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Outcast_Searcher wrote:

Armageddon wrote:

theluckycountry wrote:

Armageddon wrote:I doubled my money in Shib. Then I put in 10k in Saitama, and once it dumped last night, I traded all my Shib for it. I now have 300 billion Saitama’s. I think it explode once they announce the new Saitamask in 2 weeks. Plus, a few big exchanges are supposed to start carrying it.

Looks like you bought at the very top! Bad luck. But that's the nature of memes isn't it, viral one day, in the dust bin the next.

I keep buying the dips and lowering my cost average.

Given the quality of your overall financial advice (re market predictions) on this site the past 15ish years, no doubt, you'll be a trillionaire next week.

At least a rational person would admit such trading is wild speculation in hopes they get lucky. Why not just buy lottery tickets or do casino gambling? Oh right, you have to tell yourself you're "investing", and so that makes it "wise".

Sure.

...

Meanwhile, LOTS of newbie investors are still chasing the AMC meme, "HODL"ing away.

And when that company predictably goes bust in a couple-fewish years, they'll have even more conspiracy theories to blame their losses on, vs. admitting they were greedy or enjoyed gambling.

And if people with 5th grade math skills point out in the comments of such Youtube pumping videos that the oft-claimed target short price the AMC Youtube pumpers of $100,000 a share like to tout would make AMC's value (market capitalization) more than that of ALL the US stock markets as of 9/30/21, the newbie AMC "investors" generally respond that they're part of a hedge fund conspiracy, etc.

Yeah, no self-delusion there.

You mean my financial advise from a decade ago that said they’ll be printing trillions indefinitely and saw the debt go from 5T to 30T. Looks like I was pretty spot on. Here’s more advise, we haven’t seen anything yet.

Armageddon wrote:
You mean my financial advise from a decade ago that said they’ll be printing trillions indefinitely and saw the debt go from 5T to 30T. Looks like I was pretty spot on. Here’s more advise, we haven’t seen anything yet.

First, you can't even tell advice from advise. So much wisdom.

Second, how's your frequent predictions of stock market crashes, hyperinflation / the dollar going to zero, gold going to the moon, and on and on going?

You're an awesome cherry picker, over time, re claiming your predictions are accurate. But that's ALL the credit you get.

Outcast_Searcher wrote:

Armageddon wrote:
You mean my financial advise from a decade ago that said they’ll be printing trillions indefinitely and saw the debt go from 5T to 30T. Looks like I was pretty spot on. Here’s more advise, we haven’t seen anything yet.

First, you can't even tell advice from advise. So much wisdom.

Second, how's your frequent predictions of stock market crashes, hyperinflation / the dollar going to zero, gold going to the moon, and on and on going?

You're an awesome cherry picker, over time, re claiming your predictions are accurate. But that's ALL the credit you get.

Inflation is rampant, you really going to argue that one? Stock market? I’ve been saying for several years that the stock won’t crash because of the trillions of stimulus. Where else will it go? Try to keep up.

Armageddon wrote:If you can’t handle a 20% dump, then you don’t deserve a 200% pump.

Well I guess it's the difference between the gambler and the non-gambler mindset. I have never, aside from a few casino and dog-track visits in my youth, gambled with my money, it takes too much of your life to make. I can see the allure of these style of investments but I just don't have the stomach for them. I don't even like the share markets, though the junior gold miners I make an exception with and that's a form of gambling I suppose.

I saw an article on CNBC that reminds me of how crazy the crypto space is, in terms of the blind optimism and massive assumptions the bulls are making (and the pumpers who have something to sell, including ads on youtube are pushing).

So now, investors have driven up virtual real estate in the metaverse to pretty amazing levels, IMO.

Yorio tells CNBC her company sold 100 virtual private islands last year for $15,000 each. “Today, they’re selling for about $300,000 each, which is coincidentally the same as the average home price in America,” she said.

(Red font mine, for emphasis).

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/12/investo ... =metaverse

So a 2000% inflation rate on virtual private islands. What could possibly go wrong?

Remembering that:

1). None of this is real. It's all stuff under development. At this point it's mostly marketing and dreaming and lots of hopium.

2). None of this is real. You can shop and meet and go to virtual concerts, etc. if the metaverse works out (well, not you, but your avatar) -- which you can ALREADY do on the internet WITHOUT buying some pixels for $300,000. If I want to fool around with avatars, I've been able to do that for several decades now in these things called video games. It's fun. Of course, the games I play cost more like $5 or $50 than $300,000, so there's that. And I OWN them and the DVD they came on, so I can play them all I want on my computers and no one can take that ability away from me on a whim, so there's that too.

3). None of this is real. But what could go wrong? People are paying big money for NFT's too -- which are just a bunch of pixels. So this MUST be a wise investment, because, hey, who doesn't want a private island?

4). None of this is real. There could be an INFINITE number of such virtual worlds (it's all just data/code). Who is to say which ones become popular? Which ones are run by hucksters who just take the money and run, or just don't put much effort into it, etc?

5). None of this is real. Much of this recent excitement re the metaverse is from (you can't make this stuff up) Facebook changing its name to "Meta" and claiming it's all in on the metaverse. This, from a compnay run by a guy who is widely mistrusted and has been proven to be a bad actor in a variety of cases. Again, what could possibly go wrong?

6). Re the infinite supply concept, this is just like crypto-currencies. No one can say whether the big ones today like BTC or Etherium will be the leaders down the road. Or worth $millions per coin or worth nearly zero (hope springs eternal, and they might not go to zero in our lifetime, even if they get close to that for lack of interest, re people flocking to the next new virtual thing, etc).

...

Home prices (i.e. real physical houses -- that I feel the need to clarify that is telling, IMO) can drop of course, and homes need to be maintained and you need to pay taxes on them, etc. But you can actually LIVE in them for decades, so there's that. And they have a VERY good track record of roughly appreciating with inflation, over time, if you take reasonable care of them. No such history exists for groups of pixels that look like X in an imaginary space called Y on the internet.

I feel roughly a million times more comfortable holding a house or three in a good area, or a well run geographically diversified Apartment REIT like AVB or a good diversified REIT ETF like VNQ than I would holding any sort of collection of metaverse pixels, for $hundreds of thousands. If that makes me a coward, I can absolutely live with that.

...

Look, as always, I could be dead wrong on this. But as this goes on, I think the cautionary tales of wise folks like Warren Buffett, and the history of manias and crashes in financial speculation looks like something worth at least considering.

Crypto popped a little today, likely on the inflation news since crypto is supposed to be a panacea for inflation, but OTOH, the pumpers had BTC anywhere from $100,000 to $300,000 by the end of last year, and here we are with it at $43,000 after popping. And I used to regret the volatility of the stock market which long term investors have to endure.

Good luck to all.

If BTC gets back down to the $10,000 area (where it spent a lot of 2020), I'll be willing to take another look, re all the facts on the ground at that point...

Your arguments about virtual real estate and NFTs sound very convincing and pretty much what I thought straight away when I read about them. What I don't understand is: what are the buyers thinking? I assume they are mostly people with lots of money to burn that for some reason think that a particular piece of virtual estate might appreciate considerably. Does anyone have any more insight on what's in their minds?

Outcast_Searcher wrote:Look, as always, I could be dead wrong on this. But as this goes on, I think the cautionary tales of wise folks like Warren Buffett, and the history of manias and crashes in financial speculation looks like something worth at least considering.

The virtual certainly make money for those along the way, and as long as you're not the bag hodler when the music stops... The simple fact is, it's all based on lies. The current hodlers perpetuate the tropes in their efforts to drum up support and push the price higher. This is so obvious at places like r/dogecoin where they post meme after meme and badger everyone to HODL! As long as we all hodl nothing can go wrong, an amazing level of delusion

We are living in the final stages of arguably a 300+ year debt super-cycle. That is evidenced by a) the levels of debt, and b) the global interest rates, which are the lowest in recorded history.

Add to that the fact we are bumping up against the limits to growth and you have a planet on the verge of imploding. The key to any debt cycle is the eradication of the debt at it's end so that a new cycle can start. Debt in such cases is cleared by bankruptcy, by banks and governments stealing the encumbered assets back off the people. Land and factories are stolen by banks and money is stolen by governments. In the great depression the bank of America grew rich on foreclosures and the federal government replenished it's fortunes by stealing the (money) gold back off the citizens.

What will a flash drive full of bitcoin or a virtual island be worth under a future central bank digital currency scheme? Not much I would wager, not after people see most of their digital bank accounts and pension holdings vanish into thin air. No one will want to buy bitcoin then, nor will anyone want to trade real world items for it. It will be regarded as just another piece of the fiscal madness that was the early 21st century.

theluckycountry wrote:What will a flash drive full of bitcoin or a virtual island be worth under a future central bank digital currency scheme? Not much I would wager, not after people see most of their digital bank accounts and pension holdings vanish into thin air. No one will want to buy bitcoin then, nor will anyone want to trade real world items for it. It will be regarded as just another piece of the fiscal madness that was the early 21st century.

I understand all the debt is an issue, though I don't agree all is lost real soon now re the system imploding, as the usual purveyors of fast crash doom have been claiming since the 70's.

For one thing, if inflation continues hot, then just like the 60's through the early 80's, a HELL of a lot of the debt is made worth MUCH less in real terms. And with interest rates very low, the inflation might even keep up with the real value of the debt for a long time, depending on how poor fiscal policy is. It's ironic -- but if the population puts up with having their dollars systematically devalued significantly for a decade or three -- that rescues the system for a number of decades as a side effect. If inflation from the Covid stress doesn't calm down a lot later this year (as many "experts" still claim it will), we're potentially heading right into that, as they won't want to raise interest rates enough to tame inflation the old fashioned way any time soon, IMO.

But re the "central bank digital currency scheme", what does that matter?

1). A HUGE proportion of first world transactions are all handled digitally, already. Between credit cards, ACH (automated clearing house) transactions between financial institutions, automatic electronic bill paying (not even needing checks any more for the vast majority of cases), etc. -- except for poor people who can't afford the fees to have a small bank account and those who don't trust banks, we don't even NEED cash anymore. (Oh, and it's ILLEGAL to use cash for many large transactions, to combat the whole money laundering issue. So you can't open a brokerage account with a briefcase full of cash for example (I was in my broker's office trading on a terminal in the 80's when I saw someone try to do just that, and my broker have to explain he simply couldn't legally accept cash) -- so this is far from new.

2). China is rapidly into deploying a virtual Yuan. The US is working on a Fedcoin, re research / studies. As long as an official government crypto-currency is based on their fiat official currency of course, that doesn't really change things -- the system is still running on fiat currency.

3). If some official evil force wants to make all the money go away in a flash while twisting their mustache -- the system is 99.9% or so digital already -- so all they have to do is go after the data system and the rules and wala, mission accomplished. No crypto necessary.

What I'm talking about is the potential for the masses to, at some point, wake up and smell the coffee, when a popular crypto coin costs what a new car costs, and all you really have is a number and hope that other people want that number a lot more in the future. Or a collection of bits forming a picture or a virtual place is worth as much as a nice real physical house -- and such pictures are inflating at roughly 2000 percent a year, in the hopes they'll keep appreciating. If the masses / crypto speculators just realize such things are ludicrous and tulip-bubble like, the demand goes away and the prices implode -- just market forces via normal supply and demand. (The pumpers will try to stop it of course, but news on the internet travels fast, and they can't stop people on the internet from talking to each other electronically).

So I don't think the financial markets re the rampant speculation in some areas waking up for this cycle needs to coincide with the system rapidly imploding overall. Just as it hasn't since the great depression, though it's been quite ugly a few cycles.

But of course, we can't know the future, so time will tell.

Outcast_Searcher wrote:
What I'm talking about is the potential for the masses to, at some point, wake up ... If the masses / crypto speculators just realize such things are ludicrous and tulip-bubble like, the demand goes away and the prices implode --

I agree totally. The gains are too extreme to be sustainable. Like Silver at its 2011 $48 bubble top, like the IT stocks, like the rare earths run up, like anything in history aside from unique irreplaceable art works or such like. Virtual is doomed by virtue of its success.

So I don't think the financial markets re the rampant speculation in some areas waking up for this cycle needs to coincide with the system rapidly imploding overall. Just as it hasn't since the great depression, though it's been quite ugly a few cycles.
But of course, we can't know the future, so time will tell.

We don't need a crystal ball in most cases. We know debt is beyond repayment now, there is no way to pay back all the money owed to the global banks and the situation gets worse every year. While consumer debt has increased at a slower pace since covid began, government debt has skyrocketed.

This is no accident. Our system requires interest to be repaid, else default is legally required, and to pay the interest we need to increase the money supply, via more debt, so the money is there to pay the interest. It's why the US borrows so much every year now, a large chunk of that borrowing is simply to pay the interest on the old borrowing. It's a total Ponzi!

Congress raises the debt ceiling every time because it's baked in the cake.
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/rep ... xpense.htm

The interest repayments are over half a trillion now, and it would be a hell of a lot higher if interest rates hadn't been lowered to such emergency levels. All this is/was planned of course. The banks don't want default, they want an endless cash cow, but default will come, you can't push on a string and make the end move.

US interest repayments/Year

2021 $562,388,232,682.17
2020 $522,767,299,265.34
2019 $574,587,783,463.63
2018 $523,017,301,446.12
2017 $458,542,287,311.80
2016 $432,649,652,901.12
2015 $402,435,356,075.49
2014 $430,812,121,372.05
2013 $415,688,781,248.40
2012 $359,796,008,919.49
2011 $454,393,280,417.03
2010 $413,954,825,362.17
2009 $383,071,060,815.42
2008 $451,154,049,950.63
2007 $429,977,998,108.20
2006 $405,872,109,315.83
2005 $352,350,252,507.90
2004 $321,566,323,971.29
2003 $318,148,529,151.51
2002 $332,536,958,599.42
2001 $359,507,635,242.41
2000 $361,997,734,302.36
1999 $353,511,471,722.87
1998 $363,823,722,920.26
1997 $355,795,834,214.66
1996 $343,955,076,695.15
1995 $332,413,555,030.62
1994 $296,277,764,246.26
1993 $292,502,219,484.25
1992 $292,361,073,070.74
1991 $286,021,921,181.04
1990 $264,852,544,615.90
1989 $240,863,231,535.71
1988 $214,145,028,847.73

The banks don't want default, they want an endless cash cow, but default will come

But if the interest rates remain so low, or even they go into negative interest rates, then there may never be a default.

Doly wrote:

The banks don't want default, they want an endless cash cow, but default will come

But if the interest rates remain so low, or even they go into negative interest rates, then there may never be a default.

Yes, there may never be a default. Currency devaluation and price inflation will simply keep going until those trillions become pocket change. Why would there be a default when we can continue to create new money indefinitely?

The US Dollar has already lost 99% of its value since it was invented. I expect the US Dollar to lose 99%+ of its remaining value in the future. It's only a matter of when, not if.

Buying bitcoin and eth for me is a way to save without blowing my money on stupid stuff. If Bitcoin closes the weekly below 39500 we are in big trouble people.

billybell wrote:Buying bitcoin and eth for me is a way to save without blowing my money on stupid stuff. If Bitcoin closes the weekly below 39500 we are in big trouble people.

Who might "we" be? I don't invest anything in money stored on a computer somewhere, worth...something....with no tangible asset underpinning it that I can see (as opposed to real estate, autos, guns and ammo, etc etc) and therefore no reason that someone can just make it disappear as quick as it was imagined into existence.

So, with no involvement in this type of currency/Monopoly money, why am I in big trouble?

Buying bitcoin and eth for me is a way to save without blowing my money on stupid stuff.

Isn't bitcoin too volatile to call it a way of saving?

Doly wrote:

Buying bitcoin and eth for me is a way to save without blowing my money on stupid stuff.

Isn't bitcoin too volatile to call it a way of saving?

It depends, savings is different than trading. Pull up a bitcoin chart and pick ANY two points separated by 4 years and check out the difference in price. I'll wait, BTW BTC started in 2008.

If you can find ANY example, where the price has NOT significantly gained in price, I will quit crypto (with a HUGE profit). My first purchase of Bitcoin was 14 May 2014.

Peace

AdamB wrote:
Who might "we" be? I don't invest anything in money stored on a computer somewhere, worth...something....with no tangible asset underpinning it that I can see (as opposed to real estate, autos, guns and ammo, etc etc) and therefore no reason that someone can just make it disappear as quick as it was imagined into existence.

Really??? So you don't use the dollar?? Interesting.

Peace

careinke wrote:

AdamB wrote:
Who might "we" be? I don't invest anything in money stored on a computer somewhere, worth...something....with no tangible asset underpinning it that I can see (as opposed to real estate, autos, guns and ammo, etc etc) and therefore no reason that someone can just make it disappear as quick as it was imagined into existence.

Really??? So you don't use the dollar?? Interesting.

Peace

I use currency, like paper in my hand and whatnot. If you are implying that a dollar in the hand is no different than a bitcoin of some sort worth a dollar, I would venture that some folks coming to clear junk out of my garage this afternoon will certainly take handfuls of the one I am paying them with, but not the other. If the argument is that all currency is just belief in the system, I can see that angle. I'm probably just too old to take "lets make something up and call it money" seriously, even if it appears to be...as long as some people believe it, it is worth something to another believer? In which case, there are probably more believers in cash in hand then someone waving their computer around bragging about the gazillion dollars in value it contains. Because if they want to pay me with it, the first thing I'll ask for is them to convert it into currency and handing me that instead.

JuanP wrote:Why would there be a default when we can continue to create new money indefinitely?

Many said the same about the great depression, they blamed it on a 'mistake' by the Federal Reserve. What everyone assumes is that these top bankers and their agents in government are thinking about us, our needs. But since when have the Uber rich ever cared about anything but their own wealth and power?

When the economy gets to a state where the average person simply can't borrow any longer, that is the trigger point for a collapse, a recession /depression. At that point the banks write of the loans they created and go out and claim the assets that have been defaulted on. The farms, the factories, the houses. Every civilization has dabbled in currency devaluation and endless debt expansion, the end result is always the same.

If they were alive my grandparents would laugh at what is happening today, they saw it all happen before.

The "going direct reset" is going mainstream now.

The Fed laid out a list of pros and cons associated with adopting a CBDC, but did not come to any formal conclusion on doing so. The move comes as countries like China press forward...

“The introduction of a CBDC would represent a highly significant innovation in American money,” the Fed wrote in the paper.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-unve ... 32748.html

So what are we talking about? The replacement of cash on the street in favor of digital money. In other words any vestige of control you may have had will be gone. The CB which in America is a privately owned corporation, will have total control over your day to day spending. Eventually it will encompass all bank transactions but when it comes in your every purchase will be tracked, for taxation purposes among other reasons.