dgul
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Posts posted by dgul
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11 hours ago, dugsbody said:
Why would you sell something that is going to replace fiat currency?
IMO it is a bit like collecting Conch shells. Bitcoin is the right sort of idea -- I'm do consider that a cryptocurrency might gain real traction in many currency uses. But I don't believe it will be Bitcoin. To have such faith in a single example is, IMO, a bit odd*. It might be the 'first one', but that isn't the hallmark of success.
Frankly, I believe that there will be a generally successful crypto, but it hasn't actually been released yet.
[* if you consider that its value is all in the belief that it will be successful. If it isn't successful then its value will be zero. There isn't really a middle ground.]
[I believe that crypto is a bit like the gold-rush (plenty of examples). People are making 'life-gambles' based on its success. IMO in the end there will be some wealth generated and some people will become seriously wealthy. But at the same time most people will be lucky to come away with a modest return, and a considerable number of people will be ruined. IMO the route to guaranteed success isn't to speculate or mine, but to be the 'shopkeeper selling the pans'.]
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1 minute ago, adamLancs said:
This time last year Bitcoin wasn't even on UBS radar, I know this first hand. It has caught nearly every bank by surprise and only this year have they begun to wake from their spoon-fed slumber. Bankers are incredibly myopic. They are so far behind the curve on this you would not believe, they are still scratching their heads and don't understand what it's all about.
They don't understand the price.
They don't understand why big BTC holders are holding.
They don't understand how to use Bitcoin and need people and businesses to hold their hand.
They don't understand how their jobs are on the line if they don't take advantage and skill up quickly.
They don't understand the wider crypto economy and the parallels to the dot-com and internet boom.
A few of them understand that crypto is here to stay despite price fluctuations, but they don't understand that trying to pick the top is like trying to pick the bottom and that's what monkeys do.
And they never saw the film The Mist, they don't realise a portal to another world has been opened and they are about to be eaten by giant Arachnid-like creatures from another realm.
Let's face it, bankers had it good for loooong time. As long as there was money there were bankers. Yet, no need for bankers now. Hard to get your head around, doesn't mean it's wrong. All this will play out over the next 5-10 years, not overnight. But it's happening. This is so painful for them to watch, SO SO painful. They crave large amounts of money, it is like being a bee in a goldfish bowl next to a jar of honey. To get to the honey they have to leave the goldfish bowl, but it has been SO good to them. They get fed daily by TPTB and they can shit where they like and nobody asks questions. They've had it good. They've had it GOOD. Til now.
And you think this? That the world will move to mining farms in China and making new billionaires from nothing?
I think it far far more likely that the bankers will set up a new crypto, make it so that you can't get in/out of others easily and set up a few nice portals. Then they'll win again.
Your frustration with the current system won't be the thing that makes for a revolution.
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Just now, evetsm said:
It takes at least 3 days to transact cross borders in a bank and a failry large percentage of that in fees and forex slippages. What are you griping about 30 minutes or less and a flat $20 for any amount with bitcoin ? And the paperwork to make a bank transfer ? With bitcoin you can walk across the border with your entire net worth memorized in your head. You can make a transaction in one second by scanning a code, without any paperwork. Your verification is all in your crypto signature.
Bitcoin is not a store of value "because it's going up" ?! Strange. You would rather store your value in fiat which is always going down , that's steadily lost over 80% since 1980.
I agree gold is good, but gold cannot go through the internet and storage and transportation costs are high. Also, do you know how much tungsten plated gold is out there ? Nobody does.
The lightning network bolted to bitcoin will make millions of transactions per second(visa makes max 4000 txns/sec) , and it's out there in beta already.
$20 per transaction for iron cast security, a 99.9999% uptime network since inception and peace of mind is cheap.
A 'store of value' is one which has a really, really high chance of giving you your money back. If I'm doing 'store of value' I want to get my money back. Otherwise I'll invest or speculate or something.
Crypto just doesn't have this 'store of value'. It has a track record of a few years, and in those years quite a bit of the time it's looked like a speculative punt on a dream of the future. It might pay out, might not -- but it isn't a store of value.
I'd agree that fiat isn't either. But I've never argued that it is.
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53 minutes ago, evetsm said:
All the other crypto with more or equal the security and trustlessness of bitcoin ? None. Zero.
In a world of collapsing fiat, asset forfeiture, markets in turmoil and global $1.5 Quadrillion debt, security and not having to trust others with your money is paramount. A $20 transaction to secure your savings is dirt cheap.
I'd agree with all the points other than 'which other crypto can equal' part. Answer -- the next one. or the one after that. The idea the Bitcoin 'is the one' is just faith.
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18 minutes ago, adamLancs said:
Yes. And yes it is, hence I hold a balanced portfolio.
That sounds fine. So no more than about 10% in crypto. That would be quite a big punt on a single speculative asset class, but that much could give big returns.
Just remember to sell when the time comes.
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Just now, evetsm said:
All the other crypto with more or equal the security and trustlessness of bitcoin ? None. Zero.
In a world of collapsing fiat, asset forfeiture, markets in turmoil and global $1.5 Quadrillion debt, security and not having to trust others with your money is paramount. A $20 transaction to secure your savings is dirt cheap.
Thinking of putting 'savings' in currency is bonkers whatever the currency you choose. Put 'savings' in places where value can increase. Bitcoin! That's going up in value! Yes -- but it doesn't look like there's anything supporting it other than faith that it will be used for transactions in the future.
As a mechanism of transaction Bitcoin makes much more sense. It is a great way to transfer money outside of the banking system, and the volatility doesn't need to be so much of a problem. Oh, but now the transaction time and delay does make a difference. And the delay makes the volatility become a problem again. So you end up with what was a reasonable way to transact becoming something that you absolutely wouldn't use to transact.
But what about a store of value? It isn't behaving like a store of value. Sure, it is going up -- but that's not the desirable behaviour in a store-of-value. What you want is 'it will absolutely pay out in the future, about what I put in'. Gold isn't the best example, but it does have this 'gentleman's suit for an ounce' thing -- so sort-of-been-okay for 2000 years. That's a long term store of value.
Well, Bitcoin is an investment. Sure. But keep a level head. Do you really think that Bitcoin will be how many transactions will be done in the future? I don't have that faith. Not for Bitcoin.
As I've said, I think it is a speculative mania. You can make money out of such things. Many people lose everything. The mistake is always thinking you know which one you'll be.
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28 minutes ago, adamLancs said:
You see, you give yourself away a little bit there. You find buying Bitcoin absurd but I find forecasting dates absurd. Infact if you did that in the last 700 days you'd be wrong every time, whereas if you bought Bitcoin at any time in the last 3200 days you'd be quids in.
The trend is your friend. If you don't like Bitcoin there are many other options.
Pound coins and steamrollers. I've no idea when it'll stop, but being in when it does would be crippling.
I'm guessing 'by Jan 18' based on the way it is looking ATM. I'd have said similar at certain points in the past, and been wrong. I'm not going to bet the house on such a move.
[Trend is friend! That's exactly the sort of phrase that makes me cringe in fear when it comes to any investment]
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54 minutes ago, adamLancs said:
It's just that things don't happen overnight. Quoting jj, last Bitcoin bubble everything hinged on Mtgox, this time there are dozens of big exchanges. This bubble transactions are costly, sooner or later that will get fixed. Look into Lightning Network. Things take time to evolve.
You are right there is mania around the price but that doesn't negate the blockchain technology or Bitcoin's future potential as a currency. Nobody wants to spend it right because they can have 10x in 6 months. As the adoption curve slows then usage will grow and we will probably use Bitcoin/ETH/crypto payment cards as a replacement for existing debit cards... just my opinion. I don't like to go around saying I told you so either... I honestly don't know what will happen and have made some terrible trades... but there is no doubt in my mind that crypto is going to play a large role in shaping the future, and not just because of it's potential for financial transactions...
Ah, but don't conflate Bitcoin with the other stuff.
- Blockchain is useful. I'm using it already.
- Eth is a useful way to use blockchain without setting up your own whole infrastructure. That's fantastically useful.
- Lightning looks bonkers to me -- you set up a whole trust-independent, distributed, robust currency system (great), then when it doesn't work (scale) you introduce a trust component (the channel) to make it sort-of-work. That's backwards.
I absolutely think that a crypto could take over as the medium of many transactions. My problem is with Bitcoin specifically -- it doesn't have the right characteristics. Yet it is the one going stratospheric. I find this very suspicious -- hopefully it is just too much enthusiasm in some people and it'll calm down. [The problem there is that too many people are entering (and forcing up the price) based on promises of massive gains -- 10% in 12 months just wouldn't cut it for them -- and if they all jump ship, then the price will fall.] But, regardless, I fear that it is being manipulated.
Of the current crop, Eth looks most useful -- in that it actually can have a use. I'd put something in that, except that I I think Bitcoin is going to crash (I'll state before the end of Jan 18, but that's just a guess) and that it'll bring down the others with it (and hard). Then the question is which one will rise from the ashes.
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2 hours ago, adamLancs said:
That feel when you realise you're going to quoted by markyr in 5 years time...
I don't mind. What I've said is true now. I'm happy to be quoted against that statement, whenever.
Now, what I'm not going to do is, after Bitcoin is hacked and goes to zero -- in that case I won't say 'I told you so'. Because I don't believe it will go that way.
And I'm not going to claim any superiority when WWIII starts, and all hell plays out, including Bitcoin going to zero. Because I'd have better things to worry about.
But I absolutely think that Bitcoin isn't behaving like a currency, and that this is 'baked in' to this particular crypto (it has 'bad' qualities, like volatility, slow transaction speed, high costs). I'll stand by that. I also have concerns that the entire market is currently being manipulated (In a minor way since about the start of the year, and in earnest since about October). I might be wrong about that, but it does have the hallmarks of a manipulated market.
What I don't like is when people declare 'I told you so' when their predictions aren't true, but that something else has happened to be able to twist things around so that it sounds like they were. The statements from x years ago were all about Bitcoin being the asset of the future because everyone would start using it for all their money transactions. It would go up a bit if it was being used for lots of international transfers, etc. It would go up loads if whole countries started using it. But pretty much no-one is using it. Not for legal transactions, anyway. It is going stratospheric because a load of people think it'll be worth more in the future. This is an exceptionally dangerous behaviour, because if it stops going stratospheric (note -- just stabilises, not that if it collapses) then those people will withdraw. If Bitcoin is lucky then some other players will enter to replace them. If it isn't, then at that point the price will collapse.
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1 hour ago, markyh said:
And another November 2013 classic from Bloo Loo, I'm PMSL here now, wooooooo $40 billion in QE, can buy any market they chose, ummmm except Bitcoin which is now $281 Billion. What happened to this dude?
You've got to be careful with this sort of selective criticism from the past.
The reality is that people back then were heralding Bitcoin as the new currency. That in the future all sorts of things would be Bitcoin -- individuals would buy loads of stuff with Bitcoin, international trades would be covered by it, etc. This was criticised by people as being fantasy land, and that Bitcoin was just speculation in an unachievable dream.
Yet here we are, years later. Bitcoin still isn't being used for anything (much -- pretty much just drugs and porn). Yet the price has escalated -- based on what? It absolutely looks like a speculative mania.
Of course, the cryto guys might be right -- everything will be Bitcoin in the future!But, actually, it looks much much more like a failure. Transaction costs (meant to be low) are how comparable with the value of the majority of actual purchases made with Bitcoin. Transaction times (meant to be instant) are now many hours. Volatility all over the place... And that is with just 500,000 transactions per day -- how anyone could think this is the perfect currency of the future is beyond me. Everyone is buying to make a gain on the future price. This is a recipe for disaster.
I do like the technology -- I'm putting blockchain into a product under development -- and I think that cryptocurrency might have a future. I'm still not sure, because it doesn't actually seem to offer any advantages over current currencies (sure, instant transfer, zero costs, blah, blah -- the evidence is that it isn't like that. Sure, along will come Lite or whatever, but it is such a big hurdle to climb) and has disadvantages.
But I absolutely can't see how it could be Bitcoin. It has everything wrong with it to actually be useful as a currency.
My fear for the future is how many suicides we're going to get over Bitcoin.
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1 hour ago, houseface2000 said:
The assets the university have are huge. Vast amounts of land and property you could once walk to Cambridge to Oxford all on land owned by the uni. They said in there email they will be spending 3 times what they did last year and this bond issue helps with that spending spree. Bankruptcy unlikely me thinks. Oxford University press makes over £100 million a year in profit alone
Oh, I agree.
IMO there's incredibly serious problems brewing in HE in the UK, and I think we'll lose quite a few institutions (oh, they'll be called 'mergers', but they'll be the sort of mergers that end up with one of the sites closing down) -- but I very much doubt any of the Russel group will be badly affected.
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39 minutes ago, Locke said:
They need a business model, right? I understand what you're saying with the gentleman's club thing, however, I don't think universities will necessarily be the ones to provide that service.
You might be right. I suppose it is low risk for them -- either I'm right and it is a safe bet, or you're right and they're pretty much going bankrupt anyway. Either way they don't have to worry about the debt they're taking on.
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1 hour ago, Locke said:
Well, with whose money?
If we assume that universities provide the value-adding service of education, how do they compete with the Internet, which provides almost the same value, but is almost free?
Once the State loses the ability to prop up its brainwashers, they will find that the free market is nowhere near as generous to parasites as the government.
Well, based on an assumption that there'll always be some demand, and it'll drop off from the poorest quality provider first. So even if demand drops down to 5% of the current demand, everyone else will fold and Russel group will be left as the supplier.
I suppose you could think that the internet could do all the provision, but that ignores the 'gentleman's club' part.
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Sounds like a sensible thing to do, to me.
Their income is fairly assured over the timescale -- even if HE collapses, Russel Group will be fine.
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The trouble with your argument is that: why should they be set the same.
I'd argue (as does your linked article, I think), that unearned gains should be taxed much higher than income, not lower (as present).
Beyond that, income from equity should be taxed higher than income from labour.
If you wanted to give the 'right' incentives, you'd do something like (all 'base rates'):
Income from labour: 20%. (inc NI, £10k allowance)
Income from equity: 30% (£1k allowance)
Income from capital gains: 40% (£10k allowance, but allow rolling-over of unused allowance for 10 years*)
[* You're right in that CGT allowances just aren't normally used by 'normal' people, and then all of a sudden along comes something odd like a house and they've paying massively.
Wealthy people use up their allowances every year. This would normalise things a bit.]
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It is ridiculous to think we'd have a 'Venezuela style collapse'. The guy is an idiot.
It would be more like an Argentinian style collapse.
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3 minutes ago, ccc said:
I see. Walked past three usual ones in central Edinburgh today. No impact on them it seems.
There could be less than previously thought. I don't count so ****** knows.
It's been known as a total scam for years. Article in a paper about it long time ago.
Maybe Scot's law is different -- perhaps all the English ones have migrated north.
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1 hour ago, ccc said:
What happened with this ?
There was a test case where the judge said that a Romanian Big Issue seller wasn't eligible for TCs as she wasn't really working / was no-where near being able to support her family with her self-employment (and, I guess, that there was no way this was going to change -- she couldn't say that her business was in the early stages and she'd double turnover next year).
IIRC the numbers were £50 a week self employment, to get £150 a week TCs.
It was May this year.
Certainly, I've not seen the foreign Big Issue sellers in town this last summer, and I'm not sure I've seen any Big Issue sellers recently...
[I actually approve of this sort of ruling. IMO you should have a little time to prove your business (6 months, say), but, if you're not earning minimum wage in your stated hours by that point then you shouldn't be classed as self-employed for TC purposes -- that would need to be classed as a scam just to get TCs]
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Clever guy, Bird.
But the decent thing that was Big Issue was pretty much destroyed by tax credits and the self-employment nonsense. (Though, thankfully, this seems to have been resolved in the last 6 months -- seen a drop in Big Issue sellers over the summer? But it still hasn't really had a chance to return to its previous supportive role)
I'm sure that the government and banks will ensure that this idea, also, will be turned into something to be taken advantage of.
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2 hours ago, winkie said:
The thing is at the time she did not give them away.....they were a liability an ongoing cost.....the cash up front was better than a trickle of rents and the continued maintenance, new roofs, painting, new boilers etc.....take the money and run.....
One interesting thing about right-to-buy was that it did sort-of have the desired effect on the estates -- vast council estates which were once in a bad state are now okay. And not in an improved state because of the maintenance of the houses, but because of the 'pride' (or, perhaps, vested interest) people had in taking care of the area, both the grounds of the property itself, and in the state of the communal areas.
People who were brought up in areas which were pretty scummy, are now going on about how important it is to mow the verges.
But, for the generations to come, this effect has been lost. These children will grow up with insecure tenancies, with transient schools, friends and prospects. And, most of all, with no ties to the state of their local area. Now, the scumminess of the council estate will be a bit more difficult, as the landlord will mandate 'mowing the lawns' or, more likely, will shove the cost of an occasional gardener on the rent. But, the loss of the link to the community will remain.
Yet another area where we've all been sacrificed for the banks, yet we won't really know about it for another 20 years.
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14 minutes ago, Ah-so said:
I think that they change their minds when they realise how much tax they will need to pay to draw down on their pension
Possibly. I get a sense of frustration with them, that they could be doing better with their pension, but that they're restricted. They're blind to the reality, of course, but that's what they're thinking.
[These are all defined benefit, so they see their benefit going up by CPI/RPI each year, while others that went into BTL have seen their return double (say). That sort of thing. They've not been able to 'take their money out', but the pensions have been changed so that they now can. I don't think 'risk' is part of their thinking, other than, perhaps, 'they'll not let that happen']
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9 hours ago, Ah-so said:
Some might be buying outright, but they would be insane to do so with their pension because of the income tax on withdrawals, unless you can do it with your 25% tax free lump sum.
I've chatted with people intending to do just that. Yup, they're insane.
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10 hours ago, TwoTearsInABucket said:
Well FMP. This would backfire so badly as people shifted their money out of banks.
Yup. They'll discover that there was a good reason for having a bank deposit guarantee.
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3 hours ago, LittlePig said:
I know people that buy houses outright. They think it is a choice between rental income, or money in the bank (earning low interest). Not financially sophisticated I think is the right phrase.
It is a peculiarity of our time. I think these people will come to realise that housing isn't necessarily a safe investment. Indeed, IMO it is both essential and inevitable that people eventually come to realise this. The problem is, how much time needs to elapse before 'inevitable' comes (they've managed to delay it 10 years so far).
The Bubbly Bitcoin Thread -- Merged Threads
in House prices and the economy
Posted
TBL understands the potential of blockchain. IMO (not that it matters) he's right on the button.
He is, notably, not talking about one particular instance, of one particular use of blockchain.