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NO B.S. FRIDAY: Shock! House prices to fall 80%!

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I show you how the media industry actually works, so you can stop yourself from being sucked into their shenanigans.

80%?!?! That got your attention, right? All eyes on me.

(Look at me, look at me, look at me, Kimmy.)

This is exactly how the media industry works. Attention is the most valuable commodity there is. And there are all sorts of tricks out there to suck you in.

But I’m going to break it down, so you know exactly how it works, and how you can protect yourself from it.

But hang on… So that just a joke then – about house prices falling 80%?

Nah. That could totally happen. All it would take is for the Earth’s magnetic poles to reverse (it’s happened before, it will happen again!), unleashing a cataclysm of earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanoes.

Then, just as what’s left of humanity is picking up the pieces, bam, deadly Ebola virus outbreak.

In that scenario, I predict Australian house prices would fall 80%, perhaps even 85%.

Someone put me on the telly.

Ok, how are you feeling right now? Probably a little annoyed right? You read the title, wanted to find out more, and then realised that Jon was on another of his benders.

(Why wife calls it “Margarita Madness”).

I’ve taken time out of your busy day, and wasted it with some inane ramblings.

Just like 60 minutes did.

Last Sunday, Chanel 9's 60 Minutes program, did a terrifying piece on Australia’s looming house price crash. In it, they suggested house prices were about to fall a massive 40%, and they made it sound like that is what a lot of smart and important people were expecting.

Only they weren’t. The 40% figure came from Dr Martin North – a bonafide data nerd. He’s actually pretty good – I’ve used some of his statistics in this blog before.

The thing was, that wasn’t what North was actually saying was going to happen. What he actually said is that there was an outside chance that house prices could fall that much, If (and it’s a big IF) there was some kind of re-run of the global financial crisis.

Thing is though, 60 Minutes chose to edit all that out. You had to actually go to his blog (and how many people did that?) to get the complete picture:

… It is not my central scenario. My best call would be in the region of 15-20% from top, over 2-3 years, but with some risk of a worse outcome. Nine chose not to cover these alternatives, though I went through each in the recording…

So yeah, if there was another GFC, it’s conceivable house prices could fall 40% (for a time). And if the magnetic poles reverse, it’s conceivable house prices could fall 80%.

So what’s going on here?

Partly this is about that old saying that “good news never made a paper sell,” but it’s more than that.

As some one who works at the coal face of marketing, there’s some tried and tested marketing strategies at work here, and 60 Minutes gave us a text-book case in execution.

The term you need to know is ‘disturbance marketing’.

This is the idea that before you can sell someone anything, you need to get their attention.

Trouble is, getting someone’s attention is hard. People just tend to put their heads down and go about their lives, generally trying to ignore the gazillion sales pitches they get on any given day.

And so, as a marketer, one of your key challenges is to jolt them out of this slumber. You need to find a way to break up their routine so they actually start paying attention. You need to disturb them.

And so the prospect of a 40% fall in house prices, or that fact that “Australia’s debt bomb is about to explode”, would be very ‘disturbing’.

Job done. You have our attention.

The key thing that follows then is an emotional hook. You’ve stopped us in our tracks. You now need to grab us by the heart strings and hold our attention.

And to that end, 60 Minutes trotted out three ‘victims’ of the coming housing crash.

All three were struggling to make their mortgage repayments (OMG, imagine if that was us!). One was sick, one was unemployed, and one had just seen their interest only loans rolled over to principal and interest.

Now at this point, it all just struck me as pretty strange. I mean take the sick bloke and the unemployed bloke. Should it come as any surprise that they’re struggling to meet their mortgage repayments?

I mean, imagine the headline: “Shock: Man with no income struggles to pay his mortgage”.

It’s hardly news right?

And then there’s the guy who was just about to retire, but then the bank rolled the loans on his portfolio of investment properties over to principal and interest.

That’s right, he had a “portfolio” of investment properties. They didn’t say how many, but it looked like a few.

Also, he had to have known it was coming. All interest only loans roll over at some point (usually after 3 or 5 years). So it was hardly a shock that he had to start paying more.

“Shock: Banks make man follow payment schedule outlined in his mortgage application”.

But I’m looking at these three stories, and I’m wondering what they’ve got to do with anything.

But they’re not there as evidence. They’re there purely to make you go, OMG, imagine if that was me. Imagine if I was in those shoes.

You have my complete and undivided attention.

And at that point, your prospect is primed for your sales pitch. But hang on, 60 Minutes doesn’t have a sales pitch..? Oh, but that’s right. Their sponsors do.

Roll commercials.

And this is how the media industry works.

So long story short, 60 Minutes is scaring the good folks of Australia, because that’s how they sell advertising air time.

It is regrettable that such a trusted institution is playing this game, but that’s just how it is, and how it’s always been.

You might also wonder if 60 Minutes is the hard hitting news force it used to be.

Because what followed the housing story?

A story about a woman who worries that the people who said they would clone her dead dog for her, just went out and bought one from the pet shop.

Just saying.

JG

NO B.S. FRIDAY: Longer days, happy body

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The solstice teaches me a lot about that part of me that feels fear.

So we’re over the hump of the year. Thank fudge.

Last week the year turned, and from here on, the days start getting longer again.

There’s something about this idea that gives me a deep, full-bodied sense of relief.

But when I think about it, I realise that it’s a bit strange. Because I know the coldest days are still ahead of us.

So in terms of what has the most impact on my lived reality, surely I’d care more about heat than light, right? I’ve got Mediterranean blood in my veins. The cold freaks me out.

But we don’t celebrate the end of the cold months the way that we celebrate the solstice.

And throughout history and across cultures, the solstices are the key marker points of the year.

I think at a primal level it’s a real test of faith – to watch the days get shorter and shorter and just trust that the trajectory is going to change. That it will bottom out at some point and turn the corner.

In my rational mind, I’m like, of course the days will start getting longer again. That’s how it’s rolled for millions of years. This year’s not going to be any different.

But that’s a logical process. At a sub-logical level, at a primal body level, I think I’m watching the days get shorter and colder and I’m freaking out.

What if it doesn’t stop? What if it just keeps going like this? What if the sun disappears completely and we all just freeze?

And then the days turn and my body is like, Oh thank fudge for that. Whoa. We really dodged a bullet there.

And my rational mind is like, ‘what are you talking about? That’s what happens every year.’

And my primal body is like,

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m a child of the moment. I don’t even know what you mean when you go on about abstract concepts like ‘year’ or ‘cycle’.”

“I really don’t get why you have to be so difficult. The seasons move in cycles. It’s not that hard.”

“Whatever. Hey, are you hungry. Let’s go get some souvlaki.”

“You know we’re on a diet.”

“Oh, again with these abstract concepts!”

Do you get what I mean when I rave on about these inner conversations? What I’m saying is that the primal body, the emotional body, lives in the moment. It only knows what the senses tell it, and it operates on the patterns it has learnt.

As the days get shorter, it’s going to start to feel fear.

So how do you teach the primal body?

It has to move in it. It has to embody the lesson, over and over, until it becomes part of its patterning.

And what does this embodying class-room look like?

Ritual.

Rituals are embodied practices that seek to make a habit of a desired state.

And so I think the ancient rituals celebrating the solstice were our ancestors way of training their bodies to understand the seasons and cycles of the earth.

You do this movement at this time of year. Climb Mt. Olympus. Make an offering. Light a lamp. Do this dance. Walk back down.

Repeat, year after year.

In this way, the physical, emotional body is brought into alignment with the seasons. It comes to understand them in a way that the rational mind finds so easy that it doesn’t even have to think about it, but does in a much shallower way.

I think you’ll understand what I’m saying if you’ve ever had to talk a child out of their fears.

“No, there’s no monster under the bed. There’s no such thing as monsters. There’s so much crap under your bed that unless that monster’s the size of a hamster, it couldn’t even fit.”

“Stop with these abstract concepts, Dad. It’s not helping. My body feels afraid.”

This is something to pay attention to if you want to get the most out of your self. If you want to take your self on grand missions, dive into epic projects, take daring gambles.

There is part of you that will feel afraid, and you won’t be able to talk it down.

But that part of you is a child of the moment. Wrap it in a cuddle, let it take a few deep, long breaths, give it mental space to think about peaceful thoughts or nothing at all…

… and it will come round.

JG

NO B.S. FRIDAY: Time to Tap the Power of, “No!”

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Life is what you are willing to accept.

Life is not what you achieved. It’s not what you went out and got.

It’s what you were willing to accept.

(Can some one stick that quote over a picture of some dolphins climbing a mountain at sunset or some crap like that for me? I want to get into motivational posters.)

Life is what you are willing to accept.

This idea struck me when I was in the shower, and it stopped me in my tracks. (I have a treadmill shower, to stay fit.)

I focus a lot on achievement. On making things happen. And that really is important. It’s a key element in the make-up of your life.

But in the balance of things, it’s small fry. If you were to break your life down in to what you went out and got, and what came to you and you received, what would the break down be?

90% : 10%?

Or think about it this way. How many things are you working on achieving right now? Maybe the most productive people might have a list of 20 things, maybe 50 for the uber-driven.

But how many ‘things’ are there in life? It’s almost infinite. Who sits next to you on the tram? What is the weather is doing? Do they have any bananas today?

So maybe a ratio of 9:1 is optimistic. Maybe its more like infinity : 50.

Ok, it’s silly trying to put number on it. The only want to make the point that a lot of what we have in life is what comes to us.

In that sense then, there is an important and overlooked leverage point for creating the life you want. What you are willing to receive.

For example, if you are willing to sit next to stinky drunken hobos on the train, you’re life will contain that flavour.

However, if you are not willing to accept that, if you get up and change seats whenever that happens, your life will not have that flavour.

There is an important filter here.

And I would say that ‘what you are willing to accept’ is probably the key way to understand your life.

Are you willing to accept verbal abuse from in-laws? Are you willing to accept mundane job tasks? Are you willing to accept living in a hovel above a train line? Are you willing to accept driving a 30 year old Datsun with broken indicators?

This is the power of no.

If you say no to these things, then something has to change.

If you say to the universe, no, I’m not willing to accept a circle of friends always trying to bring me down, then something has to change. It has to.

Now of course this has the element of a gamble to it. If you say, no, I’m not willing to accept a boyfriend who is suffocatingly protective, then you do open the way for the universe to give you the reality of ‘no boyfriend’.

That is a possibility.

But if you can accept that, then you can clear the space for the universe to give you something different.

More often than not, in my experience, the universe tends to be embarrassingly generous. The probability of no boyfriend is much lower than the probability of better boyfriend.

(Gary please stop calling me. Todd and I are happy.)

Professional scrabble players know this. (Yes, they exist). They ‘chuck in’ a huge number of times – much more often than amateur players.

They know that you don’t have to be stuck with a hand of shitty vowels. That’s hard to work with. Much better to clear the decks, trust fate, and try again.

Ok, I’m slipping off point. The central thing here is that to create the life we want, we have to be strong. We have to be really strong in what we’re willing to accept, and really strong in saying no when we need to.

If you get clear on this – if you get really strong on your no, it will have a huge impact on your life.

NO B.S. FRIDAY: Love – the most unrealistic expectation of all

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Valentines day reminds me of how good we are at burdening ourselves with unrealistic expectations

I saw something cute on Facebook this week. It was someone talking about being a working mother.

She said, “Working mothers are expected to work like they don't have children, and mother like they don't have a job.”

Too true.

If it's one thing we've become very skilled at in the west, it's placing totally unrealistic expectations on ourselves

… and then beating ourselves up with a spiky stick when we don't live up to our own ridiculous ideals.

How much misery is this causing us right now? I'm not just talking about moody teenagers – at least they have the luxury of imagining that their future might be different.

I'm talking about everybody.

We should be cut like an Olympic athlete (no matter how old we are), as creative as cocaine-happy graphic designer, as up-to-date as a news anchor, as enlightened as a Himalayan man with no pants, as compassionate as a nun but as staunch as Donald Trump…

Ok, maybe I'm being a little specific here. Perhaps some of these are just me. But you get the point, and you probably have your own version of this drama playing out in your own head.

Unless we're careful, we tend to ask too much of ourselves, and then make ourselves miserable trying to keep up. It's a contemporary epidemic.

And love is the worst.

As I wander past the post Valentine's Day clutter in the dumpster outside my office – wilting roses and teddy bears and all that guff…

(seriously, ladies, I'm married. To the fellah who dropped off the golf clubs… thanks. They're very nicely weighted.)

… I'm reminded at just how much industry and endeavour is geared up into making us feel totally inadequate about our relationships.

And I feel like I'm seeing a shift.

We used to worry about whether our partner was ‘the one'. Taking our cue from 90s romantic comedies, we felt that our lover should knock us off our feet, and keep us there on the floor. If we tried to get up, they should knock us down again. And again.

Even at 5.30 in the morning, after you've both been up feeding the baby all through the night, she's got breast milk stains all down her singlet, he doesn't even know where his pants are… even in that moment, the sheer attractive power of your immutable soul bond should knock you on your arse.

Love is not being able to get up off the floor. Ever.

This is the fairy-tale and it's incredibly seductive.

It's starting to lose its grip on us though, slowly but surely.

At a conscious level (if not wholeheartedly) we can see that the fairy-tale is unrealistic BS. We get it.

That's nice.

However, I see it being replaced with fluffy personal development mantras. About being, self-sufficient, independent, complete on my own.

That we should love our partner like we love our I-phone. We deeply appreciate its sleek design functionality, and would be proper pissed if someone stole it, but ultimately, they're easily replaceable.

And you know, it is good to be independent. It's good if your own sense of self worth has nothing to do with whether there's someone on your arm or not.

However, a relationship should not be a theatre for the expression of independence.

That's not what relationships are about.

To me, relationships are a shared journey – towards shared and independent goals. To make it work, you need to think of yourself as a team.

And I mean that in a very sporting sense. You have to work as a team. You have to share your vision of what life is going to be about, and you have to work cooperatively, picking up slack and supporting each other wherever possible.

Great relationships work like well-oiled teams. Each person in the pair is independent and autonomous, but they understand their place and their role in the team, without saying.

It's not a theatre for expressing independence. There's no “I” in “Get with the program, dickhead.”

And what we don't realise is that both of these misguided notions of love – the co-dependent and the independent – both of these have been driven by the same merciless machine that makes us all miserable.

Our ancients never put so much stress on their relationships. Why?

There's probably a myriad of reasons, but I think on the whole, they were just generally more secure. They didn't need their relationship, or their relationship to the relationship, to make themselves feel ok about themselves.

And that's because advertising.

The marketing industry has totally inflamed our sensitivities to comparative worth. It's human to compare yourself to others. But only modern humans compare themselves to photo-shopped waifs on massive billboards…

… and to the centre half forward for North Melbourne, and to Richard Branson, and to the Dalia Lama….

And so we crave love because we want to know that we're ok. That we have a place within it all.

But love was never meant to carry this burden. Love was only ever meant to unite us in a hormone-driven dance of horny pants, and then transmute gently into a content shared-sense of companionship.

(That'll never be a pop song, but I think it's the reality of it.)

Asking anything more of love – and especially asking it to make you feel ok about yourself, is just asking too much.

You've got to find the right donkey for the right burdens.

How do we get back to the old ways of thinking about love? Do we want to?

How do we cultivate a greater sense of ‘team' in all our relationships?

How do we separate love from the need to feel ok about ourselves?

JG

NO B.S. FRIDAY: Bachar Houli is the future of Australia

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I’m still on a high after Richmond’s win, and I don’t want to go on about it, but it really was profound.

Last week I was talking about Dusty Martin and the Tiger's vulnerability practice and what a watershed moment that was for Aussie culture.

But there are a lot of amazing stories in the overarching epic of the Tigers’ victory.

Another one is Bachar Houli.

In case you’re not an AFL fanatic, Bachar Houli is one of the Richmond Tigers key players. He’s also first practicing Muslim in the AFL.

There have been other players from Muslim backgrounds in the AFL, but he is the first practicing Muslim – he had to get permission to break his Ramadan fast to participate in the draft round.

Given the age we’re living in, Houli’s religion is not insignificant.

Now I’ve read a few pieces which go something like, see Muslims can like footy. Therefore we can all get along.

It’s a bit silly.

I don’t think Houli’s participation in the AFL changes much in the scheme of things. I think you’re underestimating people prejudices if you think one player in the AFL can convince them to give them up, and come and join hands around the fire.

The truth is that society’s attitudes generally change as the old attitudes go with their owners to the grave.

So I don’t think Houli playing in the AFL is going to be an agent of change. That’s got the causality backwards. Rather, I think it says we’re doing something right.

I also think it’s wrong to paint ‘integration’ as relationship between an outsider and a static entity, say between a Muslim like Houli, and a static Australian society.

The way I see it, Australia is not a destination, but a journey. Australia society is not a fixed set of preferences (vegemite over jelly and peanut butter), but the values that drive our collective journey.

Of course, when we get into trying to define what Australian values are, we get into pretty hotly contested ground.

But it doesn’t need to be that way.

And the truth is, when I see a young man like Houli, I can empathise. I grew up Greek in 70s and 80s Australia. I had a last name that the white kids couldn’t pronounce.

The young kids find it hard to believe these days, but we used to cop it. And it really wasn’t that long ago.

And people used to wonder back then if the wogs “really shared our Australian values.”

“Look! Their food has all this “flavour” and the men can dance.”

And before us, it was the Irish.

And now these days, you can’t even imagine the fabric of Australian society without the Mediterranean and Irish threads running through it. And you look back in time and think, what were people even worried about? It’s hard to understand.

But the ‘integration’ (and I kinda hate that word) of Greek and Irish peoples into Australia has been a success.

Why?

Because we were allowed to participate. We were given a go. I still love soccer and love Greek food, but there’s no point looking at such superficial measures of connection.

Rather, I have a dream to make something of my life, a willingness to do the hard yards, and to help out where needed.

To me, this is all Australia is. This is the journey that we are on, together.

And so I can get why people worry about Muslim people “integrating” with Australian society. They are strong in their culture and it has some marked differences.

But I am strong in my culture too, and my heritage still defines who I am.

And so I would say, don’t worry about any of this. Don’t worry about whether people are bringing pork sausages to the BBQ or not. It doesn’t matter.

Worry about whether they are part of the shared journey.

And in large part, that is simply about being confident in Australian culture. It really is awesome. Just trust that if someone has the ability to participate in it, see it for themselves, enjoy the freedoms and the quality of life that comes with it, then they will make it their own.

They’ll go on to play footy at the highest level and tear it up.

You let that be the choice. Either you take part in the shared Australian journey to making your life your own, or off you go and join ISIS. Up to you bro.

If you don’t think people will choose the Australian journey over some fundamentalist journey of whatever stripe, then you probably have a pretty negative view of what Australian culture has to offer.

I don’t. I reckon Aussie culture has a lot to offer an individual.

So for me, the real issue here is access.

The offer only works if everyone has the opportunities that I did.

It’s why all those crony-capitalists make me so angry – and the rich folk who go out of the way to make things harder for the poor.

You’re rich. Great. Good for you. No need to be a dick about it.

Australian culture will thrive, and be a beacon to the world, so long as everyone has an opportunity.

Deny people the opportunity, and they will turn their back on society. They will stop being part of the journey and actively seek to undermine it – whether that means joining neo-nazis or ISIS.

But for now, that’s not what’s happening. Houli chose the Australian journey and living out his destiny through the AFL.

For today, at least, we’re doing something right.

What do you reckon Houli represents?

NO B.S. FRIDAY: Bitcoin for Boneheads

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A guide to Bitcoin basics from someone who is not trying to sell you anything.

Ok, so I’ve been getting enough questions about it, “Should I invest in bitcoin?” etc., that I thought I should do a deeper dive.

I’m doing this for my own benefit as much as yours. It’s one thing to understand something. But when you explain it to others, that’s when it really drops in.

There’s a bit too it, so I’m going to roll this out over the next week or so. Keep an eye out for it.

This is what I’ll be sharing with you:

  1. This week, I’ll give you a basic over-view of Bitcoin and the Block-chain so we’re all up to speed and on the same page.
  2. Next week, I’ll make the bullish case for Bitcoin. Not that that’s necessarily my position, but I’ll try get away from my own biases by making the argument for why Bitcoin is a great investment.
  3. Finally, I’ll put on my sceptic’s hat and look at why I’m still wary about Bitcoin – this is closer to my actual position. But I’ll take it to extremes for entertainment’s sake.
  4. BONUS – just for a bonus, I’ll tell you what I think this says about market dynamics, and where I’m personally looking at making money in this whole story.

So it’s win-win. I get to develop my thinking around Bitcoin, and you get to see it through the eyes of a savvy investor with time on his hands… and most importantly, hear about it from someone not trying to sell you one way or the other.

There’s value in that right?

And just in case you’ve been living under a rock, this is what Bitcoin has been doing.  Since launching in 2009 where each coin cost next to nothing, each Bitcoin is now worth $4,258.

If you were in the game for the whole ride that’s over a 4,000% gain in a matter of years.

This chart also doesn’t really do it justice, but it can be quite volatile day to day. Very volatile in fact. Keep that in mind, but I’ll come back to it.

Ok, so let’s go back to the beginning. If you’re struggling to get your head around it, you’re in good company.Seriously, when I started researching this piece, I was surprised at how difficult it was to get a handle on it.

There’s two reasons for that.

First, punch “Bitcoin” into Google and a massive tidal wave of bullshit starts bearing down on you. It’s easy to make professional looking content these days, and every millennial and their dog is trying to suck you into their sales funnel by giving you “the Basics of Bitcoin”.

And most of this, as you’d expect, is garbage. There’s a few familiar lines that get trotted out – disruptive technology, the end of centralised money… etc., but most people seem to have very little idea about what this things actually mean in theory, let alone in practice.

It’s not too hard to get a functional understanding of the technology, but as for implications… there’s a lot of hand-wavy hype, but not a lot of solid logic on offer.

That’s my impression.

And that doesn’t mean that Bitcoin isn’t awesome. You can’t judge a product by its sale-staff. It just means that if you’ve been feeling a bit baffled, there’s good reason for it.

The other reason is that is that humans are ‘metaphor thinkers’. That is, the most common way to understand something is to compare it to something similar that we already understand.

So imagine you’ve never encountered the concept of a Zebra. But you know what a horse is. It is very easy to give you a handle on what a Zebra is because I can tell you that it’s like a horse, just with black and white stripes.

There’s a lot of metaphors being bandied about for Bitcoin and the block-chain, but it’s hard to piece them all together.

Like, Bitcoin is like money. Block-chain is like a layer on top of the internet. Block-chain is a new way of building trust into the social fabric, like government, but without the guns.

All of these things are true, but put them together and the picture you get is more confusing that clarifying.

It’s like saying, this is a widget. It’s like a toaster, but it also clears conflicts in your social calendar. And it’s able to administer social football clubs.

(There’s a metaphor about metaphors. I’m so meta.)

Ok, point being, it’s not easy to get a handle on. Much harder than I thought it was going to be.

(And I’m still not entirely certain I’ve nailed it, so feel free to help me out here.)

Ok, so let’s get into it (remembering I’m aiming to give you a functional understanding, not a perfect understanding.)

The first thing we need to do is separate ‘block-chain’ from Bitcoin.

BLOCK-CHAIN

Block-chain is the technology that powers the whole show. Bitcoin is one expression of that technology but there are thousands. There’s a lot of dreaming yet to be done.

Block-chain is a decentralised trust network. It operates peer-to-peer, computer-to-computer, not through a centralised control system. If you’re across peer-to-peer content sharing platforms like Napster or BitTorrent, then you’re off to a good start.

So imagine I buy a house of you today. The title changes hands and the change of ownership is registered with the governing titles office. That body holds all the information and vouches for its integrity.

In a peer-to-peer model however, there is no central body. Rather, there is a “distributed ledger” that lives on the computers of everyone participating in the system, all at once.

What block-chain does, and why it’s such a revolution, is that it has come up with a way to ensure that this distributed ledger only records authorised transactions. That is, I just can’t open up the ledger that lives on my computer, give myself the title to the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and see that update spread across the system.

Trust does not come from the word of a central body. It comes from the integrity of the system itself.

There’s a lot more to say about how it does that, and it’s pretty amazing, but I don’t think we need to go there to get a handle on Bitcoin. If you understand that it is distributed, not centralised, and that it is a vehicle for trust, where people know that they can depend on information held in the block-chain, then we’re off and running.

BITCOIN

Bitcoin is a ‘crypto-currency’ a form of money that is cryptographically protected. It is powered by the block-chain. There are many “cryptos” out there these days, but Bitcoin was the first.

Unlike our digital money, which is a digital representation of hard currency, Bitcoin has no hard or real-world form. Other than that, it works like money. You can exchange it for goods and services.

There is an account – a ledger of who owns how many Bitcoins, and you guessed it, that ledger is distributed. There is no central body that keeps track of who has how many Bitcoins. Rather, that information lives on all computers at once.

There is a clearly defined limit to how many Bitcoins are in circulation. There were 16 million at inception in 2009. There will be 21 million when minting ceases in 2140.

(Contrast this with Australian dollars, where the quantity is largely a matter of government whim.)

Bitcoin transactions are not free – despite what some shiny teenager on the internet might tell you. There are Bitcoin ‘miners’ (not sure why they called them miners..?) who process transactions and update the “block”. Currently the miners are incentivised by being rewarded with new coins, but there is also effectively an auction market for transactions.

That is, miners get to decide which transactions to process first. You get to decide what transaction fee will be attached to your transaction. The miner effectively takes the highest bidder, and processes that transaction first.

Miners need these fees because maintaining the block is hard work. It requires large amounts of computing power running round the clock, and regular hardware upgrades. Computer power is increasing, but so is the complexity of the block.

So a Bitcoin transaction may cost you less in fees than a credit card transaction. However, it may also cost you more. It depends.

THERE YOU HAVE IT

Ok, that’s it.  A little dry I know, but we need to get on the same page before I can share my thoughts about what makes it awesome, and what makes it dangerous.

Stay tuned. UP NEXT, I’ll get you all hyped and fluffed and thinking that maybe you should mortgage your house and throw it into Bitcoin. I’m calling that WHY BITCOIN IS AWESOME.

Next time.

What did I miss?

NO B.S. FRIDAY: What you should really do with your talents

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I don’t think our great spiritual teachers really want you to disappear up your own clacker.

Some one sent me this charismatic young man’s interpretation of The Parable of Talents.

In case you weren’t perfecting spit-balls in Sunday school like I was, the Parable of Talents is one of Jesus’ more mysterious stories.

In short, a nobleman is going on a long journey. Before he leaves he gives three talents to one servant, two talents to another, and one talent to a third, “each according to their ability.”

A talent was the common term for a shi!tcan of money. Like 4 years wages. So it was serious coin.

(The modern word talent meaning “special skill set”, seems to derive from this parable!)

When the nobleman comes back he asks the servants what they did with the money. The first two traded and invested their money, and doubled what they were given.

The master is pleased.

The third however buried his talent in the backyard, and so only has the original talent that was given to him.

The master is pissed. You could have at least stuck it in the bank and earnt interest. (He actually says that.) He then takes his one talent and gives it to the one who already has the most.

There’s nuance I’m glossing over here, but this is the idea. The third servant wasted his talents, and wasted his life. God’s rewards go to those who make the most of their “God-given talents”.

This story struck me in Sunday school. I wanted to know what the first servant had invested in. How long was the master gone? What was the annualised rate of return? But it also stuck out from the other parables. It just felt different.

So coming back to our charismatic young friend. I’ve heard this one before. Not this one specifically, but this kind of new-agey interpretation.

In this version, the talents are a metaphor for what we currently call “talents”, and God wants you to take your talents and share them with the world. Don’t bury them inside you. If you can sing, then sing. If you can paint, then paint. If you can knit clothes for small dogs, go and take that sh!t to the Flemington flea market.

And shine, star bird shine.

This interpretation is getting a bit of play these day. It resonates with the times. But the fact that the word talents transitioned from a word meaning, “weight, unit of currency” in Jesus’s time, to the current meaning of “skills and abilities”, probably means that you could say this is, more or less, the standard interpretation.

I guess I used to run with that line as well.

(No, I will not come inside! God wants me to play soccer, mother!)

But these days, something doesn’t ring right.

I mean, why does Jesus place the whole story in a commercial context? The whole trading story just complicates the picture.

I mean, why not say the master gave his three servants a trombone. Two of them played, but the other did not. “Wicked and slothly servant. Why hast thou not made use of the trombone given unto thee?!?”

That’d be cleaner if that was really Jesus’ point. But no, he made it about trade and investment.

Of course I have seen people put a free-market spin on this as well, but I’m not sure I buy that either.

Historians are divided as to whether the Lord Christ ever said, “You’ve got to risk it to get the biscuit,” but I tend to side with those who don’t think the bible was meant to be a substitute for a Cert IV in financial planning.

And remember this was a man who lost his nanna and started whipping the merchants and money-changers who had set up shop in the temple.

So it’s really interesting that he chose to make this story about money.

I don’t pretend to know why, but as someone who knows money on a first name basis, I have some thoughts.

First I think that money, trade, finance, commerce, all that – that’s the human world. We’re not about ethereal dimensions here. We’re not talking divine qualities like justice and grace. We’re talking the nitty-gritty of messy humans living in a messy society, playing out their greed and selfishness and selling animals for sacrifice in the temple and all that.

But this is where our work is. This is where we should be engaging.

We could just say, nah, I don’t want to get involved in that. I’m just going to stay here and cultivate my righteousness. Or I’m just going to devote myself to my singing and macramé doggy vests.

But that is not what the gift of life is for.

We’re here to play the game. We’re here to fully engage with this messy, painful and constantly disappointing world.

And as much as we can, we should bring the talents that we were born with to the table.

But the other point I’d make is that when we’re talking about talents here, we’re not talking about the genetic dispositions we are born with. In the context of this parable, our talents are not ours. They don’t belong to us.

They are the things that are bigger than us – those higher ideals. They are our generosity, our grace, our charity, our faith, our giving people a second chance, our love.

The things that seem to come from beyond.

And so I actually wonder if this means exactly the opposite of what young mate is talking about. Jesus isn’t saying, go and invest in and cultivate the things that make you ‘special’.

Rather, it is a warning against disappearing up your own clacker. It’s not about you.  Don’t make it about what you’ve got. And don’t withdraw from the world either. Don’t think you’ll win any browny points for keeping the browny taint of the material world off your talents.

Get out there and get messy.

That’s your job.

But I don’t know. Maybe I’m just getting grumpier and more conservative in my old age.

What do you reckon?

NO B.S. FRIDAY: Achievement is a trap and its instinct’s fault

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We’re hard wired not to care what’s on the other side of our goals.

I should never have kissed her.

I shouldn’t have got her number. I shouldn’t have asked her out to dinner. I shouldn’t have brought flowers.

And I definitely shouldn’t have put on that firefighter costume.

In hindsight, it was all a mistake. In foresight, it was a mistake too. I knew that it would cause nothing but trouble. But somehow it just seemed like a mistake worth making.

And it taught me a really interesting lesson: sometimes “achievement” is a seductive lie.

It’s like the other day I was talking to a friend of mine. We played soccer together. We were talking about our golden days, and about how he got selected in the Australian Under 17 side to tour Asia.

He was reflecting on how he was never such a talented player. He didn’t work all that hard either.

But he said he wanted that Australian jersey so bad it would keep him up at night.

He would imagine how it would feel to put on that green and gold tracksuit with the kangaroo on it. How it would wear it to the shops and how people would be impressed by it.

“To be honest, that’s what I was focused on. I was focused on selection. On the honour that would come with that. I actually never thought past it – to what it would be like to actually play for Australia.

“I would just go over and over it in my mind. What it would be like to hear my name called out at the end of the state titles. Calling my family back home to let them know I was in. Getting my tracksuit and ticket to the AIS in the mail.

I wanted it so bad I could literally taste it.”

And in the end, at the state titles, which was where much of the selection took place, he just had a blinder of a carnival. Everything fell into place for him. He surprised everyone, including himself.

And he got selected.

The dream came true.

And what was it like to play for Australia? Well, he never went. He did his knee in Canberra and stayed home.

“I wasn’t as disappointed as you’d think. I’d got what I wanted, truth be told. The cosmos had delivered. It had given me everything I had called in. I’d just forgotten to ask for anything beyond the tracksuit!”

Good that he can laugh about it now. Getting old is good like that.

I feel like a see this a bit with people’s success journeys. When you dig into the kinds of things they’re striving for, often it’s the moment of the achievement itself, not the fruits of that achievement.

Take a simple example. Say someone wants a flashy new car. Now, do they really want a shiny merc? Or do they want that moment when their neighbours see their car in the driveway for the first time? Do they want bragging rights to their friends? Do they just want to be able to tell themselves, “It’s ok. Life’s going all right. We’ve got a merc…”

What’s the problem with this?

Well, one, you’ll never be satisfied. If the problem is the stories you’re telling about yourself, those stories will always reassert themselves, no matter how many cars or boats and vintage fighter planes you throw at them.

You’re chasing your tale.

(My entry in International Pun of the Year.)

Two, it’s a total waste of energy. If you want a new story about who you are and how you’re going in the world, just tell the story. You have that power and it is as easy as that.

I’ve covered this stuff before.

But the point I wanted to make today is don’t beat yourself up about it. Recognise that humans are hard-wired to focus on achievement, not the fruits of that achievement.

Our instincts drive us in this way. It’d be too much work and energy if your instincts had to convince you of the benefits associated with every motivation.

For example, our don’t instincts don’t say, “you should eat apples because they’re healthy and nutritious and they will give us the energy we need to sustain our endeavours.”

No. They say, “Get shiny sweet things and put them in your mouth.”

And that is literally where it ends. By design.

In fact, they deliberately create a blind spot around everything else that happens after that. From the instinct’s perspective, it’s just a distraction.

So take my friend with a thing for firemen. I knew that it was all a bad idea. But I just found it really hard to care.

My instincts had me focused on my attraction to her. Nothing else. They made it seem like the whole human story had only existed so that we could be together, and some great cosmic alignment would take place the moment we kissed.

Of course, that was never the case. And after the fact, when I looked to the instincts that had now gotten me into all that trouble, they were nowhere to be found.

You’re on your own now buddy.

Just another one of the joys of being human.

So my advice is this – be aware that we have a tendency to get fixated on the moment of achievement – the moment a goal is realised or a task is completed.

Be aware that while that feeling of achievement is awesome, it’s fleeting, and if your happiness is tied up with achievement, rather than the fruits of achievement, you’re on a treadmill to nowhere.

Take stock of your goals. Do you actually want what comes with them, or do you just want the satisfaction of achievement? Feel it out. What does it feel like once you’ve had that new car for a while?

Do you even care?

If not, your energies are better placed elsewhere (probably on the stories you’re telling.)

And finally, the tram to St Kilda is no place to be caught impersonating a member of the emergency services.

How do you keep yourself focused on the other side of achievement?

NO B.S. FRIDAY: Revolution delayed until further notice

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The dream of a golden crypto-currency future copped a serious blow this week.

Around 2004 I was presented with an opportunity.

It was a special ‘insider’ offering into a plucky American start up. They had a radical idea – to create a site where people could upload and share videos with each other, over the internet.

I turned it down.

I don’t really remember why. It all seemed a bit risky. The technology was new. They didn’t have a clear direction for how they were going to monetise the service. So I knocked it back.

Was it a mistake?

Hardly. The company went belly up after about 18 months. I would have lost everything.

This company wasn’t YouTube. It was one of about a hundred companies aspiring to be YouTube at the time.

YouTube just won the race. I don’t even think they were the first to get their product to market. But with three of PayPal’s exec’s at the helm, they were able to scale rapidly, until they became the dominant player in an ecosystem that was only ever going to support one player.

It’s one thing to have a million dollar idea. It’s another to have a million dollar business.

And so when I was presented with that investment opportunity back in 2004 or whatever it was, I had no way of knowing if they had a good business. They had a good idea, sure, but beyond that, I just didn’t have enough info to tell.

And I don’t like to take risks with my money. So I knocked it back.

It’s the same story with all the crypto-currency stuff.

Someone asked me my opinion about it the other day. Sure, I get the power of block-chain. I get the revolution it has the potential capacity to deliver. It could be a whole new ball game.

But what is it going to be? Which “coins” are going to dominate the market? We hear a lot about Bitcoin and Ethereum, but there are hundreds of crypto-currencies out there.

Like, did you know there’s a thing called ‘Potato Coin’? This one aims to become a unit of currency for poor African farmers (a noble aim).

Or what about ‘Wankcoin’? (Seriously, I’m not making this up.) This is designed to help porn-enthusiasts support their industry.

Someone has even launched ‘Ponzicoin’ – and people are actually buying it.

The whole alt-currency world is very weird. And as far as I can tell there isn’t a way to buy an exposure to block-chain currencies at a concept – you have to invest in individual coins.

It’s like in back in 2004 – if I could have invested in the concept of video-sharing over the internet, it would have been a no brainer. The need was obvious, and technology was certainly heading that way.

And you would have made a motza.

But you can’t invest in concepts. You can only invest in companies.

And that introduces a whole lot of complexity and uncertainty.

And they’re concepts I just don’t like to see attached to my investments. I’m a simple guy at heart.

Anyway, there was some other news this week that has made me rethink the whole crypto currency proposition.

What news?

Yep, one of the largest investment banks in the world, and depending on what conspiracy theory blog you subscribe to, is responsible for AIDS and faking the moon-landing. They’ve just brought out their own currency.

They’re calling it SETLcoin, and it aims to help parties settle share transactions. There’s a niche here. Currently it can take up to three days to settle a share trade. SETLcoin will make it instantaneous.

I was excited about crypto-currencies when I thought they were being built by 14-year old Japanese boys in their bedroom on retro-fitted Sega-64. But if we’re talking about one of the wealthies banks in the world?!?

That’s an entirely different story.

But I guess when you step back and look at it, it was always going to go this way wasn’t it? Money is power, and the powerful aren’t just about to let money get ‘democratised’ out of their control are they?

To be honest, I’m feeling a little deflated today.

I feel like it’s similar the revolution going on in the media. Traditional newspapers are dying. Their readership is too broad, their business models obsolete.

But rather than getting agenda and vested-interest free micro media – media created by the people for the people – we’re getting fake news. We’re just getting BS.

Apparently a bunch of those fake news sites in the last US election were just built by bored kids in Serbia, just looking to make a buck.

And crypto-currency, rather than democratising money, could just be about to concentrate it in hands even less accountable than our governments (low bar I know).

That’s not going to be an improvement.

And as strange as it is to say, I think I prefer a government controlled money to money controlled by Goldman-Sachs, or whatever global financial powerhouse it ends up being.

Suddenly, I’m pro-government?!?

Oh dear, oh dear.

Turns out that revolution I was waiting for… well, looks like it’s going to be a little further off than I thought.

It’s enough to drive a man to drink.

What does the crypto-currency future look like to you?

NO B.S. FRIDAY: A totally legit way to bribe the PM

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I show you a totally above-board way of bribing the Prime Minister, not that anyone seems to care…

Ok, imagine this. The secret order of Templar Space Lizards has gathered together. They drinking brandy (or virginal blood) from fine crystal glasses, deep in their velvet and chestnut wood lined lair.

One of them has just become the leader of a small, supposedly free, nation.

He’s hitting up the other Templar Space Lizard Knights for more money to carry out his evil plans.

The other Knights say no. What have you done for us lately, they say. We need to see more out of you, young knight. Give us something to invest in.

But then, a journalist manages to escape with a transcript of the meeting, and he publishes it in his paper.

The public see that their supposed democracy is a sham, and they rise up in an orgy of violence and revenge and witty social media memes.

Finally, the Templar Space Lizard Knights are cast out, and democracy is saved.

An American President, on a war boat safely anchored in Hawaii, claims the credit.

Sounds far fetched, right? You could never sell it to Hollywood.

But then read this article from the AFR..

The Turnbull government’s strained relationship with corporate Australia has come under more duress following some heated exchanges between the Prime Minister and the nation’s leading chief executives at a private dinner in Sydney on Monday night.

…The dinner was attended by board members of the Business Council of Australia – president Grant King, chief executive Jennifer Westacott, Richard Goyder, Ian Narev and Catherine Tanna. Other CEOs and BCA members included the ANZ’s Shayne Elliott and BHP’s Andrew Mackenzie. The dinner was held in the board room of Sydney law firm King & Wood Mallesons.

One source said Mr Turnbull, who handed over $1.8 million of his own money to help the cash-strapped Liberal Party get through the 2016 election campaign, prevailed upon corporate Australia to help out more.

…Another source said… “There hasn’t been support for big business why would we support the government on anything?”

There was universal support for the company tax cuts and a reaffirmation from business that the government must persist with trying to legislate the reminder of its plan which, by 2026-27, would deliver a company tax rate of 25 per cent for all corporations.

As a former treasurer of the Liberal Party, Mr Turnbull knows how hard it is to get money out of donors, he said.

“They have got to have something to invest in. It’s not like here’s our money and we’re going to back you.”

Um… That’s pretty much the first part of my story.

And the second? Well, I ran some social media analytics on “Violent Uprising”, and there’s barely a murmur.

For some reason, and it still baffles me why, we think this is normal.

The Prime Minister is sitting down to a private dinner with the richest and most powerful people in the country.

He asks them for more money.

They say, well, you haven’t done much for us lately. You’ve got to give us something to ‘invest’ in. It’s not like our political donations are just charity, you know.

Except that they are “charity”. That’s what we’re asked to believe whenever anyone wonders whether it’s a good idea to let billionaires buy politicians.

“Oh no, political donations are not about buying influence. We’re just happy to support Australia’s glorious democracy.”

It’s a lie so ridiculous it’s breath-taking when you stop and think about it. And yet somehow we’re expected to believe that politicians can govern in the public interest when private money is paying the bills.

What’s worse, it feels like politicians are getting more brazen about it. Like, they’ve just stopped pretending that a career in politics isn’t mostly about setting yourself up for a cruisy and well paid appointment, post-politics.

Remember when Ian MacFarlane resigned from parliament. He was the resources minister in the Abbott government, and oversaw the knifing of the resource tax.

Abbott got up in parliament and said on the day of his retirement:

“(Killing the MRRT) was a magnificent achievement by the member for Groom in his time as minister … and I hope the sector will acknowledge and demonstrate their gratitude to him in his years of retirement from this place.”

He actually said that. In public.

And what do you think he meant by “demonstrate their gratitude”? That maybe they would send him some flowers once a year on his birthday? Or that they would “look after him” financially?

As it turns out, and I’m sure its just coincidence, within months, MacFarlane was appointed to the highly paid role of CEO of the Queensland Resources Council.

There was also some talk of some flowers.

Now the Coalition does have a policy that politicians should wait at least 18 months before taking up positions like this, for modesty. But MacFarlane argued that the QRC was a state body, and he was a federal minister, so there was no conflict.

Yup.

Politicians are paid generous pensions so they don’t get lured into conflicts like this.

Now you might say, what’s the problem? MacFarlane’s left politics.

But it’s all about signalling.

You want to know how to bribe the Prime Minister and be totally above board about it?

Find a previous Prime Minister – I’m sure Kevin Rudd would be up for it – and pay them a ridiculous amount for something ridiculous. I’m thinking the $500K Hilary Clinton was paid to go and do balloon animals at the Goldman Sachs Christmas party.

Then you call up the current Prime Minister and say, “Oh, did you hear I paid Kevin Rudd $5 million to do a nudie run at my mates bucks party? Anyway, on a completely unrelated note, I’d like to talk to you about these annoying anti-slavery regulations.”

The message is very, very clear. Look after us, and we’ll look after you. Give us something to ‘invest in’ and we’ll invest in you.

And democracy, as we like to imagine it is when we’re bombing other countries in the name of freedom, is a joke.

This is where we’re at.

And yup, still nothing on those social media analytics.

At least give me a meme people.

How else could you bribe the PM in the current system?