P/E ratio is only useful when comparing like companies. You can't compare high growth tech stocks like NVIDIA or Netflix to an entire index and generally conclude they're overvalued because the NASDAQ is such a broader base, and growth stocks are so speculative in general. But one thing remains universal, the moment the growth that was anticipated slows, the prices crash, no matter what the narrative is. Because eventually, it all comes back to fundamentals and profitability.

And why do you suppose that is? Because it sounds to me that thieves are stealing medicines then to sell them on the dark web (however prevalent of an occurrence that may be), thereby driving up the cost for people who operate legally in the system (i.e., the rest of us).

Interesting to read this long-duration thread over the years at this point. I think I was skeptical of the idea 3 years ago, but I think the general thesis has borne out pretty well over this most recent run up in the price, and I think the institutional investors moving in really illustrate well the effect it has on the price and the crunch on the supply side driving volatility.

Buffet is a value investor, so he depends on an analysis of the valuation of a stock to its projected future cash flows to determine what a good investment is over time. Since Bitcoin doesn't produce cashflow, he has no basis for valuing it. It's really as simple as that.

Thanks, I didn't realize this. Makes it much easier to track back prizes.


I could have sworn I didn't get lottery tickets before, but I actually rolled lottery tickets today coincidentally and see them in the pool, so clearly was mistaken last time.  Thanks.

On the free email rolls on the prize wheel, if I have lottery tickets disabled but win lottery tickets on the spin, does those convert to RP or something? This happened but I wasn't able to tell if my RP balance changed because I didn't know what it was before, but I didn't get lottery tickets as a result of the spin.

I know it's incredibly trendy in the crypto community to hate on Buffet, but one of the quotes you quoted on him is not only true, nobody here is able to rebut it:

“You’re just hoping the next guy pays more. And you only feel you’ll find the next guy to pay more if he thinks
he’s going to find someone that’s going to pay more. You aren’t investing when you do that, you’re speculating.”

This is bitcoin in a nutshell. No intrinsic value, doesn't produce income, it is merely a speculative asset and the only thing that gives it value is a large group of people agreeing it has value.

Here's the thing- if you think bitcoin doesn't have value, you won't buy it. If you think it does, you will. Neither of you are right because there is no objective truth to this. And both of you are right because there is no objective truth to this. You cannot sell bitcoin to someone who doesn't think it has value. The only reason those who have bitcoin think it has value is because you think you can sell it to someone else who also thinks it has value. Exactly like Buffet said.  This is the very definition of arbitrary value. This is what makes it speculative.

This is a gross exaggeration.  The bill included a tremendous amount of small business support in addition to the individual support.  What's problematic is the abuse of the small business support by businesses that didn't need assistance or took it while not being qualified. There need to be steep penalties for those businesses and their owners who did so. But republicans keep blocking all attempts at accountability.

Lol, Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet are two of the greatest value investors in history. What on earth would make you identify them as growth investors? Growth and value investing are completely antithetical to each other.

As for narrative investing, I don't agree.  Eventually, fundamentals of the underlying business matters. The best example of this is Tesla.  Tesla won't keep trading at this valuation indefinitely, no matter the narrative around it.  Eventually, it's going to have to turn mega-insane profits to justify this valuation. 

Ironically, bitcoin is only valuable because of narrative investing.

You release something like this out into the wild and you longer have agency over it. It no longer matters what Satoshi had in mind or what the early developers thought Bitcoin was going to be. All that matters now is what it is, and it's definitely not a viable currency. It's only now being more widely accepted as a store of value.  I don't expect these two things to change.

$36k is definitely not high middle class.  High middle class has high 6 figures or low seven figures saved, buying bitcoin at these prices isn't easy as pie, but it wouldn't prove any huge impediment if they wanted to buy at this level.  I think you're grossly underestimating the resources of what you've termed the "high middle class."

If you've bought your "vaccine" from the dark web, you deserve whatever nonsense they put in the vial and you are about to inject into your body. I can't even imagine the type of person who is capable enough to navigate the dark web, but not smart enough to critically think that what they're buying is legitimate, but apparently those people do exist!

There is absolutely zero substance to this post. Why do you keep making these posts on this board? Here are some examples how you can make your posts worth reading.

Why?  What makes USDT and USDC perfect for real estate transactions specifically?

If it's so perfect, why isn't it already the perfect way to buy property? What's going to change in 5 years that makes this the perfect way to buy property?

Why would this possibly happen? Give literally any substance to support the claim.

Well firstly, it absolutely matters whether the virus was engineered or not.  Someone puts out a baseless conspiracy theory about it being engineered for a financial reset (even though they can't explain how that works) and we have to coddle them and their insane beliefs for the sake of being polite? That's why the world is as messed up as it is. We coddle people who are stupid and reinforce the notion that their stupid ideas are valid. They're not, and this one definitely isn't.

Yeah, being used for remittances is another use-case for bitcoin where it's better than the traditional alternatives.  Sending wires across borders remains relatively slow and expensive compared to bitcoin.  But as an everyday currency, bitcoin is still woeful in just about every regard.

To buy Toyota, you'd have to take into account enterprise value (which takes into account the company's debt) and Tesla isn't nearly big enough to be able to buy Toyota.  On an enterprise value basis, Toyota is actually larger than Tesla. 

Sure. Besides Tesla (TSLA), Amazon (AMZN)'s PE ratio was non-existent for a long time because it took so long to become profitable and then it was insane until very recently (currently 90 as it is with unprecedented profitability spurred by the pandemic), MercadoLibre (MELI) is currently above 1500, Shopify (SHOP) is over 700, Square (SQ) is over 500. This is just a small sample but these are all high growth tech stocks that have had incredible returns for investors over the past several years. It's quite normal for these types of stocks to have absolutely insane PE ratios because they're focusing on growth and investors are counting on profits coming later. There's even more that aren't even profitable and have high valuations... Uber, Twilio, Twitter, Teladoc, etc.

I think the fact that China has instituted such a controversial program belies this point.  If China wasn't worried about the minority populations, there would be no need to put them in concentration camps and force torturous re-education programs on them.  At the very least, it's threatens to turn the world against them.  I think wealth stratification is another threat (related to what you said as ideological and property stratification) which is why the communist party is so obsessed with growing the Chinese economy at any cost, including controlling the media so no other narrative can be told other than the glowing success of the Chinese economic miracle, and the party delivering enough tangible benefits to make the however much of it that is illusory seem true to placate the population.

So in "normal times" when the US runs a deficit, it's paid for by borrowing money from people who have saved. They issue bonds, the savers buy them because they're considered the safest investment on the planet (the US has never defaulted on the debt). They don't pay very much at all, but it's long been regarded to be the safest place to park large amounts of money for a long time and earn a little return with "zero risk."  

We haven't had normal times since the housing crisis in 2007/2008.  At that time, through the radical process known as quantitative easing, the fed was printing money to buy assets directly from troubled banks to prevent systemic collapse.  It largely pulled us through the the Great Recession.  But now, the Fed has started printing money to buy government debt directly, another new radical change from the Fed's historical role in the economy.  It's necessary because there aren't enough savers to finance the US debt, so interest rates would have to rise dramatically to get people to move into government bonds, which would be bad for the economy. So to keep interest rates at 0%, the fed finances the debt the government issues.  That's the explanation about what's going on.

Two things I want to point out:  1) The dramatic money creation during the the Great Recession did not lead to inflation despite all the warnings it would.  Those same people are largely the ones warning about inflation again, which again so far has not happened. Whether it will remains to be seen. (Please god no though!)  2) The notion that "our kids are going to pay for this debt" has been said for generations but it's never been the case.  The US has had a chronically unbalanced budget for the vast, vast majority of its history.  The debt wracked up in the 1940s wasn't paid down by that generation's children, the debt from the 1960s wasn't paid off by that generation's children, not the 1980's, and so on.  No kids have ever footed the bill for past generation's excesses.  Logically, I would say this can't continue forever.  And yet it's been true indefinitely, and because every generation wants their prosperity too unmuted by paying off past debts, every generation elects to continue kicking the can down the road.  

Personally, I don't see any generation with the willingness to tackle the debt problem. Trump added 8 trillion in debt in only 4 years, an unprecedented acceleration that blows the debt added during the Great Recession out of the water.  I think it's more likely the can gets kicked down the road until the dollar collapses.  That's why I see bitcoin gaining so much attention now.  But I hope I'm wrong, truly, because nobody wants to live in the world where the dollar has collapsed.  There will be widespread economic, social, and political upheaval, and bitcoin will not save society and the people who own bitcoin will be better off than average, but not better off than they are now because everything will be so much worse for everyone who lives in that world.  That's why I view these people wishing for the dollar collapse because they've got bitcoin and think they're going to be the new rich class as idiots.  They don't know the pain they're wishing for.

The bitcoin price has nothing to do with the election and OP showed what an idiot he is by buying into the right wing extremist fantasies that trump won the election. When you're so divorced from reality, your opinions on everything else are equally as worthless.