The Cipher

This comment is actually correct, but I suspect it won't play well here. There's too many people who aren't able to separate subjective values judgment from universal truth. It is what it is. I feel this way as well. And a large portion of the population does too, but with the caveat that they need to be told by authority figures that it's safe to travel. Ie, in addition to restrictions, they are sensitive to public health guidelines and press coverage. For travel, that seem to shape perceptions more than actual virus levels. (Source: I am a professional investment analyst with a sector specialization on casinos and hospitality. To do my job I monitor data and sentiments about this topic on an ongoing basis.) The demand is still there and it is strong. Just have a quick chat with anyone under the age of 50 and ask if they're planning to travel after borders reopen. It's probably well over 50% that will say yes. Beyond that, travel and tourism account for 10% of global GDP and 319 million jobs. The industry is entrenched and it probably isn't going anywhere.

Very high percentage. And vaccines are readily available. Kids are excluded. I wasn't suggesting that Thailand do this, just responding to your question about whether other places had done so.

I think this is unncecessarily pessimistic. In every case where restrictions have been lifted we've seen a tremendous return of demand. Las Vegas would be a good example. We're also seeing heavily vaccinated countries in North America and Europe reopening their borders to tourism, albeit limited to vaccinated travelers in many cases. But by any measure the vaccines have been highly effective in mitigating many of the worst impacts of Covid. And moreover, as a species we have been very successful at innovating relatively effective solutions to the pandemic in record time. There's no reason to believe that we won't continue to do so. Beyond the success of vaccines, we're also starting to see more pushback against heavy restrictions from fatigued populaces. Harsh restrictions were politically palatable because people were scared of a novel virus. But in the macro, Covid is not really that dangerous to us as a species (don't @ me). And if the political benefit of implementing restrictions starts to subside (ie, enough people lose their fear of the virus), there are very viable paths to coexisting with Covid and managing its impact on our societies and lives. Of course it's not a sure thing that we'll be able to contain Covid or that just living with it will ever become widely accepted. But if I had to bet, I'd expect international travel numbers to be greater in six months, and certainly in a year, than they are now.

If a person is in this situation, they are overinvested and may not understand their strategy or horizon. Genuine very long term investors should be volatility agnostic in the short and medium terms, as long as the general price trajectory is up. Large drawdowns are currently a feature of the illiquid and highly levered crypto markets. As a general statement if a -50-80% price movement affects your day to day lifestyle, you've invested too much.

Yes. Canada is doing this. There's a fairly long list of places where you need to show proof of vaccination to enter (including restaurants).

I know you addressed this to him, but I feel like this is a good point that applies to me lol. Every minute I spend on here would be better spent working on my business ????

Ok I gotta go to bed so I'm out after this but... I think you might be thinking too small. The promise of blockchain is that is has the potential to replace clearinghouses (hyperlink) by doing a better job. Settlement and reconciliation staff and their associated costs? Gone or sharply reduced. If you don't see any inefficiency in the current financial system then I really don't know what to tell you. Man, the information is out there. Here's a link to a paper on it. And oh, here's another one. Really not sure what else there is to say.

Simple example: so right now when we want to receive a capital call wire from clients it takes 3-5 business days to settle after it has been directed and then it needs to be reconciled afterwards. No less than four (!) staff (in total across all parties) are needed for this process the number of staff and the time delay to process a simple funding transfer and the associated accounting could easily be, and is frequently, more. Every one of those staff makes $50-100k/yr. Now if a few intelligently written lines of code process that transaction to an immutable ledger in minutes and for no more than a few dollars per transaction, how do you not see a massive efficiency gain? Now what if there were myriad opportunities like that across the plumbing of finance? And hey, you might be right anyway and the whole thing goes to zero. Or maybe it goes to the moon! But either way we can't know the outcome with certainty. So what are we left with? The balance of probabilities and risk management of our portfolios and life decisions generally. And so once again, if I were to sit this out I'd need to be able to justify to myself why I am at zero exposure given my horizon and risk tolerance. I guess in the end life will sort out who did it right ????‍♂️.

Not trying to be a dick here, but this might help a bit. So you said: So regarding the first part, a lot of crypto assets are designed to trade in a decentralized way and protective regulations on the assets themselves are often light, or nonexistent. For example if you're trading or holding Bitcoin off an exchange and you get scammed or hacked, well Bitcoin is decentralized so it doesn't really have a manager that you can complain to and no regulator that is currently set up to help you. Certain regulated exchanges like Coinbase (which I'm aware that you used) are a little better. They have some insurance, but not FDIC insurance and are less regulated than traditional assets. Here's Coinbase's statement on their insurance. Big exchanges like Binance and Coinbase are increasingly regulated and aren't likely to steal your assets, so the risk there is reduced. I tend to think that you specifically just had a bad customer service experience. But nevertheless, there are additional layers of risk with crypto that most traditional assets don't have. Gotta be aware. The other thing I wanted to quickly touch on was the "absolutely no asset value" comment. That's not exactly true in all cases. There's a common misconception that all coins are basically interchangeable in function and only the names differ. But different tokens actually have different features. Stuff like Ethereum, Link, and AAVE all occupy different niches and are productive. This misconception is probably due to all of the coins out there that are legitimately useless garbage with no use case (pretty much all the dog coins). So it's super important to understand at least a bit about what you're buying.

Goal setting. 100%. It's too easy to be a leaf on the wind otherwise. Do that too long and one day you wake up and you're middle-aged with very little accomplishment and no direction. No thanks. Far better to decide what you want out of life and make a list of goals to get there with quarterly and annual benchmarking to make sure that you're moving in that direction. Then execute.

Don't take this the wrong way, but the fact that you wrote this says that you have no understanding of what you bought. Honestly, if a person doesn't understand what a crypto token is, and what it isn't, that person is probably better avoiding the asset class. There's too much risk. This is particularly true for the (mostly) retirement-age people that tend to frequent this community.

Ah. I'm in the process of establishing a second home in Bangkok and I'd prefer a comfortable condo over a house, personally. It's just generally more convenient and it'll be empty 4-8 months of the year. Houses are too much work. So was wondering if there are mad deals now, but I also remember other forumers saying that those condos never get sharply discounted despite the massive inventory ????‍♂️.

Hmm, do you think this is a good time to pick up a nice condo in downtown Bangkok? A lot of those buildings seem to have plenty of unsold units, so I do wonder...

I am long some BTC (although mostly I'm long Eth), so I do expect the price to rise, in general, over the medium term. But. One thing to keep in mind re: performance is that the total market cap of the asset matters. The current Bitcoin market cap is, let's say, $1T. So it would need an additional $1T in appreciation to 2x from here and an additional $4T to 5x from here. That's a lot of money. Consider that if Bitcoin had a market cap of only $500,000, new inflows of just $2M would result in the same 5x performance. So the bigger it gets, the harder it gets to do multiples. Just something to keep in mind. This depends on your expectations. Renting isn't throwing money away if the opportunity cost of the equity tied up in buying outweighs the cost of renting. In this case your opp cost would be (hypothetically) foregone crypto returns. So whether it's worth it or not depends on your future expectations and also your risk appetite. Then it just comes down to some quick spreadsheet math.

First time I am seeing this specific prediction. Who are these others? If your confidence level in this is high, then your best move is easily to either rent or buy on the biggest mortgage you can get without selling. Think about it - assuming that your BTC is worth exactly $50,000 per right now, and that it will be worth $500,000 per in four years, that's a 900% holding period return and a 77% compound annual growth rate. How are you ever going to beat that by buying property?

Well said. It's beyond time to put this sorry episode behind us.

I've explained this to you before, but ok fine. For old times' sake. So upfront definitions - by crypto, I am referring to any of the developments that are commonly accepted as under the crypto sphere. That includes technologies like blockchain, smart contracts, NFTs, and decentralized finance generally. I started writing an example, but it got super long, so I just Googled and found this handy report. Those are just a handful of examples related to one specific type of institution in one specific industry. The basic premise for an overhaul of the financial plumbing is that that there are a ton tasks currently performed by humans that can be done more efficiently and cheaper, by code. Think about this from an executive's perspective - if you can keep the top line (revenue) the same, while reducing opex via automation, what does that do for your net income and margins? Moreover, what happens to your share price (and your job) if your competitor firms are making vast cost-efficiency gains and you aren't? A lot of firms have already moved certain functions to India/the Philippines to save costs, why would you expect them to stop there? Crypto isn't the only possible solution to this, but it's a strong contender. Why? Because the bigger the space gets, the more benefits it accrues due to interlinked network effects. And more talented human capital goes to work on those problems (we are currently seeing this), and thus it scales further and the cycle continues. Kind of like, you know, the internet back in the day. And if you think about it, you'll notice that the mainstreaming of the crypto space is starting to get underway. You don't just go to sleep one night, wake up the next morning, and the whole world is different. It's a step by step process. And if you are perceptive, you'll see this happening with the trickle of news. First it's one small thing, then another, then another, then another... Now I need to be clear - I still think crypto is a highly speculative space with a ton of scams. I've said this before but should reiterate: I do not think that crypto allocations are suitable for a lot of the AseanNow readership. But for myself, as a 30 year old looking down the runway of the future, I just don't see the case for sitting this one out.

I am not so sure about this. We can debate the degree of impact that the general developments in the crypto space will end up having, but I wouldn't be so confident saying that it'll remain a novelty and won't replace anything. The potential in the technology is there to disrupt, or at least make vastly more efficient, several key areas of finance. And I've been a little slow to the realization of this, and really only began wrapping my head around it in the past few months - something I'm still working on. But the technology for change is there or being built out. The motive for change is there - the promise of vastly increased efficiency and cost savings in the clunky plumbing of global finance. And the human capital and direction of innovation are there. If the potential exists to overhaul dozens of these areas, do I feel confident that it won't succeed at even one? Especially now that the snowball looks to have started rolling down the mountain? Sure, there are risks. But how could I consider the paragraph above and then justify zero exposure? I can't.

Oh look, the US's second largest mortgage lender will accept payment in BTC. It's almost like changes are happening right before your eyes ????. But hey. What do I know? I'm just that career financier over here with a couple of three letter finance designations ????‍♂️.

Right. I'm just letting you know that if you are in a rush to have your wife vaccinated, she might be able to do so hassle-free in your home country even if she is not a citizen of that country. Just something to consider as you weigh your options. Plus the lifestyle advantages too.

Are you and your wife both only Lao citizens? If you're a citizen of a Western country, you should check the vaccine eligibility policy for your country. In Canada and the US at least, the vaccines are plentiful and anyone is eligible regardless of nationality or legal status. Mandatory quarantines are a pain if your destination country requires one, but if you can stay at <destination> for 3-4 months, you might be able to ride it out long enough that Thailand changes their entry requirements. And anyway, there's quality of life to consider as well. I flew back to Vancouver last week and am enjoying the quality of life improvement since there are significantly fewer restrictions here now - don't even have to wear a mask anymore! ????. And Thailand will get there too, but it might be a few months yet. Just something to consider.

Funnily enough, this could actually be spun as an argument for how dangerous Covid isn't rather than how dangerous it is.

I mean, I guess that's fair. AseanNow is a community renowned for the intelligence of its members after all. Everyone likes to think they are smarter than average. The way I see it, in the long term, the lives people live usually tells their story.

It's been 1.5+ years. What kind of people really still scared of Covid at this point? NGMI.

This doesn't surprise me at all. My curiosity is more about what the foreign husband finds appealing about that arrangement. If they're happy then that's great. But the idea of marrying a former bargirl and raising someone else's kid isn't something that resonates with me at all, and so I'm just trying to broaden my horizons by reading the perspectives of others.