Freewheelers Cello Band Blog

 Well, there is hope. 

This is the end of 2020. We have not had such a long period without playing for audiences, ever. All musicians are worried about the future. Some have even sold their instruments, and bought Bitcoins. 

I did so too, when Ilene; and I had to move to the US ASAP in 2009, I had to sell my beloved oldtimers, and get tickets. I sold guitars, effect pedals, amps and a drum kit, so that we could buy a 30 foot 1987 RV with a V8 so big we hardly could afford to move it. But we had a roof, without having to pay rent in our time (we think actually in our time rent and mortgage are WAAAAAY OVER PRICED!!!). 

As life still cost us money, and the crisis didn't give us any option to make money, I had put my hope in a new development, electronic money, or: the Bitcoin. This was hot news around 2011, and I thought that buying them would help me make some profit. Via a company that at that time, magazines and experts said was the most reliable in the field, BTCNext, I bought the electronic coins and put them in an electronic wallet, which I saved on my harddisk. This was on a laptop that I had gotten from my aunt, since I helped her to use and understand it, shortly before her passing away. 

Unfortunately, this laptop crashed. The usual blue screen shit, it appeared that the motherboard had a bad memory chip or something; there was No Chance that I could get my wallet back. There also was a 'pass phrase' going with it and I was so stupid to actually completely forget about it. So ByeBye Bitcoinmoney.

We, at that time, were putting all our efforts in SURVIVING; which means, finding a place better than the walmart parking, to have our RV, finding places where we could perform and make some income, finding a way to fly to Europe to attend my parent's birthdays, keep our paperwork current etc etc. 

We also had a little 3 legged dog, Otis, to take care of. We had also planned to live in Spain; there we have a camper and a car. Both always need lots of TLC. Meanwhile, we love ecologic gardening, walking in nature, visiting hippie communes and eco villages and so on. Eventually, we discovered an ecological camping in Vinyols, near Salou, where we could perform twice a week and live in our old mercedes camper called 'Elvis'. Then, Ilene's son married his longtime friend, and we decided to move back to the US since Spain still is in a crisis (up to this day). We realized that for countries like Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal, the construction of the EU has to be changed a lot. Northern EU countries have used all kinds of tricks to attract (foreign) money, investors. For example, the Netherlands and Luxemburg are known as tax heavens. The book 'Moneyland' finally opened up about how easy it is to start anonymous companies. A year later, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (www.ICIJ.org) published their 'Panama Papers', an enormous amount of research data that pointed out how companies and rich people (including royals and heads of state) used these kinds of constructions to avoid paying tax.

Of course, as soon as the world's population, which has suffered hard after the financial-economic crisis of 2007-2013, saw how the top 1% richest people in the world has abused this situation, they wanted governments to take action. 

Meanwhile, this 1% had organized with the Trump organization AKA republican party and their think tanks, to avoid being taxed. They had first arranged to win the 2016 elections by making the Democrat party choose the rather unpopular Hillary Clinton as presidential candidate, and paid Eastern Europe and Russian troll farms to influence the elections. Then, they devised a plan that made sure Trump would win the next, 2020 elections, and in the years between 2020 and 2024 he would have been able to use the media to tell the people democracy wasn't in their best interest, and thus, there wouldn't be any in 2024, establishing an American dictatorship, the first since the US was founded. 

Now this plan has failed, all Trumps crooked friends are buying Bitcoins with their exuberant amounts of money. At this point there's more money to be made by investing in Bitcoins; my best advice is, to put your digital wallet on a USB stick you put in a safe, including the pass phrase. Make sure you can cash in, anytime. 

Happy Christmas and a successful 2021!