clutch
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Posts posted by clutch
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@Gregmalas you alluded to earlier, they need to save their face from their earlier mistake when they waited too long on the "transitory" inflation. So, they probably didn't want to wait and see now in case they are called for not acting fast again. Again, their credibility is shot and a lot of their talks and actions are now more about restoring that credibility.
But the SVB event has flushed any of their remaining credibility down the toilet.
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I think Fed wanted to push the rates higher (perhaps irrespective of inflation) while they can so they could use rate cuts when things started to break... in the back of their mind, they probably knew that there'd be no soft landing and we'd have to face a recession.
Now because something actually broke earlier than anticipated, they are now in a messy situation.
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Just met someone at a Punta Cana resort while vacationing... I asked him why are you not golfing today and he said his son who came with him has a startup whose money is mostly with SVB so he is distressed... what are the chances.
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I had AIMIA stocks before the Air Canada fall off. In the morning of the news, the stock began trading with some crazy amount of spread. I panic sold my shares, accidentally putting in a market order in the process. I think I lost about 50% of what I could have actually sold for (big loss either way). That was extremely painful.
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12 hours ago, ERICOPOLY said:
Search -> Android
or
Search -> Chrome
Android was an acquisition.
Chrome was built using a bunch of existing components, and a super simple application relative to typical software.
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13 hours ago, Spekulatius said:
I think it is likely that FB develops their own operating system for the Metaverse. It is unlikely that something geared towards gaming like Unity meets their requirements.
After all, they intend to put $10B a year into this effort and that should be some development. Unity looks totally overvalued to me and a lot of this seems based on the Metaverse narrative. I think if FB buys something, it is going to be a few private companies that nobody of us heard of yet.
I'm almost 100% sure that whatever FB builds will fail. It's not just FB, but tell me the last time a big tech company was able to successfully build a new platform/product that's outside of their core competencies. Maybe AWS was the only one, and that was eat their own dog food situation.
Unity will play a bigger role in the architecture and construction space. Designing living environments will become more and more like designing games and digital worlds. Many mundane things will be automated and a platform where people can quickly create realistic designs will win.
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On 11/19/2021 at 11:54 AM, fareastwarriors said:
If you believe in the future of the metaverse, Unity might be a major player.
Seriously though, Unity is not just for fun. Their engine could be a major player in the Digital Twin space.
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6 hours ago, Xerxes said:
I had NVIDIA at about $120-130 (pre-split) cost, what got my attention was an article on The Economist that explained tailwind on its graphic heavy product vs. the Intels of the world. Nowadays everyone knows that but just three years that was eye opening. I bought it and even held it through the crash, when they had too much inventory piling up due to the Crypto winter in '18-19, but unfortunately I let it go (along with Bank of America) in March 2020. Somehow I deluded myself that I needed to lock-in my NVIDIA's paper profit to raise cash, as oppose to selling some other thing to raise cash that was threading close to its cost. I work in aerospace, so my world was melting in front of my eyes so rapidly, that i felt to need to raise cash. Now thankfully bought it heavily into tons of thing starting April 2020 and again fall of 2020, but never NVIDIA and missed 4 bags since.
To make you feel better, I had bought NVDA at around $20 5 years ago.
My work is related to high performance computing and deep learning so I knew GPU computing was ripe to proliferate at that time. Also, the moat of CUDA.
I sold all of them over a 2 year period as the shares quadrupled...
I got back in in March 2020, though. This time I haven't sold any.
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A couple of my favorite clips:
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I've watched JP's lectures before he became popular. They used to be shown on TVO (Ontario public TV). I even attended some of his lectures at UofT. They are really, really good. It's not some typical self-help stuff that people think he's marketing nowadays. Really goes into the fundamentals of human psychology, behavior, culture, religion, etc. He even changed my mind on religions and made me a strong believer of existentialism.
My favorite rule: "Don't lie". You realize that it's not just about lying but it's about living the best life possible. You end up keeping your actions in check because you don't want to lie about them. For instance, you wouldn't do any debauchery things because you'd have to lie about them to your wife. So simple yet it really sets you straight.
Unfortunately, he has now been politicized and therefore has become a polarized figure. It's rather unfortunate.
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My 2c would be to do what I did. Settle on something in the suburbs about 45 minutes to 1 hour from the big city. Its definitely going to be cheaper. Not as inflated in price, and if you like the area and want to live there long term who cares? Buy something you know you can afford, dont reach. You can always renovate as well. Then down the line if things or life changes, you can operate from a position of strength.
Unfortunately the biggest run ups we have seen in the greater Toronto area are in the suburbs, thanks to COVID. :-/
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Chamath claims to be beating the benchmark by 56% (3.6-2.3%)
FYI if your benchmark is returning 0% and your return is 1%, your beating the benchmark by 1/0 = infinite
Buffett would never report anything like that... I used to like him but he has become a tool...
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Snatched a lot of tech names during the sell-off today:
AMZN, ABNB, NVDA, TSLA, SHOP
also, COST.
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The point? The two investors in Google at least agree on what it is - a business. With bitcoin, most advocates can't agree on what they've sunk their money into. A payment network? Software? A bank in cyberspace? An egalitarian progressive technology?
Really? One investor might look at Google stocks as representative ownership of the business but another investor might look at it simply as a stonk that will go to the moon...
What is a stock these days? Is it ownership in a company? Is it simply an investment vehicle? Is it a store of value? Is it an institutional reality?
Most stocks traded are in electronic blips nowadays... So, is it in the form of a paper? is it just a data point? Does it even exist in reality?
You can ask the same existential questions about stocks, bonds, money, ...
Can I ask a question of the advocates - My understanding is that tracking bitcoin transactions requires a lot of computing resources. Right now, there is an incentive to compute because new bitcoin is mined as a result. What happens when substantially all bitcoin has been mined? Will there be a continued incentive to do all the computing necessary to track what will then presumably be an exponentially higher number of transactions? If not, will the premise behind the network (distributed ledgers) fall apart?
Transaction fees.
https://decrypt.co/33124/what-will-happen-to-bitcoin-after-all-21-million-are-mined
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I have expressed this argument at length before but will repeat again much more directly.
Money, stocks, bonds, loans, BTC.. basically all non-hard assets are massive fantasies.
It's not my argument but of a renowned philosopher John Searle. And no, he is not some French postmodernist, he is as realist and naturalist as you could get as a philosopher. But basically, all these assets are forms of institutional reality that is created via a series of speech acts (nowadays "document acts").
You may argue... but some of these assets are "backed" by something else. My stock certificates represent ownership of the factory, the money is backed by the government, etc. Well how do you establish such backing? Document acts... but there is nothing tangible and physical about this backing.
How do we know? Suppose a dictator comes along and instructs all financial records to be wiped out. All of the assets above will be worthless. So really, investing in such assets all require some level of faith.
Now, the chance of US currency or treasury bills facing such events will be very low... at least compared to BTC. So you can estimate your confidence. Maybe I have 99% confidence in traditional assets and 1% confidence in BTC (relatively). So I decide to invest 99% in traditional assets and 1% in BTC. But then I realize the asymptomatic nature of that 1% in terms of the return. If BTC establishes itself as a stable store of value, my gain will be significant so I decided to invest a bit more.
(As an aside... I have a feeling that many economists and those with the traditional business school mindset have a harder time grasping this "massive fantasy" notion... I think it's largely because they'd like to think of their discpline as scientific and objective... they want to treat things like money, yields, institutions as the same ontological category as molecules, chemical elements, and gravity... I'm sorry they are not. In a way, I think they are resentful of the fact that they are not scientists, engineers, nor doctors dealing with objective reality... and perhaps their discipline is not as important... so they need some ground to stand on and argue that traditional assets are backed by institutions as if planet motions are governed by gravitational forces.)
In the long run, we are all dead.
- John Maynard Keynes
Clutch, I suspect Keynes would agree with your sentiment and belief. That being said, when we are investing, we are generally talking about events occurring in the next 5-10-50 years out at best.
You suggested that these pieces of paper have no real ownership. Yet, we know that is not true.
Stocks - Buffett would completely disagree with you here. They are pieces of businesses, including the underlying assets within those businesses. If you own enough pieces of paper, you directly control the assets. So, as long as the businesses are operating and generating cash flow, and the balance sheet is reasonable, the pieces of paper have some real value.
Bonds/Loans - We've seen enough examples where owning the bonds of a business, mean you own the actual business...especially if it defaults. So they are backed.
Currency - backed by nation state assets and tax revenues. Yes, a dictator could step in and change everything, but how often does that happen in stable, developed governments and economies...so while possible, the probabilities generally fall outside of the 5-10-50 year realm.
Hard Assets - generally some utilitarian purpose supports the underlying value...whether it is land, commodities, etc.
Bit Coin/Crypto in present form - nothing backing it in most cases.
Hey Parsad...I repeat... those pieces of paper are worthless if some dictator or our society as a whole declare them to no longer represent ownership of companies.
BTW such events happened before... In almost all communist states once the ruling party comes in they abolish private ownership so all your property ownership papers are now worthless... they are not backed by anything but our social agreements.
We as a society has agreed to make certain pieces of paper to represent ownership in companies and therefore have value. In theory, we can decide to reverse this agreement anytime... And the nature of these social agreements are exactly the same whether they are for stock certificates or bitcoins. So fundamentally the only thing that's backing both stock certificates and bitcoins is our social agreement. It's just that one has longer history than the other so more stable.
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Regarding the lack of discussion on the pandemic... It would have highlighted his mistakes during the March-May period...Selling the airlines at the bottom and not making any meaningful purchases. It was very un-Buffett like and he was obviously too pessimistic.
I don't know if he is Intentionally avoiding to discuss his mistakes... or he is still thinking that was the best course of action to take and he doesn't want to sound like making excuses.
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I have expressed this argument at length before but will repeat again much more directly.
Money, stocks, bonds, loans, BTC.. basically all non-hard assets are massive fantasies.
It's not my argument but of a renowned philosopher John Searle. And no, he is not some French postmodernist, he is as realist and naturalist as you could get as a philosopher. But basically, all these assets are forms of institutional reality that is created via a series of speech acts (nowadays "document acts").
You may argue... but some of these assets are "backed" by something else. My stock certificates represent ownership of the factory, the money is backed by the government, etc. Well how do you establish such backing? Document acts... but there is nothing tangible and physical about this backing.
How do we know? Suppose a dictator comes along and instructs all financial records to be wiped out. All of the assets above will be worthless. So really, investing in such assets all require some level of faith.
Now, the chance of US currency or treasury bills facing such events will be very low... at least compared to BTC. So you can estimate your confidence. Maybe I have 99% confidence in traditional assets and 1% confidence in BTC (relatively). So I decide to invest 99% in traditional assets and 1% in BTC. But then I realize the asymptomatic nature of that 1% in terms of the return. If BTC establishes itself as a stable store of value, my gain will be significant so I decided to invest a bit more.
(As an aside... I have a feeling that many economists and those with the traditional business school mindset have a harder time grasping this "massive fantasy" notion... I think it's largely because they'd like to think of their discpline as scientific and objective... they want to treat things like money, yields, institutions as the same ontological category as molecules, chemical elements, and gravity... I'm sorry they are not. In a way, I think they are resentful of the fact that they are not scientists, engineers, nor doctors dealing with objective reality... and perhaps their discipline is not as important... so they need some ground to stand on and argue that traditional assets are backed by institutions as if planet motions are governed by gravitational forces.)
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A pack of cigarette could be a medium of exchange in a prison (i.e. currency), but it cannot be used to pay taxes.
Outside the prison, the pack of cigarette has competition and alternative in its role as a medium of exchange, so it looses its 'shine' and reverts to only being something to be consumed.
Fiat currency (be it digital or paper) is just the most convenient use case because everybody accepts it.
I see BTC as the digital commodity. I am in that camp as oppose to the currency camp.
Anybody has good suggestion on books on the topic, please let me know
I finished reading Digital Gold (came back in 2015 i think) and bought Blockchain Revolution.
Blockchain Revolution is a horrible book. No depth at all and just a bunch of shallow stories and what if. More of a marketing tool for the authors.
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How are folks here keeping their BTCs as they continue to grow? Do you "diversify" your storage with a number of hardware wallets/recovery seeds? Is there anything considered more secure than a hardware wallet these days?
I use mostly paper wallets. And smallish amounts in Coinbase.
You mean seed phrases kept on paper (vs. actual private keys/address)?
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How are folks here keeping their BTCs as they continue to grow? Do you "diversify" your storage with a number of hardware wallets/recovery seeds? Is there anything considered more secure than a hardware wallet these days?
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Thanks for the response.
"How do you quote the value of the dollar if not in relative terms of what it can buy? Whether that be in goods, labor, or other currencies, the only value of any currency is relative. Why would crypto be different?"
In a store in the UK, they don't state prices in terms of US dollars, they say the price is XX Pounds sterling. Same with other countries. Bitcoin et al. are supposedly their own currency, but nothing is priced in Bitcoins (not even its own currency). How can something be its own currency when it is never stated in its own currency units?
"So when it comes to moving USD it's either cheap or fast - but you don't get both."
So, illegal transactions and very large transactions that need to happen really fast are the two advantages of virtual currencies?
How often do people need to move large amounts of funds really fast and is the price/existence risk of holding Bitcoin instead of cash worth the $15 savings for a wire fee for what is likely to be an infrequent transaction?
"in this instance, the coin/token IS the network."
Again, it sounds like the reason for buying virtual currency is access to a speedy transaction. What would happen to the price of virtual currencies (as stated in U.S. dollars) if big players in the payment processing industry announced tomorrow a new system using their networks that would allow for exchanges of large amounts of dollars really fast?
Thanks again.
I don't think looking at the value of BTC as a currency would give you any answers. The value of BTC is tied to its history, not on its utility. It's based on our social construct.
You might think that's silly but the concept of fiat money is also a social construct. It's backed by a government, and has more utility and a much longer history than BTC. But intrinsically they are the same. Neither are material objects but rather created via a series of social acts.
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If the Fed ever wants to prick a bubble without hurting the economy, targeting BTC and the other cryptos is one way to do it. As crypto becomes larger, it is almost inevitable in some way, the question is what and when.
How would that help with the rest of the inflated assets? It will create worse bubbles elsewhere.
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Reddit and WSB are not behind it.
If you go to their site , every third article says it's a scan, if you want to buy silver the ticker is GME.
If you want to buy silver, go for it. Maybe it's a good investment, great However it's not true that there is this Reddit crowd doing so which is what the article is saying. Yes there are write ups about silver but it didn't gain momentum.
Someone else is behind this.
How are you so sure? Sounds like someone who wants money tied to GME.
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Reddit WSB is saying that silver squeeze is a false narrative spread by someone trying to distract from GME. I would not buy silver hoping retail is behind you.
So the inevitable infighting begins.
The Dumbest Thing I've Heard All Year!
in General Discussion
Posted
I'd actually welcome SF, of all places, to implement this as a social experiment and deal with the consequences.