The Story: Using Dash to get by with Joël Valenzuela
Joël Valenzuela is known for his work with the Dash Force public outreach program, delivering presentations, planning conferences and other events. Valenzuela writes for Dash Force News and also oversees the content creation and distribution. Joël is also known for being a man who lives solely off cryptocurrency – specifically Dash.
In this interview we discuss Joël’s background, growing up in Mexico and living through the peso collapse and revaluation of the early 90s, how that gave him perspective on sound money and helped him to understand Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, the connection with gold and silver, the current state and future of Dash, the technical foundations of the user-friendly Dash Evolution wallet and the challenges with its development, and how commercial and central bankers are reacting to cryptocurrency.
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You might know that Bitcoin is money for the Internet, a system where no one person has the power to change the ledger. What you might not know is, why should you care? How is it going to help people escape poverty, find prosperity, to hold governments accountable, to push banks to reform or be forgotten? Let’s talk about the potential that cryptocurrency has to change the future for regular people like you.
Scroll down to watch or listen to the episode.
This episode of Cryptonomics is brought to you by good questions. I’ve told you karma is real. As a human being, questions are your karma. Many people have improved their quality of life because they had the courage and the persistence to ask the right questions – starting with “what do I have to be grateful for right now?”
Personally, I am grateful for my listeners, and everyone who enjoys my content enough to share it.
When I first started to put the puzzle pieces together about Bitcoin, I realised it was similar to Napster or Bittorrent, these file sharing services which people used to share music and movies, giving more power to the people who consume them, putting pressure on the industries to better serve their them. I saw that Bitcoin could put pressure on commercial banks, central banks and governments. It wasn’t clear to me what the effects would be, but with time they’re becoming clearer.
Let’s talk about the big one. How could crypto end war?
Crypto ends war
Ron Paul said, it’s no coincidence that the 20th century was dominated both by central banking and war. Without central banks, wars are normally short. The government has to collect extra taxes to pay for the war, and eventually they either run out of money, or the people get tired of a constant low standard of living.
With modern central banking, states just keep borrowing and printing money, and it’s hard for people to even know that war has something to do with their money being worth less or the economy failing.
Unlike dollars, Bitcoins are limited by software and consensus of the network. That means a state can’t just keep printing more of them to sustain the war on terror. They would have to ask for the money. They would have to find ways to serve the people, justify their existence, and any war that they wanted to wage.
Now we have a very real choice. If we want to withdraw our support from the dollar and other fiat currencies based on violence, we don’t have to convince people to accept silver coins; we can ask them to accept electronic cash. That is, as soon as crypto gets a decent user experience.
Crypto ends poverty
We have these central banks borrowing money, state treasuries printing money. That’s one key reason our dollars, pounds and bolivares don’t buy as much as they did last year. Just like if you flood the market with bananas and the price of a banana goes down, when the Fed floods the market with dollars, the price of a dollar goes down.
This means that saving money is for suckers. There’s no reason to save when you know your money is going to be worth less the following year. Instead, it encourages people to spend money on things they don’t need, or even invest in things they haven’t fully researched.
When you have sound money, money with a limited supply, money chosen by the people rather than imposed by a state, it will become worth more over time. The purchasing power will reflect advances in efficiency.
Saving money will be meaningful, and it will even be cool to save money. If people can save even 0.5% of their paycheque, that will make a huge difference in the long run. First they leave poverty, then they become prosperous.
Crypto brings prosperity
In a lot of developed nations, people are afraid to start businesses. Regulations drive up the cost to start a business, and then people don’t want to risk that much money. Imagine a world where you could save for 5 or 10 years and retire. You would be much more willing to save for a year, chase your dream and start an enterprise, because you know you don’t have much to lose anyway.
So we’ll see a lot more entrepreneurs. People will try out many ideas, some of them will even work, they will become rich and so will the world, for seeing their ideas come to life.
Then there’s the process of raising capital. It’s not easy to raise a million dollars. With the advent of ICOs, it’s a lot easier. Now people with crazy ideas can fund their sci-fi projects. Of course there’s a lot of scams that go with that, and with time there will be greater accountability measures – keep the sci-fi projects focused on Mars.
The other side is making money as a speculator. Before ICOs, only qualified investors or millionaires could put money into a project in the early stages. Peter Thiel bought 10% of Facebook in 2004 for $500k. At IPO, 8 years later, those shares were worth about $500 million. It was impossible for someone to buy $10 worth of Facebook in 2004. Now, it could happen with a new project, so now these kinds of 1000x gains are available to regular people.
I remember when I saw the first $10 I put into Bitcoin turn into $1000. I said to myself, I’m probably never going to see ridiculous returns like that again. But now, I say the good times are just beginning.
Thank you!
If you didn’t know why people were excited about crypto, I hope you now see that it is about real change in the world. Please leave a comment, what’s the biggest change you picture happening as a result of Bitcoin. Thanks for sharing this video with your friends so they can start to get the bigger picture.
Please note, if you’re subscribed on YouTube, starting with the next video I’ll be publishing Cryptonomics on my old channel, The Paradise Paradox. Getting those first 1000 subscribers on YouTube isn’t easy, so I’m going to go back and leverage the audience I already had there, and I hope you’ll join me.
After a solid year of bitcoin making low after low, you might think that it will continue to make new lows. You might even be so confident as to sell bitcoin short – that is, to borrow bitcoins in order to sell them, and profit when it goes lower. Would that be a smart move in market like this?
Or would the opposite action be correct – has crypto been going down for so long that it’s “due” for a turn around? Should you invest in cryptocurrency now, in February 2019?
The other day I spoke with long-term Bitcoin enthusiast and software developer Chris Guida to get his take. Scroll down to watch and listen to this episode.
Should I invest in bitcoin?
Chris notes how the market is down more than 80% from its peak, with many altcoins losing more than 90% from their all time highs. He says the idea is to start slow, dollar cost averaging, putting in $5 or $10 a week and building up slowly. A small amount of exposure to crypto can make a big difference in the long term.
Should I short bitcoin?
Nobody knows where the crypto market will go, but after one year of going down, it’s less certain that it will keep going down. A personal short-selling strategy from Chris is to catch an asset on the day that it first makes a big drop after a huge rally, such as when Monero made a stellar rise after gaining acceptance in dark web markets. Short-selling is risky, and so it’s prudent to limit shorts to a very small part of your portfolio
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The other day I sat down with my friend Chris Guida, long term Bitcoin enthusiast, software developer and all-round nice guy, to discuss some questions about cryptocurrency that people had raised on the Internet. DO we regret investing in cryptocurrency, after it’s fallen so far? And, was the 2017 rise in cryptocurrency nothing but a pump and dump scheme?
Let’s hear what Chris has to say.
Scroll down to watch the episode
Do you regret investing?
Firstly, do we regret investing in cryptocurrency? Both of us started buying years ago, so the answer was a clear no. However, there are many people who didn’t have the good fortune to buy so early. Chris says it’s likely that the crypto market will come around again – just like with a traditional market, there’s a boom and bust. It’s easy for a lot of folks in the media to say that bitcoin is dead and will never come back – but [literally hundreds of pundits have said that before](https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/), and it hasn’t stopped crypto yet.
Was it a pump and dump?
We also discussed whether the crypto bubble of 2017 was a pump and dump scheme, a manipulated effort by whales and market makers, pushing money in and loudly and taking it out quietly. Wherever there are markets, it’s almost guaranteed that people are trying to work them in their favour, but in this case it’s unlikely that there’s one grand conspiracy to push up the price. The price, and the bubble, is a result of a lot of individual actors, buying, selling, holding, and saying the truth or saying lies about what they’re doing.
Please join Chris and Kurt for a crypto exploration on this episode of Cryptonomics. Thanks for listening, liking on Facebook, subscribing on YouTube, and on BitTube, for sharing this episode, and for being cool. Stay grateful!
Last week, Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at NYU’s Stern School of Business wrote an article about cryptocurrency, explaining how it’s all about greed. It’s true, crypto is about greed, but that’s not all it’s about. Cryptocurrency is a movement and technology with many people involved, some with idealistic motives, and some more nefarious. Roubini’s piece is littered with truths, half-truths and mis-truths, as I break down in this episode of Cryptonomics.
Here are a few key quotes from the article with my responses:
Scroll down to watch and listen to the episode.
The libertarian ideology
“But it has also become the byword for a libertarian ideology that treats all governments, central banks, traditional financial institutions, and real-world currencies as evil concentrations of power that must be destroyed.”
I’m not sure if Roubini was trying to portray blockchain enthusiasts as a bunch of radical anarchists. The sentence does lack nuance… but other than that, yes please, destroy central banks, governments and fiat currencies.
Everyone on the blockchain
“They would like the entirety of social and political life to end up on public ledgers that are supposedly ‘permissionless’ (accessible to everyone) and ‘trustless’ (not reliant on a credible intermediary such as a bank).”
This is kind of right, but not exactly. For many libertarians, the idea that their entire life would be on a blockchain is horrifying, but having the facility to put things on a blockchain, where they’re very difficult to remove or censor, is a great tool for liberty.
A few white men
“A few self-serving white men (there are hardly any women or minorities in the blockchain universe) pretending to be messiahs for the world’s impoverished, marginalised and unbanked masses claim to have created billions of dollars of wealth out of nothing.”
Whether a technology is built by white men, Zimbabwean tribe children or grey Tibetan apes, can’t tell us its utility or validity. In the following paragraph, Roubini contradicts himself by writing:
“a small group of companies – mostly located in such bastions of democracy as Russia, Georgia and China – control between two-thirds and three-quarters of all crypto-mining activity and all routinely jack up transaction costs to increase their fat profit margins.”
At once blockchains are scary because it involves white men, and because it involves people who might not be white men. Well, I’m not scared.
It’s not just about greed
“But one need only consider the massive centralisation of power among cryptocurrency ‘miners,’ exchanges, developers and wealth holders to see that blockchain is not about decentralisation and democracy; it is about greed.”
Miners might have a lot of power when it comes to processing the transactions of a network, but they can’t just invent new monetary policy as a central bank can do. Developers can change the code, but they can’t guarantee that anybody will continue to use their currency. It’s true that these systems are centralised in many ways, but they are still less centralised than central or commercial banks, and still more democratic than any government.
It’s really easy to see people making money, point the finger and say “they are greedy”, reducing the motivations of strangers to a single word. It takes imagination and empathy to wonder about their idealism, their purest intentions.
Blockchains are not for traditional companies
“So it is no surprise that whenever ‘blockchain’ has been piloted in a traditional setting, it has either been thrown in the trash bin or turned into a private permissioned database that is nothing more than an Excel spreadsheet or a database with a misleading name.”
Enterprising individuals are building new kinds of organisations and communities, like Dash’s decentralised autonomous organisations. These organisations are less hierarchical – they don’t even necessarily require CEOs. When an old-fashioned hierarchical company takes a blockchain structure and tries to implement it, we shouldn’t be surprised that they have no use for it, just as we wouldn’t be surprised that a horsebreeder would find no use for a motorcar.
Conclusion – Look for value first
A lot of intelligent people are also very critical people, and that means when they hear a new idea, they start picking it apart before they even get the full picture. That’s a useful skill to have as an engineer, statistician or economist, but it must be set aside when one wishes to put on the hat of futurist, visionary, or friend. The future, like visions and friendships, are things created, and so we must be creative to glimpse their potential.
As I said in my commentary for this clip with Kosh Eek, it’s easy to think that those who bought bitcoins years ago were just lucky, but the reality is subtler. They were curious enough to listen to information from unusual sources, about the problems of central banks and fiat currency, and to imagine how things were related. To those few, Bitcoin was like the “Rose That Grew From The Concrete”, a beauty, albeit bruised and misshapen, inspiring wonder about how it came to exist. They didn’t look for the flaws first and run away, but instead looked for value and then put the flaws in their proper context.
In these changing times, analysis without curiosity might leave one suddenly waking up in an unfamiliar world, desperate and afraid. A calm and open mind is receptive to new information, to changes, the dance of life and play of consciousness. Have the courage and quietness to see the future; reveal the path of opportunity; look for value.
There’s a lot of people out there who want to speculate in crypto, but they don’t have the funds. You just gotta follow Uncle Kurt’s simple and ingenious patented formula:
Save money
Make money
Let’s talk about how to save money.
Welcome to Cryptonomics, principles of cryptocurrency and investing.
Thank you so much to everyone who is sharing these articles, videos and podcasts, 1000 Christmas blessings on all your families.
If you want to invest in crypto or stocks or even your own business, you need to get capital first. I know from experience that saving small amounts of money every week can add up over the years. But you gotta find that money to save, to put that money into a fund to buy your own financial freedom, and it all starts with paying yourself first, being conscious of your money, learning restraint, and being grateful.
Pay yourself first
If you wait till the end of your pay period to see if you have money left over to save, you’re leaving things up to chance, and you’re likely to fail. Put money into your freedom fund as soon as you get paid. Pay yourself first.
These days we do have some tools which make the whole thing a bit easier. A lot of banks have automatic savings plans, where you can set the amount to go into your savings account on the day you get paid… Or set up a transfer every month so you send the money to the crypto exchange, ready to be launched to the moon.
In Australia, it can be cool to have a savings account with a separate bank… because bank transfers can take up to three business days. That means you don’t have to worry about impulsively spending your money. Plan ahead, that goes for everyone, but especially if you have impulsive tendencies. You need to plan in a way that accounts for your nature.
There’s also a bunch of apps that will round up your purchases and put the spare change into a savings account or investment. You can use different apps depending on where you live: Acorns in the USA, Raiz in Australia, Monzo in the UK.
Another way to build your freedom fund is a Save More Tomorrow plan, where, when you get a raise, some of the increase starts going into your 401k or superannuation.
Conscious Spending
Have you ever looked at your bank balance, seen double or single digits and wondered, “where in the name of Eris did my money go?” That’s a sign that your spending habits are unconscious. To control them, you must make them conscious.
For a long time, I’d always keep a notepad with me. I’d write how much I bought, every cent known, and later categorised. Even if I put a couple of coins into a busker’s guitar case, I’d write it down. Probably not in front of him though.
Then you can enter them into a spreadsheet, or even use an app like You Need A Budget.
Review your spending and your receipts later and ask, did I really need this item? Did I use it, or end up throwing it out? Could I have found a cheaper way that was just as good, or better, with a similar amount of time and effort?
Review the spreadsheet and ask why you spent so much in each category. You might notice that a lot of money is actually going into the “entertainment” category, or a lot more goes on eating out than on home-cooked food.
Just the act of making your spending conscious can lead to great changes in the long term. Consciousness transforms everything to which it is applied.
Control Yourself
One main reason people don’t get ahead with money is because they haven’t practised restraint. When they see something nice, their impulses take over, the salesgirl steps in and starts saying how much money you’ll save if you buy today, and all of a sudden you’ve spent $300 on felt hats, French ticklers, and a new puppy.
That’s a reason to learn to meditate. I was talking to my monk friend from Wat Tham Krabok the other day. He told me the two foundations of their meditation practice there are, practise with a certain intention, and practise for a certain period. If you say you will sit until the incense stick burns out, then that’s what you do. You might have all kinds of whims while you’re seated, but you persist, you do what you set out to do. You practise integrity, ignoring impulses, and fulfilling your will.
Stay grateful
Remember to be grateful for what you have. It might sound like a scolding from your parents, or some new-age platitude, but being grateful is actually very practical.
Being smart with money isn’t about being stingy, it’s about being prudent. When some people start saving money, they go too far, become a tightwad, trying to get out more than they put in. They might even put strain on their friendships. Money is important, it can never be as important as your relationships.
If you start thinking with the mindset of a miser, you might get all the money in the world and still feel poor. The idea is to feel grateful, and realise that you’re already wealthy, to feel the abundance of wealth, but also exercise the restraint of a human comfortable in his wealth, someone who respects the power of money. You can’t at once be grateful for something and take it for granted. The more grateful you are, the more you respect it, and the more you learn.
A prudent fiscal strategy is like a beautiful poem – every word and letter in place, every one important, some empowering and some delightful. Every one part of a greater whole, and aligned to its highest purpose.
Shout outs
I’d like to shout out one young lady who commented on my video last year strongly criticising how I looked, my T-shirt, and even the nail on the bedroom wall behind me. I didn’t like the criticism at the time, but that was the grain of sand that stimulated the growth of a pearl. That’s a key reason I take so much pride in the appearance of my videos today.
So thanks to all the haters!
Thank you
Thank you for listening to Cryptonomics.
Please, please please please share this with your friends. It means so much to me on a spiritual, emotional sacred devotional level. Please share it, I put this content for free, putting in all the time, effort, thought and experience to make a work of art, a shining holy light of crypto knowledge, given freely and generously in the hopes of a better world.
Almost every time I put out an episode, I come to a point where I think, I could put in a little extra effort to make this video cooler, or I could be lazy and publish it as it is. 99% of the time, I put in that effort. I do that for myself, because I want to create something that exceeds my standards, but I also do it for you guys, to make something more compelling, entertaining and enlightening. You don’t have to do anything for me, nothing is owed. But I would love it if you share these videos and podcasts. Thank you so much to those already sharing it. It’s pretty amazing when someone listens to what I have to say, and enjoys it so much that they want others to enjoy it too.
Take care, I hope you’re enjoying your holidays, and once again, stay grateful.
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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!
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Lots of people who are involved in crypto have opinions about the direction of the market. People standing on the sidelines can tell you that it’s over and will never recover after the crash in 2018. However, for people who have been in this for a while, we can see the patterns. Bitcoin bubbled at $30, $200, $1,000, and $20,000, and some were even expecting the rise and fall.
Nobody knows the day or hour when these patterns and cycles will play out, but we can say at least that they probably will. A bubble will form and a bubble will pop. The price will jump up very quickly just before a crash. There will be a sell-off after Christmas… and the loudest people will lose interest when the real growth begins.
Bubble after bubble
A lot of people think that the 2017 crypto bubble has popped, and now the market will never recover. They’re not aware of Bitcoin’s previous bubbles, peaking at $35 in 2011, $200 in early 2013 and $1000 in late 2013. They believe it’s just like the dot-com bubble, rising once and never again.
However, this market has a different dynamic, in a different era. It’s not just exposed to Wall Street traders – almost anybody in the world with a smartphone can buy cryptocurrency, and as it gets more user friendly, more and more people will start accessing it. For good or bad, it’s likely that the market will become overhyped many more times before this technology is commonplace.
We know a bubble will come again, so we can begin preparing for it now, in order to take advantage.
Putting on the boosters
A consistent pattern to look for is when a coin grows in price over many months, perhaps going up 500% or more, then suddenly increases, going up another 50% in just a matter of days. When it does that, it’s likely that the rally is nearly over.
As I mentioned last week, many people will become emotional at this point, losing themselves in visions of swimming in money like Scrooge McDuck. That feeling is a key signal that it’s time to preserve your wealth, rather than expand it.
After Christmas sell-off
Another very consistent pattern is a sell-off after Christmas. Some say that’s Chinese preparing for Lunar NY, a dubious explanation. Whatever the cause, it’s consistent enough that you should set a reminder in your calendar for December 20th. Seriously, pull out your phone or Google calendar or your day planner and write it in there. Do it now. Don’t leave it for later. Do it now, and thank me later.
A quiet rally
Last week I talked about the sentiment on social media. As I said, it’s most noticeable when things are getting overheated, when a lot of new money is coming in and people are overhyped. After the crash, Bitcoin would start to rally and people would say “Is this the return, the second coming? Is something special happening again?”
Ed Bugos of The Dollar Vigilante pointed out that in every subsequent rally, there are less and less cheerleaders on social media. It might be because these people bought in high and they’re holding onto the hope of recovering their losses… Eventually they lose hope. In any case, when the price starts to move up without fanfare, that’s much more likely to be a lasting trend. When there’s no fanfare, that’s when the increase isn’t about flashiness or hype, it’s real growth.
Thank you
Thank you for listening. Please share this article, video and podcast with your friends so they can learn and enjoy.
Most importantly, stay grateful.
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Months ago I talked about how to know when a market is overheated. It’s a lot easier to tell when it’s heated than when it’s reaching bottom… People at the top are a lot louder, because they believe they’re genius traders, they’re rich and they’ve figured it all out. At the bottom, people aren’t so public in admitting that they’ve lost thousands of dollars. So it gets quiet.
And it has been quiet for the last month. Now with Bitcoin dropping again, it seems like nobody is even crying about their lost fortunes… Just declaring death once again. So has crypto reached a bottom?
Scroll down to watch and listen to the episode.
I know a lot of people are listening to Cryptonomics on iTunes. I appreciate it a lot when people leave a good rating on iTunes, helping more people find the podcast.
Price action and people reaction
On the 14th of November, bitcoin dropped from $6300 to $5600, very suddenly. You probably noticed. Today on the 19th it took another drop to $5300.
What I’ve been noticing the last month or so is that of course, the crypto market has been very flat. When things do rally, there aren’t as many cheerleaders saying “bitcoin is back”. A friend said to me, “Kurt, I respect you because you’re the only one still talking about bitcoins”. Then when this drop happened, I didn’t hear anyone saying “oh no, I’ve lost a fortune.” Instead I see people saying the dream is over, RIP.
The other day my friend said to me, I don’t think I’ll buy any crypto, it’s too hard to pick the bottom. I said if that’s your logic, you’ll never invest in anything ever. I said, do you think anybody who bought bitcoin at $300 is crying now that they didn’t buy it at $200? You gotta keep things in perspective.
Be greedy when others are fearly, be fearful when others are greedy. When you see a whole bunch of people bouncing out of the market, the temptation might be to depart with them. The hype is gone, the hope is gone, would that last candle of faith burning in your heart go out with them? This market belongs to those who see when others will not look, to take heart when men shrivel, and to have wits when others have lost their entire heads. Is there still courage within you friend, does your dream yet live?
Shout outs
I’d like to give a shout out to all the people who commented on my last video on Steemit. It got over 170 comments, some less spammy than others, some more respectful than others. A lot of people disagreed with me, but many had positions based on knowledge and reason. Thanks Michael Nimetz, Transisto, SilentScreamer, JoeyArnoldvn, Sames, Frdem3dot0, among others.
Thanks again to all those people leaving those 5 star ratings on iTunes. Have a great day and stay grateful!
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You’ve probably heard a lot about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in the media – people turning into millionaires overnight, discovering coins on lost hard drives and taking out mortgages to gamble on the market.
And it’s true, you can get rich using cryptocurrency, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s lot more to it than financial security – this technology is set to change society the world over, very similar to the way the Internet has changed our lives over the last 20 years.
It’s a truly transformative technology and I’d like to tell you all about it – Welcome to Cryptonomics.
I’ve been researching Bitcoin since 2011, bought my first bitcoin at $10 even though I didn’t really know what it was or have any idea that the price might increase.
Now, after years of research, analysis, and practical experience, my friends see me as an expert on crypto assets, and I strive to live up to that reputation.
Why care about cryptocurrency?
You probably have some idea of what crypto assets are about, but the implications are wider than you might first realise.
1. Money. Imagine you bought $10 worth of Facebook at the same time Peter Thiel bought 10% of the company for $500,000. How much would that have been worth at IPO? You might guess that it would be worth a few thousand dollars. Actually, it would have been worth $913,000. Until recently, these kinds of gains were reserved for qualified investors – millionaires. Now with initial coin offerings and other forms of fundraising, regular people have the opportunity to access those disproportionate gains.
2. Disruptive social change. We can already see on Steemit how crypto can disrupt social media. The highest goals are much more ambitious – disrupt the commercial banks, central banks, and end war. Using this technology, we might be able to reduce power given to these institutions, removing the power of governments to print money, limiting wars to ones that the people agree to pay for.
3. The fear. It’s not necessarily all rosy when it comes to crypto assets. Having a big ledger where all your information can be accessed in one place presents a threat to our privacy. Can we stay secure and private in the epoch of DLT and blockchain? That’s a vital question, one which many crypto fanboys and girls don’t ask often enough.
What is Cryptonomics?
Certain points that deserve emphasis are lacking in cryptocurrency media, three ambitious ideals which I hope to fulfill:
1. Responsibility. Personal finance is something that’s not taught in schools, and it does require a lot of self-control to get right. By revealing the habits of people who had the wherewithall to hold onto their bitcoins, we can see how to improve ourselves.
2. Spirituality. You might have been told that spirit and money don’t mix, that to be wealthy in spirit, you must renounce material things. That’s not true. The lessons of money are the same lessons of life, the same lessons of happiness.
3. Beauty. The classics of Chinese literature such as the Tao Te Ching and I Ching stay in the hearts of many today, because they at once had the goals of teaching and inspiring. One way to create great art is to combine form and function. In fact, form and function are hard to separate, because the way things appeal to us is a key part of how we use them.
Not one of these ideals alone is easy to attain, so my commitment is to continuous improvement on each of them.
