If Goldman is doing it... maybe I should finally buy some BitCoin...
If Goldman is doing it publicly, then you are already too late to the party.
To be fair, people have been saying that you're too late to the bitcoin party since around 2013.
Goldman Sachs Is Setting Up a Cryptocurrency Trading Desk
131–140 of 487 posts
Re: Goldman Sachs Is Setting Up a Cryptocurrency Trading Desk
#132Re: Goldman Sachs Is Setting Up a Cryptocurrency Trading Desk
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Bitcoin were to crash, you wouldn't be able to exit. The exchanges would be overloaded, the price would collapse while you [1] can't trade, and you may also discover that some of the exchanges have stolen your money because they are insolvent. [1] Although some whale customers may be able to. They may win big - or at least, lose less, at your expense.
Exactly this. During the subprime crisis, even the big banks couldn't offload their risk. It's crazy to think an amateur investor in Bitcoin is going to be able to "keep the exits clear". By the time you see the downturn those exits are long gone.
Banks and large investors need to offload billions of dollars worth of assets. Orders of magnitude more than what the average amateur will generally be working with.
If an amateur can actually guess when the downturn starts (a really big if), they should not have much of a problem exiting. Even if a large investor can identify the downturn, if they try to exit quickly, they will probably just exacerbate the problem, without even being able to get all the way out themselves
Re: Goldman Sachs Is Setting Up a Cryptocurrency Trading Desk
#134At the barbers today they were all talking about having bought bitcoin recently. When barbers start trading in bitcoin its probably the peak. In 1929 some people started getting out when the shoeshine boys started giving tips.
the reason for that saying is because by the time the lowest class of service workers is buying then there is nobody else to buy from them Stocks and commodities spread through society that way, from the most well connected VCs down to the lower class when the price rise makes them feel like they have a chance to get rich after it is shown in their nonfinancial choices of entertainment Bitcoin hasnt gone through soci…
What is interesting here is that it almost seems to be acting like a reverse bubble.
Re: Goldman Sachs Is Setting Up a Cryptocurrency Trading Desk
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, you're behind the curve, aren't you.
Hm, what are bitcoins used for today ? I was still seriously under the impression that there still wasn’t any serious use, except for illegal activities... ( i’m not talking about eth which found an interesting usages with ICOs, just bitcoins). Edit : i’m also not asking for the list of legal shops that accept bitcoins, i’m wondering about the percentage of officialy legal bitcoin transactions vs the rest.
mostly for speculation. Nobody buys anything with bitcoin anymore - takes too long and fees are too high.
Re: Goldman Sachs Is Setting Up a Cryptocurrency Trading Desk
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that is illegal or tax evasion anywhere in the world. Depending on the amount and the jurisdiction and whether the son gains ownership of the funds (rather than just the power to invest them), the firm might have to report this transaction and the son might have to pay for taxes.
It is illegal and it is tax evasion in some jurisdictions. 1) Transferring your money directly would allow to avoid inheritance tax. 2) Some jurisdictions have hard limits on what you can "donate" to your children. It can be "low" like 100k per 10 years.
No, it becomes tax evasion if you do this and then fail to pay the applicable tax on it.
In the same way, it's not tax evasion to have a successful business, say, making a million dollars selling shoes, even though there are limits on how much money you can make selling shoes before you have to pay tax on it. It is tax evasion if you make a million dollars of taxable income and only pay enough tax for half a million.
Do you have a specific jurisdiction in mind where this transfer would be tax evasion?
Re: Goldman Sachs Is Setting Up a Cryptocurrency Trading Desk
#137At the barbers today they were all talking about having bought bitcoin recently. When barbers start trading in bitcoin its probably the peak. In 1929 some people started getting out when the shoeshine boys started giving tips.
yeah.. my barometer is when the designers at my company started talking about it...
Surely designers at a tech company (I guess) are knowledgeable of macro tech trends, so they've known cryptocurrencies for a while, but weren't interested in discussing it publicly?
Re: Goldman Sachs Is Setting Up a Cryptocurrency Trading Desk
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I thought about that so I edited the comment to compare to TSLA options, bad timing, should've thought more before I submitted. To be fair though, it's my opinion that angel investing is also basically a craps wheel but I might be in the minority on this board in that opinion.
I don't disagree with that, but by that definition, no investor should be taking any above average risk. I think being aggressive with a few percentage points of your portfolio on "long shots" or high risk stuff is not necessarily bad. We have no idea how far cryptocurrencies will run. There will be corrections along the way, but if it actually is a major bubble it might very well run up to $10tn in market cap before…
>We have no idea how far cryptocurrencies will run. There will be corrections along the way, but if it actually is a major bubble it might very well run up to $10tn in market cap before we see a major correction.
Come on man... That number is straight from your ass.
>I don't disagree with that, but by that definition, no investor should be taking any above average risk. I think being aggressive with a few percentage points of your portfolio on "long shots" or high risk stuff is not necessarily bad.
Not necessarily, it's more about minimizing timing risk. If you think Bitcoin will continue to run up in some sort of Keynesian-Beauty-Contest-Unpoppable bubble and/or is the new gold or what have you then yeah as a long term investment, cool. Most people don't think that though.
>But I agree with the options example. Just being OK with risking a part of your portfolio doesn't mean being stupid about it. You want to make sure that the upside is sufficient and the true downside isn't 0. Which is why I would say crypto currently seems like a better investment than angel investing or buying options. You are probably putting 50% of your capital at risk, for a potential 5 to 10x return.
None of these numbers come from anywhere though. The real answer is that with crypto you're putting ??% of your capital at risk for a potential ? to ?x return. There's no numbers to pin on anything, it's completely baseless. It's like a currency in that respect, it's only worth what people think it is with no underlying fundamental. You can't quantify anything about it because it's based on the psychology of individual investors and the sociology of investing groups. If some guy in Barron's wrote a really good and well researched article about how bitcoin is bad because it can't scale and you really need one of the scaling coins and you should get out now because BTC valuation is only based on there being a greater fool after you and so on the thing and if some guy on reddit wrote the same thing you don't think the price would dip? Of course, BTC is a meme, it only works because people believe in it. So how much do you want to bet on other people buying into it?
Re: Goldman Sachs Is Setting Up a Cryptocurrency Trading Desk
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mostly I think it's 1. A lot of people jump on guys like Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein for calling Bitcoin massively volatile / a bubble / whatever, like they hate cryptocurrencies. They don't care, and they aren't supposed to. Their business is to sell whatever the customer wants to buy, cheaper or easier than they can get it elsewhere - and right now the customer wants to buy Bitcoin. Who cares if the backside fa…
They got burned by doing the same with subprimes, selling securities to clients who requested them but in which they did not believe themselves (and were shorting at the same time). This sort of move carries a significant reputation risk. I am sure not everyone at GS believes in crypto-currencies, there must be a lot of internal emails in the style "this is a pyramid scheme", "this thing will crash", etc... Reminds m…
In this case, though, they will be acting only as market makers, i.e. just brokering sales and purchases, not actually taking positions themselves (for the most part), meaning that whether they believe in it or not only matters in their analyst recommendations, which are completely separate from the trading desk anyway.
Re: Goldman Sachs Is Setting Up a Cryptocurrency Trading Desk
#140At the barbers today they were all talking about having bought bitcoin recently. When barbers start trading in bitcoin its probably the peak. In 1929 some people started getting out when the shoeshine boys started giving tips.
the reason for that saying is because by the time the lowest class of service workers is buying then there is nobody else to buy from them Stocks and commodities spread through society that way, from the most well connected VCs down to the lower class when the price rise makes them feel like they have a chance to get rich after it is shown in their nonfinancial choices of entertainment Bitcoin hasnt gone through soci…
Most of the institutional 'slow money' like endowments and pension funds will never touch cryptocurrencies, no matter how they are structured. They can't even take positions on FIAT currencies, or even bonds below AA rating. No way are they ever touching cryptos.