Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Two-Sided Coin

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There is a topic I believe is going to be exceptionally important over the next decade, and that is Central Bank Digital Currencies. Let me be clear at the outset that I am not a professional economist, nor am I a CBDC expert. I do have a couple of extra IQ points to rub together, however, and for both my sake and yours, I wanted to try to educate myself about this crucial topic.

It wasn’t all fun and games; reading some of the academia about this subject doesn’t exactly crackle with warm-blooded humanity, as with this excerpt:

When households endogenously select into banked and unbanked, the introduction of a CBDC, which pays interest and is assumed to be immune to theft, can be Pareto improving and always increases welfare of at least unbanked households. The economic mechanism driving the welfare implications focuses on the interaction between the new monetary policy tool introduced by an interest-bearing CBDC and banks’ limited commitment.

FEDS Notes, November 9, 2020, “Central Bank Digital Currency: A Literature Review”
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And We Begin Anew

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Welcome to 2021, everyone! The first real trading day of the year! Let’s see what the first few hours of futures trading yielded us through the night:

Let’s start with Bitcoin. Sunday evening, out of seven billion people on the planet, I was the only one stupid enough to actually say the following: “my wild guess at this point is that cryptos have – – for the time being – – peaked..” Well, this sucker plunged FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS in the span of a few hours. Not bad, eh?

btc
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Some Little Guys

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Irony of ironies, even though I’ve hardly messed with crypto at all, my crypto calls haven’t been at all bad. I first pointed out Bitcoin as a beautiful saucer pattern when it was only $1,000, and more recently, in March 2019, I did a post called Crypto-Bull in which I said, ” as a chartist, I’ve got to say that it looks like a rally is getting ready.“.

In fairness, my typically strident self also said, ” I think the days of $20,000 bitcoin will never been see again”, which quite plainly is not the case, but I did point out BTC, LTC, and ETH as good buys, all of which have done very well.

For what it’s worth, my wild guess at this point is that cryptos have – – for the time being – – peaked. Bitcoin’s ride has been absolutely explosive, and Ethereum’s “tag” of the $1,000 mark is symbolic more than anything else. I am thinking more and more about digital currencies – – particularly central bank issued ones – – these days. But the absolutely zaniness over the past couple of months, I do think, will take a breather.

In the meanwhile, I went through 200 crypto charts for you and plucked out some interesting smaller ones. Yeah, I know, I need a life. Still, I never stop working for you people.

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