Greetings, Sheeple: Pas de Deux

We're all dead.

It’s Elle again, writing after the wake of another bad crypto event.

Bad form for me to make this a habit, but there’s an ease to writing at a time like this. I don’t have to put as much work into polish, because hey, it’s forgivable to be unpolished after a disaster.

And so: hello again.

The last time I wrote was after the fall of LUNA. Looking back at it, I think I was trying to grapple with the dissonance of LUNA in 2021 vs LUNA in the wake of its collapse.

The Terra blockchain and LUNA was one of the biggest trades, and thus, one of the biggest darlings of the scene. All despite its flaws.

Once those flaws were stressed, it rapidly crumbled. One moment, I was a fool for not engaging with the chain, and the next, I was smart for barely engaging with it.

The first Greetings, Sheeple was my brain vomit at the time of trying to comprehend all of it. This is part two, and it’s still brain vomit. Like, I only have one brain cell at this point.

What am I trying to comprehend this time? I think I’ve settled on: it’s possible to make money by being wrong. Which isn’t great, when making money is seen as the best way of being correct in this space.

Sigh.

To end: I’ve been remembering an old memory lately.

There’s this yearly government fee my mom always had to pay, and I always accompanied her when I was younger.

My mom always went with a folder, stuffed with past receipts. And every year, it would come in handy, because the person at the computer would always say that they couldn’t find her record.

The people changed, but the missing record would always happen, without fail.

So, when I was a little older, I made a joke about how they should upgrade their systems. This mistake happened every year, after all!

It wasn’t until after we left that my mom gave me a scolding for being so naive. They didn’t lose her records, they were just saying so so that they could get a bribe from my mother.

And look, this very well could have been untrue. I’d believe that our government record-keeping is shit. But I could also believe that yeah, the people at the desk would like to pocket a little more money.

All I had known was to be prepared for bribes and a world of hassle, but then I found this public ledger where it was much harder to hide things like this. And oh look, finance applications run on top of this!

And I am still as fascinated as ever. Trite to say it at this point, but I think the events of the past week have more than validated the value of DeFi and self-custody.

But first: some time to rest and recover some brain cells.

Here’s hoping for a quieter week.