The Beginning - TradFi on HIVE

Hello to my fellow Hivians,

I just wanted to start off by giving people in crypto kudos. People in crypto are very talented at understanding liquidity and capital flows. It is really hard to get this experience when trading traditional investments because there is so much money there. I have learned A LOT by joining HIVE. Many people on HIVE are very educated in irregular ways which works to our advantage. Retail traders rarely influence liquidity in a noticeable way with traditional investments. What happened with Gamestop stock is one of those few exceptions. Most retail traders still got crushed in the Gamestop trade due to lack of education. A lot of retail traders got greedy and yoloed in at the top of Gametstop (more than once over a multiple year period) when there was no liquidity. Gamestop issued a lot of stock to add liquidity and "capture" this overvaluation by selling equity for cash. CEOs legally have to react this way when this happens. Every US based stock is legally required to do what is in long-term shareholder's best interest. These Gamestop events happened, more than once, at the expense of short-term traders but at the benefit of long-term GameStop shareholders. This also brought Gamestop's valuation back to "reality."

I want to first address the multiple elephants in the room:

1. People in "Crypto" that "Hate" Traditional Finance and Wall Street

I think this hatred is very common in crypto. It comes from a real place. Corrupt bankers and politicians have been destroying our societies and our communities indirectly for a long time now. I do not think they even realize the extent to which we care about our communities over money and what they have awoken in us; we are fighting them in our way and they are losing even if it doesn't seem like it right now. Wall Street "threw in the towel" and joined us when the Spot Bitcoin ETFs were created in the US. These ETFs will probably blow up in their face one day and it will create a lot of problems when they cannot control Bitcoin anymore. Right now they can control Bitcoin fairly easily and I am convinced they are doing it right now. The SEC in the US tried to stop the Spot Bitcoin ETFs from getting approved for this reason; it is well documented. I think people, like the people on Wall Street, thought they were all powerful and they could just turn crypto off. They did try to turn crypto off. Almost every major government has made some attempt to stop crypto. Some of these attempts were more forward like straight bans of using crypto. Some of these attempts were very tactical by creating confusion about what is legal and how to pay taxes. Tax law on crypto is, for the most part, still globally incoherent and most people know it. Some people literally do not invest in crypto because the taxes is too complicated or doing things in this space is not straight forward.

2. My current profile picture may seem provocative to people in crypto. It depicts a business man in the city. I am not a business man who lives in the city. I am a person who started trading stocks at a young age. My parents gave me $500 and a brokerage account for my 18th birthday. Neither of my parents invested in stocks in a serious way but I was interested in finance from a very young age. My parents giving me what I needed to invest in the stock market at a young age helped me a lot and I benefited from it to this day. I did not benefit because I made money early, but because I made my most expensive mistakes when I did not have "a lot" to lose. In the beginning I mostly invested in very high yield dividend stocks and most these firms went bankrupt and I lost most my investment. Losing most my investment when I did not have "a lot" to lose was a good lesson for my long-term success.

3. The desire to ignore Traditional Finance methods (in the crypto space) because of the people who use them (Wall Street)

Most modern finance is based on very old knowledge that pre dates modern society. For example, "Time Value of Money," one of the most important concepts in finance, dates back to 5000 BC. Pretty crazy I know. Discounted Cash Flow methods date back as early as 1772 which pre dates the United States. There is evidence that DCF concepts predate 1772 but a lot of that is hard to prove and it is really not worth proving to be honest. It is just a tool.

4. I have never started a community on HIVE before

I have very vague knowledge on what I am doing when building a community on HIVE. I am assuming I will make mistakes so I would appreciate feedback as we move along. If you become a member, I want YOUR feedback so we can improve the community for all of us, not just you.

If there are any other "elephants" you want addressed please let me know in the comments.

Community Mission Statement - A mutually beneficial Traditional Finance community that teaches Hivians how to become better investors with non crypto investments.

I am a part of this mission. I want people here to teach me. I have only learned since I joined this space. I am still learning to this day. I love it. People have always been teaching me in crypto and I appreciate the people who have done this and take the time to get to know me on the HIVE blockchain and share "their" ideas with me.

Community format:

We will have different types of content that is allowed based on a different criteria:

1. Sharing stock analysis (this excludes technical analysis or guessing prices). There needs to be logic for why you think something is worth discussing. "The price is cheap or high right now" is a perception that must be backed up by something other than price data)
2. Writing about the "approved" educational topics (a)
3. Low level economic discussions. I am leaning towards only supply and demand topics for economics right now. If there are more advanced economic discussion you would like to talk about, please ask in the comments.
4. Comment content creators are strongly encouraged to join (people who do not want to post but want to ask questions are strongly encouraged to join).
5. I will remove members without hesitation and we can talk before anyone gets added back. I do not want to cut anyone off but this is my community so I want serious people here who want to learn and share knowledge.

(a) The current approved educational topics will be covered below the not allowed section. I will edit this post and add more topics overtime.

Content that is not allowed:

1. No Technical Analysis
2. No day trading
3. No Crypto Investments (No HIVE talk, No L2 talk, No Bitcoin talk, etc) We have enough of this stuff on HIVE now so we do not need more.
4. No Crypto Treasury Companies (Some companies are a hybrid so please let me know in the comments if you are not sure about a certain company before posting)
5. AI text (This is getting hard to prove but I will watch for this and remove people who do this). I want to know what YOU think, not AI. I can ask AI what it thinks whenever I want.
6. Delisted stocks or "Penny stocks"

Approved Educational Topics:

Context - I will be doing my own analysis of firms and providing as much of my personal data and thought process as I can. I am not hiding anything but I will not make a bunch of google sheets we share with each other. Mainly because it is not necessary and putting links in spreadsheets and sharing it with people all over the world has a lot of risk. I only recommend sharing google sheets with people you "trust" and even then you should be careful.

As I value a firm, I will do it "slowly" and in a lot of posts so people can follow along and do their own valuations or analysis and share with the community.

This community will be like a book where I will start with less complicated topics and move into more abstract and more complex topics.

If you want to go the educational route here are the topics you can start with:
• Accounting basics using GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles)(b)
• Time Value of Money
• Discounted Cash Flow
• Present Value and Future Value
• Supply and demand

(b) I am not "good" with IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards). If someone here is, I am open to letting this content in, but we need to discuss it in the comments first please. This is a hard area for me because my feedback in the beginning would not be useful. GAAP is what is most used by "big" public companies. This is because all companies that want to get listed on US stock exchanges must also report with GAAP. Lots of international stocks out there but many countries exclude western investors from investing in their stocks or do not have the controls where US institution will let retail investors buy international stocks in some markets.

Examples for (b):
1. I cannot easily buy stocks from India unless they have established ADRs (American Depositary Receipts). India is very protective of its stock market from western investors which is probably smart.
2. The US will not let me easily invest in the Nigerian stock market because insider trading was basically legal in Nigeria until 2007. After Insider trading was made illegal in Nigeria no one got arrested in a serious way so western markets do not take the Nigerian stock market seriously and western markets do not want their residents investing in these companies.

I strongly recommend against buying anything when trying to learn about finance or economics or accounting. Most of finance is very old knowledge and most of it cannot even be copyrighted.

Investopedia is a really good resource and I use it all the time. AI is good at these topics usually but you need to be careful when AI is just giving you summaries from Reddit because the stuff on Reddit for finance is usually wrong or very biased.

Curation, Upvotes, Downvotes, Giveaways:

• I will make a curation account for this and fund it myself. I do not recommend delegating to it because the curation rewards will be my money and I will not pay an APR. Also, if you delegate to the curation account and then post in the community I will not upvote you with the curation account. I get enough heat for doing anti abuse on HIVE, I do not want people accusing us of vote trading.

• I will not curate my own posts with the curation account. If I do, it is most likely an accident and please call me out for this on chain so I can undo it.

• I will upvote posts and comments subjectively with my stake based on my personality. If you talk to me a lot you will likely get more appreciation from me in the form of upvotes. I am not a robot and I do like some people more than others. If I lie about my biases that doesn't help anyone here and it creates the illusion I am perfect. I am not perfect because I am human.

• This community will be members only so I will ask people to change their content based on our standards before I downvote anything. If I do not meet this standard please let me know and I will try to correct it in a way that is practical and reasonable.

• High KE. If someone has a high KE I will let them know that before they become a member. I downvote based on KE sometimes so if you have a "high" KE we will need to talk about what that means and if you are wanting to stay in the ecosystem for a long time (at least 5+ years).

• Giveaways - I will subjectively tip good posts (not comments) with HIVE not upvotes. These tips will be random and not consistent. If I am having a good day the number will likely be higher 😅

I tried to cover all the bases but I could have missed something. If you want to be a member of this community I am going to make a snap and ask who wants to join. You can go there to request access or leave a comment on a different post.

Side Note - I learned all this stuff because I want to know who I am trading against, "Wall Street." I did this so I can understand their moves and move with them or front run them rather than chasing their trades and getting crushed.

Have a wonderful weekend and I am looking forward to creating something awesome together!

Sincerely,

Hurt