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Investments in Crypto currencies

Discussion in 'Money Matters' started by Jerseymarc, Feb 8, 2021.

  1. Lee Adams
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    Lee Adams Active Member

    The land on which we chose to live on here in Negros has its own water supply. The very first thing we did was to have a fresh water deep well drilled with 6 inch casing, a 48 volt 1.5 hp submersible pump powered by a 3kw off grid solar system. That investment cost us around 150,000 Peso. Our underground water storage tank holds 45 m3 and that cost just under 90,000 Peso. Our properies roof was designed to deliver all the rain that hits it to that storage facility.
    We built a 6 stage water filter from 6 x 50 gallon drums utilising gravel,different grades of volcanic sand,UV light and activated charcoal that we produce ourselves. This was indeed overkill as the water from the well has been proven potable.
    We have a large natural fish pond which is full of Tilapia. We feed them on a fast growing water plant called duck weed which we cultivate in large seperate ponds that occupy 250 square meters of land. This weed is high in protein and makes excellent feed for not just our fish but also our chooks and Ducks!
    Because we have fish,we hafe free fertiliser for growing local vegetables or Gulay as we call it here. We utilise a soil less farming system called aquaponics. There are many different variations but basically the same.
    We spend nothing on cooking fuel as the animal and vegitation waste is converted to gas after it has left our bio digester.
    We are 100 percent living off grid with a 6kw solar array which cost around 250,000 peso. We installed as a DIY project.
    All our investments are based on things we will always need,not things we want.
    We are stocking up on things such as tinned Sardines,Tuna,corned beef etc because its my belief that the costs of these products will be 3 or 4 or 10 times the cost after the true paper money value is exposed and the world sinks into a vsery serious deppression.
    About the only stocks or shares I am interested in are resources. So buy ,coal,oil,gas companies,water utilities and of course Gold.
    Here endeth your lesson.
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  2. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    You're a bit biblical ;) :D

    So at the end of the world you could survive for a while, end of the world being defined as a global economic financial catastrophe or major natural disaster.

    Fair enough.

    Have you got enough guns and general weapons to defend you and your family from the masses when they start envying your independence during the bad times?

    And suppose it was a major natural disaster is your hardware going to survive that, off grid solar is very vulnerable to seriously bad weather like typhoons, and any bit of hardware can fail have you got lots of spare parts for the pump or indeed spare pumps or spare solar panels?

    Everything wears out eventually so you are still not independent from the global economy, it sounds like you have created a fairly self reliant "farming" microcosm but it also sounds like a 21st century solution not a 13th century solution and even back then people still needed to cooperate as no one had all the skills for complete independence, so they still had an economy.

    I agree that our investments should be about things that we need rather than want, investments in that sense include the simple investment of our labour in life, in other words what we each physically do to stay alive and that for the vast majority of the world means day to day survival i.e. working for reward.

    But the definition of "need" and "want" are quite important, at some point in history you decided that what you "wanted" was a significant degree of independence and you invested time and effort in achieving that.

    If the world was geared to "fairly" fulfil the needs of humanity rather than the wants we would all be in a far better position but you also have to consider what the "needs" are defined as, at the absolute minimum you need food, water and shelter, living in a cave and wearing animal skins and hunting would likely satisfy those requirements but the human race has moved on a bit from that and there are certainly far to many of us now for everyone to be living that way.

    Do we need hot running water, do we need indoor bathrooms and toilets, do we need plumbing and sewage systems or microwave ovens, no we could all still live shorter lives without any of these things, do we need an internet, or an International Space Station or a James Webb Telescope, no we don't need any of those things but the reason we have them is that we collectively "wanted" them, people invented all this sh*t because they wanted it, they invested time and effort and lifetimes making things better for themselves and better for some of the people around them and that generated a degree of desire, a degree of "want" in the rest of the world's population.

    If you were born and lived in some god forsaken sh*thole and you become aware that a lot of people in other places live a life that looks like luxury compared to your own life you might "want" to get a bit of the luxury that you see others enjoying.

    And another one again still with the "gold", why is it that we hairless apes have a fascination with a shiny yellow metal, it is useless in caveman world, saying that Mr Caveman might be able to beat a bear to death with a decent sized lump of gold, it is heavy so it could conceivably be seen as a tool in that sense but to get a lump of gold big enough you still need technology, you have to be able to generate sufficient heat to melt it into a decent sized lump (the number of large natural gold nuggets ever discovered is very small).

    And Coal, Oil and Gas companies, also useless, they don't exist in a post apocalyptic world, all of those companies exist only because of the existence of complex interwoven technological society, a complex tree of knowledge and industry, they have no intrinsic value unless the technology and society exists to get that stuff out of the ground and even if you have that they are a limited and dirty resource.

    Gold and bitcoin have zero value, well bitcoin actually has negative value because it is wasting fossil resources to perpetuate itself, gold as I stated earlier in the thread has no real value in caveman land but it has value in leisure-man's land, in land of technology and electronics where it is very useful as a conductor.

    The total amount of gold in the world is estimated to be 170,000 tons or a cube of gold about 20 metres high by 20 metres long and 20 metres deep and we use it to make wedding rings :frust:

    It is a fascinating metal as it formed (forged) along with many other heavy elements during the collision of two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole, an ordinary supernova is not enough to cook up gold, metals like gold, platinum and uranium are only manufactured as a by product during neutron star collisions in a tiny volume of space :) this kind of collision is called a kilonova or an r-process supernova.

    There you go here endeth a wee lesson in cosmology and the origin of a useless (in caveman land) shiny yellow metal :lol:

    And one last point, this is a quote from me "the global economy is the sum of all barter", the economy is how we codify barter, no people no economy and ultimately vice versa no economy then you won't have people, even the cavemen will have had some kind of economy.
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  3. bigmac
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    bigmac Well-Known Member Trusted Member


    i never even thought it might be radio controlled--ive looked on ebay just now and found a lot that are--just cant see a photo of my one. I just thought when the battery was low the mechanical movement stopped but a memory chip kept the time--hence me seeing the fingers swing to the right time sometimes.
  4. bigmac
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    bigmac Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    lots of different jobs over the years--thankfully happily retired now. For me zee struggle iz ofer.

    I called off moving over to mainland--silly prices and houses snapped up on the day they were listed.
    I like the house ive got--and would need to put up another £100 grand to get the same over there.

    By coincidence i was looking on rightmove yesterday--lots more for sale than last year--and a lot lower prices..but mostly sh*t holes.
  5. ChoiAndJohn
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    ChoiAndJohn Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    I see. Yeah. I think you should hunker down in your bunker and wait for the end.

    Out of interest - do you believe that Trump is the real president, that the Queen has been cloned, or that you ever been visited by aliens? :)

    I added this edit because in fairness it sounds like a nice eco friendly independent setup. I used to have my own well and do similar things - but I did it because I liked the notion of independence - not because I feared a global economic calamity.

    You may feel you are insulated from the effects of inflation. You are not. The repair supllies for your equipment, and any other items thst you do not currently own or can not make such as tools, clothing, fabric and cooking utensils will still increase in price. I don't feel that fear of inflation alone is sufficient justification to life off grid as you are trying to do, but if you like the feel then more power to you.
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2022
  6. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    It might not be a Radio Controlled watch, some watches do retain the time on chip for prolonged periods but most solar watches don't tend to have more than a 6 month power reserve if put in a drawer.

    My Seiko kinetic watch has a 4 year power reserve but when it wakes up the time can be off by quite a bit, you will know if your watch is a radio time signal watch if it is always pretty much spot on the actual time.
  7. Lee Adams
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    Lee Adams Active Member

    Debt to GDP.
    Eurozone 102.3%
    Japan 266%
    US between Spain and Portugal 128%
    Interest increases will bankrupt countries.
    Inflation will bankrupt people.
  8. Lee Adams
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    Lee Adams Active Member

    Debt is not a bug in a credit based monetary system. Its a feature.
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  9. ChoiAndJohn
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    ChoiAndJohn Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    Fascinating insights..

    I'm curious to hear more of your thoughts on the above debt to gdp ratios.

    I do have a question though before we start to discuss. Share with me what qualifies you to make these sweeping economic statements. What is, or was your day job? I expect you worked in economics or finance... Am I right?
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2022
  10. ChoiAndJohn
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    ChoiAndJohn Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    I read by the way that massive reserves of gold discovered recently in Uganda are estimated to exceed the entire global supply of gold currently in circulation - which may be one of the reasons why gold futures fell sharply (apart from the increase in US treasury yields) . Ho hum.
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2022
  11. Aromulus
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    Aromulus The Don Staff Member

    Strange presence of Chinese and Russians engineers, and consultants in that neck of the woods..
    Or am I mistaken...?
  12. ChoiAndJohn
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    ChoiAndJohn Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    No you're not mistaken.. Russia and China have maintained strong links with some African nations - whilst the USA has been relatively lukewarm. In the recent UN vote Uganda declined to criticise Russia.
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2022
  13. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    Also offshore wind and geothermal. Plenty of geothermal on Negros. :like:
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2022
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  14. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    If it is true then that is amazing and good news.

    The estimates are nearly double the total amount of refined gold that exists on the planet, good news for the electronics industry :)

    So that would be nearly three 20 metre cubes of gold on the whole planet, wow, it's going to piss off a lot of miners in Alaska :D

    Echo's of the fictional Wakanda here and its meteorite containing the fictional Vibranium metal.

    We have customers in Uganda I spent a couple of weeks getting a huge machine that was a mixture of Chinese and German technology integrated into our ERP system a couple of months ago, it was a major challenge and is still not quite right given the reliability of the electricity supply in Uganda but we are nearly there.

    While we are at it Africa is doing well in terms of becoming a source of vital elements, the Tanzanian discovery of huge Helium reserves is really important for us all for the future of modern technology.
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  15. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    And a wee point from a well known Filipino…on gross national product.
    Last edited: Jul 3, 2022
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  16. ChoiAndJohn
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    ChoiAndJohn Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    Very true. The ideal citizen of a country from a GDP perspective may be a demolition contractor with a heart triple bypass and terminal cancer who is undergoing an expensive divorce.
  17. Lee Adams
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    Lee Adams Active Member

    Watch the video below.
    You will not be able to say that you were not warned.


  18. Bluebirdjones
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    Bluebirdjones Member

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  19. Lee Adams
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    Lee Adams Active Member

    • U.K. inflation could hit 22.4% next year if energy prices continue their upward spiral, Goldman Sachs warned.
    • It comes after British households were hit with a projected 80% increase in their energy bills in the coming months.
    • The investment bank also forecast that gross domestic product could drop 3.4%.
    Www.Cnbc.com


    It's happening.
  20. bigmac
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    bigmac Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    whats happening ?

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