Daily Ramble
I feel embarrassed writing these words. It’s been almost a month since I last sat down to publish a newsletter. Unfortunately, I ghosted my audience, leaving many to reach out worried about my well-being. There are plenty of excuses I could use, but they’re not worth a hill of beans. I unfairly left you, my reader, in the dark, and I apologize. From now on, I will at least publish an “I’m going dark” newsletter if other priorities cause me to push the newsletter to the side for a bit.
I’m sitting here now, post a brief jungle run, hammock to my right, just having said good morning to my naked-but-for-a-diaper daughter. Last night, a waterfall pounded our roof waking my wife and me as dust fell in our eyes from the tin and thatched roof keeping us dry. Thankfully, the rain swept the road and gutters clean and granted us a cool morning to start our day. But, unfortunately, temperature and jungle volume go up together and I can tell we’re nowhere near a crescendo yet. It means we’ve got at least another hour before the hot, sticky heat of the jungle visits causes us to melt as the jungle critters chatter incessantly. The critter volume increases enough that I start most of my work calls by asking if the other side can hear me ok.
If you’ve been following my plot, you’ll know that I’m in Peru. The community of Tarapoto, to be exact. It’s a not-so-small jungle town of 200k where the Amazon basin meets the Andes. More like a port city to the Amazon’s sea of green, it’s 1.5 hours from where the road ends and the basin jungle begins. In other words, it’s the last community with western creature comforts before heading into the romantic, storied, and deadly Amazon basin. We arrived to discover that Paramount Pictures had just finished shooting the latest Transformers movie on the road next to where we are staying. So if you’re keen for a look at the area, wait a bit, and you can stream what’ll likely be a horrible movie with lots of computer-animated graphics shot in a beautiful setting.
The last month has been a whirlwind for our little family, piloting across continents. There was a trip to see friends in California, a brief interlude for cranberry harvest with my father, the loss of our computers — which led to a last-minute scramble to replace them before leaving the US, moving into full-time employment for Sazmining, negotiating the delights of border crossing bureaucracy in the age of COVID absurdity, and finding the resources necessary to start a western working life in a developing nation. While I could ramble, and may, about each of these at length, I wanted to touch on my sense of the US after being there for a month and traveling amongst several areas on the West Coast.
Let me preface my comments by saying that I love my friends and family and truly appreciate the natural beauty of the US wilderness. But I’m grateful not to live there for the transition it’s experiencing. Cities are exploding out into the countryside as those with enough wealth and/or ability to work remotely desire more comfortable living standards. Everywhere I traveled, the story was the same. Real estate prices were increasing in all but the cities. However, I did find it interesting that most everyone thought their locale was particularly unique and desirable. And frankly, I enjoyed seeing people having pride for their rural communities. In the US, it’s been a long-standing reality that the rural communities are the tail of the dog being wagged by cities. To see that reverse, if just by a small and perhaps temporary measure, was heartening.
But what most concerned me as I traveled the US was a foreboding sense of explosiveness. I cannot put my finger on it, and I do not think most living in the US would be able to either, but I had the sense that the US is teetering on edge — one explosive event away from pitting red culture versus blue culture. I hope that I’m incredibly wrong about that sense, but it’s the sense I had, nonetheless. I think that Arthur Brooks, an economist in the Freakonomics podcast I listened to this morning, identified it best: America is addicted to contempt. Contempt is what happens when anger merges with disgust. Anger by itself is hot-blooded but throwing in disgust makes it calculated and cold, the root of moving others from human to being less-than-human. Both team red and team blue, accelerated by talking heads and social media, have created such contempt for one another that it literally separates families. I know, because I experienced it with mine.
Arthur Brooks does offer a solution, that while child-like and naive on the surface, is the best answer I’ve come across: love. I’ll let you listen to the podcast — or read the transcript — to understand more. I sure hope his message spreads. America needs it.
Rad Things on the Interwebs
Bitcoin Price Prediction
Today: $56.9k - $63k
Tomorrow: $56.9k - $65k
The bull is back! There’s no other way to characterize Bitcoin after it successfully shrugged off another sizeable pullback last month. The price drew down as low as $39.5k before rallying up to $60k, and it does not look like the rally is anywhere set to ending. Yesterday, we got word that a long-awaited Bitcoin ETF was being approved by the SEC. It’s taken close to a decade to get a Bitcoin-based ETF in place, and the market expects it to unlock the doors to a flood of new capital entering the space. Many have compared the launch of Bitcoin ETF to the launch of a Gold ETF, which wound up driving gold multiples higher. However it plays out, it’s hard to imagine it being a negative for the market.
What do I anticipate happening with price as a result? A big rally into the end of the year. I do not see the previous high of $65k standing up for much longer. I anticipate we will be testing the last resistance between $63-65k in the next few days, and we will either blow through it or consolidate then break it. This is the phase of the market will everyone will convince themselves they’re a genius because the money comes so quickly. But they’re not — I’m speaking from experience. It’s simply the market phase. Keeping a sober head while others around you get jubilant is hard, but it will allow you to hold onto the future profits.
Bitcoin Q & A
Q: I know Bitcoin cannot be censored, but can it help us with social media censorship?
A: Yes.
Zion is an app that uses Bitcoin’s Lightning Network to build a censorship-resistant social media platform. While it is still very early days, the financial motivation of earning satoshis — fractions of a Bitcoin — is likely to stimulate adoption and network effects. While there will be new dangers introduced on the internet without censorship, removing the ability for any entity to censor should trend users towards fairer play for all.
Do you have questions or Ramble topics? Leave a comment or reply to the newsletter to reach me.
Me? I offer personal and corporate Bitcoin Implementation Strategies: custody, investing strategy, security, tax management, and inheritance. Contact me for a free initial consultation.
Boy did I miss your ramble! Welcome back :)
Welcome back! While I knew you and yours were doing ok, no illness nor injury, I was missing your column. I am glad to see it again, sobering content notwithstanding. Thinking of you as I make more apple pies. : )