Lots of people who are involved in crypto have opinions about the direction of the market. People standing on the sidelines can tell you that it’s over and will never recover after the crash in 2018. However, for people who have been in this for a while, we can see the patterns. Bitcoin bubbled at $30, $200, $1,000, and $20,000, and some were even expecting the rise and fall.
Nobody knows the day or hour when these patterns and cycles will play out, but we can say at least that they probably will. A bubble will form and a bubble will pop. The price will jump up very quickly just before a crash. There will be a sell-off after Christmas… and the loudest people will lose interest when the real growth begins.
Bubble after bubble
A lot of people think that the 2017 crypto bubble has popped, and now the market will never recover. They’re not aware of Bitcoin’s previous bubbles, peaking at $35 in 2011, $200 in early 2013 and $1000 in late 2013. They believe it’s just like the dot-com bubble, rising once and never again.
However, this market has a different dynamic, in a different era. It’s not just exposed to Wall Street traders – almost anybody in the world with a smartphone can buy cryptocurrency, and as it gets more user friendly, more and more people will start accessing it. For good or bad, it’s likely that the market will become overhyped many more times before this technology is commonplace.
We know a bubble will come again, so we can begin preparing for it now, in order to take advantage.
Putting on the boosters
A consistent pattern to look for is when a coin grows in price over many months, perhaps going up 500% or more, then suddenly increases, going up another 50% in just a matter of days. When it does that, it’s likely that the rally is nearly over.
As I mentioned last week, many people will become emotional at this point, losing themselves in visions of swimming in money like Scrooge McDuck. That feeling is a key signal that it’s time to preserve your wealth, rather than expand it.
After Christmas sell-off
Another very consistent pattern is a sell-off after Christmas. Some say that’s Chinese preparing for Lunar NY, a dubious explanation. Whatever the cause, it’s consistent enough that you should set a reminder in your calendar for December 20th. Seriously, pull out your phone or Google calendar or your day planner and write it in there. Do it now. Don’t leave it for later. Do it now, and thank me later.
A quiet rally
Last week I talked about the sentiment on social media. As I said, it’s most noticeable when things are getting overheated, when a lot of new money is coming in and people are overhyped. After the crash, Bitcoin would start to rally and people would say “Is this the return, the second coming? Is something special happening again?”
Ed Bugos of The Dollar Vigilante pointed out that in every subsequent rally, there are less and less cheerleaders on social media. It might be because these people bought in high and they’re holding onto the hope of recovering their losses… Eventually they lose hope. In any case, when the price starts to move up without fanfare, that’s much more likely to be a lasting trend. When there’s no fanfare, that’s when the increase isn’t about flashiness or hype, it’s real growth.
Thank you
Thank you for listening. Please share this article, video and podcast with your friends so they can learn and enjoy.
Most importantly, stay grateful.
You can listen and subscribe on Anchor and other podcasting services here:
Is it possible to know where the crypto market is heading? Can you tell when the market is overbought, overheated, and getting close to a correction?
Here are three simple ways you can get an idea of where the crypto market is heading, especially when a lot of money is moving into the market, and it’s reaching the peak of a bull market. Let’s look at our own biases, then our own emotions, and finally some patterns of behaviour of others on social media.
Recency Bias
Being aware of your own biases can help you step back and see things more clearly, maintaining perspective where you otherwise might lose it. Recency bias is one of these biases, where you believe you know what will continue to happen, because you’re prioritising the events of recent months.
In past months, we saw comments on social media like: “I don’t think it’ll go down that much. It doesn’t seem like it’ll go that low. I don’t feel it’ll drop like that.” Thinking, seeming, feeling… But where’s the evidence? The evidence is probably that things have been this way recently, so they’re giving this data priority.
A lot of people made this mistake when BTC was around $15,000, thinking no way it could go down to $5,000 again. At time of writing it’s around $6,300 and $5,000 seems like a real possibility. If they’d been looking back at the 2013 bull run, they could see when BTC went up to $1,100 then bottomed out around $200 8 months later, it would have given them a much clearer picture of what was possible.
Similarly, we see this when crypto has been going down for 6 months. If someone isn’t really into markets, tell them you’re thinking of buying now and they might say “Why? Isn’t that whole thing dead?” The market goes up for a few months, people think it’ll never fall. The market goes down for a few months, people think it’ll never recover.
The lesson is: when you think you know where something is going, ask yourself how you know. Maybe you don’t know. It might just be recency bias.
Your own emotional guide
One wonderful tool you can use to judge what is going on in the market, is your own emotions.
Here is one common scenario for cryptonauts: You’ve put a fair chunk of cash into a project when it was doing nothing, and now it’s taking off. You start wondering “Is this thing going to make me a millionaire?” You see the figures and your head starts swimming, you feel light-headed and say to yourself “Hoo… that’s a lot of money.” Right at that point, at that moment, you will know that other people are feeling the same. It’s almost certainly a sign that you’re overexposed to the market. Start thinking how you would feel if it dropped back down and you didn’t take at least a little profit, to have something to show for your stress.
Or let’s say you haven’t put much money into a project, and you’ve seen it go up 5x without you. You start thinking “Everyone’s going to be a millionaire but me!” You start thinking about where to get some quick cash to put into it so you don’t miss out. At that moment, you will know that other people are feeling the same. It might keep going up before it goes down, but you need to know, any money you put in at that point is very risky. You’re feeling it, other people are feeling it, so you know it’s close to the top.
The lesson is: your own emotions are a powerful guide to tell you what other people are thinking and feeling.
Social media sentiment
Another great tool for seeing where the market is heading, is social media. There’s always going to be a lot of noise out there, but by digesting people’s comments, seeing where their heads are at, you’re going to hear the thoughts of the money in the market. If there’s a bunch of people with their heads down working on building the future, you might not hear so much about it – hard work isn’t always noisy. If there’s a multitude of people, fresh to the market, thinking they know it all, believing themselves genius traders, rest assured, if you look at Facebook groups and YouTube comments, you will hear them. Look out for these clusters of behaviour, and treat them as warning signs.
Poetic speech
People say “This is a new paradigm! The dollar is crashing against crypto! BTC isn’t the bubble; it’s the pin!” There is a little bit of truth to these statements, and that’s what makes them so seductive. They have this poetry or glamour to them, they appeal to anarchists and people who want to see bankers kicked off their thrones, ideological Bitcoiners. The technology is revolutionary… but that doesn’t mean the price will go up forever without crashing.
Glib logic
When people are engaged by emotions, they’re more likely to make simpler, weaker arguments, and they may also come from a place of ignorance. One argument I remember making in 2013 was: “Litecoin has 4 times the supply of Bitcoin, therefore Litecoin should be 1/4 the price of Bitcoin.” Another one I heard recently was: “Bitcoin has a limited supply. That means it can go up forever.” And another: “The Ethereum price will rise to the same ratio that it previously had with Bitcoin.”
These arguments are superficially appealing, but analysed more closely we can see that they’re not accounting for the difference in demand. To predict a price, we need to know future demand as well as future supply. Even so, when we hear this kind of argument we can know that there may be many new speculators in the market.
Brazen predictions
“Ethereum will be $4500 on March 17th, 2019 – wut!” No reasoning, no argument, no technical analysis, no fundamental analysis. This prediction is mostly without meaning, except that it shows investors are getting very bold, so swept in the hype, that they believe a statement with no reason is valuable.
Test the sentiment
When people are saying how Bitcoin is the pin, how high it will go, make a measured comment saying “I don’t think the price will keep going up forever.” See how many people pounce on you, and how upset they get. At this stage, people may be so filled by emotion, so much in their own little bubble, they will get whipped up into a frenzy at the mere mention that the market might crash.
Conclusion
Many people follow their own emotions, reacting to their own emotions. That means when market makers or media push their buttons, they act on them. Like leaves in the wind, moving at the whim of the forces that surround them.
What we’re aiming for here is self-awareness. When you’re aware of your own emotions, you can respond to them accordingly, like tells in a card game. When the news plays on your fear, telling you to do one thing, you can step back, pause, think about it. You can do the opposite, or simply do nothing at all.
Now, you know better. Now, you are not subject to force. Now, you become force. As our great teacher Lao-Tzu said, he who controls others is strong, but he who controls himself is powerful indeed.
Thank you
Thank you for reading, watching and listening. If you got to this point, I’m sure you enjoyed it, and so my humble request is that you share this article, video and podcast with your friends and family so they can also benefit.
Months ago I talked about how to know when a market is overheated. It’s a lot easier to tell when it’s heated than when it’s reaching bottom… People at the top are a lot louder, because they believe they’re genius traders, they’re rich and they’ve figured it all out. At the bottom, people aren’t so public in admitting that they’ve lost thousands of dollars. So it gets quiet.
And it has been quiet for the last month. Now with Bitcoin dropping again, it seems like nobody is even crying about their lost fortunes… Just declaring death once again. So has crypto reached a bottom?
Scroll down to watch and listen to the episode.
I know a lot of people are listening to Cryptonomics on iTunes. I appreciate it a lot when people leave a good rating on iTunes, helping more people find the podcast.
Price action and people reaction
On the 14th of November, bitcoin dropped from $6300 to $5600, very suddenly. You probably noticed. Today on the 19th it took another drop to $5300.
What I’ve been noticing the last month or so is that of course, the crypto market has been very flat. When things do rally, there aren’t as many cheerleaders saying “bitcoin is back”. A friend said to me, “Kurt, I respect you because you’re the only one still talking about bitcoins”. Then when this drop happened, I didn’t hear anyone saying “oh no, I’ve lost a fortune.” Instead I see people saying the dream is over, RIP.
The other day my friend said to me, I don’t think I’ll buy any crypto, it’s too hard to pick the bottom. I said if that’s your logic, you’ll never invest in anything ever. I said, do you think anybody who bought bitcoin at $300 is crying now that they didn’t buy it at $200? You gotta keep things in perspective.
Be greedy when others are fearly, be fearful when others are greedy. When you see a whole bunch of people bouncing out of the market, the temptation might be to depart with them. The hype is gone, the hope is gone, would that last candle of faith burning in your heart go out with them? This market belongs to those who see when others will not look, to take heart when men shrivel, and to have wits when others have lost their entire heads. Is there still courage within you friend, does your dream yet live?
Shout outs
I’d like to give a shout out to all the people who commented on my last video on Steemit. It got over 170 comments, some less spammy than others, some more respectful than others. A lot of people disagreed with me, but many had positions based on knowledge and reason. Thanks Michael Nimetz, Transisto, SilentScreamer, JoeyArnoldvn, Sames, Frdem3dot0, among others.
Thanks again to all those people leaving those 5 star ratings on iTunes. Have a great day and stay grateful!
You can listen and subscribe on Anchor and other podcasting services here:
If you’ve listened to a lot of interviews with successful investors and entrepreneurs, you might notice that a lot of them play poker, and some of them even recommend it as a way of improving financial acumen. There are many reasons: poker is a game of incomplete information, you have to assess risk quickly, be decisive, and emotionally deal with the consequences of a decision, whether it turns out to be good, bad or unknown.
A lot of people tell me that they’re thinking of getting into Bitcoin or crypto assets in general. They’ve got a few $1000 in savings, and they’re going to put it all in.
One question I like to ask them is, have you ever been seated at a card table, with $1000 in front of you, not knowing if you’ll walk out with your pockets full or empty? Most of the time, the answer is no, and I like to point out how that should be a hint for them about how well they’ll be able to handle the swings of the market.
Scroll down to the bottom of the post to watch and listen to the episode. In this episode, I present five key ways in which investing is like a game of poker:
1. Bankroll management/Asset allocation
Managing a bankroll is something that few cardplayers master – it’s common to hear even the best players going bust at some stage in their career. It’s common to find risk-averse gamblers, who stick to playing $2 games online, never wanting to risk too much. It’s also common to find risk-inclined gamblers, putting their rent money on the table in the casino.
Risk-averse investors might put all their money into term deposits, CDs and bonds, and they will lose over time, letting inflation eat away their savings. Risk-inclined investors might take out a mortgage and put the money on a penny stock, and it might pay off – then again, it might not.
What we want to do is seek a balance – risk enough that we stand to get a good return, but not enough that any one decision can send us broke. Don’t gamble more than you can afford to lose – but assess carefully what you can afford to lose. Reading about the Kelly Criterion can give you a more thorough understanding of how much to bet.
2. Sixth street – Being aware of deception
“Sixth street” is a term coined by poker player and writer Tommy Angelo about the events which happen after a hand – posturing, lying, perception management. Some of the best poker players use manipulation techniques such as “strange loops” – statements which, whether you assume they’re true, or assume they’re false, will be equally misleading.
Likewise, in markets we have examples where big players will attempt to manipulate the market under the guise of stating their opinion. One case was where Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, opined publicly about how awful Bitcoin was, and how stupid people would get what they deserved if they bought it. Months later, it turned out that JP Morgan was purchasing Bitcoin, and Dimon decided to recant his position, saying there might be something to this crypto thing after all.
The lesson is, don’t trust what people say at the poker table, and don’t trust what big players say in the market.
3. Information asymmetry
A basic card player only has a few data in his mind while deciding whether to call, fold or raise. He knows his cards, the cards on the table, the last action, and whether he likes his hand or not. A solid player, however, has a personality profile of each player at the table, knows their betting habits, has an idea of their emotional state – and his own emotional state. He knows the chance he has to get the last card of his flush, the odds the pot is offering him, and his history with his opponent. This is the reason that a good player will beat a bad player in the long run – he knows more, and he knows how to prioritise the information.
Same idea in the markets – the average investor has heard a rumour, or he likes the logo of the project, or he saw that it went up over the last two weeks. The solid investor can take his time, looking at the commits on GitHub, reading about the history of the team, learning about their vision, and perhaps even talk to the team directly. This is why speculating is a superior form of gambling – you can take your time and literally learn a hundred times more than the average speculator. The more you know, the more likely you are to make money in the long term.
4. Let your stake match your knowledge
This is a simple rule of thumb to help you decide how much to invest. If you’re an absolute beginner at poker, knowing little more than the rules, you wouldn’t walk into a casino and put a month’s salary on the table. It’s the same with markets – it doesn’t make sense to dump thousands of dollars into a project when you only have an hour’s worth of knowledge.
The problem with this rule is, at some point with crypto assets, they could explode in price, and suddenly you’re holding more money than you know what to do with. That’s what is called “a high quality problem”, and that leads to my next point.
5. Plan your hand
It’s common to see bad poker players get into positions where they don’t know what to do, where they’ve put hundreds of dollars in the middle, and now they have hundreds more at risk. They didn’t decide before the hand what they wanted to do against a particular player, and now they’re caught out.
You can read countless stories of lottery winners who hit the big one, and then start spending their money on ridiculous excesses. For many of these people, the lottery might have been their retirement plan – but they never thought about it beyond “Step 1: Win the lottery.” If you have a plan, any kind of plan, of what to do when your investments jump in their rockets and set a course for the moon, that will remove a lot of stress from your life.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking money will solve your problems – it will not. It will only grant you different problems – problems you can start solving ahead of time, today.
You can listen and subscribe on Anchor and other podcasting services here:
You’ve probably heard a lot about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in the media – people turning into millionaires overnight, discovering coins on lost hard drives and taking out mortgages to gamble on the market.
And it’s true, you can get rich using cryptocurrency, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s lot more to it than financial security – this technology is set to change society the world over, very similar to the way the Internet has changed our lives over the last 20 years.
It’s a truly transformative technology and I’d like to tell you all about it – Welcome to Cryptonomics.
I’ve been researching Bitcoin since 2011, bought my first bitcoin at $10 even though I didn’t really know what it was or have any idea that the price might increase.
Now, after years of research, analysis, and practical experience, my friends see me as an expert on crypto assets, and I strive to live up to that reputation.
Why care about cryptocurrency?
You probably have some idea of what crypto assets are about, but the implications are wider than you might first realise.
1. Money. Imagine you bought $10 worth of Facebook at the same time Peter Thiel bought 10% of the company for $500,000. How much would that have been worth at IPO? You might guess that it would be worth a few thousand dollars. Actually, it would have been worth $913,000. Until recently, these kinds of gains were reserved for qualified investors – millionaires. Now with initial coin offerings and other forms of fundraising, regular people have the opportunity to access those disproportionate gains.
2. Disruptive social change. We can already see on Steemit how crypto can disrupt social media. The highest goals are much more ambitious – disrupt the commercial banks, central banks, and end war. Using this technology, we might be able to reduce power given to these institutions, removing the power of governments to print money, limiting wars to ones that the people agree to pay for.
3. The fear. It’s not necessarily all rosy when it comes to crypto assets. Having a big ledger where all your information can be accessed in one place presents a threat to our privacy. Can we stay secure and private in the epoch of DLT and blockchain? That’s a vital question, one which many crypto fanboys and girls don’t ask often enough.
What is Cryptonomics?
Certain points that deserve emphasis are lacking in cryptocurrency media, three ambitious ideals which I hope to fulfill:
1. Responsibility. Personal finance is something that’s not taught in schools, and it does require a lot of self-control to get right. By revealing the habits of people who had the wherewithall to hold onto their bitcoins, we can see how to improve ourselves.
2. Spirituality. You might have been told that spirit and money don’t mix, that to be wealthy in spirit, you must renounce material things. That’s not true. The lessons of money are the same lessons of life, the same lessons of happiness.
3. Beauty. The classics of Chinese literature such as the Tao Te Ching and I Ching stay in the hearts of many today, because they at once had the goals of teaching and inspiring. One way to create great art is to combine form and function. In fact, form and function are hard to separate, because the way things appeal to us is a key part of how we use them.
Not one of these ideals alone is easy to attain, so my commitment is to continuous improvement on each of them.
Bitcoin will never reach mass adoption – that’s my case here. It’s not because there’s anything wrong with Bitcoin of itself. It’s simply because Bitcoin isn’t aiming for mass adoption.
The Bitcoin team isn’t focused on mass adoption, and maybe they never were. They’re focused on something else – I don’t know exactly what, something technical, some kind of engineering miracle. I know they’re not focused on mass adoption, because mass adoption comes with user experience. The way you get people to use your tech is to make it easy to use. You start with your customer in mind.
Scroll down to watch and listen to this episode.
Stay Safe
Welcome to Cryptonomics, principles of cryptocurrency and investing. If you are storing hundreds or thousands of dollars of crypto on exchanges, you’re putting yourself at risk. Your account could get hacked, the exchange could get hacked. That’s why I recommend getting a Trezor. In many ways, it’s even more secure than storing your crypto on a paper wallet buried in your backyard. I’ve been using mine for more than a year and had a great experience with it. You can store more than 500 different cryptos on here. Put your mind at ease, keep your crypto safe with Trezor.
UX is not a priority for Bitcoin
We know that user experience isn’t their priority, because we can hear it from the developers themselves. In 2017 when Bitcoin transaction fees were surging, Bitcoin dev Lukejr said “Just pay a $5 fee and it’ll go through every time unless you’re doing something stupid.”
In 2013, developer Gregory Maxwell gave his opinion on the 1 MB block limit which caused the transaction fees to get to that point, saying he wouldn’t have joined the project if they didn’t have that limit. More recently in October 2018, both Maxwell and developer Jimmy Song advised people to use their credit cards rather than use Bitcoin for a purchase.
We can tell these are people who aren’t striving for a good UX, saying these things without apologies. Whatever plans they have for Bitcoin, it’s not as a payment platform for regular people. Bitcoin has an established history, it’s the oldest project of its kind, and it is tough. I would still say it’s the most stable project in crypto, but I’d also say that stable and stagnant are two sides of the same coin.
I like to think about the case of BetaMax vs VHS, the video systems from the 80s and 90s.
BetaMax vs VHS
Ask some people why BetaMax failed and they’ll tell you it was market failure. BetaMax had the superior tech, and buyers just made a bad choice and made VHS popular. BetaMax did have superior picture quality, but users made the right choice. Users bought the product which best served their needs.
BetaMax was so focused on tech that they never bothered to ask what their customers wanted. What they wanted, on the whole, was an affordable system with a long play time. Picture quality was always secondary. BetaMax could only record an hour in its first form. VHS could do two hours, enough for a movie or football game. BetaMax also waited years to add new features like the remote control. And so, people bought the system which gave them what they wanted.
… almost no journalists, and no geeks, have ever come across the concept of “the whole product”, though it is well known to marketing people. Real people may not be aware of it, but the “whole product” model is an accurate description of the way they buy things.
Let’s take a simple example: digital audio tape (Dat). Get someone to compare Dat with a humble C90 compact cassette and they will find Dat to be technologically superior, especially for recording music. However, if you consider “the whole product”, Dat is vastly inferior for most people most of the time. This is why people still buy millions of cassettes, while Dat has virtually disappeared from consumer use.
The point is that when someone buys and uses a product, the technological aspects are a small and often uninteresting part of the decision. When you choose compact cassette, you are also buying into a vast infrastructure of capabilities, services and support. These include the availability of cheap cassettes on every high street, cheap personal stereos, and the ability to use the same format for a wide range of applications (personal stereo, portable radio/cassette players, in the car, in your hi-fi stack).
That was Jack Schofield writing for the Guardian in 2003. We don’t use cassette tapes any more, but fundamentally nothing has changed. Techies still don’t know that there is more to a product than just its specs.
Go verify your own blockchain
A month ago, I interviewed Juan Galt about why he still believes Bitcoin is the most important project in crypto. Juan told me that:
“It comes from an an American culture, so there’s an analogy to the right to bear arms in the Bitcoin world, and that’s the right to be able to validate the blockchain itself … If you can’t download a node to a consumer grade computer and run the verification process, you can’t actually know the supply is limited.”
I respectfully disagree with Juan. if you’re nerdy enough to want to download an entire blockchain and prove for yourself that the amount of coins is limited, you’re probably nerdy enough to buy specialised hardware to do it. Working the whole project to cater to this small group of people who want to be able to prove the basis of their money on their home computer, is backwards. Regular people don’t care about that.
I encourage people to go back and listen to the full interview with Juan so you can hear his arguments and make up your own mind.
Everybody wants a good user experience
Regular people want something easy to use, and to get them to change their habits, it might even have to be easier to use than what they have now. Services like Google Pay, PayPal and Venmo set the standard of modern financial services. Being able to verify the blockchain on your iPhone generally is not something that people have on their mental checklist.
This tech can already be used to send payments cheaply, evading capital controls, and giving an option to people stuck with a hyperinflating currency. There are people suffering out there who could really benefit from digital currency, but they still can’t get it because there aren’t services that let them access it. Fortunately, some people are working on things like Dash Text, which lets people with feature phones send Dash.
I don’t know which project will hit the mainstream first. What I know is, if your project focuses on tech and not people, it will stay in your mum’s garage. First and foremost, all tech, all design, all crypto, should be about people. When you care about people, people will care about you.
Have you ever seen a ghost? Can atheists believe in ghosts, or is it solely the domain of the faithful? In this episode, Kurt chats to Juan Galt about what apparitions mean, where they might come from, and what they could be if they’re not literal spiritual entities. They also share a few personal stories of seeing weird things in the night.
Juan can’t help you exorcise your house, but he can help you get started with Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general. Reach out to Juan Galt on Twitter.
We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link. Or buy some of our great T-shirts here.
Juan Galt is a cryptocurrency journalist and consultant, who guides Bitcoin newbies to correct security practices. He’s given a few presentations at Anarchapulco, and he formerly covered crypto for The Dollar Vigilante’s newsletter. Juan lived in Colombia, then Canada, then Acapulco, and now he’s travelling the world. I managed to get a hold of him over Skype, finding him in beautiful Prague.
A few weeks ago, Juan tweeted: “Bitcoin Maximalism is a reactive, defensive, pragmatic mindset to handle the hoards of shitcoins and token scams that will continue to form on the horizon, faces painted, ready to dive into us like Agent smith.”
“Bitcoin maximalism” normally means when a crypto enthusiast supports Bitcoin to the exclusion of all other coins. When I got Juan for an interview, I realised his position is more nuanced. He makes the case that, with so many questionable or outright fraudulent projects in the crypto space, supporting Bitcoin raises the standard. By giving less attention to awful projects, he expects that we’ll find a higher quality of coin in the future.
Join us on another coin-bending journey on this episode of … The Paradise Paradox!
We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link. Or buy some of our great T-shirts here.
Luis Fernando Mises is known for his podcast “Emancipated Human”, and for teaching servant leadership as a consultant to large companies in the USA. Some people might find it a contradiction that Luis is a corporate man in a suit and tie, and an intensely spiritual man, even a spiritual healer. In fact, there is no contradiction – improving the lives of people in companies and healing souls are goals that are very consistent. Likewise, it seems contradictory to be an entrepreneur in the pursuit of money, and seeking inner fulfillment. As we learn in this interview, money goes much deeper than that.
Many people point and blame the nameless rich, the unseen 1%, rarely present to defend themselves, and it conjures the image of oil robber barons, Rockefellers and Carnegies. In fact, it only takes $32,400 to be in the top 1% of income earners worldwide – nowhere near the mega-rich level that we’re lead to believe.
Is the love of money the root of all evil? Money is a reflection of your energy, putting your effort into creating something, serving others, a representation of your production and service for others. We can use it to improve our own physical reality, enhancing our enjoyment and our friend’s enjoyment, and even to produce more wealth, freeing up time to spend it with loved ones. As long as your pursuit of money doesn’t cause you to lose your respect for people, it is good.
Join Kurt and Luis on a grateful, entrepreneurial, financial and spiritual journey in the next episode of … The Paradise Paradox!
We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link. Or buy some of our great T-shirts here.
The Story: Bob explains his time in the Church of Scientology
What can we learn from the Church of Scientology? Is there some wisdom that gets lost in all the criticism, some teachings of L. Ron Hubbard that could still benefit us?
Welcome once again to The Paradise Paradox. I’d like to present the second part of an interview I did with my friend Bob, known on Steemit and DTube as Bobaphet. Bob is going to tell us about his contact with Freemasonry, about how he joined Scientology, the drills they did to learn how to speak in a commanding, authoritative tone known as Tone 40, about auditing, which you might call a form of exposure therapy. Bob also tells the story of being excluded from the sea org, because of his previous military experience – ironically, as a sailor.
We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link. Or buy some of our great T-shirts here.
