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Example of Buffet's "Be prepared to lose half your portfolio." A portfolio of 1Million zimbabwe dollars can, over a year, fall to 500k and take another year to recover. Very few people can actually hold a lost of 500k despite ALL the lessons of history

One common sentiment amongst crypto traders is "I'm already numb to markets due to the volatility. HODL all the way." which is a kind of masochistic humble-brag that this level of faith has been achieved. Though in reality it is like blindfolding yourself.

Faith requires courage and courage requires your eyes to be open. Faith without courage is simple dogma. While it WORKS because it reduces cognitive load, all hierarchies of value eventually erode over time except the one that says "keep your eyes OPEN"

When most seek secrets they are actually seeking hacks. Secrets and Hacks are opposite when you think about their time horizons. Secrets are buried in history and about long time horizons. Hacks are implementations of the future and about short time horizons.

A hack allows you to do what takes 10 years in 1 year of 10 hours in 1 hour. A secret allows you to do in 10 years what no one thought possible.

A Startup is quite interesting in that is both a secret and a hack. A startup is usually possible only because it uses new technology and has less capital and human capital needs for the same effect. It uses "Hacks".

Yet they also have longer time horizons, often taking years for their value to manifest. Because their dips of 50% and more happen invisibly AND you are locked in due to lack of liquidity, you are basically forced into Faith (e.g. a cult)

What many people *actually* want to do with a tech startup is be acquired. This is actually a hack on the internal process of a larger company like Google or Apple.