₿oogaloo
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Wordpress is eating long posts again. I wrote a long rebuttal againt that heretic citizenx, but it disappeared, and repeated attempts to post have all been in vain. I see others are also affected. I guess only short posts and video links work consistently. BTW, I see that the TAE bitcoin address still had about $930 in unwithdrawn funds….
So I wonder if something more nefarious happened to RIM. Maybe Zelensky’s goons got to him? Maybe his final message — which oddly said nothing about his health — was misdirection, possibly coerced?
TAE started out as a collaborative effort, first with Nicole Foss and later with Ashvin (albeit briefly).
Perhaps John Day will become the next collaborator/successor?
Think of the history of the gold price. It goes nowhere for a decade or two, and then it makes a big move. In the 1970s the gold price rose from $40 to $800. That was a 20x.
Then, for the next 20 years, from 1980 to 2000, gold went nowhere. It fell to a little over $200 at “Brown’s Bottom.” Then for the next 11 years it went from a little over $200 to just shy of $2000. Not quite a 10x, but close.
Then for the next 10 years it went nowhere. From $1900+ down to around $1100+ and then back to $1900+ in 2021. Now it is on the move again. If history is any guide, I think gold continues to rise for at a decade and we get another 10x or so. A 10x from the 2015 low of $1100 would put us at $11,000. A 10x from the breakout over $1900 would put us at $19,000.
But what might make this different is that the LBMA may be losing its control over pricing, and this may have now irrevocably shifted to Shanghai. By some estimates China how has 9x as much gold as the US (and that’s assuming all the gold is in Fort Knox). Many think that the US was behind the gold price suppression. But does that make any sense? Artifically suppressing the price favors the buyer, not the seller. Perhaps the Chinese found a way to suppress price while they were accumulating, and now the hammer they can bring out in a trade war is for gold to trade at its true price.
I guess I agree with you that this time feels different. But I am not only enough to remember the bull of the 1970s. And for the bull that started around 2000, that was definitely a different era. King dollar was on top, and that was the year China joined the WTO. It seemed inconceivable that anything could ever dethrone the dollar. Even after the 2008 crisis, mainstream thought thought that is was inconceivable that the dollar system might come to an end. But gradually that has changed, and now even mainstream sources concede that this has become a real issue.
Once again I just wanted to say thanks for all you do. And to express wonder for how you manage to do it without going crazy.
Kristen Welker is the ultimate media whore. Arrogant, uninformed, aggressive, biased, hostile, and insufferable. It was painful and embarrassing to watch.
WES,
I said Fed where I should have said Treasury. Between $7 Trillion and $9 Trillion of US debt securities need to be refinanced this year. Much of that debt started out as long term debt, but cannot be refinanced as long term debt, at least not sustainably at present rates.
aspnaz,
If I am an idiot in saying that Bitcoin is hard money, I have good company. If you don’t want to take my word for it, consider Lawrence Lepard’s new book The Big Print or Lyn Alden’s book Broken Money. Lawrence Lepard was a mainstream gold bug who also discovered Bitcoin. Lyn Alden is a respected macro commentator who has written a lucid history of money, explaining how the gold based system evolved into private legder money and is now evolving into public ledger digital money. But even if you still reject Bitcoin, the point still stands that you can protect yourself as a saver if you save in a hard currency like gold. It’s not the hardest money, but it is a much better choice than government bonds or cash. Good luck to you!
WES,
I think what you say is mostly right, but I think a little off.
You are absolutely right that savers are getting screwed. You are right that the US wants to suppress interest rates. However, my understanding is that Fed is not actively selling the long term bonds on its balance sheet. Rather, a massive amount of long term bonds are expiring this year, and the Treasury is refinancing with short term bills rather than long term bonds. The Treasury would like to refinance, but not at these high rates. That is why they tried to crash the market with the tariff tantrum in April — in hopes that the stock market correction would bring down interest rates — but that did not happen. The adminsitration is also pressuring the Fed to cut rates. The Fed can do that at the short end (i.e. T-bills), but it is harder to do that at the long end (i.e. 30 year bonds). When they tried last September, long term bond rates actually went up. Even if the Fed starts cutting again, there is no assurance that long term rates will come down. They might even go up. And for good reason. Who wants to hold 30 year bonds with the deficit/debt out of control? The markets need government debt because it serves a key role as collateral in the financial system, but there is high demand for short term debt, and diminishing demand for long term debt. The Fed can try to manipulate this with yield curve control, but that will require new QE.
This is why the traditional 60-40 portfolio is slowly dying. The 40% previously allocated to bonds will now be allocated to a combination of gold and Bitcoin. That’s what Hartnett just recommended yesterday (lead article on Zero Hedge). It’s what other outside-the-mainstream forward-looking analysts like Luke Groman, Jordi Visser, Lyn Alden and Darius Dale have been recommending for a long time.
If you are a saver, you can avoid getting screwed if you save in hard money — gold or Bitcoin, or a combination of both.
It is encourarging to see signs of rapproachment between the US and Russia. It is also encouraging that the Russiagate hoax has been thoroughly debunked — at least among those of us who have been paying attention. God bless Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov!
aspnaz,
Again, I am not really sure where you are going with this? What do you think is the most fair financial system? The fiat banking system, which can be manipulated by human whim, whose ledgers are not transparent, and whichhas never been audited on a system-wide basis? Or the bitcoin system, which is regulated by code, which has a fully transparent ledger that you can download and verify for yourself, and which is audited every 10 minutes? If those are your choices, which one do you choose?
You say mining is not open to everybody. But if you want, you can order a Futurebit Apollo II for $1000 and mine Bitcoin at home. It’s really just for hobbyists at this point. It is not economical, and you will probably lose money. But you can participate in the network if you want, and you might get lucky and mine a block. But what do you expect if you are starting 16 years after launch of the network and Bitcoin is already over $2 Trillion? Of course the economics were going to make it more difficult.
If you don’t want to mine, you can still participate in the network by running a node. You cannot win a block that way, but you become part of the decentralized network that verifies the ledger. Nobody can stop you.
You raise concerns about mining becoming more concentrated. But even if it is, the miners cannot control the network. Yes, in theory they can censor certain transactions in the block they mine, but they will never be able to mine all the blocks. Bitcoin is not a majority rule system.
You raise the issue that Bitcoin is not “backed” by anything. In fact it is backed by something: The energy that secures the network. Just as it requires energy to mine gold, it requires energy to mine the bitcoin. What do you think backs gold if not its scarcity and the energy to mine it? But even if you were right, money is a consensus phenomenon.
You say that Bitcoin is “just another fiat currency” – what what do you mean by “fiat” when you say that?Who decreed that people shall use Bitcoin?
You say that the government can “close down Bitcoin”. I do not think that was ever possible. Rather, the risk was that governments shut down all of the onramps and offramps linking Bitcoin to the fiat system. Yes, this was a real risk, and this could have effectively destroyed the project by pushing it to the periphery. But now it has taken root in the legacy system, so the risks of that happening are much lower today than they were a decade ago. To do that now could destabilize and threaten the legacy system, and politicians always do whatever they can to protect the legacy system. So I think Bitcoin is here to stay.
You say that China banned Bitcoin. But in fact a substantial amount of mining still takes place in China, and there is a growing number of Chinese companies that hold bitcoin on the balance sheet. You can look them up on bitcointreaturies.net
aspnaz,
Do you actually believe what you wrote? Compared to the insiders with political and business connections, the general public does not have the same access to mining concessions, the best real estate, cheap government-subsidized financing, or opportunities to invest in early stage companies. The little guy is at a huge disadvantage — if he can even participate at all.
You use the word ponzi — but what do you mean by that? A ponzi is characterized by (i) a shady operator; (ii) lack of transparency; (iii) promising returns to new investors; (iv) funding those returns by investments from new investors; and (v) the certainty that the scheme will collapse without a constant influx of new investors. What does Bitcoin have in common with any of that?
Bitcoin is decentralized — who is the shady operator?
The blockchain is a fully audited and public ledger — where is the lack of transparency?
There has never been a guaranteed return — just a hope that Bitcoin replaced fiat currency.
Bitcoin never needs to collapse — it can go up forever as fiat currencies trend to zero.Perhaps you are using the word “ponzi” interchangeably with the so-called “greater fool” theory? But these are two different things. The greater fool theory posits that you buy something with the expectation that you will be able to sell it at a higher price to someone else. But isn’t this the expectation for all investing? Everyone expects to buy something scarce and desirable in the hope that someone in the future will be willing to pay up for a scarce and desirable asset?
I really do not understand your criticism.
Phoenixvoice,
As the resident Bitcoiner, I feel a duty to at least give a few counterpoints.
Learning to drive a car was difficult at first, but then I got the hang of it.
Using email for the first time was unfamiliar, but I figured it out.
Setting up online banking was entirely new, but now it is second nature.
Opening an online brokerage was a mindblowing experience in 1997, but no big deal now.How is Bitcoin different from any of these? Even a computer illiterate like me can get comfortable with it. Yes, the first time you send an onchain transaction, your thought is “I must have screwed this up,” but practice takes away the fear. Just practice with $5 transactions until you come comfortable with it. And if you never become comfortable with it, you can still leave the Bitcoin on an exchange or buy it through an ETF.
Becoming a Bitcoiner does not mean you need to stop using cash and debit/credit cards.
Yes, the earliest adopters have become wealthy through Bitcoin. But many of them cashed out long ago. They thought they hit the jackpot when Bitcoin hit $100. There are a few out there who still hold thousands of Bitcoin. But given that there have been three major 80-90% drawdowns since 2013, most of them sold at some point and then got back in at much higher prices. At least we can say that Bitcoin is a fair system. Everyone who holds it either bought it or put in the effort to go out and mine it. That’s unlike virtually every other asset in our modern fiat financial system.
Raul does a great job on this site. I do not know how he maintains his sanity.
I think we need to have a TAE meetup in person for the oldtimers — in part to figure out who is a real person and who is a bot.
I quit Patreon and Paypal after the Canadian trucker protest fallout, so I sent you a Bitcoin payment instead. But as the future of cross border payments appears to be stablecoins (not Bitcoin, which has instead developed into savings technology), perhaps you might add stablecoin donation options too?
Get well soon!
I fully expect that the Neocons are planning a major false flag. Trump says that the US will only enter the war if Iran attacks US targets? In that case, the bastard lying devil-worshipping treasonous Neocons will need to make it look like Iran has attacked US targets.
Instead of “Persian Gulf” or “Arabian Gulf” let’s just cut to the chase and name it the “Gulf of Greater Israel”.
Beware the snake oil salesmen pushing silver. They tell you that silver should outperform gold in a bull market. But gold has outperformed silver over the last 10 years (160% vs 106%). They also tell you that gold miners should outperform gold in a bull market — but miners have gone nowhere (maybe because so many of them are hedged?)
Forget the gold:silver ratio. That only made sense when both were regarded as monetary metals. Now gold is the only monetary metal. Silver has been mostly demonetized. Central banks hold gold on their balance sheets, but not silver. Since the end of bimetalism the ratio has gotten larger and larger. Now that silver is decoming more and more demonetized, it should continue to get larger and larger.
As far as the earth crust ratio — this does not matter if people strongly prefer gold over silver (as they should). You should also consider cost of production. These days silver usually isn’t mined for its own sake. Rather, it is a byproduct of mining for other metals. Silver is the waste product that nobody really wants, but does not want to throw away either because it is still worth something.
Finally, if you think that the silver market is manipulated, why would you ever buy it? You are betting against JP Morgan, who you know is backstopped by the FED, which is in turn backstopped by a printing press? They can continue the manipulation forever.
Gold has gradually demonetized silver over the last 70 years, and on a relative basis Bitcoin will gradually demonetize gold over the next 70 years.
So here is a thought experiment. Suppose DOGE audits the Fort Know reserve. There are three possible outcomes. What happens in each outcome?
(1) The gold is there: How does the world react? I suppose everyone shrugs and forgets that the audit ever happened.
(2) Some of the gold is missing: The reaction might be to replace the missing reserves by printing money to buy gold in an already tight market. This could lead to a major gold revaluation and a seismic shift, depending on how much gold went missing and unaccounted for.
(3) All of the gold is missing: If all the gold is missing, and this is revealed all at once, this almost certainly results in a run on all the bullion banks. This leads to a bank holiday and an immediate revaluation of gold 50x higher in purchasing power terms once the gold market reopens. The dollar probably continues to be the global transactional currency for the time being, but at a greatly devalued rate following a treasury market collapse. The hole would probably be too large for the US to replace all the gold by simply printing money to fund new purchases. The US government would probably seize all foreign government gold in its possession — vassals be damned. Chaos would ensue for six months, and on the other side, China would emerge as the new global superpower.With these possibilities on the table, if you are Trump, do you authorize DOGE to audit Fort Knox?
We are not that far apart. I was a gold bug before I became a bitcoin enthusiast, and I have no plans to ever sell my gold. I never had a conversion experience to bitcoiin. Rather, at some point I decided that I would stop buying more gold and put all further “hard money” savings into bitcoin. No regrets about keeping the gold, and no regrets about adding the bitcoin!
That argument was once valid, but the economics have changed. As the bitcoin mining economics have evolved, the only way to profitably mine bitcoin nowadays is to pay pennies for electricty that has already been generated and would otherwise go to waste. Yes, the bitcoin network consumes massive amounts of energy, but it is a scavenger. It’s no skin off anyone’s back to use that energy for mining rather than let it go to waste.
As for the physical/corporeal feature of gold and silver, this is a sword that cuts both ways. Is the physical nature of gold a blessing or a curse? There are several reasons it might be considered a curse: What happens when you try to cross a border with your gold? Good luck with that. I hope your run into customs officers who are both honest and competent. In my own personal experience, when I tried to cross a border with gold, and declared it, it turned out that customs officers weren’t sure about the law. Even though I had a printout that said “no customs tax” they spent an hour on the computer before they came back and said “no customs tax, but you have to pay 10% VAT tax.” That was on the individual level. On the national level, the physical nature of gold means a hostile army can show up at your central bank — which has happened repeatedly over the years. Bitcoin is much harder to seize, and therefore discourages war, because it is harder to grab the spoils. Storing wealth in the form of a dense metal means that your wealth is that much easier to steal.
Having said all that, I do not think the question is whether to choose bitcoin or gold, as though you need to choose one or the other. It probably makes sense to have some allocation to both. After all, there is a decent chance that there could be a coordinated international currency revaluation in the not too distant future. And if that happens, the revaluation will be based on gold, not bitcoin, because central banks already widely hold gold, and gold is the reboot fulcrum of choice for TPTB!
@ D Benton
Those are good points, but it is important to keep in mind that the Bitcoin network is decentralized. That means that the network keeps running even if things are not running smoothly in any particular part of the world. As long as the internet is up and running somewhere, the Bitcoin network survives. Even if power is out for months and you cannot access your coins wherever you are, the network remains secure, and you will have access again if you can get to a place with internet access. Even in the event of a limited nuclear war, the network survives (unless there is a nuclear winter that kills everyone, in which case the monetary system doesn’t really matter anymore). Even if solar flares destroy most of the electronics on earth, there is enough of the bitcoin network that operates underground that the network will survive. That does not guarantee that bitcoin will retain all its value, but the main point is that decentralization is the key to its resilience. This is not magic money sitting on a handful of servers that can easily be taken out. This is the most secure and computer system in the world, distributed globally and running on tens of thousands of nodes.
Not risk free. Nothing is risk free. But the market has a way of sniffing out vulnerabilities, and the market is saying that this is one of the top ten most valuable assets in the world.
@Red
Ah yes and bitcoin is backed by????? I forget!Energy. Bitcoin mining is what secures the most powerful and secure computer network in the world. You must expend energy to acquire Bitcoin. That’s probably not the answer you were expecting, but that is a very real link to the physics of the material world.
Good to see that our resident art lover and commentator, V Arnold, is alive and well and thriving. I share his view that the decision to leave the USA was one of the best I have ever made. I would probably be arrested, or dead, or batshit crazy by now if I stayed. Korea seemed like a good choice for many years, and there are still a lot of great things about this country, but now I am looking for a warmer place to spend the winters. Maybe I will join you down in Thailand, V Arnold. Where in Thailand are you? Where would you recommend?
What an amazing painting. I occasionally click the painting to find out more, and I was surprised to read that this is “the oldest very famous panel painting to have been executed in oils rather than in tempera.” Fascinating. Thanks Ilargi!
Unfortunately there is a risk that this site will be shut down if the censorship party wins the next election. It won’t just be centralized platforms like X and Facebook. Any site reposting from RT or any disfavored sources will be targeted. And any site that has a .com domain can be targeted. That is why Strategic Culture is now forced to publish from the .su domain — it’s one that the West cannot control.
All this means that TAE may be forced to a different platform, a censorship-resistant platform that uses a protocol like nostr.
How can you overlook the obvious?
1HYLLUR2JFs24X1zTS4XbNJidGo2XNHiTTI closed my Paypal account and I will never go back. Patreon is a scam that overcharges and promotes paywalls. Both of these are vulnerable to censorship. So is your checking account, as the Canadian truckers learned.
Experience tells me underwear can stop a wet fart — at least partially.
Yes, Ilargi, she can win. She will almost certainly win the popular vote.
When she was first identified as the replacement nominee, someone here warned that we should expect a massive propaganda campaign. Yes indeed. I happened to be in the US at the time, and I saw some of the corporate media. It was shocking how in step they all were, delivering the same message. Someone also warned that the propaganda campaign does not actually need to convince people to vote for her. It only has to convince people that she is a credible candidate — enough to give the Democrats enough cover to steal the election. Yes indeed. Now that the narrative is that she is expected to win, she will. There are enough cheaters and enough flaws in our voting process to ensure that.
Great to see a Bitcoin headline on TAE. I could hardly believe my eyes.
I agree that it would be healthy to get back to economics. Remember why the debt rattles started to be called debt rattles? Bitcoiners can immediately grasp this.
I have been away from TAE for a long time, but upon hearing the news, I flet that I had to come back to share my joy. I never thought this day would come. I thought for sure they would kill him in prison. Now I hope he grows again in stature and influence.
I don’t know if I can believe those Californians all selecting $20 or $10 over a Canadian Maple Leaf. Are people really that stupid? Are those actors?
I realize that most people do not follow financial markets, and do not follow the price of gold, or Bitcoin, or the Nasdaq. But surely the average person on the street knows that an ounce of gold is worth more than $10? I am speechless.
I wish the followup question had been “How many shots of the Covid-19 vaccine have you received?”
There is obviously a big difference between Zionism and anti-semitism. And yet many would say that if you oppose Zionism, that makes you an anti-semite. That is obviously nonsense, but that’s what the propagandists would have you believe. But now the tide has shifted, and more and more people are rejecting Zionism. So the real risk is that this results in an eruption of anti-semitism around the world. The tragedy is that it will be harder to stop because the Zionist propagandists have successfully blurred the distinction between these two concepts in the minds of too many people. They have created a monster they will not be able to control.
Spam blocker has blocked me from posting several times. Supposedly request were sent to the administrator, but nothing changed — same result every time. Am I still blocked? This is a test.
While I appreciate the effort, the truth is that these two lists can never bring to life the two competing cosmologies. It id necessary to animate these two perspectives. The best I have ever seen is through the characters Ivan and Alyosha in the Brothers Karamazov (or perhaps to compare Ivan and Zossima). Ivan gives an unanswerable atheist critique. Yet Alyosha and Zossima both answer it in a way that Ivan would never be able to comprehend. All pure genius from Dostoevsky.
