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Being productive enough to still get shit done while having time to just sit back and relax is the ideal “work life balance” we want to achieve. You want to be able to lounge around and be a bit lazy for some time, without completely interfering with your ability to create an adequate level of productivity. You want to be able to work and still have a, well, life to live.
Of course, we live in such a production-driven society that the average American worker has the balance skewed towards too much hard work and not enough time to take it easy. You’re working so hard to *make* a living, that you have too little time to actually *live*. Furthermore, taking it easy, taking time off to recuperate, is seen as such a detrimental thing in this work hard culture. You’re not a diligent employee if you take too many days off, and not to mention your vacation days are already extremely limited anyway. Unless you’re breaking your back and constantly putting yourself “on the grind”, then you’re nothing but a lazy bum, as seen in the eyes of modern society. God forbid if you give yourself any sort of leisure time and aren’t always working towards some goal. I mean, you’re even expected to be “on call” during your vacation nowadays, where your boss will demand that you still answer his e-mails and make phone calls with clients “in case there’s something important”. The time you should spend relaxing is instead spent guess what? Still freaking working. And if you don’t do some of your workload during vacation? Well then that work load is just gonna keep piling up while you’re gone, and you’ll have to play “catch up” by putting in extra effort and extra hours to make up for all that time spent doing something unproductive. What were you thinking? Going to the beach like that and trying not to think about work? Sheesh, get your act together! What? You thought there’s more meaning to your existence than to shell out as much work as possible? Clearly, you’re just a loser with no good work ethic. That’s the sort of propaganda we’re force fed in corporate America. We’re all brainwashed to believe that our entire worth as a human being is entirely based on our ability to “git r dun” and “make moves”. And apparently if you have any sort of distaste for work, then you’re just a waste of space, because clearly you’re only as good of a person as the work you produce. Not who you are, not how you feel, just raw numbers and data regarding the amount of productivity (and profits) you bring for the company you work for. Somehow productivity is directly tied to how much you matter in this crazy mixed up success-driven culture in which we live in. But really that’s just all indoctrination. We’re trained to be obedient corporate slaves who value productivity over our own physical health, emotional wellbeing and mental sanity. We’re told caring about ourselves is selfish. We’re told taking a rest is lazy. All these negative messages about laziness and selfishness are designed to turn you into a compliant employee, who doesn’t question authority and just accepts a bigger and bigger workload with a smaller and smaller amount of buying power each year. “Shut up and buck up” is what we’re told. Success is measured by the amount of things you can acquire and things can be acquired by working hard for them, or so it is believed. Again, straight up propaganda here. Of course, true success comes from within, and is not anything materialistic. No amount of fame or wealth can ever make you happy. But you’re two things in the eyes of your corporate owners: a worker and a consumer. You work to produce a product that the company can sell and then you spend that money you earn working on material “status” (assuming you can even afford to eat and put a roof over your head in the first place). You don’t build wealth. You build a pile of materialistic *things* to own, because that’s what you’re lead to believe makes you successful You want *things* to make you look good - a fancy watch, a nice sports car, a big house. It’s a system designed to make you work your goddamn ass off for money and then spend that money on pointless little doodads that provide truly no benefit other than the arbitrary sort of “prestige” it comes with. They want to build you to be controllable, to make you think that you have to make sacrifices for your greater corporate overlords. Time spent actually enjoying yourself for once, or heaven forbid, lying on the couch doing nothing, is a complete and utter waste, we’re trained to believe. So work, work, work. That’s all we do. That’s all we have time for. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to both complete the work that’s expected of us and also take a breather in order clear your mind of any work-related stress. We’re undergoing constant stress to do more, be more, make more. We don’t have time to take a break and say “alright that’s enough for now.” We’re always running from one errand to another, completing one project after the next, performing one task following another. It’s a nonstop bombardment of work. There’s no time to fully rejuvenate and by the time you go back to work after the weekend, or even a week-long vacation for that matter, you feel just as drained as you did *before* taking said break. Fact of the matter is, we don’t get enough Leisure, the big “L” in L.A.Z.Y. Man, being lazy is alright -- at least in balance. Certainly, not achieving *anything* isn’t something to be too proud of, but being lazy, to a certain extent, definitely has its merit. It’s okay to relax and call it quits for a bit. You don’t need to be constantly working. In fact, you do actually *need* to be lazy once in a while. You need to take a break from the sweaty 9 to 5 pace. Take it slow. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to always be “on the grind” or whatever. You can be “on the couch” instead. It’s good. It’s healthy. The amount of work we perform along with other responsibilities like taking care of children, completing household chores, etc. leaves very little room to just, like chill, ya know. Sit around. Be at rest. Let’s be real here, too. The “weekend” barely counts as a break. You spend it catching up on sleep you missed during the workweek, grocery shopping, catching up with friends, and attending to other household chores (or maybe even tasks for your job) that you otherwise missed out on Monday thru Friday. The weekend is a poor excuse for a “break”. It’s more like a strip tease for the the type of leisure we deserve to have. Plus, all this labor really starts to take a toll on our mental stability. The sheer amount of stress becomes quite a burden if day by day, week by week, we’re constantly dredging through such a massive workload. I mean suicide and depression rates are at all time high. No doubt, the work structure here in America plays a role into that statistic. I mean, I’m not saying that being overworked and underpaid is the sole reason people are depressed and committing suicide. But to ignore there’s at least some sort of correlation between the huge workload/ lack of fair compensation for said workload and depression would be ignorant. We, as a society, seem to be caring more about the profits of billionaires than the wellbeing of the common people. Having this supposed “work life balance” seems like something you can only manage to accomplish in retirement, doesn’t it? Like you can only have time for actual leisure once you’re out of the workforce. Otherwise, the day-today demands of your typical job in this country overtake any sort of ability to have any recreational time on your own. Sure, you get those few hours at home after your long 8 hour shift. But put simply, that’s not enough time to relax. On top of that, “8 hours” is a lie, absolute bullshit, if you factor in commute time and unpaid lunch. You’re really doing things for your job for 9, 10, or even more hours, depending on how long it take you to travel to and form your work place; the call of duty goes beyond just when you’re “clocked in”. It’s been the premise since the 1800s “8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what you will” was the slogan of the labor movement over a decade ago. Yet we don’t really even have that 8 hours “for what we will”. You have to drive to work and you don’t get paid for your commute time, yet alone the cost of gas and vehicle maintenance it takes to own a car and drive there to your job. Commuting is straight up time theft. And that’s certainly not something you choose to do “at your will”. You have to travel to get to work. And let’s say your commute time is a half hour. Well, we have to double that, because it takes one half hour to get there (to work) and one half hour to get back home. So that’s a full hour lost to work travel; we’re down to 7 hours “as you will”, and those are some light numbers. Some commutes, especially if you’re headed out to the city, can take several hours. And yeah, you get a lunch break, but that lunch break on “company time”. You’re not paid to eat or drink. You have to “clock out” during your lunch, so you aren’t earning any wages for that hour. Furthermore, you don’t even have the freedom to eat or drink anything you want. God forbid you sip a glass of wine at work on your lunch break or other alcoholic beverage. So that hour is not “what you will” either. It’s whatever the company you work for finds acceptable. So now we’re down to just 6 hours, assuming you have a rather short commute, maybe even far less than that already. And we haven’t even gotten into chores you have to do. You gotta cook dinner, clean up, pack lunch for the morning, the list goes on and on. And that’s only if you’re single, living alone, without kids. If you have kids, well now you gotta make sure they do their homework, help them if they need it, and put them to bed. In addition to your day job, you become a part time cleaner, chef, tutor, and nanny as a parent. 9 to 5 was built on the premise that one person in the household (the wife at the time) would take care of the kids and household chores. Now, we have both parents working FULL time jobs and splitting the responsibility of childcare and chores. You used to be able to support an ENTIRE FAMILY with just a single income, but now two people, with two incomes, can be working full goddamn time and still struggle to pay bills together. But I won’t go too deep into detail over how the wages are shit nowadays and we deserve to be paid more for our labor, as that is something we did cover recently. But today we’re talking about how not only are the wages unfair but so is the time required of us. So I want to point out that we’re spending so much time at work, both on the job site and at home, that there isn’t really any free time, or time in which you will. Now admittedly, things have certainly improved since the birth of corporate America. I mean, there was a time where 12-14 hours a day work shift was a common practice, not to mention literal children were forced into labor, so undeniably, we have improved since then. In 1940, the 40 hour workweek became the American standard, just 14 years later after Henry Ford implemented such a practice for his car company. It was a great step towards achieving a work/life balance collectively as a society. But things have changed since then. For one, women have entered the workforce, which means no one has the specific role for household and childcare duties any more. In the past, when the 40 hour work week standard was inducted, a woman would finish taking care of the house and the children, then she would have free time. Likewise, the husband would finish working his job, then he would have free time. Now both parents are working an actual job and when they’re finished? Well then come home to do more duties, because neither of them has the specific duty to take care of the children or household and it must be split between the two. The other thing that 1940 didn’t account for is technology. We have so much more technology than we did nearly a century ago. We have AI, which is only growing increasingly smarter and more effective. Pretty much all the labor can and will be automated in the future and a lot of it already is. We cut hours during the Industrial Revolution because the whole idea was that machines can take away the burden of labor from man. Well, using the same principle, and given the fact that these “machines” have superbly upgraded over the years, it seems silly to follow rules of an archaic past. We haven’t evolved, in regards to work structure and schedule for literally over 80 years! That’s insane. That’s absolutely insane. The typical 8 hour workday is an outdated practice. We’ve moved beyond that. It’s no longer necessary to work that hard for that long. Looking back at history though, Henry Ford decided to cut hours down to 8 from 14 because he found that his workers were MORE productive, working shorter hour shifts. Crazy theory, huh? When people work less hours, they put in more effort and increase productivity Imagine that! It’s almost like having Leisure (again the big “L” in L.A.Z.Y.) gives a person the motivation, energy, and tools they need to be super productive. Fact of the matter is, we’re running on E, our energy supply, physically, mentally, and emotionally is completely empty. Yet were forcing ourselves anyway to schlep to work 9 to 5 because that’s what we have to do in order to pay bills and barely afford to put scraps of food on the table. Your car can’t run without fuel. Your phone can’t run without a battery charge. And you can’t run without energy. We don’t act like our phone is being lazy by needing to plug into the charger at night after hours of playing mobile games, watching videos of TikTok, and, text messaging friends. We understand that the phone needs enough battery to perform and do those things. Likewise, we need to recharge our own “inner battery” and take time to plug in and totally and completely relax. What happens when you try to make a phone call or watch a video when your battery is too low? Well it might slow down or even shut down completely, which can be frustrating. But you understand that once it’s plugged in and charged again, it’ll be ready to do all the tasks you want it to. Employers nowadays can’t seem to apply that same theory to their employees. They’re under the false notion that human beings have an unlimited supply of energy to do things and can work nonstop, but we don’t and we can’t. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule that the employees must work a 40 hour week. Californian ecommerce business Tower Paddle Boards and German digital consultancy Rheingans, say they experienced a similar phenomenon to henry Ford back eight decades ago when they moved to compressed-hour models, with just a short five hour work day. What’s more is that research suggests that the maximum amount of time most people can concentrate on something is that five hours. Unless you’re half cyborg or superhero or something, you’re not fully focused (yet alone 100% productive) for 100% of the time you’re at work. You’re probably distracted scrolling through your Facebook or watching cat videos. How many times have you pulled up a spreadsheet when your boss walks by, while having Reddit open in another tab? How much time at work are you actually working? Think about. I can guarantee you it’s significantly less than those 8 hours you’re required to be there on site. The realization that eight hours is way too much time to spend at a job has further increased after this whole quarantine situation. During quarantine, people were forced and mandated to work from their homes. I know as well as you know that there’s no way in hell people were working that full eight hours. They would take naps, play video games, and ya know, actually give themselves the much needed leisure. We need to value Leisure a lot more than it's valued in society today. We have technology that can allow us to be lazier, far more than we had back in the day of the Industrial Revolution. It’s time to Evolve. I mean, we’re only *truly* productive for about half of the full 8 hour shift anyway. The rest of the time it’s like we’re being held hostage, by a bastard of a boss I might add too. We don’t just need more pay. We also need less hours. There’s more to being human than just working. Besides, it’s a lot easier to get things done at work or at home when you actually have the energy to do it, rather than relying on coffee just to keep your body moving. You’re already dead on the inside and your corpse is just being animated by the amount of caffeine in your system. Seriously, it’s time we take time to actually BE ALIVE and stop this dreaded 9 to 5 grind, which again turns out to be much longer than just those aforementioned hours, accounting for all the commuting and multitude of tasks we’re responsible for as an adult. Give yourself time to relax. Your mind, your heart, and your body will thank you. Go be lazy, dude and “do what you will.” Take it easy, N8
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Well fellow Procrastin8rs, it’s the rise of the sloths. People aren’t putting up with doing slave labor any more and are instead embracing their laziness, refusing to work for shit wages and little (if any) benefits.
All across the country, people by the thousand are walking off their job sites and putting on a strike. From Nabisco to Kellogg’s and now John Deere, workers are straight up saying “enough is enough” and calling it quits. Although there is a range of companies in all sorts of industries from cereal and tractors, a we mentioned to coal-mining, healthcare and fast food, with workers walking out mid shift, they all hold similar grievances across the board -- the low pay, the unpaid breaks, the lack of benefits, the ungodly hours. It all comes down to being treated like just another cog in the machine, rather than, ya know, an actual human being. And people are quite frankly just done with that shit. They’re done with working their asses off only to be able to earn enough to live themselves in poverty, barely being able to put a roof over their head or food on the table. The effort to reward ratio in a typical job nowadays is highly skewed towards way too much effort and way too little rewards. The pure amount of time and energy it takes to work in a corporate America job isn’t worth the payment these CEOs are offering to their employees. Working a job, with the way wages are set right now is *maximizing* effort and *minimizing* results, quite the opposite of what laziness is all about and what laziness achieves. People are waking up and realizing that their efforts are worth more, far more, than what’s being offered on the table. They’re worth more than just scraps. And feeding workers the scraps off the table is not a rare practice at all; it’s actually quite common. Underpaying workers has been the accepted practice of corporations for many decades. Give them enough to keep their mouth shut! Is the attitude behind signing a paycheck for your typical corporate worker. Corporate owners amass BILLIONS of dollars, all the meanwhile their workers are drowning in debt and struggling to pay bills. See, it’s not just a few bad apples, a few bad companies that are offering unfair compensation (yeah “unfair” to say the least) -- it’s the entire system corrupted by greed that exploits the labor of workers for the sheer benefit of adding to the company owner’s profits. The average CEO is earning 400 times the amount of money a company’s average employee is making. That’s an excessive amount of wealth being hoarded. And speaking of gold being hoarded, Forbes once ranked Smaug, the dragon from the Hobbit who infamously stole an entire fucking mountain of gold as the second wealthiest fictional character. That gold, if we account for the current price in the market, is estimated to be worth $51.4 billion. He literally had an ENTIRE MOUNTAIN of gold. Well, that would put him as the 15th wealthiest American, meaning there are 14 corporate owners that literally have more wealth than a gold-hoarding dragon! So yeah, people want to “slay the dragon” so to speak and redistribute this mountain-sized wealth these billionaires sleep under back to the common “peasants”, or your average worker in America The sloths are rising up, or lying down, perhaps more accurately stated, against the evil dragons ruling this country by refusing to provide any labor. I mean how do you stop wealth from being hoarded? By putting a plug in their means of production and thus, their means of gaining profit. No labor means no profits. People are seeing that, seeing that their labor is more valuable than the price tag these corporate owners label them with. And thus, the Lazy Movement is making waves. People are quitting their jobs and refusing to work. But this sort of “lazy movement” isn’t just some sensationalized phenomenon, in fact, if we look at the statistics of what’s going on, the quit rate among workers is at an all time high --- 2.9% of the workforce are saying “fuck this shit. I’m out.” That’s 4.3 million people that value their own health and sanity over the pennies in which they’re being paid. And no doubt, those numbers will only continue to rise as more and more people embrace their laziness and choose to minimize effort and maximize results. We’re going to see the number of quitters soar in the coming months. Believe me, it’s happening. And let me just clarify to you this as well: quitting is a completely okay thing to do, especially when you’re in a toxic situation. And to say working for a selfish bastard of a boss for mesly pay is toxic would be an underestimate. We’re all sick n’ tired of these shitty jobs with shitty wages. We’re done with the toxic bullshit. There’s really no advantage to holding a job right now, other than what? The ability to *maybe* survive and pay your bills, and make doing so an absolute struggle at that. Nah fam, at the end of the day, a job ain’t worth all it's cracked up to be any more. You come home physically and mentally exhausted and are given no time to recover. You get two days off, the ever sought-after “weekend”, that feels more like a quick power nap than any sort of legitimate time off. It goes by so fast and during this supposed quote on quote “free time”, you have to spend it paying bills, doing household chores, going grocery shopping, and other sorts of errands that leaves you with the *actual* free time of maybe a few hours at best. Because there ain’t such a thing as a “job” anyways. It’s all slavery. It’s slavery disguised as the “American dream”, where you too, can some day be rich. As if! The American Dream is a hogwash. It’s complete bullshit. You’re putting all your money into paying rent and bills. There’s no wealth building happening, not for you anyway, as a working class member of society. Your role is to provide labor to your (corporate) owners, much like a slave, and have said owner profit off your labor. You don’t get to own property. You pay rent to your owner. You don’t get healthcare provided. You rely on your owner to pay for it. You don’t have freedom. Your entire existence is dictated by what your owner gives to you. And your owner ain’t giving you much -- just enough to survive, and barely at that. These are poverty wages we’re talking about here. No one should work a full 40+ hours a week, only to be able to afford to live in poor conditions. One job should be enough! Period. An important note too here is that it’s a 40 hour PLUS week. The standard 40 hours isn’t enough, not with the way wages are so low. You can’t work just one job and be able to afford paying bills. You have teachers working nights as a waitress at restaurants or opening up an OnlyFans account to sell nudes in order to make supplemental income to make up for their pathetic excuse for a salary as an educator, for example. Inflation is ever increasing, and thus, the amount of “buying power” people get is on a decline. You can’t afford the same amount of groceries you did ten, five, and even two years ago. The cost of living keeps going up, while the wages are remaining the same. People have to work more to earn *less*. They are pouring more hours into work and receiving less buying power, less ability to make ends meet than they were ever before. You simply can’t work a single minimum wage job and support yourself, yet alone an entire family, and that’s a problem. It’s a problem that when people do actually work, and aren’t sittin around being lazy, they aren’t compensated enough fairly to be able to live. Mark my words folks, you can’t make a living no more! You ain’t living if your entire life is working your ass off. And this is the exact reason WHY millions of people are choosing to stop working. Meanwhile, critics will shout “I can’t believe no one wants to work nowadays. This generation is too damn lazy.” And while it’s true, people are being lazy. There’s no denying that. Refusing to work and get a job is at its very core being lazy. There’s no swerving around that. If you’re like the millions of us refusing to get a job, then you are indeed lazy. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Not at all. Being lazy is no more of a sin than Pride. Like all things, laziness is good in balance. Just like it’s not too vain to be proud of yourself, it’s also not to vain to give yourself leisure. You see, it’s not that people are unwilling to work completely. It’s not that they aren’t willing to take up a job, nor is it that they don’t have any sort of diligence or work ethic. We want what we get out of this corporate system to be just as valuable as what we put in. At this point, we’ve sacrificed so much for so little in return. We’re breaking our backs and destroying our sanity for wages that barely cover anything, People may say that all these strikers and quitters are being lazy, and that much is true. But to go as far as to say they’re not being *too* lazy crosses the line here. It’s not laziness in excess. It’s being lazy *enough*. Sure, there’s a such thing as being too lazy, but this isn’t it. Refusing to work because that work isn’t compensated fairly isn’t *too* lazy. It’s being lazy enough to respect your own time and effort. Fact of the matter is, our work is worth more than what they’re offering to pay us. Cut dry and simple. It’s funny though, isn’t it? I mean all these pro-capitalist business owners condone “the free market” and preach about “supply and demand.” They speak highly about how capitalism is great because it provides two parties a “fair trade.” They say you gotta pay the price of a product or service’s “market value”if you want to have it. All these fancy terms they use to justify their skyrocketing profits. Yet all of this talk goes right out the window the minute workers say “we don’t find the labor we’re providing for the wages we receive to be a fair trade.” How quickly these corporate bastards back pedal on their ode to capitalism when the very principle of capitalism (a fair trade) is used against them. How quickly they hate the idea of supply and demand when the supply of workers is low and the demand for them is high. People on strike and quitting their jobs are not TOO lazy. These corporate owners are TOO greedy. Greed is the bane of society, not laziness. When you build literal spaceships as a little side hobby, when you own a super yacht -- a giant yacht with another large sized yacht in it, when you dodge taxes like you’re Peter Le Fleur dodging a ball, and meanwhile your workers are on food stamps, forced to pee in cups instead of take real bathroom breaks, and given less than two weeks off in an entire year, then ya might wanna look at what’s a bit “extra” here. Are the people who just want fair compensation for the work they put in really being “extra” here? Is it really “too much” to ask for a decent goddamng wage? Or is it a bit extra to have literally more wealth than a gold hoarding dragon? I’d say the latter. Plus, these people, the corporate owners, act like low wage equals low skill. Yet, you don’t see the CEOs of these fast food chains jumping up to flip burgers. You don’t see the owners of mining companies grabbing a pickaxe. You want to talk about people being lazy. Well, fuck. The owners don’t want to work. They just want to get other people to do the work for them. For shitty wages at that. Fact of the matter is corporate owners don’t have the skill yet alone work ethic to do the work that they expect their employees to do. They’re as lazy, if not more so, than the people quitting their jobs or going on strike in the first place. Look at John Deere for example. On the first day of the strike, by 8 o'clock in the morning, there was a vehicle crash on the work site, which was being operated by one of the white collar office workers. The jobs that are paid low wages aren’t easy. They’re “essential” actually. And being essential means they should be paid enough to COVER their essentials, without popping a vein from stress. They pay us wages like we’re oh so replaceable, but when push comes to shove, they need us more than we need them. Have you ever seen the Pixar classic film, aA Bug’s Life? Well, there’s a relevant quote that Hopper, the big bad grasshopper I’ll share with you here; he says quote: “ You let one ant stand up to us, then they all might stand up! Those puny little ants outnumber us a hundred to one and if they ever figure that out there goes our way of life! It's not about food, it's about keeping those ants in line.” We’re the little ants in this great big world. And one person quitting their job is a threat to these grasshoppers, the corporate owners, because it’s the start of a revolution. We outnumber them tenfold. There are more of us, the average working class member of society than there are of these rich corporate billionaires. It’s not about the food, the money, but about keeping people in line. It’s about power. If we stand up to them, or lay down on our couches refusing to work for that matter, then they lose control over us. The power is in our hands. We just have to be lazy enough to use it. After all, laziness is a super power. Let's take down the evil villain billionaires, using our super-powered laziness and show them who's boss! Well, fellow procrastin8rs, it’s spooky season, so get out your witchy pillow and spider-webbed blankets, throw on your skeleton pajamas, then grab some candy, lay on the couch, and flick on some horror movie classics. Halloween is just a few short weeks away. And hey, if Christmas can be an entire two month long event, then I think Halloween deserves more than just a single day at the end of October. Besides, even if you don’t like Halloween and aren’t too much of a horror fan like I am, then you gotta at least appreciate the fact that Halloween acts as a gatekeeper to Christmas growing like a fucking cancer into yet another month in the year. Halloween is like NOPE, this is where we draw the line. BOO! YOU SHALL NOT PASS!  And so instead of making October an ongoing celebration of jingle jangles and holly jolly good times, we enter a sort of dark age of the year., where we embrace things that are scary like ghosts, ghouls,goblins, and other diabolical monsters and weird paranormal entities. There’s no dolls as toys, unless the doll is possessed and trying to kill you. There’s no cutting of turkey, just the cutting of human flesh by a killer’s blade. There’s no bright colored lights, just dark forests, dimly lit by flashlights of unsuspecting teens who are being hunted by some sort of evil that lurks within. Joy, peace, serenity, gratefulness -- those are the type of emotions typically associated with *other* holidays. But not Halloween. Not this bad boy. Oh no. Halloween elicits the emotion of fear. Fear is quite a peculiar emotion too, isn’t it? That chill up your spine. That anticipation over whether there’s something creepy lurking behind the corner or if it's just a void of darkness. That shock you get when something unexpectedly jumps at you. Fear is what keeps you on your toes. It gets your heart pumpin quick and can swiftly surge you into an adrenaline rush or it can creep up on you slowly, making you super alert and on edge about your surroundings. Fear doesn’t necessarily have to be this detrimental feeling; it can actually be fun (and we sort of celebrate that premise during Halloween). See, there’s this idea of “safe danger”. Like riding a roller coaster, you’re not in any actual danger of falling down extreme heights or looping around upside down, but you feel that adrenaline *as if* you are in danger (even when you’re safely strapped and buckled in a seat). Likewise, there’s no actual danger in watching on your television screen an actress portraying a lonely girl walking alone in the woods at night with a silent stalker, portrayed by another actor, tracking her every step, but you can feel that intense fear, despite it being just a portal on screen. Or maybe you go to one of those local “haunted” houses or hayrides, where people dress up in costumes of monstrous, grotesque, or otherwise intimidating beings. It’s not actually haunted ,of course or legitimately threatening. The man chasing you with a chainsaw on the hayride doesn’t even have a real chain blade attached to it. (of course there was a shooting at a hayride in Pennsylvania, so that's something that's actually scary) Yet, despite the made believe nature of horror, your instincts kick in. You can feel your heart beating ever faster. Those chills up and down your spine. And it hits as a sort of “high”.  People love putting themselves in danger without the actual danger being present. It gives all the perks of being in fear (the adrenaline rush, the excited feeling in your chest) without the risk of coming across any harm. While every single other holiday throughout the year has happy happy joy joy vibes, Halloween focuses more on fearful agitation vibes .Whether its a bunny hoppin around with a basket of eggs or a fat man in a red suit riding a sleigh, every holiday besides Halloween has some sort of lighthearted gimmick. The only gimmick Halloween has is being as scary, horrifying, and frightening as possible without actually putting yourself in harm’s way. Whether it’s your “bag of candy” or not, Halloween definitely stands out as the most unique holiday in the year, with its dark and spooky charm. Anyway, since it is the season of terrifying tales and all things horror, I’d figured it’d be appropriate to talk about REAL fear. I’m not talking about the fear you get when someone jumps out at you from a bush wearing a sheet over their head to disguise themselves as some sort of “ghost”. Nor am I talking about spilling your popcorn as a zombie jumps out from a dumpster in the movie you’re watching. I’m talking about the genuine fear and anxiety you may feel during certain scenarios in life. Maybe you feel failure. Maybe you get anxious over the thought of rejection. Maybe you find it frightening to save for retirement. Maybe it’s absolutely horrifying for you to go out and be social. Well, today we’re going to look at the cause of fear and how to go about handling it as a lazy procrastin8r, so put on your weresloth suits, howl at the moon, and let’s dive...right into it!  Fear Freezes You. Like a deer caught in the headlights, the emotion of fear can put a stop in your tracks, preventing you from moving forward. You then become so stifled by these frightening sensations that you can’t act or proceed in any way. You stagnate progress and remain trapped in a perpetual state of dread and horror. You’re panic stricken and locked in place, trembling to yourself in a mental and emotional place of uneasiness. Fear entangles you like a thick spider web, encasing you in a cage of paralysis. Yet, you call yourself lazy. You blame your lack of motivation on laziness. You say you’re tired because you're lazy. You say you haven’t made any step towards your goals because you're lazy. You cry out that the reason you barely get out of bed is because you’re just too gosh dern lazy. Laziness becomes the scapegoat for your consistent inability to do things. Why haven’t you advanced your career lately? Why haven’t you gotten in shape yet? Why haven’t you quit drinking and smoking excessively? “I’m just too lazy,” you’ll tell yourself, and write it off as a personality trait that you have no control over. You excuse yourself over and over again, thinking you’re too lazy to do it. Here’s the thing, I want to make it clear to you all folks...  You’re Not Lazy. You’re Just Afraid. You’ve been putting off doing things, not because you are lazy, not because you are procrastinating. You are putting off things because you are afraid and hesitating. Now, of course, there is a difference, a fine line, between procrastination and hesitation, something we’ve covered in much depth before. The thumbnail version is that procrastination is purposefully deciding to do something later, either because you find it strategic to wait or you just don’t feel like it right now; whereas hesitation is wanting to proceed immediately, but failing to do so because of your own self doubt or fear of failure. I recommend going back and reading that article though because it will definitely be applicable as well as helpful in today’s material. Anyway, back to pointing out how your motivation, or very well lack thereof, stems from fear and not laziness. You take a nap, not because you’re actually tired from doing things, but because you’re tired *just thinking about* the things you have to do (even though in reality you didn’t do any of it). You’re simply overwhelmed. So what do you do?  You cower in fear. You skulk away from your goals simply because it seems too “monstrous” of a task for you to handle. You hide under your bed, instead of sleeping on top of it, to put it in a metaphor. In other words, you’re not putting things off in efforts to be comfortable and at rest, you’re only putting things off in efforts to protect yourself from the potential “danger” that you imagine there to be -- whether that’s fucking up or getting rejected or criticize, you’ve created a monster out of the possible consequences that may happen in your attempts to complete a task or goal. You use your blankets as a shield from the evil entity you fabricate instead of as a warm thing to keep you comfortable in bed, as you sit there cowering away. Or perhaps you see the task at hand as too much of an encumbrance, an ominous haunting, leeching your energy. You’re dreaded by the sheer amount of shit that must be done. And so, again, you begin shivering in your shoes crying to take you back to the mystery van. Look there’s no demon present siphoning your life energy. There’s no vampire drinking your blood. There’s just you acting afraid (and maybe even really feeling it). But at the end of the day, and during the darkest of nights, it’s all in your head. You’re the one choosing to let those feelings get a hold of you. You’re the one choosing to torture yourself, more than any hockey-mask wearing bandit ever could. As the famous saying goes “There’s nothing to fear, but fear itself.” But seriously, dude...  There’s nothing to be afraid of Fear is a primal instinct, alerting you of possible death. Fear is what kept our ancestors alive. But we’re sort of past those hunting and gathering days. So I guarantee you. I guaran-freaking-tee you, that the goal you have will not result in death at failure. Unless of course your goal is to wrestle a grizzly bear or something legitimately dangerous, but I’m pretty sure that ain’t the sort of goal you’re after now, is it? You want to lose weight, earn more money, meet new friends - shit like that, right? You want to achieve something worthwhile. But haven’t been able to motivate yourself to do it, no? Look man, I ain’t against sittin’ around on my ass. And I’m certainly not one to condone any sort of “work hard and get to it” mantra, but you can’t be holding yourself back because you’re afraid of the outcome and that’s really where your lack of motivation comes from. You’re not motivated to make a move because you believe there’s too much risk involved (death). If you get rejected asking that girl out, if your business idea winds up being a complete flop, if you end up sucking ass at playing guitar, you’re not going to die, man. You may embarrass yourself a bit. But there was never a “cause of death: embarrassment” report written. Just let it go and go with the flow. Be willing to take risks. You risk a lot more sanity and wellbeing *worrying* about the risk than the risk itself even has. It’s a bigger loss to sit there and do nothing, when you actually want to do something, but are choosing not to because of whatever it is you fear, whether that’s failure, rejection, or whatever sort of negative result you can imagine. See, procrastination comes from a place of desire. It comes from a place of purposefully choosing to wait ‘til later, as opposed to avoiding doing something out of fear.  Laziness is the opposite of fear. Laziness is calmness. It’s relaxation. To be lazy is to remain composed -- to stay cool, calm, and laid back at all times. No matter the situation. No matter what scary monster or creature you come across. No matter how dark and eerie life gets. You practice sprezzatura - a certain level of nonchalance to the point where nothing stifles you in fear, or even shakes you out of bed for that matter. Nothing’s a big deal. Nothing frightens you. Fear is a panic, which is often self-induced due to your own negative thinking pattern. It’s giving into stress and getting “worked up”. Eliminate any sort of “work” in your life and be lazy. Don’t run n’ hide from your goal. Approach it slowly, smoothly, and deliberately like the sloth climbs a tree. When it comes to attaining any sort of goal, whether that’s financial, personal, or relationship, don’t live is the horrors of hesitation by giving into that fear you find within yourself. Only put things off when you mean it, when you legitimately want to, not because you’re so terror stricken by your own anxious thoughts and feelings. Remember that scene at the end of the movie “Cabin in the Woods”? Spoiler ahead if you haven’t. The Elder Gods awaken and unleash their wrath against the world of humanity because the sacrifice was not complete. Meanwhile, the characters Dana and Marty chill in the center of the temple, sharing a joint and awaiting their fate. No fucks given.  If you hold fear (of anything), then you are giving too much of a fuck.
Stop giving a fuck, man. You’ve grown too attached to outcome. Give out candy but don't give out fucks! You living in a constant alert state, worrying what will happen next, what *could* happen next. Worrying what if this happen? What if that happens as well? What if the killer finds us? What if he has a machete? What if he has supernatural powers to teleport if we try and run? What if I get bitten by a zombie? Look man, your life ain’t a horror film. Don’t make it out to be one. Nothing in your life is really that threatening, sinister, dangerous, or evil. Make your life a sitcom. Find humor in the everyday situations. Laugh out loud and enjoy it. And as always….take it easy, take *real* easy. - N8 In the last few weeks, we broke down how corrupted this corporate system is, and how [we ain’t getting off our asses until they offer more fair wages]. They want our work? Well they better pay the price! We’re worth more than shit wages that force us to live in poverty. It ain’t worth the effort to get out of bed and work a low wage job..s so we’ll sit at home and do nothing, procrastinating, waiting for that opportunity of good pay.
We also took a look at how[ AI could create a lazy utopia, where all the “hard “work” is done by machine], completely automated, with no human labor necessary to be a productive society. AI will soon replace all our jobs. You couldn’t work even if you wanted to. I mean, not that you’d *actually* want to. I’m just sayin. Soon the whole concept of “labor” will be a primitive past. Well fellow procrastin8r, as much as I enjoy sticking a middle finger up to the corporate structure and talking about how laziness is the way of the future, this week we’re gonna dive back once again to what this blog was all about: making money from the couch and today we’re going to talk about one of my favorite lazy little money-making methods and that is of course crypto. Disclaimer I need to put out a very important disclaimer before we dive on further into the realm of crypto. Look,, I’m no financial expert or anything, nor am I qualified to give any sort of advice regarding your finances. I’m just a lazy dude with an opinion, man, so take whatever I say with a grain of salt, of course. But my opinion is that crypto is an awesome asset in my portfolio. Just speaking from personal experience here. Results may vary. Crypto is lazy money and the potential gains are amazing. I mean whether your mining it, day trading it, or the most passive of them all: hodling it, it can lead to profit. But of course, that’s all my speculation and isn’t guaranteed. While the potential gains to your initial investment of upwards to 500% or more sound tempting, it’s worth mentioning: You could LOSE money! Like any investment with your money, there is a bit of risk involved. There are no promises. There are no guarantees. Again, I can’t stress enough -- it’s your money and your decision. I’m not here to tell you what you SHOULD do with your money. I’m only laying out the possibility of what you COULD do with your money. It’s your money. It’s your choice. Don’t hold a lazy gentleman like myself accountable for your own financial decisions. I don’t want anyone to come crying to me “But Nate told me to invest in crypto and I lost a lot of money”. No I didn’t say definitely go do it. I said you CAN invest in crypto. I want to make that clear. You can invest in crypto. You can decide to put your money elsewhere. I’m going to highlight why I think it may be a decent investment, but again that doesn’t mean it WILL BE for certain. Your guess is as good as mine. If you don’t like risk, stay away from crypto. This is one of if not THE most risky market out there. And as a good rule of thumb, never invest more than you’re willing to lose. You don’t want to be staking your life savings in the crypto market. It could all be gone tomorrow. Then what? Then you're broke. You got no money for retirement. Your, for lack of a better phrase, completely and utterly fucked. Don’t be that guy. Approach the crypto market like you would with any investment: with extreme caution. Now I’m about to lay down what you’re getting into if you do so happen to choose to put your money in crypto, but please, in case I haven’t made it clear enough at this point: don’t use this blog as some sort of advice as to what you should do with your money. You’re an adult. Take responsibility for your own decisions, or at the very least, go talk to an actual financial advisor who can help you a lot more than I can. This is an opinion piece from a dude on the Interwebs, not a legitimate resource for financial information. Capeesh? Anyhoot, that out of the way, let’s take a look at crypto and why I believe it’s a good way to make money from the couch. And without further ado, let’s dive...right into it! WTF is Crypto anyway? At the core, crypto is a decentralized virtual currency. It’s “magical Internet money” if you will. There are what we call “miners” who run machines to collect these coins and those coins are later bought, sold, and traded on a market. Each coin is locked behind a sort of “puzzle” that computers must solve. Think of it like a virtual combination padlock with treasure inside. People “mine” this treasure, the cryptocurrency, by running computers to “solve” the combination on the lock. Once it’s solved, they get a coin. And like I said, that coin can then be traded for what it’s valued at in the crypto market. Now when I talk about crypto, I’m not talking about *just* Bitcoin. I mean I’m certainly *including* Bitcoin, but we’re not gonna limit it to just one type of crypto coin. Bitcoin is no doubt the most popular crypto. I mean it is practically THE crypto coin. And for all intents and purposes, the value of Bitcoin tends to directly impact every single other little atl coin out there. When Bitcoin dips, the rest of the crypto market dips. When it soars high, Bitcoin’s alt coin brothers are quick to follow. Bitcoin is like the “Ziploc” of crypto. Ziploc is actually a brand name for “resealable plastic bags”, but most people don’t use that phrase and instead just say something along the lines of “I packed my sandwich in a Ziploc bag”. No matter what brand of resealable plastic bags they actually use, like Glad or whatever; they just refer to it as a “Ziploc”. Similarly, most people don’t use the phrase “crypto market” when referring to their investments or mining activity and instead just say something to the effect of “I’m invested in Bitcoin.” Just like there are other brands of resealable plastic bags besides Ziploc though, there are other “brands” of crypto -- what we refer to as “alt coins”. The average Joe will scratch their head if you mention the word “Ethereum” or “Cardano” or “Solana” to them, but those are the other “brands” of crypto, the alt coins, in which we’re talking about here. I know what you’re thinking “Okay, okay, I get it. There’s treasure to be “mined” by using computers to solve combination padlocks, but c’mon now it’s just digital numbers. The main question here is…. How is it even valuable? I mean at the end of the day, all this crypto stuff is just digital data, right? It holds no intrinsic value, essentially. It’s just numbers on a machine. I mean it holds no more value than a JPG image saved on your desktop, right? It’s just data n shit. Well, not quite. I mean, yeah, it is data, but it’s a bit more complicated than just a JPG image or something. See, Bitcoin (and most other alt coins with a few exceptions of memecoins like Dogecoin) are a finite resource. You know how I mentioned earlier that there are combination padlocks for computers to solve? Well, here’s the thing, there are a limited number of “treasure chests” available with padlocks on them, meaning here’s a limited number of puzzles to be solved, a limited number of crypto to be mined. Once all the bitcoin/crypto is mined, once those digital puzzles are all solved and the chests are “looted” if you will, then that’s it. The mines become empty so to speak and in order to obtain a Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrency), it must be traded. We’ll get to how the trading and transactions all work in a second, but for now the point I want to make is that because there is a limited number of these coins, they have the value of rarity. It is in human nature to value rare things, even if it serves no other purpose than to exist as a rare thing. Look at gold. Gold is the perfect example.It’s just a rock. You can’t eat it. You can’t even really make anything useful out of it; the metal itself is rather flimsy, especially for a metal. You can’t make a tool out of gold. It’ll break. The best you can do is make jewelry, which is nothing but a cosmetic display anyway. It doesn’t have any utility whatsoever. During the Gold Rush, people went nuts over gold, mining it, hoarding it, collecting it. Sound familiar? Right now, we’re seeing the modern day Gold Rush, but with computers. It’s the crypto rush, baby! Anyway, as you can see, just like gold, which inherently doesn’t have any use or value on its own, crypto too is sought after because, well, it’s rare. That’s the only feature about it giving it any sort of value. I mean we can even use a similar analogy and look at trading cards. I have some of the first edition Pokemon cards from the 90s that are worth literally thousands of dollars today. That much money. For what? A small piece of cardboard with a picture on it? Maybe it has some shiny colors on it if it’s one of those holographics? But really, thousands of dollars for shiny colors on a cut of cardboard with a picture of a weird monster on it and nonsensical text about what “moves” it can do in the game. On paper (literally), it sounds worthless, but human beings are weird in the sense we value things that are scarce, or at least believe are scarce. Diamonds are believed to be scarce. Spoiler Alert: They’re not. There’s a company called De Beers that owns all the diamond mines. They own all the supply of diamonds, and thus can set the price to whatever they want. They create a sense of false scarcity by purposefully keeping the diamonds available on the market at a low amount. Diamonds appear rare because De Beers keeps most of them in their own little vault. Truth is, diamonds are a plenty! But they wouldn’t want you to know that, now would they? Greedy corporate bastards… They leech off the psychology of a scarcity mindset in order to sell diamonds at a ridiculous price, advertising them as some sort of luxury, some sort of rare thing to acquire, when in reality diamonds are just as common as your average grey rock on the ground . And people eat it up De Beers’ little marketing campaign too, spending thousands of dollars on one tiny diamond that fits on a ring. Man I’m telling you, you can save a lot of money by just picking up a random ass stone by the river, tying it in a twig and calling ti a day. Of course, your significant other might not appreciate that, in which case, congratulations! You weeded out a materialistic person and now know they value riches over intimacy and are certainly NOT marriage material! Anyway, I digress. So *unlike* diamonds, Bitcoin/crypto holds TRUE scarcity. There’s no sleazy company controlling the supply and releasing it on their terms in order to maximize profits. In fact, there’s no sort of government, company, or central body controlling Crypto at all. It’s completely Peer 2 Peer. So when people see value in Crypto, they see value in an asset that is
And it’s true, the critics have a legit point when they say “Bitcoin (or any other crypto for that matter) is only as valuable as people make it out to be.” So yeah, people have to see value in cryptocurrency in order for it to be worth anything. It could, in theory, be worth nothing one day if people flat out decide they’re no longer interested. But given the fact that cryptocurrency has been around for more than a decade, I’d say it’s a bit more than “just a fad” that’s going to fade away. It would have dissipated a while ago if that were true, in my opinion. It wouldn’t have grown in popularity *slowly* over time. Fads tend to burst in a trend swiftly, then disappear as quickly as it came. Cryptocurrency has been growing slow n’ steady, in terms of recognition and popularity. Bitcoin, along with other cryptocurrency, has grown from a niche market of techie geeks to a widespread mainstream phenomenon. At this point, even if a person doesn’t necessarily understand the ins and outs of what Bitcoin is or what it does, they at least know the term and understand, at least on a fundamental level, that it is in some form a type of asset. It’s not going anywhere. Not yet anyway. Besides, we, as a society, still value pretty rocks from the ground, which for arguments’ sake is pretty dumb. My point here is that if pretty rocks can be valued, why can’t pretty numbers? It’s no more or less bizarre to value crypto than it is to value gold. Humans put value on weird things. It’s as simple as that. So when you ask “How can it even be valuable”, the answer is : human beings are just weird. Does it even exist? You can’t touch it. You can’t hold it. You can’t eat it. Heck, you can’t even look at it. It’s some arbitrary number in cyber space. I mean yeah, gold is just a rock in the ground. Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and even Magic the Gathering Cards, or whatever other TCG you can think of are just pieces of cardboard with pictures on them. But at least those things can be held in my hands. Cryptocurrency, however, isn’t something that can be touched, felt, or held. The lack of physical existence can make it difficult to accept as a legitimate thing of value. But I mean, think of it this way... Do your pictures on Facebook really exist? Do you need to print them out on a polaroid in order for them to constitute as real? I mean those pictures you post are just digital data, tiny pixels on a screen. It exists in the virtual space. Yet somehow, you can see them as “real”. And maybe you’re concerned that you can’t “see” crypto, but look, you can see the numbers. You can see the strings in the blockchain and the keys in your wallet. While it’s not as graphic as your gym selfie, it certainly can be looked at. It’s not just something concocted from imagination. Digital is more than just “imaginary”, it's real. Just because you can’t perceive it with all five of your senses doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Even collectible cards have digital versions, like Topps Baseball and Star Wars. People buy,sell, and trade these digital cards as if they’re real. I mean couldn’t you just take a screenshot of the card and say you have it? Well, no, the ownership of the card is verified through the app. Likewise, the ownership of your crypto is verified through the blockchain. Plus, I mean, we already use debit and credit cards. Bank accounts are accessed through our phones. Heck, we even make purchases digitally, with dollars on Amazon or order food through GrubHub. Most of your finances are already handled digitally. You’re not holding the cash in your hand or filling it in your wallet or loading up a sack of coins. Yet, you trust the money is there and spendable just by looking at digital data. It’s the same mindset when it comes to using cryptocurrency. Cashless businesses all across the country are propping up, where they literally do not accept cash as payment. At that, we’re seeing more and more places actually accept Bitcoin as payment. Digital is the way of the future. How can it be real, really? We have digital data that’s being traded. Couldn't one just manipulate or hack the system and give themselves ALL the Bitcoin? No, it’s not that simple. There are some security measures and organized systems in place. And as I mentioned earlier, no it’s not moderated by a company or central force of authority. It’s all done by machines in what’s called the Blockhain. The Blockhain is where all the magic happens. And truth be told, if you wanted to add more value to Bitcoin than just “pretty digital rocks”, then look at Bitcoin as an investment into Blockchain technology. The Blockchain, in laymen’s terms, is a system of computers talking to each other verifying information. Hey did this Bitcoin address send x amount of BTC to this other Bitcoin address? Why yes it did! The implications of machines verifying information to each other takes technology to a whole new level. I mean think about it. You can have your dryer “talk” to your wash machine to verify if the clothes are done cleaning and they’re ready to be dried. You can then have your washer “talk” to the store to verify that it’s run out of laundry detergent and needs a new supply. The store can then “talk” to the the delivery drone, which can then send the new bottle of laundry detergent directly towards your doorstep. You get the picture. Blockchain technology has many uses beyond just verifying the legitimacy of transactions as it does in the crypto market. Honestly, this is a lazy man’s dream. No manual input. No buttons to push. Heck, machines could even do maintenance themselves. If your car, for example, is experiencing some sort of malfunction it can verify with some sort of AI “mechanic” that its experiencing an issue and needs to be fixed, then get its tires replaced or whatever. The possibilities are endless. Sure, Blockchain is mainly used to verify cryptocurrency/financial transactions right now, but soon, it can be used for so much more. I don’t know about you, but I like investing in things that allow me to be lazy and have work take care of itself. What do you do with crypto? Now we get into the real meat and potatoes. Cryptocurrency, is well, in its very title, a “currency”. It can be used as a way to pay for goods and services, as it was intended. Of course, you always hear about the illegal money laundering and drug dealing that goes on within the crypto world And to be honest, that much is unavoidable. Just as it is unavoidable with US dollars. Criminals are going to find a way make money, crypto or not. But crypto isn’t just a commodity traded among criminals and drug lords. It’s actually becoming an acceptable form of payment at major companies like Microsoft, Etsy, Starbucks, Twitch, Home Depot -- just to name a few. The IRS recently started cracking down on crypto owners to pay taxes on their crypto. In other words, the US government recognizes it as a legitimate asset. Bitcoin is legal tender in El Salvador. Meanwhile, in China they’re banning any and all crypto(including mining and trading) because they don’t want it competing with their ever precious yuan. Point is, governments and businesses across the world are recognizing that yes, cryptocurrency does indeed hold value, whether they like/support that idea or not. The Potential Returns are Insane! That’s the answer to the question of “Why invest in the crypto market?” If you decide not to use your crypto to buy things, you can of course invest it. “Hodl” it, as they say, a drunken misspelling of the word “hold”, which grew as a bit of a meme after some user on the bitcoin talk forum wrote a whiskey inspired rant about how he was “HODLING” his coins after the big 2013 crash of the market, where the price of Bitcoin dropped from $713 to $438. The price has increased astronomically since, hitting a shocking $50k, as of writing. So yea, the potential gains are absolutely mad. Of course, I want to use the word “potential” here again to highlight the risk involved with this market. You are investing in the most sporadic, the most jumpy, the most fluctuating and risky market out there. Keep that in mind before you shell out your wallet or life savings for that matter. That said, the crypto market has been absolutely kicking ass. No financial asset ever in history has performed as high as cryptocurrency has in just the short past decade. Now if you do decide to invest in crypto, you gotta keep two things in mind. First, you have your wallet. This is where your crypto is stored. Each wallet has a unique key. The key, like the key to your house, grants you access inside (to all the funds in said wallet). So needless to say, you shouldn’t share this key with anyone you don’t trust and even then, it’s probably best not to trust them with that sort of information. Second, you have an exchange. This is where you trade crypto and/or convert it into other legal tender (eg. the US dollar). You need to have an exchange account if you’re planning on buying your crypto instead of mining it. If you mine it, you can have the funds sent directly to your wallet. Buuuut, if you ever want to sell it for cash, let’s say or even trade it for another alt coin or something, you do need to join an exchange. Now some exchanges like Coinbase have a sort of wallet/exchange hybrid. Your coins are stored in their built-in wallet and you can buy/sell/trade crypto from your wallet all on the website. It’s convenient, but….huge BUT...like any convenience in life, there’s always a downside. Now the downside of this, technically speaking, because you don’t have the keys to your wallet, you don’t actually “own” the cryptocurrency in your wallet. The only way for the funds to truly be yours is to have the keys. Without them, well, your funds are technically owned by Coinbase (or whatever similar company you may use) Furthermore, Coinbase requires ID verification, tax filing, and all this bank shit in order to be able to trade on their platform. So much for removing the one entity. Kind of defeats the purpose of creating a P2P based currency. That said, Coinbase is a great place to start for beginners. It makes the whole process easy and the trading charts are very use-friendly to read, not confusing and overly mathematical like some of the other exchanges. I’ve actually recently transferred all my coins to Crypto.com though. They offer a high paying debit rewards card, as well as interest on your investments, which means you’re earning even more gains on top of your gains if you choose to HODL! I’ll have to write up a full report/review on Crypto.com….later...eventually….when I get to it, alright? Crypto.com also offers a DeFi (Decentralized Finance) wallet and exchange, something Coinbase doesn’t do! And that means you *can* own your keys (and thus your coins as well). They’re scared of this. Those corporate owners hate this shit. They hate seeing poor people make profit. The CEO of JP Morgan Bank, Jamie Dimon, an ongoing critic of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency recently said, for example: It’s got no intrinsic value, and regulators are going to regulate the hell out of it. He calls it “fools gold”. (Of course all gold is foolish, if you think about it. After all, as we covered, it’s just a freaking rock.) Funny how the people fighting to deregulate the stock market are now up in arms about a market that’s NOT regulated. It’s almost like they don’t want a total “free market”. They want one in which they, as business owners and investors, can control. Face it. He doesn’t think crypto has no value. He’s just mad that he sold during the last dip and now it’s starting to spike again. Ironically, customers at JPMorgan demanded Crypto trading and the company has offered it to all their clients. He, as well as other investors know crypto is an absolute gold mine. There’s no denying it at this point. Doing so is the real “foolish” thing to do. The price is gonna up. It’s gonna go down. It’s a freaking roller coaster. Just enjoy the ride and keep on HOLDING….or as I like to say, keep on procrastinating. Let’s wait for the price to go to the moon together! Take it easy, N8 |
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March 2022
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