That's correct. I am quite happy to say I have never used ChatGPT. Been using FreeGPT (self hosted). Self reliance is true freedom
Your third point, the way to go. Self reliance is true freedom.
Current Income and Bitcoin
We have reached a critical point where it is financially irresponsible to ignore Bitcoin; please refer to my previous post. Every investor must take their time to understand Bitcoin’s value and how to position it within an investment portfolio. While there are several ways to own bitcoin or at the very least have indirect exposure to it, one of the “drawbacks” we hear from the families we work with is that bitcoin does not generate income. With a long enough time horizon, bitcoin’s price appreciation could make any income needs irrelevant, but the reality is that many investors need income now rather than wait for the future appreciation.
No matter what happens to interest rates, the ever-growing amount of debt in the system and therefore the fate of the US dollar, income-focused investors need to allocate their portfolios accordingly to generate enough to meet their needs. Combining income-focused investments in traditional finance with bitcoin exposure is key to the composition of any income-focused portfolio. Although income is critical for a great number of investors, there must also be a certain exposure to bitcoin for its price appreciation potential, its revolutionary protocol that allows for a variety of financial and non-financial use cases and its natural hedge against a debt-laden system that has reached unprecedented levels with no signs of stopping.
After years of being anti-bitcoin, big Wall Street firms such as BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and others have slowly started to reverse course and acknowledge that bitcoin requires attention and even an allocation within an investment portfolio. In his October 2023 investor memo, Howard Marks, a long-term distressed credit investor, emphasized the opportunity that credit investing presents given the current and future economic outlook as it relates to interest rates. What he failed to mention were the consequences of investing in credit within a heavily indebted world that is slowly heading towards a debt spiral. Adding bitcoin to the mix could bring a natural hedge against a very unhappy ending for credit, but in the meantime any investor should take advantage of higher rates, which as Marks mentioned “now approach or exceed the historical returns from equity.”
At IBEX DWM, we have identified partners that we believe have the most suitable strategies that combine credit with bitcoin. We want our families to take advantage of higher rates while simultaneously protecting that cash flow through bitcoin. Our families are used to investing in alternative investments such as private equity and credit and we are not looking to change that model, just add the forward looking component of bitcoin’s disruptive potential and natural hedge, which in the words of BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink, “has digitized gold.”
any specific reason why not SoundCloud?
Here’s why after more than 10 years of working in traditional finance I decided to dedicate my professional career and life to Bitcoin:
Developing economies need a faster, cheaper and more efficient financial system than what is currently available to them. The current and most promising solutions out there are all based on the legacy financial system which has proven to be slow, expensive, bureaucratic and not available to a great percentage of the world’s population- which needs it the most.
Throughout history, financial institutions have leveraged technology to move money across borders in ways believed to be the most efficient. From the mid-20th century, banks communicated via Telex machines only to be replaced by the SWIFT cooperative utility in 1977, which has not had a revolutionary upgrade ever since.
This is where Bitcoin comes in, as a protocol (or “blockchain”) and as a currency. Bitcoin with a capital “B” refers to the blockchain, whereas bitcoin with a lowercase “b” refers to the currency. The difference between these two is quite important and most people pretend to understand the value of bitcoin and not Bitcoin.
The following is a comparison of layered-based systems across time (with a visual representation at the bottom):
1977, SWIFT: is the base layer upon which the global banking system communicates using its protocol to move money around the world. SWIFT can very loosely be compared to an early version of a blockchain: transactions are submitted by various participants, following the protocol’s rules and these transactions are recorded and stored forever.
2006, Google Translate: is the service functioning as the base layer upon which English is the execution language used to convert to and from other languages.
2008, the Bitcoin Blockchain: is the base layer upon which the Lightning Network communicates using its protocol to move money around the world [same sentence as SWIFT in 1977, written like this on purpose]. Bitcoin is much more efficient and cheaper than SWIFT in that it allows transfers for much smaller amounts and with minute-long settlements rather than hours or days, in local currencies.
Up until now, bitcoin has been traded as a risk asset, being bought alongside stocks when there is optimism in the economy and being sold when investors panic. If there was a deeper understanding of the value within the Bitcoin Protocol (or “Blockchain”), there would be far more buying and much less selling constantly, indefinitely.
This is just one of the use cases for the Bitcoin Blockchain. It is analogous to the Internet Protocol (HTTPS/TCP/IP). If you could have bought shares of “the Internet Protocol” when it first started, what would be the value of those shares today? (Hint: Everything runs on the Internet today).
Owning bitcoin is the equivalent of owning “shares” of a Protocol that is becoming as or even more disruptive than the Internet Protocol itself.
