Round 4

Daily Ramble

I’m snooping on ya’ll. That’s right, I see how many people are opening my newsletter. Before you get your privacy panties in a bundle, I only see your email and the number of people that clicked through. I don’t even get to call my buddies out for not reading. Darn. But since I’m friends with almost everyone on the list, I know you’re not living the Portuguese life.

So permit me to ramble about Portugal a bit. Only twice in my life did I arrive at a place and get the sense that I was going to live there. The first was San Luis Obispo in November of 1997 when I visited the Cal Poly campus for the first time. Those rolling hills got my Scottish ancestral blood all fired up. The next step after High School was determined. By a feeling. Same with Portugal, in July 2014 I stepped off the plane in Faro having just arrived from Munich. As my feet touched the tarmac and my lungs filled with the Algarve air, I knew Portugal would be home. And so it was, 2 years later.

What makes Portugal unique? Too much for this daily ramble. Today let’s leave off with the idea of “place”. Originally settled by Celts, Phoenicians, and Romans, the culture stretches back to the beginnings of western civilization. Maybe it was the Phoenician bloodlines, those Biblical fishermen, that compelled the Portuguese to be the first explorers? My theory is that the deep love of pastries inspired the Portuguese to sail around the world — cinnamon and sugar were two of the first treasured imports. The Portuguese became the first global empire and their coin, the escudo, the first global reserve currency.

The Portuguese have been there and done that. From the edge of the Iberian peninsula, they went through all phases a culture can go through and after more than 800 years of being a culture, have boiled life down to just being human. Sure folks are busy here with daily life. But busy here is different than USA busy. Busy here is still taking time for conversation on meeting one another, a slow meal, afternoon coffee, and evenings that roll on in pleasant company. Everywhere you look there are little touches of comfort —perfectly scattered tiny parks with benches, cafes never more than a 10-minute walk away, and a focus on food that drives fast food far from the imagination.

How does this relate to the idea of “place”? “Place” is the concept of timelessness within a culture. Life comes and goes, but life goes on. Hardened by centuries of time it’s as if the culture has a shield around it built by a knowingness that the culture will survive this — whatever THIS is — as it has survived for 100s of years. Take COVID. Sure there’s fear, but it doesn’t have the flavor of existential risk. Life goes on… a lot like this rambling today, no?

Favorite Thing on the Interwebs Today

From my obscure digital corner of the web, this one made me laugh out loud. Baby Yoda, brought to adorable fame through the Mandalorian Disney series, face planting in a pile of coke is about as irreverent an image as it gets to describe life in crypto. And not wrong — the potential of this technology gets more than a few hyperactively excited.

Bitcoin

It’s why you read this far right? Let’s get to it. The price of Bitcoin traded yesterday between $17.3k - $18.2k creating the perfect breather for more upside today. Currently, the price looks to be pushing for further highs today. Could it go to $20k and attack the previous all-time high? I don’t see that, but I do see a push as high as $19k happening today. It’s all probabilities when it comes to the price. I’m comfortable suggesting a trading range of $17.3k - $19k for the day.

Yesterday, I mentioned the shock and awe people are experiencing around the price gains. I said it was because most people don’t understand the answer to the question “what is money?”. Here’s some data to back that up. The orange line above is the amount of BTC held on exchanges — the websites where people swap their fiat for BTC. The black line is the price of Bitcoin. Just look from May 2020: Bitcoin has been allergic to exchanges. A shortage of Bitcoin with demand increase = Number Go Up. Until this trend reverses, we can expect more of the same.

Right now, it’s really that simple. I don’t know how many times it’s been said, but at some point, it’ll click if it hasn’t already: there are only 21M Bitcoin that will ever exist. Just like the planet is not growing more land for us to live on, there is no more digital real estate available with Bitcoin. It’s literally the Wild West with settlers scooping up the digital real estate as quickly as they can. It’s the time in the cycle to stake a claim. You won’t be disappointed with the results. I won’t always say that, but I can right now with full confidence.

Thanks for reading,
Kent

Or

I don’t really care. I’m just going to keep writing thoughts into the void and see what happens.