Thursday, January 25, 2018

Whatever Dudes.

The War On Bitcoin Is Proof Crypto Is Winning.

"What becomes immediately obvious is that governments and the banking industry/cartel are fighting a war of attrition against cryptocurrencies. By consistently throwing up roadblocks, perceived or real, to their adoption, they seek to simply slow down their development as a challenge to the existing financial order."

These crypto guys have literally lost their minds.

Every third article I read today is about people freaking out about the weaker dollar. It's down 8 cents. Yet bitcoin swings only about a thousand dollars a day now.

That is why it is not a currency. Never will be a currency. No matter what kind of illuminati conspiracy you come up with. Can you imagine if the dollar was cut in half in value? Or swung wildly from day to day. The world would literally be on fire.

4 comments:

  1. This isn't actually about "a challenge to the existing financial order" ...

    This is about price discovery and how it's essentially broken when you have some of the world's most ignorant investors managing to make absurd profits, mostly because of the activities of some of the world's other most ignorant investors.

    This came from a conversation a few days ago: "How exactly do you join the competition for the world's dumbest asset class?"

    As far as I can tell, Bitcoin is a mutual fund that's been monetized by some of the world's most ignorant investors, if not outright the world's dumbest and most incompetent investors.

    That said, it has utility value as a means of transferring value, and so now the competition continues between the people who are making so-called "crypto-currencies" the world's most stupid asset class and those who can use them on short-term speculations because of their utility.

    The latter group is a lot more savvy, and they're going to win this competition eventually, but that doesn't mean we won't hear a lot of sound and fury from some of the dumbest investors on the planet.

    Mark Mobius was on Bloomberg a while ago, talking about how his "retirement" from Templeton Investments isn't actually a retirement because he's still going to invest. When the Bloomberg interviewer asked him what he'd do with $100, instead of telling him to come back with some real money (grin), he actually answered the question in terms of percentages of allocation.

    20% cash, 30% emerging markets, 30% commodities -- no mention of "crypto-currencies" at all, in fact, and I think he's spot on. The gains that are available in Vietnam alone are a better source of investment success without the risk of having to trade in the world's dumbest asset class, and China's finally coming along with a "vast improvement in governance" that makes Chinese investment a lot more interesting.

    As for those Chinese you mentioned who were talking smack about Intel, they're essentially right: Itanium was a huge flop, AMD re-imagined the CPU platform as AMD64, and Intel had to play follow-the-real-leader to get back in the game after the "Itanic" sunk. I'd go all-in with AMD hardware if it weren't for the fact that macOS X VMs won't work properly on AMD CPUs, and the stuff here that's the best value for money is based on AMD CPUs.

    PC CPUs are essentially American, mobile CPUs are essentially British, SIM cards and smart cards are essentially European, mostly French and partly German. RAM memory is essentially Japanese and American (hence why the specs are almost all JEDEC), as are the stepper motors and mechanical systems for magnetic disk drives, despite wherever they're manufactured.

    Right now all China has managed is that they're a really cheap and competent systems integrator and manufacturing base for everyone else's tech, but that will change.

    Given that single-country or single-region dominance is not only possible but also inevitable for certain market spaces, what's China's contribution to worldwide computing going to be?

    Whatever that's going to look like, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to invest in than Bitcoin, and it's very much the opposite of sticking money in the world's dumbest asset class.

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  2. "This isn't actually about "a challenge to the existing financial order" ..."

    But...... isn't it really? That's the impression I get from everyone who talks about it. Sort of reminds me of right when the housing collapse was happening everyone got this bright idea that if the banks couldn't find the title to your house - you didn't owe any more money on it. People get these fallacies into their heads and the crowd reinforces it. And it always winds up with them losing all of their shit.

    Some ovens are too hot to touch, and that is one of them. I'd rather not make money than risk that kind of downdraft. And I just sort of feel like the predators of Silicon Valley have tricked people into thinking this is something real while they are walking away with all their cash. AGAIN. It's really depressing how Silicon Valley has turned into a predator economy. It never used to be this way. Where the predators are forcing the government to be more predatory. It's disgusting.

    Regarding Intel, That feeling must be pretty pervasive for them to be so open about it. Those are the kinds of things you say in small groups. Not to hundreds of people. And especially not right in Intels back yard. Less than a mile from the Intel campus. Made me want to check out a few more of those conferences where no one speaks English and you have to use headphones for translation. It was the first time I'd ever been to one of those. Now I want to know how they really feel.

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  3. Capital of Texas RefugeeFriday, January 26, 2018 9:19:00 PM

    Some day if you want to follow the "predator economy" thought a bit more, I'll add some of my model for that in the comments if I have the time at that point. I'm going to start moving soon, and that will take up a bit of time, but I'll still check by as usual, meaning that comments might be delayed by a few days.

    But I'll give you a clue: Silicon Valley is so predatory that they've actually broken price discovery in the IT and engineering labor market. They've actually created moderate backwardation in a labor market that should be showing signs of either contango or outright price increases. I know it's odd to think of the "carry trade" in terms of Silicon Valley IT labor, but there is one and it's highly predatory.

    If some of these people crash out because of "crypto-currency" investment silliness, that's more than OK with me.

    Like I said, the more savvy speculators are already on the way.

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  4. I'm not sure what that means, but I'm curious for sure.

    Hope your move goes okay and you don't screw up your back.

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