Category: blockchain

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How crypto could change the world and Why Cryptocurrency was invented in the first place.

People used to pay each other in gold and silver. Difficult to transport. Difficult to divide.

Paper money was invented. A claim to gold in a bank vault. Easier to transport and divide.

Banks gave out more paper money than they had gold in the vault. They ran “fractional reserves”. A real money maker. But every now and then, banks collapsed because of runs on the bank.

Central banking was invented. Central banks would be lenders of last resort. Runs on the bank were thus mitigated by banks guaranteeing each other’s deposits through a central bank. The risk of a bank run was not lowered. Its frequency was diminished and its impact was increased. After all, banks remained basically insolvent in this fractional reserve scheme.

Banks would still get in trouble. But now, if one bank got in sufficient trouble, they would all be in trouble at the same time. Governments would have to step in to save them.

All ties between the financial system and gold were severed in 1971 when Nixon decided that the USD would no longer be exchangeable for a fixed amount of gold. This exacerbated the problem, because there was now effectively no limit anymore on the amount of paper money that banks could create.

From this moment on, all money was created as credit. Money ceased to be supported by an asset. When you take out a loan, money is created and lent to you. Banks expect this freshly minted money to be returned to them with interest. Sure, banks need to keep adequate reserves. But these reserves basically consist of the same credit-based money. And reserves are much lower than the loans they make.

This led to an explosion in the money supply. The Federal Reserve stopped reporting M3 in 2006. But the ECB currently reports a yearly increase in the supply of the euro of about 5%.

This leads to a yearly increase in prices. The price increase is somewhat lower than the increase in the money supply. This is because of increased productivity. Society gets better at producing stuff cheaper all the time. So, in absence of money creation you would expect prices to drop every year. That they don’t is the effect of money creation.

What remains is an inflation rate in the 2% range.

Banks have discovered that they can siphon off all the productivity increase + 2% every year, without people complaining too much. They accomplish this currently by increasing the money supply by 5% per year, getting this money returned to them at an interest.

Apart from this insidious tax on society, banks take society hostage every couple of years. In case of a financial crisis, banks need bailouts or the system will collapse.

Apart from these problems, banks and governments are now striving to do away with cash. This would mean that no two free men would be able to exchange money without intermediation by a bank. If you believe that to transact with others is a fundamental right, this should scare you.

The absence of sound money was at the root of the problem. We were force-fed paper money because there were no good alternatives. Gold and silver remain difficult to use.

When it was tried to launch a private currency backed by precious metals (Liberty dollar), this initiative was shut down because it undermined the U.S. currency system. Apparently, a currency alternative could only thrive if “nobody” launched it and if they was no central point of failure.

What was needed was a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. This was what Satoshi Nakamoto described in 2008. It was a response to all the problems described above. That is why he labeled the genesis block with the text: “03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”. Bitcoin was meant to be an alternative to our current financial system.

So, if you find yourself religiously checking some cryptocurrency’s price, or bogged down in discussions about the “one true bitcoin”, or constantly asking what currency to buy, please at least remember that we have bigger fish to fry.

We are here to fix the financial system.

Given how early in the Rogers Adoption Curve for Crypto we are, I would like to take a moment so we can just imagine what this technological revolution, which I consider is the next huge step for human kind, could bring. I will emphasize some socioeconomic implications of descentralization, but I`m mostly interested in listening to, and debating your inputs.

Blockchain and Crypto Currency are here to change the world forever.

The implications of decentralization

As you may know one of the core proposals of blockchain is decentralization, and with it we can optimize so many processes that this alone could be the revolution we are talking about. By eliminating intermediaries, we can save on the cost they add to the supply chain ensuring those that create the value, keep it. Or we can simply save on fees.

To quote the man himself:

Whereas most technologies tend to automate workers on the periphery doing menial tasks, blockchains automate away the center. Instead of putting the taxi driver out of a job, blockchain puts Uber out of a job and lets the taxi drivers work with the customer directly. – Vitalik Buterin.

To put it simply, imagine that you replace Binance (a centralized company) with a robot. A robot that you have programed so well, whose code you publicly audit, and that is so safe you can trust it with billions of dollars in liquidity pools, so it proceeds to host and operate the trading platform by itself. In case you didn’t know, this is already a reality! Many people here trade on those platforms on a daily basis.

But this goes beyond replacing Centralized Exchanges with Automated Market Makers, Airbnb with a blockchain DApp that connects landlords and costumers, or even banks with complex smart contracts that allow you to borrow, save, tokenize physical assets, and so on. This goes way beyond.

Here is where I start to fantasize of the future. Think about replacing capital itself, think about getting rid of corporations. Lets dream of a world with DAOs massive adoption.

With DeFi, we may no longer need a company like Nestlé…

And specially not their investors. Of course, you will still need the people administrating, planning, monitoring, generating new ideas that adapt to their context, and creating innovative solutions for a complex world only humans can comprehend. But the figure of shareholders and CEOs that steal all the value that workers create and leave them with a tiny fraction of it, can disappear. This can be the basis of a once in a century transformation.

Just as an example: Nestlè’s coffee growers in Colombia keep less than 10% of the final sale price, and barely make a living on it, so are actually abandoning the rural areas.

With Blockchain, DeFi and Smart Contracts, people like you and me can collectively fund such an operation, and then agree upon specific terms like wages by direct democracy, voting with our crypto holdings. Then we would proceed to allocate funds, hire “developers” which would ultimately be regular office jobs that keep the organization functioning. Once in operation we would frequently vote on decisions and results, which would ultimately keep the highest level of accountability for people working in the organization. This is already happening by the way, this is how some blockchain projects work today. We just haven’t applied it to industrial and physical supply chains yet.

Let’s go back to our project to replace Nestle. Imagine that an organization’s main goal is not to maximize profits for shareholders and bonuses for CEOs anymore. Instead, it’s the interest of regular people and the company’s collaborators that drive its actions.

Most likely, you and I will want to consolidate an efficient and effective supply chain, that is sustainable and keeps the dignity and wellbeing of its collaborators as a guiding principle. We are not longer at their mercy on issues like climate change, we can now take immediate action against it, or stop endangering and hoarding water supplies in classic Nestle fashion.

Also, we are making profits, so we are redistributing capital, and improving our quality of life, which will be most notorious in the most vulnerable communities, usually those that extract/harvest/mine raw materials.

This is what could happen with the blockchain descentralization of business. And you could apply it to pretty much anything, but maybe initially it could be for low labor and capital intensive businesses.

I’ll give you another example. I work for a solar power multinational company. If you don’t know it, solar energy is essentially a financial product, most people working in these companies don’t care about the world, its simply that solar is a very safe and lucrative hustle, and all investors care about is having a nice return of investment (ROI). As of now, my company works exclusively for large scale corporate clients or the state itself, given that’s where the nice ROIs are, since they give you the projects that allow you to place large capitals at once. This means, as of today, we blatantly ignore the regular people that seek for our help and funding to power their farms and/or houses with solar energy. They’re not that profitable my boss tells me. This is shitty, and I’ve thought of quitting several times.

But back to the point. Now, imagine once again, we get rid of the institutional investors. Now you and me create Reddit Solar Co, a DAO. Our only purpose is to facilitate access to electricity to those without it, and to advance in the urban implementation of renewable energy. We help the world, make dividends that are automatically distributed by the DAO, and also our own Crypto is rising in value.

And this is not the best.

Let’s not forget of synergies.

So, we just created a DAO that manufactures and distributes food globally right? Or maybe Reddit Solar Co. As an organization born on the blockchain, we won’t have to adapt to the state of the art innovations on the crypto world like an old steam locomotive attempting to adapt a warp drive on top of it. We were born in space.

From the beginning, our Ethereum based DAO could adopt VeChain’s solution for supply chains, Cardano will help us to give an integral solution to the unbanked communities that provide our raw material, they now have IDs, access to DeFi and education. The land deeds and legal documents that relate to our enterprise are certified by LTO Network, we move money internationally with XRP or Stellar, and don’t worry, we use Polkadot to ensure proper blockchain interoperability.

Too complex for you? Don’t worry, you don’t even have to know or care about this, leave that to others. You’re into finance. Maybe sales is your thing and there’s a little Michael Scott in you. Or you`re into social work and want to supervise our community engagement at the start of the supply chain. Just go do your thing! You don’t necessarily have to be involved in all of this.

All you know is you do your job and receive your crypto salary.

Just as computers and the internet changed the world forever, and not only had economic implications but also changed our culture, routines, work lives and ways to interact with each other, crypto will. We are just so early; that all we can do for now is dream.

You’re having too much hope in humanity dude…

Sure, I may be making some optimistic assumptions on the motivations of humans, I may be saying that we will use this technology for good, and that we care about each other, and that’s one way to look at it. But we could also argue in favor of this from a sceptic perspective: even if you don’t care about the collective wellbeing of your community, it’s in your interest to live in a safer environment right? Ergo you want to reduce poverty. Its also in your interest to stop global warming so organized human life can continue to exist, or to make sure you and your children will have water and food in 50 years, that’s why you will want to use technology for good even if you only care about yourself. Also lets not forget the powerful incentive of profits. Crypto has the clear potential to achieve all of this.

Most of the current generation of crypto projects will be ready and operating within the next 3 years, so all we will need by then is the will to use this technology for good, and the vision to change the world.

This is just the beginning, we will be killing industries but giving birth to others we could have never imagined before.

Cons of Crypto:
A coin called “Chia” is gobbling up 1,125,000 TB storage per day. Just to farm this token that no one seems to use. This takes resource wastage to a whole new level.

Chia is a coin that works on a proof of time space consensus. I.e. to farm this coin, one must allot dedicated hard drives and allot the space (known as plots), and get rewarded for it. Sounds good on paper, and one could even be tempted to think they may put that spare 500 GB space left and earn some passive income on it.

Except, this one already requires industrial grade storage space, just to farm a token that has almost zero adoption anywhere.

As you can see from this coin’s explorer, the storage is growing by almost 1000 PiB per day, in the last few days.

https://www.chiaexplorer.com/charts/netspace

1 PiB = 1125.9 TB.

So a growth of 1000 PiB per day => almost 1125000 TB of storage per day is added onto this network, just to mine these coins. This equates to 1.1 million 1 TB drives added per day just to support farming on this network!

Pros of Crypto:
– People in Hong Kong Use The Crypto and Blockchain To Fight Against Media Censorship
Reference

– Data indicates that 76% of Bitcoin investors are still in profit

Bitcoin Pro Arguments:

• Network effect and staying power
  BTC is the first virtual currency to solve the double-spending issue. The Bitcoin Protocol offered a solution to the Byzantine Generals’ Problem with a blockchain network structure, a notion first created by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta in 1991.
• Bitcoin undoubtedly has a ‘brand’. It has perhaps the most substantial name recognition of any existing crypto asset and is basically synonymous with ‘cryptocurrency’ to the lay public.
• Despite near constant proclamations of its demise, Bitcoin has not died. One could argue that – as the progenitor of cryptocurrencies – its longevity and continued profitability is itself an investment thesis.
• As the number of public addresses, daily active users (DAU), and large holders/long term holders continue to trend upwards, it becomes harder and harder to ‘put the genie back in the bottle’:
• Bitcoin’s valuation is well described by the most fundamental factor intrinsic to its network: the number of addresses that hold BTC. Applying Metcalfe’s law, the total value of Bitcoin’s network is well explained, with an R squared of 93.8%, simply by the square of its user base, n.
• Store of value to hedge inflation
• Over its lifetime, narratives of Bitcoin’s value have gone through several shifts, from the original cypherpunk vision in the white paper of p2p ‘e-cash’ to today’s ‘digital gold’ narrative.
• One theme underlying both of these points, however, is a reaction to or distrust in the current financial system. This was true during the financial crisis of 2008 (see the genesis block message) and is still relevant today with unprecedented levels of monetary and fiscal stimulus being pursued by governments worldwide. Government deficits and central bank money printing may lead to inflation and thus drive investors towards assets like gold or Bitcoin to preserve their wealth.
• This notion that BTC is a store of value to hedge inflation has certainly caught on in the last few years – not just from institutional or hedge fund investors, but from companies like MicroStrategy, Square and Tesla adding BTC to their balance sheets.
• Like gold, BTC is scarce – only 21M will ever exist. It is estimated that 3M-3.7M BTC have been lost forever/will never enter circulating supply again.. One estimate is that 14.5M BTC are essentially illiquid.
• To take one example, Grayscale’s BTC trust – which has no redemption process and thus effectively takes BTC out of circulation – alone holds over 600k BTC.
• Like gold, BTC is also divisible, interchangeable and durable. Unlike gold, however, BTC is a digital asset and is thus easier to purchase, move and store.
• If the store of value narrative endures, Bitcoin may have significant upside in supplanting a share of gold’s use case (estimated to be a $10T asset class).
• Development
• One of the common counterarguments for Bitcoin is that it is a ‘dinosaur’ with little technological improvement or development (as compared to its more innovative successors).
• Schisms in the dev community notwithstanding, Bitcoin remains an open-source project with global development communities and activity
• Developments of note include:
• Segregated Witness (SegWit): a protocol upgrade proposal that went live in August 2017. This protocol upgrade effectively increased the number of transactions that can be stored in a single block, enabling the network to handle more transactions per second (TPS)
• Lightning Network: is a second-layer micropayment solution for scalability
• Taproot: an anticipated upgrade to increase privacy and improve upon other factors related to complex transactions
• While other blockchains boast enterprise development, some companies are indeed building on Bitcoin. For example, Microsoft recently launched a Decentralized Identifier (DID) network (ION) on the Bitcoin mainnet

• Ideological foundation for a potentially new financial system, without the old, decrepit, and corrupt banks and middle men.
• The Environmental Argument is almost pointless, as it is the most efficient way of transporting millions of dollars around the world in mere seconds. And I mean efficient in all ways, there us no other single asset in the world capable of transporting this amount of capital wealth with such a low environmental impact or financial cost. If not, try moving 4 millions dollars of gold. Also, as Btc increases in value, this gets more on more efficient.
• Innovation of the technology and the first mover advantage in capturing this new market’s value/future value. Btc will always be at the top as mainstream adoption continues relating Crypto=Bitcoin.
• Ability to be bankless, with proven liquidity (thanks to Tesla) and with the best performing asset creation-to-date.
• Inability of third parties to do anything about your Btc holding without the seed phrase. Government’s can hardly tax it if, as Michael Saylor put it: “I had a boating accident and forgot my seedphrase, I don’t have acces to my crypto anymore so I can’t be taxed”. In a way, nobody but yourself can prove that you still have access to those funds, so, can they truly be taxable?
• The S2F model and updated S2F XA model. So far they have been scarily precise. Otherwise, Metcalfe’s law assures anyone that bitcoin may never go to 0, as the network is already strong enough to provide a certain degree of value.

Bitcoin CONS Arguments:

• Bitcoin has been around way too long, and to the uneducated it is the face of the crypto world.
• Bitcoin has no smart contracts.
• Bitcoin is slow.
• Bitcoin fees are expensive.
• People see it as an investment, not a currency they can use and spend. In the end this is not defined as it’s supposed to be used, but only as store of value. It’s at the state of gold, not of a coin.
• Bitcoin has become outdated, the only thing it’s useful for is investing, day to day transactions are useless.
• Bitcoin’s largest advantage and in fact it’s greatest disadvantage is that it’s the oldest cryptocurrency. Since then technology has evolved so much to become more energy and time efficient.
• Bitcoin is like the grandpa of crypto and we should look at it as such. Admire it for its wisdom because it has taught us so much, but also acknowledge that each of its children are trying to make their own marks on the world.
• It’s huge environmental impact due to its proof-of-work concept. BTC has a carbon footprint like Singapore, uses as much electrical energy as the Netherlands, and produces as much electronic waste as Luxembourg. This is a huge problem and needs to be accepted more widely.
• It’s slow. with an average transaction time of like 10 minutes, we are pretty far from instant transactions – this might not be a problem in all cases, but is one when one would like to use it like a currency, as it was planned originally
• High transaction costs – not ETH-high, but too high
• Bitcoin takes a lot of energy to mine and use. As of May 2021, a single Bitcoin transaction takes as much energy as 760,201 VISA credit card payments (source). To keep this in context, the world banking system uses about two times as much energy as the Bitcoin network (source)
• Bitcoin is difficult to mine. GPUs and CPUs don’t have enough computing power to compete with other miners, meaning so-called Application-Specific Integrated Chips (ASICs) are required. These are expensive – generally in the range of $1000 to $6000, depending on how new the model is (source). This restricts Bitcoin’s mining pool to people and groups who have enough wealth to invest in ASICs, which threatens the goal of keeping cryptocurrency decentralized.
• Bitcoin transactions can take a long time to be confirmed. The average time for a transaction to confirmed once is 10 minutes (source), but for a payment to be absolutely final, it needs to be included in multiple blocks to ensure consensus in the mining pool. This takes even longer, sometimes up to one hour (source, for 6 confirmations).
• Bitcoin transactions require expensive mining fees. At the moment, the average fee for a single transaction is $14.35, making Bitcoin unsuitable for day to day use (source).
• Bitcoin lacks many features available in other coins, including smart contracts (programs run on and enforced by the blockchain, see here), anonymity (source), and CPU mining (allowing anyone with a CPU to mine, thus making the network more democratic and less susceptible to being taken over by large groups).

Crypto is definitely a good way to make money. However, you might end up finding the tech interesting. I know that I sure did, and having a sound understanding of your investment will make a big difference in your ability to hodl. It doesn’t have to be much, just a few YouTube videos.

Strategies when it comes to cryptocurrencies
The HODL’er: you buy and basically you never sell. It’s kind of the holy grail of strategies when it comes to crypto according to this sub. Buy and forget and check back 10 years later. You’re a millionaire, Harry! No stress and no maintenance. You can even buy more over time and continue stacking your fat holdings. Do this if you believe in crypto long term

The Goal Setter: set a goal and sell when you reach that goal. Maybe it’s 3x and I’m out. Or maybe it’s make enough for student loans and I’m out. Or maybe it’s $1MM and sell half. Can be anything. Stress depends on your goal.

The Active Trader: Buy high and sell low

The Swing Trader: Some people are good at trading – they usually wait for those days where the whole market bleeds 20-30% in a day then they buy and wait for the bounce and they sell. Rinse and repeat. But they also risk missing out on the rocket jumps. But they also minimize the risk of being in the market when there’s a crash. In the end they might be able to increase their total holdings but for most beginners they lose rather than win. High stress and high maintenance.

The Cycle Trader: you DCA in during the bear market when everything has lost 80-90% of its ATH (alternatively, a year before the Bitcoin halving). Then you slowly sell off everything approximately a year after crypto starts trending up and enters a bull market. So this method has worked well for many people – they don’t necessarily time the top right but they continue to increase their holdings over several cycles. This might be the smart move if you have discipline. The risk is that history no longer repeats itself. It has worked the past 2 cycles but it’s not guaranteed it’ll work again. Medium stress, low maintenance

The Arbitrager: usually they have algos do the trading for them. They minimize risk and just arbitrage the price differences between exchanges. They might not care about crypto and just want to make money. They miss out on the bull run but also miss out on the bear market. Low stress, medium maintenance.

The Moon Chaser: 1000x or bust. Forget $10K eth or $100K btc, they want the next shiba or safe moon. They buy coins with market caps in the millions and hope for the pump to sell. This is like the lottery ticket buyers of crypto. High stress, high maintenance, smooth brain

The correct mentality for investing in the crypto market is thinking in YEARS not MONTHS.

Crypto: What to do in the bear market

–HODL, dont sell with a loss if you believe in your Coin long term.

–Stake, staking is really important! I cant tell you enough, if we are in a bear market and you can stake for a few years you can easily get 20-30% more coins then you have right now.

–DCA, keep buying. The bear market is where you DCA, dont stop buying. Right now is where you can get coins cheap! Just dont stop DCAing cause you are scared! Pick projects you believe in long term and keep buying at low prices!

–Get rid of coins you dont believe in long term, shitcoins. Many wont survive the bear market.

–Research coins for the next bull run!

Crypto Currency Market Cap Visualized during the Pandemic

Top 100 Cryptocurrencies by Market Cap

Latest News on Crypto:

• Nigerian central bank does U-turn on crypto ban
• Paypal allowing withdrawal of crypto
• Billionaire Carl Icahn eyeing $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin
• Sheetz convenience store becomes the first store chain to accept crypto
• Nashville couple suing IRS over staking gains being taxable
• Dubai’s first cryptocurrency rises over 1000% since its debut
• Biden announces $6 Trillion budget
• Colorado wants to be the first state to accept Crypto
• Large investors bought $3 Billion during the pullback
• Texas creates legal clarity for Bitcoin
• SEC starts scrutiny of Skybridge and Fidelity’s Bitcoin ETF bids
• Texas Bitcoin Bill Gets Senate Approval

Sources:

1- Reddit

2- Reddit

3- https://research.binance.com/en/projects/bitcoin

4- NYDIG Power of Bitcoins Network Effect

5- The original Cypherphunk vision

6- Unlike Gold, BTC is a digital asset that is easy to move around

7-  https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/

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