Bitcoin Random Thoughts

Source: Trough Side Story

Bitcoin has risen again. For me, it is not a certain cryptocurrency, nor is it a so-called opportunity for individuals to be free of wealth today, but it represents a whole class of things. The commonality of this class of things is: you can't understand it, it's hard to understand it, and you may even deny it, thinking that it has no possibility of survival. But it survives like that, and grows and develops at a speed you can't expect.

In other words, the existence of this class of things marks a person's cognitive blind spot. Regardless of whether a person agrees with the thing itself, the cognitive blind spot is worthy of attention and research, and that is a real problem.

Today someone said online: If I had bought 100/1000 bitcoins 12 years ago. This sentence means that if you buy a bitcoin in the middle of the year in 2012, the price is 50 US dollars. Now it is the end of 2024, and the price of Bitcoin at this moment is 88,000 US dollars, which has increased 1,760 times in 12 years.

This mentality is very typical. Similar expressions can be heard everywhere. It doesn’t have to be Bitcoin. It can be anything else, a person, a stock, an opportunity, and so on. It’s not strange to have this mentality. I have had it myself and have suffered from it. The way to break it is actually very simple. Let’s take Bitcoin as an example:

At this moment, I am exactly 12 years ago in 2036. So, what have I invested, speculated, and bet on today? Do I know what I should invest in for myself 12 years later? If I don’t know, I didn’t have any "ifs" 12 years ago. Things didn’t have anything to do with me at all.

You see, if people can be a little honest with themselves, many problems can be easily figured out. No one can go back to 2012, or go back to a time point in the past that they feel regretful, but those who are reading this article now are likely to arrive in 2036. 2012 cannot be recalled and cannot be changed, but 2036 can be imagined and there are countless possibilities. Therefore, all problems can be returned to the present, rather than looking back to the past.

Then why can't people help but think back to 2012, and can't help but think "if...then..."? Because everyone loves to cheat. The reason why 2012 is so beautiful is that everyone now has the answer of 88,000 US dollars in hand, and uses this answer to go back to 2012 to choose opportunities. If this is not cheating, what is it? At the moment in 2012, the fact is that many people at that time, like me, did not know the future at all.

According to my own understanding at that time, graphics cards are toys that only game geeks care about. Who would play games all day and pursue display effects when playing games? Electric cars are meaningless. How far can a battery drive a car? So, who is Huang Renxun? I don't know him. Who is Musk? Oh, that white man who is good at fantasy, who doesn't understand technology and business at all, and is speechless by various people at various industry conferences.

So, what's so strange? What's so strange about missing Bitcoin? Didn't I also miss Nvidia and Tesla? Why are there exceptions under the same cognitive model and cognitive structure? If you don't know, you don't know. Life is not a rebirth novel on the Internet.

The focus is always today. If you can be honest with yourself, give up the daydream of turning back time, and admit that you don't know, it's a good start. At this moment, admit two things: First, admit that you really don't know the future. Second, admit that at this moment, Bitcoin, Nvidia and Tesla in 2036 also exist, but you don't have the ability to identify them. Then, the experience of 2012 is useful, and it is worth analyzing a question: How did I ignore it in 2012, how did I miss it, and where exactly is the problem?

And perhaps a more positive idea: How to discover new things that are about to rise? What methods and means can be used to identify them from countless things that are born and die quickly? Is there anyone to ask, what books can be read, and what theories can be referred to?

Of course, of course, of course, there are people who will ask how to find it, complaining that there are no clues, life is hard, there are many things to do, the children are young, and they can't find it, and so on. Here is how I see it:

If you have the intention to change your self-concept, admit that you don't know, and then have the desire to learn, then in the material world you observe daily, what you need will naturally emerge. The principle is not complicated. A person who has never kept a cat will not see any information about cats, even if it is spread out in front of him, and his brain will automatically block it. But once the same person starts to keep a cat, all this information will suddenly appear clearly in front of him, without missing a single word, without missing a single keyword. How much you can see and how sharp you can become depends on how much you love cats. People who don't have cats can imagine the changes they see in their eyes before and after their children are born.

For example, just these few days, a picture released by Li Nan, the former CMO of Meizu Mobile, suddenly jumped into my face. He used this picture to explain a point of view: Musk's industries are all on the left side of this picture, that is, Musk is not concerned about the scale of the industry, but more concerned about the growth rate of the industry, or intuitively speaking, the slope of the development curve. According to Li Nan, this is the ability to "predict the future with risks."

If I had never thought that I knew nothing about the future, and had never admitted that there were flaws or blind spots in my cognition, then I would not have looked at this picture more than once even if it passed by me ten thousand times. But now I have one more picture, and one more starting point for thinking. Although all analytical charts may be hindsight, they can also raise good questions, such as: What is this pile on the far left of the chart? Why are they? What are the hidden clues behind them?

It can even help me reflect: Are the opinions I see in daily life, my own cognition and experience, all concentrated on the far right of the chart? If so, then are my cognition and experience all pointing to everything that is about to become the past and have nothing to do with the future? Can this explain my 2012? Then why are they concentrated on the far right of the chart? Is it because I am too mature and too familiar, so it is the easiest and most labor-saving to judge, with the lowest risk? Do I always choose the easy thing to do? Restate the correct opinions and information?

I think this should not be a problem just for me, right?