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The British ISA is a waste of effort if it's aimed at raising UK stock valuations. We only invest in UK stocks, so me and my wife will be utilising the full £50,000 allowance across our ISA's, but there aren't many people who are in a position to do that. Personally I don't know the justification for giving tax breaks for investing outside of the UK, it makes little sense.
The British ISA is a waste of time if people are still allowed to invest in foreign (US) stocks within standard ISA's, I'd suggest the extra £5000 wont make any difference to diverting more retail investment into UK stocks.
"Is that not why you invest in Lloyds , dividends after all is a form of profit on your investment ..... yet to you , that is a 'useful purpose' ... wheneas my BTC profit isnt ?? .....thats very contradoictory Fleccy , surely ??"
PAS
There's a difference between investing in a company generating profits and paying dividends, and betting on the direction of a speculative gambling chip like Bitcoin. Your Bitcoin profit is nothing more than a winning bet, whereas my Lloyds shares generate dividend income year on year. Because Bitcoin doesn't generate profit or loss until you sell, the money is effectively dead money until you convert back to cash, whereas my Lloyds shares are yielding over 6% annual income with the prospect of an increasing dividend. Although a dividend investor wont make massive capital gains on their investments, dividends give you annual returns and the choice to compound through reinvestment, or buy stuff. As long as dividends are maintained, across all our holdings, me and my wife are on target for around £27,000 in tax free dividends in the next year; Currently, while our stocks are cheap, we are reinvesting our dividends to take advantage of compounding, since more shares lead to more dividends and the cheaper the stock the more shares you can buy with your dividends, meaning you get more dividend income in the following year.
"Oh, btw Fleccy..whilst you moan about the imminent downfall of btc, millions of people are making alot of money out of it's worthlessness lol."
Wadogara, Bitcoin doesn't pay dividends so anyone who bought at say $30,000, and are still holding their Bitcoin, haven't currently made any money unless they sell at the current price. A paper gain is unrealised, so it isn't real; The same applies to people who bought QBT at 3p and are still holding, a paper loss is unrealised so not real, if they sold today they would turn that paper loss into a capital loss which is real.
The people who are making money out of Bitcoin are the exchanges, ETF providers, connected YouTubers and the traders who dip in and out, the HODLers may be sitting on paper gains, but they need to sell if and when the market turns to realise a capital gain. Because of the way the market works you can bet the institutions will bail out long before the retail investors know what's going on, should the price take a significant turn.
PAS, Bitcoin has no useful purpose so it'll eventually be near worthless. Certain Bitcoin may have some sort of value, like the Genesis Block assuming someone has the private key, but I don't see much value in the other blocks since there are millions of them. Bitcoin is nothing but a ledger with a limited amount of storage space in each block, it takes vast amounts of electricity to process each block so it's also inefficient.
I don't deny that Bitcoin could go up from the current $67,665, but it doesn't mean it's useful
for anything, and it could just easily crash at some point in the near future. Personally I wouldn't go near Bitcoin because I don't believe in it, basically because it makes no sense. Think about it like this, anyone with the relevant IT skills can create their own tokens, Dogecoin and others are proof of that, so Bitcoin is easily replicated and therefore isn't unique. The bull case for Bitcoin is that it's been decided by the sector to promote that particular token over all the others, but BTC isn't any good for anything because of its 1 block every 10 minutes with only 1mb of transaction space per Block. If anyone needed proof that the World's gone mad, it's Bitcoin.
Other Proof Of Work tokens:
https://coinmarketcap.com/view/pow/
Bitcoin is driven purely by sentiment, clearly the hype around the halving is pulling in speculative cash. At some point the speculators will want to sell and take profits since most of them aren't believers, I believe the price will crash at some point post the halving; What goes up, must come down. Anyone who argues that Bitcoin isn't a purely speculative asset, please supply proof.
The hype is driven by massive amounts of content produced by Bitcoin bulls on YouTube, and Financial media channels only inviting Bitcoin bulls in to comment. The message sent out by the sector is HODL, HODL, HODL, but I'd argue the speculators will watch the price movement and a significant turn in the price could cause the herd to stampede. If Bitcoin is such an amazing asset, why is there so much hype directed at people to buy and hold? Surely something World changing wouldn't need any persuasion to buy in. No doubt the clever connected ones will make a lot of money out of Bitcoin, many will lose their shirts.
It depends if OFCOM and the CMA still view BT as having Significant market power. My guess is that BT will eventually spin off half of Openreach, and it will become a truly independent company. BT will likely remain the largest shareholder and may spin off say 49% of Openreach, over time, and put 2% into some sort of Escrow non voting holding company.
The 49% they spin off could either be sold as shares on the open market, or sold to private equity. They probably wont sell all 49% in one go, and may decide to sell in tranches over time.
Openreach is only an infrastructure management company, I believe BT still own all the ducts and Poles, and whatever Fibre BT are paying to put in the ground. I don't imagine that BT will sell the actual infrastructure even if they spin off Openreach, another guess on my part, so BT will always receive rental income for PIA, etc, but will pay Openreach to manage the infrastructure.
All of the above is me speculating, but it makes sense.
Not really mole_man, as much as I agree that it's a massive technical achievement to enable satellite communication using an unmodified mobile phone, I'd suggest the satellite would have had to use the maximum gain available on it's antenna to enable that communication, since the mobile phone wont be able to contribute to the overall system gain. Without knowing anything about the upcoming Starlink service, I can safely say that the satellites will only be able to provide mobile service to a very limited number of mobiles and much will depend on the position of the satellite. It'd be great for isolated areas, but a standard sat phone would be just as useful for emergencies. I can see a market for the service, for remote parts of the World, but it'll always provide an inferior service to terrestrial cell service and would be useless in urban locations.
Mole_man, how do you suppose Starlink satellites would cope with hundreds of phones downloading content at the same time? LEO's would be better used as a backhaul for remote cells, where the cell can offer 5G to local mobiles and use higher gain equipment to deal with communication to the satellite. I could imagine cell to satellite might be good if you're on an deserted island, or really remote location with no cell service, but even ships and planes would be better off using a local micro cell and combining the service to backhaul with the satellite.
I take note of the comparison between art and Bitcoin, but I disagree. There's only one Mona Lisa, or Salvator Mundi, whereas there are Millions of Bitcoins. There's nothing to distinguish one Bitcoin from another, apart from the unique identifier. I think the F Art in a bottle is much better metaphor and comparison for Bitcoin.
If I'm understanding everything, by merger they're referring to Fastweb combining with Vodafone Italia. Vodafone wont have any ownership of the combined entity, it'll be entirely owned by Swisscom. The RNS clearly states "sale" with no reference to joint venture or merger.
"Vodafone Group Plc (?Vodafone?) notes recent media speculation and confirms it is in exclusive discussions with Swisscom AG (?Swisscom?) regarding a potential sale of Vodafone Italy to Swisscom for cash.
Subject to confirming binding transaction documentation, the parties have agreed that Swisscom will acquire Vodafone Italy for an enterprise value of ?8 billion on a debt and cash free basis and subject to customary closing adjustments."
To add to my last post, all the narratives supporting Bitcoin valuations are easily argued against because they're false. The reason Bitcoin enthusiasts are so against CBDC's is because it works against the decentralised Bitcoin narrative; Bitcoin will never be adopted mainstream, because it's insecure by nature and design. The idea of making the data available to anyone and everyone who want's to set up a node is madness, since it's only a matter of time before the encryption is cracked and the chain is either broken or open to theft. Bitcoin is just a rubbish way to transact, it's fundamentally insecure and inferior to other centralised methods which come with protections and institutional backing. I've seen all the arguments reasoning why the Chain can't be broken, or this that or the other wont happen, but time and again hackers have proved themselves able to achieve the seemingly impossible; The more barriers you place in front of the hackers, the harder it is for them to achieve their goals, making all the data publicly available makes it so much easier for them. The Bitcoin community has all the hallmarks of a cult, the big institutional players will likely enjoy relieving the believers of their hard earned cash.
TOTHEMOON Bitcoin is sustained purely by sentiment and belief, what little utility it has can be performed better by alternative methods. Most investors in Bitcoin are speculative purchasers, betting on the price increasing, hence the constant rhetoric persuading people to HODL. Some very powerful figures within the financial World have bet the bank on Bitcoin, and by extension their creditors, and since money drives US politics they've managed to shape some policy decisions in favour of Crypto/Bitcoin. Even if Bitcoin went to $500,000 a Token it would still have no real world use, because the Proof of Work energy intensive method of processing transactions, and the limited number of transactions per Block, will always make it an inefficient vehicle to process transactions. Anyone can produce an alternative Token to Bitcoin, just like anyone can produce their own F art in a Jar.
Forget about AI, as that has real world uses, this could be the next big thing to replace Bitcoin. People talk about halvings, flippenings, Crypto could soon be replaced by the jarrings. There's a limited supply of this new thing and arguably it is as useful as Bitcoin, takes less energy to produce, and can be stored in your safe at home just like your cold wallet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F3r5nXu8lw
"Exactly, they and Hamas are cold bloodedly using their own people as sacrificial pawns to turn world opinion against Israel."
Not really, Israel are doing a really good job of that themselves. I'm no bleeding heart Liberal and consider myself more to the right politically, than center, but looking at the evidence Israel have kicked millions of Palestinians off their ancestral land, penned them into a small strip of land, managed all their resources and given them little hope for the future; Gaza is nothing more than a prison with no guards on the inside and allowing the inmates to run the interior. Gaza has a dystopian feel to it, reminds me of the City prison in the film Escape from New York.
Then you have the West Bank where Israel are an occupying force, with settlers systematically evicting Palestinians off their land to build illegal settlements, with the settlers backed up by the IDF; The Israeli Government facilitate the illegal settlements by enforcing an apartheid regime, where Palestinians are second class citizens in what's supposed to be their own territory. Anyone who defends Israel must suffer from tunnel vision, because as far as I can tell they are probably one of the most oppressive regimes on the planet if you're unlucky enough to be a Palestinian living there.
NOFEAR if you're interested in On Exchange vs Off Book, these charts may interest you:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQ49B8X4hFFdtXb6WUx45CDRcgMt5FBglgZCFc5UnApKRpOX8cznaVjvfKeIWdC6xr70q5wCbdhpFe7/pubchart?oid=570999884&format=interactive
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQ49B8X4hFFdtXb6WUx45CDRcgMt5FBglgZCFc5UnApKRpOX8cznaVjvfKeIWdC6xr70q5wCbdhpFe7/pubchart?oid=2070430100&format=interactive
Total Voting Rights show an increase of 3,410,113 for February 2024
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS0oSavIsBjHgD7k6NMyk7Z591Cm2IrevvLI-Jq95gOmESrOI0Vi_NhA8LIO9rMz90Y5zCOCoFuEItG/pubchart?oid=1812824850&format=interactive
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS0oSavIsBjHgD7k6NMyk7Z591Cm2IrevvLI-Jq95gOmESrOI0Vi_NhA8LIO9rMz90Y5zCOCoFuEItG/pubchart?oid=1451011517&format=interactive
As far as I'm concerned it didn't matter who the new CEO was; As long as they keep to the current strategy, which I believe to be correct. BT don't need a big personality, they need someone who'll maintain the current heading full steam ahead. The market has pushed Telecoms into the bargain basket for its own reasons, a lot of potential CEO's, with over inflated opinions of themselves, will shy away from Telecom companies for that reason.