Encumbered, unencumbered?

The right to Bitcoin

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The rights of persons to maintain full lawful control over the bitcoin and other digital assets of those individuals, recognizing that the ability to maintain self custody of private keys is fundamental to the principles of financial sovereignty, privacy, and personal liberty in the digital age.

So this idea is super fascinating to me; life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Also, the right to personal sovereignty, privacy and personal liberty.

So I guess the big issue is we don’t have privacy anymore. There are CCTV everywhere, cameras everywhere, trackers on the Internet which follow and track your every move.

Also, assuming you have some sort of credit card thing with points, the way that they give you these points is that you essentially sell or forfeit your purchasing data, although it is anonymized, people could track every single financial move activity and behavior.

No I am not one of those weirdos who over since sensationalize this; ultimately, I don’t really care that much. What I am more interested is in, maybe the concept of digital property, digital property rights.

What is also really fascinating is how bitcoin is global digital capital, digital rights for all all across the planet.

For example, assuming that you live in mainland China and there is capital controls, what that then means is that you cannot take out $1 billion of Chinese yuan out of the country, even if you wanted to. Actually technically the smart strategy for rich me and Chinese person who wants to come to America whatever, is to swap all of their Chinese yuan or whatever for bitcoin, as much as humanly possible, and then just peace out.

The reason why this would be such a good strategy is that the truth is, nobody wants their wealth or their capital to be locked anywhere. For example, even my insane and annoying I remember like six months ago I just wanted to take out like $500 from the ATM at JPMORGAN Chase, and I could not, as the limit was around like 300 bucks? 

And this is the thing which is really really weird to me — so I just want access to my money, why can’t I have access to my own money? 

The Bitcoin Artist 

Kind of a random aside; I like the idea of like being able to kind of clean up the world, either with whiteout tape, or blackout tape, we just met black bitcoin icons etc.

So for example in Culver City and LA in general… My number one annoyance and greed is that there are so many annoying graffiti and ads all over the place.

So first, I just wanna clean up the damn place. I want to get rid of annoying advertisements and stuff, because aesthetically I feel like I have a strong imperative to do so.

Second, why is it so difficult or hard to promote some sort of well-being on the planet?

Bitcoin is healthy

So assuming that like 99% of our problems in life can be attributed to the fact of a poor money supply, then what that then means is that maybe like 99% of our world problems could actually be solved by bitcoin.

For example, financial health. If money is toxic, capital is toxic, assuming that you’re playing in the world of fiat currency, what that then means is that you don’t actually want access to capital because it is like immediately causing you to bleed out economic energy and power.

I actually had a super funny random thoughts; think about like the notion of semen retention and economic power retention.

For example, every time you buy something expensive it is like blowing your load. For example, you lost for that matte black scissor door Lamborghini, and then you go out and buy it, for like $500,000 or something, like you just blown the biggest load of your life. But then the downside of that is after that, you’re like kind of done, and as a consequence, what do you have left to live for?

And actually the truth is, no man in his right mind would ever blow his load immediately before trying to lift 505 kg. Or also, assuming that you’re about to have the big fight, nobody in their right mind would ever ever ever ever even consider for half a second, Rubbing one out real quick before the big fight.

I actually have a thought thoughts on the first one is that you should not blow your load, anytime during the day because that is when your power is peak, that is when you have the most power. You should only ever blow your load in the evening right before you’re about to sleep, like how the ancient Greeks did it.

Example, can imagine Achilles blowing his load and inseminating one of his babes, immediately before the big battle? No!

So why does this matter?

So I think this matter for a lot of reasons.

First, it looks like everyone is sick unwell unhealthy. And not really out of their own fault, but rather, it seems like the bigger issue is that once again, we don’t have healthy instruments to work with.

For example, assume that you live in a society in which literally every single food item is laced and injected with high fructose corn syrup or sugar. Even if you want to lose fat and get a six pack and become strong healthy and happy, you cannot. Why? If everything has sugar added to it, even if you are the world‘s most diligent exerciser and individual, you can’t do nothing! And as a consequence once again, you cannot blame an individual agent or individual for becoming fat or sick or unhealthy, if in fact the things that you are consuming and using or in fact, Giving you type two diabetes, maybe the current US dollar and monetary supply is like a metaphorical type two diabetes for Americans.

Why do I care?

So the trillion dollar question is like… Why do I care?

First, once again, my moral and ethical imperative, growing up poor, having a dad who is addicted to gambling away the rent money, seeing my mom go through bankruptcy twice etc., almost homeless like four or five times, certainly gave me some sort of real life and real world education about economics.

And I think this is where people fail— they have never really really really really really seen people go through financial distress, financial duress, they’ve never really witnessed it, nor did they really understand what it means?

For example, a lot of these well to do Democrats liberals whatever, allow them actually come from quite affluent families. For example, a lot of people who lecture us about helping poor people blah blah blah, actually did not grow up poor. For example, unless you’ve ever had the experience, being like an elementary school kid, in the fourth or fifth grade, maybe around 11 or 12 years old, having to pick up the phone, because your parents knew that it was probably creditors asking for money, and if you’ve actually never had the experience of having to pretend online and say that your parents were not home, you don’t know nothing.

And maybe this is where I am the first self-made bitcoin millionaire; now that I’m stacking 2.3 M’s and beyond, things are starting to get really interesting to me, at almost a hilariously alarming pace.

First, honestly it all seems like some sort of fake reality, it’s still shocking to me whenever I see these numbers and balances. Still… The $90,000 mark for bitcoin hasn’t really yet set in yet for me.

And I’m sure in certain when we hit the hundred thousand dollar mark for bitcoin, and we have $100,000 party, the best party of all time in cyberspace, and Michael saylors‘s house, we will all be laughing to the bank.

Or better yet, the digital cyber base, a.k.a. our own home.

Why is this such a big deal?

I don’t know any human being on the planet who does not desire some sort of financial freedom independence or liberty. I don’t know anybody who wants to keep working there are boring 90 to 5 day job, doesn’t matter if you’re working at Amazon Apple Facebook Google; everyone I know, all my friends are working these big companies, Nobody wants to be there if they had the option– yet, they are tied to their mortgages, their other financial debts and obligations etc.

And this is where I think to a large degree, debt is the devil. Why? That is slavery! And the funny thing is that a lot of people they like willingly put themselves into debt slavery.

Willingful debt slavery

For the most part, because I’ve grown up poor and whatever… I don’t actually have that much compassion for people who do poor financial decisions with their life. When people go broke according to their own accord, zero compassion and empathy.

For example, if people complain about finances, the first thing you gotta do is look at their iPhone or look at their Car. A lot of these people who complained that they’re so broke all the time, they’re the ones who are always buying the newest iPhone or iPhone Pro, buy new cars, paying a monthly payment on their car, sending their kids to daycare or private school or whatever, giving fellatio to Mark Zuckerberg, Essentially if you’re on Instagram, you love the taste of Zuckerberg semen in your mouth. Also, the reason you should not trust Mark Zuckerberg, he pretends to be fake poor humble, – she himself still operates under this façade of being a good guy, yet privately owns $10 million cars in his garage.

And I’m also pretty certain that Mark Zuckerberg has probably used the meta-quest at least once to check out virtual reality porn. Not that this is bad, but it is probably true.

the financial freedom of bitcoin

So what I really love about the financial freedom of bitcoin is that I think it sets people free. 

For example, with bitcoin, you could go anywhere on the planet, and always have your wealth with you. You don’t have to be tied down by nothing, not your loser Lamborghini your lose loser Porsche, and now, even your cyber truck.

Ideally, all your wealth would always be portable, with you, in your front pocket in your iPhone, anywhere on the planet!

Matte black bitcoin patches

A funny idea… Thank you you’re making some matte black bitcoin patches, some matte black bitcoin stickers. If you’re interested in copping some, just email me eric@erickim.com

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the vision

Once again, very very simple guys; senator Cynthia Lummis, she is introducing this really interesting bitcoin bill, in which America will like try to obtain 1 million bitcoins over four years. The legendary and mythical Nakamoto, which is 1 million bitcoins.  

Why America is well positioned to do this

America is money, America is manifest destiny. America is the best, the most powerful, the most dominant, and anyone who likes to think otherwise is either deluded, wrong, or somehow, anti-American? I don’t really get it; technically, if you live in America, and you get paid in US dollars or whatever, it is actually like a super good deal.

Why? First, essentially America could print money ad infinitum, for free, into infinity.

So it seems actually super super obvious; to essentially, just print a bunch of money, buy the bitcoin, and take the upside, none of the downside. In fact, the really intelligent strategy  is the triple Trump Max strategy outlined by Michael Saylor in his presentation the red wave; to purchase 4 million bitcoins.

If we own 6 million bitcoins, 2045,,, which is just 21 years from now, … $81T payoff!

think in bitcoins

Also what is really fashion being is that bitcoins, is actually… Also built upon the bitcoin icon; everyone could easily notice the bitcoin icon from even 100 miles away. Yet, nobody has any clue or idea what Ethereum is. Or anything else.

 financial prospering

Another big idea in things to my colon doesn’t everyone seek and desire some sort of financial prosperity? Like doesn’t everyone want to be super super filthy dumb rich, whether they use that money for good like donations to charities or whatever, quitting your own nonprofit, helping poor kids, whatever?

economic power, capital power is real power

I think this is also another thing that people don’t understand, capital control,  financial control, financial power is real power.

For example, I just went to Catholic mass the other day, and there was a second donation, for St. Vincent de Paul, helping poor families deal with paying the rent and utilities, not getting evicted etc. As long as the Catholic Church still asks for donations — money matters.

In fact I really interesting thought is if the Catholic Church or the Vatican or whatever would build up their own strategic bitcoin reserve, then, the Catholic Church would last into perpetuity. And also never have to pay taxes.

Why do rich people care about taxes so much?

You’re kind of matters because even if you’re being taxed at a paltry rate of 1%, in like 30 or 40 years, assuming that you bought a $1 million home, you’re going to send you be paying like half of that in just simple property taxes. 

Or, if you purchase a one million $ home, and you have one percent tax, then over the course of 100 years, you’re going to have already paid $1 million worth of property tax.

Now why is this important? You cannot text bitcoin, if you just hold it. And don’t sell it. Or transfer it.

Also fortunately, there’s no inheritance tax on bitcoin. Like if you die you could just give your private keys to your kids, and they will give it to their kids kids kids. No government meddling around with your family’s wealth. 

Even Sanator Lummis supports this idea, assuming that the bitcoin act passes, the bitcoin bill, I don’t really see any reasons why it won’t, essentially will give more clear property rights of private keys, to humans and American citizens?

For example, nobody could stick a gun to your head, and force you to hand over your keys.  however, somebody could stick a gun to your head, and force you to give you your credit cards, your wallet, your credit card your stuff, or break into your home and steal the gold bars stuffed under your mattress.

First, I think banks were generally a good thing the invention of it was beneficial in so far much as even me, I don’t want to walk around with like $100,000 of US currency in my pocket. Why? The risk of me misplacing it, losing it, getting it stolen is quite high. For example like when I used to lift weights at the gym and I did not want to get distracted, Sometimes I would just like leave my backpack there, not really worrying whether people would steal my old iPhone SE, or steal the maybe $50 i had in my wallet.

And this is the big idea, the idea that you could essentially store your own wealth, without a loser bank, a fucking asshole bank, I fucking hate the banks! Even these fucking assholes at JP Morgan Chase; literally taking me about three weeks before I could wire my own damn money to my Coinbase account, to just buy bitcoins for myself, even having to go to the branch like three or four times before doing it!

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How long until you could purchase bitcoins and custody or bitcoins at JP Morgan Chase?

An interesting thing; if you have a certain upgraded bank status with JP Morgan Chase, they actually give you access to this free vault thing, where I guess you could hide your gold bars and antique Rolexes.

You’re not supposed to, but you can. I also would not be surprised that a lot of people probably hide US dollars or cash currency to avoid paying taxes, which I find to be a very very despicable act.

I think with taxes, there is actually kind of like a moralistic obligation to pay taxes, certainly nobody wants to pay more than their fair share but still… I have a personal moral obligation to pay taxes. Why? Because once again, at least for myself, I was raised through the public school system, I went to UCLA, with federal government grants and scholarships, to become the person I am today. I am so insanely grateful to America American government, my mentors, my local Boy Scouts troop,  who knows maybe I’ll start volunteering once Seneca is old enough.

My sense of patriotism, is not this fake ass flag humping conservative Republican alt right, con toting fake ass libertarianism anti-government thing; even what a lot of these loser Republicans and conservatives don’t understand is they are all apparently super anti-government, yet they want America to build a wall to keep out others?

Or, they want the government to stay out of their gun business, but don’t they understand that actually, the right to gun ownership is actually still predicated on the US government?

Or, let us see that somebody breaks into your house, and either robs you or kills your family members, whatever… And even though you have a arsenal of guns, you were not able to stop all the perpetrators. If you want to enact justice, yet you are super anti-government, everyone is antigovernment until they need the government. 

Then what I think people really want is like kind of maybe minimum government possible, MVP, MINIMUM VIABLE GOVERNMENT (MVG).

I think the general idea is that certainly it is good to have the fire department if you don’t want your house to burn down, ain’t nobody gonna own their own fire hose to prevent their house from burning down.

Also, it is certainly good to have a police department, a police force, once again, if somebody beat you up and rob you, and you catch them, you certainly want justice to be dealt to them.

I think that it is like having just enough government, without the bloat?

It’s kind of like having a smart phone, certainly life is better with a smart phone rather than without. However the new ones is, ain’t nobody want to own a loser android or Samsung phone, which has far too much bloatware.

Even now Apple, there are too many damn apps.

I don’t really get it; Apple keeps turning out all these new apps, apps that nobody has any idea what it is, nor do people actually have any desire to use it, I said just let the third-party developers make those journaling apps and stuff. In fact, if Apple were really intelligent what Apple would do is actually with every subsequent version of iOS, they would actually get rid of superfluous apps!

Like there’s all these weird apps like the measuring tool and whatever.  Come on Apple just get rid of it. 

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Hot take: I think in four years by the end of the Trump presidency, I will not be shocked if bitcoin hits 1 million of bitcoin, which is about 10x from here?

To keep the math simple; I’m just going to assume that bitcoin is like $100,000 of bitcoin right now. So $100,000-$1 million is a 10x gain.

So do the simple math, if you sell your assets right now which are not really rapidly accumulating in value, then, the best way to think about it is that you have to have a strong end up for your timeline. It is currently the year 2024, I think Trump takes presidency 2025, so then the projection should be 2029, Four years from now… Seneca will only be eight years old? Is that like the second grade? And then on top of that it will be another 10 years until he goes to college or just starts his own bitcoin based company or thing.

The future four years from now

Making predictions four years from now is pretty simple. I am very very certain that miracle will accumulate some amount of bitcoins to back strategic bitcoin treasury reserve assets, I think of it like the new bitcoin Fort Knox; my personal thought is that America will decouple herself from the gold standard, and then latch on and hyper charge herself with bitcoin.

The reason why this becomes such a fascinating idea is that then, the US dollar will actually appreciate and value because it is actually backed by something which is real, bitcoin.

Triple Trump Max?

I recently watched a presentation by Michael Saylor, titled the red wave, and it is really really fascinating; now that the red Republicans have taken over the whole government, this is like 1000 X good news for us bitcoin holders as well as micro strategy share owners.

Why is it meant to be such a glorious future for us?

First, the crypto Renaissance. Now that Elon Musk is going to be the new doge chair, which is hilarious, you’ll see a boom in the whole cryptocurrency industry, a new resurgence. And as a consequence, you’re going to see like 1 trillion new crypto based companies having a virtual IPO– even Scottie Pippen is doing interesting with the famous 1991 basketball that he has held for 33 years, and he is like sharing ownership in it or something? $BALL

ANYWAYS, THIS IS ALMOST LIKE THE NEW DIGITAL GOLD WAVE; the new digital gold rush.

Even now, you’re already seen smart rich old families buy best from gold and pour that money into bitcoin instead. You are starting to see the black rock gold ETF becoming consolidated, and having those asset reserves pour into bitcoin the bitcoin spot ETF Ibit by Black rock.

Even watch CNBC news, the squawk box, which is the real financial news. You know it is a big deal when you have all these really really famous investors, admitting that they were actually wrong about bitcoin, although saying it in like a sideways, orthogonal way.

Even this really famous investor in Tesla admitted to the Joe guy, “I told you… You gotta do your own research, and you did your research and I did my research and I know my business and you know your business” which is essentially like a way of ceding defeat and admitting that you were wrong.

How to know that ERIC KIM is a true believer in bitcoin

Very interesting, I’m like one of the biggest NASSIM TALEB Fan boys of all time, and still am. Like four years ago or five years ago, he actually wrote a medium article on how he believed in bitcoin, and actually he even wrote the introduction preface to the bitcoin standard, who was written by another fellow Lebanese American economist and writer.

However, the moment in which I put in the beeswax of Odysseus was when apparently Taleb had a change of heart, and then he became like on a crusade to be super super anti-bitcoin, and making fun of bitcoiners. He also apparently wrote this bitcoin essay on how it was kind of not good, and when I saw it I immediately just shut my eyes, and went off the grid. And instead spending more time at the gym, just lifting weights, not thinking about bitcoin and the whole crypto economy, and just enjoying my lifting.

Also, you know that I am super legit because when the whole FTX meltdown happened, I didn’t even know.  for about 4 to 5 years, I try to shut my ears to bitcoin prices and not think about it, until people would accidentally tell me even against my own will. Or Cindy or my brother-in-law telling me that bitcoin is way down, I never lost hope, I just had to stay focused.

So what does it mean when you’re right?

Kind of weird and amazing, for me the really really big deal was when I first saw bitcoin hitting $88,000 a bitcoin, which was like a lot, because my mind was still pegged at bitcoin at being like an average 65,000 a bitcoin or 62,000 a bitcoin, or even 59,000 of bitcoin.

And then the magic happen, I’m miraculously just looked at the prices by chance, randomly on my iPhone, and I saw that it hit about 91,000, then about 93,000 of bitcoin? Then going on Twitter and seeing that Michael Saylor is already planning the $100k party.

Everyone wants bitcoin to succeed

I think that’s very interesting to me is that actually the whole crypto economy is pegged to the bitcoin. Even loser Ethereum and everything after it.

What is Ethereum? It is like a fake diamond a cubic zirconia, it looks shiny and pretty from the outside but in the inside it is just plastic.

People talk about how you could like create nonfungible tokens, cyber artwork, and you could program on Ethereum… But you fools don’t you know you could do the same exactly on bitcoin? And bitcoin is like at least 1000 X more powerful robust and super superior?

I almost feel like this is against the early days of android versus iPhone. I really really feel like there’s almost 0 reasons to own an android of Google pixel a Samsung phone anymore. Even Google Gemini which came out kind of is lame.

And also the big thing… The sales people at Google they all own iPhone pros.

Don’t ask people what you should do, just see what they personally own.

The joy of waking up

So now that I am like 10% invested in micro strategy, about 90% of my wealth in bitcoin, I actually get super super excited when it is 6:30 AM, the best time of the day. I enjoy looking at the market activity of micro strategy, how it is like essentially like nuclear power and physics insanely volatile, insanely high power, radioactive!

I actually remember as a kid, learning all about nuclear power, and how it was a very good thing, like essentially the magical thing that would change everything, that would essentially make energy and power practically free. I still believe this way.

I think the hard thing about nuclear power is that like anything in life, high volatility and massive upside, you just gotta be careful. Assuming you take all the smart MIT nuclear physicist to build these nuclear pants, somewhere maybe in the desert, and you do it safely, the Asymmetric payoff;

You have 1000 to one benefit ratio.

Once again nuclear waste and the potential for another Fukushima is possible, but also do you suddenly turn everyone to a buggy wagon and horse because people die in car accidents? 

Also, do you ban people from owning iPhones because there are so many debts related to texting while driving?

Or do you ban people from using electricity because there are some people who either use it as a weapon, how you could kill people with the electric chair, etc.?

I think this is also the tricky thing with guns; obviously there are all these crazy mass murderers with guns, and these fucking asshole pussies who bring it to a wedding, leave it in a book bag unattended in the guest room closet, to only have a crazy alcoholic woman stealing people’s wallets and shit, miraculously finding the gun, and then putting it on top of your kids car seat. I am not joking this is a real story which happened to me.

There are people who live in the wilderness, who actually may be hunt a game to feed their families. I respect that. What I personally hate all these skinny fat losers with beards, these small dick midgets who accumulate guns and ammunition to act tough? To me this is worse than insane, it is only a thing that a man without a penis would do. And no balls. A bunch of Ken dolls without genitalia.

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Think about the time cost to capital

Another big thing to consider, the time cost to capital. The general idea is that to build things actually just takes a lot of time, human effort, meetings, friction, working through things.

Time is the ultimate acid that we got, something which is not really really recoverable.

Like assume that you have a maximum human lifespan of 120 years, at best. However, impossible to know whether you’ll make it. I would say maybe more conservatively, we should think of like 90 years, that is like the new 80.

So if you knew with 100% precision that you would die at 90 or 92 or whatever, hopefully still with your six pack, then, how would you approach life differently?

First, my personal thought is there should really not be a profit motive. Why? With profit motives, profit is fine, but the issue is that the easiest way to make profit and make money is super simple; just buy bitcoin! If you want to make US dollar gains, then you just purchase micro strategy stock!

So then, the next step is just like kind of more like altruism; assume that you’re like worth $100 billion of bitcoin and you could afford anything on the planet, but the better question is do you really want do you really care? Is this going to create some sort of substantive impact on the planet which is something that you desire?

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Why?

So the reason why I have such a strong predilection towards Bitcoin is that I feel like I have a strong moral an ethical imperative behind it.

So I am all about open source, this has generally been my guiding principle for the last 15 years, maybe even 20 years of my life. The general idea was very very simple;

Information should be free!

Obviously I get it; there are certain people who create stuff we need to get paid and pay rent, I get it! But if you’re like somebody liked Tim Ferriss, or even Joe Rogan, and you’re already super rich… Why do you need advertisements? Why do you need more money?

I have no issues with greed wanting more money etc. It is all good. But maybe the more interesting question on my mind is what are your personal guiding principles in your personal imperative which drive you? Like, why do you care why do you do it?

So for me… The whole route of my open source philosophy was that I grew up super poor without access to nothing, and I want to treat others like how I would like to be treated. I want to be able to empower the other scrappy 19-year-old kid, like my friend Dylan Fan, to become something great, just giving them access to information education etc.

This is also where I’m kind of interested in doing more like these free open source online Zoom Bitcoin workshops on Zoom and other stuff. I don’t want people to have any barriers to access information or knowledge, which could really benefit themselves. 

Because honestly at this point, I’m making dumb money, even I’m flabbergasted. Cindy is too. And so is my mom.

You know it’s a good sign when even you are shocked

“I’m shocked too!” – JAY Z

I think you know you’re onto something good is even if you shock yourself, even if you believe in something and you succeeded, and you are made correct, you are rectified, but still… it still shocks you?

ERIC KIM FILM LEICA MP & LEICA 35mm f2 ASPH AUCTION

So I have a vision, maybe this will be big news: I’m going to sell my old film Leica MP, and my Leica 35 mm F2 ASPH lens to the highest bidder. I will only accept bitcoin.

If you wanna put in a bid, own a piece of photography history, email me at eric@erickim.com with your offer. I will sell this to the highest bidder.

Also I will make a pledge; the second after we confirm details, and we lock in the  details whatever, I will guarantee I’ll give you the best value of your bitcoin for my set up, assuming that even marked prices fluctuate a bit. In short I’ll be more generous to you.

Also, I think the fun thing is that it will be the first time I do a really big transfer just using bitcoin and bitcoin wallets– like a real pure to prayer, P2P transfer.

Technically this was the whole vision of Satoshi; being able to transfer value and money without a trusted intermediary. Not having to do it through loser PayPal, or loser bank, we’re having to deal with loser SWIFT code bank transaction wire stuff. 

Like doesn’t this make super sense,  that you would actually… If you want to sell something with a high value amount, thought you would just do it peer to peer with bitcoin, without having to deal with the messy business of some sort of third-party?

Like for example… Even a simple thing, if I owned like $1 million house I wanted to sell it directly to you, isn’t the most logical thing that I could just meet you in the flesh, shake your hand, and then immediately transfer $1 million from my bitcoin balance directly to you? Wouldn’t this make the most sense?

Or, if I owned like a $250,000 Lamborghini, that I could once again, test drive your car, tell you that I like it, shake your hand and immediately zap you like one or two bitcoins?

Or if you had a cyber truck, that I could give you like half a bitcoin for your cyber truck? Or maybe a quarter? 

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What is bitcoin and why does it matter? A simple straightforward primer:

First, the best technology of bitcoin is digital property. Or digital real estate. My general concept is that the price of a single bitcoin is and should at least least be the price of a single-family home, if not 10X 100X or 1000X.

 For example just open up Zillow, and look for the price of single-family homes in Los Angeles the Bay area etc. currently, even in poor neighborhood, average house prices are about 1.1, 1.2, $1.3 million. And also currently, many homes in the $1.5M, 2 million, $2.9M, and now $4.4 million zone.  and also, one of the estates on Hobie Hills, $155 million home, and above that a brand new construction, $199 million estate.

If I think about it, the reason why bitcoin is such a big deal is that it is the hardest working capital on the planet or the known human universe. For example, when you are sleeping in Pacific time, there is probably somebody awake in Singapore, when their exchanges are open, buying selling bitcoin.

Second, the velocity the speed the power. Currently bitcoin is like a juggernaut; you literally cannot stop it even if you wanted it to. Do you remember an X-Men, I’m the juggernaut, juggernaut just smashing through walls? Yeah that is like bitcoin.

And even microstrategy, it is like a tank, an armored vehicle, which is slowly plowing through and destroying everything in its way. If you have ever seen a raised military vehicle in the flesh, in desert 10 and iron steel, with a huge massive room that look like tractor rims, having like 20 wheels, driving on the freeway, the sheer size and mass will make your jaw drop.

The reason why I am so passionate about bitcoin is that at this point, it almost feels like an ethical imperative to me. What that means is that I almost feel like it is my God-given duty to spread the good word of bitcoin.

Why? Assuming that 55% of the world‘s problems come rooted in issues about money, if that were the case, if you could fix the money and the money supply, couldn’t you fix and improve and upgrade the human race? (Saylor).

Bet on the jockey and the horse 

So assuming that Michael Saylor is not the new patron in Saint of bitcoin, he is now the ultimate spokesperson for bitcoin, and assuming that he is in fact, unethical, incredibly intelligent, good intentioned and ethical, if that is the case, then, Michael Saylor is like our head man or jockey, like the Steve Jobs of bitcoin, and bitcoin is like the war horse. Once again, bitcoin has the most unstoppable power on the planet.

Internet digital capital

So this issue was physical real estate, let us buy $10 million house or plot of property here in Culver City, main issues:

1. The issues of property taxes, sales taxes, other taxes which is just like the local city or government or whatever siphoning away money from you. It is almost like you are a healthy child, and then you become a blood bag for some sort of mad Max evil villain, And they’re slowly selecting away the blood of your firstborn child, to feed itself. Now I think I understand a little bit more about the idea of lowering taxes and government taxes, because nobody likes to have their blood drained. Especially against their own will.
2. Laws of physical nature, act of God: so my brother-in-law is currently having his house remodeled and rebuilt, and super super crazy story the contractor who’s helping them employed by Cindy‘s mom suddenly I guess randomly got cancer and is now in the hospital? And this is the head contractor for the whole project, so then, the laws of physics; if your head contractor suddenly gets cancer or a heart attack and becomes ill… Your whole housing development project comes to a standstill. Also, the laws of physical entropy; when you are getting a house rebuild, and then it starts to rain, this is disastrous.
3. The physical world is too slow: so currently on 877 Washington in Culver City, Apple is expanding their Apple TV TV plus campus. I’ve been watching them constructed like four days and weeks on end. They’re actually doing good progress on it like they’re always at work, looks like they have good contractors etc.; but still, this is taking months, how long will it take? Five years? The issue with physical and physical development physical real estate once again, the laws of physics make it very very impossible to build things quickly. Even in Vietnam where they obviously do not observe any sort of safety laws, they built things really really fast, but it is impossible to build 100 foot skyscraper in like five days or a week. With bitcoin you can.

Why is it so hard for people to understand bitcoin?

Can you imagine trying to explain to an ant how a microwave works?  or can you try to imagine explaining to a child in nuclear physics?

Or can you try explaining to your 95-year-old mom how the Internet and the cloud works?

Poor, imagine how difficult it is if you took a 85-year-old man who has been driving petroleum cards this whole life, and giving him a brand new cyber truck?

The hard thing with technologies is that it is always very very very very difficult to understand things which are a massive paradigm shift. Even my uncle, who is almost the most reluctant person to technology ever, like he only got an iPhone literally this last year — even up until a year ago he was still using a flip phone, now that she has an iPhone Pro, his life is like 1 trillion times better. He literally fought hand and nail and even he eventually succumbed to the miraculous powers of the iPhone. I think also a similar thing will happen with electric cars, like we charge our phones every night, can you imagine if your iPhone ran on a gasoline generator?

Insight & vision

I think the hard thing is that to have a deep insight about something, is going to be considered insane by the traditional crowd. Which is also very very understandable. For example, one of the most useful inventions of all time the microwave, can you imagine trying to describe to a person in the 1800 how a microwave worked? Or even having silent clean electricity inside your home? Or, trying to explain to somebody in the 1700s that one day you would fly in the Meadow bird across the sea in a matter of hours? Or trying to explain to somebody in the 1500s that one day we will jump on a spaceship and go to the moon?

Once again very very difficult.

The art of being unreasonable

Or, it’s still kind of blows my mind… I think what Elon Musk is currently worth what like $270 billion or something? Can you imagine even telling somebody 10 or 20 years ago that one day this would be possible?

Even Steve Jobs, his insane tenacity is like the best thing of all time. Can you imagine if we were still on blackberries with physical keyboards?

Or, when he first unveiled the iPad everyone was trying to get him to like add 50 USB ports to it. But it was his stubborn genius which prevented this nonsense.

Even in the early days of the Apple to computer, Steve Jobs had the very very good idea of not having nerds hack with it, you could let them just do that with the windows computers. Steve Wozniak I didn’t like it, but ultimately Steve Jobs was right.

Or Elon Musk and Tesla; what people don’t know is that Tesla was originally started by Marc Tarpeting, and I think another group of investors and entrepreneurs, however, it is Elon who turned Tesla into what it is today. He is the one who had the genius and the insight and the engineering and design taste to make the Tesla model S the beautiful car that it is today. And also, his vision with cybertruck and now the cyber taxi and Robo van.

I think we tend to put these individuals on a pedestal. Why can you not be as unreasonable and stubborn and insightful as Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos? What in terms of the laws of physics is holding you back?

Your only limit is you 

Me talking about bitcoin might seem like it is out of left field, but actually, I’ve been investing in bitcoin and crypto since 2018. A year after I left Vietnam.

Initially, I was told about a certain old coin by this Singaporean trader investor entrepreneur named Bing — she first is the one who got me to sign up, I first did my own research a little bit, but maybe like $25,000 worth of bitcoin in 2018, when it was like $6950 a bitcoin, and me then taking half of that money and buying digibyte DGB, on the exchange fund poloniex, but I’m not even sure it’s around anymore, anyways, eventually I came back to my senses, and after doing a lot of research and thinking, consolidated all of my digibyte back into Bitcoin, the smart path.

Other meanderings

I also then much later, met a guy named Abe who was an early investor in chainlink, randomly when I was at LA fitness in Providence Rhode Island, and I was pretty sold, it seemed like chainlink was a great idea.  I think one chain-link was maybe like seven dollars a chain-link or $10 a chainlink, I sold all of my bitcoin which was worth maybe like $180,000 at the time, and bought all chainlink.  I liked the insights of Sergey Nazarov, and I used to check the chain-link blog like every single day.

Eventually… I then had a gut feeling, I kind of missed having my bitcoin. And also I started to get a little bit more and more suspicious and having a bad feeling about chain-link. The issue was too much of the price of a chain-link was dependent on marketing and PR, and also… I think they release a version 2.0 white paper for chain-link, and this was a red flag:

Never trust anything that needs a version 2.0.

What people don’t really really know is that bitcoin, when Satoshi invented it, was like version .001, and since it was published, the original bitcoin paper, it has not been tampered with or changed since.

Since then, we have seen many forks, duplications, new ideas, Ethereum Ethereum 2.0, the big Ethereum hack and fork etc.; and even now somehow I’m not even sure how this happened, Ethereum you can now have an Ethereum spot ETF?

 however, people are starting to wake up to their senses and realizing that Ethereum is like a cubic zirconian fake diamond made out of plastic – it looks really really shiny and great from the outside, but on the inside, it is just plastic.

What’s also super interesting about diamonds I learned this from my uncle who has been a gold and diamond and jewelry dealer for almost over 35 years, is that with the naked eye, a cubic zirconia and fake diamond and a real diamond is literally impossible to tell with a human eye, even if you took the world’s most skilled jeweler to take a look. 

How to FIRE with bitcoin (financial independence, retire early)

OK, before COVID-19 hit, it seems that we were actually on a good path, discovering the life happiness and the pursuit of happiness was not about physical property, physical possessions, even owning physical land or physical home or property… It was more about living this semi nomadic life, and accumulating interesting experiences, and getting your EXP up (experience points).

Even a big idea that I had, around 2015, wow almost a decade ago, is buy experiences not stuff.

So applied to our real life, maybe we should kind of shake off the trauma in the backlash of Covid, and let us take it back to the beginning, take it back to standards.

First, I think a good idea is to try to imagine that Covid never happened, and let us resent ourselves around our minimalist principles.

So let us make this notion of fire, financial independence retire early cool again.

So, how do you do this with bitcoin?

How to fuel your own early retirement with bitcoin

One quote I like from Michael Saylor; everybody is winners on the bitcoin standard, nobody is a loser. There are only varying degrees of success. 

So, how do we apply these principles?

First, the very very simple goal is to accumulate as many bitcoins as humanly possible, to stack as many Satoshi’s as humanly possible. The very very simple via negativa principle: 

You don’t sell your Bitcoin ***

If I told you that you were a wealthy family from New York City, and you own physical property commercial real estate on fifth Avenue, would you ever sell your property? Hell no! You would do everything, hand and nail to avoid and to prevent yourself from ever selling your property.

What do you then do instead is you try to do everything in your powers, your financial leverage powers to never ever ever have you to sell your bitcoin, but instead, to leverage your financial assets and instruments in order to accumulate more bitcoins.

What do you want to do is obviously do simple things like pay your rent and stuff, but, the very very simple goal: you live so insanely frugal and Spartan, and just put on 99% of your moneys into bitcoin. 

The basic idea is live like a demigod Spartan, you have no need for money or possessions or stuff. Even after recently doing this very very spirited road trip down to Temecula and Marietta, staying on a nice ranch with a bunch of chickens, I am still pretty convinced… A white Toyota Prius, is probably the best car of all time. Even if you could afford like 50 cyber trucks, or assuming I could only own one car, currently I still might take the Prius over the cyber truck.

Why? My body looks like a cyber truck, I don’t need my car to be. 

I think the problem is people try to purchase dominance through their assets like their car their truck their SUV they’re home they’re closed their jewelry their devices whatever, or even worse their guns.

Only skinny fat midget weakling losers own guns. 

A real man has no need for external fire arms; your own arms your own guns are your firearms.

So a very simple thought; don’t waste your money on guns or ammunition, use all that money to buy weights, weightlifting equipment and barbells, use that to stack your muscles and also your physical dominance. 

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How to deal with the emotional roller coaster of bitcoin

So I think the number one critical problem here is that for somebody who is inexperienced, bitcoin is one hell of a ride.

For example, even my uncle who is like 68 years old, he told me in Korean that bitcoin is almost kinda like crack cocaine or bad drugs (ma-yyak), which literally means “evil medicine”.

For example I tell him that all I think about is bitcoin and Eitreim in bitcoin, he tells me that he has the same problem. But I guess the difference is that I do it from a joyful, happy, playful childlike approach; she does it almost kind of like out of opportunity and fear?

So some simple thoughts:

1. Never look at prices 

Never ever ever ever look at prices, delete the Coinbase app from your phone or whatever, or your Fidelity app, assuming you own microstrategy stock,  and never ever ever look at prices unless you actually intend on buying selling or trading or swapping or accumulating or depositing money and re-investing it.  it might be one of the most difficult things to do but I treated like the ears of Odysseus; fill up your ears with digital beeswax, never ever look at prices. 

Now that my net worth is insanely soaring, like bitcoin is going ballistic, and I’m getting ready for the $100K bitcoin party,  the best party of all time in cyberspace and everybody who owns bitcoin or even a fraction of a bitcoin is invited, — essentially the funny thing with bitcoin and numbers and prices and whatever is that there is this strange assymmetry:

When you see the prices or your assets going up, you get like a 50% boost and happiness, but if you see it go down, it is like a -500% in happiness. 

This is why losing money at the casino is 1000 times more annoying than winning money.

So don’t be tempted with gains ; once again, the goal is to increase your money or your capital, but instead and rather, the goal is to accumulate digital power.

There is no force stronger out in the planet than bitcoin. It is like solidified power, – like I visualize it like a Dragon Ball. Assuming that there’s only like seven dragon balls scattered around the planet, wouldn’t you want to have one?

Or imagine a better analogy… There’s like 21 million dragon balls scattered hazard lead around the planet, and there will never ever ever be more than 21 million dragon balls, and this Dragon Ball is your thing to economic immortality and power, wouldn’t you want to have one, or several?

How many bitcoins is enough bitcoins?

That’s like asking somebody if you have a chance to buy out Manhattan, how many square blocks should I buy if I could afford to buy like a lot?

Your goal is how much you ever could physically afford it! And even if you have to overextend or leverage yourself a bit, more property in Manhattan is always the best idea.

Bitcoin is like the ultimate digital cyber Manhattan assuming that there will never be more than 21,000,000 square blocks in cyber Manhattan, forever, then, certainly you will want to get one while you still can.

a bitcoin mortgage program

An idea that I’m kind of toying with this idea of like a bitcoin mortgage. The general idea is that there’s going to be a certain point in which owning a bitcoin is just going to be like physically impossible for most people like a full single bitcoin. Currently the scam that is going on is that people will Essentially sell all of their physiological energy and soul over the course of 30 years, to purchase a single-family home and property.

However if I think about this critically, the reason why buying a single-family home or anything with a mortgage is a terrible idea is that as long as the APR is above 0%,  it is never worth it.

Why? Even if you do get a 0% APR loan, assuming that you have to pay property taxes of at least one to 2% means that you’ll bleed out half of your capital in the course of 30 years?

Not only that it is like somebody offers to give you a free pet puppy, but you forget that you will have to pay it in the long run; paying for a bit fee, and it getting cancer, and eventually the sadness of having to put it down.

In life, you have the option of taking the winning bet, or you have the option of taking the losing bet. Why would you take the losing bet?

The point of life is to win!

 in life, so history and words mean little and nothing.

I still cannot ever forget, my extreme annoyance with talking to one person who told me that he was taking some classes to learn about investing in real estate or whatever, and I just joked tongue and cheek, but also seriously… Like bitcoin? He shrugged me off and told me “no, real investments.” This is from somebody with a business and maybe an economics degree? And maybe a marketing degree?

Anyways, I’ve made 1 trillion times more in bitcoin over the course of the last few years, then over 15 years of traveling the world and teaching photography workshops. And the truth is a lot of it is actually just time and technology; bitcoin didn’t really exist back then in a real tangible form which wasn’t that interesting to me at the time; so obviously if the financial instruments don’t really exist at the time, then, obviously you cannot hate on people for not making good financial decisions if the financial instrument, a.k.a. bitcoin, did not yet really exist!

But isn’t bitcoin risky?

 no! It might be like the least risky thing on the planet. It is almost like in my mind 100% certain to go out forever, albeit with great volatility.

But to quote Michael Saylor, volatility is vitality.  what that then means is in life, assuming like life is like a roller coaster, you need higher highs to get the lower lows in order to reach the higher highs. For example in roller coaster tycoon, in order to make a super super epic awesome roller coaster, you first need to make it go up really really high, then really really low, in order to use the centrifugal or the gravitational force to make it reach a really really new high!

I almost wonder if there was a lot of financial physics here as well: the idea is that once again, you need really really low dips, in order to reach new highs?

Compare this with a boring asset like bonds; the whole life it is just like super flat, maybe a 1° incline upwards, kind of like one of those lame kitty roller coasters. The one that just put you in a truck that just goes in a circle forever, with a tiny incline and a tiny dip. Super boring.

what is the goal?

I think philosophically, the goal ain’t to get rich or whatever, because richness is all relative. Rather, the goal is to gain your freedom, your financial freedom! Then once you have gained this freedom, the rest of your whole life will just be upside, no downside!

ERIC

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I Shall Never Die

Economic Armor

Suit of armor, and formal suit?

The virtues of working as a team?

.

A hybrid, a hybrid between the upside of nature, without any of the downsides? And also the upside of the city?

So one thing that’s super interesting is spending a little bit time here in the mountains, the quasi countryside is that something about the piece of the mornings is surprisingly wonderful and calming to me.

At first, I thought it was kind of a gimmick to be out in nature or whatever, ironically enough, this is even coming from a Boy Scout’s Eagle Scout.

So on one hand, the issue with all these people trying to seek the wilderness I think is a form of escape. They don’t like to be with themselves, so they try to get lost in nature to forget themselves.

I think one of the things that a lot of these overly sentimental week wings suffer from that they think that somehow, nature is God and nature is supreme. As a consequence, they feel this strange guilt about being alive, resources, etc. But I find this to be ridiculous; The truth is, human beings we are supreme, and nature is our slave. To anybody who has made it a virtue that somehow we have to be subservient to nature, to me is kind of a weakling mentality.  the true man has made nature his slave, his pet thing. His matter and mold and clay for wild, fun and playful experimentation!

I think the critical issue here is that people have no idea what to live for, whom to live for, etc. As a consequence, people spend a lot of their lives just wasting it, just wondering and meandering around, with zero insight about themselves, their personal role, their own personal philosophy, their own personal ethics ethos aesthetics and approach to life etc.

And I think what a lot of these people also feel to understand is that there is no ultimate truth or true North to anything; life is like a wonderfully wild creative monster, a beast, full of chaos fun play enjoy. The Indonesian joy of radicalness, playful candor, and unreasonable art?

I’m the new Nietzsche?

Certainly everyone wants some sort of legacy, some see through their altruism and the virtuality, some try to do it like Mother Teresa, Gandhi etc., other people like Thich Nhat Hanh, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., etc. Other people tried to found religions like Saint Paul, Mohammad, Moses, the pharaohs of Egypt etc. I think Plato also tried to create a religion but failed. Same with Socrates and most of the ancient Greeks.

All of the flossers who have come before me, I think they failed on many accounts. First, none of them were actually materially successful, or entrepreneurial, or financially successful, considering or assuming they started from nothing. I’m starting to learn a little bit more about generational wealth, kids were born knowing that they had to trust fund, etc. I’m not one of them.

Second, the physicality aspect of it. Till you have met a philosopher who could lift over 1000 pounds, that is 10 1/2 plates on each side of the barbell, knock on my door.

Third, the disconnection from social media. I might be the only person that I know who is actually disconnected from social media. Even a lot of these older folks, seems that everyone is jacked into Twitter like crack. Especially a lot of older folks ironically enough.

Also, am I the only 36-year-old who doesn’t have an Instagram who deleted it at the height of his fame with 60,000 followers? The best idea in 1 trillion years; now that my net worth is soaring, just recently breaking the $2.1 million mark, and continue to grow and explode at an alarming rate, what that means is things are starting to get interesting, and also pretty awesome.

Technology

Another thing I was randomly thinking about is how blessed I am to have been born in the time of bitcoin. Even though I do have some superficial regrets, technically I’m grateful of my journey thus far, my only regret in life is not buying more bitcoins or buying any bitcoins when my roommate Kevin first told me about it my junior year of college, one bitcoin was worth like .0000 one percent of a penny. My roommate Kevin told me that we should just buy like $100 worth of Bitcoin for funsies, just to see what would happen. I think this was during bitcoin pizza day or a little bit before it. Regardless I was doing some math, and had I had bought $100 worth of bitcoin in my junior year of college, that would probably be worth like $100 billion today. But if this were the case, I probably would have never done my photography entrepreneurship journey, traveling the planet, promoting my open source philosophy, and forever cementing my legacy in street photography. So I’m not salty about nothing.

So on the contrary,  maybe the timing was all right along. Actually, one of my mottos and guiding principles to life, is the thought:

Everything happens as it should have happened.

The general idea is not that everything happens for a reason, which assumes some sort of strange mystical guiding force the universe which I do not believe in, but instead the general idea is that everything happened as it should have happened which means that one should never have any regrets in life The way in which things have played out. Because the funny thing, now that I am 36 years old, which is still super super young if I think about it, but the same time, I think with enough foresight, you will essentially discover and learn that Whatever happens in life, typically when you look back at it, 20 years or so from now, you’ll look back and smile knowing that without even really really thinking about it or considering it too deeply, the timing was perfect all along!

One story I don’t really talk about which is super super random is what inspired me and Cindy to actually  start trying to have a kid, because the timing never felt right. Long story short, being held up at gunpoint in Mexico City, me yelping, grabbing Cindy‘s hand and running the opposite way in his exact pattern as a natural impulse, and then the gunman, who first shined the chrome from his hip holster, jumping back on his moped or motorcycle and fucking off.

This was like two or three months before Covid hit, and then we started trying then. And then Covid happened, and then we thought that the baby was gonna get Covid so we stopped, and then we attended a webinar that said actually somehow babies were immune to Covid or something, and then we tried again and boom got pregnant in like a week.

Anyways, everything happens as it should have happened.

Other foresights

So some other four sites which are super fasciae to me is like my propensity to think about investing money and finances, in like a Zen stoic way?

Currently, stacking bitcoins is more like a game than anything. It’s been an interesting journey thus far, part of it is like being a little bit crazy, considered insane by the traditional crowd, but then again, now that Donald Trump has been elected president, isn’t the whole world in planet a little bit insane, truth be told?

Once again, the world is 1 trillion times more bizarre than I could have ever imagined it. For example, even Elon Musk putting on the red hat, putting on the Maga hat, make America great again hat, super interesting and weird?

And also, another sign of how America is so racist, when Kanye West put on the MAGA hat, everyone was trying to crucify him, calling him like the new black Hitler 2.0 or something. But then, when Elon Musk does it, it is considered cool hip trendy, counterculture and cool!

I suppose then, my whole theory about what everyone is so and Kanye West is kind of accurate and true; once again, America doesn’t like an outspoken African-American man, who is 1 trillion times more successful than them.

I hate you because you are 1 trillion times more successful than me! (has any man ever said this?)

Zen the fuck out , ZTFO – Big Sean

I woke up in beast mode! My wife and me is like beauty and the beast though! The only thing sold out is the seats though!

Thinking Calabasas, The Hills, etc.

So some thoughts; first, maybe the best strategy ain’t to ask people what you should do or whatever, or ask people for advice. Just see what they do, where they live, where they put their own money. In other words, talk is cheap, words weep. 

 the first interesting thoughts; why is it that all the super super rich successful people live in Calabasas? Kim has a house out there, and I think Kanye literally has a house across the street from his ex-wife?

I think Jay Z and Beyoncé also have a house in Beverly Hills?

Anyways, it looks like sooner or later everyone ends up back in LA Los Angeles Southern California. Nobody wants to be in the East Coast, New York sucks, Brooklyn sucks. The only reason people live out there is once again, people want the place to form them, rather than thinking about it Blank slate, Carte Blanche, instead of them doing the shaping? 

For example, questions; if you’re like somewhere or traveling or whatever, and you meet somebody from Brooklyn or Manhattan or New York City or whatever… The question; how long in your conversation and talking with them before they start talking about how great New York or Brooklyn is?

The same thing about people who once went to Harvard, either as a undergraduate or graduate student or postgraduate soon whatever; only unsuccessful people talk about their academic pedigree as an undergraduate. 

I think one of the things that I learned from mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen, Taoism is that the best way to think about things is not the past; which is a fiction, but rather, the present joyful moment, and also thinking about the future?

Once again, my overall suspicion of monks, Buddhist monks in the life; how much of them decide to opt for some sort of Buddhist simple lifestyle simply because they were unsuccessful in the material realm, the entrepreneurial or economic realm; like how often do you meet a billionaire who then renounces everything and becomes a monk? Typically, most people have tried the whole life thing, fail, and then become a monk. 

Zuckerberg goals

The only successful person in my age group or age range who I respect is Mark Zuckerberg. The truth is though, he’s a super fucking weirdo. Just look at interviews with him, dark rings under his eyes, and the man is quite bizarre. You could totally see that in high school and college, he was like one of these super fucking weirdos, the super weird nerds, who probably wanted to pick up chicks, probably watch some weird porn in private, maybe he was into Maria Ozawa I don’t know. Even recently watching his interview at a certain Keynote with the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, I was watching Mark on stage, his new outfit was pretty cool he essentially look like Jay Z or Kanye, but the second that Mark starts talking, once again super fucking weird.

The truth is nobody wants to live in the meta-verse. This is where I’m a huge proponent of bitcoin; I would prefer to be in the wild outdoors, super fucking jacked and happy, walking around topless with my demigod physique, my ripped hard bronze body, super jacked arms, with my black sun hat on, my 60 pound weight vest on. Even more impressive, I guess I’m strong enough now that I could actually go on a hike with my 60 pound weight vest and carry Seneca who is now like 50 pounds.

Anyways, even in terms of cars, I’m still pretty convinced, assuming you want to lift some sort of funny outdoor, off the grid, exploration lifestyle, the goal is to own some sort of loser off-roading car, over landing car,  some sort of AMG sprinter van converted mini RV thing, or camper van, no, just having a simple 2010 Prius in cocaine white, is far superior why? Until you could have a vehicle with at least 50 MPG’s, a hybrid car, everything else is not worth it.

Why? even if you had like a cyber truck or a cyber beast, for people who have really really done real road trips, or really driven anywhere outside of the Bay Area or California, 99.9% of the grid is not equipped for Tesla superchargers or electric EV chargers. Like you never see any electric charging stations anywhere!

And note, I’m like one of the biggest Elon Musk and Tesla fan boys of all time. And now that I’m super rich, I could afford like 50 cyber trucks, I still haven’t bought one. Why? Once again… Better to buy one bitcoin than one cyber truck. Because the cyber truck at best might kind of hold its value for another year or two, until it’s steadily loses economic value, until eventually you’ll probably be able to buy one for like $30 or $40 or $50,000. Because once the cyber taxi comes out, everyone’s gonna want to have that instead.

What people don’t understand is a Tesla car is like an iPhone Pro on steroids, that has wheels on it. This is also why you should never buy any sort of expensive non-interchangeable lens digital camera like a Leica Q– it is essentially first of all, a Panasonic Lumix with a body kit, just get the Lumix S9 and 26mm pancake lens instead (my current set up), which is may be superior in performance, smaller and more compact and lighter, and also way cheaper?

And also, there is no physical asset on the planet, no car no vehicle that will ever ever ever ever ever accumulate in value or go up in value. Even if you own some sort of loser super rare Porsche Carrera 911 classic car, or a classic Lamborghini or Ferrari or something, after the maintenance cost and fixing it and whatever… The value of it will essentially plummet Into the negative. Whereas bitcoin is going to the moon and to Mars and beyond. 

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Podcast

Audio

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?

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

---

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

***

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.

---

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!

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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

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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

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

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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.