Calibrating my Career : Obtain an Intuition for Global Markets (epoch 5)

If one needs an arbitrary target, it might as well be funny.

I've been smacking around all my ongoing projects, trying to figure out what to focus on. After all, I've fallen back to the heuristic of doing the hardest thing first. Generally I find people predictable, and corporate work of any kind is therefore intellectually easier (albeit more tedious) than R&D of any kind. My recent half-decade project on training my intuition in small business proceedings and the culture of ordinary workers has been valuable (epoch 4). It was a good follow-up to the time before that spent studying computer programming, and commerce in general (epoch 3). It is probably time for me to get back to the scalable opportunities. So perhaps the financial markets stuff is going to take point for now.

Soros broke the bank at 62 ... I guess, starting from near zero, I have 23 years to catch up.

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Accessory notes :

- epoch 1 : prep for college, rudiments of math and science, organisational development, public presentation; seems like i'd done my liberal arts orientation by the end of grade-school

- epoch 2 : college, independent study, survey of history of ideas, quantification framework for consciousness; i always felt like it was like a DIY doctorate, but oh well

- epoch 3 : commercial and political observation of Malaysia, introduction to finance, deepish dive into programming computers

- epoch 4 : run a small business, full-stack R&D startup situation

- epoch 5 : ....

Cryptocurrencies should be Regulated like FX

... not like securities (except in special cases), and definitely not like commodities.

The contemporary debate is about which US regulator gets to go after crypto. Here are some (hopefully) clarifying arguments.

1. All of securities, national currencies, commodities, and crypto currencies are generally regarded as assets.

2. The valuation of an asset, depends on the asset's relationship with its underliers.

2.1. SECURITIES : are most tightly coupled to their underliers, via legal regulators, generally these are national regulators. Examples : stocks, bonds. They are semantic.

2.2. COMMODITIES : are their own underliers (or may be regarded as non-semantic by definition). Examples : gold, timber.

In between these extremes, we have ...

2.3. NATIONAL CURRENCIES : are firstly, semantic, but secondly, they are less loosely coupled to their underliers (governments), than SECURITIES as exampled above. One might regard them as a variety of securities which have a logically higher-order than the securities exampled above, since the ones above are defined in terms of these!

Where lie on this ... "spectrum" ... cryptos?

2.4. CRYPTO CURRENCIES : I believe, share the most similar political relationship to NATIONAL CURRENCIES. Cryptographic currency tokens are not inherently valuable like COMMODITIES, however their value lies in being controlled by some sort of GOVERNMENT SYSTEM. It just so happens that these governments are not national governments, but abstract protocols and decentralised communities, or specific companies ... each of which function like LITTLE CENTRAL BANKS. 

3. Therefore the question of whether crypto should be regulated as a security or as a commodity, is mainly bunk. Crypto should be regulated like FX.

If nationX chooses to raise funds by selling Xdollars for USD, we do not say, "nationX is selling securities", rather we say, "nationX is selling fiat". Cryptos are fiat - they have always been fiat. This fact has been regularly obscured by the notion that "crypto is a substitute for fiat", which is false ... rather, it is the case that "crypto currency issuer governments, are substitutes for national currency issuer governments".

Update :

4. Since in the US, the CFTC (and voluntarily, the NFA) regulates FX derivatives, there might be some confusion thereafter about whether the same body regulates assets which are uncontroversially commodities, and crypto assets whose classification remains controversial. Also OFAC.

5. The special cases in which crypto assets should be regulated as securities, is when such assets are tied to contracts (in general, and not to confused with "smart contracts") beyond the rudimentary function as exchangeable, governed, stores of value.

Rukunegara x Theism

In Malaysia ...

1. by royal decree, citizens are committed to swear by principles

2. among these principles, is "belief in god"

3. whereby, "god" is not defined, so at this stage of presentation you could still "believe in god, where god is defined as a social construct"

4. subvening legislation ( the Constitution ) does specify that Islam is the religion of the federation

5. note that nowhere is it implied that the Federation and the Citizen are bound together by clauses which individually subject each one but not the other

6. Further study is required

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I've been studying the illegality of atheistic evangelism in Malaysia ... this notion seems to be rooted in formal discussions surrounding the writing of the Rukunegara ( see the arkib ) where freedom of religion is allowed, but not freedom to encourage disbelief in god ( loosely defined). Fascinating subject, impacting so many people. Historically we've also seen Malaysian atheism groups hauled up by the PDRM for investigation, and at the current time, I see their Facebook group is not findable from the public view.

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One of these days, I am going to write the Rukuneraka.