Having had one suck of the tit of trader speak, it’s time for another, and this is mark to market.
The idea is a thing is actually worth what you get when you sell it, not what you think it is worth, but there are all sorts of twists and tricks to this.
Down at the level of the single working guy / self employed guy / small business guy, it’s pretty easy, you are worth what you got paid last week, but that was last week, next week you may be on the scrapheap, so you’ll be worth what you’re paid that week.
It’s pretty hard for the single working stiff / self employed / small business to get too distant from mark to market, because what you earn or sell is what you are worth, and generally speaking you put yourself to mark to market 52 times a year, or more if you are a small business guy, every single sale is a mark to market.
But even here we have some glaring problems, how do you mark to market some stiff in a safe government mcjob? Is it their last month’s salary?
I’ll say no, by the simple fact there is no competition, you have to screw up badly to lose the next months wages, but the self employed stiff or small business owner can do everything right, and still not make any sales, because, competition… he has to compete to get the customers’ dollar, the government mcjob fella doesn’t… it’s ga-ron-teed…
I have heard politicians claim they are market to market, that’s how they get elected, my response was boy I wish I could promise everyone everything they ask for, then deliver on none of it while feathering my own nest, and still get paid… I’d be sued into prison for fraud if I tried that shit.
Suddenly I don’t understand things, or there is a big picture, or things are complicated, oh if only it were that simple, and anyway, its not down to me, I can only try to do my best.
Yeah, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
But, the harsh reality is, people like me whose worth is marked to market a few times a week are in the minority, and even then, that only tells me what my work was worth *last* fucking week.
See, last fucking week, I did something completely fucking insane, at least by the lights of the first 80% of my life, I passed on some teen cunt… but thankfully I did it in a way that it seemed to her like she passed on me… rejecting da wimminz is more than enough for an FRA nowadays, there are three of them in todays paper, and the only one the paper gives a fuck about is the “hero” po-po that got falsely accused.
But, the fact is I passed, on something I would have gone to *great* lengths to chase years before, so the whole “mark to market” while it does tell you something, it only tell you shit in the rear view mirror.
What will an hour of my labour, or some teen cunt, or a ten dollar bill, be worth *next* fucking week.
I say all this because I have had an email from the states…
The email itself is not from anyone I know or have talked to in the past, it was sent on behalf of someone who I have talked to in the past, telling me of his plight.
Apparently some time in March he got a knock on the door from the po-po, as it turns out he hasn’t been charged with anything, and he isn’t going to be charged with anything, not in a court of law anyway, there is a back story that I am told is complicated, but not relevant, but it does make some of the crazier parts of the story less crazy.. well, to yanks mebbe.. because what happened after the knock on the door and the arrest on *suspicion* of selling drugs, was po-po seized all his shit, proceeds of drug dealing or something, and he isn’t getting it back, none of it.
So this correspondent is telling me that this guy could have somehow survived all this, not easy, but he’d have found a way, except one of the things that was taken by the po-po that he ain’t never getting back is something that looks a lot like a USB stick, and a laptop.
The thing like a usb stick held over 40 bitcoin, and the laptop held the only way to recover them if the stick ever got lost or damaged (I don’t know much about crypto currencies, so I’m just repeating this stuff) so bottom line is this guy is out over 40 bitcoin, and at the time of writing 1 bitcoin = 6076 dollars us, so 243,000 bucks vanished, just like dat… never coming back.
So the writer lent this guy 300 bucks and *his* passport to get to a port where he signed on as a deckhand on some cargo boat, he gone and he ain’t / can’t never go back, adios columbia.
Don’t expect to ever hear from him again is the message.
The riddle backstory is something about an ex and alimony and hiding assets and a new boyfriend and the new boyfriend’s brother in the po-po and some story about that bastard having everything tied up in crypto, so it turns out that the thing I *have* been hearing about bitcoin, that it is out of central control, just ain’t so, all it takes is someone with a badge and a gun who can sweat you on a fake drugs charge and literally take all your shit while you are waiting for your lawyer in a cell.
Mark to market on quite a wad of bitcoin is 0 cents.
I talked her long ago about archiving shit to the cloud and telling no fucker, I dunno if that is even possible with cryptocurrencies, if it is, last week was probably a good time to do it, and destroy any traces of anything that ever connected you in any way to crypto.
Not only did it not do this guy any good, it basically ended his life.
I’m reminded about the story about the guy with a merc with fingerprint starting, in times gone by a carjacker would have stolen the car and the keys, the merc guy lost his car and his finger.
Mark to market is last week, when you had a cool quarter of a mill in crypto, this week you’re broke and fucked and on the lamb, because you had crypto, or because someone thought you did.
Closing message from the writer is things are getting ugly, and I won’t be hearing from him again either, because he says po-po can see the writing on the wall and their non existent pensions and so on, so now little groups of po-po are running their own private pension plans, and it’s all over… apparently…
Be careful out there.