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Understanding core principles that guide people’s decision making Hi I’m Jordan , I love helping people think & grow their products. Hope this helps! You can find me on Twitter and via my Newsletter :) We live in an exciting time where incremental changes in technology have the potential to have compounding forms of impact. The future is rapidly approaching — and perhaps more so than ever before, we are excited and eager for what is next. In an optimistic sense, the future promises to be brighter and bigger for many of us. The challenge is predicting what that future would look like. As humans, we tend to overestimate speed of adoption of new technologies but in the long run underestimate overall impact. So what are our best guesses on what will change in the future? Will we have flying cars? Virtual reality headsets? Chips in our brains? We’re all consumed and excited by what change. Rarely does the press or do we have conversations about what be different. will will not Perhaps that is even a more important question: “What will not change?” What are the fundamental parts of man kind that move us? Jeff Bezos provides ( ) a great explanation for how they have implemented that type of thinking into building Amazon: via Bill Gurley I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two — because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. … [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,’ [or] ‘I love Amazon; I just wish you’d deliver a little more slowly.’ Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.” Understanding the first principles that motivate and drive consumer decision making is crucial to building any sort of business. So before you go and invent the next big thing — ask yourself what would motivate a consumer/business humans to want that thing and why they would want it. Is the reason a first order principle? Or is something a priority only in the moment? Thanks so much for reading! My name is and I write blog posts It would mean a ton to me if you could: Jordan Gonen every day. > Follow me on Twitter < If you ever have any questions, send me an email jordangonen1 at gmail dot com ! Thanks so much!

What is not going to change in the next 10 years?

So, you’ve got a business idea but are unsure how to determine whether it is worth pursuing. Or maybe you’ve already been through the mill and spent a year building a product no one wanted. For either of these scenarios, you are not alone. The issue is many startup leaders don’t find the right problem to solve; they fall in love with one idea and , ignoring any feedback they receive. That’s why, currently 9 out of 10 startups fail. try to force a fit As a seasoned entrepreneur and Product Management professional leading product development in , I have learned the value of finding that problem-solution fit first. But I also realized there needs to be more user-friendly business planning tools to give founders a helping hand. AdTech Startup leaders often leverage innovative tools like LivePlan and Biz Plan to get the answers to ‘What MVP will work?’ or ’Does this solution address the issue I aimed to resolve?’ These are excellent tools for entrepreneurs to put business ideas into pre-made structured frameworks, helping them figure out their target audience, customer demands, and industry landscape. However, on occasion, filling out these templates with built-out ideas can be overwhelming. Here are four more tips to help verify if you have a viable business idea. Explore ChatGPT Prompts With all the current rage, is the first obvious tool to use — and I have witnessed the true magic of AI when harnessed to empower entrepreneurs. ChatGPT can quickly help deliver your , using prompts to determine market-solution, customer, and product-founder fit. ChatGPT validation plan For example, let’s take this first pain point: Entrepreneurs often miss out on defining their unique advantage when starting a business. The ‘why me?’ part. That’s why taking a moment to analyze your education, experience, background, and network through ChatGPT is worthwhile: Do you have access to a specific customer set or expertise in a niche area? For example, suppose you want brand and start this food company in the US. You realize §you have a close friend who owns America’s top food distribution company and could have distribution lined up. to launch a new healthy snack To more thoroughly explain your unique advantage, though, you can simply ask ChatGPT the obvious: “I’m thinking of starting a business that [does XYZ], and I want to understand my unique strengths in making it a success. I have experience in [XX] and access to people who [XX]. I want you to ask me questions to help me think through what unique advantages or risks I may have.” Don’t be surprised to see a reasonably adequate action plan listing what skills you can maximize and other activities you need to complete to get your business off the ground. Next up, it is worth asking ChatGPT who the ideal customer would be for your business. These kinds of prompts can do the trick: “Can you describe my potential customer base’s demographics and explain their problems? What products or services are they using now to tackle these issues? How could my business add more value?” And finally, founders must always ensure enough customer demand to buy their product or service. In other words, is the problem you are addressing big enough? To find out, ask ChatGPT something like: “Can you give me five reasons someone would want to buy my product?” Conduct Customer Interviews Once you’ve collated the input and feedback about your business idea from , you can put it into practice with customer discovery. A round of interviews with prospective customers means you can understand your user base’s problems, empowering you to provide a more effective and valuable solution. Those startups who have failed may find they . generative AI skipped this stage Another pitfall is asking friends and family for advice or feedback. They’ll be overly generous, which can be misleading. Instead, get speaking to real prospective users because an idea is just an idea unless you have a paying customer. For early-stage startups, using tools such as Google Forms or Survey Monkey for user testing can get the job done. But for more established companies with larger budgets, there are tools like CustomerGauge. Also, remember that ChatGPT can come in handy here for . You just need to describe your business and potential customer base for the LLM to create three compelling value propositions that address how your company solves a problem. When it comes to the customer interviews, you can ask which of the three value propositions resonates most. generating questions If you feel particularly adventurous, you could build a prototype of your digital product or put wireframes together with a design tool like before getting in front of customers. Users could interact with the prototype directly and provide insights about usability via comment mode. And Figma’s screen recording software can capture customer interviews. Figma Plus Customer interviews are invaluable if you want to know if people would pay for your service or product — and how much. They can also be an opportunity to gather feedback or ask what essential features you need to include to win business. Leverage Landing Page Apps Landing pages are like interactive online business flyers and are a great way to target different customer segments with tailored information. It’s also a low-cost, efficient, data-driven approach to test market potential. Why do you think even established companies use landing pages to launch new products, letting customers preorder or sign up for a waitlist? By tracking metrics like page visits, click-through rates, and conversion rates, you can determine if there’s genuine interest in your idea. The company Carrd helps entrepreneurs make free landing pages, while ConvertKit can drive email newsletter signups with its built-in email marketing tool. But many other apps are available, too, enabling entrepreneurs to build one-page websites that are easy to tweak and customize without any serious coding. These apps also often facilitate A/B testing and the experimentation of different headlines, images, or CTAs to optimize conversion rates. Lastly, to convert prospects, there needs to be an action for them to take, like signing up for a newsletter, filling out a form, contacting you, or purchasing an e-book. Overall, a landing page is a safer bet than building a full product or service: If the business idea doesn’t resonate with an audience, you have yet to invest heavily. Examine Intelligent AI Assistance for Business Planning Finally, even though today’s business planning software platforms have good intentions, sometimes they hinder entrepreneurs’ ability to ideate, design, and launch successful businesses. That’s because current platforms are missing a learning component to assist entrepreneurs in articulating their intentions and minimizing project timelines. This is where an AI-powered co-pilot comes in to make business planning more accessible and democratize AI for all. Newer AI-driven platforms and apps are now available that use Open AI’s APIs, for example, alongside fine-tuning models, to produce idea evaluators that inform an entrepreneur if their idea is worth pursuing or not. The platforms can assess the uniqueness of the solution and business model, giving entrepreneurs a score and offering suggestions for improvements in key areas. The feedback mechanism and personalized assessment of an idea, target market, or problem statement can help entrepreneurs iterate quickly and develop business plans. But remember, receiving a high score on these AI-powered platforms doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be successful — it is just a barometer. However, the valuable insights and recommendations provided could optimize data-driven decision-making and enhance the success rate of new ventures. Today, startups are up against many factors: talent shortages, funding obstacles, fierce competition, and an economic downturn. However, these emerging companies are essential for the global economy’s resilience to encourage innovation, job creation, and technological development — but only when a startup effectively addresses a pressing issue and can sustain operations. That’s why leveraging different technologies for better business planning is vital, providing a more favorable environment for startups to thrive and meaning we are all better off. This article was originally published by on Danish Ahmed The Sociable.

Evaluating the Viability of Your Business Idea with Modern Tools

The Play-to-Earn marketplace is gaining traction. The lockdown measures implemented due to the Covid-19 pandemic has meant that people have turned to gaming in droves. But Play-to-Earn, when combined with crypto, takes on an entirely new meaning than merely ‘gaming’. Tokens earned in the cryptocurrency environment can be turned in for other tokens, which can be used to buy real things - like clothes, gift cards, flight tickets, property, etc. ** Users are highly incentivized to participate in an entirely new ecosystem with multiple benefits. And it can also be a fun experience built around social networking. Breaking Down Play-to-Earn Games The central concept behind Play-To-Earn gaming is that you are rewarded for your participation with tokens. But we need to explore a few other topics to really break it down, namely NFTs and the Metaverse. Users will typically be rewarded in the form of a native token and they can trade these for NFTs - . This fancy name just means that it’s a unique token. If an NFT is the same as another, it's not an NFT. An NFT denotes ownership of one single asset. Two strong use cases for NFTs right now are artistic creations and digital trophies in online gaming. Non-Fungible Tokens NFTs can also be used for eBooks, music, website address, property ownership, the applications are endless. This is why this concept is taking the world by storm. The Play-to-Earn ecosystem is also taking off as it is a major marketplace and environment for the earning and trading of such NFTs. Just What is the Metaverse? The Metaverse is not just limited to online gaming worlds such as Fortnite, World of Warcraft, Minecraft, etc. it really denotes an online virtual (non-physical) environment where two avatars can interact. If the universe is all things physical, then the Metaverse would be all things virtual, including AR, VR, social media, online gaming, cryptocurrency, etc. Facebook is already attempting to monopolize the Metaverse, but has a very slim chance of succeeding due to the power of blockchain, where better games with intelligent token distributions are being built. The decentralized nature of blockchain means that it be monopolized. Blockchains are basically designed so that there is no central point of power. can't Even attempts to purchase blockchain-based companies will ultimately fail due to the democratic nature and ethos of distributed ledger technology. So the Metaverse is well and truly open for business and nobody can say for certain where the Web 3.0 future is going to take us. Play-to-Earn is Here To Stay Many might question the viability of Play-To-Earn marketplaces as a means to earn a living. Do professional adults truly want to develop a career as a fictional character in a virtual universe? Yet the marketplace is closer to home and more real than you might think. , for instance, is a real-life Play-to-Earn ecosystem that is designed to disrupt the massive gig marketplace (UBER, UpWork, Fiverr, Craigslist). Users will have their own profiles and select their own skills and hobbies. They can earn up to $1,500 in rewards a month by doing real, actual work for people who need things done in their area. It simply makes the working environment more meaningful more playful. H3RO3S and Another powerful and established marketplace is . This is one of the leading NFT projects that describes itself as a Social Gaming Economy. It works as an aggregate marketplace for the trading of NFTs collected across the Metaverse. The social aspect of gaming is massive as people can meet up due to their common interests and interactions in the metaverse. A central hub of communication and information sharing is crucial towards establishing a fair, thriving economy. Players need to know which projects are legitimate and which ones are trying to fleece their user base. Gamerse The power of Play-to-Earn and NFTs are compounded when the implications of augmented and virtual reality are considered. Pokemon Go was a precursor of what is soon to come with VR/AR. Players will interact in the Metaverse while using this technology, and this will combine physical actions in an extremely futuristic context. Companies such as has designed a game called VAIL that allows you to play an enhanced social experience and these technologies will, at some stage, incorporate NFT and Create-to-Earn environments seamlessly. The project itself already boasts NFTs of their in-game pets which are playable, interactable, and breedable. AEXLAB Get Involved in the Play-to-Earn Marketplace Most, but not all, Play-to-Earn games are free, as opposed to the Free-to-Play model. Some require an upfront investment. While many might balk at the idea of paying for these games, it's worth remembering that games take a long time to develop and need funding. It’s also worth noting that it is useful to actually spend money on a product that you believe in. Using Google and Facebook is great, except that your data is sold and your messages are stored and monitored. The charges are merely undisclosed. In other words, it’s good to actively support companies that are changing things for the better. Disclaimer: The author holds tokens in some of the above-mentioned companies. The opinions in this article belong to the author alone and should not be considered investment advice.

Examining The Viability of The Play-to-Earn Marketplaces

Cryptocurrencies are the future and Blockchain is here to stay! Cryptocurrency market continues to plunge with major currencies losing over 40% market cap in just a span of one month (From the second week of November 2018 to the second week of December 2018). Bitcoin’s dominance over the marketplace escalates while the bearish momentum is still lurking. Despite the slowdown in the trade, visionaries like Tim Draper, Peter Lynch, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey, Patrick Byrne and many more still believe that cryptocurrencies will be reshaping the future economy. 2018 had a great start but sluggish end In the very first week of 2018, cryptomarket peaked to an all-time high with more than $60 Billion of cryptocurrency traded within 24 hours and the total market capitalization reaching over $830 billion. Over the course of the next month, the entire market witnessed a free fall — crashing by almost 2/3rd to just $277 Billion in market capitalization. Source: Coinmarketcap For skeptics, this correction was a pivotal opportunity to combine effort and discredit the value of cryptocurrency assets. This exertion could be largely seen on part of news sites. Every action has a volatile reaction in Crypto space as the market is sensitive to news and many other factors. An indexed ROI graph of all ICOs that constitutes to 75% of all Cryptocurrencies indicates that 300+ ICOs ended Q2 with a positive delta over the period May to June 2018. Indexed RoI graph of all ICOs combined (Source: InWara’s Database) Even though the ICO market appears to have been in a downtrend, an individual could have made a 5X-10X profit had he bought into the right ICOs. It is fair to say that Cryptos grew in 2018 as the number of VC investments increased significantly. However, trade volumes and crowdfunding have taken a blowback. Possible causes behind this bearish trend It would be absolutely naive to believe that the crypto market is not manipulated or controlled by market mechanism to some degree as referenced in the article by super crypto titled ‘ ’. Bitcoin-Manipulation-Cartel After the Bitcoin’s price rally of 1K to 20k from Jan 2017 to Dec 2017 and 95% crash during Dec 2017 and Dec 2018, it is evident that the market trend follows a cyclic pattern and it is inevitable to see both the massive booms and massive bursts. However, what’s interesting to note is that the institutional grade investors and venture capitalists are buying in crypto while the market is still REKT. Private funding has seen significant growth in 2018 with total rounds of funding doubling as compared to 2017. Private Funding & Round Size By Quarter (Source: InWara’s database) The active rise of Venture Capital in pre-sale and private sale stages is an indication that the crypto market is beyond FOMO and FUD phases and the plummeting of the crypto market can be legitly explained by cartel theory. Future of Cryptocurrencies and blockchain Blockchain will save the cryptocurrencies as the potential scalability, lightening network, smart contracts and the solutions provided by the distributed ledger will possibly be reshaping the future economy. The underlying values of blockchain technology and its decentralization of transaction network has the potential to solve the wide spectrum of problems that exist in a centralized network. The current issue with digital currencies is that most presume that the digital currencies are a new form of currency and are in a war against the existing fiat currency. It is vital to understand that it’s not about replacing the fiat currency but revamping the way funds are transferred and reinventing the way assets are managed. Are the Companies behind ICOs legit? In Q3, 2018 the number of product driven ICOs have seen a significant growth compared to Q2, 2018. This shows the seriousness of companies behind ICOs in their project. % of ICOs with a working prototype (Source: InWara’s database) Product roadmap: Expect maximum launches in Q4, 2018 Source: InWara’s Finance sector report Methodology for product roadmap: InWara has mapped the dates of roadmap events that have a combination of the key words ‘launch’, ‘mainnet’, ‘testnet’ and ‘release’ 500+ companies have projected roadmap events in 2018. With investors getting vigilant, companies have realized the significance of transparency in reporting elements of their ICO. However, current trends suggest delays in the roadmap making Q1, 2019 an exciting prospect. Considering all these factors and also the long due hearing of SEC for ETF’s approval in December 2018 which is now postponed to February 2019, one may say that the long-standing winter in the crypto market may come to an end.

Bitcoin & Crypto market downtrend reasons explained | Bitcoin & Cryptocurrencies Viability Analysis

You’re at a meetup talking tech with the startup folks and the term “MVP” keeps getting batted around. You know MVP stands for minimum viable product, but what does that mean? really Product or Process? For starters, it’s worth noting what the “M,” “V,” and “P” actually stand for — that is, “Minimum Viable Product,” the version of a product that consists of only the features needed to deliver value for those early adopters. Remember, the idea here is to get these folks to want to spend money on your product. Once they do, your product development will start learning from the market in the form of user feedback. It’s important to get this feedback loop going so that your product development decisions are based on customer feedback — not intuition. Prototype vs MVP The idea behind an MVP originates in “The Lean Startup” by , so let’s start with this concept of an MVP first: Eric Ries An MVP is the version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. –Eric Ries Validated learning. Least effort. Doesn’t sound very sexy. Let’s jump over to Techopedia and hear what they have to say: An MVP is the most pared down version of a product that can still be released. An MVP has three key characteristics: Has enough value that people are willing to use it or buy it initiallyDemonstrates enough future benefit to retain early adopterProvides a feedback loop to guide future development Techopedia Ok, some marketing considerations. And it sounds like the emphasis is on testing rather than building. Let’s review: You want people to pay for it. You want it to impress the folks who line up to get the latest in tech. And you want to provide your customers with a way to give you feedback to improve it moving forward. The Concept of Iteration Eric Ries calls it the “build, measure, learn, loop”. Basically you have to test something to get it right. The core idea behind an MVP is validated learning. As an entrepreneur you want to be constantly checking your assumptions and making adjustments wherever needed. Think of the MVP as an exercise in temporarily shaking off that obstinate entrepreneurial vision of yours. Remember that markets don’t care about entrepreneurs. They listen to customers. Make sure your vision corresponds with reality, aka ‘what customers want.’ This is the part where you fall out of love with your idea and submit to a less warm and fuzzy objective reality. Numbers are as objective as it gets. You should be tracking metrics, and metrics galore — site metrics, user metrics, social metrics, sales metrics, cost metrics, etc. If it can be assigned a number you should be paying attention to how that number is changing. Hint: Developing Products Or Customers? In the app space you want your product in the hands of those early adopters who already get what you’re trying to do as soon as possible. This group is going to understand your product out of the gate and be able to explain it to the folks who won’t. They already want you’re selling. And not only do these people give the best feedback, they also do free word-of-mouth marketing! Features Versus Benefits It’s becoming clear why you want to keep things as simple as possible at the beginning, no? As an entrepreneur you already have way too many assumptions to make about what is or isn’t an opportunity. Once you start building a product you’re going to have to make a bunch of additional assumptions about which features to include or leave out. You have no idea whether or not these decisions will ultimately yield the benefits that your customers actually want, but you have to start somewhere. Wouldn’t it bуe nice if you could check these assumptions throughout the process of building your product? The MVP enables you to do just that. Think of it as the ace up the entrepreneur’s sleeve. With an MVP you can simultaneously build a product, test the market, and flex your assumptions about the features that customers value. And as you know, more value for the customer means more value for the entrepreneur. From Testing Features To Designing Experiences Since the time when the concept of an MVP first appeared, the market for software products has changed. Customers don’t want to buy poorly designed products and expect better functionality from newborn applications. Businesses get only one chance to make a first impression. This is where UX comes in. With everyone throwing around this UX term nowadays it would seem that the tech space has developed a more sophisticated concept of value. As apps have become increasingly nuanced — both in terms of user interface (UI) and UX — now even early adopters need that ‘wow factor’ in the preliminary versions of digital products. Alas, if only there were some middle ground between iteration and design. Not to worry, Jeff Gothelf — thought leader in the burgeoning Lean UX movement and author of Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience — has found it. He believes that incorporating UX into agile product development starts with understanding why designers aren’t so keen on MVPs in the first place, pointing to three main reasons: MVPs don’t allow for that unrestricted ideation phase during which designers can apply blue-sky thinking to business problems. Jeff refers to this as BDUF (Big Design Up Front) — a term from software development’s ‘waterfall’ school of thought. In waterfall, planning is emphasized over iterating (the opposite of how the opposing ‘agile’ camp sees it). MVPs force designers to work with non-designers and refocus the design process through the lens of engineering concepts, which runs counter to designers’ natural approach. The notion of ‘good enough to deploy’ is antithetical to the philosophy of design, which is based on realizing robust and complete experiences. Remember, there’s a fundamental difference between how designers and engineers create value — the latter iterate, while the former ideate. Let’s delve a little deeper into what drives each of these camps. So it’s not hard to see why an MVP — by definition lacking this UX element — would find it hard to drive value in markets driven by such (think digital products). In a post for Jerry Cao of UXPin offers some insight into how entrepreneurs could miss the point and fail to properly manage an MVP strategy: UXBooth Perhaps the best way to think about the MVP is Brandon Schauer’s cupcake theory, which emphasizes a complete experience each step of the way. Just like a cupcake is a better (and more desirable) MVP for cake than a bowl of flour, make sure the MVP always communicates the value of the product. –Jerry Cao Or in other words: You don’t delight customers with product development; you delight them with products. And instead of MVP try to think about MDP (Minimum Delightful Product). Viability Or Delight? In his blog , serial entrepreneur Adam Berrey proposes an interesting solution to the problem at hand. Enter the ‘Minimum Delightful Product’ (MDP). Startup Blender MVP vs MDP An MDP is just as ‘minimum product’ as an MVP only with the MDP the goal is to optimize for UX (delight) rather than time to market. It keeps the MVP’s ‘build only what you need’ spirit while slightly redefining ‘need.’ With the MDP the goal is to do more than start testing features out of the gate — it’s a means of engaging customers. So then what’s the formula for delight? Based on his experience, Adam breaks it down into three core elements: ‘Gestalt’ is just a fancy word for how people understand things as complete/irreducible concepts. It’s an idea from psychology that has applications across various disciplines. Adam sees the right combination of UX and functionality as the source of a fundamentally wonderful and — over time — relatively constant experience. Product Gestalt: Beyond the engineering context, it’s useful to think of design as the means by which people relate to each other’s aesthetic sensibilities. Adam further adds that with regard to products this element should somehow capture a sense of beauty. Design: Here’s where we have to take a long hard look at MVPs and question just how much delight they actually inspire among early adopters. The MDP on the other hand iterates according to a higher standard of craftsmanship — that is, your customers don’t just get your value proposition, they feel it at every stage. Quality: Delightful products users fall in love with. They immediately become part of a user’s life or work. When a product is delightful it just makes sense. It works the way you’d expect and the experience is highly satisfying. Delightful products are adopted faster, get better word of mouth, and create higher satisfaction. –Adam Berrey So Are MVPs Obsolete Now? MVP methodology is that as you’re engineering your product development you’re simultaneously developing your customer, as well as iteratively validating your market. It’s not about the it’s about the . what, how MVP is more than just a product. As Jerry Cao of UXPin puts it: The MVP is the smallest experiment that either proves or disproves [your] assumptions about a business idea. –Jerry Cao So, It doesn’t matter what you choose MVP or MDP development to test the business idea and validate your market, just remember, don’t think prototype, think process. This article was originally published in Ezetech blog and shared with Medium community. For more articles for entrepreneurs sign up to . our bot And don’t forget to give us your 👏 below!

MVP vs MDP = Viability vs Delight. What You Really Need?

This post was primarily written by Viktor Bunin . See end of piece for a list of contributors. Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto to be a which would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. It emerged in the middle of the Great Recession; as individuals lost their homes and savings, banks and businesses were going bankrupt, and the government was printing money to stimulate the economy through multiple rounds of Quantitative Easing. It was designed to be an alternative to our current system of what was considered irresponsible government and central bank policies; a way to reimagine the role of money in our society. peer-to-peer electronic cash system The brilliant decentralized blockchain design and incentive structure aligned the interests of miners, users, and developers to keep the system healthy and disincentivize any group from accumulating too much power since an attack or imbalance would hurt all and decrease the value of the network — and in turn, their investment. Although there are still many challenges around scaling, environmental impact, price swings, etc., Bitcoin has been revolutionary and laid the technological groundwork for Satoshi’s vision as a true alternative to FIAT currencies. However, we currently, tentatively believe that Bitcoin’s deflationary token economics will prevent it from being adopted and used as a global digital currency. Deflationary economic policies, often associated with the Austrian school of economics and Libertarian school of thought, sound great in theory, but quickly fall apart as you deconstruct them. The biggest gripe about inflation is that our money loses a little bit of purchasing power every year and a deflationary economic policy promises, at first glance, to solve that problem and have your hard earned cash appreciate without any effort on your part. This part is true — money would gain in purchasing power so your savings will be “worth” more over time. However, it is not an accident that the United States has overwhelmingly abandoned deflationary policies, moving off the gold standard in 1933 (during the Great Depression) and completely severing the dollar-gold link in 1971, with the rest of the world following suit at various times. This is because such policies provide perverse economic incentives for growth and investment while simultaneously being disastrous during economic downturns. What follows is a series of propositions and arguments examining Bitcoin’s deflationary token economics from an economic, user experience, and incentive perspective to determine its viability as a global digital currency. Assumptions: For the purposes of this discussion, let’s keep things simple and define money as a unit of measurement that allows us to compare unlike goods and services based on how much we value them (i.e., apples to oranges). As an example, a neighbor might pay you $300 to paint his fence which you then go and use to buy a $300 pair of shoes, meaning you/society associate the same value with painting the fence and that pair of shoes. We will be discussing inflation and deflation from a monetary unit, not general economic, perspective. For example, U.S. history had multiple periods with inflationary currency during a deflationary economic period (economic downturns). In traditional FIAT, a deflating economy leads directly to decreased consumption, layoffs, etc. While we think this will also be true in a BTC-denominated economy, we will not make this argument as it has already been made many times by other publications in favor of other, non-traditional reasoning We will not be commenting on Bitcoin as a store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account, because there are enough articles written about it and, although relevant to this article, would require a significantly lengthier piece without significant value add Line of Reasoning: Inflationary (FIAT) and deflationary (gold & BTC) currencies have different incentive structures and therefore result in different behaviors. Their primary difference is how they treat the past: inflation erodes the value you created while deflation increases that value. So with inflation, you have to reinvest that value to create more, greater value (by expanding operations, buying better equipment to increase your margin, expanding to other neighborhoods that desperately need your services, etc.). If you do not, your money will last you for a while, but it will have less purchasing power over time. The inflationary incentive structure, put in plain English, is that you have to grow and cannot ride on the coattails of your past successes. Deflation, on the other hand, continuously rewards you for creating value in the past, regardless of what you are doing in the present. Once you have earned money for creating value, your incentive to continue contributing to the world is significantly diminished because deflation is perpetually sustaining you over time by giving that earned money greater purchasing power. Debt is arguably one of the greatest human inventions because it allows for the smooth transition of saved up capital to be put to use by another person to create value. The owner of the capital gets a certain rate of return, allowing them to grow their capital, and the borrower is able to keep whatever returns she’s able to create on top of what she must pay back. This doesn’t apply to just complicated financial instruments; the U.S. student debt market is a perfect example of individuals agreeing to use another’s capital to invest in themselves, thereby increasing their value creation / earning potential, on the assumption that this increase will be greater than the rate at which they borrowed capital. The problem with BTC-denominated (deflationary) debt is that the real value (purchasing power) of this debt increases over time as the value of the denominational asset grows. This means that you now need to create a significantly larger amount of value because the burden of debt is that much higher. This is a big problem because it will add an additional burden on individuals and institutions using debt-based financing, the primary driver of innovation and investment. The other challenge with deflationary asset-based debt is that it causes an increase in real interest rates. Other than a few isolated cases of (where you literally pay someone to take your money), the usual nominal interest rate does not fall below 0%, which in today’s inflationary world means the lowest real we’ve seen was as low as -2%. The problem with deflation is that if we assume that the interest rate does not generally fall below 0%, then at 2% deflation, the real risk free rate of return is sitting at 2%. Because this rate is generally used as a benchmark, all real interest rates will tend to be higher even though their nominal values may be lower. Negative Interest Rate Policies risk free rate rate of return Higher real interest rates are a big problem because most investments in productivity-increasing innovations are marginal. They aren’t going to revolutionize the planet in one go… they make incremental improvements that can, over time, add up to huge leaps. For example, cryptocurrencies were talked about and worked on for more than 20 years before Bitcoin came into existence. A higher real interest rate increases the expected rate of return on investment, meaning that lower-value add or higher risk projects will not merit investment, resulting in a decreased rate of innovation. Therefore, deflationary currency promotes dynastic wealth by incentivizing hoarding and disincentivizing investment. One of the reasons the U.S. is so successful is because the system disincentivizes dynastic wealth through inflation and inheritance taxes. For better or for worse, the rich and poor are all on a treadmill with the same premise: keep contributing to society if you want to keep up and stay relevant. describes a situation in which the nominal price, of anything, is resistant to change. This is generally broken down into two components: price stickiness and wage stickiness. Both are important. Nominal rigidity Most individuals are happy thinking about the nominal price of their coffee decreasing because they think of it as now becoming cheaper, but the reality is that, just like with inflationary currency, the real price stays largely the same. You don’t suddenly value coffee as a more valuable part of your life for which you are willing to pay a larger percentage of your salary. If the price of coffee went up 20x over the past 100 years, it’s actually likely that the annual salary went up >20x due to efficiencies and supply chain improvements, so coffee is probably cheaper for you than for your ancestors! Wage stickiness is, we think, the more important point to bring up from a psychological, not economic, perspective. A common economic refrain is that denominating salaries in a deflationary currency will drive unemployment as wages are sticky-down (meaning they rise easy, but fall with great difficulty). The logic then states that this is especially true during economic downturns as currencies tend to appreciate while salaries fall, leading to greater firing as the effect is larger using a deflationary currency. While we agree with this line of reasoning, we want to call special attention to the human aspect of wages — if people often equate money with value, then our wage is a measurement of how much our contributions are valued by society. Our self-worth and ego are on the line and although the real value of the wage may be increasing, that effect is invisible, while a nominally decreasing paycheck is very visible. Lastly, we want to highlight what happens during economic downturns. Irving Fisher wrote a seminal piece in 1933 called in which he theorized that over-investment, on its own, is not sufficient to cause an economic downturn until it is combined with debt and deflation. His essay contained 49 articles, of which 29–32 (below) are the most relevant for our purposes, but which are all worth reading. The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions This was disastrous during the last deflationary, gold-based currency, and it would be disastrous today if backed by BTC. Conclusion: Given the evidence that we have seen, we believe Bitcoin’s deflationary token economics prevent it from being viable as a global digital currency. We expect one of the following outcomes: Bitcoin will remain deflationary and will solidly become a store of value, serving as the world’s “new gold” while another cryptocurrency serves as the actual currency used as cash and backing for financial instruments Bitcoin will hard fork to become inflationary, which will cause a precipitous drop in its value and due to lack of faith in the protocol’s inalterability (which we think it would survive if done early enough) Bitcoin will remain deflationary and serve in some sort of two rails capacity with the existing FIAT system that enables peer-to-peer cross-border payments while maintaining national economic sovereignty As to the Austrian vs Keynesian debate, our best advice is to meet in the middle. Austrian economic theory has been thoroughly disproven as an effective model for our society, but Keynesian economic theory has its own faults. The Fed into our economy during the recession while former to pay our debtors and avoid default. These aren’t bugs of Keynesian economics, they’re features; ones that will eventually collapse. We hope that blockchain will be a new paradigm that can take the best of both models to create a better system for all. pumped $4 trillion U.S. President Barack Obama was hours away from printing a $1 trillion coin Sources: https://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/04/money https://www.wired.com/2013/11/bitcoin-and-deflation/amp https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/978/economics/definition-of-deflation/ http://www.macrotrends.net/1329/us-dollar-index-historical-chart https://campus.fsu.edu/bbcswebdav/users/jcalhoun/Courses/Growth_of_American_Economy/Chapter_Supplemental_Readings/Chapter_23/Fisher-The_Debt_Deflation_Theory.pdf https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Deflationary_spiral https://www.investinblockchain.com/bitcoin-is-a-deflationary-currency/ https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21599053-chronic-deflation-may-keep-bitcoin-displacing-its-fiat-rivals-money https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/01/14/2088062/what-is-the-relationship-between-inflation-and-investment/ Credit Ben Rodriguez: Ben@parea.io Charles Hwang: Charles@lightning.capital Neha Singh: Neha_singh1@outlook.com Chase Collum: collumchase@gmail.com Errata We are only human and we make mistakes. We will include any types of revisions or lapses in logic when found or brought up to us in a dedicated section at the end of each of our essays. In addition, if you have any suggestions for future essays such as formatting, or topics you’d like to see written about discussed, drop us an email at or leave a comment. hello@parea.io

The impact of Bitcoin’s deflationary token economics on its viability as a global digital currency

Overview The Ripio Credit Network (RCN) is a protocol based on smart contracts and blockchain technology, which builds upon a current service offered by Ripio in their operating country of Argentina, Ripio Credit Services. The protocol aims to enable global connections between peer to peer (P2P) lenders and borrowers, regardless of currency. RCN will look to reduce traditional bank lending costs and fees, while offering a superior credit experience for both parties. RCN’s main point of differentiation within their network protocol is an “old school” credit guarantor, i.e. Cosigner. By including a loan guarantor (Cosigner​), RCN seeks to minimize the Lender’s credit risk in case of a default by taking over the defaulters loan payments while simultaneously seeking resolution within the country of loan origin. Business Model and Strategy RCN seeks to marry the P2P internet lending economy with the frictionless perks of blockchain decentralization to offer a better credit experience to the banked and unbanked population. For example, the rise of the P2P loan ecosystem enabled greater access to loan investments for investors while providing a more efficient, faster, and cheaper loan for borrowers. However, the lender under certain circumstances had limited recourse if loans went into default or arrears; especially if the Borrower and Lender were located in different areas of the world, under different credit laws. Beyond the technology, the value proposition that RCN is offering to clients is a loan guarantee, Thus, if a loan made by a Lender goes into default or arrears, the Cosigner (guarantor) will assume the liability and make the lender whole (no loss of principal and/or interest payments). RCN’s remedial approach to credit analysis should be sufficient to bootstrap the network in the early days until more actors join globally. i.e. in theory a risk-free interest rate yield. Quantitative Model Rating* Pugilist’s proprietary machine learning model generates a probability of viability that is subject to early stage investment return standards. However, given the early stage nature of these investments, the model should be viewed as directionally accurate versus a crystal ball. Pugilist’s probability of viability is that RCN be a viable ICO. 52.28% WILL Conclusion RCN has a solid team, advisors, and niche market, which should be advantageous for executing their product roadmap. However, the Management Team should take our disclosure recommendations into consideration in order to drive transparency and trust within the network; especially during these early bootstrapped days. Ultimately, RCN’s success will be tied to the growth of the blockchain universe and P2P lending in Latin America, good network incentives, and prudent credit and default management. Pugilist believes RCN has a decent probability of being a viable network despite needing to overcome several hurdles in the short term. Pugilist’s Investment Rating* *see full report appendix for rating methodology Download the full report here . — — is a research and investment firm that operates at the intersection of FinTech and Blockchain. We democratize research for blockchain enthusiasts and individual investors. Pugilist Ventures if you got an ounce of digital gold from this read. Please send your comments or requests and feel free to peruse our prior research . Please clap here here — — Neither the author of this article, nor Pugilist Ventures, provide investment, financial, or legal advice. This site cannot substitute for professional advice and independent factual verification. The content provided on this site is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as any kind of solicitation for investment in any investment opportunity. Disclaimer:

Ripio Token Investment Report Sheds Light on Viability

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