Hello from Ventura Beach, California!
We're visting @corinnestokes' family in Oxnard for Christmas. Yesterday we saw Star Wars so I'm no longer afraid of the Internet.
No more fear of...
Today we went to the beach in Ventura and had a great time walking around, playing in the sand, enjoying a meal, and playing a little Pokemon Go (we got into 4 gyms and caught a bunch of new Pokemon).
The kids (mine and my nephew) enjoyed climbing on this bike rack as soon as we got there.
The pier was great.
Kids love the sand.
Fish and chips with a beer hit the spot!
At one point my father-in-law said, "Hey, Luke, there's a story about bitcoin." I thought he was joking as I've been checking the cryptocurrency prices constantly, and we've been talking about it a lot. I was off to the beach and quite proud of myself for not checking the price while walking around (especially with the price crash that happened today). Then I realized he wasn't joking.
When I looked closer, I saw it. Sure enough, stories about bitcoin can not be escaped.
Something else that was really cool to see was this nativity scene with a bench built with carefully stacked rocks.
It was a fun, relaxing day.
I hope you're having a great holiday season with family and friends as well.
Also, thanks so much for your witness votes! I made it has high as 12th today which is a record for me.
uaaghh, was my first thought. Your avatar doesn't prepare for the real thing. But don't worry, here's some sunshine at the end of the tunnel: Your kids go after your wife;-)
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PS: Aren't you afraid of showing so much of you and your family considering that your net-worth in Steem is so high. I mean, it's fairly easy to find out where you live., pay you a visit (or maybe your kids..) and it is even easier to steal all the $$ from your account.
The more Steemit has success and the higher Steem goes, the more creeps it will attract and then they see you and... If I was you, I would be a bit more careful although it's a pity of course. Maybe, I'll write a post addressing this issue. This might become a big issue for a lot of Steemians.
So... you're saying I'm ugly? heheh.
Yes, it is fairly easy to find out where anyone is. Whether or not I post about it, doesn't change that. What holds society together isn't just privacy, it's individuals cooperating for mutual gain instead of primitive competition. The nice thing about the STEEM and BTS blockchains is everything is visible. If someone tried to steal from me, how would they get away with it? Everything is public on the blockchain.
As to my net worth, as it increases, I will have to take additional statistically-reasonable precautions to protect myself and my family, just like most rich people do. They don't rely on police but instead have their own private security measures in place to prevent crime before it happens instead of responding to it after the fact.
No, you are a beautiful snowflake of course. You have some facial symmetry;-)
What I am implying is that it is much easier for a robber to get to your 200k in Steem than to your 200k in stocks. As soon as the SP is powered down and marketed into BTC it is gone into complete anonymity (like it happened to the content of several accounts that got stolen). I think this might contribute to real life robbery schemes. And even if you account stays at this value or gets cut in half by reality, you are still a prime target. People kill for far less than that. Do you already have precautions made? My guess is no.
I know it seems a bit off, but with cryptos being such an extreme liquid and elusive asset compared to most others that are targeted traditionally in robberies, this gets me thinking (not that my account would be of any mentionable value^^). There is a chance that already at this evaluation, Steemians are an ideal target for criminals, but can you imagine @sweetsssj dining in a fancy restaurant with a bodyguard by her side?
Yes, I certainly can. That's what rich people do. If she gets to that level, and it becomes a statistically relevant thing to do, she should.
So far, I have never powered down. Also, BTC isn't anonymous. Criminals have already been prosecuted because of the trail they leave on the blockchain. Clearly, if I or my family was harmed and anything happened to my Steemit account, that would be a clear path of evidence for people to follow which may lead to apprehending the criminal.
At what frequency? Statistically speaking, how likely do you think this is for a given account worth, say, over $100k?
Based on the statistics you envision, what precautions do you think are rational?
What I won't do is act in fear. Much of the mainstream media and government news today makes its money off selling fear. They use statistically irrational and irrelevant events to get whole groups of people to make irrational, fear-based decisions. I refuse to be a part of that.
This depends on the given parameters that include:
You're right that impulsive action is wrong, but I think the numbers give it away that there is a rational base to act and that's why my bottom line is: You and maybe 30-100 users are already in the red zone. Vigilance is important when it comes to disclosing too much about the personal life, names, faces, places, dates and so on.
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Just look at the wallet of @sweetsssj: It's 350k $ worth right now and she seems to have a 2nd account from which she delegates another 750k SP to the 1st account, which makes it a total of some 3 million$ - and she's like 1,50m tall.
@doodlebear. I am very interested in your comments about security and the blockchain visibilty. Please do write a post addressing this isssue. You can see why it is a concern to me. Big upvote from me for an extremely pertinent comment.
Thanks a lot! I will write something. No promise that it's going to be worth the upvote;-)
Hey, I did it. You can find the article here.
You have such a lovely family. I don’t just mean that on the surface level. Yes, literally you guys are all pretty to look at, but also there is a genuine energy of closeness and love about you guys. 💗
I enjoy it when you post about your travels together. You guys give your kids a good education, in school and in the larger world through these adventures! And I LOVE your openness. You don’t hide who you are, what you’re about, where you go, or your family. I see the discourse with @doodlebear above and can’t agree with you more. It’s not living if you stay quiet and hide just to stay safe. So you keep doing your thing, take reasonable precautions, and enjoy your life.
Thank you for your support of my page and for being an outstanding member of and contributor to the Steemit community. Hugs 🤗
:) Thanks for always being so supportive and encouraging.
I just posted last night about our day of sailing. I look forward to much more traveling in the future.
Right now, a little California sunshine sounds quite appealing... hope you guys have a great time!
On the topic of "Bitcoin in the news," here's one for you: I'm driving home from work this evening, listening to my usual alt. rock radio station out of Victoria, BC... DJ gets to reading a bit of news...
"... in business news, the cryptocurrency markets took a dive yesterday with Bitcoin leading the way, but for those of you who have been following this for a while, you'll know this is NOT an unusual occurrence. The question is, will the market bounce back, yet again? And if you haven't checked it out, you really should as this is sure to become the way our generation will handle money. Meanwhile, in sports..."
It was just so... almost surreal... that I wasn't even sure I'd heard what I just heard. But I had. What's more, he said "cryptocurrencies," not just "Bitcoin"
Hah! That's amazing. I've been hearing similar things because Corinne's parents have the news on all the time (normally I rarely watch mainstream news). It's just so strange to hear some people talking about it who actually know what they are talking about! One guy, when asked what he's doing, talked about how he bought the dip around $11k! Impressive. :)
It was "a moment," for sure. The only time I listen to commercial ANYthing is that 15 minutes to and from work.
Feels like 2017 was the year where cryptos went from purely being "Monopoly money for nerds" to something more tangible. And, as you said, people who know something are now part of the dialogue. And the default setting is no longer "oh, it's just a scam!"
But it also made me think of how quite a few (many?) of us who live inside the cryptosphere perhaps become really focused and end up creating our own little echochambers... where we don't get exposed to what the "outside world thinks" very often.
Example: I try to pitch Steemit to fellow content creators because I know it's awesome... but it's an uphill battle. Maybe I should start simply asking people what they know about "digital money" and simply listen to their concerns.
That is awesome to hear. The money section of our local paper did a story this week about TD Ameritrade offering futures. The author referred to bitcoin as a fad and a "mysterious" cryptocurrency.
Looking innocent ...Good photography ...Thanks for sharing..Best of luck...
Would you like to see my bunghole?
Yes my friend...😁😁😁😁😁😁
@nnajmull As per the promise you made on my blog recently, I am really hoping you can start to make more meaingful comments to get the discussion going. “Thanks for sharing” just doesn’t cut it. I will be checking back and hope to reward you for quality comments or posts in the future.
Hi @lukestokes. The best part about your post was the line “......quite proud of myself for not checking the price”. It struck home to me. I have the price of bitcoin constantly displayed on my watch, iPhone and computers. It’s hard not to check it every few minutes - except when it is plunging, and the desire to check then somehow goes away.
What’s worse, I have a weird sound alert on my iphone for every big price chaange. It’s like that outer-space sound from the wombles or the movie “Mars attack”. A warbling “oooooooaaaaaa” sound. It’s such a weird sound that it turns all the heads - people think the aliens are landing. I turn my head too and look behind me as if it’s not my phone. It goes off after every $500 price change. You can imagine I got quite a few “warbles” in the last few days.
Turning to another topic, I was listening to steemit radio (MSP waves on Discord), and was surprised to hear you as part of the show. (It was 4AM here, so it must be nearly midnight for you?). I would like to listen to the show again as there was some great “unknown” information which was disclosedd which should positively affect the price of steem. I think at the end they said it would go on youtube. I would love to get the link.
Hahah... yeah, probably need to cut back a bit on the sounds and notifications or your devices will start owning you instead of you owning your devices. :)
Ah, you must have heard a replay. They do quite a lot of them. I've toyed around with the idea of doing a more consistent show of some kind. I've been asked by multiple people to do a podcast type thing, but right now I enjoy the freedom to work on my business and be flexible with my time to research cryptocurrency projects and make some trades (not to mention spend time with my family). That said, I should probably do more YouTube videos now and again. I do enjoy the free-flowing format.
Yup, it must have been a replay! I heard the same show again tonight as another replay. It sounded live as the bitcoin prices were mentioned.
It is so cool seeing you "travel blogging". Great post and photos. That's hilarious you can't escape bitcoin news even if you try! It just follows you everywhere doesn't it!
Merry Christmas to you and your lovely family,
-Dan
Thanks Dan! I definitely appreciate this comment coming from you. :)
I hope to do a lot more travel blogging in the future as our family travels more.
Do you miss living in the CA?
Nice you have Corrines family there so you can at least get a taste of it once on a while.
The nativity scene was pretty awesome. Surprise some young punks haven't knocked it over.
Man, I miss it so much. We considered moving back a while ago, but the cost of living is just so high. Maybe someday if cryptocurrency keeps going up, we might reconsider. Part of me thinks if I'm going to move, I'd like to move outside of the U.S.
I have some family here as well with my sister and brothers. We'll be hanging out with them on Christmas and a few other days sprinkled around. We're going sailing together on the 26th as well.
Yeah, I was worried my son might be one of those young punks. Thankfully he resisted the urge.
@lukestokes - Some amazing pictures. I am so happy to see you enjoying some time off with family. It is something that we all live for. Especially, the whole family picture with fish and chips - can be used in the advertisement for a happy family I think :)
It was funny to see that bitcoin stories followed you on your vacation too! LOL
Of course, the story was in trash on the beach (perhaps appropriately reflecting market sentiment on bitcoin price crash at the moment? LOL)
Thanks for sharing. Upvoted.
Regards,
@vm2904
Hahah. Yeah, with the day the markets had, it was kind of trashy, that's for sure. It's neat to see quite a bit of my portfolio recover though. I even had some low buy orders for BitShares that hit, so that's cool.
You are good at this crypto and altcoins stuff. I am trying to learn more by following a master :)
I bought some Ripple and it has stood good even through the crash so I think I am a good pupil LOL
Hahah... only I would have suggested not buying XRP. Heheh. I know it will make a lot of people rich, but I'm not a fan. It seems to me to be a bit centralized and a little too close to the banksters. I'm a bit idealistic in what I support, I guess.
I understand. It was just a quick foray - almost like trading to test waters, I am still reading up a lot of stuff and I share your views on supporting more independent things.
thanks for sharing @lukestokes.
hopefully his holiday was fun and have a nice day to you.
Thanks! Having a blast so far.
@lukestokes Merry Christmas to you and your family..........and a Happy Crypto New Year !
Thank you! I like the sound of "Happy Crypto New Year" :)