Juggling Dynamite

Exemplifying illiquidity:  of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin in existence, around 20 percent–currently priced at about $140 billion–are reportedly lost or otherwise stranded in wallets that the owners cannot open.  After 10 guesses at forgotten passwords, credits typically become permanently encrypted and forfeited.

Wallet Recovery Services, a business that tries to help owners find lost digital wallet keys–says it is receiving about 70 requests a day from people trying to recover access to their credits.  See Lost passwords lock millionaires out of their Bitcoin Fortunes.

As exuberant pricing has yielded increasingly negative investment prospects for most asset classes today, financial speculation has gone beserk and even some traditionally sober institutions like pensions and life insurance companies have tossed cash at crypto bets.

All in and then some, open interest in CME’s bitcoin futures has surged by more than 250% since the beginning of October while regulators and governments are increasing their attention on the enabled crimes, wasted energy and madness unfolding.  See ECB’s Lagarde calls for global regulation of Bitcoin to prevent use in money laundering.

All of this promises to end in the usual way, see Bitcoin will break Wall Street’s heart:

Estimates by Digiconomist suggest that the bitcoin network consumes around as much electricity as Chile, 77.78 trillion watt hours on an annualized basis. Bitcoin mining is often concentrated in places with abundant renewable energy such as China’s Sichuan province and Iceland, but increasingly climate-conscious governments will nonetheless likely take a dim view of bitcoin mining’s social utility as a priority for energy use.

The prospect of more onerous regulation may take the shine off digital assets, too. The Treasury Department’s plan to make trading platforms keep more stringent identity and transaction records is just one example of how the attractive anonymity of the system could be undermined.

Also, watch Why investors are piling into Bitcoin despite the risk:

According to surveys, about one-third of people in Ontario say they are not following public health guidelines such as physical distancing and staying away from people in other households. Escalating infection rates confirm this, including, 14 recorded cases of the U.K. variant which is about 56 percent more contagious than the original strain.

If the more contagious version takes hold, math predicts infection levels will double in just 10 days — compared with the current rate of 35 to 40 days; daily new infections would hit 10,000 by mid-February at a 3% growth rate, 25,000 at five percent and 40,000 at seven percent. Already, 40% of nursing homes are experiencing outbreak and second wave deaths. In response, the Ontario government is announcing additional lock-down measures today. See Toronto Star:  Ontario returning to many restrictions not seen since the first days of the pandemic:

Hospital intensive care units, now filled with more than 400 COVID-19 patients, could reach 500 within days and double that in February, further reducing cancer, cardiac and other surgeries already being cancelled. Fully 25 percent of hospitals have no spare ICU beds and another 25 percent have only one or two left. Ontario has just under 2,000 ICU beds.

Similar trends are unfolding in much of the world presently, with a fresh wave of economic weakness and job loss underway.  Individuals who are not following the distancing protocols are helping to perpetuate the carnage.  These are the facts.

Sadly, The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) warns that its business closure estimates are on the rise. Here is a direct video link.

The discussion on retirement and demographics starting at 23 minutes into this podcast interview is particularly worthwhile.  Click here for an  audio link:

While none of us could have predicted that the arrival of a global pandemic would fundamentally reshape our lives in 2020, stunning research by Wharton Business School professor, Mauro Guillén, shows that a series of once-in-a-lifetime events is about to profoundly reshape our culture, economy and the world by the end of this decade.  And at least this time, we’re being given some advance notice and have a little time to prepare.

The Financial Times recently named his new book, 2030: How Today’s Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything, one of its 2020 Books-of-the-Year. And it’s already become a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

..As discussed in this podcast, Guillén believes the only way to truly understand the coming global transformation – in addition to its myriad impacts – is to think laterally. That is, using “peripheral vision,” or approaching problems creatively – and from unorthodox points of view.