High Seas
Daily Ramble
I’ve been reading the Sovereign Individual, a book written in 1997, about how the coming Information Age will radically alter our societal organization and power dynamics. Almost 25 years since it was first printed, the book is finding newfound fame as its predictions have been eerily accurate catching the attention of a wider audience. The latest edition of the book was printed in January of 2020 with a foreword from Peter Thiel, a titan of Silicon Valley having co-founded PayPal and been the first investor in Facebook. Its gestation period took the greater part of 20 years, but The Sovereign Individual is astounding in depth and clarity of historic trends.
The book’s thesis is that history can be defined by who wields the ability to commit violence and how that is likely to shift based on technology. The authors predicted that the nation-state will end in the coming decades because of technological advancements in the same way the feudal system ended 500 years ago. Unbelievably, they were able to see that encryption technology would do to the state what the printing press did to the Catholic Church, ultimately causing the Church to lose its authority and allowing the Industrial Age to come into being. My words here are far too brief to do the book (that I have yet to complete) justice, but if you’re someone that wants some insight into our chaotic future, I don’t think you can find a better source.
In parallel, I stumbled across the idea “of encryption providing the boat on which individuals are sailing the digital high seas.” Thoughts of feudal history, and its demise on the high seas exploring the world, collided with the digitally encrypted boats many of us are jumping into and I got giddy with excitement. EVERY individual has the chance to become a captain of his/her boat in the digital ocean of the future. Borders and current institutions will crumble as individuals use encryption to organize anonymously on the internet funding the institutions they choose to uphold. Governments will scramble to offer the best services to their citizens to whom they will serve in exchange for voluntary payment of taxes. And just like the captains of the Golden Age of Discovery sailed the world, becoming keepers of global knowledge, those of us who learn to navigate on the digital ocean will become the new keepers of knowledge.
I may have missed the Age of Discovery and the Wild West, but I’ve got front seats for the newest age of exploration on the planet. Bloody exciting for a guy that loves continuously loves looking over the next horizon.
Favorite Thing on the Interwebs Today
That’s you! Just in case you didn’t think you contained the cosmos…
Bitcoin Price Prediction
Weekend: $48.8k - $54k
Today: $47.5k - $57.5k
Tomorrow: $43.9k - $58k
I love being wrong to the upside! I was way off base in anticipating a reaction around $54k on Friday. Since the last newsletter, the price of Bitcoin jacked up through $54k like it didn’t exist. It ran to a peak near $58.5k before losing momentum. Today, the real fireworks happened with the price of Bitcoin pulling back almost 20% to $47.5k before being bought back up to over $53k again — in just an hour! The crypto-coaster is a fast one.
Where do I see the price heading from here? In volatility like this, possibilities for more downside increase. I suspect we will go sideways here, with an outside chance we retest the lows at $47.5k again before the day is out, but that’s not likely. The market needs some time to catch its breath before buyers start to feel confident again. While that happens, I anticipate consolidating in this new range that’s been set from $47.5k - $58.5k with a strong chance we’ll dip lower than $47.5k in the days ahead to shake out the greedy sentiment currently gripping the market. Dips are for buying in a bull market and it’s only when the price goes down more than 40% can we consider the bull market behind us. Remember: Bitcoin being 100% supply-constrained makes it move unlike any other asset on the planet!
Bitcoin Ed Bite
Q: Why should I buy a Bitcoin when I can buy an Ethereum for 1/30th the price?
A: Because they’re not the same thing!
It’s tempting to boil crypto down to price to make comparisons, but you’ll just wind up losing your hard-earned cash. I mean, I can sell you a great bicycle for 1/30th the price of a Tesla, but would you say you got the same thing?
Over the next couple of days, I’ll explain how market capitalization, divisibility, and available tokens factor into the price you pay and how much you purchase. To be continued…
Thanks for reading,
Kent
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