prepping for the fall of capitalism, restoring the feminine (& the next crypto run)

I finally feel like I can write.  I'll start with the happiest pieces.

Thanks to the generosity of our givers, the Seeds community was able to send Kana Piath the $600 she needed to continue school in her native South Sudan.  

As ever, when you help those in need through Seeds, you receive SEEDS cryptocurrency in thanks, because we feel a better, kinder economic system rewards giving by design, rather than incentivizing extraction.

Due to lack of funds, Kana had been forced to wait at home for two weeks after lessons resumed for her peers.  Once she received the gift from our community to cover fees and supplies, we were told in a thank you note that she “was so happy that she woke up today at 6:00 AM and went to catch up with her [schoolmates.]”

Here's Kana Piath decked out for class:

Another thing that's cool about this is that Kana's family learned about Seeds thanks to efforts from a local man, Mayom Marek, and his collaborators.

Maybe you've heard me share this before, but Mayom Marek is a former child soldier who received a gift from the Seeds community in December 2016. He started a hygiene stall in the capital city of Juba, which he's turned into a sustainable business.

Mayom Marek then took it upon himself to teach his South Sudanese friends and neighbors how to use Seeds.  Our team didn't even suggest this to him or anything - he just did it.  As a result, many in his community have received gifts in the intervening years.

The below recently fulfilled Request for Help was another instance of this. These folks shared the following when asking for help (with slight editing for clarity):

"Malek County was devastated by communal conflict for 8 years.  Now people came back to the village and build life again. The challenge is lack of clean water to people and their livestock. In December last year, the Hand Pump was dug by United Nation Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and they left. 

We are requesting funds to plaster the area of Bore hold so that children and mothers will draw water from clean areas."

As you can see in the video, folks have to stand in dirty water to pump the clean water they need.  But thanks to our givers, they've directly received $1200 USD in funding to address this problem, and so our community has had the opportunity to offer help where traditional aid fell short.

The Seeds community (which, to be clear, consists of anyone with the volition to give whatever they're able!) continues to offer assistance to folks in the developed world as well.  

Last month Garr in New Mexico received a gift to pay for new tires for his truck.

This is also of course important.  Something I've learned through this work - which surprised me - is that there are many who struggle to even ask for help, because they compare their need to that of someone else, and decide it's “less worthy.”  I see this much more often in people imbued with a lot of feminine energy.

And so I want to remind all who've felt this way that that fear is related to a scarcity framework of thinking taught to us by late-stage capitalism. Your need is also important, and in a truly abundant economic paradigm - as Seeds is working to become as we continue to grow - there is ample support for needs of all kinds.

Okay now more about that future (via a proper update about the past few months)!

So as of late April I live in a tiny house built from a kit, on land I bought in Western Massachusetts.  I chose the area because the first Vipassana meditation center I went to (over 10 years ago now) is nearby.  

I bought the land and the house with cryptocurrency.  Most of what I used to buy the house was free cryptocurrency I received because I had staked.  If you'd like to receive free cryptocurrency, you can stake too.

I put together the house with the help of a local carpenter, and it feels cool to recognize that I played a big part in actually building my home with my own hands. Like, it was me and this one guy.

First I rented a 20 foot UHaul and drove it over to MA from the factory in Ontario where it was made (I made some TikToks about this if you feel like checking them out).  I was nervous about driving a truck so large.  There were still inches of snow on the ground at the time, and so to protect the wood from moisture, I had to put the mostly-lumber kit in storage rather than leaving it on the land.  I was planning to unload it from the truck by myself while sick because I don't have any other support around me, but this super nice person at the storage facility, Rich, ended up helping me unload it out of kindness (he wouldn't let me pay him).

And so it lived here for a couple months while I waited for enough warmth to get it to ground.

Once the snow cleared, a basic platform for the house was constructed so that I could have a small porch too:

And gradually we got the house up itself:

I moved in as soon as the wooden roofboards were (mostly) on.  Here's Bowie chilling inside when we were crashing in a sleeping bag on the dirty plywood subfloor.  We've since moved up into the loft.

It's still not done - I want to put a copper roof on, and the copper sheets I bought wholesale are sitting on the site as I try to find support to get it on the house from those in the mostly-masc contractor world (always been hard for me to find help in masc realms, but I'm working on changing that through Seeds, and in myself).

I wonder how the copper roof might support my meditation. I understand there used to be copper covering the pyramids.

But it feels pretty solid, especially as a millennial, to be able to live in a house I helped build on land that I outright own.  While “land ownership” is really fucking weird as a concept, being forced to pay a monthly subscription to a “landlord” to not be homeless is even more bizarre.  Plus, though stats are hard to find (this 2017 article cites a UN study that claims as low as 10% of the world's land is owned by women), I am down to play a part in bringing these figures up for women while land ownership exists.

I feel less depleted, like I'm shoring up my boundaries so that the system with all it's not-healthy masc energy can't fuck with me me as much from here.  My living expenses are soon to be almost nil, and I'll see a greater benefit the next time the cryptocurrency market goes up as a result.  To my mind, 2023 is a year of building.  And of healing.

Last thing, which is more Seeds-specific, and directly related to the shifts I feel coming as more centralized systems falter, decentralization rises, and yin comes back into balance with a healthier yang:

Virtually all of the semi-recent upheaval in the crypto sector at large is about bad centralization failing.  This has happened in various ways with each crypto cycle - for example, in 2014, Mt. Gox - then the largest (centralized) crypto exchange, though decentralized exchanges hadn't really figured out yet how to be a thing - collapsed.  

It was almost all Bitcoin back then, and those who had their Bitcoin in Gox's custody only saw opportunity to have most of it returned last month.  Cries re: “not your keys, not your crypto” abounded, and the idea that we're best served when keeping our cryptocurrency in self-custody, with private keys and/or mnemonics that we keep safe ourselves, has been an often painful lesson these centralized failings have taught us each time the pendulum swung back this way.

I see the collapse of these unhealthy centralized entities (FTX, BlockFi, Celsius, Voyager…Silicon Valley Bank) as very entwined with the dropping away of systems that rely heavily on unhealthy masc energy, and the travel of Pluto out of Capricorn and into Aquarius.  (Big Tech, you are next).

Seeds remains the only project I am aware of that is actively working to infuse healthy feminine energy in a decentralized ecosystem that bridges finance (Capricorn) and Tech (Aquarius) through a focus on giving.  For this reason, I continue to believe that when the new, big energy really hits…Seeds will explode.  

So coming from there:

I started Week 12 in a 13 week coding bootcamp course.  I signed up for the course after running into misogyny/misofem in software engineer collaborators for many years (many were male, but it showed itself through those of all genders).  Eventually I realized this must be the universe telling me that I needed to learn what was necessary to take the Seeds product to the next level myself (and also work on the health of the forms of support I was manifesting).

I was able to use my newly acquired skills to build the first tool that's of practical value to Seeds last week.    I still have a lot of learning to do, so I'll keep going, ultimately coding the overdue Seeds Givers Dashboard myself as well.

**

Needless to say, there's a lot of junk energy in the crypto sector, and it's a challenge to figure out how to share the Seeds message as apart from all of that, as a living example of the transcendent potential - and application - of these tools. 

That said, the next Bitcoin halvening is expected to happen circa April 2024. While past performance doesn't guarantee future results (requisite disclaimers etc.), this is significant in large part because, historically, halvenings make the crypto market as a whole rally hard.

So Seeds has to be ready for that, and once again I view 2023 as a year of preparation, both in terms of the 3D - practical tools - as well as via the energetic ascension of our community itself.  

We have to understand our message, and how to allow it to connect with the kindest, most brilliant people out there, because our community is only as strong as the generosity of spirit in each individual member.  And the product itself must be equipped to sustain the influx in new interest that has come with every previous crypto boon.

If you'd like to play a greater part in this, consider sharing about Seeds with those you care about now, while the market is still down.  Though it's easy to say and harder to do, those who benefit most from cryptocurrency cycles are of course those who engage before the market rallies.

I've committed to teaching one live Cryptocurrency & How to Trade It course in 2023, which can be an entry point for those who'd like to learn more about how to benefit from the sector.  All past students are welcome to join us at no cost (I'll email a link for past students to register interest as the next course approaches), and because SEEDS cryptocurrency is included with payment, the course is effectively free when you pay in full up front. 

Cryptocurrency & How to Trade It is what sustains our project so that 100% of the value of gifts made through Seeds can go to those in need, so joining does good in that way as well.  I'll announce the course dates in the coming weeks.

If you're interested in the course, you're invited to apply.  If you have any questions, feel free to reply here, or hit up our Discord.

I appreciate every moment of kindness y'all have shown!  The light you shine in this world matters very much.  You and and the good work you do are important.

Love & Gratitude,
Rachel