It is the sideeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeways I fear the most... that is the worst of the worst.
+1 Sideways sucks the most
Dunno, for traders maybe yes. For hodlers, down is most painful...
“Sideways” means low volatility; the extreme of sideways-ness is
price stability.
The theoretically ideal form of money is price-stable. Volatility only benefits traders, at the expense of everyone else.
There are several kinds of traders. some influence, some panic, some play big swings, etc, etc
All of those require price movements. Not price stability.
Ok? and? What's your point? Another point is that trading is not a zero sum game, it can help in a lot of ways including price discovery, provides liquidity, allows for the creation of more financial tools which thereby motivates larger and larger players to get into the space.
I am trying to describe what is... and you were trying to denigrate trading and traders... but then in one of your other post you were suggesting that we all need to spend our bitcoins... Do you even know how some of those practices and preferences (or lack of preferences in your case) for various systems overlap?
Profitable trading definitionally requires “buy low, sell high” (same for shorts in the reverse order). I think that mathematically, the only way to profit from “buying low, selling high” when the price sits still is to exploit some kind of a spread—either intra-market (market maker), or inter-market (arbitrage). Those types of traders attempt to minimize the relevance of price volatility to themselves—in the extreme case, executing (or attempting to execute) risk-free trades with no exposure to price movements. Others need volatility, for even a unidirectional price movement cannot bring them profit: If the price only goes forever up to infinity, or forever down until it hits zero, then the only way to profit without leaving money on the table is “buy and hold” (or short and never cover), not actively to trade.
We already know bitcoin is volatile.. so een you seem ot be recognizing that bitcoin provides a decent space for trading... that is if you want to trade.
Of course trading is optional.. some people do it an others don't. Seems like a vast majority of traders end up losing, and so in bitcoin, there are a lot more options for amateurs to learn how to trade (and probably lose when they do it, unless they error on the side of accumulating their lil precious... but sure there are a variety of ways to engage in trading too. as I already mentioned.. and likely no need to go into details, except to acknowledge that it exists and that it is likely not a zero sum game and people have choices how much to engage in trading and how to do it, if they do end up doing it.
If BTC could become price-stable,* then I would prefer that. The world cannot run on volatile money alone, nor on deflationary money alone. (Note to Jay: I am perfectly well aware that price-stable BTC will never happen.)
I doubt that it is good to be using the word "never" to the extent that it matters anyhow. We already should be able to anticipate that the larger the BTC market cap gets, the more likelihood for it to be less voilatile because the BIGGER the market cap, it takes more value to move it.
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That’s a rather simplistic monetary theory. I am under no illusions about a hardcapped currency with a static supply ever becoming price-stable.
It seems that I already addressed this in regards to presumptions that we might have and then also in terms of how far we might project out our planning in accordance with our presumptions. How much does it matter whether we might be correct at this time about something that might happen 150 years into the future?
* I mean price-stable according to an index of goods and services. That means rising against the dollar, as the dollar depreciates from inflation. The dollar is not price-stable; to the contrary, the dollar is a volatile currency. Have you seen dollar prices lately!? Not only the obvious increase in prices, but the fluctuations as markets adapt to price shocks.
You are a fucking goofball, sometimes. The dollar has had a pretty long stead of having quite a bit of stability (aka mostly lacking in terms of experiencing a lot volatility) .. of course, the dollar has been depreciating in at a very slow rate .. but it is not volatile.. and for sure, one of the concerns in recent times, is that its decline has started to increase in ways that are really difficult to hide and bordering on points of unsustainability - it's been a good run.. while it lasted.. but at the same time, the dollar is not dead yet... it is the strongest of the fiats, currently. There are possibilities to continue to milk the system another 5-30 years.. I am not sure if it can last that long, but the dollar is not dead yet... and we are lucky to have this life raft called bitcoin (I did not come up with such life raft term.. but many bitcoiners have been using such analogy)
I monitor street prices in dollars of some various real-world goods and services. The kinds that ordinary people would need to buy on a regular basis. Mass-market stuff, nothing obscure or having a niche market.
And? Relevance?
What does that get you?
In the past six months, I have seen up-and-down swings of 10%, 30%, in the extreme case even 50% in apples-to-apples comparisons of the exact same SKU, etc., with the general price trend being up.
“Price stability” means that ordinary people with ordinary needs can draw budgets of weekly, monthly, etc. expenditures based on more or less accurate predictions of how much things will cost.
Yes .. we live in interesting times, currently... for sure. I doubt that your street surveys are doing you much if any better than other persons who are observing these kinds of inflation matters in their own lives.
If swings of 30–50% swings constitute “stability” in your book, who is the goofball?
It appears that you are reacting to my "goofball" reference.. hahahahaha You're no fun.. but already knew that.
A lot of us who have been investing in bitcoin by buying, accumulating and HODLing in the neighborhood of one cycle (referring to each cycle as 4 years-ish) or longer have likely profited quite stupendously in terms of our decision(s) to hedge with bitcoin, and likely the more aggressive ones had benefited more than others who were less aggressive. Surely there may well be some folks in the fiat world who had been able to hedge decently well with their investments in certain stocks an d perhaps property investments, but as an asset class that has been generally open and available to anyone - even with lower level budgets, those who have chosen to invest decently aggressively in bitcoin including buying, accumulating and hodling.. have done decently well, relatively speaking.
Trading and fucking around with margin can end up being another story that likely would have left those involved in bitcoin with potentially shitty positions, and many of the more regular guys that participate in this thread do not recommend fucking around with very much trading or playing around with margin unless its a relatively small part of their BTC holdings.. so there is a kind of seemingly widespread practice that most of us here tend to emphasize buying accumulating and holding rather than trading or fucking around with margin...
So then the level of comfort that some of us regular WO members might have in regards to our bitcoin position might mostly have to do with how long we have been into bitcoin rather than other factors.. Of course, some folks might have had better cashflows than others to start with or some might have been able to transfer more value into bitcoin from the start of their investing into bitcoin, but those guys might be older too.. I surely cannot speak for the specific situations of too many others.. just to get some ideas of the variance that does exist with various regular participants in this thread.
But if you want to suggest that my Bitcoin position might have some goofball tendencies, then you might need to point that out a wee bit moar better in term of specifics in terms of "what you talkin bout Willis?"
Zooming out, the dollar has been depreciating rapidly since the Nixon Shock. Look at a chart. Only by the standards of what some people deride as a “third-world country” could the U.S. dollar be considered to have had slow depreciation. Only with very short-term thinking could it be considered to have had “a good run”.
Ok? So what are we arguing about? I al ready made my various points, and you are not really raising anything new or contrary to my points at this time.
Newsflash: INFLATION IS HIGH.* Surprise! Reaction: SELL THE DEFLATIONARY CURRENCY, TO BUY THE INFLATIONARY CURRENCY!
Makes sense. To the average “Bitcoin investor” nowadays.
This is the least problem with letting people think of Bitcoin as sort of like a stock.
* Assuredly much higher than the heavily manipulated CPI numbers show. What kind of an idiot believes the CPI numbers? The kind who reacts to high dollar inflation by spending more money (BTC) to buy dollars.
Hm? Your note goes to show that perhaps you do understand Gresham's law?
I understand Gresham’s Law
perfectly well. Indeed, I even understand that it applies to currencies—not to stocks or to anything that can be treated like a stock.
There you go with your hyperbole, again.. "perfectly well," right?
It seemed at one point you were making arguments that fail and refuse to account for Greshams law.. when you are trying to suggest that we need to spend our bitcoins blah blah blah.
Gresham's law can apply to anything of value, and of course, if something is not liquid then it is difficult to spend... but merely because something is more liquid than something else does not cause us to have to spend the more liquid good/currency first.
For example, you know as well as me that with bitcoin, there could be circumstances in which some of us might hold our bitcoins in a very difficult to liquidate kind of way.. and if we are projecting out our cashflows, we might realize that we might need to sell some of our bitcoin in order to make sure that we can cover our various expenses... so in that regard, we may well be considering in advance what kinds of assets/currencies we hold and which ones we might want to convert into a more liquid form - including our considering Gresham Law ideas during such thought process about what to do and how to hold assets/currencies and how much to hold in each category..
I began before to write a long reply to your earlier long reply re the stock issue. No time for that now; I think that anyway, I have clearly explained why treating Bitcoin as “like a stock” is a horrible idea.
We have made our points regarding this, and it seems to me that you are creating a false dichotomy.. and I already told yhou to do what you like, even if you seem to be arguing with yourself in terms of baloney premises in tterms of the way you framed the question.
If you disagree, please don’t argue with me: Take it up with the SEC.
That's a way to get out of it.. hahahah..
NOt that I want to talk about it anyway.. you are the one who seems to have a hard-on for that fantasy framing of the matter...
They’ve been cracking down on stock-like things that people try to call “ICOs”, “DAO governance tokens”, or “NFTs”; I’m sure they’d love to bite into a stock-like thing called “Bitcoin”, if they see people treating it as “like a stock”. Needless to say, I think that is ridiculous: Bitcoin is nothing whatsoever like a stock.
Oh? That explanation helps....
not.
I'm seeing Nasdaq futures down 1.8% right now. Interesting week coming up.
well yeah i do suppose screaming towards the ground at mach 15
is "interesting," in a weird hypnotic kinda way.
Don't faint.. You might mess up your nail polish.
Poll
