The Wild West of crypto is still fully in affect.
Most people don't seem to realize that we've only just been getting started here. Or they do realize it's still very early but assume we are quickly becoming reigned in by regulators and governments. I'm here to say that we haven't even come close to seeing what crypto is capable of doing. Let's talk again when the ponzi economy of some random country completely collapses and gets totally replaced by blockchain.
Eventually the regulators are going to realize that the thing they are trying to regulate... regulates itself. This is the entire point. The centralized way of doing things is becoming irrelevant but no one is just going to roll over and quit. Everyone fights for what they have and what they want. This is the way of the world.
The Trump Affect
For those who love or hate this clown of a man... it doesn't really matter either way. The new administration is coming in to clean house. Many regulations are about to be rolled back. Under the Biden administration everyone was sure crypto was just about the be reeled in and made to heel. Then the SEC lost every key lawsuit even within that hostile environment.
Now we find ourselves in the backswing of a fishtail in which all of these (often illegal) regulations gets rolled back. I honestly can't even imagine what the next cycle is going to be like within such an environment... in fact we need to get though the last year of the current cycle we are in to even try to make a guess.
But why is being early a bad thing?
Many will greedily proclaim that we're "still early".
We're All Gonna Make It.
This is toxic and greedy thinking. Anyone who thinks like this believes that they are an insider looking to dump on the next user as exit liquidity somewhere down the line. That is not what we are doing here. We are trying to rebuild entire economic systems. We are hacking our way through the jungle with a machete. We are not the lucky ones. For whatever reasons we are the pioneers who chose to be here before anything was actually ready to work properly.
Take the Gold Rush for example.
Name one person who famously got rich from the California Gold Rush. I'll wait. Thousands of people risked their lives to travel across the country, thousands of miles of zero infrastructure, just for the shot at the gold. They were early too, and most of them did not have any measurable success.
During a gold rush: sell shovels
The economic theory of betting against the herd has been true throughout the ages. If everyone is panning for gold, you don't pan for gold. You set up a shop. Sell food, alcohol, or sex workers. The same in true in crypto today. The people making the actual money are the ones building things for the gamblers, not the gamblers themselves. As someone who often finds themselves on crypto twitter I have to wonder how much money these bot accounts targeting incels acquire. Oh look a pretty girl with zero followers is liking my boring crypto post again. Fascinating.
This false concept that there isn't going to be money to made in crypto a decade or two from now is absurd. Or rather the concept that there will be money to be made but all the biggest gains will have already happened. What is this idea based on? It's based on every other centralized boom and bust history has to offer... except this isn't a centralized boom and bust so why is that what we keep comparing it to? The answer to this question is that we've never actually seen a decentralized boom in the economy so we actually haven't the slightest clue as to what will happen or how it will happen until it happens. Until such times it's just extremely shoddy guesswork that's quite guaranteed to be incorrect.
What is crypto even supposed to do?
Crypto is supposed to create a fair economy in which anyone can participate to earn their fair share. This is what people forget: crypto is not PvP even though it is constantly framed that way by both market participants and tribalism alike. If crypto succeeds then everybody wins. Anyone who says "we're still early" intrinsically believes that crypto isn't actually going to succeed and they need exit liquidity to dump their bags back into the old system.
So if we live in a society where there isn't some douchebag at the top siphoning everyone's lifeforce into their own pocket... what is the advantage of being early? The heavy implications here are that being early is actually a huge risk, and while that risk may come with a nice reward... is the reward actually worth the risk? If it was then maybe we should all be Bitcoin-only maximalists because Bitcoin is the asset that has proven time and time again that the risk:reward ratio outperforms everything under the sun.
So we have to admit one of the cold hard facts at this point:
- We are gambling addicts that want to make it big inside the shitcoin casino.
- We don't think crypto is going to succeed and need a Greater Fool to hold the bag.
- We are here for a reason other than to make financial gains.
Personally I would say I entered into crypto and stayed here because of my anarchist politics. There isn't really another option when it comes to the rampant decay of society and Rome-like abuses of power. The end of the empire is coming sooner or later... and I'd like to have an exit strategy rather than trying to wing-it like everyone else certainly will be. We all have our reasons.
Conclusion
Being early in crypto isn't a good thing unless we believe that these networks are actually just Ponzi Schemes that need to be day traded in order to have profitability. This is not how real communities operate; especially not decentralized ones. Until such times that people can work for fair wages in a decentralized ecosystem we really won't know if this little experiment is successful or not. Until then it's just a volatile anything-goes casino. Trade responsibly.
We will know we made it when manufacturing shops pay their employees in crypto, and the food, clothes, stuff shops accept crypto.
Right now, it is very hard to work outside the old money system. Why is it still so hard?
I remember Jeff Berwick saying something like, i went to this place where people were selling yachts, and the people there didn't want cash, they wanted bitcoin.
Now, that is actually creating the new system.
So, why does everyone talk about selling their bitcoin at the top?
Why do we still have people saying that they will get a loan with bitcoin as the collateral?
Its because, the old system is still dominant.
I wish we had a graph like the bitcoin dominance chart, but for crypto vs old world dominance chart.
Getting the loan on collateral is awesome in another way as well though...
If the interest rate is low enough (which it is in DEFI; sometimes 0%) we get to print out money that's guaranteed to go down in value. Shorting USD seems like a good plan in this environment which is exactly what a loan is.
That is an extremely nice point of view.
If i was sure the old system would hang around a while, i might do that.
But, right now, i am looking forward to trading some XRP for some land.
I hope i can get that to happen without having to sell out of one and buy into the other.
The old system not hanging around is the best outcome.
USD crashes to zero and you owe back zero on the loan.
I knew I should have stopped reading at the first mention of fair. I think I'll stick to Whitney Webb's advise on this one. It isn't fair, nor will it ever be fair. Same as it ever was only with more control our the dweebs.
What does "fair" even mean to you?
You've turned it into a loaded thing that lacks all meaning.
If you're saying we aren't going to live in a utopia... that's not insightful.
It's like saying people breathe air.
People need options.
Those options naturally compete with each other.
People need to be able to work and receive currency.
The population will gravitate to where the most currency is being offered.
In this context "fair" means that a centralized leader can't pop up and scoop 99% of the reward for themselves because there's always going to be another better option for people to pick.
I think for many of us we came here for the first two reasons, but we quickly realized the benefits and now the third reason fits more accurately. That's how I feel anyway. Sure, I'd love to make some money, but ultimately, I just like being part of something groundbreaking.
Making the transition from a fiat-mindset to a crypto-mindset is too big of a leap for most people to make at this stage of the game.
I'd say we are still early - in terms of the disruption that awaits society. When people realize that most govts and banks aren't going to respect their crypto gains in the TradFi system, we'll push further into a crypto-based economy.
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I wanted to chart BTC vs gold over the lifetime of gold being used as money. I can't find a chart that does that over the last 5500 years, because BTC is <15 years old. However, the amount of value that BTC has represented during the lifetime of gold used as money is not able to be calculated because the margin of error regarding the duration of the use of gold as money is an order of magnitude larger than the duration of the existence of BTC. IOW, on that theoretical chart graphing the relative value of BTC and gold, BTC doesn't even exist, because the time tick on a chart showing 5500 years is either larger than 15 years, or the chart can't be small enough to fit on a page. Gold has represented X% of wealth on that chart for 99.73% of the time, but because there is uncertainty as to when gold actually began to be used as money, the margin of error just eliminates that .27% of the time that BTC has even existed. It's statistically irrelevant.
I strongly agree it's early yet, and that it's just a volatile anything-goes casino.
Thanks!
Front row seats for the collapse of the Nation state.
If my future's comfortable too, that's just the cherry on top.