I should say that for the past month I’ve been thinking of little other than cryptocurrencies while living in a porus wooden shack with no electricity or internet connection up a hill looking over a lake in Central America. I came here to  live more simply and importantly to get more hands on experiece surviving off the land and learn the lessons that can only be properly absorbed with experience. Totally immersing myself in everything crypto related I can get my hands on seems like a high level juxtoposition to keeping the chickens fed and the wild dogs out of the compost.  

Not having pillow side access to the interweb of information pushes me out of bed with the sunrise and I slowly saunter outside in rubber boots, long underwear and my only warm sweater over to piss into the banana circle next to the chicken yard. I’m a little drowsey because I was kept up thinking about which option to hedge profits into during this volatile month of July 2017 before the potential bitcoin split. Litecoin seems to be on everyones list and is showing to be a solid choice as of now. Tethering to the USD is another obvious option which puts one in a good position with moveable currency on the market if wanting to try to take quick advantage of any dips. I put a chunk in Stratis which seemed promising but hasn’t shown signs of life. ETH's hype has gone so far as to have spooked itself and now it lies shrunken in a corner while people run around screaming about how ICO’s are ruining the culture. Everybody’s greedily gobbling up Chinese ANTS for quick cash while at the same time preaching that Monero is steady and wise.

The chickens have eggs to lay and feed to feed upon. I can tell by their cawing and cooing and crowding at the door that they want out of their night time safe house. You lock up your chickens at night or else you might one day wake up to find them torn to peices by any number of imaginable beasts from dog to fox and ferret or snake or perhaps a bold and hungry barnyard cat. Obviously no holes in the fencing, bury the wire a foot into the ground or have a raised chicken house. Either way make sure it's large enough to get in there for cleaning comfortably and egg removal. The roosting house should be safe, sheltered and cleaned daily with poop being scraped off roosting poles and covered with straw or other carbon material like sawdust or dried grass. The best thing to do is to keep adding carbon to the roosting house floor and general chicken area. In that way you build up a deep bed of potential fertalizer to be hauled out when needed or move the chicken area and plant overtop of their prior scratching and pooping grounds. The one thing you do not want to do is let the chickens out before you’ve filled the feeders and put them where they should go. You end up booting chickens out of the way while being swarmed up and down by hungry hens trying to get at the feed - wakes you up faster than a cold shower. 

I’ll save the cheesy analogies between a safe roosting house and a properly backed up offline wallet for another time and allow you the reader to make your own connections between adding to investments and putting a bit of fresh carbon around the chicken yard from day to day. It’s important to keep adding to the land, don’t just let it sit there to get pecked and scratched away. It turns to muck and that’s no fun for anybody or anybird. 

Every few days I’ll venture out in search of an internet connection. Sometimes it comes to squatting in a drainage ditch behind a near-by hotel trying to get enough wifi to refresh the numbers in my blockfolio. Othertimes I find myself paying far too much money (for being in an underdeveloped country) to drink a smoothie at a lake side restaurant that I deliver eggs to weekly. It just happens to have the best internet connection around. In the ditch I can do little more than get some numbers, check a few forums and messages but at the lake side overpriced cafe, well, I can do all sorts of things. Mostly I prepare for the rest of the week pepperd with with infrequent drainage ditch style internet updates and a whole lot of offline reading. During proper interenet connection time I usually start off with downloading a range of crypto related podcasts like the no holds bar host on 'Bitcoin: Uncensored' which is contrasted well by the softer toned yet informative 'Unchained: Big Ideas'. Those shows come out only a few times a week if that so I fill the gaps with a variety of shows published daily from ‘The Let’s Talk Bitcoin Network’. While I take in the lakeside view I’m now able now to open all my markets which at the moment consist of Coinbase (when it’s working), Poloniex, Bittrex and newly Bitfinex. I have thoughts of linking them all together on my expiring free 30 day trial of Coinology but that just hasn’t happend yet. I have a check around the charts, see what previoulsy set up orders got filled and contemplate a few moves. Before anything gets going though I try to watch a few youtube channels like Ryan Lye, Node Investor and whatever else interesting gets suggested on my feed. I would really benifit from a decent youtube downloader because I find it hard to focus on videos when I have access to so many interesting reddit forums tempting my attention on my phone which is being charged along with a mini speaker, external batterie and the computer - remember, no power at the shack. I get a lot more out of the PDFs, downloaded articles and whitepapers when I save them for the less electrically distracted later offline hours. We try to do a million different things at once when connected to a billion different options with each expereince diluted by trying to add another at the same time. 

 

So earlier this year I quit my job, packed up my life and hit the road with a bag and my petite wife. I don’t know where this world is going but I’m gonna keep trying to see more of it before one of us gets too messed up. I got out there to get more hands on experience in the field of Permaculture and sustainable design and found myself smitten with the world of crypto currency along the way. Most people are a bit confused or haven’t been properly introduced to these topics. They ask about them in similar ways usually saying that they’ve heard the name but aren’t sure what exactly it is or how it’s used. The explaination I give for Permaculture comes from David Holmgreen and he says that it’s a framework for ethical and ecological decision making. At it’s core are a set of 3 ethics and 12 pricinples which, when applied properly to an idea or system, you get increased functionality, sustainablity and productivity. The explaination I give for cryptocurrency isn’t yet fully defined but I’m going to try to work that out here in these writings. I’m going to go through the 12 Permaculture principles and try apply them to the way I learn about, interact and gain more experience in this brave new crypto world. This may be a first so follow along, comment and be a part of this together with me. 

 

We’ll start with the first PERMA-CRYPTO-CULTURE PRINCIPLE

 

#1 - Observe and Interact - Extended observation, all are useful even if you don’t know why

 

Observation comes in many forms with a good ol' start being to check out some youtube videos introducing bitcoin and learn about the brief but exciting hisory of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technological evolution. It’s also well worth brushing up on the history of money and monitary evolution. Learn the language and terms used in the crypto world with help from a list of some definitions - you’ll probably find that it’s ever evolving. Bitcoin.org is a great place to start for a ton reading material and interactive information. Keep up to date with weekly or daily with a variety of social media sources like twitter, reddit and telegram chats. Listen to podcasts from a variety of sources as well as subscribe to a few decent youtube channels. Get familiar with some of the top alt coins by visiting their websites, reading their white paper pdfs. Learn about the company and it’s team and find out their vision. Read about their roadmap and business plan. Check if they have a working product or if they have hit any of their goals on schedule. Most important is to see what their community of supporters and users has to say and cross refrence that with opinions on forums, social media and ask about it in places like reddit. Look at trading charts and follow the market. Everything indicator is useless by itself alone. Observe them all and form your own opinions. 

Interaction comes first in the form of buying some bitcoin or as they say ‘getting in the front end’. This has, for most people recently coming in for the first time, been through Coinbase and a credit card. I personally bought in with a small amout that I could easily afford to lose and started using it. The first thing I did was transfer my bitcoin onto a market then watched the numbers go up and down and started executing some basic functions like buying a small bit of alt coin and transfering back it to bitcoin. Then I started transfering some bitcoin off the market and into a software wallet then putting it into a hardware wallet usb stick as well as generating a paper wallet and copying that down. Finally, I did it all again in reverse and put the amount back onto the market. I used a fraction of a small amount as I just wanted to make sure I knew how to use all the functions correctly. Set up some of the funtions on the market like different buy in, sell and stop orders. Make sure everything moves and works to your satisfaction. Keep track of all your future movements on an excell sheet or with an app like blockfolio. Keep observing, absorbing news, get familiar with the ebbs and flow as well as the history of the markets and THEN decide whether you want to start moving more money into the crypto world. 

The next principle is: Catch and Store Energy - Cycle energy through a site

 

I’ll go through this one next week. I hope you enjoy and get something out of this perhaps strange way to relate to the cryptoworld and I most hope that you contribute comments and critique so that we learn together. Please submit any thoughts on how the next principle can relate.

 

Quit your friggin job,

hami -