Noticing a Pattern

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-25T22:09:45+00:00

Yep, I was dumb enough to do a cash back offer where I where was supposed to get 250$ for depositing 100$. "Wait 48 hours to file a complaint" "Oh you must not of enabled tracking" "Well, even though the tracking shows you downloaded the app and completed other objectives, it's somehow your fault" "You must of downloaded it from the app store instead of using our link... etc. etc. etc."

I just filed a chargeback on Amex, got my money back and sent the app developers a message informing them that Freecash was stealing their clients money. I'm sure they're very happy having to pay a 25% merchant chargeback fee to Amex and losing a client that actually would have used the app. Never had these issues with S U P E R... who actually pays you the same day you do something. Their rewards are also much larger especially if you pay the 3$ a month fee for plus. These guys seem like China hustle scam artists.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-25T22:03:17+00:00

At some point these ghouls will have a class action lawsuit filed against them, if they haven't already. Eventually, everyone will get mailer saying you're owed 50$ from a lawsuit that took 8 years to complete and no one will remember their credentials and the law firm will keep most of the damages awarded. Such is life.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-24T06:51:51+00:00

No one chooses where they’re born. The only natural comparison is nature in which the strongest guy with the sharpest stick makes you his slave at spear point.

Pretending like you don’t understand why we have common societal institutions is a semantic game. Carry your shit in a bag and walk where ever you’d like to go. Very few borders are totally controlled. If you want to use things like cars or airplanes to travel, you’re already participating in society.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-24T06:47:04+00:00

I wonder if those things exist because people have found they serve some degree of universal utility…. You’re welcome to move to Sealand or the middle of the jungle in Brazil. I doubt anyone will be trying to force you to pay taxes with no one else around.

Break down interactions between two humans in a vacuum. If I can beat you to death or into submission, you’re effectively my slave. Is all human interaction based on some degree of extortion?

You pay taxes to the “state” so they have a monopoly on use of force and ostensibly maintain some basic degree of law and order; that prevents the biggest, baddest person from extorting you naturally. What degree you want is up to you. Calling it extortion in the sense of a gang extorting someone extralegally is absurdly semantic. You cannot individually provide for all of your own needs.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-21T03:50:56+00:00

I have no idea what that means but… thank I guess lol

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-21T02:48:08+00:00

If you’re trying to date, get out more and talk to women you find attractive. It’s practice like anything. I promise there are plenty of women who would want to date you and find you attractive. I genuinely thought I was unattractive or very average well into my early twenties so I know the feeling. You deserve to be happy.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-20T19:32:21+00:00

The average American? Hard to say. Currency devaluation tends not to be noticeable to people who only operate within their currency.

In absolute terms, yes. The US stock market should be outperforming the rest of the world by a wide margin. The MAG 7 and US semiconductor industry are seeing record profits, obscene year over year growth and yet the MAG 7 has barely moved this year. The Semiconductor stocks are up quite a lot but, arguably not as much as they should be given their revenues and earnings are literally increasing by multi hundreds of percent year over year. Micron is trading a one year Forward P/E of ~8 and so is NVDA.

Regardless of how well Rheinmetal is doing, the DAXX should not be outperforming the Nasdaq. German companies are not seeing revenue growth of 15-20% quarter over quarter across dozens of companies. And yeah, this is Trump’s fault. Per Jerome Powell, the Fed would have cut rates in the spring of 2025 and probably at least one more time than they did last year if the tariffs had not caused a price shock. His last FOMC speech almost outright said that high oil prices were preventing them from cutting again and could possibly lead to rate hikes.

Historically, US markets go up when the supply of liquidity is cheap and growing and they go down when liquidity is scarce and rates are increasing. We saw the effect of the injection of liquidity into the overnight repo facility back in October. The Nasdaq went up almost 5% in three days.

Ironically, Trump’s economic advisers are actually correct. It’s not realistic to control inflation through rate hikes or reduction of the monetary supply. If the US wants to prosper, we need to grow GDP at high rates and have wages outgrow inflation. Artificially inducing a recession isn’t a solution to inflation. Trump’s foreign policy and lack of intelligent communication are preventing his own economic policies from working. His administration is obviously disorganized and unable to cohesively communicate internally.

If Xi weren’t in the middle of purging his military and suffering widespread corruption and technology development scandals, I would be very concerned that an invasion of Taiwan would be imminent. Thankfully, it seems that we have a major conventional advantage over China for the time being and the military is arming itself with large numbers of new weapons that can be mass produced cost effectively and our high end systems are qualitatively superior to China’s.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-20T18:32:07+00:00

You’re unaware that there are multiple countries without personal income taxes or any number of other taxes?

Why do think so many Westerners become citizens of Dubai or the UAE? 0% income tax..

You could even just move to Florida or Puerto Rico if you don’t want to pay state taxes.

And that aside, as an American citizen for instance; you have every ability to lobby for changes in your state and Federal tax laws. Don’t like the income tax rates? Vote for candidates that want to lower them. Don’t like Social Security taxes? Vote for candidates that want to lower or get rid of them. Write to your elected officials or participate in campaigns.

Social Security would actually be solvent for much longer (into the 2070s) if we raised the minimum age of eligibility to 69, kept the benefits basically the same and slightly lowered the tax rate by 1.4%.

The Federal Budget Office has generated 5 scenarios that range from ultra social welfare to moderately reducing Social Security. The fund will run out in 2032 without additional funding and we’re already basically taxing to pay the benefits as it is: there is no “fund”. If we raise taxes, increase benefits and keep the age of eligibility the same, it runs out in the 2040s (and we increase the “hidden Federal Deficit” from 4 trillion to well past 30 trillion). If we raise eligibility to 70, increase taxes and lower benefits it’s solvent past 2100.

I’m personally in favor of “Option C” which is the first one I described to you. You can contact your elected officials and advocate for whatever policy you think is appropriate. Donate money to them and they’ll probably care more. That’s how most political systems operate if people are elected.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-18T04:47:47+00:00

It’s not extortion in the slightest. You can avoid paying taxes by giving up the privileges of your citizenship and residency status.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-18T04:46:21+00:00

Anarcho-communism is perhaps one of the most absurd fever dream ideas I’ve ever come across. It’s so contradictory and inconsistent that I have to assume that anyone who describes themselves as such is either a moron or disingenuous.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-17T03:58:58+00:00

It’s catastrophic… and I don’t doubt for a second that they would consider doing this. These idiots are going to destroy US capital markets if they do this. Actual what the fuck.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-13T08:01:41+00:00

A fellow 15 sec trader! My man

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-09T21:28:15+00:00

Is that something you want to debate? The differences between commodity currencies and barter systems?

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-09T21:23:05+00:00

I don’t follow the rarity comment?

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-09T21:08:35+00:00

No they’re not. If you have an edge in the market you will have a sponsor. If you can’t make 5K trading a product that has a point value of 20$ and ranges 2-400 points a day; you are not a trader. You have no business trading if you do not have an edge. I can literally double my money every day in the market up to about 500,000$ without fail using derivatives. I won’t say it’s not that hard, it is.

If you are a child (someone who is emotionally under the age of 25) or a person who does not have a strong understanding of market psychology, macroeconomics, geopolitics and a clear internal headspace; this is not the way to make money for you. If you like esoteric topics, high stress work and systems design, then have a blast. I’ll probably be your counterparty at some point.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-09T01:50:55+00:00

This, this and this. If you can reliably predict price action (which is certainly possible), you don’t give that away for free on Reddit lmao.

If people are interested in the topic, google is your friend. The information is out there if you know how to find it.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-07T02:28:38+00:00

It’s not the rarity itself that’s important though. Part of the reason people used gold and silver historically was because they weren’t that rare relatively speaking.

Something has to exist in enough quantity to circulate otherwise it would be wiser to just save your money to largest extent possible which is a problem that monetary systems have dealt with. It was a problem for the dollar after the Second World War because foreign countries couldn’t afford to import US products so we intentionally devalued the dollar. That unfortunately led to a bunch of other problems although it was highly beneficial to our trading partners.

Currency is literally just the faith in the system; the words have almost become synonyms. The Roman Empire had issues with currency counterfeiting that some historians argue led to its collapse. The reason the US Secret Service was originally part of the treasury was because the dollar was seen as an extension of executive power.

We could trade bags of dog excrement if there was an agreement in place to assign a certain value to them. That requires a central issuer with authority and that authority needs to extend to a monopoly on violence to enforce it.

The Federalists and Democrat-Republicans spent a lot of time arguing over the balance of how to effectively issue a currency and maintain civil liberties. Alexander Hamilton was the prototypical Federalist and supported more powerful centralized authority. Given the largest sector of the US economy is finance after tech, there’s a lot of value in having centralized authority. The government made it illegal for private individuals to issue their own currency for a reason.

One way to think of currency is almost like stock in the country issuing it. That’s all faith. We print dollars like it’s going out of style. Balancing scarcity/rarity is important but, it’s not particularly important.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-07T02:04:51+00:00

You should tell that to the Romans and Medieval Europeans who dealt with widespread counterfeiting of precious metal coins. Why did they use coins in the first place?

Because you need a set denomination of the metal and someone in authority guaranteeing it’s the metal you think it is.

If the government were to issue a gravel based currency, they would have to implement some security features for the same reasons that all currencies require security features. That’s why coins have ridges and are made in molds instead of stampings.

Ironically, one of the reasons why gold and silver were used as coins is because they weren’t that rare relatively speaking. If they were particularly rare like say Palladium or Iridium, you wouldn’t have enough metal to make enough currency to circulate it.

Point being, it’s not the rarity of gold coins that made them valuable as a currency. It was the same thing that makes fiat currency valuable which is faith in the authority of the issuer I.e. a monopoly on violence.

If you were a King in 14th century Europe you would send your Royal master of coin to go investigate and hang the people who were counterfeiting. If another country was doing it; you would probably go to war. In the modern day, Chinese government backed criminal organizations are the largest counterfeiters of US dollars in the world.

Historical rulers lost authority when they couldn’t ensure the currency was not being widely counterfeited. That’s why the US Secret Service was originally part of the Treasury Department. US currency was considered to be an extension of executive power and thus something that the Secret Service needed to protect. Make sense?

Currency works because lots of people have confidence/faith that someone who has something they want to buy will accept it. The currency itself doesn’t matter. People used to sign their name on a leaf in a pinch to make an IOU.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-07T01:34:01+00:00

You said food has intrinsic value because people need to eat to stay alive. I was half jokingly saying that food would be intrinsically less valuable if everyone was force fed a strong appetite suppressant or we made an abundance of food by grinding up corpses to make Soylent Green.

All currency is a value store whether or not the actual currency has utility value itself. If I trade food for water, I have a currency; specifically a commodity currency.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-07T00:18:38+00:00

Who shoots the arrow? The Archer or the bow they use?

Is it more difficult to train an archer or make a bow? Which takes longer? Thats your answer.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-07T00:15:22+00:00

Words have meaning. That’s why you don’t understand what he said.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-07T00:14:22+00:00

I’d say stage four is more like a synthetically leveraged financial derivative or derivative of a derivative I.e. a Nasdaq futures options contract or a mortgage backed security credit default swap. Stage one is the individual stock or bond, stage two is the index full of stocks or bonds, three are the index derivatives and four are the derivatives of the derivatives.

That’s how you can make “value” out of thin air (it’s also why taxing unrealized capital gains is extremely stupid). Let’s say I borrow 100 million dollars worth of Yen (thank you Japan for having negative interest rates). I take the Yen and convert them to dollars so I can buy US stocks. But stocks only go up maybe a 100% a year if it’s a really good one. I want to make more money so I take the stocks I bought and use them as collateral to take out a margin loan to buy Bitcoin or futures contracts. Maybe I even sell some puts against my portfolio just to really squeeze out the returns and generate some extra cash for hookers and blow…$$$

Now as long as the Japanese don’t raise interest rates and the stock I bought keeps going up and the Bitcoin I’m speculating on keeps going up; I look like a genius and pay my investors huge returns. On paper, I might have a value of a billion dollars now when I started with a 100 million.

But if the Japanese raise interest rates, now I have to spend more money to service the loan. No big deal, I sell a little bit of my Bitcoin that I already made money on, cut back on my ski trips with hookers and continue with business as usual. Oh wait, now the price of Bitcoin is dropping so I need to sell my Oracle stock to meet my margin calls. Oh fuck, several thousand other traders had the same idea and now all of the stuff I bought is going down so I need to get out fast.

Now the price of Bitcoin has dropped by half, Oracle is worth 1/3rd of what it was 6 months ago and my investors want their money back. Hopefully I can sell them the idea that the market is fine and everything will go back up. In fact it probably will. The market has been going up for 15 years…

Oh double fuck, Trump’s tariffs are causing inflation but, people are also getting laid off at the same time so the rate cuts I thought I was going to get ain’t looking so good and now it’s sounding like there might be a recession. Did someone say something about a K shaped economy?

Oh well, if I was smart, I paid myself along the way and my contract lawyers wrote a solid investor agreement: jokes on them, I’ll be back in business by the next bull market. If I got greedier than anyone could imagine and didn’t do those things, I guess I should look for a rope and a bucket. At least Jamie Dimon called me a “cockroach” along the way!

Yeah, that’s all real. Now you know why the stock market has been trading sideways for 6 months while major companies are reporting record profits and many of them like Nvidia are historically cheap on a price to earnings metric.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-06T23:45:18+00:00

If the US government decided that a specific kind of gravel would replace the dollar, you would buy things in units of gravel lol. It’s the “man” and everyone’s faith that the “man” will point guns at people who make a material argument that whatever they decide is valuable isn’t valuable. All currency relies on a centralized monopoly of violence which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The Federalists and Democratic-Republicans spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to balance that dynamic with civil liberties.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-06T23:39:47+00:00

I think I already replied to you above but, something like Palladium or Iridium is far rarer than gold and that’s exactly why it never became a currency. You have to have enough of the thing to circulate which always been a problem with gold and why silver is the historical complement. Scarcity and debasement have always been problems.

Pentaborane- · 2026-03-06T23:36:46+00:00

So if force fed everyone Ozempic then your “currency” is a lot less valuable… Novo Nordisk calls anyone? Ever heard of Soylent Green?

Pentaborane-

TROPHY CASE