What is Crypto?

The first time I was asked that question, my mind flooded with countless answers. Panicked, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind and said, “It’s a troll on the financial system.”

Funny enough, I still love that answer. I see crypto as a social experiment, an identity, a religion, a lifestyle, and much more. It is also an unapologetic reflection of the human condition that can launch dreams or ruin lives. Many tokens are scams or puffery, but amidst the noise, there’s a growing community that is determined to unlock its potential in the best of ways.

Smart contracts and crypto are changing how we signal and trust by redefining the concepts of money, governance, allegiances, and communities. Many crypto projects are modeled after game theory and economic principles employed by central banks and Wall Street, exposing ways in which monetary policies and controls impose a hidden tax (e.g, inflation) upon those who do not understand the system.

By helping these topics enter public knowledge, people will be in a stronger position to achieve financial sovereignty and evolve the legacy systems and misaligned incentives. The perversion and arbitrary assignment of value has caused the world to focus on the bottom line as the end point, leading to destructive practices that make a few people rich while the whole world loses. By transforming the ways in which we measure value, coordinate efforts, hold people accountable, and distribute resources, we can look at the economic problems with fresh eyes, and build a better future.

How to talk to your accountant

(As published in Crypto Accounting News.)

For many, talking to an accountant translates to going over tedious minutia and being haunted by the past when wanting to move on, often with an impending fire of deadlines. Cryptocurrency compounds the process by turning tried and true systems on their head for the sake of innovation. Accountants are by nature neurotic and seek to minimize administrative pain for all parties involved, and are working hard to revise systems so that crypto can be streamlined.

Here are a few tips to get ahead in the game.

Provide crypto scope

It is possible to demystify some of the black box of accounting by leading part of it yourself. An accountant performs tasks based on their understanding of your business and the information available. A walkthrough of the business flow, volume, and nature of crypto activity builds a solid starting foundation.

Explain the context in which you use cryptocurrency, such as whether crypto assets are treated as an investment, a payment, or dapp. Include details on technologies touching the blockchain such as offchain activity, crypto contracts, and third party dapps. 

Developing a personally tailored accounting solution

If you have periodic exchange or Coinbase activity and don’t plan to increase volume, a traditional accountant may be able to help. A limited engagement such as a one-off consult, compilation, or tax filing may be an economical option to escalate to professional crypto accounting support. 

Enterprise operations such as building dapps, running an ICO or exchange, or looking for crypto attest services may need more extensive expertise. Startups at inception benefit from early planning. Ideally, entities with significant crypto usage engage long term ongoing support and leverage existing software to help automate processes.

For organic crypto adoption, such as receiving payment in crypto, many existing accountants evolve their skills as the crypto space comes to them. It may be helpful to retain an established crypto accountant to expedite learning and employ latest practices. 

Hint: Most accountants follow cycles such as year end close and tax deadlines. Working around industry crunch time can help with both search and negotiation.  

Be proactive in speaking with your accountant

Push consistent updates and reports to your accountant. It’s best not to rely solely on requests. Staying current helps catch nuances early on, Some strategy and tax positions and cannot be adopted after the fact. 

Designate what information will be documented and what you want provided by your accountant. Organize supporting documentation unless you want to pay extra for organizing as part of the engagement. In general, do not trust third party dapps to hold records long term. Many are still under development and do not provide records suitable for accounting.

Start early.  The more you wait, the more you pay

Let not the crypto slow you from finding an accounting solution. On some level, accounting is still accounting, it just needs to happen crypto-style in a way that works for you. There are emergent solutions that can assist in the transition to crypto accounting, typically involving a blend of human and software. Your accountant, lawyer, or friend may be able to make a recommendation. Plan ahead to optimize workflow, avoid rework, and minimize cost. 

Managing crypto wallets, the accountant's way - Save time (and money)

(As published in Crypto Accounting News)

In a world where digital tokens can be cryptographically transferred to bypass the expensive and maddening red tape of banks and regulators, people are working faster and cheaper than ever, inventing new ecosystems, and transacting around the globe.

Then tax season hits and it’s time to file with an accountant. This is the moment when many discover the nightmare crypto is to traditional accounting systems and the challenges of reporting for these digital properties.

As accountants, this is challenging, yet presents an opportunity to equip clients with proper tools to ensure books are in order and efficient to maintain. Here are some of the best practices you can share with your clients on handling crypto wallets which will ease the work to be done at tax season.

Best Practice #1: Document and use wallets with a defined purpose

Clients may be tempted to treat crypto wallets as bank accounts or share control of a wallet. Good wallet management can save a lot of administrative headaches. If there is a repeatable process that generates similar purpose transactions, it may be best to have a dedicated wallet. Document a clear use case for the wallet and custodian for the key(s), and each key should belong to a single user.

Example: Mary Sue runs a business where she pays bills and receives makes sales in crypto. Since one activity is tied to revenue and one tied to vendor payment, it may be wise to use two wallets.

There is some debate on whether wallets can be used with specific identification or FIFO by token. It is ideal to research and develop a tax strategy prior to putting wallets into use.

Best Practice #2: Record all transaction data proactively

If you think clients will do it later, stop! Make sure you adopt good practices as soon as possible. Unlike a bank or credit card statement, there are no names to help identify transactions. This means if they can’t remember, no one may ever know.

Some key items to request from a client:

  1. Date

  2. Counterparty

  3. Transaction Type (Incoming/Outgoing/Transfer/Failed)

  4. How much? (both crypto and currency of choice)

  5. Description/Purpose

  6. Transaction hash*

  7. Receipts/Backup

 

When in doubt, record all relevant transaction data, including smart contracts that are not transferring funds. Encourage clients that are highly technical to automate recordkeeping.

*While a transaction hash stores some data, it is best that the details can be easily seen all in one place without clicking through a link.

Best Practice #3: Set up and document a pricing methodology

Pricing sources of cryptocurrency can change fast, be incomplete, vary across exchanges and aggregators, and even disappear. Clients should understand the importance of recording the crypto price at the time of a transaction, in units of the base currency, and with supporting records whenever possible.

For Ethereum and ERC 20 tokens, Etherscan now shows a historical and current price. Some clients may default to this pricing mechanism. This is not a recommended strategy as the pricing is not transparent and may change over time. When clients insist on Etherscan, they should document and screenshot the notated value as an exported excel sheet is not proof of pricing without additional backup. They will need to stay current or use a third party to guarantee pricing.

You are not alone

Thankfully, the crypto community is highly collaborative and loves automation. Crypto decentralized applications across the board are in the early growing pains, but new solutions are emerging every day. Many accountants find it fruitful to connect at conferences, seminars, and crypto events to address emerging challenges. By working together, sharing best practices and utilizing new technologies, we can create accounting processes better than we could even imagine possible for traditional finance.

On timing of timing

We all could benefit from the study of time and communication, also known as chronemics. Inner personal experience and nuanced connection bends through the lens of language and culture, which come with deluge of assumptions and expectations, not to mention underlying motivations. What might be intended from an interaction may not be what is received by the audience.

By learning more about how culture views time, confusion becomes insight, reaction becomes reflection, and alienation becomes connection. Taken a step farther, the meanings of time can extend to subcultures and individual personalities.

By prioritizing the message intended, instead of what might be lost in translation, empathy and understanding get the front row, and perhaps, makes someone's day.

On timing (data of the data)

Analysts of all kinds study integrity, transformation, and presentation of data.

The human mind can only handle so much information (3-7 visual concepts at once). To have the best effect and immediate influence, a common GIS philosophy applied at Carnegie Mellon is to minimize ink, simplify symbols, and limit visual categorization overall.

Entire books are dedicated to the topic of translating numbers to charts and graphs. Data scientists are constantly seeking to improve predictive models to run effectively and efficiently in consideration of potentially fickle audiences.

Why, what, and who are important. The best solutions also consider when.

Timing of information is critical to business and social connection. At first glance, early knowledge may seem best, and in many cases this is true.

However, consequences in human timing is social and mercurial, and highly sensitive to the culture, and immediate pressures and whims of the audience at hand.

On Failure

Failure is one of my favorite teachers (though perhaps not in the immediate moment). It’s renews the love of a dream, challenges innovation, and builds fortitude.

The real mind fuck is how easy it is to believe a success is a failure, but hard to remember that failing is mandatory for success.

I thus hail you, dear mentor and transient state. I am determined to laugh at your passing… besides, it makes for the silliest stories.

Technology returns healthcare back to the general public

This article by Dr. Joon Yun, advocates and expresses the inevitability of Healthcare information, empowered the internet offering unparalleled access to current medicinal knowledge, along with rating services of providers, and crowdfunding investment opportunities, brings medicine back to the interests of consumers.

While the internet cannot be relied on to tell people everything, the base increase to general awareness should not be underestimated.

FREE solutions (with a little self inspiration)

In current times how-to videos proliferate the internet. Below are a few quick ways to save a bit of cash by taking the time to DIY, or “do it yourself”.

Google “DIY” and click on videos. Youtube is a very popular hub.

Categories of DIY:
o    Fix
o    Craft/Build
o    Carpentry – though be careful and leave big projects to the experts

What to NOT DIY
o    Do NOT fix your motorcycle, a mistake could cause critical failure
o    Do NOT treat medicinal remedies as a foregone solution, if problems continue, consult a doctor
o    With crafts, it may be cheaper to actually buy certain components online, many places offer wholesale discounts.

Other free online searches (that do not require the label DIY)
o    Food – if your favorite food is expensive and served at a deli, it can also likely be made in mass and constructed from many free recipes
o    Learning

The gray lines of who and what we are

Iain banks creates a universe known as the Culture containing many drones and minds, which are AI equipped with powerful computational capabilities assumed to match and in some cases greatly exceed human complexity. They are often weaponized and treated as full citizens of the culture, frequently in roles superior to humans, whom in many ways are cultivated and overseen in a manner that echoes agrarian methods.

It is interesting to note that there is no word in our language that can better translate empathy of a machine to human without anthropomorphism, because of our linguistic (and consequently cultural) limitations due to our frame of reference. 

Even basic electronics and plumbing hardware use the term male to female. Why is the existence and naming of gender so inherently and deeply connected with our ability for compassion? Even people name their boats, cars, etc, and there is some gender assumed or implied, or if there is not, it is almost a radical, counter cultural statement.

Machines being disconnected from something as base as gender is just one of many potential instinctive biological objections humans might have. Is it better for humans become more like machines or to bend machines to become more like humans? Which would allow for a more peaceful and efficient merging as we progress towards transhumanism?

So many people view and define the informational singularity as a sudden explosive occurrence, but what if the process were slow, insidious, and organic, much like an evolutionary path of many parasite-host (or symbiotic) relationships ... even now, we may already be in the midst of transition.

Data Science Gone Wrong

Bad Maps

Cartastophe is a website dedicated to studying poorly created maps provides a wide berth of map imagery and in depth commentary that range from criticizing bad map design principles.

Mistakes made by the infamous quants

It turns out common mistakes made by financial quants mirror common mistakes made in data science in general. This article references tendencies towards overfitting, training the model on training data versus test data, and consequences of overly complex models.

Dangers of cumulative consequences

Because data science is perceived as a nascent profession, it is currently funded and supported as a viable new mode of problem solving. However, with an abundance of mistakes and limited awareness, there is a risk that the profession, with many of the pitfalls and limitations similar to the field of statistics, will become once again marginalized and misunderstood.

It's okay to admit a bad thing sucks.

I give myself permission not to forgive everything that happens.

My grandmother was a miserable woman, who’s final words upon her deathbed were intended to hurt my loving father as much as possible, who had dropped everything to drive across the country in her final hour of need. I refused to go to her funeral. People said I would regret that choice. Turns out they were right, I do regret, but not because I forgave her. Rather, I wish that I had been there to support my father when he stood at her grave.

Society pressures forgiveness for the sanctity of ‘positive’ relationships. People forget that when asking for forgiveness, they demand from the very ones wronged, seeking an absolution rather than healing.

While we wait to feel forgiveness and have others forgive, time ruthlessly marches on. The consequential inner distress risks haunting us endlessly until we find harmony within ourselves. Forgiveness is a good when it happens, but cannot be forced, nor always given, even when someone wants to or thinks that they should.

I prefer to promote compassion, understanding, and empathy. We do not need to feel ‘right’ about what others do, but we do need to learn how to live with others different than ourselves. It is grounding to surrender to the many things that beyond our understanding and control, including, sometimes, our own feelings.

How to type math symbols (for the nerdy)

I highly recommend LaTeX, (pronounced lah-tekh and not like a BSDM costume). Originally TeX, written and developed by Stanford professor Donald Knuth, to help with typesetting. LaTeX came later, developed by Leslie Lamport. LaTeX came as a macro package involving the TeX command structure to help for better formatting for documents involving mathematics, which tend to use non ascii symbols and notations, in addition to formatting that is incredibly difficult if not impossible to type out using normal systems. LaTeX can also be used to perform tasks that would be included in a MS Word program such as indexing, citation, etc, it is possible to compose an entire document in LaTeX and it can be used on all platforms including Windows, Mac and Linux, just be sure your recipient does not expect it in Word.

Since then LateX has benefited from a variety of contributions and additions from numerous authors, which have now evolved into a combination of TeX and LaTeX distributions, not so different from the organic development of Linux.

Execution of LaTeX looks similar to old typing programs where formatting occurred written directly with instructions directly notated within the text to execute as commands, making the learning curve similar to a computer language. It can be written from within a text editor and must be run to show output.

On Trolling

Trolling has becoming a recent popular topic among friends. While funny, entertaining, cathartic, and many other things, it in and of itself does not serve to actually improve things and can destructively impact valid ideas still in the seeding process. My approach, as has been applied to many other areas of my life, will now be applied to all social forums. It boils down to simply asking "why not?" instead of "why", and building instead of tearing things down.

Therefore, aside from the irresistible moments where trolling serves to enlighten and not harm, I resolve to "troll screen" (for lack of better term) all my writing and focus on constructive thoughts. I formally wave my white flag, and withdraw from the noisy exchanges of ego driven banter for its own sake.

Individuals may differ on the surface, but all share common bonds

On Brown's theory of human universals. Even if you hate your neighbor, you may be more similar than first glance.

One significant source of complication in interpersonal relationships appears to lie in the delta between private universes of individuals interpreting external variables. This is further convoluted through generations of cultivated perspective and formative culture, in which we pile on cumulative layers of abstraction to the point where rote rituals suppress our awareness of baser driving forces.

There is some freedom in understanding such needs, rather than sublimating them to the subconsciousness. In the face of such awareness, it becomes easier to deviate from societal institutions in exchange for personal beliefs, some of which, your neighbor might find quite abhorrent.

A trade as it were, more freedom and autonomy, more room to innovate, but greater risk of drifting into unstable corruption and loss of value. Technology advances us to be more connected than ever, but also to feel more alone than ever.

In the comforts of isolation, we have forgotten the cost of civil unrest. It is likely that your neighbor too, feels alone, and could use a friend more than ever.

Flow

Extracting a small stream of conscious from an overactive mind...

Flow, with its many definitions ranging from a fully engaged brain to the movement of organic liquids, seems widely desirable provided that the initializing elements are also desirable. In this case the focus is on flow as a mental state. I imagine the meta state of flow manifests as optimally implemented intelligent targeting with respect to the many targeting elements (such as time, interactive variables, desired outcome).

As a function for a single human confined to a single mental universe, it might be represented as such: Flow(Flow).

"Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity."

Food for thought: Consider both the motivations and social implications of directing, redirecting, and misdirecting the state of flow in others. Certainly, the most optimal distraction is one in which that person is wholly occupied, and what better than to have them in a state of flow doing exactly what is wanted.