Introduction to Bitcoin 

What is bitcoin and why does it matter? A simple straightforward primer:

First, the best technology of bitcoin is digital property. Or digital real estate. My general concept is that the price of a single bitcoin is and should at least least be the price of a single-family home, if not 10X 100X or 1000X.

 For example just open up Zillow, and look for the price of single-family homes in Los Angeles the Bay area etc. currently, even in poor neighborhood, average house prices are about 1.1, 1.2, $1.3 million. And also currently, many homes in the $1.5M, 2 million, $2.9M, and now $4.4 million zone.  and also, one of the estates on Hobie Hills, $155 million home, and above that a brand new construction, $199 million estate.

If I think about it, the reason why bitcoin is such a big deal is that it is the hardest working capital on the planet or the known human universe. For example, when you are sleeping in Pacific time, there is probably somebody awake in Singapore, when their exchanges are open, buying selling bitcoin.

Second, the velocity the speed the power. Currently bitcoin is like a juggernaut; you literally cannot stop it even if you wanted it to. Do you remember an X-Men, I’m the juggernaut, juggernaut just smashing through walls? Yeah that is like bitcoin.

And even microstrategy, it is like a tank, an armored vehicle, which is slowly plowing through and destroying everything in its way. If you have ever seen a raised military vehicle in the flesh, in desert 10 and iron steel, with a huge massive room that look like tractor rims, having like 20 wheels, driving on the freeway, the sheer size and mass will make your jaw drop.

The reason why I am so passionate about bitcoin is that at this point, it almost feels like an ethical imperative to me. What that means is that I almost feel like it is my God-given duty to spread the good word of bitcoin.

Why? Assuming that 55% of the world‘s problems come rooted in issues about money, if that were the case, if you could fix the money and the money supply, couldn’t you fix and improve and upgrade the human race? (Saylor).

Bet on the jockey and the horse 

So assuming that Michael Saylor is not the new patron in Saint of bitcoin, he is now the ultimate spokesperson for bitcoin, and assuming that he is in fact, unethical, incredibly intelligent, good intentioned and ethical, if that is the case, then, Michael Saylor is like our head man or jockey, like the Steve Jobs of bitcoin, and bitcoin is like the war horse. Once again, bitcoin has the most unstoppable power on the planet.

Internet digital capital

So this issue was physical real estate, let us buy $10 million house or plot of property here in Culver City, main issues:

  1. The issues of property taxes, sales taxes, other taxes which is just like the local city or government or whatever siphoning away money from you. It is almost like you are a healthy child, and then you become a blood bag for some sort of mad Max evil villain, And they’re slowly selecting away the blood of your firstborn child, to feed itself. Now I think I understand a little bit more about the idea of lowering taxes and government taxes, because nobody likes to have their blood drained. Especially against their own will.
  2. Laws of physical nature, act of God: so my brother-in-law is currently having his house remodeled and rebuilt, and super super crazy story the contractor who’s helping them employed by Cindy‘s mom suddenly I guess randomly got cancer and is now in the hospital? And this is the head contractor for the whole project, so then, the laws of physics; if your head contractor suddenly gets cancer or a heart attack and becomes ill… Your whole housing development project comes to a standstill. Also, the laws of physical entropy; when you are getting a house rebuild, and then it starts to rain, this is disastrous.
  3. The physical world is too slow: so currently on 877 Washington in Culver City, Apple is expanding their Apple TV TV plus campus. I’ve been watching them constructed like four days and weeks on end. They’re actually doing good progress on it like they’re always at work, looks like they have good contractors etc.; but still, this is taking months, how long will it take? Five years? The issue with physical and physical development physical real estate once again, the laws of physics make it very very impossible to build things quickly. Even in Vietnam where they obviously do not observe any sort of safety laws, they built things really really fast, but it is impossible to build 100 foot skyscraper in like five days or a week. With bitcoin you can.

Why is it so hard for people to understand bitcoin?

Can you imagine trying to explain to an ant how a microwave works?  or can you try to imagine explaining to a child in nuclear physics?

Or can you try explaining to your 95-year-old mom how the Internet and the cloud works?

Poor, imagine how difficult it is if you took a 85-year-old man who has been driving petroleum cards this whole life, and giving him a brand new cyber truck?

The hard thing with technologies is that it is always very very very very difficult to understand things which are a massive paradigm shift. Even my uncle, who is almost the most reluctant person to technology ever, like he only got an iPhone literally this last year — even up until a year ago he was still using a flip phone, now that she has an iPhone Pro, his life is like 1 trillion times better. He literally fought hand and nail and even he eventually succumbed to the miraculous powers of the iPhone. I think also a similar thing will happen with electric cars, like we charge our phones every night, can you imagine if your iPhone ran on a gasoline generator?

Insight & vision

I think the hard thing is that to have a deep insight about something, is going to be considered insane by the traditional crowd. Which is also very very understandable. For example, one of the most useful inventions of all time the microwave, can you imagine trying to describe to a person in the 1800 how a microwave worked? Or even having silent clean electricity inside your home? Or, trying to explain to somebody in the 1700s that one day you would fly in the Meadow bird across the sea in a matter of hours? Or trying to explain to somebody in the 1500s that one day we will jump on a spaceship and go to the moon?

Once again very very difficult.

The art of being unreasonable

Or, it’s still kind of blows my mind… I think what Elon Musk is currently worth what like $270 billion or something? Can you imagine even telling somebody 10 or 20 years ago that one day this would be possible?

Even Steve Jobs, his insane tenacity is like the best thing of all time. Can you imagine if we were still on blackberries with physical keyboards?

Or, when he first unveiled the iPad everyone was trying to get him to like add 50 USB ports to it. But it was his stubborn genius which prevented this nonsense.

Even in the early days of the Apple to computer, Steve Jobs had the very very good idea of not having nerds hack with it, you could let them just do that with the windows computers. Steve Wozniak I didn’t like it, but ultimately Steve Jobs was right.

Or Elon Musk and Tesla; what people don’t know is that Tesla was originally started by Marc Tarpeting, and I think another group of investors and entrepreneurs, however, it is Elon who turned Tesla into what it is today. He is the one who had the genius and the insight and the engineering and design taste to make the Tesla model S the beautiful car that it is today. And also, his vision with cybertruck and now the cyber taxi and Robo van.

I think we tend to put these individuals on a pedestal. Why can you not be as unreasonable and stubborn and insightful as Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos? What in terms of the laws of physics is holding you back?

Your only limit is you 

Me talking about bitcoin might seem like it is out of left field, but actually, I’ve been investing in bitcoin and crypto since 2018. A year after I left Vietnam.

Initially, I was told about a certain old coin by this Singaporean trader investor entrepreneur named Bing — she first is the one who got me to sign up, I first did my own research a little bit, but maybe like $25,000 worth of bitcoin in 2018, when it was like $6950 a bitcoin, and me then taking half of that money and buying digibyte DGB, on the exchange fund poloniex, but I’m not even sure it’s around anymore, anyways, eventually I came back to my senses, and after doing a lot of research and thinking, consolidated all of my digibyte back into Bitcoin, the smart path.

Other meanderings

I also then much later, met a guy named Abe who was an early investor in chainlink, randomly when I was at LA fitness in Providence Rhode Island, and I was pretty sold, it seemed like chainlink was a great idea.  I think one chain-link was maybe like seven dollars a chain-link or $10 a chainlink, I sold all of my bitcoin which was worth maybe like $180,000 at the time, and bought all chainlink.  I liked the insights of Sergey Nazarov, and I used to check the chain-link blog like every single day.

Eventually… I then had a gut feeling, I kind of missed having my bitcoin. And also I started to get a little bit more and more suspicious and having a bad feeling about chain-link. The issue was too much of the price of a chain-link was dependent on marketing and PR, and also… I think they release a version 2.0 white paper for chain-link, and this was a red flag:

Never trust anything that needs a version 2.0.

What people don’t really really know is that bitcoin, when Satoshi invented it, was like version .001, and since it was published, the original bitcoin paper, it has not been tampered with or changed since.

Since then, we have seen many forks, duplications, new ideas, Ethereum Ethereum 2.0, the big Ethereum hack and fork etc.; and even now somehow I’m not even sure how this happened, Ethereum you can now have an Ethereum spot ETF?

 however, people are starting to wake up to their senses and realizing that Ethereum is like a cubic zirconian fake diamond made out of plastic – it looks really really shiny and great from the outside, but on the inside, it is just plastic.

What’s also super interesting about diamonds I learned this from my uncle who has been a gold and diamond and jewelry dealer for almost over 35 years, is that with the naked eye, a cubic zirconia and fake diamond and a real diamond is literally impossible to tell with a human eye, even if you took the world’s most skilled jeweler to take a look. 

How to FIRE with bitcoin (financial independence, retire early)

OK, before COVID-19 hit, it seems that we were actually on a good path, discovering the life happiness and the pursuit of happiness was not about physical property, physical possessions, even owning physical land or physical home or property… It was more about living this semi nomadic life, and accumulating interesting experiences, and getting your EXP up (experience points).

Even a big idea that I had, around 2015, wow almost a decade ago, is buy experiences not stuff.

So applied to our real life, maybe we should kind of shake off the trauma in the backlash of Covid, and let us take it back to the beginning, take it back to standards.

First, I think a good idea is to try to imagine that Covid never happened, and let us resent ourselves around our minimalist principles.

So let us make this notion of fire, financial independence retire early cool again.

So, how do you do this with bitcoin?

How to fuel your own early retirement with bitcoin

One quote I like from Michael Saylor; everybody is winners on the bitcoin standard, nobody is a loser. There are only varying degrees of success. 

So, how do we apply these principles?

First, the very very simple goal is to accumulate as many bitcoins as humanly possible, to stack as many Satoshi’s as humanly possible. The very very simple via negativa principle: 

You don’t sell your Bitcoin ***

If I told you that you were a wealthy family from New York City, and you own physical property commercial real estate on fifth Avenue, would you ever sell your property? Hell no! You would do everything, hand and nail to avoid and to prevent yourself from ever selling your property.

What do you then do instead is you try to do everything in your powers, your financial leverage powers to never ever ever have you to sell your bitcoin, but instead, to leverage your financial assets and instruments in order to accumulate more bitcoins.

What do you want to do is obviously do simple things like pay your rent and stuff, but, the very very simple goal: you live so insanely frugal and Spartan, and just put on 99% of your moneys into bitcoin. 

The basic idea is live like a demigod Spartan, you have no need for money or possessions or stuff. Even after recently doing this very very spirited road trip down to Temecula and Marietta, staying on a nice ranch with a bunch of chickens, I am still pretty convinced… A white Toyota Prius, is probably the best car of all time. Even if you could afford like 50 cyber trucks, or assuming I could only own one car, currently I still might take the Prius over the cyber truck.

Why? My body looks like a cyber truck, I don’t need my car to be. 

I think the problem is people try to purchase dominance through their assets like their car their truck their SUV they’re home they’re closed their jewelry their devices whatever, or even worse their guns.

Only skinny fat midget weakling losers own guns. 

A real man has no need for external fire arms; your own arms your own guns are your firearms.

So a very simple thought; don’t waste your money on guns or ammunition, use all that money to buy weights, weightlifting equipment and barbells, use that to stack your muscles and also your physical dominance. 


How to deal with the emotional roller coaster of bitcoin

So I think the number one critical problem here is that for somebody who is inexperienced, bitcoin is one hell of a ride.

For example, even my uncle who is like 68 years old, he told me in Korean that bitcoin is almost kinda like crack cocaine or bad drugs (ma-yyak), which literally means “evil medicine”.

For example I tell him that all I think about is bitcoin and Eitreim in bitcoin, he tells me that he has the same problem. But I guess the difference is that I do it from a joyful, happy, playful childlike approach; she does it almost kind of like out of opportunity and fear?

So some simple thoughts:

1. Never look at prices 

Never ever ever ever look at prices, delete the Coinbase app from your phone or whatever, or your Fidelity app, assuming you own microstrategy stock,  and never ever ever look at prices unless you actually intend on buying selling or trading or swapping or accumulating or depositing money and re-investing it.  it might be one of the most difficult things to do but I treated like the ears of Odysseus; fill up your ears with digital beeswax, never ever look at prices. 

Now that my net worth is insanely soaring, like bitcoin is going ballistic, and I’m getting ready for the $100K bitcoin party,  the best party of all time in cyberspace and everybody who owns bitcoin or even a fraction of a bitcoin is invited, — essentially the funny thing with bitcoin and numbers and prices and whatever is that there is this strange assymmetry:

When you see the prices or your assets going up, you get like a 50% boost and happiness, but if you see it go down, it is like a -500% in happiness. 

This is why losing money at the casino is 1000 times more annoying than winning money.

So don’t be tempted with gains ; once again, the goal is to increase your money or your capital, but instead and rather, the goal is to accumulate digital power.

There is no force stronger out in the planet than bitcoin. It is like solidified power, – like I visualize it like a Dragon Ball. Assuming that there’s only like seven dragon balls scattered around the planet, wouldn’t you want to have one?

Or imagine a better analogy… There’s like 21 million dragon balls scattered hazard lead around the planet, and there will never ever ever be more than 21 million dragon balls, and this Dragon Ball is your thing to economic immortality and power, wouldn’t you want to have one, or several?

How many bitcoins is enough bitcoins?

That’s like asking somebody if you have a chance to buy out Manhattan, how many square blocks should I buy if I could afford to buy like a lot?

Your goal is how much you ever could physically afford it! And even if you have to overextend or leverage yourself a bit, more property in Manhattan is always the best idea.

Bitcoin is like the ultimate digital cyber Manhattan assuming that there will never be more than 21,000,000 square blocks in cyber Manhattan, forever, then, certainly you will want to get one while you still can.

a bitcoin mortgage program

An idea that I’m kind of toying with this idea of like a bitcoin mortgage. The general idea is that there’s going to be a certain point in which owning a bitcoin is just going to be like physically impossible for most people like a full single bitcoin. Currently the scam that is going on is that people will Essentially sell all of their physiological energy and soul over the course of 30 years, to purchase a single-family home and property.

However if I think about this critically, the reason why buying a single-family home or anything with a mortgage is a terrible idea is that as long as the APR is above 0%,  it is never worth it.

Why? Even if you do get a 0% APR loan, assuming that you have to pay property taxes of at least one to 2% means that you’ll bleed out half of your capital in the course of 30 years?

Not only that it is like somebody offers to give you a free pet puppy, but you forget that you will have to pay it in the long run; paying for a bit fee, and it getting cancer, and eventually the sadness of having to put it down.

In life, you have the option of taking the winning bet, or you have the option of taking the losing bet. Why would you take the losing bet?

The point of life is to win!

 in life, so history and words mean little and nothing.

I still cannot ever forget, my extreme annoyance with talking to one person who told me that he was taking some classes to learn about investing in real estate or whatever, and I just joked tongue and cheek, but also seriously… Like bitcoin? He shrugged me off and told me “no, real investments.” This is from somebody with a business and maybe an economics degree? And maybe a marketing degree?

Anyways, I’ve made 1 trillion times more in bitcoin over the course of the last few years, then over 15 years of traveling the world and teaching photography workshops. And the truth is a lot of it is actually just time and technology; bitcoin didn’t really exist back then in a real tangible form which wasn’t that interesting to me at the time; so obviously if the financial instruments don’t really exist at the time, then, obviously you cannot hate on people for not making good financial decisions if the financial instrument, a.k.a. bitcoin, did not yet really exist!

But isn’t bitcoin risky?

 no! It might be like the least risky thing on the planet. It is almost like in my mind 100% certain to go out forever, albeit with great volatility.

But to quote Michael Saylor, volatility is vitality.  what that then means is in life, assuming like life is like a roller coaster, you need higher highs to get the lower lows in order to reach the higher highs. For example in roller coaster tycoon, in order to make a super super epic awesome roller coaster, you first need to make it go up really really high, then really really low, in order to use the centrifugal or the gravitational force to make it reach a really really new high!

I almost wonder if there was a lot of financial physics here as well: the idea is that once again, you need really really low dips, in order to reach new highs?

Compare this with a boring asset like bonds; the whole life it is just like super flat, maybe a 1° incline upwards, kind of like one of those lame kitty roller coasters. The one that just put you in a truck that just goes in a circle forever, with a tiny incline and a tiny dip. Super boring.

what is the goal?

I think philosophically, the goal ain’t to get rich or whatever, because richness is all relative. Rather, the goal is to gain your freedom, your financial freedom! Then once you have gained this freedom, the rest of your whole life will just be upside, no downside!

ERIC


Bitcoin Meditations

I Shall Never Die

Economic Armor

Suit of armor, and formal suit?

The virtues of working as a team?

.

A hybrid, a hybrid between the upside of nature, without any of the downsides? And also the upside of the city?

So one thing that’s super interesting is spending a little bit time here in the mountains, the quasi countryside is that something about the piece of the mornings is surprisingly wonderful and calming to me.

At first, I thought it was kind of a gimmick to be out in nature or whatever, ironically enough, this is even coming from a Boy Scout’s Eagle Scout.

So on one hand, the issue with all these people trying to seek the wilderness I think is a form of escape. They don’t like to be with themselves, so they try to get lost in nature to forget themselves.

I think one of the things that a lot of these overly sentimental week wings suffer from that they think that somehow, nature is God and nature is supreme. As a consequence, they feel this strange guilt about being alive, resources, etc. But I find this to be ridiculous; The truth is, human beings we are supreme, and nature is our slave. To anybody who has made it a virtue that somehow we have to be subservient to nature, to me is kind of a weakling mentality.  the true man has made nature his slave, his pet thing. His matter and mold and clay for wild, fun and playful experimentation!

I think the critical issue here is that people have no idea what to live for, whom to live for, etc. As a consequence, people spend a lot of their lives just wasting it, just wondering and meandering around, with zero insight about themselves, their personal role, their own personal philosophy, their own personal ethics ethos aesthetics and approach to life etc.

And I think what a lot of these people also feel to understand is that there is no ultimate truth or true North to anything; life is like a wonderfully wild creative monster, a beast, full of chaos fun play enjoy. The Indonesian joy of radicalness, playful candor, and unreasonable art?

I’m the new Nietzsche?

Certainly everyone wants some sort of legacy, some see through their altruism and the virtuality, some try to do it like Mother Teresa, Gandhi etc., other people like Thich Nhat Hanh, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., etc. Other people tried to found religions like Saint Paul, Mohammad, Moses, the pharaohs of Egypt etc. I think Plato also tried to create a religion but failed. Same with Socrates and most of the ancient Greeks.

All of the flossers who have come before me, I think they failed on many accounts. First, none of them were actually materially successful, or entrepreneurial, or financially successful, considering or assuming they started from nothing. I’m starting to learn a little bit more about generational wealth, kids were born knowing that they had to trust fund, etc. I’m not one of them.

Second, the physicality aspect of it. Till you have met a philosopher who could lift over 1000 pounds, that is 10 1/2 plates on each side of the barbell, knock on my door.

Third, the disconnection from social media. I might be the only person that I know who is actually disconnected from social media. Even a lot of these older folks, seems that everyone is jacked into Twitter like crack. Especially a lot of older folks ironically enough.

Also, am I the only 36-year-old who doesn’t have an Instagram who deleted it at the height of his fame with 60,000 followers? The best idea in 1 trillion years; now that my net worth is soaring, just recently breaking the $2.1 million mark, and continue to grow and explode at an alarming rate, what that means is things are starting to get interesting, and also pretty awesome.

Technology

Another thing I was randomly thinking about is how blessed I am to have been born in the time of bitcoin. Even though I do have some superficial regrets, technically I’m grateful of my journey thus far, my only regret in life is not buying more bitcoins or buying any bitcoins when my roommate Kevin first told me about it my junior year of college, one bitcoin was worth like .0000 one percent of a penny. My roommate Kevin told me that we should just buy like $100 worth of Bitcoin for funsies, just to see what would happen. I think this was during bitcoin pizza day or a little bit before it. Regardless I was doing some math, and had I had bought $100 worth of bitcoin in my junior year of college, that would probably be worth like $100 billion today. But if this were the case, I probably would have never done my photography entrepreneurship journey, traveling the planet, promoting my open source philosophy, and forever cementing my legacy in street photography. So I’m not salty about nothing.

So on the contrary,  maybe the timing was all right along. Actually, one of my mottos and guiding principles to life, is the thought:

Everything happens as it should have happened.

The general idea is not that everything happens for a reason, which assumes some sort of strange mystical guiding force the universe which I do not believe in, but instead the general idea is that everything happened as it should have happened which means that one should never have any regrets in life The way in which things have played out. Because the funny thing, now that I am 36 years old, which is still super super young if I think about it, but the same time, I think with enough foresight, you will essentially discover and learn that Whatever happens in life, typically when you look back at it, 20 years or so from now, you’ll look back and smile knowing that without even really really thinking about it or considering it too deeply, the timing was perfect all along!

One story I don’t really talk about which is super super random is what inspired me and Cindy to actually  start trying to have a kid, because the timing never felt right. Long story short, being held up at gunpoint in Mexico City, me yelping, grabbing Cindy‘s hand and running the opposite way in his exact pattern as a natural impulse, and then the gunman, who first shined the chrome from his hip holster, jumping back on his moped or motorcycle and fucking off.

This was like two or three months before Covid hit, and then we started trying then. And then Covid happened, and then we thought that the baby was gonna get Covid so we stopped, and then we attended a webinar that said actually somehow babies were immune to Covid or something, and then we tried again and boom got pregnant in like a week.

Anyways, everything happens as it should have happened.

Other foresights

So some other four sites which are super fasciae to me is like my propensity to think about investing money and finances, in like a Zen stoic way?

Currently, stacking bitcoins is more like a game than anything. It’s been an interesting journey thus far, part of it is like being a little bit crazy, considered insane by the traditional crowd, but then again, now that Donald Trump has been elected president, isn’t the whole world in planet a little bit insane, truth be told?

Once again, the world is 1 trillion times more bizarre than I could have ever imagined it. For example, even Elon Musk putting on the red hat, putting on the Maga hat, make America great again hat, super interesting and weird?

And also, another sign of how America is so racist, when Kanye West put on the MAGA hat, everyone was trying to crucify him, calling him like the new black Hitler 2.0 or something. But then, when Elon Musk does it, it is considered cool hip trendy, counterculture and cool!

I suppose then, my whole theory about what everyone is so and Kanye West is kind of accurate and true; once again, America doesn’t like an outspoken African-American man, who is 1 trillion times more successful than them.

I hate you because you are 1 trillion times more successful than me! (has any man ever said this?)

Zen the fuck out , ZTFO – Big Sean

I woke up in beast mode! My wife and me is like beauty and the beast though! The only thing sold out is the seats though!

Thinking Calabasas, The Hills, etc.

So some thoughts; first, maybe the best strategy ain’t to ask people what you should do or whatever, or ask people for advice. Just see what they do, where they live, where they put their own money. In other words, talk is cheap, words weep. 

 the first interesting thoughts; why is it that all the super super rich successful people live in Calabasas? Kim has a house out there, and I think Kanye literally has a house across the street from his ex-wife?

I think Jay Z and Beyoncé also have a house in Beverly Hills?

Anyways, it looks like sooner or later everyone ends up back in LA Los Angeles Southern California. Nobody wants to be in the East Coast, New York sucks, Brooklyn sucks. The only reason people live out there is once again, people want the place to form them, rather than thinking about it Blank slate, Carte Blanche, instead of them doing the shaping?

For example, questions; if you’re like somewhere or traveling or whatever, and you meet somebody from Brooklyn or Manhattan or New York City or whatever… The question; how long in your conversation and talking with them before they start talking about how great New York or Brooklyn is?

The same thing about people who once went to Harvard, either as a undergraduate or graduate student or postgraduate soon whatever; only unsuccessful people talk about their academic pedigree as an undergraduate. 

I think one of the things that I learned from mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen, Taoism is that the best way to think about things is not the past; which is a fiction, but rather, the present joyful moment, and also thinking about the future?

Once again, my overall suspicion of monks, Buddhist monks in the life; how much of them decide to opt for some sort of Buddhist simple lifestyle simply because they were unsuccessful in the material realm, the entrepreneurial or economic realm; like how often do you meet a billionaire who then renounces everything and becomes a monk? Typically, most people have tried the whole life thing, fail, and then become a monk. 

Zuckerberg goals

The only successful person in my age group or age range who I respect is Mark Zuckerberg. The truth is though, he’s a super fucking weirdo. Just look at interviews with him, dark rings under his eyes, and the man is quite bizarre. You could totally see that in high school and college, he was like one of these super fucking weirdos, the super weird nerds, who probably wanted to pick up chicks, probably watch some weird porn in private, maybe he was into Maria Ozawa I don’t know. Even recently watching his interview at a certain Keynote with the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, I was watching Mark on stage, his new outfit was pretty cool he essentially look like Jay Z or Kanye, but the second that Mark starts talking, once again super fucking weird.

The truth is nobody wants to live in the meta-verse. This is where I’m a huge proponent of bitcoin; I would prefer to be in the wild outdoors, super fucking jacked and happy, walking around topless with my demigod physique, my ripped hard bronze body, super jacked arms, with my black sun hat on, my 60 pound weight vest on. Even more impressive, I guess I’m strong enough now that I could actually go on a hike with my 60 pound weight vest and carry Seneca who is now like 50 pounds.

Anyways, even in terms of cars, I’m still pretty convinced, assuming you want to lift some sort of funny outdoor, off the grid, exploration lifestyle, the goal is to own some sort of loser off-roading car, over landing car,  some sort of AMG sprinter van converted mini RV thing, or camper van, no, just having a simple 2010 Prius in cocaine white, is far superior why? Until you could have a vehicle with at least 50 MPG’s, a hybrid car, everything else is not worth it.

Why? even if you had like a cyber truck or a cyber beast, for people who have really really done real road trips, or really driven anywhere outside of the Bay Area or California, 99.9% of the grid is not equipped for Tesla superchargers or electric EV chargers. Like you never see any electric charging stations anywhere!

And note, I’m like one of the biggest Elon Musk and Tesla fan boys of all time. And now that I’m super rich, I could afford like 50 cyber trucks, I still haven’t bought one. Why? Once again… Better to buy one bitcoin than one cyber truck. Because the cyber truck at best might kind of hold its value for another year or two, until it’s steadily loses economic value, until eventually you’ll probably be able to buy one for like $30 or $40 or $50,000. Because once the cyber taxi comes out, everyone’s gonna want to have that instead.

What people don’t understand is a Tesla car is like an iPhone Pro on steroids, that has wheels on it. This is also why you should never buy any sort of expensive non-interchangeable lens digital camera like a Leica Q– it is essentially first of all, a Panasonic Lumix with a body kit, just get the Lumix S9 and 26mm pancake lens instead (my current set up), which is may be superior in performance, smaller and more compact and lighter, and also way cheaper?

And also, there is no physical asset on the planet, no car no vehicle that will ever ever ever ever ever accumulate in value or go up in value. Even if you own some sort of loser super rare Porsche Carrera 911 classic car, or a classic Lamborghini or Ferrari or something, after the maintenance cost and fixing it and whatever… The value of it will essentially plummet Into the negative. Whereas bitcoin is going to the moon and to Mars and beyond. 


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The ability to quickly pivot whenever you want to;

The passion of outside?

So I think something I have discovered about myself is that I have a passion of outside being outside etc. Pretty much what this means is my passion is to not be in some sort of stifling cramped indoor space but rather, my passion is to be outside, With the open sky the open air etc.

Currently staying at a home exchange in the mountains in Southern California, and the mountain house is super lovely, but just even taking a quick jump outside, and then going back inside… Immediately I feel stifled and “ddab ddab hae” indoors.

The phrase ddab ddab hae in Korean is super interesting — essentially it means feeling kind of like claustrophobic, or constrained, or the feeling of feeling cramped. Once again, if you are an outside mountain spirit, the feeling of being stuck indoors.

Nietzsche one said trust no thought which does not come to assuming you’re not in the open air, outside, preferably in the mountains. Even Nietzsche — I believe he had my asthma or poor health or poor breathing or lungs or something, he traveled all around Europe until he was able to find some sort of nice mountainside retreat in Italy, maybe in the small town of Turin, in which suddenly, all of his sicknesses and ailments ceased?

 so I think the first thing is nature, big and nature, I think it’s just good for the human soul, our mind our brain, our physiology our eyes and eyeballs etc. For example, I think it is a bit foolish when all of these monks and pseudo in lightened Silicon Valley folks and thinkers believe that you could somehow “think“ yourself out of a problem or a mental malady. It is my personal belief that actually, the only way to read yourself a badness is to actually get your ass out of the house, go a walk, go outside!

Not cars

Not cars, not vehicles.

So even if you had the world’s best Lamborghini with the scissor doors or the off-road in Lamborghini sterrato whatever, doesn’t matter what color scheme, rims or whatever, as long as you do not have 100% leg freedom, you ain’t got nothing.

For example, driving down, stuck on some of the really really bad Riverside traffic, and actually, the real tragedy here is that some people have to take this god-awful commute, maybe 2 1/2 or three hours each way, to buy a nice big house in Riverside, in order to commute to Los Angeles? To me even if you gave me the world’s trillion dollar car, this trade would not be worth it.

Why? Once again it is a physics, physiological thing; there is no good on the planet which is worth the pain and suffering of being stuck sitting in a sedentary position. Even if you are in an airplane, a jet, flying first class or whatever, even if you are in the most luxurious of all luxurious seats or sitting situations, none of it is worth it. Why? Because once again when you’re sitting, you’re in a very very fragile position, in the most miserable of all physiological positions.

For example, let us consider how in fact, what is the human being being designed for? We are designed to stand upright, to walk, much of our ability to be by pets balance, look into the distance and walk, is structured around this. If a human being does not need to walk and move around or be outside or be upright, he has no reason for a brain or any body physiology.

So once again, to be human is to walk, to be outside, no ceilings no roofs, no glass ceilings.

Homes?

So, then at the end of the day, what is the meaning of the purpose of having a home?

There are 1 trillion different ways one could configure ones living circumstances, configurations etc.

For example, you could have a big ass ranch, a big ass backyard in front lawn and back lawn and private property, or you could live in an apartment, kind of more connected to society.

You could also live in a trailer home, or even I guess live in the trunk of your cyber truck.

I suppose then, the primary question to ask yourself is what do I see, what do I want from life, what do I want to out of life?

First, the light the sun. For me the sun is the source of all energy, all power, all happiness and joy. So to ideally live somewhere sunny is a virtue. I have a funny ongoing theory that human beings, we’re just like plants except we move a lot quicker.

Second, the joy of weightlifting. Still, after all of this, I still really do have a passion for lifting weights, weightlifting etc. To me it is like my ultimate form of Z meditation exercise and without weightlifting, things become a bit boring, uninteresting etc.  For example, the courage needed to lift very very heavyweights, requires 100% of your focus, a 100% focus of your presence. You cannot fake it; precisely because extremely heavy weightlifting is dangerous, that is what forces you to focus.

And this is the very very funny thing. When I would lift nine plates 10 plates and beyond at the gym, people always tell me “be careful“. Duh! This is the whole point! To be careful means to take care, take care, Which means you don’t fuck around, you don’t even listen to music; even music is a distraction. No stupid AirPods on, no external distractions. No phone.

In fact, one thing I’m very very grateful for the gym I used to go to the last few years, is that I was able to ride down the whole bitcoin downturn, due to the FTX meltdown, the hilarious thing; after buying my bitcoin in around 2018, I just literally never ever ever check the prices for almost 4 years; Rest and vest. And the only time I would ever be exposed to the price of bitcoin was on accident; in which I would accidentally see the price or something.

Anyways, I’m grateful for my journey thus far, not having lost any bitcoins or anything. Apparently I read or heard something, whenever you go to a bitcoin conference or something, you never ask people how many bitcoins you have your own, but how many bitcoins you have lost, that is the true indicator of how long you have been in the game.

But then again, I think the tricky thing with bitcoin crypto currencies, the whole crypto economy is that it is all a bit strange convoluted and polluted. Too many ideas, too many opinions, you gotta just hang out, take it out to the beginning.

The issue with the physical realm

So the biggest issue that I have is that there’s so much waste, so much physical waste in the physical realm. For example you might have your Lamborghini your RV your truck, your over landing vehicle, your AMG sprinter van, all your expensive Apple devices, your big ass house whatever. Yet all of these things seem to be more liabilities than assets to me.

One thing that I really really love about bitcoin is that it seems to be the ultimate portable, durable, weightless thing to just carry around. For example, assuming that you have an iPhone an iPad, some sort of MacBook laptop device, or something on iCloud iCloud chain, Safari Google Chrome whatever, Gmail, Google services, all of your money and assets and store of value is secure. And in theory, you can immediately liquidate your assets.

For example, even if you own some sort of RV or expensive car or something, the huge pain of having to liquidate it and sell it, this is a huge pain in the ass. You still have to find a seller, you need to figure a way to quickly or efficiently or securely Broker the trade or whatever… To me, this ain’t worth it.

What is actually useful in the physical realm

Things I find useful in the physical realm include fresh air, beautiful bright sun and sunlight, peace and quiet, absence of pollution, hot baths, Wi-Fi, 5G, cameras digital cameras, video cameras, a grill is super awesome but not 100% necessary, And having some sort of vehicle that could take you around.

In fact, recently doing a road trip to Norcal and back, I’m still shocked… The Toyota Prius, a hybrid vehicle which runs on both gasoline and has a battery an electric charging battery, seems to be the ideal hybrid? The ideal thing that leverage is both the upside of gasoline which is insane power and energy in liquefied compact form, as well as the battery, which kind of somehow magically charges itself, through the braking mechanism in the Prius and car?

And I think the thing that is difficult for people to understand on just how amazing the Toyota Prius and hybrid system is; it really is so insanely clutch right when you need it.

For example, doing a last-minute drive somewhere, and just having one tick of gas, but still being able to drive all the way from the Pacific Palisades back home to Culver City, like 5% of gas left, could still take you around 40 to 50 miles?

And this is super super useful because the second you’re trying to beat rush-hour traffic, and you cannot be fucked to stop by a gas station or a Tesla supercharger, because you want to quickly hit the road, you don’t have to deal with having to stop by a gas station or an electric charging station if you don’t want to; you have the option, More optionality!

Seek optionality

I don’t need to own it, I could just visit it rent it borrow it try it out for the week or weekend!

I think this is also a big thing, we Americans we are so silly in our notion of “ownership“, we both believe that in order to gain legitimacy, we have to “own” the underlying asset.  but I was thinking about it… Never really kind of own anything, maybe besides bitcoin.

Why? So for example let us say that you own a single-family home property whatever, you don’t really 100% owned, you’re just borrowing it from the federal government, the local city government etc. And you’re paying a huge state tax fee local fee tax fee etc.

Also, vehicles automobiles cars etc., as long as you’re sooner or later taking some sort of public Road Highway, freeway etc., you don’t really 100% on your car either because you’re just kind of leasing the rights to use your vehicle on public roads, as long as you had to pay some sort of DMV fee and sticker, you never really 100% own your vehicle.

And also, you still have to pay car insurance, like forever. And once again, vehicle registration fees. Even the fees even though the fees are not super super high, you still gotta pay something.

I think also one of the soccer fallacies is that some people fall victim to this notion of somehow like you buy some sort of RV or truck or converted Mercedes sprinter van and you could somehow turn it into like a mobile house or a mobile RV, and then you could just finally become free travel through the states whatever, etc.… But still you’re kind of a slave because you still have to find somewhere to park at night, you often had to pay a fee to park somewhere, And also, more private things like you gotta pay for sanitation to plumb out your vehicle, you still need to buy food and stuff, etc. This is where I still think it is wiser to just rent an apartment and somewhere desirable where you could just walk everywhere because once again,Americans we were romanticize the idea other great American road trip and being on the road, but still… The ideal strategy is to spend like close to 0% of your time in a car or a vehicle, and you try to instead, spend about 100% of your time walking around outside in the direct light or the direct sun.

So the ideal goal is to find a place or a local or a city or neighborhood or area that you absolutely love like for me in Culver City, the arts district, and you could just 100% pedestrian walk yourself everywhere, just jump on the metro E line if you want, and just go on a drive if you want. 

And once again, location location location location location. I still cannot stress this enough; because of the laws of physics, Los Angeles, Los Angeles traffic; still the most intelligent strategy in life is to find the best location absolutely, in which you never have to drive more than five minutes a day. Or driving just becomes an optional thing; you could actually live a virtuous 100% pedestrian lifestyle.

it is difficult to monetize walking

So I think the biggest issue here is that walking is not really popular as a past time because it is difficult to monetize. Compare this instead of running or jogging or whatever, easy easy easy because you could sell these stupid overpriced $300 or $400 running sneakers, which are only for skinny fat losers. 

And also, I think maybe this is the reason why automobile cars are so sought after an American society; because our society almost close to 100% of it is still dependent on a car, only society in which nobody really owns a car is probably New York New York City or Brooklyn, or the main island; even the rich people don’t really own a car, they might have a private driver or they might just even take the metro, or just walk or even take an Uber. Which is even easier than coordinating a personal driver.

Even in San Francisco, sooner or later everyone kind of wants a car or a Tesla or something, or maybe a Waymo,  but the sense I have is nobody wants to live in San Francisco anymore, not the huge exodus out of the Bay Area, in fact more people I see in tech are settling in Los Angeles West Los Angeles, even my tech cousin Daniel just moved to the Sawtelle neighborhood. 

Sooner or later everybody ends up in LA.

So my very very simple suggestion is with life and everything in general, just get off of loser Instagram TikTok YouTube Spotify Twitter all of the social media services. Even I was randomly getting back into Twitter because there are lots of important financial news to stay updated there, and before Trump got elected, it was actually kind of necessary for me to do some research about his policies about bitcoin and crypto, because I am 100% all in on bitcoin. But still… Access to the information the news the truth, it is so toxic. Maybe it is better to be a little bit more poor, without the toxicity, rather than being richer with more toxicity. 

Better to be poorer, and less toxic rather than be richer and more toxic.

Goals?

Bitcoin for Investors

One interesting thing that I’ve learned about bitcoin just things and life in general is that you only really really discover something or take full heart to it when you actually really have a need for it.

For example, the story of Michael Saylor microstrategy and bitcoin; the only reason that Michael Saylor really took it was because he had a real need for it; 500 million in cash, in kind of stagnant company– he needed to add vitality back to life to his company and corporation.

Necessity is the true mother of all innovation

Similarly speaking, myself, moving here to LA, staring at this ridiculous high cost of living, and trying to find innovative ways to approach money, productivity time etc. I found bitcoin as almost a salvation for me, Cindy, my aging mom, Seneca, and my future family!

How and why bitcoin has changed my life

So I think traditionally, most of us are stuck into the work cycle. It is a simple mathematical equation: a simple vector equation;  in goes your effort, time, and labor, outcomes money and income.

So for most people, there is directly proportional effect:

You labor harder, more, and you yield more US dollars, and you work hard, put out new innovative product services etc., a lot of hard work and time, heavily market the thing, through genuine and effort full channels, and then wait diligently for somebody to purchase your products services workshops etc., hope they pay, and then when that dust settles within a month two or three, then you could withdraw that money from your PayPal or digital broker, and then deposited into your checking account, finally logging in and securing your “gain”,

“Income”

So this is where things become funny: the notion of “income”.

Once again, I’m still relatively new to all of this, in the sense that the average time labor, we have a hard time thinking like an investor. For example, to think that you just have $2 million in capital, you have some deep insight and intuition about something,  and then you invest that money into the thing, and then over the course of a few days weeks months, two months, three months, four months five months, a year, 4 to 5 years, the number magically goes up!

To me, this is still like wizardry, like pure magic!

And I still think this is where it is difficult to understand; to those who have access to capital, you essentially have an economic lever to lever up, and leverage that, which is just economic power and energy, to be even more more energy, more power.

The Spartan investor

So we hear stories of Warren Buffett, living the same old house, driving the old same Honda Accord whatever, and then just spending all day reading the newspaper investing in the markets, and then becoming like the third world’s richest man, all at the age of 80 or 90 years old, But your old sick fat and tired, still eating McDonald’s and drinking Coca-Colas.

Warren Buffett is not a good example. Even he was a skeptic and critic of bitcoin.

I think the hard thing is everyone uses Warren Buffet as an example, but for my general sense, given the fact that he has invested heavily into Coca-Cola, he is no better than people who invest in fill up Morris evil cigarette and now vaping corporation, to spin a certain profit.

Tell me that, everyone wants to be as rich as Warren Buffett but nobody actually wants to become Warren Buffett. Do you know anybody in the given universe who wants to be that old fat sick and unshapely? 

Instead, I’m much better idea is to be as jacked as King Leonidas, Gerald Butler in the movie 300, all while being a billionaire. My vision is essentially having the hard spartan body, naked and super fucking jacked, and also… This is the critical one; insanely Spartan and frugal, surprising everyone that you drive a Toyota Prius, even though you could afford like 20 cyber trucks.

I think what I have discovered finally at the age of 36, is that with bitcoin, this changes everything. Why? Before bitcoin has finally hit mass adoption, and now that starting next year January 2025 will be a year one of bitcoin institutional adoption,  what that means is having a bitcoin is like having a cyber truck or Lamborghini on steroids, but on a digital wheel. 

This is my visual: I was at the park yesterday with Seneca, playing with him at night, just having the house key in my front pocket, no phone no nothing not even my camera, and we’re just playing around in the tot lot, kicking around some bark, and I had the funny thoughts; would I trade a bitcoin for a Tesla? Maybe a cyber truck? But actually the other day I jumped into a cyber truck and I was a little bit underwhelmed; the funny thing about the cyber truck is that it looks so flashy and awesome from the outside, put on the inside once you actually step into it, it is a bit underwhelming; it doesn’t really feel that different from sitting inside a Honda Accord or a Toyota Camry. Maybe it would be different if you were homeless and just owned a cyber truck and just slept in the trunk bed, but beyond this, I think cyber truck is one of those funny things that you could just admire it from the outside, without actually having to own it.  and if anything, the real thing to just wait for or save up for is the cyber taxi, which could just shuttle your kid to baseball practice, or take your wife directly to campus or work through the grueling 405 morning commute traffic.

Anyways, now, my calculus is simple; I think of everything in context to bitcoin.

For example, whenever I critically look and asses these things, I think to myself,

How many bitcoins could I buy with this thing? 

For example I was just trolling around with the finance calculator for the Tesla website, and still the cheapest Tesla model three, base edition, after taxes and even after the federal rebate, will still run you around $40-$45,000 at the door. And no this is the cheapest version! This is like half a bitcoin or a third of a bitcoin. I’d rather take the bitcoin which is going to $13 million, rather than the Tesla car which is going to zero.

Accretive or dilutive? 

A new line of thinking I’ve also been thinking about is this general idea of accretive vs dilutive;  that means, is this thing that I’m interested, will it increase value, a.k.a. go up in value, or go down in value?

So I think now that Trump is president, bitcoin at this point is in my mind, practically 100% cemented and certain to go up forever. However as I mentioned in my prior essay, the philosophy of volatility, to reach higher highs you gotta reach lower lows? 

So assuming that you just took snapshots every year, at random high points year over year, you will find that bitcoin is the insanely obvious choice. With enough hindsight, with enough 2020 you can see and determine and ascertain that in fact, bitcoin is by far the winning bet, nearly a trillion-fold obvious decision!  it has insane volatility which means it goes up and down a lot, constantly, but the cool thing is that it will essentially go up forever!

And this is like volatility, it is like having a hyper charger or a supercharger in your engine; more power or more velocity, more extremes to reach higher performance.

For example if you think about the velocity of a roller coaster; what makes it fun is precisely the highs and lows. If you take one of those boring kid ones, which is pretty much steady, it is insanely boring. Why? The thrills of the roller coaster– once again we are the adrenaline junkies!

Practical strategies

OK… if you want the ultimate blend of safety with high-yield, my suggestion is 90% of your capital into bitcoin,  and 10% into microstrategy stock (MSTR). This is what I personally do.

Why? Essentially you could treat Marco strategy stock like your cash; it keeps going up in value, and actually in fact goes up quicker than bitcoin; although it is a Security, a stock that you don’t really own, like bitcoin which is digital property. I love Michael Saylor and microstrategy to death, I have like literally watched and listen to every single Michael Saylor podcast interview available out there, I also read his book the mobile wave, and I’ve tried to consume every single piece of literature or thing that Michael Saylor has put out there. I also watched his recent earnings call, and watching it all in all, almost like watching a rockstar.

However at the end of the day once again, the name of the game is to accumulate and acquire more bitcoins. He or she with the most bitcoins, or the entity with the most bitcoins shall win.

America bitcoin first strategy

So a simple thought to the Trump bitcoin administration and beyond;

First, America must be the bitcoin leader. We must be the nation with the most bitcoin in our treasury reserves.

Sent you the basic ideas like we are creating the next bitcoin Fort Knox; we must dominate every other nation in terms of the number of our bitcoin holdings, kind of like imagine military power, but bitcoin as cyber power.

For example let us assume that the US Navy has strategic military dominance over the planet. And let us assume that our military power is at least 10,000 X to that mainland China.

So in theory in terms of numbers, America must supersede mainland China in our bitcoin holdings. By at least a factor of 10,000X.

I think even Donald Trump joked that maybe we could even use some of our bitcoin to pay back our national debt?

I think actually the more interesting strategy is we hoard our bitcoins forever, until the end of time, and instead, I don’t know… Someone with some good economic wizardry could figure out how we could leverage our debt in intelligent ways so we could actually pay back our debt without having to sell bitcoin.

And once again… I think this is the main idea on my mind right now — we can continue to accumulate bitcoin, stack bitcoin, etc.,  and figure out how we leverage borrowing cheap money or debt from other banks entities, to make money?


Being positively polarized to capital 

My has enjoy an interest; give me all your capital, and I will invest it and grow it for you!

Eric@erickim.com


Cyber Capital

So the reason why I think this is such a big deal is that finally, with bitcoin, we have finally crossed the chasm. What this means is finally, in the year 2024 and beyond, capital is finally cyber. What this means is next frontier of capital is practically infinite. 

Let me explicate this a bit more on why this is such a big deal:

So it looks like traditionally, the last frontier of making money and wealth was companies. Why? With technology, finally you were able to break free a little bit of physical limitations. For example, with Google Amazon Facebook etc., you were able to finally cross the digital divide which means that you could actually Feel all things in assets digitally, like digital advertisements digital value etc. Yet the different nuance is still… Capital was not yet in the digital realm. For example even though Amazon Facebook Google and the big tech companies could create value digitally through cyber space in cyber networks, there was no Internet native money or capital in which they could store their value.

For example all the big companies, we’re still reliant on JP Morgan Chase to custody their US dollars and field currency the treasury reserve assets etc.

But starting January of next year 2025… This will all change.

ERIC