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## Hello Hive❤️

My name is Flynn Jameson, and I am a financial scholar, historian, and writer who has spent much of the past 20 years keeping my finger on the pulse of the global financial market. While finance is my primary field of work, my lifelong passion has been, and always will be, studying #history.

This post is long-overdue. I have been a Hive blogger since shortly after the hard-fork from Steemit and the whole Justin Sun saga, and I joined Hive officially during the lock-downs in the summer of 2020.

Shout out to @coldbeetrootsoup @kencode @unklebonehead @crimsonclad and @bambukah for finally giving me the strength to put this together, so without further ado, here's a little something about me! :)

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## Origin Story & Early Interests

I grew up mostly in the 90s and early-2000s, and my first computer was a Gateway PC from the early-1990s that had a Floppy-B drive. Chessmaster 3000 was the very first video game experience I can remember. Oh, that was a simpler time, when I had no internet access to use for seeking knowledge or information.

When I was 7, my best friend introduced me to Age of Empires II on his old Windows 98 PC. I was hooked from the very first moment I played. Never before had my attention been completely consumed by a single thing. Exploring the map, discovering civilizations, fighting wars to build empires – it was all so fascinating to me - that was 23 years ago.

I spent a lot of my childhood at the local public library, usually buried in history books. It was also through the public library that I gained exposure to music through the extensive catalog of CDs in their collection. It was through the public library's collection that I acquired about 40% of my music collection today. Imagine that, I saved myself more than...$14,000 in music CDs, just from renting, from the public library – back when that was still truly a public good.

My earliest influences in #music came from my brother. He had friends who freely swapped CDs with each other, so it was through him that I first heard Nu Metal, around 2001. The moment I heard Linkin Park, I was hooked. Even in elementary school as a small child, I was listening to metal as early as 4th grade, back when most of my classmates were listening to that “pop” and “rap” stuff they played on KISS FM or Radio Disney.

Those were very strange times indeed, but music became a lifelong passion of mine from a very young age. I played piano from the age of 6 until 9, and then cello from then on until I graduated high school at 18. I’ve spent more than 15 years fiddling around with the electric bass, although I’ve never had any formal instruction. 

Music has always been an important part of my life, without it, I wouldn’t be here today, writing this to you, the Hive community.

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## My Background

I was raised in the South, where the concrete stretches for hundreds of miles in every direction, as far as the eye could see. I never lived near mountains, or had much in the way of “hills.” Where I grew up, everything was extremely flat and devoid of much natural #beauty. Everything was very manufactured, made to look a certain way to fit the urban planning..There were no rivers or natural lakes anywhere nearby. Summer was extremely hot and humid, lasting for what felt like 9 months of the year, with the remaining 3 months being split up into what one could consider “springtime,” “fall,” and “winter.”

I put those in quotes because the temperature rarely every got cooler. It was always warm in the spring and autumn time, and I rarely got to see snow. There were the occasional springtime rain and thunderstorms, but never anything truly torrential. I grew up in one of the hottest parts of North America, and so I became used to living indoors most of the year. After all, when it’s 110 degrees Fahrenheit for weeks during the summer, it’s hard to do enjoy being outdoors.

Since I spent so much time indoors, reading was my go-to activity pretty regularly. While government-mandated K-12 schools interfered with pleasure reading, I have resumed my unquenchable thirst for information, starting around 2016. I read something new every single day of my life. I credit reading with expanding my vocabulary as a small child and with keeping me well-informed of the inner-workings of systems of control (hence my focus on history and finance).

While I was growing up, I was a daily reader of the Wall Street Journal, from late-2003 until 2011. I can’t believe I actually used to read that outlet’s “World News” section uncritically. My analytical skills really got fine-tuned over the last several years, and I can’t stand reading most things from the mainstream press anymore. 

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## Business Planning & Development

My experiences with learning about finance are ultimately what shaped my decision to build my business, the Mercado Maestro. Seeing how poorly-informed, uneducated, and downright brainwashed so many people were around me, I had to do something. The easy thing was to simply complain that everyone was missing the obvious, that the world was in a state of chaos, but no one cared. The harder thing to do, was to actually be the change I wanted to see in the world, so that was what I chose to do.

So I set out in early 2021 to create and organize my business. It started off from a model of a well-known, multinational conglomerate, Sea Ltd (or Southeast Asia Ltd). They are primarily focused on gaming, e-commerce, and mobile #payments. I figured a three-headed approach was practical for me, given that I had so many ideas of what I wanted to include in my business, in terms of product and service offerings.

During the earlier days of the lock-downs in the US, everything shutdown on the West Coast, where I was living at the time. The entire local economy collapsed overnight, only big box retailers like Amazon, Target, Walmart, Costco, and Home Depot were “allowed” to remain open for business. I witnessed the destruction of (what was left of) the middle class in Oregon. Income inequality was rampant, poverty was endemic, and the lack of opportunities for young people was really disturbing to me.

I saw the so-called “brightest” minds of my generation descend into madness, consumed by addiction, mental struggles, and social isolationism. The lock-downs broke a lot of people’s brains, but it led me to re-examine my life through a different lens. This lens, was one of purely creating #value on my own. Building was determined to be the most important thing in the success of any business; a poorly-built business will never survive the bad times, and will struggle to succeed in the good times.

I wanted to build in the bad times, and thrive in the good – and that is what I have done for the past 2 years.

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## What Makes Hive Special?

I chose Hive as the home for my official blog and online presence for a variety of reasons. For me personally, I value content (and thereby Intellectual Property) ownership very highly, and I care very deeply about protecting the work that I do. 

Using Hive, I am able to solidify a permanent record on the #blockchain that documents the time and block of origin, establishing a clear record of control over the content, much like a deed to a house guarantees the right to possession. Hive is also a decentralized database for information, and as someone whose entire business revolves around the financial world, information control and distribution is everything. Hive provides the solid foundation upon which I can depend.

Not just that, but, Hive is the only place I have found online that truly enables #community creation and curation. I have been a blogger for more than 20 years, I have used platforms like Xanga, Myspace, Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram. None of those platforms come close to offering what I can do on Hive. 

I value freedom of speech and freedom of expression above all else, and Hive allows me to freely and openly speak my mind without fear of censorship, regardless of what forms it takes. Hive truly liberates the writer from the mainstream media and cult of personality, and rewards creativity, rather than suppress it.

My primary focus here on Hive is to help promote my financial education business, the Mercado Maestro. I intend on accomplishing this goal through the creation of my podcast (syndicated through @cast.garden), educational videos (published on @threespeak) and financial market research both on the traditional financial markets (fiat) and blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. 

You can expect to see regular weekly reports on different cryptocurrencies, providing both objective data, as well as my personal commentary on the token. This will include, but is not limited to: technical analysis of the charts, and qualitative analysis of the blockchain’s activity and the tokenomics.

All content will also be made available, for free, on my website, https://mercadomaestro.com, as well.

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