finance Archives - Talixa Tech Blog

May 16, 2022May 9, 2022

Bitcoin? Seems Like Bitcon…

I’ve never been a fan of crypto currencies. A few months ago, I wrote about some of the problems with crypto currencies. However, since I’m a techie, people always expect me to be paying attention to the crypto market. So, in the fall, I “invested” about $750 dollars into crypto. Like any good investor, I diversified between a variety of currencies. How did I far? Very poorly.

As I write this, Coinbase lists the overall market as down 41% from this time last year. But surely there must be some winners? If so, they weren’t among the 12 coins that I purchased. Bitcoin is one of the worst, and is down 47%. I selected a few that I thought had actual promise because of their utility – Fetch.ai and Internet Computer. Both of them performed even more poorly and are down by more than 60%.

Risks happen in any market, so this should be a surprise. However, crypto currency advocates have insisted that these currencies would protect against inflation and that they would be immune to geopolitical events. Currently, we’re seeing the highest inflation in 40 years and are closer to WWIII than we’ve ever been with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As such, crypto currencies have not lived up to their hype.

Now, investment firms are considering allowing crypto currencies to be included in retirement accounts. Why? Because supporters of crypto must be seeing the true nature of crypto’s Ponzi-scheme. They finally recognize that more investors are needed to inflate the value of their crypto “investments.”

Everyday, the evidence becomes more and more clear – it should have been named Bitcon from the beginning…

April 27, 2020April 25, 2020

Financial Planning

The unprecedented impact of the Coronavirus will certainly be the subject of countless articles during the following decade. After all, there’s much to be learned from this event in a variety of fields. Economists, epidemiologists, lawyers, and business owners will all approach the subject from a different angle. Undoubtedly, many of those conversations will involve financial planning and economic impact.

As I look at the nation, after over a month of lockdown, the most obvious thing I see is the lack of sound financial planning. From the individual to the federal government, this event has exposed a gaping hole in our ability to plan for disasters. Of course, it’s easy to say that nobody could have predicted a pandemic – so how could we prepare? But countless disasters happen every single year. Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornados, winter weather, and extreme cold are common events that could easily bring harm to a business or family.

Furthermore, sound financial planning has always said you should have six months cash on hand. That’s wise advice for individual, corporate, and government financial planning. Yet, within a week of the lockdowns, people were lining up at food banks across the nation. Surely businesses would be better prepared. Right? Sadly not. Within short order, the government opened loan programs to keep businesses from failing. Even worse, the government itself was unprepared and an extra 2 trillion dollars was added to an already unsustainable national debt to deal with the virus.

From one end of our nation to the other, nobody had any money in the bank to weather a week long storm – let alone a months long shutdown. And, sadly, I think we’ll see innumerable businesses lost in the fallout of this national disaster.

How can we – the business community better deal with these kinds of events in the future? First, we obviously need to ensure that we have adequate cash on hand to continue to meet our financial obligations even if we are unable to conduct business. Second, we need to find creative ways to operate our businesses using eCommerce, cloud systems, or other technologies that can operate even during a disaster. Third, we need to encourage everyone – at all levels – to put money back for a rainy day. We may not see another plague in our lifetime, but we will undoubtedly see other disasters.

December 13, 2018January 7, 2019

Limit[ed/less]

Over time, there is an infinitely small likelihood that I would be capable of talking about this blog individually to everyone who will ever be interested and invested in the content. As more content meets more people, time would inevitably run out. Fortunately, with the help of technology, here we are. The limitations of the internet are not the same as the limitations of my mouth, and building upon this foundation brings some game changing ideas.

While the internet provides much better potential to reach more eyes and ears, nobody wants to give up the benefits of using their mouth to speak. Nobody wants to upload their entire life to YouTube either. If humanity would become incapable of speaking, however, the way we think about even the smallest aspects of everyday life would change, similar to how the internet has impacted how we interact with the world. This leads into what we can learn and apply to tech and business.

Regardless of individual circumstances, people have areas where they are presumably limited more or less than others. For instance, the fact that I am 6’4″ implies that my height is much less limited than most. But how would things change if we alter the conditions? You might be pleasantly surprised at the result if you consider questions like this in a variety of circumstances.

When applying this thinking to finances and business growth, the effect becomes clear. Say a business operates on $200,000 per year. What would be done differently (and why?) if the business had an annual operating budget of $100,000? How about $400,000? Putting businesses into these hypothetical situations will inevitably help foster a mindset of growth by overcoming presumed limitations in a practical way.

Circumstances will certainly change over time, for better or worse. By asking these questions now, you can gain a better understanding of why you might choose to take one course of action over another. Hopefully this entire process will help you more adequately prepare for your next big decision. After all, with preparation and execution people develop and grow.