The overall context here about China catching up in GDP with the US and the US being each day more limited in the resources to answer this threat. And yes, it is a threat to have a large rival exerting strong soft and hard diplomacy that is not aligned with your interests.

This race, that China seems to be on its way to win despite the imbalances and government methods used, cannot be won by the US doing the same things. As someone said "it is stupid to expect different results doing the same things". I think that Biden´s plan is long overdue for the US. A clear bet on growth to really "make America (the US at least) great again" and so on. However, the effectiveness will be very dependant on how this is really spent and if it is channelled to productive investment and not helicopter money.

More taxes, more government spending, more debt,... Does anyone doubt of the effect this is having and will have on bitcoin price?

Again, a post about an alternative investment, for those who want to have something apart from their bag of bitcoin. If you have considered investing outside the cryptosphere, you probably thought about buying real state and, unless you have quite a bit of assets or you live in a country that is cheap, you probably figured out that it requires significant investment (technically this is called "barrier to entry").

Well, there is a simple way to invest in real state and this is called a REIT, basically funds that invest in real state and usually give a large share of any rent profit as dividends (by law). The amazing thing about these is that you are not limited to one region or country and you can invest in a variety of real state assets, for example:
- Houses
- Care homes
- Prisons (yes, you read it right).
- Office space.
- Retail space.
- other...

Also the barriers to entry are really minimal is most of these. So, there you go, another option.

[To sum up, now they are forced to deal with hedge funds and highly leveraged instruments. This was what happened with Archegos.]

How did the Archegos case happened? For those who do not know about it, you have a thread here. In essence, a Hedge fund manager(Bill Hwang) with a not very clean past was able to get x10 leverage on back-bench tech investments such as Baidu. The result is a loss across the banking system of $6 billion.

This would not be a complete surprise if it weren´t for the list of lenders: Nomura, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley,...

Why did this happen and why bitcoin price may be affected in the future? Summarising what several outlets say, investment banks are not what they used to be. IPOs are no longer in trend and they have been replaced by direct float due to the hefty costs of placements (these sometimes fail, just like IPOs). SPACs also offer a quick way to reach listed status in significant markets.

On top of that, the banks, due to the 2008 crisis, are limited in what amount of their own capital can they invest. The trading has also become electronic at large so their ability to profit from that is also hindered. There are not that many ways to gain the bucks they used to.

To sum up, now they are forced to deal with hedge funds and highly leveraged instruments. This was what happened with Archegos.

And why may this be a concern for bitcoint hodlers?

- There is an increased interest from institutional investors and companies to take positions in bitcoin.
- There is and increased interest by exchanges to have these type of clients, that are more profitable than retail.
- There is a need by investment banks to play derivatives.

So, if Archegos could get leveraged enough to move the NASDAQwhen trying to undo its position, just imagine what could happen with a much narrower market (crypto).

Some people say that working is good and that it makes people better themselves, not just by giving means of living, but because it prevents them from doing other things, becoming lazy and living of others. This entails a number of second corollaries such as:

- If you do not work you are not a good person.
- Since work is good, the more you do the better.
- Working is the natural order of life and what "God wants". If you do not work you are "a sinner". (see here "protestant work ethic").

in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.[4] Weber asserted that Protestant ethics and values along with the Calvinist doctrine of asceticism and predestination gave birth to capitalism.

For those that may remain unconvinced by the shame, there is another positive construct based on ambition (I won´t call it greed): "The American Dream" - not exclusive from the US at all, it is just that it is better know by that name. The basis is "If you are talented and work hard, you can do whatever you dream of", and by the way you have to dream of a family and a big house in case you had any doubts.

This are quite simple concepts, appeal to the masses and are the type of simple answers to complex questions that seem to get grip in certain social groups.

Are any of these dogmas valid in developed countries nowadays? Is it better to interpret it as working for yourself rather than making effort to advance other people´s agenda?

As many companies that want to skip the middle man, Coinbase is aiming to directly flotate its stock on NASDAQ. This avoids the heavy costs associated to conducting an IPO through investment banking, and since the shares are anyway being dealt OTC it makes sense and it is not as risky as otherwise might be for smaller companies.

Approval news and financial statements of coinbase.

Coinbase’s listed stock on Nasdaq will be recognized with the name “COIN’, according to the listing.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is about going public after filing for an IPO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). However, the company stated that it’s going for a direct listing instead of the usual ICO that’s predominant in the industry. It has also applied for its shares to be listed on Nasdaq Stock Exchange

Listing docs here.

Regarding the 100B valuation, it is doubtful at best and IMO speculative as perhaps all the cryptomarket I guess.

Last time we talked about Coinbase, we gave it a $15 billion valuation. Maybe it was right at the time, but it was fairly wrong given where things are going now. Today’s Coinbase private valuation is floating between $50 billion and $100 billion in the private secondary markets on Nasdaq. That distance made us revisit the financial model for the company with a February update.

Hi, I promised a short post on active and passive management - mostly to myself , and for the general economic education of the forum.

Regarding investment in funds and asset allocation, there are two tendencies of lines of thought. There are maximalists on both of these, but the truth is that they are compatible:

a) Active asset management: This is about picking and choosing assets individually and making changes when the manager or asset allocator considers it adequate. Example: A portfolio of hand picked companies "Apple, Amazon, Taiwan Semiconductors, Constellation Software and Alphamin Resources". Why? Because the allocators thinks they will outperform "the market"(*).

b) Passive asset management: This is about buying all the companies on an market(*). For example the S&P 500 has, unsurprisingly, 500 companies on its list, so you would distribute your investment across these, probably weighting by marketcap of the company (e.g. If Appel is worth 1 Trillion and Facebook is worth half a Trillion, you would have twice as much invested in Apple than in Facebook, etc...). You probably would need to have quite a bit of money to do this since you would need to buy 500 different shares, but there are funds that do it for you (index funds).

This passive strategy  can be applied to different markets using different indexes. One frequent advice for people who do not know much about analysing companies (most of us) or do not have time to go shopping for companies is to "Buy the world" - This means buying and indexed fund that tracks a Global Index of some short (e.g. The MSCI World). Buying an index carries along the recognition of the market being unpredictable or at least unpredictable consistently along a long stretch of time. Is basically the opposite to timing the market.

(*) "The market" is normally how we would call all publicly listed companies on a region, exchange, list, etc... It is understood to be a proxy for the underlying economy of that sector or region.

As you can imagine it is perfectly possible to follow this strategy with cryptoassets. There are some actively managed funds out there and a crypto20 and others that are managed passively.

[If you are in the 10% of the richest you have a problem: You have something that everyone else would like to take from you]

Ok, this applies mostly to democracies but just follow me for a moment... I am going to think as I write

This is very simple - TO KEEP WEALTH YOU JUST HAVE TO AVOID GIVING IT AWAY TO OTHERS

- To have rule a country you need: (a) A way of enforcing power (military, police, judiciary,...) (b) Some form of structure of government (c) Sufficient amount of votes
- In most democracies the military are aligned with democracy in general terms. You throw them some money, keep an eye on what the generals are doing and have someone of trust heading all that.
- In most democracies, and even in most countries I dare to say, you do have some structure of government with public workers, ministers, judges of short,... Sometimes this structure is better, sometimes is not really good, but it is there.

Now, you need the votes. If you are in the 10% of the richest you have a problem: You have something that everyone else would like to take from you. They cannot do this directly because the right to private property / ownership is normally granted and enforced. However, in a democracy, you run the very serious risk of people asking for laws that would force you to distribute wealth. This is the outline strategy on how the rich prevent that from happening:

- You can count on the votes of the 10% that is rich just as you to vote for politicians that will keep it that way.
- You can easily create a "choir" or "court of sycophants" that will play your game. They will be cunning, smart, educated and you will make sure that you will pay them well. You can add another 10% of votes, if not more, on that. Their names are "KMPG", "Bearing Point", "Morgan Stanley", "Goldman Sach" and so many others that work day after day for you and do not want to end. Let´s make this a 15% of the quite well-to-do classes.

How do you get another 25% of convinced voters to ensure that the laws maintain your privileges:

- Hate: You will get another 5% that are simply to angry to vote to "that party who is this and that"... you know, they vote with their guts not with their brains.
- Hopelessness: Discourage poor people from voting. Ensure they think their vote is meaningless or make it meaningless by Gerrymandering or similar, put a difficult process for registering,...
- Mislead: Ensure that they are not educated in alternative ways of thinking:  bitcoin is risky, the communists are taking over, this is the best country in the world, you have to trust the government,...
- Fear: Create an external and internal enemy (e.g. China) and place yourself as only alternative.
- Mislead: Ensure you have a public image of ingenuity and hard work, even if you basically spend your days smoking weed and tweeting.
- Hopelessness: The system cannot be changed. If you do something different it won´t work.
- Fear and disinformation: If you cannot oppose and argument, attack the messenger (AKA ad-hominem).
- Mislead: Be cute, nice, speak well, ... people tend to think positively of shit if shit is presented as food.
- Mislead: Poor are poor out of their choice, or because life is just like that, or because they have made bad choices or... you choose.
- Make sure to include a good number of public media in your "tournee". You will need them for all of the above.

All this costs money, but it is money well spent is it not?

On a recent post, I found out that quite a few replies mentioned that you can only diversify or have a varied portfolio "if you have a lot of money". I aim to contribute to a general financial education for the members of this forum (some could actually teach me, many are clueless). While in most countries, particularly in USA, some investments are reserved to qualified investors (typically high income or high worth individuals), there are many possibilities for the average guy to invest.

Myth: Only the rich can invest in the best business.

Reality: Anyone in most countries can invest in great companies and great assets from almost any amount. There are even funds out there that will let you invest from 10 USD or Euros. If you are looking to start your life investment (the earlier the better, see picture below), you may start by looking at Vanguard. These are the best know Index funds (I will write a post on active and passively managed funds some other day). Paper-thin fees and entry barriers are built-in.

Here is the add, the price still yet to be determined.. as of now, more than half a mill USD.

As I watched these riches change hands, I thought to myself: Why should celebrities, athletes and artists have all the fun? Why can’t a journalist join the NFT party, too?

So I decided to turn this column into an NFT and sell it on the open market. Whatever I make from it will go to The New York Times’s Neediest Cases Fund, a 110-year-old effort started by the former Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs that supports charitable causes in New York and beyond. (Administrative note: Since the Neediest Cases Fund doesn’t accept direct cryptocurrency transfers, I’ll have to convert the proceeds to dollars first, meaning that this is not a tax-deductible gift for the buyer.)

This basically reveals all the stupidity surrounding the NFTs that do not really confer any exclusivity right or possible utility. But.. I feel tempted

Once I joined Foundation and linked my account to my Ethereum wallet, I had to upload an image of my column to a decentralized storage service called InterPlanetary File System, or IPFS. I then had to mint a token mapped to that file — essentially, generating a unique cryptographic signature that would live on the Ethereum blockchain, marking the file I uploaded as the real one.

The process is simple enough isn´t it?

Esto es una trauccion aproximada de un post que he puesto en el foro general, economia. Creo q contribuye a la formacion financiera tambien aqui.

Esto puede ser muy util para aquellos que hayan ganado dinero con bitcoin y otros activos digitales pero eventualmente quieran crear un portfolio mas tranquilo. Quizas mas adelante escriba sobre como el bitcoin podria ser parte de este portfolio.

Harry Browne , estadounidense, poitico, escritor y asesor financiero.

Su trabajo mas influyente fue el desarrollo del "la cartera permanente" - una herramiento para construir una cartera q funcian bajo cualquier circunstancia previsible de mercado. Como cabe adivinar, la tambien llamada "cartera para cualquier clima" no funciona tan bien como las carteras especificas para situaciones de mercado concretas. El desarrollador del metodo estaba principalmente interesado en preservar el capital con retornos moderados.

Las bases:

- Hay cuatro escenarios basicos: prosperiad, inflacion, recesion y deflacion. Necesitas activos q lo hagan bien en cada uno de esos casos.

En prosperidad - acciones para proporcionar fuertes rendimientos. Los bonos tampoco lo haran mal.
En inflacion - El oro es el activo de eleccion. No el unico.
En recesion - el dinero o equivalentes preservan bien el valor porque suele haber falta de liquidez.
En deflacion - Los bonos lo haran muy bien.

Y eso son las bases, Simple? Si, esa es la belleza del metodo. Esta cartera ha sido probada en distintos paises y epocas y no es especifica de USA u otros.

Gambling business and activity has increased heavily during COVID. No wonder, more free time (forced sometimes), less social life and a bit of you only live once.



Add campaigns were also heavy on TV, internet and other. Do you think that this trend is here to stay or people will gamble less once COVID is better solved.

This can be very useful for people who have made money with bitcoin and digital assets but eventually would like to create a calmer portfolio. I may write later about how bitcoin could be part of a permanent portfolio reviewed to today's possibilities.

Harry Browne was an US financial advisor, writer and politician.

His most influential work was de development of the permanent portfolio - A tool to build an asset portfolio that is able to perform under any foreseeable circumstance of the markets.  As anyone may guess, the also called "all-weather" does not perform as well as specific portfolios built for special market conditions. The developer of the method was mainly interested in preserving capital with a moderate return.

The basis:
- There are 4 basic scenarios: prosperity, inflation, recession or deflation. You would need assets that do well in each of these to keep a good balance.
- In Prosperity - stocks, to provide a strong return. Bonds will do well as well.
- In Inflation - Gold is the choice (not the only possibility though).
- In Recession - Cash or cash equivalents do well, due to low liquidity in recessions.
- In deflation - Bonds will do great.

This is how the basics look like. Simple? Yes, that is the beauty of it. This type of portfolio have been tested in different countries, so it is not specific to US or other.

The problem with bitcoin and coins that are limited by nature - or should I say software is that they cannot use the fiduciary money creation system. As most of you probably know, banks can lend more money than they actually have in reserves. That is, they actually are entitled to multiply money. Simplified example:

Bank "A" has 100 in deposits from clients.  The regulation in that country requires a deposit of 20% in the federal or central bank account. Thus this bank can actually give mortgages for 400. (20% -100 so 100% is 400%).

This comes from the centuries old lender's system in which the first "letters of credit" were issues. Lenders soon found out that they could issue more that they had in reserves. You cannot do that on limited issuance digital assets can you?

Since I have been banned from their telegram, I can only but use this forum to express my opinion. I will do so simply by reporting what they are doing, accurately:

- During the ICO they stated that they wanted to build on top of ethereum.
- After the ICO the KYC was delayed and the transfer of tokens only happened after a steep token price drop.
- The project informed that they were now going to build their own chain.

I lost interest in the project, so it was only recently that I bothered to look again. apparently the tokens have some value... like 1/100th of the original price. I wanted to sell these and they told me that I could no longer swap these to new chain. Not that I had much, but you know... it is mine.

So basically, they took my money and run with it. As usual in these cases they tell you "you should have done this... you should have done that..." but the fact is that they took the money, made up the rules afterwards and.. that is the end of it.

Another guy in the group was saying that he or she had 15.000 NZD on it. Another one jumped int.

I will keep people posted here, as it is not possible to do so for me on Telegram.

This is the original thread

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2237916.msg22574793#msg22574793

Una reflexion que queria compartir tras leer un hilo de DdmrDdmr: Me meti en bastantes ICOs y bounties en el 2017 y 2018 y la verdad es que no me arrepiento porque he aprendido mucho sobre como detectar aun tramposo, que estos pueden estar en cualquier parte e incluso ser gente my respetable en una comunidad y, no menos importante, a aceptar la volatilidad.

Sobre todo esto ultimo, la volatilidad de los activos financieros tradicionales es muy inferior a las de criptodivisas (casi siempre) y la posibilidad de lo q Warren Buffet llama "la perdida permanente de capital" es altisima. Warren da por supuesto q las acciones fluctuan y que no toda inversion es positiva, pero una de las reglas es:

EVITAR LA PERDIDA PERMANENTE DE CAPITAL

[/b]

La perdida permanente de capital no es que tus tokenes or cryptos bajen, o q tus acciones de una empresa bajen, es que se produzca una perdida o situacion en la cual sea imposible recuperar el capital invertido, ni ahora, ni nunca. Por ejemplo, si una empresa quiebra o un token se va a cero y el equipo desaparece.

Las posibilidades de perdida permanente de capital son extremas en el caso de las ICOs, ITOs o flotaciones directas de tokenes. No es solo que el proyecto pueda ir mal, eso le puede pasar a cualquiera, es que tienes unos riesgos extremos:

- Falta masiva de regulacion, los promotores no responden a nadie ni durante ni despues de la ICO.
- Equipos normalmente inadecuados - por decirlo suave. Son gente q si conocieras en persona no les prestarias ni un satoshi.
- Resuelven problemas q no existen aun... ni existiran.
- Usan estrategias de marqueting q serian ilegales en cualquier otro contexto o pais.
- A veces simplemente son estafas sin mas. Dame tu pasta y adios.
- Posibilidades de ser estafado por el camino por hackers, fraudsters...

Con todo esto, aunque hagas un x2 en 2 meses en 1 de cada 100, es mejor que lo pienses o al menos sepas q estas cosas pasan y aprendas todos lo posible para q no te pasen.

Powel recenlty made a series of statements around digital currency. Among the declarations:

Fed Chair Jerome Powell says central bank-backed digital currencies must coexist alongside cash and other forms of money

Powell recently said that a potential digital dollar is a "high priority" project for the US, although that comes with notable technical and policy-related issues

Effectively, the issue for government backed digital currencies, which are not anything like a decentralised crypto, is regulations. To elaborate, the world has seen massive changes in the way money moves around. Banks are in general interested in putting some friction and cost to money movements, and a digital currency would probably create an environment to that middleman to disappear or be much less relevant.

Governments are mostly concern about what does means to the control they currently have on the flows of information about money, money laundering and taxation. So we should read any comment in that light and translate: "We do not have the regulations in place to allow for a digital dollar". On a side comment, China may use this opportunity to get ahead and has shown some movement towards it.

[9 Global Universities Offering Crypto and Blockchain Courses]

There are many people in the forum that just try to make a Satoshi here and there and think of crypto and bitcoin as just another stuff. They are not interested in learning and they do not really believe that crypto can actually be a real change to the way the world works. Probably, for them bitcoin is just "tulipmania" or a "ponzi".

If you are thinking on how to get some proper financial education, including crypto, it may be difficult to work around the massive amount of dis-information. Too many you tubers selling you "the best trading strategy" or "giveaways" or "this fantastic project" or "investment with high yield".

For those in the forum that consider that have succeeded in understanding economy, currency, crypto and bitcoin... would you like to help other and put forward the best resources? Ideally, those that can be understood by a 12 year old, as many people here do not have the privilege of a good education. I will have a look at the answers an probably wrap around the results if it is worth it.

What is the really basics for you?


I got this from a thread requesting info on crypto alone:

Of course this forum is the main objective to discuss crypto, there are many things you can learn here as you want to ask.

For that your question has been in the general stroke of words asked by many members here, so not to be hit with the same answer and repeated, if you have time you can read and see in the topic below.

1. Topic: Cryptocurrency trading for beginners.
2. Topic: Crypto courses from colleges, universities, influencers, and communities.
3. Topic: What is the best Cryptocurrency to Invest?
4. Topic: Ask Any Crypto-Based Question
5. Topic: PhD on a topic in blockchain
6. Topic: [ANN] Grin | PoW Mining | Electronic transactions for all. Community driven.
7. Topic: Looking for a marketing expert.
8. Topic: Need marketing and promotion person in to new project

This is only 1%.
Hopefully you can add to your knowledge about crypto from within the topic of suggestions, ideas in it.

...
As the above said.

https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-finance/money-and-banking/bitcoin/v/bitcoin-what-is-it

Khan Academy has a good basic series of lectures on bitcoin.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency

Coursera's course is more comprehensive. The way its organized and presented is a bit obfuscated and counter intuitive. Which makes it difficult to learn and understand the lessons.

https://www.cryptologie.net/links

I haven't had a chance to read through the above links yet. They appear to be a good resource on elliptic curve cryptography which bitcoin utilizes.

...
Check them here:
9 Global Universities Offering Crypto and Blockchain Courses

In addition, udemy and edx.
They are not really degrees though but it's more of a specialty and expertise that you can add as your skill. And that means you can study other courses while studying them at the same time.
https://www.udemy.com/courses/search/?src=ukw&q=blockchain
https://www.edx.org/search?q=blockchain

There are several studies regarding cryptocurrencies. I'll give you 5 topics down below. I'll also add where it is currently taken.
1. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency technologies (Princeton university)
2. Cryptocurrency and Blockchain: An Introduction to Digital Currencies (University of Pennsylvania)
3. Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Explained (University of Michigan)
4. Blockchain (University of Buffalo)
5. Blockchain Revolution (INSEAD)
You can search the rest in "coursera" which is a website that provides all of the subjects to study cryptocurrency.

According to Reuters and other outlets, Coinbase has been fined for using multiple trading accounts and algorithms that created the illusion of a more liquid and active market for bitcoin and litecoin on their GDAX professional trading platform.

It comes as no surprise to most people on this forum, as most exchanges use market making bots or these are active on behalf of liquidity pools. It is just the fact that multiple accounts were used undisclosed the main argument for this fine.

Is there a way that you can ensure being difficult to predict at Poker? For example, if you never bluff, people will eventually get to known that and it will reduce your ability to profit from good  cards? Anyone there knows techniques or trick to avoid being easy to read?

I am interested in knowing what others use to have an idea of how many transactions are happening, volumes, .... Yes, i do know google exists, but I would rather have your fine human expertise on this. Large transactions would also be interesting to know about.