If you could design and build the perfect bank limited only by your knowledge and the depths of your imagination. What would it look like? How would it compare to current era banking institutions? Do people need better banks or would society be better served by banks offering fewer tools and options to clients: forcing the public to rely on them less?

Banks definitely enjoy some advantages at the moment over crypto. Brand name recognition. Endorsement by public and private sectors. Trust from the public as a reliable institution.

Some of the advantages crypto has over banks are: flexibility, decentralization, trust less design paradigm, far lower barrier to market entry, et cetera.

Its common for people to approach the topic as if banks and crypto were two predatory animals that will be thrown into a UFC cage to do battle so a victor can emerge.

I think all people care about is having the best tool for the job. Whichever demographic, whether its banks or crypto, who offers the better product that gives people access to better opportunities and options is what they are likely to pursue. The free market determines the value, and worth of things.

Eras of high inflation, as the present are a great time to generate your own electricity, grow your own food, have your own supply of water. The cost of essentials and liabilities are likely to climb soon. Being self reliant and producing to fulfill your own needs is the best way to overcome climbing inflation, market shortages, rising food and living costs and similar negative trends.

Food and rent are usually the two largest pie slices of a person's monthly expenditures. While rent or mortgage costs are difficult to address, being able to grow food and produce which can offset rising food prices and market scarcity could be one of the best investment options the average person can pursue in 2021. The cost of plants and fruits can be considerable at the moment. Shopping on websites like homedepot the cost of a small avocado tree can be $50 to $100. In some regions of the world, a person can throw an avocado pit in their compost pile as garbage and it'll sprout and eventually turn into a tree.

Home gardening and organic farming might be two big areas worth focusing on, more than budgeting, saving and commonly touted traditional finance ideology.

This story may not be legitimate. It could be a variation of Jack Dorsey's 1st tweet NFT selling for "2.9 million" or the other fake NFT story that sold for "$69 million". I doubt anyone would spent millions on this. We have confirmed evidence its easy to manufacture and publicize fake news on NFTs to push narratives with the "$69 million NFT" story being proven false.

Even if it were true, would there be anything special or noteworthy about the enron/gamestop of NFTs? Scams occur in all markets and exchanges. Things get weird when people claim scams are exclusive to one market, asset, commodity or currency and not another.

For every NFT scam that exists, there could be people who are profiting and making money off them in a legitimate sense. The media has a tendency to cover only the positives, while ignoring the negatives, or the opposite. I wish people wouldn't jump to conclusions on things, simply due to the media covering the negative side of NFTs. Without much emphasis on the positives.

Many criticized bitcoin's deflationary model over the years.

They claimed debt based finance / economics were the ideal scenario that everyone should endorse and embrace. That debt was essential to society and civilization continuuing to function. With deflationary or gold backed standards being too limiting or restrictive to allow for growth.

I would be curious to know how those critics view the current day economy, with inflation having a noticeable negative impact. Is bitcoin's deflationary model still "flawed"? Do debt based financial and economic models still represent the utopian arrangement that the entire world should follow?

The funny thing about current day inflation is, few bother to learn the basic fundamentals on it. Which means that even if an inflationary economic disaster hit. The same scenario could repeat again 5 to 10 years in the future. Simply due to the public not knowing what the real problems are.

Some may find this piece informative.




It appears china has an outstanding $8.2 trillion LGFV (local government financing vehicles outstanding) bubble to rival the united states student loan or housing bubbles.

China's economy is still rolling along despite chinese banks defaulting and needing to be bailed out. Coupled with many catastrophic articles published about large chinese enterprises failing across the board.

The united states war in the middle east is claimed to have costed more than $12 trillion by some sources. If china pursues war against hong kong, taiwan and neighboring territories. What would the cost be? Military technology in a modern age is so overwhelmingly expensive, it could carry the potential to make war too expensive an option to pursue, without eventually bankrupting warring nations.

With the individual cost of sophisticated missiles rivaling the cost of a lamborghini. At a certain point, launching lambos at foreign countries would have to become economically unfeasible, is it fair to say.

The merger plan is $2.7 billion.


The above source claims the global market is $54.7 billion with europe having the largest online gambling market cap in the world at $22 billion. Which would mean the united states market is smaller than $22 billion.

Don't know if they can achieve an appreciable amount of penetration for US markets with $2.7 billion. The predictable move would be towards market consolidation and monopolization of some type. Similar to how coinbase and possibly paypal have been positioned to consolidate and monopolize US crypto purchasing.

I doubt this move will come with much in the way of innovation, there are already many crypto based casinos available. Legalized and deregulated gambling markets in europe and asia will likely emerge as industry frontrunners.

Rams > Seahawks
Jets < Falcons
Packers > Bengals
Lions < Vikings
Broncos > Steelers
Dolphins < Buccaneers
Saints > Washington
Eagles < Panthers
Titans > Jaguars
Patriots > Texans
Bears < Raiders
Browns < Chargers
Giants < Cowboys
49ers < Cardinals
Bills < Chiefs
Colts < Ravens


Initial leans. NFL is new to me.

I still need to learn the basics: formations, team dynamics, pay scaling affect on motivation, PED trends, seasonal affect on point over unders. And similar topics before I would consider my picks to be vaguely accurate and reliable.

At the moment, injuries are an overwhelmingly massive problem. Many teams appear to be playing not get injured. Rather than playing to win games. As a result, I think point totals on average are down from last year. COVID concerns could also be adding negative creep.

Some of the bigger names in fantasy sports appear to be enjoying some success using big data analytics. That seems like the way to go.

I need to read up on taproot more. I've been procrastinating on it for the longest time.

Last I heard taproot will replace BTC elliptic curve signatures with schnorr signatures. They claim this will increase bitcoin transaction throughput by 20% and improve the anonymity of single transactions sent to multiple addresses, where they say only the 1st recipient will be visible in the public ledger. It is supposed to go into effect around november of 2021.

Schnorr signatures were under patent until around 2008 when they became public domain. Some claim Satoshi would have used schnorr signatures instead of elliptic curve, had they been available when he began work on BTC.

I've been wondering if rumors that crypto ETFs in the united states will be approved in october of 2021 were related to taproots planned rollout in november of 2021.

If taproots rollout is delayed or canceled, I won't mind. Its a step towards bitcoin becoming more of a privacy coin -- which could give regulators more of an excuse to crack down on it. 20% increase in transaction speed amounts to negligible gains if theoretical maximum of on chain transactions is capped at 7 per second. 20% gains take that up to 8.4 per second. Lightning network already fulfills the role of faster transactions better.

When President Ferdinand Marcos of the philippines passed away in 1989. His expected billions in savings could not be found. When Muammar Gaddafi died, his billions also could not be found. There are many world leaders whose billions could not be found. Perhaps due to them being stashed in offshore tax havens? While some might believe this is a new trend, it could date back many decades. Arguably the practice could date back centuries, or millennia in one form or another.

While the media will illustrate offshore tax havens as privilege and freedom for the rich and powerful, who don't pay taxes. There are drawbacks to the arrangement, which are not obvious. Offshore tax havens aren't necessarily something to be envious of, for a variety of reasons, perhaps some know what they are.

"Power does not wish to be held in one place."

In physics, horror vacui, or plenism (/ˈpliːnɪzəm/), commonly stated as "nature abhors a vacuum", is a postulate attributed to Aristotle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_%28physics%29

....


Thermoeconomics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoeconomics

There's a branch called thermoeconomics which compares the flow of money to thermal energy. Some materials conduct or insulate heat producing different degrees of thermal efficiency. Financial and government institutions likewise conduct or insulate money efficiently or inefficiently in ways which can be clearly defined, analyzed and documented. It takes a certain amount of thermal energy to produce boiling water. Capital likewise requires a sufficient quantity to move markets and achieve goals.

The flow of money and efficiency of institutions could be completely scientized to produce transparency. Today's world isn't suited to it. People don't care enough about details for it to be a high priority. I wonder if that could ever change.

Initial start up costs, are dwarfing initial returns.

Its the long term outlook, which is in question. Losses could be made back from inflation protection and deflationary gains. New job creation related to crypto could boost the economy and tax revenues. If plans to construct geothermal power plants to power crypto mining are completed. The price of electricity could decline. Digital nomads and crypto whales who enjoy living near the equator could immigrate into el salvador bringing their wealth with them. Which could fund the development of more businesses and jobs.

Its hard to factor in the intangibles with new start up ventures. Potential is difficult to measure.

I can name economic stimulus bills funded by governments which created 1 low paying job at a cost of between $100,000 to $300,000 to taxpayers. On paper that looks terrible. In some cases, there might be intangible gains that can offset what appears to be a bad start.

Lebron James and the NBA were forced to push certain politics. Due to certain demographics providing a significant portion of their funding.

The debt isn't free. Sometimes, it can come with strings attached.

Joe Rogan's podcast was recently bought by spotify for around $100 million. It is claimed that a good portion of spotify is owned by china. Which led many to fear Joe Rogan's content would be censored. Or pressure would be applied to persuade him to push certain agendas. I think those familiar with Joe Rogan can decide for themselves what is happening there if anything.

It isn't only podcasts or sports leagues who can be affected by funding, loans and debt. There are recent cases of entire countries being affected. The united states which provides funding to many nations across the world. Could do so with certain strings attached. Perhaps this is becoming a normalized part of politics and life. The secrecy of it however does appear to be a somewhat new thing. There have been many pushes for transparency and free access to information, which secrecy trends opposite of.

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Whether he was a good or bad coder. He didn't update or maintain MtGox regularly. When hackers stole millions in BTC from MtGox. The theft went undetected for months.

He never invested time or energy into the infrastructure or codebase side of the exchange. He was always way behind. Even on basic upkeep, backing up data and maintenance.

Jack Dorsey made the better market play. He "sold" his NFT for almost 3 million. A more reasonable and believable sum than $69 million. The famous Mona Lisa painting has been appraised as being worth $100 million. Pricing NFTs at $69 million, close to 70% of the Mona Lisa's value. Is too ambitious a sale to be believable.

Sellers buying their own property, to artificially inflate market values of their holdings, also happens with collectibles and art in other markets. Its been a common trend for many years.

The way it works is, an investor might buy up all of the nintendo SNES cartridges still in the box in mint condition, they can find. Then they sell some of the cartridges on ebay or another exchange at an inflated price. Which allows them to unload all of the cartridges they had been HODLing at far higher prices than they paid for them. Basically what Martin Shkreli did with pharmaceutical drugs, before he landed himself in prison.

2013 was the year of silk road. Ross Ulbricht (aka Dread Pirate Roberts) ran a TOR marketplace (silk road) where users could purchase goods for bitcoin. This greatly expanded bitcoin's utility and userbase, driving its price upwards. As indicated by bitcoin crashing horribly after silk road was shut down. (China banned bitcoin in some capacity, in the same timeframe, its a toss up as to which was more responsible.)

MtGox (Magic The Gathering Online eXchange) crypto exchange started out as a small hobbyist platform created by a MENSA member to trade magic the gathering cards. Due to lack of technical support, the exchange didn't scale well when it was expanded to suit a larger userbase, as it grew in size through support of crypto markets. MtGox's basic operations were so bad, hackers stole millions from MtGox, without the theft being noticed for weeks / months.

MtGox was poorly maintained and poorly secured. It lacked competent developers or financial support. I doubt they had the financial or technical base to pull off a bot based pump of anything.

Its not so much volatility most have issues with. Its market uncertainty. Retailers sometimes complain about price shifts which can cut into their bottom line. One reason why there could be a future for a stablecoin for merchants to cut down on price shifts.

Speculation has many different facets to it. Which require time and experience to recognize and comprehend.

Neither volatility or speculation is entirely good or bad. Its important to be accurate on details in financial trading and investment. Oversimplifying the basic fundamentals is usually a recipe for failure.

On average, geothermal seems to be lower cost electricity than solar, wind or hydroelectric power. The main limiting factor for hydroelectric appears to be volcanoes which el salvador appears to have in ample supply. If the united states cracks down on crypto mining and closes down the industry the way china did, el salvador could be their next stop.

If el salvador has time to consolidate their gains, they should see a big positive impact from their crypto friendly regulation. While other neighboring countries would struggle to produce meaningful economic growth. The stark contrast would be palpable.

There are "protestors" of bitcoin in el salvador. But I don't know why anyone would protest new inventions and technology that can only improve their qualify of life.

Not the easiest question. Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin span different fields of study: finance, encryption, software, history, et cetera. All of which could be necessary to put it into perspective.

Fiat currencies of past eras were backed by gold. Bitcoin is backed by enormous amounts of processing power from crypto miners, encryption standards, integrity of its algorithms and respectable quantities of electricity. That could be the missing link behind the "bitcoin creates money out of thin air" claim not holding up under scrutiny. Bitcoin is intrinsically backed to a degree, although not by a traditional form of collateral like gold or precious metals.

The revolutionary "trust less" design of bitcoin, eliminates many middle men who are necessary in traditional finance, which relies heavily on a "trust" based format.

In business we have similar examples of a shift towards "trust less" design. Walmart eliminating middle man to make its supply and distribution chains more efficient, represents a quantum leap allowing them to compete successfully against sears, sams club and other retailers. Amazon took this a step forward by eliminating physical locations entirely.

Bitcoin's "trust less" design reduces human labor necessary for traditional financial institutions to operate. Which translates to a reduction in fees and costs.

This is just off the top of my head. Rambling. A good overview of bitcoin mental models would probably be much better than this short post.

My question with misinformation, is whether it can encourage people to develop critical thinking skills and a knowledge base which makes it harder for them to be deceived.

I haven't heard of many nigerian prince schemes in crypto. Those scams mainly target the elderly, while crypto's average userbase is composed mostly of young people. Part of the reason the elderly are targeted for scams, could involve them growing up in a world without misinformation or the scams we have today. Which led to them not developing defenses against it.

The youth of today being exposed to greater disinformation, could sharpen their critical thinking to where they wouldn't fall for scams, previous generations would.

Topics like misinformation may not be completely one sided. But rather an arms race. One where disinformation, and defense against disinformation, are both progressing in an effort to outdo each other.

Its been said ETFs are more tax efficient than mutual funds. Countries with high taxes on investments, need ETFs the most to offset the greater cost of investing there.

I'm not an ETF guy who can explain reasons for this perfectly. I think the way it works is, mutual funds buy and sell stocks, which invokes a capital gains tax. While ETFs are more prone towards buying and selling securities to themselves, which avoids capital gains. Like I said I'm not an ETF guy. I could be in error here. As far as I remember that's how it works.

ETFs could also have a few tax advantages, which I'm not fully aware of.

Something like that would be the basic reason behind the popularity of ETFs as well as why the winklevoss twins have made many proposals for a crypto based ETF over the years.