Bankless - The Astrological Crypto Maven with Maren Altman | Layer Zero
Primer: Maren Altman is one of TikTok’s most successful astrologists. She has used her craft to successfully predict cryptocurrency prices. In this episode of Bankless Layer Zero, she shares with host David Hoffman about astrology, its connection to financial markets, dealing with her critics, and what she’s building next.
Background
Astrologer who tracks the crypto markets
Growing up, she was obsessed with Astrology
As a teenager, she started applying it to world events
In college, she switched from acting to philosophy
Predicted the sequence of events in the 2020 US election
While trying to open a bank account, she found some inefficiencies with the banking system and came to learn about crypto
Finding The Connections Between Astrology And Financial Markets
At any given moment, the planets are in a certain position, moving at different speeds, etc.
In the software she has, the planets are always making different angles to one another
These angles represent easy or difficult world events
The planet themselves symbolizes certain themes in the world
E.g. predicting x aspect to y planet as to whether Bitcoin’s chart go up or down
What’s Her Response To People Who Are Skeptical?
Respects people who are skeptical instead of people who blindly believe things
She is looking at correlation
She never claims causation
“And so when people try to strawman me and say, oh, so you're saying, that’s Jupiter's making? No, I never said make. I never said cause. I'm saying in correlation with. I see signal. I say indicate. I say suggest. So when people say things like it was not the planets, it was this black swan. And I'm like, exactly, the planets were informing us that this was going to happen.”
- Maren Altman
Doesn’t really know how it works, but that it works
She has been wrong before
What About The Critique On Illusory Correlations?
Completely agrees with the critique
Thinks that tracking crypto markets and world events make it more verifiable
Deciding Which Asset Pair To Trade
Tracking only BTC and ETH as they are astrologically composed
A lot of ETH placements are exactly 180 degrees opposite Bitcoin
If something makes a certain angle with Bitcoin, it would make the same angle with Ethereum. Hence, there’s not much difference between the two
Have the charts of Solana, LUNA, and AVAX, but doesn’t think that she will get a high return on her investment of time
People have asked her to look at charts before their project launches. She responds that context comes first (e.g. if the traditional markets and Bitcoin is going down, it will probably respond in the same way)
Other Aspects Of Her Life
Her focus in philosophy was on ethics and metaphysics
Ethics involves applying logic to human decisions — what will minimize pain and maximize goodwill
This consideration outlines much of crypto — how do we make this the most efficient and less able to be exploited?
Is She A Passive Bystander Or Does She Have An Interest In Steering The Crypto Industry?
Doesn’t think that she is a passive bystander
Tries to actively engage and open this space up to others
The Maren Community
Have a very polarized following
The crypto community has been fairly supportive
Are There Traders Who Feel Frustrated That Maren Has Outperformed Them?
Have received mainly positive responses from people
Time Frames For Her Predictions
Different planets have different orbits (e.g. Mercury usually spends 3 weeks in a sign, etc.)
There are different periods and cycles within cycles
What’s Coming Up For The Rest Of 2022 and 2023?
A lunar eclipse will be happening 2 days from filming this episode. It would be horrendous
Don’t trust the market until 16 May onwards
More optimistic for a recovery for the last 2 weeks of May
Think it will stabilize from May until the end of October
Prices will be lower over the next few months due to the lack of liquidity. Retails will be prioritizing on food because of inflation rather than on Bitcoin
November and December 2022 looks bad for prices
Spring 2023 (April/May) has some strange astrology. This cycle happened 18 years ago where it involves the geopolitical redrawing of borders and the collapse of certain currencies
Ray Dalio talking about instability of a currency —> instability of a population —> downfall of an empire
What Else Is She Working On?
Building Astrace
A trading vault will be created from an API of the planetary data combined with a price feed and algorithm
Have been working on this for some time
Have just raised their first round of $500k
Meeting with developers and talking with them
“So we can see what Venus sign has the highest net worth and whoever wants to put their birth date on chain can be like, oh, during this period of my life, I had the highest net worth and now it's goblin town.”
- Maren Altman
Is She Prepared For The Amount Of Hate She Will Get From Beating Everyone?
Went through a difficult 2021 and is now bulletproof
Everything that she does is on-chain
Besides Trading And Astrology, What Else Does She Think About?
Scripting and filming TikToks
Meditating and working out
Vlogging in public
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