The Blockchain T Shirt Creation

This is a design I created called the "block chain."

It's a literal concept. Block. Chain.
What's fascinating about the human mind is that we're symbolic interpreters. Our spoken language is an instant exchange of visual identities. We learn vocabulary, and what words mean. We "know" them by the qualities we imagine.

In Mike Maloney's "Hidden Mysteries of Money" 8 part series on youtube, he did a video surrounding cryptocurrency. I linked the video in an earlier post. What I find most interesting about his videos series, aside from his simplistic and easy to understand explanations of money, is the animations he uses in the videos.

So, I'm watching this video in bed and I'm listing to the explanations and I see this image:

In the video, transactions are being picked up from a pile to be recorded on the ledger by the computers. A block is a bundle of transactions which a consensus of computers agree upon the time, recipient/sender & amount of. The computer guesses the correct math algorithm, and their block is added to the chain. All the other computers, who were working on hashing out that algorithm now have to start over again.

So the process is costly, he explains, and takes alot of time and energy.

So the image that came to mind when I heard about this, was a bunch of people, chained to the block chain. Spending millions on equipment on a gamble to hit it big.

A youtuber my husband listens to mentioned that cryptocurrency is comparable to the gold rush half way into the 19th century. He compared the majority of investors to those who packed their belongings into a carriage and road west, out to the golden coast of California to seek their fortune. So that's the 1% of people in the world who are investing into bitcoin.

Then, out of that 1%, there's 1% of the 1% who see something that most aren't looking for. Instead of randomly digging, he gathers information of the land and it's history, and decides to climb to the top of the mountain, and dig there, where he strikes gold builds an empire with his wife.

I'm thinking of all the people mining bitcoin and all the people buying bitcoin. All the cryptocurrencies which could make them wealthy individuals in the long run. I'm thinking that the way many people are going into cryptocurrency is the same way they may be going about many things; a block chain shackled to their ankle. Raising themselves out of bed every morning to run out the door for fear of their next bill.

I want to insert this thought into your head.
Kelli Coffee of youtube said it best. "We forgot why we came here. We forgot that this life is like a videogame. Instead of sitting in the chair and navigating..it's like you're in an airplane simulation and all of a sudden you forgot it's a simulation and the plane is about to crash and you're terrified--"
Robert Kiyosaki in "Rich Dad Poor Dad" mentions this topic too. Where Kelli Coffee calls it the "matrix," Robert Kiyosaki calls it the "rat race."

At the end, it boils down to our understanding of our emotions and using them to serve ourselves.

My inspiration for the shirt design then, is in part the literal technology of blockchain and in part the awareness of how investing with emotion can be a costly move, sabotaging any free movement in this video game called life.

Imagine.. you're playing an RPG game and you have to figure out a piece of information to be able to move the blockade that's barricading the gate to the next town - the next adventure.

That's the inspiration for this piece. We will be posting further images of it in different locations soon.

Until then, here's a Robert Frost poem I pulled from Robert Kiyosaki's book, "Rich Dad Poor Dad" called,

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both. And be one traveler, long I stood. And looked down one as far as I could. To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair. And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear. Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads onto way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sign. Somewhere ages and ages hence; Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

• Robert Frost (1916)

. Anyone looking to read Kiyosaki's book online can find the link to the pdf here:
http://www.lequydonhanoi.edu.vn/upload_images/S%C3%A1ch%20ngo%E1%BA%A1i%20ng%E1%BB%AF/Rich%20Dad%20Poor%20Dad.pdf