I've taught college-level investments classes, and I think a lot of you people would benefit from some of what we talk about in there.
It's important for you to understand what exactly risk is, in the finance sense. Watch this video and think about how you would react in this scenario. The expected value (average value of all possible outcomes) of the case is $500,000.50. I have a feeling that if you sold that case on the market you'd find a market price below that; the difference between the expected value and the market price (assuming a fully liquid market) is the risk premium
A central concept of finance and investments is this: the more risk you take, the more return you get. The safest thing you can do is convert your holdings to cash and stick it in your wallet, but you would get zero return (and lose purchasing power due to inflation over time). Technically, sticking money in a savings account is riskier, though interest rates on savings deposits is essentially zero these days and deposit insurance removes most of that risk. Any market play that gets you massive returns is putting a bunch of capital at risk (think about that WSB guy who put $700,000 into GME options; imagine what happens to the guy if the price doesn’t move). The reason the most common investment advice is to fire everything into low-cost index funds is because it’s low risk and low cost (active management of mutual funds rarely justifies the extra cost, but that’s a different discussion entirely). If you’re undertaking extra risk, you theoretically should be getting extra return to justify that risk. Think about a lottery ticket. If the jackpot is high enough, the expected value (the averaged return you get from all possible outcomes) of a lottery ticket is higher than the price you pay for it. However, given the limited set of outcomes that a lottery ticket gives you and the likelihood of the worst case scenario (you lose your entire investment), the risk is too high for most people to seriously invest in (and if you do “seriously” invest in the Powerball, you’re probably not having a good time).
Another important consideration is liquidity. If you're selling a Stradivarius violin, you're going to have to spend a lot of time searching for a buyer who will pay full price OR you’ll have to sell it for less than it’s worth. In the market, this tends to be reflected in the bid/ask spread. We like to think about the market as a monolith, but in reality it’s just an aggregation of all the investors out there. That means liquidity isn’t a problem when it comes to most stocks on the NYSE and NASDAQ (eg. At the time of this writing the bid/ask spread on AAPL was $.01 for a price of $136.79), but when you head to OTC territory you might start seeing bid/ask spreads that can be up to 10% of the price for some of those real “no man’s land” stocks. That means that the price you pay (the ask price) and the price you can sell at (the bid price) can be wildly different. That also means that any “at current market price” order you send (especially in pre-market) may be filled at a price different than the price you think it’s going to be filled at.
A third concept to think about is market efficiency. The central idea of market efficiency is that the price reflects all available information (different forms of efficiency consider private/public/historical info). A truly efficient market will react instantaneously and accurately to any new information that is created/released, eg. A firm releases earnings and beats expectations, therefore the price jumps up.
If market efficiency is a product of investors discovering information and acting on it, that means your best opportunities are in places that are less visible to the aggregate investing public. That’s where pennystocks comes in. Do a search on most of the tickers listed here, and you’ll see a bunch of summary stock profiles and not much else. Do a search for any S&P 500 company and you’ll find an incredible amount of news, branding, and other information. If you’re looking for “good” penny stocks to buy up, you’re looking for an information advantage over the “average” investor. However, there is the hazard (that’s been around long before the internet) of bad or fake information.
Remember that the market is an aggregate of all the investors out there, and those investors are subject to psychological biases, differences in personal attitude, and individual risk tolerance. That’s why you see some interesting reactions to events: remember when TSLA stock dropped because Elon Musk was smoking marijuana? There’s nothing about the CEO smoking marijuana that should change the fundamental value of the company, but investors collectively seemed to think this was a negative for the long term prospects of TSLA.
A few common investor biases:
• Losses are treated as more impactful than a gain. Think about if you buy into a stock and it immediately drops $.10. Compare this to how you react if you buy in and it immediately jumps $.10; the average investor is going to react more strongly to the former.
• We all hate having made a “loser” trade. The effect is usually that investors hold on too long to a poorly performing stock in hopes that it will rebound.
• Investors tend to anchor their perception of a stock’s performance based on their entry price. A $.10 drop in price hits worse if it takes you below your purchase price
• Playing with “house money” (ie. your gains) is treated differently than your initial principal. In practice, this means that an investor that has done well recently is more risk-tolerant (and not always in a good way)
• Investors are susceptible to "herding" behavior, where they follow what someone else is doing not because they know what that someone else is doing is good, but because they think that someone else knows something they don't.
Stock prices are subject to the principles of supply and demand, ie. increased demand will raise the price, and people looking to sell more than buy will lower the price. This is especially important when it comes to momentum (the principle that an increasing stock price will continue to increase and a falling price will continue to fall). This is why you see overreactions to news items and a subsequent reversal; a news item creates a buying/selling frenzy that pushes the price until cooler heads walk in and say “maybe this price is wrong”. This is where swing traders try to profit: among other things, they look for stocks that have a drop that is unjustified in material info or in the degree of drop, buy up at “downward momentum” prices and sell after the reversal. Day traders also try to benefit by buying stocks with positive momentum and selling the second that momentum reverses.
So what does this mean for us at pennystocks? A few considerations that are unique for penny stocks:
1) I already mentioned it, but liquidity is a big consideration: Bid/ask spreads may be larger than normal and many brokers either don’t let you trade below $.01 or make you pay a fee to do so. This also means that options covering penny stocks are either sparse or nonexistent.
2) Information coverage: information can be hard to find, and sifting through good and bad info can be a chore
3) Low market participation: The smaller number of traders means that it takes fewer people to influence the price in a material way. This is what makes penny stocks susceptible to pump and dump schemes: A bad actor just needs to convince a (relatively) small number to buy in to a stock to bump up the price, then the dump can crater the price leaving a bunch of bag holders in their wake.
This also means that the price is subject to more psychological bias on the part of investors.
4) There are a lot of biotech firms in penny-stock land. The fortunes of these companies rest entirely on the outcomes of drug trials and/or acquisition by larger firms, which means you can see massive swings in price.
This scene from The Wolf of Wall Street should be required viewing for anyone wanting to jump headfirst into penny stocks. The modernization of trading means that commissions are drastically reduced, but the lessons here still apply. I’m not saying “don’t invest” because there are some mighty gains to be had if you do it right. I’m saying “be cautious” and certainly don’t trade on emotion. Understand that what we’re doing here is speculation, and that many stocks with penny prices are trading at penny prices for a reason. Increased volatility in the penny stocks market is going to make you feel a lot of things, but it’s important to compartmentalize this emotion and trade logically. The moment you start treating it, consciously or unconsciously, like a casino, you’ll get casino-like returns (spoiler alert, the house always wins in the end)
A few closing thoughts:
• Like another recently popular post here said, don’t be afraid to walk away for a few days to cool off.
• FOMO is the gains killer; there will always be a New Moon in terms of penny stocks.
• Pay attention to the sector you’re buying in and understand how that might influence the volatility of the stock’s price. Be especially wary of anyone trying to sell you on a “sure thing” biotech firm.
• MLFB to the moon! (Just kidding, don't rely on me to tell you what to buy) (EDIT: By Request 🚀🚀🚀)
And finally
• Do your own research! There are some legitimate DD threads on here, but you should do your own research and make sure they’re legit. Some threads here sound a lot like Jordan Belfort in the video above.
Further reading:
Wikipedia’s very long list of cognitive biases
Efficient markets hypothesis
Behavioral finance

Monero is one of those coins that doesn't really seem very important or useful but once you understand it a bit better you start to appreciate the fact that it exists.

What is Monero?

Bytecoin, now an ancient name in the crypto community, was forked by an anonymous Bitcointalk forum user thankful_for_today and BitMonero was born in 2014. The very community that backed this fork at first, threw sticks and stones at thankful_for_today so he disappeared from the stage. 5 days later the community took over, renamed the coin to Monero (Esperanto for "Coin), and made quite a sensation out of it. In 2016 Monero was the most transacted cryptocurrency out there, mostly thanks to the Darknet markets and the privacy features of Monero, but since the regulatory crackdown of those same markets in 2017 didn't kill Monero we can safely assume that it doesn't only relate to criminal activity. In fact, it has a lot more to offer.

Why is Monero?

There is a distinct difference between privacy and anonymity. If you want to keep your transactions private, you don't want others to know where your money is going. On the other hand, if you want to keep them anonymous, you don't care if they know where the money is going as long as they don't know who is spending it. Bitcoin already offers anonymity and it may seem impossible to figure out who is behind that random string of numbers and letters but it's actually a lot easier than you think.
If you use the same address for everyday payments long enough, by simply observing your spending habits all of us could know exactly where you live, what you like, how much you like it, and what you are willing to pay for it. So, if you had a gambling habit and I was a casino manager, I would probably send you some free money to try out our games but that is just the tip of the iceberg. What if someone has a personal grudge against you but is also a bit insane? At best, we will be annoyed by push notifications on our devices and at worst a lot of psychos will know where we live.
Monero solves this problem by creating decoy transactions almost all the time. It uses an obfuscated public ledger that allows anyone to broadcast or send transactions, but outside observers can't tell the source, amount, or destination. The inner workings of Ring Signatures and Bulletproofs are a bit complex but in simple terms, for every transaction you create Monero creates a dozen fake ones meaning that no one can tell the difference, thus your privacy is guaranteed. Reciever addresses are protected as well with a "stealth address" so both sides of the trade are covered.

How is Monero?

Monero is secured by the proof of work consensus meaning that the coin is mined. To be exact, 1.26 XMR per block with a block time of 2 minutes. Recently there have been some concerns raised about the privacy features of Monero.

In August 2020, renowned blockchain auditing and security firm CipherTrace announced that they had developed the world’s first Monero tracing tool in collaboration with the United States Department of Homeland Security.
The Monero dev team quickly responded to CipherTrace’s announcement, revealing that a new algorithm called ‘Triptych’ was in development, which promised to protect users against the reported detection methods.

It feels like there is a constant effort to shut down and delegitimize Monero by regulators. In December last year, the IRS offered a $625,000 bounty to anyone who can crack Monero’s privacy. This just goes to show how big of a deal Monero actually is and if you want a confirmation of that in practical terms, here is a simple example.
If you don't want others to know your transaction history with Bitcoin you can simply convert that BTC to Monero, convert it back to Bitcoin, and send that Bitcoin to a new address. Even if someone linked the previous address to you, they will have no clue where that Bitcoin went.
Monero is designed as a currency but it can also be used as a tool. Those that consider privacy to be a right can now use this tool to gain that right on their own terms. No one can say for sure if privacy coins will survive in the long run but for now, there seems to be a high demand for them.
So how is Monero? Very untraceable.
TLDR;

• Monero is a privacy coin that helps you buy drugs on the internet but also protects you from crazy people and Facebook.
  
• Some coins have optional privacy features but Monero's privacy is mandatory as it is built-in.
  

Edit: Formatting and typos.

NEW INFO 5 Results from share redemption are posted. Less than .2% redeemed. Very bullish as investors are showing extreme confidence in the future of PLBY.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/playboy-mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-120000721.html
NEW INFO 4 Definitive Agreement to purchase 100% of Lovers brand stores announced 2/1.
https://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Playboy+%28MCAC%29+Confirms+Deal+to+Acquire+Lovers/17892359.html
NEW INFO 3 I bought more on the dip today. 5081 total. Price rose AH to $12.38 (2.15%)
NEW INFO 2 Here is the full webinar.
https://icrinc.zoom.us/rec/play/9GWKdmOYumjWfZuufW3QXpe_FW_g--qeNbg6PnTjTMbnNTgLmCbWjeRFpQga1iPc-elpGap8dnDv8Zww.yD7DjUwuPmapeEdP?continueMode=true&tk=lEYc4F_FkKlgsmCIs6w0gtGHT2kbgVGbUju3cIRBSjk.DQIAAAAV8NK49xZWdldRM2xNSFNQcTBmcE00UzM3bXh3AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA&uuid=WN_GKWqbHkeSyuWetJmLFkj4g&_x_zm_rtaid=kR45-uuqRE-L65AxLjpbQw.1611967079119.2c054e3d3f8d8e63339273d9175939ed&_x_zm_rhtaid=866
NEW INFO 1 Live merger webinar with PLBY and MCAC on Friday January 29, 2021 at 12:00 NOON EST link below
https://mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/press-release-details/2021/Playboy-Enterprises-Inc.-and-Mountain-Crest-Acquisition-Corp-Participate-in-SPACInsider-ICR-Webinar-on-January-29th-at-12pm-ET/default.aspx
Playboy going public: Porn, Gambling, and Cannabis
!!!WARNING READING AHEAD!!! TL;DR at the end. It will take some time to sort through all the links and read/watch everything, but you should.
In the next couple weeks, Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp is taking Playboy public. The existing ticker MCAC will become PLBY. Special purpose acquisition companies have taken private companies public in recent months with great success. I believe this will be no exception. Notably, Playboy is profitable and has skyrocketing revenue going into a transformational growth phase.
Porn - First and foremost, let's talk about porn. I know what you guys are thinking. “Porno mags are dead. Why would I want to invest in something like that? I can get porn for free online.” Guess what? You are absolutely right. And that’s exactly why Playboy doesn’t do that anymore. That’s right, they eliminated their print division. And yet they somehow STILL make money from porn that people (see: boomers) pay for on their website through PlayboyTV, Playboy Plus, and iPlayboy. Here’s the thing: Playboy has international, multi-generational name recognition from porn. They have content available in 180 countries. It will be the only publicly traded adult entertainment (porn) company. But that is not where this company is going. It will help support them along the way. You can see every Playboy magazine through iPlayboy if you’re interested. NSFW links below:
https://www.playboy.com/
https://www.playboytv.com/
https://www.playboyplus.com/
https://www.iplayboy.com/
Gambling - Some of you might recognize the Playboy brand from gambling trips to places like Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Cancun, London or Macau. They’ve been in the gambling biz for decades through their casinos, clubs, and licensed gaming products. They see the writing on the wall. COVID is accelerating the transition to digital, application based GAMBLING. That’s right. What we are doing on Robinhood with risky options is gambling, and the only reason regulators might give a shit anymore is because we are making too much money. There may be some restrictions put in place, but gambling from your phone on your couch is not going anywhere. More and more states are allowing things like Draftkings, poker, state ‘lottery” apps, hell - even political betting. Michigan and Virginia just ok’d gambling apps. They won’t be the last. This is all from your couch and any 18 year old with a cracked iphone can access it. Wouldn’t it be cool if Playboy was going to do something like that? They’re already working on it. As per CEO Ben Kohn who we will get to later, “...the company’s casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth.” Honestly, I stopped researching Scientific Games' sports betting segment when I saw the word ‘omni-channel’. That told me all I needed to know about it’s success.
“Our SG Sports™ platform is an enhanced, omni-channel solution for online, self-service and retail fixed odds sports betting – from soccer to tennis, basketball, football, baseball, hockey, motor sports, racing and more.”
https://www.scientificgames.com/
https://www.microgaming.co.uk/
“This latter segment has become increasingly enticing for Playboy, and it said last week that it is considering new tie-ups that could include gaming operators like PointsBet and 888Holdings.”
https://calvinayre.com/2020/10/05/business/playboys-gaming-ops-could-get-a-boost-from-spac-purchase/
As per their SEC filing:
“Significant consumer engagement and spend with Playboy-branded gaming properties around the world, including with leading partners such as Microgaming, Scientific Games, and Caesar’s Entertainment, steers our investment in digital gaming, sports betting and other digital offerings to further support our commercial strategy to expand consumer spend with minimal marginal cost, and gain consumer data to inform go-to-market plans across categories.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tMDAA1
They are expanding into more areas of gaming/gambling, working with international players in the digital gaming/gambling arena, and a Playboy sportsbook is on the horizon.
https://www.playboy.com/read/the-pleasure-of-playing-with-yourself-mobile-gaming-in-the-covid-era
Cannabis - If you’ve ever read through a Playboy magazine, you know they’ve had a positive relationship with cannabis for many years. As of September 2020, Playboy has made a major shift into the cannabis space. Too good to be true you say? Check their website. Playboy currently sells a range of CBD products. This is a good sign. Federal hemp products, which these most likely are, can be mailed across state lines and most importantly for a company like Playboy, can operate through a traditional banking institution. CBD products are usually the first step towards the cannabis space for large companies. Playboy didn’t make these products themselves meaning they are working with a processor in the cannabis industry. Another good sign for future expansion. What else do they have for sale? Pipes, grinders, ashtrays, rolling trays, joint holders. Hmm. Ok. So it looks like they want to sell some shit. They probably don’t have an active interest in cannabis right? Think again:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/09/24/playboy-gets-serious-about-cannabis-law-reform-advocacy-with-new-partnership-grants/?sh=62f044a65cea
“Taking yet another step into the cannabis space, Playboy will be announcing later on Thursday (September, 2020) that it is launching a cannabis law reform and advocacy campaign in partnership with National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Last Prisoner Project, Marijuana Policy Project, the Veterans Cannabis Project, and the Eaze Momentum Program.”
“According to information procured exclusively, the three-pronged campaign will focus on calling for federal legalization. The program also includes the creation of a mentorship plan, through which the Playboy Foundation will support entrepreneurs from groups that are underrepresented in the industry.” Remember that CEO Kohn from earlier? He wrote this recently:
https://medium.com/naked-open-letters-from-playboy/congress-must-pass-the-more-act-c867c35239ae
Seems like he really wants weed to be legal? Hmm wonder why? The writing's on the wall my friends. Playboy wants into the cannabis industry, they are making steps towards this end, and we have favorable conditions for legislative progress.
Don’t think branding your own cannabis line is profitable or worthwhile? Tell me why these 41 celebrity millionaires and billionaires are dummies. I’ll wait.
https://www.celebstoner.com/news/celebstoner-news/2019/07/12/top-celebrity-cannabis-brands/
Confirmation: I hear you. “This all seems pretty speculative. It would be wildly profitable if they pull this shift off. But how do we really know?” Watch this whole video:
https://finance.yahoo.com/video/playboy-ceo-telling-story-female-154907068.html
Man - this interview just gets my juices flowing. And highlights one of my favorite reasons for this play. They have so many different business avenues from which a catalyst could appear. I think paying attention, holding shares, and options on these staggered announcements over the next year is the way I am going to go about it. "There's definitely been a shift to direct-to-consumer," he (Kohn) said. "About 50 percent of our revenue today is direct-to-consumer, and that will continue to grow going forward.” “Kohn touted Playboy's portfolio of both digital and consumer products, with casino-style gaming, in particular, serving a crucial role under the company's new business model. Playboy also has its sights on the emerging cannabis market, from CBD products to marijuana products geared toward sexual health and pleasure.” "If THC does become legal in the United States, we have developed certain strains to enhance your sex life that we will launch," Kohn said. https://cheddar.com/media/playboy-goes-public-health-gaming-lifestyle-focus Oh? The CEO actually said it? Ok then. “We have developed certain strains…” They’re already working with growers on strains and genetics? Ok. There are several legal cannabis markets for those products right now, international and stateside. I expect Playboy licensed hemp and THC pre-rolls by EOY. Something like this: https://www.etsy.com/listing/842996758/10-playboy-pre-roll-tubes-limited?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=pre+roll+playboy&ref=sr_gallery-1-2&organic_search_click=1 Maintaining cannabis operations can be costly and a regulatory headache. Playboy’s licensing strategy allows them to pick successful, established partners and sidestep traditional barriers to entry. You know what I like about these new markets? They’re expanding. Worldwide. And they are going to be a bigger deal than they already are with or without Playboy. Who thinks weed and gambling are going away? Too many people like that stuff. These are easy markets. And Playboy is early enough to carve out their spot in each. Fuck it, read this too: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimosman/2020/10/20/playboy-could-be-the-king-of-spacs-here-are-three-picks/?sh=2e13dcaa3e05
Numbers: You want numbers? I got numbers. As per the company’s most recent SEC filing:
“For the year ended December 31, 2019, and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s historical consolidated revenue was $78.1 million and $101.3 million, respectively, historical consolidated net income (loss) was $(23.6) million and $(4.8) million, respectively, and Adjusted EBITDA was $13.1 million and $21.8 million, respectively.”
“In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Licensing segment contributed $44.2 million in revenue and $31.1 million in net income.”
“In the ninth months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Direct-to-Consumer segment contributed $40.2 million in revenue and net income of $0.1 million.”
“In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Digital Subscriptions and Content segment contributed $15.4 million in revenue and net income of $7.4 million.”
They are profitable across all three of their current business segments.
“Playboy’s return to the public markets presents a transformed, streamlined and high-growth business. The Company has over $400 million in cash flows contracted through 2029, sexual wellness products available for sale online and in over 10,000 major retail stores in the US, and a growing variety of clothing and branded lifestyle and digital gaming products.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF
Growth: Playboy has massive growth in China and massive growth potential in India. “In China, where Playboy has spent more than 25 years building its business, our licensees have an enormous footprint of nearly 2,500 brick and mortar stores and 1,000 ecommerce stores selling high quality, Playboy-branded men’s casual wear, shoes/footwear, sleepwear, swimwear, formal suits, leather & non-leather goods, sweaters, active wear, and accessories. We have achieved significant growth in China licensing revenues over the past several years in partnership with strong licensees and high-quality manufacturers, and we are planning for increased growth through updates to our men’s fashion lines and expansion into adjacent categories in men’s skincare and grooming, sexual wellness, and women’s fashion, a category where recent launches have been well received.” The men’s market in China is about the same size as the entire population of the United States and European Union combined. Playboy is a leading brand in this market. They are expanding into the women’s market too. Did you know CBD toothpaste is huge in China? China loves CBD products and has hemp fields that dwarf those in the US. If Playboy expands their CBD line China it will be huge. Did you know the gambling money in Macau absolutely puts Las Vegas to shame? Technically, it's illegal on the mainland, but in reality, there is a lot of gambling going on in China. https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/10/19/magic-johnson-and-uncle-buds-cbd-brand-enter-china-via-tmall-partnership/?sh=271776ca411e “In India, Playboy today has a presence through select apparel licensees and hospitality establishments. Consumer research suggests significant growth opportunities in the territory with Playboy’s brand and categories of focus.” “Playboy Enterprises has announced the expansion of its global consumer products business into India as part of a partnership with Jay Jay Iconic Brands, a leading fashion and lifestyle Company in India.” “The Indian market today is dominated by consumers under the age of 35, who represent more than 65 percent of the country’s total population and are driving India’s significant online shopping growth. The Playboy brand’s core values of playfulness and exploration resonate strongly with the expressed desires of today’s younger millennial consumers. For us, Playboy was the perfect fit.” “The Playboy international portfolio has been flourishing for more than 25 years in several South Asian markets such as China and Japan. In particular, it has strategically targeted the millennial and gen-Z audiences across categories such as apparel, footwear, home textiles, eyewear and watches.” https://www.licenseglobal.com/industry-news/playboy-expands-global-footprint-india It looks like they gave COVID the heisman in terms of net damage sustained: “Although Playboy has not suffered any material adverse consequences to date from the COVID-19 pandemic, the business has been impacted both negatively and positively. The remote working and stay-at-home orders resulted in the closure of the London Playboy Club and retail stores of Playboy’s licensees, decreasing licensing revenues in the second quarter, as well as causing supply chain disruption and less efficient product development thereby slowing the launch of new products. However, these negative impacts were offset by an increase in Yandy’s direct-to-consumer sales, which have benefited in part from overall increases in online retail sales so far during the pandemic.” Looks like the positives are long term (Yandy acquisition) and the negatives are temporary (stay-at-home orders).
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921006093/tm213766-1_defa14a.htm
This speaks to their ability to maintain a financially solvent company throughout the transition phase to the aforementioned areas. They’d say some fancy shit like “expanded business model to encompass four key revenue streams: Sexual Wellness, Style & Apparel, Gaming & Lifestyle, and Beauty & Grooming.” I hear “we’re just biding our time with these trinkets until those dollar dollar bill y’all markets are fully up and running.” But the truth is these existing revenue streams are profitable, scalable, and rapidly expanding Playboy’s e-commerce segment around the world.
"Even in the face of COVID this year, we've been able to grow EBITDA over 100 percent and revenue over 68 percent, and I expect that to accelerate going into 2021," he said. “Playboy is accelerating its growth in company-owned and branded consumer products in attractive and expanding markets in which it has a proven history of brand affinity and consumer spend.”
Also in the SEC filing, the Time Frame:
“As we detailed in the definitive proxy statement, the SPAC stockholder meeting to vote on the transaction has been set for February 9th, and, subject to stockholder approval and satisfaction of the other closing conditions, we expect to complete the merger and begin trading on NASDAQ under ticker PLBY shortly thereafter,” concluded Kohn.
The Players: Suhail “The Whale” Rizvi (HMFIC), Ben “The Bridge” Kohn (CEO), “lil” Suying Liu & “Big” Dong Liu (Young-gun China gang). I encourage you to look these folks up. The real OG here is Suhail Rizvi. He’s from India originally and Chairman of the Board for the new PLBY company. He was an early investor in Twitter, Square, Facebook and others. His firm, Rizvi Traverse, currently invests in Instacart, Pinterest, Snapchat, Playboy, and SpaceX. Maybe you’ve heard of them. “Rizvi, who owns a sprawling three-home compound in Greenwich, Connecticut, and a 1.65-acre estate in Palm Beach, Florida, near Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, moved to Iowa Falls when he was five. His father was a professor of psychology at Iowa. Along with his older brother Ashraf, a hedge fund manager, Rizvi graduated from Wharton business school.” “Suhail Rizvi: the 47-year-old 'unsocial' social media baron: When Twitter goes public in the coming weeks (2013), one of the biggest winners will be a 47-year-old financier who guards his secrecy so zealously that he employs a person to take down his Wikipedia entry and scrub his photos from the internet. In IPO, Twitter seeks to be 'anti-FB'” “Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia looks like a big Twitter winner. So do the moneyed clients of Jamie Dimon. But as you’ve-got-to-be-joking wealth washed over Twitter on Thursday — a company that didn’t exist eight years ago was worth $31.7 billion after its first day on the stock market — the non-boldface name of the moment is Suhail R. Rizvi. Mr. Rizvi, 47, runs a private investment company that is the largest outside investor in Twitter with a 15.6 percent stake worth $3.8 billion at the end of trading on Thursday (November, 2013). Using a web of connections in the tech industry and in finance, as well as a hearty dose of good timing, he brought many prominent names in at the ground floor, including the Saudi prince and some of JPMorgan’s wealthiest clients.” https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/technology/at-twitter-working-behind-the-scenes-toward-a-billion-dollar-payday.html Y’all like that Arab money? How about a dude that can call up Saudi Princes and convince them to spend? Funniest shit about I read about him: “Rizvi was able to buy only $100 million in Facebook shortly before its IPO, thus limiting his returns, according to people with knowledge of the matter.” Poor guy :(
He should be fine with the 16 million PLBY shares he's going to have though :)
Shuhail also has experience in the entertainment industry. He’s invested in companies like SESAC, ICM, and Summit Entertainment. He’s got Hollywood connections to blast this stuff post-merger. And he’s at least partially responsible for that whole Twilight thing. I’m team Edward btw.
I really like what Suhail has done so far. He’s lurked in the shadows while Kohn is consolidating the company, trimming the fat, making Playboy profitable, and aiming the ship at modern growing markets.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-ipo-rizvi-insight/insight-little-known-hollywood-investor-poised-to-score-with-twitter-ipo-idUSBRE9920VW20131003
Ben “The Bridge” Kohn is an interesting guy. He’s the connection between Rizvi Traverse and Playboy. He’s both CEO of Playboy and was previously Managing Partner at Rizvi Traverse. Ben seems to be the voice of the Playboy-Rizvi partnership, which makes sense with Suhail’s privacy concerns. Kohn said this:
“Today is a very big day for all of us at Playboy and for all our partners globally. I stepped into the CEO role at Playboy in 2017 because I saw the biggest opportunity of my career. Playboy is a brand and platform that could not be replicated today. It has massive global reach, with more than $3B of global consumer spend and products sold in over 180 countries. Our mission – to create a culture where all people can pursue pleasure – is rooted in our 67-year history and creates a clear focus for our business and role we play in people’s lives, providing them with the products, services and experiences that create a lifestyle of pleasure. We are taking this step into the public markets because the committed capital will enable us to accelerate our product development and go-to-market strategies and to more rapidly build our direct to consumer capabilities,” said Ben Kohn, CEO of Playboy.
“Playboy today is a highly profitable commerce business with a total addressable market projected in the trillions of dollars,” Mr. Kohn continued, “We are actively selling into the Sexual Wellness consumer category, projected to be approximately $400 billion in size by 2024, where our recently launched intimacy products have rolled out to more than 10,000 stores at major US retailers in the United States. Combined with our owned & operated ecommerce Sexual Wellness initiatives, the category will contribute more than 40% of our revenue this year. In our Apparel and Beauty categories, our collaborations with high-end fashion brands including Missguided and PacSun are projected to achieve over $50M in retail sales across the US and UK this year, our leading men’s apparel lines in China expanded to nearly 2500 brick and mortar stores and almost 1000 digital stores, and our new men’s and women’s fragrance line recently launched in Europe. In Gaming, our casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth. Our product strategy is informed by years of consumer data as we actively expand from a purely licensing model into owning and operating key high-growth product lines focused on driving profitability and consumer lifetime value. We are thrilled about the future of Playboy. Our foundation has been set to drive further growth and margin, and with the committed capital from this transaction and our more than $180M in NOLs, we will take advantage of the opportunity in front of us, building to our goal of $100M of adjusted EBITDA in 2025.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company
Also, according to their Form 4s, “Big” Dong Liu and “lil” Suying Liu just loaded up with shares last week. These guys are brothers and seem like the Chinese market connection. They are only 32 & 35 years old. I don’t even know what that means, but it's provocative.
https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1832415.htm
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-ii-002600994.html
Y’all like that China money?
“Mr. Liu has been the Chief Financial Officer of Dongguan Zhishang Photoelectric Technology Co., Ltd., a regional designer, manufacturer and distributor of LED lights serving commercial customers throughout Southern China since November 2016, at which time he led a syndicate of investments into the firm. Mr. Liu has since overseen the financials of Dongguan Zhishang as well as provided strategic guidance to its board of directors, advising on operational efficiency and cash flow performance. From March 2010 to October 2016, Mr. Liu was the Head of Finance at Feidiao Electrical Group Co., Ltd., a leading Chinese manufacturer of electrical outlets headquartered in Shanghai and with businesses in the greater China region as well as Europe.”
Dr. Suying Liu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp., commented, “Playboy is a unique and compelling investment opportunity, with one of the world’s largest and most recognized brands, its proven consumer affinity and spend, and its enormous future growth potential in its four product segments and new and existing geographic regions. I am thrilled to be partnering with Ben and his exceptional team to bring his vision to fruition.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company
These guys are good. They have a proven track record of success across multiple industries. Connections and money run deep with all of these guys. I don’t think they’re in the game to lose.
I was going to write a couple more paragraphs about why you should have a look at this but really the best thing you can do is read this SEC filing from a couple days ago. It explains the situation in far better detail. Specifically, look to page 137 and read through their strategy. Also, look at their ownership percentages and compensation plans including the stock options and their prices. The financials look great, revenue is up 90% Q3, and it looks like a bright future.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF
I’m hesitant to attach this because his position seems short term, but I’m going to with a warning because he does hit on some good points (two are below his link) and he’s got a sizable position in this thing (500k+ on margin, I think). I don’t know this guy but he did look at the same publicly available info and make roughly the same prediction, albeit without the in depth gambling or cannabis mention. You can also search reddit for ‘MCAC’ and very few relevant results come up and none of them even come close to really looking at this thing.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gOvAd6lebs452hFlWWbxVjQ3VMsjGBkbJeXRwDwIJfM/edit?usp=sharing
“Also, before you people start making claims that Playboy is a “boomer” company, STOP RIGHT THERE. This is not a good argument. Simply put. The only thing that matters is Playboy’s name recognition, not their archaic business model which doesn’t even exist anymore as they have completely repurposed their business.”
“Imagine not buying $MCAC at a 400M valuation lol. Streetwear department is worth 1B alone imo.”
Considering the ridiculous Chinese growth as a lifestyle brand, he’s not wrong.
Current Cultural Significance and Meme Value: A year ago I wouldn’t have included this section but the events from the last several weeks (even going back to tsla) have proven that a company’s ability to meme and/or gain social network popularity can have an effect. Tik-tok, Snapchat, Twitch, Reddit, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter. They all have Playboy stuff on them. Kids in middle and highschool know what Playboy is but will likely never see or touch one of the magazines in person. They’ll have a Playboy hoodie though. Crazy huh? A lot like GME, PLBY would hugely benefit from meme-value stock interest to drive engagement towards their new business model while also building strategic coffers. This interest may not directly and/or significantly move the stock price but can generate significant interest from larger players who will.
Bull Case: The year is 2025. Playboy is now the world leader pleasure brand. They began by offering Playboy licensed gaming products, including gambling products, direct to consumers through existing names. By 2022, demand has skyrocketed and Playboy has designed and released their own gambling platforms. In 2025, they are also a leading cannabis brand in the United States and Canada with proprietary strains and products geared towards sexual wellness. Cannabis was legalized in the US in 2023 when President Biden got glaucoma but had success with cannabis treatment. He personally pushes for cannabis legalization as he steps out of office after his first term. Playboy has also grown their brand in China and India to multi-billion per year markets. The stock goes up from 11ish to 100ish and everyone makes big gains buying somewhere along the way.
Bear Case: The United States does a complete 180 on marijuana and gambling. President Biden overdoses on marijuana in the Lincoln bedroom when his FDs go tits up and he loses a ton of money in his sports book app after the Fighting Blue Hens narrowly lose the National Championship to Bama. Playboy is unable to expand their cannabis and gambling brands but still does well with their worldwide lifestyle brand. They gain and lose some interest in China and India but the markets are too large to ignore them completely. The stock goes up from 11ish to 13ish and everyone makes 15-20% gains.
TL;DR: Successful technology/e-commerce investment firm took over Playboy to turn it into a porn, online gambling/gaming, sports book, cannabis company, worldwide lifestyle brand that promotes sexual wellness, vetern access, women-ownership, minority-ownership, and “pleasure for all”. Does a successful online team reinventing an antiquated physical copy giant sound familiar? No options yet, shares only for now. $11.38 per share at time of writing. My guess? $20 by the end of February. $50 by EOY. This is not financial advice. I am not qualified to give financial advice. I’m just sayin’ I would personally use a Playboy sports book app while smoking a Playboy strain specific joint and it would be cool if they did that. Do your own research. You’d probably want to start here:
WARNING - POTENTIALLY NSFW - SEXY MODELS AHEAD - no actual nudity though
https://s26.q4cdn.com/895475556/files/doc_presentations/Playboy-Craig-Hallum-Conference-Investor-Presentation-11_17_20-compressed.pdf
Or here:
https://www.mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/default.aspx
Jimmy Chill: “Get into any SPAC at $10 or $11 and you are going to make money.”
STL;DR: Buy MCAC. MCAC > PLBY couple weeks. Rocketship. Moon.
Position: 5000 shares. I will buy short, medium, and long-dated calls once available.

RoyalRoad
First
Next
Jen and Sarah spent the next week doing research. The Internet was filled with contradictory information about monetary theory and economics, and neither of them really had the background to evaluate the arguments that everyone was having.
However, Sarah reminded them both, they didn't need to look at a perfect system, just one that worked. So, they started digging through Wikipedia articles and online textbooks on the history of money and how they came to be.
"Hey, did you know they used to use salt as currency?" Sarah asked as she skimmed through a particularly fascinating documentary about Middle Age East African economies.
"Is this some kind of joke about mining salt?"
"No, it's real, look. And apparently the word salary is from the Latin word salarium for money used to buy salt," Sarah continued fascinated.
Of course, they couldn't use something as simple as salt to represent money. In fact, they couldn't use any commodity either.
Over the last week, one of the alien traders caught wind that gold was extremely valuable on Earth, so they'd brought them in by the ton load. Gold was still useful for electronics and some dentistry, but the price of gold, mostly propped up by its value in rarity, crashed hard.
The problem with currency in galactic trading, as Sarah discovered, was that there wasn't a single commodity that was equally rare in every system.
No, whatever alternative they come up to the laughably outdated barter system had to be built on something far more rare and valuable than gold.
Something that even the most powerful human empires in history have struggled to collect.
It had to be built on trust.
"That's the system most modern currencies are based on," Sarah claimed, "you only accept dollars for work because you trust that you're going to be able to wake up tomorrow and spend it on… everything you need."
"Hmm well, we can't just ask them to take US dollars," Jen giggled. This would be so much easier if that weren't true.
"Why not?" Sarah asked, playing the devil's advocate.
"Well… well, like you said, they won't trust it! I certainly wouldn't if I were a trader! Furthermore, who knows? Maybe they have a printer in their ship that can duplicate money! Maybe we should ask them for that next time we bring Zarko some pears," Jen said, thinking out loud.
"I doubt it. The government keeps a lot of secrets about how they make Dollars , and I don't want the Secret Service knocking on my door," Sarah said. Until this week, she hadn't known that this was one of the lesser known duties of the USSS. Now that she knew it, it made the thought of attracting their attention even less palatable, "you're right. What about digital casino tokens? We can produce something that translates to Dollars and have our own system that tracks it all."
"Sure, that's not too hard to make. We would have a centralized money supply, where we don't trust each end point…" Jen continued on the brainstorm, thinking in terms of the technical system, "ok, so say we make SarahBucks, and peg its value to the US Dollar. One pound of pears would be worth 1.5 SarahBucks, one pound of sirloin steak is 6.99 SarahBucks at Safeway. That still doesn't explain how we'll get people to use it."
"I'm not sure. I need to think about this more," Sarah yawned, tired. "And I hate that name."
They agreed that they were stuck, and that SarahBucks was absolutely a terrible name.
Livermore Spaceport, Earth
A month after the spaceport opening, Sarah noticed that it had become less of a tourist attraction. There were far fewer people standing around gawking at the aliens, and a lot more companies trucking their best-selling products into the spaceport for trade.
After their abuse of Jen's cousin's employee pass got discovered by the spaceport authorities, Sarah and Jen had started placing their own bids on getting into the spaceport through the official channels. Thanks to their existing connections with the managers at the spaceport and a growing bank account of value, they could still get in to continue their lucrative trade for magical alien goods.
A bit of a rich-get-richer type of situation.
The flavor of the month were these Bohor magical air filter machines that aggressively scrubbed the air of… anything you want them to.
The Bohor planet is basically the planetary equivalent of a toxic dump.
Sure, it had biomes; it wasn't a Star Wars sci-fi planet where the entire planet is either a desert or an ice-cold tundra or a forest. But the entire planet had been polluted so heavily by its occupants that it lowered the life expectancy by half before the Bohors found a solution:
They simply filtered their entire atmosphere through air filter machines and then buried the toxins and garbage they got out of it in a very deep landfill, somewhere where very few people lived. Pretty much the kind of solution you'd expect out of a species that created the original problem in the first place.
Zikzik, the alien that was the same species as Zarko, overheard a human asking about their rocket fuel and climate change, and brought in a cargo hold of them.
It was a massive hit.
Earth's climate change problem wasn't nearly as bad as Bohor, but it was relatively simple to program these machines to suck carbon out of its atmosphere and… bury them in a landfill.
At first, few of the human traders bought them, thinking that it was going to be at least a while before the problem became big enough that big governments were going to come to them to try to address the issue, but they had it all wrong.
Soon as word got out this was an option, big companies and philanthropists started lining up at their doors. As it turned out, literally sucking the carbon dioxide out of the air was easier and cheaper than modifying many of their industrial practices to actually be environmentally green. They didn't need to run more efficient factories to claim to be carbon-neutral; just pump as much carbon into the air in exchange for undoing that by sucking it out of the atmosphere after!
Some bean counters at a think tank in DC predicted that a few more shipments of these air filters will fix Earth's climate problems by themselves in about a decade, so every trader had a waiting list of corporations with PR problems willing to buy them.
Sarah and Jen had a couple vehicle manufacturing companies on their list who were trying to get Bohor air filters to use in lobbying for looser emission standards for their dirty gasoline cars.
Today, there were traders on all the landing pads, and they were all carrying air filters. Zarko's ship was there, and he was loading fruits into his spaceship with an alien looking forklift. Sarah and Jen approached his ship and noticed the truck driver standing there.
"Hey Benny, tempting the poor aliens with cherries this time?" Sarah waved good, grinning and looking at his cargo.
Technically, Benny is a competitor, or at least he drives for a competitor. The massive fruit conglomeration he worked for, Chuckita, had not neglected to notice the massive business opportunity sitting right here as many others have, and are now delivering straight to the aliens in exchange for massive profit margins.
But Benny was a good guy. One time Jen and Sarah were having some trouble finding a buyer for a bunch of legally dubious alien psychedelics. Benny was in his late 50s, not that great with the Internet either, so he'd introduced them to whom he referred to as "my money launderer". Aka, his 22-year-old son, Benny Jr, who had a habit of buying weed and other less than legal items off the deep web. Benny Jr had found a buyer for them within minutes and even generously offered to handle the deal for them to spare them the risk of meeting some psycho hopped up on an alien high in a dark alley somewhere.
"Heh! One of the bat aliens loves sweets but has a low tolerance for sour, so they treat cherries as some kind of an odd challenge fad. They eat a random cherry, and it's either so incredibly sweet they start drooling out of the mouths, or it's a sour one, and they freak out," Benny replied, in a low voice as if he were trying to keep it a big secret. "Zarko showed me a video, and it's the most hilarious thing I've ever seen".
"I think I've seen that one, have you seen the one where they drink wine?" Sarah chuckled at the memory. Alien videos have been a big hit on YouTube. Some human merchants were trading fruit for aliens to take videos of the galaxy. Which they monetized, of course.
"No," Benny's ears perked up. Chuckita doesn't make wine, but if selling wine to aliens was going to be a thing, they were a big supplier of grapes… "Is it gonna be a thing?"
"Well guess what we brought today?" Jen also grinning from ear to ear, and holding up a big carton of low-quality box wine.
"Awww seems like I'm always one step behind you guys," Benny moaned in exaggeration, "I tried to get my money launderer to tell me what aliens would want but all he does is play video games on the Internet, kids these days."
Luckily, Zarko chose this moment to step out to spare them from more good-humored ribbing from the boomer. "Ah Sarah and Jen, you brought the grape wine this time!"
"Yup," Sarah beamed, "and I see you've run out of air filters to trade again!"
"Sadly yes," Zarko tilted his head in shame, "my ship is overdue for a cargo space upgrade, but I haven't found a port that would do it for fruit yet. Next time?"
"Alright! Alright! We'll leave our special wine with you, but you better get us some extra good filters next time!" Jen scolded mockingly. Zarko has gotten a lot more comfortable doling out IOUs since the first time.
"Of course. Only the best for you two," Zarko said with a greasy human smile imitation that almost made Sarah laugh out loud. It reminded her of a ridiculous cartoon sloth.
"By the way," Sarah asked casually, "how much is a spaceship worth on your planet?"
Zarko sobered up his expression and looked at her curiously. It was a question that other humans had asked before. To him, it was a good sign. This meant that they all dreamt of the stars. But he didn't expect such a question from someone as seemingly practical as Sarah. She had a lot of fruit, sure, but fruit doesn't build spaceships.
After thinking for a while, he replied honestly, "ships aren't traded for one single item. My family traded for the parts to build mine for generations."
He pointed at his spaceship.
Zarko proudly explained, "this is the work of eighteen generations of trading. My family was one of the richest on Zeep-zep. For thirteen generations, they traded for each of the parts on this beauty. Then, for the last five, my ancestors traded excess food from the tenant farmers on their land to expert craftsbeings that could put it together."
"Wait, eighteen generations?" Jen gasped. Eighteen generations ago, her family were probably peasants on a farm in Korea or something…
"Yes," Zarko said, looking at them with a little of pity. "After getting the spaceship, my family has traded in it for twelve generations, through civil wars and disasters."
He did some math on his hands, and said, "that's about four hundred of your years. That's why it's very unlikely that you will never go to space."
Looking at the stunned expression on their faces, he tried to lighten the mood. Zarko said mischievously, "unless you're willing to part with some more of your fruit, in which case I'll let you sit in the back seat for a whole route!"
"Hold on, back up, I'm still stuck on the multiple generations part," Sarah said seriously. "You're saying you're flying on a spaceship that started to be built thirty generations ago? That's… about a millennia for us."
"Yes," Zarko answered, "and that's why only thirteen families on my planet have had the privilege of owning one in our long history. No offense, but that's why I think no human will ever own their own spacecraft for at least fifteen more generations."
Something is wrong here, Sarah thought. The budget for NASA's FTL spacecraft was in the hundreds of millions. Yes, for a fruit farmer, that would be many generations of work if all their descendants worked in the same industry. But there were over three thousand billionaires on Earth, not including the tens of thousands of corporations that had assets or market value over a billion. And the prices for the spacecraft would surely go down as time went on…
For a planet like Zarko's to only have thirteen spaceships over generations of their development…
As they were walking away, Benny asked, "have you guys noticed something weird about the way these aliens do business?"
"Yes." "God yes." They said in unison.
"We've been thinking about it for a while, but these guys not having money is a major problemo," Sarah said, looking around surreptitiously, "Zarko and Zikzik keep talking about not being able to find someone who can upgrade their hulls for fruit. And sometimes they come with nothing good, and we're supposed to just drive our fruits all the way back!"
"And if you think about it, if they were human ships, think about truckers who don't own their trucks. We'd have loans or something to deal with the cargo space problems, and they'd be paid for by profits in a few trips," Jen added.
"The numbers he gave us for spacecraft ownership seem insane," Sarah agreed. "Your company could probably afford to order one right now, not to mention hundreds of others. They must all be dirt poor!"
Benny seemed relieved that he wasn't the only one who was thinking this, "exactly! I'm thinking we just introduce them to the concept of Benjamins and solve all their problems and ours. Would certainly make the return trip a lot easier for me if I didn't have to drive all the way to Berkeley for junior to launder all this crap!"
"We thought of that too," Sarah said as Benny pretended to groan again, "but we couldn't figure out how to get them to take money with no intrinsic value."
"Oh that shouldn't be too hard," Benny said, who's clearly already thought through this problem in his head, "we play a little game called good cop, bad cop."
"Good cop bad cop?"
"Sure, it's a mind game the cops play, where they put you in a room-"
"Yeah we know what it is, but how does that help us?" Sarah said impatiently, an idea tugging on her subconscious.
"Well you see," Benny clearly smugly enjoying this moment where he's thought of something that the duo did not, "you two come with an empty truck next time, and you tell Zarko that you'll give him a wad of clean crisp cash, fresh from the bank, for some of his air filters. And when he asks you why he'd take the cash, you just tell him that he can give it to me in exchange for some of my fruits."
"What does that have anything to do with good cop bad cop?!" Jen asked.
"That has nothing to do with good cop bad cop," Sarah chimed in, but the idea was beginning to form in her head, "but it's a good start. We don't want to deal in cash. It's too risky. It could get the feds onto us and there's a bunch of laws around it that I'm not sure about."
"But what we can do is have an internal money system for traders pegged to the US Dollar!" Jen completed.
"Yup, so when Zarko comes back next time, we tell him he has an account with the Bank of Benny, we give him a fancy looking card that has his bank account number and give him a pin code, and we deposit a certain amount of BennyBucks into his account for giving us air filters. Then when you come around, Zarko gives you his card and pin, and gives you BennyBucks for your fruit," Sarah finished.
"Aha. And then I come to you two, say, I would like to convert BennyBucks in my Bank of Benny account to good old American dollars," Benny extrapolated, completing that final step.
"Yeah! We'll just wire you the money and everyone gets theirs," Sarah exclaimed, happy they've finally thought through the loop and gotten someone on board.
"BennyBucks is a terrible name though," Jen said, calming everyone down a little, "and why are we getting so excited over the basic concept of currency? And why haven't aliens figured this out? Maybe it's against some kind of space trading code."
"Who knows? Maybe we just try it on Zarko and see if it works out," Benny said, a glint in his eyes, "and then we expand, galaxy-tically."
"Galactic credits!" Sarah exclaimed, "that's what we'll call it."
They agreed that it was the least worst name that they'd come up with so far. It was boring, but when it came to finances, maybe boring and cliché was a good choice after all.
"Explain again. I am trying to understand," Zarko said two days later as he offloads the air filters he'd promised.
"C'mon dude, for the fifth time," Sarah exasperated, "it's not that hard. We give you a bank account card and have you set up a secret number…"
Jen had spent the last two days coding up a storm. Technically, a simple debit system wasn't that hard, but she had to make a website interface that Benny could go up to and enter his account, Zarko's card information and amount, then let Zarko type in his code…etc. She'd mused that it would have been easier to just do this all in a cloud-based spreadsheet, but that wouldn't scale up if they had more customers.
Sarah had the account cards laminated and designed a logo: the letters GC, for Galactic Credit, and a stylized version of a Milky Way in the background. Part of the value in a trustworthy system is to look official, and you can't get much more official than laminated cards.
"Yes, I understand that part," Zarko said, clearly displaying his frustration on his facial expression as well, "but I don't understand why Benny would give me his fruit for just entering a number."
"Because we have an agreement with him that he'll take it in exchange for fruit!" Sarah was sure this was the umpteenth time she had to explain this, but clearly Zarko was not getting it.
"Is it similar to a debt?" Zarko said suspiciously, as if debt was this dark magic that the humans were performing on him, "I have never heard of this kind of debt before."
"Yes, it's a debt, of sorts," Jen cut in. The last time he had asked this exact question, they'd said no, and that led to fifty other questions and explanations that went nowhere, so nothing could go worse if they said yes-
"Ok. I don't understand," Zarko did his sloth version of a sigh, it was cute, but at the same time frustrating for Sarah and Jen, "But I can try it. I know you two are not trying to trick me. Do I get my fruits before I take off?"
"Yes! You go to Benny-" Sarah started.
"Yes! And that's it. Benny gives you his fruit," Jen cut her off, knowing that this was about to launch into yet another long, long line of questions they just can't deal with right now.
Sarah set up a new account for Zarko, asked him for a 6 digit base ten pin code (thank god Zarko was a ten digit species) which he promptly memorized, and hoping that Jen's prototype website wouldn't fail, showed him how they were "giving" Zarko 40,000 Galactic Credits for 8 Bohor air filter machines into his account ("No, you can't have my iPad. It's on your account card now. Show this to Benny later.")
"Well that worked out great," Benny said as he watched them wire him the $25,000 for his truck shipment of fruit. Though his costs were in the low thousands, he could have easily fleeced Zarko for his full 40k. But they all agreed that wasn't the point, which was to get Zarko to see the benefits of using a currency system abstracted from goods and services.
"Dude, you weren't there," Sarah complained, "I don't understand why he had such a hard time understanding money. Money equals goods. Bing bang boom. It's like these guys don't have the capability for abstract thinking."
"No they definitely do. You can't build spaceships without abstract math and science," Jen said, "but he clearly had a deathly aversion to using money. I think it's tied to some taboo to debt somehow. All the other species must have it because none of the aliens we've met have even mentioned anything close to a real economy."
"Whatever it is," Benny sighed happily, "I'm just happy I didn't have to go home with my truck full of weird alien toys."
"Yup. The next step is to get all the human traders to take credits. At least they'll have no problems understanding the benefits."
Sarah made some calls to the trader licensing office at the spaceport. There she found a manager willing to part with phone numbers and contact information for the other human traders, for an "information fee" of course, and started making calls to the other human traders.
It wasn't easy. Some traders were representatives of bigger food companies, and didn't have all the flexibility to make these kinds of decisions. And others no doubt were thinking of copying their system for their own profit. But they all saw the benefits of a unified network of currency debiting because they've been suffering the same problems that Sarah, Jen, and Benny had been.
Over the next few days, all the human traders agreed to take galactic credit from the aliens, which they knew they could exchange for cash with Sarah and Jen.
"We are officially in business."
In economics, there's a distinction made between different kinds of money. There's commodity money, usually gold or silver. There's representative money, which is currency backed by commodities like gold or silver. And then there's fiat money, which is not backed by any intrinsic value, but rather by government decree, hence fiat.
Galactic Credits fall into some kind of weird hybrid category between representative and fiat money. They're backed by the Dollar, which is fiat money, but also which makes them representative money. This means that the people issuing them, in this case Jen and Sarah, are not supposed to create them without also having a corresponding US Dollar in their bank account.
Of course, Sarah and Jen hadn't signed an ironclad contract with the other human traders that they're always guaranteed to take their galactic credits and exchange for money, so technically that meant that one day Sarah could simply "deposit" a large number of credits in her account and buy all the goods she wanted from Zarko, or potentially the other traders.
That would, however, be slaughtering the golden goose for the meat.
After all, they didn't want to sell fruit or Bohor air filters.
They wanted to sell the concept of money.
"Why would I take this over fruit?" Zikzik sniffed. He was known as a sharp one by all the human traders. If there's any new alien fad coming down the pipeline, chances are Zikzik is the first one to touchdown with a cargo hold full of it.
Unlike many of the other traders, he was fairly consistent in his dealings. This much fruit is for this much air filters. He knows his price, and he lets you know it too. Everyone suspected he kept careful records of all his selling and buying somewhere in his ship, but he's never brought them out. Maybe he just had a sharp memory.
"It's very consistent," Sarah insisted, trying to appeal to his affinity for a stable and predictable exchange, "one pound of fruit today is the same as one pound of fruit tomorrow, and you can deal in fractions."
Completely ignoring that most fruits are seasonal, and price changes, and inflation, she thought, let's start here.
"Fractions, you say?" Zikzik seemed thoughtful, or maybe he's just scratching an itch on his snout, Sarah could never tell with these aliens.
"Yes, fractions," said Jen detecting the slightest bit of opening, "you can trade your air filters for credit. Then you can trade maybe three quarters of your credits to fill your cargo with fruit. The next time you come down here to Earth, you would only need to bring half the amount of air filters as the first trip, combined with the credits you have left, you can leave with a full cargo load anyway!"
Is that how that math goes, Sarah thought, but didn't cut in, as Zikzik seems to be nodding, an oddly universal gesture for affirmation.
"Five eighths of the credits," Zikzik argued, "The air filters are harder to get now because the Bohor are running low, and they need time to make more."
Bargaining! There we go! That's what we're talking about! Sarah almost pumped her fists in the air and gave him a high five, not a great idea given how sharp his claws are as she found out when trying to shake his hands a couple of weeks ago.
"Ok, you would still have to negotiate that amount with each human trader," Sarah replied adding, "but they all deal in Galactic Credits."
They signed him up for an account, gave him a card, and set up his pin code. It had only taken half an hour to get Zikzik on board, which was significantly faster than the hours they'd taken to explain this to Zarko, despite them being the same species. Was it xenocist that she'd assume it was going to take just as long, Sarah wondered.
Looking at the line of traders, she sighed. This was going to be a long day.
Luckily, Zikzik accepting the credits made for great advertising. He was known for being a sharp trader, so if he doesn't think it's a scam, it must not be, right?
Sarah and Jen managed to get two other traders that day onto credits, and one more who was dipping his proverbial toes into the water.
It was a good day.
Jen had been working hard. The Galactic Credits website was now on its 16th major iteration. She'd beefed up the security on it, to make sure none of the other human traders got any funny ideas. Backups became more automatic and frequent, and there was now a rollback and dispute mechanism, not that it was being used yet.
Sarah had also been working hard. She'd been sitting in meetings all day with legal, finances, and now they had a small army of people who were ready to help out if they got into trouble there. Galactic Credits is now officially a tax paying LLC incorporated in the great state of Delaware.
Benny Jr, who had just finished college, had come in as well. He was no good at talking to clients, but he's what the duo would refer to as "street smart". Occasionally, the alien traders would bring in some exotic or ahem, dubiously sourced items, and he would know exactly where to convert that into cold hard cash. On the spreadsheets, his dealings were adding up to a nice fat padding on the margins for Galactic Credits, which to this point, hasn't been making any money other than in the fruit and air filters exchange business.
They were now working out of a rented office in downtown Livermore, with a very nice view of a brick-lined pub that offers numerous craft beers and the old railroad that runs through the heart of town.
Ironically, there's a Bank of America branch across the street, not far from the office itself, the company that had invented the BankAmericard and started the credit card revolution, seemingly oblivious to this new competitor moving into town, literally and figuratively.
They had many brilliant finance experts who were working on something, surely, but established financial institutions are not always great at moving fast and adapting to changing technology. There were many regulations to worry about, and the stakes were a lot higher.
There's something very quaint about the town itself. Some people didn't consider it part of the Bay Area metro area itself, but with the latest BART expansion station they recently built, that's been less and less true.
Now, it was literally the town where the train tracks ended. And where the final frontier began.
For the people in the office, it's also where they dreamt about a new financial revolution in the galaxy.
Some people have critiqued this chapter on the grounds that established financial institutions would have thought of this idea on day one. I appreciate the feedback, but that is a rosy view of the velocity at corporations in my opinion. I've personally worked in some of these companies, and if someone brought up this idea, it would probably have taken at least a month to get the idea through various risk audits and legal reviews.
In terms of technology, much of banking still operates on software that predates the modern Internet. This is one of the reasons why fin-tech startups have been able to beat them on time-to-market, despite massive institutional or financial disadvantages. It's why companies like PayPal, Square, Stripe, Venmo… etc could compete with the incumbents with the development of the Internet.
Sure, an intern in engineering or tools would have a semi-working prototype by week three, but the first line of code would be pushed to production by… month three. A much more likely scenario: some startup beats them to the punch, exactly as it happens here, and the large company offers their founders or investors an obscene amount of money to buy them out.
RoyalRoad
First
Next

On September 11 of 2001, 19 men hijacked four planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and into an open field in Shanksville PA. These men were al-Qaeda terrorists doing the deeds in the name of a holy war against the West and not much about the attack remains a mystery unless you subscribe to the inside job theory, which isn't my case. What authorities haven't been able to explain is the hijackers' several trips to Las Vegas despite what has been dubbed to be the broadest investigation in city. All these trips happened within a few months before the attacks, but the men behind them left very little evidence of their activities in the area.
TIMELINE
May 24 - Marwan Al-Shehhi, the pilot who crashed the United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Towers of the WTC, arrived to Las Vegas from San Francisco and rented a room at Travelodge as a walk in customer. Once there, he called eight other motels.
May 25 - Al-Shehhi walked in the St. Luis Manor, a hotel that wasn't on the call list. At 12:52 pm, he rented a different car, but didn't return the first car until 3:58pm. The unaccounted mileage in both vehicles summed up to 29 miles. FBI believes that these unusual patterns were a conscious attempt to avoid detection.
May 27 - Al-Shehhi made it to New York.
June 7 - Ziad Jarrah, pilot of the United Airlines 93 that crashed in Shanskville while on its way to the Capitol Building, arrived to Las Vegas and rented a car at 3:13 pm. He was accompanied by an unidentified man described as "middle eastern looking". When Jarrah asked for directions to Circus Circus Hotel and Casino, the a rent-a-car employee tried to give him an answer but was interrupted by the unidentified man who suggested another route. The man's knowledge of the address suggests that he was familiar with the area or that he had been in Las Vegas before.
June 10 - Jarrah took a flight to the Baltimore Washington International Airport leaving his rented car with a mileage exceeding 200 miles and no trace of his Las Vegas whereabouts .
June 28 - Mohamed Atta, pilot of American Airlines Flight 11 that crashed into the North Tower of WTC and leader of the hijackers, arrived to Las Vegas at 2:41 pm and rented a car at 4:25 pm. At 6:40 pm Atta established an account at Cyberzone internet café and used the computer for one hour and thirty five minutes.
June 29 - Atta checked into Econo Lodge Motel at 1:01 pm. He logged in at Cyberzone again at 2:21 and 6:21 pm. Once done, the FBI believes he went back to his hotel.
June 30 - Atta accessed his Cyberzone accounts at 1:56 pm, 6:30 pm and 9:33 pm. The mileage analysis indicated that he returned to his hotel afterwards. This day as well as the day before, Atta had placed several call to Al-Shehhi as well as to two different number in Houston, TX. One number was unassigned and the other one belonged to a mobile salesman.
July 1 - Atta returned his rented vehicle at the airport at 5:12 am and took a flight to New York that connected in Denver. The vehicle had 73 unaccounted miles of usage which the FBI believes would cover a round trip to the Hoover Dam.
July 31 - Waleed al-Shehri, hijacker of the Flight 11, took a flight from San Francisco to Las Vegas where he stayed for 45 minutes while waiting for another flight to Miami. It is unclear to me whether this was a tactical flight - the hijackers were believed to take flights to study their trajectory as well as entrance to the cockpit-, or just a connection.
August 13 - Hani Hanjour and Nawaf al-Hazmi, pilot and hijackers of the American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon arrived to Las Vegas at 11:18 am. At 11:58 am, Atta arrived to Las Vegas to and rented a vehicle at 1:46 pm. The FBI assumed that the three men met, but no activity from Hanjour and al-Hazim was recorded from that trip. Atta accessed a room at the Econo Lodge at 2:55 pm and connected at the Cyberzone at 11:26 pm, getting back to his room at 12:46 am.
August 14 - Atta returned his rented car at 11:09 am leaving no unaccounted mileage and took a flight outside Las Vegas. Hanjour and al-Hazmi boarded a flight at 11:29 am.
THEORIES
A) Al-Qaeda was looking to target Las Vegas area
As noted in Atta's first trip, the unaccounted mileage added up to a round trip to the dam from his hotel. However, Atta's vehicle was not among the recorded license plates in the parking garage of the dam. If the hijackers had connections in Las Vegas area, which seems to be the case with Jarrah, Atta might have traveled to Boulder City or any other town close to the lake and gotten to the dam with someone else in a different vehicle. It should also be noted that both Atta and al-Shehhi stayed in hotels close to the Stratosphere, a hotel and casino located in the highest building of the city. Being known as the Sin City, Las Vegas could have been a attractive target for jihadists looking to rebel against what they perceived to be the westernization of their home countries and culture.
B) Hijackers were exchanging information with other Al-Qaeda members
The FBI emphasized the short duration on hijacker's trip to Las Vegas saying that it was just long enough to exchange information. Authorities believe that Atta was not only looking at flight on the East coast but he also kept in communication with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a potential 20th hijacker who had been denied entry to the United States and acted as an intermediary between Al-Qaeda and the other hijackers. Jarrah's mystery companion and the complete lack of evidence of his whereabouts point to possible terrorist acquaintances residing or staying in Las Vegas that are yet to be identified. The FBI summary mentions two persons of interest: Lotfi Raissi and Zakaria Hassan Ibrahim.
Raissi started attending the Sawyer School of Aviation in 1998 one month after Hanjour quit. Two days after Jarrah left Las Vegas, Raissi arrived to the city with his wife and stayed there until June 18. His stay didn't overlap with that of the hijackers and he claims he went to Las Vegas to celebrate his honeymoon. On September 21, Raissi was arrested near Colnbrook, UK, where he had been living at the time of the attacks. Prosecutor Arvinder Sambei claimed that the FBI had footage of him celebrating an event with Hanjour and that his flight logs from March 2000 to June 2001 were missing. It has also been claimed that Raissi was training five of the hijackers. No such proof was presented to the courts and the man in the footage turned out to be his cousin and not Hanjour, as it had been previously claimed.
Hassan Ibrahim had previously been convicted for trafficking in fraudulent passports and visas. He was the person to provide Mir Aimal Kansi, CIA headquarters shooter , and Mohammed A. Salameh, perpetrator of the 1993 WTC bombing, with fake documents. He was reported to have spent most of July in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, not much information about this individual is accessible so I could not verify if any connection between him and the hijackers was formally established.
C) Hijackers went to Las Vegas as a final pleasure stop before committing suicide
This theory was briefly mentioned by Evan Thomas, journalist, and quoted by criminologist Adam Lankford in his psychological autopsy of Mohamed Atta. According to the author, Atta and the other hijackers - Hanjour and al-Hazmi - might have visited Las Vegas because maybe " they wished to be fortified for their mission by visiting a shrine to American decadence".
While not much is known about Hanjour and al-Hazmi, Atta has been alluded to by the people who knew him as a sexually repressed man who experienced extreme discomfort around women and the mildest hint of sexuality. When years of repression build up an uncontrollable sexual urge, the individual might end up participating is risky sexual activities. Nevertheless, the circumstances of the trip make sex and gambling very unlikely motives. Their stays were short, happened across different months and there was no evidence of them visiting casinos or any similar venues. Strippers supposedly identified al-Shehhi as one of their patrons, but evidence was not conclusive. Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that a quick visit to the strip club was anything more than a fun opportunity while pursuing a bigger goal.
I personally believe that the hijackers visited Las Vegas to coordinate the attacks with other members from Al-Qaeda who flew under the radar (no pun intended).
SOURCES:
Las Vegas investigative summary
Theories on why 9/11 hijackers visited Las Vegas
David C. Henley: 9/11 hijackers visits to Nevada remain a mystery
Wikipedia entry for Mir Aimal Kansi
Wikipedia entry for Mohammed A. Salameh
Cracking the terror code
EDIT: Thanks for the awards people!

The USA PATRIOT Act provides a textbook example of how the United States federal government expands its power. An emergency happens, legitimate or otherwise. The media, playing its dutiful role as goad for greater government oversight, demands "something must be done." Government power is massively expanded, with little regard for whether or not what is being done is efficacious, to say nothing of the overall impact on our nation's civil liberties.
No goals are posted, because if targets are hit, this would necessitate the ending or scaling back of the program. Instead, the program becomes normalized. There are no questions asked about whether the program is accomplishing what it set out to do. It is now simply a part of American life and there is no going back.
The American public largely accepts the USA PATRIOT Act as a part of civic life as immutable, perhaps even more so than the Bill of Rights. However, this act – passed in the dead of night, with little to no oversight, in a panic after the biggest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor – is not only novel, it is also fundamentally opposed to virtually every principle on which the United States of America was founded. It might not be going anywhere anytime soon, but patriots, liberty lovers and defenders of Constitutional government should nonetheless familiarize themselves with the onerous provisions of this law, which is nothing short of a full-throttle attack on the American republic.

What’s Even in the USA PATRIOT Act?

What is in the USA PATRIOT Act? In the Michael Moore film Fahrenheit 9/11, then Rep. John Conyers cracked wise about how no one had actually read the Act and how this was in fact par for the course with America's laws. Thus, before delving into the deeper issues surrounding the PATRIOT Act, it is worth discussing what the Act actually says. Here’s a brief look at the 10 Titles in the PATRIOT Act:

• Title I: Enhancing Domestic Security Against Terrorism: This provision dramatically expands the powers of the President, the military and the intelligence community whenever the specter of "terrorism" is invoked. Bizarrely, it contains a provision condemining discrimination against Arabs, Muslims and South Asians, which seems to have very little to do with protecting Americans from terrorism.
• Title II: Enhanced Surveillance Procedures: Title II contains the meat of the Act with regard to massive, industrial-scale surveillance on the American public. Beyond the simple spying on Americans and their communications, Title II increases the ability of federal intelligence agencies to share your private communications with one another.
• Title III: International Money Laundering Abatement and Financial Anti-Terrorism Act: Not simply a section of the USA PATRIOT Act, Title III is an Act of Congress in its own right. You might have noticed how much more difficult it is to open a bank account or send a wire transfer after 9/11. You can blame this provision, which shredded banking privacy rights in the United States.
• Title IV: Protecting the Border: Other than expanding the number of federal employees (of course), the provision of the USA PATRIOT Act charged with protecting America's borders does little other than point toward paths for future action and study. It is worth noting that the weakest provision of the Act is the only one explicitly authorized by the Constitution -- protecting the border.
• Title V: Removing Obstacles to Investigating Terrorism: Title V authorizes bounties for the apprehension of alleged terrorists, broadens government power to conduct DNA analysis, allows for greater data sharing between law enforcement agencies and, perhaps most disturbingly, requires private telecommunication carriers to comply with government requests for electronic communication records whenever requested by the FBI. It also expands the power of the Secret Service to investigate computer fraud.
• Title VI: Providing for Victims of Terrorism, Public Safety Officers and Their Families: Perhaps the most innocuous portion of the USA PATRIOT Act, Title VI provides for a victims' fund for victims of terrorism and their families.
• Title VII: Increased Information Sharing for Critical Infrastructure Protection: The subtitle of this section of the Act is a rather wordy way of saying that the United States federal government is allowing for law enforcement agencies to share information across jurisdictional boundaries in an easier fashion than was previously legal. To that end, the Bureau of Justice Assistance was given a $50,000,000 budget for 2002 and a whopping $100,000,000 budget for fiscal year 2003.
• Title VIII: Strengthening the Criminal Laws Against Terrorism: Title VIII is where the rubber meets the road: What exactly is terrorism, according to the federal government? Unfortunately, this Title does little to clarify what terrorism is, instead focusing on declaring a number of actions (such as attacks on transit) as “terrorism,” regardless of intent.
• Title IX: Improved Intelligence: The section subtitled “improved intelligence” largely expands the powers and responsibilities of the Director of Central Intelligence.
• Title X: Miscellaneous: When the federal government titles a segment of a law “miscellaneous,” you know it’s going to include everything and the kitchen sink. And so it does: The definition of electronic surveillance, additional funds for the DEA in South and Central Asia, research on biometric scanning systems, a limitation on hazmat licensure and infrastructure protections are all addressed in Title X, which is a catchall for everything the federal government forgot to address in the first nine sections of the law.

Most of the provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act were set to sunset four years after the bill was passed into law. However, the law was extended first by President George W. Bush and then by President Barack H. Obama. The latter is particularly scandalous given that, at least in part, a rejection of the surveillance culture that permeated the Bush Administration was responsible for the election of Obama in 2008.

Passing the USA PATRIOT Act

Next, it’s important to remember the environment in which the USA PATRIOT Act was passed: Post-9/11. It is not the slightest bit of exaggeration to label the environment in which the PATRIOT Act was passed as “hysterical,” nor is “compliant” a misnomer for the Congress of the time. Opposition to the Act was slim and intensive review of one of the most sweeping Acts of Congress in American history was nonexistent.
All told, Congress took a whopping six weeks drafting, revising, reviewing and passing the PATRIOT Act. That’s less time than Congress typically spends on totally uncontroversial and routine bills that don’t gut the Fourth Amendment. The final vote found only 66 opponents in the House and one (Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold) in the Senate. The entire passage of the PATRIOT Act, from start to finish, took place behind closed doors. There were no committee reports or hearings for opponents to testify, nor did anyone bother to read the bill.
“Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” is the bloated and overwrought full name of the bill, crafted by a 23-year-old Congressional staffer named Chris Cylke. This ridiculous name puts the focus not on the surveillance aspects or the erosion of basic civil liberties enshrined in Western society since the Magna Carta, but on patriotism. At the time of its creation, the messaging was very clear: Real patriots support massive intrusions on civil rights. As President George W. Bush said at the time, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” This sentiment very much seemed to apply to American citizens.
While the argument that if you have nothing to hide you shouldn’t fear investigation is anathema in a Constitutional republic with regard to citizens, it should be standard operating procedure when it comes to our organs of government. If we cannot expect transparency from the United States Congress – elected officials charged with representing the will of the people and protecting the Constitution – then we certainly can’t expect it anywhere else.

The Unfortunate Growth of the USA PATRIOT Act

It’s no surprise to those in the liberty movement that given an inch, the government (in particular the military-intelligence community) took a mile. Even the nebulous definition of “terrorism,” largely centered around a long litany of acts rather than the motivation behind them, has expanded to include receiving military training from a proscribed organization (without actually committing any terrorist acts or even acts of violence of any stripe) as well as “narcoterrorism” – the latter particularly convenient, as the United States government continues its losing “War on Drugs.”
Indeed, in many ways, the War on (Some) Drugs was the template for the War on Terror. Both wars have no defined enemy, no defined terms of victory. Instead, they are waged against a nebulous concept, while enjoying bipartisan support for their ever-expanding budgets. What’s more, it didn’t take long for the Feds to start using the USA PATRIOT Act for things it was never intended for, including prosecuting the War on Drugs.
Perhaps the silliest application of the USA PATRIOT Act is the prosecution of Adam McGaughey. McGaughey maintained a fansite for the television series Stargate SG-1. The Feds charged him with copyright infringement and computer fraud. In the course of their investigation, the FBI leveraged the PATRIOT Act to get financial records from his website’s ISP. This was made possible by the USA PATRIOT Act amending the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, allowing for search and seizure of ISP records.
The New York Times discovered in September 2003, that the USA PATRIOT Act was being used to investigate alleged drug traffickers without what would otherwise be sufficient probable cause. These were investigations into non-terrorist acts using a law ostensibly designed to investigate terrorism. There was some suspicion that the Act was being used to investigate crimes occurring before the Act was passed, violating the ex post facto clause of the United States Constitution.
In one of the biggest power grabs (excluding virtually everything we know from Edward Snowden – more on that below), the FBI sent tens of thousands of “national security letters” and procured over one million financial records from targeted businesses in Las Vegas. These businesses were primarily casinos, car rental bureaus and storage spaces. The data obtained included financial records, credit histories, employment records and even people’s personal health records.
The FBI maintains and databases this – and, indeed, all information collected through the USA PATRIOT Act – indefinitely. In the good old days before the PATRIOT Act, the Feds were compelled to destroy any evidence they collected on someone later found not guilty of a crime. Note that the aforementioned data collection brought to public attention by Edward Snowden (which, again – we’re getting to that) falls under this provision. Not only is the government collecting obscene amounts of private and personal information about you, they’re also storing it indefinitely with no plans to stop.
What’s more, the FBI has approached public libraries to turn over the records for specific terminals, collecting information not about specific users who might be under investigation, but about anyone who has ever used the computer at the public library. Libraries, to their credit, have been very much at the forefront of resistance against the PATRIOT Act, with some litigating compliance despite operating on small budgets and others posting “canary letters,” which effectively say “The FBI Hasn’t Been Here Yet.” The removal of such a letter would warn patrons that the FBI has been sniffing around in their records.
Indeed, the greatest criticism of the PATRIOT Act is the simplest and perhaps most obvious: Why does an Act ostensibly passed to fight terrorism so drastically expand the government’s power to investigate virtually everyone else? The PATRIOT Act is not merely unconstitutional, it is an unprecedented expansion of state power in the Anglosphere, a culture based on restricted government and the primacy of individual rights.
An excellent example of this is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) expansion. Most people are familiar with the term “FISA court,” but very few people actually know what it is – a special federal court created under the Carter Administration that grants approval of electronic surveillance of both citizens and resident aliens in the event that they are accused of acting in the service of a foreign power. The last part of this sentence is very important: The FISA courts are not simply for allowing surveillance of anyone that it might be expedient to collect information about. The scope of their powers is very, very limited.
Or was.
The PATRIOT Act lowered the burden of evidence required to obtain a FISA warrant for electronic surveillance and expanded the overall scope of the FISA courts. Any savvy federal agent can now drape his charges in the garb of (what else?) “national security” and obtain electronic surveillance privileges hitherto only dreamed of by investigators. FISA courts have become pliant tools in the hands of the Feds, gladly approving their requests to monitor phone and internet surveillance, as well as access to medical, financial and educational records.

The Future of the USA PATRIOT Act

Do we still need the PATRIOT Act? Did we ever? All laws are certainly a product of their times. But this seems much more acutely true of the USA PATRIOT Act, which was passed in a rush and under duress without due consideration.
Particularly in light of the revelations from Edward Snowden – that the government is spying on everything they possibly can – it’s worth asking if there’s any walking back. He points out that the police state apparatus was originally for drug dealers, then for terrorists, but ultimately ended up being applied to anyone and everyone.
What’s more, Bob Bullard notes another frightful aspect of the USA PATRIOT Act: Terrorism-related cases are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. This means that there is little or no oversight. There is no surer hallmark of a police state than an all-powerful domestic surveillance agency with no transparency or oversight. While the USA PATRIOT Act might not create an American Stasi as such, it certainly paves the way for one.
Continue reading The USA PATRIOT Act: The Story of an Impulsive Bill that Eviscerated America's Civil Liberties at Ammo.com.

Hey mommies,
It's Hard Rock Nick, i would like to address some allegations and other questions (because i am a cool guy that likes to interact with the mommies). As you know many false allegations have been levied against me in the last 2 years (since my celebrity became widely known and since i appeared on multiple tv shows and podcasts). Many of these allegations are rooted in hate and are meant only to damage my celebrity, these allegations have significantly damaged my profitability and the monetization of my celebrity (I was kicked off of Cameo,Holo, Manscapped, and am currently being booted from Starsona). I would like to address to allegations against my character: I did not do anything to my ex-wife, it didn't work out and we had our differences, she claims i defiled her sink, edited her Wikipedia page, stole form her, etc. (These are all boldfaced lies!) Secondly, I actually do own hotels and casinos my Hard Rock Vegas was bought out by Virgin and i received and extra $75,000,000 in 2019! I am also a homeowner of 8 homes (Dallas, Irvine Cove, Tokyo, Stalingrad, Del Mar, Santa Monica, WEHO, and Oakland). Third i do own 18 cars, and 12 of them are Mercedes Benzes, but people want to fixate on my show truck which i sold to Robert Downey jr. for $300,000. I am also going to be in a new Iron Man movie in 2021-2022, and am scheduled to make even more money. I interact with my fans because i want to build a brand name and want to bring my fans and their influence into my personal projects and my professional projects! I also would like to address allegations of predatory behavior, yes i do have a young and powerful fan base (13-18) but i do not send sexually explicit messages or sexually intoned messages to them i only merely try to inspire my young fans to be like me! I would also like to address the large swaths of people who accuse me of being loud and vulgar, i do this because that is the brand i created for myself and that is what i got famous for, i also would like to address allegations of racism, I am not racist, yes i prefer white women but that is a preference that is my personal choice, i am not saying that there aren't pretty women of color, i am just saying i prefer what i prefer. This brings me to another point, people are saying i am an Armenian, persian, Turkish guy, I am not ham a Dutch Swedish guy and i have light eyes, i think i know what race i am and i am the expert int that area. Furthermore, allegations of me being gay are false i am a straight man and i like women. I also would like to talk about the goofballs who said i am Aly Ashley Jash, i never have once changed my name, I was born as Nicholas Rock Johannsen, and am proud of my nordic heritage! The final allegation that i would like to address is the one that i am a liar and have been arrested for multiple felonies, These are all false, the court documents were doctored to make a false case against me! I did not steal and Escalade form a cadillac dealership and hide it in my moms garage, i did not harrass 5 women to the point of lawsuit, i did not harass my wife and her boyfriend after we divorced, furthermore, i did not file for a bankruptcy in 2012. These are all baltant lies and they are running my celebrity. Please do not believe everything that you see on the internet because it is not true it damages my reputation and misleads you the mommies!
I have a lot of love for Tom and Christina they are awesome, i really liked the segments they did on me they were very funny and tasteful! I also like their other cool guys my other favorites are Tony Johns and Fedsmoker. I would love to do an interview with Tom and Christina, even if it is over the phone or via Skype!
-Hope this clears everything up
- The founder of the Rich Guy Club
Hard Rock Nick

Accompanying Song

The Democratic People’s Republic of Maryland

State Song

Peter Franchot | Governor of Maryland
Jim Taiclet | Chairman of the UNAAC
Jim Perdue | Chairman of Perdue
Bill Marriott | Executive Chairman of Marriott International
Eilif Sereck-Hanssen | CEO of Laureate Education
Ronald Daniels | John Hopkins School of Medicine
Steve Johnson | CEO of HMSHost
Kenneth Samet | CEO of MedStar Health
Lawrence Kurzius | CEO of McCormick & Company
Patrik Frisk | CEO of Under Armor
Todd Combs | CEO of GEICO
Steven C. Preston | CEO of Goodwill Industries
David Zaslav | CEO of the Discovery Channel
Calvin Butler, Jr | CEO of BGE
Pradman Kaul | CEO of Huges

Construction Companies

Kevin Mandia | CEO of DeWalt Tools
Governor Larry Hogan | Owner of Hogan Companies Construction
Timothy Regan | CEO of The Whiting-Turner Contracting Co.
Robert D. Moser | President of Clark Construction
James Davis | President of the James G. Davis Construction Corp.
Kenneth Grunley | CEO of Grunley Construction Co.

Trucking/Transportation Companies

Marino Transportation | Construction Shipping/Transportation
Alfredo Trucking | Heavy Equipment Transportation
COWAN | LTL Trucking
Eric Morgan | President of Piedmont Airlines

Private Security Companies (Sadly From Virginia)

Academi) (Blackwater)
Triple Canopy
Vinnell

International Lawyers and State AG

Brian Frosh | Representing the state of Maryland
Here

2023 | The Democratic People’s Republic of Maryland 

”The world is ours” -- Discovery Channel Slogan

As Maryland continues to ever seek more influence in the United States, many (as seen above) have been collaborating for years to see state entities enter the world stage. With the United North American Aegis Company chairman Jim Taiclet leading the charge and being the first to break into the Liberian market (along with help from Ghana ). With the New Bethesda Megaplex in the works in the United States, the Aegis company felt unstoppable in terms of development undertakings. This came especially true after the not one, not two, not even three, but four (still working on that last one) multibillion dollar military contracts from the swiss and continued support from the United States Federal government. Revenue was massive. With new headquarters in western Europe, the stage was truly set for the Aegis company.
As Jim Taiclet thought in his office, he truly saw the pure and raw benefits of working in Liberia. He decided to call his friends about it. Being one of the largest company in the state of Maryland by a vast margin and having a history of shady practices when it came to getting things done immediately set up a meeting between the old Comptroller turned Governor Peter Franchot, Baltimore mayor turned Governor Martin O’Malley, and construction company owner turned Governor Larry Hogan. To consult them about his plan. After picking their brain about the plan, they agreed that investment a hostile economic takeover of Liberia would be the best thing for the Democratic People’s Republic of Maryland. In turn, they immediately began getting their friends together, composed of the most powerful entities in the state of Maryland with not only stateside reach, but international reach in a majority of the cases and global reach in a notable amount of cases. Together, they all formulated a grand plan in the Governor's Mansion in Annapolis that the Liberian government simply couldn’t refuse.
The general idea was to have Liberia in the putty of Maryland's hands. Through investment and a strangling corporate hand, they would work to do just that.

General Investment Plan: 2023/4-2035

The companies of Maryland together are a multi hundred billion dollar powerhouse by itself larger than most African nation's when bridging together state and private entities. The Maryland Cabal planned on using this intense and concentrated capital to dump funds into Liberia to spread their own influence over the small West African nation of Liberia and use it, and eventually other African nations, as a supply house for raw materials, a factory full of cheap labor, and a fertile breeding ground for pure, unadulterated, capitalism. Between Hogan, Franchot, and O’Malley, they proposed a roughly $200 billion dollar investment plan to completely revamp Liberia from the ground up, the Maryland way. The plan would be to completely rework the Liberian economy to benefit the state of Maryland (and the US to a secondary extent) and expose them to Maryland culture and innovations over a period of 8-10 years. Western Africa will feel the might of raw Maryland economic power.

Healthcare Sector

The Maryland healthcare sector (Represented by the John Hopkins School of Medicine, HMSHost, and MedStar Health) will start off the deal by creating the “the Jim Taiclet Frederick-Monrovian General Hospital” thanks to alleged ‘private’ funding by Aegis company CEO Jim Taiclet. The namescape will also be due to Monrovia Frederick County, Maryland. The hospital will be the primary healthcare center providing American tier healthcare at Liberian costs. As Liberia only has 5,000 health workers and 51 native doctors, we can easily dominate the market by building a massive hospital to rival, and eventually collapse John F. Kennedy Medical Center) and we can simply expand from there. By having a fully staffed, American style hospital in Liberia, we can dominate the healthcare market there in a big way.
The strategy is to provide free services until the JFK Medical center closes due to failing in every way compared to the Frederick-Monrovian Hospital. By stealing the doctors from the JFK center and the medical workers by providing a hyper competitive wage (for Liberian standards which shouldn’t cost us that much overall), we can easily create a healthcare monopoly in the nation of Liberia with ease. This will be combined with GEICO selling “health insurance” plans to the population (despite the fact GEICO only does auto insurance in the United States.) They will ‘expand’ into every type of insurance when it comes to Liberian operations to ensure that the Liberians buy into the Maryland system we will establish and be a direct benefactor of.

Construction and housing sector

The housing sector will be taken over by Maryland’s finest major contractors and trucking companies. Utilizing the drastically cheaper resources found in Western Africa, we can build apartment blocks, townhomes, single family homes, major arenas, casinos and give Monrovia a major facelift by effectively gentrifying the entire nation bit by bit. As we will be able to dominate the wages given to day laborers and full time workers with the brainpower and might of American construction, we should be able to completely rebuild Liberia into a paradise of Maryland based capitalism and splendor. It will be a utopian state of the finest Maryland infrastructure.
The gimmick here will be buying out the residents across Liberia. As the total GDP of Liberia is $3.2 billion dollars with the average Liberian making around $704 a year ($1,414 in PPP dollars) and then doing massive redevelopment projects across the nation's major cities and becoming the best and only game in town. By using the construction companies themselves to issue loans to people for buying homes (something similar to what GM financial does). With the contracting companies of Maryland acting as the developer and banker for these properties, over time, Maryland based companies will be the only game in town to own property in Liberia. Offering the 20, 25, and 30 year loans as seen in the United States and with the entire Maryland Cabal strong arming the Liberian economic ministry due to sheer economic power as a block, we could become very powerful, very quickly. We will effectively set up a Maryland based monopoly.

Tourism Sector

As we have the power of Marriott International on our side along with the contractors, we can build up the hospitality sector of Liberia from something frankly, questionable, to an upper-middle class wonderland of cheap goods and services in a foreign land. By using HMS-Host to develop operations for the food in the nation (something they will do for the hospital system as well as noted), it should be generally very easy to establish a tourism sector for Americans and Europeans that they are already familiar with by having a low overhead.

Manufacturing/Agriculture

We will be using McCormick, Under Armor, the Aegis Company, DeWalt Tools, and Perdue (due to the large AG sector), to manufacture goods in a cheap manner. Taking a note out of China’s book in African investment, we will undercut the Chinese themselves by using cheap labor whilst still paying the average Liberian a “competitive wage” that, in reality, is only large enough to consume more Maryland (and American to a lesser extent) goods. Considering we lost a considerable amount of AG goods supply after the US broke up, we will offset this and become the American breadbasket by owning high amounts of Liberian assets and sending them back to America to sell them at American standard rates to make a huge profit.

Infrastructure

Using various Maryland based companies, Liberia can transform in a matter of a few years with Huges (for internet), BGE (for energy production), and the several infrastructure companies to redevelop roads while they are redeveloping and rebuilding neighborhoods.
With these lofty and grand plans, Jim Taiclet of the Aegis company feels that a coordinated effort like this will yield wildly effective results for improving the state of Maryland, bring cheap goods and services into the United States and most importantly, turn a heavy profit. The Maryland Cabal has decided to work this plan over the next 8-10 years and establish a very clear, and even overwhelming force in Western Africa. With Liberia being a relatively low bar for the massive economic power held by these Maryland based companies, they all decide to put this plan into motion.

The Stage Has Been Set.

THIS POST HAS BEEN FLAIRED AS UNAVAILABLE AND WILL BE LEFT HERE JUST AS A REFERENCE. ALL 15 DIFFERENT ORDERS YOU CAN SEE HERE WERE DELIVERED AND POSITIVE FEEDBACK GIVEN. ABOUT 15% OF THE ITEMS ON THE LIST HAVE BEEN SOLD. I WILL MAKE ANOTHER POST IN THE FUTURE WITH AN UPDATED LIST. CHEERS!
 
TL;DR: you can find the link for the decks and accessories list (and another link for a way less nicely formatted list of 100+ books about magic, sleight of hand and card tricks) at the end of this post. Feel free to rush there, get the decks names (or just books names and author in case you are also/only getting books) and respective items conditions (M, A, B or C - more on that later) and create a top-level comment with your list of wishes. Example:
 
Mint 2 Set (Blueberry, Cucumber, Frost, Foiled Frost) (M)
Dynasty Jade Green (A)
Smoke and Mirros V6 Rouge (M)
Seasons Set (Verana, Inverno)(A)
The Amazing Miracles of Shigeo Takagi - Richard Kaufman
 
After that, YOU MUST READ THE WHOLE POST. It is crucial you read the post and understand that, if you still want to go ahead with negotiations, you agree with the conditions I wrote. It is extremely important we are on the same page regarding this. I am here to try to sell cards, not to create an unnecessary mess because of miscommunication. It is absolutely fine if you don't agree with some condition, but all of this needs to be worked out before we proceed to payment stage. I hope no one minds too much me saying "hey, that information was available on the post" :)
Note 1: DO NOT edit your top-level comment, if you want to add decks or subtract decks from your list answer to your own comment and we will go from there. I will have to prioritize non edited comments because that is the only reliable timestamp I have.
Note 2: On the (now locked) post on playingcards there was only one instance of a deck many people wanted (the "Verum Videre Christmas Edition (Signed)"). I have been pming for the last few hours everybody who reserved decks there to come here again and make a top-level comment with what they have reserved, so I will only keep reservations done here and the waiting list for the "Verum Videre Christmas Edition (Signed)" as it stood there.
Note 3: it goes without saying I reserve myself the right of not trading with or selling to anyone I don't want to, whatever the reason might be.
 
 

Hello there, everybody!

The day has finally come! After almost four months, the work on this list has come to an end. Quick shout-out to everybody who helped by checking prices, conditions of the decks, gathering information on the internet and with people in the industry, helping me coming up with clever solutions for Sheets automation and so on. Thank you all! Unfortunately for me, from now on this is basically a one man mission :)
A lot of consideration went into deciding on how to do this, how to tackle a project this size. There are around 1550 decks and a few accessories all bundled up in, as it stands right now, 1350 different items (plus the books on the secondary list).
So, who am I (regarding cards, that is)? I am a card collector based in the woods in Sweden (yeah, I live remote even for Swedish standards). Been collecting for two and a half years, worked in the casino industry as a dealer for quite some time (though I don't deal that frequently anymore I am more involved in logistics, inspecting and training) even with my "actual" profession being in a completely different field. I admin the only group of card collectors in Sweden on Facebook (trying to push fellow swedes to engage and participate a bit more - it was kind of a miracle we had a fairly successful Secret Santa last year haha) and been a contributor at Portfolio 52 basically since I started collecting (fixing tons of info and pictures there whenever I can and spot something). Also, because of circumstances, I ended up getting involved with some Kickstarter creators and still work with some of them on the background of their campaigns :)
 

The List!

I would like to believe all the relevant information is right there, easy to see, search and find.
All the decks are listed in alphabetical order (company>deck name) and color coded differently by different company's name. There are individual entries for every single deck (i.e. 10 copies of lets say "Saturn Red October" will have 10 different entries) that is not bundled up (example: Ellusionist's Prohibition Case V1 is one "item" only even though it has six decks).
 
Shelf/Box | Item# | Deck/Set/Accessories | Company/Designer | Printer | Year | Price (USD) | Condition | Status
 
When you decided for something you want, specially if that item has copies of it (but also when it doesn't), it is essential that you also write down the condition (M, A, B or C - more on that later) of that item so I know which one exactly do you want.
A bit of patience is required with it; it takes around five minutes for the published document to be update from the master list whenever I make a change (example: marking a deck as reserved or sold).
 

Available / Reserved / Sold!

Another thing that is very easy to see on the list is if a certain item is still available or if it has been reserved or sold already (check the "Status" column).
How do you "reserve" an item? Just make a top-level comment bellow with the items names and condition (M, A, B, or C - more on that later) and you are good to go! In case someone has already reserved a item you want to reserve and there are no copies of it, you can still make a top-level comment saying "I want item X condition Y" and I will let you know you are on that item's waiting list, you don't need to do anything else.
I am gonna give myself a buffer of two days from the time of posting this to see how things went and then start working on individual requests, pictures, etc. That doesn't mean I won't do that before two days, it is just so people don't expect it. During this time, whenever I am available, I will be answering things that are not on this post (this post will NOT be updated for transparency sake, I will make an addendum in the comments about anything that needs to be corrected) or any other questions you guys and girls might have about the decks, conditions, pricing, shipping, etc. After this period I will check all the wish lists and put them in order (first come, first served of course), and grind the data from there.
 

Pricing / Condition

This is literally a "BUYER BEWARE" section of this post, but first things first.
 
Pricing: as you will see, there many, many different items with prices lower than what it is being offered everywhere else on the internet, but there are also decks priced pretty competitively towards the market, and a few decks have a higher compared to other places. Are you free to make me an offer because you saw an item somewhere else for cheaper but you still want to buy it from me? Absolutely, but it won't be often this might go through. Am I open to trades? Absolutely, but then again, do not have high hopes for it. I am in no way expecting most of it to be sold in the coming one, or even two years. There will be a bunch of decks left after this, and that is ok. Also, everything is priced in USD.
 
Condition: big disclaimer here so this is as clear as it can possibly be: EVERYTHING BEING SOLD HERE (DECKS, SETS, ACCESSORIES AND BOOKS) ARE SOLD "AS IS". As per Wikipedia: "As is" denotes that the seller is selling, and the buyer is buying an item in whatever condition it presently exists, and that the buyer is accepting the item "with all faults", whether or not immediately apparent." There is no way to put this out without sounding like an ass (maybe?) but this needs to be understood by both you and me.
Having said that, I have done all I could, to the best of my abilities, to condition every single item fairly, but of course this is still subjetive and it only represents the way I would see them. Basically the "M" decks are decks with no faults whatsoever (or nothing that I could possibly bother or notice to begin with), the "A" decks are minor imperfections I would not bother with even if it is a deck I had no intentions of opening it, "B" are decks I would probably contact the store / seller to talk about it, even if it was not my intention to request a refund (example: decks I would be opening anyway I still contact them but just to let them know and give some feedback) and "C" decks I would definitely contact the store / seller to know what could be done about it regarding some sort of compensation.
On the list you will see four different letters representing the conditions of the decks (and the respective discounts to each):

• M: Mint (base price). Some decks have no cellophane (signed, etc) or came with no seal but are still considered "M", it just depends on the condition of the tuck/cards.
• A: Almost mint (10% discount). Minuscule dents, minor issues with the cellophane or with the seal or other minor issues with the tuck. Basically no possibility of damage to the cards.
• B: Either bigger dents or issues or more quantities of minor dents or other issues. Very low possibility of damage to the cards.
• C: Bigger damage to tuck. Possibility of damage to the cards.

 
This was not an easy (or fun) run at all. I considered everything I could regarding the condition of all the 1550 decks: dented corners, dented sides, pressed bottom, pressed top, pressed seal, opened, no cellophane, cellophane broken, cellophane opened, scratched, smudged edge, seal partially broken inside the cellophane, no seal, issues with the bottom or top flap, etc etc etc.
As of now, these are the quantities of items with each condition (to a total of 1350 different items):

• M: 993
• A: 266
• B: 80
• C: 11

Obviously nobody wants to buy anything in the complete darkness, but neither could I take individual pictures of 1550+ decks and match each and everyone with the respective conditions (with the "free" time I have this would take years hahaha). Having said that, I will upon request (which might take some time but I am 100%, of course, willing to do so) take pictures of specific decks (matching condition/item#/etc).
I made a small Imgur album with a few pictures of some of the decks and my username on it (please don't mind the mess of this new VERY OLD house with tons of renovation to be done we just moved in). Again, feel free to ask for additional info or pictures.
 

Shipping

It doesn't make it easier that one I live in Sweden and two I live in the middle of b$%f#&* nowhere in Sweden :) Basically the only shipping option I have here is Postnord, and I will absolutely not charge anything "a bit extra on top of shipping just to be sure but then people end up paying a bit more every time". If you want to have an idea of how much shipping would cost to you, go ahead and check Postnord's own website.
Yet again, a lot of consideration went into this, and it is unfortunate but I have to say that I can not and won't be responsible for any lost packages or packages damaged during transportation, in any stage of it. The responsibility I am taking here is to agree on a price for items + shipping, pack everything in a way that the parcel could probably take a severe beating and the itens would still arrive on the same way they were shipped (I am talking hard boxes and unethical - I don't remember which redditor said this but I promised myself I would take it for a future use so here I am - amounts of bubble plastic, paper, tapes, boxes inside boxes like a good old matryoshka, etc). I have sent close to a hundred parcels on the last two and a half years (to Sweden, Europe, US, Taiwan, etc) and not ONCE a single deck arrived in a different condition they were shipped in. Depending on location and kind of parcel, Postnord offers some "sort of insurance" I can claim if a package gets lost or damage. We might talk about it if you are interested but I will only be able to refund any amount whatsoever after, and only if I am compensated by Postnord first.
 

Payment Methods

Making this as short as I possibly can: buyer is responsible for all and any fees from Transferwise or Paypal (or any other payment method we agree upon - Swish in Sweden but I think it will be hard to find someone here that is not part of "Svenska Kortlekssamlare" already).
Transferwise you say? Yes, I use a lot of Transferwise.
Why? Cheapest fees charged by a service that accepts Swedish Crowns and deposits it directly on my bank account. Works in most countries, worth checking them out.
Does Transferwise has a buyer protection program like Paypal does? No, Transferwise, because I only use a personal account and not a traders account, has no buyer protection at all, whatsoever. It works like Paypal's Family and Friends, sort of.
I am not sure I feel comfortable using that, do you understand me? Absolutely, if you don't feel comfortable using a service like Transferwise (even though it is cheaper for you and easier for me), you are free for us to TRY to work something else out (like Paypal), but you have to remember my responsibility here is to send the decks we agreed upon, for the price of items + shipping we agreed upon, and packed very, very well; yet again, I can not and won't be responsible for any lost packages or packages damaged during transportation, in any stage of it. If you rather use Paypal Family and Friends (I think inside Europe we don't pay fees to use that option but please someone correct me if I am wrong), you are also free to do so but ONLY if you understand what it entails and are comfortable with that.
Remember: NO REFUNDS OR COMPENSATION FOR ITEMS DAMAGED OR LOST DURING TRANSPORTATION, IN ANY STAGE OF IT.
 

Final Considerations

Again, I think there is a lot of important and specific information here and because of that I won't edit this post for transparency sake. Any correction or new information will be posted in the comments.
I will have to let pass all my English mistakes I am sure I made so please, bear with me :)
 

HEY, YOU FORGOT THE LISTS!!!

• Decks and Accessories
  
• Books and Dvds
  
• Album with some pictures of the decks and my username
  
• Portfolio 52 Profile: From now on I will be removing from this profile decks that have been SOLD (but not reserved) already. Remember this profile has only entries for different decks, but a lot (if not most of them) have more than one copy of each. Check the "Decks and Accessories" links above to see exactly what I still have in stock!
  

 
Cheers! :)