One of the more interesting and subjectively alluring things about cryptocurrency is that the market never sleeps. Humans, on the other hand, are required by nature to sleep quite often, otherwise we die.

Now it makes sense that crypto never sleeps because it's not really a 'market' persay, or at least I don't think it's really supposed to be. The idea is that the whole concept of currency will somehow eventually move entirely onto block chains (or something) and we won't use paper money at all any more. Right? Obviously there are a few problems with that, like, for instance, where does the money go? Does it vanish? Does Crypto God eventually accrue every single dollar, yuan, ruble, rupee, whatever, and burn them? Will every participating country makes its own currency token in the meantime like the USD Coin to encourage people to enter the future? What about old people? Will regular money just never go away? Why can't we all be friends and forgo the use of an imaginary placeholder for 'value'? If we're hit by an asteroid and/or a magnetic storm and the internet goes down, does anyone legally 'own' anything anymore?

I'm no finance major so I have no idea how this will work itself out. But it will somehow. Of course it will.

It also makes sense that humans do need to sleep because how else would we ever make peace with all of these unsettling thoughts? In addition to having braaainzz that for whatever reason have evolved to process extremely complex thoughts and ideas, some of us also tend to be pretty active in terms of the energy that our bodies transmute in some form or another.

Like most things these days, there is a lot of debate about the best ways to sleep and I'm going to weigh in too.

My last post was about intermittent fasting, which is when you choose a larger portion of your day to not consume any food. This is a lot easier to do if you consistently get 9 hours of sleep. Then you're already like three-quarters of the way to a really easy fasting schedule. But is 9 hours of sleep really beneficial?

Well, yes, but only for humans that use sleep time to increase their bone and muscle mass. The even pull of gravity on all of your extremities while you're laying down on a bed and an extended period of not moving around facilitates much more efficient growth.

But our bones pretty much completely stop growing sometime in our twenties, so, around that time, we stop needing so much sleep.

After that, the optimal amount of sleep for the average person is somewhere between 5 and 8 hours. Any longer and it starts to add to your 'sedentary time', and your body decides that it doesn't really need such strong bones and muscles if it's going to be spending more than a third of its day in bed. Of course, this is partially reversed by doing moderate exercise, and, as a corrolary, if you're doing a lot of high-intensity exercise, the opposite will be true and your body will appreciate an extra hour of sleep because it can sincerely use that time to repair itself and grow. 

It gets a little more interesting if you decide to break that time down. A long time ago, I heard that geniuses like Da Vinci and Tesla generally had unconventional sleep schedules, like 3x3 hours, 2x4 hours, or most intriguing to me, 4.5 + 0.5x hours. I had a weird sleep schedule in college, but not like that. I had always wanted to try a sleep schedule like these, but never had the optimal conditions to do so.

Well, for the past month+ I have kind of accidentally switched to sleep schedules of 5, 4.5+0.5, or 4+1 hours per night, obviously adjusted a little bit, and it is working really well. I have more waking time during the day and no noticeable difference in waking energy/mood.

This schedule could be very sustainable, and if you're a trader you might want those extra hours of waking time. 

To do this, I recommend a 4-4.5 hour main sleep with one or two 20-60 minute power naps. Obviously you can modify it as you see fit, but if you're a moderately active person I definitely wouldn't recommend consistently getting less than 5 hours of sleep in total. But it might work for you too. We're all different so don't just take my word for it; experiment a little. Or not, it's up to you.

We are cursed with the need to sleep often, but blessed because after each sleep we are awakened.