What is an AMA?

AMA stands for Ask Me Anything. Although to prevent spam and other non-essential topics, I limited the topics to career, crypto, and life. Ironically, I fell asleep right after I posted this so I didn't have time to answer all the questions before the 24-hr period of an Instagram Story was done.

I'm documenting questions I have answered and some that I haven't for two things: so I can answer the questions from friends and so I get to have a blog post after many months of no blog content.

Starting with this heavy-hitter question:

1. Do you think it's ok/necessary to keep the Philippines so locked down despite such economic hardship during the pandemic?

I don't see another option. Our hospitals are overloaded as it is. Letting everyone roam free as if it's normal is a recipe for more deaths, specifically in the social classes who can't afford to be sick.

This is anecdotal but let me tell you that as early as April last year, a friend of mine died within 24hrs because he didn't get a bed in the ICU. He was a non-Covid case and had the means to pay for hospitalisation. 

Covid cases aside, it is more of a hospital availability issue. Even non-Covid cases are out of hospital resources. As terrible as it is to be locked in, I don't see the Philippines going back to normal until we get herd immunity back home.

2. Can you give me tips on how to be brave and move to a foreign ass place?

Gosh I think I wrote several posts on my own experiences of relocating and the Why's. I will try to link them up here as I find them.

• Here's one on moving to New York without having been here before

The short answer here is to really want it and trick yourself into thinking you don't have other options. Once you believe that the only place to go is outside of your comfort zone, everything follows. 

The sense of urgency will fill you with so much vigour because the stakes are higher. That usually does it for me. In my case, the very first time I relocated I quit my corporate job without having anything lined up.

100% would recommend to everyone reading this to try it at least once. It's such a powerful situation that you can put yourself in. Imagine feeling like you can do anything and that everything is possible--that's how I felt in the times I made the move without a backup plan.

3. How do you have so much time or better yet mental energy to do all this?

I sleep 5 hours per day and am very hyper-focused when I want to accomplish something. That said, I have lots of anxiety that I often release through creative outlets. 

4. Will you return to blogging?

This question is why I'm documenting this particular AMA on here. I routinely do AMAs on my Instagram and I do enjoy writing those lengthy posts that are definitely not for a short-form media consumption.

Adding a note to say I like how my name can be used as a pun for almost everything using this syntax: jennever + verb. 

...Jennever Blogs 

...Jennever Blogs 

...Jen Never Blogs

...which should really tell you when I'll blog again.

5. How do you come to terms with the environmental impacts of crypto investment?

This one was another heavy hitter. 

To my friend who asked this question, I had to do a lot of additional research on this subject so I can include citations in my response.

I cannot find an apples to apples comparison on this topic so we will be using extrapolated data to show environmental impact. In this case, I'm also using carbon emission as the main culprit so we have a commonality.

The case I'm making here is how crypto investing, specifically BTC, is not any worse than global carbon emissions produced by agriculture, particularly livestock production. I know I know that sounded bad. But hear me out:

For those with a smaller budget, it would take a single Antminer S19 Pro (an older generation, but widely available unit) a total of 1,356 days to generate 1 BTC in rewards when working with a mining pool. [Source: Decript.io, December 2020]

By the numbers: GHG emissions by livestock Total emissions from global livestock: 7.1 Gigatonnes of Co2-equiv per year, representing 14.5 percent of all anthropogenic GHG emissions. This figure is in line FAO’s previous assessment, Livestock’s Long Shadow, published in 2006... [Source: Food and Agriculture Organization]

1 Gigatonnes = 1,000,000,000 tonnes

Then taking the average emissions of 191 tonnes per BTC * 318,600 BTC is amounting to 60,852,600 tonnes of CO2 emission from BTC per year.

6. How to get started on crypto/investing