Real Vision

Real Vision is running a promo. It gives you a free trial to the site. Real Vision is the premier in depth financial new outlet on the planet and I generally watch at least one video daily. They cover every kind of topic you can think of by top people in the niche. They have a monster crypto library. It’s low on hype and high on financial dope (see what I did there)? As I understand it you can get a free trial without divulging CC info.

It’s behind a paywall so they aren’t selling anything but information. Take it or leave it but I find it worth my time. If you use the above link I get some kind of credit which could add up to a free year. You can read blogs by some plumber selling you on 4 x 25 or you can spend an hour with Stan Drunkenmiller or Ray Dalio being asked pointed questions about their opinions. There are 3 price levels, $199, $599 and $3499 each level gives access to more specialized content. It’s worth $1.64/day to me to have access to 24/7 Real Vision content and not be consigned to Youtube, but I have the time and the interest. There is also a multi topic forum called the exchange where people exchange. I searched FIRE on the main site and the exchange and not one reference. There were some references to financial independence like one entitled “Playing the Next Financial Revolution”, “Confronting the Establishment in Financial Markets” and “Financial Markets Confidence Trick” Not a single video on just “DCA into low cost mutual funds…” So if you want access to something beside FIRE echo chamber this may be your ticket.

12 Replies to “Real Vision”

  1. Thanks for sharing.
    I will check it out.
    I am tired of the same three stories being rehashed a hundred times.
    I found your tips on Roth conversions, Mint spending monitoring, and BTC high-yield.

  2. I think you are way more knowledgeable with crypto than I am.

    I was curious what you thought about etherium 2.0. I originally thought that Eth holdings would just be converted to Eth 2.0 but I think that is actually not the case. So my question is with Eth 2 coming out which is supposed to be a huge advancement, what will happen to Eth 1 prices? I know you can stake Eth for the 2.0 launch too but I think that means you can get hit with capital gains upon conversion (if I am reading that correctly).

    I just started purchasing Eth so not much of a capital gains issue but would it be wise to hold off more purchase till 2 comes out?

    1. Etherium 2 launched on Dec 1 exactly on time. Eth is a proof of work coin like BTC. PoW means miners compete to solve a cryptographic calculation which validates the block chain database. The “work” part is the electricity and server farm cost which is the infrastructure of the mine. BTC is paid for solving what’s called the #hash and the profit is the difference between BTC paid and server and electricity cost. Because BTC has only 21M coins and the amount paid for mining halves every 4 years as time goes on BTC is harder and harder to mine so it becomes scarce and the cost of mining goes up causing the price to go up. Since the asset is scarce and the price over decades is biased to rise. BTC is a store of wealth and a hard asset. Soon enough it’s market cap will be big enough governments won’t dare try to squish it. It is not warehoused in any country, so if Washington “bans”, it just fly to Singapore or some other country that trades it. There is legislation in process in Switzerland for writing BTC in as legal tender, so effectively you could turn your illegal BTC into legal swiss francs. Paypal allows transaction in BTC. It has properties of currency like gold has properties of currency but it’s real value is in its network effect where as more and more people agree it has value, then it’s value simply is scaled by supply and demand low supply high demand very valuable. So BTC’s nature is to become more and more valuable every day over time and the volatility is just noise on a relentlessly uphill growth in price for a scarce property. Basically it works like gold.

      ETH does not have a fixed # of coins but is still actively mined. ETH has a layer of code that rides on it’s “value” called a smart contract, so ETH is like flow. Lets say I have a sandal manufacturing plant in Peru and I sell to Macy’s in NYC. Me and Macy make a contract 500 sandals for 500 ETH. The contract forces the ETH into sequester and the instant 500 sandals arrive in NYC 500 ETH goes into my account the contract is permanent transparent and will be executed without dispute. It completely bypasses governments and swift payment systems and currency exchanges. It also can undergo speculation. ETH has some problems when it comes to scaling this up. Contracts can be made to created “stable coins” on the Ethereum back bone which removes the volatility and eth can be used as a way to lend and can be insured, so I can tie up my eth with a “bank” who does lending and receive interest and the contract can be insured or basically bonded. You can make like 6% on your dough, no central banks involved. If I had a 60/40 the 40 would be in ETH in a bank earning 6% not in some dumb assed treasury.

      ETH2 is a proof of stake model. In this model instead of mining new blocks, blocks are minted by validators and when enough validators attest to the veracity of the stake a new block is created and you get paid for minting a block. ETH2 has a much more advanced software/contract layer and a much (potentially) much larger network foot print the larger the network the more valuable and the faster as is demonstrated by the cellphone backbone 2G 3G 4G 5G 6G etc. Each network iteration harnesses more computing power and more complexity and more speed. Passive income can be derived by being a ETH2 node. I was farting around last weekend trying to turn a Raspberry Pi into an etherium node. Won’t pay much but the understanding is worth its weight and a Rpi only uses 6 watts of power full tilt. So ETH and ETH2 are different creatures. ETH2 will not spring into reality complete, it will be built out over several years and then likely assume an S shaped growth.

      ETH for me is not likely a long term investment. I’m trading the volatility. In the past 24 hours BTC is down 1.85% and ETH is down 3.22% When ETH is up it tends to become asymmetrically more valuable as well, so if BTC goes up 1% ETH may go up 1.4%. ETH is “cheap” compared to BTC and so it’s more of a retail market with a lot of bot algorithms trading. BTC is going to be an institutional market like the NYSE or CME and banks like JPM and brokerages like FIDO are going to warehouse and service BTC. BTC has a 500B market cap that will need to grow to several trillion to tens of trillions and BTC is capped at 21M coins forever. As the market cap grows therefore with a fixed amount of coins so will the value and the growth will be exponential. My initial purchase of BTC was for $275/coin today those coins are worth 19K/coin.

      Since ETH has a asymmetrically better risk reward I’m growing “value” in ETH right now at a faster rate than in my BTC holdings. BTC has gone up 163% YTD. ETH has gone up 300% YTD. Eventually I will turn my ETH into BTC for the long term so ETH for me a “levered” funding mechanism for BTC. I will probably buy some ETH2 with cash at some point. Right now it takes about 20K to stake a block.

      My economic outlook is the economy will rip through second q in 2021 and then die and we will see recession or depression as the cumulative effect of all the government BS and the carnage of the virus is realized. Many many things are 100% dead but not yet recognized. If you jump off a 1000ft cliff you are dead the instant you start to accelerate and your PE begins to turn to KE, even if you didn’t hit yet. Superman ain’t going to save you. If that happens I’ll be buying more BTC for cash on the cheap. If it doesn’t happen I’ll be buying more skyrocketing BTC with profits from my also skyrocketing ETH. BTC is an international macro play. Eventually Dollars will be denominated in BTC not vis versa. Yes transfer from ETH to ETH2 if you have profits are taxed as cap gain same as ETH to BTC. That’s why God made tax loss harvest.

      I just read something that says eventually ETH will be moved to what is called a shard which will be part of ETH2. ETH is good to go. ETH2 is a work in progress, but it is in progress. I bought my ETH back in March for $105/coin and today it’s worth $600/coin. I don’t see any reason it won’t triple, or triple triple again when Yellen, Biden and crew fire up the presses.

      1. Thank you for the detailed explanation. That reply is worthy of a post in and of itself.

        Another follow up question is from a podcast I recently heard that kind of was down on BTC and the fact that it is “limited.” The speaker said even if it is capped at 21M, if the price becomes too high, it will fork off another version (ala BT cash) and then that would grow and BTC therefore not as safe as one thinks.

        Any thoughts?

        Outstanding discussion btw on crypto. I got into it much later than you have but it was after I read some initial posts by you that I thought it was worthy of a flier.

        1. My guess is once BTC is institutionally established in the fabric of finance it’s a done deal. Once you decide on wrench size across millions of bolts alternatives are merely a nuisance. Institutional establishment has already begun. Paypal allows trade in BTC. Visa is offering a CC with BTC as the cash back currency. So what if BTC is 100,000,000? It’s completely divisible. BRK-A is worth $346,756 a share. BRK-B $231. You can’t split a share so the little guy can never buy BRK-A so BRK-B was created in 1996 for $25/share. Anybody can buy BTC at any price. I read an article if you own 0.28 BTC today, in the future you will be guaranteed to be in the top 1% of wealth in the world forever.

          There is no such thing as “too high” How high is “too high” for an ounce of gold? The price is set by supply and demand. If inflation hits, gold could easily become $50K/oz. THAT is the point of hardness. The “value” exists outside of the control of treasury and the fed. In the end value is determined by what $1 will buy. If a dozen eggs costs $12, a dollar isn’t worth much. In a fiat currency the “value” is arbitrary based on the # of pieces of paper printed and whether or not people trust the paper has value. The US is 27T in debt at .08% interest. If interest goes to 5% the nation goes bankrupt because of compounding and reserve currency will be lost. In the end, you can’t repay debt with debt. In that case you will wish you had twice whatever BTC you own.

          The only way to get more gold is to open a gold mine and mine it using expenditure of energy aka work. The only way to get more BTC is to mine it using expenditure of energy aka computing power and electricity. The same argument could be made about the internet. There is probably more efficient infrastructure but the cost of changing is too great. The “fork” already occurred it’s called Etherium. I would say whoever wrote that article doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.

  3. The comment and replies to Xray’s questions alone were worth the read – thanks for the educational boot camp on BTC and ETH.

    I’m a slow adopter (and I accept that there is a cost to my delayed approach to adoption) but I appreciate the thought, research and rationale that you put into your investments and your willingness to explain them to yokels like me.

    Fondly,

    CD

    1. Hey CD

      Just set up a Coinbase account and buy 2 BTC and 20 ETH. Cost maybe 40k. It’s like buying a call option on the future. If the option pays off later will be way too late. This is an exponential growth curve at the low end of the S. MassMutual insurance bought $100M yesterday.

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