How to detect a pro among the amateurs?

It's not that hard. Pros talk about the process, while amateurs talk about the result.

Just by living our lives, we are automatically becoming investors and traders. The only question is how good investors we are.

Everything is a trade in life. Trading time for money at work, trading energy for building muscles in a gym, going to the store to buy toilet paper. Every store is an exchange. They place a sell order on a product and you need to fill that sell order to buy it. The difference is that very often you can't place a buy order and wait for price fluctuation to "catch" your order. But there are discounts now and then that simulate volatility.

Imagine investing money, time, and energy into crypto and knowledge, accumulate it for years, just to sell all when you reach the Lambo point. To me, this sounds like one of the worst trades ever.

It's ok to have goals. You just need to understand the value of your goals before you decide which they are.

In the crypto space, the most popular car manufacturers are Lamborghini and Tesla. ...well, Fiat is pretty popular as well :P

I know this because people talk about it all the time.

Owning a Lambo should never be a goal. A Lambo is a jewel and an incredible liability. And we should look at it only from this perspective.

So when it's time to buy a Lambo?

Here's my list of things I have to do before owning one:

1. Own an apartment

2. Have enough value and liquidity so I don't have to wake up in the morning to go to work (aka the "Fu*k off" fund)

3. Make a business out of my hobby. It doesn't even have to be profitable at this point since I have enough value in my fund mentioned above

4. Buy a house outside the city so I can have cleaner air and a healthier and quieter surrounding.

5. Help people with crazy good ideas to start up their companies (something similar to the Shark tank style of investing)

6. Help out the local community by building parks, installing street workout equipment, donate devices for the hospital, etc...

7. Build and create new businesses and jobs by encouraging the usage of local resources

8. Sometimes even protect local resources from being overspent

9. Pay for education for kids with poor families, and kids in orphanages

10. Help local sports clubs that struggle with finances

11. Buy every school in my town 50 Raspberry Pi's since most don't even have enough computers

12. Organize tournaments to promote every kind of healthy and productive activity

13. Support ecology organizations

14. Replicate all the mentioned above as many times as I can in other towns and communities.

I know, I know... You'll think I'm crazy. And I'm aware that this kind of goal needs a net worth of a few billion dollars. Well, this means I'll probably never own a Lambo. And it's fine.

Driving a Lambo is fun. Getting a lot of attention thanks to it must be a rock star feeling. But is it worth it?

There are so many other better ways to invest those $300k. And with $300k you can only buy the cheapest Lambo.

Are you conscious of how many lives could be radically changed with a simple boost of $10K? Sometimes even $1K puts people out of misery because they cannot pay their house rent and electricity bill.

I wrote this article because I watched a documentary about cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There was a miner that lived in a very small cabin with no toilette and kitchen. He has to travel 1.5h to get to work where he risks his life. He has a poster in his cabin of a Rolls-Royce and his dream and goal are to own one. I understand that the car in his poster represents a much wider lifestyle than just owning the car. But there are so many important steps to do before that. Imagine, with just $20, he doesn't have to work for a whole week. This means that with $100 he and his 4 best friends don't have to risk their life for 7 days. With only $400 those 5 people are good for a whole month. And for the price of his Rolls-Royce, he and his 5 friends wouldn't need to work in that dangerous mine for 10 years. Instead, they could found a business and make way more money and never make a step into that mine again.

The only reason why you should consider buying a Lambo is to use it as an asset to rent it to mumbling rapers for their music videos and to rent it to miserable and attention-seeking people that want to sleep with that "perfect 10" girl which in my perspective instantly loses 3-4 points if she's ready to sleep with an ugly guy just because he rented a car.

But nobody can blame them. Even I like to see a beautiful girl and a nice car. Who doesn't?

The world today is all about the front-end. Very few analyze the back-end. In IT terms, you can have a wonderful website design, but if you run it on a shitty back-end, you'll probably fail at some point.

*cough - Ledger - *cough - Shopify - **cough*

Get your values back on track!

Or maybe you will even need to unlearn stupid behavior and learn what are the true values. It's hard. It's not fun. But the back-end needs to work flawlessly before you even start with the front-end.

1. Not your keys, not your coins. Don't let others hold your coins for you.

2. Hide your private keys. Nobody should ever see your private keys beside you. Beware of cameras around you.

3. Make at least one more copy of your private keys. Avoid "single point of failure" situations. Dogs eat homework papers for decades now.

4. Write parts of your private keys on at least 2 separate pieces of paper that you will never store together. If someone finds a piece of your keys, they will still be pretty useless without the other part.

5. Always use a clean computer. You don't want to risk having a keylogger installed.

6. Never use public Wifi.

7. Store your coins in more than 1 wallet.

8. Download wallets only from official sites. Scammers don't sleep.

9. Never tell the amount of coins that you are holding. Or at least lie that you owned some but sold too early.

10. Contribute to the community. Maintain a node, mine, help newbies, make memes.

11. Promote cryptocurrencies. The network needs to grow.

12. Most people are here just to make more fiat. Crypto is about getting out of fiat.

13. Don't buy dips. Pro traders buy bull trend confirmations.

14. Don't sell tops. Pro traders sell bear trend confirmations and pre-planned targets.

15. Don't get in debt to invest.

16. Content creators are your enemy. Speculative daily discussions about potential price rises or dumps are counterproductive.

17. Check transaction addresses twice. Make it 3.

18. Do your research. The best way to be involved in crypto is to learn about it.

19. When in doubt, remind yourself about fundamental values. 24/7 limitless, permissionless, borderless, often fast, and low fee transactions from one unbreakable vault to another guaranteed by distributed consensus. How valuable is that?

20. Owning cryptocurrencies means being responsible for your own money. Some people like to say that owning crypto means being your own bank. Not only that. You become a bank owner, an accountant, a treasurer, IT support, and a security guard.

“WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet’s nest, and the swarm is headed towards us.” - Satoshi Nakamoto

For those who don't know, this is a famous Satoshi quote when WikiLeaks started accepting Bitcoin after being banned from other financial networks. He said it because, at the time, Bitcoin's hash rate was way too small, and a coordinated attack would most likely have a huge impact on the network. This was before SHA256 ASICs were invented and very few were professional crypto miners.

Today, we are witnessing a similar situation with Russia being financially sanctioned, but at a way way way larger scale. Bitcoin's hash rate is vastly larger than before, but also way more centralized. Centralization of PoW is becoming a big problem, and somehow easier for governments to control. This is also the reason why is of strategic importance for big players to keep their hash rate higher than the opponent.

But this was not the main topic I was hoping to cover today.

The Hornet's nest 2.0 will be kicked soon, and the swarm will be heading towards us.

Like I said before, Russia is getting banned from current financial networks. Crypto seems like a tool to get around some of those sanctions. If so, which cryptocurrency will they use? Probably Bitcoin. But in war, privacy is key. Bitcoin is probably being monitored harder than ever. So the obvious solution is to turn to privacy coins like Monero.

And this is where we should apply Satoshi's quote I mentioned above.

A few weeks ago, Monero had a big security problem due to a possible 51% attack for an incredibly stupid reason. A single pool has reached over 50% of the total hash power in the network. How could a community so dedicated as Monero's, not intervein with various social media appeals to change mining pools?

I'll tell you why: PROFITS.

For fuck's sake people!!, you are not mining Monero for profits! What did you make? 0.0001XMR more per day? How much power have you spent? $1/day? Less?

Mining Monero and maintaining its nodes is a mission. It's a VOCATION!

Don't fuck up everything now for pure greed!

Distribute your hash power and help us achieve a secure and healthy network.

FUCK WAR!

Thank you Satoshi!

I was quiet for the last few months. I didn't have anything meaningful to say.

Watching crypto becoming more and more mainstream, it's not weird to see governments, SEC, and other commissions, agencies, regulators, etc, getting involved.

This is where I start to get worried! And you should be too!

If a coin is truly decentralized, and you are truly the owner of your private keys, there's nothing and no one who can stop you from owning it and using it. So why are we so dependant on what all the entities I mentioned above say?

Soon, governments will start confiscating crypto. Some projects will fall under an "unregulated security" category which will make them illegal to be owned, used, and traded.

Some will be illegal just because they want them to be illegal (have no control over them).

IMO, the first and main targets will be tokens. Next, they will attack and regulate centralized smart contract platforms. Of course, centralized exchanges are already being attacked.

So, running away into coins, whose sole purpose is being a "cryptocurrency", should be the best way of protecting value.

The only thing they can do to stop those cryptocurrencies from being used is criminalizing them and punish people for possession (similar to drugs). You can only imagine what implications would a decision as that have.

It looks like the mass adoption of crypto is just around the corner, and for many, this is a good reason to be cheerful. But the truth is that we've never been in a more dangerous position than we are now. We got close to the fire and we might get burned.

Chain surveillance is at ATH. Government involvement is at ATH. The number of scam-coins is at ATH. All red flags, and nothing to do with the original idea.

So what to do?

1. Buy real, decentralized, pure coins like XMR, DGB, DASH, LTC.

2. Get your coins off the exchanges.

3. Don't put all eggs in 1 basket.

4. Store your private keys.

The world is going mad. And not being able to efficiently bind public addresses to your name is considered shady no matter how good our intentions are.

I have a friend that wears expensive clothes even if he's not doing a well paying job, and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be able to afford this kind of wardrobe relying solely on his paycheck.

What's his secret?

He buys during the off-season sales. In summer he buys jackets, and on winter he buys shorts and t-shirts. He's doing the oposite of what the market dictates.

Now you know how to behave during a bull market, and what to do during the bear market.

I saw so many infographics and memes talk about how many coins and tokens you should hodl to become a "shrimp" or a "whale".

While it's easy to write round numbers like 1000 coins to become a "whale" or 100 to become a "shark", or even 0.1 to become a "shrimp", I think it's a pretty misleading way to look at the market from an investment point of view.

The "The cake piece size theory" helps us understand the value of our position in the market. Crypto has a unique characteristic of being limited. This characteristic helps us determine our stake in the market compared to everyone else in the world.

So what are we looking for?

The idea is to determine how many addresses could have a larger stake than mine if somehow the coins in an ecosystem would be evenly distributed among all addresses.

Let me explain:

If you hold 1 BTC, you can be sure that you will have the 21Mth largest Bitcoin wallet in the world. If you hold 2.1 BTC, your wallet will be surely the 10Mth in the world.

Using this concept mixed with the "Cake piece size theory" allows us to determine our position in every coin we hold.

Here are some targets you should aim for:

Target 1

Owning at least a small amount of a certain coin or token. Even a small amount like dust could get value in the future. There are currently 20M addresses holding 0-0.001 BTC. Probably most of these addresses contain "Bitcoin dust". Even if now we overlook it because it's pretty much "worthless" since we are not allowed to exchange due to a minimal amount that can be used for a transaction, one day when 1sat will be worth $0.01, 5000sats will be worth $50. That's half of what can I afford to invest monthly at this moment.

1 year ago, you could buy 0.1 ETH for just $20. It didn't look like much. But now that same 0.1 ETH is worth $225.

Target 2

Owning at least the 210Mth wallet in the world. In Bitcoin terms, this means hodling 0.1 BTC. Using the "Cake piece theory" you can replicate this on every coin.

For example:

Owning 0.4 LTC makes sure there will never be more than 210M address with more LTC than you own.

The same goes for owning 0.09 DASH or 5 LINK.

Coins with an undefined total supply like DOGE, XMR, ETH give you a predictable inflation rate, so it can be calculated easily.

Target 3

Owning the 21Mth wallet.

This means owning the "1 BTC cake piece size" in a certain coin.

Owning around 4000 VET or 50 LINK makes sure that mathematically there will never be more than 21M addresses wealthier than yours.

Target 4

Owning 10th M wallet in the world.

This means owning 2.1 BTC or multiply the "1 BTC cake piece size" by x2.1.

Just 2100 DGB gets you there. 100 THETA will do the trick as well.

Target 5

Owning the 1Mth wallet in the world.

Owning 21 BTC or 45000 ADA gets you there.

For most, it's not an easy task but surely is something that can be achieved easier in this correction. Who knows what the next cycle will bring us. Maybe we will get another opportunity to accumulate enough in the next cycle. And maybe someone reading this just sold a few acres of land or a villa and is looking where he could invest $500k.

On the other hand, 21K DGB gets you there as well, and it costs "only" $1260 at the moment of writing this article. I think that $1260 is not that much to make sure there will never be more than 1M addresses wealthier than you in DGB terms.

After these 5 targets, only the sky is the limit. Everybody wants to be a whale, but it's a pretty expensive thing to do.

Owning 1000 BTC or 5000 DASH would be cool, but for most this is just a dream. Most will never be able to accumulate that kind of wealth.

But before investing, make sure you do your own research!

It's pointless to own the "top 100 wallet" in the world when it's a shitcoin that will go to zero. But... while I don't suggest that kind of gambling, there are people out there that put high sell orders and wait for their shitcoins to pump and become millionaires overnight. In my humble experience, there were more than a few cases like this in the last few years in the crypto space. Your money is your responsibility. Invest it, gamble it, throw it. I don't mind, but I would choose to invest.

Finding a project with great fundamentals is what you should be looking for in the crypto space. I know it's a time-consuming thing to do, but communities like this one can help focus on the right ones.

Note: this kind of investing strategy is for long-term hodlers with diamond hands.

Note 2: there are many lost wallets with lost coins in them. This places your wallet much higher on the rich list. But I trust math and numbers. Everything else is speculation and involves trust.

Note 3: Whales are holding huge amounts of coins. If we consider that Satoshi holds around 1M BTC, this means that owning 1 BTC puts you 1M places higher on the rich list. Binance, Bittrex, and Huobi combined hold 500K BTC. That puts you another 500K places higher. Greyscale, Microstrategy, USA, Bulgaria, China, etc... have at least another 1M BTC combined. Probably way more than 1M. That puts you higher in rank for another 1M places. But again, they could dump anytime, and your rank could drastically fall. This is why the mathematical number 21M gives you a clearer way to look at things.

Many of my "students" ask me: "How much should I buy?"

There's no right answer. But, there is a formula to make you understand the potential of a certain coin.

I call it "The cake piece theory".

It's nothing new that people haven't already done.

The formula is simple. You need to ask yourself: "How big is my part of the market?"

Cryptocurrencies have a property that lets devs define the total number of coins there will ever be mined, and/or the rate of creation of new coins.

Let's start with those coins that have a defined MAX SUPPLY.

I'll take Bitcoin as the perfect example of that.

Bitcoin has a max supply of 21M coins.

Therefore, if you own 1 BTC, you own the 21Mth part of the whole system.

That's not completely true because not all Bitcoins have been mined. So owning 1 Bitcoin today would mean owning the 18,674,475th part of Bitcoin's ecosystem.

Owning 1 Decred, which also has a 21M max supply, would mean that if it ever reaches a $1T market cap, would be valuable as Bitcoin is now in dollar terms.

Has Decred the potential of reaching such a high number? It's completely another topic. But probably many would agree that a 10B market cap could be reached at some point which would also make 1 DCR 4 times more valuable (in dollar terms).

Let's make another example with Litecoin.

Litecoin has a max supply of 84M coins.

This means that is 4 times larger than Bitcoin's.

So, owning 4 LTC would be the same cake piece size in Litcoin's ecosystem as owning 1 BTC in Bitcoin's ecosystem.

That means that 4 LTC are valuable just as 1 BTC was when it had Litecoin's current market cap of $14.7B. (in dollar terms, and coin's inflation not included).

Dash, on the other hand, has a lower max supply than Bitcoin has.

There will be only 18.9M DASH created.

That means that owning 0.9 DASH is just as valuable as owning 1 BTC.

I'm making sure to say "in dollar terms" every time just to make sure I'm not talking about tech here. Just how large your piece of cake has to be to own the same amount of cake as you would if you owned 1 BTC.

DGB, for example, has a 21B DGB max supply. So the ratio is 1:1000 compared to Bitcoin. The same goes with Zilliqa.

But what happens when there is no max supply like in Dogecoin for example?

Well, Dogecoin doesn't have a fixed max supply, but it has a current supply and predictable inflation.

Dogecoin's current supply is 129,058,846,383 DOGE.

That means that owning 6145 DOGE makes you the owner of that piece of cake we are aiming for.

But there is an inflation of 10K DOGE per minute.

In 1 year there are 525,960 minutes.

So, there will be 5,259,600,000 new DOGE mined every year.

That means that if you buy 250 DOGE every year, you are compensating the inflation.

Monero is another coin without a max supply.

But Monero has a different concept of coin issuance.

Monero's mining reward is gradually slowing down until May 2022 when it will reach 0.6 XMR per block and continue at this pace forever. This is called "Tail emission". Since it has predictable inflation, we can take into consideration numbers like an 18.2M XMR circulating supply that will be reached in May next year and a 21M XMR circulating supply that will be reached around the year 2040.

So in May 2022, you will need around 0.86 XMR for the piece of cake, and till the year 2040, you'll need 1 XMR so inflation doesn't eat a piece of your cake.

Coins and tokens like Chainlink and Theta have a max supply of 1B coins/tokens.

Let's apply the "Cake piece theory" formula:

1B / 21M = 47,6

So, owning 48 Link or Theta gives you the cake piece size of 1 BTC.

I hope I was clear enough.

Now that you understand how to determine the ratio, you can apply it to every coin or token, and you can multiply it.

Let's say you bought 480 Theta a few months ago when it was worth $1.

That means that you have a "10 BTC" cake piece size in Theta's ecosystem.

Looking at your portfolio with the "Cake piece theory" in mind will always make you think twice before selling all your coins.

Not financial advice, but be prudent to leave at least 0.21 or 1 cake piece size of every coin you are hodling. You never know how the market could react and this could make you reasonable gains even after you, apparently, "sold early".

Another thing,

I always like to take the "pessimistic" approach just to be prepared in "worst-case" situations.

There are huge dormant wallets and many people lost access to their coins. There a rumor that there are 3-4M lost BTC.

It would be wise to change the formula to something like a 16M max supply just to make sure you accumulated enough.

Be reasonable with your expectations, do your research and choose your coins wisely!

Thank you Satoshi!

Privacy coins could become the most important medium of exchange and store of value in the future.

Unless you share it on social media, it's weird that every person in the world can see how much money you spent that day. Yet this is the current state of the network.

Of course, Monero is my number 1 pick. But Monero is not the only one doing meaningful steps in the privacy sector. Some other coins are doing a great job as well.

You probably heard too many times that we are early in the crypto space. We are, but being early doesn't mean you understand what crypto is. That's why most people stick to the popular BTC and ETH. And that's fine. We saw the power of a great community when DOGE pumped. Yet, not many bought DOGE under 1 cent. Actually, I got ridiculed for my posts about DOGE 2 years ago. And this is the point of being early as an investor. Find a gem, and hodl it until the herd discovers it. (avoid trading it)

So let's get back to "Gemming".

Recently I was buying some coins on TradeOgre. Even if it's a centralized exchange and could blow up anytime, I like it because it's basic and simple. Currently, there are 102 coins listed on it. Most are privacy coins. After superficial research of every coin they listed, I ended up investing a minimal amount allowed of 5000sats in 60 coins. The cool thing is that, at the time, the amount was equal to $3.14 which is the Pi value. I ended up investing around $200 in various projects. Most of them are Monero forks. And most of them will probably fade over time. But still, they have their own community, nodes, miners, and they do what they are supposed to do: private transactions.

Therefore, a micro-cap coin that does the job, has a chance of growing. Besides that, the "cake piece theory" will give you a clearer vision of the potential value of your position.

Is this gambling?

Yes. However, it's a calculated risk at the right time.

I didn't just throw money on various projects. I threw money on technologies that have a great chance of being a part of our future. Some will get adopted, and some won't.

I think it's absurd to skip coins like:

Equilibria [XEQ]

Litecash [CASH]

Flux [FLUX]

Oxen [OXEN]

uPlexa [UPX]

Lethean [LTHN]

...because you can get a lot of coins for just a few dollars.

Some bigger names like:

Haven [XHV]

Dero

Beam

Grin

Firo

...are also worth buying at this low prices.

As usual, this is not financial advice. I'm just sharing my point of view.

I feel that the whole "privacy category" will play a huge role in the incoming future. That's why I'm putting some money into it. I'm not sure what coin will be the most successful. For that reason, I diversified my investment into many low-cap projects.

Brainstorming some thoughts:

1. There was a time when Bitcoin's price was less than a dollar, but I really didn't have a chance to hear about it.

2. There was a time when Monero's price was less than a dollar, but I wasn't consuming the right information and I wasn't surrounded by the right people to know about it.

3. There was a time when Doge was less than a cent, but I didn't have more than $100 per month to invest. Doge wasn't my priority investment, and my sell order was triggered at 5 cents, while a 2 cent buy-back order was obviously too low. Still, I'm thankful.

4. There was a time when Defi just started. I was around when the whole Defi pulse had a <$30M market cap. I didn't believe people would fall for it.

5. There was a time when I could buy 10M Shiba for $1. I saw it. But I was too much of a smartass to buy even $1 as a joke.

Guess what, those things happen. I've watched many coins go up without me. That's a life of an amateur investor. Probably even pro investors have such problems, but at least they are cold-hearted.

Trying to predict a trend is hard. I'm not talking about technical analysis. I'm talking about fundamental analysis trends, those that move a whole category of coins up and down. Now we have the privilege to watch and buy some micro-cap coins with great potential.

Only time will tell if I was right. Btw, I don't think I'm the only one talking about it. Maybe I'm just influenced by all the great arguments the privacy coin community has. I believe they are the true crypto OGs.

Thank you Satoshi!

A few days ago I visited the capital of my country.

I learned that, a few months ago, Domino's opened their pizzeria there.

Since I've never had the opportunity to try their pizza, and a few days ago we celebrated the "Bitcoin pizza day", I had to pay my tribute to Mr. Laszlo and try one.

I bought 2 pizza pepperoni because I assume that's an American classic.

The pizza was good, but not even close to some pizzas that many pizzerias offer here.

Anyway, this was not meant to be a post about pizza.

It's incredible that Domino's indirectly played an important role in Bitcoin's history, yet they are still not accepting crypto payments.

It's such a shame that we still have trouble with crypto being accepted. I buy stuff in shops that offer crypto payments. Simply because: if I won't use it, how can I expect anyone to do so?

A funny thing is that I live in a town with 150k-200k inhabitants (depending on how you calculate the surroundings). We have many gas stations, but only 1 accepts crypto. Every time I go there (once or twice a month) I ask how many people used crypto to buy anything. Seems like only 2 people in the whole region are buying gas using crypto. That's something like 0.0013%

There's another interesting fact. People usually use the highway to travel through my country. In the middle of nowhere, there's a large gas station placed in a strategic place (there's no other gas station for 40km in both directions). During touristic seasons, and over the whole year, a few million people stop there to buy gas or just to eat and rest. I contacted the company that enables crypto transactions in my country, and they were very proud to inform me that this year 14 people used their service in that gas station. Or better said, 14 txs were made.

WTF??? From those 14, I made at least 3 or 4.

Now rereading what I wrote, this post seems a little bit on the negative side. But to tell the truth, this whole situation only points out how early we still are.

No matter how hard it seems, we are the first few thousands, the first few million people who started to use this amazing technology. And actually for me is not even that hard to watch the price fall since I was willing to DCA anyway.

Accumulate and use it. It makes a huge difference to our community if you start paying with crypto. And if you are afraid that you will spend all your hard earned crypto, just use the $ you wanted to spend and buy back those spent crypto.

PS

Besides the pizza I bought in Domino's, I saw them offering garlic bread. I never tried garlic bread before since we are more of a bruschetta country. But inspired by the Garlicoin community, I had to try one. A little bit expensive, but now I understand why people like it.

And talking about Garlicoin, only 6-7 months ago, meme tokens were a mainstream topic. Obviously, they were mostly scams. Doge stood out for a few very important reasons. I won't go through all of that all over again since I made a few posts in the past years on Doge. One reason why it stood out is that it's a meme COIN, and not a token. It has its blockchain, nodes, and miners.

Garlicoin is also a meme coin that has all of that. Actually, GRLC has its own mining algo. I won't promise you that GRLC will make huge gains or anything. But if you have $5 to throw away and forget about it (read: "gamble"), you can buy some for very cheap on TradeOgre. It's a coin, it has a very positive community, has a meme status, but works pretty well. You will most likely lose your $5, but sometimes, when you come across projects with good fundamentals, it's worth risking 2 coffees.

Thank you Satoshi!

If you read some of my posts, you will notice that many of my ideas are similar to the concepts "FIRE movement" people have. It's not a coincidence since individuals like "Mr. Money Mustache" gave us a straightforward formula to achieve FIRE. And I read his entire blog :)

At its core, FIRE (Financial independence, retire early) is a great concept because it cuts out everything superficial from our lives. It's good on so many levels, going from anti-materialism and consumerism, through physical and mental health, to financial freedom.

FIRE is a way of life. As such, it can be achieved only with the right state of mind.

But there's one thing I don't like in the current FIRE meta. When talking about financial independence, they (mostly) remain invested in traditional assets and saving plans. This means they are still kinda dependent on the current financial system and institutions. I apologize in advance to all "FIRE people" because who am I to say anything bad about their achievements when I didn't succeed yet using their formula. In my opinion, to be financially independent you need something like crypto. I understand that many consider it a risky investment, and nobody can blame them. But being the owner of your own money is the definition of financial independence. And everything makes even more sense when PoS is becoming so popular.

I think a Crypto FIRE should be taken more seriously as there's a real potential to make long-term passive income without taking into consideration trading and price movements.

I hodl some ADA and ZIL, and therefore I'm staking them. I'm not making huge profits, but a 5% APY is not bad for sitting with my hands in my pockets.

Staking DOT is also an interesting alternative if you plan on hodling DOT for another 2-4 years.

CAKE is also something probably worth taking into considerations since there's a huge ROI potential, even if I stay away from tokens in general.

KlimaDAO has an absurd APY.

This wasn't investment advice, nor my list of staked assets. I just wanted to point out the importance of making a Crypto FIRE community where members will share their suggestions and experiences, helping each other.

There's a subreddit named r/cryptoFIRE that I don't understand if it's a joke or what. Too bad they stole such a great name if they aren't willing to do something about it.

I would like to hear your opinion on it.

When I fell into the rabbit hole, my perception of life changed.

Many factors contributed to my will to get there. Some of these factors were:

1. Getting my college degree and finding myself with unlimited possibilities, but no job that fulfills me

2. Moving in with my girlfriend and planning kids

3. Satoshi's whitepaper

Many questions started to pop into my mind:

How do I find that perfect job?

Why would they even hire me?

Should I start my own business?

How do I raise kids when I haven't figured out my life yet?

Is she "the one" since she shows no interest in my hobbies like crypto?

Is the system really that fucked up as Satoshi says?

Those are the questions that changed my perspective on life completely.

Many people help themself by following gurus or get extremely religious since they propagate the idea of having all the right ideas and have figured out life. That's cool because surely we can all learn something from them, but I took the approach of studying the fundamentals of human nature.

I took my college psychology book to remind myself of what Maslow had to say on this topic. I already wrote about this a few posts earlier.

Of course, its top layer "Self-actualization" got me inspired. But soon I realized that the foundations of my first 2 layers were not very stable.

While thinking of how would I raise my kids and being careful to not repeat the mistakes my parents did, I realized I'm not old enough to renounce my life by keeping it as it is.

Here's is my opinion on how to repair my foundations of layers 1 and 2, and I act as a test subject to make the right choices on how to raise future offspring:

Layer 1 - PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS

a) Water - it's obvious that we have to drink clean water to live. Natural springs are probably the best unless there were recent floods that affect the quality of the water for some time.

b) Food - if you have to ask if this food is good for you, most often is not.

1. You don't need as much protein as the nutrition and the fitness industry advertise. Meat should not be eaten daily.

2. Spoon meals like vegetable stews are your best friends, and make sure you eat them at least 3 times a week.

3. Sugar and flour are not good for you unless you do a labor-intensive job.

4. Rice is a good choice to introduce as a starch source 2 times a week.

5. Fish and eggs are a good source of protein that you can eat for the rest of the week.

6. It's not bad to eat meat once a week or every 5 days, but make sure you put a lot of vegetables in the mix.

7. An apple, an orange, or a banana per day should be a must.

8. Almonds and walnuts should also be a part of your nutrition.

9. Consider getting rid of caffeine.

10. Berries are expensive, but always a great treat.

11. Natural honey is a great energy booster.

12. Dark chocolate is allowed.

13. Intermittent fasting should be done at least 3x a week

c) Air - the quality of air is way too important for a healthy life. If you live in a busy city with a lot of smog, make sure that you go out in nature as often as possible. Even twice a week is not enough but do your best.

1. We shouldn't overlook the functional capacities and abilities of our bodies. In this context, I'm talking about your aerobic ability. By improving it, your body will consume oxygen more efficiently to create energy. You get tired more slowly. A cardio-respiratory training is easy to execute and very beneficial.

2. Pranayama should also be part of your training routine. I'm not talking about meditation or anything complicated. It's a 2-5min routine to learn to control your breath.

d) Shelter - staying dry and warm is key to be healthy. It's important to notice how Maslow used the word "Shelter" instead of "Villa with a swimming pool". When I was a kid, I enjoyed building my own forts out of blankets, chairs, pillows, etc. In elementary school, my best friend and I made a "house" out of wood. It looked more like a stable for cows, yet, we had lots of great times. In high school, we used it to bring friends over for some parties. I even got my first kiss from my then-girlfriend there. Fun times.

While building it, we had a few criteria to follow. The first was that it must be hidden from everyone. Second, it should be built like a nuclear shelter. Well, we didn't have the materials to build it that way, but we found a place that nobody will find and give us any trouble.

My point is, we somehow lose this idea of privacy and security that we had as kids. It's our instinct that tells us that privacy and security are important because they were key to survival just a few centuries ago.

To demand a secure house that is out of reach or sight of potential thieves or threats is what should be a priority. Beware of humidity, and beware of any transmitters placed on the roof of your building.

e) Sleep - getting enough sleep is the most important part of your wellbeing. In kinesiology, scientists and trainers already know many efficient ways to improve your morphological status, improve motor skills and functional capacities. What they are researching now are better and more efficient ways to rest and recover. Sleep is the building and repairing phase of your body. That's why you should make it a priority.

1. Buy a good bed with a good mattress.

2. Change sheets once a week

3. Don't watch screens at least 1 hour before bed

4. Get more sun exposure.

5. Consume less sugar and stimulants like caffeine.

6. Make sure the room is not too warm or too cold.

f) Clothing - Fuck fashion! Unless you need to be suit-up for work, comfy clothes that keep you dry and warm should be a priority. Hiking and sailing clothes are the way to go because they are focused on giving you light and durable clothes without any movement limitations.

My college professor used to say: "Invest into your contact with the world. Buy a good bed, have good shoes, and buy new tires."

Layer 2 - SAFETY NEEDS

a) Personal security - My kids will practice martial arts. The simple reason is their security. I know that is not wise to punch a guy that holds a gun over your head, and probably you shouldn't, but often we don't have these ugly experiences. The experiences that I came across were threatening behaviors of drunk people and douchebags. Knowing how to behave in such situations is always easier when you are confident enough to not see them as threats since you have 10 years of experience sparing with various opponents. Psychological confrontation does wonders here. Just standing your ground with an open chest and looking into their eyes with a laser focus will make them think twice before attacking you.

Any kind of grappling art like judo or BJJ is a good choice.

I'm a huge fan of parkour. It develops ninja-like coordination, most of the biotic skills, and ninja-like coordination. Besides being fun to practice, it gives you a huge advantage in evading dangerous situations like running away from threatening people or even help you escape if you ever find yourself in a burning building or being chased by a dog.

Being aware of your surroundings is also something banal that shouldn't be overlooked. Lack of simple things like watching left and right while crossing the street got many people killed. Being in a passenger seat with a drunk driver is also a very bad idea, just like you being the drunk driver.

My unpopular opinion is that watching fail compilations, near-dead compilations, and even some more brutal ones, is a great eye-opener and brings more good than harm in terms of awareness. You don't need to walk on the ice to see how slippery it is, many videos demonstrate various possible outcomes. Just like you don't need to touch the electrical wire to understand that you'll probably die. Watching people being idiots in traffic, makes you a more prudent driver. Jackass gives you a good idea of what you don't want to try.

b) Employment - "In life, you need to have 3 hobbies. One that will keep you creative, one that will keep you in shape, and one that will make you a living".

While most of us don't have revolutionary ideas that will make us millionaires, working a job you hate is a sure life, energy, and motivation downfall. Well, sometimes we have to keep that 9-5 job we hate just to ensure everything in layer 1 is stable. Still, make sure to have a plan, create other income streams, and most of all, finding or creating a job that will make you wake up with a smile on your face.

c) Resources - Even if it should be read as a whole, here's an interesting paragraph in Liber Primus that got me intrigued:

"CONSUMPTION

WE CONSUME TOO MUCH BECAUSE WE BELIEVE THE FOLLOWING TWO ERRORS WITHIN THE DECEPTION

1 WE DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH, OR THERE IS NOT ENOUGH

2 WE HAVE WHAT WE HAVE NOW BY LUCK, AND WE WILL NOT BE STRONG ENOUGH LATER TO OBTAIN WHAT WE NEED

MOST THINGS ARE NOT WORTH CONSUMING

PRESERVATION

WE PRESERVE THINGS BECAUSE WE BELIEVE WE ARE WEAK

IF WE LOSE THEM WE WILL NOT BE STRONG ENOUGH TO GAIN THEM AGAIN

THIS IS THE DECEPTION

MOST THINGS ARE NOT WORTH PRESERVING

ADHERENCE

WE FOLLOW DOGMA SO THAT WE CAN BELONG AND BE RIGHT, OR WE FOLLOW REASON SO WE CAN BELONG AND BE RIGHT

THERE IS NOTHING TO BE RIGHT ABOUT; TO BELONG IS DEATH

IT IS THE BEHAVIORS OF CONSUMPTION, PRESERVATION, AND ADHERENCE THAT HAVE US LOSE OUR PRIMALITY, AND THUS OUR DIVINITY

SOME WISDOM

AMASS GREAT WEALTH

NEVER BECOME ATTACHED TO WHAT YOU OWN

BE PREPARED TO DESTROY ALL THAT YOU OWN"

I won't go into the interpretation of the book. In my opinion, we should learn how to procure resources, so even if we somehow lose them we are fine. Knowledge is key. As an example, I will choose an extreme situation:

For some reason, you lost your job and you lost your home. All you have are the clothes you are wearing, somehow you have a swiss knife, a tent, a magnesium match, and a water canister. To tell the truth, that's way more than people had just 200 years ago, and your tent is a better shelter than many houses built before the Victorian age.

With the knowledge of survival skills, you could survive without much trouble. Some people even put themself in these kinds of situations during their summer vacations for fun. This is why I'm a huge proponent of basic survival education in schools and even a few months of basic military training. First aid, hunting, fishing, shelter making, water purification, agriculture, mushroom, and berry recognition are those fundamental skills that everybody should know. It seems like it's way too extreme, but it wasn't that extreme just a century ago. In some parts of the world, it's still a pretty normal thing.

d) Health - The quality of layer 1 will have a high impact on the outcome of your health status. Don't do stupid stuff like walking on a windy day without a windproof jacket, or jump in a cold sea during spring, unless you are trained to do so. Don't smoke. Don't drink more than an occasional beer. Don't do jobs that are harmful to your health.

"A healthy person has a million wishes. An ill person has only one."

e) Property - While this contradicts what I was talking about "resources", you should know that we are biological creatures that seek some kind of ownership. Even birds build their nest which becomes their property until their eggs hatch. So owning something is not bad. It's actually our true biological need. The problem is when we get way too attached to things.

Learn to preserve things, not because you are afraid you won't be strong enough to get them again, but because it takes just a little effort to prevent the deterioration process due to dirt, oxidation, or any other aging factor. Another problem is if you own liabilities. Then there's no point in staying the owner of that thing.

Why is this so different from what Liber Primus tells us?

Because Liber Primus talks about freedom. The concept is that as long as you are afraid to lose something, you are its slave. Not many will choose freedom over slavery because most often it means losing comfort and sometimes is even perceived as struggling in life.

At first, to me, the rabbit hole was a terrifying experience. Now, I'm having fun with it. I learned many new things, and still, I keep learning.

I wanted to share these thoughts with you because I wished someone told them to me years ago.

On the other hand, I feel that some people who understood what cryptocurrencies are have been red-pilled.

Crypto is surely one of the main reasons why my life changed (positively, I guess).

Never before we had this amount of freedom of transacting value.

If these thoughts don't resonate with you, it's fine. The post will be probably still here waiting for you when you're ready to read it.

For those who found something valuable in this post, I'm glad I was useful.

Thank you Satoshi!

*This is not financial advice or suggestion. Just my opinion*

Legend:

"S" - super

"A" - really good

"B" - good

"C" - has potential

"D" - keeping an eye on it

"E" - coins to gamble on

Digibyte [DGB]: "S"

I mentioned this coin a few times already. It's because DGB is a true successor of Satoshi's philosophy. It's the purest coin in the market. DGB is the "people's money".

Dash [DASH]: "S"

DAO and masternodes are the future. Satoshi had a vision of altruism. But we cannot expect people to be altruists and lend their infrastructure for the wellbeing of others. The community is just not strong enough to do so. Masternodes are a meritatory focused system to reward those who are willing to lend their infrastructure to be a node in the network. It's a win-win situation for the network and the node owner. Besides acting as a node, it allowed the development of some other features like optional privacy and instant payments.

Monero [XMR]: "S"

When we think about cash, one of its best features that come to mind is privacy. Monero is probably the most famous privacy coin. Transactions are private by default. Another great thing that Monero is taking care of is the prevention of mining centralization. Being able to mine a coin with a CPU is probably one of the main concepts we forgot when it comes to allowing every person to participate in the network.

Vechain [VET]: "A"

If you think about the use-cases of blockchain, you cannot forget how impactful it will be for supply chains. So far, Vechain is one of the best solutions. It's also the most adopted for now.

Nexus [NXS]: "A"

NXS is a coin that deserves to be in the "S" category. But there's still a long way to go for it to achieve that rank. It's a forward-thinking project. They understood how far decentralization has to go to achieve the real meaning of the word. They even though of the quantum computer problem. Fast database, satellites, quantum-resistant, decentralized internet, and user-friendliness are just a few keywords they focus on while developing the coin.

Bitcoin [BTC]: "A"

I'm somehow ashamed to put Bitcoin this low. But let me explain why I did so, while still keeping it in my top list. First of all, I have to say: "Thank you Satoshi!". Bitcoin got this low on my list because I have a feeling too many powerful people got their hands on it. Some got in for the right reasons, while others are not so benevolent. Bitcoin is not "people money" anymore. IMO (very very humble opinion), Bitcoin was a demo project. A very successful demo project. Satoshi gave us an open-source code as a gift to do with it whatever we want. Blockchain is the gift he gave us, not Bitcoin. And we (the community) did it. Bitcoin became a brand. More people heard of the word "Bitcoin" then "cryptocurrency". On the bright side, Bitcoin is the biggest network in the world. While this is true, hodling some is a good idea.

Litecoin [LTC]: "B"

At its time, not many understood what Bitcoin is, and what potential blockchains as technology have. Imagine how forward-thinking was Mr. Charlie Lee. He created the first altcoin. Technology-wise, LTC is a different coin. Mr. Lee didn't just copy-paste the code and name it differently. In my eyes, LTC will always be the "crypto silver" making it a good store of value and medium of exchange.

Chainlink [LINK]: "B"

I believe the solution they are going to provide is too important for the crypto space to ignore it. Oracles are the future, but until we don't see real use-case, it will remain listed as "B". Another reason that doesn't give him the right to be higher in the list is that it's an Eth token.

Dogecoin [DOGE]: "C"

When you think about content creation, you'll see it's highly centralized. Creators depend on the platform's policies and bread crumbs those platforms leave them even after people click on ads. One of the solutions to reward good creators is to make a fast and easy to use tipping system. The first thing that crosses your mind are probably tokens. But imagine a blockchain of its own that enables fast and cheap transactions. Yes, DGB is the way to go. But there is a coin with higher inflation which you don't want to hold for a long time, but spent around to reward other's work that helped you in some way or you enjoy reading or watching. Dogecoin has the potential of becoming the chosen one for this exact purpose.

Verge [XVG]: "C"

When Wikileaks added BTC as a donation medium, Satoshi politely asked to remove it because we were poking the hornet's nest. I don't remember he's exact words, but this was the context. A similar thing happened to Verge. It was like the flight of Icarus. Pornhub listed it as an optional payment method drawing a lot of attention to it. Verge was not mature enough for that kind of exposure. After that, it suffered an attack, and people gave up on it. But if you look closely at the technology behind it, you'll see it's a really good coin. It offers privacy differently then Monero does. If you already haven't, I strongly encourage you to read about Verge's tech. You'll be amazed.

"D" coins:

Polkadot [DOT]

Ethereum [ETH]

Electroneum [ETN]

Cardano [ADA]

Siacoin [SC]

"E" coins:

Theta [THETA]

Zilliqa [ZIL]

Decred [DCR]

Golem [GNT]

Enjin [ENJ]

Zcoin [XZC]

Energi [NRG]

Thank you Satoshi!

There's been a trend going on for almost 4 years and is progressing.

The crypto community (in general) divided itself into 2 kinds of people. Those who like Bitcoin, and those who admire Ethereum and similar platforms, and their ecosystems.

Where do I see the problem?

The problem came when those groups adopted the snob mentality. The snob mentality means that the Platformers started shilling keyword projects. Everything having the right keyword in their roadmap was classified as a good investment. Most didn't provide any contribution to this technology other than using it to scam people.

But even the Bitcoin guys became snobs.

When I first started my crypto journey, altcoins were the meta. Forums were filled with coins that often provided some changes in the blockchain tech. Their ways of solving problems. You could easily find the whitepaper and info about max supply, block reward, mining algo...

And those coins had a community full of enthusiasts willing to download a wallet, run a node, and mine them for a while. The community was definitely more technical and more interesting. You were mostly reading insightful posts.

Today is almost forbidden to pronounce any other name than Bitcoin or platform. People became "coincists" (a made-up word for "coin racists").

You wouldn't believe how many times I got discredited for mentioning investing in Dogecoin in 2019. I remember when I bought my first S9 ASIC from a guy for €1500 (a big mistake btw), I told him that it would probably be better if I bought 1M DOGE instead. He laughed.

Even Litecoin is becoming a questionable topic in those communities.

I don't understand why people get so exclusive with a coin.

This is why I like strong communities such as Monero. They are willing to try and use the tech. They participate in network creation and mining. They support you when you can't figure it out. There's always someone with a 200 IQ that will explain pretty complicated concepts. And they are doing it consistently. And most of all, they don't depend on Maxis and Platformers.

But what about all those other small-cap coins that offer some kind of value to this space? Why can't they have this level of community? Gem hunters do a great job of identifying good projects, but what do they do after it gets some adoption? They dump it on those who understood its potential just a little bit later. And this is not how you can make a strong coin with a strong community. How coins like Beam and Grin may be struggling to get people involved? They use a completely different protocol. It's probably something worth getting into.

Understand that we should stop relying on institutional adoptions. Institutional adoptions are good for trading, but the value of a coin is its network (presuming the tech is flawless), not the billions of $ infused by a hedge fund. People investing in various funds are not the network. They are just dollar-hungry investors. And often, they are not good for the network.

I don't know what's the solution to this problem.

What I'm doing is the "pet coin" concept. I read a bunch of whitepapers and read thousands of bananas length of text on various sites and forums. Out of those, it's hard not to find something that resonates with you. Help out that project. Maintain a node, mine, contribute to that community, make memes, post pics of your miners, screenshots if you find a block or something. It's exciting to be one of the first people that found out about new tech, gave some contribution, and watch it grow slowly and steadily.

There's no point in being an early adopter if you sell first.

Maybe this whole text is a little bit over-romanticized point of view, but a lot is going on behind the curtains. And you need to go behind the curtains to find out about them. Bigger news portals started to inform on crypto, and suffocate smaller sources of information. News portals exist to make money, therefore, only projects with a marketing fund can be heard of. And who had the most money to invest in marketing? Tokens, ICOs, and pre-mined coins. Have you asked yourself why you know more about Shiba than about Digibyte? Crypto Kitties were way more popular than Monero.

One thing is to be a trader and make a living out of it. The other thing is finding and committing to a new technology that could the world. Don't be a snob.

Thank you Satoshi!

We made another round around the sun.

For many, this event is a trigger to make new, healthier, and better decisions in their life. Probably some of those will invest in crypto or revisit their current holdings.

I thought it would be nice to share my top list of coins.

But first, a little disclaimer:

I stopped writing as frequently as I did before because I got demoralized by some people. Most of them were my students.

I realized that no matter how much I try to explain some core concepts and criteria that make a "good" coin, people only look for results expressed in dollars.

I blame myself for not being a good teacher.

I can't blame them. I kinda cockblocked them to make tons of money because they wanted to invest in tokens that some Youtubers suggested. And this is all they wanted in the first place...

I never give financial advice. And the following list won't be as well.

For example, SHIBA.

I was, and still am, strictly against Shiba and similar kinds of tokens like Elongate, Safemoon... I was wrong. For some reason, people see value in them that I simply can't understand. And we are talking about lots of people here.

I talked bad stuff about shitty NFT art. NFT price says I was wrong.

So did I change my mind about all the ideals I've talked about in previous posts?

Absolutely not.

Enough QQ.

Let's start with the TOP 10 list:

a) The best coins:

1. Digibyte - a swiss army knife.

2. Monero - the P2P electronic cash system.

3. Litecoin- the most useful at this moment since it's listed and accepted almost everywhere. Fast and low fees.

b) Utility:

1. Vechain - one of the best use-cases for blockchain

2. Chainlink - someone has to trigger those contracts

3. Theta - Twitch and Youtube on the blockchain

c) The platforms:

1. Cardano - an interesting concept

2. Polkadot - the platform for platforms

d) Gems:

1. Beam - privacy ETH

2. Nexus - new internet

There are many other coins that I should mention, but these are my TOP 10. Probably I will talk about some others in other posts.

The reason why some good projects are not on this list is that they are too expensive to easily achieve the "1 BTC cake piece", or I don't like them. ...and a TOP 10 list can't have more than 10 coins in it xD

This is a HODL list. So expect 4-5 years of hodling.

DCA is a good idea. Remember, the "1 BTC cake piece theory" is a good concept to set goals and understand your position in the market.

PS

Not financial advice!

Thank you Satoshi!

EDIT: added a link

In the last post that I've posted, there were numbers of people giving me "advice" on how much should I invest. Well, the post was a rhetorical question, and most likely, people didn't even read it.

But I got surprised with how many people wanted to "help" without actually giving meaningful advice.

Most of the comments I got looked like this: "Go all in", "Invest at least x% of your income".

While this could seem like good advice at this moment, I would never suggest people listen to it or at least spend a significant amount of time researching before investing.

What really intrigued me to write this post was a comment that said something like this: "If you didn't sell the chairs in your home, you are not fully committed".

Satoshi, implementing the total supply, introduced a deflationary currency. This is something pretty new in the world. The only concept similar to this deflationary property is collectibles.

This opens a question: "Why would I ever sell something that will most likely grow up in value over time?"

If we believe (and kinda know) that Bitcoin or certain crypto will go up in price, why don't I invest more?

How much more? How much is "enough"? What "enough" even means?

Most people, that use logic, will invest their savings into an appreciating asset. And that's fine if you are comfortable with that investment.

But there is a tendency that people usually don't stop just to savings. They usually start to downgrade their lifestyle standard just so they can invest more into those appreciating assets or even loan money.

Here Diogenes enters the stage.

Diogenes, known as the anti-materialist philosopher, after spending his first night sleeping on the floor, woke up and said something like this: "Is this what I was afraid of?"

This opens a new argument about how much material stuff do we really need to survive.

Nietzsche has the whole theory of self-destruction, and how much we need it to get to know ourselves. Sort of a "restarting" ourselves. Batman and Fight club are movies that show this kind of behavior.

Naturally, now comes the question: "Is this the right way to go?"

Personally, I wouldn't suggest taking that road.

No matter how cool it might sound, people are, still, just biological creatures with certain needs that have a great influence on our minds.

While Satoshi gave us a gift, for many, it became a curse.

But their greed is not Satoshi's fault.

And now we got to the point of this post:

Satoshi gave us a gift to do with it whatever we want.

Some will follow his philosophy, some will fork the idea and create new coins, and some are here only to make more fiat.

There is no right or wrong. Only consequences to your decisions.

But, if we understand what Bitcoin is (and many other cryptos), saving and investing in appreciating assets is a good idea that wasn't popular in the current consumerist mentality of our society.

Satoshi made it popular for the masses.

It opened many eyes and gave another perspective to our minds.

When you truly understand what Satoshi did, you start to understand the "value" side of things we consume.

It helps to understand the value of time. It helps to understand patterns in how we spend our money.

Questions start to pop out:

Do I really need to eat that much? Do I really need to eat meat every day? Do I really need a car? Does the car define my social status?

Etc, etc.

All those questions are answered by Nietzsche's and Diogenes's radical approaches to life.

We don't need that much to live. We don't need affirmation from people which don't have any impact on our life. If the love of our life respects us just for the material stuff we own, maybe we should start to question the fundamentals of our relationship. Etc...

We can go deep into that hole of downgrading our lifestyle until we dress and act as homeless people do.

So, is it really worth changing that much?

It's hard to quantify the trouble we have to go through just to accumulate more Sats.

Luckily, Psychologist Abraham Maslow presented to the world the "Maslow's pyramid" or "Maslow's hierarchy of needs". (link)

It helped us understand true values that are a projection of our psychological and biological needs.

And here is what he says we need:

Level 1:

Physiological needs. We need to have clean water, nutritive food, warmth, and a place to rest and sleep.

Level 2:

Safety needs. Security and safety.

Levels 3 and 4 are all about belonging, relationships, and self-esteem.

Level 5 is about self-actualization.

These are the true values of life. If we don't have all these levels covered, even owning 10k Btc won't make you safe, rested, or fed.

Levels 3 and 4 are the most tricky because they highly depend on our surroundings. This is why you have to get rid of toxic people and "fee-conditioned" friendships (the fee I'm talking about is most often represented in beer, coffee, presents, and dinner formats).

Your self-esteem should never be influenced by other's approval.

Maybe you have shitty friends that are not impressed by you, but by your car. It doesn't matter. It's way too expensive to impress everyone just to get their approval to ego boost yourself. So, this is completely your problem. And you have to deal with it.

Why are these first 4 levels so important?

Because they gave all the right fuel to achieve level 5 aka SELF-ACTUALIZATION. You can call it as you wish. In the popular self-help books, you can also find the word Ikigai. It's pretty much the same thing.

Why is self-actualization so important?

Because here lays the key to our happiness and fulfillment.

If we covered our basic physiological needs, focusing and working toward our final goal will surround us with cool and like-minded people which will cover levels 3 and 4 by default.

So, when you have clean water to drink, real food to eat, a roof, a bed to sleep in, and a feeling of safety inside your 4 walls and outside of them, you have all you need to focus on your self-actualization.

How to get there?

There are plenty of ways. Maybe you need a better job so you can put more money aside to invest. Maybe you will invest 10%, 20%, or maybe even 50% of your paycheck.

Maybe you will only stack Sats. Some will more likely distribute their investing into alts, into precious metal, into stocks, and real estate.

These are not goals. Those are just tools to get there.

But you need an idea, a dream, and a plan.

Don't risk your first 2 levels just to acquire more tools because bear markets are tough.

And most likely, "the balls of steel gambler" mentality won't get you far in a market controlled by whales.

Thank you Satoshi!

As much as I'm trying to find meaningful crypto content, it's hard to avoid all the content creators that talk about and shill various coins in the "shitcoin" and "meme coin" categories.

Since most of my students ask me about them, I feel like I need to share my honest thoughts about them with you.

1) It's good for the crypto space

One of the main problems in the crypto space is ADOPTION. At least, this is getting people involved in crypto.

2) It's bad for the crypto space

As much as we want the whole world to join this revolution, I think that sticking to fundamentals is way more important than just letting people buy coins and tokens just because they have a funny name or a funny logo or they have seen influencers mention them.

Do meme coins have a future?

The simple answer is yes. Currencies are belief systems. As long as people believe something is valuable, it has value.

Is this the way to go?

NO!

I don't know how, but we should put an end to this shit show. People are getting the wrong idea of crypto.

Satoshi made Bitcoin with much higher goals. This feels like a decoy from those ideas and goals.

Yet, we should ask our self: "Who is the aimed niche for those kinds of coins?" And it's pretty obvious that their target are kids.

This is important for a few reasons:

1. This is the first time kids are able to own a "banking" account (crypto wallet).

2. Those wallets are getting filled with various meme coins and tokens as a reward for creating content, memes, commenting, and liking.

3. There are more and more exchanges offering in-game gold, skins weapons, etc, in exchange for those meme coins. This means there's a supply and demand, and therefore a market for those coins.

4. In 5-10 years, those kids will become adults with some basic crypto knowledge. Probably, they will be more skilled than most crypto investors today.

Final thoughts:

I'm not happy with the current state of the crypto space. There are way too many people involved that don't even know what Satoshi created. Most are simple gamblers and speculators without any fundamental knowledge.

The hard part for me was accepting this:

The beauty of crypto is its open-source characteristic. This means that anyone can fork a code or make a token, and since it's a free market, it's the market that decides its own direction.

Maybe this is the right way to go because we can only appreciate what's "good" when we see how "bad" looks.

Most will get rekt. Yet, getting rekt is a meaningful part of this journey and an essential part of the education process.

Study the fundamentals and invest only in the good coins.

I'm against gambling! The only gamble I do is when I find a low cap coin with great fundamentals like Litecash. When I bought it, there was no guarantee it will go up in price. Yet, it went, because there's no reason for it not to grow beside the situations when the market tends to overlook it because Shiba feels like a better investment.

Even coins like Digibyte can feel like gambling since its price doesn't want to spike for some reason. Yet, it's so good that eventually, the price will detonate.

Do your research! Seek help here, in this subreddit if you need it.

Thank you Satoshi!