OK, now that the bitcoin ETF, the spot ETF has been approved… truth be told, I don’t think there is really any more risk in regards to bitcoin, owning bitcoin, or the like. 
1. Before, it was really really hard to acquire and buy bitcoin
For me, acquiring bitcoin in around 2017 2018, I suppose around four or five years ago, the only practical option was using something like Coinbase, beautiful user interface and experience, to buy my bitcoins. At first I think I bought bitcoin around 6000 or $7000 a bitcoin… around $25,000 worth of it.
Even today, the thing that is really insanely annoying is that making wire transactions to purchase more bitcoin has been horrific. Simple wire transfers of around $120,000, I had to go into the bank at least three times, sign a bunch of things, Talk to real life being tellers, and then having to be stuck on the phone for an hour or two talking to some outsourced customer support labor and the Philippines or Manila, and then having to call back another week later, figuring out why my damn wire transfer had not gone through yet.
The more street for workaround has been using the built-in plaid integration with Coinbase, purchasing daily maximum of $50,000 USD worth of bitcoin at a time.  every time I do this it is insanely anger-fying, because when I have the right opportunity to buy, because I have this lame restriction put on me, I lose opportunities and I also lose the ability to purchase more bitcoins.
For example, when I wanted to buy bitcoin when it was low, when it dipped down a bunch, because the wire transfer took me about a week or two, I think finally when the money was available, or finally when the purchase went through, bitcoin up at least $10,000 a bitcoin, which means that I was able to purchase few bitcoins than I wanted to. 
Anyways, I’m so grateful that the technology even exist in the first place for me to purchase bitcoins at all. Sometimes I limit at the fact that me and my friend Kevin do not buy $100 worth of bitcoin, back in 2009, when my roommate Kevin told me about the bitcoin pizza incident. I will never forget how I shrugged my shoulders, and I said we should not, because I thought it was a scam. I think if we had bought hundred dollars worth of bitcoin the time, both of us would have owned thousands if not 10 and thousands of bitcoins, making both of us hundred millionaires, or potentially maybe even billionaires.
2. It is never too late 
So I think the main issue that we have is we always lament the fact that we are “too late”. This applies to almost everything in life, finding a life partner, getting married, having kids, getting into shape and doing fitness, investing whatever.
But, as I speak these words, it is still early! Apple has not yet integrated bitcoin support into their iOS or iPhone, once Apple does this, the price of bitcoin will explode.
3. Do you remember blockbuster? 
One thing that I’ve learned in life, it is easier to predict what will fail, rather than what will succeed.
For example, I think I’m really lucky that I was born in 1988, because I recall life before the Internet, in life after the Internet. And also the Internet came out around a formative time for me, when I was living in New York, and I got my first computer with AOL 3.0, a 38.8k dial up modem,  I think when I was around 11 years old. Maybe the fourth or fifth grade?
Anyways, back in the day, I recall how we used to go to Blockbuster to rent VHS tapes to watch movies. I remember in college, when I got really into investing in stocks and stuff,  blockbuster was still a publicly traded company. I remember my roommate Kevin, our freshman year, having a Netflix subscription when they still use to send DVDs in the mail. I knew with great certainty that blockbuster would go bankrupt and go under, and I wanted to short blockbuster stock, but I had no idea how to do it. my prediction was right. Blockbuster went bankrupt, I could’ve made a good profit had I done this.
Or on the other hand, if I had invested in that in college, in 2007 or 2008, this would have also been good.
Anyways the big pot was dematerialization. The fact that in my short life, I have already seen the transition from the materialized world of going in person to choose a blockbuster VHS tape, to rent or borrow or to watch, I actually used to do this with video games too… It actually made a lot of sense, Instead of paying $50 for the Nintendo 64 video game, which I would eventually beat, I rented for only like five or $10, and then try to beat it really fast, so economically as a kid, it made a lot of sense.
4. YouTube premium
I really random thing that my mom has been getting into lately has been tai chi, Cindy’s mom got my mom into it. It has been great every morning my mom has been practicing it, but no matter how many blockers I tried to install, google is smart enough to figure out how to disable the ad blockers. 
I suppose the genius of getting a YouTube premium family plan, whether it is $20 a month or whatever, then intelligence is you think about it… It might be the new most important utility that we got.
Even random things, like me preparing to change the oil in my 2010 Prius, watching YouTube videos on how to do it, is 1 trillion times better than written tutorials.
Even whenever I talk about house construction or maintenance or whatever, all the handyman I know tell me to just watch it on YouTube.
So if you think about the economics of it, assuming that having a studio membership for Pilates or yoga $200 a month, and technically you could just stream it on YouTube for $20 a month, economically it is extremely intelligent.
Anyways what is very interesting about the whole YouTube premium thing that is how it has dematerialized so many different things. 
And this is what I think is the genius of bitcoin, it has the materialized money. Yes bitcoin is money, even as time goes on I put less than less faith on field paper currency. To me it is like cotton candy.
5. Money philosophy
So I just finished watching the whole Michael Saylor series on money, and I feel like I just got a new PS in economics, economic theory, as well as corporate finance and accounting.
The main takeaways are the following: 
a) Inflation
The basic idea is because the money creation rate in America and beyond is expanding 7 to 10% a year, because the price of minimum wage keeps going up, out of thin air, this is what drives inflation, or another words, the price of everything going up. 
For example, I’ll never forget this moment; when me and Seneca bought  our typical single burger patty, just the patty nothing else, just a month ago for $1.50 at Patty, it going up over 90 to $2.50 just for a single patty! This was because minimum wage was raised from $16 an hour to $20 USD an hour.
The reason why this decision was bad is because honestly, it just seems like a political ploy, for politicians to get elected or reelected. The reason why this is a scam is this:
I want to get elected, and I promise you that I will raise your minimum wage. Vote for me!
And then, the real after effects of inflation is going to happen when I am out of office.
b) History of money
Some of this is a rehashing of Michael Saylor quoting the book, the bitcoin standard, which I find really fascinating not because of the whole bitcoin thing, but about the history of money.
Long story short, bitcoin might be the best money and asset because it is infinitely durable and will last forever, because it is so intensive to create it has value, it has a hard cap of 21 million bitcoins, which will be certain even 1000 years from now, And also… it is money perfected. 
6. My thoughts
I am very very happy and grateful that I did not study economics formally. I’m sure that I would have fallen into the same pitfalls as a lot of these loser economic peoples who has never done business in the real world.
I’ll give you examples; when I went to UCLA as an undergraduate,  we didn’t have a formal business major, only a Hybrid business – economics major. Out of all the people that knew who studied business economics, none of them became entrepreneurs, self-employed, none of them started their own companies, none of them worked for themselves, and none of them became successful. They all ended up just becoming low or mid-level managers at some company, probably clocking in the typical $80,000 thousand dollars a year to $120,000 a year salary. 
In fact, what made me so successful in my realm of Farsi, entrepreneurship, etc.… It totally up ended any traditional economic theories. For example my open source vision; it would probably had been deemed as heresy by any traditional school of economic thought.
Also as a side thing; I am very very happy that I did not study photography formally, and I am also grateful that I did not go to art school. Why? Once again, you get stuck in these loser ways of thinking, these incestuous ways of thinking about photography and the art world is quite filthy.
Anyways, as a general thought, true innovation and entrepreneurship comes from expertise domain expertise outside of that certain domain. For example, let us note that flight was invented by the weight brothers, who I believe were actually bicycle mechanics. 
I feel that I am well positioned to talk about money, economics, economic theory because I grew up poor, single mom working minimum wage jobs, also, becoming a successful self-employed sole proprietor, having zero debt, and applying my economic theories to real life.
Also, I am also moderately booksmart, and my wife has a PhD. And then helping Cindy get her PhD, I feel like I got a PhD.
And also other things which I have done which I consider very intelligent: I have never spent more than $2500 USD on a car, in my whole life, from age 15 to at age 36.
- 1991 Nissan Sentra XE (5 speed, manual transmission, $1000)
- 1991 Nissan Sentra SE-R (5 speed, manual transmission $1500 USD)
- 1990 Mazda Miata, five speed manual transmission, no air conditioning no power steering, $2500 USD
- 2002 Subaru outback, five speed manual transmission, $800 USD
- Current, 2010 Prius, free. ($0.00)– free 99
I put zero faith in any individual who has ever purchased any brand new car. It is a true signal that they are economically a fool.
Doesn’t matter if you bought the new Tesla or whatever, all fools.
7. Why does this all matter?
Whether you like it or not, our whole life revolves around money.
There are certain things which are negotiable, certain things which are not negotiable.
Nonnegotiable include paying rent, gas and electricity, Wi-Fi, food, coffee etc.
Negotiable things include purchasing any sort of clothing, eating out, drink alcohol or smoking marijuana or doing drugs, cars, purchasing a home or property etc.
Also, unfortunately I think 99.9% of the photography industry is predicated around purchasing your cameras, lenses, accessories etc. Was the first to start the anti-gear movement, by books not gear, and being the first to really make the Ricoh GR camera mainstream?