You’ve already heard our thoughts on shares and property. So, on this week’s show we share our views about everything else…
Bitcoin and crypto. Gold and commodities. Fractional property investing. Peer-to-peer lending. Real estate investment trusts and infrastructure. And mortgage funds.
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My thoughts on ‘The Great Taking’. An idea that the masses will lose untold amounts of wealth in the next financial crash, due to a deliberate plan by mysterious figures.
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G’day Boys ,
Now that Elon Musk has legitimised Crypto as an exchange for goods ( Tesla car ) will this open the door for other companies?
Can never get my head around Crypto. For the average person on the street , isn’t crypto out of reach for exchange of Goods & Services ?
Cheers
Well, yeah I wouldn’t be surprised if other companies accept it. I don’t know how tracking, tax, etc. will work. If you’re a tech company (which Tesla is), or any company selling stuff really, it’s in your best interest to accept whatever payment people are willing to give you, provided enough other people will also accept payment/exchange for that if they want to turn it into cash. Still uninterested in the entire space, regardless of who ‘endorses’ it.
With respect lads, you come across as determined to dismiss the crypto ‘craze’.
It clearly has a use case (particularly for corporations as a hedge against all of today’s money printing) and is on the verge of broader acceptance.
To name a few more catalysts besides Tesla buying $1.5 billion and potentially allowing bitcoin car purchases:
– PayPal allowing millions of merchants to accept crypto payments
– Large corporations adding bitcoin to balance sheet eg: Square/Cash App
– Backed and owned by legendary investors such as Druckenmiller, Paul Tudor Jones, Bill Miller.
I don’t own any bitcoin put the sniggering seems misplaced given the above. After all, the whole world has just gone digital right?
We’re not determined to do anything. We get asked about it all the time, so we felt obligated to share how we feel about it. People are using it and see value in it, so yeah, there is a use case. Doesn’t mean we need to be convinced of it as an investment or an asset class to put our money into. And yes, the world is digital, but last time I checked, I can already do everything I need without touching any paper money, so money is already digital.
See my comment above. If enough people believe in it then of course companies are going to follow and facilitate the usage of it. That’s not surprising. But doesn’t mean it’s a sensible investment – it’s just a currency with a made-up scarcity after all.
If bitcoin goes to 10 million or zero, I honestly don’t care either way. I’m not rooting for its demise like some people – I’m indifferent to it.
Fair enough.
My point was more that your comments seem like those of a couple of lads who haven’t necessarily done the research into exactly what it is and how it works, but have had a quick scroll and chosen to write it off as a bubble or ‘a currency with a made up scarcity.’
It rightly got a bad rep at the end of 2017 when all the mums and dads piled in to try and make a dollar, but it has come a long way and at the very least it’s interesting tech and worth researching and understanding properly.
Cheers Dave ,
Yep , you’re making more sense to me than Crypto !! …would make more sense if investors would put renewables on the table for discussions on future potential growth and earnings .
Cheers
…..crypto is like the GameStop saga recently ….Greed , illogical , irrational and elitism gone mad !!! ….short term impatient gambling !!!! Crazy times indeed !!
Cheers
Hey legends, great episode as always. I think it’s *on the money* (pun intended). I copped a bit of flak recently about my comments on crypto on the Aussie Firebug pod, so I’m dipping a toe with an Aussie coin exchange (ala microinvesting- nothing serious here) just to see how it goes. I also don’t have any vested interest or desire to see it explode or crash, just want some more of an education. I also kind of see it as a form of virtual gold though. Will be interesting to reflect back on this in ten years
Cheers brother. Haha I wasn’t aware of that. But come on mate, it almost sounds like you were peer-pressured into it? Hardly sounds like the right reason to go into something 😉
ahh mate the older kids made me do it! Haha. Yeah I agree, I am still not fully sold on the fundamentals of crypto (or gold for that matter) but still felt I needed to get some skin in the game to commentate a bit more, and to show that I am willing to give things a go. Having said that, it is only a VERY small transaction and the majority of all my investments still go to a diversified ETF portfolio
I lost a bit in crypto in 2018 so i’m not interested in testing those waters again. And in the last week alone, I’ve had 2 people telling me about how much money they’ve made in crypto, that it’s easy money, and I need to buy because it’s “going to $100k by October”. The first guy was the welder building my gates, the other was a clerk. As the saying goes, when your taxi driver starts telling you about a stock, it’s time to get out of there.
Sorry to hear about that T-Dog. Yeah I really have no clue what’ll happen with it, but it just makes no sense to me as an investment. As an honest bit of speculation, then sure no problem, but trying to dress it up as a no-brainer investment – my little brain just doesn’t compute.
I threw in about $3k as a speculative bet in 2017 towards some alt coins.
I still hold them now and probably will indefinitely. It makes up a whopping 1% of my entire portfolio with the rest being ETF’s and LIC’s. I still don’t feel comfortable with cryptocurrency in the sense that we’re yet to see potential government regulations; I mean we just don’t know what’s going to happen.
I’m just annoyed as a PC gamer because it’s going to drive the price up of video cards to insane levels.
Fair enough Scott, thanks for sharing mate. There’s probably a lot of people who’ve done a similar thing, as an experiment or bit of side entertainment to see what happens. Not my style though.
Dave, I get ads in Facebook about buying whiskey barrels held in bonded storage. Interested in your take on that one.
Sounds like a winner… if it doesn’t increase in value, can you go and redeem it? 😉
86% of gold is used for jewellery and investment. Only 14% to make (useful?) things.
Gold is a resource that requires a lot of energy to extract and creates a massive amount of toxic waste, which is dumped in oceans, lakes and rivers.
It takes 2.8t of waste to produce 1g of gold. And 220L of freshwater is required to produce 1g of gold.
Does it worth it ?
https://manyana.substack.com/p/-bitcoin-or-gold-which-one-is-better-6eb
Haha wow that’s interesting, and pretty damn sad to be honest. We humans are strange creatures, falling in love with shiny metal. I have no interest in gold as an investment or personal use. Thanks for sharing Marc
Hi guys,
With regards to cryptocurrencey, you didn’t discuss defi (decentralised finance). I use Blockfi but there are other platforms. It’s similar to a peer to peer system of loans backed by cryptocurrency. Similarly due to it being digital and decentralised, your return is much better than the pittance you get from banks. Other cryptocurrencies you didn’t discuss are ones that have specific use cases and aren’t as volatile as bitcoin. Stablecoins such as USDC which runs on the etherium network are designed to track 1:1 with US dollars and you can get 8.6% interest on blockfi with these coins. You definitely should research these developments in the crypto space.
When it comes to crypto, some of the utility lies into the trustless, permission-less and decentralised nature of the system.
Surely you guys can see some value in that?
Furthermore, you mention Bitcoin and Blockchain technology are 2 different things, but do you have any tangible alternatives than Bitcoin to get exposure to this new technology?
Pat you don’t seem to get that Bitcoin isn’t replicable – the users of the system and the mining/securing of the network is what gives it value. You say you have nothing against blockchain tech but you can’t just create your own decentralised blockchain – you need it to be secure.
I got a decentralised loan without having to go to a bank – nobody could base the loan conditions on my appearance, ethnicity etc. – surely that has real value?