Towards the last leg of his life, he turned into this full-time rebel who seemed like he wanted to lead an anti-establishmentarian cult revolution. He frequently gave interviews denouncing taxes and went as far as refusing to pay them, for which he was pursued.

We'll never know whether he actually believed all this or did it for the antics. Considering that he earned a lot by shilling ICOs to his followers back in 2017, on top of getting paid to do it, one can safely assume that he wasn't a very nice person.

So many ideals behind Bitcoin, so much hard work and spirit of benefiting humanity in crypto, yet it mostly end up like this. False promises to enrich themselves. From the scams to the false prophets. Well, the chapter is now closed so there is little else to say than, Rest in Peace, John McAfee.

These Cajee brothers were just 20 and 17 year old kids. While they may have struck the proverbial goldmine with the exchange, it could wholly be possible that they themselves are a victim of the 5-dollar wrench attack.

3.6 Billion is a lot of money. I have no idea what precautions these people took for their safety but young people are prone to boastfulness. If this "disappearance" continue to remain a disappearance, it could as well be that they were gobbled up by someone far more powerful.

The excuse for not investigating is also pretty weak. It has already been a few days and will be impossible to track if something untoward has happened to them. Watch for those proceeds ending up in some politician or powerful policeman's Swiss bank stash.

If you were over it, you would stop making these ridiculous claims and assumptions. All you ever do is peddle PoS as a solution which it clearly is not.

You are intellectually dishonest and simply a Bitcoin hater. I guess one reason is that nobody accepts your viewpoint as worthy of a debate when it comes to real meaning of cryptocurrencies.

Well that won't ever happen. An outright ban similar to China is out of the question. If it ever happens, you can say goodbye to all your crypto dreams including your PoS shitcoins.

The countries like Nigeria and India were seen as one of the chief growth hotspots of the coming decades. This was because of the young, aspirational population and the abundance of resources. In both cases, there is a considerable English speaking population. These predictions were true from a time of globalization and multi-culturalism.

Multi-culturalism suits globalization. This means that a socially liberal ideology is inevitably a part of growth in the modern world. In the last few years, the conservatives and fanatics the world over have taken center-stage against liberalism. Liberalism of thoughts and habits are a good thing. A significant population saw these ideas as an attack on their "culture". This led to a revival of right-wing movements. While Right-wing isn't all bad, the problem is that conservatives almost always devolve into their monstrous form of fanaticism. This is why you can now witness the suppression of freedom of speech in these two countries.

From the OPs description, it looks like the Nigerian head of state is similar to the current Indian demagogue who love to make subtle threats to the minority while pandering to the majority. I guess history will be the best judge of people like these. All we can do is thank them for making these two budding world economies the shitholes that they were earlier.

I don't know about Nigeria, but hopefully, the Indian democracy will prove to be more resilient. This Koo app is an Indian app by the way and they started to gain a foothold after the right winger politicans in India started being called out on Twitter for their fake news. Interestingly, a lot of these same leaders were all praise for Twitter a few years ago when they rode on the wave of Digital popularity on platforms like Twitter, FB and Whatsapp. Doesn't surprise me the least as all Right-wingers anyways are the biggest hypocrites of society.

How can holding cash be termed as an asset for 3-4 years, especially when the interests rates on deposits are negligible and inflation is slated to increase with the printing of money?

If taxes were to be rationalized, it would affect the levels of inequality and welfare spending. How it helps the US dollar is questionable? And why exactly does someone have to "help" the US dollar when it has the richest country and the most powerful army in the world backing it? If anything, the US Dollar needs to stop having such an over-arching influence. Throughout much of the past half century, we have already witnessed how the petro-dollars have kept the most ruthless regimes in place, helped to fund devastating wars and badly affected world peace and political stability.

The dollar needs to be disentangled from politics. The Fed by itself wouldn't be such a hated entity for Bitcoiners if they had done their job as an autonomous institution and not as the money printer for populist politicians.

These ideas are some of the first and most obvious use-cases for moving towards a more decentralized future.

The push towards globalization integrated us and increased opportunities as well as earning. Yet, by consolidating ownership in the hands of a few, it increased inequalities to a large extent. Ideas like a decentralized governance of localized communities like cities with stake/ shareholding by its own residents may prove to be an ideal method of redistribution of resources and earnings.

One problem is who gives legitimacy to these coins? What is the mandate for someone to start a coin. Is it even allowed as per local laws and regulations.

OP, What do you know about MiamiCoin btw? Do you own it?

I am repeating myself again but imo, there is no direct relationship between these two.

The way i see social mobility, it seems to be a result of several factors related to quality of life and access to opportunities. In a country or society, these things are decided by the socio-political system. For example, a judicious mix of fair capitalism and welfare state is the kind of system that provides maximum social ability.

Inflation does many things but it is chiefly an economic parameter that measures the rate of deprecation of money, in this case, fiat. Inflation directly affects businesses, wages, consumer behavior and most importantly, entrepreneurship. Those things in turn, can result in better or worse opportunities and thus social mobility.

Saying that inflation directly affect or ensures social mobility is taking the argument too far. The example of Venezuela isn't apt. In case of hyper-inflation, everyone is worse-off. Its a crisis situation and no measures of social mobility would apply. If an individual suddenly comes across a profitable enterprise due to a war (say, supplying water to both sides), it doesn't mean that war affecting social mobility can be a thesis..

The thought is scary and got me thinking of reasons why this parallel shouldn't be drawn. I'll posit that underlying assumption of The Housing Bubble was that House prices always go up. While a lot of Bitcoin enthusiasts love to have similar notions, most market participants understand that this assumption is not correct. They are mostly ready to manage their positions at the first sign of trouble. This is because Bitcoin is a far more liquid asset than housing.

Additionally, those in a position to take on debt based on Bitcoin positions are only a very few, maybe just corporations and not necessarily individual buyers as in the case of housing. Within the decentralized Lending scenario, where this is a thing on individual scale, the BTC is often over-collateralized or simply locked for a very small interest rate.

So yeah, thankfully, the similarities are few.

To take your thought further, the question to ask is; If the rich invest in new assets to counter inflation, what opportunities do you think it creates for the poor? IMO, Investing in fixed assets by the wealthy to safeguard their wealth is not the same as entrepreneurship. Enterprises generate the opportunities that enable Social mobility. An enterprising person with or without wealth will do so without any restrains from inflation.

In fact, when inflation is high (hyperinflation), the cost of doing business is higher. This restricts entrepreneurship and thus, will hinder social mobility. On the other hand, with balanced inflation and deflationary emission, like Bitcoin, the entrepreneur would be much more confident to take risk and generate opportunities.

There is definitely a balance there somewhere which creates more opportunities for the economy as a whole. Though if you consider just the Bitcoin economy, I can definitely agree that Bitcoin being deflationary encourages people to Hodl rather than invest, thus decreasing opportunities within the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Miami is already famous for the crypto conferences, right. And Miami isn't really competing with China as China is essentially kicking those miners out and they don't have the access to cheap electricity like they had earlier.

The reason this won't workout is because a lot of these Chinese mining farms run with bare minimum manpower which is paid pretty low for the maintenance and running activities. The labor laws and minimum wage requirements will not be acceptable to the so-called Chinese "entrepreneurs" who are accustomed to treating their workers like they own them.

This will work best if the barriers to Chinese miners essentially takes them out of business resulting in decrease of demand for miner hardware and cheaper hardware for American miners. The US miners can then take the mantle and afford to run additional farms.

Several good possibilities already pointed out. Maybe someone should compile them. The Hodling maybe a reason. For example, The inertia of not having sold at ATH and then waiting for the ATH to even use Bitcoin for things you normally were doing already, i something that actually happens.

One thing that I feel is contributing is the decrease is shifting of crypto investment scene towards centralized coins and several other platforms. These "projects" keep mushrooming beyond anything we expect. After the bloodbath of ICOs, you'd think that people would learn their lessons and not throw money on repetitive, clearly scam projects on centralized chains. Seems that I am wrong. Psychology and greed works differently. People still continue to put money into these shady projects and keep getting rugged.

It doesn't matter to them as long as they can sell their tokens at a higher price within a few days. They then move onto the next one with hype. This has become a rinse and repeat for devs as well as communities. Its literally madness and it shows no signs of slowing down.

Earlier, If you had to put money into these projects, you needed BTC. Now, these people are content taking up any token as long as they can find liquidity for that in Uniswap. Hayden maybe pretty proud of his unicorn but I think the time isn't far when regulators will come down pretty heavily on the AMMs that are enabling these pump and dump schemes.

Shitcoiners like you who have only ever been here to post bounty reports and one-liners shouldn't really be commenting so confidently about the path that Bitcoin price will take. You have no idea what Bitcoin is about. All these ideas about safe haven, hedge, SoV are buzzwords you hear and then repeat.

So frankly, just make it easy for everyone and keep your uninformed, baseless opinions to yourself. If all you understand about Bitcoin is the dollar value, then you are the kind of people who are better off selling.

What the f### Joker-Toshi, This isn't 2020. Although, a lot of us would like to come to an agreement to take the clocks back considering how 2020 was eaten by the virus.

You are just trying to have some fun but this isn't even fun. Your grammar is too bad to make this acceptable level of fun. You really should try this in some local sub. The language wouldn't sound so atrocious and people may even like your parody. Otherwise, its just a lot of effort wasted. Satoshi had pretty good writing skills you know.

That is one of the issues with games on blockchain. You will always end up giving off profits to the early grinders. I don't know how much of it is about skill. For example, I Axie, the more you explore and breed (and spend), the higher level your pets become. This is snowballing. There is little scope for competition without putting in a lot of money and that money finding its way as profit to early entrants.

Axie is really popular in phillipines and there is an article about it here. Reading the article, it seems like it has helped a lot of people  in earning money during the pandemic. Whole families play it. Pretty late to the party I think.

IMO, Elon should have by now understood that Bitcoin's decentralization is important. He should have known the history of the blocksize debate and bitcoin going the path of L2 to scale while ensuring maximum censorship resistance.

Clearly he hasn't understood these things or this "green energy" question from his side would be over. The "Based on what data?" could simply be rhetoric or may even be a genuine question. I think its the former. He still fails to see Bitcoin as a phenomena that has never happened before and is yet to be replicated.

Once can only hope that he'll come around to the realization. The problem is that he seems to be really enjoying having all those people beg him and praise him for the DOGE branding. This open him up to Shitcoiners who are always ready with their "low-energy" alternatives with a foundation/ corporation behind them. Adam Back, Peter McCormack, Todd and others are trying occasionally. Mow doesn't seem to be making a difference (I don't know why but he never seemed all that genuine to me ever). Just makes pointless jabs at Musk's tweet. My greatest hope right now is on Adam Back and Saylor to engage Musk. He cannot be ignored and allowed to fall for the cheap medicines that the shitcoiners offer.

That pretty much summarizes your approach. You spend considerable effort in engaging and i have taken inspiration from the conviction many a times. And LOL@ the self-awareness.. .

In the earlier sales and raises, it was always explicitly mentioned that the proceeds will be used for buying up Bitcoin. This time, it hasn't specified that it'll just be Bitcoin. Additionally, this also seems to be a prospectus about what Microstrategy actually does as an enterprise. It also is looking to link Bitcoin to their analytics software business. Sample this:


This seems to be a well-timed marketing push to generate interest in the company when all eyes are on them. This pretty much is Saylor's business strategy. While it is great that he is going all-in, I feel apprehensive that performance of Saylor and the company is getting linked to Bitcoin, at least for the short term.

Your idea is not wrong. That "maximalism" comment was basically making an excuse for all Bitcoiners in general, LOL. Newbies and Nocoiners want Bitcoiners to be "nice" to them just like the Alt-coiners and scammers. They fail to take into account that they are nicer because they want your money and time. Bitcoiners aren't "nice" because there is no Bitcoin corporation trying to push Bitcoin to them. It has always been inspired by Satoshi's "If you don't believe or don't get it, I don't have the time to convince you, sorry".

That kind of straight-forwardness is off-putting to many and they just love to close their mind to further argument, like @Jaysabi is doing here.


What you are talking about is a correct but very narrow take on "Hedge effectiveness" for currency volatility; specifically Bitcoin vs Dollar. That is why you are repeatedly making the "hyperinflation" point.

Hedging is basically a Risk management strategy. Measures of "Hedging effectiveness" are both qualitative and quantitative. How to define it is something that the respective institutions' Accountants and Risk managers have to decide when they are diversifying into Bitcoin. As far as I know, those analysis are not in public domain.  What we do know is that multiple institutions have taken positons in BTC. The basic idea behind that "hedging" for corporations as well as individuals is what JJG said here:


If you are not trying to wrap your head around it simply on the basis of "Bitcoin isn't a great hedge against dollar volatility" in the short term, and does not have long enough history or the long term, sorry to say but that is just a stupid, Nocoiner reason.

No need to be surprised as the two offerings seem to be different from the announcement. Those earlier ones were "Convertible senior notes". Buyers are eligible to convert them to MSTR stocks. (with some complicated terms that I did not try to understand). These present ones are "Senior Secured Notes". The interest is their selling point.

You probably are refusing to address JJGs post because the communication got personal. 

Talking about the "Hedge", it is all good to take the academic definition in account like you said. Still, Bitcoin's long term hedge against "inflation" or "dollar" can't just be based on contemporary understanding of economics. When countries and companies start adopting, it also becomes about not being left behind. This has been one of the fundamental strengths of Bitcoin that if one group wants to regulate or ban it, there maybe another group more interested in benefiting from it. We are at that inflexion point where IMF and BIS are actually taking cryptocurrencies into view.

Now if the small MERCOSUR countries, island nations like Tonga choose to differ, who is to say that the decentralized future won't continue to be promising. If it remains promising, then Bitcoin is your hedge. If you feel that it doesn't stand any chance against centralized policy, well then why are we even discussing this.

That, I believe, is the line of thought JJG is trying to push through, though in that typical non-endearing way that maximalists have. So, lets chill out and not let personal differences cloud over the end goal of a larger, well-functioning Bitcoin economy.

We were having similar discussions on the viability of these investments and what Michael Saylor is doing. @Stompix and @Tytanowy Janusz, you should be here..LOL..
It started off with TJs post on investors sentiment toward Microstrategy. We are getting to the conclusion that:
It is interesting that with this 3rd offering, the interest rate being offered is pretty high for a planned raise of 488 Million USD. And those will be backed by Microstrategy and its assets, which will not include the 92K BTC held by Macrostrategy. What i am wondering is that whether Saylor can use the returns from Macrostrategy to service the debt of Microstrategy??

Thanks for this excellent thread fillippone. It'll be interesting to see what Michael declares on the 14th when this latest offering closes.

Owning a house depends on a lot of factors. For me, it was a no-brainer considering that it was a first home for our family including my parents. If i had the option to consider this as an investment, for example in cases where your father has already built a house in a decent enough city, I'd definitely accept the mortgage on one of those city apartments that have re-sale value. (Re-sale value is of course something you have to judge depending on country, state, locality).

The 40% payment of your present salary may seem higher but you have to bet on your own future growth. Be optimistic damn it, its a free market. That 100 USD you earn will soon become 120==>160==>200 USD and then the 40 USD payments wouldn't seem much. In such a case, I'd advise to increase the monthly installments and reduce the re-payment tenure. Make sure to check the pre-payment terms on your Home Loan so you can make big payments once in a year to cut down the Principal in the initial years. (If you don't understand this, then amortization will end up costing you a lot more.)

My verdict, A 15$ rent versus a 40$ mortgage payment to "own" a house, is a no-brainer imo.