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14 min read Newsletter

2024.14 - Experts

TLDR: The "good" experts are clueless, the bad experts are actively trying to mislead you. You need to put in the work and develop your personal intuition and understanding. This is not business as usual.
Clown posing as an "expert"

IMHO

One of the challenges of diving into Bitcoin is learning —often the hard way— that "the experts" are —in the best of cases— clueless.

This is a wildly wrong take on the halving.

The recent take by Fed President, Neil Kashkari (below) is just as ridiculous:

“Bitcoin has been around for more than a decade and there’s still no legitimate use case in an advanced democracy” — Neil Kashkari

These would funny if the people spouting them were simply stupid, they're not. Maybe they're hoping you are?

The worst expert takes are not just wrong, but purposefully misleading.

The second (more bitter) pill comes when you realize the dishonesty is not limited to the expert BTC takes.

Does it feel to you like "core inflation is at a 3-year low"?

I bet not.

The economic reality of a country is difficult to grasp because it involves interwoven topics, like demographics, liquidity, energy, productivity, military capability, economic policy and more.

Each of these is complex in its own right. Adding globalized trade and conflicts leaves you with quite the puzzle.

This is worse today than in the past because now you are guaranteed to get tons conflicting "data" on virtually any topic.

You have to develop a personal sense of reality as you parse different opinions and data points any of which might be suspect.

When you run across a metaphor that gives you a feel for the the gist of things "check-in" and see if it rings true, not just with your preconceptions, but with your actual experience.

At simplest possible level, the situation in the US is not that hard to understand.

The country owes way too much money. Where "way too much" means much more than they can pay. In fact it means "so much it can't even afford the interest payments".

If you'd like a visual on how it's going here you go:

The excessive debt part is not really in question, the pertinent question is "what are they going to do about it?"

Maybe the least bad option is debasing the value of the USD (inflate the debt away). Other noteworthy choices could include a severe worldwide crash and depression or, if push comes to shove, the seizure of all your assets (click on the tweet below if you're feeling frisky)

Even uncle Larry is worried

This humongous debt overhang creates all kinds of distortions in the markets and in people's behavior.

From financial nihilism where people YOLO into long-shot investments with dismal chances of success (but the promise of great riches if they strike it big)

To the panicked (mis)allocation driving capital into instruments that have perceived scarcity (like stocks, real estate, collectibles) and pushing their prices beyond reasonable ranges.

I'm not saying the US is alone in its financial woes, most other countries are facing serious challenges too (certainly including China) but contrast this headline:

With this headline below.

If you know what to look for, it's clear that the cost of the US "financialization" (making the USD strong at the cost of hollowing out manufacturing capacity) —which made the US the world's financial powerhouse over the last decades— is starting to come due.

And if you think the decade it'll take to repair this bridge is due to it being a low-priority issue, you may be mistaken. This is not my field and I have no edge to detect disinformation on this topic, but I found the "strategic attack" hypothesis an interesting read.

The bottom line is, it will be increasingly hard to make sense of the reality of things gong forward and you should not count on "the experts" being on your side.

This most definitely includes "crypto experts" whom you should avoid like the plague.

The one thing you can easily ascertain is you need to protect yourself from this:

And the case for safeguarding some of your savings in Bitcoin is straightforward if you put in the work.

There are plenty more reasons to save in Bitcoin, including a few unexpected ones:

But its imperative that you develop your BTC expertise to the point where you don't need to rely on anyone else to decide on your allocation or safekeeping strategies. Become your own expert.

Bitcoin News

Still Going

The ETFs are not slowing down.

And they'll be increasingly available to customers as tradfi firms incorporate them

Building

I'm not a Bukele perma-bull, but it's impossible not to feel a twinge of envy at the sight of a country moving forward into the future.

MSTR Shorts

Several firms are now boasting being short Microstrategy. I hope they create some nice buying dips before they get REKT.

Don't Google it

You can now google a transaction or the BTC balance in an address.

PLEASE DON'T DO THIS.

If you do, you can be sure your IP address will be logged in conjunction to your search and Google —who probably knows you better than your mom— will do their darnedest to surveil your BTC activity. You can use other services like Samson suggests, or better yet: run your own node and run your searches privately.

Inheritance Wars

This is one war I'm happy to see. Inheritance is tricky business in BTC. Nunchuk has a very interesting product attached to its wallet and Casa just came out with a competing product.

Team Nunchuk quickly pointed out some potential weaknesses which you should be aware of before making any decisions.

In the end both solutions adopt different tradeoffs, its an active area of intertest for me and I hope to have more to say on this soon.

Can't Have Nice Things

Coinbase continues to disappoint with its seemingly reluctant support of Bitcoin,

Krypto News

"Crypto" can be lethal to your portfolio

25

SBF was sentenced to 25 years in prison, apparently he may get out in 20 if he behaves. Is that enough for the biggest US fraud ever?

If you need a refresher on the trial Helene has you covered

And if you want to dive a little deeper into some of the shennanigans that landed SBF in jail, Conor has your back:

Frozen Faketoshi

Soon to be a signature cocktail at Bitcoiner gatherings, this drink will commemorate the freezing of Craig Wright's worldwide assets (few as those may be) by order of a UK judge.

Timber

Usually, ETH would pump after BTC, in a series of pump-and-dumps fueled by speculator's who had taken some BTC profits. Will Solana eat ETH's lunch this time around?

Don't Retvrn

Many of the same people pushing Ordinals are now trying to "bring back" big-blockers —like Roger Ver— into the Bitcoin-fold. Steer clear or be scammed.

Fiat News

Chess?

The issue of whether China is "winning or losing" prompts vigorous debate among macro-heads in my timeline. By most accounts, China is not winning.

Is gold's "head-scratching" behavior of late suggestive of 5D-chess?

Luke Gromen had a great quote last week. Something to the effect of "Long term changes are often obscured by short-term noise". If this is what's happening most will be caught trying to play a new game using old rules.

YOLO

An obscure gold miner pulled a beautiful rug-pull by (fake) announcing they were buying a lot of BTC, brifly sending their stock price to the moon.

Dystopian News

Your Bank Fired You

If your bank won't allow you to move your money to other legally established accounts, is it really your money?

Deez Net

A BBC reporter tried to shame the President of Guyana over oil exploration. Things did not go as he planned.

Yours Mine

Nice beachfront property you have there, it'd be a shame if someone tried to expropriate it.

Censurado

Cartoon-villain wannabe Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes demanded X block certain accounts, apparently in a move to censor political opponents. Elon refused, tension ensued.

Michael Shellenberger called it a "push towards totalitarianism"

"What Lula and de Moraes are doing is an outrageous violation of Brazil’s constitution and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights." —Michael Shellenberger

Price News

Goxxed

A rumor spread last week that the Mt. Gox coins were responsible for the price dump. Always take this sort of news with a handful of salt.

21

Historically, BTC has seen big rallies soon after breaching the previous ATH. It's also seen rallies a few months after the halving (which is a couple of weeks away). Will either of these patterns repeat?

Bitcoin Surfing

Bitcoin came down to touch The Board ($66k) last week before jumping back up above the 2021 ATH

Dip Fishing

BTC has been bouncing around near $65 and $69k range. Will it dump hard again before making a new ATH? If I were fishing for dips I'd place an order near $65k and another near $60k in case a someone manufactures a new Mt Gox scare

Calm Chart

$71,285 That's the number to beat if April's going to close out Green. Bullish as I am, I've learned to watch the basic astrology Technical Analysis patterns. The pertinent one being how many Green candles can BTC print in a row.

I'm not a fan of making predictions but my guess is this month will either be modestly red or blowout green (praying on the former, expecting the latter)

Published by:

₿ Coach

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