Samza Round-Up - 11/17/2022

This Week's Round-Up

What a week. We made it through elections, saw a collapse of another crypto exchange, and in Minnesota have officially made it to winter with a three-day snowfall. Enjoy this week's round-up!

FTX collapse heralds the bursting of the crypto bubble

I cannot disagree with this headline. The writer of this piece said something that stuck with me: "[T]his is the end of the road for crypto in its current state. Either it evolves and becomes more regulated and transparent, possibly subsumed by traditional finance, or it will simply cease to exist at all."

If you have been living under a rock and aren't familiar with the unmitigated, catastrophic failing of FTX, I'd strongly encourage you to read up on it. The story reaks of fraud and webs of lies; similar in ways to Enron and Lehman Brothers. The result very well could lead to heavy regulation of the crypto industry, ending the era of "easy money" and off-the-wall speculation.

We will see if crypto has a use-case and utility that dictates it's preservation. As people see more and more stories like FTX, some are quickly developing a repulsion to the digital assets, making the odds of crypto going to zero become higher and higher. Only time will tell.

Side-hustle Britain: The people working second – and even third – jobs to make ends meet

While not in the same exact economic position as the U.S., Great Britain has seen similar trends in the area of inflation and consumer spending pressures. This pressure has forced lots of individuals to strike out of their own, creating new streams of income in order to stay afloat. Unfortunately, it seems that the inflation issues isn't going away in the near future, and side hustles/extra streams of income appear to be continuing to be a popular method of making ends meet, with a 58% increase in 2022 for the term "side hustle" according to Google. This is a cool article about ingeniunity and humans doing whatever is needed in order to provide for their families.

G20 vows to calibrate pace of interest rate hikes, avoid spillovers

Our betters have come together in Indonesia to discuss the current threat of economic devastation worldwide. This year, the leaders called for response to the "unparrelled multidimensional crises," which now includes pacing the rate of interest rate hikes, and communicating with each other about when large central banks (primarily the U.S.) anticipate hiking rates in order to avoid "spillovers," or significant capital outflows from emerging economies due to U.S. fiscal policy.

It turns out that running insane amounts of expansionary economic policies will inevitably result in massive problems on the back end in the form of inflation and issues for emerging markets, not to mention the interest rate hikes that are dictated.

For the last two years, the U.S. Federal Reserve has aggressively fought to keep us out of recession, knowing it may cause inflation. Now, the Fed will aggressively fight inflation, knowing it may cause recession.

Idea of the Week - Vending Machine Business

This is an idea on my list of new ideas to explore. Fundamentally, the idea is pretty simple: Buy some machines (or a route), find high-traffic locations to pitch to, and get your machine stocked and ready to go when you get it placed.

Trickiest part for most people? Finding locations and business owners who are open to taking on a vending machine. This is one of those business models where cold calling is a necessary evil, but the rewards are high. After the machines are in place, you can bank as "passive" of income as possible, only needing to collect payments and stock with new inventory once or twice a month.

Podcast of the Week - Afford Anything

Another classic in the world of personal finance and financial independence, host Paula is a highly knowledgeable and engaging podcaster with knowledge about all kinds of issues people like you and I face in our journeys to financial security. Each episode has listener questions and an underlying theme that is relevant to something on the mind of people like us.

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