2. "Melania Trump auctions off her hat, and has become the latest victim of the cryptocurrency crash."
I'm glad to see that on the "most read" list in the sidebar, the big story is ranking above the big hat story:
Actually, it's the Melania story I choose to read, because it's hard to understand how accepting cryptocurrency hurts her. It's only a hat she doesn't want that's going out in the world. What difference does it make to her — the "I really don't care, do u?" lady — how the cryptocurrency bids translate into dollar amounts? She restricted the bids to cryptocurrency — for whatever reason — but since there are different cryptocurrencies, aren't all the bids presented at the bidding site in dollar amounts? No, she's only accepting one cryptocurrencies — Solana — so that simplifies things. Its value has fallen 40% in the last week, but wouldn't that cause people with Solana who want the hat to pour a lot more of this declining stuff into the quest for the hat? How is Melania a victim?
Oh, I'm sure people could put together a list of ways in which Melania is a victim. Make a list and rank it, with the Solana-for-a-hat problem on it. If it ranks high, then good for Melania. But I'm laughing at the Washington Post readers who are drooling over the news that Melania is suffering.
WaPo snatches the hat and runs with it:
Although they’re under no obligation to do so, typically, first ladies donate iconic items either the Smithsonian’s First Ladies collection, or to their husband’s libraries and museums, as a way of preserving history for the public. The hat was custom-made for the occasion [of meeting the French president] by Hervé Pierre, the French-born, New York-based designer who became her White House stylist after making her inaugural gown. (That one is in the Smithsonian.) ...
Certainly, other first ladies and presidents have engaged in for-profit activities, particularly the large advances many of them receive to write their memoirs and for speaking engagements. “But that doesn’t take up nearly as much time as their not-for-profit activities,” [says Lauren A. Wright, a political scientist who studies first ladies at Princeton University]. “That’s most of what they spend time on when they leave office.”
Time? Did it take Melania any time to auction the hat? And I like how Wright lets it slip that the ex-First Ladies don't put much time into writing these memoirs for which they receive lavish pay-outs.
I'm reading this whole long article so you don't have to, and this, near the end is the most interesting thing to me:
[A] mid-December sale of an NFT featuring a watercolor painting of her eyes, called “Melania’s Vision,” by French artist Marc-Antoine Coulon.... Unlimited quantities of that NFT sold for one SOL, which was worth around $185 at the time. Each came with an audio message from Trump: “My vision is: Look forward with inspiration, strength and courage.”
Try to imagine just how banal and awful that painting of Melania's eyes must be, then look to see the actual thing: here. It was quite a bit worse than I'd pictured, and I was expect something atrocious.
Be best!
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i want to know, why referring to your daughter's roommate as "her roommate" is bad
Do you HAVE to refer to people's fucktoys as their fucktoys?
seems demeaning
Small headlines the size of a large headline? Don't think these count.
It's stories like the Melania story that will keep the rabid Progressives under WaPo's thumb. It's their click bait. Anything anti-Trump gets views.
The big losers in the last bitcoin crash are the ones who panicked and sold. The people who waited it out did just fine. These newer more marginal currencies, who knows? The ones that don't dissolve will probably also do just fine for their holders.
Melania would, I'm sure, prefer to sit around the house waiting for Netflix to offer her millions of dollars just for being, as they did with Michelle Obama. But Michelle is part deity. Melania married Trump. Need I say more?
On the other hand, I have to ask the question: Are we down to teenage reporters at The Washington Post? Is this what they're cranking out these days? Nothing much else to report on?
BTW- Solana is up 7.3% in the last 24 hours. Time for the upswing.
That particular painting of the eyes is bad, but I think it’s still a good idea. Just needs a better execution.
You've set up a nice parlor game. "who loses in the Melania/crypto gambit". The problem is I have no idea of rules. You might as well barter using unicorns as currency. Those I understand.
Where have you gone, sweet Melania? Wapo turns its lonely eyes to you.
Woo, woo, woo.
I'll take a shot:
1. Melania's White House Christmas decorations are too small to fit in her current residence.
2. Melania's fashion choices not featured yet in Vogue.
3. Melania still ranked in Wapo as "not as cute as Dr. Biden.
4. Melania auctions worthless hat using solana.
I don't understand "bitcoin":
Understanding What Determines Bitcoin’s Price
...
Conversely, Bitcoin prices are influenced by the following factors:
-- The supply of Bitcoin and the market’s demand for it
-- The cost of producing a bitcoin through the mining process
""Mining" is performed using sophisticated hardware that solves an extremely complex computational math problem. The first computer to find the solution to the problem receives the next block of bitcoins and the process begins again."
WTF.
Is there a more accomplished First Lady, since Hoover?
"Everybody should be introduced by their particular sexual preferences"
My sexual preference for First Ladies is MELANIA! (coo, coo, ca-choo)
“WaPo snatches the hat and runs with it:”. Hahah
Trump was ridiculed in the papers etc for causing the world to mock us- the US… laugh at us and “make us look bad.” Respect for the US went down, I was told.
And now we’re here… and Melania’s hat is on the run.
Darkness- even when the sun is shining
Anyone willing to take bets to see if WAPO covers the $30 million dollar deal that Harry and the Markle made with Spotify and then produced only one podcast in over a years time?
It's stories like the Melania story that will keep the rabid Progressives under WaPo's thumb. It's their click bait.
@wendybar, well it hooked Althouse, didn’t it? And she, in turn, got us to read her post. So it worked.
"it's hard to understand how accepting cryptocurrency hurts her"
It doesn't, but that need not keep prog MSM from trying to use it to hurt her.
"What difference does it make to her"
None. But it makes a difference to the WaPo audience of soap opera women, so they run with it.
Trump = bad. Anti-Trump = good. Progs fight. Nice women still eat up what they dish out.
Propaganda is not that "hard to understand."
No one invests in Bitcoin. It's speculation. Bitcoin owners are hoping there's a greater fool willing to buy Bitcoin for more than what the speculator paid for it. There's no intrinsic value, it pays no dividends nor interest, it doesn't create any new products nor does it offer any useful services. The only thing Bitcoin does is induce "miners" to buy high-end computers and then burn through MWH trying to solve a useless problem.
O.T.
Chicago is -15 deg F. Where's Jesse?
Some wag said that crypto is all the things you don't understand about finance and computers.
Buffett and Munger are against it. Both are Omaha natives!
Crypto and NFTs are max greater fool theory
Would you check on the Chinese teen? I know many adopted people- why such a permanent reaction/ since darkness is the WaPo slogan: what was the dark turn?
May the Angels be his guide…
The top two article really are special
1: Friend refers to her daughter's partner as her "roommate". Let ti go?
WTF? This here is a woman who desperately seeks social approval among her worthless social class by letting everyone know her daughter is a lesbian. Which means the girl is lucky. Since if she was 10 years younger, mom would now be bullying her into being "non-binary" or "trans".
Have they married? no? Then "roommate" is time honored and quite appropriate. It's not like "girlfriend" would give any more information
2: "What does Virginia want now, and what does that mean for America?"
Oh my God. Now that VA voted in a GOP sweep, we're going to get "Gorillas in the Mist" stories about this Capitol adjacent State?
I congratulate the WaPo headline writers for doing such a good job of showing us how mentally blind they are
The Dutch could at least eat their tulip bulbs, and they did.
Speaking of Trump, here's David Leonhardt at the NYT today, writing about Germany accommodating Putin, under the headline . . . "Trump's shadow"!
Because, you see, even with new governments in Germany and the U.S., the latter having approved the pipeline Trump opposed, the current crisis is "a sign that Trump has succeeded at one of his foreign-policy goals: creating distance between the U.S. and at least some parts of NATO."
Because, clearly, when Trump wanted NATO partners to spend more on defense, and to be less dependent on Putin, his aim was to "create distance." And, clearly, Scholz and Biden are still beholden to their orange puppet master. Germans coddling Vlad, Biden being Biden: it's Trump's doing.
Mike of Snoqualmie said...
No one invests in Bitcoin
Actually, they do. Let's say you're someone living in a unstable Country where you might need to get out at any time. The classic answer to that was "buy gold", so you have something you can take with you, and turn into cash when you arrive.
Bitcoin is better for that. Because the border patrol you have to go through can rob you of your gold much easier than they can rob you of your bitcoin
"There's no intrinsic value, it pays no dividends nor interest, it doesn't create any new products nor does it offer any useful services"
Same is true for the US dollar, the Euro, UK pounds, and gold coins / gems / jewelry.
Do I own any bitcoin? No. It's a threat to governments, and I expect they're just going to increase their efforts to destroy it.
Simple example: what happens if the NSA decides to go into the bitcoin mining business? But that doesn't keep me from recognizing its purpose
She traded something nominally of little value for something that fluctuates in value and is currently devalued? I guess that explains why the best job the writer could get is at WaPo.
I would have picked the story about the Chinese teen who committed suicide to click on. Sounds really dark. Excellent premise for a Ricky Gervais sitcom.....I can't get into either liking or disliking Melania Trump. She's beautiful and smart, but distant and inaccessible. I suppose you don't have to be motherly to be a good mother, but matronly qualities help in First Lady duties. Melania just doesn't seem matronly, and the domestic life of the Trumps is not something I can readily relate to......I have one sure fire way to judge the artistic merit of a painting. If I like it, it's probably kitsch. I could tell immediately whose eyes were depicted in that painting. I kind of liked it. The gaze definitely does not have a Big Brother Is Watching You vibe.
What astounds me is how many people willingly give money to the Trumps, and the Trumps never ending schemes to get people to give them money with no strings attached.
Its funny to read when lawyers write about finance.
I tend to discount clickbait as mindless but mostly harmless junk but I listened to The Joe Rogan podcast with Robert Epstein:
Dr. Robert Epstein is an author, professor, and Senior Research Psychologist at American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology: a non-profit, non-partisan organization that offers data regarding the power of Google and other Big Tech companies to censor dissenting opinions online and sway the outcome of elections.
Now he isn’t the most compelling guest but he tells about his experiments with search engine result manipulation where he claims he can dramatically alter the opinion of the searchers- something something 90 percent by including a single negative search result…
Sorry- I’m going back to listen later but knowing how easy it is to manipulate minds with simple search engine results goes a long way to explaining how a full court press from legacy media can transform seemingly ordinary Americans into raging psychopaths…
Sorry Ann- no Carrot Top today…
"But it makes a difference to the WaPo audience of soap opera women, so they run with it."
Now it can be told: "The View" panel holds the Executive power in the USA. Whoopi Goldberg is the real Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief of our country. When she says black people in America have not advanced since the Emancipation Proclamation, ignore her $8 million per year salary and everything you see and hear. Joy Behar is the real chief of our State Department--she personifies diplomacy and strategic thinking. Sunny Hostin is the real Attorney General of the United States and head of the DOJ. Watch what you say and do. Sunny is.
With talent like this in charge, everything is always great. (Applause)
Most crypto is garbage.
However, think of Bitcoin as digital gold. It has special value because lots of people think it has special value. The future will be Bitcoin because the cost of maintaining physical stores of gold is inefficient.
There is also the world of stablecoins that will act not like gold but electronic currency not meant to increase in value (UST on the Terra Luna network is a good example).
The electronic future is Bitcoin as a store of value and something like UST as a daily currency.
"What astounds me is how many people willingly give money to the Trumps, and the Trumps never ending schemes to get people to give them money with no strings attached."
Have you heard of the Clinton Foundation?
If I ever do find out what an NFT is, I will make myself one and then my financial worries will be over.
WAPO, raising the bar on sophomoric every day. Way to go, WAPO!!!!
For everyone trying to understand what an NFT is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJzNiFLyw8k
WAPO, raising the bar on sophomoric every day!!! Way to go, WAPO!!!!
Please. The amount of money people "give" to the Trumps is no greater than the amount they give to the Clintons, the Obamas, or the Bidens. It's probably a lot less, and the quid quo pro is little or nothing.
I thought that comment merited a "bitch, please," but that could have been misunderstood in various ways.
It's not investment, it's speculation. People invest in stock index funds or in Boeing, to name just a few. People speculate that Bitcoin tomorrow will be worth more than today. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value and cannot produce a stream of income, unlike stocks and bonds.
Speculation.
What astounds me is how many people willingly give money to the Trumps, and the Trumps never ending schemes to get people to give them money with no strings attached.
Now do Hunter Biden and The Big Guy.
Petty Washington Post drooling at every bit of bad (?) news for the Trump family. Who considers this newspaper a serious, objective and honest outlet? The Post and the NYT are rushing to the bottom of the barrel of former great newspapers. So-called journalism has become a profession for not so smart but very biased left wing haters. Corporate media has joined forces to boost the dimwit in the White House and do anything to destroy Trump’s chances of running for President again. Looks to me like they are really scared when they stoop to writing this ridiculous crappy article. They continue to try and convince themselves and their followers that Trump and his family are corrupt. The real corrupt family is the Biden clan. But, they refuse to state the obvious that we all know is true. What a bunch of assholes.
If I ever do find out what an NFT is, I will make myself one and then my financial worries will be over.
Just declare you NFT has a value of $1T and you'll be really set. Good Luck!
Cryptocurrency's only use is making it easier for criminals to obscure the source of their blood money. Bitcoin mixers make crypto the ideal currency for money laundering. This stuff sucks. I'm glad crypto "investors" are getting torched. The people who just lost a trillion dollars or so deserve it.
I'm also glad that the crypto boom was financed by criminals, terrorists and retail investors riding their coat tails. Not by leverage -- so it's unlikely that the crashing crypto market is going to crash the real economy. Thank God. That's the last thing we need right now.
"I'm reading this whole long article so you don't have to"
Who questions this blog's value?
That being said, it must really piss off progressives that Melania is so far above "Dr." Jill and Michelle in beauty, sex appeal and personal accomplishment based on the individual merits of each. The same insecurities and envy expressed by lefties are what make them sympathetic to socialism. Get over it, losers, and try to accomplish something in your own life and stop mooching.
On the other hand, who cares.
Indeed. She's just selling her hat to pump up the value of this one crypto, which they probably own who-knows-how-much of.
Cryptocurrency's only use is making it easier for criminals to obscure the source of their blood money. Bitcoin mixers make crypto the ideal currency for money laundering. This stuff sucks. I'm glad crypto "investors" are getting torched. The people who just lost a trillion dollars or so deserve it.
I'm also glad that the crypto boom was financed by criminals, terrorists and retail investors riding their coat tails. Not by leverage -- so it's unlikely that the crashing crypto market is going to crash the real economy. Thank God. That's the last thing we need right now.
"What astounds me is how many people willingly give money to the Trumps, and the Trumps never ending schemes to get people to give them money with no strings attached."
Leave it to a lefty to be upset about leaving the quo out of quid pro quo.
"Do you HAVE to refer to people's fucktoys as their fucktoys?"
I call my wife my wife. Does that imply "fucktoy"? To me it would seem really weird to refer to her as a "roommate." Those of you have introduced a wife or girlfriend as a roommate, how did that go? Was she OK with that?
The crypto vaults are leaky. There's been plenty of these vaults that have been hacked and all the crypto stolen, leaving the account holders with nothing. Then, there was a guy who stored his crypto-key on an encrypted hard drive and forgot the password to the unlock the encryption. Three tries and then the hard drive is only good as a fish habitat. LOL!
What if it were Daddy's roommate? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daddy%27s_Roommate
This "unfortunate" event for Melania Trump might well mark the first time that WaPo has admitted to noticing her superb couture, that which the MSM has studiously ignored for the last seven years.
Stupid writing is stupid.
Anyone who was planning to cash out on crypto right now is in a rough spot with their crypto portfolio.
That's all it means. No one is a victim. Crypto right now has questionable intrinsic value, huge technological evolution around it, and enormous and rapidly evolving competition. Buying it is a total bet. If you are buying a crypto for short term cash out, you are taking huge risk and could anticipate a 40-50% swing in value at any given time.
And none of this has to do with Melania. Who could be using crypto to create tax benefit btw....
Freder Frederson said...
What astounds me is how many people willingly give money to the Trumps, and the Trumps never ending schemes to get people to give them money with no strings attached.
Field Marshal Freder much prefers Biden who gets his money from China and Ukraine.
This article is typical Journalist idiocy.
The dollar is going to zero.
Now is a great time to buy crypto and educate yourself. I am personally going with the Cardano Network now but I will be getting into Solana and Ardana as funds become available.
Web 3.0 is going to be the future. That means crypto.
My crypto wallets are not tied in any way to my identity. The government doesn't get to track my money. They have no way of doing it.
There is a reason why the State organs like the WAPO are trying to run down crypto. One is they can't control it. The other is to give institutional investors, read billionaires, a chance to get in.
tim maguire said...
The big losers in the last bitcoin crash are the ones who panicked and sold. The people who waited it out did just fine. These newer more marginal currencies, who knows? The ones that don't dissolve will probably also do just fine for their holders.
Kinda.
Bitcoin is a proof of work network. The transaction rates for Bitcoin suck. That means it takes a lot of time to move it around.
The Cardano network runs thousands of times faster and this will soon be upgraded. Proof of Stake crypto networks are the future.
Ethereum is trying to switch from proof of work to proof of stake as we speak. They may or may not be able to do this in time.
Bitcoin is like Gold. It is there because it is first and that is about it. Long term the money is going to be in the newer technologies and much more robust blockchains.
Freder Frederson said...
What astounds me is how many people willingly give money to the Trumps, and the Trumps never ending schemes to get people to give them money with no strings attached.
This is astounding to you because you are stupid.
Trump delivered for his voters. He delivered wage increases, low crime, and the largest increase in standard of living to the bottom four quintiles for at least a century.
We support the people who do what we want.
You support politicians who get their money from Giant Corporations and Foreign countries and that money has obvious strings attached.
Joe Biden could not be more of a Putin Puppet right now if he tried.
Crypto collapse erases more than $1 trillion in wealth, forcing a reckoning for everyday investors.
No.
Crypto currencies, like all currencies are not wealth. They are a CLAIM on wealth. When the value of a currency declines, the people holding that currency have a smaller claim on wealth, and everybody else has a larger claim on wealth.
Everyone who read this headline became a little more ignorant.
That watercolor of Melania's eyes looks perfectly acceptable . . as an ad for makeup in the Neiman Marcus catalog.
Speaking of which, she could market a line of skims creams called "Emoluments".
It sounds like she is promoting that particular currency.
I would assume she donated the proceeds anyway.
Mike of Snoqualmie said...
It's not investment, it's speculation.
Read what I wrote at 8:20 AM. Understand it. Then write a response that indicates you actually understand what you claim to be talking about
Merely repeating the same claim, without any response to the multiple people who told you what you're missing, just makes you look like an idiot.
It's only a hat she doesn't want that's going out in the world.
No, it's an NFT (non-fungible token) on the blockchain. The art she's selling is a virtual representation of her and the hat. She's keeping the actual hat (just like she's keeping her actual head).
The WaPo headline is really stupid. I can't access the article but it seems like the author doesn't understand NFTs or crypto. I agree that the journalist did the article just to mock Melania. But based on what Althouse is writing here, the paper has done a bad job of educating its readers.
What difference does it make to her — the "I really don't care, do u?" lady — how the cryptocurrency bids translate into dollar amounts?
An NFT auction can only happen on the blockchain. The Solana chain was chosen (as opposed to the Ethereum network) because it's faster and way cheaper than older networks. I would assume that anybody who's doing their auction on Solana is smart and understands crypto very well.
She restricted the bids to cryptocurrency — for whatever reason — but since there are different cryptocurrencies, aren't all the bids presented at the bidding site in dollar amounts?
It's restricted to Solana crypto because that's where NFT auctions happen, on the blockchain. There's no dollar bidding whatsoever. So the answer to your question is no. The bidding is done in Solana coin. You can trade Solana for dollars, of course.
Its value has fallen 40% in the last week, but wouldn't that cause people with Solana who want the hat to pour a lot more of this declining stuff into the quest for the hat?
Crypto crashed in January thanks to the leak that Biden wants to use an executive order to regulate the crypto universe in February. The Fed has already quashed Facebook (now Meta)'s attempt to introduce a coin.
I've written on Solana here and here and here and here.
Crypto crashed in January thanks to the leak that Biden wants to use an executive order to regulate the crypto universe in February. The Fed has already quashed Facebook (now Meta)'s attempt to introduce a coin.
There is no way that governments won't try to squash cryptocurrencies. Control of the coinage is central to sovereignty.
has the value of the dollar increased, because to my mind it's dwindled in the last year or so?
Best thing I've seen on the Internet all week was a post on Instapundit. A guy writes to the Government, "Now that Covid is dying down, can we get back to normal?" The response is a still from Pawn Stars with Rick as Government: "Best I can do is a war with Russia."
Everybody sing! "We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when ..." .
That trillion did not disappear, it went into the pockets of the people selling at prices higher than they bought.
There is no way that governments won't try to squash cryptocurrencies.
It's looking like a righty/lefty split, with Republicans favoring crypto and Elizabeth Warren wanting to crush them.
Crypto is a populist revolution, from the ground up. Governments and big banks have been mocking crypto for years. And more and more money has been made. Bitcoin passed $1 trillion in valuation last year. Large numbers of institutions are finally starting to buy crypto. They are adding crypto trading desks. I think Schwab will start offering crypto sooner rather than later.
Control of the coinage is central to sovereignty.
They are torn between a desire to crush this new currency, and a greedy desire to make sure they can tax it and profit from it. There are many reasons that peer-to-peer networks for money management is superior to the status quo. Among them...
1. Fraud protection. Every transaction is on the blockchain. Bitcoin has never been hacked. The crypto protocols will make it harder for criminals to steal money, not easier.
2. Banks have been ripping off people forever. If you buy a CD what kind of interest will you get? 1%? And banks might charge you 15% on a loan. There is no yield for savers. People who want to chase yield should really look into crypto, where you can earn significant yields by staking your crypto. And that's an important mechanism by which transactions are verified and fraud is reduced (if not eliminated).
3. The Fed involves unelected people going into a room and deciding what a dollar is worth. Much better, more democratic, to have markets decide. The Fed is currently holding rates at zero while inflation is causing havoc among poor people. Such a small number of (unelected) people having control over a currency is a bad idea. Yes, it's sort of worked, but with significant shocks and unhappiness.
4. Crypto forces governments to be better stewards of their currency, and not inflate it recklessly with huge deficit spending. Competition is good!
5. Black people are investing in crypto to a much higher degree than they ever bought stocks. The government that "squashes" crypto will pay a price at the ballot box.
6. The bigger crypto gets, the harder it will be to destroy. The network effect is a powerful thing.
7. Did you know that the Fed wants to release its own crypto? Why do that if crypto is stupid and useless? Crypto is here to stay. Of course there are a lot of worthless coins out there. But there have been huge winners and there's a reason for that.
mikee said...
That trillion did not disappear, it went into the pockets of the people selling at prices higher than they bought.
Um, no.
That $ trillion is the difference between what all cryptocurrencies would be worth if they were all sold for the then current market price (not going to happen), vs that same number but with the current market price.
IOW, it's magic hand-wavy bullshit
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