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Apparently, Trump wants the US to be the "Crypto Capital of the World."
Didn't Mr. Buffett refer to Crypto as "rat poison?"
Scary world we are living in!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-call...

It's not particularly surprising that Mr Trump and Mr Buffett disagree on the valuation of some things.

More interesting is the disagreement between Mr Trump and Mr Trump.
"Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam," Mr Trump said.
What has changed? A cynical person would notice that the crypto crowd does have a lot of money available for campaign donations, as well as many acolytes who vote.

Come to think of it, I'm rather surprised there isn't a DJTcoin. Of course I haven't searched, maybe there is.
[brief pause while I search]
Sure enough, TrumpCoin has been trading for at least a month. Current "Market Cap" about $80 million.

Jim

DJT is self-aggrandizing and a blowhard. But consider the alternative

Mr Buffett called BTC a "mirage" in 2014 when it was trading around $500. Making him exactly wrong for ten years in a row and missing out on a 130 bagger. One of the worst calls in history. Not a record to be proud of, and yet, some people act like he was right.

So you would have preferred to have Berkshire's cash then invested in it? To realize this, what, "130 bagger"?

Not me though. I would have sold my Berkshire shares if he had done that. "Investing" in that kind of speculation is what I could do myself (or not, as I also "missed" it). It's not what I pay Warren a "fortune" for.

I'll take the alternative:)

Mr Buffett called BTC a "mirage" in 2014 when it was trading around $500. Making him exactly wrong for ten years in a row and missing out on a 130 bagger. One of the worst calls in history. Not a record to be proud of, and yet, some people act like he was right.

There is no law of nature preventing the price of mirages from going up for a while : )

The main lesson has been discussed here many times, but few take it to heart.
There is a very big difference between a good bet and a winning bet.
A good bet is one with a positive expected value: the chances of a win times the size of the win is greater than the chances of a loss times the size of the loss, summed across all outcomes and their probabilities. In short you'll probably make money, but it's not certain.
A winning bet is merely one that paid off. It might have been a good bet, or it might have been a bad bet that got lucky.

Mr Buffett specializes in good bets. He doesn't always win, but he does his darnedest (better than anyone else I know) at assessing the odds of a big loss, and either skipping the opportunity or sizing appropriately when the chance of loss is material. In the last half century he has never realized a loss of more than 1% of the then-current portfolio value, which boggles my mind.

The fact that he skipped putting money into crypto was definitely a "good bet" decision. Bitcoin isn't money, and isn't an investment, it's a capital good like a Rembrandt. The prices of capital goods are determined solely by supply and demand, as there can never be earnings or (by extension) investment intrinsic value, or a rise in the intrinsic value. Consequently it is extremely hard to make any case in the "good bet" category, since the value can't go up, only the price. For non-investment goods it's hard to predict the future demand, so it's nigh impossible to predict the future price.

None of this is to say that the price can't go up. It has. That doesn't make it dumb to have sat it out, which would be the scariest possible form of bad FOMO thinking. Wagers in roulette are very close to fair bets, but I still wouldn't conclude "it was foolish not to have put all your money on #23 on that roulette wheel a few minutes ago before the ball landed there".

Jim

Sounds like an endorsement of EMT. Nobody could have understood how valuable this was going to be ... just a bunch of degenerate coin flippers who got lucky. Well, a lot of really smart people did understand it the same way other people understood Google, Amazon, Apple and Tesla. It's new, you have to do a hell of a lot of work to figure it out. No 30 sec description is going to do. They kept telling everyone but only a few would listen. Buffett wasn't unlucky, he was just plain wrong. There's a great saying in the Bitcoin world: Everybody gets BTC at the price they deserve. (On the other hand, I like the Bill Clinton Quote: We all have to hope we don't get what we deserve.)

Bamboozled Yokel

There's a great saying in the Bitcoin world: Everybody gets BTC at the price they deserve.

I couldn't agree more.

But that saying is a whole lot funnier (in a sad kind of way) to those of us who know that Bitcoin has zero intrinsic value, and thus obviously won't ever buy at a price higher than that. Per your aphorism, we deserve to get them for nothing, which seems fair.

Recall that the intrinsic value of any financial security is the present value of all future distributions it could pay, never a farthing more. That is of course zero for bitcoins, which is why bitcoins are not investments at all at any price, but capital goods.

In this case it seems that the market price goes up and down primarily as a function of the number of people who don't know that yet. I'm content to watch from the sidelines as they trade amongst themselves.

Jim

"Mr Buffett called BTC a "mirage" in 2014 when it was trading around $500. Making him exactly wrong for ten years in a row and missing out on a 130 bagger. One of the worst calls in history. Not a record to be proud of, and yet, some people act like he was right."

No. It is just that Buffett understands the difference between price and value.

"Sounds like an endorsement of EMT. Nobody could have understood how valuable this was going to be ... just a bunch of degenerate coin flippers who got lucky."

If that is what you got out of what he said then you should read it again because you have it backwards.

Bitcoin solves the money problem

Bitcoin is money

"Bitcoin is money"

Bitcoin isn't money any more than Tyco Beanie Babies are money, Monet paintings are money, Magic the Gathering cards are money.

Any definition of money that is expanded to include Bitcoin is so wide as to include lots of other things that absolutely no one thinks is money. It is useless as a definition.

Casino chips are closer to being money than Bitcoin is.

Bitcoin isn't money any more than Tyco Beanie Babies are money, Monet paintings are money, Magic the Gathering cards are money.


As it happens there is a pretty accepted definition of "money".
It's something useful as (and used as) (a) a unit of account, (b) an acceptably stable store of value, and (c) a medium of exchange.

Bitcoin is useless as a unit of account and as a stable store of value, and is extremely awkward and costly as a method of payment, so it gets a score of maybe 1/2 out of 3 for being money. I personally don't know anybody who would accept bitcoin as payment, so the 1/2 is being a bit generous.

I understand quite a few drug dealers will accept paintings as payment, at the wholesale level. MTG cards might be harder, but you never know. Geeks everywhere.

Incidentally, I did try to negotiate a hypothetical deal denominated in bitcoin once, with some die hard coin fans, but got no response.
http://www.datahelper.com/mi/search.phtml?nofool=y...
Nobody is willing to use bitcoin as the medium of future payment in a contract for anything NOT a crypto asset.
Because, as mentioned above, it's useless as a stable store of value or as a unit of account, so it's not money.

I'm not saying that it has no market value, or that it's going to zero, nor even saying that it has no merit as a vehicle for price speculation. But money? no.

Jim

Incidentally, I did try to negotiate a hypothetical deal denominated in bitcoin once, with some die hard coin fans, but got no response.
http://www.datahelper.com/mi/search.phtml?nofool=y...


This is very interesting. It sounds like something close to an option (European style at first, and in the secondary thought experiment it is US style). In general, nobody will give away an option for free, they usually want to be paid something for it. And most of the time, the way they calculate what they want (need) to be paid for it is using volatility, interest rates, etc. The major difference in this case is that the option is denominated in a commodity rather than in a fiat currency. I haven't thought about it too deeply, but perhaps this could be modeled as some sort of combination of two options, one denominated in BRKA versus US$ and the other denominated in BTC versus US$? Maybe an actual value based on real market actions could even be determined!

I wonder if someone would have taken the deal if you offered some sort of option premium up front? Probably still not.

I'm not saying that it has no market value, or that it's going to zero, nor even saying that it has no merit as a vehicle for price speculation. But money? no.

A good test to determine if something is money is if the government accepts it as payment.

Does the IRS allow you to pay your federal tax with bitcoin (or beanie babies, paintings, trading cards, etc.)?

No?

Then it's not money.

This is very interesting. It sounds like something close to an option (European style at first, and in the secondary thought experiment it is US style). In general, nobody will give away an option for free, they usually want to be paid something for it. And most of the time, the way they calculate what they want (need) to be paid for it is using volatility, interest rates, etc. The major difference in this case is that the option is denominated in a commodity rather than in a fiat currency. I haven't thought about it too deeply, but perhaps this could be modeled as some sort of combination of two options, one denominated in BRKA versus US$ and the other denominated in BTC versus US$? Maybe an actual value based on real market actions could even be determined!

I wonder if someone would have taken the deal if you offered some sort of option premium up front? Probably still not.

Bear in mind that it wasn't asking for the option for free, as there was a price ratio negotiation against a valuable asset...it was more like a swap than an option, especially as there was no optionality. The sale was binding, with only the closing date variable in one scenario.

But from the point of view of someone thinking bitcoin is money, it was merely the purchase of some Berkshire shares. Since delivery was at a future date (but not conditional), it would have had an additional amount for me equating to interest I was foregoing prior to close. Equivalently, it would most closely resemble a single stock futures contract with physical delivery.

Arguably, though, Berkshire was by comparison the reasonably stable store of value and unit of account and medium of exchange--the "money" side of the transaction--and it was therefore more like a futures contract on my future purchase of some bitcoin. I'd just be paying for them with some B shares instead of greenbacks.

As it happens, the ratio has barely budged since the offer...net. It was 10.73 bitcoin per A share when the post was done, and it's 10.01 now. The ratio rose to 30 (Berkshire pulling ahead) then dropped right back. The fact that this curve does not correspond at all to the trajectory of the price of Berkshire shares measured in any stable currency demonstrates (as if we needed it) that bitcoin isn't a meaningful unit of account and therefore can not meaningfully act as money.

Jim

it was more like a swap than an option, especially as there was no optionality. The sale was binding, with only the closing date variable in one scenario.

There still is a kind of optionality. The TIME optionality. And indeed it is more like a swap. This is why I said "close to an option" because it isn't exactly like a traditional option.

The ratio rose to 30

As an example of the time optionality, when it was trading at 30X, you could have simply locked in your profits ("optionality" to lock in) by selling Berkshire short (or perhaps using Jan '25 options if at a lower cost) and buying 15 bitcoins. Then come Feb 2025, you deliver the 15 bitcoins and they deliver the Berkshire share, and thus ends the transaction. They, of course, also have optionality of the same sort. When you think about it, because the transaction can be "closed" anytime you, or they, wish, the 3-year time period is essentially moot. (I think)

Sounds like an endorsement of EMT. Nobody could have understood how valuable this was going to be ... just a bunch of degenerate coin flippers who got lucky. Well, a lot of really smart people did understand it the same way other people understood Google, Amazon, Apple and Tesla.

What was it they were understanding that other people missed? The first sentence of the white paper is: "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."

Here we are 15 years later, and how many people are using Bitcoin to make purely peer-to-peer payments? Basically none, except for very niche cases (usually criminal). Bitcoin transactions almost always made using centralized exchanges or using the Lightning network, which is also centralized (and introduces a whole host of new problems).

If 15 years ago you studied the white paper and concluded that Bitcoin would never gain traction as a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash, you would have been 100% correct.

Bitcoin's value is because people like to speculate on the price. There's nothing wrong with that, but that was never an implied use case in the white paper. The price speculation component grew organically later. I doubt many people understood that's how it would play out in the beginning.

Bitcoin isn't money any more than Tyco Beanie Babies are money, Monet paintings are money, Magic the Gathering cards are money.


Weird. Russia today announced that they will begin accepting Beanie Babies for international payments.

What was it they were understanding that other people missed?

That a bearer asset you could store and transmit digitally might have great utility. That the first mover might become the standard and disrupt the world's financial system.

"Weird. Russia today announced that they will begin accepting Beanie Babies for international payments."

Remember when Jim mentioned criminals taking payment in paintings? Same thing. Pariahs make do with what they can.

Besides, what do you think Russia is doing with those Bitcoins as soon as they get them?

Remember when Jim mentioned criminals taking payment in paintings? Same thing. Pariahs make do with what they can.

Do you mean like Goldman Sachs and Blackrock? Fidelity? The smear campaign is wearing a little thin. Weird.

"Do you mean like Goldman Sachs and Blackrock? Fidelity?"

You can also sell your Rembrandt to Goldman, Blackrock, and Fidelity if you are willing to take a discount to do so. Just like Bitcoin.

"The smear campaign is wearing a little thin. Weird."

You got that backwards. The irrational lovefest that demands Bitcoin be defended at all costs is what is weird. Proof: You think that someone correctly pointing out Bitcoin doesn't meet any traditional definition of money is a smear campaign. Bitcoin is a capital good. If you consider that a smear, that is on you.

Weird.

You're right. No smears.

Pariah (Formerly Bamboozled Yokel)

mungofitch asked 2 years ago:
Would you agree to sell me a share of Berkshire at the price of 15 bitcoin three years from now?
Measured in bitcoin, I'm willing to buy at a 40% premium, or 11.8%/year.

At this time, even in US$ this would be a bad contract to make. BRK stock currently trades for APR 16.4% higher than it traded at 3 years ago.

Which isn't to say that Buffett should ever consider investing in BTC. I agree with Buffett on this one, as if anybody should care.

R:)

carolsharp:
Does the IRS allow you to pay your federal tax with bitcoin (or beanie babies, paintings, trading cards, etc.)?

No?

Then it's not money.

Does the IRS allow you to pay your federal taxes with UK Pounds (or Euros or Swiss Francs or Korean Won or Canadian Dollars or Australian Dollars)?

Because those are all definitely money.

R:)

Which isn't to say that Buffett should ever consider investing in BTC. I agree with Buffett on this one, as if anybody should care.

The mistake people are making is that they have an uninformed opinion. If someone came on this board and asked what the difference between an A and B share is and then quickly stated that BRK is a scam and is going to zero ... how would you react? I may well be wrong about BTC, but people should educate themselves before expressing a strong opinion. WEB famously said to stay within your circle of competence. He also said that tech was outside of his. He didn't follow his own advice and made some big mistakes. Nobody's perfect.

The Federal Reserve will be restructured and gold and more likely, BITCOIN will play a role.

We will put end to the endless wars and endless $ printing.

Time Stamp pls

Buffett, Munger, Dimon, etc haven't made it very clear what they think of the bitcoin space? Wrong board. Maybe Buffett will use the money to become a major drug dealer?

The mistake people are making is that they have an uninformed opinion. If someone came on this board and asked what the difference between an A and B share is and then quickly stated that BRK is a scam and is going to zero ... how would you react? I may well be wrong about BTC, but people should educate themselves before expressing a strong opinion

Hmm, along the same lines, one should inform one's self about whether your audience has informed themselves before assuming and expressing the opinion that they haven't.
Just because someone very well informed has concluded that there is no merit in holding crypto assets most emphatically does NOT imply that they don't understand it.

I consider myself very well informed indeed--I have a solid comprehension of blockchains, crypto assset technology, and the monetary and business and implications. And (eww) the companies active in the sector. I have designed crypto investment schemes that have done pretty well in the last 6.5 years. I just have no interest in using them myself, because (as mentioned) I'm well informed.

For the price to continue going up, it requires the percentage rate of new participants (=speculators, basically) joining the bandwagon to exceed the percentage rate of new coin creation. That isn't a Ponzi scheme, but it's not 100.00% unlike a Ponzi scheme. It won't blow up without new speculators as a Ponzi scheme would, but the price rise trend will halt without an ongoing net increase in the number of speculators.

But I'm happy to post a well proven bitcoin timing/trading scheme if anybody is interested : )
Way higher returns and way lower risk than HODL, so far.

Jim

I thought you made some poor arguments.

Going from memory, BTC doesn't generate any income so the price is throttled - Flipping gold is a 15X ... I'd be happy with that. Criminals use it - they mostly use the USD. Only a small percentage of BTC is used for illicit purposes ... who wants a permanent record of their crime? It's not money - of course it is. 10T in transactions, bigger than Visa. The next day Russia said they changed the law and will accept BTC for intl payments. That opens up a settlement channel for half the world. They'll soon run out of new "speculators." - Adoption is moving very quickly. BTC keeps showing up in new places: insurance companies, retirement funds, public companies and brokerage accounts. Pariahs - several hundred million (?) Bitcoiners are just trying to keep the govt from taxing their savings through money printing. I don't think they're evil. Adoption and regulatory certainty are the driving forces behind rising prices and there has been a dramatic change in the last year. Hard to believe you follow it closely and don't see that.

Money can be made shorting the market in BTC. It does seem to follow some predictable metrics. But, any success you've had I attribute to being a good coin flipper. :) After all, BTC is the best performing asset class ten out of the last thirteen years and you'd have made a lot more going long.

Maybe Buffett will use the money to become a major drug dealer?

At 93 years old, why not? What is the worst that can happen, he gets tossed in jail for life?

Buffett, Munger and Dimon do not control what money is>>>the market does.

The best stock to flow ratio always wins.

Going from memory, BTC doesn't generate any income so the price is throttled - Flipping gold is a 15X ... I'd be happy with that. Criminals use it - they mostly use the USD. Only a small percentage of BTC is used for illicit purposes ... who wants a permanent record of their crime? It's not money - of course it is. 10T in transactions, bigger than Visa. The next day Russia said they changed the law and will accept BTC for intl payments. That opens up a settlement channel for half the world. They'll soon run out of new "speculators." - Adoption is moving very quickly.

It's a very silly list, so no need to comment. You're a Believer, and nothing anyone will say will change that.

I do like this bit tho'
Only a small percentage of BTC is used for illicit purposes ... Russia said they changed the law and will accept BTC for intl payments.

Hey, the good thing about the pervasive criminal transactions is that at least it's a real use case. I don't know of another.

Jim

But I'm happy to post a well proven bitcoin timing/trading scheme if anybody is interested : )

Interested.

Tails

But I'm happy to post a well proven bitcoin timing/trading scheme if anybody is interested : )
...
Interested.

Here's a simple one.

For each trading day, calculate the highest reported bitcoin price in the prior 3 months: a sliding window.
Count how long it has been since a day that the calculation was higher than the same calculation done the day before.
The scheme is simple: If it has been less than a month since a fresh recent high (21 trading days), be long bitcoin. Otherwise, sit on cash.
That's it.

Where does it stand now? It's about 139 trading days since a fresh recent high right now, so it recommends cash. The last long position was from (close) 2024-02-12 to (close) 2024-04-04. The price rose 37% in those 7.4 weeks. In the 17 weeks since then the price you'd have been in cash and the price is still a bit lower than at the sell day.



Are the magic numbers overtuned? Not terribly, it seems.
You can do hold anywhere 2-5 weeks since the most recent fresh recent high, but a calendar month has worked well and is easy to remember.
The "recent high" calculation looks back 3 months, but you could use 4 or 5 or 6 months and still get relatively similar results.

Stats since late 2017 when I first posted about this type of timing for bitcoin:
You'd have been long only 38% of the time, CAGR of bitcoin price during those days +134%/year.
You'd have been in cash 62% of the time, CAGR of bitcoin price during those days -15.2%/year.
Bitcoin buy and hold total return since then +842% (24.3%/year)
Scheme total return ignoring interest +2297% (44.6%/year)

Since you're in cash most of the time, and the average return during those times is poor, the drawdowns are mild compared to buy and hold.
My preferred risk metric comes in at 13.1% in this stretch, which is not a smooth ride (you might see this from the Nasdaq over time), but buy-and-hold bitcoin has been risk metric 27.9% in the same stretch. On my risk metric a score of 6-7% is very smooth and almost unachievable, and at 2-3% you're starting to look like Mr Madoff.

This works in part because this type of scheme works to some degree on almost any "commodity" with jagged pricing but strong trends, and probably in part because about half of all bitcoin trading has been shown to be fake wash trades trying to create the impression of steady up-trends and fake rallies and high volume.

I see no reason to believe that the (so far) long term up trend in bitcoin prices will continue indefinitely. Without ongoing increments in the demand to hold (transaction volumes being irrelevant), the natural long term result is either flat or negative prices. But in that situation this scheme will keep you in cash most of the time, which would not be as bad as a wipe-out. For example, 2022 was terrible for bitcoin prices, down -57%. The scheme was in cash 93.4% of the year, so it was down only -12.8% before earned interest. Bad, but not life-changingly bad.

Jim

If it has been less than a month since a fresh recent high (21 trading days)
I'm not sure what this means exactly. Doesn't bitcoin trade 24/7 every week of the year?

That a bearer asset you could store and transmit digitally might have great utility. That the first mover might become the standard and disrupt the world's financial system.

Put in a pin in that thought...

Do you mean like Goldman Sachs and Blackrock? Fidelity? The smear campaign is wearing a little thin.

They will be happy to sell you a Bitcoin ETF if you like. But then your Bitcoin isn't a bearer asset, is it?

London School of Economics professor Igor Marakov and colleagues made an interesting analysis of Bitcoin transactions both on and off chain. The paper is too long to summarize adequately, but the paper concluded about 10% of Bitcoin transactions are economically useful (this category includes legitimate uses, as well as gambling, dark web commerce, and ransomware payments). The remaining 90% of transactions were primarily Bitcoin washing and arbitrage.


https://personal.lse.ac.uk/makarov1/index_files/Bi...

I'm not sure what this means exactly. Doesn't bitcoin trade 24/7 every week of the year?

There is a daily open/high/low/close posted by a few sources including Yahoo which is what I used. It's a similar situation with forex rates for currencies.
There are so many bitcoin trading venues and so many fake transactions that I wouldn't worry about "accuracy" per se.

Jim

My preferred risk metric

Jim, if you don't mind sharing, what is it?

Below will be ridiculed as not credible and goofy but I would expand your thinking:

https://rumble.com/v599egz-ep.-3415a-gold-certific...

"Weird.

You're right. No smears.

Pariah (Formerly Bamboozled Yokel)"

Reading comprehension is not overrated.

Russia's status as a pariah isn't because it uses bitcoin. It uses Bitcoin because it is a pariah state.

So no smears. Try again.

A question for the board:

At what price did you first decide that BTC had no value?

Were you right or were you wrong?


BTC provides a service. It stores and transmits value. If you want and like that service you have to buy BTC to get it. If more people adopt it the price goes up. That has been the case and there is a fifteen year track record supporting that assumption. What is so hard to understand? I don't get it. Or is it something else? You're so vested in the USD you attack anything that competes with it? After all, it must be evil if its adoption is contrary to your perceived personal interests.

The silly one with poor reading comprehension. (Formerly Pariah)

"A question for the board....."

Will any of the answers really make a difference to you? I think your mind is already made up and perceives any other viewpoint as an "attack" such that you don't even try and understand the alternative viewpoints. You demonstrated that numerous times (like with your repeated pretending you were smeared as a Pariah). Why should anyone waste their time answering when it is clear you aren't even listen to the answer let alone try and understand it?

At what price did you first decide that BTC had no value?
A. (no value as an investment) First time I heard about it.
B. (utility as an offbeat currency) I thought it reasonably possible.

Were you right or were you wrong?
A. Right. It can never pay a coupon even on ultimate liquidation if any, so it has no intrinsic value as an investment by definition.
B. Looks like I was mostly wrong, though I underestimated the real world utility for money laundering once good mixers were available.

As a capital good it can be an interesting vehicle for price speculation, and it is likely to have a market value well into the future, but it's not an investment. It also has substantial and proven value as a story and industry for taking money from other people in so many different ways, many of them legal. Bitcoin has great beauty as conceptual art, and arguably the world's greatest-ever construction of a solution in search of a problem. I don't hold anything against those who own it, nor do I mock them. People own lots of things that don't interest me, for all kinds of reasons, and good for them.

I am however happy to mock their reasoning sometimes, which is as subtle but important difference.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/nanacoin

If more people adopt it the price goes up.

To be more technically accurate, the price trend will go up only so long as there is continually increasing demand to hold (not transact) it at any given price. I can't see any reason that could be a never-ending trend. And I would call that the main reason it doesn't exactly score a perfect zero on the Ponzi-meter. The most useful comparison is that Bitcoin aspires to achieve the strength of consensus to take the place of gold as a store of value, which famously has had the same real purchasing power for millennia without getting any net higher in price. (even as the global number of people who more-or-less believe in it as a store of value has risen by a factor of 50+). To believe that the price of bitcoin will go up in price forever is essentially a religious belief--plainly wrong, but immune to argument, so there any useful discussion ends.

The fact that the price of bitcoin has gone up a lot so far is (rather obviously) NOT a proof of the religion's central tenet.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/029... (aka "you get the price you deserve")
It should be noted that the South Sea Company was in fact an investment, not a mere speculative capital good, as there was a theoretical possibility of the underlying asset (the company) turning a profit.

Jim

Looks like I was mostly wrong, though I underestimated the real world utility for money laundering once good mixers were available.

Today, Morgan Stanley announced that they'll be offering BTC ETFs to their wealth clients. I expect others to follow. I doubt that their clients will be using it to launder money or gamble. I expect some of their clients will be making a small allocation with the intention of diversifying their portfolios with a good hedge against inflation. Should I add them to the pariah list?

Looks like I was mostly wrong, though I underestimated the real world utility for money laundering once good mixers were available.
...
Today, Morgan Stanley announced that they'll be offering BTC ETFs to their wealth clients. I expect others to follow. I doubt that their clients will be using it to launder money or gamble. I expect some of their clients will be making a small allocation with the intention of diversifying their portfolios with a good hedge against inflation. Should I add them to the pariah list?

Nah.
Morgan Stanley can be added to the list of people making money from the phenomenon--there are lots of ways to do this, many of them legal. The fee gatherers are playing a positive sum game, as they always do. The coin holders should be added to the list of people speculating on the price, hoping it will go up.

Both of those activities are (for now) legal and non-fattening. Neither group is pariah territory, and all power to them. (though there are some people who run coin exchanges or sponsor coins that I wouldn't invite to a party, and if I did I'd count the cutlery afterwards)

The very worst one could say is that perhaps the first group is a bit too cynical, and perhaps the second group is not quite cynical enough?

Jim

I'm happy to admit that the space is full of every form of financial scoundrel and that the far majority are in it just to make money. Also, that any day you could wake up with BTC having gone to zero and if that causes anything more than a mild annoyance you have too much.

ck

A question for the board:

At what price did you first decide that Tulip Bulbs had no value?

Were you right or were you wrong?

Tulip Bulbs provide a utility, they are beautiful and some are quite rare. They can be a store of value. If you want and like the utility they offer you have to buy Tulip Bulbs to get it.
If more people buy Tulip Bulbs the prices go up. That certainly was the case and there was a multi-year year track record supporting that assumption. What is so hard to understand? I don't get it.
Or is it something else? You're so vested in the USD you attack anything that competes with it? After all, it must be evil if its adoption is contrary to your perceived personal interests.

The silly one with poor reading comprehension, and an affinity for Tulip Bulbs!

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dutch_tulip_b...

At what price did you first decide that Tulip Bulbs had no value?

Weirdly, at the same time I understood how long the ostrich craze would last. I was watching a documentary and I saw a two year old walking (or should I say strutting?) around with thirty chicks at its feet. So, in that case, the answer was two years. Of course the ostrich still had value, about 29c/lb.

If you don't understand scarcity, you'll never understand BTC and the fatal flaw in all fiat currencies.

I apologize if I'm making it harder to redistribute my wealth. Nothing personal.

Proud owner of 1,000 tulip bulbs. I think they're comin' back!

At what price did you first decide that Tulip Bulbs had no value?

How about just trend-follow? When it is going up buy, when it starts going down, sell. You don't need to try to decide on the value.

That's not investing, of course. It's just speculating on the price trend.
Newton's error was holding when the price drop began.

Yeah, that chart doesn't show when Newton's friends (who got rich) exited their trades. "How to lie with statistics. And charts."

A question for the board:

At what price did you first decide that BTC had no value?

Were you right or were you wrong?

I'm not sure what this has to do with Berkshire. This is a board to primarily discuss Berkshire and related things. You should probably post this on a bitcoin board or a crypto board. I bet one could be created here if you like, or maybe there already is one.

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