Speaking to the unborn, POs everywhere, + Crypto answers.
In today's article, I answer a reader's question about Crypto as well as talk about the confusing life of the PO and how I manage to talk to the unborn (spooky).
We are all about two generations away from no one remembering who we are. No matter what we do, or how much money we make, we will just be a name to our great, great-grandchildren. It’s both a sobering and freeing fact, but it’s a big part of why I write. It’s my chance to talk to the unborn just as reading is a way for me to listen to dead people.
In my business, the word PO may be the single most confusing phrase out there, for good reason. This is a normal situation in my world when signing up, and training, a new customer on Mach1.
First, we agree on a contract for them to buy Mach1. They send me a PO to sign.
Then, when they use Mach1 to run their projects, they create contracts and ratesheets. In most industries, the master contract is sometimes, but not always, referred to as a PO.
Then they create a set of work items to run their project. We call these WBS (work breakdown structure) but ultimately they are just tasks. However, each task has a corresponding charge number that they can bill their customer. This is called a PO.
Then, they need to buy things for their project so they create and order in Mach1 to a vendor and they create, you guessed it, a PO.
Trying to explain this to a new employee or customer can be funny. Even funnier is when you do it in New Orleans and order a couple of shrimp sandwiches.
I feel obliged to write about crypto-currency today, given that Bitcoin is above $64K, Etherium is about to hit $4k, the feds recent approval of a Bitcoin ETF, the fact that Russia wants to move away from the US dollar in favor of digital assets in the future, and that my personal portfolio is near an all-time high.
As some of you know by now, I am overall a fan of Crypto in general, but not exactly a fanboy. About 9 out of 10 that you see out there are simply scams but there are truly some fascinating and completely game-changing ideas in that leftover 10%. Who will emerge, and most importantly when, is impossible to predict but no matter what happens, digital assets and decentralization will do to technology what the internet did in the early 2000’s. Web 3.0 is all about the creators and builders making the money, and digital assets will lead the way.
In fact, I believe the traditional businesses, particularly those that involve blue-collar work, will be the biggest benefactors of the new technology. They will not refer to it as Bitcoin or Dogecoin, much like they do not refer to the internet as HTML or TCP/IP Packets, but new higher-level services will emerge that will use digital assets as the underlying tech. This may or may not be an easter egg to a project I am working on next year :)
Still today, Crypto lies in a weird space, somewhere between an incredible opportunity and a garbage dump of unregulated, speculative, FOMO fueled gambling. Both sides of the spectrum are interesting but are very confusing to navigate, which leads to today’s AMA…
Q: My neighbor suggested I buy SHIB coin. What the heck is it and should I invest in it and buy it?
A:
Trying to explain what any of these weird altcoins can be hard because even as I say it the words sometimes do not make sense. The best way I can describe it is in short, very punchy phrases.
SHIB coin is like DogeCoin, which is essentially a meme-fueled "coin” whose primary value is best related to marketing.
It has no real value, or utility, in anything other than attention (eyeballs). However, today's attention is the currency (think Google, Facebook) so if attention is the currency, memes (attention-getters) become market-movers.
There are 1000 other versions of this silly coin. The only real differentiator is the name and the logo.
Some will get rich but 99.8% will lose it all
So, the question about should you invest in this coin is easy - No. Hard Stop.
The question about should you buy is harder. It’s all about gambling. If you are one who likes video poker, playing the lottery, or bettering a 10-team parlay, then go ahead and put a few hundred bucks in it. Just remember that it is just gambling and you should expect to lose it all. But everyone should gamble a little bit, just to try to hit it big and have a little fun watching it. Life is too short not to occasionally visit a sportsbook, throw some dice on a craps table, or, waste $100 on some random coin. If you are looking for cheap thrills (who isn’t), then buy away and have a little fun.
Friday’s AMA will discuss the best place to invest $500K of cash in today’s market, so stay tuned. As always, if you have questions or topics, let me know. No topic is truly off limits but most of my questions are related to business, investing, technology, parenting, and general life Feel free to forward or share this with your friends!
Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay