I have neither the balls nor the brains to get into crypto on my own, thanks.

Or is it all over the country?

Say, Ping -- are Coinbase or Coinflip more anonymous ways to get the goods?

Coinbase

I know someone that was dabbling with Coinbase. And I think they made a profit at it too. ;)

www.rt.com/usa/fbi-owns-largest-bitcoin-wallet-458/

They have BTC vending machines in Keene NH, and unless I'm a monkey's uncle it's legit fizical coins.

How can you get physical coins when Bitcoin is a digital currency?

Can you say, "Ooo eee ooo ha ha ting tang walla walla bing bang?" ;)

But don't our banks and ergo the tax thieves routinely know about any money we put into crypto -- unless we buy literal Bitcoins in in a local shop?

Not as a matter of routine, no. It's a more complex question, but crypto is borderless, so if one obtains crypto from an international source that doesn't answer to your government's regulations, then you get the crypto and no one really knows about it.

Now they can see that a credit card was used to send dollars to that entity, but they can't normally ID the crypto that was sent back in return as belonging to you.

A caveat here is that if the gov does learn which crypto wallet belongs to you, such as the place you bought crypto from reporting it to the gov, then they can see all transactions going in and out of that wallet and ask you questions about that. To prevent that one would need a wallet that is never disclosed as being your wallet, and such non- disclosure would mean never xferring crypto funds from the wallet to another entity that knows who you are AND will report it to the gov in the form of any inquiries or financial reports.

This does not apply to privacy coins like Dash, ZCash and Monero. With those, it's not known from their blockchain how much crypto in is each wallet, nor can one associate any two transactions involving that wallet as being related. For example if you received a payment and paid someone else, outside entities can probably see those 2 transactions, but cannot tell that those 2 transactions involved your wallet, or even whether they involved the same wallet. So if you are using those coins then you got your privacy.

But even without the privacy cryptos, once crypto is obtained by one person, its effective cash for many practical purposes as there is no ID tied to that crypto after one has it. You can hand it off to another person and they do the same and pretty soon, stuff gets pretty convoluted when it comes to tracking.

And you can always create a new wallet periodically yourself to obsolesce the old one and force a reset of any tracking that may be going on.

Your advice sounds good -- maybe I'll put $5000 wherever she says to, and sell whenever she says to.

That is legit to think that way, however, do understand that thinking that way assumes the dollar is a stable unit of wealth measurement. I generally don't do that myself. I instead view dollars as a sinking ship, and in fact, crypto as a safe-haven against that sinking. In fact, "safe-haven" implies that crypto will merely preserve my spending power when in fact if & when dollars do start to implode, it will mean my spending power should go up exponentially.

But it's an approach and philosophy that makes holding crypto through price swings tolerable, and has worked well for me. Sure trying to milk more dollars out of crypto trading can be profitable, even very profitable, but if the titanic moment does come when dollars collapse and crypto goes to the moon, those in that practice will likely find themselves having sold a lot of their crypto for dollars at the wrong time.

Say, Ping -- are Coinbase or Coinflip more anonymous ways to get the goods?

For anonymity, one is best off buying crypto from an international entity that accepts credit cards but isn't in your gov's jurisdiction.

I'll let you know what she advises me to do with my $5000.

BTW, my Generac stock that I bought after the big Texas Freeze is doing great. Thanks again for suggesting that.

How can you get physical coins when Bitcoin is a digital currency?

Bitcoin ATM's would only dispense bitcoin and accept physical dollar cash, or more likely a credit card. Someone once had the idea of making a physical bitcoin, and it would work by having the coin sealed up in a non-counterfeit fashion, but when opened, would reveal the private key of the wallet holding the face value of the physical bitcoin. So by destroying the physical coin, you can obtain digital access to the actual bitcoin backing that particular coin.

Don't think it took off, but in theory it could work.

Back to the kiosk thing, a basic problem with xferring bitcoin is the high transaction fees. It can cost $20-$30 to do a transaction. The high cost is a combination of the low capacity of the bitcoin blockchain to record transactions and the cost of bitcoin constantly going up, as the payment is made in bitcoin itself.

Now there is something called a "Lightning Network" overlay of the bitcoin blockchain that is supposed to address that, and I t hink El Salvador is making use of that. I understand it makes bitcoin transactions free or nearly free, and fast, such that you can buy a stick of bubblegum with it (do tiny transactions) without breaking the bank.

It's on my to-do list to look into that. The wallet is called, I think, Chivo (spanish for "goat" -- don't ask me why).

It's on my to-do list to look into that. The wallet is called, I think, Chivo (spanish for "goat" -- don't ask me why).

I knew this Spanish girl online. I told her I knew a true Spaniard in Chicago. His name was Gomez. Everyone called him Gomer. She said Gomez was a good name. ;)

The current financial system is obsolete but few have figured that out so far.

Currently, the FED has been buying up all of the short term notes being sold into secondary markets by China and Brazil.

If the time ever comes when they fail to do so, the inflation rate here will make the price of a loaf of bread in the Weimar Republic pale by comparison, when you needed a wheel barrow full of German Marks to buy a loaf of bread.

BTW, Hitler had a great sense of irony. He forced the French to sign the Armistice in the same rail car the French had Germany sign the Versailles Treaty. ;)

www.rt.com/usa/fbi-owns-largest-bitcoin-wallet-458/

I am sure this amount would be a drop in the bucket compared to what the CIA had put aside running Opium out of Afghanistan. All of those funds went directly into the CIA black budget for clandestine operations.

Just ask BillDBerger about the Air America planes he saw at that Air Force base in northern Thailand. ;)

decrypt.co/73125/el-salva...n-law-btc-is-legal-tender

www.fool.com/the- ascent/b...-billion-bitcoin-fortune/

How can El Salvador be on the leading edge of anything? just asking...

It actually makes sense one you realize Brandon is the leader of MS-13. It all makes sense then.

The Central Banks are bringing out their own digital currencies. The whole world might blow up before we get to the other side.

I expect very few of us will survive this Grand Solar Minimum which we entered in 2020. Might not end until 2060.

BTW, Hitler had a great sense of irony. He forced the French to sign the Armistice in the same rail car the French had Germany sign the Versailles Treaty.

Hitler was the front-man for the greatest scam ever perpetrated on humanity, the roll-out of a State in which any and all Jewish criminals are granted immunity from rule of law.

As it is, I'm nearing retirement and currently hold zero crypto. What percentage of my retirement savings would you recommend that I put in crypto? Which crypto(s)? (I realize you probably get asked that a lot, and that you might not want to answer in specifics for several good reasons. Understood, no problem.)

Thanks and Regards.

I can't recall the exact line near the end of one of Irving's books on WW2, but he said something to the effect that when Churchill surveyed Europe in its aftermath, he realized that Britain had lost the war.

Do you think Hitler was complicit in this scam, or an unwitting tool of the elites? Or what?

Do you think Hitler was complicit in this scam, or an unwitting tool of the elites?

Nothing happens by accident in politics.

I can see how crypto could render some functions of banks obsolete, but do you mean all (legitimate) functions? Mortgage lending? -- I guess there are alternatives to banks for that, but crypto wouldn't do for that, would it?

As you know, at present, local banks create loans via fractional reserve activity. They do it by creating an account for the borrower and type in the amount of the loan. New currency enters the economy that did not exist before.

With crypto, they cannot create it the way they do dollars now. If a loan is to be made, it has to be made the old fashioned way. Someone or some people who actually possess the needed amount need to hand it off to the borrower, so in that way, no new currency is created to inflate the economy, and savers would be rewarded for saving.

Would that make borrowing very hard? Maybe. The free market could come up with a solution if there is a market need for a solution, as the market always does.

Now in theory it would be possible for banks to arise to hold crypto for people that don't trust themselves or their housemates with access to their crypto wallets. If that should happen then all of the history that's transpired with gold and silver could repeat itself. If they can turn gold and silver into paper, then turn that paper into digital entries and make a lot more representations of gold and silver than actually exists, then they can most certainly do the same to bitcoin or any other. But it will be harder because whereas gold and silver is hard to keep safe in your house justifying a banks service as safekeeper, crypto is easier to keep safe. At least from burglars.

Am I repeating myself again.

For anonymity, one is best off buying crypto from an international entity that accepts credit cards but isn't in your gov's jurisdiction.

Pleasexplain. How is that more private when it still starts with an outlay from the mainstream financial system?

What percentage of my retirement savings would you recommend that I put in crypto? Which crypto(s)?

In my view, and this is a viewpoint I've acquired in the last few months, crypto is better than gold and silver. And I say that as one that really likes the metals.

The problem with gold/silver is that the price of those metals is manipulated by big finance, and I mean suppressed. Everyone knows that. Silver can't even be mined at the current price as miners would lose money so the only silver getting mined are as byproducts of mining copper and whatever else. And I expect they will keep manipulating the price down until the day the dollar collapses. THEN we will se $800 silver, but what good will that be when $800 buys as much as $25 does now?

It's great as an inflation hedge, but I want to do better than to simply hedge inflation, and crypto is doing that because unlike metals, the mechanisms are not in place to suppress crypto prices.

That's an aside, somewhat, but perhaps it argues well that if you have precious metals in your portfolio, consider converting a double digit percentage into crypto. Maybe 50% or ever 75%, depending on your specific circumstances. Obviously it would be best to do that on a crypto pullback (in dollar terms) to get the best bang, but doing it on a dollar cost averaging system isn't bad either. Convert 5% per month or something like that.

I don't know much about stocks and other assets to compare with crypto, but if the balloon goes up, then those stocks might crash. Again, I don't see crypto as risky. I see it as a safe haven, and I'm not kidding or exaggerating with that. The value of most other assets can be manipulated. So long as crypto is immune to that manipulation, it's the place to be.

As for which cryptos, I'd diversify. Bitcoin is a bit of a stage coach tech, compared to 18-wheeler tech that other coins offer, but it has name recognition which is a factor that should not be underestimated. I expect it will be around for the long haul, and there is also the element of software upgrades that Bitcoin and any crypto can benefit from.

Ethereum is the world's #2 crypto by market cap, and it's a high tech coin. The blockchain supporting Ethereum also supports a number of other crypto coins whose makers were too lazy to make their own proprietary blockchain. So that lends a need-value to Ethereum. Eth is also in the process of being upgraded to 2.0 so it's capable.

If you want to just buy and hold crypto, those are the 2 to get, IMO. If you want to make bigger money then there are a number of other cryptos that could be juggled, and if you're lucky, you might pull off some of the profits others have reported here. But there are many hundreds of cryptos out there. I don't venture much beyond about 25 or 30 of them.

Great. Now if you were the jew world order politicians, what plot would you hatch to get rid of it? Remember now, you have the highest tech in history and unltd funds at your disposal.

I appreciate that challenge, being in the Info Tech field.

To get rid of crypto, and by that, you mean free market crypto, as crypto issued by central banks would grant even more control over the economy than they have now.

Well, first and foremost, free market crypto can't be forced out of existence. It's decentralized and internet based. It's international, beyond the jurisdiction of any one government.

The only way to get rid of it is to get rid of the internet. But if I do that, then economies world over all crash because they are already addicted to the internet. The people will not accept that, and besides, that would mean no more facebook, google or twitter to use to manipulate peoples beliefs. No, that's over kill.

There's the "if you can't beat them, join them" strategy which would entail having central banks issue their own competing crypto. Which they are doing and China is leading the way in that regard. Many CB's world over are in the rush, the Fed Reserve included, though they are behind the curve, so far as I know. But get a gov sanction CB crypto out there first so people won't turn to the free market cryptos. But that comes with the risk of normalizing digital currency in the minds of the population I want to control, and if I teach them to use CB crypto, they may find it more accepting to use free market crypto. Still, add in government enforcement of CB cryptos with legal tender laws and it may work, at least for a while.

Aside from that, there is the demonization of free market crypto with the help of big finance instiution CEO's that keep getting interviewed about crypto. But those guys really aren't on my side. They want to make money for themselves, and if they see a quick buck to be made with crypto, they'll do it as easily as they'd buy stock in any new found company they encounter.

So I guess that's about it as far as what I could do about it as the "Pinky and the Brain" arch nemesis to world freedoms. What else could I possibly do?

But once crypto is purchased, then from that point on, it can xfer hands and get lost in the shuffle just as cash is. One could even arrange payment to a middle man to buy it for you for a % commission, and if that happens, the selling exchange just has that middle man's info on file. It might be illegal, either now or one day in the future, but even that could be a stretch because it's an international arena and laws have limited geographical jurisdiction and their are dozens of exchanges world over that will sell you crypto. It's really a case of govs trying to catch rain water in a colander. They can see who buys it first, but tracking transfers of crypto after that is a real PITA. And that's not even addressing the merits of private cryptos.

There is this. The gov may try, rightly or wrongly to track crypto for tax purposes, but the practical matter is that crypto is borderless. So while some US based exchanges would fall under this jurisdiction, a great many others would not. Americans acquiring crypto from international sources would ultimately be on an honor system with the IRS to report what they have acquired (over $10k worth, I suppose, somehow accounting for the great fluctuation of dollar value of crypto), albeit with criminal penalties for failure to do so. And proving ownership itself could be nebulous in some cases as all crypto is on the internet, and "possession" of crypto consists of having or simply knowing a digital private key that has provides power to handle the funds.

So enforcement of crypto tracking as with fiat dollars is certainly a tougher challenge for any government. Ultimately, the gov may need to go back to taxing imports and land like they used to. That as a practical matter.

The kids and my wife both agree with Ping that Bitcoin and Ethereum are the cryptos for me. Family is telling me 40% Bitcoin, 40% Ethereum, and 20% mad money to spread around speculatively in hopes of hitting the crypto jackpot.

Twixt the main 2, looking at their historical charts, I'm leaning more toward Ethereum than Bitcoin.

I went out and bought four today. A 0-20 pencil, a 0-50 pencil, 0-60 dial and a new digital gauge. I replaced the battery (CR2032) in my old digital gauge, the tire pressure in every tire of Weyland Yutani One was exactly 1.0 PSI.

I forgot about the gauge in my tire plug box, I think that might've been my dad's. It still probably works. Or O'Riely's Auto Parts stock.

"The inverse multiple L’Hospital’s Rule hashtag prosthaphaeresic regression blockchain derivative superposition transaortic distillation parallels with the cumulative thixotropic quantitative rollover saturation monotonic inflection matrices registration positraction ..."

That's what I hear when Ping starts enucleatin' on the subject.

en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Apheresis_(linguistics)