This was my favorite Christmas album as a kid, I think my mom found the LP at a yard sale or something. I remember we accidentally spilled flour all over the album while baking Christmas cookies when I was in 4th grade, and we lived in this farm house outside of Shiloh, Ohio. We played this album every year, over and over, at Christmas time, until I was in high school. It finally got lost around that time. Hope you have a cool Christmas season everyone! Here's the link to listen to the full album.
I'm writing this post a little after 8:00 am, Pacific time, on December 5th, 2023. This clip above is talking about Bitcoin hitting $42,000 per Bitcoin yesterday, and hovering around $41,000 and change. Bitcoin bottomed out, in the last trough, in December of 2022 at around $16,600 per Bitcoin. As I write this, Bitcoin is $42,304. So Bitcoin is up about 155% in less than a year. Why? It continues to attract investors as a store of wealth, a "digital gold," as some people call it. But mostly, financial giant BlackRock will probably get the approval for a Bitcoin spot price ETF (exchange traded fund), possible as early as January 8th, 2024. If not in January, that ill most likely happen in mid March, 2024. That will allow major institutional investors (hedge funds, pension funds, etc.) to invest in the ETF, based on the price of Bitcoin, as easy as investing in any other stock or ETF. That's BIG. BlackRock has also applied for an Ethereum spot price ETF, as well, so the same could happen for Eth, most likely at a later date.
This post is written for entertainment and education purposes only, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do all needed due diligence, and consult needed professionals, before making any investment decisions. Please read the disclaimer linked below.
But Bitcoin is not even the big news in the market today. The real news is another huge decline in bond rates. The benchmark U.S. 10 year treasury bond, was paying 4.98% in interest on October 18th, 2023. To put that in perspective, on January 5th 2020, pre-pandemic, it paid 1.79% in annual interest. In August of 2020, that rate of return dropped to about .53%, one half of one percent interest paid on your money each year. That's not much.
The bond market is HUGE, much bigger than the stock market. This is where the Big Boys (and Big Girls) play, where institutions with billions of dollars (euros, yen, yuan, kroner, whatever) put large portions of their money. Now, bonds have an inverse relationship between price and interest rates, which is tricky to get your head around. When prices go up, when buying bonds is popular, the interest rates go down. When investors sell bonds to buy other things, the interest rate paid goes up. So, in the last month and a half, enormous amounts of global money have been going into bonds, and that has pushed the interest rate on the U.S. 10 year bond (a good gauge of the overall market), from almost 5% interest, down to 4.17% right now.
At the same time, gold prices have soared. They had hovered around $1,950 (per troy ounce)for a long time, then dipped down to around $1,850. Now gold is up to $2,013. It spiked up to $2,148 the day before yesterday.
What does it mean when the biggest institutional investors in the world pour hundreds of billions of dollars into gold and U.S. government bonds? They're scared. This is called a "flight to safety." The most sophisticated investors in the world are running for cover. They know a global recession is here in places (like Germany), and that's it's coming to pretty much everywhere else. They smartest investors in the world are hunkering down for a financial storm, an economic hurricane. They're protecting their wealth from loss, until the storm blows over, and the big damage is done. Then they'll look for new opportunities, when things settle down.
Here's what that means for all of us regular people. Here's how I see the next couple of months playing out:
Stocks- The U.S. stock market is at or near all time highs, about the same levels it was at two years ago. But now our dollars are worth about 20% less, due to all of the inflation. So stocks are actually worth less than they were in 2021. It's December 5th. On Friday, December 8th, the window for most companies to buy back their own stock closes, because the next earnings season is approaching. So the biggest driver in stock prices, businesses buying back their own stock, will mostly shut off this coming Friday. I expect stock prices to really begin dropping next week.
Virtually every economic indicator has been flashing red, recession warnings, for months now. The stock market has ignored this. Starting next week, it looks like reality will begin to set in. After the holidays, reality will REALLY set in on stocks. I personally expect 30% to 50% drops in stocks in the next few months, overall.
Gold- Back in July, somewhere, I said I expected gold to pop up to around $2,150, maybe $2,200, and then back off. I think we are near peak gold prices now. It may get to a solid $2,200 for a week or two, maybe. But I DO NOT think gold will soar to $3,000 an ounce. Sorry gold bugs. I like gold, over the long term, but our inflation is turning into disinflation now, and probably outright deflation come January. I think gold will settle at a new level, a bit over $2,000 an ounce, and stay there for most of 2024 and into 2025. Silver? It should pop higher, maybe to $35-$40 and ounce, but it's stuck at $25 right now. I don't see it soaring either. Silver is also a good hedge against future inflation, and affordable to average people, at $25 (plus premiums) an ounce. But I don't see it taking off in 2024.
Interest rates- Here's the good news, for average people, interest rates, overall, should drop quite a bit in 2024. The Fed will begin lowering rates, because of the recession that we are already in (in my opinion), but that hasn't been officially recognized yet. A banking crisis will force The Fed's hand, in early 2024, and interest rates will probably drop 1% to 2% in 2024, generally speaking.
Credit- The bad news about interest rates dropping is that this recession will hammer the banks, who are already in sad shape. The banks have totally tightened credit. They will tighten more, making it harder for everyone to get loans. Cash is king in 2024. It will be hard to get mortgages, car loans, and credit cards, because there will be a record level of defaults and foreclosures as the recession becomes obvious in early 2024, and continues to play out. So even though interest rates will drop dramatically, it will still be hard to get loans, unless you have excellent credit, and a low debt to income ratio. This goes for businesses and individuals. Alternative financing options will be huge in 2024. Non-traditional ways, owner financing, etc., will be the way to purchase big items (which will be at huge discounts).
Crypto- Crypto hardcores are chomping at the bit right now. Crypto winter is over, and we're well into crypto spring. Even though we are heading into a massive recession, huge amounts of money will pour into crypto in early 2024, because of the BlackRock ETF's, (Bitcoin and most likely Ethereum), and potentially Bitcoin ETF's by other companies. Major crypto coins will be the only "major asset" giving good returns in 2024, in my opinion, though even Bitcoin is not a "major asset" to most investors yet.
All investors, large and small, will be drawn to crypto, because that's where the good returns will be. Also, the Bitcoin halving happens in about April, which also usually leads to higher Bitcoin prices, in time. You can research that for more info. In this post, about three weeks ago, I wrote about the Bitcoin ETF, and the case for Bitcoin going forward. Bitcoin was $36,366 per BTC. Bitcoin has gone up $5,938 per BTC, or over 16%, in three weeks. Just sayin'. I think we'll see $100,000 per Bitcoin in 2024, almost certainly. I, personally, think the next peak will be in the $150,000 to $180,000 per Bitcoin range, maybe in 2025. $200,000 isn't out of the question, taking all things into account. It'll plummet after, to a new higher low. But that's the area where I think it'll peak.
Real estate- Want to buy a house from a disgruntled Millennial who paid $40K over asking price in 2021 because of the FOMO hype? What to buy a former Air BnB home at 50% off because the owner has 12 of them that aren't renting? 2024 is your year. If you have CASH. Want to buy a 20 year old office building for 80% off, or a dead mall? 2024 is your year... if you have CASH. Otherwise, forget real estate and watch the crash from a distance. It's going to be brutal.
Collectibles- If you're into any kind of collectibles, keep and eye on Craigslist or eBay, there will be lots of people selling collections of one kind or another, after getting laid off, in 2024. So, IF you know that particular market, from sports cards and comic books to exotic cars, there will be deals to be had... if you have CASH.
OK, that's my outlook on the financial world, overall for December 2023, and into January, and farther into 2024. This post is written for entertainment and educational purposes, and should not be taken as financial advice. Do your own research. Do your own due diligence. Consult professionals wherever and whenever needed, before making any investment decisions.
Buckle up. We've now have four years of warm-up craziness. Now things are about to REALLY start going nuts.
This is a fascinating documentary that I just found and watched, about urban exploring in Detroit, over the last 20 years or so. It's narrated by a guy who goes by the moniker Detroit Unseen, a former heroin addict who got into UrbEx in the late 1990's or early 2000's. He has a passion for exploring, but also a love of the architecture and history behind all of these buildings that have been abandoned in the last 50 years or so. If you have any interest in urban exploring, or Detroit, this is a well done, great documentary on the subject, focusing on Detroit.
While the concept of urban exploring has really become a thing in the last 15 to 20 years, it's something that has always been around. But the decline of the Industrial Age in the modern world, the shuttering of thousands of factories that went out of business, or where the plant was moved to another location, has led to tens of thousands of abandoned buildings in the U.S. alone. As a now middle aged Generation X guy who grew up in several towns in Ohio as a kid, I remember the days when those factories, and all the other buildings were thriving. People of my generation from the Midwest remember when those smokestacks were still puffing out smoke, and we were told we'd probably work in one of those factories our whole lives as kids.
The odd juxtaposition of Gen X is that while the factories were still striving, we had all these post-apocalyptic movies that came out in our childhood, talking about the nuclear apocalypse that would, probably, someday happen. At least that's how lots of people felt then. The threat of global thermonuclear war was a big threat that our parents, and the civic leaders of our childhood, worried about a lot. Yet we have had an apocalypse that destroyed thousands of businesses, and led to all these abandoned buildings, but it wasn't a nuclear apocalypse. It was economic and social and technological.
As I've mentioned in many posts, I'm a huge fan of the late futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler. In Toffler's 1980 book, The Third Wave, he foresaw a future where the industrial-based society declined, and a new type of society, a knowledge-base society emerged. His books were some of the first, and still the best, to explore how big of a change we were all in for. Now, about 16 years after his last book, and seven years after his death, this transition continues. We're all familiar with the ideas of the fall of the Industrial Age, and the rise of the Information Age, as we call them, at this point. But few people think of us as still being in this long transition period.
It was this transition from one form of society to another that led to the shutdown of thousands of factories, and the migration of millions of people away from once thriving cities like Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, and many other industrial-based cities. As the younger generations, the Millennials and Gen Z kids grew up, abandoned factories, malls, and other buildings, became a part of their culture. Small groups took to exploring these rotting relics of the Industrial Age, and urban exploring, or UrbEx, became a thing with a name, and a subculture, with a lot of creative people, graffiti writers and photographers, mostly.
Like most of you, I imagine, I've explored a some abandoned places. I remember as a kid of 10 or 11, a few of us kids sneaking into an abandoned house we all thought was haunted, in the tiny town of Willard, Ohio. Then the city put a railroad caboose, on a small section of tracks, in the park by my house. We all explored, and then played in, the caboose for a few weeks, before it got locked up. In New Mexico and Idaho, I explored some buildings and old houses out in the desert. As a BMX freestyler, years later, I often went off on my own, exploring areas of the various cities I lived in, or traveled to, looking for cool obstacles for street riding. Skateboarders and BMXers have always been urban explorers, looking for drained ditches, swimming pools, and other places to ride or skate. That was our drive to peak over fences, into odd nooks and crannies of cities. When I drove a taxi in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 2011-2012, I used to park during the day, and sleep in my taxi at night, near a big abandoned industrial building, right above Hanes Mall. When someone else broke the lock, I went in and checked it out one day, dreaming of buying the place and turning it into a huge BMX, mountain bike, and skatepark.
Now there's a whole subculture of younger explorers sneaking into abandoned places, and usually documenting them. I think that's really cool, and honestly, if I had time and money, I'd go check out some of these places myself.
Well known photo of Rolling Acres Mall, near Akron, Ohio, when it was abandoned, early 2010's. Photo borrowed from the web.
In the early 2010's, the Rolling Acres Mall, near Akron, Ohio, became the poster mall for dead malls, the first images of an abandoned mall to really go viral. I was born within 5 or 10 miles of Rolling Acres Mall, and my family lived nearby until I was about three. I actually walked through that mall as a little kid. I don't specifically remember it, I was only there a few times, and we went to lots of malls. But seeing one of the malls I walked through as a kid, abandoned and deteriorating in internet photos, sparked my interest in all these abandoned buildings that people can't find new uses for. Rolling Acres was demolished a few years after the famous photos were taken. There's an Amazon fulfillment center on that property now.
All of these abandoned buildings hold some of our cultural history, and I, personally, appreciate the explorers, like Detroit Unseen, who document and dig into the history of these buildings. Buildings that were once so culturally relevant, in many cases, and that now rot away, or have been demolished. We will see a lot more abandoned buildings in the next several years, and hopefully many will find new uses before they crumble, or have to be demolished.
There's a concept called "Adaptive Reuse," which is the idea to take unused or abandoned buildings, and find new, 21st century, viable uses for them. Particularly with all the empty industrial and retail spaces, and now office buildings being added to that list, I think this will be a huge and growing industry going forward. Most adaptive reuse projects you see on the web are huge projects. But adaptive reuse can be done with a house, or a small retail building, even by small investors and entrepreneurs. My personal favorite adaptive reuse story is Ray's MTB mountain bike park in Cleveland, Ohio.
Abandoned buildings, from the 11,000 plus abandoned houses, and other buildings, just in Gary Indiana alone, to the struggling dead malls and half vacant office buildings across the country, from the last few years, abandoned buildings is huge theme in the U.S., and many other countries. This makes potential opportunities for adaptive reuse a big potential growth industry in today's world. What are your thoughts on how to use some of these buildings in the future? Hit me up on Facebook with any comments.
I've been doing a lot of writing on Substack lately. Check it out:
In the video above, we have Nick Gerli of Reventure Consulting, who I've been watching for over two years now. He's been calling the trends in residential real estate really well that whole time. In this video above he shares the news that the median prices for new homes are down 18% over the last year. Yep. As the economies of most major nations grind to almost to a halt at the end of 2023, the U.S. residential real estate market is just one of many industries heading into some even more difficult times.
Last week, I wrote this post about the bicycle industry, talking about how screwed up it is after the pandemic shutdowns, supply shocks, and the overall crazy economic shit storm of the last four years. As a guy who was a hardcore BMX freestyler and industry guy in the 1980's, I really want to see the BMX bike, mountain bike, and over bicycle industry, figure things out, and get back on track again. I spent 20 years of my life riding daily, and hope to get back to that at some point in the future. But BMX, and the whole bicycle industry, is small time compared to some of the other large industries out there. Many, if not most industries, are struggling after the last four years of the pandemic, shutdowns, supply shocks, $6 trillion in "helicopter money," high inflation, and then a historic rise in interest rates.
Last week's post about the bike industry was just a look at the turmoil there, because that's where I came from, where my first "real job" was, 37 years ago. Here are some YouTube videos by people looking at several other major industries which are struggling now, along with my thoughts.
My underlying, Big Picture thesis on today's crazy business environment, is that we're in what I call The Big Transition. This is the continuation of what futurist Alvin Toffler first described way back in 1980, in his book,The Third Wave. We are in a transition period between the fading Industrial Age, and the still emerging Information Age. Many whole industries have not made the full transition from the old, Industrial Age business models, into a new, viable, Information Age business models. This recession (which I think we're already in) will force the issue for thousands of businesses, large and small, and dozens of different entire industries. These next few years will be really tough for nearly everyone, but will also present amazing opportunities for enterprising business people. Here are some of the industries really struggling right now.
The commercial real estate crisis of empty offices and the "Urban Doom Loop."- CNBC October 2023 Now... this is CNBC, which means it is telling you "The Narrative" that the powers at be want you to believe. Yes, Big Cities are taking big hits from the decline in office space rent. But the big tech cities, like New York City, San Francisco, L.A., Seattle, and Austin, will rebound in time.
Right now business interests in less popular cities are trying to get people, particularly tech people and and tech businesses, to migrate en masse to many smaller cities, still struggling from the loss of factory jobs in previous decades. So there's a big Narrative right now that there's a huge migration of people (particularly tech people and tech companies) that are moving to these (mostly red state) cities and regions. But they are over hyping the actual movement of people to those regions. There are numbers of people moving to southern, midwest, and northeast cities now, and that may continue for the next couple of years. But in 2-5 years, coming out of this next recession, I believe the Big tech cities will rebound, as they have time after time, and older industrial-based cities will still be struggling, overall.
Meanwhile, dozens, probably hundreds, of office buildings will be given back to the banks, or be foreclosed on, or be part of bankruptcies in the next couple of years. This will lead to the collapse of a more banks, very likely a few hundred of them, over the next few years. Most at risk are those regional banks that so came into focus after the March 2023 bank collapses.
The Trucking industry "bloodbath"- Trucking Made Successful channel, 11/29/2023. During the supply shock phase of the pandemic, there was a huge shortage or truck drivers for a while. Not surprisingly, as things opened up, and big money was flowing, more trucking companies and more drivers took to the road. Now things are slowing back down overall, and the trucking industry is struggling. This is happening even with the closing down of Yellow trucking, which laid off 30,000 workers, about 22,000 of them drivers a couple of months ago.
The Rise and Fall of the American Mall- The History Guy- September 2012. The dying off of shopping malls as a center of social life, as well as the huge drop in sales of shopping at department stores, has led to both dying malls, dead malls (70% vacant or more), and fully abandoned malls.
Sure you can blame Amazon, but I see the decline of malls as the dying off of the Industrial Age goods distribution system of huge department stores and shopping malls, as the Information Age goods distribution system (phone app and that item is on your door step two days later) rose to fill the needs of millions of today's consumers.
There were once about 2,500 fully enclosed shopping malls, the number is somewhere around 700 now, in late 2023. The huge influx of helicopter money by The Fed, in 2020 and 2021, slowed down the Retail Apocalypse, but as consumers have run out of that money, retail store closings have begun picking up again. The consensus view is that the very high end malls, and the very low end ones, those just above flea market and swap meet status, will probably survive. But a whole bunch of the mid range malls, located largely in mid range cities outside large metro areas, will continue to die off. There will be malls in the future, but a much lower number of them, and they won't play the cultural role they once did. Unless some new cultural re-invention of malls as experience centers comes along. The recession we're heading into now should take out several dozen more malls in the next few years.
The Self-Storage business has been thrown for a loop over the last four years, and 2023 has caused major struggles for many storage unit owners- Self Storage Income, September 2023. The Self-Storage industry popped out of nowhere about 30 years ago, and those familiar little overpriced garages are everywhere now. In the 2010's, REIT's (Real Estate Investment Trusts), and other Big Money, got into the game, and changed it forever. Now it's a business of a teaser rate to get you into a unit, and then once you move all your stuff in, they know they can jack up rates dramatically, and nearly everyone will pay the higher rent, rather than move all their stuff somewhere else. But higher interest rates, higher real estate values in recent years, and a higher debt load, have hit their margins.
The movie theater industry got hammered by the pandemic, and they are struggling to survive and adapt at this point- PBS News Hour, March 2023 According to a slate at the end of this news segment linked, there are now about 3,000 less movie screens in the U.S., than there were in 2019. As we all know, Covid-19 completely shut down movie theaters for many months. Then AMC, the largest theater owner, became one of the meme stocks when that craze hit. Due to that, their stock price surged from just over $8 per share, to peak around $230 per share. That bought AMC some time, because it gave the business more money to work with. But their share price just collapsed in August 2023, and is $6.65 as I write this. So they are still struggling, going into the 2023 holiday season.
Meanwhile, the second largest theater chain, Regal (which includes the former UA or United Artists theaters, among others), got bought out by British theater chain Cineworld. Then Cineworld went bankrupt, both in the U.S. and later in the U.K. I dug into their story in this blog post, about the big Barbenheimer movie weekend, back in July. Cineworld couldn't get themselves out of bankruptcy, so they were taken over by their bankers. The bankers then managed to form a new corporation, transfer Cineworld and Regal's theaters into it, and completely blew off the $4.5 billion in debt they owed to shareholders. Just said, "Uh, yeah, you guys ain't gettin' paid." Then they kept the chains going, like nothing had happened, but in a new corporation with an entirely new board of directors, and they're pretending it's just the same Cineworld. Check out the very last sentence of the Hollywood Reporter article linked above. In any case, a few high grossing movies, like Barbie, Oppenheimer, and Top Gun: Maverick have helped keep the theater chains afloat, for now. But the huge rise in popularity in streaming thanks to the pandemic, the proliferation of 85 and 98 inch home screens, and the changing tastes of theaters goers, keeps theaters from thriving again, at least right now.
Like I've been writing for over 4 1/2 years now, in posts like this one from March 2019, "Our economy is powered by unicorn farts." We are in for a major recession (or depression), and a monumental shift in the business world, and society at large. Yeah, The Big Transition thing I keep harping about. Alvin Toffler called this change 43 years ago. Now it's here, and things are going to get even crazier than the last 4 years. This will be really hard for most people, but this period will also have incredible opportunities for both business and social entrepreneurs, and people with good ideas about how to build a better future, from the neighborhood level to the global level. And no I'm not talking about the Globalist/WEF agenda, their plans are falling apart, too.
These next two or three years are the reason I've been writing about a major coming recession for so long. These next few years will change society going forward. But so did personal computers, the internet, smartphones, and the democratization of media, due largely to those devices. Change. There's more change coming. A lot more. If you have some ideas to build or try something new, these next few years are a great time to give it a shot.
I'm doing a lot of writing on Substack these days, check it out:
There's a lot of cool and random stuff out in the desert. This guy tools around on an ebike looking at the old junk in this section of Nevada, outside Las Vegas. In the last part of the video he checks out an abandoned casino and hotel. For real. And they are still full of furnishings. That's pretty crazy.
Until I was almost 14 years old, "the desert" was a mythical place where cowboys used to herd cattle, and have gunfights in old movies. I grew up in the very green and moist state of Ohio. There were creeks small rivers, medium sized rivers, and big ass rivers like the Ohio River, all over the state where my family bounced around during my childhood. All of the rivers had water in them all year 'round, because that's what a river is, right? Rivers are never ending places of running water.
Then word got around that the company my dad worked at might get sold, and possibly shut down. That rumor began to circulate in 1979, and up until about 1978, factories simply didn't shut down. They just didn't, it was unheard of. But about a year earlier, one had closed in a nearby town, and then moved the whole plant to a faraway place where people worked for less money... Alabama. That was the beginning of the mass closings of factories in the U.S., where tens of millions of human jobs were either replaced by industrial robots and other new technology, or they were outsourced to another state or another country. That mass closing of factories in the 1980's through the 2000's turned the Midwest from the Industrial heart of the U.S. into the Rust Belt we known now. My family got out of Ohio early, not realizing how big the trend would become. In the summer of 1980 we moved to Carlsbad, New Mexico.
I was a chubby, wimpy white boy who was suddenly was entering 9th grade in a city that was 70% Hispanic. Orale ese! I learned a lot of things during that year we lived in southeastern New Mexico. I learned that chicken fried steak, steak fingers, tamales, and guacamole were all good things. I learned not to order mountain oysters at a restaurant. I learned that the Pecos River was muddy, "too thick to drink and too thin to plow," was the local joke. Yet both trout and gar somehow lived in the brown water. I learned not to camp in a sand wash, because if it rains somewhere upstream, a debris flow can happen unexpectedly. I learned that some rivers don't have water running in them most of the year. I learned not to step on cholla spines. I learned "spelunking" is another word for cave exploring, which is big in Carlsbad, home of the Carlsbad Caverns. I learned how to do the Latino "what's up" up nod to say "Hi" to friends, without words. I saw Roswell before anyone talked about aliens, the book that blew that story up came out in 1981, while I lived there.
I also learned that there is all kinds of crazy stuff out in the desert, pretty much any desert, I think. While I had trouble dealing with the summer heat as a chubby kid in Carlsbad, I loved wandering around the desert on the weekends in the fall, winter, and spring, looking for random stuff. I looked for turquoise colored, and the more rare purple, glass insulators from the old power lines. They were clear originally, but something in the glass made then change colors over many years while out in the sun. An unchipped one was a desert treasure, and many lined window sills in Carlsbad.
At that time, there was a book of aerial photos you could buy of each county, from an obscure government office, for $4. My dad's co-workers scoured those books for interesting looking stuff to go find out in the desert. They found some 1/4 mile wide circles way out in the desert, with smaller, concentric circles inside. Those turned out to be World War II Army Air Force bombing practice targets. So we went out nearly every weekend that winter to explore those things.
We found hundreds pieces of both metal and concrete practice bombs, pieces of hundreds of them. These were 100 pound practice bombs, maybe 8 or 9 inches in diameter, and about three feet long. The concrete ones were solid concrete, with metal fins bolted on the back end. The metal ones were the same size and shape, but were steel filled with either sand or gravel. They were all broken, and big pieces were hard to find. But some of the concrete ones still had the light blue color on the parts that had been buried, and white stenciled writing on them. There were 45 or more of those targets out in the desert in Southeastern New Mexico. After months of collecting practice bombs, we finally found a little magazine article, from many years before, that explained the basic story. During World War II, from 1943-1945, one of the U.S. Army Air Force's bombardier and navigator training centers was located in Carlsbad. Even a local historian we met didn't know that, so we told her what we had found. Now there's the Wikipedia page about it, linked above.
On one of our trips to find one of these targets, we found a bunch of foundations for houses, like an early 20th century little village, of maybe 100 people. It was just out in the middle of nowhere. In a bit of synchronicity, our next door neighbor lady, who was in her 70's, knew exactly what it was. My dad mentioned it over the fence, detailing where it was. "Oh, that's Getty," she said, "It was a little home for oil rig workers in the 1930's, I lived out there for a couple of years." That was a really random coincidence. Since those days, as a junior high kid in 1980-81, I've loved just wandering different places in the desert, just to see what there is to find. My point is, there's all kinds of weird stuff out in the desert, and because of the arid environment, things don't get overgrown, and things last a long time, for decades, even hundreds of years.
In this video above, this explorer rides around this area on his ebike, and finds a bunch of the more normal stuff you find in desert areas of the West. Old cans, trash pits from 50 or 100 years ago, part of a glass insulator, turned turquoise by years in the sun, and similar old bits and pieces. Then he finds what appears to be a dead, rattlesnake, a pretty big one. Then he rides back to where he started, which is an abandoned casino and hotel, closed in 2020. That's pretty crazy. It's in Jean, Nevada, on the 15 freeway, south of Las Vegas.
This video reminded me of all the time I've spent wandering pieces of desert, when it popped up on my YouTube feed. So I thought I'd do a post about it. A lot of my early BMXing in 1982 and 1983, in the trailer park outside of Boise, was riding my bike around the Jeep trails in the miles of desert where I lived, to see what was out there. There was a filled in water well and rock walls, what we thought might be part of an old Pony Express stop, near the trailer park, among other stuff. Anyhow, this is just a cool little exploration video, something I haven't really had the chance to do in a long time.
I'm doing a lot of writing on a platform called Substack now. Check it out:
This is Josh, from Daily MTB Rider channel, giving the lowdown on the crazy state of the massively overstocked bike industry right now. Long story short, pretty much everybody's got a ton of inventory they're trying to get rid of right now, and sales have dropped off dramatically from last year. And we're heading into a serious recession.
To begin, I've had nothing to do with the bike industry since the mid 1990's. In the 1980's, I worked at two magazines (BMX Action and FREESTYLIN') for few months. Then came the AFA for most of 1987. Then I worked at Unreel Productions, Vision Street Wear's video company, for 2 1/2 years, when VSW was the biggest clothing sponsor in BMX. In the early 1990's. I spent four years as a roommate to a guy who owned a little, upstart BMX company, which is now one of the BIG BMX companies, actually two BMX companies. So for about a decade, I was in or around the BMX industry, if not actively involved in a bike or component company. But that was a LONG time ago. I kept riding daily until 2003, but was out of touch with the industry.
I was there in January of 1989, at the big bike trade show in Long Beach. Walking around the show, I literally heard, over and over, in booth after booth, "BMX is dead, mountain bikes are the new thing." The big money pulled out of the BMX bike market, and BMX "died." It didn't die to us hardcore riders, but most of the industry and money walked away. At the Brooklyn Banks 2-Hip Meet the Street contest in the late summer of 1989, I had a room as a Vision/Unreel cameraman, with a pro rider. Dennis McCoy, Mat Hoffman, Steve Swope, Rick Thorne, and a couple other Kansas City riders wound up sleeping on the floor of our room, because they didn't have sponsors. That's how much money had been pulled out of the BMX world. The top vert rider and top overall rider, Mat and Dennis, didn't even have sponsors for a while.
Riding went underground, and first Ron Wilkerson with 2-Hip, and later, Mat and Swope with the B.S. contests, kept BMX freestyle comps alive. During those years, S&M Bikes, Hoffman Bikes, Standard Byke Company, FBM Bikes, Eastern Bikes, and several other BMX related companies, either started in business, or grew into the roots of BMX and freestyle. From 1990-1995, the riders took over the BMX industry.
Now in the early 2020's, I think we're going to see another huge breaking down and rebuilding of the BMX and overall bike industry. How can I say this, as a fat, ugly, Old School BMX industry Has Been who's outside the industry? Because I'm predicting this for EVERY industry. My geek side has been an amateur futurist, a guy looking at economics, future trends, and shit like that, for over 30 years now. I think we are in The Big Transition, as I call it. We are not totally out of the fading Industrial Age society, but we're not fully into a functional Information Age society yet. We're about 3/4 of the way through the transition period between the two. Click this link to learn more about The Big Transition.
In the spring of 2019, I did some online work for a kickass bike shop that wanted to open an online business. That ultimately didn't work out. But I was telling the owner the same thing back then. "There's a HUGE recession coming, and it's going to force a complete change to the bike shop and bike industry business model. At the time, April and May of 2019, that didn't make sense to him. I get that. My weird world view was based on reading all kinds of obscure books about trends (like Alvin Toffler's Revolutionary Wealth- 2006), 30 years of observing financial markets and trends, and what I had learned about internet marketing and internet businesses, as a long time blogger.
But there's no denying that there's some major change ahead for the BMX and over bike industry now. AND nearly every other industry. This didn't happen just because of Covid-19. It was going to happen anyhow. The pandemic just made this change happen much faster, by screwing up the supply lines, and the economy overall. A ten year transition got fast-forwarded into a 3 years of chaos, and now the afternath of figuring out new business models for the future.
Here's the takeaway from my perspective. Now, 23 years into the 21st century, we have a world where everyone has smartphones, and money can zoom around the world in seconds. A potential customer can test ride a $3,000 mountain bike, or a $1,200 BMX bike, in a bike shop. Then they can walk out to their car, in the parking lot of that bike shop, and order the exact bike for $100 cheaper online.In this changing world, what is the role of a bike shop? What is the role of a bike manufacturer? If kids don't all get $200 BMX bikes as 9-year-olds, will very many want to ride high end BMX bikes in their teens and 20's? Or will they do wheelies on big wheeled BMX cruisers or ride mountain bikes? I think bike shops will have to completely change their business model to survive. They won't make their money off of selling bikes in the future, as crazy as that sounds. So what will the main revenue source be? The same for manufacturers, I don't think they will make their money selling bikes in the future, I think some other aspect of the business (maybe media?) will turn into the primary revenue source.
I don't think this because I have some special insight into the bike world. I'm totally out of touch, and I admit that. I think this because it's happening in every other industry as well. So that's my basic thoughts, heading into Thanksgiving Weekend, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and then a God-awful recession in the months afterwards. I think the bike industry, and many other industries, are heading "back into the early 1990's," or a time much like it. A time of TRANSITION.
What will the bike and BMX industries become? Hopefully a better version of the best that they have been. Time will tell. Feel free to dive into the comments about this post on my Facebook.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
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There are a whole bunch of videos talking about Blackrock's application for a Bitcoin spot price ETF (Exchange Traded Fund). Crypto Casey's video, from July 2023, tells all the basics in 16 minutes, so it's a good place to start researching this potential move in Bitcoin, expected to play out over the next 1-2 years. Investing in crypto, like any investment, carries risks, so be smart, do your own due diligence, and talk to any need professionals before making any investment decisions.
Bitcoin, BTC, the crypto asset, the decentralized digital form of exchange, hosted on thousands of computers worldwide, began with a white paper published just over 15 years ago, by some mysterious person or group, who went by the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi's true identity remains unknown to this day. A link to a white paper describing the concept was released on October 31, 2008. The open source code network was created on January 3rd, 2009. Using the info in the white paper, people began "mining" Bitcoin almost immediately. You can dig into more details on the Bitcoin Wikipedia page, or watch the documentary The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin, or one or more of the other Bitcoin and crypto docs out there. In any case, in January 2009, reportedly inspired by the Great Recession of 2007-2009 (aka The GFC or Global Financial Crisis), the world's experiment with digital crypto currency and blockchain technology began. It was over 8 years until the strange digital "coin" hit a value of $1,000 U.S. per Bitcoin. As I write this in mid November 2023, Bitcoin is trading at $36,366 per Bitcoin. According to Google, the total market cap of all crypto is $1.44 trillion, with Bitcoin making up $708 billion of that. Obviously, a bunch of people see value in this digital blockchain technology and transaction system. There are now many other blockchains, and thousands of other crypto coins being traded online.
The point of this post is that we have the set-up for what appears to be another huge rise in the value of Bitcoin. This began slowly, a year ago, as Bitcoin rose from the low after the SBF debacle. The price is back up well over 100% from the low price in November of 2022, after the last big crypto crash and trough in prices. But now there's another big event coming that could help the price of Bitcoin surge much higher over the next several months, and into the next year or two.
Wall Street, and specifically the financial Goliath, Blackstone, has applied to create a spot price ETF for Bitcoin. They applied for it last June. A lot of other businesses have also applied. But Blackstone is the largest, most well connected, traditional financial player (trad-fi), and they've had over 500 ETF's approved, and only one denied. So the crypto world, and many others, expect Blackstone to eventually get approved to open that ETF.
What does that do? That ETF, exchange traded fund, will allow investors, particularly huge investment portfolios like pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, ultra high net worth individuals, and other major investors, get exposure to Bitcoin's volatile price action, while not having to actually buy Bitcoin itself. Basically, the Big Boys and Girls Club of investors around the world will be able to make money off of Bitcoin, without the risks of actually owning BTC, or any other crypto coin. It's a huge side bet arena, part of the traditional financial system, that would be as easy to invest in as stocks on a Robinhood account. It would open the crypto environment up to hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars of investment in a traditional investment vehicle, an ETF, but also be able to profit when Bitcoin goes up in price. The consensus view is that the Blackstone ETF, or perhaps a series of Bitcoin spot price ETF's, beginning with Blackstone's, would make Bitcoin itself much more valuable.
In March of 2017, Bitcoin was under $1,000 per Bitcoin. In December of 2017, the price rose to $19,650 per Bitcoin. That's a rise of 2038% in one year, a 20X return, if sold at the peak. Then Bitcoin, and other cryptos, crashed. In December of 2018, the price got down around $3183 per Bitcoin. In November of 2021, it peaked again at around $64,400 per Bitcoin. That rise, trough to peak, was 2023%, another 20X rise. Then crypto prices, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and all the alt coins or shit coins, crashed again. This last low was around $16, 452 per Bitcoin, in November of 2022. I'm saying "around" for the prices because I'm using the Google chart to simplify things, which is weekly numbers, and not the absolute, intraday lows or highs.
The crypto world, looking at the likelihood of the Blackrock ETF actually happening, sees the next big price spike for Bitcoin likely going to at least $100,000 to maybe $150,000 per Bitcoin, at some point in the next couple of years. That's nearly a 10X rise in price, from the 2022 low. If Bitcoin does another 20X peak trough to peak rise, that would put the next peak price at roughly $320,000 per Bitcoin. That's the extreme high side of the next potential peak, driven in large part by the continued adoption of crypto, as well as the Blackstone ETF, and possible other Bitcoin ETF's, getting approved. The Blackstone ETF potential approval dates are January 12-14th, 2024, and I think March 13-14th, 2024.
But wait, there's more! The nextBitcoin halving is predicted to take place around April 20th, 2024. The "halving" is programmed into the Bitcoin code. Once every four years, the amount of Bitcoin that Bitcoin miners earn for mining it, gets cut in half. This generally leads to the price rising as well, in time. The last two halvings, the price went down a bit at first, then recovered, and grew, a few months later. In 2020, the price went much higher in a few months, but Bitcoin popularity was also growing a lot then. In any case, miners get paid less Bitcoin to mine it, beginning next April 2024, which tends to make Bitcoin more valuable, overall. So there's a one-two punch set to push the price of Bitcoin higher next spring, the very likely Blackstone ETF approval, and the baked in Bitcoin halving.
Last month, the news broke that the Blackrock ETF got approved, and the price of Bitcoin took off immediately. Within a day, the news broke that it was a false announcement, based on an intern's mistake. Sure blame the interns. In any case, even though everyone realized the ETF did not get approved, the mistaken news leak sent the price of Bitcoin from around $26,800, to over $28,000 in ten days, and it has drifted higher since, and it now well over $36,000 per Bitcoin, after hitting #37,000 recently. Ethereum and many other crypto coins have risen as well, sparked by Bitcoin's rise.
Many traditional investors are now really happy to "T-bill and chill," after the 2022-2023 chaos in stocks, buying U.S. treasury bills that pay 5% to 5.5% annually on their money. But over in cryptoland, there's this opportunity to ride the Bitcoin train up for the next several months, maybe for 1-2 years. this opportunity exists because of increasing overall adoption, because of the effect the nearly certain approval of the Blackstone spot price Bitcoin ETF, and the Bitcoin halving, are expected to have on Bitcoin's price in the next 6 to 12 months, or more. So that's the opportunity sitting out there right now, for any of you interested in investing in Bitcoin.
Crypto is not as easy to invest in as stocks, U.S. treasuries, or something like gold or or silver. It's volatile, the price swings day to day can be several percent. You have to do quite a bit of research, if you're not already familiar, on how to safely buy crypto, then how to hold it safely in a hard wallet. If this interests you, then dive into the research about this potential opportunity. There are a lot of videos about the aspects of Bitcoin, the Blackstone ETF, and many opinions on how this might play out. As I said above, Crypto Casey's video embedded above is a great place to start. If the ETF does happen, and Bitcoin rises steadily in price for a while, that generally drags up the price of Ethereum, the other major cryptos, and many of the alt coins (or shit coins) as well. Do the due diligence needed before investing any money in any of these. Be smart and be safe.
If this whole idea makes sense, how do you play it? Buy Bitcoin, or even Ethereum, and hold it through at least next April. The real rise should come in the months after April. Don't expect it to soar straight up in price, but make a bumpy, upward trend over time. If this is the next big cycle in crypto, as it appears to be, then Bitcoin, and many other cryptos, could rise substantially over the next 1 1/2 to 2 years. It's a buy and hold, mid term play, for several months, up to maybe 2 years. You decide when to sell some or all of your crypto, and take profits, if this long move plays out more or less as expected.
If you don't know how to safely buy and store crypto, then take the time to do the proper research on how to buy crypto safely, and learn about hard wallets, and how to store your crypto safely.
Again, this is a potential opportunity that seems to be shaping up, where the ETF approval and the halving will help push the price of Bitcoin up, over several months. No one is obligated to buy any crypto because you read this post. If this post sparks your interest, do the needed research, and see if this potential opportunity makes sense for you. As this is playing out, it looks like we're heading into a recession, so expect much of the rest of the economy to be slow as we see just how the Bitcoin story plays out in the next year or two.
I'm sharing this information because I see this huge potential investment hanging out there, at a time when economic growth around the world is slowing down, some countries are already in recession, and others, including the U.S., are either heading into, or will soon head into, a recession. There are no paid links in this post, I don't make any money off of writing this in any way, whether you do or don't buy Bitcoin or other cryptos. I'm just sharing the potential opportunity with those of you who read my blog, hoping it may help some of you, if it makes sense to you, and if this opportunity plays out close to how its expected to play out.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned, there's more to come. Hit me with any comments or ideas on Facebook.
Blogger's note- 11/16/2023- BlockRock just filed with the SEC to open an Ethereum ETF, to go along with the Bitcoin ETF that I wrote about above. Here's the CNBC report on this. So add Ethereum, the #2 crypto, and the first to incorporate smart contracts, to the ideas lined out above concerning Bitcoin.
I've also been doing a lot of longer form writing on Substack, a platform designed specifically for writers, lately. There I'm writing mostly about creativity, creative scenes, art, writing, and a little economic stuff. Check it out.
