#SYDWAC - What Are You Learning About?

Your certified high performance coach, Sean Butner. And today we're talking about what are you learning? So I'm trying out this new format where on Tuesdays I'll be sharing things that I'm paying attention, things that I think are important, things that I'm curious about. So I've had a couple of conversations this week about blockchain and crypto. So I thought I'd share some of the stuff that I've been paying attention to. Attention to over the years and maybe how it could practically impact us moving forward with the caveat that I am still just kind of wrapping my head around it. So I wanted it to be an open conversation. So if you have any good resources that you are talking are looking at about blockchain and crypto, please share them. I am not interested in investing advice, giving it or receiving it. So please refrain from like go buy all the bitcoins or don't buy all the bitcoins or the dogecoin or whatever. That's not what this is about. But it's more of a. I want Tuesdays to be an exploration day for everyone because I think if we can get back and connect with that sense of awe and wonder and how things are changing out in the world, that that would be really good. So that said, let's talk about crypto, let's talk about blockchain, right? So as someone that has been adjacent to tech pretty much my whole life, right, like, you know, when I was six or seven years old, our family inherited a computer from my grandmother who needed word processing for her job. So it's pretty awesome. And being a six year old kid that was always interested in video games, my job became how do I get that thing to play some things? And over erasing the hard drive over and over and over again to the patience to and acknowledging the patience of my parents that sparked this lifelong interest in technology and computers, you know, by trying to figure out that problem when I was young, I started talking to neighbors that were in the computers. You pick up how to like modify hardware, you pick up how to not accidentally, you know, erase the operating system, like basic things like that. And surprisingly like it became a hobby that translated into a career in software and studying information systems for my master's degree. So like, you know, there's a lot of interest and so that perspective, I think bringing this to an emerging technology like blockchain, I, I think is pretty good. So the analogy I, I think I like to make with blockchain is it feels like it, it's like the Internet in the early 90s, right. It was happening. People are trying to figure out what to do with it. Nobody knows how it's really going to turn out. Everyone is starting to kind of catch on that it's going to have huge implications in the economy in our day to day lives. And you have a couple of things like you know, the people auction in March, I think, where some guy sold Internet digital art on a traditional auction for crypto for 70, like 69, $70 million. So which is insane, right? So the biggest sale of digital anything, you know, at an auction through the, the sky and it's, it's starting to kind of highlight how this is going to transform stuff. So if we're thinking about, you know, I could go into the very technical, how blockchain works and stuff. There's plenty of information out there. You know, the base term is like it's a ledger of ownership. So connected in a chain, technical, technical stuff. And I still don't quite understand how to articulate it, so I won't try. But basically it's a ledger of ownership, I guess for the sake of this exploratory thing. So how is it going to impact how we do things? Well, you have, there's articles I think in the Economist this year that the U.S. treasury is looking into crypto. China has been pushing to put its currency on crypto. There's a lot of big institutions like you know, JP Morgan Chase and bit. I think PayPal this past week also decided that you can take bitcoins now, you know, so it's credit card through PayPal or cryptocurrency. Coinbase just had its big IPO I believe. So I'm going to do a more formal article than just this kind of talking through the stuff that I observed so far. And so you have big institutional players, you have governments, you have, a lot of the technology is starting to get known. You have these big auctions that are highlighting stuff. You have IPOs of cryptocurrency, blockchain stuff. So there's a lot of movement in the market. Right, which is why I think now is kind of the time to start thinking about it. Because, you know, I, I've had friends that have worked at like blockchain think tanks and stuff here in the Valley and it seemed a little too early. You know, I think there were some, some key technologies that needed to be developed or problems that needed to be solved like the crypto wallets. And I haven't done any research on how that's evolved in the last couple years. So if you know of any good ways to like keep track of all your digital assets, that would be cool to know. But where do I think, why do I think this is a pretty big deal for business, Right. So other than currency, right. You have like with the people auction, you have someone that can sell art, you know, the, the ownership of art for you know, $5,000. But you also have this weird way where because it's code and because they can do like a contract with it that if there's any further sales down the line. So if I make some art, you buy it for me and then you sell it to your, somebody in your family. Right. I get 90% of that first transaction and maybe 10% of the sale you did to someone else because you could track the ownership back to the person who created it. So that is the simple idea. I think that is going to come up in a lot of cool ways out in the market. So yeah, that's kind of where my head is at right now. I have a lot more research to do. Like I said, I wanted to invite the community to learn on this journey with me. I'll probably do more better research articles than just me remembering things that I read from a while back ago. But yeah, so I think, you know, yeah, there's going to be a lot of, a lot more to talk about coming soon. So I hope you like this. I think next week if I don't have a better thought out crypto conversation, I talk about chess, which has been one of my Covid hobbies I've been focusing on with some of my neighbors this past year, which has been a lot of fun. But yeah, I think this conversation of how are we learning, how are we growing, how are we, you know, developing interests and things outside of work or high performance. It's going to be a good balance of a lot of the like get more stuff done type stuff that we've been doing here on the show normally. So if you like it, let me know. If you don't like it, let me know too. Like I said, I'm just trying something new here on the live show. So. And if you have any questions also let me know. And if you are currently trying to accelerate your learning and you, you feel like you're stuck, you might need a high performance coach. So you can always go to seanbartner.com coaching if that's you. If not, no worries. We'll continue to do the free show every day about 10 o' clock in the morning Pacific standard time Monday through Friday. So that's it, guys. Take care. I'll see you later and.