- jaypeters.dev
- Posts
- The Cloud, Crypto and Game Theory
The Weekly Variable
A new website, a new podcast, a new investment strategy and general strategies for life. Let’s break it down.
Topics for this week:
divs.placeholder
Slowly but surely, divs.cloud is coming to life.
I experimented with a fancier landing page at first, but decided it might be better to go with a more straightforward style for now.
As far as the copy goes, I’ll focus on Salesforce solutions, but if things go well, overtime I’ll expand to more generalized “cloud” branding beyond Salesforce.
Until then, I’ll continue finishing up the website design and preparing for a potential client.
Clearly this is an early first draft of a site, quite a bit of work left including updating all the wording and getting some graphics in there, but I could use your feedback.
I’ve been looking at Dovetail and Glue for inspiration in addition to keeping Salesforce styling in mind, but if you have any ideas for design direction, let me know!
Delegating Work
A week behind but I finally uploaded episode 7 of The Dev Sync and it’s all about delegation - at least for most of the conversation anyway.
To be honest, we don’t tend to prepare much for the podcast. Maybe a text to talk about topics before hand, then usually 5 or 10 minutes of catching up and finalizing a direction right before we jump into it.
I still get slightly nervous that we won’t talk long enough to create a full episode - I usually have a minimum of 25 minutes in mind - but every episode so far has surprised me when I check the time and we’re already at 45 minutes.
Even this episode with just Eric and I ended up being over an hour.
Eric has more experience than I do in delegating, but we both have plenty of opinions on when, how and what to delegate and balancing that fine line of delegation vs micro-management.
If you’ve enjoyed the last few episodes, I think you’ll enjoy this one too.
It is a bit of a commitment at over an hour, but feel free to check it out and let me know what you think. We’re 7 episodes in, but aiming for 21 as our first big milestone so we’d be happy to incorporate any feedback on making it better in future episodes!
Long Term Crypto Strategies
I wouldn’t self identify as a cryptobro but I could see how someone would mistake me for one.
I usually try to avoid the condescension, though.
I’ve watched a few Max Maher videos in the past, but I didn’t realize he was a fellow cryptobro until I saw this video, and I’m still figuring out why it stuck with me beyond the obvious click-bait “turn $26 into $2.7 million”.
Watching the video, Max introduces Kyle Chisamore as a crypto advisor for his crypto investment service and I really liked Kyle’s system for identifying trade opportunities.
I’ve had some success with Ethereum, Solana and Bitcoin all from basically buying and holding but I was essentially guessing.
I follow crypto (technically Bitcoin isn’t considered a crypto) prices enough to know what highs and lows look like by casually checking a couple times a week or month.
But Kyle is a full time trader and found some really powerful charts that show data to explain what I was feeling.
Kyle demonstrates how he tracks the cycle of high and low for Bitcoin using a few market factors, but the main ones for me were the charts for unrealized gains.
Using some of the charts he recommends, I can put data to what I was casually guessing before.
One advantage of crypto is that you can see all transactions, so you know the prices people bought at and how much they are holding, meaning you also know how much of the market is in profit and likely to sell.
You can also see when prices are low, or when a large percentage of holders have crypto that is at a loss.
This creates a straightforward enough strategy: buy in the green, sell in the red.
Except for the hard part.
These charts only work for long periods of time, not day trading.
You have to wait for significant changes. Most people tend to follow what’s popular and not wait.
I’ve been operating on a buy-low sell-high strategy of my own, but it’s really just loosely paying attention to the market and guessing.
With these charts, I can have more solid data to back decisions.
It’s a fun crypto video if you’re interested. Always nice to dream about making millions in the market. And it’s always easier said than done.
Simple but not easy.
I’ll be looking more into Kyle’s strategies to supplement some long-term diversification, but you can get an idea of his strategy below and join us in the title of cryptobro (not all cryptobros are male).
The My First Million podcast has referenced Kevin Van Trump a few times now and apparently they have been trying to get him to make an appearance for 4 years, but I completely understand why they wanted him on the show.
Kevin seems like a super sharp guy who’s great at breaking down complicated concepts into simpler ideas, which I’m sure is a key component to his success.
He writes a newsletter about farm crop futures and has over 30,000 subscribers that read it at $600 a subscription so his newsletter alone is doing quite well.
He talks about how he got into the investment world, how he started his newsletter, how he runs a few other businesses with his family and gives advice on looking for business opportunities as well as attending conferences outside your comfort zone to keep a fresh perspective and open mind.
I can’t do it enough justice here, but glad MFM was finally able to get him on the show.
A longer episode at over an hour, but a fun listen:
Game Theory
I always think I know Game Theory until someone starts to explain it, then realize I don’t actually know Game Theory, so this was a nice refresher from Veritasium.
I can’t help but appreciate the fact that this example uses programs to simulate different Game Theory strategies, but draws some fascinating parallels to the real world.
The game is simple. You and your partner can vote green or red.
If you both vote green, you both get 3 points
If one votes green and one votes red, red wins 5 point and green gets 0
If you both vote red, you both get 1 point
Winner has the most points at the end
The strategy that almost always won was Tit for Tat. Be cooperative until someone was uncooperative, then go back to being cooperative.
I’m going to spoil the video here but here’s the 4 qualities they determined in the winners of the game:
Nice - there’s a better chance of winning if you’re nice, never be the first one to vote red
Forgiving - even if your partner votes red against you, forgive them for it after retaliating once
Retaliatory - don’t just let them vote against you without voting against them
Clear - don’t have some complicated plan that can’t be understood then your partner won’t know what to expect and won’t know what to do
This is a rough breakdown, but he parallels this idea of the game quite well with real life.
Cooperation is highly beneficial in almost all scenarios, but don’t be a pushover either. Retaliate when needed, but don’t hold a grudge. And don’t act in a way that can’t be understood or predicted (assuming you want the benefit of cooperation).
It’s something I think about quite a bit and will eventually write a blog post about… one of these days. Until then, learn about life and Game Theory first:
And that’s it for this week! A new website, a couple podcasts, some crypto, and a strategy to be successful at life.
Those are the links that stuck with me throughout the week and a glimpse into what I personally worked on.
If you want to start a newsletter like this on beehiiv and support me in the process, here’s my referral link: https://www.beehiiv.com/?via=jay-peters. Otherwise, let me know what you think at @jaypetersdotdev or email [email protected], I’d love to hear your feedback. Thanks for reading!