In what @edicted would rightly put down to "unit bias" we are now at the end of 2021 and heading into 2022, where we tend to reflect on what has passed, where we are and what we hope for the future. Though, not all of this is unit bias related, since we have set up a system where for example, taxes need to be paid. However, from a psychological perspective, the year end and start does give feelings of death and rebirth and like always, I do think it is valuable to reflect on what has come to pass.

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2021 for me

Gotta say, this year has been one of quite severe ups and downs. It started off well enough with the bull market cycle starting to move into effect and while many were pretty disillusioned after 2020, Q1 was full of upside, where some of my holdings from all the way back in 2017 and 2018 started to get some traction. Then, the LEO Finance Team entered into the DeFi field and things started to get pretty hectic, considering yields and investigating impermanent loss and such.

During all of this time, my family was living in a renovation construction site, with copious amounts of fiat getting poured from every source we could gather to get work done, and fix what was done incorrectly. And it was during some kitchen painting work, that the biggest down side of the year struck.

It started on a Saturday with what felt like a migraine, but it came on very fast and strong to the point where literally five minutes later, I was showered and groaning in bed, hoping sleep would remedy the pain. It did not. The ambulance was called, paramedics arrived, they gave the all clear and left, saying - just a migraine. This was despite me not being able to remember my wife and daughter's names, even though I knew who they were.

Note: Any neurological symptoms -straight to hospital.

The next day I felt a little better, but on Monday, it happened again and I never get two migraines so close together and tend to not even get one every year. So, I went off to hospital - my wife driving. It took hours there and finally a scan showed I had a Carotid Artery Dissection, but it wasn't until Wednesday when after my wife had commented on my slightly dropped lip and I was saying I was having trouble thinking and speaking, that an MRI showed I had suffered a stroke caused by the dissection and a chunk of my brain in the cerebellum was now dead.

Profound change

I have always talked about wanting life changing results, but, this is not what I had envisaged. Funnily enough, I actually have trouble visualizing anything at all now, which used to be a competitive advantage skill of mine that I could use to think myself through problems rapidly. The stroke has affected fundamental components of my core foundation and now, I feel like someone related, but not the same as me. It is a disturbing feeling to say the least and of course I know that it is "still me", but perhaps in time it will fade and I will learn who this new version is and connect and integrate into them.

This however, has affected my entire experience in life and as such, the path I was on was no longer aligned with who "I am" at the current point in time. The trouble is, without knowing who I am right now, it is very difficult to take a path that feels right for me.

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There is no way to describe what I am going through with any real sense, unless someone has gone through similar and had similar outcomes, but what it has done is remind me that I have to ensure that I am able to "secure" the future for my family. There was nothing but luck that the stroke was the way it was and didn't kill me or worse, leave me a vegetable drooling in the corner, unable to communicate.

"Luck" is full of funny contradictions, as people say how lucky I am, forgetting that I also had a stroke at 42 years of age, caused by something I had no control over whatsoever. Lucky me.

But, lucky I was, as even though they are much harder to make now, I still have the opportunity to make my own decisions on my future and, crypto factors heavily into that process. This is because even more so than earlier (and it was definitely there earlier also), I want profound change not just in my life, but in the world in general.

Affection of economy

If the last two years of the way the Covid-19 "crisis" has been handled is any indication at all, it is that where we are headed is not leading to an improvement in life experience for the majority of people. It really is like we are doomed to repeat the past and we have failed to learn. As always, incentive is what drives us and in the society we have built, the monetary economy is the major force driving all kinds of processes that are important to us.

This means that in order to improve the world of human experience, we need to improve the economic conditions, but this doesn't mean generate more wealth at all. We talk about the "wealth gap" being a problem, but don't actually seem to acknowledge that it is a symptom of the economic practices we employ, that don't work. The economy is designed to create that gap, it is designed to empower a decreasing amount of people, it is designed to crush an increasing majority.

A new design

So, what needs to happen in order to empower the majority, isn't a redistribution of wealth as we know it, it is a redesign of the economy into something that redefines processes and applies value to human values. Rather than a system that is incentivized by activities to create profits, profits need to be derived through the incentivization of activity that improves humanity, society, community. The current economy is the antithesis of this.

Crypto and blockchain bring into the mix new possibilities, and much like myself who has to learn who I am what I can do and what potential I have, it is a process of learning what the capabilities are from an economic perspective. Two key factors blockchain provides are, decentralization of ownership and transparency of activity - with these two things spread globally, taking out a lot of the value around knowledge and availability that is only accessible to a narrow few.

Own experience

Own experience now takes on a double meaning, because whilst we are the only ones who can experience our lives, we are rapidly moving into an economy where we are able to literally own our experience, meaning we can invest into what we do. For a long time, people have been encouraged to spend money on *"experiences, rather than things", but now it is possible to invest into those experiences directly also, meaning that there is not only a personal value of the experience itself, but a return on the investment for that experience too.

The previous advice was to "invest into what you know" but I think we are moving into a period of invest into what you use. I believe that this is vital for restructuring the economy, as it intrinsically ties supply to demand based on what we value, connecting the financial value of these things to our real-world activity. Currently though, most of the wealth is tied up in financial mechanisms that have no practical purpose, nor are accessible by the majority of people.

The value of wealth

But, once this paradigm shift takes place, business models are going to have to factor in a return to their users that goes beyond just a simple usecase, a they are also going to be looking for financial return. This fundamentally shifts the economic practice and through incentive, starts to redistribute "wealth" as defined by what we as society choose has value.

We are already seeing through crypto how what we value can change form, where not too long ago the idea of investing into mere digital pictures, was ludicrous - s after all, they can be replicated endlessly. But, just like there can be only one original Mona Lisa painted by Da Vinci, the "scarcity" matters, with all of this being enabled through transparent and immutable blockchains.

Yield to me

But, we are just scraping the surface of what is to come in this redefinition and as these scarce resources get combined with other decentralized financial mechanisms, they can create an endless amount of yield potential. But, in order for that potential to be realized, there has to be demand for these resources, meaning that they need to offer utilization of some kind, not just useless yield.

Yield is of course not useless if it can be used to buy something that has usecase, which is why the various derivative markets are so valuable, as the "yield" from those can be used to invest into products and services that are in demand. The problem of course being, that since only a narrow set of highly invested users have access to that yield, it is they who are able to invest into what we demand, including the mechanisms like the media channels that influence our consumer behavior. This means that the wealth gap has to increase continuously and there is no way to stop it - under current conditions.

But, once there has to be active utility to get the yield for it to have tradeable value, it not only changes the economic flows, but also who is involved in earning that yield, as it includes the consumer as an investor. This means that not only is the consumer a source of demand, they are also beneficiaries as a source of the supply.

Can you see?

As you might realize, I spend far too much time thinking these things through, but despite the loss of my ability to visualize, I do tend to have a pretty clear picture of where things are going from my perspective. This allows me to formulate a strategy and play my game, which is one that looks long and attempts to be where the ball is going to be, with "the ball" being the future economy.

It might all come crashing down and be a disaster for me personally, but I don't see the current economy servicing me any better and rather, it is just going to be a continual decline into economic oblivion for most of us. I would rather be part of a movement toward improved experience, than one that begs for better conditions for us slaves.

2022 is likely to be the year of the usable NFT, which I believe is a necessary step to begin a practical redefinition of what it means to "hold value" and will start combining these tokens with financial mechanisms that will give people limited, but growing ownership over their experience, as they start investing into what they use. As it picks up traction in the mainstream narrative, it will pull more people into the fold and we'll start to see the spread of the new paradigm and the first clusters of components that solidify the foundation, to cement it into the economy as a base to build upon.

2022 has the potential to be a mammoth growth year for the crypto industry, NFTs and the Web 3.0 movement, no matter what the prices are on the market.

Happy New Year.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]