This is part of the reason why I never blamed Trump for killing his geriatric consistency, as often he was accused of by the left. Is anyone truly under the notion that the complexity of an unknown virus with high transmissibility was handled with grace by any country? I look at the COVID death rates per capita by country, and I don't see any correlation between lockdown strategy and lower death rate. The response to COVID was in real time; there was no time for preparation.

For Trump, his reelection chances plummeted when the media held him personally responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. He seemed to be the only politician in the world held to that standard.

All signs point to a global economic slow down. There isn't a way the central banks can recover from having borrowed/printed so much money in order sustain the economy during COVID without raising interest rates significantly and growth slowing down to a recession.

Keep in mind the war is still "fresh" in Ukraine. Expectations are that it could last years. The cost of consumer goods will only go up as countries begin hoarding resources fearing uncertainty.

The social media giants don't actually owe anyone the right to free speech.

They become de facto town square, as Elon Musk puts it, which warrants at least some ability to speak freely without censorship.


This is what the censorship folks argue and it only holds true when the solution isn't censoring the dissent. If everything I disagree with is disinformation, then what sort of democracy is left? I don't trust the government in dictating what's disinformation or not. I don't trust Facebook to determine that either. It's their platform, so they can do what they want. But it's no secret the government would love nothing more than to control the social media outlets to support their political ambitions.

Yes, Trump was quite the moron for putting Dr. Fauci center stage and having him appear on every TV network for his 10 minutes of fame. In retrospect, Trump's biggest weakness is surrounding himself with incompetence and then getting upset when these people do irrevocable damage.

The 2 weeks to stop the spread turned into 30 days which morphed into over a year of restrictions. The difference being, Trump actively attempting to undo the damage that he had mostly caused while the pro-lockdown groups in liberal states did everything they could to continue lockdowns. Also, it goes without saying that the landscape of COVID was difference in March of 2020 during lockdowns when nothing was known about the virus. If it any prudent person were to view the totality of the circumstances, you have an unknown virus from an unverified origin, no known treatments, high transmissibility, and an under prepared healthcare system. Was Trump (or any other country for that matter) incorrect in their pro-lockdown presumption? Maybe not. But after a year, that presumption no longer exists. We knew a lot more.



Here is the CPI for the United States, last 5 years: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi

Here is the PPI for the United States over the last year: https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_producer_price_index


CPI can be explained only by supply and demand. Increase the money supply, demand increases which will cause the consumer prices across all sectors to increase if the supply isn't able to be maintained. The COVID lockdowns/supply chain issues would cause price increases undoubtedly, but it would happen contemporaneous or at least proximate to the lockdowns, not magically increase when a new President was elected. The CPI began increasing sharply after Biden got elected, and then sharply increased when he got into office.

What policies would explain such inflation? Examine whatever policies would increase the money supply -- the so called "American Rescue Package," or about a trillion dollars in unnecessary spending. Extension of unemployment benefits to September, meaning workers could be paid more to work zero hours/week. This decreases the labor participating rate and raises the operating cost of small businesses that need to compete with the federal government's social welfare state. On top of this, there becomes the issue of democrats/liberals prolonging COVID restrictions and lockdowns in their own jurisdictions which caused many businesses to fail. Some red states opened up, to the scorn of the media, while blue states placed restrictions for much longer. And of course, you can't forget the stimulus checks issued out to something like 90 percent of the American population.

The inflation was on it's way up after Biden's election and before the so called "Putin Price Hike." USD was outpacing the inflation rate of most other developed countries before the Ukrainian war broke out, and USD is still outpacing most other countries with its inflation rate. It is no coincidence that Biden gets in office, starts spending more money that has ever existed, and inflation goes up.

By the way, Biden has desperately attempted to blame corporate greed and price gouging on the increased consumer prices. Completely debunked by the PPI charts over the last two years. The cost of producing goods for manufactures and wholesalers has increased because of the raw materials to produce goods went up. If this was price gouging on the consumer side of the transaction, you wouldn't see the PPI reaching 10 percent. Corporate greed does not explain inflation.


Trump will run again and he will win because he is a narcissistic man child. Republicans need to find a way to manage the neocons and the MAGA crowd because the MAGA crowd isn't sustainable.

Betting markets have Trump and DeSantis as the top two picks: https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/7053/Who-will-win-the-2024-Republican-presidential-nomination

Ron DeSantis would demolish any candidate that democrat want to put up. And Trump is going to derail the Republicans' path to the Presidency because he can't control his ego. If he had remained even slightly restrained from Twitter in 2020, he would have beaten Joe Biden. He carries too much baggage. And unfortunately, he is going into 2024 and will ensure that the most qualified Republican candidate since Ronald Regan will not be President. Trump would be a better President than Biden, but he won't survive the media backlash after J6 if he were to win the primaries.

Imaging Trump vs. Biden would be quite entertaining though. Two geriatrics going for round 2, incredible!

Probably. But the question is still important. The major financial institutions that run the global economy certainly view Bitcoin as a threat to the fundamentals of their institutions. Is there doubt in people's mind that Bitcoin could be a global currency? Sure there is. We should dispel the myths.

IMO Bitcoin could become a global currency if the traditional reserve currencies fail. USD currently serves as the world's currency reserve, but with high inflation some countries are electing to increase their share of Yuan. Of course, China's economy is not doing well either, so where might countries go to fill up their currency reserves? Hopefully they might choose a decentralized currency that is independent of politics, ie. Bitcoin.

I see that as the only possible avenue. There is no incentive for countries to come together and ditch their own currency in favor of a common shared currency. The only way for this to happen would be if they (central banks of major developed countries) were force to.

Something odd about the Communist Chinese Party convincing everybody that Bitcoin is heading to zero while their economy is hemorrhaging from COVID lockdowns and supply chain issues. For a country that censors the internet and drags people away in chains for criticizing the government, I would see why the disinformation campaign would need to be ramped up in a time of economic uncertainty.

Unfortunately for the CCP, people are not stupid.

I laugh at these hysterical statements. They don't even put in any effort.

Perfect time for a gas tax holiday for the Biden administration. He's got elections for his congress coming up and it's looking like his party is going to lose their majority in the house and possibly the senate. The federal gas tax holiday does not stop his anti-oil policy stances.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-alaska-oil-gas-lease-sale-canceled/

He's continuing to cancel drilling leases and his suggestion to people that can't afford fuel that they switch to an electric vehicle. U.S. citizens aren't going to take him up on that advice. 100% increase on fuel relative to 2020 prices are not remedied by a minor tax break.

What's interesting is that Germany has elected to go back to coal due to limited Russian energy supplies being imported to them. Yet Biden's plan to combat the war is go further in the direction of green energy contemporaneous with his efforts limiting gas and oil.

The US dollar is not adherent to the gold standard anymore. There is no value to USD other than the U.S. government willing to support its usage. You can only trust USD as much as you can trust the U.S. government, which is to say very little.

Bitcoin is supported by the free market, so it isn't actually any different from USD in your example. The U.S. government has already diluted the value over 90 percent since the creation of the federal reserve some number of decades ago. If value is siphoned off so quickly with a guaranteed decrease in purchasing power yearly due to inflation, how could you articulate that USD has real value while Bitcoin doesn't?

If I can go into the market and trade my Bitcoin for goods and services, it has value.

First of all, it isn't a surprise that it's a democratic politician in your original post that is looking for the regulation. Liberal politicians don't like cryptocurrency because it doesn't centralize fiscal powers within a main banking system. It makes it harder to pander to their constituency with free social service programs funded by money printed from thin air. Not that conservative politicians are much better, but at least they try to pretend to be fiscally responsible.


Consider what happens when the government involves itself between the employer and the employee. It usually involves a lot of regulation and taxes. Doesn't create incentives for an employer to expand business, so why would crypto employers need to undergo regulation from policy makers that don't understand anything about the industry? The economy is currently in a ditch because there's been an abundance of regulation and top-down government control by the central banks. QE induced inflation, COVID lockdowns generated by future borrowing -- You want these folks involved in crypto regulation?


There are no advantages to a regulated crypto industry. Investors don't need to be saved by the government, they need to be saved from the government.

Governments can get a warrant through the judicial system and physically force you to give up your thumb print to unlock a device. Face ID would work the same way. They're not safe for the user.


Apple invests a ton into cybersecurity R&D but no system is impenetrable. Biometrics being stored locally isn't enough if someone were to get hold of the device (ie law enforcement) and bypass any security measures. I wouldn't be concerned about the ordinary person who doesn't have the resources to bypass Apple's own security measures -- law enforcement could probably seek legal avenues to have biometrics scrapped from the device, forcing Apple to cooperate.

He's already said that Bitcoin is highly energy demanding. Elon Musk is intelligent so he isn't saying these things out of stupidity. He just has a utopian view of energy consumption being completely green. Bitcoin mining isn't a sector that will be going green any time soon therefore he has no need to prop up Bitcoin because it won't personally enrich him.

I'm sure he understands that a decentralized currency system is beneficial from government tyranny. It takes an elementary understanding of economics to recognize it.

Yes. You can look at the historical charts and make some inferences if you're in to analytics and even if you're not, the global economic metrics are enough to give you insight as to how long the slump will last. Institutional investors are out of crypto for the time being (a lot of them are, not all) as people make preparations for a recession. As long as the economy is down, entire crypto market will be down.


Why be so harsh? No one is late to join crypto. This sort of sentiment is toxic.

Your guess isn't as good as anyone else's. In your post you don't seem to detail too much as to why you believe we're headed back to <1k$.

The shock you're seeing right now is because of panic selling. My guess, (as worthless and speculative as anyone else's) is we're doing to see ~15k and then some stabilization. There was a correction that was to be expected with the global economy on the downward trend, but anything you're seeing now is just hysteria driven panic selling. A regression to pre-pandemic prices is outlandish.

You're underestimating the global economy. Crypto sphere took a hit with the Luna/UST collapse but that still does not explain the Bitcoin drop. Global economy was fragile following the COVID lockdowns and the expectation was for a faster and sharper recovery. High inflation meat federal reserve had to lower rates causing low economic growth.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-15/goldman-sachs-cuts-us-growth-forecasts-for-2022-and-2023

All the economic institutions are cutting their projections for GDP of the U.S. It makes sense that people are liquidating assets -- they don't know where to put their money, so they're electing for tangible assets (metals, real estate).

Luna/UST only represent a small portion of the crypto market. It's collapse doesn't even come close to the entire story with crypto.

The economic collapse is already here though. USD is at it's highest inflation rate in 4 decades, and the federal reserve hiked interest rates to slow down inflation. Inflation was already high for USD prior to the Ukrainian war -- problem is that supply chain shortages and post-COVID lockdown economic strain has caused the EUR to increase too. Nearly every market is down and major companies are hiring fewer people or laying off staff.

You don't need to be a top economist to predict an economic collapse. It's a guessing game as to how bad it might be.

Panic and hysteria articles from CNBC are just to generate clicks/revenue, though your point stands. Any time the market corrects or is shocked, there's the tendency for people to claim victory -- a "I told you so" moment. They fail to examine the historic price of BTC and recoveries it undergoes. Not due to any malicious intent, perhaps due to ignorance.

However, this argument works both ways. Someone that bought at 66k/BTC, for example, can't "zoom out" of the graph in any way that would recuperate his losses. To them, Bitcoin might be dead. It'd be foolish to liquidate in this market, but some may not have had a choice.

Won't happen for a couple years at least, probably longer: You'll need the war in Ukraine to resolve, and the housing market bubble to eventually pop and then recover alongside all other markets. Crypto markets move in tandem with the global economy. If U.S./EU/China are struggling, you're not going to crypto move.

If you wanted seismic change in the crypto market, then you would need a major currency to collapse. Inflation rates are going to go down within the next few years, so that isn't a possibility.

Because people need liquidity and bit off more than they could chew. The golden rule of investing is do not invest more than you can afford to lose. With every market down (except for real estate, which has a bubble forming), high inflation, and low wage growth, people are taking their cash out of the markets in order to afford to live.

IMO Bitcoin's growth was too unstable and highly speculative following the pandemic. A correction was incoming but the severity of the correction is just people panic selling in combination with a global economy that's extremely fragile. Entire crypto industry will recover, so for those panicking I can't help but think they're young investors that have not experienced volatility before.

Unfortunately a lot of the panic selling you're seeing now aren't just newbies, they're middle income folks that need liquidity because all markets are down. They don't have a choice but to sell. If they're using Bitcoin as an investment, they should not have been investing more than they could afford to lose in the first place. I'm confident the price will recover, but for those needed liquidity, they're out. They don't have a choice to hold.

Dr. Fauci, greatest doctor alive I've been told, tests positive for coronavirus despite being quadruple vaccinated and double masked per his own advice: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/15/health/fauci-covid-positive/index.html

Maybe this will finally convince people to move on from the pandemic. Propensity of the hypochondriacs to associate callousness with anyone who tests positive with COVID might also stop. The biggest cheerleader for COVID safety is not above the virus, no one is.