All posts by erickclasen

About erickclasen

This is my Blog for writing about technical items and my other thoughts. I also use it to experiment with WordPress.

M2 Money Supply

The War Machine and the Federal Reserve

Money, My Thoughts,

Give a listen to the following clips taken from the book The Creature From Jekyl Island by G. Edward Griffin. I won’t give away the plot but, bear in mind what is going on in early 2022 with regards to the Ukraine and of course previous conflicts. Each is short, about 3 – 7 minutes each.

The first audio file is a short reference for the book

1111 – ITEM Now the action has spread

1112 – The New Alchemy

1113 – Fifth Reason to Abolish

1114 – Summary

 

M2 Money Supply

Also see this chart ( https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL )  an image of which is presented as the featured image at the top of this post as of March 2020. Lots of fiat money being created lately by the system of creating debt by the Federal Reserve lending to the US Govt. Treasury and then effectively printing new money via the Treasury/Mint. As in, instead of the Govt. just minting money and creating it as one might expect, it is loaned to the Govt by the Federal Reserve. This gets around the Constitution which states that Congress can’t print bills of basically fiat money, bills of exchange. In theory bills should be against something, like a hard asset. It used to be that the Dollar was based on a specific amount of silver, that which is in the old silver dollars, I believe it was 371.25 grains of pure silver per dollar, based of the Spanish Dollar, so called pieces of 8, as it was worth 8 Reals. The dollar on paper was directly tied to this, since 1971 it is not tied to silver or gold and is just fiat.

 

 

 

Crypto Donations to Ukraine

Info Links, ,

Excerpt from 03.03.2022. Coinbase Bytes article published by Coinbase , lays out how to support Ukraine with crypto donations. Also from this it can be seen how important cryptocurrencies can be during an economic disruption. Passing this on to let others see this and also learn from what Coinbase has to say about this topic.

The quote at the bottom sums up the importance of cryptocurrencies in a time of crisis…

“My Ukrainian credit cards don’t work anymore. I’m safe physically in Kazakhstan, but all my savings are gone. Crypto is the only money I still have, and today I can say without exaggeration that $BTC, $ETH and #NFT[s] are going to save my life while I can’t come back home.”

As always with crypto, make sure you know what address you are sending to, make sure it is from a legitimate source, scams abound. Always double check the crypto address whenever cutting and pasting make sure it matches as bad actors have been known to create viruses that can hijack an address copied and pasted so funds go to them!

Links coming from legitimate sources are important. I copied some links from the excerpt below with locations to donate via crypto. For example…

The official Twitter accounts of the government and Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov shared wallet addresses for BTC, ETH, and the USD-pegged stablecoin Tether

the Kyiv Independent also listed BTC and ETH wallets

CRYPTO SUPPORT

Crypto donations pour into Ukraine as the country resists Russian invasion

As Ukraine continues to resist Russia’s full-scale invasion, international sanctions begin to hobble the Russian economy, Russian president Vladimir Putin has resorted to nuclear saber-rattling, and global markets have whipsawed. On Monday, oil prices reached over $100 per barrel for the first time since 2014, and the Russian Ruble lost 30% of its value against the dollar, plummeting to record lows. For Ukrainians, emergency economic measures — including cash withdrawal limits (about $3,350 per day) — have prompted the country’s government, citizens, and even newspapers to call for crypto aid. Let’s take a closer look at some ways crypto is assisting during a time of crisis.

  • Ukraine has raised over $30 million in cryptocurrency since tweeting an appeal for donations on Saturday. The official Twitter accounts of the government and Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov shared wallet addresses for BTC, ETH, and the USD-pegged stablecoin Tether (which saw such significant demand on Ukraine crypto exchange Kuna that it traded above its peg, reaching $1.10) Why crypto donations? As blockchain analytics firm Elliptic explains, “Cryptoassets such as Bitcoin have emerged as an important alternative crowdfunding method. They allow quick, cross-border donations.”
  • Russian-Canadian Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin amplified the appeal on Twitter as part of a string of tweets that included a sharp rebuke of Moscow, calling the invasion “a crime against the Ukrainian and Russian people.” In other Ethereum news, Uniswap added a tool on Tuesday that allows users to swap any crypto for ETH and send it to the Ukrainian government’s wallet in a single transaction.
  • A founding member of the Russian pro-democracy punk group Pussy Riot formed a DAO to raise funds for Ukrainian civilians. Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova, along with members of PleasrDAO and artist Trippy Labs, formed UkraineDAO, which sold 10,000 Ethereum-based Ukrainian flag NFTs and plans to donate all proceeds (over $5 million) to the Come Back Alive Foundation, which supports Ukraine’s military, and the Proliska non-governmental organization. (If you are considering donating crypto, be mindful of potential scams and always do your research first.)
  • The Kyiv Independent, an English-language newspaper in Ukraine is seeking crypto donations to support the country’s independent media. In addition to GoFundMe pages for the paper and several partners, the Kyiv Independent also listed BTC and ETH wallets. Meanwhile, a Berlin-based blockchain startup called Arweave is attempting to preserve historical documents about the crisis — so far its network of 1,000 nodes holds about 50 terabytes of related data.
  • Last November, The New York Times described Ukrainians as among the “most avid cryptocurrency users in the world,” and they rank fourth in Chainalysis’ 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index. Why? A combination of factors — from high inflation to a widespread lack of trust in local banks. Ukraine is also a highly tech-forward nation, with an IT export business worth almost $7 billion last year. Ukraine also adopted a progressive bill last September, enabling the government to regulate crypto.

Why it matters… Ukranians are using crypto to defend themselves from Russia’s invasion, protect their wealth, and fund their escapes to neighboring nations. In one sobering tweet, a citizen explained: “My Ukrainian credit cards don’t work anymore. I’m safe physically in Kazakhstan, but all my savings are gone. Crypto is the only money I still have, and today I can say without exaggeration that $BTC, $ETH and #NFT[s] are going to save my life while I can’t come back home.”

Crypto Basics Notes

Trading, , ,

Having an ‘edge’ and surviving are two different things: the first requires the second. You need to avoid ruin. At all costs.” – Nassim Taleb

Class Slides

The following are the handmade slides from the class. Well all but the last one on valuation.

Resources

Here on this site

See the trading category on this site for more information on trading and investing on this site…

http://erick.heart-centered-living.org/trading/

On the Internet

Also, the following are resources that were mentioned in the class. Good places to start on the path to learning more about investing and crypto as well…

Subject: Game of Trades at 14:08:10, Mon Nov 15, 2021 from 192.168.1.66

https://www.youtube.com/c/GameofTrades

Subject: The Crypto Sniper at 14:05:40, Mon Nov 15, 2021 from 192.168.1.66

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCryptoSniper

Subject: Brave New Coin at 14:04:54, Mon Nov 15, 2021 from 192.168.1.66

https://www.youtube.com/c/bravenewcoin

Subject: Josh Olszewicz at 14:03:59, Mon Nov 15, 2021 from 192.168.1.66

https://www.youtube.com/c/carpenoctom

Subject: ARK Invest at 14:02:21, Mon Nov 15, 2021 from 192.168.1.66

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK-zlnUfoDHzUwXcbddtnkg

Subject: Breaking Bad Fat Stacks at 13:45:44, Mon Nov 15, 2021 from 192.168.1.66

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48OJbbI0DfE

Subject: Electrum Wallet at 17:49:48, Sun Nov 14, 2021 from 192.168.1.66

https://electrum.org/#home

Subject: 1964 Prices at 11:14:49, Sun Nov 14, 2021 from 192.168.1.29

https://www.reference.com/history/much-did-everyday-items-cost-1964-cfba9fcd6734ea4f https://misterboomer.com/2014/04/boomers-and-the-cost-of-living-in-1964/ http://www.348-409.com/1964flash.html

Subject: Silver Coin Value Guide at 11:11:02, Sun Nov 14, 2021 from 192.168.1.29

https://www.coinflation.com/silver_coin_values.html

Sorelle Amore Finance

As far as finance, I agree with most of what she has to say…

Some Crazy Price Moves

A class on crypto would not be complete without showing some crazy price moves that are only possible in the crypto world.

AU-USD Prices to 3/2021

Opinions of Trading

My Thoughts, Trading, ,
There is too much hype an charlatanism out there waiting to mislead and take advantage of newbies, pushing a lot of nonsense. This is a quick post, stream of conciousness with some of my personal opinions.
Myself, I use several trading strategies, from mean reversion and gap buying algos running on a 5m tick tuned using genetic differential evolution, mid range day to week algos, trend and mean reverting, to manual trades that take weeks and to long term holds in a custom index fund that get added to over time. Personally for manual trading/investing if I had to choose one technique out of them all, Ichimoku would be the one. Daily/Weekly for most assets, gold and silver, Weekly/Monthly.

Trading and Investing in General

 It’s not for everyone and it’s not something to jump into blindly. Start very small, like 1% of your net worth, learn and then build up your position sizes slowly as a reward for success. Other than your ‘play’ money, while learning just buy and hold with the bulk of you invest able $. There is a lot more to it than charts and excitement when TSLA and DOGE climb. It’s more about psychology (See Elder Alexander and Morgan Housel)and risk management than anything. Forget about get rich quick and fast money, let it ride out for the long term. Day trading is not the place to start either. It is much to0 confusing for a beginner as to read signal (trend) in the noise of random price movements at low timeframes. Myself, I leave the low time frame stuff to algos, and mostly mean reversion works better than trend following with high noise at low time frames. To do algos, you need to know/learn code, well I might add, not just wing it. It’s not for everyone, depends on your skills and motivation to learn, math, physics, CS, engineering helps here. Briefly, just look at the edge cases, buy and hold and super quick trades. Super quick trades, noise, fees and slippage will eat your $ up. Plus, do you really want to sit in front of the computer watching 1,5,15m candles with a finger hovering on the mouse all day. That’s for machines to excel at, really. Buy and hold works and is super low maintenance, but in my opinion it can be easily improved on with a few small considerations. Use some basic moving averages, long ones, 1yr, 2, what ever makes sense on the major high and low cycles, then pick a multiple of this value not the time of the average, curve fit it to past data that is reasonable, DCA (Dollar Cost Average) in below the long base average, DCA out above the multiplier, like 5X the 730 day avg for BTC, for example. This helps get some more bang out of a plain buy and hold. The timing depends on how fast the asset moves. BTC, shorter cycles from peaks at about 3-5 years apart, think 2013,2018,2021 a 2 year MA works well and for the multiplier, look at the lows and highs and fit to them. Stocks, using an index like SPY, think of the last low, the real low, on March 9,2009, moves slower than BTC. But averages can be fit to the lows for a good DCA in. Gold, slower too. Look at an asset, see how long it took to 10x on a buy and hold hypothetically, that gives you a sense of the speed of assent. BTC does it in less than a year at times. Silver, just because, I know it off the top of my head was around $3 around 2003 and in 2011 it 10x’s that, a 1964 quarter was almost $0.25 in silver weight then, now it’s worth $4+ in Silver, so that’s it’s rate of change. Went on a bit of a tangent, hope this is helpful for someone.

Intro to Cryprocurrency

My Thoughts, , , , , ,

This post is a bit of a quick rant on the basics of cryptocurrencies (crypto) and is just my opinions and not any advice on investing. It started as a response to someone that was interested in learning a bit of the basics of cryptocurrency. Then I got on a roll and covered a bit of ground. It does not contain many references to sources as I was working from memory of information that I have seen or heard.

Pros and Cons

One of the cons with cryptocurrencies is wading through the charlatans and hype out there. Scammers too, malware that tries to copy your crypto addresses as you cut and paste them, always visually confirm and never leak your private addresses in an unsecured environment, they are your money. hype and nonsense out there also applies to trading, investing and mining it. Lots of pros to it. But, it all really depends what you want to do with it. The options typically center around trading,investing,mining it and using it as a payment method. I’ll work through the list a bit and build my case for crypto as I move along. Mining a coin such as ETH ,is not profitable for most people at the moment, Currently electricity and equipment costs factor into this heavily. However this may change in the future as ETH will be moved from a proof of work to a proof of stake model (a bit much to explain in this intro, but if you go to the site name for the creator of Bitcoin, Nakamoto.com, there is a whole intro to cryptocurrency series of posts there), with ETH 2.0, along with other changes. Using it as a payment method is getting simpler every day, there are numerous apps for it, Cash App and Coinbase for example.  PayPal and Venmo will be integrating crypto purchases into there systems.

Fundamentals

What is going on that may cause prices to rise

People in Europe that work on the underpinnings of the banking system that allows money to move around under the hood, kind of like our ACH system here in the US are working with the folks who developed the crypto called LINK. This has leaked out, I saw the presentation where the guy giving it slipped and said the name that LINK uses in it’s code instead of the secret project name that they were using to cover up LINK’s involvement. These projects are typically secret with NDA’s and all but, human error and a slip of the tongue can happen. The US Gov’t, Treasury Dept. has hired the person that developed the stable coin called USDC for Coinbase. He worked for a bank prior to Coinbase, the name I can’t remember, but there is a picture of him with 2 other co workers that now work in the Treasury Dept. so he was most likely hired because he was the lead in developing the USDC stable coin for Coinbase. A stable coin is a coin that attempts to stay in lockstep with a fiat currency. USDC is always $1, some others ary a little bit around $1, like a range a few pennies up and down at most. Examples are Tether and DAI. On top the Gov’t reserach into an electronic coin, there was initial language in the draft for the stimulus package that was removed that reference disbursing payments using electronic coins developed by the US Gov’t. I saw copies of this, it was interesting to see a reference to an electronic coin in a gov’t doc. Also, large banks are starting to work to become custodians for crypto currencies as well, they are entering into agreements with exchanges to be the custodians of large amount of crypto. BTC futures are traded on the Chicago exchange (Chicago Mercantile Exchange), something the big boys in the investment banks are interested in. There is something called BAKKT that the investment banks are working on, I forgot the details but, it relates to cryptocurrencies Why does this matter? This is all a big pro. Because governments adopting blockchain technology, Investment banks are starting to use crypto as an investment vehicle and considering being custodians of it and integrating blockchain tech into transactions. All of this validates it’s existence, which means only more growth in the future as people (investors really and end users eventually) realize it is not some kind of fad and a toy for tech hobbyists. Remember the curve of other tech. The first home computers were also “toys” and now we can’t live without (several of them, think phones too) them, the same will happen with crypto currencies in time. As far as investing in it. A big pro is that it is a new asset class in the world. Every time a new asset class comes into being it makes for a great investment opportunity as new asset classes don’t some along often.

Cryptocurrencies as Technology

Trading and Investing

Cryptocurrencies behave a lot like a new technology in that there is an exponential growth curve which is reflected in the price. ETH could be bought for around $10 in 2016-17 and today it is worth over $300 with recent highs above $400. Weekly time-frame Ichimoku chart has a target at $750 within the next year most likely. Trading and investing are similar but, two different animals. A con with trading in general that does not occur as easy with investing is that it is easy to lose money trading for a lot of reasons, as a beginner. Most of them have less to do with proficiency and the mechanics of trading and more to do with emotional factors, especially how we view money itself. The market it a brutal but honest teacher at times and it will teach you how to look at your belief system. And, it is always your fault when you lose, the market never lies, only we can lie to ourselves. In the beginning I wish I would have spent a bit more time learning this versus spending most of my allotted learning time on technical analysis. I have found quite a few good time tested resources on the trading topic if you are interested. Always start with a few hundred $ and work up slowly until the charts stop looking like just a bunch of lines and start to intuitively make sense and your heart no longer drops every time the prices go red. It’s as if you have to develop a Zen or Taoist attitude to the market. Start with something really simple for a trading rule and stick to it. The more simple and boring the better until you get experience. And, on a longer time frame, daily and weekly charts, not less than hourly charts to start. In the limit as time –> 0 the charts become just noise which can cause confusion at best. Crypto has much more volatility than many other asset classes, so more noise there too. Especially the small cap coins, up 100% one day, down the next and as usual it takes double the gain to make up for a loss of half, so losses mount fast in downward price shocks. BTC and ETH, being large cap are less volatile than the rest, about 3000 of them, some of which are a joke (literally DOGE and Siraj coin are memes) and really have no future at all, Big pro. Investing for the long haul is one of the easiest easy options to start that can even be combined with trading/active investing. One of the best methods to invest in an asset with exponential growth is to accumulate the asset when the price is below the 1 year to 2 year average price and then distribute out at a price that is a multiple (2,3,5) of the 1-2 year moving average. Golden Ratio Multiplier Chart. This is an almost foolproof way to actively invest and could be used to dollar cost average in at the best times. Feel free to reach out to me for any more and research. I would highly recommend listening the Lex Fridman podcast where he interviews Vitalik Buterin the co-creator of ETH to get a flavor of the mind of who is behind it.

Covid-19 and N-Acetyl Cysteine GLUTATHIONE

My Thoughts, ,

The one item of interest that I have seen lately is a case study that speaks of high oxidative stress/glutathione ratio being an indicator of poor outcome with Covid-19. This study speaks to the possibility of using NAC N-acetyl-cystine, a precursor to glutathione, it being comprised of NAC and glutamate, as a supplement to reduce oxidative stress. It also can shorten the bonds that form clotting via von Willebrand factor (VWF), a blood glycoprotein involved in hemostasis. There is a question of why not supplement with glutathione directly, as well. I know that asparagus and kombucha both contain high amounts, for food at least, of glutathione. Not sure if the body will uptake it directly or if it gets broken into the 3 amino acids and gets built back up again. With NAC/glutathione, it is also interesting to note as thrombosis has been associated with Covid-19 and of course this is a type of clotting. In my personal opinion, the links in the logic of the science with this playing a role seems plausible in theory. More studies would be required to confirm but, it is nice to see all of the effort being poured into the issue. I started down this path of research via the following videos…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtL0B1bqXak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr_6w-WPr0w

censorship

Social Media Reform

My Thoughts, , , , , , ,

Recently I posted a comment to this video below. What got me to post this comment besides the video itself was the censorship of Coronavirus videos on YouTube created by Dr. Seheult which thankfully are still all available on MedCram. Also I recently heard of censorship on Facebook as well.

Comment to Video

Personally I believe that major problems with social media as it is are privacy, censorship and machine learning curation of content that may include unintentional bias. I understand with machine learning many times the bias is accidental and purely based on the data going in to create the model. Another subtle potential issue with social media is manipulation, as in the manipulation of human behavior in order to create a situation in which they can be motivated to act in ways that are good and thereby profitable for the entity that owns the platform but not in a healthy behavior pattern for the individual in the long run. In my opinion humans can be subtly gamed with stimulating content curated by the platforms that can do things from as simple as encouraging more use of it to something along the lines of gently reforming a set of values that could sway a populations way of thinking over time. All institutions are capable of doing this but, social media being a unique personalized experience certainly has more power in this regard. It can be both your best friend and worst enemy. To shift forward into a new and more equitable model, in my opinion a good idea would be to redirect the funds that go from the government to the companies that run the social media platforms and fund programs at research universities to foster the development of alternative social media platforms. This would include any fines that would become levied on the social media companies for violations of the laws that will be written as a result of this executive order. The idea is to foster the development of alternative platforms that allow for a public commons on the Internet that is ideally along the lines of a self organizing system. Preferably it would not be under the control of any single entity and have transparency as far as the technology is concerned so there are no tricks up it’s sleeve, such as privacy concerns, censorship issues and unintended model/algorithm biases and unintentional human behavior modification. A model for this would be along the lines of what has been done with academic scientific research, open source software or other media such as Wikipedia, which by the nature of having many eyes on it becomes self adjusting to the needs and wants of the users, with the mechanism that achieves the results in plain sight. No doubt given enough funding and some bright minds on the task this could become a reality as the current technology required to achieve this goal is readily available.

Dr. Seheult Coronavirus Updates

Info Links, ,

Very informative series of videos. All of them dealing with Covid-19 to date, Dr. Seheult releases these update videos regularly. He is actively treating Covid-19 patients, from what I remember he is an internist and with pulmonary and sleep specialties. Below is a sampling of the videos that I found interesting, mostly centered on prevention and treatment. Covering new approaches such as Remdesivir and Choloquine. Supplements are also covered for general health and use for helping the bodies immune system. Plus some general information on how viruses work, which I had long forgotten about over the years. Some of the ideas in the videos are fairly unique, such as the importance of sleep for boosting the immune system and the positive effects of forest bathing.

UPDATE: There has been some censorship of Coronavirus videos on YouTube created by Dr. Seheult which thankfully are still all available on MedCram