Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 1475. (Read 2032274 times)

Actually about the only thing I have against your service is that I think it is questionable to place a high bet (as a percentage of net worth) on Bitcoin at this time and I think you are irresponsible for promoting this.  I'm not going to pay your fee to find out if your subscribers get different advice than what I feel you expound on in public.  I think you are very probably dead wrong about the safe harbor nature of gold and I honestly don't want to see third parties suffer for it though I really should not care.

To the extent that I attempt to irritate you publicly it is a reflection of what I feel you do to us 'gold bugs.'  I actually enjoy your jabs...especially the ones which land...and I enjoy dishing them out.  Cuz I'm a troll

One of the primary reasons I call myself a 'Socialist' is that it pisses me off that a long-running PR blitz has labeled certain political classifications with an unfair and derogatory connotation...and pisses me off even more that it's as effective as it is.  All that proves to me is that it is relatively easy to corral and herd a bunch of mouth-breathing retards.

I actually subscribe to a lot of the principles of which Libertarians claim as their own.  Every time I've been tempted to call myself a Libertarian, I hear some professed one open his yap on the internet or read some absurd screed like you've pointed to and it quashes any inclination I might have for another few years.

i just ran across this blog post.  now i understand better your hostilities towards my subscription service as well as our many other differences.  you'll find this interesting:


Bitcoin is Voluntarist, not Socialist

That does not seem particularly counter-intuitive to me.  Sounds like a damn good idea which would probably work well in instance where two honest actors simply want a conclusion.  That probably covers a high percentage of disputes, particularly in business-land.

It bring back a flash of an idea I had some time ago.  Trying to dredge up the core aspects:

 - Overview:  an 'arbitration guild'

 - members serve as randomly selected arbitrators.
 - compensation is exclusively that they can use the service in their own disputes.
 - complete and enforced anonymity of arbitrators.
 - judgement binding in that the winner gets the key to locked bitcoin caches.
 - evidence presented publicly for peer review (of the arbitrator's performance mostly.  Very unlike judge.me and potentially a show-stopper for a lot of people's use cases.)

The idea would be that the guild would function fairly and would bestow credibility on it's members and confidence in doing business with them in addition to providing a valuable service for the members own needs if they are unfortunate enough to need them.

I do _not_ claim any ownership of these ideas.  If anyone wants to run with some of them I'd be delighted since I would appreciate such a service myself (if reasonably well implemented.)

this thread was started 3/13

Bitcoin  5.40

Gold 1690.


today 5/24

Bitcoin 5.13   (down ~5%)

Gold 1558  (down ~8%)

BTC still isn't up .  Gold still hasn't collapsed.  BTC is slightly outperforming gold.


AAPL 565 

General Comment: Gold's performance in relation to the USDX is startling and troubling today.
The upward move in BTC that I was anticipating remains something of a yawn.
(Same comments as yesterday.  Nothing much changed on any front.)

Another Score:  5/24/12
          year ago    now       delta mult
BTC     7.10         5.14       + 0.72
Gold    1514         1558      + 1.03

--------------------------
ref (for future updates):
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#czsg2011-05-08zeg2011-05-08ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv  (change date)
http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html  (hist cgi at bottom)
mult=now/year_ago

day           ya-btc  btc  mult    ya-Au  Au    mult
2012-05-24  7.10  5.14  0.72    1514  1558  1.03
2012-05-23  7.10  5.13  0.72    1515  1562  1.03
2012-05-22  6.30  5.09  0.81    1512  1560  1.03
2012-05-21  5.90  5.10  0.86    1514  1590  1.05
2012-05-18  7.50  5.12  0.68    1497  1592  1.06    
2012-05-17  7.80  5.09  0.65    1480  1574  1.06            
2012-05-16  7.40  5.09  0.69    1495  1533  1.03
2012-05-15  6.80  5.03  0.74    1492  1545  1.04
2012-05-14  8.50  5.00  0.59    1495  1555  1.04
2012-05-12  5.40  4.95  0.92    1505  1580  1.05
2012-05-11  5.00  4.95  0.99    1505  1580  1.05
2012-05-10  3.82  4.90  1.28    1510  1593  1.05
2012-05-09  3.75  5.03  1.34    1510  1590  1.05
2012-05-08  3.64  5.03  1.38    1497  1605  1.07

Yes, if the Fed were to instill restraint, the USD could remain the global reserve currency. However, that turns into a situation of the Fed against congress, the presidency, and eventually most of the world.

It isn't enough to look at what the Fed alone can do, but what other comparable forces are in play. The Fed has to fight immense demand for lax policy coming from several directions or wind up deflating the economy too quickly, pushing it toward a Greek scenario - or worse.

Maintaining fiscal responsibility requires effort from multiple parts of the US government, corporate America, the domestic population, and other nations' governments because of the reserve currency status - not just the Fed. Monetary policy can restrain to an extent, but there's arguably more pressure from other branches to continue profligacy, in addition to public outcry demanding short-term relief without understanding the consequences.

While the possibility exists for austerity/restraint, and it may be implemented for some period of time, it is not the most probable course that will be taken to completion. The give & take battle for the past 3-4 years has clearly been in favor of easing and business as usual over addressing structural decay in any meaningful way.

As an analogy, it's like thousands of people crossing a bridge every day for years and an engineering team discovering severe metal fatigue mid-span. Closing the bridge is unthinkable to those using it daily, but only so much repair can be done without a month-long closure. Political leadership can either approve the closure, forcing thousands of people into a forced vacation with many of them likely to go bankrupt because they live paycheck-to-paycheck, or authorize only minor repair that will keep the bridge open while escalating risk that it will fail at a later date.

Likewise, the Fed has been doing patchwork repair for decades when the structural problems needed to be properly handled. The probability of catastrophic failure has been increasing all the while, and now no amount of spit & duct tape will keep things together.

Put another way: if risk of bank failure were increasingly linearly by 1% per year for 99 years and nothing substantial were done to reverse it, there'd be a 100% chance of failure on the 100th year. The real problem is non-linear, and much worse than it seems.

Me likey how the PM's are behaving counter to the market today 

lol!

The Fed will reinstate the USD as reserve by NOT easing.  If there's money to be made, people will fight to get their hands on it.  The heuristic of "always assume inflation" has worked fairly well for your entire life so far.  But, like any heuristic, there will be times it breaks down.

you definitely belong here

not to mention the demise of bitcoinica, which made up for quite a bit of mtgox traffic.

I'm guessing the market share loss is because of the recent ToS changes and the effect on Dwolla transfers.

I don't know if this means anything, but the Chaikin Volatility indicator spiked up along with those spikes...

Has anyone been noticing the biggish up-spikes on negligible volume at Gox? Looks like pressure is building for the makings of a breakout.

There are positive and negative elements in everything, and any self-respecting libertarian would reject violent aggression. Like the Occupy movement, any substantial trend is eventually bound to attract interests anathema to the core.

My own views might be closest to agorism. I've observed and helped develop business methods that seem counter-intuitive and costly at first, yet result in positive outcomes for all participants, leading me to a stance that what we think of as the state may be unnecessary. Judge.Me is one business that I recently became aware of, and happens to accept Bitcoin for payment.

Glad the link was worthwhile: sharing information makes us what we are

I didn't know if I could be friends with a Libertarian after the head-stomp at the Rand Paul event...and general reaction to it.

But I have the great fortune of having a co-worker and friend who calls himself a Libertarian and he is one of the most decent salt-of-the-earth guys I've ever met.

BTW, thanks for the Robespierre link.  I'd seen some sort of a documentary about him sometime in the distant past and watched with fascination and horror.  It's great to keep everything in perspective and keep in mind that while general trends might have some validity, it is a grave error to attempt to map them at an individual level.  And, of course, that power corrupts with stunning regularity.

Just making sure I was on the same page

I agree that central banking/economic planning could work, and did to an extent. As far as I see it, reliance upon the fallible human component led to failure, similar to how communism could work on a large scale (not merely in small, functional communes) if everyone were completely honest and thought the same way.


At this point, yes, there does need to be growing interest. That shouldn't be as important as the asymptote is approached. Bitcoin certainly weathered the decline well.

I wonder whether the reduced confidence is attributable more to greater awareness of the weaknesses after having been tested more than previously. After all, the same risks are still present and have been since before last year's bubble. Adaptability in such a young environment is something that I think outweighs the dangers for now, and will for some time.

It isn't necessary to know all of the factors, as long as you understand what gold is. Rote memorization of myriad different case situations can often be described by a single formula - understanding the principle allows narrowing of potentials.


Read that again - where did I say anything about the USD?

Gold has maintained a steady range in relation to oil for over 50 years. The dollar has not. A similar situation exists with various other real assets.




This:


You made a statement about the falling paper price of gold "hurting" and I replied by saying that it was something else entirely that hurt, not the falling gold price. Miscommunication perhaps; the two were separate and if you hadn't mentioned hurting, I wouldn't have brought up fascism.

This real pain has nothing explicitly to do with gold.


In the end, yes - but the transition will be a process, whether it's fast or slow.


By doing what? By raiding demand deposit accounts of citizens because everything else has already been drained? By telling the BRICs that they'd better keep buying US debt - or else? By bombing brown people to keep the oil flowing?

The Fed is a big magician - a snake oil salesman. And he's outstayed his welcome.


Where's the logical, reasoned rebuttal that refutes documented efforts by the US gov't to manage markets?


I haven't been keeping track for some time. Link?


Armageddon accompanies that. Monetization is the only option when there isn't enough time to naturally process the debt. It's like choking because you've stuffed too much beef down your gullet, and peristalsis can't move the backlog quickly enough.

The question is: how much debt monetization must occur to stabilize the economy on a global basis? Will it be 20%, 50%, 80% or more?

What would happen if even 10% had to be monetized? Including Eurodollars/Petrodollars, there is perhaps $20-30 trillion in base money supply. If $70-144 trillion came into the world markets over a period of less than a decade, monetary inflation stands a very good chance of causing pricing destabilization which rapidly leads to catastrophic business failure and debt defaults. The whole cycle accelerates from there.

I subjectively think any less than 50% debt monetization ($350-722 trillion or more) would be insufficient. If that level is not met, debt growth would be virtually guaranteed to outpace the world's ability to process it - this may be the US dollar's 51% threat.


I know I don't speak for all gold advocates, and many would rail against my ideas just as they do Bitcoin.

I have always been negative on the majority of precious metal ETFs as an investment - they are by and large short-term trading instruments; GLD especially is the epitome of paper gold.

Miners have had and still have massive upside growth potential. There are geopolitical risks inherent with owning them, which is less desirable than having physical bullion in possession - potentially to the point of avoiding miners under certain circumstances. Careful selection is necessary, but miners are still very worthwhile - especially with the possibility of paying dividends in kind.

I've been saying for a long time that a paper/physical separation is possible, and that each stress to extreme outside ranges raises the chance of that occurring. The mechanism for that occurring have also been outlined repeatedly.


To that, I think it's been said better than any way I can put it...


I don't know if we can be friends anymore 


I love the leper analogies

"Denominated in" does not equate to "exclusively redeemable in".

Absent increasing inflation, there is more pressure for the USD to collapse than to continue providing stability. Since all other options have been shut out, the USD can only swing in one of two directions: it can remain the world's reserve currency at the expense of the US economy or it can be inflated to oblivion so America can escape its debt burden.

Forcing USD holders in a certain direction after they trusted the US promise to manage the dollar responsibly results in foreign holders seeking a way to get out of the USD. You don't think there's selling of the dollar by the biggest participants on the planet? What do you think China is using to acquire gold and natural resources?


Seriously, WTF? Raise interest rates?

So the US would be paying the BRICs more on the massive holdings they already have? Some "punishment". How does that do anything but harm domestic interests in the short-term? At least there might be a glimmer of hope for genuine recover, but the sitting political establishment would have the Bernank replaced in a split second, possibly after a surprise "terror" attack so further power grabs could be pushed.

It preserves my purchasing power.  You know the score.

It is worth note (and I'm to lazy to quote from a different thread here) that I actually have nothing much against central banks and central economic planning if they are run for the common good, and I buy into the Keynesian spiel about the power of these solution.  I see no eminent danger of them being run for the common good however and consider it preferable that people forcibly take what should be theirs rather than getting shit on by a minority of assholes at the top.

I also note that even a modest amount of fairness and responsibility in our economic systems is a good thing for at least a decent fraction of society and a disaster for gold.  We saw this in the Volker period and when the S&L criminals were getting their pee-pees whacked and it was a long cold winter for gold bugs where the purchasing power argument did not really hold so well.  Again, I see no eminent danger of such a thing returning.  But I keep my eyes open and will adjust accordingly if I see such a threat rearing it's head.


Bitcoin needs a certain level of interest just to keep it evolving.  I felt that we were at a point where that was in real danger of.  I don't feel that way currently.

I have to admit that my analysis of the structure of the specific solution leads me to be less confident in it than I was at that time.  But the evolution of the solution itself and the number of people being stimulated to think about the problems and potential solutions is an important thing to maintain.

of course.  then there's nothing else to be said.