It will be interesting to witness the extent to which some "work-arounds" may develop in response to aspects of the somewhat surprising draconian measures that Canada has chosen to take.

Several of us can likely recognize various ways to employ work-arounds that make it much more difficult for individuals to end up getting identified - but surely, any time that these matters start to appear completely "decentralized," there are worries about rug pulls (lack of legitimacy)... and then if targets (individuals) of distribution are recognized, then that can be difficult too.

It's almost as if there are disadvantages in publicizing either the means of distribution or the targets of the beneficiaries.. so that each person almost has to give directly to some individual that they want to benefit, whether a truck driver, or some one who is supporting the truck drivers (the one giving out free sandwiches and discounted fuel.. or paying for lawyers). 

Not easy.. and then if you start talking about it or supporting it, then maybe you become a target for that (deplatformed or even gone after by authorities).... words can lead to action, and then surely governments engage in behaviors to attempt to make words illegal too.

That's a weird way of framing everything... first starting off from the December 2017 peak.. seems just weird and maybe even self-defeatist.. and failing/refuse to appreciate more overall representative prices, not that the December 2017 peak did not have some bearing, including a need to return to it three years later... ... but surely we should not be writing off those three years.. and what happened therein, but then also the kind of weird and flamboyant way that bitcoin went past the December 2017 peak.. I mean really did not spend very much time between $10k and $30k.. when passing through in late 2020.. and not even saying that we have to go back there in spite that recent passage.. and now all of a sudden (another year and a half later) the 200-week moving average is just going above that same $20k price point.

I cannot really disagree with you that we already revisited $30k around 3 times (1) January 2021, 2) May/June/July 2021, and 3) January 23, 2022).. but you are now currently suggesting that $30k would have to be a pretty solid bottom, even though you had been insisting that we needed to visit $20k and perhaps below $20k when we were testing the lower $30ks in May/June/July.   I understand, we are 6-7 months later, so in that regard, you are probably right to change your mind because the bottom has likely moved up.. and I doubt that there are many folks who are not considering that there is quite a bit of support in the lower $30ks.. but then the question remains whether it will hold or not because we are not really that far away from it... and we been there a few times... 

You are also now suggesting that this $40k is a kind of solid bottom that compares with the $6k price point in 2018.. so surely we could get a break down from it.. so therefore back to $30k again.. but then again we have already been to $30k.. so we may not need to go back down there again (that's your kind of getting more bullish part.. and suggesting the bear market (to the extent that it ever existed) is over)..

In some sense, you are coming off as more bullish than me, but you are also coming off as a wee bit whimsical in terms of just throwing out strange frames.... I will agree that $30k is a pretty solid bottom so long as we are in a bull market.. because it is the 100-week moving average, but if we end up being in a bear market, then $20k would be the bottom... still because that is the 200-week moving average.. and yeah, I believe that we are not in a bear market, yet.. even though our ongoing corrections are pretty strong.. and surely, continued down pressures and even staying down could end up triggering a testing of lower $30ks that may or may not end up holding, depending on if it ends up being coupled with other scary macro-events - and it seems that TPTB are never ending in their abilities to keep screwing things up and acting like they have things under control when they do not.

So bitcoin is not controlled or lead by mainstream macro-factors, but in the short-term those matters can play out that way.. and bitcoin could end up getting played in some of those circumstances - even though there can be opportunities that develop in which some bullwhales and even bitcoin retail can end up fucking some of the traditional status quo institutions that are playing around too much with their ongoing naked shorting of bitcoin - and yeah those matters end up blowing up in their face.. but I have no clue about if some of those kinds of dynamics could end up playing out, even if some of them likely realize that their fractional reserve playing bitcoin does run some of those risks.. but maybe they are so arrogant that they are willing to play those games anyhow... thinking that they got it all figure out.

It is funny how you seem to have the conclusion all figured out...

Your lack of factual description causes me to conclude that you have no clue about what bitcoin is providing or potentially providing in El Salvador.

Sure, it might fail in the end, but surely not for anything even close to the reasons (or lack thereof) that you have stated.

Actually, consider remittances by itself.


Then consider the ability for many people to become banked (at least with a bitcoin kind of an account) who had previously been unbanked.

Then consider that so far various forms of lightning interactions (whether Chivo or using other lightning wallets) are nearly free to transact (at least so far).

In other words, there are quite a few ways (even considering some of the basics), that bitcoin provides value and options to the overall Salvadorean citizens, even if the overall system might not end up being a resounding success in terms of sustainability and being able to soundly manage the overall system with bitcoin-related capital that seems to be currently coming into El Salvador because of their various announced measures (that were ONLY announced last June .. so just over 8 months ago.. still newly developing systems there.

Ok.  Falconer.. I agree with you overall because the ideas presented by olib123 are likely going to fuck you out of a lot of profit areas, but there are some issues when you seem to be suggesting ONLY buying on dips.. because sometimes the BTC price does not dip for an extended period of time.

you have been registered on this forum for about the same amount of time as me, so likely you have been through several examples of periods in which the BTC price goes up without really dipping.. so what do you do?  just stop everything?

Let's take our recent example of September 2020 to April 2021.. The BTC price largely went from $10k to $64,895 with only around one period of significant dip..

For the sake of this example, let's say that you have $1k per month of extra cashflow (that you can dedicate towards buying BTC) coming in between September 2020 and April 2021.  What do you do?  Do you buy?  Do you just hold it?  And, you don't know in advance where the BTC price is going.. even though afterwards, you can see where it went.. but while the price is going up between September 2020 and April 2021 you do not really know when the UP is going to stop, right?

I chose September 2020 and April 2021, but we have a lot of examples like that in bitcoin.  Remember April 2019 to June 2019 going from $4,200 to $13,880 without any meaningful dips?  What do you do during those kinds of times?  Of course, we could go further back, but some of that could be messy to describe the period. especially if we look at the various price moves in late 2016 or throughout 2017.

Good thing that we are not attempting to measure bitcoin on such short timelines, otherwise we might even start to believe some of the baloney claims that BTC is correlated with the stock market and nonsense like that.

Think about the matter.

We had right around a 7x BTC price appreciation in terms of dollars since September 2020.. however, we have been experiencing a kind of lull that keeps bitcoin prices bouncing largely between 3x and 7x but ending up gravitating around 4x from that September 2020 time frame.

Yeah, maybe some folks will try to assert that using September 2020 is not very representative, and there are preferences to use some other number, and sure maybe it is possible to play those kinds of games, but if we get to 4 years or longer in our measurement timeline, there are almost no ways that you can appreciate that BTC is doing better than fiat and other assets and stocks - even property, equities (stocks) and commodities such as gold. 

Yeah, some folks will try to paint disingenuine pictures by striving to pick bitcoin price peaks as the starting point (such as starting to measure from December 2017 when BTC shortly reached $19,666) and surely measuring from peaks is hardly even reflective....

So, struggle as they will to attempt to paint bitcoin as a mediocre performing asset, zooming out causes a lot of difficulties for such folks who prefer to try to remain stuck in various select short-term periods that they can spin nonsense claims... and, yeah I will admit that there are so many of us (and normies) who have a whole hell of a lot of difficulties to either plan to invest in the long term or to actually follow through with longer term executions of something like a BTC accumulation/HODLing plan.

There is nothing really in the evidence that shows that BTC is going to stop performing in stupendous ways relatively speaking - especially for folks who are able to consider their own allocations into bitcoin in terms of 4-10 years or longer from here on out.. in the event that they happen to be new to BTC or not involved in BTC for very long.  The short term can feel difficult, but likely continuing investing accumulating and holding BTC for 4-10 years or longer, there is likely to be considerable and measurable differences that might not be at the same magnitudes as earlier years in bitcoin, but bitcoin is likely to continue to at least match (if not greatly exceed) various traditional ways of investing.

Nothing wrong with being hesitant about investing into BTC too.. but these days it does not hurt to start out with something like a 1% to 25% allocation into bitcoin, and then in the earlier years while investing into bitcoin, figure out more specifically how you want to particularize your ongoing investments, whether it is somewhere within a 1% to 25% range or if you want to make some other allocation into BTC based on studying and learning about BTC along the way.


No coiners and whimpy investors into BTC have mentalities like that, and those mentalities have largely kept them poor (at least more poor) because they failed/refused to take an adequate and meaningful investment position into bitcoin.. and it really does not take very much of an investment in bitcoin in order to have had really benefited your overall portfolio over the years.

Just consider if you had around $100k in various traditional investments around 2016, and you had decided to diversify 10% into bitcoin.

So you are starting out with something like $90k traditional investments and $10k into bitcoin.  What happens during that time?

So maybe your traditional investments end up going up to $120k

but your bitcoin ends up going up to around $60k

All of a sudden, instead of having a 10% BTC portfolio, your BTC comprises about 50% of your overall investment portfolio.


Well, if we go by your forum registration date of April 2013 bitcoinminer42, we get even more dramatic results... but let's just say that in your first year or two of being into bitcoin, you did not quite understand bitcoin so you had been a bit distracted by other nocoiner and whimpy coiner ideas.. so it took you a bit longer to figure out that maybe it could be a good idea to invest a bit of value into bitcoin. 

So you have something like $100k, and you decide to take a 10% plunge into bitcoin.  So similar to the above example but with a bit of a longer timeline:

In 2014/2015, you are starting out with something like $90k traditional investments and $10k into bitcoin.  What happens during that timeframe?

So maybe your traditional investments end up doing very well and doubling  and going up to $180k

but what happens with your bitcoin:

your bitcoin ends up going up around 40x or more to around $400k

All of a sudden, instead of having a 10% BTC portfolio, your BTC comprises about 70% of your overall investment portfolio.

These are not unrealistic numbers, and I question about whether getting excited about any kind of potential bear market in BTC gets you these kinds of results like I describe above, and I would imagine that anything that you have done through the past 9 years or so that you have been registered in this forum has not even gotten you close to the levels of results that I am describing above.


It's always obvious, until it is not.

What happens frequently in bitcoin is that people/normies believe that they know better, and they prepare for down while failing/refusing to significantly/adequately preparing for up.


You may well be looking at the wrong chart... because the way that you are talking, you come off as NOT really knowing bitcoin too well.. and you sound like either a no coiner or someone who has whimpily invested in bitcoin at various times over the years, so you have not really benefitted in any kind of material/tangible and or representative way that even comes close to the conservative/normal numbers that I describe above that would reflect a longer term bitcoin accumulator/hodler that has a timeline something like you.

I am really tempted to batslap you for that last point.. but maybe I don't know enough regarding some of the potential back and forth that could create some utility between coins, too.. because sometimes if a lot of people are engaging in various kinds of mixing or even back and forth between coins options, and it has become a kind of standard practice for a large proportion of the population to be engaging in those kinds of attempts at privacy/security preservation, then it is harder to distinguish the potentially illicit (or targeted for the wrong reasons.. nobody here is either engaging in illegal activity or aiming to engage in illegal activity.. not going to presume that) content.. back to the 5 out of a 1,000 example.... it becomes difficult for any analyst or government/bank official to block or blacklist those addresses without due process and then claim that they are treating you fairly... In the short-term they will claim that you are being treated fairly as they steal your money.. it's for your own good.


Pretty scary.. that the directive gives so much latitude to financial institutions to freeze accounts without due process... and she did not clarify if just donating would have caused your account to get frozen, but from the way she answered, it seems that there are going to be frozen accounts from people who were merely donating.. which is really outrageous.. but at the same time, really concretize in meaningful ways the use case(s) for bitcoin and for anonymous donating when possible.

Of course you likely appreciate that my various comments about BTC price expectations and possible ways to individually manage BTC holdings is not directly aimed at any particular kind of BTC holder, even though I understand that there are quite a few of the longer term WO participants who have crossed over  into considerable financial freedom, have been there for a while or are on the cusp of moving over into such status.

For sure, there are likely quite a few of us who could have cashed out large portions of our BTC portfolio in the sub $10k price arena and still been in a position in order to NOT have to worry about finances for the remainder of our lives - but many of us continue to choose to retain higher portions of our HODLings in BTC because we have either sufficiently diversified into other assets or that we may well not feel that there is any need to diversify into other assets...

Of course, there can always be some second-guessing regarding the BTC portfolio management if a lot of value is held in BTC and the value drops 30%, 50% or even greater amounts - but many of us have already been there several times, so maybe we might sometimes feel some levels of regrets for perhaps not taking out some additional portfolio insurance by cashing out a bit more at higher BTC prices, but at the same time, there might be a sufficient level of confidence that the cashing out timeline is far enough into the future, that there are not too many fears about even potential worser -case scenarios that may well require waiting a few more years to get back above $69k again.

For sure, I attempt to address a variety of these kinds of variations in WO member reservations and situations.. including of course, that we are always going to have some members who are going through way earlier stage adoption... so it does not really seem fair to ignore them and to create the appearance that older members are dumping upon newer members - or can no longer relate to the stresses of those earliest years of BTC accumulation emphasis.

On a personal level, it seems that I had my most intense BTC accumulation phase during late 2013 and most of 2014... but for some reason, I could not really stop myself from having quite a bit of continued BTC accumulation through 2016 and maybe even into parts of 2017... I did kind of get pushed back into some lower levels of accumulation even in early to mid 2017 to attempt to make up for some mistakes that I made early in the year.. but you know really.. the movement from accumulation to maintenance to liquidation has been gradual.. and so the way that I have structured my own BTC portfolio management has contributed to my NOT considering my own location/stage in absolute categorical terms.. even though there had been quite a bit of emphasis on maintenance that goes back to as far as late 2014 - even though psychologically, I could not really stop myself from acting upon continued financial preparations that kept me accumulating - even though I did not really need to. 

Of course, your particulars vary enough from my own and we can see that some of our choices about how to talk about portfolio management does reflect aspects of our own particular circumstances... so from your various descriptions in the past, I already recognize that it is quite likely that you achieved a kind of 2-3x cushion before you even started to make any kind of decently-sized moves to cash out some chosen portion of your BTC portfolio.. and so some of that ended up resulting in a kind of overallocation that was way more than you had really ever though that you were going to end up investing into BTC, so you experience some relieved as fuck feelings when you are able to cash out decent amounts of that (even though it is not even a large overall amount of your total holdings) so in some sense, you were not even attached to keeping that value in BTC...

And, surely there is nothing wrong with that whole approach, even though it is a bit different from my own approach - but of course, I started from a different position from you too in terms of quite a few of our particulars...  and sometimes it can be difficult to really appreciate if one approach pays off better than another approach in objective terms, because the calculation is not completely based on objective considerations.

Maybe I am being a bit of a hypocrite here, too?  You know maybe I should not give any excuses to some folks who I really had been suggesting to them that they should have some kind of higher level of allocation into BTC because anything like 1% to 10% (in 2014, 2015, 2016) would have put them in a really great position right now (maybe even blowing my own BTC portfolio management performance away... perhaps, perhaps, perhaps), but the difference between you and me is not likely as great as the difference between me and the people who I had been trying to convince to get off of zero because both you and I ended up both making decent-sized allocations to BTC, and even though we managed our portfolios differently, each of us are worlds apart from either the the person who did not allocate into BTC and/or the person who was somewhat whimpy in his/her bitcoin allocation.

So another thing in common between you and me is that neither of us have been whimpy in our BTC allocation and/or our BTC portfolio management and even though each of us have had points of fear, uncertainty and even second guessing regarding if there might be some better ways to manage our holdings.. overall both you and I have errored on the side of mostly holding.. which has made a lot of commonality between us (even if we started from different places and our individual circumstances are different) and we have also considerably distinguished our lil selfies from the no coiner... but we have even considerably distinguished ourselves from the whimpy investors too....

Maybe some of those whimpy BTC investors ended up not even going 1% into bitcoin (or at least they were not even consistent enough), and they might have been 10x more wealthy than us in 2014, 2015, 2016, but we know that BTC is still at least 40x up from those times, so even someone who might have been 10x more wealthy than us in 2014, 2015, 2016, they have difficulties keeping up even if their wealth has grown too.. but not likely grown as much as bitcoin.... ... maybe they had some really good performance of some real estate and businesses that may have gotten them up 2x.. or even 4x.. but then if they went up 4x.. instead of being 10x in front of us.. we are similar levels of wealth.. even if the bitcoin portion does seem like magical internet money.. hahahahahahaha.. but it should be more liquid than real estate or owning some businesses that might have done well in that same 6-8 year timeframe.

I am not trying to be emotional about this or even to compete with others because sometimes there might not be significantly BIG compare contrast between people, but sometimes the objective differences do end up being considerable.. especially that there has been so much flexibility in how to invest in BTC over the years, as compared to even some of the difficulties that might exist in picking which stocks to hold or how to manage a business or some real estate that might not be completely trouble free either...even if it has advantages of being able to live and enjoy it.. and not going to blame anyone from liquidating some of their BTC in order to experience some of those kinds of luxuries, too.



For sure, there can be quite a bit of extra comfort that comes from having had gotten ahead of the price, so in that sense you have set up price points that are comfortable for you... and then to really feel comfortable there should be a bit of detachment to whether they hit or they do not hit.. so for example, one of the BIG tests can be if the BTC price ends up going to "almost" your buy price point, and then it reverses.. that can be one of the most frustrating of things but it is also a pretty decent test regarding your level of establishing your orders in a kind of "don't give a shitness" way.

In that regard, the psychology to be happy with any of these: 
1) "if they fill they fill" 
2) "if they don't they don't" and
3) "I don't give too many shits, either way about 1 or 2."

That can be a kind of test regarding whether your set levels are sufficiently good enough for you... no one else to satisfy, right?  just you, right?


Could be.

Hard to know with any level of certainty...

And, of course, you will be happy any way, right?

right?




right?




 

hahahahaha I could not resist.

You may well know that I hardly have any high levels of confidence regarding short term BTC price directions, and I hardly would set up my own portfolio management out of very high levels of certainty except for just expecting that in the long run (or that any time in the future), the odds are pretty good that in 4 years that the BTC price will be higher than it is today... beyond that?  Maybe just staying above the 208-week moving average is a good thing....

By the way, I had seen a decent new graph that discusses the 100-week moving average as a bottom and then compares it to a top that is 5x the 100-week moving average.

Look at this page: 
https://www.lookintobitcoin.com/charts/bitcoin-investor-tool/

I am thinking that I am going to have to incorporate that for my 208-week moving average.. so the 208-week moving average will be the bottom (which is currently at about $20k) and then instead of 5x, I think 10x the 208-week moving average would be good top.... (or maybe a slightly smaller than 10x multiple?), so that expectations of the bottom and the top largely falls within such range... .. of course, even when we get to 5x or 6x of the 208-week moving average, we can become quite concerned that we are getting frothy.. but we know that there have also been times that we have reached true blow off tops that actually do end up exceeding 10x of the 208 week moving average.

Can look at historical renditions of the 200-week moving averages as compared with the BTC spot price here.

https://www.lookintobitcoin.com/charts/200-week-moving-average-heatmap/



Could be.

Again.  Hard to know with any level of certainty...

Of course, a bit more whimpy of a run, but surely not horribly bad.  In 2013 we had a bit over 116x if you consider $1,163 as the top and measure something like $10 as the base (from early 2013), even though reasonable arguments could be made to move the jumping off base down further than $10 (which would likely get the base in the $2-ish territory.. but I am not very comfortable with $2 as a base mostly because of the considerable lacking of maturity of the BTC market in those pre-2013 times).

I am thinking that 2017 was around 78x getting to a high of $19,666, so that is using $250 as the base (from mid-2015).

Personally I believe that even though we had some muddiness through the whole 2019-2021 period (what else is new?), right around $4,200 (from April 2019) would be a fair base for our so far 2021 UPpity run to $69k.. which ends up coming out as a 16.4x price run... which yeah for sure is way wimpier that previous runs.. but still not horribly bad either.. including my general agreement with some of you subsequent comments that smaller run up tops likely causes way less likelihood that anything close to as BIG of a crash is coming in terms of either time or quantity of DOWNity....

I am way less convinced that we have enough data to have confidence that we have entered into a bear market.. even though the four-year presumptions are being screwed with in decently solid ways.. but why not.. why not screw with the 4-year presumptions if you are able to get away with it and if you have enough incentive to do it.. but does not mean that you (referring to bearwhales here) are going to end up getting your way and stopping the UPpity inclinations that are somewhat built into this likely to be greatest wealth transfer that man has ever witnessed.

Yeah.. maybe you (not referring to you specifically LFC) can get your way in the short run, but the longer that you manipulate down.. the greater potentiality for an UPward explosion, too...

Maybe we have entered a bear?

Maybe?

I would not bet too much on that.. and for sure, there is some advantages to getting ahead of it.. even though I do not feel comfortable playing those kinds of games with my BTC holdings.




Could be..

Those are not really unrealistic potential bottoms.. .. and there are also decent probabilities, that we won't even get below our current local bottom of $32,951.. I am only giving that about a 55% odds at most.. and of course, if the current local bottom breaks then the odds for further down goes up.. but I think that if we get above $46k for a day (which who knows?) then the odds get back to just over 50% maybe 51% that $32,951 bottom is in....

we will see... hard to really know, and in some sense, you are starting to side with the thought so Raja_MBZ, and potentially having some beliefs that the 200-week moving average is going to end up getting met (potentially) and maybe even wick-breached.. with the 200-week moving average currently at $20k, it is likely to be over $23k within 2-3 months.. maybe by May-ish?
 

People care.. even though there are surely ways to set up your portfolio in order to NOT care as much as you would if you had not prepared.. so cannot fault anyone for making those kinds of preparations... part of the reason that I frequently get criticized for keeping some Buy orders open that go down as low as the 200-week moving average.
 

Those seem like pretty reasonable and relatively conservative numbers.


Of course, 4-year cycles are still in play. They have not even been negated by current BTC price performance.., even though some adjustments are likely in need of being made in order to account for some of the recent BTC price dynamics.. but we cannot necessarily put too high of values into thinking that we know how the pattern might play out.. even if we have some decent ideas regarding which kinds of scenarios are more likely than others... and we do not even have to agree on which scenarios or the specifics that we believe to be more likely than others... or what probabilities that we might personally attempt to assign to various price points... or the timeline upon reaching them.

Of course, in recent days each of us have been wondering why we could not just go up from here and get above $46k "as we were scheduled" in order to increase confidences that the $32,951 bottom is in.

That bottom still might end up being in, but I am doubting that its odds are better than 50/50.. and it's not like I go much beyond 50/50 in anything that I say regarding short term BTC price anyhow.. even though I feel that I do tend to have my leanings that error on the side of our being in a bull market (even when we are not.. hahahahahaha... those kinds of biases of mine have not really damaged me too much psychologically nor financially in the past 8-ish years)...

In recent months, we have had folks proclaiming that we are in a bear market, and gosh some of these proclamations go back to May-ish of last year... and some of them have been ongoing, consistent and persistent and others have been more opportunistic to be materializing during the more DOWNity times of whatever correction that we are in at the time.. and surely others come after the fact and say "I told you so - look at my post x, y and z."

A frequent underlying fear continues to be whether something like 2018 could repeat... If you might recall (or look at the charts), we had around 5 or 6 times of visiting and revisiting the "support" at $6k, so the feeling was that $6k had to be a pretty damned solid-bottom... so in that sense by the time we got to September/October/November 2018, there was quite a bit of growth in confidence from a broad section of the BTC HODLers that $6k was the bottom... because it had been tested so many times.

So then our current question could be the price arena of $30k.. Is $30k really a bottom for this era... has it been tested sufficiently and strongly enough, and could we end up in a similar situation as we had experienced with our nearly 50% break of BTC price support below $6k once it happened in mid-November 2018?

Personally, I hate to become too cocky regarding whatever BTC price related beliefs that I have because so many times there have been overshooting.. and not just exaggerated overshootings but something that really seems to border upon extreme overshooting - even though sometimes some BTC price points do seem quite difficult to achieve (in spite of proclamations of their inevitability) and also there has to be a lot of tree shaking to get us to even get to something like $28,600 - if we were to get there... however, we also know that if multiple tested bottoms end up tending to have more bottom if they end up getting breached..

I really hate going down this bear-talkening road, and for sure, I hate to be presuming that support is going to break at various BTC price levels.. because we have had many times in which reversals end up happening before the price gets even close to theoretical "support" levels, and those waiting for further bottoms.. end up getting screwed because they really are not sufficiently prepared for UP.

Many of us who have been participating in this thread for a few years have gotten ourselves sufficiently prepared for UP.. so I amnot really too worried about many of us, even if there are some of the guys/gals herein who do seem to want to trade these kinds of conditions that may not really work out too well for them in the end.

I am not going to presume that lower $30ks won't get tested, even though I am considering that any breach below $30k would have difficulties getting anywhere close to even a 30% correction from there (which would be right around $20k).. and I am not sure if I am saying anything controversial.. ... and how much should we even have any dry powder still in reserves for prices below $35/$36k is surely a matter of personal discretion and could well be funds that ONLY serve as insurance rather than being anything that would realistically end up being used..   For sure, I am not against attempting to maintain insurance whenever feasible, and surely I am for neither running out of fiat for the drops that could come nor running out of BTC for any price rises that may end up happening...

If you have some kind of pooling service, and there are something like 1,000 input addresses, and let's say that 5 of the input addresses are "blacklisted,"  then the various government agencies want to taint all 1,000 output addresses - but the reality of the matter remains that they are full of shit.. because only less than 1/2 percent actually were blacklisted...

We can all get scared away from using those kinds of pooling services, but the reality of the matter is that they tend to be very effective and ultimately if they are used on a wide-spread basis lead the government to having to blacklist all bitcoin addresses.. which surely is neither workable nor practical, but it works so long as they can scare people away from using those mixing/pooling services.


Your response, Torque, shows your own inclination towards cloudiness in your thinking.  It would be best to take the politics out of your ways of looking at the matter rather than looking at these matters through tainted lenses.. even if the tolerance of protest does vary from time to time based on political climate.. whining about some protesters getting treated better than others does not get us very far in any kinds of attempts to really work through matters without getting overly distracted.


What else is new?

That's part of the problem, but I doubt that the solution would be to whine about one protest getting better treatment.. merely because the powers that be were less threatened by it.

I had to look up Wakanda... which I found to be a fictional country.

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

I am not much of a fan of out of context posts, even if there might be some kind of joke in there.


No matter what, I doubt that we are ever going to get "true democracy," even though many of us would recognize the Indian versus Canada situation as one in which India came out way better than Canada.

Many years ago, I had been studying the topic of democracy and capitalism - and so many times the ideas are weaved together and sometimes we have to question whether both can exist - it gets worse in the workplace.... hostility towards democracy in the workplace... and yeah, I suppose even my own ideas are conflicted about so many contradictions that exist around the topic.. including how much public/people input is enough.. in order to allow the benevolent dictator to come to results that are best for everyone..... Even in the bitcoin space, we have all kinds of divergencies in ideas regarding priorities, so it is difficult to even know if bitcoin fixes this - even though many of us likely realize that a lot of problems have gotten worse from irresponsibilities regarding the money systems, Cantillon effects and for sure the money printer go brrrr corruptions... .. and for sure, if you listen to the Tales from the Crypt podcast (towards the end) that I linked a couple of days ago.. you will see discussion of India seeming to have way better policies/practices in terms of how they are dealing with Corona treatments as compared to the west (and/or the vaccine oriented countries).. which seems to be showing quite a bit of truth in terms of some of the fraudulent crux of the matter regarding Canada's extreme Corona measures that are likely not even close to being scientifically-based (rather than money and population-control based), in the public interest and likely implemented as control measures rather than something that might be freely discussed (even if the truckers might have gone overboard in their ways of employing the trucks to their advantage).

There's something more going on than that cAPSLOCK, no?

We are not just going to throw up our hands and do whatever the scared and increasingly needing to be compliant exchanges want, right?

Wouldn't part of the goal be to get all or most of the private transactions going through hygiene or mixing services, and then the exchanges have to choose whether they are going to be in the bitcoin business or not.

Of course, there needs to be options so that bitcoin HODLers still have ways to use their coins whether through exchanges, direct interactions or other ways of liquidating (or getting coins) products/services.


What we going to do?  just throw up our hands and give up?  These kinds of tools are likely to continue to be developed.. and hopefully become increasingly more user-friendly.



That's the spirit!!!!!!!!!   Think more positively.  You fuck.


Can't disagree with you here.


Potentially part of the problem  that you are having is to attempt to answer for all people, and for sure, bitcoin remains a plane in the air that continues to be worked on while in flight.. and there are going to be people at all kinds of variations of levels, skills, abilities and desires... so for sure, some people can handle the implementation of more complicated tools, but others need the various tools handed to them on a silver platter (I know I am mixing all kinds of metaphores).  Part of my point remains that all of us know that we are continuing in quite early days and the Canadian situation (and even some of the reactions/seeming plans of other govts) has highlighted various bitcoin weaknesses... and difficult for sure to get into attempts to directly attack status quo institutions at this time.

We can see that these are early days.. and sometimes if we might be engaging in transactions with others, we might even get worried if we might be receiving coins that either had been blacklisted or happen to be 5 hops down the chain.. and for sure, we have likely gotten dollars in those kinds of ways, but we have not even known about that.

I am not going to presume that everything is going to play out into easy-peasy transition into bitcoin dominance and fungibility - but at the same time, we cannot be throwing up our hands, either.  Of course, some of the more OG folks and even the more technically knowledgeable can help us to get through some of these times by presenting some of the ideas and dilemmas.. and for sure, you are one of those folks.. and for sure, the Canadian issue had helped to highlight some of the thorny issues that both currently exist and highlighted some of the difficult ways forward too... not all doom and gloom for sure because bitcoin surely has tools..that might need to both become more user-friendly but also better if they are more wide-spread in their adoption/usage too.....

These short term set backs can be helpful towards focusing all of us on potential issues that have moved beyond potentiality and into actual practice of some govt. entities.

Sure, the strength of seemingly draconian measures could scare some folks away from bitcoin, but I am sure that others are inspired to both develop and attempt to use the kinds of tools and wallets that help to cause difficulties for any third parties, whether governments, financial institutions or potential private actors from abilities to monitor, to freeze or to scare holders from being able to use their funds in ways that they deem appropriate - and for sure there are a large number of instances in which there are going to be differences of opinions regarding whether some kind of activity is legal or illegal or rising to the level of something like terrorism or jeopardizing national security - even if some government might have labeled activities in those kinds of aggressive (and sometimes seemingly desperate) ways.

For sure, I am not personally anti-government because I believe that there are several public interests matters that go beyond mere national security in which having governments is useful - especially since I do not believe that people are going to sufficiently contribute towards such projects on a voluntary basis (even if individuals say they will or even if various theories suggest they will), but history is replete with examples of various govt entities engaging in quite questionable activities that seem to go quite contrary to the public interest and then getting shown for what they were doing and then going after the whistle blower with quite strong vengeance...

Abilities to fund potentially controversial project and abilities to use funds in potentially controversial ways can be threatening.. and we are not always going to agree on those kinds of ways to fund.. .and of course, in the case of bitcoin, many of us are quite skeptical of various governments and status quo financial institutions and maybe even some of the status quo rich (whether individuals or companies) who have already shown a lot of irresponsibilities (and self-interest and narrow interest) in terms of their engaging in various bad practices when it comes to money - and even if we might not concede that individuals should be able to engage in "evil" uses of their money, there money still can be one of those tools that can be used to battle the various evils of status quo rich that is otherwise likely to get worse and worse if gone unchecked.

Maybe some of the recent events with the freezing and blacklisting of accounts/addresses is going to inspire some of us in terms of what measures/actions we take?...

Does not seem like anything even close to an appropriate comparison. In other words, NFTs are nothing like bitcoin.. There are a lot of potential complications with them whether we are talking about authenticity or other matters, so in that regard, NFTs are surely a different story... probably you should not have bought up that fad of the day crap in the first place...

Should not be comparing NFTs to bitcoin except that bitcoin is likely the ONLY NFT that matters.. each satoshi is its own unique snowflake.... and confirmed on an actual blockchain that cannot be fucked with.

Apparently, the owners of the Tales from the Crypt podcast received a two week suspension on YouTube from posting and monetization based upon the content of the above linked podcasts.  They disclosed their suspension punishment at the beginning of today's podcast.  I still have not listened to the rest of today's podcast.. it's a little less than 2 hours.

Just an example of quick deplatforming (even if a warning and temporary) - and shows a lot of fear regarding talking about this kind of information that deviates from current standards of care (that have been politicized and likely not really based on science)...

I have heard some folks denigrate protest on one side versus applauding protests on another side - and the existence of riot cops does seem to be an ambiguous thing - because I cannot really blame status quo officials from striving to engage in some combating of protests and to label protests as something other than what they are.. sometimes protests become too powerful too.. so the use of trucks may or may not be legitimate, but you can appreciate the obstacles that such largess presents towards any government that might attempt to control such.

By the way, bitcoin can help us in these regards, but cannot necessarily fix matters when people are not sufficiently practiced in how to use it effectively.. so anyone can make mistakes, even very smart people.. and when those smart people are known.. they become actual targets that may well not be ready, willing and able to sacrifice their lil selfies for the cause... even if they say that they are willing.. it's not easy for someone who might be in his/her late 20s or early 30s to become willing to get locked up "out of principle."

We are not even going to necessarily agree with some of the substantive issues of some of the protests.. even though there is a lot of legitimacy that those kinds of dynamics can and should exist in "free" societies.. and this imagination of the government disappearing or everyone getting an island or a citadel is just not realistic.. there has to be some governance of public goods/services.. and part of the messy part is that we might not even be able to get two people to completely agree, so in some sense, some of the actual implementations of public goods/services policies/procedures/laws are going to end up having a lot of compromises... and hopefully somewhat representative of the overall population preferences rather than getting diverted into too much weight going to small groups that end up not really representing the overall better way of going forward involving not everyone getting their way..and maybe the structure ends up somewhat in order to NOT infringe too much either...  but not forgetting about providing opportunities for normies and maybe some folks who seem undeserving, too.

I could not resist but to fix that for you, serveria.

 

I cannot help but to respond to your 18-month old post  (does not hurt to bump this still relevant and interesting thread, either, right?)

Some things we already knew, but with bitcoin sometimes we have to learn some variations on the angles of knowledge that we already had... sure game theory could be related to politics, but politics is a different topic.  

Sure, we might have already had some ideas about personal financial management, but the nature of bitcoin (likely never having invested into this kind of an asset because nothing like it really has previously existed) likely forces you into considering a variety of other aspects of investment portfolio management and considering the value of potentially employing more sophisticated financial tools to the extent that they have come available.

Of course, the topic of this thread that might include BTC holdings management that goes beyond our prior experiences but also our own considerations of balancing the extent to which we might have already fucked up aspects of our privacy (and security) and if there might be some remedial measures going forward.

Ways of holding coins has also been a somewhat dynamic field.. and of course, lightning network has been becoming more popular (and used) too... and surely, if you hold only a few thousand in value, there might NOT be as much concern if that value is held through exchanges...  but there still might be some desires to hold coins in a variety of ways.. and striving to figure out the way some coins might have histories that are O.k. to mix together.. and other coins might fit some other kind of category.. .and there might end up being a lot of different categories of coins, and then wondering if your wallets can be helpful in sorting that out, and can anyone else see notes that you make about the coins (if you have those capabilities in your wallet.. or if you do not have too many addresses - not likely the longer you have been in - then you might have some on-the-side ways of keeping track that is not attached to the actual wallet/addresses).

Not going to mention any names, but I have heard that some people had considered that they were going to just be mediocre well off (and comfortable), but through HODLing bitcoin their status has changed, so subsequently, they have to learn how to be richer than expected and to spend way more money than expected (does not sound like a bad problem to have.. but sometimes spending way more money can create situations in which the spender has to learn things)...   By the way, on a personal level.. not sure if I should say anything, but I recently made a purchase that ended up being a kind of purchase from hell.. and maybe my initial attitude of I don't really give too many shits about how much it cost created some of my subsequent problems... because the situation is ongoing and continues to cause me a lot of issues that go way beyond just the money aspects.. and I am having to spend way more time to attempt to salvage from a situation that probably should not have happened in the first place, and I attribute such situation from my having had way more money at my disposal than I had historically been accustomed to handling and transacting.

There are ONLY so many hours in the day.  What to learn next?  or what to get involved in next?  

Not used to traveling to X, Y and Z locations, have to learn right?  an ever changing world, too.. some locations are not really too friendly to foreigners.. especially in recent times.  Learn how to deal with those kinds of potentially new situations, no?

 I listened to a Tales from the Crypt podcast yesterday.. interviewing a 35 year plus doctor (Dr. Woods) regarding various anti-virals seeming to be much more effective than the vaccines that seem to bring questionable benefits at best.. (and we are ONLY learning that there really are not as many benefits way down the road.. which should cause any of us to question why they were lying about supposed 90%+ efficacy of the vaccines.. which surely seems amazing, but it ends up being far from true... I hate being lied to.. but those kinds of numbers did convince a lot of people that vaccines were going to save us blah blah blah), and there does not seem to be anything untruthful in his presentation regarding various benefits and even preventative treatments.. and for seemingly lame reasons, in recent weeks, the Doctor got fired because of his treating patients that way.. and seems like a potentially successful lawsuit against the hospital.. not that they discussed that angle in the Podcast.... and sometimes it is hard to know whether to follow standards of care when many aspects of standards of care are not seeming to be very science-based and they seem to be motivated by other reasons.. which has been the case for other treatments and illnesses too... but seems to be really rearing its ugly head in terms of the way Covid is being used -----

By the way some of the punchline ideas that came out seems to be:

 ivermectin is good (but not the animal variation)

hydrochloriquine is good but not necessarily as good as ivermectin

monoclonal antibodies seem to be good.. even though a bit involved in how to get them

there are some other treatments that can supplement or combined with the above depending on the stage of the patient symptoms or progression of the sickness.......

getting natural immunity tends to be good

rendevesver is not good

getting on a ventilator is not a good sign

vaccines do not seem to help and sometimes can hurt

can/does bitcoin fix any of this? 

I am not necessarily asserting that governments had historically refrained from attempts to control people, there were just a lot of difficulties in terms of the kinds of way that people could be tracked or blocked, and of course, self-sustaining farms would run the risk of pillage... 

In recent times, the internet has truly allowed for mobility in a lot of ways and even living in various remote locations - perhaps using google translate to assist, too. 

There have frequently been attempts at controlling the movement of wealth - and even in recent times, prior to bitcoin, the capital controls could be used to limit mobility - but air travel being more affordable, even governments realize that jurisdictional arbitrage becomes more possible.. and surely some passports have more possibilities than others - even if there has been a decent amount of juggling mobility since March 2020-ish.. yeah.. more than some of the juggling that had been occurring after September 2001.

I am not claiming to have any of the answers, but I am not going to poo poo the various restrictions and try to keep faith that everything is o.k.. and everything will return back to pre-March 2020 - to the extent that more free movement was possible at that time. 

I guess my main points were just attempting to suggest that we are having a lot of issues (even if we cannot agree on the issues), and various governments are showing kinds of desperation and even alliances in terms of going along with some of the ways to attempt to control populations more and to create and maintain geo-mobility obstacles... . Of course, maybe some of the western countries are getting a taste of their own medicine in terms of losing more mobility than had already been restricted in a lot of other countries.. so some countries already had a lot less mobility abilities, even if they could get their finances together.

For those folks who were not planning to travel, they might find fewer issues with whatever may be happening.. and surely even some folks in this thread are considering that various aspects of the various versions of the "official story" are adequately acceptable.. and surely any of us can be susceptible to view some of these matters within some of the political channels that we might find to be more credible and just consider that the "other side" is lying.

I had already mentioned that I was more than willing to give a lot of benefit of the doubt to the virus story - but after about a year, several of the claims started to fall apart.. especially after the introduction of the various vaccines.. and the longer that the vaccines were in effect, the contradictions became more and more difficult to resolve.. so making it difficult to believe various aspects of the variations and weaving channels of "the ever changing official story."

For sure, I don't completely buy Marcus's rendition of events.. but he is coming off as quite a bit less crazy now as compared to two years ago when he was saying similar things in early 2020.

Various government reactions have been draconian as fuck in regards to both their response to the virus, and also their seeming to have exaggerated and lied about a lot of things related to the virus and the supposed effectiveness of various vaccines and other treatments that have been (and continue to be) rammed down various throats...

about a year into the vaccines, it was already seeming to show various contradictions in the messages....  

Are governments really going to stop with the various mandates.. ?  I hope so.

Are we going back to normal or something that was closer to what we had prior to March 2020?  I hope so.

We all know that a lot of travel rights were removed after September 2001 in accordance with various false pretenses (at least we should be able to recognize that a lot of those various controls that went into place after September 2001 were overblown and never really rolled back in any kind of meaningful way).

Do you really believe that various govts around the world are going to be giving back various freedoms to people.. travel, assembly movement, once they have been able to take them away and cause people to be scared of other people..?   That would be nice, but seems that governments tend to be quite disinclined to give back freedoms after they have been successful in taking  them away.. .. and for sure I am not any kind of anti-govt person.. but there are some sickening aspects to some of these expectations of compliance matters and the shutting down of speech and the intensities of some of the deplatforming and deplatforming attempts.

Seems to me that peeps are less inclined to even want to talk to other people in the real world...

Govts love those kinds of dynamics of causing fear and internal fighting amongst the plebs while they continue to reel from fear regarding abilities to keep financial systems from crashing...?  freedom from the powers of bitcoin too.,. do you believe that these various other battles in social systems are not related to desires to control the finances of normies too?

yeah.. maybe you have some personal issues with marcus.. and maybe he can be a bit less confrontational in his various presentations of matters... but there seems to be quite a bit of truth in several matters that he is pointing out, even if he is not getting all of the details correct.. or reaching some extreme conclusions...