Categories
Education Participation

Everything Altogether is Trying to Be a Revelation for you

Everything altogether is trying to be a revelation for you. It is just that you are not sensitive to it in your ordinary habit. The shaman, you see, has entered into a discipline to make himself sensitive. It is not that he is making the magic happen. The magic is already there. He is just not sensitive to it, not in a position to observe it. Thus, he must engage in a discipline that enables him to participate in what is already happening. Then all of a sudden he sees all kinds of magical things.

–the World-Friend, Adi Da, from The Transmission of Doubt, Talks and Essays on the Transcendence of Scientific Materialism through Radical Understanding, page 239

Categories
FinTech

FUD Vs Foresight


Today on March 16, 2018 bitcoin is sitting at $8,550 USD. Here we have a couple of my favorite investors throwing shade at bitcoin. What’s interesting is that the crypto industry is actually going thru the necessary growing pains of regulation and use scaling. Because both bitcoin and ethereum are testing their scaling solutions (to compete with banks & visa/mastercard, etc), both are poised for more use adoption this year.

So here’s the FUD:

In February, Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. (BRK.A, BRK.B) vice chairman Charlie Munger had harsh words for bitcoin at the Berkshire annual shareholder meeting.

“It’s just disgusting. Bitcoin is noxious poison,” Munger said. Billionaire Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett once famously called bitcoin “a mirage.”

And the Foresight:

Still, bitcoin has plenty of supporters on Wall Street. Fundstrat Global Advisors co-founder Thomas Lee[WD] says Fundstrat’s bitcoin misery index suggests the sell-off is an excellent buying opportunity for long-term investors.

“The BMI is telling us to keep the negative headlines in perspective,” Lee said, according to CNBC. “When the BMI is at a ‘misery’ level, future returns are very good.”

Fundstrat has a year-end price target for bitcoin of $25,000.

Categories
FinTech

CoinPuffs Vs Coinmarketcap

Coinmarketcap’s homepage.

One day I noticed that the bitcoin price dropped alot, and the coinmarketcap as a whole also dropped $50 billion. What?! It turns out someone running coinmarketcap.com decided to drop South Korea off the market index because it’s prices were higher than other countries without telling anyone in advance. What?! Their prices are higher because South Korea makes it hard to move money in and out of country on purpose–that shouldn’t bar the country from being part of of the general index. Anyway, in the process of discovering this info, I found out that CoinPuffs works like CoinMarketCap, but not as capriciously. It seems more like a community site, and it has over 2000 coins listed. Article on coindesk.

Categories
FinTech

So What does the Federal Reserve Do?

I like to listen to economic news at night and recently heard this lady, Nomi Prins, who was a Goldman Sachs manager, then journalist, talk about the history of the Federal Reserve in America. Her book, All the Presidents’ Bankers is a telling of the relationships between US Presidents and powerful bankers from 1907 to the present.

In 1907 there was a potential stock market meltdown, (caused by some bankers (some people are always trying to game the system)) and Teddy Roosevelt called on his friend J.P. Morgan to fix it. That led to the creation of the Federal Reserve in America. So basically the Fed (the US version of a “Central Bank”) acts as a bridge to do what the Government wants in the economy, via handling Government money. Unfortunately, it seems that printing money (called “fractional reserve banking” and “quantitative easing”), and thus devaluing the currency, is what the Fed tends to do, because it’s easier to flood the economy with money than it is to actually solve the economy’s root problems.

And right now, in 2018, it seems like the US is in the middle of a bigger bubble than it was in 2008 when the banking bubble burst, because the US is over 20 trillion in debt, and is at the point of not being able to make interest payments on the debt if the bond market rates keep going up. So buckle your seat belts!

Categories
Education

How to Prevent World-Destruction?

In order that world-destruction be prevented, the “late-time” ego-culture must be stopped in its tracks. The pond-water into which Narcissus is gazing must be stirred to deep.

–The World-Teacher, Adi Da, from Not-Two Is Peace, the essay “You The People: On The Necessity of A Global Cooperative Order of The All of Humankind”, page 157, 3rd edition.

Basically everyone-all-at-once must feel the “Depth”, the prior unity, in order to stop dramatizing egoity. The first thing  to do is to assert you’re a human being, you’re part of the human race:

First and foremost, people are members of the totality of humankind. Therefore, everyone should actively participate in the global cooperative. That is how it ought to be.

Prior Unity is the native state of humankind.

–from Prior Unity, The Basis For A New Human Civilization, by the World-Friend, Adi Da

Best to read the essay… or buy the books and read them both!