global financial crash yay!

[Mr. Tea]

there's this store here called the 1 EURO STORE, and basically their entire marketing has revolved around the fact that all their products are exactly 1 euro, no exception. then last week i drove past and they put posters on the windows with a handwritten notice saying everything costs 1,10 euro now. it's still called the 1 EURO STORE though

Not far from Rich's old flat in London there's a 99p shop, with a shop next door (or a few doors down, anyway) that's brutally undercutting them by selling goods (well, they're probably bads, if we're being totally honest) at 98p.

I do wonder how long shops like that will continue to operate with inflation being what it is. Are they eventually going to have to put their prices up, or just sell products of lower and lower value, until they're pretty much flogging the "gifts" you get in cheap Christmas crackers?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Not far from Rich's old flat in London there's a 99p shop, with a shop next door that's brutally undercutting them by selling goods (well, they're probably bads, if we're being totally honest) at 98p.

I do wonder how long shops like that will continue to operate with inflation being what it is. Are they eventually going to have to put their prices up, or just sell products of lower and lower value, until they're pretty much flogging the "gifts" you get in cheap Christmas crackers?

The plot thickens!

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www.allinlondon.co.uk

Edit: shame, that's a different Broadway altogether, in Ealing. I guess it would be, since the Broadway in Dalston is where the fancy shops are.

 

[Clinamenic]

Seems the US stock market indices are at ~6 month lows, and the crypto market is taking a deep beating as well. A nice opportunity to lower one's average buy prices, to state the silver lining, which I already took advantage of.

But I'm also getting a bunch of crazy mixed signals. I was just watching a senate banking hearing from maybe 10 days ago, and Sherrod Brown was rejoicing that labor had more leverage in the US than it has in a while. He may have even offered some multi-decade record stat on employment.

Really I find this very difficult to make heads of tails of. I don't have any understanding of the supply chain issues everyone keeps talking about; maybe that would help explain it.

 

[sus]

Stan's gonna be rich and he's gonna hold it over us forever, about how if we'd just rationally followed the signals of the market...

Stan when you have 8 or 9-figure wealth can you throw writing grants to some of us shitposters or something

 

[Clinamenic]

Yes, but my first order of business as a squillionaire is to make a considerable donation to luke's riverside poetry foundation.

 

[Clinamenic]

 

[Leo]

Stan's gonna be rich and he's gonna hold it over us forever, about how if we'd just rationally followed the signals of the market...

Stan when you have 8 or 9-figure wealth can you throw writing grants to some of us shitposters or something

You're not in crypto? I just assumed you were, why not?

 

[sus]

You're not in crypto? I just assumed you were, why not?

I'm very, very modestly invested.

Because crypto prices are more about other people buying in (like a pyramid scheme, although this is how all culture works—trendsetters & early adopters are only validated if others follow suit) I don't have much more information than your average Joe re: whether Bitcoin or Eth will still be worth anything in 5 years. I'm close enough, and understand the tech enough, that if I wanted to play daytrading/early adopter, read white papers, follow influencers, I could probably make a bit of money. But would it be more than my eng hourly? Eh hard to say, and I enjoy engineering much more than research-heavy gambling.

 

[Clinamenic]

The dynamics are more like a ponzi scheme than pyramid, but yes in ways that aren't as unlike the traditional financial system (or value in general) as crypto skeptics tend to assert.

Like CityCoins, which I am financially and idealistically invested in, in its naked form is essentially a transparent and decentralized ponzi scheme that generates funds for a city government. The ponziness fades (thankfully) as utility is added.

 

[Clinamenic]

But arguably a decentralized and transparent ponzi scheme isn't a ponzi scheme or even a scheme at all, totally depends on what you think ought to substantiate value.

If the sole thing substantiating the value of the asset is the potential for someone else to come along and buy it for more (i.e. greater fool), then I'd say its safe to call such an arrangement a ponzi scheme.

But traditionally a ponzi scheme just involves a dynamic where earlier investors are given returns from the investments of new investors, who likewise can only profit if more people buy in.

The stock market and crypto both kinda work in this way, but not so linearly. If you buy a stock/asset while the price is on the rise, i.e. if you provide demand for higher sell orders, you are effectively helping pump the portfolios of anyone who has a lower average buy price than you do.

 

[Clinamenic]

So that would be the somewhat shallow basis for calling many of these assets ponzi schemes. Its not like Ethereum Foundation gets your dollars whenever you buy ETH, but if you buy ETH at an all time high, you are doing your part to pump the portfolios of previous ETH buyers.

 

[Clinamenic]

So that would be the somewhat shallow basis for calling many of these assets ponzi schemes. Its not like Ethereum Foundation gets your dollars whenever you buy ETH, but if you buy ETH at an all time high, you are doing your part to pump the portfolios of previous ETH buyers.

People should understand this, that when you spend $1000 on ETH via Coinbase, Coinbase takes a ~2% fee from that transaction, and the rest of those dollars go into Coinbase's liquidity for the ETH/USD trade pair, or perhaps into some kind of federalized liquidity pooling system, depending on whether or not that would be a more efficient structure.

So its not like even Coinbase is just getting your dollars. Its in their interest to grow liquidity pools so they can keep making a killing on transaction fees.

 

[Clinamenic]

Slippage is something I still don't quite understand, but it is my understanding that, generally, the more liquidity the better.

 

[Clinamenic]

I haven't come across any crypto projects that resemble a pyramid scheme, and really most of the schemes aren't even ponzis, but rather just rugpulls, which I suppose could qualify as ponzis.

 

[Clinamenic]

A crypto pyramid scheme would look more like this:

Say there is a DeFi protocol where a user can deposit some asset as collateral (say ETH) and get some synthetic asset in return, ALICE, a synthetic asset that was unique to that user, who is named Alice.

Alice could then stake her ALICE tokens to generate staking rewards, and she could also sell some of her ALICE to Bob, who could also stake it. But when Bob stakes it, Alice gets some of those staking rewards.

But Bob can now derive synthetic assets from his staked ALICE, and call this synthetic synthetic asset BOB, and repeat this process by selling his BOB to Charlie, who then stakes his BOB and generates staking rewards for both Bob and Alice in addition to himself.

Thankfully I haven't seen anything like this.

 

[Clinamenic]

But re: day trading we are up against total goliaths with the ability to move markets, so I tend to advise against trading unless you have a really sophisticated algo-trading setup, and/or enough capital to move markets. Its also just a nightmare tax-wise.

I'd rather just hold and generate interest, then just report the interest as income (form 1040 seems to be the one in this case), which thankfully is very easy when the lending platform automatically formats your interest as a CSV file with fair market value at the time of earning.

But the CityCoins project is more complex tax-wise, and will just require some good faith disclosures in lieu of guidelines.

 

[Clinamenic]

But if you plant the seeds for a passive income portfolio now, and just add a little bit to it over the years and decades, it could blossom into a five or six figure revenue that is generated in an entirely passive way, i.e. the way elites and aristocrats have procured funds one way or another for a while now.

Absolutely crazy that you can have a passive income source with only a few hundred dollars invested. The obvious downside is the volatility of price, which is somewhat offset by the compounding nature of this strategy.

 

[Clinamenic]

Time for a Korean lager and a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

 

[sus]

Amazing

 

[vimothy]

But arguably a decentralized and transparent ponzi scheme isn't a ponzi scheme or even a scheme at all, totally depends on what you think ought to substantiate value.

If the sole thing substantiating the value of the asset is the potential for someone else to come along and buy it for more (i.e. greater fool), then I'd say its safe to call such an arrangement a ponzi scheme.

But traditionally a ponzi scheme just involves a dynamic where earlier investors are given returns from the investments of new investors, who likewise can only profit if more people buy in.

The stock market and crypto both kinda work in this way, but not so linearly. If you buy a stock/asset while the price is on the rise, i.e. if you provide demand for higher sell orders, you are effectively helping pump the portfolios of anyone who has a lower average buy price than you do.

that's not how the stock market works. the stock market finances productive investment in the economy. at least ideally. crypto does not. crypto is closest to online gambling, theres no connection to productive activity