Investment & Investing

Thank you!

I have a chunk in one pension which I paid into from 2001 to 2014. That's stuck where it is unless I end up working somewhere which will allow the amount to be transferred into the new pension.

Then I have the pension I am currently paying into since 2014.

I'm 45 next year.

The point is that by the time it gets into your grubby hands you have paid tax on it at least once

Eurgh, isn't that so...

Eurgh, isn't that so...

Well, it helps to pay for society, etc.

It was the at least bit... but I won't derail, particularly in defending this hill!

I have a chunk in one pension which I paid into from 2001 to 2014. That's stuck where it is unless I end up working somewhere which will allow the amount to be transferred into the new pension.

I had 4 pensions (despite only having two jobs that gave me a pension):

• company 1 before I moved to the US (A)
  
• company 1 after I moved back from the US (B)
  
• company 1 after acquisition (C)
  
• company 2 (D)
  
  

Pension C is the largest, and was only charging 0.19% each year (even though I'm not paying into it any more) so I left it alone.

Pensions A and B were charging >0.5% each year so I transferred the contents into my current employer's pension (D) which just happens to be the same provider as pension A. Pensions generally have lower rates if you're actively paying into them too.

Pensions A, B and C were all long before the NMPA changes in 2021 so all should have allowed me to take them from 55 but the rates and amounts of A and B were such that it made more sense to roll them into the current one (D), so that will be 57 before I can touch that.

The point I'm labouring is that moving an old pension to something new may mean you can't collect it from 55 any more, as it would default to the new pension setup of 57. But you'd need someone qualified to be able to make sure as every pension/situation is different.

Leaving C alone means I'll be able to take 25% of it at 55 if I wanted to. I'd hope to have my mortgage paid off and to be retired before 55 (I'm 48 now) so I'm going to need to be in a position where I have savings/income before I'm able to get anything at 55. It's then a long wait (12 years at least, probably more) until I'd be able to collect any state pension.

This kind of case study is useful - thank you!

Anyone using plum for much?

Buy trackers they said

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VWRP is up 9.21% in the last three months.

Yeah it’s all there for long term just made me chuckle

Happy days Fellas, 100k Bitcoin... Retail is back!

Sorry to dredge but cryptocurrency currently has a $3.74 Trillion market capitalization. So supposing BTC goes to $0-$1000, where do you see all that money going?

Why does it need to go anywhere? Most of the market cap doesn't actually exist.

where do you see all that money going?

i don't understand the question - it would go to the same place all market gains come from and losses go to.

as tertius says above, the huge majority of it is unrealised gains so it isn't "real" money in any case. it would mean that guy can stop looking for his hard drive, among other things.

Same place the money goes when a stock goes to $0-10, disappears. Stocks, commodities, crypto all operate the same - you essentially hold a ticket for X at X price, if price goes to 0 or low you’re left with an expensive piece of paper saying what you own.

I still believe BTC will likely die a slow death, it can’t operate in any capacity as a trusted financial instrument. It’s volatility means it’s not suited for backing the fed, it’s anonymity works great for money laundering/drugs/organised crime, it’s only selling point is washing money. It was created as an instrument away from traditional banking institutions yet banks and hedge funds are now onboard using it to generate profit. I think FOMO is a massive part of price drive along with the ‘scarcity’ angle - but the idea that it could back government currency is insane, you don’t know how many people in the world own X of bitcoin, some long term holder could sell and cause a run on the price, and the governments lost million/billions.

MSTR is even weirder- buying it through coinbase, seems his only angle is using interest free money to buy up as much bitcoin as possible, in the hope to corner the market and drive price higher?

The money has to go somewhere

To expand on what others have written.

The money has already been spent, when the whatevercoin / digital asset was purchased.

Imagine starting from scratch. I make a single shitcoin, I sell it to you for 100,000 national central bank backed currency units. It then is discovered to be worthless (for whatever reason, nobody wants any of it) - you're left with nothing, I'm left with 100,000 CU.

For every BTC that drops to zero, there will be a balancing $100,000 in someone's bank account (except for the coins mined and held by the miners).

It already did, when the value of the coin was realised.

Expand the earlier scenario.

I make two coins, and sell you one for $100,000.

The market cap is $200,000.

My balance sheet shows $100,000 cash, $100,000 shitcoin

You B/S shows $100,000 shitcoin, -$100,000 cash.

Shitcoin goes to zero, I have 100,000, you have -100,000.

You can apply basic accounting principles that all transactions have a balancing debit & credit.

But not everybody holding bitcoin paid the current price so the money lost would be a lot less.

I am grossly oversimplifying things and ignoring increases in price.

Take the above example. The shitcoin price goes to 1 million. The market cap is now 2,000,000.

The price then drops to zero.

I'm still up 100,000, they are down 100,000.

May as well listen to it explained properly by the CEO

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7KBAv3ap4y3imrEjeD7hVr?si=S8mCmwCcSl-jUzGnHFmTTA&t=2339

Hoping @Greenbank took my advice and is enjoying the $60k profit they made from Tesla stock in the last 9 days

To expand a bit:

If I buy a shitcoin for £1 and it goes up to £1m, whilst I have a notional gain of £999,999, I have only risked £1 so I can only lose up to £1.

If shitcoin goes to zero, I have made a notional loss of £1m but I'm only £1 down on the trade.

Did the £999,999 ever exist? If I had got out at the top, and sold my shitcoin for £1m, then yeah it does exist and someone else is nursing a £1m loss. If I held from £1 all the way down to zero then it's arguable that the £999,999 never existed.

With a volatile "asset" like crypto, not everyone can get out at the top as the act of selling will quickly reduce the value.

^Correct
Money is not like energy or physical matter - it's not conserved. It gets created out of thin air, and destroyed, all the time - mostly by banks / governments but in other situations too.
It doesn't have to go somewhere, or come from anywhere.

Plus of course there are vast amounts of that "market cap" that would be impossible to realise in any reasonable circumstances - such as the coins controlled by the keys on the hard drive lost in the recycling centre; Satoshi's coins; other lost coins; etc.

Plus of course there are vast amounts of that "market cap" that would be impossible to realise in any reasonable circumstances

£600m is nothing really. It's about 0.7% of the 24h trading volume of BTC. You could realise those coins over the course of a few weeks with very little movement on the price. In the last 24h 6% of the market cap of BTC was traded. More than likely you could arrange a direct deal with someone like MSTR or some other whale who wants to get into BTC.

Satoshi's coins are another matter completely, any movement on any of those early wallets would be picked up almost instantly by a lot of people who would take action based on that.

James Howells had 8,000 BTC. Satoshi has ~125 times that many (1,000,000).