The Gorilla With a Fistful of Berries

Yesterday was a sunny day in London. I went to the zoo.

The gorilla enclosure is one of the first as you make your way into the zoo.

I was lucky to be there at the exact time when the gorillas are let to roam free in the open-closed space where they go on a quick rampage of foraging for berries and other treats left on the field by the zoo keepers.

They were clearly excited and knew what was coming, as they were pounding with their fists on the yet to open doors of their wall cage, similar to how greyhound betting dogs would spree out in chase of the prey that's rail lined on the racing track. They were conditioned and the pavlovian/primate mixture of instinct preserved.

Soon after they were set free, one of the not dominant gorillas found a bunch of berries. With a winner take all attitude, the gorilla opened her fist and grabbed the 15-20 or so berries it had found.

What followed soon, was a run with the trophy moment. Gorilla was being chased by 3 other gorillas in a wild and frantic race, jumping on the ropes, climbing off structures, settling on top of a tree like edifice, in the race to keep the berries. Once a fistful of berries, always a prey to be chased, an enemy, an envious instinct kicked in the other primates. Maybe, they would've found more if they searched around the camp. But why search when you can chase someone who already found what you're looking for. Law of the jungle at play.

I feel this is illustrative for the crypto space in its current climate. We witness a 10% rally and we see it retrace fully. We see traders with a fistful of profits and we chase them down in oblivion.

To illustrate the anecdotic scene in pseudo-code, what I mean is:

while(berries)
  chaseGorilla(berries--)

While berries.. but for how long? And what is berries-- and what happens in the black box function of chaseGorilla. This my fren' we are all here to find out.

Similar to gorillas, we also have survival and self preservation instincts.

As capital markets animals we have more sophisticated berries: liquidity that enables us to buy and sell assets at any moment in time. When there's even a slight hunch telling us that liquidity is about to fade, we start chasing the berries and herein enter the chaseGorilla function. We do not leave in our wake footsteps but excrements of our process. Foraging, pillaging, hunting for the everlasting game.

As crypto animals we are not hindered by a 5-day trading window, 52 times a year. Simply, crypto is immortal and never sleeps (you can ask anyone on Twitter about its toll but that's another story).

This caused us to lose a sense of identity, a portrait that would provide self reassurance in times of dire strait.

We used to look back for our leaders of the modern world and be comfortable with a pat on the back. But that pat is not coming anymore. Our leaders are also looking for a pat on the back but they only receive boo-ing, the institutions that were supposed to protect us, have no clue themselves and employ highly regarded and mathusalemic figures at their helm, so disconnected from the wave of progress as ever before.

How can we trust? The point is we can't, so we chase and chase.

We are spit out of the chaseGorilla recursively, only to enter it again and again and again.. while berries. But at some points in time berries go down, and the slice of pizza is too smol to feed an entire community of primates.

From hedge funds and VCs, angel investors and environmentalists, pundits and scammers, shillers and prophetic messiahs, we have lost our path.

We want to step on something solid, make the information curve a highway and portray it as a bottom, we desire the infinite and think of the moon.

We want blue handles and collections, jpegs and digital wraps, assets, collateral, swaps, we want it all.

We want to escape the sudden lack of sense, the crisis of the post-modern man in which we find ourselves at every turn.

We think more berries will make tummy feel gud, will make go pain go away.

There is no panaceum for this. And if there was, seemingly, the chaseGorilla would not let it get out of its event horizon.

We are doomed to fake it till you make it, play by ear, have balanced portfolios, do not put all eggs in one basket because simply put there is no basket, there are no eggs and there is no play, no rhythm and no success.

We were lied. We lied ourselves. We patted our backs with our own arms and we did not look back. We ate the berries hoping for a miracle elixir but all we got was Socrates's poison.

=== degenz need not read past here

I know articles with nice cover photos are more likely to be read / shared etc. As such, each of my articles will showcase the topic of the article via an NFT collection that I find suitable (free .jpeg). Article in no means aims to promote any of these collections or constitute investment material or advice.

This article's NFT collection used for cover photo 👇

Did you like my article? Donations highly encouraged, ERC-20: 0x337e9855147F8E4E333f2DC32fC1a99b5E14c9F7