It's interesting how regular people rush to buy cryptocurrencies when the valuation is at all-time-high. Then, in a month everybody will freak out that they can't buy a Lambo yet, even worse, they lost around 50% (based on past peaks).
Of course, I can't predict the future, so maybe it's the first time a peak will never end? :)
I was not trying to imply that BTC's price will never go higher than the current price.
I just find it interesting how regular people (including me, I'm not a big crypto enthusiast and I don't follow the prices and innovations in the field) are inclined to buy when they hear about the peak in the news and then expect that the price will continue to go up, then get frustrated when in about a month, the value of their acquired coins go down.
There is such a negative emotional reaction to both BTC and TSLA. Sometime over the last 10 years or so we've found ourselves really moving forward from the old guard of the 20th century and we have real new beginnings. It's not that "this time it's different" it's "the times are different".
Embrace it, buy a small amount of bitcoin, buy a small amount of tesla, be part of something big, if it pops it will not hurt you, if it continues to grow and evolve you will be part of it.
It’s not even negativity just incredulity. TSLA has a larger market cap than all other car companies combined. I’m tickled to see a new entrant in automotive succeed, but the frothiness around it is based less on fundamentals or realistic growth prospects and more on something approaching religious fervour. The sentiment about turning over the old guard has a very strong “new economy” 1999 feeling to it.
All the above applies to Bitcoin as well, which has largely failed at all the practical uses that were proposed to justify its early rise.
I'm old enough to remember 1999 too. I think there was a lot of economic fear in our industry then. Outsourcing was big and people predicted most software would be written in Asia. The dot-com stocks crashed. People called tech a bubble.
And if you were, like me, starting your career back then with Enron in the backdrop, it's easy to get pretty cynical. It's left many people, for nearly a decade now, expecting the next crash. But it takes optimism to make money I think.
I think tesla is frothy. I've sold some and bought other things with the gains. But I'm going to hold because I'm going to make a bet that the better tech and team wins.
The main reason I don't like TSLA is not that I think electric cars will go bust, but that the company does not have good leadership. The CEO just does not seem to have any common sense, openly taunting regulators on Twitter, racking up defamation lawsuits and SEC penalties, etc. There's a lot of startup era hype and showmanship projects that don't come out as promised.
As for crypto, I definitely see a future for it and plan to invest soon, but I will wait to see if it dips back down a little bit before buying at such a large high.
Tons of people have lost their fortune by keeping it in an "account." Banks have gone under, investments collapse or are scams (eg Bernie Madoff), etc.
Considering a pending IPO, you would think this would be addressed by now. Far too often they are they are down; especially when big swings are happening in the crypto-currency market.
Crypto however has not. It has spent a comparatively tiny fraction of its time at ATH as one would expect for a speculative bubble. In fact, it spent the last 3 years way below its ATH.
But the ATH increases often. Yes it crashes from these peaks, but never to below the starting point. Bitcoin bought anytime and held for a sufficient length of time would have always made money. If you can hold it for 5+ years you will make money.
You're comparing a speculative mania in fictional crime-bucks to a speculative mania in a car company worth more than Facebook while simultaneously selling just 4% as many cars as Toyota. Tesla's price to earnings ratio is 1500 meaning it would take until the year 3521 for it to earn back its market cap.
The fact you're even making this assessment tells me this isn't going to end well for anyone.
Heed my warning: The bubble pops when the last bear dies.
You could also call gold "speculative mania in shiny trinkets with little utility", but that one has lasted thousands of years so far. Describing something in colorful language doesn't make it a strong argument.
Being so sure that BTC is a bubble is just as naive as being completely sure it's going up to a million dollars per coin. It's just speculation either way, and there is no fundamental law of nature (or even principle of economics) preventing either outcome.
> Being so sure that BTC is a bubble is just as naive as being completely sure it's going up to a million dollars per coin. It's just speculation either way, and there is no fundamental law of nature (or even principle of economics) preventing either outcome.
Which is why I'm not playing. And why I don't have any gold.
I'd love a citation on that if you have one, I have seen no evidence the two are connected. The money was printed to counter deflationary pressure. This succeeded, and the rate of inflation is tracking at 2% per expectations.
Replace Tesla with Facebook, or a fraction of one large tech company, or less than the $900B stimulus bill that was just passed.
My point was only that it’s a currently a small fraction of the overall US equity market, and if it becomes increasingly widely accepted as a reserve currency comparable to the dollar or an inflation protected asset like gold then there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be worth trillions.
What makes you think the amount someone is willing to pay for something at any given moment is a proxy for its intrinsic value? Enron traded sky high until it didn't. Tulip bulbs traded sky high until they didn't.
That people are willing to pay for it doesn't mean it should be worth anything. Worth is not price. And a high price certainly doesn't mean something is good for the world. If I offered $1,000,000 for each silverback gorilla pelt you procure, (a) is that a proxy for its worth and (b) is that good for the world?
The market tends to conform to my personal biases, my personal investing account just crossed 14X what it was on 3/20. I tend to short irrationality but in this case I have no interest in shooting dice in a rigged casino.
It's most definitely true, especially my biggest expenses of taxes, real estate, education, and healthcare.
Savings (for retirement or otherwise) is probably the other big expense, which you could classify as "stocks", but if you predict more volatility in the future, therefore needing to save more now, then that is also increasing in price.
Taxes are a function of income, so irrelevant [edit] and either factored into CPI or again, not monetary policy. That's fiscal policy. Take it up with congress, not the fed.
Real estate, while down, is a supply and demand function. In big cities, supply is artificially constrained to the benefit of existing landowners. On average across the US housing, on an inflation-adjusted dollars per square foot basis, is actually exactly the same as its been since the 1970s. [1]
Education and healthcare are social and fiscal policy issues and not connected to monetary policy at all.
Taxes paid can go up even if your income does not. Tolls, car registration fees, property taxes, etc are all taxes. Therefore, they are very relevant when discussing CPI, as it directly affects your bottom line.
I specifically wrote the "goods and services I want" so real estate that I'm not interested in doesn't concern me. I have to plan my life around buying real estate that I want, and so if the price of that real estate is increasing, then it's once again affecting my bottom line.
Education and healthcare being social and fiscal policy issues is irrelevant to me for budgeting purposes. All I am concerned with is the price to achieve the life I want for myself and my kids.
I am predicting that the items I am interested in buying are worth $x in year 2021, but will be worth $y in year 2030, and the difference in $x and $y will be more than what is predicted by official CPI numbers. This has proven true for the last 15 to 20 years for me.
That's all fair but not relevant to monetary policy, the Fed, bitcoin or anything else in this thread. That's a matter of fiscal and social policy and something you should take up with Congress and not the Fed.
My original comment was tongue-in-cheek about how CPI is irrelevant to day to day life for many people and the disconnect people feel from what CPI versus what they experience (or they believe they experience).
I assume it's all wrapped up in the widening income/wealth divides, rewards of automation and outsourcing going to capital owners, and reduced opportunities or perceived opportunities for many resulting in lower quality of life than they expected. That's not going to be captured by any numbers, especially not in a single number nationwide for a place as big as the US.
CPI measures something, and perhaps it's useful for economists or policymakers, but it has been useless as a predictor for how much income I will need to keep up with expenses in day to day life.
I'd like to know more about this. I always equated printing money to inflation. Why isn't this the case? Can you point me to some good books for the same? Thanks!
The value of the dollar in terms of a constant basket of goods is a function of both supply and of "velocity." Money is only worth something if it changes hands.
Let's say the Fed prints 1 quintillion dollars, and then gives it to me. I then put it under my very big mattress. I will never spend a single one of those dollars. Has this quintillion dollar print changed the value of the dollars that are actually changing hands? It has not.
Obviously that's a contrived example but it does demonstrate the principal. If economic environmental factors are causing people to spend less money, such as unemployment or a global pandemic, then the velocity of money goes down. This in turn causes merchants to lower prices to incentivize spend. This is how deflation materializes. If they cannot lower prices fast enough to actually incentivize a consistent level of spending you enter a deflationary spiral.
Printing new money offsets the reduction in velocity, and staves off a deflationary spiral. It doesn't however guarantee a commensurate level of inflation.
You can see this on a macro scale. Since the 1970s the M2 money supply has increased 15X however inflation has only increased 7X.
Because the Fed, like most central banks, exercises a positive control mechanism, once velocity is restored, printing will slow or even go negative to ensure a consistent, predictable level of inflation.
> Let’s say the Fed prints 1 quintillion dollars, and then gives it to me. I then put it under my very big mattress. I will never spend a single one of those dollars. Has this quintillion dollar print changed the value of the dollars that are actually changing hands? It has not.
Probably, very slightly, because even if you plan to never spend them, the fact that you have a quintillion of them in your mattress probably changes the value you attach to other dollars (because, in extremis, you could break into that stash), which has an effect on the overall value of dollars (but only imperceptibly, because you are a very small part of the market.)
>Let's say the Fed prints 1 quintillion dollars, and then gives it to me. I then put it under my very big mattress. I will never spend a single one of those dollars. Has this quintillion dollar print changed the value of the dollars that are actually changing hands? It has not.
But of course no one is stupid enough to put their dollars on a mattress. They will, like everybody else, try to find a way to run from inflation, be it investing on stocks or any other assets. So your point is of course true but irrelevant.
Not at all. Its fine if that money makes its way into assets because assets are not a necessity for life. CPI is a proxy for necessity for life. If it makes its way into stocks, that's just an ROI.
Further, if that money starts making its way back out, towards CPI, the fed will stop printing or even take the money back out of the system. That's why we have a Fed.
And that's fine, because the fed can and will simply slow down printing to compensate in the future. The supply of money is very well controlled in the US and in most other centrally banked economies.
The pandemic is speeding up change in the world. The transition to crypto currencies is happening faster than ever. Lots of people who are resistant to change are going to miss the boat and are going to be stuck holding the anchor that is the massive over leveraged debt in the fiat currency world.
> The transition to crypto currencies is happening faster than ever
Except I have yet to see any convincing indicators that crypto currency is actually being used for day to day transactions.
Everything I see suggests people are hoping it's the next gold rush and they'll strike it rich based on timing alone.
(Which is not to say I don't sometimes think about how back in 2011 I toyed with the idea of buying 1000 bitcoins just for kicks when they were ~$1 each.)
It was also trivial to mine it yourself back then, first with CPU then with GPU.
Some miners dabbled with FPGAs in 2012-2013, but the difficulty adjustment wasn't hit hard until ASICs started being used in 2013. Since then it's only been profitable to use the latest few generations of ASICs.
Except that Tether is far worse than anything that exists in the fiat world, and crypto has thus far not been used for anything other than a distributed pump and dump that can't be shutdown or delisted.
another round of stimulus checks is going to set bitcoin off on another bull run imo. you could see a drastic effect as soon as the $600 started hitting people's checking accounts
> you could see a drastic effect as soon as the $600 started hitting people's checking accounts
I think it's interesting how true it is that some people just can't stand the feeling of money burning a hole in their pockets.
Based on the furniture set sitting out on the curb at my neighbor's house, they decided a free $1800 was as good a reason as any to get some new furniture.
I guess that's the theory behind stimulus checks, so I suppose it makes sense.
If you make 75K that's more than double the US median personal income and you still qualify for the checks. It's a good living in the US outside of a handful of cities. Also I think a lot of buyers are young people living with parents
The difference is clearly that with Netflix, the thing you're buying (access to TV shows and movies) is experienced virtually through the app. You may not disagree with that policy (I don't, and it's certainly applied inconsistently) but it's pretty cut-and-dry here.
I get your point, but for me at least, I use my Netflix app in 99.9% of cases as a remote control for my TV... I wouldn't call that experiencing content through an app.
does gold qualify as a ponzi scheme? Tesla stock? Google stock? 2000s dotcom stocks?
There is a difference between overbought assets and scams, and it usually goes along the line of, the easier it is for a small group of people to walk away with all the winnings the more likely we are to call it a scam.
Cryptoassets are a suitable vehicle for scams just as bits of paper with holograms on it or devices with touch screens can be - all it takes is a suspension of disbelief and caution which we also see with overbought assets. And there's a fair share of altcoins and ICOs that look quite scammy to educated people, while BTC/ETH/LTC and some others have survived a decade of people trying to poke holes into them.
Of course, I can't predict the future, so maybe it's the first time a peak will never end? :)