Soap, Water, and Gas Money
I have been in crypto for more than 2 years (at the time of writing) reading documentation, producing flowcharts, recording and editing videos, searching for alpha on crypto twitter (CT), sharing alpha, and discussing crypto in discord and telegram, all 100% paperless.
When I went full-time crypto, it was one of the highlights of my working life. I have never been jobless for most of my adult life. “Financial freedom”, “my own boss”, “master of my own time” were some of the dreams that I thought I had achieved, and to be fully honest, they are truthful statements mostly.
However, the 9–5 turned into a 10am–2am. It became one big dopamine chase. Airdrops, high yield apy farms, price pumps all injecting those sweet sweet gains deep into the heart of me.
“If you try to walk in crypto, you get left behind.”
A friend once told me that he told the mother of his young child, his wife, this.
And whether, someone that surfs the tweets once a day, or god forbid, once a week, can keep up, I can’t say, but the juiciest opportunities are always 10 mins before you find them, and then you have the strain of “is this fomo?” to deal with.
Questions, need answers. Options need decisions. Answers and decisions need both time and energy, things that are deflationary and have had the minting keys burnt long before you and I.
Time is wasted, yes indeed. I have had many conversations, where I ask the other, or they me, “are you still there?” which is usually replied with “sorry, i was just answering someone” or “just saw something on CT”
Blood days and sharks are also either right up in your face, or looming in the shadows. How many times have you heard some crypto youtuber proudly announce that a 20–30% dump on BTC is nothing more than a Tuesday, or a chance to buy the dip. Hopium.
Collateralized debt positions (CDPs) take these red bar days and turn them into a, “faak, where did i put those stables i borrowed?” day. I can only imagine the energy required with those degens that take those USDs and use them to speculate on chitcoins.
I saw a wallet the other day that had 20+M of borrowed USDs locked up in veTKNs, and only 3K USDs liquid in the wallet with a health factor of 1.05. Good thing BAND was spitting out a ringtone….
Did I say sharks? We see a project hacked for 15M and barely blink an eye, assuming we weren’t staked there. Just another flash loan attack.
“Why don’t they turn flash loans off?”…they can’t now.
If we were in there, we likely lose sleep, from stress, reading/writing post mortems, warroom’n on both a technical and logical capacity, and just waiting to see if the tornado gets a bit more traffic.
I have had 20/20 vision for the entirety of my life. I played videogames, hours and hours a day some days, but I also ran in baseball fields, climbed trees in forests, and swam in rivers. But a short time in the “metaverse” and now I need reading glasses. I was surprised to learn from my wife.
“You need to use dish soap and water to clean them. Its the oils”
Doc says, you're getting old, and that is likely true, but its fun to blame something else for the failures of my body as many of us blame other for the sharks and red days.
Walking. Exercise is another thing I find less and less time for. I have a 1 hour reminder on my PC that I’m supposed to use to do 10 push ups, or at the very least stand up and stretch out, but I seldom obey. The lie to myself, comes and goes as quick as it takes to harvest some gov tokens.
Ungrateful…not. If I could go back 2 years and make the choice to dig deep in DeFi or not again. I would undoubtably make the same choice again. It would be like holding a token that has single sided staking and not staking it.
WTF does that?
Crypto has given so much to so many, myself included. We must be grateful for the early adopters, innovators, deployers, launchers, and plebs that fuel the machine. We all must do our part to keep the machine going because the freedom granted is miraculous, its breathtaking (both in awe and in sloth).
BUT we must also not forget that we are people too. Not just cartoon animal jpegs. Not smart contracts that sit ready at all times. Rather we need gas to run, to execute actions, to change the state of our worlds in the ways we are skilled in doing so.
You are your own node. Pay yourself some gas money.
