A Sex Robot With a Chest Cold
Despite being held by world class investors like Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller, bitcoin still seems as incongruous to the financial system as a sex robot with a chest cold.
While Michael Saylor may have put US$500 million of his company’s reserve assets into bitcoin, many institutional funds are still wary of deploying capital into bitcoin because of its reputation as a black market tool and a currency for criminals.
Oh, about that MicroStrategy allocation: Saylor is issuing another US$400M in private securities for the purpose of buying more bitcoin. The trading desk at Citi are not pleased — they changed the company’s rating from neutral to a sell overnight.
We also read complaints that blockchain technology is too expensive.
Large banks see its price movements and its rapidly growing market cap and warn the public and retail investors that bitcoin is still a speculative investment.
I remember seeing posters on the Hong Kong MTR during 2017. They showed cartoon characters riding a wild roller coaster, puking off the side of the cars, and screaming while they dangled out of the ride as the cars plummeted down a steep drop. The wording went something like “Cryptocurrencies are speculative investments, like gambling. You could lose it all.” They were signed by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
On market days like this, when the price has moved down by almost US$2000, it’s easy to see why these kinds of claims get passed around.
I don’t trade bitcoin. I have held it since 2013. I never really look at it from a risk capital or trading ROI perspective. I do like to read the news about it, and gauge how the economy is handling its presence. News stories offer a glimpse of how much needs to change in finance, and how much change is tolerable.
Speaking of chest colds
I’ve done a fair bit of reading about how chest colds work, and how bacterial infections progress in the lungs and bronchioles. I can tell you that it’s not pretty. I can also tell you that hormones and white blood cells have a lot to do with why the marauding forces of congestion and mucus seems so cyclical.
It’s actually quite interesting. During the evening, when natural steroids in the body begin to diminish and dopamine and serotonin dump into the brain, they lower the resistance that the blood vessels put up, which usually keeps the breathing apparatus firm and open. Airways begin to narrow, and relax, as they are supposed to do. Then, if there is some injury or bacteria infection, leukocytes (a type of white blood cell) and histamine start to release in ever increasing amounts.
In addition to not being able to breathe because of wind resistance in narrowing breathing tubes, the mucus and the histamines start pumping and flood the chambers, so in a way you do feel like you are drowning. Subsequently, you begin to cough and hack just as you are at your most vulnerable, readying yourself to lay down with a book or tuck in for the night.
Human bodies are a fascinating ecosystem of hormones and blood. And while it feels uncomfortable, it’s all meant to clean you out and help your body fight.
This is just to say that I have again spent another night waking up at three a.m. to cough worms of mucus into the sink, though I can report that the phlegm and sputum is now clear where it used to be a yellowish color.
And as I prepare myself for a day of work, I leave you with these links:
Hong Kong social distancing rules to fight a fourth Covid19 wave are increasingly draconian, mostly because people are getting tired of following them and feel the wrong businesses are being punished for dancing aunties.
The New York State Attorney General thinks that Trump is going to resign, and then Mike Pence is going to pardon him so he can live happily ever after in Boca Raton.
Trump may resign because the Supreme Court is not having the Rudy Guilliani and GOP senators’ argument that the election was rigged, no matter how wonderfully this kind of insanity helps firm up the base for the GOP going into 2021.
Some countries are acting quickly to inoculate their public. The UK started jabbing old people to protect them from COVID19 on Tuesday.
If we don’t get inoculated soon, we will only have sex robots as partners, and we will spend days in virtual reality believing we are still alive.
