Decompression time…
Rewind 11 years… Ubud, Bali.
Chatting with a dude morning after ayahuasca ceremony, a seed was planted as he told me he was into cryptocurrency. "Like, Bitcoin…?” I asked, really not knowing much at all then. "Yeah, Bitcoin,” he said with a strikingly warm smile and twinkle in his eye.
Maybe a week or two later, I was sitting in a Bitcoin meetup, staring at the launching presentation for Ethereum. I really didn’t - or even couldn’t - understand what it was about exactly. But I could feel I’d walked into something significant, as subtle as the signal was. (And hot damn, the number of times I’ve questioned what if I’d grokked enough then to load up at its early price of a quarter per token.)
There’s been several times over the last 8 years - my God, how time flies - that there’s been this similar sense with/about Tauchain. T’was the writing of @kevinwong and @dana-edwards that brought it onto the radar and began seeing the first glimpses of its potentials as a similar as significant leap as Ethereum was from Bitcoin in the world of crypto & blockchain. Though in spite of the years that’ve passed as its slowly & surely continued in its development, I still can’t claim to really grasp the full implications or potentials of the innovations occuring with Tau, as the technical details well-exceed my capacity to comprehend them. But every so often when I check back to get an idea of where things are at, there’s still that same sense I had watching that first Ethereum presentation before it actually launched.
But this sense… it’s merely a fractal of the intuition of much bigger technological waves unfolding.
After that seed was planted by my plant-medicine soul-bro and the brief glimpse into the future at that Bitcoin meetup, about a year and half passed without really looking any further. But spring of 2016, the magnetism activated. Whether via some internal instinct, ‘signs’ from the external, or a combo of both, there was this clear feeling: I needed to dive in.
I didn’t know what or how. I didn’t really get why, other than there was surely some kind of financial opportunity ahead. But I just knew: “throw yourself into researching what this is all about and what’s going on in the space.” So I did.
At the time, I couldn’t have known the opportunity would’ve been Steemit. I didn’t even know for a while after discovering it, making a few passes back, following the instinct to just write, and finding out it was indeed legit. I was still just heeding the call to explore the space, get my feet wet, and remain open. While it was as much the years of preparation, study, skill development, life experience, etc. as it was the actual wave of opportunity that unlocked it and enabled me to recognize and surf the wave, I really couldn’t have imagined how drastically life-changing it’d be.
And I’m feeling at another one of those points. This time, with AI.
It’s been a bit over a year since I first got on ChatGPT. It honestly felt like I was late, but… timing, perhaps. First few experiences didn’t make much of an impression, and I really didn’t know where to start, given most of the examples I’d been exposed to pertained to online business owners or coders/programmers - which didn’t seem relevant to me. Though once gaining access to GPT4 for free through CoPilot and beginning to see some of its capabilities for blowing a basic search engine out of the water, my curiosity was sparked.
For months, I took it slow & steady. Nothing completely earth-shattering, but something clicked. And as I realized how damn fast you can get answers to pretty much any question, that curiosity grew. Along with it, the level of detail, nuance and precision in the questions. And correspondingly, a fascination with the results. But still, I was just using for my own personal explorations - nothing monumentally game-changing in regards of business opportunities or creatively. Nonetheless, there’s been an increase in familiarity, comfort and proficiency with the tool. I haven’t known where it’s “leading,” but have just been enjoying the ride - while knowing it’s likely serving the building of a foundation for something yet to come.
But recently, I’m feeling this magnetism to something.
What… I’m not sure.
It’s kinda been growing slowly. Like, it’s clear there’s this huge wave of opportunity and tons of creative potential to build things with this whole new set of tools. And as I’ve been cultivating these foundational skills and enjoying the process, it’s like, it’d be a fucking shame to not put them to use and miss out surfing this wave. But the what…? And how? And, in consideration that money isn’t the same motivator it used to be, why?
So upon moving back to the mountains, I ended up going through hell with snowboard boots… which was perhaps a blessing in disguise - not only leading to a massive upgrade as getting probably bootfitted & schooled in the art, but a good connection & budding friendship with a total savant of a bootfitter…
For the first while, we’d just spend hours geeking out on technicalities of snowboard gear. Then, branching into different territory, the topic of crypto came up. My time to pay forward the seeds, I cracked him open… and in no time, he was deep-diving, with skin in the game. Then a few months ago, I started telling him he needs to get on ChatGPT. And holy fuck. Dude did. And has runnnnnnn with it.
Popping into his shop recently, I was in awe as listening to him share how not only has he been deep-diving learning AI with YouTube, but has been rapidly putting it into practice - with 20 business/app ideas on the go, building them out with ChatGPT and Grok in no-time. There was this fascinating mix of inspiration, admiration, and feeling almost stupid as I’ve still been feeling like I’m in the crawling stage while he’s picked it up and is practically sprinting in record time.
And lemme tell ya: there’s something about having such a friend/peer exploring the same field, face-to-face, feeding back such explorations, discoveries, and undertakings.It’s one thing to play around by yourself and watch YouTube videos of people using a tool in ways that don’t really apply to you; it’s another surf a ADHD-hyperfocus-wave with with a bro you vibe with. And I couldn’t have predicted the impact of the seeds he planted through the feedback.
As unpacking some of his ideas, he leans over - whispering so the lady who shares the space in the back doesn’t hear - telling me one of the things he started: an AI OnlyFans model. And as we continue, he’s kinda insistent: ”you should do it too.”
At first, my instinctual reaction was like, “nah. I wouldn’t want to be a part of that kind of degeneracy. Yeah, you could make $$$, but not for me.”
But after I left, there was this totally unexpected experience.
I could see the judgement & moral self-righteousness at play in my initial reaction. And with some distance created through that observation, another intriguing response presented itself: I almost wanted to do it. And not at all for the reasons I would’ve expected.
While part of my initial resistance was to the idea of having to expend a whole bunch of time & energy on something that didn’t morally align, there’s also the fact requiring consideration: the whole model would be something to get pretty much completely automated - requiring very little time & energy to maintain once up & running. And getting something going in such a fashion - that’s the type of challenge I’ve kinda been interested in / feeling called towards. But in addition to that technical challenge of bringing something creative into form, there was also the challenge of my own judgementality, biases, and preconceptions.
Like, how might I actually be able to do it… in a way that aligned? In a way that I might be able to seed positive energy & intentions through it. To engage in these shadow worlds - creatively dropping ‘light codes,’ planting unexpected seeds. How might I be able to use the channel/vehicle of an avatar “influencer” to influence - not according to conventional protocols of how OnlyFans models do their social media, but playing the game as a front to sneak in name-drops of key spiritual teachers, esoteric philosophies, mentions of DMT and conspiracy theories, etc, etc.
Yeah. Lol.
my first little silly AI-made video... my cousin & her girls posted some art they did - had idea to seed the idea for them to turn into animation... so screenshotted it, pumped out a prompt, and voilá... 😹
Whether I’ll proceed with the idea or not… time shall tell.
But either way, it really cracked me open to contemplating a whole new dimension of possibilities.
And sparked some momentum accelerating the catch-up on what’s possible now with the different LLMs, agents, custom GPTs, generative AI, etc.
While at the same time, there’s still been other ideas ruminating.
Like… while DOGE (the Department Of Government Efficiency, not the crypto token named after a dog) may be already using AI in the US government to weed out corruption, what use-cases could be put together up here in Canada to accelerate the cause of western separation from the federal system - perhaps aiding in the deep research, journalistic reporting and distribution of overlooked facts & figures.
While I’ve been procrastinating on watching the Canada Is Illusion documentary that apparently gives a thorough overview of how the country doesn’t even actually have a proper legal foundation for its existence, there’s been the question - what could be built with AI to further the case presented… and compile a sound foundation for strategic action to hold certain corruption & fraud to proper accountability?
There are indeed some great individuals & organizations in this country serving to advance the best interest of the people - from independent journalists like Jasmine Laine to the Alberta Prosperity Project… what might be able to be built to help strengthen the shared causes of both exposing the rot in our federal government and building new/alternative systems that’d need to take the place of those collapsing in the processes of change we’re moving through?
Big questions. But allowing them time to ruminate as learning the capabilities of tools at our fingertips and what components would need to be brought together in what arrangements, answers are coming.
Whether the energy will be there consistently for me to actually act upon and build out (or I’m just here to serve as a ‘frequency node,’ grounding & transmitting bits of these ideas… or just letting my head get lost in the clouds), time shall tell.
And then another idea that just resurfaced: crypto trading bot.
In the midst of the YouTube deep-dives on AI agents, popped up this - built to run on Cardano, with some sorta ‘portfolio-balancing’ strategy. Which might just match with what I had in mind some years ago - trading solely between a select basket of tokens that’d be held long-term anyways, weighing in on differentials to spot sniper opportunities short-term.
Haven’t looked into it yet and not sure this particular agent-bot will be the one. But regardless, as developing profiency prompt-engineering, realizing the capabilities to collab with genius-level AI in the crafting & coding of specific strategies, and the increasing ability to do it all on-chain… time shall tell, as the waves of energy release to begin and proceed deeper into those specific explorations.
So yeah. There’s some ideas in queue. Though, also the humbling sense that I still don’t know what that “something” is or will be.
Might be one or multiple of these. Might be something completely else. Or I dunno… maybe there is no “something” in any sense I could be expecting it at all. Maybe “it” will not be a money-maker, nor world-changer. Maybe all these smaller developments of skills and ideas are building up to something bigger, where I’ll be able to look back and clearly see how all the pizzle pieces connected into bigger projects then - maybe not. Maybe it’ll be merely a far-less dramatic continuation of this explorative journey with satisfying little side-missions along the way
But irregardless of the uncertainty and the mind/ego’s annoying desire to know that can’t be satisfied, I’ve still been waking each day with excitement. Not at outcomes. But cuz the journey itself is just fun. Maybe not in a high-intensity dopamine-jackpot highlight-reel way of “fun” I’ve thought “fun” to be in the past. But nonetheless, satisfying. Not just to contemplate all these ‘big ideas’ like I’ve always had the inclination towards ‘getting distracted’ with, but to witness the acceleration of evolution and observe the development of all these different tools that’d enable the building of these ideas - whether I’m the one to build them or not.
Yada, yada, yada.
In conclusion: some shit...
