Martin Armstrong Discussion

[freshman777]

Now I remember why I have you on Ignore.

In other words, you're smart with investments but circumstances. I get it.
Please remind how your prediction from last year of BTC@150 and gold@800 has turned out?
Your followers are loyally waiting to buy both at lower prices.
Learning from mistakes would mean to stop making silly predictions when you got no clue.
Be my guest and put me on ignore again, because truth hurts.

[1714843563]

1714843563

[iamnotback]

Now I remember why I have you on Ignore.

In other words, you're smart with investments but circumstances. I get it.

I see you continue to attack the messenger instead of the message. Have you not any logic to add about the recent discussion or is your jealousy of me the person just all too obvious.

Again who are you? You refuse to share.

Please remind how your prediction from last year of BTC@150 and gold@800 has turned out?

Don't forget my published prediction of the silver move from $22 to $48, then back down to $25 many months before it happened in 2011 (and did you know that I got fucked over in the Philippines not enabling me to profit on my prediction! If I had my investment in an ETF, my sell order at the peak and short would have been honored! Not to mention that most of my metal was stolen by the only vault provider in Manila you jack ass, and there is no way to sue because they refuse to give accurate accounting!):

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article23786.html

Btw, I correctly predicted the low of Bitcoin at $150 first time, and way before it happened. I predicted the fall from the $600s to $300s, and the $150 low. I thought it would deadcat bounce and then go to lower lows, because...

In fact, I mentioned it day before yesterday:

My mistake was assuming BTC was correlated to gold, even though Armstrong never wrote that. That was my mistake, not Armstrong's. I realize now that BTC is correlated to safe haven liquidity same as the dollar and USA stocks.

The gold to $850 is still on the table. Nothing with that has changed. As predicted, the dollar and USA stocks went up and the pound crashed towards parity as predicted. This is why gold is back down in the $1200s, on its way probably to $1050 again and lower (we might get a few more deadcat bounces along the way).

Sorry dollar up, gold down. That has not changed.

My mistake was assuming BTC was correlated to gold as a tinfoil hat asset. Because Satoshi even pitched BTC as gold in his whitepaper. And I know many of early adopters in BTC came from being tinfoil hats (including myself and Bitcoin millionaire rpietila). Btw, I had more silver than rpietila and had it not been for my problem in 2012 with my health and family breakup then I would have been poised to invest $100,000 in BTC at $10 in January 2013. I told rpietila to go ahead, but I told him I had been destroyed by events in 2012 and couldn't follow him. That is fate. But my destiny is not yet complete.

Any way, back to the issue at hand, you should remember that in this thread, I told everyone numerous times that it was my theory that BTC might be correlated to gold, but that I wasn't sure and that I could be wrong. And so I was wrong, but I also admitted at the time that I wasn't sure. Do I need to make 5 or more quotes of me repeating that before in order to convince your rabid ass to go hide under a rock where you belong?

Your followers are loyally waiting to buy both at lower prices.

I don't have loyal followers you jealous loser.

I share my thoughts openly so that losers like you can take pot shots at me from behind your secrecy.

Learning from mistakes would mean to stop making silly predictions when you got no clue.
Be my guest and put me on ignore again, because truth hurts.

You never came off Ignore. I clicked to read your message only because I know you need a good slapdown.

And be my guest to please come back and admit you are wrong later.

Don't disappear with your tail between your front legs.

[freshman777]

The gold to $850 is still on the table.

I hope you mean bricks or rounds of real metal, not the 200:1 leveraged paper pushed from one brokerage account to another? There is absolutely no merit in predicting what paper or electronic digits will do, those can do anything. Please clarify if you imply real gold in your prediction. We will save it for the record for next year, and the year after next, when you'll be proven wrong and wrong again.

For silver in 2011 there is no record what you said about it - there is no reason to believe that you guessed it at that time. You know well that in crypto space it's not a good habit to trust anything but code and verifiable records. There is a public record on this forum of what you wrote about BTC and gold last year and that didn't come to pass, now you extend it longer.

You're juggling words as usual. Facts verifiable with public records aren't in your favor. It would take a very special kind of stupid to be jealous of such reputation, thanks but no thanks

PS: as it's in human psychology to only remember the last sentence, go to first paragraph and clarify which gold you predict to hit 850.

[iamnotback]

The gold to $850 is still on the table.

I hope you mean bricks or rounds of real metal, not the 200:1 leveraged paper pushed from one brokerage account to another?

I mean the least expensive gold metal, whether that be Comex bars or what ever. I am aware that the goldbugs rush in and create artificial scarcity of non-Comex bars during large drops in the price.

And even if you find it inconvenient to buy a Comex bar, then buy an ETF at then as the price normalizes then sell your paper gold and buy metal gold if that is what you want.

The goldbugs always use this excuse. In fact, I was buying silver 10?? oz Comex bars from Fidelity Trade in 2009, minting them into 1oz rounds and making 20% market up because of this idiotic behavior of the silverbugs.

There is absolutely no merit in predicting what paper or electronic digits will do, those can do anything.

More nonsensical propaganda to get fools to overpay for useless metal.

If gold is on a low, it certainly means we don't have collapse right? So the paper will be tracking the metal again just fine once the idiots stop overpaying for coins.

For silver in 2011 there is no record what you said about it - there is no reason to believe that you guessed it at that time.

I gave you the link to public published prediction of mine. You can go to archive.org and verify when it was published:

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article23786.html

You know well that in crypto space it's not a good habit to trust anything but code and verifiable records.

Go to archive.org and email Nadeem Wayat the owner of marketoracle.co.uk and ask him.

Keep trying to invent excuses to wiggle out of your slapdown.

[deisik]

I tend to disagree. You may be right in this very case, but overall, as history shows, there is always something that we simply don't know about yet (haven't discovered it or the ways to use it). Who could ever think about using nuclear energy when oil became mainstream in the second half of the 19th century? So, most likely, we would be hitting the limit of our knowledge about what could be made into a resource, but not the actual lack of resources due to some existential limit...

There's lots of Thorium laying around you can use for nuclear energy, but the point was that the skillset to do so is probably absent after a dark ages and you would have to work your way back up using something like coal again as a base except all the coal and oil is gone or only located somewhere like Antarctica.

Okay, I got your point, but it is still debatable. After a devastating all-out war, two major conditions should be met simultaneously so that the civilization didn't get thrown ages behind. First, there should be enough people to keep up the required level of specialization. Obviously, we don't need all these multi-billion dollar fancy technologies like computer gaming, marketing and so on which a lot of people are busy in. And humanity seems to have a good safety cushion in this respect. I think 200-300M people would suffice to keep the world from ultimately sinking into the Stone Age unless they are sparsely dispersed across the world, of course . Second, we should have the knowledge of these technologies preserved somehow on some media that can survive the apocalypse and not lose the ability of being used by who is left...

So we are essentially coming down to what can be loosely called as a technological bottleneck

[freshman777]

I mean

With gold and Bitcoin there is a safety rule one must follow: if you don't hold it - you don't own it. A Comex bar is fine so long as it's in your hand, not in the Comex warehouse. A bitcoin is fine so long as you hold the private key, not a book entry to your name at Coinbase or other Bitcoin "vault". It appears you keep talking about paper promises, it makes your prediction of $850 gold completely useless. The kind of fool's gold you describe will be $850 one day, on its way to zero.

So you made a prediction of silver price in the past but didn't act on your own prediction because reasons. I heard this story before, a couple of posts earlier. Reasons seem to get in your way all the time. Do you think you should learn to overcome reasons before you are in a position to teach others?

[r0ach]

I don't feel any need whatsoever to encourage any one in any circumstance to diversify in pathetic precious metals. That is how pathetic I think they are.

I am intentionally ridiculing those who stack precious metal.

So much for not getting emotionally invested in the market.  Your entire view of metals at this point is just hatred of the possibility that someone else might make a profit where you didn't and has nothing to do with any of the actual market dynamics.  Having 0 metals when the market implodes is probably the biggest financial mistake someone can make.

Even out of sheer principle alone you would have to be a fool to participate in the debt based currency scam when it can be avoided.  What kind of person willingly subjects themselves to being scammed on purpose?  Metals and bitcoin are the only alternative, and there are no viable solutions for decentralized currency, so the answer is pretty clear where the majority of your money has to be out of principle, wealth preservation, and chance of windfall gains when the debt based system implodes and wealth transference occurs.

You keep repeating over and over that the world is "short US dollars".  The world is not short US dollars.  Those are called unserviceable debts.  When people have no intention of fulfilling those contracts, those are toxic assets and not shorts with any type of counter party.

On the other hand, when you see places like Comex running unallocated, fractional reserve gold at 100:1 or more, those actually are shorts because the demand on the object for which they are attached never goes to zero unlike the bond market.

I wouldn't have lost the fortune I earned developing computer software if I hadn't become a silverbug following Jason Hommel back in 2006. And shipped my physical metal to the Philippines!

You would have doubled your money buying silver in 2006 (or 5x if you sold at the last top).  Literally nothing you're saying about metals makes any sense.  If you're worried about liquidity, the only type of silver you should be touching is silver eagles, not some random bullion cubes or silver shaped like dragons or something.  The liquidity for silver eagles in America is good.  The liquidity for non-govt rounds anywhere isn't nearly as good.

Precious metal bugs are irrational extremists, who are locked and loaded in their basements.

Since when is Anonymint shilling for the jews? lol.  Telling people to buy stocks at the peak of the bubble (sans hyperinflation) and demonizing guns and metals.  Now I've seen everything.

[iamnotback]

So much for not getting emotionally invested in the market.  Your entire view of metals at this point is just hatred of the possibility that someone else might make a profit where you didn't and has nothing to do with any of the actual market dynamics.  Having 0 metals when the market implodes is probably the biggest financial mistake someone can make.

Nonsense. I am warning others. If you don't heed the warning, then you deserve your fate. I made this warning back when I did have 18,000 oz of silver:

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article20327.html

You are the irrational one, who is invested in your tinfoil delusion of fighting back with useless metal. You aren't investing for sound reasons, but rather because you think you are fighting back against the system. Yet the global elite are the ones who are feeding you the propaganda that makes you think precious metals are great. Lol.

Talk about a dog chasing his own tail. Lol.

Even out of sheer principle alone you would have to be a fool to participate in the debt based currency scam when it can be avoided.

There you go with that useless ideological crap that the global elite have planted in your brain through the various propaganda sites they fund, such as Alex Jones.

What kind of person willingly subjects themselves to being scammed on purpose?

Yeah. And you are being scammed, by the very group you think are fighting. They have you so fooled.

Metals and bitcoin are the only alternative, and there are no viable solutions for decentralized currency, so the answer is pretty clear where the majority of your money has to be out of principle, wealth preservation, and chance of windfall gains when the debt based system implodes and wealth transference occurs.

They are not an alternative. There is no alternative.

Crypto-currency is your best chance. Also dollars and the US stock market.

You keep repeating over and over that the world is "short US dollars".  The world is not short US dollars.  Those are called unserviceable debts.  When people have no intention of fulfilling those contracts, those are toxic assets and not shorts with any type of counter party.

They have every intention of fulfilling them. We will get a massive push back into the dollar before we get any default on dollar loans. Later yes defaults, but I am talking about what happens in 2017, not 2018 or beyond.

I wouldn't have lost the fortune I earned developing computer software if I hadn't become a silverbug following Jason Hommel back in 2006. And shipped my physical metal to the Philippines!

You would have doubled your money buying silver in 2006 (or 5x if you sold at the last top).

I tried to sell at $21 to take profits before the crash to $9 and again at $48 before the crash in 2011. I was rebuked both times. 18,000 oz of physical metal is difficult to sell at the top if you don't have it sitting in a Comex warehouse or otherwise have a very deep pocket dealer close by. Forget it in the Philippines.

Literally nothing you're saying about metals makes any sense.

Because you are deluded, irrational, insane tinfoil hat. So of course sanity and rationality won't make sense to you.

If you're worried about liquidity, the only type of silver you should be touching is silver eagles

And only if you are physically in the USA.

Actually you are incorrect. The most liquid are Comex bars.

Precious metal bugs are irrational extremists, who are locked and loaded in their basements.

Since when is Anonymint shilling for the jews? lol.  Telling people to buy stocks at the peak of the bubble (sans hyperinflation) and demonizing guns and metals.  Now I've seen everything.

Watch and observe your mistake over the next year. Then let's talk again.

[iamnotback]

Those who stay in precious metals are going to see losses in 2017 (due to a surging dollar) and then only at most a 4 X gain from current prices over next several years.

400% gain over several years ?

Life's a bitch ~LOL~

That is the maximum possible. And good luck actually cashing out with that gain. And good luck with your governments not declaring you a terrorist and money launderer for having gold and silver.

You are walking into a hornet's nest by buying that pathetic shit. It is a trap laid for you by the psyops of the global elite. They are promoting you to buy this shit.

[STT]

silver coins would only be used in a catastrophic SHTF

Silver coins can be melted down and used for industry so we can be sure they'll always be used, its just at what price are they useful.   Some have called for them to rise to the same value society placed on them in roman times.   Back then they were unique and useful but I dont see that happening now    Gold coins have less uses especially the pure gold sold now, it wears too much to be circulated really.   Both are symbolic value, I doubt anyone literally would want to use it as a coin.  They might have to but lets not assume thats going to be normal.  
The actual usable coin is bitcoin or something that at the extreme could also be considered worthless as it has no industrial use but its far easier to exchange then an actual coin.   I agree coins wont be used unless society can no longer communicate digitally as it can now, in some parts of the world coins are useful still so its relative to where the majority of commerce is taking place.  
So many parts of the world are holding US dollar notes, so what happens when they are not used.   Can we assume they use silver coins, I think they will advance past that.   Capital will held centrally as solid value perhaps instead of debt and political taxes as now, but distribution wont be in a population with metals for decades only shortly in transition maybe

I think we'll see such a large scale change we cant imagine how it will take place, if the western economies lose their reserve currency status then its hard to predict as it relies on where that business goes.  This isnt that strange an idea, a century ago it was the British empire the largest empire ever to have existed and it was the reserve currency and today they are just another country not especially on reserve.   It seems likely USA also goes through that process, nothing apocalyptic really just change.  I assume that wherever business is done, it will acquire rapid communication just like the west has now and coins wont be swapped as its just not as efficient for transactions.

Also worth saying I dont think silver coin will lose value, its not going to become less used.  Same for gold, its held by central banks now and I think that trends increasing but not for circulation really

[iamnotback]

I mean

With gold and Bitcoin there is a safety rule one must follow: if you don't hold it - you don't own it. A Comex bar is fine so long as it's in your hand, not in the Comex warehouse. A bitcoin is fine so long as you hold the private key, not a book entry to your name at Coinbase or other Bitcoin "vault". It appears you keep talking about paper promises, it makes your prediction of $850 gold completely useless. The kind of fool's gold you describe will be $850 one day, on its way to zero.

And you completely ignored that I wrote if gold is on a slump in price then it means the dollar is strong and thus you are not likely near to a default scenario in gold (although it is plausible that the dollar carry trade impacts the liquidity of those who back the futures markets with metal), thus you can buy the SLV or some paper instrument of the spot price, then as the price comes back up to the price of the physical metal, you can convert your gain to physical metal.

Moreover your entire thesis is brain dead tinfoil hat nonsense, because the entire point of my exposition is that physical metal will be entirely useless in a collapse scenario where society implodes into utter chaos due to abject failure of the financial systems that our just-in-time-inventory systems depend on. The reason being as I explained before that in that collapse chaos, people return to their primitive needs and eating metal is not one of them. At that point no one is willing to risk that they will be stuck holding some metal that nobody else wants, because resources are scarce and everybody is very worried about making sure they have food, guns, and medicines.

What you fail to understand mathematically (because you don't have a high enough IQ to reason about this issue in a mathematical abstraction) about efficient markets in general is they always require a market maker who has deep liquidity. Barter doesn't require a market maker, but barter is extremely inefficient because the currency is not fungible.

That is the reason that for example USA dollars were liquid in Argentina's collapse and German marks in Bosnia, because those both had market makers externally which sustained the liquid value of the currency. Whereas, the market makers in gold are the damn investment banks such as Goldman and JP Morgan who you think you are fighting by buying the metal. When chaos ensues, your local dealer can no longer use a futures contract with the Comex to hedge his purchases and sales. Why do you think mega dealer Tulving went bankrupt!

For fiat, the market makers are the banks and thus ultimately the central banks which set the reserve ratio requirements, etc..

Crypto-currency is unique because for the market makers are all of us meeting a free market on exchanges. It is an amazing breakthrough in decentralized control over liquidity while delivering a fungible unit. This is the case for as long as we are all trading non-fractional reserve units of crypto-currency.

Now that I have given you some Finance 101 education, I suggest you STFU with your nonsense, because you are showing everyone what a vindictive fool you are.

So you made a prediction of silver price in the past but didn't act on your own prediction because reasons. I heard this story before, a couple of posts earlier. Reasons seem to get in your way all the time. Do you think you should learn to overcome reasons before you are in a position to teach others?

Listen you fucking anonymous pussy, my experience in the Philippines of carrying 800oz of physical silver in a backpack from Manila to Mindanao, meant I had to bribe the police at the airport (even I had a permit to carry it issued from the an authorized rep of central bank) and it meant I was very much in danger of getting kidnapped or robbed. There was no way I was going to bring 18,000oz to fucking Mindanao. Besides it was useless to bring it to Mindanao, because I can't sell it there. There was no courier service for shipping metal insured to fucking Mindanao. My extended family is from Mindanao and I needed to be there to have the grandmother watch the kids because the mother was AWOL.

This is indicative of the situation you will be in once a collapse ensues and you can't waltz over to your comfy local coin dealer to trade metal.

You ignorant, vindictive, pompous fool.

I had to be in the Philippines for reasons I have alluded to (and detailed in the past but I don't want to go talking about my ex in public as it is not appropriate). I told you already that a family member endangered the mutual custody of my kids and forced me back to the Philippines to prevent the loss of custody of my kids to the State. Which created a big fucking dilemma for me, of how to manage my investment priorities because I was fooled into thinking that I had to be invested in precious metals. What a crock of shit. Had it not been for that incorrect tinfoil hat delusion that I ventured into circa 2006, I would be a multi-millionaire right now simply following conservative mainstream investment practices such as bonds. By now, I would have found Armstrong and had diversified out of bonds and into dollars and US stocks (and possibly Bitcoin given I am a programmer).

STFU about my personal life. Stay on point of the issue at hand.

[iamnotback]

the stat that always resonates with me is that society is four unattainable meals away from anarchy. these metalheads are living in dreamland if they think anyone is going to care about their lumps of shininess in a genuine collapse.

it can happen over a long weekend and if it's clear there's no coming back any time soon then food, bullets and medicine will be the only things with any value. everything else instantly becomes abstract and 100% useless.

it's a different matter if we're talking market wobbles and nothing else, but I get the feeling the former is in the minds of many precious metal hoarders. good luck with that. see you in the cemetery.

if you were stuck in Aleppo right now with no way of getting out would you swap 20 litres of clean water, some toilet paper and a pile of preserved food for a gold coin? hey, it's shiny shiny.

For some reason, the tinfoil hats are unable to comprehend this common sense.

[OROBTC]

...

STT, iamnotback, r0ach, deisik

While Armstrong may have a great record of predicting macro-trends, we all recognize that short-term trends are very hard to measure beyond a day or two.  Very hard.

Since NO ONE knows what is going to happen, I have found it best to be prepared for as many *reasonable probability scenarios" as possible.  Think about what is likely to happen, think about what COULD happen, think about effects on you for each scenario; THEN plan your strategies to cope with the future.

I have explored various scenarios in some depth at another website.  The scenarios in question were all BAD ones: various horrible things that could happen, how likely and what to do now/soon to protect oneself.  For example, there are a spectrum of possibilities that could happen re "Economic Devastation".  Would this be an outcome that would be a Great Depression v. 2?  Would it be a tougher SHTF?  Or the horrible TEOTWAWKI (The Road, One Second After, Lights Out and others)?  The severity of these different, but relatively easy to visualize, would influence choice and amounts of assets to hold, for example.

*   *   *

In the most extreme scenarios, bullets may be the best single "currency" (USA), my lead stash is 9mm bullets (lots of them) for my Beretta.  Along with water production systems.  These cases would likely not have gold (especially) and silver valued highly, at least during the very worst parts...  Still, at some point (probably..., when?), some kind of currency almost always is chosen.  My *guess* is that the most probable candidate would be silver coins, remember we are talking about a long and drawn out time (TEOTWAWKI in this paragraph) when central governments might not be there.  Silver will always retain some value, it is useful too (kills germs in water).  Gold will be there to preserve value through a long period, like giving to your kids.

But how likely are the extremely bad  scenarios?  Ahh, not as likely, IMO, as the milder, but still bad Great Depression v.2 and its more uncomfortable "SHTF".  So, in my own planning, I have but a couple of water filters and only a nominal amount of food stored (believing that the very ugly TEOTWAWKI will NOT be what happens).  Again assuming here no HORRID scenario (no Golden Horde armies devouring everything in the landscape...), I think that gold & silver are perfectly fine as part of a diversified portfolio of holdings.

If things DO go really bad, if the Dark Ages (let's say little/no electricity for the moment), then Bitcoin ain't going to do the job!!  Yeah I know that BTC can still function at some level without an Internet, but, it will fail in actual use...

*   *   *

Perhaps a "1984" scenario could occur.  Crypto might work out well, but maybe not!  At some point product would have to be delivered when paid by crypto (like when I bought gold with BTC).  Ahh!  My name and address are in the system, whoops.

Perhaps we may luck-out and get a benign scenario that features technological advance, benign governments, more freedom, less war, etc.  What then?  iamnotback's advice of some time ago (education in useful skills) might be No. 1.

My point is that we don't know.  As deisik pointed out recently, we don't know which wall will hit us...  Black Swans, by definition are unpredictable low-probability events, even though they have massive impact.

Note that CURRENCY (US$, FRNs in your actual possession, not in the bank) counts as a good asset to hold in almost ANY weird scenario...  In the early days, a $100 FRN might get you gasoline or a meal for your family if the credit card machines are down...

So where does that leave us?  Use the imagination to identify things that could happen, make a best guess to the probability, then choose assets based on that matrix (also what you can afford, how to store, etc.).  Already you can see that the possibilities are nearly endless, so you must choose...

I have chosen, based on my own expectations.  I value diversity very much, that of course includes reasonable holdings of precious metals (gold holdings by far outweigh my silver -- by $-value).  Bitcoin is also in there, but I own far less (at least for now) BTC than gold.  Bitcoin to me is riskier, but has a real possibility of going way up...  Alts?  I have too little time (non-tekkie) to spend looking into harder-to-use and riskier cryptos that are less accepted and harder to use than Bitcoin.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!  

[freshman777]

STFU about my personal life.

Wtf? Cry baby throwing a hissy fit because someone disagrees. I'd better not prod this stinky pile, if only for respect of other forum members who can spend their time much more productively than in reading novel length emotional outbreaks by this "circumstances-always-get-me" self-proclaimed genius.

[iamnotback]

In the most extreme scenarios, bullets may be the best single "currency" (USA), my lead stash is 9mm bullets (lots of them) for my Beretta.  Along with water production systems.  These cases would likely not have gold (especially) and silver valued highly, at least during the very worst parts...  Still, at some point (probably..., when?), some kind of currency almost always is chosen.  My *guess* is that the most probable candidate would be silver coins, remember we are talking about a long and drawn out time (TEOTWAWKI in this paragraph) when central governments might not be there.  Silver will always retain some value, it is useful too (kills germs in water).  Gold will be there to preserve value through a long period, like giving to your kids.

Rather than speculating, just go study history. Armstrong has, and he says that if it gets bad enough to where you need to abandon the established money system, then you go to food as money.

Sorry you and all your fellow tinfoil hatters speculating in forum discussions are simply wrong. You don't study history.

Where metal was used as money was because it was already the money system before the collapse ensued. Even then when the collapse was severe enough, only food was money.

So you pray that we don't lose the existing money system or that Bitcoin can transition to a popular currency before the collapse, otherwise only food (and maybe bullets since you can use that to steal or guard food) will be money.

But how likely are the extremely bad  scenarios?  Ahh, not as likely, IMO, as the milder, but still bad Great Depression v.2 and its more uncomfortable "SHTF".  So, in my own planning, I have but a couple of water filters and only a nominal amount of food stored (believing that the very ugly TEOTWAWKI will NOT be what happens).  Again assuming here no HORRID scenario (no Golden Horde armies devouring everything in the landscape...), I think that gold & silver are perfectly fine as part of a diversified portfolio of holdings.

The gold and silver diversification is fine for a non-collapse scenario, in which case you might as well just buy bullion. But it will highly underperform crypto-currency as a speculative asset. My exposition was specifically about collapse scenario and I even put it in bold, red text.

If things DO go really bad, if the Dark Ages (let's say little/no electricity for the moment), then Bitcoin ain't going to do the job!!  Yeah I know that BTC can still function at some level without an Internet, but, it will fail in actual use...

Nothing will work as money. Which is why it collapses into a Dark Age. Pray we don't go there.

Note that CURRENCY (US$, FRNs in your actual possession, not in the bank) counts as a good asset to hold in almost ANY weird scenario...  In the early days, a $100 FRN might get you gasoline or a meal for your family if the credit card machines are down...

Until they cancel the currency and declare it illegal. And if we are in a collapsed government scenario, then the FRNs have no value because there is no market maker for them anymore. Dark Ages are a scorched earth where only food is money and everybody is coming to steal yours.

Bitcoin is much more difficult to steal physically.

Gold and silver will be thrown into the streets as the Bible says. Their time has ended.

[iamnotback]

"circumstances-always-get-me"

I've been very successful in my life. I've had failures later on. I'll probably be very successful again, because I identified the decision I made which led to a vortex of bad circumstances.

Nevertheless, instead of focusing on the content and logic of the discussion, you'd rather focus on whether the imperfection of life is indicative of whether a human can speak correct facts.

Because you aren't interested in the facts. You are just jealous. And soon you will be more jealous, as my success rises again.

Goodbye loser.

If you think you can compete with me, let's get it on. Any time you are ready. In crypto and blockchain programming and development. In investing. In sports. In boxing. You are all talk. And no facts. And no production. Even with an intestinal illness, I can kick your ass. You pussy.

[iamnotback]

freshman777,

I don't give a shit about your psychological warfare. Bring your pussy ass words here.

http://www.coolpage.com/commentary/economic/shelby/freshman777.mp4

[deisik]

If things DO go really bad, if the Dark Ages (let's say little/no electricity for the moment), then Bitcoin ain't going to do the job!!  Yeah I know that BTC can still function at some level without an Internet, but, it will fail in actual use...

Nothing will work as money. Which is why it collapses into a Dark Age. Pray we don't go there

Bullets would be used as pointed out already. Though my personal preference is for the good ol' AK-47 7.62×39 mm round, useful in both cold polar and hot desert conditions (which are to be expected then). Guns are stronger than people overall, so we can be damn sure that if we sink into the new Dark Ages pretty fast, i.e. within one generation, there will be plenty of firearms around, at least for a few dozen years of their active usage...

After that we either turn back to arrows and bows or pull through the collapse

[iamnotback]

To my BCT friends who are goldbugs, the reason I speak frankly is because I want you to look at the situation objectively. I know from my own infatuation in the past with precious metals, that the drug of fighting back against the system is very intoxicating.

But the fact is that absent our existing governance and monetary system, a power vacuum forms, which sucks in roaming armed gangs which then gives rise to warlords. The warlords are the market makers. Feudalism. Power is a fact of physics and nature.

The only way your fantasy of a silver dime monetary barter system would take form is if you have an organized community with governance, security, and enshrining silver dimes as the monetary system to give it the confidence it needs. And then some market makers to provided the liquidity between debt, silver dimes, and production. And you have to then provide for defense against more powerful invaders, so your community can't be too small.

If you don't understand how governance, market makers (i.e. power-brokers), and the economy are all dependent on each other, then you of course will make silly fantasies about people trading silver dimes as a fall back option.

Understanding power vacuums, the power-law distribution of wealth in nature, etc.. are critical to forming a rational assessment of the future.

Money has always been what people trust and have confidence in. This doesn't mean the metal itself, but as Armstrong has explained many times it was the stamp on the metal. Even when the invaders took over the Roman Empire, they used the stamps on the coins from the former Empire because it was more trusted.

Bitcoin (crypto-currency on a blockchain) enable trustless money, where we don't have to trust any authority. We trust the decentralized protocol. Now that was the ideal. Unfortunately Satoshi's proof-of-work centralizes and thus we end up trusting Gregory Maxwell and the Chinese mining cartel.

So crypto-currency is not quite ready for being independent of the powers-that-be yet.

Someone may invent a solution. I happen to know someone who claims he may have such a solution. We'll see...

[deisik]

Money has always been what people trust and have confidence in. This doesn't mean the metal itself, but as Armstrong has explained many times it was the stamp on the metal. Even when the invaders took over the Roman Empire, they used the stamps on the coins from the former Empire because it was more trusted.

Bitcoin (crypto-currency on a blockchain) enable trustless money, where we don't have to trust any authority. We trust the decentralized protocol. Now that was the ideal. Unfortunately Satoshi's proof-of-work centralizes and thus we end up trusting Gregory Maxwell and the Chinese mining cartel

I disagree that that trust in the case of hard currencies has anything to do with authorities and the stamp on the metal they make. In fact, in medieval times you could just grab a piece of gold and take it to the royal mint where you got your royal coins stamped for a small fee. This tells us that the stamp had rather a utilitarian function than an existential one. On the other hand, if it all came down to trust in authorities, there would be no case for Gresham's Law where you had essentially the same stamp but, nevertheless, different levels of trust...

Which wouldn't be ever possible unless you in fact trusted the metal more than the stamp on it as you claim