Messages

'Striking the right balance is not always easy though. In 2008 the Fed was preoccupied with inflation, while subprime mortgage products built up excessive leverage in bank balance sheets, provoking systemic problems in markets that lead to the worst global recession since the 1930s.'

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks-weekahead/markets-fret-over-federal-reserves-approach-under-new-chair-powell-idUSKCN1G729Z


'The pilot was pre-occupied with making coffee when the plane ploughed into a mountain, killing all aboard.'


Debt has to be repaid -- or maybe not.

QE was going to be a brief and unsavoury experience in just one country, but it has gone on and on in countries all over the world.

Really high levels of debt must be avoided -- except if everyone has them, then . . . everyone has them but you just don't talk about it!

After QE must come rises in interest rates -- or not . . . let's wait and see.


These guys have no idea what they're doing. So, 2018 -- with a new apparatchik at the helm of the US Fed Reserve -- will be sooooo interesting to watch. Articles suggest four or even five interest-rate rises.

Really?

[Thinking about Exchanges]

Thinking about Exchanges

'I'm using Kraken for a very long time and never had any issue, but it's true that their support is very slow to answer (like a month or so for complex questions).
You just have to be patient and they'll find where your money went.'

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7zdwol/24k_stolen_by_krakencom/



Firstly, the political term 'co-option' – soooo useful at present. 'Co-option' is when something good and new comes along, then the bad old guys get their claws into it, push it out of view, weaken it, take it over.

I've reviewed four exchanges since December: two centralised and two decentralised. Didn't like any of them (though I do have high standards).

The decentralised exchanges are probably going to be as bad as the centralised exchanges. They are merely the next phase of the co-option.
What can we do about it? That's a post for another day. But it's clear that many crypto geeks think that the dexchanges will lead us to bright sunlit uplands. But I fear: nuh.

[NOW]

'The Opec cartel is to forge a permanent alliance with a Russia-led bloc of producers by the end of the year, aiming to regain control of the world crude market with a super-combine of unprecedented scale and reach.'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/02/20/oils-super-cartel-born-opec-russia-prepare-knot-us-shale-still/


What does this have to do with cryptos?

Well, when you buy your first crypto, you enter the world of The Theory of Money.

The U.S. dollar has been the global reserve currency since the Second World War, particularly in respect of trading oil. And the U.S. can bully nations by refusing to let them buy stuff with dollars -- stuff like oil. And this Russian-OPEC agreement is part of an historic movement away from trading in U.S. dollars -- check this:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/11/china-will-compel-saudi-arabia-to-trade-oil-in-yuan--and-thats-going-to-affect-the-us-dollar.html

Now check this: 'an arcane new financial product — one that could presage a huge shift in global energy markets and advance China's quest to play a bigger role in the global economy.'

http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/01/18/chinas-bid-upend-global-oil-market-petroyuan-shanghai/


So, on one side, the half-Trillion-market-cap terrier of cryptos has its teeth sunk into the calf of Mr. U.S., but on the other side, a wolf is tearing his arm out of its socket.

Now think about how stock markets functioned historically: you were rich, and you could trade stocks (in U.S. dollars?); or you weren't, and you couldn't. But NOW, schoolkids are trading these 'cryptos' on their smartphones during little lunch.

Watch for the collapse of the Eurozone, campers -- the death of the Euro.

'Nigerians Trade $4 Million in Bitcoin Weekly, despite Warnings'           

https://news.bitcoin.com/nigerians-trade-4-million-in-bitcoin-weekly-despite-warnings/

Good read. Shows the relationship between What-Goes-on-in-Bankers'-and-Bureaucrats'-Minds versus what goes on in the real world (in which folks are running out of patience with bankers and bureaucrats . . . ).

[Volatility: Big Lies Are The Best Lies]

Volatility: Big Lies Are The Best Lies

'In other words, it's becoming not just more volatile, the whole underlying structure of our economy is destabilizing.  What I mean by that is it's becoming more brittle or fragile.  That is fundamentally why we are seeing these wild swings.'

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-18/charles-hugh-smith-fears-catastrophic-drop-financial-markets-definitely


I'm pleased: got this one right years ago: we're gonna see wilder and wilder swings in everything as the system disintegrates.

Check this: http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart

Although the huge shifts happened slower than, say, Bitconnect's collapse, they were huge swings. The argument that cryptos are useless because they're volatile has always been a weak one, and it is getting weaker.

https://news.bitcoin.com/crypto-trading-2018-new-strategies-bigger-crowds-diminishing-returns/

GRS will succeed in the long-term because this is not us. Those newcomers who don't give up will begin to differentiate the fast-and-flimsy projects from the solid projects.

Got an idea to kick around:

talked to our accountant today. It's increasingly clear that newcomers make almost no distinction between old-school POW cryptos and the most Wall-Street-ish permissioned-ledger blah blah token. THUS: we gotta start actually advertising ourselves as immutable (fixed number of units, no rollbacks) instruments: currency, store-of-value.

'Simple'!!

Further detail: check this: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-foundations-llew-claasen-says-bitcoin-will-hit-40000-90-of-altcoins-will-fail
It's Wall Street!

And a token I bought at ICO is requiring KYC. The devs seem utterly oblivious to the notion that KYCs for 'crypto' holders is at all unusual.

We shall distinguish ourselves from the froth and bubble of ICOs and corporate 'DLT' and mutable 2.0s and Government coins and pegged tokens. 'Just' GRS.

'A new poll of IT mangers at large UK businesses found that exactly half keep stockpiles of cryptocurrency for various reasons. Unlike what some might imagine, only a very small fraction of the companies that are holding bitcoin claim to be doing so as preparation for a ransomware attack.'

https://news.bitcoin.com/half-large-british-businesses-hold-stockpiles-cryptocurrency/

Got an idea to kick around:

talked to our accountant today. It's increasingly clear that newcomers make almost no distinction between old-school POW cryptos and the most Wall-Street-ish permissioned-ledger blah blah token. THUS: we gotta start actually advertising ourselves as immutable (fixed number of units, no rollbacks) instruments: currency, store-of-value.

'Simple'!!

'Citi India has decided to not permit usage of its . . . debit cards towards purchase or trading of such bitcoins, cryptocurrencies and virtual currencies.'          https://www.businesstoday.in/sectors/banks/buying-bitcoin-difficult-citi-india-bans-cryptocurrency-purchase-using-debit-credit-cards/story/270561.html

'Given concerns, both globally and locally'       ibid


So far, we've heard the palaver from the banks about protecting themselves and their customers, but we now have a blatant 'governmental function': we are society's shepherds, acting locally upon international concerns.

'"If you were going to look for what's the possible real crack in the financial architecture for the next crisis, rather than looking in the rearview mirror, pension funds would be on our list," Hunt said in a Friday interview with Bloomberg, discussing what municipalities and states will do when local tax revenues decline and unemployment worsens. "So we're worried about those pension obligations."

PGIM, owned by New Jersey-based Prudential Financial, advises 147 of the 300 largest pension funds around the world. Hunt joined Prudential in 2011 after leaving McKinsey & Co., where he doubled assets under management, renamed the business PGIM, and bought a Deutsche Bank AG unit to expand in India.

In other words, he knows the business like the back of his hand.'

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-13/12-trillion-asset-manager-forget-volatility-real-financial-timebomb-public-pensions

[Okay, start here]

Okay, start here, campers: 'The key lines of defence have held on Wall Street.'         

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/02/11/frightening-market-tremor-first-warning-trouble-2019/


Now some theory: feminist theorists speak of 'gaps and silences' — the fact that the important stuff can just be left out. Okay . . .
.
Now check here: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-12/chinas-plunge-protection-team-arrives-urges-companies-boost-stocks-avoid-selling

'the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) and other regulators "advised and encouraged" some major stockholders to purchase more shares in the mainland-listed firms they invest in.'        ibid

'The Shanghai Stock Exchange said on Friday that it has issued warnings and limited intraday trading to prevent large equity sales that affected the market's stability.'        ibid

http://money.cnn.com/data/world_markets/se_composite/

Check the Shanghai Composite Index. Nearly ten percent down over several days, then closes less than one percent in the green on Monday -- that's the Chinese Government propping up the market -- more debt.

'With China cracking down, India cracking down and big retailers that once accepted Bitcoin now turning away from it, gale force headwinds are blowing against the world's leading cryptocurrency.'

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2018/02/05/banks-retailers-china-have-all-turned-on-bitcoin/#51a29e0d95ca

I was ridiculed on Reddit for saying that 2018 would be a 'sideways' year for cryptos.
But price is not the only measure.

The total number of crypto users in the world is still a tiny percentage of world population. So, suppose governments and central banks manage – this year and next? – to put a f a i r l y affective strait-jacket on cryptos? It may be that price does rise, perhaps back to $20k or more; but that the original libertarian goals of this technology – to provide a real alternative to a global banking-system seen as corrupt and incompetent – will not have come about.

The deciding factor will undoubtedly be the global economy – but that's not my point.

My point is that 'sideways this year' isn't just price. It could also be the creation of regulatory constraints.

[What are the connections between stocks and cryptos?]

What are the connections between stocks and cryptos?

What I've been arguing since I got into cryptos is:

One: the GFC never finished. Debt has been used to make it seem that it finished.

Two: the stock markets have been behaving crazily for years now.

Three: this week's craziness on those markets might not continue. If it doesn't, we'll puddle along in Crazy Mode for a bit longer.

Four: but . . . if the markets worsen, cryptos will not only boom in price; but the politics of it all will really kick in: Millennials -- whose adult lives have been lived through the ten years of the GFC -- will really really clearly see that the system doesn't work for them/it doesn't work at all.

I recently saw the term 'accidental criminal' -- those who have wound up on the wrong side of their Tax Department because know one can understand crypto tax regulations. Can you say 'mass social disobedience'?