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azguard

Today we have been in Budapest, Hungary.  On our nearly one week river cruise (Bavaria, Austria and Budapest), I have seen ZERO Bitcoin signs or ads (course I do not see many in the USA either).

Also, I have been with my family doing tourism, not BTC stuff...

I have been able to find gold and even platinum (latter in Vienna) in central Europe with no problem.

Tomorrow we are off to Prague, a much more friendly BTC place I read (Slush).  I'll poke around and see what I can find.

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This might be possibly useless anecdotal evidence (also an observation JUST as a spender of BTC), but we have been in Nuremburg and Regensburg (Germany) the past few days, and I have seen NO signs at shops for Bitcoin nor any other evidence that BTC is used in everyday commerce.

But, I have only been to one coffee shop so far.  We go to Vienna in a couple of days, maybe there will be more use of Bitcoin there.

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Over the past few days I have been reading about really know what's going re various Italian banks (up to eight of them) being in big trouble, and that a referendum coming up re Renzi might affect them.

I don't really know what's going on (on vacation), but it sounds perilous, even for German banks.  Which would affect everybody as Deutsche Bank is so important because it is so big.

Yet I have seen no reaction in BTC price.

Would anyone from Italy care to comment on:

1) How serious is this Italian bank problem and the consequences of the upcoming vote?

2) I see that Bitcoin price has not gone anywhere since we went on vacation.  Is BTC catching on in Italy?


Molto Grazie!

Now how am I supposed to argue with someone suggesting a real reason to buy gold...?

Only reason I can't right now is because it's not easy buying some here in Regensburg (Germany, we're on vacation).

Regensburg, by the way, is very cold.  Reached 1 degree C (max).  Brrr...  How does our friend Risto stand it there in his Estonian castle...? *

* Because he's from even colder Finland?  *shudder*

Hmm, just checked.  Yep, my gold is still there!

This grasshopper has the patience to wait until 2018 or even 2068.  Our family's gold will be passed down through the generations.


EDIT:  A Happy Thanksgiving to all (Americans and not)!  If you pause and really look, we all have much to be thankful for.

Ha ha.  The EU can vote however it wants to, but that does not mean they will ever have an effective military force.

I read somewhere (but of course I do not KNOW this) that the German Army only has a very few helicopters that would work on no notice.  No (few) running choppers, lousy operational capability...

And that's just Germany!  Add the others..., well it's hard to see how the Europeans can put together anything that could stand up to Russia.

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Whether it would have been Hillary elected vs. Trump, either would have spent a whole lot more money, that means inflation will arrive if monetary velocity picks up.  People who have "money" are tending to not spend a levels seen before ("Money velocity" is down).  Should people decide that so much more "money" (currency) is going to be printed, they may decide to start spending...

That is when prices will start going up.

Gold is a good defense against rising prices.  Gold has proven its value through the last 6000 years over and over.

Bitcoin will likely do well too.

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A new book worth taking a look at: The Road to Ruin (Jim Rickards), just out in the past few days.  He has written other books on modern money.  He is a very connected man.

I just finished it.  In short, he believes that The Elites are waging a War on Ca$h because they need to keep power and to keep spending money.  He suggests holding 5% - 10% of your investments in gold, the rest well-diversified.

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10-4, Timelord2067!

Maybe I should take 10 points off my IQ as a reward?

On the other hand, it IS your wallet, one would expect that you would know it well... 



Myself, I still have not noticed any address in use with more than FIVE of any alphanumeric.

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I don't read Coindesk either.  It's a crappy opinion, whether it reflects the editors' views or not.

r0ach lists the red-flags to beware of.  In general, anything that goes against personal freedom is bogus, and not to be trusted.  I agree w/ O/P that metals (Au, Pt, Ag, etc.) are the basis of wealth preservation ("Store of Value"), it will not be within our lifetimes that all digital currencies put together would come close to the value of gold worldwide.

Maybe in 100 years?  I won't be around to see.

Your address (1MMMMGhox5YvX9AkfS5MtTxMLve2MGEMMM) not only has the four "M"'s at the beginning and three at the end, but a total of NINE "M"'s in all.  In my casual browsing around on my own and at this thread, I have not seen that many of the same character in any address.

The most I have ever dealt with was five "M"'s, my address at my profile has four "P"'s, and earlier today I received some BTC at my address with for "E"'s.

I do not use the vanity address generators, just personal observations.

Today I had a BTC payment (received) that was termed "Very High" priority (blockchain.info) and with a $0.15 fee that took over two hours to confirm even though SEVEN blocks were found after receipt.

There certainly are hard-to-figure-out things in Bitcoinistan™ still out there.  "More wrinkles than you can shake a stick at"

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And by Hot Potato, I mean that no one wants to investigate this, they don't even want to touch it, get burned..  Maybe they'd be killed?

Oz too, huh?  There have been rumors for decades (that I am aware of, maybe much longer) that TPTB in the UK have been into this.  Now all of this has stormed onto the Alt-Media here in the US.  They (the Alt-Media) are looking into it.  It may be gaining traction.

I am legendary too. *





* But, I don't deserve it!  I take my compensation via Sig Campaign.  Hey, I'm retired!  How else am I supposed to get an income anyway?

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Let me go ahead and drop the Hottest Potato in the World now.  I don't think Armstrong, Zero Hedge, Breitbart or anyone prominent will touch this.  Look into it, and you will see why...

PizzaGate

^---  The scandal of the millennium?  The biggest scandal of all time?

I'll let you all do your own checking, as I have NO IDEA if any of this is true or not.  If just 1% is true, then this very, very bad...

Wikileaks (Podesta emails) kicked this off when various noticed the pedophilia-seeming comments re "pizza", "hotdog", "map", "Spirit Cooking", "handkerchief", etc.

Google terms to get you started:

"Comet Ping Pong Pizza, Washington, DC"
"Disturbing, Art, Tony Podesta"
"Child trafficking, Epstein, Clinton, parties"
"wikileaks.org, podesta emails, emailid/32795"

Warning: very disgusting stuff has already been unearthed.  Ugh if true.

Yes, Rickards even wrote in his last book (The New Case for Gold) that China and Russia are acquiring gold with the blessing of the USA and Europe with the idea that all the major players would sit down in the future when the time arrives for a new global financial system.  His idea is that each major player would have about as much gold as their GDP would be relative to the world.  This means, according to Rickards, that the world's elites ARE in all of this together (this notion is explained in greater depth in his new The Road to Ruin).

So China would need a LOT more.  Russia, a much smaller economy, would still need more, but their gold holdings relative to GDP are in better shape than China's.  

Note that Russia has very little debt, how that factors into that future equation Rickards does not discuss.  Nor could I offer up and idea how meaningful a low debt by Russia would be, but it would mean something.

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Switzerland is a very advanced country with an excellent understanding of everything financial.  I am not surprised that they are among the leaders in identifying BTC opportunities.

Makes me want to go back there, it has been a long time.

It's a beautiful and safe country, highly recommended for travel & tourism.  And if they make it easy to buy BTC, well, book me a ticket and a hotel room!

India has very strange laws on foreign exchange that may explain part of the very high price premium for BTC vs. the world price.

It is cumbersome to exchange rupees for dollars.  Gold is expensive there (I know, I bought 10 grams there once).  Were I a merchant in India I would prefer to have BTC rather than rupees.  For me to give up my Bitcoin, they would have to pay me ($150 over "spot" (so, $900) seems about right).  I saw NO obvious opportunities for arbitraging gold or BTC when there (a year ago), and I was looking...

India and China do not have all that much in common as one would think.  China has a modern & "go-get-'em" mentality, India is still stuck in ignorance and superstition outside of their cities.  Modi has provided a good example of incompetence in India...

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It is extremely unlikely that Bitcoin could reach a price of over, say, $3000 in 2017. 

There are way too many people who would sell at $1200 - $1400 (over its previous all-time high) vs. potential new buyers.  I see nothing in the current dynamics of BTC mining, BTC demand, and BTC acceptance by merchants to give me hope of a huge & majestic move to very high numbers in a year or so.

However...

It is very possible that in the next 2 - 5 years (or so) that BTC demand could take off as more people get into it (and we hope) more merchants will accept BTC as payment.  The long-term prospects are not bad at all (that assumes, of course, that BTC does NOT have a fatal flaw nor that a new coin does not destroy it).

$100,000 per Bitcoin could come, but not until demand goes UP and the mining reward gets slashed in half again.  But, this is all unknowable...

I am plowing my way through Jim Rickards's brand-new book The Road to Ruin.  He thinks the SDR will be the next world currency (but that the US$, the Euro, The J. Yen, etc.) will circulate within their home countries.  ALL foreign trade (at least larger deals) will be settled with SDRs.  Also, he expects that before too long, major multinationals (think Exxon, Volkswagen, and IBM) will issue bonds in SDRs.

Right now the IMF is not "printing" any SDRs.  There is no paper version.

Rickards pointed out one interesting point (certainly for you, iamnotback): that since the IMF does not import & export, issuing more SDRs (apparently they have only issued "new" ones only four times) would resolve Triffin's Dilemma, a notion that the major world player must run trade deficits so that there is a reserve currency.  Problem is that continued trade deficits could bankrupt the country (so the Dilemma).

I first ran into Triffin's Dilemma at FOFOA's blog some years ago.