Author Topic: Money/inflation, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, BTC, crypto, Gold  (Read 512900 times)

ccp

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1200 on: February 04, 2021, 07:55:38 AM »
yes

if one has private wallet and is holder of code/key
and it gets lost
you will lose it all

one can go through a intermediary that holds the key for you
 of course they can all die and their company could crash and burn
and if you do not also have key then you lose too

it is like lost gold and treasures that can never be found
such as the rumored Nazi gold ..........



ya

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1201 on: February 05, 2021, 05:51:56 PM »
Actually, the details are not completely accurate.
1. If you lose the hardware wallet, its no big deal just buy another wallet. What matters is to keep the private keys safe. The wallet is actually like pass key to the block chain, one still needs private keys to access funds. Having said that, loss of a hardware wallet can be problematic and potentially be broken into by a real pro.
2. The second point you allude to, likely deals with multi-sig (multiple signatures). eg one needs 2/3 or 3/5 keys to access acct. These keys can be distributed to different individuals you trust, and loss of one key is not a problem.
3. Another option is to store in free cold storage available at exchanges. It will be immune from hacks, but the exchange/IRS/Govt can potentially put a hold over your acct. When coins are in cold storage, they are moved to "vaults" outside the exchange.
4.The riskiest is a hot wallet, i.e. store live on an exchange, which is susceptible to hacking. When we hear of exchanges/BTC being hacked, these are hacked from the hot wallet/live account of an exchange. There are no hacks reported from cold storage of an exchange.

DougMacG

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1202 on: February 05, 2021, 06:20:25 PM »
Good info, ya.

ccp

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Dogecoin. and the market power of Elon Musk
« Reply #1203 on: February 06, 2021, 09:48:56 AM »
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9225081/Elon-Musk-breaks-brief-Twitter-silence-tout-meme-cryptocurrency-DogeCoin.html

the first we heard Elon Musk tout Dogecoin. (apparently the Shiba Inu breed)
   it was shortly after he trashed bitcoin. as worthless.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/dogecoin-cryptocurrency-elon-musk-b1797619.html

At that time a dogecoin was selling for 0.0009 cnets a share .  and bitcoin at one point then went to ~ 30,000 ( though the latter was not due to Musk)

Now A dogecoin sells for 0.05 cents - a gain of ~ 55 times

a $1,000 amount of dogecoin would now be $55,000.

Then later Musk touts bitcoin .....

So as a joke did he bash bitcoin then tout Dogecoin and buy the latter and later take the profits and buy bitcoin and start touting that?

Just trying to connect the dots here . 

Truly a giant farce no matter how one looks at it.

PS : I didn't buy dogecoin - it is a joke - but in restrospect it would have been a very profitable one.  Market cap for dogecoin in 6.5 billion.

ya

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1204 on: February 06, 2021, 02:52:19 PM »
dogecoin is a joke coin..

ccp

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1205 on: February 07, 2021, 02:19:50 AM »
yes

it is a joke

yet the joke is bringing in joksters who run it up 55 times with 6.5 billion in real  money (if sold for US dollars in time)

I hope when the balloon pops it doesn't drag all the other cryptos down
into a heap like reminiscent of the  WTC.
« Last Edit: February 07, 2021, 02:23:38 AM by ccp »

ya

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1206 on: February 07, 2021, 09:03:44 AM »
There are supposedly 5000 altcoins...99% of them will not survive. rather than guess which ones will survive, the safe thing to do is buy BTC. I know..calling BTC safe is an oxymoron...but if anthing survives it will.

ccp

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Elon Musk buys 1.5 billion bitcoin
« Reply #1207 on: February 08, 2021, 07:42:56 AM »
from my post on 2/6:

***the first we heard Elon Musk tout Dogecoin. (apparently the Shiba Inu breed)
   it was shortly after he trashed bitcoin. as worthless.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/dogecoin-cryptocurrency-elon-musk-b1797619.html

At that time a dogecoin was selling for 0.0009 cnets a share .  and bitcoin at one point then went to ~ 30,000 ( though the latter was not due to Musk)

Now A dogecoin sells for 0.05 cents - a gain of ~ 55 times

a $1,000 amount of dogecoin would now be $55,000.

Then later Musk touts bitcoin .....

So as a joke did he bash bitcoin then tout Dogecoin and buy the latter and later take the profits and buy bitcoin and start touting that?

Just trying to connect the dots here .

Truly a giant farce no matter how one looks at it. ***

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOW WE see this in news

first he bashes it then touts the absurd dogecoin

than of course touts bitcoin after he bought in.

oh, perfectly legal........

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tesla-says-it-has-invested-1-5-billion-in-bitcoin-prices-surge-to-record-above-42-000-11612790314

ccp

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bitcoin chart is scary
« Reply #1208 on: February 08, 2021, 04:46:13 PM »
go to coindesk and click "all" on the chart

How long can this go straight up?

Ok Tesla is in

amazon and Fuck book will of course have their own coins to keep people in their universe and control them

will apple accept BC
and will amazon and shit book eventually have to take BC too if they want the business


ya

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Re: bitcoin chart is scary
« Reply #1209 on: February 08, 2021, 07:09:52 PM »
go to coindesk and click "all" on the chart

How long can this go straight up?

The secret to reviewing BTC charts is to use log scale and not linear scale.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1210 on: February 09, 2021, 02:43:56 AM »
Tesla Buys $1.5 Billion in Bitcoin
Cryptocurrency’s price soars after electric-vehicle maker says it soon expects to accept customer payments in bitcoin

Tesla founder Elon Musk has demonstrated an interest in cryptocurrency.
PHOTO: ODD ANDERSEN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
By Caitlin Ostroff and Rebecca Elliott
Updated Feb. 8, 2021 6:04 pm ET


Tesla Inc. TSLA 1.31% said Monday that it bought $1.5 billion in bitcoin, a disclosure that follows Chief Executive Elon Musk’s promotion of the cryptocurrency and other digital-currency alternatives on Twitter.

The electric-vehicle company also said it expects to start accepting bitcoin as payment for its products soon. Bitcoin prices jumped more than 10% after the announcement, according to cryptocurrency research and news site CoinDesk.

Tesla disclosed its bitcoin purchase in its latest annual report, saying the move aims to “diversify and maximize returns on our cash that is not required to maintain adequate operating liquidity.” Tesla said a board committee had approved changes to company rules on investments, adding that it can also invest cash in gold bullion and gold exchange-traded funds among other assets.

One bitcoin, in dollars
Source: CoinDesk
As of Feb. 8, 5 p.m. ET
Feb. 2
Feb. 8
32,000
34,000
36,000
38,000
40,000
42,000
44,000
$46,000
The bitcoin purchase, likely among the largest by a public company, comes after a rally in 2020 when the price more than quadrupled. Tesla is joining a handful of other companies that have disclosed bitcoin holdings. Software developer MicroStrategy Inc. acquired about $425 million worth of bitcoin last summer, and its CEO, Michael Saylor, has become an outspoken proponent.

Companies holding bitcoin in their treasuries face an accounting risk: Because bitcoin and other digital assets are considered “indefinite-lived intangible assets,” rather than currencies, any decrease in their value below what the company paid for them—even a temporary one—can force a company to write down the value, taking an impairment charge. MicroStrategy posted a net loss in the third quarter of 2020 because the price of bitcoin dropped temporarily in September.

Tesla said it would analyze its holdings in the cryptocurrency each quarter to see whether impairments are warranted based on bitcoin prices. “If we hold digital assets and their values decrease relative to our purchase prices, our financial condition may be harmed,” the company said.

Sharp changes in the digital currency’s valuation might be why companies have acquired millions, rather than billions, of dollars’ worth of the cryptocurrency, said Michel Rauchs, founder of Luxembourg-based digital-assets consulting firm Paradigma Sarl: “It is definitely greater risk but greater reward there.”

Bitcoin recently traded Monday at $43,602.68, according to CoinDesk. Its price averaged $34,730.12 in January and is currently more than eight times higher than bitcoin’s 2020 low of a little under $5,000.

Mr. Musk has shown growing interest in bitcoin in recent years, after tweeting in 2018 that the only cryptocurrency he owned was one-quarter of a bitcoin a friend had given him—which today would be worth more than $10,000. Around Jan. 29 the Tesla chief changed his Twitter biography to “#bitcoin,” which sent prices for it higher, before removing that reference.

“I think bitcoin is really on the verge of getting broad acceptance by sort of the conventional finance people,” he said last week on the social-networking app Clubhouse. Mr. Musk said he needed to be cautious with his public statements about cryptocurrencies because “some of these things can really move the market.”

Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment. The company said in its report that it updated its investment policy in January but didn’t disclose the exact timing of either its board decision or its bitcoin purchase.

“He’s already telegraphed it to the market,” said Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer at London-based asset management firm CoinShares, referring to Mr. Musk’s mentioning bitcoin in his Twitter biography. “One of the world’s largest corporations doing this—I think it opens the floodgates.”


After tweets from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and rapper Snoop Dogg, the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which started as a joke, topped $10 billion in market value. WSJ looks at why online investors are pouring money into the meme-inspired virtual currency. Photo: Yuriko Nakao/Aflo/Zuma Press
Recently, Mr. Musk’s tweets about dogecoin, a cryptocurrency started as a joke in 2013, have helped drive up that virtual currency’s price.


Tesla has struggled to maintain cash while ramping up vehicle production, but its shares soared some 480% in the year ended Friday as investors piled into electric-vehicle makers and the company reported a string of quarterly profits. Tesla took advantage of that surge by selling billions of dollars in new stock, shoring up its cash position. The company’s cash holdings totaled around $19.4 billion at the end of last year, up from around $6.3 billion at the end of 2019.

Mr. Musk’s tweets have drawn regulatory scrutiny, including from the Securities and Exchange Commission over a 2018 post in which the CEO said he had secured funding to take Tesla private. Mr. Musk and the SEC later settled in a deal requiring the company to sign off on any written statements he made that could be deemed material. He has since mocked the regulator on Twitter.

The SEC is unlikely to challenge Mr. Musk over his bitcoin tweets, said John Coffee Jr., a Columbia University law professor who specializes in securities law, especially after a federal judge rebuked the commission when it sought to hold the CEO in contempt in 2019. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment about whether Mr. Musk had sought approval for his bitcoin commentary.

Tesla shares
Source: FactSet
As of Feb. 8, 12:10 p.m. ET
Feb. 2021
Feb. 8
780
800
820
840
860
880
$900
Mr. Musk’s online remarks can move markets. After touting online shopping site Etsy Inc. in January, the stock rose more than 8% on the open. Shares in CD Projekt SA, the maker of the troubled Cyberpunk 2077 game, rose more than 15% after Mr. Musk praised the game. Both stocks retreated later. Last year, Mr. Musk tweeted that he thought Tesla’s share price was too high. The market agreed, and the stock fell before recovering.

An affinity for bitcoin seems a natural fit for Mr. Musk, who has bristled at government constraints. Last year he battled local authorities in California that ordered his lone U.S. car plant closed as part of broader measures to curb the pandemic. Mr. Musk reopened the facility after several weeks, daring authorities to arrest him. They didn’t.

Part of bitcoin’s appeal for some holders is that it isn’t circulated or controlled by a government or nation. Unlike opening up a bank account to store dollars, euros or yen, starting a bitcoin account doesn’t require providing identifying information. Bitcoin is effectively anonymous, and law enforcement can’t freeze a bitcoin account as they could a bank account.


Payments company Square Inc., which shares bitcoin advocate Jack Dorsey as its CEO with Twitter Inc., acquired about $50 million worth for its corporate treasury in October. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. acquired $100 million worth in December to hold in its general investment account.

Companies might have grown more optimistic about bitcoin after the March 2020 selloff, when it recovered faster than the broader stock market, said Joel Kruger, a currency strategist at LMAX Group.

The added wrinkle with Tesla is the plan to accept bitcoin from customers. Few companies now accept bitcoin directly as payment; Overstock.com Inc. is among the few that do. Some large companies experimented with bitcoin payments in 2014 and 2015, like Dell Technologies Inc. and Expedia Group Inc., but most later dropped it for lack of use.


While Tesla’s move would be high profile, a more substantial development is expected later this year, when PayPal Holdings Inc. plans to allow its customers to use their bitcoin holdings for payments.

Mr. Musk’s ties to the financial-services industry date to the 1990s, when he invested most of the $22 million he earned from the sale of an internet business into a new startup, X.com, that became PayPal. EBay Inc. bought PayPal for $1.4 billion in 2002.

As the largest shareholder, a 31-year-old Mr. Musk collected more than $100 million. He used the money to start Tesla and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the rocket company he also runs, as well as solar-cell company SolarCity, now part of Tesla.

—Micah Maidenberg and Paul Vigna contributed to this article.

Write to Caitlin Ostroff at caitlin.ostroff@wsj.com and Rebecca Elliott at rebecca.elliott@wsj.com

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the February 9, 2021, print edition as 'Tesla Makes Big Bet In Bitcoin.'


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Crafty_Dog

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1211 on: February 09, 2021, 02:49:37 AM »
esla Buys $1.5 Billion in Bitcoin: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Elon Musk’s bitcoin purchase for Tesla is another warning for investors in the wake of GameStop mania

Social media posts by Tesla boss Elon Musk already have helped drive bitcoin’s price to a record.




GameStop mania was a wake-up call, but now the capital markets have truly reached ludicrous mode.

Electric-car maker Tesla TSLA 1.31% said in a securities filing Monday that it has purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and that it expects to begin accepting payment in the cryptocurrency for its products in the future. Tesla shares and bitcoin both traded higher after the announcement. This follows social media posts by the auto maker’s influential boss, Elon Musk, that already had helped drive bitcoin’s price to a record. All told, the rally spurred by the announcement on Monday added more than $100 billion to bitcoin’s market value, while Tesla shares also rose yet again.

The investment is more than symbolic for the company, being equivalent to Tesla’s research-and-development tab for 2020. And while uniting two of the most popular investment themes under one roof is undoubtedly a winner today, the decision introduces even more risk to owning what is already one of the most speculative stocks of the current bull market.

Higher and HIgher
Tesla stock and bitcoin returns
Sources: FactSet (stocks); CoinDesk (cryptocurrencies)
%
Tesla Inc.
Bitcoin USD
March 2020
'21
-100
-50
0
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As Tesla itself said in the filing, prices for digital assets such as bitcoin have been volatile in the past. Cryptocurrencies are a fairly recent development and their long-term adoption by consumers, investors and businesses is highly uncertain. That adds to the speculative fervor already gripping Tesla’s stock price in a feedback loop. Indeed, the manager of the most popular active fund recently, Cathie Wood of ARK Invest, has made big bets on both Tesla and a trust that owns bitcoin, fueling a record pace of inflows.

At a market value of about $800 billion, Tesla trades at about 6.5 times the combined value of Ford and General Motors, despite controlling a small fraction of the global auto market. And Tesla lately has been losing market share in Western Europe to competitors including Volkswagen, which has begun to compete aggressively in the electric category. The news of Tesla’s bitcoin investment eclipsed a negative headline for the company Monday about quality issues identified in the important Chinese market.




While digital assets are relatively new, a tour of financial history suggests similar speculative use of an industrial company’s funds aren’t—and they have ended badly. About a century ago, General Motors required a bailout due to the stock speculation activities of founder William Durant. In the 1980s, widespread corporate speculation on Japanese land prices helped drive a stock bubble that eventually collapsed.

Those cautionary tales aren’t likely to concern investors who are enjoying a giant stock-market party. But Tesla’s monetary experiment, coupled with the individual-investor-driven stock-market madness of recent weeks, should have investors concerned that the consequences of staying at the party too late will be worse than leaving early.


Crafty_Dog

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1212 on: February 09, 2021, 02:52:43 AM »
On Twitter, Elon Musk Has Mused About Bitcoin
‘Bitcoin is almost as bs as fiat money,’ CEO said in December. Tesla now says it purchased $1.5 billion worth of the cryptocurrency.

Close watchers of Elon Musk’s tweets may not have been surprised by Tesla’s decision to buy bitcoin.
PHOTO: MIKE BLAKE/REUTERS
By Micah Maidenberg
Feb. 8, 2021 4:51 pm ET
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Elon Musk talks about a lot of things on Twitter, but Tesla Inc.’s TSLA 1.31% disclosure Monday about the company’s investment in bitcoin casts new light on a series of tweets he made about the cryptocurrency in December.

Among other bitcoin-related tweets on Dec. 20, the Tesla chief executive used his Twitter account to post an explicit meme showing what appears to be a bearded monk with the words “Me trying to live a normal productive life” pasted over him. The monk is standing near a woman with the word bitcoin pasted over her.

That graphic elicited a response from Michael Saylor, founder and chief executive of MicroStrategy Inc., a publicly traded enterprise-software company that has invested in bitcoin and made it the company’s reserve asset.

Dogecoin: Elon Musk, Snoop Dogg Tweets Fuel Crypto Price Rally
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Dogecoin: Elon Musk, Snoop Dogg Tweets Fuel Crypto Price Rally
Dogecoin: Elon Musk, Snoop Dogg Tweets Fuel Crypto Price Rally
After tweets from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and rapper Snoop Dogg, the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which started as a joke, topped $10 billion in market value. WSJ looks at why online investors are pouring money into the meme-inspired virtual currency. Photo: Yuriko Nakao/Aflo/Zuma Press
“If you want to do your shareholders a $100 billion favor, convert the [Tesla] balance sheet from [U.S. dollars to bitcoin]. Other firms on the S&P 500 would follow your lead & in time it would grow to become a $1 trillion favor,” Mr. Saylor said in a tweet.


“Are such large transactions even possible?” Mr. Musk said in response to him. Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Monday, Tesla said it bought $1.5 billion in bitcoin and plans to start accepting the digital currency as payment for its products soon.

Mr. Saylor said in a tweet Monday, “Congratulations & thank you to @elonmusk & @Tesla on adding #Bitcoin to their balance sheet. The entire world will benefit from this leadership.” A spokesman for MicroStrategy confirmed Mr. Saylor’s Twitter account.

Close watchers of Mr. Musk’s musings on Twitter, where he has of late discussed space projects, Tesla vehicles, videogames and other topics, may not have been surprised by the Silicon Valley car company’s decision to buy bitcoin. In January, Mr. Musk changed his Twitter biography to read, “#bitcoin.” His biography no longer references it.

Mr. Musk “has a tendency to hint at future developments at Tesla through his Twitter account [and] recent commentary there has been geared to bitcoin and other digital currencies,” a Robert W. Baird & Co. analyst said Monday.

Mr. Musk had other things to say about the cryptocurrency on Dec. 20, beginning with the comment, “Bitcoin is my safe word.” He then added, “Just kidding, who needs a safe word anyway.”

To a user who responded to his first tweet by predicting bitcoin would crash and also would reach $50,000 each in the five years, Mr. Musk said, “Sounds about right.”

Later, he said, “Bitcoin is almost as bs as fiat money.” Fiat currency is money issued by a central authority, such as a country’s central bank, but isn’t linked to an underlying commodity like gold, according to a definition from a unit of the World Bank.

On Monday, Mr. Musk again discussed bitcoin. He communicated with another Twitter user about the Dogecoin cryptocurrency and referenced bitcoin’s “BTC” symbol: “Doge appears to be inflationary, but is not meaningfully so (fixed # of coins per unit time), whereas BTC is arguably deflationary to a fault. Transaction speed of Doge should ideally be a few orders of magnitude faster.”


He also said Monday that he was ready to move on to other topics: “Back to work I go …”

ccp

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Ya says look at the log scale for bitcoin
« Reply #1213 on: February 09, 2021, 05:35:48 AM »
".The secret to reviewing BTC charts is to use log scale and not linear scale."


https://medium.com/@CryptoKea/bitcoin-to-90k-in-2020-32364f318903

DougMacG

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Re: Ya says look at the log scale for bitcoin
« Reply #1214 on: February 09, 2021, 06:08:22 AM »
".The secret to reviewing BTC charts is to use log scale and not linear scale."

https://medium.com/@CryptoKea/bitcoin-to-90k-in-2020-32364f318903

It can only go up, right? Or is the downside exponential too?  Yikes.

Money that Elon Musk puts it bitcoin is money not available to build EV manufacturing  facilities, battery production, R & D, or space travel, unless he sells his bitcoin.  Can he pledge bitcoin as collateral for business lending? If he sells, does it have a similar downside effect as his buy?

Going up exponentially does not make it a stable trading currency, which I thought was the original point of it.

If it's going to 90k shortly, it's a good buy at 40k. If it hits 90, is it still a good buy, a hold or a sell.  All rhetorical questions.  No one knows.


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ya

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1217 on: February 10, 2021, 05:31:26 PM »
Also check this BTC adoption rate, 1 billion in 4 yrs vs 7.5 yrs for the internet adoption. Pl. scroll to the right

ya

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1218 on: February 10, 2021, 06:47:59 PM »
Are you concerned that you are too late to the party..

https://www.swanbitcoin.com/am-i-too-late-for-bitcoin/


Crafty_Dog

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1220 on: February 11, 2021, 01:45:01 PM »
YA:

Great stuff!

Your thoughts please on:

1) GBTC vs. BTC for a "low tech boomer who really does not understand the technology investor" like me?

2) Yellen's comments and related regulatory/legal issues.

Thank you,

Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: Can you get rich with BTC?
« Reply #1221 on: February 11, 2021, 03:15:32 PM »
second post

Can You Get Rich With Bitcoin? Sure, but Slowly
Cryptocurrency is rising on a wave of enthusiasm. Yet its fundamentals have genuine value.
By Max Raskin
Feb. 10, 2021 1:05 pm ET



Chances are in the past few weeks someone has given you a stock tip—maybe to buy bitcoin or invest in GameStop. In part because of Covid-induced boredom, the country is witnessing an unprecedented interest in financial speculation. This craze is fueled by business celebrities like Elon Musk, who announced Monday that his company Tesla had purchased $1.5 billion of bitcoin. Last Thursday Mr. Musk tweeted in support of the cryptocurrency dogecoin, which was created as a joke in 2013.

What is the average investor to make of all this? When stocks shift by hundreds of percentage points in a day, there’s only so much the government can do to protect you. Instead, investors should look past the tweets and Reddit posts and get back to fundamentals.

Yes, even bitcoin has fundamentals. There are two stories you can tell about Mr. Musk’s promotion of bitcoin. The first is a cynical one, in which he is using his media platform to pump an inherently speculative asset that he will dump, enriching himself at others’ expense.

The second story is honorable: Mr. Musk has keyed in on bitcoin’s value as an asset that can’t be manipulated by central banks. He understands bitcoin’s fixed supply, and in a world of seemingly unlimited monetary stimulus he’d like to promote the separation of money and state. The value of all money, even traditional currencies, is determined in part by public demand, and Mr. Musk’s driving up bitcoin’s price is no scandal in itself. Perhaps that’s what he meant when he tweeted, “Bitcoin is almost as bs as fiat money.”


Though bitcoin may be rising on a thin wave of enthusiasm, its fundamentals have real value. I teach a course on cryptocurrency, and I urge my students to look past the allure of easy money and focus on the philosophy, technology and political economy that differentiate bitcoin and its peers from traditional currencies.


Investing in a new, uncertain asset class can certainly be a trip. In the early days of bitcoin, I was a reporter covering the fortunes being made overnight by nerds living in their parents’ basements. I reported on accidental millionaires who happened to have left a program running on their computers to mine bitcoin. I also covered unlucky individuals who lost millions by accidentally throwing out a hard drive or losing a password. No one seemed particularly happy. Even those who made money overnight were upset that they hadn’t made more.

The only people who seemed fulfilled in the world of cryptocurrency were those like the Winklevoss twins, who were genuinely dedicated to the ideal of private money and competing currencies. This is an idea with a rich historical tradition that includes such luminaries as F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises. It is true that the Winklevoss twins are reportedly billionaires because of their holdings, but it was their ideology that bound them to weather the volatility of the early days of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin’s biggest boosters have also created valuable services from the same underlying technology, such as smart contracts, which automate and authenticate complex payment arrangements. They were pioneered by Nick Szabo, an early bitcoin adopter who is less concerned with price and more concerned with the plumbing.

So if you follow cryptocurrency, be sure to keep an eye on new applications and technological developments as well as daily price swings. Stories about buying Lamborghinis with bitcoin are always going to get more clicks than pieces that explain its underlying value. But that latter type of article holds the key to why bitcoin may be an asset worth holding for the long haul.

One of my favorite stories of a crypto true believer involves an entrepreneur named Erik Voorhees. Around 2012 I asked him if he was going to cash out after becoming a millionaire. To my surprise, he said he was almost completely cashed out. He quickly clarified, “of dollars.” This is the kind of investor who doesn’t care what Elon Musk does with Tesla’s balance sheet.

Mr. Raskin is director of research at Qvidtvm Inc. and an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law.

ya

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1222 on: February 11, 2021, 09:03:34 PM »
GBTC vs BTC, are you looking for investment gains (GBTC) only or investment gains + freedom + money that cannot be confiscated (BTC). Both are good options for different individuals.

The central banks and IMF are in a panic. Their CBDC's cannot compete with BTC, so a lot of FUD will be created. China has tried to ban BTC, I think like 4 times, they were unsuccesful. BTC is now a 900 Billion asset, it will soon be worth over 1 Trillion dollars. New money keeps pouring in.

The two areas where one should anticipate FUD is 1. A lot of terrorists and drug dealers use it. Reality is that BTC is a ledger, everything is trackable. the US $ is what is used for >90 % of drug money. Drug dealers are smart, they no longer use it. 2. BTC's energy consumption. Much has been written about it, but more and more BTC is being mined using flared gas or reusable energy.

FUD can cause a temporary fall in price, but it will not stick. As an example. the SEC recently called XRP token illegal (it is a security) and asked US exchanges to delist it. The price collapsed, but a month later it is back up again because the asian exchanges did not delist.

In 4-5 years there will be a billion users of BTC and it becomes something that cannot be banned. Even today, it cannot be banned due to game theory considerations. All one needs is one country in the world to allow its use and BTC will continue to function. If a country were to spend 100's of billions of dollars to buy and capture BTC using a 51 % attack technique, even that would not work. The block chain would be forked and a new chain would start. All the billions of dollars expended would be wasted.


DougMacG

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Risk 'expert' Nassim Taleb turns against Bitcoin
« Reply #1223 on: February 14, 2021, 08:36:56 AM »
'Black Swan' Author Nassim Taleb Dumps Bitcoin
He’s advocated for crypto in the past. But for now, it has "failed," he says.

“A currency is never supposed to be more volatile than what you buy & sell with it,” he said. “You can't price goods in BTC.”
https://decrypt.co/57628/black-swan-nassim-taleb-dumps-bitcoin
------------------------------------------------------
[Doug]
On that point he is right.  You can't look at its chart and say it's a currency, or a stable currency.  It is a speculative store of value.  Those who speculate it may still go up and up and up may be right, right now.  But still it is not currency at all in the sense of all the things needed to make it a stable currency.  When it goes down, what is its intrinsic bottom value?

Elon Musk, I noticed, announced his 1.5 billion dollar purchase after he made it, and the value jumped.  But the price of bitcoin at the announcement already reflected his major purchase.  The rest is for his news they will take bitcoin for payment, but anyone can take any currency, right to the trading desk and get dollars or whatever they need.  That policy is a breakthrough for bitcoin, but gets canceled the minute bitcoin is not a rising or stable enough value for them, or the minute your all knowing government bans the use of btc for currency.

Zerohedge reports India will be the first country to ban bitcoin:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2021-02-12/coming-indian-bitcoin-ban

I assume that is a ban on using it as a currency.  I don't see how (or why) they ban the buy and sell of it as investment (in a free country).
----------------------------
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/121815/bitcoins-price-history.asp
Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s inventor, designed it for use as a medium for daily transactions and a way to circumvent the traditional banking infrastructure after the 2008 financial collapse. While the cryptocurrency has yet to gain mainstream traction as a currency, it has begun to pick up steam through a different narrative—as a store of value and a hedge against inflation.
----------------------------
It went from .0008 to .08 in 2010.  It went from 900 to 20,000 in 2017?  It's gone from 14,000 to 48,000 since the election of Biden Harris. 

That makes sense in direction but not scale. 

For comparison:
Gold Nov 3, 2020:  $1914
Gold Feb 12, 2021  $1824




ya

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1224 on: February 14, 2021, 05:17:46 PM »
 There is very little supply, < 4 million coins available, most are in cold storage. There are still 499 companies in the SP 500 that still have not added BTC to their treasury.
Looks like Taleb had a bad trading day...must have shorted and got rekt (wrecked).
« Last Edit: February 14, 2021, 05:20:15 PM by ya »

ya

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1225 on: February 14, 2021, 05:23:16 PM »
See how BTC is behaving as compared to the 2 previous halvings, the average of the two and where it is now. Pl. scroll to right.

ya

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1226 on: February 15, 2021, 09:43:11 AM »
The supply is being locked up ...internationally.


Crafty_Dog

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1227 on: February 15, 2021, 10:32:11 AM »
I'm in way over my head here.  What does that mean?

ccp

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1228 on: February 15, 2021, 01:34:58 PM »
I cannot figure out the first graph
the second one I assume shows the available supply on the exchanges had been increasing till 2020
then started dropping as people are hoarding it

and we can see the price going up in the opposite direction around 2020

 :|

ya

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1229 on: February 15, 2021, 03:14:37 PM »
Both the charts are related. My explanation powers are not the greatest..

In first chart: We know that BTC goes up after the halvings (every 4 years, mining reward is cut by 50 %), i.e. supply goes down 50 % and price will go up even if demand is the same. These halvings occurred in 2012, 2016 and  in May 2020. The chart shows the % increase for the 2012 post halving period (purple line), the 2016 post halving which peaked in Jan 2018 (greenish line) and the average of the two (yellow line), assuming the 2020 post-halving will behave somewhere in between the 2 halvings. We can see that the actual path being traced by the blue line post the 2020 halving, matches the yellow line so far. If this were to continue, the peak is around 200-300 K.

The second chart shows that BTC balances on exchanges are declining post 2020 halving in May. A decline in balances means that investors are withdrawing them from the exchanges for long term storage in their own private hardware wallets. When they want to sell BTC at the top, you will see that they will send their BTC's back to the exchange and the Exchange's balances will rise. This happened in 2017 and continued well after the peak in 2018, so its not a precise indicator.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2021, 03:22:58 PM by ya »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1230 on: February 15, 2021, 07:00:57 PM »
Thank you.



Crafty_Dog

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1233 on: February 18, 2021, 04:45:12 AM »
GBTC now over 50.    My first purchase was at 15 with more in the upper 20s and upper 30s.

ccp

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$100 bitcoin
« Reply #1234 on: February 18, 2021, 09:41:28 AM »
when it was 10 cents

now worth 51.8 million

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/12/how-much-youd-have-today-if-you-invested-100-in-bitcoin-in-2009.html

no one in cryptocurrency space has not thought:

"what if"



Crafty_Dog

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Could someone explain this please?
« Reply #1235 on: February 18, 2021, 11:46:09 AM »
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/here-we-go-again-zoltan-warns-repo-market-verge-major-shock-key-funding-rate-turns-negative?utm_campaign=&utm_content=Zerohedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter

This just in from Scott Grannis:


Seems like there is a simple solution to this problem: the Fed is going to have to lift its cap on access to the overnight RRP facility.

It’s fallout from Congress’ insane desire to send out huge checks to just about everyone. People’s desire to hold onto ever-increasing amounts of cash is limited, and the financial market’s ability to “warehouse” all that cash is limited as well, unless the Fed uncaps the RRP facility.

The real problem comes if people decide that they are simply holding way too much cash relative to their incomes and decide to reduce their cash balances. Everyone can’t do that at once, because the cash can’t just disappear from the system if the Fed doesn’t start draining cash (i.e., reversing its QE efforts). Without Fed draining cash, the market’s attempt to reduce total cash can only happen if nominal GDP (i.e., incomes) surges, which in turn means a huge increase in the price level (ie, inflation goes way up).
« Last Edit: February 18, 2021, 03:05:18 PM by Crafty_Dog »

G M

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From the CEO of Gab.com
« Reply #1236 on: February 18, 2021, 07:32:57 PM »
The problem with the American Populist movement is that it was centralized.

Centralized movements give the enemy a central attack vector to target and overcome. One man, who took on the weight of the world, became the sole focus of both the enemy and of the American Populist movement itself for over five years.

The oligarchs removed that one man from the entire internet, then they removed him from office. Everyone knows this, we all watched it happen. What no one has clearly defined is where American Populism goes from here.

The oligarchs believe that they have destroyed American Populism by rigging an election, removing the movement’s leader from public view, and by forcing everyone to stay locked inside for a year while the country burns down around us all.

They think they have won and want to define “New Normal” under their rule as they consolidate power. What they don’t realize is that they have recruited tens of millions of Americans to the side of reason, light, and Truth. Many millions of these people didn’t even vote for Donald Trump, but they recognize what is happening to our country and want to stop it.

Over the course of the past year I’ve seen comments across the internet become increasingly “red pilled” and aware of the Big Lies being pushed by the corporate media and frauds in government. It turns out that keeping people locked inside on the internet for an entire year ends up illuminating a lot of minds.

The People are learning what the real problem is: the globalist oligarchs. Not any one politician. Not this political party or that one. The entire system is corrupt. Banks, tech companies, media companies, schools, government, and on and on.

We must exit this broken and failing system and start building a new one immediately. We are not revolutionaries. We are not violent. We are reformers. We are builders. When we up and leave the existing system in favor of our own the existing system will crumble without us lifting a finger.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”― Buckminster Fuller

The way around centralized problems in the movement is to decentralize American Populism at the local level. In order to take our country back and move forward with the American Populist movement we must first take our local communities back. Here are several examples of this happening across the country:

Big Tech’s Unlikely Next Battleground: North Dakota

Montana Bill Would Designate Antifa as Domestic Terrorism

Florida restaurant goes viral for ‘face diapers not required’ mask policy

We must build our own economy. Here's how.

Pull your positions out of their useless stock market and buy bitcoin, gold, silver, food stores, and ammo. Bitcoin is free speech money. Learn what it is and how to use it. Now.

National elections are a big distraction. Members of Congress are bought and sold like cattle by the oligarchs, foreign nations, and whoever has the money. Instead center your focus on getting American Populists and Christian men and women elected mayor, to state legislatures, as judges, on school boards, etc.

Cut the cable cord. That includes both Fox and CNN. Do not watch it. Do something else with your time and money. Support alternative media outlets and individuals. Get that garbage marxist indoctrination content machine our of your home and away from your family.

Exit the Big Tech mind prison. Join Gab.

If your church has gone “woke,” leave. We have room for only one Gospel in Christian churches and that’s the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Not the imitation false gospel of “social justice.”

Leave Big Banks for local community banks.

Start supporting small local shops.

Create pro-family, pro-business, and pro-law and order policies for your local area. We can’t control DC, but we can control what happens in our backyards.

Pull your kids out of public schools where their minds are being molded at the altar of marxism. Do everything and anything you can to homeschool or attend Christian private schools or online schooling programs.

Pay attention to the brands you buy and support. Check out their websites and marketing. If they are “woke,” stop giving them your money. Period.

We must also work to unite American Populists on the left and the right. What unites the left and right wing populists, and Americans in general, is Jesus Christ.

The trasnhumanist nihilists and their technocracy are offering nothing of spiritual value. The Gospel Message of Jesus Christ, and that of American Populism, is one of redemption, hope, love, dominion, sovereignty, freedom and forgiveness. None of these things are possible with critical theory or woke consumer crony capitalism paired with a corporate techno tyranny.

What are you waiting for?

Let’s get to work, we have a new economy to build.

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King

ya

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1237 on: February 19, 2021, 03:55:31 AM »
Here's a simplified chart of the above. Horizontal lines are the proposed limits based on various models. Nothing is guaranteed, ofcourse. IMHO, 100K is 95 % probable, 200K 50 % probability based on what I am seeing.

ccp

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1238 on: February 19, 2021, 04:34:57 AM »
If it does perform as hoped

the capital gains tax under the Democrats would drastically cut into the overall gains by a good chunk

We need to win back power
and bring and keep the gains tax  at reasonable (not punitive theft) levels



To just think of all the reparations ,  wind mills
 and turning states into solar panel glaciers ,  teachers unions pay increases, and the rest of  their ENDLESS pet projects ............. paid for by every conceivable way to squeeze every dollar out of us they can

ya

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1239 on: February 20, 2021, 06:11:30 AM »
No, not necessarily. There are several companies now that allow you to borrow money at (6-10 %) against your BTC. You keep ownership, no sales, no capital tax. Unchained Capital charges 10 % or so, but you keep ownership (multisig), whereas Blockfi charges less interest, but rehypothecates (less safe). If one assumes that BTC is still going up 200-300 % per year, this is a great way to live off BTC without selling any.

ccp

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1240 on: February 20, 2021, 07:05:20 AM »
with regard to chart
it seems that after halving

in '12 and '16 and 5/20
the price has been going up for about 13 to 19 months then dips

so we are looking at June to December for a dip if the pattern holds
  the nadir will be ~ 31 months or Dec January 22/23

any one care to trade though?
risky
and then one sells and then buys back lower
it incurs gains tax for the profit from the sell for that yr.

OTOH the dark blue ('12-20) target was 100 K and the chart shows it reached 200 K
which is clearly far from reality
so not sure how to interpret the chart

ya

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1241 on: February 20, 2021, 08:35:48 AM »
Past performance does not predict future results  :-D, due to changes in the market structure namely arrival of institutions, the drawdowns after the bull peak are not likely to be 85 % as before**. In the previous 2 bull markets, the corrections were severe because these runs were due to retail traders.

With the arrival of institutions and big money, the corrections have been only 30 % or less in this bull cycle. I expect at most a 50 % correction from the peak.

The graph below tries to compare the % gains after the halving in the 3rd cycle (ongoing) as compared to earlier cycles, using a common scale.

** If you believe you will get a deep draw down, some rich hodlers are planning to sell at the perceived peak, buy a used ferrari that will retain value, use it for a year or so and sell it to buy back BTC at the nadir.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2021, 09:04:44 AM by ya »


ya

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1243 on: February 20, 2021, 01:42:42 PM »
Your meme is incomplete, #7 is BTC

ccp

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1244 on: February 20, 2021, 03:27:04 PM »
Ya

what do you think of ethereum?

the second largest crypto.

I have some of that

ccp

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The cult of national debt is no big deal
« Reply #1245 on: February 20, 2021, 04:27:35 PM »
just print more money

be happy

https://www.cfo.com/the-economy/2018/11/the-federal-government-does-not-need-revenue/

if bitcoin is a cult so is the concept we can keep paying interest
 for a debt for centuries and keep printing money
 is
funny how this thinking all comes to the fore just in time
for gigantic democrat partisan spending

did not hear about the new cultist theory  during Trump presidency


G M

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Re: The cult of national debt is no big deal
« Reply #1246 on: February 20, 2021, 04:37:16 PM »
If they can just print more money, then no need to tax us anymore, right?


just print more money

be happy

https://www.cfo.com/the-economy/2018/11/the-federal-government-does-not-need-revenue/

if bitcoin is a cult so is the concept we can keep paying interest
 for a debt for centuries and keep printing money
 is
funny how this thinking all comes to the fore just in time
for gigantic democrat partisan spending

did not hear about the new cultist theory  during Trump presidency

ya

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1247 on: February 20, 2021, 06:26:38 PM »
ETH is a good trade and it has its supporters. Bitcoin maximalists, people who did some of the early work for BTC and who interacted with satoshi, so called cypherpunks dont think much of it. They think it cannot scale and it is impossible to audit how many coins there are. Another negative is the supposedly 70 % premine of coins by the Vitalik Buterin and other developers for themselves. There was no premine by Satoshi and every coin can be counted. ETH is centralized to some extent as the developers exercise a lot of control. Having said that, it is a useful coin, but is not likely to become a store of value or a currency like BTC. The standard advise when holding altcoins is to use profits from their rapid price appreciation to buy BTC. ETH is also popular because of the smaller unit of acct, these days around 2000$ for a coin vs 56000$ for BTC.

Another tip while looking at altcoins is to plot a long term chart  in ETH/BTC as opposed to ETH/USD. This can be revealing.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2021, 06:36:21 PM by ya »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1248 on: February 20, 2021, 07:00:14 PM »
ccp:

That article left me befuddled!

DougMacG

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Re: Money, the Fed, Banking, Monetary Policy, Dollar, bitcoin, crypto, Gold/Silver
« Reply #1249 on: February 21, 2021, 02:59:39 AM »
ccp:
That article left me befuddled!

Sort of the anti- economics, xenier of economics viewpoint.

From the article
"Kelton said that what she’s trying to do is “get us to the point where we can open a nice bottle of wine, read the headline that the national debt is at an all-time high, and feel at peace with the world. Because there is no reason to panic.”

 - I don't know, does a frog in a pan of heating water have reason to panic?

Us there any example in history of a prisperous economy without a stable currenxy?

What is the check on unlimited spending if not for pursuit of a balanced budget?

Massive deficits are giant stimuli? A misreading of fiction written by Keynes.

The more government spending the better is misses something. The spending IS a tax, the removal of resources from the productive economy.