VoxVenti

Det är fredag och jag läser i en svensk finanstidning, “Efterlyser statliga kreditgarantier för att backa tillväxtbolag” allt skrivet av en bank. Småler och tittar på klockan, nej det är inte första April. De måste ha snedtänkt bland dimmorna, eller?

De senaste 10 åren har varit häpnadsväckande, extremt låga räntor. Vilket lett till utmaningar för de som letar avkastning, Fonder, Pensionsbolag, Riskkapitalister etc. Detta har bäddat för en marknad där det varit lätt för innovativa idéer att hitta fondering, kanske för lätt?
Nu är klimatet kärvare. Det krävs mer solida idéer och upplägg för att hitta investeringar. Framför allt gäller att övertyga om att det går att tjäna pengar. Bara tillväxt och negativa kassaflöden gör sig knappast besvär i dagens klimat.

Det är hedersvärd att en bank vill gå in och hjälpa bolag med investeringar. Men uppenbarligen ser de också utmaningar med många investeringar, för riskfyllda för lite substans etc.
Att då be “mamma om hjälp” känns som ett rop som skallat de senaste 2-3 åren. Vi vill gärna låna ut pengar till en investeringarna och göra en bra affär men skulle saker gå över styr vill vi inte plocka upp förlusten. Kan inte staten dvs. skattebetalarna göra det? Se det som en samhällsekonomiskt investering.

Blir förbluffad att någon kan komma upp med något så naivt. Det är inte en samhällsekonomisk investering ! Vad är return på den investeringen? Bara risk och ingen return. Det finns redan idag ett antal statliga initiativ för att främja tillväxten, där staten åtminstone har kontroll över vilka investeringar som görs. ALMI, Exportkrediter, Swedisk Venture Initiative, Saminvest, Mittkapital etc.

Att släppa en bank lös med statliga kreditgarantier idag för att finansiera startups och tillväxtbolag är så nära försummelse det går att komma. Det är som att släppa loss en räv en hönsgård.
Att säga men det här blir mer expansivt och effektivt. Tvivlar inte en sekund på det när mycket av risken dumpas på skattebetalarna.

Jag kan bara konstatera att räckmackan är slut för de företag och personer som jobbar med snabbväxande bolag och startups. Det har varit 10 bra år. Klimatet har blivit frostigare och marknaden mindre. Sorry om du sitter i det segmentet.

Också förvånad över det finns personer som tycker förslaget med de statliga kreditgarantierna till en bank är ett strålande förslag.

Nu är jag inte så orolig att detta kommer att hända LOL. Mer orolig för den naivitet som finns inom delar av bankväsendet

Bra idéer och projekt finner alltid en väg framåt.

The first 10-12 years of your life is an intensive learning period of cause-and-affect. You learn that you can’t fly, fire will burn you, ice is slippery, etc. After a while the wisdom becomes conditioned reflexes. Times goes by so fast, you glad that you remember to breathe and things just happens.

All the time you add expiration to your wisdom. You learn that less intelligent decisions and antecedent events is likely to come with consequences. Hard work is mostly required for reaching goals. Most things just happens and goes without saying. Very rarely we reflects over why things happens.

A number of years ago I was involved in complex settlement that spanned over a some time.
I started to wonder, how did I end up here? What is happening and why? How will this work out?
Is this just fate?

Around was one successful sharp person, saying that there were thing beyond our control that we could not do anything about, buy-the-ticket-take-the-ride. And others things that we could affect. He had sort black/white view on things, a fairly fatalistic view. Perhaps he used his view on this to avoid being confronted with certain things. Who knows? ;-)

When everything was settled and some time had passed. The scenario played out was quite logical. It was not fate, there was some alternatives but it was not a question of all of them being equally bad/good. One was chosen, based on wisdom and data known for the time being.

After that I started to reflect more over why things happens and cause-and-affect.
My firm belief is things just do not happen without a cause. The questions is to what degree are things bound to happen?
I came across causal determinism that made a lot of sense for me. But as for a few I realized that the strict definition is a bit tricky when it comes to prove the philosophy, especially the definition.

Every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together 
with the laws of nature. 

• Every Event, what is “every event” in the universe/world. It easily and very soon becomes extremely complex. Is this even a sensible statement?
• Antecedent events, what antecedent events? All, a few and if so where is the boundary?

To prove determinism strict and mathematically easily falls apart. But does it dismiss the philosophy? I do not think so. I think it should be seen for what it is.

My Simplistic View

Thing does not happen without a cause. However it is not feasible/possible to include all parameters in the equation to predict the future events.

Some events can be predicted with extreme accuracy. When dropping a coin from a plan it will most likely fall to earth. However even that can not be fully predictable.

- A bird can snap up the coin, a thunder flash can hit the coin and vaporize it, etc.
- A intergalactic highway may be deploy and earth is blown to peaces by some Vogon development team.

By considering events and and nature laws being of significant, the outcome of an event can be fairly well understood. When dropping the coin from the plane it does not come as an surprise when the coin falls to the ground. But if it does not fall to earth it becomes a surprise for sure :-)

When dropping the coin and with the knowledge we had and considered we was of the opinion that the coin would fall to earth, but it did not so why?

Was it the fate? Was it Gods will? Was it fugazi/magic?
Neither, it was data not known or not considered. As said the whole universe, all aspects of nature laws (not even understood today) and antecedent events can not be considered.

For me there is no magic or randomness, things happens due to a cause. It is simply not possible to consider all data, it is infinite.

Even rolling a dice is predicable. It fairly simple to construct a mechanical device that roll a dice in a certain way, and almost guarantee the outcome. Of cause again we have the bird or the intergalactic highway interference.

But even these event could in theory be predicted. Given we know that there where a bird around and it saw something across the room that causes his mind to fly across the dice table just as the dice was to be rolled. etc, etc, etc.

Two of my favorite film clips related to this is Randy “Bird” Johnson baseball clip and the film Devs.

For me, free will is an illusion. There are an number of alternatives arising as a result of different causes and antecedent events (you might not even like any of them, LOL). You chose one based upon your previous experience, genes and an infinite number of other parameters that can not be included in the equation.

When large companies goes from great to bad. When you are not coming out well in an re-organisation, you win a race etc.

It’s not good or bad karma, it is not randomness, it is not magic.

Things happens due to causes that you may can/will affect.

Yes, the phenomenon cryptocurrency is truly amazing and the people advocating and believing in it is even more amazing.
As you can guess I’m not totally saved and blest yet. Been around for a long time and seen many revolutionary ideas
aiming for creating great paradigm shifts. Few has truly change a lot, most have fallen into the endless mainstream of evolution and being just another small step for mankind.

As a causal determinist I trying to have a sober view on the gold at the end of the rainbow. So what is a sober and fatalistic view on cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrency itself, hereby called CC is an impressive idea and realization of distributed ledger for digital currency transactions. I really like the technology.

I somewhat agree with some of the benefits highlighted and associated with CC, maybe not what they in reality implicates.

Privacy, Access and Control

CC is a virtual asset being everywhere i.e. on the public distributed ledger, but is encrypted an controlled with the one that has the ability to decrypt the asset.
So given that you have have some CC and you have them kept in you digital wallet and it is encrypted with a private key controlled by you. No one can take the CC away unless they have the encrypted (wallet) data and the private key used for encrypt / decrypt the data with. Spendable CC d
data is in one place, controlled by the one that has the private key.

You can transfer the CC to anyone directly, P2P without any involvement from any middleman such bank or any type of financial institution. The CC network community will see all transaction and confirm them.

CC are kept in wallets. Wallets are easily created by anyone and are just a sources or destination when transferring CC. When creating a wallet it becomes anonymous. It’s just an address, no information about who is behind it or where it is created etc.

So assets are truly in control of the owner and the owner is anonymous.

There a many articles about CC and its envelopment. Google is your friend, you will find a lot about it here

Great, but What Problems are Solved?

For something to be successfully or have a value there must be a need (i.e. simple demand / supply logic).
So bluntly what have the need been so far?

It has been hard to deny that CC has used as payment in shady / illegal business transactions. Quite logical given the nature of CC anonymity and traceability.
Also a convenient tool in money laundry processes. CC acceptance is far more common among merchants dealing with luxury goods to accept CC payments than ordinary retail merchants.

Maybe the sector where CC has gain most traction is trading. The value increase over time has been staggering, just looking at the larges CC Bitcoin (40% market share) between 2010-2022 is easy to see that it has been more opportunistic than the traditional financial markets.

CC has been a notorious volatile segment(s). Volatility is creating business opportunity especially with a trend of positive value increase. Quite a few have been attracted by the new opportunistic investment segment. It estimated to be around 50 million people trading CC. It is estimated that a little bit over 300 million people owns CC. There are estimated to be around 500 crypto exhanges. The total market value is estimated to be around 25 billion USD (22/12 -2022) which is just a fraction of the stock market value 1372 billion USD for the 67 largest countries.

It is estimated that CC to a value of 1 million USD are spent on goods and services is USA per day. In general 38356 million USD spent on goods and services in USA per day.
That implicates that CC has a 0.0026 % “market share”.

What are Some of the Challenges

It is not so that that today’s payment systems are dysfunctional. Already today we almost do all payments electronically with debit or credit cards, Apple / Google payments or whatever. Electronic 2P2 payment system are developing fast, there are many successfully initiative Swish,Google payments, Apple Cash, EMPS, and many more. Today electronic payments are completed and confirmed in seconds. Just think about your latest checkout at the grossery shop.

The average transaction cost for a Bitcon is around 1.5-2.0$, Ethereum 0.5-1$. The transaction cost for electronic debit card is around one dollar.

You will always have to pay for any payment service I can not see that CC have any substantial advantage over today’s electronic payment solutions when it comes to latency, capacity or costs. Rather CC has historically been struggling with capacity issues resulting in long transaction latency. Of cause these issues are being worked on and will be resolved.

Even if the CC technology is considered to be most secure. It is not so that ordinary payments are unsafe, transactions are encrypted and many time 2FA is required. Bank and credit constitutions are fairy generous when it comes to covering frauds and illegal transaction. Would not say that this is something that is being at an unacceptable level, far from.

On the other hand the nature of the CC introduces some challenges. CC trading being a big part of the CC echo system require users to transfer CC assets and funds to wallets / accounts controlled by the exchange due to trust. You can not sell anything you do not have, so show it. And you can not buy anything unless you show the money i.e. delivery-vs-payment .

CC exchanges are not regulated and have not worked hard to become ones. They are often located in places with flexible legislation, generous taxes, none or minimal governance. The obvious reason is to attract all kind of liquidity without any involvement of authority governance.

Transparency around exchanges ownership, financials, routines, development process are diffuse. And not surprisingly there has been a number of incidents where assets has vanished from exchanges when the assets has been transferred from the users to the exchanges for trading. Sometimes pure fraud where the owners has just taken the money are dispersed. Or where exchanges has been compromised through hacking. It is estimated that 2.72 billion USD has been stolen from crypto exchanges since 2012. You can read about śome of the cases here The latest and flabbergasted case is FTX

All scams and stolen CC has raised the question; is CC to be trusted? Do CC have a trust problem? Do you trust Faculty-Brats around 30, low paid developer far far away from the business and trenches. Company / exchange business location with flexible legislation, generous taxes, none or minimal governance?

One of the beauty and curse is the intrinsic value of CC. It is not tangible truly virtual. Still priced are determined by simple demand / supply logic. A not too unusual view is that the CC value is driven by peoples desire to a quick easy profit. Bluntly translate to peoples dreams and hope to become rich, just like for the Klodike gold rush. or catching the Gold Fever i.e .the extreme excitement and greed caused by a gold rush.

A Sober Future View

CC will not die. There will always be a need for people to keep money outside the regulated authority system and that could be substantial values. CC is convenient, easy to move, easy to transfer. Better than gold.

It will not be widely accepted as mean of payments in the retail echo system. Due to

• Volatility the value can fluctuate significantly, which can make them unpredictable and risky to use.
• Limited acceptance, it does not solve any fundamental in today’s electronic payment echo system.
• Not regulated and therefore having a trust issue.

Today there is about 12000 CC in the world and there is about 1000 new every month. Inflation protected? NO!
Most CC will and are imploding. A very few large will continue to exist.

Volatility is going to be relative high going forward. There is a incitement to have high volatility it attracts opportunistic users. This will maintained by interest have large stakes in CC.

The value grows will generally slow down and there will always be a need for having unofficial assets.

Number off people owning CC will not increase dramatically.

There is a fair chance that we will see CBDC, Central Bank Digital Currency not likely to be anonymous. Every governments wet dream is to be able to trace all money transaction in real time. Such CC is likely to get an other level of impact. The funny thing is that the inventors of CCs most likely did not have that in their plan.

Cash payment / physically payments will always be around has been for almost 3000 years and will continue to exist. Internet and electronic payment infrastructure may and will have shorter and longer disturbances for various reason. Mishaps, sabotage, war etc. Everyone have an interest in having some sort of physical mean of payment.

The whole concept around WEB3 is a dark horse. The fundamental idea of users being in control of their data is not an absurd idea. Everything can not be replicated and transferred without control. Some mechanisms will evolve to address these issues. The same sort of underlying technology i.e. blockchain
is likely to be used. But exactly how and when is ruled by time will tell

I’m generation boomer and for years I have been told that my cholesterol and blood sugar levels has been a bit high. I did not experienced any problems and exercised frequently so, no problem not an issue. A few years ago I got cardiac arrest when being on long haul bike ride. A scary moment but it ended well. I got an acute stent operation, medication and insight diet coaching. Life went on and cholesterol and blood sugar levels became within the acceptable boundaries.

20 month ago a was a longer walk in the neighborhood, started to feel a bit tired and just a couple of hundred meters from home I tripped when going down for a short stair. I sprain the left foot quite badly but made it home. Felt that I need to rest so I laid down on the bed for a couple of hours and started to fell a pain in my left thigh.
The pain did not go away and I discovered that I could not control my thigh muscles in the left leg. If trying to lean on the left leg when being slightly bent the leg collapse, resulting in several falls. When laying on the floor I could not lift the left leg of the floor for more that a couple seconds. I also had significant numbness in my left thigh.

I contacted the my house doctor and got in contact with few institutions looking at various possible reasons, stroke, back issue, nerve issue, etc.
Yes, it could be established that nerve signals to the left leg was not going through as they should.

After some weeks I got in contact with an engagerad nerve clinic. They came up with the qualified guess; you have diabetes and you is like to experienced a mononeuropath complication or more precise, diabetes amyotrophy.

Glad that someone could put a finger on the problem. Started to google on the topic.

One of the first articles on the topic that I found was a short crispy description on WebMD written by Hope Cristol.

Spot On.

• Diabetes type 2 (or type 1)
• Men +50 years are more like to get it.
• Intense pain in your hip and thigh or buttock.
• Asymmetrical neuropathy, with acute to subacute onset.
• Diagnosis for this condition is usually done through a process of elimination.

Outlook

Felt a bit relieved to know what it was, but did not reflect too much over the implications.

• The condition frequently will improve with time and the body will heal itself.
• It may take a year to start getting better, and 2 years until you recover. But…it can linger for up to 3 years.
• Pain recovered first, typically within 1 year, followed by improved strength and, to a lesser extent, recovery of the knee reflex.

Unluck?

• Diabetic amyotrophy affects just 1% of adults with diabetes. So given the statistics odds was in my favor, so I consider myself to be unlucky. Luck is when you beat the odds.
• Deaths per 100,000 population: 31.0 caused by diabetes.
• Life calculator says that I have 75 % chance to live beyond 78. Lifetime expectancy 85. I can live with these odds.

Takeaway

• - The first weeks was tumbling. Toke a while for the brain to learn that leaning on the left leg going downwards was a no-no, it resulted in many falls.
• - In the beginning the left leg was strong and I could walk on flat ground fairly ok, but quite quickly that also became a bit of struggle.
• - Over the next 10 month things became worse. The leg got weaker, the muscle control did not improve. Had a very hard time doing recommended physo exercises.
• - The pain in the thigh and around the knee was tangible! It was a sort of numb feeling in the thigh. For the first 5 month it affected the sleep, and also the mood, considerably . I got gabapentin to
  dull the pain. Most of the time the feeling was that it did not helped very much.
• - After 12 month I stopped taking gabapentin and started to to pick up physo exercises, occasionally. But if doing anything other than very light training, the pain was there the day after. At about this time I was also able to get back on my bike (indoors) could just sit and not riding standing.
• - Now after 20 month I do not have any pain. I still have a numb feeling in the left thigh, but it is gradual getting better. The muscle control is much better but still it is not fully recovered. I can ride my bike indoors and outdoors fairly unhindered, even if I have lost a lot of my previous strength.

Diabetic Amyotrophy should not be taken lightly. For me it has been a challenging time for sure. Dealing with the physical disability, not been able to hike, bicycle etc has been hardest for me. Also the recovery time 2-3 years are is not life-affirming! But knowing the condition frequently will improve with time gives hope.

Is it possible for a non professional to create a self hosted blog page and make it visible on Internet?
This is what this entry is about. I will not push for this site or entry on any social media but like to see whatever I can get
the site to be recognized by any search engine.

So if you have found this page by any unfathomable reason, it would be nice if you could leave a comment.

Cheers