brute journal

[dagiffy]

brute has 3x yearly expenses saved

Brute is the greatest thing that ever lived. I'd love to own that factoid for myself.

[dagiffy]

3.9 years of expenses

Even better...you are young and strong and you're running against the wind.

[BRUTE]

definitely strong

[Kriegsspiel]

I saw they had a profile on you recently.

https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/bitcoin-carnivores.html

[slowtraveler]

Brute makes good progress. Soon Brute be 30x.

[dagiffy]

Brute makes good progress. Soon Brute be 30x.

Your strategies are devastatingly effective. Truly the following poem is about your glorious march to FI:

And I wait for the men who will win me -- and I will not be won in a day;
And I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild,
But by men with the hearts of vikings, and the simple faith of a child;
Desperate, strong and resistless, unthrottled by fear or defeat,
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat.

--Robert Service

[BRUTE]

4.7 years of expenses

[singvestor]

Fast progress! How high are your yearly expenses?

[BRUTE]

very high

[FBeyer]

And you still made half a year's expenses in one month? Giggolo side-hustle?

[BRUTE]

bitcoin up 60% in one month

[slowtraveler]

Seriously. I'm considering putting in a 500-1000 just in case it goes to the moon.

You're 20% of the way there. Congrats, Brute.

[C40]

It already is to the moon. But it can keep going, right? I don't know much of anything bout bitcoin, so don't take my opinion for anything, but I think we're approaching a bitcoin bubble pop. Why? I'm starting to see idiot vandwelling hippie losers talk about bitcoin investing on Instagram. But even if there is a pop coming, in how long? There are a lot more losers that could get in (and a lot more fast growth) before it pops.

[bryan]

It being to the moon already means I would expect some correction/settling out to happen, shortly. The moving average I am looking at, which has been a "floor" in the past, is at $5k. It's the one I use for estimating my BTC worth for NW purposes. Decent way to mostly avoid the daily price drama. I still expect most demand to come from wall street; main street if an ETF comes around.

I only know one person (!, unless others are keeping mum) who has bought some BTC within the last few months (who hadn't before). Family are finally happy that I got them some BTC for xmas years ago (though my uncle had the most fun with it by keeping the paper wallet on him and always whipping it out any time he overheard someone talking about Bitcoin). The main reason I am still holding Bitcoin now is the overall economic/market situation/prices, otherwise I'm a bit bearish on Bitcoin.

I think people underestimate the psychological factor at play with (especially the Bitcoin) price; they don't quite understand what it means to have no new "shares" being issued, no "stock splits" possible, and prices being set on the margin. Demand amplifies and mostly controls the price. The best that can be done for now is start quoting the mBTC price: $6.40. See! Not very hard to believe it could go up to $32 or higher! Market Cap is a similarly weird thing (humans seem to invent value out of thin air or set strange prices all the time). Then again I'm not so into financials, so I'm sure I'm missing some other factors or better metrics.

I just saw that the recent fall to $6.4k (-600?) has been offset by a rise in Bitcoin Cash fork $600->$1300 (+700). Luckily I still have most of those coins as well.. though I had meant to exchange them since forever. I have no explanation as to why BCH would have such a high valuation; if it's legit, we are in store for a really weird future of monies (or perhaps reliving some weird history). A bit disappointed that the new sw2x fork didn't happen though.. I guess next time I should trade fork futures ahead of time (the assumption being if the futures crash, the miners/users will not even attempt the fork)?

[BRUTE]

6 years of expenses

[suomalainen]

How long you planning on working full time? At this rate, 2 years to 30 yrs.

[BRUTE]

volatility is volatile

[classical_Liberal]

...

[BRUTE]

to the moon

[NPV]

Found a link to this topic in "Best of ERE 2017" and enjoyed reading it. I empathize with a lot of Brute's worldview (nihilism, optionality, paleo, weightlifting, weirdness, disregard for opinions of bystanders etc.) and think we could make good friends if we didn't live on different sides of the Pacific Ocean.

One point I wanted to share some thoughts on is "Brute's search for meaning":

but does it make brute feel like he has a purpose, or if his life has meaning? no. brute's belief is that everything humans attribute purpose or metaphysical meaning to is just scratching their dumb little biological itches - be it family, religion, or whatever. would more individuals be honest with themselves and raise their head from their self-constructed hamster wheels, they'd arrive at the same conclusion. brute is just more honest with himself. he's just stardust.

I understand "curing Brute of existential nihilism" is not necessarily desirable and am not attempting it. I also understand that Brute's knowledge that there is no objective meaning in life and universe is taken by Brute purely informatively rather than as something to be sad about. However I also notice strong curiosity from Brute on this subject (undoubtedly, another evolved biological "itch" as populations with more curious monkeys had higher chances to survive and thrive).

I think the opportunity here is elevating the framing of this "no objective meaning" thesis from purely informational to actually liberating and empowering. Of course, there is no objective meaning - meaning is a figment of our imagination and we are free to imagine whatever we wish. And of course, we are simply a highly intelligent monkey species which evolved civilization, culture and knowledge on the back of a weird evolutionary strategy while retaining evolutionary artifacts of our ancestors - whether they are useful or not in modern world. So, that is the cards you are dealt. The cool thing is you can do whatever you want with it. This is the game - there are no rules - you get to do whatever the fuck you want, and to invent whatever meaning you want. How fun is that playground! Isn't that a much more exciting world than a hypothetical one with one textbook Holy Grail of meaning to be found?

Now in terms of actually choosing your source meaning, in broad terms I would define the most powerful source of meaning for me as "increasing control of reality and the acquisition and accumulation of capabilities and assets to do so". I think a similar point was made by Riggerjack above, with a focus on "acquisition" part. At the extreme side of this, I remember Elon Musk mentioning in an interview that the reason he was doing SpaceX and Tesla and all other world changing projects is because it keeps him excited to wake up in the morning. I think this source of meaning and motivation falls under the same framework, taking it as close to its logical conclusion as anyone probably has, as Elon tends to do with things. Ray Dalio in his recent book postulated that evolution is the meaning of life, which I think also falls under this framework as human evolution at this point is increasing control over natural environment, although unlike Ray Dalio, I am not quite sure that this meaning is as universal - it is simply a fun, useful and exciting one for me and some other people to choose. Might or might not work for Brute as well.

Where magic seems to happen is at the intersection of applying this framework to domains you are most excited about. For Elon it is making humanity and interplanetary species and making sure the light of intelligence does not fade in the universe. For Ray Dalio it is markets, meaningful work and meaningful relationships. For Riggerjack it is building out his house and accomplishing other feats. Brute seems to already enjoy a few interesting domains from weightlifting and coding to cryptocurrencies. He has also tested a few which did not seem to get him excited enough (e.g., skanky dolls). A potential next step might be choosing one of those which are already working, or a new domain Brute is curious about and giving it a real go - hopefully forming a fun obsession a-la Elon, Dalio or Riggerjack. Much cleaner way to get your opioids than dogs or heroin.