Tag Archives: bitcoin

Is Now A Good Time To Buy Bitcoin?

Posted on by
1

Is now a good time to buy Bitcoin? I think it’s going to $10k in a few months. These are the type of things people say when I ask why they don’t own any bitcoin. 

Questions I prefer to ask them are “What is your time horizon?” What is your goal with buying this bitcoin?

If you want to double or triple your money and “get rich” when bitcoin goes to $100k and sell it then no it’s not a good time to buy bitcoin. It actually never is. That is speculation and I hate speculation, in the stock market, or in anything really. That shows you don’t understand the point of bitcoin. Bitcoin should be held forever or at least until $1 million/ coin. I pick $1 million/coin because I think once it’s worth $1 million per coin it will be much more obvious that it is a store of value.  When it’s worth that you may think “Why would I sell this for USD?” You can probably trade it directly for goods and services at that level.
If you have any plans to sell bitcoin in the short term, just don’t even buy it. 

Consider if you buy bitcoin now the downside is $26k to $0, or whatever amount you invest.

The upside is infinite, when measured in dollars.

21 million bitcoin that will ever exist, divided by 8 billion people = .002625 bitcoin per person. 

X$26,000 (current bitcoin price) = $68

So if you invest just $68 you can at least secure your equal amount of bitcoin. 

Get your fair share of btc today.

Realistically even owning 0.002625 bitcoin is more than a lot of people ever will because as we know no money is equally distributed. So the average person will likely own less. That is actually ok. Wealth inequality is the expected state since people have unequal talents and are willing to take different levels of risk.
Bitcoin is your chance to opt into a system that doesn’t reduce your wealth via inflation though!

Once you own a little bitcoin you’ll be more inclined to learn more about it. I bought it for the first time in 2017. Then got distracted by a different coin , litecoin, that was “a better bitcoin”. I lost money on litecoin but continued to learn. Eventually I came to learn the problem that bitcoin solves and why there can’t be a better bitcoin.

“If you don’t believe it or don’t get it, I don’t have the time to try to convince you, sorry” – Satoshi Nakamoto ,  creator of bitcoin.


While Satoshi is probably right that he didn’t have time to try to explain it to you, I think I do. I enjoy trying to help others learn about bitcoin. Don’t hesitate to ask questions if you are genuinely interested in bitcoin!

Bitcoin Catalysts

Posted on by
Reply

Bitcoin has a slew of catalysts on the horizon. The first three are increasing demand/buyers.

  1.  As I’ve written about before Microstrategy, the public company that owns the most bitcoin is selling $750 million worth of new stock to buy more bitcoin. 
  1. El Salvador, the first country to make bitcoin legal tender, is on their way to selling $1 billion in bitcoin bonds. $500 million will be used to buy bitcoin directly.   $500 million will be used to buy bitcoin miners. 
  1. At least 7 Bitcoin Spot ETF’s have been filed in the USA. This in itself is not new. There have been many filed in the past that have been rejected, for no good reason. The first one filed in this latest round has been pushed off by the SEC and opened for comments by the public, a delay tactic. But they can’t delay forever. They have to give a final ruling in January 2024. Many other countries around the world have bitcoin spot ETFs active. There is no good reason to not approve one. One will eventually be approved in the USA either now or later. Once that happens there will be a lot of new buyers of bitcoin. Currently it is rather difficult to buy bitcoin with many funds, 401k’s, IRA, regular brokerage account. But when you are able to buy a bitcoin spot ETF in any of those funds with money you already have in those accounts that just opens a lot more money to buy bitcoin. 

The 4th catalyst is a supply reducing catalyst. The next bitcoin halving is currently going to happen on April 17th, 2024. Bitcoin miners are rewarded for protecting the bitcoin network with “new” bitcoin. They have to sell a lot of these bitcoin to pay for their electricity costs. They currently receive 6.25 BTC per block. In April 2024 it will drop to 3.125 BTC. Since there will be less bitcoin being sold by miners, if the demand remains the same it’s likely bitcoin will appreciate in value. 

While bitcoin is very volatile it should be remembered that the goal of bitcoin is to not be volatile. It is currently volatile due to all the people speculating on its future value. Some people bought it 6 months ago and it’s doubled in price so they are selling because they have made 2x their initial money. In the long run bitcoin’s price will only go up as the value of goods grows. It will only go up with inflation. That is the end goal of bitcoin.

Tesla Should Accept Bitcoin NOW!

Posted on by
Reply

As both a Tesla shareholder and a Bitcoin holder, I think it’s time Tesla starts accepting bitcoin for payments again.

Tesla currently holds hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin on their balance sheet. 

Tesla accepted bitcoin for Tesla purchases for a very short time in 2021 but then quit accepting it due to concerns about the emissions from bitcoin mining.
His “rules” laid out above in a tweet June 13th, 2021 was that Tesla would resume accepting Bitcoin when bitcoin mining was using greater than 50% green energy. It has been clearly shown by the Bitcoin Mining Council that bitcoin mining is 59.9% green! 

“Based on this data, the global bitcoin mining industry’s sustainable electricity mix has improved marginally to 59.9% and remains one of the most sustainable industries globally,” the report stated. – Bitcoin Mining Council

Direct link to Bitcoin Mining Council Q2 2023 report. 

This is well above the goal set by Elon for Tesla of 50%. Because of this, I think Tesla should immediately start accepting Bitcoin for payments again.


Of course Elon could be waiting for “reasons”.

One might be that he expects whenever Tesla starts accepting Bitcoin to have a small flood of buyers. He might be waiting for this until a time that he perceives that he needs a small demand boost? This is my only speculation on why he hasn’t started accepting bitcoin yet.I hope Elon will have a chat with Michael Saylor (Chairman of Microstrategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin and also an instrumental figure in the Bitcoin Mining Council) soon!

So Elon, what are you waiting for?

What is Counterfeit money?

Posted on by
Reply

Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan explains how the United States can pay down the debt. By printing money. Transcript:

David Gregory, moderator of “Meet The Press” on NBC: “Are U.S. treasury bonds still safe to invest in?”

Alan Greenspan, Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve: “Very much so. This is not an issue of credit rating, the United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So, there is zero probability of default.”

If I were to print new money it would be counterfeiting, which is illegal in the USA, and every other country in the world. When the US government creates new money it is not counterfeiting. The action and result is exactly the same, there are more dollars in circulation, except in magnitude. If I were to print new money it’d be maybe $1 million? When the government creates new money it is $1 trillion! Every year! What’s the difference? Every new dollar decreases the purchasing power of every dollar that currently exists. Why do we put up with this?

1% Allocation to Bitcoin – An Asymmetric Bet

Posted on by
Reply

Bitcoin represents an asymmetric bet. It is one of the few assets that has the potential to 50x.

I think it’s smart to invest 1% of your net worth into bitcoin. If you have $100k in investable assets in your 401k or bank account, you could consider buying $1,000 worth of Bitcoin. With Bitcoin costing $29,749.64 for 1 bitcoin as I’m writing this $1,000 would get you 0.03302561. If bitcoin was to hit $100k that’d be worth $3,302. If Bitcoin goes to $1 million/coin you’d have $33,025.

Once you accumulate a higher net worth you can actually bet a larger amount to bitcoin, say 2%-5%. The reason is you have the safety of your core position of assets in case your asymmetric bet goes poorly. If your core position is $500k and you invest $5k or even $10k, in the chance your asymmetric bet goes to $0 you still have $490k in your core position, which is still a strong position to be in. 

Nassim Nicholas Taleb shares the concept of asymmetric bets. Safe/low risk positions in your investments act as an anchor while as well as big/high risk investments give you the opportunity to “hit it big”. Bitcoin would fall into this big payoff/high risk category. 


But as noted, if you have a very safe base of index funds as your safe/low risk position, it might make sense to take some risk, but only with what you are willing to lose! Most people think they are willing to take more risk than they actually are. Once a position drops 50% people often sell. You need to consider what you will do if your asymmetric bet drops 50% BEFORE it happens. If your answer is “sell” the asymmetric bet probably wasn’t something you should have done in the first place!. If the answer is buy, and you are sure you will do that, perhaps you should consider the asymmetric bet. Personally this is the position I was in all of 2022. I was buying bitcoin all the way from $60k down to $15k. It is now at $29k and I am just a little in the green, but at the start of 2023 I was 50% in the negative on my bitcoin holdings!

The majority of my personal portfolio is invested in safe index funds. But I do have 2 potential asymmetric bets with a smaller portion of my portfolio, Tesla and Bitcoin. 

If you’d like to learn more about bitcoin you can read plenty of my posts. 

Nobody Wants to Buy Bitcoin… Yet

Bitcoin Vs. Cryptocurrencies

What Problem Does Bitcoin Solve?

KPMG – The Bitcoin Narrative is Changing

Silver – Buying and Premiums

Posted on by
Reply

I bought my first silver 1 oz coin just over a year ago. I ended up paying $24.25 from a local coin shop. At the time the silver spot price was $19.43. This means I paid a premium of $4.82 or 24.81%. This was actually the lowest premium I paid for quite a while until November 2022 when I found some sales on www.SDBullion.com. 

By that time the silver spot price had risen to $21.43 and I paid $25.97 or $4.54 premium which was a 21% premium. The high premiums were partially because these were on sale. I was paying these 20%+ premiums because the stock market was doing poorly and people were selling out of stocks and buying into precious metals because they were seen as safe. 

Today, the stock market has been roaring, most of the year. The S&P 500 is up 17% this year as I am writing this. When the stock market is going up, people often sell gold and silver, and bonds, and buy into the stock market. 


When people aren’t interested in something is when you should consider buying it, if you are going to. 

The best deal I found was these 1 oz Golden State mint generic silver coins. The silver spot price was 22.84 and they were selling for a $2 premium, $24.84! Or 8.7% premium. This is just a little more than the first silver I bought over 1 year ago when the spot price was $19.43 or $3.41 lower than it is today. $24.84 is also lower than I paid in November 2022!

This is a trend I’ve watched over the last year. The spot price for gold and silver has risen but the premiums have actually fallen more! This makes it possible for you to buy the same amount of silver or gold for less than was possible a year ago, despite the higher spot price. 

The 2 websites I check frequently are https://sdbullion.com/deals . Specifically their “Doc’s deals” page which is linked here. The 2nd is https://monumentmetals.com/deals.html?page=1 Monument Metals – Deals page also. Basically every metals dealer has a “deals” page. And when you are looking for the cheapest premium that is often where it is. 
Other good sites are JM bullion (although usually more expensive) or as mentioned at the start Golden State Mint. 


The deals change weekly. It’s even possible that premiums or spot price continue to go down in the future! Buyer beware!


Read this before considering metals and know why you are buying physical metals, similar to any purchase or investment.

Microstrategy $750 Million to Buy MORE Bitcoin!

Posted on by
2

Microstrategy is a large software analytics company. It is also the company which holds the most Bitcoin. Microstrategy currently holds 152,800 bitcoins.

This is 0.73% of all Bitcoin that will ever be created! There will be only 21 million Bitcoin ever.

It’s also estimated that perhaps 4 million bitcoin have been “lost” with old computers that people have lost so that means 152,800/17 million = 0.9% of all Bitcoin that will ever be available! Only 19 million bitcoin have been issued. The final 2 million will be issued over the next 120 years, so that means there are only about 21-2-4 = 15 million bitcoin available for purchase today. So Microstrategy owns over 1% of all Bitcoin available today!

And they are buying more!

MicroStrategy is planning to raise up to $750 million via a stock sale and says it may use the proceeds to buy more Bitcoin- Cointelegraph

The reason Microstrategy is buying more bitcoin is because they see it as the supreme ownership asset. In a world where more fiat currency (USD, Euros, Yen) are created everyday something that is ultimately scarce is valuable!

You can watch the Chairman of Microstrategy, Michael Saylor, discuss bitcoin here, for 1 hour, or if you are really interested he discusses history, energy and bitcoin here for many hours. I watched the hours and hours podcast as it’s fascinating!
This development, Microstrategy, buying more and more bitcoin, is a signal in the noise of everyday life where people are talking about if you should buy bitcoin, or gold, or stocks. There are things that are signals and things that are noise. This is a signal. KPMG putting out a paper about bitcoin being ESG friendly is also a signal. 

You should watch for signals and act accordingly!

Remember! Don’t FOMO buy thousands and thousands of dollars of Bitcoin unless you are ready to temporarily lose 50% or more.

Don’t invest any more into Bitcoin than you are willing to lose. While I think it will be fine, it’s always possible something wild could happen and it could go to $0 (I doubt this but keeping all possibilities open). 

KPMG – The Bitcoin Narative is Changing

Posted on by
2

https://advisory.kpmg.us/content/dam/advisory/en/pdfs/2023/bitcoins-role-esg-imperative.pdfKPMG is considered one of the “Big Four” accounting firms, it is the 4th biggest, but still pretty big in the grand scheme of things.KPMG recently released a document, linked above and here, sharing how Bitcoin fulfills all 3 values of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investing. This is a pretty big change in the narrative about bitcoin in the media compared to the erroneous FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) that had been being spread and is still being spread about Bitcoin’s “high” energy usage. That is disputed in this article, and elsewhere. Bitcoin has a small overall energy usage compared to many other industries. It also has a greater than 50% usage of renewable energy, which is the highest of any industry in the world. There are even bitcoin mining applications that can have negative emissions such as using methane from a landfill to power the bitcoin miner. If that methane was just released into the environment, like it is at many landfills now, that methane is 80x worse for the environment than CO2.I encourage everyone to learn about bitcoin. You can read my older posts. You can also find many bitcoin books from my reading list.As Jason Maier said in his book “A Progressive’s Case for Bitcoin” – “You don’t know any intelligent person who has studied Bitcoin for 100 hours and thinks it’s a bad idea.”I encourage you to read his book.  

Isn’t The Bitcoin Guy in Jail?

Posted on by
Reply

I was recently in the hospital (that part of the story isn’t important) and had a Bitcoin book, A Progressive’s Case for Bitcoin: A Path Toward a More Just, Equitable, and Peaceful World, out on my desk to read while I was sitting around doing nothing. One of the nurses asked me if I “Was into Bitcoin?”. I naturally said “yes” enthusiastically and asked her if she wanted to talk about it. Her first comment was “Isn’t the bitcoin guy in jail?” I explained to her that “no there is no ‘bitcoin guy’” The guy who is in jail, who I’m assuming she meant Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), although we didn’t clarify that, I explained to her, was a fraudster but not directly linked with bitcoin. I explained to her that Sam and his company FTX were more or less committing fraud on a level similar to Enron. She seemed to understand that. 

Fighting basic narrative errors about bitcoin like this is important for bitcoin adoption. There is so much false news and when people don’t really have that much interest, this is the type of error they can make. 

I also got to mention to her that there is a limit of 21 million bitcoin ever and it fixes the problem of governments stealing our savings via inflation. She did like that! She mentioned that she had a “lot of cash” and “wished the government would stop stealing things”. Not the most technical conversation, but I’m hoping that by.

1 . removing the connection of SBF/FTX to bitcoin and

2. Connecting the idea of bitcoin saving you from government created inflation, she might be more open to bitcoin the next time she hears about it. 

She also mentioned that she “isn’t tech savvy” but somehow mentioned she has Venmo. You can buy bitcoin on Venmo (it’s not the favorite platform for the “hardcore” bitcoin folks but it works). So I did mention to her that she would be able to buy it there pretty easily.

What Problem Does a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Solve?

Posted on by
Reply

If you read my previous post you will learn what problem bitcoin is trying to solve. But there is another thing that governments love to talk about when anyone mentions bitcoin or cryptocurrencies. To be clear on the difference between bitcoin and cryptocurrencies read this. The thing Governments love to bring up is a Central Bank Digital Currency or a CBDC for short.  

What is a CBDC and what benefit does it have? The most important thing to know about a CBDC is it is 100% Government controlled, just like money today. It has no limit on how much of it there can be.  Because of this they can create more new CBDC everyday and reduce the value of the ones you own.  This is inflation and that is the problem that bitcoin solves by having a limit that is 21 million bitcoin ever. The fact that  CBDC does not have a limit, means it is not a substitute for bitcoin and you should not be fooled by anyone on tv, or anywhere, saying a CBDC can replace bitcoin and now we don’t need bitcoin.

One thing a CBDC may do is either make settlements at the store faster or international settlements faster. Today international settlements usually go through a company like Western Union.  It is very expensive to send money out of the country. Visa and Mastercard process most payments via their credit system and charge between 1.5%-4%  to the businesses using their network. A CBDC could remove the need for Visa and Mastercard and for Western Union. Basically it could remove any intermediaries as a CBDC would be infinitely and immediately traceable. While to me all our money seems digital and traceable anyway, a CBDC would make it even more easily so. There may be a push from a government to use it as a form of punishment or denial of purchase for certain things which would be another option that opens up even more with the abilities of a CBDC. For example the government could say that buying meat is bad or buying more than 1000g/ month of meat is illegal and could limit your CBDC credit card to purchases of meat, or anything they wanted. 

The main point I wanted to help people understand with that post is that a CBDC certainly does not do anything that would replace bitcoin or reduce inflation and could even potentially be used to control purchases by individuals.

Consider buying a little Bitcoin!