Mexican Billionaire Ricardo Salinas Says His Liquid Portfolio Is 60 Bitcoin

Mexican Billionaire Ricardo Salinas Says His Liquid Portfolio Is 60% Bitcoin

Mexico’s third-richest man has upped his holdings over the years, he says.

By Mat Di Salvo

Ricardo Salinas is a big believer in Bitcoin.

Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas said today that 60% of his liquid investment portfolio is in Bitcoin

Salinas is Mexico’s third-richest man, and the world’s 154th richest, with a net worth of $12.8 billion, according to Bloomberg. At the Miami Bitcoin 2022 conference today, Salinas said he doesn’t own any bonds—instead preferring to invest mostly in Bitcoin. 

This is up from 2020, when the business magnate admitted 10% of his portfolio was in Bitcoin—saying at the time that the asset “protects the citizen from government expropriation."

“I definitely don’t have any bonds,” he said today. “I have a liquid portfolio—I have 60% in Bitcoin and Bitcoin equities, and then 40% in hard asset stocks like oil and gas and gold miners, and that’s where I am.”

Salinas, who is chairman of Grupo Elektra, a home appliance and electronics retailer, has long been a Bitcoin fan. In October 2020, he posted on Twitter a list of book recommendations, including ‘The Bitcoin Standard’ by economist Saifedean Ammous. 

Not long after, he admitted he held Bitcoin in his portfolio. And then the billionaire went full Bitcoin bro and changed his Twitter bio to include the biggest cryptocurrency by market cap—joining the likes of MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor and Skybridge’s Anthony Scaramucci. 

Salinas, who controls more than half of the Mexican motorcycle market, has since talked about Bitcoin frequently on social media. 

And he isn’t the only Mexican excited about Bitcoin in Miami right now. Earlier today, Senator Indira Kempis, a pro-Bitcoin politician who represents the State of Nuevo León, said she was going to propose making Bitcoin legal tender in Latin America’s second biggest economy. 

Though it wasn’t clear how realistic the announcement was—and how much of it was just hyperbolic Bitcoiner bluster.

 

Tim Moseley

Gold rises as investors brace for Tuesday’s CPI inflation report

Gold rises as investors brace for Tuesday’s CPI inflation report

As of 4:44 PM EDT gold futures basis, the most active June 2022 contract is trading up $11.70, a gain of 0.60% at $1949.50. There were some alarming forecasts for the upcoming release of the latest inflationary data vis-à-vis the CPI (Consumer Price Index) on Tuesday, March 12. Just last week estimates were released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland which revealed a detailed estimate of the upcoming CPI report indicating that the level of inflation in March could run as high as 8.41%. Furthermore, estimates for the first quarter of 2022 predict inflationary pressures quarter over quarter could swell as high as 9.1%.

The chart above is a 240-minute candlestick chart of gold futures. We have included are trendlines highlighting a series of lower highs, as well as a series of higher lows. This has created a compression triangle and breakout above the current resistance level. This indicates that gold has concluded its consolidation period and moved back into a solid rally mode. This puts our next target for potential resistance at $1967.60. Above that price point, there is resistance at $2000 and major resistance at $2016.

While the Federal Reserve maintains that inflationary levels are peaking and should begin to decline throughout the rest of the year, this assumption is not written in stone as many variables could continue the rise of inflationary pressures throughout the year. One of the primary unknowns is the current crisis in Ukraine which resulted in global inflationary pressures due to supply chain issues regarding their agricultural exports to countries in the European Union, as well as the continuing boycott of Russian goods, oil of course but also much more, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This has had a dramatic impact on the cost of crude oil worldwide. It also led to the release of over 200 million barrels from the strategic oil reserves of the United States and the European Union.

Russia’s escalated military action following its invasion of Ukraine continues to create geopolitical uncertainty and could prolong the rise of inflationary pressures which began as countries around the world allocated massive amounts of capital to stave off the recession which was a result of the global pandemic.

There is now concern that future actions of the Federal Reserve in its attempt to lessen the rise of inflation will lead to an end to the economic recovery, resulting in a return to a recession in the United States.

James Knightley, chief international economist at ING, said, “With the Fed seemingly feeling the need to ‘catch up’ to regain control of inflation and inflation expectations, a rapid-fire pace of aggressive interest rate increases heightens the chances of a policy miss-step that could be enough to topple the economy into a recession.”

Bloomberg News recently reported that economists polled have raised their U.S. inflation forecast again and downgraded their expectations for economic growth through most of 2023. This forecast is based upon the potential risks that result from the Federal Reserve’s attempt to reduce the current level of inflation.

Many uncertainties will continue to increase inflationary pressures globally. The confidence that the Federal Reserve can effectively execute a soft landing is waning among many economists. The assumption that the Federal Reserve will not have the ability to pull it off without causing damage leads to one of two things. The return of global economic recession, or the continuation of rising inflation. Either of these outcomes will have an enormous impact on economies worldwide and will continue to be highly supportive of safe-haven assets such as gold, moving them to higher prices.

By Gary Wagner

Contributing to kitco.com

Time to buy Gold and Silver on the dips

 

Tim Moseley

Less is more – then there is enough for everyone

Less is more – then there is enough for everyone

And while many dream of the progressive life, for us it is quite ordinary. We live, think, learn, work, consume, eat, get sick and die the way we learned to live, think, learn, work, consume, eat, get sick and die, and in the course of time we get used to the strangest things.

But if I erase everything I have learned and look at the present as a stranger from the outside, I no longer understand the world:

Surreal reality is normality
We hang people on tubes, insert artificial joints and make their hearts beat artificially. We keep bodily functions alive while the soul may be on a completely different path.

We screen our bodies, but not the meaning of life.

We are not allowed to let people die, but we are allowed to keep them alive – are we not then allowed to judge their death by judging their life?

We don't have time, although everything goes faster.

We look at displays all day, but less at faces.

We have the best conversation, but have conversations less often.

We speed up, but go backwards.

We have it easier, but are getting heavier.

We are overfed, but underfed.

We are more comfortable, but get sick.

We have prosperity, but suffer from prosperity diseases.

We have become the tools of our own inventiveness – the world is becoming more and more complex, although life is supposed to become simpler.

Prisoners of freedom
Because we want cheap meat, we produce animals like matter and grow fodder crops, although people are starving. We are closest to ourselves and yet often miles away. We can be in any place at any time, but are rarely in the present. The world is getting smaller – we can even bring it home. Everything is possible – WE ARE FREE! But freedom makes us its prisoners. When everything is possible, we have a thousand possibilities and always too little time. We are the slaves of our time: separated from our families and married to work because modern life demands flexible people.

The dependence of freedom
We dissect the world under the microscope, but forget to marvel.

We feel omnipotent – yet we lose control.

We want to possess, but become obsessed with everything.

We root ourselves in the earth, but destroy it.

We are outnumbered, but consume the most resources.

We always want more, but overlook what we have.

We look for happiness around us and don't feel that we have it inside us.

We no longer have to be cold – we have even turned on the heating in the world.

We have the most modern machines, but we forget our own hands.

We consume products from other continents but cannot order our own garden – not even online.

We are free, but more dependent than ever before.

And although we are allowed to choose, we lament not having a choice.

Responsibility in globalisation
We – is the western lifestyle.

We – is the high standard of living.

We – is the model for many people around the world who have been at home in their unique cultures. Gradually they are disappearing into a shallow monotony.

Are these lamentations on a high level
or justified doubts about our form of society?

It is far from all bad, but much could be better if we were less complex and more simple again. In the constant striving for faster, further, higher, I long for a reversal: back to the roots and touching the earth with your hands again!

 

Tim Moseley

Gold moves higher as investors refocus on inflation and Ukraine

Gold moves higher as investors refocus on inflation and Ukraine

Unquestionably market sentiment oscillates amongst the investment community focusing upon inflationary pressures and Ukraine or on the Federal Reserve’s tightening of their monetary policy. Inflationary pressures and the war in Ukraine create bullish market sentiment for the safe-haven asset class, specifically gold. In contrast, reactions to the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, which includes a series of rate hikes and runoff of their balance sheet assets, lead to bearish market sentiment in gold.

It seems that from day to day, market participants will move back and forth between these factors. As for today, market participants are once again putting their primary focus on the inflation continuing to move higher and the war in Ukraine. In regards to the war, it seems highly unlikely that a peaceful resolution will be forthcoming any time soon. Rather concerns have emerged over the excessive military action and targeting of civilians in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine has also affected levels of global inflation, taking them higher. Currently, Ukraine and Russia collectively export a large percentage of wheat and other agricultural products to countries in the European Union, and the war has pressured agricultural products such as wheat higher.

As of 4:10 PM EDT, gold futures basis most active June 2022 contract is up to $11.50 or 0.60% and is currently fixed at $1934.80. Gold traded to a high today of $1941.70 and a low of $1923.30. Concurrently the dollar has been extremely strong this weekend, providing moderate headwinds for gold prices. The entire precious metals complex on the futures markets has shown gains on the day.

Silver futures are up almost a full percent (+0.97%) or $0.23 and are currently fixed at $25.695. Palladium futures are trading 2.62% higher on the day at $2242 per ounce. However, it must be noted that there has been exceedingly high volatility and downside selling pressure over the last five weeks. During the week of March 7, palladium traded to a record high just above $3400 an ounce and, compared to current pricing, has given up roughly 30% in value. Russia is one of the primary producers of platinum and palladium and provides roughly 30% of the palladium used in the automotive industry’s production of catalytic converters.

Additional sanctions by the United States and the European Union further isolate Russia. Still, it also increases the probability of dramatic military action as a response or rationale for escalating their military campaign.

Lastly, market participants continue to focus on the minutes from the March FOMC meeting, which were released yesterday, and statements made by Federal Reserve members, which indicate a much more hawkish tone and pace at which they will tighten their monetary policy to decelerate the pace at which inflation is rising.

By Gary Wagner

Contributing to kitco.com

Time to buy Gold and Silver on the dips

 

Tim Moseley

The Sneaky Sales Tie Down of Feature Benefit Meaning

The Sneaky Sales “Tie Down” of Feature – Benefit – Meaning

by Jim Edwards, The Jim Edwards Method

The Sneaky Sales “Tie Down” of Feature – Benefit – Meaning

 

When I was in the furniture business, I learned from a real old-school salesman named Buck Daniels. I actually dedicated my book to him along with my mom, my dad, my wife, and Russell Brunson.

Buck taught me a selling concept called “tie-downs.” Tie-downs are basically where, when you’re talking to somebody, as soon as whatever it is you’re selling meets one of their requirements, you tie them down to that feature.

Example: “So we can agree that this is the right color?” Yes. Cool.

What do you think about the texture? Good.

What do you think about the fabric? Cool.

It’s got a recliner on one end, that’s good? Yes.

Excellent!  So we got the right fabric, we got the right color, and we got the right function here! We are in good shape!

 

 

Bottom line: as you tied people down, they started selling themselves! Why? Because what you were selling met their criteria for buying. We were looking for as many different things to tie them to as we could get. Color, size, fabric, function, pattern, manufacturer, price point, all these things.

So I just learned that you want to find as many different reasons people have for buying and tie the purchase to as many of those reasons as possible.

But if you notice a lot of people in their sales copy only harp on one reason to buy. The problem is when people are making a buying decision, if you only harp on one reason (like making money), and that’s not the reason, you’ve got a problem!

Let’s say you were selling a course on how to write and publish a book in seven days.

Some people want to write the book because they think they want to make passive income.

Other people want to write the book because it’s going to give them authority.

Other people want to write a book because it’s going to give them something to sell on the back end of a funnel.

Others want it to set up a book funnel.

Other people want to write a book so that they can have a legacy.

Other people want to use their book as a textbook for a coaching program, or a course they want to teach.

There are a whole bunch of different reasons why somebody wants to buy something.

If you miss that reason, if you never even acknowledge it, you’re going to miss the sale, more often than not! You’re hoping that they will infer why they should buy.

One of the things I have done for years – automatically or just instinctually – is to try to tie different features of my products to different reasons why people buy… and then interpret the meaning of that.

Think of it this way. If you are familiar with the Feature, Benefit, Meaning bullet formula, I want to give you a new way of looking at this tried and true formula.

Take the feature of whatever it does and then tie the payoff/benefit to one of the 10 reasons why people buy. 

1 – Make money

2 – Save money

3 – Save time

4 – Avoid effort

5 – Escape mental or physical pain

6 – Get comfort

7 – Increase cleanliness or health

8 – Gain praise

9 – Feel loved

                       10 – Increased popularity and social status

 

And, for the M in the FBM formula, the meaning we always come back to is some kind of freedom. Freedom to do what we want… or freedom to avoid what we don’t want.

When creating bullets, we now have a GREAT way to come up with bullets, because you’re just not making stuff up. You can ask which benefit or payoff from the list of 10 makes the most sense to tie with this particular feature.

Then, by tying it to that benefit, what is the ultimate meaning of that feature and benefit together?

This is really cool because this ties together a proven list of things we know motivate people to buy plus we can then automatically translate over into meaning.

I hope this new way of looking at tie-downs and bullets and meaning helps you write some better sales copy!

 


New Opportunities Are Emerging For Citizens of The World.

Freedom and democracy may appear to be struggling to stay alive in America, but there may be a knock-out punch ready to be released. The evolution of the blockchain-enabled metaverse is going to enable the 'Citizens of the World' to gain their own Freedom by democratizing power and creating a new world with new rules, new players, and new opportunities. For 99.99% of us, the metaverse will improve our real-world lives through the democratization of power and opportunity.

Along with the major long-term trend of society towards decentralization and smaller-scale organizations, there are new opportunities developing to help 'Preparers' in the cryptocurrency sector. Businesses are beginning to issue their own Crypto Coins that can be traded on Cryptocoin Exchanges.

Markethive.com for example will be releasing its HiveCoin (HIV) in the coming weeks. It has tremendous upside potential that is outlined in a Video by Founder Tom Prendergast, "Entrepreneur Advantage…".

Not only that, if you go to their website and register as a FREE Member, you will be given 500 HiveCoins for "FREE" along with access to several Earning Opportunities and online tools to increase your HiveCoin balance.

Be sure to check it out today – Markethive.com

Markethive

Tim Moseley

Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary: Bitcoin Mining Is Going to Save the World’

Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary: ‘Bitcoin Mining Is Going to Save the World’

The former no-coiner believes U.S. stablecoins will “become the reserve currency of the Earth.”

By Kate Irwin

Canadian entrepreneur and "Shark Tank" star Kevin O’Leary is big on Bitcoin and believes mining the cryptocurrency will “save the world.”

A year ago, O’Leary expressed derision for any crypto mined in China, calling Chinese Bitcoin “blood coin” because of human rights concerns. China has received criticism in recent years for its mistreatment of Turkish Uyghurs living within its borders. 

But Bitcoin mining has since been all but abandoned in the country. Last year, China announced multiple times that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are illegal, causing a mass exodus of crypto mining operations from China to nearby countries with cheap electricity, such as Kazakhstan. Many of Kazakhstan's miners, however, continue to operate using coal power, which is notoriously bad for the environment

O’Leary offered a more positive outlook.

“Bitcoin mining is going to save the world,” he said in a keynote speech at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami Wednesday.

Digiconomist Founder Alex De Vries: Bitcoin's E-Waste Problem

Bitcoin's energy use has long been a contentious issue, but less discussed is the e-waste it creates from discarded mining rigs. Decrypt's Scott Chipolina interviews Alex de Vries of Digiconomist about his latest research on Bitcoin's less-discussed environmental impact.

Go to video page

This is because many Bitcoin miners are looking for sustainable energy sources, and O’Leary argued that the demand for nuclear and hydroelectric power will spur further innovation and sustainable energy adoption. The Wall Street Journal reported last fall, for example, that Bitcoin mining company TeraWulf partnered with a Pennsylvania-based nuclear power plant company to make its mining more sustainable.

And, in Costa Rica, miners are bringing hydroelectric power plants back online to provide a cheaper, environmentally-friendly energy source. The University of Cambridge estimates that roughly 39% of Bitcoin mining uses sustainable energy sources, such as hydroelectric, solar, nuclear, or wind power.

Carbon offset programs are difficult to verify, according to O’Leary, who said that the margins for error for such initiatives made them virtually impossible to audit correctly. So the entrepreneur doesn’t see carbon offset options as a viable long-term solution to Bitcoin-produced carbon emissions. Instead, miners must choose green energy alternatives from the start.

“I’ll install the turbines,” he declared.

Kevin O'Leary at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, FL. Source: Kate Irwin / Decrypt

O’Leary also sees cryptocurrency regulation as an essential part of its evolution. While some might be wary of government-imposed crypto restrictions like a recently-proposed bill that would define what assets must back stablecoins (crypto tokens that are pegged to fiat currencies such as the dollar), O’Leary is all for regulating the crypto market.

“Crypto will be the twelfth sector of the S&P,” O’Leary said today at Bitcoin 2022, referring to the S&P 500 stock market index. “Regulation is coming, and that is a good thing.” 

O’Leary stressed the importance of stablecoins in the U.S., calling them “one of the fastest-growing asset classes outside of Bitcoin.” He warned that if U.S. policymakers do not embrace them, others will, and those currencies would hold immense power across the globe. 

“If it’s backed by the U.S. dollar, it will become the reserve currency of the Earth. That’s what will happen,” O’Leary said of U.S. stablecoins. “Why would we want to give that up to any other country? Why would we ever give that innovation up?”

Tim Moseley

Yellen: ‘We Haven’t Seen Significant Evasion’ of Sanctions Using Crypto

Yellen: 'We Haven't Seen Significant Evasion' of Sanctions Using Crypto

The Treasury secretary said the department thinks using crypto to evade sanctions on a large scale "is something that is not easy to do."

By Jeff Benson

Janet Yellen in 2021.

In brief

  • Many have worried about Russia using crypto to get around U.S. sanctions.
  • Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says there's no evidence this is happening on a large scale.

Since the U.S. introduced fresh sanctions on Russia in response to its February 24 invasion of Ukraine, prominent political figures and armchair observers alike have been asking whether cryptocurrency would allow the Kremlin to evade them.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has remained skeptical of that line of thought, stating in early March, "It's not that that sector is completely one where things can be evaded." Today, she declared during a hearing of the House Committee on Financial Services that while "it is a channel we're worried about, we haven't seen significant evasion through crypto so far." 

After saying that the Treasury Department continues to monitor the situation, Yellen alluded to the fact that large transactions would be easily viewable on public blockchain explorers—and spotted by private analytics firms. 

Said Yellen: "Trying to use crypto at a large scale, simply, we think is something that is not easy to do."

Decrypting the Week 10: Ukraine Welcomes Crypto

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, Ukraine has raised more than $50 million in crypto donations—in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polkadot, and even Dogecoin. Decrypt’s Dan Roberts, Scott Chipolina, and Kate Irwin, joined by special guest Izabella Kaminska of The Blind Spot, discuss the biggest story in the world right now.

Go to video page

In late February, the U.S. and allies froze $400 billion in foreign assets owned by the Russian central bank, contributing to a currency crisis as the ruble lost much of its value relative to other currencies. Meanwhile, European leaders helped push Russian banks out of the SWIFT network, which financial institutions use to coordinate transactions. 

In early March, the Biden administration halted imports of oil and gas from Russia. The U.S. has also restricted exports of technology hardware and software, making it more difficult for Russia's military to replace parts for the war effort. 

But some legislators, most prominently Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), are worried that cryptocurrency provides an end run around such sanctions. In a March letter to Yellen, Warren joined Senators Mark Warner (D-VA), Jack Reed (D-RI), and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) in claiming that crypto assets "allow entities to bypass the traditional financial system."

They have a point. Cryptocurrency ecosystems, especially within decentralized finance, allow people to make transactions without utilizing traditional financial intermediaries. You can swap tokens, lend them out, and earn interest without ever talking to a bank or broker.

But dealing in billions of dollars is a bit different; there's not enough liquidity to quietly tiptoe around sanctions. Moreover, exchanges play a major role serving as on-ramps and off-ramps to crypto. Said Yellen today: "Exchanges, those who use crypto to get in and out of it, buy things in hard currencies, and exchanges are subject to [anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism] regulations. So they're part of the financial system that is subject to those regulations."

However, Warren last month told MSNBC that some crypto exchanges weren't doing their part. Referring to know-your-customer regulations, she said, "We have a lot of evidence that not all the crypto platforms are actually adhering to those rules, and collecting the information and then reporting the information and then shutting down where we have sanctions."

If they are, the Treasury Department isn't seeing evidence of it.

Tim Moseley

Gold choppy but lower as FOMC minutes show no hawkish surprises

Gold choppy but lower as FOMC minutes show no hawkish surprises

Gold prices initially erased mild losses and traded firmer in the wake of the just-released FOMC minutes. However, prices have since sold off moderately. Many deemed the FOMC minutes as containing no hawkish surprises, which allowed the precious metals markets to briefly drift higher. Rising bond yields this week are a bearish element for the metals markets. June gold futures were last down $5.00 at $1,922.60 and May Comex silver was last down $0.104 at $24.43 an ounce.

The FOMC minutes showed members see a total monthly drawdown of $95 billion of U.S. securities (quantitative tightening). Many members favor a 50 basis point interest rate hike at the next FOMC meeting and possibly the same in the following few meetings thereafter. The members also believe the Russia-Ukraine war has caused inflationary pressures to significantly heat up.

On the front burner of the marketplace is rising inflation. On Tuesday, usually dovish Fed governor Lael Brainard said the Russia-Ukraine war has further stoked inflation and that inflation must be tamped down aggressively. She also suggested the Fed will begin selling off its big balance sheet of bonds (quantitative tightening). U.S. Treasury yields spiked up on her remarks. The benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury note presently yields 2.611%. The 2-year/10-year Treasury note spread quickly snapped out of its inversion after Brainard’s hawkish tone on U.S. monetary policy.

Gold prices continue to consolidate above $1,900 as bond yields hit three-year high

Global stocks markets were mixed to weaker overnight. The U.S. stock indexes are lower today. The Russia-Ukraine war is still on the front burner of the marketplace as more economic sanctions are levied against Russia for its war atrocities against Ukrainian citizens. That is keeping energy prices elevated as European countries consider banning Russian energy imports.

Nymex crude oil prices are sharply lower and trading around $96.75 a barrel. Meantime, the U.S. dollar index is modestly higher today.

Technically, April gold futures bulls have the overall near-term technical advantage amid recent sideways and choppy trading. Bulls' next upside price objective is to produce a close above solid resistance at $1,967.20. Bears' next near-term downside price objective is pushing futures prices below solid technical support at the March low of $1,888.30. First resistance is seen at today’s high of $1,937.60 and then at $1,950.00. First support is seen at today’s low of $1,916.20 and then at $1,900.00. Wyckoff's Market Rating: 6.0

May silver futures bulls have the slight overall near-term technical advantage. However, prices are in a four-week-old downtrend on the daily bar chart. Silver bulls' next upside price objective is closing prices above solid technical resistance at $26.16 an ounce. The next downside price objective for the bears is closing prices below solid support at $23.50. First resistance is seen at today’s high of $24.68 and then at $25.00. Next support is seen at today’s low of $24.20 and then at the March low of $24.045. Wyckoff's Market Rating: 5.5.

May N.Y. copper closed down 705 points at 472.45 cents today. Prices closed nearer the session low today. The copper bulls have the overall near-term technical advantage. Copper bulls' next upside price objective is pushing and closing prices above solid technical resistance at 500.00 cents. The next downside price objective for the bears is closing prices below solid technical support at the March low of 446.85 cents. First resistance is seen at today’s high of 478.85 cents and then at this week’s high of 486.00 cents. First support is seen at 466.90 cents and then at last week’s low of 464.20 cents. Wyckoff's Market Rating: 6.0.

By Jim Wyckoff

For Kitco News

Time to buy Gold and Silver on the dips

 

Tim Moseley

Confessions of an Information Hoarder

Confessions of an Information Hoarder

by Charlie Warzel, contributor, The Atlantic

 

What happens to our brains when we have an infinite memory?

There was a point during the most isolating parts of the pandemic, usually when I was bored in the evening, where I’d open my phone’s camera roll and scroll back through my pre-pandemic life. I’m not sure if this was a healthy lockdown coping strategy or not, but I’d thumb through photos of mundane life moments that, in that moment, felt exotic. Look at me. In a restaurant! At a concert with friends! Participating in society showing my full face!

Content of the photos aside, there was also something genuinely pleasing about the experience of clicking the Photos app and seeing this mosaic of my life (when I sort by “All Photos,’ my iPhone shows 45 frames at a time). Occasionally I would page through the 26,224 photos in my library (which my phone refers to, quite generously, as “Recents”) to find something from a few years back, and the act of rapid scrolling would blur and shift the mosaic. I noticed while swiping that, without seeing individual photos, this specific document of my life had different eras with distinct color palettes. The palette was darker, for instance, when I lived in New York City, probably because more of my photos were taken inside my dimly lit railroad apartment. There’s a period around late 2015 where the mosaic turns reddish-brown, a marker of when my dog, Peggy came into my life. I moved to Montana in 2017, and the scrolling blur is blue and green, the result of many shoddy attempts to capture a new home that featured mountains and a large sky.

Scrolling through all our images is a strange, introspective, even poignant experience, enough so that people have written songs about it. “Chronological order and nothing but torture” is how the singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves put it on her recent album. And, yes, these archives can be a reminder of lost love or loved ones or simply the relentless passage of time. It’s also a marvelous diary and documentary tool. On one thumbing excursion, I got preoccupied with the hypothetical notion of a historian trying to write somebody’s life story only by looking through their camera roll. The cloud as a biographer.

Archiving our lives is not new, but the volume we can amass and the ease with which we can do it is new. As writer Drew Austin notes in a wonderful recent piece for Wired, “by fostering the sense that our wells of personal information were bottomless, Google turned us all into information hoarders.”

Austin is referring to the fact that many of Google’s services—most notably Gmail, which requires users to create a Google account—were predicated on the idea of vast free storage for your personal data, and the ability to search it effortlessly. When it launched in 2004, Gmail gave us powerful tools that helped solve a lot of problems with email at that time—spam, the need to delete messages for space, difficulty finding old correspondence—and those tools also changed the way we thought about and used email.

Not, though, always for the better. Here’s Gmail’s creator describing the state of email on the occasion of his product’s 10-year anniversary:

The problem with email now is that the social conventions have gotten very bad. There’s a 24/7 culture, where people expect a response. It doesn’t matter that it’s Saturday at 2 a.m.—people think you’re responding to email. People are no longer going on vacation. People have become slaves to email. It’s not a technical problem. It can’t be solved with a computer algorithm. It’s more of a social problem.

Gmail’s creator is right that this is a social problem, but I don’t fully absolve him of his responsibility, either. It is a problem that is exacerbated by the powerful tools we use. Infinite storage and effortless search changes our relationship to our information. As Austin notes, it “enables us to be casual, even messy, with our data … Instead of organizing our data using a legible system or knowing where things are, it can all go into one seemingly jumbled pile.” It also leads to hoarding. “Anxious that we might delete something we will end up needing later, we err on the side of caution by saving it all,” Austin writes. This is how you get 26,000 “recent” photos or an inbox from hell. It’s also how you get strange behavior like somebody replying to an email out of the blue three months later. Our shitty etiquette isn’t only due to that availability of storage and search capacity, but I’d bet that email wouldn’t be the scourge it is today without those powerful functions.

Austin argues that at the societal level, ample personal data storage poses a serious problem because there’s an incentive to privatize our cluttered, poorly organized information into individual silos instead of building public infrastructures for it. We think of the internet as having an overabundance of publicly accessible information. But perhaps it’s also causing us to file away our private selves. We have more public information than ever, but what if there is also less transmission of more personal information between people—especially between generations. What is lost if our digital heirlooms become inaccessible to close relatives? What is lost if estates do not donate prominent people's cloud data to university archives?

 

 

I myself am an information hoarder. I recently had to upgrade my Google storage to 100 gigabytes, and I’m already inching closer to purchasing a new tier. My inbox is a disaster: nearly 200,000 emails, read and unread, dating back to my college years. The last label I created? “Summer internship applications.”

My photos are a hodgepodge of my personal life mixed in with 2,734 screenshots—mostly of tweets or paragraphs of articles that my past self apparently felt might be worth returning to. Across my various cloud-based notes apps, I store endless tossed-off lists and musings, copy-paste fragments, and links. It’s all an attempt at off-loading the deluge of information I’m confronted with each day into a kind of external memory. In theory, this is exciting and useful. In practice, I am not confident it makes me any smarter or more productive, or even better informed. Occasionally, I find myself barely pausing to think about something important I’ve read, and instead, filing it away to think about it later. One effect of my external memory is that it pushes me to consume faster and in higher quantities.

I know I’m not alone. In a paper published in 2019 in the journal World Psychiatry, titled “The ‘Online Brain’: How the Internet May be Changing Our Cognition,” the researchers suggest that “the Internet is becoming a ‘supernormal stimulus’ for transactive memory—making all other options for cognitive offloading (including books, friends, and community) become redundant, as they are outcompeted by the novel capabilities for external information storage and retrieval made possible by the Internet.”

That sure sounds bad. But in reality, it’s probably good and bad. The paper suggests that “reliance on online searching may impede memory retrieval by reducing the functional connectivity and synchronization of associated brain regions.” But it also notes that this process might also free up cognitive space in other parts of our brain. At one point, the paper’s authors posit that “increasing reliance on the Internet for information may cause individuals to ‘blur the lines’ between their own capabilities and their devices.” This is likely what I’m doing by saving information for later and mistaking that filing away for a kind of uploading into my own memory.

Ultimately, the paper notes that it is too early to really understand the long-term effects of all this on our brains. To me, what really matters is that it is likely changing us in ways we’re not fully aware of. In an interview last year, the technology writer and theorist L. M. Sacasas gave a lovely description of how he conceptualizes the way technology acts on us:

I sometimes think of the body and the world in our minds kind of creating a circuit. And so then, we introduce a tool into that circuit, and it’s going to shape how we perceive the world, and it’s going to shape how we interpret the world. And so the body is at the nexus of our experience of reality, and technology enters into that loop of perception in ways that can be benign, in ways that can be beneficial, in ways that can be detrimental. But it certainly changes it.

It often feels like new technology breaks that circuit, but Sacasas might be right that it is merely introduced into the loop. Having instantaneous access to tens of thousands of moments in my life doesn’t destroy my sense of self, but it alters how I formulate the narrative of my last decade. For example, there’s a weird patch from January to May 2015 where my photos never synced up to the cloud. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that this period now seems less relevant in my actual memory. Similarly, I was foolish and didn’t upload my high-school, college, and pre-2013 photos, most of them digital, to the cloud. Thanks to a damaged hard drive and a lost computer, most of these photos are gone, creating a massive hole in my life. What does it mean that my digital likeness, save for some Facebook photos, begins so late? Are the memories from that era, which now exist only in my mind, more precious and more indelible because I rely on my brain to access them? Or are they merely less reliable and more likely to degrade over time?

In that same interview, Sacasas discusses his relationship to documenting the lives of his two young children with his phone:

They’re growing up so fast, and you want to document where they’ve been along the way. Paradoxically, in my experience anyway, I think I’ve almost found that having this very pervasive record, visual record of their growth, has made that actually a more pronounced experience, a greater sense of things slipping by, slipping away.

Scrolling through my camera roll during the pandemic, I also felt that greater sense of time—and of myself—slipping by. There is a melancholy to that, but it is not merely a sad feeling. Because that feeling is also, at its core, a sense of awareness. I am constantly taking stock of myself and my life (a good thing!) while also taking myself out of moments in order to document it (probably not the best thing!).

For whatever reason, I take fewer photos now than I did pre-pandemic, and the ones I do take are somewhat inscrutable. I don’t even think to do it when I’m socializing. What I do seem to take are snapshots of where I am in quiet moments, even if the locations aren’t photogenic. Most aren’t really meant to be shared. For me, iPhone photos have become more about the action of taking them than what I do with them. They’re meant, instead, to add texture to that near-infinite scroll of the camera roll. They’re meant, probably, as proof that I’m alive and in the world. They’re meant for the mosaic. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s definitely a product of being able to take and save as many as I could ever want to.

 


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Tim Moseley

New Bill Takes Aim at El Salvador’s ‘Careless Gamble’ on Bitcoin

New Bill Takes Aim at El Salvador’s 'Careless Gamble' on Bitcoin

U.S. lawmakers are pressing on with legislation aimed at protecting U.S. financial interests from El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law.

By Mat Di Salvo

El Salvador. 

In brief

  • El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender last year.
  • The U.S. government is worried—and is drafting legislation that aims to protect its financial system.

The U.S. is pressing on with legislation aimed at protecting its financial system from El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law. On Monday, lawmakers introduced a new bill asking the State Department to mitigate the risks of El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin

This new bill, the Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador Act, will accompany the Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador (ACES) Act, which was introduced in the U.S. Senate in February and passed committee last month.  

Yesterday’s bill was introduced by Congresswoman Norma J. Torres (D-CA-35) and Congressman Rick Crawford (R-AR-01). Congresswoman Torres said in a statement that the bill was necessary to “protect” the U.S. financial system from El Salvador’s “careless gamble.” 

“Global financial institutions have studied and detailed the numerous risks of El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin, and the international community acknowledges the potential danger,” she said. 

“El Salvador is an independent democracy and we respect its right to self-govern, but the United States must have a plan in place to protect our financial systems from the risks of this decision, which appears to be a careless gamble rather than a thoughtful embrace of innovation.”

The new legislation specifically asks the State Department to produce an analysis of El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender and “the risks for cybersecurity, economic stability, and democratic governance” in the country. February’s bill is broader and will also ask the State Department to look at El Salvador’s regulatory framework and the impact the Bitcoin Law has on businesses and citizens. 

El Salvador last year made Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, legal tender in the country. Businesses have to accept the digital asset if they have the technological means. 

The Bitcoin Law was the idea of the country’s president, Nayib Bukele. The baseball cap-wearing millennial leader is hoping to attract investors and crypto-trading digital nomads to the tiny country—which has long been one of the most violent nations in the Americas—with the law.  

Bukele even announced plans for a "Bitcoin city" in El Salvador: a geothermal energy-powered tax-free haven. “Invest here and make all the money you want,” he said during the announcement in November. 

But not everyone is happy with his plans. U.S. lawmakers want to keep an eye on the Central American country. Senators introduced February’s bill because they think the Bitcoin Law has the “potential to weaken U.S. sanctions policy, empowering malign actors like China and organized criminal organizations,” congressman Jim Risch (R-Idaho) said in a statement. 

The IMF and World Bank have both criticized—and even asked the country to drop—the law.

Tim Moseley

The Artist that came out of the Winter