The bank CEOs didn't commit felonies.  You need to look deeper:  why were non-creditworthy borrowers given loans?  Ask people in the US like Barney Frank and his ilk who forced the banks to use something other than creditworthiness to judge people for loans.  Blaming the CEOs is like blaming the firemen for not putting out the fire that the government started with a gas can.

You don't need to be a doomsday prepper to be prepared.  The media has painted prepping as some "far right" activity again so that fewer people will be prepared and hence be dependent on the media's masters.  The left hates people who can take care of themselves and wants a dependent middle class who can be used and controlled.

No. Bitcoind didn't use BitcoinJS for randomness.

Short term forecasts are always a challenge and this is no exception.  Is 45k likely?  Yes.  By the end of the year?  Who knows.  It is really just a guess.  There are plenty of catalysts going forward, but with the exception of the halving, the timing is wide open.

Interesting concept.  Perhaps I missed it, but I didn't see this on the bitcoin-dev list.  As the comments said, there are similar things, but having uses for bitcoin is nearly always a positive.

I doubt they are yet.  Look at Argentina, Cyprus, or Venezuela for example.  How many times have the people of Argentina voted in authoritarians?  It really only takes one time, e.g. Venezuela, but Argentina keeps doing it, and to make matters worse, international finance still keeps funding them! How many times will it take the people of Argentina to realize that the same socialist authoritarian polices will keep destroying their wealth and thus their country?  The degree to which socialism is implemented correlates with the degree of the destruction.

This is part of the reason why a republic or democracy alone is a bad system of government unless there are constitutional limits on the power, otherwise you can have a tyranny of the majority.  Just look at the democrat slave owners in the old US south.  Just because it was in theory a republic or democracy, it didn't mean that a group weren't slaves.  That party is on the same page today: it is my right force people to work in my fields then, it is my right to force people to pay for other choice now due to "need".

In short, this is the advice that has been given since 2009:  fiat price volatility is pretty irrelevant, don't look at the price daily, come back in a few years and you'd have been happy.  The long term trend has been an increase in fiat price as more people recognize the value proposition in bitcoin. 

There have been similar arguments since 2009, 2010 etc.  In July 2010 there were similar arguments on slashdot when bitcoin was mentioned there.  More than 13 years later, they still don't hold water.  People see the problems with fiat not backed by anything of value:  the value of fiat is at the whim of a majority of the political class who want money and power. 

A free people have the power to withdraw themselves from the caprice of the politicians and protect the products of their lives using PMs, bitcoin etc.  A lot of smart people are doing so and have done so. 

>"Today, the dominant type of money is the one created by banks, i.e. fiat money."

Governments, not banks.

Money is a tool of exchange, the material form of the principle that people who wish to deal with each other must do so voluntarily, giving value for value.  Money is a tool.  Fiat, enforced at the point of a gun can't make it valuable in the long term. 

Yeah, you are right.  This is essentially the reverse of Gresham's law.  Good money (aka bitcoin and other things backed by assets) will eventually drive out bad.  People won't accept anything for the long term that is going to be inflated away.  Not to mention all the other benefits of bitcoin. 

Eventually people will realize that fiat not backed by anything is worth less (and eventually worthless) in the long term.  In the short term politicians can get away with devaluing a currency but reality catches up with their shenanigans eventually.  It is only a question of when.  An asset/currency/token/etc such as bitcoin illustrates the costs of holding fiat for the long term and helps expose that the emperor has no clothes. 

Particularly if you know that you are going to be discussing bitcoin, why wouldn't you at least bone up on some basics?  Or perhaps it was just an opportunity for both of them to get some press without having to actually do anything.


Did Max provide answers he would regard as correct?:

How many total bitcoin are there ever going to be in existence?  20,999,999.9769 , so slightly less than 21 million. 
How often does the difficulty adjustment adjust? Every 2016 blocks, or 2 weeks, roughly
What’s the core hashing algorithm called? SHA-256
How often, on average, do new blocks appear?  10 minutes is the goal.
Is Craig Wright Satoshi Nakamoto? Lol.  No.

Yeah, and not just banks facing challenges.  Government too with their profligate spending and consequent huge interest costs which are in reality causing the people of various countries to face challenges.  When your interest costs (like in the US) are more than $1 trillion per year due to insane spending policies there are few choices, one of which is inflating your way out of the problem which then hurts every single citizen.  But the "something for nothing" crowd like AOC are either too stupid to understand the issue or have decided they'd be willing to destroy the currency and thus the country to obtain power.

"What makes this year's boom so remarkable is that it is not being driven by retail investors. "

Hopefully the smart retail investors are already well positioned for this.  Who knows though.  Plenty of peoplehad the knowledge and opportunity to get involved in bitcoin but few actually did anything and then end up regretting it.

Given the current level of inflation, the number of times Argentina has defaulted on their debt, devalued their currency, added currency controls and destroyed their economy by inflation in the past compared with the above, it is extremely ironic that they would be even discussing bitcoin since it is an extraordinarily hard currency over time.  It is essentially the Anti-Argentinian peso and would neuter their ability to defraud the people of Argentina and the people who loan money to Argentina from around the world by devaluing the currency.

Maybe it will help the people of Argentina get out from under the thumb of their oppressive politicians.  Of course they keep voting the same type of politician in periodically by falling for the same "something for nothing", "my right to force someone else to pay for my choices" socialist rhetoric.

The fact that there are bureaucrats who have to approve something like this says a lot about the degree of freedom remaining in the US and in the world.  In a free country/world, adults should be free to enter into contracts like this without a hack like Gensler having to approve it or not.

Investors all over need to think about protecting themselves from inflation and authoritarians.   The combination will rob people of their wealth even if it is "only" 2-5% per year.  Global chaos and rampant printing money to fund insane schemes and military conflicts would only make it worse.  PMs and bitcoin are two way to help protect oneself.  And ETF holding "physical" bitcoin vs futures will make it easy for a lot of people to protect some of their money.  Even if on average they only choose to protect a few percent, the numbers are huge.

If an ETF is approved, Fidelity, Schwab, BlackRock and others will no doubt bring a lot of fiat to the table from retirement accounts and non retirement accounts.  It will be a game changer particularly with the proximity to the halving.

Yeah, what the heck is all this about?   And did they consider the gift tax implications here?  A 709 is required and MK would be paying the gift tax on it which is 40%.  So he'd be giving 10000 bitcoin and then having to sell 4000 for the tax, but then would owe a capital gains tax on the 4000 so would need to sell another 1000 to pay that which would need another 240 to pay that which would need another 60....
So in short he'd need to have around 16000 bitcoins in order to gift 10000. 

And (as you asked), does he have that many remaining - 16000 - and if so why would he do it? 

The combination of an ETF (if approved) and the halving, may be a huge catalyst.  Since prices are set at the margin and new supply is dropping quite quickly the impact of even $155 billion would be huge.  With around 900 bitcoins per day going to 450, that amount of "new" money will have an outside impact.  :-)

Have the prices really already been priced in at the halving?  I would argue now.  Perhaps in the very short term you could consider that (e.g. 1-3 months?) but 9-12 months later it seems now.  :-)

And I agree that the impact of the ETF approval may be priced in, but the impact of the ETF investments over time probably hasn't. 

Who knows for sure though....ask me in 5 years. lol
:-)