Superfun post. At first I just was not sure if you were joking or actually serious about your mixed set of assertions, but after some consideration I am now certain that you are making fun of the whole thing. Yep, any establecoin is purely a joke: they have all the disadvantages of fiat, additional credibility issues around being backed up by anything at all and have a history of fraud and accusations. Anyway, perhaps useful for short times to avoid tax or artificially pump bitcoin price... all very legit activities.

It is a recurrent issue with coinmarketcap and other and it also happens to certain individual coins particularly if they have low liquidity or are marginal coins with weak programming and poor blockexplorers. it is certainly not the first time and won't be the last, so CMC should not really be used as a single source of truth for these matters ... nor for any other to be honest.

Regarding you having more than Elon, all I can say is that statistics say that between him and me we have billions.

Inflation linked bonds are a defensive asset, but it is not always available. I would look into combinations of commodities and stocks that have pricing power to go past the inflation.  Insofar as your comments on Argentina, you are absolutely right. I would add that Venezuelans can also help with the classes and include an specialty in urban survival skills.

Jokes apart, the average Argentinian has learnt more about economy, inflation, the banking system, the credit system, what money really is and what an irresponsible politician can do to their lives. Hyperinflation, "corralitos", debt beyond measure and governments that last months.

It would also be interested to know how the people who did not attend college fared. There is a lot of questioning on the real value of college and university education as it is , AFAIK, a free market in the USA and therefore by mere economic theory it will tend to reach a point in which the investment in time, money , effort would tend to an equilibrium with the benefits of such education (nicer jobs, better pay, better lifetime value). Did people looking for job without any degree do any better?

I think central banks are mostly concerned with people being scammed rather than with the crypto being a competition or substitute system. It is very clear that bitcoin does not really work as a substitute of local currencies, but rather like gold or other assets, so there is no fear on that. however, everyone that has been around for a while understands that possible the greatest risk in crypto is falling into a scam and the governments cannot allow people to loose their saving to scams and then having to subsidize their retirements.

I am afraid we are not reading or watching the same news. US has stated that an invasion of Ukraine would have dire economic consequences, which in diplomatic terms is not equivalent at all to a green light. The fact that they are not sending tanks, submarines and the like does not mean that they are willing to have Russia have a go for free.

Regarding sending troops, you have to choose in a range of declarations... no clarity on that either and changes by the day. The Biden admin is unlikely to survive an invasion of Ukraine politically IMHO.

But none of that is the largest issue affecting markets, again, IMHO.

As most of you know, markets go on their own and determine prices by offer and demand... until the FED or the CEB shows up with the money bazooka and then everything moves correlated to the amount of money they decide to print. The situation as of today is no different, as any mention of "tampering", that is, the FED starting to withdraw money from circulation is received with 3% loses in stocks and quite a bit more in bitcoin.

On these times, focus on the long term or you will just get lost in the noise.

not financial advice either.

The fact that you buy a house with x5 or more leverage is what makes it an interesting business. You are basically doing business with someone else's money. If inflation is around 2% and you are paying a 2 o 3% is quite difficult to end worse than you started even if things go south. The main risk is not being able to pay or get into a large negative equity, but that is not really common unless you buy at the peak of a bubble or have very bad luck on your choices.

On top of that, if you are buying a house to live in, you would always need to consider that anyway you would need to pay to live somewhere, so the alternative is not to spend zero.

More or less. I have used it a few times for transfers and the like, but I am mostly a hodler. Bitcoin has not changed my life greatly, although I am fully aware that it is the case for many others in the forum.

My attitude towards money, bitcoin and investment is thinking in the very long term, decades or even a century ahead. To put it plainly, I hope that my grandchildren are born financially free. Taking that approach means that you will not take as much advantage of your personal achievements during your life time and it is a philosophy that is completely opposite to all the messages you are getting out there from commercial advertising, financial institutions, news outlets and society in general - so it is not for everyone.

It is probably as good as it gets, but again, it is very easy to adjust a model backtesting, that is, adjusting the parameters so that it works perfectly in "predicting the past". But the nature of the market in the long and short term is highly psychological and bitcoin is facing legal and geostrategic issues that was not facing before. 200 year before it happened, people would not have predicted the fall of the Roman Empire to put it in a way.

Respecto al tema energetico, creo que las estadísticas son muy difíciles de estimar. Hace poco vimos en un post que en teoría prácticamente no se mina en China pero que seguramente se estará haciendo con VPNs y similar. Ya de partida una buena parte del minado no sabes ni donde está. Hay casos absurdos como Rusia que tiene una prohibición de minado y a la vez el 3% de los nodos,... en fin que imposible de calcular.

Para mi lo más importante es saber cual es el coste de las alternativas. El minado es el precio de la seguridad de red y la capacidad de transaccionar. Cual es el coste energético de los centros de datos de Visa, Mastercard, Bancos, Financieras? Cuanto se gasta en realidad, inclusive por ejemplo los trabajadores llendo a las oficinas todos los días o la energía de los centros de datos, los edificios y sus consumos, ....

El debate ni siquiera es si la energía usada en bitcoin es renovable, el debate hay que llevarlo a cuan renovables son las alternativas.

I think these numbers do add to the argument in favour of considering that bitcoin price is being artificially inflated by the issuance of "tethers" in all their varieties. Even if only 10% of the bitcoins are exchange, price manipulation is even simpler and the depth of the market is low and it can be easily altered. If the USDT is not effectively backed up 1:1 then is leveraged and thus adds strength to the ability to artificially manipulate the market price and even the marketcap.

For me, all this sound sketchy and very far from the original intent of creating a coin that offers certainty and trustless exchanges.

Glad to know that this company is taking it seriously. The most clear case of legit and economic use of NFTs is to prove digital assets ownership and to trustlessly transact these on a chain. The in-game items clearly fit on this description and Ubisoft is taking a great step in ensuring that their uses receive and added value that other will have to follow soon to keep competing. In my view, it has already taken more than enough time to get to this, as the tech was ready years ago but probably the craziness of 2018 did not help much instil confidence in crypto.

Yep, that is how the CCP acts and governs. First they feed the cow and put flowers in the horns and then kills it. It is not only the fortunes of the internet millionaires that have been wiped out, it is a much wider movement to de-couple China from western economic investment. China could even ban the societies that allow the circumvention of the rules for foreign investment in mainland China companies and many are listing in Hong Kong as the risk is also coming from the US in the form of delisting the companies from the NASDAQ.

The decoupling that China intends is asymmetric, wants to make the west invest but under their own arbitrary rules.

I would say that, at government level, it is just "El Salvador". As I have said in previous posts, using an asset that is limited, cannot be printed and is, as of now, deflationary is not valid for a whole country. It does not allow to follow a monetary policy to attenuate crisis and deflation has an very detrimental effect on any economy.

No, bitcoin is not intended to be used by any centralised and politically controlled institution and my take is that this is by design. It is money peer-to-peer, for the people and the individuals.. You can argue that some may want to have some nominal holdings of bitcoin for transactional purposes... the CIA has been mentioned but sources, well, you know, if "I tell you about the sources I would have to kill you after."

I did not know that you were presumed a donor in Spain unless stated otherwise, but I guess it makes sense. Particularly in a country that is quite strong in organ transplants in general already for a few decades. I cannot help but to feel that this is kind of a "harvesting" by the public health system though.

In my view, and based on the studies, donating for money is an ultimate way of exploitation of the poor. Anyone with a little imagination can figure out how ugly this may get... e.g. selling children for their organs, giving organs away to avoid deprivation and hunger or extreme poverty... My take is that this is already happening in the black market, yet making it official is simply intolerable.

That is certain for most business. Anyone selling goods of certain value or with tickets above a certain value should seriously consider implementing a crypto-payments solution to allow customers to pay with crypto. This may now be simply a smart option, but by the looks of the markets and the general direction of travel of adoption and recognition among the young, it may simply become something that commerce may not be able to live without or, in another way, may have to live with it or be loosing a significant percent of sales.

This is an episode of the US history that is known yet perhaps not widely enough. The executive order 6102 signed by the US president Roosevelt, basically confiscated all the privately held gold in the US giving a clearly insufficient compensation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102



This has to be more widely know particularly for younger people who have lived in an era in which banks seemed solid, money seemed to be of some value and most governments somehow seem respectful of private property. There is no haven, no absolute safety and you should not take anything for granted. Bitcoin may help you protect from these cases, yet, again, nothing is watertight.

It makes sense in many ways. Firstly, CIA has to pay an immensely large number of agents across the world and those payments carry certain risks. Firstly, if done in person (and many times that is the only option) they can be detected and intercepted. Secondly, individuals that get the money can look suspicious unless they somehow hide it "under the mattress". Using blockchain for payments solves quite nicely the problems.

And on another matter, they certainly must have projects on blockchain investigation, e.g. reverse-engineering the chipmixers?

Taxes make a huge impact on betting earnings in certain countries while other are relatively free of that burden. Many central European countries such as Germany, France, Luxembourg, Denmark, etc... charge directly to the casinos and other charge to the earnings. For example Denmark will get nearly 70% of the Casino earnings.

https://www.taxback.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-gambling-tax-rates-around-the-world

As you can read, Germany is the most astringent jurisdiction, with 90% of casino earning being paid as tax! The message cannot be more clear: if you want money, go work! You could argue that Italy - tax free -  is also sending a message: go gamble, there is not much more to do  On-line is also different per country and some are tax-free if it is online and other make no difference.

I researched this because I hear that a professional poker player from Spain was about to move to Andorra, which is something that may people do when they earn big.