Subject: Supposedly, Bitcoin revealed: a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another Sat Jan 17, 2015 11:09 pm
If Bitcoin were a currency, it'd be the worst-performing one in the world, worse even than the Russian ruble.
But Bitcoin isn't a currency. It's a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another. At least that's all it is right now. One day it could be more. Venture capitalists, for their part, are quick to point out that it's really a protocol, like the early internet, and its underlying technology could still be revolutionary. What are they supposed to say, though, when they've bet hundreds of millions of dollars on it?
But that's not much of a consolation to anyone who bought anywhere near Bitcoin's $1,100 top. Or near $1,000, or $900, or $800, or, well even yesterday's prices. That's because Bitcoin hasn't just fallen 76 percent the past year. It's fallen 36 percent the past two days, as you can see below, with a 24 percent decline the past 24 hours. It's too bad Bitcoin doesn't have a central bank to help stabilize its value.
Subject: Re: Supposedly, Bitcoin revealed: a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another Mon Jan 19, 2015 2:10 am
So your savings with a financial institution... you don't own them?
;)
DiabloLoco
Age : 44 Location : The VAMPIRE State Job/hobbies : Contractor Humor : Every survival kit should include a sense of humor.
Subject: Re: Supposedly, Bitcoin revealed: a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another Mon Jan 19, 2015 10:31 am
CovOps wrote:
So your savings with a financial institution... you don't own them?
;)
Not really. If things crash, do you really think that you would be able to access those funds? If the bank is shuttered, would you expect to get all of your FRN's, or even the contents of a safe deposit box?
Edit- I'll go a bit further. If the power goes out, what good are bitcoins? Worthless!
Subject: Re: Supposedly, Bitcoin revealed: a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another Tue Jan 20, 2015 1:39 am
Every investment carries risk, including the ones you can hold personally.
That doesn't negate the concept of ownership.
Quote :
I'll go a bit further. If the power goes out, what good are bitcoins? Worthless!
What?! A preper without a back up generator??? Unheard of, I iZ tellZ yA!
DiabloLoco
Age : 44 Location : The VAMPIRE State Job/hobbies : Contractor Humor : Every survival kit should include a sense of humor.
Subject: Re: Supposedly, Bitcoin revealed: a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another Tue Jan 20, 2015 7:49 am
CovOps wrote:
Every investment carries risk, including the ones you can hold personally.
That doesn't negate the concept of ownership.
Quote :
I'll go a bit further. If the power goes out, what good are bitcoins? Worthless!
What?! A preper without a back up generator??? Unheard of, I iZ tellZ yA!
Yes, there is risk with any investment, but I would rather be the one responsible for mitigating those risks. I don't trust anybody else to do it for me.
What good would a generator do? In order for bitcoins to be viable, everybody else would have to have one too! PLUS have a lot of gas and backup parts. Most people don't even have 3 days worth of food! Do you really think that they would take the time and spend the money for a generator and a gas stockpile?
Bitcoins are stupid. They require faith. I have none.
Subject: Re: Supposedly, Bitcoin revealed: a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another Wed Jan 21, 2015 3:21 am
Quote :
What good would a generator do? In order for bitcoins to be viable, everybody else would have to have one too!
Not everyone loses power at the same time. And certainly not at different locations, let alone on an international scale.
LOL, Bitcoin isn't stupid, but just another financial tool. You may not like it, but seems you don't like any financial instruments either. I presume you're hostile to say trading shares via the net as well... or Fx, futures, options, CFDs, etc...
That's unfortunate... as it kinda limits your opportunities...
DiabloLoco
Age : 44 Location : The VAMPIRE State Job/hobbies : Contractor Humor : Every survival kit should include a sense of humor.
Subject: Re: Supposedly, Bitcoin revealed: a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another Wed Jan 21, 2015 4:11 pm
CovOps wrote:
Quote :
What good would a generator do? In order for bitcoins to be viable, everybody else would have to have one too!
Not everyone loses power at the same time. And certainly not at different locations, let alone on an international scale.
What about a Carrington Class solar flare? Nuclear war? EMP weapons? While these threats are unlikely, they ARE a possibility.
Quote :
LOL, Bitcoin isn't stupid, but just another financial tool.
How do you feel about the US dollar? The Euro? Yuan? Yen? Ruble? Franc? How is Bitcoin any different? None of these things have any intrinsic value. They are not backed by anything. They are not "money". Once faith in these currencies fail, so does the currency. And to think that all this time, I had you pegged as a Rothbardian. I'm disappointed.
Quote :
You may not like it, but seems you don't like any financial instruments either. I presume you're hostile to say trading shares via the net as well... or Fx, futures, options, CFDs, etc...
That's unfortunate... as it kinda limits your opportunities...
Yes, I am against those things. I have faith in me and my abilities. Nothing else. I need to have complete control of my life. Present AND future. By participating in the rigged game of stocks, currencies, bonds,....etc...you are facilitating your own demise. I have no right to impose that view on others though. I will just sit back and bask in my "told you so" attitude with a smug look on my face once they all fail, which they will ALL do eventually. It's a mathematical certainty.
Subject: Re: Supposedly, Bitcoin revealed: a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another Wed Jan 21, 2015 6:18 pm
Quote :
What about a Carrington Class solar flare? Nuclear war? EMP weapons? While these threats are unlikely, they ARE a possibility.
LOL, cataclysmic events? If Armageddon strikes, no matter how you're placed, you're screwed... and now I'm off to get a tin-foil hat for the next meteor shower...
Quote :
How do you feel about the US dollar? The Euro? Yuan? Yen? Ruble? Franc? How is Bitcoin any different? None of these things have any intrinsic value.
Nothing in fact has any intrinsic value. And intrinsicism as a philosophy is false. That aside, various currencies, etc., are great for making money, as things stand today.
Quote :
They are not "money". Once faith in these currencies fail, so does the currency.
That's OK, I'll be sure to short them and make money anyway...
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And to think that all this time, I had you pegged as a Rothbardian. I'm disappointed.
Awww, but you were right the first time...
Quote :
By participating in the rigged game of stocks, currencies, bonds,....etc...you are facilitating your own demise.
LOL, I must have been 'facilitating my own demise' for decades then... all the while making money... And it doesn't matter to me, even if it's a rigged game... if you know how to trade properly, that becomes irrelevant... it becomes just another random variable...
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I need to have complete control of my life. Present AND future.
First, that is never the actual case, it's an impossibility. But to the extent that you can come close to it's realization, it would only be applicable to a small scale operation. But as soon as one starts expanding, growing, etc., a whole new set of variables comes into play...
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I will just sit back and bask in my "told you so" attitude with a smug look on my face once they all fail, which they will ALL do eventually. It's a mathematical certainty.
LOL, I know guys with that attitude and who are now long buried and gone... Also know one wacko who in order to minimize risks, won't drive with his family in the car, on the grounds that he 'could have a heart attack' and would be putting the rest of the family at risk... won't go into all the problems this causes, additional expenditure, inconvenience, etc... you remind me of him, lolol.
Quote :
It's a mathematical certainty.
So is death, but that doesn't prevent us from enjoying life while we still have it...
Here's a sample chart of a falling Yen and since 2012...
And it doesn't mean one isn't making money out of it...
DiabloLoco
Age : 44 Location : The VAMPIRE State Job/hobbies : Contractor Humor : Every survival kit should include a sense of humor.
Subject: Re: Supposedly, Bitcoin revealed: a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another Wed Jan 21, 2015 7:15 pm
Well...I do believe that we have reached another impasse. Further discussion will only result in more ad hominem from your end, (eg; "Also know one wacko" "you remind me of him") and no ground gained by either side. Noting such, I do not wish to continue the conversation. I am not admitting defeat. Not at all. Quite the opposite, really. Your use of ad hominem basically announces loud and clear that you felt that you were losing. I'm stating that my time is best spent elsewhere considering the denigration that was included and would most likely continue.
Subject: Re: Supposedly, Bitcoin revealed: a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another Wed Jan 21, 2015 7:27 pm
Nonsense. There is no ad-hom. Describing a 'wacko' as a 'wacko,' is accurate and sticking to the facts of reality. If he reminds me of you, there must be a reason and attempting to mitigate all risks imaginable, is not the capitalistic way, but quite the opposite.
RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
Subject: Re: Supposedly, Bitcoin revealed: a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another Thu Jan 22, 2015 1:45 am
Group bets on oil price fall, makes $1 billion - So much for falling prices
Hedge fund manager Zach Schreiber stood on stage at Avery Fisher Hall in New York eight months ago and made a bold prediction.
“We believe crude oil is going lower -- much lower,” Schreiber, 42, told the audience of roughly 3,000 investors, including some of the biggest money managers in the industry.
“If you are long, I’m sorry for you.” Then he showed a slide of a car stuffed with clowns.
Crude was trading at $99 a barrel that day, bolstered by speculation that Russia’s annexation of Crimea and incursions into Ukraine would crimp shipments.
Prices crept up over the next weeks peaking in June at $107. Then, as Schreiber predicted, the dive began.
Oil fell more than 50 percent through the end of the year as global supplies piled up, helping Schreiber’s PointState Capital make about 27 percent for the year after fees.
The New York-based investment firm’s profit was about $2 billion in 2014 with about half of that from the oil trade, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the firm is private.
PointState, which started 2014 with about $5.8 billion in assets, has been one of the biggest winners from the drop in oil as the U.S. energy industry ramped up production and Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations chose not to cut supply in the face of increased competition.
Global Ramifications
The biggest drop in prices since 2008 has roiled global markets, pushing Russia towards recession, Venezuela closer to default and cutting into earnings for U.S. companies.
It’s also punished hedge funds and other investors that were betting on the U.S. energy complex.
Billionaire John Paulson was among the hardest hit, losing 36 percent in one fund last year in part because of energy company stocks.
When Schreiber spoke at the May conference, he was little known outside the $2.8 trillion hedge fund industry and had a low profile among peers.
He’d founded PointState in January 2011 with Josh Samuelson, Kenan Turnacioglu and Jack Franke, focusing on bets on and against stocks and wagering on global macroeconomic events.
The group had worked together at investor Stan Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Capital Management until 2010, when Druckenmiller closed his 30-year-old hedge fund and returned client capital. PointState started with $1 billion from Druckenmiller and $4 billion from other investors.
Also read: 'Blame the US for oil price fall, not the OPEC'
‘Handily’ beaten
Oil prices have falled 60 per cent since their June 2014 peaks.
At the event, the annual Ira Sohn Investment Conference that raises money for pediatric cancer research and care, Druckenmiller, 61, introduced Schreiber to the crowd as someone who’d traded energy, power, utilities and commodities for him for eight years.
He told the attendees, who had paid at least $1,500 a ticket each, that the PointState crew in 2013 had beaten him “handily.”
Schreiber and his colleagues had returned 30 percent that year, according to people familiar with the firm, compared with an average 7.4 percent gain for hedge funds.
Patrick Clifford, a spokesman for PointState at Abernathy MacGregor Group Inc., declined to comment on PointState’s trades or performance.
Schreiber laid out his argument for shorting West Texas Intermediate crude. He anticipated oil producers in the central U.S. region would keep building supplies leading to a collapse in prices.
Led Zeppelin
Quoting Led Zeppelin’s “The Song Remains the Same,” he said the same scenario had unfolded in the natural gas market, where increased production had driven the commodity down.
His speech resonated with some in the audience. David Einhorn, who manages the $10 billion Greenlight Capital and was also speaking at the conference, described Schreiber’s presentation as compelling in a letter this week to investors. Greenlight then went short the commodity, offsetting losses in energy stocks the firm held at the time.
What Schreiber didn’t mention that day was the role of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which pumps about 40 percent of the world’s oil and declined to cut production in response to increasing supply.
At a Nov. 27 meeting, the organisation agreed to maintain its production target at 30 million barrels a day, wagering that U.S. shale drillers would be first to slow output as prices fell.
Energy stocks
Schreiber also told investors to buy shares of Valero Energy Corp. (VLO) and Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC)
He expected these refiners to benefit from the spread -- or difference in prices - - between WTI and brent, which is extracted from the North Sea and at the time was trading at more than $107 a barrel. This part of the trade worked less well.
As prices for the commodity fell dramatically, the stocks followed, tumbling 15 percent and 5.8 percent respectively through year-end. By the end of the third-quarter, PointState had cut its Valero holdings by more than 80 percent and its Marathon position by a third.
For PointState, it was a blip. The firm’s other $1 billion profit last year included a big wager on healthcare stocks and other macroeconomic themes, said the people.
Oil has continued its descent, with WTI falling more than 12 percent this year.
Schreiber ended his presentation that day with a quote from economist Rudi Dornbusch: “In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then happen faster than you thought they could.”
Location : Wasted Space Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
Subject: Re: Supposedly, Bitcoin revealed: a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another Thu Jan 22, 2015 1:46 am
Some have been waiting for bond markets to collapse for a very long time: last time sovereign bond yields were so low, was the 14th century
It is not a good sign when an internationally respected economist, one of the few who predicted the 2008 global financial crisis, invokes the black plague when discussing today's global financial markets.
"We are in a world that is dangerously unanchored … We're seeing true currency wars and everybody is doing it," said William White, a senior economist for the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development.
"Sovereign bond yields haven't been so low since the black plague," he told Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the European economics editor of The Telegraph in London. Evans-Pritchard has been a prescient (and pessimistic) observer of the eurozone.
Invoking the black plague is not good, especially when the historic reference is accompanied by this: "I have no idea where this is going to end".
The black plague, or black death, known today as bubonic plague, swept from China to mediaeval Europe in the middle of the 14th century, killing an estimated 75 million to 150 million people, about 20 per cent of the world's population. It ravaged Europe for seven years, 1346 to 1353, wiping out half the populations of large cities, including London and Paris. Nothing as deadly has been seen since.
That was the last time interest rates on sovereign debt were as low as they are today.
If White is agitated his concerns should be noted. A former deputy governor of the (Reserve) Bank of Canada, he spent 14 years as the chief economist at the Bank for International Settlements, the central bank for central banks.
His reports for the BIS warned repeatedly that financial regulators were failing to rein in dangerous market instability, especially the potent combination of financial derivatives, junk debt and excessive financial engineering.
In June 2008, White wrote his last report for the BIS. He warned that the world was at risk of another depression. He then retired from the BIS. Three months later, the global financial system went into gridlock.
Today, White serves on a committee advising the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, and is a senior adviser to the OECD.
He thus has credibility when he says that the world's central banks are pushing the global economy into dangers as great as those in 2008. He points out, with disapproval, that since the financial crisis of 2008-09 the world's combined public-private debt has increased by 20 per cent, and most governments have been engaged in competitive currency devaluations.
His warnings come on the eve of a meeting of the European Central Bank on Thursday, which is expected to announce a massive bond-buying program to stimulate the stagnant eurozone.
"It is not going to help at all," he told Evans-Pritchard. "Europe has far greater reliance than the US on small and medium-sized companies and they get their money from banks, not from the bond market … and the banks are not lending to small firms for a variety of reasons."
This is the latest in a series of warnings from White. In the Financial Times of November 20, he was brutal about Japan's massive fiscal stimulus:
"In a world of unprecedented expansionary actions by central banks, the Bank of Japan is set to outdo them all … [This] could seriously affect the global economy … It is not needed … It will not work … It is therefore imperative that Tokyo takes rapid steps to lower its deficit to halt the vicious circle. The risks of not doing so are just too great - for all of us."
In December, analysing this unprecedented stimulus by central banks in a special report for Investments and Pensions, he wrote:
"If easy monetary conditions lead to still more debt accumulation, then an unsustainable and deflationary dynamic process is set in motion … As well, associated misallocations of both real and financial resources also contribute to reducing … output. Clear signs of this process are already very evident."
He is sceptical of the conventional wisdom that the US and Britain are growing faster than Europe because they carried out stimulus aggressively and early. "There are serious side-effects building up and we don't know what will happen when they try to reverse what they have done."
What they have done, White believes, is push the problems of today into a never never land of avoided responsibilities, as if there were no known cure to the plague of fiscal self-indulgence. Let's hope he is as wrong in 2015-16, as he was right in 2008-09.
Location : Wasted Space Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
Subject: Re: Supposedly, Bitcoin revealed: a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another Thu Jan 22, 2015 1:53 am
Re suggestions 'fiat money not backed by anything': OZschwitz statists 'sell off' land for developments, billions involved
One of Sydney's last undeveloped headlands should be sold to developers, according to a report condemned by local MPs as an "appalling breach of trust" by the Abbott government.
The consultants' report, prepared for the Department of Finance, says the Commonwealth-owned Malabar headland is "surplus to requirements" and would generate a "significant return" if sold.
Any sale would all but spell the end of the former federal Labor government's plan to transform the entire headland, just 12km from central Sydney, into national park and public open space. "Appalling" suggestion: The currently undeveloped Malabar headland could be sold to developers.
The heavily redacted "initial business case" instead makes plain that only scenarios that involve selling at least part of the headland for development would meet the government's requirement that the process "maximises the return for the Commonwealth within 3-4 years". Advertisement
"The site is both surplus to Commonwealth requirements and ideal for improvement through cooperation with the private sector," the business case said, estimating future development would generate an investment of "up to $1 billion" during the construction phase alone.
"Divestment of the site will relieve the Commonwealth of an ongoing financial liability associated with the maintenance and decontamination of the site," it said. As much as 48 hectares, or a third of the 160-hectare headland separating Malabar and Maroubra beaches, has been earmarked within the document as suitable for possible mixed-use development following remediation.
"The development could be a mix of land uses such as residential, commercial, special aged care, retail, community/government facilities such as childcare centres and libraries," it said.
By contrast, handing over the entire headland for public open space, as had been proposed by the former government, "does little to improve the economic capital of the site" and "provides limited opportunity for the private sector to contribute".
"This option is unlikely to provide any return to the Commonwealth within the 3-4 year timeframe," the September document, obtained by Fairfax Media under freedom of information laws, said.
Maroubra's state MP Michael Daley accused the government of concealing its true development intentions for the headland, while the Member for Kingsford Smith, Matt Thistlethwaite, called the document an "appalling breach of trust".
"Before the last election there was no mention of development of the headland," Mr Thistlethwaite said. "This is the sacred green shoulder of Maroubra beach, the last remaining tract of native bushland between the harbour and Botany Bay."
The former Labor government's conservation plans for the heavily contaminated headland, parts of which once served as landfill, stalled in 2012 when the NSW Rife Association successfully fought its eviction from a 100-hectare central part of the site.
But any move to transform the Anzac Rifle Range and parts of nearby bushland into one of the report's proposed "development portions" of either 15, 30 or 48 hectares would no longer face such an obstacle.
Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm last month announced he had secured a deal to move the recreational shooters to an upgraded facility in western Sydney, allowing the government to "free up" $3 billion in land at the headland.
Resistance would instead likely come from local MPs, Randwick City Council and community groups, who have all called for the headland to be protected from any future development.
"Trying to make money out of it just doesn't wash with the community," said the Friends of Malabar Headland's Claire Bettington.
"It's something that has to be looked after, not flogged to death," she said.
Nation Partners, consultants appointed by the government to lead "a strategic assessment on the site's potential", inadvertently revealed the existence of the business case in a since-deleted statement published on the company's website last year.
Nation Partners managing director Matthew Nation directed questions to the Department of Finance on Wednesday. "We don't have any comment to make," he said.
A spokeswoman for Michael McCormack, the parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Finance, said "the government has not yet made a decision in relation to the future of Malabar headland".
"With the level of expenditure required to remediate the site it is prudent to understand land use scenarios to develop potential remediation options and cost estimates to ensure value for money outcomes for the Commonwealth," the spokeswoman said.
Although most of the costings - along with the business case's final recommendation - have been redacted from the document, the department has previously put the cost of remediating the headland at between $95 million and $150 million.
Subject: Supposedly, Bitcoin revealed: a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another 
Sat Jan 17, 2015 11:09 pm
