NWR Selling bitcoin

From Warren Buffett Berkshire vice Chairman

On the value of cryptocurrencies, Munger said he did not welcome a currency that was “so useful to kidnappers and extortionists… Nor do I like shovelling out a few extra billions and billions and billions of dollars to somebody who just invented a new financial product out of thin air. I think I should say modestly that I think the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization.”

"new financial product out of thin air"
...and he did not even mention the huge operating costs of this "whole damn development"
"contrary to the interests of civilization.”
Pretty damning!
Clearly, once it goes out of fashion, a lot of people will cry...
 
Just a little thing to add here - I have a strong suspicion that my First Direct account (of 31 years) was summarily closed due to my buying £200 worth of bitcoin.

Advice: keep one bank account for boring domestic things, direct debits, etc. Have another bank account (with another bank) for dealing with non-core things like online gambling, cryptocurrency and wine-buying.
 
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Alex Lake said:
Just a little thing to add here - I have a strong suspicion that my First Direct account (of 31 years) was summarily closed due to my buying £200 worth of bitcoin.

Advice: keep one bank account for boring domestic things, direct debits, etc. Have another bank account (with another bank) for dealing with non-core things like online gambling, cryptocurrency and wine-buying.
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Another good reason not to buy Bitcoin.
 
Alex Lake said:
Just a little thing to add here - I have a strong suspicion that my First Direct account (of 31 years) was summarily closed due to my buying £200 worth of bitcoin.

Advice: keep one bank account for boring domestic things, direct debits, etc. Have another bank account (with another bank) for dealing with non-core things like online gambling, cryptocurrency and wine-buying.
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It sounds a little unlikely that buying a small amount of Bitcoin will lead to your account being closed, I could be wrong, but £200 isn’t really going to fund anything too dodgy
 
Lots of reports of Lloyds having basically a zero tolerance policy if they see you buying crypto. Other banks however quite welcoming, Barclays for example. I doubt it’s as clear cut as the anecdotal reports on the internet make it sound though.
 
Julian Seers-Martin said:
Lots of reports of Lloyds having basically a zero tolerance policy if they see you buying crypto. Other banks however quite welcoming, Barclays for example. I doubt it’s as clear cut as the anecdotal reports on the internet make it sound though.
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I’m not sure why it would matter what a person spends their money on as long as it’s a legal transaction.
property deals, shares, gambling, art or coinbase / crypto purchases.
Anecdotal I know but I’m with Lloyds and have purchased a decent chunk of Coinbase, they stop the payment, as the anti fraud often do for new payments or suspicious transactions .They then make sure it’s you doing it and you haven’t been coerced but that’s it. No problem.
 
Mike Humphreys said:
I’m not sure why it would matter what a person spends their money on as long as it’s a legal transaction.
property deals, shares, gambling, art or coinbase / crypto purchases.
Anecdotal I know but I’m with Lloyds and have purchased a decent chunk of Coinbase, they stop the payment, as the anti fraud often do for new payments or suspicious transactions .They then make sure it’s you doing it and you haven’t been coerced but that’s it. No problem.
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Be cautious if that is your main account.
 
Mike Humphreys said:
I’m not sure why it would matter what a person spends their money on as long as it’s a legal transaction.
property deals, shares, gambling, art or coinbase / crypto purchases.
Anecdotal I know but I’m with Lloyds and have purchased a decent chunk of Coinbase, they stop the payment, as the anti fraud often do for new payments or suspicious transactions .They then make sure it’s you doing it and you haven’t been coerced but that’s it. No problem.
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Yeah - this is why I say it's probably not as clear cut as reports on the internet make it sound - the people who ask about this sort of thing on the internet are the ones that probably are trying to launder money.

I think in your case Alex - as completely ridiculous as it is and I have the utmost sympathy for you - I bet you had a marker on your file from the situation you described about your previous business bank account and AML suspicions. First Direct are a division of HSBC after all.

People trying to launder will generally start small and creep up in volume - no one is going to try washing £20k off the bat, so I think the amount is pretty immaterial to the situation.

The thing about AML techniques is the very nature of them means you'll probably never find out the reason. I knew lots of people stung by Chase bank in the states, who seemed to be particularly trigger happy, and they never found out exactly what they did.
 
The thing about money laundering is that one is guilty until proven innocent, especially if they don't make an issue of it formally. Fighting these things is likely to be incredibly expensive.
In some ways, this is exactly why bitcoin is useful. They can't take away from you! So there's a strange sense that by treating you as dodgy, the banks are putting pressure on you to actually become "dodgy" for self-preservation.
 
Back page of FT 8/5/21 uses digiconomist estimates to conclude that if you buy $10,000 worth of Bitcoin you're responsible for 505kg CO2, 10% of the average UK person's annual CO2 emissions.
 
Richard Zambuni said:
Wow, I am in awe at the 'Technoking's' intellect and handle on current affairs - not. But at least they have recognized the unfeasibility of Bitcoin in its current power-guzzling format.
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Indeed, although I think it's a little more subtle than that - i.e. that it's fossil-based power being used. They seemingly wouldn't mind if the miners all used renewables (even if the net effect of that was to force ambivalent electricity consumers to use the fossil-made stuff).

In a way, though, this could (with very low probability) have been the plan all the way along(!) - he's hyped other, less inefficient, crypto currencies and BTC may well take even more of a beating now?
 
I had an interesting discussion with a very old friend who has a brain the size of a planet and works at Apple in California designing their image sensing algorithms. He agrees that BTC is basically broken from an environmental POV and also made one interesting remark re the size of the blocks and the wastefulness of block maintenance: "One thing is becoming more apparent, if there is a collapse in bitcoin value, people are not going to be able to get their money out in a hurry, it could take weeks. It’s be mayhem. I suspect many of the exchanges will just collapse."

I'm in Ethereum now not BTC FWIW
 
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