The Painful Psychological Block Entrepreneurs Suffer When They Ask the Wrong Questions

Deep research for deep thinking.

When you’re an entrepreneur and you’re in the investment world, the first question you should ask yourself would be:

How does my brain actually work? How does it wire itself? How do external conditions affect my bias?

If most people really dig into how the brain works, they would understand that there is a hidden force that is so powerful that it can recognize most events before they happen.

And for me, that’s the main reason some entrepreneurs thrive and others don’t. I have been investing in the stock market since 2017 and lucky for me, I’ve never lost money. But I also know we’re in the longest bull market in history and I also see the market is flooded with money.

For me, that’s a sign; that’s why I sold 90% of my portfolio last month. I see signs everywhere that the economy is being pumped artificially. So, I’m out. If the stock market keeps getting higher over the next two years, without something severe happening, I’m not afraid of missing out.

Why? Because I know we live in very volatile times: inflation is a serious threat, the bond market transformed itself into an irrational system. I prefer to wait and see.

So, yes, the questions we ask are crucial to our success as entrepreneurs.

Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers. — Tony Robbins.

If there’s something we don’t understand, we must create the right questions. And those questions compel us to investigate deeply on a particular subject.

Most readers don’t know what’s going on in depth with the blockchain and Bitcoin technology. Through their arguments and the questions they’re asking, it’s clear that the level of knowledge they have on the matter is superficial.

So, what kind of questions should every entrepreneur be asking about Bitcoin?

What did Satoshi Nakamoto create, and what is Bitcoin?

Nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is. But a lot of people know what he/she/they did. The pseudonym used by the individual or group of people who developed Bitcoin has become an almost mythical story due to the anonymity of the creator.

Yet if Satoshi didn’t write the 9-page white paper, Bitcoin wouldn’t exist.

In August 2008, the domain name bitcoin.org was quietly registered online. Two months later, a paper entitled ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System’ was passed around a cryptography mailing list.- Zöe Bernard and Grace Kay from businessinsider.com

Whatever the Bitcoin project will be in the future, it’s evident that a one trillion dollar market cap signifies something important.

And the Bitcoin protocol created by an anonymous person right after the Great Recession of 2008 is a sign that something is fundamentally wrong with the current system.

If someone like Satoshi Nakamoto, in the early stage of its creation, said: What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party — it’s because there is a severe TRUST issue in the global financial system. So, what is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a type of cryptocurrency. There are no physical bitcoins, only balances kept on a public ledger that everyone has transparent access to. All bitcoin transactions are verified by a massive amount of computing power. Bitcoins are not issued or backed by any banks or governments, nor are individual bitcoins valuable as a commodity.- Investopedia.com.

Nobody knows what will be in the near future of the global financial world. Nobody can predict it. And we don’t even know if the cryptographic technology is the perfect solution to all of our economic problems.

However, I started to deeply study the Bitcoin protocol and what was happening in the blockchain world because if Bitcoin turns out to be a better solution, I want to make part of the millions that believe the code is more reliable than human trust.

The first question I asked was, What’s Bitcoin and the Blockchain?

Making assumptions about a specific subject without knowing deeply what you are talking about is working on the surface. Whoever works superficially will always have superficial results.

How is Bitcoin going to solve the systemic problems of global financial policies?

It’s difficult to predict the future of the financial system, but all we know is that the Bitcoin protocol was written by Satoshi Nakamoto with a purpose:

The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be authorized to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts.- Satoshi Nakamoto

At the present time, it’s very curious to read this paragraph from Satoshi because very recently, the DeFi (Decentralized Finance) companies started to promote lending products. BlockFi is one of the most popular lending DeFi companies doing it.

Yet, the new DeFi system doing the lending structures is overcollateralizing Bitcoin.

Let me explain it better. For example, imagine you have your house already paid off, and its value is $500,000. So you take out a loan against your house of $250,000. The house is immediately settling in a liquid market that trades 24/7, including holidays. The house can be immediately settled if its valuation starts to approach the parity of the loan you took.

Basically, if you want to make a $250,000 loan in dollars, you have to make a deposit of $500,000 in Bitcoin.

The exciting thing is that DeFi is heading to a peer-to-peer lending system, which seems to be a safer system than the one banks have today.

We’ll see.

Is Bitcoin going to be a global currency?

I recently posted an article about Jack Mallers and his company, Strike. Mallers’ company trades any currency in any country in the world using the lightning network, which we could call blockchain 2.0, using Bitcoin as an intermediary to trade pesos for dollars, or dollars for pounds, 24/7, 365, in any part of the globe, at a minimum cost, at the speed of light.

Bitcoin is going to have several utilities. Personally, I think Bitcoin is going to be a financial tool to build several financial instruments, but in the end, Bitcoin is going to be a hard asset- a safe-haven asset like gold or real estate.

For now, in some countries where the governments dictate and devalue their currencies, I believe millions of citizens will try to use Bitcoin to trade against their own currency.

Who controls the Bitcoin network?

Nobody owns the Bitcoin network.

Bitcoin is controlled by all users around the world. The developers are continually improving the software, but they can’t force a change in the Bitcoin protocol. No developer can change the protocol because all users can choose what software and version they use.

The expression “decentralized” means everybody controls everybody. Millions of blocks are built in the blockchain, one after the other, with protocols between the parties and the miners’ validation (the ones that produce the Bitcoins), making the system, to date, inviolable.

How does one acquire bitcoins?

For now, the commercial banks can’t trade Bitcoin. However, I believe it’s a question of time.

Square and Paypal have the option to buy Bitcoin. But DeFi companies are the place where you can buy and sell Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The most popular platforms are Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, and Binance. In Europe, I use Bitstamp.

You download the app on your phone, authenticate that you’re not a robot, and you can buy and hold (it’s called HODL) or trade Bitcoin.

All these DeFi companies had to go through tight regulatory scrutiny, but right now, they are financial structures just like any commercial bank you know.

Final Thought

Whether you’re talking about Bitcoin and blockchain or talking about cooking, photography, wildlife, or writing tips, you have to be better at the questions you create.

We see many writers on this platform and in the blogosphere talking about subjects in a very superficial way.

Profoundly reflecting on the kind of questions we ask puts us on another level of thought.

Before I write about a particular topic, I draft several questions on my whiteboard. Then I reread them, delete some, and write others. As time goes on, the questions that survive my demanding office will be the questions that will give me the answers I want.

The second step is to start my own research to get to the very essence of what I will write about.

When you find yourself doing these demanding exercises relative to your questions, you will see the results of your research appear in a more profound, better-grounded, and more enriching way.

This process has only one end: becoming a more interesting, more cultured, more responsible person for the message you send abroad. And inadvertently, you become a more respected writer.

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