Escape Hatch
Daily Ramble
Blissful ignorance. It’s the undying trait of a society committing suicide through inflation. Just like cigarettes are a slow way to unwind our mortal spool, inflation seems to be the same on a societal level. Or at least that’s what I gather as I read more about the history of inflation.
Last week, I mentioned reading When Money Dies. Still, as I dig deeper into the book, it’s not just the similarities today that I find intriguing, but the incredible blindness to the root causes of societal strife — money printing. To briefly back up, When Money Dies is a book documenting the hyperinflationary period in Germany after WWI from 1918-1923. If you’ve ever seen photos of people delivering wheelbarrow loads of paper notes for a loaf of bread, those pictures came from this period in history.
It may seem like madness now, but at the time, all stratum of society were blaming each other for the devaluation of the German mark — instead of the money printing. Those pointing to money printing as the root cause were popularly thought to be ignorant. Journalists went out of their way to explain why money printing had nothing to do with hyperinflation — indeed, printing was the only solution to end it!
100 years later, much of Western society seems to be traveling down the same path as we try to print enough money to paper over the structural problems in our system. And just as there was a tendency to shout down those in the Weimar Republic banging on the drum about inflation, those of us raising the concern are typically thought of us as oddballs that don’t get it. But there’s a major difference today that didn’t exist 100 years ago: instead of being locked into a potential hyperinflationary period, Bitcoin offers everyone an escape hatch.
Even the head of the European Central Bank understands the escape hatch Bitcoin represents.
Favorite Things on the Interwebs Today
Sure, why not? Let’s go ahead and heat our hot tubs with the heat put off from our Bitcoin miners.
Bitcoin Price Prediction
Yesterday: $34.6k - $40k
Today: $35.6k - $39k
Tomorrow: $35k - $40k
The chop of consolidation continues as the market wrapped up its second week since sellers capitulated on the 18th of May. Though subtle, yesterday’s price action showed the bulls to have the upper hand at the moment. Currently, we are at $37k, which is midway between the range high of $42k and $30k. Until either side of the range breaks, I anticipate that we’ll grind between the highs and lows. The long and short of it: don’t expect much price movement for a while.
Bitcoin Q & A
Q: How do I access the Lightning Network, and what do I need?
A: All you need is a Lightning-enabled wallet and some satoshis — fractions of a Bitcoin.
Recall that the Lightning Network is a network that runs on TOP of the Bitcoin network, much like Facebook is a social network that runs on top of the internet. The Lightning Network is accessed through a Lightning Wallet which uses satoshis, or fractions of a Bitcoin. Blue Wallet is the easiest wallet to get started — create a Lightning wallet, select ‘manage funds,’ then choose ‘external wallet,’ and send some satoshis to the address provided.
Thanks for reading,
Kent
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