.. looking for a new low again  It seems so…. It's because I bought today (a small amount of BTC). I'm sorry. My speculations go the wrong way some 80% of the time (for a few days...). please decide to sell, soon  As we tick below $22k as I write, I DO have to consider what you suggest.  |
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.. looking for a new low again It seems so…. It's because I bought today (a small amount of BTC). I'm sorry. My speculations go the wrong way some 80% of the time (for a few days...). |
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They (.gov, Mainstream Media, WEF, etc.) are gaslighting us, guys.
Gaslighting is an especially nasty form of lying, where the liars try to make it look like the victim is at fault or even insane. It is insidious, and they use psychological trickery, it's quite advanced the progress that has been made in propaganda.
Stock futures are down hard tonight. The investor classes are now awake to the fact that inflation is nowhere near as low as 8.6%... Job losses are incoming, wages are stagnant in our inflationary environment. Whatever gains in wages that come will not nearly keep up with the current inflation, and might not even come close should inflation get worse. It will almost surely get worse.
Many assets are at risk as well. Home values will likely start down as mortgage rates go up. Homes have already shot up in price (as have rents).
Assets and wages are going down. Living expenses are going up.
And typically what happens AFTER bad inflation is a crash. Typically very ugly. 25% unemployment level depressions seem to occur once in a lifetime (Fourth Turning).
And they are looking at war.....
So what to do?
First, debt may look good in an inflationary epoch, but the banks will cotton on to that very soon and index interest rates on loans (bankers are not stupid), STAY OUT OF DEBT to the extant you can.
Second, BTC seems to be the only "crypto" worth a damn (and I have looked at various "Alts" in some detail), so yes I would HODL BTC and I will be buying (poco-a-poco) more. Still, I have not become convinced that BTC is invincible, that a .gov attack of one nasty sort or another could severely damage BTC despite it's many strengths. I know and understand this is not a popular view here at W.O. All I can really suggest is that over-concentration in one asset is way riskier that I would certainly do.
Third, my moniker here suggests that I hold gold. Everyone should consider owning some physical gold, and keep it carefully hidden. Cash too. If you have a solid small business, great.
Fourth, there are tons of websites about "preparation", Plan Bs, diversification into non-traditional assets, etc. Most folks here no doubt have looked into some of this in some detail. Preparation, I have found through these many years, is a complex topic, it is also expensive. Many family members of a "prepper" may object, that can cause its own set of problems. Preparation is wildly different for each person, depending on a huge range of factors, all of them interrelated and uncertain...
Uncertainty is a big problem too, for who knows what will happen? I sure don't. I have many doubts about everything. I have no idea what will happen in the future, what pandemics are next, what Klaus Schwab or Bill Gates or Nancy Pelosi will try next. NO ONE knows what will happen.
In the past several weeks I have become more convinced that we have relatively little time left to get ready for a very rough storm. Keep your heads down. Lower your risks. Get going on protecting yourself and your legacy. Think long-term.
/rant
edited
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... Thank you for the short punchy note proudhon. Nice and to the point. * * * Aleks Svetski often writes very interesting stuff. In his latest article (link below) he rolls several nice themes all together. -- Past, present and future -- The Bible, the Vedic Samhitas and the Tao Te Ching -- Fiat and lies... -- “show don’t tell” -- Bitcoin vs. shitcoin Please don't miss the image of "The Helth Ministers"! <--- [A fine example of a "Double Sic"] A short passage I much enjoyed: "Bitcoin is like the Old Testament God, in that it is a consequential god. There is no free lunch, nor ignorance of sin or error. You pay the price for mistakes, but if you heed them and adapt, you shall find that “God is good.”"https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-shows-you-not-tell-you |
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Rephrase what I said, according to its context: In the hypothetical event of a total ban, >99% of people here could be easily stopped from using Bitcoin.
for anyone of us in the USA (you know, land of the "free") a government ban would certainly stop almost all of us in their tracks. even if youre not kyc'd anywhere, use tor, decentralized exchanges etc i would wager they would find out anyway. maybe if you live totally off the grid and never go near civilization it could be done but thats not for me. call me a wimp or whatever, i need modern society to live comfortably. especially modern medicine. understand: i HATE kyc and the government snooping in our business to the point they just hoover all info they can to store and analyze for "security/terrorism/etc" purposes even when its not currently useful. as they can always make some law in the future and look back at all that collected data to retroactively get you on some law that doesnt even exist right now. look, i will mess with a lot of things but one entity i wont mess with is the irs. they have NO sense of humor. makes me glad i did not hide my btc gains even before the irs targeted it. call me a wimp but thats what we here in the USA need to do to exist in peace. bleh. Yeah, that's pretty much the way I feel too. It's really none of the business of the intrusive IRS, but not worth fighting. The law and all. I hate KYC as well, but went through it in early 2021 to take some of my large gains in BTC. Declaring my gains and paying the capital gains tax. *Sigh* |
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A very useful thread, thanks OP and other repliers. These facts/policies/thoughts are important because they do indeed cast light on threats to BTC and the philosophy of privacy. Very important.
* * *
*Gemini, my experiences only*
In January 2021 I finally joined Gemini. I did the whole KYC thing, answered their questions, etc. I did this because I wanted to sell some of the BTC I had acquired for MUCH cheaper, and so take some gains. I sold a lot between January and October (2021).
When I applied to get into Gemini, I told them upfront that most of my coins were mixed and/or coinjoined. I told them that I was not doing illegal things, but valued my privacy. No drugs, no gambling. US citizen. I wanted to sell some BTC to take some gains.
They took me on. I went on to sell a large percentage of my BTC at those wonderfully high prices in 2021.
Gemini had some questions about the way I was selling (some small amounts a couple of times a week for a few months), they thought I might be cashing out BTC from a business. I told them no, I was selling that way because I wanted to CA$H IN some BTC and that I was not smart enough to sell at the All Time High, so I was selling over a period of relatively high prices (Jan - Oct 2021). And Gemini was OK with that. And as far as I am concerned, Gemini served me well (albeit with KYC and explanations).
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I just noticed at coinmarketcap that BTC has lost LESS of its value vs. almost all of the schnittcoins (other than stables) over the past seven days. "BTC Dominance" also is a relatively high 44.8% of total crypto value (recently BTC Dominance has been around 41% - 42%).
BTC has performed rather well all things considered.
Just bought some a few hours ago.
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... HUGE volume of BTC transactions, most with fees in the 12 - 15 sats/vB range (though if I needed something sent today I would pay 20+). All of this started at 12:50 PM ET today. ~117 blocks JUST to clear what's already stacked up on the blockchain. Very unusual, I haven't seen anything like this recently. See: mempool.spacebitbo.io |
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Yah, well, I just bought some today as well, I missed the local low of $30,500 though. But, my short-term speculation record is usually pretty bad. Almost as bad as proudhon's?  Wow.. you must suck really badly if you are comparing your performance to proudhon's performance, especially proudhon's price projections. On the other hand, most of us already have some pretty good ideas that such donkey-breathed being, aka proudhon, is either a ringer or he has extensive brain-damage (probably a bit of both). .In any event, it would be good to call him age-appropriate names wherever and whenever possible... he get's a lot of scholarly motives (if that is the right name?) from such.. since he is sort of stuck at 12 and a half years.. for some reason? - even though we should not be feeding those kinds of damaged juvenile animals.. it only encourages them to spout out more puzzled pieces of disinformation.. like they are stuck in a time-warp, never got past the 6th grade in terms of calculation skills, and still believes that bitcoin is a baby (believes in santa claus too).. just like them.I have a long history of short-term speculation going the other way on me right after I buy or sell... I buy, the price goes down. Maybe 80% of the time! Anyone could make short-term money taking the other side of my trade. Longer term I do better. proudhon is probably my favorite character here at W.O. For real. Though you and the DUDE are close runners-up. |
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When we go sub $30k, who sold at the bottom?  Who's our next Mindrust? Dunno but there will be one or even a couple. The first time that bitcoin crossed this price level (~$34k-ish) to the upside was on 01/02/21. That means that anyone that bought any bitcoin for the first time in the last 17 months and held it is likely underwater, all the while inflation jumped another +15% or so. That sucks big time. Psychologically, 17 months is a long time for weak hands. (Of course that means that they are still winning vs. stonks with relative losses > 15% during the same period) I just hope that they have the balls of steel to weather this storm. The tide will turn, and then none of them will be underwater.Yes, emphasis in above quote mine. Also: "Don't sweat the volatility" -- Bobby Lee (from his 2021 book The Promise of Bitcoin) HODL, HODL, HODL has always worked so far given a low time preference. |
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Another issue to keep in mind about Fuck You status, and even with living in another country would be "succession planning" (to whom you would give your wealth to and how much upon your death).
Deciding how to pass along assets to heirs is a complex subject just in and of itself. Especially with BTC and wallets, with Private Keys or Seed Words to send/pass along in a secure way with the instructions on how to access the BTC contained therein...
I still have a bit further to go myself in planning how to pass along some more assets, but I have given the process a good start. Once I have finished (or in great part, as this could go on and on), then I too will think more about how to live the life in a low-stress & comfortable way.
* * *
I am less enthused than before about LatAm as a secure Plan B kind of place. The country we had looked the most at is less secure politically than we had hoped and somewhat assumed. I am guessing that ALL of LatAm is now more problematic than I had considered before. Pity that.
On the other hand, certain LatAm places do seem to be relatively better, even over a longer time frame. Costa Rica seems to be relatively stable and less authoritarian than most others.
Edit: Also, before doing anything relatively permanent (moving, or even advanced planning), I suggest visiting the target country/countries at least twice (each) for a minimum of 8 weeks to assess whether you like the food, culture, can learn the language, etc. Part of these visits would be "business", that is talking with lawyers re immigration, work, investments, and so on. It's complex! A lot of factors to take into account.
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... Having noted Wasabi's decision to block certain UTXOs from their service, I did a quick 'n' dirty look into alternatives. My casual search yielded the below two services: -- coinjoin.io <--- never heard of them apparent scam, see next post -- https://samouraiwallet.com/download/whirlpool, a service of Samourai It looks like Whirlpool has an app that you can download at the above link, it also looks like that you can download it to Windows and Linux desktop computers, not just to "Google phones". My questions are: 1) Can we use Whirlpool without the Samourai wallet? That would make it a good alternative to Wasabi. 2) Has anyone tried or heard of coinjoin.io?Related, I read an article on a coinjoin service a week or two ago, it looked like Whirlpool (not sure though, and it was NOT via the link above). The article mentioned that you can run your BTC through the service more than once (yet just pay for the first CJ), the article explained that doing that meant more privacy / harder to break. If I understand correctly, Whirlpool might be a great alternative to Wasabi. Also, if there are any other CoinJoin services that are EASY to use (for beginners), please share! edited |
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I did have a chance to talk with a younger guy (40s) about BTC (and crypto), but I told him that I was BTC only, and to solicit opinions on alts elsewhere. He seemed genuinely interested, I will inquire later if he jumps in the pool.
He will probably go all in on poocoin after looking at alts.  My friend is a serious guy, he will likely ask various others and move slowly. (I am not all that serious, but do move slowly.) I did tell him to edge into any purchases, I should have mentioned JJG's Dollar Cost Averaging thoughts in regards to his budget, goals and financial means. He DID tell me he is OK with volatility and thinking long term, and I believe that. I hope that he does not get suckered into ALTS, but that is his decision. He's not a programmer either -- I hardly know any of them, looks like I come from a different space than most here.. |
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It was not as easy to learn as I had hoped ("tap" is a very light tap for example), but I was able to get it set up quickly, the "secondary password" was also easy and pretty clear to set up. I saw several people complaining about that and I personally prefer normal buttons instead of touch screen fake buttons. My suggestion is to not remove protective foil from the screen, or make your own custom one to avoid scratches. I have NOT yet figured out how to do "coin control" yet (out of town), that it is a feature I like about Wasabi. I will explore that upon return home.
I think you can use coin control just fine with Electrum, and to make things easier to you BitbBox02 works with other third party wallets like Wasabi, Specter and Sparrow. If you are using their native app it's simple if you follow this simple guide and Enable coin control in Advanced Settings: https://shiftcrypto.support/help/en-us/14-privacy/31-how-to-use-coin-controlThank you very much, dkbit98. I will examine shiftcrypto's support link you cited. Once I figured out how the device worked ("tap", etc.), I got used to it. So far so good. |
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So I go away for almost two weeks yet the price of BTC barely moves. Ah well.
Maybe with all the cheery news around (/s) number go up once I get home. It's not like anything macro is really getting any better (war, inflation, .gov "leadership", etc.)
I did have a chance to talk with a younger guy (40s) about BTC (and crypto), but I told him that I was BTC only, and to solicit opinions on alts elsewhere. He seemed genuinely interested, I will inquire later if he jumps in the pool.
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I wonder who was "the guy manning the booth." The mask wearing anarchist or the suit wearing business man. Depending on who you met, you will get different answers to your questions, as their personality is the exact opposite. zkSNACKs is a company with over 30+ people already and opinions on blacklisting varies to a great degree from "this should'd been done long time ago" to "we must start working on decentralized coordination protocols." My take is that I'd not like to discriminate between users at all, but it had to be done, and I can only hope it wasn't already too late. At least Bitcoin privacy can flourish.
I'm sorry it has taken me a while to respond, I have been out of town since the conference. I did not ask the man for his name, but he definitely was not wearing a mask (medical nor anarchist), and I believe he was not wearing a suit either, could be wrong as I was very busy for my overly brief 5 hours or so there. I can certainly imagine that in a company of 30+ employees that opinions on a topic like this would be all over the map. Privacy and trust-in-privacy are extremely important to guys like me. It pains me that there are so few tools that beginners, and, well, everyone can easily use to keep their financial activities private. It looks like most of us do not want anything like what you are considering as it seems arbitrary. Also, why did it have to be done (my emphasis in your reply)? |
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I bought one (BitBox02, BTC-only) at the Miami BTC conference. I am out of town so don't remember exactly what I paid for it, but I think it was a little bit less than I have seen online, my price was something on the order of $120. I didn't have to worry about Sales Tax or VAT either... Nor did they ask who I was, smile.
It was not as easy to learn as I had hoped ("tap" is a very light tap for example), but I was able to get it set up quickly, the "secondary password" was also easy and pretty clear to set up.
I have NOT yet figured out how to do "coin control" yet (out of town), that it is a feature I like about Wasabi. I will explore that upon return home.
So after some more work exploring my device, I will likely be able to say which of Trezor Model T or BB02 I like better, but both are very good experiences as far as I am concerned.
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For what it's worth (very little), I stopped by Wasabi's booth at the BTC conference in Miami Beach today and spoke to the guy manning it (my first stop after they opened the doors). The guy there was NOT "nopara73".
I asked him about this whole issue of Wasabi not allowing certain UTXOs to be used in their CoinJoin service. He gave me a "plausible" response, essentially saying that the banned UTXOs would be those directly linked to wrongdoing (my wording), like for big BTC thefts, etc. He said it would be uncommon (again, my wording not his). Like I wrote above" "plausible"... So, I really cannot knowledgeably comment any further, just don't know, but the fact that they are doing this is NOT GOOD, IMO.
I did not feel like grilling the guy any further as I had only today to see the show with lots to see & do.
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Gerontocracy? What a load of crap. I'm older than both Larry Fink and Jamie Dimon and I clued in immediately upon hearing about Bitcoin. Now I'm set for life. One of my friends, a member of the Silent Generation in his 80s, accumulated 13BTC before passing away over a year ago. When he knew the end was drawing near, he went on a sending spree and cashed in his last coins a week before he died. He had no heirs. Meanwhile, a Millennial friend scoffed at me and called me a sucker who couldn't see through an obvious scam, while pursuing a "career" as an online poker player.  Another Millennial friend had the brains to hop aboard in 2013. We attended Vitalik Buterin's shitcoin white paper unveiling together at Decentral in January 2014. Needless to say we both took a pass. My wife is Gen-X and regrets not getting in when she heard about it (before me!) in 2012. She needed the money for another enterprise. Bitcoin may have been developed by mostly Gen-Xers (and some Boomers) but it crosses generational lines. It's not about age. Besides their age, what do Buffett, Fink and Dimon have in common? They all have an interest in the status quo, specifically the legacy financial system. It wasn't a cataclysmic event that extincted the dinosaurs. It was their failure to adapt to it. Many older species survived. ZeroHedge has their take, I haven't read it yet: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/stunning-speech-peter-thiel-blasts-buffett-dimon-and-fink-finance-gerontocracy-sees-bitcoinEdit: Just read the ZH piece. YES, Thiel really pastes the bastids, rightly so. He hates "ESG" even more. Bwa ha. The ZH piece is worth a read. |
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