A digital agency based out of Mumbai working on specialized projects in the fields of UI/UX, Problem Solving, Media Buying, Content Creation, Growth Hacking, and Product Innovation

Surfing Monkey

Dedicated to BakkaPhoenix Books

So let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests. Hi everyone, I’m Nikita and I’m a Software Engineer. I enjoy video games, surfing, skating and writing some tips for myself and sharing them with the community :) Code Monkey writing some code Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about? I wrote about performance tips for CSS. There is nothing to say more, just some useful advice about faster CSS practices. Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about? Usually I write on some topics related to my current work. Like React and other Frontend stuff and C# + databases. Right now I’ve started to work on Java, so maybe I will write something about Java :) Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?) I will describe it base on my last article. I’m getting interested in some topic (like CSS performance). I start to search everything I can about CSS Write some notes about most useful things in my opinion Write each note/tip as a separate section. Sort everything from the most interesting to the least one Looking for a cool picture (the most difficult part) Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing? This is simple. I like to keep everything short. Writing bio and description to articles is the most challenging part. So I just copy description from my previous article and rephrase it based on m current theme :) What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career? To surf in a tube! And become a Staff engineer :) Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice? Coach potato day with games and ice-cream :) Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it? Surfing! I lived for some time on a tropical island and it was one of the best choices in my life :) What can the Hacker Noon community expect to read from you next? I really like to dive deep into performance issues. I started to work with Java. So maybe something about Java :) What’s your opinion on HackerNoon as a platform for writers? One of the most convenient platform for writing tech articles. You know on some other platforms you need to use Gist. But here you can just write anything and choose the language. It worth more than you can imagine :) Thanks for taking time to join our “ ” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words? Meet the writer Thanks to you! Have fun! Read some of my articles.

Meet the Writer: HackerNoon's Contributor Nikita Starichenko, SWE at Snap Inc.

Using rewards to boost willpower and perform at your best Work is hard. There’s always a lot to get done and there’s never enough time to do it. You need to be focused and energized at all times. Work gets harder when things aren’t going as well as you had hoped. When that new client falls through at the last minute. When you don’t hit your quarterly goals. When your boss gives you “constructive feedback” on a project that you’ve spent weeks perfecting. When you experience such setbacks — and every ambitious person inevitably does—you won’t feel as motivated as you once did. You may not even realize that it’s affecting your performance, but it is. It’s harder to get out of bed in the morning. You don’t have as much energy to go to the gym or meet friends after work. You procrastinate on your work. I used to believe that I simply needed to power through — use whatever energy I had left to keep working and hope for better results. But then finally, exhausted and unsatisfied with the results that I was achieving, I turned to behavioral psychology to learn how to get “unstuck” and perform at my best. This articles covers the psychology behind how rewards influence our behavior and eight techniques that you can practice to get and stay motivated. Why We Crave Rewards Alexander Rothman’s of behavior maintenance suggests that your ability to maintain a positive behavior or habit is dependent on your perception of the benefits: theory “Decisions regarding behavioral initiation are predicted on favorable expectations regarding future outcomes, whereas decisions regarding behavioral maintenance are predicted on perceived satisfaction with received outcomes.” However, challenging and ambitious projects don’t always provide immediate rewards, and sometimes you may even get negative feedback for prolonged periods of time. When we receive or achieve positive feedback, we get more motivated, and when we get more motivated, we perform better. It’s a cycle that feeds on itself. On the other hand, when we perceive that the rewards that we are receiving from a given behavior are are insufficient, or if we receive negative feedback, we lose motivation. This lack of motivation might manifest itself as procrastination or a lack of energy. We experience this because our brains are telling us to stop investing energy into something that is not helping us. Douglas Lisle, a psychologist who specializes in motivation, moods and emotions as “feedback systems” that can indicate the effectiveness of our actions. He says that anxiety is actually an important and valuable emotion: describes “Anxiety is generally a useful guide — signaling us that our proposed endeavor may require our very best effort to succeed, and, in fact, may require talent beyond our current abilities. The survival value of anxiety is obvious — if you are contemplating a trek across dangerous terrain, you had better be anxious. You had better consider carefully whether this is an intelligent undertaking. And if it is, your anxiety will help to facilitate careful planning, checking and rechecking of supplies, the rehearsing of potentially needed skills, worrying about things that could go wrong, and so forth.” Anxiety is a signal that we may need to rethink our strategy. When you are too anxious, you won’t feel motivated or energized. The lack of motivation hinders your ability to perform, which further hinders your ability to achieve your goals. When you’re in this negative feedback loop, it’s difficult to get up off the couch and get to work. You just want to sit around and do nothing. You can’t seem to cross items off your to-do list, even though they’ve been there for weeks. However, as you begin to take action and pick up small wins, you start feeling less stuck. After making more progress, you’re still not quite at your peak level of performance, because there’s still some uncertainty about your ability to succeed and achieve results. You still have some degree of stress, but it’s a healthy stress that’s enough to motivate you to keep taking action. As you continue to gain momentum, you reach a state of optimal motivation and performance, before reaching a new plateau. How We Measure Success Behind most of the decisions that we make is a . This analysis may be done consciously or unconsciously. We compare the benefits that we expect to receive to the costs that we expect will be required to receive them. cost-benefit analysis While money is one of the most obvious forms of benefits, rewards can come in many forms. Humans also seek social status and positive feedback from peers. Rewards validate your cost-benefit analysis. It’s evidence that gives you more confidence that you’re moving in the right direction. For example, say that you decide to start freelancing on the side because you’re confident that you can make some extra money and build your portfolio. When you get positive feedback, in the form of a new client, your cost-benefit analysis gains validation. Your initial hypothesis, that you can start a freelancing business, is more likely to be correct. As a result of the monetary rewards that you receive from closing the new client, your cost-benefit further tips to the left side of the graphic above, where benefits outweigh costs, and you gain motivation to continue freelancing. Conversely, if you were to spend months trying to find a freelancing client, but never manage to land one, your brain may interpret freelancing as a poor return on investment, and therefore limit your energy for seeking clients. Some people are more motivated by fear. Rather than moving towards something — such as a freelancing business — they are motivated to move away from something else. They may be motivated to get out of student debt or quit their day job. It’s important to think in terms of the desired action (freelancing in this case) the undesired action or the status quo. If your brain doesn’t understand the costs of inaction, and/or the benefits of action, you won’t feel very motivated. and This may seem straightforward, but it gets more interesting when you consider the fact that we don’t always do a good job of interpreting feedback. Many people don’t internalize the rewards that they’re receiving. Some people may even be succeeding but actually believe that they’re failing. Failures can generally be grouped into two categories: real and imagined. If you have ambitious goals, you will inevitably experience a real failure. You might shut down your business, take a loss on an investment, or get dumped by a partner. However, it’s far more often that your perceived failures are actually just small missteps that are moving you in the right direction. You simply need to reinterpret the feedback that you’re receiving. 8 Techniques for Boosting Your Motivation Regardless of whether the negative feedback that you’re getting is real or imagined, there are techniques that you can use to regain or sustain motivation during challenging times. “Imagined” failure — in the form of over-reacting to negative feedback, or lacking appreciation for positive feedback — can be solved through changing the way that you think about your work and results. You can overcome “real” failure by changing your strategy. The eight techniques below can help break a cycle of negative feedback and get you back into a positive feedback loop. Change your thinking Oftentimes, feelings of failure are merely figments of imagination. In these cases, you don’t actually need more money or more pats on the back from your peers. Rather, you simply need to change the way you interpret your situation and internalize the rewards that you’re already receiving. . Ying Zhang and Xavier Dre`ze that when people have made progress towards reaching their goals they are more motivated to continue working towards them. This is because progress reduces the amount of perceived costs and gives you more confidence that you will receive benefits. Achieving a goal gives you data that indicates that your cost-benefit analysis was correct and that you are moving in the right direction. Break down big goals into smaller goals that you can achieve on a consistent basis. Your long-term goal may be to sell your company for $1 billion, but that will take years, and without some smaller wins along the way, you may lose motivation. Consider setting a , such as shipping a new feature, or publishing a piece of content. Accomplishing shorter-term goals will keep you motivated to achieve your longer-term goals. 1. Set achievable goals found weekly goal . When you don’t have tangible rewards, such as money, to point to, you need to create them. According to , money can make you happier, but you reach diminishing returns once you make $75,000 per year. Your biology is more concerned with simply surviving than climbing up Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs and realizing your full potential. Rewards such as supporting your community or increasing your financial safety net are important, but you won’t necessarily gain a compulsory dopamine hit of motivation from it like you will from landing a new job that pays $75,000 per year, so remind yourself of the less tangible rewards that you are receiving. 2. Acknowledge intangible rewards Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton . When you fail at something, you lose motivation as your monkey brain tells you to stop investing time and money in an opportunity that might not lead to success. However, your brain may not realize that failure is also a learning opportunity. Now that you’ve failed, you know what doesn’t work. You can try something new that’s more likely to work. When you fail, don’t identify it as a failure. Instead of telling yourself “I’m a loser,” tell yourself “I lost this time, but I’ll win in the long run.” Also remember that there’s an element of chance in most pursuits. The loss may not have even been a result of your performance. 3. Change your interpretation of failure . When you decide to start a business, your goal is probably to achieve profitably or perhaps to sell it. Many talented entrepreneurs have deployed sound strategies and worked hard to achieve these goals. However, there is a high degree of chance in starting a company. Sometimes even the most talented and hard working entrepreneurs fail. You don’t know how the economy will change, what new regulations will affect your market, how consumer preferences will change, or what new competitors may enter your market. These factors, however, are largely out of your control. If you let your motivation depend on factors outside of your control, you will inevitably face setbacks. Instead, define success in terms of making good decisions and executing to the best of your abilities. 4. Upgrade your definition of success . When you win at a video game, your brain will think that you’ve just done something beneficial, but you really haven’t. Remind yourself that climbing to the top of the World of Warcraft leaderboard is not as rewarding as getting healthier, closing your next deal, or starting that non-profit organization that you’ve always wanted to start. In fact, spending too much time playing video games will only make it less likely that you will achieve your most important goals. Remind yourself that inaction has a cost and try to deprive yourself of the rewards that you receive from inaction. 5. Increase the cost of inaction Change your behavior Many personal development articles encourage suppressing negative emotions and forcing yourself through whatever comes your way. This way of thinking is so prevalent because it’s easier to adopt than it is to accept failure. , it’s easier to push through hardship than it is to accept that you are falling short. This is problematic because suppressing this negative feedback may cause you to avoid re-considering your strategies and priorities. You may actually need less hustle, and more strategic thinking, if you want to achieve your goals. From a psychological perspective . You may be receiving rewards, but if those rewards are not meeting your expectations given your perceived abilities, they may not be motivating. If a rocket scientist was regarded as the best surfing coach in the world, she may still not feel like she’s accomplishing enough. Lisle that “people sometimes become depressed because their lives no longer require their very best efforts. Consistently operating at significantly less than your full capacity may save energy, but it often doesn’t feel good.” Find an opportunity to take on a new project at work or start a side-project outside of work that challenges you. 6. Take on a new challenge writes . If you’re unsatisfied with the results that you’re achieving, take time to consider you are not achieving sufficient rewards and what you can do to improve. It may turn out that you are working on the right project or pursuing a great opportunity, but simply need to change the way you are doing it. For example, if your blog hasn’t grown the way you’d wanted it to, you may need to shift from writing short articles frequently to more in-depth articles, less frequently. Or, you may need to learn or improve a skill that can help you succeed, such as SEO or Facebook ads. 7. Change your strategy why . The cost-benefit analysis that you ran to determine what you should be working on didn’t pan out as expected. This is common because it’s difficult to predict the future. If you determine that you are accurately measuring your results, and changing your strategy is insufficient, it may be best to shift your focus to a new and better opportunity. While this realization may bruise your ego, it would be foolish to continue to deny the reality that you are not achieving the results that you are capable of achieving. Consider your strengths, weakness, and values, and . 8. Choose the right opportunity find your next big opportunity Use rewards to get and stay motivated Feedback influences your motivation and your motivation influences your ability to perform at your best. Positive rewards are a powerful source of motivation. A lack of positive rewards, or a dash of negative feedback, can reduce your motivation, and therefore your performance. Find ways to gain positive feedback to create and sustain motivation during challenging times.

How To Get Motivated According To Behavioral Psychology

<Rant> I am an engineer by education, and have therefore studied science _a l_ot. Yet I have realised that I find it easier to read something written in , than most scientific papers written in (and I’ve never even fucking learned Spanish). Do you know why scientific research papers are so hard to read? Spanish English Because the authors of these papers these days, the “global scientific community”, consists of people whose life depends on one thing: whether they can coat their words with enough bullshit that the real scientists don’t figure out how insignificant their work really is. predominantly I’m not even alone — I know . Even Andrew Ng, one of the foremost researchers in the field of AI, himself said recently that when he first read the , he found it so hard to read that him understand what was going on. (Update 2019: was talking to the Nobel Laureate chemist Roald Hoffman at Cornell recently, and he voiced the same concerns. Go figure!) of senior scientists and experienced engineers who share this opinion plenty YOLO paper he had to ask some of his colleagues to help Now wait — to those who are offended by this claim, please allow me to expand before you write a nasty comment. You are very likely an ass-witted graduate student who thinks that writing fat tongue twisters in your paper will make you seem smart enough to hide whatever mistake it was that got you selected for your current position in the first place. (Now you can write that comment) Now, I understand that you can’t write papers simply using high-schooler vocabulary. I also acknowledge the need for the required pre-requisite knowledge while reading a scientific paper. There is indeed always a need for technical jargon, because in general the target audience of these papers are also experts in their niche fields. I’m not advocating that scientists simply replace every single “difficult sounding word”. This is about the practice of adding additional fluff to make even simple things sound more sophisticated on paper. I would argue that . So improving readability by a factor of 2x is more than enough and that’s all I ask for — . do some other a marginal increase in readability would increase a paper’s by at least 5 times readership not suggesting that you turn every paper into a textbook Read Albert Einstein’s paper if you think it can’t be done. And here’s another very influential paper written in simple language. I don’t blame you for following the herd — your entire system forces you to do that, and I have been in the same situation — my own supervisor in college once told me that my project reports should use more English and passive voice and what not, so that it “sounds like real research”. That whenever I have to choose between two words, I should use the more fancy term so that people take my work seriously. sophisticated Guess what, this culture of trying to describe in a more sophisticated way is what is in part responsible for destroying the world. And then you will get on your own faux Neil Tyson chair and complain about people who don’t understand science, deny climate change and do stupid things. Well guess what, if you tried to make science accessible to people, maybe they would actually take interest. ( ) everything Because of this tough lingo, students get put off from pursuing science and it also puts a language barrier to scientists from other countries. By crypting your knowledge you are basically hoarding it from the common people who might have taken an interest in science or research in general, which makes the whole society dumber as a result. For the record, I greatly respect Dr Tyson and his efforts to educate common people about science. But far too many “scientists” echo his sentiments while also hypocritically bloating their papers with unnecessary jargon. Allowing blind people to use elevators is one thing; but you can show real empathy and humanity by adding Braille to the elevator buttons. Documentation for programmers has reached the same unprecedented level of hyper-jargon bullshit. Sometimes I am amazed that a document which is supposed to provide can be harder to understand for a beginner than a hieroglyphic mural in the pyramid of Giza. clear and EASY instructions . This is why I’m on a quest to democratise specialized knowledge in my own way. A great challenge in reducing income inequality and saving the world is to level the playing field and educate the damn masses </Rant> My previous article, a , shocked me by attracting a non-zero audience of people who shared the same sentiment as I do. dummies’ guide to Google App Engine So today I will clean out one of the largest piles of cow-shit that new developers have to deal with. Learning how to store projects on GitHub. I have to point out that this is more of a “git” tutorial; git and are technically two different things. Moreover, git can be used for many more things than just storing your projects online. It is a ‘version control system’, and you can what that means. If you want to learn the more advanced stuff, take . GitHub waaayy Google this online course I looked at some other git tutorials online which are supposedly for beginners. But after reading and even article, I have reached the conclusion that my intelligence is sub-human, and therefore only a tutorial meant for chimpanzees and dumber would work for me. this THIS Assuming that there are other people on the planet who fall into the same category, I am writing . a GitHub tutorial for chimpanzees By the way, the I’ve found so far is this: best GitHub tutorial I highly recommend watching this if you have the time! Don’t get me wrong here— I like GitHub. But I find it hard to read the fancy documentation written by people who have forgotten the boundary between English and Java. Sorry— I digressed again. No more rants. I’ll jump right into it. By the way, PLEASE let me know if you encounter any problem following this tutorial. ZERO-BULLSHIT GITHUB GUIDE What is a repository? I keep seeing this word in every git tutorial. A repository is a fancy word to describe what is basically an online folder which stores all the code files of a particular project. So for example if you’re building an app called “Monkey species identifier”, you’ll have one big folder which has all the sub-folders and files related to that app project right? That is called a “repository” and it will have a name like “Monkey-species-identifier”. For the record, I swear this name wasn’t inspired by the title of this tutorial. The only thing that makes a ‘repository’ different from a regular folder is that it has a few hidden files which give it certain special properties. These properties allow the git system to track changes in this folder, know where it comes from, etc. With that you can even reverse and repeat changes made to the folder, and do other cool tricks, all of which fall into the big bag of “version control”. 2**. Download or install Git** There are two ways you can do this. (like I do), don’t bother surfing around the web looking for things to download. Just open your Terminal, and type “git”. The Terminal will itself tell you that you don’t have git installed, whether you’d like to install it, yada yada yada and basically take you through the process on its own. And by the end you’ll suddenly have git on your system! If you’re using a Mac If you use Windows, you’ll have to download git and then you might need something called a Powershell, which looks just like the command prompt but maybe has a different color. If you use Linux, I’m not sure what you should do, because you’re probably a geek who knows this stuff already? Why else do you even have Linux? Anyway, the official documentation for this step can be found here: https://help.github.com/articles/set-up-git/ Scroll down the mumbo-jumbo words like “forking” and “repository” etc, and go straight to the _good shit, w_here they use familiar words like “download” and “install”. 3. Once you have git, open your Terminal and do this to check if it works fine: Type ‘git’ and press enter. After this, it doesn’t matter if you have Windows/Linux/Mac etc. It’s all the same once you have installed GitHub. FIRST — Learn how to use the command line to navigate between folders. It’s actually quite simple! I don’t have time to create my own tutorial, so I’ll just refer you to this 3-minute video which explains how to use the command line very easily, in a way that a chimpanzee could understand. It’s not my own video, I found it online and it’s excellent. beautiful Click on the image link. invest 3 minutes into watching this video! Please Now, how to use GitHub? You basically need to remember only FOUR commands to get up and running: and clone, add, commit push . Creating a new project Go to github.com and sign-in. Find and click on the ‘New Repository’ button. You will see something like this in the of your window, somewhere. right-hand side 3. You will see something like this: 4. Create a repository name. There should be no spaces or punctuation in the name. For example, “My-Awesome-App”. 5. Choose the ‘Public’ option for now. To choose ‘Private’, you’ll need to upgrade your account to a paid account. It doesn’t really make a difference unless you’re working in a company and/or your code is meant to be kept secret from the world. 6. Check ‘Initialize this repository with a README’. 7. Click on ‘Create Repository’. 8. Now you’ll see this: You have created a new repository called ‘My-Awesome-App’. Currently your new Repository has only one file, which is the README.md. It was created because you chose the option to initialize the repo with a readme. :) 9. Then, go to your GitHub repo, and click on “Clone or download”. Copy the https url. 11. Now open your terminal/powershell/whatever. Navigate (using cd and ls functions) to the place where you want to set up your project folder. 12. Type “git clone” and then paste the url you copied in step #10. Press enter, as shown below: The url is the one you copied earlier. 13. You will see the folder My-Awesome-App being created. Now, add the project files (your code files) to this folder. Bingo! You have now created what is called a “local repository”, which is a clone of your repository on github.com. Now — how to store your code online and make changes to it The next step is to sync these changes with your online repository on github.com. This requires 2 steps: Tracking changes in the local repository Updating the online repository to reflect those changes For the first step, tracking changes locally, we use 2 commands, and . You don’t have to understand how exactly they work (for now). Basically it’s just the way the git system is created, so we shall roll with that. add commit 1. If your terminal is not already inside your My-Awesome-App folder, use to get inside it through the command line. cd 2. Do this: git add * This tells GitHub that you have added some new files to your project, that you want to make a part of the project. You will use the add command every time you add a new file to that folder. 17. Now, we will ‘commit’ those changes. Type the following command: For example, git commit -m “short comment”. git commit -m “Added new files” 18. Almost there! Now your local repository is up to date with the latest changes. Time to sync it with the online repository. 19. Type: git push origin master 20. By executing the above command, your terminal will upload the local files to the online repo, and now your code is stored on github! If you go to github.com now and check your repository, you will see all your code files there. It wasn’t too difficult, right? :) “What do I do next time?” The above tutorial was all about your using GitHub. But what if you make changes to that project and want to sync your updates again? Well, here’s what you do: first time Make whatever changes to your code on your computer in the local repository, and save. Command: git add * Use command . This allows you to document the change you just made to the code. You know, like telling someone “hey I added a new feature”. (If you want to record different changes to 3 different files, you will use the command thrice, by using a different comment for each file and adding at the end, like ‘ ’This way, you will be able to document the latest changes for file of code.) git commit -m “comment” FILENAME git commit -m “comment” FILENAME each Sync the changes with . git push origin master Makes sense? Now go ahead and try it out. Do let me know what you think of the tutorial. Even if it’s bad. I post all my essays on Reddit for the community to rip apart, so don’t worry I have thick skin. :) Would you like to stay in touch with me? I don’t use it as a newsletter that I can share links through, but as a two-way communication channel through which I can hear your stories and ideas. If you’re a tech company or developer, and need help in creating easy-to-understand training materials or documentation for your users, I can help you! Drop me a message on Twitter at @mngrwl

GitHub for Chimpanzees (and a short rant against scientists)

The Sentient AI Whisperer: Exploring the Realm of AI in Decoding Animal Communication

Why do we write things down? The spectrum of human expression is so vast that I don’t believe any one person can know all of it. We admire paintings, symphonies, sculptures, architecture… then one day we learn of the existence of Tibetan throat singing, origami, and layered sand art and our universe expands. One thing almost all of us share in common is the expression of thought through writing. Photo by on Clark Young Unsplash Writing itself takes many forms. Some experiences are so strong we have an expression: “words cannot describe it.” But you know what I mean when I say that, and I used words to express the thought. Writing is an art form, and whether or not we feel good at it as individuals we can all relate to the desire to express our inner thoughts, feelings, emotions, and opinions through the medium of writing. There’s something special about making our mark; something outside of ourselves that exports the experience we’ve had for consumption by others. “Real artists ship.” — Steve Jobs The distribution channels of the written word have been through quite a journey. When stone and clay were the medium of inscription, a single copy existed as the source of truth until time was invested to painstakingly duplicate every mark, every line, and every curve. The role of the scribe was sacred in some cultures, and their product was rare by nature. Things that are rare have an intrinsic worth beyond any other objective measure of value. A pencil may sell for millions of dollars if it was the used by a famous person to write a famous thing. one and only pencil Photo by on Kim Gorga Unsplash The advent of the printing press changed everything. Suddenly we had machines doing massive amounts of labor in a highly efficient manner, and our values shifted. It was no longer the rarity of the written word itself that carried value — it was the author. Photo by on Brad Neathery Unsplash Whether it is humans or machines doing the work to make copies of written words, we understood for millennia that only words of value go through the process of duplication and distribution. To be considered worthy of having your words copied and distributed was a very high honor. Photo by on Manoj kumar kasirajan Unsplash I remember several distinct careers that I considered prestigious as a child in the 80’s. Actors, musicians, authors — all of these roles were achievable only by those who were “good enough” to fulfill the demanding scrutiny of a society that would support these pursuits financially by purchasing the products of work. Photo by on Jon Tyson Unsplash Like the printing press, the World Wide Web brought another leap forward in technological empowerment, and with it yet another shift in value. Suddenly it was possible for anyone to make their words available to the entire planet, regardless of any objective value contained in the words themselves. Photo by on rawpixel Unsplash “lol i no rite kk hmu later bro u mad i no dis a hard time 4 u but u gots 2 b strong an b tru 2 urself kk l8er peace” — Teh Internets Something interesting happened as these values shifted. The people capable of writing stayed the same. Well, broadly speaking. The scribes who possessed the training and technical skills were given honor and trust by the rulers who employed them. The craftsmen who knew how to construct, operate, and maintain the printing press were ultimately in the same position of technical prowess, and the same can be said of those who knew how to change a typewriter ribbon or publish a website in the early days of modern . technology Photo by on Matthew LeJune Unsplash One thing has never changed: the power of the written word itself. Whether it was decreed by royal edict, copied religiously by hand, pressed on paper, typed on a machine, or brought to your home by telephone line and a cathode ray tube, words survive a shocking variety of paradigm shifts in our world. We often attribute greatness to the things we feel strongly. Here’s a couple of sentences to illustrate my point; which one makes you feel something? While the Document Object Model has served us well in traditional browser models, the availability of WebAssembly within all major browsers opens the question as to whether we even need the DOM to deliver modern apps on the web. — Illustration 1 Anything? Here’s the second one: The kitten was so excited to taste freedom in the backyard that we encouraged him to run around for exercise, not realizing that the chain link fence was loose enough at the bottom for an alligator to press its snout and wriggle through. — Illustration 2 For some reason we seem to have an emotional wall erected when words simply state facts. When we tell stories, our emotions engage and we almost to find out what happens. Great. need The kitten was fine. Don’t worry. When the enabled the World Wide Web to flood our lives with words from any and every source without reason, without purpose, and often without skill as a filtration mechanism, our brains were presented with something unique: for what may arguably be the first time in history, we are experiencing instant worldwide connections with an exponentially explosive growth in the number of content creators. Internet Photo by on San Fermin Pamplona - Navarra Unsplash That’s really quite amazing. I don’t quite know how to process that. It’s a new thing, this mesh of human thought. Your experience of surfing the web is probably vastly different from mine. Your social groups, interests, and even the language you speak at home may be entirely foreign to me. But here we are, together, in these words, sharing a link between our brains whether you’re just outside the door of my home office (hi, Katya!), experiencing summer while I’m in the middle of winter (hi, Marcelo!), or on the other side of the world (hi, Liela!). Photo by on NASA Unsplash Much of the frantic struggle to self-organize on the Interwebs has centered around the promotion and presentation of curated content. If you ever found your way to one of my first web pages, you quickly learned that some content is a waste of your time, and you probably felt a little sad or angry that the magic happiness machine that you paid so much money for wasn’t doing its job. Photo by on Tim Gouw Unsplash Rather than convincing a select group of individuals in power to compensate us as they gambled on our ability to connect with an audience, we found ourselves in a massive popularity contest where hate speech, racism, bigotry, and even direct threats of violence were bubbling to the top of society like scum on a pond. In the comfort of our own homes, we unknowingly stood on the stage of eternity as we instantly, permanently, and very publicly enshrined our least refined thoughts and our basest emotions. There is value in that honesty, to a startling degree. Much like the cameras that followed the cast of the TV series The Office, we’ve been given the gift (and the surprise) of a detailed record of our lives than we would have otherwise had available, and we are surprised by both the scope and nature of these reflections. We are perhaps most surprised by the value of the negative recollections. After all, positive memories have been captured in stories and art since long before the Internet was around. rather more This novel lens that allows us to observe ourselves and others has a fascinating effect on our group dynamics and personal psychology. I would be very grateful if you’d point me to some good reading on this topic from professionals in the field of sociology and psychology that are examining this effect on the human experience. My perspective is simply technology and business related. Photo by on Rubén Bagüés Unsplash I’ve been subject to the same social temptations as you during this cultural shift. I wanted to be a rock star or an F-16 pilot or an author when I was young. Part of that was an interest in the activities of these jobs, but a lot was really just pride and the belief that I was special. The fact that I wasn’t a very good singer, too tall to be a jet pilot, and prone to pedantic soliloquies didn’t phase me. The Internet made all of us famous overnight. Photo by on Elijah O'Donnell Unsplash When we see what I’ll refer to as “good” content, we have a positive experience. We could say “bad” content is that which is harmful, poorly prepared or presented, or perhaps inaccurate. Why am I reducing content into the boolean good/bad labels? Because that’s how the Internet feeds on everything we produce. That’s how we process information. There’s good, bad, and mediocre, but mediocre is bad so we’re back to these two. Upvote or downvote; like and share, or report and ban. Retweet, or rage tweet. We’re sifting ourselves. Photo by on Ieva Vizule Unsplash Have you ever seen a clip art collection? It’s a pretty foreign concept on the web today, as we can just search for images and illustrations ad hoc and embed them into our media without really thinking about it, but I remember flipping through my grandpa’s Corel Draw printed clip art book and writing down the floppy disk number where I could find a cheesy paperclip or telephone drawing to add to a paper. I like to imagine that somewhere out there, an artist with a penchant for minimalism found their calling and really went to town on those clip art drawings. I’m guessing at some point the list of items needed to complete the set did a bit of the driving though. It is possible to trick the eye into believing strange things. Sometimes the trick is to make bad content appear as though it is good content. 7 Secrets for Making Fire Your Doctor Doesn’t Want You to Know This flood of content we wade through every day is often motivated by financial gain. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s a different sort of creature from a poem or a drawing your kid made that says “I love you” in glitter and paste. Photo by on rawpixel Unsplash There are various levels of balance between “click here/buy now” and “…wiping the tears back from her eyes, he confessed his love at long last…”, but the psychological lock-in of anecdotal affirmation is strong. Curiosity is also strong. What are 3 ways you can save save time, save money, and be more disciplined over the holidays? I’m not sure either, but that sounds like a great article that somebody should write. Photo by on rawpixel Unsplash Then there’s the mysterious “ …” factor. “Shocking new study proves apples aren’t what doctors fear most.” Great for water cooler domination, but little else. Well, according to sources. actually My favorite? Real, nutritious content. No preservatives, no artificial ingredients. Art. Creations that were made because the author cares deeply about the subject. Photo by on Ian Schneider Unsplash I think Technology Evangelism is a great space for real artists to ship good content. Are you a code poet? Do you like writing about technology? Do you look forward to your days off so you can build software projects in multiple languages? Evangelize. Looking for quality, guilt-free content with purpose? Track down an Evangelist and follow them. I don’t mean the kind that want you to send them private jet money for magic faith oil. I mean the kind that respond to “Show me!” with “Ok, check this out.” Photo by on rawpixel Unsplash I think this role-category is a very healthy manifestation of the struggle against the thin veneer of many vaporware sites, products, and services of the dot com era. When a company genuinely cares about the art and science that goes into the technology their customers use, it shows. It “tastes” different than the other brands. Don’t think that it detracts from traditional marketing and sales at all. It actually sets those roles free to be more transparent, more forthright, and more grounded. Content creators stopped making art when we started making money, and then we started making art again. I’d like to see creative, artistic, scientific, and engineering roles established as society embraces this mindset. more Ok, but what’s the solution for artists, creators, and authors in general? Technology Evangelists have found the sweet spot, but what about “the rest of us”? Perhaps if we do the opposite of clickbait, things will balance themselves out? I wrote an article about how we stopped making art when started making money. What happened next will surprise you. Photo by on Andre Guerra Unsplash

How we stopped making art when we started making money

Ocean Protocol by BigchainDB Through millions of years of biological design, humans have developed a resistance to paradigmatic change. It makes sense. Anything which we cannot anticipate or imagine is, by definition, a threat to the of our line. With almost inscrutable consistency, is the cause of our everyday . The uncertainty of being late. The uncertainty of losing money. The uncertainty of getting sick. It’s not the hours lying miserably in bed that we fear (which will almost always resolve itself) but rather the not knowing if or when it will happen. certainty uncertainty stressors But why then do we still send (wo)men to the moon, work with large hadron particle colliders, or conduct any dangerous scientific experiments? “The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that changes so quickly, the only strategy guaranteed to fail is not taking risks” — Mark Zuckerberg Ocean protocol is the genesis of two visionary technologies which harbor as much uncertainty as they do optimism: and . Much like the enormous body of water for which it is named, the is a vast ecosystem deep enough to be fascinated by, but not so deep as to entirely fear. It is the first real innovation which I have heard of that truly intertwines AI and the Blockchain. Many startups have claimed to be separately using both AI and Blockchain technology to build their platforms — but this begs the question: “will you ever hit a home run by swinging with one bat in each hand?” Yes, each bat may increase the odds of making contact, but it takes two hands, seamed together, to really touch all four bases. Artificial Intelligence Blockchain Ocean Protocol The First Risk: AI According to the , championed by , the “life expectancy of non-perishable things (like technology and ideas) is proportional to their current age.” That is, Artificial Intelligence has been around for roughly seventy years, so it should survive for at least another seventy. AI is here to stay, but the applications and its malevolence is what causes apprehension to some folks in the Artificial Intelligence community. Lindy effect Nassim Nicholas Taleb potential At present, there is no irrefutable evidence to convince those who believe in our impending Artificially Intelligent doom. But what if we could prove that the benefits of pursuing this technology far outweigh the detriments? If we could prove that a computer passing the , or achieving , is less corrosive to society than our avoidance of the technology altogether, then research and funding will come pouring in from sides. Turing Test self-awareness both After all, where would we be if horses still cobbled through the streets of New York City? Already, Aritificial Intelligence is responsible for immensely important algorithms which have had society level impacts. Take for example the 2016 US election. Without delving into either side of the political spectrum, it has become common that Facebook’s algorithm played a large part in lassoing certain demographics to vote and not vote for a particular candidate. It did this without intention other than to keep users happy and spending time on the platform. (..A topic for another article). What this influence shows, though, is that our Artificially Intelligent programs are already so deeply embedded into the social fabric of global culture that if man simply turned them off or refused to investigate them, they could spiral into exactly what cynics most fear. knowledge Risk Two: B⃣l⃣o⃣c⃣k⃣c⃣h⃣a⃣i⃣n⃣ Right now, Blockchain and have become trendy topics in the field of entrepreneurship and finance. At its core, Blockchain has enormous potential. It could open up , create an unencumbered channel for sending and receiving , remove our reliance on the financial sector, reinvent some types of , and so much more. (Ex. self-driving Uber/Lyfts which pay their own bills using cryptocurrencies earned from riders. Posed by Andreas Antonopoulos.) Cryptocurrency social scalability remittances engineering PwC Blockchain Analysis Yet, the world is and there are various obstacles standing in the path of the technology. Currently, Blockchain has become inseparable with cryptocurrency, which is under fire from some of the largest and on the planet. Given the scale of its opponents, it’s safe to say, that if Bitcoin is able to thrive, even amid assault from Big Banks and governments, the platform is here to stay (the Lyndi effect would agree). Nevertheless, on the other hand, if these corporations are able to pound Cryptocurrency into the ground, it would be many years before the masses realize that Blockchain and Cryptocurrency could be mutually exclusive. That is, Blockchain could dismantle its bindings to the domain and continue applying itself to others. far less predictable than we often imagine it to be corporations regulators currency Diving into the Ocean The The computers we have in our pockets, backpacks, kiosks, grocery stores, airports — they all run on immense pools of data that have been gathered and looped into various bands of information. The problem with the separation of these collections is that the data available to a facial recognition device in LaGuardia International Airport has no access to photos that have been synched to Facebook. Or the Amazon Go Kiosk being unable to detect that there is an APB out for the man purchasing his groceries. At present moment, there are millions of different data pools lined up next to each other, but they are all divided by rigid barriers. idea behind Ocean Protocol hinges upon the fact that modern society is irrevocably reliant on data. So what if we knock down these walls? This is precisely what Ocean Protocol is hoping to accomplish in building the world’s largest and most efficient Data Marketplace in history. However, the problem with knocking down the walls and creating one fluid body of data is that it would difficult to reconcile owners to their data. With the need for privacy, regulation, and data sharing, that might render this one big data ocean a no-go. There is, however, an alternative which still retains the essence of a Data Marketplace — and it relies on swinging the bat with two hands. According to Trent McConaghy of , in order for this type of marketplace to exist “It needs to be decentralized. It needs to be at scale, not just some shiny toy technology. Private & decentralized at scale is hard. However, that’s exactly what we’ve been working on since 2015: an .” If you were wondering, an Interplanetary database is like Wikipedia, but for everything. BigchainDB IPDB Describing the moment when his company realized they were in a position to turn this fiction into a reality McConaghy elaborates, “First, we have the scalable Blockchain database technology. Second, we have both AI and Blockchain expertise, key for designing data marketplace algorithms. Third, we know the customers’ worlds, both data suppliers (enterprises) and data buyers (AI companies). Finally, we’re going to build relationships with governments and data regulators.” Backing up the claim Unlike some other ambitious startups, BigchainDB is following up on its claims to build relationships with their biggest competitors — regulators. His company has teamed up with the as well as The Data Exchange SG. This willingness to team up with research companies who may have vastly different motivations from his own reflects well upon Mr. McConaghy and should give him and his team a leg up on the inevitable friction that they will face. Toyota Research Institute DEX: There is no predicting how and when Artificial Intelligence and the Blockchain will truly become one entity; however, the logic behind their genesis is strikingly clear. The latter is a wonderful tool for fair marketplace trading. It’s fantastic at , security, and . The former is powerfully efficient and only becoming scarily more so. Individually, these radical technologies have reason for fear, but perhaps then we shouldn’t look at each in isolation. Perhaps we should unify the two as a system of checks and balances. Perhaps Blockchain is the security net we need to rope down Artificial Intelligence and keep it from spiraling out of control. Only time will tell. privacy scalability If there is one thing to be sure of however, it’s that these are uncertain waters. If you found even 1 Ripple of value from this story please “Clap 👏 ” below so others can find it as well.

Surfing the Ocean Protocol on a Blockchain of New Paradigms

Ping Ping Ping That is the sound of my phone alerting me to overnight snowfall at the various Hokkaido ski resorts I monitor. While this sound brings me immense joy in January and February, in March, it brings only FOMO. I decamped from Hokkaido in early March for the past few ski seasons. My recent experience taught me that Mother Nature turns on the heat circa March 1st. I’m a primadonna skier who only likes the driest and deepest pow. However, this season, Gaia changed up big time. There was a brutal warm spell in February that rekt the snow back. The cold weather only returned towards the end of the month. But frigid temperatures came back in March, accompanied by 10 to 30cm dumps of freshie pow pow every night. Hence, the reason why my phone was blowing up. Sitting in various South East Asian hot and humid countries throughout March, I kept foolishly checking the app and ruing my decision to leave the slopes. The April thaw finally occurred in earnest, and with it, the end to my FOMO. As readers know, my ski experiences act as metaphors for my macro and crypto trading book. I previously wrote that the cessation of the US Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) on March 12th would cause a global market rout. The BTFP was cancelled, but a vicious sell-off in crypto specifically did not occur. Bitcoin broke $70,000 decisively and topped out around $74,000. Solana kept pumping alongside various doggie and kitty meme coins. My timing was wrong, but like the ski season, the unexpected favorable March conditions will not be repeated in April. While I love winter, summer brings joy as well. The onset of northern hemispheric summer brings sporting bliss as I reorient time towards playing tennis, surfing, and kiteboarding. Summer will usher in a renewed gusher of fiat liquidity due to the policies of the US Federal Reserve (Fed) and Treasury. I will briefly outline my mental map on how and why April will experience extreme weakness in risky asset markets. For those intrepid enough to short crypto, the macro setup is favorable. While I will not outright short the market, I have closed in profit several shitcoin and memecoin trading positions. From now until May 1st, I will be in a no-trade zone. I hope to return in May with dry powder ready to deploy to position myself for the bull market to begin in earnest. Tricksters The Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) ended a few weeks ago, but no US, non-Too-Big-to-Fail (TBTF) banks have subsequently faced any real stress. That is because high priests of fugazi finance have a bag of tricks they will use to surreptitiously print money in order to bail out the financial system. I will peek behind the curtain and explain how they are expanding the USD fiat money supply, which will underpin the general rise of crypto and stonks until the end of the year. While the end result is always money printing, the journey is not without periods where liquidity growth slows, providing a negative catalyst for risk markets. By going through the bag of tricks and estimating when the rabbit will be pulled from the hat, we can guestimate when there will be periods where the free market is allowed to operate. The Discount Window The Fed and most other central banks operate a facility known as the discount window. Banks and other covered financial institutions who are in need of funds can pledge eligible securities to the Fed in exchange for cash. By and large, the discount window, for now, only accepts US Treasuries (UST) and mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Assume that a bank is fucked because a bunch of Pierce & Pierce boomer muppets runs it. The bank holds a UST that was worth $100 when purchased but is currently worth $80. The bank is in need of cash to satisfy deposit outflows. Rather than declaring bankruptcy, the dogshit insolvent bank can tap the discount window. The bank swaps the $80 UST for $80 of dolla dolla bills because under the current rules the bank receives the market value of pledged securities. To deprecate the BTFP and remove the associated negative stigma without increasing the risk of bank failures, the Fed and US Treasury now encourage troubled banks to tap the discount window instead. However, under the current collateral terms, the discount window is not as attractive as the recently expired BTFP. Let’s go back to our example above to understand why. Remember that the UST’s value declined from $100 to $80, which means the bank has an unrealized loss of $20. Initially the $100 of UST was funded with $100 of deposits. But now the UST is worth $80; therefore, the bank would be short $20 if all the depositors fled. Under the BTFP rules, the bank receives par for underwater USTs. That means a UST worth $80, when delivered to the Fed, is swapped for $100 of cash. This restores the solvency of the bank. But the discount window only gives $80 for a UST worth $80. The $20 loss is still there, and the bank remains insolvent. Given that the Fed can unilaterally change the collateral rules to equalize the treatment of assets by the BTFP and discount window, by greenlighting the use of the discount window by the insolvent banking system, the Fed continued the stealth banking bailout. Therefore, the Fed has essentially solved the BTFP problem; the entire UST and MBS balance sheet of the insolvent US banking system (I estimate at $4 trillion) will be supported when needed by money printed to finance loans through the discount window. This is why I believe the markets haven’t forced any non-TBTF banks into bankruptcy post-March 12th, when the BTFP ended. Bank Capital Requirements Banks are often called upon to finance governments who offer bonds at yields less than nominal GDP. But why would private for-profit entities buy something that features a negative real yield? They do it because the banking regulators allow banks to purchase government bonds with little to no money down. When the banks, who hold an insufficient capital cushion against their government bond portfolio, inevitably blow up because inflation appears and bond prices fall as yields rise, the Fed allows them to use the discount window in the manner described above. As a result, banks would rather buy and hold government bonds than lend to businesses and individuals in need of capital. When you or I buy anything using borrowed money, we must pledge collateral or equity against potential losses. That is prudent risk management. But the rules are different if you are a vampire squid zombie bank. After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the world’s banking regulators attempted to force banks globally to hold more capital, thus creating a more robust and resilient global banking system. The system of rules that codified these changes are called Basel III. The problem with Basel III is that government bonds are not treated as riskless. Banks must put a small amount of capital behind their gargantuan portfolio of sovereign bonds. These capital requirements have proven problematic during times of stress. During the COVID March 2020 market crash, the Fed decreed that banks could hold USTs with no collateral backing. This allowed banks to step in and warehouse trillions of dollars worth of USTs in a riskless fashion … at least in terms of their accounting treatment. When the crisis abated, the supplemental leverage ratio (SLR) exemption for USTs was reinstated. Predictably, as UST prices fell due to inflation, banks went bust due to an insufficient capital cushion. The Fed rode to the rescue with the BTFP and now the discount window, but that only covers losses from the last crisis. How can banks step up and slurp down more bonds at the current unattractively high prices? The US banking system loudly proclaimed in November 2023 that due to Basel III forcing them to hold more capital against their government bond portfolios, Bad Gurl Yellen could not stuff them with more bonds. Therefore, something had to give because the US government has no other natural buyers of its debt at these negative real yields. Below is the polite way the banks phrased their precarious situation. Demand for US Treasuries may have softened among several traditional buyers. Bank security portfolio assets have been declining since last year, with bank holdings of Treasuries down $154 billion compared to one year ago. Source: Report to the Secretary of the Treasury from the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee Again, the Fed – led by Powell – saved the day. Out of nowhere, at a recent , Powell proclaimed that banks would not be subject to higher capital requirements. Remember that many politicians called for banks to hold more capital so that the regional banking crisis of 2023 would not repeat itself. Obviously, the banks lobbied hard to nullify these higher capital requirements. They had a good argument –  if you, Bad Gurl Yellen, want us to buy dogshit government bonds, then we can only do it profitably with infinite leverage. Banks around the world run every flavour of government; the US is no different. US Senate Banking hearing The icing on the cake was a recent letter from the International Swaps Dealer Association (ISDA) advocating for an exemption of USTs from the SLR I spoke about earlier. In essence, banks can only hold USTs in the trillions of dollars needed to finance the US government deficit on a go-forward basis if they are required to put no money down. I expect as the US Treasury ramps up debt issuance, the ISDA proposal will be accepted. This excellent chart from clearly shows how wasteful the US Government is, as evidenced by the record-high deficit. The two recent periods where deficit spending was higher were due to the 2008 GFC and the boomer-led COVID lockdowns. The US economy is growing, but the government is spending money like it's an economic depression. Bianco Research Taken together, the relaxation of capital requirements and a likely future exemption of USTs from the SLR are a covert way of money printing. The Fed doesn’t print the money, rather the banking system creates the credit money out of thin air and purchases the bonds which then appear on their balance sheet. As always, the goal is to ensure that government bond yields do not rise to a level above the nominal GDP growth rate. As long as real rates remain negative, stonks, crypto, gold, etc., will continue advancing in fiat currency terms. Bad Gurl Yellen My essay “ ” spoke in depth about how the US Treasury, led by Bad Gurl Yellen, increased the issuance of short-term Treasury bills (T-bills) in an effort to drain the trillions of dollars locked in the Fed’s Reverse Repo Program (RRP). As expected, the RRP decline coincided with a rip higher in stonks, bonds, and crypto. But now that the RRP is down to $400 billion, the market is wondering what the next source of fiat liquidity will be that bolsters asset prices. Don’t you worry, Yellen ain’t done yet, shout ‘bout to booty drop. Bad Gurl RRP Balance (white) vs. Bitcoin (yellow) The flow of fiat funds I will discuss focuses on US tax payments, the Fed’s Quantitative Tightening (QT) program, and the Treasury General Account (TGA). The timeline in question is from April 15th (the day tax payments are due for the 2023 tax year) to May 1st. Let me provide a quick guide on their positive or negative impact on liquidity to help you understand the implications of these three things. remove liquidity from the system. That is because payers must remove cash from the financial system by selling securities for example, in order to pay their taxes. Analysts expect tax payments for the 2023 tax year to be on the high side because of the large amounts of interest income received and a solid performance in the stock market. Tax Payments removes liquidity from the system. As of March 2022, the Fed allows roughly $95 billion worth of UST and MBS to mature without reinvesting the proceeds. This causes the Fed’s balance sheet to fall, which we all know reduces dollar liquidity. However, we are not concerned about the absolute level of the Fed’s balance sheet but the pace at which it declines. Analysts, like Joe Kalish of Ned Davis Research, expect the Fed to reduce the pace of QT by $30 billion per month at its May 1st meeting. The reduction in the pace of QT is positive for dollar liquidity as the Fed’s balance sheet rate of decline slows. QT When the balance rises, it removes liquidity from the system, but when it falls, it adds liquidity to the system. When the Treasury receives tax payments, the TGA balance rises. I expect the TGA balance to swell well above the current ~$750 billion level as tax payments are processed on April 15th. This is dollar liquidity negative. Don’t forget it's an election year. Yellen’s job is to get her boss, US President , reelected. That means she must do all she can to juice the stock market to make voters feel rich and ascribe this great outcome to the slow “genius” of Bidenomics. When the RRP balances finally go to zero, Yellen will spend down the TGA, releasing, most likely, an additional $1 trillion of liquidity into the system, which will pump markets. TGA Jeo Boden The precarious period for risky assets is April 15th to May 1st. This is when tax payments remove liquidity from the system, QT rumbles on at the current elevated pace, and Yellen has yet to start running down the TGA. After May 1st, the pace of QT declines, and Yellen gets busy cashing checks to jack up asset prices. If you are a trader looking for an opportune time to put on a cheeky short position, the month of April is the perfect time to do so. After May 1st, it’s back to regular programming … asset inflation sponsored by Fed and US Treasury financial shenanigans. Bitcoin Halving The Bitcoin block reward is forecast to halve on April 20th. This is seen as a bullish catalyst for crypto markets. I agree that it will pump prices in the medium term; however, the price action directly before and after could be negative. The narrative of the halving being positive for crypto prices is well entrenched. When most market participants agree on a certain outcome, the opposite usually occurs. That is why I believe Bitcoin and crypto prices in general will slump around the halving. Given that the halving occurs at a time when dollar liquidity is tighter than usual, it will add propellant to a raging firesale of crypto assets. The timing of the halving adds further weight to my decision to abstain from trading until May. To date I took full profit on these positions, MEW, SOL, and NMT. The proceeds were placed into and staked to earn that phat yield. Before Ethena, I would have held USDT or USDC and earned nothing while Tether and Circle captured the entire T-bill yield. Ethena’s USDe Could the market defy my bearish inclinations and continue higher? Fuck yeah. I’m perennially long as fuck crypto, so I welcome being wrong. Do I really want to babysit my most speculative shitcoin positions while I’m two-stepping at Token2049 Dubai? Hell no. Therefore, I dump. There is no need to be upset. If the dollar liquidity scenarios I discussed above come true, I will have that much more confidence to ape into all manner of dogshit. If I miss a few percentage points of gains but definitely avoid losses for my portfolio and lifestyle, that is an acceptable outcome. With that, I bid you adieu. Please remember to put your dancing shoes on, and I will see you in Dubai for a celebration of the crypto bull market.

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