# Memo #2 - Wait, was it all FIRE 🔥?

I've been thinking about our purpose, if you didn't see it before, this is a good time to read this [Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/Alexintosh/status/1463884609024839684) about that.

[Since the very beginning](https://medium.com/dexlab-io/in-search-of-steady-returns-be0a930f9f02) my journey was inspired by the strong conviction that crypto is going to change the game in investing and open a whole new world of opportunities when it comes to generate wealth and income. A new asset class which would accellerate the process to archive financial indipendence, an opportunity like no other for this generation to escape financial captivity, to skip the line.

I still strongly believe that to be the case.

For these reasons, we used the statement "Wealth creation for everyone" to try to represent how we felt about what we were building. If you have been following our journey long enough, like Bennet reminded me a couple of weeks ago, then you remember our early effort on [Dexwallet](https://hackmd.io/@alexintosh/rk7VotSpE#The-Master-Plan), [DDAI](https://youtu.be/ORAkGeIRx5k?t=743) and [Earn Network](https://docs.google.com/document/d/13srlLN6jHt2-BaUGhXO8mjJOnNyJfRp1FNvLoZjY_kY/edit?usp=sharing).


**There was always an attitude oriented to personal finance** in the things we were building, since what we deeply craved was at the very essence to fix our own finances to live a better, more indipendent life.

Of course we felt very close to many of the philosophical aspects of the cypherpunks ideology and the focus on protection of privacy, political freedom, and economic freedom where the cryptocurrency revolution was inspired by (context: [The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto - Timothy C. May](https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/crypto/cypherpunks/may-crypto-manifesto.html)) but what economic freedom meant to us was really the possibility to live intentionally, do things because we want to, not because we are forced by the circumstances (debt, bills, rent, morgage, etc). It meant escape the wage-trap, it meant to break our own chain.

[](https://twitter.com/Alexintosh/status/1442519086160924677)

## What is FIRE?

FIRE is short for Financial Independence, Retire Early, it's a lifestyle movement with the goal of gaining financial independence and retiring early.

The idea is simple, your goal is to build up enough passive income to offset all current expenses, and be able to continue to live our current lifestyle.

It is usally implemented by a simple recipe of:

1. Frugality
2. Maximizing savings rate
3. Aggressive investments

All of these is usually bundled up with a strategy for [Safe Withdrawal Rate](https://earlyretirementnow.com/safe-withdrawal-rate-series/), the so called **4% rule**, as a rough withdrawal guideline, thus setting a goal of at least 25 times one's estimated annual living expenses.

It's easy to see how this is appealing to me and the significant overlap with the work done within the last years.

In January this year, in the forum post [Aligning Focus & Strategy in 2022](https://forum.piedao.org/t/aligning-focus-strategy-in-2022/1208) I wrote:

> The 2022 revision of the Ultimate Goal statement develops on important points; It identifies the clear goal of Being the platform of choice for ambitious wealth seekers. It develops on the previously used motto of Automated wealth creation for everyone by narrowing down the customer segment to ambitious wealth seekers, it is an important distinction as the word everyone, while being incredibly powerful, can also be at times confusing. The Ambitious Wealth Seeker has made the conscious decision to change their destiny, take action and walk the path to grow their wealth. Why crypto? Because it’s the single biggest wealth redistribution event in history.

During the journey, it became clear how wealth creation or financial indipendence is an *extremely intentional path* to be taken by an indiduals. It requires a very specific mindset and it comes with challenges and sacrificies. Interestingly enough there is an entire community of people having very similar goals which disregard crypto of DeFi entirely right now.

**Could we create and lead the Crypto FIRE community?**

I find it an interesting question to ask, most of the fire people share similar values with us and follow the [The Bogleheads philosophy](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads%C2%AE_investment_philosophy) where diversification, simplification, index funds are preached as the way to go.

The concept of [Full Time Token Holder](https://medium.com/piedao/announcing-dough-staking-6dab2561626a) was already leaning heavely towards that direction and I believe would have been well received by the FIRE community.

## Thinking about DEFIRE

It's funny how difficult it is to pin point a vision, it evolves over time, goes through cycle and it can take years to narrow down. There were so many phases:

Premise:
Shift of economic forces  --> Decreasing trust in institutions / Job displacement / Raise of automation --> Crypto fixes this

Attempts:
Crypto is unusable --> Friction to access --> Build wallet
Access not enough --> Can we automate investment strategy? --> Earn network / DDAI
People get rekt on shitcoin --> We need defi index funds --> PieVaults
People get rugpulled farming --> Can we build a meta fund via dough? --> veDOUGH

While diverse the set of problems we have been discussing the common denominator was to help people make money to live their life.

*Was that a convoluted way to say: "Financial Independence, Retire Early, With Crypto" ?*
What if we embraced this positioning? Would it provide clarity to what we do?

Some advantages come to mind:
- Builds on the existing Full time token holder idea
- Easy to create a very strong content strategy on top
- Taps into an extremely proactive niche of committed people
- Auxo app much more unique as a platform using Defi for personal finance
- Clear narrative, great storytelling

## I'm obsessed with it

Not drawing any conclusions just yet about it. I cannot help to notice how obsessed I am with all of this, I always come back to the idea of a platform which is in between a personal finance app, aiding you to plan your journey to build passive income for retirement, and a Defi protocol automating most of it and making you access to a wider range of opportunity than before.

When I feel tired and frustrated, I come back to why I'm doing all of this and feel a thrill of excitement in the idea that we right alchemy of combining smartcontracts, great UX and education can help a lot of folks talking control over their life and finances. It's magic and we get to be the wizards.

## Reading list
- [The PieDAO Manifesto](https://medium.com/piedao/the-piedao-manifesto-3fa387b65ef7)
- https://accidentallyretired.com/financial/how-i-planned-my-early-retirement-withdrawal-strategy-after-i-accidentally-retired-without-a-plan/412?utm_source=pocket_mylist
- https://www.personalcapital.com/financial-software/retirement-planner
- https://www.cfiresim.com/
- https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/