A lot of your thinking around intelligence can be translated into how you think about capital as well. Particularly your frame of mind around access and power.
As you build up your capital, you could ask yourself the question: do I want to build capital in equity or cash that I don't truly own? Who can restrict access to my capital?
To hedge that risk, you would want to own a piece of scarce, open source, digital capital which you can fully control and own, and that would be Bitcoin.
Take the same math you did about the RAM and storage necessary to preserve your access to intelligence forever, and apply it to capital. With 4 to 8Gb of RAM and 2Tb of storage, you can run a full node, hold your keys and have complete sovereign, uncensorable access to your capital.
> "do I want to build capital in equity or cash that I don't truly own? Who can restrict access to my capital?"
This is a great point that haunts me every month when I review my portfolio. I lean towards equity, but is not clear what type of equities can protect your net worth with the uncertainty ahead.
But I agree that BTC is also a good hedge/insurance. As I mention in last week's post, it may not be necessarily a good investment, but like local hardware, it can become an insurance for times of uncertainty.
> is not clear what type of equities can protect your net worth with the uncertainty ahead.
You ideally want something that both:
- preserves its value and,
- preserves your access to that value
Equities might preserve your value "better"*, while Bitcoin preserves your access to value better (no counter-party risk). While Bitcoin might still suffer from contagion in a catastrophic scenario (and drop in value), owning it directly completely takes out the risk of paper claims, confiscation, etc.
* I put better in quotations here as it is a proxy for "less volatility" in most people's mind.
I think you're saying that as well, but I just wanted to clarify my thoughts there.
Bitcoin is deceptive in that it is often framed as an asset/investment, when I believe it is much closer to a new form of sovereign money (going through volatile phases of adoption).
Here I'd link back to your post:
> it helps to stop reading this as a technology story and start reading it as a power one
With Bitcoin it helps to look at it beyond investment, and more as money you fully control. Then it shifts from an insurance policy, to an asset you want to store most of your capital in, within the limits of the volatility you can stomach. Interestingly, you can reach a similar conclusion with a risk-return analysis (as an investment).
I recommend Stephen Perrenod's substack on the topic, he brings his astrophysics background to analyse Bitcoin under the lens of a growing network, and you might find interesting novel perspectives shared in it: https://stephenperrenod.substack.com
In any case, the silver lining is that we live in times where power levers like intelligence and money are both centralising and commoditising, and each individual has a choice between choosing sovereignty or choosing serfdom!
Good post.
A lot of your thinking around intelligence can be translated into how you think about capital as well. Particularly your frame of mind around access and power.
As you build up your capital, you could ask yourself the question: do I want to build capital in equity or cash that I don't truly own? Who can restrict access to my capital?
To hedge that risk, you would want to own a piece of scarce, open source, digital capital which you can fully control and own, and that would be Bitcoin.
Take the same math you did about the RAM and storage necessary to preserve your access to intelligence forever, and apply it to capital. With 4 to 8Gb of RAM and 2Tb of storage, you can run a full node, hold your keys and have complete sovereign, uncensorable access to your capital.
> "do I want to build capital in equity or cash that I don't truly own? Who can restrict access to my capital?"
This is a great point that haunts me every month when I review my portfolio. I lean towards equity, but is not clear what type of equities can protect your net worth with the uncertainty ahead.
But I agree that BTC is also a good hedge/insurance. As I mention in last week's post, it may not be necessarily a good investment, but like local hardware, it can become an insurance for times of uncertainty.
> is not clear what type of equities can protect your net worth with the uncertainty ahead.
You ideally want something that both:
- preserves its value and,
- preserves your access to that value
Equities might preserve your value "better"*, while Bitcoin preserves your access to value better (no counter-party risk). While Bitcoin might still suffer from contagion in a catastrophic scenario (and drop in value), owning it directly completely takes out the risk of paper claims, confiscation, etc.
* I put better in quotations here as it is a proxy for "less volatility" in most people's mind.
I think you're saying that as well, but I just wanted to clarify my thoughts there.
Bitcoin is deceptive in that it is often framed as an asset/investment, when I believe it is much closer to a new form of sovereign money (going through volatile phases of adoption).
Here I'd link back to your post:
> it helps to stop reading this as a technology story and start reading it as a power one
With Bitcoin it helps to look at it beyond investment, and more as money you fully control. Then it shifts from an insurance policy, to an asset you want to store most of your capital in, within the limits of the volatility you can stomach. Interestingly, you can reach a similar conclusion with a risk-return analysis (as an investment).
I recommend Stephen Perrenod's substack on the topic, he brings his astrophysics background to analyse Bitcoin under the lens of a growing network, and you might find interesting novel perspectives shared in it: https://stephenperrenod.substack.com
In any case, the silver lining is that we live in times where power levers like intelligence and money are both centralising and commoditising, and each individual has a choice between choosing sovereignty or choosing serfdom!