Jeez, in Russian?  Jealous.  When I was a younger man, I wanted to learn it to read Tolstoy without the filter of translation.   

Needless to say, I never got around to it.

Shakespeare understood the great human eternal drives, love, jealousy, the trials of power..... 

Tolstoy could weave a tale in plain speaking which saw a whole country in time of war from the lone soldier in the fog of war right up to the aristocracy playing for estates and bonded serfs with cards.

A lot of the great Russians are worth a read, Turganev, Pushkin, (some) Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Solzhenitsyn....

But hey - I suspect we are in a very small minority here...

Best get back on topic.... I do hope the doom is lifting a little in Rosewater's world with the current upturn.  Do say hello to BMB for me?

Nah, it was always coming.  It is about time...

Nice additions - particularly giving Bill the Bard a mention, but I can't enjoy reading Trilema - and I have really tried... His slut shaming Dom stuff is weirdly dubious and some of the rest is (while no doubt intelligent and incredibly erudite) pretty unintelligible and often deeply cynical to me.  I dip in sometimes still, but I am not sure I ever learn much.

EDIT: Spelling

Just catching up on a week's worth of WO after heading off for a little fly fishing.

Respect for a great reading list, although Bulgakov would go to no. 1, and I might rate a different Hemmingway.

So some people here are well-read after all.  (Both of you) rise even further in my estimations.

(Merited) keep lifting the tone, eh?

Yup - been on a pre-beach holiday diet.

It's just that time of year.. Does look better with it, though.

I had a friend who was a hedge fund manager, a 'macro' trader.  She was fascinated with crypto as it was an 'uncorrelated asset class' which in the investment world is a good things to find.   You don't want all a portfolio in asset classes that all respond to economic factors in the same way.  Everyone needs something in their portfolio that doesn't do what the old school investments do.

This seems to reach a similar conclusion:  Crypto is different to the old shit.  Best buy at least 'some' - it makes sense.

(Well found, Sir)

In summer, the crypto market generally can be a little boring. 

The Wall Street money in on holiday as are people in many fields of life; it's not tax season... and with a bear market too, it can be grindingly dull.   However, many of those here have seen it all before and they know that BECAUSE they held from 2014 to 2016, they were there in 2017 for when it picked up again.

So in crypto you just have to sit tight.  Both Monero and Bitcoin have gone up thousands of % in a few years.   Yes,  you are right, Monero and most alts have gone down more than Bitcoin, but when the alts which are still around recover, they will appreciate fast, too.

Febo is right, we ALL should have sold some at 0.32, parked it in BTC and bought back at 0.0129.   But we have no crystal ball and the vast majority of us didn't.  Be assured, though - getting it wrong is always more expensive than hodling in the long run.  That's why the old guard here are not panicking.

It might go on for longer, but you will not have to stress about when to buy back in if you just HODL.  If most of your cash is in Monero you are not alone, I can assure you.  It hurts, yep.  But when it rises again (and personally I think it will) Monero tends to move up fast.  And you will be glad you didn't flip if it does.

Do your own research, of course - I am a fanboy.

TLDR:  Probably missed the best time to flip, likely best policy now? Just HODL

Yeah - pretty SERIOUS cash involved:

"According to AUSA Ciaffa, Burrell’s activities “blew a giant hole” through the legal framework of U.S. anti-money laundering laws by soliciting and introducing into the U.S. banking system close to $1 million in unregulated cash."

'A million dollars'?  I think there's a meme for this somewhere.... 

Jeez, he could have made up to fifty thousand bucks.

Can't get on Twitter right now, but will check once I can.  It seems they are trying to dodge claims of paper Bitcoin being created by rehypothecation, - and saying 'we will do Bitcoin differently'.  I am still sceptical.  Leopard.. Spots...  

EDIT: I read Caitlin Long's points, she is asking the questions and has been a long term advocate of shares on the Blockchain to prevent things like the Dole Foods shares problem:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/business/dealbook/dole-case-illustrates-problems-in-shareholder-system.html

Yes, it looks like we had a (local) double bottom in the past few days around the 0.13 level.

But of course if Bitcoin is mirroring 2014 / 2015 (as it may be) and decides to dip much further - it's tough to predict what all the alts will do.   My sentiment agrees with yours; that is that in XMR/BTC I think we are unlikely to go lower, in fact I think a little upside is now on the cards.

I think a spike up is due from now /late August into Sept.  Mainly because this time of year has 'history' for Monero.

A really big rise in XMR/USD will need Bitcoin to end its bear market.  I hope this will not need to wait until the next halving, but who knows....

It already happens, though - when you short (as I am sure people here do on occasion), as you 'borrow' Bitcoin to sell.   The Exchange credits or debits accordingly - but the numbers are in a database, no coins are in your personal wallet under your private key.   It's not a big step for an institution to 'lend' coins it has custody over, or lend them twice and for these coins to have more than one owner.  Some exchanges have done this before and some probably still do.  Not all the people want all their bitcoins back at once, so there are always some spare in the cold wallet.

Yes, you or I will always want to have our coins under our own key.  It has always been essential for us to do so.

But other investors would probably rather not.  Institutions can just 'credit your account' with Bitcoin they do not actually have, as banks do with fiat all the time - thus increasing the supply of Bitcoin out there (on paper).  ICE and Bakkt will be custodians of people's coins (how nice of them) and the ability of them to 'use' the coins to make money by rehypothecating them will be part of their business model.

You may not be gullible, but if others accept paper custodianship, then Bitcoins can be rehypothecated and (more) Bitcoins will be bought and sold that do not exist.  ICE are big enough to do this in a much bigger way and the market for Bitcoin may well become just like all the other markets.

And there will be far, far more bitcoins being traded out there than actually exist.

The system lapped up the ICOs (and why not - free money) but they don't like Bicoin yet.  They will when they can fractionally reserve it.  Look further into ICE / Bakkt, they want to find a way. 

You do good research, V8.  When you get a moment, check this podcast on what ICE 'may' mean - it's worth a listen:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/why-ice-bakkt-news-makes-some-crypto-investors-nervous/id1347049808?i=1000417570519&mt=2

ICE wont be stopped by the SEC, they own the fucking NYSE (and 22 other exchanges). It might not all be good news they are looking to get into Bitcoin. 

And before you say 'Bitcoin can't be in a fractional reserve situation' think again.  Because it actually could. 

A good doco (well spotted) but you can't help the feeling of deja vu: 

Massive corporate fraud to rip off ordinary people and the ones who make the money don't give a shit and don't even think it's doing anything wrong.

It's just 'normal', nothing changes. Business as usual. No one goes to jail.

How would we know if that was true? 

Hang on... I suppose we could look it up in the Monero rich list...

Sounds suspiciously off topic... Are you feeling ok? What's bitcoin anyway?

OK, I was not hoping for less of a Walmart version, more of a... Harrod's version

Apologies to our homo brothers... I see no point in apologising to the ladies here - we probably scared them off years ago.

Well, I guess in a bear market like this it's about all I could expect.

Blah blah... this thread isn't what it used to be... a double bottom used to be a thing... blah blah...

I think I will get my coat.

 

well... we're waiting.

Where is V8 when you need him?

Been watching this quite a long time - it's been bouncing off the long term MA and now it's dropped to bounce off the other.

I guess it will break one or the other at some point but so far... it looks like it doesn't want to.