tsuki

This is a manipulation of demand, not of supply. When demand rises and supply stays the same, then price rises to accommodate for it. The difference between digital and physical currencies is that in times of high demand, the centralized institution could change supply of the coin to manipulate the price from the other end. For example, the US government could print money when the demand is high so that the price of $ stays the same. There is no such thing in decentralized currencies, which opens them up to speculation that we experience right now, but it also makes it more predictable. The problem with fiat money is that there is a big difference in inertia between how governments are able to influence money and how the users of it do. When I cover my expenses in PLN, I can't switch to USD when my government is destroying the economy. Nobody will accept USD as a payment method here, it's illegal. On the other hand, the government can print its money however it pleases to cover up their mistakes, effectively stealing from me by making the currency hold less value. This is not going to happen with cryptocurrencies, there is no centralized agency that issues the coins. It has its ups and downs, but it is a much better store of value if you accommodate for short-term volatility.

I've been pondering value, money and investing for the past few days and trying to integrate with my current self-understanding. To me, value is what the mind does when it decides that something is beneficial for a chosen purpose, which is survival most of the time. In other words, it's a belief. Now, money is something we use to represent value. If I satisfy the needs of one person, I will receive a representation of the value that they believe my service has provided to them. I can then use that money to receive service from someone else. The fact that money exists has several pros. Firstly, it gives me the ability to decouple the services that I provide from the services that I receive. Secondly, money is divisible, so that I can provide a very valuable service to one actor, and receive service from many other actors. The other benefit is that I can de-couple the provided services in time. I can provide a service one day and receive it in another. This is how money, in of itself, is valuable. The issue for me is that I get lost within money. I mean, I tend to value money itself more than the things that I can do with it. I use that to feel pride. The rationalization that i always come up with is that I'm "prepared" for the future, in case unforeseen difficulties arise. This rationalization is superficial, no unforeseen consequences have ever come up. The existence of the need for pride is rooted in how I was raised. My father would hoard his money and spend it however he wanted, and he convinced us that we don't need it. When I started to make my own money I would unconsciously pick up on it and follow his footsteps. While he did it for his own reasons, I would hoard money so that I can feel proud of myself, fulfilling my father's expectations. The stories about why I want money became quite elaborate to be honest. I would imagine investing, or starting a retirement fund, etc. These are all valid reasons, but they require actually doing something with money, and I don't. The truth is that I'm afraid of spending money, of losing it. When I have to use it, I don't feel good that I was prepared at all. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, I want to save up, but I'm not glad that I do so, but rather - I think that I should have saved up even more. All of it is very unsatisfactory, so I decided to get rid of my personal savings in favor of shared ones and see how it's like to be free. I'm writing this because my pride started to act funky recently. For example, I would push myself to learn how to use flint and steel and start a fire in snowy conditions. I would use that to feel proud and "prepared" and turned my interest in bushcraft into a pride funnel. This weekend, I will go to the forest and start a fire with a lighter, and will take some paper with me. I want to have fun rather than be prepared. The weekend will be cold, -5:-10 during the day, and up to -15 during the night, so no sleeping outdoors this weekend. It will be a good test for the clothes that I bought.

@datamonster I thought about it for some time and the only way I can think of are the Satoshi-era wallets that hold BTC. These coins are effectively out of the market and if they ever moved, the price would be affected. Still, this does not affect the security of BTC on the protocol level.

Should have prepared that lemon water beforehand

There is no such thing as "value" that exists outside of social consensus that is quantified in USD on a day-to-day basis by traders. Something is valuable because your mind decides that it is useful. It is a belief and it's entirely relative. There is no "true" value of anything. This is factually wrong. Bitcoin supply is decided by the protocol implemented in client software. To manipulate supply, you would have to force all users to download new software with updated protocol. This would create a hard fork, which would potentially create two versions of bitcoin. Something similar happened in the early days of ETH. Bitcoin is volatile because people's beliefs about its usability are unstable. If you think of value of crypto money in terms of fiat money, as in: BTC is worth X USD, then you are wrong. If BTC was widely adopted and you could perform transactions in it as easily as in USD, then USD/BTC rate would be meaningless. This is interesting. I see where you are coming from. So, you are basically saying that the very fact that some people can amass money and live without providing value is wage slavery? This is very interesting, thank you for this thought. Does the same line of reasoning extend to retirement, for example?

Delivery arrived! Pretty content with how it turned out tbh. The gear is set and ready, just a few general appliances left and I'm ready for the weekend. I was pretty surprised that the poncho liner didn't come with an opening for the head because I can't figure it out how to wear it?

The only thing that is low or high conscious is you. It is up to you to use technology or knowledge as a tool for good or evil.

Innocence.

Basically, when someone puts a buy order, they are saying that this stock is worth to them $X. If someone sells them that stock, then they say that they value $X over it. There is no "generation" of value in the exchange of the stock. You get cash for an item. If the buyer is right that the item will be more desirable in the future, then he will make money. If he is wrong about the future desirability, then he just gave his money to the seller. The "desirability" is not totally decided by the buyers and sellers. They base their estimations upon publicly available information and interpret it. For example, if the stock is the share of a company, then they inspect how the company is run and what plans they have for the future and general outlook of the economy. Since the information is publicly available, the buyer is competing with the seller for better predictions. This is the "creative work" that @Leo Gura denies. As for the "value" that trading provides for the society at large, they decide upon the current price of an item that is comparable to other prices expressed in the same currency. They give a crowdsourced context, a semi-objective, consensus-based, quantifiable description of the economy on the day-to-day basis. Thanks to traders, we can compare how companies fare on large timescales. For example, by comparing the exchange rates of fiat money, you can draw conclusions on how economies of countries fare, or how economies compare to each other. Today's price of BTC i $34011,10 and ETH is $1065.06. It means that BTC is 30 times more desirable than ETH with respect to USD. If I were to invest, I'd say that this is severely skewed and that ETH is much more valuable than BTC simply because of the the technology and possibilities it provides. Saying that all trading is evil and valueless is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Happy and lasting relationships are built by resolving the apparent discrepancy between the two options you have identified. They both are important and relationships cannot be satisfying unless they are satisfied. There is no "caring for the significant other" besides recognizing what they truly want and consciously deciding to provide it for them. Genuine love between partners come from the openness to experience the other person without inhibiting their expression and helping them to thrive. There is no thriving in any sense other than satisfying physical existence that places certain limitations, wants and needs upon our environment. There are varying depth to "caring for the other", as we are all limited by our self-understanding. You cannot recognize the needs of others that you are not able to recognize within yourself first. The deeper you are able to connect with yourself, the better you can understand, and provide for the other. It begins with purely material needs, such as food, water, shelter, and proceeds towards more subtle ones, such as company, support, and higher to self-discovery and self-transcendence. It touches sex, emotions, money and all the various areas of life that you come in contact with.

I've been there. There are things constructed by the ego that fall away during awakenings, and there is you that is spontaneous and ingenious. What you had is the awakening of the mind, but there is also the awakening of the heart and the awakening of the body. Keep chipping away at it. There is a real you underneath all of the deception that is not merely a conditioned mental construct. The true purpose of the mind is to learn from that real you and express it via language. The trick is that your true nature cannot be fully grasped and "known" like the untamed mind would like it to have. This is how the ego is being constructed moment-to-moment, by confusing conceptual self with the real self. Feelings are the key to finding yourself. Good luck!

I didn't realize how much I relied on my therapist as a backdrop for my confidence. Now that I'm alone in this, I feel that on one end, my world has expanded dramatically, and on the other end, there is no authority to validate my actions. Not that my therapist did this, but I felt that she was the adult that I could come to for support and now I feel like I'm alone in this. It's both scary and freeing. Still settling into this predicament.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_finance Where are you getting these ideas from? Ludicrous! There is virtually no chance for anyone who is not "doing any actual creative work" to turn $1000 into $1,000,000 via trading. This statement is ludicrous precisely because there is no increase in the amount of money within trading exchanges. Your $1,000,000 is coming from other traders that put it in there. If it required no creative work, why would some win over the other? There are people who design modeling software that automatically trades stocks and models prices via big data analysis. These are the major players in the financial world that are at the top. How is that not creative work? The effect of running such software is that it becomes progressively more difficult to model price movements, but I'm not exactly sure how valuable is that. I am not denying that this is a tank full of sharks, but if you think that you are a shark, then by all means, go ahead. You are mistaking traders with salespeople that pitch stocks to laymen and lie to them that this is free money with no risk. Excuse me if this is too personal, but did your father perhaps lose a lot of money on stocks? I remember you saying that he was losing a lot of money on get-rich-quick schemes.

If you're trying to woo me, then it isn't working. I don't have this figured out, so why don't you share your understanding of what value is? I think that value is how the mind communicates that something is beneficial for some purpose, mostly survival. Traders back their beliefs about assets with money and create markets with prices. Prices reflect the demand for these assets and quantify current beliefs about them. The more something is believed to be beneficial, the more people want their share of it. I'm not entirely clear on the goal of this game to be honest. It is definitely about being ahead of the curve with respect to prediction of prices. Their job is to sell just before everyone else does, so they are incentivised to reveal their information at the correct moment, not too early and not too late. It's even more complicated with currency exchanges because there is no underlying currency in which value is expressed. It's an exchange of money for money and my brain does not work this way very well. I'm not a trader. Obviously, money flows from traders that predict badly to ones that predict well. Is this why you are calling it parasitic? Because bad traders are people that have no idea how this works? Or is it because exchanges don't interact with the outside world other than providing rates?

@LfcCharlie4 The bubble that is happening right now is a response to corona-related panic and Trump's irresponsible governance. People don't care about printing money nearly as much as they perhaps should, so it is not likely to me that crypto will remain popular when things settle down. I am aware of its value on its own and I acknowledge that it has the potential to replace fiat money. It is still in very early stages though. When Bitcoin transaction fees rise, it's like $50 for sending any amount of btc. The technology is not nearly as scalable as it should be for widespread adoption. Not to mention that transactions need multiple confirmations before they can be considered safe, and it takes unreasonable amount of time. Remember that most fiat transactions are probably in grocery stores. Ethereum has some good ideas regarding scalability, and there are new algorithms for cryptographic security that decouple transactions from block creation rate, like proof of history for example. These innovative cryptos however, have no market value because they are too new and under development. I'm guessing that it will take at least 20 years before these problems will be solved. In the meantime, we have the rise of quantum computing that will make cryptography as we know it today, obsolete. I didn't even mention the possibility of national centralization of proof-of-work cryptos, such as Bitcoin for example. As far as I know, big mining operations are held in China, and I can see the potential that their government would confiscate the farms, making the currency Chinese property if it became too popular. Proof-of-stake algorithms seem more robust in this area, but the transition is just starting to happen with Ethereum 2.0 switching over.

Traders provide value by prediction. By investing money in a business, you are predicting that this business will fare well in the future. Very few people can do this well and this information is valuable. The same idea is applicable to (crypto)currencies. By buying bitcoin, you are predicting that it will be more useful than fiat money in the future. The distinction between genuine trading, get-rich-quick schemes and gambling is based upon the quality of prediction. If you have access to good quality sources, understand cryptocurrency technology, understand financial markets, then you have a shot on predicting this well and making money consistently. If you base your knowledge on crypto digests, then you are basically speculating. If you don't read anything, go by the gut feeling and are lured in by the headlines, then you are gambling. The problem with cryptocurrencies is adoption. As it stands right now, besides Ethereum, it has very little use outside of store of value. It will not replace fiat money anytime soon, so I think that it is not a good investment. At the very least, not during the corona bubble we're having right now.

The smell has been bugging me a lot for the last two days, to the point that I even feel disgust at work. After pondering this for a while, I figured that it probably is a covid side-effect. I already have felt burning in my nostrils when the air is too dry. Still waiting for the next delivery. I hope that it will be better.

I'm sure that you already researched the generic pointers, so you will need to provide us with a specific context so that we can give you specific pointers.

Then tell me, explicitly, what do you value in other people? Why is it that the things they value is not enough for you? Why do you think that the lack of ambition needs justification, or rationalization? As if people were valuable externally, only through what they accomplish in the world. This is entirely relative to you. Exactly! They see no problems with it! Why on earth would you trouble yourself with their problems that they don't even recognize? Why would you assume the responsibility over other people's lives? Why would you want to help people out of the self-created problems? This makes no sense! This is all you, your thinking! I think that you are severely underestimating other people's capacity to take care of themselves, or think for themselves. I think that people are simply much more trusting because they haven't experienced what you did. Are you comfortable with death? There is nothing in the world that you can do to prolong your separate existence in any form. Any project, or improvement of the world that you may want to undertake, will be gone. 10 years after you're gone, 100 years, 10000 years, doesn't matter. You will be a vehicle of change, but it will never be personal. Everyone you have ever loved will be gone at some point. Humans will either go extinct, or evolve into something you will not even be able to recognize given enough time. Any control we have over this world is a complete illusion. Everything, every single thing, is on fire, by design. Isn't it obvious that trying to preserve the world has to be grounded in fear? We are all afraid and work frantically on being alive and it's absurd when you look at it closely. There is no love in it, the only reasonable thing we can do is to witness the world, moment by moment. Not even remember the witnessing, as we're not able to take the memories with us. Just experience it. This is it. Bringing up projections in a discussion is a very fine line. I feel like you are trying to dismiss what I said. I was being serious with Trump, NPD coming from childhood abuse is real and I strongly believe that he is a narcissist. There are no evil people. All behaviors are reasonable from within the paradigm they exist. Even though we seem to have opposite worldviews, I want to understand yours. It is incomprehensible to me. It does not compute. I've been there and I moved on, but I don't want to commit to pre/post fallacy and I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt. When you neglect yourself, are not in touch with your true desires, it is not possible to help anybody. Feelings are the only reliable way of telling what you want and need. If you can't listen to them, then any idea that comes to your mind is not grounded in reality. I am very distrustful of Elon precisely because of that. It is painfully obvious to me that he does not feel himself. I see him as a funny puppet and a comedian that has a lot of money to toy with. Brilliant mind and business intuition? Sure, not denying that, but his preoccupation with "saving" the world is ridiculous. As if the world was meant to last! Ha! As if progress could liberate us! As if we could escape! Ludicrous! Just look at his face, he's not there!

Nothingness is usually experienced as fear, as the mind mistakes death for something real. If you keep being conscious as you fear, what the fear is in reality, it is just the experience of being rapidly aware of something. It appears as there is nothing there, but if you keep at it, you will understand what that "thing" is. In the many "nothings" that I've experienced, none of them were experienced as a loss after I died. On the contrary, all it requires is to give up beliefs about the world and see for yourself what really is true.

I think that reading Epictetus would do you some good. Even though he was literally a slave, he was an extraordinarily free person. What you are speaking of is not freedom, but power. Power is active in that it allows you to re-arrange things so that they don't bother you. It can be external in the sense that you can re-arrange your circumstances so that they are in conformity with your beliefs. It can also be internal in the sense that you can re-arrange your beliefs so that external circumstances don't bother you. Power requires effort, work. Freedom on the other hand is the understanding of how circumstances and beliefs correspond to each other in the first place. In seeing that, there is no need to struggle, as everything is already as it should be, and as you always wanted. Contrary to how it may seem, power and freedom are not mutually exclusive. The difference is that power is limited, while freedom is not. Do you hate yourself for having to work a job? At the very least, it sounds lonely because there are practically no people that are free to do whatever they please with their time. Not to mention that power has a way of corrupting people and I'm not entirely sure that the ones at the top are also the ones that are worth hanging out with. Remaining true to ones' self while being powerful requires extraordinary wisdom that is a greater treasure than any amount of power. If one had the wisdom in the first place, I doubt that they would seek power. Do you have a personal relationship with these ideas, or are they "just" ideas? I realize now that I'm trying to understand your drive because I never got the idea of dreaming big. I mean, I had some dreams, like becoming a scientist, but they mostly turned out to be implanted by my parents, or formed in opposition to them. My wife would get very upset when I inquire for the reason of her dreams and she has some, albeit much more modest than yours. When I think about it, I do have a dream of being wise, of living a good, happy, fulfilling life. My journey has shown me that this does not come from external accomplishments, but by being and expressing myself right now, in my current circumstances. Not 5 years ago, or in 10 years from now. Seizing opportunities in everyday interactions, in whatever opportunity that presents itself. I believe that this is all we get, regardless of the amount of power we have. How would I know how to express myself with billion dollars if I can't express myself with the amount that I have right now? I don't get it. Why won't you simply work for someone that does things you want to help with? Does it rub you the wrong way when someone gives you tasks to perform? How different is it from getting tasks from your clients? If you're concerned with being unable to refuse, then perhaps become a contractor, or just stand by your integrity? I have no problem discussing tasks that are silly and expose their silliness to the team that I work with. Are you genuinely sorry, or just being cheeky? If you are truly sorry for not fitting into the stereotype, then it would indeed imply that you want to be loved, given what you said about the conflicts that you have with your parents. They are stereotyping you, but I'm not your parents. The fault that I may be committing here is that I am not really talking to you, but to myself. I was this achiever that wanted acceptance and once I learned to accept myself, I do not need to achieve anymore. I may be projecting things unto you, but I feel deep sympathy for you and I wish you the best. I know that I would fight the "achiever" stereotype relentlessly in the past if someone presented it to me explicitly. Mostly because I did not recognize my perfectionism for what it was, even though I read every book about it. The past me would either feel angry, devastated, or scared after reading this paragraph. Would doubt myself for some time too. This is why I'm holding back a little in this conversation, I don't want to hurt you given what you went through recently. And what if all evil in this world is done by people that want to do good for others without first realizing how to do good for themselves? By people so starved of love that they would do anything to get it and that justify horrible acts of cruelty so that others recognize them? Do you honestly think that Trump is openly selfish in this own mind? What if humans are incapable of selflessness unless they are properly selfish first? (These were rhetorical questions). Trump, for example, was abused by his father so that he would become a vessel of his fathers' legacy. I know how outrageous claims about childhood trauma are to self-governing people, but they are, in my experience, much more common than it is expected. Emotions really rule us, and our minds are but tools for justifying them. I know how ridiculous my justifications were, when I was dead-set on "helping" my wife out of "her" problems. Perhaps I'm committing to the same mistake in this conversation? Paradoxically, freedom lies in realizing the true relationship with the mind and the heart. It is better to be a vulnerable child that is lost in the world, than to pretend to be invincible. Yes, do go on. I would like to hear whether there is any value in your mind to the 99% of humanity that do not follow your ideals. Because if you can't find any reason, sympathy, or understanding for the behavior of most men, then that is the very definition of loneliness. One could even say that you look down on most people that are not in the top 1%. It would very much coincide with your self-criticism, as you are merely a "wage slave" like the rest of us. You are wrongly assuming that because I do not advocate for orienting one's life around seeking money, I am for seeking poverty. There is no nobility in poverty and no nobility in wealth. Money is a leverage for power, an ability to put little effort into having big effect. The question is whether the effect we want is really the one that is needed and beneficial. The other question is whether you really, truly, want to be entangled with the problems of the whole world by becoming humanity's savior. I wouldn't expect it to help you with your nicotine addiction. As much as we need people that care for the bees, I find it quite improbable that there are many that truly, genuinely, care about them. It is much more common to care for your intimate company, and excuse my directness, you don't seem to have any. So who are you doing this for, exactly? I doubt it's the 99% of people you look down on, or the abstract ideal of the humanity itself. True love is not abstract, it is concrete and grounded. I guess, "If I can't handle you at your worst, I don't deserve you at your best" . No offense taken.

I am moving away from the idea of personal development for the sake of, perhaps, personal discovery. I do not intend to change the way in which I work through effort, but rather to understand myself better, to have a more detailed picture of myself. Sort of a way to allow myself to be myself fully. This sometimes leads to insights that transform me deeply by freeing me from falsehood, but the change is not the goal. I have no image of "me" that I ought to be and I aim to become. I'm hopelessly and totally lost within myself. Thankfully!

I think that your definition of freedom is at fault here. It is not possible to be free to do things. We can only be free from things that bother us, but not "externally free" in the sense of disposing of them, but internally free, as in: it does not bother us. What you seem to want is the power to do whatever you please with no consequences. This sounds very lonely, my friend. Do you mind sharing what you actually want to do, other than playing instruments, meditating and traveling? Neither of these activities have well-defined "finish conditions" that seem to bother you. It is not like you can "finish" meditation project, or be "the" musician, the finished product. They do not seem to need loads of money to do. I have a suspicion that you actually want to be "better" by perfecting yourself. Don't get me wrong, not better than someone else, but being perfect, in a sense. The "finished" project of a person. This is a fantasy that will move the goalpost every time you approach it. To me, it seems like you really want to be loved and accepted, personally, for who you are.

Do you dream of being wealthy, or is it a stepping stone for what you actually want to do in life? I know that this is a matter of definition, but it really does not seem to me that you are dreaming of something. It seems like you are being propelled forward by the discomfort of your current situation. While it does indeed facilitate change, I can see how that can create a lot of stress that you may want to numb down by smoking. I can also see how that can make you harsh on yourself. This may be a strange question, but why do you hate being poor, specifically? Is it a constraint on your expression, or is it about external appearance, like status? I think that you may be confusing God with your inner critic. God is already expressing itself as freely as your physical constraints allow.

I had a difficult Sunday and I could not put to words why. I was pretty upset for some reason and didn't go to the forest today. I gave a nice scrub to the backpack cover and dried it out on the balcony to get rid of the smell. I think that I cleaned every nook of it by now and I decided to go for the detachable pockets that came with it. For the whole day, I was upset about the gear and I did not know why exactly. I want this gear, and yet, there is something wrong with it. A holder came with the backpack and pockets and it was the most upsetting thing in the whole package. It was supposed to hold the detachable pockets together so they would form a mini, 20 liter backpack when combined. The most devastating thing about it was that there were patches of nylon in all of these items where soldiers would write their names to identify their equipment. In this holder, however, someone sprayed it black. When I talked with my wife about the today's stress, I finally got it. Nobody has ever loved these items before. Ever since I understood this, I feel better. I tend to underestimate my sensitivity sometimes. Anyways, I ripped the sprayed patch off and my wife will help me sew a new one on. These items will be happy. I want to restore them so that they will serve me well. I managed to sharpen the axe yesterday. It took some time because it was so dull that the wetstone didn't work too well. I learned that axes can be sharpened by filing. I did finish it with the wetstone though. Decided to not kick my ass over not going to the forest today. I feel that I should go because I invested money into the gear and I don't want to be ridiculed for it. Of course, it's all in my head so I simply stopped forcing myself. My muscles are still sore from yesterday's tramp and I don't want to push myself too hard from the start. This is supposed to be pleasant, after all.