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November 10, 2023

I corresponded with Sam Konkin briefly at the turn of the millennium. He seemed okay to me, but I was never someone who admitted to having money so he never hit me up. I continue to believe that the New Libertarian Manifesto was more consistently Rothbardian than much of what Rothbard wrote, which just goes to show that sometimes great messages come from otherwise deeply flawed people.

Bitcoin continues to sail up. I don't think it's at all clear if there is any certainty that it won't moderate in price once again. If you look at the price chart over the long term, new all time highs get set (and I am expecting one in the next few months) and then the price stays high only a little while before something spooks the market and it crashes. But it doesn't crash below the previous low. It sets higher lows and higher highs, and that's been true for quite a while. As we all know the total possible BTC is 21 million and the vast majority have been mined. The current number is helpfully kept here:

https://buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoins-are-there/ and is 19,538,775 as of the time of me composing this message. Obviously more every ten minutes, but not that many more, since the miners are making more from transaction fees than from newly mined/minted coins.

By the way, that's one of the things about "Googling" for everything. Certain data is simply easier to find if you happen to know another URL. Like Coinmarketcap.com for things related to crypto. I have one of those irritating memories, which I refer to as "my photogenic memory." It isn't photographic, but it makes me look good. -grin-

So, at home ("home is where the laptop is") I can just type the first few characters and my browser gives me the link in a list and boom, I know the thing. Oh, sure, I used to own a house, but that had to go in 2017. God put me on the road in 2020 and I'm in a very good place right now. I'm not at all committed to the "caravanarchy" lifestyle, and don't own a vehicle presently, either. But there are good places in North America where a person can live comfortably. And, after all, we don't have nanny state morons convincing everyone to give up their guns. We still have the fools, don't get me wrong, but over half the states have right to keep and bear arms codified at the "constitutional carry" level as of today. You can see the map here: https://l5news.substack.com/p/happy-independence-day The green states are all constitutional carry and the purple/magenta states just became that way as of the post. Twenty-seven states. People sometimes ask me how I see the "national divorce" happening, and while I still think the inertia of the system remains far greater than the expectations of those who want change would have it, if I were going to see a division into two countries, it would be on those lines, where the evil nasty commie socialist scum are concentrated on the coasts and the right to keep and bear arms is the sine qua non in flyover country. New Mexico for various reasons just doesn't get it. Rural counties in eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and the northeast corner of California would likely file for divorce, and same for the vast majority of rural Colorado outside the big cities of Denver and Boulder.

But to get back to the Bitcoin (BTC) price chart, if you look at the high back in Dec 2013, just over $1K, it fell to a low of a little less than a quarter that value, then made a new all time high (ATH) in 2016 and has never been below the 2013 high since then. Follow the price action in Dec 2017/Jan 2018, at $17.5K (a nice double top btw) and subsequent low in 2019 ($3.6K or a bit less than a quarter of the recent high) and you get a new floor it has not yet ever penetrated. New high in Apr 2021, $63K was quickly surmounted by a pretty double-top formation with the current ATH set at around $67K in Nov 2021. Now, I am completely in favour of Robert Heinlein's adage that "it doesn't pay a prophet to be too specific" but I don't believe that the big move by institutional investors into Bitcoin and Ethereum is going to abate any time soon. So, I would be very very very surprised (add a few more very's if you wish) if BTC ever drops below US$16K, the low reached during the sell-off last year. Those keeping track will recall that there was some seriously skanky stuff going on between Nov 2021 (the all time high) and Nov 2022 (the SBF bust). I am prepared to accept the HL Mencken quote from 1926 (Chicago Daily Tribune carried the item) “No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." So, yeah, there could be a great confluence of scams and billions of dollars of under achieving money swept up by another SBF sort of fellow, or even, after he gets pardoned by the outgoing Biden/Harris admin, by SBF his own self) in the crypto biz, but we shouldn't expect it to cause as much ruckus as to bring BTC below $16K.

All of which is to say: HODL and BTFD. Some say that HODL was just a typo for "hold" and in all caps. Others insist it stands for "Hang on for dear life." I am with the French in New Orleans: sans souci. BTFD is "buy the fine dip" and you can substitute a gerund with a different four-letter word beginning with F as you wish. There will be a dip below today's high, sure. But not below last year's low, imnsfho

And that, my friends, is how I see things shaping up in crypto. Follow me on Substack for more crazy ideas. lol

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Drew Lamb

November 10, 2023

Doug's Konkin story was hilarious!

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Doug Casey's Crisis Investing

Viewer Q&A: Failed Societies, Digital ID, Carl Jung, Agorism's Founder, "The Jewish Question", and much more

Doug Casey's Take [ep#288]

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