rkbabang

Well said. This is basically what I was thinking getting back into Fairfax this year. I will not hold it forever.

That was a great book. Written 25 years ago and still 100% relevant today. I re-read it earlier this year and it holds up 100%, even if he did think some of these changes would happen more quickly than they did/are/will. The changes in society from the printing press or the firearm took centuries, the changes from the digitalization of the world will be quicker than that, but still better measured in decades not years. This is my favorite quote: Excerpt from “The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age”, by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg, 1997: “Disdain as a Leading Indicator Moral outrage against corrupt leaders is not an isolated historical phenomenon, but a common precursor of change. It happens again and again whenever one era gives way to another. Whenever technological change has divorced the old forms from the new moving forces of the economy, moral standards shift, and people begin to treat those in command of the old institutions with growing disdain. This widespread revulsion comes into evidence well before people develop a new coherent ideology of change. As we write, there is as yet little evidence of an articulate rejection of politics. That will come later. It has not yet occurred to most of your contemporaries that a life without politics is possible. What we have in the final years of the twentieth century is inarticulate disdain. Something similar happened in the late fifteenth century, but at that time it was religion rather than politics that was in the process of being downsized.” This was starting to happen in 1997, but distain for everyone in government has grown dramatically ever since. It has accelerated since the Trump election and then again after Biden's election, it has gone far beyond "inarticulate disdain" to the level of articulated hatred. My thoughts are the hatred, disdain, distrust, and disrespect for everything government will continue to grow throughout the years accelerating with every new administration when nothing changes and the ruling class can no longer control the narrative. Government will become a parody of itself and more and more people will be looking at it in disgust and looking to ignore it. A non-governmental medium of exchange is a critical component of that. whether it ends up being bitcoin or something else (I think it will be bitcoin) the technology is now commonplace and can not be put back in the bottle.

But why is this Bitcoins fault. As you agree people use dollars and gold, does that mean those things are bad? And should be banned? Black markets will trade in whatever is valuable. If Bitcoin is valuable someone will accept it in trade for goods and services, some of those good or services will not be legal. So what? A drug dealer isn't going to stop dealing drugs if you ban Bitcoin. He will go back to accepting dollars, so what is accomplished? People use artwork and expensive watches to launder money, should we not allow the market in art or watches? The medium of exchange is not the problem. You are barking up the wrong tree.

I don't know if there is good data on this, but I find it hard to believe that the major drug cartels do much if any business in Bitcoin. There is some relatively infinitesimal amount of retail trade on the dark web, but the illegal drug industry on planet Earth is almost entirely a USD based industry. Worrying that Bitcoin is used in the drug trade today is sort of like worrying that hammers are often used in murders. Yes, it happens, but not very often compared with other tools. And even if Bitcoin replaces dollars in the drug trade it would just mean that it is just as bad as the dollar, not necessarily worse. If you are going to demonize a currency because it is used by criminals then the USD should be the first thing you should want to ban in today's world.

Don't worry the same people will be on the same sides, saying the same things, in 2031 when Bitcoin is trading at $1M-$5M each and still has nothing backing it. LOL

Criminal activity such as drugs, human trafficking, etc, the USD is just as good and used far more often. It is laughable to assume that BTC is being used even a fraction as much as the dollar in the drug trade currently. As far as “tax fraud” is concerned, the other name for that is “hiding money from racketeers”. And yes the government should probably be concerned about that.

That's like saying Amazon.com is just a company with a website and anyone can start a company with a website, there are millions of them and more being created every day. Oh wait, value investors did say that about Amazon.com for decades.... Also Ethereum is Turing complete which makes it dangerous. Bitcoin not being Turing complete is a feature not a bug. Ethereum and Bitcoin are fundamentally different things.

There was a time when paper money was useless too, but people seem to accept it now though. Times change. Some people change with the times, others don't... until they do. None of these anti-BTC posts are going to age well I think. I will have a chuckle someday though. Until then we will just have to agree to disagree.

"supported by its tax revenue base" is another way of saying what I've already said. It is supported by its ability to take a significant portion of the wealth created by everyone who lives in a large area of the planet under threat of violence, and to demand that payment in dollars. It has a large protection racket and it is likely that it will continue for the foreseeable future. I'm not saying that it is unreasonable to value dollars, I hold them myself, I'm just being realistic as to what gives them the value they hold. As for BTC not having anything "backing it"; it is valuable in and of itself because of its properties. It is useful and will become far more useful in the future. I know it is in vogue for value investors to laugh at the concept of holding gold because it "doesn't produce anything", but people have valued it for its money like properties for thousands of years and will continue to do so. Bitcoin has superior money-like properties to gold and thus people will value it, regardless of what value investors think.

Yes, and tulip bulbs still have value. You can buy them at your local garden center today. Prices go up and down on most things, and bubbles happen from time to time. Also the story you are referring to is more urban legend than history. https://cunninghamjeff.medium.com/the-dutch-tulip-mania-that-never-happened-85dd0b18066a

Some things are in demand because people want to own it and other things are in demand because someone powerful is making you use it. The difference between BTC and USD is the difference between consent and coercion.

BTC, because it is more likely to be in demand as a store of value by more people and for a longer time than Greenpacks. Also, like a fiat currency the Green Bay Packers can issue as much stock as it wants, anytime that it wants. The real question is what makes the US Dollar different from Green Bay Packers stock certificates? The only difference I can see is that the dollar is demanded by a large government who will hurt you if you don't pay them a part of everything you create in dollars. The Green Bay Packers should go into the protection racket and demand payment in Greenpacks.

Absolutely.

Added 20% to my LAACZ position. ~8% expected gain on those additional units in a few months.

People can certainly try to create something else, last I checked there were thousands of cryptocurrencies. You don't just have to create something, you have to get everyone else to value it and use it. There will be a market for defi and this might have other blockchains besides Bitcoin which retain a lot of value (although there are Bitcoin maximalists who think Bitcoin wins here too eventually), but the store of value function is definitely a winner take all type of thing and Bitcoin is that winner. Read "The Bitcoin Standard" by Dr. Saifedean Ammous, he makes an excellent case for Bitcoin maximalism.

Exactly. Even if someone is massively wealthy due to bitcoin they will buy houses, cars, yachts, private jets, etc. And if they have no investments or companies earning money they will have wealth going out, but none coming in. And even in the case where someone does not spend their wealth, their kids and grandkids will. This is a problem, if it is a problem, that will eventually take care of itself.

Humans don't value things or not based on social justice theories or wealth inequality preferences. Everyone on earth is just going to say "hey that's not fair" and decide not value bitcoin. I don't think that's how it works.

I do this often. Sometimes to act as a limit order, I write the put for the strike that I want to buy the stock at and usually it goes unfilled and I just keep the premium. Other times I do it expecting not to be put too. I've been making ~$1000/month lately writing puts 1 month out on WMB (The $28 puts I wrote a month ago are expiring tomorrow). With energy inflation as it is I don't think it will go down, so it is like printing money. And if I'm put to, I'd be perfectly happy to own it at $28.

I've been enjoying Dopesick as well. It is very entertaining even though I know it is just drug-war propaganda; complete with cartoonish villains, helpless unwitting victims, and government agent super heroes to the rescue.

Where have you been? This already started. I was talking to my nephew this summer, he's in his early 20s, he said that him and his friends basically listen to only 70s music now. Foo Fighters to release disco album as the Dee Gees https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-57524428

Gloomy is a judgement call based on your perspective. I would have said "the same but more hopeful". I guess a neutral way of putting it is "The same, but more so". As TwoCities mentioned above, your scenario assumes people are indifferent between BTC and USD, I don't think that is the case now and it will become less and less the case over time.

10 people on an island. One produces dollars on his printer and keeps printing more and more and more of them every day. Every day he gets to spend the new dollars at what people value them at on the day he prints them, but once they go into circulation the other 9 people start valuing them less. Another guy invents a digital currency which can't be inflated beyond a certain point. People start valuing Bitcoin more than dollar-guy's paper dollars, while the dollar guy is still printing away every day, making people value the dollars less still. Eventually people won't exchange their Bitcoin for any amount of that guy's paper money, unless they are out of toilet paper, in which case they will value them only for the paper not for the printing on it.

All value is subjective. It is worth exactly what someone will pay you for it. Not one cent more or one cent less. Take your cigarette company, yes it had earnings, but why is it worth 8 times those earnings, and not 0.5 times or 200 times or 8.2 times. It is subjective. Why was it 2% more expensive last month than this month, why will it be worth a different price tomorrow than today? It is subjective and worth only what someone will pay. Same with shiny pieces of metal or a diamond, or a skyscraper, or a Bitcoin.

Could have been a zoom meeting. Hell, it could have been an email.

I used to keep a few percent in gold (3-5%), but I no longer do. Crypto is back up to over a 20% position for me with the recent run up even though I sold ~45% of what I owned earlier this year. I also have a ~2% position in physical Uranium (SRUUF).