Democratization

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Block chain. We as a population have become used to being owned and manipulated. They say when you sit down to a game of poker if you can’t identify the mark at the table, the mark is you. The same is true of all the interactive media we participate in.

We’ve grown used to it, being owned. We want info at our finger tips, we “Google it”. We get some kind of information, but we have no idea of the quality of the information and why it exists. You look at the top 5 search results and choose one and that becomes the standard narrative by which you judge your “world”. Google knows a lot about you and the AI can very easily tailor the results to fit an agenda, not necessarily your agenda, but an agenda Google was paid by a third party to produce for you. The data about you is called “meta” data. Meta is a Greek prefix which means beyond, so a query contains the content it interprets you to mean plus an overlay of what it has determined to be your prejudices (pre-judgments) and then rank orders according to some criteria. Ever wonder why you Google “wheel chair” and suddenly wheel chair adds show up all over the Drudge Report? You may not even query “wheel chair” on Google but just mention it in the presence of Siri (i.e. you have your phone in your pocket) and the AI is free to color your world with a myriad of wheel chair adds.

You may say well yea but I choose to pay with my meta data for the ability to gain access to immediate knowledge. Is knowledge what you gain access to, or is it agenda? Just like wheel chair adds, meta data colors your perception of reality. The meta data company gets paid to color your reality, and you get manipulated. We’ve grown so used to this manipulation we don’t even notice. We’ve become product not the client. We feel powerless and trapped to resist.

Suppose you owned your meta data and had contol over it. For Google to access it suppose they had to pay you for it. Yjey make money from the wheel chair company, why doesn’t some of that acrue to you and your digital wallet? Facebook has changed its name to Meta. As a virtual world host they will know more about you, in more intimate fashion than ever before and that data is up for sale. Virtual reality is a social psychologists wet dream. While you busy yourself clicking yourself up to get a nice dopamine hit, the AI is watching and learning and creating a product with your help it can market. Zuckerberg is not your friend.

If you owned your meta data, secure on a block chain ol’ Zuck would have to pay up to gain access. If you owned your data, you could make your preferences known, choose what portion you decide to sell and what you don’t. Instead of the government providing UBI why not Google and Meta (facebook). As an individual you can join a group, and the group could lobby with the power of a community. Instead of being the individ, ual rat in the maze, you become powerful.

There are 60M crypto holders in the US, roughly 23% of the population as of 2021. Yellen and Biden tried to attach legislation to the infrastructure bill severely disabling DeFi (the ability to lend your crypto and get paid interest. All hell broke loose. Presently banks own your moneym and you have a little piece to eta data on their balane sheet saying the value of that holding belongs to you. If the bank decides you should pound sand, you’ll pohis bill ound sand. In Greece back in 2015 this is exactly what happened. The banks froze up and became illiquid and the “depositors” could stand in line to access $50/day, no questions asked. I saw a story about a man, a multimillionaire who was vacationing in the Greek Islands and he couldn’t get home. No credit cards worked, no bank checks worked. He was stuck except he owned BTC. In Europe at the time there were means by which you could transact in BTC. So he took some BTC paid his bill bought a plane ticket home and a Gyro and got the hell out of there. It is what prompted me to buy my first BTC.

BTC is declaired by the IRS as property and is taxed by capital gain and capital loss. It is not money in the sense of dollars, but in the sense of gold, a medium that can be possessed and used for barter. It doesn’t rely on a bank to let you have ccess to your wealth. This is what the brough ha ha was regarding the infrastructure bill. 60M Americans saw Yellen and company try to gain control over the decentralized property known as crypto. Democracy happened and the attempt failed. The congress heard from voters and correctly surmised the third rail nature of touching someone’s income and relented. Too much pork yet to be consumed to die on that hill. And so we see the power of decentralized finance, where the holders of the value and the individual are the same. Possession is power. It’s the reason the second amendment works to protect the individual. The block chain shows immutable proof of ownership (which is whay it’s a lousy “thing” to get paid in for criminal activitym it’s imminently traceable).

The point is the people stood up, 60M of them and said get your mits off my dough and democracy worked. With wealth comes power. With 60M who possess wealth power abounds and the elites bac Straus ked down. There is a book called the 4th Turning by Strauss and Howe. The book describes a cyclic nature of society split into 4 consecutive generations and a societal revolution happens every 4th generation. We are now in the 4th turning and the chickens are coming home to roost. Creative destruction will and is happening and in my opinion cryto will be the catalyst. If you own your property you have a voice and the more property you own either individually or collectively the bigger the voice. This is the nature of a democratic republic.

You may think I’m nuts. Maybe yes, maybe no, but crypto as an asset class and the power it provides is here to stay. It will be (and should be) regulated but it’s power is evident. It’s far more than a way to make money, it’s a way to express opinion, especially as a mamber of a community. Stocks ar worth about 200T dollars, bonds 400 Trillion. Deratives a quadrillion, FX multiple quadrillions. Crypto is worth 2.5 T and is growing at 116%/yr. There is no reason to believe it wont equal or exceed stocks as an asset class2.5T to 250T is a 100x growth. It’s an everyman investment since it’s so finely divisible. You can put in $10 or 10M according to your means. Ownership means you also have voice. If you have no stake you have nothing to loose, but not so if your an owner.

The dialectic is in play. A solution will emerge. You want to be a mark? You want to continue to be the mark?

3 Replies to “Democratization”

  1. Good to see you back. I’ve opened a modest position in a few currencies, mostly based on your writing here. Have learned a lot though probably nowhere near enough. Hope you’re well.

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