Random

An excerpt I read online:

'By age 25 you should be old enough to realise this. Most people never understand number six until they're 40.

1) Life is 100% better when no one knows anything about you.

2) You shouldn't take advice from people who are not where you want to be in life.

3) Everyone will show you who they are, just give them time.

4) You need to be smart enough to create your own opportunities. Don't wait for them to come to you.

5) The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage. In life, you must take action if you want to experience freedom.

6) You will always have problems. You will always have some sort of conflict going on in your life. You must learn to enjoy life while still solving them. There is beauty in everything we experience, you just need to adjust your perception. You can either cry in the storm or dance in the rain.'

The dopamine rush of talking about your goals without ever acting on them is one of the most dangerous addictions. Psychologists call it mental masturbation. Here's how it works: every time you talk about what you'll do, your brain releases dopamine. You feel like you've achieved something. But in reality? You've achieved nothing. It's productivity's cruel illusion.

In fact, Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer ran studies in 1982 & 2009: People who shared their goals publicly were less likely to achieve them. Why? Because the praise they got gave their brain the same "reward" as finishing the goal.

The Prophet ﷺ spoke of this:

"استعينوا على إنجاح الحوائج بالكتمان، فإن كل ذي نعمة محسود"

"Seek help in fulfilling your needs in secrecy, for everyone who is blessed is envied."

The hadith advises discretion when pursuing your goals, plans, or blessings. It's not about secrecy for its own sake, but about protecting your intentions and energy from unnecessary interference, jealousy, or negativity.

When we talk too much about what we plan to do — whether out of excitement or validation — we can invite:

• Envy (ḥasad) from others, consciously or unconsciously
• Pressure or distraction that derails focus
• And even, as modern psychology shows (like Peter Gollwitzer's research), a false sense of accomplishment that weakens motivation

So in essence: just move quietly, build privately, and let the results speak for themselves.

An excerpt I read online:

Students at Alpha School, Texas, spend only two hours in the morning on science, math and reading, working at their own speed using personalized, AI-driven software.

Adults in the classroom are called guides, not teachers, and earn six-figure salaries. Their job is to encourage and motivate.

Afternoons at the school are different. Students tackle projects, learn financial literacy and public speaking — life skills that founder MacKenzie Price says are invaluable.

"There is such a huge advantage when students can be met at the level and pace of learning that is right for them," Phillips said.

Price was not an educator before starting the school in 2014. There are now 16 campuses with support from big backers. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon visited last month.

When asked about concerns over turning learning over to a laptop, Price said, "So our guides are not teaching academic content, but they are connecting. In fact, every week, every one of our students get 30 minutes of one-on-one concentrated time with their guides, and during the workshops in the afternoons, they are connecting and interacting in a group experience."

That progress isn't cheap. Tuition at Austin's Alpha School starts at $40,000 a year.

"We recognize that there is a huge mountain of challenges that come in a large public [school] system, so what I hope that Alpha can be is an example, an inspiration and help families understand that this model of education is something that can work," Price said.

While the school says its students test in the top 1% on standardized assessments, AI models have been met with skepticism by educators who say they're unproven. Though there's no dispute it is engaging students like Smith Adreon, who calls the program "amazing."

The fact that kids attending AI schools rank in the top 1% of standardized tests with only 2h of learning per day is proof that traditional schools were never about learning, just compliance.

A well-known finding in education research is that the perception of learning is often at odds with actual measurable learning.

When using effective learning strategies, students perform better on assessments but may feel they've learned less.

Why?

Because effective strategies increase cognitive activation, enhancing learning despite students feeling it's harder.

It's like weightlifting – the strongest people lift weights heavy enough to make them feel weak.

In response to a question I asked on X:

"As someone that's been here longer than I have, have you seen such bullish reasoning for a meme before? I only started memes in November but to me this just seems like the pinnacle and endgame of what a memecoin could be. I mean it's objectively the most famous 'meme' across history aside from many other things. I've seen coins like dogwifhat go to ~$5B among many billion dollar runners but none of them seem anywhere near comparable to me except for Pepe and Doge."

@bitcoinstax:

"Yeah so, my experience with memes dates back to the last cycle 2021 days where Doge and Shib had insane runs. Then Pepe came along in 2023 while the market was in shambles, honestly. It seemed like this light after everyone got absolutely fucked in NFTs. It was a eureka moment that just made sense. The narrative that set it off was "Pepe will easily flip Shib." People were saying this at 60-70M. Belief was strong.

Fast forward to Solana memes… it really kicked off after $Bonk became the key risk-on indicator and acted as a leveraged bet on Sol which skyrocketed from $8 to $60-80 and continued all the way to $295.

As Sol ran from $8-$120, Bonk basically went from 0 to $2B. Then WIF basically took over and was the people's coin. WIF became the best leveraged bet on Sol. Pump.fun launched in Jan 2024, this spawned the most tickers we've ever seen in memes. Several metas went crazy: AI meta (GOAT, Fartcoin), TikTok & Virality (Chillguy, Moodeng, Pnut), there were several 500M+ runners. I can't even go through it all.

When it comes to $TROLL, I am not kidding when I say this is a second opportunity at catching a Pepe-like run. The difference is we have a much better team and we actually have the IP to build. I also think the term "trolling" has made a massive comeback in 2025 and the timeless nature of Trollface as a tokenised asset is an incredible opportunity to own.

You hit it spot on, this is the endgame and it is the best memecoin I've ever seen."

One of my favourite Jocko Willink quotes is "aside from death, all failure is psychological." How many times have you done something that you thought was "risky" only to realise it wasn't all that bad after the fact? Even when things don't go the way you want, it's almost never as bad as it seems. The truth is most risks aren't real. The expensive steak you overcooked can still be eaten. The money you lost in a failing business can be made back. Risk is just your ego showing up to protect itself.

Don't worry about the market.

Your convictions will play out.

Focus on taking proactive steps to better your life so you are fully prepared for the success once it comes by.

Train yourself to work without getting immediate results or validation. It takes years for hard work to turn into a big promotion. It takes years for failures to turn into a growing company. It takes hundreds of pieces of published writing to get a readership. When you were a kid, you'd get a "good job" from an adult when you tried, and they'd often give you the result you wanted. In life, results lag far behind effort, and there will be almost nobody cheering you on. Make peace with that. Show up and do the work anyway.

The paradox of relationships is that they make or break your life, but you never know which ones are going to make a big impact and which won't. That means you need to meet a lot of people. Send DMs and emails. Go to events. Have a lot of first dates. The vast majority of people you meet will mean nothing to you long-term. The tiny minority will change everything for you. Get out there and make connections. Even if it doesn't come naturally to you. It's worth it.

"worst cycle ever, no true altszn" - story about fragmented liquidity, Solana trenchers and human greed;

you wanted faster execution, lower fees and fun experience - Solana brought that to the table, giving birth to the first efficient onchain 'coin-sino', whilst also kick-starting the dispersion issue. that's okay, as 'slow and expensive' ETH has moved away towards institutional yield, SoV and RWA layer. I'm sure a little dispersion never hurt anybody, especially if we can all make more money.

you weren't satisfied.

you wanted even earlier & faster entries, more memetics, more toys you play with for a day and discard them like street prostitutes - Pumpfun gave you exactly that. dilution quickly went from "bad" to "what the fuck". you started aping coins mere seconds after launch. "this could run". run? where? unemployment center?

have we had enough? not even close.

you developed bots, scripts, trackers, AI tools to increase efficiency, speed and execution - at what cost? more freedom to ape into more coins. more incentives for serial ruggers, I mean devs, sorry, to automate coin launches at the expense of ~99%.

please, fragment the liquidity even further!

suffice to say, whilst damaging crypto for years to come, barely anyone has turned profit. "Data from Dune reveals that 99.6% of http://Pump.fun traders have yet to achieve more than $10,000 in realized profits."

pathetic. you've shot yourself in the foot. quite literally.

as if the situation wasn't dire enough, this all brought the attention of outsiders. B-tier celebrities all scrambled to launch their own token, only to extract even more from already damaged participants.

then it all broke in January 2025. Trump. Melania. final nail in the coffin. they've heard the lengths of which you absolute fucking degenerates will go to just to turn profit. they launched their own token, mere days before inauguration. literal crime. whilst you hear many stories of people acquiring generational wealth, you forget this is a zero-sum game. who was on the other side of those trades?

while everyone screamed "this surely sparks the beginning of Solana casino!" - euthanasia rollercoaster officially began. that was it. no, really, statistically that was the top of trenches. slow erosion begins.

desperate, clinging onto hopes and dreams of "just one 100x", most failed to realize the game has always been rigged against their favor. you have better odds in an actual casino. no, really, you statistically do.

9 months later, as participants have [somewhat] awoken themselves from the false dream, everything that's left on the rollercoaster today are 'metas'. we went from thousands of coins/day, to once a month metas that saturate faster than Gainzy can press the sell button to dump on his followers.

what are we left with? streamer coins? capital markets? 1.) What.. the fuck is even that?

and whilst many would consider such a post, or even sentiment to be a "bottom signal" [lol, lmao even], they forget what awaits at the end of euthanasia rollercoaster - "The Euthanasia Coaster is a hypothetical steel roller coaster and euthanasia device designed with the sole purpose of killing its passengers".

only death can pay for life.

only after dying are we truly free.

rebirth.

this won't change until regulations tighten up the space - allowing money to concentrate, instead of dilute.

it will take years for the cleanse.

@xydotdot:

You don't fail because you can't find winners. You fail because you never close them.

Most traders don't fail at entries, they fail at endings. The exit is tied to a number, and a number has no boundary.

As price rises, the brain updates the goal in real time. That update loop is built in: dopamine prefers variance, social proof lifts expectations, and the "goal-gradient" pushes you to stretch the target the closer you get.

A number does two things to your psychology.

First, it creates a moving threshold: any level can be justified as "almost there," so decisions are perpetually deferred.

Second, it protects ego: raising the target lets you preserve the identity of the brilliant holder a little longer. Both forces bias you toward indefinite postponement.

Nothing in your life actually changes at a price on a screen, so the mind finds no reason to stop.

Purpose breaks that loop because it introduces a state change your brain can recognise.

Paying off a liability, buying time, funding runway, securing an asset....these are discrete outcomes.

They flip your environment from one state to another, which gives the brain closure. Closure reduces the tension to keep negotiating with the future. You convert "maybe more" into "definitely mine," and the decision holds.

Purpose also rewires regret.

Numbers anchor you to the counterfactual of "what if I held longer," which is unbounded and will always win the argument. Purpose anchors you to certainty: the debt is gone, the runway exists, the asset is owned.

Humans regret lost certainty far less than missed extra upside. That asymmetry is what makes purpose durable under pressure.

There's a second-order effect people miss: profits with purpose improve the next round.

Lower stress, fewer forced trades, more patience, clearer time horizons. Capacity goes up, error rate goes down.

You didn't just take money out; you increased the quality of your future decisions. In a game with infinite rounds, that compounding edge matters more than squeezing the last leg of a single move.

Numbers drift; purposes hold.

Give your wins an outcome that exists outside the market, and the exit stops feeling like betrayal of opportunity. It reads as completion, and it funds a stronger next hand.

@oxbquant:

The internet age has led the zoomer's canonical action space to become infinite dimensional. Virtually anything is now accessible given enough vision, grit, and extreme diligence. Noting this, how does one navigate the questions of "what do I do?", "how can I manifest my goals into reality?", and "what is the pathway which allows me to experience maximum convexity?".

Each branch you pick in your possibility tree cuts off infinities of potential convexity and outcomes you could've experienced which leads to people piling into optionalitymaxxing or even worse, doing nothing - out of fear that the second they pick a branch, they "mark themselves to market" i.e. collapse their future to something which could've been the wrong choices (when you're unchosen, you could be anything; when you're something, you are judged off that something).

The average smart intelligent kid will have their pick of a few paths in their 20s; at least in my circles it was some derivative of consulting, law, finance, trading, medicine, VC, startups, or being artfully unemployed. What's the most convex thing? Startups have almost uncapped upside, salarymaxxing (law, consulting, non-trading finance, medicine) has safety and stability (constant $/amount in your bank) but often no convexity. Trading means the only thing you'll really do for most of your career is play a game that virtually has no tangible outputs for the "real world" with more stable base case than startups but with less ease to access and scalp convexity. VC is similar.

What is the right path? Do you blindly optimise for convexity? People my age by the thousands are rushing into SF with their slopmaxxed startups hyperiding VCs, keywordmaxxing visionstrivers - "oh dude this is totally gonna be the future ong, we are gonna democratise the B2B SaaS prediction markets hyperliquid on-chain L2 agentic dev game". but with almost nothing truly tangible or no true edge to show for it - which is as expected. At brunch today with my dear friend @apralky, we both agreed that Thiel's view on on original idiosyncratic thought being rare is completely correct and underpriced. Peter Thiel was right - Idiosyncratic thinkers are the mental equivalents of olympic medallists. So okay, don't scale into startups if you don't have any hint of an edge unless you want to risk ending up having no core competency and having achieved nothing tangible or remarkable, being the "vision guy" at age 30.

What about jobs? Is being a consultant at McKinsey a good trade? Is being a trader at Jane Street a good trade? Within the job space, there's a lot of degrees of freedom wherein you can control your risk vs. convexity tradeoff - trading is what I would say is the max-risk, max-convexity play but even trading convexity can be seen as trivial compared to startups. The best macro PMs will bring in >100MM/yr in PnL, assuming 20% PnL cut (varies a ton by firm), they will take home 20mm/yr which we can say is ~10mm/yr post tax. To get to that level, you'd probably have to spend at least ~10 yrs in trading, and that's close to your ceiling.

To experience maximal convexity, you need to be close to the best at what you do. Everyone is born w/ their own "idiosyncratic juice" - talents, something that they have that others truly don't. Some are amazing at socialmaxxing, great thinkers, super skilled at a certain craft, have extreme diligence, are super artistic - whatever it is - my personal view is to go with max leverage into it but we will explore further.

Path dependency kills because it locks you into meta-ruminating instead of playing the game. Most keywordmaxxers spend all their time attacking the first order of seeming like they are scalping convexity without actually doing anything, they fall prey to veneermaxxing. They don't understand the idea that continuously scalping local optima is not necessarily, and often not, the most potent way to find a global optimum.

In trading, there are only two levers: thesis (what do I do) and expression (where do I sit on the risk/upside curve). If thesis is wrong, you lose - no matter how you expressionmaxx. The thesis meta is simple: scalp convexity in line with your "idiosyncratic juice"; risk and upside tradeoffs flow downstream from that.

The real endgame then, is reaching a position with uncapped upside. This only arrives when you are the sole risk-taker - your own venture, your own fund, your own craft, etc. A contrarian view is that riding conventionality (low risk, capped upside) is often a highly formidable instrument to incubate convexity. Simplistic dummy example: you can bruteforce raising a 5M fund right now in a hope to scalp convexity or waiting a few years, build a track-record at a firm while accessmaxxing, raising orders of magnitude more capital in one go rather than trying to triple your fund every year for 5 years straight.

Conventionality then is a cocoon, not a prison, to incubate your edge. So stop veneermaxxing, stop optionalitymaxxing, and stop overhedging. Work backwards from the true goal. Tilt your risk higher, iterate, pivot, refine, and execute. Pick your branch, let conventionality incubate you, and let it be the cocoon which takes you into pure, raw convexity.

The game is not to avoid marking yourself to market. It is to mark yourself to destiny.

@bryan_johnson:

Had my 30 year high school reunion last night. These sort of events have a way of inviting unique sobriety of observation.

First, the vast majority of everyone there had left the Mormon church. This is very surprising given the deeply religious adherence of our small 30,000 person town during our childhood. If my class is representative of Mormon membership generally, the religion is evaporating, at least in this geography and demographic. I wonder if this holds for other religions too.

Second, everyone was basically the same as when we graduated. After 30 years of life, the similarities of behaviours was fun to see. This isn't surprising as evidence shows the stability of personality excluding substantial life changing events.

Third, given the stability of personality over a lifetime, if you're not happy with your behavioural patterns, best to be sober about the challenge of changing oneself because you will inevitably become your patterns.

30 years is 10,950 days. I left concluding one needs to live each day as if that one day will determine where they'll be in 30 years from now.

Fourth, statistically, by our 30th reunion, we'd expect to have lost less than 20 of our classmates but I think we've lost more. Many to suicide. In the next 10 years (age 50-60) it's expected we'll lose 20 more. And 40 more from age 60-70. Only 250 out of the 400 will still be alive when we are 80.

Fifth, our childhood experiences deeply affect our life outcomes. Middle school, junior high and high school can be especially brutal and some people never recover or overcome. This led many to not attend. For those that did, we found a vibe together last night that allowed for some long needed healing.

It's insane how fast life happens. I'm still struggling to comprehend how 30 years has passed and many of my classmates are now grandparents. I'm not too far off either.

I loved my childhood. I love my friends. Of course I'm exhibiting a bias of favouring the positive however in contrast to the world my children grew up in, I'm grateful that we had so much freedom to explore, play, be independent, and not be imprisoned to our devices. I wonder if social media and device addiction is really the great plague that we can't or refuse to see.

@smileycapital:

how to play the rest of the cycle, I'd say for people with 5 to 7 figs, anyone under should probably look for alternative income;

time of the cycle where you turn the leverage slider down and reduce the risk [says the guy beating his own perp records every month lol]

we're moving down the risk curve, volatility is returning and last thing you need are -30% alt nukes to wipe you out before god candles

select your winners -> buy them on spot -> sit on your hands and pray you've selected correctly in this disgustingly diluted market

leverage should be used by experts only - use it to hedge spot, eventually being delta neutral at top to capture last runners whilst having downside protection, most importantly to catch larger, quicker moves on majors [eg. ETH, SOL, DOGE in chronological order the last 2 months]

I'd also advise against heavy rotations, especially with lowcaps and Solana trench shitters, if you're good at rotating stick to highcaps [top 20], possibly medcaps [top 50]. rotate only if you're extremely good and it doesn't require you to sell your "winners". use dry powder instead

worst thing you can do is pre-select performers, recognise a narrative, position yourself correctly and then decide to sell & chase some Pumpfun-streamer coin that 'accidentally' gets FSH by a broke 40 year old jew or some dogshit vapor 'utility' coin promoted by your favourite egirl account with botted followers likely managed by her even more broke boyfriend

stick to your thesis, stick to your plan. you can't afford mistakes or deviations from plan this late into the cycle

I firmly believe we get a fruitful period for select altcoins sometime in the next 6 months - timing it is fairly tricky for most of you, hence my suggestion of spot holdings

some narratives I'm seeing in chronological order;

- SOL beta, high/medcaps mostly, onchain lowcaps very tricky and not my domain anyway - 6/10 conviction as half of it has played out already

- Memes, DOGE and the rest of high/medcaps [there's like 4 of them lol] should do well if DOGE continues leading - 6/10 conviction, dilution is a bitch

- ETH beta [ironically SOL is proving to be best ETH beta] in the form of utility plays - RWA is prime sector to benefit from stablecoin, yield and institutional adoption, again only a handful of coins so you have to be fairly retarded not to capture - 8.5/10 conviction, 9.5/10 if ETH breaks 5k firmly

- AI [utility, not agents] maybe super-late in the cycle as one of the last plays, I wouldn't put capital in yet - ?/10

- Chinese coins. don't fade the rotation. hardest coins to trade, never know when pump, tricky - ?/10

if you're half-decent, put some effort in, you can 10x your portfolio by the time house of cards comes collapsing down on everyone

good luck, stomp these markets

You have to stop disappointing yourself. You have to stop breaking promises that you make to yourself. You have to stop taking actions, thinking thoughts, and interacting with people that hurt you. A life where you constantly let yourself down is a painful one. It'll slip right through your fingers, and in your old age, you'll realise how much better you could've been, and how easy it would've been to do it. Save yourself that pain. Be good to yourself now. Right now.

Be the person that gets stuff done no matter what. Be the one everyone else looks to when they're lost. Be that rare individual who takes ownership for their mistakes and does the things they say they'll do. Be the first one to show up and the last one out the door. Don't complain, whine or gossip. Be the one role model everyone looks up to and everything else will work out.

Whatever happens around you, don't take it personally. Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. Even when a situation seems so personal, it has nothing to do with you. What they say, what they do, and the opinions they give are projections of their own internal thoughts. Everyone has their own reality. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our reality, and we try to impose our reality onto theirs. When we don't take things personally, it gives us more power over our thoughts, feelings, and actions. When we don't take things personally, we recognise the individuality of others and we can accept that other people are different from us. We have little control over how others view us and relate to us. We have more control over how we view ourselves and the situation, and how we respond to it. The truth is that we tend to make assumptions and judgements about other people without knowing the full story. And more often than not, what we assume about a person is wrong.

@jamesclear:

"The only way to develop true confidence is to earn it.

• The confidence that you can bounce back from failure is earned by working through previous failures.
• The confidence that you can deliver the speech is earned by the previous speeches you have given.
• The confidence that you can perform on game day is earned by the previous performances in practice.

In the beginning, you need enough courage to practice even though it may not go very well. And over time, as your skills improve, courage transforms into confidence. Courage first, confidence later."

You can rewire your brain. That sounds like a science fiction movie, but it's actually simple. The first step is realising that every piece of information you consume, every action you take, and every thought you have programs you. Many of the things you think are true are just the result of repetition. The second step is taking control of your actions, thoughts, and consumption. None of those are easy. But they're all doable. You can change your information diet quickly. You can change your habits. You can even stop yourself from entertaining certain thoughts, and you can replace those thoughts with different ones instead. The happiest and most successful people in the world are constantly programming themselves to feel and be better. If you want to be one of them, start doing the same. Do it today. Right now.

The dumbest way to waste your time is to get into arguments with people. Their mind is already made up so it's a lost cause. All that happens is you waste your time and energy. Every argument has the same ending; you get angry trying to convince the other person about something that doesn't matter and the other person resents you for trying. Time is your greatest asset. Don't waste a minute of it arguing with people who don't deserve it.

@sama:

You can skip all the parties, all the conferences, all the press, all the tweets. Build a great product and get users and win.

@collision:

As you become an adult, you realise that things around you weren't just always there; people made them happen. But only recently have I started to internalise how much tenacity *everything* requires. That hotel, that park, that railway. The world is a museum of passion projects.

Procrastination is a form of self-harm. Resist the urge to treat it like a joke or a simple fact of life. Don't take pride in waiting to do assignments. Don't have a laugh about your diet starting next week. Every day you delay is another day of subtle anxiety and zero progress. Not subjecting yourself to that is the ultimate form of self-care and self respect.

Unless you're playing at the absolute highest levels, every game in life is just you vs you. It's you vs the voice in your head that tells you you're not good enough. It's you vs the desire to quit. It's you vs being lazy. It's you vs staying stuck in your ways instead of adjusting your strategy. Take your focus off the supposed competition. Just improve yourself.

@naval:

Fast, lift, sprint, stretch, and meditate.

Build, sell, write, create, invest, and own.

Read, reflect, love, seek truth, and ignore society.

Make these habits. Say no to everything else.

Avoid debt, jail, addiction, disgrace, shortcuts, and media.

Relax. Victory is assured.

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: "I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?"

—But it's nicer here...

So you were born to feel "nice"? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don't you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you're not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren't you running to do what your nature demands?

Alex Becker:

After achieving 100s of millions, this is my #1 lesson I can give you.

Found a vid of me 14 years ago. Broke. Cringe. In my $200 a month bedroom talking about my new "SEO blog."

Why I show this: It's CRINGE af… BUT it's why I have wealth that .01% of people do, and here's why:

Imagine seeing this back then as someone who knew me in high school before I did anything.

CRINGE. LOL. Look at this dork who isn't in college at this age.

When you start ANYTHING, you will be cringe. ALWAYS.

To get to the good stuff, you have to go through the "icky" beginner period. To make MAX progress you have to put yourself out in the world.

The world will then tell you: you are embarrassing… stop.

This is because most peoples SOLE goal in life is protecting their ego and not looking like a failure to others.

In short, they make their main goal avoiding being cringe.

Very few people can put themselves in a position where they appear weak, pathetic, silly—yet keep moving forward.

Those that can… repeatedly… and stay motivated? They take over the world.

Because in order to be Tom Brady, you FIRST must get on the field and throw the ball like a 5-year-old soy girl and be judged by everyone on the sidelines.

Then you analyse your throw and get better day after day, week after week, year after year… till you're great.

My point, my #1 lesson: Be cringe as fuck and put yourself out there. Let the peanut gallery laugh.

There is NOTHING shameful about wanting to become something greater than you are and trying like hell in public to do so.

Accept the pain of being a clown short term… to avoid being a clown (like those on the sidelines) for your entire life.

So be cringe. Pursue cringe.

Extract from "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle:

1. Your thoughts are loud, but they aren't always true.
2. Most of your stress comes from living in your head.
3. Stop replaying the past—it's done.
4. Stop fast-forwarding the future—it hasn't happened.
5. Peace is found in this one moment.
6. Take a deep breath. That's presence.
7. You don't have to fix everything right now.
8. Let life be what it is, not what you expect.
9. Not every thought needs your attention.
10. You can feel things without reacting to them.
11. The now is the only place you can actually live.
12. You miss life when you're always in your head.
13. Being present doesn't mean perfect—it means aware.
14. No moment is ever wrong. It just is.
15. You don't need all the answers. Just awareness.
16. The more still you become, the clearer life feels.
17. Let go of the need to control everything.
18. What you resist will only grow louder.
19. Just be here. That's more than enough.
20. Sometimes the best thing you can do... is nothing at all.

You can't live a big life in a small environment. Stay in the wrong place too long, and you start to shrink. You talk like the people around you. You think like them. You want what they want. If no one around you is building something big, taking risks, or pushing further, neither will you. Not because you can't—but because you won't even realise you should. But the second you step into a bigger room, everything changes. You see how small you were thinking. You feel what real ambition looks like. You stop making excuses and start making moves. If you feel stuck, look around. The problem isn't always you—it's where you're standing.

Force yourself to be in a good mood all the time. That may sound a bit crazy to you. You might think your mood isn't under your control. Or it might sound excessive to try and be positive always. Or maybe you've even bought into the idea that forcing a good mood is repressive and will lead to bigger problems later. But the truth is, you can decide to put a smile on your face and have a positive outlook no matter what, in every situation. Do that. You'll be happier, and you'll start getting better outcomes too. Win-win.

You can always go back. After spending every weekend for a year trying to build a business on the side, you can just go back to being a standard professional who watches football on Sundays. After spending a year writing on social media, you can just delete your accounts and not try to build a page anymore. In almost every case, the effects of an experiment aren't lasting. Monetary losses are small. People in your life either forget, barely care, or never even noticed. If the worst case result of an experiment is going back to where you started, and the best case is a changed life, it's usually worth taking. What holds us back is low-consciousness fear.

@SimonAlexanderO:

You are the most important project you will ever work on: your mindset, your emotional maturity, your ability to keep showing up when no one's watching and the quiet, daily work of becoming someone you're proud of. We spend so much time building lives that look good on the outside, but the real transformation happens within ourselves. In the choices no one sees, in the beliefs you challenge and in the habits you choose when comfort would have been easier. There is no finish line for personal growth. There's only deeper self-awareness, stronger boundaries, better questions and more alignment. And the greatest reward from truly investing in yourself will never be in what you earn, but in the person you become.

1) Murphy's Law — The more you fear something happening, the more likely it is to occur. Stop feeding your fears.
2) Kidlin's Law — Writing a problem down clearly is half the solution. Clarity = Power.
3) Gilbert's Law — Your success is in your hands. Take responsibility, find solutions, and own the outcome.
4) Wilson's Law — Prioritise knowledge and intelligence, and wealth will follow. Smart work pays off.
5) Falkland's Law — If a decision isn't necessary, don't make it. Sometimes, doing nothing is the best move.

From The Daily Stoic:

Someone says something about you and you get rattled for the day. Your son or daughter lashes out at you—and your week is thrown off. You overhear someone saying something about your appearance—and it gets to you. Your boss lays into you—and now you're anxious and insecure.

All of us—every single one of us—have experienced this. No one is immune to the judgements of others.

And yet: Why do we put so much stock in what others say? Marcus has a clever observation:

"We all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own."

It's true isn't it? We're generally selfish people but the one thing we value more than ourselves is other people's opinion about us. And this ridiculous contradiction causes us so much misery.

One of stoicism's fundamental principles is that we all have a "citadel of the self": a fortress that we're constantly building and strengthening. That fortress can only be breached by us, when we let an opinion or a thought go past the walls. Whether that happens—whether we give ourselves over to someone else's judgement, opinion, slur, thought, action—is a choice.

Nothing outside of your own thoughts can affect you—if you choose. No one's opinion of you can shake you—if you don't allow yourself to be affected by it.

I was a college dropout at nineteen, a struggling Uber driver at twenty three, a entrepreneurial failure with thousands of dollars in losses at twenty five, then a thousand dollar a day solopreneur at thirty. My dad didn't quit his job and start his company until he was fifty. A woman I met recently lost a hundred pounds and got in extremely good shape at seventy years old. It's never too late to do anything, and you're never out of the game until you give up. Keep going.

Reposted by @elonmusk:

What is laziness? Laziness is a habit of thinking about the cost of things or the effort required instead of thinking about the payoff. I'm going to say it again to get a few more heads to explode: if laziness is nothing but a habit of thinking about the effort instead of thinking about the outcome, what if you could reverse laziness by simply developing a habit of thinking more about the reward instead of how long it would take to get it?

Think about it this way: when you're at home and hungry, do you think about the delicious food you'll enjoy, or do you think about how long it will take to prepare it? The answer determines whether you get up and make it or stay on the couch scrolling.

So the real question is: when you're trying to achieve something, do you think more about the good outcome or about the work required? Who goes through childbirth? Women experience the same phenomenon. If they fully remembered how excruciating the pain was, they wouldn't do it again. So not thinking about the effort is actually vital to survival and continuation of the human race. If we focused intensely on how hard it was to have a baby, we simply wouldn't do it. But if you focus on how wonderful it would be to have a family—the joy, the love, the legacy—well, then you willingly go through the pain because you've already mentally committed to the outcome.

This raises an interesting question: am I truly ambitious, or do I simply have a thinking habit which produces dopamine because I'm thinking about the positive outcome? That dopamine is what gets me moving. And when people are observing high achievers and asking, "How the hell do you get so much done? What's your secret?" How do they do it? I think it's just this simple shift: when I think of all the things I need to do, I don't think about them in terms of the effort, the time, or the difficulty. I think about them in terms of their benefits—the impact they'll have on people's lives, the value they'll create, the positive change they'll bring.

That's the difference between lazy and productive thinking. It's not about willpower or discipline—it's about where you direct your mental focus. Focus on outcomes, not obstacles.

The "locking in" paradox contains the seeds of its own destruction from the moment of conception. By framing focus as an extreme intervention requiring monastic discipline, it creates an unsustainable psychological pressure cooker. The person "locking in" is essentially betting their entire sense of self-worth on maintaining a state of perfect control. Every small deviation - checking a phone, having an unproductive hour, feeling unmotivated - becomes existential failure. The system is so rigid that any crack becomes a catastrophic break. You're not just failing at a task; you're failing at being the kind of person who can "lock in."

The inevitable collapse is always spectacular because "locking in" doesn't build genuine habits or sustainable rhythms - it builds a house of cards dependent on constant vigilance. When the willpower finally exhausts itself (and it always does), people don't just return to their previous baseline. They crash far below it, binge-consuming everything they denied themselves with compound interest. The phone that was locked away becomes more addictive than ever. The social media that was deleted gets reinstalled with desperate urgency. The system creates its own rebound effect, making the original "problem" exponentially worse.

What's most tragic is that this failure is then internalised as personal weakness rather than systemic design flaw. People blame themselves for "not being disciplined enough" to maintain an inherently unsustainable state, then attempt to "lock in" even harder next time. Each failure reinforces the belief that they need more extreme measures, creating a cycle of increasingly violent self-intervention. The paradox becomes self-perpetuating: the more dramatically you try to lock in, the more dramatically you'll fail, and the more dramatically you'll need to lock in again.

The deepest failure is that "locking in" prevents people from developing actual relationship with their impulses, desires, and natural rhythms. Instead of learning to work WITH their psychology, they declare war against it. When the war inevitably ends in defeat, they're left more fragmented and self-distrustful than when they started, having learnt nothing except that they're "weak" - ensuring the cycle continues indefinitely.

Inability to focus is a disease. And it's becoming a pandemic spreading throughout the world. Cheap entertainment has made people's minds soft. They can't read books anymore. They can't sit down and work for an hour straight with no breaks. Many can't even watch TV without also being on their phone. Cure yourself of this, and you'll have a massive advantage in the future. Give in to it, and it'll ruin you.

@notanicecat69:

Somewhere out there is a guy who sold within 25% of last cycle's top, sat in cash and waited for the crash, DCA'd into BTC near the bottom and then made 5x on his whole crypto portfolio by just buying BTC and then fucked off again, waiting again.

Been thinking about this a lot lately.

In 10 questions identify what I am truly afraid of. Find out how this fear is guiding my day to day life and decision making, and what areas in life it is holding me back. Ask the 10 questions one by one, and do not just ask surface level answers that show bias, go deeper into what I am not consciously aware of. After the 10 questions, reveal what I am truly afraid of, that I am not aware of and how it is manifesting itself in my life, guiding my decisions and holding me back. And then using advanced Neuro-Linguistic Programming techniques, help me reframe this fear in the most productive manner, ensuring the reframe works with how my brain is wired. Remember the fear you discover must not be surface level, and instead something that is deep rooted in my subconscious.

"Ask ChatGPT, Claude or Grok what the Triffin Dilemma is and you'll never question Bitcoin again."

The Triffin Dilemma is an economic problem that happens when a country's national currency is also used as the world's main reserve currency (like the U.S. dollar today). It was first described by Belgian-American economist Robert Triffin in the 1960s, and bears his name because he was the first to clearly articulate this fundamental paradox of the international monetary system.

Here's the trap: to keep the world supplied with enough dollars (or reserve currency), the U.S. has to send dollars abroad — usually by running trade deficits (buying more than it sells). But when the U.S. runs deficits, confidence in the dollar can fall, because people worry the U.S. can't back up all those dollars with real value (like gold, in the old days, or economic strength today).

So the U.S. must create more dollars to support world trade, but creating more dollars weakens trust in the dollar over time. That's the Triffin Dilemma — a built-in conflict between domestic stability and global currency demand.

The World Needs	But That Causes
More U.S. dollars for trade	U.S. deficits and inflation risk
Strong, trusted dollar	Less global liquidity and slower growth

It helped explain the collapse of the Bretton Woods system (when the U.S. stopped backing dollars with gold in 1971). It's still relevant today — people use the Triffin Dilemma to talk about the limits of the dollar's dominance and the search for alternatives (like a multipolar reserve system or digital currencies).

Written by Colby Kultgen:

1) Setting boundaries is hard. Being taken advantage of is harder.
2) If you won't start today—you won't start tomorrow either.
3) Regret is the result of inaction more often than wrong action.
4) Overworking is a sign of inefficiency, not dedication.
5) Saying "yes" to everything means saying "no" to the most important things.
6) Perfectionism is a form of self-sabotage.
7) Social media is a tool to distract yourself from a life you don't enjoy.
8) Not everyone in your life wants to see you succeed.
9) The best lessons in life often come from the most painful experiences.
10) Relationships take continuous effort; they don't just maintain themselves.
11) Your feelings are valid, but they don't excuse bad behaviour.
12) Not every problem has a solution; learn to manage ambiguity.
13) Luck plays a bigger role in success than most people want to admit.
14) Most of your limitations are self-imposed.
15) If you want a different life, you have to change your daily habits.
16) Money can't buy happiness, but it can provide opportunities for happiness.
17) Who you blame is who you give power to.
18) The timelines we set for our achievements are arbitrary and unhelpful.
19) Waiting for the "right time" often means missing the opportunity entirely.
20) You'll never fully know what you want to be in life, and that's okay.

Neuroplasticity is fundamentally life-altering because it reveals that consciousness itself is both the sculptor and the sculpture—that our awareness can literally rewrite the physical substrates that generate our experience of being alive. This creates a powerful feedback loop where the observer changes the observed, where the thinker reshapes the brain that does the thinking. When someone practises mindfulness meditation, they're not just developing a mental skill; they're physically thickening the insula, the brain region responsible for interoceptive awareness and empathy. They're literally growing more capacity for presence, for compassion. When trauma survivors engage in EMDR or somatic practices, they're not just processing memories; they're dismantling the neural architecture of hypervigilance and constructing new networks of safety and trust. The profound implication is that we're not passive recipients of our neurological inheritance. We're active architects of our own consciousness, capable of redesigning the very mechanisms through which we perceive and interact with reality.

The deepest transformation comes from recognising that neuroplasticity operates at the level of identity itself—not just changing what we do, but fundamentally rewiring who we are. The neural networks that encode our sense of self, our core beliefs about reality, our deepest emotional patterns, are all malleable. This means that the person who believes they are fundamentally flawed can literally rebuild the neural basis of self-worth. The individual convinced that the world is dangerous can reconstruct their threat-detection systems to perceive safety and possibility. Most remarkably, people can literally change their brain's wiring itself—transforming from someone who fears growth into someone whose brain is wired for curiosity and resilience. This isn't personality modification or behavioural adjustment. It's ontological reconstruction. We can become fundamentally different beings while remaining ourselves, like rivers that carve entirely new channels while maintaining their essential flow.

What makes neuroplasticity ultimately transformative is its revelation that suffering and limitation are not permanent features of human existence but temporary configurations of neural activity. Every pattern of depression, every cycle of anxiety, every habit of self-sabotage exists as a specific arrangement of synaptic connections that can be systematically rewired. This means that redemption is not a spiritual concept but a neurological possibility—that we can literally be born again through the patient work of neural reconstruction and architecture. The implications are staggering: that healing is always possible, that growth has no upper limit, that the human capacity for transformation is bounded only by our willingness to engage in the patient work of neural reconstruction. It suggests that enlightenment, emotional freedom, and profound personal transformation are not rare gifts reserved for the few, but natural consequences of understanding and working with the plastic nature of consciousness itself.

You're not lazy. You're distracted. You're worried about step three when you haven't even laced up your shoes for step one. You're asking yourself what if it doesn't work when it doesn't even exist. Train yourself to do the thing in front of you and ignore everything else. It doesn't matter if you fell flat on your face yesterday. It doesn't matter what happens tomorrow because it's out of your control. All that matters is what's in front of you so focus on that. Everything else will fall into place when you focus.

Anxiety is what happens when your brain is bigger than your courage. You're smart enough to know what you should be doing but lack the guts to do it. This imbalance is what triggers anxiety. The only way to demolish anxiety is to choke it out with ruthless action. This is why you never feel anxious when you're in motion, even if that motion leads to temporary failure. Anxiety has nothing to do with failure and everything to do with a lack of courage.

Every day we see tweets about someone getting drained $100k, or a protocol got hacked, resulting in all connected wallets being compromised. Most people lose everything by clicking one wrong link. Here's the exact system to stay 100% safe.

Stop treating wallets like bank accounts. Your crypto wallet isn't a bank — it's a loaded weapon. One wrong click and it's over.

1) Never store seed phrases or private keys on the cloud. Saving phrases on cloud storage platforms like Google Drive and iCloud is extremely risky. A hacker can access your cloud profile the moment your email is compromised. If you must use cloud storage, enable 2FA on your email and use a secondary email for registering on random sites. Ideally, you should store your seed phrase on a piece of paper and store it somewhere safe. Bonus: You can also memorise it. It's not that hard.

2) Separate your activity: Use 2 wallets — Hot & Cold. Hot Wallet is for daily use: minting, trading, connecting to dApps. It's always online — fast, but risky. Think of it like your current account: convenient, but exposed. Cold Wallet is for storage. Your long-term holdings, your serious money. It stays offline until you absolutely need it. Think of it like a safe deposit box: secure, but not for everyday use.

3) Hot Wallets – Use Open Source with Proven Track Records. When it comes to active use wallets, stick with open-source tools that have stood the test of time. MetaMask is the go-to for daily DeFi, NFT minting, and airdrop hunting. Rabby and Phantom are also solid options.

4) Use Hardware Wallets (Ledger/Trezor). A centralised exchange account can get frozen or restricted with assets in it. A non-custodial wallet is susceptible to getting flushed or compromised if proper care isn't taken, and that's where a hardware wallet comes in. A hardware wallet (also known as a cold wallet) is a physical device that securely stores cryptocurrency private keys offline, providing enhanced security for digital assets. Though it comes with drawbacks such as risk of misplacement, cost, and potential physical damage, it's by far the safest way to store and secure your assets from getting drained. Ledger Nano X / Nano S Plus are industry standard. Trezor Model T is the open-source option.

5) Never connect your cold wallet to sketchy sites. Your cold wallet should almost never touch a browser. If you're connecting it to some random dApp, you're doing it wrong. Transfer funds to your hot wallet first, then interact.

6) Use separate wallets for different activities. Don't use the same wallet for everything. Have one for trading, one for NFTs, one for airdrops. If one gets compromised, the others stay safe.

7) Revoke access and signatures after interacting with protocols. This is the most popular reason why most people's wallets get compromised. Whenever you give wallet approval or signature to a website, your wallet can get compromised if the connected site happens to get hacked in the future. Always revoke access after using any site, even trusted ones. Visit Revoke.cash, connect your wallet, tap on your address and click 'my approvals', select every chain you've interacted with and revoke approvals and signatures if you find any. Note: there's a small fee to revoke access, usually around $0.00001.

8) Never approve unlimited token allowances. When a dApp asks for token approval, it often defaults to "unlimited." Change it to the exact amount you need. Check and revoke old approvals regularly using Revoke.cash.

9) Bookmark your important sites. Phishing is everywhere. Don't trust search results or random links. Bookmark the real sites (Uniswap, OpenSea, etc.) and only use those bookmarks.

10) Use a hardware wallet for signing critical transactions. Even if your computer is compromised, a hardware wallet keeps your keys offline. You physically confirm transactions on the device itself.

If you do get drained, here's what to do immediately:

1) Factory reset your device. Your computer or phone may be compromised.
2) Update and always keep your software updated. Security patches matter.
3) Use a hardware wallet as your main storage. This should be your primary security layer.
4) Create new hot wallets for trading, each DEX on its own (different seeds, not accounts on same wallet). Isolation is key.
5) Never save your seed digitally in any form — no text files, images, notes, or iCloud. Paper only.
6) Don't keep much on your trading wallets. Move funds to hardware wallet whenever you're offline.
7) If you move funds frequently, consider Ledger Nano X or Flex for Bluetooth sending on the go (send/receive, not signing contracts).
8) If trying out a new DEX, use a new seed phrase wallet. Don't risk your existing wallets.
9) Use a separate Telegram account for trading. Keep your personal and trading lives completely separate.

The bottom line: Security isn't about one perfect solution. It's about layers. Never store keys on cloud, use hardware wallets for serious funds, separate wallets for different activities, revoke approvals regularly, and bookmark trusted sites. Most people get drained because they skip these basics. If you do get compromised, the steps above will help you rebuild securely.

You can't become a good trader without failing first. Think about it... You need to fall off a bike to learn balance. You need to make mistakes before you learn real strategies. You need to lose money to understand the value of execution.

Failure isn't the opposite of success in trading... it's the entry fee to long-term profitability.

Every blown stop, every bad entry, every missed take profit is painful, but each one teaches you a lesson that no textbook, video or guru ever will.

The key is surviving long enough to apply those lessons. Fail small, fail fast, fail often, but always keep yourself in the game.

Because the traders who last? They're not the ones who never fail, they're the individuals who learn from every failure until success becomes inevitable.

Bookmark this, come back to it in the future.

In a world that rewards confidence and punishes uncertainty, admitting "I don't know" feels like weakness. But it's not — it's intellectual honesty, and it's the foundation of true learning. The smartest people in history weren't those who pretended to know everything; they were those who acknowledged the limits of their knowledge and sought to expand them. The Dunning-Kruger effect shows us that the less someone knows, the more confident they are in their expertise. The more someone actually knows, the more they realise how much they don't know.

Confucius said it best: "To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge." This isn't about ignorance — it's about clarity. When you say "I don't know," you're drawing a line between what you understand deeply and what you don't. This prevents you from making decisions based on false confidence, spreading misinformation, or building your worldview on shaky foundations. Example: a doctor who says "I don't know, let me consult a specialist" is far more trustworthy than one who guesses and gets it wrong.

Neil deGrasse Tyson often emphasises that saying "I don't know" is one of the smartest things you can say. It signals that you value truth over ego. It means you're more interested in being right eventually than appearing right immediately. This is the mindset of scientists, philosophers, and great thinkers: they ask questions, test assumptions, and update their beliefs when evidence changes. Example: if someone asks you a technical question outside your expertise, saying "I don't know, but I'll find out" is far more respectable than bluffing your way through an answer.

Richard Feynman, one of the greatest physicists, was famous for his intellectual humility. He said (paraphrased): "Admitting that you do not know something is the first step to learning." If you pretend to know, you close the door to discovery. If you admit ignorance, you open it. Example: a student who says "I don't understand this concept" will ask questions, seek clarification, and eventually master it. A student who nods along, pretending to understand, stays confused forever.

"I don't know" is a sign of honesty, not weakness. It shows you're self-aware enough to recognise gaps in your knowledge. It shows you're secure enough to admit them publicly. Insecure people bluff because they equate not knowing with incompetence. Secure people say "I don't know" because they understand that no one knows everything, and pretending otherwise is exhausting and counterproductive. Example: in a business meeting, the person who admits "I don't have the data on that, let me check" is far more credible than the person who makes up numbers to save face.

Wisdom begins when pride ends — with the courage to say, "I don't know." Pride demands that you appear knowledgeable at all times. Wisdom demands that you pursue truth, even when it requires admitting ignorance. The Socratic method is built on this: Socrates claimed he knew nothing, and by interrogating others' assumptions, he exposed how little they knew too. His "I know that I know nothing" wasn't false modesty — it was a recognition that knowledge is provisional, incomplete, and constantly evolving. Example: a leader who says "I don't know the answer, let's figure it out together" fosters collaboration and learning. A leader who pretends to know everything stifles input and makes bad decisions.

Saying "I don't know" also protects you from being manipulated. Confident liars exploit people who are too proud to admit ignorance. If someone is selling you an investment, a conspiracy theory, or a medical treatment, and you don't understand it, saying "I don't know enough about this" stops you from making a costly mistake. Example: during financial bubbles (dot-com, crypto), many people invested in things they didn't understand because admitting ignorance felt embarrassing. Those who said "I don't know how this works, so I'm not investing" avoided disaster.

In relationships, "I don't know" is equally valuable. Pretending to have all the answers creates false expectations. Admitting uncertainty opens space for honest conversation. Example: if your partner asks "Why do you shut down when we argue?", saying "I don't know, but I want to figure it out" is far healthier than making up an excuse. It shows vulnerability and a willingness to explore uncomfortable truths.

The cultural shift we need is to treat "I don't know" not as failure, but as intellectual courage. Schools, workplaces, and social media reward people who speak confidently, even when they're wrong. This incentivises bluffing. We should reward those who say "I don't know," then do the work to find out. Example: in tech interviews, candidates who say "I don't know, but here's how I'd figure it out" often get hired over those who confidently give wrong answers.

In summary: "I don't know" is not weakness — it's honesty, humility, and the first step to wisdom. It protects you from overconfidence, bad decisions, and manipulation. It opens the door to learning, collaboration, and growth. The smartest people aren't those who know everything; they're those who know the limits of their knowledge and aren't afraid to admit it. As Confucius, Feynman, and Tyson understood: true knowledge begins with recognising what you don't know.

You don't need more trades, you need more patience between them.

Wait for the right setup
Size up with conviction
Take profit
Fuck off for a few days

I call this the cycle of profitability.

Over the next few months, it is absolutely crucial that you remember:

This is all a giant ponzi game of musical chairs in which the early participants sell their shitcoins to the greater fools as close to the top of the ponzi as they can manage.

When the time comes, you will need be able to snap yourself out of the euphoria and press the red button — prepare for this in advance, don't just wing it.

If you do not secure your victory when it is yours to take — you are the greatest fool of all.

Do not worry about making "as much money as possible" — instead, have the mindset of making "enough" money, and remember that there will be another bear market, another instance in which the playing field will reset — as long as you secure your win, walk away, and wait for the reset, you can rinse & repeat — but not if you give it all back.

When you secure that victory, it is important that you walk away from the charts — there will be a period of a few weeks in which you will be very vulnerable to the chart's tricks — you will think "oh, it's going to go higher, I sold too early," and you will buy back just before the major downturn…

— and then you will think, "I can't sell now! That's 40% less than what I could've sold for a week ago — it will go back up, and then I will sell!"

… but then, when it reaches that point, the market will trick you again: "ah, but if it just breaks this level again, I could double my money! Then I'll sell for sure!" … but it won't — it will reject at that level, and you will fall into a spiral of psychological warfare with yourself — down, and down, and down — until you've given everything back…

Only to find yourself feeling like a complete idiot, thinking "I could've changed my life… it was right in front of me, and all I had to do was click a button… my greed got the best of me."

And once again, we return to the point of: over the next few months, it is absolutely CRUCIAL that you remember that this is all a ponzi game of musical chairs in which the early participants sell their shitcoins to the greater fool — if you do not secure your victory when it is right before you — you are the greatest fool of all.

… and you will certainly feel like one.

It's not just because you lack willpower or discipline. It's actually because you don't live an interesting life.

Make your life interesting by living each day like an adventure, and you won't feel the urge to act like an NPC on social media.

To make your life interesting, you don't need to do something totally new everyday.

You just need to bring back your curiosity that you had as a child. Take genuine interest in everything, and you'll see how fun life can be.

Foresight seems to be becoming increasingly rare, especially in this space.

The lack of foresight can be staggering — shocking, even; "how do they not see it?"

This creates an extreme advantage for those who do have foresight.

Most participants only live in the moment, and are so quick to say things like; "xyz is cooked, dead, never coming back," etc.

But we have extensive, definitive evidence that confirms the psychologically cyclical nature of these markets.

Ironically, those without foresight are those who embody the cyclical nature of these markets, and it is they who are responsible for the correlation that takes place on price charts.

On the large scale, those who have foresight are the "early buyers," and those without it are "exit liquidity."

No matter how strong the narrative, never marry your bags. Sell without emotions. The dunking, noise and tantrums from emotional man-children who cuss you out for selling your bags don't matter cos they're characters on a screen who don't live your reality. When you log out of CT, you'll be left to carry your cross alone. Soltards will hail you as a "chad" for round-tripping while their PNLs get fat. Being a chad don't pay your bills. The only scorecard that matters is your PNL.

It makes sense to take at least 2 weeks break from trading.

Why this matters:

After a big win, you feel invincible. Your brain is flooded with dopamine. You start thinking you've figured it out, that you can't lose. You take bigger risks, overleveraging positions, chasing the next high. This is when you give back all your gains.

After a big loss, you feel desperate. Your brain is in panic mode. You want to make it back immediately. You revenge trade, doubling down on bad positions, trying to force the market to give you back what you lost. This is when you blow up your account.

Both states are emotional, not rational. Both lead to bad decisions. The 2-week break isn't arbitrary. It's the minimum time needed for your emotional brain to calm down and for your rational brain to take back control.

During the break, you're not trying to forget. You're processing. Reviewing what happened. Understanding the decisions that led to the outcome. Rebuilding your mental state. By the time you come back, you're trading from a place of clarity, not emotion.

A Rolex. A Lamborghini. A penthouse. Designer clothes. Michelin-star restaurants. First-class flights. Things that signal status. Things you buy to show others you've made it.

But real luxury is:

Waking up without an alarm. Not checking your phone for the first hour of the day. Having zero meetings you don't want to attend. Saying no without guilt. Time to think. Time to do nothing. Not needing to impress anyone. Financial security so deep you never think about money. The ability to disappear for a week without consequences.

Society's version of luxury is about impressing other people. Real luxury is about freedom from other people's expectations.

The irony is that most people spend their entire lives chasing society's definition, sacrificing the real one in the process. They work 80-hour weeks to afford the watch, the car, the house. But they have no time to enjoy any of it. They're trapped in a cycle of earning and spending, always needing to maintain the image.

Real luxury can't be photographed. It can't be posted on Instagram. It's invisible to everyone except you. And that's exactly why most people never pursue it.

The core insight: Price is meaningless without market cap context. When someone says "$1 million Bitcoin," they're not predicting an arbitrary number. They're saying Bitcoin will capture a certain percentage of global wealth. The question isn't "can Bitcoin hit $1 million?" The question is "can Bitcoin capture 3-4% of global wealth?"

Why market cap matters: Bitcoin at $118,000 (today) has a market cap of $2.3 trillion. That's 13% of gold's $18 trillion. Gold at $2,800 per ounce vs Bitcoin at $118,000 tells you nothing. But "$2.3T vs $18T" tells you everything. You're not comparing coins to ounces. You're comparing total stored value.

The moving target problem: Gold's market cap doesn't stay at $18 trillion. It grows with inflation at roughly 3-4% annually. By 2035, gold will be $24 trillion. By 2045, $32 trillion. So when Bitcoin hits $1 million in 2035, it's not "matching gold." It's reaching $19.5 trillion, which is only 81% of gold's $24 trillion at that time. You're chasing a moving target.

The purchasing power trap: $1 million Bitcoin in 2035 sounds massive. But in real purchasing power, it's only worth $667,000 in today's money. $1.6 million in 2045? That's only $497,000 in today's purchasing power. Inflation erodes 69% of the value over 20 years. The nominal number is meaningless. Only real purchasing power matters. To maintain today's purchasing power of $900,000, Bitcoin would need to hit $2.9 million by 2045 just to break even in real terms.

The expanding wealth problem: Global wealth also grows. Today it's $450 trillion. Gold is 4% of that. But by 2035, global wealth will be $650 trillion (3.5% annual growth). By 2045, $900 trillion. So $1 million Bitcoin in 2035 is $19.5T out of $650T = 3.0% of global wealth. Gold will still be 3.7% ($24T out of $650T). Bitcoin at $1 million in 2035 doesn't mean it matched gold. It means it's still trailing in percentage terms. You're chasing a percentage of an expanding pie.

What the price targets actually mean:

• $200k (2026): Bitcoin is 21% of gold's projected $18.5T
• $300k (2027): Bitcoin is 31% of gold's projected $19T
• $500k (2030): Bitcoin is 47% of gold's projected $21T
• $1M (2035): Bitcoin is 81% of gold's projected $24T
• $2M (2045): Bitcoin overtakes gold's projected $32T

The real question: Can Bitcoin grow faster than inflation + gold's growth + global wealth expansion? That's the bet. Not "will number go up," but "will Bitcoin capture market share fast enough to outpace three different growth rates simultaneously?" If yes, price follows automatically. If no, price stagnates no matter how bullish people feel.

Why this matters for you: When someone says "Bitcoin can't go to $1 million, that's too expensive," they're thinking about price in isolation. They're comparing Bitcoin to their salary, a house, or a car. Irrelevant. Bitcoin's price only matters relative to market cap, and market cap only matters relative to other assets and total wealth. Understanding this changes how you evaluate price targets. $1 million Bitcoin by 2035 sounds impossible. But "Bitcoin capturing 3% of global wealth over 10 years" sounds reasonable if you believe in the thesis.

How being a "millionaire" has eroded over time: The term "millionaire" has lost 99% of its meaning since 1900. A million dollars in 1900 had the purchasing power of roughly $37 million today. Being a millionaire meant something. By 2025, a million dollars is upper-middle class in major cities, not wealthy. Here's what $1 million from different years is worth in 2025 purchasing power, calculated using the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which tracks the cost of a basket of goods and services over time:

• 1900: $1M = $37.1M today
• 1910: $1M = $31.8M today
• 1920: $1M = $15.4M today
• 1930: $1M = $18.3M today
• 1940: $1M = $21.9M today
• 1950: $1M = $12.9M today
• 1960: $1M = $10.3M today
• 1970: $1M = $7.9M today
• 1980: $1M = $3.7M today
• 1990: $1M = $2.3M today
• 2000: $1M = $1.8M today
• 2010: $1M = $1.4M today
• 2020: $1M = $1.2M today

The calculation uses CPI data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics. For example, CPI in 1900 was 8.0, and in 2025 it's approximately 297. So $1 million in 1900 × (297 ÷ 8.0) = $37.1 million in 2025 dollars. The erosion accelerated post-1971 when the US left the gold standard, allowing unlimited currency printing. From 1900 to 1971 (71 years), $1 million lost 77% of its value. From 1971 to 2025 (54 years), it lost another 73%. The post-gold-standard era saw faster debasement.

This is why nominal price targets are meaningless. "Millionaire" in 1900 = generational wealth. "Millionaire" in 2025 = comfortable retirement. "Millionaire" in 2050 = middle class. The number stays the same. The purchasing power collapses. This is the trap Bitcoin faces. $1 million sounds enormous. But by the time it gets there, $1 million won't mean what it means today. You're not chasing a number. You're chasing purchasing power in a system designed to erode it.

The framework: Market cap → Global wealth percentage → Inflation adjustment → Purchasing power. That's the only way to think about price. Everything else is noise.