Robert Viglione ...ancap finpunk loving the crypto revolution!
Hey there Steemit,
It's always weird trying to write about who are you; most people seem to start out by saying what they do for a living, what they study, or just dive right into a set of hobbies. To some extent all of these things contribute to who we are, and I guess their order follows from what we want to emphasize at the moment. The title of this post sums up a lot of what I wanted to convey to this forum, but here's a bit more about me...
For starters, this is me sailing last weekend...
Persistence paid off and I ended up marrying way out of my league...
As far as the whole career thing goes, I started off as a physicist turned military officer, worked in some high tech stuff like radar systems, satellites, and launch vehicles, did some consulting, pulled a stint doing intel work in Afghanistan, and am now a PhD candidate in Finance doing asset pricing research, innovation from a finance perspective, and even have my first academic paper on cryptofinance:
"Does Governance Have a Role in Pricing: Cross-Country Evidence from Bitcoin Markets"
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2666243
The gist of it is that the usual tools of financial repression, like capital controls, foreign currency controls, and just lack of economic freedom, cause safe haven assets, like Bitcoin, to trade at premiums because...well, those things suck.
And speaking of Bitcoin, here's my buddy and I making what we think is the first ever Bitcoin transaction in Afghanistan in 2013:
If you haven't been able to tell by now, my philosophy on life is that every peaceful person ought to have the right to be left alone. It doesn't get much simpler than that, but people seem to complicate a lot and make up all sorts of names for things. You could call me a libertarian, an ancap, or just someone who doesn't believe in slavery...like, really.
Besides binge reading apocalyptic novels, I like to get out and do some things. I get out into the wilderness and hike quite often:
What wilderness-loving libertarian veteran doesn't like to play with guns?
But they're even more fun with bourbon...
So besides those zombie books and doing the finance thing, I travel a bunch and spend a lot of time learning languages; it's def one of my favorite hobbies and so far I've picked up enough French, German, Spanish, and Italian to have a lot of fun, but not get into too much trouble, in some cool places around the world.
So that's me in a nutshell. Viva la Bitcoin and the decentralized technologies that are giving humanity a chance to peacefully opt out of the old school command-and-control nonsense.
Read synopsis of your paper. Love it!
Thanks for the feedback. I couldn't resist working on a paper combining bitcoin and economic freedom...just way too tempting.
Think it is a great angle. I was also pleasantly surprised that economic freedom can be measured.
it can, but it's a rough measure based on aggregating categorical variables. The economic freedom variables used in that study were from the Heritage Foundation.
Subjective but nevertheless a rough gauge.
Welcome!
Based on the photos it looks like you'd be able to hold your own in a zombie apocalypse...
BTW It would be cool to post your dissertation on Steemit first!
now that's an interesting idea re: posting my dissertation on here first! I'll have to think about that, maybe do the traditional thing and upload to SSRN to claim the work in the academic space, then link to it here and write an explanatory article. I may actually do that for the Bitcoin paper i have listed in the article here. Academic papers are one thing, but being able to break it down to normal language is maybe even more useful.
Glad to have you around!
Welcome to steemit! I think yo'll love it here.
Hey man, welcome to Steemit! If you're interested in learning new Languages, I know it's basically a dead one, but learning Latin is really fun and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves language!! :)
cool, i haven't thought about that one before, but might consider it at some point. I'm currently working my way through enough Italian to enjoy an upcoming trip to Italy.
"And speaking of Bitcoin, here's my buddy and I making what we think is the first ever Bitcoin transaction in Afghanistan in 2013"
Cool. I think I had the very first frisbee in Afghanistan in 1969.
Dude you must tell us more!
well, not too much to tell...we actually just exchanged some cigars for BTC. they ended up being very expensive cigars with the price action in 2013! We also ended up hosting some Bitcoin educational events for locals on post to try to get the word out in that part of the world.
Liberty! pop pop