26 Comments

My request would be a how to guide for investing in the speculative/yield farming/staking/Defi Sphere.

I have custody of my own coins in a cold wallet, my BTC and ETH are 60% of the portfolio with some "blue chip/Top 100" (DOT/MATIC/SOL/LUNA/SPELL) alt coins making up the other 40% (no dog coins, lol). I am automatic dollar cost averaging daily on all above protocols from a CEFI.

I have no idea where to start in the Defi space, other than buying the protocol coins themselves from a CeFi, but just buying a curve dao or uniswap isn't really the big picure of Defi, right?

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You've said on many occasions that you're almost completely divested from USD. What would you do with a $50,000 emergency fund that needs to be relatively liquid in case of, well, an emergency? Hold USD? Lend USDC on a CEX?

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Dec 29, 2021Liked by Flirtcheap

A lot of the financially successful genXers and millennials I interact with regularly preach the endless benefits of a Roth IRA. Will this remain a viable investment for someone college aged now? as it was seemingly was for them?

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Apr 19, 2023·edited Apr 19, 2023Liked by Flirtcheap

This is excellent, I really enjoyed reading this. Especially the sections on "golden handcuffs," and the temporal and ethereal nature of online personalities.

I'm crypto-skeptic. A lot of people have made a lot of money. The technology is incredible. No disputes there. I have other concerns that a cursory search of your blog did not answer.

The first is that crypto is a purely speculative asset (at least in its current form): it only gains value when people invest in it because they believe its value will rise. It is a place to park surplus capital. QE created a lot of surplus capital in financial markets, which facilitated extraordinary valuations on cryptocurrencies as interest-free money chased high returns. As the Fed sucks liquidity out of markets with QT and starts to correct for the massive asset inflation that occurred under the QE regime, it's hard for me to imagine how high crypto valuations can be sustained.

The second concern is that crypto mining carries enormous material and energy costs. As markets snap up metals and minerals for the renewable transition, demand-side inflation will put additional pressures on a speculative asset. Then there's the supply side. As we slide into the back half of Peak Oil*, where will the surplus energy for crypto mining come from when states need every BTU they can find to keep homes heated through the winter? Again, the margins get tighter.

Assuming you track with these priors, what is the value proposition for crypto in a new era defined by energy / material scarcity? If you don't agree with my priors... why?

Thanks, man. I appreciate your insights and am looking forward to your thoughts, if you have time/interest.

*Global conventional oil production has been plummeting since 2007 despite higher populations, much higher standards of living in places like China, and generally higher demand. Last month WSJ predicted that fracked oil will peak in the next 5 years. The back half of the peak translates to ever-higher energy costs as scarcity becomes the paradigm.

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Dec 30, 2021Liked by Flirtcheap

I have to say, this was fun to read. I really appreciate your insights. I too will never get in the pod or eat the bugs. I admit I actually read this twice, to get the full effect.

This last year I've gotten into the habit of regularly converting my monthly cash savings into physical precious metals with little cash on hand for emergencies. Which now as I type this seems a little irresponsible...BUT consider this:

What if gold and silver spike in the coming months, and basically the value of said metals has now become "dear"? Am I taking too big of a risk in your opinion? This feels somewhat similar to FOMO, but the fundamentals for precious metals being a great hedge against inflation (medium-long term) is solid IMHO. Ideally(?), the spike happens this year and afterwards I build an emergency fund in USD Trash Token and like you mentioned in another comment, I just take the inflation hit "on the chin". I should also mention that I have 3 streams of revenue: a full time job, a small business, and a royalty stream. Also I am regularly DCAing into ETH.

Ultimately what I am struggling most to do is set aside cash. My instincts tell me I need to deploy it into something.

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founding
Dec 29, 2021Liked by Flirtcheap

Hypothetically I buy ETH today and say I pull a Rip Van Winkle type bender for call it 10 years.

Is there not a higher chance ETH in its current fork goes to zero? Consider hard forks, security classification by the US, centralized hosting of the network(e.g., Amazon Web Services), proof of stake complications, unkown unkowns.

Why is the best conservative strategy to not JUST stack sats?

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founding

Hey, honest but lazy question here in the general section...could I please get that Nord VPN link dropped here? Or, direct me to where it is again? I remember seeing it, but, 2yrs of archives is a bit to sift thru, so I ask my honest tho lazy question 🙏

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How you doing man? Everything good?

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Questions I’ve been accruing

- What/how do you find balance with regard to spending $ vs experience? Is it a vs?

- How do we kill the impending robots?

- What is your overarching view on precious metals?

- Priorities? 1. Savings 2. Food - stockpile 3. Crypto 4. Ammo 5. Precious metals 6. DeFi ???

- Hedonic quality adjustments and CPI metric changes

- If it’s not and appreciating asset but we have the option to buy it on loan essentially with you no 0 to 1% interest should we be doing that at this time if it’s something that we can afford versus spending buying it out right with dollars because the dollars are losing value so better to spend them later and lock in that price if that makes sense

- how do you keep track of the aggregate performance of your portfolio? Make your own spreadsheets or any other tools/programs you recommend?

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Speaking of gold dealers and hyperinflation, what do you think of Peter Schiff? What do you think of his critiques on crypto?

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