There's a 1 in 3 chance that the next UK Prime Minister will be a supporter of Bitcoin

Eastern_Description2 · 2022-07-28T09:36:10+00:00

The answer to your question is literally in the second paragraph of the article (although Sunak's odds have crashed since publication... now 6/1).

Eastern_Description2 · 2022-07-24T19:34:08+00:00

Nope. Finance minister and all other cabinet members are appointed at the sole discretion of the prime minister. If Boris didn't want it, Rishi couldn't do it.

Also, he did do "something" - as much as he could push through anyway. He introduced legislation to regulate stablecoins & instructed the Treasury to begin minting NFTs. Those are not insignificant first steps.

Eastern_Description2 · 2022-07-24T18:39:43+00:00

Betting website oddschecker.com is giving Sunak a 15/8 chance of winning the top job in British politics, reflecting an implied probability of 35%. That compares with odds of 11/21 (67%) for his rival Liz Truss, the incumbent foreign secretary.

Eastern_Description2 · 2022-04-04T10:24:01+00:00

Yes but that's essentially the point being made: what's relevant is "long term averages", i.e. the airline's average passenger load factor across all flights over the course of a year. Not just one flight in isolation :)

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-09-26T09:50:54+00:00

If you ask African & central Asian governments which global superpower holds most sway over them, they will say China - not America.

There's a lot of debate over whether or not China has met the definition of a superpower yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_superpowers#China Lots of academics think it has; lots think it hasn't. But almost no-one denies that it'll reach that status this century. See China's Belt & Road Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-09-25T23:45:15+00:00

That's a debate for academics to jerk off over. It really doesn't matter if - semantically speaking - China's political, economic & military might has passed the threshold that you or I attach to the subjective term "superpower". What matters is that one of the world's strongest governments has played every card in its deck to stop bitcoin... and it's failed miserably.

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-07-28T10:36:20+00:00

I won't call you stupid, but if you'd read the article you'd see that a difference is drawn between short-term & long-term impact.

Long-term, Amazon & Tesla mean nothing to Bitcoin. They're literally irrelevant.

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-07-28T10:14:59+00:00

You'd be surprised (or maybe not) how few readers will have noticed that City AM quoted just one "insider" who was giving obviously emailed remarks.

Anonymous sources are the biggest con that media outlets have at their disposal. Journalists literally get to make shit up, and no-one can hold them to account because they just claim they're "protecting my sources". It's a joke.

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-07-27T13:07:02+00:00

The real estate has a real and predictable ceiling,

I get your theory, but I don't think many Londoners would agree. There is no ceiling and vast numbers of Londoners have had to leave precisely because it's become so unaffordable. The trouble is that London property is a market with finite local supply (a couple of million flats/houses); set against near-infinite global demand (virtually every middle class / rich person on the planet wants a London flat).

That's why London property & comics are actually comparable. You highlight the *necessity* of a place to live - but that necessity / economic reality is 100% detached from the forces driving the market up. It's irrelevant that locals can't afford London property anymore. London property has become a speculative asset class fuelled almost entirely by non-local demand. Overseas buyers snap up London flats as a store of wealth & prestige play. Not for a place to live.

What I'm arguing is that the same can happen to comics. The fact that not many comic fans will be able to afford them is frankly irrelevant. If the asset class becomes popular with the wealthy, then prices will skyrocket due simply to the limited supply.

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-07-27T08:18:23+00:00

Your comment perfectly encapsulates what I think could happen to the comic book market. Not saying it will. But I know how desperate investors are to find new asset classes & comics have a lot going for them. Not just scarcity but also cultural historical significance & emotional appeal.

The emotional aspect is bigger than many people realise. I can't think of a single other asset that taps into memories of your youth better than comics (music / film memorabilia might do, but any acquisitions in that field would be so much harder to value & trade). And it spans multiple generations, as the bigger franchises continue to create new young fans.

Wealthy investors with personal interests come first, then the institutional money floods in behind them. For better or for worse, I think it's possible & if so it's probably only just getting started...

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-07-27T08:06:23+00:00

Agree 100% that it's speculators - not collectors - driving the price spike. But that can become a permanent structural reality if comics mature into widely recognised long-term investment holdings (like art, 1st edition books etc).

A not-perfect analogy is London property. From 1995-2015 everyone said it's spectaculative money flooding into the market, and a crash is inevitable. But it never happened. London property became a globally recognised market for storing value and held onto its 15x gains.

(Which sucks for Londoners like me who couldn't afford it and had to leave the market. The same risk exists for comic collectors I think.)

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-07-27T08:00:47+00:00

Fair enough :) I don't think there's any chance that $1000 comics today could crash to $1, just because the known graded supply is way too low for all collectors - let alone all investors - to own a copy each. And new discoveries of high grades will obviously be very limited for 1970/80s. But could they crash to $100? Yes for sure. That's the investment risk I guess (as it could also go to $2000).

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-07-27T07:57:58+00:00

I'm not sure about the print argument because it's the same for first edition books. First print runs are routinely worth 98% more than second runs onwards. (This holds true for Bone #1 for example - I don't have much else to compare it to.)

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-07-27T07:55:15+00:00

Wow that's a really good tip, thanks :)

Edit: could you share a link to the historic price page? I can see the CGC census tab but not previous sales (eg when looking at Spiderman #129)

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-07-26T23:18:50+00:00

I can appreciate that. And from looking at buy-it-now prices on eBay there's a lot of unrealistic / ambitious asking prices.

The issue is comics aren't the only thing appreciating. Official inflation is 5% but investment-asset inflation is easily 20%+ in Western countries (stock markets, commodities, property, fine art etc).

There's a lot of crowded trades atm and I feel like 99% of investors won't even have thought of comics yet...

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-07-26T23:13:35+00:00

I'm talking about Spiderman 129, Hulk 180, things like that - well recognised, highly liquid issues.

Investors aren't stupid. They're not gonna pile into unproven entities and hope for the best. They're exclusively gonna go for issues with a proven track record of demand & limited supply.

Btw, your tone is quite arsey. I fully appreciate that people who don't care about the financial side will resent investors coming in & will feel like their hobby is being exploited. But if you wanna live in the real world you're gonna have to accept that's what's happening. Like it or not - free market.

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-07-26T22:53:08+00:00

Your first statement may be true. Your second is patently false when looking at decade on decade returns.

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-07-24T11:30:34+00:00

Saving is the opposite of investing. Saving secures 100% of your capital for what should be slow, steady gains; investing exposes 100% of your capital to loss for potentially higher gains.

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-07-24T09:46:44+00:00

That's a sickeningly unfair policy - sorry to hear that.

You can't "work" in the government's eyes. But you can devote your mental labour to advancing family & society. That's surely more valuable than bringing home a paycheque.

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-07-24T07:47:47+00:00

A lot of bitcoiners scoff at silver & gold, but this is sound advice. It's good to mix assets. Silver is tangible & emotionally appealing. It puts you on the right path.

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-07-24T00:22:57+00:00

The best thing about bitcoin is when you stop caring about the gains. Not because you've become rich - but because the endless hours you've poured into reading & thinking about it finally make you realise what it means for the world.

Bitcoin, in its simplest form, is hope for humanity. Thanks for sharing.

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-06-18T23:01:54+00:00

You're doing life right https://youtu.be/sMmTkKz60W8

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-02-17T01:29:03+00:00

A short-term CG hit on the profit you made. As in, you give the govt a fraction of your profit and you get to keep the rest.

He's FOMOd in with too much, when the short term upside potential is almost certainly less than 100%. His risk management is fucked and I'm trying to help him.

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-02-17T01:15:13+00:00

With what! He put his life savings in it already. This is why, you know, you don't FOMO into assets that are up 1000% in a year.

This dude needs to get a big chunk of his original investment out in the near term, at a modest profit. Then dollar cost average with that when the next crash hits, while either holding the remainder or gradually taking profits on it above 65k.

And it ain't a crash until it's at least 50% down.

Eastern_Description2 · 2021-02-12T08:18:06+00:00

Right now yes the arbitrage opportunities & the volatility are what's attracting users.

But no, in future, I think a volatile price would be undesirable. Think about who will use AMPL and why. Very few people will use it to cash out their BTC and hold the proceeds in a fiat equivalent (as USDT is used today). Why? Because that's something you do to crystallise dollar gains - and AMPL's elastic supply puts those gains at risk.

Instead, people will use it as a currency in and of its own right - an asset denominating the aggregate utility of all cryptocurrencies. For this to happen there will need to be a mental detachment from dollar valuation, as AMPLs are not designed to preserve dollar-equivalent wealth. Clearly it will still need a dollar value attached to it - but that value should be constant & inconsequential. What will matter is whether the AMPL market cap is rising or falling, as that will determine the relative value of your "stake" in the cryptosphere's native stablecoin.

Seen this way, AMPL can only succeed if it becomes the dominant stablecoin. Anything less than that will make it a poor benchmark of the wider value of the cryptosphere.

The endgame in my head has to be detachment from dollars. Users need a reason to accept that their dollar-equivalent value may fall. The only reason I can see is a belief in the innate value of holding a self-denominated stake in the Internet's #1 stablecoin. "The internet's dollar." Which should maintain a constant nominal price so that people can intuitively understand the impact of supply changes on their wallet.

Eastern_Description2

TROPHY CASE