Cogitate
Daily Ramble
I had an unintentional biathlon morning. Over the weekend, I left my bike at a neighbor’s at the other end of the valley, intending to get it later. It didn’t happen, and I popped up in bed last night with the sudden remembrance. A run there and a bike ride back was enough of a moving-meditation to cogitate on some thoughts. If you’re tired of hearing me ramble on about the intricate dance between time and money, better skip this one.
My fascination with time inevitably led me to a fascination with money. After years of learning, reading, and podcasting, I’ve realized that Michael Saylor, THE Bitcoin investor of the last year, having invested more than $2B based on the strength of his conviction, has it right: money is a store of life force, our energy.
When we create value for others, our time is put into that effort. Whether the effort is moral, enjoyable, or painful is beside the point. We use our time and energy. And time is the resource each of us has in limited supply. Some may believe that there’s a death cure, but I’m not one of those — call me old-fashioned. Death is the other side of the contract we signed at birth, and with it comes the end of our time in our current form.
I know I was born and I know that I'll die
The in-between is mine
- I Am Mine (Pearl Jam)
It follows that our life force on the planet is what we use our time doing. Our energy put into an endeavor, sustained for some period of time, is nothing other than our life force in action. When we place our life force on the scale for monetary gain, we have given a part of ourselves to gain that money. This is why the way we store our value is so deeply personal. We gave of ourselves to obtain it. When someone or something involuntarily takes our monetary resources, they have stolen some amount of our life force from us. This is the reason that inflation is such an insidious infraction against humanity.
Inflation comes from the printing of more money. A bigger supply of money means the value of an individual unit of money decreases. If you’ve stored your life force in that money, then the folks printing the money have involuntarily taken some of your stored life force even under the best of reasons. A few percentage points of inflation each year may not seem like much, but over the course of 20 years, more than 60% of saved dollars have melted away as lost purchasing power. If those saved dollars were meant to pay for retirement, then you’ve experienced a 60% theft of your life force that you’d saved for the future!
I’m going to skip the obvious link to Bitcoin here in hopes these ideas sink deep, causing you to cogitate too.
Favorite Thing on the Interwebs Today
Elon Musk is legally both the CEO and Technoking of Tesla after yesterday’s filing with the SEC. So great to see a CEO making fun of himself.
Bitcoin Price Prediction
Weekend: $56k - $60.8k
Today: $49k - $59k
Tomorrow: $46k - $62k
I kept my downside prediction slightly too tight yesterday as the price pushed through $56k, kissing $54.5k, before finding a temporary floor. Luckily, I did anticipate enough downward momentum to broaden the range to $53k for today — exactly where price found buyers to prop it back up. Like the last two dips, both funding and momentum indicators have reset, and bitcoin continues flowing out of the exchanges, which, in sum, suggests if we haven’t found the bottom, we’re close to it. We’re in a massively bullish market, and there are no signs that the situation is planning to shift anytime soon despite the temporary fear the markets feel from the price decline of the last couple of days. TL;DR: expecting sideways today, tomorrow upside, with the potential for one more drop before continuation to the upside.
Bitcoin Ed Bite
Q: What is Number Go Up technology?
A: Bitcoin
“Number Go Up tech” is an internet meme that captures one of the core attributes of Bitcoin: its fixed supply and increasing demand make price increases inevitable.
To go a bit deeper here, because the supply of new Bitcoin is cut in half every four years, the price itself moves on a four-year cycle, with the peak coming approximately 18 months after the supply reduction. Using a four-year moving average, the price of Bitcoin has never declined and is currently moving up by more than $400 each week.
What that means is if you invested the same amount of $s each week for four years, you would join that trend. Alternatively, making a single investment with a four-year time horizon ensures, no matter when you purchase, you would make money. Talk about a no-brainer.
For some historical context: four years ago, the price of Bitcoin was considered expensive to most people at $1200. Today the price is considered expensive to most at $56,000. In four years, it will be considered too expensive by most — but will be much higher. Can you see the pattern?
Thanks for reading,
Kent
Have you got questions or a “Favorite Thing on the Interwebs”? Comment below or reply and drop me a line!
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