I like moons, I like music. I also like burying musical references in crypto reports. First one to name the two musical references gets some moons.
Remember the panic in early Sept? Despite a tough month, the 2019 Top Ten are +54% and still well ahead of the stock market.
What's this all about? I purchased $100 of each of Top Ten Cryptos in Jan. 2019, haven't sold or traded. Did the same in 2018 and 2020. Learn more about the history and rules of the Experimentshere.
September - all cryptos in the red, so I guess Tether wins the month.
Overall since Jan. 2019 - ETH loses lead to BTC which is +189%. Only 2 out of the Top Ten in negative territory.
Combining all three three years, Top Ten cryptos underperforming S&P if I'd taken a similar approach.
Month Twenty One – UP 54%
2019 Top Ten Summary for September Although crypto recovered a bit from an early September dive, the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio ended the month completely in the red, similar to what we saw in June. Litecoin dropped out of the Top Ten this month, the first time since these Experiments began.
Question of the month:
In September, Tether moved 1 billion USDT coins from TRON to this blockchain:
A) Ethereum B) Neo C) Polkadot D) EOS Scroll down for the answer.
Ranking and September Winners and Losers
2019 Top Ten Ranking Here come the new coins: with the exception of BCH (up one place from #6 to #5) every crypto either remained in place or dropped. BSV, down one place, EOS and Tron down two, and Stellar fell three. Litecoin dropped a massive five places to land itself outside of the Top Ten, the first time since I began the Experiments back in January 2018. Due to Litecoin’s expulsion from the Top Ten, 40% of the crypotos have dropped out of the Top Ten since January 1st, 2019: Tron, Stellar, Litecoin and EOS have been replaced by BNB, DOT, ADA, and LINK. September Winners – With all cryptos in the red, stablecoin Tether outperformed the rest. BTC finished second, down -8% in September, followed by BSV, down -10%. September Losers – LTC had a truly horrible month, losing nearly a quarter of its value (-24%), falling five places in the ranking, and falling out of the Top Ten. Close behind was Stellar and ETH, down -23% and -22%. For overly competitive nerds, here is a tally of which coins have the most monthly wins and losses during the first 21 months of the 2019 Top Ten Experiment: 2019 Ws and Ls Depressingly, Tether is still far ahead with seven monthly victories, more than twice as much as second place BSV and ETH. And although BSV is up 87% since January 2019, it dominates the monthly loss count: it has now finished last in eight out of twenty-one months. Swing trade anyone? And XRP is still the only crypto that has yet to notch a win.
Overall update – BTC takes lead from ETH. Stellar now worst performing since Jan. 1st, 2019
After briefly pulling ahead of BTClast month, ETH gave up its overall lead in September. The top two are up +189% and +169% respectively followed distantly by BSV, up +87% since January 2019. The initial $100 investment in BTC is currently worth $295. Twenty-one months into the 2019 Top Ten Index Fund Experiment, 80% of the 2019 Top Ten cryptos are either flat or in the green. The other two cryptos are well in negative territory: last place Stellar (-33%) and second to last place XRP (-32%) have each lost about one third of their value since January 2019). At +54%, the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio is just behind the 2020 Top Ten Portfolio’s +56% gain and both are far, far ahead of the 2018 group (much more on that below).
Total Market Cap for the entire cryptocurrency sector:
Monthly total market cap, since Jan 2019 Since January 2019, the total market cap for crypto is up +176%. The overall market fell around $35B in September, ending the month around $351B. Despite the tough month, this is the second highest month-end level since the 2019 Top Ten Experiment started 21 months ago.
Bitcoin dominance:
BitDom ticked up slightly this month, but is trending lower than the last year or so, where it had remained in the mid-60s%. As always, a low BitDom signals a greater appetite for altcoins. Zooming out, the BitDom range since the beginning of the experiment in January 2019 has been between 50%-70%.
Overall return on investment since January 1st, 2019:
The 2019 Top Ten Portfolio lost nearly $300 in September. After the initial $1000 investment, the 2019 Top Ten Crypto Portfolio is worth $1,538. That’s up about +54%. Here’s a look at the ROI over the life of the first 21 months of the 2019 Top Ten Index Fund experiment, month by month: Monthly ROI on Top Ten since Jan 2019 Unlike the completely red table you’ll see in the 2018 Top Ten Experiment, the 2019 crypto table is almost all green. The first month was the lowest point (-9%), and the highest point (+114%) was May 2019. At +54%, the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio is now the second best performing out of the three but just barely (the 2020 Top Ten is up +56%). Speaking of the other Experiments, let’s take a look at how the 2019 Top Ten Index Fund Portfolio compare to the parallel projects:
Taking the three portfolios together, here’s the bottom bottom bottom line: After a $3000 investment in the 2018, 2019, and 2020 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies, my combined portfolios are worth $3,340 ($238+ $1,538 +$1,564). That’s up about +11% for the three combined portfolios, compared to +31% last month. Lost in the numbers? Here’s a table to help visualize the progress of the combined portfolios: Combined ROI on $3k over 3 years - UP +11% To sum up: 11% gain by dropping $1k once a year on whichever cryptos happened to be in the Top Ten on January 1st, 2018, 2019, and 2020. But what if I’d gone all in on only one Top Ten crypto for the past three years? While many have come and gone over the life of the experiment, only five cryptos have started in Top Ten for all three years: BTC, ETH, XRP, BCH, and LTC (Litecoin, no pressure, but if you’re not back in the Top Ten in the next few months, you’re out of the club). Let’s take a look at those five: ETH leading the three year club Ethereum (+104%) would have returned the most at this point, followed by BTC (+77%). On the other hand, following this approach with XRP, I would have been down -31%. Alright, that’s crypto. How does crypto compare to the stock market?
Comparison to S&P 500:
I’m also tracking the S&P 500 as part of the experiments to have a comparison point with traditional markets. Although the S&P fell from an all time high the month before, it is up +35% since January 2019. The initial $1k investment I put into crypto 21 months ago would be worth $1,350 had it been redirected to the S&P 500 in January 2019. +35%, not bad at all. But the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio is up +54% over the same time period. That’s 2019. But what if I took the same world’s-slowest-dollar-cost-averaging $1,000-per-year-on-January-1st crypto approach with the S&P 500? It would yield the following:
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2018 = $1260 today
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $1350 today
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1050 today
Taken together, here’s the bottom bottom bottom line for a similar approach with the S&P: After three $1,000 investments into an S&P 500 index fund in January 2018, 2019, and 2020, my portfolio would be worth $3,660. That is up +22%since January 2018, compared to a +11% gain of the combined Top Ten Crypto Experiment Portfolios. As you can see in the table below, that’s a 11% swing in favor of the S&P 500. September breaks a two month mini-streak of wins from the Top Ten crypto portfolios. S&P takes the lead in Sept.
Conclusion:
After a strong August, both the stock and crypto markets fell in September. In a year that feels neverending, a lot can and will happen in the remaining months of 2020. Be safe and take care of each other out there. Thanks for reading and for supporting the experiment. I hope you’ve found it helpful. I continue to be committed to seeing this process through and reporting along the way. Feel free to reach out with any questions and stay tuned for progress reports. Keep an eye out for the original 2018 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiment and the 2020 Top Ten Experiment.
[Spoilers S7] Here's what we know about the state of Earth before the bombs
Here's a compiled list of what Earth was like pre-apocalypse using details from the show. Jason Rothenberg has said if the prequel gets greenlit, he wants to implement a lot of flashbacks LOST style. These flashbacks may include references to the following:
Oil Depletion
In Monty's video message he said: "After sucking the Earth dry of oil, they [Eligius III] went looking for another planet to tap." [Episode 5x13]
This is presumably why Eligius I (unmanned), II (manned), and IV (prison labor) were sent to asteroids to mine for hythylodium, an incredibly efficient energy source. Hythylodium was used to power the Eligius III and IV missions. [Episode 5x03]
Other energy alternatives are used, such as solar energy (the field of solar panels Jaha and Murphy see in 2x14). And in 6x04, Ryker tells Raven the propellant they use for the motorcycles is "ethanol distilled from Earth corn."
Dust Storms
During Josephine's flashback in Boston 2043, a man walks into a diner holding a mask, brushing dust off his shoulders. Josephine's friend also says "It's really dusty outside." You can see multiple people in the diner wearing masks around their neck. [Episode 6x07]
Water Shortages
During Josephine's flashback, the guy that commits suicide mentions that she posted about going to a water-rationing protest. [Episode 6x07]
Gabriel says his mother's water was cut off in Colombia so the rich could water their lawns. [Episode 7x10]
Global Warming
On Callie's TV, a headline says "Yosemite National Park Burns". [Screenshot] Another headline says: "Deadly Heat Wave". [Screenshot] You can also hear the newscaster mention "above 110 degrees." [Episode 7x08]
Global Pandemic
On Callie's TV, a headline says "Russian Ankovirus Spreads". [Screenshot] The newscaster mentions the US has declared a public health alert. [Episode 7x08]
Overpopulation
Becca says ALIE intends to kill 6.5 billion people to solve overpopulation. She's not trying to kill 100% of the population, so 6.5 billion is not the total population count. [Episode 3x16]
On Callie's TV, a headline says "World's 11 Billionth Child Born". [Screenshot][Episode 7x08]
Technological Advancements
This is abundant when we look at the technologies developed by just Becca and Eligius, such as large space ships, cryopods, sonic drills, brain chips, ALIE, nightblood, etc.
We also see hologram technology. In 2x16, Jaha first meets ALIE in hologram form. In 7x08, it's used as a telecommunication device when Callie speaks to her father and brother.
On Callie's TV, we see a headline "first human brain transplant successfully performed in Bangalore". [Screenshot] Another headline says "Dubai's Alpha Centauri Group debuts first orbital hotel". [Screenshot][Episode 7x08]
Becca Franko, The Tech Celebrity
She was born in 2025 and went to Harvard when she was 10 years old (2035). [Episode 7x08]
In 2043, she started making tech for Eligius at 18 years old. [Episode 6x01]
She owned her own company. We don't know the name of it but we do know it's corporate logo is an infinity sign and its motto is "Seek Higher Things". [Episode 3x07]
People idolized her. The newscaster on Callie's TV said she had "legions of devotees". In 6x07, Josephine had a magazine with Becca featured on the cover. In 7x08, Reese said "Don't mind my sister. She once dressed as you for Halloween."
She owned her own television network. The channel that Callie was watching on her TV has the infinity sign as its network logo. [Screenshot] The newscaster said "The reclusive billionaire and owner of this network made her last public appearance". [Episode 7x08]
Financial Crisis
On Callie's TV, a headline says "Stock Market Headed For A ..." and it's cut off. [Screenshot] There's most likely a recession going on and stock markets are crashing. You can also see bitcoin (BTC) is worth 4563.44 (half of what it is today). [Screenshot] Also, on top of the pandemic, huge advancements in AI and technology are most likely disrupting businesses and employment as well. [Episode 7x08]
Drug Legalization
On Callie's TV, we see a headline "Wyoming joins 32 other states in legalizing the recreational use of psilocybin mushrooms". Shrooms. [Screenshot][Episode 7x08]
Battles in U.S. Cities
The Battle of San Francisco was an armed conflict that Shaw recalls watching on TV as a child. During Diyoza's time in the military, she was one of the soldiers helping the evacuation of thousands of refugees. [Episode 5x07]
Resistance Groups & Terrorism
The United Liberation Army (ULA), was a terrorist group dedicated to fighting against the corrupt government that Diyoza became a part of after the military. The ULA was involved in many terror attacks, including an attack on the 4th of July, 2041 (which they took credit for) that killed 80 civilians in a plane bombing, and a suspected metro suicide bombing in Washington D.C., killing 19 civilians in 2042. [Screenshot][Episode 5x04]
Asteroid Mining Penal Colony
The Asteroid Mining Penal Colony was an off-world penitentiary on the asteroid Proxima 6 that used prison labor to mine for hythylodium. After her arrest in 2043 [Episode 6x07], Diyoza was transported to the colony on Eligius IV.
In 2047, she and the other prisoners learned they were to be abandoned on the asteroid due to getting sick from the hythylodium so they took over the ship, damaging one of it's engines and making the ship significantly slower. It would take 109 years to fly back to Earth. Had the engine not been damaged, it's possible Diyoza and the prisoners could've made it back to Earth before the bombs. [Episode 5x03]
This damaged engine can also explain why it took Eligius IV 75 years to travel to Sanctum, while Eligius III presumably got there in shorter time. [Episode 5x13]
Corrupt U.S. Government
Diyoza says to Clarke "When the fascist government tried to take my home, I wanted blood too." [Episode 5x03]
When Reese mentions Callie dropping out of MIT, she says "Refusing to take part in fascistic regimes is my thing." [Episode 7x08]
On Callie's TV, the newscaster says "... when riot police, on orders from the Wallace Administration, moved in to clear the extreme environmental group known as The Tree Crew." [Episode 7x08]
Callie: "Extreme? What a joke. We were there peacefully. They're the extreme ones."
Lucy: "Don't they know they're defending a system that hurts people like them?"
Callie: People want to believe their leaders are telling the truth, which is why we need to get back there and continue exposing their lies.
The US president at the time of the bombs was a Wallace. In Season 2, Dante says "I love you Cage, and there's been a Wallace in this office since the bombs but if I find out that you're lying there won't be one after me". So most likely the Wallace administration and their family were corrupt. They easily decided to do away with democracy in order to have complete control in Mount Weather. [Episode 2x06]
Russell says to Diyoza in 6x03 "Your face is in our history books next to Hitler and Bin Laden". Eligius took part in federal prison labor, so most likely they had close ties with the government. Fascist governments like to vilify their opponents through propaganda. Even though Diyoza was indeed causing violence, she was probably also used as a scapegoat by the government since she was against them. Even Gabriel said in 7x04, "She was a freedom fighter, not a terrorist".
On Callie's TV, the newscaster says "The 11 billionth baby was born in the Wayne County Internment Camp". Internment camps/concentration camps are "camps where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group which the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable." [Source]
On Callie's TV, a headline says "Congress's negotiations on economic relief funds at an impasse amidst violent riots ..." [Screenshot]
Cult Mentality & Conspiracy Theories
In 7x10, Gabriel says to Bill Cadogan "Earth was pretty terrible. But it's good for the cult business, am I right?"
According to this article, Bill grew up in poverty. And Jaha mentioned in 4x03 that Bill's father beat him frequently. Bill, a millennial, says in 7x10 that his first job was flipping burgers, dreaming of the day he'd escape. "There must be more to life than politics, the dying ecosystem, the memes." In times of economic hardship and social upheaval, it's easy for people to latch onto certain beliefs.
Callie says Bill's a vulture capitalist who "traded his precious credibility to become a prophet of doom". She also called him a cultural artifact thief. He found and stole the Anomaly stone from Machu Picchu and in 2042, he started studying it. [Episode 7x08]
It's unknown when Bill founded the Second Dawn, but we know a news article was written about them in 2042, saying that only those with lots of money could "unlock the twelve seals" since it required payments of over $10 million to the cult. [Episode 4x03]
That's what I got. If you spotted anything else from the show, feel free to share! :) Edit: Thanks everyone for the kind words and the awards! Also, thanks to clwrutgers for asking me to make this list.
At this point, the chances of Bitcoin dying are next to impossible
The worst that could happen to Bitcoin was that it would become some obscure decentralized internet network with no real value. But at this point in the game, it's too big to shrink away into infamy. Wall Street is buying, hospitals are starting to accept it, banks are accepting it, stores are accepting it, PEOPLE are accepting it. It's too far adopted at this point for the dominos of adoption to stop falling. We're on a path that leans in an overwhelming direction towards Bitcoin's continued growth and adoption in this world. It was always a Binary equation when it started, and at this point, it's only got 1 way to go. Do you think Grayscale's clients who own the over 450 thousand Bitcoins are going to want to let them go? MicroStrategy who bought over 250 million dollars worth of Bitcoin as it's primary treasury financial reserve asset? Any of these guys who are, and will adopt in at the pro level of the financial world? We're at the brink of another parabolic run, and even if Bitcoin repeats history and 1000% jumps, then dumps 80%, do you think these guys would sell? Even after the drop, they'll still be over 200% on whatever they owned pre ATH(All-Time High Price). AKA, 20k$. These guys are going to see what we all saw after our first parabolic runs. They're going to see what happened, look at the history, and see that it does this every halving, realizing as we all did once, what Bitcoin truly is, and where it is headed. And these are hodlers who are already experienced in holding over 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, 100+F'ing years. These are the same institutional buyers pumping the stock market right now despite this pandemic. Once they get a taste of Bitcoin, they won't stop doing everything they can to get more. The volatility will slow down, the growth will become more consistent, boring, and predictable even, just as the stock market is today. But the math holds true; once these guys are fully adopted, and all the adoption dominoes have fallen; Bitcoin will be over 10 million per coin. By then, growth will probably be as boring and predictable as the stock market. The math will dignify it to still grow faster than the stock market does today, but boring, with no massive price swings as we see today; where you can buy Bitcoin at a 50% discount just 1 day, or 1 week later. By then, most companies will probably have already converted their stocks into their own cryptocurrencies of sorts. It's the only logical next step; cuts out the stockbroker middlemen, just like Bitcoin cuts out the banks. But, regardless of all that stuff that is likely to come with this path that we're on now, the one thing I know for most certain is, before this next run happens, you'll want to get in. Like now. Before this next run even starts pricing over 20k$. Because, after this whole next run up and drop is said and done, you'll be lucky if we ever see a 20k$ Bitcoin again. The best chances will be a drop to 30k$ if we break just over 100k$, or 70k$ if we break just over 300k$. That's if we even get the 80% drop that history has shown this time around, now with these old school investors joining the game before the parabolic run up even starts. Buy now, before we break 20k$. Hell, keep buying whenever you can until we hit 20k again. I can guarantee you; after 8 years of buying through these markets, there is no better time to buy than right before the start of a parabolic run. Sure, you'll wish you'd have bought when it was at an all-time low price period, but then, you'd have to wait potentially up to 4 years for the next parabolic run to start after a halving, in order to experience any of the crazy historical price run action you've heard so much about. Buying 6 months after a halving like now; puts you on the financial rocket ship that is Bitcoin, right before takeoff, making you able to experience the ride that has made thousands of people addicts to this decentralized network over the last 10 years. IN the next 10 years, it will be millions of addicts; in the next 30, it will be billions. And the price, well the price will be numbers we think today as impossible. Because if you think 10 million is where this bad boy is stopping, then you really don't understand what will happen when the owners of quadrillions in value, become addicted to a decentralized network that's capped out at 21 million coins, and those owners of those quadrillions in value begin to move their asset holdings into Bitcoin; in order to feed their addiction to this decentralized network that many of us have grown to know. Once they know what Bitcoin is, and they have experienced the supply shock that Bitcoin's halvings have on it's value, then they'll begin to move their assets into Bitcoin's network like a crackhead selling their mom's TV just to score an ounce of meth after experiencing its financial ride. Buy every chance you can, every paycheck; hop on this boat before it's too late and you miss another opportunity of insane ROI. Don't get me wrong, even in buying in on the next cycle, you'll still be exponentially profitable if you hold for the long run. But every time we have a parabolic run, that exponential potential becomes less and less. Although exponential none the less. The 10k$ dollars per Bitcoin range will be looked at in 30 years, just like we look at the days of Bitcoin being worth less than a penny per Bitcoin today. Hell, 10 years from now will be looking at a 10k$ per Bitcoin price range like we look at buying Bitcoin at 20$ a coin today.
DITO rockets up 20%, drops 30%, then finishes flat... the Aristocrats! (Wednesday, Oct 7)
Happy Wednesday, Barkada --
The PSE closed down 28 points to 5911 ▼0.5%.
Good news! I have a couple of people who are potentially interested in sponsoring MB, so I'm excited to explore those opportunities. My goal has always been to simply be revenue neutral, and to keep MB free for everyone to enjoy. (inb4 "RAID Shadow Legends" ad) Shout-out to Christine for her suggestion to try and improve the bottom-line of MB by moving from Mailchimp to SendFox. It's something I'm going to look into, but I'm very careful about making changes. I'll have to investigate. Thanks also to Jack_ol_lantern for suggesting ways to leverage my domain to try a "roll your own" alternative, and to nikohd for suggesting I offer a bitcoin donation address. I've got lots to study this weekend! No complaints here, though. Exciting times in MB town.
[UPDATE] ABS-CBN [ABS 9.00 ▼14.93%] confirms distribution deal with Zoe TV’s rebranded “A2Z Channel”... this is just confirmation of the fire that caused the ceiling-play smoke a couple of days ago that saw the ABS stock price rise 50% intraday. According to this press release, ABS-CBN and Zoe Broadcasting Network Inc have made a deal to show “some entertainment shows and movies of ABS-CBN” on A2Z Channel 11, a newly re-branded Zoe Broadcasting Network channel that will broadcast on analog TV in Metro Manila and surrounding provinces. ABS content will start appearing on this new A2Z channel starting October 10.
MB:No details yet on what content, exactly, will be shown, but the wording of the press release is interesting. It mentions “entertainment and movies” specifically, but leaves out politically-adjacent topics like news or analysis/interview shows. The Inquirer is reporting a rumor that “It’s Showtime” and “ASAP Natin ‘To” will be part of the content to make its way to A2Z Channel 11, but that has not been confirmed. Investors will want to watch this closely to see how well ABS is able to monetize this agreement with advertising, and to see how the government reacts as more ABS content moves into this pipeline.
[UPDATE] Wild DITO CME [DITO 6.81 unch], NOW Communications [NOW 4.98 ▲13.44%], and Chelsea Logistics [C 5.90 ▼4.07%] price action in yesterday’s session... the NOW and DITO pump has been massive and constant. But this last week was especially spicy, with yesterday’s session just an absolute gong-show that caused brokerage meltdowns. DITO opened the day at P7/share, up 3% on the previous day’s close, and steadily gained to a high-water mark of P8.02/share (+18%) at around 11:45am. At 11:45am, DITO had a marketcap of P22.5bn. In the next 27 minutes, DITO would lose P7.4bn in marketcap as the price imploded to P5.38/share, swinging from an 18% gain on the day to a 21% loss. Then, over the next 30 minutes, completely erasing that loss and ending the day right where it started, at P6.81/share. 2.09 billion shares changed hands on the PSE yesterday; DITO accounted for 16% of the day’s total volume (355 million shares). The three companies combined accounted for over 28% of all shares traded.
MB:MB: The amount of market uncertainty here is incredible. Traders love it, investors hate it. DITO doesn’t even own DITO Telecommunity, or anything else of material value for that matter, NOW just diluted shareholders with a bearish low-price sweetheart deal, and Chelsea is a company of tugboats and passenger ferries that happens to own a sliver of Dennis Uy’s enigmatic telecom. NOW has a long history of playing the “press release pump and dump” game, and I can only imagine that it’s happy just to be along for the ride, fluffing feathers before a potential IPO by way of introduction. Everyone in the Philippines can sense that connectivity is a bull market, whether that be mobile data (C, GLO, TEL.... then NOW) or broadband (GLO, TEL, CNVRG)...so money just keeps pouring into telco-related stocks. And it makes sense, too, given how few options there are right now on the PSE for anything that looks both pandemic-resilient and secularly profitable. But some of these things are not like the others. Some of these things will crush it, and some will not. Be careful trading telcos that you remember whether you’re being a trader (short term) or an investor (long term). Don’t start out as a trader, forget to place stops, then wind up as an investor with an investment that’s underwater. BE CAREFUL. EDIT: Also, COL Financial, get your act together. You blew AREIT and MM, and you blew yesterday's Telecommotion. At this point, traders/investors should not make plans in reliance on COL Financial's execution of a buy or sell trade.
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Should you Buy Bitcoin? If you understand what it is, and where it's going; then Yes. If you don't know what it is and would sell at any sign of a 5%, 10%, 50%, or more dip; then, No.
Bitcoin is only a safe investment if you understand what it is, and how it will continue to be adopted into this world at this point in its life, regardless of the market price swings in the short term. Because only then will you never cement a loss by panic selling, and then seeing Bitcoin runaway in price while you're still out, therefore losing both your Dollar value and your Bitcoin position value. I've been in Bitcoin for over 8 years now, and have seen many friends, family, and acquaintances come into Bitcoin, and many panic sell and FUD out during a down market. Most eventually coming back after learning more about Bitcoin, but some, for some it takes a long time to return. And for an even smaller few, well they never return, or at least not yet. But in essence, Bitcoin is only a safe investment if someone understands that their amount of Bitcoin is more important than whatever dollar value it has in the short term. That all they should be focused on is acquiring more Bitcoin, and that every 5 years after a halving happens, they'll see their coins grow in value. That they'll grow in value thanks to the math of its limited 21 million total coin supply, the new coin supply getting cut in half by the halvings making a more and more or the total supply being held by hodlers every year, and that its continued adoption into the global markets will always force it to eventually go up in price because those new adopters will always have to find what price those hodlers are willing to sell, finding Bitcoins new value that hodlers are willing to sell each time that happens, regardless of the short term evaluation corrections after a parabolic runs. Corrections mind, you that on average are only 80%, leaving anyone in before a 1000% growth parabolic runs to still being up 200% as long as they bought before the parabolic run started. The .com stock fluctuations were fluctuating on averages of 99% corrections during its first 15 years of life from the '90s to the early 2000s. And the ones that survived those early days were previously the best investments in history before Bitcoin came along. So Bitcoin is holding a better correction in its early day pattern than the biggest internet companies when they started, and its returns have already broken any records they previously held. Records they'll never be able to catch up to as Bitcoin continues its path. If they don't understand this, then even if they don't leave the market, they'll panic sell every time. And for some friends I know, they'll always sell at a dip right before a parabolic run, and then FOMO back in at a new all-time high, only to experience the next correction and sell again at their break-even point. With this, losing more Bitcoin position every time, but maintaining the same initial investment point which in their eyes as a win. I have one friend who came in with 10k in 2013, and today in 2020 is still only at 10k thanks to this pattern of buying and selling. Don't get me wrong, they've been up well over 100k$ at times, but they kept panicking selling at every parabolic run's slightest dip, then buying back in at the new all-time highs, only to then sell low in a repetitive cycle until they broke even. People like that friend try to play the market, and yes while they do win sometimes, that pattern of buying and selling will almost always lead you to get rekt during times of parabolic growth, and correction. Had my friend just held his initial 10k investment in 2013, he'd be a multi-millionaire right now. It's one of the most golden rules with investing in any market. If you try to play it, eventually it will play you. Instead, just find a market on the path of growth, and longevity, and do everything you can to just increase your piece of that market's pie, no matter what the price. If it goes down in price in the short term, then just think of it like a rare Gucci purse or limited edition rare popular shoes that are being released on sale. Buy the damn discount and hold onto that shit until the market catches up with what you know and realizes it's true value. Because of all these experiences throughout the years, if I'm trying to help anyone start buying Bitcoin, I tell them to learn about it first before buying any. To learn what it is, study its history, it's adoption growth, where it can be adopted, where it is being adopted, what it's limited 21 million coin supply is, and about what the halvings mean to its long term value. How it can and will be used, how they can protect it, etc. I always want them to learn enough about it to understand why HODLing is so important, and that the only thing that matters is that they increase their Bitcoin supply. That's the safest way to win in this game. Without understanding that, then they're a financial danger to themselves if investing in Bitcoin. Not because Bitcoin is a bad investment, but because they'll be a bad investor.
The Fed's Losing Battle with Technological Deflation
PART 1/4 - FREE MARKET? First off, let's set the scene. The stock market is telling you nothing about the real economy anymore. Economic fundamentals have never mattered as little for the stock market as has been the case during this 11-year bull market. The correlation between gross-domestic-product growth and the direction of the S&P 500 Index has only been 7% in this cycle - historically it has been 30% to 70%. Why? Well, it is the Central Banks, led by the Fed, who printed their way out of the Recession in '08. In doing so, they have papered over the cracks, and we have seen the longest economic expansion in US history. However, this is not a particularly meritocratic process: money creation itself increases inequality via the Cantillon Effect, as money printing leads to asset price inflation, which disproportionately benefits the rich and hurts the poor. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker told the New York Times in 2018: “The central issue is we’re developing into a plutocracy. We’ve got an enormous number of enormously rich people that have convinced themselves that they’re rich because they’re smart and constructive." The reality of course is that this is largely not the case - it is because the game is rigged in their favour. Now, it is important to emphasise the fact that the path we have taken has resulted in the highest living standards we have seen in human history. However, the issue, particularly since the US completely abandoned the gold standard in 1971, is that debt has exploded to obscene levels. We are not operating in a free market if it takes $185 trillion of debt over the last 20 years to create 'growth'. In fact, the global debt to GDP ratio hit an all-time high of 322% in the third quarter of 2019. Inflation means that your dollar loses value and thus your purchasing power goes down. Deflation means that the value of your dollar goes up and your purchasing power goes up. That's a good thing right? You get more goods and services for less. Well, no. If you have deflation, debt explodes in real terms and you can never pay it back. As the economy is based on debt, if you allow deflation, then you have to reset the debt. This is why central banks fear deflation so much. However, the major force driving the human race is technological progress - and this stops for no mortal... PART 2/4 - TECHNOLOGICAL DEFLATION: The increased abundance created by technology will result in massive job losses. Throughout history, doom porn enthusiasts have screamed that the machines are coming for jobs. This is not a new phenomenon. All technological revolutions are deflationary - since they create "supply side shocks", meaning that they allow for more intensive use of resources and thus higher production. With more goods being produced, all other things being equal, the price of those goods will fall. In the last 20 years or so, software has disrupted and replaced many established goods and services. It is in the next 20 years that another disruptive technology is set to take the stage: AI According to Steve Schwarzman, the co-founder and CEO of The Blackstone Group who has a net worth of $17.6BN: "This is going to touch everyone's life....you're not going to be able to get away from this technology" Moreover, this virus will only accelerate this trend towards tech. Zoom is a fantastic example of exactly this. Old legacy economic systems were not built for this tech deflation, and the thing about exponential growth is that we humans do not intuitively understand it. As an example, if you folded a piece of paper 51 times, of course you can only fold it seven times, but if you could fold it 51 times, it would reach the Sun! PART 3/4 - IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIETY: The question is: how does this play out? In the long term, it is the fundamental structure of the economic system that has a significant impact on people's lives, not who is President for 4 to 8 years. In reality, politicians have limited power and are effectively all puppets. We have seen what happens when a President doesn't stay in their lane... One could argue that the two main mechanisms of control are:
As we have seen many times in the past, herd psychology is worryingly easy to manipulate... Speaking of the censorship, in his book Antifragile, Nassim Taleb discusses the anti fragility of information. Information feeds more on attempts to harm it than it does on efforts to promote it. A fantastic example of this process is what has happened with London Real: they were banned on LinkedIn and David Icke's interview was censored. Now, regardless of what you think of this particular channel or your thoughts on David Icke and the theories provided, censoring information in this way actually spreads it more virally. It's fascinating to observe how many views the videos regarding the bans and censorship have relative to the others. And the impact this has had on subscribers. It is always easier to blame a bigger enemy (or create a new one) rather than to admit it's a structural problem. Therefore, you avoid short term pain...whatever the cost. The real question is if and when this situation will lead to social unrest... PART 4/4 - INTELLECTUAL CAPITALISM: The depth and width of jobs impacted by AI will continue to increase in the future. Now this will not necessarily happen straight away. However, our transition from commodity capitalism to intellectual capitalism is inevitable and the people and nations who fight against this trend will be on the wrong side of history. From a practical investment perspective, and disclaimer this is not investment advice, network effects are a crucial aspect to consider moving forwards. Essentially, this means that the value of the network increases with each additional user - all of the tech monopolies have exhibited this property. An asset which could in time demonstrate very strong network effects is Bitcoin. Looking at the market cap relative to other asset classes, Bitcoin provides an asymmetric investment opportunity. Only time will tell... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nFbKzt-uwE
The Fed's Losing Battle with Technological Deflation
PART 1/4 - FREE MARKET? First off, let's set the scene. The stock market is telling you nothing about the real economy anymore. Economic fundamentals have never mattered as little for the stock market as has been the case during this 11-year bull market. The correlation between gross-domestic-product growth and the direction of the S&P 500 Index has only been 7% in this cycle - historically it has been 30% to 70%. Why? Well, it is the Central Banks, led by the Fed, who printed their way out of the Recession in '08. In doing so, they have papered over the cracks, and we have seen the longest economic expansion in US history. However, this is not a particularly meritocratic process: money creation itself increases inequality via the Cantillon Effect, as money printing leads to asset price inflation, which disproportionately benefits the rich and hurts the poor. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker told the New York Times in 2018: “The central issue is we’re developing into a plutocracy. We’ve got an enormous number of enormously rich people that have convinced themselves that they’re rich because they’re smart and constructive." The reality of course is that this is largely not the case - it is because the game is rigged in their favour. Now, it is important to emphasise the fact that the path we have taken has resulted in the highest living standards we have seen in human history. However, the issue, particularly since the US completely abandoned the gold standard in 1971, is that debt has exploded to obscene levels. We are not operating in a free market if it takes $185 trillion of debt over the last 20 years to create 'growth'. In fact, the global debt to GDP ratio hit an all-time high of 322% in the third quarter of 2019. Inflation means that your dollar loses value and thus your purchasing power goes down. Deflation means that the value of your dollar goes up and your purchasing power goes up. That's a good thing right? You get more goods and services for less. Well, no. If you have deflation, debt explodes in real terms and you can never pay it back. As the economy is based on debt, if you allow deflation, then you have to reset the debt. This is why central banks fear deflation so much. However, the major force driving the human race is technological progress - and this stops for no mortal... PART 2/4 - TECHNOLOGICAL DEFLATION: The increased abundance created by technology will result in massive job losses. Throughout history, doom porn enthusiasts have screamed that the machines are coming for jobs. This is not a new phenomenon. All technological revolutions are deflationary - since they create "supply side shocks", meaning that they allow for more intensive use of resources and thus higher production. With more goods being produced, all other things being equal, the price of those goods will fall. In the last 20 years or so, software has disrupted and replaced many established goods and services. It is in the next 20 years that another disruptive technology is set to take the stage: AI According to Steve Schwarzman, the co-founder and CEO of The Blackstone Group who has a net worth of $17.6BN: "This is going to touch everyone's life....you're not going to be able to get away from this technology" Moreover, this virus will only accelerate this trend towards tech. Zoom is a fantastic example of exactly this. Old legacy economic systems were not built for this tech deflation, and the thing about exponential growth is that we humans do not intuitively understand it. As an example, if you folded a piece of paper 51 times, of course you can only fold it seven times, but if you could fold it 51 times, it would reach the Sun! PART 3/4 - IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIETY: The question is: how does this play out? In the long term, it is the fundamental structure of the economic system that has a significant impact on people's lives, not who is President for 4 to 8 years. In reality, politicians have limited power and are effectively all puppets. We have seen what happens when a President doesn't stay in their lane... One could argue that the two main mechanisms of control are:
As we have seen many times in the past, herd psychology is worryingly easy to manipulate... Speaking of the censorship, in his book Antifragile, Nassim Taleb discusses the anti fragility of information. Information feeds more on attempts to harm it than it does on efforts to promote it. A fantastic example of this process is what has happened with London Real: they were banned on LinkedIn and David Icke's interview was censored. Now, regardless of what you think of this particular channel or your thoughts on David Icke and the theories provided, censoring information in this way actually spreads it more virally. It's fascinating to observe how many views the videos regarding the bans and censorship have relative to the others. And the impact this has had on subscribers. It is always easier to blame a bigger enemy (or create a new one) rather than to admit it's a structural problem. Therefore, you avoid short term pain...whatever the cost. The real question is if and when this situation will lead to social unrest... PART 4/4 - INTELLECTUAL CAPITALISM: The depth and width of jobs impacted by AI will continue to increase in the future. Now this will not necessarily happen straight away. However, our transition from commodity capitalism to intellectual capitalism is inevitable and the people and nations who fight against this trend will be on the wrong side of history. From a practical investment perspective, and disclaimer this is not investment advice, network effects are a crucial aspect to consider moving forwards. Essentially, this means that the value of the network increases with each additional user - all of the tech monopolies have exhibited this property. An asset which could in time demonstrate very strong network effects is Bitcoin. Looking at the market cap relative to other asset classes, Bitcoin provides an asymmetric investment opportunity. Only time will tell... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nFbKzt-uwE
The Fed's Losing Battle with Technological Deflation
PART 1/4 - FREE MARKET? First off, let's set the scene. The stock market is telling you nothing about the real economy anymore. Economic fundamentals have never mattered as little for the stock market as has been the case during this 11-year bull market. The correlation between gross-domestic-product growth and the direction of the S&P 500 Index has only been 7% in this cycle - historically it has been 30% to 70%. Why? Well, it is the Central Banks, led by the Fed, who printed their way out of the Recession in '08. In doing so, they have papered over the cracks, and we have seen the longest economic expansion in US history. However, this is not a particularly meritocratic process: money creation itself increases inequality via the Cantillon Effect, as money printing leads to asset price inflation, which disproportionately benefits the rich and hurts the poor. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker told the New York Times in 2018: “The central issue is we’re developing into a plutocracy. We’ve got an enormous number of enormously rich people that have convinced themselves that they’re rich because they’re smart and constructive." The reality of course is that this is largely not the case - it is because the game is rigged in their favour. Now, it is important to emphasise the fact that the path we have taken has resulted in the highest living standards we have seen in human history. However, the issue, particularly since the US completely abandoned the gold standard in 1971, is that debt has exploded to obscene levels. We are not operating in a free market if it takes $185 trillion of debt over the last 20 years to create 'growth'. In fact, the global debt to GDP ratio hit an all-time high of 322% in the third quarter of 2019. Inflation means that your dollar loses value and thus your purchasing power goes down. Deflation means that the value of your dollar goes up and your purchasing power goes up. That's a good thing right? You get more goods and services for less. Well, no. If you have deflation, debt explodes in real terms and you can never pay it back. As the economy is based on debt, if you allow deflation, then you have to reset the debt. This is why central banks fear deflation so much. However, the major force driving the human race is technological progress - and this stops for no mortal... PART 2/4 - TECHNOLOGICAL DEFLATION: The increased abundance created by technology will result in massive job losses. Throughout history, doom porn enthusiasts have screamed that the machines are coming for jobs. This is not a new phenomenon. All technological revolutions are deflationary - since they create "supply side shocks", meaning that they allow for more intensive use of resources and thus higher production. With more goods being produced, all other things being equal, the price of those goods will fall. In the last 20 years or so, software has disrupted and replaced many established goods and services. It is in the next 20 years that another disruptive technology is set to take the stage: AI According to Steve Schwarzman, the co-founder and CEO of The Blackstone Group who has a net worth of $17.6BN: "This is going to touch everyone's life....you're not going to be able to get away from this technology" Moreover, this virus will only accelerate this trend towards tech. Zoom is a fantastic example of exactly this. Old legacy economic systems were not built for this tech deflation, and the thing about exponential growth is that we humans do not intuitively understand it. As an example, if you folded a piece of paper 51 times, of course you can only fold it seven times, but if you could fold it 51 times, it would reach the Sun! PART 3/4 - IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIETY: The question is: how does this play out? In the long term, it is the fundamental structure of the economic system that has a significant impact on people's lives, not who is President for 4 to 8 years. In reality, politicians have limited power and are effectively all puppets. We have seen what happens when a President doesn't stay in their lane... One could argue that the two main mechanisms of control are:
As we have seen many times in the past, herd psychology is worryingly easy to manipulate... Speaking of the censorship, in his book Antifragile, Nassim Taleb discusses the anti fragility of information. Information feeds more on attempts to harm it than it does on efforts to promote it. A fantastic example of this process is what has happened with London Real: they were banned on LinkedIn and David Icke's interview was censored. Now, regardless of what you think of this particular channel or your thoughts on David Icke and the theories provided, censoring information in this way actually spreads it more virally. It's fascinating to observe how many views the videos regarding the bans and censorship have relative to the others. And the impact this has had on subscribers. It is always easier to blame a bigger enemy (or create a new one) rather than to admit it's a structural problem. Therefore, you avoid short term pain...whatever the cost. The real question is if and when this situation will lead to social unrest... PART 4/4 - INTELLECTUAL CAPITALISM: The depth and width of jobs impacted by AI will continue to increase in the future. Now this will not necessarily happen straight away. However, our transition from commodity capitalism to intellectual capitalism is inevitable and the people and nations who fight against this trend will be on the wrong side of history. From a practical investment perspective, and disclaimer this is not investment advice, network effects are a crucial aspect to consider moving forwards. Essentially, this means that the value of the network increases with each additional user - all of the tech monopolies have exhibited this property. An asset which could in time demonstrate very strong network effects is Bitcoin. Looking at the market cap relative to other asset classes, Bitcoin provides an asymmetric investment opportunity. Only time will tell... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nFbKzt-uwE
Meet Brock Pierce, the Presidential Candidate With Ties to Pedophiles Who Wants to End Human Trafficking
thedailybeast.com | Sep. 20, 2020. The “Mighty Ducks” actor is running for president. He clears the air (sort of) to Tarpley Hitt about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein and more. In the trailer for First Kid, the forgettable 1996 comedy about a Secret Service agent assigned to protect the president’s son, the title character, played by a teenage Brock Pierce, describes himself as “definitely the most powerful kid in the universe.” Now, the former child star is running to be the most powerful man in the world, as an Independent candidate for President of the United States. Before First Kid, the Minnesota-born actor secured roles in a series of PG-rated comedies, playing a young Emilio Estevez in The Mighty Ducks, before graduating to smaller parts in movies like Problem Child 3: Junior in Love. When his screen time shrunk, Pierce retired from acting for a real executive role: co-founding the video production start-up Digital Entertainment Network (DEN) alongside businessman Marc Collins-Rector. At age 17, Pierce served as its vice president, taking in a base salary of $250,000. DEN became “the poster child for dot-com excesses,” raising more than $60 million in seed investments and plotting a $75 million IPO. But it turned into a shorthand for something else when, in October of 1999, the three co-founders suddenly resigned. That month, a New Jersey man filed a lawsuit alleging Collins-Rector had molested him for three years beginning when he was 13 years old. The following summer, three teens filed a sexual-abuse lawsuit against Pierce, Collins-Rector, and their third co-founder, Chad Shackley. The plaintiffs later dropped their case against Pierce (he made a payment of $21,600 to one of their lawyers) and Shackley. But after a federal grand jury indicted Collins-Rector on criminal charges in 2000, the DEN founders left the country. When Interpol arrested them in 2002, they said they had confiscated “guns, machetes, and child pornography” from the trio’s beach villa in Spain. While abroad, Pierce had pivoted to a new venture: Internet Gaming Entertainment, which sold virtual accessories in multiplayer online role-playing games to those desperate to pay, as one Wired reporter put it, “as much as $1,800 for an eight-piece suit of Skyshatter chain mail” rather than earn it in the games themselves. In 2005, a 25-year-old Pierce hired then-Goldman Sachs banker Steve Bannon—just before he would co-found Breitbart News. Two years later, after a World of Warcraft player sued the company for “diminishing” the fun of the game, Steve Bannon replaced Pierce as CEO. Collins-Rector eventually pleaded guilty to eight charges of child enticement and registered as a sex offender. In the years that followed, Pierce waded into the gonzo economy of cryptocurrencies, where he overlapped more than once with Jeffrey Epstein, and counseled him on crypto. In that world, he founded Tether, a cryptocurrency that bills itself as a “stablecoin,” because its value is allegedly tied to the U.S. dollar, and the blockchain software company Block.one. Like his earlier businesses, Pierce’s crypto projects see-sawed between massive investments and curious deals. When Block.one announced a smart contract software called EOS.IO, the company raised $4 billion almost overnight, setting an all-time record before the product even launched. The Securities and Exchange Commission later fined the company $24 million for violating federal securities law. After John Oliver mocked the ordeal, calling Pierce a “sleepy, creepy cowboy,” Block.one fired him. Tether, meanwhile, is currently under investigation by the New York Attorney General for possible fraud. On July 4, Pierce announced his candidacy for president. His campaign surrogates include a former Cambridge Analytica director and the singer Akon, who recently doubled down on developing an anonymously funded, $6 billion “Wakanda-like” metropolis in Senegal called Akon City. Pierce claims to be bipartisan, and from the 11 paragraphs on the “Policy” section of his website it can be hard to determine where he falls on the political spectrum. He supports legalizing marijuana and abolishing private prisons, but avoids the phrase “climate change.” He wants to end “human trafficking.” His proposal to end police brutality: body cams. His political contributions tell a more one-sided story. Pierce’s sole Democratic contribution went to the short-lived congressional run of crypto candidate Brian Forde. The rest went to Republican campaigns like Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, John McCain, and the National Right to Life Political Action Committee. Last year alone, Pierce gave over $44,000 to the Republican National Committee and more than $55,000 to Trump’s re-election fund. Pierce spoke to The Daily Beast from his tour bus and again over email. Those conversations have been combined and edited for clarity. You’re announcing your presidential candidacy somewhat late, and historically, third-party candidates haven’t had the best luck with the executive office. If you don’t have a strong path to the White House, what do you want out of the race? I announced on July 4, which I think is quite an auspicious date for an Independent candidate, hoping to bring independence to this country. There’s a lot of things that I can do. One is: I’m 39 years old. I turn 40 in November. So I’ve got time on my side. Whatever happens in this election cycle, I’m laying the groundwork for the future. The overall mission is to create a third major party—not another third party—a third major party in this country. I think that is what America needs most. George Washington in his closing address warned us about the threat of political parties. John Adams and the other founding fathers—their fear for our future was two political parties becoming dominant. And look at where we are. We were warned. I believe, having studied systems, any time you have a system of two, what happens is those two things come together, like magnets. They come into collision, or they become polarized and become completely divided. I think we need to rise above partisan politics and find a path forward together. As Albert Einstein is quoted—I’m not sure the line came from him, but he’s quoted in many places—he said that the definition of insanity is making the same mistake or doing the same thing over and over and over again, expecting a different result. [Ed. note: Einstein never said this.] It feels like that’s what our election cycle is like. Half the country feels like they won, half the country feels like they lost, at least if they voted or participated. Obviously, there’s another late-comer to the presidential race, and that’s Kanye West. He’s received a lot of flak for his candidacy, as he’s openly admitted to trying to siphon votes away from Joe Biden to ensure a Trump victory. Is that something you’re hoping to avoid or is that what you’re going for as well? Oh no. This is a very serious campaign. Our campaign is very serious. You’ll notice I don’t say anything negative about either of the two major political candidates, because I think that’s one of the problems with our political system, instead of people getting on stage, talking about their visionary ideas, inspiring people, informing and educating, talking about problems, mentioning problems, talking about solutions, constructive criticism. That’s why I refuse to run a negative campaign. I am definitely not a spoiler. I’m into data, right? I’m a technologist. I’ve got digital DNA. So does most of our campaign team. We’ve got our finger on the pulse. Most of my major Democratic contacts are really happy to see that we’re running in a red state like Wyoming. Kanye West’s home state is Wyoming. He’s not on the ballot in Wyoming I could say, in part, because he didn’t have Akon on his team. But I could also say that he probably didn’t want to be on the ballot in Wyoming because it’s a red state. He doesn’t want to take additional points in a state where he’s only running against Trump. But we’re on the ballot in Wyoming, and since we’re on the ballot in Wyoming I think it’s safe—more than safe, I think it’s evident—that we are not here to run as a spoiler for the benefit of Donald Trump. In running for president, you’ve opened yourself up to be scrutinized from every angle going back to the beginning of your career. I wanted to ask you about your time at the Digital Entertainment Network. Can you tell me a little bit about how you started there? You became a vice president as a teenager. What were your qualifications and what was your job exactly? Well, I was the co-founder. A lot of it was my idea. I had an idea that people would use the internet to watch videos, and we create content for the internet. The idea was basically YouTube and Hulu and Netflix. Anyone that was around in the ‘90s and has been around digital media since then, they all credit us as the creators of basically those ideas. I was just getting a message from the creator of The Vandals, the punk rock band, right before you called. He’s like, “Brock, looks like we’re going to get the Guinness Book of World Records for having created the first streaming television show.” We did a lot of that stuff. We had 30 television shows. We had the top most prestigious institutions in the world as investors. The biggest names. High-net-worth investors like Terry Semel, who’s chairman and CEO of Warner Brothers, and became the CEO of Yahoo. I did all sorts of things. I helped sell $150,000 worth of advertising contracts to the CEOs of Pepsi and everything else. I was the face of the company, meeting all the major banks and everything else, selling the vision of what the future was. You moved in with Marc Collins-Rector and Chad Shackley at a mansion in Encino. Was that the headquarters of the business? All start-ups, they normally start out in your home. Because it’s just you. The company was first started out of Marc’s house, and it was probably there for the first two or three months, before the company got an office. That’s, like, how it is for all start-ups. were later a co-defendant in the L.A. County case filed against Marc Collins-Rector for plying minors with alcohol and drugs, in order to facilitate sexual abuse. You were dropped from the case, but you settled with one of the men for $21,600. Can you explain that? Okay, well, first of all, that’s not accurate. Two of the plaintiffs in that case asked me if I would be a plaintiff. Because I refused to be a part of the lawsuit, they chose to include me to discredit me, to make their case stronger. They also went and offered 50 percent of what they got to the house management—they went around and offered money to anyone to participate in this. They needed people to corroborate their story. Eventually, because I refused to participate in the lawsuit, they named me. Subsequently, all three of the plaintiffs apologized to me, in front of audiences, in front of many people, saying Brock never did anything. They dismissed their cases. Remember, this is a civil thing. I’ve never been charged with a crime in my life. And the last plaintiff to have his case dismissed, he contacted his lawyer and said, “Dismiss this case against Brock. Brock never did anything. I just apologized. Dismiss his case.” And the lawyer said, “No. I won’t dismiss this case, I have all these out-of-pocket expenses, I refuse to file the paperwork unless you give me my out-of-pocket expenses.” And so the lawyer, I guess, had $21,000 in bills. So I paid his lawyer $21,000—not him, it was not a settlement. That was a payment to his lawyer for his out-of-pocket expenses. Out-of-pocket expenses so that he would file the paperwork to dismiss the case. You’ve said the cases were unfounded, and the plaintiffs eventually apologized. But your boss, Marc Collins-Rector later pleaded guilty to eight charges of child enticement and registered as a sex offender. Were you aware of his behavior? How do you square the fact that later allegations proved to be true, but these ones were not? Well, remember: I was 16 and 17 years old at the time? So, no. I don’t think Marc is the man they made him out to be. But Marc is not a person I would associate with today, and someone I haven’t associated with in a very long time. I was 16 and 17. I chose the wrong business partner. You live and you learn. You’ve pointed out that you were underage when most of these allegations were said to take place. Did you ever feel like you were coerced or in over your head while working at DEN? I mean, I was working 18 hours a day, doing things I’d never done before. It was business school. But I definitely learned a lot in building that company. We raised $88 million. We filed our [form] S-1 to go public. We were the hottest start-up in Los Angeles. In 2000, you left the country with Marc Collins-Rector. Why did you leave? How did you spend those two years abroad? I moved to Spain in 1999 for personal reasons. I spent those two years in Europe working on developing my businesses. Interpol found you in 2002. The house where you were staying reportedly contained guns, machetes, and child pornography. Whose guns and child porn were those? Were you aware they were in the house, and how did those get there? My lawyers have addressed this in 32 pages of documentation showing a complete absence of wrongdoing. Please refer to my webpage for more information. [Ed. Note: The webpage does not mention guns, machetes, or child pornography. It does state:“It is true that when the local police arrested Collins-Rector in Spain in 2002 on an international warrant, Mr. Pierce was also taken into custody, but so was everyone at Collins-Rector’s house in Spain; and it is equally clear that Brock was promptly released, and no charges of any kind were ever filed against Brock concerning this matter.”] What do you make of the allegations against Bryan Singer?[Ed. Note: Bryan Singer, a close friend of Collins-Rector, invested at least $50,000 in DEN. In an Atlantic article outlining Singer’s history of alleged sexual assault and statutory rape, one source claimed that at age 15, Collins-Rector abused him and introduced him to Singer, who then assaulted him in the DEN headquarters.] I am aware of them and I support of all victims of sexual assault. I will let America’s justice system decide on Singer’s outcome.
In 2011, you spoke at the Mindshift conference supported by Jeffrey Epstein. At that point, he had already been convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor. Why did you agree to speak? I had never heard of Jeffrey Epstein. His name was not on the website. I was asked to speak at a conference alongside Nobel Prize winners. It was not a cryptocurrency conference, it was filled with Nobel Prize winners. I was asked to speak alongside Nobel Prize winners on the future of money. I speak at conferences historically, two to three times a week. I was like, “Nobel Prize winners? Sounds great. I’ll happily talk about the future of money with them.” I had no idea who Jeffrey Epstein was. His name was not listed anywhere on the website. Had I known what I know now? I clearly would have never spoken there. But I spoke at a conference that he cosponsored. What’s your connection to the Clinton Global Initiative? Did you hear about it through Jeffrey Epstein? I joined the Clinton Global Initiative as a philanthropist in 2006 and was a member for one year. My involvement with the Initiative had no connection to Jeffrey Epstein whatsoever.
You’ve launched your campaign in Minnesota, where George Floyd was killed by a police officer. How do you feel about the civil uprising against police brutality? I’m from Minnesota. Born and raised. We just had a press conference there, announcing that we’re on the ballot. Former U.S. Senator Dean Barkley was there. So that tells you, when former U.S. Senators are endorsing the candidate, right? [Ed. note: Barkley was never elected to the United States Senate. In November of 2002, he was appointed by then Minnesota Governor Jesse Venture to fill the seat after Sen. Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash. Barkley’s term ended on Jan. 3, 2003—two months later.] Yes, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis. My vice-presidential running mate Karla Ballard and I, on our last trip to Minnesota together, went to visit the George Floyd Memorial. I believe in law and order. I believe that law and order is foundational to any functioning society. But there is no doubt in my mind that we need reform. These types of events—this is not an isolated incident. This has happened many times before. It’s time for change. We have a lot of detail around policy on this issue that we will be publishing next week. Not just high-level what we think, not just a summary, but detailed policy. You said that you support “law and order.” What does that mean? “Law and order” means creating a fair and just legal system where our number one priority is protecting the inalienable rights of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” for all people. This means reforming how our police intervene in emergency situations, abolishing private prisons that incentivize mass incarceration, and creating new educational and economic opportunities for our most vulnerable communities. I am dedicated to preventing crime by eliminating the socioeconomic conditions that encourage it. I support accountability and transparency in government and law enforcement. Some of the key policies I support are requiring body-cams on all law enforcement officers who engage with the public, curtailing the 1033 program that provides local law enforcement agencies with access to military equipment, and abolishing private prisons. Rather than simply defund the police, my administration will take a holistic approach to heal and unite America by ending mass incarceration, police brutality, and racial injustice. Did you attend any Black Lives Matter protests? I support all movements aimed at ending racial injustice and inequality. I have not attended any Black Lives Matter protests. My running-mate, Karla Ballard, attended the March on Washington in support of racial justice and equality. Your platform doesn’t mention the words “climate change.” Is there a reason for that? I’m not sure what you mean. Our policy platform specifically references human-caused climate change and we have a plan to restabilize the climate, address environmental degradation, and ensure environmental sustainability. [Ed. Note: As of writing the Pierce campaign’s policy platform does not specifically reference human-caused climate change.] You’ve recently brought on Akon as a campaign surrogate. How did that happen? Tell me about that. Akon and I have been friends for quite some time. I was one of the guys that taught him about Bitcoin. I helped make some videogames for him, I think in 2012. We were talking about Bitcoin, teaching him the ropes, back in 2013. And in 2014, we were both speaking at the Milken Global Conference, and I encouraged him to talk about how Bitcoin, Africa, changed the world. He became the biggest celebrity in the world, talking about Bitcoin at the time. I’m an adviser to his Akoin project, very interested in the work that he’s doing to build a city in Africa. I think we need a government that’s of, for, and by the people. Akon has huge political aspirations. He obviously was a hugely successful artist. But he also discovered artists like Lady Gaga. So not only is he, himself, a great artist, but he’s also a great identifier and builder of other artists. And he’s been a great businessman, philanthropist. He’s pushing the limits of what can be done. We’re like-minded individuals in that regard. I think he’ll be running for political office one day, because he sees what I see: that we need real change, and we need a government that is of, for, and by the people. You mentioned that you’re an adviser on Akoin. Do you have any financial investments in Akoin or Akon City? I don’t believe so. I’d have to check. I have so much stuff. But I don’t believe that I have any economic interests in his stuff. I’d have to verify that. We’ll get back to you. I don’t believe that I have any economic interests. My interest is in helping him. He’s a visionary with big ideas that wants to help things in the world. If I can be of assistance in helping him make the world a better place, I’m all for it. I’m not motivated by money. I’m not running for office because I’m motivated by power. I’m running for office because I’m deeply, deeply concerned about our collective future. You’ve said you’re running on a pro-technology platform. One week into your campaign last month, a New York appeals court approved the state Attorney General’s attempt to investigate the stablecoin Tether for potentially fraudulent activity. Do you think this will impact your ability to sell people on your tech entrepreneurship? No, I think my role in Tether is as awesome as it gets. It was my idea. I put it together. But I’ve had no involvement in the company since 2015. I gave all of my equity to the other shareholders. I’ve had zero involvement in the company for almost six years. It was just my idea. I put the initial team together. But I think Tether is one of the most important innovations in the world, certainly. The idea is, I digitized the U.S. dollar. I used technology to digitize currency—existing currency. The U.S. dollar in particular. It’s doing $10 trillion a year. Ten trillion dollars a year of transactional volume. It’s probably the most important innovation in currency since the advent of fiat money. The people that took on the business and ran the business in years to come, they’ve done things I’m not proud of. I’m not sure they’ve done anything criminal. But they certainly did things differently than I would do. But it’s like, you have kids, they turn 18, they go out into the world, and sometimes you’re proud of the things they do, and sometimes you shake your head and go, “Ugh, why did you do that?” I have zero concerns as it relates to me personally. I wish they made better decisions. What do you think the investigation will find? I have no idea. The problem that was raised is that there was a $5 million loan between two entities and whether or not they had the right to do that, did they disclose it correctly. There’s been no accusations of, like, embezzlement or anything that bad. [Ed. Note: The Attorney General’s press release on the investigation reads: “Our investigation has determined that the operators of the ‘Bitfinex’ trading platform, who also control the ‘tether’ virtual currency, have engaged in a cover-up to hide the apparent loss of $850 million dollars of co-mingled client and corporate funds.”] But there’s been some disclosure things, that is the issue. No one is making any outrageous claims that these are people that have done a bunch of bad—well, on the internet, the media has said that the people behind the business may have been manipulating the price of Bitcoin, but I don’t think that has anything to do with the New York investigation. Again, I’m so not involved, and so not at risk, that I’m not even up to speed on the details. [Ed note: A representative of the New York State Attorney General told Forbes that he “cannot confirm or deny that the investigation” includes Pierce.] We’ve recently witnessed the rise of QAnon, the conspiracy theory that Hollywood is an evil cabal of Satanic pedophiles and Trump is the person waging war on them. You mentioned human trafficking, which has become a cause for them. What are your thoughts on that? I’ve watched some of the content. I think it’s an interesting phenomenon. I’m an internet person, so Anonymous is obviously an organization that has been doing interesting stuff. It’s interesting. I don’t have a big—conspiracy theory stuff is—I guess I have a question for you: What do you think of all of it, since you’re the expert? You know, I think it’s not true, but I’m not running for president. I do wonder what this politician [Georgia congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene], who’s just won her primary, is going to do on day one, once she finds out there’s no satanic cabal room. Wait, someone was running for office and won on a QAnon platform, saying that Hollywood did—say what? You’re the expert here. She won a primary. But I want to push on if we only have a few minutes. In 2006, your gaming company IGE brought on Steve Bannon as an investor. Goldman later bought out most of your stock. Bannon eventually replaced you as CEO of Affinity. You’ve described him as your “right-hand man for, like, seven years.” How well did you know Bannon during that time? Yes, so this is in my mid-twenties. He wasn’t an investor. He worked for me. He was my banker. He worked for me for three years as my yield guide. And then he was my CEO running the company for another four years. So I haven’t worked with Steve for a decade or so. We worked in videogame stuff and banking. He was at Goldman Sachs. He was not in the political area at the time. But he was a pretty successful banker. He set up Goldman Sachs Los Angeles. So for me, I’d say he did a pretty good job. During your business relationship, Steve Bannon founded Breitbart News, which has pretty consistently published racist material. How do you feel about Breitbart? I had no involvement with Breitbart News. As for how I feel about such material, I’m not pleased by any form of hate-mongering. I strongly support the equality of all Americans. Did you have qualms about Bannon’s role in the 2016 election? Bannon’s role in the Trump campaign got me to pay closer attention to what he was doing but that’s about it. Whenever you find out that one of your former employees has taken on a role like that, you pay attention. Bannon served on the board of Cambridge Analytica. A staffer on your campaign, Brittany Kaiser, also served as a business director for them. What are your thoughts on their use of illicitly-obtained Facebook data for campaign promotional material? Yes, so this will be the last question I can answer because I’ve got to be off for this 5:00 pm. But Brittany Kaiser is a friend of mine. She was the whistleblower of Cambridge Analytica. She came to me and said, “What do I do?” And I said, “Tell the truth. The truth will set you free.” [Ed. Note: Investigations in Cambridge Analytica took place as early as Nov. 2017, when a U.K. reporter at Channel 4 News recorded their CEO boasting about using “beautiful Ukranian girls” and offers of bribes to discredit political officials. The first whistleblower was Christopher Wylie, who disclosed a cache of documents to The Guardian, published on Mar. 17, 2018. Kaiser’s confession ran five days later, after the scandal made national news. Her association with Cambridge Analytica is not mentioned anywhere on Pierce’s campaign website.] So I’m glad that people—I’m a supporter of whistleblowers, people that see injustice in the world and something not right happening, and who put themselves in harm’s way to stand up for what they believe in. So I stand up for Brittany Kaiser. Who do you think [anonymous inventor of Bitcoin] Satoshi Nakamoto is? We all are Satoshi Nakamoto. You got married at Burning Man. Have you been attending virtual Burning Man? I’m running a presidential campaign. So, while I was there in spirit, unfortunately my schedule did not permit me to attend. OP note: please refer to the original article for reference links within text (as I've not added them here!)
JP Morgan is investing and on the board at ConsenSys, bringing JP Morgan to ethereum. So the biggest banks are now moving to blockchain in many applications. It’s a complete 180 from Jamie Diamond blasting crypto a few years ago.
There appears to be a Cold War race right now between the US and China to develop a national crypto to help stabilize troubled economic system around the world. A currency tech race seems inevitable and probably will happen extremely fast.
Fidelity Investment, one of the largest asset managers in the world, has now opened a Bitcoin Fund and released a long report with a stock-to-flow analysis putting Bitcoin at $1,000,000 by 2025. This is the type of shit Mcafee would say in the past, now our biggest financial institutions are saying it.
At this point we see the biggest financial institutions and the biggest nation’s governments are getting into Defi. The general market is going to see that Bitcoin isn’t going away and is a safe and reliable asset. The greatest wealth transfer in history is going to happen in the next 10 years. Make sure to pack your bags...at your own risk.
DDDD - The Rise of “Buy the Dip” Retail Investors and Why Another Crash Is Imminent
In this week's edition of DDDD (Data-driven DD), I'll be going over the real reason why we have been seeing a rally for the past few weeks, defying all logic and fundamentals - retail investors. We'll look into several data sets to see how retail interest in stock markets have reached record levels in the past few weeks, how this affected stock prices, and why we've most likely seen the top at this point, unless we see one of the "positive catalysts" that I mentioned in my previous post, which is unlikely (except for more news about Remdesivir). Disclaimer - This is not financial advice, and a lot of the content below is my personal opinion. In fact, the numbers, facts, or explanations presented below could be wrong and be made up. Don't buy random options because some person on the internet says so; look at what happened to all the SPY 220p 4/17 bag holders. Do your own research and come to your own conclusions on what you should do with your own money, and how levered you want to be based on your personal risk tolerance. Inspiration Most people who know me personally know that I spend an unhealthy amount of my free time in finance and trading as a hobby, even competing in paper options trading competitions when I was in high school. A few weeks ago, I had a friend ask if he could call me because he just installed Robinhood and wanted to buy SPY puts after seeing everyone on wallstreetbets post gains posts from all the tendies they’ve made from their SPY puts. The problem was, he actually didn’t understand how options worked at all, and needed a thorough explanation about how options are priced, what strike prices and expiration dates mean, and what the right strategy to buying options are. That’s how I knew we were at the euphoria stage of buying SPY puts - it’s when dumb money starts to pour in, and people start buying securities because they see everyone else making money and they want in, even if they have no idea what they’re buying, and price becomes dislocated from fundementals. Sure enough, less than a week later, we started the bull rally that we are currently in. Bubbles are formed when people buy something not because of logic or even gut feeling, but when people who previously weren’t involved see their dumb neighbors make tons of money from it, and they don’t want to miss out. A few days ago, I started getting questions from other friends about what stocks they should buy and if I thought something was a good investment. That inspired me to dig a bit deeper to see how many other people are thinking the same thing. Data Ever since March, we’ve seen an unprecedented amount of money pour into the stock market from retail investors. Google Search Trends \"what stock should I buy\" Google Trends 2004 - 2020 \"what stock should I buy\" Google Trends 12 months \"stocks\" Google Trends 2004 - 2020 \"stocks\" Google Trends 12 months Brokerage data Robinhood SPY holders \"Robinhood\" Google Trends 12 months wallstreetbets' favorite broker Google Trends 12 months Excerpt from E*Trade earnings statement Excerpt from Schwab earnings statement TD Ameritrade Excerpt Media cnbc.com Alexa rank CNBC viewership & rankings wallstreetbets comments / day investing comments / day Analysis What we can see from Reddit numbers, Google Trends, and CNBC stats is that in between the first week of March and first week of April, we see a massive inflow of retail interest in the stock market. Not only that, but this inflow of interest is coming from all age cohorts, from internet-using Zoomers to TV-watching Boomers. Robinhood SPY holdings and earnings reports from E*Trade, TD Ameritrade, and Schwab have also all confirmed record numbers of new clients, number of trades, and assets. There’s something interesting going on if you look closer at the numbers. The numbers growth in brokers for designed for “less sophisticated” investors (i.e. Robinhood and E*Trade) are much larger than for real brokers (i.e. Schwab and Ameritrade). This implies that the record number of new users and trade volume is coming from dumb money. The numbers shown here only really apply to the US and Canada, but there’s also data to suggest that there’s also record numbers of foreign investors pouring money into the US stock market as well. However, after the third week of March, we see the interest start to slowly decline and plateau, indicating that we probably have seen most of those new investors who wanted to have a long position in the market do so. SPX daily Rationale Pretty much everything past this point is purely speculation, and isn’t really backed up by any solid data so take whatever I say here with a cup of salt. We could see from the graph that new investor interest started with the first bull trap we saw in the initial decline from early March, and peaking right after the end of the crash in March. So it would be fair to guess that we’re seeing a record amount of interest in the stock market from a “buy the dip” mentality, especially from Robinhood-using Millennials. Here’s a few points on my rationalization of this behavior, based on very weak anecdotal evidence
They missed out of their chance of getting in the stock market at the start of the bull market that happened at the end of 2009
They’ve all seen the stock market make record gains throughout their adult lives, but believing that the market might be overheated, they were waiting for a crash
Most of them have gotten towards the stage of their lives where they actually have some savings and can finally put some money aside for investments
This stock market crash seems like their once-in-a-decade opportunity that they’ve been waiting for, so everyone jumped in
Everyone’s stuck at their homes with vast amounts of unexpected free time on their hands
Most of these new investors got their first taste in the market near the bottom, and probably made some nice returns. Of course, since they didn’t know what they were doing, they probably put a very small amount of money at first, but after seeing a 10% return over one week, validating that maybe they do know something, they decide to slowly pour in more and more of their life savings. That’s what’s been fueling this bull market. Sentiment & Magic Crayons As I mentioned previously, this bull rally will keep going until enough bears convert to bulls. Markets go up when the amount of new bullish positions outnumber the amount of new bearish positions, and vice versa. Record amounts of new investors, who previously never held a position in the market before, fueled the bullish side of this equation, despite all the negative data that has come out and dislocating the price from fundamentals. All the smart money that was shorting the markets saw this happening, and flipped to become bulls because you don’t fight the trend, even if the trend doesn’t reflect reality. From the data shown above, we can see new investor interest growth has started declining since mid March and started stagnating in early April. The declining volume in SPY since mid-March confirms this. That means, once the sentiment of the new retail investors starts to turn bearish, and everyone figures out how much the stocks they’re holding are really worth, another sell-off will begin. I’ve seen something very similar to this a few years ago with Bitcoin. Near the end of 2017, Bitcoin started to become mainstream and saw a flood of retail investors suddenly signing up for Coinbase (i.e. Robinhood) accounts and buying Bitcoin without actually understanding what it is and how it works. Suddenly everyone, from co-workers to grandparents, starts talking about Bitcoin and might have thrown a few thousand dollars into it. This appears to be a very similar parallel to what’s going on right now. Of course there’s differences here in that equities have an intrinsic value, although many of them have gone way above what they should be intrinsically worth, and the vast majority of retail investors don’t understand how to value companies. Then, during December, when people started thinking that the market was getting a bit overheated, some started taking their profits, and that’s when the prices crashed violently. This flip in sentiment now look like it has started with equities. SPY daily Technical Analysis, or magic crayons, is a discipline in finance that uses statistical analysis to predict market trends based on market sentiment. Of course, a lot of this is hand-wavy and is very subjective; two people doing TA on the same price history can end up getting opposite results, so TA should always be taken with a grain of salt and ideally be backed with underlying justification and not be blindly followed. In fact, I’ve since corrected the ascending wedge I had on SPY since my last post since this new wedge is a better fit for the new trading data. There’s a few things going on in this chart. The entire bull rally we’ve had since the lows can be modelled using a rising wedge. This is a pattern where there is a convergence of a rising support and resistance trendline, along with falling volume. This indicates a slow decline in net bullish sentiment with investors, with smaller and smaller upside after each bounce off the support until it hits a resistance. The smaller the bounces, the less bullish investors are. When the bearish sentiment takes over across investors, the price breaks below this wedge - a breakdown, and indicates a start of another downtrend. This happened when the wedge hit resistance at around 293, which is around the same price as the 200 day moving average, the 62% retracement (considered to be the upper bound of a bull trap), and a price level that acted as a support and resistance throughout 2019. The fact that it gapped down to break this wedge is also a strong signal, indicating a sudden swing in investor sentiment overnight. The volume of the break down also broke the downwards trend of volume we’ve had since the beginning of the bull rally, indicating a sudden surge of people selling their shares. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we will go straight from here, and I personally think that we will see the completion of a heads-and-shoulders pattern complete before SPY goes below 274, which in itself is a strong support level. In other words, SPY might go from 282 -> 274 -> 284 -> 274 before breaking the 274 support level. VIX Daily Doing TA is already sketchy, and doing TA on something like VIX is even more sketchy, but I found this interesting so I’ll mention it. Since the start of the bull rally, we’ve had VIX inside a descending channel. With the breakdown we had in SPY yesterday, VIX has also gapped up to have a breakout from this channel, indicating that we may see future volatility in the next week or so. Putting Everything Together Finally, we get to my thesis. This entire bull rally has been fueled by new retail investors buying the dip, bringing the stock price to euphoric levels. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been seeing the people waiting at the sidelines for years to get into the stock market slowly FOMO into the rally in smaller and smaller volumes, while the smart money have been locking in their profits at an even slower rate - hence an ascending wedge. As the amount of new retail interest in the stock market started slowed down, the amount of new bulls started to decline. It looks like Friday might have been the start of the bearish sentiment taking over, meaning it’s likely that 293 was the top, unless any significant bullish events happen in the next two weeks like a fourth round of stimulus, in which case we might see 300. This doesn’t mean we’ll instantly go back to circuit breakers on Monday, and we might see 282 -> 274 -> 284 -> 274 happen before panic, this time by the first-time investors, eventually bringing us down towards SPY 180. tldr; we've reached the top EDIT - I'll keep a my live thoughts here as we move throughout this week in case anyone's still reading this and interested. 5/4 8PM - /ES was red last night but steadily climbed, which was expected since 1h RSI was borderline oversold, leaving us to a slightly green day. /ES looks like it has momentum going up, but is approaching towards overbought territory now. Expecting it to go towards 284 (possibly where we'll open tomorrow) and bouncing back down from that price level 5/5 Market Open - Well there goes my price target. I guess at this point it might go up to 293 again, but will need a lot of momentum to push back there to 300. Seems like this is being driven by oil prices skyrocketing. 5/5 3:50PM - Volume for the upwards price action had very little volume behind it. Seeing a selloff EOD today, could go either way although I have a bearish bias. Going to hold cash until it goes towards one end of the 274-293 channel (see last week's thesis). Still believe that we will see it drop below 274 next week, but we might be moving sideways in the channel this week and a bit of next week before that happens. Plan for tomorrow is buy short dated puts if open < 285. Otherwise, wait till it goes to 293 before buying those puts 5/5 6PM - What we saw today could be a false breakout above 284. Need tomorrow to open below 285 for that to be confirmed. If so, my original thesis of it going back down to 274 before bouncing back up will still be in play. 5/6 EOD - Wasn't a false breakout. Looks like it's still forming the head-and-shoulders pattern mentioned before, but 288 instead of 284 as the level. Still not sure yet so I'm personally going to be holding cash and waiting this out for the next few days. Will enter into short positions if we either go near 293 again or drop below 270. Might look into VIX calls if VIX goes down near 30. 5/7 Market Open - Still waiting. If we break 289 we're probably heading to 293. I'll make my entry to short positions when we hit that a second time. There's very little bullish momentum left (see MACD 1D), so if we hit 293 and then drop back down, we'll have a MACD crossover event which many traders and algos use as a sell signal. Oil is doing some weird shit. 5/7 Noon - Looks like we're headed to 293. Picked up VIX 32.5c 5/27 since VIX is near 30. 5/7 11PM - /ES is hovering right above 2910, with 4h and 1h charts are bullish from MACD and 1h is almost overbought in RSI. Unless something dramatic happens we'll probably hit near 293 tomorrow, which is where I'll get some SPY puts. We might drop down before ever touching it, or go all the way to 295 (like last time) during the day, but expecting it to close at or below 293. After that I'm expecting a gap down Monday as we start the final leg down next week towards 274. Expecting 1D MACD to crossover in the final leg down, which will be a signal for bears to take over and institutions / day traders will start selling again 5/8 Market Open - Plan is to wait till a good entry today, either when technicals looks good or we hit 293, and then buy some SPY June 285p and July 275p 5/8 Noon - Everything still going according to plan. Most likely going to slowly inch towards 293 by EOD. Will probably pick up SPY puts and more VIX calls at power hour (3 - 4PM). Monday will probably gap down, although there's a small chance of one more green / sideways day before that happens if we have bullish catalysts on the weekend. 5/8 3:55PM - SPY at 292.60. This is probably going to be the closest we get to 293. Bought SPY 290-260 6/19 debit spreads and 292-272 5/15 debit spreads, as well as doubling down on VIX calls from yesterday, decreasing my cost basis. Still looks like there's room for one more green day on Monday, so I left some money on the side to double down if that's the case, although it's more likely than not we won't get there. 5/8 EOD - Looks like we barely touched 293 exactly AH before rebounding down. Too bad you can't buy options AH, but more convinced we'll see a gap down on Monday. Going to work on another post over the weekend and do my updates there. Have a great weekend everyone!
How YFI came out of nowhere to become the fastest coin to reach $1B and the fastest coin to ever get listed on Coinbase
Note: As mentioned to the original 624 Reddit subscribers, there will be $YFI based Exclusive Original Content released here by myself and others from time to time. These kinds of interactive Deep Dives with a Q&A with fellow Investors / Beta Testers right afterwards is a rare thing in Crypto, and will only be found with this level of immediacy, social interaction, permanence, depth, and complexity of analysis and feedback on a platform like Reddit. A lot of projects have low innovation, just copying something that someone else has already done, but with small tweaks to things like variables in Smart Contracts. A few rare projects have genuine innovation, providing genuine value to investors and users by providing attractive new products that simplify a lot of things in this space. Even rarer are the Unicorns that not only have innovation, but they have innovation in spades, oozing out of every pore. $YFI is one of these types of Unicorns. The scope of products and rapidity of release of new revolutionary products of this project has been simply unmatched in the short history of Crypto. Since 2009, the world of crypto has never seen anything like this lightning fast pace of development spanning such a wide scope of products - optimized automated yield farming and lending that relentlessly hunts the best yields, crypto insurance on Smart Contracts, a revolutionary Stablecoin idea that essentially makes a USD altcoin "smart" with built-in yield farming capabilities for the first time, to name a few - all built by a genius Smart Contract Builder who provided the world the first Fair Launch token. Key to wrapping your head around the advantages that the yEarn Finance ecosystem has over - well, every single other option out there at this time - are the concepts below:
CeFi vs. DeFi
Composability
Smart Contract Stacking
The power of a Talented and Diverse DAO
To discuss these concepts, and to educate beginners, we have to understand what the terms above truly mean. This post doesn't discuss any particular products and their advantages, only the systemic advantages that are available only to $YFI. This project seems to attract the smartest and the highest risk taking of crypto investors, and an important thing in truly understanding all of the risks involved, is that you have to know the terms and concepts first. Even veteran crypto and DeFi users may be thrown for a loop by some of the innovative products and concepts that keep coming out of the YFI Labs. This project is going through an expansion phase, where the scope of everything and the reach of the various released products is increasing (Insurance, A truly pegged Stablecoin, yETH Version 2, ySwap, yLiquidate, etc, etc..) You know that there's some motherforker or twenty that is now just avidly waiting for every piece of code that Andre drops onto GitHub, so that they can be among the first to copy it verbatim then claim it as "their own variation" because they changed some variables and titles. Yawn. From the definitive glossary for the DeFi space - yet another $YFI innovation - I'll list their definitions below. These may not be their final definitions when I finish any V1.1 edits to it, but they're good enough for now, and at least 3 or more YFI Dev Team members have read, reviewed, or edited these definitions. I've also invited my fellow Beta testers to provide comments to my RFC on this subreddit and in the Governance forum (among the documentation volunteers). Yes, this is how early DeFi investors are in the development and maturation of the DeFi space. Anyone reading this right now is so early into DeFi's evolution that the terms used for this space are literally still being finalized by the community. I've given a little bit of a sneak peek into how technical documentation is somehow self-organized in a powerful DAO such as this one. In this example, it starts off with a call for help on Twitter to improve our documentation by tracheopteryx. Interested and qualified volunteers show up (or don't) when such a call is made. Your writers and editors have spent many a moment pondering off into space debating whether this term really means this or that, or if the term was either succinctly described, or fully sufficient. It's a usually thankless and anonymous job, that is critical in providing enough relevant information to its users and investors. [Note: Just like anything you see related to the $YFI project: You can help us improve this documentation - any of it - if you see errors or better ways of describing this information.] All terms are shamelessly plagiarized from myself and my fellow writeeditors - u/tracheopteryx and Franklin - from the draft definitions in our new DeFi glossary: https://docs.yearn.finance/defi-glossary 1. CeFi vs. DeFi CeFi - Centralized Finance. In terms of cryptocurrency, CeFi is represented by centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, businesses or organizations with a physical address, and usually with some sort of corporate structure. These CeFi businesses must follow all applicable laws, rules, and regulations in each country, state, or region in which they operate. DeFi - DeFi, or Decentralized Finance, is at its root a set of Smart Contracts running independently on blockchains such as the Ethereum network. Smart Contracts may or may not interact with other smart contracts and even other blockchains. The goal of DeFi is to enhance profitability of investors in DeFi through automated smart contracts seeking to maximize yields for invested funds. DeFi is marked by rapid innovative progression and testing of new ideas and concepts. DeFi often involves high risk investing sometimes involving smart contracts that have not been audited or even thoroughly reviewed (a review is not as comprehensive as an audit, but may be also be included as part of an audit). Due to this and other reasons, DeFi is conventionally considered to be more risky than CeFi or traditional investing. Comment: DeFi is higher risk, partly because it moves so fast. A lot of yams, hot dogs, and sushi can get lost when you move so fast that you can't even bother to do a thorough audit before releasing code. The cream of the crop projects will all have had multiple audits done by multiple independent auditors. Auditors are expensive. At such an embryonic stage, most projects can't afford to have one audit done let alone 5. But if you can live with that higher risk intrinsic in DeFi and be willing to be a part of "testing in prod," then financial innovation can truly blossom. And if you let your best and brightest members of your community focus only on doing what they do best, then they don't have to bother to try to grow a business like a Bezos, Musk, or a Zuckerberg. Innovative entrepreneurs in this mold such as Andre, don't have to even try to do this business growth on their own because the DAO sets it up so that they don't have to do this.The DAO both grows the business while supporting and allowing these innovators to simply innovate, instead of trying to get nerds to do backroom deals to gain market share and access to new customers. It turns out that nerds are much more productive when you just let them be a nerd in their labs.
Composability
Composability - The measure of the usability and ability of a product to be used as a building block (or "money lego") in the construction of other products or domains. A protocol that is simple, powerful, and that functions well with other protocols would be considered to have high composability. Comment: The maturity of the cryptocurrency ecosystem and the evolution of composable building tools in the DeFi space now make new products and concepts available. $YFI would not have been possible only 2 or 3 years ago; the tools and ecosystem simply weren't ready for it yet. This is why only now are you and many other now hearing about YFI. In 2018, Andre began providing free code reviews to Crypto Briefing. Andre had to learn to walk before he could run, and the composable tools needed to work on embryonic ideas in his head were simply not ready or available then. By reading and reviewing so many Smart Contracts he learned to recognize good code from bad code at what was still a very early stage in Smart Contract development in 2018, only 3 years after ETH's launch in July 2015.
Smart Contract Stacking
Smart Contracts - A digital contract that is programmed in a language that is considered Turing complete, meaning that with enough processing power and time, a properly programmed Smart Contract should be able to use its code base and logical algorithms to perform almost any digital task or process. Ethereum's programming languages, such as Solidity and Vyper, are Turing complete. Comment: Smart Contracts have actually gotten smarter since ETH launched in July 2015. It's because Smart Contract builders needed to learn Solidity and how it functions and interoperates before they could spread their wings as designers. With more time and experience under their belts, the early SC builders that stuck to it have gotten much better. In Andre Cronje, we may have been witness to the rise of the next Satoshi or Vitalik of crypto. There is a reason that a couple of days ago, I counted 6 of 41 YF clones - nearly 15% - among the top gainers on the day. Success breeds copycats showing a ton of flattery. A smart contract is so smart, it can be used to be stacked upon other smart contracts such as at Aave or Maker. True innovation takes time, sacrifice, blood, sweat, and tears. It does not come without cost to those doing the innovating. There is not a single project in DeFi, CeFi, or even all of cryptocurrency that can claim the breadth and diversity of innovation and product reach that is found in the $YFI ecosystem. As a tech investor and professional nerd who's been involved at Research Labs and around product development and testing since before the year 2000. Prior to that I've ready widely and keenly to keep up with technological changes and assess investment potential in these disruptive changes nearly my whole life. The amount of innovation shown in this project is breathtaking if you're a Tech or FinTech researcher. It's being released at a ridiculously rapid pace that is simply unmatched in any private or government research lab anywhere, let alone at any CeFi or traditional financial institution one can name. The only comparable levels of innovation shown by this young project is typically only seen during periods of epochal changes such as The Renaissance or times of strife and war, such as World War II. Unless you've been in the industry and working with coders:I don't think those that haven't been around software development and testing can understand, can truly grasp that no one, no group does this.This isn't normal. This rapid-fire release of truly innovative code and intelligent strategies would have to be comparable to some of the greatest creative periods of human ingenuity and creativity. It's truly on par with periods of brilliance seen by thinkers like Newton, Einstein and Tesla, except with software code and concepts in decentralized finance. When the history of FinTech writes this chapter in its history, $YFI may need its own section or chapter. Don't forget all of these financial instruments we take for granted all around us, all had a simple start somewhere, whether it was an IOU system of credit, insurance, stocks, bonds, derivatives, futures, options, and so on...they all started off as an idea somewhere that had to get tested sooner or later "in production." One brilliant aspect of $YFI Smart Contracts is that they're built as a profitable layer atop existing DeFi protocols, extracting further value from base crypto assets and even primary crypto derivatives. $YFI is built atop existing smart contracts to create further value where there was none before, and help maximize gains for long term investors.
The Power of a Talented and Diverse DAO
DAO - Distributed Autonomous Organization. The first DAO was started in 2016. According to Wikipedia's definition, it is an: "organization represented by rules encoded as a computer program that is transparent, controlled by the organization members and not influenced by a central government. A DAO's financial transaction record and program rules are maintained on a blockchain." When implemented well, a DAO allows for real world experiments in decentralized democratic organization and control, with more freedom of action and less regulatory oversight for DAO controlled projects and products when compared to legacy corporate structures and organizations. Comment: yEarn Finance has shown us what a properly motivated and sufficiently powerful DAO can do in a short amount of time. There's many reasons why this project with an already profitable business model is the fastest original project in history to ever reach a $1B marketcap in any market - traditional or crypto - accomplishing this amazing feat in less than two months. There's reasons why this is probably the fastest coin in history to get listed on Coinbase in less than 2 months. The power of a sufficiently talented and diverse development team and community is stunning in its power, speed, and ability to get things done quickly. There are risks aplenty with parts of this project, but $YFI is now seen as a "safe" place in DeFi, because you know you that as far as yield farming you probably couldn't do it better yourself unless you took a chance on unaudited code with anonymous Devs, or you were doing the trading equivalent of throwing darts blindfolded and somehow won, except that you even more improbably kept doing that over and over and winning. Summary: There's reasons why YFI has been called the Bitcoin of DeFi and the Berkshire Hathaway Series A of crypto. I've listed some of the reasons above. The confluence of these 4 factors has helped lead to explosive growth for this project. This isn't financial advice as I'm not a financial pro but make no mistake: as a Crypto OG around crypto since early 2013, who was deeply involved in multiple community projects as an early organizer, and who was a small investor during the DotCom era investing in early giants that went on to be gorillas, I don't say this lightly that the $YFI project is lightning in a bottle and a diamond in the rough. What $YFI allows, when all is said and done, is the rapid fire implementation of great ideas that have gone through a rapid Darwinian evolution, where only the best ideas are implemented. Thoughts and ideas are powerful things. The valuation of this coin and ecosystem has to, itmusttake into account that this nascent financial innovation hub and ecosystem actually works and allows the best of these ideas to actually blossom rapidly. You just don't find too many gems like this.
The Fed's Losing Battle with Technological Deflation
PART 1/4 - FREE MARKET? First off, let's set the scene. The stock market is telling you nothing about the real economy anymore. Economic fundamentals have never mattered as little for the stock market as has been the case during this 11-year bull market. The correlation between gross-domestic-product growth and the direction of the S&P 500 Index has only been 7% in this cycle - historically it has been 30% to 70%. Why? Well, it is the Central Banks, led by the Fed, who printed their way out of the Recession in '08. In doing so, they have papered over the cracks, and we have seen the longest economic expansion in US history. However, this is not a particularly meritocratic process: money creation itself increases inequality via the Cantillon Effect, as money printing leads to asset price inflation, which disproportionately benefits the rich and hurts the poor. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker told the New York Times in 2018: “The central issue is we’re developing into a plutocracy. We’ve got an enormous number of enormously rich people that have convinced themselves that they’re rich because they’re smart and constructive." The reality of course is that this is largely not the case - it is because the game is rigged in their favour. Now, it is important to emphasise the fact that the path we have taken has resulted in the highest living standards we have seen in human history. However, the issue, particularly since the US completely abandoned the gold standard in 1971, is that debt has exploded to obscene levels. We are not operating in a free market if it takes $185 trillion of debt over the last 20 years to create 'growth'. In fact, the global debt to GDP ratio hit an all-time high of 322% in the third quarter of 2019. Inflation means that your dollar loses value and thus your purchasing power goes down. Deflation means that the value of your dollar goes up and your purchasing power goes up. That's a good thing right? You get more goods and services for less. Well, no. If you have deflation, debt explodes in real terms and you can never pay it back. As the economy is based on debt, if you allow deflation, then you have to reset the debt. This is why central banks fear deflation so much. However, the major force driving the human race is technological progress - and this stops for no mortal... PART 2/4 - TECHNOLOGICAL DEFLATION: The increased abundance created by technology will result in massive job losses. Throughout history, doom porn enthusiasts have screamed that the machines are coming for jobs. This is not a new phenomenon. All technological revolutions are deflationary - since they create "supply side shocks", meaning that they allow for more intensive use of resources and thus higher production. With more goods being produced, all other things being equal, the price of those goods will fall. In the last 20 years or so, software has disrupted and replaced many established goods and services. It is in the next 20 years that another disruptive technology is set to take the stage: AI According to Steve Schwarzman, the co-founder and CEO of The Blackstone Group who has a net worth of $17.6BN: "This is going to touch everyone's life....you're not going to be able to get away from this technology" Moreover, this virus will only accelerate this trend towards tech. Zoom is a fantastic example of exactly this. Old legacy economic systems were not built for this tech deflation, and the thing about exponential growth is that we humans do not intuitively understand it. As an example, if you folded a piece of paper 51 times, of course you can only fold it seven times, but if you could fold it 51 times, it would reach the Sun! PART 3/4 - IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIETY: The question is: how does this play out? In the long term, it is the fundamental structure of the economic system that has a significant impact on people's lives, not who is President for 4 to 8 years. In reality, politicians have limited power and are effectively all puppets. We have seen what happens when a President doesn't stay in their lane... One could argue that the two main mechanisms of control are:
As we have seen many times in the past, herd psychology is worryingly easy to manipulate... Speaking of the censorship, in his book Antifragile, Nassim Taleb discusses the anti fragility of information. Information feeds more on attempts to harm it than it does on efforts to promote it. A fantastic example of this process is what has happened with London Real: they were banned on LinkedIn and David Icke's interview was censored. Now, regardless of what you think of this particular channel or your thoughts on David Icke and the theories provided, censoring information in this way actually spreads it more virally. It's fascinating to observe how many views the videos regarding the bans and censorship have relative to the others. And the impact this has had on subscribers. It is always easier to blame a bigger enemy (or create a new one) rather than to admit it's a structural problem. Therefore, you avoid short term pain...whatever the cost. The real question is if and when this situation will lead to social unrest... PART 4/4 - INTELLECTUAL CAPITALISM: The depth and width of jobs impacted by AI will continue to increase in the future. Now this will not necessarily happen straight away. However, our transition from commodity capitalism to intellectual capitalism is inevitable and the people and nations who fight against this trend will be on the wrong side of history. From a practical investment perspective, and disclaimer this is not investment advice, network effects are a crucial aspect to consider moving forwards. Essentially, this means that the value of the network increases with each additional user - all of the tech monopolies have exhibited this property. An asset which could in time demonstrate very strong network effects is Bitcoin. Looking at the market cap relative to other asset classes, Bitcoin provides an asymmetric investment opportunity. Only time will tell... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nFbKzt-uwE
What will undoubtedly happen from a macroeconomic (big picture) perspective... idiots
OKAY. So demand has been reduced dramatically around the world, our $21 trillion GDP has basically been paused for 2 months, so to keep it afloat (rough math), the government had to add $3.5 trillion to keep the economy running somewhat smoothly. That's a lot of printing, you idiots probably expect inflation. Wrong, step away from the US and look at what other countries are doing, the ECB (European Central Bank) and BOJ (Bank of Japan) are having to print trillions of dollars worth of EURO and YEN to keep their economies going, along with every other country getting pounded. Not only that, but since the US dollar makes up 70% of global transactions, in liquidity terms, trillions worth of euro and yen is MUCH MUCH more than any amount Jpow feels like printing, there's no way our printing could offset what the rest of the world is doing, so inflation isn't coming. If you want proof, just look at the euro/usd (going lower) and literally ANY emerging market currency is getting absolutely clapped vs the dollar. Furthermore, not only is US corporate debt at an all time high, but emerging markets, the eurozone, and asia has borrowed more dollars than ever before at any point in history, basically everyone around the world's debt is denominated in US DOLLARS. So what's about to happen? It's already happening, demand for US dollars is going up because everyone around the world wants to borrow more to offset cash flow concerns and pay off existing debts, which will cause the dollar to increase in value. What happens when the whole world has debt in dollars and the dollar goes up in value? DEBT BECOMES MORE EXPENSIVE. This is DEFLATION, and in particular and even more terrifying DEBT DEFLATION, a phrase that would make Jpow absolutely shit himself (and he knows its coming). This has already started before the whole beervirus nonsense, look at Venezuela and Zimbabwe, they had too much dollar debt, no one wanted to lend to them anymore and whoops, their currency is worthless now. It's going to be like a game of musical chairs for people trying to get access to dollars, starting with emerging markets and eventually moving into the more developed economies. The result: massive corporate bankruptcies, countries defaulting on debt (devaluing their currencies) and eventually a deleveraging of massive proportions. This WILL occur and no amount of printing can stop it, it's already too far gone. It doesn't matter what the stock market does, other markets around the world will be fucked, honestly it might cause the market to go up because of all the money fleeing other countries trying to find a safe place to live. Here are the plays assholes. TLT will go up because no matter what Jpow says, he doesn't control the fed funds rate, the market does, and US treasury bond yields have already priced in bonds going negative. CPI shows that we may see up to -3% inflation (3% deflation), meaning at .25% fed funds rate, the REAL rate is 3.25%, that is the worst thing possible during a deleveraging because it makes it harder to stimulate the economy, the fed has no choice, rates MUST go lower. Rates go lower, bond prices go up, TLT 12/18 $205c. Remember how I said scared foreign money will want to find a nice safe place to go when we go into the biggest debt crisis the world has seen in over 300 years? GLD 12/18 $240c. Finally, the dollar will rise in value as well so UUP 12/18 $28c. As far the actual market, we hit a high of SPY 339.08 in February, fell to a low of 218.26 by mid March, and have since then retraced EXACTLY to the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level at 290, and started to bounce lower from there. I'm no technical analyst, but I do know history. During the greatest crashes in stock market history, 1929, 2001, 2008, the Nikkei in 1989 (Japan) this exact same thing happened, market got scared and fell to lows, then smoked that good hopium for a few weeks or month to retrace between 50% and 61.8% back to previews highs, then absolutely fell off a cliff. If you don't believe me, go look at the charts. Now, I'm personally not going to be betting on the US market falling because of the fact that its just straight up not reflecting reality and there are much better ways to trade on what's occurring (see trades above), but I PROMISE, that we will not be seeing new highs at any point any time soon. TLDR; The world is going to shit due to the dollars over-dominance of the world market, we will soon see the worst deleveraging in human history, and may very well have to come up with a new fiat money system (probably not bitcoin, but it wouldn't hurt to have some). TLT 12/18 $205c, GLD 12/18 $240c, and UUP 12/18 $28c. If you wanna be an autist and buy weeklys, I can't help you, but I basically just gave you the next big short, so you're welcome. DISCLAIMER: I didn't say what price to buy at for a reason, timing is extremely important for trades like this, so don't FOMO in and overpay, you will get clapped.
Wall Street Breakfast: Volatile Week Ends In Quad Witching Session
U.S. equity futures held up overnight following another selloff on Wall Street that was led by major tech names. Contracts tied to the Dow and S&P 500 are hugging the flatline, while Nasdaq futures pared recent losses by climbing 0.6%. Mixed messaging around a potential coronavirus vaccine, as well as the passage of further fiscal stimulus, weighed on the market, while investors are gearing up for consumer sentiment data set for release at 10 a.m. ET. Don't forget that it's also quad witching day, which refers to the simultaneous expiration of market index futures, stock futures, market index options and stock options. "These days tend to get a lot of press for all of the volume they create, but historically they are nearly always a non-event," said Ryan Detrick, senior market strategist at LPL Financial. Spending deal to avoid government shutdown While there may be disagreement over another round of coronavirus relief, lawmakers are aiming to unveil a bipartisan spending bill today to avert a government shutdown on Oct. 1. The "clean" legislation, largely devoid of any controversial measures, should keep the government funded into mid-December. "I don't think anybody wants to be responsible for shutting down the government on the eve of an election in the middle of a pandemic, so it's a rare outbreak of common sense on both sides," said Rep. Tom Cole (R., Okla.), a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee. New round of farm aid "Starting next week my administration is committing an additional $13B in relief to help farmers recover from the China virus," President Trump announced a campaign rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin. The new aid is the second tranche of money issued as part of the Trump administration's Coronavirus Food Assistance Program. In April, the administration unveiled $19B in relief for the agriculture sector under the CARES Act, including $16B in direct payments to farmers and ranchers and $3B in mass purchases of dairy, meat and produce. Fed mulls extension of bank dividend curbs Due to heightened economic uncertainty, the Federal Reserve is considering extending its caps on banks' dividends and stock repurchases for the rest of the year. The U.S. central bank made the announcement along with its release of hypothetical scenarios for the second round of stress tests that it's requiring due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike an earlier round of stress tests this year, the Fed will release the results of the tests for each of the 33 lenders, rather than providing aggregate results for the group. Sub-zero rates The Bank of England held its benchmark policy rate at 0.1% on Thursday, but indicated it could cut interest rates below zero for the first time in its 326-year history. While recent domestic economic data has been a bit stronger than expected, it's "unclear how the economy will perform further out," according to the Monetary Policy Committee. Another major risk facing the U.K. economy relates to the post-Brexit trade discussions between the U.K. and the EU, which have recently soured. Terms of a TikTok deal The Trump administration spent Thursday reviewing proposals on the TikTok-Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) partnership, which currently has many moving parts. TikTok owner ByteDance (BDNCE) agreed to list the video-sharing app on a U.S. stock exchange, which could happen within a year, though there are still concerns over whether the Chinese parent would be allowed to retain a majority stake in the new company. Meanwhile, shares in China's Tencent (OTCPK:TCEHY) tumbled into the U.S. closing bell following reports that its investments are drawing new national security attention. Exchange dealmaking Seeing off competing bids from Deutsche Borse (OTCPK:DBORY) and Switzerland's SIX, the London Stock Exchange (OTCPK:LNSTY) is in exclusive talks to sell Borsa Italiana to France's Euronext (OTCPK:EUXTF). Offloading the Milan stock exchange would help LSE achieve regulatory remedies for its $27B purchase of data provider Refinitiv, which is owned by Blackstone (NYSE:BX) and Thomson Reuters (NYSE:TRI). The deal is politically sensitive in Rome because of concerns about who could take control of Borsa Italiana's bond platform, which handles trading of Italy's government debt. New COVID-19 restrictions across Europe Targeted lockdowns and local restrictions are returning to Europe as the region tries to avoid broad economic damage amid a surge in coronavirus cases. "Weekly cases have now exceeded those reported when the pandemic first peaked in Europe in March," the WHO's regional director for Europe Hans Kluge told an online news conference. "Although these numbers reflect more comprehensive testing, it also shows alarming rates of transmission across the region." Pubs and restaurants must shut early and household mixing has been limited in northeast England, while social gatherings of more than six people have been banned across the country. French authorities are meanwhile preparing tighter restrictions in several cities, while Spain's Madrid has moved to "reduce mobility and contacts" in areas with high infection rates. Go Deeper: Israel becomes first developed country to enforce a second nationwide shutdown. Pandemic closures see restaurants hit the hardest About 60% of businesses that have closed their doors during the coronavirus pandemic will never reopen, and restaurants have suffered the most, according to new data from Yelp. The National Restaurant Association also said this week that 100,000 restaurants have closed either permanently or long term, adding that the sector is on track to lose $240B in sales this year. A number of factors have made it especially difficult for eateries, which tend to operate on thin margins even in the best of times. What else is happening... Unity (NYSE:U) to raise $1.3B in IPO, prices 25M shares above range. New York files civil charges against J&J (NYSE:JNJ) over opioids. Walmart (NYSE:WMT) hikes pay for about 165,000 hourly employees. Dave & Buster's (NASDAQ:PLAY) stumbles on bankruptcy speculation. Proposed Boeing (NYSE:BA) 737 MAX safety upgrades endorsed by NTSB. Nat gas tumbles by most in two years after stockpile gain. Today's Markets In Asia, Japan +0.2%. Hong Kong +0.5%. China +2.1%. India -0.3%. In Europe, at midday, London -0.2%. Paris -0.3%. Frankfurt +0.1%. Futures at 6:20, Dow flat. S&P flat. Nasdaq +0.6%. Crude +0.9% to $41.34. Gold +0.6% to $1961.40. Bitcoin +1.6% to $11005. Ten-year Treasury Yield flat at 0.68%
My Provisional List of COVID Anomalies, Red/ False Flags & Clear Indications of Scumbaggery And Scambuggery. LIHOP, MIHOP Or HOAX/SCAM? Def Not As Described. Very Much Updated Since 1st Posting. Please Let Me Know What I’ve Missed Or Add Links. Repost, Due To Strange Disappearance of 90% Of My Post.
Here’s my Top 22 list of suspicious shenanigans and red flags surrounding the COVID narrative:
The Imperial College Death data - Neil Ferguson and Gates-funded Imperial College, London Model that ‘persuaded’ Johnson and Trump to lockdown. Projected 500K deaths in UK and 2.2m deaths in US, EVEN WITH LOCKDOWN. Less than 10% accuracy but 110% alarmist, and evidence that the coding was deliberately flawed and designed to inflate numbers. Gates funding everyone involved in the staged 'debacle'.
Vaccine adulation and promotion (Gates etc promising vaccine = release from captivity - pharmaceutical companies in league with WHO to drum up mandatory sales)
Expediting the climate change agenda, conflating it with the virus as a call for world government and global sustainability.
Plus RFID/ ID2020 tracking through vaccines (mark of the beast, without which no transaction/ employment will be possible)
Demonisation and eradication of cash (total financial dominion)
Mass unemployment and Universal Credit system linked to Social Credit.
Bank (and corporate) bailouts – this time round it looks legitimate and necessary, no public outcry.
Using and conditioning us to the concept of quarantining as a future method of control should there be any hint of unrest.
Cultification of the NHS to the point of a unifying religion (clapping and donations and lionisation of medical staff during what must be the quietest time in their history)
Legitimation of multiculturalism and immigration (race-baiting through NHS and volunteers, #youclapforusnow
A shot in the arm for the MSM and government as a whole: no longer irrelevant and dying, people watching 24-7 since pandemic. Taking attention away from alternative media.
Privatisation of NHS/ public services – corporations will step in to ‘save’ us (public gratitude replacing scepticism)
Makes government look noble and heroic (wartime/ WW2 mentality fostered)
COVID19 as cover story for 5G radiation/ environmental pollution/ vaccine damage etc
Mass Surveillance – using 5G ‘for our safety’ to track and trace
Opportunity to pass draconian laws against human rights (assembly, sectioning, travel, speech)
Social alienation/ conformity as preference/ patriotic duty
Prevention of assembly in order to protest draconian laws
Depopulation in stages (elderly first, then with vaccines and suicides/ bankruptcy etc due to system collapse)
Censorship of social media and social discourse in general
Installation of 5G during lockdown to avoid scrutiny
Effecting the transition of the workplace, shopping district and school to the home, ending community and all nourishing human interactions.
The ‘new normal’ - social revolution and culture creation through social distancing/ queuing for shops/reinvention of the word essential/ mask wearing etc
Destruction of small and medium sized businesses and the high street in general
Fauci’s early dismissive comments about virus, herd immunity and futility of masks, before the script was revised.
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