welcome to the world of neurodivergence...

Oooo! That is an interesting topic that I don't really like because for me thinking about neurodivergence can create neurodivergence..... Ok it is happening I need to stop 🤣

Anyways.

I was never drawn here by the lure of money

This is what crypto was supposed to be.

I think Wall Street greed is a real thing that happened to crypto. Most people in crypto do not like Wall Street so that is a hard pill for people swallow. I watched a lot of people who were "friends" turn into that which they despise and most people don't have the self awareness to realize something like that. Also admitting you became what you hate and acted that way for years is extremely hard. I think it takes a long period of self reflection and the ability to put down pride and forgive yourself. These are not normal things for a human to do. Also admitting you were wrong can be risky if you are not in a position to do so. People intuitively know this and a lot of the desire to not admit you are wrong is a rational form of self preservation. I do not expect the average person to be able to admit they made mistakes. People admitting they made mistakes is a skill and it is very hard to maintain consistently.

Back on the Wall Street greed topic, I can assume it is really hard not to get greedy when handling lots of money; I think most people snap if they can make all the decisions and someone else cannot say no. It is not normal for 1 person to have that much money. This makes me believe Wall Street has survived so "long" because they control themselves "enough" to come back from terrible events. I know people like to talk about government bailouts for Wall Street. But if the government did not bail out Wall Street the less risky firms would have just grabbed everything and centralized a lot of those institutions. I think a lot of financial institutions have become very centralized anyways but the slower that happens the better in my opinion.

I do agree crypto took a wrong turn that was inevitable. I think the way crypto has gone the last 3 years has been pretty brutal but it is often how emerging technologies go. People can speculate and create huge price swings until there is not enough money left to hold up those valuations and everything comes crashing down. It was a particularly bad time for crypto because debasement of global currencies has ramped up exponentially. In the beginning that fueled these valuations higher in my opinion. It stretched crypto valuations to unimageable numbers. Then on the back end, everyone's cost of living ramped up like crazy. People who live paycheck to paycheck got crushed. People don't have as much money for their crypto hobbies. Valuations crashed hard. I think we are close to the bottom but most of this stuff is not asset backed so it will always, to some extent, be worth what we think it is worth. To me this is an inherently dangerous proposition. If a human's creativity is the biggest factor in a valuation it will get wild sometimes and be painful on the backend. I don't believe in timing markets so it makes investing in these things very challenging.

I would say when it comes to crypto, some things were self fulling proficiencies and some things were ideals that got taken advantage of. Like people who have tried to make life changing money in crypto all have very different stories. I "lost" a lot of money post FTX collapse but I do have a degenerate gambler side that I acknowledge exists. I try to control my "gambles." I would say identifying what is a gamble in crypto is very hard though. If people are "investing" in ideals, to some degree these are always a gamble.

What crypto went through we are seeing something similar with quantum computing stocks. Lots of speculative valuations that are based on really extreme scenarios. Some people would argue we are seeing something similar with AI but AI is clearly ramping up and no one can stop it.

I think a lot of the people who made AI regret it but they have to keep feeding the beast if they want to stay employed.

Something I love to discuss about AI is how it has happened the totally opposite way most people thought it would. Most people thought AI would be an analytical tool for math and finance while it would lack in creativity. The opposite happened. AI is not a good tool for trading. It will make mistakes and cause you to lose money at scale. AI has mostly replaced artists and musicians. AI is also replacing the people creating it first.... Programmers and coders.

Sorry for the AI transition there but I guess we can chalk that up to neurodivergence 😉

Thank you for the kind words and the thoughtful comment. I look forward to chatting with you again. Even if not soon, I powered up HIVE so I will probably be here for a while.

If you ever want to talk on HIVE I'll be around.

Cheers and have a wonderful Christmas. If you do not celebrate Christmas, have a wonderful holiday