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The ability to quickly pivot whenever you want to;

The passion of outside?

So I think something I have discovered about myself is that I have a passion of outside being outside etc. Pretty much what this means is my passion is to not be in some sort of stifling cramped indoor space but rather, my passion is to be outside, With the open sky the open air etc.

Currently staying at a home exchange in the mountains in Southern California, and the mountain house is super lovely, but just even taking a quick jump outside, and then going back inside… Immediately I feel stifled and “ddab ddab hae” indoors.

The phrase ddab ddab hae in Korean is super interesting — essentially it means feeling kind of like claustrophobic, or constrained, or the feeling of feeling cramped. Once again, if you are an outside mountain spirit, the feeling of being stuck indoors.

Nietzsche one said trust no thought which does not come to assuming you’re not in the open air, outside, preferably in the mountains. Even Nietzsche — I believe he had my asthma or poor health or poor breathing or lungs or something, he traveled all around Europe until he was able to find some sort of nice mountainside retreat in Italy, maybe in the small town of Turin, in which suddenly, all of his sicknesses and ailments ceased?

 so I think the first thing is nature, big and nature, I think it’s just good for the human soul, our mind our brain, our physiology our eyes and eyeballs etc. For example, I think it is a bit foolish when all of these monks and pseudo in lightened Silicon Valley folks and thinkers believe that you could somehow “think“ yourself out of a problem or a mental malady. It is my personal belief that actually, the only way to read yourself a badness is to actually get your ass out of the house, go a walk, go outside!

Not cars

Not cars, not vehicles.

So even if you had the world’s best Lamborghini with the scissor doors or the off-road in Lamborghini sterrato whatever, doesn’t matter what color scheme, rims or whatever, as long as you do not have 100% leg freedom, you ain’t got nothing.

For example, driving down, stuck on some of the really really bad Riverside traffic, and actually, the real tragedy here is that some people have to take this god-awful commute, maybe 2 1/2 or three hours each way, to buy a nice big house in Riverside, in order to commute to Los Angeles? To me even if you gave me the world’s trillion dollar car, this trade would not be worth it.

Why? Once again it is a physics, physiological thing; there is no good on the planet which is worth the pain and suffering of being stuck sitting in a sedentary position. Even if you are in an airplane, a jet, flying first class or whatever, even if you are in the most luxurious of all luxurious seats or sitting situations, none of it is worth it. Why? Because once again when you’re sitting, you’re in a very very fragile position, in the most miserable of all physiological positions.

For example, let us consider how in fact, what is the human being being designed for? We are designed to stand upright, to walk, much of our ability to be by pets balance, look into the distance and walk, is structured around this. If a human being does not need to walk and move around or be outside or be upright, he has no reason for a brain or any body physiology.

So once again, to be human is to walk, to be outside, no ceilings no roofs, no glass ceilings.

Homes?

So, then at the end of the day, what is the meaning of the purpose of having a home?

There are 1 trillion different ways one could configure ones living circumstances, configurations etc.

For example, you could have a big ass ranch, a big ass backyard in front lawn and back lawn and private property, or you could live in an apartment, kind of more connected to society.

You could also live in a trailer home, or even I guess live in the trunk of your cyber truck.

I suppose then, the primary question to ask yourself is what do I see, what do I want from life, what do I want to out of life?

First, the light the sun. For me the sun is the source of all energy, all power, all happiness and joy. So to ideally live somewhere sunny is a virtue. I have a funny ongoing theory that human beings, we’re just like plants except we move a lot quicker.

Second, the joy of weightlifting. Still, after all of this, I still really do have a passion for lifting weights, weightlifting etc. To me it is like my ultimate form of Z meditation exercise and without weightlifting, things become a bit boring, uninteresting etc.  For example, the courage needed to lift very very heavyweights, requires 100% of your focus, a 100% focus of your presence. You cannot fake it; precisely because extremely heavy weightlifting is dangerous, that is what forces you to focus.

And this is the very very funny thing. When I would lift nine plates 10 plates and beyond at the gym, people always tell me “be careful“. Duh! This is the whole point! To be careful means to take care, take care, Which means you don’t fuck around, you don’t even listen to music; even music is a distraction. No stupid AirPods on, no external distractions. No phone.

In fact, one thing I’m very very grateful for the gym I used to go to the last few years, is that I was able to ride down the whole bitcoin downturn, due to the FTX meltdown, the hilarious thing; after buying my bitcoin in around 2018, I just literally never ever ever check the prices for almost 4 years; Rest and vest. And the only time I would ever be exposed to the price of bitcoin was on accident; in which I would accidentally see the price or something.

Anyways, I’m grateful for my journey thus far, not having lost any bitcoins or anything. Apparently I read or heard something, whenever you go to a bitcoin conference or something, you never ask people how many bitcoins you have your own, but how many bitcoins you have lost, that is the true indicator of how long you have been in the game.

But then again, I think the tricky thing with bitcoin crypto currencies, the whole crypto economy is that it is all a bit strange convoluted and polluted. Too many ideas, too many opinions, you gotta just hang out, take it out to the beginning.

The issue with the physical realm

So the biggest issue that I have is that there’s so much waste, so much physical waste in the physical realm. For example you might have your Lamborghini your RV your truck, your over landing vehicle, your AMG sprinter van, all your expensive Apple devices, your big ass house whatever. Yet all of these things seem to be more liabilities than assets to me.

One thing that I really really love about bitcoin is that it seems to be the ultimate portable, durable, weightless thing to just carry around. For example, assuming that you have an iPhone an iPad, some sort of MacBook laptop device, or something on iCloud iCloud chain, Safari Google Chrome whatever, Gmail, Google services, all of your money and assets and store of value is secure. And in theory, you can immediately liquidate your assets.

For example, even if you own some sort of RV or expensive car or something, the huge pain of having to liquidate it and sell it, this is a huge pain in the ass. You still have to find a seller, you need to figure a way to quickly or efficiently or securely Broker the trade or whatever… To me, this ain’t worth it.

What is actually useful in the physical realm

Things I find useful in the physical realm include fresh air, beautiful bright sun and sunlight, peace and quiet, absence of pollution, hot baths, Wi-Fi, 5G, cameras digital cameras, video cameras, a grill is super awesome but not 100% necessary, And having some sort of vehicle that could take you around.

In fact, recently doing a road trip to Norcal and back, I’m still shocked… The Toyota Prius, a hybrid vehicle which runs on both gasoline and has a battery an electric charging battery, seems to be the ideal hybrid? The ideal thing that leverage is both the upside of gasoline which is insane power and energy in liquefied compact form, as well as the battery, which kind of somehow magically charges itself, through the braking mechanism in the Prius and car?

And I think the thing that is difficult for people to understand on just how amazing the Toyota Prius and hybrid system is; it really is so insanely clutch right when you need it.

For example, doing a last-minute drive somewhere, and just having one tick of gas, but still being able to drive all the way from the Pacific Palisades back home to Culver City, like 5% of gas left, could still take you around 40 to 50 miles?

And this is super super useful because the second you’re trying to beat rush-hour traffic, and you cannot be fucked to stop by a gas station or a Tesla supercharger, because you want to quickly hit the road, you don’t have to deal with having to stop by a gas station or an electric charging station if you don’t want to; you have the option, More optionality!

Seek optionality

I don’t need to own it, I could just visit it rent it borrow it try it out for the week or weekend!

I think this is also a big thing, we Americans we are so silly in our notion of “ownership“, we both believe that in order to gain legitimacy, we have to “own” the underlying asset.  but I was thinking about it… Never really kind of own anything, maybe besides bitcoin.

Why? So for example let us say that you own a single-family home property whatever, you don’t really 100% owned, you’re just borrowing it from the federal government, the local city government etc. And you’re paying a huge state tax fee local fee tax fee etc.

Also, vehicles automobiles cars etc., as long as you’re sooner or later taking some sort of public Road Highway, freeway etc., you don’t really 100% on your car either because you’re just kind of leasing the rights to use your vehicle on public roads, as long as you had to pay some sort of DMV fee and sticker, you never really 100% own your vehicle.

And also, you still have to pay car insurance, like forever. And once again, vehicle registration fees. Even the fees even though the fees are not super super high, you still gotta pay something.

I think also one of the soccer fallacies is that some people fall victim to this notion of somehow like you buy some sort of RV or truck or converted Mercedes sprinter van and you could somehow turn it into like a mobile house or a mobile RV, and then you could just finally become free travel through the states whatever, etc.… But still you’re kind of a slave because you still have to find somewhere to park at night, you often had to pay a fee to park somewhere, And also, more private things like you gotta pay for sanitation to plumb out your vehicle, you still need to buy food and stuff, etc. This is where I still think it is wiser to just rent an apartment and somewhere desirable where you could just walk everywhere because once again,Americans we were romanticize the idea other great American road trip and being on the road, but still… The ideal strategy is to spend like close to 0% of your time in a car or a vehicle, and you try to instead, spend about 100% of your time walking around outside in the direct light or the direct sun.

So the ideal goal is to find a place or a local or a city or neighborhood or area that you absolutely love like for me in Culver City, the arts district, and you could just 100% pedestrian walk yourself everywhere, just jump on the metro E line if you want, and just go on a drive if you want. 

And once again, location location location location location. I still cannot stress this enough; because of the laws of physics, Los Angeles, Los Angeles traffic; still the most intelligent strategy in life is to find the best location absolutely, in which you never have to drive more than five minutes a day. Or driving just becomes an optional thing; you could actually live a virtuous 100% pedestrian lifestyle.

it is difficult to monetize walking

So I think the biggest issue here is that walking is not really popular as a past time because it is difficult to monetize. Compare this instead of running or jogging or whatever, easy easy easy because you could sell these stupid overpriced $300 or $400 running sneakers, which are only for skinny fat losers. 

And also, I think maybe this is the reason why automobile cars are so sought after an American society; because our society almost close to 100% of it is still dependent on a car, only society in which nobody really owns a car is probably New York New York City or Brooklyn, or the main island; even the rich people don’t really own a car, they might have a private driver or they might just even take the metro, or just walk or even take an Uber. Which is even easier than coordinating a personal driver.

Even in San Francisco, sooner or later everyone kind of wants a car or a Tesla or something, or maybe a Waymo,  but the sense I have is nobody wants to live in San Francisco anymore, not the huge exodus out of the Bay Area, in fact more people I see in tech are settling in Los Angeles West Los Angeles, even my tech cousin Daniel just moved to the Sawtelle neighborhood. 

Sooner or later everybody ends up in LA.

So my very very simple suggestion is with life and everything in general, just get off of loser Instagram TikTok YouTube Spotify Twitter all of the social media services. Even I was randomly getting back into Twitter because there are lots of important financial news to stay updated there, and before Trump got elected, it was actually kind of necessary for me to do some research about his policies about bitcoin and crypto, because I am 100% all in on bitcoin. But still… Access to the information the news the truth, it is so toxic. Maybe it is better to be a little bit more poor, without the toxicity, rather than being richer with more toxicity. 

Better to be poorer, and less toxic rather than be richer and more toxic.

Goals?

Bitcoin for Investors

One interesting thing that I’ve learned about bitcoin just things and life in general is that you only really really discover something or take full heart to it when you actually really have a need for it.

For example, the story of Michael Saylor microstrategy and bitcoin; the only reason that Michael Saylor really took it was because he had a real need for it; 500 million in cash, in kind of stagnant company– he needed to add vitality back to life to his company and corporation.

Necessity is the true mother of all innovation

Similarly speaking, myself, moving here to LA, staring at this ridiculous high cost of living, and trying to find innovative ways to approach money, productivity time etc. I found bitcoin as almost a salvation for me, Cindy, my aging mom, Seneca, and my future family!

How and why bitcoin has changed my life

So I think traditionally, most of us are stuck into the work cycle. It is a simple mathematical equation: a simple vector equation;  in goes your effort, time, and labor, outcomes money and income.

So for most people, there is directly proportional effect:

You labor harder, more, and you yield more US dollars, and you work hard, put out new innovative product services etc., a lot of hard work and time, heavily market the thing, through genuine and effort full channels, and then wait diligently for somebody to purchase your products services workshops etc., hope they pay, and then when that dust settles within a month two or three, then you could withdraw that money from your PayPal or digital broker, and then deposited into your checking account, finally logging in and securing your “gain”,

“Income”

So this is where things become funny: the notion of “income”.

Once again, I’m still relatively new to all of this, in the sense that the average time labor, we have a hard time thinking like an investor. For example, to think that you just have $2 million in capital, you have some deep insight and intuition about something,  and then you invest that money into the thing, and then over the course of a few days weeks months, two months, three months, four months five months, a year, 4 to 5 years, the number magically goes up!

To me, this is still like wizardry, like pure magic!

And I still think this is where it is difficult to understand; to those who have access to capital, you essentially have an economic lever to lever up, and leverage that, which is just economic power and energy, to be even more more energy, more power.

The Spartan investor

So we hear stories of Warren Buffett, living the same old house, driving the old same Honda Accord whatever, and then just spending all day reading the newspaper investing in the markets, and then becoming like the third world’s richest man, all at the age of 80 or 90 years old, But your old sick fat and tired, still eating McDonald’s and drinking Coca-Colas.

Warren Buffett is not a good example. Even he was a skeptic and critic of bitcoin.

I think the hard thing is everyone uses Warren Buffet as an example, but for my general sense, given the fact that he has invested heavily into Coca-Cola, he is no better than people who invest in fill up Morris evil cigarette and now vaping corporation, to spin a certain profit.

Tell me that, everyone wants to be as rich as Warren Buffett but nobody actually wants to become Warren Buffett. Do you know anybody in the given universe who wants to be that old fat sick and unshapely? 

Instead, I’m much better idea is to be as jacked as King Leonidas, Gerald Butler in the movie 300, all while being a billionaire. My vision is essentially having the hard spartan body, naked and super fucking jacked, and also… This is the critical one; insanely Spartan and frugal, surprising everyone that you drive a Toyota Prius, even though you could afford like 20 cyber trucks.

I think what I have discovered finally at the age of 36, is that with bitcoin, this changes everything. Why? Before bitcoin has finally hit mass adoption, and now that starting next year January 2025 will be a year one of bitcoin institutional adoption,  what that means is having a bitcoin is like having a cyber truck or Lamborghini on steroids, but on a digital wheel. 

This is my visual: I was at the park yesterday with Seneca, playing with him at night, just having the house key in my front pocket, no phone no nothing not even my camera, and we’re just playing around in the tot lot, kicking around some bark, and I had the funny thoughts; would I trade a bitcoin for a Tesla? Maybe a cyber truck? But actually the other day I jumped into a cyber truck and I was a little bit underwhelmed; the funny thing about the cyber truck is that it looks so flashy and awesome from the outside, put on the inside once you actually step into it, it is a bit underwhelming; it doesn’t really feel that different from sitting inside a Honda Accord or a Toyota Camry. Maybe it would be different if you were homeless and just owned a cyber truck and just slept in the trunk bed, but beyond this, I think cyber truck is one of those funny things that you could just admire it from the outside, without actually having to own it.  and if anything, the real thing to just wait for or save up for is the cyber taxi, which could just shuttle your kid to baseball practice, or take your wife directly to campus or work through the grueling 405 morning commute traffic.

Anyways, now, my calculus is simple; I think of everything in context to bitcoin.

For example, whenever I critically look and asses these things, I think to myself,

How many bitcoins could I buy with this thing? 

For example I was just trolling around with the finance calculator for the Tesla website, and still the cheapest Tesla model three, base edition, after taxes and even after the federal rebate, will still run you around $40-$45,000 at the door. And no this is the cheapest version! This is like half a bitcoin or a third of a bitcoin. I’d rather take the bitcoin which is going to $13 million, rather than the Tesla car which is going to zero.

Accretive or dilutive? 

A new line of thinking I’ve also been thinking about is this general idea of accretive vs dilutive;  that means, is this thing that I’m interested, will it increase value, a.k.a. go up in value, or go down in value?

So I think now that Trump is president, bitcoin at this point is in my mind, practically 100% cemented and certain to go up forever. However as I mentioned in my prior essay, the philosophy of volatility, to reach higher highs you gotta reach lower lows? 

So assuming that you just took snapshots every year, at random high points year over year, you will find that bitcoin is the insanely obvious choice. With enough hindsight, with enough 2020 you can see and determine and ascertain that in fact, bitcoin is by far the winning bet, nearly a trillion-fold obvious decision!  it has insane volatility which means it goes up and down a lot, constantly, but the cool thing is that it will essentially go up forever!

And this is like volatility, it is like having a hyper charger or a supercharger in your engine; more power or more velocity, more extremes to reach higher performance.

For example if you think about the velocity of a roller coaster; what makes it fun is precisely the highs and lows. If you take one of those boring kid ones, which is pretty much steady, it is insanely boring. Why? The thrills of the roller coaster– once again we are the adrenaline junkies!

Practical strategies

OK… if you want the ultimate blend of safety with high-yield, my suggestion is 90% of your capital into bitcoin,  and 10% into microstrategy stock (MSTR). This is what I personally do.

Why? Essentially you could treat Marco strategy stock like your cash; it keeps going up in value, and actually in fact goes up quicker than bitcoin; although it is a Security, a stock that you don’t really own, like bitcoin which is digital property. I love Michael Saylor and microstrategy to death, I have like literally watched and listen to every single Michael Saylor podcast interview available out there, I also read his book the mobile wave, and I’ve tried to consume every single piece of literature or thing that Michael Saylor has put out there. I also watched his recent earnings call, and watching it all in all, almost like watching a rockstar.

However at the end of the day once again, the name of the game is to accumulate and acquire more bitcoins. He or she with the most bitcoins, or the entity with the most bitcoins shall win.

America bitcoin first strategy

So a simple thought to the Trump bitcoin administration and beyond;

First, America must be the bitcoin leader. We must be the nation with the most bitcoin in our treasury reserves.

Sent you the basic ideas like we are creating the next bitcoin Fort Knox; we must dominate every other nation in terms of the number of our bitcoin holdings, kind of like imagine military power, but bitcoin as cyber power.

For example let us assume that the US Navy has strategic military dominance over the planet. And let us assume that our military power is at least 10,000 X to that mainland China.

So in theory in terms of numbers, America must supersede mainland China in our bitcoin holdings. By at least a factor of 10,000X.

I think even Donald Trump joked that maybe we could even use some of our bitcoin to pay back our national debt?

I think actually the more interesting strategy is we hoard our bitcoins forever, until the end of time, and instead, I don’t know… Someone with some good economic wizardry could figure out how we could leverage our debt in intelligent ways so we could actually pay back our debt without having to sell bitcoin.

And once again… I think this is the main idea on my mind right now — we can continue to accumulate bitcoin, stack bitcoin, etc.,  and figure out how we leverage borrowing cheap money or debt from other banks entities, to make money?


Being positively polarized to capital 

My has enjoy an interest; give me all your capital, and I will invest it and grow it for you!

Eric@erickim.com


Cyber Capital

So the reason why I think this is such a big deal is that finally, with bitcoin, we have finally crossed the chasm. What this means is finally, in the year 2024 and beyond, capital is finally cyber. What this means is next frontier of capital is practically infinite. 

Let me explicate this a bit more on why this is such a big deal:

So it looks like traditionally, the last frontier of making money and wealth was companies. Why? With technology, finally you were able to break free a little bit of physical limitations. For example, with Google Amazon Facebook etc., you were able to finally cross the digital divide which means that you could actually Feel all things in assets digitally, like digital advertisements digital value etc. Yet the different nuance is still… Capital was not yet in the digital realm. For example even though Amazon Facebook Google and the big tech companies could create value digitally through cyber space in cyber networks, there was no Internet native money or capital in which they could store their value.

For example all the big companies, we’re still reliant on JP Morgan Chase to custody their US dollars and field currency the treasury reserve assets etc.

But starting January of next year 2025… This will all change.

ERIC


Paradise Bitcoin

So I have a vision, it is titled paradise bitcoin. What is the general idea?


Paradise Computers

First, my first entrepreneurial venture was a one when I was around 15 years old, my friend Eric Moon just taught me how to build computers, using the thermal pace on the processors and everything, and he gave me a simple idea; I could build a computer super super cheap, buy the parts myself and put the parts together, and then I could sell it for a small profit, like 100 bucks or something. When I registered the eBay seller account, I called it “paradise computers”. I still remember I used Adobe Photoshop, and I used the little icon of the beach palm tree, and I made it bright orange, and I would use all these pictures of babes, to plaster advertisements for my awesome computers.

Who doesn’t want paradise?

Why paradise? Simply put, aren’t we all seeking paradise?

For example, in terms of bitcoin, to me it really is kind of a paradise thing; something in which we are seeking some sort of economic paradise. 

For example, everyone loves and cares for money, whether it be deep or superficial. But assuming that you own an iPhone, use Wi-Fi, then the truth is ain’t nobody can exist without money.

I think also a sociological intervention that I understand;  money is just human technology. There is nothing on the planet that intrinsically has any worth; the worth of something is what society agrees on that has value, so you think of the sociology of money is super fascinating.

You cannot eat gold 

For example, why do we value gold? According to Fernandinho Galliani’s ON MONEY, he says that we prize gold because it is rare, stable, and just has a beautiful color which is very very fitting to adorn your children with gold jewelry, also for women. So he thought that it was useful because it was easily transportable, the color in itself was beautiful, and that it was just a beautiful object. But even he knew the rules of monetary inflation, for example when outlining the discovery of the New World, he noted that the price of gold plummeted, with a huge influx of gold from the Americas. Galiani also wisely noted that there were many countries in which silver was actually more valued than gold, and he even talks about how gold, at least 10 times as valuable as bronze, talking about the “bad trade” that one of the heroes did in the Iliad, trading his armor that was worth 100 oxen, of gold, for a tin one which is considered a lot less worth it, about 10 times less. In fact a lot of economists still use this ratio measure to determine the price of gold in respect to other things back in ancient Greek times.

The magic of bitcoin

Anyways, in the world of assets, it is very tricky; you got securities, which aren’t really worth anything in itself, they are predicated on companies, company policies, rules and regulations, the SCC, the rules of the stock market etc.

To me, the extreme magic of bitcoin is that it is an asset without an issuer, which means that it is the world‘s first true digital commodity, which is based in real life physics, as it requires real life analog energy to mine and produce. Not only that, it is now a $1.5 trillion asset class, only worth about $500 billion maybe three or four years ago, so simply put, it is growing at a wonderfully alarming rate.

How Facebook grew like wildfire 

It’s kind of like iPhone penetration, or social media penetration. For example there is an extreme network effect here; if you are Facebook, and you have a place to post your pictures and your status updates, you get all your friends to join, they get their friends to join, and as a consequence, everyone benefits from this monetary and social network.

Assuming that bitcoin is like the new Facebook or social media of money, which is connected to all 8 billion people on the planet, kind of a big deal.

Bitcoin unifies all people on the planet 

Why? You could own bitcoin and be in south Sudan, Nigeria, Lagos, Vietnam Sweden or Dubai, and even if you own a few Satoshis or a fraction of a bitcoin, you are my brother!

And not only that, but I was actually thinking about it… bitcoin truly may be the first real perfect property, also a digital property.

For example, one of the major issues and headaches about real property, like real estate, commercial real estate, even owning a single-family home is that you have to deal with property taxes, local laws, regulations, politics, local politics, national and federal politics etc. Also you have to make friends with the local politicians the mayor, to slide by regulations etc.

Now I think politics is fine; but, technically the problem about it it is “unfair“; if your best friends with one of the local politicians, you have an edge, but if you don’t know nobody, you are at a disadvantage.


Economic paradise

So I don’t know any human being who doesn’t want to be rich and have a lot of money, whether they use their wealth for good or bad or whatever… everyone loves money, everyone loves talking about it etc. But I suppose the difficult thing is how do you approach money in a way that is philosophically meaningful and also good, not superficial but deep, striving to approach it in such a way which is good for you society etc.

Why do you have dysentery? 

Now some thoughts; first, you cannot blame people if the money itself is toxic. For example, assuming that they are drinking sewage water– you cannot get angry or upset, assuming that it is their fault for getting dysentery; no, the simple causation; the toxic water supply is causing the dysentery, not somehow the moral degeneracies of said individual.

Traditional fiat currency is like sewage water 

Assuming that bitcoin is the world’s first perfect money, which is tamper proof resistant, ethical, and open, then if this is the case, the best way to think and consider things is that maybe half of the world’s problems which are predicated on money is not a moral individualistic problem, but rather, a technological problem.

This means I wonder if a lot of people’s poor spending habits are simply a cause of inflation, and bad monetary policies? Assuming we had good money sound money, bitcoin, maybe people could better start saving investing and planning for the future? 

So perhaps if we are seeking some sort of economic life paradise we should seek bitcoin?

ERIC

***

Paradise Bitcoin

So I have a vision, it is titled paradise bitcoin. What is the general idea,?

First, my first entrepreneurial venture was a one when I was around 15 years old, my friend ERIC Moon just taught me how to build computers, using the thermal pace on the processors and everything, and he gave me a simple idea; I could build a computer super super cheap, buy the parts myself and put the parts together, and then I could sell it for a small profit, like 100 bucks or something. When I registered the eBay seller account, I called it “paradise computers”. I still remember I used Adobe Photoshop, and I used the little icon of the beach palm tree, and I made it bright orange, and I would use all these pictures of babes, two plaster advertisements for my awesome computers.

Why paradise? Simply put, aren’t we all seeking paradise?

For example, in terms of bitcoin, to me it really is kind of a paradise thing; something in which we are seeking some sort of economic paradise.

For example, everyone loves and cares for money, whether it be deep or superficial. But assuming that you own an iPhone, use Wi-Fi, then the truth is ain’t nobody can exist without money.

I think also a sociological intervention that I understand;  money is just human technology. There is nothing on the planet that intrinsically has any words, the worth of something is what society agrees on that has value, so you think of the sociology of money is super fascinating.

For example, why do we value gold? According to Fernand Nagai‘s on money, he says that we prize cold because it is rare, stable, and just has a beautiful color which is very very fitting to adore your children with gold jewelry, also for women. So he thought that it was useful because it was easily transportable, the color in itself was beautiful, and that it was just a beautiful object. But even he knew the rules of monetary inflation, for example when outlining the discovery of the New World, he noted that the price of plummeted, with a huge influx of gold from the Americas. Also he wisely noted that there were many countries in which silver was actually more valued than gold, and he even talks about how gold, at least 10 times as valuable as Bronze, talking about the “bad and portray that one of the heroes did in the Elliot, trading his armor that was worth 100 auction, of gold, for a tin one which is considered a lot  less worth it, about 10 times less.

Anyways, in the world of assets, it is very tricky; you got securities, which aren’t really worth anything in itself, they are predicated on companies, company policies, rules and regulations, the SCC, the rules of the stock market etc.

 to me, the extreme magic of bitcoin is that it is an asset without an issue, which means that it is the world‘s first true digital commodity, which is based in real life physics, as it requires real life analog energy to mine and produce. Not only that, it is now a $1.4 trillion acid class, only worth about 500 billion maybe three or four years ago, so simply put, it is growing at a wonderfully alarming rate.

It’s kind of like iPhone penetration, or social media penetration. For example there is an extreme network effect here; if you are Facebook, and you have a place to post your pictures and your status updates, you get all your friends to join, they get their friends to join, and as a consequence, everyone benefits from this monetary and social network.

Assuming that bitcoin is like the new Facebook or social media of money, which is connected to all 8 billion people on the planet, kind of a big deal.

Why? You could own bitcoin and be in south Sudan, Nigeria, Lagos, Vietnam Sweden or Dubai, and even if you own a few Satoshi‘s or a fraction of a bitcoin, you are my brother!

And not only that, but I was actually thinking about it… bitcoin truly may be the first real perfect property, also a digital property.

For example, one of the major issues and headaches about real property, like real estate, commercial real estate, even owning a single-family home is that you have to deal with property taxes, law law, regulations, politics, local politics, national and federal politics etc. Also you have to make friends with the local politicians the mayor, to slide by regulations etc.

Now I think politics is fine; but, technically the problem about it it is “unfair “; if your best friends with one of the local politicians, you have an edge, but if you don’t know nobody, you are at a slight disadvantage.


The Philosophy of Volatility

A super super interesting thought on my mind is the quote from Michael Saylor, volatility is vitality. What does that mean, why does it matter etc.?

First, typically when we think of volatility, it is in the financial realm. We think of volatility in the context of something going up and down, almost unpredictably, chaotically, crazily.

For example in the markets, we tend to think of volatility like a bad thing. Because most people cannot stomach the up and downs.

I am an interesting case because obviously I’m affected by it too. Yet now, whenever I see volatility, I’m more annoyed than anything, like the days that bitcoins down, or the days that microstrategy stock is a little bit down, it is almost more like having an annoying mosquito bite, Maybe even a tiny splinter than anything. The good thing with mosquito bites is as time goes on, we know that it will fade, although it is very annoying. Also, with the tiny splinter… Super super annoying to pick it out, but you can!


Nuclear power

So besides Chernobyl and Fukushima, I actually think that nuclear power is a super smart idea. Certainly nobody wants nuclear fallout, but come on… It is year 2024. For a while, me and Seneca were playing with SimCity: cities of the future on the Mac, and also, we watched the cities of the future film on IMAX and also 3-D, at the California science center. It is still kind of bizarre to me… Once again, the year 2024, if I think about the film Elysium, produced by Bill Block, and starring Matt Damon, shouldn’t we kind of be living in this futuristic, cyberpunk, or massively green and beautiful bright future? Not kind of this ugly, slumlord vibes we get from watching a film like Snowpiercer?

Even often the truth is a distraction 

Anyways, about two or three days ago I was curious why bitcoin spiked so high, breaking the mythical $70,000 mark, after about 2 to 4 years of languishing. So I searched it on ChatGPT, and randomly saw that because Elon Musk tweeted it? And then I was curious, and then I kind of went down a rabbit hole, checking Elon Musk Twitter, Seeing now how he endorses Donald Trump, and then seeing the tweed video the retweeted video of the Joe Rogan podcast with Donald Trump.

Anyways, I was watching the interview, I watched about half of it, very fun and interesting and entertaining! One of the interesting things is how Joe Rogan was asking Trump about nuclear.

So to me nuclear is interesting because it is insanely high volatility like it has a lot of power. But if done right, if handled quickly, it is essential you produce practically free energy for everybody! Apparently they do it well in France I think, they just create a bunch of these mini nuclear power plants, And the French citizens benefit?

A good reason to be anti stoic 

I think about 99% stoicism is good, come on, I named my firstborn son after Seneca the younger, the great stoic sage!

Yet where stoicism fails, I call this “the life after stoicism”, is that Stoicism is too focused on hardening yourself into like a porcupine, and then eventually, it makes you unemotional or unfeeling etc. Yet what if you want to embrace this interesting strategy; put on the stoic armor, in which you don’t really suffer any downsides from life, but you could harness the volatility of life, and channel harness and reap the benefits of the upside?

Stoicism is not volatile enough. Certainly we want Stoicism to clip and hedge the downsides of life, but, you want at least 200X upside in life!

The wisdom of kids

So kind of an interesting thing I learned from Seneca, kids in general etc.; Seneca is about 3 1/2, and when he is angry or upset about something, he’ll get angry, he’ll throw stuff, stop his feet, put out a lot of high energy, start screaming and yelling, and shouting, but when we just let him get it out of his system, like for 30 seconds or a minute or so, he’ll kind of forget about it, and then start smiling again, and then being happy and proceeding like usual. Because Seneca is like happy and joyful and silly and playful and curious Like 99.999% of the time.

Adults should also mirror children 

Anyways, I almost wonder if this is a better strategy for adults as well.

I think where adults fail is that we try to be good proper and prim, I don’t know if this is like Victorian Quaker Christian ethics, we try to restrain our anger, we don’t raise our voices we don’t yell we don’t scream, we don’t throw stuff, we are told to become modest, go on a walk etc.

But I almost wonder if it was a good idea that adults we also would just let our our anger and fury as well like kids — for example if we’re angry, to just yell shot scream, stump our feet, go outside, throw around the sandbag, go to the park and take some big heavy rocks and throw them into the distance etc. Also as a funny sidenote, go on YouTube or Google and search ERIC KIM rock toss challenge, in which during Covid when all the gyms were shut down I would just go to the nearby park, find the biggest rock or Boulder I could, and just practice throwing it around etc. It might be the best workout of all time!

Don’t hold in your anger 

Anyways, the issue with adults is that when we’re angry or upset about something, we’re holding our emotions, yet we harbor this anger and resentment, this Poison, for weeks days months years decades? Even one of my uncles, considering that my grandfather had an illegitimate wife and about five or six kids all illegitimate kids on the other side, essentially ditching my mom‘s mom, and the 4 to 5 legitimate kids, anyways, apparently one of my uncles is still super super upset about this, even many years after the passing of my grandfather, my uncle saying that after getting drunk “I have no father”, referring to my already deceased grandpa.

I get it, but I almost feel like it doesn’t really matter anymore. Don’t people gotta move on?

Yeah yeah yeah, life is tough, life is sad whatever, but, I once read that resentment and anger is like drinking poison, hoping that the other person dies.

No not only is this kind of not a good strategy, it is ineffective but also foolish.

Think Achilles

For example, imagine like you’re a warrior, like you’re Achilles, or Hector, and you’re about to do the final battle. You got your spear and shield, your battle armor on. Obviously the goal is to throw your spear and kill the other guy, not to take your spear and stab yourself in spite of your enemy, hoping that somehow spearing yourself will damage the other person?

Really sick stuff

Even a more sick thing, a parent, who is frustrated with their child, not sure what to do, starts to literally beat themselves, like hitting themselves or self flagellating themselves, causing themselves some sort of self-made pain, to make the younger child feel bad? To me this is almost the most sick evil thing to do of all time because when your kid and your parent beats you, at least you could feel bad and think that your parent is a bad guy. But if your parent beats themself to spite you… You have no one else to but by yourself? 

Never spite nobody!


Where it is wise to not trust Christianity 

The early Christian fathers, a lot of them kind of unwell people, we kind of do a similar thing, self flagellate themselves for their sins whatever, as a form of repentance or something?

But the reason why this is so sick and weird, is that once again, by hurting or damaging or poisoning yourself, you ain’t doing nothing useful.

Like for example, let us say that you did something bad or whatever, and then boom now your parents are dead or somebody you care about is dead or whatever, and then you get super depressed and you start to drink alcohol, smoke a bunch of weed, do a bunch of drugs, simply to alleviate your pain your distress your suffering. Or you start to self yourself, you start to physically beat yourself.

Now once again, this is not productive at all.

Channel volatility

So just watching the recent microstrategy earnings call, go Michael! I also like Andrew Kang and Phong Le (both I presume our Korean and Vietnamese, just like me, Seneca, and Cindy!) 

Anyways, what do you notice what super interesting was that what is so fascinating about microstrategy, it is like literally the best performing company in stock in the known human universe, is that it is also the most volatile. Whereas a typical asset might have a volatility of five, The volatility of micro strategy often exceeds 50.

Volatility is vitality, the motto of Michael Saylor.

So then I guess the tricky thing, the philosophy behind things: “Would you prefer to have higher volatility for greater yield and performance?” Or would you rather have low or no volatility, and just take boring steady gains, but far inferior gains and yields?

For me, I think 100% obvious strategy is to have higher performance, with even greater and higher volatility.

Because at the end of the day, it is probably more interesting to drive a high volatility performance vehicle, like a Lamborghini, which has more power powers and “flexiness” rather than a boring and reliable Toyota Camry?

Yet what a lot of fools do is they just park their money in some sort of blended S&P 500 derivative, because they don’t know what else to do?

Taking control of your financial destiny

Michael Saylor said his personal imperative with bitcoin, is that he believes that at least 50% of the world‘s problems and issues can be solved by fixing the money. He likens traditional money and capital as being toxic; would you give your healthy four year-old child contaminated sewer water to drink, or would you give them clean water? Or, would you take the temperature of your home, which is a cozy 73°, and turn down the thermostat by 1°, every single day, for 10 years? Obviously not, you will literally kill and freeze your family to death.  

Think scientific history & physics

I think the genius of a Michael Saylor is that he studied history of science at MIT, and also aeronautics and aerospace engineering.

So I was curious about the word volatility, and apparently it just is derived from Latin to fly, initially from the Proto into European to throw.

So certainly flying is good. I would not want to go to Seoul South Korea on a boat. Also, thinking about French colonialism, I have no idea how the French would be able to stand the boat ride from Paris all the way over to Saigon; or even worse, Thinking about Australia, the original penal colony, how in the hell did you take a boat from London all the way to Australia?

Flying is literally volatile (volaris, to fly)

Anyways, the volatility of flying, certainly flying can be dangerous, you hear the reports about the new Boeing jets, exploding or whatever. Yet nobody gives up flying.

Or let us say the dangers of driving an automobile car. Certainly there are lots of dangers associated with driving, like fatalities from car related accidents, now texting while driving, it is literally a life or that situation. You are 1 trillion times more likely to die from a car accident rather than any sort of accident resulting from a terrorist attack, or a gun related fatality.

If in fact, everyone is talking about why guns are bad and so evil and how we should ban guns or whatever. Yet nobody is talking about how we should be texting while driving, or even ban the use of a cell phone while you are in an automobile car.

If anything, if Apple really wanted to say millions of lives, I have a simple thought: by default if you buy a new phone or whatever, a new Apple ID or whatever, there should be a workflow which if it detects that you’re driving really really fast in the car, it automatically locks you out of your phone, into the do not disturb driving mode, and that if you want to access the normal mode, assuming you’re a passenger in an Uber or Tesla Robo taxi, then you could voice dictate or type I am not driving. Or “I am a passenger”.

Anyways, volatility is good. I almost wonder if volatility, voltage is the same thing? You step up and you step down there’s transformers for electricity. And this is what allows high-powered electricity to travel from phone wires, silently into your home, powering your washer and dryer your heater and air conditioning whatever. Yet nobody is trying to ban electricity.


Channeling volatility

Bitcoin is up 507% percent over 4 years since 2020, MSTR is up 1989% since then — 5x, 19x (20x) gain since 2020

So also, a curious thing… Why is it that I have never met a female day trader? Or a female bitcoin investor?

I’ve met lots of day traders, all male, some guys at the gym at the local park whatever. It is pretty common to meet day traders who drive Uber on the side or whatever. I haven’t really met any bitcoin investors in the flesh yet, besides myself. And certainly I have never met any women who are interested in bitcoin. It is too volatile for them.

It is also too volatile for most men. Yet a simple filter, I think that for the general part, women hate volatility, most men also hate volatility but some men like myself, love volatility.

Question; are there any women who love volatility? I guess the ideas that you have sex with the rockstar, and you have the boring accountant husband at home, paying the mortgage or whatever, but it seems that most women, would not want to be in a serious financial relationship with a Starbucks barista playing music on the side.

Anyways, maybe what life is then, is the love of volatility. 


Harnessing the upside of volatility without the downside?

So this is where things get super interesting; how can we reap the benefits of the upside, like gain 150% upside in life, while clipping the downside?

So for example, the microstrategy strategy is super super fascinating;: capturing 150% the performance of bitcoin and the upside, without the downside?

Bitcoin Treasury Company (BTC)

So how do they do this? Simply put they have access to permanent bitcoin capital. Funny enough they are dubbing themselves BTC, bitcoin treasury company, I like to just think of micro strategy as their first bitcoin bank (BB), because it is easier for mere mortals like myself to remember, but anyways, what is super fascinating about microstrategy, is because they have been in business for over 30 years, they are a real company, that first started off selling business intelligence software, and now transitioning into becoming the world‘s first 100% bitcoin company, which is effectively unstoppable at this point; even if Apple somehow bought $1 trillion worth of bitcoin, because the operating structure of Apple computer is still revolving around future projections of selling more future iPhones, Apple can never really really ever become 100% bitcoin, even if I wanted to.

December 2024: Will Microsoft purchase bitcoin? 

Oh and also as a random sidenote, I think in December, there might be discussions that Microsoft might actually start to add bitcoin to her balance sheet. This is worth noting, especially because starting January 2025, the new FASB (fasb.org) financial accounting standards board, GAAP generally accepted accounting principles — essentially companies institutions like Harvard and Yale and Brown can now add bitcoin to their balance sheet, as a treasury reserve asset. The reason why this is a big deal is for so long, bitcoin was considered fake money, and that a company could not add it to her balance sheet, proving proof of funds and reserves in the traditional sense. Now, all of these nerds who become accounting will have to learn all of these new rules, figuring out how to integrate bitcoin and other cryptocurrency assets to accounting principles.


If Larry Fink and Blackrock think that bitcoin is real capital, it is.

The reason why this is such a big deal is that once again, people still think that bitcoin is fake money! Yet look at the Janet Yellen talk on Satoshi, and even look at Larry Fink, CEO of blackrock who owns over $10 trillion worth of assets, Larry Fink even now says that bitcoin is legitimate asset class, and I think that black rock has actually recently invested and bought a bunch more micro strategy stock. Watch the CNBC interview with Larry Fink on Bitcoin.

Study it yourself

Oh and also, a pro tip; definitely get the $20 a month ChatGPT pro, it is now the ultimate financial investment research tool; when you want to search any financials or anything, this is an insanely big deal.

Anyways, once Harvard Yale and Ivy League schools start to purchase bitcoin, or maybe even there investors, the ones that handle the endowment start to purchase microstrategy, which is essentially a conduit for purchasing bitcoin, with indirect exposure to the asset class of bitcoin, this will be a big deal.

If UCLA were smart, she would purchase BTC and Bitcoin and or microstrategy, not real estate.

How to harness the upsides of volatility without the downsides?

So this is a very big idea. Obviously the goal in life is to win, even Michael Saylor said at the end of October 30 micro strategy earnings call, that essentially, under a bitcoin strategy, everybody wins, there are no losers in the bitcoin strategy. Only varying degrees of success. 

There are no losers in life!

Philosophically, this is fantastic. Why? To me the idea that we could all win together, 100%, no losers, isn’t this the ultimate thing?

For example, I still think that the number 1 foolish way that most individuals live is that they think of life like zero sum; they think that your success means my failure, that your big dick means my small dick.

But this makes no sense because money is fake, money ain’t real, it is just a man-made construct. So if somehow you have $1 million in the bank, that doesn’t make my balance any smaller or bigger.

21M is a hard cap.

I suppose the thing that is a little bit tricky under the bitcoin standard is that because there is a hard cap of 21 million bitcoins, the ultimate strategy is indeed to own the most bitcoin at the end of the day. And this is still where I think the strategy, is to use microstrategy as a cash yield generation machine, periodically selling microstrategy stock when it is up to purchase more bitcoin, is still the best strategy.

MSTR Microstrategy as the engine in order to accumulate more Bitcoin?

MSTR -> BTC


Building and making your own micro strategy?

Introducing BLACK EAGLE CAPITAL: 

Currently, my new direction in my life — obviously I’ll still be doing photography workshops etc., as it is still my number one supreme in life and passion. Yet I’m thinking about offering more workshops in the bitcoin sphere, I think I am well adjusted to this because I have Stoicism, and control on my side.

Also, I am currently doing a soft launch of BLACK EAGLE CAPITAL, essentially my bitcoin hedge fund, the name behind it is inspired by the fact that I believe in the ethos of black, black canvas, all black aesthetics, and eagle, Because I was a Boy Scout eagle, also the symbol of America.

If you’re interested in participating, shoot me an email at eric@erickim.com

To be transparent, the strategy is to create an infinite money machine, you essentially leverage MSTR microstrategy stock, and then ultimately the goal is to accumulate more bitcoin. I encourage you to just open up your own Coinbase account, and start buying bitcoins. Just download Coinbase to your iPhone, from the App Store, connected with your JP Morgan Chase or Bank of America checking account, and start buying bitcoins, you could just buy 10 bucks, 25 bucks, $100, $500, $1000, 10,000, $100,000, if you like. The good thing on Coinbase is that they recently increased the limit i’m a $50,000 a day in instant limit, to now doubling that to $100,000! Thank god.

When is the best time to buy Bitcoin?

Buy it high buy it low buy it in the middle, because 30 years from now when bitcoin is worth $22 million a bitcoin, the price of what you paid right now won’t really matter. It won’t matter if you bought it at $100,000 a bitcoin, 200,000 a bitcoin, $75,000 bitcoin, or $50,000 a bitcoin.

Essentially starting next year will be year one of institutional acceptance. I am almost close to 100% certain that Donald Trump will be elected president, even me, I am a liberal Democrat on the left, and even me… I don’t think I’ll be voting for Kamala Harris. Vote orange, vote bitcoin!. Even worth noting the Donald Trump talk at the bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville Tennessee, also note that Donald Trump his two sons, Eric Trump and Baron Trump, I believe they’re actually really into bitcoin and crypto. Which is good for us, because if you have a president that loves bitcoin crypto and also the US dollar, this will be very very good news for us Americans. And also, good for any holders of bitcoin on the planet.

Bitcoin is the solution for world peace?

I also personally ethically believe that bitcoin can promote peace because it don’t matter what country you’re from, as long as you own bitcoin, we are all part of the same monetary network.

I think bitcoin is a threat to the international monetary fund, Jerome Powell and the FED, which prints money like cotton candy. Even Donald Trump in his interview with Joe Rogan is talking about paying off the $35 trillion debt America has, and also Donald Trump says we will never sell our bitcoin.

And also I would not be surprised if maybe, an interesting national strategy; a nation or a nation to purchase bitcoins, which backs their own fiat monetary supply?

Like imagine if America owned 1 million bitcoins, or 2 million bitcoins whatever, and assuming that the US dollar was pegged to the bitcoin or back, then, the US dollar would actually be worth something. People talk that bitcoin is bad for the environment whatever, this is not true. Because bitcoin miners are incentivized to produce bitcoin, at a low financial rate, it will flow into high yield energy sources like nuclear power plants, or electricity which is stranded on the edges of the grid, for example it is it is cheaper to purchase electricity by building your bitcoin mining rig somewhere in the mountains with access to a hydroelectric dam, where electricity would not be used For example, if you could somehow capture the hydro power of hydroelectric power, which is essentially free because it is powered by gravity, then, assuming that electricity is practically free in America, certainly this will be very good for bitcoin mining and bitcoin network.

And also besides cheap electricity, or free electricity, There is actually a strong entrepreneur incentive to create computers which are more efficient, because contrary to popular belief, bitcoin mining is less about electricity — it is more about computer efficiency.

For example in the early days bitcoin, a lot of bitcoin mining was done on graphics cards, card by Nvidia, then a transition into ASICs, ASIC computers, which is not really even a computer in the traditional sense. It cannot do anything besides solve the mathematically intense cryptography puzzles, which is essentially the proof of work concept.

Also, the reason why proof of work is the path, is that work, like things need to have a real world work in order for it to be worth anything.

For example you do not want to live in your fake virtual reality metaverse, With your fake virtual reality Lamborghini, having sex with your virtual reality girlfriend, with access to your virtual reality money. For anyone who played Diablo II, you know very well that gold is not worth anything in the universe of Diablo; everyone wants the rare weapons.

Before there were hacks, this would mean that you as a kid, you have you would have to spend hours upon hours of doing BAAL runs, Trying to wait and cross your fingers that BAAL would drop some sort of mythical item or weapon, for you to equip yourself. And as a kid, this required real work, which meant a lot of time sitting on your computer, clicking around, and investing countless hours of time which is work, to achieve this outcome.

Bitcoin and crypto is the same thing; if there’s not real human labor or physical labor or analogue energy which goes into producing the digital asset, it is not worth it. This is why you should not purchase or invest in anything that is not bitcoin — nothing else is powered by proof of work and has a hard cap and supply. And derivatives, don’t forget Ethereum was essentially a bitcoin copycat.

Ethereum is not worth anything, don’t buy it, sell your Ethereum and buy bitcoin.

The best analogy is that Ethereum is Pepsi. Nobody likes Pepsi. The only reason anyone would drink Pepsi was because somebody gave it to them for free.

Bitcoin is like Coca-Cola, it has always been the best and will always be the best or bitcoin is like the iPhone Pro, everyone wants the iPhone, nobody wants a Google pixel, nobody wants a Samsung. And certainly nobody wants a Huawei, if you’re a smart rich Chinese billionaire, come on… You have zero interest in buying a Huawei phone besides supporting the Chinese communist party.

If you are any person with any sense, you would prefer to be wearing Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Balenciaga, wearing YEEZY sneakers, with the newest iPhone Pro, driving your Lamborghini Rolls-Royce whatever.

You would not want to drive a Chinese car, a Chinese phone, or even send your kids to a Chinese university.

You would rather want to send your kid to a Harvard Yale or Stanford, and even… No rich Chinese person actually wants to live in Beijing or Shanghai; they would prefer to live in and own property in Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Calabasas, Beverly Hills, Culver City, or maybe Vancouver.

The Chinese yuan is actually pegged to the US dollar 

The only thing that is stopping mainland Chinese is capital controls–  if you have $1 billion worth of Chinese yuan, you cannot take it out of the country even if you wanted to.

Don’t forget that the Chinese yuan is essentially pegged to the US dollar, and I think time has shown that no no no, we are not going to be speaking in Mandarin. English is international protocol and the international business language.

As long as the US, we have at least 1000 X military supremacy over China, we will be fine. And also, when Donald Trump becomes president, he is all about the tariffs, and he’s going to become antagonist towards China, which is good for us Americans because if you put a tariff on Chinese produced goods, money talks, words weep.

What does that means is China will not do anything to promote war with America because the rich Chinese oligarchs are still dependent on manufacturing products in China, and selling it to the American market for a profit.

Don’t be a dummy boy. Anyone who thinks that China is going to take over the planet is either anti-American, a communist, likes to give fellatio to Karl Marx, is a fakeass woke plant based hippie, spends too much time on Reddit, and pirateBay, spent too much time torrenting and streaming Maria Ozawa pornography (on Google incognito, brave browser incognito), maybe they have an apple Vision Pro and they watch virtual reality pornography on their $4000 Apple Vision Pro in private. They might be single, they might not be, maybe own a dog, they have no intention of having kids or girlfriends or a serious relationship.

And also they don’t own bitcoin.

ERIC


Upcoming ERIC KIM workshops, bitcoin thoughts, crypto thoughts, and also when in doubt, start here >


The Philosophy of Volatility 

A super super interesting thought on my mind is the quote from Michael Saylor, volatility is vitality. What does that mean, why does it matter etc.?

First, typically when we think of volatility, it is in the financial realm. We think of volatility in the context of something going up and down, almost unpredictably, chaotically, crazily.

For example in the markets, we tend to think of volatility like a bad thing. Because most people cannot stomach the up and downs.

I am an interesting case because obviously I’m affected by it too. Yet now, whenever I see volatility, I’m more annoyed than anything, like the days that bitcoins down, or the days that micro strategy stock is a little bit down, it is almost more like having an annoying mosquito bite, Maybe even a tiny splinter than anything. The good thing with mosquito bites is as time goes on, we know that it will fade, although it is very annoying. Also, with the tiny splinter… Super super annoying to pick it out, but you can!

Nuclear power

So besides Chernobyl and Fukushima, I actually think that nuclear power is a super smart idea. Certainly nobody wants nuclear fallout, but come on… It is year 2024. For a while, me and Seneca were playing with SimCity: cities at the future on the Mac, and also, we watched the cities of the future film on IMAX and also 3-D, at the California science center. It is still kind of bizarre to me… Once again, the year 2024, if I think about the film Elysium, produced by Bill Block, and starring Matt Damon, shouldn’t we kind of be living in this futuristic, cyberpunk, or massively green and beautiful bright future? Not kind of this ugly, slumlord vibes we get from watching a film like Snow piercer?

Anyways, about two or three days ago I was curious why bitcoin spite so high, breaking the mythical $70,000 mark, after about 2 to 4 years of languishing. So I searched it on ChatGPT, and randomly saw that because Elon Musk tweeted it? And then I was curious, and then I kind of went down a rabbit hole, checking Elon Musk Twitter, Seeing now how he endorses Donald Trump, and then seeing the tweed video the retweeted video of the Joe Rogan podcast with Donald Trump.

Anyways, I was watching the interview, I watched about half of it, very fun and interesting and entertaining! One of the interesting things is how Joe Rogan was asking Trump about nuclear.

So to me nuclear is interesting because it is insanely high volatility like it has a lot of power. But I’ve done right, if handled quickly, it is essential you producers practically free energy for everybody! Apparently they do it well in France I think, they just create a bunch of these mini nuclear power plants, And the French citizens benefit?

A good reason to be anti-stoic 

I think about 99% stoicism is good, come on, I named my firstborn son after Seneca the younger, the great stoic sage!

Yet we’re stores and fails, I called this the life after stoicism, is that Stoicism is too focused on hardening yourself into like a porcupine, and then eventually, it makes you unemotional on feeling etc. Yet what if you want to embrace this interesting strategy; put on the stoic armor, in which you don’t really suffer any downsides from life, but you could harness the volatility of life, and channel harness and reap the benefits of the upside?

The wisdom of kids

So kind of an interesting thing I learned from Seneca, kids in general etc.; Seneca is about 3 1/2, and when he is angry or upset about something, he’ll get angry, he’ll throw stuff, stop his feet, put out a lot of high energy, start screaming and yelling, and shouting, But when we just let him get it out of his system, like for 30 seconds or a minute or so, he’ll kind of forget about it, and then start smiling again, and then being happy and proceeding like usual. Because Seneca is like happy and joyful and silly and playful and curious Like 99.999% of the time.

Anyways, I almost wonder if this is a better strategy for adults as well. I think we’re adults fail is that we try to be good proper and prim, I don’t know if this is like Victorian Quaker Christian ethics, we tried to restrain our anger, we don’t raise our voices we don’t yell we don’t scream, we don’t throw stuff , we are told to become modest, go on a walk etc. But I almost wonder if it was a good idea that adults we also would just let our our anger and fury as well like kids — for example if we’re angry, to just yell shot scream, stump our feet, go outside, throw around the sandbag, go to the park and take some big heavy rocks and throw them into the distance etc. Also as a funny sidenote, go on YouTube or Google and search ERIC KIM rock toss challenge, in which during Covid when all the gyms were shut down I would just go to the nearby park, find the biggest rock or Boulder I could, and just practice throwing it around etc. It might be the best workout of all time!

Anyways, the issue with adults is that when we’re angry or upset about something, we’re holding our emotions, yet we harbor this anger and resentment, this Poison, four weeks days months years decades? Even one of my uncles, considering that my grandfather had an illegitimate wife in about five or six kids all illegitimate kids on the other side, essentially ditching my mom‘s mom, and the 4 to 5 legitimate kids,  anyways, apparently one of my uncles is still super super upset about this, even many years after the passing of my grandfather, my uncle saying that after getting drunk “I have no father”, referring to my already deceased grandpa.

I get it, but I almost feel like it doesn’t really matter anymore. Don’t people gotta move on?

Yeah yeah yeah, life is tough, life is sad whatever, but, I once read that resentment an anger is like drinking Poison, hoping that the other person dies.

No not only is this kind of not a good strategy, it is ineffective but also foolish.

For example, imagine like you’re a warrior, like your Achilles, or Hector, and you’re about to do the final battle. You got your spear and shield, your battle armor on. Obviously the goal is to throw your spear and killed other guy, not to take your spear and stab yourself in spite of your enemy, hoping that somehow Spearing yourself will damage the other person?

Really sick stuff

Even a more sick thing, a parent, who is frustrated with their child, not sure what to do, starts to literally beat themselves, like hitting themselves or self flagellating themselves, causing themselves some sort of self-made pain, to make the younger child feel bad?

The early Christian fathers, a lot of them kind of unwell people, we kind of do a similar thing, self flagellate themselves for their sins whatever, as a form of repentance or something?

But the reason why this is so sick and weird, is that once again, by hurting or damaging or poisoning yourself, you ain’t doing nothing useful.

Like for example, let us say that you did something bad or whatever, and then boom now your parents are dead or somebody you care about is dead or whatever, and then you get super depressed and you start to drink alcohol, smoke a bunch of weed, do a bunch of drugs, simply to alleviate your pain your distress your suffering. Or you start to self yourself, you start to physically beat yourself.

Now once again, this is not productive at all.

Channel volatility

So just watching the recent micro strategy earnings call, call Michael! I also like Andrew Kang and Phong Le (both I presume our Korean and Vietnamese, just like me, Seneca, and Cindy!) 

Anyways, what do you notice what super interesting was that what is so fascinating about micro strategy, it is like literally the best performing company in stock in the known human universe, is that it is also the most volatile. Whereas a typical asset might have a volatility of five, The volatility of micro strategy often exceeds 50.

Volatility is vitality, the motto of Michael Saylor.

So then I guess the tricky thing, the philosophy behind things: “would you prefer to have higher volatility for greater yield and performance? Or would you rather have low or no volatility, and just take boring steady gains, but far inferior gains and yields?

 for me, I think 100% obvious strategy is to have higher performance, would even greater and higher volatility.

Because at the end of the day, it is probably more interesting to drive a high volatility performance vehicle, like a Lamborghini, which has more power powers and “flexiness” rather than a boring and reliable Toyota Camry?

Yet what a lot of fools do is they just park their money in some sort of blended S&P 500 derivative, because they don’t know what else to do?

Taking control of your financial destiny

Michael Saylor said his personal imperative with bitcoin, is that he believes that at least 50% of the world‘s problems and issues can be solved by fixing the money. He likes traditional money in capital as being toxic; would you give your healthy four year-old child contaminated sewer water to drink, or would you give them clean water? or, would you take the temperature of your home, which is a cozy 73°, and turn down the thermostat by 1°, every single day, for 10 years? Obviously not, you will literally kill and freeze your family to death.  

I think the genius of a Michael Saylor is that he studied history of science at MIT, and also aeronautics and aerospace engineering.

 so I was curious about the word volatility, and apparently it just is derived from Latin to fly, initially from the Proto into European to throw.

So certainly flying is good. I would not want to go to Seoul South Korea on a boat. Also, thinking about French colonialism, I have no idea how the French would be able to stand the boat ride from Paris all the way over to Saigon; or even worse, Thinking about Australia, the original penal colony, how in the hell did you take a boat from London all the way to Australia?

Anyways, the vitality flying, certainly flying can be dangerous, you hear the reports about the new Boeing jets, exploding or whatever. Yet nobody gives up flying.

Or let us say the dangers of driving an automobile car. Certainly there are lots of dangers associated with driving, like fatalities from car related accidents, now texting while driving, it is literally a life for that situation. You are 1 trillion times more likely to die from a car accident rather than any sort of Accident resulting from a terrorist attack, or a gun related fatality. If in fact, everyone is talking about why guns are bad and so evil and how we should be in guns or whatever. Yet nobody is talking about how we should be texting while driving, or even ban The use of a cell phone while you are in an automobile car. If anything, if Apple really wanted to say millions of lives, I have a simple thought: by default if you buy a new phone or whatever, a new Apple ID or whatever, There should be a workflow which if it detects that you’re driving really really fast in the car, it automatically love you out of your phone, into the do not disturb driving mode, and that if you want to access the normal mode, assuming you’re a passenger in an Uber or Tesla Robo taxi, then you could voice dictate or type I am not driving. Or I am a passenger.

Anyways, volatility is good. I almost wonder if volatility, voltage is the same thing? You step up and you step down there’s transformers for electricity. And this is what allows high-powered electricity to travel from phone wires, silently into your home, powering your washer and dryer your heater and air conditioning whatever. Yet nobody is trying to ban electricity.

Channeling volatility

So also, all those curious… Why is it that I have never met a female day trader? Or a female bitcoin investor?

I’ve met lots of day traders, all mail, some guys at the gym at the local park whatever. It is pretty common to meet day traders, Who Dr., Uber on the side or whatever. I haven’t really met any bitcoin investors in the flesh yet, besides myself. And certainly I have never met any women who are interested in bitcoin. It is too volatile for them.

It is also too volatile for most men. Yet a simple filter, I think that for the general part, women hate volatility, most men also hate volatility but some men like myself, love volatility.

Question; are there any women who love volatility? I guess the ideas that you have sex with the rockstar, and you have the boring accountant husband at home, paying the mortgage or whatever, but it seems that most women, would not want to be in a serious financial relationship with a Starbucks barista playing music on the side.

Anyways, maybe what life is then, is the love of volatility. 

Harnessing the upside of volatility without the downside?

So this is where things get super interesting; how can reap the benefits of the upside, like gain 150% upside in life, while clipping the downside?

So for example, the micro strategy strategy is super super fascinating;: capturing 150% the performance of bitcoin and the upside, without the downside?

So how do they do this? Simply put they have access to permanent bitcoin capital. Funny enough they are dubbing themselves BTC, bitcoin treasury company, I like to just think of micro strategy as their first bitcoin bank (BB), because it is easier for mere mortals like myself to remember, but anyways, what is super fascinating about micro strategy, is because they have been in business for over 30 years, they are a real company, that first started off selling business intelligence software, and now transitioning into becoming the world‘s first 100% bitcoin company, which is effectively unstoppable at this point; even if Apple somehow bought $1 trillion worth of bitcoin, because the operating structure of Apple computer is still revolving around future projections of selling more future iPhones, Apple can never really really ever become 100% bitcoin, even if I wanted to.

Oh and also as a random sidenote, I think in December, our discussions that Microsoft might actually start to add bitcoin to her balance sheet. This is worth noting, especially because starting January 2025, the new FASB (fasb.org) financial accounting standards board, GAAP generally accepted accounting principles — essentially companies institutions like Harvard and Yale and Brown Kang now add bitcoin to their balance sheet, as a treasury reserve asset. The reason why this is a big deal is for so long, bitcoin was considered fake money, and that a company could not add it to her balance sheet, proving proof of funds and reserves in the traditional sense. Now, all of these nerds who become accounting will have to learn all of these new rules, figuring out how to integrate bitcoin and other cryptocurrency assets to accounting principles.

The reason why this is such a big deal is that once again, people still think that bitcoin is fake money! Yet look at the Janet yell and talk, and even look at Larry Fink, CEO of black rock who owns over $10 trillion worth of assets, Larry Fink even now says that bitcoin is legitimate asset class, and I think that black rock has actually recently invested and bought a bunch more micro strategy stock. 

Oh and also, a pro tip; definitely get the $20 a month ChatGPT pro, it is now the ultimate financial investment research tool; when you want to search any financials or anything, this is an insanely big deal.

 Anyways, once Harvard Yale and Ivy League schools start to purchase bitcoin, or maybe even there investors, the ones that handle the endowment start to purchase micro strategy, which is essentially a conduit for purchasing bitcoin, with indirect exposure to the asset class of bitcoin,  this will be a big deal.

How to harness the upsides of volatility without the downsides?

So this is a very big idea. Obviously the goal in life is to win, even Michael Saylor said at the end of October 30 micro strategy earnings call, that essentially, under a bitcoin strategy, everybody wins, there are no losers in the bitcoin strategy. Only varying degrees of success. 

Philosophically, this is fantastic. Why? To me the idea that we could all win together, 100%, no losers, isn’t this the ultimate thing?

For example, I still think that the number 1 Foolish Way that most individuals live is that they think of life like zero; they think that your success means my failure, that you’re a big dick means my small dick.

But this makes no sense because money is fake, money ain’t real, it is just a man-made construct. So if somehow you have $1 million in the bank, that doesn’t make my balance any smaller or bigger.

I suppose the thing that is a little bit tricky under the bitcoin standard is that because there is a hard cap of 21 million bitcoins, ultimate strategy is indeed to own the most bitcoin at the end of the day. And this is still where I think the strategy, is to use micro strategy as a cash yield generation machine, periodically selling micro strategy stock when it is up to purchase more bitcoin, is still the best strategy.

The Ethics

So something which is super interesting and important to me is ethics. And honestly it is something that is so elusive because there is no codified hard set rules of ethics which applied to everybody, for eternity.

Also, I think is super interesting because I actually tired in ethics with certain moralistic imperative; I sent you when it comes down to it… Your personal ethics your ethos of things dictates almost everything.

I’m almost starting to think instead… Rather than thinking about goals, veteran instead to think about ethics and ethos and your imperatives and philosophies behind things.

The ethics of Bitcoin & money

Is bitcoin actually the most virtuous money?

So what is super interesting to me is that from a philosophical perspective, if you invoke the Austrian economics, like Karl Menger and the like .,, Property, what is property?

Property is something that you own, that belongs to you, which legally that nobody could seize against your own will.

So for example, I can own a watch, a camera, a car whatever… Legally nobody could just come up to me and steal it from me without any sort of negative repercussion.

Taxes?

Cindy’s mom and my brother-in-law Gabe both said it; when your own property, like real estate or whatever… Assuming there is a tax rate which is above 0%, that means that you don’t really “own “the property… You just borrowing it or renting it from the government.

Because this issue is with taxes, in theory, that is money that you’ll never see touch or witness, and it is essentially like you’re bleeding capital.

So for example, I was shocked, doing the math on even a $1.6 million home, I had a very low interest rate, you’re still bleeding around $1800 a month … close to $2000 a month, essentially money that is just going into thin air and vapor?

Even if you’re a savvy investor like myself, my personal thought is I would prefer to take that $2000 a month and just buy bitcoin instead, which is gonna go to $13 million or $22 million a bitcoin. 

Homes

OK so currently… This is my thought:

Single family home or nothing.

I think the fragile position to be in is only a condo because the price of him might slightly go up, but… It might not even be able to keep in pace or up to pace with inflation. What that means is let us say you buy a condo for $1 million, and you sell it a deck for $1.2 million, you might’ve thought that you realized a $200,000 gain but you did not, because of inflation, you might’ve actually lost money?

Another thing… Even owning a single-family home, property whatever, once again if you factor in property taxes and stuff, you’re not really making money.

So I heard that is to own a single-family home is kind of more of like a trophy acid like bragging rights for owning a Ferrari or Lamborghini whatever.

I suppose the nuance in difference is you could actually live in the thing, the single-family home. And you could brag to all your millennial friends that you own a single-family home.

I think where the calculus gets a little bit confusing is assuming that you’re married you have a wife and kids or more kids on the way etc. So then the home becomes a symbolic thing. But for me still… My hard school of thought is that a home is not an investment, it is just somewhere where you live.

And essentially, once again, just do the math, assuming that bitcoin is currently around $65,000 of bitcoin and is going up to 13 million, there is at least a 200X potential gain in front of you.

So let us say that your down payment is $300,000 or whatever, that is $60M. So the question is… Are you willing to sacrifice $60 million for the potential upside of buying a certain house you like? For you and your family?

Decisions

I think your life, the wise thing to think about, is that decisions, nothing is ever forever, nor should anything before ever, and even from a Zen and Taoist principal, nothing ever remains the same even if you want it to.

Also, your ethics change. Your ethical framework as a two-year-old versus 12-year-old versus high schooler versus college student versus 36 year old man with a kid is going to be different. Your ethics and morality as a degenerate single person is going to be different than your ethics and your morality once you have a kid. Or several.

Or your ethics before getting married and after getting married.

Where philosophers fail

It really really big problem is a lot of these philosophers try to create some sort of ultimate at the cold framework which can never be changed or modified. They strive in vain for 30 years, seeking some sort of ultimate truth of everything, which could last 1000 years or whatever. If you think about it then, this is what religion is. The religion of Mohammad, Saint Paul, the religion of Judea – these religions have lasted for thousands of years. So I guess the founders did a good job.

Endowments for private schools like Harvard or Yale; their endowments last forever. So it looks like they’re doing something right.


The ethics of smoking

So for this conversation I’m just going to talk about secondhand smoke.

So some critical issues here; the ethics.

First, I think smoking cigarettes in a public space which is not your house, in which your secondhand could fuck up the lungs of other people, especially for people like myself with sensitive lungs, is unethical.

First, legally it might be allowed, but ethically, it is not.

The first rule is first do no harm onto others. If you are on a sidewalk, and you have a certain walking path every single morning, and there’s always somebody smoking on that path, and they don’t know it, but there’s secondhand smoke goes down half a block, And it attacks your lungs, they are doing harm on you, whether you know it or not.

So it is unethical.

Ident suppose, what can and what should you do about it?

For example I met a dude named Scott, who is always smoking this one spot in Culver City, wearing his red vest, he claims he works there but he looks homeless and dirty? Not sure I talked with him, and he seemed kind of normal, but slightly a little weird? Anyways, I asked him nicely to not smoke there on the main street because it gets into my lungs whatever, but then he told me to not walk on the sidewalk. Or to walk on the other side?

Or he told me to keep walking?

First, I think the major issue here is repeated exposure. Maybe if I was in Venice Beach or whatever, in which I’ll never see the person again this is different, but because I see him almost every single day or every other day, this is very annoying and upsetting to me.

So obviously the first idea is to have a conversation with him. He had the audacity to tell me “If you don’t like it keep walking”. 

So some several issues here.

First, once again, no I will not keep walking. Because the issue is the regularity and the continued exposure. Once again if you’re in Santa Monica, and you see a homeless guy smoking a cigarette, or looking like he is cracked out, often in that situation the best strategy is don’t engage with crazy drugged out homeless people.

However, if the person looks like an irrational human being, mentally there, then isn’t having an intelligent conversation with somebody worth it?

Second I guess the big thing is I always saw it and I pointed out to him, that there’s literally a sign there that says no smoking. Like the big cigarette icon with the big red circle and the strike through it. I pointed out to him and he said that “oh, I never saw that.”

I also suppose there’s a difference, if the person is homeless or a squatter versus they actually work there?

Legality?

Then at this point, let’s assume that is private property, but the property owner put a do not smoke sign out. Then according to the rules of the private property, you can and should enforce it. Is that what you do is you talk to Security, or you called the property manager etc. And you report them.

But let us say that it is a more of a grey zone; like they are smoking a cigarette kind of close to a restaurant which is actually illegal in Los Angeles and most of California I believe. In this case, what do you do, call the cops on the person?

Or… Let us say that you approach somebody and you try to talk to them rationally, and then they threaten you with some sort of physical violence, or they do physically assault you? Then I suppose what you could do is bust out your iPhone camera, Start recording them, and then you could get them arrested?

I suppose the only thing you don’t want to get done to you is to get stabbed or shot with a gun, you don’t want to die.

I mean I suppose for myself, I could take a hit or an injury, I just don’t want to die.

So maybe, just be careful if you think they might have a gun?


Not being a pushover

So I think the problem with most people nowadays, especially people my age the millennial generation I was born in 1988, we are a very non-confrontational generation. And honestly most people are.

The first thing is don’t let nobody push you around, don’t be a pushover. If there’s something you don’t like you had to speak up, and it is a good idea to make a fuss out of it even bit may seem trivial.

So for me, the only thing I really hit on the planet is cigarette smoke, secondhand smoke. Especially having a father who was a heavy smoker, I hate the smell of secondhand cigarette more than the devil.

And also, a big issue here is that I have a kid now, and me and Seneca often walk down that street and we smelled the secondhand smoke. So once again, you’re not just standing up for yourself but for your kid.

I think the tricky thing with ethics is we should not invoke children because if you’re talking about kids you’re just kind of blaming them. Or you’re putting them in the crossfire. You should never make your kid apologize for nothing, it is your role as the guardian, The father to essentially have a spine and not be a pussy.

What is a hero?

I Also suppose the issue at hand is  things that upset you, versus things that could actually damage your harm others, whether it be your family, your kid, your kids etc.?

I think the first practical thought is not to be a social justice warrior for all of society, this is too fake. First just protect your wife and your kid, the most difficult thing.

Then after that your clan, your best friends, your squad.

Treat others you would like to be treated?

The golden rule, treating other people that way you would like to be treated, not perfect but still kind of a good rule. 


Digital Capital

Brave New World of digital capital,

So it looks like microstrategy, MSTR stock is gonna hit $300 this year soon; earnings report incoming October 30th.

And some big news, the FASB.org financial accounting standards board, they updated their accounting standards to include bitcoin and crypto,  which is an insanely big deal because starting January 2025, essentially companies corporations like Apple can start to add bitcoin to their balance sheet, being able to accurately mark their assets and capital in bitcoin, openly transparently, fair accounting.

Anyways, the reason why this is such a big deal is that for a long time, especially thinking about bitcoin pizza day, in which a guy bought two medium sized Domino’s pizzas with about 100,000 bitcoins, maybe worth about $200 million today, back when it was worth nothing, round 2009, my junior year of college.

Anyways, back in the day actually whether it was our sophomore or junior year, I still will never forget how my roommate Kevin told me that we should’ve bought some bitcoins, like 100 or so, Windows trading for pennies. At first I dismissed him saying that it would be a scam;

In the past I regretted this, but now… No, I am even more convinced. 100% of my assets into bitcoin, the first and true digital capital, this is like the early days of the Internet!

And also, for Roth IRA, IRA and retirement, the traditional market, literally micro strategies only safe to invest in; my critical thinking and understanding is there is too many risk factors for all these other corporations, even Apple, which seems like the safest bet, it might be the other and only “safe” Investment out there which will last 30 years, but my bearish view is that within 30 years, Apple might be bleeding and dying a slow slow death.

In fact, my unorthodox view is that actually, not investing in bitcoin is the risky idea?

Excitement optimism and joy! 

A random thought this morning was actually, maybe investing in apple is actually the unethical thing to do; think about all the mainland Chinese workers that fox con exploits, and as long as mainland China is doing acts of genocide all around the planet, and Apple is OK with that… Because Fox con should also be understood as essentially just another puppet or arm of the mainland Chinese corporation government, then, in theory to invest in Apple is to low-key accept all the human rights violations that mainland China does around the globe.

Everyone loves to talk about how climate change is so bad, racism is so bad, eating animals is bad blah blah blah, but yet nobody talks about how mainland China, is committing genocide all around the planet? And everybody knows it; and yet everyone still feels OK buying new iPhones?

Once again, if you are some sort of plant-based, anti-meat eating, pro environment person, yet you have an Instagram a Snapchat a Facebook a YouTube a TikTok whatever… No, this is not ethical.

why bitcoin is ethical.

To anybody who says that bitcoin is bad for the environment or the planet blah blah blah, essentially they were suckered by Sam Bankman-Fried and these evil corners, who sent she made air tokens which means fake value out of fakeness.

So, question… Do you think that air conditioning is bad for the planet? How about iPhones? How about the Internet? How about your hybrid Prius, your Tesla car, public transportation?

How about heaters?

How about washers and dryers?

So washers and dryers and air conditioning currently wastes about 20% of the world’s electricity – do you think the trade-off is worth it? If you have ever lived in Southeast Asia, Texas and the like, obviously!

What is commonly misunderstood about bitcoin is that it actually might be the most ethical energy use; actually, the economics of bitcoin mining is that it actually makes more sense to invest in energy efficient bitcoin mining rigs, near stranded energy sources like ideally building it at the edges of the grid, next to hydroelectric power plants etc.

What is actually very very interesting is that once you create a bitcoin, it lasts forever! The maintenance cost of bitcoin is practically 0%; whereas even gold, the world second best asset, bleeds at around 2% a year; which means that in about 60 years your value goes down by half.

Economic immortality?

So everyone is trying to become immortal in Silicon Valley or whatever… But instead, maybe what if economic immortality were more interesting?

This means, building up a war chest for your kids kids kids. So when your kids kids kids have kids they will be able to do great things on the planet!

No no no, the world is not going to melt. Ignore Al Gore and all these fake fear porn people; who essentially profit off of your fear! This includes Google, who makes more ad revenue The more people click on climate change articles.

Bitcoin is hope, bitcoin is a promise for a more glorious future!

Why do I care? 

For me, considering the fact that I grew up poor, essentially I think of bitcoin like unethical imperative. The idea of saving up money for the future, building up capital for the future, and also my belief in open source; to me… Bitcoin might be the most ethical thing on the planet? That is censorship resistant, open source, and also… A political, which means that America doesn’t need to keep committing war atrocities in order to support the value of the US dollar.

What is interesting is that all of these weird conspiracy theory people in America, the ones that tell you that the Rothschild in these Jewish bank organizations run the planet blah blah blah, that Israel is evil blah blah blah, actually the real bad guy is America, The US government, the American military, which essentially bankrolls Israel.

I think the best way to think about Israel is that essentially it is just like another military outpost for America, to maintain control over the region, kind of like South Korea, to have a strategic position against North Korea mainland China etc.

Koreans, South Korean don’t want to accept or think is that essentially South Korea is a neocolony of America, a new colony of America. As long as American military support South Korea and maintaining the 38th parallel, South Korea is essentially forever indebted to America.

Also let us not forget that Israel, was essentially established, with the guiding hand of America. Without America, Israel as a state would not exist.

So rather than pointing the finger at Israel, which actually does seem that the Prime Minister of Israel has done really terrible things, especially to the Palestinians, Hamas also seems like the bad guys, the innocent people are the civilians women and children. But really really really, the real bad guy is America, and the sad truth is without American military dominance on the planet, the US dollar supremacy would not exist.

Even if you are a liberal Democrat, anti-war; assuming that you have US dollars in your bank account, you have a JP Morgan Chase or Fidelity or Citibank, or Bank of America… assuming that your salary is being paid in US dollars, and let us remember that almost all the currencies on the planet, even the Chinese yuan are essentially pegged to the US dollar,  without the Fed printing more money to pay military contractors for the US defense government, the US dollar would not have any value.

So what is the solution? Super simple buy bitcoin. In theory, buying bitcoin not the US dollar, could help solve violence that destruction and genocide on the planet, and solve at least 50% of the world issues; considering that about 50% of the world’s issues are about money. If you’re from a broken family, or if there has ever been any debt or bankruptcy or credit card debt, or gambling in your family, lot of it is actually embedded in financial issues.

Think first principles

Actually, the best way to think about bitcoin is not to listen to your favorite YouTuber or podcaster, but to think first principles, and going back to the source.

For myself, the most interesting book on economics I have ever read is DELLA MONETA bye the Italian Fernand Galliani, who surprisingly wrote the whole treaty when he was only 21 years old, masquerading as a six-year-old man. Essentially I discovered Galliani via Frederich Nietzsche,  who quotes Galliani all the time; like some of my favorite quotes include from Galliani “better to be a gay monster than a sentimental bore”, or the idea that Eagles fly solo.

Anyways, Galliani talks about money and why it has value; and talk specifically about gold and silver and how in America at the time… The Quakers would actually trade paper money which was considered insane at the time.

To summarize, Galliani said that gold was the most valuable asset and money because it was both beautiful, used for decorations and jewelry, like making your child beautiful by giving them cold jewelry, and also… The fact that it was resistant and robust against the elements, it lasted a long time, and was also rare on the planet difficult to find. And also, how the color in itself is the most beautiful as it shines like the sun. Have a theory the reason why he was like is that in fact, we love this golden yellow color because it simulates the sun and the light, Let us not forget that most of the ancient world they praise the sun God.

But then again Galli mentions wisely how inflation happens and how money is valued, like when the Spanish conquistadors discovered gold in the New World, and brought it back to Europe, the value of gold plummeted because it became less rare. And also in history, there were many places on the planet in which silver was actually more rare than gold, and therefore in some parts of the world silver was actually more prized!

Essentially the moral the story is that money is a man-made concept; and even the notion of capital comes from the notion cap, head, Kaputt, caput– like literally the head of oxen. Even in the Iliad, a hectic comb is the sacrifice of 100 oxen, to appease Zeus and the gods. Even in today’s world, in which an adult oxen could cost you $1000, can you imagine sacrificing 100 oxen to appease the gods?  it’s like almost burning $100,000, to get the gods to not get angry at you; very expensive. Like a single cyber truck!

What’s the point of capital?

There are some simple things, like paying rent and groceries. But beyond this, what is the point of money and capital?

At this point, I’m starting to think of capital and accumulation like the most interesting fun game! 1, trillion times more interesting that any video game out there because it actually has to deal with reality; the problem with all the video games is none of them are actually based in physics or the real world; even professional sports which is essentially a prostitution of the body, is beridden with steroids and drugs and all this bad stuff. The only useful professional sports seems to be the UFC or mixed martial arts, as it might benefit you in a street fight, everything else seems quite useless.

Also a lot of guys were interested, a lot of fools make that analogy that thinking that some sort of chess grandmaster would be a great military strategist, but this is not the case. Because to sacrifice upon is very different than sacrificing the life of a human being. And also… The real world is 1 trillion times more messy than chess, Which has strict rules.

And also in theory… Any skinny fat loser could be really really good at chess, like number one on the planet. But how would he do in a street fight, or player versus player combat? Let us not forget our manly virtues; ultimately… It don’t matter how rich you are or how smart or successful you are, if you do not have physical valor and strength, you got nothing. 

Good role models

I think having a good role model is critical. Like a Steve Jobs, except he is dead now. In fact, Apple today is kind of a former shell of Steve Jobs original vision; now that Jony Ive has left Apple, Apple is like the new Microsoft. There is no more sex in Apple.

Even Elon Musk has a joke that failed Tesla or SpaceX engineers go to Apple; much more difficult to design a self driving car or a spaceship or a rocketship rather than the next mediocre iPhone.

Michael Saylor, also talks about risks of most securities, like a simple one; how do you know that the iPhone 55 pro will be any good or not? And how do you know if one day… Mainly China closes the doors to international traded manufacturing, if Apple no longer can create iPhones in mainland China with Foxconn, then what? Certainly Apple cannot maintain her monopoly profits if she produced iPhones in Nebraska or in the Midwest, maybe Vietnam but even Vietnam is kind of in bed with mainland China, so if overnight, Vietnam closes her borders to America, Apple would be in big trouble.

I wonder if mainland China’s long-term vision is to continue to steal and help her trade secrets with Apple and American corporations like Microsoft and Bill Gates, and then eventually just close her borders to America, and hoping that Huawei could take over the planet? Currently the fact that TikTok is dominating America, maybe her plan is working?


Back to us

So taking things back to us;

First, it seems the interesting idea here is that maybe we should not worry too much about macro economics, like solving global poverty issues here etc., but just starting with ourselves and our own family. 

The first one I think is that the simplest way to become rich is to just not get poor, which means don’t buy the new iPhone Pro, don’t buy a new car or Tesla, don’t buy a single-family home even if you could afford it, better to rent indefinitely and put your money into bitcoin, which will go out forever without any maintenance costs, whereas I think if you think about investing in a single-family home… It seems like a good investment idea, but because of the mortgage interest rates, assuming that your mortgage is above 0%, you’re essentially bleeding yourself dry, I almost wonder how much of modern day economics is about buying a single family at home and a mortgage, because the banks want to just profit off of this idea?

Once again even if you had a very very low interest rate, even if you’re paying about 2%, sooner or later, the interest itself will kill you. And right now the interest rate is around 7 to 8%; too expensive!

And also once again, even if the asset of your home goes up in value, after the cost of maintenance, fixing your roof and water heater and 1 trillion other things which could break, but that means your acid value goes down infinitely because you bleed yourself dry doing maintenance and renovations etc.

And also, I think a big thing is once you buy a single-family home or even a condo… Every time you come home, you’ll think to yourself, all of the upgrades and maintenance that you have not yet done, that you need to do. Even for me right now, I’ve been putting off changing the oil in my 2010 Prius for over a month, barely finding time to even do that! Whether I do it myself or go to a dude, I don’t think homeownership is right for me, or most millennials because we have no skills for home maintenance?

The best lifestyle is a zero maintenance lifestyle

You don’t want a high maintenance girlfriend wife spouse partner, dog, or negative yielding asset like a Ferrari Lamborghini Porsche etc.

The more maintenance, the worse your life, the more headaches the more stress, the more misery.

I think the sucker of capitalism is that we think that if we purchase these high-yielding stuff, we think we will be happy. But no. If you are happy paying for $1,000 oil changes in your Lamborghini or Ferrari or Porsche 911 GT 3 RS, yes! And I think what I discovered is it doesn’t matter how rich or poor you are; nobody likes to pay for these things.

I think the peel of having a Tesla is you never have to get another oil change again. But then again the issue here is that the battery is not designed to last forever, let alone 30 years.

At least your Toyota Prius might last you 30 years, I don’t think any Tesla or electric car will.

Go long

On a long enough time span, thinking 30 years, things become simple. You don’t need to overthink things too much.

How to make free money

Currently the infinite money hack and trick I discovered is this:

Purchase microstrategy stock with your traditional account, ride it up, and when the value is high, sell the pure profit, and then use that money to purchase bitcoin! And essentially ride it up forever.

Ideally purchase the bitcoin when microstrategy stock is high, and buy bitcoin when it is a bit low.  but either way, the ultimate goal is to acquire as many bitcoins as humanly possible, he or she with the most bitcoin shall win.

Even Michael Saylor revealed in an interview with Maddy Reid, the reporter from New Zealand, that his and micro strategies goal was to acquire the mythical Nakamoto, which is 1 million bitcoins,  the same number of bitcoins in the wallet of Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of bitcoin. Also what is a big deal is that since Satoshi was born, he has never touched his bitcoins, or moved them. And also what is interesting is that Satoshi disappeared, the immaculate conception of bitcoin.

Also another reason I believe in it is that there was only first one bitcoin version, no version two. This is the reason why I ended up ditching chain-link when they released the second white paper, and also Ethereum is bad because of all the hard forks, And different versions.

Day trader? 

I don’t know if this is just a trend, or somehow… When people ask me what I do for a living, I’ve actually been getting “day trader” a lot.

I suppose in some ways I kind of am because I’m watching bitcoin and micro strategy like a hawk, and I consume every single Michael sailor interview that comes out. I think I have literally watched every single interview he has ever done, from four years ago up until now. And he has been consistent and wise and insightful the whole time; and also what is very meaningful is that the last four years, he has never once advertised his own company, I didn’t even know what MicroStrategy was up until maybe six months ago?