rkbabang

"Blind to the facts on the ground" is a very good way to describe it. You are talking about a government which reigns over and taxes a multi-trillion dollar economy with the most powerful military empire the world has ever seen. Anyone who thinks that is going down in a year or even in a decade is crazy, but anyone who thinks the empire it is immortal is equally crazy. It will take some time, but the Federal Government of the United States will not last forever. And the United States Dollar will not last forever. Loose monetary policy does have the power to eventually take the dollar down, it won't be overnight. Just because it hasn't happened yet, isn't evidence that it isn't happening. The dollar has lost over 85% of its value since Nixon untied it from gold, this current round of printing will send it even lower. In the next 50 years it will go down from here even more than 85%. The dollar is doomed eventually, the only question is when?

TwoCitiesCapital, I think there are some people who just can't imagine change. It's like telling someone in the 1840's that slavery would someday be illegal in the US. The dollar has value now and it is unimaginable that it won't always have value. Yes, you are correct every currency that has ever collapsed had the same government requirement that it be used for tax payments, therefore that will do zero to protect the dollar if and when it collapses, but you are going to bang your head against a wall convincing someone of this if they can't wrap their heads around it. Nothing backs Bitcoin, nothing backs the dollar, and nothing really backs gold. All value is subjective, so another way to look at it is the same thing backs all 3: demand.

A lot of crypto is crap of course (as is many stocks), but BTC and ETH will both beat the SP500 by a wide margin over the next 10 years.

I've owned crypto since 2014 and none of my stocks have outperformed them over the last 6-7 years and I don't think any stocks I own will outperform them in the next 6-7 years either, same probably goes for the 6-7 years after that as well.

I mean, as long as the Fed reserves the rights to issue unlimited digital dollars, it doesn't seem to erode the competitive advantage much. Just means that the entire USD system is getting a digital upgrade for faster/cheaper transfer and settlements, but doesn't take away from the advantages of BTC being global and scarce. Quite honestly, this might INCREASE adoption as I envision a digital USD would increase on-ramps into DeFi. Right now, it's difficult to get dollars into DeFi. You have to deposit cash on an exchange, buy a digital asset, wait 4 days, transfer to a wallet, convert to the token you need, and then you can get involved. Multiple fees paid in expensive ether along the way. A digital dollar might forego the need for first 3 steps and make it easier to get dollar liquidity into the system. It's more likely that the digital dollar negates the need for stable coins as opposed negating the need for BTC and would actually lower transaction costs as less gas would be wasted exchange between, and supporting, stablecoin transactions. This would be great news because the stable coins are all pretty shady, it would make trading into and out of crypto much easier and safer.

I'd love the opportunity to buy at $6K again. Don't get my hopes up like that.

Yes, I had a similar situation. As I wrote (here) I looked at it at some point 2011 and almost bought it, but I couldn't get over wiring money to mtgox, it just seemed so sketchy. I changed jobs that year, moved, sold a house, bought another house in a different state, and didn't think about bitcoin again until it went to over $1000 and was in the news in 2013. When it crashed back down to $200 I made sure to buy some, but not as much as I should have.

He obviously wants to buy more

He's a billionaire, clearly. “Most of my coins” Implying at least three. If so congrats rk Yes more than three, but much less than a billion dollars worth. I was buying at $200-$500 and not buying more than I did is by far the biggest mistake of my life.

At $53, isn't the BTC market cap around $700B as I seem to remember that accounting for lost and unmined total count was closer to 14M? Or is that way off? No one knows for sure how many coins are lost (including millions of bitcoins presumably owned by Satoshi Nakamoto), so the market cap is calculated based on the only number which is known for sure: the number of mined bitcoins. So yes the real market cap is somewhat less, but no one knows how much less. I know there have been people who have looked at the number of coins which has not moved in X numbers of years, but that doesn't mean anything as a lot of people are holding. Most of my coins haven't been moved since 2014, but they are not lost. There is really no way to ever know for sure which coins are lost and which are being intentionally held.

I use mostly paper wallets. And smallish amounts in Coinbase.

So your average holding period is about 18 months? Is that right? So i guess your holding period seems 'forever' as it is more than double the average period now for the average crowd. i've started doing 'this' about 20 years ago and one of the most striking features has been the unrelentling rise in competition. Some days i wish i'd have started in 1957 or something but then again, now is probably one of the greatest times to be alive. I need someone to tell me what my top 1% of my ideas are, because I have no clue myself. The present is almost always the best time to be alive. Exceptions were probably the 14 century (epidemics) in Europe ir if you were born in Germany before 1618 or 1914 (very ugly wars). Agreed on both points. What that chart above tells me is that if I am holding for only for 1 or 2 years I will be competing against everyone else and I am not going to try to tell myself that I am some kind of exceptional genius that can compete with the majority of the professionals and win. My competitive advantage is that I'm willing to hold for 5, 10, 15+ years. All I need to do is find stocks with long runways, buy them and hold. I won't win trading against professionals, or even algorithms. And I am never confident enough to tell myself this stock right here is one of my top 1% of ideas for this year. I'm just not that good.

BTC now has a market cap over $1T

FSLY. I've got a permanent position, but I've also been trading on Fastly's volatility the past 6 months or so. Buying in the 80s selling >$100.

Sold my SAVE Jan 2022 $45 calls for a 126% gain. I'm out of SAVE completely now.

With the huge premium its shares are trading above both what the operating company is worth + its BTC holdings, it makes sense to tap the market for cash, even if just to buy more BTC.

I have some questions for anyone with any insight into how public companies securely hold Bitcoin on their balances sheet. 1) How do they secure the BTC from theft, both internal and external, and what tools to they have to detect attempts? 2) How is BTC handled in an audit? How do auditors confirm the claimed amount is securely held, and not stolen or fraudulent? My guess would be they're using custody services from either a custodial bank or an established crypto exchange. How do those counterparties secure it from theft? I'm sure it varies, but probably have measures around it just like they would cash, or physical gold, or securities. How can it be audited? The third party custodian should be able to report the value at any given time OR could allow auditors read access to the wallet in which the BTC is stored. If you know the public address of the wallet, then the balance is publicly viewable. It seems like auditing would be simple and straightforward.

BTC quite possible. As 6 hour download of a BTC node replaces each banking function through out world. It may not be longer before Oracle of Omaha and venerated Charlie Munger change their mind on it. PS: Interesting one from today is BNY Mellon news. All old players on street joins; ultimately Oracle joins. This may be only start up investment where general public had open market ledger and cap table (fully visible) access for 12 years or so before Traditional finance make their mind about it. As WEB says: "If history is guide to riches ; librarians would be richest in the world." Digital Scarcity is the trail on which World embarks. World abundant with Central bank currencies; a new trail leading to Digital Scarcity has begun. Every banking function? How does BTC assess credit risk, market risk, IRR, etc? How does BTC perform collections and fraud functions? How does BTC perform hedging? Risk appetite assessments? I am not well versed in Bitcoin or block chains but I have not seen anything related to these functions discussed in conjunction with Bitcoin. Apologize for premature all banking functions comment; and pardon for my ignorance in world full of experts. Bitcoin is zero trust (full verification every 10 minutes) - closed system designed for specific functions. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf assess credit risk, market risk, IRR, etc? --> Traditional Banks may need to evolve to verify and transact BTC public ledger(Currently Fintechs(Square,PayPal) have started to transact in past couple of years) . Putting BTC on collateral function; will able to assess the credit risk. BTC is zero trust system. How does BTC perform collections and fraud functions? --> It is zero trust system. What it entails is every transaction is verified for its entirety and keeps the records. In traditional banking functions; We send EDI files for data exchange between related parties. Distributed nodes keeps the full ledger available all time for anyone's who is user of system. How does BTC perform hedging? Risk appetite assessments? --> Hedging function can not be replaced by BTC; but having BTC in your portfolio may hedge modern finance fallacies. Risk Appetite assessment. ( BTC is 365/24/7 system can be transacted all time with) so some of the Risk assessment relates to "information synchronicity"; BTC will make immaterial Key difference is because of Bitcoin's digital scarcity "TIME" becomes material of IRR and any finance function (in -ve interest world; TIME doesn't carry any value and seem to make less of difference). "Time is Money" . "Do you love life? Then do not squander time; For that's the stuff life is made of." -- Benjamin Franklin More experts in these area of Banking can chime in. I agree with you that BRK <i>should</i> buy BTC and hold forever, but the reason it was just a joke is that BRK will not buy BTC, at least while Warren Buffet is CEO. It is pretty hard to buy something you called "rat poison squared". He might be the greatest investor that ever lived, but he is human and thus has blind spots, and no one has an ego which would allow them to turn an about face like that.

The question is: Is this 2000 or 1998?

Sanjeev posted this in the "gambling ..." thread, but I think it belongs here. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/crypto-mogul-bets-meme-investing-220000958.html

Totally agree! If everyone was left to their own devices, we would have utter chaos! I'll be 52 in July, and even after everything I've saved and invested, I wonder if it is still enough. I also know that the majority of people my age and those heading into retirement have a fraction of what I have saved. Without CPP, universal healthcare, medicare, etc., there is no way they would be able to live a retirement life with any dignity. Cheers! I admit upfront that know very little about the situation in Canada, but I have a neighbor who was was an executive at velcro in Canada (he's now retired), he worked in Canada most of his career and his wife is Canadian. He worked the last 10 years of his working life in the US though. He's in his late 70s now and said that he'd love to move back to Canada, but he could never afford to live there because of the taxes. He claims that his standard of living would have to decrease substantially if he went back there, so he remains in New Hampshire. This seems to contradict what you are saying.

Serious question, if you feel you have no 'edge' (which is a quantitative concept i.e., better odds than average), why are you picking stocks at all? There would be no point. Because people are overoptimistic about their abilities and therefore they think they have an edge when they really don't. Exactly. And consider this, are there really only 3 or 4 market beating stocks in the world? I think there are a lot of them. If you really have an edge then you should have no problem finding 30 market beating stocks to hedge against the possibility that your edge isn't as sharp as you think it is.

BTC? OK, JK, I'd guess Google as well.

I'm with you. These are mine in alphabetical order. Some of these are very small ~1% positions and even the largest is only 13%. AAPL ADI AMZN APPN ATCO AYRWF LHSIF AXON BAM BRKB FB FSLY FSRWS GAN GOOGL ISRG LAACZ MIDD MSTR NIO NTAP NVEC PRDGF RMRM SAVE (Jan 2022 $45 calls) SDGR SE SHOP SWAV SYTE TRRSF TRUP TTD UI WFCF WMB

I always tend to hold a lot of stocks, more and more as time goes on, I used to be more concentrated. I find I'm getting less risk tolerant as I get older (late 40s now :( ). And all of my regrets are stocks I've sold way too early. Right now I hold 36 stocks. My largest position (BAM) is about 13% and I hold a lot of 1-10% positions. I tend to take small positions and add over time. Whenever something grows past 10% I tend to trim a little (but not always). I try never to sell completely unless there is a good non-valuation based reason to sell, which makes me not want to own it at all. I'm trying to only trim on valuation, but never get rid of a great company entirely on valuation alone. I don't do this for a living, so I think the diversification gives me some sense that not all of my eggs are in one basket and stops me from doing something dumb out of fear or worry. If any one of my stocks takes a nose dive it isn't a huge deal. More and more I like the Peter Lynch type approach of holding a lot of great companies and never selling. Probably limits my gains, but limits my downside as well. And sometimes I have great years like 2020 where I demolished the S&P500. I also tend to hold very little cash, about 5% cash right now which is about where I usually keep it, (although I've been 0% cash in the past) I also try to make sure I have at least 5% in something on the safe side like BRKB. BRKB is about 8% now, so cash and BRK is 13%. I used to count Apple as one of my almost as safe as cash stocks, but with it's valuation now I no longer consider it to be in that category. I recently trimmed Apple back down to under a 10% position. Anyway that's my current methodology, like always, subject to change. And then there's crypto, which I haven't decided what to do with, so I'm just Hodling for now. It has grown to about half the size of my stock portfolio and is almost all in two coins (BTC & ETH). So it is about 1/3rd of my combined stock/crypto portfolio. That means both BTC and ETH are larger than I usually let stocks get. So I am obviously not managing that portion of my portfolio in the same way. My cost basis there is so small though that I think I'm just going to continue to do nothing and see what happens in the coming years/decades.