Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Three Years

My how time flies.  Three years ago this month I started this blog.  In those three years a lot has happened.  A few dinar douchebags have been arrested and convicted.  Many have been exposed as frauds.  Some have disappeared.  Others have just tweaked their presentation and kept on going.  Many people have caught on and sold their dinar.  Some have actually joined me in the cause.  And then there's Iraq.  Coalition forces left at the end of 2011.  Shabibi was removed as the governor of the CBI in October of 2012.  President Talibani was disabled by a stroke two months later.  Now in 2014 the terrorist organization ISIS has taken over about a third of Iraq, and it appears that the US is heading back into Iraq to some extent. 

Yes, a lot has happened but one thing hasn't happened.  The much heralded RV.  Oh sure, the dinar's value went from $.0008547 to $.0008576 (or 1170:1 to 1166:1) a couple of years ago but that's not the RV that the gurus were hyping and the hopeful were waiting for.  That RV will never happen.

When I started the blog a lot of people got mad at me for calling gurus "douchebags" and insisting that nobody would get rich by owning dinar.  Since then the hatred has waned as people started waking up.  Today almost all of the sites are bashing gurus to one extent or another.  In fact I hear some of what I've said being repeated in conference calls and posted in forums. 

Since September of 2011 this blog has had 850,000 hits.  By my estimate it should hit 1 million next summer if the blog is still up.  Considering how little traffic I had the first few weeks that's just amazing to me.  A lot of that is due to the word of mouth advertising done by my readers, and for that I am truly grateful. 

I have started another blog and have moved on for the most part, but this experience will always be with me.  The one thing I've proven to myself is that one person can make a difference.  You should never be afraid to respond when you see an injustice taking place.  You should never refuse to try just because the odds are against you.  When you hear yourself saying "why doesn't somebody do something about this?" stop and ask yourself if you might be that somebody.  And don't ever be intimidated into silence, thinking that you don't know enough to have a valid opinion or to voice those opinions.  I have learned more since I started the blog than I did before I started it, but I started with what I knew and proceeded from there.

I'm certainly not taking all of the credit.  John Jagerson was the voice in the wilderness two years before I came along.  Others like DaveD and Brian Simpson were debunking guru BS on various forums for years.  Marcus Curtis revamped his pro-RV blog and denounced the dinar scam two years ago.  Baghdad Invest joined in the fun for awhile, even trapping the gurus with a fake RV story which they later admitted was a hoax to see how many gurus "confirmed" their intel.  They've now returned to their true passion which is updating people on the events in Iraq.  We wish them well.

All of us have contributed to the decline in dinar sales and dinar site traffic.  All of us have been vindicated over time.  All of us have helped to curb the hype and irrational exuberance that was prevalent in the dinar world a few years ago.

As for the dinar, I'm afraid the future's not too bright.  If it survives at all the value is likely to remain below 1/10 of a penny.  I still maintain that nobody will get rich from owning the IQD or the VND.  You will probably lose money on both.  If you haven't figured that out by now I can't help you. 

Thanks again everybody, and best wishes to all!