ECONOMICS: Second corpoation puts reserves in ₿itcoin to avoid inflation

Sunday, March 30, 2025

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-for-corporations/gamestops-bitcoin-move-looks-bold-but-it-might-be-brilliant?_kx=pYguJkB4-5NWNPpHSMMFBEIA8mUlSirEDlJPaB68tH8lzIRLbKOSwm282F8TWY5D.RLfipm

GameStop’s Bitcoin Move Looks Bold—But It Might Be Brilliant

  • GameStop’s Bitcoin move left many scratching their heads. But behind the confusion is a clear, calculated strategy that more CFOs should be watching closely.

By Nick Ward  —  March 26, 2025

*** begin quote ***

This week, GameStop quietly updated its investment policy to include Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset. With approximately $4.78 billion in cash—nearly 37% of its $12.9 billion market cap—this move marks more than just a diversification of reserves.

*** and ***

For companies with material cash holdings, the erosion of purchasing power is no longer theoretical—it’s measurable. Over the past decade, the U.S. dollar has declined in real terms by more than 25%, driven by inflation, expansionary monetary policy, and global fiscal uncertainty.

Bitcoin presents a compelling counterweight to this degradation, particularly for balance sheets with the flexibility to tolerate mark-to-market volatility in pursuit of long-term strategic payoff.

*** end quote ***

Now a corporation doing this can spend resources ensuring the security of its assets.  

However, the average consumer retail type needs to be extremely careful not to lose their “wallet”.

Considering the 25% loss of purchasing power over 5 years, that can put a hole in anyone savings.

It’s the same problem as Social Security “Insurance” (see my many rants about that  —  the prepaid Death Tax).  You pay in with “good” dollars say in 1970 and get out “bad” dollars that have lost 90+% of their purchasing power.

Given the state of Gooferment finances (i.e., the current 140T+ national debt and the guesstimated 200T+ in unfunded liabilities that our posterity will have to deal with) how does one preserve wealth in this disastrous era.

I, personally, have some savings, but not enough, in ₿itcoin, gold, silver, and Goldbacks.  As always YMMV.

How does the consumer, to use a military term, “get small in your hole”?  Where is your “underground bunker” for this “tornado”.  Everyone should have one.

In the pre-1913 era, you could save your gold dollars in jar or bury some in your back yard.  Then in your old age you’d find that the money had actually increased a little in purchasing power.  What can you do today?

—30—

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GOLDBUG: The shift from dollar-based global economy to something else is glacially slow but you can see it happening

Saturday, November 2, 2024

https://www.gold-eagle.com/article/commodity-currency-revolution

The Commodity Currency Revolution
Alasdair Macleod
Author & Head of Research @ Goldmoney
April 7, 2022

*** begin quote ***

We will look back at current events and realise that they marked the change from a dollar-based global economy underwritten by financial assets to commodity-backed currencies. We face a change from collateral being purely financial in nature to becoming commodity based. It is collateral that underwrites the whole financial system.

The ending of the financially based system is being hastened by geopolitical developments. The West is desperately trying to sanction Russia into economic submission, but is only succeeding in driving up energy, commodity, and food prices against itself. Central banks will have no option but to inflate their currencies to pay for it all. Russia is linking the rouble to commodity prices through a moving gold peg instead, and China has already demonstrated an understanding of the West’s inflationary game by having stockpiled commodities and essential grains for the last two years and allowed her currency to rise against the dollar.China and Russia are not going down the path of the West’s inflating currencies. Instead, they are moving towards a sounder money strategy with the prospect of stable interest rates and prices while the West accelerates in the opposite direction.

The Credit Suisse analyst, Zoltan Pozsar, calls it Bretton Woods III. This article looks at how it is likely to play out, concluding that the dollar and Western currencies, not the rouble, will have the greatest difficulty dealing with the end of fifty years of economic financialisation.

Pure finance is being replaced with commodity finance

*** end quote ***

We’ve seen the price of gold in dollars rise.  ₿itcoin is another example of the little people seeking to save in the face of massive inflation.  And, those ₿itcoiners who are holding on for dear life (aka HODLers) are obviously big winners and just don’t let go.

Some Gooferment just levied a 42% tax on ₿itcoin capital gains.  Good luck collecting that.  That’s why self-custody is almost mandatory.  I can see generations of family practicing tax evasion and avoidance as wealth is transferred inter-generationally by means of ₿itcoin, precious metal “coins” (i.e., rounds), and other hard invisible assets.  

For the “tiny savers”, for whom the price of gold and silver is too big a barrier to entry, ₿itcoin and Goldbacks are low cost ways to enter the market.

Not every seismic change happens quickly like a Tsunami, Earthquake, or Hurricane.  But like small tremors lead up to a big quake, this is happening right before us.

—30—

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DISCOURAGING: Do you think incumbent politicians will willingly give up all this power?

Saturday, March 30, 2024

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-and-taxation-government-on-a-bitcoin-standard-?mc_cid=e0840e7a31

Bitcoin and Taxation: Government On A Bitcoin Standard

  • Some thoughts on the difficulty of governments enforcing taxation in a world where Bitcoin is widely used in commerce.    

Robert Hall  —   Mar 25, 2024

REFERS TO

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/10/incumbent-politicians-enjoy-record-reelection-in-aging-congress/

Incumbent politicians enjoy record reelection in an aging Congress
By Miro Hall-Jones  —  October 12, 2023 3:11 pm

AND OPINES on

*** begin quote ***

In America, incumbents get reelected north of 90 percent. Did you know in the House of Representatives, the reelection of incumbents has never dipped below 85 percent? So you only have 15 percent of being voted out in the next election. Who doesn’t like those odds? This is why nothing changes. We get the same people in office year after year because they know how to play the game and grease the right palms, all thanks to the fiat money printer.

If you want to see all the BS the federal government spends on their deprecating fiat dollar, check out the Citizens Against Government Waste website. This will give you a good idea of the crap that is being funded in your name.

So, knowing this, do you think they will willingly give up all this power, prestige, and influence? I don’t think so.

*** end quote ***

I agree.

So how do we rid ourselves of these “priestly drones”?

—30—

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INSPIRATIONAL: ₿itcoin podcast slips in a good episode about make bettwe, possibly, Libertarian children

Thursday, October 5, 2023

Kids Don’t Need School with Jonathan Prescott 
Stephan Livera
September 20, 2023

https://overcast.fm/ OBZnLSjGc

*** begin quote ***

Podcast
Stephan Livera Podcast
http://www.stephanlivera.com

Join Stephan as he interviews the sharpest economic and technical minds in Bitcoin & Austrian Economics to help you understand how money is changing and evolving. This is one of the leading podcasts in the space, and listening to this show is one of the fastest ways to learn and get up to speed on Bitcoin. 

*** end quote ***

This “snuck” in on my favorite ₿itcoin podcast.  I’m sympathetic to home schooling.  Even if I have to children to torture my craziness with. 

This is that “home school” podcast that I thought had some great ideas to try with an ADHD child my fiancé has custody of.  Not to “home school” but to steal some of the strategies and tactics that might help us deal with him. 

It may offer some great ideas.

I was particularly struck by how Gooferment Skrules make the children unable to make even simple decisions by themselves.  I am well aware of the “Prussian School Model” with bells and yak in the box.  It was designed to replace the Family with the State and make cannon fodder for the Army, willing morons for the factories, and useful idiots to vote for and be led by the elite.

FWIW YMMV

I found it inspiration for liberty.

—30—

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BITCOIN: Try and wrap your head around this paradigm shift.

Thursday, December 22, 2022

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/print/stage-is-set-for-bitcoin-to-replace-fiat?utm_source=Bitcoin+Magazine&utm_campaign=31a110c8e6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_12_16_08_04&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f7d45fbb67-31a110c8e6-357073741&mc_cid=31a110c8e6&mc_eid=386b7b0895

The Stage Is Now Set: Bitcoin Will Replace Fiat. 

  • Bitcoin represents an unprecedented paradigm shift, and while the world may not be ready to replace fiat, that change is inevitable.

Beautyon
Dec 15, 2022

*** begin quote ***

Bitcoin, which will transform the way you transfer money, needs to be understood on its own terms, and not just as an online form of money. Thinking about bitcoin as money is as absurd as thinking about email as another form of sending letters by post; one not only replaces the other but it profoundly changes the way people send and consume messages. It is not a simple substitution or one-dimensional improvement of an existing idea or service.

*** end quote ***

This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. — Morpheus in the Matrix (1999)

In this case, it’s the “orange pill”.

I wrote about how “job search” changed in the 80’s from the “gold watch” to “everyone is an entrepreneur”.  I used to say there was no K-Mart Blue Light announcing that there was a “special” in Aisle 7.  There was now announcement that the rules of employment had changed.  But they had and those that failed to adapt were left flopping on the beach like soon to be dead fish when the tide went out.

This “orange pill” tell a similar tale.  The Financial “rules of the game” are changing silently

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TECHNOLOGY: Micropayments using bitcoin might solve the problem of revenue sharing

Sunday, December 18, 2022

https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/zgytrl/left_murder_scene_because_my_manager_complained/

Left murder scene because my manager complained about overtime
r/MaliciousCompliance
•Posted by u/Longjumping_Bad9555
6 hours ago

*** begin quote ***

In a past work life I worked at a small newspaper where corporate insisted on paying me hourly, despite the job not being capable of being done in 40 hours.

*** and ***

fishter_uk
4 hr. ago

This was several years ago, that newspaper no longer exists.

DreamOfTheEndlessSky
Avid Voter ·
4 hr. ago

Less funny when you consider how many newspapers have disappeared.

BigRiverHome
Monthly Top 5% Karma+2 ·
2 hr. ago

Funny what happens when you keep decreasing the value of your product.

I used to get the paper and I truly enjoyed reading it every morning. But, it kept getting smaller and smaller, and eventually it was bought out by Gannett, the people behind USA Today. That was pretty much it for me, it just became another version of the USA Today with a thin veneer of local news.

*** end quote ***

# – # – # – # – #

I’m a retired IT guy. I personally have always been surprised that “newspapers” didn’t figure out and implement a micropayment system.

Imagine if you were asked for 0.0001 of something (i.e., a dollar; a bitcoin; a ruble; a yen) for an article. Not some number of dollars for a year, or month, or such.

When you get on internet scale, it’s not hard to imagine getting 50k readers each paying say a penny for an article. That translates to 500$ for that one article.

The current payment technology doesn’t pay to scale that price point.

But now, a paper could collect a fraction of a bitcoin from someone’s public key and encrypt the article so that only the person’s private key could decrypt it. At that level, it wouldn’t be worth pirating it or sharing you private key to deprive the sender of the revenue.

I think that would be the way to save the “local” paper with digital distribution of content.

FWIW YMMV

—30—

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MONEY: “Blue Light Special” announcement — fiat currencies like the U$D are being stolen by “inflation”

Wednesday, May 11, 2022

The 5 Stages Of Getting Orange-Pilled
https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/5-stages-getting-orange-pilled

 — via my feedly newsfeed

# – # – # – # – #

​I’m at “acceptance and hope” stage​.  Back when the employment model switched from “lifetime employment” to “job hopping/consulting”, I told my turkeys that there was now “Blue Light Special” announcement like at the now defunct Kmart to tell them that “the game” had changed.  So to, now, imho, the “financial game” has changed and no announcement is being made.  Bitcoin, alternative forms of money, and other commodities are replacing fiat currencies like the U$D, Euro, and others.  Only the Russian Rouble has made the shift.  All other forms of fiat are subject to “inflation” aka Gooferment Theft. 

Unfortunately, not many have gotten the “non-announcement” and so will pay the tax and take the losses.  Heaven help the bond holders who will get triple screwed (i.e., inflation, loss of income, and loss of capital value) when the 1/7 seesaw rocks against them (i.e., 1% rise in interest rate yields a 7% decrease in the dollar value a bond).

FWIW YMMV and TANSTAAFL (“There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch” From Robert Heinlein’s classic) 

—30—
 

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GOVEROTRAGEOUS: Airlines are “zombie companies” due to Gooferment bailouts

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-songsheet-airline-miles?utm_source=Bitcoin+Magazine&utm_campaign=4e1027bcbe-&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f7d45fbb67-4e1027bcbe-357073741&mc_cid=4e1027bcbe&mc_eid=386b7b0895

Bitcoin Songsheet: Airline Miles Are The Original Altcoins

  • Airline miles are the original altcoin, allowing zombie companies to issue value for nothing while encouraging people to be “Miles Chasers.”

Jimmy Song
Apr 11, 2022

*** begin quote ***

Because governments view airlines as a display of national prestige, there’s a tendency to bail them out of their troubles. The three major U.S. airlines (Delta, American and United) have gone through at least one bankruptcy in the last 20 years. The bankruptcy proceedings usually result in a merger or some new company that’s injected with government funds. Even airlines that might go bankrupt are bailed out by the government such as during the travel shutdowns of the pandemic. The result is that airlines are now zombie companies that repeatedly get revived through government intervention.

Zombie companies typically don’t do that well in the marketplace. It’s no coincidence that air travel times are slower now than in the ‘70s. Planes might be more fuel efficient, but they’re not really faster or more convenient. The way these zombies have survived, besides government intervention, is through the financialization of their miles programs.

*** end quote ***

One really has to see the link between bailouts and inefficient zombie companies.

Real competition between financially healthy airlines would make air travel faster, more convenient, as well as “cheaper”.

The DHS / TSA “airport security” is “security theater” at best and further allows zombie airlines to shift costs to the public at large.

Argh!

—30—

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MONEY: Can bitcoin stop the “bad guys”? Can anything?

Wednesday, March 23, 2022

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-the-foundation-of-human-rights?utm_source=Bitcoin+Magazine&utm_campaign=f8fa15ec24-&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f7d45fbb67-f8fa15ec24-357073741&mc_cid=f8fa15ec24&mc_eid=386b7b0895

BITCOIN CAN BE THE FOUNDATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
The bad guys can’t stop Bitcoin, but Bitcoin can stop the bad guys.
GREGOR HERBORT
MAR 18, 2022

*** begin quote ***

60 years ago, it was not Syrians, Afghans, Iranians and people from various African states who had to leave their homes and sought refuge.

It was Kazakhs, Ukrainians, Jews, Poles, Russians and Germans who needed a new home before, during and after World War II. Displaced by an occupying power, by the ruling government and by hunger and war.

Many had to leave their hometowns and were not able to take much with them, let alone transfer money across national borders. This is what happened to many Jews. Refugees were deprived of their remaining possessions in Germany. In a perfidious way, the war and the extermination of the Jews were thus co-financed.

Within experiences of these and other inhuman acts, the Universal Human Rights have been defined. A commission led by Eleanor Roosevelt worked out 30 articles under the auspices of the United Nations in 1948.

Reading these 30 articles, it becomes clear that the potential bad guy is often seen on the side of the state or government.

*** and ***

Everyone has the right to freely access a healthy international currency!

*** end quote ***

I certainly like that it’s inflation proof.  It may be a hopeless gesture to liberty, but what choice do we have?

—30—

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CRYPTO: BITCOIN provides a “financial parachute”

Thursday, March 17, 2022

https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/surviving-off-crypto-when-cash-fails/?ftag=CAD-04-10aai6g&bhid=28093491592028715072518150828614&mid=13749287&cid=2046605583

Surviving Off Crypto When Cash Fails
Many Ukrainians and Russians lost access to their bank accounts in the days following Russia’s invasion.
Daniel Van Boom  
March 15, 2022 5:27 p.m. PT

*** begin quote ***

Fedosov is one of approximately 5.5 million Ukrainians who own cryptocurrency. His ability to live off bitcoin and ether is music to the ears of cryptocurrency proponents. They point out that situations like Fedosov’s, when the financial system stutters or fails, are the precise reason bitcoin was created. Using a cryptocurrency wallet — as opposed to going through an intermediary exchange like Binance — holders can access their cryptocurrency with nothing more than an internet connection and a 12-word seed phrase.

*** end quote ***

I find this story is a warning to everyone.

It costs a little in opportunity costs, but it could be a life saver.

How about a “flat tire in a strange place” without a credit card machine?

—30—

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