rkbabang

With all of the QE, do you think it is possible for it to persist? That isn't a rhetorical question, because I don't know. My gut tells me that at some point the chickens are going to come home to roost and we are going to be hit with an uncomfortable rate of price inflation. Most of my wealth is still in stocks and USD, not bitcoin, but I'm glad I have some bitcoin nonetheless.

Yes. And I'd argue that inflation hurts the elderly who are trying to live off of their fixed savings far far far more than it hurts the super rich who have investments which more than keep up with inflation. When you are at the grocery store and see the elderly cashier ringing up the other elderly woman's cart full of cat food you have seen the effects of inflation. no_free_lunch Well maybe I didn't explain myself correctly, I am going to pass from one subject to another, I don't understand why would you think I was only going to talk about inflation, My intention was just to start the conversation. What does it mean when you say you don't like that I am talking about inflation ? isn't it (or should I say the lack of it) part of bitcoin ? so why shouldn't I speak about it ? rkbabang I don't really think your criticism about inflation is really about inflation. Isn't it about not having proper financial planning ? If I am a retire that saved enough money why is inflation hurting me more than the 1 percent ? both of us have our wealth invested just that my money is more in a fixed income than his. still i'm getting my income stream and the market is pricing the security for proper real return. Why do you think inflation hurts the elderly "far far far more" ? There are many reasons. One is that the elderly (today's elderly) have been lied to their whole lives and thought that they would be taken care of by Social Security. Then they retire to find out that they barely get coffee money and healthcare is huge issue. Thus they have not saved enough and whatever they did save is being eaten by inflation every year so they now have to work. Also your risk tolerance is less when you need the money presently. At 30 or 40 years old you can invest in higher risk/higher return investments, but when you are retired (and you are not very wealthy) you need to both live off of your investments and try to not lose any ground. This is hard to do for the average person with no interest in investing in an inflationary environment. What ends up happening is that being risk averse leads to inflation loses. In a non-inflationary environment (or deflationary environment) you could save money if that was your intention and not have it eaten away by the year. If you did want to invest your money, then any return at all would be positive, you would only lose money if your investment actually lost money. It would make it much easier to plan for retirement, live conservatively, and know that you will always have enough. Forcing everyone into the stock market whether they wish to be investors or not just to avoid losing your wealth is not an ideal situation. Not to mention inflation in the housing market creates houses to be re-evaluated for tax purposes and the elderly end up paying much more to simply live in their paid off homes then they had ever imagined. There are all kinds of ways that inflation hurts the elderly.

Yes. And I'd argue that inflation hurts the elderly who are trying to live off of their fixed savings far far far more than it hurts the super rich who have investments which more than keep up with inflation. When you are at the grocery store and see the elderly cashier ringing up the other elderly woman's cart full of cat food you have seen the effects of inflation.

Not today, but earlier this week I added to my MIDD, UBNT, and BAM positions. And took some profits by selling about half of my OSTK holdings.

You mean like iRobot's new security bot? Don't worry my security bot doesn't like dogs.

The WSJ’s analysis 1 Dallas, 2 Boston, 3 DC https://www.wsj.com/graphics/amazon-headquarters/?mod=e2fb

Once you start arguing, "its not the system its really just human beings that suck", you have all but outright admitted that your system sucks. See below for something I extracted from Feynman's talk on Cargo Cult science. What I find interesting about this, is this whole idea that replications should not be done because they are a waste of time. Its never ever about time. Its about priorities. And priorities are about incentives. What people really mean when they say something is a waste of time is that the current system is pushing hard them to do certain things (publish more research, get more grants, get more citations) and they don't have the time to do other important things that they aught to be doing. Its the incentives and design of the system that are wrong. Not the people. http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm Even in Feynman's example it isn't the system itself that sucks, there is nothing about science that says experiments should not be repeated, in fact in theory every scientist will tell you that indeed they should be. It was the individual professor who told her that she'd be wasting her time who sucks. In the end it always comes down to specific individual people. You can have the best methods and systems in place theoretically, but if people choose not to follow them in practice they will not work. Take hand washing by doctors as an example. Every doctor will tell you that hand washing is important, yet 100,000 people per year die because doctors simply don't practice what they preach. The theory is great and everyone agrees, but in practice individual human beings choose to do it the wrong way. People suck.

I have a suggestion. A way to refresh your search. I punched three symbols into the search bar yesterday. Today my tab was still open and I wanted to re-do the same search. The search bar looked like the picture attached. Hitting the magnifying-glass icon did nothing. Using the browser refresh cleared all the symbols and I had to retype them in. There should be a way to re-run the search with the same symbols that you have already typed in. Maybe this exists already and I just couldn't figure it out.

Bingo. They are looking at scaling solutions... It's just kind of crazy that it's valued at $120B and they haven't implemented scaling yet. Usually when you develop a software solution that needs to scale you take care of that at step 1, not after the software is live. I am very intrigued to see what happens to bitcoin in a major global recession (perhaps in the next year or two?). People loved internet stocks in the late 1990s. I have a feeling the 20-30 somethings at the time were the most confident in their internet stock holdings (these people had never seen stocks decline, perhaps like bitcoin holders today). Did their confidence prevent them from losing 90-100% of their money? People that ask me about bitcoin are certainly intrigued by the price rising - if that is why you are buying it, who will be left to buy when it's 'cheap'? I'm not sure there will be enough bitcoin bargain-hunters to stop the panic. That will be me left buying when its cheap. The more panic the better. Another chance to buy at $100 or $1 would be greatly appreciated.

Bingo. They are looking at scaling solutions... It's just kind of crazy that it's valued at $120B and they haven't implemented scaling yet. Usually when you develop a software solution that needs to scale you take care of that at step 1, not after the software is live. The complete dataset with all of the age groups included is interesting as well: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0Lpn9mr-a-8d0gyalVMZjJ5YkE/view

<Man dials phone> <Little Girl answers phone> GIRL: Hello MAN: Hello sweetie, this is Daddy is Mommy near the phone? GIRL: Hi Daddy, no she's in the bedroom with Uncle Paul. MAN: But you don't have an Uncle Paul? GIRL: I know, Mommy just wants me to call him that. They've been in the bedroom a long time. MAN: Can you do something for Dadddy? GIRL: Yes MAN: Go knock on the bedroom door and yell Daddy's Home! and then come back and tell me what happened. GIRL: Okay Daddy. <loud noises, screams, bangs> GIRL: Daddy, Daddy, I think Mommy's hurt, she ran out of the bedroom with no clothes on, she fell down the stairs and she's not moving! MAN: What! GIRL: And Uncle Paul, he jumped out the window into the pool, he didn't know that you drained the water last week. I think he's dead! <girl sobbing> <long pause ...> MAN: Pool? Is this 554-1288? GIRL: No MAN: I'm sorry, wrong number. <Phone disconnects>

I think blockchain is going to be crucial in proving identity and validity of information. We all know that pictures can be photoshopped, but the same capability is now available to edit video and even voice. You can edit a video of someone now and make them say anything you wish them to say. When you see a video how will you know it is real? If people upload videos to a blockchain signed with their personal key (or audio like in podcasting) then when someone sends me a clip of you saying that you are have joined the Nazi party and think the white race is biologically superior, I won't believe it unless it was uploaded to the blockchain and signed by you personally.

:( It's still the early days though. None of this has been sorted out yet. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money due to carelessness and theft before the dust settles. The people who take extreme measures won't.

Which is why open source standard protocols are the way to go, so the best people can work on and audit the code. If everyone is rolling their own some are going to be very bad. The problem with that though, is if a bug does exist then everyone is vulnerable. There are no easy solutions right now. Security is tough. If you have millions or hundreds of millions of dollars to protect, create a paper wallet with a new air-gapped computer which has never been connected to a network, print it on a printer which has never been connected to a network, do this in a concrete basement with no windows (physical glass or MS), destroy the computer's hard drive, then store the paper safely.

oops! "devops199 said they were a newbie to the crypto-currency system, and had created a multi-signature wallet in a way the software did not expect. When devops199 tried to delete the buggy money pouch, it bafflingly locked down all multi-signature Parity wallets created after the last software update" "Gavin Woods, admitted today that a user calling themselves devops199 had "accidentally" triggered a bug in its multi-signature wallets that hold Ethereum coins. As a result, wallets created after July 20 are now locked down and inaccessible, quite possibly permanently, thus nuking $90m of Woods' own savings." Paper wallets are still the safest. I'd never hold millions of dollars in a software wallet. This wasn't even malicious hacking by some super genius, just a software bug triggered accidently by a newbie.

I own a basket of Cryptocurrencies (which I discuss here: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/cryptocurrencies/) And I have owned OSTK for a long time. I haven't done any research on any of the companies on that list you posted. Do any of them strike you as real companies with potential or are they just trying to take advantage of the hype by changing their name to something with "Blockchain" in it? I suspect that there will be a lot of vaporware in this space. There will be opportunities as well as scams.

Hyundai and Kia are great cars. My 2007 Hyundai Elantra has over 200K miles on it and still going strong. Bought it new for $15k in 2007 and still drive it to work 5 days per week. The paint/body looks almost like new even after 10 New England winters and no visible rust underneath either.

I've bought cars from dealers and private individuals. Getting a carfax is a must on a used car, it will tell you if there have been any reported accidents, how many owners, and if it was ever a rental. I usually sign up for the unlimited carfax plan when I start looking, so I can research the vehicle before even going to look at it in person. Don't waste your time looking at vehicles with problems.

My answer is that I don’t know when to sell. It is still too early to get a good idea what it will even be used for in the end. I used to think that Bitcoin would be a currency, but now I’m not so sure. Like SnarkyPuppy above I think it might end up being a store of value like gold as well as a way to transfer large amounts of wealth between institutions or like wiring money and a Western Union replacement. I think other coins will be used more like a currency. They will be faster and cheaper, but won’t be as secure. You will use bitcoin as your savings and the other as your checking (for an analogy). There will be still other coins used mainly for smart contracts or to purchase specific goods and services. The other big unknown is how governments will react. I do not know when to sell, but not in the next 10 years. This is internet circa 1994. Everyone has now heard of it, but almost no one is using it. And a ton of people think it is a bunch useless hype.

Fixed that. aaand this is where wiggle watching winds up! Cheers ;) I blame the scotch, not the wiggles. The wiggles never lie.

I still always keep my eye out for the double loop de loop as a strong signal to stop looking at stocks, turn off my computer, and go to bed.

Nice. I was just thinking if I just buy one less Ferrari every month I could buy an A-share instead. :)

Just got real....

I have Google alerts set for all of the company names and ticker symbols for the stocks I own or am watching. This gives me daily emails with news from all different sources. A lot of junk/uninteresting news to sort through though, especially for the larger companies. I find this method very useful for small caps and less so for a company like Apple.

I started buying stocks in 1996 right after graduating from college. But I was pretty much buying random tech stocks without really knowing or even trying to know what I was doing. I wouldn't say that I started really trying to learn about investing until after the tech crash in 2000-2001 or so.