We’re getting into the final stages of the hardwood flooring project. This morning we chose the stain color and the first few coats of this will be on the floor by the end of the day today.
We chose the lightest stain (on the bottom of the photo below) which is essentially just a clear coat. The darker stain colors bring out more of the random natural grain pattern in the maple planks and it looks splotchy. We’re learning much more about hardwood floors than we anticipated throughout the course of this renovation.
Since this is a water-based clear coat the dry time is only three hours and the smell should be gone by Friday. With any luck we’ll be back in the house by the end of the week. This lighter flooring will make the space seem larger and brighter and should work out pretty well with the mid-century modern style furniture we plan on using. The peace won’t last long because the kitchen flooring, countertops, and cabinet refacing begins soon.
Gif created by Grok.
This crypto market cycle is proving to be the strangest in history. The OG, Bitcoin, has had much less volatility compared to past cycles and less predictable moves. Analysts have attributed this lack of volatility to Wall Street’s increasingly large stake. They're scooping up more and more coins with every dip.
Most Wall Street firms and large banks have well over a century of experience manipulating markets and they’re using everything they’ve learned to influence the crypto market. There’s no way in a million years I’d dabble in leveraged trades these days. As they say about casinos, “the house always wins” and the house is now Wall Street. Despite less dramatic price decreases, investors (especially those new to Bitcoin) seem to be having disproportionate freak outs to these smaller drops in price. This is the first bull market for many investors and it shows.
Last week over $19B dollars was liquidated from the cryptocurrency market as a whole, this was prompted by President Trump’s announcement of future tariffs on China. This was 19x the March 2020 Covid crash and 9x the downturn sparked by the FTX crash. Despite the massive outflows last week Bitcoin managed to have only dropped around 9.3% in price—which is pretty impressive. Despite this stability I miss the volatility I remember from the days of old.
For better or worse, it’s pretty safe to say Bitcoin has grown up and the crypto space isn’t what it once was. Fewer and fewer investors know or even care about the original fundamentals that Bitcoin was built on. Phrases like—decentrailized, immutable, trustless, permissionless aren’t uttered nearly as often now. I’ve found myself looking back on previous market cycles and having a whole lot of nostalgia for those old days.
For most investors today Bitcoin is merely an investment vehicle. I suppose this is the true price of an asset like this going mainstream. Despite this I remain extremely optimistic, long term (10 years), and if there’s a better investment out there I don’t know what it is. I’ll be continuing my strategy of dollar cost averaging into BTC on a monthly basis using credit card cash rewards and high interest savings account yields.
I’ll always remember the vibe a decade ago when we all thought cryptocurrency would change the whole world for the better. I suppose for some people and in some ways Bitcoin really is changing the world for the better maybe just not exactly in all the ways the Cypherpunks envisioned. The days when just anyone can own a Bitcoin are quickly coming to a close. However, there’s still time, in this world pretty much anything is possible. Satoshi Nakamoto was thinking so many moves ahead that sometimes I can’t help but wonder if he was a time traveler.
As always, this isn’t meant to be investment advice. Please do your own research.
All for now. Thanks for reading.
