Friday, June 6, 2020
I haven't been sleeping much these days. I don't know if it's because of everything that's going on in the world, but I can't seem to stay asleep for more than a few hours at a time. And when I find myself waking up at three or four or five in the morning, I can't help but grab my phone to check if everything has completely burned to the ground yet or not.
I'm sure part of it has to do with the fact that I have no idea how this is all going to end. Are we headed towards total military rule? Are the masses going to riot and protest forever until they bring the whole system crashing down?
With so much turmoil in the US, it's hard for me not to think about an encounter I had two years ago. It was easily the strangest encounter of my life, and one that I've already written about several times.
Basically, I attended a meet-up where I ended up sitting next to none other than Uyen Nguyen. If the name isn't familiar to you, this article is a good primer:
https://news.bitcoin.com/uyen-t-nguyen-the-powerful-young-woman-behind-the-alleged-satoshi-affair/
Of course at the time I didn't know who she was. In fact, she wouldn't even tell me her name. She acted so mysterious that I was immediately drawn to her and curious about who she was. Eventually we started talking about Bitcoin, but then the discussion quickly moved on to the economy in general. I was surprised by how much she seemed to know for such a young person. I literally pulled out my phone to fact check some of the things she said, and it all checked out.
I'm not going to get into the details of everything we discussed, or how I finally came to know who she was since I've written about it before. But I just wanted to highlight something she said that I've kept in the back of my mind these last couple of years.
I can't remember her exact words, but it went something like this: "I have no idea when the collapse is going to happen, it could be in six months, or the bull market can continue for another two years, but the crash is going to be like nothing we've ever seen before."
She said people were going to suffer badly. She said things were going to become so bad the only safe haven assets would be physical gold and silver. Don't buy paper gold or silver, she said, make sure it's physical. When I asked what about crypto, she wasn't as sure. She gestured with her hand forming a smooth line saying we were forming a base. She wasn't sure how long it would take, although she did say that at some point, people who cashed out at the top in 2017 would want to get back in the game, implying prices would go back up eventually.
Now here we are, two years later, and I can't help but wonder if what she described is exactly what's playing out.
I actually attended one more meet up hoping to run into her again and ask her more questions, but I was told I was probably never going to see her again.
In the end, maybe it's nothing more than a cool story for me to tell. Maybe Uyen isn't some economic genius and she just got lucky with her prediction. Whatever the case may be, it was definitely one of the most fascinating encounters I've ever had in my life, though perhaps it doesn't sound that way since I'm only describing a small piece of the story here. Who knows, if I hadn't had that encounter, I might not even still be a part of the BCH community. It definitely made me fall deeper down the rabbit hole than I ever intended, and if BCH ever becomes world money, maybe I can share a little more about that night.
Until then, thanks for reading as always, and I hope there's a light at the end of this 2020 tunnel. But if Uyen was right, this is going to get a whole lot worse.
Oh, one more thing.
Yesterday while looking her up again I came across an article I'd never seen before:
In the article they discuss Uyen and her connection with CSW like the other one, but there's also mention of a book that was written by Bitcoin Belle (Michele Seven). Bitcoin Belle was apparently an early Bitcoiner who was connected to some big names in crypto before she too disappeared from the scene. I bring this up because the book is a work of fiction that's supposed to be a series, though only one has been released so far. I found this intriguing because the night we met, Uyen revealed she was writing a book, a work of fiction that was split into multiple volumes, and given the book by Bitcoin Belle features a young 19 year old protagonist (which would have been approximately Uyen's age when the book was being written), plus the fact that Vietnam is mentioned in the book makes me wonder if she's connected somehow.
Here's a link to a review of the book on Hacker Noon:
I found this sentence particularly interesting: "The book follows nineteen year old protagonist Phalaen, a tech wonderkid who is leaving home to study at the prestigious MIT university with the blessing of her widowed father."
Maybe I'm trying to make connections that aren't there, but I bought the book on Amazon and will definitely give it a read. If I find anything interesting, I'll share it with everyone here.
Until next time.
That would not the end perhaps. But another new era.