It’s only a loss if you sell, right?

Nayib Bukele proclaimed himself “the world’s coolest dictator”.

His jokes aren't clear.

El Salvador's 43rd president self-proclaimed “CEO of El Salvador” couldn't be less presidential.

His thin jeans, aviator sunglasses, and baseball caps like a cartel lord.

He's popular, though.

Bukele won 53% of the vote by fighting violent crime and opposition party corruption.

El Salvador's 6.4 million inhabitants are riding the cryptocurrency volatility wave.

They were powerless.

Their autocratic leader, a former Yamaha Motors salesperson and Bitcoin believer, wants to help 70% unbanked locals.

He intended to give the citizens a way to save money and cut the country's $200 million remittance cost.

Transfer and deposit costs.

This makes logical sense when the president’s theatrics don’t blind you.

El Salvador's Bukele revealed plans to make bitcoin legal tender.

Remittances total $5.9 billion (23%) of the country's expenses.

Anything that reduces costs could boost the economy.

The country’s unbanked population is staggering. Here’s the data by % of people who either have a bank account (Blue) or a mobile money account (Black).

According to Bukele, 46% of the population has downloaded the Chivo Bitcoin Wallet.

In 2021, 36% of El Salvadorans had bank accounts.

Large rural countries like Kenya seem to have resolved their unbanked dilemma.

An economy surfaced where village locals would sell, trade and store network minutes and data as a store of value.

Kenyan phone networks realized unbanked people needed a safe way to accumulate wealth and have an emergency fund.

96% of Kenyans utilize M-PESA, which doesn't require a bank account.

The software involves human agents who hang out with cash and a phone.

These people are like ATMs.

You offer them cash to deposit money in your mobile money account or withdraw cash.

In a country with a faulty banking system, cash availability and a safe place to deposit it are important.

William Jack and Tavneet Suri found that M-PESA brought 194,000 Kenyan households out of poverty by making transactions cheaper and creating a safe store of value.

2016 Science paper

Mobile money, a service that allows monetary value to be stored on a mobile phone and sent to other users via text messages, has been adopted by most Kenyan households. We estimate that access to the Kenyan mobile money system M-PESA increased per capita consumption levels and lifted 194,000 households, or 2% of Kenyan households, out of poverty.

The impacts, which are more pronounced for female-headed households, appear to be driven by changes in financial behaviour — in particular, increased financial resilience and saving. Mobile money has therefore increased the efficiency of the allocation of consumption over time while allowing a more efficient allocation of labour, resulting in a meaningful reduction of poverty in Kenya.

Currently, El Salvador has 2,301 Bitcoin.

At publication, it's worth $44 million. That remains 41% of Bukele's original $105.6 million.

Unknown if the country has sold Bitcoin, but Bukeles keeps purchasing the dip.

It's still falling.

This might be a fantastic move for the impoverished country over the next five years, if they can live economically till Bitcoin's price recovers.

The evidence demonstrates that a store of value pulls individuals out of poverty, but others say Bitcoin is premature.

You may regard it as an aggressive endeavor to front run the next wave of adoption, offering El Salvador a financial upside.

The easiest online explanation.

Web3 is growing. Crypto companies are growing.

Instagram, Adidas, and Stripe adopted cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies made web3 famous.

Most don't know where to start. Cryptocurrency, DeFi, etc. are investments.

Since we don't understand web3, I'll help you today.

Let’s go.

1. Web3

It is the third generation of the web, and it is built on the decentralization idea which means no one can control it.

There are static webpages that we can only read on the first generation of the web (i.e. Web 1.0).

Web 2.0 websites are interactive. Twitter, Medium, and YouTube.

Each generation controlled the website owner. Simply put, the owner can block us. However, data breaches and selling user data to other companies are issues.

They can influence the audience's mind since they have control.

Assume Twitter's CEO endorses Donald Trump. Result? Twitter would have promoted Donald Trump with tweets and graphics, enhancing his chances of winning.

We need a decentralized, uncontrollable system.

And then there’s Web3.0 to consider. As Bitcoin and Ethereum values climb, so has its popularity. Web3.0 is uncontrolled web evolution. It's good and bad.

Dapps, DeFi, and DAOs are here. It'll all be explained afterwards.

2. Cryptocurrencies:

No need to elaborate.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, and Dogecoin are cryptocurrencies. It's digital money used for payments and other uses.

Programs must interact with cryptocurrencies.

3. Blockchain:

Blockchain facilitates bitcoin transactions, investments, and earnings.

This technology governs Web3. It underpins the web3 environment.

Let us delve much deeper.

Blockchain is simple. However, the name expresses the meaning.

Blockchain is a chain of blocks.

Let's use an image if you don't understand.

The graphic above explains blockchain. Think Blockchain. The block stores related data.

Here's more.

4. Smart contracts

Programmers and developers must write programs. Smart contracts are these blockchain apps.

That’s reasonable.

Decentralized web3.0 requires immutable smart contracts or programs.

5. NFTs

Blockchain art is NFT. Non-Fungible Tokens.

Explaining Non-Fungible Token may help.

Two sorts of tokens:

1. These tokens are fungible, meaning they can be changed. Think of Bitcoin or cash. The token won't change if you sell one Bitcoin and acquire another.

2. Non-Fungible Token: Since these tokens cannot be exchanged, they are exclusive. For instance, music, painting, and so forth.

Right now, Companies and even individuals are currently developing worthless NFTs.

The concept of NFTs is much improved when properly handled.

6. Dapp

Decentralized apps are Dapps. Instagram, Twitter, and Medium apps in the same way that there is a lot of decentralized blockchain app.

Curve, Yearn Finance, OpenSea, Axie Infinity, etc. are dapps.

7. DAOs

DAOs are member-owned and governed.

Consider it a company with a core group of contributors.

8. DeFi

We all utilize centrally regulated financial services. We fund these banks.

If you have $10,000 in your bank account, the bank can invest it and retain the majority of the profits.

We only get a penny back. Some banks offer poor returns. To secure a loan, we must trust the bank, divulge our information, and fill out lots of paperwork.

DeFi was built for such issues.

Decentralized banks are uncontrolled. Staking, liquidity, yield farming, and more can earn you money.

Web3 beginners should start with these resources.

Calendars are great unpaid employees.

After using Notion to organize my next three months' goals, my days were a mess.

I grew very chaotic afterward. I was overwhelmed, unsure of what to do, and wasting time attempting to plan the day after it had started.

Imagine if our skeletons were on the outside. Doesn’t work.

The goals were too big; I needed to break them into smaller chunks. But how?

Enters Google Calendar

RescueTime’s recommendations took me seven hours to make a daily planner. This epic narrative begins with a sheet of paper and concludes with a daily calendar that helps me focus and achieve more goals. Ain’t nobody got time for “what’s next?” all day.

Onward!

Return to the Paleolithic Era

Plan in writing.

Not on the list, but it helped me plan my day. Physical writing boosts creativity and recall.

Find My Heart

i.e. prioritize

RescueTime suggested I prioritize before planning. Personal and business goals were proposed.

My top priorities are to exercise, eat healthily, spend time in nature, and avoid stress.

Priorities include writing and publishing Medium articles, conducting more freelance editing and Medium outreach, and writing/editing sci-fi books.

These eight things will help me feel accomplished every day.

Make a baby calendar.

Create daily calendar templates.

Make family, pleasure, etc. calendars.

Google Calendar instructions:

• Other calendars

• Press the “+” button

• Create a new calendar

• Create recurring events for each day

My calendar, without the template:

Empty, so I can fill it with vital tasks.

With the template:

My daily skeleton corresponds with my priorities. I've been overwhelmed for years because I lack daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly structure.

Google Calendars helps me reach my goals and focus my energy.

Get your colored pencils ready

Time-block color-coding.

Color labeling lets me quickly see what's happening. Maybe you are too.

Google Calendar instructions:

• Determine which colors correspond to each time block.

• When establishing new events, select a color.

• Save

My calendar is color-coded as follows:

• Yellow — passive income or other future-related activities

• Red — important activities, like my monthly breast exam

• Flamingo — shallow work, like emails, Twitter, etc.

• Blue — all my favorite activities, like walking, watching comedy, napping, and sleeping. Oh, and eating.

• Green — money-related events required for this adulting thing

• Purple — writing-related stuff

Associating a time block with a color helps me stay focused. Less distractions mean faster work.

Open My Email

aka receive a daily email from Google Calendar.

Google Calendar sends a daily email feed of your calendars. I sent myself the template calendar in this email.

Google Calendar instructions:

• Access settings

• Select the calendar that you want to send (left side)

• Go down the page to see more alerts

• Under the daily agenda area, click Email.

Get in Touch With Your Red Bull Wings — Naturally

aka audit your energy levels.

My daily planner has arrows. These indicate how much energy each activity requires or how much I have.

Rightward arrow denotes medium energy.

I do my Medium and professional editing in the morning because it's energy-intensive.

Niharikaa Sodhi recommends morning Medium editing.

I’m a morning person. As long as I go to bed at a reasonable time, 5 a.m. is super wild GO-TIME. It’s like the world was just born, and I marvel at its wonderfulness.

Freelance editing lets me do what I want. An afternoon snooze will help me finish on time.

Ditch Schedule View

aka focus on the weekly view.

RescueTime advocated utilizing the weekly view of Google Calendar, so I switched.

When you launch the phone app or desktop calendar, a red line shows where you are in the day.

I'll follow the red line's instructions. My digital supervisor is easy to follow.

In the image above, it's almost 3 p.m., therefore the red line implies it's time to snooze.

I won't forget this block ;).

Reduce the Lighting

aka dim previous days.

This is another Google Calendar feature I didn't know about. Once the allotted time passes, the time block dims. This keeps me present.

Google Calendar instructions:

• Access settings

• remaining general

• To view choices, click.

• Check Diminish the glare of the past.

Bonus

Two additional RescueTimes hacks:

Maintain a space between tasks

I left 15 minutes between each time block to transition smoothly. This relates to my goal of less stress. If I set strict start and end times, I'll be stressed.

With a buffer, I can breathe, stroll around, and start the following time block fresh.

Find a time is related to the buffer.

This option allows you conclude small meetings five minutes early and longer ones ten. Before the next meeting, relax or go wild.

Decide on a backup day.

This productivity technique is amazing.

Spend this excess day catching up on work. It helps reduce tension and clutter.

That's all I can say about Google Calendar's functionality.

From oil to attention.

Oil has been the most important commodity for a century. It's sparked wars. Pearl Harbor was a preemptive strike to guarantee Japanese access to Indonesian oil, and it made desert tribes rich. Oil's heyday is over. From oil to attention.

We talked about an information economy. In an age of abundant information, what's scarce? Attention. Scale of the world's largest enterprises, wealth of its richest people, and power of governments all stem from attention extraction, monetization, and custody.

Attention-grabbing isn't new. Humans have competed for attention and turned content into wealth since Aeschylus' Oresteia. The internal combustion engine, industrial revolutions in mechanization and plastics, and the emergence of a mobile Western lifestyle boosted oil. Digitization has put wells in pockets, on automobile dashboards, and on kitchen counters, drilling for attention.

The most valuable firms are attention-seeking enterprises, not oil companies. Big Tech dominates the top 4. Tech and media firms are the sheikhs and wildcatters who capture our attention. Blood will flow as the oil economy rises.

Attention to Detail

More than IT and media companies compete for attention. Podcasting is a high-growth, low-barrier-to-entry chance for newbies to gain attention and (for around 1%) make money. Conferences are good for capturing in-person attention. Salesforce paid $30 billion for Slack's dominance of workplace attention, while Spotify is transforming music listening attention into a media platform.

Conferences, newsletters, and even music streaming are artisan projects. Even 130,000-person Comic Con barely registers on the attention economy's Richter scale. Big players have hundreds of millions of monthly users.

Supermajors

Even titans can be disrupted in the attention economy. TikTok is fracking king Chesapeake Energy, a rule-breaking insurgent with revolutionary extraction technologies. Attention must be extracted, processed, and monetized. Innovators disrupt the attention economy value chain.

Attention pre-digital Entrepreneurs commercialized intriguing or amusing stuff like a newspaper or TV show through subscriptions and ads. Digital storage and distribution's limitless capacity drove the initial wave of innovation. Netflix became dominant by releasing old sitcoms and movies. More ad-free content gained attention. By 2016, Netflix was greater than cable TV. Linear scale, few network effects.

Social media introduced two breakthroughs. First, users produced and paid for content. Netflix's economics are dwarfed by TikTok and YouTube, where customers create the content drill rigs that the platforms monetize.

Next, social media businesses expanded content possibilities. Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit offer traditional content, but they transform user comments into more valuable (addictive) emotional content. By emotional resonance, I mean they satisfy a craving for acceptance or anger us. Attention and emotion are mined from comments/replies, piss-fights, and fast-brigaded craziness. Exxon has turned exhaust into heroin. Should we be so linked without a commensurate presence? You wouldn't say this in person. Anonymity allows fraudulent accounts and undesirable actors, which platforms accept to profit from more pollution.

FrackTok

A new entrepreneur emerged as ad-driven social media anger contaminated the water table. TikTok is remaking the attention economy. Short-form video platform relies on user-generated content, although delivery is narrower and less social.

Netflix grew on endless options. Choice requires cognitive effort. TikTok is the least demanding platform since TV. App video plays when opened. Every video can be skipped with a swipe. An algorithm watches how long you watch, what you finish, and whether you like or follow to create a unique streaming network. You can follow creators and respond, but the app is passive. TikTok's attention economy recombination makes it apex predator. The app has more users than Facebook and Instagram combined. Among teens, it's overtaking the passive king, TV.

Externalities

Now we understand fossil fuel externalities. A carbon-based economy has harmed the world. Fracking brought large riches and rebalanced the oil economy, but at a cost: flammable water, earthquakes, and chemical leaks.

TikTok has various concerns associated with algorithmically generated content and platforms. A Wall Street Journal analysis discovered new accounts listed as belonging to 13- to 15-year-olds would swerve into rabbitholes of sex- and drug-related films in mere days. TikTok has a unique externality: Chinese Communist Party ties. Our last two presidents realized the relationship's perils. Concerned about platform's propaganda potential.

No evidence suggests the CCP manipulated information to harm American interests. A headjack implanted on America's youth, who spend more time on TikTok than any other network, connects them to a neural network that may be modified by the CCP. If the product and ownership can't be separated, the app should be banned. Putting restrictions near media increases problems. We should have a reciprocal approach with China regarding media firms. Ban TikTok

It was a conference theme. I anticipated Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner to say, "We're watching them." (That's CEO protocol.) TikTok should be outlawed in every democracy as an espionage tool. Rumored regulations could lead to a ban, and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr pushes for app store prohibitions. Why not restrict Chinese propaganda? Some disagree: Several renowned tech writers argued my TikTok diatribe last week distracted us from privacy and data reform. The situation isn't zero-sum. I've warned about Facebook and other tech platforms for years. Chewing gum while walking is possible.

The Future

Is TikTok the attention-economy titans' final evolution? The attention economy acts like it. No original content. CNN+ was unplugged, Netflix is losing members and has lost 70% of its market cap, and households are canceling cable and streaming subscriptions in historic numbers. Snap Originals closed in August after YouTube Originals in January.

Everyone is outTik-ing the Tok. Netflix debuted Fast Laughs, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Snap Spotlight, Roku The Buzz, Pinterest Watch, and Twitter is developing a TikTok-like product. I think they should call it Vine. Just a thought.

Meta's internal documents show that users spend less time on Instagram Reels than TikTok. Reels engagement is dropping, possibly because a third of the videos were generated elsewhere (usually TikTok, complete with watermark). Meta has tried to downrank these videos, but they persist. Users reject product modifications. Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner posted a meme urging Meta to Make Instagram Instagram Again, resulting in 312,000 signatures. Mark won't hear the petition. Meta is the fastest follower in social (see Oculus and legless hellscape fever nightmares). Meta's stock is at a five-year low, giving those who opposed my demands to break it up a compelling argument.

Blue Pill

TikTok's short-term dominance in attention extraction won't be stopped by anyone who doesn't hear Hail to the Chief every time they come in. Will TikTok still be a supermajor in five years? If not, YouTube will likely rule and protect Kings Landing.

56% of Americans regularly watch YouTube. Compared to Facebook and TikTok, 95% of teens use Instagram. YouTube users upload more than 500 hours of video per minute, a number that's likely higher today. Last year, the platform garnered $29 billion in advertising income, equivalent to Netflix's total.

Business and biology both value diversity. Oil can be found in the desert, under the sea, or in the Arctic. Each area requires a specific ability. Refiners turn crude into gas, lubricants, and aspirin. YouTube's variety is unmatched. One-second videos to 12-hour movies. Others are studio-produced. (My Bill Maher appearance was edited for YouTube.)

You can dispute in the comment section or just stream videos. YouTube is used for home improvement, makeup advice, music videos, product reviews, etc. You can load endless videos on a topic or creator, subscribe to your favorites, or let the suggestion algo take over. YouTube relies on user content, but it doesn't wait passively. Strategic partners advise 12,000 creators. According to a senior director, if a YouTube star doesn’t post once week, their manager is “likely to know why.”

YouTube's kevlar is its middle, especially for creators. Like TikTok, users can start with low-production vlogs and selfie videos. As your following expands, so does the scope of your production, bringing longer videos, broadcast-quality camera teams and performers, and increasing prices. MrBeast, a YouTuber, is an example. MrBeast made gaming videos and YouTube drama comments.

Donaldson's YouTube subscriber base rose. MrBeast invests earnings to develop impressive productions. His most popular video was a $3.5 million Squid Game reenactment (the cost of an episode of Mad Men). 300 million people watched. TikTok's attention-grabbing tech is too limiting for this type of material. Now, Donaldson is focusing on offline energy with a burger restaurant and cloud kitchen enterprise.

Steps to Take

Rapid wealth growth has externalities. There is no free lunch. OK, maybe caffeine. The externalities are opaque, and the parties best suited to handle them early are incentivized to construct weapons of mass distraction to postpone and obfuscate while achieving economic security for themselves and their families. The longer an externality runs unchecked, the more damage it causes and the more it costs to fix. Vanessa Pappas, TikTok's COO, didn't shine before congressional hearings. Her comms team over-consulted her and said ByteDance had no headquarters because it's scattered. Being full of garbage simply promotes further anger against the company and the awkward bond it's built between the CCP and a rising generation of American citizens.

This shouldn't distract us from the (still existent) harm American platforms pose to our privacy, teenagers' mental health, and civic dialogue. Leaders of American media outlets don't suffer from immorality but amorality, indifference, and dissonance. Money rain blurs eyesight.

Autocratic governments that undermine America's standing and way of life are immoral. The CCP has and will continue to use all its assets to harm U.S. interests domestically and abroad. TikTok should be spun to Western investors or treated the way China treats American platforms: kicked out.

So rich,

My wallpape