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I was talking about what he bought through MicroStrategy, as we cannot audit his private purchases, and therefore have no idea if he e.g. omitted purchases done in 2021 to make average cost price lower. What he bought with MicroStrategy funds have an average cost price closer to $30k iirc.

So your source for 15% inflation is the ramblings of Michael Saylor? Look, consumer prices are measured all the time and reports are published with raw data made available. If inflation was not what the government reports, it should be trivially simple to prove it. So you linking to a guy rambling for ten minutes on YouTube is not convincing me that inflation is 15%, especially as I can look at my own expenses over the last decade, and e.g. management fee in the two buildings where I have a condo, which does not double every fifth year to keep up with inflation. Seriously, this is just a ridiculous claim, and if you can’t understand that, there really is no point in discussing anything with you, as you are a lost cause.

I clicked the link, and highest rated answer starts: “Very rarely is 'I' used in scholarly writing (at least in math and the sciences). A much more common choice is 'we'”. Edit: I read a little further, and it even says the opposite of what you took from that link: The use of "I", and especially its overuse, sometimes has a repellent effect, as arrogance or ex-cathedra preaching, and, for that reason, I like to avoid it whenever possible. And you made a living from teaching people that “we” is considered self-serving and arrogant? ????

For the last decade, inflation has been just below 2%. What is your source for 15% inflation? Do you live in a third world country? Because none of the official numbers that measure inflation in the developed world can back up your claim, leading me to believe that you are just one of these conspiracy theory nutcases. You realize with 15% inflation, prices would have to double every 5th year, right? Also, wouldn’t dream of 7% APY? Where do you think the money come from? How can a society be sustainable if everyone think they are entitled to passive income of at least 15% p.a. of their current net worth? This is just absurd!

It’s academic writing style. In the example you quote, you will find that many people have reached the same conclusion as me, therefore I am not taking credit for “having done the research”, lots of scholars have already come to the same conclusion, therefore it is “we have done the research”, referring to the wider field of skeptics.

Which, according to a previously posted survey, were 70% in one survey. You think people bought crypto from 2018-2020 and then stopped buying last year? Then tell me, why was price down from 2018-2020, and only spiked last year? If we set aside price manipulation, it spiked because people bought, it is supply and demand. So clearly, majority of people bought last year, not 2018-2020.

LMFAO… we did the research: It’s a negative-sum game. You say so yourself, you make money on the swings. It’s just gambling, not an investment. And lots of the stuff you have mentioned in these threads are way down since you mentioned it, so I really wonder if you are actually making money on this. As for your 1% APY. It is not either money in the bank, or gambling it all at the casino. You can put your money in productive assets and should expect to make 7-9% APY (last couple of years have been > 20% but those were not normal years).

Yes, and it can be done. Proof: Miners have agreed to code changes in the past. Do you understand what effect it will have on mining, when block rewards disappear? Do you understand it will be in the interest of everyone who holds BTC or have invested in mining equipment to “fix” this problem? There might be debate, and it might result in another hard fork, but trust me, miners will continue on the most lucrative branch, and if one branch gives zero mining rewards, and the other gives e.g. 2 BTC in mining rewards, which one do you think they will chose?

A bit of a straw man there. Sure, it might be here to stay, just like gambling or drugs. But it is not changing financial markets as we speak, it is still just an unproductive speculative asset / negative sum game, it contributes significantly to pollution / global warming, and the value is only in allowing regulatory arbitrage (if we disqualify running a scam as value, even though the person who runs it, does get some value from it). If you want to disprove it is a ponzi, just explain how everyone buying into the same unproductive asset can magically create more value than what was put into it. You can’t, and that is why everyone who understands basic finance calls it a ponzi (or zero-sum / negative-sum). People warned about Bernie Madoff 9 years before his scheme actually collapsed. With crypto though, people are already looking at lots of losses. Just look at the table posted in this thread about how Nayib Bukele has bought for $86M of bitcoin which is now worth $65M. Michael Sayler of MicroStrategy is also dangerously close to being in the red, not to mention all the retail investors who bought through 2021.

For bitcoin, they can just change the reward scheme once they find out that mining is unsustainable without the subsidy. Of course it requires consensus among minors, but changes to fundamentals have been done in the past, sometimes leading to hard forks, sometimes not. Regardless, nothing is set in stone. And anyway, this limited supply is just a distraction: It’s just numbers in a database. Putting constraints on them does not give them value. What has value is the network itself, not the coins.

I wouldn’t count on it. In the UK, the House of Lords Economics Affairs Committee has issued its report on central bank digital currencies. The title is “Central bank digital currencies: a solution in search of a problem?” and notes “We have yet to hear a convincing case for why the UK needs a retail CBDC.”

But it is not being adopted worldwide. We just went over this a day ago. I asked for specific examples, and was given “go to GitHub and search for projects”. You are right that people are buying crypto-tokens worldwide, but there is no technology being adopted. If you disagree, give me a concrete example of someone using blockchain/crypto that gives them a competitive edge. Not just JPMorgan replying to journalist that they are exploring it, but didn’t give specifics, etc., as all the previous examples are basically boiling down to.

This is not a forum about crypto. There is a section about crypto, but you repeatedly post here. Go post your nonsense in the crypto section, and at least I will completely ignore it. But I don’t think anyone here are laughing about people losing money, on the contrary, I have repeatedly said I am concerned about people (going to) lose money with crypto, because so many people are FOMO’ing into crypto without understanding it, and they do it because of people like you, and all the celebrity/influencers that you post videos from, many with no background in neither technology nor economics. And as for stocks: I don’t remember ever seeing anyone pushing stocks here. Even on finance forums I follow, I often see people warn newbies about a) buying stocks for the short term, and b) putting too much money into a single stock. Of course there are r/wallstreetbets, but I think the name indicates that this is YOLO stuff.

And we have explained this to you over and over again. Crypto tokens are unproductive speculative assets with no underlying value or ownership in anything. To us, it makes no sense why anyone would buy these, but for this, you label us haters, boomers, or claim we do not understand the technology, yet I have been the one repeatedly having to explain things about blockchains, economics, trading, stocks, computers, and debunking the countless false claims made in these threads.

You tell us bank stocks got crushed, then you tell us they are up, but not because of what I think, and I should go research, yet earlier you also told us that stock valuations are pure speculation decoupled from fundamentals, so what is there to research? And who cares anyway? You said bank stocks were getting crushed, they are not. No need to research anything. You are all over the place, and making zero sense. Everyone thought? Clearly the market did not think so, and the higher interest rates are not even here yet… It is pretty obvious to most people. If you disagree, make a coherent argument or just leave it be. LMFAO…

If you are on a fixed-length contract then severance payment does not apply to you. Only if the contract was in violation of the requirements set forth for a fixed-length contract, would you be elligable. But otherwise you are correct, that more than 10 years of employment entitles you to 300 days of severance payment.

Algo-trading is more about profitting from inefficiencies in the market, i.e. arbitrage opportunities. Of course there are also some that try to do strategies based on news feeds, TA, etc. But this is an entirely different part of the market. A stock exchange exist primarily for businesses to raise capital they need to run their business and turn a profit, that then gets returned to the investors (i.e. those who funded the business). Major investors are still doing it this way, and investment banks are still selling their research to investors, to try to gain a knowledge advantage and investing in the most profitable markets/businesses.

You said that stocks are not based on fundamentals, otherwise, why would higher interests cause them to go down. I explain to you how making it more expensive to loan money means less profit for companies (that get funding via debt) and less spending by consumers (who have debt, which is now more expensive). Then you say, but then why are bank stocks being crushed, implicitly that they should actually benefit from higher interests. And I reply and tell you, actually, bank stocks are not being crushed, many are up year-to-date. And now you are just quoting a dozen stocks, and your argument is what? If you want to look at stock valuations, we have to look at companies case-by-case, you can’t just say, Wells Fargo is being crushed because Apple stock is higher over last 5 years… on the contrary, this just illustrates that it is based on fundamentals, because Apple has made a hell of a lot more money over the last 5 years than Wells Fargo. But now, Wells Fargo, YTD, may have outperformed Apple in %-gain, and that is because the future cashflow of Apple looks worse, where future cashflow of Wells Fargo looks better… Though really, these discussions about what happened last week in the stock market are sort of missing what stocks are about. Sure, there are volatility, but any meaningful discussion should be had looking over the longer term, where fundamentals do play a significant role in stock valuations.

Your statement was that “crypto is changing financial markets as we speak”. Conclusion: They are not! Blockchain is useful for regulatory arbitrage, because here people are willing to pay a higher price for censor resilient transactions. It is not useful in regulated markets where you have trust. Not to mention that reversibility and having someone responsible is actually considered a desired feature by most consumers.

IBM: That project is already dead: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/02/01/ibm-blockchain-is-a-shell-of-its-former-self-after-revenue-misses-job-cuts-sources/ JPMorgan & Citigroup: “While JPMorgan and Citi did not specify in what capacity they use blockchain technology”. I call BS! They also mention Ripple in same story, but Ripple CEO has previously gone on the record before and said that banks do not want crypto because it is slow, and because they do not want customer information on a blockchain, and the products Ripple are selling to banks are not based on blockchain (even though many press releases will have you believe that). As for your third link: “[…] the power that blockchain technology could play in the regulated financial industry - specifically in banking. Smaller commercial banks, like ours to the largest financial institutions in the country, are exploring the various ways that blockchain can be brought into the fold of banks”. So just PR hype. We have heard that banks are “exploring” crypto for many years now. Nothing has come of it! Give a concrete example! Not just these vague fluff pieces.

You say, and give a link to Jim Cramer, I am lost for words… Only thing to add: All this “you know nothing”, F’ing prove yourself. I have explained over and over in minute detail about pretty much anything that has come up. You just make vague statements like “bank stocks are being crushed” (which obviously, they are not), that “financial markets are changed by crypto as we speak”, with zero examples, that “market cap of Apple and Amazon does not add up” with no follow-up when quoting the actual P/E ratio, etc. You are just wasting my time.

I said that I personally think it is overvalued, but that this is just my gut feeling. I don’t think anyone would interpret what I wrote as me painting a picture that Amazon is a good investment. I really have no idea. As said, I am not following this company (since I sold my last shares for around $310). But if you want, we can actually make a decent analysis about whether or not their current price is a fair valuation. All the numbers are there, their financials, disclosures, guidance about future revenue, etc.

Crushed? Wells Fargo, Citigroup, HSBC, etc. are up year-to-date, Bank of America about the same, JPMorgan was up until they released earnings report the 13th of January, which showed decline in earnings for Q4 2021, and that is why the stock is now down, not because of higher interests. Anyway, it is getting tedious having to correct all your misunderstandings about stocks. The point being made is that crypto is worthless, just a speculative unproductive asset, at best a zero-sum game, in practice a negative sum game. Your misunderstandings about stocks does not change that.

I have repeatedly argued that blockchain is not disrupting anything. It is slow and expensive. You made the claim that crypto is changing financial markets as we speak. Up to you if you want to give an examples, but I fail to see how anyone can take you serious, if you can’t even give a single example of how this stuff is changing financial markets, after you made such a claim.