Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

[giskard]

What websites and social media accounts do you follow to get ideas about what altcoins might be worth flipping?

The only people worth following are on crypto twitter, you can join some discords as well but I find twitter more accessible.

A good rule of thumb is to be skeptical of anyone with more than 100k followers and very skeptical of anyone with more than 250k. The best accounts on there are like 10k to 30k followers and they will have actual alpha. I follow mostly smaller bullish traders who talk a lot about Solana & Cosmos ecosystem. The Ethereum people are like negative alpha so far this cycle lmao. There are some people on there I have seen get nearly everything right for months straight. I think every cycle you need to follow a new crop of traders because the old ones get too famous and rich and there is no alpha left.

I don't want to mention any specific accounts because I don't want this thread to be indexed in google.

[giskard]

You have to be acceleration maxxing. You have to training models in your garage. You have to be creating autonomous agents. You have to be humanoid robot pilled. You have to be contributing to the technocapital singularity. You have to be preparing for labor costs to asymptotically plunge toward zero. You have to be dealing in the currency of future gods of the universe and managing your private keys carefully.

[giskard]

NVDA is about to cross $600. It goes up 3% every day. I will be surprised if it doesn't hit $1000 / share sometime this year.

Nancy Pelosi is long $5 million NVDA calls, and you are saying the magnificent 7 are not magnificent?

Quit fading the technocapital singularity folks.

[giskard]

About a week and a half into the SEA trip, having a lot of fun. First stop was Philippines which of course is not very foreign compared to the US given that most people know English. I am enjoying the place & the people a lot. Its not cheap here though, its almost as expensive as back home (well in BGC in Manila that is).

So trying to FIRE early and go here would be best done in a smaller city? Idk I will continue to research and explore & I have several more places to go.

[giskard]

Continuing to hop around Philippines. Money is respected here, service is excellent. People are warm and friendly. The poverty you can see if you venture outside the nice areas is heartbreaking and horrifying. Not sure I want to live here but I totally could. It's quite familiar feeling for an American. I see a lot of foreigners here in the cities in some areas but interestingly most of them seem to be Europeans and Koreans?

I see a lot of old european guys with younger filipinas but my guess is its mostly girls from the slums or who didn't get an education. It's a little weird but I'm sure it's a reasonable trade for both parties given the prevalence. I doubt the educated women are making that trade when they can get a job and make a living. Definitely also a lot of younger foreigners here with younger girlfriends / wives having very normal looking relationships. It's hard not to love the filipino people, they are just delightful folks.

[giskard]

I left the country already but I started to get a feel for things in the Philipines. I figured out how to find the bars the expats would hang out at and chat with them. I figured out how where the (more educated) locals go in some places, etc. It's pretty nice. I simply just enjoyed it. I definitely want to go back. I encountered the nicest kindest people there.

The cost of living only really comes down if you go further into the smaller cities / rent long term. If you are staying short term and eating in nice globalized malls it's going to be among most expensive places in southeast asia other than Singapore imo (especially Manila).

Personally, I would not skimp on the food. I like eating quality food but even then it would be considered expensive if a meal is more than $10 or $15 in most of these places.

[giskard]

Spent some time Singapore, here are my impressions:

- Singapore is the nicest most well run city I have ever visited
- There are incredible amounts of money here
- However, you can eat cheaply if you want to. Food in grocery stores is not too bad. Public transit is fantastic, the big issue would be housing costs.
- I think Housing wise you might be able to end up with 2000 to 2500 / month SGD for a 1 or 2 bed well outside city center. This is like $1500 usd to $1850 usd. So it's pricey but everything else can be cheaper.

There is stuff to do but not sure I would want to live there now. I think it might be a good place to raise kids? I would have to know how the schools are. I got bored of it and wanted to leave after a couple of days tbqh.

I'm actually in Vietnam now but I just got here so I will hold off before making any statements.

[delay]

Thanks for your journal update! Singapore is an interesting subject, I've read conflicting stories about it. There are stories about heavy fines and punishments and rules that infringe personal freedom. Yet other people say it's a great place to visit.

- Singapore is the nicest most well run city I have ever visited
...
There is stuff to do but not sure I would want to live there now.

For what purpose is it run, if it's not for being a good place to live?

[lightfruit55]

@giskard Thanks for sharing your views about Singapore. It is always interesting to hear what foreigners think about my country. You are right - the biggest costs are housing and private vehicles. For the latter, it is not a need as public transportation works well. As for housing, it can be prohibitive, especially for foreigners. Close to 80% of the population live in public housing which is much cheaper and locals are entitled to rather generous subsidies for public housing. Our city state can be boring to foreigners after a few days in terms of size and (mostly manicured) tourist attractions, but for living, it's pretty great if you are into safety, efficiency, comfort and convenience. To compensate for our lack of size and "natural" attractions, we can visit Malaysia by car in under 1-2 hours and our airport is very well-connected with many countries a short flight away, so it's quite common for many in Singapore to go for weekend getaways/travel frequently.

There are stories about heavy fines and punishments and rules that infringe personal freedom. Yet other people say it's a great place to visit.

The most common description of Singapore is that it is Disneyland with the death penalty. [/quote] Honestly, and I would think Giskard can also attest to this - you won't feel your personal freedoms are infringed here (unless of course you are looking to do something bad???!!). Perhaps the better description would be that Singapore feels like a nanny state (state really thinks and manages many parts of people's lives) and sterile. But well, Singapore was only founded 58 years ago so naturally we don't have the same level of cultural heritage as other cities.

For what purpose is it run, if it's not for being a good place to live?

It really depends on what you define as a good place to live. If you think Irvine, California, is a good place to live, then it has been said that Singapore offers a similar vibe (barring the weather). (I'm assuming you are American here.)

[7Wannabe5]

If you want the opposite experience from Singapore, I would suggest visiting Flint, Michigan. Zero-percent Disneyland vibe. Although, I do know a couple humans who have positive things to say about both locations. I guess the Venn diagram overlap might be liking machines.

[loutfard]

I spent a week in Singapore some time ago. I liked the "bad" area around Geylang, the electronics market, the local hackerspace and the Indian hawker places a lot. Probably not a coincidence that al I just named were some of the least sterile places...

[lightfruit55]

@7 - I watched some YouTube videos on Flint - interesting history and communities. From some of the comments, it does seem that it's really not all that bad.

@loutfart - Yea well, these are places that have the more 'organic' character. There are pockets of such places and subcultures/vibes here and there but are more 'IYKYK", even for the locals.

[giskard]

@giskard Thanks for sharing your views about Singapore. It is always interesting to hear what foreigners think about my country. You are right - the biggest costs are housing and private vehicles. For the latter, it is not a need as public transportation works well. As for housing, it can be prohibitive, especially for foreigners. Close to 80% of the population live in public housing which is much cheaper and locals are entitled to rather generous subsidies for public housing.

---

Honestly, and I would think Giskard can also attest to this - you won't feel your personal freedoms are infringed here (unless of course you are looking to do something bad???!!). Perhaps the better description would be that Singapore feels like a nanny state (state really thinks and manages many parts of people's lives) and sterile.

I am biased towards liking the law and order approach of Singapore because I have had so many terrible experiences with US cities. US cities are quite frankly disgusting, dangerous and poorly run almost without exception (on top of that they are expensive & still require cars lol). I don't have any interest in ever living in one again.

I never felt like Singapore was oppressive or anything like that, it was more like well calculated to prevent you from doing stuff that would sow chaos.

Singpore is quite interesting given that the population has these very different subsets of cultures (Chinese, Tamil, Malaysian, and more) with different norms and different languages yet they make it work. Certainly the approach is more successful than the approach of the western liberal democracies.

RE the public housing situation - yes this is something I wondered about. I didn't realize it was that extreme. I did notice the presence of large amounts of migrants from other SEA countries employed in roles like maid services, etc.

[giskard]

Well I'll just give an update on the meme coin situation:

- BTC at all time high in every currency except USD almost as I type this
- every major meme coin has broken out
- I am underexposed to memecoins like WIF & PEPE
- I am well exposed to the majors - BTC & SOL along w/ some others
- biggest meme positions are still BONK and DOGE which are the slow movers sadly

I will be attempting to find long entries on WIF, PEPE, etc (the ones that broke 1 billion mk cap and are thus proven to me as blue chips now) on large pullbacks. Don't believe we are at peak cycle yet.

Last note: I hit 2 million NW today, so its because of crypto yes so idk how serious you can take that haha.

Will present this here for your studies.

[giskard]

Lmao I just realized I posted about WIF on here when it was worth 6 cents and I said I wasn't sure on it. Jesus christ it's $1.79 now... Well everyone is welcome for the 30x call if you did the opposite of what I did

[giskard]

I will do another March 2024 update since a lot is going on. Summary of events:

- BTC is at an all time high, given my portfolio allocations this has been very good. Net worth just hit 2.2 million.
- I loved aspects of every place I visited in Asia, I think I could live happily in many of these countries. Right now I am going to continue to orient my life so that I am reducing my expenses and footprint in America and plan like I am going to spend most of my time abroad.
- Financially speaking - I can FIRE right now abroad in Southeast Asia. I could probably do it in a median expensive country, all the way up to Japan. Just not America, it's too expensive for my preferred lifestyle I think.
- Meme coins are going insane. I am a little bit mad because I predicted this and heavily felt like this would happen but it happened too quickly for me to get positioned correctly. Oh well, I need to be more nimble in the future. I will be moving stuff around on dips I guess.

[Stahlmann]

...

Pmed you.

[giskard]

Peak meme performance:
- stupid (check)
- relevant (check)
- funny (check)

Jeo Boden

[giskard]

Jeo Boden

Let me explain something to readers: this coin is trading at a market cap of 200+million. Does that mean its worth 200 million? No. There is only $2.5 million in liquidity (see screenshot).

The way an automated market maker works means that if you tried to sell 2 million dollars worth of this you would nuke the price to zero almost.

But, on the flip side, if you bought 2 million worth of $BODEN, you could impact the price by almost 100%. This is a feature of on-chain liquidity using AMM liquidity pools.

This is also part of why people love these on-chain meme coins so much.

If you look at these closely on dexscreener, they have insane wicks on many candles, this is why.

[jacob]

Let me explain something to readers: this coin is trading at a market cap of 200+million. Does that mean its worth 200 million? No. There is only $2.5 million in liquidity (see screenshot).

The way an automated market maker works means that if you tried to sell 2 million dollars worth of this you would nuke the price to zero almost.

But, on the flip side, if you bought 2 million worth of $BODEN, you could impact the price by almost 100%. This is a feature of on-chain liquidity using AMM liquidity pools.

This is also part of why people love these on-chain meme coins so much.

Yeah ... so great for speculation and borderline spoofing. Lesser fools eventually unloading to greater fools. People having inflated NWs based on holding stamps, NFTS, selling pixels, sneakers collections, sports cards, and collectibles that might be hard to turn into cash. People making money from other people who end up holding the bag and eventually losing money. From my old school investor perspective, these are crazy times.

I wonder how many are actually playing these meme/stonk games #liquidity. Is it but a dozen millions fanatics each throwing in a hundred or a thousand bucks, encouraging each other within a single bubble. That would be enough for a so-called market value of 1B USD based on the peak price... although it would be impossible to extract that amount in cash getting out of the position. I wonder how much paper-NW can be turned into actual cash within, say a year, w/o crashing that NW metric. This used to be a VC or (pretend-)billionaire on paper problem, but it seems like it's turning into an everymans' meme stonk gambler problem defaulting to a "sell it down the river"-solution.