wolf81

On 12/3/2021 at 4:10 PM, onthedarkside said:

A misinformation post claiming, wrongly, that vaccination doesn't help prevent COVID infections has been removed.

 

How weird.
 

One doctor of the Outbreak Management Team that advises the Dutch government on the COVID situation in The Netherlands, (Diederik Grommers) actually stated on a Belgian radio program recently that vaccinations don’t prevent infections and therefore he didn’t see the point of introducing a 2G system in The Netherlands. Since vaccinations don’t prevent transmissions, he thought a 1G approach would be wiser.

He also said the following during the program: “it doesn’t matter if you’re vaccinated or not; if you feel sick, stay home”.

8 hours ago, Will B Good said:

This will just mean Thais have less disposable income and the government will have more revenue to spend on tanks and APCs.

 

If they really want to improve health then they need to educate.......what am I thinking!

And they could introduce some legislation that would limit the maximum amount of salt allowed in packaged food, perhaps based on the weight.

And work together with industry to slowly reduce the amount of salt in the foods over the coming years.

4 hours ago, Eric Loh said:

Hundreds of millions of mRNA vaccines have been administered safely in the world. There is no evidence to indicate that the spike proteins generated by human cells following vaccination are a toxin or that they circulate in the body and damage tissues contrary to to what a Canadian virus immunologist claimed. This  claim was picked up by anti-vaxxer organization and widely spread. 

I suggest you look up on what's happening in Israel right now. The country that only uses Pfizer.

That guy is bonkers ...

I loved the View Talay 5 pool. 
 

I believe other View Talay condos nearby have similar sized pools.

5 hours ago, jackdd said:

... the benefits outweigh the risks ...

I am always annoyed when I read this soundbite. We don't know yet if there are any long term risks with mRNA vaccines. Also, when looking at some highly vaccinated areas in the world we still see cases go up (Ireland, Gibraltar, many US blue states). 

From what I understand, at the moment Florida is performing quite well even if there are no mask mandates and no policies that attempt to force people into getting vaccinated. And Florida is kinda of like the retirement state in the USA, many old people.

3 hours ago, Neeranam said:

So he has unrealized gains with his house? 

 

I know a few bitcoin maximalists that will never sell their bitcoin, bit borrow against it. 

If hyperinflation is coming, then the debt on the house will quickly drop. If you believe crypto will stay strong or even become much stronger in such an environment, it makes no sense to sell the crypto to pay off the debt.

I’m far from wealthy, but if crypto goes up a lot in value in the coming months, I’ll sell a bit to buy a condo here in Thailand, but I will like also finance it with a loan (50%) through MBK Guarantee.

9 hours ago, Dumbfounded said:

Africa still has polio, so that tells me all I need to know about you. How about Thalidomide? Guess that was safe too in your books. But why are you comparing vaxes from yesteryear to now? Were you forced to take those vaxes with threats of restrictions. One other thing I'm curious about is why is the US Senate exempt from being vaccinated. Do what I say not what I do comes to mind

Other recent examples of vaccines that didn't turn out to be so great were:

- Anthrax vaccine that was forced on US soldiers (and caused many problems)

- Mexican flu vaccine was also problematic IIRC, but less so than the antrax one

By the way, I came across this video today on Bitcoin vs fiat and it was an interesting discussion.

35 minutes ago, lkn said:

By that logic, shares in Facebook is a good store of value.

It's probably much better than both fiat currencies and keeping money in the bank yes.

49 minutes ago, GrandPapillon said:

actually, there is one and only use case, but it's about illegal money ????

 

and since regulations will shut that down eventually, the countdown for that use case already started

For crypto? That doesn't make sense. Cash and even bank transactions often involve illegally gained money. At least the block chain transactions (wrt Bitcoin) are fully visible for everyone. And with KYC (know your consumer) regulation implemented in many countries, it's possible to link certain crypto wallets to certain people. It's the reason why you often have to show a photo of yourself, your passport, other information related to you (e.g. water bill) when signing up to a crypto Exchange. 

I believe what you will see in the near future is bigger players entering the crypto markets. Especially since it'll become easier to get involved in crypto without the hassle of dealing with wallets and such (e.g. by buying Bitcoin ETFs which are either introduced already or will be introduced very soon). Bitcoin ETFs will allow institutional investors (e.g. pension funds) to buy Bitcoin much more easily.

Some use cases for Bitcoin and other cryptos are:

- It will likely proof to be the hardest currency in existence, which means it is a great store of value.

- It's easier to transfer than gold. 

- You are not reliant on banks for transfers, it's very cheap to send to wallets in other countries.

- You can easily carry it along with you to other countries, e.g. by carrying a hardware wallet or storing your wallets' private key in your brain.

- Precious metals (e.g. gold) might become cheap once we are able to mine astroids, but Bitcoin doesn't have this risk. 

- Bitcoin is not impacted by inflation, which is kind of an hidden tax used by governments.

8 hours ago, fdsa said:

yes, and that software was released in 2015. Dare to name a single distributed database or public ledger that existed before 2008?

Lotus Notes is a distributed database that many companies have used on their intranet.

5 hours ago, Lemsta69 said:

liquidate everything at bull run top next year is my plan too, but easier said than done eh? I hope we get it right this time ????????

The point is that it's impossible to know when the top is reached, so you just have to make up a price in your mind that you'd be happy to sell at and sell when that price point is reached.

At least, that's my plan this time. 

2 hours ago, allanos said:

I always put my money where my mouth is.! I sold a property and put the proceeds into Bitcoin. I sold all of my krugerrand gold coins, (a substantial amount), and put the proceeds into Bitcoin and Ethereum. I understand that the true gains will be made over the medium to long term. I am all in, and am prepared (mentally) forprice volatility, and to wait for the rewards which will surely come along.

 

In my view, Alts are for trading and not medium or long-term holds. I deem them to be speculative, at best, and not investments. Some, of course, will break through, and settle into long-term adoption, but which ones out of the 7000-plus which are out there? 

 

Both Bitcoin and Ethereum, on the other hand, are now fully entrenched, adoption has reached critical mass and they have both benefited from, among their many other attributes, first-mover advantage.

 

Not only will they be difficult to dislodge from their pre-eminent positions in the crypto-universe, 

one can see neither of them ever going to zero, although course-corrections will inevitably take place along the way.

 

Anyone looked at how the Amazon share price performed in the early years of its life-cycle? At one stage, it even plummeted 90%. I take heart when I see Bitcoin price drops of around 50%, as they are meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

 

Bitcoin and Ethereum are essentially the internet of money, their network-effect following the trajectories explicit in Metcalf's Law. If the internet adoption of the late-90's is anything to go by, Bitcoin's adoption at this stage of its cycle is almost twice as great, and the move is unlikely to be halted.

 

As to the OP, I agree that much of what is seen on YouTube is suspect, but for good, and relatively unbiased programming, for Technical Analysis (TA) I would recommend, first and foremost, Chris, from MM Crypto (a bit of a showman, and ok if you don't mind Germans), whose output is first class. Secondly, Karl from The Moon, with excellent TA.

 

This is mostly for short-term or swing-traders, it must be said, but they both provide good foundational knowledge on the price movements, and jargon, found in the crypto space.

With Bitcoin you should be prepared to see drops of up to 80%. This has happened several times in the past and is likely to happen in the future again (likely shortly after reaching a new top of anywhere between 100.000 USD and 235.000 USD). The key, then, is to not be too greedy and cash out after having some kind of gains that you can be ok with (this was my mistake in 2017/2018 ... I was too greedy to sell when I had nice gains, so in the end my gains were quite minimal, since I kept waiting for the price to rise, while the price drops from 40k to 10k or so).

By the way, when looking on YouTube videos of people advertising coins (or listen to Telegram groups and the like), be aware most likely there's some people at the top that give buying advise to people below. The people at the top will invest prior to sending out crypto-tips, so they can get huge gains (if many people follow up on the tips and buy the same coins). These people might dump the coin again after a certain value is reached, raking up a huge profit at the expense of late investors, who will be left holding a bag of worthless coins.

With that in mind, I think it's best to ignore most crypto advise from YouTube, Telegram groups and the like. 

You might not get the most profit choosing Bitcoin, but it seems to me the safest bet. Ethereum should be solid as well. Both coins have existed for a long time and development on both is ongoing. 

Current estimate for Bitcoin is it'll reach a value of around 100.000 USD near the end of the year, based on the Stock2Flow model (which so far seems to be in line with historical BTC price developments). 

I've only been a little bit scared of COVID back when I first heard about it and saw videos of Chinese people dropping dead in the streets.

But soon after, once I checked out the World of Stats website a couple of times, it became clear to me COVID would be mainly dangerous for old people or people with multiple co-morbidities. I'm 39, my girlfriend is 41 and our daughter is 4.5 years now. None of us have any co-morbidities. So with this in mind, I wasn't worried at all.

I know many people might not agree on this, but in my mind it's really not anymore dangerous than the flu for most people, including the three of us. My girlfriend is a bit scared for COVID though. As long as we don't have any other ailments and we take good care of our health (exercise a bit, eat healthy food, etc..) I'm sure we'll be fine. 

I actually believe we have COVID together in January 2021 when the 3 of us we're all quite sick all at the same time. The sickness we had was quite similar to the flu, but unlike the flu I had in the past, I had a lot of pain in the throat, which never happened before. If we indeed had COVID at the time, we all might have anti-bodies for COVID already. FYI: we live in North-West Thailand close to the border of Myanmar. In the amphur nearby there's a Chinatown. The people there have a lot of contact with people from China, which includes a lot of trading. This is the reason why I believe COVID arrived already in our village in January 2021.

I wear a mask outside only for other people, as I am not worried for my, my girlfriend and our daughter these days.

One remark about people that comment about generalising teacher behaviour. Of course not all teachers have the same teaching style, however I do believe there could be a norm in a country, hence why I stated: "Do Thai teachers tend to become a little bit angry?".

Anyways thanks for all responses, gives me some food for thought. I discussed my girlfriends teaching style with my girlfriend and she explained me she does the same as her sister did to her. Her sister would even hit my girlfriend if she tried to explain a subject and my girlfriend wouldn't understand it. I asked my girlfriend if she believes that kind of behaviour helped her understand subjects better and I think she got the point. 

I aided the niece of our daughter a little bit with her maths homework (I am quite patient and I enjoy teaching people stuff) and I did see as we did more math exercises together, she began to improve. Was nice to see.

Perhaps in the future at some point I should consider doing some part-time teaching in Thailand (if possible). But first need to safe retirement money with freelance computer programming, which earns a whole lot more ...