Ministry of Truth
Sunday Ramble
New Year has come and gone. My family and I spent it watching recovering addicts sing their hearts out, free-style, and lay down some poetry beats. It was pretty amazing to see how Takiwasi re-homes addicts wanting to recover, offering them a family environment, and teaching them how to stand on their own two feet again — Jungian therapy and Amazonian plant medicines silently back the efforts. Seeing various men at the entry, mid, and exit points of their journey at Takiwasi made it abundantly clear the transformation they experienced over their 9-month stay.
Speaking of transformation, as we set sail across the blank canvas of a new year, the thing I’m most curious to see is how humanity reacts to the pandemic, especially within the US, the bastion of human liberty. My conviction is growing that the US masses are shifting into an awakening period. If it happens, I believe Joe Rogan will be elevated to demigod status for platforming the voices of highly credentialed medical professionals to question the “vax us out of pandemic land” strategy. Joe is doing his best to batter ram the official narrative.
This week, Joe’s guest was the much-maligned Dr. Malone, inventor of the mRNA vaccine, who has both caught COVID and been double vaccinated. It’d be an understatement to say that Dr. Malone has some authority on the matter. In the course of his conversation with Joe, they covered a lot of ground, but the summary was clear: there’s been a systemic avoidance of treatment-based options for COVID. Hearing it from a man who is a grandfather, horse rancher, and doctor without a vested interest in the outcome makes it difficult to find him impeachable. He will be, though, I’m sure — he was kicked off of Twitter the day before his Joe Rogan interview.
And that brings me to the fascinating aspect of COVID — censorship. What I didn’t realize was just how coordinated it has been. Don't worry if you’ve never heard of the Trusted News Initiative kicked off by the BBC. You’re not alone. The initiative has admirable goals of fighting disinformation related to all sorts of matters and was initially dreamt up to combat election disinformation. The members are a who’s who in the tech and media world:
AP, AFP; BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU),Facebook, Financial Times, First Draft, Google/YouTube, The Hindu, Microsoft , Reuters, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter, The Washington Post.
While the goal of combatting wrong information is lofty, there has to be some ultimate source of trust for these organizations to judge misinformation against. Logically, for COVID, they chose the WHO, CDC, NIH, and FDA, as best as I can pin down. The media and tech giants listed above would then use these governmental institutes to assess disinformation from fact. Can anyone else see the fly in the ointment here? You’re clever if you said, “What happens if any of the government institutions are wrong? for $200, Alex.”
And that’s precisely what has happened. Instead of the Trusted News Initiative scrubbing out the wrong information (which I’m sure they’ve done a fair bit of as well), it’s also been used to censor even the wisest amongst us. Why? Because the government institutions have been exalted as arbiters of truth. I’m not sure whether the system’s design, function, and outcome are occurring by incompetence or malfeasance. The first is quite normal to us bumbling primates, while a few wrong-headed primates use the second to manipulate the majority.
So if you thought yourself going mad reading information that seemed accurate, smelled right, and sounded logical, but you were told it was wrong by the COVID police, now you know why. So yes, I feel satisfied — though disturbed as well. But more than anything, I’m glad to be finding this out at the beginning of 2022, so we’ve got plenty of time to kick our Ministry of Truth habit before celebrating the next new year.
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Bitcoin Price Prediction
Weekly Range: $39k - $52k
This last week proved that we’re still very much in grind mode, with the price bouncing between $45k and $52k. Because of the holidays, it was a lightly traded market, so I don’t have a clear sense if we’re going to bounce from the bottom of the range again as we did two weeks ago, or if we’ll push below come Monday’s market when the pros are back at their desks. It is slightly bullish to see the bottom of the range hold as long as it has, suggesting to me that a bounce is more likely than a further drop, but if it does break below $45k, we can expect as low as $39k to be on the table. On the bullish side, there’s not much to get excited about until we break through $52k.
Looking at the fundamentals, I am interested to see if institutional capital flows into the space over the next three months. Many institutions have strict budgeting and planning processes, making the beginning of 2022 the first time they’re prepared to purchase Bitcoin. If we see inflows of capital from the institutions, Bitcoin could begin to move quickly again.
Bitcoin Q & A
Q: Will Bitcoin be worth more than $100k in 2022?
A: I don’t know.
As we start the New Year, price predictions are on everyone’s mind. While I don’t have a clear idea of Bitcoin’s price by the end of 2022, I know it has averaged a 155% compounded annual growth since its inception. Should that trend hold, then Bitcoin will end 2022 well over $100k. Its price increases are already genuinely astounding for an asset that started 13 years ago at $.06 per bitcoin. But if it entirely overtakes the store of value market, estimated at $400T, each Bitcoin has a ceiling price of $19M each. Woah.
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