rkbabang

Fractional reserve banking is all about confidence. If you destroy that confidence, you destroy (or at least damage) the system.

I suspect that many look at what is happening in Canada and because they don't like the people it is happening to they say "Good, screw them truckers and those who support them" and they feel comfortable that such things could never happen to them. Most people always think government overreach can't effect them personally... until it does. However I'm sure there are a few people who have been woken up by this to the realization that having at least some of their wealth stored out of the reach of governments couldn't hurt.

Added to JOE, AIV 2024 CALLS, and PSTH (moved most of my remaining cash into PSTH).

It's even more than that though. Don't think of them as "companies" think of them as products or applications. How many products are there in the world? What is the potential number of software applications humanity could create? 10K is a very small number.

Why is that nuts? You can create 10K more cryptocurrencies if you'd like. I'm sure there are millions of them in existence on someones' computers somewhere in the world, but only 10K of them are generally exchangeable. It is early in this technology an ecosystem is emerging and new ideas are being tried. Cryptocurrencies are going to come and go by the 100s of thousands in the next decade or two.

Yes, yes, fo shizzle.

Yes, but it doesn't end in "zzle"

The crypto can be used for illegal purposes thing is a sad attempt to discredit something the powers that be dislike for other reasons. Cars make it easier to get away from bank robberies. <yawn>

Fo shizzle my nizzle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiAvfcfIzac&ab_channel=MarthaStewart

Nice. I hope you bought a lot in 91. I've never purchased a Dell product myself (or owned Dell stock), but my work laptop provided to me by my company is a Dell Precision 5520, its a solid machine that has run flawlessly since about 2017 and I still use it everyday. Mostly to log into my company's VPN and into my linux machine there, but I also use it for email, web, documents, and communications (Teams, Zoom, etc.). I still prefer a Mac personally though.

No, obviously Whitney likes the ads.

I think you forgot to include the ticker symbol or company name in your post. Unless I'm missing something.

There is a survivorship bias with anything and everything. You could say that about stocks. Everyone focuses on the Apples and Amazons, but no one remembers the Blackberrys (unless you are a Fairfax shareholder).

I'm sure she thinks that it is obviously the greedy landlords fault and there is no problem that can't be solved with government wage, rent, and price controls.

Exactly. The reason private charity is superior to public assistance is that when people receive charity they are humble, grateful, and will try to get to the point when they no longer need it. When people get money from government they are greedy, ungrateful, entitled, and will demand more (mostly by voting for people who will give them more). Elon Musk, in his recent interview on the Lex Fridman Podcast, when asked something like "what advice would you give a young person just starting out?" said "Make it your goal in life to produce more than you consume." Amen. I think humans have a responsibility to themselves, their loved ones, and their societies to produce more than they consume over their lifetime. This surplus is what makes modern society possible, it's what makes the investments in science, technology, and charity possible, it's what makes the growth in wealth, the decrease in poverty and hunger, the increase in living standards possible. If you aren't at the very least pulling your own weight you should feel humble and a bit humiliated, certainly not entitled.

If you own Bitcoin but don't mine you have no say at all. Anyone can run a node and mine, but your vote is proportional to the computing power you put in compared to the total computing power of the entire pool of miners. The idea is that you need over 50% of the computing power to make a change. So yes, if an idea is controversial and you can't get miners representing >50% of the computing power to agree on the change, then the change simply doesn't happen and things go on as they have without the change. This is a feature though. It should be hard to change the code. As Bitcoin becomes more and more valuable it is less and less likely that any one miner or even small group of miners will control over 50%. This stabilizes the network, makes it safe, makes it difficult to change, but at the same time it doesn't allow any 1 miner to stand in the way of a change that almost everyone wants. If you can't get consensus for a change, then maybe it isn't as much of a no-brainer as you thought and maybe it shouldn't be implemented. You are free to start your own blockchain to prove the features worth, but there is no guarantee anyone will participate. Bitcoin represents hundreds of billions of dollars in value and will someday represent many trillions. Changes should never be taken lightly and it certainly shouldn't be changed on a whim by a small group.

You keep saying "current batch of crypto", but I don't think you realize that they can fork and and add functionality if the consensus is there to do so. Bitcoin was just upgraded to add functionality a few months ago. This isn't like a company that has stubborn management that will resist change and let a competitor eat its lunch. New ideas are tried in new blockchains and good ones can be adopted by the old blockchains. My guess is that Bitcoin and Ethereum (which serves different purposes and always will) will evolve into whatever is next in crypto. This first batch of crypto will keep evolving while people are on the sidelines waiting for the second coming.

I sold some EPD puts last week, I just bought them back today to close them out for $600 less than I received for them in less than a week. Wanted to free up the cash which was backing them to buy some more TRRSF, SE, and AIV calls.

Exactly. And before defi you had no option but to use third-party custodians. Defi increases your options and optionality is always an added value.

Nothing wrong with that. There are, and always will be, other ways to make money even if crypto eventually becomes what I, and many others, think it will. I fully understand that not everyone is convinced right now. I don't think I'm wrong, but of course I could be. There are people fully convinced that we will all be driving hydrogen powered cars (I think their wrong), but who knows? There were people who thought the internet was going to be a flop, Paul Krugman famously said "By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s." Everyone's got their own thoughts about what will happen and that's what makes a market.

Quoted from the returns thread. I think 60x is unlikely over that time outside of an extreme bubble. But 10-15x seems reasonable. Yes, 60X would be extreme bubble territory for sure, that's why I put it on the high end. 15X is a no brainer, 20+X is my target. If anything close to 60X becomes reality then it would be difficult to even know for sure what the gains were as this would be an extreme bubble combined with a Bitcoin-took-over-everything scenario where most of the fiat currencies no long exist and there wouldn't even be an equivalent to the US Dollar to measure it against.

Yeah

I personally have over 20% in crypto even after selling almost half last May, but I wouldn't feel comfortable telling other people to do that. My cost basis is almost nothing (less than 1%) so I'm comfortable holding and seeing where it goes. I think bitcoin returning 20-60X in the next 10 years is not out of the question, so even a 3% position could move the needle if I am correct. And it wouldn't be much of a drag if I am wrong.

Yes, it is amazing how few colds/flues you get when you are cautious like we've all been the last few years. Since the fall of 2019 I've had exactly 1 cold, I was sick for a few days this past July (tested negative for COVID) I had a runny nose and was sneezing for a few days. That is it. I've never gone 2 years with so little time being sick before.

I don't think you can think of them the same way you think of stocks or real estate. Gold or other commodities are a closer analog, but not perfect either. There is supply & demand, there are the network effects. Bitcoin is a store of value today and may become a widely used currency someday. Also it may be used for dapps/fintech/defi etc. My thesis is that there will only ever be 21 Million of them in existence and the demand for them will cause the price to sky rocket in the next decade or two. I do think the price stabilizes as some point, but that is a long way off. If you are really interested in understanding the thesis for Bitcoin read "The Bitcoin Standard" by Dr. Saifedean Ammous. For ETH, my thesis is a little bit shakier. I'm not as sure of ETH as I am of BTC. I think BTC might win in the end even for defi. But right now ETH is where all the interesting things are happening in the defi world and I think the next few years will see a lot of growth and increased demand for ETH. It is too early to tell. I do think that anyone who doesn't have at least a percent or three of their portfolio in BTC is going to be sorry someday.