<div class="text-justify">


When I "got in" on crypto, times were hard, really hard. At the time it seemed like there was just going to be no respite and we struggled through financial hardship, but it was health issues that plagued all three of us that delivered the worst blows. During those times and for near on a year, I was doing the best I could to meet responsibilities of work and family and was surviving off around three hours of broken sleep a night and if I could manage it, a nap after I got home from work. 

I felt like a mindless zombie from the walking dead, but I look back at those times and hold them dear, as I learned a lot about myself during those weeks that turned into months that drew out into years. I have shared some of the journey through my writing, but I will never likely publish it all. 

<center>![Ava toybox 22417.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/tarazkp/kvMq1Mcg-Ava20toybox2022-4-17.jpg)</center>

As said, it was during this time that I got into crypto through writing, a way to make a few much needed dollars that never eventuated into dollars at all - that crypto is still crypto. There is a reason for this that I was trying to explain to a colleague today. 

While I needed the money, the *getting in* set me on a path of learning and opened me up to areas of life that I hadn't really considered before. I started to change my perspective on the world, started to see weaknesses in myself and others and the direction society is taking. I had looked at much of this before, but there was something about entering into a social platform with an economy attached that shone a spotlight on aspects of the world. 

I was trying to explain to a colleague today who a few months ago bought his first Bitcoin, that the reason to get into the scene isn't because of the potential for profits, it is for where it all leads. Making "money" is one aspect of it and it is highly compelling and evokes strong emotion as it could relieve one of our major pain points in life, but I believe that lasting relief will come through the personal shift in perspective that happens for *most* people who get into crypto and start to explore past the token price and into what it can mean from a community perspective. 

Of course, I don't just mean the Hive community here, I mean the global community, one that is consistently failing to manage itself in a way that enriches the lives of us all. Yes, we are living longer - but are we living *better?* 

Part of the problem is that as a collective, we have a very low imagination and we adhere quite strongly to our conditioning, which makes us believe that the way things are is the way they must be, even though they haven't always been this way. The outlier who believe different are dismissed as crazy, because the fact of the matter is, *most are.* 

Having ideas different to the collective has nothing to do with the idea being good. If what we need is a radical shift in direction to be able to deal with societal aspects like economic failure and extreme disparity, environmental change and social disillusionment and the increasing violence - we need ideas. But radical shifts often take radical ideas and for a radical idea to be implemented, it has to also be supported. Most people don't support radical ideas, unless conditioned, and that conditioning takes time. 

But, if we are looking at outlier ideas, we need to have *a lot of ideas* as most will not be far enough away from the mean to make a difference, at least half of them are going to be genuinely bad. Bad ideas tend to get support too, as often there is an incentive for one group or another to support *any* idea. but, due to the ambiguity, ideas for *the common good* struggle to gather support. 

The thing is that no societal paradigm shift is going to happen en masse toward a common good, unless there is an incentive to do so. And, since most people will not support anything far from their personal average, it is going to be a progression of incremental changes that will lead to somewhere better. For example, the concept of "tax is theft" being driven may be doing far more harm then good, as while it might attract a few outliers, it will increase the resistance in the far greater percentage of people, as they do not have the imagination to see much other than what they know.

Currently, social platforms and all the data that drives them has had a profound effect on the way society interacts and consumes in what is a very short time frame from a global perspective. While it is ubiquitous and we have become so accustomed to it that it seems "natural" to us, it has come through trillions of nudges daily over the space of decades to get to this point and, at every step there is an incentive to do so - generally a short, "in the moment" incentive. Social media does not encourage investment, as that isn't what makes them money. 

Investment requires long-term thinking and abilities to solve immediate problems. Going back to my journey into crypto, I had a very pressing and painful financial problem to which I was looking for a solution, even though it wasn't a good short-term solution at all. But, what I recognized after joining,. interacting and *learning* is, there is a solution here and that solution can be innovated over time to scale out to help many more than myself. Again, I am not talking about Hive alone and I am not talking about making money alone.

Crypto and blockchain technologies are making inroads into areas that were previously untouchable by the average person and impossible for a distributed group to maintain. It will increasingly start to question aspects of our current lives and begin to nudge us in new directions, as we will be incentivized to move. 

Doesn't anyone find it ridiculous that next week there will be an election where there is likely to be contested results and calls of vote rigging - when we are currently using a blockchain that could easily take all of that guess work out? Why aren't they using a blockchain for record keeping with everyone having a token to vote with? Is it really so hard? Is it *too expensive* when they are spending billions upon billions for the elections as they run them now? Trillions of you consider it globally? *Don't they want transparency?* 

What about that derivatives market that is *estimated* 6x the size of the global stock values, but most of it is handled in an unregulated, over the counter fashion with very, very low or no visibility, with a very high incentive to manipulate markets. - *and they say Bitcoin is a risk and used for crime because it is hard to track.* They do not even know if it is worth 600 trillion or, 1.4 quadrillion. 

> # 1,400,000,000,000,000

They are just zeroes.... *meaningless.*

And I think this is part of the visibility problem, as we can't even imagine what that looks like - but, if you consider the US with the largest economy in the world has added something like 4 trillion to their national debt in the last 6 months and it now sits at an unprecedented and highly risky 27 trillion - the derivatives market is over 50x larger - 5000%

Tax might be theft - but what the fuck is going on in that blackhole filled with wealth that no one has visibility on and even if they did.

This is the [US debt visualized](https://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/us_debt/us_debt.html) in stacks of $100 notes:

<center>https://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/us_debt/images/usd-us-debt_ceiling-2017-20_trillion_USD-v1.jpg</center>

But that is from 2017 and is only 20 trillion, it is now over 35% larger. This means to look at the derivatives market wealth size that is based on *nothing,* you would have to multiply that stack by between 50 and 80 times - no one knows. Seems legit. 

But, this is the economy that we are taking part in, our pension funds are going into indexed funds and that is what we have visibility on. But as said, the estimate of size is unknown because most of the trading is done over the counter and in the dark. If it is in the dark - what is happening to the capital gains tax to be paid on it?

We play here in the the hope that whoever is managing our money will do a good enough job that when we retire there will be enough money to look after us, that all the hard work over the last 45-odd years amounted to something. How many crashes will it take, will we ever learn?

And I think that this is where we have a chance to participate in the learning required to reorganize our economies by reorganizing ourselves, by taking responsibility for our own futures. While it seems that the incentive to gain isn't a strong enough draw - perhaps the incentive to not lose will be.

The major players in the corporate world are starting to make their intentions known and move a toe into crypto to test the waters, because they have lost trust in the economy that they have benefited so heavily from. Remember, inflation hurts us all and when a company has *billions* in cash on hand, a few percent extra is going to make a significant dent. The corporations don't trust the governments to look after the value of their money, so they are moving it out of reach. but, perhaps for the first time in history, we the people are able to make a concurrent move too, as crypto is an asset class that *anyone* can get their hands on.   

For me, I have made many, many mistakes in the way I have managed my crypto from a gains perspective and could be wealthy had I made a couple decisions differently. but, I am still here, still participating and still supporting a future where we might just end up stumbling onto one of those ideas that changes the world for the better, and have the tools available to support the cultural shift. It might not eventuate - but I think it is a failure I can accept. 


Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]

</div>
 

Posted Using [LeoFinance <sup>Beta</sup>](https://leofinance.io/hive-167922/@tarazkp/a-quadrillion-reasons)