Yes, they will automatically exercise if your dead, the same way they auto execute when you are alive. I have sold many options over the years, with many of them exercising. If they expire ITM, you don't have a choice (whether dead or alive) past expiration.
Say what you will about salt consumption, but my wife suffered thyroid issues until we added a shaker of iodized salt back into our kitchen/eating area.
This is a very important point. Also other point is that in some hospitals people are going into ER with hiponatremia. Granted extreme cases. But many people are getting obsessive with low Na. And while a little bit too much will not affect you at all, a little bit too little will affect you immediately.
Not really, at least not everywhere. If you live away of sea, you will bot be inclined to eat seafood, also will be expensive. There are many cultures in which the diet does not have enough iodine.
Sure, if you live in a country with submodern infrastructure, doesn't produce enriched wheat, or cannot afford to buy an iodine supplement, you are probably right.
However 1 cup of milk has more iodine than 1/4 teaspoon of iodized salt, 1 egg has half as much, and two slices of enriched wheat bread has three times as much.
Also, a typical kelp supplement has way more than the RDV, in a single pill.
Then you have an enormously large tower held up by nothing but its own strength instead of being naturally pulled into space. Also takes additional delta-v to get satteliges into common orbits post release.
This is arguably more doable than cables. I've been told that it's completely possible to build steel structures several miles tall (and the main reason we don't is b/c elevators become a problem).
No known material could support a tower that tall (towers need compressive strength; elevators need tensile strength). It would need to rely on 'active support' or 'dynamic structures', like a space fountain ( http://www.orbitalvector.com/Orbital%20Travel/Space%20Founta... )
A friend of mine who studies engineering told me that masonry has infinite compressive strength meaning, in theory, it's possible to build monumental structures out of stone.
I think it would be the same ∆V requirement (for geosynchronous orbital altitude). But it's not possible to have a geo orbital plane (so the subsatellite point is stationary on the Earth) that is out of the equatorial plane.
Yeah, but gold is real, it's a real metal here in the physical universe, not only does it look good, it doesn't tarnish or rust ( to any real degree under normal circumstances ) with many niche uses beyond ornamental, just think about how much gold foil goes into something that's going to space... it is also one of the heaviest, most uniquely workable metals that isn’t dangerously radioactive.
My point is that it has an INTRINSIC value, not just an arbitrary value we've assigned to it, but a natural value that comes only to things that are actually naturally valuable... that statement may seem to be self referential, i.e. wet because not dry, but I think it makes the point I'm trying to get across, which is: there's a difference between that which IS valuable, and that which has value because WE assign it value.
Like tulips in pre-crash 1637, "bitcon" only has the value we assign to it, in reality it's nothing but numbers and we've plenty of those.
That it can and probably will decrease in value drastically when a majority of people realize it has no INTRINSIC value... well that should be warning enough to those wise enough to think about critically.
It's not like "market cap" really even applies to it here, yes each "coin" is assigned some value and the multiplication applied methodically does seem to come up with a giant number, but there are no REAL assets... it's not like it's a share of stock in a company that makes anything, it's all ethereal, there's absolutely nothing of value except the fact that somebody else is willing to exchange something of REAL value for it... when that's gone, the whole thing will be another story on Wikipedia...
> there's a difference between that which IS valuable, and that which has value because WE assign it value.
10% of the price of gold IS valuable, the other 90% is WE valuable. What does that say to you?
If you agree that bitcoin has at least 0.0001% IS valuable (for example for some collectors of digital artefacts), then where do you draw the line, what percentage of IS valuable do you require so that you would consider bitcoin having some INTRINSIC value as gold does?
Yes, I agree with you that a portion of the value assigned to virtual currencies ( the IS value ) comes from the utility of the the thing... just like a portion of the value we assign to the U.S. Dollar comes from the utility ( you can carry it in your pocket and exchange it for stuff )... but understand that just like the dollar, we assign value to it because it's HARD to counterfeit ( and only because so ), you can't just make as many as you want easily.
Bitcoin, and most other virtual currencies, are only "hard" to counterfeit because limitations in current technologies ( math included ) make it so... What happens when that goes away?
What would the value of bitcoin be tomorrow if some scientist today, publishes a paper providing an easier way to factor large numbers? What about Moore's law? What about quantum computing and machine learning? What about breakthroughs in mathematics or cryptography? Start thinking about all the intellectual manpower working every day on any number of things that could make the very basis for bitcoin obsolete, and you start thinking that maybe the value we assign it is a bad bet.
As far as gold goes, until someone creates a philosopher's stone, or starts 3d printing gold atoms, I think we're safe to assume you would still have to mine the stuff and refine it, and that amount of work isn't going away anytime soon... and therefore the "value" of it isn't going to zero soon either.
Bitcoin can transition to a quantum resistant system before quantum computers are a reality. At the moment there is no clear post-quantum algo winner, but when the industry settles on one, bitcoin (and the whole world - SSL, ...) will switch. It's not the secp256k1 elliptic curve which defines bitcoin, it's just an implementation detail.
I'm pretty sure most cryptography experts would consider nuclear war more likely than a breakthrough in crypto which breaks bitcoin (and the rest of the world). Yes, it's possible, but I wouldn't lose sleep over it.
Gold supply is elastic, unlike bitcoin which is hard coded.
Gold mining is dictated by the gold price. When gold price goes up, miners start to dig again in regions that were too expensive before. When price goes down, they stop. With a suitable (huge) gold price, it makes sense to just filter it out from ocean water. And let's not even think about giant gold asteroids which are out there.
That is circular reasoning. You can buy gold with money just like you can with bitcoins as well. There is no 'Gold Standard' to the former, nor the latter. Both are pure fiat currencies.
Most people when they say they 'hold gold in their portfolio' don't mean they have the metal lying in their safe. They usually hold shares in a tracking stock like [1], or are active in the commodities market speculating with futures and options on gold, or invested in gold mining companies.
Their is ofc also a real industrial demand for gold. Jewelry makers, electronics firms etc. will take delivery of and use the real metal to make products. For everyone else, it is just numbers in a computer that are transferred from account to account. even when Central banks buy and trade with each-other, the gold never leaves the vault (although it might sometimes be moved from stack to stack inside)
Lately trust in some of these vaults and the accessibility to the actual gold held there has declined, resulting in countries 'repatriating' their gold[2]. As you can imagine, this is not a trivial logistics operation.
While the ownership may change, the actual gold never leaves the huge vaults of e.g. the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/markets/etfs/gld/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_repatriation
There's a reason we call currencies like the dollar fiat currencies, because they only have the value that we give them. Bitcoin is similarly valued. As for gold, Bitcoin is a currency, not a rock. Have you ever tried to buy a sandwich with gold? No, well no shit because it's not a currency and is useless as a means of exchange. Comparing Bitcoin to gold is silly.
Gold is primarily used as a store of value. Bitcoin (for me, at least) is primarily used as a store of value.
Gold has an intrinsic value of “beauty” and has a minor use in electronics. Bitcoin lets you make international money transfers easily.
People rarely buy sandwiches with gold. People rarely buy sandwiches with bitcoin (though I hope that changes in the future, because it will increase the value of bitcoin!).
It’s true that you can hold a piece of gold in your hand. But, honestly, how often do you do that? And more to the point - do you think most of the people who own gold do it for its physical properties, or so they can eventually exchange it for fiat currency?
I compare bitcoin to gold because, to me, they serve the same purpose for the same reasons.
There's probably quite a few places that would take gold for a sandwich...assuming they knew what you were giving them was real gold. Gold is not as widespread in use as it once was for commerce, but it's still used.
Also, the value of gold doesn't go to zero when the electricity stops... if/when that happens the chickens laying eggs in your coop will be worth more than bitcoin.
If “the electricity stops” how do you expect to retrieve your gold?
Or do you keep it in a vault in your house along with two years’ rations in case the world’s electricity stops working?
I don’t mean to be rude, but let’s try to keep the arguments rational. I’m happy to be convinced otherwise about bitcoin’s value. But I need to be convinced.
I think bitcoin can be compared to gold in the sense that people use them both as vehicles to store value. Obviously they have different manifestations (digital and physical) and different use cases, but both have the unique characteristic of being rare and therefore valuable.
I'm going to use a alt account for this ( for obvious reasons )...
I disagree with this sentiment, I was ( some 20 years ago ) incarcerated for drug dealing. I broke the law ( much more than I was caught and prosecuted for btw... ) and I deserved what I got, probably more.
For the record, being in prison sucks... it's SUPPOSED to suck, it's supposed to make you regret what you did to get put in there and actively look forward to the day of your release, it's not supposed to be a cushy summer camp for confused snowflakes... if it was, it WOULD NOT rehabilitate errant individuals like myself. The fact that it did suck SO BAD, is STILL some 20 years later FRONT-AND-CENTER in my mind - actively DETERRING me from doing something stupid and illegal again.
Also, for the record, I was allowed to EARN the right to work outside the prison ( good behavior / etc... ), for about a dollar a day ( usually removing trash and cleaning roadsides and tending parks and other municipal assets ) and I made more ( triple if I remember correctly ) when on fire duty.
Fire duty started the minute you got on a bus and left the prison, and ended when you got back, even if you did nothing but sit on the bus on the side of some road... you got paid for every hour you were on duty - 24 hours a day / 7 days a week - IT WAS GOOD MONEY ( for being in prison ) and it was a PRIVILEGE... because more than the money ( which was nice to have in prison, believe me ) it allowed you to go OUTSIDE of the prison, which was PRICELESS.
"Pay them for their hardwork and they'll learn they can succeed in life by hardwork, determination and honesty" -- Again I disagree, I learned nothing of the sort, what I learned is this: There are NO SHORTCUTS to success, and I should quit breaking the law and instead become a productive member of society INSTEAD of being a criminal.
Giving criminals (like my former self) better pay and treatment in prison has to be the stupidest idea I've ever heard of. If it wouldn't have been terrible I maybe would still be a criminal, because the deterrent would be insufficient.
The author of the parent comment seems not to understand recidivism in the United States if they were ever in prison at all. The Nordic example is leagues more potent than an anonymous anecdote.
Leave it to the typical HN comment on things like that to equate heaps of evidence with "I read X somewhere" and praise some anon anecdote over solid data.
Well, I'd like to remain anonymous for obvious reasons and will provide no proof of this assertion, but I'm actually that commenter's mother and they never went to jail.
Well, things like more lienient drug laws, harsher gun control, and social welfare usually keep people out of prison or from re-offending when they get out. Outcomes are better there because, truthfully, life is better there.
Sure, those help, but there is a lot more to the idea.
Most prisons are places where the word "criminal" is imprinted on your soul. You live as a criminal and learn from criminals. Or you're isolated which damages your mental health. If you have children, they normalize the idea of being a criminal. You lose your friends and colleagues (your "support network") so when you get out, where else do you go other than crime?
The idea behind Norway's incarceration system is simple. You deprive the person of their freedom, then simulate real life in a controlled environment. You teach them skills. You teach them how to socialize. You do everything to make sure that the criminal learns how to live a normal life.
So why don't other countries implement this system? Two reasons, both of which have to do with politics:
1- Politicians who act "tough on crime" are applauded (as if that will make the streets safer).
2- You produce cheap products and compete with the cheap labor of the third world. Why destroy a system that can produce a lot on the cheap (while banning the import of products of prison labor)?
Aside from the obvious difference USA <> Norway, saying "everyone copy Norway" is a huge generalization without much consideration for the situational and confounding variables present in different countries/societies/cultures.
Norway has ~5M people while the US has ~325M people. The US has a 5.35/100k murder rate compared to .51/100k murder rate for Norway [1]. In 2014, Chicago alone had 14x the number of murders the entire country of Norway had [2][3]. Pretty much across the board, the US has a ton more crime than Norway [4]. The scale and expanse of the problem is so vastly different between Norway and the US that is would take nothing short of a societal shift to begin to approach overhauling such a massive problem. Norway is basically sample size data when planning a criminal justice system for countries with 100M+ people that are already more socioeconomically strained.
Politics is a part of the problem, but fixing criminal justice is immensely more complicated than a 2-step solution of fix politics and copy Norway.
I'm sure ALL of your fellow inmates are now stellar citizens with not one in recidivism. Not one back where they started, or leading a life of crime still... because our criminal justice system has a 100% success rate at rehabilitation.
The issue is not that I want to make prison suck any less. I believe it sucks and that's done by design. What I care about is instilling the skills, attitude and experience that will allow seamless re-introduction back into society. Teaching inmates how to handle money, understand finances and giving them something to buy a car, rent an apartment, a uniform for work and tuition for education isn't going to make their prison stint any less awful, but it will reduce recidivism, increase participation in the legal economy and make these inmates _people_ in the real sense of the term.
The issue is that if you fuck up and go to jail, your life is effectively over.
The "suck" might please puritanical values. However, it doesn't encourage inmates to get on a better path. It just churns out bitter unemployable people with high rates of recidivism.
We have no way to check if they were actually an inmate or just a sock puppet for their political position. Even then, they never experienced the alternative, so they don't have any more information than we do. A classic "alternative history" problem.
We haven't experienced an alternate-history version of America without slavery, so does that mean we don't have any information on whether it was bad or not?
"Make prison suck" is just one possible means to an end (the ends being to deter crime and recidivism, and keep dangerous people off the streets), not an end in itself. For some offenders, the sucky experience is enough to set them straight. For others, their whole lives already sucked at least as bad as prison, so prison is just more of the same.
