"At the start of 2020, the dollar’s run had endured 100 years. That would have been reason to question how much longer it could continue." This crude instance of the gambler's fallacy is one of many reasons why I find Ruchir Sharma's FT piece unconvincing:

Another is his suggestion that, although "When the pandemic hit, the US dollar was as mighty as ever," the pandemic has changed that. To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of the end of the dollar's "exorbitant privilege" are much exaggerated.

In fact the demand for dollars rose to exceptional levels early in the crisis; if it has declined somewhat since, it is only from that unusual peak:

Then there is this glaring non-sequitur: "US officials were thus confident that...they could print the dollar in limitless quantities without undermining its reserve currency status. ...But a new class of contenders is emerging: cryptocurrencies."

But? The rise of cryptos has practical no bearing on how many dollars the Fed can create without undermining the dollar's int'l appeal or otherwise resulting in its "debasement." Sure, many Bitcoin fans _think_ the dollar is going to crash. But that hardly means it will!

1/9 In 2019 I checked out Craig Wrights claim that in 2008 he had installed a fibre link between his rural property (ranch) in Bagnoo/Byabarra to the local exchange.

This claim was proven false
A few days ago I revisited this claim and dug much deeper - the story is still false

2/9 Craig claimed that due to his initiative he opened up a rural town to high speed internet and approx 50,000 people benefited 🙃

The Byabarra exchange is tiny and in 2009 didn't service many properties, maybe a hundred or so

Craig must think we are clowns 🤡

3/9 Craig also said he had racks of PC's set up in his shed at his ranch to support the Bitcoin network in the early stages of 2009. The high speed Fibre internet link was an integral part of this.

Why on earth would you need all that to support the Bitcoin network 2009? 👎

4/9 I found photos of his shed online as the property was being sold at one point, just looked like a normal shed with lots of tools. It was a metal shed, no insulation, no cooling, so not a great place to host PC's mining Bitcoins

Aussie sun + metal shed = very hot PC's 🔥

5/9 So I checked the facts and found the claim about having fibre to the home was total nonsense.

I did this by phoning a local business, also the NBN co, Optus, Telstra and I spoke to real estate agents and 2 key people in the local area.

Nope, no fibre then, no fibre now

Today a new bitcoiner was born.

How and which information triggered his change of mind?

...... A super small thread. 👇👇👇

A family member who bought a bit in the end 2017, right in the top and saw its portfolio basically dissolve rather quickly than slowly.

He basically dismissed the idea that bitcoin had value, and believed that every #bitcoin -er was in a cult.

I asked him to give it a chance

Just listen to these two podcasts:

1. Bitcoin is Hope
with @johnkvallis and @michael_saylor

2. Bitcoin in a Deflationary World
with @PrestonPysh and @JeffBooth

And finally read this little article:
"Why the Yuppie Elite Dismiss Bitcoin"
by @Croesus_BTC

As a context, he had an inclination to socialism as he is not from a wealthy family and did his Masters Program in an Ivy League university.. so he is fully indebted.

He gave it a chance, and I wake up to an SMS.

"Ok, I bought bitcoin, wont ever make fun of that again."

I asked him: "What changed your mind?"

He said:
"I am convinced. I must accept that part of me wants to trust that the currently monetary system won't fail. It is not easy to accept that the USD will devaluate to oblivion."

"I loved @PrestonPysh's pod, I will cont. learning"

#Bitcoin has never taken any money from anybody. Every person in the world that bought #BTC and did not sell or lose it has made money. I mean hard money too. The only ones that lost either sold it or lost it. What’s the lesson?

The simple answer is #HODL don’t sell and secure it, but not many have done that #. Why? Here is what I learnt from being involved in #Bitcoin for over a decade.

1. You need to overcome the emotions of fear and greed which is hard wired into the human psychology. Not so easy.

2. You need to resist the urge to trade when everybody is telling you #Bitcoin is going to be killed by another competitor or it’s a scam or it’s a Ponzi scheme or it’s just for drug dealers or it’s a dinosaur compared to other crypto or it’s going to get banned or etc. etc. etc.

3. You need to learn how to become your own bank that requires learning a new skill that became easier over time, but was very hard in the early days. Securing your own wealth without a bank gives you freedom, but new problems to solve.

A personal update: Monday was my last day at Business Standard and I can truly count the past 3 years as the golden phase of my career, where I got the opportunity to not only report but also break some of the biggest news stories during this period.

From January, I will be writing for the @BloombergQuint.

Even though I will miss the adrenaline rush of finding my byline in the paper every morning, I am really excited about starting a new journey with a digital platform.

In this thread, I am sharing some of the work that I did at @bsindia, which is close to my heart.

I wrote a series of stories with @dilasha on how the cryptocurrency players in India are surviving in a hostile regulatory

In Feb 2018, I exposed how the government secretly commissioned a survey to two independent economists, giving them unauthorised access to private data of citizens only to establish ‘robust’ job