Applying the “long term patient, short term impatient” mindset to second language acquisition

Applying the “long term patient, short term impatient” mindset to second language acquisition
View last weeks 10 most used speaking assignments.
Do you love bringing all kinds of content, activities, questions, and quizzes together using Formative assessments? We do too! That’s why Speakable is excited to offer an embed function that allows teachers to embed their Speakable assignments inside of Formative...
Looking for ideas to get students stay in contact with target language? Here’s a list of 10 top activities to do outside the classroom!
There comes a time in your journey down the Bitcoin rabbit hole when you realize that not all monetary assets that you hold are of equal value. I, for one, live in Colombia: while the Colombian Peso isn’t the worst currency in Latin America, it has lost 50% of its purchasing power in dollar terms since I arrived in 2013. The exchange rate to the USD was about 1,800 COP / USD and now floats around 3,900 COP/USD. Therefore, when it comes time to spend one currency over the other, I have the easy choice of spending my Colombian Pesos over the dollars I hold. The “smart” decision, therefore, is to spend the currency which loses its value faster. In economics, this is called Gresham’s Law.
“In economics, Gresham’s law is a monetary principle stating that “bad money drives out good”. For example, if there are two forms of commodity money in circulation, which are accepted by law as having similar face value, the more valuable commodity will gradually disappear from circulation”
-Wikipedia
The “bad” money is spent because it doesn’t hold its value in the long term as well as the “good” money. The “good” money is hoarded and stuffed under mattresses (or stored on USB drives as we see with Bitcoin). The comparison of the dollar vs the Colombian peso is easy to see on a multi-year time scale – don’t hold your pesos!
If we take that analysis a step further and extend this to the world’s first global, decentralized, digital monetary asset, Bitcoin, the US Dollar, and even more so the Colombian Peso, starts looking like the Venezualan Bolivar or the German Mark post-WWI – a slip n’ slide to hell.
Gresham’s Law isn’t some obscure law that is only put into practice by “smart” investors or economists; it’s as much a law of nature as gravity is. Venezuelans hoard dollars and spend their Bolivares, and it’s easy to see why. Bitcoiners spend the other currencies they hold and hoard Bitcoin.
DON’T SPEND YOUR BITCOIN: for now at least. Many of our Lightning Tutors in Latin America are saving in Bitcoin. Many were Bitcoiners before they started tutoring and already understood that though. The new tutors who begin to understand Bitcoin by holding it themselves quickly learn this lesson; it’s not hard to understand why it needs to be held long-term: it’s scarce and it’s only getting scarcer as each day passes. Scarcity and adoption, both of which are increasing, drive Bitcoin’s increasing purchasing power. We at Speakable hope to bring this amazing savings tool to more Spanish teachers in the future. Finally, on to the practical side of this article.
If you’re in the United States (or El Salvador at the moment) you’re in luck; there’s an app for that called Strike! Strike, a company founded by Chicago native Jack Mallers, discovered the magic sauce: hook your bank account directly to the Bitcoin network (more precisely the Lightning Bitcoin Network). This allows you to send the dollars from your bank account as a bitcoin transaction. You spend your dollars, they receive Bitcoin. If you’re sending it to another Strike user, they’ll receive it as dollars in their app – just like the cash app or PayPal. This seemingly simple integration has taken the world by storm – now a Strike user in the United States can send dollars to El Salvador instantaneously for free; they may receive it as Bitcoin or dollars – their choice.
Strike is planning on going global soon. Before you know it, Latin America, Asia, and Europe will all have access to it or another app that does the same thing. For the time being though, if you do need to spend a bit of Bitcoin here or there, here’s what I recommend.
Learn More About Sending and Receiving Bitcoin
Sayonara Language Learners!
Strike App: https://strike.me/
LocalBitcoin: https://localbitcoins.com/
0 Comments