Death Part 2
Daily Ramble
Finally, after more than a few months of wondering why the subject driving everyone mad during the pandemic, facing our mortal fear of demise, wasn’t being talked about, a podcast popped in my feed to reassure me I wasn’t mad. The co-author of Freakonomics, now more than 15 years old, Stephen Dubner, has put out a podcast by the same name for more than a decade. It delves into random and arcane corners of the human experience uncovering uncommon economic-driven behavior.
The podcast I listened to on my morning walk How to be Better At Death interviewed Caitlin Doughty, a mortuary owner, who has written several books on the topic. I learned that until the US Civil War there was no such thing as a funeral home. Family and loved ones would care for the body of the deceased in their own homes. The need to embalm and send home the bodies of the battlefield deceased started a whole new business that didn’t go away once the Civil War ended. Instead, the new industry convinced the American public that a dead body was an unsanitary thing and needed to be kept refrigerated and hidden behind steel.
Having grown up and experienced the dis-ease the US culture has with death, it was a shock to be in Nepal during the 2015 earthquake that ravaged the country. The day after the earthquake, I was hiking out of the Himalayas alongside bamboo stretchers of the deceased on their way to funeral pyres burning alongside the riverbanks. Surreal was an understatement having survived the 7.8 magnitude earthquake just the day before. I made it to Katmandu by the end of the day, to stumble upon temples choked with more bodies on the funeral pyres. It was something that etched memories into my synapses.
It wasn’t until I was outside the shellshock of the experience, that I recognized there was no strangeness for the Nepalese about a dead body. Just the deep sadness and mourning that comes with death. Without the disgust that an inanimate body brings, it seemed like the Nepalese connected and mourned the passage of the soul inhabiting the body differently — more humanely.
I can’t say how any of this ties to economics, but I am grateful to Stephen at Freakonomics for putting some light on a corner of the attic we try to avoid.
Favorite Thing on the Interwebs Today
The concept of fiat money coming with cigarette styled warning labels made me giggle. It’s worth the click to read the labels.
Bitcoin Price Prediction
Yesterday: $33.5k - $38k
Today: $34.6k - $38.9k
Tomorrow: $33k - $42k
Not a straight line indeed. After two days of nothing but grinding up, the Bitcoin price has found a temporary top at $38.9k where the price was soundly rejected earlier today. This is a good thing to cool off the market after a 13% move in two days. I suspect we’ll end the workweek between $33k to $38.2k while the price consolidates before breaking out either over the weekend or next week. The longer we stay in this big $28k-$42k range, the more support this region will provide for price in the future. It also suggests a more powerful and long-lasting move once we move out of the range.
All that’s to say, I’m not antsy for a big move up any time soon. We’re in January and the blow-off top the last two cycles hasn’t been until December. The macro set up continues to look extremely bullish. Not to mention that TODAY, Michael Saylor has more than 1000 corporate executive’s attention while he works to orange pill them on the benefits of BTC. The fundamental and technical picture couldn’t look better.
Bitcoin Ed Bite
Q: Is Bitcoin expensive?
A: Not at all.
Here’s the thing most people miss when they look at Bitcoin — what to compare it to. I bumped into this chart today and it explains it better than I. The price of a Bitcoin is listed on the left axis and the comparisons are the various blue, red, and yellow dots.
Gold is the most compelling comparison at the moment. If the value of the Bitcoin network reaches the value of all the gold above ground, we’re looking at $600k per Bitcoin. It’s not a straight line to get there, but it’s pretty inexpensive when you look at it with perspective, huh?
Shout out to Ecoinometrics for the chart.
Thanks for reading,
Kent
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