Bankless - The Astrological Crypto Maven with Maren Altman | Layer Zero

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

Crypto is a multidisciplinary field. Whether it’s finance, sociology, history, or philosophy—the list goes on. However, what about astrology? Can crypto be predicted using it? Maren makes the case for why. And she's got the track record to prove it. In this episode, we dive into Maren’s astrological crypto trading methods, her responses to the main critiques, what lies ahead in the coming months and remaining decade, and so much more. ------ 📣 ALCHEMIX | Get a self-repaying loan today! https://bankless.cc/Alchemix  ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALED ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across  🏦 ALTO IRA | TAX-FREE CRYPTO https://bankless.cc/AltoIRA  👻 AAVE V3 | LEND & BORROW CRYPTO https://bankless.cc/aave  ⚡️ LIDO | LIQUID ETH STAKING https://bankless.cc/lido  🔐 LEDGER | NANO S PLUS WALLET https://bankless.cc/Ledger  ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 4:20 Who is Maren & Astrology? 8:00 The Method to Predicting 10:06 Critiques of the Method 15:20 Predicting the Collapse of UST 17:34 Maren’s Track Record & Reading 22:21 Gravitating Towards Crypto 27:41 The Maren Community 35:46 Prediction Timeframes & Cycles 37:54 What’s Coming in May, June & Beyond? 46:10 Multidisciplinary Alignment 47:53 Astrace & Other Things Maren’s Working On 57:37 David & Maren’s Signs ------ Resources: Maren https://www.youtube.com/c/MarenAltman/videos  https://twitter.com/marenaltman  https://www.tiktok.com/@marenaltman  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures 

Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Crypto is built by code, but is composed by people. And each individual member of the crypto community has their own story to tell. Cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it. And Layer Zero focuses on the people behind the code because Ethereum is people all the way down. And it always has been. Today on Layer Zero, it's going to be something a little different. I'm speaking to Merrin Altman, and she is the person that pays attention to astrology to predicts the crypto markets. And so this is definitely off the beaten path for typical bankless content. And so listeners might need to put on their skeptics hat. But either way, I think there are interesting things to pull out of this episode, regardless of whether you believe in the relationship between the positions of the planets and the relationship of how our Earth progresses. Maren is a

background in philosophy, but also in order to do what she does has to be extremely multidisciplinary. So it's not just astrology. It's relating astrology to many, many things. things. And I'm always a huge fan in the way that crypto is so multidisciplinary. In order to understand crypto, you need to understand biology. You need to understand psychology, computer science, history, economics. Human anthropology is super relevant. But I've never really thought to include astrology. And I don't think most people do. And I think most people definitely discount astrology almost completely. But if you want some entertainment and just to open your mind and explore new subjects. Marin has produced a huge brand around herself for being the person that can somehow

make really good calls from really far away. Whether you think that is just luck of the draw and just sheer happenstance or whether you think that this is actually something real, is an entertaining show either way. And so I hope you guys enjoy this fantastic conversation with Marin Altman right after we get to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. If you're trying to grow and preserve your crypto wealth, optimizing your taxes is just as lucrative is trying to find the next hidden gem. Also, IRA can help you invest in crypto in tax advantage ways to help you preserve your hard-earned money.

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A token proposal is being deliberated as we speak in the Across Forum where community members will decide on the token distribution. You can have your part of Across's story by joining the Discord and becoming a co-founder and helping to design the fair, fair launch of Across. If you want to bridge your assets quickly and securely, go to across.TO to bridge your assets between Ethereum, optimism, arbitram, or boba networks. Hey, Marin, what's up? Hey, I'm just casually in Europe, traveling around.

What about you? Kind of wondering where this conversation goes. I don't think our two communities cross-pollinate too much. So I actually want to start at the very beginning. For the people who don't know who Marin is, who is Marin? Marin is, I was about to say, walking incarnation of cringe, but then people probably ask, what does that mean? So I'm not going to say that.

I am an astrologer and I mainly track financial markets, specifically crypto. Okay, so there's a varying degree of skepticism about astrology. The first time I heard you, saw you on my radar, you were doing the astrology thing, but like relating it to like shit coin prices, right? I think maybe like the first one was like shib token. And so is there a conversation to have about like the degree of facetiousness about astrology or like are you 100% like on board with the whole astrology thing? Oh, I've been tracking this throughout my life.

life. I have been observing the correlation. I've been more focused on world events and markets than personality because if I can objectively predict a world event, especially price action, which is very verifiable right or wrong, that's much more credible than me anecdotally saying that someone acts a certain way. You know, that can be bullshit. That can be manipulated any certain way. So the only facetiousness is me just creating a meme out of myself. I'm kind of astounded sometimes when people don't get when I'm joking in when I'm not, but I get that I'm using such weird words that I can't expect everyone to understand. I'm either dead serious or I'm completely meaning myself. But the act of what I'm doing in its totality is like dead serious. Yeah. Okay. And so you were doing this before crypto,

right? You were integrating astrology and money and finance before you found crypto? So I'd been growing up obsessed with astrology. And when I was a teenager, I started applying it to world events because I found that much more interesting. And when I got to college and switched from acting to philosophy in order to do that better. I was doing more political cycles, empires. I've always been, like people who know me personally know this, I've been obsessed with war and combat throughout my life. So when I could apply astrology to predicting that and tracking that, that's when things really took off for me, especially looking at the U.S. like U.S. wars that history, I started talking about that. And I really blew up when I predicted the 2020 sequence of events in politics for the U.S.

leading up to and following the election. And early 2020, when I, I was, when I was, I was a second time, I was graduating from NYU and I was like, I need to open a bank account, learn how to manage my own money. I found some issues in the banking system that just seemed inefficient. Like, I found it incredibly stupid, inefficient. Luckily, I had no prior knowledge of anything financial. Like, no one had ever taught me anything. I studied philosophy. So when I found the issues, I found crypto. And that was the first entry into finance. I have no traditional finance background. I have no traditional financial astrology background. I still, to the state, don't know that much about traditional finance, only early crypto.

Can you do walk us through a little like out loud thinking process about like what goes into finding the predictions, finding the connections between astrology and financial markets or the other things that relate? Yeah. So at any given moment, the planets in the sky are in a certain position. They're all moving in different speeds. They're all moving in different orbits. And in the software I have, it shows that.

And the planets, therefore, are always making different angles to one another. And these angles tend to represent either easy or difficult world events. And the planet themselves symbolize certain themes in the world. So you'll combine X planet with Y planet in a certain degree in very much first order logic to make an if this than that statement. And if you're using multiple charts as in the chart of the given sky and those planetary aspects to something that was born, whether it be a person or Bitcoin and its Genesis block, because we're we're all born at a snapshot of the planets. And we can see how our life is going if we apply the current planets and those geometric aspects to something that's born. So if you do that to Bitcoin, you can predict if X aspect to like Y planet and Bitcoin's chart, then number go up,

go down. It's the same process as if this is happening to the chart of the US, then this looks like this kind of world event in this area of the life because there's sectors in the sky that represent certain things. And it's a ton of basically data collection over time that is refined into certain alignments represent certain world events. And it's the judgment of the astrologer to contextualize that with what the world is going through right now. So anyone with basic knowledge of astrology can tell you this angle with these planets means bad or good. It takes awareness of the world and contextual possibilities to put that into perspective for how it can apply to the market, the world, someone's life. And that's where my knowledge,

of wanting to learn about crypto came in handy because it was an area I was actually passionate about learning about. It didn't take me forcing myself to look at people's charts, which I stopped doing once crypto blew up because I'm not as interested in people's personalities or their lives as I am financial markets, which I think are just more objectively gratifying to predict and look at. Yeah, I think crypto fits really, really well here because crypto offers a unique vantage point for viewing the whole entire world. So there's a conversation to be had there. But before we get to that point. There's going to be a decent number of listeners who just listen to that and they're like, that's a bunch of magic. And I'm sure you get this all the time. So like, what's your response

to people who think that like, this is just magic? This isn't real. What do you say to this? Firstly, I invite in all skepticism. We do not get anywhere with blindly believing things. I would rather have someone be extremely confused, extremely skeptical and I find that more respectable than buying it. I find that a much better reaction than like, oh, magic. Oh, I don't take that seriously. That's not the kind of conversation I want to have. looking at correlation here. So there are different seasons obviously in the world. Therefore, if we're simply zooming out, looking at other things happening on a repeated basis, I'm in no way claiming causation. In fact, I will like stand out from possibly maybe more woo or magical inclined people who study

this who will say things like this is happening because of Mercury retrograde. This is happening because Mars is in this angle. I'm very specific with my language. I never use causal language unless I'm literally making a joke. And like I don't even do that anymore because then people get confused. So in no way am I ever claiming causation. And so when people try to straw man me and say, oh, so you're saying that Jupiter's making, no, I never said make. I never said cause.

I'm saying in correlation with I say signal. I say indicates. I say suggests. So when people say things like it was not the planets, it was this black swan of it. I'm like, exactly. The planets were informing us that this was going to happen. And if someone doesn't buy the correlation, then by. By no means, am I offended?

By no means, am I going to try to convince them? I think that it's important to go in with a clean slate of, I don't really know how this works, because it's not something that works. It's something that is shown to us that I like to think of it is a glitch in the architecture of reality that we can look at, where we're getting a sneak peek into a point of view that we would normally have. I think there's a certain amount of humility that comes from being the player in the game and recognizing that, not the creator of the game, not that it's not a religion, it's nothing religious at all.

it's more of a perspective that I'm practicing. But I invite in all skepticism. I show people, this is how I get there. Everything I do, like my scripts from my videos, is written in literal first order logic. Like, if this, then that, this negates this. This is more important than this. And because of that, I think if anyone does disagree, it would be more on the level of, I don't agree with your interpretation.

When it's correlation, it's hard to disagree with like that conclusion because someone can say, I just don't feel comfortable. with my own ability to determine that this is a correlation. But I invite an all skepticism. I think when it's done from a perspective without straw manning or from the get-go, getting some ad hominem argument, then I invite it. What about the critique or the criticism that, like, there's just two sets of data here. There's like the world events, the crypto markets, the movements of the nation states,

all these big things. And then there's the data set of all the planets and their relationships with each other. And there's so much data on both of these two data sets that like inevitably you'll find a way, to like map them together to produce some correlation. Yeah. What about this critique? I completely agree with that. And that's why I don't talk about things that I am not specifically focused on the

context of because sometimes I'll predict a world event. And I'll have someone comment, oh, this is happening in the Philippines right now. I'm like, I'm looking at the chart of the U.S. Don't give me credit for that. That's not what I'm looking at. I think tracking crypto markets with certain assets and world events for things like nations and specific areas of like with that is much more. verifiable. And if someone gives me credit for claiming that, I don't know, I'm looking at the U.S.

chart and I'm like, ooh, this looks like terrible financially involving female leader. I wonder what's happening. And someone tells me, oh, in like some African country that this happened with this female leader and the currency did this. I'm like, I wasn't speaking to that. That actually happened a few months ago when something I spoke to was around, maybe it was a year ago, but I talked about it looking like Biden was going to have to step down for a period of time. Like there was a planetary retrograde that I'm like, look, he's not like leading office, but it looks like he's stepping down intermittently. And Kamala Harris looks like she's going to be stepping up. He was getting a colonoscopy and had to, because it was under anesthesia, say that he

was putting her in control. Yeah. So like that kind of thing happened where it was strange and I did not have the context for that. I didn't know that that could happen, but it definitely looks like he's going away for a little bit. That's kind of strange where I completely agree with that. And that's the kind of thing that I want people to grill me on. I want them to say, but this didn't happen like worldwide. I stick to areas that I'm literally looking at. So the chart of Bitcoin, if it did not happen to Bitcoin, if it happened to, I don't know, some other thing, then I don't get credit for that.

This is amazing. One of the reasons why I was piqued to bring you on the show is because there's been a number of other people who have made the similar comments of just like, yo, I don't get the voodoo magic that Mary is up to, but her track record is like off the charts. And then I saw a prediction from you forever ago that predicted May 9th.

And I think you said something along the lines of do what you will with that. and then May 9th came and went and that was the collapse of the Terra ecosystem. So like, can you talk about just how you've kind of won hearts and minds via just actual predictions that came true? Yeah, I think not, not wavering because I can see that this has worked. I was much, this has worked. Like people initially told me, oh, you're just in a bull market. That's why I'm just like, no, I made more money over the summer because I actually just am like

better at shorting. It's just more fun. It's more red. I'm better at that. I think continuously putting things out. And I don't take things seriously enough not to be completely like, I predict this. If I'm wrong, crucify me. Like, I've been wrong before. I've said things that just did not. They happen in a different way. And I'm like, oh, so I got this wrong and this happened. I don't have any hesitation

and putting myself out there because I would rather have tried it and failed miserably than played scared and run away from people judging me or coming to doubt me at first. So I think by continuously showing up, developing a track record and being very deliberate about saying this is correlation, not causation. I'm not someone that claims any magical abilities. In fact, I'm pretty grounded. Like, I say I'm like a human computer. I can't even remember tarot card meetings. I don't do tarot cards or anything like that, really. I take the means. You could call me crypto witch. You can ask, you know, when moon, when I'm like, I'm rarely looking at the moon and I'm usually looking at the other planets. I invite that. I think that just my unwavering consistency and being more scared.

of not making an impact than what people think at a given moment, as kept people engaged even if at first they're like, the hell is she doing? So do you leverage your own portfolio when you look towards the stars and the planets to make predictions? Like, do you actually put your own money on the line? Always. Like, that's 100 million percent. Yeah. Wow. How's your track record with your own money? Given that I started learning how to trade late 2020, started trading early 2021. And then my block five was hacked and all my eth was taken. It wasn't that. at the time. But at the time, I was like, this is all my money. Oh, my God. And I had to make it all back like I had to learn. It's been what I've done over the past two year and a half now.

And it's been like astounding. I mean, the opportunities that I've gotten to do with helping my family. And I think not only with tracking astrology, I'm used to for like, I guess like, I mean, I'm 23. So I haven't been technically doing this for decades, but I've been looking, I guess you could say for decades, whatever. I've been looking at planetary symbols and cycles and lining them up for so long that looking at a candlestick chart and learning those patterns, it's all pattern recognition that fell into place really, really quickly for me. I don't care if the number is going up or down. I will be kind of cool to people and be like, I don't see why you're upset. Like there's no need to be upset. Number go down showing the strength

and the dollar is a, it's a better asset right now. Like all the Bitcoin USD chart is saying is the dollar is a stronger asset right now. There's no good bad. Because of that, like I do put my money where my mouth is and there's no hesitation. And I haven't traded as much over the past year. I've just simply stuck to doing more on the building side and doing that. But I still, when I get an entry, I'll document it. I put it on my telegram channel and I'll just be like, oh, I've stopped out. Oh, shit. But I'm pretty open about like how I like to go risk on and I will be more risk on end of this month. How do you decide what is the asset pair to trade? Do the planets tell you this? So with Bitcoin being the context for basically the entire crypto market, everything else being

Bitcoin on leverage for the most part. I'm really only tracking Bitcoin and ETH. In the way that both of them are astrologically composed, a lot of ETH's placements are exactly 180 degrees opposite Bitcoin, meaning that in a 360 degree wheel, if something is making a certain angle with Bitcoin, it'll make the same angle with Ethereum. So there's rarely that much difference between the two. You're telling me Bitcoin and Ether are highly correlated. Yeah, yeah, which is funny because in seeing that I thought that that was interesting. However, there's some very specific things that are really only triggered for Bitcoin or ETH. And usually I can determine whether it's news related because when I'm looking at astrology, that's fundamentals. It's not exact price. I have to execute the trade to talk

about that. That I'm only looking at Bitcoin in Eath generally. I have like the chart of Solana, Luna, Avax, but I don't think that I get a high return on my investment of time. If I'm looking at that, I would rather just look to Bitcoin. If I miss a random announcement about something, I don't even care. I'm not going to beat myself. up. I've gotten people to be like, yo, I'm launching this. Can you look at the chart? I'm like, no, it doesn't fucking matter. Like, look at context first, just like how if the traditional markets are nuking, Bitcoin's probably going to respond in some sort of way. So I just look at what's the founding like principle going on here. And it's easier too because I have the astrology memorized of Bitcoin or East. So I can keep it in mind more actively. Right. And there's a resolution problem here, right? Like,

you know what the market action of this one $10 million market cap shit coin are doing. That's two refined. So maybe even Bitcoin and Ether are too specific. And so we're really looking at the crypto industry as a whole, more than specific assets inside of it. Is that right? I would say that with astrology, I like to say that it's a mirror for reality or the clock on the wall that's telling you it's 3 p.m. It's not making it 3 p.m. That if something is substantial enough in taking up space in world events, that the astrology of whatever you're using is the birth chart will be relevant. But if I'm like looking at a shit coin chart and I can see that it looks good in this way, bad in this way, I'm not going to take that to be direct price action because price action is probably going to follow Bitcoin, but I could see different things in the chart that could just be like the company level. I've told people flat out if they ask about their company and they really want to know, I can tell them more so this looks like a success in this way or not a success in this way and it looks better during the market at this time. But the most direct path to understanding what's going on in the market will be what's the underlying funding.

fundamental asset that's most in charge here. It's going to be Bitcoin and E. Amazing. Amazing. So you have a background in philosophy, a degree in philosophy, and you've been looking at just world events and the massinations of the universe as it relates to our planet over a long period of time. And I think that's always an intimately awesome conversation when it turned into the crypto space. Because the crypto space always seems to be just microcosms or like the speed running of things that have already happened in the world. Like there's always the line that crypto is speed running the history of money and finance, but also if you're into human organizational structures, there's also the same line that crypto is speed running the systems of

human organization that we've already been through. So like we have the empires of old and we have like the newer crypto economic layers on top of it. And it's the same old patterns over and over and over again. And so I would imagine when you found the crypto rabbit hole, it felt like a bunch of candy for you just because like it's so rich here. There's so many things to discuss. Can you talk about that part of your life? Yeah. I think that the volatility, not only in price action, but also just in the general happenings in crypto, gave me much more to predict, much more stakes. And like, I'm someone who didn't shy away from talking about politics, talking about these things. And a way that in no way really was like my own beliefs.

Like, I'll be like, I'll talk about them, but not predict. It's not a prediction. Like, objectively, this is happening here. It was just objective. I like that it was very objective because with a person, it apparently hurts people's feelings to say this was fucking terrible. Like, this is never really going to be in an amazing time of your life right now. Like this looks horrendous. I don't know. I talk about myself with that, but apparently other people will be like, this is not, whatever. Thankfully, I've never said that because I've never seen anything. I've just never seen anything that horrible. But an asset chart, I can be blatant. I can say this looks horrendous. I can say for months, the first two weeks of A look horrendous. And people are like, oh, fun, like we're going to

100. Okay, okay. Trade on that. All right. I think that with crypto, was an area that I was already, like, with my own interest, very interested in because I have no attention span. There's a certain amount of innovation that is not personal going on there. I am not anonymous, obviously myself, but I appreciated the trustlessness and the anonymity because I didn't have to be conservative people and identities I could just see was being built. So the more like computerized aspect of me enjoyed that. And the emergence of things that I had studied. Like my focus in philosophy was ethics and then metaphysics. And even with ethics, I found that it's a lot of applying logic into human decisions and what will minimize pain and maximize just

good will. So that consideration outlines a lot of crypto. Like how do we make this most efficient, most parsimonious and less able to be exploited or detrimental? It was like that, but without the tiers or whatever that can sometimes get intermingled with evaluating ethics when in a lot of ways it's evaluating what's the most precise path to logically minimizing issues. And that's constantly at the end, whether you're building or you're trading is how do I do this most efficiently. Yeah. So do you consider yourself like a passive bystander of the crypto industry or do you also have some sort of like interest in like steering it as well? I wouldn't say that I'm a passive bystander in like anything besides yeah i can't think of a single thing well as opposed to like an observer of the

event rather than someone who's trying to like you know lead the horse for example yeah um i don't like to comment or try to make decisions on behalf of things i don't understand so for example with the luna fiasco like going on right now i don't understand the theories of citadel doing this that borrowing i openly and like i need to sit down and i'm not even going to try to understand it through a 4chan meme that being thrown around. So on those kinds of things that I feel like are outside of the weirdly specific niche neuronic pathways I have towards certain pattern analysis and that kind of thing, I don't want to make an appeal to my own authority on things I don't feel confident in. So certain kinds of trading, like things that are very high level like equities.

Oh, hell no. Like I'm just no authority in that. But I don't think I'm taking a bystander or a journalistic approach. I think that I am trying to actively engage. And in particular, open this space up to a generation that I understand. I don't have an attention span. They're very gigabrain, high level things here that I just smile and nod about because I'm very simple. I don't develop. I don't code. Not that I can't look at something and kind of understand where it's going, but that's not where I go. I think if anything, I would want to continuously increase my reach and my impact as I grow my expertise, as well as respect when I can just joke and be like, I don't fucking know what's being talked about here. I don't know what happened with Luna. I just know price go down. I don't understand what's happening.

What's the Marin community? Like, there's a bunch of communities in the world of crypto. Every single token has a community and some people have their own communities. Is there like a cult following of Marin? And I use cult endearingly, by the way. Yeah. There's a very polarized following, I would say the crypto community. I would say it's fairly supportive. People ask me like, do you face misogy? It was like, I don't think so. It's just me. I feel pretty. I feel pretty. pretty well supported. I've throughout my time gone from getting offended at every comment. I mean, I had such a thin skin. It really, really for the first, I mean, it happened so quickly that it wasn't really crypto. It was more just people will make things up to try to take people down who are

successful. And it was really, really difficult. And now I don't really read comments often because I'm just like, what am I going to learn from this? Either someone saying, I love you, not useful. Someone's saying, you know this because you're being flown out by whales. No, I'm not. Do you see me in my blogs, I'm a love. Like, this is just ridiculous. I don't get anything from that. So also for the listeners, the people that have the time to draft up the comments are generally the people that also just have this some sort of like negative complex about them. Like, we've definitely seen this same behavior at bankless. Yes. And if you look at what they're saying, if they're on Twitter, it's always they target like three people and the only thing they have

to say is like, that you're a fraud, like you're doing this then. You're like, okay, whatever. So I'd say my quote polling is pretty polarized because I do have a lot of that. Like, I I just, at first I didn't, and now I do get it, that young, successful girl outspoken is not like, lol if that makes sense. No, like I don't apologize. I don't say, oh, well, or ha ha at the end of my statements. And I've had people say, that made me so angry at first. And I didn't really get that. I don't really get jealous. I'm just like, everyone do their thing, very happy. I mind my own business. I get why there is a large cult following that absolutely hates my guts. And I've even had bigger accounts, call me like a scammer and people are like how like you just does something how she scammer they're like

for existing i've seen that thrown around the view that i'm like okay whatever i've seen people try to add up the letters in my name in gematria and be like this says this is a man that that's and they think i'm like a bot i'm a russian bot so the other half i think are pretty cool people that mind their own business they're really weird and a lot of them will say something like yo i trade or i work like equities or I do private equity for this, but like, I really like your calls. You're pretty cool. Just wanted to drop in. And when I meet people in real life, everyone is super chill.

Everyone is super, I guess, down to earth. So I don't think I have that out there of a following, but I have a very, very polarized following. And I've always been like, what am I going to run into one of my haters? But then you learn that usually people doing that would come up to you and smile in real life anyway. Yeah, 100% of the time. Oh my gosh.

Yeah. Even like the people that have come and left like terrible comments on the bankless YouTube, Sometimes when I just reply and I go, hey, thanks, man. They always end up saying, oh, sorry for that really bad comment. So in real life, everyone is always much more lovely perpetually. Yeah, I've had some funny situations where someone will see me at a conference, which is usually where the mass people will obviously meet me. Weirdly enough, today I was touring.

I'm in Poland and I toured the concentration camp that my grandmother escaped from and someone recognized me in the gift store and it was the most absurd thing I've ever, ever felt. I was like, this is. surreal. So insane. But yeah, always when people who met me in your life, it's been great. And then sometimes they'll be like, you block me on Twitter. And I'm like, I don't care. That's your problem. And that's like only, that's the only time when I'll just be like, yeah, because you had to do something. I don't block out of nowhere. And sometimes I don't remember and I don't, I don't remember. But that's the only time when it's been like, other people trying to make it awkward. And I'm just, I don't have time to make things awkward. I just move on. Right. Yeah. You have to grow some sort of just like hard skin confidence to exist long term as a public figure in this space. Yeah, very quickly. Arbitrum is an Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution that's going to completely change how we use DFI and NFTs. Over 300 projects have already deployed to Arbitrum and the Defy and NFT ecosystems are growing rapidly. Some of the coolest and newest NFT collections have chosen Arbitrum as their home, all the while DeFi protocols continue to see increased usage and liquidity.

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that's AABE.com. And also check out the AVE protocol governance forums to see what more than 100,000 Dow members are all ravening about at governance.aVE.com. Yeah, so you're close to a lot of like the trading communities in the crypto space. And are there any like traders who just like are frustrated by your performance and be like, what the hell is she doing? She's beating me and at my own game and not even playing the same game. To be honest, I've really only gotten positive responses.

The very small minority are people who I'd say are like, angered or have a negative reaction when things happen. Whenever my calls do come through, I mean, it's just like a flood in my DMs of a lot of people that do trade. I'd say to a higher level than I do. Like, I just trade support resistance. I don't know a lot of the terms that they use or like the strategies or I don't take those into account. So people I respect often do reach out. And I can't respond to the amount of messages I tend to get from people that I probably respect. I openly can't even open my DMs most of the time. It's a lot of people just asking questions, you know, saying things. Do you think this? I can't even open it. But there definitely is a huge

amount of people that I am shocked and I respect a lot that do reach out when these things happen. And they're like, what the fuck? And I'm like, I told you. I told you risk off early May. But usually it's a pretty supportive response. So with some of your predictions, are they generally all about the same time frames or like are there like short time frames, medium time frames? long time frames. This is to lead into some predictions I'm going to ask for you to make. But first, this one, just like, are like next couple weeks, next couple months, next couple years. Like, what's going on? Since planets have different orbits, for example, Mercury spends usually three weeks in a sign, Jupiter spends a few months, goes back to a different sign in a total of one year

in a sign. There are different periods and cycles within cycles and also the planetary aspects that happen between planets geometrically. Depending on the planets involved, can last. different speeds. So the moon moves very quickly. It's two and a half days in a sign. So if I see something like a new or a full moon, that's going to be like a one day range of a pivot up or down that I'm looking for versus Jupiter in a sign. It's going to be a couple months where I'm like market looks better or worse than it was over the past months. So there's a huge range. Things always go in cycles. Time is not linear. Time goes in circles. Yeah. Like it corks through the future, right? Like spins around circles and then orbits around those, right? And so like

the moon orbits around the Earth. orbits around the sun, the sun orbits around something larger. That is also the same pattern that is found in crypto charts, as in like we have the four-year cycles, and then we have like the 80-year business cycles, and then you have like the shit coins that orbit around the Bitcoin. The structure here is all the same. Is this what you're tapping into here? Yeah, in a similar way. I am tracking both very short-term things. Like, ooh, this day for Doge looks interestingly great. Elon Tweet, something like that. I can also look at, wow, there's a few months here that look much better than the previous few months. And then I can zoom in for what are the planets that move faster doing

within that time for the more specified dates. So very similar to things that stick around versus longer term things like the having cycle. Amazing. What are we got coming up for us? What month are we in right now? It's May. What's coming up for May and June? And then what's coming up for the rest of 2022. So we have two days from filming this two days until a lunar eclipse. And it looks absolutely horrendous. Oh, God. But however, with the eclipse season lasted from April 30th with the first eclipse until May 15th with this eclipse. So there's a two-week period that's eclipse season. That period was like the complete caution, caution, caution, watch out, specifically May 10th to 15th. And that was the period that this Luna thing happened.

And it's interesting that Luna would have this happen under a lunar eclipse. Yeah, just that was strange because I wasn't looking at Luna's astrology. I didn't know it. I've never been in the Luna ecosystem. Frankly, I just only have the bandwidth to focus on so much. So I looked at it and was like, well, this looks like a turning point, May 10th to 15th. This looks pretty horrendous. I think that the eclipse being, I guess, in a day and a half now, technically, that could have

been the major, major correction that was going into it. I don't trust the market until the 16th onward when because a lunar eclipse is always a full moon. And if you look at the moon cycle on trading me, you can see that full moons tend to be pivots to the upside. We are dumping into full moons and then we pivot up after. I am more optimistic for a recovery for the last two weeks of May. and I do want to qualify that with in no way does that mean like golden bull run over the summer that I do think restabilizes from May until the end of October. That's about the range when I'm like, okay, it looks like there's a bit of a restabilization. And no, by no means do we have the liquidity? Do we have the market condition, the world climate for anything like 2020 when every 18 year old is putting the $15.9 stimulus check into Doge.

Like that's in no way what I'm seeing. I think that people have to have a reality check around prices and just some of the same. that number values will be likely lower over the next few months because of the lack of liquidity crazy inflowing and the priorities of retail to invest in the food that's inflating rather than put their excess money into Bitcoin. So over the next few months, over the summer, I do anticipate that things will restabilize and get better from where they are. Not all time high, nothing like that. End of year, November, December, it looked pretty difficult again. Difficult as in bad. Yeah. I don't fear a number going down like I've said.

I don't know. I practiced stoises. I'm just like, number go up, number go down. I literally don't care. I'm going to respond in any new way. But caution because it does look like down end of year. Okay. So if we're trying to time out the length of this bear market, the first bear market I went through the 2018 to 2021. That lasted two years. There were a number of times where like the whole industry got bullish as like Bitcoin approached 10K. Ether started to break through 300 and we're like, oh, guys, it's on. And then it just broke down every time. Every single time. Yeah. So like, is there any indication as to how long we're going to be stuck in the spare market. Yeah, I think that 2023 has some extremely, like spring, 2023 April, May has some very strange astrology

that I've been talking about when I made a predictions video in summer 2021 about this eclipse cycle. That is 22 into spring 2020. And when this cycle repeated 18 years ago and 18 years ago before that, it dealt with geopolitical redrawing of borders, and that seems to be happening. I was talking about the Soviet Union, actually, and then again, now there could be some things redrawn in, like, Ukraine, Russia, depending on how that goes. It also tended to be collapses of certain currencies in finance and the things being redeveloped in the banking system, like crashes into, okay, then we have this new form of currency, new form of banking. There's some other things as well, like terrorism, hostage crisis,

some strange ones that tend to repeat during this cycle. But I think it makes sense for in about a year for something geopolitical to catalyze crypto in a way that, I don't know if this makes sense, but the way it pieced it together is for now, no one really cares that some random country wherever put Bitcoin as legal tender, whatever. But if there's a reason for countries to start massively needing to accumulate it, in the way that I see both independence, free speech, this other cycle going on really accelerating as well as having to crash and reconstruct a financial system, there could be a strange world theme where whether it's central bank digital currencies, then making Bitcoin an alternative because people don't want to be under the manipulation

of that. Or it's there's some sort of geopolitical war financial crisis payment rails blocked. It literally is just the most feasible option. I do think 2023 looks better. I don't know if that is considered a bull run because I don't know what price people consider it a bull run. Is it a bull run the second we pivot up? Is a bull run when we get out of this range at like 45K? I do think that's a cop out for some people who are like, I don't know if we're a bull or a bear. Like it depends how you call. Like no, we've been in like a bear market since December. I'd say December was when there was a pretty severe dump and we've been there since then. I'm not copping out with that. But I am not looking at anything overly optimistic this.

year. I think anyone with like a decent geopolitical just understanding it can be like, yeah, even if things get better, it doesn't look that great for this year. 2023 is when I'm seeing some, like I said, just like weird, shocking things that I think are reinventions of the banking system on a more massive scale and possibly the scarcity of Bitcoin becoming a fight to obtain that on a more geopolitical sense. There's a frequent line that we use on bankless that the 2020s decade is going to be a chaotic decade. Is there anything in the stars that would also agree with this?

Oh, yeah. The start of 2020 had an alignment that when I had repeated throughout history, very sparingly, I mean, every like few hundred years was some kind of massive, like a matter of destruction and death. And I didn't have the word pandemic to say because I'd never lived through them. But I was like, looks like a lot of people are just like chaos, like infrastructure people were just done. That was the beginning of the decade. And I'd say that that was the most catastrophic alignment that I'd ever seen. It's a pretty intense decade specifically as we close to. are into the end of it because the alignments that had repeated some during the 1860s combined with some during the 1940s for the U.S. specifically do look like civil tensions rise. Like I've been saying that for a while that anyone in the U.S. kind of see this happening. We live into different universes depending on red state, blue state people that don't want any part of it. There's a huge amount of civil tensions rising. And so I think that the end of the decade will be in the way that Ray Dahlio talks a lot about the instability of a currency leading to the instability of a population and then the downfall

of an empire. We're going through something right now that demonstrates that instability of currency and banking in the U.S. and followed by the alignments that were very similar to Civil War, World War II in many ways, which nowadays wouldn't play out in the same way. There's not going to be like ban acts in the street. Like, that's not going to happen. It does look like things escalate towards the end of the decade for, particularly when I'm looking at U.S. astrology, there's a meme. And we're in the intersection of the U.S. going down and China coming up and we're at like this three-quarter almost complacency bounce point. And I'm like, yeah, I can see that too. Yeah.

See, this is why I find this like so oddly like compelling. First off, like in order to be able to do this art, it's very multidisciplinary, right? You have to understand history. You have to understand global current events. Like you even have to understand like computer science and human anthropology to some degree. And like what Ray Dalio in his book talks about cycles and he talks about the massinations. of the earth. And so, like, I don't understand the causation between these two things, but you've stated that neither do you. And so, like, it's like one of those things we're like, I don't know why,

but there's something in alignment here. Yeah, I think the way that I'm just presenting it without fluff or without saying anything outside of my, like, ontological pay grade, like, do not ask me about why this is happening. Do not ask me about what it means. I think meaning is not something that can be attributed to like objective events. It's something that we create. I can go on and on about. There's no meaning or purpose. I can never talk about anything besides like hammers, nails, whatever. It doesn't like astrology provides no meaning. It provides context and that depresses people. I don't know. I think it's just obvious with what we're looking at here. It means, which is context. I think the presentation of what I'm looking at very simply both confuses us down,

and is more compelling than me either dumbing it down, whitewashing it into something pop-cultory or a meme. And my money is where my mouth is. And when I, and more actively trading, I show it. And also, there are people who have done what I've done over centuries, but none of them wear all red and do TikToks and are usually in random hotel rooms all over the world. So there's some fun in that. Yeah, there's definitely some mystique. Sure. So what's the future of Merritt? Like, what are you working on? Is there a project that you're working on right now, behind the scenes? Or what do you do in addition to trading? Yeah. Since the start of my trading and things happening, I knew I wanted to do something where I put this on chain and allowed more people to have this data,

get access to it and understand it, but you don't know what you don't know. So I didn't really rush building this. In fact, I could tell that with the market euphoria, I don't want to build during this. Like, I'd rather build when people are, I don't know, down. No one wants to do anything. So I'm building a project called Ask Trace, and it's taking what I do with planetary cycles and an API of that planetary data combining it with the price feed and the algorithm of just my first order logic and creating a trading vault based on it. So that's the first major thing is pretty transparently being like, okay, planetary data, this is what we're doing with like, if this and that statement is to execute the trade and creating a vault with it.

And that same algorithm will power the non-trading depths that the kids want. So like daily horoscopes, dating, basically putting the astrological data on chain and creating things with it. And it's been in the works for a while. I just, it's just me. Like I don't know. People will assume a lot of things. But I'm like, no, this is just me.

How does one? How do I learn solid? no, don't learn solidity. Like, don't do that. I'm like, okay, fine. Can I just start creating? No, no, no, you have to set up a legal entity. I'm like, Jesus Christ.

So doing that over the past few months. And as of a few days, three days ago, we raised the first round. So we're in that process now. But I have been in Poland, like meeting the developers that are building this and talking with their team and hang out in their office. So building something that is an astrology oracle so good, you can trade with it. It's the tagline I unintentionally came up with. And it's been pretty fun so far.

Amazing. This is going to be so much fun. Coming from the perspective that this is just random noise, which I'm not necessarily my perspective, although I'm not ready to buy into it yet. But like coming from that perspective, having like this on chain with this performance transparent, I think is going to be a super awesome benchmark to compare the whole rest of the industry to. Yeah. I was talking with a good friend who used to, used to work at Bridgewater. And he's like, like, you're beating the 10% and it's not just on hold. an asset like I've chosen no winners. It's kind of nice that I have a control variable upholding of literal terrible performance. I chose no winners. I got in. I am a top signal. That's why I sure. I've always, if I'm hearing about it, I'm not early to this. So putting that into something that can take my error out of it, of trade execution or of a mist saying the moon is at a mercury or 90 years into 40 degree. Like I've done that before many times where human error comes in. And seeing that, if it fails miserably, but I

did it. I tried it. And I don't have no fear of this not working because if it doesn't work first, I'm going to look at, okay, where is it not working? Like, is it the algorithm behind it? Is it the astrology? What's happening? Because it's worked for me on a pretty basic level. I'm really excited for just more people to get to see this. I am looking forward to building this in a time when I think there's going to be less noise when there's just less euphoria going on distracting. Like, I've just had my head down and people have been like raising in these conditions. I'm like saying that you're going to wait for better conditions to raise like pussy shit. Like no, no, no, no, no. We're doing this now, we're going to have this ready for whatever things recover, and people are more willing

to look at things that are more fun, even though I've said repeatedly, like, this is not a fun game vibe. This is like chain link walks so we could run with some weird shit here with astrology oracles. And I'm really looking forward to doing it as well, like put this all on chain, make all the data available so we can see what Venus sign has the highest net worth. And whoever wants to put their birth data on chain can be like, oh, during this period of my life, I had the highest net worth. And now it's goblin town. I'm very much looking forward to like people who inevitably pitch me on a bajillion things about like their trading performance.

I'm like, we'll have you beat Marin. Yeah, yeah. And we'll have the option for if you want to counter trade me, be my guest. Like be my guest and join the counter trading thing because sometimes I'm wrong. So you could make some money, but I don't think you'll be highly profitable. You said you've already raised money. How much money have you raised? 500K.

500K. Yeah, I'm not raising that much. Okay, 500K going on chain. Yeah, it actually is. I mean, all my wallets are docks. So it's there. I'm intentionally very conservative valuations, very conservative raise. All I'm paying our devs.

Like we don't need a marketing budget. So I learned a lot about this process doing myself. Like just talking to people, telling other people, them being like, you can't say that. Where I was like, okay. Like I learned legally you can only do certain things. But yeah, we just raised like the pre-seed round in two hours. So that was, yeah, now we're doing more. Amazing.

So in the event that this fund does just like take off and outperform everyone, especially as crypto becomes more and more adopted, are you prepared for like the amount of just hate and flack you are going to get from beating everyone? I would say yes, because I went through a very, very difficult 2021, just amount of what I went through that I'd bulletproof. Like, come for me, but actually come for me. And also with this on chain and just the transparency of everything, like fundraising of my own wallet that I do everything in. I'm like, you can see it here. Like, feel free to look. There's nothing that I can possibly regret or not want to show. And I think the hate will come from a place of me being really proud of what I built and not being

afraid of that. And my priority right now is how do we just make this algorithm strong? How do we develop something that is resilient that can integrate the machine learning that we want? And all the other things, I'm just going to have my head down and keep building. And I'd like to think of both the love and the hate as literal noise. Like literally doesn't help me either way. I don't take anything to heart.

But luckily, I feel like I went through like an insane, just like. battle forever. I can't Google myself online. I'll throw up. I literally, it's so insane. And I just sit there sometimes when my friends are like, did you see this Reddit thread? Did you see this 4champ? And I'm like, don't send it to me. Do not send it to me. I don't want to know. It's insane. I think I have a pretty high tolerance now. Amazing. Amazing. Well, in addition to, and separate from all of this trading in astrology, what else do you think about? What else captures your attention? I work pretty nonstop. So in a certain way, because I love what I do. I love people ask me, how do you put out so much content? I'm like, actually I would put out more if I didn't have to add captions and text and the hashtag

or whatever the hell I have to add. So I can say a lot more. I don't shut up. I think that if you're in a zone of genius and alignment and enjoy what you do, there's no ending or cap to the amount of value you can provide to the world. So if I'm not trading, which I don't over trade. If I don't have an entry and exit a clear plan, I don't do it. I think of pretty much everything like a battle plan because I do find it fascinating to study combat in different ways. I think that it's been kind of my form of studying. I don't know Buddhism. I was a yoga teacher in college. I see a lot of parallels between stoicism, the leaders in a military sense during that time and other people I admire and just the rigidity, the strictness, the commitment and the discernment that they exercise with everything and the intention behind it. And I don't enter a trade. I don't do anything without a reason why I'm entering, what I hope to get out of it. And exit plan of things don't go according to me in a way that I can sleep at night, even though I don't like to hold positions open while I sleep.

I don't want to wake up and be like, oh, I need to check it. I would rather miss a profit. Yeah, but I'm not training, which isn't that too often necessarily. I'm filming TikTok. I'm scripting TikToks. I am on a plane trying to schedule my week ahead because I'm pretty rigid about wake up at six, meditate, work out, do your most difficult tasks in the morning. I'm in bed by like 9, 10 usually.

I love it, but I stick to that pretty strictly. So what I'm known for and what I'm doing, people watch my YouTube videos because I genuinely like to bring a camera everywhere because my life is absurd. I mean, when I mean absurd, like it's incredibly strange. I like to document it. It's very fun. I'm already wearing all red. I'm in tattoos.

Everyone's going to see me out on the street anyway. I might as well be saying something, not seeming like who the hell is this strange person in the who's like this big, but take whatever. I am filming a lot. I'm making content, researching content, and not usually causing a scene, but other people causing a scene because I'm filming, vlogging out in public or on a podcast. plane and there's turbulence and I'm freaking out and I'm like, I have to get this on video. So that's how I live my life. Well, the crypto industry never fails to produce some very interesting corners. And I definitely

see that corner with what you're building over there. Yeah. Is there a name for what you're building. Astrax. Astrax. How do you spell that? Astrace. So A-S-T-R-A-C-E. It's a combination of a few words, but yeah, Astrace. Amazing. All right. Well, if there are links out there, we will get them into the show notes. Marin, thank you for coming on Layer Zero. Thank you. May I ask what your sign is. Oh, I'm a Sagittarius. Okay. Interesting. Good to know.

Oh, no. What rabbit hole did I just open up? I was just curious. I mean, I'm not going to be able to tell or at least see. I mean, we all have so many different placements in our chart. But that's cool. I mean, it's a fire sign. So what does that mean?

I'm an earth sign. I'm many earth signs. So I'm more boring. You're more excited. But, you know, that's a great. I don't know how you get you that you are boring out of this. No, I mean, I'm an 85-year-old monk in the body of a like 23-year-old's child-sized person. TikToker. So yeah, TikTok, it's another insane world. But it's made me resilient. Like,

crypto, the most volatile space I could work in. So I'm happy to have shared that with people that maybe you're not on TikTok. Maybe you're just in crypto or like, the hell is she. I hope that that clarified some things as to why I am so cringe. This is fantastic. Awesome. Marin, thank you for coming on and telling the Bankless Nation a little bit about your life. Of course. Thank you for having me.