Is real estate a shitcoin? TLDR: yes.

I've heard many people refer to real estate as a shitcoin but it's hard to make sense of that statement without the numbers. Everyone still needs a place to live right? So I made a shitty spreadsheet just to get an idea and I was very surprised. I did my best to actually puff up the real estate numbers and use ultra conservative numbers in bitcoin.

I ran the numbers for a multifamily triplex with rental income on an FHA loan (3.5% down payment). The rental income really dampens the amount you spend on your mortgage payments. I also did not account for any vacancy periods, troublesome tenants, or maintenance fees in real estate. Any financial planner that fails to calculate these factors would be committing fraud and the return on real estate compared to bitcoin in this case would STILL not even be close. On the other side with bitcoin, I used a conservative 30% annual appreciation over 30 years. Yes I know it fluctuates and, over a long enough time frame, the average returns have been much higher historically but I really wanted to steelman real estate. The DCA BTC website helped me a lot with this. If you began a weekly DCA 8 years ago, you would be up 1,142% today which is 143% annually! I believe a 30% annual return on bitcoin is conservative to say the least.

The numbers I used were from a lender's estimate I got in March of this year. Note that interest rates are higher now. The triplex was quoted at $700k. Cash to close was $37,273 (remember this number). If you spent that $37,273 on financing a triplex and lived in one unit while renting out the other two, after 30 years, your property would be worth $2,134,644. I used an average 4% annual appreciation in real estate and subtracted the 1% annual property tax to reach this number. Yes I know there are factors like income tax and depreciation but I want to keep the numbers simple.

Now the fun part: what would bitcoin have done during that 30 years if you invested the same cash to close in it? I used the rental price of a local apartment that was $25,140 for the first year and I added a 3.2% annual inflation rate every year. Again, I am really trying to steelman the case for owning your own home. After 30 years, your $37,273 in bitcoin would be worth $73,882,979!

Eminent domain is the government’s “right” to take your property for public use. Even if you have your keys and deed, you still only have a claim to your shitcoin. The Sovereign Individual thesis is much more doable with bitcoin. You can easily leave the jurisdiction that is mistreating you when you are not tied down to real estate. If you spent the rest of your life DCAing into bitcoin and lived as a renter, you would not have to worry about the major headaches that come with property management. Is the jurisdiction you are living in forcing you to eat ze bugs and stay home because there are aliens outside? No problem, take your bitcoin and go somewhere else. This is what freedom money is!

This is the part where I say this is not financial advice and do your own research. I don’t know the future and I don’t claim that anything above will actually play out that way. My numbers may be wrong, if so please let me know.

#bitcoin #nostr

Some big media account on Twitter asked people what they think the best music album ever was, front to back.

While some albums are more iconic than others, the fascinating thing about the question is how it tends to be a sign of what era someone came of age in (i.e. which decade they grew up as a teenager), and what cultural part of that era they were more in line with. Sure, some people go back and find older iconic music and appreciate it the most, the absolute greats of the past, but the more typical outcome is that someone finds music from their coming-of-age years to be what somehow sticks out.

For me it was rock in the 2000s, and my mental answer to the question of "best album?" was Meteora by Linkin Park.

While it was a very popular album and also well-remembered, it doesn't generally go down on the ageless list of greats. In other words, it's always kind of a top two or three genre item. I could argue why other more iconic albums are better, and why they "should" be my answer. For example I could go a little bit before my time, but still close enough, and say Nirvana's Nevermind was better. That would poll better.

But basically, as a product of my time, Meteora is just the one that struck the right chords at the right time when I was a teenager. It's the one that spoke to me. I would listen to it casually, and then also listen to certain songs in it before martial arts tournaments to get myself in the combat zone. Even as my musical tastes changed over time, that's the album I listened to the most of all time, and so when I hear it in the present day, I still appreciate it a ton.

The fact that they crossed genres appealed to me a lot. Their main vocalist, Bennington, struck their melodic and emotional aspect. The other vocalist, Shinoda, was their hip-hop guy, with a rougher or more practical aspect. Mr. Hahn brought an electronic aspect, and Delson brought the rock guitar aspect. Some of their stylization was anime-aligned, and I was into anime at the time. Basically whatever vibes I might be feeling as a teenager at the time, there was something in Linkin Park that spoke to it, with Meteora being among their best and which came out at the right time when I was 15. It's like Bennington would speak to my emo aspect and help me acknowledge it, while Shinoda and the others would pump me back up, and tell me to not fuck around and get back out there, and boost my confidence. Yin and Yang.

Another reason I thought of this is that here in 2023, Linkin Park released a 20th anniversary edition of Meteora, which included a couple songs like "Lost" that didn't make it into the original. It all hits a bit harder for us fans based on the fact that the lead singer, Chester Bennington, is no longer with us. RIP.