Kolek planning to go pro
I'm taking an informal poll to see how much you know or understand about any of this stuff. No right answer, this is more curiosity as to how deep you are into the crypto world. And a non-crypto investing thread might be the perfect place to ask.Has anyone ...* staked coins in liquidity pools?* done any yield farming?* store coins in a wallet (i.e., metamask) or cold storage (ie., ledger)?* bought an NFT?* traded through an AMM (automatic market maker)?* borrowed against a coin on collateral?* Used a futures contract like perpetual or synthetic?* bought an ICO?* Know what DeFi is?* Know What Uniswap is?* Know the difference between the Binance Smart Chain and the Ethereum Network?* know what gas fees are?* Know what layer 2 scaling solutions are?* Know what ETH 2.0 means?* Know what ERC-20 tokens are?* Know what web 3.0/IPFS/Filecoin are and why I lumped them all together?Why do I ask? Because I believe the answer to the questions above represents the biggest thing that is about to happen to finance/banking ... maybe ever. A massive earthquake is coming and everything we know about investing, banking, insurance, money, central banking, trust, estates, etc is about to massively change in ways we cannot begin to understand.
“Even though I’m sort of a pro-crypto, pro-Bitcoin maximalist person, I do wonder whether at this point Bitcoin should also be thought in part of as a Chinese financial weapon against the U.S,” said Peter Thiel, noted tech investor, on how cryptocurrency threatens the U.S. dollar. “China wants to do things to weaken it, so China’s long Bitcoin."
Peter Thiel, noted trash bag human being. Strange quote though. Even stranger to post it.
Strange to post a quote from a famous investor about an investment that lots of folks are talking about? OK.
Why Peter Thiel though? There are quotes from hundreds of dopes that didn't understand bitcoin a few years ago that are in the process of loading their bags.What is special about his quote? That China is long on BTC? That's asinine, China is long on China and has been for generations.
I mean, you can hate Thiel for his politics or his personal stuff, but dude co-founded PayPal (which was originally founded in cryptography) and was the first outside investor in Facebook. He's basically one of the most reputable people to talk about Bitcoin/developments secure online payment/new tech. Implying that he's some Johnny Come Lately jumping on the BTC train like everyone else is kind of silly.Also, while I totally agree China is long China before anything else, that doesn't mean he's point is any less valid if they view BTC as a way to weaken the dollar and, as a result, the US. That seems like exactly the sort of 4D chess that China would play.
I didn't say he was a JCL. If he truly believe what he says, he'd be dumping his reserves into BTC. But that isn't what his comments were about. His ideology/politics specifically impacts his view of BTC. He is anti China. And that is what was guiding his comments. Elon Musk says that holding BTC is better than holding cash, and he is more wealthy, helped found PayPal, and currently owns Tesla and SpaceX. He is even accepting it as payment for Teslas. Should we listen to him more?
I think both have valid voices and understandings and opinions that are worth weighing. If someone has understanding and experience with crypto, I’ll listen. It’s the dinosaurs and slow adapters who I avoid, aka Charlie Munger.I didn’t take anything from his comments to be anti-BTC. Concern about Chinese influence, sure. But I don’t think that automatically makes him a crypto skeptic or any less pro-BTC at its core than Musk.
Why do I ask? Because I believe the answer to the questions above represents the biggest thing that is about to happen to finance/banking ... maybe ever. A massive earthquake is coming and everything we know about investing, banking, insurance, money, central banking, trust, estates, etc is about to massively change in ways we cannot begin to understand.I would be very interested in your comments on the above paragraph. I too believe a massive change is coming, but know so little about it that all I have done is bought some coins and put them away. I think I am going to invest in Coinbase once it is public as well, but beyond that not even sure what to look for.....
Funny timing, and not to dogpile but a headline from Marketwatch today was "China’s bitcoin crackdown contradicts Peter Thiel’s belief that it is a ‘financial weapon’ against U.S."That being said the de-dollarification desire from Russia and Europe is real. There are non-trustworthy actors pushing crypto. Blockchain is still an interesting technology, though I don't believe it will disrupt the finance sector's big players all that much though it will become a part of the backbone of the industry.
Interesting comments ... how does it become the back of the industry but not disrupt the big players? I think these two ideas are inconsistent. The only way it becomes the backbone is by being a major disruption to the business model of Wall Street.
And I finally have a profit in XRP after all these years.Sucks buying at a high.
A lot of the financial system, especially the banking system extracting rents from the economy while providing little value. This, I believe is why banking/wall street is so hated. They are perceived as taking a lot and providing so little. This is not completely wrong.This new world promises to replace all of this with permissionless systems via the use of a immutable blockchain and smart contracts. If this promised is realized, and it is by no means guaranteed, everyone gets equal access for the same fee structure, no matter their size. It is not possible to offer "special" deals or services to anyone else.So, a lot of basic banking functions will switch to this. This includes payments, money transfer (money transfers includes trading and settlement), collateralized lending and borrowing, basic insurance, lotteries, etc.So this big parts of current "centralized" banks, brokerage, insurance, lotteries, exchanges, etc. go away. The current banks, brokers, insurance still exist, but they lose most of their business and are left with the stuff that cannot be automated in a permissionless system (such as unsecured lending, research services, complex insurance underwriting, etc). They become small boutiques. Here are some good videoshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-O3r2YMWJ4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTMR18fk-nILastly, one of the worst sectors to invest in has been the banks/financial sector. The bank index is back at 1998 levels ... 23 years and no gains. The overall financial sector is back to its 2007 peaks, 14 years and no gains.The markets are telling us the current financial system has been broken for decades. That is why they have lagged so badly. Now its replacement might be coming into focus.