When I was a kid, this was the defense to someone calling Bullshit. You would brag, someone would call BS! and the response oftentimes was, ‘Oh yeah? Wanna bet?’ This was followed by some type of slim or imagined proof and then we all went back to what we were doing. My point in telling this very brief history is that betting, even in such a harmless boys sticking their chest out way, is bred into many a person’s psyche from the time they are a kid.

Finance. That’s it. That’s the word, and it’s actually pretty expansive and inclusive at the same time. When I left college, people actually used that word a lot. And it pretty much covered it. Banking, trading, much of the business world in general revolved around that single word, finance. For those that know about the television game show Password, I think this goes from what once was probably an easy word to guess based on clues to now being a much tougher guess.

…Or the computer screen, or the cell phone. Unless it’s to put on some meaningless background noise. That’s what we did in the prop trading shop. We rarely had CNBC or Bloomberg TV on. Generally, we tuned into sports, Netflix, that type of thing. Something you could ignore. Business channels? Maybe if there were interesting things going on. This would probably have been one of those times.

…Or the computer screen, or the cell phone. Unless it’s to put on some meaningless background noise. That’s what we did in the prop trading shop. We rarely had CNBC or Bloomberg TV on. Generally, we tuned into sports, Netflix, that type of thing. Something you could ignore. Business channels? Maybe if there were interesting things going on. This would probably have been one of those times.

I have been finding it extremely difficult to come up with topics that will not lead to people (on one side or the other or both) flaming me for taking a side politically in a blog that is intended to promote thought without inserting a political opinion. But then, as so often happens over the last 10 years, crypto comes flying in with something to write about.

Rule #1: Discipline [ dis-uh-plin ] noun – behavior in accord with rules of conduct; behavior and order maintained by training and control. That definition was one of nine listed and was actu…