The image above was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'cartoon bat looking at a financial chart.'
My credit was long ago destroyed by the medical debt that comes with chronic illness. In 2017, following the likely exposure of my data in the Equifax data breach, I locked my credit and have never been able to unlock it. As a result, the entire legacy credit system has been completely inaccessible to me for many years. I can't even open a commercial checking account.
Although I receive fair wages for the work I do these days, my income has always been low. My news editing job pays just enough to cover the basics not including taxes. So I trade crypto to pay my tax bill every year. And I receive a little extra from art and book sales. Here's my 2024 breakdown:
- Nonprofit contract: 66.67%
- Crypto trading: 22.22%
- Art and book sales: 11.11%
All things considered, I netted about $36k in 2024. My estimated tax bill for the year is $8.5k, which is just over the amount I earned trading. This was a pretty good profit on the $6.4k I put in between June and November. Yet while I'm happy to be able to pay my taxes, I'm also disheartened because even better than doubling my money didn't seem to get me anywhere. Once I pay my taxes, my trading roll will be approximately the same size as it was last year after I paid my taxes.
At the same time, the need to find a new permanent residence has become pressing. And I may be soon kicked off of my public insurance for making too much money, which will saddle me with about $12k/year in unavoidable medical expenses. Realistically, my total income may need to triple this year for things to work out okay. This increase won't come from the nonprofit I'm committed to, so it has to come from other sources.
I hope to sell more books and art this year, which could yield several thousand dollars. Dev work could maybe yield a few thousand more. That's great, but it's far from enough. Which leaves me with crypto trading.
I learned to trade using the Quickfinger Luc method, which is basically buying a drop and selling the bounce. Later I got into harvesting volatility trading on the range. There was a time when trading paid my bills, but I never had any substantial funds to work with, so my hourly pay for the terribly boring and simultaneously stressful activity probably never really got above $30.
Recovering from a serious illness in 2019 totally wiped me out. I started again in 2020 with $100. Since then, I've been making slow trades on annual cycles and project information, paying my taxes every year while bringing my roll once again into the thousands. And now circumstances are pressuring me to take it to the next level.
My 2025 plan is to trade with my tax money through Q1. My strategy is to buy EOS and maybe SOL as low as I can during the January slump while hodling my 9.05mb of EOS ram. Here are the buy orders I currently have open:
12/23/24|SOL-USD|Limit Buy|$118.33|37.9|SOL
12/23/24|EOS-USD|Limit Buy|$0.53|8,480.3|EOS
12/23/24|EOS-USD|Limit Buy|$0.615|4,872.1|EOS
These orders may be optimistic, but we'll see what happens in the next month. If my buys hit, I'm confident I can make 30% by the end of Q1. After taxes, this might leave me with $7k to keep going with. In March, depending on the market, I'm thinking I might sell what I need to satisfy the tax man and pour the rest into bitcoin in case it has a big spring run. I'll also likely stake the bitcoin to earn exSat.
I'm guessing that the price of bitcoin will move up at least 10 points this spring. In May, I'll probably sell the bitcoin and refocus on EOS, including CHEX and ram, in hopes of catching a nice autumn run. If all goes as planned, I might end up with $10k going into 2026, with most or all of that spoken for to cover 2025 taxes. This is a far cry from the tens of thousands that I actually need. So I'm on the lookout for better opportunities.
Note that nothing I say should be considered advice. Trade at your own risk.
Read Free Mind Gazette on Substack
Read my novels:
- Small Gods of Time Travel is available as a web book on IPFS and as a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt.
- The Paradise Anomaly is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Psychic Avalanche is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- One Man Embassy is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Flying Saucer Shenanigans is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Rainbow Lullaby is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- The Ostermann Method is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Blue Dragon Mississippi is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
See my NFTs:
- Small Gods of Time Travel is a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt that goes with my book by the same name.
- History and the Machine is a 20 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on my series of oil paintings of interesting people from history.
- Artifacts of Mind Control is a 15 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on declassified CIA documents from the MKULTRA program.