Cryptocurrencies

[TwoCitiesCapital]

4 hours ago, rkbabang said:

And the drop in USD by far greater than 75%, more like 98%, is a permanent one that it will never recover from. In fact it is still dropping further year by year and no one expects it to ever stop dropping.

 

I think the point people miss is the "long term" of "long term store of value". 

 

USD is a decent "store" of value for a ~12 month period. But long term? It's been miserable despite being one of the best fiat currencies in existence. Same with bonds that pay USD. 

 

But Bitcoin? Has served it's purpose for anyone that has a 3+ time horizon which still isn't "long term" IMO - but rather intermediate. Long term holders? Well, it's worked out better than any store of value should, but that's because they're early adopters in what will be the largest payment network in the world. 

Edited May 25 by TwoCitiesCapital

[rkbabang]

53 minutes ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:

 

I think the point people miss is the "long term" or "long term store of value". 

 

USD is a decent "store" of value for a ~12 month period. But long term? It's been miserable despite being one of the best fiat currencies in existence. Same with bonds that pay USD. 

 

But Bitcoin? Has served it's purpose for anyone that has a 3+ time horizon which still isn't "long term" IMO - but rather intermediate. Long term holders? Well, it's worked out better than any store of value should, but that's because they're early adopters in what will be the largest payment network in the world. 

Exactly.  Even in a perfect world where the fed hits its inflation target of 2% every year in perpetuity, holding USD is an awful way to store wealth for the long term. And we don’t live in that perfect world. It forces people to invest in risky assets such as stocks or bonds just to have a chance of preserving their wealth. Yes you could buy government debt, t-bills, etc, but long term those aren’t as safe as people think they are. Certainly not 0 risk the way most people treat them. There is a black swan blow up risk there that most people and institutions don’t take into account.

[SharperDingaan]

3 hours ago, wachtwoord said:

 

ETH isnt a crypto. It never was. It's centralized crap.

 

Quite agree from the tech PoV. But it's radically different in the investment PoV, when crypto is also considered an asset class. As ETH also has CME options/futures, and is functionally very different to BTC; it's also a preferred choice for asset class diversification. ETH may be clunky, but its very useful 'white label' token, and not going away anytime soon.

 

SD

 

 

 

 

 

 

[wachtwoord]

2 hours ago, SharperDingaan said:

 

Quite agree from the tech PoV. But it's radically different in the investment PoV, when crypto is also considered an asset class. As ETH also has CME options/futures, and is functionally very different to BTC; it's also a preferred choice for asset class diversification. ETH may be clunky, but its very useful 'white label' token, and not going away anytime soon.

 

SD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not sure about absolute valuation but am sure of some things:

 

1. It's a utility token at best. Utility tokens have a value ceiling orders of magnitude below store of value (I shared the paper/article explaining this earlier)

 

2. Relative valuation in relation to bitcoin: it's currently valued as 0.33 times the market capitalization of Bitcoin. I'd be surprised if it's real relative value to Bitcoin is even 0.01, making it completely uninvestable from a value perspective

 

3. Risk: it's completely centralized even in a singular person (Vitalik) who's under control of governments. 

 

4. All changes during it's existance have pivoted stronger to centralization (and therefore away from value) so speculating on improvements also seems foolish.

[james22]

 

[james22]

 

[SharperDingaan]

Just to throw it out there.

 

Think of the crypto asset class as 4 layers; 1) BTC, 2) Utility Token, 3) Non Fungible Token, 4) ‘Crypto Builders’. Pyramid of BTC on top, ‘Crypto Builders’ on the bottom, lower the layer in the pyramid the more ‘fluid’ it is. For most, access to the asset class is via a Crypto-ETF.

 

The higher the layer and the more ‘investable’ the asset, the higher the asset weighting in the pyramid. High weightings for BTC and ETH as the CME option and future markets make these investments both liquid and hedgeable. Crypto diversification by functionality, portfolio optimisation via var-covar price optimisation.

 

Assume a layer 1 of one asset, layer 2 of two assets, etc, etc. It implies one additional and very different utility token, plus three additional and very different NFT vehicles; and each with a separate CME option and futures market. 4+ global ‘Crypto Builders’, each with the standard common share financial options market. All transactions within a layer eventually settled exclusively via CBDC (as anti-money laundering protection). Crypto stacks within each layer; within the BTC layer, BTC as level 1, CBDC/Lightstream as level 2, etc. 'Crypto Builders' resembling the US auto industry of old; where there used to be many constructors, M&A over time eventually shrank it to 3.

 

All still very much an evolving industry, but now the adults are in the room. However, develop your own model around how this evolves, and you could do very well indeed 

 

Different PoV

 

SD

Edited May 27 by SharperDingaan

[jfan]

 

This is from a private business that Murray Stahl is invested in via his Renn Fund.

 

 

[SharperDingaan]

Smuggling friends like to remind me that digital tracking (crypto), is utter sh1te when we all live in a physical world! For the most part; one needs to either disable removal of the physical from the digital track, time limit the digital track, or turn the physical into both a physical and a digital track. The better applications are around diamonds and barcodes imprinted on the skin of produce (produce rots, barcode becomes unreadable, digital track drops).

 

SD

Edited May 26 by SharperDingaan

[Dave86ch]

 

 

[fareastwarriors]

BlackRock’s $20 Billion ETF Is Now the World’s Largest Bitcoin Fund

[rkbabang]

Semler Scientific Announces Bitcoin Treasury Strategy

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/semler-scientific-announces-bitcoin-treasury-strategy-302156715.html

 

"Semler Scientific announced that it has purchased 581 bitcoins for an aggregate amount of $40 million, inclusive of fees and expenses... "After studying various alternatives, we decided that holding bitcoin would be the best use of our excess cash," said Mr. Semler."

 

Press release from the company: https://ir.semlerscientific.com/static-files/caa023b3-4bc8-4b56-a475-a112cbae9355

Edited May 30 by rkbabang

[james22]

 

[Paarslaars]

Good news for MSTR, guess they lobby well.

Edited June 1 by Paarslaars

[james22]

No, Saylor wishes the asset class to thrive.

 

 

[SharperDingaan]

This isn't the Bitcoin that most people think of .....

 

It is more along the lines of FDIC coverage of the FDI insureds BTC-ETF. Should the FDI insured get hacked and its BTC stolen, it's not the depositors (i.e. you) problem so long as you had < 250K of the insureds BTC-ETF at the time of the hack. Deposit insurance that is currently at 250K, if CBDC/BTC-ETF is considered a cash equivalent ...... and therefore affects most people.

 

Clever  market solution, that de-risks BTC quite a bit, concentrates activity within the BTC-ETF swim-lane, and concentrates deposits within the banking system. Retail need no longer trade BTC-ETF on their favourite app; when they could do the same thing at their bank, along with 250K of free hacker insurance. Of course, BTC itself still trades; but now the trades are between professionals.

 

We live in interesting times.

 

SD

 

      

Edited June 2 by SharperDingaan

[Dave86ch]

8 hours ago, SharperDingaan said:

This isn't the Bitcoin that most people think of .....

 

It is more along the lines of FDIC coverage of the FDI insureds BTC-ETF. Should the FDI insured get hacked and its BTC stolen, it's not the depositors (i.e. you) problem so long as you had < 250K of the insureds BTC-ETF at the time of the hack. Deposit insurance that is currently at 250K, if CBDC/BTC-ETF is considered a cash equivalent ...... and therefore affects most people.

 

Clever  market solution, that de-risks BTC quite a bit, concentrates activity within the BTC-ETF swim-lane, and concentrates deposits within the banking system. Retail need no longer trade BTC-ETF on their favourite app; when they could do the same thing at their bank, along with 250K of free hacker insurance. Of course, BTC itself still trades; but now the trades are between professionals.

 

We live in interesting times.

 

SD

 

      

Providing wealthy individuals with an ark floating on enough liquidity to escape the fiscal trap, sailing towards Galt's Gulch.

[rkbabang]

In his 1st term he created the Space Force, in his 2nd term he may create a Hash Force.

 

 

Edited June 8 by rkbabang

[SharperDingaan]

"In his 1st term he created the Space Force, in his 2nd term he may create a Hash Force."

 

The man forgets that blockchain is only a digital asset; tamper-proof data is worth squat if your computers are fried, can't talk to each other, or are without electricity to power them. Lot of the followers also seem to view BTC/Blockchain as interchangeable; a very exploitable misconception.

 

SD

 

Edited June 9 by SharperDingaan

[rkbabang]

2 hours ago, SharperDingaan said:

"In his 1st term he created the Space Force, in his 2nd term he may create a Hash Force."

 

The man forgets that blockchain is only a digital asset; tamper-proof data is worth squat if your computers are fried, can't talk to each other, or are without electricity to power them. Lot of the followers also seem to view BTC/Blockchain as interchangeable; a very exploitable misconception.

 

SD

 

I can’t speak for the random internet people commenting on his post, but I’ve read “Soft War” and am certain that Lowery doesn’t think that any blockchain is the equivalent of Bitcoin. He is talking about Bitcoin and only Bitcoin.

[SharperDingaan]

On 6/9/2024 at 11:51 AM, rkbabang said:

I can’t speak for the random internet people commenting on his post, but I’ve read “Soft War” and am certain that Lowery doesn’t think that any blockchain is the equivalent of Bitcoin. He is talking about Bitcoin and only Bitcoin.

 

Not so sure ..... Re the abstract excerpt, he's trying to change the gaming payoff on the BTC protocol POW consensus mechanism, and make the BTC protocol create secure data instead of a BTC. 'BTC protocol' is blockchain (using a POW vs 'other' consensus mechanism), and 'secure data' is simply a NFT version 2.0 block; created via BTC protocol, and accessed via a smart contract linking to a server (military) containing the code. Smart contact executing based on a linked time stamp and consensus mechanism, that changes multiple times a day. 

 

Thing is, what does the anonymous miner get paid in? either its anonymous BTC, or its the local currency of a captive domestic mining pool; i.e; space force over-investment in space force supercomputers (hash force) dedicated to mining, and using the surplus CPU capacity for simultaneous backups. 

 

And two platforms ..... 1) BTC protocol to confirm the veracity of new sensory data (slow); 2) private network to process the now confirmed data (fast).  

 

The good news is that the civilian version would offer a great deal of utility in quite a few global economic applications; and if there ain't no social licence for this approach, there ain't no show. Wise men would do pilot economic applications first.

 

SD

 

"[ This thesis introduces a novel theoretical framework for analyzing the potential national strategic impact of Bitcoin as an electro-cyber security technology rather than a peer-to-peer cash system. The goal of this thesis is to give the research community a different frame of reference they can utilize to generate hypotheses and deductively analyze the potential risks and rewards of proof-of-work technologies as something other than strictly monetary technology. The author asserts it would be beneficial for researchers to explore alternative functionality of proof-of-work technologies to eliminate potential blind spots, provide a more well-rounded understanding of the risks and rewards of proof-of-work protocols like Bitcoin, and positively contribute to the development of more informed public policy in support of the March 2022 US Presidential Executive Order on Ensuring the Responsible Development of Digital Assets and the May 2022 US Presidential Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity.

 

Utilizing a grounded theory methodology, the author combines different concepts from diverse fields of knowledge (e.g. biology, psychology, anthropology, political science, computer science, systems security, and modern military strategic theory) to formulate a novel framework called “Power Projection Theory.” Based on the core concepts of Power Projection Theory, the author inductively reasons that proof-of- work technologies like Bitcoin could not only function as monetary technology, but could also (and perhaps more importantly) function as a new form of electro-cyber power projection technology which could empower nations to secure their most precious bits of information (including but not limited to financial bits of information) against belligerent actors by giving them the ability to impose severe physical costs on other nations in, from, and through cyberspace. The author calls this novel power projection tactic “softwar” and explores its potential impact on national strategic security in the 21° century. Like most grounded theory research efforts, the primary deliverable of this thesis is a novel theory rather than deductive analysis of a hypothesis derived from existing theory. ]"

Edited Wednesday at 05:58 PM by SharperDingaan

[Dave86ch]

On 6/8/2024 at 7:27 PM, rkbabang said:

In his 1st term he created the Space Force, in his 2nd term he may create a Hash Force.

 

 

Antpool Based in Beijing, China.

 

The hash war has already started.

Edited June 10 by Dave86ch

[Dave86ch]

 

 

[Xerxes]

7 hours ago, Dave86ch said:

 

 

Donald wants to bring Bitcoin manufacturing back in the U.S. !!

[TwoCitiesCapital]

4 hours ago, Xerxes said:

Donald wants to bring Bitcoin manufacturing back in the U.S. !!