China would invade Taiwan to save their dying economy. If that meant starting an international conflict with the U.S., so be it. They will not simply succumb to their economic woes without trying for the gold mine that lies below their border and try to control chip production. It'd mean that they would also have immense power over the U.S.


They will develop, just not at the rate as they were before. No one is suggesting that China will cease to exist. They just won't become the world power they were on track to be.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/28/pfizer-covid-vaccine-was-just-12percent-effective-against-omicron-in-kids-5-to-11-study-finds.html

Study finds Pfizer COVID vaccine only 11% effective in children ages 5-11, down from 68%

Some of the arguments for getting the vaccine also lied on preventing long COVID symptoms that might originate from someone that received COVID and recovered.

New study recently released on long term COVID: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-4905

There were no significant difference in inflammatory biomarkers from the control group and long term COVID group. The authors took some other measurements that were significant summarized in the link above, including that related to mental health.

It's not that children were particularly prone to long COVID anyways. But neither were adults.

The monkeypox headlines are just to drive clicks. Media is quite shameless that they will terrify the public with a new virus to as long as it keeps them engaged.

Less than <100 cases pending, and many linked to "fetish festivals" or bathhouses commonly populated by homosexual men: https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/world-news/monkeypox-outbreak-linked-belgium-fetish-24028883

This would be characterized as a super spreader event had it been COVID related. The media is silent because they don't want to perpetuate harmful stereotypes like the U.S. had in the 80's with the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

All this means is the individual risk to someone remains virtually zero as long as you don't go to bathhouses or festivals and have sex with strangers.

It's based on the myth that older folks are not adaptable with technology. I don't really buy it. You don't have to have been someone that grew up in a technologically advanced world to understand crypto. Basic cryptography is not complicated. I'd consider older folks more prone to Bitcoin acceptance opposed to the younger generation that looks towards socialism and government control of every facet of society. It takes the most basic understanding of economics to understand the merit of Bitcoin, and the younger generation is increasingly lacking that basic understanding.

It's not too difficult to understand. Centralized control means the government gets to use their hand to control fiscal policy. Crypto counteracts that and competes with fiat currency for the consumer's business.

If a citizen could decide to use their country's currency that's irresponsibly managed, or choose a decentralized currency that's price is determined by a free market, would you have any apprehension in choosing crypto? Doesn't become a difficult choice even if you live in a country that has a stable currency. Most currencies are inflating at a rate inconsistent with wage growth so it makes it fairly easy to choose crypto over fiat.

This kicks up the disinformation/misinformation campaign quite significantly.

They might even throw Do Kwon in jail for defrauding investors: https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/20/terra-creator-do-kwon-faces-prosecutions-in-south-korea/

I don't know if criminal liability lies on Kwon, but they're using him as a scapegoat and will probably look to regulate crypto under the guise of investor safety as if any UST/Luna user was not aware (or at least they should've been aware) of the risks. U.S. is looking to regulate crypto currencies because they can't let any tax revenue go wasted and I don't have any faith that they'd be able to string together coherent regulations that aren't economic authoritarianism.

I mean strictly from economic power, so taking the GDP of the top countries instead of on a per capita basis. Even if the population of Africa might be greater than other regions, if African spending power isn't enough, then they can't use Bitcoin at the volume they'd need in order to compete with the larger economies. Meaning, if the US/EU/UK/China banned Bitcoin, I don't think Africa or some other Asian countries could carry Bitcoin alone.

I agree that most exchanges don't need to lobby against regulations. They're already so regulated that there's no point in lobbying against it. Damage is done.

My concern is that the major players (US, EU, China) will either collude with one another to oust Bitcoin or act independently to regulate all cryptocurrencies to such a degree that investors flock to other assets. At that point, it'll be impossible for the rest of the world to compete and out maneuver the larger economies because of how much capital they control. There aren't enough day-to-day users of Bitcoin that would allow the price to be maintained (at it's ATH or lower) if the institutional investors are gone.

I wouldn't mind seeing a pro-BTC coalition. Problem is that most countries are on the wrong side of the issue.

Exactly my thoughts. Too many people don't understand why Bitcoin works in practice and why traditional currencies are outdated. Any courses on Bitcoin needs to include information on various economic theories. Laissez-faire economics/capitalism and supply and demand would be foundational.

Most educational institutions unironically explore Marxism more than they do anything related to free markets. Granted they don't apply to high schools as much, but it's better to highlight cryptocurrency and capitalism at an early age instead of communist indoctrination.

You can take the vaccine if you believe that you're in a high risk category that might be prone to severe illness and hospitalization death.

If you've survived this long, you've either already gotten the disease and built up natural immunity or have been able to successfully isolate yourself from human civilization to such a degree that Sars-COV-2 has physically not contacted you. Most likely the former. There's no incentive to receiving a COVID vaccine if you already gotten COVID. None.

And by the way, the vaccine will not prevent you from getting COVID. The may help for a severe infection. Vaccines were all designed for the alpha variant. And to my knowledge there aren't any approved omicron vaccines on the market.

Report alleges sexual misconduct against Elon Musk: https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-paid-250000-to-a-flight-attendant-who-accused-elon-musk-of-sexual-misconduct-2022-5

I find the timing suspiciously odd given Musk's intent on buying Twitter and freeing up the platform from the heavy handed enforcement of the wokesters on the Twitter moderation team. "Hit piece" does not even begin to underscore the mud slinging campaign against Elon Musk.

Musk denied the allegations. 250k from the world's richest man isn't hush money. If it was, the alleged victim would have gotten a lot more.

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In other news, Musk also has concerns with bot accounts. Seems like he doesn't want to pay the premium price he once offered: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/16/tech/elon-musk-twitter-spam-bots-parag/index.html

Tangible assets are reasonable investments during inflation. Only worry for real estate is that there's a lot of uncertainty which could cause a crash. Not saying that an immediate crash is likely nor do most experts think so. The concern is that housing prices has sharply increased with supply chain issues and high demand.

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/will-housing-market-crash/

Long term investments in real estate will pay off, short term is pretty risky IMO.

Biden should get his misinformation board on this blog post to do some fact checking.


"Tax the rich" slogan was bound to appear in this nonsense. Raising taxes does nothing to fight inflation. The money supply was increased and the economy was artificially stimulated during the COVID lockdowns and the ramifications were predictably high inflation rates. The cost of raw goods does not change despite what the tax rate is. Manufacturers and producers still have to pay elevated costs to produce their goods, and those costs are passed down to the consumer.

We know this because the PPI has sharply increased over the last two years: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PPIACO


"Putin price hike," they say.

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=emm_epm0_pte_nus_dpg&f=m

Steep increase in gas prices in Nov. 2020 when Biden is elected. The energy sector reacted to Biden's election win.


"Go buy a 50k USD electric vehicle."

Biden seems fixated on shilling for the green energy sector. In a time of economic crisis, I'm sure many of his voters have the wherewithal for an electric vehicle.

If it is correct that the ban was made in 2018, my speculation is that it could have been done for transparency reasons. It seems easy enough for a political campaign to register crypto donations and keep a log of such transactions to a campaign, but it might be difficult to monitor the donors to ensure they don't contribute past the legal cap. Donating with fiat presumably has a lot more verification steps involved on behalf of the donor, with crypto lacking those steps.

The Middle East could incorporate crypto into their economies despite gambling being haram because the argument would be that crypto currency usage doesn't incur risk for profit. The interpretations of crypto currency's compliance to Sharia also depend on what scholar wants to opine on the matter, and that usually involves arbitrary interpretation of the Quran. I don't have any expertise on the matter, only looking at what some scholars have talked about. None of it makes any sense to me. Most muslims seem accepting of crypto currency, but not the theocrats that govern Islamic countries.

If you truly wanted, you could short stocks or crypto. That's about the only way to make any profit in a bear market. Goes without saying that the risk is probably not worth it. Food is a nonsensical investment.

Most wise investors just hold onto whatever assets they have and wait for things to clear up within a few years. Whatever assets you're holding, you haven't lost any value unless you've realized the loss by selling. Most people that panic sold during the COVID crash were just donating money away to the upper class, many of which just waited for the market to recover instead of selling their assets for a discount. You're seeing a repeat here.

The inflation crisis is fairly unique because Bitcoin hasn't been around long enough to truly test the waters of an inflation crisis. USD hasn't experienced this sort of inflation since the 1980's, and the European Union is having challenges of inflation of their own. We would need to wait a bit longer to truly see how the market reacts to Bitcoin and inflation because usually the inflation target is 2% annually and it's only post-COVID where most countries are having extreme challenges with inflation. If USD inflation spirals out of control more than it already has, I could see people using Bitcoin as a safe haven driving up the cost but the state of the global economy needs to be considered too. If people don't have money to invest, it's conceivable that crypto would less valuable in congruence to every other asset which price is in the gutter at the moment.

Take this story with a grain of salt: https://metro.co.uk/2022/05/19/putins-inner-circle-believe-ukraine-war-is-lost-and-russia-faces-coup-16672422/

Putin's inner circle believes Ukraine war is lost. Putin ‘facing a coup after his closest allies accept they’ve lost the war’.

I would accept the premise given how miserable Russia's attempt at an invasion has gone, and the resilience of Ukraine. But also factoring in the global economy taking a nose dive and Russia's isolation from the global economy, there is not much left. They have not concerned Ukraine, their currency is becoming worthless, and major corporations have pulled out of the country for the foreseeable future. Hope Putin has hired some food testers.

Question remains, who is Russia's next leader? Will the mental fortitude be that of Putin, or perhaps less?

It's not supposed to make any sense. USD or Tether, you have to trust the issuer to maintain the value of the asset. Doesn't take much for confidence to tumble like a stack of cards if the market decides that there's too much uncertainty in your asset. Nothing's stopping you from creating your own centralized crypto and pegging it to whatever you feel like as long as you can convince people you have the underlying assets to maintain solvency. Tether claims to have nearly 70 billion dollars in assets so whoever wishes to put any of their funds into Tether better hope that those assets are real.

Interesting how Kamala Harris was put in charge of the border in 2021. She even visited the border for her photo ops. Nothing changed, why is that? Either she might be incompetent at her job, or they (democrats) seek to gain political capital from having millions of illegals come into the U.S. and then vote democrat if they ever were given the opportunity to vote. May even include illegals in the census figures so California can pick up more congressional representation in the house and a few electoral votes. The lack of media attention is appalling.