Bitcoin....who's gotten into it?

[skaredshtles]

scared shitless prob too risky for you

It absolutely is.

I'm just pointing out that comparing returns without the associated risk makes the comparison kind of useless.

[JimmyCarter]

This is meaningless without a risk column.

Not to mention the other two had established value when they started trading (as opposed to starting at <.01) so it’s even more meaningless

[CarlMega]

A quickie article I just read had this guy's quote:

Mark Matson, president and CEO, Matson Money: I think it’s got no business in a prudent portfolio of anybody that has a purpose for their time, their energy, their money, their life, their retirement. It isn’t an investment. It’s pure speculation, for several reasons. Cryptocurrencies have an annual standard deviation over the past five years upward of 90%. So obviously it isn’t a real currency. There’s no “there” there: When you buy it, you’re not buying a company, you’re not buying human capital, you’re not buying intellectual property or capital. You don’t own a factory, you don’t own products. At least if you’d bought gold, which I also am against, you’d actually have a physical property.

These are random zeros and ones floating around in hyperspace that only have value because of what P.T. Barnum said, which is that there’s a sucker born every minute. So I just think cryptocurrencies and ETFs based on them are a terrible idea. Wrapping them up in an ETF doesn’t make it better. There are three types of cryptocurrency ETFs. There are ETFs that have actual coins in them. There are ones that are backed by futures. And there are ones that own stocks of companies that have a high exposure to Bitcoin currencies. All three of those types are flawed: They’re either stock-picking, market timing, or track-record investing, and all of those have been proven to be flawed methods of investing.

Which is where I'm at for a traditional mindset about investing. Fundamentals and all. I cringe at the energy waste, but personally have no problem with speculative traders. If you have some sort of savy and restraint in figuring out how to exploit this for gain, rock on. There are speculative traders using dodgy reasoning in traditional markets; a few are successful, with corresponding losers on the other side. And that's mostly fine.

I'm not a gambler, and I've missed some excellent opportunities where the fundamentals were sound - but you needed to bet on a few horses because the best-in-breed wasn't easy to predict. Subject matter I knew well too. Woulda-coulda-shoulda. But unlike a number of FOMO sensations that we've all seen come and go, these companies functioned in area/markets - that desperately needed what they were poised uniquely to provide.

That's where the struggle here - from a payments or currency perspective - objectively worse. As a store of value - highly volatile. It's duplicatable or even replaceable with better. Subject to detoothing regulation or widespread restriction - yup. Footing and name recognition? Pretty strong so that's positive.

I dunno. Give me the legal market where this is better. Tell me the future killer use-case, who has to use it. Something other than "network is big" or conjured, strained dystopian landscapes where BTC would likely fall under heel too.

Now that I wrote that, I just realized my dissonance. The uber-advocates give it treatment like a fundamental-type investment. Skeptics like me want some basis for that claim but the contortions are never going to fit it conforming to traditional standards.

[byates1]

Gotta take a flyer here and there. BTC is a risk. Nothing wrong with that. Couple % call it good. Be reasonable w the other 90 some %. That's all I've done. Worked out fucking great.

[skaredshtles]

Gotta take a flyer here and there. BTC is a risk. Nothing wrong with that.

No - but comparing it to other investments without *quantifying* the risk makes the comparison useless.

[byates1]

pretty standard to be reasonable w most investment and take some risk, high risk, along the way. btc's meteoric rise cannot be ignored. everyone has had plenty of years to get in. the window for reasonably priced btc is over.

[CarlMega]

Gotta take a flyer here and there.

I appreciate that. I know some people who are the type who start like 10 businesses, 9 fail with loses and one hits a home run. They live well. I can't knock it.

My holdings are boring: real estate, indexes, diverse funds, treasuries, cds, interest earning accounts with liquidity. My personal risk tolerance is probably overly restrictive; but I like investing in productive assets that are tantamount to saying 'I believe in the lasting power of our economy and stability of civilization'. Heh - an outdated concept lately.

My personal flyers are probably more along the lines of speculative real estate - worse case, bag holder for something I'd want anyway.

[bennymac]

Gotta take a flyer here and there. BTC is a risk. Nothing wrong with that. Couple % call it good. Be reasonable w the other 90 some %. That's all I've done. Worked out fucking great.

Apparently mags aren’t supposed to take this flyer if they don’t buy completely into BTCs ability to solve climate change and poverty in third world countries. There’s a purity test. No criticism or blasphemy allowed.

[byates1]

Benny can I buy a few Mexicans from you? got a landscaping job in big sky I need to fleece some alabaster white millionaires out of cash. Thx.

[Cono Este]

Sold 20% of my COIN. Was hoping for ipo price, but I took my initial investment out. I think we’ll see it.

They have monopoly on ripping off crypto investors.

[stalefish3169]

A quickie article I just read had this guy's quote:



Which is where I'm at for a traditional mindset about investing. Fundamentals and all. I cringe at the energy waste, but personally have no problem with speculative traders. If you have some sort of savy and restraint in figuring out how to exploit this for gain, rock on. There are speculative traders using dodgy reasoning in traditional markets; a few are successful, with corresponding losers on the other side. And that's mostly fine.

I'm not a gambler, and I've missed some excellent opportunities where the fundamentals were sound - but you needed to bet on a few horses because the best-in-breed wasn't easy to predict. Subject matter I knew well too. Woulda-coulda-shoulda. But unlike a number of FOMO sensations that we've all seen come and go, these companies functioned in area/markets - that desperately needed what they were poised uniquely to provide.

That's where the struggle here - from a payments or currency perspective - objectively worse. As a store of value - highly volatile. It's duplicatable or even replaceable with better. Subject to detoothing regulation or widespread restriction - yup. Footing and name recognition? Pretty strong so that's positive.

I dunno. Give me the legal market where this is better. Tell me the future killer use-case, who has to use it. Something other than "network is big" or conjured, strained dystopian landscapes where BTC would likely fall under heel too.

Now that I wrote that, I just realized my dissonance. The uber-advocates give it treatment like a fundamental-type investment. Skeptics like me want some basis for that claim but the contortions are never going to fit it conforming to traditional standards.

So let me get this straight. This Matson MFer wants to charge his poorest clients 2% a year (https://smartasset.com/financial-adv...n-money-review) to keep them out of the best performing major asset in modern history while he puts them in dog shit (https://hedgefollow.com/funds/Matson...rmance-History) funds?

Got it.

[stalefish3169]

This one is for Jong.

https://twitter.com/NewmanJ_R/status...70354072248370

[CarlMega]

So let me get this straight. This Matson MFer wants to charge his poorest clients 2% a year (https://smartasset.com/financial-adv...n-money-review) to keep them out of the best performing major asset in modern history while he puts them in dog shit (https://hedgefollow.com/funds/Matson...rmance-History) funds?

Got it.

That's fine. I'm more of a Bogle investor so that speaks to my opinion of utility of FAs.

But, I think his quote is spot on despite BTC's recent performance recovery. FWIW, there were 3 other FA/managers in the article - 2 who thought it was reasonable to put 1% into speculative assets like BTC depending on investor's risk profile. All of them called it a speculative investment.

But you quoted my other post and didn't address anything I personally wrote.

Jeffrey Janson, senior wealth advisor, Summit Wealth Partners: I have been reaching out to clients proactively and asking if they want to take 10 minutes and talk about it. I don’t push it on them. We talk about position sizing and the volatility of the asset class. I would say 98% of my clients have said, let’s dip a toe in the water and get off zero and see what happens.

I definitely agree that it’s a speculative asset, but if you’re building portfolios, I don’t think having a small position in a speculative bucket is a problem. I actually think it’s beneficial for a well-balanced portfolio, especially if you’re going to rebalance periodically. I don’t know that there is one single solution to the allocation question. But when everybody is coming off zero, I’m actually thinking that 1% would be a good place to start.

I’ve had some clients say, let’s do 2% or 3% or 5%, and I’ve tried to talk them back from that level of allocation. I’ll tell them, let’s dip a toe in the water, let’s walk before we run. I want to prepare clients for the downside volatility when that inevitably comes. And I don’t want them to make the mistake of selling; I want them to add at that point. And then I’m also telling people that this is really a five-year hold.

Other guy:

I personally like Bitcoin, but you have to see it in context: It is a speculative asset. It’s got no fundamental value, it’s got no cash flows, it’s essentially digital gold. It’s going to take a long time for the institutional investment policy communities to be able to add Bitcoin as an asset class. I would think of Bitcoin kind of as house money. Whatever you put into it, don’t plan on that amount necessarily being there in the future, because it’s very volatile; it could go up or down 90% very quickly.

[J. Barron DeJong]

This one is for Jong.

https://twitter.com/NewmanJ_R/status...70354072248370

Durrrrr.

You can tell they’re serious and not just fearmongering because they adjust for inflation and population. Oh, wait.

[J. Barron DeJong]

Separate from that specific chart, does stalefish have any idea what the Mises Institute believes and advocates for?

[J. Barron DeJong]

Here, in case you want to read someone who is actually concerned about wealth inequality and how it has been changing over time:

https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/SaezZucman14slides.pdf

[MultiVerse]

Jong's slides are a decade old. Inequality began reversing about a decade ago. Stalefish's chart is misleading b/c in a wealthy society the bottom group will have less wealth than the upper groups. It's only in poorer societies where you see a flatter distribution. There's also a life cycle component. The bottom percentiles include more of the very young and very old while the upper percentiles include more people in their peak earning years. This is what it looks like for all percentiles:



The 9.9% have the most wealth, followed by the middle class 50-to-90%, then the top 0.1%, and lastly the bottom 50%. It's important to note wealth in America has increased roughly proportionately for all groups, even for the bottom 50%:

[skaredshtles]

Separate from that specific chart, does stalefish have any idea what the Mises Institute believes and advocates for?

Mises Institute... lol

[J. Barron DeJong]

If anyone want’s the long form version of Saez:

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.34.4.3

[J. Barron DeJong]

Mises Institute... lol

Guy who’s very, very concerned about wealth inequality:



Also a goldbug. Don’t recall, was he left or right wing?

[MultiVerse]

If anyone want’s the long form version of Saez:

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.34.4.3

Piketty, Saez, Zucman datasets are not only flawed (now well documented) but they fail to take into account absolute income levels across entire groups, or across countries, or the dynamics of wealth creation (people move in and out of the top percentile in America).

There's also a problem with the way they measure things on a relative basis where the poor can become poor more slowly than the rich become poorer like during a recession, actually lowering inequality even though that's clearly not a desirable outcome. Instead what we want to see is the poor becoming wealthier on an absolute basis. Which is what we're seeing in America especially in comparison with countries like Canada or much of Europe.

[J. Barron DeJong]

[skaredshtles]

Guy who’s very, very concerned about wealth inequality:



Also a goldbug. Don’t recall, was he left or right wing?

Dunno... but a dumbass regardless.

[MultiVerse]

Also a pro-Russian collaborator like his son. As is the case with Jong leftists they just want to crush America because they think their moronic ideology will arise and take power in the aftermath.

[byates1]

Multiverse owning jong love it.