Slaving over a marketplace bug

These are the last two captures I made in my old camera, the one with the bug was the final taken and the shutter never opened again - kind of strange to see the last of something, isn't it? You hear things like, the last kiss goodbye, the last time you will say "I love you" or, the last time Bitcoin will be below.....

Speaking of,

How is your trading going?

I haven't had time to trade much over the last weeks, which is kind of annoying as there is a lot of opportunity in the markets. I am now approaching the equivalent in BTC value since that last drop, where I failed to really capitalize or, didn't have the balls to buy the low, because I thought it was going to go lower. I also made some stupid sell decisions of things I thought would drop thinking I could get a buy back and make some gains. The amounts wouldn't have been earth shattering, but I don't like missing opportunities or making rookie mistakes. Sometimes though, it is better to sit one out than to chase the tail while running down a slippery slope.

I am still about 6% down from a few weeks ago though - but it is better than the 15% I was. Of course, this is in BTC value, not fiat, as in fiat value I am actually up since Bitcoin has increased significantly in price. I don't count too much in fiat terms though as that only really matters when using it and currently, I am not.

I think it is important to break the habit of thinking in terms of dollars, but it is also a handy way to speak about things in dollar terms as it gives some kind of context, a common denominator for normal people to understand, like a common language. At the end of the day though, eventually we will have to start breaking away from even the referencing of centralized currencies as they will be the highly volatile and risky option.

When it comes to currencies, it is all about buying power, meaning what can be bought with the currency, which means for mainstream adoption, there has to also be some level of stability, so that one can have some relative idea of what things are worth. You know how annoying it is to buy a product and the next week it is on sale at 30% off? That is essentially buying something with crypto and the next week the value of the token is 30% up. For me at least, it is hard to buy something with crypto as I believe it is going to be worth significantly more later.

Of course, this view is flawed, because I could essentially buy with crypto and immediately buy crypto with fiat for the same value (or convert fiat to crypto for the purchase) without losing much and this would give crypto more transaction volume, whilst moving more fiat value across onto the blockchains, something that has to happen for blockchains to hold the value of the world. Not just fiat has to move over however, things of value will have to be built that hold value, like the tracking of goods and services, as well as businesses that generate value from usage itself.

Just think what it would be like back in the day to pitch a business idea to investors like social media, where there is no real product and they do not sell anything directly to users. Instead, it is all secondary value generation where people pay to have access to the user base information, either for marketing purposes, or reasons more nefarious.

The term "media" doesn't really give a good representation of what is of value on a platform like Facebook, with many people thinking they make their money through advertising space like a newspaper. They do this too of course, but if they just offered space, they wouldn't have the value they do, the value is in their ability to effectively use the space to target users at a granular level in ways that are highly tailored to precisely who that user is. A newspaper can't do this, it is reader agnostic as pretty much anyone can buy a copy, so advertisers have to bet on far broader readership statistics and parameters, and far less feedback on efficiency.

I know that a lot of people disagree, but I feel that the drive for privacy" is actually working against us changing for a better world, because we think* we are invisible. I think that while we are invisible at the surface level from each other to a larger degree, anyone with the money to spend to buy our data from the collectors can see exactly who we are, as all of what we do is logged and cross referenced through a thousand gateways and APIs that we don't even know we are using.

Knowledge is power in the way it is used and we have been fooled into thinking that we are knowledgeable even though we know nothing of consequence. People worrying about their internet privacy while using corporate owned lines that have to abide by government law. The idea of being "hidden" in this digital landscape is naive, I believe.

This is why I think what is more important than privacy, is ownership. It is unlikely that we will be able to ever own the lines, but owning the value gives us power over the laws and once enough value is out of the reach of law makers, new laws come into play - market laws.

I look at everything as a universally free market economy at the macro level, meaning that we are all free to make our decisions, with many decisions leading to localized closed and protected market systems. Think about it in the US, where they talk of free markets yet the largest transfer of wealth is the tax system, which is a protected mechanism and not free at all. It is protected by the state, which effectively protects itself by using the same system to enforce the protection against those who act freely in the marketplace by choosing not to pay their tax. This is not universal law, nor god's law if you believe in such a thing, it is a protected economy that protects itself through the threat of prosecution, persecution and violence - it is an automatic opt-in, and there is no opt-out without being labelled a criminal. It is actually kind of strange that we have supported this for a couple thousand years, which points to our conditioning.

The first known system of taxation was in Ancient Egypt around 3000–2800 BC in the First Dynasty of Egypt of the Old Kingdom of Egypt.[28] The earliest and most widespread form of taxation was the corvée and tithe. The corvée was forced labour provided to the state by peasants too poor to pay other forms of taxation (labour in ancient Egyptian is a synonym for taxes).[29] Records from the time document that the Pharaoh would conduct a biennial tour of the kingdom, collecting tithes from the people. Other records are granary receipts on limestone flakes and papyrus.[30] Early taxation is also described in the Bible. In Genesis (chapter 47, verse 24 – the New International Version), it states "But when the crop comes in, give a fifth of it to Pharaoh. The other four-fifths you may keep as seed for the fields and as food for yourselves and your households and your children". source

So, in ancient Egypt, if you couldn't afford to pay the tax, you were forced into labor. How do you think the people earned so they didn't have to do the labor?

While I am far from economically talented, it is interesting to me to think about how economics impacts on our lives through the decisions we make, with most being not only economically driven by resource usage, but directly by financial consideration. Most people choose jobs based on some level of earning potential and even if working for charity, the focus is on raising funds to provide goods and services to help those without economic availability. Whatever job one does, it is probably connected to the financial economy somewhere.

The problem is with this is that we don't have any control over this system, other than the purchase decisions we make. What is interesting about crypto is that we can essentially change the way finance is organized by purchasing currency itself, a currency that isn't controlled by an individual nation or group of governments, but rather is owned and operated by people spread around the world, in a highly traceable and precise system that should always have a balance sheet that tallies exactly, at any point in time - past, present or future.

With enough support, it is a system that is far superior in its process than anything that is being used centrally and because of the precision and transparency, makes it at least difficult to fake. Because of this inability to hide, governments are unlikely to want to support it themselves because unlike the currencies that they "own and operate", they don't have control. no government will willingly give up control over their subjects, it takes revolution.

Economic revolution is coming through blockchain to expel the bugs in the system and replace them with something far more beneficial - unless you are in the business of slavery of populations.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]