#but! they will hold value forever (or until america collapses...)

[swanosol]

who gave these stamps permission to be so cute!! I want to buy them all but would have little use for them ;-;

[iliketowrite1996]

Part 2/3: Her Regret

Part 1: https://iliketowrite1996.tumblr.com/post/618305723787608064/part-13-his-mistake

 TRIGGER WARNINGS AND THEMES- violence, mentions of weapons, alien attacks,pushing loved one out of the way, dad and daughter time, conversations about breaking up and regretting falling in love,

It has been three weeks since your and Nick’s argument, and Steve has been careful to help you keep your distance. Sometimes that means form Fury… other times, it means from himself.

    Steve knows you well enough to now that you’re just trying to figure things out. You are your own person, but this is your first position of leadership. It’s a position that he always thought It would take, but one he’s glad she declined when it was initially said that it’d be given to either you or her.

    Now, Steve watches as you prep for your latest mission, securing your shield- similar to his- and weapons.

    ‘’Are we going to ignore the fact that you haven’t really spoken to me this past week?’’

    You look up to Steve, raising an eyebrow before looking back at the latest device Tony has gifted you, ‘’Do you always ways bring your personal dreams onto the battlefield, Cap?’’

    ‘’Yep.’’

    ‘’He does.’’

    ‘’All the time.’’

    Tony, Nat and CLint give their input, causing Steve to roll his eyes and nod towards the back of the jet, where no one else is.

    ‘’Did I miss something or do we have a problem, too,’’ Steve questions you, ‘’Because you not talking to me isn’t going to work out- in here, at the tower, on the mission, anywhere.’’

    “Well, fortunately for you, I have enough tact to refrain from allowing my emotions to influence me during a mission, Rogers. I suggest that you adopt the same training.”

“You know what you can cut the crap, alright? You’re upset about the fact that you don’t know if your dad will ever talk to you again, is that a fact?”

“What is a fact is that we are in the middle of traveling to a mission, Rogers. That is a fact. So I suggest you save the talk of our private lives for when we are indeed in private, Captain.’’

‘’You are always going to come up with an excuse- no amount of time is good and no time is the right time to discuss it. I have accepted the fact that maybe I shouldn't have kissed you, but I don’t regret it. Even if I did in the beginning, I don't regret sneaking around with you. Because I’d do it again, Now where do your loyalties lie?’’

    ‘’You dare to question my loyalties?,’’ you laugh a  bit humorlessly, ‘’Who was the one that helped you get everybody back? Who stood by your side through everything, Captain America, the perfect soldier? My loyalties are to the people I love, the ones I trust. That’s this whole team, Rogers. You need to question where your head is, while you are scrutinizing me.’’

    ‘’My head is in the mission and if something happens to one of us,’’ Steve seethes, taking your face into his hands, ‘’Now either we’re together or we’re not. But I am not losing someone else before I get a chance to define what we are. I love you, alright?’’

    ‘’Don’t you dare, Steve,’’ you whisper, ‘’Don’t do this to me now.’’

    ‘’I love you. I love you and I am not afraid to say it. Your stubbornness has cost you one relationship already,’’ he begins, speaking about your dad, ‘’Do you really want to lose another one?’’

    Something in your eyes harden, and though he meant no ill-will when he said it, Steve instantly regrets his decision the second that those words tumble out of his mouth and fall to the ground between the two of you, effectively creating more distance than there has been for the both of you these past 21days.

    ‘’You know what, I would keep one thing the same if I could. I would still have the relationship with my dad that I had and I never would have kissed you, Steve Rogers. This conversation is over.’’

    You stalk away from the man in front of you, turning your back on him and effectively ending your relationship.

    And as you all prepare to land, you think of two things- number one being this mission.

    And number two being the fact that you’ve fallen in love with Steve Rogers, too, and you can’t seem to regret a second of it.

        ‘’I need help, where is everyone?’’

    ‘’Nat,it’s me, where are you located,’’ you speak into your earpiece, surveying the area for anyone, ‘’I can’t see you?’’

    ‘’I’m with Peter and Bucky. Peter is fine, but Bucky is injured. We need help,’’ Nat urges, ‘’Where are you at?’’

    Steve gives details of your location, before Tony promises that he’s on his way to get Bucky back to the jet, now that the mission is over.

    ‘’See you back at the jet,’’ Tony informs the team, and you and Steve head to the exit.

    There has been little to no communication between the two of you, only about the mission. You managed to free anyone captured by the villains and capture them, securing them on the jet.

    And it’s fine. You’re used to suppressing your emotions- it’s what your dad always taught you to do. You’re fine.

    You’re fine.

    You’ll be fine.

    You are fine.

    Then… then you’re not so fine. There’s a weapon and it's aimed at Steve and you don’t think you just… you just do.

    And all you hear is Steve cry out your name, all you see is his face as he kneels before you, surveying you as Thor’s taking care of the villain.

    ‘’Hey, you’re going to be fine. I promise that you’re going to be fine.’’

    ‘’Steve,’’ you choke out, vision blurring, ‘’Hurts.’’

    ‘’I know, I know, but you’re okay. I promise,’’ Steve picks you up, ‘’You’ll be fine.’’

    ‘’I love,’’ you gasp out, squeezing your eyes shut, ‘’Love you, too. Steve. I love you, I’m sorry. Tell my dad-’’

    ‘’Tell him yourself, doll. You are okay.’’

    It’s the last thing you hear before your eyes close.

    And everything goes dark.

    The beeping is what makes you up. It’s loud, it’s rhymastic, it’s incessant.

    It’s the first thing that you register, the first thing that lets you know that despite this pain, Steve managed to get you back to the ship.

    You sit up, immediately regretting your decision when your head starts spinning and you collapse back into your pillow.

    ‘’I’d advise you to take it easy. Your head took most of the pain, and you’ve got a broken arm, but there doesn’t seem to be any permanent damage.’’

    The gruff voice belongs to the man staring out of the window, dressed in all back and not looking at you.

    ‘’Dad?’’

    Fury turns to face you, strolling over to your bed, ‘’You sustained an injury to the abdomen, but it was mostly due to Captain pushing you out of the way. He managed to use hsi shield- which, you have one, too, why didn’t you use it?’’

    ‘’I wasn’t thinking. I had to stop them from hurting him.’’

    ‘’Right, right. The super soldier, full of super soldier serum, with a vibranium shield needed you to save him,’’ Fury shakes his head, ‘’You’ve always been impulsive.’’

    ‘’I’ve always been protective of the ones I love,’’ you insist, ‘’I learned from the best.’’

    Fury levels you with a look, before sitting on the side of the bed, ‘’You’ve always been loyal. But you’ve also been my daughter. How do you think I felt almost losing you today?’’

    In a rare moment of affection, Fury presses a kiss to your head, cousin tears to tick your eyes.

    ‘’I’m sorry I lied to you, dad. I am so, so sorry. I didn’t-’’

    ‘’You know, Cap has made it a habit of striking his neck out for those that he cares about. He told me some things, about how you are the most loyal person he’s ever met and you act selflessly all of the time, how you deserve to live your life.’’

    Fury’s not looking at you, but you can tell he’s working up to something, so he says, ‘’I don’t tell you enough, but I do love you. That’s why I never wanted people to know we’re related. It’s bad enough that the Avengers know, but if anyone  else found out?’’

    ‘’I know you’re trying to protect me, dad , but you can’t forever. I follow in your footsteps. I protect those that I love. And I won't apologize for doing that.’’

    ‘’I’m not asking you to,’’ Fury insists, standing, ‘’I’m telling you to leave your problems at the door.  And by problems, I mean Steve, Whatever you two do in your personal lives is fine, as long as it does not affect the mission.;;

    It’s the closest you’re going to get to an ‘’I love you’’ from Nicholas J. Fury- it’s his approval, and as he saunters to the door, he says, ‘’Alright, Rogers. She’s ready for you now.’’   

    As Fury exits, Steve enters, hands in his pockets as he glides over to your bed.

    ‘’Hi.’’

    ‘’Hi,’’ you shift a bit, careful of your arm in its sling, ‘’You look nice.’’

    ‘’You look good, two. For someone who tried to save me from an alien attack, what the heck were you thinking?’’

    ‘’I just…reacted,’’ you admit, ‘’I didn’t think. ‘

    ‘’Exactly! Do you know how dangerous that was? We could have lost you.’’

    ‘’And we could have lost you,too, Steve. Don’t value my life above your own, Rogers. I won’t allow that.’’

    Steve knows that there's no use in arguing with you most times, so he sits in the chair beside your bed, grabbing a hold of your hand as he does,’’I meant what I said on the jet, alright? I love you. I love you and when you love someone, you want what’s best for them. It was unfair of me to corner you into your feelings and I’m sorry.’’

    ‘’Don’t apologize to me, Rogers. Sometimes I need the extra phsb. You know how stubborn I can be’’ you from a bit, causing him to chuckle, ‘’I meant what I said, too. I love you. I wasn’t going to… I had to tell you just in case.’’

    ‘’Just in case,’’ he speaks, all too familiar with the pain of not admitting your feelings sooner, ‘’Well, I’m going to go. Let you get some sleep.’’

    ‘’Would you mind staying here, Rogers,’’ you request, yawning after you do, ‘’Just until I fall asleep.’’

    ‘’I’ll stay here as long as you like. I’ll even be here when you wake up if you’d like me too.’’

    ‘’Good, good,’’ you yawn again, ‘’That’s good. We’ve got a lot to discuss.’’

    ‘’We can talk about it when you wake up, doll. Love you.’’

    ‘’I love you, too,’’ you yawn once more before sleep overtakes you.   

    Your dreams are filled with glimpses of a future- a future with Steve. It is one where you don’t have to hide who you two are when you are together, where you dad knows. And you even have a glimpse into what you two could have- a secret family like Clint or retiring like Tony once did.

    It’s rough for you, for now to dream To hope.

    Because it reminds you that there can be a future for you two.

    And it removes a bit of the regret that you had for giving Steve a chance.

DISCLAIMER- I own no rights to any Marvel characters or their fictional worlds, countries, galaxies, planets, etc. 

@ashanti-notthesinger @destinio1 @afraiddreamingandloving @airis-paris14 @syreanne @chaneajoyyy @90sinspiredgirl @shemiahsmelanin @zillmonger @skysynclair19 @marvelpotterlove @constantlycravingtheunknown @imaginewhoever @wakanda-inspired @pocmarvelworks @theunsweetenedtruth @dreampovx @adrioola21 @supremethunda @thisiskayesworld @mcusocialimagines @priya212  @kumkaniudaku  @airis-paris14 @alexundefined @fonville-designs  @dramaqueenamby  @mellowjellow6 @oceanscorazon @nerd-lovely @fonville-designs @akimi-youngblood @yoyolovesbucky @fd-writes @areubeingserved-too​ @areubeingserved​ @thisbrokencapulet @squeackygee @melidris1  @honeydew-melanin @id-rather-be-an-outsider @andreasworlsboring101

[gwoongi]

𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗅𝖺𝗌𝗍 𝗈𝖿 𝗎𝗌 ✰ taehyung (7)

𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗅𝖺𝗌𝗍 𝗈𝖿 𝗎𝗌 kim taehyung / reader genre: zombie apocalypse au words: 4228

It felt shit to feel thankful of someone’s screaming. Mostly, Taehyung was happy it was them and not him.

a/n: funny story, i submitted this chapter as part of my creative writing portfolio and the prestige uni i sent it off to loved it and accepted me :D hopefully thats a nice indication on whether or not this is good :S

warnings: extremely graphic content, sexual pain, graphic torture, gore, violence, death, Humans Suck

01. denver ↝ 02. holiday with me ↝ 03. sad forever ↝ 04. surely ↝ 05.scorpion ↝ 06. shakespeare ↝ 07. thrones ↝ 08. moon motel

The group leave the trailer park three days later.

Bundling everything of use into the back of the truck, which seemed darker in colour since the last time it was used, you had found you enjoyed leaving more than you did settling in. Packing everything into correct places had always been such a bore, even at a young age. You remembered when you were eight, and moving in to your grandparents’ home in the outskirts of Denver. Was this really Denver? It was a small town, barely noticeable amongst the cluster of trees and ferns, but nonetheless peaceful, ‘perfect for a new place to start fresh’. Yeah, it only took around an hour and a half to get to school every-day, but don’t worry, it’s a fucking perfect place to live, aged eight, as an orphan. It took you around eleven months to finish emptying each box.

But four years ago, throwing everything into a backpack and into the boot of a car you nicked from down the road, it had been so easy. It was so easy to throw everything out and keep what you really needed. Easy to forget to pack a jacket you had been given for Christmas off an aunt you barely knew, easy to remember to pack all the knives out of the kitchen and the forbidden gun your grandfather used to hunt deer in the winter. It was rather symbolic- pretending people were deers as you shot them between the eyes.

“That everything?”

Namjoon stood, risen off the ground, his hand on the bar of the roof of the truck. Taehyung stepped down the plastic steps from the trailer, not bothering to lock the door, knowing nothing in there was of any value. At one point, the rainbow-glassed fruit bowl might have been of value, sentimental value or something. Now, it was worthless, with a lightning bolt crack down the middle.

“Yeah, good to go,” Taehyung replied, hovering when you climbed into the back to join Kyungmin. He waited, not knowing what for, only mildly embarrassed when you turned to see him staring. “You okay?”

You nodded once with a smile. “Mm. Are you?”

“Yeah. Sorry, I-”

Somehow, he hadn’t realised you shuffle to the open back doors to pull him in for a simple kiss. It was that quick and simple that he almost missed it. His eyes opened to the sight of you in front of him, your hands holding his face, rubbing the stubble around his jaw.

“You’re holding us all up, you know.”

“You’re holding me up,” he muttered, peeling your hands off his face and pressing a kiss to your knuckles, somehow finding the strength to let go and at the same time, make his way to the front of the truck. The whole vehicle shook as you pulled the back doors closed, submerging Kyungmin and yourself in familiar darkness.

“You got a map anywhere?” Taehyung fuddled in the glove compartment as Namjoon started the truck up. He pulled out a worn map, the same one you had used to direct the both of you out of Denver. Namjoon didn’t care for the quality, muttering a hasty thanks and peeling it open, staring at the lines and faded colours. “Keep heading East, as if we’re going to Georgia. Hopefully, we’ll catch Seokjin and his crew of fans on the way there.”

“And if we don’t?” Taehyung asked. When Namjoon fell silent, Taehyung’s lips pulled into a tight frown, “I’m just asking for the future. You’re not coming to Georgia. We’re going. I wanna know what our plan is before we put ourselves in danger in the middle of nowhere.”

Very aware of the compartment slider down, Namjoon found it was difficult to pick a solution that would best suit everybody. Kyungmin wanted to stay with Taehyung and yourself, forgetting Korea entirely and heading straight for the islands off the coast. Namjoon knew you wanted to go to Georgia with everybody, hoping to stick together as a four, but if there was no other option, you’d go to find a plane. Taehyung wanted to get to Georgia with you, but wouldn’t be opposed to finding Seokjin. As for himself, Namjoon wanted to take the jeep to Virginia, leaving Taehyung and yourself on the road.

Everybody made tough calls. Those words echoed in his head. Above all else, Kyungmin was his priority.

“I wanna take the jeep,” Namjoon said slowly, aware of the frowns, “but I can help find a vehicle for you and Y/N to use to get to Georgia. When that happens...we’ll go our separate ways. Half to Virginia. Half to Georgia. Fair, and square.”

Kyungmin fell with a thud and a sigh in the back of the jeep, and Namjoon did his best to ignore it.

“Alright,” Taehyung agreed, believing there was no other way around it. As long as you and him were safe, he didn’t care how it happened. “Whatever you say goes.”

14TH MARCH, 5 YEARS AGO.

Jiyong: i’ll be round at like 7:30ish. lost my weed bag and i’m a junkie and cant leave without it

Y/N: i hope it kills you

Jiyong: watch me actually die

Jiyong: don’t cry at my funeral you fake friend

Y/N: KIDDING!!!!

Y/N: is...seunghyun coming

Jiyong: fuck off

Jiyong: hes banned from seeing you

Jiyong: i cant believe my best friend is fucking my other best friend

Y/N: i like to call it woohooing and we’re being safe

Jiyong: i cant believe this is happening

Jiyong: why seunghyun?????? why not youngbae he treats women nice

Y/N: idk!!! we just hit it off a lot

Jiyong: you’ve known him for like 5 minutes

Y/N: it’s literally been like 5 years but whatever

Y/N: can’t you just be happy for me? i’m living life getting laid being happy n shit

Jiyong: i respect it but i’m not coming to urs expecting to have fun watching goblet of fire for the millionth time only for you to give seunghyun a sweaty bj right in front of me

Y/N: that was one time Let It Go

Jiyong: one day i’m gonna fucking die and you’ll realise how badly you treated me

Y/N: stop you’re my best friend :-(

Y/N: what are you like jealous that im banging him and not you???? wanna join

Jiyong: yeah i’d literally rather fuck the girl from the ring

Y/N: kinky

[03:45am]

Jiyong: woah did you hear about the north korea shit

Y/N: im literally being pounded into Cant this wait

Jiyong: we’re gonna die because kim jongun wants to nuke us and all you care about is seunghyun’s 3 inches

Y/N: it’s just fake news dont worry about it

Y/N: how many times has he threatened nuclear war

Y/N: he should hurry up and do it before exams

Jiyong: just wanted to check up on you because ur nan is fucking mental and she’ll probably collapse tomorrow morning and panic buy loaves of bread

Y/N: stop omg

Jiyong: anyways stay safe love U please bring me my weed tomorrow morning me and Jennie are gonna get high and try anal

Y/N: sweet thanks

SOMETIME LATER.

Leaving the world behind through the back windows of the jeep, you were oddly reminded of the time you left everybody behind during a Summer many years ago. It had been a spur of the moment decision, something you never expected to do, but found yourself doing anyway.

It felt like a lifetime ago; you had almost forgotten about it, until now, until seeing a sign graffitied with a smiley face, reminding you of the “GRIME SIGN” back in your hometown, renowned for being the most graffitied sign in the city. Whether or not that's true, you never really found out. Seunghyun and Jiyong had come along too, for the moral support of being alone on the road. With Jiyong in shotgun and Seunghyun in the backseat, it had felt like something slap-bang out of a teenage coming-of-age movie, titled “3 delinquents on the road to God knows where”, directed by Quentin Tarantino. You didn’t even know how to drive. It was pure bliss.

“Any luck with the radio?”

Kyungmin rattling the small radio that had been picked up from the trailer park startled you, the memory of driving nowhere and everywhere at the same time suddenly gone like the wind. As your vision readjusted to the dark, you noticed that Kyungmin was pressing all the buttons and turning all the dials, a frown on her lips jutted outwards.

“Not yet,” she replied. “Just give me a few more minutes, I can probably get this thing working.”

Namjoon let out a soft curse, swerving the truck slightly to move around a left behind Volvo, the cars open like wings with a dried trail of dragged blood leading into the thick forest. Things like that were common accessories, famed like tourist attractions. Namjoon now thought of what the world was really like- could Paris be any worse than America? What was Iceland like these days?

“Nearly there, now,” Namjoon said vaguely, and Taehyung debated whether or not to reply, if there was even anything to reply with at all. That’s how things went now, short replies or simply none at all. When the world died, so did words. Namjoon thought that was funny, how the collapse of society could mean the collapse of communication and language.

“We’ll need to stop for gas,” Taehyung said, his voice barely above a third volume. From the back of the van, you sat with your face looking out towards the left behind road, your eyelids growing heavy at the sound of Kyungmin pressing buttons, and the hum of the van beneath your thighs. “We’re running on fumes.”

Namjoon grumbled a reply, mentioning something about a gas station a couple miles ahead, near the clearing in the woods, just off the road. It didn’t take long to approach, only around ten minutes if Taehyung were to count. At least three songs had played since then. Taehyung couldn’t believe he was now counting using songs.

The station was large, decaying and it looked unsafe. Taehyung didn’t exactly care about the safety of the building itself, just caring about how safe it would be in the long-run. Safe enough to hide inside? Safe enough to step inside? Safety in architectural design didn’t matter anymore. If it looked rusted, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

Namjoon pulled the truck into the station, immediately noticing a few canisters of fuel that was left for the purpose of using, a sign reading “STAY SAFE” stood up, stuck with black masking tape. The letters were dripping onto the concrete, a small pool of chalky white near the drain where a plant was starting to sprout.

“Are you feeling okay?”

Kyungmin’s voice made you look over from the canisters, a wrinkle between your brows. She smiled, generously, and waited for your reply. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

She was talking about the Great Escape the other day. You already knew that.

“Just curious,” she replied, the smile never wavering. “There’s not many people left in the world, you know. Next to Namjoon, you and Taehyung are all I have.”

A silence fell on the two of you, and all you could hear was the sound of Taehyung dragging a barrel across the gas station, dipping his head underneath a broken window and scanning the interior of the gas station.

“I’m here for you,” Kyungmin continued, her voice significantly quieter. “You know that, right?”

“Of course I do,” you replied, and your hand came up to stroke her forearm, a smile on your lips. For a moment, it didn’t feel like the apocalypse. In that moment, it felt like two best friends, reunited after a Summer break, the pine trees isolating them from the world, a Studio Ghibli film, released 2019.

And yet Kyungmin moved away, her gaze lowered as she passed across the gas station to meet Namjoon, already lifting canisters of gas towards the car to refill. Taehyung had emerged once again, his bag refilled with cans and cigarette packets, surprisingly a bottle of liquor in his hands as he stepped back into the bitter wind. Inhaling a breath, Taehyung crossed the width of the station and opened the passenger door to the vehicle, setting down his bag and the bottle, as if they were small children.

“There’s no way we’re making it to Georgia on time.”

Taehyung paused, throwing you a look over his shoulder. “What?”

“Let’s think realistically,” you reasoned, tugging at the cloth over his elbow. Above all, you didn’t want Kyungmin to be upset if she overheard. “It’s been...how long? Since we left the warehouse? I haven’t exactly been keeping up with the dates, but it’s been too long, Tae. Normally, it takes less than 24 hours to get from where we are- wherever we are- to Georgia. And yet, we’re still not near. I’m just-” you sighed, raking your hands through your hair. In the dim light, the grease was visible. “I think we’re out of time.”

“Y/N, they’ll be there,” Taehyung said. He didn’t know what else to say, frowning, “I thought you wanted to remain optimistic?”

“I do, but I can’t afford to hope to get to Georgia and find them there. And what?” you continued. Your voice had raised slightly, not enough to make Kyungmin or Namjoon ask questions, but enough to make Taehyung’s nose cringe at the increase. “We get there, and find them. Is anything gonna be the same? What if we get there and they’re gone and there’s no boats? What if we get there and something happens to any one of us? Tae, I can’t have that on me. I can’t have that on my conscience. Not again.”

Not again. “Yena wasn’t your fault, Y/N, you have to know that-”

“I don’t fancy being out on the road all night.” Namjoon stepped into view from around the front of the van, his hands shoved into the pockets of his distressed jeans. “Thinking we keep driving, turn in when it gets dark to the first place we see.”

“Isn’t that a little risky?” Taehyung asked, mentally making a note to continue your conversation later. “I mean, we have to really check the place before we head in.”

Namjoon frowned. “I know that. But, Kyungmin’s feeling kinda travel sick, and I don’t wanna overdo it, you know? Nights like back at the trailer park...I want more of them.”

Already moving to the back of the van, you pulled open the double doors and slipped inside, keeping them open in time for Kyungmin to crawl in after you. Her skin was a shade of ivory, whiter than earlier, as if the sickness had come suddenly like a simulation glitch. Wasn’t that what you were now? A glitch? An error in coding.

Namjoon shut the drivers door, groaning at the loud sound.

“Hey, man, you okay to drive?” Taehyung asked quietly, looking over from shotgun. “Look, if you’re tired, we can switch the orders around.”

Namjoon looked over weakly- “You’re sure?”

Taehyung unbuckled his seatbelt, dumping his jacket in the footwell with a sniff of stuffy air. “I’d prefer if you slept if you’re tired. ‘Specially when they’re in the back. Don’t wanna hurt them.”

He made a sort of grunt as a reply, switching seats with the younger. When he was sat in the passenger seat instead of the drivers, he let his head lull back onto the windowpane, feeling the chilly glass cool the back of his head. It was as if resting his head had added extra weight to his eyes.

“‘m gonna drive straight-ish,” Taehyung said with his tongue between his lips, backing up the van slowly and carefully. Namjoon opened his eyes slightly, squinting.

“Can you drive?”

Taehyung changed gears. “Yes.” 

If Namjoon noticed that Taehyung paused, he didn’t mention it. In-fact, he closed his eyes again with a shrug, a half wriggle, resting his forehead against the glass, pushing towards the cool touch.

Taehyung had been driving for hours, for sure.

The time in the van was unlikely to be reliable, reading 5:19pm when the sky was as black as squid ink, the dim street-lights that somehow worked- probably solar - beckoning the group forward. In honesty, Taehyung had no idea how long it had been since the gas station, just long enough to give him a crick in his neck, the back of his thighs numbed. All things considering, Taehyung thought he was getting better at driving.

He flinched slightly as the divider to the back came sliding down, and your face popped out slightly, peering out the front window with sleepy eyes. If he had a free hand, Taehyung would have wiped the sleep from the corner of your eye, and he turned back to the road, oddly afraid of crashing the car with all four of you inside. Like yourself, he didn’t want that on his conscience. Like yourself, he couldn’t have it on his conscience, not again.

“Are we stopping soon?” you asked quietly. Namjoon shifted, making it known he wasn’t sleeping. He groaned, grinding the heel of his palm into his eyes, unbothered when dust and dirt smudged on his skin when he pulled away. He could look worse, he thinks.

“Nearly,” Taehyung replied. “I don’t know where to go from here. Last road was blocked, so, I’m trying to get out of here.”

Namjoon shifted, cracking his shoulder loudly. “You tried any back-streets?”

Instantly, Taehyung thought of the woman earlier in his trip. The way she screamed at the car, scratching at the rusty paint job, her eyes bloodshot and her skin a lime colour. He gulped the hot lump in his throat, “I’d rather avoid them.”

“It’s safer,” Namjoon continued. “Out of the way-”

Somewhere outside of the van, there was a loud crash, similar to the way you sound when you drop something at midnight when your parents are sleeping. The volume was loud, louder than anticipated, and Taehyung unintentionally stalled the van. Kyungmin jeered forward, hitting the underneath of her chin on the seats opposite, sending out a string of foreign curses to Taehyung in the driver's seat. He avoided the stare of Namjoon, deciding he didn’t want to see the deathly glare.

“What the hell was that?” you asked, cradling a throbbing pain on the side of your face after catching it on the separation between front and back. “Is someone here?”

Namjoon stayed silent for a moment, staring darkly into the outside. Taehyung didn’t know what to do except wait, ready to jump into action when Namjoon made a noise of surprise- or was it shock?- and slapped Taehyung’s hand with great panic, “Fucking pull up somewhere. Turn off those fucking lights. Fuck, fuck, fuck-”

“Jesus,” Taehyung cursed, doing exactly that as you leaned back to switch off the lights, submerging Kyungmin into darkness as the blood pooled in her mouth from earlier. She groaned something between her lips, holding her chin with her left hand as she picked herself up to lean over into the front, staring out at what Namjoon was watching across the small street. With the van now in darkness, away from the streetlight, you were invisible.

It wasn’t hard, locating the source of Namjoon’s panic.

Across the street, a flood of artificial white engulfed the street, barely missing the pull-in that Taehyung had moved into moments earlier. Namjoon slouched out of instinct, keeping his eyes on the road as he noticed three people dashing out into the darkness, the explosive lights following them as if they were automatic. They probably were, turning on as they stepped further and further away from the door they ran from. As they hurried past the hidden van, another noise pulled away your attention.

A large garage door screamed as it opened, in desperate need of oil, chains clattering against the metal interior. The light suddenly changed to an eerie green, something you saw in documentaries about weed farms. As it slid further up into the building, Namjoon hitched a breath as the sight of three sets of human legs came into view, dressed in stunning ebony, large guns by their hips. One of them smoked a cigarette, the smoke rising up like old Native smoke-signals. The middle guy pulled up his mask, covering his nose and lower face, and loaded the large Heckler Koch HK MG4 MG 43, aiming it swiftly at the little piggies running away from the slaughterhouse.

Taehyung knew that gun- the Heckler Koch never missed a target. He barely flinched when the gunman hit the kneepits of the runners, sending them to the ground instantly, their bodies buckling under the loss of legs. The screams were loud. Mama has the bacon, now.

The other two gunmen laughed loudly, approaching the pigs and picking them up to drag them back into the garage, a trail of blood marking the concrete like paint. He said something, the main gunner, and the two spares were taken away, possibly to die, maybe to a waiting room where they would await their death, as casually as they would waiting for a doctor’s appointment. The last runner, a man who looked to be in his mid-thirties, with already greying hair at the top, was pulled to the side of the room where three more men emerged, a woman amongst the pack with her hair sprawled out to her elbows, in mermaid curls. She was gorgeous, nobody could argue against that, with her body in a glamorous dress, something too glamorous for the apocalypse. On her feet, heels that presented her perfectly painted toes, a peachy shade.

“What’s happening?” Kyungmin asked. It was rhetoric. Everybody knew the answer.

The woman dressed in glam approached the slumped body of the runner, crouching to cup his face and stroke a thumb across the bags under his eyes, bleeding out with veins a bright red, the red of a freshly picked apple, the red line under a spelling error. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, putting her thumb over his lips and kissing her nail, before retreating and nodding curtly at the men around her. It was a signal, for they picked up the runner and began to tear off his clothes, leaving him stark naked, covered in purple bruises, tiny flowers on his skin.

Taehyung had seen things like this before- he was no stranger to the way the men beat the man with clubs and their boots, laughing at the way he retreated into his own skin, recoiling at every kick and screaming with every sickening club, until he accepted the fact that his body was their plaything. He watched, in morbid wonder, as they dragged him by his swollen balls to the center of the room, where a sharpened hook hanging from a chain off the ceiling swung threateningly, a bone being wagged in the face of a dog. The man whimpered, his eyes hurting, only barely making out his destination before his body shook violently.

The man picked him up as if he was a sack of sugar, with one hand around his neck, promptly planting him on the hook as if it were a throne. Now Taehyung had to close his eyes.

It was curling upwards, sharply, scraping every wall and nerve and good spot that ached. Yet, the men watched with wonder and satisfaction, clapping when he thrashed like a fish out of water. His legs were immobile, moving inches and with every movement came a grunt of pain, flashed with panic and agony from his rather pointy throne, and then the passing pain of his arm being cracked upwards.

The crack was loud.

From behind him, Taehyung heard Kyungmin make a small wheeze, hurrying into the back of the van, where Taehyung watched you pick her head up off the seats, your thumbs in a pool of vomit around her mouth. You didn’t even care about the sick on her knees, or the smell in your nose. Namjoon looked through the slot, dragging the divider up before the sound of retching made him sick, too.

You stopped listening to the retching, quietly shushing each whimper as Taehyung slowly started the van back up, grateful that he was covered by the sound of someone screaming in fucking agony. It felt so wrong, to be thankful of a tortured man. Cock and all, Taehyung was thankful he was screaming. The tyres of the van slowly rolled along the road, in the shadows, at a sluggish pace. Namjoon wiped away a line of sweat on his forehead, unable to look away from the man, thrashing like a pig, hanging like a sack of meat in a slaughterhouse, blood pooling now at the corner of his mouth, his eyes, his nose, dried blood at his ears.

It felt shit to feel thankful of someone’s screaming. Mostly, Taehyung was happy it was them and not him.

[organiclifestylemagazine]

Interview With Joel Salatin, Polyface Farms

Joel Salatin is an American farmer and author. He owns Polyface Farms, which is known for its small scale unconventional farming methods. Months ago I heard Joel on a Joe Rogan podcast and was immediately blown away. It’s not very often that we hear people discuss the gut microbiome on one of the most popular podcasts in the country.

Here’s that podcast. I highly recommend listening to it if you have the time.

Along with discussing the gut microbiome, Joel talked about his farm, Polyface Farms. Polyface Farms is located in Virginia, and they do things a little differently than most. The land that is now Polyface farms was purchased by Joel’s parents in 1961. They’re all about regenerative farming through sustainable practices, like pasture-raised meat, carbon sequestration, and working in a seasonal cycle.

In short, it’s a dream come true for someone like myself who is all about organic eco-friendly agriculture, so naturally, I had to ask Joel a couple of questions.

The older generation is a big fan of talking about life when they were young. My grandfather loves to talk about the fact that he was raised on cow’s milk, and he turned out “just fine.” The difference, of course, is that the milk he was raised on was unpasteurized small scale cows milk. What encouraged you to get into small scale sustainable farming? Does it relate back to how you were raised or did you have some sort of revelation in life? Feel free to comment on how things have changed if you have any thoughts on that.

My paternal grandfather was a charter subscriber to Rodale’s Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine when it came out in the late 1940s.  He always wanted to farm but never did.  He had a very large garden, though, and sold extra produce to neighbors and corner grocers.  My dad received his no-chemical indoctrination, then, from Grandpa, so I’m the third generation in the compost tradition.  My Dad was a financial wizard and did accounting work all his life.  After flying Navy bombers in WWII, he went to Indiana University on the GI bill and then headed off to Venezuela, South America as a bilingual accountant with Texas Oil Company.  His long-range goal was a farm in a developing country and Venezuela seemed as good as any.  After about 7 years he’d saved up enough to buy 1,000 acres in the highlands of Venezuela and began farming.  The goal was dairy and broilers. My older brother and I were born during that time, and things looked bright.  But then came a junta and the ouster of Peres Jimenez and animosity toward anything American; we fled the back door as the machine guns came in the front door; lost everything and after exhausting all attempts at protection, (we) came back to the U.S. Easter Sunday 1961, landing in Philadelphia. Mom grew up in Ohio and Texas and all their family was in Ohio and Indiana, but Dad’s heart was still in Venezuela and he hoped after the political turmoil settled to be able to return to our farm.  

With that in mind, he wanted to be within a day’s drive of Washington D.C. so he could get to the Venezuelan Embassy quickly and easily to do paperwork and return. That never happened, but it’s why we ended up in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.  When I hit 41, I remember thinking: “If I lost it all, would I start over?” That’s what Dad and Mom did in 1961. I was 4.  Dad did his accounting work, and Mom was a high school health and physical ed teacher; that off-farm income paid the mortgage and within 10 years the land was paid off.  Dad combined his ecology with his economic understanding to create some broad principles: animals move; mobile infrastructure; direct marketing; carbon-driven fertility.  I had my first flock of laying hens when I was 10 years old and then added a garden.  By 14 years old, I was our main salesman at the local Curb Market, a Depression-era hold-over that foreshadowed today’s farmers’ markets.  With only 3 vendors, it struggled but after a couple of years, we had a growing and steady clientele for our pastured meats, poultry, eggs, produce, and dairy products (yogurt, butter, cottage cheese). We closed it down when I went off to college and the other two elderly matrons at the market quite as well so by the time I came home, that market and all of its wonderful grandfathered food safety exemptions were gone forever.

I’ve always said we were about 20 years ahead of our time.  Operating that market during my teen years of early 1970s as the nascent back-to-the-land hippie movement germinated was not easy, but the lessons were invaluable when I returned to the farm and started building a clientele on my own in 1980, long before modern farmers’ markets. Teresa and I married in 1980, remodeled the attic of the farmhouse, and lived there for 7 years until Mom and Dad moved out from downstairs to a mobile home parked outside the yard.  My Mom’s mother had lived there for 10 years and passed away, making that spot available.  As an investigative reporter at the local daily newspaper, I realized every business was desperate for people who would show up on time, put in a full days’ work without whining, and actually creatively think through better ways of doing things all made me highly employable.  Living on $300 a month, driving a $50 car, growing all of our own, cutting our own firewood for winter warmth, not having a TV—all these things enabled us even without a high salary to squirrel away half the paycheck.  Within a couple of years we had saved enough to live on for a year.  I walked out of that office Sept. 24, 1982, with a one-year cash nest egg and the jeering of every person I knew”  “He’s throwing his life away.”  “All that talent and he’s going to waste it on a farm.” “Don’t you know you can’t make any money farming?”

We succeeded. 

While we were watching the podcast you did with Joe Rogan, my dad and I had several “Wow!” moments listening to you. One of us would be in the kitchen, and we would run into the living room where the podcast was playing, and share a look of absolute awe. “This guy is talking about the stuff that we talk about! And he’s on Joe Rogan!” We don’t know many people who talk about gut health the way we do. How did you learn about the importance of the body’s microbiome? Is there a correlation between your knowledge of the microbiome and how you run your farm? 

Perhaps the most profound truth in life is that everything we see floats in an ocean of invisible beings.  With electronic microscopes, we can now see many of these things, but because we can’t see them with the naked eye, they are not in our momentary conscience.  It’s hard to forget the microbes floating in the air, on our skin, in our eyes, nostrils, and intestines.  Our farm’s wellness philosophy stems from Antoine Béchamp, the French contemporary and nemesis of Louis Pasteur.  While Pasteur promoted the germ theory and busied himself destroying and sterilizing, Beauchamp advanced the terrain theory and encouraged people to think about basic immunity.  Rather than sterilization, he encouraged sanitation.  He encouraged folks to get more sleep, drink more and better water (much of the water at that time was putrid) and eat better food.  Along came Sir Albert Howard half a century later adding the soil dimension to this basic wellness premise.

In general, we believe nature’s default position is fundamentally wellness and if it’s not well, we humans probably did something to mess it up.  That’s a far cry from assuming wellness is like catching lightning in a bottle, and some sort of sickness fairy hovers over the planet dropping viral stardust willy nilly.  Sickness and disease, whether in humans, plants, or animals are not the problem in and of themselves; they simply manifest weaknesses developed in the unseen world.  Every sickness or disease we’ve ever had on our farm was our fault.  We may have selected the wrong seedstock, crowded things, created incubators for pathogens.  You can stress things a lot of different ways.  But our assumption when confronted with non-wellness is not to assume we missed a vaccine or a pharmaceutical, but rather to ask “what did we do to break down the immunological function of this plant or animal?”  That leads to far more profound truth than assuming we didn’t select the right connection from the chemistry lab.

The fact that today people actually talk about the microbiome in polite company is a fantastic societal breakthrough. Hopefully, it will continue.

The current “pandemic” resulted in a total collapse of our food chain at big grocery stores. While things have since calmed down and straightened out, many people are now aware of just how weak our food supply chain is. The obvious solution- buy small- scale, buy local. The obvious problem- buying meat the right way, (small scale and local) is expensive. Here where I am in Detroit we’ve got a great meat guy, but a couple of weeks ago I found myself at the Dekalb farmers market in Atlanta. I spent $9 for one pound of organic, grass-fed ground beef. What are your thoughts for people who are concerned about the costs of shopping ethically? On a broader scale, do you have any solutions to this? 

Price; it’s one of the biggest and most common questions.  So let’s tackle it on several fronts.

1.  Whenever someone says they can’t afford our food, I grab them by the arm and say “take me to your house.” Guess what I find there? Take-out, coffee, alcohol, sometimes tobacco, Netflix, People magazine, iPhones, flat-screen TV, tickets to Disney, lottery tickets—you get the drift. Very seldom does “I can’t afford it” carry any weight. We buy what we want, and that includes many folks below the poverty line.  

2.  Buy unprocessed. That $9 ground beef is still less than a fast food meal of equal nutritional value. Domestic culinary skills are the foundation of integrity food systems, and never have we had more techno-gadgetry to make our kitchens efficient. The average American spends fewer than 15 minutes a day in their kitchen. Nearly 80 percent of Americans have no clue at 4 p.m. what’s for dinner. In fact, the new catchphrase for millennials is “what’s dinner?” not “what’s for dinner?” So cooking from scratch is the number one way to reduce costs. Right now you can buy a whole Polyface pastured broiler, world-class, for less a pound than boneless skinless breast Tyson chicken at Wal-Mart. The most expensive heirloom Peruvian blue potato at New York City green markets is less per pound than Lay’s potato chips across the street. It’s about the processing.

3.  Buy bulk. Get a freeze and buy half a beef or 20 chickens at a time.  Buy a bushel of green beans and can them.  We buy 10 bushels of apples every fall and spend two days making applesauce; it’s cheaper than watery junk at the supermarket and is real food.  That’s not a waste of time; it’s kitchen camaraderie.  On our farm, we give big price breaks for volume purchasing because it’s simply more efficient to handle a $500 transaction than 25 $20 transactions.  This means, of course, that you must have a savings plan.  Half of all Americans can’t put their hands on $400 in cash.  That’s not an expensive food problem; that’s an endemic and profound failure to plan

Q: Here at OLM we’re a big fan of systems. We also have 10,000 square foot urban farm right in our back yard and are getting chickens very soon. Developing a farm feels a bit like an optimal opportunity to create the “perfect” system. I’m curious as to how the farm is systemized to be self-sustainable. I’m wondering if the farm is carbon neutral or carbon negative? Do you let your chickens work on your compost pile? Do you monitor cow grazing for optimum carbon sequestration? What advice do you have for the many people including us, who have just started growing our food after the current crisis?

Perhaps the starting point is to think of integration rather than segregation.  How many different species of things can you hook together for symbiosis?  So we follow the cows with the laying hens in Eggmobiles to scratch through the cow dung, spread out the manure as fertilizer, and eat the fly larvae out of the cowpats (this mimics the way birds always follow herbivores in nature).  We build compost with pigs (we call them pig aerators).  We have chickens underneath rabbit cages, generating $10,000 a year in a space the size of a 2-car garage and making the most superb compost in the world.  We see trees as carbon sinks to integrate with open land; industrial commercial chippers enable us to chip crooked, diseased, and dying trees for compost carbon.  The kitchen and gardening scraps go to the chickens.  Hoop houses for rabbits, pigs, and chickens in the winter double up as vegetable production in the spring, summer, and fall, creating pathogen dead-ends for the plants and animals growing there at different times of the year.  Integration is everything.

In half a century, we’ve moved our soil organic matter from 1 percent to 8.2 percent.  I don’t know if we’re overall carbon-neutral, but we’ve done this without buying an ounce of chemical fertilizer and using 800 percent less depreciable infrastructure per gross income dollar than the average U.S. farm.  That creates resilience.  Over the years we’ve installed 8 miles of waterlines from permaculture style high ponds that catch surface run-off and gravity feed to the farmland below.  And the rocks and gullies now grow vegetation where none grew before.  This is not pride; it’s a humble acknowledgment of a Creator’s benevolent and abundant design; it’s our responsibility to caress this magnificent womb.

Interview With Joel Salatin, Polyface Farms was originally published on Organic Lifestyle Magazine

[stillebesat]

In the Rubble (3/6)

Blurb: After a bomb collapses a building on both Conan and Kogoro, Conan is faced with a difficult decision regarding the Famous Sleeping Detective.

Story: Detective Conan Characters: Edogawa Conan/Kudo Shinichi, Mouri Kogoro TW: Claustrophobia/Trapped

Kogoro went still. Anger gone in a flash. Surprise did that to people. The brat actually thought? But...

"Can you stand?" Shinichi asked in the awkward silence, rubbing the back of his neck as he dropped his piercing look. "You should be able to put some weight on that left leg for a second so I can lift you onto my back. I think it's just fractured."

"Fractured is still broken, brat." He retorted reflexively, trying to get his brain back in gear. Shinichi couldn't have meant that. He couldn't have. And then the brat was offering to carry him? The old Shinichi wouldn't have done that. What had happened to...could being Conan really have changed his opinion of him so much?

"Do you want to drag yourself through the building then, Oji-Mouri-san?" Shinichi raised an eyebrow, offering a hand to him. "Because I definitely can't lift you on my own from there."

For some reason, hearing Shinichi refraining from calling him Ojisan now felt wrong. Especially after the boy had just stated he valued Kogoro's life, the Mouri Kogoro, the man Shinichi hadn't liked at all, over his parents.

Kogoro frowned and shook his head. "You're injured too, Shinichi-kun. You can't carry me with that shoulder." He may not know how badly it was injured, but with how Shinichi flinched whenever he had grabbed the arm connected to said shoulder, it had to be painful. Not to mention the boy's other cuts and scrapes that the jacket now mostly hid. They both shouldn't be moving until help arrived. But he doubted those injuries would stop the boy. Shinichi had a familiar stubborn glint in his eyes that Kogoro knew all too well. Conan had had it often whenever he'd tried to kick the boy out from crime scenes. So despite his misgivings, he lifted his hand for Shinichi to grab.

"It's no big deal, Mouri-san." Shinichi said, failing to hide a wince as he twinged the shoulder in question while grabbing Kogoro's hand.

Kogoro raised a skeptical eyebrow. Fine huh?

"I can still walk," he added defensively. "You can't."

Sure. Walk barefooted. Over broken glass, concrete, metal, and who knew what else, plus carry Kogoro's own weight? "You still need your own treat-" Kogoro yelped as Shinichi pulled him to his feet. He reached out to grip Shinichi's arms with the intention of never letting go as he put his full weight on his legs. He couldn't catch is breath from the radiating agony coming from his limbs. Quickly he lifted the right one off the ground to get some relief from the exploding volcano trying to take up residence there, while the left only felt slightly better as a ball of liquid fire.

Shinichi didn't let him stand for long. "I'll get treatment when I shrink again." He said, somehow removing Kogoro's vice-like grip on his arms as he pulled him into a fireman's carry, giving Kogoro blessed relief from standing.

Even though he was reeling in his own agony, Kogoro caught Shinichi's muffled cry of pain as his weight settled on the boy's injured shoulder. "A-any bandages I put on now will only fall off then."

"Sh-Shinichi-kun," Kogoro managed to say as the fire in his legs died down, unable to keep the concern out of his voice as he tried to get back off. The boy was going to hurt himself worse. It was amazing he could stay standing, the boy shouldn't be able to carry him as is. He shouldn't be strong enough. Shinichi'd said temporary strength. Not everlasting strength. "We can wait here."

Shinichi tightened his grip on Kogoro, preventing him from moving. "I'm fine. It's not-"

"Not safe to wait." Kogoro grumbled, full of misgivings for not trying harder to get off the boy. But...he didn't want to face standing on his legs again, nor did he think Shinichi would allow him to get off without fighting to keep him on. So he held still instead to prevent himself from jostling the boy.

Kogoro glanced upwards, not missing the creaking of the ceiling above them with the occasional pitter-patter of falling debris. Was Shinichi always this fool-hardy-yes, yes he was. He remembered the boy getting shot in the stomach, as well as kidnapped, and trapped in other buildings with bombs and fires. "I got it the first time." He muttered as he did his best to avoid putting too much weight on the boy's injured shoulder.

Shinichi nodded, relaxing when Kogoro went still. "Good. Let's get out of here."

Kogoro couldn't help but hold his breath as Shinichi wobbled, convinced he was going to collapse before the boy began walking them through the rubble. Surprisingly Shincihi didn't struggle as much as Kogoro expected him to. Only Shinichi's fingers tightening and releasing on Kogoro's limbs indicated how often the boy stepped on something sharp.

Did the boy really care so much for him? Mouri Kogoro? To risk further injury to get him out of this place? Ran he could see if she were here, but him? Kogoro stayed silent only for another minute before he stated "You can't mean that."

"Mean what?" Shinichi huffed.

"That you care for us more than your parents. They're your parents Shinichi-kun." It bothered him to hear that. It wasn't like Kogoro had been the most...welcoming of the freeloader in his house.

Shinichi chuckled and shook his head. "You know...I actually forgot to tell them. My parents." Shinichi admitted. He glanced to Kogoro before he returned his focus to the rubble around them. "I've been on my own for so long, it never occurred to me to give them an update on my...condition. We don't keep in constant contact since Dad's always traveling to avoid his editors." He twisted, sidling them sideways through a narrow gap, doing his best to avoid jarring Kogoro's legs. "So I was as surprised as you were when Edogawa Fumiyo showed up. I hadn't known she was my mother."

Kogoro tensed, both in disbelief and because his right leg had just been jarred by an outcropping of pipes. "You went off with a stranger?!" He exclaimed half-strangled. This boy was more than foolhardy! Hadn't he just said he couldn't let those people find him?

"Yes. Because I couldn't risk you and Ran getting hurt, Mouri-san." Shinichi replied like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "If that woman was with the people who poisoned me...my only hope was to convince them that you had no idea who I really was so that they would leave you two alone."

Kogoro couldn't help himself. He thunked the boy on the head, causing him to yelp and stagger, nearly sending them both tumbling into a pile of broken concrete. Kogoro jerked his hands up, hitting the concrete with them before their faces could. He pushed them away from the pile as Shinichi regained his balance.

"What was that for!"

"You're an idiot, that's what that's for." Kogoro stated. "Go off with a complete stranger! Someone who could have killed you." He glared at the boy. "And not even tell us that you were in trouble. What if you had died!" It made him feel sick just to think about. He was supposed to be watching this brat.

"Then you wouldn't have known, Mouri-san." Shinichi replied, adjusting his grip on Kogoro. "You both thought I'd gone off with my mother. And I couldn't tell you she wasn't her. If she was a part of Them, she would have killed you on the spot." A tremor ran through the boy's body. "Besides, why would you question if I never made contact again? I'm a freeloader am I not? I would no longer be a burden to you." He glanced to Kogoro and then away, "You'll be glad to see the last of me when Conan finally 'returns to America' to live with his parents."

Kogoro huffed. Truthfully, he hadn't questioned it. He'd been glad for the brat to leave then, but that was over a year and a half ago when they'd first met Edogawa Fumiyo. "Well...that's hardly...true...now." Kogoro couldn't picture it actually. Conan had become such a part of their lives after two years that the thought of him leaving brought a pang to his chest.

Shinichi paused, wincing as his foot hit a jagged copper wire. "It's not?" he asked raising his eyebrows as he looked to Kogoro, disbelief clear on his face.

Kogoro looked away as the boy began cautiously moving once more. Well, it had seemed like the freeloader would be living with them for forever and even if he grumbled about it constantly...he no longer minded it. The boy had his helpful moments. "You're not...so bad...when you're not meddling in my investigations."

Shinichi chuckled quietly as he paused at a partially collapsed wall. "Well...I can't really help myself with that."

"No, no you really can't." Kogoro agreed ruffling the boy's hair with a fond smile. He really couldn't.

Shinichi made a small noise of protest, moving his head to try and dislodge Kogoro's hand.

It made so much more sense now why Conan was so acute at crime scenes. Why a six, well now nearly eight, year old could face death so calmly. Why he was so knowledgeable. His information didn't just come from 'something he saw on TV.' Shinichi already had known it from personal experience, from years of studying crime scenes with his father and through books.

"Do you think you can crawl, Mouri-san?" Shinichi asked drawing Kogoro from his thoughts, only now realizing that the boy hadn't moved away from the wall. "The wall's covered most of the doorway, I can't carry you through it."

Kogoro looked up to see that indeed the remaining wall was leaning dangerously over them, covering their potential exit. It took him a moment to locate the doorway in question, and narrowed his eyes when he did. A tiny hole at the base of the rubble. It hardly looked like they would be able to crawl through the narrow opening, let alone know if it would have an exit on the other side. It seemed more like they'd be wriggling through that tiny space instead of crawling.

"I can manage." He said finally, wondering how Shinichi could be sure it was a tunnel. Regardless, he'd already dragged his broken legs once today, he could do it again, especially if that meant giving the boy a break from lugging his weight around. Besides what other option was there? Who knew if there would be a second exit even available if they looked.

"Good." Shinichi bent over, letting Kogoro's feet touch the ground. Kogoro couldn't help but let out a cry of pain as once more he put weight on his legs, his hands gripping Shinichi's shoulders hard enough to bruise them as he fought to keep his vision from tunneling.

Shinichi winced, biting back his own yelp. "Easy, old man." He gritted out as he helped to lower Kogoro to the ground, getting the weight off his legs as quickly as possible. He pulled away from him once Kogoro was stable, massaging his shoulder with a grimace before the hand drifted down to grip at his chest. "I'll go first to make sure the path is clear for you to come through." He said wiping fresh sweat from his brow.

Kogoro narrowed his eyes not liking that idea, but the boy was in better condition. If only by the tiniest of margins. Just because Shinichi had working legs didn't mean that the rest of him would be alright. He was after all, just wearing Kogoro's jacket, that would hardly be any defense against whatever he might encounter in that crawlspace. "Be careful, boy," Kogoro said instead of arguing. They'd both have to go through the tunnel, might as well be the boy first.

"As careful as I can be, Mouri-san." Shinichi said flashing him his confident smile.

Kogoro tensed and grabbed the boy's arm before he could move. Making an impulsive decision. "You can call me Ojisan still, Shinichi-kun." He said, squeezing lightly. He kept eye contact as he fought to keep the frown of concern off his face. Shinichi felt...warmer than he had two minutes ago. "I don't mind." He really didn't. It was bugging him to hear the boy being so formal with him.

Shinichi blinked, his eyes softening before he turned away. "Alright...Ojisan." He pulled free of Kogoro's grip. "I'll holler when I'm on the other side." He said getting down on his belly and wiggled through the small hole, quickly disappearing from view.

[readerbookclub]

Book Suggestions

Here are this round’s suggestions:

1. Shadow and Bone:

Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.

Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life―a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.

Yet nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha…and the secrets of her heart.

2. We Are Okay

You go through life thinking there’s so much you need. . . . Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother. Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.

3. Strange The Dreamer

The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around--and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he's been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance to lose his dream forever.What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving? The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries--including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo's dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? and if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?

4. Shadows Cast By Stars

Two hundred years from now, blood has become the most valuable commodity on the planet—especially the blood of aboriginal peoples, for it contains antibodies that protect them from the Plague ravaging the rest of the world. Sixteen-year-old Cassandra Mercredi might be immune to the Plague, but that doesn’t mean she’s safe—government forces are searching for those of aboriginal heritage to harvest their blood. When a search threatens Cassandra and her family, they flee to the Island: a mysterious and idyllic territory protected by the Band, a group of guerilla warriors—and by an enigmatic energy barrier that keeps outsiders out and the spirit world in. And though the village healer has taken her under her wing, and the tribal leader’s son into his heart, the creatures of the spirit world are angry, and they have chosen Cassandra to be their voice and instrument...

5. The Magicians

Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A high school math genius, he’s secretly fascinated with a series of children’s fantasy novels set in a magical land called Fillory, and real life is disappointing by comparison. When Quentin is unexpectedly admitted to an elite, secret college of magic, it looks like his wildest dreams have come true. But his newfound powers lead him down a rabbit hole of hedonism and disillusionment, and ultimately to the dark secret behind the story of Fillory. The land of his childhood fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he ever could have imagined. . . .

6. Unwind:

In America after the Second Civil War, the Pro-Choice and Pro-Life armies came to an agreement: The Bill of Life states that human life may not be touched from the moment of conception until a child reaches the age of thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, a parent may choose to retroactively get rid of a child through a process called "unwinding." Unwinding ensures that the child's life doesn’t “technically” end by transplanting all the organs in the child's body to various recipients. Now a common and accepted practice in society, troublesome or unwanted teens are able to easily be unwound.

7. The Night Circus:

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway: a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them both, this is a game in which only one can be left standing. Despite the high stakes, Celia and Marco soon tumble headfirst into love, setting off a domino effect of dangerous consequences, and leaving the lives of everyone, from the performers to the patrons, hanging in the balance.

8. Highly Illogical Behavior:

Sixteen-year-old Solomon is agoraphobic. He hasn’t left the house in three years, which is fine by him. Ambitious Lisa desperately wants to get into the second-best psychology program for college (she’s being realistic). But how can she prove she deserves a spot there? Solomon is the answer. Determined to “fix” Sol, Lisa thrusts herself into his life, sitting through Star Trek marathons with him and introducing him to her charming boyfriend Clark. Soon, all three teens are far closer than they thought they’d be, and when their walls fall down, their friendships threaten to collapse, as well.

9. Hunted

Beauty knows the Beast’s forest in her bones–and in her blood. Though Yeva grew up with the city’s highest aristocrats, far from her father’s old lodge, she knows that the forest holds secrets and that her father is the only hunter who’s ever come close to discovering them. So when her father loses his fortune and moves Yeva and her sisters back to the outskirts of town, Yeva is secretly relieved. Out in the wilderness, there’s no pressure to make idle chatter with vapid baronessas���or to submit to marrying a wealthy gentleman. But Yeva’s father’s misfortune may have cost him his mind, and when he goes missing in the woods, Yeva sets her sights on one prey: the creature he’d been obsessively tracking just before his disappearance. Deaf to her sisters’ protests, Yeva hunts this strange Beast back into his own territory–a cursed valley, a ruined castle, and a world of creatures that Yeva’s only heard about in fairy tales. A world that can bring her ruin or salvation. Who will survive: the Beauty, or the Beast?

10. Passenger:

In one devastating night, violin prodigy Etta Spencer loses everything she knows and loves. Thrust into an unfamiliar world by a stranger with a dangerous agenda, Etta is certain of only one thing: she has traveled not just miles, but years from home. And she’s inherited a legacy she knows nothing about from a family whose existence she’s never heard of. Until now. Nicholas Carter is content with his life at sea, free from the Ironwoods-a powerful family in the Colonies-and the servitude he’s known at their hands. But with the arrival of an unusual passenger on his ship comes the insistent pull of the past that he can’t escape and the family that won’t let him go so easily. Now the Ironwoods are searching for a stolen object of untold value, one they believe only Etta, his passenger, can find. In order to protect her, Nick must ensure she brings it back to them-whether she wants to or not. Together, Etta and Nicholas embark on a perilous journey across centuries and continents, piecing together clues left behind by the traveler who will do anything to keep the object out of the Ironwoods’ grasp. But as they get closer to the truth of their search, and the deadly game the Ironwoods are playing, treacherous forces threaten to separate Etta not only from Nicholas but from her path home forever.

Vote using this link: https://goo.gl/forms/F3MtgCwoGp9B838J2

[scottmapess]

This Is HUGE For Bitcoin! The First MAINSTREAM Hedge Fund Just Bought In!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

History has just been made for Bitcoin, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back, everyone, to AWALT Coin Daily. My name is Aaron. If you hold Bitcoin again, you ought to be feeling really good. Legendary investor Paul Tudor Jones has become the first mainstream hedge fund manager to announce to the world that his hedge fund is buying Bitcoin. It puts Bitcoin as asset health. This puts Bitcoin as a brand on this whole another level. 2020 is the year of Bitcoin. In my opinion. Now, if you’ve been subscribed to our channel for a while, you already know, you know exactly why he is buying Bitcoin. If you’ve been subscribed to us for any amount of time. That being said, there is a lot of new people who have entered the space recently. And I do want to know specifically what he said. He sees Bitcoin as a hard asset, a hedge against the endless money printing. He called it a store value. Called it trustworthy, liquid, portable, if you want to know his exact statements on the matter. Feel free to pause the video right here. That’s a large part of what he said on Bitcoin. But he also went on to say that he sees buying Bitcoin now like buying gold in the 1970s. And just to refresh your memory, 1971 is the year that Richard Nixon took America fully off the gold standard. And that prompted a lot of hedge fund managers, a lot of people in general, to seek out hard assets, store their wealth. This is something people are looking again today for. Actually, if we take a closer look at gold’s price action starting in the mid-1970s. If we go from the bottom to the top, this may vary depending on where you get your data. Gold rallied about seven hundred and seventy percent and it actually went much higher in future cycles. But Paul Tudor Jones sees owning Bitcoin today like owning gold right here. In the 1970s and his hedge fund is buying it. I tweeted this out. To go along with this story, at some point, it will become fiscally irresponsible if hedge funds don’t have Bitcoin in their portfolios. Do you agree with this? Do you disagree with this? The reason I think this is true is that hedge funds have this fiduciary duty to make good investments. If Bitcoin continues to be the best investment, even if it just continues to be a good investment, they’re going to need to get off zero. By the way, guys, if Bitcoin does perform like gold, you know, the same percentage gains, we would be seeing a Bitcoin price of over seventy thousand dollars. And if you like that, you’re gonna like this. It’s another famous trader and investor role. Paul, we’ve talked about him before. We brought the story to you. The fact that this man just put 25 percent of his portfolio into Bitcoin this year for similar reasons as Paul Tudor Jones. And he tweeted out some rather bullish charts and opinions on Bitcoin. He called it Bitcoin porn. The perfect setup for Bitcoin is here. Chart one, the perfect wedge. If you use classic charting techniques, it gives you a future price target for bitcoin around forty thousand dollars. But chart number two, the perfect wedge on a log chart. Well, that gives you a price for this run potentially one million dollars. Chart number three, the perfect regression channel that gives you one standard deviation move to a Bitcoin price of four hundred thousand dollars or a two standard deviation, move to a potential price of one million dollars. Again, a one million dollar Bitcoin, whatever plays out after a key technical break like today, the probability of vastly higher prices for Bitcoin has risen dramatically. And this is confirmed by the stock to flow models by Plan B, and the breakout has happened almost exactly at the happening. Add to that the entire world central banks are either seeing their currencies collapse to the almighty dollar or they’re printing money like crazy. Huge quantitative easing. Fiat meets the hardest money that automatically quantitative tightens, bitcoin wins. This is one of the best setups in any asset class I’ve ever witnessed. Technical, the fundamental flow of funds and plumbing all now and again. To be clear, even if the odds are 90 percent, doesn’t mean it’s definitely going to work out. I can and I will be wrong often and dramatically. Good luck. Expect horrific volatility both up and down, but you can’t make a five x 10x hundred X returns. Without large drawdowns, so be careful how much you put in. It also feels like you have too little. Until it doesn’t. And then you wish you didn’t have so much. This is exactly what I thought would happen. First of all, we’re seeing two famous investors and traders this year in 2020 come out extremely bullish on Bitcoin. They’re putting their money where their mouth is. But besides that, I’ve always said that I think people are going to be secretly buying Bitcoin when they perceive it as low. And then when we see a Bitcoin rally up and all of a sudden it feels very good to tell the world that you invested in Bitcoin. And I think we’re going to continue to see people like this come out and say, I own Bitcoin and here’s why. And make no mistake about this. Paul Tudor Jones, his hedge fund buying Bitcoin is a huge milestone for Bitcoin as an asset. This is global news. Even our friends at CNBC are singing its praises. Welcome back to Fast Money, one of Wall Street’s most successful hedge fund managers sending a giant shockwave across the cryptocurrency market today. Paul Tudor Jones reportedly buying Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation. Jones comparing the cryptocurrency to the gold trade back in the 1970s. Calling it the fastest horse in this environment. Let’s break this bombshell down with our own Bitcoin baller, Brian Kelly. B.K. Crypto Crypto Twitter was just on fire today with this. More so than ever. I quit crypto traders putting in place. But yeah, I mean, certainly having somebody called Trader Joe’s pedigree and calibre come in and kind of put their stamp of approval on this asset class. Got everybody really excited. Brian, a big fan of your work. A lot of people think the gold bitcoin is binary. You have to own one or the other. They both can’t work. Do you think in this environment both can do well? Sure, it’s the same thesis. It’s the idea that you have you need a capped security or a capped supply. And so whether it’s gold or whether it’s Bitcoin, I happen to think Bitcoin has a much higher upside, a better risk to reward. But the thesis is very similar. The only other thing I would say about Bitcoin is that it’s different than gold. It’s a lot more. More, right. We’ve seen the issues we’ve had over the last weeks where gold prices disengaged from futures spot gold because they couldn’t get gold bars from London to New York to settle. You don’t have that issue with Bitcoin. This is the Internet money. You just send it right over and settle it. So in that sense, I think Bitcoin has a bigger role to play in this environment. The gold does. All right. Okay. Great to see you. Brian Callear owns Bitcoin Boller. Karen, I’m curious when somebody like a Paul Tudor Jones says that he’s buying cryptocurrency. Do you think that sort of paves the way for other hedge fund managers in the mainstream to do the same? Yeah, I think so. I mean, it does. Its sort of nobody wants to get sort of outed having owned Bitcoin if it completely falls apart, but they can say, you know, Paul Tudor Jones owned it also. Maybe that gives you a little bit of cover. I believe I mean, I think that Mike Novogratz had said it a few weeks ago. I really believe if this isn’t the environment for Bitcoin to work with this kind of just money printing all around the world, then I don’t know what is. So we’ll see if inflation ever ticks up. I’m optimistic that Bitcoin will go up as well. Guys, this is an incredibly exciting time to be a Bitcoin holder. And just in the cryptocurrency space in general, we if you’ve been following us for a while, we are leagues ahead of the general public on everything related to cryptocurrency, things that we’re seeing, you know, famous hedge fund managers coming out and saying this year they’re spouting out, you know, things that we’ve been going over on this channel forever, ever. Everything that, you know, we went over today, everything that these famous people have said about Bitcoin if you already knew this. And I think it’s just an incredibly exciting time to be in the cryptocurrency space. By the way, guys, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be doing a live stream on the same day this video comes out in the evening with our Australian friend, Alex Saunders. So look forward to a Livestream, hopefully coming up in a couple of hours whenever you watch this video. Alex is coming on because Alex, I want Alex to wait. If we were going to talk cryptocurrency, but specifically I’m like, Alex, what other coins? Like, I want to be on Team DFI. You know what? Other coins have real fundamental value and hopefully, we’re gonna get into some of that stuff. So look forward to the Livestream later. That’s it, guys. Seema.

source https://www.cryptosharks.net/this-is-huge-for-bitcoin-first-mainstream-hedge/ source https://cryptosharks1.blogspot.com/2020/05/this-is-huge-for-bitcoin-first.html

[jeffrmayhugh]

This Is HUGE For Bitcoin! The First MAINSTREAM Hedge Fund Just Bought In!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

History has just been made for Bitcoin, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back, everyone, to AWALT Coin Daily. My name is Aaron. If you hold Bitcoin again, you ought to be feeling really good. Legendary investor Paul Tudor Jones has become the first mainstream hedge fund manager to announce to the world that his hedge fund is buying Bitcoin. It puts Bitcoin as asset health. This puts Bitcoin as a brand on this whole another level. 2020 is the year of Bitcoin. In my opinion. Now, if you’ve been subscribed to our channel for a while, you already know, you know exactly why he is buying Bitcoin. If you’ve been subscribed to us for any amount of time. That being said, there is a lot of new people who have entered the space recently. And I do want to know specifically what he said. He sees Bitcoin as a hard asset, a hedge against the endless money printing. He called it a store value. Called it trustworthy, liquid, portable, if you want to know his exact statements on the matter. Feel free to pause the video right here. That’s a large part of what he said on Bitcoin. But he also went on to say that he sees buying Bitcoin now like buying gold in the 1970s. And just to refresh your memory, 1971 is the year that Richard Nixon took America fully off the gold standard. And that prompted a lot of hedge fund managers, a lot of people in general, to seek out hard assets, store their wealth. This is something people are looking again today for. Actually, if we take a closer look at gold’s price action starting in the mid-1970s. If we go from the bottom to the top, this may vary depending on where you get your data. Gold rallied about seven hundred and seventy percent and it actually went much higher in future cycles. But Paul Tudor Jones sees owning Bitcoin today like owning gold right here. In the 1970s and his hedge fund is buying it. I tweeted this out. To go along with this story, at some point, it will become fiscally irresponsible if hedge funds don’t have Bitcoin in their portfolios. Do you agree with this? Do you disagree with this? The reason I think this is true is that hedge funds have this fiduciary duty to make good investments. If Bitcoin continues to be the best investment, even if it just continues to be a good investment, they’re going to need to get off zero. By the way, guys, if Bitcoin does perform like gold, you know, the same percentage gains, we would be seeing a Bitcoin price of over seventy thousand dollars. And if you like that, you’re gonna like this. It’s another famous trader and investor role. Paul, we’ve talked about him before. We brought the story to you. The fact that this man just put 25 percent of his portfolio into Bitcoin this year for similar reasons as Paul Tudor Jones. And he tweeted out some rather bullish charts and opinions on Bitcoin. He called it Bitcoin porn. The perfect setup for Bitcoin is here. Chart one, the perfect wedge. If you use classic charting techniques, it gives you a future price target for bitcoin around forty thousand dollars. But chart number two, the perfect wedge on a log chart. Well, that gives you a price for this run potentially one million dollars. Chart number three, the perfect regression channel that gives you one standard deviation move to a Bitcoin price of four hundred thousand dollars or a two standard deviation, move to a potential price of one million dollars. Again, a one million dollar Bitcoin, whatever plays out after a key technical break like today, the probability of vastly higher prices for Bitcoin has risen dramatically. And this is confirmed by the stock to flow models by Plan B, and the breakout has happened almost exactly at the happening. Add to that the entire world central banks are either seeing their currencies collapse to the almighty dollar or they’re printing money like crazy. Huge quantitative easing. Fiat meets the hardest money that automatically quantitative tightens, bitcoin wins. This is one of the best setups in any asset class I’ve ever witnessed. Technical, the fundamental flow of funds and plumbing all now and again. To be clear, even if the odds are 90 percent, doesn’t mean it’s definitely going to work out. I can and I will be wrong often and dramatically. Good luck. Expect horrific volatility both up and down, but you can’t make a five x 10x hundred X returns. Without large drawdowns, so be careful how much you put in. It also feels like you have too little. Until it doesn’t. And then you wish you didn’t have so much. This is exactly what I thought would happen. First of all, we’re seeing two famous investors and traders this year in 2020 come out extremely bullish on Bitcoin. They’re putting their money where their mouth is. But besides that, I’ve always said that I think people are going to be secretly buying Bitcoin when they perceive it as low. And then when we see a Bitcoin rally up and all of a sudden it feels very good to tell the world that you invested in Bitcoin. And I think we’re going to continue to see people like this come out and say, I own Bitcoin and here’s why. And make no mistake about this. Paul Tudor Jones, his hedge fund buying Bitcoin is a huge milestone for Bitcoin as an asset. This is global news. Even our friends at CNBC are singing its praises. Welcome back to Fast Money, one of Wall Street’s most successful hedge fund managers sending a giant shockwave across the cryptocurrency market today. Paul Tudor Jones reportedly buying Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation. Jones comparing the cryptocurrency to the gold trade back in the 1970s. Calling it the fastest horse in this environment. Let’s break this bombshell down with our own Bitcoin baller, Brian Kelly. B.K. Crypto Crypto Twitter was just on fire today with this. More so than ever. I quit crypto traders putting in place. But yeah, I mean, certainly having somebody called Trader Joe’s pedigree and calibre come in and kind of put their stamp of approval on this asset class. Got everybody really excited. Brian, a big fan of your work. A lot of people think the gold bitcoin is binary. You have to own one or the other. They both can’t work. Do you think in this environment both can do well? Sure, it’s the same thesis. It’s the idea that you have you need a capped security or a capped supply. And so whether it’s gold or whether it’s Bitcoin, I happen to think Bitcoin has a much higher upside, a better risk to reward. But the thesis is very similar. The only other thing I would say about Bitcoin is that it’s different than gold. It’s a lot more. More, right. We’ve seen the issues we’ve had over the last weeks where gold prices disengaged from futures spot gold because they couldn’t get gold bars from London to New York to settle. You don’t have that issue with Bitcoin. This is the Internet money. You just send it right over and settle it. So in that sense, I think Bitcoin has a bigger role to play in this environment. The gold does. All right. Okay. Great to see you. Brian Callear owns Bitcoin Boller. Karen, I’m curious when somebody like a Paul Tudor Jones says that he’s buying cryptocurrency. Do you think that sort of paves the way for other hedge fund managers in the mainstream to do the same? Yeah, I think so. I mean, it does. Its sort of nobody wants to get sort of outed having owned Bitcoin if it completely falls apart, but they can say, you know, Paul Tudor Jones owned it also. Maybe that gives you a little bit of cover. I believe I mean, I think that Mike Novogratz had said it a few weeks ago. I really believe if this isn’t the environment for Bitcoin to work with this kind of just money printing all around the world, then I don’t know what is. So we’ll see if inflation ever ticks up. I’m optimistic that Bitcoin will go up as well. Guys, this is an incredibly exciting time to be a Bitcoin holder. And just in the cryptocurrency space in general, we if you’ve been following us for a while, we are leagues ahead of the general public on everything related to cryptocurrency, things that we’re seeing, you know, famous hedge fund managers coming out and saying this year they’re spouting out, you know, things that we’ve been going over on this channel forever, ever. Everything that, you know, we went over today, everything that these famous people have said about Bitcoin if you already knew this. And I think it’s just an incredibly exciting time to be in the cryptocurrency space. By the way, guys, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be doing a live stream on the same day this video comes out in the evening with our Australian friend, Alex Saunders. So look forward to a Livestream, hopefully coming up in a couple of hours whenever you watch this video. Alex is coming on because Alex, I want Alex to wait. If we were going to talk cryptocurrency, but specifically I’m like, Alex, what other coins? Like, I want to be on Team DFI. You know what? Other coins have real fundamental value and hopefully, we’re gonna get into some of that stuff. So look forward to the Livestream later. That’s it, guys. Seema.

source https://www.cryptosharks.net/this-is-huge-for-bitcoin-first-mainstream-hedge/ source https://cryptosharks1.tumblr.com/post/617702416946757632

[heatherrdavis1]

This Is HUGE For Bitcoin! The First MAINSTREAM Hedge Fund Just Bought In!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

History has just been made for Bitcoin, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back, everyone, to AWALT Coin Daily. My name is Aaron. If you hold Bitcoin again, you ought to be feeling really good. Legendary investor Paul Tudor Jones has become the first mainstream hedge fund manager to announce to the world that his hedge fund is buying Bitcoin. It puts Bitcoin as asset health. This puts Bitcoin as a brand on this whole another level. 2020 is the year of Bitcoin. In my opinion. Now, if you’ve been subscribed to our channel for a while, you already know, you know exactly why he is buying Bitcoin. If you’ve been subscribed to us for any amount of time. That being said, there is a lot of new people who have entered the space recently. And I do want to know specifically what he said. He sees Bitcoin as a hard asset, a hedge against the endless money printing. He called it a store value. Called it trustworthy, liquid, portable, if you want to know his exact statements on the matter. Feel free to pause the video right here. That’s a large part of what he said on Bitcoin. But he also went on to say that he sees buying Bitcoin now like buying gold in the 1970s. And just to refresh your memory, 1971 is the year that Richard Nixon took America fully off the gold standard. And that prompted a lot of hedge fund managers, a lot of people in general, to seek out hard assets, store their wealth. This is something people are looking again today for. Actually, if we take a closer look at gold’s price action starting in the mid-1970s. If we go from the bottom to the top, this may vary depending on where you get your data. Gold rallied about seven hundred and seventy percent and it actually went much higher in future cycles. But Paul Tudor Jones sees owning Bitcoin today like owning gold right here. In the 1970s and his hedge fund is buying it. I tweeted this out. To go along with this story, at some point, it will become fiscally irresponsible if hedge funds don’t have Bitcoin in their portfolios. Do you agree with this? Do you disagree with this? The reason I think this is true is that hedge funds have this fiduciary duty to make good investments. If Bitcoin continues to be the best investment, even if it just continues to be a good investment, they’re going to need to get off zero. By the way, guys, if Bitcoin does perform like gold, you know, the same percentage gains, we would be seeing a Bitcoin price of over seventy thousand dollars. And if you like that, you’re gonna like this. It’s another famous trader and investor role. Paul, we’ve talked about him before. We brought the story to you. The fact that this man just put 25 percent of his portfolio into Bitcoin this year for similar reasons as Paul Tudor Jones. And he tweeted out some rather bullish charts and opinions on Bitcoin. He called it Bitcoin porn. The perfect setup for Bitcoin is here. Chart one, the perfect wedge. If you use classic charting techniques, it gives you a future price target for bitcoin around forty thousand dollars. But chart number two, the perfect wedge on a log chart. Well, that gives you a price for this run potentially one million dollars. Chart number three, the perfect regression channel that gives you one standard deviation move to a Bitcoin price of four hundred thousand dollars or a two standard deviation, move to a potential price of one million dollars. Again, a one million dollar Bitcoin, whatever plays out after a key technical break like today, the probability of vastly higher prices for Bitcoin has risen dramatically. And this is confirmed by the stock to flow models by Plan B, and the breakout has happened almost exactly at the happening. Add to that the entire world central banks are either seeing their currencies collapse to the almighty dollar or they’re printing money like crazy. Huge quantitative easing. Fiat meets the hardest money that automatically quantitative tightens, bitcoin wins. This is one of the best setups in any asset class I’ve ever witnessed. Technical, the fundamental flow of funds and plumbing all now and again. To be clear, even if the odds are 90 percent, doesn’t mean it’s definitely going to work out. I can and I will be wrong often and dramatically. Good luck. Expect horrific volatility both up and down, but you can’t make a five x 10x hundred X returns. Without large drawdowns, so be careful how much you put in. It also feels like you have too little. Until it doesn’t. And then you wish you didn’t have so much. This is exactly what I thought would happen. First of all, we’re seeing two famous investors and traders this year in 2020 come out extremely bullish on Bitcoin. They’re putting their money where their mouth is. But besides that, I’ve always said that I think people are going to be secretly buying Bitcoin when they perceive it as low. And then when we see a Bitcoin rally up and all of a sudden it feels very good to tell the world that you invested in Bitcoin. And I think we’re going to continue to see people like this come out and say, I own Bitcoin and here’s why. And make no mistake about this. Paul Tudor Jones, his hedge fund buying Bitcoin is a huge milestone for Bitcoin as an asset. This is global news. Even our friends at CNBC are singing its praises. Welcome back to Fast Money, one of Wall Street’s most successful hedge fund managers sending a giant shockwave across the cryptocurrency market today. Paul Tudor Jones reportedly buying Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation. Jones comparing the cryptocurrency to the gold trade back in the 1970s. Calling it the fastest horse in this environment. Let’s break this bombshell down with our own Bitcoin baller, Brian Kelly. B.K. Crypto Crypto Twitter was just on fire today with this. More so than ever. I quit crypto traders putting in place. But yeah, I mean, certainly having somebody called Trader Joe’s pedigree and calibre come in and kind of put their stamp of approval on this asset class. Got everybody really excited. Brian, a big fan of your work. A lot of people think the gold bitcoin is binary. You have to own one or the other. They both can’t work. Do you think in this environment both can do well? Sure, it’s the same thesis. It’s the idea that you have you need a capped security or a capped supply. And so whether it’s gold or whether it’s Bitcoin, I happen to think Bitcoin has a much higher upside, a better risk to reward. But the thesis is very similar. The only other thing I would say about Bitcoin is that it’s different than gold. It’s a lot more. More, right. We’ve seen the issues we’ve had over the last weeks where gold prices disengaged from futures spot gold because they couldn’t get gold bars from London to New York to settle. You don’t have that issue with Bitcoin. This is the Internet money. You just send it right over and settle it. So in that sense, I think Bitcoin has a bigger role to play in this environment. The gold does. All right. Okay. Great to see you. Brian Callear owns Bitcoin Boller. Karen, I’m curious when somebody like a Paul Tudor Jones says that he’s buying cryptocurrency. Do you think that sort of paves the way for other hedge fund managers in the mainstream to do the same? Yeah, I think so. I mean, it does. Its sort of nobody wants to get sort of outed having owned Bitcoin if it completely falls apart, but they can say, you know, Paul Tudor Jones owned it also. Maybe that gives you a little bit of cover. I believe I mean, I think that Mike Novogratz had said it a few weeks ago. I really believe if this isn’t the environment for Bitcoin to work with this kind of just money printing all around the world, then I don’t know what is. So we’ll see if inflation ever ticks up. I’m optimistic that Bitcoin will go up as well. Guys, this is an incredibly exciting time to be a Bitcoin holder. And just in the cryptocurrency space in general, we if you’ve been following us for a while, we are leagues ahead of the general public on everything related to cryptocurrency, things that we’re seeing, you know, famous hedge fund managers coming out and saying this year they’re spouting out, you know, things that we’ve been going over on this channel forever, ever. Everything that, you know, we went over today, everything that these famous people have said about Bitcoin if you already knew this. And I think it’s just an incredibly exciting time to be in the cryptocurrency space. By the way, guys, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be doing a live stream on the same day this video comes out in the evening with our Australian friend, Alex Saunders. So look forward to a Livestream, hopefully coming up in a couple of hours whenever you watch this video. Alex is coming on because Alex, I want Alex to wait. If we were going to talk cryptocurrency, but specifically I’m like, Alex, what other coins? Like, I want to be on Team DFI. You know what? Other coins have real fundamental value and hopefully, we’re gonna get into some of that stuff. So look forward to the Livestream later. That’s it, guys. Seema.

Via https://www.cryptosharks.net/this-is-huge-for-bitcoin-first-mainstream-hedge/

source https://cryptosharks.weebly.com/blog/this-is-huge-for-bitcoin-the-first-mainstream-hedge-fund-just-bought-in

[cryptosharks1]

This Is HUGE For Bitcoin! The First MAINSTREAM Hedge Fund Just Bought In!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

History has just been made for Bitcoin, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back, everyone, to AWALT Coin Daily. My name is Aaron. If you hold Bitcoin again, you ought to be feeling really good. Legendary investor Paul Tudor Jones has become the first mainstream hedge fund manager to announce to the world that his hedge fund is buying Bitcoin. It puts Bitcoin as asset health. This puts Bitcoin as a brand on this whole another level. 2020 is the year of Bitcoin. In my opinion. Now, if you’ve been subscribed to our channel for a while, you already know, you know exactly why he is buying Bitcoin. If you’ve been subscribed to us for any amount of time. That being said, there is a lot of new people who have entered the space recently. And I do want to know specifically what he said. He sees Bitcoin as a hard asset, a hedge against the endless money printing. He called it a store value. Called it trustworthy, liquid, portable, if you want to know his exact statements on the matter. Feel free to pause the video right here. That’s a large part of what he said on Bitcoin. But he also went on to say that he sees buying Bitcoin now like buying gold in the 1970s. And just to refresh your memory, 1971 is the year that Richard Nixon took America fully off the gold standard. And that prompted a lot of hedge fund managers, a lot of people in general, to seek out hard assets, store their wealth. This is something people are looking again today for. Actually, if we take a closer look at gold’s price action starting in the mid-1970s. If we go from the bottom to the top, this may vary depending on where you get your data. Gold rallied about seven hundred and seventy percent and it actually went much higher in future cycles. But Paul Tudor Jones sees owning Bitcoin today like owning gold right here. In the 1970s and his hedge fund is buying it. I tweeted this out. To go along with this story, at some point, it will become fiscally irresponsible if hedge funds don’t have Bitcoin in their portfolios. Do you agree with this? Do you disagree with this? The reason I think this is true is that hedge funds have this fiduciary duty to make good investments. If Bitcoin continues to be the best investment, even if it just continues to be a good investment, they’re going to need to get off zero. By the way, guys, if Bitcoin does perform like gold, you know, the same percentage gains, we would be seeing a Bitcoin price of over seventy thousand dollars. And if you like that, you’re gonna like this. It’s another famous trader and investor role. Paul, we’ve talked about him before. We brought the story to you. The fact that this man just put 25 percent of his portfolio into Bitcoin this year for similar reasons as Paul Tudor Jones. And he tweeted out some rather bullish charts and opinions on Bitcoin. He called it Bitcoin porn. The perfect setup for Bitcoin is here. Chart one, the perfect wedge. If you use classic charting techniques, it gives you a future price target for bitcoin around forty thousand dollars. But chart number two, the perfect wedge on a log chart. Well, that gives you a price for this run potentially one million dollars. Chart number three, the perfect regression channel that gives you one standard deviation move to a Bitcoin price of four hundred thousand dollars or a two standard deviation, move to a potential price of one million dollars. Again, a one million dollar Bitcoin, whatever plays out after a key technical break like today, the probability of vastly higher prices for Bitcoin has risen dramatically. And this is confirmed by the stock to flow models by Plan B, and the breakout has happened almost exactly at the happening. Add to that the entire world central banks are either seeing their currencies collapse to the almighty dollar or they’re printing money like crazy. Huge quantitative easing. Fiat meets the hardest money that automatically quantitative tightens, bitcoin wins. This is one of the best setups in any asset class I’ve ever witnessed. Technical, the fundamental flow of funds and plumbing all now and again. To be clear, even if the odds are 90 percent, doesn’t mean it’s definitely going to work out. I can and I will be wrong often and dramatically. Good luck. Expect horrific volatility both up and down, but you can’t make a five x 10x hundred X returns. Without large drawdowns, so be careful how much you put in. It also feels like you have too little. Until it doesn’t. And then you wish you didn’t have so much. This is exactly what I thought would happen. First of all, we’re seeing two famous investors and traders this year in 2020 come out extremely bullish on Bitcoin. They’re putting their money where their mouth is. But besides that, I’ve always said that I think people are going to be secretly buying Bitcoin when they perceive it as low. And then when we see a Bitcoin rally up and all of a sudden it feels very good to tell the world that you invested in Bitcoin. And I think we’re going to continue to see people like this come out and say, I own Bitcoin and here’s why. And make no mistake about this. Paul Tudor Jones, his hedge fund buying Bitcoin is a huge milestone for Bitcoin as an asset. This is global news. Even our friends at CNBC are singing its praises. Welcome back to Fast Money, one of Wall Street’s most successful hedge fund managers sending a giant shockwave across the cryptocurrency market today. Paul Tudor Jones reportedly buying Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation. Jones comparing the cryptocurrency to the gold trade back in the 1970s. Calling it the fastest horse in this environment. Let’s break this bombshell down with our own Bitcoin baller, Brian Kelly. B.K. Crypto Crypto Twitter was just on fire today with this. More so than ever. I quit crypto traders putting in place. But yeah, I mean, certainly having somebody called Trader Joe’s pedigree and calibre come in and kind of put their stamp of approval on this asset class. Got everybody really excited. Brian, a big fan of your work. A lot of people think the gold bitcoin is binary. You have to own one or the other. They both can’t work. Do you think in this environment both can do well? Sure, it’s the same thesis. It’s the idea that you have you need a capped security or a capped supply. And so whether it’s gold or whether it’s Bitcoin, I happen to think Bitcoin has a much higher upside, a better risk to reward. But the thesis is very similar. The only other thing I would say about Bitcoin is that it’s different than gold. It’s a lot more. More, right. We’ve seen the issues we’ve had over the last weeks where gold prices disengaged from futures spot gold because they couldn’t get gold bars from London to New York to settle. You don’t have that issue with Bitcoin. This is the Internet money. You just send it right over and settle it. So in that sense, I think Bitcoin has a bigger role to play in this environment. The gold does. All right. Okay. Great to see you. Brian Callear owns Bitcoin Boller. Karen, I’m curious when somebody like a Paul Tudor Jones says that he’s buying cryptocurrency. Do you think that sort of paves the way for other hedge fund managers in the mainstream to do the same? Yeah, I think so. I mean, it does. Its sort of nobody wants to get sort of outed having owned Bitcoin if it completely falls apart, but they can say, you know, Paul Tudor Jones owned it also. Maybe that gives you a little bit of cover. I believe I mean, I think that Mike Novogratz had said it a few weeks ago. I really believe if this isn’t the environment for Bitcoin to work with this kind of just money printing all around the world, then I don’t know what is. So we’ll see if inflation ever ticks up. I’m optimistic that Bitcoin will go up as well. Guys, this is an incredibly exciting time to be a Bitcoin holder. And just in the cryptocurrency space in general, we if you’ve been following us for a while, we are leagues ahead of the general public on everything related to cryptocurrency, things that we’re seeing, you know, famous hedge fund managers coming out and saying this year they’re spouting out, you know, things that we’ve been going over on this channel forever, ever. Everything that, you know, we went over today, everything that these famous people have said about Bitcoin if you already knew this. And I think it’s just an incredibly exciting time to be in the cryptocurrency space. By the way, guys, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be doing a live stream on the same day this video comes out in the evening with our Australian friend, Alex Saunders. So look forward to a Livestream, hopefully coming up in a couple of hours whenever you watch this video. Alex is coming on because Alex, I want Alex to wait. If we were going to talk cryptocurrency, but specifically I’m like, Alex, what other coins? Like, I want to be on Team DFI. You know what? Other coins have real fundamental value and hopefully, we’re gonna get into some of that stuff. So look forward to the Livestream later. That’s it, guys. Seema.

source https://www.cryptosharks.net/this-is-huge-for-bitcoin-first-mainstream-hedge/

[mbatradingacademy]

Bitcoin vs. Gold

What are the differences between bitcoin and gold? The answer is partly philosophical. Gold is the most tangible of assets. It exists in the real world, in the forms of prized jewelry, computer contact points, sacred religious vessels, false teeth, King Tut’s funeral mask, and the golden dome of the Colorado state capitol building.

You can hold gold in your hands. It is amazingly durable, which is why gold was used to create a record of human voices that were carried aboard the Voyager I spacecraft, launched in 1977 and still functioning today, some 13 billion miles beyond the solar system. That King Tut mask still shone like new when first discovered in 1922; any dulling since then has been caused by improper cleaning in modern times.

An individual atom of gold may have been reprocessed a hundred times in the last few millennia, so that your wedding ring could contain gold mined in the days of King Solomon in the fabled lost city of Ophir, mixed in with gold mined in Ireland by the Bronze Age Celts, all melted together with more modern gold from mines large and small in Australia, California, Russia, Indonesia, and the Yukon.

We like to look at the nighttime webcam images from atop Pikes Peak, which show the lights of the huge, open-pit Cresson gold mine in nearby Victor, Colorado. In their days, the goldfields of Victor and Cripple Creek rivaled those of California. If you ever ascend to that height, be sure to take the Mollie Kathleen mine tour, 1,000 feet down the original mine shaft. Free samples (of ore chips, not refined gold) are available as you leave.

At the other end of the scale, we know a fellow who pans for gold dust in a certain stream in Indiana, where it was deposited by glaciers 10,000 years ago. I know he doesn’t find enough to make a living at it—or, some weeks, even enough to pay for his gas to get there—but he is having fun.

Fort Knox has tons of it, mostly in the form of 400-ounce cast bars. The workers wear steel-toed boots because if you dropped a gold bar on your toe, you would know it. (If you choose not to believe that there is gold in Fort Knox, please have a nice day.) Gold has always been desirable in human civilization, even back when human civilization consisted of little more than the ability to cultivate grain, make a crude form of beer from it, and carve crude markings on clay tablets to keep track of who owned the beer. Small pellets of electrum, gold naturally alloyed with silver, were also used to settle up the accounts.

Roughly 2,700 years ago, a king in Asia Minor figured out that these pellets could be melted together and recast into standard-weight pellets and stamped with the king’s seal, and coinage was born. From that day onward, until the 20th century, gold was money and money was gold.

THE BITCOIN, on the other hand, is partly faith. Faith can make good money if enough people believe in it. From the late 1870s to the late 1960s, you could take a $1 Silver Certificate to the Treasury Building and get a solid silver dollar for it, and the very fact that you could do so made people prefer to carry the intrinsically worthless, but significantly lighter, paper dollar.

In the 1960s, the Treasury managed to remove this convertibility without too many people noticing that their chicken had been plucked, but the new one-dollar Federal Reserve Notes easily circulated because by then people were used to using paper dollars, and those people continued to have faith in those paper dollars.

The bitcoin was created on paper—or should we say on electrons?—when the domain name “bitcoin.org” was registered on Aug. 18, 2008. Its birth may have generated little notice at the time, as the economies of America and much of the rest of the world were crashing down all around it. For all we know, the collapse of the more traditional economies made the creation of an electronic mini-economy more acceptable.

On Halloween of that year, according to Investopedia, “Someone using the name Satoshi Nakamoto makes an announcement on The Cryptography Mailing list at metzdowd.com: ‘I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party. The paper is available at Bitcoin.org.’ This link leads to the now-famous white paper published on bitcoin.org entitled ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.’

The paper contains a lot of math but it clearly establishes that the bitcoin was intended to be used as an alternative form of money that could be transferred from Party A to Party B with no financial institution intervening as Party C. Party A and Party B would not even have to know each other’s identity. Law enforcement officials were quite naturally disturbed at this prospect.

Tracking and intercepting the money derived from illegal activities has long been a function of the United States Treasury. This is one reason it discontinued issuing $500 and $1,000 bills in the late 1940s, to make large sums of money more unwieldy. The Treasury seriously considered doing the same with $50 and $100 bills earlier in this century, but abandoned the idea after a survey of drug money seizures proved that criminals capable of moving tons of drugs were equally capable of moving tons of $5, $10 and $20 bills.

Bitcoins are created by being “mined” using sophisticated computer hardware and software that create elaborate strings of computer code by the rules of the game. The code is typically stored in an electronic “wallet” that is protected with an electronic “key” that serves as a password. The system is so secure that if you lose that key, you have lost your bitcoins forever.

Once the codes are mined, they are validated by the issuing authority, after which a given number of bitcoins are awarded to the miner as “proof of work”. For roughly the first four years of Bitcoin’s existence, the “reward” was 50 bitcoins per accepted code string, out of a maximum ultimate issuance of approximately 21 million “coins”. For the next four years or so, the reward was 25 coins, and this has recently been halved again to 12.5 bitcoins per block string.

As the total number of bitcoins outstanding - including the pieces that have already been lost - gets nearer and nearer to the 21 million marks, the reward will be halved repeatedly so that the number never exceeds that cap. What that reward will be worth will, of course, depend upon the value of one bitcoin.

In December 2017, Great Britain’s The Telegraph reported a story about a Welsh man who allegedly mined 7,500 bitcoins between 2009 and 2013, and stored them in the hard drive of his computer. When the computer died, he removed the hard drive for safekeeping. He then accidentally threw the hard drive in the trash. It was buried under a few years’ more trash before its loss was noticed. The unfortunate miner then petitioned his city for the right to mine the landfill for the potential $100,000,000+ payoff, but the city declined, citing safety reasons.

THE VERY FIRST bitcoins were technically worthless, as nobody was making a buy/sell market in them. This changed in October 2009, when New Liberty Standard posted an offer to buy or sell bitcoins at the rate of 1,309.03 bitcoins per dollar, or roughly 76 cents per 1,000 bitcoins. The value was calculated as being the cost of the electricity used by a computer to mine one bitcoin. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

As the “mining” function has gotten harder and harder, some bitcoin miners have installed more computer hardware, which takes more electricity to operate. A coin dealer we know tells the story of a mining acquaintance who was racking up electricity bills of $2,500 per month until he was raided by drug enforcement authorities, who had decided that he must have been running a marijuana grow operation. This experience curbed the miner’s activities, at least for a while.

A week after posting that first offer, New Liberty purchased 5,050 bitcoins from a miner for US$5.02, or approximately $1 per 1,000 bitcoins. At least now the company had a product inventory to sell.

In May 2009, the first actual transaction using bitcoins occurred. A man named Laszlo Hanyecz purchased, obviously by prior arrangement, two pizzas worth approximately US$25 for 10,000 bitcoins. As of this writing, those 10,000 bitcoins would be worth approximately $68,690,000, but had they never been spent, and accepted, it is possible that no bitcoin anywhere would be worth anything.

The bitcoin achieved parity with the U.S. dollar in late winter 2011, after which a short-lived bubble saw it break $30 per bitcoin before falling back to $2. Despite this prescient example of things to come, it bubbled up to over $265 in spring 2011 before dropping back to around $70. Since then, the bubbles and the busts have only gotten larger.

The currency function of the bitcoin remains difficult to quantify. It is widely assumed that the system is being used to launder drug money around the world, but the highly secretive nature of the cryptocurrency makes it impossible to verify this. For all we know, the vast majority of the bitcoins still existing are merely being used for speculation.

There are places where you can buy a cup of coffee or a bar of gold with bitcoins, but the devil is in the details. Unless your coffee shop has a Bitcoin account and the hardware to allow you to make a small payment (one pumpkin spice latte costing roughly 0.00058 bitcoin, hold the nutmeg) directly to them, you might end up paying a $20 service charge to a third-party company set up to facilitate Bitcoin purchases.

One of the numismatic forums recently carried a tale of woe from a member who tried to buy 10 gold bullion coins from a dealer that accepted Bitcoin using one of these third-party intermediaries, only to discover that the bullion dealer had a 15-minute time-out clock that started the second that the price between the buyer and the seller was established. This was to protect the seller if the typically volatile price of the tendered payment dropped before the transaction was completed.

Well, the third party took over 45 minutes to make the transfer, for a $20 fee, by which time the seller was no longer honoring the original price. Thinking that the seller had canceled the transaction, the buyer asked the third party for his funds back, incurring another $20 fee. He then heard from the seller that the transaction had gone through, but that he owed another $66 due to a slight drop in the Bitcoin value.

He sent the money again, and before everything was over he had ended up paying $80 in fees, as well as mailing a check for the $66. He had bought into the bitcoins at a much lower price than he was spending them at, so he still did fine on the deal, but his profit was that much less because of the hassle factor involved with using Bitcoin as a currency. The day after he complained about all this in the forums, the price of a bitcoin dropped to $11,000 from over $18,000, so, all in all, he came out OK.

In the end, a bitcoin is a nebulous thing with enormous potential, just as the weight of the water behind a hydroelectric dam has the potential energy to drive turbines and produce much good. However, the weight of a giant boulder perched on a hill above a small town can have that same potential energy to produce harm. Which one will Bitcoin be for you?

[jamieclawhorn]

I’d buy this FTSE 100 dividend stock before the market comes to its senses!

Ferguson (LSE: FERG) may have taken a pummelling in the final quarter of 2018, but I believe that this makes it one of the finest bargains on the FTSE 100 right now. And particularly so for dividend chasers.

Things had been going swimmingly for the plumbing and heating products supplier up until the start Q4, but its share price collapsed from the record highs punched at the end of September and it continues to struggle for momentum, down almost 25% from those aforementioned peaks.

It’s not a mystery as to why Ferguson has felt the heat from scared investors. Some 80% of the group’s sales are generated in the US, and the market is fretting over what impact a combination of rising Federal Reserve benchmark rates and the tough trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing’s lawmakers will have on the country’s economy.

I would argue, though, that Ferguson’s low forward P/E multiple of 12.3 times — comfortably inside the widely-regarded value territory of 15 times or below — factors in these problems.

Indeed, with Fed chair Jerome Powell’s tone around future rate rises becoming less hawkish in recent weeks, and patchy data from both the US and China stressing the urgent need for a breakthrough with trade talks, this low level could provide the base for a stock price recovery as 2019 progresses.

Terrific trading

Trade at Ferguson has remained extremely strong despite those less reassuring datasets from North America in recent months.

Just last month the plumbing powerhouse released yet another excellent market update, advising that group revenues rose 9% in the three months to October, to £5.55bn (also representing a 7% rise on an organic basis). This result drove pre-tax profit 10% higher year-on-year to £432m too.

Chief executive John Martin commented that “growth in the US was widespread across all geographic regions and major business units,” with US organic sales growth in the period sprinting almost 10% higher on an annualised basis.And he suggested that Ferguson could continue to make heady progress in the weeks and months ahead, noting that “since the end of the quarter, the US has continued to grow well and the current indications are that growth will continue in the months ahead.”

Great dividend growth

You might not know it from looking at the share price, but City brokers upgraded their earnings forecasts for Ferguson in the wake of December’s perky release. They now predict a 17% rise in the 12 months to July 2019, a result that would continue the company’s recent run of annual double-digit percentage rises.

And this leads to predictions of further meaty dividend growth as well. Ferguson turbocharged the full-year payout by around a fifth in fiscal 2018, to 189.3 US cents per share, and it’s predicted to extend it to 206 cents in the current period. This means an inflation-smashing 3.2% yield.

With organic sales booming, margins still growing, and its appetite for profits-boosting M&A showing no signs of abating, Ferguson has a hell of a lot going for it. I’m convinced it can bounce back from that recent share price weakness I mentioned above, and that it will continue to dole out exceptional earnings and dividend growth for many years to come.

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More reading

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Royston Wild has no position in any of the shares mentioned. The Motley Fool UK has no position in any of the shares mentioned. Views expressed on the companies mentioned in this article are those of the writer and therefore may differ from the official recommendations we make in our subscription services such as Share Advisor, Hidden Winners and Pro. Here at The Motley Fool we believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.

[kansascityhappenings]

Leaders from around the world react to George H.W. Bush’s death

https://embed-prod.vemba.io/vemba-embed.js

The 41st President of the United States and patriarch of a political dynasty, George H.W. Bush died on Friday in Houston. He was 94 years old. Friends, world leaders and fellow politicians are now paying tribute to the man remembered as a World War II combat pilot, a Cold War politician, and a compassionate family man.

President Donald J. Trump and first lady Melania Trump: Melania and I join with a grieving Nation to mourn the loss of former President George H.W. Bush, who passed away last night.

Through his essential authenticity, disarming wit, and unwavering commitment to faith, family, and country, President Bush inspired generations of his fellow Americans to public service — to be, in his words, “a thousand points of light” illuminating the greatness, hope, and opportunity of America to the world.

President Bush always found a way to set the bar higher. As a young man, he captained the Yale baseball team, and then went on to serve as the youngest aviator in the United States Navy during the Second World War. Later in life, he rose to the pinnacle of American politics as a Congressman from Texas, envoy to China, Director of Central Intelligence, Vice President of eight years to President Ronald Reagan, and finally President of the United States.

With sound judgement (sic), common sense, and unflappable leadership, President Bush guided our Nation, and the world, to a peaceful and victorious conclusion of the Cold War. As President, he set the stage for the decades of prosperity that have followed. And through all that he accomplished, he remained humble, following the quiet call to service that gave him a clear sense of direction.

Along with his full life of service to country, we will remember President Bush for his devotion to family — especially the love of his life, Barbara. His example lives on, and will continue to stir future Americans to pursue a greater cause. Our hearts ache with his loss, and we, with the American people, send our prayers to the entire Bush family, as we honor the life and legacy of 41.

Former President Barack Obama: America has lost a patriot and humble servant in George Herbert Walker Bush. While our hearts are heavy today, they are also filled with gratitude. Not merely for the years he spent as our forty-first President, but for the more than 70 years he spent in devoted service to the country he loved — from a decorated Naval aviator who nearly gave his life in World War II, to Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces, with plenty of posts along the way. Ambassador to the United Nations. Director of Central Intelligence. U.S. Envoy to China. Vice President of the United States.

George H.W. Bush’s life is a testament to the notion that public service is a noble, joyous calling. And he did tremendous good along the journey. Expanding America’s promise to new immigrants and people with disabilities. Reducing the scourge of nuclear weapons and building a broad international coalition to expel a dictator from Kuwait. And when democratic revolutions bloomed across Eastern Europe, it was his steady, diplomatic hand that made possible an achievement once thought anything but — ending the Cold War without firing a shot.

It’s a legacy of service that may never be matched, even though he’d want all of us to try.

After seventy-three years of marriage, George and Barbara Bush are together again now, two points of light that never dimmed, two points of light that ignited countless others with their example — the example of a man who, even after commanding the world’s mightiest military, once said “I got more of a kick out of being one of the founders of the YMCA in Midland, Texas back in 1952 than almost anything I’ve done.”

What a testament to the qualities that make this country great. Service to others. Commitment to leaving behind something better. Sacrifice in the name of lifting this country closer to its founding ideals. Our thoughts are with the entire Bush family tonight — and all who were inspired by George and Barbara’s example.

Former Vice President Al Gore: President George H.W. Bush served our nation with extraordinary integrity and grace. I will remember him for his personal kindness and for his love of this country. He earned bipartisan respect for speaking up and taking action for what he believed was right, even when doing so was unpopular. He inspired countless Americans to volunteer and improve their communities through his point of life Foundation. President Bush leaves behind an American legacy of a lifetime of service that will be revered for generations.

Former President Bill and former first lady Hillary Clinton: Hillary and I mourn the passing of President George H.W. Bush, and give thanks for his great long life of service, love, and friendship. I will be forever grateful for the friendship we formed. From the moment I met him as a young governor invited to his home in Kennebunkport, I was struck by the kindness he showed to Chelsea, by his innate and genuine decency, and by his devotion to Barbara, his children, and their growing brood.

Few Americans have been—or will ever be—able to match President Bush’s record of service to the United States and the joy he took every day from it; from his military service in World War II, to his work in Congress, the United Nations, China, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Vice Presidency and the Presidency, where he worked to move the post Cold War world toward greater unity, peace, and freedom. He never stopped serving. I saw it up close, working with him on tsunami relief in Asia and here at home after Hurricane Katrina. His remarkable leadership and great heart were always on full display.

I am profoundly grateful for every minute I spent with President Bush and will always hold our friendship as one of my life’s greatest gifts. Our hearts and prayers are with George, Jeb, Neil, Marvin, Doro, their families, and the entire Bush clan.

Hillary Clinton: George H.W. Bush was a beloved father (and) grandfather, a war hero, a public servant, (and) a class act. In my experiences (with) him, I always valued his desire to listen, look at evidence (and) ask for ideas, even from people (with) different beliefs. My heart goes out to the entire Bush family.

US Naval Air Forces: Naval Aviation mourns the passing of our 41st President, George H.W. Bush, a Naval Aviator, statesman, and humble public servant. His legacy lives on in those who don the cloth of our great nation and in the mighty warship which bears his name, @CVN77_GHWB. May he Rest In Peace.

Ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev: “I express my deep condolences to the family of George H.W. Bush and all Americans over of the death of the 41st president of the United States,” he told the Russian news agency Interfax. Gorbachev and Bush worked closely to help end to the Cold War.

“I have a lot of memories associated with this person. We had a chance to work together during the years of tremendous changes. It was a dramatic time that demanded great responsibility from everyone. The result was an end to the Cold War and the nuclear arms race,” Gorbachev added.

“I pay tribute to the contribution of George H. W. Bush to this historic achievement. He was a real partner,” he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron: “On behalf of the French people, I convey all my condolences to the American nation for the loss of former President George Bush. He was a world leader, who strongly supported the alliance with Europe. Our sympathy to his family and beloved ones.”

Prime Minister of Great Britain Theresa May: “Today Britain remembers a great statesman and a true friend of our country. We send our deepest condolences to the American people and to the family he leaves behind,” the Prime Minister said Saturday.

“President George H. W. Bush’s ethos of public service was the guiding thread of his life and an example to us all. It took him from service in World War II, to his stewardship of the CIA and his direction of the Gulf War as Commander-in-Chief. And in navigating a peaceful end to the Cold War he made the world a safer place for generations to come.”

Australian Prime Minister John Howard: George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st president of the United States, was in office when arguably the most momentous event in post Second World War affairs occurred – the collapse of the Communist empire of the Soviet Union.

Initially as Vice President to Ronald Reagan, and later as President himself, he played a major role in shaping those historic years.

The late President possessed an endearing sense of humor and always exhibited immense public grace. He was the patriarch of a great American family.

At all times he was a true friend of Australia. He visited our country on a number of occasions. He was the first American president to address a joint sitting of our national parliament.

I extend my deep sympathy to the late President’s family. He exemplified the best of his nation’s values in both war and peace.

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger: Today, we’ve lost a great hero. George Bush was an inspiration to all Americans and we will miss him dearly. From the day he first put on his US Navy flight suit and took off into the unknown, he always put his country first. He took on many jobs throughout his long career, and all shared one distinct trait: public service. His greatest legacy is that pure American spirit, that commitment to selflessness that drove him until the very end.

He was born in a time that seemed to produce an endless supply of heroes, but make no mistake: George Bush embodied everything that made the Greatest Generation great.

I will always be grateful to him for his friendship, for embracing me and imparting just a fraction of his wisdom during our time together. Some of my fondest memories are of sledding with him at Camp David and inspiring America to join our fitness crusade by hosting the Great American Workout with him on the White House lawn and listening to his speech advice as we flew between campaign rallies. I will never forget the pride I felt the day he appointed me Chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. I loved to hear him surprise people with his wild side — explaining the pure joy he felt as he flew and jumped out of planes. I also loved to hear him explain his passion for this country — it was a true love that knew no petty boundaries or party lines. He taught me so much, but most of all, he taught me the power of serving a cause greater than yourself. I count myself lucky for many reasons; but for the opportunity to call George Bush a mentor, I can’t help but think I’m the luckiest man in America.

President Bush has left us for one last flight but his destination isn’t unknown. He’s flying into the arms of the love of his life, Barbara. This evening, each of us should take a minute to look up and offer him a silent thanks.

Former President Richard Nixon’s daughters Tricia Nixon Cox and Julie Nixon Eisenhower: Our father believed in George H.W. Bush. Richard Nixon kicked off George Bush’s campaign for congress in 1966, encouraged him to run for senate in 1970, entrusted him as U.N. Ambassador and head of the RNC, and supported him tirelessly when he served as President for four years.

George H.W. Bush lived a life that was purposeful, and extraordinarily rewarding—for our nation, and for our world.

While people everywhere salute and thank George H.W. Bush today, we take special solace in knowing that President and Mrs. Bush are together again.

Former Vice President Joe Biden: From the moment he signed up as an 18-year-old Naval aviator a few months after Pearl Harbor and for every step after that in his lengthy career as a diplomat, Congressman, Vice President, and President — George H.W. Bush chose a path of service.

He was a man who presided over the peaceful end to the Cold War and the reunification of Germany. This was statesmanship and leadership of historic dimensions. So much could have gone wrong but instead went right because of his leadership. This is how history will rightly remember him. Every American — and arguably everybody on Earth — owes him a debt of gratitude for bring such an able steward.

Over the course of the many years we worked with together — and against each other — on the biggest issues of the day, differences of policy were always based on substance. It was never personal. It was never petty. It was always with respect for our institutions and the people they govern.

As we mourn his passing today, we remember a life totally and completely dedicated to the country he loved.

US Senator Marco Rubio: President George H.W. Bush was an American hero, a patriot and a wise and generous man. May he Rest In Peace.

Queen Elizabeth II: It was with sadness that I learned of the death of President George H W Bush last night.

President Bush was a great friend and ally of the United Kingdom. He was also a patriot, serving his country with honour and distinction in Office and during the Second World War.

Prince Philip and I remember our days in Texas in 1991 with great fondness.

My thoughts and prayers are with President Bush’s family and the American people.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: I am saddened to hear of the passing of President George H. W. Bush. On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the Bush family and the many close friends who also continue to mourn the loss of his beloved wife, Barbara.

George H. W. Bush’s lifetime of service began when he enlisted during the Second World War and became one of the youngest pilots in the U.S. Navy. His exemplary spirit of service and commitment to country would mark each of his roles — including in Congress, as ambassador to the United Nations, as head of the Central Intelligence Agency, and in the White House.

President Bush was a dedicated and thoughtful leader who stuck by his convictions and values. He did much to strengthen relations between our two countries, championing the North American Free Trade Agreement and initiatives like the fight against acid rain.

As president, he provided steady, principled leadership through a number of decisive international events.

In his retirement from public life, President Bush remained unwavering in his service to others. He raised millions of dollars for charities related to cancer and child poverty, and made considerable contributions to disaster relief efforts in Southeast Asia and the U.S. Gulf Coast states.

Today, all Canadians join our American friends and neighbours in mourning the loss of a great leader and friend. George H. W. Bush’s lifetime of public service has inspired a thousand points of light. His legacy will inspire many more.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: On behalf of the people of Israel I send heartfelt condolences to the Bush family and the American People on the passing of a great American patriot, President George H.W. Bush. His wise leadership at the end of the Cold War helped steer the world to a peaceful transition and the spread of democracy. The People of Israel will always remember his commitment to Israel’s security, his important contribution to the liberation of Soviet Jewry, and his efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East at the Madrid Conference.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in: Our deepest condolences to the American people on the loss of former President George H. W. Bush of the United States. President Bush dedicated himself to world peace and security by taking a leading role in ending the Cold War and reconciling the West and East, and made noble endeavors to bring peace on the Korean Peninsula and strengthen the ROK-US alliance. President George H. W. Bush will be long remembered in the hearts of the Korean people.

US Secret Service: The Secret Service sends our heartfelt condolences on the passing of Former President George H.W. Bush. Timberwolf, you defined patriotism and leadership throughout your life of service to this country and you will be sorely missed.

Former HUD Secretary and fellow Texan Julian Castro: President George Herbert Walker Bush lived an admirable life of service to country. He made a positive impact on the lives of so many Americans. May he Rest In Peace.

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry: Tonight, our Nation honors the life and legacy of President @GeorgeHWBush. His unwavering service to our country and his family are unparalleled. #GigEm

Former Secretary of State Condolezza Rice: President George Herbert Walker Bush was the epitome of a public servant. He loved America with all of his heart and served her as fully and completely as anyone ever has.

I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to work for him, to learn from him and to experience his deep and abiding commitment to his fellow citizens. He was a mentor to me and a dear friend.

President Bush’s legacy is deep and broad: the many people that he touched, the difference that he made in the life of the country and the impact that he had beyond America’s shores. We will never forget his steady and inspired leadership in guiding the world to the peaceful end of the Cold War.

Now he is in God’s loving embrace with Mrs. Barbara Bush, his beloved wife of so many years. He has finished his race with honor and dignity. All who knew him and loved him — especially his remarkable family — will miss him. Yet, he lives on with us in spirit. Rest well, Mr. President.

Republican National Committee: President Bush dedicated himself to serving his country in many roles: a naval aviator, a congressman, an ambassador, RNC chairman, CIA director, vice president, and commander in chief. He stood for American strength and cared deeply for the American people, alongside his late wife Barbara. President Bush’s legacy of bold leadership, patriotism and humanitarianism will live on long after his passing. We at the RNC are praying for the entire Bush family.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner: George H.W. Bush served with valor and integrity as the 41st president of the United States. But to Houstonians he was one of our most esteemed and relatable neighbors. He and his wife Barbara Bush were our sports teams’ biggest fans, and boosters for everything Houston. The Bushes could have moved anywhere after his time in public office, but they chose to return to their beloved city where he started his political career as the chair of the Harris County Republican Party.

“In statesman-like fashion, he knew the importance of reaching across the aisle to find common ground. He backed our bid to host the 2020 Democratic National Convention. He was an equal ally of former election foe President Bill Clinton in helping victims of Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma through the One America Appeal. And I will always be grateful to the Bushes for being kind friends and advisers to me.

“For these reasons and more, I join Houstonians in mourning the death of George Herbert Walker Bush and expressing heartfelt condolences to his children and the rest of the Bush family. May we never forget his service to our country, his call for all of us to be a light to the world, and his loving spirit.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott: The state of Texas mourns with the nation at the passing of one of our greatest Presidents. George H.W. Bush was an American hero and icon, he was a friend to all he met, he embodied class and dignity. Texans are genuinely honored that he called the Lone Star State home and we collectively grieve this monumental loss. On behalf of Texas, Cecilia and I offer our thoughts and prayers to the Bush family in their time of need.

Apple CEO Tim Cook: We have lost a great American. Service defined President George H.W. Bush’s life, and he taught all of us about leadership, sacrifice and decency. We send our deepest sympathies to the Bush family.

Kevin Ryan, president of Covenant House: Clare and I send our love & sympathy to the Bushes on the loss of Pres. George Bush. At a time when some argued for the quarantine of our @CovenantHouse kids with HIV & AIDS, George & Barbara Bush held them close. I hope those angels now welcome him home to the kingdom of God.

Former FBI Director James Comey: Remembering the wisdom of a great American leader: “America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.”

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2018/12/01/leaders-from-around-the-world-react-to-george-h-w-bushs-death/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2018/12/02/leaders-from-around-the-world-react-to-george-h-w-bushs-death/

[legit-scam-review]

“99 Percent of Cryptocurrencies are Worth Zero”

The interview has been edited and condensed.

Nouriel Roubini is a New York-based economist that famously predicted the 2008 financial crisis when only a few considered there might be a threat to the existing course of events at the time.

A Harvard alumnus and now a professor at NYU Stern School of Business, Mr. Roubini has always been critical of the crypto and blockchain industry. Oct.11, 2018 he testified at the Congressional hearing on Capitol Hill, Washington D.C., warning U.S. senators about “the mother or father of all scams and bubbles,” — crypto.

We met with Mr. Roubini during BlockShow Americas in Las Vegas and talked about why he doesn’t believe in smart contracts, thinks Ethereum is a scam, and the fact that he might want to give the industry another try.

On being “against” the crypto industry

“I’m not against [it], I’m open to any type of innovation, but I’m an expert on financial crises and asset bubbles. And I became famous [by] predicting the global financial crisis  — the burst of that bubble.

I can see a bubble when there is one — and to me, this entire space has been the mother and the father of all financial bubbles and now it’s [going to] burst

Last year, almost everybody I knew was asking me every other day, “Should I buy Bitcoin?” And the price of Bitcoin doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and went to $20,000. And when that bubble burst, it collapsed — collapsed from $20,000 down to $6,000 today (at the time of the interview).

If you bought it at the peak, you lost 70 percent of your value. And it’s typical of all these financial bubbles: They go up until they collapse. And Bitcoin is actually the best [example], because the average cryptocurrency has lost, in the last nine months, more than 90 percent of their value.

I spoke about the bubble existing and this bubble going bust. And guess what? In the last year, [it] has gone bust. So I think I’ve been vindicated and proven right.

Bitcoin could go to the moon or zero, I’m not going to make a penny either way because I’m neither short or long.

And I’m just an academic that speaks his mind. And I saw a big bubble, and I think that it’s fair as an intellectual to discuss these things and then figure out what’s going wrong.”

To watch the interview go here:

On future price movement and Ethereum being a “scam”

“An academic study suggests that 81 percent of all ICOs were a scam to begin with; 11 percent of them have failed or have died; and of the remaining eight percent that is traded on exchanges, the top 10 have lost on average, in the last year, 95 percent of their value — more than Bitcoin.

So, there was a bubble — and everybody was riding the bubble, everybody was issuing an ICO, raising money — but now it’s gone bust.

I think that they’ve lost already 95 percent of their value and they could lose another 95 percent.

I would say 99 percent of cryptocurrencies are worth zero. Just because some people believe in something alternative to fiat currencies — alternative to gold — then, like collectibles, some people are going to hold some Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not going to disappear. But, you know, Ethereum is a bubble and it’s a bit of a scam — it’s worth nothing — XRP, all the other ones, they’re all going bust.”

Catherine Ross: Why do you think Ethereum is a scam?

It’s a scam because the technology. They talk about smart contracts — there’s nothing about them that is smart, they’re all buggy. They’re not real contracts because you have to enforce certain contracts, you cannot have just the code.

They’ve tried things that have failed: Their DAO was a failure.

You know, there’s a lot of people [who] talk about their DApps or their distributed apps. 75 percent of those apps are what? CryptoKitties, Ponzi schemes and other pyramid schemes, and other casino games, like Las Vegas. So, after a decade, what does Ethereum have to show us? CryptoKitties and Ponzi schemes? And that’s what they’re doing? They’re not doing anything that is of any use to anybody.

CR: But if a smart contract is a technology, — and you said “it’s buggy” — technology can be buggy and it can be fixed. Don’t you think we need more time to see the technology rise and smart contracts working better?

NR: I don’t believe, first of all, in smart contracts. By definition, any contract has to be enforced by lawyers — [there is nothing that is enforced] by itself. So, the idea that you put everything in a code in a contract is silly to begin with. And, you know, a typical other program has less than one percent of bugs in its code, and a typical smart contract has 10 percent of its code  is buggy [sic].

I mean, this is the reality where we are in now.

And by the way, the broader question about cryptocurrency is that they are not scalable, and there’s no system that makes them scalable; they’re not decentralized because the entire system is [becoming] centralized; and they are not secure because there are so many ways to hack them.

So, it doesn’t have any functions [it] should have: It’s not scalable, it’s not secure, it’s not decentralized. So, what is it worth for? With Bitcoin, you can do five transactions per second; with Visa, you can do 25,000 transactions per second.

They’ve [the blockchain community] been saying for a decade, “We are going to resolve it with proof-of-stake rather than proof-of-work.” It has not worked yet. And even if there was something scalable, it’s going to be centralized and therefore is not secure. So, there’s a fundamental flaw in the technology.

At least financial systems that we know are centralized, yes, but they’re secure and they’re scalable.  

They’ve been talking about fixing it, but Vitalik Buterin, who is the creator of Ethereum, said you cannot have a blockchain system that has three characteristic of the same time: being scalable, decentralized, and secure.

On trusting financial system

CR: Even after the 2008 global financial crisis, you still believe in the traditional financial banking banking system?

Traditional financial systems are centralized —  and there’s nothing wrong with institutional centralizing in my view. They [the blockchain community] criticize it, saying “We want it decentralized.”

But I prefer a centralized system with a trusted authority — but at least they’re secure and scalable.

There’s a lot of talk about decentralization: Miners are centralized as an oligopoly, coders are centralized, exchanges are centralized — as 99 percent of all transactions occur on a centralized exchange — and there’s a massive concentration of wealth. This is worse than North Korea in terms of income and wealth inequality.

The reality is just the opposite: It’s a totally centralized system.

[At the same time] there are many problems with the traditional financial systems. And I’ve been one of the biggest critics of the financial system. And I believe that there are ways to [democratize] finance and [to] make it more efficient, but this is not based on blockchain.

There is a revolution in financial services: It’s called fintech and it has zero to do with cryptocurrency and  blockchain.

It’s based on AI, machine learning, Internet of Things and big data. It’s revolutionizing payment system, insurance, credit allocation, capital market functions, and asset management.

Take, for example, payment systems: There [are] already plenty of digital payment systems — that do billions of transactions a day, and are used by billions of people around the world — that are not based on blockchain. In China, you have AliPay and WeChat Pay; in India, you have all these UPI systems; in Africa, you have M-Pesa; in the United States, you have Venmo, PayPal, Square — and so on, and so on. These are useful transactions.

With these models, you can do millions of transactions — and there are billions of transactions done by billions of people today. They are digital payment systems based on [the] traditional financial institution and fintech. They have nothing to do with blockchain. We don’t need blockchain, we don’t need crypto to [democratize] finance.

There is already a revolution: there’s going to be much more competition, there’ll be much more access. If you are a poor farmer in Kenya today, you are using M-Pesa. On your little smartphone, you can make transactions, you can borrow and lend, you can buy and sell your goods and services, you have a whole slew of financial services without the brick-and-mortar bank. And all these things are available to billions of poor people in Africa. What [do] they have to do with blockchain or crypto? Nothing, zero. So, there is a revolution and it has nothing to do with blockchain.

CR: The entire philosophy of the industry was to create a transparent system and create a new world from a financial system that you can trust, a financial system that thinks about a user, a client. So you think it failed to do what it was supposed to do?

NR: Of course, it completely failed: After 10 years, there is no killer app; the crypto assets are going bust; they’ve lost 99 percent of their value; all these experiments have led not a single corporation or single financial institution using this technology; and there is no reason why they want to use this technology. And why would you want [to]?

Why would I want to trust somebody in Russia or China to verify my transactions? It’s not safe. Why would I want to do it? There are central banks, there are corporations, there are institutions that have been existing forever that are based on trust — on the reputation. And I know what I’m dealing with.

I’d rather have those institutions verify my transaction rather than somebody in China who can manipulate everything I am doing. Why should I trust somebody while I don’t even know what the name is, who they are, what they do.

CR: So, you would rather trust a bank? How can you be sure that your money is safe?

NR: We have security laws. If a bank manipulates, there’ve been hundreds of billions of dollars in fines on the banks and their misbehavior — people ended up in jail. There are lots of problems with the traditional financial system: Blockchain and cryptocurrency do not resolve this problem. Fintech resolves it, but fintech has nothing to do with blockchain or cryptocurrencies.

I’m the first one who criticized the financial system, I’ve been writing about financial crises, I’ve been criticizing [the] banking system. I don’t believe that crypto or blockchain resolves any, any of the problems of our existing financial system, [and they] don’t resolve anything.

It’s just something for a bunch of self-serving people speaking about decentralization, speaking about freedom, speaking about [the] democratization of finance — and there is no democratization of finance, there is no more access to financial services through crypto or blockchain. There are other alternatives that exist out there, like M-Pesa, that are giving power and giving democratization of finance to billions of people in Africa. Those things have nothing to do with blockchain. I believe in those things.

I don’t believe in blockchain.

CR: I see your point of view, but just to be clear, the banking system has been around for centuries, right? So, maybe you should give the crypto industry and blockchain industries a try?

NR: No. I’m not giving it a try. I’m gonna give a try to financial innovation that changes the financial system.

All those things [mentioned above] —  they are revolutionizing finance, they are leading to competition, they are forcing the banking system to innovate or not survive, and they are changing the world. But they have nothing to do with blockchain. Why should I give the benefit of the doubt to something that has not provided any application which is used by anybody. I don’t believe in it and the proof is in the pudding.

CR: My last question is, have you ever tried trading cryptocurrency?

NR: I haven’t tried it. Some people say, “Oh, you are critical of crypto because you are shorting Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies.” I have zero position — I have no long position, no short position.

I may be right or may be wrong, but crypto could go to the moon to go to zero; I’m not going to make a penny out of it. I’m an intellectual. I’m an academic. I have no conflicts of interest.

My only thing is my own academic reputation. If I’m proven wrong, my reputation is going to be negatively affected. But I’m not going to make a penny. And therefore, I’m not going to take a position one way or another because if I take a position, I have a financial interest to talk down or up a particular cryptocurrency; and that’s not my interest.

I’m an intellectual and I’m not going to make money —  one way or another — out of it.

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[bloojayoolie]

Being Alone, America, and Anaconda: Trade Deficit: What does it mean for us? WeAreCapitalists~ Currency outflow is offset by capital inflow. Foreign investment is responsible for about 7 million jobs, $57 billion in Research and Development, and S350 billion in additional exports. Foreigners are bankrolling 30% of our National Debt. Global Influence: Supply of foreign held USD is part of why the Dollar is the globally preferred "universal currency," The main economic news of late is regarding President Trump's tariffs. It's the only way! We must do something to fight the trade deficit! Or do we...? Just how big of a deal is the trade deficit? The topic of international trade and financing, or Balance of Payments, can be complicated and confusing. Current Account, Capital Account, Financial Account, exchange rates, reserves, etc are all interlinked. Rather than diving straight into the technical economics of international trade, let's take it step by step. Start by thinking about what happens to the money that goes overseas when we buy something, and they don't buy from us in return. Take China as an example. In 2017, we had imported $505 billion from them, and exported only $130 billion, with a $376 billion trade deficit on our end.[1] So they're sitting on $376 billion of our money, what do you think they do with that? They're surely not stuffing it in their mattress or burning it for heat, because unlike the Venezuelan Bolívar, USD is actually valuable. How valuable? Let's consider the role of the US Dollar in the world stage. It serves as 64% of the world's central bank reserve currency, with the Euro coming in at a distant second at 20%[2]. Following WW2 and the Bretton Woods Conference, the USD is desired by financial institutions world wide because of the Dollar's... 1. Stability: our inflation is relatively well-controlled compared to other countries, and we don't mess around with it as much as, say, China. USD's value is predictable, 2. Liquidity: this is a self-fulling prophesy; the USD is easy to trade with, because everyone wants it, which makes it easy to trade with. Rather than converting USD to RMB to Yen to Ruble, it's easier to just use the dollar to trade internationally, since just about everyone is willing to accept it as a means of exchange. 3. Safety: with the US as one of the world's superpowers, it's less likely for the US to collapse. 4. Has Lender of Last Resort: the US Federal Reserve as a lot of power and resources to back up the USD.[3] In fact, the Chinese term for USD is "美金" [4] which translates literally as "Beautiful Gold" With that in mind, let's revisit what a business in China could be doing with their giant mounds of USD, and how it affects us. Say they use it for international trade with countries OTHER than the US. They take $100 of USD to buy oil from Russia, who uses it to buy tools from Germany, who uses it to buy something else from someone else. "In the foreign exchange market, the dollar rules. More than 85 percent of forex trading involves the U.S. dollar... Around $580 billion in U.S. bills are used outside the country. That's 65 percent of all dollars. That includes 75 percent of $100 bills, 55 percent of $50 bills and 60 percent of $20 bills. Most of these bills are in the former Soviet Union countries and in Latin America." [2] How does that affect us? As an analogy, consider my stack of gift-cards that my friends and I have been re-gifting each other. It's at least $500+ worth of cards to Best Buy, Victoria's Secret, Game Stop, Olive Garden, etc. Because giving a Best Buy $50 gift card is less tacky than saying, "I'm too lazy to shop for you, here's $50 cash, happy birthday." So we just recirculate the cards to each other for birthdays, holidays, etc. So, years ago, one of us had given Best Buy $50 to buy that card, and none of us has bothered to redeem it yet. To us, it's a medium of exchange with a promised value of $50 in goods and services backed by Best Buy, valuable as long as Best Buy exists. How does that affect Best Buy? They took our $50 years ago, and have yet to give anything in return, until one day one of us decide to cash it, in which case Best Buy will have to provide $50 worth of goods and services. In the mean time, $50 has become less valuable through inflation, and BestBuy essentially got a $50 loan, interest free. [Note: we are not endorsing Best Buy in any way, it just happened to be the gift card randomly on top of the stack] The same goes for the outflow of USD that ends up being floated around the world. We get to enjoy the benefits of the goods or service NOW, without having to give anything in return until the foreign holder of the currency decides to cash in, whenever that may be. If they never cash in, and instead choose to keep using that USD for international exchange, then it's like if my friends and I kept exchanging that Best Buy gift card forever. Winner is Best Buy, who doesn't need to owe up to their obligation. And if the foreign holder of USD does decide to cash in, and actually buy something from us, then we had essentially received an interest free loan in the interim, saving a total of about $20 BILLION in interest per year from the currency being floated around [3]. What about jobs? Well, majority of the outflow on the Current Account (Trade Deficit) does come back to us via inflow on the Capital Account, meaning investments from abroad. The United States is the largest single recipient of Foreign Direct Investment in the world, meaning foreigners REALLY like investing in us. As of 2016, FDI position was over $3.7 TRILLION dollars. That year alone saw an inflow of $457 billion dollars in investments [5], compared to a trade deficit of $737 billion in 2016 [6]. Nationally, this is what Foreign Direct Investment brings to our country [7]: 1. Supporting US Jobs: 6,820,700 US Workers employed by US affiliated of majority foreign-owned firms in 2015. 2. Investing in R&D: $57 billion in R&D spending by majority foreign-owned firms in 2015 3. Expanding US Exports: $353 billion contribution in US exports by majority foreign-owned firms operating in the US in 2015. This is only factoring in direct investments, not including investments via shell corporations and private "grass-root" buyers. For example, a few years ago I was managing the construction of a luxury condominium. Many of the buyers were college or grad students from China who were here on student visas. Why would a college student, with no income, need to buy condos? Because the secondary (or primary?) reason why their parents had sent them to go to college here, is to be a vehicle to privately purchase US property as investments, to get around their home country's restrictions and regulations on investing overseas. This is a win-win for both us and them. They want to invest in the US because of our stability and property rights, and are willing to pay a premium for it. Despite our real estate bubble bursting occasionally, and our economic downturns, the US is still a safer bet than much of the world. Our government does not arbitrarily confiscates private property "in the name of the People." So the foreign buyers get a safer investment, while we get influx of funding, which would finance and encourage further development, which creates jobs in the construction, manufacturing, and service industries. Like New Yorkers who own a condo in Miami that they use 2 weeks a year, the foreign investors are paying property taxes on an empty Pied-à-terre to finance schools, roads, and other services that they don't use. These secondary investments aren't shown in statistics like FDIs (if you can find a source on the true volume, please share, I'd love to see how the statistics match my anecdotal and professional observations). Another way that foreign entities are spending their stockpile of USD is by buying our national debt. As of March 2017, foreign countries are holding $6.3 trillion of treasury securities, including China, which was holding almost $1.2 trillion by itself in March 2018, followed by Japan at just over $1 trillion, with Ireland coming in 3rd at $318 billion.[8] Their investment is keeping our government solvent. Should we be worried about foreign countries "owning" our government? I'm not. One lesson to take from Trump and his Taj Mahal bankruptcies [9]: when you owe the bank a little money, the bank owns you. When you owe the bank ALOT of money, you own the bank. Banks have power over small borrowers, until the borrower becomes too big to fail, where their failure would bankrupt the bank. China can't afford to let our government collapse, they've got $1.2 trillion dollars riding on us. It's like a poison pill, if we go down, so do they! They can't devalue our currency, because they'd devalue their own investments. And it's a deterrent for war: we would suffer a bit from losing a source of consumer goods, while they would lose their investment. One other indirect benefit of our negative current account is global influence. You might be asking, "Wait, how can a trade deficit be prestigious?" By "Making it rain USD" on the world, we maintain our status of being the big player, a status that has benefits. "Overall, the fact that English is the common language of international business and politics is of considerably more benefit to the United States than is the global role of the dollar."[3] Being English speakers is a great privilege, and the unique convenience and power that comes with it is often taken for granted when we do business or travel overseas. As the joke goes, foreigners all of a sudden know English when you whip out your USDs. Bottom line, the trade deficit isn't all bad, and has some benefits. What goes around, comes around, including money. The flow of currency and capital is best regulated by the Market, not tariffs and regulations. Like the tide, you can work against it at great effort and cost, or work with it to your advantage. Picture Source: https://ift.tt/2lD4dZB [1] https://ift.tt/2tahQnu [2] https://ift.tt/2lo94hv [3] https://ift.tt/2xOkbGz [4] https://ift.tt/2MjAkj0 [5] https://ift.tt/2c7oqCJ [6] https://ift.tt/1EXeEci [7] https://ift.tt/2m5Chm3 [8] https://ift.tt/2MgbXCK [9] https://ift.tt/2byPZZ0

[chrisabraham]

Crypterium makes spending Bitcoin Apple Pay easy

Crypterium is a cryptobank with the goal of turning the impenetrable volatile world of cryptocurrency into a contactless payment platform that's as easy-to-use as the Starbucks App is for buying coffee--providing cryptocurrencies to mainstream everyday users.  Once cryptocurrencies are as simple and easy to use every day as dollar bills the benefits of cryptocurrency--lower transaction costs, speed of payment, removal of national boundaries, and so on--become real. Crypterium will free you to easily spend your cryptocurrencies IRL.

Bitcoins have been more stocks and bonds than actual cash

Right now, Bitcoins are almost strictly being used as investment vehicles. They're stuck like stocks or bonds into just something you track on your phone or look up online.

There's enough of a barrier to entry--tech, cost, and expense--associated with converting government-backed fiat money into cryptocurrency that it's like owning 400 troy ounce (27 pound!) gold bars like they have in the movies. Sure, you're rich as hell at $515,778.38-per-London Good Delivery Bar but how're you going to move that money into a form that you can buy and trade with? It's both physically heavy and logistically-suspicious.

When it comes to cyrptocurrency,  the next step needs to be cryptobanking because even something that's as simple in Europe with the SWIFT network as sending a bank wire in America is expensive and a pain in the ass, requiring paperwork and signatures and even federal oversight. And that's just getting Greenbacks into a digital wallet like Coinbase or GDAX. That's even before buying your very first Litecoin, Namecoin, Dogecoin, PotCoin, Ethereum, and especially, Bitcoin.

I was an early adopter of Bitcoin

I have been playing around with Bitcoin (Ƀ) since 2009 when I played miner.  All this demanded was using my computer's CPU to mine blockchain blocks using an app in a way that resembles mining diamonds or gold: a new site is easier to mine than an old mine. The more mature the coin (Bitcoin is the oldest) the more brute computing "exertion" is required to make new cryptocurrency available, emulating the rate at which commodities are mined from the ground.

Even today, all cryptocurrency--Litecoin, Namecoin, Dogecoin, PotCoin, Ethereum, and especially Bitcoin--is tough to acquire. Scanned and uploaded Passports and Driver's License, a $50 international wire from your bank (which could result in your account being closed for money laundering), and then the constant threat of hacking, theft, market collapse, as well as the very real threat of being locked out of your own wallet forever. And then there's the daily limits on selling. And, of course, when I misplaced what's called a cryptocurrency paper wallet--the only access anyone on planet earth can ever access your coins--all was naught.

The age of panning for Bitcoins is over

Now, Bitcoin-mining demands supercomputing powers and more power costs than the coins had been worth. Since I started mining in the early days, even a commercial PC could mine actual Bitcoins. I wonder where I securely hid those first mined coins. After misplacing my private key--I lost my paper wallet! I pray to Saint Anthony every day (Tony, Tony, look around. Something's lost and must be found!)

Later, I had a vendor who insisted on being paid with Bitcoin back in 2010-2013. This was the first time I needed to move money from my bank account into my first--and most popular--digital wallet, Coinbase. It was good practice for now but it required me to formally order a wire transfer and then go down to the physical bank myself to fill out forms with a pen on paper and then be told that there was an actual chance that my international wire transfer would be scrutinized under some international money laundering law and that there was a chance that my assets would be seized, my access to the money would be frozen, and my account would be closed. Yikes! It never came to that but it was a pain in my butt (and that vendor is so rich in crypto that he can now buy and sell me like penny candy).

The future of money is cryptobanking

To get everything moving, Crypterium launched its own ICO (Initial Coin Offering) on Halloween that will remain open until January 12, 2018.

Simply put, according to Wikipedia, "an initial coin offering (ICO) is a means of crowdfunding centered around cryptocurrency, which can be a source of capital for startup companies. In an ICO, some quantity of the crowdfunded cryptocurrency is preallocated to investors in the form of "tokens," in exchange for legal tender or other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. These tokens become functional units of currency if or when the ICO's funding goal is met and the project launches."

In the case of Crypterium, they have the CRPT Token.  The price of a CRPT Token has been set at 0.0001 Bitcoin in order to make the initial buy in affordable and accessible in these times of $16,037 Bitcoins. Crypterium is accepting payments in Bitcoin, Etherium, and fiat currencies such as US Dollars, Euros, etc.

Sisyphus mines Bitcoin

It's pretty exciting that the future of banking is a currency without country. That the value of cryptocurrencies are based more on mass hysteria and a quest for value than on the strength and power of a nation's military. While technically cryptocurrencies can be fiat currencies, Bitcoin, for example, has a limited supply. Bitcoin is the Manhattan and Bay area of Cryptocurrencies.

No matter what, there will never be more than 21 million BTC ever produced.

What's more, the closer the currency is to 20999999.9769 BTC, the exponentially harder it will be to mine them: the cost of the hardware required to mine the coin and the amount of electricity required to power that level of brutal computing will probably mean only nation states with access to free electricity (The Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric gravity dam, after all).

That's one of the greatest things about meta-coins like the CRPT Tokens: they allow you to straddle the value of a variety of altcoins. You can invest in a variety of cryptocoins and spread your money around and, as Bitcoin becomes too expensive for you or it stagnates (probably won't, it'll surely reach $1 million-a-coin at least), you can cross invest and make sure you're able to work in an environment where your cryptocurrency daily driver won't be so volatile that the pizza you bought at 11PM for $10 actually cost you $700 because of market volatility. You'd hate that right? Even though that's a stupid thought game (when I was living in Berlin, a Euro cost $1.30 and a Pound Sterling cost $2, now it's closer to $1.10 and $1.30), volatility is only good when you're holding and not when you're spending.

I look forward to Cryptobanks like Crypterium because I like the idea of being supranational and not relying on US or German banks and banking. I love the idea of having my wealth and value swirling both safely and accessibly somewhere in the cloud. And while cryptocurrencies don't have to be cloud-based and can be actual real things in the form of a private key in a paper wallet, both accessibly and convenience are important for me. So, until now, I have relied on Coinbase, and in the near future, I shall be relying on cryptobanks like Crypterium.

Actually, Keith Teare, Co-founder of Techcrunch, does a better job than I at explaining Crypterium:

And here's more info from the horses' mouths, the Crypterium Team:

Good luck and Happy Boxing Day! Via Biznology.