Authored by Michael Maharrey via SchiffGold.com,

When I was a kid, we used to say some things only “sound good on paper.” In other words, they seem like good plans, but there is no way they’re going to work in the real world.

That’s socialism in a nutshell.

The Pilgrims found this out the hard way during their first couple of years in North America. Their experiment in socialism turned out deadly.

Turns out, you can’t just ignore economics and human nature.

Socialism really does sound good on paper though, right? We’re all going to own everything together and take care of each other. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.“

It sounds so nice. And we all want to be nice, right? People are emotionally drawn to socialism because it sounds so good. It sounds fair. It sounds — nice.

But do you know what’s not nice?

Corpses.

That’s exactly what happened the Pilgrims got when they took a stab at socialism.

Most Americans don’t know that the Plymouth colony was originally an experiment in socialist utopianism and were it not for a complete 180 a couple of years in, we probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the bountiful feasts most of us will indulge in today. There would have been no Thanksgiving because there would have been nobody left to give thanks.

When the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts on November 11, 1620, they placed all their food and provisions in a “common store.” These folks were forward thinkers. They didn’t even have Marx’s scribblings to appeal to. They set things up on the socialist principle of, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Things got off to a bad start in the new world. Conditions were miserable, as William Bradford described them.

That which was most sad and lamentable was, that in two or three months time half of their company died, especially in January and February, being the depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the scurvy and other diseases, so as there died sometimes two or three of a day, in the aforesaid time; that of 100 and odd persons, scarce 50 remained.”

Now, the Pilgrim’s initial struggles didn’t really have anything to do with socialism. They just had the misfortune of landing in Massachusetts at the onset of winter. If you live in New England, you understand their pain.

But even after their first summer, things didn’t improve much. The following fall, the Pilgrims harvested their first crops and again, they all went into the common store.

Now, wasn’t that nice? No greed. Nobody getting any more than they should. Of course, nobody was getting much of anything at all – but still – they had to feel good about themselves, right? Because, after all, the system was fair.

So, in November the ship Fortune arrived with more than 30 new settlers, mostly young men. More manpower was welcome, but according to accounts, they brought “not so much as a bisket-cake” with them. Now they had a meager supply of food in the common store and even more mouths to feed. The future looked bleak as food supplies ran out and the “planned socialist” community faced starvation yet again.

The following year, the harvest was poor in spite of the added manpower. Nevertheless, the pilgrims again put the meager harvest in the common store. Because, you know, it’s going to work this time!

It didn’t.

That winter, they starved.

The colonists were learning economics the hard way.

Richard Grant in his book The Incredible Bread Machine wrote:

“For two years the Pilgrims faithfully practiced communal ownership of the means of production. And for two years nearly starved to death, rationed at times to “but a quarter of a pound of bread a day to each person.” Governor Bradford wrote that “famine must still ensue the next year also if not some way prevented.” He described how the colonists finally decided to introduce private property:

[The colonists] began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. [In 1623] after much debate of things, the Gov. (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set down every man for his own … and to trust themselves … so assigned to every family a parcel of land. This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Gov. or any other could use, … and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little-ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness, and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”

Reflecting on the experience of the previous two years, Bradford goes on to describe the folly of communal ownership:

“The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Platosand other ancients, applauded by some of later times; — that the taking away of property, and bringing in community into a common wealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young-men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children, without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more indivision of victuals and cloths, than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice…”

Woah! Some people resented doing all the work? They didn’t work as hard when they knew they weren’t going to directly benefit?

Shocking.

Actually, it’s not shocking at all. It’s human nature. And we all know it.

Now, we can lament the fact. We can say it shouldn’t be that way. We can finger-point and talk about greed. We can get all holier-than-thou and say we wouldn’t act that way (in other words lie). But people will still be people.

Here’s a harsh truth: good intentions and feel-good policies can’t trump basic economics. You can dream of unicorns and lollipops all day, but it won’t change reality.

Scarcity. Human behavior. Incentives. The experience of the Pilgrims vividly demonstrates basic economic principles. Their good intentions could not overpower the cold hard realities of economic principles. They never have. They never will.

The wait is finally over for Tesla owners who paid $10,000, or as of recently $15,000, for the controversial driver-assistance system, also known as “Full Self-Driving.” 

Twitter, SpaceX, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Thursday morning, “FSD Beta is now available to anyone in North America who requests it from the car screen, assuming you have bought this option.”  

Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta is now available to anyone in North America who requests it from the car screen, assuming you have bought this option.

Congrats to Tesla Autopilot/AI team on achieving a major milestone!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2022

FSD is Tesla’s upgraded “Autopilot” driver-assist feature that allows vehicles to navigate highways and city streets autonomously. Until now, some customers who paid the fee were blocked from using it “because they didn’t score high enough on metrics Tesla uses to set insurance rates,” explained Bloomberg. 

Over the last six months, about 100,000 drivers were granted access to FSB Beta. Musk has promised a broader roll-out of FSD several times, though his timelines were off. In the latest 3Q22 earnings call, he indicated FSD would be available to all North American users who paid the fee: 

“This quarter, we expect to go to a wide release of Full Self-Driving Beta in North America. So, anyone who has ordered Full Self-Driving will have access to the FSD Beta program this year, probably about a month from now. So – and then obviously, anyone who buys a car and purchases the Full Self-Driving option will immediately have to that available to them,” Musk said.

The world’s richest man first promised FSD in 2018. Only a small number of “expert and careful drivers” received FSD in July 2021. On the last FSD release, Tesla lowered the requirement for at least 100 Autopilot miles and an 80 safety score, and now anyone who wants it can click a few buttons, sign a waiver, and presto… 

Just got FSD on a car with 54 score and less than 100 miles on autopilot ! 114 kms 🇨🇦 Wide release here we goo!! pic.twitter.com/57dtzJalQp

— 🤖FSD & Chill⚡️ (@MateenOmair) November 24, 2022

Just got #FSD Beta 10.69.3.1 here in Toronto. Took it out for a drive in North York and this is the most confident FSD drive I’ve ever had. Zero takeovers within the ~30min drive.The turns are confident and navigation around parked cars on the roads are human-like.🤯10/10! #Tesla pic.twitter.com/JZzpvFqGDm

— Ruiwen (@RuiwenHe) November 24, 2022

FSD Beta Highway Merge Construction 🚧 @elonmusk $TSLA $Tesla pic.twitter.com/XTn3ADZhWp

— Kevin Chunilal (@KevinChunilal) November 24, 2022

FSD Beta 10.69.3.1 locked and loaded🙂
Thank you team @Tesla pic.twitter.com/bSXKBHrmMK

— Alicia Cryst  (@alicia_cryst) November 24, 2022

However, over the years, we have not just pointed out delay after delay for FSD but also safety concerns around Autopilot.  

In June, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published the first report highlighting that Tesla vehicles running on Autopilot were involved in 273 reported crashes over the past year. 

“These technologies hold great promise to improve safety, but we need to understand how these vehicles are performing in real-world situations,” NHTSA’s administrator, Steven Cliff, told reporters over the summer. 

Perhaps Musk’s wide release of FSD should make every non-Telsa driver a little bit more cautious when they see a Model S, Model 3, Model X, and or Model Y coasting down the highway or city street while the driver is distracted playing video games on an iPad while the car drives itself. 

Authored by Joakim Book via BitcoinMagazine.com,

I don’t…

That’s it. That’s the article.

In all sincerity, that is the full message: Just don’t do it. It’s not worth it.

You’re not an excited teenager anymore, in desperate need of bragging credits or trying out your newfound wisdom. You’re not a preaching priestess with lost souls to save right before some imminent arrival of the day of reckoning. We have time.

Instead: just leave people alone. Seriously. They came to Thanksgiving dinner to relax and rejoice with family, laugh, tell stories and zone out for a day — not to be ambushed with what to them will sound like a deranged rant in some obscure topic they couldn’t care less about. Even if it’s the monetary system, which nobody understands anyway.

Get real.

If you’re not convinced of this Dale Carnegie-esque social approach, and you still naively think that your meager words in between bites can change anybody’s view on anything, here are some more serious reasons for why you don’t talk to friends and family about Bitcoin the protocol — but most certainly not bitcoin, the asset:

1. Your family and friends don’t want to hear it. Move on.
    
2. For op-sec reasons, you don’t want to draw unnecessary attention to the fact that you probably have a decent bitcoin stack. Hopefully, family and close friends should be safe enough to confide in, but people talk and that gossip can only hurt you.
    
3. People find bitcoin interesting only when they’re ready to; everyone gets the price they deserve. Like Gigi says in “21 Lessons:”

“Bitcoin will be understood by you as soon as you are ready, and I also believe that the first fractions of a bitcoin will find you as soon as you are ready to receive them. In essence, everyone will get ₿itcoin at exactly the right time.”

It’s highly unlikely that your uncle or mother-in-law just happens to be at that stage, just when you’re about to sit down for dinner.

1. Unless you can claim youth, old age or extreme poverty, there are very few people who genuinely haven’t heard of bitcoin. That means your evangelizing wouldn’t be preaching to lost, ignorant souls ready to be saved but the tired, huddled and jaded masses who could care less about the discovery that will change their societies more than the internal combustion engine, internet and Big Government combined. Big deal.

2. What is the case, however, is that everyone in your prospective audience has already had a couple of touchpoints and rejected bitcoin for this or that standard FUD. It’s a scam; seems weird; it’s dead; let’s trust the central bankers, who have our best interest at heart. No amount of FUD busting changes that impression, because nobody holds uninformed and fringe convictions for rational reasons, reasons that can be flipped by your enthusiastic arguments in-between wiping off cranberry sauce and grabbing another turkey slice.

3. It really is bad form to talk about money — and bitcoin is the best money there is. Be classy.

Now, I’m not saying to never ever talk about Bitcoin. We love to talk Bitcoin — that’s why we go to meetups, join Twitter Spaces, write, code, run nodes, listen to podcasts, attend conferences. People there get something about this monetary rebellion and have opted in to be part of it. Your unsuspecting family members have not; ambushing them with the wonders of multisig, the magically fast Lightning transactions or how they too really need to get on this hype train, like, yesterday, is unlikely to go down well.

However, if in the post-dinner lull on the porch someone comes to you one-on-one, whisky in hand and of an inquisitive mind, that’s a very different story. That’s personal rather than public, and it’s without the time constraints that so usually trouble us. It involves clarifying questions or doubts for somebody who is both expressively curious about the topic and available for the talk. That’s rare — cherish it, and nurture it.

Last year I wrote something about the proper role of political conversations in social settings. Since November was also election month, it’s appropriate to cite here:

“Politics, I’m starting to believe, best belongs in the closet — rebranded and brought out for the specific occasion. Or perhaps the bedroom, with those you most trust, love, and respect. Not in public, not with strangers, not with friends, and most certainly not with other people in your community. Purge it from your being as much as you possibly could, and refuse to let political issues invade the areas of our lives that we cherish; politics and political disagreements don’t belong there, and our lives are too important to let them be ruled by (mostly contrived) political disagreements.”

If anything, those words seem more true today than they even did then. And I posit to you that the same applies for bitcoin.

Everyone has some sort of impression or opinion of bitcoin — and most of them are plain wrong. But there’s nothing people love more than a savior in white armor, riding in to dispel their errors about some thing they are freshly out of fucks for. Just like politics, nobody really cares.

Leave them alone. They will find bitcoin in their own time, just like all of us did.

Take one look at some of the employees fired from Twitter the past two weeks by Elon Musk and it’s easy to understand why the company operated as a far-left echo chamber for so long.  Though company executives claimed that the platform was “politically neutral” for many years, evidence is coming to light which confirms what we already knew – There was a severe leftist bias that permeated every aspect of the social media site which specifically targeted and censored any viewpoints or facts that did not fit with their narrative.

Hilariously, Musk posted on the discovery of a supply closet at Twitter HQ containing activist swag including stacks of t-shirts which have “#StayWoke” printed on them.  A neutral company?  Not a chance.

Most interesting of all has been the absolute distress and in some cases rage expressed by long time employees over Musk’s free speech position.  The level of open authoritarianism on display by the political left in the past few years has been astonishing, if not predictable.  The reaction to changes at Twitter solidifies this obsession in crystalline detail.  Here, former contracted Twitter employee (a male identifying as a trans female) hired as a “moderator” (censor) tells NBC about his worries when it comes to the company’s future as a free speech based platform.

Musk fired over 4000 outside contractors this past week, most of them employed as moderators.  NBC’s message is relatively clear:  Free speech is a negative.  And, such an ideal being applied at Twitter overshadows the great harm being done to the poor innocent leftist employees who were doing God’s work by protecting platform users from unfiltered discussions. 

The problem is, anyone can block anyone else on Twitter at any time and filter their own social media feeds, which completely debunks the common argument that people will be “harmed” by surprise exposure to politically incorrect discussions.  The next most exploited argument is that “hate speech” will run rampant on the site – But the term “hate speech” has become so diluted by false leftist accusations and fraudulent hype that it is now meaningless.  Even the term “groomer” was banned on Twitter before Elon Musk took over.

The corporate media has spent the better part of the past week predicting the implosion of Twitter after the firing of several thousand workers.  At any moment the company was going to shut down, they claimed.  This has not happened, revealing a stark truth – The company runs just fine without them.  Those several thousand regular employees and contracted moderators were useless dead weight.  The proof is right there for the world to see. 

Has the Earth exploded because of less moderation on Twitter?  No.  Has the Third Reich returned because gender identity warriors aren’t sitting on their laptops at home banning people who say Lizzo’s obesity is unhealthy or that men cannot be women, cannot menstruate and cannot have babies?  Nothing has happened.

This leads us to a singular conclusion – Leftist censorship is about power and control, not about safety  They know it, and we know it.  And now, with Twitter out of their hands their denials can be challenged in an open forum.  It’s the one thing they fear the most.      

Authored by John Ransom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A newly-elected GOP representative from New York said that he worries that Democrats will try to downplay potential campaign finance and securities law violations by former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried using a lame-duck session of Congress before the new Congress is sworn in.

Republican George Santos, 34, who won New York’s 3^rd Congressional District flipping the seat red, joined his congressional colleagues by calling for a “thorough investigation” when the new GOP Congress takes over next year.

The spectacular collapse of FTX, a crypto-currency exchange that is headquartered in the Bahamas, which filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11 has left around million customers and other investors facing total losses of billions of dollars. Since then, reports have emerged that Alameda Research, a crypto hedge fund established by Bankman-Fried, was trading billions of dollars from FTX accounts without clients’ knowledge.

The House Financial Services Committee said last week it plans to hold a hearing in December to investigate the FTX collapse. It said it expects to hear from companies and individuals involved, including Bankman-Fried, FTX, and Alameda Research.

Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said in a statement that the United States needs “legislative action to ensure that digital assets entities cannot operate in the shadows outside of robust federal oversight.”

But Santos is not convinced the Democrat-led committee will take robust action.

“Waters has signaled that she’s not going to investigate Bankman-Fried and FTX as a class. So I’m a little concerned that the Democrats right now as lame-ducks in Congress, will deflect the issue between now and the start of the new Congress,” Santos, who is attending leadership meetings for the GOP this week, told The Epoch Times.

“That’s something I’m very interested in investigating,” he added.

Santos, who worked as a financial advisor and has asked for a Financial Services Committee assignment, said that “accountability is mandatory and absolutely necessary.”

“Nobody should get away with this with impunity,” he added.

Santos made news last week when he called some planned investigations by the House GOP, such probes of the COVID-19 origins, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s handling of the pandemic, and Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, “hyperpartisan” issues.

When speaking with the Epoch Times, Santos clarified his remarks, saying he was fine with any investigations, but that as a freshman legislator from New York with a background in financial services, he thought he could leave those decisions in the hands of party leadership.

“I’m not opposed to investigating. I don’t think you’ll find someone more interested in investigating Hunter Biden and Anthony Fauci, than I am” said Santos.

“But I’ll leave that to the senior members of Congress who know how to do those things better than I do,” he added.

Santos said that for him these weren’t his main issues, because he felt better versed in financial and economic matters. The incoming congressman confirmed that he has asked for assignments in both the financial services committee and foreign affairs committee.

“We don’t have the power to just pass legislation, but we also have the power to hold people accountable,” Santos said of the FTX scandal.

Donations to Democrats

The FTX matter has taken on added urgency given that Bankman-Fried was the second-largest Democratic donor for the 2021–22 election cycle, donating over $38 million to various Democrat-aligned PACs with another $990,000 going to individual members of Congress.

Many of the donations came from foreign addresses in Nassau, capital of the Bahamas, and Hong Kong, according to an analysis by the Epoch Times.

According to data by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), of the 182 donations made by Bankman-Fried this election cycle, two donations came with no address, 16 donations came from a Hong Kong address, 68 came from U.S. addresses and 96 came from two addresses in Nassau, Bahamas.

It’s legal for American citizens to donate to campaigns from foreign accounts, said attorney John Zakhem, whose practice areas includes federal election law.

“If he tells you that he’s a U.S. citizen living in the Bahamas, there’s no prohibition against him making a contribution,” Zakem told The Epoch Times, adding that once a campaign checks that box they only worry about the funds clearing the bank.

There is also no prohibition against Bankman-Fried having donated money to those in Congress who regulate the financial services arena.

The Washington Free Beacon reported this week, citing FEC records, that Bankman-Fried and his colleagues at FTX donated $300,351 to nine members of the House Financial Services Committee, with “[s]ome of the largest contributions [made] to Democrats on the committee’s Digital Assets Working Group, which worked on regulation of the crypto industry.”

An Ethics Issue 

It’s this nexus between Bankman-Fried and the committee members that makes Santos concerned that the Democrats might try to downplay the scandal in the upcoming investigation.

Read more here…

Authored by Kevin Downey Jr via PJMedia.com,

The media is shifty when it comes to mass shootings.

They decide which shootings we do and do not get to hear about. If a shooting doesn’t jive with the liberal narrative, you’re not likely to hear the gory details.

FACT-O-RAMA! In order to talk about mass shootings, we have to agree on the definition of what a mass shooting is. Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as four or more people shot, not including the shooter/shooters.

The recent mass shooting in Colorado Springs is the 601st mass shooting in 2022. There have been four mass shootings since then, but you likely haven’t about them. You probably didn’t hear about most of the previous 600 shootings, either. Why is that? Because the left is keeping secrets. Let’s talk about what they don’t want you to know about mass shootings and why, so you can dominate your commie relatives at the Thanksgiving dinner table.

Mass Shooting Secret #1: The AR-15 Is Not a Mass Shooter’s Weapon of Choice

The left likes to screech about the evils of AR-15s and their use in mass shootings. Some dolts whine that the AR-15 is the “preferred weapon” of mass shooting whackjobs. I rate this myth: five big, stinkin’ Pinocchios.

When you’re arguing at the Thanksgiving table with your liberal sister-in-law and her green-haired, trans-pan muxe-puke femme-boi?friend, she’ll go full-harpy on how AR-15s are the preferred weapons of mass shooters. This is odd, because even the Pravda-like lefty media outlet ABC News had to admit that’s false. As did Newsweek and The New York Times. Yet the left somehow still manages to convince their quislings that assault semi-automatic rifles are the problem. Why is that? We’ll discuss that in a bit.

Mass Shooting Secret #2: Most Mass Shooters Aren’t Angry White MAGA Dudes

No mass shooting argument is complete without a bolshie screeching that “angry, white men” are responsible for the lion’s share of mass shootings. Again, this lie warrants five whopper Pinocchios. Also, it’s where your lib-in-law will lose its gender-free mind when you show him/her/zhim this article.

As I’ve written before, most mass shootings are committed by black men. The media goes radio-silent when black dudes blaze up a rap concert, as we saw when three black men perforated more than 22 people in Miami in May of 2021. That story disappeared pretty quickly. As did a recent Halloween drive-by in Chicago that left 13 people injured, including three kids, and one man dead. No MAGA hats or white suspects were found.

Mass Shooting Secret # 3: Fudging the Numbers

The liberal guntards are happy to screech that mass shootings are on the rise. In fact, this is true. The nation saw 611 mass shootings in 2020, and we will easily beat that by the end of Thanksgiving weekend this year. There were 690 multiple-victim shootings in 2021.

The left likes to pull some gun-grabbing chicanery at this point. They are happy to point out the 600-plus mass shootings but conveniently leave out that most are drive-by, drug-related, gang-related, or just pointless party shootings. Again, this omission is likely due to the race of those spreading mad brass around our major cities. The commies will scream about the number of mass shootings (because it fits the narrative) while conveniently forgetting to mention who is pulling the triggers, as this wouldn’t work with the liberal brainwashing scheme.

New York’s gun-loathing governor, Kathy Hochul, can’t stop talking about the brutal May 14 mass shooting in her hometown of Buffalo, which left mostly black people killed and wounded, but hasn’t said a word about the Nov. 5 mass shooting in the same city that left four people injured. Nor has she mentioned the 45 mass shootings in Chicago this year. Is it because some lives matter more than others? Or because these shootings don’t help the commie cause?

Mass Shooting Secret # 4: Mass Shootings Are a Tiny Proportion of Gun Murders

As of today, Gun Violence Archive states that roughly 15,608 people have been murdered with guns in 2022. (This doesn’t count defensive shootings and unintentional shootings.) Of those, around 545 people were killed in mass shootings. This means mass shootings make up 3.49% of all gun-related murders. Yet, the apparatchiks in the mainstream media would have us believe mass shootings are a major cause of death in the United States.

SHOCK-O-RAMA! More than 500 Americans are hit by lightning every year, making the chance of getting killed in a mass shooting and getting hit by lightning about the same.

What Have We Learned?

We have learned that the media is very picky about which mass shootings make — and stay in — the headlines. If the shooting doesn’t fit the narrative, it’s almost like it never happened.

We know that those big, scary AR-15s — and those pesky high-capacity magazines — aren’t the weapon of choice for mass shooters, though the bum lickers in the liberal news media would have us think otherwise.

We also figured out that mass shootings make up a tiny fraction of murders in the nation, yet they get most of the media ink. And we learned most shooters aren’t drooling white men in MAGA hats.

So what gives?

There are two bogus narratives oozing out of the liberal press: White guys are the biggest domestic problem facing the nation; and AR-15s pose a threat to the population. Neither is true.

My humble opinion is that the Democrats have been hijacked by globalists who want us unarmed. You know — the way Hitler, Stalin, and Mao wanted their people defenseless. If a government wants its population unarmed, they are probably up to no good.

The leftists are using mass shootings to take away the AR-15. They happily stand on the bodies of dead kids, gay people, and anyone else viciously murdered in a mass shooting to propagate their lies. I almost think they look forward to these violent incidents.

Now that you know how to trounce your commie-in-laws in a verbal joust, let’s start out the Thanksgiving weekend with some laughs. Here’s another great video by my friends at Jokes and a Point. Remember, liberals are miserable, self-hating merry andrews. Conservatives know how to have fun.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Something curious is taking place in the world of bitcoin as the price of the largest digital token tumbles to a two year low amid the second crypto winter accentuated by one man’s historic fraud: retail refuses to sell.

According to a recent report from Morgan Stanley’s Sheena Shah on the state of the crypto market (available to pro subs), the space has seen surprisingly low trading activity as the price tumbled, and a record proportion of bitcoin units haven’t transacted in 6 months – 78% of total. According to Morgan Stanley, this means that “retail hasn’t sold in the bear market” and one possible reason for that is that “anyone that bought/received bitcoin between 1-1.5 years ago has an average breakeven purchase price around $45k.” It also means that the “marginal” price of Bitcoin is set by an ever smaller population of transactions, which explicitly reduces market liquidity and makes volatility ever greater.

On the other hand, retail may just be more patient than institutions and having seen the ability of crypto to stage meteoric advances every time the Fed starts the liquidity firehose, hodlers are merely waiting until the Fed’s next inevitable QE-driven freakout.

And since retail is largely out, having peaked in Q4 2021, Morgan Stanely observes that institutions are now the dominant traders day to day, after retail traders were far more important in the last 2017/18 crypto cycle than today.

This means that crypto has become an (extremely) levered bet for institutions to trade central bank policy: buy when easing, sell (and short) when tightening. And indeed, as Morgan Stanley notes, “Bitcoin has experienced many bull and bear markets before. Since 2013, bitcoin’s growth has tracked fiat money supply growth, increasing equity market correlation”

Going back to the original point, that holders – pardon HODLers – of bitcoin remain steadfast, here is an analysis from Shane Nagle, editor-in-chief of “The Tokenist”, who is also concludes that “the conviction of holders is stronger than ever and only growing.”

* *  *

Macroeconomic headwinds are continuously adding to a bearish narrative across all markets, including bitcoin.

As of October 2022, bitcoin is down more than 60% since the start of the year, yet bitcoin’s trading volume remains fairly consistent since July 2022. Does that mean the majority of holders are giving up on the prospect of bitcoin and opting to sell?

This is a complex topic to dive into, but there’s one indicator that can help us paint a picture of what’s taking place behind the noise: coin days destroyed (CDD).

What Are Coin Days Destroyed?

Throughout the course of an asset’s trading history, there is a significant difference if the buying price was on the lower or higher end of the price spectrum. In the case of bitcoin, that spectrum is relatively short — just 13 years — but quite variable in terms of price (ranging from $0-$69,000). The original cryptocurrency has undergone four major bull and bear cycles, but when zooming out, has continuously trended upwards.

The implication of this long-term, upward trajectory is clear. Investors who were the earliest to buy bitcoin have the most to gain by selling, even in bear markets. Likewise, investors who took the opportunity to purchase bitcoin early and at a lower cost, had the opportunity to buy much more bitcoin for the same amount of fiat currency compared to prices later in bitcoin’s history.

In turn, bitcoin that were mined and purchased earlier have different value significance than newer bitcoin released into the circulating supply. If these “aged” bitcoin are held in the same wallet for an extended period of time, such on-chain activity would suggest a strong conviction held by the owner in terms of bitcoin’s long-term value proposition. Such activity sends a strong signal to the Bitcoin network.

In addition, a long-term holder of dormant bitcoin has an increased likelihood of experiencing multiple bear and bull market cycles, which further amplifies the significance of old bitcoin moving.

The metric of coin days destroyed measures this significance. According to Glassnode, “Coin days destroyed is a measure of economic activity which gives more weight to coins which haven’t been spent for a long time.” CDD is calculated by multiplying the number of coins in a given transaction by the number of days since they last moved from a wallet.

Bitcoin is often critiqued for its high levels of volatility. Yet there’s clear demand for bitcoin in long-term investments, even in traditional IRAs. CDD is a popular on-chain indicator used to measure the sentiment maintained by long-term holders — individuals who see value in the long-term prospects of bitcoin.

So, what does the current CDD level suggest?

Bitcoin’s CDD Has Been Quite Low

At 0.36, the 90-day moving average of bitcoin’s CDD in October 2022 hit one of the lowest values throughout its history. This particular range was only visited previously in 2018, 2015 and late 2011. As the supply-adjusted bitcoin days destroyed (BDD) chart below shows, the highest BDD upticks happened during bull run peaks, which is to be expected as long-term holders lock in their profits.

In other words, long-term Bitcoiners — in the context of the asset’s historical selling activity — are continuing to hold bitcoin in large numbers. This could be one of the reasons why bitcoin’s price activity has been relatively stable. Such holders could be acting as safeguards against selling pressure.

If we turn to bitcoin’s trading volume, do we see a similar pattern?

The above chart shows bitcoin’s trading volume from October 2020 to October 2022. What’s noted here is fairly steady and consistent trading volume from roughly July 2021 to October 2022. We do not see a drop, which resembles the activity from CDD.

The combination of data from these two indicators — a low CDD with steady and consistent trading volume — further suggests that most of the bitcoin traded was by short-term holders. In fact, bitcoin from 2010/2011, purchased at well under the $100 range, have moved the least.

Overall, according to Glassnode data, just over 60% of circulating BTC haven’t moved in over a year. This holding trend also contributed to bitcoin’s exceptionally low volatility. Comparatively, in 2018, a similar price volatility was followed by a 50% drop in a single month, from $6,408 in November to $3,193 in December.

Is it likely we will see a new bottom even with long-term Bitcoiners holding the line?

Additional Bitcoin Sell-Off Pressures

Presently, bitcoin’s price is inversely related to its record-high hash rate. This is not good news considering miners have to service their debts by selling mined bitcoin, even at their bottom price point in this bear cycle.

Already, one of the largest bitcoin mining companies, Core Scientific (CORZ) — with a share of hash rate around 5% of the network’s total — is exploring bankruptcy. In the meantime, CORZ stock collapsed by 98.32% year-to-date.

Argo Blockchain (ARBK) shares the same fate, having fallen by 91.56% and is unable to sell enough assets to cover the costs. According to an operational update from Argo in October 2022:

“Should Argo be unsuccessful in completing any further financing, Argo would become cash flow negative in the near term and would need to curtail or cease operations.”

Although these mining companies will likely end up lowering the Bitcoin hash difficulty, in a game of survival of the fittest this has the potential to cause another contagion spiral. This time around, vulnerability and market sell-offs could come from remaining centralized platforms that are lending dollars to bitcoin mining companies. Going back to the ongoing macroeconomic headwinds, how the market interprets the Federal Reserve’s next moves may end up raising the price of bitcoin just enough for miners to stay above water.

Because the Fed increases the cost of capital and borrowing, making the dollar stronger in the process, this typically makes investors leave risk-on assets, such as bitcoin. When investors forecast a recession, the dollar reigns even stronger, as investors dive into cash as a safe harbor.

By the same token, the Fed’s signaling against accelerated tightening — a pivot from its anticipated raise schedule — could provide market relief.

With that said, the so-called “Fed pivot” should not be understood as a return to lower interest rates, but as a deceleration to potentially hiking only 50 basis points in December (if incoming inflation data favors it). Nonetheless, in the current fearful market environment, that may be sufficient for a short-term rally, or at least, the avoidance of a new bitcoin bottom.

Despite the many factors pushing investors away from risk-on assets — the Fed battling 40-year-high inflation, a looming energy crisis in Europe, ongoing global supply chain issues and even Bitcoin’s mining difficulty — data from CDD and bitcoin trading volume provides us with an interesting observation. Long-term holders seem more confident than ever in the long-term value proposition that bitcoin provides. Such holders are currently selling bitcoin at one of the lowest rates we’ve seen in the history of the Bitcoin network.

Via Political Calculations blog,

Having covered the inflating cost of a Thanksgiving turkey in 2022, we’re turning our attention to something very different: the shrinking size of U.S. farm-raised turkeys in 2022.

That became a cause of concern for American consumers after the U.S. government warned that big turkeys would be scarce in 2022. Here’s Axios’ executive summary:

The U.S. government is warning of a big shortage of big birds this Thanksgiving.

Why it matters: Because of this year’s avian flu outbreaks, finding 20-pound turkeys in some regions of the country could be challenging, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said in a call with reporters on Tuesday.

The bird flu has killed more than 8 million turkeys, according to CDC data.

What they’re saying: “Some of the turkeys that are being raised right now for Thanksgiving may not have the full amount of time to get to 20 pounds,” Vilsack said on the call, which was about the administration’s effort to reduce meat and poultry prices in the long-term.

We’ve seen this show before, since avian flu was also behind 2015’s turkey shortage. But Axios’ article doesn’t answer the direct question it raises. How much smaller are U.S. farm-raised turkeys in 2022?

To find out we started with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s estimate of the total “Ready-To-Cook” (RTC) weight of turkeys that will brought to market during 2022. That figure is 5.214 billion pounds.

Looking at the last 10 years worth of data, we determined the RTC weight of turkeys averaged 79.1% of the live weight of U.S. farm-raised turkeys. Dividing the total RTC weight by this percentage gives us an estimated total live weight for farm-raised turkeys of 6.592 billion pounds. If we broaden our analysis to look at the range of RTC-to-Live weight percentages over the last 10 years, we find it has fallen between 77.46% (2021) and 79.94% (2015). Doing the same math with these figures gives us a potential range of 6.522 to 6.731 billion pounds for the live weight estimate. The higher the percentage, the smaller the estimated live weight.

All we need to know now is the estimated population of turkeys on U.S. farms. For 2022, that preliminary estimate is 212 million turkeys. That figure is two percent below 2021’s final count of 216.5 million turkeys.

We can now estimate the average live weight of a U.S. farm raised turkey. Dividing the total live weight of all turkeys by their population in 2022 tells us that figure is 31.1 pounds (with a potential range between 30.8 and 31.8 pounds based on the range of total live weights). The following chart shows how that fits with all the data reported since 1970.

If the USDA’s estimates hold, 2022 has seen the largest year-over-year reduction in the average weight of turkeys in U.S. history. Talk about turkey shrinkflation!

Last week, we observed that delusion and hope can only last so long (even when one’s salary depends on it) as US homebuilder confidence crashed to COVID lockdown lows in November after failing (or refusing) to see what was obvious to everyone for months, and what homebuyers were clearly feeling as prices soared along with mortgage rates and record low affordability for most Americans. And don’t get us started on homebuyer confidence: just look at the red line below which has taken out all previous record lows (including the post-2006 housing bubble) and is hitting new record lows every single month…

Well, slowly but surely this epic collapse in sentiment is spreading to market metrics, and while it will take between 6 and 9 months for real-time data to reach the badly lagging government-level CPI and PCE data, what’s taking place in the US housing market right now is nothing short of a meteor strike, with RedFin reporting in its latest market forecast that pending home sales fell the most on record in October and deal cancellations and price cuts hit record highs as buyers were spooked by the biggest mortgage-rate jump in over four decades.

Pending sales dropped 32.1% year over year last month, the largest decline since at least 2013, when Redfin’s records begin.

Nearly 60,000 home-purchase agreements fell through, equal to a record 17.9% of homes that went under contract.

Meanwhile, almost one-quarter (23.9%) of homes for sale experienced a price drop, double the rate of a year earlier.

Surging mortgage rates also caused would-be sellers to stay put due to the lock-in effect. The average 30-year-fixed mortgage was 6.9% in October, up 3.83 percentage points from 3.07% one year earlier—the largest year-over-year increase during any month since 1981. That contributed to a 24% year-over-year drop in new listings, the steepest decrease on record aside from April 2020, when the onset of the pandemic brought the housing market to a near halt.

“The Fed’s actions to curb inflation are causing the housing market to slow at a pace not seen since the financial crisis,” said Redfin Economics Research Lead Chen Zhao. “There are already early but promising signs that inflation is cooling, which caused mortgage rates to drop last week. If that progress continues, buyers who recently backed out of deals may return to the market and sellers may be less inclined to slash their prices.”

Still, sale prices are only now just starting to fall as sellers, having held out until now, are starting to feel the need for liquidity and are increasingly hitting whatever bid they can see. And while the median U.S. home sale price declined 1.4% month over month—the largest slowdown during any October since 2012—it was still was up 4.9% from a year earlier. That will change very soon.

Prices may ease as listings linger on the market and competition slows. Homes that sold in October were on the market for a median of 35 days, up from 21 days a year earlier, and less than half (44.6%) of home offers written by Redfin agents faced competition. That compares with more than two-thirds (67.3%) in October 2021.

Here are the October highlights tabulated:

Again, none of this will show up in official US Dept of Commerce/BLS data until some time in the summer by which point the Fed may have hiked to 6% pushing the US into an all out depression.