rkbabang

Nice! Sold MKL the same day. Also own BAM & PVI ;) Rkbabang & EricSchleien1: I like BAM for their management, alternative investments, and ability to deploy capital wisely during downturns. Plus, am able to buy in C$s. I too have been adding to BAM recently, while continuing to hold previous investments in BIP (Brookfield Infrastructure) and BEP (Brookfield Alt Energy). Also adding to recent Brookfield spinoff : TSU - Trisura. So overall I'm bullish on Brookfield. My question is why are both of you selling MKL? I bought into MKL a year ago with the idea of it being a BRK like stock that could be held for a long time/forever. After a 25% gain in past 12 months, are you finding it overvalued? Has there been a structural change at the company that caused both of you to get out? Thanks, For me it is that it isn’t cheap anymore like it was a year ago, I was way overweight in MKL, I now think BAM is a better bet long term, and, finally, I did this in my IRA so there were no tax considerations in making the reallocation.

In the early years of any new technology you always have such visionaries who can see where the tech is, but not where it’s going. There is never a shortage of unimaginative people who aren’t afraid to share their lack of vision publicly so that the rest of us can read it years later and chuckle. http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306

http://www.newsweek.com/ufo-existence-proven-beyond-reasonable-doubt-says-former-head-pentagon-alien-758293

Why would a billion+ people want to own bitcoin other than pure greed? It can't handle a decent amount of transaction, you have fucked up and unregulated middle men, insane transaction costs, risk of theft and loss, energy consumption issues, it is no store of value due to extreme volatility and worst of all: supply isn't limited at all. Greed driven supply will meet greed driven demand until it reaches a tipping point where supply > demand. Suddenly you will have people realizing unregulated crypto markets are far more inflationary than the centralized monetary system already in place. (A system people don't want but truly need in one way or another to keep some sanity in the financial markets.) Anyway, this dynamic will get really interesting combined with retail speculators taking on margin loans, newly created derivates multiplying the market size, ... Forced selling as sentiment shifts completely will result in a beautiful death spiral for most, if not all, current crypto's IMO. We can only hope this occurs sooner rather than later as the impact on our economy of this crypto K.O. would only increase as crypto popularity increases. Other hits to bitcoin simply weren't fatal because these things take time to mature. The scarcity argument was somewhat valid at the time and structural issues were still under the radar. To break mania's you need the creation of a entire bullshit industry that offers enough supply to act as a counterweight to stop this pure fucking madness. Looking at some behavioral issues is telling enough. For instance, most people interested in speculating in crypto's seem to be between the age of 18 and 35. Corresponds nicely with the entire adult population that was too young to experience the Dotcom mania. No, it's not that older people aren't capable of understanding Bitcoin because of age or because they lack the technological knowledge. The collective mindset of this group of people is simply more fearful and sensible. They have wised up (a little) and sooner or later an entire new generation is going to receive the same painful lesson they learned too once upon a time. You could be right about the death spiral leading to a mega crash and the generational thing, although I'm old enough to remember 2000. But I don't see how you think there could be an increase in supply? How do you see that happening? Again, if someone or some cartel tries to change bitcoin into something else they will need to fork it and their fork will likely be worthless, or at least worth a lot less. Look at Bitcoin Gold for an example of something forking off and I believe is going to zero. There will be so much at stake that people will keep the original Bitcoin blockchain going regardless of who tries to get greedy and fork off a different version which works differently. Explain how someone gets away with changing it and inflating it, because I just don't see how that's possible.

I've read the Tether fraud theories and I really don't know if there is something there or not, but even in the worst case it will be a short term problem for Bitcoin like MtGox was. I think there is room for more than one crypto in the market used for different purposes. I see Bitcoin taking the digital gold function. To serve this purpose it will have to have a huge network effect. It is like asking what is the chances that a new social network comes along and destroys facebook. FB is valuable because everyone uses it. Yes there was myspace, but they never got to the size FB is. Anything new will have to have something FB doesn't have and can't implement to make a billion people switch. There is still a chance that something else moves past Bitcoin and serves the gold function leaving Bitcoin valueless (i.e. making bitcoin the myspace of digital gold), this is a winner take all function and in a few years the winner will become clear I think. The other cryptos will be used for other purposes. I think there will be a popular silver to the Bitcoins gold. It might serve more of a medium of exchange to replace the dollar. This is the currency that people will be paid with and used to buy their everyday items, because it will have low fees and be fast. People will regularly convert it to bitcoin for long term savings as this other currency will be POS and much less secure than bitcoin. There will be many single function coins that people use for a single purpose such as buying storage in the cloud (where you can earn the coin by providing storage and you pay the coin if you use storage) or paying for video poker, etc. There will be a lot of these. I think there is a good chance these run on the Ethereum blockchain so ETH will be very valuable. There will also be coins that represent equity in a company or organization, which will be similar to stocks today and many will pay dividends. These may even replace the stock market as they can be traded quickly without days of settling time and the ownership is always clear. There will certainly be types of crypto that I can't think of yet because no one has thought of them yet.

Only the good ones.

Who is this "they" you are speaking of? Gold isn't really limited there have been times when A LOT more gold has been introduced in circulation in a short amount of time, some say bringing massive amounts of gold home from the new world destroyed the Spanish economy. Consider the fact that there are near earth asteroids which contain more gold than has ever been mined on Earth. It is much more likely that gold is inflated massively in our lifetime than it is bitcoin. You will never get half the mining power of bitcoin to agree to destroy its value. If you did the original unedited chain would simply fork away and continue to exist leaving the new inflation chain to die.

To put this current "crash" in perspective. The 50 day moving average is $12,100 and the 250 day moving average is $5,900. The last time Bitcoin traded under its 250 day moving average was in October 2015. But it has traded under its 50 day moving average 7 times this year, it just touched it then moved on up higher every time. We've have multiple 30% drops in 2017 so far. I'd hardly call the current move anything but normal volatility. Normal for bitcoin anyway.

I sure hope so. I'm buying more under $9K, under $5K would be ideal. Just curious, but how are you determining your price points to add? There is no real way to determine an intrinsic value, so is it just based on regressions or prior trading ranges? I can't give you an exact value, but if Bitcoin becomes what I think it will you will have 7 Billion people who want to own and use those 16M-20M coins (depending on how many you think are lost). I don't know if the price in 10 years is $500K or $25M, but it won't be $5K unless my thesis on bitcoin is entirely wrong. If that is the case then you probably shouldn't buy it at all as $0 would be my best guess. I've been buying on the dips since 2014 and it has served me well building my position. I think the real runup is going to be in the 2020s. As we go from way less than 1% of people using/owning bitcoin to 20-40%. Facebook has over 1 Billion users, what happens when a billion+ people want Bitcoin? I still think that there is plenty of time. This drop will be one of many along the way.

I sure hope so. I'm buying more under $9K, under $5K would be ideal.

In a way you don’t really own your Bitcoin in the same way that you own your house or your car. You own bitcoin in the same way you own the cash in your wallet. It is a bearer instrument. With a $100 bill the piece of paper is the instrument, if someone takes it from you they can spend it. With Bitcoin the instrument is your private key. If someone knows your private key they can send your Bitcoin to another address (their own presumably). So if you store your private key on a piece of paper and someone takes it (or even takes a picture of it) then they can access your Bitcoins. If you store your private key on a computer and someone hacks into it they can take your Bitcoins. This is why I think it is dangerous to hold Bitcoins in a 3rd party account Like an exchange or online wallet like Coinbase. You are trusting a company to keep the key safe. I suggest controlling your own keys and keeping them safe yourself. Interesting. Thanks. So the ledger records all the private keys that are out there? So if I transfer my bitcoin to you, my private key becomes invalidated and you get a new one? What is being recorded on the blockchain? Also it is better to think of it as a public address with a private key. Your address is public, that is what you give to other people to send you money and also what you use to check your balance. Think of the private key as a key to unlock your address to enable sending. Ignoring the blockchain for a moment, what using bitcoin is like is imagine a huge room filled with safety deposit boxes. Every box has an address viewable to everyone right on it. Every box has a unbreakable glass door so you can walk around and see what is inside every one. Some boxes may be empty and that is fine. Every box also has a keyhole and a coin slot so that you can put coins in a box without opening it, but you can only get to the coins inside if you have the key. So you might have the key to one box which you can open and take coins and deposit them in another box for which you don’t own the key. Also some boxes might have coins in them, but the key to get into them is lost, so those coins are forever unavailable to the world. Now of course with the actual blockchain you can not only see every public address and the balance in each one, but you can also see the history of the ledger. You can see every transaction ever made since the start of the blockchain.

In a way you don’t really own your Bitcoin in the same way that you own your house or your car. You own bitcoin in the same way you own the cash in your wallet. It is a bearer instrument. With a $100 bill the piece of paper is the instrument, if someone takes it from you they can spend it. With Bitcoin the instrument is your private key. If someone knows your private key they can send your Bitcoin to another address (their own presumably). So if you store your private key on a piece of paper and someone takes it (or even takes a picture of it) then they can access your Bitcoins. If you store your private key on a computer and someone hacks into it they can take your Bitcoins. This is why I think it is dangerous to hold Bitcoins in a 3rd party account Like an exchange or online wallet like Coinbase. You are trusting a company to keep the key safe. I suggest controlling your own keys and keeping them safe yourself. Interesting. Thanks. So the ledger records all the private keys that are out there? So if I transfer my bitcoin to you, my private key becomes invalidated and you get a new one? What is being recorded on the blockchain? Your key once created never becomes invalid, if you send me all your bitcoin, you will have a zero balance, but if someone sends you more bitcoin you will have a balance again. Once an address exists I don’t think there is a way to remove it. You could have a zero balance for 100 years then receive new coins. The blockchain records which addresses currently contain which bitcoins.

You have your choice of meals 1) Dish A prepared by a chef at a small local restaurant. 2) A Delmonico steak from Delmonico’s in NYC. Which is more risky? Of course #1 is more risky, you aren’t even telling me what it is. A small businessman has the potential to make a lot more from his initial investment by investing his time and money into his business, but it is certainly more risky than just sitting back and being a passive investor in BRK.

Just like McAfee got me hoping that Bitcoin doesn’t hit $500k, now you got me hoping that there really are aliens among us.

Very interesting. Could have wide ranging impact on economies, industry, energy usage etc if they could identify what these technologies & materials are. OK, now things are starting to get crazy. We've got everything discussed before....and now there are "materials" coming off/from UFO's? Materials that scientists have no idea what they are and reportedly have strange effects on people? How did these materials come off UFO's? Was it a UFO broken down by the side of the ride and a panel fell off when it took off? OR was it maybe a shootdown? Or was it a crash? This isn't getting more coverage in the papers? If it is indeed true, I would think this would be pretty big news? Of course, we've got a lot of news with maniac perverts and the political circus to capture the public's attention. I don't know what to make of that story at all. I am also surprised it isn't getting more attention.

Speaking of KO it better get Nestea on the blockchain soon if it wants to compete. You wouldn't want to be in a market where all the other teas are on the blockchain but yours.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/pentagon-ufo-alloys-program-recover-material-unidentified-flying-objects-not-recognise-us-government-a8117801.html?amp&__twitter_impression=true

I hope Warren Buffet changes the name of his company to "Berkshire Blockchain", in seconds it will be the most valuable company in the world leaving Apple in the dust. Unless of course Apple changes its name to Apple Blockchain. Its pretty amazing actually. Even stranger IMO is XIN, highlighted a couple days ago by a fairly well respected author on SA, with real assets, profitability, a dividend, and supposedly blockchain technology partnerships with 58.com and IBM... barely budging 10%. Went long yesterday for a swing trade but it seems like people only want crappy, worthless companies to invest in. Assets, profits, earnings, dividends, blah, blah, blah, but the word "Blockchain" isn't in its name.

I hope Warren Buffet changes the name of his company to "Berkshire Blockchain", in seconds it will be the most valuable company in the world leaving Apple in the dust. Unless of course Apple changes its name to Apple Blockchain.

https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1EE02J-OCABS Down 20% intraday before eventually closing down 4.5% on the day, & suggestions that some of the punters are exiting …… “However, for Japanese retail investors who are estimated to account for 30 to 50 percent of bitcoin trade worldwide, a more worrying warning may have come from a Japanese day trader guru known as Cis. The individual trader, who claims to own 21 billion yen ($186 million) in assets, tweeted over the last 24 hours that he had sold cryptocurrencies.” Maybe Makoto reads this board? …. “The listing of two bitcoin futures makes it easier for institutional players to trade bitcoins. Futures also enable players to go short on bitcoins, which was difficult without liquid futures,” said Makoto Sakuma, researcher at NLI Research Institute in Tokyo. SD I noticed that Bitcoin Cash went up while Bitcoin was going down. This drop coincided with Coinbase adding Bitcoin Cash. It could just be people moving some money around. $ flowing out of the high price Bitcoin & into the lower price Bitcoin Cash, is a sign that the retail demand/liquidity of Bitcoin is slowing; retail is seeking cheaper alternates. Problem is that Bitcoin is driving the tide, so as the Bitcoin tide ebbs; all boats fall - including the price of Bitcoin Cash, Etherium, etc. Hence either sell now & buyback later, or short via the futures/options markets for very high premiums. The 'trading' game has changed, and the professionals are now at the table. Nothing wrong in that, but either know what you're doing or be as least as good as they are. SD The only problem with your theory is that ETH was hitting all time highs at that same moment. I'm not worried about the so-called "professionals". I've held my own against them in the stock market over the years and I will hold my own against them in crypto as well. I am focused long term and aren't worried about this quarter or next which is the exact opposite point of view from the vast majority of the "professionals".

The neverending quest for a free lunch continues. TANSTAAFL!

In a way you don’t really own your Bitcoin in the same way that you own your house or your car. You own bitcoin in the same way you own the cash in your wallet. It is a bearer instrument. With a $100 bill the piece of paper is the instrument, if someone takes it from you they can spend it. With Bitcoin the instrument is your private key. If someone knows your private key they can send your Bitcoin to another address (their own presumably). So if you store your private key on a piece of paper and someone takes it (or even takes a picture of it) then they can access your Bitcoins. If you store your private key on a computer and someone hacks into it they can take your Bitcoins. This is why I think it is dangerous to hold Bitcoins in a 3rd party account Like an exchange or online wallet like Coinbase. You are trusting a company to keep the key safe. I suggest controlling your own keys and keeping them safe yourself.

https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1EE02J-OCABS Down 20% intraday before eventually closing down 4.5% on the day, & suggestions that some of the punters are exiting …… “However, for Japanese retail investors who are estimated to account for 30 to 50 percent of bitcoin trade worldwide, a more worrying warning may have come from a Japanese day trader guru known as Cis. The individual trader, who claims to own 21 billion yen ($186 million) in assets, tweeted over the last 24 hours that he had sold cryptocurrencies.” Maybe Makoto reads this board? …. “The listing of two bitcoin futures makes it easier for institutional players to trade bitcoins. Futures also enable players to go short on bitcoins, which was difficult without liquid futures,” said Makoto Sakuma, researcher at NLI Research Institute in Tokyo. SD I noticed that Bitcoin Cash went up while Bitcoin was going down. This drop coincided with Coinbase adding Bitcoin Cash. It could just be people moving some money around.

https://srsroccoreport.com/gold-mining-industry-fuel-costs-explode-in-a-decade/

Sold 85% of my MKL today and bought more BAM.