clutch

I sold some of my BTC holdings as it reached 10% of my liquid net worth. I have done the same when it reached the peak back in late 2017 (which seemed very prudent until now)... maybe I will regret it but I like to continue treating BTC as my alternative asset class and keep it relatively small compared to my traditional portfolio.

Wouldn't these people constantly get burned over time? As you said, there is survivorship bias, which means a lot of people are already blowing up now. I think a market bubble is actually built based on what seems like rational decisions at the time. Individual stock crashes will happen for sure. But I doubt pure gambling-like decisions can build an overall market bubble that would lead to a big crash...

Gold requires a whole industry (mining) to produce it and the physical security/storage to keep it safe. In contrast to the network and compute power for BTC.

One important note about the store of value thesis. It's considered a gold alternative because BTC could be another store of value, not because the price of BTC will follow the price of gold. The prices of many stores of value went down in March -- such as real estate or collectibles.

Long term value investor cites short term price fluctuations as indication of long term thesis success/failure I just poted numbers. I didn't make any comments. You did that. I just assumed you were letting the board know that crypto was on sale. Bitcoin +600% since this post. Doesn't produce cashflow though so cite some Munger quote and avoid independent thinking. Correction: It doesn't produce anything I used to think gold was valuable too until I heard that when you fondle the cube it will not respond. Gold has been a bit of a stinker of an investment in real terms over the long haul, hasn't it? If Bitcoin is the next gold, wouldn't it be fair to assume it would be a bit of a stinker over the long haul as well? If you could provide some numbers on how you calculate your intrinsic value I think that would help me a bit with understanding your position. Maybe I really am missing something, I dunno, but no one seems to be able to provide me any hard numbers. Take X % of the current total gold valuation based on how much of the gold the bitcoin will replace as a store of value. Many people have argued for this for a while but it seems like doubters don't pay attention.

Same

"Why is DeepMind's AlphaFold a major breakthrough? When will it begin impacting drug discovery? Dangers of AI at scale"

I agree with the overuse of "ML/AI" as a marketing ploy. I work in the software industry and I see many companies (including ours) put "ML/AI" on marketing and PR materials but under the hood, it's just traditional computational techniques.

I was referencing the “simple investment” piece more so, but I have a hard time believing you could describe bitcoin to a ten year old in one sentence. Supply and demand imbalance doesn’t really cut it for me. Nobody can seem to tell me why people demand bitcoin other than that it’s going up. It’s not a currency. Currencies do not fluctuate like this. And it’s not a store of value either - those don’t fluctuate wildly either, they store value. If it “might” become a currency or store of value that is speculating. https://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/what-are-cryptocurrencies-(ontological-perspective)/ Thanks clutch, I appreciate the thoughtful post and it’s one of the few times I’ve actually gotten a legitimate response. I agree it has the ability to become a currency or store of value. As your post suggests, anything can become so if society accepts it as such. With that said, we don’t know if Bitcoin will or not. Even if it does become a store of value similar to gold, how can anyone calculate its intrinsic value with a straight face? It’s just impossible. People are very interested in this again only because it has gone up in price. Imagine ten people in a room, and everyone owns one bitcoin and one million dollars. For an entire year, people trade their bitcoins to each other for higher and higher prices. Each person is only willing to pay more because they see their neighbor make a tidy profit and get a little jealous of how easy it was. At the end of the year, that room would have the exact same amount of bitcoins and the exact same amount of dollars in it, and a ton of wasted human potential trading it all around. If you think you can be the winner in that scenario, then maybe Bitcoin is for you, but it sounds a lot like musical chairs to me. It requires quite a bit of good luck, because nobody knows when the music will stop, and when it does you’re left holding a very expensive bitcoin that has zero actual value to human beings. Note: I’m typing all of this on my phone so please excuse and typos or formatting issues. Glad to help. Regarding your first point, yes it's completely speculative at this point to bet on whether Bitcoin will become a store of value or not. Hence, if anyone was to invest in this, they should have that expectation and size their bet accordingly. Having said that, note that it's also impossible to calculate the intrinsic value of gold. If you don't consider gold as an investment, then you would never see Bitcoin as an investment either. This is also Buffett's argument... Second, the thought experiment you describe does not equate to the real-world situation because the amount of money in the room continues to increase in the real world. As the fiat money increases significantly and the bitcoin increases at a much slower rate, the value of the bitcoin will rise IF the people in the room perceive it as a store of value. Regarding the wasted productivity, you could say that about a lot of investment options so it's not exclusive to cryptocurrencies.

I was referencing the “simple investment” piece more so, but I have a hard time believing you could describe bitcoin to a ten year old in one sentence. Supply and demand imbalance doesn’t really cut it for me. Nobody can seem to tell me why people demand bitcoin other than that it’s going up. It’s not a currency. Currencies do not fluctuate like this. And it’s not a store of value either - those don’t fluctuate wildly either, they store value. If it “might” become a currency or store of value that is speculating. https://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/what-are-cryptocurrencies-(ontological-perspective)/

I had a Deja Vu of reading this thread and hence came here to report the last 5 year returns of FANG vs. BRK... just for fun. FANG: 28.57% annualized BRK: 11.26% annualized p.s. S&P500: 13.99% annualized

"Protecting Seniors from COVID At What Cost The restrictions intended to protect seniors against COVID-19 have created other unintended consequences. They've exacerbated the emotional, mental, and physical toll of loneliness and social isolation for which older adults are already more at risk, even when there isn't a pandemic. Is the sacrifice many families are making - to stay apart for the greater good - really the best approach for seniors' health? Geriatrician Dr. Nathan Stall and psychiatrist-in-chief Dr. Lesley Wiesenfeld at Sinai Health weigh in, as does journalist Christina Frangou."

Guys, it's not surprising at all these people are breaking their own rules. Remember that Neil Ferguson, the UK epidemiologist who arguably brought the lockdown approach to this world, broke the lockdown rules to be together with his non-marital lover. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Google (or Alphabet). The expertise of DeepMind is currently used to solve and optimize many problems in Google.

I wish more people flee out of Toronto where I'm living. Less traffic, less competition for high paying jobs, and hopefully less real estate prices so I could finally afford to buy a home within the city.

Scientists are supposed to formulate falsifiable hypotheses, run experiments to validate them, report the findings, and align future research based on these findings. Scientists are not supposed to make predictions and decisions based on incomplete and descriptive data. At least this was what I was told to do when I earned my PhD in applied science. What I'm worried about is that we will witness even worse snafu than the current situation when comes to handling climate change. Scientists will continue to push descriptive statistics and their consensus opinions as the "scientific evidence/truth" and make predictions/decisions based on them. Scientists are the High Priests of our age.

They will come back... NYC is still the capital of the world. But my guess is when they get a Republican mayor again. ;D

Here is CNN acknowledging Trump and his administration on facilitating the successful and quick vaccine development:

I can understand your point of view better now. I do think working from home more (not 100%, but >0%) will be permanent now. Besides preventing the spread of diseases, there are many benefits that people have now recognized and will convince the companies to allow people to work from home more. I'm invested in a number of enterprise software/digitization companies for this reason. Regarding the transmission rate, I think that R0 for the typical flu is much lower because the larger portion of the population has already built immunity and some of them are vaccinated. If the same virus was novel like Covid-19, I'm pretty sure the R0 would be higher, although not high as Covid-19.

How is the transmission rate, that is, R0, going to go down for mutations of Covid-19 coronavirus with vaccine and better treatment. Flu has an R0 of about 1.3, i.e. one person can spread it to 1.3 people on average. Covid-19 coronavirus strains have an R0 as high as 5 or higher. Do we know of other ways of lowering R0 for Covid-19 strains other than behavior change? We cannot say with 100% certainty that herd immunity will continue to provide immunity for mutated strains of Covid-19. We do know that herd immunity does not provide immunity for mutated strains of flu coronaviruses. Vaccines. The transmission rate will go lower if more people are immune to it. Isn't that obvious? If the virus mutates and presents a serious threat again, I'm sure that we will develop another vaccine that works. Hence, my question at the start of the thread, i.e. what is the probability that we would need a vaccine every year? So, you agree that the probability of that is non-zero? Yes, but it won't change our behaviors to the point that the industries you pointed out will significantly change. We get flu vaccines every year.

How is the transmission rate, that is, R0, going to go down for mutations of Covid-19 coronavirus with vaccine and better treatment. Flu has an R0 of about 1.3, i.e. one person can spread it to 1.3 people on average. Covid-19 coronavirus strains have an R0 as high as 5 or higher. Do we know of other ways of lowering R0 for Covid-19 strains other than behavior change? We cannot say with 100% certainty that herd immunity will continue to provide immunity for mutated strains of Covid-19. We do know that herd immunity does not provide immunity for mutated strains of flu coronaviruses. Vaccines. The transmission rate will go lower if more people are immune to it. Isn't that obvious? If the virus mutates and presents a serious threat again, I'm sure that we will develop another vaccine that works.

Even if it becomes endemic, things will return to normal. Both the transmission rate and fatality rate will continue to lower (with vaccine and better treatment), making this another type of the common flu. Not to mention, we will reach some form of herd immunity -- as it did with (and ended) the Spanish flu. We haven't changed much of our behaviors because of the flu. The only implication/change I would like to see is on the long-term care front. Not only because of COVID, but is this really how our society should deal with older people -- basically putting them in a prison?

Those that think communist countries have wealth equality have never been (or studied) a communist country. People there are about as equal than the animals in Orwell’s Animal farm. Everyone knows this...but a key message when the transition to communism is made is "the rich are evil, we need equality" Exactly. I was pointing out what type society you will turn into if you accept inequality vs. pursue equality. There is no place else in the world where the effect of capitalism vs. communism has been better demonstrated. Both North and South Korea have the same race, culture, religious background, climate, etc... After the Japanese occupation, the North actually had better infrastructure and factories as well as natural resources. Much of the South was also wiped out after the Korean war. Yet look where they stand now. It's actually remarkable how the original leaders of South Korea chose the capitalism/pacific route where the tradition has always been to go along with China. Most of them were dictators by today's standard but their goal was to fight communism... which again proves the point that the political system is the most important factor for the betterment of the country.

Wealth inequality: South Korea Wealth equality: North Korea Choose carefully.

This topic worries me, too. Both for equities and real estate investment. What I'd like to think... get some more cash ready. Especially on the real estate side. I think the combination of increased capital gains inclusion and the principal resident being taxed would lead to a short-term crash in the market. But I'm not selling my condos during the fire sales as they are in quality locations. Instead, I'd look to take advantage of downturns. So instead of thinking of selling, think of it as another opportunity to accumulate your assets at cheaper prices... EDIT: I realize that my advice is more for younger people like myself who should be building assets. If you are closer or in the retirement age, I think the thinking/action would be different.