The more corrupt the country is, the more they need paper money. Corruption is simpler that way, including for government officials. The government flattens employees' salaries to maintain superficial control of inflation and allows for further negotiations, criminal activities. No punishment. Many government officials receive more than their own corrupt wages.
Seems to me digital currency would be easier to manipulate. No need to print all that money when you can just expand the monetary base by typing extra zeros in the central bank's account and pushing that money into the economy. I think the reason Venezuela needs so much paper money is not because they're corrupt but because they're not technologically advanced to have a digital economy. |
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The more I look at the website, the more I like the idea, the less I like the implementation. The guys is doing several errors, on many levels: - He’s mixing companies putting value at risk investing in Bitcoin (Microstrategy, Square) with companies simply holding BTC on behalf of their clients (Grayscale, other ETP) and even miner with BTC inventories (HUT8)
- He’s adding CAD and USD values like they were the same currency, which is of course an error
- As pointed out by some sharp eyes, there are factual error is the links
This is why I am pledging to do an “improved” version of that website using my Google drive spreadsheet. Of course I will do a little bit of piggyback riding on the most tedious work, but I think the result will be more clear from a logical point of view. Yeah, I don't like including any company's whose business is selling/holding bitcoin to other people as a service. Companies like Grayscale or Coinbase own a lot of bitcoin, but it's on behalf of other people. That's not an indication of the business's conviction of the future of bitcoin. Square is different because it allows you to buy bitcoin but the company itself has invested its own assets in bitcoin. |
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<...>
Though why is cashapp going to be the next amazon for delivering bitcoin? The last time I used cashapp with crypto currency buy/sell enabled, it wasn't user friendly at all.
I have never used Cashapp because I am not living in one of their markets. I didn't say they are going to be the "Amazon of Bitcoin", I was only trying to figure out why the market is pricing them with those borderline-absurd multipliers. It's because of the revenue growth rate. No tech company undergoing rapid growth has a "sane" PE ratio when they're redeploying all their cashflow into the growth of the business. Shopify, Mercado Libre, Square, Twilio and many others all have stratospheric (or negative) PE ratios and if you were using the insane PE ratio as a reason not to invest, you missed out on 10x returns on each of these over the last 5 years, or in the case of shopify 50x returns over the last 5 years. Traditional valuation metrics are pretty useless for measuring fast growing companies like these. |
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Lol, it's clear you don't know what you linked to. This is not the Rothschild family's investments. This is an investment adviser named Rothschild Investment Corp. It's an SEC-registered investment adviser that caters to retail investors as well as high net worth investors, charities, pension funds and corporations. The 13F holdings you linked to are holdings the investment adviser has bought on behalf of their more than 1000 clients while rendering investment advice. Again, not the Rothschild's personal money. |
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What is better at the moment? To invest in real estate or to buy bitcoin? I want to see everyone's opinion. Recently I have talked with one real estate agent in Kew and he said that it is better to invest in real estate. With the current pandemic, he said that he saw a really big increase in sales of the houses. That real estate agent was really good and it helped me to find a really nice house in Kew. I have talked with him and I can say that he is really smart. Totally recommend him. I am really satisfied. At current prices I'd rather own more real estate than more bitcoin. I just don't view huge gains as likely at the current prices for bitcoin and the risk from the volatility is too high. Real estate over the long term acts as a hedge against inflation and also produces an income stream on top of that, which bitcoin doesn't. It's just a better asset class in my opinion. |
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You can call me a moron, blind, whatever you like--but I have to ask you: what evidence can you point me to that fiat currency is falling apart? In certain countries like Venezuela and Zimbabwe where they've had hyperinflation, I'd certainly agree. But the rest of the world? I just don't see any sort of general currency crisis emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic.
And yes, I'm aware of all the money printing and debt accumulation, but I don't see any evidence in my day-to-day life that things are as dire as some people think.
I think it's great that Binance might be releasing a crypto debit card, though I'm not sure how popular it'll turn out to be--and of course I probably wouldn't even be allowed to try it because of the state I live in.
I second this. It's just taken as a given that fiat is falling apart or on the verge of collapse. Ultimately in the future, those saying such things may be right but are by no means guaranteed to be right like they all claim to be. And I would argue are not likely to be right. In any event, there is no consensus that the USD is falling apart. Inside the echo chamber of the bitcoin community, it's heresy not to drink that particular koolaid, but the evidence to support the conclusion is scant. If the current 2% inflation rate is the evidence, then you should probably look at how high the inflation rate has gotten before for the USD without collapsing. |
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Square just decided to follow up MicroStrategy footsteps buying 1% of their total assets in Bitcoin.
*SQUARE: CRYPTOCURRENCY AN INSTRUMENT OF ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT
*SQUARE INVESTS $50M IN BITCOIN
https://twitter.com/deitaone/status/1314189340726177793?s=21Press release from Square:SAN FRANCISCO, CA – October 8, 2020 – Square, Inc. (NYSE: SQ) announced today that it has purchased approximately 4,709 bitcoins at an aggregate purchase price of $50 million. Square believes that cryptocurrency is an instrument of economic empowerment and provides a way for the world to participate in a global monetary system, which aligns with the company’s purpose. The investment represents approximately one percent of Square’s total assets as of the end of the second quarter of 2020.
This translate in a 10,617 USD average price. They have beaten Microstrategy entry point at 11,111 USD per Bitcoin. They released a very interesting press release on their investment, detailing rationale and execution: Square, Inc. Bitcoin Investment WhitepaperAs I like to follow those “big swinging dicks” in the bitcoin ecosystem (Grayscale, Microstrategy, and now Square) I think it is nice to have a well organised thread on the news. They invested 1% of their total assets. I think this is something every CFO should be looking at, given the highly asymmetrical returns of a bitcoin investment. Percentage of total assets doesn't seem like a very meaningful measure because a company can't convert all its assets to investable cash and still have a functioning business. Say you take a real estate company that has bitcoin holdings. The percentage of bitcoin assets to overall assets isn't meaningful because the vast majority of the company's assets are going to be in real estate that wouldn't be invested in any other asset class, because that is the business. Same for Square. There's a portion of the assets related to their business that are never going to be convertible to other assets. I think a more meaningful way to track a company's exposure is measuring bitcoin's share of the company's liquid assets. |
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I think this is interesting that you're tracking this. One nit- "bitcoin investment" column is just taking the "today's value" divided by the "market capitalization" column, but the market capitalization is not a good indicator of the company's investable assets if that's the ratio you're trying to get at. What are you attempting to show in the last column? Maybe the heading just needs to be updated to something more reflective of what you're tracking. Also, Galaxy Digital's link shows holdings of 14,651 btc, not 16,651. Is that a mistake or do you have a more updated number somewhere? It makes an $1100 in their average price cost basis. |
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fillippone, the fund for which the request was initiated by Fidelity is not ETF if I understood correctly from OP? This latest BitMEX news and comments from the CFTC should then be on the trail of some future ETF that we know has been of interest to a number of different companies in the past.
If things have to start cleaning up from somewhere, then BitMEX is a great start - but I wonder if the crypto market can be regulated to the extent that it meets the SEC criteria for the BTC ETF? As far as I know there is not a single active ETF request since the SEC rejected the last one in February this year (Wilshire Phoenix).
This is just a private fund, which means it will be targeting at a minimum accredited investors. Fidelity filed the Form D on 8/26 prior to any sales, so they won't have to disclose any sales figures for this fund until 8/26/2021, which is a shame because I'd be interested to see what kind of interest they're getting. They could opt to publish an amendment prior to that if they wanted to update the sales figures prior to that, which some issuers do as a sign of interest in their fund, but I wouldn't count on that. |
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A country with many students winning high prizes in OLYMPIC math will get more attention and those countries will be considered for investment.
Southeast Asian countries are being invested in inflows of FDI inflows that have increased dramatically in recent years due to the number of students winning the OLYMPIC award in math.
Samsung is moving its factories from China to Vietnam. iPhone manufacturing factories are considering moving to neighboring countries Malaysia and Vietnam.
This has nothing to do with winning math olympics and everything to do with the cost of labor. As China's economy continues to progress, labor becomes more expensive. So companies will continue to do what they've always done since the advent of the industrial revolution and move a location where the labor is cheaper. Vietnam and Malaysia are the new China. When those economies develop, you'll see manufacturing seek less developed economies to exploit. |
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Yeah it seem just coincidence
Yeah, there's no relationship between the two, if stocks fall down and at the same time Trump is infected by the virus, that is totally a coincidence. Don't make too much noise and issue pushing it to have a correlation. Even if Trump recover from the virus, he can still not fix and make the stocks recover when it is in a downward state. It's absolutely related. Any time there is potentially huge changes to the way the American government runs, it creates uncertainty in the market, and uncertainty is almost universally guaranteed to make the markets go down. Uncertainty is the one thing the markets hate more than anything else. When the president contracts the virus in the middle of the global pandemic it's causing and the market drops, you can bet your bippy those are related and not a coincidence. |
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rich people around the world taking loans?
they use their properties as collateral what it can be out come for propery market? what they do with money?
do they use same method as taking loan against your crypto instead of selling a asset?
what we can expecing? the property prices will go higher?
They take loans as the interest are cheaper this time and it's the strategy of the governments to make their economies alive again. They can't just do nothing while watching the economy go down. And as for those rich people, they see this as an opportunity. Although they have the resources, they are wise enough to use others money to generate profit from them and from that profit, they'll just pay the loan with the interest. Somehow, if the economy is going alive again expect that properties value will increase. This is why you save. Success is where opportunity and preparedness meet. The opportunity in this case was people panic selling assets to raise liquidity, mostly because they were recklessly overleveraged. The preparedness is having already saved to be able to take advantage of other people being forced out of the market instead of selling because they wanted to. But the rich aren't using other people's money, they're using their own. Leveraging your assets to borrow is still using your money. If the enterprise goes south, you lose the asset supporting the loan. |
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The CEO might be the head of the world largest vaccine producer but not the fastest vaccine producer, because the first line/fastest vaccine a Human has is their immune and nature.
This is not true at all. You're confusing antibodies with a vaccine. Your body does not create a vaccine. When you're infected with the virus, your body creates antibodies to fight the virus. You're still infected though and you're still capable of spreading the infection to others. A vaccine is a safe agent that doesn't make you sick but for which your body will still create antibodies for the virus, preventing you from ever being infected. The point of a vaccine is so that you never have to risk getting sick from the virus. |
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Is the economy dependent on the health of Trump?
No, stocks drop whenever there is uncertainty and the president contracting Covid-19 is certainly a cause for a lot of uncertainty. The stocks will recover in short order though because this won't affect the economy. Also, stocks falling isn't the same as economic disruption, and there's no economic disruption that will happen because of this news, so the drop in stocks is artificial and unwarranted and will correct itself fairly quickly. |
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What are your thoughts about BTC being use as a store of value in hyperinflationary/ authoritarian economies like mine (Venezuela) ?
Do you think is it an opportunity for bitcoin in terms of adoption?
Do you think that people within this situation should opt for other more conservative alternatives?
What would an authoritarian government do when realizes people is using something they cannot completely control?
I already have some idea about these topics, but I would not be wise of me not to ask others.
If you have any other comments in the matter, feel free to share them.
Anything that experiences less volatility than the local currency is an improvement over the local currency, and the reverse is true as well. It's why Bitcoin is not an improvement over the USD currently but can be an improvement over the Bolivar. If possible to own, the USD would be to hold than bitcoin in Venezuela, but bitcoin may be a lot easier to get your hands on compared to dollars. |
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If this covid-19 crisis will not be controlled, it will continue to destroy the humankind and the world's economy. I guess, this will really happen if we can't find the cure/the vaccine to end this battle. Poverty in different sides of the world, grows higher and its really sad to think that a lot of people are starving. We just pray it will never go that far and this world's craziness will be over soonest.
Plenty of politicians undermining any effort to control the spread of the virus. They're almost always conservatives. The anti-science politicians need to be voted out of office if the world has any chance of containing this thing. Suffering these fools helps nobody. |
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It's not smoke and mirrors and it has nothing to do with debt. India and Brazil both have a good chance to pass the US in number of cases. India due to population density presenting a giant risk to the country and the total population gives a lot more potential infections, and Brazil because they have an idiotic leader who downplays the virus and is more content to ignore it than try to prevent the spread of it (shares this in common with the US, but more at risk I would say due to economic and structural weaknesses in the government compared to the US).
Brazil is the worst example. The president (Jair Bolsonaro) even refused to acknowledge the seriousness of the pandemic in the beginning. Even when the death toll crossed into tens of thousands, he refused to declare a nation-wide lockdown. On the other hand, India was among the first countries to declare a nation-wide lockdown. And it helped them in slowing down the spread (at least during the initial phase). Well you can add Trump to that list of politicians who haven't taken the pandemic seriously and has paid a price for it. Up until now, Americans have been paying the price for Trump's refusal to take the pandemic seriously, but the idiot has contracted it himself now as a direct result of not taking it seriously, which is some long overdue karma. |
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It isn't just Africa though. You see bad economies and underdevelopment in a lot of countries that have autocratic and corrupt leadership. Usually, they go hand in hand. The governments are autocratic because the corrupt leaders are looting the countries resources for personal gain, and the autocratic nature of the country prevents political opposition that might make things free and fair and based on meritocracy.
In most cases, authoritarian countries will be having weak economies, but there can be exceptions. A perfect example is that of China. Democracy doesn't exist in that country, and yet they managed to achieve staggering amount of economic growth in the 1990s. On the other hand, their democrat neighbors (such as India, Philippines, Vietnam, Laos.etc) grew at a much smaller pace during the same period. China is one interesting exception economy-wise, but they may project prosperity a lot more than may be experiencing it. For one, they have built giant ghost cities as a way to spur economic development, but there is not enough natural economic activity to support populating those cities and it may take decades to grow into them. Their control on information makes it difficult to assess. But for sure they posture like every other country to project strength that may not actually be there. |
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As a big country, the US economy will continue to recover. However, it will not happen quickly because the government needs to clarify first what they prioritize to recover. Not just the US, the other countries will also do the same, and whether it is developed countries or big countries, the process is still running. The recovery process will still run, no matter if the election will coming in November, and no matter who is in charge, they need to continue the recovery.
The advantage with US is that they can borrow huge amounts of money at near-zero interest rates. Now this is some advantage that the other nations can't count on. In the US they already had the first round of economic stimulus. The impact was visible in the economy, as the employment rate grew (although not to the level that they had prior to the pandemic). But a full economic recovery may not be possible until the virus is completely eradicated. Even now, anywhere from 700 to 1,200 new deaths are being reported every day from the United States. If the US dollar is to retain any type of value integrity, this can't go on forever. It's been decades since the US ran a budget surplus which decreased the deficit at all, and it was short lived and possibly only a fluke as tax receipts swelled in conjunction with the dot com bubble. The US currently takes for granted that ability to sell bonds to finance the debt, but the world's appetite for this bonds will eventually wane as it looks increasingly unlikely that the US is even able to balance the budget, let alone pay down the debt. |
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The current new normal setup is really unfavorable to all because mostly the privilege people are the ones who can do have an access on the resources not just with remote working but as well as into the education system because all have been set up on being reliant into the presence of modern technology on which both remote working and studying lies on the same platform and share the same experience. Even such they were different in purpose, but the approach as well as the way it is being done is the same that is clearly favorable to privilege individuals but we cannot do anything about it for the pandemic is still on and what we can to still continue our recent normal activities is to adapt into the new normal.
The pandemic is certainly hurting lower income areas of the economy more than the upper rungs of the ladder. Manual labor jobs can't be worked from home. Retail can't be worked from home. Factory workers can't work from home. It's white collar office jobs who can transition to working from home. The pandemic is just making more clear the structural inequalities in the economy, but conservative lawmakers will continue to resist any changes because rich people want their low tax rates. |
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