The Astrological Crypto Maven with Maren Altman | Layer Zero

Welcome to Layer Zero.

Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Crypto is built by code, but is composed by people, and each individual member of the crypto community has their own story to tell.

Cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it, and Layer Zero focuses on the people behind the code because Ethereum is people all the way down, and it always has been. Today on Layer Zero, it's gonna be something a little different. I'm speaking to Maren Altman, and she is the person that pays attention to astrology to predicts the crypto markets. And so this is definitely off-the-beaten path for typical bankless content. And so listeners might need to put on their skeptics' hat, but either way, I think there are interesting things to pull out of this episode, regardless of whether you believe in the relationship between the positions of the planets and the relationship of how our Earth progresses. Marin is a background in philosophy, but also in order to do what she does, it has to be extremely multidisciplinary. So it's not just astrology, it's relating astrology to many, many things. And I'm always a huge fan in the way that crypto is so multidisciplinary. In order to understand crypto, you need to understand biology, you need to understand psychology, computer science, history, economics, human anthropology is super relevant. But I've never really thought to include astrology. And I don't think most people do. And I think most people definitely discount astrology almost completely. But if you want some entertainment and just to open your mind and explore new subjects, Marin has produced a huge brand around herself for being the person that can somehow make really good calls from really far away. Whether you think that is just luck of the draw and just sheer happenstance, or whether you think that this is actually something real, is an entertaining show either way. And so I hope you guys enjoy this fantastic conversation with Maren Altman right after we get to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Hey Maren, what's up?

Hey, I'm just casually in Europe, traveling around. What about you?

kind of wondering where this conversation goes. Uh I don't think our two communities cross pollinate too much. So I actually want to start at the very beginning. For the people that who don't know who Marin is, who is Marin?

Marin is, I was about to say, walking incarnation of cringe, but then people probably ask, what does that mean? So I'm not gonna say that. I am an astrologer and I mainly track financial markets, specifically crypto.

Okay, so there's a varying degree of skepticism about astrology. The first time I heard you uh saw you on my radar, you were doing the astrology thing, but like relating it to like shit coin prices, right? I think maybe like the first one was like shib token. And so is there a conversation to have about like the degree of facetiousness about astrology, or like are you 100% like on board with the whole astrology thing?

Oh, I've been tracking this throughout my life. I have been observing the correlation. I've been more focused on world events and markets than personality, because if I can objectively predict a world event, especially price action, which is very verifiable, right or wrong, that's much more credible than me anecdotally saying that someone acts a certain way. You know, that can be bullshit, that can be manipulated any certain way. So the only facetiousness is me just creating a meme out of myself.

I'm kind of astounded sometimes when people don't get when I'm joking and when I'm not, but I get that I'm using such weird words that I can't expect everyone to understand. I'm either dead serious or I'm completely memeing myself. But uh the act of what I'm doing in its totality is like dead serious. Yeah.

Okay. And so you were doing this before crypto, right? You were integrating astrology and money and finance before you found crypto.

So I'd been growing up obsessed with astrology. And when I was a teenager, I started applying it to world events because I found that much more interesting. And when I got to college and switched from acting to philosophy in order to do that better,

I was doing more political cycles, empires. I've always been

like people who know me personally know this. I've been obsessed with war and combat throughout my life. So when I could apply astrology to predicting that and tracking that, that's when things really took off for me, especially looking at uh the US, like.

US war stat history, I started talking about that, and I really blew up when I predicted the 2020 sequence of events in politics for the US leading up to and following the election. And early 2020, when I was graduating from NYU and I was like, I need to open a bank account, learn how to manage my own money. I

found some issues in the banking system that just seemed inefficient. Like I found it incredibly stupid, inefficient. Luckily, I had no

Prior knowledge of anything financial. Like no one had ever taught me anything. I studied philosophy. So when I found the issues, I found crypto. And that was the first entry into finance. I have no traditional finance background. I have no traditional financial astrology background. I still to this day don't know that much about traditional finance, uh, only early crypto.

Can you do walk us through a little like out loud thinking process about like what goes into finding the predictions, finding the connections between astrology and financial markets or the other things that relate?

Yeah, so at any given moment, the planets in the sky are in a certain position. They're all moving at different speeds, they're all moving uh in different orbits. And in the software I have, it shows that. And the planets, therefore, are always making different angles to one another. And these angles tend to represent either easy or difficult world events, and the planet themselves symbolize certain themes in the world. So you'll combine X planet with Y planet in a certain degree, in very much first order logic to make an if this then that statement.

And if you're using multiple charts, as in the chart of the given sky and those planetary aspects to something that was born, whether it be a person or Bitcoin and its Genesis block, because we were all born at a snapshot of the planets, and we can see how our life is going if we apply the current planets and those geometric aspects to something that was born.

So if you do that to Bitcoin, you can predict

If X aspect to like Y planet in Bitcoin's chart, then number go up, go down. It's the same process as if this is happening to the chart of the US, then this looks like this kind of world event in this area of the life because there's sectors in the sky that represent certain things. And it's a ton of basically data collection over time that is refined into certain alignments represent certain world events. And it's the judgment of the astrologer to contextualize that with what the world is going through right now. So anyone with basic knowledge of astrology can tell you this angle with these planets means bad or good. It takes awareness of the world and contextual possibilities to put that into perspective for how it can apply to the market, the world, someone's life. And that's where my knowledge of wanting to learn about crypto came in handy because it was an area I was actually passionate about learning about. It didn't take me forcing myself to look at people's charts, which I stopped doing once crypto blew up because I'm not as interested in people's personalities or their lives as I am financial markets, which I think are just more objectively gratifying to predict and look at.

Yeah, I think crypto fits really, really well here because crypto offers a unique vantage point for viewing the whole entire world. So there's a conversation to be had there. But before we get to that point, there's gonna be a decent number of listeners who just listen to that and they're like, that's a bunch of magic. And I'm sure you get this all the time. So, like, what's your response to people who think that like this is just magic? This isn't real.

Yeah.

What do you say to this?

Personally, I invite in all skepticism. We do not get anywhere with blindly believing things. I would rather have someone

be extremely confused, extremely skeptical, and I find that more respectable than buying in. I find that a much better reaction than like, oh magic, oh ha, cool. Like I don't take that seriously. That's not the kind of uh conversation I want to have.

We're looking at correlation here. So

there are different seasons, obviously, in the world. Therefore, if we're simply zooming out, looking at other things happening on a repeated basis, I'm in no way claiming causation. In fact, I will like stand out from possibly maybe more woo or magical inclined people who study this who will say things like this is happening because of Mercury retrograde, this is happening because Mars is in this angle.

I'm very specific with my language. I never use causal language unless I'm literally making a joke. And like I'm, I don't even do that anymore because then people get confused. So, in no way am I ever claiming causation. And so when people try to straw man me and say,

Oh, so you're saying that Jupiter's making no, I never said make, I never said cause. I'm saying in correlation with I say signal, I say indicates, I say suggests. So when people say things like, it was not the planets, it was this black swan of it, I'm like, exactly. The planets were informing us that this was going to happen. And if someone doesn't buy the correlation, then by no means am I offended, by no means am I going to try to convince them. I think that it's important to go in with a clean slate of I don't really know how this works because it's not something that works, it's something that is shown to us that I like to think of it as.

a glitch in the architecture of reality that we can look at, where we're getting a sneak peek into a point of view that we wouldn't normally have. I think there's a certain amount of humility that comes from being the player in the game and recognizing that, not the creator of the game. Not that it's not a religion, it's nothing religious at all. It's more of a perspective that I'm practicing.

But I invite in all skepticism. I show people this is how I get there. Everything I do, like my scripts for my videos, is written in literal first order logic. Like if this, then that, uh, this negates this, this is more important than this.

And because of that, I think if anyone does disagree, it would be more on the level of I don't agree with your interpretation. When it's correlation, it's hard to disagree with like that conclusion because someone can say, I just don't feel comfortable with my own ability to determine that this is a correlation. But I invite an all skepticism. And I think when it's done from a perspective without

Strawmanning or from the get-go getting some ad hominem argument, then I invite it.

What about the critique or the criticism that like there's just two sets of data here? There's like the world events, the crypto markets, the movements of the nation states, all these big things. And then there's the data set of all the planets and their relationships with each other. And there's just so much data on both of these two data sets that, like, inevitably you'll find a way to like map them together to produce some correlation. Yeah. What about this critique?

I completely agree with that. And that's why I don't talk about things that I am not specifically focused on the context of. Because sometimes I'll predict a world event and I'll have someone comment, oh, this is happening in the Philippines right now. I'm like, I'm looking at the chart of the US. Don't give me credit for that. That's not what I'm looking at. I think tracking crypto markets with certain assets and world events for things like nations and specific areas of life with that.

Is much more verifiable. And if someone gives me credit for claiming that, I don't know, I'm looking at the US chart and I'm like, ooh, this looks like terrible financially involving a female leader. I wonder what's happening. And someone tells me, oh, in like some African country that this happened with this female leader and the currency did this. I'm like, I wasn't speaking to that. That actually happened a few months ago when someone I spoke to was around maybe it was a year ago, but I talked about it looking like Biden was gonna have to step down for a period of time. Like there was a

A planetary retrograde that I'm like, look, he's not like leaving office, but it looks like he's stepping down intermittently and Kamala Harris looks like she's gonna be stepping up. He was getting a colonoscopy and had to, because he was under anesthesia, say that he was putting her in control. Yeah, so like that kind of thing happened where

It was strange, and I did not have the context for that. I didn't know that that could happen, but it definitely looks like he's going away for a little bit. I that's kind of strange. Where I completely agree with that, and that's the kind of thing that I want people to grill me on. I want them to say, but this didn't happen like worldwide. I stick to areas that I'm literally looking at. So the chart of Bitcoin, if it did not happen to Bitcoin, if it happened to, I don't know, some other thing, then I don't get credit for that.

This is amazing. One of the reasons why I was piqued to bring you on on the show is because there's been a number of uh other people who have made this similar comments of just like, yo, I don't get the voodoo magic that Marin's up to, but her track record is like off the charts. And then I saw a prediction from you forever ago that predicted May 9th. And I think you said something along the lines of do what you will with that. And then May 9th came and went, and that was the collapse of the Terra ecosystem. So, like, can you talk about just how you've kind of won hearts and minds via just actual predictions that came true?

Yeah, I think not wavering because I can see that this has worked. I was much

This has worked. Like people initially told me, Oh, you're just in a bull market. That's why I'm just like, no, I made more money over the summer because I actually just am like better at shorting. It's just more fun. It's more red. I'm better at that.

I think continuously putting things out, and I don't take things seriously enough not to be completely like I predict this. If I'm wrong, crucify me. Like I've been wrong before. I've said things that just did not, they happen in a different way. And I'm like, oh, so I got this wrong and this happened. I don't have any hesitation in putting myself out there because I would rather have.

Tried it and failed miserably, then played scared and run away from people judging me or coming to doubt me at first. So I think by continuously showing up, developing a track record, and being very deliberate about saying this is correlation, not causation, I'm not someone that claims any magical abilities. In fact, I'm a pretty like grounded,

like I say I'm like a human computer. I can't even remember tarot card meetings. I don't do tarot cards or anything like that really.

I take the memes. You could call me Crypto Witch. You can ask, you know, when moon, when I'm like, I'm rarely looking at the moon, I'm usually looking at the other planets.

I invite that. I think that just my unwavering consistency and being more scared of not making an impact than what people think at a given moment has kept people engaged even if at first they're like, the hell is she doing?

So do you leverage your own portfolio when you look towards the the stars and the planets to make predictions? Like do you actually put your own money on the line?

Always. Like that's a hundred million percent. Yeah.

Wow. How's your track record with your own money?

Given that I started learning how to trade late 2020, started trading early 2021, and then my block file was hacked and all my ETH was taken. It wasn't that much at the time, but at the time I was like, this is all my money, oh my God. And I had to make it all back like I had to learn. It's been what I've done over the past two year and a half now. And it's been like astounding. I mean, the opportunities that I've gotten to do with helping my family. And I think not only with tracking astrology, I'm used to for like, I guess, like, I mean, I'm 23. So I haven't been technically doing this for decades, but I've been looking, I guess you could say for decades, whatever. I've been looking at planetary symbols and cycles and lining them up for so long that looking at a candlestick chart and learning those patterns, it's all pattern recognition, that fell into place really, really quickly for me. I don't care if the number is going up or down. I will like be kind of cold to people and be like, I don't see why you're upset. Like there's no need to be upset. Number go down, showing the strength in the dollar is a it's a better asset right now. Like all the Bitcoin USD chart is saying is the dollar is a stronger asset right now. There's no good bad. Because of that, like I do put my money where my mouth is and there's no hesitation. And I haven't traded as much over the past two years. I've just simply stuck to doing more on the building side and doing that. But I still, when I get an entry, I'll document it. I put it on my telegram channel and I'll just be like, oh, I've stopped out. Oh shit. But I'm pretty open about like how I like to go risk on, and I will be more risk on the end of this month.

How do you decide what is the asset pair to trade? Do the planets tell you this?

So with Bitcoin being the context for basically the entire crypto market, everything else being Bitcoin on leverage for the most part, I'm really only tracking Bitcoin and ETH

in the way that both of them are astrologically composed.

A lot of ETH's placements are exactly 180 degrees opposite Bitcoins, meaning that in a 360-degree wheel, if something is making a certain angle with Bitcoin, it'll make the same angle with Ethereum. So there's rarely that much difference between the two. And

You're telling me Bitcoin and Ether are highly correlated.

yeah, yeah, which is funny because in seeing that, I thought that that was interesting. However,

there's some very specific things that are really only triggered for Bitcoin or ETH. And usually I can determine whether it's news related because when I'm looking at astrology, that's fundamentals. It's not exact price. I have to execute the trade to talk about that.

That I'm only looking at Bitcoin and ETH generally. I have like the chart of Solana, Luna, AVAX, but I don't think that I get a high return on my investment of time if I'm looking at that. I would rather just look to Bitcoin. If I miss a random announcement about something, I don't even care. I'm not gonna beat myself up.

I've gotten people to be like, yo, I'm launching this. Can you look at the chart? I'm like, no, it doesn't fucking matter. Like, look at context first, just like how if the traditional markets are nuking.