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The Bitcoin Smiley Model
Before writing about the intended content of this post, I felt compelled to whine and complain about my physical status in the moment. So, here goes.
My feet are vibrating and numb from the ankles down, my toes are involuntarily curled up, my ears are ringing, my right leg feels like it’s loosely coupled to my hip with badly frayed strings, my right leg muscles are fatigued and crampy from an unrelenting tightness, the arthritis in my right shoulder is inflamed to the point where it painfully limits my arm motion, my sense of balance is quite wobbly due to a low level of continuous dizziness, and my mind is in a Schoedinger’s cat superposition of both a dunkin’ “explorer batch” coffee high and a cannabis brownie high.
Since I think my Opdivo-juiced immune system T-cells are on another impromptu, instantaneous rampage searching for more poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma cancer cells to annihilate, I think the swarm is once again responsible for the above-mentioned collateral damage. The tradeoff is surely worth it, but the next time I see my oncologist after my upcoming CT scan I’m going to discuss the possibility of taking what we in the community call a “chemo holiday“.
Now that I got the poor-me cancer complaint off my chest, it’s time to talk about Bitcoin yet again. At some unknown point in time, the Bitcoin Smiley Model (BSM) crossed the chasm in my mind from formless energy to a formed thought. The BSM is a simplified abstraction of the following bitcoin price chart from Bitcoin advocate Dan “HODL” Held. And yes, his real last name is “Held”. Thus, he was destined to be a Bitcoiner at birth.
As I studied the chart of successive parabolas, it looked as though it was smiling at me. Hence, after an uncontrollable but innate urge to create consumed me and directed my attention away from my physical distress, I iteratively doodled in visio in a high speed mode where thoughts for improvements raced through my mind faster than I could capture and draw them. When I felt satisfied with the look and feel of the “done done” product, I stopped and reveled in the sacred moment of communication between the creator and the created. With that said, I share with you my masterpiece, the BSM…
The model suggests that the price of Bitcoin may bump up against a ceiling sometime in the future. The value of the ceiling is a newly discovered universal constant, kBDOO , named after its discoverer, me, BD00. Since our lord Satoshi, the god of money, is the only other person on earth to know what the value of kBDOO is, BD00 has made a pact with Satoshi to keep it secret for the good of all mankind. But once again, don’t forget…
But wait! I don’t make any of the cancer shit up. It’s the real deal. It’s the non-cancer stuff that I make up.
Just Get Me To The Next Treatment
One of the deceased members of my MRCG (see formal ID cards below) was a scrappy fighter and a role model for our cancer caucus. Except for the inevitable final encounter with the infamous Emperor-Of-All-Maladies, Amy knew how to put a whuppin’ on the Emperor whenever he got too close. One of Amy’s many inspirational nuggets of wisdom is:
“Just Get Me To The Next Treatment”
The quip is meant to convey the bright hope that as each treatment starts failing to halt the Emperor’s advance, a newly FDA-Approved or heavily-scrutinized clinical trial regimen would be ready for her to latch onto before the looming final existential encounter. I don’t know how many treatment types Amy endured, but there were many. One of our other heroic MRCG members, Tracy B., is on her freakin’ 23rd treatment regimen! This exceptional woman is as indestructible as the Bitcoin honey badger. (I had to shill Bitcoin in this post somehow).
So back to me, because it’s all about me, damn it! I’m currently on treatment regimen number three and still a mere grunt in a platoon of battletested MRCG veterans. I don’t know what my next chemo cocktail will turn out to be because there s no official checklist to follow. It “depends” on how my physical situation changes and how fast those changes occur.
However, whenever I stumble upon news like this…..
….it boosts my spirits because I always think of Amy: “That may be my next treatment!“.
Cranio Crawdad
In the interest of ongoing full disclosure (lol), here’s the report from my latest brain MRI performed on 1/12/21:
I’m waaaaaay past the point of being intimidated by all the med-speak, but “craniocaudad” did catch my eye as a funny new word. I pronounced it as “cranio-crawdad” as I read it and laughed out loud as memories of eating real crawdads and drinking hurricanes at Mardi Gras flooded my tumor-tinted brain. I laughed again as I googled it and learned that it was spelled wrong. Its correct spelling is “craniocaudal” and it describes a dimension in a 3D coordinate system whose origin is anchored to the skull somewhere.
The MRI follow up with my neurosurgeon took place an hour after the scan. It occurred in my car outside the doctor’s office, which is in the building right next door to the MRI place. Don’t be silly, the doctor didn’t walk out to the car and give me the news from the passenger seat. He wanted me to be easily accessible in case the MRI showed something ominous and he needed to physically examine me.
We held an iPhone telemedicine session and as soon as his face came online he said my favorite meditation mantra: “it looks exactly like the last scan“. And with that, we were done after 5 more minutes of exchanging pleasantries.
Whew! I’ve been gifted yet another three month reprieve from being consumed by scary thoughts of being cyberknifed again or having my skull drilled open to excise some emperor turds. Onward to next month’s chest/abdomen/pelvis CT scan.
An Exercise For The Student
I’m gonna take a break from being a wild-eyed Bitcoin advocate to make stuff up again. Actually, most of my Bitcoin stuff is made up stuff too. Can you tell which stuff is?
With that preface in mind, please behold this made up graph:
As an exercise for the student, please printout the following template, fill it in, and then throw it away.
An Adoring Legacy
As I stated in a previous post, one of the goals I’d like to accomplish before being violently escorted off the stage by the dastardly EOAM is to help family, friends, and readers become rich. Well, um, perhaps? This is another post intended to nudge my homies in that direction with the aid of…….. Bitcoin, once again.
The figure below shows the generic S-curve template that accurately models successful new technology adoption. As the new technology (think Bitcoin) gains traction and steals market share from an older, noble but inferior technology (think gold), the early adopters/investors reap the most benefits and the laggards (think stubborn goldbugs like Peter “cuff links” Schiff), the least. It makes sense in a capitalist society that the early risk-takers with more skin in the game are highly rewarded. They have a higher risk of getting rekt if the technology fails to gain traction, never makes it past the “knee” of the S-curve, and returns to the big goose egg.
The next figure shows many specific examples of successful technology adoptions. They all follow the classic S-curve template but the time interval from early-to-laggard acceptance varies quite a bit. It took the telephone 60 years to achieve 80% penetration into the home whereas it took the microwave only 15 years to achieve the same encroachment. The steeper the slope past the knee of the curve, the greater the reward is over a shorter amount of time. The ideal slope is infinity, “…to the moon Alice”.
Yet another graph below shows the latest brazen attempt by the insecure BD00 to look bigly smart. He’s overlaid the current Bitcoin market position on its S-curve assault on the gold market.
So, how did the fake genius BD00 concoct the 3.5% market penetration position? Follow the assumptions, check out the result, and make sure you kindly read the blue note:
To be even more delusionally obsessed, let’s take a look at the approximate market caps for some major monetary asset classes:
If you believe the new kid in town, that Bastard-Bitcoin-Badger, can nestle in with this elitist cartel and gouge out trillions of inflated value as a hedge against a major collapse of these fiat-based assets, then its market value may climb to $50T+, which would jack the Bitcoin price up to $2.85M/BTC. <— WTF?
For reference, let’s look at what my man, god’s third son after Jesus and Satoshi, PlanB, forecasts in his elegant S2FX model below. He’s got BTC cutting the cord at $1M and stepping up just after the next “halvening” occurs in 2024.
That’s enough cray cray for this post, and don’t forget that….
Oh, and there’s just one more thing. I felt the need to rage about this abomination…..
The Spock Line
I most likely now have fewer positive thoughts than You. I most likely now have many more negative thoughts than You. I most likely now cross the Spock line at a much higher frequency than you. I now experience an indescribably horrid, shivering, existential crisis from 8-10 AM on an almost daily basis. I now know why they started asking questions about depression on each visit to the cancer center.
That’s it, that’s the post.
Badass Baked Bulldozer
I staggered with new swagger this morning into my home-away-from-home, the Hematology-Oncology-Associates cancer treatment center. My new swagger is a stylish black mask brandishing a big fat Bitcoin logo covering my schnoz and pie hole.
At the check-in desk I was asked what the “B” meant. I said “badass”. She chuckled. On my way to plop my ass down in a comfy chemo chair I was asked again what the “B” meant. I said “baked” (which I was). Two people chuckled. While in the chair getting juiced with my savior, Opdivo, a third person asked me what the “B” was. I said “bulldozer zero zero”. She asked why the “zero zero”. I said “bulldozer” and “bulldozer zero” were already taken. She chuckled. On my way out yet another person asked what the “B” meant. I answered “badass baked bulldozer” and he looked at me like I was nutz, which I am. I don’t know why I shared this, but I did.
An Uncorrelated Asset
Bitcoin is on yet another volatile, but upward, trajectory. My friends and family insufferably know that I’m a bitcoin champion because of my incessant preaching to them about the virtues of personally-secure money. They also know I’m a long time lover-of-bitcoin, not a skanky shitcoin shill who popped up out of nowhere overnight.
I’ve seen smart people describe bitcoin as an “uncorrelated” asset for quite some time now. Until very recently I thought it strange of them to say that. I look up the price of BTC daily and it seems qualitatively clear to me that bitcoin is positively correlated to the S&P 500 index. Every time the index goes up, BTC seems to go up. Every time the index goes down, BTC goes down.
Fidelity Research helped me understand why calling bitcoin an “uncorrelated” asset is quantitatively correct. The effort of Ria Bhutoria (Director of Research at Fidelity Digital Assets) dotted an “i” and crossed a “t” in my previously infallible mental model of the emerging role of bitcoin in the world. I snipped the following elegant table from her latest thesis (“Bitcoin’s Role As An Alternative Asset“) to record the correlation coefficients between the top financial assets in the world.
The first column clearly shows that bitcoin, like honey badger, don’t care about what other assets do. Unlike any of the other listed assets, none of bitcoin’s correlation coefficients cross the .2 threshold. Interestingly, bitcoin is less correlated to its biggest competitor, gold, than it is to stocks.
An uncorrelated asset like bitcoin is the best hedge against a global financial system crash that deflates the value of all other assets except for, perhaps, gold. But there’s no need to worry about that, right?
The Thing
At last month’s MRI follow up with my neurosurgeon, my sky high stress level was instantaneously deflated when he said “no change“. Specifically, there was no progression or regression in the sizes of those three fugly tumors in my brain.
Since I knew at the time that my next chest/abdomen/pelvis CT scan was scheduled for this month, my stress levels started ramping up once again in a parabolic frenzy (just like Bitcoin’s price action). 🙂
This morning I had the follow up with my primary oncologist to review the results of the CT scan I had yesterday. My stress level was instantaneously deflated once again when he said “no change” just like my neurosurgeon did last month. Also, similarly, there was no progression or regression in the sizes of the four fugly tumors in my right lung.
The Emperor Of All Maladies hates the phrase “no change“. That means his blood thirsty orc soldiers are still being held at bay by my ex$pen$ive savior, Opdivo.
My beloved wonder drug has also kept the EOAM frozen in a virtual block of ice like that monstrous abomination in John Carpenter’s “The Thing“.
So, all is well inside my mind for now my dear readers. My stress level has returned to its baseline value of “phew!”, and the slope of my stress-vs-time curve has been reset to zero. It’s time for the groundhog day cycle to restart: wash, rinse, repeat.
Why am I here?
WTF?
Meh!
D'oh!
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