Stock Market Meme Culture

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Vertigo 7
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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by Vertigo 7 » Mon, 8. Feb 21, 11:20

They did buy them back, but instead of buying them at 30/share, they had to pay at 300+ per share, which meant net losses in the billions for them.
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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by CBJ » Mon, 8. Feb 21, 12:17

RegisterMe wrote:
Mon, 8. Feb 21, 00:13
I don't understand the antipathy directed towards short selling. Please can somebody explain?
I think part of the issue that people have with complicated financial instruments like this is that they are essentially only available to the big investors, whether simply due to their complexity, the capital required to take advantage of them, or in some cases because they are not offered to the public. More importantly, the money that those big investors make on the deals has to come from somewhere, so someone else will lose out; often enough someone who has no access to the tools used against them.
RegisterMe wrote:
Mon, 8. Feb 21, 00:13
As for retail access to the markets, it's never been more accessible or cheaper.
Access to the market is one thing. Being able to take advantage of that access, and actually make money out of it rather than just being milked by the big investors is another matter entirely. With the available retail trading services often belonging to the very same companies that are operating the hedge funds, and with those companies having full access to customers' trading data as well as to tools allowing them to make their own automated trades in a matter of milliseconds, it's easy to see why people may be sceptical that they are really operating in the interests of their smaller customers, rather than simply using those customers' data to make their own, much bigger, trades more profitable. This is further compounded by those companies' reaction to recent events, shutting down those smaller customers' ability to trade in order to protect their own positions.

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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by pjknibbs » Mon, 8. Feb 21, 13:04

Vertigo 7 wrote:
Mon, 8. Feb 21, 11:20
They did buy them back, but instead of buying them at 30/share, they had to pay at 300+ per share, which meant net losses in the billions for them.
That too, but like I said, pretty sure they were so determined to "beat" Reddit that they'd actually ended up with more stock than actually existed.

Don't really understand the reason for shorting anyway, mind you. If you think about it, there's an upper limit to how much money you can make when doing it--you can't ever make more money than you got by selling the virtual stock in the first place, but the level of losses are effectively potentially unlimited. This is entirely the opposite of the regular situation where you buy stock and sell for a profit, where you can't ever lose more money than you spent on the stock but your potential earnings are unlimited. Seems to me it's just a massive extra risk to run for no particularly good reason.

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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by Ketraar » Mon, 8. Feb 21, 13:17

The logic behind short selling is what is wrong with modern Stock Exchange, as not even the name is accurate anymore. Betting things go wrong is just, well, wrong! Especially since the market, as we see, reacts to moronic things like twitter posts, wind and a butterfly sneezing. All things that will cause people loosing jobs, but when the market ticks upwards, those profits seem to not find the same path back or at least take a huuuuge detour.

It has been a common theme over the last years where loss is "socialised" (aka taxpayers bail out, job loss, ect) and wins are privatized to either the trickle down crap ideology or the "let the market do its thing". So I cant help to feel some schadenfreude for the gamestop stuff, even though I'm well aware nothing will really change as those losses will most likely be pushed again down the line until it reaches the same people (hint: its you).

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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by Alan Phipps » Mon, 8. Feb 21, 13:29

Isn't it the 'self-fulfilling prediction' idea that makes it so inevitable and attractive to the big investors?

You 'borrow' a high volume stock which has no immediate effect on the market unless somebody finds out, you sell it which depresses the price and then buy it back for less but which regains some or most of the price fall you caused, then you give the stock back to the lender (which again does not affect the price) and pocket the profit you made in the cycle. In effect, the risk is being carried by whoever lent you the stocks, by the unwitting companies the stocks are in, and by the other investors in those stocks.

The key factors are secrecy and speed because if another major holder of that stock sells or buys at critical times before you do ....
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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by RegisterMe » Mon, 8. Feb 21, 14:35

This might turn out to be a long, complicated post. I am not an expert in shorting shares, bonds or markets, but I did work in and around the trading operation of a large investment bank for twenty odd years. I have never shorted anything, and I didn't take part in the recent WallStreetBets inspired GameStop shenanigans. And whilst I have friends and former colleagues who work, or worked, for hedge funds, I have never done so.

So, now that the disclaimers are out of the way... :).

As much as I think hedge funds have a role to play, I have no sympathy for any that were caught on the wrong side of this. They're big boys playing a rough game and sometimes they get hurt. I have some, but very limited, sympathy for retail investors who came to the party late and got hit hard when the GameStop dropped 70% in two days recently. GameStop is a crappy underlying business - physical retail in an age of Amazon and eBay during pandemic driven lockdowns, that lost $19m in 2020 with a negative operating income - hence the hedge fund shorts in the first place; high profile and very public goings on; lots of volatility; and late to the game... Getting involved in that wasn't smart. Of course the WallStreetBets people who got in at the start and exited well made out like bandits.

1) The nature of shorts:-

One of the main functions of (financial) markets is "price discovery", ie how much is something worth? For that you need large numbers of both buyers and sellers. Shorts have a role to play here (as do futures and options, which have received far less coverage in the media recently). Shorts allow the sceptical voice to take a position based on their analysis, and sometimes they are spectacularly right. If only BaFin had listened to Matthew Earl, a short seller who called the German regulator to discuss his concerns about fraud at Wirecard two years before it went bust. They hung up on him...

Let's take an arbitrary stock that's worth $100. Person A wants to buy it because they think it's undervalued, person B agrees to sell it because they think it's overvalued. Person A is going long. Person B isn't shorting it in the market, but they are effectively "underweighting" it in their portfolio. "Real shorting" is just taking this principal one, logical, step further. It might be logical, but, as those hedge funds found out, it can also be very risky. It's risky because there is no limit to their potential loss. A stock can't be valued at less than $0. But there is no limit to a stock's potential positive value. But it is a price signal, and as such aids in "price discovery". For price discovery to be valid equal weight needs to be applicable to both positive and negative sentiment. If you remove a tool for expressing negative sentiment you run opposite risks...

There are also real "non-speculative" reasons to short something eg to hedge your risks or to manage a portfolio.

So, at least imho, shorts have a real role to play. They are also not "free". To take a short position you need to pay to borrow the stock, and you need to post margin to your broker if the trade moves against you (it's this that broke those hedge funds). To pjknibbs point about naked shorting (the practice of shorting something you haven't agreed to borrow and so can't cover) yes, it happens. Though it's meant to be illegal. There should be better mechanisms to monitor and prevent this.

All of the above is not meant to suggest that shorts are an unalloyed good. They're dangerous, their use needs to be well regulated, and there are lots of things to learn from with regard to WallStreetBets, RobinHood, and "mass retail traders". But hedge funds and institutions being reminded of the fact that there's no such thing as a risk free trade? I can live with that :).

2) Bankruptcy and the misery of others

@BrasatoAlBarolo

Shorts have no direct impact on the financial wellbeing of a company. Leaving aside the cost of raising new capital the price of a share boils down to (the market's understanding of) the value of the company's underlying assets, its future growth prospects, and expected future revenue streams.

Shorting a stock does not increase the chances of bankruptcy of the company concerned.

@jlehtone

* "misery"

Do you make money from "other's misery"? It's emotive but yes, I think you can argue that. Equally you could argue that those others shouldn't be making the money they are making because what they have isn't worth what people think it is. If I'd shorted Enron I'd be patting myself on the back, and I wouldn't give a damn about Kenneth Lay's misery. Similarly if a company is failing, the short might bring attention to it, but it's not the cause of it. It might well be a miserable time for employees, owners and customers, but that's not the direct fault of the short.

* Somebody loans their stock to you. When they get it back, its value has decreased.
a) the person (or more likely fund) that loaned their stock to you recieved a fee for doing so, b) the reason they loaned it to you is because they did not want to sell it (think about that for a second)

* Whomever you sell your stocks to will make a bad investment, because the value is predicted to decrease.
a) the act of "shorting" is selling something at below market price, b) the person who bought it from you thought that was a good deal

* The company whose stocks are traded is not doing well, if stock value decreases?
See above, largely irrelevent.

* When you buy the cheap stock (to return the loan), do the sellers make profit or are they just cutting their losses?
If our arbitrary stock was currently priced at $100 and I shorted it I make more profit the more the price drops below $100 (because I sold at $100 and bought back, to "cover my short" at what the new price was, eg $90). However if the price rises I am losing money.

* You are most likely not a person, but "faceless, greedy, scheming, filthy wealthy" hedge fund that takes and never gives back.
OK then.

3) Hedge funds

Some make a lot of money, yes. Most don't. In fact most fail. There's an awful lot of survivor bias in what most people understand about hedge funds. It's also so broad a term these days as to be largely meaningless. And they're a terribly easy bogeyman to point the finger at. clakclak's uninformed rant about hedge funds is simply that, an uninformed rant. Though were they to provide any actual reasonsing for their opinions we might be able to have a discussion about it (perhaps in a different thread?).

The notion that the 2008 house market crash (and the Great Financial Crash in general) was caused by hedge funds is simply incorrect. It's true that a couple (notably those run by David Einhorn and John Paulson) made a fortune out of shorting the sub-prime CDO (etc) market, but they called it right (they've also underperformed in recent years). Getting it right is not the same as causing it. It's probably also correct to say that the broader hedge fund industry benefited from government assistance eg TARP, but that was mainly introduced to keep the banking system alive. Banks and hedge funds are not synonymous (particularly true after Dodd-Frank was introduced).

The causes of the Great Financial Crash were, broadly speaking down to a complicated mix of the following (and I won't try to attribute how much responsibility each bears):-

* Clinton administration attempts to broaden access to home ownership.
* A frothy US housing market.
* Competition from mortage providers to lend leading to lower standards for borrowers (think "NINJA" loans - "No Income No Job No Assets" here have $250k to go buy a house).
* "No skin in the game" from mortage providers meaning they could just hand off the mortgages when they'd concluded the (shoddy) transaction.
* Those mortgages being packaged up by banks into Collateralised Debt Obligations (and worse), masking the risk whilst making it look like they were low(er) risk.
* No "skin in the game" from the banks and other institutions that packaged the mortgages up into CDOs etc meaning they could just hand off the CDOs (and associated risk) to the (naïve) institutional purchasers.
* Those mortgages being underwritten by the US Government in the form of Fannie May and Freddie Mac (see the first point above).
* Institutions (many of them foreign eg German Landesbanks) not understanding the risks they were taking on.
* The belief that because a 50 state wide drop in residential property prices had never happened before it could never happen.
* The over-reliance of banks on wholesale funding markets rather than "stickier" deposits.
(* Perhaps a global savings imbalance leading to cheap money flooding the US, though there are competing views as to how much of a role this played).

So essentially this is what went down: Crappy mortgages packaged up and sold to banks as eg CDOs - those CDOs suddenly become worth far less than they used to be - immense pressure put on bank balance sheets (ie losses) - which leads to increased capital requirements and reluctance to lend to them in the wholesale markets - which leads to lending seizing up - which smashes the real economy.

CBJ's point about some of this resentment of hedge funds (and other large institutions) only being available to large investors has a certain ring of truth about it. This is, to an extent, inevitable. Individuals rarely have the ability to conduct large, complicated transactions because they lack both the capital and the expertise. But... when we go on holiday we buy a seat on the plane, right? We don't buy a 777 for ourselves? I never see any anger directed at airlines because it's unfair that an individual can't buy their own passenger jet. Products and markets and customers of any type inevitably have restrictions built in. Whilst this might be annoying I think it's both right, proper, practical and realistic.


4) RobinHood

I'm not completely up to speed with this, so some of what I say may be wide of the mark. Am I right in thinking that there's anger with RobinHood because they stopped people buying eg GameStop shares (to keep squeezing the shorts)? I can understand that. But do those who are angry about this understand the implications and pressure this put on RobinHood? Shares typically trade on what's known as a "T+2" basis. What that means is that the settlement date (when the buyer receives their shares and the seller receives the cash due them) is two days after the date the transaction was entered into. During that window the trading platform (in this case RobinHood) has to post collateral to its counterparty. The collateral requirements naturally increase when there is significant volatility (because there is more chance of major price swings between the transaction date and the settlement date). Collateral typically equals cash or risk free instruments like Treasury Bills (you can use lower "quality" collateral, but you have to post more of it). RobinHood didn't have the resources to manage this huge increase in risky and volatile trading. Indeed, they raised $3b, yes, three billion dollars, in new capital, to support this recent activity. This also had a necessary knock on effect on their other customers, because when they traded something other than GameStop those trades also required supporting collateral. So the GameStop trading will have had an impact across the entire platform. You start getting into very murky regulatory waters about "treating customers fairly" when that happens.

RobinHood does have questions to answer, eg their "pay for orders" relationships with inter-deal brokers (some of which are also hedge funds) like Citadel. In fact they paid a $65m dollar fine recently for not making this clear to their customers. But, to coin an old adage, "there's no such thing as a free lunch". RobinHood offers retail customers zero commission trading at prices just a smidgen away from those available to the institutional market. They have to make money somehow, right?

There are also real questions to answer about "mass retail impact" eg WallStreetBets on particular stocks (it's very Goonswarmish behaviour). If financial institutions behaved in such a way they'd be in breach of oodles of regulation and breaking many laws.


Phew, that was a long post!

EDIT: Minor corrections, don't want to get my knuckles rapped again :).
Last edited by RegisterMe on Tue, 9. Feb 21, 21:53, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by RegisterMe » Mon, 8. Feb 21, 21:12

To take a very current example. Tesla announced today that they purchased $1.5b worth of Bitcoin.

* If an investor thinks that's an inspired move, they could buy Tesla stock at the moment at $858. Otherwise known as "going long".
* If an investor thinks that's a questionable move they could sit on their hands.
* If an investor thinks that's a daft move, because they could use $1.5b of capital far more productively in expanding / improving their manufacturing and design capabilities, they could sell their Tesla stock.
* If an investor is really negative about the idea, and thinks the $1.5b spent on Bitcoin has essentially gone up in smoke (and perhaps that Tesla is grossly overvalued for a host of other reasons), they could "sell it short". Say at a price of $800(1 - see below).

As of right now the market seems to be pretty neutral on the announcement, with Tesla stock up 1.12% on the day at the time of writing (which, to be honest, is probably just broader market "noise"). If it closes at that price the short seller will have to post some amount of collateral with their dealer. If their account can't meet the collateral the dealer will make what is known as a "margin call", essentially requiring the investor to post more collateral. If the investor can't meet the margin call the dealer takes ownership of the collateral, and the short stake, and sells them to recoup its losses.

(1) This isn't the only way of achieving this, for instance the investor could also use options. If they own Tesla stock they could sell put options at say $800, and if the price drops below that they have some downside protection. And if they don't own any Tesla stock and sell a put option at $800 they're effectively implementing a naked short trade....
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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by Incubi » Tue, 23. Feb 21, 21:59

Thanks for this. I am only just today seeing it. I will definitely be looking hard in to this and respond in a bit. Its my 50th bday so It may be much later.

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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by RegisterMe » Wed, 24. Feb 21, 00:10

Incubi wrote:
Tue, 23. Feb 21, 21:59
Thanks for this. I am only just today seeing it. I will definitely be looking hard in to this and respond in a bit. Its my 50th bday so It may be much later.
Many happy returns!!! I hit that milestone in July :).

Oh, and... here's some news on Tesla and bitcoin:-

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56174404

Tesla is currently trading at $698, so $160 less than in my post of the 8th Feb above. If you'd sold short at $800 you'd have made $102 / share, or an 11.8% return on your investment (ignoring costs) in a couple of weeks. Not bad if you managed it.

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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by greypanther » Fri, 26. Feb 21, 14:38

RegisterMe wrote:
Mon, 8. Feb 21, 14:35
This might turn out to be a long, complicated post. ( Lots of educational things... )
Thank you, that was interesting. I still find it hard to get past the thought of it being very exploitive though. Shame there is no ideal alternative to Capitalism.
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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by Chips » Sat, 27. Feb 21, 12:03

RegisterMe wrote:
Mon, 8. Feb 21, 14:35
So, at least imho, shorts have a real role to play. They are also not "free". To take a short position you need to pay to borrow the stock
To put this completely into my (as I understand it) understanding - you pay to borrow someone's shares, and then basically flog them at the current price, with a promise to buy shares back and give back to the original owner you borrowed from in the instance of:
a) You remove your "short position"
b) They want to sell their stock?

The reality sounds like you can use leveraging to effectively borrow more than you can afford? But that's not really relevant to my thoughts anyway! :D

My issue with shorting is simply this. You don't own the shares in the first place, you've never invested in the company. Price correction and whatnot is not something I consider in this - just purely that you've not invested.

So you shouldn't have access to shares. Want an investment in them? Buy shares. The idea of "pay to borrow" is a wrong un for me.
If you won't buy them as you think they're overprice - well guess what... don't buy them then. Doesn't mean borrow to bet against.

That's literally my dislike. You may open a position that's exposed to huge losses if wrong, so what. The entire shorting feels like someone sat there going "I KNEW they'd drop in value. Now if only I could have borrowed someone's shares to sell at the high point as I knew they'd tank, and buy them back at the low point to make money... how can we do this?". Seriously, it's not necessary.

There may well be great financial health and justifications, fine. But to me, it's just an opportunity to make more money rather than investing in your positive beliefs. I just have a different outlook to some I guess.
Last edited by Chips on Sat, 27. Feb 21, 12:36, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by BaronVerde » Sat, 27. Feb 21, 12:30

greypanther wrote:
Fri, 26. Feb 21, 14:38
Shame there is no ideal alternative to Capitalism.
Sorry to respectfully object, but that's just an opinion.

Since the economic system already failed multiple times and can only be kept alive by providing infinite money, one could also, equally opinionated say that many alternatives would be better than 'capitalism'. I'm sparing me the tedious task of defining the term 'capitalism'. Alternatives reach from very practical 'micro-economic' applications inside a firm, e.g. in relations from owners to employees, all the way up to the macro- and political economics. On an abstract level one could with a slightly philosophical, anthroposophical touch say, capitalism and its variations are a state of mind, handed down without questioning, they are not a fixed reality.

Economists and politicians don't learn about natural science, the environment they live in. They conveniently ignore bad sides of the (imo false belief in) constant growth, or blame others for not doing enough. Many take the current way of subsistence for granted and grab as much of the constant stream of money provided as they can, which leads to controversy and hampers development.

Let's not forget, what makes humanity so extraordinary successful in the animal kingdom is its ability to communicate and co-operate. Controvery only destroys the achievements. Recent example: successful vaccine development in worldwide cooperation, when politics took over things went wrong and politicians did what they can do best: hinder, blame, obstruct, lie, reject responsibility ...

All in all, nearly every other way of subsistence would be better than 'capitalism' (still not defined properly here :-)), let's see if we can implement it in time, before the environment gives in. We need better education and basic care for everyone and for free, not just for the huge administrative caste and their stooges and accomplices.

Yeah, am I left wing, or just reasonable ? :-)

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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by RegisterMe » Fri, 5. Mar 21, 20:22

I'm not really a fan of Fortune, but given a couple of my earlier posts in this thread I did find this story amusing.

https://fortune.com/2021/03/05/tesla-st ... alue-drop/
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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by Mightysword » Fri, 5. Mar 21, 23:02

BaronVerde wrote:
Sat, 27. Feb 21, 12:30
greypanther wrote:
Fri, 26. Feb 21, 14:38
Shame there is no ideal alternative to Capitalism.
Sorry to respectfully object, but that's just an opinion.
For me the problem is the current debate seem to have everyone only focus in 2 directiosn: Capitalism and Communism/socialism that I wonder if anyone interested in another option? Both of those things are so yester---century, 'about time someone come up with a new -ism don't you think? ;)

Like sure, if you tell me Capitalism is not functioning as intended and are flying off the handle I won't disagree, but that to me is not equivalent to saying socialism has it right or is the only alternative. The issue with any "binary" argument, not with just this topic but about everything else, they always tend to drift toward their extreme end as they locked head into each other. A third alternative is importantly not only for the shake of having one more option, but in my experience it can also help the 2 existing one to gain a wider perspective outside of their own box.
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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by Vertigo 7 » Fri, 5. Mar 21, 23:59

Mightysword wrote:
Fri, 5. Mar 21, 23:02
BaronVerde wrote:
Sat, 27. Feb 21, 12:30
greypanther wrote:
Fri, 26. Feb 21, 14:38
Shame there is no ideal alternative to Capitalism.
Sorry to respectfully object, but that's just an opinion.
For me the problem is the current debate seem to have everyone only focus in 2 directiosn: Capitalism and Communism/socialism that I wonder if anyone interested in another option? Both of those things are so yester---century, 'about time someone come up with a new -ism don't you think? ;)

Like sure, if you tell me Capitalism is not functioning as intended and are flying off the handle I won't disagree, but that to me is not equivalent to saying socialism has it right or is the only alternative. The issue with any "binary" argument, not with just this topic but about everything else, they always tend to drift toward their extreme end as they locked head into each other. A third alternative is importantly not only for the shake of having one more option, but in my experience it can also help the 2 existing one to gain a wider perspective outside of their own box.
That's great in theory, except you republican types love to turn anything that isn't capitalism into socialist or communist plots that will ruin life for all the white people. So what's the point in labeling anything? Your type isn't going to like it no matter what it is so, screw the republicans and screw the capitalists, we're not out to appease either of them.

I hope to see more short sellers lose their ass in the future. Watching rich white dudes cry on TV is the best TV. I'd love to see some of them have to go start a Go Fund Me to pay their bills, or put food on their table, or face just any one of the hardships the people they've spat on for years have to deal with.
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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by Observe » Sat, 6. Mar 21, 04:38

Mightysword wrote:
Fri, 5. Mar 21, 23:02
BaronVerde wrote:
Sat, 27. Feb 21, 12:30
greypanther wrote:
Fri, 26. Feb 21, 14:38
Shame there is no ideal alternative to Capitalism.
Sorry to respectfully object, but that's just an opinion.
For me the problem is the current debate seem to have everyone only focus in 2 directiosn: Capitalism and Communism/socialism that I wonder if anyone interested in another option? Both of those things are so yester---century, 'about time someone come up with a new -ism don't you think? ;)
Any of the popular ism's work fine if the wealth flows equitably and if greed has restraints. Since all of the worldwide ism's share a more or less common flawed global economic system, they all have to dance to the same tune, regardless of the facade they use to claim difference.

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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by mr.WHO » Mon, 8. Mar 21, 16:26

Call me paranoid, but Elon Musk suddenly promoting useless Dogecoin shortly after Gamestop incident, might be indication that he's not on good guys side :/

Note from wiki:
Dogecoin started its initial coin production schedule with 100 billion coins in circulation. By mid-2015 the 100 billionth Dogecoin had been mined with an additional 5 billion coins put into circulation every year thereafter. There is currently no implemented hard cap on the total supply of Dogecoins. Initially, Dogecoin had a supply limit of 100 billion coins, which would already have been far more coins than the top digital currencies were allowing. Nonetheless, in February 2014, Dogecoin founder Jackson Palmer announced that the limit would be removed in an effort to create a consistent reduction of its inflation-rate over time

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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by BrasatoAlBarolo » Tue, 9. Mar 21, 08:30

mr.WHO wrote:
Mon, 8. Mar 21, 16:26
Call me paranoid, but Elon Musk suddenly promoting useless Dogecoin shortly after Gamestop incident, might be indication that he's not on good guys side :/

Note from wiki:
Dogecoin started its initial coin production schedule with 100 billion coins in circulation. By mid-2015 the 100 billionth Dogecoin had been mined with an additional 5 billion coins put into circulation every year thereafter. There is currently no implemented hard cap on the total supply of Dogecoins. Initially, Dogecoin had a supply limit of 100 billion coins, which would already have been far more coins than the top digital currencies were allowing. Nonetheless, in February 2014, Dogecoin founder Jackson Palmer announced that the limit would be removed in an effort to create a consistent reduction of its inflation-rate over time
In my opinion, people with the wealth of Elon Musk (or any ultra-rich) are never going to be on good guys side. They might be fine men / women every now and then but if they were good, they'd share more (e.g. actively fight to pay more taxes).

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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by Vertigo 7 » Tue, 9. Mar 21, 08:38

BrasatoAlBarolo wrote:
Tue, 9. Mar 21, 08:30
mr.WHO wrote:
Mon, 8. Mar 21, 16:26
Call me paranoid, but Elon Musk suddenly promoting useless Dogecoin shortly after Gamestop incident, might be indication that he's not on good guys side :/

Note from wiki:
Dogecoin started its initial coin production schedule with 100 billion coins in circulation. By mid-2015 the 100 billionth Dogecoin had been mined with an additional 5 billion coins put into circulation every year thereafter. There is currently no implemented hard cap on the total supply of Dogecoins. Initially, Dogecoin had a supply limit of 100 billion coins, which would already have been far more coins than the top digital currencies were allowing. Nonetheless, in February 2014, Dogecoin founder Jackson Palmer announced that the limit would be removed in an effort to create a consistent reduction of its inflation-rate over time
In my opinion, people with the wealth of Elon Musk (or any ultra-rich) are never going to be on good guys side. They might be fine men / women every now and then but if they were good, they'd share more (e.g. actively fight to pay more taxes).
Didn't ol' Elon side with Trumpanzies on disinformation for COVID and tax breaks for the ultra rich? Yeah... screw him too.
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Ketraar
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Re: Stock Market Meme Culture

Post by Ketraar » Tue, 9. Mar 21, 10:03

BrasatoAlBarolo wrote:
Tue, 9. Mar 21, 08:30
In my opinion, people with the wealth of Elon Musk (or any ultra-rich) are never going to be on good guys side. They might be fine men / women every now and then but if they were good, they'd share more (e.g. actively fight to pay more taxes).
Isnt putting most of your money to innovate the world's energy consumption towards using sustainable and clean sources (not claiming thats the case just making a point) a form of "paying taxes"? I mean Elon got rich because he invented paypal not like Bezos who gets rich by underpaying workers and put everyone else out of business. One is what capitalism likes to call itself and the other is reality, so there might be shades of grey wrt to call people out on their contributions. I'm happy to grant a person wealth if their contribution improves others life in similar "amount". Taxes can have various forms, not just cash.

MFG

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