OT: Ray, how's your Bitcoin investment going?

[Mr. Pink]

Kiev and now Odessa are dark.Millions have left the country, and, if and when the electric grid fails, millions more will. Russia occupies an area that produced 60-70% of GDP. All able bodied men who couldn't escape or buy their way out of the country are fighting. If we weren't there for support, this would be over.

[verticaldoug]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pink

Yeah, but, the way I see it, regulating crypto in any way negates the whole concept of crypto. It's supposed to be, in theory, (dude), some sort of store of value that has no connection to your father's currency. Utopian in nature. But, in reality, prosecution futures. Or, why buy Bitcoin when the issuer of a competitive currency regulates it? It's great use up to this point, from what I see, and it has enough history to say this, is drug trafficking and money laundering. It isn't even a defense against periods when all other assets drop or crash, like gold has been lately. This year is proof of that.

I think the ecosystem built around Crypto negated the concept of crypto long ago. The concept was really limited to just the bitcoin and the ledger. The interface into the system is where all the shenanigans occur. This part of the ecosystem is built on trust and opaqueness otherwise stablecoins, defi, yield farming would not exist.

Back to my Joe Kennedy example, the early stock market was often a place for 'get rich quick' schemes. This is how I look at crypto. Essentially, a get rich quick scheme. Binance offering 50% APR for 'cloud farming' seems to be in this category.

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pink

Kiev and now Odessa are dark.Millions have left the country, and, if and when the electric grid fails, millions more will. Russia occupies an area that produced 60-70% of GDP. All able bodied men who couldn't escape or buy their way out of the country are fighting. If we weren't there for support, this would be over.

Doubt it will ever be 'over', unless putin leaves. Russia will never successfully 'occupy' Ukraine. Russia doesn't have the resources, people, strength to do that. The resulting insurgency would make Afghanistan look like a sunday tea party.
Putin has lost almost 100,000 men since February. Almost twice what the US lost in VietNam in over 10 years. Putin isn't hurting yet but it's getting close. Putin needs an offramp..or he needs to be retired.

BTW-what does this have to do with Ray and Bitcoin?

[verticaldoug]

Originally Posted by oldpotatoe

Doubt it will ever be 'over'. Russia will never successfully 'occupy' Ukraine. Russia doesn't have the resources, people, strength to do that. The resulting insurgency would make Afghanistan look like a sunday tea party.
Putin has lost almost 100,000 men since February. Almost twice what the US lost in VietNam in over 10 years. Putin isn't hurting yet but it's getting close. Putin needs an offramp..or he needs to be retired.

BTW-what does this have to do with Ray and Bitcoin?

As Boris Pasternak wrote about WW1 and the Revolution in Dr. Zhivago, Yevgraf Zhivago 'we underestimated our brothers cursed ability to suffer. . We thought it'd be over in a year, but during the second year with their great coats rotting on their backs, our brothers continued to suffer. '

(paraphrased)

[Mr. Pink]

Originally Posted by oldpotatoe

Doubt it will ever be 'over', unless putin leaves. Russia will never successfully 'occupy' Ukraine. Russia doesn't have the resources, people, strength to do that. The resulting insurgency would make Afghanistan look like a sunday tea party.
Putin has lost almost 100,000 men since February. Almost twice what the US lost in VietNam in over 10 years. Putin isn't hurting yet but it's getting close. Putin needs an offramp..or he needs to be retired.

BTW-what does this have to do with Ray and Bitcoin?

Well, to be short, war is profit, and the real winners of this thing will be our defense industry and the financiers, including funny money nerds, who support it and loan to the rebuilders. Many billions of usury were made from the Marshall plan.

Oh, and, Russia seemed to be doing just fine in Crimea for eight years, before all this.

Oh, and its heartening to see that comfy, warm Americans are so committed to fighting this war to the last Ukranian.

[redir]

The last Ukrainian is willing to stay in this fight so... When you love your country, your people, and your culture it's just what you do. It seems to me most Americans would get that.

As for BTC and that relationship Mr. Potato the war in Ukraine definitely hit the crypto market. Russians played a big part in it and they were cut off. China too but they are able to get around the restrictions well.

[mstateglfr]

Originally Posted by oldpotatoe

Doubt it will ever be 'over', unless putin leaves. Russia will never successfully 'occupy' Ukraine. Russia doesn't have the resources, people, strength to do that. The resulting insurgency would make Afghanistan look like a sunday tea party.
Putin has lost almost 100,000 men since February. Almost twice what the US lost in VietNam in over 10 years. Putin isn't hurting yet but it's getting close. Putin needs an offramp..or he needs to be retired.

BTW-what does this have to do with Ray and Bitcoin?

My first thought after reading that post too.

Apparently its all connected, even when you dont see it and even when it isnt, it is.

[verticaldoug]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pink

Well, to be short, war is profit, and the real winners of this thing will be our defense industry and the financiers, including funny money nerds, who support it and loan to the rebuilders. Many billions of usury were made from the Marshall plan.

Oh, and, Russia seemed to be doing just fine in Crimea for eight years, before all this.

Oh, and its heartening to see that comfy, warm Americans are so committed to fighting this war to the last Ukranian.

I'd like to see the data on how the many billions of usury was made from the Marshall Plan. My understanding is of the total $13.3b, $11.8b was grants with no interest attached, and only $1.5B was loans with interest. At the time, it amounted to about 3% of GDP of the region until 1952.

The only criticism I really see is from Noam Chomsky who was against because it paved the way for American Corporate Direct investment into Europe and the rise of the transnational corporation.

[Mr. Pink]

"grants". Sounds good.

https://www.citigroup.com/citi/about...tail-1948.html

They didn't have crypto back then. Couldn't make up capital from thin air. Banks did that.

[verticaldoug]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pink

"grants". Sounds good.

https://www.citigroup.com/citi/about...tail-1948.html

They didn't have crypto back then. Couldn't make up capital from thin air. Banks did that.

The banks provided the interim funding via letters of credit so countries could buy things like food. The countries used the grants and loans from the marshall plan to repay the letters of credit. LCs are generally short term financing bridges. This is not usury.

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pink

Well, to be short, war is profit, and the real winners of this thing will be our defense industry and the financiers, including funny money nerds, who support it and loan to the rebuilders. Many billions of usury were made from the Marshall plan.

Oh, and, Russia seemed to be doing just fine in Crimea for eight years, before all this.

Oh, and its heartening to see that comfy, warm Americans are so committed to fighting this war to the last Ukranian.

I'd say the real winners will be Ukrainians in a free Ukraine.

Rebuilding Europe, that money spent has been repaid many, many times over..

Before Russia invaded Ukraine proper? BTW-Russia seemed to be doing just fine, how about those Ukrainians who didn't wish to live under russia's thumb? Screw them?

It's going to be to the last Russian..so, what do you suggest? Just give Ukraine to Russia and Putin? Screw the Ukrainian? After Ukraine, who's next? Finland? Poland? I guess American exceptionalism is alive and well,...still.

You mentioned WW2..I guess, after Pearl Harbor, the US should just have been afraid and stayed neutral...eh?

[redir]

BTC is the new gold. Web3, digital gold. That is the way I see it. Sure, real gold has a commercial value to it but it's price is really determined by mining and supply. Jewerly making does affect the demand but even that is a sort of storage of gold, it just looks pretty as you store it around your neck.

BTC isn't pretty but you still mine it. It has value just like gold does because people have applied value to it. To say that an asset that has a 24hour volume of 900mil last I checked is nothing but thin air is pretty silly sounding to me.

As far as scams go? Wall St, which started as a slave market in the first part of the 18th century has been screwing people over for a couple hundred years

Some see cryptocurrencies a way out and that has given it tremendous value which one simply cannot deny whether you like it or not.

I'm still looking for BTC to hit 10k. Thats then the big whales are going to go all in and you will see some vicious price action. NFA of course. Never ever invest in cryto money you need to feed the kids or even your pets.

[HTupolev]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pink

Kiev and now Odessa are dark.

They're struggling with intermittency, but the grid isn't just gone.

Russia occupies an area that produced 60-70% of GDP.

No it doesn't. Even if Russia occupied the entirety of Crimea, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, and Kherson oblasts, which it doesn't, we'd be looking at about 15% of Ukraine's pre-war GDP.

All able bodied men who couldn't escape or buy their way out of the country are fighting.

Not really. Ukraine's ability to mobilize has been mostly limited by material and training, not manpower. Enough Ukrainians have volunteered that they actually cancelled the standard autumn draft for this year.

If we weren't there for support, this would be over.

It would look different, but it's unlikely that it would be over. Even a lot of the analysts who thought that Ukraine's conventional forces would be quickly defeated - analysts who badly underestimated Ukraine and underestimated various systemic problems with Russia's military - were of the opinion that Russian forces would fail in the occupation effort.

[XXtwindad]

I'd love to discuss the crypto implosion. Can someone start a "Ukraine" thread?

[redir]

Originally Posted by XXtwindad

I'd love to discuss the crypto implosion. Can someone start a "Ukraine" thread?

It's taken some amazingly hard hits in the last year but it's still there and still going which if anything shows it's resilience.

Just checking in on a lot of my 'traditional' investments they are finally back in the green again too but only right on the border line.

What I have found is that even though the dream of crypto is to be decentralized and not tethered to banks and traditional finance is that it still follows the same trends.

One of those trends BTW that you can track back to the 1920's if you want is that once the bottom of an inflation cycle is found there is a bull run. It's like clock work and even though crypto is still very young it has followed that trend as well.

Unfortunately war has a way of messing with markets so it is part of the system.

When I look at candle stick charts I am looking at human psychology more then anything else. It maps it out. The time to buy is when everyone is upset, depressed, angry and hopeless, when the markets implode as you say. But it goes against human nature and we will see once again that when the run starts people will be buying in at price points 3 and 4 times higher then they are right now.

Last year was a great time to build up and hold cash. When to dump it in? I wish I knew that answer. The bottom has got to be near though.