Bitcoin, yes everybody wants to talk about bitcoins. it’s all about money, everybody wants to make money.
I’ve actually been putting together a tweet storm on how to make money and I haven’t gotten very far in it. Well, I actually wrote the outlines of my tweet storm on how to make money because I thought it would be doing the world a service but I know a lot of people will pick at it will attack it so it’s been it’s been a difficult one to write.
Bitcoin and crypto is a revolution I’ll say that… I really only got into it in a big way last year and decided to just go all-in in terms of my thought process and time on it.
Once you figure it out it’s hard to think about anything else. It’s hard to think that there’s any other thing that’s going on that’s as important now. Of course, it’s probably not true… it’s a big and complicated world and there are lots and lots of important things going on but you know anyone who’s interested in the intersection of politics, economics, technology, and finance will just find-crypto currencies and blockchains be this really interesting rabbit hole.
I think humans have created something that’s larger than ourselves. It’s sort of like when we first invented markets… and so when you invent something that big it’s hard for anyone to figure out how it works. So we are all now collectively trying to figure out how to describe it and what his properties are and it almost feels like this is organism larger than ourselves that we’re all working on co-evolving
I think the Trump administration is actually very deregulatory. As far as I remember they haven’t filled two out of the five slots on the SEC Commission. And they have that deregulation mandate where they basically say for every regulation you enforce or you rollout you basically have to roll back two. And so I think that’s keeping the SEC in a very Laissez-faire sort of mentality and I think everyone in crypto should be pretty happy about that.
Now there’s a lot of scams going on, and a lot of pumps and icos and that’s pretty disgusting and could be bad when there’s a fallout. But, overall it’s better than having someone who’s cracking down big time on crypto.
I think the US government may eventually end up rolling out a Facta equivalent. FACTA is you when have to file a few foreign bank accounts. So they might do an equivalent of turn over your cards in crypto where you sort of have to declare what you have. And I think that could be a come-to-jesus moment for a lot of people. But overall I think Western governments will have a very difficult time dealing with it. Until eventually we start making the transition to taxing people on consumption and on land and property as opposed to taxing them on income and wealth which are going to become much harder to track over time.
I mean I think some of the things that people don’t realize about crypto is it doesn’t have to have value to everybody. Even if there’s a small percentage of people in the world who really really believe in it and you can use it as a store of value with them… then it’s valid. It doesn’t need to be something that only works if it’s shared with everybody.
The most interesting project in the space. I mean I love Bitcoin, is the OG, it’s the store of value. But, Ethereum is probably the most actively developed and the most ambitious and it’s really hard to overlook that.
I think the privacy coins are still underrated relative to the rest at least the ones that work. Many of them are scams so you have to filter out which ones are actually real in real technology/science and which ones don’t.
I don’t want to make specific crypto coin recommendations because I actually don’t actually trade crypto coins. Believe it or not, I put it all into this fund called Metastable where I’m a partner and my technical partners actually manage the investments. I don’t want to hold crypto, I don’t want to decide what to invest in, so I don’t make specific recommendations. I like to think about it more in the general classification.
I think they’ll try. I think countries will try to create their own blockchains. But I think the whole point of blockchains is decentralization. A blockchain controlled by a company, or
corporation, or even by a democracy, or by an elite, or an aristocracy, it’s kind of nonsense.
The interesting part of blockchains is that they’re decentralized. The moment you take away the decentralization… all you have is a really expensive database.
Follow credible people:
- Ethereum: Vitalik, Vlad
- Bitcoin: Adam Back, Peter Todd, Greg Maxwell
- Z-Cash: Zooko, Nathan
- Blockchain, cryptocurrency, and smart contracts pioneer: Nick Szabo
Follow the credible developers in the space and expand out slowly from there. Some of the people who have done a good job of explaining new stuff in blockchains: Linda Xie at Scalar Capital, Ari David Paul at Block Tower and Preethi Kasireddy.
I have a very unpopular view of UBI I just think it’s a frictionless slide into complete redistribution of all wealth. The moment that fifty-one percent of voters figure out they can vote themselves anything they want you to end up in some quasi-socialist paradise.
I don’t day trade.. it just seems to me to you know either crypt is going to work or not… and if it works it’s going to be gigantic and you’re going to make tons of money holding, so why day trade? Why take the extra risk in the stress?
You just gotta be patient… you know what value investors like Buffett and venture investors like Fred Wilson have in common is that they’re long-term holders, they’re long-term players, they’re long-term bullish. I don’t hold tokens myself I invest in a fund, I’m actually in two funds and then they do the investment for me so I don’t worry or think day to day about what tokens to buy or sell, or how to custody them or anything like that.
