0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TwoLargePizzas 1 May \ parent \ on: if bitcoin became illegal by law Personal_Finance
They figured out how to make you a slave and have you think that you're not.
Even if this was telling us something useful which I don't believe it is, a heck of a lot has changed since 2019.
Are we somehow forgetting we had C19 in 2020, the government printed 25% of all money in existence, inflation skyrocketed then interest rates went up faster than any other time in history.
The point is, the last 5 years really really matter. Looking at a chart from 2019 isn't very useful.
My thoughts on this are pretty simple.
Real estate is great collateral for a loan. In other words, it's pretty easy to go to a bank and borrow $500,000 dollars against a house. The same is not really true for Bitcoin or many other assets.
So while I agree real estate doesn't have the potential upside of Bitcoin it can't be understated how beneficial it can be to have long term low risk leverage. If you manage your finances right you can use this to acquire more Bitcoin.
That said, it's not a no brainer. In the current high interest rate environment it might not be the right move to buy real estate right away. But over the long term it tends to work out because rent goes up with inflation and home loan repayments don't.
Real estate has generally gone up in tandem with currency debasement. You can see this if you plot real estate prices over monetary inflation.
This is not a bad thing per se. It means dollars stored in real estate have kept their purchasing power over time. If you borrowed dollars to buy real estate that's a pretty good deal because you've created an inflation hedge on the banks freshly printed money. Of course, your loan interest rates do play a role in this equation.
So strictly speaking, while real estate prices have gone up the 'value' of real estate has stayed relatively stable in purchasing power terms.
Isn't this the guy that created the Bitcoin Cash fork and gets upset that nobody uses it?
He wrote a book called Hijacking Bitcoin. He's good friends with Craig Wright. He registered Bitcoin dot com to trick people going to the wrong website.
Yeah, sorry, I don't feel any sympathy for this guy.
I think the first thing to understand is that the term CBDC is not well defined. The definition changes from country to country and it's pretty fluid over time. We don't really know right now what CBDC's will look like in a decade.
That said, from what I understand there's two distinct categories. If we take a look at the definitions as described by Investopedia.
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Wholesale CBDCs function similarly to holding reserves in a central bank. The central bank grants an institution an account in which to deposit funds or to use to settle interbank transfers. Central banks can then use monetary policy tools, such as reserve requirements or interest on reserve balances, to set interest rates and influence lending.
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Retail CBDCs are government-backed digital currencies used by consumers and businesses. Retail CBDCs eliminate intermediary risk - the risk that private digital currency issuers might become bankrupt and lose customers' assets.
Clearly these definitions don't take the dystopian viewpoint but they do give us an idea where it's heading. Both have potentially negative implications, some worse than others.
I remember listening to a podcast where Lyn Alden talked about how the United States is most likely to go down the Wholesale CBDC route. If that's the case the most likely outcome is that the money printer will go brrr and continue to accelerate. How long this will take and how much impact it'll have is still up for debate.
The Retail CBDC route is much more scary. We can all imagine the dystopian outcomes as you've already described and we can see from other countries like China that those fears are already a reality for some people.
Some people argue that a Retail CBDC is unlikely because it would cut out the middle man banks and they don't want that. On the flip side, some people have argued that we might not even know if it's happening. Banks aren't exactly transparent entities and they might already be implementing this stuff behind the scenes.
Will they try to block the exits? Most likely. Can they block all the exits at once? Probably not. I would say in this scenario Bitcoin becomes more valuable, not less. It doesn't take a lot of people rushing for the exit to push the price up.
But that's just my two sats. Take it with a grain of salt.
As an individual having focus on one thing is great but having everyone in a group focused on the same thing can be detrimental. Too many cooks in the kitchen.
Besides, even if we wanted to get everyone focused on the same thing it's almost impossible to do practically. Ironically, this desire would lead to centralization, the very thing we set out to avoid.
People's desire to build comes from their different views and beliefs about the best way forward. Like it or not it's going to happen that way regardless. That's healthy in a free market of ideas.
Using a service that does not comply with its legal obligations may put you at risk of losing access to funds after law enforcement operations target those businesses.
You are at risk of losing your funds. Why? Because we might confiscate them. For your protection, do as you're told.
There's some mafia level shit right there.
Someone has to do it I guess. One benefit is that it reveals and exposes how the system actually works. It's much easier to convince people the system is broken with evidence.
Value can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Value by definition is subjective in the sense that the importance, worth, or usefulness of something depends on who is using it and what they're trying to achieve.
That said, one interesting way to measure value is how many cumulative man hours are saved with a particular technology.
Let's imagine you had an app that 1 million people use everyday to achieve a certain outcome. Let's also assume they each need to spend 15 minutes using the app to reach their outcome.
That equates to a cost on humanity of 250,000 human hours. If you can reduce the time spent in the app from 15 minutes to 14 minutes you've given back 16,666 hours of value to those people.
The point is, sometimes even the smallest improvement has a massive impact.
I've heard a lot of opinions from a lot of different people over the years but there's one thing they all agree on.
The money printing will continue.
I'm sure plenty of people understand this stuff outside Bitcoin circles. But it's still only a tiny percentage of the population.
Certainly not enough to make a difference in general public opinion. That said, it feels like we're trending in the right direction.
As others have already pointed out most people don't see Bitcoin for what it really is yet.
However, there's another reason. Bitcoin is often the most liquid easy to sell asset. You can't sell real estate quickly. You can't sell stocks when the market is closed. So for people that think they need cash fast they sell Bitcoin.
On the upside, it's a great time to stack.
I think you should take the time to really question your assumptions and think through the actual consequences of each. In my experience, reality is far less scary than whatever is going on in our minds.
I don't know everything that's going on in your mind or your life but I can tell from your words that many of your thoughts are coming from fear of the unknown.
Let's take a look at some of the assumptions you've already mentioned.
I have to get a stable job
There's no such thing as a "stable job". There are only jobs you can do and jobs you can't do yet. If we look up the meaning of "stable job" it's defined as a position that employees can keep for long periods of time. The problem with this meaning is that there's no way of knowing what "long periods of time" means. Nobody actually knows what's going to happen over decades.
My father had what you'd consider a "stable job" for 20 years. Then one day the company closed down. What happened next? He moved on and got another job. No big deal.
My advice, stop looking for the mythical stable job and focus on building up your skills. Job stability comes from having reasons to hire you. If you have skills, you'll have job stability regardless of how long you work for each company.
I want to work long-term
Do you really want to work long-term? I don't. My ideal goal is to work as little as possible on things I hate and spend more of my time doing the things I love.
Of course, our ideals and reality don't always align. But you can do things to get closer. It takes some self reflection to figure out what you really enjoy doing but the closer you can get to making money doing what you love the less it'll feel like work.
"Choose a job you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life"
-- Confucius
My situation could turn for the worse
What does that actually mean? I can't answer this one. Only you know what it means but I encourage you to really think through the possible outcomes.
In my experience, reality is usually better than what you think. You think you're going to be homeless, but in reality you'd just move back in with your parents. You think you can't afford rent, but in reality you get a roommate.
Also, the word 'worse' is relative and temporary. If I lost my job today my situation is 'worse' but next week I could find a new job and my situation is suddenly 'better'.
Find a job in a field that's not only save from digitalisation and automation
Okay, first of all, stop letting fear drive your decisions. You don't know what's going to happen in the future, you can't control it and you can't predict it.
The very idea that you think you can find a job that's safe from automation is flawed. It assumes you can even know what a safe job looks like and you can't.
Again, reality is usually better than your worst fears. Many of the jobs that exist today didn't exist a couple of decades ago and the same will be true decades from now.
Focus on next week and next year and stop worrying about next decade. Even if you're right and lots of jobs are replaced by automation it won't happen overnight. You've got time to react and you're not the only one in the same boat. It's not your responsibility to figure everything out right now.
fulfilling enough to strike a balance which enables me to work long-term
Looking for something fulfilling and enjoyable is an excellent idea. But stop trying to force it. Often the most rewarding work comes from play. Have some fun in your spare time, mess around with things you find interesting.
Again, you don't have to have everything figured out immediately. Life is a journey and whatever you decide today is not going to matter much a decade from now. There are very few absolutely life altering decisions.
Don't get me wrong. It's good to have a plan. It's good to think long term. But you need to come to terms with the fact that it's impossible to get it perfect.
turning into a bitter asshole a few decades from now.
I dunno. Being a bitter asshole isn't so bad ;)
I don't freak out anymore but I remember a time a few years ago when I almost vomited from the volatility. I remember going through some self reflection afterwards and coming out the other side a better investor.
So yes, I think it does take time for people to learn not to freak out and that experience is different for everyone. Presumably some people never get over it.
That said, we can't assume what's happening in this persons life. Maybe they're dying or died. Maybe they're buying houses for their kids. Who knows?
And if you think about it, this is healthy for the network. These 500 BTC will hopefully end up in the hands of 500 or 5000 new people.
First of all, there are very few irreversible decisions. In fact, I can only think of three...
- Having kids.
- Committing a serious crime.
- Wasting your life doing nothing.
However, every decision has a cost, including not making a decision. Now, let's imagine 2 scenarios.
Scenario 1... You get a job, work for a year and then quit.
Scenario 2... You spend a year thinking about what the perfect job might be.
In scenario 1 you get some work experience, earn some money, meet some people and still have time to think about your future. When you quit you'll have a better idea of what to do next.
In scenario 2 you might figure out the perfect path forward but you're now further away from achieving it. You have no savings, no experience and nothing to show for your time except thoughts.
The truth is, you are asking the right questions but you need to accept that you don't have all the answers yet. The only way to find the answers is to make decisions and iterate. Try things, see what works and what doesn't and repeat.
- What if it's the wrong decision? Almost every decision you make will be wrong to some degree. The solution is to make them, find out and make better ones.
- I simply don't have that many options left anymore? You always have options. You have more options with money and experience.
- I do know what to do, namely: build a foundation. Define 'foundation'. What does that look like? What's the first step? Take it.
"A bad plan is better than no plan, and the most important quality of any plan is the flexibility to change" -- Judson L Moore
paper over :- to hide an unpleasant situation, especially a problem or disagreement, in order to make people believe that it does not exist or is not serious
I always find it fascinating how the words and phrases we use regularly have much deeper meaning. Almost as if the people who created them where trying to warn us.
Yep. There is data that supports what you're saying. The truth is the miners are just like everyone else with an additional incentive to sell to stay in business. Some of them sell more often and some try to hold on longer. There's no universal strategy.
The real kicker though is that the demand coming from the ETFs is a lot higher (some reports say 6x to 10x) more than what the miners are producing. The data shows most of the selling is actually still coming from GBTC but it's only a matter of time before they run out.
This is true. The question is, at what price will people a part with their coins? The answer is different for everyone and for some people the answer is still never.
Recent price increases have not been driven by the halving event but rather by the Spot ETFs acquiring so much Bitcoin.
In some sense, these things are all connected. Presumably people buying the ETFs know the halving is coming. It's rarely one reason or another, it's the markets collective understanding of everything that causes them to decide to buy or sell.