Vish_ram

Pakistan will eventually be split into 4 separate countries. It’ll become too small to fund terrorists. Or they’ll be busy with infighting. Problem solved.

we had to cancel our trips to Leh/Nubra valley in july. bummer.

WAGNX has been in market for too short a time to make a meaningful comment. One should give at least 5 years. Pabrai has talked a lot about S&P P/E etc and made bold statements that S&P 500 will do poorly etc (kind of self serving). He made a similar prediction about MSFT decades ago and it did really well. He made a similar prediction about AMZN saying they staple some $10 (or some X amount) cash to every order they sell decade or so ago and AMZN did phenomenally well. Again no one is perfect and making predictions are tough. One should develop some humility when one's track record is average to poor and past predictions haven’t panned out good.

@LakesideB for the record I admire Pabrai for his philanthropic efforts, his marketing ability and explaining skills. The portrayal that he is a super-investor is iffy at best. Also, there is nothing wrong in underperforming S&P 500. Millions of investors and tens of thousands of professionals do underperform. If you come out in the open and talk about cloning, value investing etc, then your returns should be scrutinized. Absolutely nothing wrong in that. it is nothing personal, just business. I wish Pabrai all the success so that he can continue to help people. Now the numbers. Just draw your own conclusions. In fact PiF3 was better in last 5 years. I’ve updated the returns to include Q1-2025. Please correct if I’ve missed anything.

It was an excellent question. Greg is honest and has the presence of mind to say that he has to phone a friend. He didn’t mistake it for something else and give a BS answer. it revealed something great about Greg.

$1 of last years money buys less today. That is a default (in purchasing power sense) of few pennies in that single $. Many were bothered by removal of Gold standard. People were more powerless then, now we’ve BTC. Like a drunkard who needs a post to stand upright, we need something like Gold to keep the value of currency intact. It could be anything that holds value. The most sinister thing about inflation is that, not only do we lose the purchasing power, we also lose the productivity gains (unless you own some equity or other assets). With average of say 3% productivity and zero inflation, each $1 bill should help us buy $1.03 worth of goods the next year and $1.34 worth 10 years later. Instead we get to buy $0.95 worth next year and $.60 worth 10 years later (assuming 5% inflation). Monetary inflation runs at 8%.

Yes to all available info.

Crazy myth building going on, full of inaccurate tweets, posts and articles. what a world we live in! Who is behind all this.

I meant in terms of envy/jealousy

If you can time travel to your younger self, what advice would you give? No stock picks Mine would be Be kind to yourself when you make mistakes, Trade less, Don’t compare, be patient and own great companies and compound slowly.

You’re absolutely correct about stocks. They derive value from intrinsic cash flows (present or future). This model won’t work for Gold, BTC, Art etc. in the future if BTC’s L2 networks replaces existing ones then maybe some stock like intrinsic value is present.

You are getting caught up in circular arguments. Taking bits and pieces of what one says and trying to fit it into your existing flawed framework. The art world reference is about understanding value of scarcity & adoption by people. Picasso is scarce and also embraced by rich folks. (Bitcoin is scarce and embraced by rich and poor). Maybe you can call Bitcoin as a collectible afforded by a poor man too. This is like owning a pixel of a Picasso. Ownership of Bitcoin gives you access/use of the network, not ownership of network. The network is owned by the collective indirectly. That has intrinsic value. Using internet to transfer your wealth. Screws aren’t scarce. Bitcoin’s intrinsic value can come from 1) scarcity (inflation protection) 2) 24 by 7 network on internet that provides an exchange mechanism (free from govt, central banks etc) 3) security (cryptography) 4) adoption that has a self-fulling prophesy (first mover advantage maybe) I’ve seen some silly arguments like for 1, i’m an aging balding man and my hair follicles are scarce. that doesn't make it valuable. for 2, there are so many shit coins freely traded on internet, that doesn't make it valuable. for 3, i’ve worthless crap secure in my banks locker, that doesn't make it valuable. ……. The combination of 1-4 above makes it valuable.

This is what clicked for me. The art world. The Picasso and the Warhols. imagine there’s only one Picasso that everyone wants and each pixel or fraction is available for sale and posted in a public ledger. Enough people buy these pixels as a store of value as competing ones are ravaged by inflation. The ledger is unhackable and can’t be destroyed. No one makes fun of a Picasso owner. There’s always a market and a willing buyer. It more than goes up with inflation. Storing one’s wealth in Land, building, equities etc have their own risk. oddly larger the BTC price more money it attracts and more wealth it can store. If BTC is at 100T, it can absorb $1T in and out without a ripple. you can’t do that with equities. If $1T flows in, companies/insiders sell stock and dilute it.

Now I get the logic. if tooskin watches something and is convinced it has no value (based on number of pages in CoBF board) when many perceive it has some value then it is a zero.

Reds is a man of pure heart. He wants to protect hapless CoBF investors from reckless speculators who shamelessly peddle Ponzi schemes. Long live Reds.

In a decade, practically everyone (investors) will be owning BTC directly or indirectly. Just like Halal/Sharia ETFs, ESG based etfs, folks like Reds will own non-crypto ETFs (includes companies with zero crypto exposure).

Of course VOO vs VOO+BTC. BTC above 0%. or you report in 10 years the returns you had made vs BTC.

In 10-15 years, two COBF investors starting out with same $ today, the one owning BTC will be far richer than the one not owing it. I’ll come back on Apr 21st, 2035 and 2040. #btcprediction

Going concerns put their treasury cash in fiat and related instruments that don’t absorb inflation. One by one corps are using BTC as treasury asset. yes, the block chain tech may also be used but value creation is much less compared to use of BTC. @73 Reds please keep posting here and I truly appreciate the comments. All ideas should be challenged all the time. There are no permanent longs or shorts, just permanent interests to make and protect wealth.

In a few decades from now, there'll be a Quantum coin (QC) created by Mitsubishi Yamamoto (pseudonym of course). It’ll have better characteristics than BTC. BTC value would've been 50T by then. The puritans who own Gold, BTC will argue vehemently. The board member "87 Orange” will call the QC coin holders delusional and say it is gambling. As USD fiat inflates at 10%/annum, QC will slowly go to 15T, BTC to 100T.

I never talked about BTC risks. It doesn’t mean it has no risks. At the moment BTC is the Rai stone of the world. To not invest in MSFT 35 years saying there are risks when thr firm has growing revenues, market share etc is foolish. BTC is the best of all Rai stones, has growing mind/market share.

Counterintuitive thing: the strength and prospects of BTC is due to the lack of strength and prospects of its competing assets. Fiat (poor inflation hedge), Gold (security risk, difficulty transporting it, new supply), equities (mind/market share risk, disruption risk…), ….. in a perfect world no one would need to own BTC. if fiat had zero inflation, for many folks savings would just be money in checking/savings account. The productivity increase alone will give them comfortable retirement.

I was religious during my childhood, then went the route of atheism. After listening to some Ted talk, Ayahuasca, Vipasanna, Self inquiry (Ramana Maharshi) and a few non-dual experiences later I understood spirituality better. This is what I wrote a few years ago: Seek and ye shall find But who is seeking? It is the ego that is doing the seeking For seeking to end, the ego should die The death of ego is the birth of enlightenment How to kill the ego? Realize you’re not the doer, doing happens through you Quit the seeking, what you sought is already in you But I still can’t find that. What then? Let go the attachments, the craving and the wanting Be still and empty the mind Abide in the awareness I am that I am. tat tvam asi

74k plus tax

brand new. For a while I had wanted Land Cruiser. GX is upscale version of LC. This can run for 300k miles. there’s a 3-4 mo waiting in US for GX, sold at MSRP. I put deposit for nori green then texted him saying I’m ok for 3 other colors. Lucky to get nebula grey (Premium +). LX new goes above 120k. Front dashboard looks ugly (twin screen). Not designed well. Replaced my Tesla Y (shipped it to my son as it depreciated crazy). Just love GX. Amazing ride.