Gecko123

I take it you haven't been following the news on Sri Lanka's economy very closely.

Leaving America to escape the rising cost of living may seem attractive, but it could all go up in smoke if either the USD is devalued or entitlement programs have to be cut. The US debt and deficit are on a scary upward trajectory due to rising borrowing costs and burgeoning entitlement program payouts. The same is true for many other Western countries. If either the dollar devalues (think British pound post-Brexit) or entitlement programs are slashed, the incentive for moving overseas in order to lower living costs could disappear overnight. Becoming an ex-pat for financial reasons becomes a rather dicey decision when you start pondering what the future might hold.

Was it really necessary to single out a specific nationality to make your point?

I'm not sure if these re-enactments are always appropriate, but I don't think it's fair to say that they are done only to provide an opportunity for the police to grandstand in front of the public. The community receives the comfort of seeing the perpetrator confess to the crime and the assurance that the right person was apprehended. The community also receives an opportunity to voice condemnation of the crime, thus reinforcing societal norms, perhaps helping bring closure. Re-enactments can serve as a form of public atonement, which is an important part of the criminal rehabilitation process. Re-enactments serve to validate verbal or written confessions, and can be useful as evidence in the event the confession is later retracted. They can also be useful if there is more than one perpetrator and one perpetrator is testifying against the other(s), or if there are conflicting accounts about what happened. Cops also take criminals through re-enactments to better understand criminal motives, psychology, and behavior.

If you think this guy was foolish, where do you think he went wrong? Getting in a relationship with a bar girl in the first place? Letting her move in? Allowing her to stay in the condo while he was out of the country? Thinking the safe would deter her? Not installing hidden cameras in the condo to keep tabs on what she was up to while he was away? Not paying off the condo lobby guards to tip him off if they saw any suspicious comings and goings? Really curious what the old guard thinks he should have done differently?

Bitcoin played some role in this. That's my guess.

The only points I was trying to make were: (1) crimes such as this sometimes don't make the news in Thailand because the perpetrator, including foreigners, buys the victim's and her family's silence. So don't assume that just because these news reports don't seem to involve foreign men very often that that necessarily means foreign men are morally superior or in better control of their darker impulses than Thai men, and, (2) of course the crime is heinous and deserves to be severely punished, but the bashing of Thai male perpetrators as if they were subhuman along with proposals for medieval punishments, etc. sometimes seems misdirected and overdone, when you stop to consider that these types of crimes occur back home with just as much - if not greater - frequency.

These news stories about fathers molesting their step-daughters seem to only rarely involve Western men. I wonder if part of the reason for this might be because Western men often have the money needed to pay off irate family relatives, thus avoiding news publicity and criminal prosecution. These crimes are truly reprehensible and deserve to be roundly condemned, but please don't forget that they occur with disturbing frequency elsewhere in the world, including in our home countries.

I think there is something in the vocal timbre of black singers that the majority of white singers simply don't have. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of superb white singers out there. But when it comes to soul, blues, and perhaps even gospel music the vocal expression of black singers seems to come from the core of their being, oftentimes seeming to spring from a well of experience going back generations. The delivery of emotion just seems to resonate more. It goes beyond the issue of who has the most street credibility of having lived a tough life. I hear it here: And, perhaps surprisingly, even here:

I think it's more likely that lady boy snatch thieves in Pattaya are targeting Indian tourists because of their affinity for wearing gold jewelry. They may also be being targeted because they are perceived as racially less desirable sex clientele, and it's therefore rationalized that it's OK to rip them off (drugging, overcharging, thievery.) Indian males, (who reportedly like to explore Pattaya in small groups of men) may feel a false sense of security because they are part of a group. The dangers of wearing jewelry in Pattaya's red light districts may not have been fully publicized back in India. According to the internet, a very small percentage of Indian households carry homeowner's property insurance (presumably the coverage such thefts would be covered under). I hope posters speculating that this is likely all a scam on the part of Indian tourists will consider the above points.

She may need to work on her impulse control, but you can't tell me she doesn't have a wicked sense of humor.

I go to considerable lengths to hide or at least not broadcast how well I eat. I live in a poor rural area. Nobody's starving, but some people definitely have poor diets, and I do sometimes feel guilty about how well I eat. If people ever looked in my refrigerators and freezers or saw how much food was in my food pantry, I'm certain they would be shocked and gossip about it, possibly even generating criminal interest. Partly because of this, I do most of my shopping at big box retailers which are 100 km away, unload the groceries discretely, and even take steps to make sure food packaging is incinerated completely so as to not leave any clues about how well I eat. Aside from my diet, my lifestyle is very much in line with the low-key/low flash lifestyles of everyone else. I also sometimes give away vegetables and fruit from my gardens, and baked goods (oatmeal cookies/banana nut bread) to neighbor kids. Because the closest big supermarkets are 100 km away, I tend to make mega grocery purchases every 3-4 months, almost always running up totals between 20-30K. This has sometimes attracted comments, but never anything overtly envious or resentful. But just yesterday at Big C the family behind me at the checkout counter was really transfixed and agog at my purchases laid out on the conveyor belt. For the first time, I felt this 'must be nice to afford to shop like that' vibe. For some reason, the security guard also photographed my receipt, and maybe I'm missing something, but I wondered whether he was going to post it on social media as an example of how 'high on the hog' foreigners live. With everyone grappling with inflation these days, it's probably best to keep a low profile and lend a helping hand when you can.

According to the Vox article posted earlier: "One paper in October 2021 found that, at the end of 2020, the top 10,000 investors owned about 5 million bitcoins, or about a third of what’s in circulation. That’s less than 0.1 percent of total bitcoin holders." I was surprised by this concentration of ownership, much of which is probably in the hands of the very same top 1% whose clutches you are eager to be freed from. Those top 10,000 investors probably got in very early, making them filthy rich in the process. The other 15 mm bitcoins are being bid up by average Joe's trying to get in on the action. The way I see it, the top 10,000 investors have little incentive to add to their positions. They'd only be increasing their dollar cost average, right? But they have every incentive to hype and gin up enthusiasm in hopes that their shares increase further. The only reason I see for them to sell would be if they thought the share price was so high it couldn't go up any further. I'd also point out that that concentration of ownership affords considerable power to manipulate the market price if or when desired, especially if the market is largely free from regulatory oversight. Food for thought? https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23071245/bitcoin-price-crypto-ethereum-nfts-defi-stablecoin

I know you see yourself as the forum's high priest of Bitcoin, but you have probably done more to alienate potential investors than anyone I can think of. If you were an ambassador to a country you would have been recalled long ago. If your goal is to bolster interest in Bitcoin, my advice to you would be to stop talking. The insults, the name calling, the condescension, the braggadociousness is so obnoxious and off-putting. You also have shown an appalling insensitivity to the reality that people have different risk appetites especially as they get older, something which has been pointed out to you over and over again, to no avail. Also, please provide a link to where you ever recommended capping one's Bitcoin position at 1% of your portfolio. Maybe you have, but just earlier on this thread you were applauding another poster's plans to move all of his bank accounts into Bitcoin. Grandiose and all-in when Bitcoin is up, you turn maudlin, verbally abusive, and self-pitying when it crashes, and either dubiously claim you presciently liquidated your positions months earlier, or that your interest in Bitcoin was never more than intellectual in nature to begin with. You need to give your Bitcoin hucksterism on this forum a break. As I said earlier, you're alienating people more than gaining new converts.

Excellent article. Thank you.

Believe it or not, I worry what a sudden unexpected blow to financial health might have on you. I also think "hatred of the banking system" as a primary incentive to get into crypto is not well-advised. Contrary to the propaganda you read on these threads, most of the people sounding words of caution are not doing so out of jealousy, inherent negativity, or rigid resistance to new technologies. They're doing it out of genuine skepticism. I have to say, though, that I see the speculation in crypto markets as an extreme example of the froth in asset and financial markets generated by artificially low interest rates and quantitative easing. I see the crashing of asset values which will accompany the normalization of interest rates as very healthy and necessary for the economic health of economies, and frankly, welcome it. Why? Because the rising cost of living, asset inflation in real estate and the stock market, the negative real savings rates, and the income and wealth inequalities caused by monetary policy have done enormous damage to many people, including myself.

Dude, you really need to snap out of it. I had a 25 year career in insurance and risk management, including working with sophisticated self-insurance products for products liability and workers compensation for Toyota Motors North American operations. I am very familiar with techniques for measuring and managing risk including: using standard deviations, risk avoidance, risk transfer, diversification, hedging, puts and calls, etc., etc. I consider myself to have highly honed risk management skills, and I find it baffling that you think that risk management alone will enable you to assume any risk out there. That's like saying 'No worries about smoking in my fireworks factory - I've got insurance.' Also, before considering which risk management tools to utilize, you have to assess and understand the nature of the underlying risk, which is next to impossible with an asset class which is so difficult to apply valuation metrics to.

Most of the time when people talk about financial risk management they are talking about managing the risk that your actual return is less than your expected return.

I think there may be some miscommunication. Crypto bulls routinely claim that anybody's skepticism about crypto stems from a lack of understanding about the technology, a knee jerk rejection of the technology because they are too set in their ways to research what crypto is all about. I was pointing out that most of what I've seen on line has been technical analysis of price movement with little attention paid to underlying fundamentals. It's very difficult for me to understand why you are talking about risk management considering it is almost impossible to put a fair valuation on a crypto currency. Your comment that most of the information available to retail investors is outdated only underscores my contention that crypto bulls claiming to have thoroughly researched the crypto space and to understand the risks involved may be overly confident. I think the intro and first 7+ minute segment on the below video do a good job of explaining the skepticism behind crypto valuations.

Here's something else I don't get... I keep hearing about DYOR, and being dismissed as someone who "hasn't done his research." What research is there to do? There aren't any fundamentals to research. No earnings, no P/E ratios, no ROE, etc. All I ever see are guys obsessing over technical charts, plotting support and resistance levels, speculating about future valuations. I only see scant attention being paid to the main factors which could seriously cause the price to swing wildly: regulation, interest rates, inflation, economic downturns. I'm curious to know what research people claim to be doing besides hanging out on crypto investment forums and watching U-tube videos. Are you seriously trying to tell me that some guy in Mukdahan fiddling around on an Oppo smart phone knew the risks he was taking putting his money in an algorithmic stablecoin?

After watching a ton of U-tube videos on crypto currencies over the week-end, I was struck by the cult-like dynamic in many of the videos, and equally struck by how often I have read these sames themes regurgitated on crypto threads on this forum. The talk about potentially astronomical returns in the future as well as the intra-day price volatility appeal to "get rich quick" fantasies. The talk about the crypto "community," how the community needs to "stick together" and "stay strong", the esoteric crypto jargon; the self-congratulatory self-perception that crypto investors are visionaries, and more intelligent than everyone else, and that there are outside forces trying to destroy the crypto-sphere all helps contribute to a cult-like sense of belonging, "being in the know", being "chosen." Ageism, and contempt for traditional investors, and anyone who expresses skepticism - all themes which I had previously heard from crypto promoters on this forum - also contribute to the sense of belonging to a special group. Setting aside for a moment the issue of whether decentralized finance is viable over the long term, the promise of untold riches to be gained by investing in crypto currencies seems to be nothing short of a Ponzi scheme intended to bilk retail investors out of their life savings. It seems totally dependent on somebody willing to pay a higher price than the price you paid for something that has almost no inherent economic value, which, in my opinion, goes a long way towards explaining why some crypto investors are so evangelical about promoting crypto investments. I was especially struck by Michael Saylor's Christ-like pontificating about how Bitcoin was the only viable way forward. It really did leave me with the feeling that I was being indoctrinated into a cult. The richly appointed interiors of his home, prominently featured in many of his Bitcoin videos, seemed to have been expressly chosen for the purposes of firing the imaginations of retail investors that they too could get rich quick. Your money is your money. Do what you want, but I'm as skeptical as ever, and there's no way I would ever invest in crypto currencies.

Exactly this.

Crypto certainly doesn't seem to be performing well in a rising interest rate environment. Take a look at what the long end of the Treasury market is doing: ten year down 345 basis points just in the past few days. Seems to be signalling a belief that inflation is going to force the Fed to keep tightening even if the economy goes into recession. Does not bode well for stocks, real estate, other more speculative assets.

Bit(ter)coin

Just a quick word to the urbanistas on this thread... The belief that urban life is inherently superior to rural life is quite outdated. Maybe a hundred years ago you could only find cultural stimulation and entertainment in cities, but ever since the advent of mass media that's really no longer true. Consider: how much of your entertainment comes from cable TV, Netflix, music streaming services, U-tube, e-books, or [cough, cough] TVF? All of this is equally available to those living in the countryside. True, Bangkok offers better restaurants and more lavish shopping malls than you can find upcountry, but many international foods and consumer items can now be purchased on-line. Ask yourself when is the last time you ate gold-leaf sushi or went to see a philharmonic orchestra? And let's not forget about the pollution, traffic congestion, heat, and noise in large cities. It's not a class issue either; many wealthy people around the world put a high value on the peace and quiet which rural life has to offer. Frankly, I suspect that many of the people who belittle rural Thais as a bunch of ill-educated hillbillies do so because they can't speak the language and are unable to appreciate what they have to offer. Just because someone doesn't require constant stimulation and distraction doesn't mean that their quality of life is lower or that they are bored out of their minds. It can just as easily be argued that too much stimulation and distraction risks dissolution and dissipation, and can impede focus, self-development, and spiritual growth.