Luck
Sunday Ramble
Today’s ramble has been stuck in the hopper nagging at me the last few days to spill some ink. The realities of working full-time for a startup have taken a while to sink into my thick head. But I’m getting there. My current conclusion is that this will be turning into a weekly Sunday Ramble from here on out. I was delusional, thinking I could get it out a couple of times during the workweek. Why Sundays? Because after a week of work and Saturdays for family, Sundays are what’s left. Sunday is also the day that the weekly price of Bitcoin closes, allowing me to make a fairly educated guess on the following week’s price action. Take it or leave it, but that’s where I am. Now on to rambling…
I’ve experienced a values shift over the previous few years that’s taken some time to pinpoint: luck is more important than good intentions, hard work, and skill. Perhaps it’s been Jodan Petersen’s book 12 Rules for Life that brought the idea of virtue signaling home to me. Still, everywhere I look, I see people living out the ideas propagated to us as children in our Disney movies where the hero wins the day by being and doing good. It’s one of the primary motivations I see and hear in people getting “vaccinated” from COVID and pushing it on others. They want to do the right thing and believe doing so helps others.
Now, I’m not arguing that you should NOT do the right thing or that helping others is unimportant. I am saying that persuading others to your moral cause is unhelpful if others don’t have the same moral compass. And the moral compass of doing good because it makes me a good person is not accurate. We’re all capable of being despicable and righteous human beings depending on our circumstances. If you don’t believe me, then you’ve never read about the Stanford Prison Experiment in which everyday people in a mock prison environment became the equivalent of Nazi soldiers. Yet, I see many people believing that their righteous actions make them a good person, and they don’t have the humility to recognize that they’ve got a dark side that all but the Ghandi’s of the world can overcome when push comes to shove. Being good doesn’t lead to a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And advertising good deeds does not make the pot of gold closer to grasp.
After spending time in the world of plant medicine for more than a decade, where curanderos talk about people having good or bad luck, I’ve come to believe that dumb-ass luck plays a more significant role in life than most of us have the humility to admit. Several studies have been done in recent years highlighting that luck is the defining characteristic between wealthy and those that aren’t. For example, a 40-year study published in 2018 proved that luck was the underlying factor separating the rich and average. Not hard work, intelligence, or perseverance — luck. Even more interesting is how few wealthy people recognize that luck played a significant part in their road to success. Instead, most will bang the drum about their work ethic, intelligence, and skills. And while that’s all-important in creating an environment for good luck to happen, it’s the excellent luck itself that thrusts people beyond average in their social strata.
Here’s the best part about shifting values from an “I’m good, so I became successful” to an “I’m lucky to be where I am” mindset: humility and gratitude are the side products. It is impossible to embrace luck and not realize how small and insignificant you are in the universe without feeling both humbled and grateful for luck’s results. If you’ve not heard, gratitude is one of the most beneficial emotions we can exhibit in life — try being down when you’re around someone grateful. I’d even go so far as to say that gratitude itself could be a good luck generator. Who knows what makes us lucky?
So if you’re someone that thinks doing good acts and broadcasting it is how you get the pot of gold, socially accepted, and the life you’ve dreamt, let me break it to you not-so-gently: you’re wrong. Be good and do good because it’s the right thing to do, not because of who’s watching you do it. And count your blessings for every stroke of luck that has gotten you to the incredible place you are, down to the mundane things like where you were born, your family, and your health. Of course, a little more humility and a little less hubris in this day and age wouldn’t hurt any of us either.
Rad Things on the Interwebs
Undoubtedly, the unfolding paradigm shift to Bitcoin will lead to new problems, but how great would it be to have our property secured by energy instead of human life.
Bitcoin Price Prediction
Weekly Range: $58k - $80k
Heading into the next week, we’ve got good chances of definitively breaking the all-time high and sailing into open waters. Three weeks ago, we broke the last all-time high set in May at $65k by reaching $67k, only to be rejected, leading to several weeks of consolidation. That consolidation is likely to lead to a decisive spring-like move. I am anticipating it breaks to the upside, but it’s not a given. If it does break to the upside, I may be undershooting the 80k high on my range prediction this week since Bitcoin in price discovery is hard to predict. Regardless, all signs point upwards here.
Bitcoin Q & A
Q: Will Bitcoin’s price peak in December or later?
A: I don’t know.
The last two cycles have seen blow-off top peaks in December. These occurred in 2013 and 2017. Many are convinced that we’ll see the same this December. I give it about 50/50 odds that we do versus pushing out the cycle peak into the first half of next year. Why? Because the volume of dollars needed to make the market move parabolically is becoming incredibly large. A move from $53k to $106k will require another $1T in capital inflows, for example. That said, if we see the price of Bitcoin double in less than ten days, we’re entering blow-off top territory.
Do you have questions or Ramble topics? Leave a comment or reply to the newsletter to reach me.
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