Two questions came up from the same post from @Blanchy, where he (assuming gender) asked the first, How much does your wife know about your crypto holdings. The answer to this question in my case is very, very simple:
More than she wants to know.
As a "slight" crypto enthusiast, I have kept her in the loop, but more than that, she has been on this journey with me from the start, at least indirectly. I will give the abridged version, as many of you have likely heard this before, but after our daughter was born, despite being very prepared, medical complications meant that we burned through all savings within the space of a few months and were stuck with a monthly baby formula expense that was twice that of our mortgage.
My wife in bed recovering for many months, a daughter that wasn't sleeping more than 30 minutes in a row and me trying to accommodate both while running a sole proprietorship, we were at breaking point financially and emotionally. And at this point, at the start of 2017, a friend introduced the idea of writing for "money" and I chose to give it a go.
I say "money" because at the time of joining, I didn't even know it was a crypto platform and once I did, my only experience was crypto was back in 2010/11 where I tried to buy about 250€ worth of Bitcoin as an investment (knowing nothing about it), spent ten minutes trying to work it out and after failing, went drinking instead.
Two pizzas anyone?
Now, while writing never eased our burden in any way for us and my wife hasn't been very active in the crypto space over the last six years, she has been supportive. I have had the space to write and as things changed in the industry, perform other activities too. Sure, much of this has been done when everyone else is asleep at the expense of my own rest, but that is a luxury too in some ways. As a result, through thick and thin of our lives, I have managed to post daily for well-over five years on Hive, missing only a couple sporadic days early in 2017, which has resulted in this:
It is 2049 days from the start date to the end date, but not including the end date.
Or 292.7 weeks
Or 5 years, 7 months, 11 days excluding the end date.
Or 67 months, 11 days excluding the end date.
So as you can see, while I have missed 9 weekly author badges, I have only missed 3 monthly author badges, so all of those nine missed appeared in one of those 3 months, and they were all before June 2017. At that time, these badges didn't exist, they came later.
In order to do this, I needed "wife support" and at times, it wasn't always easy, but overall, she has come to understand that I am a better person when I get to write, because I am able to clear mental and emotional blockages and equip myself with tools to deal with whatever life throws our way - and that has unfortunately been quite a lot of "misfortune", especially in terms of our health. And of course, she doesn't mind having the possibility that it will one day help us out financially.
Well, that last point is an interesting one, as it already has helped us, even though we aren't using it. The reason is that through writing and interaction here, I have learned a lot about finance, opportunity, risk and myself; which has led to me taking a second job and expanding it, investing, consolidating, as well as taking risks and mitigating risks. This has given me "confidence" to make moves I wouldn't have earlier, like buying a house that needs renovation.
So, while that is a long-winded (typical) answer to a simple question, in short, my wife doesn't know the details of everything that I am involved with across Hive, Splinterlands, Leo infra and holdings, but she does know in a general sense, that the amounts I am playing with a larger than we could have dreamed those six years ago, when we were at financial and personal breaking point.
Which leads into the second question that @blanchy asked in the comment section after I said that about the support and added,
I don't think she'd be as understanding if there wasn't the potential for a return one day.
This is a very hard question to answer, but I know that the "timeframe" is not a useful point, as while time is incredibly important for the development of crypto and wealth, there is so much volatility and timing that it is far too unknown as to "when" something will or will not happen. On top of that, time indicates a "getting out" of crypto, which is not my goal at all, as the more I learn, the more I want to get further in.
However, in order to make crypto valuable for my family, there has to be the ability to use it to improve our wellbeing in some way, which does currently mean getting out, as most of our life can't be lived only in crypto, because vendors want it converted to fiat at some point. Sure, I could use a card where I can use my crypto and don't have to touch the fiat, but that is just proxying the conversion in the background, still moving crypto wealth into fiat at some point.
This will change in the future, but by extension, this "problem" also indicates that the "number" is not going to be suitable either, as that number is based on fiat value, meaning getting out of crypto and into the centralized system again, but also that the number in fiat is a stagnant point, which it is not. For example, when I was young, everyone's dream reference point was "if I had a million dollars", but at that time, the average house price was around 150K, so having 8-10x in cash on top of a median house price made a person wealthy.
Now however, with the median house price being almost a million dollars, that dream of if I had a million seems immature. Because of the way fiat markets work, whatever we think of in terms of adequate value now, is always going to seem immature in the future, unless we are able to make what we have now work to generate enough to give equivalent value in the future, which leads into the last option mentioned;
Passive income.
This is where it is and for example, over the last six years I have been working hard to stake Hive and use some of it to diversify for risk mitigation and opportunity so that I can earn a passive amount daily. For instance, I am getting about 20 dollars a day at current prices through curation activities based on my stake, which is around 600 dollars a month, more than I am able to put aside from my salary to save currently, especially with the ongoing renovation. This also means that I am distributing the same amount to the Hive community through voting and content, which helps many other people do the same.
I have been well supported on Hive through my content, but I will posit that when it comes to the value of content on average cross-referenced with effort in and all that jazz, I am also probably one of the hardest working content creators on the platform and have been for years. At first, all of the work was just trickles of value, but the power of compounding effects makes a difference, though most people only look at it in terms of financial gains. Compounding also happens at the social level and through all of the various activities that work together to improve experience and ultimately, improved experience is the goal, not improved wealth - but often, they go hand in hand or at least, there is a strong correlation for the average person. And I am very average.
My wife knows this too.
So, the goal is to create passive income revenue streams that are stable enough (not just at the highs) to provide for all of my family's needs indefinitely into the future. This is far easier said than done, because generating that future income stream means investing now, which can be hard for us due to the immediate needs and wants in life. And, "spending" on investment now also comes with the risk of not having it available to use, but with no guarantee on the future, possibly losing the availability in the future too.
Investing is always a risk.
And while we all know this, it is good to understand and visualize what that really means for our daily lives and whether we really are willing to lose it all for the potential of a more financially certain future. Can we go without the streaming services in order to use that extra 15 dollars to buy 30 HIVE? Are we willing to forego a new phone to buy 2000 more? Are we willing to limit our expenditures to move more into investments of all kinds, giving up "wellbeing" now for wellbeing tomorrow?
With the events of the last years and especially with the stroke in 2021, I am more certain than ever that having even small streams of incoming value from crypto is vital for my family's wellbeing, as it allows us to invest when we couldn't otherwise and if something were to happen to one of us, that extra could be used to cover some shortfalls, or keep us investing on a single income. Yes, in that scenario, assets would likely need to be sold, but so would the house - not because of the mortgage, but because of the physical work it takes to maintain, work that my wife can't do and while I can, I would struggle with if a single parent trying to raise a daughter.
how much passive is enough?
"Passive" is an interesting term, because it makes it sound like it doesn't take work - but it does. The difference is that the work is done prior to the income coming in, which means the passive part is like getting paid for services already rendered. For the last handful of years, I have been doing the work and have made many errors of judgement in how to best utilize the value of that work, but overall, I am still in with a chance that the future value of what I have done will be enough to make it worth it.
And I am not the only one.
What I love about crypto is despite a lot of it being seemingly lonely work and based on individual desires, for it to become successful, it is actually a massive collaboration of activities globally between tens of millions of people who do not know each other, but all dream of a better future. It is a redefining of our species, taking back individual responsibility for ourselves and building an economic system that works to improve our wellbeing, not degrades it through maximization of the corporation activities through power monopolization.
What this means is that while my family might benefit from a passive income, in order to do so, millions of families will similarly benefit, even if they themselves haven't directly invested into the industry. It does this because in time, as more value is generated on chain, it starts to distribute power outwardly rather than through consolidation and that gets applied locally, improving the systems where people live, not the systems where the central authorities choose to improve, which are inevitably where they live.
While immature as an industry now, we can already see the beginnings of how crypto and blockchains are starting to formalize to bring decentralized opportunity and localized value to its users, through platforms like Hive and games like Splinterlands. Tens of thousands are already here people are benefiting daily, and now it is about scaling that up. However, those who will benefit the most, are also likely going to be those who support the development the most, by investing into that idea of a better future.
That support comes in many forms, but for those looking to generate financial wellbeing for their life in the future, it is going to take work and risk exposure to do so. Passive income is great, but it is a resource and like any resource, how it is used now is going to determine outcomes in the future.
Making decisions on where we want to be is valuable, but more valuable than that is, making decisions on what we are going to do right now in order to get there.
We can always change where we want to be, we can't change what we did yesterday.
I want to be in crypto.
Yesterday, I was working toward that end. Today, I am working toward that end. And while the future is uncertain, I am predicting, tomorrow, I will be working toward that end.
The more who do, the more likely it will be.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]