rkbabang

There are some benefits to cryto mining. Crypto mining coupled with increased nuclear power could justify an increased base load with the ability to modulate the mining power draw to help stabilize the grid in times of high demand and stress. Also it promotes renewables because you can justify building a much larger amount of renewable generation capability if you know that the excess can be sold to miners in times of low demand when it would otherwise go to waste. Batteries are not a realistic option because the amount of rare earths that would be required to stabilize the entire grid run on renewables would be impactable to say the least. Not to mention miners can generate electricity from off grid options like gas flaring and unused hydropower. In the end protecting the worlds most secure blockchain will have a positive impact on our energy system, which will far exceed the negatives. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/bitcoin-mining-as-a-grid-resource-its-complicated/617896/ "Along with providing demand flexibility, the crypto mining industry can help bolster the grid and develop clean energy in a variety of others ways, crypto miners say, often by taking advantage of crypto mining wherever there is cheap energy and internet access. Crypto miners can consume energy that would otherwise be curtailed, said Bitfury’s Brooks, by locating near renewable generators and providing baseload consumption for solar and wind. They can also consume natural gas that would otherwise be flared at oil drilling operations “to turn that dead-weight loss into economic value,” he said. That same locational flexibility can help with transmission losses and distribution grid efficiency, he said. “The mobility of Bitcoin mining allows the industry to construct data centers close to the power generation source, thus reducing these losses and turning the associated power into economic value while also reducing the need for additional investments in transmission and distribution infrastructure,” Brooks said. Digital Power Optimization’s Webber said his company is also looking at how cryptocurrency mining can help revitalize the United States’ aging hydroelectric infrastructure. “There’s a lot of defunct and underfunded hydroelectric assets around North America and elsewhere, frankly, that maybe haven’t had their maintenance ... kept up to date,” he said. “There’s a lot of opportunity there to repair some of America’s infrastructure.” “Crypto mining can actually revitalize disused, underused, underfunded energy assets that are 100 years old,” he said. “And on top of that, whatever you’re not using for your Bitcoin mine, you can then sell into the grid.”" https://www.nhbr.com/canadian-bitcoin-company-has-big-plans-for-berlin-manufacturing-facility/ "“Bitcoin Mining Rovers” at the Presby Steel site (the former Isaacson Steel fabrication plant) in Berlin and will ship out the decentralized bitcoin modular units to places where they can be fueled by the cheapest source of energy. It is increasingly looking at off-grid locations, flares from oil and gas fields and landfills, to behind-the-meter hydro facilities and even nuclear power plants. The company sees itself working with the energy industry, being an “energy sink” – a guaranteed sale point for the industry, a way to convert energy to cash."

Bitcoin is the most secure blockchain on earth, no individual, corporation, or even government can modify or destroy it. It is the most secure commodity on earth today. I'd say that is pretty hard.

Funny how an invention is just totally worthless if the inventor wasn't omniscient.

asset (n) something useful or valuable.

Getting a little tired of rehashing the same things again and again here, but Bitcoin is a hard asset.

All this talk about raising rates, in realityy rates still aren't that high. You can get 5.5% 30 year fixed mortgage in the US today. I bought my first house in 1997 when the economy was absolutely booming and took out a 30 yr fixed at 8.5%. As long as the fed doesn't get really crazy raising rates I don't think what they've already done is going to do all that much damage. I'm not one who thinks rates should be anwhere near 0. Rates should be reasonable and predictable so businesses and people can make long term plans to allocate their capital wisely.

Ah well you know what I mean - thats a yoke i found online to illustrate a point...........lets just call them domestically produced services, consumed domestically....... It's more accurate to call it: Highly government regulated or highly government subsidized services. The freer market type stuff is bellow the line or at least closer to the line.

No one ever went broke taking profits. I too always sell way too early. I'm holding Jan 2024 puts on Tesla and Rivian right now and have been thinking about selling them because they are in the green over 100%. I haven't yet, but I know the moment I do sell those stocks are going to take a nosedive and I will be kicking myself yet again.

No, not in the slightest. Just when such "critism" is entirely made of non sequitors, ad auctoritatem, ad hominems and other logical fallacies as they hold zero merit. Good luck with the mental gymnastics! I've yet to read anything on the Amazon thread like: All public companies are scams and Ponzi schemes. Why would you invest in any public company when someone else could just start an equivalent competing company tomorrow that does the same exact thing? Look at how far the market has dropped, see I told you it was all nonsense!

Help me understand. Some guy got robbed due to bad security on his internet connected devices and is crying about it to the feds. Aaaand this translates to all enthusiasts (millions and millions of them) will stop championing the decentralization of cryptocurrencies? I don't see how those dots connect. It's more like you found a story about some poor guy who got robbed and it confirms your preexisting biases.

Does anyone else remember a recession/depression that was anticipated and expected by absolutely everyone like this coming one in 2023 is? Makes me thing that gregmal may be correct and it doesn't happen.

The old buy high, sell low trick that the average investor seems so fond of.

I agree with this lately. Treason wasn't bad, but it was just mediocre at best. The other series I watched lately was "The Recruit". It was probably better than Treason, but not great either, because it wasn't believable. It was almost a cartoonish idea of how the CIA operates. I don't know if they were trying to be funny or what, but it ended up just being somewhat dumb.

According to Fidelity performance tab for all of my accounts as of 12/31/22: 1 year: -19.81 (vs SP500 -18.11) 3 year: +15.91 (vs SP500 +7.66) 5 year: +12.94 (vs SP500 +9.42) My positions which were all down this year. BAM, BN, BNRE, JOE, APPL, AMZN, MSGE, AIV, AIV calls, NVDA, OSTK, SE, CLPR, VET, SHOP, TRUP, TRRSF Luckily I also bought and held BRKB, FRFHF, ATHOF, EPSN, ALNY, WMB, RIVN $30 puts And I sold for gains: UI, WFCF, EPD, OBE, APTS, APTS calls, VRE calls, VET calls I broke even on TSLA puts which I sold and lost money on APPL puts which I sold. EDIT: Also down a large amount in Crypto I've held BTC and ETH all year, bought some more, but haven't sold any this year. I haven't calculated the % loss on that.

What? Who thinks it’s going to be $1M by 2025 and only has $5K invested? I must have missed that post.

yes it will eventually happen, and you can probably guess what I think will replace it? No one is going to want to give one nation the kind of power the US has enjoyed with its currency being the reserve currency of the world. One by one everyone is going to switch to something neutral and stable. “Stable” meaning can’t be messed with or controlled.

Thanks Watchword. It seem the concept that All value is subjective is a hard one for people to understand. If write a piece of paper which says it pays 3 purple rocks per month for 12 months, then that piece of paper is only valuable to you if you value the purple rocks. If all value is subjective, then the value of anything which backs your investment is subjective. Like I said you need to internalize the concept that all value is subjective, “all” meaning everything that has ever existed or ever will exist. The question “how valuable is it” should never be asked, because “value” isn’t a property for which it is possible for anything to have. Value is a judgement by an individual person. So the proper questions are: Who values it? How much do they value it? How much are they likely to value it in the future? And why?

You keep saying "intrinsic value", "intrinsic value", "intrinsic value", ...... The first thing you need to understand about the reality of the universe you inhabit is that there is no such thing as "intrinsic value", there never has been, and there never will be. "Intrinsic Value" is impossible, because all value is subjective. Try this thought experiment. Aliens land their ship in your back yard and ask you to explain this concept of "intrinsic value" to them and ask you to give them an example of something that is intrinsically valuable. You tell them the US Dollar. They say "but we have no use for those, they aren't valuable to us, and studying your history we see that even humans don't value them the way they used to since they have lost 99% of their purchasing power in the last century, so that is hardly something that has intrinsic value." You say "gold" and they laugh and say "we can stop by a trillion different rocks in space and pick up as much of that as we please why would we want that?" You say diamonds and they laugh again saying "we can manufacture them any time we want why would we value such things?" You say a company which produces valuable products and has earnings. Once again they laugh as say that those products are of no use to them and the so called earnings are in a currency that is of no use to them. All value is subjective. When you fully internalize this completely you look at the world in a different way. There are some things that a lot of people happen to value highly now, but there is nothing that "everyone" values. Even the same person (or alien) will value things differently at different times. Things that are widely valued now may not be widely valued in the future because of differing tastes, trends of history, or technological change. Oil was just a messy nuisance until technological advancement made it valuable to many people. Further technological advancements could very well make it valueless to everyone again. Currencies come and go all the time in the span of centuries. Companies come and go (Sears used to be extremely valuable, but there was nothing intrinsic about it as it is now gone). Nations, kingdoms, and empires come and go, none of them have intrinsic anything. If your argument for, or against, anything is the property of "intrinsic value", then you have a completely different view of our existence than I do.

We were talking about older folks not adopting new technologies and how older systems need to be kept in place for them while they are here. But of course, you are correct. We both had to have accounts with 3rd parties and trust them to store our value safely and make the transactions we requested. Neither of us paid the grocery store directly, that technology has yet to be adopted by them.

Suddenly the IRS knows exactly how much the neighborhood kid who cuts your lawn is making and wants their cut. They know you sold some old stuff on Craigslist for $5K last year, do you have receipts for when you bought all that stuff to prove your cost basis? Probably not. CBDCs are a nightmare.

Yes. It's like saying what is so special about the existing internet? Couldn't you just start your own separate network with all the same features and get everyone to leave the existing internet and switch to your network? Say you come up with some novel networking feature, would it be more plausible that everyone on the planet leaves the internet and starts using your network instead? Or would it be far more likely that the current internet simply adopts that functionality and everyone continues to use it?

Agreed. I was at the grocery store this summer and this old woman, probably in her 80s, was paying with a check. I hadn't seen that in years. She wrote out the check, then filled in info about it in the transaction journal above the check in her checkbook. Here's someone who's never adopted credit cards or even debit cards. I'm sure she wouldn't understand why anyone would need Applepay. I came next and paid with my watch.

Got it. Fair enough. I didn't realize that commodities, fixed income, etc wasn't allowed there either. Maybe the name should have been "Stock Ideas" rather than "Investment" Ideas.

I ran across this today and thought of this topic on excess deaths. At least in the UK ambulance response times are horrible and appear to be trending in the wrong direction. About an hour on average some months of this year for "category 2" calls which includes chest pains and strokes, with 90th percentile up over 2 hours some months. https://www.health.org.uk/publications/long-reads/why-have-ambulance-waiting-times-been-getting-worse

Thanks alxcii, I agree, the unwillingness by some to understand crypto is almost like they deliberately are trying not to understand it. I tried at some point a few years ago to add a topic in the "investments" area of this board called BTC - Bitcoin and it was deleted and the few messages in it were appended to this topic here. No one on this board wants to discuss an individual crypto currency as an investment, they just want to throw them all together as a single topic where it can all be dismissed as "rat poison" as the seer says.