Bitcoin as Religion

A thought and observation: perhaps bitcoin is the best investment because it is the new religion.

For example, that is consider that in modern day times, capital, capitalism, money is the new religion. Let us consider how much we sacrifice in our lives in order to accumulate more money, more capital, and we deify money above all.

For example, one self-worth is based on their capital worth. Their net worth is based on how much property they own, the amount of stock they own, bonds, CDs, investments, appreciating assets, power and influence etc.

However perhaps the problem about all of this is that money and things becomes the new carrot and stick.

For example, I’m a huge fan of cyber truck, cars in general, but the savvy investor and real rich person will always think:

Why spend $100,000 on a car, when I could invest that money into something else, and my money, instead of bleeding it?

For example, no matter how expensive your car is, it will always be a depreciating asset.

For example, even if you have a rare Ferrari or Porsche or whatever, the maintenance and upkeep cost for it are horrendous. Even if the market value of your car goes up overtime, maybe at your breaking even, most likely you’re actually bleeding money because of all the expensive parts maintenance cost, labor, having to run your car every once in a while, keep it clean etc. And therefore these trophy assets become toxic assets, negative liabilities:

You’re bleeding a slow death, your like a bathtub with a half working stopper, you have to keep filling up the water to just keep it even.

Stop the bleeding?


Apparently the first thing that you learn in medical emergencies is first, stop the bleeding. As long as the person doesn’t bleed to death, what that means is even if they suffer broken bones or whatever, with enough time healing and recovery they will be OK, but once a person has lost a critical amount of blood, they’re dead forever.

Going back to money in general, I look at all these people, and they’re all slowly bleeding themselves to death, being hooked on drugs and methamphetamines and painkillers and other weird things in order to just keep self flagellating themselves to produce.

Money as religion?

I wonder if in someways, we could actually think about the modern day government as almost some sort of religion. Consider taxes, it is like tithing. 

Death & taxes are the only two certain things in life.

Cash rules everything around me

A few weeks ago, the priest that my Korean Catholic Church did something very very funny, for Mother’s Day, during his homily, took out $100 bill, and said that he would give it to the mother at church with the most amount of children, which was five kids.

Everyone left in good spirits, because it almost felt slightly sacrilegious for a priest to talk about money, or bust out money, or even present money as a good thing.

However, the truth is all these institutions, churches etc. all rely on donations. A church cannot survive without donors, nor can your local pickle ball club.

Messiah figure?

Something which is actually really baked into Christian Catholic, Judeo Christian ethics morality and storytelling is  the notion of a savior, Messiah figure. Most likely crucified, or sacrifices their life for some greater cause. This is a common trope ever since Greek notions of Dionysus, maybe Egyptian notions of life after death, or whatever.

Basically the idea is one individual, one man, comes to save humanity or whatever. And he must sacrifice his life in order to give immortal life to everybody else.

So in the case of bitcoin, this becomes really really fascinating because Satoshi was a metaphorical messiah figure, who ended up disappearing into thin air, a picture perfect ending.

I think maybe Banksky is similar; somebody to essentially troll and reveal the ridiculousness of the art world, through his anonymity.

Death & immortality 

The other day my mom Cindy and Seneca we all went to the Broad Museum in downtown LA, insanely epic! Then infinity room is totally worth it, and the whole space is an architectural marvel and masterpiece. It makes me so proud to be a Los Angeles citizen.

Anyways, we stumbled onto this one room, and I was shocked… I saw the famous skull painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat, one of my favorite paintings of all time. I said really loud, in shock “wait… Is that real?” a friendly fancy looking York artist appreciating woman to my right, laughed, and said, yes it is! I was more shocked that we had in Los Angeles, instead of it being in New York or New York City, which I imagined it should be. 

Anyways, I really appreciate it, but my mom was horrified. She said something really funny that the artwork and paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat was “disturbing”. I said that was true, because he was addicted to heroin cocaine and all these other weird drugs, and eventually died because of a drug overdose.

My sister Annette something interesting, which was that the theory is if Bard didn’t die so early, he probably would have eventually been demoted, from the art world, because of his overreliance on drugs, partying, and like in order to produce artwork. Any sort of art which is produced based on an artist being overly reliant on drugs alcohol, etc. is degenerate bad art. Even Jackson Pollock, he was notoriously an alcoholic, and the truth that a lot of art critics and collectors try to hide and obfuscate is the fact that he died because he was drinking and driving, under the influence. We should mark then Jackson Pollock as a bad one; sure he killed himself, but what if while drunk and under the influence of alcohol while driving, he killed a little kid running in the road, or even worse, a full car full of other human beings?


Limits & value

Anyways, my personal take on why Jean-Michel Basquiat ended up becoming so famous was he died early, and even my sister said that because he died so early, his stock of paintings is limited, and no more will ever be produced. This is what makes them so valuable.

This is where bitcoin gets so fasting, because everybody on the planet  knows that only 21 million bitcoin will ever ever ever be produced in eternity.

This is a big deal because with traditional fiat currency, the government could keep printing cotton candy paper fiat money currency forever. 

In fact, about a week ago, after tipping my masseuse a $20 bill, and I knew that I had to go to the ATM to withdraw more cash money currency, in case of emergency or tips or whatever, I paused and stopped, the thought:

Whenever I pull out paper currency or cash money, eventually it all eventually disappears, and have to keep refilling my wallet with more paper currency.

And this is actually the funny thing about holding paper currency and cash money; simply by having it on you, you will end up losing it. Why? To put a $20 bill in the church basket, to give it to a friendly waiter, to use it on silly things, etc.

So I suppose the tricky thing is this:

All of this, capital accumulation etc.… for the sake of what?

Kids

So the first thought I have is the prime obvious one: if you want to have the supreme amount of happiness in life, the true meaning and joy in life, I think you gotta have at least one kid. Two, maybe 2.2 kids to re-populate the planet or whatever. 

I think we’re going through a weird time, in which capital, capitalism is running a milk. Which means that I think the reason why a lot of people don’t wanna have kids anymore is because in some funny way it seems anti-capitalistic.

For example, if you’re a woman, and you get married, become a stay at home mom no longer work… Who is going to buy all of this Louis Vuitton clothing and whatever? Let us consider the capitalist dream is a single working career woman… All of this disposable cash and income they have to buy Subarus, Mercedes, Porsches, designer handbags, etc.

 Certainly there is still a big industry for people who sell kids stuff, but this is a super tiny market compared to the market for the average consumer.

Why this is a big deal

For myself personally speaking, I would not be shocked if we see a $1 million bitcoin, a $3 million bitcoin, maybe even a $10 million bitcoin or $50 million bitcoin price our lifetime. I still remember very vividly as a kid, being in becoming a millionaire was The dream! But now… Even if you’re a millionaire, it might buy you a mediocre condo in LA, the new ethos is being a billionaire.

Also, I will not be shocked if within a few years or decades we will see Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or somebody become the worlds first trillionaire.

Spending money?

Certainly there are things that we must spend money on. Spending money on rent, food, gas, etc. Alao certain truisms I’ve discovered while living in Los Angeles is that owning a car is better than owning no car in Los Angeles, even if you live in a walking paradise like Culver City.

However, in terms of practicality, owning a 2010 Prius might be the superior option and decision then owning any Tesla car, any gas or electric vehicle.

People slowly bleeding themselves to death?

Now that gas prices are universally five dollars a gallon and above, I am very very certain we will never see us ever again at three dollars a gallon, two dollars a gallon, etc. Once the price goes up, it will never go back down to what they used to.

For example, minimum wage for fast food workers went from $16 an hour to $20 an hour, which means the rest of the economy must adjust to this new $20 an hour benchmark.  I’ve been talking to a lot of fast food workers, laborers, security guards, people at Shake shack etc. and I wondered to myself and asked them:

“Isn’t the optimal strategy for everyone to just get a job at McDonald’s and earn $20 an hour?”

One of the security guards at the Huntington Gardens and library laughed and said “That is true… But then you gotta work at McDonalds!”

The smell of money?

Apparently as a plumber, you can easily make a salary of $120,000, $200,000, $250,000 a year. But, the downside is you have to smell the horrendous smell of human excrement, and sewage in general for the rest of your life.

To me, no amount of money is worth that.

Also I saw an advertisement on the 405 or La Cienega that apparently starting salary for a CHP California highway police officer is $120,000 a year! Once again, not worth it.

People often make the wrong decision in life, choosing the bad job in order to get a higher salary. Even hearing to young Asian American 20 something-year-olds at the Huntington Gardens: a nerdy skinny Asian American guy, saying that he did not want to get a job at Amazon, but, he was tempted because the salary was so good… At least $200,000 a year!

The problem is this:

$200,000 a year ain’t what it used to to be. 

So what should we do about all this?

 if you own an iPhone or a smart phone, we are all implicated in this capitalist system. So the question is this:

How do we maximize the upside of living in a capitalist society, while clipping the downsides? 

1. Intelligent living

The first very pragmatic one is living intelligently. Being moneywise.

A very simple one is stopping the bleeding.

How do we bleed money? We bleed money by All of these stupid subscription services. They are all bad, mass unsubscribe to all of them. 

This includes your Disney+, Hulu, YouTube premium, Spotify, deliver services apps, Netflix, hbo max, etc.

My simple thought is this: 

There has never been a streaming TV series which has ever been created which is worth it.

Only good things which have been produced our movies and cinema, so if there is really really really a movie or something you want to watch, just pay money and watch it in the theater, or purchase it on Apple TV+.

Also let us consider and think, truth be told, in terms of overall value I think there have only ever been maybe three or four movies which had any real big impact on my worldview. Therefore the hard thing is trying to filter all of it.