Stock Trading - Entry 55

While spiritual, I ascribe neither to Christianity nor to Judaism. This article is all about a warning for investors such as myself. I am not dispensing investing advice, only reflections on my personal financial situation when it comes to investing...in blockchains.

Origins of 666

I am going to smash through a whole lot of BS right now by being literal and direct. Way back when, it turns out that King Solomon would receive annual revenues of 666 talons of gold (according to the Book of Kings and the Book of Chronicles in the Bible). That's a lot of gold. Say what you want about that, why did his annual revenue stop at that number? Because of what the lesson of 666, in that context, is actually about.

If you study the impacts of King Solomon's approach to wealth, you will find two important money lessons according to this video. First, money is a tool. Second, a wealth mentality involves seeing yourself as a steward of things that are not yours. Money is not yours, but if you think of it that way, that is hoarder mentality, not steward mentality.

Thinking one as a steward and money as a tool, King Solomon did not need to surpass 666 talons of gold per year because, for him, that seemed to be enough things to be entrusted with to manage. What is equally important is the foundation. According to the story, a person cannot hoard wants and then pile stewardship on top of that. Money doesn't seem to work that way.

In short, Solomon's 666 is a symbol of a lesson in knowing what is enough. Define that. Be the steward of all that. (I leave the Book of Revelations to be something else entirely and outside the scope of my investment journey.)

My Limits

Although I have only recently delved into the historical meaning of 666, I have been very clear with my wealth-building intentions. It's for my retirement based on careful and lengthy calculations of how I saw me enjoying living life based on my 2018 view of things. I have been diligent in reviewing that periodically as my life has changed since then. That, however, was simply my first move in building wealth.

What followed was keeping my boat on an even keel when it comes to avoiding greed. I wrote about a super-clear example of this in entry 10 so I could avoid mismanaging my investment funds.

Even with that, it took me quite a while before I navigated through the gates of actually investing in blockchains. To get through that gate, I needed to know I had adequate tools to manage blockchain investments and, after some shrewd research, I spelled out what that would be for me back in entry 35. (It hasn't changed so far.)

What I Have Seen in the Blockchain-sphere

But I refused to invest in just any new blockchain. Whether you consider that me avoiding blindness or me avoiding gluttony, I will leave that up to you to decide. The point is, I looked at a lot of blockchain tokens and approaches before making my decisions.

One of the most disturbing instances I described in entry 11 and how history could repeat itself quite terribly and, I would argue, unethically. Just because I am making efforts to keep greed out of my thinking, that doesn't mean others are doing the same. Newsflash #28: In a free market, both I and others are free to engage greed in whatever way.

Countering that, one positively impressive instance was a blockchain that could help reimagine at least one industry (in addition to investors). That I started covering in entry 16. In fact, it got me to thinking so much about the positive transformational capacity of blockchain technology in general that I conjured up an idea for cities and water management in entry 21!

How I have Reacted

Amidst my research, I found wasteful aspects to some blockchains and those aspects I wrote about in entry 16. In that same article, I hammered out my response to choose what I would and would not accept managing in terms of building wealth through blockchain investing (keeping the stewardship principle in mind).

That framework simply described the bucket I would use to build wealth, but that still left the size of the bucket to be determined. In entry 41, I explicitly declared my intentions when it came to managing any blockchain investments for the medium-term (which I later updated in entry 53. To be honest, I have no idea if blockchains will still be an investment vehicle in half a century from now or if there will be something new for me to consider then. We'll see.

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