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>Banking is a delicate game. It is very much like torturing a hostage for information, punish too much and the person dies and becomes useless, don't punish enough and not enough gains are made. 

Most seem to now be getting ready for a reversal of fortunes in terms of interest rate hikes for 2024. This means the central banks have forced the extraction of enough wealth from normal people that now it is time to get a bullrun going, so that they can use that wealth to generate more wealth, before dumping on the market again. 

![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/tarazkp/23xVVxULYoK3Mm45VyMmnqCcDs9AesWkJ7jGBnVrwFwZEMhaQz3g2ycqzNzPCDdBbwDjq.jpg)

For the people who have managed to hold some assets that will appreciate in a bullrun, all is well. For those who were forced or chose to sell in order to maintain lifestyle, they are going to get punished. And, a lot of people are impatient, so they have likely been bleeding the last couple years, a bit here, a bit there, because it *wasn't that much.* 

> "Not that much" is relative.

Yes, as mentioned often enough before, it is relative based on localized conditions, where a hundred dollars in one place doesn't buy a decent dinner, and in another it buys a month worth of food. But, it is also relative based on *when* the asset is sold. For instance, selling a 100 HIVE for 25-35 dollars might not seem a lot, but if HIVE hits an ATH again, that will be worth 350 dollars. 

Again, whether that is a lot or not, is going to depend on many factors, the main being how much HIVE one owns. If 100 is 10% of the stack, it is a huge amount of the value, but if it is 1 or 0.1% of the stack, it is not so much *relatively.* And, for a few people here, it is 0.001 or less of their HIVE stack. 350 dollars out of 3.5M isn't a great deal of money. For some, it is just a day worth of salary, for others it is a month or two. 

One of the things that people don't consider is that regardless of the economic conditions, the economic players are always trying to make money. Businesses need money to run their operations. Governments need money to run their scams too. This means that regardless of whether people are finding it hard to make ends meet and feed themselves, monetary extractors are going to keep doing what they do, because that is what they are designed to do. Companies, nor governments have the best interest of individuals in mind, they are just looking to keep perpetuating their lifespan.

>They are successful at it. 

So, it is worth thinking about this process in terms of personal spending, because while we think we are making the decisions at our own accord, we should realize that all the stakeholders who benefit from us spending, are doing their best to pry as much money out of our hands as possible. And, when times are hard, they realize that these small amounts that they are squeezing out will be supercharged in value when times are plenty. 

Crypto people generally get this, as they have seen their shitcoins go hundreds and thousands of percent up in value at certain times. Buying a hundred worth and seeing it hit 10,000 worth a couple years later, is incredible. And similarly, most of us have had the experience of selling something that later increased astronomically, so we lament our decisions. 

>Too many times... *If only I had.*

Regrets? Sure. We all have them, despite the people who believe they don't. In the darkness when no one is around and the thought of *what could have been* comes to mind, it is hard to not feel that pang of regret, isn't it? 

A moment ago, I did something that I haven't done in seven years or so, I logged onto my lottery account. I had forgotten I even had it there, but was reminded by a passing article I saw and thought I would check if there was anything in the wallet.

> 2 dollars.

That isn't worth the hassle trying to transfer it back into my bank account, so I looked to see what I could get with it. There was only one game to play that was 2 dollars, so I put in an entry.

![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/tarazkp/23zS59sycsR3aeacfLU7aHs9tJDF8YjMD1XVzJwfFMtQPi6BC2JdrWLeVxf9SwJ1q3a5T.png)

Tomorrow evening, I might be €78,000,000 richer. This would bring my wealth to about, €78,002,000. For numbers that have no value alone - *those zeroes matter.*

It is funny, because we talk about how lottery winners often end up with nothing in their bank and worse off than before winning a few years later, but are we any better? Those winners make a lot of mistakes because they don't have the financial hygiene to deal with that kind of money. However, the majority of us are in the same position that they came from, which means we likely don't have good financial habits either. And, since we aren't likely to win the lottery (even if entering regularly), you'd think that we would spend more time learning how to improve the impact of the little we do have.

>Yet, we don't.

We are as easy targets as the lottery winner with no financial knowledge, it is just that the amounts extracted out of us are smaller. But, instead of one person losing a lot of money, it is millions of people losing an obscene amount of money. but because each individual is just losing a little, it goes unnoticed, while we bleed to death slowly.

>The torture continues.

As long as we don't die too soon. 

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ] 


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