changegonnacome

Low interest rates allowed Zombie companies to continue to operate......those Zombie's consumed the most important capital of all - human capital....while destroying the economics/pricing power of non-Zombie companies...the low/no growth of the 2010's can be seen in the context of a misallocation of that human capital. Europe in some ways was the worst offender as they went literally negative on rates. Capitalism is brutal - when allowed to operate - creative destruction recycles resources into activities that have merit. It appears that Zombie's with debt stacks maturing into 2024 are finally going to have their moment. Europe is going to be at the forefront of this.

Exactly - and certainly more work than a bank account somewhere inside the Swift payment network...that has some, even faked KYC data attached.... BTC isn't perfectly anonymous....far from it....but if your choosing a digital mechanism to extract value in a way that represents the best chance of collecting that value AND more importantly not getting caught collecting that value BTC is the best answer out there*.....as I said don't take my word for it.......the people for whom this matters alot have voted with their wallets and their freedom.......and overwhelmingly they choose BTC as their preferred payment method. * for larger sums......some more esoteric shitcoins I'm sure work better for a few G's.....but if your shaking down someone for a few millis well btc is about the only coin with a large enough mkt cap do that in.

I think those with an agenda claim BTC is truly anonymous as they dislike it and would like to see it banned so they play up its anonymity......but I also think the delusional maxis can't bring themselves to admit that it provides additional & incremental anonymity relative to pretty much all other electronic forms of acquiring value remotely, digitally and at great distance (wire, ACH, venmo, paypal, swift etc.)). This is the not the same thing as saying BTC is anonymous. The evidence is clear.....when presented with various mechanisms by which one might collect a ransom remotely....overwhelmingly ransomware actors request their ranson is delivered via BTC.....not because it's perfectly anonymously (it isn't) but because it obviously represents the optimal combination of evading identification and getting paid.

Taught the more likely explanation was BTC was a project to allow the continuation of online poker after the various crackdowns in late 2000's had led to their banning & regulation….I say this because the original source code for BTC written by Satoshi himself (see github below) included GUI elements for a poker lobby https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28830211 https://github.com/trottier/original-bitcoin/blob/master/src/uibase.cpp#L1573-L1731 It's also notable that many in the online poker world of this period - found themselves later involved with the crypto industry most notably Dan Friedberg FTX's Chief Regulatory Officer who's previous claim to fame was being involved in the UltimateBet "god mode' poker scandal where they cheated players funds - https://nypost.com/2022/11/20/ftxs-ex-chief-regulatory-officer-tied-to-online-poker-scandal/ Feels like the lofty libertarian stuff seemed to come later to backfill the narrative for BTC - at its core the origin of BTC was likely a protocol designed to allow anonymous online poker players interact in a decentralized unsurveilled manner outside the new poker bans of the late 2000's that had taken down the main sites......the MOST important thing in poker off course is 'the pot'....& BTC provided an elegant way that a winning poker player could be certain that his spoils were safely and securely in his wallet (in a irrevocable way) before the virtual table went their separate ways. There's a kind of beatification about Satoshi that he was Moses that came down from the mountain- the reality is he or the group that 'he' was were very much of this earth - they were likely a bunch of programmer's & players who had ridden the online poker boom to wealth & riches and BTC was their response to the government coming in and ruining their heretofore lucrative niche in unregulated online poker gaming.

This feels to me like the part of the BTC narrative where to move to the next catalyst it involves 'jumping the shark' like states seceding from the Union or BTC through gov legislation being given a deeply privileged position in the tax code such that it isn't a capital asset so that it might be seamlessly used for transactions & compete head on with the dollar issued by the same legislature. What came before was improbable but plausible (adoption, commodification via CFTC, etf-ization via SEC) it's been a fantastic run and hats off to those who stuck with it.........but what's required to come next to maintain say BTC's 10yr cagr rate, ubiquitous btc payments, is improbable because its implausible....and that is a very different risk/reward IMO.

Be careful shorting cults.......be doubly careful shorting cults where the founder/CEO has a history of saying anything to pump the stock (funding secured/FSD etc.)......not saying dont do it (I've done it myself and made $$$) but size it appropriately. Better yet - the time to go after TSLA is if/when Musk is gone...and it gets a CEO who cares about his reputation and SEC disclosures/violations. Musk is above all that and remains IMO the greatest salesman of our age.

And you think the use of btc as a transaction layer in the economy brought about by granting it a capital asset tax exemption....is a tent pole issue of sufficient interest to the broad public....that it would gain a sufficiently widespread grassroots support and become like the civil rights marches of the 1960's or opposition to the Vietnam war or something akin to the revolutionary war....which might be examples where the general public forced the hands of a domestic or foreign government? The reality I see - is that monetary debasement, hard money, the federal reserve system, the growing debt, fractional reserve banking - these remain for want of a better word things that a tiny sliver of kind of monetary 'nerds' in the population fall down the rabbit hole into and start to deeply care and are obsessed by......most everybody else is kind of whatevs. I'm sympathetic to the idea of reducing the "tyranny "of government that manifests itself in the structure of our monetary system of debasement & debt.........but most everybody else I meet....I mean they don't care.....in the way that fish don't care about water, they dont even realize they are swimming in water....the general public is the same.....watch the median person's eyes glaze over when you talk them about monetary debasement and such.

Yes very true - although the tax code allows for this eventuality and indicates that individuals purchasing foreign currency with the express intent purpose of using it in a foreign jurisdiction where USD is obviously not the currency of the land. So your outside the USA when this transaction occurs, dollars cant be used, your using a foreign currency to complete a transaction in a foreign country......so this is a sensible exemption....that preserves the dollars, single unit of account domestically with no competitors for transactions. If you buy a foreign currency, in the USA, without intent or actual use of it outside the USA....that foreign currency is deemed a capital asset.....and your hit with capital gains....that a foreign currency acquired 'on-shore' in the US & never used overseas functions not as currency in our tax code but simply as another capital asset - you are in effect, domestically, a currency speculator with ensuing Gains/Losses. Again BTC current position here is clear - even if you want to pretend its a foreign currency - that cuts no mustard when acquired and somehow used domestically in the United States to transact. Its a capital asset - being used as 'in-kind' barter transaction. Again - your in a foreign land physically or digitally, forced to pay by virtue of that other sovereigns strict single domestic use laws ..and the CC company pays the merchant in the local currency for you...and charges you back in the equivalent fx adjusted dollar amount. It's like the above example....USD isnt a currency option for you....the foreign currency is the only unit of account in the country in which you effecting a transaction. In the same way that Amazon USA.....isnt all of sudden going to give you the option to pay in Yen for an item sitting in their warehouse in New Jersey. To say this - would be also to advocate for I dunno the Mexican peso to be allowed to be used in the US for transactions by giving it also a small use capital asset tax exemption. I mean there are lots of people who hold mexican pesos in the USA due to their place of birth/family members/travel there....I would guess that perhaps the holders of mexican pesos in the USA equals the population of holders of BTC It seems a touch crazy to advocate for a mexican peso capital gains exemption such that it might be used for domestic transaction....and so its equally crazy to say it about BTC. I mean to the above @TwoCitiesCapital do you think that folks who have mexican pesos right now in the USA.....who easily number in the millions.....should be able to use them to buy goods and services here? I guess the Alexander Hamilton monterist answer is that two effective circulating currencies - which a capital asset (with cap tax exemption for small transactions attached) would effectively & functionally be....is a recipe for chaos.....USD is the unit of account from which all other capital asset gains/losses/cost basis calculations are derived. Two effective currencies in circulation = unit of account/tax accounting chaos....to say nothing about how it would diminish the power imbued in government to tax/spend/borrow when they hold the right to be the only issuer of the currency of the land (which I get btc'ers are railing against here & hope btc is a tojan horse that will bring governments debt binge to heel in time). The issue with this theory, as regards payments, is that you need that very same government to vote its leverage/power away.....by turning a capital asset BTC, into a defacto competing currency by tax exempting it for transactions. The BTC payments dream is the functional equivalent of a francophile one day dreaming that he might be able to use french francs to buy a coffee in Dunkin Donuts in D.C. That outcome for all the reasons I've given above is just deeply deeply structurally unlikely when you think through the political, legislative pathway. Think I said turkeys voting for thanksgiving before. BTC, capital asset tax exemption for transactions, is you telling me in the future turkeys will vote for thanksgiving.

Sure point taken. But not interested per ser in possibilities here.......I'm interested in probabilities.......as I said I'm trying to understand the next leg up in BTC.....and that next leg up seems to me to be wholly dependent on expanding use cases - all of which kind of revolve around payments or using btc in effective payment for service on other blockchains which would neccestate a sale of underlying btc. So sure I'm trying to understand the avenues to this (the possibilities)which you've provided - tax code change......but more importantly I'm trying to understand the probabilities. I think I would correct in saying that outside the exemption that exists for gain on sale of principal private residences......there exists no other capital asset exemption in the tax code that I'm aware off? I mean this is important if one of the tenants here is that an exemption would be forthcoming to solve the friction inherent in using a capital asset as a payment instrument There only other one I can think of is the deferment of capital gains in 1031 property transactions, which isn't the same thing. So you know - capital gains exemption it's quite hallowed ground in the tax system.....and if the btc payment use case is kind of dependent on achieving that.....the industry is setting itself a very high bar here to get that done.....to the point that it seems implausible....and as such the use case narrative is one thats underpinned by a large structural technical problem.

@TwoCitiesCapital you've kind of ignored the impossibility of the tax change scenario that might open up capital gain free btc payments that I've outlined - but OK - I'll take that as some kind of indication that my points were somewhat difficult to develop counter arguments for and that they might have some validity. I'm really just attempting to war game out the probability here. In regard to the tax status & ETF approval....I think you missed my earlier posts.......in my initial post from basically two days ago.....I said the below.....acknowledging btc's capital asset classification PRIOR to ETF approval.....but suggesting that the ETF approval is further entrenches its classification as such (i should have been clearer perhaps) Then followed up with the below.

To be clear - he asked for more voting power and in the same twitter thread & almost simultaneously acknowledged that there was no way for TSLA to introduce a dual share structure post-IPO. Therefore -by simple deduction - he was quite clearly, in effect, demanding more stock or he was gonna take his AI ball and go home.

The Sam Cooke version remains untouched - but I find myself going back to this Al Green performance every few months to hear my theme song (so to speak):

Yep asshole move. If your a TSLA shareholder, given the valuation, your kind of all in on the Elon option bet already. Its worked out very well for you. The other people in stock I'm guessng (the non-cultists) are basically momentum traders & trend followers. Elon with this request is asking his stockholder/followers to basically double down on him again here......my guess is they will.....and the board will roll over....stock price & elon are inextricably linked....the board has a tough problem.....protecting shareholder value (the price anyway) requires holding to the Elon....such that the Elon premuim remains embedded in the high stock price.......a board that didn't acquise could perversely find itself in court for not following their fiducrary duties...as they would know that Elon walking would tank TSLA by I dunno 30-50%? The collateral damage and innocent bystanders being hurt here - and you can thank S&P for this - is the index holder that finds this in their 401k....and is gonna get sucked into the Elon shakedown if this happens......which I find distasteful.....but this is in the nature of the index fund structure you hold a diversified bucket of stuff and are gonna find yourself & your hard earned retirement savings tangled up in nonsense like this. For every TSLA/Elon value smash & grab.....you get to participate in NVIDIA going to the moon. In the end it works out satisfactorily.

Not really - the constitution is pretty clear.....there is the single domestic currency issued by government...it and it alone is not a capital asset.......in fact it is the unit of account which allows for the calculation of capital gains & losses on capital assets for the purpose of taxation of same. Now I guess your trying to say that the house, the senate and president would vote and sign a tax reform bill, sometime in the near future, where they would introduce a special capital gain exemption for BTC such that it might become more frictionless in transactions that ordinarily might be done in the US dollar? Is that right? On the face of it I think that it is beyond the realms of possibility in my lifetime....i find it implausible that such a political coalition could ever be assembled to get that done given its implications & competition that would create with the domestic currency for that transaction use case....turkeys dont vote for christmas and politicians don't vote to diminish the importance of the national currency (to do so would be a vote to diminish themselves). In fact I would go further - taking a capital asset, exempting it for capital gains tax purposes in a congressional bill, for the express purpose that it would function more usefully as a USD transaction substitute currency would certainly find itself being challenged under constitutionality grounds in the Supreme Court under Section 8. But like I said - turkeys voting for Christmas (exempting btc from cap gains)..kind of makes my last paragraph a moot point. Its back to my earlier point - I'm hunting around for the next big positive tentpole catalyst for btc....and I'm not hearing any.....it feels like a dog that's had its day......and given it prices is determined by the robustness, attractiveness and believability of the future narrative around it......I guess what I'm saying is that 'the story' (with so many of the positive plot twists behind it) seems a little tapped out to me. It feels like we are in the part of the BTC movie franchise where the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi have happened already.....and now were into Jar Jar Binks....and the Phantom Menace phase I say that joking but being kind of serious. Regardles back to the payments use case dream - 'extra step' Strike is dead on arrival as a M/V rival...sure its niche neat trick but nobody outside of the folks on this thread will use it.....and so were left with himalayan sized hurdle of congressional legislation that isn't unconstitutional exempting btc as a capital asset such that it might compete with the domestic currency issued by the same congressional authority....mmmmmmm ok. Put em both together and btc becoming a ubiquitous payments solution rivalig M/V in volume terms - is a red herring IMO.

So let me get this straight instantly switch out of USD into to BTC to instantly move it to the L2 is that it can instantly be sent to the merchant, who instantly needs to move into btc....... Eh........OK......why are switching into btc to L2 to the merchant again then? Seems like about two additional superfluous steps in there with fees attached to complete a purchase......and for that reason it'll never compete with existing payment rails at scale where fiat currency is the L1....it doesn't instantly have to be converted into anything....it just is. Sounds like Strike - should just be called Extra Step Strike

Useless because of the friction created by using a payment instrument which generates capital gains/losses as part of its use - and this is of course relative to the alternative use of digital fiat - most notably the visa/mastercard network. USD is the L1 (not a capital good, the currency of the land therefore no capital gains) & then visa/mastercard as the L2 settling the transaction between buyer and merchant. In this model - you purchase a gallon of milk and the transaction settles immediately. The milk cost $5, you paid with a visa debit - end of the transaction. This is not necessarily new - but btc trading in ETF form dooms in it a sense to being a capital good in our taxation system. So the L2 payments use case for btc (as rival M/V) is effectively using a capital good BTC (with a cost basis) to perform the same transaction. Generating a gain (or loss) on sale. In this model - you purchase a gallon of milk at the store for $5....you fire up your L2 app as tap to pay.... you push/it pulls btc from your wallet to the L2.....a capital gain is created....the merchant gets $5 USD or btc if like a cost basis event. But this is not the end of the transaction for you. The cost of the milk - is $5 + whatever capital gain occurred on the btc at the point of btc liquidation......the milk is now $5 + 0.35c capital gain x 35% federal tax say ~$0.10c.....and you need to provide that transaction to your tax accountant in April the following year. Doesn't sound like a great visa/mastercard scale competitor to me.

Exactly right @Dinar excellent post - foreign policy & security, like investing, is never really a quantitative game (GDP/no. of nukes/population)....there is no wisdom or edge in just the numbers...everybody has the numbers....its a qualitative exercise of threat assessment and preemptive strategy planning based on risk/reward considerations for each action....keeping on eye on the tails always!...trying to assess the best path forward as a sovereign in a sea of other sovereigns & non-state actors...reacting and acting......it's a deep deep challenge....its a nonlinear dynamic system.....in some ways worse than trying to predict the weather a month in the future. Human beings are unpredictable creatures. Its system where exactly like you said - you can myopically focus on the Chinese or the Russian threat......but find out later that a small group of religious zealots in shawls in the caves of Afghanistan actually posed a far greater threat to American lives. So when I see somebody say - why should we care what XYZ group thinks they're a bunch of third worlders....I would say to them that the CIA/NSA & 3000 Americans learned the foolishness of that approach post-9/11. Thankfully the 9/11 commision addressed those types of failings heads on. As regards Ukraine-Russia to bring things back on topic - I clearly consider the situation in Ukraine to be an example where due to liberal democratic idealism & blatant disregard for Russia security concerns....we in the West badly miscalculated the risk/reward of the approach we were taking there....the West but mainly the USA/Germany & France myopically slept walked Ukraine and itself into a conflict that may not have ever needed to happen.......an alternative reality existed that required perhaps only minor concessions to Russian security concerns in the region while still optimizing for Ukraine's own sovereignty and democratic aspirations.....we in the West would be $122bn richer as a result.....and perhaps as many as 500,000 dead and injured in Ukraine & Russia would be better off too. Sweating the details matters in international relations & security. That's all i've ever really tried to convey in this thread - a sense that the history of the conflict is much more complex and nuanced than a CNN/Fox/NYT byline that reads "Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine - a Putin plot to recreate the USSR?"

I have no idea - I raised that point only to say that the ETF approval increases the likely hood of this crypto dream to come through (not saying it will but it’s certainly more possible post etf approval than before) while completely destroying the payments piece. Yeah 21 million BTC! Finite coins but the etf approval creates the playbook…..for the future launch of ATC coins etf’s, XTC coins, doge coin's inside an ETF wrapper listed on NYSE/Nasdaq. BTC is finite by design….whats not finite...are cryptographic coins with a fiat debasement story that can now find their way into an ETF wrapper and be sold to Joe Sixpack. What's also infinite is the creativity of promoters when presented with the oppurtunity to make money...which feeds the preceding point. In this respect - cryptographic tokens with a fiat debasement story that might find themselves on Coinbase or inside an ETF wrapper isnt capped at 21 million....the number is potentially infinite.

Quick question - outside the digital gold use case which admittedly with the ETF approval opens up the institutional/portfolio allocation to the 1-2% previously held by gold...which creates potential BTC upside from here....what are the remaining use case catalysts for the BTC narrative? BTC trading on a stock exchange in an ETF is the final confirmation of its catergorization as a capital good in our taxation/regulatory system. Surely this finally kills the payments/L2 mastercard/visa competitor idea that was always the 2nd leg of the BTC to the moon story. Put simply - a future ubiquitous payments system which creates a litany of short term / long term capital gains behind it is functionally useless, creates unacceptable friction and in doing so would be from a competitive position be unable to unseat digital fiat options (M/V) that don't have this problem. This is before we get into the technical issues with lightning (cost/network effects/chargebacks/fraud/centralization/throughput etc.). In short a payments system with greater friction than the incumbent system is doomed to failure. Put simply the BTC community lobbying for its inclusion in a stock market ETF and succeeding- have in doing so put the nail in the coffin of the payments/L2 use case.....imagine explaining to your mom that a gallon of milk purchased on lightning using BTC will likely trigger a tax event that she needs to speak to her accountant about and that all purchases made that year will need to netted off for gains on sale or loss on sale.....your mom would rightly say "son, where's my visa card? and please delete that lightning thing off my iPhone"

Serious question - with this viewpoint - why @ValueArb with all due respect even bother commenting or engaging in a thread which is fundamentally at its core a kind of international relations/security themed discussion...where what Russia thinks and by extension does is kind of foundational to the kicking around the subject?

William J. Burns,U.S. Ambassador to Russia, 2008 - Cable back to Washington D.C. "Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/12/23/ukraine-taiwan-red-lines/ William J. Burns,U.S. Ambassador to Russia, 2008 Message to Condoleezza Rice: “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” Found in: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/561709/the-back-channel-by-william-j-burns/

I report, you decide - given I put up the vid like 10 minutes ago and you responded 3 minutes later - I'm glad to see you've watched it, taught about and then marintated on it for a while Guess he's just a guy that was part of Zelensky government, partook in the Istanbul peace talks and is now part of a group of political voices in Ukraine outlining a path forward by reflecting on the conflicts origins.....as you know @ValueArb the Russian expansionism argument carries no weight with me.....and remains, in my opinion, the exact narrative that a nations ruling classes via media creates to engender support for the resources that are to be dedicated to the fighting to come. Its much harder to a fund war - with something approximating the following........"we in the West made a miscalculation in our zeal to expand liberal democracy via NATO expansion in Ukraine....we were ignorant to Russian red lines and their own internal security concerns and now Ukraine find itself between a rock and a hard place cause we led them down the primrose path.....so we're gonna have to spend $100bn+++ to try save some face and play the good guys." Better to run with the Putin imperial madman narrative....it most definitely requires less intellectual overhead thats for sure....any alternative framework for thinking about the war is just way to complicated.....better to have theory of cops and robbers, cowboys and indians.....than the way the real world is......in which most countries/nations are simultaneously

Zelenskys former ex-spokesperson - seen on Ukrainian TV during the war - a true insider - laying out the history and situation in realistic terms. Worth a look Paraphrasing some points - - "Russia does not feel secure - it began the war because of NATO expansion....and we in Europe/Ukraine can laugh at that....but they REALLY feel this way" - Donbas is lost - but we in Ukrane shouldn't be focused on it - Donbas was never really part of Ukraine - it's like Northern Ireland in the UK.... a place that was neither truly Ukranian nor truly Russian...but is now Russian. - he was part of Istanbul peace talks - deal on the table then was advantogous for Ukraine - but deal collapsed (he doesn't know why)

Kuppy and El-Erian on the same page......feels like a one legged black cat crossing the road or something Short version is I probably agree with them both - we are entering the last mile and its full of sticky goo....in a election year no less....very curious to see how it plays out.

I’m with Kuppy on this one