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Strategies & Market Trends : John Pitera's Market Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy who wrote (19412)	6/17/2017 5:25:51 AM
From: John Pitera	Respond to of 33421

Deutsche Bank -- DB 140 weekender ---Insights in 140 words 16 June 2017 Macro US rate hike – The Federal Reserve’s *dual mandate is pulling it in opposing directions.* Unemployment below NAIRU signals tightening is in order while core inflation below two per cent and falling suggests otherwise. Theoretically *stabilising inflation and outpu,t should align in a ‘divine coincidence*’. Empirically, they have been in conflict 45 per cent of the time over the past 25 years, forcing the Fed to choose. In the late 1990s, when this was a persistent problem, the Fed disregarded unemployment and used inflation as a guide. Ms Yellen in a 1996 FOMC meeting said, “with each passing quarter in which unemployment remains low and core inflation declines or remains stable, the Committee's degree of confidence that the natural rate has fallen should rise a little.” Not anymore. This week Ms Yellen confidently held NAIRU estimates unchanged while resisting the pull of low inflation . Strategy Euro – The more things change, the more euro-dollar stays the same. Despite Brexit, Trump, Macron, a failed Italian referendum, three Fed rate hikes, and the ECB QE taper/extension, the currency pair is where it was 12 months ago. This stability is uncanny, with the nine per cent range over the last year being half the average annual move** since the euro’s launch in 1999. Investors remain undeterred by the currency’s refusal to budge, however. Current options prices reflect a ten per cent probability that the euro appreciates 12 per cent to $1.25 one year from now. This *is also incongruous with moves expected* in other markets. For instance, equity options assign an identical ten per cent probability to a similar-sized move higher in the Euro Stoxx50 index. Historically, though, the equity index has been twice as volatile as the euro-dollar. Stocks Immelt –The four per cent jump in GE’s share price this week was put down to investor hopes that new chief executive John Flannery is likelier than his predecessor to sell-off chunks of the conglomerate. But would the board sanction such a strategy given that during Jeff Immelt’s tenure it approved over $250bn of acquisitions, equivalent to GE’s entire market value? More probable is that Mr Flannery will cut the dividend, which has become increasingly difficult to fund. If GE hits $13bn of operating cashflow this year and then subtracts capital spending of $3.5bn and pension payments of $1.8bn, the available free cashflow of $7.7bn will be just short of the expected $8bn dividend. Compare that to GE’s dividend policy in September 2001 when Mr Immelt first took over. Back then *the dividend consumed less than half GE’s free cash flow.* Finance Basel III – America’s plans to shake up financial regulation, *unveiled on Monday, have perhaps made the finalisation of the Basel III rules even more urgent.* One of the final hurdles is setting ‘output floors’ which mandate the minimum capital required for various products. For European banks, a mooted 70-75 per cent threshold could boost risk-weighted assets to 23 per cent, one quarter higher than with no floor. Combining this with new accounting rules under IFRS 9 would lower the average tier-one equity ratio by one-fifth, to 10.4 per cent. European finance ministers believe their banks will not have to raise much new capital. Japanese banks should avoid having to tap the market. Yet investors should be cautious. Although banks should have until 2025 to comply, markets may ‘*front load’ the requirements, meaning lending plans and capital strategies are affected sooner than many think. Digestif* Lunch with Warren – Everyone reckons the anonymous bidder who paid $2.7m for lunch with Warren Buffett this week must be rich. In fact the tab makes sense for regular Joes, too. Take the average US worker: 42 years old with a pension pot of $92,500 earning seven per cent annually. Even with no more contributions those savings will be worth $284,000 in real terms by the retirement age of 65. But when, over dessert, Warren whispers the secret to Berkshire Hathaway’s 19 per cent annualised return since inception, the expected pot becomes $3.8m. Hence the average American should be willing to pay $3.5m for the lunch – more than last year’s record amount – minus any real borrowing costs to fund the bid. And if someone with just $92,500 to invest should spend that much, every billionaire hedgie who has dined with Warren has underpaid. (Editorial note Buffett's returns are widely and wildely state and mistated. When he initially gathered money from family and friends in the early 1960's.. he experienced sucess, but he found the stock market of 1967-1968 , the so called "GO-GO" market so vastly overvalued that he shut down his fund and sent money back to his shareholders.) (It's also something else the Goldman Sachs *whose vulture culture opportunism was on full display during the GFC of 2008-2009.* And then in a private offering raised money to Buffett, he was given a very high interest rate on his preferred equity with a below free market value conversion ability into equity. This from a firm that engaged in criminal activity with John Paulson in letting *Paulson cherry pick the* *ABS components, and CDO tranches that were surest to blow up in price* making Paulson 15 Billion from 1 Billion and similarly enrishing GS. When they invested in Wells Fargo, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.... and I particularly find Munger's words ands actions to be duplicitous and that of a manipulative 93 year old. specifically he called Vallent's business model a sewer at the May 2016 3 hour marathon interview on CNBC. Yet he had laboriously looked through Wells Fargo's financial disclosures and *knew that WFC employees were guilty of widespread illegal activity in pumping 10, 15 , 20 accounts* on some innocent members of the public to *generate fees and earnings for WFC.. which Berkshire has continously held near 10% of. Mr Munger and Mr Buffett had no problem investing in a sewer of corrupt employees and a corrupt corporate culture that was ripping off the public and has been subsequently fined millions of dollars and I believe there were actually criminal charges considered, in WFC's practices..... If Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett can sit back and tell you that they did not know that one of their biggest investments that they have to actively manage to stay below the 10% threshold.... and then tell you they did not pay attention to how WFC was* *creating there earnings growth.... which was prominently discussed by WFC management in terms of growth in client accounts and various other metrics illegally achieved and then boasted about. For Buffett and Munger to stay mum about knowing about this criminal activity.... is itself... crimally collusive in nature... and shows a culture of moral bankruptcy at Berkshire at the highest level, Munger and Buffett..* And Munger has the two/faced gaul to talk of Valent being a sewer ...... *ignoring the sewer enriching him in his own portfolio.* Warren and Charlie should have there feet held to the fire and explain why they do these things. editorial note by JJP) pull.db-gmresearch.com

To: Elroy who wrote (19412)

6/18/2017 9:30:13 PM

From: John Pitera

2 Recommendations

Recommended By
richardred
sixty2nds

Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 33421

Graham's response to me on the value thread is so good I'm posting it here on the market Lab.

Message 31144127

my response that prompted his on 6/12/17

Message 31143413

He wrote it on June 12th and he talks about AMZN and comments that - as a retailer it's you eat their lunch or they eat yours.

Graham does talk about AMZN in the context of what THE STANDARD -- the standard oil trust company
which gloriously was throwing off $180 a year and $200 a year in dividends in the 1880's...what the stock was worth.... each year..... a veritable "black gold " mine that controlled 90% of the refining industry in 1900

Royal Dutch Shell with European investment banking capital coming out of europe especially some Rothschild money to help create global competition

However, the Standard Oil Trust was broken up in the landmark Antitrust case in of 1911

en.wikipedia.org

Standard Oil Co. Inc. was an American oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. Established in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller as a corporation in Ohio, it was the largest oil refinery in the world of its time. [7] Its controversial history as one of the world's first and largest multinational corporations ended in 1911, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil was an illegal monopoly.

Standard Oil dominated the oil products market initially through horizontal integration in the refining sector, then, in later years vertical integration; the company was an innovator in the development of the business trust. The Standard Oil trust streamlined production and logistics, lowered costs, and undercut competitors. " Trust-busting" critics accused Standard Oil of using aggressive pricing to destroy competitors and form a monopoly that threatened other businesses.

John D. Rockefeller was a founder, chairman and a major shareholder. With the dissolution of the Standard Oil trust into 34 smaller companies, Rockefeller became the richest man in the world, as the initial income of these individual enterprises proved to be much bigger than that of a single larger company. Its successors such as ExxonMobil, BP, and Chevron are still among the companies with the largest income worldwide. By 1882, his top aide was John Dustin Archbold. After 1896, Rockefeller disengaged from business to concentrate on his philanthropy, leaving Archbold in control. Other notable Standard Oil principals include Henry Flagler, developer of the Florida East Coast Railway and resort cities, and Henry H. Rogers, who built the Virginian Railway.

To: John P who wrote (59556)	6/12/2017 4:01:35 PM
From: Graham Osborn	of 59576

Hi John, good to hear from you! As you may know I abandoned technical analysis last fall. *I still hold certain macroeconomic views but they don't much influence the way I think about companies or valuations. So I may not be a source of much interesting conversation on these topics, simply because I don't read what the ECB is doing every day. I guess when the market is going down everyone is a macroeconomist and when the market is going up everyone is a fundamentalist - but in my case the latter is probably here to stay. As a fundamentalist, what I see are my favorite companies (mostly tech stocks) at modestly overvalued levels. I don't look much outside this area these days since only a handful of nontech companies are growing their tangible book on a nonlevered basis at above single digits. If anyone has one, please send it my way. GOOG is a stock I still like OK at the current price,* but I like other things more. *AMZN is a company I have never understood as a value investor,* and I don't expect that to clear up anytime soon. Google is a natural monopoly with no meaningful competition in its core operation. *Amazon is a retailer - and in retail either you are eating someone else's lunch or they are eating yours.* 30 years ago WMT was eating everyone else's lunch - now their lunch is being eaten. This doesn't mean retailers are bad businesses to own - Berkshire owned Walmart - but it does mean that Amazon's future profit margins are by no means guaranteed, a potential problem when almost all of the present valuation is based on those future margins. *Like Standard Oil, their margins depend on killing everyone, and such a sterile environment is hard to maintain. I don't feel the need to soul-search about why I missed the Amazon joyride - there were a lot of other companies where success was easier to predict, and I'm much happier owning those. To date no one has given me a succinct explanation of why Amazon was a sure thing 10 years ago, although maybe Bezos knew. The current market environment reminds me a lot of the mid-90s, although there is no particular reason for it to pan out the same way. Commodities were tanking, growth was unimpressive in a lot of other sectors of the economy, and tech was the one light in the dark so everyone jumped on the bandwagon. Rather than make predictions when I know I can't, my approach has become essentially: (1) arrange your affairs in such a way that you always have steady cash flow to invest regardless of market action* (2) look for companies growing at a steady clip and retaining their earnings, regardless of what the general market is doing (3) restrict purchases to companies selling at or below intrinsic value. It is quite alright to build up cash when valuations are high - but it is an unforgivable sin to run out of cash when valuations are low. A portfolio like that will decline in a downturn - but over 10 years, the results are likely to be far from unsatisfactory.

To: Elroy who wrote (19412)	6/20/2017 9:03:42 PM
From: John Pitera	2 Recommendations Recommended By roguedolphin sixty2nds Respond to of 33421

Elroy, the checkered past of Bitcoin. These weaknesses likely exist in all cryptocurrencies... either the programers can have back door access, 2) the hackers can cause havoc 3) the major exchanges can collapse very easily 4) the digital wallets are not fully secure. Yes Bitcoin was already clipped in Feb 2014 by the collapse of Japanese Mt. Gox that was handling 70% of all bitcoin transactions worldwide...... we've all know that and the elements of instability inherent in the cryptocurrency concept. Let's review Mt. Gox. en.wikipedia.org -------------------------------------- Mt. Gox was a bitcoin exchange based in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. [1] Launched in July 2010, by *2013 and into 2014 it was handling over 70% of all bitcoin transactions worldwide, as the largest bitcoin intermediary and the world's leading bitcoin exchange. [2] [3] [4] [5] In February 2014, Mt. Gox suspended trading, closed its website and exchange service, and filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors. [6] [7] In April 2014, the company began liquidation proceedings. [8] Mt. Gox announced that approximately 850,000 bitcoins belonging to customers and the company were missing and likely stolen, an amount valued at more than $450 million at the time. [9] [10] Although 200,000 bitcoins have since been "found", the reason(s) for the disappearance—theft, fraud, mismanagement, or a combination of these—were initially unclear. New evidence presented in April 2015 by Tokyo security company WizSec led them to conclude that "most or all of the missing bitcoins were stolen straight out of the Mt. Gox hot wallet over time, beginning in late 2011." [11] [12] Founding (2006-10)[ edit]In late 2006, programmer Jed McCaleb ( eDonkey2000, Overnet1, Ripple, Stellar) thought of building a website for users of the Magic: The Gathering Online* fantasy-based card game service, to let them trade "Magic: The Gathering Online" cards like stocks. [13] [14] [4]In January 2007, he purchased the domain name mtgox.com, short for "Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange". [15] [16] [17] [18] Initially in beta release, [19] sometime around late 2007, the service went live for approximately three months before McCaleb moved on to other projects, having decided it was not worth his time. He reused the domain name in 2009 to advertise his card game The Far Wilds. [20] In July 2010, McCaleb read about bitcoin slashdot.com, [21] and decided that the bitcoin community needed an exchange for trading bitcoin and regular currencies. After writing an exchange website, he launched it while reusing the spare mtgox.com domain name. [14] On July 18, Mt. Gox launched its exchange and price quoting service deploying it on the spare mtgox.com domain name. [14] [22] Security breach and invalid addresses (2011)[ edit]McCaleb sold the site to French developer Mark Karpelès, who was living in Japan, in March 2011, saying "to really make mtgox what it has the potential to be would require more time than I have right now. So I’ve decided to pass the torch to someone better able to take the site to the next level." [23] [4] Bitcoin transactions made on Mt.Gox Bitcoin Exchange on 19 June 2011, demonstrating price crash. Size of circular plot denotes size of transaction. On 19 June 2011, a security breach of the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange caused the nominal price of a bitcoin to fraudulently drop to one cent on the Mt. Gox exchange, after a hacker allegedly used credentials from a Mt. Gox auditor's compromised computer to transfer a large number of bitcoins illegally to himself. He used the exchange's software to sell them all nominally, creating a massive " ask" order at any price. Within minutes the price corrected to its correct user-traded value. [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] Accounts with the equivalent of more than $8,750,000 were affected. [26] In order to prove that Mt. Gox still had control of the coins, the move of 424,242 bitcoins from "cold storage" to a Mt. Gox address was announced beforehand, and executed in Block 132749. [30] In October 2011, about two dozen transactions appeared in the block chain (Block 150951) [31] that sent a total of 2,609 BTC to invalid addresses. As no private key could ever be assigned to them, these bitcoins were effectively lost. While the standard client would check for such an error and reject the transactions, nodes on the network would not, *exposing a weakness in the protocol.* Processor of most of world's bitcoin trades; issues (2013)[ edit] Logarithmic scaled bitcoin price history in USD on the Mt. Gox exchange from February 2012 until its shutdown in February 2014 On 22 February 2013, following the introduction of new anti- money laundering requirements by e-commerce/online payment system company Dwolla, some Dwolla accounts became temporarily restricted. As a result, transactions from Mt. Gox to those accounts were cancelled by Dwolla. The funds never made it back to Mt. Gox accounts. The Mt. Gox help desk issued the following comment: "Please be advised that you are actually not allowed to cancel any withdrawals received from Mt. Gox as we have never had this case before and we are working with Dwolla to locate your returned funds." The funds were finally returned on May 3, nearly three months later, with a note: "Please be advised never to cancel any Dwolla withdrawals from us again". In March 2013, the bitcoin transaction log or " blockchain" temporarily forked into two independent logs, with differing rules on how transactions could be accepted. The Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange briefly halted bitcoin deposits. Bitcoin prices briefly dipped by 23%, to $37, as the event occurred, [32] [33] before recovering to their previous level (approximately $48) in the following hours. [34] By April 2013 and into 2014 the site had grown to the point where it was handling over 70% of the world's bitcoin trades, as the largest bitcoin intermediary and the world's leading bitcoin exchange. [5] [4] [35] [3] With prices increasing rapidly, Mt. Gox suspended trading from 11–12 April for a "market cooldown". [36] The value of a single bitcoin fell to a low of $55.59 after the resumption of trading, before stabilizing above $100. Around mid-May 2013, Mt. Gox traded 150,000 bitcoins per day, per Bitcoin Charts. [37] On 2 May 2013 CoinLab filed a $75 million lawsuit against Mt. Gox, alleging a breach of contract. [38] The companies had formed a partnership in February 2013 under which CoinLab was to handle all of Mt. Gox's North American services. [38] CoinLab's lawsuit contended that Mt. Gox failed to allow it to move existing U.S. and Canadian customers from Mt. Gox to CoinLab. [38] On 15 May 2013 the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a warrant to seize money from Mt. Gox's U.S. subsidiary's account with payment processor Dwolla. [39] The warrant suggested the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an investigative branch of the DHS, asserted that the subsidiary, which was not licensed by the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), was operating as an unregistered money transmitter in the US. [39] [40] Between May and July the DHS seized more than $5 million from the subsidiary. [37] [4] On 29 June 2013, Mt. Gox received its money services business (MSB) license from FinCEN. [40] Mt. Gox suspended withdrawals in US dollars on June 20, 2013. [41] The Mizuho Bank branch in Tokyo that handled Mt. Gox transactions pressured Mt. Gox from then on to close its account. [37] On July 4, 2013, Mt. Gox announced that it had "fully resumed" withdrawals, but as of September 5, 2013, few US dollar withdrawals had been successfully completed. [42] [43] [44] On August 5, 2013, Mt. Gox announced that it incurred "significant losses" due to crediting deposits which had not fully cleared, and that new deposits would no longer be credited until the funds transfer was fully completed. [45] Wired Magazine reported in November 2013 that customers were experiencing delays of weeks to months in withdrawing cash from their accounts. [35] [3] The article said that the company had “effectively been frozen out of the U.S. banking system because of its regulatory problems”. Withdrawals halted; trading suspended; bitcoin missing (2014)[ edit]Customer complaints about long delays were mounting as of February 2014, with more than 3,300 posts in a thread about the topic on the Bitcoin Talk online forum. [46] On 7 February 2014, Mt. Gox halted all bitcoin withdrawals. [47] The company said it was pausing withdrawal requests “to obtain a clear technical view of the currency processes”. [47] The company issued a press release on February 10, 2014, stating that the issue was due to transaction malleability: “A bug in the bitcoin software makes it possible for someone to use the bitcoin network to alter transaction details to make it seem like a sending of bitcoins to a bitcoin wallet did not occur when in fact it did occur. Since the transaction appears as if it has not proceeded correctly, the bitcoins may be resent. Mt Gox is working with the bitcoin core development team and others to mitigate this issue.” [48] [49] On 17 February 2014, with all Mt. Gox withdrawals still halted and competing exchanges back in full operation, the company published another press release indicating the steps it claimed it was taking to address security issues. [50] In an email interview with the *Wall Street Journal, CEO Mark Karpelès refused to comment on increasing concerns among customers about the financial status of the exchange*, did not give a definite date on which withdrawals would be resumed, and wrote that the exchange would impose "new daily and monthly limits" on withdrawals if and when they were resumed. [51] A poll of 3,000 Mt. Gox customers by CoinDesk indicated that 68% of polled customers were still awaiting funds from Mt. Gox. The median waiting time was between one and three months, and 21% of poll respondents had been waiting for three months or more. [52] On 20 February 2014, with all withdrawals still halted, Mt. Gox issued yet another statement, not giving any date for the resumption of withdrawals. [53] A protest by two bitcoin enthusiasts outside the building that houses the Mt. Gox headquarters in Tokyo continued. Citing "security concerns", Mt. Gox moved its offices to a different location in Shibuya. Bitcoin prices quoted by Mt. Gox dropped to below 20% of the prices on other exchanges, reflecting the market's estimate of the unlikelihood of Mt. Gox paying its customers. [54] [55] On 23 February 2014, Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès resigned from the board of the Bitcoin Foundation. [56] The same day, all posts on its Twitter account were removed. [57] On 24 February 2014, Mt. Gox suspended all trading, and hours later its website went offline, returning a blank page. [58] [59] [60] A leaked alleged internal crisis management document claimed that the company was insolvent, after having lost 744,408 bitcoins in a theft which went undetected for years. [58] [59] [61] [62] Six other major bitcoin exchanges released a joint statement distancing themselves from Mt. Gox, shortly before Mt. Gox's website went offline*. [63] [64] On 25 February 2014, Mt. Gox reported on its website that a "decision was taken to close all transactions for the time being", citing "recent news reports and the potential repercussions on Mt Gox's operations". Chief executive Mark Karpelès told Reuters* that Mt. Gox was "at a turning point". [65] [66] [67] [68] From 1 February 2014 until the end of March, during the period of Mt. Gox problems, the value of bitcoin declined by 36%. [69] Bankruptcy; Stolen bitcoin (2014-16)[ edit]On 28 February 2014 Mt. Gox filed in Tokyo for a form of bankruptcy protection from creditors called minji saisei (or civil rehabilitation) to allow courts to seek a buyer, reporting that it had liabilities of about 6.5 billion yen ($65 million, at the time), and 3.84 billion yen in assets. [70] [71] [72] [73] [3] The company said it had lost almost 750,000 of its customers' bitcoins, and around 100,000 of its own bitcoins, totaling around 7% of all bitcoins, and worth around $473 million near the time of the filing. [72] [73] Mt. Gox released a statement saying, "The company believes there is a high possibility that the bitcoins were stolen,” blamed hackers, and began a search for the missing bitcoin. [10] [37] Chief Executive Karpelès said technical issues opened up the way for fraudulent withdrawals. Mt. Gox also faces lawsuits from its customers. [74] [75] On 9 March 2014, Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in the US, to halt U.S. legal action temporarily by traders who alleged the bitcoin exchange operation was a fraud. [76] [77] [78] On 20 March 2014, Mt. Gox reported on its website that it found some bitcoins — worth around $116 million — in an old digital wallet used prior to June 2011. [4] That brought the total number of bitcoins the firm lost down to 650,000, from 850,000. [79] New evidence presented in April 2015 by Tokyo security company WizSec led them to conclude that *"most or all of the missing bitcoins were stolen straight out of the Mt. Gox hot wallet over time, beginning in late 2011." [80] [81] On 24 February 2014, Mt. Gox suspended all trading, and hours later its website went offline, returning a blank page. [58] [59] [60] A leaked alleged internal crisis management document claimed that the company was insolvent, after having lost 744,408 bitcoins in a theft which went undetected for years. [58] [59] [61] [62] Six other major bitcoin exchanges released a joint statement distancing themselves from Mt. Gox, shortly before Mt. Gox's website went offline. [63] [64] On 25 February 2014, Mt. Gox reported on its website that a "decision was taken to close all transactions for the time being", citing "recent news reports and the potential repercussions on Mt Gox's operations". Chief executive Mark Karpelès told Reuters* that Mt. Gox was "at a turning point". [65] [66] [67] [68] From 1 February 2014 until the end of March, during the period of Mt. Gox problems, the value of bitcoin declined by 36%. [69] Bankruptcy; Stolen bitcoin (2014-16)[ edit]On 28 February 2014 Mt. Gox filed in Tokyo for a form of bankruptcy protection from creditors called minji saisei (or civil rehabilitation) to allow courts to seek a buyer, reporting that it had liabilities of about 6.5 billion yen ($65 million, at the time), and 3.84 billion yen in assets. [70] [71] [72] [73] [3] The company said it had lost almost 750,000 of its customers' bitcoins, and around 100,000 of its own bitcoins, totaling around 7% of all bitcoins, and worth around $473 million near the time of the filing. [72] [73] Mt. Gox released a statement saying, "The company believes there is a high possibility that the bitcoins were stolen,” blamed hackers, and began a search for the missing bitcoin. [10] [37] Chief Executive Karpelès said technical issues opened up the way for fraudulent withdrawals. Mt. Gox also faces lawsuits from its customers. [74] [75] On 9 March 2014, Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in the US, to halt U.S. legal action temporarily by traders who alleged the bitcoin exchange operation was a fraud. [76] [77] [78] On 20 March 2014, Mt. Gox reported on its website that it found some bitcoins — worth around $116 million — in an old digital wallet used prior to June 2011. [4] That brought the total number of bitcoins the firm lost down to 650,000, from 850,000. [79] New evidence presented in April 2015 by Tokyo security company WizSec led them to conclude that *"most or all of the missing bitcoins were stolen straight out of the Mt. Gox hot wallet over time, beginning in late 2011." [80] [81] On April 14, Mt. Gox lawyers said that Karpelès would not appear for a deposition in a Dallas court, or heed a subpoena by FinCEN. [37] On 16 April 2014, Mt. Gox gave up its plan to rebuild under bankruptcy protection, and asked a Tokyo court to allow it to be liquidated. [82] In a 6 Jan 2015 interview, Kraken bitcoin exchange CEO Jesse Powell discussed being appointed by the bankruptcy trustee to assist in processing claims by the 127,000 creditors of Mt. Gox. [83] [84] [85] [3] CEO Karpelès was arrested in August 2015 by Japanese police and charged with fraud and embezzlement, and manipulating the Mt. Gox computer system to increase the balance in an account -- this charge was not related to the missing 650,000 bitcoins. [86] [87] [4] [88] [89] After he was interrogated, Japanese prosecutors accused him of misappropriating Y315m ($2.6m) in bitcoin deposited into their trading accounts by investors at Mt. Gox, and moving it into an account he controlled, approximately six months before Mt. Gox failed in early 2014. [90] [91] By May 2016, creditors of Mt. Gox had claimed they lost $2.4 trillion when Mt. Gox went bankrupt, which they asked be paid to them. [92] The Japanese trustee overseeing the bankruptcy said that only $91 million in assets had been tracked down to distribute to claimants, despite Mt. Gox having asserted in the weeks before it went bankrupt that it had more than $500 million in assets. [93] The trustee's interim legal and accounting costs through that date, to be paid ultimately by creditors, were $5.5 million. [94] See also[ edit] Digital currency exchange Bitfinex, which replaced Mt. Gox as the world's largest bitcoin exchange, lost $72 million in bitcoin in 2016. there are 94 sources cited in this article go to wikipedia and U can read very extensively on the corroboration articles from a multitude of new sources. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SO THAT WAS BITCOIN 1.0 ------------------------------------ fortune.com Bitcoin and Ethereum Just Crashed, Taking Coinbase Down With Them Jen Wieczner Jun 15, 2017 After both hit all-time highs earlier this week, Bitcoin and Ethereum prices plummeted as much as 25% Thursday* — but many investors were unable to trade for much of the selloff. *Coinbase, a leading cryptocurrency* exchange, confirmed that it was completely offline by 9:35 a.m., though the outage appears to have begun several hours earlier, with investors reporting problems on Twitter throughout the night. The company blamed "sustained heavy traffic," *likely caused by intense Bitcoin and Ethereum trading,* for crashing the Coinbase website and mobile app, which remained completely down for at least four hours. As has become a familiar frustration to blockchain enthusiasts in recent days, Coinbase went offline at the worst possible time, just as extreme price swings in the cryptocurrencies made investors desperate to buy or sell. Around 10 a.m. Thursday, the Bitcoin price fell as low as $2079, a more than *30% drop since breaking the $3,000 milestone last weekend* (and a 19% decline in the previous 24 hours alone). At the same time, Ethereum, a rival cryptocurrency whose eye-popping 40-fold gain this year has far outpaced Bitcoin's returns, was down as much as 25% from its price a day earlier. The Ethereum price dipped below $274, just three days after it traded above $400 for the first time. Coinbase had a similar outage in late May while Bitcoin was trading at record highs, illustrating that new systems for trading blockchain currencies are not yet as reliable as traditional stock market exchanges — a lesson a number of investors were learning the hard way, based on their tweets. (While Coinbase initially said it had restored full access to the exchange by mid-afternoon Thursday, it was still trying to repair service for at least some users after 5 p.m., according to a status report on its website.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't know who is paying attention but the prices of a multitude of asset classes have been bruised starting with gold, silver, the euro, and yen starting declines on June 6th.... Friday June 9th... we had the NVDA headline show up on thursday night on the WSJ money blog with the $300 price wish... AMZN had an AIRPOCKET develop that clipped $100 off of and rebounded at 2 pm.... all of the top growth stocks turned on a dime as Carter Worth of Cornerstone Macro commented yesterday at 4:18 PM on cnbc. Message 31140238 that article I posted at 4 AM friday. NVDA, engage in extreme toppy action in at least the short term Message 31140949 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Glenn, nvda is one of the most intriguing growth stories of data center growth..... nvda's GPU is in every cloud computer we have taken a very deep dive into NVDA for a number of months. *The short term story with FANG and the NDX is that the NDX hit a top on 06/04/17 and we've been having a sell off in FANG.... Message 31140238 my post..to kick the day off The old adage is that they ring a bell at the top, and on a trading basis.. The WSJ blog ... had the big head.. to ring the bell and Cramer sees this ..... and Jimbo is always useful in creating huge massive volume when needed....8 million share s exchanged hands in the first 15 minutes today between 164 and 168.50. He was instrumental in creating the bottom on Oct 8th 1998 when Dell which you could never buy under it's 200 dma back in 1997 and 1998 plummeted along with the market and Cramer gave the capitulation to sell signal .... He plays his role so well........ And he also has great insights and knowledge.. Is he actually, affected by the passion or fear of the moment or just the master craft man..... in the 1998 movie rounders. I walked into my associates office at 5 pm yesterday and the NVDA headline was there on the monitor I commented that they always ring a bell at the top... and I was looking at this picture of the WSJ story on a 50 inch monitor...... ( it was not talking up the entire screen but it was the only one opened.... ) so we are having the check-back. we were at 155 when I started writing this and now we are back to the 200 period MA on the 15 minute cha chart. NVDA CFO Collette Kress spoke for 40 minutes on Tuesday. that's why I highlighted those areas data centers, artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and gaming* what they are doing with inferencing, the ability for GPU visualization Triangulation is extraordiary and has applications in everything from energy extraction to Medical procedures to autonomous driving and possibly 250 additional OEM applications. The Data Center business of nvda is incredible... as is the use of NVDA to compute in data centers has lead to 500,000 Kuda developers around the world -- creating the acceleration of computing via the GPU. A I / Deep Learning enabled -- is focused not on just the hardware, also the software and the development framework. I have 6 pages of notes that NVDA CFO Collette Kress presented on Tuesday at the San Franciso investment conference. They are full of really amazing technologies. As is the 70 page slide presentation that NVDA provided at JPM's Global tech conference in New York on May 10th...... Nvidia does have an investor site which does the a huge wealth of information on the financial as well as the technical aspects of the company......... That's the part of the NVDA website that anyone who wants to know the future of machine learning, A I autonomous driving and ultimately the singularity.... I have been deciding if I want to create a thread to focus on the machine learning, A I / Deep Learning, Inferencing, autonomous driving and the interplay of a number of key companies in the area as well as what ISRG, Celegene. are doing TSLA and Elon Musk and Peter Diamandis are up to........ theverge.com diamandis.com Is there a central repository site on SI for this.....Glenn ..? JP --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We saw the TNX 10 year yield do a mini crash to 2.10% on Weds earlier in the day prior to the FED hike at 2 PM FED raising rates.... the action in just about all asset classes..... the stock index futures , all the interest rate compenents, the currencies, the precious metals, copper, the energy complex crashed down 4% on the inventory numbers at 10:30 that morning.... the grains foreign stocks all had very large wild swings with very large ranges and the very large thin lines above , below the price box on the candlestick charts. Totally different theme from the the wild ebullience in which all asset prices across the board (except the US dollar index) went up dramatically and euphorically on the day of the Previous FED rate hike. on March 15th thebalance.com (This post was put a thread the MUX goldmining thread.... on 6/16/2017... I wanted to get this info on the market lab thread... and put it on the McEwan mining thread as a response to the Coinbase cryptocurrency news.... which was negative... digital money stolen out of digital wallets) Message 31149499 John