In the cryptocurrency market, anybody with a laptop, a little coding knowledge and a dream can invent a new asset, programming a financial instrument from their garage, scaring the pants off of regulators like the SEC, and many banks. That’s why it’s so popular among libertarians – it’s liberty money. However, freedom also comes with responsibility. A free market with little oversight and no system of redress leads to widespread scams and other shady projects.
There are many ways to address this issue – for example, asking ICOs to get escrows to hold their funds until they reach key points in their projects, to prevent them taking the money and running. We can also leverage media to exposed poorly-conceived coins. And, as crypto journalist and consultant Juan Galt points out in this interview, we can stick to established projects like Bitcoin.
Thinning out the field
In a market of 1500+ coins, many of which were probably started on a whim, it’s unlikely that most of them will survive the long term. Many won’t ever be widely traded on exchanges, let alone becoming money, being widely used in commerce in any society, and many, such as Ethereum, don’t even intend to become currencies. Bitcoin, being the biggest and oldest cryptocurrency, is one of few which have the chance to gain world reserve currency status.
The gap of libertarian thought
Libertarians don’t want government oversight in most markets – they believe that commerce can work just fine on its own in many cases. However, it does seem that crypto libertarians are overlooking just how out of control things can be without regulation. Fraud is rampant among crypto projects, and the resources we have to address it are still limited.
Crypto start-ups create fancy presentations, write whitepapers, create flashy but meaningless marketing campaigns on any social media platform that will still allow them, raising thousands or millions of dollars. Then when the campaign ends, the projects have little accountability. The tokens are not contracts, and they make no guarantees of any return on investment. Legally, the creators can walk without consequence.
We can expose bad actors by talking about them on blogs and YouTube channels, shaming them for their actions and encouraging others to withdraw support. Or, as Juan suggests, we can ignore them entirely, and stick with Bitcoin.
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Is it possible to become financially free within 4 years, the same amount of time it takes to complete a university degree? Maybe.
In December 2018, the crypto market is lower than it’s been in 16 months. That will send many running, but for contrarians looking for an opportunity, it looks great.
Of course, to take advantage, you need to be careful with your money. Pay yourself first, tighten your purse strings, and remember your legacy. Then, glory may await you on the other side.
Scroll down to watch and listen to this episode.
Financially Free with Crypto
Now more than ever, it’s possible to become financially independent within a short period, maybe 4 years, maybe even 1 year.
Many of you have heard me use the example of Peter Thiel investing in Facebook. If you had bought $10 worth of Facebook at the same time Thiel did, you could have sold at IPO for more than $900,000. Back then it was almost impossible to invest small amounts at that stage, but with ICOs and new forms of investment, it is possible.
But there’s certain things you have to do first. In order to make money investing, first you have to save the money to invest.
Pay Yourself First
When I worked in a call centre, I’d get a lot of calls every week asking “Can I please delay the direct debit till next week?” In many cases, it seemed my customers had spent the last dollars in their bank accounts, without thinking through what they might soon owe.
That’s the plight of the common man, a lack of financial education leaving them one paycheque away from being destitute.
The normal pattern of spending upon getting paid goes like this:
Buy something nice for yourself
Hopefully pay my dues
Save whatever isn’t left
The pattern of the prudent goes like this:
Pay yourself
Pay your dues
Maybe buy yourself something nice
If you have trouble being disciplined with your money, the best thing to do is make it automatic. Set up an automatic savings plan, sending 1% or 10% your money to a different account so it’s harder to access. Then you can save, invest or tithe that money.
There are also apps such as Raiz and Monzo to help you with this process, by rounding up what you spend to the nearest dollar, then saving it or investing it.
Tighten The Purse Strings
With so many modern conveniences today, everyone with smartphones and laptops, it’s easy to be spoiled – to believe that you deserve luxuries. If our great grandparents could see how we live today, how flippantly we spend money, buying new things and throwing out old things, they’d be shocked.
If I lose a couple of buttons on a shirt, I might throw out the shirt and buy a new one. Yet, somewhere in the house is a sewing kit, and I can easily mend what is broken for a mere fraction of the cost.
Cheap Thrills Become Dear
One key expense for a lot of people is alcohol. In Australia I’ve seen people spend $50, $100 or even $200 a night going out to a club. Every dollar you spend now, is a dollar you could be putting away to improve your future.
Governments know that the common man has few pleasures, and therefore spends his money on cigarettes and alcohol. So, they tax them, a lot – sometimes as much as 100%. By buying them, you’re playing their game and keeping yourself poor.
When the taxes get higher, it gets easier to buy black market tobacco. As beer prices rise, yeast prices stay low, so homebrewing is an option. Drink at home instead of a nightclub, or just cut out the habit altogether. It’s a well-kept secret, but nightclubs are often more fun when you’re not drinking.
Vegetarianism for Cheapskates
Meat is generally expensive compared to vegetables. If you eat meat two meals a day, in Australia and other countries that can add up to thousands of dollars a year.
At the first Anarchapulco in 2015, entrepreneur Travis Boyd got up and told his story of dreaming, sacrifice and perseverance about establishing a wireless ISP in his town, breaking down the oligopoly of service providers. He said “I did it. It took me a year, I ate beans and rice, but I did it.” Everyone stood up and applauded because they heard the power in what he was saying. Mr. Boyd had made real sacrifices, and achieved something great because of it.
The other perspective is, beans and rice are delicious. Put some onion, tomato, chilli, cumin, maybe some fried plantain Cuban style, and you have a delightful meal on your hands. The lesson is, with creativity, living with less can actually be more fulfilling. In other words, money can never be a substitute for your own resourcefulness.
The Legacy You Inherited
I know what you might be thinking. “I could never give up steak for a year! That would be absolute torture!” And I have a couple of things to say to you.
The first thing is, I love you.
The second thing is: you spoiled brat. You pampered milquetoast waterling. Didn’t your ancestors run across plains barefoot? Didn’t they hide in caves? Didn’t they forage not knowing if they would eat? Didn’t they wonder if they would survive the next day? And didn’t they do it with a smile on their face?
Didn’t they possess that strength of body, spirit, of character? Didn’t they sit through snowstorms, thunderstorms, sandstorms and icestorms, with barely a pulse to keep their hands warm?
Didn’t they give that to you? Isn’t that your heritage? Isn’t that the legacy you’ve inherited? Isn’t that your being? Isn’t that your very name?
It’s easy to throw around words like “I cannot” and “I could never”, but if you really respected the sacrifices that your ancestors had gone through to get you here, maybe you wouldn’t use those words so flippantly. Maybe if you remembered that, you would make the effort to say “I can try” or “I can”, or even “I will no matter what.”
It’s December 2018. For those few who find a way to save some $1000s over the next four years, things could be crazy.
Bitcoin has tumbled to $3500, and there’s blood on the streets. People are uncertain and many will put aside their dreams they had of speculating on crypto projects, finding a genuine investment that improves the world, serves humanity, and makes them some silver.
Do you have what it takes to make a few sacrifices, put the chips down, take a punt for your future? If you do, there might well be glory waiting for you on the other side.
Thank you
Thanks for reading, watching and listening to Cryptonomics. Thank you to all those people who share this post with your friends. I love it when you do that.
A quick shout out to the gentleman Martin Dillon, who has been following me for years, comments on so many of my videos and always says something positive. Thanks Martin.
Have a great day, and remember to stay grateful!
You can listen and subscribe on Anchor and other podcasting services here:
I saw a question on Quora recently: Is this the end of cryptocurrencies?, accompanied by a link to a quote from Ethereum founder, Vitalik Buderin saying “There isn’t an opportunity for yet another 1,000-times growth in anything in the space anymore.” It’s funny to think that, without the chance of 100,000% gains, it seems like anything interesting about crypto is over. Most people playing the stock market would be ecstatic with even a 100% gain.
The truth is, there are still many opportunities in crypto for speculators, developers and even creative types. Read my answer in text and watch the video below.
My Answer
The link you posted is a funny one to accompany the question. All Vitalik said was that we wouldn’t see another period of 1000x growth, and then people started selling ETH as a result… That’s hilarious. There might be 10x or 100x growth, but if there’s no chance of 1000x, people want to get out of the market. That goes to show how crazily speculative this market is, how people get skittish very easily. That means there’s likely still a lot of money to be lost, and money to be gained – if people get out based on the fear of loss, they and many more will likely enter based on the fear of missing out.
As it stands, there’s a lot of money floating around, but there’s not a lot of real world use. Some say that Bitcoin is a store of value, and that’s true if you line it up against currencies that are likely to fail like the Argentine peso, the Venezuelan bolívar, the Zimbabwean dollar (or the US dollar?). Bitcoin has been amazing as a store of value since its inception, providing you were willing to hold it for 3 years.
Other than a store of value, I know of only two projects which have significant real-world use: 1. Steemit, which enables people to get paid for producing content such as blogs, videos, podcasts and music; and 2. Dash, which is gaining traction as a medium of exchange in Venezuela.
While I like both of these projects, they still have a long way to go in terms of user experience. We don’t have any site like Steemit which is as easy to use as Quora, Facebook, Medium. When we do, we’ll start to see mass adoption. Life then will be as different from today as it was before smartphones and widespread Internet access.
You can listen and subscribe on Anchor and other podcasting services here:
In ‘Post Office’, Bukowski’s girlfriend tells him to get a job, and he responds “Any damn fool can beg up a job. It takes a wise man to make it without working. Out here we call it ‘hustling’.” In movies and novels, adventurers, rogues and hustlers are glamourised, representing something desireable and unattainable. In the real world, people judge and marginalise them, calling them “dreamers” or even “bums”. Every day, these people dance through cracks in the system, finding value and opportunities in places which are invisible to others. They may be judged, and they may not fit neatly into any box, and it might not be easy to balance their accounts, but any hustler will tell you that their freedom is worth the pricetag. Scroll down to watch and listen to this episode!
No opportunity?
The media in Australia keeps pushing this narrative that there are no opportunities for young people, and people keep repeating it. There are opportunities. You just have to be prepared to look where others won’t. If you let the mainstream media tell you where the opportunities are, you will almost certainly end up a sucker.
The world of money is changing
For a century, governments and central banks have been robbing the value of our money, and now we’ve found a way out. Once crypto is stable, every time there’s an advancement in technology which makes things more efficient, our money is going to be worth more – not less. Just imagine if every good reduced in price the same way computers and mobiles do.
The world is changing. For some, life is gonna be hard… it’s gonna be so hard, IF you try to fit into the mould that’s already broken, to conform with a world that no longer exists. But if you look for opportunities and embrace them, things are going to be amazing.
Hustlin’
When I first moved to Mexico, I had a few thousand dollars in Bitcoin and I was making $200-$300 a month. I figured it out, playing cards online, teaching English to Russian engineers, and eventually earning crypto on Steemit. Hustlin’!
Amanda B. Johnson and Pete Eyre did a similar thing. They moved to Oaxaca, and they started the Daily Decrypt. Expatriating is a great way to cut your expenses while starting an online business. Hustlin’!
A few months back I showed Steemit to my friend Bob and he took to it like crazy, learning things about it that I didn’t even know. Now he makes decent money in addition to his day job. Next year when he moves to Peru, his side hustle may well become his main hustle. Hustlin’!
Worlds collide
Things might look grim for employees, university educated government regulated, square boxed, tightly articulated, notes meticulously dictated, folks. But they’re looking really good, for hustlers. People who are willing to take a different perspective, find a different way to get by, look for ways to find and give value that are hidden in the cracks. Hustlers.
Improvise, adapt, overcome
In Keith Johnstone’s Impro he says that everyone is creative, it’s just that some of us are so afraid of getting the wrong answer that we never say anything. The lesson of impro is ,there are no wrong answers. What you do is right just by virtue of doing it. If you’re sitting in a classroom or an office wondering what it’s all about, dreaming of travelling the world or taking a long shot… remember that.
Job insecurity
Many have heard this story about the myth of go to school, go to university, get a job and retire. Look at the bios of the most successful people, they didn’t stick to this script. They wrote their own script. The best players are the ones who question the nature of the game.
For many people, not having a job is the scariest thing in the world. They say “I don’t understand how anybody could live, not knowing how much money they’ll make in a month.” My friend Rae was the opposite, and she would say to me “I don’t understand how people can make a commitment to go to a job every day. What happens if you just don’t feel like going?” Then she got on a train and went to Byron Bay, and if she found some friends she would sleep on their couch, and if she didn’t, she would sleep on the beach.
I’m not saying you should take that lifestyle to the extreme like Rae did, but isn’t there something enviable about the way she thought, something wonderful… something magical? If you’ve been in a cubicle for more than a few years, you could probably use a few drops of that elixir.
Hustlers
I like these people, the people who are willing to cast off the shackles of regular society, live life differently, open their mind and find what’s inside, open their eyes and see what the world has to offer. It’s not just poetic, and it’s not just for the movies. Adventurers are out there hustling, flipping houses and cooking in makeshift kitchens for unlikely customers. They have decided that they will be more than background characters in the game of life. Rugged and adaptable, they are the future.
You can listen and subscribe on Anchor and other podcasting services here:
I told you on my last episode, I lost my bitcoins back in March 2017. After 20 months of no movement on the case, many emotions like frustration, despair, regret, and peace, I finally got them back.
Let me tell you about about my journey battling the support team and Telegram admins, and finally getting a positive result.
Scroll down to watch or listen to the episode.
Bye Bye Bitcoins
I lost the bitcoins. They’d locked the account, they’d deleted my support request. It looked like there was no hope. I started posting on the Bleutrade thread on Bitcointalk forum, but it seemed that the staff hadn’t accessed it since they started the thread. I told my story on there, saying I hadn’t got my bitcoins back after a week. One fellow named 1369 he questioned my credibility, considering I didn’t have a posting history on Bitcointalk.
I overcame his initial skepticism and he said he would try to help. He’d had a really good experience with Bleutrade, so good that he had some connections with the staff. He said he figured somehow my case had just slipped through the cracks, and he’d try to get them to do something about it. So I’m grateful to 1369 that he tried.
But still, nothing, no response, no emails, no concern from the staff about the bad reputation that their exchange was developing.
Changing winds
With no apparent recourse, I gave up on it. As traders might say, I reached capitulation. I thought there was no chance of getting anything out of these guys. If they wanted to keep my money, they would.
That changed a couple of weeks ago when I went back on the Bitcointalk forum and 1369 was saying that Bleutrade had opened a Telegram group, and now would be the end of the bad talk against the exchange – people could now obtain answers to their basic support questions quite quickly.
It so happened that in September 2018, Bleutrade became regulated by the Maltese state, which might have forced it to be a little stricter with certain practices. It also meant that I probably had some recourse if I didn’t get my money, as Bleutrade probably wouldn’t want to risk its licence.
A new hope…ish
I went to Bleutrade’s new site and was surprised to find that I could log in. I could see the old transactions there, two deposits and a withdrawal, which had been cancelled, but the funds had never been returned to the account. I made a note of them, and put in a support request. The next day I noticed that I had again been locked out of the account. Great.
I went on the Telegram group and asked a couple of times what was going on. The first two times I received no response. When I tagged the admins in a post, the guy said that the support team would get to it, and said that I already knew what was going on. I was a little confused, how would I know what was going on? He said it was being handled internally. I said “It sounds like you’re saying Bleutrade has taken my money.” He said don’t be silly, Bleutrade has never taken anyone’s money, and then accused me of slander, and attempting to sow discord.
I just imagine this situation. My friend calls me on the weekend and asks “Hey bro what are you up to tonight – you want to go to the bar and hoist a few?”
Naturally I would respond: “Nah mate I’m pretty busy, I’ve got this great new hobby, I like to sow discord in random crypto Telegram groups.” Seriously?
I considered pointing out to the admin that my statement was just an opinion, and therefore not slanderous, and his statement accusing me of slander, was actually slanderous. I thought better of it. I thought, this guy is going to keep prodding me until I explode in the chat so it looks like I’m the bad guy, and then they can block me, and likely again avoid returning my funds.
Fortunately I PM’d another admin, he said I’d receive a response that day. I said thanks.
Two criminal masterminds
To my surprise, I did get a response that day. The weird and incredible irony was that, all this time I thought they were thieves for taking my bitcoins – but they stated reason they took them was that, they believed I had stolen the bitcoins. I’d deposited They said when they didn’t get any support request from me, they decided it was proof that the source of my funds was indeed illegitimate.
Of course, I did put in a support request. I went through my old records and found the text, date and link. But besides that, when you lock a dude out of his account, wouldn’t you think to like, contact him?
At the time, it looked like one big scam, but according to them, they were merely following prudent anti-money laundering procedures.
The real story…?
My best guess of what actually happened is that in 2017, a rogue staff member decided to pilfer my funds and cover his tracks by deleting the support request and confirming a red flag on the transactions to mark it as illegitimate. The exchange continued and eventually gained the Maltese licence, which put them under greater scrutiny, so when I had the chance to protest, they decided to colour in this little story of funds marked stolen.
In their version of the story, they never contacted me to ask what was going on, and just assumed their own customer to be a criminal. I’m not entirely sure which is worse.
A happy ending
The happy ending is, they asked me to confirm my identity and explain the source of the funds. I did so, and they said okay we will unlock your account and the funds. They did it, and I got my bitcoins. How about that! So despite all my criticisms of Bleutrade, I’m grateful for what they did. They could have drawn out the process and made it difficult, but they gave me back my bitcoins, and even despite the recent downturn in the market, they’re still worth a lot more than when I lost them.
So there are some important lessons to be learned here:
Never give up. You don’t have to hold on to your bitterness or your disillusionment, but you don’t have to give up.
Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice.
Never use Bleutrade.
Thank you
Thank for reading, listening and watching. Thanks for sharing the video with your friends so they can soak up the crypto-goodness.
It’s common to hear stories of people losing hard drives that held millions of dollars of bitcoin, losing a crypto password or even getting your regular exchanged hacked so hard it never recovers. For a lot of people, it might be devastating to lose their life’s savings, and there’s even the cliché of the Wall Street traders ending it all after losing a fortune.
In this interview, “Emancipated Human” Luis Fernando Mises explains the things he focused on after a tragic loss – losing his best friend and his money at once. It’s always going to be tough, but with confidence in your own skills, the support of your loved ones, and the knowledge that you can always rebuild, life becomes a lot less stressful. Scroll down to listen or watch the episode.
Making the most of what you have
In this day and age, with so mobile phones, computers and video games, it’s easy to forget that just a couple of generations ago, people didn’t have that stuff. Most of our grandparents went through periods where they had very little disposable income, and if they wanted to have a good time, they would find ways to do it for free. It’s free to dance, to sing, to converse and make friends. The people who make the most of things when they have nothing are going to be happier when they have something, and working on the imagination develops your resourcefulness – helping you find ways to create wealth.
The cycle of wealth
Luis says his parents always told him that life is like a ferris wheel – sometimes you’re at the top, and sometimes you’re at the bottom. If times are bad, don’t take it too seriously, and when times are good, don’t take it for granted. Nobody can say how long either will last.
Respectful saving and spending
When some people get money, their inclination is to hoard it, to be very careful with how they spend it, and certainly not to risk it. For these people, showing respect for money means learning to spend it on things that may increase their quality of life, and to invest it on things that have a chance of increasing their wealth.
However, the opposite problem is much more common. Most people spend their paycheque as soon as they receive it, and find themselves scrambling for coins before the next pay cycle clicks over. In this case, being grateful for money means setting some aside for the bad times, and pausing before they invest their money, considering where it is best put to use.
Watch the episode Bitcoin is like poker to learn more about risk-inclined and risk-averse personalities.
Money makes you more like you are
Luis says, if you want to see the true nature of a person, give them power, money, stress, or booze. When people think there are less consequences of their actions, or when they’re pushed to their limit, you’re more likely to see what kind of person they are. We can all develop our character to be more consistent, to show respect for others even when there is no reward. The restraint we show in good times will make bad times much easier.
It’s not about the money
There’s always something to be grateful for, even if you lose all of your material wealth. If you lose your house, you still have your family. Lose your family, you still have your friends. Lose your friends, you still have your health.
The skills you build can stay with you a long time, as can the relationships. You may have a precious few who stick with you no matter what, and remind you not to risk forgetting that you are powerful, that divine power within you – to change, and be changed. Stay grateful!
Let me ask you a question… What is fiat currency, and why does it suck so much?
Welcome to Cryptonomics, principles of cryptocurrency and investing. I’d like to talk about how Dash is helping people handle the problems of hyperinflation in Venezuela, and give you some historical context about the failure of fiat currency, and why you shouldn’t trust governments with the money supply.
Thanks so much to everyone sharing, resteeming, liking and commenting on this content. I can feel that we’re already building a community of people that’s willing to ask the deeper questions about finance.
Scroll down to the bottom of this post to watch the video or listen to the podcast!
Fiat currencies
Getting into crypto, you’ve probably heard the term “fiat currency”. Some people say that “fiat currency” means a currency not backed by anything, but the literal meaning is “currency by decree”. Governments declare that something must be accepted as a payment for debts – that’s what’s known as “legal tender”, and they’ll demand that currency as taxes. In a very real sense, it’s violent money, blood money. The government makes a threat, saying pay us using our money, or we will put you in a cage.
Before 1971, national currencies were backed by gold or silver in some form. At certain times in history, you could even go into a national bank, hand in your notes and receive gold in return. Not any more though. The US dollar, the British pound, the euro, and of course the Venezuelan bolívar are fiat currencies, used largely because of that threat of state force.
Cryptocurrencies like Dash and Bitcoin aren’t fiat currencies. No formal office has declared them to be money, and generally, people aren’t forced into using them. So to the extent that people do use them, is generally the extent that they are useful. They use them because they want to, not because they have to.
Let’s talk about hyperinflation. Let’s go back to beautiful Venezuela.
Hyperinflation in Venezuela
February 18, 1983, Black Friday. The bolívar was unpegged from the US dollar.
25 years later, in January 2008, the bolívar was worth so little that the government decided to chop three zeros off the currency, phasing out the bolívar, replacing it with the bolívar fuerte or strong bolívar.
Now ten years later, they’ve again revalued the currency, replacing the strong bolívar with the sovereign bolívar. They planned to cut off three zeros in June 2018, but it was August before the plan went through, so they cut 5 zeros instead, dividing bank accounts by 100,000.
Now there are many causes for this, including the sanctions by the US and other countries, and the fall in the oil price. One thing is undeniable though… The government ruined the money by printing too much.
Hyperinflation through history
I wish I could tell you this was a new story, but it’s not. This isn’t the first time it’s happened. The Argentine peso has been revalued 4 times since 1970, and might even be due for another crash. The continental dollar issued during the US revolutionary war was such a spectacular failure that people started saying the phrase “not worth a continental”. In the German Weimar republic, hyperinflation was so marked that there were reports of a mental disorder known as zero stroke, where bookkeepers would get obsessed with large numbers, writing long strings of zeros without stopping, and when asked their age, they would say they were 40 billion years old.
The more power you give a small group of people over a society’s money, the more likely and rampant the corruption. Power corrupts, power is irresistible to the corruptible.
Historically, every fiat currency has failed, sooner or later. The average lifespan of a fiat currency is 27 years. When Nixon cut the final tie to gold, he removed the backing of almost every international currency. That was 47 years ago.
Dash vs Hyperinflation
Compared to fiat, it’s very difficult to hyperinflate cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Dash because the issuance of the currency is set by the software, which is in the hands of the people. If Fed chairman Jerome Powell wanted to come in and say “Let’s print a million bitcoin today, let’s print a billion Dash tomorrow,” the network would have to come to a consensus for that to pass.
The reason I mention Dash over other crypto is because it’s one currency that people in Venezuela are choosing to use to do business. People have been mentioning some others to me, for example Nano, which looks like a cool project – zero fees and instant transactions. The Bitcoin Cash community is also doing charity projects there which shows us the hearts of people in crypto and humanity in general. However, Dash is already getting traction as a medium of exchange in Venezuela, people are choosing it to conduct commerce.
A big problem when people come into a community and try to help them using a new technology… They come from outside, and try to tell people how to use it, when they don’t know the problems that are unique to that area. What happens with Dash is, people submit proposals to the treasury and get funding for projects. That means local people who already know the culture and the problems can come up with ways to address them. So the conferences and contact centres set up for Dash in Venezuela are coming from inside the community they’re trying to help.
Not only does Dash have the money to support these projects, they also have a system which can benefit from all the brains of the people who need it. That’s the beauty of crowdsourcing, these decentralised systems that have access to a crazy amount of human capital.
I asked one Venezuelan in the Dash Discord about its adoption. He goes by the moniker LeoGrizz, and he had this to say:
“We Venezuelans are learning the advantages of a currency which is more stable than the bolivar, and we’re enjoying the advantages of the payment system for that reason. Of course it’s understood that a currency isn’t enough to solve all our problems, but if the adoption of Dash continues such a rapid path, I doubt very much that Dash would disappear after Venezuela gets back on its feet. On the contrary, it would affirm its position and have an even greater value.”
The dream of cryptocurrency is alive, the dream of a world where money, the lifeblood of an economy, is not controlled and abused by warmongers and sociopaths, but instead is in the hands of the people. Viva Venezuela.
“I am Venezuelan. We are held captive by the military and rotten politicians. They are sucking all resources just like a leech sucks blood. Everything is hitting bottom: health, education, food, infrastructure, among other things. Cryptocurrency is a way to salvation for Venezuela and the world.”
Thanks Jorge, it’s good to hear that crypto is starting to have the positive effect many of us hoped it would when we got involved, that it does offer people opportunities, that there is hope for a better future.
Also a quick shout out to the Dash community who have been so supportive, especially Mark Mason and Tao of Satoshi.
Thanks for listening to Cryptonomics. As Mark says, stay Dashy, and as always, stay grateful!
A lot of people believe that money is evil, or the love of money is the root of all evil. I don’t believe that. In fact, I think the opposite. Money is actually sacred – it’s this potent condensed form of energy which can be used to benefit people. Money is powerful, and it’s beneficial to show it respect. Let me tell you a story about what happens when you don’t show respect for money, about how I lost my bitcoins.
Thanks so much to everyone sharing the videos and podcasts. I really like it when you do that!
Scroll down to watch and listen to the episode.
Losing My Bitcoins
In March 2017 I was living in Guadalajara, seems like a lifetime ago. Bitcoin was around $1200. Dash was around $40. I’d been learning a lot about Dash and I thought, this is the future. They’re focused on UX, they’ll have treasury funding for important projects.
I’d also just seen Dash rocket up from around $15, and I felt the fear of missing out. I hastily decided to sell my remaining bitcoins for Dash.
I looked up an exchange, Bleutrade. They had a trading pair with Dash on there. I deposited my remaining bitcoins, about 1/3 of my net worth at the time. Thus, my first key mistakes.
Simple Lessons
Lesson: pause, reflect, meditate, breathe, before I make any financial decision. I might miss an opportunity by taking a step back, it’s true. But I can make many more mistakes by being hasty.
When I use a new exchange, or even use an old exchange for the first time in months, it’s beneficial to check their reputation. Are there many complaints on the web saying that they’ve been waiting a long time for withdrawals? That’s a red flag. I make a small deposit, trade and withdrawal first, to confirm their trustworthiness.
No Response
After I’d put in the money, I realised that they didn’t have the trading pair I wanted. So I withdrew the bitcoins. I waited an hour, and the withdrawal still hadn’t processed. Okay, that happens on some exchanges, sometimes they need to pull funds from cold storage. I put in a support request and waited.
After a week, they still hadn’t replied. Eventually they locked me out of my account and the support request was deleted. Ah. Oh dear. Oh no oh no oh no. I’d lost 1/3 of my net worth.
So it looked like they’d straight ripped me off, shut me down, shut me out, and in crypto, with an exchange in a foreign country, I had no apparent recourse.
Around that time, a couple of other misfortunes occurred. I was using my phone in public after dark and it was plucked from my hands by a moto-thief. A friend was unable to fulfill an agreement and I lost my payment for a new laptop.
Capitulation
I started thinking a lot about it, trying to come to grips with what I’d lost, my own hand in it. Just a week before I’d read some story about someone using a phony ATM in Latin America and losing thousands of dollars. I thought there’s no way I’d be that careless. Obviously the universe had other plans. I absolutely had been that careless, and I’d paid the price.
I thought, I could have spent that money on anything. I could have gone to Las Vegas and ordered tables, champagne, taken trips around Mexico or the world, given it to charity, to a friend in need. I could have blown it all on trifles and I’d still be better off. But I hadn’t, I’d kept the money to myself, like the archetype of an old miser in his one room shack, tying his pants with twine because he didn’t want to buy a belt, dying alone, a millionaire, very rich and very dead.
Then one night I was going to sleep, probably still with some emotional turmoil. I had a vision. A figure in a white hooded robe appeared in the darkness and started to speak. It said they were running things behind the scenes.
“We know you perceive what we’re doing as bad. It is the revelation of a spiritual lesson. Some of what you have has been taken from you, so you can better learn the value of what remains.”
Then the figure was gone.
I came to grips with losing the money, and I learnt this lesson… Being respectful of money does mean saving it, it also means spending it to improve the quality of life for yourself and those around you.
The price of hospitality
When my parents last visited me in Guadalajara, we went to a little kitchen and got breakfast. One of the old men there, don Carlos Robles, paid for our meal, just to show my parents some Mexican hospitality, to welcome them to the city and country.
My parents were amazed, they’d never experienced such hospitality in their lives, that someone you’d never met would buy you a meal just so you could feel at home. Old fashioned Mexican hospitality. For the small price of 150 pesos, he’d changed my parents’ ideas of hospitality forever. Maybe you know now what I mean when I say: money is sacred.
When I enter the temple, I take off my shoes and hat, to show respect for the gravity of what is taking place. When I pick up a knife, I become present, because of the potential for injury. Likewise, when I touch silver, I first put on my gloves. People die for money, people kill for it. The proper understanding and correct intention can use it to create and sustain life, to bring joy and health. Yes my friends, money is sacred. When I touch it, I will remember its power and wonder: is this the most blissful use of this potent energy?
I should note that I did actually get my bitcoins back from Bleutrade, it just took a long time – about 20 months. You’ll hear more about that in the next episode.
Shout outs
I’d like to give a shout out to Milos, who sometimes comments on the Cryptonomics Facebook page. A month ago he left this review:
I love Kurt’s videos. He constantly publishes interesting and substantive content, mixed with high quality editing and thought provoking topics. I look forward to seeing his influence grow in the Fintech sphere over the next few market cycles. Cheers!
Milos sometimes disagrees with what I say, and even so he supports his positions with reason and with respect. Thanks Milos.
Thanks again to everyone who shares these posts, the videos and podcasts. That’s really cool of you!
I’ll leave you with this gentle blessing: may all your lessons hard-learnt, be well-learnt. Stay grateful my friends.
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Have you ever pulled on a door with a handle, only to realise it says “push”? What’s the handle for?
Have you ever had your washing machine lock its door on you, and then give you a really helpful message like “DOOR IS LOCKED”?
People have these experiences all the time. Often they get frustrated. Sometimes they think “Aw geez I’m such a dummie for not knowing how to work this thing.” But generally, it’s not your fault. It’s the fault of the designers for not keeping you in mind when they made the thing.
A lot of newbies have the same experience with Bitcoin.
Welcome to Cryptonomics, principles of cryptocurrency and investing.
Welcome and thank you so much to all those people who are sharing these videos and podcasts, and thank you to all those people leaving 5 star reviews on iTunes. That’s really helping me out a lot.
Scroll down to watch and listen to the episode.
A brief history of UX on the Internet
Around the time I started using the Internet, it was still common to use IP addresses – the address as numbers, instead of using words like google.com. There was no Web 2.0, or even Web 1.0. Search engines weren’t fully formed. You typed the numbers to get to a university site, and got to look at a few documents and pictures – no animation, no video, not even links to click on. If I didn’t know the numbers, I couldn’t get to the site.
If the Internet had stayed as user friendly as it was then, do you think it would have ever become as popular as it is today? If you had to type an IP address into Gopher or a browser to get to a site, if you didn’t have a search engine but you had to ask your friends for new sites to find them? The Internet would still be for nerds.
Nothing wrong with nerds, it’s great to be a nerd. But the majority of people, the potential market for the Internet, and for cryptocurrency, go far beyond nerds. Regular people. Grandmas and soccer mums, grocery shoppers. Regular old humans.
Let’s talk about the user experience of Bitcoin over time.
History of UX in Bitcoin
When I first started using Bitcoin, we downloaded the whole blockchain to use the wallet. It took a while, possibly a day or two to download it. Yes, you had to wait days before you had the full functionality of the wallet. I got the Litecoin wallet, used a torrent to download the blockchain to get it started. I verified the blockchain cryptographically, to make sure I wasn’t getting a fake one.
In 2014, my buddy Aaron suggested this idea for a business, a café which had a full Bitcoin node so you could walk in with your laptop and download it over WiFi. That idea became obsolete pretty quickly.
Then came web wallets like Blockchain.info, and eventually light wallets like Electrum. Now we have mobile wallets, wallets as browser plugins that can hold hundreds of different cryptos. And in many countries you have a choice of several exchanges.
Now some cryptos have addresses that are actual names. You can go on Bitshares or Steemit and send money to your friend just by typing their handle. By the way, follow @cryptonomics1 on Steemit.
A few people get bent out of shape when I mention this, they say it’s no big deal to use a 34 character address or use a QR code. Okay, it could be worse. But there’s a reason I don’t write 50.87.146.217 on my business cards. I write cryptonomics.space – because it’s easily read, understood and remembered by humans.
Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are easier to use than ever. If we expect crypto to be more than a niche thing, it has to be outstanding to use. It has to be better to use than what people are already using, or they won’t switch. It needs things like transaction disputes, private payments, automatic payments, discounts for paying with crypto. Successful digital currencies might not have all these features, but they’ll have to have some of the important things that people expect, in order to reach mass adoption.
What’s in it for me?
It’s tempting to think that UX is something simple, something that can just be added on later, that it can be an afterthought. Really, UX doesn’t work like that. Today more than ever, the technology needs to welcome the user. If you build the tech first, without thinking of the user, and then try to build UX on top, it will be tough. The tech won’t be able to do what the user needs, because it wasn’t built for the user.
UX can’t be thrown on top like a first coat of pastel paint. A system must be designed to be congruent with user experience. If it’s not, and the user comes second to the tech, people will know, they will feel it, and as long as there are other options, they simply won’t use the service.
People are naturally, constantly seeking value. People are constantly asking that magical question “What’s in it for me?”
As entrepreneurs and system designers we constantly have to be asking “What’s in it for them?” to think about why someone would use a system, how to make it easy to use a system. Make it easy, make it fun, make it engaging, and you just might find success.
Thanks for listening to Cryptonomics, thanks for sharing this video and podcast, thanks for giving a five star review on iTunes. Most importantly, stay grateful!
Crypto fanatics have been asking for a long time, when will this technology reach mass adoption? However, for many years the situation wasn’t ripe. Bitcoin wasn’t user-friendly enough, it was hard for non-techy newbies to get involved, and they didn’t have an incentive. That seems to be changing, with Dash helping merchants and users get involved, giving the people of Venezuela a new tool to improve their situation during a crisis. Watch the episode below.
Economic situation in Venezuela
Venezuela has a lot of problems right now, many of them caused by too much control exerted by the state, one key problem being hyperinflation. I’ve seen the inflation of the Bolívar reported variously as 2500% pa, 6000%, even 1,000,000% per year. When I first started following the Bolívar, it was around 20 Bs to the dollar. When the Bolívar Fuerte was revalued and replaced, the exchange rate was 800,000 Bs to the dollar. The highest denomination was the 100 Bs, so people had to carry bales of cash.
Another piece in this puzzle is the fact that the Venezuelan government came up with their own cryptocurrency, the Petro – supposedly backed by Venezuelan petroleum – and ran propaganda campaigns all over the country promoting it. That means that millions of people all over the country now have exposure to the idea, and so they’re willing to hear more.
Enter Dash
Then we have Dash, a crypto project with a focus on user experience and a large treasury which can be used to fund any project the community decides will increase the value of the network. Over the last year, with cryptocurrency getting more popular, certain prominent coins saw their fees and transaction times increase. However, Dash fees got lower and transaction speeds remained around 3 seconds, fast enough for consumer use – and the Dash core team has a plan to continue scaling, retaining those key elements of useability.
In Venezuela, the Dash treasury funded a call centre to help people set up wallets, monthly conferences in Caracas, among other projects to get the word out, and it worked. Discover Dash lists over 1000 retailers in Vz – restaurants, real estate agents, accountants, and it seems there are many more small retailers which aren’t listed, food trucks and stalls in Caracas and Maracay.
Obviously there are still challenges ahead, such as smartphone penetration, and funding problems. The monthly conferences were funded when Dash was $800, now closer to $200, so they have a lot less funding. But it seems Dash and crypto are becoming a part of Venezuelan culture. Caracas may already be the crypto capital of the world.
