Choice
Daily Ramble
Many random topics are running through my head this morning as I sit down to ramble, from tobacco cleansing rituals to inflationary outcomes in the Weimar Republic to the joy of being back home after time abroad. If you haven’t been around this corner of the internet for long, you may not realize how far we’ll be rambling together…
But the topic that’s been pushing itself into my thoughts most frequently is how peer groups in the US are beginning to apply airline COVID testing guidelines to social gatherings — 72 hours before attending an event, if you’re unvaccinated, please test negative. Airline policy now social policy. Juxtaposed against life in Portugal and the Bitcoin 2021 conference I just attended, which was an “attend at your own risk” event, I’m struggling to square the two ideas in my mind.
Help me think this through…. Leaving politics aside, you’re either vaccinated or unvaccinated at this point. (I’m going to leave the one-dosers out of my analysis because, common, they can’t decide what they’re doing.) Let’s look at the vaccinated side first. Folks that chose vaccination are now free of worry from contracting COVID. That’s the point of vaccination, correct? If you’re vaccinated, then coming into contact with someone with COVID poses no risk. On the other hand, unvaccinated people have chosen not to be vaccinated. If they come into contact with someone that has COVID, they risk contracting it themselves. The unvaccinated have weighed the risk of vaccination against the risk of COVID and decided the risk of COVID was the better choice.
The keyword in all this is choice. Unvaccinated people chose to be unvaccinated just as vaccinated chose to be vaccinated. Now here’s the rub, if you’re vaccinated, other than a misplaced desire to protect the unvaccinated from themselves, I can’t think of a single reason to push testing on others. The risk remains solely with those that are unvaccinated. COVID can only be passed to those that are unvaccinated. And if you’re unvaccinated, chances are, you’ve made a very conscious, researched effort to be unvaccinated. At least that’s my experience talking to unvaccinated people. So if anyone should want to push COVID testing, shouldn’t it be unvaccinated people? And if you’re vaccinated and pushing COVID testing of the unvaccinated, why?
Most importantly, if I’m missing something here, correct me…please….
Rad Things on the Interwebs
Bitcoin Price Prediction
Weekend: $33k - $39k
Today: $37k - $40k
Tomorrow: $35.6k - $42k
Over the weekend, we saw the bulls take a decisive position in the market, closing out the week with a push from $34.6k to $39.4k. That push tentatively shifted the trend back into a bull market. Since it was weekend trading, we need to see if the high volume weekly traders support the price movement. I suspect they will and that the low at $30k marks the end of this pullback. Of course, that doesn’t mean we move straight up from here, but it does mean that we will see price action begin to grind up and towards the right. By the end of this week, we'll know if the trend has truly shifted, but once confirmed, I suspect there’s still quite a bit more grinding before we see Bitcoin decide to take off again.
Bitcoin Q & A
Q: Can I perform accounting on my Bitcoin transactions?
A: Yes, but there are privacy tradeoffs.
Currently, third parties, like Cryptio, are necessary if you want to avoid manually accounting for your Bitcoin transactions. These services watch your wallet’s address for transactions. On the one side, third parties make life easier, but on the other, it can lead to privacy concerns. I suspect we’ll see non-custodial wallet providers integrate more accounting features into their wallets in the years ahead to avoid these privacy concerns.
Thanks for reading,
Kent
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