Mindrust is likely correct that a lot of bitcoins are being hoarded and that a vast majority were mined below $50.. but so fucking what? His logic is nearly totally screwed in regards to bitcoin's potentially not having value based on those kinds of facts.. They are dumb no coiner claims...
And, also the claims that bitcoin has no utility because a vast majority of coins are not moving and are hoarded is also a stupid ass no coiner argument. I suggest that the basic fallacy here is evaluating Bitcoin’s value based on the cost of mining. This was raised somewhere earlier in the same general context (sorry, WO n00b here will not dig back through all these fast-moving pages to find it). As I have been saying on this forum since I was a Newbie (search post history), Bitcoin’s value is not based on the cost of producing a coin. That is backwards: Miners are incentivized to mine, based on a market value that rises from other factors. Observe that if the market value of Bitcoin were to drop below the cost that can be recovered from mining, then hashpower would surely decrease: Miners could not prop up Bitcoin’s value by spending more on electricity! Of course, there is a subtle feedback loop between one of the factors in Bitcoin’s value and the hashrate: The higher the hashrate (assuming that the total is split between non-colluding independent parties), the more secure Bitcoin is. The more secure Bitcoin is, the better it is for the usefulness that gives it its real value. But that is not the primary factor; and it is more a matter of effects than causes. My Bitcoin Social Phenomenon thread presents my thesis on the true nature of Bitcoin’s value. I mean its long-term real value in terms of fundamentals, not its speculative daytrading value. In short: Bitcoin is the money that lets you independently control your own funds, store them securely, and transmit them anywhere in the world fast and easily. Both its security and its value are increased by a design that not only assumes it is deployed in a hostile environment between mutually distrusting parties, but actually exploits distrust and competition to encourage both mining and nodes. Bitcoin doesn’t care if its users love each other, or hate each other—it just keeps going, providing a global transaction network that nobody can control.As such, Bitcoin facilitates other economic activity which would be otherwise inconvenient or impossible—Bitcoin’s real value rises thus.Bitcoin was the first money in all of history to have these characteristics; indeed, it invented its own characteristics. Thereupon, it has organically grown a user base, an established reputation, a decentralized social movement that cannot be duplicated. There is only one Bitcoin, and there can only be one Bitcoin. The upside is that Bitcoin’s uniqueness makes it all the more valuable—the downside is that if Bitcoin were to fail, we could not just make another Bitcoin. I don’t think that even Satoshi really understood the value of what he created. Nobody could have. I surely didn’t (which is why I am not rich). Bitcoin is historically significant. Epochal. I do not use those terms lightly: I have too much respect for history, and I detest hype. Any more questions about what gives Bitcoin its value? |
|
|
|
[— many interesting corrections by Lambie Slayer; read the whole thing —] The mind of a bear is quite interesting.  You are arguing with someone who drew an analogy likening the coronavirus to Hitler, as a setup for somehow pinning this on Germans and Austrians. Do not expect logic. * OutOfMemory rates logic a STRONG SELL
Boldface in the original: They [panickers] will virtue signal about loss of life, but if they really cared they would worry about all the millions who will die of poverty, drugs, suicide, etc in a global depression. Very well said! However, I disagree with the connection to what you said later in that post. HODL! |
|
|
|
''How long are we meant to self-isolate for?'' As long as we have to mate. 'Is this going to happen everytime a new form of SARS appears?' Yes if it's serious enough, quit crying about it, not everything has a good solution. You’re the one who should quit crying. Or else, good luck, um, eating. As a practical matter, your proposed rule is a most excellent plan for totally imploding a fragile, technocratic globalized civilization based on centralization and long supply chains and... (why do I even bother?)It's a pretty crazy situation. If the virus doesn't recede significantly over the summer, will we stay on global lockdown for 1 year+, while waiting for a vaccine? A technocratic, industrialized, globalized international economy based on massive centralization and long supply chains cannot survive such a scenario as “global lockdown for 1 year+”. That is why I accuse headless-chicken governments of destroying the world in a futile attempt to save it from a virus that is not being significantly slowed by all the lockdowns. My concern is distinct from theymos’ and hilarious’ concerns about the economy. I don’t share the general worldview of economic thinking—although I think that they are evaluating this situation rationally, for the most part. Stop panicking!Between the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, I fear Famine. I do not fear Plague (at least, not in this instance). I do fear War. I have never feared Death; and I do not intend to start now.
The Earth is ridiculously overpopulated. A long-term global lockdown proximately causing deindustrialization and famine could help to knock off a few billion talking apes. Maybe it is not such a bad idea after all?
~ I agree with TECSHARE on this. Who would've thought. I hope not with this part of the international quotation that I just snipped: The issue is not that this disease is just so fatally dangerous, but that is is just dangerous enough, and mostly debilitating with many requiring long hospital stays to treat. This disease has a unique combination of long viability on surfaces, being airborne, long incubation periods, passive carriers, and high rates of infection that is basically like a checklist of all the things you would put into a disease you intend to cause a pandemic. Cf.:I have a high level of confidence that this is a bioweapon, and will lead to open war. Even if it isn't, it looks like it, and that might be enough to ignite tensions. Those who habitually spew twisted illogic, quack junk, and extraordinary claims on the basis of merest speculation (not to mention lies about other people) do not suddenly start making sense, unless they radically change their worldviews. That is psychologically difficult, almost impossible; and it requires an extraordinary mind which would be unlikely to believe nonsense in the first instance. TE ChSHARE remains the same artless Techy as always; and the probability approaches one that he always will. That is why I distrust him as a person.
We're gonna run out of beds, doctors will have to decide who dies and who doesn't, it's going to suck. People are going to die. Yes. That’s life.
I find myself arguing against each and all of: - Panic.
- Fantastic dolts who suppose that SARS-CoV-2 must be somehow of different origins from the 2002–03 SARS-CoV. Wow, a zoonotic jumped species—as has doubtless been the origin of countless diseases throughout the whole history of all living creatures on Earth. It is closely related to another zoonotic that also jumped species. Clearly, the most likely explanation is that this is a genetically engineered bioweapon!
- Panic.
- Destroying all that remains of civilization, for the purpose of failing to save it.
- Panic.
- Tyranny. The naïve, fallible mortal human in me is shocked that nobody notices we have instantaneously entered an era of global dictatorship, without any significant resistance or even protest. The dispassionate scholar knows human nature, and is therefore not surprised. The new normality is that every government everywhere can issue any “emergency” order they want, and nobody will even complain! WTF. Are you awake? (Nice question.)
- Panic.
My own perspective: Humans endured plagues for all time before modern history. There are now two significant differences: - Technology makes plagues spread much faster. I shudder to imagine the Black Death in the era of aeroplanes and automobiles. Could happen someday—is not the coronavirus situation. Many coronavirus-type incidents have probably occurred over the centuries, but remained local, minor, barely worth remark.
Indeed, I would suggest that Chinese scholars should probably examine the question of whether there is any evidence of previous SARS outbreaks, before modern times. My hypothesis: Variants of this virus have jumped to humans many times within the five millennia for which at least some historical record may exist. Minor local outbreaks may have burned out without leaving any historical evidence that would be extant today (especially after the last century’s upheavals destroyed much historical evidence in China). Thus, a negative cannot be proved (as is oft the case with historical hypotheses).
I do think that’s an important question; and it is just the type of question that nobody thinks of. - Modernity has made humans soft and weak. Soft, weak creatures do not survive. In this context, I mean that collectively, in the long run. Sooner or later, humans have a high risk of going extinct due to having degenerated into wimps who are totally maladapted to the harsh conditions of life in this world. Evolution is blind: It does not always “progress” or “advance” a species with godlike intentions, as commonly assumed and implied by pseudoscientific liberals.
I never said that the virus is not bad (although I think its level of badness is much exaggerated, whereas people have faced much worse historically). I never said that people will not die. Actually, I am of the opinion that everybody dies someday. I said and say, stop panicking. If the current trend does not soon change, then a relatively moderate global epidemic of coronavirus will have ushered in a new era of mass starvation. It has already inaugurated global tyranny, the full extent of which has yet to be seen. |
|
|
|
*TRUMP SEEKING OVER $1,000 IN DIRECT PAYMENTS FOR AMERICANS Cool. Hope I don't need a bank account for that shiz. Wonder how that's gonna work... Off-the-cuff prediction, knowing America: Not only will it require a bank account, but it will be entwined with the IRS. Either directly, with forms that make people give statements relating to tax status—or more likely more subtly, somehow that makes people dox themselves in ways that will be useful to the IRS. Cf. the institution by the American Kerensky of the Social Security system, replete with Social Security Numbers. Where will this lead? Will ☭Trump be the American Lenin?I admit that I am going out a bit on a limb there. It is too early to tell where that will lead; but on the other hand... FYI, American “Social Security” cards used to be explicitly marked, “NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION”. LOL. Has America seen any greater mass panic since the Roosevelt era?
Revised: Trump is seeking $1,000 per head to plow into Bitcoin  Excellent! :-) Just as long as the Americans tick the box saying that they hodl virtual currency. :-/
*TRUMP SAYS ‘WE’RE GOING BIG’ ON VIRUS RELIEF MONEY
That's the only way Trump goes. He’s a big talker. Maybe Trump should ask the Chinese for advice on how to build amazingly big border walls—and do it with style!The Chinese: “We will build a wall!” MADE IN CHINAAmerican Twit-in-Chief Trump: “#TWEET #TWEET” What’s wrong? You Americans can’t build a simple wall for yourselves, ever since you shut down most of your industrial base and outsourced its functionality to China? Lulz.I have news for you: The People’s Republic of China pwns your country. Now, I have no sympathy for the Communists; to the contrary, I hate them with fire. I am merely pointing out that, for example, you, the most pestilent warmonger country in the history of Earth, could never dare to risk a war with the Red Chinese.
Bernie Sanders will probably be shouting that Trump should give $2000 to every American and $3000 to every Mexican. I think you meant a bunch of other politicians from both “(D) Pepsi” and “(R) Coke”. Although Sanders is an admitted Socialist, he himself has said that mass-immigration is bad for the American working class. Therefore, I would not assume that his almost overt Marxism would take the form that you are suggesting. https://web.archive.org/web/20150728172319/http://www.vox.com/2015/7/28/9014491/bernie-sanders-vox-conversationEzra Klein
You said being a democratic socialist means a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing ...
Bernie Sanders
Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal.
Ezra Klein
Really?
Bernie Sanders
Of course. That's a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. ...
[...]
But I think what we need to be doing as a global economy is making sure that people in poor countries have decent-paying jobs, have education, have health care, have nutrition for their people. That is a moral responsibility, but you don't do that, as some would suggest, by lowering the standard of American workers, which has already gone down very significantly. Strictly speaking, he is correct in identifying open borders as what would be more properly described as a globalist-capitalist corporate agenda (which, I will add, is always substantively indistinguishable from the International Communist agenda). Of course, I think it’s a ploy to pander to the masses. But it does demonstrate the folly of picking leftie names out of a hat for rhetoric about leftist policies. In my opinion, Sanders is the left’s counterpart to Trump: A candidate who purports to oppose the establishment, and makes rhetoric that appeals to the working class. If the working class were to turn from Trump to Sanders, I do predict that they would be just as disappointed as they have been with Trump. See how that works?
By the time this is done universal basic income may well be a thing in several countries including the US. China made commies out of us all just with one asshole eating a bat that fucked a pangolin. Forking hell, the Chinese even pwn America by accident! Why, it is almost as if the proud Ovine-Americans are begging for tyranny, and will eagerly embrace any excuse that their government has the opportunity to offer.
I hear the choppers in the distance Paranoiac. You are at high risk for contracting the contagion of slowly progressing schizophrenia.* STFU and turn back to the TV, if you don’t want to be in need of re-education. For your own good. You do not appreciate the American freedom that you enjoy; people who love you will want to help you with that. * nullius loves Big Brother.
* Actual USSR “medical” diagnosis applied to particularly dangerous dissidents. |
|
|
|
I love America. I love it's constitution. I love the revolutionary principles of liberty on which it is founded. I love the landscape and I love the people.
The government of the beloved nation of my birth has evolved, before my eyes, into an unrecognizable horror of corruption and violence.
Something something...tree of liberty. If more Americans knew what the hell you are talking about ( and cared to), then perhaps I may not despise America as I do. Since you allude to Jefferson, you may observe that Jefferson’s notion of a “natural aristocracy” was in essence an attempt to synthesize his own rationally aristocratic mentality with the “Enlightenment” ideals which he believed with a religious fervour. The resulting vision of a State ruled by an educated middle class was what must surely be one of the most elegant populist theories ever imagined. Too bad that it did not survive contact with reality. I hold several of the American founders in the highest respect—both Federalists such as Washington and John Adams (plus Adams’ famous scholarly great-grandsons; read their stuff!), and Antifederalists such as Jefferson, Samuel Adams, et al. I detest Americans all the more for betraying the gift bought with blood and honour by men greater than themselves, and bequeathed to them with a foolish generosity: Freedom given freely, and discarded cheaply! If my favourite American founders could see their country today, they would probably panic and beg the King to take them back. Nowadays, the individual Americans whom I most respect are the ones who finally realize that the same patriotic principles which make them love what America could have been, must make them hate what America is. (By the way, from your apparent lack of fatheadedness, I assume that you are probably not fat. That itself makes you a dissident. ;-)Yeah guess one is better off in a country where its leader cannot be ousted: Russia, China, Middle East, most African Nations.... The average law abiding citizen has never faced any hardships in such nations at all. Let alone... not being able to buy Bitcoin.  Soooo much better to live in a country where you oust them every 8 years, but it doesn't matter and nothing ever changes.  (R) 2020! | |  (D) 2020! |
This is why I say: Don’t vote. By voting, you grant your moral and practical political endorsements to a corrupt system: An ochlocracy manipulated by a plutocracy. The result is kakocracy: Rule of the worst.If you vote, then you are part of the problem. |
|
|
|
Bravado among predominantly young healthy members of this forum is understandable. That doesn't work for those who have a high risk of complications from this virus I take insult at your broad-brush statement based on unwarranted assumptions. I am neither young nor healthy. Without disclosing personal details that may compromise my privacy, I will note that I am at significantly higher than average risk of death from coronavirus. However, as I have said repeatedly, life is risk. It would be awfully hypocritical of me to preach about courage, then turn around and demand that healthy young people destroy the world and embrace unlimited tyranny because I got panicked about a personal risk to myself. My first public message about the coronavirus:Dear readers of the forum:
Some of you will die from the coronavirus. (—Some few of you: The virus has low lethality except to the aged or otherwise frail.) The virus may kill me, too; maybe, maybe not. That is acceptable: Life is risk, and death is a part of life. My only sadness is that sometimes, the worst befalls the best of people.
unless you want to go full Darwin on them and just let them die. I myself want to go much more than “full Darwin” on anybody who panics. I'm kinda attached to a couple high-risk family members So am I. I have been quietly advising people (online and IRL) to spend some quality time with anyone elderly or frail whom they care about. It may be your last chance. Lockdowns don’t help with that—and probably won’t help the old folks in the end. |
|
|
|
most of the world justifiably hates you.
Jealousy..
* nullius is so jealous. :-(
Everyone's jealous of a country with the world's highest civilian incarceration rate, that spies on its own citizens while spending more on the military than healthcare or education.
Who wouldn't want that? Indeed. Everybody should be duly grateful that America uses a combination of military aggression, economic warfare, and cultural imperialism to convert all the beknighted * peoples of the world to Americanism. We can all be like Americans! America demands it.
* Not a typo.
Go Bitcoin go. Damn straight. |
|
|
|
This thread needs some pruning. I will go through it another time. Meanwhile, I hereby transplant an important discussion from WO, where I believe that the needed lengthy treatment would diverge too much from the thread topic. The following is the first in a series of anti-American posts! Discussion is welcome. The topic of this thread is, of course, serious anti-Americanism, cunningly veiled in humourous ridicule of fat, disgusting Americans. My moderation policy will be more or less like the American government’s policy on the freedom of speech: Proclaim high-minded freedom, and then use dirty tricks and naked aggression to suppress any actual dissent. ;-) WTF ever.. What country would you rather be the world superpower?
The entire world is lucky that the USA is top dog and not anyone else.. Stereotypical American. And you wonder why most of the world justifiably hates you. Look in the mirror. There are some individuals from America whom I respect and admire. They don’t have this American attitude; and most of them hate America, too.Anyway, all of those [India, Europe, China, Japan, Arabia, Turkey, and others] are superior to America, which never had a high culture, and which is the world-destroyer of all cultures. You must Americanize your country, or else the American world-police will bomb you into “ liberation” so that you can “ enjoy” the “ freedom” to think like Americans, act like Americans, eat at McDonald’s like Americans, vote like Americans, and most importantly, do whatever America tells you. No—most importantly, you shall love America! “ God” “ bless” the “ Land of the Free”! most of the world justifiably hates you.
Jealousy.. most of the world justifiably hates you.
Jealousy.. Pretty much. Yes, you should keep telling yourself that. As a garbage-dump country primarily populated by Europe’s “huddled masses” of “wretched refuse”, America never had a high culture, and does not even know what a high culture is. Of course, America evokes jealousy from the people with rich traditions all over the world who are so stupid that they need to be bombed into “freedom” in aggressive wars based on the crudest propaganda, which America habitually wages with an unlimited hypocrisy seen nowhere else in all the annals of recorded history. “Freedom” per the American definition is, of course, the freedom to buy buy buy until you are drowning in consumer debt, worship the boob-tube as the source of all wisdom, achieve the American dream of “owning” an ugly house by renting it from the bank (ever notice that America has the ugliest houses on Earth!?), get fat, vote in Coke (R) vs. Pepsi (D) elections, move an average of seven times in your life, give up your gold on the demand of the American Kerensky (America is today the most deeply Marxist country on Earth!)— and finally, at long last, to elect a tough-tweeting economically-minded gauche parvenu as your president, because the American “wretched refuse” does not want to share what was its country with the subset of Mexicans who are too stupid to realize that Mexico at its gangland worst is still culturally superior to America. By the way, how is The Wall coming along? * nullius is so jealous. :-( Most vile and obscene of all is the Americans’ way of concealing their own nature from themselves with saccharine platitudes and good-guy pretenses. Americans are axiomatically The Good Guys! Goodness is defined by Americanism. Evil per se is that which is desired or done by anybody who insufficiently venerates America. The result: The Americans do the dirtiest deeds, they wage the most unjust wars, they tell the worst lies—and yet, they are such noble heroes that anybody who criticizes them must be “jealous”. Of course, that would be the accusation: Americans, the historic grandmasters of hypocrisy, are consistently motivated in their foreign policy by hatred of anybody who is superior to themselves.
Too bad for you Americans that I have sufficiently studied American history, law, domestic politics (historical and current), and quasi-“culture” ( the word cannot properly be applied to America) that I could give lectures on the topic. Know your enemy, etc. I will not insult myself with the low standard of observing that I know far more about America than most Americans do: The stereotypical American has a 15-second attention span, a narrow-mindedness combined with something tantamount to a mass pandemic of clinical narcissism, and an astounding ignorance of anything whatsoever not spoonfed to him by the mass media. —Wherefore I do not expect for much, if any of the foregoing to be understood by Americans. After all, America is the country where, in an instance of the worship of mere formalism commonly seen in the decay of advanced societies, somebody needed to invent the term “Dunning-Kruger effect” to identify an ancient and well-known principle which, together with envy, hypocrisy, narcissism, rudeness, degeneracy, shallowness, cowardice, a belligerent lack of culture, economically-minded mismeasures of value, and pandemic obesity, is symbolic of America itself, and a part of the American stereotype. |
|
|
|
WTF ever.. What country would you rather be the world superpower?
The entire world is lucky that the USA is top dog and not anyone else.. Stereotypical American. And you wonder why most of the world justifiably hates you. Look in the mirror. There are some individuals from America whom I respect and admire. They don’t have this American attitude; and most of them hate America, too.Anyway, all of those [India, Europe, China, Japan, Arabia, Turkey, and others] are superior to America, which never had a high culture, and which is the world-destroyer of all cultures. You must Americanize your country, or else the American world-police will bomb you into “ liberation” so that you can “ enjoy” the “ freedom” to think like Americans, act like Americans, eat at McDonald’s like Americans, vote like Americans, and most importantly, do whatever America tells you. No—most importantly, you shall love America! “ God” “ bless” the “ Land of the Free”!
edit, the forum just glitched hardcore while posting this.. Then delete your duplicate post with absolutely identical content, instead of waiting for someone else to clean it up for you. “How to use a forum” at n00b level.
Ok, this seals it for me, the bio-engineered virus is a spook operation for sure. Probably CIA is only agency with access to such bio-weapons or authority to commandeer such access. NSA is branch of army so maybe them too but unlikely to get involved. May even be a rogue branch that 'slipped up' while doing their hidden masters bidding from the seat of the UN or some other global secret society power, e.g. Fabians. You would be making some great points, if you weren’t mixing them with arrant nonsense. N.b. that these conclusory leaps of logic also tend to discredit in the public mind anybody who has sound reasons for being wary of the CIA, the NSA, the UN, the Fabians, et al. Such as myself. Why, it is almost as if there is some sort of a conspiracy to discredit rational investigation of such matters. :-/ |
|
|
|
I never liked talking about this. (Privacy, y’know.) Whereas the point is too important here... Yeah I dunno
I shaved off my "feeling better" money at $13
dollars
...I ain't doing that shit again
Date Registered: January 04, 2012, 02:23:16 PM [...] Damn, you're an old-timer. Old timer... Whatever.  I have a little story that will make jojo69 feel better about selling anything whatsoever at $13. I have said parts of this before, in various threads. (Will not now waste time mining for self-quotes.) I discovered Bitcoin rather early. I don’t want to say exactly how early—enough so that the original Zerocoin paper immediately caught my attention in 2013. So, significantly earlier than that. I didn’t buy. Didn’t even mine (when that could still be done with commodity hardware). Didn’t even play with the software! Didn’t bother creating a forum account before 2017, although of course, I knew about this place long before then. (And if anybody was wondering how, at Newbie rank, I came out swinging in the thick of the fork wars within 36 hours of when I started actively posting—then the next day, hopped over to defend Segwit in Development & Technology... ...and yes, I was in the Lauda camp before I even registered.) Bitcoin was an intellectual curiosity which fascinated me, given my interest in cypherpunk money going back to the 90s. I casually followed its development, from a distance. I just could not stand the privacy problems of a global public ledger. I hoped that Bitcoin would lead to better technologies; and just like all those technocratic blockheads whom I have always despised, I was more focused on the technology than on the organic, unduplicable, rapidly growing Bitcoin Social Phenomenon. After all that I had read about Bitcoin, I actually got into cryptocurrency via Zcash, which I had been patiently awaiting for several years. Thereupon, I endured a hard lesson in the virtù of Shitcoin Minimalism (h/t qwk (date registered: 2011-06-15)). Hello, Bitcoin: I have always loved you in theory; now, I embrace you in practice.I could have been “Bitcoin rich”. Could have been.I hope that people learn something from my story. The funniest part: Most of the regulars on this thread have far more Bitcoin than I do, even though I am all in on Bitcoin with my life savings. In terms of personal wealth, I never had much money. Now, because I was reading about Bitcoin and sitting on my hands when I should have been getting in, I don’t have much Bitcoin. The Bitcoin is what I have, and is thus all the more precious to me... mindrust, don’t take my recent posts the wrong way. I wandered into WO via your post history, because I’ve been checking up on people whom I respect—hoping that everyone is ok. Oh, forking hell, mindrust just did what!? Ouch. Hey, I was a “ nocoiner” who admired Bitcoin from a distance for years. It has worked out so terribly well for me, as you can see. Most bitcoins were mined when their price was below 50 bucks. There are millions of them. [...]
One of the reason I was so freaked out when I read there were coins moved to exchanges after 10 foookin years. 10 fookin years. Latecomers only sell because they panic (like me), it is the early adopters taking a dump on us.
We are betrayed. How do you think I feel right about now, or ever? The almost early adopter. Who could have had the secret keys to ancient coins neatly tucked away. Fuck me. I betrayed myself. I believe in leading by example. In this case, please take the story of my personal crypto-journey as an example of what not to do. Regardless of all the emotional whining, last time I checked there is still no decentralised permissionless digital currency out there with the same potential and standing as Bitcoin. So it’s buying Bitcoin at (still) cheap prices to me, although the time frames may have shifted.
I can wait... Damn straight. On the other side of the coin, if Bitcoin fails, then we will all be globally, historically fucked in a thousand ways that you never even imagined. Spunky little Bitcoin, whose whole market cap is a drop in the bucket of the global financial markets, is now all we have to advance the cause of financial freedom against the tyranny of an international system that reads your soul (and your practical activity) by watching all that you buy and sell, and that is moving toward the point that it can starve any dissent simply by freezing the money of anybody deemed undesirable. When hardcore HODLers are panic-selling, the prospect of losing the value of my life savings is actually the least of my concerns. Hello, WO! I never posted here before, because I am not a financial investor. Now, I am here saying to BUY and HODL.Quite frankly, I tell you that that is risky—for everything is high-risk right now. Manage the risk rationally: No FOMO panic-buys, and no panic-selling! I also candidly point out that Bitcoin is less risky than government-issued toilet paper—which historically has always been the worst risk in times of social breakdown! I hereby add that if the sheep all run away from Bitcoin, then we will all be as lambs to the slaughter. BTC won't rescue anyone from their own misery, self pity and incompetence. But it can make one realise his/her dreams. That's my bet. I dream of not needing to ask anybody’s permission to use my own money, and of easily carrying on private transactions with anybody in the world. Bitcoin is my bet. |
|
|
|
Boldface by the not-dispassionately-rational “Passionate”; highlighting is mine:I think its best if every country's military starts getting deployed in every area in their region and systematically check every person if infected with the virus. - ✔ Government control of food supplies
- ✔ Government control of both local and long-distance travel
- ✔ Arbitrary lockdowns
- ✔ Direct government control of each individual’s body, under the rubric of e.g. “healthcare”
- ✔ Arbitrary, peremptory government orders of any kind whatsoever
- Total government control of communications*
(* In my nightmare, this has not yet started; thus, I would still be able to post this message. The worst part of my nightmare is when I discover that dissent is so marginal amidst the mass-panic, the government finds it unnecessary to control communications.)All of these actions are praised by the sheep, due to mass panic. Dissidents will be immediately labelled “conspiracy theorists” and/or accused of wanting for people to die. [...]
What a nightmare! I am glad that I don’t live in that world. * nullius shakes himself awake.
Dude. You leave me speechless. [...]
Trollpost threshold exceeded. bye. Ja, there was nothing trollish about drawing an analogy between the coronavirus and Hitler, accusing Tyroleans of “infecting half of Europe”, and giving standard-issue due to our history rhetoric about how “that comparison with Hitler is hard to understand for people that have no german or austrian background”. Didn’t leave me speechless at all! Never mind, i should have made better use of my brain before making that comparison. That is true.
|
|
|
|
Good thus far... What is unacceptable is panic, bureaucratic “do something!” tyranny, and worst of all, hybris.
[...]
I do not fear the virus.
I fear the government which claims jurisdiction over my secure undisclosed location. Its current behaviour is alarming.
I fear the people talking apes around me. They are panicking, behaving irrationally, and clamouring for an aggressive government response. Predictably, the government replies with a bureaucratic mess that spectacularly fails to prevent the spread of the virus, whilst instantly instantiating a de facto dictatorship—not potential dictatorship, actual dictatorship, right now, today! Nobody notices.
[...]
I’ve followed this entire coronavirus outbreak with a skeptical eye since it first appeared on the radar in January. Knowing that I’m lied to by virtually everyone has made it difficult to comprehend the truth about this ongoing crisis. We know China lied to the entire world about the outbreak in Wuhan. It wasn’t until social media revealed the true extent of the virus and quarantine of a city larger than NYC, that the world began to understand this was serious.
The fact that a military bio-lab in Wuhan somehow contributed to the initial outbreak has been downplayed by the propaganda media. The arrest of a Harvard chemistry professor and two Chinese nationals for trying to smuggle biological vials to China in January is also highly suspicious. A Canadian government scientist at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg made at least five trips to China in 2017-18, including one to train scientists and technicians at China’s newly certified Level 4 lab, which does research with deadly pathogens.
All indications point to this virus being man made, for purposes of biological war. Whether it was released into the world by accident or on purpose is unknown. Now, hold up a moment! Compare this: 0. Governments seize upon an emergency to arrogate unto themselves “emergency powers”. Whether they create the emergency, or merely take opportunistic advantage of some existing situation producing panic which they can encourage and exploit. all that they need is an emergency. The emergency may be a more or less real problem. For example, the Roosevelt gold seizure exploited panic over the Great Depression. No reasonable person denies that the Great Depression caused widespread worry and suffering. I must mention this explicitly, because imbeciles the feeble-minded the subnormal Americans mental retards persons with intellectual disabilities irrationally assume that tyrants can only exploit fake events. Yes, “fake” is not the same as “created by the government”. Yes, also, I am reasonably sure that the Great Depression was caused by the Fed (whether from malice or stupidity), and subsequently exploited (from malice only). Nevertheless, the same principle applies: The fact that a crisis can be exploited— is being exploited for tyrannical purposes does not in itself support any inference whatsoever about its causes. Tyrants can act opportunistically!
[...]
What is not taught in government schools or proclaimed by the propaganda spewing fake news media were the dictatorial type actions taken by FDR over the next month after his “inspirational” speech. He was the first Democrat president to not let a crisis go to waste. The day after his inauguration, Roosevelt assembled a special session of Congress to declare a four-day bank holiday, and on March 9 signed the Emergency Banking Act.
What the American people should have feared was the government taking control of every aspect of their lives and threatening them with imprisonment if their dictums were not followed. On March 6, taking advantage of a wartime statute that had not been repealed, he issued Presidential Proclamation 2039 that forbade the hoarding ‘of gold or silver coin or bullion or currency’, under penalty of $10,000 and/or up to five to ten years imprisonment.” Yes, I have been hitting that point hard since I was a Newbie: This is fact, not fancy. Not some weird theory. This is history: It actually happened. And if it happened before, it could happen again.[...] It happened: “CRIMINAL PENALTIES... 10 years imprisonment...” for keeping gold!
One month later, Roosevelt implemented Executive Order 6102 “forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States”. FDR, like every corrupt politician, overstepped his authority by invoking the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, to seize all the gold in the country. The fake reason for the order was that hard times had caused “hoarding” of gold, stalling economic growth and making the depression worse.
As usual, the Federal Reserve created the Great Depression through their recklessly easy monetary policy during the 1920s, creating a stock market bubble and its inevitable crash. The false rationale behind the order was to remove the restriction on the Federal Reserve which prevented it from increasing the money supply during the depression; the Federal Reserve Act (1913) required 40% gold backing of Federal Reserve Notes issued.
Excessive money printing by the Fed to benefit their Wall Street owners and the monied interests is a consistent theme since the Fed’s shameful conception in 1913. They catalyzed the Great Depression Fourth Turning in 1929 and seventy-nine years later created the current Greater Depression Fourth Turing in 2008. Americans should fear what they have done to our country.
Roosevelt used the fears of the American people to elevate the Federal government as the savior and ultimate allocator of dispensations to the masses. This is how politicians used fear in the 1930s to implement more control over our lives. They used the 2008 Wall Street created financial collapse to further confiscate the nation’s resources, while screwing over the little guy. Hmmm... Think it can’t happen? Well—how many of you are American? Private individual ownership of gold coins and bars was illegal in the United States for four decades. “Hoarding” individual wealth in gold was banned from 1 May 1933 until 31 December 1974. Vast amounts of gold bullion were confiscated from people, who were forced to accept instead the Monopoly Money known as “United States Dollars”. Numerous individuals were criminally prosecuted for attempting to keep their gold—a crime according to Executive Orders 6102, 6111, 6260, and 6261, and the Gold Reserve Act passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs law criminalizing gold30 January 1934
Now, we are in the midst of another manufactured crisis When you have a rock-solid point that is completely indisputable as to fact, don’t bollox it up with stuff you cannot prove in black and white. For example, everything that I said here is reasonably unimpeachable—unless somebody wants to deny that lockdowns are occurring, or whatever? 1. Under the banner of Emergency, governments inure panicked sheep to:- ✔ Government control of food supplies
- ✔ Government control of both local and long-distance travel
- ✔ Arbitrary lockdowns
- ✔ Direct government control of each individual’s body, under the rubric of e.g. “healthcare”
- ✔ Arbitrary, peremptory government orders of any kind whatsoever
- Total government control of communications*
(* In my nightmare, this has not yet started; thus, I would still be able to post this message. The worst part of my nightmare is when I discover that dissent is so marginal amidst the mass-panic, the government finds it unnecessary to control communications.)All of these actions are praised by the sheep, due to mass panic. Dissidents will be immediately labelled “conspiracy theorists” and/or accused of wanting for people to die. 2. The government’s actions do not actually stop the emergency. This is a feature, not a bug. Short-term “emergency” measures become long-term daily realities to which people have become accustomed: The instant new normality.(For my nightmare, it would be quite convenient if, say, the “emergency” were a rapidly spreading infectious disease with high fear factor and low lethality. With a bit of luck, such an emergency may continue for long enough to make total, inescapable global tyranny an accomplished fact—or even indefinitely!)
To be clear, I concur with the same points about the government responses. I am urging more effective advocacy. |
|
|
|
You can buy unallocated pool metals from Kitco... I know, not your keys not your coins.
LOL, FTFY: You can buy unallocated pool metals from Kitco... I know, not your coins not your coins.
...indeed, just like Bitcoin! (At least in this respect.)
I have never used my Bitcoin there. Well, you must be laughing it up at all the people HODLing dollars. Why not take delivery? Oh, right. Hmmm. |
|
|
|
So there was Hitler, born in Austria, infected almost the whole of Europe.
Today there is Tyrol, infecting half of Europe with SARS-CoV-2. You win the prize for the stupidest rhetoric of the day. And today, the competition is extraordinary! Do you even have a point? Let’s see... Later...That comparison with Hitler is hard to understand for people that have no german or austrian background. Hmmm... Back to the previous post:I feel ashamed.
EDIT: And angry. Oh, I get it, anonymous screen name who implicitly claims to be of German or Austrian background: “‘Due to our history’, we need to somehow make sure to blame the coronavirus on Germans.” Why do I get the feeling that if the Tyrolean government had immediately placed the whole region on lockdown, you would be accusing them of Nazism?
No, I’m not inclined to waste more time with this. We now return to the regularly schedule programme of lessons on how the coronavirus can be prevented with megadoses of vitamins. |
|
|
|
They keep injecting money and the market keeps going down. Reminds me of the end of "Inside Out" when all the emotions are pushing the buttons and....
it's not working...... It’s working just fine. That is incomprehensibly stupid. It is also a very good way for the people who control dollars to extract the last bit of durable value from total idiots. Massive panic-selling is a good opportunity to make dollars out of thin air, and give the panic-sellers what they’re asking for! Note: I am not suggesting that some monolithic hidden hand is ushering in the age of space aliens, or whatever. Remember what I said earlier about the vectors of competing interests. The U.S. Fed has a century-plus history of fucking the markets for the purpose of draining real value, and of helping hydra-head institutional banks to suck up real value. They drain value chronically, in both “boom” and “bust” parts of their cycle, via instruments including (but not limited to) the hidden tax of Keynesian inflation (both through the obvious primary effect, and through the secondary effect of encouraging interest-bearing indebtedness by punishing savers). They also do it acutely, as in the Great Depression—or in times such as now, when total idiots are panic-selling all kinds of value in exchange for a massive infusion of dollars. LOL! Other big players may well be desperately trying to stop the market from dying, because they will die with it. Hey, how many wealthy, upper-class, well-connected New York financiers committed suicide in 1929? Just for example. Only a fool would claim to know in advance exactly how all of this will play out. And to be clear, I myself am dosing with Hopium® for technological civilization to last at least a bit longer. It may. And none of us is prepared for otherwise. Don’t argue with me; I obviously know what the fuck I am talking about. 99% of “prepper” stuff is, unfortunately, a self-comforting illusion. A few people may be well enough prepared to have a small chance of long-term survival in the event of a global collapse—of the global collapse, an historically unprecedented event, the Fall of Rome raised by a few orders of magnitude. I have my Bitcoin. In the event that total collapse does not occur, times will still be tough; and Bitcoin will be a very useful form of money! And if total collapse does occur, then I will have worse problems than losing all my savings. For you see, I am strictly rational. No hope. No optimism, either. Whatever may happen, I will meet it with dignity: The one thing that cannot be taken from a man.
I scorn all hope: Hope was the ill at the bottom of Pandora’s box, “the evil of evils, the most malign of all evils”. For the lulz, keeping up with the theme of things that I did not study in school—in this case, something that was always obvious to me: “(Gerade wegen dieser Fähigkeit, den Unglücklichen hinzuhalten, galt die Hoffnung bei den Griechen als übel der Übel, als das eigentlich tückische Übel: es blieb im Fass des Übels zurück)”. Man and Technics“Optimism is cowardice.” — Spengler (writing most of a hundred years ago) |
|
|
|
This is a good debate, i.e. thoughtful disagreement. Thanks, Phil_S: Why do you assume that a replacement must exist before it [the dollar] collapses!?
Because its value is rooted in psychology. Right now people sell all types of assets (even gold) to buy dollars. Completely illogical, but that's a reality. By that logic, every scam called out on the Scam Accusations forum has actual value as long as people believe in it. Dollar will collapse when people will lose faith in it, when they'll rush to sell dollars to buy something else. That "something else" will become a new universally-recognized replacement.
Lots of worldwide value is locked in dollars right now. That value will not disappear. It will flow into "something else", into a replacement vessel. Boldface on a faulty assumption. Wealth is not a zero-sum game—not in either direction. No quasi “law of conservation” applies. Value is both created and destroyed. I have long predicted that the collapse of the dollar and the collapse of industry, technology, and society will be intertwined in a feedback loop. Massive amounts of real value will disappear. Not flow to something else. Things of durable value will remain; but not many people will have them. I must now revisit something here: Right now people sell all types of assets (even gold) to buy dollars. That is incomprehensibly stupid. It is also a very good way for the people who control dollars to extract the last bit of durable value from total idiots. Well, I don’t have anything against that, in and of itself. Total idiots don’t deserve to have things of durable value. The only unfortunate part is that there are massive side effects to people who are not total idiots.
It's a pretty crazy situation. If the virus doesn't recede significantly over the summer, will we stay on global lockdown for 1 year+, while waiting for a vaccine? A technocratic, industrialized, globalized international economy based on massive centralization and long supply chains cannot survive such a scenario as “global lockdown for 1 year+”. That is why I accuse headless-chicken governments of destroying the world in a futile attempt to save it from a virus that is not being significantly slowed by all the lockdowns. |
|
|
|
Every sane person has known for a very long time that the dollar must collapse someday;
Not anytime soon. No universally-recognized replacement on the horizon. Why do you assume that a replacement must exist before it collapses!? That is like assuming that Madoff’s scheme could not collapse before his investors moved on to something better. Say what? The U.S. Dollar itself is the most enormous of things that are “too big to fail”. That does not mean it cannot fail—to the contrary. It has been suspicious since 1913, fundamentally unsound since the 1930s, and a red-tag scam since the 1970s. Of course, it will collapse—it cannot keep going forever! The problem is that without a crystal ball, it is impossible to time the collapse of a global, tera-scale scam backed by a habitually belligerent military superpower with a worm-eaten domestic economy that still has a lot of momentum. I am not a financial analyst. I think in historical terms. The context that you snipped: Every sane person has known for a very long time that the dollar must collapse someday; but trying to predict when is like trying to predict the fall of the Roman Empire when you are living in it at some undermined point between c. A.D. 300–400... or is it later than I think? |
|
|
|
Guys, check out silver price. ::)
It's actually in the buy zone for me. But ironically, no one can get silver at spot right now, the silver vendors have made sure of that with a high premium. Would honestly love to own physical gold & silver, purely for the ‘being in awe’ , magpie, shiny, shiny type hypnosis of it but not at the expense of buying corn. Hmmm... The substantial effect of the gold ban is still in full force. The government simply no longer needs to maintain a legal ban, when individual ownership of gold is restricted to only relatively few wealthy investors (most of whom never take delivery—thus leaving possession, “nine-tenths of the law”, in control of banks), plus economically negligible amounts in the hands of socioeconomically and politically marginal goldbugs and “preppers”. Seriously. The system does not care if you and a few others have a few coins of an ounce or less. Read what I said two paragraphs after that, if you want any chance of surviving a real SHTF scenario. Gold (etc.) is the only form of money that survives the deaths of civilizations. But it has been under total control in America since the 1930s, and worldwide since not later than the Nixon Shock and global conversion to completely arbitrary fiat currencies. Any WO-style investment decisions assume as a premise the continued existence of civilization. For other assumptions, you needed to start preparing long ago. But if that assumption is correct, then don’t shoot yourself in the foot financially here. Do the opposite of what panicking people are doing. For example, I have my own take on this excellent photo of panic personified:Mass Suicide!  Also, for example, if panickers are dumping Bitcoin, then now is a good time to accumulate it. If I had any fiat to invest, I would be buying more Bitcoin, and also be looking at futures in commodities, plus some stocks for companies that are least likely to cease to exist. Well, take that for what it’s worth: I have no skin in the game with fiat currencies. ;-) If I had been trading in London at the time of the Battle of Waterloo, I would have ridden on Rothschild’s coattails, too. Even without any special intelligence as he had. Just based on my principle that men with cool heads place carefully measured bets against panic. Always bet against panic! All of this is high-risk; but do not expect safety in a time of mass chaos (or ever!). It is a good time to get rich, if you can pull it off—and if you can’t, for the nth time, government-issued scrip is not a safe place to park your assets right now. |
|
|
|
A PSA that should probably not be buried in WO: Stop measuring value in dollars!Those of you who do TA and dataporn, do you have any good intelligence on the value of the dollar, in purchase-power terms? I don’t mean today; I mean tomorrow; I don’t mean the next day, either. Every sane person has known for a very long time that the dollar must collapse someday; but trying to predict when is like trying to predict the fall of the Roman Empire when you are living in it at some undermined point between c. A.D. 300–400... or is it later than I think? Flip the axes on your BTC-USD trading charts, re-run your algorithms with the variables swapped, and see what that tells you—to start with. What is the dollar’s trend against Bitcoin? As a rule of thumb, I measure fiat currency value by how many $/€/etc. an ounce of gold will purchase. Not vice versa. Flip your thinking, because your thinking is upside-down. I also try to track the fiat/BTC price: What is the value of government-issued official trading stamps, as measured in Bitcoin today? However, that only works to avoid being a sheep getting sheared in the markets due to mismeasures of value, plus for long-term predictions, e.g.: The dollar loses value. Whoopie, I’m a genius. Ok. Bitcoin is going "down" because dollars are disappearing. The little bits of paper are starting to vanish like toilet paper because institutions (banks and the like) are hoarding them to be able to pay taxes and probably bonuses to their leaders.
So right now dollars are like toilet paper and everyone is worried that they won't have a clean bum. Thus they are more "valuable" than bitcoins. Now the main difference between dollars and toilet paper and bitcoins is that you can print an infinite number of dollars at a whim. You can only make so much toilet paper, and you sure can't make more than 12.5 bitcoins per 10 minutes.
When the super flood of dollars hits, people will be flush again and bitcoin will go back to about where it has been (IMO). Note I don't think it will skyrocket because the dollars being printed are just filling a pothole that has been growing all along and people have been blissfully ignoring it.
The people ultimately screwed are people on pensions, people on fixed income, and people who panic. Damn, well said. Note that all of the above assumes the continued existence of the Internet—and all the Internet’s massive dependency chain of fragile infrastructure. If that assumption holds true, then I rate Bitcoin a strong buy without even trying to time the bottom. If not, then moving your assets to toilet paper is not exactly helpful. The creation of money out of thin air is a tool for shearing sheep by draining value from their possession. Note that all of the above assumes a sane person is in charge of all this. Such is not the case. There is no single person in charge. This is the problem with “conspiracy theorists” (not calling you that—it’s just a good segue for an important point). Everybody who knows how the world actually works, knows that it is run by the sum of vectors of competing interests. Of course, people with the same interests will collude much as they can, and try to avoid announcing their plans to their competitors. In that sense, the world is run by “conspiracies”, and always has been; but that is just Real Life 101. In all significantly powerful countries, the ruling classes have been in headless-chicken mode for a very long time—ever since they converted themselves from aristocracies to industrial capitalist plutocracies. They painted themselves into a corner: They are dependent on the dollar scam, the Euro scam, the stock market scam, etc., etc. They are not only using it to trap you: They are trapped, too, and trapped worst of all. “Too big to fail.” Building dynasties on the foundation of what is effectually the biggest Ponzi scheme in recorded history was not exactly wise. Thus indeed, no sane person is in charge. No single person or monolithic organization is in charge; and the various competing groups in power are all totally insane. We are now enjoying the sum of competing vectors of insanity. Lulz.
|
|
|
|
VB1001, love it.
In a world where the FED panic, who am I to not panic? LoL Hey, after a few days off the forum for fateful reasons, I just posted a long polemic in Politics & Society about how it is panic that will destroy the world. Panic already wrecked your hard-won HODLings. :-/ I don't know what is safe. Probably nothing. Not gold, not cash, not btc. Life is not safe. Life is risk, and death is a part of life.
...destroy within yourself every particle of the sick modern mindset based in the fantasy that the world can be made safe.
Not gold, Gold is golden— if you can keep it. No matter where you are, nowadays, good luck with that, if SHTF and you are not very carefully prepared long in advance. not cash, I heard that toilet paper is in high demand. not btc. Was Bitcoin ever “safe”? It is powerful: A powerful idea that can change the world for the better. Therefore, it has powerful enemies. I bet on Bitcoin.
this is a complete global meltdown. Many people will die. This is not a small scale war in the Middle East. Metldown caused by panic. See the trend? Yes, I think it is a meltdown. To increase your chance of surviving it, first of all, don’t panic. The dollar is pulling a supernova. No matter what the FED do, it will keep going up because the demand is infinite on dollar.
The FED is trying to counter balance it by putting more money into the system but how can you counter infinite demand? By creating infinite supply. That 700billion is nothing. Make it 700 quadrillion. Is this a good time to HODL fiat? What’s better than hyperinflation? Infinite inflation? I know next to nothing about daytrading. I study history. This is exactly the sort of move that is used to suck value out of the market— i.e. out of the populace. Dollar-holders will be left holding the bag. At this point, I think the only question is whether they will lose it all (in which case it is really SHTF), or they will “only” get sheep-sheared much more than usual, in purchase-power terms.
Pop quiz: America was a quite free country in 1932 (unlike today!). Pretend that you are an American in 1932. In 1932, it was also in economic turmoil amidst the throes of the Great Depression. Do you put all you have left into gold? Congrats, you are now forced to trade it for toilet paper in 1934. Do you HODL dollars? LOL! *crash* There was no Bitcoin in 1932. N.b., I never claimed that Bitcoin was “safe”—especially in a time of disaster, when more than ever, nothing is safe. Choose your best available options.
|
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
