KJP
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Posts posted by KJP
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Swedish Match
Hill International
Leatt Corp.MacFarlane Group PLC
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6 hours ago, changegonnacome said:
see this mentioned alot - dont see an investment idea thread....could be worth starting one...... any write ups you could point me towards that nail the essense of the thesis.....have to say a nicotine/tobacco company thats growing volumes like SWMA are has to catch your eye.....any thoughts on spin dynamics of the cigar biz later this year....simplifies the smokeless nicotine remain co company story I presume?
Here's one: https://sinstockpapi.substack.com/p/swma?utm_source=url
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Nickel 28 Capital Corp.
Swedish Match
Hill International
Leatt Corp.
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27 minutes ago, fareastwarriors said:
Housing is so hot that even Disney is getting in on the action?
https://deadline.com/2022/02/disney-panned-residential-communities-rancho-mirage-1234934824/
Disney To Build New Residential Communities, First In Rancho Mirage, California
There's demand for this even among the 55+ crowd?:
"At each location, it said Disney cast members trained in the company’s guest service will operate the community association."
"The first community [will] . . . offer a range of home types including estates, single family homes and condos, including at least one area expressly for 55+ residents."
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15 hours ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:
Article about money laundering in cyrpto in WSJ today. Fairly balanced in its view.
Points out that money laundering is happening, and increased in 2021, but that it's a small portion of all transactions (0.05%). Also that the bulk of it is tied to just 5 services/dApps and the flows fairly easy to follow if Feds want to get involved. It appears my assertions of public blockchains being terrible for crime continues to be backed up.
The Bitcoin/crypto is for criminals narrative needs to die now.
How are things like Tornado Cash affecting the usefulness of crypto for criminal purposes?
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7 minutes ago, Dean said:
some names this morning were trading down 5-7% and now are even or even positive for the day.
Take a look at Shopify's range today.
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Sold Lockheed Martin. Proceeds used to add to:
Leatt Corp.
SNC-Lavalin
Hill International
American Outdoor Brands
Turning Point Brands
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2 hours ago, thepupil said:
Thanks! won’t ask anymore ?’s without modicum of reaearch
I've been poking around to find out more about USDC. As far as I can tell, small dollar USDC transfers on the Ethereum chain are expensive. For example, here are some transfers in the last hour, with USD cost derived from current ETH price:
$39.52 fee to transfer $175 USDC: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xb59571d03f1d3f1f6549f121786f82dfe972558890059488473e3f5609778cc3
$42.00 fee to transfer $338 USDC: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x952f0e5cf1502f3c047890abacbe2119c96182df7d46c6873eb21c5e760cf569
$36.83 fee to transfer $821 USDC: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x13879fb45cfb6c470d1d8de4cf7ab17bb633dd79333516178c82aec7423a6300
Ethereum currently seems far too expensive for small value USDC transactions until gas fees come way down.
USDC transfers on other chains appear much cheaper. For example, 15 cents to transfer $250 USDC on Avalanche: https://snowtrace.io/tx/0x0f21d42026b6f9efd0be2515e4c1a30297787418ca1c0996859ad7d3a5f916ee
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1 hour ago, thepupil said:
Good point, yea assume that.
more succinctly, do stablecoins circumvent KYC and/or reduce transaction costs for remittances/cross border payments?
At a minimum, USDC is connected to the traditional banking system at creation and redemption. See S-4 quote below. In between, they can be transferred between blockchain-compatible digital wallets. Hopefully someone else can explain the transaction fees for (i) creation and withdrawal, (ii) transfers between Circle accounts, and (iii) transfers between a Circle account and a non-Circle digital wallet. If you start with a non-USD currency, I assume you have additional conversion costs.
From the S-4:
Issuing and redeeming USDC from our platform involves risks, which could result in loss of customer assets, customer disputes and other liabilities, which could adversely impact our business.
To receive USDC a customer must deposit, via credit or debit card, ACH or wire transfer, to a Circle bank account, U.S. dollars corresponding to the amount of desired USDC tokens. Once the credit is made to the Circle bank account, USDC tokens are issued to the customer’s digital wallet (the “Circle Account”), effectively increasing the USDC in circulation. Likewise, customers with USDC in their Circle Account can redeem USDC so that the system cancels the USDC tokens and transfers U.S. dollar funds out of reserve and into a customer’s linked bank account, effectively reducing the USDC in circulation. -
18 minutes ago, thepupil said:
Dumb question re the more reputable stable coins.
if I am a Bangladeshi working in Saudi, can I send a stable coin home to my parents if
1) I have a mobile and/or internet access with internet but parents don’t
2) we both have mobile
3) neither have mobile
does one/both sides need a bank?
if so, what is the t-cost?I assume you're asking about sending a portion of wages back to Bangladesh. How does this hypothetical worker get paid? Direct deposit of riyals into a Saudi bank account?
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35 minutes ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:
No, it doesn't. They have audited public record of their reserves. Last I checked it was mostly cash with SOME credit instruments. I believe they have since committed to migrating to 100% cash, but don't quote me on that.
It is part owned by a publicly traded, regulated company (Coinbase) and is about to be a publicly traded company itself with audits, reporting standards, third party custody, etc etc etc.
It's got everything Tether doesn't which is why it recently surpassed Tether as the leading stablecoin on the Ethereum network.
Took way longer than expected - months instead of days - but ultimately stablecoins like Gemini USD (GUSD), Paxos' USD (USDP), and USDC are significantly more trustworthy and transparent and will continue to eat market share from untrustworthy sources like Tether.
Interesting. Here is the S-4 for those reading along: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001876042/000110465921153174/tm2124445-4_s4a.htm
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14 minutes ago, muscleman said:
There is a currency called USDT, issued by a startup called Circle. It is essentially the digital dollar.
They are going IPO in Q1 this year. You may want to follow that.
Doesn't USDC have same issue as Tether: What exactly is the collateral? Are they currencies or units in some type of opaque money market/bond fund?
Another potential stablecoin: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/12/us-banks-form-group-to-offer-usdf-stablecoin/
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1 hour ago, JRM said:
How much value do you assign to a payment rail?
Isn't the blockchain the rail and the Bitcoin/token both the unit of value that can move across the rail and the unit of value that must be used to pay to transfer value on the rail? That's why blockchains have always seemed to me to be bad fits for combining (i) store of value/investment, and (ii) payment rail, because as the value of the token goes up, the usefulness of the system as a payment rail goes down because transaction fees go up. I realize there are layer 2 efforts to address this, but if BTC goes to $1 million, as some suggest may happen, can the Bitcoin blockchain be a useful payment rail for anything but very high value transactions?
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52 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:
Defi and crypto looks more like solution in search of a problem than the other way around.
I took a look at the Mirror white paper. In Section C.2.4 on page 9, the creators listed six advantages to asset tokenization: https://docs.mirror.finance/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2F-MLRzugf7mxc4ryNhTuq%2Fuploads%2F0t3znySsjF6CiLrcT0mI%2FMirror_Protocol_V2.pdf?alt=media&token=b5728c7d-7f12-4f41-8ce6-8347da02b9ff
Very few, if any, of them apply to US investors trading in liquid securities listed on US exchanges. But you could see the value for someone who lives in a geography in which it is very difficult to access US exchanges.
I'm also skeptical of the mechanics of applying the Mirror model to physical world assets like an apartment building, the example used on page 8 of the white paper. How do you connect the physical world operation and management of the apartment building to a self-contained blockchain smart contract?
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1 hour ago, Longnose said:
I think we will get to a point where people wont realize the difference anymore. Eventually you'll be able to name your wallet like an email address. Your money will be tied to whatever wallet you make. Potentially hardware wallets could get to the point where you buy the equivalent of a raspberryPI that has a software preloaded. Where you set up the wallets for your household.
I guess there may always be the group that doesn't even want to do that but w/e. I think DeFi will become more and more mainstream over time.
It's not just the technical aspects of self-custody, but the risks as well. Of course, there are also risks to third-party custodians.
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5 hours ago, KJP said:
Interesting essay on some highly centralized aspects of the current state of Web3: https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html
In the context of DeFi, I think the maxim "people don't want to run their own server" can be translated to "people don't want to be their own custodian." That's not universally true, but I think it's generally true in Western countries and will continue to be unless there are major failures of traditional custodians or people get sufficiently concerned that their government can (and would) lock them out of the financial system, a la what happened to women once the Sons of Jacob took over in The Handmaid's Tale.
A response from Buterin:
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Interesting essay on some highly centralized aspects of the current state of Web3: https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html
In the context of DeFi, I think the maxim "people don't want to run their own server" can be translated to "people don't want to be their own custodian." That's not universally true, but I think it's generally true in Western countries and will continue to be unless there are major failures of traditional custodians or people get sufficiently concerned that their government can (and would) lock them out of the financial system, a la what happened to women once the Sons of Jacob took over in The Handmaid's Tale.
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12 minutes ago, K2SO said:
Taking it to its logical conclusion we just end up back to V and MA networks which can do it all at a relatively low cost.
I am a complete idiot when it comes to this but I have no idea how blockchains scale in any practical way without centralization, the bane of DeFi.
Yes, this is the issue I was getting it. Non-blockchain solutions have economies of scale. Decentralized blockchain solutions appear to have diseconomies of scale that are solved by centralization. But then what is the point of them in the first place? Do they all transition from virtual machines/smart contracts/transaction processors to crypto stores of value with attached ledger, and we just continually create new chains to do the transactional work?
I realize that this is pretty unfair given that the tech is very new and alot of experimentation and trial and error needs to happen to figure out how to use the tech. But I still like to think through these issues just to see whether my 50,000 foot view of the current state of play is correct.
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1 hour ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:
As someone who has been involved in DeFi on ETH for a year or so now, it's frustrating that it costs $100-200 to do anything.
That is another issue I've tried to think through. I realize people are trying to build solutions to lower transaction costs and improve speed, and other chains are designed for higher throughput (e.g., Solana), but from a dapp designer/user perspective, don't they all have diseconomies of scale, because more usage will always lead to higher gas fees? Or put another way, doesn't an increasing amount of value over time flow to the protocol layer, rather than the dapp ecosystem?
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58 minutes ago, SharperDingaan said:
You don't - and that is the major limitation of blockchain.
The blockchain is just an incomplete digital record 'purporting' to represent a real asset - it generally just tracks the 'box', not what is in the box. We get around the problem by issuing an assignable blockchain proof to accompany the physical product. A 1oz gold wafer produced entirely with 'ethical' gold, generates a 1oz proof. Thereafter, any 1oz gold wafer plus that 1oz proof, represents an ethically sourced 1oz wafer. Buy a gold ring for your significant other, and you buy both the ring and the certificate - otherwise accept that some of the ring is blood gold.
SD
But this example requires some off-chain authority to assert/decide that "ethical" gold was used to make the wafer. Who is doing that? Isn't that antithetical to the entire notion of decentralization?
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19 minutes ago, Longnose said:
Theoretical example: medical records: These records are very sensitive and need to be accurate the amount of manual work and things that go on to pass these records between businesses is big and the amount of people touching it is big. But if medical records were held on a blockchain tied to an individual then the hospital sees the same thing as your private practitioner, your pharmacist, your insurance provider, etc.
Medical records, collectively, represent a very large amount of data (I assume). Is all of that data a candidate for storage on a blockchain? If so, how could that much data ever be stored on something like Ethereum?
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49 minutes ago, 3259 said:
Not sure I follow you here. The commerce clause applies even if Congress doesn't act.
Although there is uncertainty about what regulatory framework Congress will use, I think it is likely that framework will be less protectionist (and potentially much much less) than current state and local policies that insulate the local / state markets from competition. Opening up to more competition is good policy. It would lower prices, allow brands to form which would have safety benefits, it would do a better job getting rid of the black market than protectionist state policies do, and at some point the big boys are going to start lobbying hard to get into the game. FWIW, if you look at the nascent Cannabis lobbying groups, the US MSOs and the big corps ain't on the same team.
I know you know this, but just for others reading, the "Commerce Clause" refers to Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which gives the federal government (specifically Congress) the power to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." The courts have inferred from this enumerated federal power a limit on the authority of states to act in certain ways even when Congress has not acted. To simplify (a lot), the courts have held that states generally cannot engage in protectionist legislation that is meant to protect their own industries over the industries of other states. This doctrine is referred to as the "dormant" Commerce Clause, because courts invoke it even when Congress has not acted at all on the issue.
But when Congress does act and expressly legislates on what states can and cannot do in a particular area, then there is no more scope for this "dormant" Commerce Clause doctrine. Instead, the express language of federal statutory law controls. And as part of its express power to "regulate Commerce . . . among the several States," Congress may expressly permit States to favor their own domestic industry and engage in protectionist regulation.
Turning back to cannabis, if all Congress did was drop all federal restrictions on cannabis, the dormant Commerce Clause would then kick in and I doubt states would be permitted to, for example, require all cannabis sold in the state to be grown in the state. But in any legalization legislation, Congress could permit states to continue to do that. I cannot predict what form any federal legalization would take. But, as one example, I'd be nervous about companies whose economics depend on the fact that they have one of a very limited number of state cultivation licenses.
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14 minutes ago, Longnose said:
I think ETH and a few other projects will lay the foundation for smart contracts built on blockchains. I believe business transactions may start migrating this direction. We may see businesses in the future that have built themselves on blockchains based on ETH and other layer 1 projects that will allow them to eliminate substantial costs that current business today carry.
How do you solve the problem that most business transactions involve physical world activity? How can a blockchain-based smart contract deal with that? I don't see how oracles get you there. Or am I misunderstanding the types of business transactions you're talking about?
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19 minutes ago, 3259 said:
Once that happens, a lot of the protectionism goes away due to the dormant commerce clause issue.
Maybe, maybe not. The Commerce Clause is only "dormant" when Congress doesn't act. But when Congress uses its Commerce Clause power, it can create (or accept from the states) restrictions on interstate commerce that would be unlawful for the states to impose on their own.
Short Taiwan?
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by KJP
You've explained the difficulties of an invasion earlier. But wouldn't blockade be China's strategy with Taiwan? If the Chinese had a large quantity of highly accurate, satellite-guided anti-ship cruise missiles (including hypersonics) with 500km - 1000km range that could be fired from land (perhaps from mobile launchers) and were willing to sink non-combatants, couldn't they interdict all shipping into Taiwan. Could even a US carrier battle group survive in such an environment? To the extent the Chinese don't have such missile technology today, when will they have it?
The flip side is what you mention above -- US and Japan blockade China.