, nor was it fully legalized or sanctioned unlike many other securities bubbles. It looks like at the end of the day, the implosion will have more of a lasting effect on people's net worth's, rather than any huge systemic issue outside of the crypto space. The outcome will most likely be restrained spending and a sense of being poorer on average. Essentially a "Buyer Beware!" exercise rather than a push into a deep, deep, painful recession. Cheers!

And the GOP get their funding from underground organizations. They fucking do everything in the shadows...whereas the Dems are just plain stupid and do it in front of everyone. https://www.npr.org/2016/01/19/463551038/dark-money-delves-into-how-koch-brothers-donations-push-their-political-agenda I still don't understand your point about making it a liberal or conservative thing. Both parties do it, both sides do it. You aren't dumb enough to not know that...and you're intelligent enough where you actually know what the truth is...so stop pushing the agenda over and over again! Cheers!

You just like to present only one side of every argument. Pretty much a Trumptard thing! https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/top-of-the-ticket/story/2008-10-07/opinion-lehman-brothers-boss-spread-money-around-capitol-hill-and-got-some-back https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=121259&page=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/25/business/enron-s-collapse-campaign-finance-enron-andersen-made-donations-almost-all-their.html https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epstein-politicians-connections-donations-2019-7

There's jackasses on both sides. I'm pretty sure the guys at Enron and Lehman Bros weren't donating to Clinton or Obama. Cheers!

Greg, what the hell does that mean? Fucking entire GOP is blaming the media and corrupt election officials for the election results and you decide to throw this political barb about "liberals" into the conversation about cryptocurrencies. Do you see why you piss people off?!