13 September 2021
Trading tears for a PlayStation 2
The rabbit hole of cryptocurrency
‘Bitcoin’ and ‘cryptocurrency’ have more or less evolved into household topics in recent times.
I was, and still am, pretty late to the game.
My first encounter with cryptocurrency was sometime between 2010–2012. I recall some old memories of my brother running a mining setup just from his home computer. I remember this vividly because of the many complaints that were coming from the parents; their concerns stemmed from the step change in the electricity bill during those times his computer would be churning through computations.
The setup was nothing specialised, like what you would have to have today, just the very same computer he would use to type up documents or run computer games from.
Then when the computation ceiling appeared, he would put more money into getting a better graphics card and tinker with the rest of his setup to squeeze out some more efficiency.
During all of this (really, maverick-like) experimentation, I was just an innocent and oblivious by-stander. None of it had sparked any curiosity for me, and I do not think I even had the urge to probe into what he was really up to. All I heard was that his computer was now running all the time, his bedroom was getting uncomfortably warm from the heat being dissipated, especially during summertimes, and the electricity bill was going up on the monthly.
What was it all for? Where was all the energy going to? To what end?
In my innocence, there I was living my day-to-day while cryptocurrencies were being produced, one computation at a time, right next door.
The Return
Fast-forward to 2020, a decade after that first encounter, it was all the hype and commonplace conversations that got me curious enough to dig below the surface.
It started with learning about the intense price volatility, and how the day-traders were either making an insane fortune or getting themselves killed. It seemed like there was no in-between.
Next, it was about the institutional investors stepping into the fray, big names like Paul Tudor Jones, Jack Dorsey and Michael Saylor putting a portion of their professional portfolios into the Bitcoin cryptocurrency — these were, each in their own right, massive steps towards validating the technology.
It eventually became very clear to me, however, that once the ‘wild idea’ becomes more tamed and palatable, a lot of the original edge gets lost. That I was late to the game.
Nevertheless, hearing about these stories had sparked an intrinsic curiosity and led me further down the path of understanding and educating myself about crypto.
I attempted to read the white papers for Bitcoin and Ethereum, but the underlying cryptography logic turned out too much for my mere mortal mind. There was much to deconstruct and digest, and it was demanding more time and attention than I originally had intended on using. Some of the key concepts, however, started to become less muddy.
- Public ledger, accessible record-of-transactions, the blockchain
- Sovereign ownership of money, public and private wallets, peer-to-peer transactions without a middleman leading to faster, cheaper and more accessible transfers
- The close link between scarcity and value, ‘fiat’ currency, fungibility
- De-centralised network of individual mining nodes, each working to secure the underlying network itself
- ‘Don’t trust. Verify.’ philosophy
- The history and evolution of the concept of ‘money’
It was this last point that got me hooked.
I started going back to the history books, not encyclopedias per say, but purposely re-visiting specific chapters in great books like Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.
In the earliest ‘technologies’ of money, there was no such thing as paper money. It started with a foundation of bartering, ‘the exchange of resources or services for mutual advantage.’ A corn farmer would exchange some of his stock for wine through a deal with the local winemaker, who happened to be looking for some corn to cook with.
What if one of the parties turned out to be uninterested in the specific product being offered by the other? Money then evolved to take the shape of shells, animals and then precious metals and eventually physical paper money. The core foundations of what makes ‘money’ money revolves around:
- Portability
- Recognisability
- Scarcity
- Durability
- Divisibility
Falling down the rabbit hole
Why has it taken me this long to discover the meanings underlying something that has been around all my life?
I have come to realise that, up to this point, my exposure to the concepts underlying money have largely been implicit and absorbed from the surrounding, immediate environment.
Things like saving, optimal decision making with scarce resources, asset ownership and the necessity of work has largely happened by chance and the often slow and tedious process of trial and error.
Learning from friends, other people who are close to me and reading about the experiences from others on the internet, I do not think this haziness around money is a unique human experience.
Besides, is this not why there are an infinite array of ‘how to understand money’ books on shelves all over the world, and not just a singular definitive guide?
Money, it turns out, is a deceptively complex topic to explore and there are plenty of nooks that are subtler, softer and less definitive.
Trading tears
As a kid, the earliest conception of money that I could comprehend was money as a medium of exchange.
If I ever wanted a new toy or some food to eat or to get to someplace, my parents, not I, would have to exchange money for the thing I really wanted.
I recall one particular memory where my brother and I went on this relentless pursuit for a PlayStation 2. The requirements made explicit by the parents were that our grades at school had to be above a certain bar. Grades were to be our currency, the only leverage we would have to get what we really wanted, and I’m pretty sure mine were beneath the minimum requirement.
So what then did I do?
I looked for leverage outside the box, and resorted to pestering. As a naive kid, I just kept pestering and pestering and pestering, with words and emotions that were cheap and readily harnessed. Marginal cost of replication.
In the meantime, behind the scenes, my parents had the task of doing the actual work required in order to fork out the few hundred physical dollars for the PlayStation 2.
They were the ones who had to exert energy to produce the money that would ultimately be traded in exchange for the PlayStation 2 — and all I had to do was to scream and shout for it.
The shame that I carry from this experience does not lie in the fact that I was dependent on my parents (it is probably unreasonable to expect children to fork out physical cash for each of their own expenses), but instead in the fact that I got away, in the end, with the thing I had really wanted by producing zero value.
There was an established standard, which I had clearly failed to meet, and the price I had to pay was to let go of the desire of wanting that PlayStation 2. But no, I forced my way into getting what I wanted by passing the price up to my parents to manage and probably to my brother, who would have been the one who worked to cover the deficit in grades.
To what end?
There is no happy ending to this story.
Once the PlayStation was out of the box and hooked up, countless of irredeemable hours were poured into the video games. To even utilise the thing, we had to continually pay with a currency that is universally finite and non-fungible — with time.
Time is the ultimate currency.
That distracting YouTube video that seduces you from doing good work? Sure, it is ‘free’ to watch, but beneath the surface, you are paying with your time.
This is not to necessarily say that that video was not worth paying for, but asking the question of ‘Is this worth my time?’ is a useful prompt to become more aware of where your currency flows.
This applies not only to small choices such as these, but in many other areas in life as well.
In some strange roundabout way, it seems to be easier to be maintain an awareness of monetary expenses as opposed to time expenses — when the former is derived from a renewable source and the other finite.
The takeaway is this: invest your time wholeheartedly and with care, and if you do it right, the decisions you make today will eventually return to provide you with sustenance as you move forward into the future.
By my side, sitting in the chair right in front of me, I see death as a beautiful woman… She is saying, “I am going to kiss you,” and I say to her, “Not now, please.” But she says, “OK, not now — but pay attention and try to get the best of every moment because I’m going to take you.”
And I say, “OK, thank you for giving me the most important advice in life” — to live your moment fully.
- Paulo Coelho
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