That escalated quickly
Over the last few months I have put a little into some Steem on the exchanges hoping that I could catch some spikes, nothing major and just to keep things "interesting" so to speak. I had the feeling that there was going to be some larger pumps coming when I was looking last night, but kept my lower sells in because I wanted to get a little bit of liquid BTC and didn't expect it to go to 2370 satoshis. My lowest sell was around 1850 and I was "all out" at 2250.
I will reiterate, the volumes that I am trading is not very high and this is more for the practice of it more than anything as I get value from the emotional training. What I mean by this is the observation of how I feel at different trading points. For example, when I saw the pump happening I was pretty happy as I could see that it had eaten my low sells and I thought I would have a chance to buy back. When it kept climbing I was still happy as I figured it would shew my mid-range sells and again, I could buy back. When it hit the 2370 peak ... I felt like I had missed out.
But I know I didn't.
I bought these STEEM in the 1500 satoshi range, meaning that even my low sells were 20% up with the high sells around 50%. Even if it climbs well past this point (it very well might) without dropping back, I have still been able to increase my BTC holdings. It is interesting considering the "real-world" value of this is quite insignificant in the grand scheme of things, the emotional weighting applied is still high. I don't like making emotional decisions, hence the trade training, as I feel that it helps me evaluate and choose paths in other risk areas of my life.
My wife is looking at houses.
We have an apartment that we have a little collateral in and our mortgage is manageable. But the problem is that the building maintenance costs have almost tripled in the 5 years we have been here. The reason is that the people who live in the building are mostly either long-term residents who aren't going to ever move again or, renters (We have been very unfortunate with the tenants above and below us). The owners of the apartments keep upgrading parts of the building and adding it onto the debt, and while we have a "say" in this, it is not a large enough stake to override. In many respects, the changes that they make are like putting lipstick on a pig - and it isn't even a nice shade.
So now the predicament is that my emotional side (likely driven by my current energy levels) is saying... I don't want to go through the hassle of moving, even if it makes financial sense. Then there is the other aspect that is telling me that there is a massive recession coming that will bottom out the housing prices that have climbed significantly over the last decade - so waiting to buy makes more sense.
But... it only makes sense if we have the economic availability to take advantage, something that currently we do not have. There is no cash in the bank and a large part of the collateral in our home will be eaten in that same drop to housing prices, so I have the feeling that we need to move and that it might be better to stay put for the time being. Doh.
Ideally, the near best case scenario would be that crypto pumps to the moon (150x on Steem would do fine ;D ) and I am able to take some profits to pay off the apartment, use it as collateral on a house and keep it as a rental that will cover the building maintenance costs and provide something toward the mortgage of a house. that way it would provide a recurring revenue stream that is relatively reliable.
"Best cases" rarely happen in my experience.
Recurring revenue streams is something I value a lot, which is why I value having several working point that provide some income each, as it spreads the risk and lowers the chance of losing them all. Steem is one of those I consider a recurring revenue even though I have not taken any of it into use. Currently, I am more in the building phase of the Steem investment, not the profit taking phase, as the profits are far from significant enough to make a difference That can change very rapidly though and if for example Steem was to climb and then find a floor price around 1 dollar, my curation would make a decent dent in a mortgage - at 2 dollars it would probably cover it.
Dreams can come true
It may be a dream, it might never happen at all - but the risk of building now for the chance to have that possibility in the future is far lower than the upside potential. I see Steem (and crypto in general) as highly asymmetrical where the ratio of input to gain is very unbalanced. Not only that, there is both certainty and uncertainty.
I know the floor price on crypto. It is ZERO.
What no one knows is the ceiling price. We set milestone points in our head like "if STEEM reaches 20" or "when Bitcoin hits a million" but, we actually have no idea what the peak might be as we are so early in the game and the price discovery is only speculative and not supported by real goods and services (for the most part). Bitcoin doesn't have to stop at a million, it can go to 10 million. Steem could go to 100 dollars and it would still only have a total value of 33 billion dollars - that is chickenfeed in the grand scheme of things - especially if we consider that crypto is going to be adopted by the masses sooner or later.
33 billion dollars seems a long way away from the current 65 million we sit at now, but then once upon a time every billion dollar industry felt the same. Crypto is 11 years old, Steem 4 - this industry is only just beginning.
Maybe I am emotional.
Looking back at tech industries from phones and cameras, to internet and social media - some of us might make the comment, that escalated quickly. crypto is going to piggy back on all of that and add a financial layer that is accessible to all, not just the select few.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
What would be 120x? $24 steem. I guess that would be possible with bitcoin at a million...so maybe in 2030 ;-)
I think we can hope for a $1 steem by the end of the year...it seems like the year is going to be 10 steps forward 9 steps back all year until something big happens towards the end or next year. But what do I know!
Accumulation is possible, but I have a feeling that it will go well over 1 this year. I am hoping that the "new normal" will be 1. Fun times either way.
i hope so too! I'm just trying not to get overly excited! Learned my lesson :-D
Yeah, it is definitely best to temper expectations :D
I've actually been quite enjoying myself just buying in and out of Steem the last couple of weeks making 5-10% gains each time, this Steem pump has sort of left me wondering what to do. I've just sold the 300 I had kicking around on the exchange, and put in a lower limit buy, I'm sure it'll come down again!
I'm leaving my lower limit buys in place too.... I don't mind keeping the BTC if they never trigger!
Interesting times, I wonder whose buying? New adopters? Unlikely to be anyone familiar with Steem I think.
I quite like your strategy of staggered sell points. I might adopt that more.
I only trade tiny amounts for the game of it, I don't like it as an income strategy - it's too fragmented an experience for me. I'd rather work on projects I can focus on for a long time and earn my money that way!
I don't trade at all these days. If you're trading on an exchange that has anything resembling KYC, there is no choice but to declare all gains as taxable income. Doing the calculations can be a major headache.
I don't think the floor price of crypto is zero. It may be low but there will always be some use for it, if not for criminals or people living under authoritarian regimes to avoid the law.
Increase Bitcoin's fungibility with Schnorr signatures or Litecoin's with Mimble Wimble (in the works right now) and you could say that both of them combined with second-tier solutions to help them scale are the best form of money ever invented by humanity.
Floor price is always zero. It isn't likely though.
In practice it won't be because of the small amount of baseline demand for the purposes I mentioned.
Yep. the chain would have to halt and @gtg won't let that happen ;D
Well sometimes we look at these things with our emotions rather than being really rational or reasonable. I have no doubt on steem whatsoever.
Always have some doubt, as overconfidence can lead to unknowingly overstretching resources into risk models one might not want to accept.
What kind of renovations are you talking about? If I recal correctly, in a building roughly the of most buildings age in your area, typical parts and systems due to being renovated may include: the plumbing + bathrooms/kitchens, sewage pipes, electrical wiring, balconies and the exterior walls, doors+windows, roofing (inspection at a minimum followed by maintenance/repair). If the long-term residents of your building are wasting money mainly on other kinds of things, it may indeed be time to move out.
Those structures and parts have a lifetime based on normal wear and tear. If don't replace 40 to 60 year-old pipes (I don't recall the exact expected lifetimes of various types), you're going to have leaks which no insurance company will cover. Serious water damage is very, very expensive to repair. There are serious health risks to such damage, too.
Unless you're ok with substandard housing, living in a home of a certain size in a certain area will cost a certain amount of money. There is no escaping that. In some Western European countries, people just don't care and it shows in the condition of the buildings. I've heard a lot of horror stories from au pairs, exchange students and other Finnish expats in WE about the conditions of residential buildings there.
The plumbing was done as we bought. Then they added some 'surface renovation' done "cheaply" and poorly in styles that do not age well, based on trends from the 90s. :) They did half the balconies when doing the windows, but now have to do them properly, which means redoing what was done 5 years ago. Lots of little things by people who know better than everyone else.
One part of owning a home is being master of one's own destiny in some respect. I had never rented until coming to Finland.
I wouldn't mind finding a nice rintamiestalo somewhere, but obviously price is an issue still, as well as location etc. I'd also like to one day build for myself, as I think I could design a kick ass home :D
Good for you.
That's not great. Was the bathroom done like that? It has to be renovated if the plumbing is replaced.
That's a pity. It can cost about €10,000 to replace the windows of a family home. I dare not think what replacing the windows would cost us if we had to do it in our house but they seem to be in good shape. I already had to have snow guards installed. The front porch is in need of maintenance. The long moist autumn and the wet warm winter hasn't been kind to it. The garage door remote control is broken and the fault could be in the receiver because I changed the remote battery and it didn't help. Just had to have the mechanism of one leaking toilet seat replaced. The kitchen appliances seem quality models but they might have to be replaced in the next few years. There's always something. A hundred here and a few hundred there.
This is why home ownership is common here, too, and favored by the tax code.
If you have to fly frequently, you might want to consider Nokia as it is not far from the airport, accessible quickly by motorway, and, as far as I know, the house prices there are relatively low. They can be surprisingly low given that the shore of Pyhäjärvi is not far from any part of the zoned area around the core of the town. Pirkkala near the airport tends to be expensive.
If you're going to buy a rintamamiestalo, they can be very nice. But if they have been renovated thoroughly, it would be wise to pay attention to how the renovations were done. Hire a professional home inspector of your own. A classic mistake some people make is insulating the basement from the inside. Guaranteed microbial damage because there is nothing to stop moisture in the warm moist indoor air from condensating on the cold side of the insulation. Also, it's a good idea to factor in the cost of upcoming necessary repairs and upgrades such as rebuilding the foundation drainage system if it hasn't been done already. Basements must be kept dry in this climate. Why? Because differences between air humidity and temperature outside and in the house vary greatly according to the time of year. Condensation tends to be periodic. The dry periods put potential microbial growths under a lot of stress, which is when they begin chemical warfare on each other, which is when the human occupants may become collateral damage.
It would have been if we had gone with their choices. Our bathrooms are nice - we designed and bought the furniture and fittings :)
All of the little expenses add up and it is even worse if one isn't equipped to do the renos and has to pay a professional. Not that I have a lot of faith in Finnish tradespeople tbh. Lt's of experience with them, very little good.
I do fly often at the moment, but it doesn't change much as the customer covers costs anyway :)
If we do look at rintamiestalot, we have a couple friends who have a massive amount of experience with them, the renovations of them and the points to look for. We would likely get a professional in after that anyway. So many things can go wrong with them if not prepped properly.
Great!
I'm sorry you've had bad experiences. Mine have been varied. Some good, some bad. It really comes down to having a network of friends or acquaintances who can recommend good tradespeople. I know one guy does floors and other renovations in your city who's good.
In 2008, we had our bathroom renovated by a company in Tampere where we lived at the time. The bathroom guy was ok but he had a specialist for doing the tiles whose work we had nothing to complain about except that he suddenly took off to Turkey for a week in the middle of everything. My parents once dealt with a contractor who had a drinking problem. Beware of Laestadians who push overpriced contracts on you. :)
Sure, but if you fly from Pirkkala, living not too far from the airport wouldn't hurt.
Definitely.
BTW, the garage door remote control started working by some miracle today. I went down to the supermarket to get my sauna beer and when I came back about fifteen minutes ago, I tried the remote for the hell of it only because I had mentioned it earlier in this thread. And it worked! It stopped working almost two years ago.
The funniest part of us doing the bathrooms was that they had to return money to us and, they would bring their people through to see them and say, we could have done this in all of them.. :)
Yep, the network is needed for tradespeople, but I don't think it should be to the degree it is. THe other weird thing is that when building (might have changed now) the building company doesn't have their own selected crew - which means the results vary greatly - my brother built a Jämerä home with some disaster people - they were given a list and had to call them themselves.
Their tilers after getting 50% deisappeared for 5 weeks. They called from Kuopia finally and said they were coming to do the job, but they needed more money upfront, because they had drunk theirs and couldn't afford to get back to Tampere.
Yeah, but I think it is the Australian in me. I wouldn't move to be closer to my workplace either. Though that is in Hervanta...sooo ;D It is actually quite nice there I guess these days once heading toward the Vuores areas.
Score on the remote - but don't trust it :)
What a fucking disaster!
I know better. :) I wonder if this whole thing was a contact issue in the wiring? Maybe the remote stops working again when the weather gets drier...
If it does, then at least you have a place to start looking
I always think I'd have the best designs ever when creating a house, should try draw one out one of these days. My gf keeps reminding me how I'm letting my drawing pad cover dust too and I could shitpost the drawing in the end. That's a lot of birds with one stone.
I have made a few designs over the years that I still think will work. Eventually I will refine one to be "the one" and build it with upvotes to pay the contractors :)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I'm a few years behind you I think in terms of creating revenue streams, investing for later and looking to purchase a house.
But in my mind I'm preparing to do the same. I'm learning a lot, structuring my finances and slowly investing some money in Steem and steem-engine tokens.
A pleasant read on a Saturday afternoon this was.
Perhaps, but I am playing catchup as hard as I can at the moment, without punishing my family too much :D
One of the large values of Steem is the personal awareness it brings to paying attention to financial considerations. Hopefully we all benefit from it :)
Dude, $100 STEEM. I haven't crunched those numbers for a while.
It all seems crazy til it happens. I wonder if the old school tech billionaires saw the potential in the first few years. These days, tech startups all seem to believe they are unicorn companies - but the work takes time and the luck needed isn't often aligned.
Even if you put in the work, eventually its often down to luck.
Thinking of all the people who move to Hollywood to try and make it as a
writer - actor - director etc.
For every success story there are hundreds of failures. You'll never make it if you don't try; but looking at the winners is only giving you half the story.
I agree. Thereis a very strong survivor bias. No one writes books about the losers.
PS. I really enjoy reading your posts before falling asleep, either that or they help me fall asleep. :p
As long as they help with something, I am happy.