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...Marc Faber, the noted Swiss economist and investor, has voiced his concerns for the U.S. economy numerous times during recent media appearances, stating, “I think somewhere down the line we will have a massive wealth destruction. I would say that well-to-do people may lose up to 50 percent of their total wealth.”

When he was asked what sort of odds he put on a global recession happening, the economist famous for his ominous predictions quickly answered . . . “100 percent.”

http://www.moneynews.com/MKTNews/Massive-wealth-destruction-economy/2013/06/20/id/511043/

Good news for BTC, but sorry to see so much suffering ahead.

In other words, don't think of it as "investing in bitcoin", rather think of it as "dumping US Dollars."

Supposedly he had a video interview where he discusses good financial investment alternatives, would you happen to know where I can find it? I've found interviews with him but not one that summarizes his aftershock investment book

that whole article is a sales pitch for aftershock (which moneynews and newsmax are famous for)

Regardless i don't deny we are in huge trouble, it will all come down, but i don't see the USD mega hyper inflating to 50% anytime soon. There are just way too many factors keeping this afloat and kicking the can down the road.

The 50% of wealth destruction is probably referring to a stock market correction in 2014-2015 which seems to be highly likely. Along with Massive housing bubbles crashing in some countries like CHina, India, Australia & Brazil

Bitcoin, Litecoin, Gold & Silver are all good investments right now.

Marc Faber is known as Doctor Doom. He is always mega-bearish. Sometimes he's right of course. But he is often a bit like a broken grammophone record saying that everything is going to hell. Finance TV shows love him as he's always available to make gloomy comments which generate catchy headlines and he looks and sounds like a James Bond villain.

I completely agree with bitcoin and litecoin being good investments. The cautions I would have with gold and silver are 3 fold.

1. Gold/Silver ETF's may actually be a "fractional reserve" situation with the people that claim to actually hold the gold and if this is ever proven to be true they will crash

2. Physical gold/silver is very hard to trade with. One would need to go back to carrying around satchels of gold dust for everyday purchases and gold bars of varying weight for larger purchases or transfer of funds

3. When you buy physical gold/silver you would have to go through rigorus testing to insure that it is actually made of the stated material. There have been a lot of fakes on the market recently that are doing an excellent job at density matching and plating the false material with the correct metal for surface testing....which would make the consumers have to break the bars in half and then test the cores of the gold/silver blocks in order to verify it is real....which is not practical for daily purposes nor long term storage of value imo

I thought that was Roubini's title.  I guess spouting off FUD in any sense gets your name in the paper.  Some of what he says is valid but overall you're correct, he's prominent because he brings ratings.

Saw Marc Faber talking on CNBC awhile back, I quite liked this guy, he's definitely not a neo-keynesian and very realistic.

For the record, he talked about how he was actually benefiting from all the money printing because of how much it caused his assets to rise but explained that it screwed over everybody else because it made everything more expensive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mkq384oxH1w

They're just a bunch of alarmists trying to make money by selling their video. Salesmen. Look their chart comparing the DJIA with the stock graph just before the crash the Great Depression. If the DJIA is following the same pattern (as they claim), then it should have crashed by now, but it hasn't.

Is it really? Presumably if there's less wealth, then the value of each Bitcoin would be less as well.

unless that less wealth transfer to bitcoin and it's scarcity takes the value upwards

That's a transfer of wealth, not a destruction of wealth.

Well the people holding US stocks/bonds or dollars may have their wealth destroyed. Completely separate from that, bitcoin could increase in price, which would create wealth with people that own bitcoins.

Pss... why would I do that? I have very little wealth anyway…

You will be sorry when you discover that a global recession is fkn terrible for Bitcoin and your crocodile tears turn into real ones as the value of your Bitcoins turn to dust and you realise that ridiculous paradigm of how the financial world operates and Bitcoins relation to it, was pulled straight out your arse.

Rise is price relative to what?  Dollars?  You just said people holding dollars will have their wealth destroyed.  If that's the case, Bitcoin rising against dollars isn't really wealth creation.

Don't be daft. The value of bitcoin is relative to what you can get for it. Dollar, euro, yen and all the rest are just there to make the mental translation simpler. You could price it in lambos if you wanted to.

A lot of panic around nothing important.

...

I like GigaCoin´s idea of diversification, and I practice that in all of my asset holdings.  Physical gold is very important to me as a Store of Wealth, I am not worried about having to "spend it", my preference will be to give it away...  Platinum ("value dense"!) is worth a look as well.  And, of course I own a little (2.2 or so BTC) and have some CA$H FIAT$ lying around the house "just in case."

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Lyth0s brought up a point or two I would like to consider.   All things considered, gold bullion coins are hard to counterfeit.  Lead weighs much less than Au, and does not "hold a strike".  And, if you buy fractional Gold Eagles, for example (in 1/10 oz or 1/4 oz sizes), it is VERY hard to fake them with tungsten (whose density is within 1% of gold´s).  Tungsten is hard to work with, it is very hard and has a high melting point.

Also, a scale and calipers (total cost of both, cheapie units OK) would run, say $35 tops.  Once you are familiar with your gold coins, you will feel more secure that each is real.

And if/when you get really RICH, then there are ultrasound thickness gauges ($500 and up) that would deal with the tungsten problem, say in kilo bars, sound travels much faster through tungsten than gold.

Don't be obtuse.  A lambo is a rather poor medium of exchange.  Currency is a medium of exchange not a "mental translator."  Maybe in the distant future your idea might come to fruition but right now Bitcoin is tied to fiat, I don't know how you can even deny that.  No one is going to sell you a $1,000 item for 1BTC today but they would have back when BTC=$1,000.  So what has changed in that timespan?  Nothing.

Lucky I'm not from the US xD ;D

Not right now no.
I have a really good memory so I'll eventually (probably) come up with it.

Come on... I hear so many people saying a huge crisis would push BTC/USD to new highs, but I need to completely disagree. NOBODY will buy Bitcoin during a crisis. NOBODY! Why? Simply because you won't be able to buy crap with it.

It's very sad, but I do agree that a major economic collapse within the next 1-3 month is faaaaaar more than just likely.

And when it goes down it doesn't matter where you live, the US and EU will drag us ALL to hell...

Good luck and stay safe

You're only partly correct. The thing is, the huge crisis doesn't happen instantaneously. It takes time to evolve - it takes years. Actually it's been going for a few years now, and look at what happened to Bitcoin. The crisis will continue on the same path, although maybe at an accelerating rate. In the next few years it develops (look to 2020), more and more businesses will be accepting crypto currencies and other forms of private money and even barter to replace the fiat losing value, that's why down the road you'll be able to buy more everyday items with non-fiat money. Fiat will be used mainly to pay taxes and other payments to government. Private businesses will be looking to keep only as much fiat as they need to pay those mandatory payments, but to save the rest in something that doesn't lose value.

Sure. If you are talking years there might be a 1% chance for that scenario, but we should be talking month or even a few weeks!

I don't think so. If you observed what some non-mainstream economists were saying over the past few years, they all had been saying since 2008 (some even earlier) - it's all over in the next few weeks, months at most, but somehow it's all been kicked down the road for a few years now, which makes me think they can kick it down the road another few years. At some point it'll be over, but not as fast as initially predicted.

Let's hope so...

Silver and gold are a solid investment, Bitcoin is cool magical internet money but that's all it is, It's value is speculative, If fiat paper money were to go away tomorrow then how would you determine the value of a Bitcoin?

Unless the exchanges started accepting and storing deposits of physical gold and silver then the Bitcoin would be worthless.

I know it's sort of blasphemy to point out this fact on this forum and i will most likely get attacked for doing so but that is the truth.

From an investment stand point Bitcoin is a great short term investment, It's a roller coaster, You buy when it's low and sell when it's high, Anyone just keeping money in Bitcoin for long term storage is not playing the game right.

No attacking from my side, +1 instead.

All the people who say otherwise whether don't know much about financial markets, holding bags since December or have other existential interests bound to Bitcoin while knowing better.

Wealth is never destroyed, only transferred.

Everyone should read "When Money Dies" by Adam Fergusson. This is about the Weimer inflation period.

Hyperinflation doesn't just happen overnight. It happens over a period of a few years. The rate of inflation slowly increases over a period of months.

There is another good book about a period of great inflation in France. I can't seem to find it anymore though and I forgot the title. While Adam did a good report about the technical aspects of hyperinflation, this other author did a really good job of describing the breakdown of morality that occurs during high inflation.

Fiat is just the common denominator. If fiat is gone, something else will be the common denominator, don't worry. Same would be true for PMs, how would you determine their value without fiat? How much would you pay for a loaf of bread in silver? I'll give you a hint. First you'd use the last available price of silver in fiat and last available price of loaf of bread in fiat, and calculate their ratio, at later stages the market would decide that ratio according to supply and demand of both items without looking at the fiat-world last available price.

But rest assured, these are all fantasies as fiat is not going to go away any time soon or ever. They will inflate it, then hyperinflate, then just chop off a few zeros from denominations, call it the new dollar, euro, yen, etc. and the new cycle begins. That's the history of hundred+ recorded episodes of fiat cycles when fiat died and was reborn, no reason to believe it will be different this time, doesn't matter it's at the global scale this time.

"scary parallel"

I'm almost sure it is just a joke article xD

When you put all these growing problems into even an optimistic math model - the result is collapse of the dollar in a few years as the post 15 quoted source stated. This is not an "economic disagreement" with the above facts - it is simple math, but not all economist are willing publish that, especially those that are paid by the government or Wall Street firms.