Author: Kurt Robinson

US Dollar Will Never Collapse

by Kurt Robinson on April 4, 2019 in Cryptonomics • 0 Comments

A lot of people have been saying for years that the US dollar is going to collapse, and that will cause another global financial crisis. That’s why you should hold onto your crypto for dear life. Is that really the case?

USD is still the official currency of other countries such as Ecuador, East Timor, El Salvador and Zimbabwe. It’s used for $100Bs of oil trade every year. Hundreds of millions of people pay their taxes in dollars, and despite the Federal Reserve and US Treasury printing trillions, it’s still valuable. The IMF has plans to create a system of e-dollars, and as early as 2008, political figures were discussing a new currency system known as Bretton Woods 2 – so there’s always a way out.

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Welcome to Cryptonomics, principles of cryptocurrency and investing. Thanks for liking, subscribing, being a crypto bro, checking the description and connecting with me on all social media.

I’d like to thank Builderofcastles for leaving a great comment on my video about why holding on to crypto no matter what is a bad idea. Builder made a lot of interesting points, but I’d like to focus on this part specifically:

Dollar Collapse – its coming. When? Don’t know, but all signs point to the edge of hyper inflation. When the dollar starts going, you won’t have much time to buy [cryptocurrency]… and there might not be much to buy.

The Dollar Collapse

In case you’re not familiar with the case for the dollar collapse, it goes like this:

The Federal Reserve and the US Treasury have been printing a lot of money for a long time. After the 2008 global financial crisis, they saw an opportunity and started a program of “quantitative easing”. That’s a fancy term for “printing a buttload of money”. From 2008 to 2015, the base money supply more than quadrupled, going from 900 billion to over 4 trillion.

After all that money printing, people who were watching thought that it would mean the dollar would lose a lot of its value, perhaps going into hyperinflation like the Zimbabwe dollar or the Venezuelan bolívar. But here we are in 2019, and despite the dollar losing some value, it is still the reserve currency of the world, and many countries still look to it in times of trouble.

If you want some more info on this, I recommend checking out the first Zeitgeist film, and the cartoon “The American Dream”.

Many intelligent people have predicted a dollar collapse – but maybe they’re being too critical and overlooking what the dollar has in its favour. So what does it have going for it?

In The Dollar’s Favour

The perception of value

The dollar is accepted in many countries around the world, and in many countries outside the US, such as Ecuador, East Timor, El Salvador and Zimbabwe, the dollar is the currency, officially or unofficially. In Cambodia, dollars are seen so much as a symbol of wealth that Chinese Cambodians will burn false dollars on Qingming, ancestor day, to send to their fallen loved ones in the underworld. Countries don’t do that with Australian dollars or Canadian dollars. A few countries do use euros outside the EU, but mainly countries turn to the dollar.

Dollar bears say those dollars are one day all going to come back to the USA, and suddenly they would be so concentrated that people would realise how worthless they were.

One day, perhaps. But when they do, we may be looking at a very different world. For now, it seems the idea of the dollar as a safe haven is very fixed, and that’s a key part of what sustains its value. It would take a huge shift or a lot of time for that to change. Of course, if that changes, then people who have some precious metals or crypto are likely to be in a very good position.

Base money

When it comes to the supply of base currency US dollars, it has actually reduced in the last couple of years. The supply peaked at 4 trillion, and is now down around 3.3 trillion.

Bears’ track record

Look back at these predictions from the bears. People have been predicting a dollar collapse, or something like it, for maybe 30 years. But hasn’t happened, not like they said.

In 1980, author and investor Doug Casey appeared on Donahue, predicting a crash and gold going to $3400 an ounce. He was pretty certain, enough to name figures, but it just didn’t happen the way he said it would.

Don’t think I’m saying you shouldn’t listen to guys like Doug Casey, Jeff Berwick, Jim Rogers, Jim Rickards… These are all smart people, contrarians who look for ways to take advantage. So listen to them, take their knowledge on board, but be wary of doomsday scenarios. There will literally always be someone to tell you that the sky is falling.

Innovation props up failing currency

There’s a lot of regulation in the USA. You need a licence just to cut or braid someone’s hair. Even so, the economy continues to advance in one way or another. People keep finding ways to innovate within the cracks, finding more efficient ways to do things.

For example, Uber, Lyft, AirBNB, all of these have brought down costs. Every time one of these innovations pops up, dollars end up being worth more in certain scenarios. That kind of innovation is likely to continue. With things like AI, self-driving cars and general automation crossing the horizon, that’s going to keep pushing it up.

The Petrodollar

After Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard, the US negotiated with Saudi Arabia, informally agreeing to price and trade oil in dollars.

Many members of OPEC trade oil in dollars, and If they don’t have dollars, they need to buy them in order to get oil, pumping up the demand. Some members of OPEC are now trading in Chinese renminbi rather than dollars. Even so, every year hundreds of millions of dollars are traded for oil between OPEC nations every year.

Pay your taxes

The tax dollar is also strong. 100s of millions of people in the USA pay taxes in one form or another, and many of them even claim to be proud to pay taxes, an unusual claim to say the least. As long as people are willing to pay taxes, that upholds the almighty dollar.

Keep the good times rolling

The IMF released an article in February 2019 talking about negative interest rates. The thesis is to create a two currency standard – regular dollars and electronic dollars. Regular dollars would be worth 3% less every year compared to e-dollars. The dollar didn’t collapse when they changed to Bretton Woods in 1944… then an informal petrodollar in 1971… so is it likely to collapse when they introduce this new standard?

For years there have been rumours for years of a North American Union, combining Canada, the US and Mexico. In that case, a new currency, the Amero, would replace the loonie, the dollar and the peso.

Similarly, on 26 September 2008, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, “we must rethink the financial system from scratch, as at Bretton Woods.” In fact, Bretton Woods Part 2 has been suggested by economists as early as 2003.

From the perspective of the moneymakers, it doesn’t need to be a perfect, sustainable system. It just has to be good enough to last for 30-40 years, to keep the good times rolling.

They’re not out of tricks – they still have aces up their sleeves. Maybe those aces are a little dirty and sweaty, but they’re there.

The upshot – win or win

I made the video saying HODL is for chumps… I wasn’t saying that you should sell all your crypto, just that when the crypto goes up or down, you shouldn’t hold it religiously, and to think about asset allocation, especially in good times.

If you were 100% certain that there would be a dollar collapse, you might put all of your money into crypto and precious metals, or find some other way to bet against the dollar. I was certain about it in 2011, and I put most of my wealth into gold at an all time high, buying at around $1800 an ounce. It wasn’t the right move.

The idea is to form a strategy assuming one does not know everything that is going to happen, or make a strategy that works even if one is mistake wrong.

The case is that a dollar collapse is unknown – it might happen, it might not. At the very least, even when its managers inflate it so hard it looks like they want it to die, it hasn’t died.

If you’ve ever played chess seriously, you know the idea of a fork. You get your opponent in a spot where you are going to benefit no matter what he does. Maybe he’ll lose his queen, maybe he’ll lose a rook, but you’re going to capture a piece either way. Life is similar. If you plan and act carefully, you can improve your situation even if things don’t go exactly as you wanted. You win a little, or you win a lot.

That’s the challenge. How can you structure your life so that you and others around you can end up better off, regardless of events out of your control?

Thank you

Thanks for listening, watching and reading Cryptonomics. Remember, have a look around you. There’s a lot of people on this very day who won’t have a chance to see a blue sky or breathe fresh air, so take advantage, and stay grateful!

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Cryptonomics – US Dollar will never collapse

HODL is for chumps – Cryptonomics

by Kurt Robinson on April 3, 2019 in Cryptonomics • 0 Comments

In the world of cryptocurrency, a lot of investors know this word: HODL. It started as a typo in a hastily typed post on bitcointalk, in which a fellow was telling everyone NOT to sell their bitcoin but hold on. Later it turned into a backronym, “hold on for dear life”.

Now, whenever the market goes down, people bring on the old memes telling people not to panic, not to sell and above all, HODL. I’m here to tell you why that’s really stupid.

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Welcome to Cryptonomics, principles of cryptocurrency and investing. Thanks for liking, subscribing and sharing. Check out the description below, be a crypto-bro, and connect with me on all social media.

HODL is for chumps

RIght now, March 2019, it looks like we’re nearing the end of a bear market in crypto. So not many people are thinking about what they’re going to do when it blows up again, how they’re going to protect their gains. That’s why I want to tell you to plan ahead now. Remember the 6 Ps of success: “Proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance.”

It’s great to be prepared for this now, to get your mind primed so you already have a plan for when the market takes off.

“Bitcoin to the Moon” Scenario

It’s around the end of 2020 or 2021. Crypto has been going up, accelerating steadily for the last 6 months. Then suddenly, the market makes a big 20% jump in a single day. More people than ever are scrambling to put in their cash, and a week later the market drops 40%.

People start pulling out their doge memes and their HODL memes, saying you’re a sucker to sell now when it’s far down from the peak. You look at how much you have in dollar terms, and think about how much you had a week ago, and you feel ugly inside.

That feeling is important. Emotions are information, and in a market like this, they give you a clue about what everyone else is feeling. In this case, they can be a trigger to look at how much you’ve lost and consider how much more you might lose.

A lot of people will be saying “It’s already dropped 40%, surely it can’t go down much more” when they say that, look back to the charts of 2014 & 2018 and think yes, it can go down another 90%. Now you’ve had a dose of reality – don’t resist it.

If you were blinded by hype, don’t double down and again be blinded by hope.

Ideally, you’d already be out, with 90% of your holdings safely in other markets, with a lot of dry powder ready to launch back in when crypto settles down. In the likely case that you didn’t get out as much as you wanted, it’s time for damage control. Protect your downside, cover your backside, HODL is for chumps.

Peak tilt

When you’ve already lost a lot, the temptation is that the numbers don’t matter any more. Thousands, 10,000s and even millions blend into one another.

So many gamblers have lost $200 at the table, and because they’ve peaked out their tilt or negative emotions, they don’t feel any worse when they drop another thousand. Make no mistake, that $1000 will sting bad on the long walk home.

Comedian and former sports gambler Norm MacDonald tells a story where he lost most of his bankroll, and then went on to throw $60k in cash into the ocean. You might think Norm was kidding, but themes he describes are very real. Once you lose a little, you may even want to lose it all, just so you don’t have to worry about losing more.

So be present, empathise with your future self. Protect your downside, cover your backside, HODL is for chumps.

Asset Allocation

When the market has gone down, you don’t necessarily know how much farther it’s going to drop. Nobody has a crystal ball, and nobody’s timing is perfect. That’s why you’ll hear so many guys who are really experienced in the market sound so uncertain – so humble.

We have three ways to become better speculators. Pick better projects, pick better timing, and choose better asset allocation. The first two are really complex, but with just basic asset allocation we have a lot more control over our financial situation.

If you have 5% or even 20% of your portfolio in crypto, you don’t stand to lose a lot. If you have 90% in crypto you do. You have 10%-20%, you can still easily double your entire portfolio within a couple of years, the kind of gains many traditional investors couldn’t have dreamed of 20 years ago. Think about your number, how much do you really want to expose to an extremely volatile market like crypto? How much is going to give you a high chance of excellent gains, and a low chance of losing your shirt?

A Grand Opportunity

Again, my hope is that the gains don’t just go to hedge fund managers and bankers, but to regular people like you. For that to happen you need to be prepared. It’s really possible for you to outmanoeuvre the market, but you have to be a little smarter than the average. This is a market where being 5% smarter means you can gain 5x as much as the average guy loses.

When regular people understand more about hype and market cycles, when they’re a bit more emotionally intelligent and better at recognising scams, and when they stop HODLing, the market won’t be anywhere near as volatile.

Until then, protect your downside, cover your backside, HODL is for chumps.

Thank you

Thanks so much for listening, watching and reading Cryptonomics. Please be a crypto-bro, like, subscribe, have a look in the description and connect on all social media. Most importantly, have a look at the beautiful things around you, and stay grateful.

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Cryptonomics – HODL is for chumps

Nobody Cares About Cryptocurrency – Cryptonomics

by Kurt Robinson on April 2, 2019 in Cryptonomics • 0 Comments

You might know that Bitcoin is money for the Internet, a system where no one person has the power to change the ledger. What you might not know is, why should you care? How is it going to help people escape poverty, find prosperity, to hold governments accountable, to push banks to reform or be forgotten? Let’s talk about the potential that cryptocurrency has to change the future for regular people like you.

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This episode of Cryptonomics is brought to you by good questions. I’ve told you karma is real. As a human being, questions are your karma. Many people have improved their quality of life because they had the courage and the persistence to ask the right questions – starting with “what do I have to be grateful for right now?”

Personally, I am grateful for my listeners, and everyone who enjoys my content enough to share it.

When I first started to put the puzzle pieces together about Bitcoin, I realised it was similar to Napster or Bittorrent, these file sharing services which people used to share music and movies, giving more power to the people who consume them, putting pressure on the industries to better serve their them. I saw that Bitcoin could put pressure on commercial banks, central banks and governments. It wasn’t clear to me what the effects would be, but with time they’re becoming clearer.

Let’s talk about the big one. How could crypto end war?

Crypto ends war

Ron Paul said, it’s no coincidence that the 20th century was dominated both by central banking and war. Without central banks, wars are normally short. The government has to collect extra taxes to pay for the war, and eventually they either run out of money, or the people get tired of a constant low standard of living.

With modern central banking, states just keep borrowing and printing money, and it’s hard for people to even know that war has something to do with their money being worth less or the economy failing.

Unlike dollars, Bitcoins are limited by software and consensus of the network. That means a state can’t just keep printing more of them to sustain the war on terror. They would have to ask for the money. They would have to find ways to serve the people, justify their existence, and any war that they wanted to wage.

Now we have a very real choice. If we want to withdraw our support from the dollar and other fiat currencies based on violence, we don’t have to convince people to accept silver coins; we can ask them to accept electronic cash. That is, as soon as crypto gets a decent user experience.

Crypto ends poverty

We have these central banks borrowing money, state treasuries printing money. That’s one key reason our dollars, pounds and bolivares don’t buy as much as they did last year. Just like if you flood the market with bananas and the price of a banana goes down, when the Fed floods the market with dollars, the price of a dollar goes down.

This means that saving money is for suckers. There’s no reason to save when you know your money is going to be worth less the following year. Instead, it encourages people to spend money on things they don’t need, or even invest in things they haven’t fully researched.

When you have sound money, money with a limited supply, money chosen by the people rather than imposed by a state, it will become worth more over time. The purchasing power will reflect advances in efficiency.

Saving money will be meaningful, and it will even be cool to save money. If people can save even 0.5% of their paycheque, that will make a huge difference in the long run. First they leave poverty, then they become prosperous.

Crypto brings prosperity

In a lot of developed nations, people are afraid to start businesses. Regulations drive up the cost to start a business, and then people don’t want to risk that much money. Imagine a world where you could save for 5 or 10 years and retire. You would be much more willing to save for a year, chase your dream and start an enterprise, because you know you don’t have much to lose anyway.

So we’ll see a lot more entrepreneurs. People will try out many ideas, some of them will even work, they will become rich and so will the world, for seeing their ideas come to life.

Then there’s the process of raising capital. It’s not easy to raise a million dollars. With the advent of ICOs, it’s a lot easier. Now people with crazy ideas can fund their sci-fi projects. Of course there’s a lot of scams that go with that, and with time there will be greater accountability measures – keep the sci-fi projects focused on Mars.

The other side is making money as a speculator. Before ICOs, only qualified investors or millionaires could put money into a project in the early stages. Peter Thiel bought 10% of Facebook in 2004 for $500k. At IPO, 8 years later, those shares were worth about $500 million. It was impossible for someone to buy $10 worth of Facebook in 2004. Now, it could happen with a new project, so now these kinds of 1000x gains are available to regular people.

I remember when I saw the first $10 I put into Bitcoin turn into $1000. I said to myself, I’m probably never going to see ridiculous returns like that again. But now, I say the good times are just beginning.

Thank you!

If you didn’t know why people were excited about crypto, I hope you now see that it is about real change in the world. Please leave a comment, what’s the biggest change you picture happening as a result of Bitcoin. Thanks for sharing this video with your friends so they can start to get the bigger picture.

Please note, if you’re subscribed on YouTube, starting with the next video I’ll be publishing Cryptonomics on my old channel, The Paradise Paradox. Getting those first 1000 subscribers on YouTube isn’t easy, so I’m going to go back and leverage the audience I already had there, and I hope you’ll join me.

Thank you for listening. Stay grateful!

Important Links

Eisenhower Farewell Address

Bitcoin vs Political Power – Stefan Molyneux

The Paradise Paradox on YouTube

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Cryptonomics – Nobody cares about cryptocurrency

Meta-Health and EFT Tapping with Sam Neffendorf – Episode 205

by Kurt Robinson on March 16, 2019 in Podcast • 0 Comments

The Story: Taking control of your own health

Sam Neffendorf is an expert in meta-health, a strategy for putting various health traditions and EFT, a healing technique that combines principles of acupressure and hypnosis. In this interview, Sam gives Kurt an overview of how meta-health can help people take control of their own healing, putting data from various sources into context.

Many people have the experience of going to their doctor and feeling like they’re not being taken seriously, given a prescription and ushered out of the office before the doctor’s next appointment in 12 minutes. Even so, it would be a mistake to dismiss western medicine entirely, as their diagnostic methods are the most advanced in the world, and the pills they prescribe can help in many extreme health situations.

There are also many things to learn from other medical traditions, such as the long and thorough consultations from homeopathy, guiding people towards knowledge of their own habits and helping them realise what is really beneficial for them, in addition to the treatments.

Here Sam explains how we can discover our own patterns of stress that often precede the symptoms, how life can be seen as a series of cycles involving stress and regeneration, and what to do when we get trapped in a part of this cycle. Join us on a personal health journey on this episode of The Paradise Paradox!

The Eps:

Bee Sting Therapy

Homeopathy – just water?

The Links:

Eftnow.co.uk

Sam on Steemit

The Cash:

If you enjoy our posts, please like and follow The Paradise Paradox’s page on Steemit where you can join, earn money, and upvote our posts to help support the show! You can also find a lot of additional content which is not posted on this site, with Kurt’s posts on Steemit. Also check out my new site, Cryptonomics, and follow Cryptonomics on Steemit

We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link. Or buy some of our great T-shirts here.

The Episode:

Listen and subscribe to The Paradise Paradox on Anchor and other services.

If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.

How To Lose A Million Dollars – Cryptonomics

by Kurt Robinson on March 11, 2019 in Cryptonomics • 0 Comments

Many people have lost money in cryptocurrency, either from oversight, malice or just not knowing how to prepare for market madness. One fellow asked me the other day about how to deal with the pain of seeing his portfolio go from millions to… not so much. While I’m yet to make and lose my first million, I do have a few ideas about emotional intelligence.

Here are Kurt’s tips for a happy loss, explained in detail in this episode:

Count your blessings
Find the lessons in the pain
Feel deeply
Embrace the journey
Let go

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If you’ve experienced losing millions of dollars, or even something more precious, you might know that it exposes deeper trauma. Things that have been hiding from your view – that’s what makes this subject so serious. Maybe you’re reading this in the future after the next crypto crash, and you’re wondering what your life is worth after losing so much. Remember you can always seek help in the form of talk therapy, using certain substances, or reaching out to me on Facebook. The important thing to remember is that pain is temporary; this too will pass.

1. Count your blessings

Even if you’ve lost all your money in the world, chances are you can still find something so be grateful for. Take a look around, breathe some fresh air, feel the sun on your face or the cold ground under your feet. Call an old friend. Ask, what is there to be grateful for today?

2. Find the lessons

When something happens that causes us a lot of suffering, it’s partly because we weren’t properly prepared for it. If you lost more money than you expected, you probably didn’t realise how much you were really risking. Maybe you had more opportunities to enjoy the money but didn’t. What lessons lie hidden in your pain? As long as it hurts, there are probably more lessons to learn.

3. Feel deeply

A lot of people go to sad movies, and cry. And how they cry! They don’t resist the feeling of sadness, nor its physical expression. They seek a kind of pain in order to find release.

When something tragic happens in your own life, does it also present this opportunity, to squeeze the sponge dry? What will be left, once you feel it completely? Find out for yourself.

4. Embrace the journey

Just like a movie, just like a journey, life is an adventure full of ups and downs, disappointments, delight, and unexpected turns. When we start a journey, we can anticipate these things will occur. When they do, they don’t have to shake us to our core. They’re just another part of the journey.

Many times when we look back at our challenging days, we see we were pushed to our limit. We were uncertain if we’d even make it – but weren’t we alive then! With years we see that the hardest times, and that was when we grew the most. Can you gain enough perspective to enjoy the hard times while you’re living them?

5. Let go

After embracing the journey, feeling the pain and learning its lessons, you can let it go. Its likely at that point it will come easy to you, like dropping off the training wheels or an old jumper that no longer fits. You can let go.

6. Be grateful for the pain

It turns out there’s a final stage to this process. I sent this video to my friend who asked me the question. It’s been a month since they first asked me, and a lot has passed. Now they are grateful that things happened the way they did. His deeper pain was revealed, and because it was made conscious, he could finally heal it.

So it’s true, the lessons are in there, and soon enough you might be grateful for the things that were taken from you, and what was left in their place.

Important links

How to lose half a mill and keeping your cool with Luis Fernando Mises

Thank you

Thanks for sharing these videos, liking, subscribing, following and connecting with me on all social media. Stay grateful!

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Cryptonomics – How To Lose A Million Dollars

The Power of Words – Episode 204

by Kurt Robinson on March 8, 2019 in Podcast • 0 Comments

The Story: How to let people feel good in your presence

Sometimes we use words without thinking too much about their meaning, without putting the intention or the weight behind them which they might deserve. We say “You’re welcome” without feeling that someone is welcome, or “good bye” without remembering the original meaning of the phrase – “God be with ye”. Similarly, French people say “Adieu” and Spaniards say “Adiós” without thinking of them as blessings.

However, in some parts of the world, people do mean what they say. In Thailand, the common greeting and farewell is “sawatdii”, which is actually the Sanskirt word “svasti” meaning “goodness”. Every hello is a blessing in Thai, and when you hear Thai people say it, you can feel the goodness.

How can you use your words to bless people, to let them feel welcome in your presence, to increase their comfort? How much of a hello is your “Hello”, and can you introduce yourself and reveal a little of your soul? Let’s talk about it in this episode of The Paradise Paradox!